SHORT STUDIES ON GREAT SUBJECTS. 

 LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE

 SHORT STUDIES ON GREAT SUBJECTS. 

 BY

 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M. A. 

 LATE FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD. 

 _SECOND EDITION. _

 LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1867. 

CONTENTS. 

 PAGE

THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 1

TIMES OF ERASMUS AND LUTHER: Lecture I 26 Lecture II 50 Lecture III 75

THE INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION ON THE SCOTTISH CHARACTER 102

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLICISM 124

A PLEA FOR THE FREE DISCUSSION OF THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES 133

CRITICISM AND THE GOSPEL HISTORY 159

THE BOOK OF JOB 185

SPINOZA 223

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES 265

ENGLAND'S FORGOTTEN WORTHIES 294

HOMER 334

THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS 363

REPRESENTATIVE MEN 384

REYNARD THE FOX 401

THE CAT'S PILGRIMAGE: Part I 419 Part II 422 Part III 427 Part IV 430

FABLES: I. The Lions and the Oxen 433 II. The Farmer and the Fox 434

PARABLE OF THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE 436

COMPENSATION 439

THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY:

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION

FEBRUARY 5, 1864. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, --I have undertaken to speak to you this evening onwhat is called the Science of History. I fear it is a dry subject; andthere seems, indeed, something incongruous in the very connection ofsuch words as Science and History. It is as if we were to talk of thecolour of sound, or the longitude of the rule-of-three. Where it is sodifficult to make out the truth on the commonest disputed fact inmatters passing under our very eyes, how can we talk of a science inthings long past, which come to us only through books? It often seems tome as if History was like a child's box of letters, with which we canspell any word we please. We have only to pick out such letters as wewant, arrange them as we like, and say nothing about those which do notsuit our purpose. 

I will try to make the thing intelligible, and I will try not to wearyyou; but I am doubtful of my success either way. First, however, I wishto say a word or two about the eminent person whose name is connectedwith this way of looking at History, and whose premature death struck usall with such a sudden sorrow. Many of you, perhaps, recollect Mr. Buckle as he stood not so long ago in this place. He spoke more than anhour without a note--never repeating himself, never wasting words;laying out his matter as easily and as pleasantly as if he had beentalking to us at his own fireside. We might think what we pleased of Mr. Buckle's views, but it was plain enough that he was a man of uncommonpower; and he had qualities also--qualities to which he, perhaps, himself attached little value, as rare as they were admirable. 

Most of us, when we have hit on something which we are pleased to thinkimportant and original, feel as if we should burst with it. We come outinto the book-market with our wares in hand, and ask for thanks andrecognition. Mr. Buckle, at an early age, conceived the thought whichmade him famous, but he took the measure of his abilities. He knew thatwhenever he pleased he could command personal distinction, but he caredmore for his subject than for himself. He was contented to work withpatient reticence, unknown and unheard of, for twenty years; and then, at middle life, he produced a work which was translated at once intoFrench and German, and, of all places in the world, fluttered thedovecotes of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. 

Goethe says somewhere, that as soon as a man has done anythingremarkable, there seems to be a general conspiracy to prevent him fromdoing it again. He is feasted, fêted, caressed; his time is stolen fromhim by breakfasts, dinners, societies, idle businesses of a thousandkinds. Mr. Buckle had his share of all this; but there are also moredangerous enemies that wait upon success like his. He had scarcely wonfor himself the place which he deserved, than his health was foundshattered by his labours. He had but time to show us how large a man hewas--time just to sketch the outlines of his philosophy, and he passedaway as suddenly as he appeared. He went abroad to recover strength forhis work, but his work was done with and over. He died of a fever atDamascus, vexed only that he was compelled to leave it uncompleted. Almost his last conscious words were, 'My book, my book! I shall neverfinish my book!' He went away as he had lived, nobly careless ofhimself, and thinking only of the thing which he had undertaken to do. 

But his labour had not been thrown away. Disagree with him as we might, the effect which he had already produced was unmistakable, and it is notlikely to pass away. What he said was not essentially new. Some suchinterpretation of human things is as early as the beginning of thought. But Mr. Buckle, on the one hand, had the art which belongs to men ofgenius; he could present his opinions with peculiar distinctness; and, on the other hand, there is much in the mode of speculation at presentcurrent among us for which those opinions have an unusual fascination. They do not please us, but they excite and irritate us. We are angrywith them; and we betray, in being so, an uneasy misgiving that theremay be more truth in those opinions than we like to allow. 

Mr. Buckle's general theory was something of this kind: When humancreatures began first to look about them in the world they lived in, there seemed to be no order in anything. Days and nights were not thesame length. The air was sometimes hot and sometimes cold. Some of thestars rose and set like the sun; some were almost motionless in the sky;some described circles round a central star above the north horizon. Theplanets went on principles of their own; and in the elements thereseemed nothing but caprice. Sun and moon would at times go out ineclipse. Sometimes the earth itself would shake under men's feet; andthey could only suppose that earth and air and sky and water wereinhabited and managed by creatures as wayward as themselves. 

Time went on, and the disorder began to arrange itself. Certaininfluences seemed beneficent to men, others malignant and destructive, and the world was supposed to be animated by good spirits and evilspirits, who were continually fighting against each other, in outwardnature and in human creatures themselves. Finally, as men observed moreand imagined less, these interpretations gave way also. Phenomena themost opposite in effect were seen to be the result of the same naturallaw. The fire did not burn the house down if the owners of it werecareful, but remained on the hearth and boiled the pot; nor did it seemmore inclined to burn a bad man's house down than a good man's, providedthe badness did not take the form of negligence. The phenomena of naturewere found for the most part to proceed in an orderly, regular way, andtheir variations to be such as could be counted upon. From observing theorder of things, the step was easy to cause and effect. An eclipse, instead of being a sign of the anger of Heaven, was found to be thenecessary and innocent result of the relative position of sun, moon, andearth. The comets became bodies in space, unrelated to the beings whohad imagined that all creation was watching them and their doings. Bydegrees, caprice, volition, all symptoms of arbitrary action, disappeared out of the universe; and almost every phenomenon in earthor heaven was found attributable to some law, either understood orperceived to exist. Thus nature was reclaimed from the imagination. Thefirst fantastic conception of things gave way before the moral; themoral in turn gave way before the natural; and at last there was leftbut one small tract of jungle where the theory of law had failed topenetrate--the doings and characters of human creatures themselves. 

There, and only there, amidst the conflicts of reason and emotion, conscience and desire, spiritual forces were still conceived to exist. Cause and effect were not traceable when there was a free volition todisturb the connection. In all other things, from a given set ofconditions, the consequences necessarily followed. With man, the wordlaw changed its meaning; and instead of a fixed order, which he couldnot choose but follow, it became a moral precept, which he might disobeyif he dared. 

This it was which Mr. Buckle disbelieved. The economy which prevailedthroughout nature, he thought it very unlikely should admit of thisexception. He considered that human beings acted necessarily from theimpulse of outward circumstances upon their mental and bodily conditionat any given moment. Every man, he said, acted from a motive; and hisconduct was determined by the motive which affected him most powerfully. Every man naturally desires what he supposes to be good for him; but todo well, he must know well. He will eat poison, so long as he does notknow that it is poison. Let him see that it will kill him, and he willnot touch it. The question was not of moral right and wrong. Once lethim be thoroughly made to feel that the thing is destructive, and hewill leave it alone by the law of his nature. His virtues are the resultof knowledge; his faults, the necessary consequence of the want of it. Aboy desires to draw. He knows nothing about it: he draws men like treesor houses, with their centre of gravity anywhere. He makes mistakes, because he knows no better. We do not blame him. Till he is bettertaught he cannot help it. But his instruction begins. He arrives atstraight lines; then at solids; then at curves. He learns perspective, and light and shade. He observes more accurately the forms which hewishes to represent. He perceives effects, and he perceives the means bywhich they are produced. He has learned what to do; and, in part, hehas learned how to do it. His after-progress will depend on the amountof force which his nature possesses; but all this is as natural as thegrowth of an acorn. You do not preach to the acorn that it is its dutyto become a large tree; you do not preach to the art-pupil that it ishis duty to become a Holbein. You plant your acorn in favourable soil, where it can have light and air, and be sheltered from the wind; youremove the superfluous branches, you train the strength into the leadingshoots. The acorn will then become as fine a tree as it has vital forceto become. The difference between men and other things is only in thelargeness and variety of man's capacities; and in this special capacity, that he alone has the power of observing the circumstances favourable tohis own growth, and can apply them for himself. Yet, again, with thiscondition, --that he is not, as is commonly supposed, free to choosewhether he will make use of these appliances or not. When he knows whatis good for him, he will choose it; and he will judge what is good forhim by the circumstances which have made him what he is. 

And what he would do, Mr. Buckle supposed that he always had done. Hishistory had been a natural growth as much as the growth of the acorn. His improvement had followed the progress of his knowledge; and, by acomparison of his outward circumstances with the condition of his mind, his whole proceedings on this planet, his creeds and constitutions, hisgood deeds and his bad, his arts and his sciences, his empires and hisrevolutions, would be found all to arrange themselves into clearrelations of cause and effect. 

If, when Mr. Buckle pressed his conclusions, we objected the difficultyof finding what the truth about past times really was, he would admit itcandidly as far as concerned individuals; but there was not the samedifficulty, he said, with masses of men. We might disagree about thecharacters of Julius or Tiberius Cæsar, but we could know well enoughthe Romans of the Empire. We had their literature to tell us how theythought; we had their laws to tell us how they governed; we had thebroad face of the world, the huge mountainous outline of their generaldoings upon it, to tell us how they acted. He believed it was allreducible to laws, and could be made as intelligible as the growth ofthe chalk cliffs or the coal measures. 

And thus consistently Mr. Buckle cared little for individuals. He didnot believe (as some one has said) that the history of mankind is thehistory of its great men. Great men with him were but larger atoms, obeying the same impulses with the rest, only perhaps a trifle moreerratic. With them or without them, the course of things would have beenmuch the same. 

As an illustration of the truth of his view, he would point to the newscience of Political Economy. Here already was a large area of humanactivity in which natural laws were found to act unerringly. Men hadgone on for centuries trying to regulate trade on moral principles. Theywould fix wages according to some imaginary rule of fairness; they wouldfix prices by what they considered things ought to cost; they encouragedone trade or discouraged another, for moral reasons. They might as wellhave tried to work a steam-engine on moral reasons. The great statesmenwhose names were connected with these enterprises might have as welllegislated that water should run up-hill. There were natural laws, fixedin the conditions of things: and to contend against them was the oldbattle of the Titans against the gods. 

As it was with political economy, so it was with all other forms ofhuman activity; and as the true laws of political economy explained thetroubles which people fell into in old times, because they were ignorantof them, so the true laws of human nature, as soon as we knew them, would explain their mistakes in more serious matters, and enable us tomanage better for the future. Geographical position, climate, air, soil, and the like, had their several influences. The northern nations arehardy and industrious, because they must till the earth if they wouldeat the fruits of it, and because the temperature is too low to make anidle life enjoyable. In the south, the soil is more productive, whileless food is wanted and fewer clothes; and in the exquisite air, exertion is not needed to make the sense of existence delightful. Therefore, in the south we find men lazy and indolent. 

True, there are difficulties in these views; the home of the languidItalian was the home also of the sternest race of whom the story ofmankind retains a record. And again, when we are told that the Spaniardsare superstitious, because Spain is a country of earthquakes, weremember Japan, the spot in all the world where earthquakes are mostfrequent, and where at the same time there is the most serene disbeliefin any supernatural agency whatsoever. 

Moreover, if men grow into what they are by natural laws, they cannothelp being what they are; and if they cannot help being what they are, agood deal will have to be altered in our general view of humanobligations and responsibilities. 

That, however, in these theories there is a great deal of truth is quitecertain; were there but a hope that those who maintain them would becontented with that admission. A man born in a Mahometan country growsup a Mahometan; in a Catholic country, a Catholic; in a Protestantcountry, a Protestant. His opinions are like his language; he learns tothink as he learns to speak; and it is absurd to suppose him responsiblefor being what nature makes him. We take pains to educate children. There is a good education and a bad education; there are rules wellascertained by which characters are influenced, and, clearly enough, itis no mere matter for a boy's free will whether he turns out well orill. We try to train him into good habits; we keep him out of the way oftemptations; we see that he is well taught; we mix kindness andstrictness; we surround him with every good influence we can command. These are what are termed the advantages of a good education: and if wefail to provide those under our care with it, and if they go wrong, theresponsibility we feel is as much ours as theirs. This is at once anadmission of the power over us of outward circumstances. 

In the same way, we allow for the strength of temptations, and the like. 

In general, it is perfectly obvious that men do necessarily absorb, outof the influences in which they grow up, something which gives acomplexion to their whole after-character. 

When historians have to relate great social or speculative changes, theoverthrow of a monarchy or the establishment of a creed, they do buthalf their duty if they merely relate the events. In an account, forinstance, of the rise of Mahometanism, it is not enough to describe thecharacter of the Prophet, the ends which he set before him, the meanswhich he made use of, and the effect which he produced; the historianmust show what there was in the condition of the Eastern races whichenabled Mahomet to act upon them so powerfully; their existing beliefs, their existing moral and political condition. 

In our estimate of the past, and in our calculations of the future--inthe judgments which we pass upon one another, we measure responsibility, not by the thing done, but by the opportunities which people have had ofknowing better or worse. In the efforts which we make to keep ourchildren from bad associations or friends we admit that externalcircumstances have a powerful effect in making men what they are. 

But are circumstances everything? That is the whole question. A scienceof history, if it is more than a misleading name, implies that therelation between cause and effect holds in human things as completely asin all others, that the origin of human actions is not to be looked forin mysterious properties of the mind, but in influences which arepalpable and ponderable. 

When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralised by whatis called volition, the word Science is out of place. If it is free to aman to choose what he will do or not do, there is no adequate science ofhim. If there is a science of him, there is no free choice, and thepraise or blame with which we regard one another are impertinent and outof place. 

I am trespassing upon these ethical grounds because, unless I do, thesubject cannot be made intelligible. Mankind are but an aggregate ofindividuals--History is but the record of individual action; and what istrue of the part, is true of the whole. 

We feel keenly about such things, and when the logic becomes perplexing, we are apt to grow rhetorical about them. But rhetoric is onlymisleading. Whatever the truth may be, it is best that we should knowit; and for truth of any kind we should keep our heads and hearts ascool as we can. 

I will say at once, that if we had the whole case before us--if we weretaken, like Leibnitz's Tarquin, into the council chamber of nature, andwere shown what we really were, where we came from, and where we weregoing, however unpleasant it might be for some of us to find ourselves, like Tarquin, made into villains, from the subtle necessities of 'thebest of all possible worlds;' nevertheless, some such theory as Mr. Buckle's might possibly turn out to be true. Likely enough, there issome great 'equation of the universe' where the value of the unknownquantities can be determined. But we must treat things in relation toour own powers and position; and the question is, whether the sweep ofthose vast curves can be measured by the intellect of creatures of a daylike ourselves. 

The 'Faust' of Goethe, tired of the barren round of earthly knowledge, calls magic to his aid. He desires, first, to see the spirit of theMacrocosmos, but his heart fails him before he ventures that tremendousexperiment, and he summons before him, instead, the spirit of his ownrace. There he feels himself at home. The stream of life and the stormof action, the everlasting ocean of existence, the web and the woof, andthe roaring loom of time--he gazes upon them all, and in passionateexultation claims fellowship with the awful thing before him. But themajestic vision fades, and a voice comes to him--'Thou art fellow withthe spirits which thy mind can grasp--not with me. '

Had Mr. Buckle tried to follow his principles into detail, it might havefared no better with him than with 'Faust. '

What are the conditions of a science? and when may any subject be saidto enter the scientific stage? I suppose when the facts of it begin toresolve themselves into groups; when phenomena are no longer isolatedexperiences, but appear in connection and order; when, after certainantecedents, certain consequences are uniformly seen to follow; whenfacts enough have been collected to furnish a basis for conjecturalexplanation, and when conjectures have so far ceased to be utterlyvague, that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by thehelp of them. 

Till a subject has advanced as far as this, to speak of a science of itis an abuse of language. It is not enough to say that there must be ascience of human things, because there is a science of all other things. This is like saying the planets must be inhabited, because the onlyplanet of which we have any experience is inhabited. It may or may notbe true, but it is not a practical question; it does not affect thepractical treatment of the matter in hand. 

Let us look at the history of Astronomy. 

So long as sun, moon, and planets were supposed to be gods or angels; solong as the sword of Orion was not a metaphor, but a fact, and thegroups of stars which inlaid the floor of heaven were the glitteringtrophies of the loves and wars of the Pantheon, so long there was noscience of Astronomy. There was fancy, imagination, poetry, perhapsreverence, but no science. As soon, however, as it was observed that thestars retained their relative places--that the times of their rising andsetting varied with the seasons--that sun, moon, and planets moved amongthem in a plane, and the belt of the Zodiac was marked out and divided, then a new order of things began. Traces of the earlier stage remainedin the names of the signs and constellations, just as the Scandinavianmythology survives now in the names of the days of the week: but for allthat, the understanding was now at work on the thing; Science had begun, and the first triumph of it was the power of foretelling the future. Eclipses were perceived to recur in cycles of nineteen years, andphilosophers were able to say when an eclipse was to be looked for. Theperiods of the planets were determined. Theories were invented toaccount for their eccentricities; and, false as those theories might be, the position of the planets could be calculated with moderate certaintyby them. The very first result of the science, in its most imperfectstage, was a power of foresight; and this was possible before any onetrue astronomical law had been discovered. 

We should not therefore question the possibility of a science ofhistory, because the explanations of its phenomena were rudimentary orimperfect: that they might be, and might long continue to be, and yetenough might be done to show that there was such a thing, and that itwas not entirely without use. But how was it that in those rude days, with small knowledge of mathematics, and with no better instruments thanflat walls and dial plates, those first astronomers made progress soconsiderable? Because, I suppose, the phenomena which they wereobserving recurred, for the most part, within moderate intervals; sothat they could collect large experience within the compass of theirnatural lives: because days and months and years were measurableperiods, and within them the more simple phenomena perpetually repeatedthemselves. 

But how would it have been if, instead of turning on its axis once intwenty-four hours, the earth had taken a year about it; if the year hadbeen nearly four hundred years; if man's life had been no longer than itis, and for the initial steps of astronomy there had been nothing todepend upon except observations recorded in history? How many ages wouldhave passed, had this been our condition, before it would have occurredto any one, that, in what they saw night after night, there was any kindof order at all?

We can see to some extent how it would have been, by the present stateof those parts of the science which in fact depend on remote recordedobservations. The movements of the comets are still extremely uncertain. The times of their return can be calculated only with the greatestvagueness. 

And yet such a hypothesis as I have suggested would but inadequatelyexpress the position in which we are in fact placed towards history. There the phenomena never repeat themselves. There we are dependentwholly on the record of things said to have happened once, but whichnever happen or can happen a second time. There no experiment ispossible; we can watch for no recurring fact to test the worth of ourconjectures. It has been suggested, fancifully, that if we consider theuniverse to be infinite, time is the same as eternity, and the past isperpetually present. Light takes nine years to come to us from Sirius;those rays which we may see to-night when we leave this place, leftSirius nine years ago; and could the inhabitants of Sirius see the earthat this moment, they would see the English army in the trenches beforeSebastopol; Florence Nightingale watching at Scutari over the wounded atInkermann; and the peace of England undisturbed by 'Essays and Reviews. '

As the stars recede into distance, so time recedes with them, and theremay be, and probably are, stars from which Noah might be seen steppinginto the ark, Eve listening to the temptation of the serpent, or thatolder race, eating the oysters and leaving the shell-heaps behind them, when the Baltic was an open sea. 

Could we but compare notes, something might be done; but of this thereis no present hope, and without it there will be no science of history. Eclipses, recorded in ancient books, can be verified by calculation, andlost dates can be recovered by them, and we can foresee by the lawswhich they follow when there will be eclipses again. Will a time everbe when the lost secret of the foundation of Rome can be recovered byhistoric laws? If not, where is our science? It may be said that this isa particular fact, that we can deal satisfactorily with generalphenomena affecting eras and cycles. Well, then, let us take somegeneral phenomenon. Mahometanism, for instance, or Buddhism. Those arelarge enough. Can you imagine a science which would have[A] _foretold_such movements as those? The state of things out of which they rose isobscure; but suppose it not obscure, can you conceive that, with anyamount of historical insight into the old Oriental beliefs, you couldhave seen that they were about to transform themselves into thoseparticular forms and no other?

It is not enough to say, that, after the fact, you can understandpartially how Mahometanism came to be. All historians worth the namehave told us something about that. But when we talk of science, we meansomething with more ambitious pretences, we mean something which canforesee as well as explain; and, thus looked at, to state the problem isto show its absurdity. As little could the wisest man have foreseen thismighty revolution, as thirty years ago such a thing as Mormonism couldhave been anticipated in America; as little as it could have beenforeseen that table-turning and spirit-rapping would have been anoutcome of the scientific culture of England in the nineteenth century. 

The greatest of Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the seething massof moral putrefaction round him, detected and deigned to notice amongits elements a certain detestable superstition, so he called it, risingup amidst the offscouring of the Jews, which was named Christianity. Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of GregoryVII. , could he have beheld the representative of the majesty of theCæsars holding the stirrup of the Pontiff of that vile and execratedsect, the spectacle would scarcely have appeared to him the fulfilmentof a rational expectation, or an intelligible result of the causes inoperation round him. Tacitus, indeed, was born before the science ofhistory; but would M. Comte have seen any more clearly?

Nor is the case much better if we are less hard upon our philosophy; ifwe content ourselves with the past, and require only a scientificexplanation of that. 

First, for the facts themselves. They come to us through the minds ofthose who recorded them, neither machines nor angels, but falliblecreatures, with human passions and prejudices. Tacitus and Thucydideswere perhaps the ablest men who ever gave themselves to writing history;the ablest, and also the most incapable of conscious falsehood. Yet evennow, after all these centuries, the truth of what they relate is calledin question. Good reasons can be given to show that neither of them canbe confidently trusted. If we doubt with these, whom are we to believe?

Or again, let the facts be granted. To revert to my simile of the box ofletters, you have but to select such facts as suit you, you have but toleave alone those which do not suit you, and let your theory of historybe what it will, you can find no difficulty in providing facts to proveit. 

You may have your Hegel's philosophy of history, or you may have yourSchlegel's philosophy of history; you may prove from history that theworld is governed in detail by a special Providence; you may prove thatthere is no sign of any moral agent in the universe, except man; you maybelieve, if you like it, in the old theory of the wisdom of antiquity;you may speak, as was the fashion in the fifteenth century, of 'ourfathers, who had more wit and wisdom than we;' or you may talk of 'ourbarbarian ancestors, ' and describe their wars as the scuffling of kitesand crows. 

You may maintain that the evolution of humanity has been an unbrokenprogress towards perfection; you may maintain that there has been noprogress at all, and that man remains the same poor creature that heever was; or, lastly, you may say with the author of the 'ContratSocial, ' that men were purest and best in primeval simplicity--

 When wild in woods the noble savage ran. 

In all, or any of these views, history will stand your friend. History, in its passive irony, will make no objection. Like Jarno, in Goethe'snovel, it will not condescend to argue with you, and will provide youwith abundant illustrations of anything which you may wish to believe. 

'What is history, ' said Napoleon, 'but a fiction agreed upon?' 'Myfriend, ' said Faust to the student, who was growing enthusiastic aboutthe spirit of past ages; 'my friend, the times which are gone are a bookwith seven seals; and what you call the spirit of past ages is but thespirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose mind those ages arereflected. '

One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat withdistinctness; that the world is built somehow on moral foundations;that, in the long run, it is well with the good; in the long run, it isill with the wicked. But this is no science; it is no more than the olddoctrine taught long ago by the Hebrew prophets. The theories of M. Comte and his disciples advance us, after all, not a step beyond thetrodden and familiar ground. If men are not entirely animals, they areat least half animals, and are subject in this aspect of them to theconditions of animals. So far as those parts of man's doings areconcerned, which neither have, nor need have, anything moral about them, so far the laws of him are calculable. There are laws for his digestion, and laws of the means by which his digestive organs are supplied withmatter. But pass beyond them, and where are we? In a world where itwould be as easy to calculate men's actions by laws like those ofpositive philosophy as to measure the orbit of Neptune with a foot-rule, or weigh Sirius in a grocer's scale. 

And it is not difficult to see why this should be. The first principleon which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, isthat all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may beenlightened self-interest; it may be unenlightened; but it is assumed asan axiom, that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at somethingwhich he considers will promote his happiness. His conduct is notdetermined by his will; it is determined by the object of his desire. Adam Smith, in laying the foundations of political economy, expresslyeliminates every other motive. He does not say that men never act onother motives; still less, that they never ought to act on othermotives. He asserts merely that, as far as the arts of production areconcerned, and of buying and selling, the action of self-interest may becounted upon as uniform. What Adam Smith says of political economy, Mr. Buckle would extend over the whole circle of human activity. 

Now, that which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a loworder of man--that which constitutes human goodness, human greatness, human nobleness--is surely not the degree of enlightenment with whichmen pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness--it isself-sacrifice--it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personalindulgence, personal advantages remote or present, because some otherline of conduct is more right. 

We are sometimes told that this is but another way of expressing thesame thing; that when a man prefers doing what is right, it is onlybecause to do right gives him a higher satisfaction. It appears to me, on the contrary, to be a difference in the very heart and nature ofthings. The martyr goes to the stake, the patriot to the scaffold, notwith a view to any future reward to themselves, but because it is aglory to fling away their lives for truth and freedom. And so throughall phases of existence, to the smallest details of common life, thebeautiful character is the unselfish character. Those whom we most loveand admire are those to whom the thought of self seems never to occur;who do simply and with no ulterior aim--with no thought whether it willbe pleasant to themselves or unpleasant--that which is good, and right, and generous. 

Is this still selfishness, only more enlightened? I do not think so. Theessence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of selfpass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone--like the bloom from asoiled flower. Surely it is a paradox to speak of the self-interest of amartyr who dies for a cause, the triumph of which he will never enjoy;and the greatest of that great company in all ages would have done whatthey did, had their personal prospects closed with the grave. Nay, therehave been those so zealous for some glorious principle, as to wishthemselves blotted out of the book of Heaven if the cause of Heavencould succeed. 

And out of this mysterious quality, whatever it be, arise the higherrelations of human life, the higher modes of human obligation. Kant, thephilosopher, used to say that there were two things which overwhelmedhim with awe as he thought of them. One was the star-sown deep of space, without limit and without end; the other was, right and wrong. Right, the sacrifice of self to good; wrong, the sacrifice of good toself;--not graduated objects of desire, to which we are determined bythe degrees of our knowledge, but wide asunder as pole and pole, aslight and darkness--one, the object of infinite love; the other, theobject of infinite detestation and scorn. It is in this marvellous powerin men to do wrong (it is an old story, but none the less true forthat)--it is in this power to do wrong--wrong or right, as it liessomehow with ourselves to choose--that the impossibility stands offorming scientific calculations of what men will do before the fact, orscientific explanations of what they have done after the fact. If menwere consistently selfish, you might analyse their motives; if they wereconsistently noble, they would express in their conduct the laws of thehighest perfection. But so long as two natures are mixed together, andthe strange creature which results from the combination is now under oneinfluence and now under another, so long you will make nothing of himexcept from the old-fashioned moral--or, if you please, imaginative--point of view. 

Even the laws of political economy itself cease to guide us when theytouch moral government. So long as labour is a chattel to be bought andsold, so long, like other commodities, it follows the condition ofsupply and demand. But if, for his misfortune, an employer considersthat he stands in human relations towards his workmen; if he believes, rightly or wrongly, that he is responsible for them; that in return fortheir labour he is bound to see that their children are decently taught, and they and their families decently fed and clothed and lodged; that heought to care for them in sickness and in old age; then politicaleconomy will no longer direct him, and the relations between himself andhis dependents will have to be arranged on quite other principles. 

So long as he considers only his own material profit, so long supply anddemand will settle every difficulty; but the introduction of a newfactor spoils the equation. 

And it is precisely in this debatable ground of low motives and nobleemotions--in the struggle, ever failing, yet ever renewed, to carrytruth and justice into the administration of human society; in theestablishment of states and in the overthrow of tyrannies; in the riseand fall of creeds; in the world of ideas; in the character and deeds ofthe great actors in the drama of life; where good and evil fight outtheir everlasting battle, now ranged in opposite camps, now and moreoften in the heart, both of them, of each living man--that the truehuman interest of history resides. The progress of industries, thegrowth of material and mechanical civilisation, are interesting, butthey are not the most interesting. They have their reward in theincrease of material comforts; but, unless we are mistaken about ournature, they do not highly concern us after all. 

Once more; not only is there in men this baffling duality of principle, but there is something else in us which still more defies scientificanalysis. 

Mr. Buckle would deliver himself from the eccentricities of this andthat individual by a doctrine of averages. Though he cannot tell whetherA, B, or C will cut his throat, he may assure himself that one man inevery fifty thousand, or thereabout (I forget the exact proportion), will cut his throat, and with this he consoles himself. No doubt it is acomforting discovery. Unfortunately, the average of one generation neednot be the average of the next. We may be converted by the Japanese, forall that we know, and the Japanese methods of taking leave of life maybecome fashionable among us. Nay, did not Novalis suggest that the wholerace of men would at last become so disgusted with their impotence, thatthey would extinguish themselves by a simultaneous act of suicide, andmake room for a better order of beings? Anyhow, the fountain out ofwhich the race is flowing perpetually changes--no two generations arealike. Whether there is a change in the organisation itself, we cannottell; but this is certain, that as the planet varies with the atmospherewhich surrounds it, so each new generation varies from the last, becauseit inhales as its atmosphere the accumulated experience and knowledge ofthe whole past of the world. These things form the spiritual air whichwe breathe as we grow; and in the infinite multiplicity of elements ofwhich that air is now composed, it is for ever matter of conjecture whatthe minds will be like which expand under its influence. 

From the England of Fielding and Richardson to the England of MissAusten--from the England of Miss Austen to the England of Railways andFree-trade, how vast the change; yet perhaps Sir Charles Grandison wouldnot seem so strange to us now, as one of ourselves will seem to ourgreat-grandchildren. The world moves faster and faster; and thedifference will probably be considerably greater. 

The temper of each new generation is a continual surprise. The fatesdelight to contradict our most confident expectations. Gibbon believedthat the era of conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full lifeof man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a fewyears ago we believed the world had grown too civilised for war, and theCrystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles, bloody as Napoleon's, are now the familiar tale of every day;and the arts which have made greatest progress are the arts ofdestruction. What next? We may strain our eyes into the future whichlies beyond this waning century; but never was conjecture more at fault. It is blank darkness, which even the imagination fails to people. 

What then is the use of History? and what are its lessons? If it cantell us little of the past, and nothing of the future, why waste ourtime over so barren a study?

First, it is a voice for ever sounding across the centuries the laws ofright and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every falseword or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust orvanity, the price has to be paid at last: not always by the chiefoffenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone endure andlive. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes atlast to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways. 

That is one lesson of History. Another is, that we should draw nohoroscopes; that we should expect little, for what we expect will notcome to pass. Revolutions, reformations--those vast movements into whichheroes and saints have flung themselves, in the belief that they werethe dawn of the millennium--have not borne the fruit which they lookedfor. Millenniums are still far away. These great convulsions leave theworld changed--perhaps improved, --but not improved as the actors in themhoped it would be. Luther would have gone to work with less heart, couldhe have foreseen the Thirty Years' War, and in the distance the theologyof Tubingen. Washington might have hesitated to draw the sword againstEngland, could he have seen the country which he made as we see itnow. [B]

The most reasonable anticipations fail us--antecedents the most appositemislead us; because the conditions of human problems never repeatthemselves. Some new feature alters everything--some element which wedetect only in its after-operation. 

But this, it may be said, is but a meagre outcome. Can the long recordsof humanity, with all its joys and sorrows, its sufferings and itsconquests, teach us no more than this? Let us approach the subject fromanother side. 

If you were asked to point out the special features in whichShakespeare's plays are so transcendently excellent, you would mention, perhaps, among others, this, that his stories are not put together, andhis characters are not conceived, to illustrate any particular law orprinciple. They teach many lessons, but not any one prominent aboveanother; and when we have drawn from them all the direct instructionwhich they contain, there remains still something unresolved--somethingwhich the artist gives, and which the philosopher cannot give. 

It is in this characteristic that we are accustomed to say Shakespeare'ssupreme _truth_ lies. He represents real life. His dramas teach as lifeteaches--neither less nor more. He builds his fabrics as nature does, onright and wrong; but he does not struggle to make nature more systematicthan she is. In the subtle interflow of good and evil--in the unmeritedsufferings of innocence--in the disproportion of penalties to desert--inthe seeming blindness with which justice, in attempting to assertitself, overwhelms innocent and guilty in a common ruin--Shakespeare istrue to real experience. The mystery of life he leaves as he finds it;and, in his most tremendous positions, he is addressing rather theintellectual emotions than the understanding, --knowing well that theunderstanding in such things is at fault, and the sage as ignorant asthe child. 

Only the highest order of genius can represent nature thus. An inferiorartist produces either something entirely immoral, where good and evilare names, and nobility of disposition is supposed to show itself in theabsolute disregard of them--or else, if he is a better kind of man, hewill force on nature a didactic purpose; he composes what are calledmoral tales, which may edify the conscience, but only mislead theintellect. 

The finest work of this kind produced in modern times is Lessing's playof 'Nathan the Wise. ' The object of it is to teach religious toleration. The doctrine is admirable--the mode in which it is enforced isinteresting; but it has the fatal fault, that it is not true. Naturedoes not teach religious toleration by any such direct method; and theresult is--no one knew it better than Lessing himself--that the play isnot poetry, but only splendid manufacture. Shakespeare is eternal;Lessing's 'Nathan' will pass away with the mode of thought which gave itbirth. One is based on fact; the other, on human theory about fact. Thetheory seems at first sight to contain the most immediate instruction;but it is not really so. 

Cibber and others, as you know, wanted to alter Shakespeare. The Frenchking, in 'Lear, ' was to be got rid of; Cordelia was to marry Edgar, andLear himself was to be rewarded for his sufferings by a golden old age. They could not bear that Hamlet should suffer for the sins of Claudius. The wicked king was to die, and the wicked mother; and Hamlet andOphelia were to make a match of it, and live happily ever after. Acommon novelist would have arranged it thus; and you would have had yourcomfortable moral that wickedness was fitly punished, and virtue had itsdue reward, and all would have been well. But Shakespeare would not haveit so. Shakespeare knew that crime was not so simple in itsconsequences, or Providence so paternal. He was contented to take thetruth from life; and the effect upon the mind of the most correct theoryof what life ought to be, compared to the effect of the life itself, isinfinitesimal in comparison. 

Again, let us compare the popular historical treatment of remarkableincidents with Shakespeare's treatment of them. Look at 'Macbeth. ' Youmay derive abundant instruction from it--instruction of many kinds. There is a moral lesson of profound interest in the steps by which anoble nature glides to perdition. In more modern fashion you mayspeculate, if you like, on the political conditions represented there, and the temptation presented in absolute monarchies to unscrupulousambition; you may say, like Dr. Slop, these things could not havehappened under a constitutional government; or, again, you may take upyour parable against superstition--you may dilate on the frightfulconsequences of a belief in witches, and reflect on the superioradvantages of an age of schools and newspapers. If the bare facts of thestory had come down to us from a chronicler, and an ordinary writer ofthe nineteenth century had undertaken to relate them, his account, wemay depend upon it, would have been put together upon one or other ofthese principles. Yet, by the side of that unfolding of the secrets ofthe prison-house of the soul, what lean and shrivelled anatomies thebest of such descriptions would seem!

Shakespeare himself, I suppose, could not have given us a theory of whathe meant--he gave us the thing itself, on which we might make whatevertheories we pleased. 

Or again, look at Homer. 

The 'Iliad' is from two to three thousand years older than 'Macbeth, 'and yet it is as fresh as if it had been written yesterday. We havethere no lessons save in the emotions which rise in us as we read. Homerhad no philosophy; he never struggles to impress upon us his views aboutthis or that; you can scarcely tell indeed whether his sympathies areGreek or Trojan; but he represents to us faithfully the men and womenamong whom he lived. He sang the Tale of Troy, he touched his lyre, hedrained the golden beaker in the halls of men like those on whom he wasconferring immortality. And thus, although no Agamemnon, king of men, ever led a Grecian fleet to Ilium; though no Priam sought the midnighttent of Achilles; though Ulysses and Diomed and Nestor were but names, and Helen but a dream, yet, through Homer's power of representing menand women, those old Greeks will still stand out from amidst thedarkness of the ancient world with a sharpness of outline which belongsto no period of history except the most recent. For the mere hardpurposes of history, the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' are the most effectivebooks which ever were written. We see the Hall of Menelaus, we see thegarden of Alcinous, we see Nausicaa among her maidens on the shore, wesee the mellow monarch sitting with ivory sceptre in the Marketplacedealing out genial justice. Or again, when the wild mood is on, we canhear the crash of the spears, the rattle of the armour as the heroesfall, and the plunging of the horses among the slain. Could we enter thepalace of an old Ionian lord, we know what we should see there; we knowthe words in which he would address us. We could meet Hector as afriend. If we could choose a companion to spend an evening with over afireside, it would be the man of many counsels, the husband of Penelope. 

I am not going into the vexed question whether History or Poetry is themore true. It has been sometimes said that Poetry is the more true, because it can make things more like what our moral sense would preferthey should be. We hear of poetic justice and the like, as if nature andfact were not just enough. 

I entirely dissent from that view. So far as Poetry attempts to improveon truth in that way, so far it abandons truth, and is false to itself. Even literal facts, exactly as they were, a great poet will preferwhenever he can get them. Shakespeare in the historical plays isstudious, wherever possible, to give the very words which he finds tohave been used; and it shows how wisely he was guided in this, thatthose magnificent speeches of Wolsey are taken exactly, with no morechange than the metre makes necessary, from Cavendish's Life. Marlborough read Shakespeare for English history, and read nothing else. The poet only is not bound, when it is inconvenient, to what may becalled the accidents of facts. It was enough for Shakespeare to knowthat Prince Hal in his youth had lived among loose companions, and thetavern in Eastcheap came in to fill out his picture; although Mrs. Quickly and Falstaff, and Poins and Bardolph were more likely to havebeen fallen in with by Shakespeare himself at the Mermaid, than to havebeen comrades of the true Prince Henry. It was enough for Shakespeare todraw real men, and the situation, whatever it might be, would sit easyon them. In this sense only it is that Poetry is truer than History, that it can make a picture more complete. It may take liberties withtime and space, and give the action distinctness by throwing it intomore manageable compass. 

But it may not alter the real conditions of things, or represent life asother than it is. The greatness of the poet depends on his being true tonature, without insisting that nature shall theorise with him, withoutmaking her more just, more philosophical, more moral than reality; and, in difficult matters, leaving much to reflection which cannot beexplained. 

And if this be true of Poetry--if Homer and Shakespeare are what theyare, from the absence of everything didactic about them--may we notthus learn something of what History should be, and in what sense itshould aspire to teach?

If Poetry must not theorise, much less should the historian theorise, whose obligations to be true to fact are even greater than the poet's. If the drama is grandest when the action is least explicable by laws, because then it best resembles life, then history will be grandest alsounder the same conditions. 'Macbeth, ' were it literally true, would beperfect history; and so far as the historian can approach to that kindof model, so far as he can let his story tell itself in the deeds andwords of those who act it out, so far is he most successful. His work isno longer the vapour of his own brain, which a breath will scatter; itis the thing itself, which will have interest for all time. A thousandtheories may be formed about it--spiritual theories, Pantheistictheories, cause and effect theories; but each age will have its ownphilosophy of history, and all these in turn will fail and die. Hegelfalls out of date, Schlegel falls out of date, and Comte in good timewill fall out of date; the thought about the thing must change as wechange; but the thing itself can never change; and a history is durableor perishable as it contains more or least of the writer's ownspeculations. The splendid intellect of Gibbon for the most part kepthim true to the right course in this; yet the philosophical chapters forwhich he has been most admired or censured may hereafter be thought theleast interesting in his work. The time has been when they would nothave been comprehended: the time may come when they will seemcommonplace. 

It may be said, that in requiring history to be written like a drama, werequire an impossibility. 

For history to be written with the complete form of a drama, doubtlessis impossible; but there are periods, and these the periods, for themost part, of greatest interest to mankind, the history of which may beso written that the actors shall reveal their characters in their ownwords; where mind can be seen matched against mind, and the greatpassions of the epoch not simply be described as existing, but beexhibited at their white heat in the souls and hearts possessed by them. There are all the elements of drama--drama of the highest order--wherethe huge forces of the times are as the Grecian destiny, and the powerof the man is seen either stemming the stream till it overwhelms him, or ruling while he seems to yield to it. 

It is Nature's drama--not Shakespeare's--but a drama none the less. 

So at least it seems to me. Wherever possible, let us not be told_about_ this man or that. Let us hear the man himself speak; let us seehim act, and let us be left to form our own opinions about him. Thehistorian, we are told, must not leave his readers to themselves. Hemust not only lay the facts before them--he must tell them what hehimself thinks about those facts. In my opinion, this is precisely whathe ought not to do. Bishop Butler says somewhere, that the best bookwhich could be written would be a book consisting only of premises, fromwhich the readers should draw conclusions for themselves. The highestpoetry is the very thing which Butler requires, and the highest historyought to be. We should no more ask for a theory of this or that periodof history, than we should ask for a theory of 'Macbeth' or 'Hamlet. 'Philosophies of history, sciences of history--all these, there willcontinue to be; the fashions of them will change, as our habits ofthought will change; each new philosopher will find his chief employmentin showing that before him no one understood anything; but the drama ofhistory is imperishable, and, the lessons of it will be like what welearn from Homer or Shakespeare--lessons for which we have no words. 

The address of history is less to the understanding than to the higheremotions. We learn in it to sympathise with what is great and good; welearn to hate what is base. In the anomalies of fortune we feel themystery of our mortal existence, and in the companionship of theillustrious natures who have shaped the fortunes of the world, we escapefrom the littlenesses which cling to the round of common life, and ourminds are tuned in a higher and nobler key. 

For the rest, and for those large questions which I touched inconnection with Mr. Buckle, we live in times of disintegration, and nonecan tell what will be after us. What opinions--what convictions--theinfant of to-day will find prevailing on the earth, if he and it liveout together to the middle of another century, only a very bold manwould undertake to conjecture! 'The time will come, ' said Lichtenberg, in scorn at the materialising tendencies of modern thought; 'the timewill come when the belief in God will be as the tales with which oldwomen frighten children; when the world will be a machine, the ether agas, and God will be a force. ' Mankind, if they last long enough on theearth, may develope strange things out of themselves; and the growth ofwhat is called the Positive Philosophy is a curious commentary onLichtenberg's prophecy. But whether the end be seventy years hence, orseven hundred--be the close of the mortal history of humanity as fardistant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behindus--this only we may foretell with confidence--that the riddle of man'snature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet whichphysical laws will fail to explain--that something, whatever it be, inhimself and in the world, which science cannot fathom, and whichsuggests the unknown possibilities of his origin and his destiny. Therewill remain yet

 Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things; Falling from us, vanishings-- Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realised-- High instincts, before which our mortal nature Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised. 

There will remain

 Those first affections-- Those shadowy recollections-- Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day-- Are yet the master-light of all our seeing-- Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the Eternal Silence. 

FOOTNOTES:

[A] It is objected that Geology is a science: yet that Geology cannotforetell the future changes of the earth's surface. Geology is not acentury old, and its periods are measured by millions of years. Yet, ifGeology cannot foretell future facts, it enabled Sir Roderick Murchisonto foretell the discovery of Australian gold. 

[B] February 1864. 

TIMES OF ERASMUS AND LUTHER:

THREE LECTURES

DELIVERED AT NEWCASTLE, 1867. 

LECTURE I. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, --I do not know whether I have made a very wiseselection in the subject which I have chosen for these Lectures. Therewas a time--a time which, measured by the years of our national life, was not so very long ago--when the serious thoughts of mankind wereoccupied exclusively by religion and politics. The small knowledge whichthey possessed of other things was tinctured by their speculativeopinions on the relations of heaven and earth; and, down to thesixteenth century, art, science, scarcely even literature, existed inthis country, except as, in some way or other, subordinate to theology. Philosophers--such philosophers as there were--obtained and halfdeserved the reputation of quacks and conjurors. Astronomy was confusedwith astrology. The physician's medicines were supposed to be powerless, unless the priests said prayers over them. The great lawyers, theambassadors, the chief ministers of state, were generally bishops; eventhe fighting business was not entirely secular. Half-a-dozen Scotchprelates were killed at Flodden; and, late in the reign of Henry theEighth, no fitter person could be found than Rowland Lee, Bishop ofCoventry, to take command of the Welsh Marches, and harry thefreebooters of Llangollen. 

Every single department of intellectual or practical life was penetratedwith the beliefs, or was interwoven with the interests, of the clergy;and thus it was that, when differences of religious opinion arose, theysplit society to its foundations. The lines of cleavage penetratedeverywhere, and there were no subjects whatever in which those whodisagreed in theology possessed any common concern. When menquarrelled, they quarrelled altogether. The disturbers of settledbeliefs were regarded as public enemies who had placed themselves beyondthe pale of humanity, and were considered fit only to be destroyed likewild beasts, or trampled out like the seed of a contagion. 

Three centuries have passed over our heads since the time of which I amspeaking, and the world is so changed that we can hardly recognise it asthe same. 

The secrets of nature have been opened out to us on a thousand lines;and men of science of all creeds can pursue side by side their commoninvestigations. Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Calvinists, contend with each other in honourable rivalry in arts, andliterature, and commerce, and industry. They read the same books. Theystudy at the same academies. They have seats in the same senates. Theypreside together on the judicial bench, and carry on, without jar ordifference, the ordinary business of the country. 

Those who share the same pursuits are drawn in spite of themselves intosympathy and good-will. When they are in harmony in so large a part oftheir occupations, the points of remaining difference lose their venom. Those who thought they hated each other, unconsciously find themselvesfriends; and as far as it affects the world at large, the acrimony ofcontroversy has almost disappeared. 

Imagine, if you can, a person being now put to death for a speculativetheological opinion. You feel at once, that in the most bigoted countryin the world such a thing has become impossible; and the impossibilityis the measure of the alteration which we have all undergone. Theformulas remain as they were on either side--the very same formulaswhich were once supposed to require these detestable murders. But wehave learnt to know each other better. The cords which bind together thebrotherhood of mankind are woven of a thousand strands. We do not anymore fly apart or become enemies, because, here and there, in one strandout of so many, there are still unsound places. 

If I were asked for a distinct proof that Europe was improving and notretrograding, I should find it in this phenomenon. It has not beenbrought about by controversy. Men are fighting still over the samequestions which they began to fight about at the Reformation. Protestantdivines have not driven Catholics out of the field, nor Catholics, Protestants. Each polemic writes for his own partisans, and makes noimpression on his adversary. 

Controversy has kept alive a certain quantity of bitterness; and that, Isuspect, is all that it would accomplish if it continued till the day ofjudgment. I sometimes, in impatient moments, wish the laity in Europewould treat their controversial divines as two gentlemen once treatedtheir seconds, when they found themselves forced into a duel withoutknowing what they were quarrelling about. 

As the principals were being led up to their places, one of themwhispered to the other, 'If you will shoot your second, I will shootmine. '

The reconciliation of parties, if I may use such a word, is notinkered-up truce, or convenient Interim. It is the healthy, silent, spontaneous growth of a nobler order of conviction, which has conqueredour prejudices even before we knew that they were assailed. This betterspirit especially is represented in institutions like this, whichacknowledge no differences of creed--which are constructed on thebroadest principles of toleration--and which, therefore, as a rule, arewisely protected from the intrusion of discordant subjects. 

They exist, as I understand, to draw men together, not to dividethem--to enable us to share together in those topics of universalinterest and instruction which all can take pleasure in, and which giveoffence to none. 

If you ask me, then, why I am myself departing from a practice which Iadmit to be so excellent, I fear that I shall give you rather a lameanswer. I might say that I know more about the history of the sixteenthcentury than I know about anything else. I have spent the best years ofmy life in reading and writing about it; and if I have anything to tellyou worth your hearing, it is probably on that subject. 

Or, again, I might say--which is indeed most true--that to theReformation we can trace, indirectly, the best of those very influenceswhich I have been describing. The Reformation broke the theologicalshackles in which men's minds were fettered. It set them thinking, andso gave birth to science. The Reformers also, without knowing what theywere about, taught the lesson of religious toleration. They attempted tosupersede one set of dogmas by another. They succeeded with half theworld--they failed with the other half. In a little while it becameapparent that good men--without ceasing to be good--could thinkdifferently about theology, and that goodness, therefore, depended onsomething else than the holding orthodox opinions. 

It is not, however, for either of these reasons that I am going to talkto you about Martin Luther; nor is toleration of differences of opinion, however excellent it be, the point on which I shall dwell in theseLectures. 

Were the Reformation a question merely of opinion, I for one should nothave meddled with it, either here or anywhere. I hold that, on theobscure mysteries of faith, every one should be allowed to believeaccording to his conscience, and that arguments on such matters areeither impertinent or useless. 

But the Reformation, gentlemen, beyond the region of opinions, was ahistorical fact--an objective something which may be studied like any ofthe facts of nature. The Reformers were men of note and distinction, whoplayed a great part for good or evil on the stage of the world. If weexcept the Apostles, no body of human beings ever printed so deep a markinto the organisation of society; and if there be any value or meaningin history at all, the lives, the actions, the characters of such men asthese can be matters of indifference to none of us. 

We have not to do with a story which is buried in obscure antiquity. Thefacts admit of being learnt. The truth, whatever it was, concerns us allequally. If the divisions created by that great convulsion are ever tobe obliterated, it will be when we have learnt, each of us, to see thething as it really was, and not rather some mythical or imaginativeversion of the thing--such as from our own point of view we like tothink it was. Fiction in such matters may be convenient for ourimmediate theories, but it is certain to avenge itself in the end. Wemay make our own opinions, but facts were made for us; and if we evadeor deny them, it will be the worse for us. 

Unfortunately, the mythical version at present very largelypreponderates. Open a Protestant history of the Reformation, and youwill find a picture of the world given over to a lying tyranny--theChristian population of Europe enslaved by a corrupt and degradedpriesthood, and the Reformers, with the Bible in their hands, coming tothe rescue like angels of light. All is black on one side--all is fairand beautiful on the other. 

Turn to a Catholic history of the same events and the same men, and wehave before us the Church of the Saints fulfilling quietly its blessedmission in the saving of human souls. Satan a second time enters intoParadise, and a second time with fatal success tempts miserable man tohis ruin. He disbelieves his appointed teachers, he aspires afterforbidden knowledge, and at once anarchy breaks loose. The seamless robeof the Saviour is rent in pieces, and the earth becomes the habitationof fiends. 

Each side tells the story as it prefers to have it; facts, characters, circumstances, are melted in the theological crucible, and cast inmoulds diametrically opposite. Nothing remains the same except the namesand dates. Each side chooses its own witnesses. Everything is crediblewhich makes for what it calls the truth. Everything is made false whichwill not fit into its place. 'Blasphemous fables' is the usualexpression in Protestant controversial books for the accounts given byCatholics. 'Protestant tradition, ' says an eminent modern Catholic, 'isbased on lying--bold, wholesale, unscrupulous lying. '

Now, depend upon it, there is some human account of the matter differentfrom both these if we could only get at it, and it will be an excellentthing for the world when that human account can be made out. I am not sopresumptuous as to suppose that I can give it to you; still less can youexpect me to try to do so within the compass of two or three lectures. If I cannot do everything, however, I believe I can do a little; at anyrate I can give you a sketch, such as you may place moderate confidencein, of the state of the Church as it was before the Reformation began. Iwill not expose myself more than I can help to the censure of the divinewho was so hard on Protestant tradition. Most of what I shall have tosay to you this evening will be taken from the admissions of Catholicsthemselves, or from official records earlier than the outbreak of thecontroversy, when there was no temptation to pervert the truth. 

Here, obviously, is the first point on which we require accurateinformation. If all was going on well, the Reformers really and trulytold innumerable lies, and deserve all the reprobation which we can givethem. If all was not going on well--if, so far from being well, theChurch was so corrupt that Europe could bear with it no longer--thenclearly a Reformation was necessary of some kind; and we have taken onestep towards a fair estimate of the persons concerned in it. 

A fair estimate--that, and only that, is what we want. I need hardlyobserve to you, that opinion in England has been undergoing lately avery considerable alteration about these persons. 

Two generations ago, the leading Reformers were looked upon as littleless than saints; now a party has risen up who intend, as they franklytell us, to un-Protestantise the Church of England, who detestProtestantism as a kind of infidelity, who desire simply to reverseeverything which the Reformers did. 

One of these gentlemen, a clergyman, writing lately of Luther, calledhim a heretic, a heretic fit only to be ranked with--whom, do youthink?--Joe Smith, the Mormon Prophet. Joe Smith and Luther--that is thecombination with which we are now presented. 

The book in which this remarkable statement appeared was presented bytwo bishops to the Upper House of Convocation. It was received withgracious acknowledgments by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was placedsolemnly in the library of reference, for that learned body to consult. 

So, too, a professor at Oxford, the other day, spoke of Luther as aPhilistine--a Philistine meaning an oppressor of the chosen people; theenemy of men of culture, of intelligence, such as the professor himself. 

One notices these things, not as of much importance in themselves, butas showing which way the stream is running; and, curiously enough, inquite another direction we may see the same phenomenon. Our liberalphilosophers, men of high literary power and reputation, looking intothe history of Luther, and Calvin, and John Knox, and the rest, findthem falling far short of the philosophic ideal--wanting sadly in manyqualities which the liberal mind cannot dispense with. They arediscovered to be intolerant, dogmatic, narrow-minded, inclined topersecute Catholics as Catholics had persecuted them; to be, in fact, little if at all better than the popes and cardinals whom they werefighting against. 

Lord Macaulay can hardly find epithets strong enough to express hiscontempt for Archbishop Cranmer. Mr. Buckle places Cranmer by the sideof Bonner, and hesitates which of the two characters is the moredetestable. 

An unfavourable estimate of the Reformers, whether just or unjust, isunquestionably gaining ground among our advanced thinkers. A greater manthan either Macaulay or Buckle--the German poet, Goethe--says of Luther, that he threw back the intellectual progress of mankind for centuries, by calling in the passions of the multitude to decide on subjects whichought to have been left to the learned. Goethe, in saying this, wasalluding especially to Erasmus. Goethe thought that Erasmus, and menlike Erasmus, had struck upon the right track; and if they could haveretained the direction of the mind of Europe, there would have been moretruth, and less falsehood, among us at this present time. The partyhatreds, the theological rivalries, the persecutions, the civil wars, the religious animosities which have so long distracted us, would havebeen all avoided, and the mind of mankind would have expanded graduallyand equably with the growth of knowledge. 

Such an opinion, coming from so great a man, is not to be lightly passedover. It will be my endeavour to show you what kind of man Erasmus was, what he was aiming at, what he was doing, and how Luther spoilt hiswork--if spoiling is the word which we are to use for it. 

One caution, however, I must in fairness give you before we proceedfurther. It lies upon the face of the story, that the Reformersimperfectly understood toleration; but you must keep before you thespirit and temper of the men with whom they had to deal. For themselves, when the movement began, they aimed at nothing but liberty to think andspeak their own way. They never dreamt of interfering with others, although they were quite aware that others, when they could, were likelyto interfere with them. Lord Macaulay might have remembered that Cranmerwas working all his life with the prospect of being burnt alive as hisreward--and, as we all know, he actually was burnt alive. 

When the Protestant teaching began first to spread in theNetherlands--before one single Catholic had been illtreated there, before a symptom of a mutinous disposition had shown itself among thepeople, an edict was issued by the authorities for the suppression ofthe new opinions. 

The terms of this edict I will briefly describe to you. 

The inhabitants of the United Provinces were informed that they were tohold and believe the doctrines of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. 'Menand women, ' says the edict, 'who disobey this command shall be punishedas disturbers of public order. Women who have fallen into heresy shallbe buried alive. Men, if they recant, shall lose their heads. If theycontinue obstinate, they shall be burnt at the stake. 

'If man or woman be suspected of heresy, no one shall shelter or protecthim or her; and no stranger shall be admitted to lodge in any inn ordwelling-house unless he bring with him a testimonial of orthodoxy fromthe priest of his parish. 

'The Inquisition shall enquire into the private opinions of everyperson, of whatever degree; and all officers of all kinds shall assistthe Inquisition at their peril. Those who know where heretics areconcealed, shall denounce them, or they shall suffer as hereticsthemselves. Heretics (observe the malignity of this paragraph)--hereticswho will give up other heretics to justice, shall themselves be pardonedif they will promise to conform for the future. '

Under this edict, in the Netherlands alone, more than fifty thousandhuman beings, first and last, were deliberately murdered. And, gentlemen, I must say that proceedings of this kind explain and go farto excuse the subsequent intolerance of Protestants. 

Intolerance, Mr. Gibbon tells us, is a greater crime in a Protestantthan a Catholic. Criminal intolerance, as I understand it, is theintolerance of such an edict as that which I have read to you--theunprovoked intolerance of difference of opinion. I conceive that themost enlightened philosopher might have grown hard and narrow-minded ifhe had suffered under the administration of the Duke of Alva. 

Dismissing these considerations, I will now go on with my subject. 

Never in all their history, in ancient times or modern, never that weknow of, have mankind thrown out of themselves anything so grand, souseful, so beautiful, as the Catholic Church once was. In these times ofours, well-regulated selfishness is the recognised rule of action--everyone of us is expected to look out first for himself, and take care ofhis own interests. At the time I speak of, the Church ruled the Statewith the authority of a conscience; and self-interest, as a motive ofaction, was only named to be abhorred. The bishops and clergy wereregarded freely and simply as the immediate ministers of the Almighty;and they seem to me to have really deserved that high estimate of theircharacter. It was not for the doctrines which they taught, only orchiefly, that they were held in honour. Brave men do not fall downbefore their fellow-mortals for the words which they speak, or for therites which they perform. Wisdom, justice, self-denial, nobleness, purity, highmindedness, --these are the qualities before which thefree-born races of Europe have been contented to bow; and in no order ofmen were such qualities to be found as they were found six hundred yearsago in the clergy of the Catholic Church. They called themselves thesuccessors of the Apostles. They claimed in their Master's nameuniversal spiritual authority, but they made good their pretensions bythe holiness of their own lives. They were allowed to rule because theydeserved to rule, and in the fulness of reverence kings and nobles bentbefore a power which was nearer to God than their own. Over prince andsubject, chieftain and serf, a body of unarmed defenceless men reignedsupreme by the magic of sanctity. They tamed the fiery northern warriorswho had broken in pieces the Roman Empire. They taught them--theybrought them really and truly to believe--that they had immortal souls, and that they would one day stand at the awful judgment bar and giveaccount for their lives there. With the brave, the honest, and thegood--with those who had not oppressed the poor nor removed theirneighbour's landmark--with those who had been just in all theirdealings--with those who had fought against evil, and had triedvaliantly to do their Master's will, --at that great day, it would bewell. For cowards, for profligates, for those who lived for luxury andpleasure and self-indulgence, there was the blackness of eternal death. 

An awful conviction of this tremendous kind the clergy had effectuallyinstilled into the mind of Europe. It was not a PERHAPS; it was acertainty. It was not a form of words repeated once a week at church; itwas an assurance entertained on all days and in all places, without anyparticle of doubt. And the effect of such a belief on life andconscience was simply immeasurable. 

I do not pretend that the clergy were perfect. They were very far fromperfect at the best of times, and the European nations were nevercompletely submissive to them. It would not have been well if they hadbeen. The business of human creatures in this planet is not summed up inthe most excellent of priestly catechisms. The world and its concernscontinued to interest men, though priests insisted on their nothingness. They could not prevent kings from quarrelling with each other. Theycould not hinder disputed successions, and civil feuds, and wars, andpolitical conspiracies. What they did do was to shelter the weak fromthe strong. In the eyes of the clergy, the serf and his lord stood onthe common level of sinful humanity. Into their ranks high birth was nopassport. They were themselves for the most part children of the people;and the son of the artisan or peasant rose to the mitre and the triplecrown, just as nowadays the rail-splitter and the tailor becomePresidents of the Republic of the West. 

The Church was essentially democratic, while at the same time it had themonopoly of learning; and all the secular power fell to it whichlearning, combined with sanctity and assisted by superstition, canbestow. 

The privileges of the clergy were extraordinary. They were not amenableto the common laws of the land. While they governed the laity, the laityhad no power over them. From the throne downwards, every secular officewas dependent on the Church. No king was a lawful sovereign till theChurch placed the crown upon his head: and what the Church bestowed, theChurch claimed the right to take away. The disposition of property wasin their hands. No will could be proved except before the bishop or hisofficer; and no will was held valid if the testator died out ofcommunion. There were magistrates and courts of law for the offences ofthe laity. If a priest committed a crime, he was a sacred person. Thecivil power could not touch him; he was reserved for his ordinary. Bishops' commissaries sate in town and city, taking cognizance of themoral conduct of every man and woman. Offences against life and propertywere tried here in England, as now, by the common law; but the ChurchCourts dealt with sins--sins of word or act. If a man was a profligateor a drunkard; if he lied or swore; if he did not come to communion, orheld unlawful opinions; if he was idle or unthrifty; if he was unkindto his wife or his servants; if a child was disobedient to his father, or a father cruel to his child; if a tradesman sold adulterated wares, or used false measures or dishonest weights, --the eye of the parishpriest was everywhere, and the Church Court stood always open to examineand to punish. 

Imagine what a tremendous power this must have been! Yet it existedgenerally in Catholic Europe down to the eve of the Reformation. Itcould never have established itself at all unless at one time it hadworked beneficially--as the abuse of it was one of the most fatal causesof the Church's fall. 

I know nothing in English history much more striking than the answergiven by Archbishop Warham to the complaints of the English House ofCommons after the fall of Cardinal Wolsey. The House of Commonscomplained that the clergy made laws in Convocation which the laity wereexcommunicated if they disobeyed. Yet the laws made by the clergy, theCommons said, were often at variance with the laws of the realm. 

What did Warham reply? He said he was sorry for the alleged discrepancy;but, inasmuch as the laws made by the clergy were always in conformitywith the will of God, the laws of the realm had only to be altered andthen the difficulty would vanish. 

What must have been the position of the clergy in the fulness of theirpower, when they could speak thus on the eve of their prostration? Youhave only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned cathedral city, and you will see in a moment the mediæval relations between Church andState. The cathedral _is_ the city. The first object you catch sight ofas you approach is the spire tapering into the sky, or the huge towersholding possession of the centre of the landscape--majesticallybeautiful--imposing by mere size amidst the large forms of Natureherself. As you go nearer, the vastness of the building impresses youmore and more. The puny dwelling-place of the citizens creep at itsfeet, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when downbelow among the streets and lanes the twilight is darkening. And evennow, when the towns are thrice their ancient size, and the houses havestretched upwards from two stories to five; when the great chimneys arevomiting their smoke among the clouds, and the temples of modernindustry--the workshops and the factories--spread their long frontsbefore the eye, the cathedral is still the governing form in thepicture--the one object which possesses the imagination and refuses tobe eclipsed. 

As that cathedral was to the old town, so was the Church of the middleages to the secular institutions of the world. Its very neighbourhoodwas sacred; and its shadow, like the shadow of the Apostles, was asanctuary. When I look at the new Houses of Parliament in London, I seein them a type of the change which has passed over us. The House ofCommons of the Plantagenets sate in the Chapter House of WestminsterAbbey. The Parliament of the Reform Bill, five-and-thirty years ago, debated in St. Stephen's Chapel, the Abbey's small dependency. Now, bythe side of the enormous pile which has risen out of that chapel'sashes, the proud Minster itself is dwarfed into insignificance. 

Let us turn to another vast feature of the middle ages--I mean themonasteries. 

Some person of especial and exceptional holiness has lived or died at aparticular spot. He has been distinguished by his wisdom, by his piety, by his active benevolence; and in an age when conjurors and witches weresupposed to be helped by the devil to do evil, he, on his part, has beenthought to have possessed in larger measure than common men the favourand the grace of heaven. Blessed influences hang about the spot which hehas hallowed by his presence. His relics--his household possessions, hisbooks, his clothes, his bones, retain the shadowy sanctity which theyreceived in having once belonged to him. We all set a value, not whollyunreal, on anything which has been the property of a remarkable man. Atworst, it is but an exaggeration of natural reverence. 

Well, as nowadays we build monuments to great men, so in the middle agesthey built shrines or chapels on the spots which saints had made holy, and communities of pious people gathered together there--beginning withthe personal friends the saint had left behind him--to try to live as hehad lived, to do good as he had done good, and to die as he had died. Thus arose religious fraternities--companies of men who desired todevote themselves to goodness--to give up pleasure, and amusement, andself-indulgence, and to spend their lives in prayer and works ofcharity. 

These houses became centres of pious beneficence. The monks, as thebrotherhoods were called, were organised in different orders, with somevariety of rule, but the broad principle was the same in all. They wereto live for others, not for themselves. They took vows of poverty, thatthey might not be entangled in the pursuit of money. They took vows ofchastity, that the care of a family might not distract them from thework which they had undertaken. Their efforts of charity were notlimited to this world. Their days were spent in hard bodily labour, instudy, or in visiting the sick. At night they were on the stone-floorsof their chapels, holding up their withered hands to heaven, intercedingfor the poor souls who were suffering in purgatory. 

The world, as it always will, paid honour to exceptional excellence. Thesystem spread to the furthest limits of Christendom. The religioushouses became places of refuge, where men of noble birth, kings andqueens and emperors, warriors and statesmen, retired to lay down theirsplendid cares, and end their days in peace. Those with whom the worldhad dealt hardly, or those whom it had surfeited with its unsatisfyingpleasures, those who were disappointed with earth, and those who werefilled with passionate aspirations after heaven, alike found a haven ofrest in the quiet cloister. And, gradually, lands came to them, andwealth, and social dignity--all gratefully extended to men who deservedso well of their fellows; while no landlords were more popular thanthey, for the sanctity of the monks sheltered their dependents as wellas themselves. 

Travel now through Ireland, and you will see in the wildest parts of itinnumerable remains of religious houses, which had grown up among apeople who acknowledged no rule among themselves except the sword, andwhere every chief made war upon his neighbour as the humour seized him. The monks among the O's and the Mac's were as defenceless as sheep amongthe wolves; but the wolves spared them for their character. In such acountry as Ireland then was, the monasteries could not have survived fora generation but for the enchanted atmosphere which surrounded them. 

Of authority, the religious orders were practically independent. Theywere amenable only to the Pope and to their own superiors. Here inEngland, the king could not send a commissioner to inspect a monastery, nor even send a policeman to arrest a criminal who had taken shelterwithin its walls. Archbishops and bishops, powerful as they were, foundtheir authority cease when they entered the gates of a Benedictine orDominican abbey. 

So utterly have times changed, that with your utmost exertions you willhardly be able to picture to yourselves the Catholic Church in the daysof its greatness. Our school-books tell us how the Emperor of Germanyheld the stirrup for Pope Gregory the Seventh to mount his mule; how ourown English Henry Plantagenet walked barefoot through the streets ofCanterbury, and knelt in the Chapter House for the monks to flog him. The first of these incidents, I was brought up to believe, proved thePope to be the Man of Sin. Anyhow, they are both facts, and notromances; and you may form some notion from them how high in the world'seyes the Church must have stood. 

And be sure it did not achieve that proud position without deserving it. The Teutonic and Latin princes were not credulous fools; and when theysubmitted, it was to something stronger than themselves--stronger inlimb and muscle, or stronger in intellect and character. 

So the Church was in its vigour: so the Church was _not_ at the openingof the sixteenth century. Power--wealth--security--men are more thanmortal if they can resist the temptations to which too much of theseexpose them. Nor were they the only enemies which undermined theenergies of the Catholic clergy. Churches exist in this world to remindus of the eternal laws which we are bound to obey. So far as they dothis, they fulfil their end, and are honoured in fulfilling it. It wouldhave been better for all of us--it would be better for us now, couldChurches keep this their peculiar function steadily and singly beforethem. Unfortunately, they have preferred in later times the speculativeside of things to the practical. They take up into their teachingopinions and theories which are merely ephemeral; which would naturallydie out with the progress of knowledge; but, having received a spurioussanctity, prolong their days unseasonably, and become first unmeaning, and then occasions of superstition. 

It matters little whether I say a paternoster in English or Latin, sothat what is present to my mind is the thought which the words express, and not the words themselves. In these and all languages it is the mostbeautiful of prayers. But you know that people came to look on a Latinpaternoster as the most powerful of spells--potent in heaven, if saidstraightforward; if repeated backward, a charm which no spirit in hellcould resist. 

So it is, in my opinion, with all forms--forms of words, or forms ofceremony and ritualism. While the meaning is alive in them, they are notonly harmless, but pregnant and life-giving. When we come to think thatthey possess in themselves material and magical virtues, then thepurpose which they answer is to hide God from us and make us practicallyinto Atheists. 

This is what I believe to have gradually fallen upon the Catholic Churchin the generations which preceded Luther. The body remained; the mindwas gone away: the original thought which its symbolism represented wasno longer credible to intelligent persons. 

The acute were conscious unbelievers. In Italy, when men went to massthey spoke of it as going to a comedy. You may have heard the story ofLuther in his younger days saying mass at an altar in Rome, and hearinghis fellow-priests muttering at the consecration of the Eucharist, 'Bread thou art, and bread thou wilt remain. '

Part of the clergy were profane scoundrels like these; the rest repeatedthe words of the service, conceiving that they were working a charm. Religion was passing through the transformation which all religions havea tendency to undergo. They cease to be aids and incentives to holylife; they become contrivances rather to enable men to sin, and escapethe penalties of sin. Obedience to the law is dispensed with if men willdiligently profess certain opinions, or punctually perform certainexternal duties. However scandalous the moral life, the participation ofa particular rite, or the profession of a particular belief, at themoment of death, is held to clear the score. 

The powers which had been given to the clergy required for theirexercise the highest wisdom and the highest probity. They had fallen atlast into the hands of men who possessed considerably less of thesequalities than the laity whom they undertook to govern. They haddegraded their conceptions of God; and, as a necessary consequence, theyhad degraded their conceptions of man and man's duty. The aspirationsafter sanctity had disappeared, and instead of them there remained thepractical reality of the five senses. The high prelates, the cardinals, the great abbots, were occupied chiefly in maintaining their splendourand luxury. The friars and the secular clergy, following their superiorswith shorter steps, indulged themselves in grosser pleasures; whiletheir spiritual powers, their supposed authority in this world and thenext, were turned to account to obtain from the laity the means fortheir self-indulgence. 

The Church forbade the eating of meat on fast days, but the Church wasready with dispensations for those who could afford to pay for them. TheChurch forbade marriage to the fourth degree of consanguinity, butloving cousins, if they were rich and open-handed, could obtain theChurch's consent to their union. There were toll-gates for the priestsat every halting-place on the road of life--fees at weddings, fees atfunerals, fees whenever an excuse could be found to fasten them. Evenwhen a man was dead he was not safe from plunder, for a mortuary ordeath present was exacted of his family. 

And then those Bishop's Courts, of which I spoke just now: they werefounded for the discipline of morality--they were made the instrumentsof the most detestable extortion. If an impatient layman spoke adisrespectful word of the clergy, he was cited before the bishop'scommissary and fined. If he refused to pay, he was excommunicated, andexcommunication was a poisonous disease. When a poor wretch was underthe ban of the Church no tradesman might sell him clothes or food--nofriend might relieve him--no human voice might address him, under painof the same sentence; and if he died unreconciled, he died like a dog, without the sacraments, and was refused Christian burial. 

The records of some of these courts survive: a glance at their pageswill show the principles on which they were worked. When a laymanoffended, the single object was to make him pay for it. The magistratescould not protect him. If he resisted, and his friends supported him, somuch the better, for they were now all in the scrape together. The nextstep would be to indict them in a body for heresy; and then, of course, there was nothing for it but to give way, and compound for absolution bymoney. 

It was money--ever money. Even in case of real delinquency, it wasstill money. Money, not charity, covered the multitude of sins. 

I have told you that the clergy were exempt from secular jurisdiction. They claimed to be amenable only to spiritual judges, and they extendedthe broad fringe of their order till the word clerk was construed tomean any one who could write his name or read a sentence from a book. Arobber or a murderer at the assizes had but to show that he possessedeither of these qualifications, and he was allowed what was calledbenefit of clergy. His case was transferred to the Bishops' Court, to aneasy judge, who allowed him at once to compound. 

Such were the clergy in matters of this world. As religious instructors, they appear in colours if possible less attractive. 

Practical religion throughout Europe at the beginning of the sixteenthcentury was a very simple affair. I am not going to speak of themysterious doctrines of the Catholic Church. The creed which itprofessed in its schools and theological treatises was the same which itprofesses now, and which it had professed at the time when it was mostpowerful for good. I do not myself consider that the formulas in whichmen express their belief are of much consequence. The question is ratherof the thing expressed; and so long as we find a living consciousnessthat above the world and above human life there is a righteous God, whowill judge men according to their works, whether they say their prayersin Latin or English, whether they call themselves Protestants or callthemselves Catholics, appears to me of quite secondary importance. Butat the time I speak of, that consciousness no longer existed. Theformulas and ceremonies were all in all; and of God it is hard to saywhat conceptions men had formed, when they believed that a dead man'srelations could buy him out of purgatory--buy him out of purgatory, --forthis was the literal truth--by hiring priests to sing masses for hissoul. 

Religion, in the minds of ordinary people, meant that the keys of theother world were held by the clergy. If a man confessed regularly to hispriest, received the sacrament, and was absolved, then all was well withhim. His duties consisted in going to confession and to mass. If hecommitted sins, he was prescribed penances, which could be commuted formoney. If he was sick or ill at ease in his mind, he was recommended apilgrimage--a pilgrimage to a shrine or a holy well, or to somewonder-working image--where, for due consideration, his case would beattended to. It was no use to go to a saint empty-handed. The rule ofthe Church was, nothing for nothing. At a chapel in Saxony there was animage of a Virgin and Child. If the worshipper came to it with a goodhandsome offering, the child bowed and was gracious: if the present wasunsatisfactory, it turned away its head, and withheld its favours tillthe purse-strings were untied again. 

There was a great rood or crucifix of the same kind at Boxley, in Kent, where the pilgrims went in thousands. This figure used to bow, too, whenit was pleased; and a good sum of money was sure to secure itsgood-will. 

When the Reformation came, and the police looked into the matter, theimages were found to be worked with wires and pulleys. The German ladywas kept as a curiosity in the cabinet of the Elector of Saxony. OurBoxley rood was brought up and exhibited in Cheapside, and wasafterwards torn in pieces by the people. 

Nor here again was death the limit of extortion: death was rather thegate of the sphere which the clergy made, peculiarly their own. When aman died, his friends were naturally anxious for the fate of his soul. If he died in communion, he was not in the worst place of all. He hadnot been a saint, and therefore he was not in the best. Therefore he wasin purgatory--Purgatory Pickpurse, as our English Latimer called it--anda priest, if properly paid, could get him out. 

To be a mass priest, as it was called, was a regular profession, inwhich, with little trouble, a man could earn a comfortable living. Hehad only to be ordained and to learn by heart a certain form of words, and that was all the equipment necessary for him. The masses were paidfor at so much a dozen, and for every mass that was said, so many yearswere struck off from the penal period. Two priests were sometimes to beseen muttering away at the opposite ends of the same altar, like acouple of musical boxes playing different parts of the same tune at thesame time. It made no difference. The upper powers had what they wanted. If they got the masses, and the priests got the money, all partiesconcerned were satisfied. 

I am speaking of the form which these things assumed in an age ofdegradation and ignorance. The truest and wisest words ever spoken byman might be abused in the same way. 

The Sermon on the Mount or the Apostles' Creed, if recited mechanically, and relied on to work a mechanical effort, would be no less perniciouslyidolatrous. 

You can see something of the same kind in a milder form in Spain at thepresent day. The Spaniards, all of them, high and low, are expected tobuy annually a Pope's Bula or Bull--a small pardon, or indulgence, orplenary remission of sins. The exact meaning of these things is a littleobscure; the high authorities themselves do not universally agree aboutthem, except so far as to say that they are of prodigious value of somesort. The orthodox explanation, I believe, is something of this kind. With every sin there is the moral guilt and the temporal penalty. Thepardon cannot touch the guilt; but when the guilt is remitted, there isstill the penalty. I may ruin my health by a dissolute life; I mayrepent of my dissoluteness and be forgiven; but the bad health willremain. For bad health, substitute penance in this world and purgatoryin the next; and in this sphere the indulgence takes effect. 

Such as they are, at any rate, everybody in Spain has these bulls; youbuy them in the shops for a shilling apiece. 

This is one form of the thing. Again, at the door of a Spanish churchyou will see hanging on the wall an intimation that whoever will pray somany hours before a particular image shall receive full forgiveness ofhis sins. Having got that, one might suppose he would be satisfied; butno--if he prays so many more hours, he can get off a hundred years ofpurgatory, or a thousand, or ten thousand. In one place I rememberobserving that for a very little trouble a man could escape a hundredand fifty thousand years of purgatory. 

What a prospect for the ill-starred Protestant, who will be lucky if heis admitted into purgatory at all!

Again, if you enter a sacristy, you will see a small board like thenotices addressed to parishioners in our vestries. On particular days itis taken out and hung up in the church, and little would a stranger, ignorant of the language, guess the tremendous meaning of thatcommonplace appearance. On these boards is written 'Hoy se sacananimas, '--'This day, souls are taken out of purgatory. ' It is anintimation to every one with a friend in distress that now is his time. You put a shilling in a plate, you give your friend's name, and thething is done. One wonders why, if purgatory can be sacked so easily, any poor wretch is left to suffer there. 

Such practices nowadays are comparatively innocent, the money asked andgiven is trifling, and probably no one concerned in the businessbelieves much about it. They serve to show, however, on a small scale, what once went on on an immense scale; and even such as they are, piousCatholics do not much approve of them. They do not venture to say muchon the subject directly, but they allow themselves a certaingood-humoured ridicule. A Spanish novelist of some reputation tells astory of a man coming to a priest on one of these occasions, putting ashilling in the plate, and giving in the name of his friend. 

'Is my friend's soul out?' he asked. The priest said it was. 'Quitesure?' the man asked. 'Quite sure, ' the priest answered. 'Very well, 'said the man, 'if he is out of purgatory they will not put him in again:it is a bad shilling. '

Sadder than all else, even as the most beautiful things are worst intheir degradation, was the condition of the monasteries. I am here ondelicate ground. The accounts of those institutions, as they existed inEngland and Germany at the time of their suppression, is so shockingthat even impartial writers have hesitated to believe the reports whichhave come down to us. The laity, we are told, determined to appropriatethe abbey lands, and maligned the monks to justify the spoliation. Werethe charge true, the religious orders would still be without excuse, forthe whole education of the country was in the hands of the clergy; andthey had allowed a whole generation to grow up, which, on thishypothesis, was utterly depraved. 

But no such theory can explain away the accumulated testimony whichcomes to us--exactly alike--from so many sides and witnesses. We are notdependent upon evidence which Catholics can decline to receive. In thereign of our Henry the Seventh the notorious corruption of some of thegreat abbeys in England brought them under the notice of the CatholicArchbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Morton. The archbishop, unable tomeddle with them by his own authority, obtained the necessary powersfrom the Pope. He instituted a partial visitation in the neighbourhoodof London; and the most malignant Protestant never drew such a pictureof profligate brutality as Cardinal Morton left behind him in hisRegister, in a description of the great Abbey of St. Albans. I cannot, in a public lecture, give you the faintest idea of what it contains. Themonks were bound to celibacy--that is to say, they were not allowed tomarry. They were full-fed, idle, and sensual; of sin they thought onlyas something extremely pleasant, of which they could cleanse one anotherwith a few mumbled words as easily as they could wash their faces in abasin. And there I must leave the matter. Anybody who is curious forparticulars may see the original account in Morton's Register, in theArchbishop's library at Lambeth. 

A quarter of a century after this there appeared in Germany a book, nowcalled by Catholics an infamous libel, the 'Epistolæ ObscurorumVirorum. ' 'The obscure men, ' supposed to be the writers of theseepistles, are monks or students of theology. The letters themselves arewritten in dog-Latin--a burlesque of the language in whichecclesiastical people then addressed each other. They are sketches, satirical, but not malignant, of the moral and intellectual character ofthese reverend personages. 

On the moral, and by far the most important, side of the matter I amstill obliged to be silent; but I can give you a few specimens of thefurniture of the theological minds, and of the subjects with which theywere occupied. 

A student writes to his ghostly father in an agony of distress becausehe has touched his hat to a Jew. He mistook him for a doctor ofdivinity; and on the whole, he fears he has committed mortal sin. Canthe father absolve him? Can the bishop absolve him? Can the Pope absolvehim? His case seems utterly desperate. 

Another letter describes a great intellectual riddle, which was arguedfor four days at the School of Logic at Louvaine. A certain Master ofArts had taken out his degree at Louvaine, Leyden, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Padua, and four other universities. He was thus a member often universities. But how _could_ a man be a member of ten universities?A university was a body, and one body might have many members; but howone member could have many bodies, passed comprehension. In such amonstrous anomaly, the member would be the body, and the universitiesthe member, and this would be a scandal to such grave and learnedcorporations. The holy doctor St. Thomas himself could not make himselfinto the body of ten universities. 

The more the learned men argued, the deeper they floundered, and atlength gave up the problem in despair. 

Again: a certain professor argues that Julius Cæsar could not havewritten the book which passes under the name of 'Cæsar's Commentaries, 'because that book is written in Latin, and Latin is a difficultlanguage; and a man whose life is spent in marching and fighting hasnotoriously no time to learn Latin. 

Here is another fellow--a monk this one--describing to a friend thewonderful things which he has seen in Rome. 

'You may have heard, ' he says, 'how the Pope did possess a monstrousbeast called an Elephant. The Pope did entertain for this beast a verygreat affection, and now behold it is dead. When it fell sick, the Popecalled his doctors about him in great sorrow, and said to them, "If itbe possible, heal my elephant. " Then they gave the elephant a purge, which cost five hundred crowns, but it did not avail, and so the beastdeparted; and the Pope grieves much for his elephant, for it was indeeda miraculous beast, with a long, long, prodigious long nose; and when itsaw the Pope it kneeled down before him and said, with a terrible voice, "Bar, bar, bar!"'

I will not tire you with any more of this nonsense, especially as Icannot give you the really characteristic parts of the book. 

I want you to observe, however, what Sir Thomas More says of it, andnobody will question that Sir Thomas More was a good Catholic and acompetent witness. 'These epistles, ' he says, 'are the delight ofeveryone. The wise enjoy the wit; the blockheads of monks take themseriously, and believe that they have been written to do them honour. When we laugh, they think we are laughing at the style, which they admitto be comical. But they think the style is made up for by the beauty ofthe sentiment. The scabbard, they say, is rough, but the blade within itis divine. The deliberate idiots would not have found out the jest forthemselves in a hundred years. '

Well might Erasmus exclaim, 'What fungus could be more stupid? yetthese are the Atlases who are to uphold the tottering Church!'

'The monks had a pleasant time of it, ' says Luther. 'Every brother hadtwo cans of beer and a quart of wine for his supper, with gingerbread, to make him take to his liquor kindly. Thus the poor things came to looklike fiery angels. '

And more gravely, 'In the cloister rule the seven deadlysins--covetousness, lasciviousness, uncleanness, hate, envy, idleness, and the loathing of the service of God. '

Consider such men as these owning a third, a half, sometimes two-thirdsof the land in every country in Europe, and, in addition to their othersins, neglecting all the duties attaching to this property--the woodscut down and sold, the houses falling to ruin--unthrift, neglect, wasteeverywhere and in everything--the shrewd making the most of their time, which they had sense to see might be a short one--the rest dreaming onin sleepy sensuality, dividing their hours between the chapel, thepothouse, and the brothel. 

I do not think that, in its main features, the truth of this sketch canbe impugned; and if it be just even in outline, then a reformation ofsome kind or other was overwhelmingly necessary. Corruption beyond acertain point becomes unendurable to the coarsest nostril. Theconstitution of human things cannot away with it. 

Something was to be done; but what, or how? There were three possiblecourses. 

Either the ancient discipline of the Church might be restored by theheads of the Church themselves. 

Or, secondly, a higher tone of feeling might gradually be introducedamong clergy and laity alike, by education and literary culture. Thediscovery of the printing press had made possible a diffusion ofknowledge which had been unattainable in earlier ages. Theecclesiastical constitution, like a sick human body, might recover itstone if a better diet were prepared for it. 

Or, lastly, the common sense of the laity might take the matter at onceinto their own hands, and make free use of the pruning knife and thesweeping brush. There might be much partial injustice, much violence, much wrongheadedness; but the people would, at any rate, go direct tothe point, and the question was whether any other remedy would serve. 

The first of these alternatives may at once be dismissed. The heads ofthe Church were the last persons in the world to discover that anythingwas wrong. People of that sort always are. For them the thing as itexisted answered excellently well. They had boundless wealth, and allbut boundless power. What could they ask for more? No monk drowsing overhis wine-pot was less disturbed by anxiety than nine out of ten of thehigh dignitaries who were living on the eve of the Judgment Day, andbelieved that their seat was established for them for ever. 

The character of the great ecclesiastics of that day you may infer froma single example. The Archbishop of Mayence was one of the mostenlightened Churchmen in Germany. He was a patron of the Renaissance, afriend of Erasmus, a liberal, an intelligent, and, as times went, andconsidering his trade, an honourable, high-minded man. 

When the Emperor Maximilian died, and the imperial throne was vacant, the Archbishop of Mayence was one of seven electors who had to choose anew emperor. 

There were two competitors--Francis the First and Maximilian's grandson, afterwards the well-known Charles the Fifth. 

Well, of the seven electors six were bribed. John Frederick of Saxony, Luther's friend and protector, was the only one of the party who cameout of the business with clean hands. 

But the Archbishop of Mayence took bribes six times alternately fromboth the candidates. He took money as coolly as the most rascallyten-pound householder in Yarmouth or Totnes, and finally drove a hardbargain for his actual vote. 

The grape does not grow upon the blackthorn; nor does healthy reformcome from high dignitaries like the Archbishop of Mayence. 

The other aspect of the problem I shall consider in the followingLectures. 

LECTURE II. 

In the year 1467--the year in which Charles the Bold became Duke ofBurgundy--four years before the great battle of Barnet, whichestablished our own fourth Edward on the English throne--about the timewhen William Caxton was setting up his printing press atWestminster--there was born at Rotterdam, on the 28th of October, Desiderius Erasmus. His parents, who were middle-class people, werewell-to-do in the world. For some reason or other they were preventedfrom marrying by the interference of relations. The father died soonafter in a cloister; the mother was left with her illegitimate infant, whom she called first, after his father, Gerard; but afterwards, fromhis beauty and grace, she changed his name--the words DesideriusErasmus, one with a Latin, the other with a Greek, derivation, meaningthe lovely or delightful one. 

Not long after, the mother herself died also. The little Erasmus was theheir of a moderate fortune; and his guardians, desiring to appropriateit to themselves, endeavoured to force him into a convent at Brabant. 

The thought of living and dying in a house of religion was dreadfullyunattractive; but an orphan boy's resistance was easily overcome. He wasbullied into yielding, and, when about twenty, took the vows. 

The life of a monk, which was uninviting on the surface, was not morelovely when seen from within. 

'A monk's holy obedience, ' Erasmus wrote afterwards, 'consists in--what?In leading an honest, chaste, and sober life? Not the least. Inacquiring learning, in study, and industry? Still less. A monk may be aglutton, a drunkard, a whoremonger, an ignorant, stupid, malignant, envious brute, but he has broken no vow, he is within his holyobedience. He has only to be the slave of a superior as good for nothingas himself, and he is an excellent brother. '

The misfortune of his position did not check Erasmus's intellectualgrowth. He was a brilliant, witty, sarcastic, mischievous youth. He didnot trouble himself to pine and mope; but, like a young thorough-bred ina drove of asses, he used his heels pretty freely. 

While he played practical jokes upon the unreverend fathers, hedistinguished himself equally by his appetite for knowledge. It was thedawn of the Renaissance--the revival of learning. The discovery ofprinting was reopening to modern Europe the great literature of Greeceand Rome, and the writings of the Christian fathers. For studies of thiskind, Erasmus, notwithstanding the disadvantages of cowl and frock, displayed extraordinary aptitude. He taught himself Greek when Greek wasthe language which, in the opinion of the monks, only the devils spokein the wrong place. His Latin was as polished as Cicero's; and at lengththe Archbishop of Cambray heard of him, and sent him to the Universityof Paris. 

At Paris he found a world where life could be sufficiently pleasant, butwhere his religious habit was every moment in his way. He was a priest, and so far could not help himself. That ink-spot not all the waters ofthe German Ocean could wash away. But he did not care for the lowdebaucheries, where the frock and cowl were at home. His place was inthe society of cultivated men, who were glad to know him and topatronise him; so he shook off his order, let his hair grow, and flungaway his livery. 

The Archbishop's patronage was probably now withdrawn. Life in Paris wasexpensive, and Erasmus had for several years to struggle with poverty. We see him, however, for the most part--in his early letters--carrying abold front to fortune; desponding one moment, and larking the next witha Paris grisette; making friends, enjoying good company, enjoyingespecially good wine when he could get it; and, above all, satiating hisliterary hunger at the library of the University. 

In this condition, when about eight-and-twenty, he made acquaintancewith two young English noblemen who were travelling on the Continent, Lord Mountjoy and one of the Greys. 

Mountjoy, intensely attracted by his brilliance, took him for his tutor, carried him over to England, and introduced him at the court of Henrythe Seventh. At once his fortune was made. He charmed every one, and inturn he was himself delighted with the country and the people. Englishcharacter, English hospitality, English manners--everything Englishexcept the beer--equally pleased him. In the young London men--thelawyers, the noblemen, even in some of the clergy--he found his ownpassion for learning. Sir Thomas More, who was a few years younger thanhimself, became his dearest friend; and Warham, afterwards Archbishop ofCanterbury--Fisher, afterwards Bishop of Rochester--Colet, the famousDean of St. Paul's--the great Wolsey himself--recognised and welcomedthe rising star of European literature. 

Money flowed in upon him. Warham gave him a benefice in Kent, which wasafterwards changed to a pension. Prince Henry, when he became King, offered him--kings in those days were not bad friends toliterature--Henry offered him, if he would remain in England, a houselarge enough to be called a palace, and a pension which, converted intoour money, would be a thousand pounds a year. 

Erasmus, however, was a restless creature, and did not like to be cagedor tethered. He declined the King's terms, but Mountjoy settled apension on him instead. He had now a handsome income, and he understoodthe art of enjoying it. He moved about as he pleased--now to Cambridge, now to Oxford, and, as the humour took him, back again to Paris; nowstaying with Sir Thomas More at Chelsea, now going a pilgrimage withDean Colet to Becket's tomb at Canterbury--but always studying, alwaysgathering knowledge, and throwing it out again, steeped in his ownmother wit, in shining Essays or Dialogues, which were the delight andthe despair of his contemporaries. 

Everywhere, in his love of pleasure, in his habits of thought, in hissarcastic scepticism, you see the healthy, clever, well-disposed, tolerant, epicurean, intellectual man of the world. 

He went, as I said, with Dean Colet to Becket's tomb. At a shrine aboutCanterbury he was shown an old shoe which tradition called the Saint's. At the tomb itself, the great sight was a handkerchief which a monk tookfrom among the relics, and offered it to the crowd to kiss. Theworshippers touched it in pious adoration, with clasped hands andupturned eyes. If the thing was genuine, as Erasmus observed, it had butserved for the archbishop to wipe his nose with--and Dean Colet, apuritan before his time, looked on with eyes flashing scorn, andscarcely able to keep his hands off the exhibitors. But Erasmus smiledkindly, reflecting that mankind were fools, and in some form or otherwould remain fools. He took notice only of the pile of gold and jewels, and concluded that so much wealth might prove dangerous to itspossessors. 

The peculiarities of the English people interested and amused him. 'Youare going to England, ' he wrote afterwards to a friend; 'you will notfail to be pleased. You will find the great people there most agreeableand gracious; only be careful not to presume upon their intimacy. Theywill condescend to your level, but do not you therefore suppose that youstand upon theirs. The noble lords are gods in their own eyes. '

'For the other classes, be courteous, give your right hand, do not takethe wall, do not push yourself. Smile on whom you please, but trust noone that you do not know; above all, speak no evil of England to them. They are proud of their country above all nations in the world, as theyhave good reason to be. '

These directions might have been written yesterday. The manners of theladies have somewhat changed. 'English ladies, ' says Erasmus, 'aredivinely pretty, and _too_ good-natured. They have an excellent customamong them, that wherever you go the girls kiss you. They kiss you whenyou come, they kiss you when you go, they kiss you at interveningopportunities, and their lips are soft, warm, and delicious. ' Prettywell that, for a priest!

The custom, perhaps, was not quite so universal as Erasmus would have usbelieve. His own coaxing ways may have had something to do with it. Atany rate, he found England a highly agreeable place of residence. 

Meanwhile, his reputation as a writer spread over the world. Latin--thelanguage in which he wrote--was in universal use. It was the vernacularof the best society in Europe, and no living man was so perfect a masterof it. His satire flashed about among all existing institutions, scathing especially his old enemies the monks; while the great secularclergy, who hated the religious orders, were delighted to see themscourged, and themselves to have the reputation of being patrons oftoleration and reform. 

Erasmus, as he felt his ground more sure under him, obtained from Juliusthe Second a distinct release from his monastic vows; and, shortlyafter, when the brilliant Leo succeeded to the tiara, and gathered abouthim the magnificent cluster of artists who have made his era soillustrious, the new Pope invited Erasmus to visit him at Rome, andbecome another star in the constellation which surrounded the Papalthrone. 

Erasmus was at this time forty years old--the age when ambition becomespowerful in men, and takes the place of love of pleasure. He wasreceived at Rome with princely distinction, and he could have asked fornothing--bishoprics, red hats, or red stockings--which would not havebeen freely given to him if he would have consented to remain. 

But he was too considerable a man to be tempted by finery; and thePope's livery, gorgeous though it might be, was but a livery after all. Nothing which Leo the Tenth could do for Erasmus could add lustre to hiscoronet. More money he might have had, but of money he had alreadyabundance, and outward dignity would have been dearly bought by gildedchains. He resisted temptation; he preferred the northern air, where hecould breathe at liberty, and he returned to England, half inclined tomake his home there. 

But his own sovereign laid claim to his services; the future emperorrecalled him to the Low Countries, settled a handsome salary upon him, and established him at the University of Louvaine. 

He was now in the zenith of his greatness. He had an income as large asmany an English nobleman. We find him corresponding with popes, cardinals, kings, and statesmen; and as he grew older, his mind becamemore fixed upon serious subjects. The ignorance and brutality of themonks, the corruption of the spiritual courts, the absolute irreligionin which the Church was steeped, gave him serious alarm. He had noenthusiasms, no doctrinal fanaticisms, no sectarian beliefs orsuperstitions. The breadth of his culture, his clear understanding, andthe worldly moderation of his temper, seemed to qualify him above livingmen to conduct a temperate reform. He saw that the system around him waspregnant with danger, and he resolved to devote what remained to him oflife to the introduction of a higher tone in the minds of the clergy. 

The revival of learning had by this time alarmed the religious orders. Literature and education, beyond the code of the theological text-books, appeared simply devilish to them. When Erasmus returned to Louvaine, thebattle was raging over the north of Europe. 

The Dominicans at once recognised in Erasmus their most dangerous enemy. At first they tried to compel him to re-enter the order, but, strong inthe Pope's dispensation, he was so far able to defy them. They couldbark at his heels, but dared not come to closer quarters: and with histemper slightly ruffled, but otherwise contented to despise them, hetook up boldly the task which he had set himself. 

'We kiss the old shoes of the saints, ' he said, 'but we never read theirworks. ' He undertook the enormous labour of editing and translatingselections from the writings of the Fathers. The New Testament was aslittle known as the lost books of Tacitus--all that the people knew ofthe Gospels and the Epistles were the passages on which theologians hadbuilt up the Catholic formulas. Erasmus published the text, and with it, and to make it intelligible, a series of paraphrases, which rent awaythe veil of traditional and dogmatic interpretation, and brought theteaching of Christ and the Apostles into their natural relation withreason and conscience. 

In all this, although the monks might curse, he had countenance andencouragement from the great ecclesiastics in all parts of Europe--andit is highly curious to see the extreme freedom with which they allowedhim to propose to them his plans for a Reformation--we seem to belistening to the wisest of modern broad Churchmen. 

To one of his correspondents, an archbishop, he writes:--

'Let us have done with theological refinements. There is an excuse forthe Fathers, because the heretics forced them to define particularpoints; but every definition is a misfortune, and for us to persevere inthe same way is sheer folly. Is no man to be admitted to grace who doesnot know how the Father differs from the Son, and both from the Spirit?or how the nativity of the Son differs from the procession of theSpirit? Unless I forgive my brother his sins against me, God will notforgive me my sins. Unless I have a pure heart--unless I put away envy, hate, pride, avarice, lust, I shall not see God. But a man is not damnedbecause he cannot tell whether the Spirit has one principle or two. Hashe the fruits of the Spirit? That is the question. Is he patient, kind, good, gentle, modest, temperate, chaste? Enquire if you will, but do notdefine. True religion is peace, and we cannot have peace unless we leavethe conscience unshackled on obscure points on which certainty isimpossible. We hear now of questions being referred to the nextOEcumenical Council--better a great deal refer them to doomsday. Timewas, when a man's faith was looked for in his life, not in the Articleswhich he professed. Necessity first brought Articles upon us, and eversince, we have refined and refined till Christianity has become a thingof words and creeds. Articles increase--sincerity vanishesaway--contention grows hot, and charity grows cold. Then comes in thecivil power, with stake and gallows, and men are forced to profess whatthey do not believe, to pretend to love what in fact they hate, and tosay that they understand what in fact has no meaning for them. '

Again, to the Archbishop of Mayence:--

'Reduce the dogmas necessary to be believed, to the smallest possiblenumber; you can do it without danger to the realities of Christianity. On other points, either discourage enquiry, or leave everyone free tobelieve what he pleases--then we shall have no more quarrels, andreligion will again take hold of life. When you have done this, you cancorrect the abuses of which the world with good reason complains. Theunjust judge heard the widow's prayer. You should not shut your ears tothe cries of those for whom Christ died. He did not die for the greatonly, but for the poor and for the lowly. There need be no tumult. Doyou only set human affections aside, and let kings and princes lendthemselves heartily to the public good. But observe that the monks andfriars be allowed no voice; with these gentlemen the world has borne toolong. They care only for their own vanity, their own stomachs, their ownpower; and they believe that if the people are enlightened, theirkingdom cannot stand. '

Once more to the Pope himself:--

'Let each man amend first his own wicked life. When he has done that, and will amend his neighbour, let him put on Christian charity, which issevere enough when severity is needed. If your holiness give power tomen who neither believe in Christ nor care for you, but think only oftheir own appetites, I fear there will be danger. We can trust yourholiness, but there are bad men who will use your virtues as a cloke fortheir own malice. '

That the spiritual rulers of Europe should have allowed a man likeErasmus to use language such as this to them is a fact of supremeimportance. It explains the feeling of Goethe, that the world would havegone on better had there been no Luther, and that the revival oftheological fanaticism did more harm than good. 

But the question of questions is, what all this latitudinarianphilosophising, this cultivated epicurean gracefulness would have cometo if left to itself; or rather, what was the effect which it wasinevitably producing? If you wish to remove an old building withoutbringing it in ruins about your ears, you must begin at the top, removethe stones gradually downwards, and touch the foundation last. Butlatitudinarianism loosens the elementary principles of theology. Itdestroys the premises on which the dogmatic system rests. It would begthe question to say that this would in itself have been undesirable; butthe practical effect of it, as the world then stood, would have onlybeen to make the educated into infidels, and to leave the multitude to aconvenient but debasing superstition. 

The monks said that Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched acockatrice. Erasmus resented deeply such an account of his work; but itwas true after all. The sceptical philosophy is the most powerful ofsolvents, but it has no principle of organic life in it; and what oftruth there was in Erasmus's teaching had to assume a far other formbefore it was available for the reinvigoration of religion. He himself, in his clearer moments, felt his own incapacity, and despaired of makingan impression on the mass of ignorance with which he saw himselfsurrounded. 

'The stupid monks, ' he writes, 'say mass as a cobbler makes a shoe; theycome to the altar reeking from their filthy pleasures. Confession withthe monks is a cloke to steal the people's money, to rob girls of theirvirtue, and commit other crimes too horrible to name! Yet these peopleare the tyrants of Europe. The Pope himself is afraid of them. '

'Beware!' he says to an impetuous friend, 'beware how you offend themonks. You have to do with an enemy that cannot be slain; an order neverdies, and they will not rest till they have destroyed you. '

The heads of the Church might listen politely, but Erasmus had noconfidence in them. 'Never, ' he says, 'was there a time when divineswere greater fools, or popes and prelates more worldly. ' Germany wasabout to receive a signal illustration of the improvement which it wasto look for from liberalism and intellectual culture. 

We are now on the edge of the great conflagration. Here we must leaveErasmus for the present. I must carry you briefly over the history ofthe other great person who was preparing to play his part on the stage. You have seen something of what Erasmus was; you must turn next to thecompanion picture of Martin Luther. You will observe in how many pointstheir early experiences touch, as if to show more vividly the contrastbetween the two men. 

Sixteen years after the birth of Erasmus, therefore in the year 1483, Martin Luther came into the world in a peasant's cottage, at Eisleben, in Saxony. By peasant, you need not understand a common boor. HansLuther, the father, was a thrifty, well-to-do man for his station inlife--adroit with his hands, and able to do many useful things, fromfarm work to digging in the mines. The family life was strict andstern--rather too stern, as Martin thought in later life. 

'Be temperate with your children, ' he said, long after, to a friend;'punish them if they lie or steal, but be just in what you do. It is alighter sin to take pears and apples than to take money. I shudder whenI think of what I went through myself. My mother beat me about some nutsonce till the blood came. I had a terrible time of it, but she meantwell. '

At school, too, he fell into rough hands, and the recollection of hissufferings made him tender ever after with young boys and girls. 

'Never be hard with children, ' he used to say. 'Many a fine characterhas been ruined by the stupid brutality of pedagogues. The parts ofspeech are a boy's pillory. I was myself flogged fifteen times in oneforenoon over the conjugation of a verb. Punish if you will, but bekind too, and let the sugar-plum go with the rod. ' This is not thelanguage of a demagogue or a fanatic; it is the wise thought of atender, human-hearted man. 

At seventeen, he left school for the University at Erfurt. It was thenno shame for a poor scholar to maintain himself by alms. Young Martinhad a rich noble voice and a fine ear, and by singing ballads in thestreets he found ready friends and help. He was still uncertain withwhat calling he should take up, when it happened that a young friend waskilled at his side by lightning. 

Erasmus was a philosopher. A powder magazine was once blown up bylightning in a town where Erasmus was staying, and a house of infamouscharacter was destroyed. The inhabitants saw in what had happened theDivine anger against sin. Erasmus told them that if there was any angerin the matter, it was anger merely with the folly which had storedpowder in an exposed situation. 

Luther possessed no such premature intelligence. He was distinguishedfrom other boys only by the greater power of his feelings and thevividness of his imagination. He saw in his friend's death the immediatehand of the great Lord of the universe. His conscience was terrified. Alife-long penitence seemed necessary to atone for the faults of hisboyhood. He too, like Erasmus, became a monk, not forced into it--forhis father knew better what the holy men were like, and had no wish tohave son of his among them--but because the monk of Martin's imaginationspent his nights and days upon the stones in prayer; and Martin, in theheat of his repentance, longed to be kneeling at his side. 

In this mood he entered the Augustine monastery at Erfurt. He was fullof an overwhelming sense of his own wretchedness and sinfulness. LikeSt. Paul, he was crying to be delivered from the body of death which hecarried about him. He practised all possible austerities. He, if no oneelse, mortified his flesh with fasting. He passed nights in the chancelbefore the altar, or on his knees on the floor of his cell. He weakenedhis body till his mind wandered, and he saw ghosts and devils. Aboveall, he saw the flaming image of his own supposed guilt. God requiredthat he should keep the law in all points. He had not so kept thelaw--could not so keep the law--and therefore he believed that he wasdamned. One morning, he was found senseless and seemingly dead; abrother played to him on a flute, and soothed his senses back toconsciousness. 

It was long since any such phenomenon had appeared among the rosy friarsof Erfurt. They could not tell what to make of him. Staupitz, the prior, listened to his accusations of himself in confession. 'My good fellow, 'he said, 'don't be so uneasy; you have committed no sins of the leastconsequence; you have not killed anybody, or committed adultery, orthings of that sort. If you sin to some purpose, it is right that youshould think about it, but don't make mountains out of trifles. '

Very curious: to the commonplace man the uncommonplace is for everunintelligible. What was the good of all that excitement--that agony ofself-reproach for little things? None at all, if the object is only tobe an ordinary good sort of man--if a decent fulfilment of the round ofcommon duties is the be-all and the end-all of human life on earth. 

The plague came by-and-by into the town. The commonplace clergy ranaway--went to their country-houses, went to the hills, wentanywhere--and they wondered in the same way why Luther would not go withthem. They admired him and liked him. They told him his life was tooprecious to be thrown away. He answered, quite simply, that his placewas with the sick and dying; a monk's life was no great matter. The sunhe did not doubt would continue to shine, whatever became of him. 'I amno St. Paul, ' he said; 'I am afraid of death; but there are things worsethan death, and if I die, I die. '

Even a Staupitz could not but feel that he had an extraordinary youth inhis charge. To divert his mind from feeding upon itself, he devised amission for him abroad, and brother Martin was despatched on business ofthe convent to Rome. 

Luther too, like Erasmus, was to see Rome; but how different the figuresof the two men there! Erasmus goes with servants and horses, thepolished, successful man of the world. Martin Luther trudges pennilessand barefoot across the Alps, helped to a meal and a night's rest at themonasteries along the road, or begging, if the convents fail him, at thefarm-houses. 

He was still young, and too much occupied with his own sins to know muchof the world outside him. Erasmus had no dreams. He knew the hard truthon most things. But Rome, to Luther's eager hopes, was the city of thesaints, and the court and palace of the Pope fragrant with the odours ofParadise. 'Blessed Rome, ' he cried, as he entered the gate--'BlessedRome, sanctified with the blood of martyrs!'

Alas! the Rome of reality was very far from blessed. He remained longenough to complete his disenchantment. The cardinals, with their gildedchariots and their parasols of peacocks' plumes, were poorrepresentatives of the apostles. The gorgeous churches and more gorgeousrituals, the pagan splendour of the paintings, the heathen gods stillalmost worshipped in the adoration of the art which had formed them, toLuther, whose heart was heavy with thoughts of man's depravity, wereutterly horrible. The name of religion was there: the thinnest veil wasscarcely spread over the utter disbelief with which God and Christ wereat heart regarded. Culture enough there was. It was the Rome of Raphaeland Michael Angelo, of Perugino, and Benvenuto; but to the poor Germanmonk, who had come there to find help for his suffering soul, what wasculture?

He fled at the first moment that he could. 'Adieu! Rome, ' he said; 'letall who would lead a holy life depart from Rome. Everything is permittedin Rome except to be an honest man. ' He had no thought of leaving theRoman Church. To a poor monk like him, to talk of leaving the Church waslike talking of leaping off the planet. But perplexed and troubled hereturned to Saxony; and his friend Staupitz, seeing clearly that amonastery was no place for him, recommended him to the Elector asProfessor of Philosophy at Wittenberg. 

The senate of Wittenberg gave him the pulpit of the town church, andthere at once he had room to show what was in him. 'This monk, ' saidsome one who heard him, 'is a marvellous fellow. He has strange eyes, and will give the doctors trouble by-and-by. '

He had read deeply, especially he had read that rare and almost unknownbook, the 'New Testament. ' He was not cultivated like Erasmus. Erasmusspoke the most polished Latin. Luther spoke and wrote his own vernacularGerman. The latitudinarian philosophy, the analytical acuteness, thesceptical toleration of Erasmus were alike strange and distasteful tohim. In all things he longed only to know the truth--to shake off andhurl from him lies and humbug. 

Superstitious he was. He believed in witches and devils and fairies--athousand things without basis in fact, which Erasmus passed by incontemptuous indifference. But for things which were really true--trueas nothing else in this world, or any world, is true--the justice ofGod, the infinite excellence of good, the infinite hatefulness ofevil--these things he believed and felt with a power of passionateconviction to which the broader, feebler mind of the other was for evera stranger. 

We come now to the memorable year 1517, when Luther was thirty-fiveyears old. A new cathedral was in progress at Rome. Michael Angelo hadfurnished Leo the Tenth with the design of St. Peter's; and the questionof questions was to find money to complete the grandest structure whichhad ever been erected by man. 

Pope Leo was the most polished and cultivated of mankind. The work to bedone was to be the most splendid which art could produce. The means towhich the Pope had recourse will serve to show us how much all thatwould have done for us. 

You remember what I told you about indulgences. The notable device ofhis Holiness was to send distinguished persons about Europe with sacksof indulgences. Indulgences and dispensations! Dispensations to eat meaton fast-days--dispensations to marry one's near relation--dispensationsfor anything and everything which the faithful might wish to purchasewho desired forbidden pleasures. The dispensations were simplyscandalous. The indulgences--well, if a pious Catholic is asked nowadayswhat they were, he will say that they were the remission of the penanceswhich the Church inflicts upon earth; but it is also certain that theywould have sold cheap if the people had thought that this was all thatthey were to get by them. As the thing was represented by the spiritualhawkers who disposed of these wares, they were letters of credit onheaven. When the great book was opened, the people believed that thesepapers would be found entire on the right side of the account. Debtor--so many murders, so many robberies, lies, slanders, ordebaucheries. Creditor--the merits of the saints placed to the accountof the delinquent by the Pope's letters, in consideration of valuereceived. 

This is the way in which the pardon system was practically worked. Thisis the way in which it is worked still, where the same superstitionsremain. 

If one had asked Pope Leo whether he really believed in these pardons ofhis, he would have said officially that the Church had always held thatthe Pope had power to grant them. 

Had he told the truth, he would have added privately that if the peoplechose to be fools, it was not for him to disappoint them. 

The collection went on. The money of the faithful came in plentifully;and the pedlars going their rounds appeared at last in Saxony. 

The Pope had bought the support of the Archbishop of Mayence, Erasmus'sfriend, by promising him half the spoil which was gathered in hisprovince. The agent was the Dominican monk Tetzel, whose name hasacquired a forlorn notoriety in European history. 

His stores were opened in town after town. He entered in state. Thestreets everywhere were hung with flags. Bells were pealed; nuns andmonks walked in procession before and after him, while he himself satein a chariot, with the Papal Bull on a velvet cushion in front of him. The sale-rooms were the churches. The altars were decorated, the candleslighted, the arms of St. Peter blazoned conspicuously on the roof. Tetzel from the pulpit explained the efficacy of his medicines; and ifany profane person doubted their power, he was threatened withexcommunication. 

Acolytes walked through the crowds, clinking their plates and crying, 'Buy! buy!' The business went as merry as a marriage bell till theDominican came near to Wittenberg. 

Half a century before, such a spectacle would have excited no particularattention. The few who saw through the imposition would have kept theirthoughts to themselves; the many would have paid their money, and in amonth all would have been forgotten. 

But the fight between the men of letters and the monks, the writings ofErasmus and Reuchlin, the satires of Ulric von Hutten, had created asilent revolution in the minds of the younger laity. 

A generation had grown to manhood of whom the Church authorities knewnothing; and the whole air of Germany, unsuspected by pope or prelate, was charged with electricity. 

Had Luther stood alone, he, too, would probably have remained silent. What was he, a poor, friendless, solitary monk, that he should sethimself against the majesty of the triple crown?

However hateful the walls of a dungeon, a man of sense confined alonethere does not dash his hands against the stones. 

But Luther knew that his thoughts were the thoughts of thousands. Manywrong things, as we all know, have to be endured in this world. Authority is never very angelic; and moderate injustice, a moderatequantity of lies, is more tolerable than anarchy. 

But it is with human things as it is with the great icebergs which driftsouthward out of the frozen seas. They swim two-thirds under water, andone-third above; and so long as the equilibrium is sustained, you wouldthink that they were as stable as the rocks. But the sea-water is warmerthan the air. Hundreds of fathoms down, the tepid current washes thebase of the berg. Silently in those far deeps the centre of gravity ischanged; and then, in a moment, with one vast roll, the enormous massheaves over, and the crystal peaks which had been glancing so proudly inthe sunlight, are buried in the ocean for ever. 

Such a process as this had been going on in Germany, and Luther knew it, and knew that the time was come for him to speak. Fear had not kept himback. The danger to himself would be none the less because he would havethe people at his side. The fiercer the thunderstorm, the greater perilto the central figure who stands out above the rest exposed to it. Buthe saw that there was hope at last of a change; and for himself--as hesaid in the plague--if he died, he died. 

Erasmus admitted frankly for himself that he did not like danger. 

'As to me, ' he wrote to Archbishop Warham, 'I have no inclination torisk my life for truth. We have not all strength for martyrdom; and iftrouble come, I shall imitate St. Peter. Popes and emperors must settlethe creeds. If they settle them well, so much the better; if ill, Ishall keep on the safe side. '

That is to say, truth was not the first necessity to Erasmus. He wouldprefer truth, if he could have it. If not, he could get on moderatelywell upon falsehood. Luther could not. No matter what the danger tohimself, if he could smite a lie upon the head and kill it, he wasbetter pleased than by a thousand lives. We hear much of Luther'sdoctrine about faith. Stripped of theological verbiage, that doctrinemeans this. 

Reason says that, on the whole, truth and justice are desirable things. They make men happier in themselves, and make society more prosperous. But there reason ends, and men will not die for principles of utility. Faith says that between truth and lies, there is an infinite difference:one is of God, the other of Satan; one is eternally to be loved, theother eternally to be abhorred. It cannot say why, in languageintelligible to reason. It is the voice of the nobler nature in manspeaking out of his heart. 

While Tetzel, with his bull and his gilt car, was coming to Wittenberg, Luther, loyal still to authority while there was a hope that authoritywould be on the side of right, wrote to the Archbishop of Mayence toremonstrate. 

The archbishop, as we know, was to have a share of Tetzel's spoils; andwhat were the complaints of a poor insignificant monk to a supremearchbishop who was in debt and wanted money?

The Archbishop of Mayence flung the letter into his waste-paper basket;and Luther made his solemn appeal from earthly dignitaries to theconscience of the German people. He set up his protest on the churchdoor at Wittenberg; and, in ninety-five propositions he challenged theCatholic Church to defend Tetzel and his works. 

The Pope's indulgences, he said, cannot take away sins. God alone remitssins; and He pardons those who are penitent, without help from man'sabsolutions. 

The Church may remit penalties which the Church inflicts. But theChurch's power is in this world only, and does not reach to purgatory. 

If God has thought fit to place a man in purgatory, who shall say thatit is good for him to be taken out of purgatory? who shall say that hehimself desires it?

True repentance does not shrink from chastisement. True repentancerather loves chastisement. 

The bishops are asleep. It is better to give to the poor than to buyindulgences; and he who sees his neighbour in want, and instead ofhelping his neighbour buys a pardon for himself, is doing what isdispleasing to God. Who is this man who dares to say that for so manycrowns the soul of a sinner can be made whole?

These, and like these, were Luther's propositions. Little guessed theCatholic prelates the dimensions of the act which had been done. ThePope, when he saw the theses, smiled in good-natured contempt. 'Adrunken German wrote them, ' he said; 'when he has slept off his wine, hewill be of another mind. '

Tetzel bayed defiance; the Dominican friars took up the quarrel; andHochstrat of Cologne, Reuchlin's enemy, clamoured for fire and faggot. 

Voice answered voice. The religious houses all Germany over were likekennels of hounds howling to each other across the spiritual waste. Ifsouls could not be sung out of purgatory, their occupation was gone. 

Luther wrote to Pope Leo to defend himself; Leo cited him to answer forhis audacity at Rome; while to the young laymen, to the noble spiritsall Europe over, Wittenberg became a beacon of light shining in theuniversal darkness. 

It was a trying time to Luther. Had he been a smaller man, he would havebeen swept away by his sudden popularity--he would have placed himselfat the head of some great democratic movement, and in a few years hisname would have disappeared in the noise and smoke of anarchy. 

But this was not his nature. His fellow-townsmen were heartily on hisside. He remained quietly at his post in the Augustine Church atWittenberg. If the powers of the world came down upon him and killedhim, he was ready to be killed. Of himself at all times he thoughtinfinitely little; and he believed that his death would be asserviceable to truth as his life. 

Killed undoubtedly he would have been if the clergy could have had theirway. It happened, however, that Saxony just then was governed by aprince of no common order. Were all princes like the Elector Frederick, we should have no need of democracy in this world--we should never haveheard of democracy. The clergy could not touch Luther against the willof the Wittenberg senate, unless the Elector would help them; and, tothe astonishment of everybody, the Elector was disinclined to consent. The Pope himself wrote to exhort him to his duties. The Elector stillhesitated. His professed creed was the creed in which the Church hadeducated him; but he had a clear secular understanding outside hisformulas. When he read the propositions, they did not seem to him thepernicious things which the monks said they were. 'There is much in theBible about Christ, ' he said, 'but not much about Rome. ' He sent forErasmus, and asked him what he thought about the matter. 

The Elector knew to whom he was speaking. He wished for a direct answer, and looked Erasmus full and broad in the face. Erasmus pinched his thinlips together. 'Luther, ' he said at length, 'has committed two sins: hehas touched the Pope's crown and the monks' bellies. '

He generously and strongly urged Frederick not to yield for the presentto Pope Leo's importunacy; and the Pope was obliged to try less hastyand more formal methods. 

He had wished Luther to be sent to him to Rome, where his process wouldhave had a rapid end. As this could not be, the case was transferred toAugsburg, and a cardinal legate was sent from Italy to look into it. 

There was no danger of violence at Augsburg. The townspeople there andeverywhere were on the side of freedom; and Luther went cheerfully todefend himself. He walked from Wittenberg. You can fancy him still inhis monk's brown frock, with all his wardrobe on his back--an apostle ofthe old sort. The citizens, high and low, attended him to the gates, andfollowed him along the road, crying 'Luther for ever!' 'Nay, ' heanswered, 'Christ for ever!'

The cardinal legate, being reduced to the necessity of politeness, received him civilly. He told him, however, simply and briefly, that thePope insisted on his recantation, and would accept nothing else. Lutherrequested the cardinal to point out to him where he was wrong. Thecardinal waived discussion. 'He was come to command, ' he said, 'not toargue. ' And Luther had to tell him that it could not be. 

Remonstrances, threats, entreaties, even bribes were tried. Hopes ofhigh distinction and reward were held out to him if he would only bereasonable. To the amazement of the proud Italian, a poor peasant'sson--a miserable friar of a provincial German town--was prepared to defythe power and resist the prayers of the Sovereign of Christendom. 'What!' said the cardinal at last to him, 'do you think the Pope caresfor the opinion of a German boor? The Pope's little finger is strongerthan all Germany. Do you expect your princes to take up arms to defend_you_--_you_, a wretched worm like you? I tell you, No! and where willyou be then--where will you be then?'

Luther answered, 'Then, as now, in the hands of Almighty God. '

The Court dissolved. The cardinal carried back his report to his master. The Pope, so defied, brought out his thunders; he excommunicated Luther;he wrote again to the elector, entreating him not to soil his name andlineage by becoming a protector of heretics; and he required him, without further ceremony, to render up the criminal to justice. 

The elector's power was limited. As yet, the quarrel was simply betweenLuther and the Pope. The elector was by no means sure that his boldsubject was right--he was only not satisfied that he was wrong--and itwas a serious question with him how far he ought to go. The monk mightnext be placed under the ban of the empire; and if he persisted inprotecting him afterwards, Saxony might have all the power of Germanyupon it. He did not venture any more to refuse absolutely. He temporisedand delayed; while Luther himself, probably at the elector'sinstigation, made overtures for peace to the Pope. Saving his duty toChrist, he promised to be for the future an obedient son of the Church, and to say no more about indulgences if Tetzel ceased to defend them. 

'My being such a small creature, ' Luther said afterwards, 'was amisfortune for the Pope. He despised me too much! What, he thought, could a slave like me do to him--to him, who was the greatest man in allthe world. Had he accepted my proposal, he would have extinguished me. '

But the infallible Pope conducted himself like a proud, irascible, exceedingly fallible mortal. To make terms with the town preacher ofWittenberg was too preposterous. 

Just then the imperial throne fell vacant; and the pretty scandal I toldyou of, followed at the choice of his successor. Frederick of Saxonymight have been elected if he had liked--and it would have been betterfor the world perhaps if Frederick had been more ambitious of highdignities--but the Saxon Prince did not care to trouble himself with theimperial sceptre. The election fell on Maximilian's grandsonCharles--grandson also of Ferdinand the Catholic--Sovereign of Spain;Sovereign of Burgundy and the Low Countries; Sovereign of Naples andSicily; Sovereign, beyond the Atlantic, of the New Empire of the Indies. 

No fitter man could have been found to do the business of the Pope. Withthe empire of Germany added to his inherited dominions, who could resisthim?

To the new emperor, unless the elector yielded, Luther's case had now tobe referred. 

The elector, if he had wished, could not interfere. Germany wasattentive, but motionless. The students, the artisans, the tradesmen, were at heart with the Reformer; and their enthusiasm could not bewholly repressed. The press grew fertile with pamphlets; and it wasnoticed that all the printers and compositors went for Luther. TheCatholics could not get their books into type without sending them toFrance or the Low Countries. 

Yet none of the princes except the elector had as yet shown him favour. The bishops were hostile to a man. The nobles had given no sign; andtheir place would be naturally on the side of authority. They had nolove for bishops--there was hope in that; and they looked with no favouron the huge estates of the religious orders. But no one could expectthat they would peril their lands and lives for an insignificant monk. 

There was an interval of two years before the emperor was at leisure totake up the question. The time was spent in angry altercation, boding nogood for the future. 

The Pope issued a second bull condemning Luther and his works. Lutherreplied by burning the bull in the great square at Wittenberg. 

At length, in April 1521, the Diet of the Empire assembled at Worms, andLuther was called to defend himself in the presence of Charles theFifth. 

That it should have come to this at all, in days of such high-handedauthority, was sufficiently remarkable. It indicated something growingin the minds of men, that the so-called Church was not to carry thingsany longer in the old style. Popes and bishops might order, but thelaity intended for the future to have opinions of their own how far suchorders should be obeyed. 

The Pope expected anyhow that the Diet, by fair means or foul, wouldnow rid him of his adversary. The elector, who knew the ecclesiasticalways of handling such matters, made it a condition of his subjectappearing, that he should have a safe conduct, under the emperor's hand;that Luther, if judgment went against him, should be free for the timeto return to the place from which he had come; and that he, the elector, should determine afterwards what should be done with him. 

When the interests of the Church were concerned, safe conducts, it wastoo well known, were poor security. Pope Clement the Seventh, a littleafter, when reproached for breaking a promise, replied with a smile, 'The Pope has power to bind and to loose. ' Good, in the eyes ofecclesiastical authorities, meant what was good for the Church; evil, whatever was bad for the Church; and the highest moral obligation becamesin when it stood in St. Peter's way. 

There had been an outburst of free thought in Bohemia a century and ahalf before. John Huss, Luther's forerunner, came with a safe conduct tothe Council of Constance; but the bishops ruled that safe conducts couldnot protect heretics. They burnt John Huss for all their promises, andthey hoped now that so good a Catholic as Charles would follow soexcellent a precedent. Pope Leo wrote himself to beg that Luther's safeconduct should not be observed. The bishops and archbishops, whenCharles consulted them, took the same view as the Pope. 

'There is something in the office of a bishop, ' Luther said, a year ortwo later, 'which is dreadfully demoralising. Even good men change theirnatures at their consecration; Satan enters into them as he entered intoJudas, as soon as they have taken the sop. '

It was most seriously likely that, if Luther trusted himself at the Dieton the faith of his safe conduct, he would never return alive. Rumoursof intended treachery were so strong, that if he refused to go, theelector meant to stand by him at any cost. Should he appear, or notappear? It was for himself to decide. If he stayed away, judgment wouldgo against him by default. Charles would call out the forces of theempire, and Saxony would be invaded. 

Civil war would follow, with insurrection all over Germany, with nocertain prospect except bloodshed and misery. 

Luther was not a man to expose his country to peril that his own personmight escape. He had provoked the storm; and if blood was to be shed, his blood ought at least to be the first. He went. On his way, a friendcame to warn him again that foul play was intended, that he wascondemned already, that his books had been burnt by the hangman, andthat he was a dead man if he proceeded. 

Luther trembled--he owned it--but he answered, 'Go to Worms! I will goif there are as many devils in Worms as there are tiles upon the roofsof the houses. '

The roofs, when he came into the city, were crowded, not with devils, but with the inhabitants, all collecting there to see him as he passed. A nobleman gave him shelter for the night; the next day he was led tothe Town Hall. 

No more notable spectacle had been witnessed in this planet for many acentury--not, perhaps, since a greater than Luther stood before theRoman Procurator. 

There on the raised dais sate the sovereign of half the world. There oneither side of him stood the archbishops, the ministers of state, theprinces of the empire, gathered together to hear and judge the son of apoor miner, who had made the world ring with his name. 

The body of the hall was thronged with knights and nobles--stern hardmen in dull gleaming armour. Luther, in his brown frock, was led forwardbetween their ranks. The looks which greeted him were not allunfriendly. The first Article of a German credo was belief in _courage_. Germany had had its feuds in times past with Popes of Rome, and theywere not without pride that a poor countryman of theirs should havetaken by the beard the great Italian priest. They had settled amongthemselves that, come what would, there should be fair play; and theylooked on half admiring, and half in scorn. 

As Luther passed up the hall, a steel baron touched him on the shoulderwith his gauntlet. 

'Pluck up thy spirit, little monk;' he said, 'some of us here have seenwarm work in our time, but, by my troth, nor I nor any knight in thiscompany ever needed a stout heart more than thou needest it now. If thouhast faith in these doctrines of thine, little monk, go on, in the nameof God. '

'Yes, in the name of God, ' said Luther, throwing back his head, 'In thename of God, forward!'

As at Augsburg, one only question was raised. Luther had broken thelaws of the Church. He had taught doctrines which the Pope had declaredto be false. Would he or would he not retract?

As at Augsburg, he replied briefly that he would retract when hisdoctrines were not declared to be false merely, but were proved to befalse. Then, but not till then. That was his answer, and his last word. 

There, as you understand, the heart of the matter indeed rested. Inthose words lay the whole meaning of the Reformation. Were men to go onfor ever saying that this and that was true, because the Pope affirmedit? Or were Popes' decrees thenceforward to be tried like the words ofother men--by the ordinary laws of evidence?

It required no great intellect to understand that a Pope's pardon, whichyou could buy for five shillings, could not really get a soul out ofpurgatory. It required a quality much rarer than intellect to look sucha doctrine in the face--sanctioned as it was by the credulity of ages, and backed by the pomp and pageantry of earthly power--and say to itopenly, 'You are a lie. ' Cleverness and culture could have given athousand reasons--they did then and they do now--why an indulgenceshould be believed in; when honesty and common sense could give but onereason for thinking otherwise. Cleverness and imposture get onexcellently well together--imposture and veracity, never. 

Luther looked at those wares of Tetzel's, and said, 'Your pardons are nopardons at all--no letters of credit on heaven, but flash notes of theBank of Humbug, and you know it. ' They did know it. The conscience ofevery man in Europe answered back, that what Luther said was true. 

Bravery, honesty, veracity, these were the qualities which wereneeded--which were needed then, and are needed always, as the root ofall real greatness in man. 

The first missionaries of Christianity, when they came among the heathennations, and found them worshipping idols, did not care much to reasonthat an image which man had made could not be God. The priests mighthave been a match for them in reasoning. They walked up to the idol inthe presence of its votaries. They threw stones at it, spat upon it, insulted it. 'See, ' they said, 'I do this to your God. If he is God, lethim avenge himself. '

It was a simple argument; always effective; easy, and yet mostdifficult. It required merely a readiness to be killed upon the spot bythe superstition which is outraged. 

And so, and only so, can truth make its way for us in any such matters. The form changes--the thing remains. Superstition, folly, and cunningwill go on to the end of time, spinning their poison webs around theconsciences of mankind. Courage and veracity--these qualities, and onlythese, avail to defeat them. 

From the moment that Luther left the emperor's presence a free man, thespell of Absolutism was broken, and the victory of the Reformationsecured. The ban of the Pope had fallen; the secular arm had been calledto interfere; the machinery of authority strained as far as it wouldbear. The emperor himself was an unconscious convert to the highercreed. The Pope had urged him to break his word. The Pope had told himthat honour was nothing, and morality was nothing, where the interestsof orthodoxy were compromised. The emperor had refused to be temptedinto perjury; and, in refusing, had admitted that there was a spiritualpower upon the earth, above the Pope, and above him. 

The party of the Church felt it so. A plot was formed to assassinateLuther on his return to Saxony. The insulted majesty of Rome could bevindicated at least by the dagger. 

But this, too, failed. The elector heard what was intended. A party ofhorse, disguised as banditti, waylaid the Reformer upon the road, andcarried him off to the castle of Wartburg, where he remained out ofharm's way till the general rising of Germany placed him beyond thereach of danger. 

At Wartburg for the present evening we leave him. 

The Emperor Charles and Luther never met again. The monks of Yuste, whowatched on the deathbed of Charles, reported that at the last hour herepented that he had kept his word, and reproached himself for havingallowed the arch-heretic to escape from his hands. 

It is possible that, when the candle of life was burning low, and spiritand flesh were failing together, and the air of the sick room was thickand close with the presence of the angel of death, the nobler nature ofthe emperor might have yielded to the influences which were around him. His confessor might have thrust into his lips the words which he sowished to hear. 

But Charles the Fifth, though a Catholic always, was a Catholic of theold grand type, to whom creed and dogmas were but the robe of a regalhumanity. Another story is told of Charles--an authentic story thisone--which makes me think that the monks of Yuste mistook or malignedhim. Six and twenty years after this scene at Worms, when the thendawning heresy had become broad day; when Luther had gone to hisrest--and there had gathered about his name the hate which mean men feelfor an enemy who has proved too strong for them--a passing vicissitudein the struggle brought the emperor at the head of his army toWittenberg. 

The vengeance which the monks could not inflict upon him in life, theyproposed to wreak upon his bones. 

The emperor desired to be conducted to Luther's tomb; and as he stoodgazing at it, full of many thoughts, some one suggested that the bodyshould be taken up and burnt at the stake in the Market Place. 

There was nothing unusual in the proposal; it was the common practice ofthe Catholic Church with the remains of heretics who were held unworthyto be left in repose in hallowed ground. There was scarcely, perhaps, another Catholic prince who would have hesitated to comply. But Charleswas one of nature's gentlemen; he answered, 'I war not with the dead. '

LECTURE III. 

We have now entered upon the movement which broke the power of thePapacy--which swept Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, England, Scotland, into the stream of revolution, and gave a new direction to thespiritual history of mankind. 

You would not thank me if I were to take you out into that troubledocean. I confine myself, and I wish you to confine your attention, tothe two kinds of men who appear as leaders in times of change--of whomErasmus and Luther are respectively the types. 

On one side there are the large-minded latitudinarian philosophers--menwho have no confidence in the people--who have no passionateconvictions; moderate men, tolerant men, who trust to education, togeneral progress in knowledge and civilisation, to forbearance, toendurance, to time--men who believe that all wholesome reforms proceeddownwards from the educated to the multitudes; who regard with contempt, qualified by terror, appeals to the popular conscience or to popularintelligence. 

Opposite to these are the men of faith--and by faith I do not meanbelief in dogmas, but belief in goodness, belief in justice, inrighteousness, above all, belief in truth. Men of faith considerconscience of more importance than knowledge--or rather as a firstcondition--without which all the knowledge in the world is no use to aman--if he wishes to be indeed a man in any high and noble sense of theword. They are not contented with looking for what may be useful orpleasant to themselves; they look by quite other methods for what ishonourable--for what is good--for what is just. They believe that ifthey can find out that, then at all hazards, and in spite of all presentconsequences to themselves, that is to be preferred. If, individuallyand to themselves, no visible good ever came from it, in this world orin any other, still they would say, 'Let us do that and nothing else. Life will be of no value to us if we are to use it only for our owngratification. '

The soldier before a battle knows that if he shirks and pretends to beill, he may escape danger and make sure of his life. There are very fewmen, indeed, if it comes to that, who would not sooner die ten timesover than so dishonour themselves. Men of high moral nature carry outthe same principle into the details of their daily life; they do notcare to live unless they may live nobly. Like my uncle Toby, they havebut one fear--the fear of doing a wrong thing. 

I call this faith, because there is no proof, such as will satisfy thescientific enquirer, that there is any such thing as moral truth--anysuch thing as absolute right and wrong at all. As the Scripture says, 'Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself. ' The forces of nature payno respect to what we call good and evil. Prosperity does not uniformlyfollow virtue; nor are defeat and failure necessary consequences ofvice. 

Certain virtues--temperance, industry, and things within reasonablelimits--command their reward. Sensuality, idleness, and waste, commonlylead to ruin. 

But prosperity is consistent with intense worldliness, intenseselfishness, intense hardness of heart; while the grander features ofhuman character--self-sacrifice, disregard of pleasure, patriotism, loveof knowledge, devotion to any great and good cause--these have notendency to bring men what is called fortune. They do not evennecessarily promote their happiness; for do what they will in this way, the horizon of what they desire to do perpetually flies before them. High hopes and enthusiasms are generally disappointed in results; andthe wrongs, the cruelties, the wretchednesses of all kinds which forever prevail among mankind--the shortcomings in himself of which hebecomes more conscious as he becomes really better--these things, youmay be sure, will prevent a noble-minded man from ever beingparticularly happy. 

If you see a man happy, as the world goes--contented with himself andcontented with what is round him--such a man may be, and probably is, decent and respectable; but the highest is not in him, and the highestwill not come out of him. 

Judging merely by outward phenomena--judging merely by what we callreason--you cannot prove that there is any moral government in the worldat all, except what men, for their own convenience, introduce into it. Right and wrong resolve themselves into principles of utility and socialconvenience. Enlightened selfishness prescribes a decent rule of conductfor common purposes; and virtue, by a large school of philosophy, iscompletely resolved into that. 

True, when nations go on long on the selfish hypothesis, they are apt tofind at last that they have been mistaken. They find it in bankruptcy ofhonour and character--in social wreck and dissolution. All lies inserious matters end at last, as Carlyle says, in broken heads. That isthe final issue which they are sure to come to in the long run. TheMaker of the world does not permit a society to continue which forgetsor denies the nobler principles of action. 

But the end is often long in coming; and these nobler principles aremeanwhile _not_ provided for us by the inductive philosophy. 

Patriotism, for instance, of which we used to think something--areadiness to devote our energies while we live, to devote our lives, ifnothing else will serve, to what we call our country--what are we to sayof that?

I once asked a distinguished philosopher what he thought of patriotism. He said he thought it was a compound of vanity and superstition; a badkind of prejudice, which would die out with the growth of reason. Myfriend believed in the progress of humanity--he could not narrow hissympathies to so small a thing as his own country. I could but say tomyself, 'Thank God, then, we are not yet a nation of philosophers. '

A man who takes up with philosophy like that, may write fine books, andreview articles and such like, but at the bottom of him he is a poorcaitiff, and there is no more to be said about him. 

So when the air is heavy with imposture, and men live only to makemoney, and the service of God is become a thing of words and ceremonies, and the kingdom of heaven is bought and sold, and all that is high andpure in man is smothered by corruption--fire of the same kind bursts outin higher natures with a fierceness which cannot be controlled; and, confident in truth and right, they call fearlessly on the seventhousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal to rise and standby them. 

They do not ask whether those whom they address have wide knowledge ofhistory, or science, or philosophy; they ask rather that they shall behonest, that they shall be brave, that they shall be true to the commonlight which God has given to all His children. They know well thatconscience is no exceptional privilege of the great or the cultivated, that to be generous and unselfish is no prerogative of rank orintellect. 

Erasmus considered that, for the vulgar, a lie might be as good astruth, and often better. A lie, ascertained to be a lie, to Luther wasdeadly poison--poison to him, and poison to all who meddled with it. Inhis own genuine greatness, he was too humble to draw insolentdistinctions in his own favour; or to believe that any one class onearth is of more importance than another in the eyes of the Great Makerof them all. 

Well, then, you know what I mean by faith, and what I mean by intellect. It was not that Luther was without intellect. He was less subtle, lesslearned, than Erasmus; but in mother wit, in elasticity, in force, andimaginative power, he was as able a man as ever lived. Luther createdthe German language as an instrument of literature. His translation ofthe Bible is as rich and grand as our own, and his table talk as full ofmatter as Shakespeare's plays. 

Again; you will mistake me if you think I represent Erasmus as a manwithout conscience, or belief in God and goodness. But in Luther thatbelief was a certainty; in Erasmus it was only a high probability--andthe difference between the two is not merely great, it is infinite. InLuther, it was the root; in Erasmus, it was the flower. In Luther, itwas the first principle of life; in Erasmus, it was an inference whichmight be taken away, and yet leave the world a very tolerable andhabitable place after all. 

You see the contrast in their early lives. You see Erasmus--light, bright, sarcastic, fond of pleasure, fond of society, fond of wine andkisses, and intellectual talk and polished company. You see Lutherthrowing himself into the cloister, that he might subdue his will to thewill of God; prostrate in prayer, in nights of agony, and distractinghis easy-going confessor with the exaggerated scruples of hisconscience. 

You see it in the effects of their teaching. You see Erasmus addressinghimself with persuasive eloquence to kings, and popes, and prelates; andfor answer, you see Pope Leo sending Tetzel over Germany with hiscarriage-load of indulgences. You see Erasmus's dearest friend, our owngifted admirable Sir Thomas More, taking his seat beside the bishops andsending poor Protestant artisans to the stake. 

You see Luther, on the other side, standing out before the world, onelone man, with all authority against him--taking lies by the throat, andEurope thrilling at his words, and saying after him, 'The reign ofImposture shall end. '

Let us follow the course of Erasmus after the tempest had broken. 

He knew Luther to be right. Luther had but said what Erasmus had beenall his life convinced of, and Luther looked to see him come forward andtake his place at his side. Had Erasmus done so, the course of thingswould have been far happier and better. His prodigious reputation wouldhave given the Reformers the influence with the educated which they hadwon for themselves with the multitude, and the Pope would have been leftwithout a friend to the north of the Alps. But there would have beensome danger--danger to the leaders, if certainty of triumph to thecause--and Erasmus had no gift for martyrdom. 

His first impulse was generous. He encouraged the elector, as we haveseen, to protect Luther from the Pope. 'I looked on Luther, ' he wrote toDuke George of Saxe, 'as a necessary evil in the corruption of theChurch; a medicine, bitter and drastic, from which sounder health wouldfollow. '

And again, more boldly: 'Luther has taken up the cause of honesty andgood sense against abominations which are no longer tolerable. Hisenemies are men under whose worthlessness the Christian world hasgroaned too long. '

So to the heads of the Church he wrote, pressing them to be moderate andcareful:--

'I neither approve Luther nor condemn him, ' he said to the Archbishop ofMayence; 'if he is innocent, he ought not to be oppressed by thefactions of the wicked; if he is in error, he should be answered, notdestroyed. The theologians'--observe how true they remain to theuniversal type in all times and in all countries--'the theologians donot try to answer him. They do but raise an insane and senselessclamour, and shriek and curse. Heresy, heretic, heresiarch, schismatic, Antichrist--these are the words which are in the mouths of all of them;and, of course, they condemn without reading. I warned them what theywere doing. I told them to scream less, and to think more. Luther's lifethey admit to be innocent and blameless. Such a tragedy I never saw. Themost humane men are thirsting for his blood, and they would rather killhim than mend him. The Dominicans are the worst, and are more knavesthan fools. In old times, even a heretic was quietly listened to. If herecanted, he was absolved; if he persisted, he was at worstexcommunicated. Now they will have nothing but blood. Not to agree withthem is heresy. To know Greek is heresy. To speak good Latin is heresy. Whatever they do not understand is heresy. Learning, they pretend, hasgiven birth to Luther, though Luther has but little of it. Luther thinksmore of the Gospel than of scholastic divinity, and that is his crime. This is plain at least, that the best men everywhere are those who areleast offended with him. '

Even to Pope Leo, in the midst of his fury, Erasmus wrote bravely;separating himself from Luther, yet deprecating violence. 'Nothing, ' hesaid, 'would so recommend the new teaching as the howling of fools:'while to a member of Charles's council he insisted that 'severity hadbeen often tried in such cases and had always failed; unless Luther wasencountered calmly and reasonably, a tremendous convulsion wasinevitable. '

Wisely said all this, but it presumed that those whom he was addressingwere reasonable men; and high officials, touched in their pride, are aclass of persons of whom Solomon may have been thinking when he said, 'Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man rather than a fool in hisfolly. '

So to Luther, so to the people, Erasmus preached moderation. It was likepreaching to the winds in a hurricane. The typhoon itself is not wilderthan human creatures when once their passions are stirred. You cannotcheck them; but, if you are brave, you can guide them wisely. And this, Erasmus had not the heart to do. 

He said at the beginning, 'I will not countenance revolt againstauthority. A bad government is better than none. ' But he said at thesame time, 'You bishops, cease to be corrupt: you popes and cardinals, reform your wicked courts: you monks, leave your scandalous lives, andobey the rules of your order, so you may recover the respect of mankind, and be obeyed and loved as before. '

When he found that the case was desperate; that his exhortations werebut words addressed to the winds; that corruption had tainted the blood;that there was no hope except in revolution--as, indeed, in his heart heknew from the first that there was none--then his place ought to havebeen with Luther. 

But Erasmus, as the tempest rose, could but stand still in feebleuncertainty. The responsibilities of his reputation weighed him down. 

The Lutherans said, 'You believe as we do. ' The Catholics said, 'You area Lutheran at heart; if you are not, prove it by attacking Luther. '

He grew impatient. He told lies. He said he had not read Luther's books, and had no time to read them. What was he, he said, that he shouldmeddle in such a quarrel. He was the vine and the fig tree of the Bookof Judges. The trees said to them, Rule over us. The vine and the figtree answered, they would not leave their sweetness for such a thanklessoffice. 'I am a poor actor, ' he said; 'I prefer to be a spectator of theplay. '

But he was sore at heart, and bitter with disappointment. All had beengoing on so smoothly--literature was reviving, art and science werespreading, the mind of the world was being reformed in the best sense bythe classics of Greece and Rome, and now an apple of discord had beenflung out into Europe. 

The monks who had fought against enlightenment could point to theconfusion as a fulfilment of their prophecies; and he, and all that hehad done, was brought to disrepute. 

To protect himself from the Dominicans, he was forced to pretend to anorthodoxy which he did not possess. Were all true which Luther hadwritten, he pretended that it ought not to have been said, or shouldhave been addressed in a learned language to the refined and educated. 

He doubted whether it was not better on the whole to teach the peoplelies for their good, when truth was beyond their comprehension. Yet hecould not for all that wish the Church to be successful. 

'I fear for that miserable Luther, ' he said; 'the popes and princes arefurious with him. His own destruction would be no great matter, but ifthe monks triumph there will be no bearing them. They will never resttill they have rooted learning out of the land. The Pope expects _me_ towrite against Luther. The orthodox, it appears, can call him names--callhim blockhead, fool, heretic, toadstool, schismatic, and Antichrist--butthey must come to me to answer his arguments. '

'Oh! that this had never been, ' he wrote to our own Archbishop Warham. 'Now there is no hope for any good. It is all over with quiet learning, thought, piety, and progress; violence is on one side and folly on theother; and they accuse me of having caused it all. If I joined Luther Icould only perish with him, and I do not mean to run my neck into ahalter. Popes and emperors must decide matters. I will accept what isgood, and do as I can with the rest. Peace on any terms is better thanthe justest war. '

Erasmus never stooped to real baseness. He was too clever, toogenuine--he had too great a contempt for worldly greatness. They offeredhim a bishopric if he would attack Luther. He only laughed at them. Whatwas a bishopric to him? He preferred a quiet life among his books atLouvaine. 

But there was no more quiet for Erasmus at Louvaine or anywhere. Here isa scene between him and the Prior of the Dominicans in the presence ofthe Rector of the University. 

The Dominican had preached at Erasmus in the University pulpit. Erasmuscomplained to the rector, and the rector invited the Dominican to defendhimself. Erasmus tells the story. 

'I sate on one side and the monk on the other, the rector between us toprevent our scratching. 

'The monk asked what the matter was, and said he had done no harm. 

'I said he had told lies of me, and that was harm. 

'It was after dinner. The holy man was flushed. He turned purple. 

'"Why do you abuse monks in your books?" he said. 

'"I spoke of your order, " I answered. "I did not mention you. Youdenounced me by name as a friend of Luther. "

'He raged like a madman. "You are the cause of all this trouble, " hesaid; "you are a chameleon, you can twist everything. "

'"You see what a fellow he is, " said I, turning to the rector. "If itcomes to calling names, why I can do that too; but let us bereasonable. "

'He still roared and cursed; he vowed he would never rest till he haddestroyed Luther. 

'I said he might curse Luther till he burst himself if he pleased. Icomplained of his cursing me. 

'He answered, that if I did not agree with Luther, I ought to say so, and write against him. 

'"Why should I?" urged I. "The quarrel is none of mine. Why should Iirritate Luther against me, when he has horns and knows how to usethem?"

'"Well, then, " said he, "if you will not write, at least you can saythat we Dominicans have had the best of the argument. "

'"How can I do that?" replied I. "You have burnt his books, but I neverheard that you had answered them. "

'He almost spat upon me. I understand that there is to be a form ofprayer for the conversion of Erasmus and Luther. '

But Erasmus was not to escape so easily. Adrian the Sixth, who succeededLeo, was his old schoolfellow, and implored his assistance in termswhich made refusal impossible. Adrian wanted Erasmus to come to him toRome. He was too wary to walk into the wolf's den. But Adrian requiredhim to write, and reluctantly he felt that he must comply. 

What was he to say?

'If his Holiness will set about reform in good earnest, ' he wrote to thePope's secretary, 'and if he will not be too hard on Luther, I may, perhaps, do good; but what Luther writes of the tyranny, the corruption, the covetousness of the Roman court, would, my friend, that it was nottrue. '

To Adrian himself, Erasmus addressed a letter really remarkable. 

'I cannot go to your Holiness, ' he said, 'King Calculus will not let me. I have dreadful health, which this tornado has not improved. I, who wasthe favourite of everybody, am now cursed by everybody--at Louvaine bythe monks; in Germany by the Lutherans. I have fallen into trouble in myold age, like a mouse into a pot of pitch. You say, Come to Rome; youmight as well say to the crab, Fly. The crab says, Give me wings; I say, Give me back my health and my youth. If I write calmly against Luther Ishall be called lukewarm; if I write as he does, I shall stir a hornet'snest. People think he can be put down by force. The more force you try, the stronger he will grow. Such disorders cannot be cured in that way. The Wickliffites in England were put down, but the fire smouldered. 

'If you mean to use violence you have no need of me; but mark this--ifmonks and theologians think only of themselves, no good will come of it. Look rather into the causes of all this confusion, and apply yourremedies there. Send for the best and wisest men from all parts ofChristendom and take their advice. '

Tell a crab to fly. Tell a pope to be reasonable. You must relieve himof his infallibility if you want him to act like a sensible man. Adriancould undertake no reforms, and still besought Erasmus to take arms forhim. 

Erasmus determined to gratify Adrian with least danger to himself andleast injury to Luther. 

'I remember Uzzah, and am afraid, ' he said, in his quizzing way; 'it isnot everyone who is allowed to uphold the ark. Many a wise man hasattacked Luther, and what has been effected? The Pope curses, theemperor threatens; there are prisons, confiscations, faggots; and all isvain. What can a poor pigmy like me do?

 * * * * *

'The world has been besotted with ceremonies. Miserable monks have ruledall, entangling men's consciences for their own benefit. Dogma has beenheaped on dogma. The bishops have been tyrants, the Pope's commissarieshave been rascals. Luther has been an instrument of God's displeasure, like Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar, or the Cæsars, and I shall not attackhim on such grounds as these. '

Erasmus was too acute to defend against Luther the weak point of a badcause. He would not declare for him--but he would not go over to hisenemies. Yet, unless he quarrelled with Adrian, he could not beabsolutely silent; so he chose a subject to write upon on which allschools of theology, Catholic or Protestant--all philosophers, allthinkers of whatever kind, have been divided from the beginning of time:fate and free will, predestination and the liberty of man--a problemwhich has no solution--which may be argued even from eternity toeternity. 

The reason of the selection was obvious. Erasmus wished to please thePope and not exasperate Luther. Of course he pleased neither, andoffended both. 

Luther, who did not comprehend his motive, was needlessly angry. Adrianand the monks were openly contemptuous. Sick of them and their quarrels, he grew weary of the world, and began to wish to be well out of it. 

It is characteristic of Erasmus that, like many highly-gifted men, butunlike all theologians, he expressed a hope for sudden death, anddeclared it to be one of the greatest blessings which a human creaturecan receive. 

Do not suppose that he broke down or showed the white feather tofortune's buffets. Through all storms he stuck bravely to his own properwork; editing classics, editing the Fathers, writing paraphrases--stilldoing for Europe what no other man could have done. 

The Dominicans hunted him away from Louvaine. There was no living forhim in Germany for the Protestants. He suffered dreadfully from thestone, too, and in all ways had a cruel time of it. Yet he continued, for all that, to make life endurable. 

He moved about in Switzerland and on the Upper Rhine. The lakes, themountains, the waterfalls, the villas on the hill slopes, delightedErasmus when few people else cared for such things. He was particularabout his wine. The vintage of Burgundy was as new blood in his veins, and quickened his pen into brightness and life. 

The German wines he liked worse--for this point among others, which iscurious to observe in those days. The great capitalist winegrowers, anti-Reformers all of them, were people without conscience and humanity, and adulterated their liquors. Of course they did. They believed innothing but money, and this was the way to make money. 

'The water they mix with the wine, ' Erasmus says, 'is the least part ofthe mischief. They put in lime, and alum, and resin, and sulphur, andsalt--and then they say it is good enough for heretics. '

Observe the practical issue of religious corruption. Show me a peoplewhere trade is dishonest, and I will show you a people where religion isa sham. 

'We hang men that steal money, ' Erasmus exclaimed, writing doubtlesswith the remembrance of a stomach-ache. 'These wretches steal our moneyand our lives too, and get off scot free. '

He settled at last at Basle, which the storm had not yet reached, andtried to bury himself among his books. The shrieks of the conflict, however, still troubled his ears. He heard his own name still cursed, and he could not bear it or sit quiet under it. 

His correspondence was still enormous. The high powers still appealed tohim for advice and help: of open meddling he would have no more; he didnot care, he said, to make a post of himself for every dog of atheologian to defile. Advice, however, he continued to give in the oldstyle. 

'Put down the preachers on both sides. Fill the pulpits with men whowill kick controversy into the kennel, and preach piety and goodmanners. Teach nothing in the schools but what bears upon life and duty. Punish those who break the peace, and punish no one else; and when thenew opinions have taken root, allow liberty of conscience. '

Perfection of wisdom; but a wisdom which, unfortunately, was threecenturies at least out of date, which even now we have not grown bigenough to profit by. The Catholic princes and bishops were at work withfire and faggot. The Protestants were pulling down monasteries, andturning the monks and nuns out into the world. The Catholics declaredthat Erasmus was as much to blame as Luther. The Protestants held himresponsible for the persecutions, and insisted, not without reason, thatif Erasmus had been true to his conscience, the whole Catholic worldmust have accepted the Reformation. 

He suffered bitterly under these attacks upon him. He loved quiet--andhis ears were deafened with clamour. He liked popularity--and he was thebest abused person in Europe. Others who suffered in the same way hecould advise to leave the black-coated jackdaws to their noise--but hecould not follow his own counsel. When the curs were at his heels, hecould not restrain himself from lashing out at them; and, from hisretreat at Basle, his sarcasms flashed out like jagged points oflightning. 

Describing an emeute, and the burning of an image of a saint, 'Theyinsulted the poor image so, ' he said, 'it is a marvel there was nomiracle. The saint worked so many in the good old times. '

When Luther married an escaped nun, the Catholics exclaimed thatAntichrist would be born from such an incestuous intercourse. 'Nay, 'Erasmus said, 'if monk and nun produce Antichrist, there must have beenlegions of Antichrists these many years. '

More than once he was tempted to go over openly to Luther--not from anoble motive, but, as he confessed, 'to make those furies feel thedifference between him and them. '

He was past sixty, with broken health and failing strength. He thoughtof going back to England, but England had by this time caught fire, andBasle had caught fire. There was no peace on earth. 

'The horse has his heels, ' he said, when advised to be quiet, 'the doghis teeth, the hedgehog his spines, the bee his sting. I myself have mytongue and my pen, and why should I not use them?'

Yet to use them to any purpose now, he must take a side, and, sorelytempted as he was, he could not. 

With the negative part of the Protestant creed he sympathised heartily;but he did not understand Luther's doctrine of faith, because he hadnone of his own, and he disliked it as a new dogma. 

He regarded Luther's movement as an outburst of commonplace revolution, caused by the folly and wickedness of the authorities, but with noorganising vitality in itself; and his chief distress, as we gather fromhis later letters, was at his own treatment. He had done his best forboth sides. He had failed, and was abused by everybody. 

Thus passed away the last years of one of the most gifted men thatEurope has ever seen. I have quoted many of his letters. I will add onemore passage, written near the end of his life, very touching andpathetic:--

'Hercules, ' he said, 'could not fight two monsters at once; while I, poor wretch, have lions, cerberuses, cancers, scorpions every day at mysword's point; not to mention smaller vermin--rats, mosquitoes, bugs, and fleas. My troops of friends are turned to enemies. At dinner-tablesor social gatherings, in churches and king's courts, in public carriageor public flyboat, scandal pursues me, and calumny defiles my name. Every goose now hisses at Erasmus; and it is worse than being stoned, once for all, like Stephen, or shot with arrows like Sebastian. 

'They attack me now even for my Latin style, and spatter me withepigrams. Fame I would have parted with; but to be the sport ofblackguards--to be pelted with potsherds and dirt and ordure--is notthis worse than death?

'There is no rest for me in my age, unless I join Luther; and I cannot, for I cannot accept his doctrines. Sometimes I am stung with a desire toavenge my wrongs; but I say to myself, "Will you, to gratify yourspleen, raise your hand against your mother the Church, who begot you atthe font and fed you with the word of God?" I cannot do it. Yet Iunderstand now how Arius, and Tertullian, and Wickliff were driven intoschism. The theologians say I am their enemy. Why? Because I bade monksremember their vows; because I told parsons to leave their wranglingsand read the Bible; because I told popes and cardinals to look at theApostles, and make themselves more like to them. If this is to be theirenemy, then indeed I have injured them. '

This was almost the last. The stone, advancing years, and incessant toilhad worn him to a shred. The clouds grew blacker. News came from Englandthat his dear friends More and Fisher had died upon the scaffold. He hadlong ceased to care for life; and death, almost as sudden as he hadlonged for, gave him peace at last. 

So ended Desiderius Erasmus, the world's idol for so many years; anddying heaped with undeserved but too intelligible anathemas, seeing allthat he had laboured for swept away by the whirlwind. 

Do not let me lead you to undervalue him. Without Erasmus, Luther wouldhave been impossible; and Erasmus really succeeded--so much of him asdeserved to succeed--in Luther's victory. 

He was brilliantly gifted. His industry never tired. His intellect wastrue to itself; and no worldly motives ever tempted him intoinsincerity. He was even far braver than he professed to be. Had he beenbrought to the trial, he would have borne it better than many a man whoboasted louder of his courage. 

And yet, in his special scheme for remodelling the mind of Europe, hefailed hopelessly--almost absurdly. He believed, himself, that his workwas spoilt by the Reformation; but, in fact, under no conditions couldany more have come of it. 

Literature and cultivation will feed life when life exists already; andtoleration and latitudinarianism are well enough when mind andconscience are awake and energetic of themselves. 

When there is no spiritual life at all; when men live only forthemselves and for sensual pleasure; when religion is superstition, andconscience a name, and God an idol half feared and half despised--then, for the restoration of the higher nature in man, qualities are neededdifferent in kind from any which Erasmus possessed. 

And now to go back to Luther. I cannot tell you all that Luther did; itwould be to tell you all the story of the German Reformation. I want yourather to consider the kind of man that Luther was, and to see in hischaracter how he came to achieve what he did. 

You remember that the Elector of Saxony, after the Diet of Worms, senthim to the Castle of Wartburg, to prevent him from being murdered orkidnapped. He remained there many months; and during that time the oldecclesiastical institutions of Germany were burning like a NorthAmerican forest. The monasteries were broken up; the estates wereappropriated by the nobles; the monks were sent wandering into theworld. The bishops looked helplessly on while their ancient spiritualdominion was torn to pieces and trodden under foot. The Elector ofSaxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, and several more of the princes, declared for the Reformation. The Protestants had a majority in theDiet, and controlled the force of the empire. Charles the Fifth, busywith his French wars, and in want of money, dared not press questions toa crisis which he had not power to cope with; and he was obliged for atime to recognise what he could not prevent. You would have thoughtLuther would have been well pleased to see the seed which he had sownbear fruit so rapidly; yet it was exactly while all this was going onthat he experienced those temptations of the devil of which he has leftso wonderful an account. 

We shall have our own opinions on the nature of these apparitions. ButLuther, it is quite certain, believed that Satan himself attacked him inperson. Satan, he tells us, came often to him, and said, 'See what youhave done. Behold this ancient Church--this mother of saints--pollutedand defiled by brutal violence. And it is you--you, a poor ignorantmonk, that have set the people on to their unholy work. Are you so muchwiser than the saints who approved the things which you have denounced?Popes, bishops, clergy, kings, emperors--are none of these--are not allthese together--wiser than Martin Luther the monk?'

The devil, he says, caused him great agony by these suggestions. He fellinto deep fits of doubt and humiliation and despondency. And whereverthese thoughts came from, we can only say that they were very naturalthoughts--natural and right. He called them temptations; yet these weretemptations which would not have occurred to any but a high-minded man. 

He had, however, done only what duty had forced him to do. His businesswas to trust to God, who had begun the work and knew what He meant tomake of it. His doubts and misgivings, therefore, he ascribed to Satan, and his enormous imaginative vigour gave body to the voice which wasspeaking in him. 

He tells many humorous stories--not always producible--of the means withwhich he encountered his offensive visitor. 

'The devil, ' he says, 'is very proud, and what he least likes is to belaughed at. ' One night he was disturbed by something rattling in hisroom; the modern unbeliever will suppose it was a mouse. He got up, lita candle, searched the apartment through, and could find nothing--theEvil One was indisputably there. 

'Oh!' he said, 'it is you, is it?' He returned to bed, and went tosleep. 

Think as you please about the cause of the noise, but remember thatLuther had not the least doubt that he was alone in the room with theactual devil, who, if he could not overcome his soul, could at leasttwist his neck in a moment--and then think what courage there must havebeen in a man who could deliberately sleep in such a presence!

During his retirement he translated the Bible. The confusion at lastbecame so desperate that he could no longer be spared; and, believingthat he was certain to be destroyed, he left Wartburg and returned toWittenberg. Death was always before him as supremely imminent. He usedto say that it would be a great disgrace to the Pope if he died in hisbed. He was wanted once at Leipsic. His friends said if he went thereDuke George would kill him. 

'Duke George!' he said; 'I would go to Leipsic if it rained Duke Georgesfor nine days!'

No such cataclysm of Duke Georges happily took place. The single onethere was would have gladly been mischievous if he could; but Lutheroutlived him--lived for twenty-four years after this, in continued toil, re-shaping the German Church, and giving form to its new doctrine. 

Sacerdotalism, properly so called, was utterly abolished. Thecorruptions of the Church had all grown out of one root--the notion thatthe Christian priesthood possesses mystical power, conferred throughepiscopal ordination. 

Religion, as Luther conceived it, did not consist in certain things doneto and for a man by a so-called priest. It was the devotion of eachindividual soul to the service of God. Masses were nothing, andabsolution was nothing; and a clergyman differed only from a layman inbeing set apart for the especial duties of teaching and preaching. 

I am not concerned to defend Luther's view in this matter. It is amatter of fact only, that in getting rid of episcopal ordination, hedried up the fountain from which the mechanical and idolatrousconceptions of religion had sprung; and, in consequence, the religiouslife of Germany has expanded with the progress of knowledge, whilepriesthoods everywhere cling to the formulas of the past, in which theylive, and move, and have their being. 

Enough of this. 

The peculiar doctrine which has passed into Europe under Luther's nameis known as Justification by Faith. Bandied about as a watchword ofparty, it has by this time hardened into a formula, and has becomebarren as the soil of a trodden footpath. As originally proclaimed byLuther, it contained the deepest of moral truths. It expressed what was, and is, and must be, in one language or another, to the end of time, theconviction of every generous-minded man. 

The service of God, as Luther learnt it from the monks, was a thing ofdesert and reward. So many good works done, so much to the right page inthe great book; where the stock proved insufficient, there was thereserve fund of the merits of the saints, which the Church dispensed formoney to those who needed. 

'Merit!' Luther thought. 'What merit can there be in such a poor caitiffas man? The better a man is--the more clearly he sees how little he isgood for, the greater mockery it seems to attribute to him the notion ofhaving deserved reward. '

'Miserable creatures that we are!' he said; 'we earn our bread in sin. Till we are seven years old, we do nothing but eat and drink and sleepand play; from seven to twenty-one we study four hours a day, the restof it we run about and amuse ourselves; then we work till fifty, andthen we grow again to be children. We sleep half our lives; we give Goda tenth of our time: and yet we think that with our good works we canmerit heaven. What have I been doing to-day? I have talked for twohours; I have been at meals three hours; I have been idle four hours!Ah, enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord!'

A perpetual struggle. For ever to be falling, yet to rise again andstumble forward with eyes turned to heaven--this was the best whichwould ever come of man. It was accepted in its imperfection by theinfinite grace of God, who pities mortal weakness, and accepts theintention for the deed--who, when there is a sincere desire to serveHim, overlooks the shortcomings of infirmity. 

Do you say such teaching leads to disregard of duty? All doctrines, whenpetrified into formulas, lead to that. But, as Luther said, 'where realfaith is, a good life follows, as light follows the sun; faint andclouded, yet ever struggling to break through the mist which envelopesit, and welcoming the roughest discipline which tends to clear and raiseit. 

'The barley, ' he says, in a homely but effective image--'the barleywhich we brew, the flax of which we weave our garments, must be bruisedand torn ere they come to the use for which they are grown. So mustChristians suffer. The natural creature must be combed and threshed. Theold Adam must die, for the higher life to begin. If man is to rise tonobleness, he must first be slain. '

In modern language, the poet Goethe tells us the same truth. 'Thenatural man, ' he says, 'is like the ore out of the iron mine. It issmelted in the furnace; it is forged into bars upon the anvil. A newnature is at last forced upon it, and it is made steel. '

It was this doctrine--it was this truth rather (the word doctrinereminds one of quack medicines)--which, quickening in Luther's mind, gave Europe its new life. It was the flame which, beginning with a smallspark, kindled the hearth-fires in every German household. 

Luther's own life was a model of quiet simplicity. He remained poor. Hemight have had money if he had wished; but he chose rather, amidst hisenormous labour, to work at a turning-lathe for his livelihood. 

He was sociable, cheerful, fond of innocent amusements, and delighted toencourage them. His table-talk, collected by his friends, makes one ofthe most brilliant books in the world. He had no monkish theories aboutthe necessity of abstinence; but he was temperate from habit andprinciple. A salt herring and a hunch of bread was his ordinary meal;and he was once four days without food of any sort, having emptied hislarder among the poor. 

All kinds of people thrust themselves on Luther for help. Flights ofnuns from the dissolved convents came to him to provide for them--naked, shivering creatures, with scarce a rag to cover them. Eight florins werewanted once to provide clothes for some of them. 'Eight florins!' hesaid; 'and where am I to get eight florins?' Great people had made himpresents of plate: it all went to market to be turned into clothes andfood for the wretched. 

Melancthon says that, unless provoked, he was usually very gentle andtolerant. He recognised, and was almost alone in recognising, thenecessity of granting liberty of conscience. No one hated Popery morethan he did, yet he said:--

'The Papists must bear with us, and we with them. If they will notfollow us, we have no right to force them. Wherever they can, they willhang, burn, behead, and strangle us. I shall be persecuted as long as Ilive, and most likely killed. But it must come to this at last--everyman must be allowed to believe according to his conscience, and answerfor his belief to his Maker. '

Erasmus said of Luther that there were two natures in him: sometimes hewrote like an apostle--sometimes like a raving ribald. 

Doubtless, Luther could be impolite on occasions. When he was angry, invectives rushed from him like boulder rocks down a mountain torrentin flood. We need not admire all that; in quiet times it is hard tounderstand it. 

Here, for instance, is a specimen. Our Henry the Eighth, who began lifeas a highly orthodox sovereign, broke a lance with Luther for thePapacy. 

Luther did not credit Henry with a composition which was probably hisown after all. He thought the king was put forward by some of theEnglish bishops--'Thomists' he calls them, as men who looked for thebeginning and end of wisdom to the writings of Thomas Aquinas. 

'Courage, ' he exclaimed to them, 'swine that you are! burn me then, ifyou can and dare. Here I am; do your worst upon me. Scatter my ashes toall the winds--spread them through all seas. My spirit shall pursue youstill. Living, I am the foe of the Papacy; and dead, I will be its foetwice over. Hogs of Thomists! Luther shall be the bear in your way--thelion in your path. Go where you will, Luther shall cross you. Luthershall leave you neither peace nor rest till he has crushed in your browsof brass and dashed out your iron brains. '

Strong expressions; but the times were not gentle. The prelates whom hesupposed himself to be addressing were the men who filled our Smithfieldwith the reek of burning human flesh. 

Men of Luther's stature are like the violent forces of Natureherself--terrible when roused, and in repose, majestic and beautiful. Ofvanity he had not a trace. 'Do not call yourselves Lutherans, ' he said;'call yourselves Christians. Who and what is Luther? Has Luther beencrucified for the world?'

I mentioned his love of music. His songs and hymns were the expressionof the very inmost heart of the German people. 'Music' he called 'thegrandest and sweetest gift of God to man. ' 'Satan hates music, ' he said;'he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us. '

He was extremely interested in all natural things. Before the science ofbotany was dreamt of, Luther had divined the principle of vegetablelife. 'The principle of marriage runs through all creation, ' he said;'and flowers as well as animals are male and female. '

A garden called out bursts of eloquence from him; beautiful sometimes asa finished piece of poetry. 

One April day as he was watching the swelling buds, he exclaimed:--

'Praise be to God the Creator, who out of a dead world makes all aliveagain. See those shoots how they burgeon and swell. Image of theresurrection of the dead! Winter is death--summer is the resurrection. Between them lie spring and autumn, as the period of uncertainty andchange. The proverb says--

 Trust not a day Ere birth of May. 

Let us pray our Father in heaven to give us this day our daily bread. '

'We are in the dawn of a new era, ' he said another time; 'we arebeginning to think something of the natural world which was ruined inAdam's fall. We are learning to see all round us the greatness and gloryof the Creator. We can see the Almighty hand--the infinite goodness--inthe humblest flower. We praise Him--we thank Him--we glorify Him--werecognise in creation the power of His word. He spoke and it was there. The stone of the peach is hard; but the soft kernel swells and bursts itwhen the time comes. An egg--what a thing is that! If an egg had neverbeen seen in Europe, and a traveller had brought one from Calcutta, howwould all the world have wondered!'

And again:--

'If a man could make a single rose, we should give him an empire; yetroses, and flowers no less beautiful, are scattered in profusion overthe world, and no one regards them. '

There are infinite other things which I should like to tell you aboutLuther, but time wears on. I must confine what more I have to say to asingle matter--for which more than any other he has been blamed--I meanhis marriage. 

He himself, a monk and a priest, had taken a vow of celibacy. The personwhom he married had been a nun, and as such had taken a vow of celibacyalso. 

The marriage was unquestionably no affair of passion. Luther had come tomiddle age when it was brought about, when temptations of that kind losetheir power; and among the many accusations which have been broughtagainst his early life, no one has ventured to charge him withincontinence. His taking a wife was a grave act deliberately performed;and it was either meant as a public insult to established ecclesiasticalusage, or else he considered that the circumstances of the time requiredit of him. 

Let us see what those circumstances were. The enforcement of celibacy onthe clergy was, in Luther's opinion, both iniquitous in itself, andproductive of enormous immorality. The impurity of the religious ordershad been the jest of satirists for a hundred years. It had been thedistress and perplexity of pious and serious persons. Luther himself wasimpressed with profound pity for the poor men, who were cut off from thenatural companionship which nature had provided for them--who were thusexposed to temptations which they ought not to have been called upon toresist. 

The dissolution of the religious houses had enormously complicated theproblem. Germany was covered with friendless and homeless men and womenadrift upon the world. They came to Luther to tell them what to do; andadvice was of little service without example. 

The world had grown accustomed to immorality in such persons. They mighthave lived together in concubinage, and no one would have thought muchabout it. Their marriage was regarded with a superstitious terror as akind of incest. 

Luther, on the other hand, regarded marriage as the natural and healthystate in which clergy as well as laity were intended to live. Immoralitywas hateful to him as a degradation of a sacrament--impious, loathsome, and dishonoured. Marriage was the condition in which humanity was atonce purest, best, and happiest. 

For himself, he had become inured to a single life. He had borne theinjustice of his lot, when the burden had been really heavy. But timeand custom had lightened the load; and had there been nothing at issuebut his own personal happiness, he would not have given further occasionto the malice of his enemies. 

But tens of thousands of poor creatures were looking to him to guidethem--guide them by precept, or guide them by example. He had satisfiedhimself that the vow of celibacy had been unlawfully imposed both on himand them--that, as he would put it, it had been a snare devised by thedevil. He saw that all eyes were fixed on him--that it was no use totell others that they might marry, unless he himself led the way, andmarried first. And it was characteristic of him that, having resolved todo the thing, he did it in the way most likely to show the world hisfull thought upon the matter. 

That this was his motive, there is no kind of doubt whatever. 

'We may be able to live unmarried, ' he said; 'but in these days we mustprotest in deed as well as word, against the doctrine of celibacy. It isan invention of Satan. Before I took my wife, I had made up my mind thatI must marry some one: and had I been overtaken by illness, I shouldhave betrothed myself to some pious maiden. '

He asked nobody's advice. Had he let his intention be suspected, themoderate respectable people--the people who thought like Erasmus--thosewho wished well to what was good, but wished also to stand well with theworld's opinion--such persons as these would have overwhelmed him withremonstrances. 'When you marry, ' he said to a friend in a similarsituation, 'be quiet about it, or mountains will rise between you andyour wishes. If I had not been swift and secret, I should have had thewhole world in my way. '

Catherine Bora, the lady whom he chose for his wife, was a nun of goodfamily, left homeless and shelterless by the breaking-up of her convent. She was an ordinary, unimaginative body--plain in person and plain inmind, in no sense whatever a heroine of romance--but a decent, sensible, commonplace Haus Frau. 

The age of romance was over with both of them; yet, for all that, nevermarriage brought a plainer blessing with it. They began with respect, and ended with steady affection. 

The happiest life on earth, Luther used to say, is with a pious, goodwife; in peace and quiet, contented with a little, and giving Godthanks. 

He spoke from his own experience. His Katie, as he called her, was notclever, and he had numerous stories to tell of the beginning of theiradventures together. 

'The first year of married life is an odd business, ' he says. 'At meals, where you used to be alone, you are yourself and somebody else. When youwake in the morning, there are a pair of tails close to you on thepillow. My Katie used to sit with me when I was at work. She thought sheought not to be silent. She did not know what to say, so she would askme. 

'"Herr Doctor, is not the master of the ceremonies in Prussia thebrother of the Margrave?"'

She was an odd woman. 

'Doctor, ' she said to him one day, 'how is it that under Popery weprayed so often and so earnestly, and now our prayers are cold andseldom?'

Katie might have spoken for herself. Luther, to the last, spent hours ofevery day in prayer. He advised her to read the Bible a little more. Shesaid she had read enough of it, and knew half of it by heart. 'Ah!' hesaid, 'here begins weariness of the word of God. One day new lights willrise up, and the Scriptures will be despised and be flung away into thecorner. '

His relations with his children were singularly beautiful. Therecollection of his own boyhood made him especially gentle with them, and their fancies and imaginations delighted him. 

Children, to him, were images of unfallen nature. 'Children, ' he said, 'imagine heaven a place where rivers run with cream, and trees are hungwith cakes and plums. Do not blame them. They are but showing theirsimple, natural, unquestioning, all-believing faith. '

One day, after dinner, when the fruit was on the table, the childrenwere watching it with longing eyes. 'That is the way, ' he said, 'inwhich we grown Christians ought to look for the Judgment Day. '

His daughter Magdalen died when she was fourteen. He speaks of his losswith the unaffected simplicity of natural grief, yet with the faith of aman who had not the slightest doubt into whose hands his treasure waspassing. Perfect nature and perfect piety. Neither one emotion nor theother disguised or suppressed. 

You will have gathered something, I hope, from these faint sketches, ofwhat Luther was; you will be able to see how far he deserves to becalled by our modern new lights, a Philistine or a heretic. We will nowreturn to the subject with which we began, and resume, in a generalconclusion, the argument of these Lectures. 

In part, but not wholly, it can be done in Luther's words. 

One regrets that Luther did not know Erasmus better, or knowing him, should not have treated him with more forbearance. 

Erasmus spoke of him for the most part with kindness. He interceded forhim, defended him, and only with the utmost reluctance was driven intocontroversy with him. 

Luther, on the other hand, saw in Erasmus a man who was false to hisconvictions; who played with truth; who, in his cold, sarcasticscepticism, believed in nothing--scarcely even in God. He was unaware ofhis own obligations to him, for Erasmus was not a person who wouldtrumpet out his own good deeds. 

Thus Luther says:--

'All you who honour Christ, I pray you hate Erasmus. He is a scoffer anda mocker. He speaks in riddles; and jests at Popery and Gospel, andChrist and God, with his uncertain speeches. He might have served theGospel if he would, but, like Judas, he has betrayed the Son of Man witha kiss. He is not with us, and he is not with our foes; and I say withJoshua, Choose whom ye will serve. He thinks we should trim to thetimes, and hang our cloaks to the wind. He is himself his own firstobject; and as he lived, he died. 

'I take Erasmus to be the worst enemy that Christ has had for a thousandyears. Intellect does not understand religion, and when it comes to thethings of God, it laughs at them. He scoffs like Lucian, and by-and-byhe will say, Behold, how are these among the saints whose life wecounted for folly. 

'I bid you, therefore, take heed of Erasmus. He treats theology as afool's jest, and the Gospel as a fable good for the ignorant tobelieve. '

Of Erasmus personally, much of this was unjust and untrue. Erasmus knewmany things which it would have been well for Luther to have known; and, as a man, he was better than his principles. 

But if for the name of Erasmus we substitute the theory of human thingswhich Erasmus represented, between that creed and Luther there is, andmust be, an eternal antagonism. 

If to be true in heart and just in act are the first qualities necessaryfor the elevation of humanity--if without these all else is worthless, intellectual culture cannot give what intellectual culture does notrequire or imply. You cultivate the plant which has already life; youwill waste your labour in cultivating a stone. The moral life is thecounterpart of the natural, alike mysterious in its origin, and alikevisible only in its effects. 

Intellectual gifts are like gifts of strength, or wealth, or rank, orworldly power--splendid instruments if nobly used--but requiringqualities to use them nobler and better than themselves. 

The rich man may spend his wealth on vulgar luxury. The clever man maylive for intellectual enjoyment--refined enjoyment it may be--butenjoyment still, and still centering in self. 

If the spirit of Erasmus had prevailed, it would have been with modernEurope as with the Roman Empire in its decay. The educated would havebeen mere sceptics; the multitude would have been sunk in superstition. In both alike all would have perished which deserves the name ofmanliness. 

And this leads me to the last observation that I have to make to you. Inthe sciences, the philosopher leads; the rest of us take on trust whathe tells us. The spiritual progress of mankind has followed the oppositecourse. Each forward step has been made first among the people, and thelast converts have been among the learned. 

The explanation is not far to look for. In the sciences there is notemptation of self-interest to mislead. In matters which affect life andconduct, the interests and prejudices of the cultivated classes areenlisted on the side of the existing order of things, and their bettertrained faculties and larger acquirements serve only to find themarguments for believing what they wish to believe. 

Simpler men have less to lose; they come more in contact with therealities of life, and they learn wisdom in the experience of suffering. 

Thus it was that when the learned and the wise turned away fromChristianity, the fishermen of the Galilean lake listened, and a newlife began for mankind. A miner's son converted Germany to theReformation. The London artisans and the peasants of Buckinghamshirewent to the stake for doctrines which were accepted afterwards as asecond revelation. 

So it has been; so it will be to the end. When a great teacher comesagain upon the earth, he will find his first disciples where Christfound them and Luther found them. Had Luther written for the learned, the words which changed the face of Europe would have slumbered inimpotence on the bookshelves. 

In appealing to the German nation, you will agree, I think, with me, that he did well and not ill; you will not sacrifice his great name tothe disdain of a shallow philosophy, or to the grimacing of a deadsuperstition, whose ghost is struggling out of its grave. 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION ON THE SCOTTISH CHARACTER:

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH, NOVEMBER 1865. 

I have undertaken to speak this evening on the effects of theReformation in Scotland, and I consider myself a very bold person tohave come here on any such undertaking. In the first place, the subjectis one with which it is presumptuous for a stranger to meddle. Greatnational movements can only be understood properly by the people whosedisposition they represent. We say ourselves about our own history thatonly Englishmen can properly comprehend it. The late Chevalier Bunsenonce said to me of our own Reformation in England, that, for his part, he could not conceive how we had managed to come by such a thing. Weseemed to him to be an obdurate, impenetrable, stupid people, hide-boundby tradition and precedent, and too self-satisfied to be either willingor able to take in new ideas upon any theoretic subject whatever, especially German ideas. That is to say, he could not get inside theEnglish mind. He did not know that some people go furthest and gofastest when they look one way and row the other. It is the same withevery considerable nation. They work out their own political andspiritual lives, through tempers, humours, and passions peculiar tothemselves; and the same disposition which produces the result isrequired to interpret it afterwards. This is one reason why I shouldfeel diffident about what I have undertaken. Another is, that I do notconceal from myself that the subject is an exceedingly delicate one. Theblazing passions of those stormy sixteenth and seventeenth centuries areno longer, happily, at their old temperature. The story of those timescan now be told or listened to with something like impartiality. Yet, ifpeople no longer hate each other for such matters, the traditions of thestruggle survive in strong opinions and sentiments, which it is easy towound without intending it. 

My own conviction with respect to all great social and religiousconvulsions is the extremely commonplace one that much is to be said onboth sides. I believe that nowhere and at no time any such struggle cantake place on a large scale unless each party is contending forsomething which has a great deal of truth in it. Where the right isplain, honest, wise, and noble-minded men are all on one side; and onlyrogues and fools are on the other. Where the wise and good are divided, the truth is generally found to be divided also. But this is preciselywhat cannot be admitted as long as the conflict continues. Men begin tofight about things when reason and argument fail to convince them. Theymake up in passion what is wanting in logic. Each side believes that allthe right is theirs--that their enemies have all the bad qualities whichtheir language contains names for; and even now, on the subject on whichI have to talk to-night, one has but to take up any magazine, review, newspaper, or party organ of any kind which touches on it, to see thatopinion is still Whig or Tory, Cavalier or Roundhead, Protestant orCatholic, as the case may be. The unfortunate person who is neitherwholly one nor wholly the other is in the position of Hamlet's 'basernature, ' 'between the incensed points of mighty opposites. ' He is theLaodicean, neither cold nor hot, whom decent people consider badcompany. He pleases no one, and hurts the sensitiveness of all. 

Here, then, are good reasons why I should have either not come here atall, or else should have chosen some other matter to talk about. Inexcuse for persisting, I can but say that the subject is one about whichI have been led by circumstances to read and think considerably; andthough, undoubtedly, each of us knows more about himself and his ownaffairs than anyone else can possibly know, yet a stranger's eye willsometimes see things which escape those more immediately interested; andI allow myself to hope that I may have something to say not altogetherundeserving your attention. I shall touch as little as possible onquestions of opinion; and if I tread by accident on any sensitivepoint, I must trust to your kindness to excuse my awkwardness. 

Well, then, if we look back on Scotland as it stood in the first quarterof the sixteenth century, we see a country in which the old feudalorganisation continued, so far as it generally affected the people, morevigorous than in any other part of civilised Europe. Elsewhere, thegrowth of trade and of large towns had created a middle class, with anorganisation of their own, independent of the lords. In Scotland, thetowns were still scanty and poor; such as they were, they were for themost part under the control of the great nobleman who happened to livenearest to them; and a people, as in any sense independent of lords, knights, abbots, or prelates, under whose rule they were born, had asyet no existence. The tillers of the soil (and the soil was verymiserably tilled) lived under the shadow of the castle or the monastery. They followed their lord's fortunes, fought his battles, believed in hispolitics, and supported him loyally in his sins or his good deeds, asthe case might be. There was much moral beauty in the life of thosetimes. The loyal attachment of man to man--of liege servant to liegelord--of all forms under which human beings can live and work together, has most of grace and humanity about it. It cannot go on without mutualconfidence and affection--mutual benefits given and received. The lengthof time which the system lasted proves that in the main there must havebeen a fine fidelity in the people--truth, justice, generosity in theirleaders. History brings down many bad stories to us out of those times;just as in these islands nowadays you may find bad instances of theabuses of rights of property. You may find stories--too many also--ofhusbands ill-using their wives, and so on. Yet we do not therefore laythe blame on marriage, or suppose that the institution of property onthe whole does more harm than good. I do not doubt that down in thatfeudal system somewhere lie the roots of some of the finest qualities inthe European peoples. 

So much for the temporal side of the matter; and the spiritual was notvery unlike it. As no one lived independently, in our modern sense ofthe word, so no one thought independently. The minds of men were lookedafter by a Church which, for a long time also, did, I suppose, verylargely fulfil the purpose for which it was intended. It kept alive andactive the belief that the world was created and governed by a justBeing, who hated sins and crimes, and steadily punished such things. Ittaught men that they had immortal souls, and that this little bit oflife was an entirely insignificant portion of their real existence. Ittaught these truths, indeed, along with a great deal which we nowconsider to have been a mistake--a great many theories of earthly thingswhich have since passed away, and special opinions clothed in outwardforms and ritual observances which we here, most of us at least, do notthink essential for our soul's safety. But mistakes like these arehurtful only when persisted in in the face of fuller truth, after truthhas been discovered. Only a very foolish man would now uphold thePtolemaic astronomy. But the Ptolemaic astronomy, when first invented, was based on real if incomplete observations, and formed a groundworkwithout which further progress in that science would have been probablyimpossible. The theories and ceremonials of the Catholic Church suitedwell with an age in which little was known and much was imagined: whensuperstition was active and science was not yet born. When I am toldhere or anywhere that the Middle Ages were times of mere spiritualdarkness and priestly oppression, with the other usual formulas, I say, as I said before, if the Catholic Church, for those many centuries thatit reigned supreme over all men's consciences, was no better than thething which we see in the generation which immediately preceded theReformation, it could not have existed at all. You might as well arguethat the old fading tree could never have been green and young. Institutions do not live on lies. They either live by the truth andusefulness which there is in them, or they do not live at all. 

So things went on for several hundred years. There were scandals enough, and crimes enough, and feuds, and murders, and civil wars. Systems, however good, cannot prevent evil. They can but compress it withinmoderate and tolerable limits. I should conclude, however, that, measuring by the average happiness of the masses of the people, themediæval institutions were very well suited for the inhabitants of thesecountries as they then were. Adam Smith and Bentham themselves couldhardly have mended them if they had tried. 

But times change, and good things as well as bad grow old and have todie. The heart of the matter which the Catholic Church had taught wasthe fear of God; but the language of it and the formulas of it were madeup of human ideas and notions about things which the mere increase ofhuman knowledge gradually made incredible. To trace the reason of thiswould lead us a long way. It is intelligible enough, but it would takeus into subjects better avoided here. It is enough to say that, whilethe essence of religion remains the same, the mode in which it isexpressed changes and has changed--changes as living languages changeand become dead, as institutions change, as forms of government change, as opinions on all things in heaven and earth change, as half thetheories held at this time among ourselves will probably change--thatis, the outward and mortal parts of them. Thus the Catholic formulas, instead of living symbols, become dead and powerless cabalistic signs. The religion lost its hold on the conscience and the intellect, and theeffect, singularly enough, appeared in the shepherds before it madeitself felt among the flocks. From the see of St. Peter to the farmonasteries in the Hebrides or the Isle of Arran, the laity were shockedand scandalised at the outrageous doings of high cardinals, prelates, priests, and monks. It was clear enough that these great personagesthemselves did not believe what they taught; so why should the peoplebelieve it? And serious men, to whom the fear of God was a livingreality, began to look into the matter for themselves. The first stepseverywhere were taken with extreme reluctance; and had the popes andcardinals been wise, they would have taken the lead in the enquiry, cleared their teaching of its lumber, and taken out a new lease of lifeboth for it and for themselves. An infallible pope and an infalliblecouncil might have done something in this way, if good sense had beenamong the attributes of their omniscience. What they did do wassomething very different. It was as if, when the new astronomy began tobe taught, the professors of that science in all the universities ofEurope had met together and decided that Ptolemy's cycles and epicycleswere eternal verities; that the theory of the rotation of the earth wasand must be a damnable heresy; and had invited the civil authorities tohelp them in putting down by force all doctrines but their own. This, orsomething very like it, was the position taken up in theology by theCouncil of Trent. The bishops assembled there did not reason. Theydecided by vote that certain things were true, and were to be believed;and the only arguments which they condescended to use were fire andfaggot, and so on. How it fared with them, and with this experiment oftheirs, we all know tolerably well. 

The effect was very different in different countries. Here, in Scotland, the failure was most marked and complete, but the way in which it cameabout was in many ways peculiar. In Germany, Luther was supported byprinces and nobles. In England, the Reformation rapidly mixed itself upwith politics and questions of rival jurisdiction. Both in England andGermany, the revolution, wherever it established itself, was acceptedearly by the Crown or the Government, and by them legally recognised. Here, it was far otherwise: the Protestantism of Scotland was thecreation of the commons, as in turn the commons may be said to have beencreated by Protestantism. There were many young high-spirited men, belonging to the noblest families in the country, who were among theearliest to rally round the Reforming preachers; but authority, both inChurch and State, set the other way. The congregations who gathered inthe fields around Wishart and John Knox were, for the most part, farmers, labourers, artisans, tradesmen, or the smaller gentry; andthus, for the first time in Scotland, there was created an organisationof men detached from the lords and from the Church--brave, noble, resolute, daring people, bound together by a sacred cause, unrecognisedby the leaders whom they had followed hitherto with undoubtingallegiance. That spirit which grew in time to be the ruling power ofScotland--that which formed eventually its laws and its creed, anddetermined its after fortunes as a nation--had its first germ in thesehalf-outlawed wandering congregations. In this it was that theReformation in Scotland differed from the Reformation in any other partof Europe. Elsewhere it found a middle class existing--created alreadyby trade or by other causes. It raised and elevated them, but it did notmaterially affect their political condition. In Scotland, the commons, as an organised body, were simply created by religion. Before theReformation they had no political existence; and therefore it has beenthat the print of their origin has gone so deeply into their socialconstitution. On them, and them only, the burden of the work of theReformation was eventually thrown; and when they triumphed at last, itwas inevitable that both they and it should react one upon the other. 

How this came about I must endeavour to describe, although I can givebut a brief sketch of an exceedingly complicated matter. Everybody knowsthe part played by the aristocracy of Scotland in the outwardrevolution, when the Reformation first became the law of the land. Itwould seem at first sight as if it had been the work of the wholenation--as if it had been a thing on which high and low were heartilyunited. Yet on the first glance below the surface you see that thegreater part of the noble lords concerned in that business cared nothingabout the Reformation at all; or, if they cared, they rather disliked itthan otherwise. How, then, did they come to act as they did? or, howcame they to permit a change of such magnitude when they had so littlesympathy with it? I must make a slight circuit to look for theexplanation. 

The one essentially noble feature in the great families of Scotland wastheir patriotism. They loved Scotland and Scotland's freedom with apassion proportioned to the difficulty with which they had defendedtheir liberties; and yet the wisest of them had long seen that, sooneror later, union with England was inevitable; and the question was, howthat union was to be brought about--how they were to make sure that, when it came, they should take their place at England's side as equals, and not as a dependency. It had been arranged that the little MaryStuart should marry our English Edward VI. , and the difficulty was to besettled so. They would have been contented, they said, if Scotland hadhad the 'lad' and England the 'lass. ' As it stood, they broke theirbargain, and married the little queen away into France, to prevent theProtector Somerset from getting hold of her. Then, however, appeared anopposite danger; the queen would become a Frenchwoman; her French mothergoverned Scotland with French troops and French ministers; the countrywould become a French province, and lose its freedom equally. Thus anEnglish party began again; and as England was then in the middle of hergreat anti-Church revolution, so the Scottish nobles began to beanti-Church. It was not for doctrines: neither they nor their brothersin England cared much about doctrines; but in both countries the Churchwas rich--much richer than there seemed any occasion for it to be. Harrythe Eighth had been sharing among the laity the spoils of the Englishmonasteries; the Scotch Lords saw in a similar process the probabilityof a welcome addition to their own scanty incomes. Mary of Guise and theFrench stood by the Church, and the Church stood by them; and so it cameabout that the great families--even those who, like the Hamiltons, weremost closely connected with France--were tempted over by the bait to theother side. They did not want reformed doctrines, but they wanted theChurch lands; and so they came to patronise, or endure, the Reformers, because the Church hated them, and because they weakened the Church; andthus for a time, and especially as long as Mary Stuart was Queen ofFrance, all classes in Scotland, high and low, seemed to fraternise infavour of the revolution. 

And it seemed as if the union of the realms could be effected at last, at the same juncture, and in connexion with the same movement. Next insuccession to the Scotch crown, after Mary Stuart, was the house ofHamilton. Elizabeth, who had just come to the English throne, wassupposed to be in want of a husband. The heir of the Hamiltons was ofher own age, and in years past had been thought of for her by herfather. What could be more fit than to make a match between those two?Send a Scot south to be King of England, find or make some pretext toshake off Mary Stuart, who had forsaken her native country, and so jointhe crowns, the 'lass' and the 'lad' being now in the right relativeposition. Scotland would thus annex her old oppressor, and give her anew dynasty. 

I seem to be straying from the point; but these political schemes had somuch to do with the actions of the leading men at that time, that thestory of the Reformation cannot be understood without them. It was thus, and with these incongruous objects, that the combination was formedwhich overturned the old Church of Scotland in 1559-60, confiscated itspossessions, destroyed its religious houses, and changed its creed. TheFrench were driven away from Leith by Elizabeth's troops; the Reformerstook possession of the churches; and the Parliament of 1560 met with aclear stage to determine for themselves the future fate of the country. Now, I think it certain that, if the Scotch nobility, having onceaccepted the Reformation, had continued loyal to it--especially ifElizabeth had met their wishes in the important point of themarriage--the form of the Scotch Kirk would have been somethingextremely different from what it in fact became. The people wereperfectly well inclined to follow their natural leaders if the matterson which their hearts were set had received tolerable consideration fromthem, and the democratic form of the ecclesiastical constitution wouldhave been inevitably modified. One of the conditions of the proposedcompact with England was the introduction of the English Liturgy and theEnglish Church constitution. This too, at the outset, and with fairdealing, would not have been found impossible. But it soon became clearthat the religious interests of Scotland were the very last thing whichwould receive consideration from any of the high political personagesconcerned. John Knox had dreamt of a constitution like that which he hadseen working under Calvin at Geneva--a constitution in which the clergyas ministers of God should rule all things--rule politically at thecouncil board, and rule in private at the fireside. It was soon madeplain to Knox that Scotland was not Geneva. 'Eh, mon, ' said the youngerMaitland to him, 'then we may all bear the barrow now to build the Houseof the Lord. ' Not exactly. The churches were left to the ministers; theworldly good things and worldly power remained with the laity; and as toreligion, circumstances would decide what they would do about that. Again, I am not speaking of all the great men of those times. Glencairn, Ruthven, young Argyll--above all, the Earl of Moray--really did in somedegree interest themselves in the Kirk. But what most of them felt wasperhaps rather broadly expressed by Maitland when he called religion 'abogle of the nursery. ' That was the expression which a Scotch statesmanof those days actually ventured to use. Had Elizabeth been conformable, no doubt they would in some sense or other have remained on the side ofthe Reformation. But here, too, there was a serious hitch. Elizabethwould not marry Arran. Elizabeth would be no party to any of theirintrigues. She detested Knox. She detested Protestantism entirely, inall shapes in which Knox approved of it. She affronted the nobles on oneside, she affronted the people on another; and all idea of uniting thetwo crowns after the fashion proposed by the Scotch Parliament sheutterly and entirely repudiated. She was right enough, perhaps, so faras this was concerned; but she left the ruling families extremelyperplexed as to the course which they would follow. They had allowed thecountry to be revolutionised in the teeth of their own sovereign, andwhat to do next they did not very well know. 

It was at this crisis that circumstances came in to their help. Francisthe Second died. Mary Stuart was left a childless widow. Her connexionwith the Crown of France was at an end, and all danger on that side tothe liberties of Scotland at an end also. The Arran scheme havingfailed, she would be a second card as good as the first to play for theEnglish Crown--as good as he, or better, for she would have the EnglishCatholics on her side. So, careless how it would affect religion, andmaking no condition at all about that, the same men who a year beforewere ready to whistle Mary Stuart down the wind, now invited her back toScotland; the same men who had been the loudest friends of Elizabeth nowencouraged Mary Stuart to persist in the pretension to the Crown ofEngland, which had led to all the past trouble. While in France, she hadassumed the title of Queen of England. She had promised to abandon it, but, finding her own people ready to support her in withdrawing herpromise, she stood out, insisting that at all events the EnglishParliament should declare her next in the succession; and it was wellknown that, as soon as the succession was made sure in her favour, somerascal would be found to put a knife or a bullet into Elizabeth. Theobject of the Scotch nobles was political, national, patriotic. Forreligion it was no great matter either way; and as they had before actedwith the Protestants, so now they were ready to turn about, and openlyor tacitly act with the Catholics. Mary Stuart's friends in England andon the Continent were Catholics, and therefore it would not do to offendthem. First, she was allowed to have mass at Holyrood; then there was amove for a broader toleration. That one mass, Knox said, was moreterrible to him than ten thousand armed men landed in the country--andhe had perfectly good reason for saying so. He thoroughly understoodthat it was the first step towards a counter-revolution which in timewould cover all Scotland and England, and carry them back to Popery. Yethe preached to deaf ears. Even Murray was so bewitched with the notionof the English succession, that for a year and a half he ceased to speakto Knox; and as it was with Murray, so it was far more with all therest--their zeal for religion was gone no one knew where. Of courseElizabeth would not give way. She might as well, she said, herselfprepare her shroud; and then conspiracies came, and under-groundintrigues with the Romanist English noblemen. France and Spain were toinvade England, Scotland was to open its ports to their fleets, and itssoil to their armies, giving them a safe base from which to act, and adry road over the Marches to London. And if Scotland had remainedunchanged from what it had been--had the direction of its fortunesremained with the prince and with the nobles, sooner or later it wouldhave come to this. But suddenly it appeared that there was a new powerin this country which no one suspected till it was felt. 

The commons of Scotland had hitherto been the creatures of the nobles. They had neither will nor opinion of their own. They thought and actedin the spirit of their immediate allegiance. No one seems to have dreamtthat there would be any difficulty in dealing with them if once thegreat families agreed upon a common course. Yet it appeared, when thepressure came, that religion, which was the play-thing of the nobles, was to the people a clear matter of life and death. They might lovetheir country: they might be proud of anything which would add lustre toits crown; but if it was to bring back the Pope and Popery--if itthreatened to bring them back--if it looked that way--they would havenothing to do with it; nor would they allow it to be done. Allegiancewas well enough; but there was a higher allegiance suddenly discoveredwhich superseded all earthly considerations. I know nothing finer inScottish history than the way in which the commons of the Lowlands tooktheir places by the side of Knox in the great convulsions whichfollowed. If all others forsook him, they at least would never forsakehim while tongue remained to speak and hand remained to strike. Brokenthey might have been, trampled out as the Huguenots at last weretrampled out in France, had Mary Stuart been less than the mostimprudent or the most unlucky of sovereigns. But Providence, or thefolly of those with whom they had to deal, fought for them. I need notfollow the wild story of the crimes and catastrophes in which MaryStuart's short reign in Scotland closed. Neither is her own share, be itgreat or small, or none at all, in those crimes of any moment to ushere. It is enough that, both before that strange business and after it, when at Holyrood or across the Border, in Sheffield or Tutbury, her everfavourite dream was still the English throne. Her road towards it wasthrough a Catholic revolution and the murder of Elizabeth. It is enoughthat, both before and after, the aristocracy of Scotland, even thoseamong them who had seemed most zealous for the Reformation, were eagerto support her. John Knox alone, and the commons, whom Knox had raisedinto a political power, remained true. 

Much, indeed, is to be said for the Scotch nobles. In the first shock ofthe business at Kirk-o'-Field, they forgot their politics in a sense ofnational disgrace. They sent the queen to Loch Leven. They intended tobring her to trial, and, if she was proved guilty, to expose and perhapspunish her. All parties for a time agreed in this--even the Hamiltonsthemselves; and had they been left alone they would have done it. Butthey had a perverse neighbour in England, to whom crowned heads weresacred. Elizabeth, it might have been thought, would have had noparticular objection; but Elizabeth had aims of her own which baffledcalculation. Elizabeth, the representative of revolution, yet detestedrevolutionists. The Reformers in Scotland, the Huguenots in France, theinsurgents in the United Provinces, were the only friends she had inEurope. For her own safety she was obliged to encourage them; yet shehated them all, and would at any moment have abandoned them all, if, inany other way, she could have secured herself. She might have conqueredher personal objection to Knox--she could not conquer her aversion to aChurch which rose out of revolt against authority, which was democraticin constitution and republican in politics. When driven into alliancewith the Scotch Protestants, she angrily and passionately disclaimed anycommunity of creed with them; and for subjects to sit in judgment ontheir prince was a precedent which she would not tolerate. Thus sheflung her mantle over Mary Stuart. She told the Scotch Council here inEdinburgh that, if they hurt a hair of her head, she would harry theircountry, and hang them all on the trees round the town, if she couldfind any trees there for that purpose. She tempted the queen to Englandwith her fair promises after the battle of Langside, and then, to herastonishment, imprisoned her. Yet she still shielded her reputation, still fostered her party in Scotland, still incessantly threatened andincessantly endeavoured to restore her. She kept her safe, because, inher lucid intervals, her ministers showed her the madness of actingotherwise. Yet for three years she kept her own people in a fever ofapprehension. She made a settled Government in Scotland impossible;till, distracted and perplexed, the Scottish statesmen went back totheir first schemes. They assured themselves that in one way or otherthe Queen of Scots would sooner or later come again among them. They, and others besides them, believed that Elizabeth was cutting her ownthroat, and that the best that they could do was to recover their ownqueen's favour, and make the most of her and her titles; and so theylent themselves again to the English Catholic conspiracies. 

The Earl of Moray--the one supremely noble man then living in thecountry--was put out of the way by an assassin. French and Spanish moneypoured in, and French and Spanish armies were to be again invited overto Scotland. This is the form in which the drama unfolds itself in thecorrespondence of the time. Maitland, the soul and spirit of it all, said, in scorn, that 'he would make the Queen of England sit upon hertail and whine like a whipped dog. ' The only powerful noblemen whoremained on the Protestant side were Lennox, Morton, and Mar. LordLennox was a poor creature, and was soon dispatched; Mar was old andweak; and Morton was an unprincipled scoundrel, who used the Reformationonly as a stalking-horse to cover the spoils which he had clutched inthe confusion, and was ready to desert the cause at any moment if thebalance of advantage shifted. Even the ministers of the Kirk were fooledand flattered over. Maitland told Mary Stuart that he had gained themall except one. 

John Knox alone defied both his threats and his persuasions. Good reasonhas Scotland to be proud of Knox. He only, in this wild crisis, savedthe Kirk which he had founded, and saved with it Scottish and Englishfreedom. But for Knox, and what he was able still to do, it is almostcertain that the Duke of Alva's army would have been landed on theeastern coast. The conditions were drawn out and agreed upon for thereception, the support, and the stay of the Spanish troops. Two-thirdsof the English peerage had bound themselves to rise against Elizabeth, and Alva waited only till Scotland itself was quiet. Only that quietwould not be. Instead of quiet came three dreadful years of civil war. Scotland was split into factions, to which the mother and son gavenames. The queen's lords, as they were called, with unlimited money fromFrance and Flanders, held Edinburgh and Glasgow; all the border line wastheirs, and all the north and west. Elizabeth's Council, wiser thantheir mistress, barely squeezed out of her reluctant parsimony enough tokeep Mar and Morton from making terms with the rest; but there herassistance ended. She would still say nothing, promise nothing, bindherself to nothing, and, so far as she was concerned, the war would havebeen soon enough brought to a close. But away at St. Andrews, John Knox, broken in body, and scarcely able to stagger up the pulpit stairs, stillthundered in the parish church; and his voice, it was said, was like tenthousand trumpets braying in the ear of Scottish Protestantism. All theLowlands answered to his call. Our English Cromwell found in the man ofreligion a match for the man of honour. Before Cromwell, all over theLothians, and across from St. Andrews to Stirling and Glasgow--throughfarm, and town, and village--the words of Knox had struck the inmostchords of the Scottish commons' hearts. Passing over knight and noble, he had touched the farmer, the peasant, the petty tradesman, and theartisan, and turned the men of clay into men of steel. The villagepreacher, when he left his pulpit, doffed cap and cassock, and donnedmorion and steel-coat. The Lothian yeoman's household became for thenonce a band of troopers, who would cross swords with the night ridersof Buccleuch. It was a terrible time, a time rather of anarchy than ofdefined war, for it was without form or shape. Yet the horror of it waseverywhere. Houses and villages were burned, and women and childrentossed on pike-point into the flames. Strings of poor men were dangledday after day from the walls of Edinburgh Castle. A word any way fromElizabeth would have ended it, but that word Elizabeth would neverspeak; and, maddened with suffering, the people half believed that shewas feeding the fire for her own bad purposes, when it was only that shewould not make up her mind to allow a crowned princess to be dethroned. No earthly influence could have held men true in such a trial. The noblelords--the Earl of Morton and such-like--would have made their ownconditions, and gone with the rest; but the vital force of the Scotchnation, showing itself where it was least looked for, would not have itso. 

A very remarkable account of the state of the Scotch commons at thistime is to be found in a letter of an English emissary, who had beensent by Lord Burleigh to see how things were going there. It was notmerely a new creed that they had got; it was a new vital power. 'Youwould be astonished to see how men are changed here, ' this writer said. 'There is little of that submission to those above them which there usedto be. The poor think and act for themselves. They are growing strong, confident, independent. The farms are better cultivated; the farmers aregrowing rich. The merchants at Leith are thriving, and, notwithstandingthe pirates, they are increasing their ships and opening a brisk tradewith France. '

All this while civil war was raging, and the flag of Queen Mary wasstill floating over Edinburgh Castle. It surprised the English; stillmore it surprised the politicians. It was the one thing whichdisconcerted, baffled, and finally ruined the schemes and the dreams ofMaitland. When he had gained the aristocracy, he thought that he hadgained everybody, and, as it turned out, he had all his work still todo. The Spaniards did not come. The prudent Alva would not risk invasiontill Scotland at least was assured. As time passed on, the Englishconspiracies were discovered and broken up. The Duke of Norfolk lost hishead; the Queen of Scots was found to have been mixed up with the plotsto murder Elizabeth; and Elizabeth at last took courage and recognisedJames. Supplies of money ceased to come from abroad, and gradually thetide turned. The Protestant cause once more grew towards the ascendant. The great families one by one came round again; and, as the backwardmovement began, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew gave it a fresh andtremendous impulse. Even the avowed Catholics--the Hamiltons, theGordons, the Scotts, the Kers, the Maxwells--quailed before the wail ofrage and sorrow which at that great horror rose over their country. TheQueen's party dwindled away to a handful of desperate politicians, whostill clung to Edinburgh Castle. But Elizabeth's 'peace-makers, ' as thebig English cannon were called, came round, at the Regent's request, from Berwick; David's tower, as Knox had long ago foretold, 'ran downover the cliff like a sandy brae;' and the cause of Mary Stuart inScotland was extinguished for ever. Poor Grange, who deserved a betterend, was hanged at the Market Cross. Secretary Maitland, the cause ofall the mischief--the cleverest man, as far as intellect went, in allBritain--died (so later rumour said) by his own hand. A nobler versionof his end is probably a truer one: He had been long ill--so ill thatwhen the Castle cannon were fired, he had been carried into the cellarsas unable to bear the sound. The breaking down of his hopes finishedhim. 'The secretary, ' wrote some one from the spot to Cecil, 'is dead ofgrief, being unable to endure the great hatred which all this peoplebears towards him. ' It would be well if some competent man would write alife of Maitland, or at least edit his papers. They contain by far theclearest account of the inward movements of the time; and he himself isone of the most tragically interesting characters in the cycle of theReformation history. 

With the fall of the Castle, then, but not till then, it became clear toall men that the Reformation would hold its ground. It was the finaltrampling out of the fire which for five years had threatened bothEngland and Scotland with flames and ruin. For five years--as latecertainly as the massacre of St. Bartholomew--those who understood bestthe true state of things, felt the keenest misgivings how the eventwould turn. That things ended as they did was due to the spirit of theScotch commons. There was a moment when, if they had given way, allwould have gone, perhaps even to Elizabeth's throne. They had passed fornothing; they had proved to be everything; had proved--the ultimate testin human things--to be the power which could hit the hardest blows, andthey took rank accordingly. The creed began now in good earnest to makeits way into hall and castle; but it kept the form which it assumed inthe first hours of its danger and trial, and never after lost it. Hadthe aristocracy dealt sincerely with things in the earlier stages of thebusiness, again I say the democratic element in the Kirk might have beensoftened or modified. But the Protestants had been trifled with by theirown natural leaders. Used and abused by Elizabeth, despised by theworldly intelligence and power of the times--they triumphed after all, and, as a natural consequence, they set their own mark and stamp uponthe fruits of the victory. 

The question now is, what has the Kirk so established done for Scotland?Has it justified its own existence? Briefly, we might say, it hascontinued its first function as the guardian of Scottish freedom. Butthat is a vague phrase, and there are special accusations against theKirk and its doctrines which imply that it has cared for other thingsthan freedom. Narrow, fanatical, dictatorial, intrusive, superstitious, a spiritual despotism, the old priesthood over again with a newface--these and other such epithets and expressions we have heard oftenenough applied to it at more than one stage of its history. Well, Isuppose that neither the Kirk nor anything else of man's making isaltogether perfect. But let us look at the work which lay before it whenit had got over its first perils. Scotch patriotism succeeded at last inthe object it had so passionately set its heart upon. It sent a king atlast of the Scotch blood to England, and a new dynasty; and it neverknew peace or quiet after. The Kirk had stood between James Stuart andhis kingcraft. He hated it as heartily as did his mother; and, when hegot to England, he found people there who told him it would be easy todestroy it, and he found the strength of a fresh empire to back him intrying to do it. To have forced prelacy upon Scotland would have been todestroy the life out of Scotland. Thrust upon them by force, it wouldhave been no more endurable than Popery. They would as soon, perhapssooner, have had what the Irish call the 'rale thing' back again. Thepolitical freedom of the country was now wrapped up in the Kirk; and theStuarts were perfectly well aware of that, and for that very reasonbegan their crusade against it. 

And now, suppose the Kirk had been the broad, liberal, philosophical, intellectual thing which some people think it ought to have been, howwould it have fared in that crusade; how altogether would it haveencountered those surplices of Archbishop Laud or those dragoons ofClaverhouse? It is hard to lose one's life for a 'perhaps, ' andphilosophical belief at the bottom means a 'perhaps' and nothing more. For more than half the seventeenth century, the battle had to be foughtout in Scotland, which in reality was the battle between liberty anddespotism; and where, except in an intense, burning conviction that theywere maintaining God's cause against the devil, could the poor Scotchpeople have found the strength for the unequal struggle which was forcedupon them? Toleration is a good thing in its place; but you cannottolerate what will not tolerate you, and is trying to cut your throat. Enlightenment you cannot have enough of, but it must be trueenlightenment, which sees a thing in all its bearings. In these mattersthe vital questions are not always those which appear on the surface;and in the passion and resolution of brave and noble men there is oftenan inarticulate intelligence deeper than what can be expressed in words. Action sometimes will hit the mark, when the spoken word either missesit or is but half the truth. On such subjects, and with common men, latitude of mind means weakness of mind. There is but a certain quantityof spiritual force in any man. Spread it over a broad surface, thestream is shallow and languid; narrow the channel, and it becomes adriving force. Each may be well at its own time. The mill-race whichdrives the water-wheel is dispersed in rivulets over the meadow at itsfoot. The Covenanters fought the fight and won the victory, and then, and not till then, came the David Humes with their essays on miracles, and the Adam Smiths with their political economies, and steam-engines, and railroads, and philosophical institutions, and all the other blessedor unblessed fruits of liberty. 

But we may go further. Institutions exist for men, not men forinstitutions; and the ultimate test of any system of politics, or bodyof opinions, or form of belief, is the effect produced on the conductand condition of the people who live and die under them. Now, I am nothere to speak of Scotland of the present day. That, happily, is nobusiness of mine. We have to do here with Scotland before the march ofintellect; with Scotland of the last two centuries; with the three orfour hundred thousand families, who for half-a-score of generationsbelieved simply and firmly in the principles of the Reformation, andwalked in the ways of it. 

Looked at broadly, one would say they had been an eminently piouspeople. It is part of the complaint of modern philosophers about them, that religion, or superstition, or whatever they please to call it, hadtoo much to do with their daily lives. So far as one can look into thatcommonplace round of things which historians never tell us about, therehave rarely been seen in this world a set of people who have thoughtmore about right and wrong, and the judgment about them of the upperpowers. Long-headed, thrifty industry, --a sound hatred of waste, imprudence, idleness, extravagance, --the feet planted firmly upon theearth, --a conscientious sense that the worldly virtues are, nevertheless, very necessary virtues, that without these, honesty forone thing is not possible, and that without honesty no other excellence, religious or moral, is worth anything at all--this is the stuff of whichScotch life was made, and very good stuff it is. It has been calledgloomy, austere, harsh, and such other epithets. A gifted modern writerhas favoured us lately with long strings of extracts from the sermons ofScotch divines of the last century, taking hard views of humanshortcomings and their probable consequences, and passing hard censuresupon the world and its amusements. Well, no doubt amusement is a verygood thing; but I should rather infer from the vehemence and frequencyof these denunciations that the people had not been in the habit ofdenying themselves too immoderately; and, after all, it is no very hardcharge against those teachers that they thought more of duty than ofpleasure. Sermons always exaggerate the theoretic side of things; andthe most austere preacher, when he is out of the pulpit, and you meethim at the dinner-table, becomes singularly like other people. We maytake courage, I think, we may believe safely that in thoseminister-ridden days, men were not altogether so miserable; we may hopethat no large body of human beings have for any length of time been toodangerously afraid of enjoyment. Among other good qualities, the Scotshave been distinguished for humour--not for venomous wit, but forkindly, genial humour, which half loves what it laughs at--and thisalone shows clearly enough that those to whom it belongs have not lookedtoo exclusively on the gloomy side of the world. I should rather saythat the Scots had been an unusually happy people. Intelligent industry, the honest doing of daily work, with a sense that it must be done well, under penalties; the necessaries of life moderately provided for; and asensible content with the situation of life in which men are born--thisthrough the week, and at the end of it the 'Cottar's SaturdayNight'--the homely family, gathered reverently and peacefully together, and irradiated with a sacred presence. --Happiness! such happiness as wehuman creatures are likely to know upon this world, will be found there, if anywhere. 

The author of the 'History of Civilisation' makes a naïve remark inconnexion with this subject. Speaking of the other country, which hecensures equally with Scotland for its slavery to superstition, he saysof the Spaniards that they are a well-natured, truthful, industrious, temperate, pious people, innocent in their habits, affectionate in theirfamilies, full of humour, vivacity, and shrewdness, yet that all this'has availed them nothing'--'has availed them nothing, ' that is hisexpression--because they are loyal, because they are credulous, becausethey are contented, because they have not apprehended the firstcommandment of the new covenant: 'Thou shalt get on and make money, andbetter thy condition in life;' because, therefore, they have addednothing to the scientific knowledge, the wealth, and the progress ofmankind. Without these, it seems, the old-fashioned virtues availnothing. They avail a great deal to human happiness. Applied science, and steam, and railroads, and machinery, enable an ever-increasingnumber of people to live upon the earth; but the happiness of thosepeople remains, so far as I know, dependent very much on the oldconditions. I should be glad to believe that the new views of thingswill produce effects upon the character in the long run half sobeautiful. 

There is much more to say on this subject, were there time to say it, but I will not trespass too far upon your patience; and I would gladlyhave ended here, had not the mention of Spain suggested one other topic, which I should not leave unnoticed. The Spain of Cervantes and DonQuixote was the Spain of the Inquisition. The Scotland of Knox andMelville was the Scotland of the witch trials and witch burnings. Thebelief in witches was common to all the world. The prosecution andpunishment of the poor creatures was more conspicuous in Scotland whenthe Kirk was most powerful; in England and New England, when Puritanprinciples were also dominant there. It is easy to understand thereasons. Evil of all kinds was supposed to be the work of a personaldevil; and in the general horror of evil, this particular form of it, in which the devil was thought especially active, excited the mostpassionate detestation. Thus, even the best men lent themselvesunconsciously to the most detestable cruelty. Knox himself is not freefrom reproach. A poor woman was burned at St. Andrews when he was livingthere, and when a word from him would have saved her. It remains alesson to all time, that goodness, though the indispensable adjunct toknowledge, is no substitute for it; that when conscience undertakes todictate beyond its province, the result is only the more monstrous. 

It is well that we should look this matter in the face; and asparticular stories leave more impression than general statements, I willmention one, perfectly well authenticated, which I take from theofficial report of the proceedings:--Towards the end of 1593 there wastrouble in the family of the Earl of Orkney. His brother laid a plot tomurder him, and was said to have sought the help of a 'notorious witch'called Alison Balfour. When Alison Balfour's life was looked into, noevidence could be found connecting her either with the particularoffence or with witchcraft in general; but it was enough in thesematters to be accused. She swore she was innocent; but her guilt wasonly held to be aggravated by perjury. She was tortured again and again. Her legs were put in the caschilaws--an iron frame which was graduallyheated till it burned into the flesh--but no confession could be wrungfrom her. The caschilaws failed utterly, and something else had to betried. She had a husband, a son, and a daughter, a child seven yearsold. As her own sufferings did not work upon her, she might be touched, perhaps, by the sufferings of those who were dear to her. They werebrought into court, and placed at her side; and the husband first wasplaced in the 'lang irons'--some accursed instrument; I know not what. Still the devil did not yield. She bore this; and her son was nextoperated on. The boy's legs were set in 'the boot, '--the iron boot youmay have heard of. The wedges were driven in, which, when forced home, crushed the very bone and marrow. Fifty-seven mallet strokes weredelivered upon the wedges. Yet this, too, failed. There was noconfession yet. So, last of all, the little daughter was taken. Therewas a machine called the piniwinkies--a kind of thumbscrew, whichbrought blood from under the finger nails, with a pain successfullyterrible. These things were applied to the poor child's hands, and themother's constancy broke down, and she said she would admit anythingthey wished. She confessed her witchcraft--so tried, she would haveconfessed to the seven deadly sins--and then she was burned, recallingher confession, and with her last breath protesting her innocence. 

It is due to the intelligence of the time to admit that after this herguilt was doubted, and such vicarious means of extorting confession donot seem to have been tried again. Yet the men who inflicted thesetortures would have borne them all themselves sooner than have done anyact which they consciously knew to be wrong. They did not know that theinstincts of humanity were more sacred than the logic of theology, andin fighting against the devil they were themselves doing the devil'swork. We should not attempt to apologise for these things, still less toforget them. No martyrs ever suffered to instil into mankind a morewholesome lesson--more wholesome, or one more hard to learn. The moreconscientious men are, the more difficult it is for them to understandthat in their most cherished convictions, when they pass beyond thelimits where the wise and good of all sorts agree, they may be thevictims of mere delusion. Yet, after all, and happily, such cases werebut few, and affected but lightly the general condition of the people. 

The student running over the records of other times finds certainsalient things standing out in frightful prominence. He concludes thatthe substance of those times was made up of the matters most dwelt on bythe annalist. He forgets that the things most noticed are not those ofevery-day experience, but the abnormal, the extraordinary, themonstrous. The exceptions are noted down, the common and usual is passedover in silence. The philosophic historian, studying hereafter thispresent age, in which we are ourselves living, may say that it was atime of unexampled prosperity, luxury, and wealth; but catching atcertain horrible murders which have lately disgraced our civilisation, may call us a nation of assassins. It is to invert the pyramid and standit on its point. The same system of belief which produced the tragedywhich I have described, in its proper province as the guide of ordinarylife, has been the immediate cause of all that is best and greatest inScottish character. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLICISM. [C]

Not long ago I heard a living thinker of some eminence say that heconsidered Christianity to have been a misfortune. Intellectually, hesaid, it was absurd; and practically, it was an offence, over which hestumbled. It would have been far better for mankind, he thought, if theycould have kept clear of superstition, and followed on upon the track ofthe Grecian philosophy. So little do men care to understand theconditions which have made them what they are, and which has created forthem that very wisdom in which they themselves are so contented. But itis strange, indeed, that a person who could deliberately adopt such aconclusion should trouble himself any more to look for truth. If a mereabsurdity could make its way out of a little fishing village in Galilee, and spread through the whole civilised world; if men are so pitiablysilly, that in an age of great mental activity their strongest thinkersshould have sunk under an abortion of fear and folly, should haveallowed it to absorb into itself whatever of heroism, of devotion, self-sacrifice, and moral nobleness there was among them; surely therewere nothing better for a wise man than to make the best of his time, and to crowd what enjoyment he can find into it, sheltering himself in avery disdainful Pyrrhonism from all care for mankind or for theiropinions. For what better test of truth have we than the ablest men'sacceptance of it? and if the ablest men eighteen centuries agodeliberately accepted what is now too absurd to reason upon, what righthave we to hope that with the same natures, the same passions, the sameunderstandings, no better proof against deception, we, like they, arenot entangled in what, at the close of another era, shall seem againridiculous? The scoff of Cicero at the divinity of Liber and Ceres(bread and wine) may be translated literally by the modern Protestant;and the sarcasms which Clement and Tertullian flung at the Pagan creed, the modern sceptic returns upon their own. Of what use is it to destroyan idol, when another, or the same in another form, takes immediatepossession of the vacant pedestal?

I shall not argue with the extravagant hypothesis of my friend. In theopinion even of Goethe, who was not troubled with credulity, the humanrace can never attain to anything higher than Christianity--if we meanby Christianity the religion which was revealed to the world in theteaching and the life of its Founder. But even the more limitedreprobation by our own Reformers of the creed of mediæval Europe is notmore just or philosophical. 

Ptolemy was not perfect, but Newton had been a fool if he had scoffed atPtolemy. Newton could not have been without Ptolemy, nor Ptolemy withoutthe Chaldees; and as it is with the minor sciences, so far more is itwith the science of sciences--the science of life, which has grownthrough all the ages from the beginning of time. We speak of the errorsof the past. We, with this glorious present which is opening on us, weshall never enter on it, we shall never understand it, till we havelearnt to see in that past, not error, but instalment of truth, hard-fought-for truth, wrung out with painful and heroic effort. Thepromised land is smiling before us, but we may not pass over into thepossession of it while the bones of our fathers who laboured through thewilderness lie bleaching on the sands, or a prey to the unclean birds. We must gather their relics and bury them, and sum up their labours, andinscribe the record of their actions on their tombs as an honourableepitaph. If Catholicism really is passing away, if it has done its work, and if what is left of it is now holding us back from better things, itis not for our bitterness but for our affectionate acknowledgment, norfor our heaping contempt on what it is, but for our reverend and patientexamination of what it has been, that it will be content to bid usfarewell, and give us God speed on our further journey. 

In the Natural History of Religions, certain broad phenomena perpetuallyrepeat themselves; they rise in the highest thought extant at the timeof their origin; the conclusions of philosophy settle into a creed; artornaments it, devotion consecrates it, time elaborates it. It growsthrough a long series of generations into the heart and habits of thepeople; and so long as no disturbing cause interferes, or so long as theidea at the centre of it survives, a healthy, vigorous, natural lifeshoots beautifully up out of the intellectual root. But at last the ideabecomes obsolete; the numbing influence of habit petrifies the spirit inthe outside ceremonial, while new questions arise among the thinkers, and ideas enter into new and unexplained relations. The old formula willnot serve; but new formulæ are tardy in appearing; and habit andsuperstition cling to the past, and policy vindicates it, and statecraftupholds it forcibly as serviceable to order, till, from the combinedaction of folly, and worldliness, and ignorance, the once beautifulsymbolism becomes at last no better than 'a whited sepulchre full ofdead men's bones and all uncleanness. ' So it is now. So it was in theera of the Cæsars, out of which Christianity arose; and Christianity, inthe form which it assumed at the close of the Arian controversy, was thedeliberate solution which the most powerful intellects of that day couldoffer of the questions which had grown with the growth of mankind, andon which Paganism had suffered shipwreck. 

Paganism, as a creed, was entirely physical. When Paganism rose, men hadnot begun to reflect upon themselves, or the infirmities of their ownnature. The bad man was a bad man--the coward, a coward--the liar, aliar--individually hateful and despicable: but in hating and despisingsuch unfortunates, the old Greeks were satisfied to have felt all thatit was necessary to feel about them; and how such a phenomenon as a badman came to exist in this world, they scarcely cared to enquire. Thereis no evil spirit in the mythology as an antagonist of the gods. Thereis the Erinnys as the avenger of monstrous villanies; there is aTartarus where the darkest criminals suffer eternal tortures. ButTantalus and Ixion are suffering for enormous crimes, to which the smallwickedness of common men offers no analogy. Moreover, these and othersuch stories are only curiously ornamented myths, representing physicalphenomena. But with Socrates a change came over philosophy; asign--perhaps a cause--of the decline of the existing religion. Thestudy of man superseded the study of nature: a purer Theism came in withthe higher ideal of perfection, and sin and depravity at once assumed animportance, the intensity of which made every other questioninsignificant. How man could know the good and yet choose the evil; howGod could be all pure and almighty, and yet evil have broken into hiscreation--these were the questions which thenceforth were the perplexityof philosophic speculation. 

Whatever difficulty there might be in discovering how evil came to be, the leaders of all the sects agreed at last upon the seat of it. Whether_matter_ was eternal, as Aristotle thought, or created, as Platothought, both Plato and Aristotle were equally satisfied that the secretof all the shortcomings in this world lay in the imperfection, reluctancy, or inherent grossness of this impracticable substance. Godwould have everything perfect, but the nature of the element in which Heworked in some way defeated his purpose. Death, disease, decay, clungnecessarily to everything which was created out of it; and pain, andwant, and hunger, and suffering. Worse than all, the spirit in itsmaterial body was opposed and borne down, its aspirations crushed, itspurity tainted by the passions and appetites of its companion--thefleshly lusts which waged perpetual war against the soul. 

Matter was the cause of evil, and thenceforth the question was how toconquer matter, or, at least, how to set free the spirit from itscontrol. 

The Greek language and the Greek literature spread behind the march ofAlexander; but as his generals could only make their conquests permanentby largely accepting the Eastern manners, so philosophy could only makegood its ground by becoming itself Orientalised. The one pure and holyGod whom Plato had painfully reasoned out for himself had existed fromimmemorial time in the traditions of the Jews; while the Persians, whohad before taught the Jews at Babylon the existence of an independentevil being, now had him to offer to the Greeks as their account of thedifficulties which had perplexed Socrates. Seven centuries of struggle, and many hundred thousand folios, were the results of the remarkablefusion which followed. Out of these elements, united in variousproportions, rose successively the Alexandrian philosophy, theHellenists, the Therapeutæ, those strange Essene communists, with theinnumerable sects of Gnostic or Christian heretics. Finally, the battlewas limited to the two great rivals, under one or other of which thebest of the remainder had ranged themselves--Manicheism and CatholicChristianity: Manicheism in which the Persian--Catholicism in which theJewish--element most preponderated. It did not end till the close of thefifth century, and it ended then rather by arbitration than by a decidedvictory which either side could claim. The Church has yet to acknowledgehow large a portion of its enemy's doctrines it incorporated through themediation of Augustine before the field was surrendered to it. Let ustrace something of the real bearings of this section of the world'sOriental history, which to so many moderns seems no better than an idlefighting over words and straws. 

Facts witnessing so clearly that the especial strength of evil lay, asthe philosophers had seen, in _matter_, it was so far a conclusion whichboth Jew and Persian were ready to accept; the naked Aristotelic view ofit being most acceptable to the Persian, the Platonic to the HellenisticJew. But the purer theology of the Jew forced him to look for a solutionof the question which Plato had left doubtful, and to explain how evilhad crept into matter. He could not allow that what God had createdcould be of its own nature imperfect. God made it very good; some othercause had broken in to spoil it. Accordingly, as before he had reducedthe independent Arimanes, whose existence he had learnt at Babylon, intoa subordinate spirit; so now, not questioning the facts of disease, ofdeath, of pain, or of the infirmity of the flesh which the naturalstrength of the spirit was unable to resist, he accounted for them underthe supposition that the first man had deliberately sinned, and by hissin had brought a curse upon the whole material earth, and upon allwhich was fashioned out of it. The earth was created pure and lovely--agarden of delight, loading itself of its own free accord with fruit andflower, and everything most exquisite and beautiful. No bird or beast ofprey broke the eternal peace which reigned over its hospitable surface. In calm and quiet intercourse, the leopard lay down by the kid, the lionbrowsed beside the ox, and the corporeal frame of man, knowing neitherdecay nor death, nor unruly appetite, nor any change or infirmity, waspure as the immortal substance of the unfallen angels. 

But with the fatal apple all this fair scene passed away, and creationas it seemed was hopelessly and irretrievably ruined. Adam sinned--nomatter how, he sinned; the sin was the one terrible fact: moral evil wasbrought into the world by the only creature who was capable ofcommitting it. Sin entered in, and death by sin; death and disease, storm and pestilence, earthquake and famine. The imprisoned passions ofthe wild animals were let loose, and earth and air became full ofcarnage: worst of all, man's animal nature came out in giganticstrength--the carnal lusts, unruly appetites, jealousies, hatreds, rapines, and murders; and then the law, and with it, of course, breachesof the law, and sin on sin. The seed of Adam was infected in the animalchange which had passed over Adam's person, and every child, therefore, thenceforth naturally engendered in his posterity, was infected with thecurse which he had incurred. Every material organisation thenceforwardcontained in itself the elements of its own destruction, and thephilosophic conclusions of Aristotle were accepted and explained bytheology. Already, in the popular histories, those who were infected bydisease were said to be bound by Satan; madness was a 'possession' bythe Evil Spirit; and the whole creation, from Adam till Christ, groanedand travailed under Satan's power. The nobler nature in man still madeitself felt; but it was a slave when it ought to command. It might willto obey the higher law, but the law in the members was over-strong forit and bore it down. This was the body of death which philosophydetected but could not explain, and from which Catholicism now cameforward with its magnificent promise of deliverance. 

The carnal doctrine of the sacraments, which Protestants are compelledto acknowledge to have been taught as fully in the early Church as it isnow taught by the Roman Catholics, has long been the stumbling-block tomodern thought. It was the very essence of the original creed. Unlessthe body could be purified, the soul could not be saved; because fromthe beginning, soul and flesh were one man and inseparable. Without hisflesh, man was not, or would cease to be. But the natural organisationof the flesh was infected with evil, and unless organisation could beginagain from a new original, no pure material substance could exist atall. He, therefore, by whom God had first made the world, entered intothe womb of the Virgin in the form (if I may with reverence say so) of anew organic cell; and around it, through the virtue of his creativeenergy, a material body grew again of the substance of his mother, pureof taint and clean as the first body of the first man was clean when itpassed out under his hand in the beginning of all things. In Him thuswonderfully born was the virtue which was to restore the lost power ofmankind. He came to redeem man; and, therefore, He took a human body, and He kept it pure through a human life, till the time came when itcould be applied to its marvellous purpose. He died, and then appearedwhat was the nature of a material human body when freed from thelimitations of sin. The grave could not hold it, neither was it possiblethat it should see corruption. It was real, for the disciples wereallowed to feel and handle it. He ate and drank with them to assuretheir senses. But space had no power over it, nor any of the materialobstacles which limit an ordinary power. He willed, and his body obeyed. He was here, He was there. He was visible, He was invisible. He was inthe midst of his disciples and they saw Him, and then he was gonewhither who could tell? At last He passed away to heaven; but while inheaven, He was still on earth. His body became the body of his Church onearth, not in metaphor, but in fact!--his very material body, in whichand by which the faithful would be saved. His flesh and blood werethenceforth to be their food. They were to eat it as they would eatordinary meat. They were to take it into their system, a pure materialsubstance, to leaven the old natural substance and assimilate it toitself. As they fed upon it it would grow into them, and it would becometheir own real body. Flesh grown in the old way was the body of death, but the flesh of Christ was the life of the world, over which death hadno power. Circumcision availed nothing, nor uncircumcision--but a _newcreature_--and this new creature, which the child first put on inbaptism, was born again into Christ of water and the Spirit. In theEucharist he was fed and sustained, and went on from strength tostrength; and ever as the nature of his body changed, being able torender a more complete obedience, he would at last pass away to Godthrough the gate of the grave, and stand holy and perfect in thepresence of Christ. Christ had indeed been ever present with him; butbecause while life lasted some particles of the old Adam wouldnecessarily cling to every man, the Christian's mortal eye on earthcould not see Him. Hedged in by 'his muddy vesture of decay, ' his eyes, like the eyes of the disciples of Emmaus, are holden, and only in faithhe feels Him. But death, which till Christ had died had been the lastvictory of evil, in virtue of his submission to it, became its owndestroyer, for it had power only over the tainted particles of the oldsubstance, and there was nothing needed but that these should be washedaway, and the elect would stand out at once pure and holy, clothed inimmortal bodies, like refined gold, the redeemed of God. 

The being who accomplished a work so vast--a work compared to which thefirst creation appears but a trifling difficulty--what could He be butGod? God Himself! Who but God could have wrested his prize from a powerwhich half the thinking world believed to be his coequal and coeternaladversary? He was God. He was man also, for He was the second Adam--thesecond starting-point of human growth. He was virgin born, that nooriginal impurity might infect the substance which He assumed; and beingHimself sinless, He showed, in the nature of his person, after hisresurrection, what the material body would have been in all of us exceptfor sin, and what it will be when, after feeding on it in its purity, the bodies of each of us are transfigured after its likeness. Here wasthe secret of the spirit which set St. Simeon on his pillar and sent St. Anthony to the tombs--of the night watches, the weary fasts, thepenitential scourgings, the life-long austerities which have beenalternately the glory and the reproach of the mediæval saints. Theydesired to overcome their animal bodies, and anticipate in life the workof death in uniting themselves more completely to Christ by thedestruction of the flesh, which lay as a veil between themselves andHim. 

Such I believe to have been the central idea of the beautiful creedwhich, for 1, 500 years, tuned the heart and formed the mind of thenoblest of mankind. From this centre it radiated out and spread, as timewent on, into the full circle of human activity, flinging its ownphilosophy and its own peculiar grace over the common details of thecommon life of all of us. Like the seven lamps before the Throne of God, the seven mighty angels, and the seven stars, the seven sacraments shedover mankind a never-ceasing stream of blessed influences. The priests, a holy order set apart and endowed with mysterious power, representedChrist and administered his gifts. Christ, in his twelfth year, waspresented in the Temple, and first entered on his Father's business; andthe baptised child, when it has grown to an age to become conscious ofits vow and of its privilege, again renews it in full knowledge of whatit undertakes, and receives again sacramentally a fresh gift of grace toassist it forward on its way. In maturity it seeks a companion to shareits pains and pleasures; and, again, Christ is present to consecrate theunion. Marriage, which, outside the Church, only serves to perpetuatethe curse and bring fresh inheritors of misery into the world, He madeholy by his presence at Cana, and chose it as the symbol to representhis own mystic union with his Church. Even saints cannot live without attimes some spot adhering to them. The atmosphere in which we breathe andmove is soiled, and Christ has anticipated our wants. Christ did penanceforty days in the wilderness, not to subdue his own flesh--for thatwhich was already perfect did not need subduing--but to give to penancea cleansing virtue to serve for our daily or our hourly ablution. Christconsecrates our birth; Christ throws over us our baptismal robe of pureunsullied innocence. He strengthens us as we go forward. He raises uswhen we fall. He feeds us with the substance of his own most preciousbody. In the person of his minister he does all this for us, in virtueof that which in his own person He actually performed when a man livingon this earth. Last of all, when time is drawing to its close withus--when life is past, when the work is done, and the dark gate is near, beyond which the garden of an eternal home is waiting to receive us, histender care has not forsaken us. He has taken away the sting of death, but its appearance is still terrible; and He will not leave us withoutspecial help at our last need. He tried the agony of the moment; and Hesweetens the cup for us before we drink it. We are dismissed to thegrave with our bodies anointed with oil, which He made holy in his lastanointing before his passion, and then all is over. We lie down and seemto decay--to decay--but not all. Our natural body decays, being the lastremains of the infected matter which we have inherited from Adam; butthe spiritual body, the glorified substance which has made our life, andis our real body as we are in Christ, that can never decay, but passesoff into the kingdom which is prepared for it; that other world wherethere is no sin, and God is all and in all!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] From the _Leader_, 1851. 

A PLEA FOR THE FREE DISCUSSION OF THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES. [D]

In the ordinary branches of human knowledge or enquiry, the judiciousquestioning of received opinions has been regarded as the sign ofscientific vitality, the principle of scientific advancement, the verysource and root of healthy progress and growth. If medicine had beenregulated three hundred years ago by Act of Parliament; if there hadbeen Thirty-nine Articles of Physic, and every licensed practitioner hadbeen compelled, under pains and penalties, to compound his drugs by theprescriptions of Henry the Eighth's physician, Doctor Butts, it is easyto conjecture in what state of health the people of this country wouldat present be found. Constitutions have changed with habits of life, andthe treatment of disorders has changed to meet the new conditions. Newdiseases have shown themselves of which Doctor Butts had no cognizance;new continents have given us plants with medicinal virtues previouslyunknown; new sciences, and even the mere increase of recordedexperience, have added a thousand remedies to those known to the age ofthe Tudors. If the College of Physicians had been organised into a boardof orthodoxy, and every novelty of treatment had been regarded as acrime against society, which a law had been established to punish, thehundreds who die annually from preventible causes would have beenthousands and tens of thousands. 

Astronomy is the most perfect of the sciences. The accuracy of thepresent theory of the planetary movements is tested daily and hourly bythe most delicate experiments, and the Legislature, if it so pleased, might enact the first principles of these movements into a statute, without danger of committing the law of England to falsehood. Yet, ifthe Legislature were to venture on any such paternal procedure in a fewyears gravitation itself would be called in question, and the wholescience would wither under the fatal shadow. There are many phenomenastill unexplained to give plausibility to scepticism; there are othersmore easily formularised for working purposes in the language ofHipparchus; and there would be reactionists who would invite us toreturn to the safe convictions of our forefathers. What the world hasseen the world may see again; and were it once granted that astronomywere something to be ruled by authority, new popes would imprison newGalileos; the knowledge already acquired would be strangled in the cordswhich were intended to keep it safe from harm, and, deprived of the freeair on which its life depends, it would dwindle and die. 

A few years ago, an Inspector of Schools--a Mr. JellingerSymonds--opening, perhaps for the first time, an elementary book onastronomy, came on something which he conceived to be a difficulty inthe theory of lunar motion. His objection was on the face of itplausible. The true motions of the heavenly bodies are universally theopposite of the apparent motions. Mr. Symonds conceived that the mooncould not revolve on its axis, because the same side of it wascontinually turned towards the earth; and because if it were connectedwith the earth by a rigid bar--which, as he thought, would deprive it ofpower of rotation--the relative aspects of the two bodies would remainunchanged. He sent his views to the 'Times. ' He appealed to the commonsense of the world, and common sense seemed to be on his side. The menof science were of course right; but a phenomenon, not entirely obvious, had been hitherto explained in language which the general reader couldnot readily comprehend. A few words of elucidation cleared up theconfusion. We do not recollect whether Mr. Symonds was satisfied or not;but most of us who had before received what the men of science told uswith an unintelligent and languid assent, were set thinking forourselves, and, as a result of the discussion, exchanged a confused ideafor a clear one. 

It was an excellent illustration of the true claims of authority and ofthe value of open enquiry. The ignorant man has not as good a right tohis own opinion as the instructed man. The instructed man, howeverright he may be, must not deliver his conclusions as axioms, and merelyinsist that they are true. The one asks a question, the other answersit, and all of us are the better for the business. 

Now, let us suppose the same thing to have happened when the only replyto a difficulty was an appeal to the Astronomer-Royal, where therotation of the moon was an article of salvation decreed by the law ofthe land, and where all persons admitted to hold office under the Statewere required to subscribe to it. The Astronomer-Royal--as it was, if weremember right, he was a little cross at Mr. Symond's presumption--wouldhave brought an action against him in the Court of Arches; Mr. Symondswould have been deprived of his inspectorship--for, of course, he wouldhave been obstinate in his heresy; the world outside would have had anantecedent presumption that truth lay with the man who was makingsacrifices for it, and that there was little to be said in the way ofargument for what could not stand without the help of the law. Everybodycould understand the difficulty; not everybody would have taken thetrouble to attend to the answer. Mr. Symonds would have been a Colenso, and a good many of us would have been convinced in our secret heartsthat the moon as little turned on its axis as the drawing-room table. 

As it is in idea essential to a reverence for truth to believe in itscapacity for self-defence, so practically, in every subject except one, errors are allowed free room to express themselves, and the liberty ofopinion which is the life of knowledge, as surely becomes the death offalsehood. A method--the soundness of which is so evident that to arguein favour of it is almost absurd--might be expected to have beenapplied, as a matter of course, to the one subject where mistake issupposed to be fatal, --where to come to wrong conclusions is held to bea crime for which the Maker of the universe has neither pardon nor pity. Yet many reasons, not difficult to understand, have long continued toexclude theology from the region where free discussion is supposed to beapplicable. That so many persons have a personal interest in themaintenance of particular views, would of itself be fatal to fairargument. Though they know themselves to be right, yet right is notenough for them unless there is might to support it, and those who talkmost of faith show least that they possess it. But there are deeper andmore subtle objections. The theologian requires absolute certainty, andthere are no absolute certainties in science. The conclusions of scienceare never more than in a high degree probable; they are no more than thebest explanations of phenomena which are attainable in the existingstate of knowledge. The most elementary laws are called laws only incourtesy. They are generalisations which are not considered likely torequire modification, but which no one pretends to be in the nature ofthe cause exhaustively and ultimately true. As phenomena become morecomplicated, and the data for the interpretation of them moreinadequate, the explanations offered are put forward hypothetically, andare graduated by the nature of the evidence. Such modest hesitation isaltogether unsuited to the theologian, whose certainty increases withthe mystery and obscurity of his matter; his convictions admit of noqualification; his truth is sure as the axioms of geometry; he knowswhat he believes, for he has the evidence in his heart; if he enquire, it is with a foregone conclusion, and serious doubt with him is sin. Itis in vain to point out to him the thousand forms of opinions for eachof which the same internal witness is affirmed. The Mayo peasantcrawling with bare knees over the splintered rocks on Croagh Patrick, the nun prostrate before the image of St. Mary, the Methodist in thespasmodic ecstasy of a revival, alike are conscious of emotions inthemselves which correspond to their creed: the more passionate, or--assome would say--the more unreasoning the piety, the louder and moreclear is the voice within. But these varieties are no embarrassment tothe theologian. He finds no fault with the method which is identical inthem all. Whatever the party to which he himself belongs, he is equallysatisfied that he alone has the truth; the rest are under illusions ofSatan. 

Again, we hear--or we used to hear when the High Church party were moreformidable than they are at present--much about 'the right of privatejudgment. ' 'Why, ' the eloquent Protestant would say, 'should I pin myfaith upon the Church? the Church is but a congregation of fallible men, no better able to judge than I am; I have a right to my own opinion. ' Itsounds like a paradox to say that free discussion is interfered with bya cause which, above all others, would have been expected to further it;but this in fact has been the effect, because it tends to remove thegrounds of theological belief beyond the province of argument. No onetalks of 'a right of private judgment' in anything but religion; no onebut a fool insists on his 'right to his own opinion' with his lawyer orhis doctor. Able men who have given their time to special subjects, areauthorities upon those subjects to be listened to with deference, andthe ultimate authority at any given time is the collective general senseof the wisest men living in the department to which they belong. Theutmost 'right of private judgment' which anybody claims in such cases, is the choice of the physician to whom he will trust his body, or of thecounsel to whom he will commit the conduct of his cause. The expression, as it is commonly used, implies a belief that, in matters of religion, the criteria of truth are different in kind from what prevail elsewhere, and the efforts which have been made to bring such a notion into harmonywith common sense and common subjects have not been the leastsuccessful. The High Church party used to say, as a point against theEvangelicals, that either 'the right of private judgment' meant nothing, or it meant that a man had a right to be in the wrong. 'No, ' said awriter in the 'Edinburgh Review, ' 'it means only that if a man choosesto be in the wrong, no one else has a right to interfere with him. A manhas no right to get drunk in his own house, but the policeman may notforce a way into his house and prevent him. ' The illustration fails ofits purpose. 

In the first place, the Evangelicals never contemplated a wrong use ofthe thing; they meant merely that they had a right to their own opinionsas against the Church. They did not indeed put forward their claim quiteso nakedly; they made it general, as sounding less invidious; but nobodyever heard an Evangelical admit a High Churchman's right to be a HighChurchman, or a Catholic's right to be a Catholic. 

But secondly, society has a most absolute right to prevent all manner ofevil--drunkenness, and the rest of it, if it can--only in doing so, society must not use means which would create a greater evil than itwould remedy. As a man can by no possibility be doing anything but mostfoul wrong to himself in getting drunk, society does him no wrong, butrather does him the greatest benefit, if it can possibly keep him sober;and in the same way, since a false belief in serious matters is amongthe greatest of misfortunes, so to drive it out of man, by the whip, ifit cannot be managed by persuasion, is an act of brotherly love andaffection, provided the belief really and truly is false, and you have abetter to give him in the place of it. The question is not what to do, but merely 'how to do it;' although Mr. Mill in his love of 'liberty, 'thinks otherwise. Mr. Mill demands for every man a right to say out hisconvictions in plain language, whatever they may be; and so far as hemeans that there should be no Act of Parliament to prevent him, he isperfectly just in what he says. But when Mr. Mill goes from Parliamentto public opinion--when he lays down as a general principle that thefree play of thought is unwholesomely interfered with by society, hewould take away the sole protection which we possess from the inroads ofany kind of folly. His dread of tyranny is so great, that he thinks aman better off with a false opinion of his own than with a right opinioninflicted upon him from without; while, for our own part, we should begrateful for tyranny or for anything else which would perform so usefulan office for us. 

Public opinion may be unjust at particular times and on particularsubjects; we believe it to be both unjust and unwise on the matter ofwhich we are at present speaking: but, on the whole, it is like theventilation of a house, which keeps the air pure. Much in this world hasto be taken for granted, and we cannot be for ever arguing over ourfirst principles. If a man persists in talking of what he does notunderstand, he is put down; if he sports loose views on morals at adecent dinner party, the better sort of people fight shy of him, and heis not invited again; if he profess himself a Buddhist or a Mahometan, it is assumed that he has not adopted those beliefs on seriousconviction, but rather in wilful levity and eccentricity which does notdeserve to be tolerated. Men have no right to make themselves bores andnuisances; and the common sense of mankind inflicts wholesomeinconveniences on those who carry their 'right of private judgment' toany such extremities. It is a check, the same in kind as that whichoperates so wholesomely in the sciences. Mere folly is extinguished incontempt; objections reasonably urged obtain a hearing and arereasonably met. New truths, after encountering sufficient opposition totest their value, make their way into general reception. 

A further cause which has operated to prevent theology from obtainingthe benefit of free discussion is the interpretation popularly placedupon the constitution of the Church Establishment. For fifteen centuriesof its existence, the Christian Church was supposed to be under theimmediate guidance of the Holy Spirit, which miraculously controlled itsdecisions, and precluded the possibility of error. This theory brokedown at the Reformation, but it left behind it a confused sense thattheological truth was in some way different from other truth; and, partly on grounds of public policy, partly because it was supposed tohave succeeded to the obligations and the rights of the Papacy, theState took upon itself to fix by statute the doctrines which should betaught to the people. The distractions created by divided opinions werethen dangerous. Individuals did not hesitate to ascribe to themselvesthe infallibility which they denied to the Church. Everybody wasintolerant upon principle, and was ready to cut the throat of anopponent whom his arguments had failed to convince. The State, while itmade no pretensions to Divine guidance, was compelled to interfere inself-protection; and to keep the peace of the realm, and to prevent thenation from tearing itself in pieces, a body of formulas was enacted, for the time broad and comprehensive, within which opinion might beallowed convenient latitude, while forbidden to pass beyond the border. 

It might have been thought that in abandoning for itself, and formallydenying to the Church its pretensions to immunity from error, the Statecould not have intended to bind the conscience. When this or that law ispassed, the subject is required to obey it, but he is not required toapprove of the law as just. The Prayer-Book and the Thirty-nineArticles, so far as they are made obligatory by Act of Parliament, areas much laws as any other statute. They are a rule to conduct; it is noteasy to see why they should be more; it is not easy to see why theyshould have been supposed to deprive clergymen of a right to theiropinions, or to forbid discussion of their contents. The judge is notforbidden to ameliorate the law which he administers. If in discharge ofhis duty he has to pronounce a sentence which he declares at the sametime that he thinks unjust, no indignant public accuses him ofdishonesty, or requires him to resign his office. The soldier is askedno questions as to the legitimacy of the war on which he is sent tofight; nor need he throw up his commission if he think the quarrel a badone. Doubtless, if a law was utterly iniquitous--if a war wasunmistakably wicked--honourable men might feel uncertain what to do, andwould seek some other profession rather than continue instruments ofevil. But within limits, and in questions of detail, where the serviceis generally good and honourable, we leave opinion its free play, andexaggerated scrupulousness would be folly or something worse. Somehow orother, however, this wholesome freedom is not allowed to the clergyman. The idea of absolute inward belief has been substituted for that ofobedience; and the man who, in taking orders, signs the Articles andaccepts the Prayer Book, does not merely undertake to use the servicesin the one, and abstain from contradicting to his congregation thedoctrines contained in the other; but he is held to promise what nohonest man, without presumption, can undertake to promise--that he willcontinue to think to the end of his life as he thinks when he makes hisengagement. 

It is said that if his opinions change, he may resign, and retire intolay communion. We are not prepared to say that either the Convocation of1562, or the Parliament which afterwards endorsed its proceedings, knewexactly what they meant, or did not mean; but it is quite clear thatthey did not contemplate the alternative of a clergyman's retirement. Ifthey had, they would have provided means by which he could haveabandoned his orders, and not have remained committed for life to aprofession from which he could not escape. If the popular theory ofsubscription be true, and the Articles are articles of belief, areasonable human being, when little more than a boy, pledges himself toa long series of intricate and highly-difficult propositions of abstrusedivinity. He undertakes never to waver or doubt--never to allow his mindto be shaken, whatever the weight of argument or evidence brought tobear upon him. That is to say, he promises to do what no man living hasa right to promise to do. He is doing, on the authority of Parliament, precisely what the Church of Rome required him to do on the authority ofa Council. 

If a clergyman--in trouble amidst the abstruse subjects with which hehas to deal, or unable to reconcile some new-discovered truth of sciencewith the established formulas--puts forward his perplexities; if heventures a doubt of the omniscience of the statesmen and divines of thesixteenth century, which they themselves disowned, there is an instantcry to have him stifled, silenced, or trampled down; and if no longerpunished in life and limb, to have him deprived of the means on whichlife and limb can be supported, while with ingenious tyranny he isforbidden to maintain himself by any other occupation. 

So far have we gone in this direction, that when the 'Essays andReviews' appeared, it was gravely said--and said by men who had noprofessional antipathy to them--that the writers had broken their faith. Laymen were free to say what they pleased on such subjects; clergymenwere the hired exponents of the established opinions, and were committedto them in thought and word. It was one more anomaly where there wereenough already. To say that the clergy, who are set apart to study aparticular subject, are to be the only persons unpermitted to have anindependent opinion upon it, is like saying that lawyers must take nopart in the amendment of the statute-book; that engineers must be silentupon mechanism; and if an improvement is wanted in the art of medicine, physicians may have nothing to say to it. 

These causes would, perhaps, have been insufficient to repress freeenquiry, if there had been on the part of the really able men among us adetermination to break the ice; in other words, if theology hadpreserved the same commanding interest for the more powerful minds withwhich it affected them three hundred years ago. But on the one hand, asense, half serious, half languid, of the hopelessness of the subjecthas produced an indisposition to meddle with it; on the other, there hasbeen a creditable reluctance to disturb by discussion the minds of theuneducated or half-educated, to whom the established religion is simplyan expression of the obedience which they owe to Almighty God, on thedetails of which they think little, and are therefore unconscious of itsdifficulties, while in general it is the source of all that is best andnoblest in their lives and actions. 

This last motive no doubt deserves respect, but the force which it oncepossessed it possesses no longer. The uncertainty which once affectedonly the more instructed extends now to all classes of society. Asuperficial crust of agreement, wearing thinner day by day, isundermined everywhere by a vague misgiving; and there is an unrestwhich will be satisfied only when the sources of it are probed to thecore. The Church authorities repeat a series of phrases which they arepleased to call answers to objections; they treat the most seriousgrounds of perplexity as if they were puerile and trifling; while it isnotorious that for a century past extremely able men have either notknown what to say about them, or have not said what they thought. On theContinent the peculiar English view has scarcely a single educateddefender. Even in England the laity keep their judgment in suspense, orremain warily silent. 

'Of what religion are you, Mr. Rogers?' said a lady once. 

'What religion, madam? I am of the religion of all sensible men. '

'And what is that?' she asked. 

'All sensible men, madam, keep that to themselves. '

If Mr. Rogers had gone on to explain himself, he would have said, perhaps, that where the opinions of those best able to judge aredivided, the questions at issue are doubtful. Reasonable men who areunable to give them special attention withhold their judgment, whilethose who are able, form their conclusions with diffidence and modesty. But theologians will not tolerate diffidence; they demand absoluteassent, and will take nothing short of it; and they affect, therefore, to drown in foolish ridicule whatever troubles or displeases them. TheBishop of Oxford talks in the old style of punishment. The Archbishop ofCanterbury refers us to Usher as our guide in Hebrew chronology. Theobjections of the present generation of 'infidels, ' he says, are thesame which have been refuted again and again, and are such as a childmight answer. The young man just entering upon the possession of hisintellect, with a sense of responsibility for his belief, and moreanxious for truth than for success in life, finds, when he looks intothe matter, that the archbishop has altogether misrepresented it; thatin fact, like other official persons, he had been using merely astereotyped form of words, to which he attached no definite meaning. Thewords are repeated year after year, but the enemies refuse to beexorcised. They come and come again, from Spinoza and Lessing to Straussand Renan. The theologians have resolved no single difficulty; theyconvince no one who is not convinced already; and a Colenso comingfresh to the subject with no more than a year's study, throws the Churchof England into convulsions. 

If there were any real danger that Christianity would cease to bebelieved, it would be no more than a fulfilment of prophecy. The statein which the Son of Man would find the world at his coming he did notsay would be a state of faith. But if that dark time is ever literallyto come upon the earth, there are no present signs of it. The creed ofeighteen centuries is not about to fade away like an exhalation, nor arethe new lights of science so exhilarating that serious persons can lookwith comfort to exchanging one for the other. Christianity has ableradvocates than its professed defenders, in those many quiet and humblemen and women who in the light of it and the strength of it live holy, beautiful, and self-denying lives. The God that answers by fire is theGod whom mankind will acknowledge; and so long as the fruits of theSpirit continue to be visible in charity, in self-sacrifice, in thosegraces which raise human creatures above themselves, and invest themwith that beauty of holiness which only religion confers, thoughtfulpersons will remain convinced that with them in some form or other isthe secret of truth. The body will not thrive on poison, or the soul onfalsehood; and as the vital processes of health are too subtle forscience to follow; as we choose our food, not by the most carefulchemical analysis, but by the experience of its effects upon the system;so when a particular belief is fruitful in nobleness of character, weneed trouble ourselves very little with scientific demonstrations thatit is false. The most deadly poison may be chemically undistinguishablefrom substances which are perfectly innocent. Prussic acid, we are told, is formed of the same elements, combined in the same proportions, asgum-arabic. 

What that belief is for which the fruits speak thus so positively, it isless easy to define. Religion from the beginning of time has expandedand changed with the growth of knowledge. The religion of the prophetswas not the religion which was adapted to the hardness of heart of theIsraelites of the Exodus. The Gospel set aside the Law; the creed of theearly Church was not the creed of the Middle Ages, any more than thecreed of Luther and Cranmer was the creed of St. Bernard and Aquinas. Old things pass away, new things come in their place; and they in theirturn grow old, and give place to others; yet in each of the many formswhich Christianity has assumed in the world, holy men have lived anddied, and have had the witness of the Spirit that they were not far fromthe truth. It may be that the faith which saves is the something held incommon by all sincere Christians, and by those as well who should comefrom the east and the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, when thechildren of the covenant would be cast out. It may be that the trueteaching of our Lord is overlaid with doctrines; and theology, wheninsisting on the reception of its huge catena of formulas, may bebinding a yoke upon our necks which neither we nor our fathers were ableto bear. 

But it is not the object of this paper to put forward either this or anyother particular opinion. The writer is conscious only that he ispassing fast towards the dark gate which soon will close behind him. Hebelieves that some kind of sincere and firm conviction on these thingsis of infinite moment to him, and, entirely diffident of his own powerto find his way towards such a conviction, he is both ready and anxiousto disclaim 'all right of private judgment' in the matter. He wishesonly to learn from those who are able to teach him. The learned prelatestalk of the presumptuousness of human reason; they tell us that doubtsarise from the consciousness of sin and the pride of the unregenerateheart. The present writer, while he believes generally that reason, however inadequate, is the best faculty to which we have to trust, yetis most painfully conscious of the weakness of his own reason; and oncelet the real judgment of the best and wisest men be declared--let thosewho are most capable of forming a sound opinion, after reviewing thewhole relations of science, history, and what is now received asrevelation, tell us fairly how much of the doctrines popularly taughtthey conceive to be adequately established, how much to be uncertain, and how much, if anything, to be mistaken; there is scarcely, perhaps, asingle serious enquirer who would not submit with delight to a courtwhich is the highest on earth. 

Mr. Mansell tells us that in the things of God reason is beyond itsdepth, that the wise and the unwise are on the same level of incapacity, and that we must accept what we find established, or we must believenothing. We presume that Mr. Mansell's dilemma itself is a conclusionof reason. Do what we will, reason is and must be our ultimateauthority; and were the collective sense of mankind to declare Mr. Mansell right, we should submit to that opinion as readily as toanother. But the collective sense of mankind is less acquiescent. He hasbeen compared to a man sitting on the end of a plank and deliberatelysawing off his seat. It seems never to have occurred to him that, if heis right, he has no business to be a Protestant. What Mr. Mansell saysto Professor Jowett, Bishop Gardiner in effect replied to Frith andRidley. Frith and Ridley said that transubstantiation was unreasonable;Gardiner answered that there was the letter of Scripture for it, andthat the human intellect was no measure of the power of God. Yet theReformers somehow believed, and Mr. Mansell by his place in the Churchof England seems to agree with them, that the human intellect was not sowholly incompetent. It might be a weak guide, but it was better thannone; and they declared on grounds of mere reason, that Christ being inheaven and not on earth, 'it was contrary to the truth for a naturalbody to be in two places at once. ' The common sense of the country wasof the same opinion, and the illusion was at an end. 

There have been 'Aids to Faith' produced lately, and 'Replies to theSeven Essayists, ' 'Answers to Colenso, ' and much else of the kind. Weregret to say that they have done little for us. The very life of oursouls is at issue in the questions which have been raised, and we arefed with the professional commonplaces of the members of a close guild, men holding high office in the Church, or expecting to hold high officethere; in either case with a strong temporal interest in the defence ofthe institution which they represent. We desire to know what those ofthe clergy think whose love of truth is unconnected with their prospectsin life; we desire to know what the educated laymen, the lawyers, thehistorians, the men of science, the statesmen think; and these are forthe most part silent, or confess themselves modestly uncertain. Theprofessional theologians alone are loud and confident; but they speak inthe old angry tone which rarely accompanies deep and wise convictions. They do not meet the real difficulties; they mistake them, misrepresentthem, claim victories over adversaries with whom they have never evencrossed swords, and leap to conclusions with a precipitancy at which wecan only smile. It has been the unhappy manner of their class fromimmemorial time; they call it zeal for the Lord, as if it were beyondall doubt that they were on God's side--as if serious enquiry aftertruth was something which they were entitled to resent. They treatintellectual difficulties as if they deserved rather to be condemned andpunished than considered and weighed, and rather stop their ears and runwith one accord upon anyone who disagrees with them than listenpatiently to what he has to say. 

We do not propose to enter in detail upon the particular points whichdemand re-discussion. It is enough that the more exact habit of thoughtwhich science has engendered, and the closer knowledge of the value andnature of evidence, has notoriously made it necessary that the groundsshould be reconsidered on which we are to believe that one country andone people was governed for sixteen centuries on principles differentfrom those which we now find to prevail universally. One of manyquestions, however, shall be briefly glanced at, on which the real issueseems habitually to be evaded. 

Much has been lately said and written on the authenticity of thePentateuch and the other historical books of the Old Testament. TheBishop of Natal has thrown out in a crude form the critical results ofthe enquiries of the Germans, coupled with certain arithmeticalcalculations, for which he has a special aptitude. He supposes himselfto have proved that the first five books of the Bible are a compilationof uncertain date, full of inconsistencies and impossibilities. Theapologists have replied that the objections are not absolutelyconclusive, that the events described in the Book of Exodus mightpossibly, under certain combinations of circumstances, have actuallytaken place; and they then pass to the assumption that because a storyis not necessarily false, therefore it is necessarily true. We have nointention of vindicating Dr. Colenso. His theological training makes hisarguments very like those of his opponents, and he and Dr. M'Call maysettle their differences between themselves. The question is at oncewider and simpler than any which has been raised in that controversy. Were it proved beyond possibility of error that the Pentateuch waswritten by Moses, that those and all the books of the Old and NewTestaments were really the work of the writers whose names they bear;were the Mosaic cosmogony in harmony with physical discoveries; and werethe supposed inconsistencies and contradictions shown to have noexistence except in Dr. Colenso's imagination--we should not haveadvanced a single step towards making good the claim put forward for theBible, that it is absolutely and unexceptionably true in all its parts. The 'genuineness and authenticity' argument is irrelevant and needless. The clearest demonstration of the human authorship of the Pentateuchproves nothing about its immunity from errors. If there are no mistakesin it, it was not the workmanship of man; and if it was inspired by theHoly Spirit, there is no occasion to show that the hand of Moses was theinstrument made use of. To the most excellent of contemporary histories, to histories written by eye-witnesses of the facts which they describe, we accord but a limited confidence. The highest intellectual competence, the most admitted truthfulness, immunity from prejudice, and the absenceof temptation to misstate the truth; these things may secure greatcredibility, but they are no guarantee for minute and circumstantialexactness. Two historians, though with equal gifts and equalopportunities, never describe events in exactly the same way. Twowitnesses in a court of law, while they agree in the main, invariablydiffer in some particulars. It appears as if men could not relate factsprecisely as they saw or as they heard them. The different parts of astory strike different imaginations unequally; and the mind, as thecircumstances pass through it, alters their proportions unconsciously, or shifts the perspective. The credit which we give to the mostauthentic work of a man has no resemblance to that universal acceptancewhich is demanded for the Bible. It is not a difference of degree: it isa difference in kind; and we desire to know on what ground thisinfallibility, which we do not question, but which is not proved, demands our belief. Very likely, the Bible is thus infallible. Unless itis, there can be no moral obligation to accept the facts which itrecords; and though there may be intellectual error in denying them, there can be no moral sin. Facts may be better or worse authenticated;but all the proofs in the world of the genuineness and authenticity ofthe human handiwork cannot establish a claim upon the conscience. Itmight be foolish to question Thucydides' account of Pericles, but noone would call it sinful. Men part with all sobriety of judgment whenthey come on ground of this kind. When Sir Henry Rawlinson read the nameof Sennacherib on the Assyrian marbles, and found allusions there to theIsraelites in Palestine, we were told that a triumphant answer had beenfound to the cavils of sceptics, and a convincing proof of the inspiredtruth of the Divine Oracles. Bad arguments in a good cause are a sureway to bring distrust upon it. The Divine Oracles may be true, and maybe inspired; but the discoveries at Nineveh certainly do not prove themso. No one supposes that the Books of Kings or the prophecies of Isaiahand Ezekiel were the work of men who had no knowledge of Assyria or theAssyrian Princes. It is possible that in the excavations at Carthagesome Punic inscription may be found confirming Livy's account of thebattle of Cannæ; but we shall not be obliged to believe therefore in theinspiration of Livy, or rather (for the argument comes to that) in theinspiration of the whole Latin literature. 

We are not questioning the fact that the Bible is infallible; we desireonly to be told on what evidence that great and awful fact concerning itproperly rests. It would seem, indeed, as if instinct had been wiserthan argument--as if it had been felt that nothing short of this literaland close inspiration could preserve the facts on which Christianitydepends. The history of the early world is a history everywhere ofmarvels. The legendary literature of every nation upon earth tells thesame stories of prodigies and wonders, of the appearances of the godsupon earth, and of their intercourse with men. The lives of the saintsof the Catholic Church, from the time of the Apostles till the presentday, are a complete tissue of miracles resembling and rivalling those ofthe Gospels. Some of these stories are romantic and imaginative; someclear, literal, and prosaic; some rest on mere tradition; some on thesworn testimony of eye-witnesses; some are obvious fables; some are aswell authenticated as facts of such a kind can be authenticated at all. The Protestant Christian rejects every one of them--rejects them withoutenquiry--involves those for which there is good authority and those forwhich there is none or little in one absolute, contemptuous, andsweeping denial. The Protestant Christian feels it more likely, in thewords of Hume, that men should deceive or be deceived, than that thelaws of nature should be violated. At this moment we are beset withreports of conversations with spirits, of tables miraculously lifted, ofhands projected out of the world of shadows into this mortal life. Anunusually able, accomplished person, accustomed to deal withcommon-sense facts, a celebrated political economist, and notorious forbusiness-like habits, assured this writer that a certain mesmerist, whowas my informant's intimate friend, had raised a dead girl to life. Weshould believe the people who tell us these things in any ordinarymatter: they would be admitted in a court of justice as good witnessesin a criminal case, and a jury would hang a man on their word. Theperson just now alluded to is incapable of telling a wilful lie; yet ourexperience of the regularity of nature on one side is so uniform, andour experience of the capacities of human folly on the other is solarge, that when people tell us these wonderful stories, most of us arecontented to smile; and we do not care so much as to turn out of our wayto examine them. 

The Bible is equally a record of miracles; but as from other historieswe reject miracles without hesitation, so of those in the Bible weinsist on the universal acceptance: the former are all false, the latterare all true. It is evident that, in forming conclusions so sweeping asthese, we cannot even suppose that we are being guided by what is calledhistorical evidence. Were it admitted that, as a whole, the miracles ofthe Bible are better authenticated than the miracles of the saints, weshould be far removed still from any large inference, that in the oneset there is no room for falsehood, in the other no room for truth. Thewriter or writers of the Books of Kings are not known. The booksthemselves are in fact confessedly taken from older writings which arelost; and the accounts of the great prophets of Israel are acounterpart, curiously like, of those of the mediæval saints. In manyinstances the authors of the lives of these saints were their companionsand friends. Why do we feel so sure that what we are told of Elijah orElisha took place exactly as we read it? Why do we reject the account ofSt. Columba or St. Martin as a tissue of idle fable? Why should not Godgive a power to the saint which He had given to the prophet? We canproduce no reason from the nature of things, for we know not what thenature of things is; and if down to the death of the Apostles theministers of religion were allowed to prove their commission by workingmiracles, what right have we, on grounds either of history orphilosophy, to draw a clear line at the death of St. John--to say thatbefore that time all such stories were true, and after it all werefalse?

There is no point on which Protestant controversialists evade the realquestion more habitually than on that of miracles. They accuse those whowithhold that unreserved and absolute belief which they require for allwhich they accept themselves, of denying that miracles are possible. They assume this to be the position taken up by the objector, andproceed easily to argue that man is no judge of the power of God. Ofcourse he is not. No sane man ever raised his narrow understanding intoa measure of the possibilities of the universe; nor does any person withany pretensions to religion disbelieve in miracles of some kind. To prayis to expect a miracle. When we pray for the recovery of a sick friend, for the gift of any blessing, or the removal of any calamity, we expectthat God will do something by an act of his personal will whichotherwise would not have been done--that he will suspend the ordinaryrelations of natural cause and effect; and this is the very idea of amiracle. The thing we pray for may be given us, and no miracle may havetaken place. It may be given to us by natural causes, and would haveoccurred whether we had prayed or not. But prayer itself in its veryessence implies a belief in the possible intervention of a power whichis above nature. The question about miracles is simply one ofevidence--whether in any given case the proof is so strong that no roomis left for mistake, exaggeration, or illusion, while more evidence isrequired to establish a fact antecedently improbable than is sufficientfor a common occurrence. 

It has been said recently by 'A Layman, ' in a letter to Mr. Maurice, that the resurrection of our Lord is as well authenticated as the deathof Julius Cæsar. It is far better authenticated, unless we are mistakenin supposing the Bible inspired; or if we admit as evidence that inwardassurance of the Christian, which would make him rather die thandisbelieve a truth so dear to him. But if the layman meant that therewas as much proof of it, in the sense in which proof is understood in acourt of justice, he could scarcely have considered what he was saying. Julius Cæsar was killed in a public place, in the presence of friendand foe, in a remarkable but still perfectly natural manner. Thecircumstances were minutely known to all the world, and were neverdenied or doubted by any one. Our Lord, on the other hand, seemspurposely to have withheld such public proof of his resurrection aswould have left no room for unbelief. He showed himself, 'not to all thepeople'--not to his enemies, whom his appearance would haveoverwhelmed--but 'to witnesses chosen before;' to the circle of his ownfriends. There is no evidence which a jury could admit that he was everactually dead. So unusual was it for persons crucified to die so soon, that Pilate, we are told, 'marvelled. ' The subsequent appearances werestrange, and scarcely intelligible. Those who saw Him did not recogniseHim till He was made known to them in the breaking of bread. He wasvisible and invisible. He was mistaken by those who were most intimatewith Him for another person; nor do the accounts agree which are givenby the different Evangelists. Of investigation in the modern sense(except in the one instance of St. Thomas, and St. Thomas was ratherrebuked than praised) there was none, and could be none. The evidenceoffered was different in kind, and the blessing was not to those whosatisfied themselves of the truth of the fact by a searching enquiry, but who gave their assent with the unhesitating confidence of love. 

St. Paul's account of his own conversion is an instance of the kind oftestimony which then worked the strongest conviction. St. Paul, a fieryfanatic on a mission of persecution with the midday Syrian sun streamingdown upon his head, was struck to the ground, and saw in a vision ourLord in the air. If such a thing were to occur at the present day, andif a modern physician were consulted about it, he would say, withouthesitation, that it was an effect of an overheated brain and that therewas nothing in it extraordinary or unusual. If the impression left bythe appearance had been too strong for such an explanation to besatisfactory, the person to whom it occurred, especially if he was a manof St Paul's intellectual stature, would have at once examined into thefacts otherwise known, connected with the subject of what he had seen. St. Paul had evidently before disbelieved our Lord's resurrection--haddisbelieved it fiercely and passionately; we should have expected thathe would at once have sought for those who could best have told him thedetails of the truth. St. Paul, however, did nothing of the kind. Hewent for a year into Arabia, and when at last he returned to Jerusalem, he rather held aloof from those who had been our Lord's companions, andwho had witnessed his ascension. He saw Peter, he saw James; 'of therest of the apostles saw he none. ' To him evidently the proof of theresurrection was the vision which he had himself seen. It was to thatwhich he always referred when called on for a defence of his faith. 

Of evidence for the resurrection, in the common sense of the word, theremay be enough to show that something extraordinary occurred; but notenough, unless we assume the fact to be true on far other grounds, toproduce any absolute and unhesitating conviction; and inasmuch as theresurrection is the keystone of Christianity, the belief in it must besomething far different from that suspended judgment in which historyalone would leave us. 

Human testimony, we repeat, under the most favourable circumstancesimaginable, knows nothing of 'absolute certainty;' and if historicalfacts are bound up with the creed, and if they are to be received withthe same completeness as the laws of conscience, they rest, and mustrest, either on the divine truth of Scripture, or on the divine witnessin ourselves. On human evidence the miracles of St. Teresa and St. Francis of Assisi are as well established as those of the New Testament. 

M. Ernest Renan has recently produced an account of the Gospel storywhich, written as it is by a man of piety, intellect, and imagination, is spreading rapidly through the educated world. Carrying out theprinciples with which Protestants have swept modern history clear ofmiracles to their natural conclusions, he dismisses all that ismiraculous from the life of our Lord, and endeavours to reproduce theoriginal Galilean youth who lived and taught, and died in Palestineeighteen hundred years ago. We have no intention of reviewing M. Renan. He will be read soon enough by many who would better consider theirpeace of mind by leaving him alone. For ourselves, we are unable to seeby what right, if he rejects the miraculous part of the narrative, heretains the rest; the imagination and the credulity which inventextraordinary incidents, invent ordinary incidents also; and if thedivine element in the life is legendary, the human may be legendaryalso. But there is one lucid passage in the introduction which wecommend to the perusal of controversial theologians:--

'No miracle such as those of which early histories are full has takenplace under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries inwhich miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who aredisposed to believe them. No miracle has ever been performed before anassemblage of spectators capable of testing its reality. Neitheruneducated people, nor even men of the world, have the requisitecapacity; great precautions are needed, and a long habit of scientificresearch. Have we not seen men of the world in our own time become thedupes of the most childish and absurd illusions? And if it be certainthat no contemporary miracles will bear investigation, is it notpossible that the miracles of the past, were we able to examine intothem in detail, would be found equally to contain an element of error?It is not in the name of this or that philosophy, it is in the name ofan experience which never varies, that we banish miracles from history. We do not say a miracle is impossible--we say only that no miracle hasever yet been proved. Let a worker of miracles come forward to-morrowwith pretensions serious enough to deserve examination. Let us supposehim to announce that he is able to raise a dead man to life. What wouldbe done? A committee would be appointed, composed of physiologists, physicians, chemists, and persons accustomed to exact investigation; abody would then be selected which the committee would assure itself wasreally dead; and a place would be chosen where the experiment was totake place. Every precaution would be taken to leave no opening foruncertainty; and if, under those conditions, the restoration to life waseffected, a probability would be arrived at which would be almost equalto certainty. An experiment, however, should always admit of beingrepeated. What a man has done once he should be able to do again; and inmiracles there can be no question of ease or difficulty. The performerwould be requested to repeat the operation under other circumstancesupon other bodies; and if he succeeded on every occasion, two pointswould be established: first, that there may be in this world such thingsas supernatural operations; and, secondly, that the power to performthem is delegated to, or belongs to, particular persons. But who doesnot perceive that no miracle was ever performed under such conditions asthese?'

We have quoted this passage because it expresses with extreme precisionand clearness the common-sense principle which we apply to allsupernatural stories of our own time, which Protestant theologiansemploy against the whole cycle of Catholic miracles, and which M. Renanis only carrying to its logical conclusions in applying to the historyof our Lord, if the Gospels are tried by the mere tests of historicalcriticism. The Gospels themselves tell us why M. Renan's conditions werenever satisfied. Miracles were not displayed in the presence of scepticsto establish scientific truths. When the adulterous generation soughtafter a sign, the sign was not given; nay, it is even said that in thepresence of unbelief, our Lord was not able to work miracles. Butscience has less respect for that undoubting and submissive willingnessto believe; and it is quite certain that if we attempt to establish thetruth of the New Testament on the principles of Paley--if with ProfessorJowett 'we interpret the Bible as any other book, ' the element ofmiracle which has evaporated from the entire surface of human historywill not maintain itself in the sacred ground of the Gospels, and thefacts of Christianity will melt in our hands like a snowball. 

Nothing less than a miraculous history can sustain the credibility ofmiracles, and nothing could be more likely, if revelation be a realityand not a dream, than that the history containing it should be saved inits composition from the intermixture of human infirmity. This is theposition in which instinct long ago taught Protestants to entrenchthemselves, and where alone they can hope to hold their ground: onceestablished in these lines, they were safe and unassailable, unless itcould be demonstrated that any fact or facts related in the Bible werecertainly untrue. 

Nor would it be necessary to say any more upon the subject. Those whobelieved Christianity would admit the assumption; those who disbelievedChristianity would repudiate it. The argument would be narrowed to thatplain and single issue, and the elaborate treatises upon externalevidence would cease to bring discredit upon the cause by theirfeebleness. Unfortunately--and this is the true secret of our presentdistractions--it seems certain that in some way or other this belief ininspiration itself requires to be revised. We are compelled to examinemore precisely what we mean by the word. The account of the creation ofman and the world which is given in Genesis, and which is made by St. Paul the basis of his theology, has not yet been reconciled with factswhich science knows to be true. Death was in the world before Adam'ssin, and unless Adam's age be thrust back to a distance which noingenuity can torture the letter of Scripture into recognising, men andwomen lived and died upon the earth whole millenniums before the Eve ofSacred History listened to the temptation of the snake. Neither has anysuch deluge as that from which, according to the receivedinterpretation, the ark saved Noah, swept over the globe within thehuman period. We are told that it was not God's purpose to anticipatethe natural course of discovery: as the story of the creation waswritten in human language, so the details of it may have been adapted tothe existing state of human knowledge. The Bible, it is said, was notintended to teach men science, but to teach them what was necessary forthe moral training of their souls. It may be that this is true. Spiritual grace affects the moral character of men, but leaves theirintellect unimproved. The most religious men are as liable as atheiststo ignorance of ordinary facts, and inspiration may be only infalliblewhen it touches on truths necessary to salvation. But if it be so, thereare many things in the Bible which must become as uncertain as itsgeology or its astronomy. There is the long secular history of theJewish people. Let it be once established that there is room for erroranywhere, and we have no security for the accuracy of this history. Theinspiration of the Bible is the foundation of our whole belief; and itis a grave matter if we are uncertain to what extent it reaches, or howmuch and what it guarantees to us as true. We cannot live onprobabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peacemust be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or itis nothing. It may be that all intellectual efforts to arrive at it arein vain; that it is given to those to whom it is given, and withheldfrom those from whom it is withheld. It may be that the existing beliefis undergoing a silent modification, like those to which thedispensations of religion have been successively subjected; or, again, it may be that to the creed as it is already established there isnothing to be added, and nothing any more to be taken from it. At thismoment, however, the most vigorous minds appear least to see their wayto a conclusion; and notwithstanding all the school and church building, the extended episcopate, and the religious newspapers, a general doubtis coming up like a thunderstorm against the wind, and blackening thesky. Those who cling most tenaciously to the faith in which they wereeducated, yet confess themselves perplexed. They know what they believe;but why they believe it, or why they should require others to believe, they cannot tell or cannot agree. Between the authority of the Churchand the authority of the Bible, the testimony of history and thetestimony of the Spirit, the ascertained facts of science and thecontradictory facts which seem to be revealed, the minds of men aretossed to and fro, harassed by the changed attitude in which scientificinvestigation has placed us all towards accounts of supernaturaloccurrences. We thrust the subject aside; we take refuge in practicalwork; we believe, perhaps, that the situation is desperate, and hopelessof improvement; we refuse to let the question be disturbed. But wecannot escape from our shadow, and the spirit of uncertainty will hauntthe world like an uneasy ghost, till we take it by the throat like men. 

We return then to the point from which we set out. The time is past forrepression. Despotism has done its work; but the day of despotism isgone, and the only remedy is a full and fair investigation. Things willnever right themselves if they are let alone. It is idle to say peacewhen there is no peace; and the concealed imposthume is more dangerousthan an open wound. The law in this country has postponed our trial, butcannot save us from it; and the questions which have agitated theContinent are agitating us at last. The student who twenty years ago wascontented with the Greek and Latin fathers and the Anglican divines, nowreads Ewald and Renan. The Church authorities still refuse to look theirdifficulties in the face: they prescribe for mental troubles theestablished doses of Paley and Pearson; they refuse dangerous questionsas sinful, and tread the round of commonplace in placid comfort. But itwill not avail. Their pupils grow to manhood, and fight the battle forthemselves, unaided by those who ought to have stood by them in theirtrial, and could not or would not; and the bitterness of thoseconflicts, and the end of most of them in heart-broken uncertainty orcareless indifference, is too notorious to all who care to know aboutsuch things. 

We cannot afford year after year to be distracted with the tentativescepticism of essayists and reviewers. In a healthy condition of publicopinion such a book as Bishop Colenso's would have passed unnoticed, orrather would never have been written, for the difficulties with which itdeals would have been long ago met and disposed of. When questions rosein the early and middle ages of the Church, they were decided bycouncils of the wisest: those best able to judge met together, andcompared their thoughts, and conclusions were arrived at whichindividuals could accept and act upon. At the beginning of the EnglishReformation, when Protestant doctrine was struggling for reception, andthe old belief was merging in the new, the country was deliberately heldin formal suspense. Protestants and Catholics were set to preach onalternate Sundays in the same pulpit; subjects were discussed freely inthe ears of the people; and at last, when all had been said on bothsides, Convocation and Parliament embodied the result in formulas. Councils will no longer answer the purpose; the clergy have no longer asuperiority of intellect or cultivation; and a conference of prelatesfrom all parts of Christendom, or even from all departments of theEnglish Church, would not present an edifying spectacle. Parliament mayno longer meddle with opinions unless it be to untie the chains which itforged three centuries ago. But better than councils, better thansermons, better than Parliament, is that free discussion through a freepress which is the best instrument for the discovery of truth, and themost effectual means for preserving it. 

We shall be told, perhaps, that we are beating the air--that the pressis free, and that all men may and do write what they please. It is notso. Discussion is not free so long as the clergy who take any side butone are liable to be prosecuted and deprived of their means of living;it is not free so long as the expression of doubt is considered as a sinby public opinion and as a crime by the law. So far are we from freediscussion, that the world is not yet agreed that a free discussion isdesirable; and till it be so agreed, the substantial intellect of thecountry will not throw itself into the question. The battle willcontinue to be fought by outsiders, who suffice to disturb a reposewhich they cannot restore; and that collective voice of the nationalunderstanding, which alone can give back to us a peaceful and assuredconviction, will not be heard. 

FOOTNOTES:

[D] _Fraser's Magazine_, 1863. 

CRITICISM AND THE GOSPEL HISTORY. [E]

The spirit of criticism is not the spirit of religion. The spirit ofcriticism is a questioning spirit; the spirit of religion is a spirit offaith, of humility and submission. Other qualities may go to theformation of a religious character in the highest and grandest sense ofthe word; but the virtues which religious teachers most generallyapprove, which make up the ideal of a Catholic saint, which the Catholicand all other churches endeavour most to cultivate in their children, are those of passive and loyal obedience, a devotion without reserve orqualification; or to use the technical word, 'a spirit ofteachableness. ' A religious education is most successful when it hasformed a mind to which difficulties are welcome as an opportunity forthe triumph of faith--which regards doubts as temptations to be resistedlike the suggestions of sensuality, and which alike in action or opinionfollows the path prescribed to it with affectionate and unhesitatingconfidence. 

To men or women of the tender and sensitive piety which is produced bysuch a training, an enquiry into the grounds of its faith appearsshocking and profane. To demand an explanation of ambiguities ormysteries of which they have been accustomed to think only upon theirknees, is as it were to challenge the Almighty to explain his ways tohis creatures, and to refuse obedience unless human presumption has beenfirst gratified. 

Undoubtedly, not in religion only, but in any branch of human knowledge, teachableness is the condition of growth. We augur ill for the future ofthe youth who sets his own judgment against that of his instructors, andrefuses to believe what cannot be at once made plain to him. Yet again, the wise instructor will not lightly discourage questions which areprompted by an intelligent desire of knowledge. That an unenquiringsubmission produces characters of great and varied beauty; that it hasinspired the most splendid acts of endurance which have given a lustreto humanity, no one will venture to deny. A genial faith is one of thatgroup of qualities which commend themselves most to the young, thegenerous, and the enthusiastic--to those whose native and originalnobleness has suffered least from contact with the world--which belongrather to the imagination than the reason, and stand related to truththrough the emotions rather than through the sober calculations ofprobability. It is akin to loyalty, to enthusiasm, to hero-worship, tothat deep affection to a person or a cause which can see no fault inwhat it loves. 

'Belief, ' says Mr. Sewell, 'is a virtue; doubt is a sin. ' Iago isnothing if not critical; and the sceptical spirit--_der Geist der stetsverneint_--which is satisfied with nothing, which sees in everythinggood the seed of evil, and the weak spot in every great cause or nature, has been made the special characteristic--we all feel with justice--ofthe devil. 

And yet this devotedness or devotion, this reverence for authority, isbut one element of excellence. To reverence is good; but on the onecondition that the object of it be a thing which deserves reverence; andthe necessary complement, the security that we are not bestowing ourbest affections where they should not be given, must be looked for insome quality which, if less attractive, is no less essential for ourtrue welfare. To prove all things--to try the spirits whether they be ofGod--is a duty laid upon us by the highest authority; and what is calledprogress in human things--religious as well as material--has been dueuniformly to a dissatisfaction with them as they are. Every advance inscience, every improvement in the command of the mechanical forces ofnature, every step in political or social freedom, has risen in thefirst instance from an act of scepticism, from an uncertainty whetherthe formulas, or the opinions, or the government, or the receivedpractical theories were absolutely perfect; or whether beyond the circleof received truths there might not lie something broader, deeper, truer, and thus better deserving the acceptance of mankind. 

Submissiveness, humility, obedience, produce if uncorrected, in politicsa nation of slaves, whose baseness becomes an incentive to tyranny; inreligion, they produce the consecration of falsehood, poperies, immaculate conceptions, winking images, and the confessional. The spiritof enquiry if left to itself becomes in like manner a disease ofuncertainty, and terminates in universal scepticism. It seems as if in ahealthy order of things, to the willingness to believe there should bechained as its inseparable companion a jealousy of deception; and thereis no lesson more important for serious persons to impress uponthemselves than that each of these temperaments must learn to toleratethe other; faith accepting from reason the sanction of its service, andreason receiving in return the warm pulsations of life. The twoprinciples exist together in the highest natures; and the man who in thebest sense of the word is devout, is also the most cautious to whom orto what he pays his devotion. Among the multitude, the units of whichare each inadequate and incomplete, the elements are disproportionatelymixed; some men are humble and diffident, some are sceptical andenquiring; yet both are filling a place in the great intellectualeconomy; both contribute to make up the sum and proportion of qualitieswhich are required to hold the balance even; and neither party isentitled to say to the other, 'Stand by; I am holier than thou. '

And as it is with individuals, so is it also with whole periods andcycles. For centuries together the believing spirit held undisputedsovereignty; and these were what are called 'ages of faith;' ages, thatis, in which the highest business of the intellect was to pray ratherthan to investigate; when for every unusual phenomenon a supernaturalcause was instinctively assumed; when wonders were credible inproportion to their magnitude; and theologians, with easy command ofbelief, added miracle to miracle and piled dogma upon dogma. Then thetide changed; a fresh era opened, which in the eyes of those whoconsidered the old system the only right one, was the letting loose ofthe impersonated spirit of evil; when profane eyes were looking theiridols in the face; when men were saying to the miraculous images, 'Youare but stone and wood, ' and to the piece of bread, 'You are but dust asI am dust;' and then the huge mediæval fabric crumbled down in ruin. 

All forms of thought, all objects of devotion, are made thus liable toperpetual revision, if only that belief shall not petrify into habit, but remain the reasonable conviction of a reasonable soul. The change oftimes and the change of conditions change also the appearance of thingswhich in themselves are the same which they always were. Facts supposedonce to be as fixed as the stars melt into fiction. A closeracquaintance with the phenomena of experience has revealed to us theaction of forces before undreamt of working throughout nature withunerring uniformity; and to the mediæval stories of magic, witchcraft, or the miracles of saints, we are thus placed in a new relation. Thedirect evidence on which such stories were received may remainunimpaired, but it no longer produces the same conviction. Even inordinary human things where the evidence is lost--as in some of our ownState trials, and where we know only that it was such as broughtconviction to judges, juries, and parliaments--historians do nothesitate to call their verdicts into question, thinking it more likelythat whole masses of men should have been led away by passion or fraudor cowardice than that this or that particular crime should have beencommitted. That we often go beyond our office and exaggerate the valueof our new criteria of truth may be possible enough; but it is no lesscertain that this is the tendency of modern thought. Our own age, likeevery age which has gone before it, judges the value of testimony, notby itself merely, but by the degree to which it corresponds with our ownsense of the laws of probability; and we consider events probable orimprobable by the habit of mind which is the result of our generalknowledge and culture. To the Catholic of the middle ages a miracle wasmore likely than not; and when he was told that a miracle had beenworked, he believed it as he would have believed had he been told that ashower of rain had fallen, or that the night frost had killed the budsupon his fruit trees. If his cattle died, he found the cause in themalice of Satan or the evil eye of a witch; and if two or more witnessescould have been found to swear that they had heard an old woman cursehim, she would have been burnt for a sorceress. The man of science, onthe other hand, knows nothing of witches and sorcerers; when he can finda natural cause he refuses to entertain the possibility of theintervention of a cause beyond nature; and thus that very element ofmarvel which to the more superstitious temperament was an evidence oftruth, becomes to the better informed a cause of suspicion. 

So it has been that throughout history, as between individuals amongourselves, we trace two habits of thought, one of which has given uschurches, creeds, and the knowledge of God; the other has given usfreedom and science, has pruned the luxuriance of imaginative reverence, and reminds piety of what it is too ready to forget--that God is truth. Yet, essential as they are to one another, each keeps too absolutely tothe circle of its own convictions, and, but half able to recognise themerit of principles which are alien to its own, regards the other as itsnatural enemy. 

To the warm and enthusiastic pietist the enquirer appears as a hater ofGod, an inveterate blasphemer of holy things, soiling with rude andinsolent hands what ought only to be humbly adored. The saint when hehas the power calls the sword to his aid, and in his zeal for what hecalls the honour of God, makes war upon such people with steel and fire. The innovator, on the other hand, knowing that he is not that evilcreature which his rival represents him as being, knowing that he toodesires only truth--first suffers, suffers in rough times at stake andscaffold, suffers in our own later days in good name, in reputation, inworldly fortune; and as the whirligig of time brings round his turn oftriumph, takes, in French revolutions and such other fits of madness, his own period of wild revenge. The service of truth is made to appearas one thing, the service of God as another; and in that fatalseparation religion dishonours itself with unavailing enmity to whatnevertheless it is compelled at last to accept in humiliation; andscience, welcoming the character which its adversary flings upon it, turns away with answering hostility from doctrines without which its ownhighest achievements are but pyramids of ashes. 

Is this antagonism a law of humanity? As mankind move upwards throughthe ascending circles of progress, is it for ever to be with them aswith the globe which they inhabit--of which one hemisphere isperpetually dark? Have the lessons of the Reformation been thrown away?Is knowledge always to advance under the ban of religion? Is faithnever to cease to dread investigation? Is science chiefly to value eachnew discovery as a victory gained over its rival? Is the spiritual worldto revolve eternally upon an axis of which the two poles are materialismand superstition, to be buried in their alternate occultations inperiods of utter darkness, or lifted into an icy light where there isneither life nor warmth?

How it may be in the remote future it is idle to guess; for the presentthe signs are not hopeful. We are arrived visibly at one of thoserecurring times when the accounts are called in for audit; when thetitle-deeds are to be looked through, and established opinions againtested. It is a process which has been repeated more than once in theworld's history; the last occasion and greatest being the Reformation ofthe sixteenth century; and the experience of that matter might havesatisfied the most timid that truth has nothing to fear; and thatreligion emerges out of such trials stronger and brighter than before. Yet Churchmen have not profited by the experience; the pulpits and thereligious press ring again with the old shrieks of sacrilege; themachinery of the law courts is set creaking on its rusty hinges, anddenunciation and anathema in the old style take the place of reasoning. It will not answer; and the worst danger to what is really true is thewant of wisdom in its defenders. The language which we sometimes hearabout these things seems to imply that while Christianity isindisputably true, it cannot stand nevertheless without bolt andshackle, as if the Author of our faith had left the evidence so weakthat an honest investigation would fail to find it. 

Inevitably, the altered relation in which modern culture places theminds of all of us towards the supernatural, will compel areconsideration of the grounds on which the acceptance of miracles isrequired. If the English learned clergy had faith as a grain of mustardseed, they would be the first to take possession of the field; theywould look the difficulty in the face fearlessly and frankly, and weshould not be tossing as we are now in an ocean of uncertainty, ignorantwhether, if things seem obscure to us, the fault is with our intellectsor our hearts. 

It might have been that Providence, anticipating the effect produced ondead testimony by time and change, had raised religion into a highersphere, and had appointed on earth a living and visible authority whichcould not err--guided by the Holy Spirit into truth, and divinelysustained in the possession of it. Such a body the Roman Catholic Churchconceives itself to be; but in breaking away from its communion, Protestant Christians have declared their conviction that neither theChurch of Rome, nor they themselves, nor any other body of men on earth, are exempt from a liability to error. It is no longer competent for theAnglican communion to say that a doctrine or a fact is true because itforms a part of their teaching, because it has come down to them fromantiquity, and because to deny it is sin. Transubstantiation came downto the fathers of the Reformation from antiquity; it was received andinsisted upon by the Catholic Church of Christendom; yet nevertheless itwas flung out from among us as a lie and an offence. The theory of theDivine authority of the Church was abandoned in the act of Protestantismthree centuries ago; it was the central principle of that great revoltthat the establishment of particular opinions was no guarantee for theirtruth; and it becomes thus our duty as well as our right to examineperiodically our intellectual defences, to abandon positions which thealteration of time makes untenable, and to admit and invite into theservice of the sanctuary the fullest light of advancing knowledge. Ofall positions the most fatally suicidal for Protestants to occupy is theassumption, which it is competent for Roman Catholics to hold, but notfor them, that beliefs once sanctioned by the Church are sacred, andthat to impugn them is not error but crime. 

With a hope, then, that this reproach may be taken away from us; that, in this most wealthily-endowed Church of England, where so many of themost gifted and most accomplished men among us are maintained inwell-paid leisure to attend to such things, we may not be left anylonger to grope our way in the dark, the present writer puts forwardsome few perplexities of which it would be well if English divinitycontained a clearer solution than is found there. The laity, occupied inother matters, regard the clergy as the trustees of their spiritualinterests; but inasmuch as the clergy tell them that the safety of theirsouls depends on the correctness of their opinions, they dare not closetheir eyes to the questions which are being asked in louder and evenlouder tones; and they have a right to demand that they shall not beleft to their own unaided efforts to answer such questions. We go to ourappointed teachers as to our physicians; we say to them, 'We feel painhere, and here, and here: we do not see our way, and we require you tohelp us. '

Most of these perplexities are not new: they were felt with the firstbeginnings of critical investigation; but the fact that they have beenso many years before the world without being satisfactorily encounteredmakes the situation only the more serious. It is the more strange thatas time passes on, and divine after divine is raised to honour andoffice for his theological services, we should find only when we turn totheir writings that loud promises end in no performance; that the chiefobject which they set before themselves is to avoid difficult ground;and that the points on which we most cry out for satisfaction are passedover in silence, or are disposed of with ineffectual commonplaces. 

With a temperament constitutionally religious, and with an instinctivesense of the futility of theological controversies, the English peoplehave long kept the enemy at bay by passive repugnance. To thewell-conditioned English layman the religion in which he has beeneducated is part of the law of the land; the truth of it is assumed inthe first principles of his personal and social existence; and attackson the credibility of his sacred books he has regarded with the sameimpatience and disdain with which he treats speculations on the rightsof property or the common maxims of right and wrong. Thus, while theinspiration of the Bible has been a subject of discussion for a centuryin Germany, Holland, and France; while even in the desolate villages inthe heart of Spain the priests find it necessary to placard the churchwalls with cautions against rationalism, England hitherto has escapedthe trial; and it is only within a very few years that the note ofspeculation has compelled our deaf ears to listen. That it has come atlast is less a matter of surprise than that it should have been so longdelayed; and though slow to move, it is likely that so serious a peoplewill not now rest till they have settled the matter for themselves insome practical way. We are assured that if the truth be, as we are told, of vital moment--vital to all alike, wise and foolish, educated anduneducated--the road to it cannot lie through any very profoundenquiries. We refuse to believe that every labourer or mechanic mustbalance arduous historical probabilities and come to a just conclusion, under pain of damnation. We are satisfied that these poor people are notplaced in so cruel a dilemma. Either these abstruse historical questionsare open questions, and we are not obliged under those penalties to holda definite opinion upon them, or else there must be some generalprinciple accessible and easily intelligible, by which the details canbe summarily disposed of. 

We shall not be much mistaken, perhaps, if we say that the view of mosteducated English laymen at present is something of this kind. They areaware that many questions may be asked, difficult or impossible toanswer satisfactorily, about the creation of the world, the flood, andgenerally on the historical portion of the Old Testament; but theysuppose that if the authority of the Gospel history can be wellascertained, the rest may and must be taken for granted. If it be truethat of the miraculous birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, we have the evidence of two evangelists who were eye-witnesses of thefacts which they relate, and of two others who wrote under the directionof, or upon the authority of, eye-witnesses, we can afford to dispensewith merely curious enquiries. The subordinate parts of a divine economywhich culminated in so stupendous a mystery may well be as marvellous asitself; and it may be assumed, we think, with no great want of charity, that those who doubt the truth of the Old Testament extend theirincredulity to the New; that the point of their disbelief, towards whichthey are trenching their way through the weak places in the Pentateuch, is the Gospel narrative itself. [F] Whatever difficulty there may be inproving the ancient Hebrew books to be the work of the writers whosenames they bear, no one would have cared to challenge their genuinenesswho was thoroughly convinced of the resurrection of our Lord. And thereal object of these speculations lies open before us in the nownotorious work of M. Renan, which is shooting through Europe with arapidity which recalls the era of Luther. 

To the question of the authenticity of the Gospels, therefore, thecommon sense of Englishmen has instinctively turned. If, as Englishcommentators confidently tell us, the Gospel of St. Matthew, such as wenow possess it, is undoubtedly the work of the publican who followed ourLord from the receipt of custom, and remained with Him to be a witnessof His ascension; if St. John's Gospel was written by the beloveddisciple who lay on Jesus' breast at supper; if the other two wereindeed the composition of the companions of St. Peter and St. Paul; ifin these four Gospels we have independent accounts of our Lord's lifeand passion, mutually confirming each other, and if it can be provedthat they existed and were received as authentic in the first century ofthe Christian Church, a stronger man than M. Renan will fail to shakethe hold of Christianity in England. 

We put the question hypothetically, not as meaning to suggest the factas uncertain, but being--as the matter is of infinite moment--being, asit were, the hinge on which our faith depends, we are forced beyond ouroffice to trespass on ground which we leave usually to professionaltheologians, and to tell them plainly that there are difficulties whichit is their business to clear up, but to which, with worse thanimprudence, they close their own eyes, and deliberately endeavour tokeep them from ours. Some of these it is the object of this paper topoint out, with an earnest hope that Dean Alford, or Dr. Ellicott, orsome other competent clergyman, may earn our gratitude by telling uswhat to think about them. Setting aside their duty to us, they will findfrank dealing in the long run their wisest policy. The conservativetheologians of England have carried silence to the point ofindiscretion. 

Looking, then, to the three first Gospels, usually called theSynoptical, we are encountered immediately with a remarkable commonelement which runs through them all--a resemblance too peculiar to bethe result of accident, and impossible to reconcile with the theory thatthe writers were independent of each other. It is not that generalsimilarity which we should expect in different accounts of the samescenes and events, but amidst many differences, a broad vein ofcircumstantial identity extending both to substance and expression. 

And the identity is of several kinds. 

I. Although the three evangelists relate each of them some thingspeculiar to themselves, and although between them there are somestriking divergencies--as, for instance, between the account of ourLord's miraculous birth in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in the absencein St. Mark of any mention of the miraculous birth at all--nevertheless, the body of the story is essentially the same. Out of those words andactions--so many, that if all were related the world itself could notcontain the books that should be written--the three evangelists selectfor the most part the same; the same parables, the same miracles, and, more or less complete, the same addresses. When the material from whichto select was so abundant--how abundant we have but to turn to thefourth evangelist to see--it is at least singular that three writersshould have made so nearly the same choice. 

II. But this is not all. Not only are the things related the same, butthe language in which they are expressed is the same. Sometimes theresemblance is such as would have arisen had the evangelists beentranslating from a common document in another language. Sometimes, andmost frequently, there is an absolute verbal identity; sentences, paragraphs, long passages, are word for word the very same; a fewexpressions have been slightly varied, a particle transposed, a tense ora case altered, but the differences being no greater than would arise ifa number of persons were to write from memory some common passages whichthey knew almost by heart. That there should have been this identity inthe account of the _words_ used by our Lord seems at first sight no morethan we should expect. But it extends to the narrative as well; and withrespect to the parables and discourses, there is this extraordinaryfeature, that whereas our Lord is supposed to have spoken in theordinary language of Palestine, the resemblance between the evangelistsis in the Greek translation of them; and how unlikely it is that anumber of persons in translating from one language into another shouldhit by accident on the same expressions, the simplest experiment willshow. 

Now, waiving for a moment the inspiration of the Gospels; interpretingthe Bible, to use Mr. Jowett's canon, as any other book, what are we toconclude from phenomena of this kind? What in fact do we conclude whenwe encounter them elsewhere? In the lives of the saints, in the monkishhistories, there are many parallel cases. A mediæval chronicler, when hefound a story well told by his predecessor, seldom cared to recomposeit; he transcribed the words as they stood into his own narrative, contented perhaps with making a few trifling changes to add a finish ora polish. Sometimes two chroniclers borrow from a third. There is thesame identity in particular expressions, the same general resemblance, the same divergence, as each improves his original from his independentknowledge by addition or omission; but the process is so transparent, that when the original is lost, the existence of it can be inferred withcertainty. 

Or to take a more modern parallel--we must entreat our readers to pardonany seeming irreverence which may appear in the comparison--if in theletters of the correspondents of three different newspapers written fromAmerica or Germany, we were to read the same incidents told in the samelanguage, surrounded it might be with much that was unlike, butnevertheless in themselves identical, and related in words which, downto unusual and remarkable terms of expression, were exactly the same, what should we infer?

Suppose, for instance, the description of a battle; if we were to findbut a single paragraph in which two out of three correspondents agreedverbally, we should regard it as a very strange coincidence. If allthree agreed verbally, we should feel certain it was more than accident. If throughout their letters there was a recurring series of suchpassages, no doubt would be left in the mind of any one that either thethree correspondents had seen each other's letters, or that each had hadbefore him some common narrative which he had incorporated in his ownaccount. It might be doubtful which of these two explanations was thetrue one; but that one or other of them was true, unless we suppose amiracle, is as certain as any conclusion in human things can be certainat all. The sworn testimony of eye-witnesses who had seen the letters socomposed would add nothing to the weight of a proof which without theirevidence would be overwhelming; and were the writers themselves, withtheir closest friends and companions, to swear that there had been nointercommunication, and no story pre-existing of which they had madeuse, and that each had written _bonâ fide_ from his own originalobservation, an English jury would sooner believe the whole partyperjured than persuade themselves that so extraordinary a coincidencewould have occurred. 

Nor would it be difficult to ascertain from internal evidence which ofthe two possible interpretations was the real one. If the writers weremen of evident good faith; if their stories were in parts widelydifferent; if they made no allusion to each other, nor ever referred toone another as authorities; finally, if neither of them, in giving adifferent account of any matter from that given by his companions, professed either to be supplying an omission or correcting a mistake, then we should have little doubt that they had themselves notcommunicated with each other, but were supplementing, each of them fromother sources of information, a central narrative which all alike hadbefore them. 

How far may we apply the parallel to the Synoptical Gospels? In onesense the inspiration lifts them above comparison, and disposessummarily of critical perplexities; there is no difficulty which may notbe explained by a miracle; and in that aspect the points of disagreementbetween these accounts are more surprising than the similarities. It ison the disagreements in fact that the labours of commentators havechiefly been expended. Yet it is a question whether, on the whole, inspiration does not leave unaffected the ordinary human phenomena; andit is hard to suppose that where the rules of judgment in ordinarywritings are so distinct, God would have thus purposely cast astumbling-block in our way, and contrived a snare into which our reasonshould mislead us. That is hard to credit; yet that and nothing else wemust believe if we refuse to apply to the Gospel the same canons ofcriticism which with other writings would be a guide so decisive. It maybe assumed that the facts connected with them admit a naturalexplanation; and we arrive, therefore, at the same conclusion as before:that either two of the evangelists borrowed from the third, or else thatthere was some other Gospel besides those which are now extant; existingperhaps both in Hebrew and Greek--existing certainly in Greek--thefragments of which are scattered up and down through St. Mark, St. Matthew, and St. Luke, in masses sufficiently large to be distinctlyrecognisable. 

That at an early period in the Christian Church many such Gospelsexisted, we know certainly from the words of St. Luke. St. Paul alludesto words used by our Lord which are not mentioned by the evangelists, which he assumed nevertheless to be well known to his hearers. Hespeaks, too, of an appearance of our Lord after His resurrection to fivehundred brethren; on which the four Gospels are also silent. It isindisputable, therefore, that besides and antecedent to them there wereother accounts of our Lord's life in use in the Christian Church. Andindeed, what more natural, what more necessary, than that from the dayon which the apostles entered upon their public mission, some narrativeshould have been drawn up of the facts which they were about to makeknown? Then as little as now could the imagination of men be trusted torelate accurately a story composed of stupendous miracles withoutmistake or exaggeration; and their very first step would have been tocompose an account of what had passed, to which they could speak withcertainty, and which they could invest with authoritative sanction. Isit not possible then that the identical passages in the SynopticalGospels are the remains of something of this kind, which theevangelists, in their later, fuller, and more complete histories, enlarged and expanded? The conjecture has been often made, and Englishcommentators have for the most part dismissed it slightingly; notapparently being aware that in rejecting one hypothesis they were boundto suggest another; or at least to admit that there was something whichrequired explanation, though this particular suggestion did not seemsatisfactory. Yet if it were so, the external testimony for the truth ofthe Gospel history would be stronger than before. It would amount to thecollective view of the first congregation of Christians, who had allimmediate and personal knowledge of our Lord's miracles and death andresurrection. 

But perhaps the external history of the four Gospels may throw somelight upon the question, if indeed we can speak of light where all is acloud of uncertainty. It would seem as if the sources of Christianity, like the roots of all other living things, were purposely buried inmystery. There exist no ancient writings whatever of such vast moment tomankind of which so little can be authentically known. 

The four Gospels, in the form and under the names which they at presentbear, become visible only with distinctness towards the end of thesecond century of the Christian era. Then it was that they assumed theauthoritative position which they have ever since maintained, and wereselected by the Church out of the many other then existing narrativesas the supreme and exclusive authorities for our Lord's life. Irenæus isthe first of the Fathers in whom they are found attributed by name toSt. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. That there were four trueevangelists, and that there could be neither more nor less than four, Irenæus had persuaded himself because there were four winds or spirits, and four divisions of the earth, for which the Church being universalrequired four columns; because the cherubim had four faces, to each ofwhich an evangelist corresponded; because four covenants had been givento mankind--one before the Deluge in Adam, one after the Deluge in Noah, the third in Moses, the fourth and greatest in the New Testament; whileagain the name of Adam was composed of four letters. It is not to besupposed that the intellects of those great men who converted the worldto Christianity were satisfied with arguments so imaginative as these;they must have had other closer and more accurate grounds for theirdecision; but the mere employment of such figures as evidence in anysense, shows the enormous difference between their modes of reasoningand ours, and illustrates the difficulty of deciding at our presentdistance from them how far their conclusions were satisfactory. 

Of the Gospels separately the history is immediately lost in legend. 

The first notice of a Gospel of St. Matthew is in the well-known wordsof Papias, a writer who in early life might have seen St. John. Theworks of Papias are lost--a misfortune the more to be regretted becauseEusebius speaks of him as a man of very limited understanding, [Greek:panu smikros ton noun]. Understanding and folly are words ofundetermined meaning; and when language like that of Irenæus could seemprofound it is quite possible that Papias might have possessedcommonplace faculties which would have been supremely useful to us. Asurviving fragment of him says that St. Matthew put together thediscourses of our Lord in Hebrew, and that every one interpreted them ashe could. Pantænus, said by Eusebius to have been another contemporaryof the apostles, was reported to have gone to India, to have found therea congregation of Christians which had been established by St. Bartholomew, and to have seen in use among them this Hebrew Gospel. Origen repeats the story, which in his time had become the universalCatholic tradition, that St. Matthew's was the first Gospel, that it waswritten in Hebrew, and that it was intended for the use of the Jewishconverts. Jerome adds that it was unknown when or by whom it wasrendered into a Greek version. That was all which the Church had to say;and what had become of that Hebrew original no one could tell. 

That there existed _a_ Hebrew Gospel in very early times is wellauthenticated; there was a Gospel called the Gospel of the Ebionites orNazarenes, of which Origen possessed a copy, and which St. Jeromethought it worth while to translate; this too is lost, and Jerome'stranslation of it also; but the negative evidence seems conclusive thatit was not the lost Gospel of St. Matthew. Had it been so it could nothave failed to be recognised, although from such accounts of it as havebeen preserved, it possessed some affinity with St. Matthew's Gospel. Inone instance, indeed, it gave the right reading of a text which hasperplexed orthodox commentators, and has induced others to suspect thatthat Gospel in its present form could not have existed before thedestruction of Jerusalem. The Zachariah the son of Barachiah said by St. Matthew to have been slain between the temple and the altar, is unknownto Old Testament history, while during the siege of Jerusalem aZachariah the son of Barachiah actually was killed exactly in the mannerdescribed. But in the Ebionite Gospel the same words are found with thisslight but important difference, that the Zachariah in question is therecalled the son of Jehoiadah, and is at once identified with the personwhose murder is related in the Second Book of Chronicles. The latertranslator of St. Matthew had probably confused the names. 

Of St. Mark's Gospel the history is even more profoundly obscure. Papias, again the highest discoverable link of the Church tradition, says that St. Mark accompanied St. Peter to Rome as his interpreter; andthat while there he wrote down what St. Peter told him, or what he couldremember St. Peter to have said. Clement of Alexandria enlarges thestory. According to Clement, when St. Peter was preaching at Rome, theChristian congregation there requested St. Mark to write a Gospel forthem; St. Mark complied without acquainting St. Peter, and St. Peterwhen informed of it was uncertain whether to give or withhold hissanction till his mind was set at rest by a vision. 

Irenæus, on the other hand, says that St. Mark's Gospel was not writtentill after the death of St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Chrysostom says thatafter it was written St. Mark went to Egypt and published it atAlexandria; Epiphanius again, that the Egyptian expedition wasundertaken at the express direction of St. Peter himself. 

Thus the Church tradition is inconsistent with itself, and in allprobability is nothing but a structure of air; it is bound up with thepresence of St. Peter at Rome; and the only ground for supposing thatSt. Peter was ever at Rome at all is the passage at the close of St. Peter's First Epistle, where it pleased the Fathers to assume that the'Babylon' there spoken of must have been the city of the Cæsars. Thispassage alone, with the wild stories (now known to have originated inthe misreading of an inscription) of St. Peter's conflict with SimonMagus in the presence of the emperor, form together the light and airyarches on which the huge pretences of the Church of Rome have rearedthemselves. If the Babylon of the Epistle was Babylon on theEuphrates--and there is not the slightest historical reason to supposeit to have been anything else--the story of the origin of St. Mark'sGospel perishes with the legend to which it was inseparably attached byChurch tradition. 

Of St. John's Gospel we do not propose to speak in this place; it formsa subject by itself; and of that it is enough to say that the defects ofexternal evidence which undoubtedly exist seem overborne by theoverwhelming proofs of authenticity contained in the Gospel itself. 

The faint traditionary traces which inform us that St. Matthew and St. Mark were supposed to have written Gospels fail us with St. Luke. Theapostolic and the immediately post-apostolic Fathers never mention Lukeas having written a history of our Lord at all. There was indeed aGospel in use among the Marcionites which resembled that of St. Luke, asthe Gospel of the Ebionites resembled that of St. Matthew. In both theone and the other there was no mention of our Lord's miraculous birth;and later writers accused Marcion of having mutilated St. Luke. Butapparently their only reason for thinking so was that the two Gospelswere like each other; and for all that can be historically proved, theGospel of the Marcionites may have been the older of the two. What iswanting externally, however, is supposed to be more than made up by thelanguage of St. Luke himself. The Gospel was evidently composed in itspresent form by the same person who wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Inthe latter part of the Acts of the Apostles the writer speaks in thefirst person as the companion of St. Paul; and the date of this Gospelseems to be thus conclusively fixed at an early period in the apostolicage. There is at least a high probability that this reasoning is sound;yet it has seemed strange that a convert so eminent as 'the mostexcellent' Theophilus, to whom St. Luke addressed himself, should befound impossible to identify. 'Most excellent' was a title given only topersons of high rank; and it is singular that St. Paul himself shouldnever have mentioned so considerable a name. And again, there issomething peculiar in the language of the introduction to the Gospelitself. Though St. Luke professes to be writing on the authority ofeye-witnesses, he does not say he had spoken with eye-witnesses; so farfrom it, that the word translated in the English version 'delivered' isliterally 'handed down;' it is the verb which corresponds to thetechnical expression for 'tradition;' and the words translated 'havinghad perfect understanding of all things from the first, ' might berendered more properly, 'having traced or followed up all things fromthe beginning. ' And again, as it is humanly speaking certain that in St. Luke's Gospel there are passages, however they are to be explained, which were embodied in it from some other source, so, though extremelyprobable, it is not absolutely certain that those passages in the Actsin which the writer speaks in the first person are by the same hand asthe body of the narrative. If St. Luke had anywhere directly introducedhimself--if he had said plainly that he, the writer who was addressingTheophilus, had personally joined St. Paul, and in that part of hisstory was relating what he had seen and heard, there would be no roomfor uncertainty. But, so far as we know, there is no other instance inliterature of a change of person introduced abruptly withoutexplanation. The whole book is less a connected history than a series ofepisodes and fragments of the proceedings of the apostles; and it is tobe noticed that the account of St. Paul's conversion, as given in itsplace in the first part of the narrative, differs in one material pointfrom the second account given later in the part which was unquestionablythe work of one of St. Paul's companions. There is a possibility--itamounts to no more, and the suggestion is thrown out for theconsideration of those who are better able than this writer to judge ofit--that in the Gospel and the Acts we have the work of a careful editorof the second century. Towards the close of that century a prominentactor in the great movement which gave their present authority to thefour Gospels was Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch; he it was who broughtthem together, incorporated into a single work--_in unum opus_; and itmay be, after all, that in him we have the long-sought person to whomSt. Luke was writing; that the Gospel which we now possess was compiledat his desire out of other imperfect Gospels in use in the differentChurches; and that it formed a part of his scheme to supersede them byan account more exhaustive, complete, and satisfactory. 

To this hypothesis indeed there is an answer which if valid at all isabsolutely fatal. We are told that although the names of the writers ofthe Gospels may not be mentioned until a comparatively late period, yetthat the Gospels themselves can be shown to have existed, because theyare habitually quoted in the authentic writings of the earliest of theFathers. If this be so, the slightness of the historical thread is oflittle moment, and we may rest safely on the solid ground of soconclusive a fact. But is it so? That the early Fathers quoted someaccounts of our Lord's life is abundantly clear; but did they quotethese? We proceed to examine this question--again tentatively only--wedo but put forward certain considerations on which we ask for fullerinformation. 

If any one of the primitive Christian writers was likely to have beenacquainted with the authentic writings of the evangelists, that one wasindisputably Justin Martyr. Born in Palestine in the year 89, JustinMartyr lived to the age of seventy-six; he travelled over the Romanworld as a missionary; and intellectually he was more than on a levelwith most educated Oriental Christians. He was the first distinctlycontroversial writer which the Church produced; and the great facts ofthe Gospel history were obviously as well known to him as they are toourselves. There are no traces in his writings of an acquaintance withanything peculiar either to St. John or St. Mark; but there are extractsin abundance often identical with and generally nearly resemblingpassages in St. Matthew and St. Luke. Thus at first sight it would bedifficult to doubt that with these two Gospels at least he wasintimately familiar. And yet in all his citations there is thispeculiarity, that Justin Martyr never speaks of either of theevangelists by name; he quotes or seems to quote invariably fromsomething which he calls [Greek: apomnêmoneumata tôn Apostolôn], or'Memoirs of the Apostles. ' It is no usual habit of his to describe hisauthorities vaguely: when he quotes the Apocalypse he names St. John;when he refers to a prophet he specifies Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Daniel. Why, unless there was some particular reason for it, should he use sosingular an expression whenever he alludes to the sacred history of theNew Testament? why, if he knew the names of the evangelists, did henever mention them even by accident? Nor is this the only singularity inJustin Martyr's quotations. There are those slight differences betweenthem and the text of the Gospels which appear between the Gospelsthemselves. When we compare an extract in Justin with the parallelpassage in St. Matthew, we find often that it differs from St. Matthewjust as St. Matthew differs from St. Luke, or both from St. Mark--greatverbal similarity--many paragraphs agreeing word for word--and thenother paragraphs where there is an alteration of expression, tense, order, or arrangement. 

Again, just as in the midst of the general resemblance between theSynoptical Gospels, each evangelist has something of his own which isnot to be found in the others, so in these 'Memoirs of the Apostles'there are facts unknown to either of the evangelists. In the accountextracted by Justin from 'the Memoirs, ' of the baptism in the Jordan, the words heard from heaven are not as St. Matthew gives them--'Thou artmy beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'--but the words of the psalm, 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee;' a reading which, singularly enough, was to be found in the Gospel of the Ebionites. 

Another curious addition to the same scene is in the words [Greek: kaipur anêphthê en Iordanê], 'and a fire was kindled in Jordan. '

Again, Justin Martyr speaks of our Lord having promised 'to clothe uswith garments made ready for us if we keep his commandments'--[Greek:kai aiônion basileian pronoêsai]--whatever those words may preciselymean. 

These and other peculiarities in Justin may be explained if we supposehim to have been quoting from memory. The evangelical text might not asyet have acquired its verbal sanctity; and as a native of Palestine hemight well have been acquainted with other traditions which lay outsidethe written word. The silence as to names, however, remains unexplained;and as the facts actually stand there is the same kind of proof, and nomore, that Justin Martyr was acquainted with St. Matthew and St. Luke asthere is that one of these evangelists made extracts from the other, orboth from St. Mark. So long as one set of commentators decline torecognise the truth of this relation between the Gospels, there will beothers who with as much justice will dispute the relation of Justin tothem. He too might have used another Gospel, which, though like them, was not identical with them. 

After Justin Martyr's death, about the year 170, appeared Tatian's'Diatessaron, ' a work which, as its title implies, was a harmony of fourGospels, and most likely of _the_ four; yet again not exactly as we havethem. Tatian's harmony, like so many others of the early evangelicalhistories, was silent on the miraculous birth, and commenced only withthe public ministration. The text was in other places different, so muchso that Theodoret accuses Tatian of having mutilated the Gospels; but ofthis Theodoret had probably no better means of judging than we have. The'Diatessaron' has been long lost, and the name is the only clue to itscomposition. 

Of far more importance than either Justin or Tatian are such writings asremain of the immediate successors of the apostles--Barnabas, Clement ofRome, Polycarp, and Ignatius: it is asserted confidently that in thesethere are quotations from the Gospels so exact that they cannot bemistaken. 

We will examine them one by one. 

In an epistle of Barnabas there is one passage--it is the only one ofthe kind to be found in him--agreeing word for word with the SynopticalGospels, 'I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. 'It is one of the many passages in which the Greek of the threeevangelists is exactly the same; it was to be found also in Justin's'Memoirs;' and there can be no doubt that Barnabas either knew thoseGospels or else the common source--if common source there was--fromwhich the evangelists borrowed. More than this such a quotation does notenable us to say; and till some satisfactory explanation has beenoffered of the agreement between the evangelists, the argument canadvance no further. On the other hand, Barnabas like St. Paul had othersources from which he drew his knowledge of our Lord's words. He tooascribes words to Him which are not recorded by the evangelists, [Greek:houtô phêsin Iêsous; hoi thelontes me idein kai hapsasthai mou têsbasileias opheilousi thlibentes kai pathontes labein me]. The thought iseverywhere in the Gospels, the words nowhere, nor anything like them. 

Both Ignatius and Polycarp appear to quote the Gospels, yet with themalso there is the same uncertainty; while Ignatius quotes as genuine anexpression which, so far as we know, was peculiar to a translation ofthe Gospel of the Ebionites--'Handle me and see, for I am not a spiritwithout body, ' [Greek: hoti ouk eimi daimonion asômaton]. 

Clement's quotations are still more free, for Clement nowhere quotes thetext of the evangelists exactly as it at present stands; often heapproaches it extremely close; at times the agreement is rather inmeaning than words, as if he were translating from another language. Butagain Clement more noticeably than either of the other apostolic Fatherscites expressions of our Lord of which the evangelists knew nothing. 

For instance--

'The Lord saith, "If ye be with me gathered into my bosom, and do notafter my commandments, I will cast you off, and I will say unto you, Depart from me, I know you not, ye workers of iniquity. "'

And again:--

'The Lord said, "Ye shall be as sheep in the midst of wolves. " Peteranswered and said unto Him, "Will the wolves then tear the sheep?" Jesussaid unto Peter, "The sheep need not fear the wolves after they (thesheep) be dead: and fear not ye those who kill you and can do nothing toyou; but fear Him who after you be dead hath power over soul and body tocast them into hell-fire. "'

In these words we seem to have the lost link in a passage which appearsin a different connection in St. Matthew and St. Luke. It may be said, as with Justin Martyr, that Clement was quoting from memory in the senserather than in the letter; although even so it is difficult to supposethat he could have invented an interlocution of St. Peter. Yet nohypothesis will explain the most strange words which follow:--

'The Lord being asked when His kingdom should come, said, "When twoshall be one, and that which is without as that which is within, and themale with the female neither male nor female. "'

It is needless to say how remote are such expressions as these from anywhich have come down to us through the evangelists; but they were noinventions of Clement. The passage reappears later in Clement ofAlexandria, who found it in something which he called the Gospel of theEgyptians. 

It will be urged that because Clement quoted other authorities besidethe evangelists, it does not follow that he did not know and quote fromthem. If the citation of a passage which appears in almost the samewords in another book is not to be accepted as a proof of anacquaintance with that book, we make it impossible, it may be said, toprove from quotations at all the fact of any book's existence. But thisis not the case. If a Father, in relating an event which is toldvariously in the Synoptical Gospels, had followed one of them minutelyin its verbal peculiarities, it would go far to prove that he wasacquainted with that one; if the same thing was observed in all hisquotations, the proof would amount to demonstration. If he agreedminutely in one place with one Gospel, minutely in a second withanother, minutely in a third with another, there would be reason tobelieve that he was acquainted with them all; but when he merely relateswhat they also relate in language which approaches theirs and yetdiffers from it, as they also resemble yet differ from one another, wedo not escape from the circle of uncertainty, and we conclude eitherthat the early Fathers made quotations with a looseness irreconcileablewith the idea that the language of the Gospels possessed any verbalsacredness to them, or that there were in their times other narrativesof our Lord's life standing in the same relation to the three Gospels asSt. Matthew stands to St. Mark and St. Luke. 

Thus the problem returns upon us; and it might almost seem as if theexplanation was laid purposely beyond our reach. We are driven back uponinternal criticism; and we have to ask again what account is to be givenof that element common to the Synoptical Gospels, common also to thoseother Gospels of which we find traces so distinct--those verbalresemblances, too close to be the effect of accident--those differenceswhich forbid the supposition that the evangelists copied one another. Somany are those common passages, that if all which is peculiar to eachevangelist by himself were dropped, if those words and those actionsonly were retained which either all three or two at least sharetogether, the figure of our Lord from His baptism to His ascension wouldremain with scarcely impaired majesty. 

One hypothesis, and so far as we can see one only, would make themystery intelligible, that immediately on the close of our Lord's lifesome original sketch of it was drawn up by the congregation, whichgradually grew and gathered round it whatever His mother, His relations, or His disciples afterwards individually might contribute. This primaryhistory would thus not be the work of any one mind or man; it would bethe joint work of the Church, and thus might well be called 'Memoirs ofthe Apostles;' and would naturally be quoted without the name of eitherone of them being specially attached to it. As Christianity spread overthe world, and separate Churches were founded by particular apostles, copies would be multiplied, and copies of those copies; and, uncheckedby the presence (before the invention of printing impossible) of anyauthoritative text, changes would creep in--passages would be left outwhich did not suit the peculiar views of this or that sect; others wouldbe added as this or that apostle recollected something which our Lordhad said that bore on questions raised in the development of the creed. Two great divisions would form themselves between the Jewish and theGentile Churches; there would be a Hebrew Gospel and a Greek Gospel, andthe Hebrew would be translated into Greek, as Papias says St. Matthew'sGospel was. Eventually the confusion would become intolerable; and amongthe conflicting stories the Church would have been called on to make itsformal choice. 

This fact at least is certain from St. Luke's words, that at the timewhen he was writing many different narratives did actually exist. Thehypothesis of a common origin for them has as yet found little favourwith English theologians; yet rather perhaps because it would beinconvenient for certain peculiar forms of English thought than becauseit has not probability on its side. That the Synoptical Gospels shouldhave been a natural growth rather than the special and independent workof three separate writers, would be unfavourable to a divinity which hasbuilt itself up upon particular texts, and has been more concerned withdoctrinal polemics than with the broader basements of historic truth. Yet the text theory suffers equally from the mode in which the firstFathers treated the Gospels, if it were these Gospels indeed which theyused. They at least could have attributed no importance to words andphrases; while again, as we said before, a narrative dating from thecradle of Christianity, with the testimony in its favour of such broadand deep reception, would, however wanting in some details, be anevidence of the truth of the main facts of the Gospel history very muchstronger than that of three books composed we know not when, and theorigin of which it is impossible to trace, which it is impossible toregard as independent, and the writers of which in any other view ofthem must be assumed to have borrowed from each other. 

But the object of this article is not to press either this or any othertheory; it is but to ask from those who are able to give it an answer tothe most serious of questions. The truth of the Gospel history is nowmore widely doubted in Europe than at any time since the conversion ofConstantine. Every thinking person who has been brought up a Christianand desires to remain a Christian, yet who knows anything of what ispassing in the world, is looking to be told on what evidence the NewTestament claims to be received. The state of opinion proves of itselfthat the arguments hitherto offered produce no conviction. Every othermiraculous history is discredited as legend, however exalted theauthority on which it seems to be rested. We crave to have good reasonshown us for maintaining still the one great exception. Hard worked inother professions, and snatching with difficulty sufficient leisure tolearn how complicated is the problem, the laity can but turn to thosefor assistance who are set apart and maintained as their theologicaltrustees. We can but hope and pray that some one may be found to give usan edition of the Gospels in which the difficulties will neither beslurred over with convenient neglect or noticed with affectedindifference. It may or may not be a road to a bishopric; it may or maynot win the favour of the religious world; but it will earn at least therespectful gratitude of those who cannot trifle with holy things, andwho believe that true religion is the service of truth. 

The last words were scarcely written when an advertisement appeared, theimportance of which can scarcely be over-estimated. A commentary isannounced on the Old and New Testaments, to be composed with a view towhat are called the 'misrepresentations' of modern criticism. It is tobe brought out under the direction of the heads of the Church, and isthe nearest approach to an official act in these great matters whichthey have ventured for two hundred years. It is not for us to anticipatethe result. The word 'misrepresentations' is unfortunate; we should haveaugured better for the work if instead of it had been written 'thesincere perplexities of honest minds. ' But the execution may be betterthan the promise. If these perplexities are encountered honourably andsuccessfully, the Church may recover its supremacy over the intellect ofthe country; if otherwise, the archbishop who has taken the command willhave steered the vessel direct upon the rocks. 

FOOTNOTES:

[E] _Fraser's Magazine_, 1864. 

[F] I do not speak of individuals; I speak of _tendency_. 

THE BOOK OF JOB. [G]

It will be matter some day of curious enquiry to ascertain why, notwithstanding the high reverence with which the English people regardthe Bible, they have done so little in comparison with their continentalcontemporaries towards arriving at a proper understanding of it. Thebooks named below[H] form but a section of a long list which hasappeared during the last few years in Germany on the Book of Job alone;and this book has not received any larger share of attention than theothers, either of the Old or the New Testament. Whatever be the natureor the origin of these books (and on this point there is much differenceof opinion among the Germans as among ourselves) they are all agreed, orthodox and unorthodox, that at least we should endeavour to understandthem; and that no efforts can be too great, either of research orcriticism, to discover their history, or elucidate their meaning. 

We shall assent, doubtless, eagerly, perhaps noisily and indignantly, toso obvious a truism; but our own efforts in the same direction will notbear us out. Able men in England employ themselves in matters of a morepractical character; and while we refuse to avail ourselves of what hasbeen done elsewhere, no book, or books, which we produce on theinterpretation of Scripture acquire more than a partial or an ephemeralreputation. The most important contribution to our knowledge on thissubject which has been made in these recent years is the translation ofthe 'Library of the Fathers, ' by which it is about as rational tosuppose that the analytical criticism of modern times can be superseded, as that the place of Herman and Dindorf could be supplied by an editionof the old scholiasts. 

It is, indeed, reasonable that as long as we are persuaded that ourEnglish theory of the Bible, as a whole, is the right one, we shouldshrink from contact with investigations which, however ingenious inthemselves, are based on what we know to be a false foundation. Butthere are some learned Germans whose orthodoxy would pass examination atExeter Hall; and there are many subjects, such, for instance, as thepresent, on which all their able men are agreed in conclusions thatcannot rationally give offence to any one. With the Book of Job, analytical criticism has only served to clear up the uncertainties whichhave hitherto always hung about it. It is now considered to be, beyondall doubt, a genuine Hebrew original, completed by its writer almost inthe form in which it now remains to us. The questions on theauthenticity of the Prologue and Epilogue, which once were thoughtimportant, have given way before a more sound conception of the dramaticunity of the entire poem; and the volumes before us contain merely anenquiry into its meaning, bringing, at the same time, all the resourcesof modern scholarship and historical and mythological research to bearupon the obscurity of separate passages. It is the most difficult of allthe Hebrew compositions--many words occurring in it, and many thoughts, not to be found elsewhere in the Bible. How difficult our translatorsfound it may be seen by the number of words which they were obliged toinsert in italics, and the doubtful renderings which they have suggestedin the margin. One instance of this, in passing, we will notice in thisplace--it will be familiar to every one as the passage quoted at theopening of the English burial service, and adduced as one of thedoctrinal proofs of the resurrection of the body:--'I know that myRedeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter _day_ upon theearth; and _though_, after my skin _worms_ destroy this _body_, yet inmy flesh I shall see God. ' So this passage stands in the ordinaryversion. But the words in italics have nothing answering to them in theoriginal--they were all added by the translators[I] to fill out theirinterpretation; and for _in my flesh_, they tell us themselves in themargin that we may read (and, in fact, we ought to read, and must read)'_out of_, ' or _'without' my flesh_. It is but to write out the verses, omitting the conjectural additions, and making that one small but vitalcorrection, to see how frail a support is there for so large aconclusion: 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and shall stand at thelatter       upon the earth; and after my skin       destroythis       ; yet without my flesh I shall see God. ' If there is anydoctrine of a resurrection here, it is a resurrection precisely _not_ ofthe body, but of the spirit. And now let us only add, that the wordtranslated Redeemer is the technical expression for the 'avenger ofblood;' and that the second paragraph ought to be rendered--'and one tocome after me (my next of kin, to whom the avenging my injuries belongs)shall stand upon my dust, ' and we shall see how much was to be donetowards the mere exegesis of the text. This is an extreme instance, andno one will question the general beauty and majesty of our translation;but there are many mythical and physical allusions scattered over thepoem, which, in the sixteenth century, there were positively no means ofunderstanding; and perhaps, too, there were mental tendencies in thetranslators themselves which prevented them from adequately apprehendingeven the drift and spirit of the composition. The form of the story wastoo stringent to allow such tendencies any latitude; but they appear, from time to time, sufficiently to produce serious confusion. With theserecent assistances, therefore, we propose to say something of the natureof this extraordinary book--a book of which it is to say little to callit unequalled of its kind, and which will one day, perhaps, when it isallowed to stand on its own merits, be seen towering up alone, far awayabove all the poetry of the world. How it found its way into the canon, smiting as it does through and through the most deeply-seated Jewishprejudices, is the chief difficulty about it now; to be explained onlyby a traditional acceptance among the sacred books, dating back from theold times of the national greatness, when the minds of the people werehewn in a larger type than was to be found among the Pharisees of thegreat synagogue. But its authorship, its date, and its history, arealike a mystery to us; it existed at the time when the canon wascomposed; and this is all that we know beyond what we can gather out ofthe language and contents of the poem itself. 

Before going further, however, we must make room for a few remarks of avery general kind. Let it have been written when it would, it marks aperiod in which the religious convictions of thinking men were passingthrough a vast crisis; and we shall not understand it without havingbefore us clearly something of the conditions which periods of such akind always and necessarily exhibit. 

The history of religious speculation appears in extreme outline to havebeen of the following character. We may conceive mankind to have beenoriginally launched into the universe with no knowledge either ofthemselves or of the scene in which they were placed; with no actualknowledge, but distinguished from the rest of the creation by a facultyof gaining knowledge; and first unconsciously, and afterwardsconsciously and laboriously, to have commenced that long series ofexperience and observation which has accumulated in thousands of yearsto what we now see around us. Limited on all sides by conditions whichthey must have felt to be none of their own imposing, and findingeverywhere forces working, over which they had no control, the fearwhich they would naturally entertain of these invisible and mightyagents assumed, under the direction of an idea which we may perhaps callinborn and inherent in human nature, a more generous character ofreverence and awe. The laws of the outer world, as they discovered them, they regarded as the decrees, or as the immediate energies of personalbeings; and as knowledge grew up among them, they looked upon it, not asknowledge of nature, but of God, or the gods. All early paganismappears, on careful examination, to have arisen out of a consecration ofthe first rudiments of physical or speculative science. The twelvelabours of Hercules are the labours of the sun, of which Hercules is anold name, through the twelve signs. Chronos, or _time_, being measuredby the apparent motion of the heavens, is figured as their child; Time, the universal parent, devours its own offspring, yet is again itself, inthe high faith of a human soul conscious of its power and itsendurance, supposed to be baffled and dethroned by Zeus, or _life_; andso on through all the elaborate theogonies of Greece and Egypt. They areno more than real insight into real phenomena, allegorised as time wenton, elaborated by fancy, or idealised by imagination, but never losingtheir original character. 

Thus paganism, in its very nature, was expansive, self-developing, and, as Mr. Hume observed, tolerant; a new god was welcomed to the Pantheonas a new scientific discovery is welcomed by the Royal Society; and thevarious nations found no difficulty in interchanging their divinities--anew god either representing a new power not hitherto discovered, or onewith which they were already familiar under a new name. With such apower of adaptation and enlargement, if there had been nothing more init than this, such a system might have gone on accommodating itself tothe change of times, and keeping pace with the growth of humancharacter. Already in its later forms, as the unity of nature was moreclearly observed, and the identity of nature throughout the known world, the separate powers were subordinating themselves to a single supremeking; and, as the poets had originally personified the elemental forces, the thinkers were reversing the earlier process, and discovering the lawunder the person. Happily or unhappily, however, what they could do forthemselves they could not do for the multitude. Phoebus and Aphroditehad been made too human to be allegorised. Humanised, and yet, we maysay, only half-humanised, retaining their purely physical nature, andwithout any proper moral attribute at all, these gods and goddessesremained to the many examples of sensuality made beautiful; and, as soonas right and wrong came to have a meaning, it was impossible to worshipany more these idealised despisers of it. The human caprices andpassions which served at first to deepen the illusion, justly revengedthemselves; paganism became a lie, and perished. 

In the meantime, the Jews (and perhaps some other nations, but the Jewschiefly and principally) had been moving forward along a road whollydifferent. Breaking early away from the gods of nature, they advancedalong the line of their moral consciousness; and leaving the nations tostudy physics, philosophy, and art, they confined themselves to man andto human life. Their theology grew up round the knowledge of good andevil, and God, with them, was the supreme Lord of the world, who stoodtowards man in the relation of a ruler and a judge. Holding such afaith, to them the toleration of paganism was an impossibility; the lawsof nature might be many, but the law of conduct was one; there was onelaw and one king; and the conditions under which he governed the world, as embodied in the Decalogue or other similar code, were looked upon asiron and inflexible certainties, unalterable revelations of the will ofan unalterable Being. So far there was little in common between thisprocess and the other; but it was identical with it in this oneimportant feature, that moral knowledge, like physical, admitted ofdegrees; and the successive steps of it were only purchasable byexperience. The dispensation of the law, in the language of moderntheology, was not the dispensation of grace, and the nature of good andevil disclosed itself slowly as men were able to comprehend it. Thus, nosystem of law or articles of belief were or could be complete andexhaustive for all time. Experience accumulates; new facts are observed, new forces display themselves, and all such formulæ must necessarily befrom period to period broken up and moulded afresh. And yet the stepsalready gained are a treasure so sacred, so liable are they at all timesto be attacked by those lower and baser elements in our nature which itis their business to hold in check, that the better part of mankind haveat all times practically regarded their creed as a sacred total to whichnothing may be added, and from which nothing may be taken away; thesuggestion of a new idea is resented as an encroachment, punished as aninsidious piece of treason, and resisted by the combined forces of allcommon practical understandings, which know too well the value of whatthey have, to risk the venture upon untried change. Periods of religioustransition, therefore, when the advance has been a real one, always havebeen violent, and probably will always continue to be so. They to whomthe precious gift of fresh light has been given are called upon toexhibit their credentials as teachers in suffering for it. They, andthose who oppose them, have alike a sacred cause; and the fearfulspectacle arises of earnest, vehement men contending against each otheras for their own souls, in fiery struggle. Persecutions come, andmartyrdoms, and religions wars; and, at last, the old faith, like thephoenix, expires upon its altar, and the new rises out of the ashes. 

Such, in briefest outline, has been the history of religions, naturaland moral; the first, indeed, being in no proper sense a religion atall, as we understand religion; and only assuming the character of it inthe minds of great men whose moral sense had raised them beyond theirtime and country, and who, feeling the necessity of a real creed, withan effort and with indifferent success, endeavoured to express, underthe systems which they found, emotions which had no proper place inthem. 

Of the transition periods which we have described as taking place underthe religion which we call moral, the first known to us is marked at itsopening by the appearance of the Book of Job, the first fierce collisionof the new fact with the formula which will not stretch to cover it. 

The earliest phenomenon likely to be observed connected with the moralgovernment of the world is the general one, that on the whole, as thingsare constituted, good men prosper and are happy, bad men fail and aremiserable. The cause of such a condition is no mystery, and lies verynear the surface. As soon as men combine in society, they are forced toobey certain laws under which alone society is possible, and these laws, even in their rudest form, approach the laws of conscience. To a certainextent, every one is obliged to sacrifice his private inclinations; andthose who refuse to do so are punished, or are crushed. If society wereperfect, the imperfect tendency would carry itself out till the two setsof laws were identical; but perfection so far has been only in Utopia, and, as far as we can judge by experience hitherto, they haveapproximated most nearly in the simplest and most rudimentary forms oflife. Under the systems which we call patriarchal, the moderndistinction between sins and crimes had no existence. All gross sinswere offences against society, as it then was constituted, and, whereverit was possible, were punished as being so; chicanery and those subtleadvantages which the acute and unscrupulous can take over the simple, without open breach of enacted statutes, became only possible under thecomplications of more artificial polities; and the oppression or injuryof man by man was open, violent, obvious, and therefore easilyunderstood. Doubtless, therefore, in such a state of things it would, on the whole, be true to experience that, judging merely by outwardprosperity or the reverse, good and bad men would be rewarded andpunished as such in this actual world; so far, that is, as theadministration of such rewards and punishments was left in the power ofmankind. But theology could not content itself with general tendencies. Theological propositions then, as much as now, were held to be absolute, universal, admitting of no exceptions, and explaining every phenomenon. Superficial generalisations were construed into immutable decrees; theGod of this world was just and righteous, and temporal prosperity orwretchedness were dealt out by Him immediately by His own will to Hissubjects according to their behaviour. Thus the same disposition towardscompleteness which was the ruin of paganism, here, too, was foundgenerating the same evils; the half truth rounding itself out withfalsehoods. Not only the consequences of ill actions which followedthrough themselves, but the accidents, as we call them, ofnature--earthquakes, storms, and pestilences--were the ministers ofGod's justice, and struck sinners only with discriminating accuracy. That the sun should shine alike on the evil and the good was a creed toohigh for the early divines, or that the victims of a fallen tower wereno greater offenders than their neighbours. The conceptions of such mencould not pass beyond the outward temporal consequence; and if God'shand was not there it was nowhere. We might have expected that such atheory of things could not long resist the accumulated contradictions ofexperience; but the same experience shows also what a marvellous poweris in us of thrusting aside phenomena which interfere with our cherishedconvictions; and when such convictions are consecrated into a creedwhich it is a sacred duty to believe, experience is but like waterdropping upon a rock, which wears it away, indeed, at last, but only inthousands of years. This theory was and is the central idea of theJewish polity, the obstinate toughness of which has been the perplexityof Gentiles and Christians from the first dawn of its existence; itlingers among ourselves in our Liturgy and in the popular belief; and inspite of the emphatic censure of Him after whose name we call ourselves, is still the instant interpreter for us of any unusual calamity, apotato blight, a famine, or an epidemic: such vitality is there in amoral faith, though now, at any rate, contradicted by the experience ofall mankind, and at issue even with Christianity itself. 

At what period in the world's history misgivings about it began to showthemselves it is now impossible to say; it was at the close, probably, of the patriarchal period, when men who really _thought_ must have foundthe ground palpably shaking under them. Indications of such misgivingsare to be found in the Psalms, those especially passing under the nameof Asaph; and all through Ecclesiastes there breathes a spirit ofdeepest and saddest scepticism. But Asaph thrusts his doubts aside, andforces himself back into his old position; and the scepticism ofEcclesiastes is confessedly that of a man who had gone wandering afterenjoyment; searching after pleasures--pleasures of sense and pleasuresof intellect--and who, at last, bears reluctant testimony that, by suchmethods, no pleasures can be found which will endure; that he hadsquandered the power which might have been used for better things, andhad only strength remaining to tell his own sad tale as a warning tomankind. There is nothing in Ecclesiastes like the misgivings of a noblenature. The writer's own personal happiness had been all for which hehad cared; he had failed, as all men gifted as he was gifted are sure tofail, and the lights of heaven were extinguished by the disappointmentwith which his own spirit had been clouded. 

Utterly different from these, both in character and in the lesson whichit teaches, is the Book of Job. Of unknown date, as we said, and unknownauthorship, the language impregnated with strange idioms and strangeallusions, un-Jewish in form, and in fiercest hostility with Judaism, ithovers like a meteor over the old Hebrew literature, in it, but not ofit, compelling the acknowledgment of itself by its own internal majesty, yet exerting no influence over the minds of the people, never alludedto, and scarcely ever quoted, till at last the light which it hadheralded rose up full over the world in Christianity. 

The conjectures which have been formed upon the date of this book are sovarious, that they show of themselves on how slight a foundation thebest of them must rest. The language is no guide, for althoughunquestionably of Hebrew origin, the poem bears no analogy to any of theother books in the Bible; while of its external history nothing isknown at all, except that it was received into the canon at the time ofthe great synagogue. Ewald decides, with some confidence, that itbelongs to the great prophetic period, and that the writer was acontemporary of Jeremiah. Ewald is a high authority in these matters, and this opinion is the one which we believe is now commonly receivedamong biblical scholars. In the absence of proof, however (and thereasons which he brings forward are really no more than conjectures), these opposite considerations may be of moment. It is only natural thatat first thought we should ascribe the grandest poem in a literature tothe time at which the poetry of the nation to which it belongs wasgenerally at its best; but, on reflection, the time when the poetry ofprophecy is the richest, is not likely to be favourable to compositionsof another kind. The prophets wrote in an era of decrepitude, dissolution, sin, and shame, when the glory of Israel was falling roundthem into ruin, and their mission, glowing as they were with the ancientspirit, was to rebuke, to warn, to threaten, and to promise. Findingthemselves too late to save, and only, like Cassandra, despised anddisregarded, their voices rise up singing the swan song of a dyingpeople, now falling away in the wild wailing of despondency over theshameful and desperate present, now swelling in triumphant hope that Godwill not leave them for ever, and in His own time will take His chosento Himself again. But such a period is an ill occasion for searchinginto the broad problems of human destiny; the present is all-importantand all-absorbing; and such a book as that of Job could have arisen onlyout of an isolation of mind, and life, and interest, which we cannotconceive of as possible under such conditions. 

The more it is studied, the more the conclusion forces itself upon usthat, let the writer have lived when he would, in his struggle with thecentral falsehood of his own people's creed, he must have divorcedhimself from them outwardly as well as inwardly; that he travelled awayinto the world, and lived long, perhaps all his matured life, in exile. Everything about the book speaks of a person who had broken free fromthe narrow littleness of 'the peculiar people. ' The language, as wesaid, is full of strange words. The hero of the poem is of strange landand parentage--a Gentile certainly, not a Jew. The life, the manners, the customs are of all varieties and places--Egypt, with its river andits pyramids, is there; the description of mining points to Phoenicia;the settled life in cities, the nomad Arabs, the wandering caravans, theheat of the tropics, and the ice of the north, all are foreign toCanaan, speaking of foreign things and foreign people. No mention, orhint of mention, is there throughout the poem of Jewish traditions orJewish certainties. We look to find the three friends vindicatethemselves, as they so well might have done, by appeals to the fertileannals of Israel, to the Flood, to the cities of the plain, to theplagues of Egypt, or the thunders of Sinai. But of all this there is nota word; they are passed by as if they had no existence; and instead ofthem, when witnesses are required for the power of God, we have strangeun-Hebrew stories of the eastern astronomic mythology, the old wars ofthe giants, the imprisoned Orion, the wounded dragon, 'the sweetinfluences of the seven stars, ' and the glittering fragments of thesea-snake Rahab[J] trailing across the northern sky. Again, God is notthe God of Israel, but the father of mankind; we hear nothing of achosen people, nothing of a special revelation, nothing of peculiarprivileges; and in the court of heaven there is a Satan, not the princeof this world and the enemy of God, but the angel of judgment, theaccusing spirit whose mission was to walk to and fro over the earth, andcarry up to heaven an account of the sins of mankind. We cannot believethat thoughts of this kind arose out of Jerusalem in the days of Josiah. In this book, if anywhere, we have the record of some [Greek: anêrpolutropos] who, like the old hero of Ithaca, [Greek: pollôn anthrôpôn iden astea kai noon egnô, polla d' hog' en pontô pathen algea hon kata thumon, arnumenos psuchên. .. . ]

but the scenes, the names, and the incidents, are all contrived as if tobaffle curiosity--as if, in the very form of the poem, to teach us thatit is no story of a single thing which happened once, but that itbelongs to humanity itself, and is the drama of the trial of man, withAlmighty God and the angels as the spectators of it. 

No reader can have failed to have been struck with the simplicity ofthe opening. Still, calm, and most majestic, it tells us everythingwhich is necessary to be known in the fewest possible words. The historyof Job was probably a tradition in the East; his name, like that ofPriam in Greece, the symbol of fallen greatness, and his misfortunes theproblem of philosophers. In keeping with the current belief, he isdescribed as a model of excellence, the most perfect and upright manupon the earth, 'and the same was the greatest man in all the east. ' Sofar, greatness and goodness had gone hand in hand together, as thepopular theory required. The details of his character are brought out inthe progress of the poem. He was 'the father of the oppressed, and ofthose who had none to help them. ' When he sat as a judge in themarket-places, 'righteousness clothed him' there, and 'his justice was arobe and a diadem. ' He 'broke the jaws of the wicked, and plucked thespoil out of his teeth;' and, humble in the midst of his power, he 'didnot despise the cause of his manservant, or his maidservant, when theycontended with him, ' knowing (and amidst those old people where themultitude of mankind were regarded as the born slaves of the powerful, to be carved into eunuchs or polluted into concubines at their master'spleasure, it was no easy matter to know it)--knowing that 'He who hadmade him had made them, ' and _one_ 'had fashioned them both in thewomb. ' Above all, he was the friend of the poor; 'the blessing of himthat was ready to perish came upon him, ' and he 'made the widow's heartto sing for joy. '

Setting these characteristics of his daily life by the side of hisunaffected piety, as it is described in the first chapter, we have apicture of the best man who could then be conceived; not a hard ascetic, living in haughty or cowardly isolation, but a warm figure of flesh andblood, a man full of all human loveliness, and to whom, that no roommight be left for any possible Calvinistic falsehood, God Himself bearsthe emphatic testimony, that 'there was none like him upon the earth, aperfect and upright man, who feared God and eschewed evil. ' If such aperson as this, therefore, could be made miserable, necessarily thecurrent belief of the Jews was false to the root; and traditionfurnished the fact that he had been visited by every worst calamity. Howwas it then to be accounted for? Out of a thousand possibleexplanations, the poet introduces a single one. He admits us behind theveil which covers the ways of Providence, and we hear the accusing angelcharging Job with an interested piety, and of being obedient because itwas his policy. 'Job does not serve God for nought, ' he says; 'strip himof his splendour, and see if he will care for God then. Humble him intopoverty and wretchedness, so only we shall know what is in his heart. 'The cause thus introduced is itself a rebuke to the belief which, withits 'rewards and punishments, ' immediately fostered selfishness; and thepoem opens with a double action, on one side to try the question whetherit is possible for man to love God disinterestedly--the issue of whichtrial is not foreseen or even foretold, and we watch the progress of itwith an anxious and fearful interest; on the other side, to bring out, in contrast to the truth which we already know, the cruel falsehood ofthe popular faith--to show how, instead of leading men to mercy andaffection, it hardens their heart, narrows their sympathies, andenhances the trials of the sufferer, by refinements which even Satan hadnot anticipated. The combination of evils, as blow falls on blow, suddenly, swiftly, and terribly, has all the appearance of a purposedvisitation (as indeed it was); if ever outward incidents might withjustice be interpreted as the immediate action of Providence, thosewhich fell on Job might be so interpreted. The world turns disdainfullyfrom the fallen in the world's way; but far worse than this, his chosenfriends, wise, good, pious men, as wisdom and piety were then, withoutone glimpse of the true cause of his sufferings, see in them a judgmentupon his secret sins. He becomes to them an illustration, and even (suchare the paralogisms of men of this description) a proof of their theorythat 'the prosperity of the wicked is but for a while;' and instead ofthe comfort and help which they might have brought him, and which in theend they were made to bring him, he is to them no more than a text forthe enunciation of solemn falsehood. And even worse again, the suffererhimself had been educated in the same creed; he, too, had been taught tosee the hand of God in the outward dispensation; and feeling from thebottom of his heart, that he, in his own case, was a sure contradictionof what he had learnt to believe, he himself finds his very faith in Godshaken from its foundation. The worst evils which Satan had devisedwere distanced far by those which had been created by human folly. 

The creed in which Job had believed was tried and found wanting, and, asit ever will be when the facts of experience come in contact with theinadequate formula, the true is found so mingled with the false, thatthey can hardly be disentangled, and are in danger of being swept awaytogether. 

A studied respect is shown, however, to orthodoxy, even while it isarraigned for judgment. It may be doubtful whether the writer purposelyintended it. He probably cared only to tell the real truth; to say forthe old theory the best which could be said, and to produce as itsdefenders the best and wisest men whom in his experience he had known tobelieve and defend it. At any rate, he represents the three friends, notas a weaker person would have represented them, as foolish, obstinatebigots, but as wise, humane, and almost great men, who, at the outset, at least, are animated only by the kindest feelings, and speak what theyhave to say with the most earnest conviction that it is true. Job isvehement, desperate, reckless. His language is the wild, naturaloutpouring of suffering. The friends, true to the eternal nature of man, are grave, solemn, and indignant, preaching their half truth, andmistaken only in supposing that it is the whole; speaking, as all suchpersons would speak and still do speak, in defending what they considersacred truth against the assaults of folly and scepticism. How beautifulis their first introduction:--

'Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil which was come uponhim, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, andBildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made anappointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him. Andwhen they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they liftedup their voice and wept, and they rent every one his mantle, andsprinkled dust upon their heads towards heaven. So they sat down withhim upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a wordunto him, for they saw that his grief was very great. '

What a picture is there! What majestic tenderness! His wife had scoffedat his faith, bidding him 'leave God and die. ' 'His acquaintance hadturned from him. ' He 'had called his servant, and he had given him noanswer. ' Even the children, in their unconscious cruelty, had gatheredround and mocked him as he lay among the ashes. But 'his friendssprinkle dust towards heaven, and sit silently by him, and weep for himseven days and seven nights upon the ground. ' That is, they weretrue-hearted, truly loving, devout, religious men; and yet they, withtheir religion, were to become the instruments of the most poignantsufferings, the sharpest temptations, which he had to endure. So it was, and is, and will be--of such materials is this human life of ourscomposed. 

And now, remembering the double action of the drama--the actual trial ofJob, the result of which is uncertain; and the delusion of these men, which is, at the outset, certain--let us go rapidly through thedialogue. Satan's share in the temptation had already been overcome. Lying sick in the loathsome disease which had been sent upon him, hiswife, in Satan's own words, had tempted Job to say, 'Farewell toGod, '--think no more of God or goodness, since this was all which cameof it; and Job had told her that she spoke as one of the foolish women. He 'had received good at the hand of the Lord, and should he not receiveevil?' But now, when real love and real affection appear, his heartmelts in him; he loses his forced self-composure, and bursts into apassionate regret that he had ever been born. In the agony of hissufferings, hope of better things had died away. He does not complain ofinjustice; as yet, and before his friends have stung and wounded him, hemakes no questioning of Providence, --but why was life given to him atall, if only for this? Sick in mind, and sick in body, but one wishremains to him, that death will come quickly and end all. It is a cryfrom the very depths of a single and simple heart. But for suchsimplicity and singleness his friends could not give him credit;possessed beforehand with their idea, they see in his misery only afatal witness against him; such calamities could not have befallen aman, the justice of God would not have permitted it, unless they hadbeen deserved. Job had sinned and he had suffered, and this wild passionwas but impenitence and rebellion. 

Being as certain that they were right in this opinion as they were thatGod Himself existed, that they should speak what they felt was onlynatural and necessary; and their language at the outset is, all whichwould be dictated by the tenderest sympathy. Eliphaz opens, the oldestand most important of the three, in a soft, subdued, suggestive strain, contriving in every way to spare the feelings of the sufferer, to theextreme to which his love will allow him. All is general, impersonal, indirect, --the rule of the world, the order of Providence. He does notaccuse Job, but he describes his calamities, and leaves him to gatherfor himself the occasion which had produced them; and then passes off, as if further to soften the blow, to the mysterious vision in which theinfirmity of mortal nature had been revealed to him, the universalweakness which involved both the certainty that Job had shared in it, and the excuse for him, if he would confess and humble himself: theblessed virtue of repentance follows, and the promise that all shall bewell. 

This is the note on which each of the friends strikes successively, inthe first of the three divisions into which the dialogue divides itself, but each with increasing peremptoriness and confidence, as Job, so farfrom accepting their interpretation of what had befallen him, hurls itfrom him in anger and disdain. Let us observe (and the Calvinists shouldconsider this), he will hear as little of the charges against mankind asof charges against himself. He will not listen to the 'corruption ofhumanity, ' because in the consciousness of his own innocency, he knowsthat it is not corrupt: he knows that he is himself just and good, andwe know it, the Divine sentence upon him having been already passed. Hewill not acknowledge his sin, for he knows not of what to repent. If hecould have reflected calmly, he might have foreseen what they would say. He knew all that as well as they: it was the old story which he hadlearnt, and could repeat, if necessary, as well as anyone: and if it hadbeen no more than a philosophical discussion, touching himself no morenearly than it touched his friends, he might have allowed for thetenacity of opinion in such matters, and listened to it and replied toit with equanimity. But, as the proverb says, 'It is ill talking betweena full man and a fasting:' and in Job such equanimity would have beenbut Stoicism, or the affectation of it, and unreal as the others'theories. Possessed with the certainty that he had not deserved what hadbefallen him, harassed with doubt, and worn out with pain andunkindness, he had assumed (and how natural that he should assume it)that those who loved him should not have been hasty to believe evil ofhim; he had spoken to them as he really felt, and he thought that hemight have looked to them for something warmer and more sympathisingthan such dreary eloquence. So when the revelation comes upon him ofwhat was passing in them, he attributes it (and now he is unjust tothem) to a falsehood of heart, and not to a blindness of understanding. Their sermons, so kindly intended, roll past him as a dismal mockery. They had been shocked (and how true again is this to nature) at hispassionate cry for death. 'Do ye reprove words?' he says, 'and thespeeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind?' It was but poorfriendship and narrow wisdom. He had looked to them for pity, forcomfort, and love. He had longed for it as the parched caravans in thedesert for the water-streams, and 'his brethren had dealt deceitfullywith him. ' The brooks, in the cool winter, roll in a full turbidtorrent; 'what time it waxes warm they vanish, when it is hot they areconsumed out of their place; the caravans of Tema looked for them, thecompanies of Sheba waited for them; they were confounded because theyhad hoped; they came thither, and there was nothing. ' If for once thesepoor men could have trusted their hearts, if for once they could havebelieved that there might be 'more things in heaven and earth' than weredreamt of in their philosophy--but this is the one thing which theycould not do, which the theologian proper never has done or will do. Andthus whatever of calmness or endurance Job alone, on his ash-heap, mighthave conquered for himself, is all scattered away; and as the stronggusts of passion sweep to and fro across his heart, he pours himself outin wild fitful music, so beautiful because so true, not answering themor their speeches, but now flinging them from him in scorn, nowappealing to their mercy, or turning indignantly to God; now praying fordeath; now in perplexity doubting whether, in some mystic way which hecannot understand, he may not, perhaps, after all, really have sinned, and praying to be shown his fault; and then staggering further into thedarkness, and breaking out into upbraidings of the Power which hasbecome so dreadful an enigma to him. 'Thou enquirest after my iniquity, thou searchest after my sin, and thou knowest that I am not wicked. Whydidst thou bring me forth out of the womb? Oh, that I had given up theghost, and no eye had seen me. Cease, let me alone. It is but a littlewhile that I have to live. Let me alone, that I may take comfort alittle before I go, whence I shall not return to the land of darknessand the shadow of death. ' In what other poem in the world is therepathos deep as this? With experience so stern as his, it was not for Jobto be calm, and self-possessed, and delicate in his words. He speaks notwhat he knows, but what he feels; and without fear the writer allows himto throw out his passion all genuine as it rises, not overmuch caringhow nice ears might be offended, but contented to be true to the realemotion of a genuine human heart. So the poem runs on to the end of thefirst answer to Zophar. 

But now, with admirable fitness, as the contest goes forward, therelative position of the speakers begins to change. Hitherto, Job onlyhad been passionate; and his friends temperate and collected. Now, becoming shocked at his obstinacy, and disappointed in the result oftheir homilies, they stray still further from the truth in an endeavourto strengthen their position, and, as a natural consequence, visiblygrow angry. To them, Job's vehement and desperate speeches are damningevidence of the truth of their suspicion. Impiety is added to his firstsin, and they begin to see in him a rebel against God. At first they hadbeen contented to speak generally, and much which they had urged waspartially true; now they step forward to a direct application, andformally and personally accuse himself. Here their ground is positivelyfalse; and with delicate art it is they who are now growing violent, andwounded self-love begins to show behind their zeal for God; while incontrast to them, as there is less and less truth in what they say, Jobgrows more and more collected. For a time it had seemed doubtful how hewould endure his trial. The light of his faith was burning feebly andunsteadily; a little more, and it seemed as if it might have utterlygone out. But at last the storm was lulling; as the charges are broughtpersonally home to him, the confidence in his own real innocence risesagainst them. He had before known that he was innocent; now he feels thestrength which lies in innocence, as if God were beginning to revealHimself within him, to prepare the way for the after outwardmanifestation of Himself. 

The friends, as before, repeat one another with but little difference;the sameness being of course intentional, as showing that they were notspeaking for themselves, but as representatives of a prevailing opinion. Eliphaz, again, gives the note which the others follow. Hear thisCalvinist of the old world: 'Thy own mouth condemneth thee, and thineown lips testify against thee. What is man that he should be clean, andhe that is born of a woman that he should be righteous? Behold, heputteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in hissight; how much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinkethiniquity like water. ' Strange, that after all these thousands of yearswe should still persist in this degrading confession, as a thing whichit is impious to deny and impious to attempt to render otherwise, whenScripture itself, in language so emphatic, declares that it is a lie. Job _is_ innocent, perfect, righteous. God Himself bears witness to it. It is Job who is found at last to have spoken truth, and the friends tohave sinned in denying it. And he holds fast by his innocency, and witha generous confidence thrusts away the misgivings which had begun tocling to him. Among his complainings he had exclaimed, that God wasremembering upon him the sins of his youth--not denying them; knowingwell that he, like others, had gone astray before he had learnt tocontrol himself, but feeling that at least in an earthly father it isunjust to visit the faults of childhood on the matured man; feeling thathe had long, long shaken them off from him, and they did not even impairthe probity of his after-life. But now these doubts, too, pass away inthe brave certainty that God is not less just than man. As thedenouncings grow louder and darker, he appeals from his narrow judges tothe Supreme Tribunal--calls on God to hear him and to try his cause--andthen, in the strength of this appeal the mist rises from before hiseyes. His sickness is mortal: he has no hope in life, and death is near;but the intense feeling that justice must and will be done, holds to himcloser and closer. God may appear on earth for him; or if that be toobold a hope, and death finds him as he is--what is death then? God willclear his memory in the place where he lived; his injuries will berighted over his grave; while for himself, like a sudden gleam ofsunlight between clouds, a clear, bright hope beams up, that he too, then, in another life, if not in this, when his skin is wasted off hisbones, and the worms have done their work on the prison of his spirit, he too, at last, may then see God; may see Him, and have his pleadingsheard. 

With such a hope, or even the shadow of one, he turns back to the worldagain to look at it. Facts against which he had before closed his eyeshe allows and confronts, and he sees that his own little experience isbut the reflection of a law. You tell me, he seems to say, that the goodare rewarded, and that the wicked are punished; that God is just, andthat this is always so. Perhaps it is, or will be, but not in the waywhich you imagine. You have known me, you have known what my life hasbeen; you see what I am, and it is no difficulty to you. You preferbelieving that I, whom you call your friend, am a deceiver or apretender, to admitting the possibility of the falsehood of yourhypothesis. You will not listen to my assurance, and you are angry withme because I will not lie against my own soul, and acknowledge sinswhich I have not committed. You appeal to the course of the world inproof of your faith, and challenge me to answer you. Well, then, Iaccept your challenge. The world is not what you say. You have told mewhat you have seen of it: I will tell you what I have seen. 

'Even while I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold upon myflesh. Wherefore do the wicked become old, yea, and are mighty in power?Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspringbefore their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rodof God upon them. Their bull gendereth and faileth not; their cowcalveth, and casteth not her calf. They send forth their little oneslike a flock, and their children dance. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down into the grave. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. What is theAlmighty that we should serve Him? and what profit should we have if wepray to Him?'

Will you quote the weary proverb? Will you say that 'God layeth up Hisiniquity for His children?' (Our translators have wholly lost the senseof this passage, and endeavour to make Job acknowledge what he issteadfastly denying. ) Well, and what then? What will he care? 'Will hisown eye see his own fall? Will he drink the wrath of the Almighty? Whatare the fortunes of his house to him if the number of his own months isfulfilled?' One man is good and another wicked, one is happy and anotheris miserable. In the great indifference of nature they share alike inthe common lot. 'They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms coverthem. '

Ewald, and many other critics, suppose that Job was hurried away by hisfeelings to say all this; and that in his calmer moments he must havefelt that it was untrue. It is a point on which we must declineaccepting even Ewald's high authority. Even then, in those old times, itwas beginning to be terribly true. Even then the current theory wasobliged to bend to large exceptions; and what Job saw as exceptions wesee round us everywhere. It was true then, it is infinitely more truenow, that what is called virtue in the common sense of the word, stillmore that nobleness, godliness, or heroism of character in any formwhatsoever, have nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, oreven happiness. The thoroughly vicious man is no doubt wretched enough;but the worldly, prudent, self-restraining man, with his five senses, which he understands how to gratify with tempered indulgence, with aconscience satisfied with the hack routine of what is calledrespectability, --such a man feels no wretchedness; no inward uneasinessdisturbs him, no desires which he cannot gratify; and this though he bethe basest and most contemptible slave of his own selfishness. Providence will not interfere to punish him. Let him obey the laws underwhich prosperity is obtainable, and he will obtain it, let him neverfear. He will obtain it, be he base or noble. Nature is indifferent; thefamine and the earthquake, and the blight or the accident, will notdiscriminate to strike him. He may insure himself against casualties inthese days of ours, with the money perhaps which a better man would havegiven away, and he will have his reward. He need not doubt it. 

And, again, it is not true, as optimists would persuade us, that suchprosperity brings no real pleasure. A man with no high aspirations, whothrives, and makes money, and envelops himself in comforts, is as happyas such a nature can be. If unbroken satisfaction be the most blessedstate for a man (and this certainly is the practical notion ofhappiness), he is the happiest of men. Nor are those idle phrases anytruer, that the good man's goodness is a never-ceasing sunshine; thatvirtue is its own reward, &c. &c. If men truly virtuous care to berewarded for it, their virtue is but a poor investment of their moralcapital. Was Job so happy then on that ash-heap of his, the mark of theworld's scorn, and the butt for the spiritual archery of the theologian, alone in his forlorn nakedness, like some old dreary stump which thelightning has scathed, rotting away in the wind and the rain? Ifhappiness be indeed what we men are sent into this world to seek for, those hitherto thought the noblest among us were the pitifullest andwretchedest. Surely it was no error in Job. It was that real insightwhich once was given to all the world in Christianity, however we haveforgotten it now. Job was learning to see that it was not in thepossession of enjoyment, no, nor of happiness itself, that thedifference lies between the good and the bad. True, it might be that Godsometimes, even generally, gives such happiness--gives it in whatAristotle calls an [Greek: epigignomenon telos], but it is no part ofthe terms on which He admits us to His service, still less is it the endwhich we may propose to ourselves on entering His service. Happiness Hegives to whom He will, or leaves to the angel of nature to distributeamong those who fulfil the laws upon which _it_ depends. But to serveGod and to love Him is higher and better than happiness, though it bewith wounded feet, and bleeding brows, and hearts loaded with sorrow. 

Into this high faith Job is rising, treading his temptations under hisfeet, and finding in them a ladder on which his spirit rises. Thus he ispassing further and even further from his friends, soaring where theirimaginations cannot follow him. To them he is a blasphemer whom theygaze at with awe and terror. They had charged him with sinning on thestrength of their hypothesis, and he has answered with a deliberatedenial of it. Losing now all mastery over themselves, they pour out atorrent of mere extravagant invective and baseless falsehood, which inthe calmer outset they would have blushed to think of. They _know_ noevil of Job, but they do not hesitate to convert conjecture intocertainty, and specify in detail the particular crimes which he musthave committed. He _ought_ to have committed them, and so he had; theold argument then as now. --'Is not thy wickedness great?' says Eliphaz. 'Thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped thenaked of their clothing; thou hast not given water to the weary, andthou hast withholden bread from the hungry;' and so on through a seriesof mere distracted lies. But the time was past when words like thesecould make Job angry. Bildad follows them up with an attempt to frightenhim by a picture of the power of that God whom he was blaspheming; butJob cuts short his harangue, and ends it for him in a spirit ofloftiness which Bildad could not have approached; and then proudly andcalmly rebukes them all, no longer in scorn and irony, but in high, tranquil self-possession. 'God forbid that I should justify you, ' hesays; 'till I die I will not remove my integrity from me. Myrighteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go. My heart shall notreproach me so long as I live. '

So far all has been clear, each party, with increasing confidence, having insisted on their own position, and denounced their adversaries. A difficulty now arises which, at first sight, appears insurmountable. As the chapters are at present printed, the entire of the twenty-seventhis assigned to Job, and the paragraph from the eleventh to thetwenty-third verses is in direct contradiction to all which he hasmaintained before--is, in fact, a concession of having been wrong fromthe beginning. Ewald, who, as we said above, himself refuses to allowthe truth of Job's last and highest position, supposes that he is herereceding from it, and confessing what an over-precipitate passion hadbetrayed him into denying. For many reasons, principally because we aresatisfied that Job said then no more than the real fact, we cannot thinkEwald right; and the concessions are too large and too inconsistent tobe reconciled even with his own general theory of the poem. Anothersolution of the difficulty is very simple, although it is to be admittedthat it rather cuts the knot than unties it. Eliphaz and Bildad haveeach spoken a third time; the symmetry of the general form requires thatnow Zophar should speak; and the suggestion, we believe, was first madeby Dr. Kennicott, that he did speak, and that the verses in questionbelong to him. Any one who is accustomed to MSS. Will understand easilyhow such a mistake, if it be one, might have arisen. Even inShakespeare, the speeches in the early editions are in many instanceswrongly divided, and assigned to the wrong persons. It might havearisen from inadvertence; it might have arisen from the foolishness ofsome Jewish transcriber, who resolved, at all costs, to drag the bookinto harmony with Judaism, and make Job unsay his heresy. This view hasthe merit of fully clearing up the obscurity. Another, however, has beensuggested by Eichorn, who originally followed Kennicott, but discovered, as he supposed, a less violent hypothesis, which was equallysatisfactory. Eichorn imagines the verses to be a summary by Job of hisadversaries' opinions, as if he said--'Listen now; you know what thefacts are as well as I, and yet you maintain this;' and then passed onwith his indirect reply to it. It is possible that Eichorn may beright--at any rate, either he is right, or else Dr. Kennicott is. Certainly, Ewald is not. Taken as an account of Job's own conviction, the passage contradicts the burden of the whole poem. Passing it by, therefore, and going to what immediately follows, we arrive at what, ina human sense, is the final climax--Job's victory and triumph. He hadappealed to God, and God had not appeared; he had doubted and foughtagainst his doubts, and at last had crushed them down. He, too, had beentaught to look for God in outward judgments; and when his own experiencehad shown him his mistake, he knew not where to turn. He had beenleaning on a bruised reed, and it had run into his hand and pierced him. But as soon as in the speeches of his friend he saw it all laid down inits weakness and its false conclusions--when he saw the defenders of itwandering further and further from what he knew to be true, growingevery moment, as if from a consciousness of the unsoundness of theirstanding ground, more violent, obstinate, and unreasonable, the scalesfell more and more from his eyes--he had seen the fact that the wickedmight prosper, and in learning to depend upon his innocency he had feltthat the good man's support was there, if it was anywhere; and at last, with all his heart, was reconciled to the truth. The mystery of theouter world becomes deeper to him, but he does not any more try tounderstand it. The wisdom which can compass that mystery, he knows, isnot in man, though man search for it deeper and harder than the minersearches for the hidden treasures of the earth; the wisdom which aloneis attainable is resignation to God. 

'Where, ' he cries, 'shall wisdom be found, and where is the place ofunderstanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it foundin the land of the living. The depth said it is not with me; and the seasaid it is not in me. It is hid from the eyes of all living, and keptclose from the fowls of the air. [K] God understandeth the way thereof, and He knoweth the place thereof [He, not man, understands the mysteriesof the world which He has made]. And unto man He said, Behold! the fearof the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, that isunderstanding. '

Here, therefore, it might seem as if all was over. There is no cleareror purer faith possible for man; and Job had achieved it. His evil hadturned to good; and sorrow had severed for him the last links whichbound him to lower things. He had felt that he could do withouthappiness, that it was no longer essential, and that he could live on, and still love God, and cling to Him. But he is not described as ofpreternatural, or at all Titanic nature, but as very man, full of allhuman tenderness and susceptibility. His old life was still beautiful tohim. He does not hate it because he can renounce it; and now that thestruggle is over, the battle fought and won, and his heart has flowedover in that magnificent song of victory, the note once more changes: heturns back to earth to linger over those old departed days, with whichthe present is so hard a contrast; and his parable dies away in a strainof plaintive, but resigned melancholy. Once more he throws himself onGod, no longer in passionate expostulation, but in pleading humility. [L]And then comes (perhaps, as Ewald says, it _could not_ have comebefore) the answer out of the whirlwind. Job had called on God, andprayed that he might appear, that he might plead his cause with him; andnow he comes, and what will Job do? He comes not as the healing spiritin the heart of man; but, as Job had at first demanded, the outward God, the Almighty Creator of the universe, and clad in the terrors and theglory of it. Job, in his first precipitancy, had desired to reason withhim on his government. The poet, in gleaming lines, describes for ananswer the universe as it then was known, the majesty and awfulness ofit; and then asks whether it is this which he requires to have explainedto him, or which he believes himself capable of conducting. Therevelation acts on Job as the sign of the Macrocosmos on the modernFaust; but when he sinks, crushed, it is not as the rebellious upstart, struck down in his pride--for he had himself, partially at least, subdued his own presumption--but as a humble penitent, struggling toovercome his weakness. He abhors himself for his murmurs, and 'repentsin dust and ashes. ' It will have occurred to every one that the secretwhich has been revealed to the reader is not, after all, revealed to Jobor to his friends, and for this plain reason: the burden of the dramais, not that we do, but that we do not, and cannot, know the mystery ofthe government of the world--that it is not for man to seek it, or forGod to reveal it. We, the readers, are, in this one instance, admittedbehind the scenes--for once, in this single case--because it wasnecessary to meet the received theory by a positive fact whichcontradicted it. But the explanation of one case need not be theexplanation of another; our business is to do what we know to be right, and ask no questions. The veil which in the Ægyptian legend lay beforethe face of Isis is not to be raised; and we are not to seek topenetrate secrets which are not ours. 

While, however, God does not condescend to justify his ways to man, hegives judgment on the past controversy. The self-constituted pleadersfor him, the acceptors of his person, were all wrong; and Job--thepassionate, vehement, scornful, misbelieving Job--he had spoken thetruth; he at least had spoken facts, and they had been defending atransient theory as an everlasting truth. 

'And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, theLord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee andagainst thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that isright, as my servant Job hath. Therefore take unto you now sevenbullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job; and offer foryourselves a burnt-offering. And my servant Job shall pray for you, andhim will I accept. Lest I deal with you after your folly, for that yehave not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job. '

One act of justice remains. Knowing as we do the cause of Job'smisfortunes, and that as soon as his trial was over it was no longeroperative, our sense of fitness could not be satisfied unless he wereindemnified outwardly for his outward sufferings. Satan is defeated, andJob's integrity proved; and there is no reason why the general lawshould be interfered with, which, however large the exceptions, tends toconnect goodness and prosperity; or why obvious calamities, obviouslyundeserved, should remain any more unremoved. Perhaps, too, a deeperlesson still lies below his restoration--something perhaps of this kind. Prosperity, enjoyment, happiness, comfort, peace, whatever be the nameby which we designate that state in which life is to our own selvespleasant and delightful, as long as they are sought or prized as thingsessential, so far have a tendency to disennoble our nature, and are asign that we are still in servitude to selfishness. Only when they lieoutside us, as ornaments merely to be worn or laid aside as Godpleases--only then may such things be possessed with impunity. Job'sheart in early times had clung to them more than he knew, but now he waspurged clean, and they were restored because he had ceased to need them. 

Such in outline is this wonderful poem. With the material of which it iswoven we have not here been concerned, although it is so rich andpregnant that we might with little difficulty construct out of it acomplete picture of the world as then it was: its life, knowledge, arts, habits, superstitions, hopes, and fears. The subject is the problem ofall mankind, and the composition embraces no less wide a range. But whatwe are here most interested upon is the epoch which it marks in theprogress of mankind, as the first recorded struggle of a new experiencewith an established orthodox belief. True, for hundreds of years, perhaps for a thousand, the superstition against which it was directedcontinued. When Christ came it was still in its vitality. Nay, as wesaw, it is alive, or in a sort of mock life, among us at this very day. But even those who retained their imperfect belief had received intotheir canon a book which treated it with contumely and scorn, soirresistible was the majesty of truth. 

In days like these, when we hear so much of progress, it is worth whileto ask ourselves what advances we have made further in the samedirection? and once more, at the risk of some repetition, let us look atthe position in which this book leaves us. It had been assumed that man, if he lived a just and upright life, had a right to expect to be happy. Happiness, 'his being's end and aim, ' was his legitimate and covenantedreward. If God therefore was just, such a man would be happy; andinasmuch as God was just, the man who was not happy had not deserved tobe. There is no flaw in this argument; and if it is unsound, the fallacycan only lie in the supposed right to happiness. It is idle to talk ofinward consolations. Job felt them, but they were not everything. Theydid not relieve the anguish of his wounds; they did not make the loss ofhis children, or his friends' unkindness, any the less painful to him. 

The poet, indeed, restores him in the book; but in life it need not havebeen so. He might have died upon his ash-heap, as thousands of good menhave died, and will die again, in misery. Happiness, therefore, is _not_what we are to look for. Our place is to be true to the best which weknow, to seek that and do that; and if by 'virtue its own reward' bemeant that the good man cares only to continue good, desiring nothingmore, then it is a true and noble saying. But if virtue be valuedbecause it is politic, because in pursuit of it will be found mostenjoyment and fewest sufferings, then it is not noble any more, and itis turning the truth of God into a lie. Let us do right, and whetherhappiness come or unhappiness it is no very mighty matter. If it come, life will be sweet; if it do not come, life will be bitter--bitter, notsweet, and yet to be borne. On such a theory alone is the government ofthis world intelligibly just. The well-being of our souls depends onlyon what we _are_; and nobleness of character is nothing else but steadylove of good and steady scorn of evil. The government of the world is aproblem while the desire of selfish enjoyment survives; and whenjustice is not done according to such standard (which will not be tillthe day after doomsday, and not then), self-loving men will still ask, why? and find no answer. Only to those who have the heart to say, 'Wecan do without that; it is not what we ask or desire, ' is there nosecret. Man will have what he deserves, and will find what is reallybest for him, exactly as he honestly seeks for it. Happiness may flyaway, pleasure pall or cease to be obtainable, wealth decay, friendsfail or prove unkind, and fame turn to infamy; but the power to serveGod never fails, and the love of Him is never rejected. 

Most of us, at one time or other of our lives, have known something oflove--of that only pure love in which no _self_ is left remaining. Wehave loved as children, we have loved as lovers; some of us have learntto love a cause, a faith, a country; and what love would that be whichexisted only with a prudent view to after-interests. Surely there is alove which exults in the power of self-abandonment, and can glory in theprivilege of suffering for what is good. _Que mon nom soit flétri, pourvu que la France soit libre_, said Danton; and those wild patriotswho had trampled into scorn the faith in an immortal life in which theywould be rewarded for what they were suffering, went to their graves asbeds, for the dream of a people's liberty. Justice is done; the balanceis not deranged. It only seems deranged, as long as we have not learntto serve without looking to be paid for it. 

Such is the theory of life which is to be found in the Book of Job; afaith which has flashed up in all times and all lands, whereverhigh-minded men were to be found, and which passed in Christianity intothe acknowledged creed of half the world. The cross was the new symbol, the Divine sufferer the great example; and mankind answered to the call, because the appeal was not to what was poor and selfish in them, but towhatever of best and bravest was in their nature. The law of reward andpunishment was superseded by the law of love. Thou shalt love God andthou shalt love man; and that was not love--men knew it once--which wasbought by the prospect of reward. Times are changed with us now. Thoushalt love God and thou shalt love man, in the hands of a Paley, arefound to mean no more than, Thou shalt love thyself after an enlightenedmanner. And the same base tone has saturated not only our commonfeelings, but our Christian theologies and our Antichristianphilosophies. A prudent regard to our future interests; an abstinencefrom present unlawful pleasures, because they will entail the loss ofgreater pleasure by-and-by, or perhaps be paid for with pain, --this iscalled virtue now; and the belief that such beings as men can beinfluenced by any more elevated feelings, is smiled at as the dream ofenthusiasts whose hearts have outrun their understandings. Indeed, hewere but a poor lover whose devotion to his mistress lay resting on thefeeling that a marriage with her would conduce to his own comforts. Thatwere a poor patriot who served his country for the hire which hiscountry would give to him. And we should think but poorly of a son whothus addressed his earthly father: 'Father, on whom my fortunes depend, teach me to do what pleases thee, that I, pleasing thee in all things, may obtain those good things which thou hast promised to give to thyobedient children. ' If any of us who have lived in so meagre a faithventure, by-and-by, to put in our claims, Satan will be likely to say ofus (with better reason than he did of Job), 'Did they serve God fornought, then? Take their reward from them, and they will curse Him toHis face. ' If Christianity had never borne itself more loftily thanthis, do we suppose that those fierce Norsemen who had learnt, in thefiery war-songs of the Edda, of what stuff the hearts of heroes arecomposed, would have fashioned their sword-hilts into crosses, andthemselves into a crusading chivalry? Let us not dishonour our greatfathers with the dream of it. The Christians, like the Stoics and theEpicureans, would have lived their little day among the ignoble sects ofan effete civilisation, and would have passed off and been heard of nomore. It was in another spirit that those first preachers ofrighteousness went out upon their warfare with evil. They preached, notenlightened prudence, but purity, justice, goodness; holding out nopromises in this world except of suffering as their great Master hadsuffered, and rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for Hissake. And that crown of glory which they did believe to await them in alife beyond the grave, was no enjoyment of what they had surrendered inlife, was not enjoyment at all in any sense which human thought orlanguage can attach to the words; as little like it as the crown of loveis like it, which the true lover looks for when at last he obtains hismistress. It was to be with Christ--to lose themselves in Him. 

How these high feelings ebbed away, and Christianity became what we knowit, we are partially beginning to see. The living spirit organised foritself a body of perishable flesh: not only the real gains of realexperience, but mere conjectural hypotheses, current at the day for thesolution of unexplained phenomena, became formulæ and articles of faith. Again, as before, the living and the dead were bound together, and theseeds of decay were already planted on the birth of a constructedpolity. 

But there was another cause allied to this, and yet different from it, which, though a law of human nature itself, seems nowadays altogetherforgotten. In the rapid and steady advance of our knowledge of materialthings, we are apt to believe that all our knowledge follows the samelaw; that it is merely generalised experience; that experienceaccumulates daily, and, therefore, that 'progress of the species, ' _inall senses_, is an obvious and necessary fact. There is something whichis true in this view, mixed with a great deal which is false. Materialknowledge, the physical and mechanical sciences, make their way fromstep to step, from experiment to experiment, and each advance is securedand made good, and cannot again be lost. One generation takes up thegeneral sum of experience where the last laid it down, adds to it whatit has the opportunity of adding, and leaves it with interest to thenext. The successive positions, as they are gained, require nothing forthe apprehension of them but an understanding ordinarily cultivated. Prejudices have to be encountered, but prejudices of opinion merely, notprejudices of conscience or prejudices of self-love, like those whichbeset our progress in the science of morality. But in morals we enterupon conditions wholly different--conditions in which age differs fromage, man differs from man, and even from himself, at different moments. We all have experienced times when, as we say, we should not knowourselves; some, when we fall below our average level; some, when we arelifted above, and put on, as it were, a higher nature. At such intervalsas these last (unfortunately, with most of us, of rare occurrence), manythings become clear to us which before were hard sayings; propositionsbecome alive which, usually, are but dry words; our hearts seem purer, our motives loftier; our purposes, what we are proud to acknowledge toourselves. 

And, as man is unequal to himself, so is man to his neighbour, andperiod to period. The entire method of action, the theories of humanlife which in one era prevail universally, to the next are unpracticaland insane, as those of this next would have seemed mere baseness to thefirst, if the first could have anticipated them. One epoch, we maysuppose, holds some 'greatest nobleness principle, ' the other some'greatest happiness principle;' and then their very systems of axiomswill contradict one another; their general conceptions and theirdetailed interpretations, their rules, judgments, opinions, practiceswill be in perpetual and endless collision. Our minds take shape fromour hearts, and the facts of moral experience do not teach their ownmeaning, but submit to many readings according to the power of the eyewhich we bring with us. 

The want of a clear perception of so important a feature about us leadsto many singular contradictions. A believer in popular Protestantism, who is also a believer in progress, ought, if he were consistent, toregard mankind as growing every day towards a more and more advantageousposition with respect to the trials of life; and yet if he were askedwhether it was easier for him to 'save his soul' in the nineteenthcentury than it would have been in the first or second, or whether thesaid soul was necessarily better worth saving, he would be perplexed foran answer. There is hardly one of us who, in childhood, has not feltlike the Jews to whom Christ spoke, that if he had 'lived in the days ofthe Fathers, ' if he had had their advantages, he would have found duty amuch easier matter; and some of us in mature life have felt that in oldAthens, or old republican Rome, in the first ages of Christianity, inthe Crusades or at the Reformation, there was a contagious atmosphere ofheroism, in which we should have been less troubled with the littlefeelings which cling about us now. At any rate, it is at these rareepochs only that real additions are made to our moral knowledge. At suchtimes, new truths are, indeed, sent down among us, and, for periodslonger or shorter, may be seen to exercise an elevating influence onmankind. Perhaps what is gained on these occasions is never entirelylost. The historical monuments of their effects are at leastindestructible; and when the spirit which gave them birth reappears, their dormant energy awakens again. 

But it seems from our present experience of what, in some at least ofits modern forms, Christianity has been capable of becoming, that thereis no doctrine in itself so pure, but what the meaner nature which is inus can disarm and distort it, and adapt it to its own littleness. Theonce living spirit dries up into formulæ, and formulæ, whether ofmass-sacrifice or vicarious righteousness, or 'reward and punishment, 'are contrived ever so as to escape making over-high demands upon theconscience. Some aim at dispensing with obedience altogether, and thosewhich insist on obedience rest the obligations of it on the poorest ofmotives. So things go on till there is no life left at all; till, fromall higher aspirations, we are lowered down to the love of self after anenlightened manner; and then nothing remains but to fight the battleover again. The once beneficial truth has become, as in Job's case, acruel and mischievous deception, and the whole question of life and itsobligations must again be opened. 

It is now some three centuries since the last of such reopenings. If weask ourselves how much during this time has been actually added to thesum of our knowledge in these matters; what, in all the thousands uponthousands of sermons, and theologies, and philosophies with which Europehas been deluged, has been gained for mankind beyond what we have foundin this Book of Job, how far all this has advanced us in the 'progressof humanity, ' it were hard, or rather it is easy, to answer. How far wehave fallen below, let Paley and the rest bear witness. But what moralquestion can be asked which admits now of a grander solution than wasoffered two, perhaps three, thousand years ago? The world has not beenstanding still; experience of man and life has increased; questions havemultiplied on questions, while the answers of the established teachersto them have been growing every day more and more incredible. What otheranswers have there been? Of all the countless books which have appeared, there has been only one of enduring importance, in which an attempt ismade to carry on the solution of the great problem. Job is given overinto Satan's hand to be tempted; and though he shakes, he does not fall. Taking the temptation of Job for his model, Goethe has similarlyexposed his Faust to trial, and with him the tempter succeeds. His herofalls from sin to sin, from crime to crime; he becomes a seducer, amurderer, a betrayer, following recklessly his evil angel wherever hechooses to lead him; and yet, with all this, he never wholly forfeitsour sympathy. In spite of his weakness, his heart is still true to hishigher nature; sick and restless, even in the delirium of enjoyment healways longs for something better, and he never can be brought to say ofevil that it is good. And therefore, after all, the devil is balked ofhis prey; in virtue of this one fact, that the evil in which he steepedhimself remained to the last hateful to him, Faust is saved by theangels. .. . It will be eagerly answered for the established belief, thatsuch cases are its especial province. All men are sinners, and _it_possesses the blessed remedy for sin. But, among the countless numbersof those characters so strangely mixed among us, in which the dark andthe bright fibres cross like a meshwork; characters at one momentcapable of acts of heroic greatness, at another hurried by temptationinto actions which even common men may deplore, how many are there whohave never availed themselves of the conditions of reconciliation asorthodoxy proffers them, and of such men what is to be said? It was saidonce of a sinner that to her 'much was forgiven, for she loved much. 'But this is language which theology has as little appropriated as theJews could appropriate the language of Job. It cannot recognise thepower of the human heart. It has no balance in which to weigh the goodagainst the evil; and when a great Burns or a Mirabeau comes before it, it can but tremblingly count up the offences committed, and then, looking to the end, and finding its own terms not to have been compliedwith, it faintly mutters its anathema. Sin only it can apprehend andjudge; and for the poor acts of struggling heroism, 'Forasmuch as theywere not done, ' &c. , &c. , it doubts not but they have the nature ofsin. [M]

Something of the difficulty has been met by Goethe, but it cannot besaid that he has resolved it; or at least that he has furnished otherswith a solution which may guide their judgment. In the writer of theBook of Job there is an awful moral earnestness before which we bend asin the presence of a superior being. The orthodoxy against which hecontended is not set aside or denied; he sees what truth is in it; onlyhe sees more than it, and over it, and through it. But in Goethe, whoneeded it more, inasmuch as his problem was more delicate and difficult, the moral earnestness is not awful, is not even high. We cannot feelthat in dealing with sin he entertains any great horror of it; he lookson it as a mistake, as undesirable, but scarcely as more. Goethe's greatpowers are of another kind; and this particular question, though inappearance the primary subject of the poem, is really only secondary. Insubstance, Faust is more like Ecclesiastes than it is like Job, anddescribes rather the restlessness of a largely-gifted nature which, missing the guidance of the heart, plays experiments with life, tryingknowledge, pleasure, dissipation, one after another, and hating themall; and then hating life itself as a weary, stale, flat, unprofitablemockery. The temper exhibited here will probably be perennial in theworld. But the remedy for it will scarcely be more clear under othercircumstances than it is at present, and lies in the disposition of theemotions, and not in any propositions which can be addressed to theunderstanding. 

For that other question--how rightly to estimate a human being; whatconstitutes a real vitiation of character, and how to distinguish, without either denying the good or making light of the evil; how to bejust to the popular theories, and yet not to blind ourselves to theirshallowness and injustice--that is a problem for us, for the solution ofwhich we are at present left to our ordinary instinct, without anyrecognised guidance whatsoever. 

Nor is this the only problem which is in the same situation. There canscarcely be a more startling contrast between fact and theory than theconditions under which, practically, positions of power and influenceare distributed among us--between the theory of human worth which thenecessities of life oblige us to act upon, and the theory which webelieve that we believe. As we look around among our leading men, ourstatesmen, our legislators, the judges on our bench, the commanders ofour armies, the men to whom this English nation commits the conduct ofits best interests, profane and sacred, what do we see to be theprinciples which guide our selection? How entirely do they lie besideand beyond the negative tests! and how little respect do we pay to thebreach of this or that commandment in comparison with ability! So whollyimpossible is it to apply the received opinions on such matters topractice--to treat men known to be guilty of what theology calls deadlysins, as really guilty of them, that it would almost seem we had falleninto a moral anarchy; that ability _alone_ is what we regard, withoutany reference at all, except in glaring and outrageous cases, to moraldisqualifications. It is invidious to mention names of living men; it isworse than invidious to drag out of their graves men who have gone downinto them with honour, to make a point for an argument. But we know, allof us, that among the best servants of our country there have been, andthere are, many whose lives will not stand scrutiny by the negativetests, and who do not appear very greatly to repent, or to haverepented, of their sins according to recognised methods. 

Once more: among our daily or weekly confessions, which we are supposedto repeat as if we were all of us at all times in precisely the samemoral condition, we are made to say that we have done those things whichwe ought not to have done, and to have left undone those things which weought to have done. An earthly father to whom his children were dayafter day to make this acknowledgment would be apt to enquire whetherthey were trying to do better--whether, at any rate, they wereendeavouring to learn; and if he were told that although they had madesome faint attempts to understand the negative part of their duty, yetthat of the positive part, of those things which they ought to do, theyhad no notions at all, and had no idea that they were under obligationto form any, he would come to rather strange conclusions about them. But, really and truly, what practical notions of duty have we beyondthat of abstaining from committing sins? Not to commit sin, we suppose, covers but a small part of what is expected of us. Through the entiretissue of our employments there runs a good and a bad. Bishop Butlertells us, for instance, that even of our time there is a portion whichis ours, and a portion which is our neighbour's; and if we spend more ofit on personal interests than our own share, we are stealing. Thissounds strange doctrine; we prefer making vague acknowledgments, andshrink from pursuing them into detail. We say vaguely, that in all wedo we should consecrate ourselves to God, and our own lips condemn us;for which among us cares to learn the way to do it? The _devoir_ of aknight was understood in the courts of chivalry; the lives of heroicmen, Pagan and Christian, were once held up before the world as patternsof detailed imitation; and now, when such ideals are wanted more thanever, Protestantism stands with a drawn sword on the threshold of theenquiry, and tells us that it is impious. The law, we are told, has beenfulfilled for us in condescension to our inherent worthlessness, and ourbusiness is to appropriate another's righteousness, and not, likeTitans, to be scaling heaven by profane efforts of our own. Protestants, we know very well, will cry out in tones loud enough at such arepresentation of their doctrines. But we know also that unless men mayfeel a cheerful conviction that they can do right if they try, --thatthey can purify themselves, can live noble and worthy lives, --unlessthis is set before them as _the_ thing which they are to do, and _can_succeed in doing, they will not waste their energies on what they knowbeforehand will end in failure; and if they may not live for God, theywill live for themselves. 

And all this while the whole complex frame of society is a meshwork ofduty woven of living fibre, and the condition of its remaining sound is, that every thread of it, of its own free energy, shall do what it ought. The penalties of duties neglected are to the full as terrible as thoseof sins committed; more terrible, perhaps, because more palpable andsure. A lord of the land, or an employer of labour, supposes that he hasno duty except to keep what he calls the commandments in his own person, to go to church, and to do what he will with his own, --and Irish faminesfollow, and trade strikes, and chartisms, and Paris revolutions. We lookfor a remedy in impossible legislative enactments, and there is but oneremedy which will avail--that the thing which we call public opinionlearn something of the meaning of human obligation, and demand someapproximation to it. As things are, we have no idea of what a humanbeing ought to be. After the first rudimental conditions we pass at onceinto meaningless generalities; and with no knowledge to guide ourjudgment, we allow it to be guided by meaner principles; we respectmoney, we respect rank, we respect ability--character is as if it had noexistence. 

In the midst of this loud talk of progress, therefore, in which so manyof us at present are agreed to believe, which is, indeed, the commonmeeting point of all the thousand sects into which we are split, it iswith saddened feelings that we see so little of it in so large a matter. Progress there is in knowledge; and science has enabled the number ofhuman beings capable of existing upon this earth to be indefinitelymultiplied. But this is but a small triumph if the ratio of the good andbad, the wise and the foolish, the full and the hungry, remainsunaffected. And we cheat ourselves with words when we conclude out ofour material splendour an advance of the race. 

In two things there is progress--progress in knowledge of the outwardworld, and progress in material wealth. This last, for the present, creates, perhaps, more evils than it relieves; but suppose thisdifficulty solved--suppose the wealth distributed, and every peasantliving like a peer--what then? If this is all, one noble soul outweighsthe whole of it. Let us follow knowledge to the outer circle of theuniverse--the eye will not be satisfied with seeing, nor the ear withhearing. Let us build our streets of gold, and they will hide as manyaching hearts as hovels of straw. The well-being of mankind is notadvanced a single step. Knowledge is power, and wealth is power; andharnessed, as in Plato's fable, to the chariot of the soul, and guidedby wisdom, they may bear it through the circle of the stars; but left totheir own guidance, or reined by a fool's hand, the wild horses maybring the poor fool to Phaeton's end, and set a world on fire. 

FOOTNOTES:

[G] _Westminster Review_, 1853. 

[H] 1. _Die poetischen Bücher des Alten Bundes. _ Erklärt von HeinrichEwald. Göttingen: bei Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht. 1836. 

 2. _Kurz gefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament. _ ZweiteLieferung. _Hiob. _ Von Ludwig Hirzel. Zweite Auflage, durchgesehen vonDr. Justus Olshausen. Leipzig. 1852. 

 3. _Quæstionum in Jobeidos locos vexatos Specimen. _ Von D. HermannusHupfeld. Halis Saxonum. 1853. 

[I] Or rather by St. Jerome, whom our translators have followed. 

[J] See Ewald on Job ix. 13, and xxvi. 14. 

[K] An allusion, perhaps, to the old bird auguries. The birds, as theinhabitants of the air, were supposed to be the messengers betweenheaven and earth. 

[L] The speech of Elihu, which lies between Job's last words and God'sappearance, is now decisively pronounced by Hebrew scholars not to begenuine. The most superficial reader will have been perplexed by theintroduction of a speaker to whom no allusion is made, either in theprologue or the epilogue; by a long dissertation, which adds nothing tothe progress of the argument, proceeding evidently on the falsehypothesis of the three friends, and betraying not the faintestconception of the real cause of Job's sufferings. And the suspicionswhich such an anomaly would naturally suggest, are now made certaintiesby a fuller knowledge of the language, and the detection of a differenthand. The interpolator has unconsciously confessed the feeling whichallowed him to take so great a liberty. He, too, possessed with the oldJew theory, was unable to accept in its fulness so great a contradictionto it: and, missing the spirit of the poem, he believed that God'shonour could still be vindicated in the old way. 'His wrath was kindled'against the friends, because they could not answer Job; and against Job, because he would not be answered; and conceiving himself 'full ofmatter, ' and 'ready to burst like new bottles, ' he could not containhimself, and delivered into the text a sermon on the _Theodice_, such, we suppose, as formed the current doctrine of the time in which helived. 

[M] See the Thirteenth Article. 

SPINOZA. [N]

_Benedicti de Spinoza Tractatus de Deo et Homine ejusque FelicitateLineamenta. Atque Annotationes ad Tractatum Theologico-Politicum. _Edidit et illustravit EDWARDUS BOEHMER. Halæ ad Salam. J. F. Lippert. 1852. 

This little volume is one evidence among many of the interest whichcontinues to be felt by the German students in Spinoza. The actual meritof the book itself is little or nothing; but it shows the industry withwhich they are gleaning among the libraries of Holland for any traces ofhim which they can recover; and the smallest fragments of his writingsare acquiring that factitious importance which attaches to the mostinsignificant relics of acknowledged greatness. Such industry cannot beotherwise than laudable, but we do not think it at present altogetherwisely directed. Nothing is likely to be brought to light which willfurther illustrate Spinoza's philosophy. He himself spent the betterpart of his life in clearing his language of ambiguities; and suchearlier sketches of his system as are supposed still to be extant inMS. , and a specimen of which M. Boehmer believes himself to havediscovered, contribute only obscurity to what is in no need ofadditional difficulty. Of Spinoza's private history, on the contrary, rich as it must have been, and abundant traces of it as must be extantsomewhere in his own and his friends' correspondence, we know onlyenough to feel how vast a chasm remains to be filled. It is not oftenthat any man in this world lives a life so well worth writing as Spinozalived; not for striking incidents or large events connected with it, butbecause (and no sympathy with his peculiar opinions disposes us toexaggerate his merit) he was one of the very best men whom these moderntimes have seen. Excommunicated, disinherited, and thrown upon the worldwhen a mere boy to seek his livelihood, he resisted the inducementswhich on all sides were urged upon him to come forward in the world. Herefused pensions, legacies, money in many forms; he maintained himselfwith grinding glasses for optical instruments, an art which he had beentaught in early life, and in which he excelled the best workmen inHolland; and when he died, which was at the early age of forty-four, theaffection with which he was regarded showed itself singularly in theendorsement of a tradesman's bill which was sent in to his executors, inwhich he was described as M. Spinoza of 'blessed memory. '

The account which remains of him we owe, not to an admiring disciple, but to a clergyman to whom his theories were detestable; and hisbiographer allows that the most malignant scrutiny had failed to detecta blemish in his character--that, except so far as his opinions wereblameable, he had lived to outward appearance free from fault. Wedesire, in what we are going to say of him, to avoid offensive collisionwith popular prejudices; still less shall we place ourselves inantagonism with the earnest convictions of serious persons: our businessis to relate what Spinoza was, and leave others to form their ownconclusions. But one lesson there does seem to lie in such a life ofsuch a man, --a lesson which he taught equally by example and inword, --that wherever there is genuine and thorough love for good andgoodness, no speculative superstructure of opinion can be so extravagantas to forfeit those graces which are promised, not to clearness ofintellect, but to purity of heart. In Spinoza's own beautifullanguage, --'Justitia et caritas unicum et certissimum veræ fideiCatholicæ signum est, et veri Spiritûs Sancti fructus: et ubicumque hæcreperiuntur, ibi Christus re verâ est, et ubicumque hæc desunt deestChristus: solo namque Christi Spiritu duci possumus in amorem justitiæet caritatis. ' We may deny his conclusions; we may consider his systemof thought preposterous and even pernicious; but we cannot refuse himthe respect which is the right of all sincere and honourable men. Wherever and on whatever questions good men are found ranged on oppositesides, one of three alternatives is always true:--either the points ofdisagreement are purely speculative and of no moral importance--orthere is a misunderstanding of language, and the same thing is meantunder a difference of words--or else the real truth is somethingdifferent from what is held by any of the disputants, and each isrepresenting some important element which the others ignore or forget. In either case, a certain calmness and good temper is necessary, if wewould understand what we disagree with, or would oppose it with success;Spinoza's influence over European thought is too great to be denied orset aside; and if his doctrines be false in part, or false altogether, we cannot do their work more surely than by calumny ormisrepresentation--a most obvious truism, which no one now living willdeny in words, and which a century or two hence perhaps will begin toproduce some effect upon the popular judgment. 

Bearing it in mind, then, ourselves, as far as we are able, we proposeto examine the Pantheistic philosophy in the first and only logical formwhich as yet it has assumed. Whatever may have been the case withSpinoza's disciples, in the author of this system there was nounwillingness to look closely at it, or to follow it out to itsconclusions; and whatever other merits or demerits belong to him, atleast he has done as much as with language can be done to make himselfthoroughly understood. 

And yet, both in friend and enemy alike, there has been a reluctance tosee Spinoza as he really was. The Herder and Schleiermacher school haveclaimed him as a Christian--a position which no little disguise wasnecessary to make tenable; the orthodox Protestants and Catholics havecalled him an Atheist--which is still more extravagant; and even a manlike Novalis, who, it might have been expected, would have had somethingreasonable to say, could find no better name for him than a _Gotttrunkner Mann_--a God intoxicated man: an expression which has beenquoted by everybody who has since written upon the subject, and which isabout as inapplicable as those laboriously pregnant sayings usually are. With due allowance for exaggeration, such a name would describetolerably the Transcendental mystics, a Toler, a Boehmen, or aSwedenborg; but with what justice can it be applied to the cautious, methodical Spinoza, who carried his thoughts about with him for twentyyears, deliberately shaping them, and who gave them at last to the worldin a form more severe than with such subjects had ever been so much asattempted before? With him, as with all great men, there was no effortafter sublime emotions. He was a plain, practical person; his object inphilosophy was only to find a rule by which to govern his own actionsand his own judgment; and his treatises contain no more than theconclusions at which he arrived in this purely personal search, with thegrounds on which he rested them. 

We cannot do better than follow his own account of himself as he hasgiven it in the opening of his unfinished Tract, 'De EmendationeIntellectûs. ' His language is very beautiful, but it is elaborate andfull; and, as we have a long journey before us, we must be content toepitomise it. 

Looking round him on his entrance into life, and asking himself what washis place and business there, he turned for examples to his fellow-men, and found little that he could venture to imitate. He observed them allin their several ways governing themselves by their different notions ofwhat they thought desirable; while these notions themselves were restingon no more secure foundation than a vague, inconsistent experience: theexperience of one was not the experience of another, and thus men wereall, so to say, rather playing experiments with life than living, andthe larger portion of them miserably failing. Their mistakes arose, asit seemed to Spinoza, from inadequate knowledge; things which at onetime looked desirable, disappointed expectation when obtained, and thewiser course concealed itself often under an uninviting exterior. Hedesired to substitute certainty for conjecture, and to endeavour tofind, by some surer method, where the real good of man actually lay. Wemust remember that he had been brought up a Jew, and had been driven outof the Jews' communion; his mind was therefore in contact with the barefacts of life, with no creed or system lying between them and himself asthe interpreter of experience. He was thrown on his own resources tofind his way for himself, and the question was, how to find it. Of allforms of human thought, one only, he reflected, would admit of thecertainty which he required. If certain knowledge were attainable atall, it must be looked for under the mathematical or demonstrativemethod; by tracing from ideas clearly conceived the consequences whichwere formally involved in them. What, then, were these ideas--these_veræ ideæ_, as he calls them--and how were they to be obtained? Ifthey were to serve as the axioms of his system, they must beself-evident truths, of which no proof was required; and theillustration which he gives of the character of such ideas is ingeniousand Platonic. 

In order to produce any mechanical instrument, Spinoza says, we requireothers with which to manufacture it; and others again to manufacturethose; and it would seem thus as if the process must be an infinite one, and as if nothing could ever be made at all. Nature, however, hasprovided for the difficulty in creating of her own accord certain rudeinstruments, with the help of which we can make others better; andothers again with the help of those. And so he thinks it must be withthe mind; there must be somewhere similar original instruments providedalso as the first outfit of intellectual enterprise. To discover these, he examines the various senses in which men are said to know anything, and he finds that they resolve themselves into three, or, as heelsewhere divides it, four. 

We know a thing--

 1. I. _Ex mero auditu_: because we have heard it from some person or persons whose veracity we have no reason to question. 

 ii. _Ab experientiâ vagâ_: from general experience: for instance, all facts or phenomena which come to us through our senses as phenomena, but of the causes of which we are ignorant. 

 2. We know a thing as we have correctly conceived the laws of its phenomena, and see them following in their sequence in the order of nature. 

 3. Finally, we know a thing, _ex scientiâ intuitivâ_, which alone is absolutely clear and certain. 

To illustrate these divisions, suppose it be required to find a fourthproportional which shall stand to the third of three numbers as thesecond does to the first. The merchant's clerk knows his rule; hemultiplies the second into the third and divides by the first. Heneither knows nor cares to know why the result is the number which heseeks, but he has learnt the fact that it is so, and he remembers it. 

A person a little wiser has tried the experiment in a variety of simplecases; he has discovered the rule by induction, but still does notunderstand it. 

A third has mastered the laws of proportion mathematically, as he hasfound them in Euclid or other geometrical treatise. 

A fourth, with the plain numbers of 1, 2, and 3, sees for himself bysimple intuitive force that 1:2=3:6. 

Of these several kinds of knowledge the third and fourth alone deserveto be called knowledge, the others being no more than opinions more orless justly founded. The last is the only real insight, although thethird, being exact in its form, may be depended upon as a basis ofcertainty. Under this last, as Spinoza allows, nothing except the verysimplest truths, _non nisi simplicissimæ veritates_, can be perceived;but, such as they are, they are the foundation of all after-science; andthe true ideas, the _veræ ideæ_, which are apprehended by this facultyof intuition, are the primitive instruments with which nature hasfurnished us. If we ask for a test by which to distinguish them, he hasnone to give us. 'Veritas, ' he says to his friends, in answer to theirquestion, 'veritas index sui est et falsi. Veritas se ipsam patefacit. 'All original truths are of such a kind that they cannot withoutabsurdity even be conceived to be false; the opposites of them arecontradictions in terms. --'Ut sciam me scire, necessario debeo priusscire. Hinc patet quod certitudo nihil est præter ipsam essentiamobjectivam. .. . Cum itaque veritas nullo egeat signo, sed sufficiathabere essentiam rerum objectivam, aut quod idem est ideas, ut omnetollatur dubium; hinc sequitur quod vera non est methodus, signumveritatis quærere post acquisitionem idearum; sed quod vera methodus estvia, ut ipsa veritas, aut essentiæ objectivæ rerum, aut ideæ (omnia illaidem significant) debito ordine quærantur. ' (_De Emend. Intell. _)

Spinoza will scarcely carry with him the reasoner of the nineteenthcentury in arguments like these. When we remember the thousandconflicting opinions, the truth of which their several advocates have aslittle doubted as they have doubted their own existence, we require somebetter evidence than a mere feeling of certainty; and Aristotle's lesspretending canon promises a safer road. [Greek: Ho pasi dokei], 'what allmen think, ' says Aristotle, [Greek: touto einai phamen] 'this we say_is_, '--'and if you will not have this to be a fair ground ofconviction, you will scarcely find one which will serve you better. ' Weare to see, however, what these _ideæ_ are which are offered to us asself-evident. Of course, if they are self-evident, if they do produceconviction, nothing more is to be said; but it does, indeed, appearstrange to us that Spinoza was not staggered as to the validity of hiscanon, when his friends, everyone of them, so floundered and stumbledamong what he regarded as his simplest propositions; when he found them, in spite of all that he could say, requiring endless _signa veritatis_, and unable for a long time even to understand their meaning, far less to'recognise them as elementary certainties. ' Modern readers may, perhaps, be more fortunate. We produce at length the definitions and axioms ofthe first book of the 'Ethica, ' and they may judge for themselves:--

DEFINITIONS. 

 1. By a thing which is _causa sui_, its own cause, I mean a thing the essence of which involves the existence of it, or a thing which cannot be conceived except as existing. 

 2. I call a thing finite, _suo genere_, when it can be limited by another (or others) of the same nature--_e. G. _ a given body is called finite, because we can always conceive another body enveloping it; but body is not limited by thought, nor thought by body. 

 3. By substance I mean what exists in itself and is conceived by itself; the conception of which, that is, does not involve the conception of anything else as the cause of it. 

 4. By attribute I mean whatever the intellect perceives of substance as constituting the essence of substance. 

 5. Mode is an affection of substance, or is that which is in something else, by and through which it is conceived. 

 6. God is a being absolutely infinite; a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses his eternal and infinite essence. 

EXPLANATION. 

 I say _absolutely_ infinite, not infinite _suo genere_--for of what is infinite _suo genere_ only, the attributes are not infinite but finite; whereas what is infinite absolutely contains in its own essence everything by which substance can be expressed, and which involves no impossibility. 

 7. That thing is 'free' which exists by the sole necessity of its own nature, and is determined in its operation by itself only. That is 'not free' which is called into existence by something else, and is determined in its operation according to a fixed and definite method. 

 8. Eternity is existence itself, conceived as following necessarily and solely from the definition of the thing which is eternal. 

EXPLANATION. 

 Because existence of this kind is conceived as an eternal verity, and, therefore, cannot be explained by duration, even though the duration be without beginning or end. 

So far the definitions; then follow the

AXIOMS. 

 1. All things that exist, exist either of themselves or in virtue of something else. 

 2. What we cannot conceive of as existing in virtue of something else, we must conceive through and in itself. 

 3. From a given cause an effect necessarily follows, and if there be no given cause no effect can follow. 

 4. Things which have nothing in common with each other cannot be understood through one another--_i. E. _ the conception of one does not involve the conception of the other. 

 5. To understand an effect implies that we understand the cause of it. 

 6. A true idea is one which corresponds with its _ideate_. 

 7. The essence of anything which can be conceived as non-existent does not involve existence. 

Such is our metaphysical outfit of simple ideas with which to start uponour enterprise of learning. The larger number of them, so far from beingsimple, must be absolutely without meaning to persons whose minds areundisciplined in metaphysical abstraction; they become only intelligiblepropositions as we look back upon them with the light of the systemwhich they are supposed to contain. 

Although, however, we may justly quarrel with such unlooked-fordifficulties, the important question, after all, is not of the obscurityof these axioms, but of their truth. Many things in all the sciences areobscure to an unpractised understanding, which are true enough and clearenough to people acquainted with the subjects, and they may be fairlymade the foundations of a scientific system, although rudimentarystudents must be contented to accept them upon faith. Of course, also, it is entirely competent to Spinoza, or to any one, to define the termswhich he intends to use just as he pleases, provided it be understoodthat any conclusions which he derives out of them apply only to theideas so defined, and not to any supposed object existing whichcorresponds with them. Euclid defines his triangles and circles, anddiscovers that to figures so described, certain properties previouslyunknown may be proved to belong. But as in nature there are no suchthings as triangles and circles exactly answering the definition, hisconclusions, as applied to actually existing objects, are either nottrue at all or only proximately so. Whether it be possible to bridgeover the gulf between existing things and the abstract conception ofthem, as Spinoza attempts to do, we shall presently see. It is a royalroad to certainty if it be a practicable one; but we cannot say that weever met any one who could say honestly Spinoza's reasonings hadconvinced him; and power of demonstration, like all other powers, can bejudged only by its effects. Does it prove? does it produce conviction?If not, it is nothing. 

We need not detain our readers among these abstractions. The power ofSpinozism does not lie so remote from ordinary appreciation, or weshould long ago have heard the last of it. Like all other systems whichhave attracted followers, it addresses itself, not to the logicalintellect, but to the imagination, which it affects to set aside. Werefuse to submit to the demonstrations by which it thrusts itself uponour reception; but regarding it as a whole, as an attempt to explain thenature of the world of which we are a part, we can still ask ourselveshow far the attempt is successful. Some account of these things we knowthat there must be, and the curiosity which asks the question regardsitself, of course, as competent in some degree to judge of the answer toit. 

Before proceeding, however, to regard this philosophy in the aspect inwhich it is really powerful, we must clear our way through the fallacyof the method. 

The system is evolved in a series of theorems in severely demonstrativeorder out of the definitions and axioms which we have translated. Topropositions 1-6 we have nothing to object; they will not, probably, convey any very clear ideas, but they are so far purely abstract, andseem to follow (as far as we can speak of 'following' in such subjects)by fair reasoning. 'Substance is prior in nature to its affections. ''Substances with different attributes have nothing in common, ' and, therefore, 'one cannot be the cause of the other. ' 'Things reallydistinct are distinguished by difference either of attribute or mode(there being nothing else by which they can be distinguished), and, therefore, because things modally distinguished do not _quâ_ substancediffer from one another, there cannot be more than one substance of thesame attribute. Therefore (let us remind our readers that we are amongwhat Spinoza calls _notiones simplicissimas_), since there cannot be twosubstances of the same attribute, and substances of different attributescannot be the cause one of the other, it follows that no substance canbe produced by another substance. '

The existence of substance, he then concludes, is involved in the natureof the thing itself. Substance exists. It does and must. We ask, why?and we are answered, because there is nothing capable of producing it, and therefore it is self-caused--_i. E. _ by the first definition theessence of it implies existence as part of the idea. It is astonishingthat Spinoza should not have seen that he assumes the fact thatsubstance does exist in order to prove that it must. If it cannot beproduced _and_ exists, then, of course, it exists in virtue of its ownnature. But supposing it does not exist, supposing it is all a delusion, the proof falls to pieces. We have to fall back on the facts ofexperience, on the obscure and unscientific certainty that the thingwhich we call the world, and the personalities which we call ourselves, are a real substantial something, before we find ground of any kind tostand upon. Conscious of the infirmity of his demonstration, Spinozawinds round it and round it, adding proof to proof, but never escapingthe same vicious circle: substance exists because it exists, and theultimate experience of existence, so far from being of that clear kindwhich can be accepted as an axiom, is the most confused of all oursensations. What is existence? and what is that something which we sayexists? Things--essences--existences! these are but the vague names withwhich faculties, constructed only to deal with conditional phenomena, disguise their incapacity. The world in the Hindoo legend was supportedupon the back of the tortoise. It was a step between the world andnothingness, and served to cheat the imagination with ideas of afictitious resting-place. 

 If any one affirms (says Spinoza) that he has a clear, distinct--that is to say, a true--idea of substance, but that nevertheless he is uncertain whether any such substance exist, it is the same as if he were to affirm that he had a true idea, but yet was uncertain whether it was not false. Or if he says that substance can be created, it is like saying that a false idea can become a true idea--as absurd a thing as it is possible to conceive; and therefore the existence of substance, as well as the essence of it, must be acknowledged as an eternal verity. 

It is again the same story. Spinoza speaks of a clear idea of substance;but he has not proved that such an idea is within the compass of themind. A man's own notion that he sees clearly, is no proof that hereally sees clearly; and the distinctness of a definition in itself isno evidence that it corresponds adequately with the object of it. Nodoubt a man who professes to have an idea of substance as an existingthing, cannot doubt, as long as he has it, that substance so exists. This is merely to say that as long as a man is certain of this or thatfact, he has no doubt of it. But neither his certainty nor Spinoza'swill be of any use to a man who has no such idea, and who cannotrecognise the lawfulness of the method by which it is arrived at. 

From the self-existing substance it is a short step to the existence ofGod. After a few more propositions, following one another with the samekind of coherence, we arrive successively at the conclusion that thereis but one substance; that this substance being necessarily existent, itis also infinite; that it is therefore identical with the Being who hadbeen previously defined as the 'Ens absolute perfectum. '

Demonstrations of this kind were the characteristics of the period. DesCartes had set the example of constructing them, and was followed byCudworth, Clarke, Berkeley, and many others besides Spinoza. Theinconclusiveness of the method may perhaps be observed most readily inthe strangely opposite conceptions formed by all these writers of thenature of that Being whose existence they nevertheless agreed, by thesame process, to gather each out of their ideas. It is important, however, to examine it carefully, for it is the very keystone of thePantheistic system. 

As stated by Des Cartes, the argument stands something as follows:--Godis an all-perfect Being, --perfection is the idea which we form of Him:existence is a mode of perfection, and therefore God exists. The sophismwe are told is only apparent. Existence is part of the idea--as muchinvolved in it as the equality of all lines drawn from the centre to thecircumference of a circle is involved in the idea of a circle. Anon-existent all-perfect Being is as inconceivable as a quadrilateraltriangle. 

It is sometimes answered that in this way we may prove the existence ofanything--Titans, Chimæras, or the Olympian Gods; we have but to definethem as existing, and the proof is complete. But, this objectionsummarily set aside; none of these beings are by hypothesis absolutelyperfect, and, therefore, of their existence we can conclude nothing. With greater justice, however, we may say, that of such terms asperfection and existence we know too little to speculate. Existence maybe an imperfection for all we can tell; we know nothing about thematter. Such arguments are but endless _petitiones principii_--like theself-devouring serpent, resolving themselves into nothing. We wanderround and round them, in the hope of finding some tangible point atwhich we can seize their meaning; but we are presented everywhere withthe same impracticable surface, from which our grasp glides offineffectual. 

Spinoza himself, however, obviously felt an intense conviction of thevalidity of his argument. His opinion is stated with sufficientdistinctness in one of his letters. 'Nothing is more clear, ' he writesto his pupil De Vries, 'than that, on the one hand, everything whichexists is conceived by or under some attribute or other; that the morereality, therefore, a being or thing has, the more attributes must beassigned to it;' 'and conversely' (and this he calls his _argumentumpalmarium_ in proof of the existence of God), '_the more attributes Iassign to a thing, the more I am forced to conceive it as existing_. 'Arrange the argument how we please, we shall never get it into a formclearer than this:--The more perfect a thing is, the more it must exist(as if existence could admit of more or less); and therefore theall-perfect Being must exist absolutely. There is no flaw, we are told, in the reasoning; and if we are not convinced, it is from the confusedhabits of our own minds. 

Some persons may think that all arguments are good when on the rightside, and that it is a gratuitous impertinence to quarrel with theproofs of a conclusion which it is so desirable that all should receive. As yet, however, we are but inadequately acquainted with the ideaattached by Spinoza to the word perfection; and if we commit ourselvesto his logic, it may lead us out to unexpected consequences. All suchreasonings presume, as a first condition, that we men possess facultiescapable of dealing with absolute ideas; that we can understand thenature of things external to ourselves as they really _are_ in theirabsolute relation to one another, independent of our own conception. Thequestion immediately before us is one which can never be determined. Thetruth which is to be proved is one which we already believe; and if, aswe believe also, our conviction of God's existence is, like that of ourown existence, intuitive and immediate, the grounds of it can neveradequately be analysed; we cannot say exactly what they are, andtherefore we cannot say what they are not. Whatever we receiveintuitively, we receive without proof; and stated as a nakedproposition, it must involve a _petitio principii_. We have a right, however, to object at once to an argument in which the conclusion ismore obvious than the premises; and if it lead on to other consequenceswhich we disapprove in themselves, we reject it without difficulty orhesitation. We ourselves believe that God is, because we experience thecontrol of a 'power' which is stronger than we; and our instincts teachus so much of the nature of that power as our own relation to itrequires us to know. God is the being to whom our obedience is due; andthe perfections which we attribute to him are those moral perfectionswhich are the proper object of our reverence. Strange to say, theperfections of Spinoza, which appear so clear to him, are without anymoral character whatever; and for men to speak of the justice of God, hetells us, is but to see in him a reflection of themselves; as if atriangle were to conceive of him as _eminenter triangularis_, or acircle to give him the property of circularity. 

Having arrived at existence, we next find ourselves among ideas, whichat least are intelligible, if the character of them is as far removed asbefore from the circle of ordinary thought. Nothing exists exceptsubstance, the attributes under which substance is expressed, and themodes or affections of those attributes. There is but one substanceself-existent, eternal, necessary, and that is the absolutely Infiniteall-perfect Being. Substance cannot produce substance, and thereforethere is no such thing as creation; and everything which exists iseither an attribute of God, or an affection of some attribute of him, modified in this manner or in that. Beyond him there is nothing, andnothing like him or equal to him; he therefore alone in himself isabsolutely free, uninfluenced by anything, for nothing is excepthimself; and from him and from his supreme power, essence, intelligence(for these words mean the same thing), all things have necessarilyflowed, and will and must flow for ever, in the same manner as from thenature of a triangle it follows, and has followed, and will follow frometernity to eternity, that the angles of it are equal to two rightangles. It would seem as if the analogy were but an artificial play uponwords, and that it was only metaphorically that in mathematicaldemonstration we speak of one thing as following from another. Theproperties of a curve or a triangle are what they are at all times, andthe sequence is merely in the order in which they are successively knownto ourselves. But according to Spinoza, this is the only true sequence;and what we call the universe, and all the series of incidents in earthor planet, are involved formally and mathematically in the definition ofGod. 

Each attribute is infinite _suo genere_; and it is time that we shouldknow distinctly the meaning which Spinoza attaches to that importantword. Out of the infinite number of the attributes of God, two only, hesays, are known to us--'extension, ' and 'thought, ' or 'mind. ' Duration, even though it be without beginning or end, is not an attribute; it isnot even a real thing. Time has no relation to Being, conceivedmathematically; it would be absurd to speak of circles or triangles asany older to-day than they were at the beginning of the world. These andeverything of the same kind are conceived, as Spinoza rightly says, _subquâdam specie æternitatis_. But extension, or substance extended, andthought, or substance perceiving, are real, absolute, and objective. Wemust not confound extension with body; for though body be a mode ofextension, there is extension which is not body, and it is infinitebecause we cannot conceive it to be limited except by itself--or, inother words, to be limited at all. And as it is with extension, so it iswith mind, which is also infinite with the infinity of its object. Thusthere is no such thing as creation, and no beginning or end. All thingsof which our faculties are cognizant under one or other of theseattributes are produced from God, and in him they have their being, andwithout him they would cease to be. 

Proceeding by steps of rigid demonstration (and most admirably indeed isthe form of the philosophy adapted to the spirit of it), we learn thatGod is the only _causa libera_; that no other thing or being has anypower of self-determination; all moves by fixed laws of causation, motive upon motive, act upon act; there is no free will, and nocontingency; and however necessary it may be for our incapacity toconsider future things as in a sense contingent (see _Tractat. Theol. Polit. _ cap. Iv. , sec. 4), this is but one of the thousand convenientdeceptions which we are obliged to employ with ourselves. God is the_causa immanens omnium_; he is not a personal being existing apart fromthe universe; but himself in his own reality, he is expressed in theuniverse, which is his living garment. Keeping to the philosophicallanguage of the time, Spinoza preserves the distinction between _naturanaturans_ and _natura naturata_. The first is being in itself, theattributes of substance as they are conceived simply and alone; thesecond is the infinite series of modifications which follow out of theproperties of these attributes. And thus all which _is_, is what it isby an absolute necessity, and could not have been other than it is. Godis free, because no causes external to himself have power over him; andas good men are most free when most a law to themselves, so it is noinfringement on God's freedom to say that he _must_ have acted as he hasacted, but rather he is absolutely free because absolutely a law himselfto himself. 

Here ends the first book of Spinoza's Ethics--the book which contains, as we said, the _notiones simplicissimas_, and the primary andrudimental deductions from them. _His Dei naturam_, he says, in hislofty confidence, _ejusque proprietates explicui_. But, as if consciousthat his method will never convince, he concludes this portion of hissubject with an analytical appendix; not to explain or apologise, but toshow us clearly, in practical detail, the position into which he has ledus. The root, we are told, of all philosophical errors lies in ournotion of final causes; we invert the order of nature, and interpretGod's action through our own; we speak of his intentions, as if he werea man; we assume that we are capable of measuring them, and finallyerect ourselves, and our own interests, into the centre and criterion ofall things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the universe be whatthis philosophy has described it, the perfection which it assigns toGod is extended to everything, and evil is of course impossible; thereis no shortcoming either in nature or in man; each person and each thingis exactly what it has the power to be, and nothing more. But menimagining that all things exist on their account, and perceiving theirown interests, bodily and spiritual, capable of being variouslyaffected, have conceived these opposite influences to result fromopposite and contradictory powers, and call what contributes to theiradvantage good, and whatever obstructs it, evil. For our convenience weform generic conceptions of human excellence, as archetypes after whichto strive; and such of us as approach nearest to such archetypes aresupposed to be virtuous, and those who are most remote from them to bewicked. But such generic abstractions are but _entia imaginationis_, andhave no real existence. In the eyes of God each thing is what it has themeans of being. There is no rebellion against him, and no resistance ofhis will; in truth, therefore, there neither is nor can be such a thingas a bad action in the common sense of the word. Actions are good orbad, not in themselves, but as compared with the nature of the agent;what we censure in men, we tolerate and even admire in animals; and assoon as we are aware of our mistake in assigning to man a power of freevolition, our notion of evil as a positive thing will cease to exist. 

 If I am asked (concludes Spinoza) why then all mankind were not created by God, so as to be governed solely by reason? it was because, I reply, there was to God no lack of matter to create all things from the highest to the lowest grade of perfection; or, to speak more properly, because the laws of God's nature were ample enough to suffice for the production of all things which can be conceived by an Infinite Intelligence. 

It is possible that readers who have followed us so far will now turnaway from a philosophy which issues in such conclusions; resentful, perhaps, that it should have been ever laid before them at all, inlanguage so little expressive of aversion and displeasure. We mustclaim, however, in Spinoza's name, the right which he claims forhimself. His system must be judged as a whole; and whatever we may thinkourselves would be the moral effect of such doctrines if they weregenerally received, in his hands and in his heart they are worked intomaxims of the purest and loftiest morality. And at least we are boundto remember that some account of this great mystery of evil there mustbe; and although familiarity with commonly-received explanations maydisguise from us the difficulties with which they too, as well as thatof Spinoza, are embarrassed, such difficulties none the less exist. Thefact is the grand perplexity, and for ourselves we acknowledge that ofall theories about it Spinoza's would appear to us the least irrational, setting conscience, and the voice of conscience, aside. The objections, with the replies to them, are well drawn out in the correspondence withWilliam de Blyenburg. It will be seen at once with how little justicethe denial of evil as a positive thing can be called equivalent todenying it relatively to man, or to confusing the moral distinctionsbetween virtue and vice. 

 We speak (writes Spinoza, in answer to Blyenburg, who had urged something of the kind), we speak of this or that man having done a wrong thing, when we compare him with a general standard of humanity; but inasmuch as God neither perceives things in such abstract manner, nor forms to himself such generic definitions, and since there is no more reality in anything than God has assigned to it, it follows, surely, that the absence of good exists only in respect of man's understanding, not in respect of God's. 

 If this be so, then (replies Blyenburg), bad men fulfil God's will as well as good. 

 It is true (Spinoza answers) they fulfil it, yet not as the good nor as well as the good, nor are they to be compared with them. The better a thing or a person be, the more there is in him of God's spirit, and the more he expresses God's will; while the bad, being without that divine love which arises from the knowledge of God, and through which alone we are called (in respect of our understandings) his servants, are but as instruments in the hand of the artificer--they serve unconsciously, and are consumed in their service. 

Spinoza, after all, is but stating in philosophical language the extremedoctrine of Grace; and St. Paul, if we interpret his real belief by theone passage so often quoted, in which he compares us to 'clay in thehands of the potter, who maketh one vessel to honour and another todishonour, ' may be accused with justice of having held the same opinion. If Calvinism be pressed to its logical consequences, it either becomesan intolerable falsehood, or it resolves itself into the philosophy ofSpinoza. It is monstrous to call evil a positive thing, and to assert, in the same breath, that God has predetermined it, --to tell us that hehas ordained what he hates, and hates what he has ordained. It isincredible that we should be without power to obey him except throughhis free grace, and yet be held responsible for our failures when thatgrace has been withheld. And it is idle to call a philosophersacrilegious who has but systematised the faith which so many believe, and cleared it of its most hideous features. 

Spinoza flinches from nothing, and disguises no conclusions either fromhimself or from his readers. We believe for ourselves that logic has nobusiness with such questions; that the answer to them lies in theconscience and not in the intellect. Spinoza thinks otherwise; and he isat least true to the guide which he has chosen. Blyenburg presses himwith instances of monstrous crime, such as bring home to the heart thenatural horror of it. He speaks of Nero's murder of Agrippina, and asksif God can be called the cause of such an act as that. 

 God (replies Spinoza, calmly) is the cause of all things which have reality. If you can show that evil, errors, crimes express any real things, I agree readily that God is the cause of them; but I conceive myself to have proved that what constitutes the essence of evil is not a real thing at all, and therefore that God cannot be the cause of it. Nero's matricide was not a crime, in so far as it was a positive outward act. Orestes also killed his mother; and we do not judge Orestes as we judge Nero. The crime of the latter lay in his being without pity, without obedience, without natural affection--none of which things express any positive essence, but the absence of it; and therefore God was not the cause of these, although he was the cause of the act and the intention. 

 But once for all (he adds), this aspect of things will remain intolerable and unintelligible as long as the common notions of free will remain unremoved. 

And of course, and we shall all confess it, if these notions are asfalse as Spinoza supposes them--if we have no power to be anything butwhat we are, there neither is nor can be such a thing as moral evil; andwhat we call crimes will no more involve a violation of the will of God, they will no more impair his moral attributes if we suppose him to havewilled them, than the same actions, whether of lust, ferocity, orcruelty, in the inferior animals. There will be but, as Spinoza says, aninfinite gradation in created things, the poorest life being more thannone, the meanest active disposition something better than inertia, andthe smallest exercise of reason better than mere ferocity. 'The Lord hasmade all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of evil. '

The moral aspect of the matter will be more clear as we proceed. Wepause, however, to notice one difficulty of a metaphysical kind, whichis best disposed of in passing. Whatever obscurity may lie about thething which we call Time (philosophers not being able to agree what itis, or whether properly it _is_ anything), the words past, present, future, do undoubtedly convey some definite idea with them: things willbe which are not yet, and have been which are no longer. Now, ifeverything which exists be a necessary mathematical consequence from thenature or definition of the One Being, we cannot see how there can beany time but the present, or how past and future have room for ameaning. God is, and therefore all properties of him _are_, just asevery property of a circle exists in it as soon as the circle exists. Wemay if we like, for convenience, throw our theorems into the future, andsay, _e. G. _ that if two lines in a circle cut each other, the rectangleunder the parts of the one _will_ equal that under the parts of theother. But we only mean in reality that these rectangles _are_ equal;and the _future_ relates only to our knowledge of the fact. Allowing, however, as much as we please, that the condition of England a hundredyears hence lies already in embryo in existing causes, it is a paradoxto say that such condition exists already in the sense in which theproperties of the circle exist; and yet Spinoza insists on theillustration. 

It is singular that he should not have noticed the difficulty; not thateither it or the answer to it (which no doubt would have been readyenough) are likely to interest any person except metaphysicians, a classof thinkers, happily, which is rapidly diminishing. 

We proceed to more important matters--to Spinoza's detailed theory ofnature as exhibited in man and in man's mind. His theory for its boldingenuity is by far the most remarkable which on this dark subject hasever been proposed. Whether we can believe it or not, is anotherquestion; yet undoubtedly it provides a solution for every difficulty;it accepts with equal welcome the extremes of materialism and ofspiritualism: and if it be the test of the soundness of a philosophythat it will explain phenomena and reconcile contradictions, it is hardto account for the fact that a system which bears such a test soadmirably, should nevertheless be so incredible as it is. 

Most people have heard of the 'Harmonie Pré-établie' of Leibnitz; it isborrowed without acknowledgment from Spinoza, and adapted to theLeibnitzian philosophy. 'Man, ' says Leibnitz, 'is composed of mind andbody; but what is mind and what is body, and what is the nature of theirunion? Substances so opposite in kind cannot affect one another; mindcannot act on matter, or matter upon mind; and the appearance of theirreciprocal operation is an appearance only and a delusion. ' A delusionso general, however, required to be accounted for; and Leibnitzaccounted for it by supposing that God, in creating a world composed ofmaterial and spiritual phenomena, ordained that these several phenomenashould proceed from the beginning in parallel lines side by side in aconstantly corresponding harmony. The sense of seeing results, itappears to us, from the formation of a picture upon the retina. Themotion of the arm or the leg appears to result from an act of will; butin either case we mistake coincidence for causation. Between substancesso wholly alien there can be no intercommunion; and we only suppose thatthe object seen produces the idea, and that the desire produces themovement, because the phenomena of matter and the phenomena of spiritare so contrived as to flow always in the same order and sequence. Thishypothesis, as coming from Leibnitz, has been, if not accepted, at leastlistened to respectfully; because while taking it out of its properplace, he contrived to graft it upon Christianity; and succeeded, with asort of speculative legerdemain, in making it appear to be in harmonywith revealed religion. Disguised as a philosophy of Predestination, andconnected with the Christian doctrine of Retribution, it steps forwardwith an air of unconscious innocence, as if interfering with nothingwhich Christians generally believe. And yet, leaving as it does nolarger scope for liberty or responsibility than when in the hands ofSpinoza, [O] Leibnitz, in our opinion, has only succeeded in making itinfinitely more revolting. Spinoza could not regard the bad man as anobject of Divine anger and a subject of retributory punishment. He wasnot a Christian, and made no pretension to be considered such; and itdid not occur to him to regard the actions of a being which, both withLeibnitz and himself, is (to use his own expression) an _automatonspirituale_, as deserving a fiery indignation and everlasting vengeance. 

'Deus, ' according to Spinoza's definition, 'est ens constans infinitisattributis quorum unumquodque æternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit. 'Under each of these attributes _infinita sequuntur_, and everythingwhich an infinite intelligence can conceive, and an infinite power canproduce, --everything which follows as a possibility out of the divinenature, --all things which have been, and are, and will be, --findexpression and actual existence, not under one attribute only, but undereach and every attribute. Language is so ill adapted to explain such asystem, that even to state it accurately is all but impossible, andanalogies can only remotely suggest what such expressions mean. But itis as if it were said that the same thought might be expressed in aninfinite variety of languages; and not in words only, but in action, inpainting, in sculpture, in music, in any form of any kind which can beemployed as a means of spiritual embodiment. Of all these infiniteattributes, two only, as we said, are known to us--extension andthought. Material phenomena are phenomena of extension; and to everymodification of extension an idea corresponds under the attribute ofthought. Out of such a compound as this is formed man, composed of bodyand mind; two parallel and correspondent modifications eternallyanswering one another. And not man only, but all other beings and thingsare similarly formed and similarly animated; the anima or mind of eachvarying according to the complicity of the organism of its materialcounterpart. Although body does not think, nor affect the mind's powerof thinking, and mind does not control body, nor communicate to iteither motion or rest or any influence from itself, yet body with allits properties is the object or ideate of mind: whatsoever body does, mind perceives; and the greater the energising power of the first, thegreater the perceiving power of the second. And this is not because theyare adapted one to the other by some inconceivable preordinating power, but because mind and body are _una et eadem res_, the one absolute beingaffected in one and the same manner, but expressed under severalattributes; the modes and affections of each attribute having that beingfor their cause, as he exists under that attribute of which they aremodes, and no other; idea being caused by idea, and body affected bybody; the image on the retina being produced by the object reflectedupon it, the idea or image in our minds by the idea of that object, &c. &c. 

A solution so remote from all ordinary ways of thinking on these mattersis so difficult to grasp, that one can hardly speak of it as beingprobable, or as being improbable. Probability extends only to what wecan imagine as possible, and Spinoza's theory seems to lie beyond therange within which our judgment can exercise itself. In our own opinion, indeed, as we have already said, the entire subject is one with which wehave no business; and the explanation of our nature, if it is ever to beexplained to us, is reserved till we are in some other state ofexistence. We do not disbelieve Spinoza because what he suggests is initself incredible. The chances may be millions to one against his beingright; yet the real truth, if we knew it, would be probably at least asstrange as his conception of it. But we are firmly convinced that ofthese questions, and of all like them, practical answers only liewithin the reach of human faculties; and that in 'researches into theabsolute' we are on the road which ends nowhere. 

Among the difficulties, however, most properly akin to this philosophyitself, there is one most obvious, viz. , that if the attributes of Godbe infinite, and each particular thing is expressed under them all, thenmind and body express but an infinitesimal portion of the nature of eachof ourselves; and this human nature exists (_i. E. _, there existscorresponding modes of substance) in the whole infinity of the divinenature under attributes differing each from each, and all from mind andall from body. That this must be so follows from the definition of theInfinite Being, and the nature of the distinction between the twoattributes which are known to us; and if this be so, why does not themind perceive something of all these other attributes? The objection iswell expressed by a correspondent (Letter 67):--'It follows from whatyou say, ' a friend writes to Spinoza, 'that the modification whichconstitutes my mind, and that which constitutes my body, although it beone and the same modification, yet must be expressed in an infinity ofways: one way by thought, a second way by extension, a third by someattribute unknown to me, and so on to infinity; the attributes beinginfinite in number, and the order and connexion of modes being the samein them all. Why, then, does the mind perceive the modes of but oneattribute only?'

Spinoza's answer is curious: unhappily, a fragment of his letter only isextant, so that it is too brief to be satisfactory:--

 In reply to your difficulty (he says), although each particular thing be truly in the Infinite mind, conceived in Infinite modes, the Infinite idea answering to all these cannot constitute one and the same mind of any single being, but must constitute Infinite minds. No one of all these Infinite ideas has any connexion with another. 

He means, we suppose, that God's mind only perceives, or can perceive, things under their Infinite expression, and that the idea of eachseveral mode, under whatever attribute, constitutes a separate mind. 

We do not know that we can add anything to this explanation; thedifficulty lies in the audacious sweep of the speculation itself; wewill, however, attempt an illustration, although we fear it will be toillustrate _obscurum per obscurius_. Let A B C D be four out of theInfinite number of the Divine attributes. A the attribute of mind; B theattribute of extension; C and D other attributes, the nature of which isnot known to us. Now, A, as the attribute of mind, is that whichperceives all which takes place under B C and D, but it is only as itexists in God that it forms the universal consciousness of allattributes at once. In its modifications it is combined separately withthe modifications of each, constituting in combination with the modes ofeach attribute a separate being. As forming the mind of B, A perceiveswhat takes place in B, but not what takes place in C or D. Combined withB, it forms the soul of the human body, and generally the soul of allmodifications of extended substance; combined with C, it forms the soulof some other analogous being; combined with D, again of another; butthe combinations are only in pairs, in which A is constant. A and B makeone being, A and C another, A and D a third; but B will not combine withC, nor C with D; each attribute being, as it were, conscious only ofitself. And therefore, although to those modifications of mind andextension which we call ourselves, there are corresponding modificationsunder C and D, and generally under each of the Infinite attributes ofGod, each of ourselves being in a sense Infinite--nevertheless, weneither have nor can have any knowledge of ourselves in this Infiniteaspect; our actual consciousness being limited to the phenomena ofsensible experience. 

English readers, however, are likely to care little for all this; theywill look to the general theory, and judge of it as its aspect affectsthem. And first, perhaps, they will be tempted to throw aside as absurdthe notion that their bodies go through the many operations which theyexperience them to do, undirected by their minds. It is a thing, theymay say, at once preposterous and incredible. It is, however, lessabsurd than it seems; and, though we could not persuade ourselves tobelieve it, absurd in the sense of having nothing to be said for it, itcertainly is not. It is far easier, for instance, to imagine the humanbody capable by its own virtue, and by the laws of materialorganisation, of building a house, than of _thinking_; and yet men areallowed to say that the body thinks, without being regarded ascandidates for a lunatic asylum. We see the seed shoot up into stem andleaf and throw out flowers; we observe it fulfilling processes ofchemistry more subtle than were ever executed in Liebig's laboratory, and producing structures more cunning than man can imitate. The birdbuilds her nest, the spider shapes out its delicate web, and stretchesit in the path of his prey; directed not by calculating thought, as weconceive ourselves to be, but by some motive influence, our ignorance ofthe nature of which we disguise from ourselves, and call it instinct, but which we believe at least to be some property residing in theorganisation. We are not to suppose that the human body, the mostcomplex of all material structures, has slighter powers in it than thebodies of a seed, a bird, or an insect. Let us listen to Spinozahimself:--

 There can be no doubt (he says) that this hypothesis is true; but unless I can prove it from experience, men will not, I fear, be induced even to reflect upon it calmly, so persuaded are they that it is by the mind only that their bodies are set in motion. And yet what body can or cannot do no one has yet determined; body, _i. E. _, by the law of its own nature, and without assistance from mind. No one has so probed the human frame as to have detected all its functions and exhausted the list of them; there are powers exhibited by animals far exceeding human sagacity; and, again, feats are performed by somnambulists on which in the waking state the same persons would never venture--itself a proof that body is able to accomplish what mind can only admire. Men _say_ that mind moves body, but how it moves it they cannot tell, or what degree of motion it can impart to it; so that, in fact, they do not know what they say, and are only confessing their own ignorance in specious language. They will answer me, that whether or not they understand how it can be, yet that they are assured by plain experience that unless mind could perceive, body would be altogether inactive; they know that it depends on the mind whether the tongue speaks or is silent. But do they not equally experience that if their bodies are paralysed their minds cannot think?--that if their bodies are asleep their minds are without power?--that their minds are not at all times equally able to exert themselves even on the same subject, but depend on the state of their bodies? And as for experience proving that the members of the body can be controlled by the mind, I fear experience proves very much the reverse. But it is absurd (they rejoin) to attempt to explain from the mere laws of body such things as pictures, or palaces, or works of art; the body could not build a church unless mind directed it. I have shown, however, that we do not yet know what body can or cannot do, or what would naturally follow from the structure of it; that we experience in the feats of somnambulists something which antecedently to that experience would have seemed incredible. This fabric of the human body exceeds infinitely any contrivance of human skill, and an infinity of things, as I have already proved, ought to follow from it. 

We are not concerned to answer this reasoning, although if the matterwere one the debating of which could be of any profit, it wouldundoubtedly have its weight, and would require to be patientlyconsidered. Life is too serious, however, to be wasted with impunityover speculations in which certainty is impossible, and in which we aretrifling with what is inscrutable. 

Objections of a far graver kind were anticipated by Spinoza himself, when he went on to gather out of his philosophy 'that the mind of manbeing part of the Infinite intelligence, when we say that such a mindperceives this thing or that, we are, in fact, saying that God perceivesit, not as he is Infinite, but as he is represented by the nature ofthis or that idea; and similarly, when we say that a man does this orthat action, we say that God does it, not _quâ_ he is Infinite, but_quâ_ he is expressed in that man's nature. ' 'Here, ' he says, 'manyreaders will no doubt hesitate, and many difficulties will occur to themin the way of such a supposition. '

We confess that we ourselves are among these hesitating readers. As longas the Being whom Spinoza so freely names remains surrounded with theassociations which in this country we bring with us out of ourchildhood, not all the logic in the world would make us listen tolanguage such as this. It is not so--we know it, and that is enough. Weare well aware of the phalanx of difficulties which lie about ourtheistic conceptions. They are quite enough, if religion depended onspeculative consistency, and not in obedience of life, to perplex andterrify us. What are we? what _is_ anything? If it be not divine--whatis it then? If created--out of what is it created? and how created--andwhy? These questions, and others far more momentous which we do notenter upon here, may be asked and cannot be answered; but we cannot anythe more consent to Spinoza on the ground that he alone consistentlyprovides an answer; because, as we have said again and again, we do notcare to have them answered at all. Conscience is the single tribunal towhich we choose to be referred, and conscience declares imperativelythat what he says is not true. It is painful to speak of all this, andas far as possible we designedly avoid it. Pantheism is not Atheism, butthe Infinite Positive and the Infinite Negative are not so remote fromone another in their practical bearings; only let us remember that weare far indeed from the truth if we think that God to Spinoza was_nothing else_ but that world which we experience. It is but one ofinfinite expressions of him--a conception which makes us giddy in theeffort to realise it. 

We have arrived at last at the outwork of the whole matter in itsbearings upon life and human duty. It was in the search after this last, that Spinoza, as we said, travelled over so strange a country, and wenow expect his conclusions. To discover the true good of man, to directhis actions to such ends as will secure to him real and lastingfelicity, and, by a comparison of his powers with the objects offered tothem, to ascertain how far they are capable of arriving at theseobjects, and by what means they can best be trained towards them--is theaim which Spinoza assigns to philosophy. 'Most people, ' he adds, 'derideor vilify their nature; it is a better thing to endeavour to understandit; and however extravagant my proceeding may be thought, I propose toanalyse the properties of that nature as if it were a mathematicalfigure. ' Mind being, as he conceives himself to have shown, nothing elsethan the idea corresponding to this or that affection of body, we arenot, therefore, to think of it as a faculty, but simply and merely as anact. There is no general power called intellect, any more than there isany general abstract volition, but only _hic et ille intellectus et hæcet illa volitio_. 

Again, by the word Mind is understood not merely an act or acts of willor intellect, but all forms also of consciousness of sensation oremotion. The human body being composed of many small bodies, the mind issimilarly composed of many minds, and the unity of body and of minddepends on the relation which the component portions maintain towardseach other. This is obviously the case with body; and if we cantranslate metaphysics into common experience, it is equally the casewith mind. There are pleasures of sense and pleasures of intellect; athousand tastes, tendencies, and inclinations form our mentalcomposition; and since one contradicts another, and each has a tendencyto become dominant, it is only in the harmonious equipoise of theirseveral activities, in their due and just subordination, that any unityof action or consistency of feeling is possible. After a masterlyanalysis of all these tendencies (the most complete by far which hasever been made by any moral philosopher), Spinoza arrives at theprinciples under which unity and consistency can be obtained as thecondition upon which a being so composed can look for any sort ofhappiness; and these principles, arrived at as they are by a route sodifferent, are the same, and are proposed by Spinoza as being the same, as those of the Christian religion. 

It might seem impossible in a system which binds together in soinexorable a sequence the relations of cause and effect, to make a placefor the action of self-control; but consideration will show that, however vast the difference between those who deny and those who affirmthe liberty of the will (in the sense in which the expression is usuallyunderstood), it is not a difference which affects the conduct or altersthe practical bearings of it. Conduct may be determined by laws--laws asabsolute as those of matter; and yet the one as well as the other may bebrought under control by a proper understanding of those laws. Now, experience seems plainly to say, that while all our actions arise out ofdesire--that whatever we do, we do for the sake of something which wewish to be or to obtain--we are differently affected towards what isproposed to us as an object of desire, in proportion as we understandthe nature of such object in itself and in its consequences. The betterwe know, the better we act; and the fallacy of all common argumentsagainst necessitarianism lies in the assumption that it leaves no roomfor self-direction: it merely insists, in exact conformity withexperience, on the conditions under which self-determination ispossible. Conduct, according to the necessitarian, depends on knowledge. Let a man certainly know that there is poison in the cup of wine beforehim, and he will not drink it. By the law of cause and effect, hisdesire for the wine is overcome by the fear of the pain or the deathwhich will follow. So with everything which comes before him. Let theconsequences of any action be clear, definite, and inevitable, andthough Spinoza would not say that the knowledge of them will beabsolutely sufficient to determine the conduct (because the clearestknowledge may be overborne by violent passion), yet it is the bestwhich we have to trust to, and will do much if it cannot do all. 

On this hypothesis, after a diagnosis of the various tendencies of humannature, called commonly the passions and affections, he returns upon thenature of our ordinary knowledge to derive out of it the means for theirsubordination. All these tendencies of themselves seek their ownobjects--seek them blindly and immoderately; and the mistakes and theunhappinesses of life arise from the want of due understanding of theseobjects, and a just moderation of the desire for them. His analysis isremarkably clear, but it is too long for us to enter upon it; theimportant thing being the character of the control which is to beexerted. To arrive at this, he employs a distinction of great practicalutility, and which is peculiarly his own. 

Following his tripartite division of knowledge, he finds all kinds of itarrange themselves under one of two classes, and to be either adequateor inadequate. By adequate knowledge he does not mean what is exhaustiveand complete, but what, as far as it goes, is distinct and unconfused:by inadequate, he means what we know merely as fact either derived fromour own sensations, or from the authority of others, while of theconnexion of it with other facts, of the causes, effects, or meaning ofit we know nothing. We may have an adequate idea of a circle, though weare unacquainted with all the properties which belong to it; we conceiveit distinctly as a figure generated by the rotation of a line, one endof which is stationary. Phenomena, on the other hand, however made knownto us--phenomena of the senses, and phenomena of experience, as long asthey remain phenomena merely, and unseen in any higher relation--we cannever know except as inadequately. We cannot tell what outward thingsare by coming in contact with certain features of them. We have a veryimperfect acquaintance even with our own bodies, and the sensationswhich we experience of various kinds rather indicate to us the nature ofthese bodies themselves than of the objects which affect them. Now, itis obvious that the greater part of mankind act only upon knowledge ofthis latter kind. The amusements, even the active pursuits, of most ofus remain wholly within the range of uncertainty, and, therefore, arefull of hazard and precariousness: little or nothing issues as weexpect. We look for pleasure and we find pain; we shun one pain andfind a greater; and thus arises the ineffectual character which we socomplain of in life--the disappointments, failures, mortifications whichform the material of so much moral meditation on the vanity of theworld. Much of all this is inevitable from the constitution of ournature. The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higherknowledge. The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases whichcannot be understood by us except with the utmost inadequacy; and theresignation to the higher will which has determined all things in thewisest way, is imperfect in the best of us. Yet much is possible, if notall; and, although through a large tract of life 'there comes one eventto all, to the wise and to the unwise, ' 'yet wisdom excelleth folly asfar as light excelleth darkness. ' The phenomena of experience, afterinductive experiment, and just and careful consideration, arrangethemselves under laws uniform in their operation, and furnishing a guideto the judgment; and over all things, although the interval must remainunexplored for ever, because what we would search into is Infinite, maybe seen the beginning of all things, the absolute eternal God. 'Menshumana, ' Spinoza continues, 'quædam agit, quædam vero patitur. ' In sofar as it is influenced by inadequate ideas--'eatenus patitur'--it ispassive and in bondage, it is the sport of fortune and caprice: in sofar as its ideas are adequate--'eatenus agit'--it is active, it isitself. While we are governed by outward temptations, by the casualpleasures, by the fortunes or the misfortunes of life, we are butinstruments, yielding ourselves to be acted upon as the animal is actedon by its appetites, or the inanimate matter by the laws which bind it;we are slaves--instruments, it may be, of some higher purpose in theorder of nature, but in ourselves nothing; instruments which areemployed for a special work, and which are consumed in effecting it. Sofar, on the contrary, as we know clearly what we do, as we understandwhat we are, and direct our conduct not by the passing emotion of themoment, but by a grave, clear, and constant knowledge of what is reallygood, so far we are said to act--we are ourselves the spring of our ownactivity--we pursue the genuine well-being of our entire nature, and_that_ we can always find, and it never disappoints us when found. 

All things desire life; all things seek for energy, and fuller andampler being. The component parts of man, his various appetites andpassions, are seeking larger activity while pursuing each its immoderateindulgence; and it is the primary law of every single being that it sofollows what will give it increased vitality. Whatever will contributeto such increase is the proper good of each; and the good of man as aunited being is measured and determined by the effect of it upon hiscollective powers. The appetites gather power from their several objectsof desire; but the power of the part is the weakness of the whole; andman as a collective person gathers life, being, and self-mastery onlyfrom the absolute good, --the source of all real good, and truth, andenergy, --that is, God. The love of God is the extinction of all otherloves and all other desires. To know God, as far as man can know him, ispower, self-government, and peace. And this is virtue, and this isblessedness. 

Thus, by a formal process of demonstration, we are brought round to theold conclusions of theology; and Spinoza protests that it is no newdoctrine which he is teaching, but that it is one which in variousdialects has been believed from the beginning of the world. Happinessdepends on the consistency and coherency of character, and thatcoherency can only be given by the knowledge of the One Being, to knowwhom is to know all things adequately, and to love whom is to haveconquered every other inclination. The more entirely our minds rest onhim--the more distinctly we regard all things in their relation to him, the more we cease to be under the dominion of external things; wesurrender ourselves consciously to do his will, and as living men andnot as passive things we become the instruments of his power. When thetrue nature and true causes of our affections become clear to us, theyhave no more power to influence us. The more we understand, the less canfeeling sway us; we know that all things are what they are, because theyare so constituted that they could not be otherwise, and we cease to beangry with our brother, because he disappoints us; we shall not fret atcalamity, nor complain of fortune, because no such thing as fortuneexists; and if we fail it is better than if we had succeeded, notperhaps for ourselves, yet for the universe. We cannot fear, whennothing can befall us except what God wills, and we shall not violentlyhope, when the future, whatever it be, will be the best which ispossible. Seeing all things in their place in the everlasting order, Past and Future will not affect us. The temptation of present pleasurewill not overcome the certainty of future pain, for the pain will be assure as the pleasure, and we shall see all things under a rule ofadamant. The foolish and the ignorant are led astray by the idea ofcontingency, and expect to escape the just issues of their actions; thewise man will know that each action brings with it its inevitableconsequences, which even God cannot change without ceasing to behimself. 

In such a manner, through all the conditions of life, Spinoza pursuesthe advantages which will accrue to man from the knowledge of God, Godand man being what his philosophy has described them. His practicalteaching is singularly beautiful; although much of its beauty is perhapsdue to associations which have arisen out of Christianity, and which inthe system of Pantheism have no proper abiding place. Retaining, indeed, all that is beautiful in Christianity, he even seems to have relievedhimself of the more fearful features of the general creed. Heacknowledges no hell, no devil, no positive and active agency at enmitywith God; but sees in all things infinite gradations of beings, all intheir way obedient, and all fulfilling the part allotted to them. Doubtless a pleasant exchange and a grateful deliverance, if only wecould persuade ourselves that a hundred pages of judiciously arrangeddemonstrations could really and indeed have worked it for us; if wecould indeed believe that we could have the year without its winter, daywithout night, sunlight without shadow. Evil is unhappily too real athing to be so disposed of. 

But if we cannot believe Spinoza's system taken in its entirecompleteness, yet we may not blind ourselves to the disinterestednessand calm nobility which pervades his theories of human life andobligation. He will not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded. Virtue is the power of God in the human soul, and that is the exhaustiveend of all human desire. 'Beatitudo non est virtutis pretium, sed ipsavirtus. Nihil aliud est quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, quæ ex Deiintuitivâ cognitione oritur. ' The same spirit of generosity exhibitsitself in all his conclusions. The ordinary objects of desire, he says, are of such a kind that for one man to obtain them is for another tolose them; and this alone would suffice to prove that they are not whatany man should labour after. But the fulness of God suffices for usall; and he who possesses this good desires only to communicate it toevery one, and to make all mankind as happy as himself. And again:--'Thewise man will not speak in society of his neighbour's faults, andsparingly of the infirmity of human nature; but he will speak largely ofhuman virtue and human power, and of the means by which that nature canbest be perfected, so to lead men to put away that fear and aversionwith which they look on goodness, and learn with relieved hearts to loveand desire it. ' And once more:--'He who loves God will not desire thatGod should love him in return with any partial or particular affection, for that is to desire that God for his sake should change hiseverlasting nature and become lower than himself. '

One grave element, indeed, of a religious faith would seem in such asystem to be necessarily wanting. Where individual action is resolvedinto the modified activity of the Universal Being, all absorbing and allevolving, the individuality of the personal man is but an evanescent andunreal shadow. Such individuality as we now possess, whatever it be, might continue to exist in a future state as really as it exists in thepresent, and those to whom it belongs might be anxious naturally for itspersistence. Yet it would seem that if the soul be nothing except theidea of a body actually existing, when that body is decomposed into itselements, the soul corresponding to it must accompany it into ananswering dissolution. And this, indeed, Spinoza in one sense actuallyaffirms, when he denies to the mind any power of retaining consciousnessof what has befallen it in life, 'nisi durante corpore. ' But Spinozismis a philosophy full of surprises; and our calculations of what _must_belong to it are perpetually baffled. The imagination, the memory, thesenses, whatever belongs to inadequate perception, perish necessarilyand eternally; and the man who has been the slave of his inclinations, who has no knowledge of God, and no active possession of himself, havingin life possessed no personality, loses in death the appearance of itwith the dissolution of the body. 

Nevertheless, there is in God an idea expressing the essence of themind, united to the mind as the mind is united to the body, and thusthere is in the soul something of an everlasting nature which cannotutterly perish. And here Spinoza, as he often does in many of his mostsolemn conclusions, deserts for a moment the thread of hisdemonstrations, and appeals to the consciousness. In spite of ournon-recollection of what passed before our birth, in spite of alldifficulties from the dissolution of the body, 'Nihilominus, ' he says, 'sentimus experimurque nos æternos esse. Nam mens non minus res illassentit quas intelligendo concipit, quam quas in memoriâ habet. Mentisenim oculi quibus res videt observatque sunt ipsæ demonstrationes. '

This perception, immediately revealed to the mind, falls into easyharmony with the rest of the system. As the mind is not a faculty, butan act or acts, --not a power of perception, but the perception itself, in its high union with the highest object (to use the metaphysicallanguage which Coleridge has made popular and partially intelligible), the object and the subject become one. If knowledge be followed as itought to be followed, and all objects of knowledge be regarded in theirrelations to the One Absolute Being, the knowledge of particular outwardthings, of nature, or life, or history, becomes, in fact, knowledge ofGod; and the more complete or adequate such knowledge, the more the mindis raised above what is perishable in the phenomena to the idea or lawwhich lies beyond them. It learns to dwell exclusively upon the eternal, not upon the temporary; and being thus occupied with the everlastinglaws, and its activity subsisting in its perfect union with them, itcontracts in itself the character of the objects which possess it. Thuswe are emancipated from the conditions of duration; we are liable evento death only _quatenus patimur_, as we are passive things and notactive intelligences; and the more we possess such knowledge and arepossessed by it, the more entirely the passive is superseded by theactive--so that at last the human soul may 'become of such a nature thatthe portion of it which will perish with the body in comparison withthat of it which shall endure, shall be insignificant and _nulliusmomenti_. ' (Eth. V. 38. )

Such are the principal features of a philosophy, the influence of whichupon Europe, direct and indirect, it is not easy to over-estimate. Theaccount of it is far from being an account of the whole of Spinoza'slabours; his 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus' was the forerunner ofGerman historical criticism; the whole of which has been but theapplication of principles laid down in that remarkable work. But this isnot a subject on which, upon the present occasion, we have cared toenter. We have designedly confined ourselves to the system which is mostassociated with the name of its author. It is this which has been reallypowerful, which has stolen over the minds even of thinkers who imaginethemselves most opposed to it. It has appeared in the absolute Pantheismof Schelling and Hegel, in the Pantheistic Christianity of Herder andSchleiermacher. Passing into practical life it has formed the strong, shrewd judgment of Goethe, while again it has been able to unite withthe theories of the most extreme materialism. 

It lies too, perhaps (and here its influence has been unmixedly good), at the bottom of that more reverent contemplation of nature which hascaused the success of our modern landscape painting, which inspiredWordsworth's poetry, and which, if ever physical science is to become aninstrument of intellectual education, must first be infused into thelessons of nature; the sense of that 'something' interfused in thematerial world--

 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;-- A motion and a spirit, which impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. 

If we shrink from regarding the extended universe, with Spinoza, as anactual manifestation of Almighty God, we are unable to rest in the meredenial that it is this. We go on to ask what it _is_, and we are obligedto conclude thus much at least of it, that every smallest being was oncea thought in his mind; and in the study of what he has made, we arereally and truly studying a revelation of himself. 

It is not here, it is not on the physical, it is rather on the moralside, that the stumbling-block is lying; in that excuse for evil and forevil men which the necessitarian theory will furnish, disguise it inwhat fair-sounding words we will. So plain this is, that common-sensepeople, and especially English people, cannot bring themselves even toconsider the question without impatience, and turn disdainfully andangrily from a theory which confuses their instincts of right and wrong. Although, however, error on this side is infinitely less mischievousthan on the other, no vehement error can exist in this world withimpunity; and it does appear that in our common view of these matters wehave closed our eyes to certain grave facts of experience, and havegiven the fatalist a vantage ground of real truth which we ought to haveconsidered and allowed. At the risk of tediousness we shall enterbriefly into this unpromising ground. Life and the necessities of lifeare our best philosophers if we will only listen honestly to what theysay to us; and dislike the lesson as we may, it is cowardice whichrefuses to hear it. 

The popular belief is, that right and wrong lie before every man, andthat he is free to choose between them, and the responsibility of choicerests with himself. The fatalist's belief is that every man's actionsare determined by causes external and internal over which he has nopower, leaving no room for any moral choice whatever. The first iscontradicted by facts, the second by the instinct of conscience. EvenSpinoza allows that for practical purposes we are obliged to regard thefuture as contingent, and ourselves as able to influence it; and it isincredible that both our inward convictions and our outward conductshould be built together upon a falsehood. But if, as Butler says, whatever be the speculative account of the matter, we are practicallyforced to regard ourselves as free, this is but half the truth, for itmay be equally said that practically we are forced to regard each otheras _not_ free; and to make allowance, every moment, for influences forwhich we cannot hold each other personally responsible. If not, --ifevery person of sound mind (in the common acceptation of the term) beequally able at all times to act right if only he _will_, --why all thecare which we take of children? why the pains to keep them from badsociety? why do we so anxiously watch their disposition, to determinethe education which will best answer to it? Why in cases of guilt do wevary our moral censure according to the opportunities of the offender?Why do we find excuses for youth, for inexperience, for violent naturalpassion, for bad education, bad example? Why, except that we feel thatall these things do affect the culpability of the guilty person, andthat it is folly and inhumanity to disregard them? But what we act uponin private life we cannot acknowledge in our ethical theories, andwhile our conduct in detail is humane and just, we have been contentedto gather our speculative philosophy out of the broad and coarsegeneralisations of political necessity. In the swift haste of sociallife we must indeed treat men as we find them. We have no time to makeallowances; and the graduation of punishment by the scale of guilt is amere impossibility. A thief is a thief in the law's eye though he hasbeen trained from his cradle in the kennels of St. Giles's; and definitepenalties must be attached to definite acts, the conditions of politicallife not admitting of any other method of dealing with them. But it isabsurd to argue from such rude necessity that each act therefore, bywhomsoever committed, is of specific culpability. The act is one thing, the moral guilt is another. There are many cases in which, as Butleragain allows, if we trace a sinner's history to the bottom, the guiltattributable to himself appears to vanish altogether. 

This is plain matter of fact, and as long as we continue to deny orignore it, there will be found men (not bad men, but men who love thetruth as much as ourselves) who will see only what we neglect, and willinsist upon it, and build their systems upon it. 

And again, if less obvious, yet not less real, are those naturaltendencies which each of us brings with him into the world, --which wedid not make, and yet which almost as much determine what we are to be, as the properties of the seed determine the tree which shall grow fromit. Men are self-willed, or violent, or obstinate, or weak, or generous, or affectionate; there is as large difference in their dispositions asin the features of their faces. Duties which are easy to one, anotherfinds difficult or impossible. It is with morals as it is with art. Twochildren are taught to draw; one learns with ease, the other hardly ornever. In vain the master will show him what to do. It seems so easy: itseems as if he had only to _will_, and the thing would be done; but itis not so. Between the desire and the execution lies the incapable organwhich only wearily, and after long labour, imperfectly accomplishes whatis required of it. And the same, _to a certain extent_, unless we willdeny the patent facts of experience, holds true in moral actions. Nowonder, therefore, that evaded or thrust aside as these things are inthe popular beliefs, as soon as they are recognised in their fullreality they should be mistaken for the whole truth, and the free-willtheory be thrown aside as a chimera. 

It may be said, and it often is said, that such reasonings are merelysophistical--that however we entangle ourselves in logic, we areconscious that we are free; we know--we are as sure as we are of ourexistence--that we have power to act this way or that way, exactly as wechoose. But this is less plain than it seems; and if granted, it provesless than it appears to prove. It may be true that we can act as wechoose, but can we _choose_? Is not our choice determined for us? Wecannot determine from the fact, because we always _have chosen_ as soonas we act, and we cannot replace the conditions in such a way as todiscover whether we could have chosen anything else. The stronger motivemay have determined our volition without our perceiving it; and if wedesire to prove our independence of motive, by showing that we _can_choose something different from that which we should naturally havechosen, we still cannot escape from the circle, this very desirebecoming, as Mr. Hume observes, itself a _motive_. Again, consciousnessof the possession of any power may easily be delusive; we can properlyjudge what our powers are only by what they have actually accomplished;we know what we _have_ done, and we may infer from having done it thatour power was equal to what it achieved. But it is easy for us toover-rate our strength if we try to measure our abilities in themselves. A man who can leap five yards may think that he can leap six; yet he maytry and fail. A man who can write prose may only learn that he cannotwrite poetry from the badness of the verses which he produces. To theappeal to consciousness of power there is always an answer:--that we maybelieve ourselves to possess it, but that experience proves that we maybe deceived. 

There is, however, another group of feelings which cannot be set asidein this way, which do prove that, in some sense or other, in some degreeor other, we are the authors of our own actions. It is one of theclearest of all inward phenomena, that, where two or more coursesinvolving moral issues are before us, whether we have a consciousness of_power_ to choose between them or not, we have a consciousness that we_ought_ to choose between them; a sense of duty--[Greek: hoti dei toutoprattein]--as Aristotle expresses it, which we cannot shake off. Whatever this consciousness involves (and some measure of freedom itmust involve or it is nonsense), the feeling exists within us, andrefuses to yield before all the batteries of logic. It is not that ofthe two courses we know that one is in the long run the best, and theother more immediately tempting. We have a sense of obligationirrespective of consequence, the violation of which is followed again bya sense of self-disapprobation, of censure, of blame. In vain willSpinoza tell us that such feelings, incompatible as they are with thetheory of powerlessness, are mistakes arising out of a false philosophy. They are primary facts of sensation most vivid in minds of most vigoroussensibility; and although they may be extinguished by habitualprofligacy, or possibly, perhaps, destroyed by logic, the paralysis ofthe conscience is no more a proof that it is not a real power ofperceiving real things, than blindness is a proof that sight is not areal power. The perceptions of worth and worthlessness are notconclusions of reasoning, but immediate sensations like those of seeingand hearing; and although, like the other senses, they may be mistakensometimes in the accounts they render to us, the fact of the existenceof such feelings at all proves that there is something which correspondsto them. If there be any such things as 'true ideas, ' or clear, distinctperceptions at all, this of praise and blame is one of them, andaccording to Spinoza's own rule we must accept what it involves. And itinvolves that some where or other the influence of causes ceases tooperate, and that some degree of power there is in men ofself-determination, by the amount of which, and not by their specificactions, moral merit or demerit is to be measured. Speculativedifficulties remain in abundance. It will be said in a case, _e. G. _ ofmoral trial, that there may have been _power_; but was there _powerenough_ to resist the temptation? If there was, then it was resisted. Ifthere was not, there was no responsibility. We must answer again frompractical instinct. We refuse to allow men to be considered all equallyguilty who have committed the same faults; and we insist that theiractions must be measured against their opportunities. But a similarconviction assures us that there is somewhere a point of freedom. Wherethat point is--where other influences terminate, and responsibilitybegins--will always be of intricate and often impossible solution. Butif there be such a point at all, it is fatal to necessitarianism, andman is what he has been hitherto supposed to be--an exception in theorder of nature, with a power not differing in degree but differing inkind from those of other creatures. Moral life, like all life, is amystery; and as to anatomise the body will not reveal the secret ofanimation, so with the actions of the moral man. The spiritual life, which alone gives them meaning and being, glides away before the logicaldissecting knife, and leaves it but a corpse to work upon. 

FOOTNOTES:

[N] _Westminster Review_, 1854. 

[O] Since these words were written a book has appeared in Paris by anable disciple of Leibnitz, which, although it does not lead us to modifythe opinion expressed in them, yet obliges us to give our reasons forspeaking as we do. M. De Careil[P] has discovered in the library atHanover, a MS. In the hand-writing of Leibnitz, containing a series ofremarks on the book of a certain John Wachter. It does not appear whothis John Wachter was, nor by what accident he came to have sodistinguished a critic. If we may judge by the extracts at presentbefore us, he seems to have been an absurd and extravagant person, whohad attempted to combine the theology of the Cabbala with the verylittle which he was able to understand of the philosophy of Spinoza;and, as far as he is concerned, neither his writings nor the reflectionsupon them are of interest to any human being. The extravagance ofSpinoza's followers, however, furnished Leibnitz with an opportunity ofnoticing the points on which he most disapproved of Spinoza himself; andthese few notices M. De Careil has now for the first time published as_The Refutation of Spinoza_, by Leibnitz. They are exceedingly brief andscanty; and the writer of them would assuredly have hesitated todescribe an imperfect criticism by so ambitious a title. The moderneditor, however, must be allowed the privilege of a worshipper, and wewill not quarrel with him for an exaggerated estimate of what his masterhad accomplished. We are indebted to his enthusiasm for what is at leasta curious discovery, and we will not qualify the gratitude which he hasearned by industry and good will. At the same time, the notes themselvesconfirm the opinion which we have always entertained, that Leibnitz didnot understand Spinoza. Leibnitz did not understand him, and thefollowers of Leibnitz do not understand him now. If he were no more thanwhat he is described in the book before us--if his metaphysics were'miserable, ' if his philosophy was absurd, and he himself nothing morethan a second-rate disciple of Descartes--we can assure M. De Careilthat we should long ago have heard the last of him. 

There must be something else, something very different from this, toexplain the position which he holds in Germany, or the fascination whichhis writings exerted over such minds as those of Lessing or of Göthe;the fact of so enduring an influence is more than a sufficient answer tomere depreciating criticism. This, however, is not a point which thereis any use in pressing. Our present business is to justify the twoassertions which we have made. First, that Leibnitz borrowed his _Theoryof the Harmonie Pré-établie_ from Spinoza, without acknowledgment; and, secondly, that this theory is quite as inconsistent with religion as isthat of Spinoza, and only differs from it in disguising its realcharacter. 

First for the _Harmonie Pré-établie_. Spinoza's _Ethics_ appeared in1677; and we know that they were read by Leibnitz. In 1696, Leibnitzannounced as a discovery of his own, a Theory of _The Communication ofSubstances_, which he illustrates in the following manner:--

'Vous ne comprenez pas, dites-vous, comment je pourrois prouver ce quej'ai avancé touchant la communication, ou l'harmonie de deux substancesaussi différentes que l'âme et le corps? Il est vrai que je crois enavoir trouvé le moyen; et voici comment je prétends vous satisfaire. Figurez-vous deux horloges ou montres qui s'accordent parfaitement. Orcela se peut faire de trois manières. La 1^{e} consiste dans uneinfluence mutuelle. La 2^{e} est d'y attacher un ouvrier habile qui lesredresse, et les mette d'accord à tous moments. La 3^{e} est defabriquer ces deux pendules avec tant d'art et de justesse, qu'on sepuisse assurer de leur accord dans la suite. Mettez maintenant l'âme etle corps à la place de ces deux pendules; leur accord peut arriver parl'une de ces trois manières. La voye d'influence est celle de laphilosophie vulgaire; mais comme l'on ne sauroit concevoir desparticules matérielles qui puissent passer d'une de ces substances dansl'autre, il faut abandonner ce sentiment. La voye de l'assistancecontinuelle du Créateur est celle du système des causes occasionnelles;mais je tiens que c'est faire intervenir Deus ex machinâ, dans une chosenaturelle et ordinaire, où selon la raison il ne doit concourir, que dola manière qu'il concourt à toutes les autres choses naturelles. Ainsiil ne reste que mon hypothèse; c'est-à-dire que la voye de l'harmonie. Dieu a fait dès le commencement chacune de ces deux substances de tellenature, qu'en ne suivant que ces propres loix qu'elle a reçues avec sonêtre, elle s'accorde pourtant avec l'autre tout comme s'il y avoit uneinfluence mutuelle, ou comme si Dieu y mettoit toujours la main au-delàde son concours général. Après cela je n'ai pas besoin de rien prouver àmoins qu'on ne veuille exiger que je prouve que Dieu est assez habilepour se servir de cette artifice, ' &c. --LEIBNITZ, _Opera_, p. 133. Berlin edition, 1840. 

Leibnitz, as we have said, attempts to reconcile his system withChristianity, and therefore, of course, this theory of the relation ofmind and body wears a very different aspect under his treatment, fromwhat it wears under that of Spinoza. But Spinoza and Leibnitz both agreein this one peculiar conception in which they differ from all otherphilosophers before or after them--that mind and body have no directcommunication with each other, and that the phenomena of them merelycorrespond. M. De Careil says they both borrowed it from Descartes; butthat is impossible. Descartes held no such opinion; it was the precisepoint of disagreement at which Spinoza parted from him; and therefore, since in point of date Spinoza had the advantage of Leibnitz, and weknow that Leibnitz was acquainted with his writings, we must eithersuppose that he was directly indebted to Spinoza for an obligation whichhe ought to have acknowledged, or else, which is extremely improbable, that having read Spinoza and forgotten him, he afterwards re-originatedfor himself one of the most singular and peculiar notions which was everoffered to the belief of mankind. 

So much for the first point, which, after all, is but of little moment. It is more important to ascertain whether, in the hands of Leibnitz, this theory can be any better reconciled with what is commonly meant byreligion; whether, that is, the ideas of obedience and disobedience, merit and demerit, judgment and retribution, have any proper place underit. Spinoza makes no pretension to anything of the kind, and openlydeclares that these ideas are ideas merely, and human mistakes. Leibnitz, in opposition to him, endeavours to re-establish them in thefollowing manner. He conceives that the system of the universe has beenarranged and predetermined from the moment at which it was launched intobeing; from the moment at which God selected it, with all its details, as the best which could exist; but that it is carried on by the actionof individual creatures (monads as he calls them) which, thoughnecessarily obeying the laws of their existence, yet obey them with a'character of spontaneity, ' which although 'automata, ' are yet voluntaryagents; and therefore, by the consent of their hearts to their actions, entitle themselves to moral praise or moral censure. The question is, whether by the mere assertion of the co-existence of these oppositequalities in the monad man, he has proved that such qualities canco-exist. In our opinion, it is like speaking of a circular ellipse, orof a quadrilateral triangle. There is a plain dilemma in these mattersfrom which no philosophy can extricate itself. If men can incur guilt, their actions might be other than they are. If they cannot act otherwisethan they do, they cannot incur guilt. So at least it appears to us;yet, in the darkness of our knowledge, we would not complain merely of atheory, and if our earthly life were all in all, and the grave remainedthe extreme horizon of our hopes and fears, the _Harmonie Pré-établie_might be tolerated as credible, and admired as ingenious and beautiful. It is when forcibly attached to a creed of the future, with which it hasno natural connection, that it assumes its repulsive features. The worldmay be in the main good; while the good, from the unknown condition ofits existence, may be impossible without some intermixture of evil; andalthough Leibnitz was at times staggered even himself by the misery andwickedness which he witnessed, and was driven to comfort himself withthe reflection that this earth might be but one world in the midst ofthe universe, and perhaps the single chequered exception in an infinityof stainless globes, yet we would not quarrel with a hypothesis becauseit was imperfect; it might pass as a possible conjecture on a darksubject, when nothing better than conjecture was attainable. 

But as soon as we are told that the evil in these human 'automata' beinga necessary condition of this world which God has called into being, isyet infinitely detestable to God; that the creatures who suffer underthe accursed necessity of committing sin are infinitely guilty in God'seyes, for doing what they have no power to avoid, and may therefore bejustly punished in everlasting fire; we recoil against the paradox. 

No disciple of Leibnitz will maintain, that unless he had found thisbelief in an eternity of penal retribution an article of the popularcreed, such a doctrine would have formed a natural appendage of hissystem; and if M. De Careil desires to know why the influence ofSpinoza, whose genius he considers so insignificant, has been so deepand so enduring, while Leibnitz has only secured for himself a mereadmiration of his talents, it is because Spinoza was not afraid to beconsistent, even at the price of the world's reprobation, and refused topurchase the applause of his own age at the sacrifice of sincerity. 

[P] _Réfutation Inédite de Spinoza. _ Par Leibnitz. _Précédée d'uneMémoire_, par Foucher de Careil. Paris. 1854. 

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES. [Q]

To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not difficult--itis impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through aglass darkly. The mind as well as the eye adds something of its own, before an image, even of the clearest object, can be painted upon it. 

And in historical enquiries, the most instructed thinkers have but alimited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most, approach least to agreement. The most careful investigations arediverging roads--the further men travel upon them, the greater theinterval by which they are divided. In the eyes of David Hume, thehistory of the Saxon Princes is 'the scuffling of kites and crows. 'Father Newman would mortify the conceit of a degenerate England bypointing to the sixty saints and the hundred confessors who were trainedin her royal palaces for the Calendar of the Blessed. How vast a chasmyawns between these two conceptions of the same era! Through what commonterm can the student pass from one into the other?

Or, to take an instance yet more noticeable. The history of Englandscarcely interests Mr. Macaulay before the Revolution of the seventeenthcentury. To Lord John Russell, the Reformation was the first outcomefrom centuries of folly and ferocity; and Mr. Hallam's more temperatelanguage softens, without concealing, a similar conclusion. Thesewriters have all studied what they describe. Mr. Carlyle has studied thesame subject with power at least equal to theirs, and to him thegreatness of English character was waning with the dawn of Englishliterature; the race of heroes was already failing. The era of actionwas yielding before the era of speech. 

All these views may seem to ourselves exaggerated; we may have settledinto some moderate _via media_, or have carved out our own ground on anoriginal pattern; but if we are wise, the differences in other men'sjudgments will teach us to be diffident. The more distinctly we havemade history bear witness in favour of our particular opinions, the morewe have multiplied the chances against the truth of our own theory. 

Again, supposing that we have made a truce with 'opinions, ' properly socalled; supposing we have satisfied ourselves that it is idle to quarrelupon points on which good men differ, and that it is better to attendrather to what we certainly know; supposing that, either from superiorwisdom, or from the conceit of superior wisdom, we have resolved that wewill look for human perfection neither exclusively in the Old World norexclusively in the New--neither among Catholics nor Protestants, amongWhigs or Tories, heathens or Christians--that we have laid asideaccidental differences, and determined to recognise only moraldistinctions, to love moral worth, and to hate moral evil, wherever wefind them;--even supposing all this, we have not much improved ourposition--we cannot leap from our shadow. 

Eras, like individuals, differ from one another in the species of virtuewhich they encourage. In one age, we find the virtues of the warrior; inthe next, of the saint. The ascetic and the soldier in their turndisappear; an industrial era succeeds, bringing with it the virtues ofcommon sense, of grace, and refinement. There is the virtue of energyand command, there is the virtue of humility and patient suffering. Allthese are different, and all are, or may be, of equal moral value; yet, from the constitution of our minds, we are so framed that we cannotequally appreciate all; we sympathise instinctively with the person whomost represents our own ideal--with the period when the graces whichmost harmonise with our own tempers have been especially cultivated. Further, if we leave out of sight these refinements, and contentourselves with the most popular conceptions of morality, there is thisimmeasurable difficulty--so great, yet so little considered, --thatgoodness is positive as well as negative, and consists in the activeaccomplishment of certain things which we are bound to do, as well as inthe abstaining from things which we are bound not to do. And here thewarp and woof vary in shade and pattern. Many a man, with the help ofcircumstances, may pick his way clear through life, never havingviolated one prohibitive commandment, and yet at last be fit only forthe place of the unprofitable servant--he may not have committed eithersin or crime, yet never have felt the pulsation of a single unselfishemotion. Another, meanwhile, shall have been hurried by an impulsivenature into fault after fault--shall have been reckless, improvident, perhaps profligate, yet be fitter after all for the kingdom of heaventhan the Pharisee--fitter, because against the catalogue of faults therecould perhaps be set a fairer list of acts of comparative generosity andself-forgetfulness--fitter, because to those who love much, much isforgiven. Fielding had no occasion to make Blifil, behind his decentcoat, a traitor and a hypocrite. It would have been enough to havecoloured him in and out alike in the steady hues of selfishness, afraidof offending the upper powers as he was afraid of offendingAllworthy--not from any love for what was good, but solely because itwould be imprudent--because the pleasure to be gained was not worth therisk of consequences. Such a Blifil would have answered the novelist'spurpose--for he would have remained a worse man in the estimation ofsome of us than Tom Jones. 

So the truth is; but unfortunately it is only where accurate knowledgeis stimulated by affection, that we are able to feel it. Persons wholive beyond our own circle, and, still more, persons who have lived inanother age, receive what is called justice, not charity; and justice issupposed to consist in due allotments of censure for each special act ofmisconduct, leaving merit unrecognised. There are many reasons for thisharsh method of judging. We must decide of men by what we know, and itis easier to know faults than to know virtues. Faults are specific, easily described, easily appreciated, easily remembered. And again, there is, or may be, hypocrisy in virtue; but no one pretends to vicewho is not vicious. The bad things which can be proved of a man we knowto be genuine. He was a spendthrift, he was an adulterer, he gambled, heequivocated. These are blots positive, unless untrue, and when theystand alone, tinge the whole character. 

This also is to be observed in historical criticism. All men feel anecessity of being on some terms with their conscience, at their ownexpense or at another's. If they cannot part with their faults, theywill at least call them by their right name when they meet with suchfaults elsewhere; and thus, when they find accounts of deeds of violenceor sensuality, of tyranny, of injustice of man to man, of great andextensive suffering, or any of those other misfortunes which theselfishness of men has at various times occasioned, they will vituperatethe doers of such things, and the age which has permitted them to bedone, with the full emphasis of virtuous indignation, while all the timethey are themselves doing things which will be described, with no lessjustice, in the same colour, by an equally virtuous posterity. 

Historians are fond of recording the supposed sufferings of the poor inthe days of serfdom and villanage; yet the records of the strikes of thelast ten years, when told by the sufferers, contain pictures no lessfertile in tragedy. We speak of famines and plagues under the Tudors andStuarts; but the Irish famine, and the Irish plague of 1847, the lastpage of such horrors which has yet been turned over, is the mosthorrible of all. We can conceive a description of England during theyear which has just closed over us (1856), true in all its details, containing no one statement which can be challenged, no singleexaggeration which can be proved; and this description, if given withoutthe correcting traits, shall make ages to come marvel why the Cities ofthe Plain were destroyed, and England was allowed to survive. The fraudsof trusted men, high in power and high in supposed religion; thewholesale poisonings; the robberies; the adulteration of food--nay, ofalmost everything exposed for sale--the cruel usage of women--childrenmurdered for the burial fees--life and property insecure in open day inthe open streets--splendour such as the world never saw before uponearth, with vice and squalor crouching under its walls--let all this bewritten down by an enemy, or let it be ascertained hereafter by theinvestigation of a posterity which desires to judge us as we generallyhave judged our forefathers, and few years will show darker in theEnglish annals than the year which we have just left behind us. Yet weknow, in the honesty of our hearts, how unjust such a picture would be. Our future advocate, if we are so happy as to find one, may not be ableto disprove a single article in the indictment; and yet we know that, asthe world goes, he will be right if he marks the year with a whitestroke--as one in which, on the whole, the moral harvest was better thanan average. 

Once more: our knowledge of any man is always inadequate--even of theunit which each of us calls himself; and the first condition under whichwe can know a man at all is, that he be in essentials something likeourselves; that our own experience be an interpreter which shall openthe secrets of his experience; and it often happens, even among ourcontemporaries, that we are altogether baffled. The Englishman and theItalian may understand each other's speech, but the language of eachother's ideas has still to be learnt. Our long failures in Ireland haverisen from a radical incongruity of character which has divided the Celtfrom the Saxon. And again, in the same country, the Catholic will be amystery to the Protestant, and the Protestant to the Catholic. Theirintellects have been shaped in opposite moulds; they are likeinstruments which cannot be played in concert. In the same way, but in afar higher degree, we are divided from the generations which havepreceded us in this planet--we try to comprehend a Pericles or aCæsar--an image rises before us which we seem to recognise as belongingto our common humanity. There is this feature which is familiar tous--and this--and this. We are full of hope; the lineaments, one by one, pass into clearness; when suddenly the figure becomes enveloped in acloud--some perplexity crosses our analysis, baffling it utterly, thephantom which we have evoked dies away before our eyes, scornfullymocking our incapacity to master it. 

The English antecedent to the Reformation are nearer to us than Greeksor Romans; and yet there is a large interval between the baron whofought at Barnet field, and his polished descendant in a moderndrawing-room. The scale of appreciation and the rule of judgment--thehabits, the hopes, the fears, the emotions--have utterly changed. 

In perusing modern histories, the present writer has been struck dumbwith wonder at the facility with which men will fill in chasms in theirinformation with conjecture; will guess at the motives which haveprompted actions; will pass their censures, as if all secrets of thepast lay out on an open scroll before them. He is obliged to say forhimself that, wherever he has been fortunate enough to discoverauthentic explanations of English historical difficulties, it is rareindeed that he has found any conjecture, either of his own or of anyother modern writer, confirmed. The true motive has almost invariablybeen of a kind which no modern experience could have suggested. 

Thoughts such as these form a hesitating prelude to an expression ofopinion on a controverted question. They will serve, however, toindicate the limits within which the said opinion is supposed to behazarded. And in fact, neither in this nor in any historical subject isthe conclusion so clear that it can be enunciated in a definite form. The utmost which can be safely hazarded with history is to relatehonestly ascertained facts, with only such indications of a judicialsentence upon them as may be suggested in the form in which the story isarranged. 

Whether the monastic bodies of England, at the time of theirdissolution, were really in that condition of moral corruption which islaid to their charge in the Act of Parliament by which they weredissolved, is a point which it seems hopeless to argue. Roman Catholic, and indeed almost all English, writers who are not committed to anunfavourable opinion by the ultra-Protestantism of their doctrines, seemto have agreed of late years that the accusations, if not false, wereenormously exaggerated. The dissolution, we are told, was apredetermined act of violence and rapacity; and when the reports and theletters of the visitors are quoted in justification of the Government, the discussion is closed with the dismissal of every unfavourablewitness from the court, as venal, corrupt, calumnious--in fact, as asuborned liar. Upon these terms the argument is easily disposed of; andif it were not that truth is in all matters better than falsehood, itwould be idle to reopen a question which cannot be justly dealt with. Noevidence can affect convictions which have been arrived at withoutevidence--and why should we attempt a task which it is hopeless toaccomplish? It seems necessary, however, to reassert the actual state ofthe surviving testimony from time to time, if it be only to sustain thelinks of the old traditions; and the present paper will contain one ortwo pictures of a peculiar kind, exhibiting the life and habits of thoseinstitutions, which have been lately met with chiefly among theunprinted Records. In anticipation of any possible charge of unfairnessin judging from isolated instances, we disclaim simply all desire tojudge--all wish to do anything beyond relating certain ascertainedstories. Let it remain, to those who are perverse enough to insist uponit, an open question whether the monasteries were more corrupt underHenry the Eighth than they had been four hundred years earlier. Thedissolution would have been equally a necessity; for no reasonableperson would desire that bodies of men should have been maintained forthe only business of singing masses, when the efficacy of masses was nolonger believed. Our present desire is merely this--to satisfy ourselveswhether the Government, in discharging a duty which could not bedispensed with, condescended to falsehood in seeking a vindication forthemselves which they did not require; or whether they had cause reallyto believe the majority of the monastic bodies to be as theyaffirmed--whether, that is to say, there really were such cases eitherof flagrant immorality, neglect of discipline, or careless waste andprodigality, as to justify the general censure which was pronouncedagainst the system by the Parliament and the Privy Council. 

Secure in the supposed completeness with which Queen Mary's agentsdestroyed the Records of the visitation under her father, Roman Catholicwriters have taken refuge in a disdainful denial; and the Anglicans, whofor the most part, while contented to enjoy the fruits of theReformation, detest the means by which it was brought about, have takenthe same view. Bishop Latimer tells us that, when the Report of thevisitors of the abbeys was read in the Commons House, there rose fromall sides one long cry of 'Down with them. ' But Bishop Latimer, in theopinion of High Churchmen, is not to be believed. Do we produce lettersof the visitors themselves, we are told that they are the slandersprepared to justify a preconceived purpose of spoliation. No witness, itseems, will be admitted unless it be the witness of a friend. Unlesssome enemy of the Reformation can be found to confess the crimes whichmade the Reformation necessary, the crimes themselves are to be regardedas unproved. This is a hard condition. We appeal to Wolsey. Wolseycommenced the suppression. Wolsey first made public the infamies whichdisgraced the Church; while, notwithstanding, he died the devotedservant of the Church. This evidence is surely admissible? But no:Wolsey, too, must be put out of court. Wolsey was a courtier and atime-server. Wolsey was a tyrant's minion. Wolsey was--in short, we knownot what Wolsey was, or what he was not. Who can put confidence in acharlatan? Behind the bulwarks of such objections, the champion of theabbeys may well believe himself secure. 

And yet, unreasonable though these demands may be, it happens, afterall, that we are able partially to gratify them. It is strange that, ofall extant accusations against any one of the abbeys, the heaviest isfrom a quarter which even Lingard himself would scarcely callsuspicious. No picture left us by Henry's visitors surpasses, even if itequals, a description of the condition of the Abbey of St. Albans, inthe last quarter of the fifteenth century, drawn by Morton, Henry theSeventh's minister, Cardinal Archbishop, Legate of the Apostolic See, ina letter addressed by him to the Abbot of St. Albans himself. We mustrequest our reader's special attention for the next two pages. 

In the year 1489, Pope Innocent the Eighth--moved with the enormousstories which reached his ear of the corruption of the houses ofreligion in England--granted a commission to the Archbishop ofCanterbury to make enquiries whether these stories were true, and toproceed to correct and reform as might seem good to him. The regularclergy were exempt from episcopal visitation, except under especialdirections from Rome. The occasion had appeared so serious as to makeextraordinary interference necessary. 

On the receipt of the Papal commission, Cardinal Morton, among otherletters, wrote the following letter:--

 John, by Divine permission, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic See, to William, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Albans, greeting. 

 We have received certain letters under lead, the copies whereof we herewith send you, from our most holy Lord and Father in Christ, Innocent, by Divine Providence Pope, the eighth of that name. We therefore, John, the Archbishop, the visitor, reformer, inquisitor, and judge therein mentioned, in reverence for the Apostolic See, have taken upon ourselves the burden of enforcing the said commission; and have determined that we will proceed by, and according to, the full force, tenor, and effect of the same. 

 And it has come to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot afore-mentioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, so negligent, so prodigal, that whereas the said monastery was of old times founded and endowed by the pious devotion of illustrious princes, of famous memory, heretofore kings of this land, the most noble progenitors of our most serene Lord and King that now is, in order that true religion might flourish there, that the name of the Most High, in whose honour and glory it was instituted, might be duly celebrated there;

 And whereas, in days heretofore, the regular observance of the said rule was greatly regarded, and hospitality was diligently kept;

 Nevertheless, for no little time, during which you have presided in the same monastery, you and certain of your fellow-monks and brethren (whose blood, it is feared, through your neglect, a severe Judge will require at your hand) have relaxed the measure and form of religious life; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke of contemplation, and all regular observances--hospitality, alms, and those other offices of piety which of old time were exercised and ministered therein have decreased, and by your faults, your carelessness, your neglect and deed, do daily decrease more and more, and cease to be regarded--the pious vows of the founders are defrauded of their just intent--the ancient rule of your order is deserted; and not a few of your fellow-monks and brethren, as we most deeply grieve to learn, giving themselves over to a reprobate mind, laying aside the fear of God, do lead only a life of lasciviousness--nay, as is horrible to relate, be not afraid to defile the holy places, even the very churches of God, by infamous intercourse with nuns, &c. &c. 

 You yourself, moreover, among other grave enormities and abominable crimes whereof you are guilty, and for which you are noted and diffamed, have, in the first place, admitted a certain married woman, named Elena Germyn, who has separated herself without just cause from her husband, and for some time past has lived in adultery with another man, to be a nun or sister in the house or Priory of Bray, lying, as you pretend, within your jurisdiction. You have next appointed the same woman to be prioress of the said house, notwithstanding that her said husband was living at the time, and is still alive. And finally, Father Thomas Sudbury, one of your brother monks, publicly, notoriously, and without interference or punishment from you, has associated, and still associates, with this woman as an adulterer with his harlot. 

 Moreover, divers other of your brethren and fellow-monks have resorted, and do resort, continually to her and other women at the same place, as to a public brothel or receiving house, and have received no correction therefor. 

 Nor is Bray the only house into which you have introduced disorder. At the nunnery of Sapwell, which you also contend to be under your jurisdiction, you change the prioresses and superiors again and again at your own will and caprice. Here, as well as at Bray, you depose those who are good and religious; you promote to the highest dignities the worthless and the vicious. The duties of the order are cast aside; virtue is neglected; and by these means so much cost and extravagance has been caused, that to provide means for your indulgence you have introduced certain of your brethren to preside in their houses under the name of guardians, when in fact they are no guardians, but thieves and notorious villains; and with their help you have caused and permitted the goods of the same priories to be dispensed, or to speak more truly to be dissipated, in the above-described corruptions and other enormous and accursed offences. Those places once religious are rendered and reputed as it were profane and impious; and by your own and your creatures' conduct, are so impoverished as to be reduced to the verge of ruin. 

 In like manner, also, you have dealt with certain other cells of monks, which you say are subject to you, even within the monastery of the glorious proto-martyr Alban himself. You have dilapidated the common property; you have made away with the jewels; the copses, the woods, the underwood, almost all the oaks, and other forest trees, to the value of eight thousand marks and more, you have made to be cut down without distinction, and they have by you been sold and alienated. The brethren of the abbey, some of whom, as is reported, are given over to all the evil things of the world, neglect the service of God altogether. They live with harlots and mistresses publicly and continuously, within the precincts of the monastery and without. Some of them, who are covetous of honour and promotion, and desirous therefore of pleasing your cupidity, have stolen and made away with the chalices and other jewels of the church. They have even sacrilegiously extracted the precious stones from the very shrine of St. Alban; and you have not punished these men, but have rather knowingly supported and maintained them. If any of your brethren be living justly and religiously, if any be wise and virtuous, these you straightway depress and hold in hatred. .. . You . .. 

But we need not transcribe further this overwhelming document. Itpursues its way through mire and filth to its most lame and impotentconclusion. After all this, the abbot was not deposed; he was invitedmerely to reconsider his doings, and, if possible, amend them. Such wasChurch discipline, even under an extraordinary commission from Rome. But the most incorrigible Anglican will scarcely question the truth of apicture drawn by such a hand; and it must be added that this oneunexceptionable indictment lends at once assured credibility to thereports which were presented fifty years later, on the generalvisitation. There is no longer room for the presumptive objection thatcharges so revolting could not be true. We see that in their worst formthey could be true, and the evidence of Legh and Leghton, of Rice andBedyll, as it remains in their letters to Cromwell, must be shaken indetail, or else it must be accepted as correct. We cannot dream thatArchbishop Morton was mistaken, or was misled by false information. St. Albans was no obscure priory in a remote and thinly-peopled county. TheAbbot of St. Albans was a peer of the realm, taking precedence ofbishops, living in the full glare of notoriety, within a few miles ofLondon. The archbishop had ample means of ascertaining the truth; and, we may be sure, had taken care to examine his ground before he left onrecord so tremendous an accusation. This story is true--as true as it ispiteous. We will pause a moment over it before we pass from this, oncemore to ask our passionate Church friends whether still they willpersist that the abbeys were no worse under the Tudors than they hadbeen in their origin, under the Saxons, or under the first Norman andPlantagenet kings. We refuse to believe it. The abbeys which towered inthe midst of the English towns, the houses clustered at their feet likesubjects round some majestic queen, were images indeed of the civilsupremacy which the Church of the Middle Ages had asserted for itself;but they were images also of an inner spiritual sublimity, which had wonthe homage of grateful and admiring nations. The heavenly graces hadonce descended upon the monastic orders, making them ministers of mercy, patterns of celestial life, breathing witnesses of the power of theSpirit in renewing and sanctifying the heart. And then it was that artand wealth and genius poured out their treasures to raise fittingtabernacles for the dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the villageand the city, amongst the unadorned walls and lowly roofs which closedin the humble dwellings of the laity, the majestic houses of the Fatherof mankind and of his especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty. And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief from anever-failing store to the poor and the suffering; ever within thesacred aisles the voices of holy men were pealing heavenwards inintercession for the sins of mankind; and such blessed influences werethought to exhale around those mysterious precincts, that even the pooroutcasts of society--the debtor, the felon, and the outlaw--gatheredround the walls as the sick men sought the shadow of the apostle, andlay there sheltered from the avenging hand, till their sins were washedfrom off their souls. The abbeys of the middle ages floated through thestorms of war and conquest, like the ark upon the waves of the flood, inthe midst of violence remaining inviolate, through the awful reverencewhich surrounded them. The abbeys, as Henry's visitors found them, wereas little like what they once had been, as the living man in the prideof his growth is like the corpse which the earth makes haste to hide forever. 

The official letters which reveal the condition into which the monasticestablishments had degenerated, are chiefly in the Cotton Library, and alarge number of them have been published by the Camden Society. Besidesthese, however, there are in the Rolls House many other documents whichconfirm and complete the statements of the writers of those letters. There is a part of what seems to have been a digest of the 'BlackBook'--an epitome of iniquities, under the title of the 'CompendiumCompertorum. ' There are also reports from private persons, privateentreaties for enquiry, depositions of monks in official examinations, and other similar papers, which, in many instances, are too offensive tobe produced, and may rest in obscurity, unless contentious personscompel us to bring them forward. Some of these, however, throw curiouslight on the habits of the time, and on the collateral disorders whichaccompanied the more gross enormities. They show us, too, that althoughthe dark tints predominate, the picture was not wholly black; that asjust Lot was in the midst of Sodom, yet was unable by his singlepresence to save the guilty city from destruction, so in the latest eraof monasticism there were types yet lingering of an older and fairerage, who, nevertheless, were not delivered, like the patriarch, butperished most of them with the institution to which they belonged. Thehideous exposure is not untinted with fairer lines; and we see traitshere and there of true devotion, mistaken but heroic. 

Of these documents two specimens shall be given in this place, one ofeither kind; and both, so far as we know, new to modern history. Thefirst is so singular, that we print it as it is found--a genuineantique, fished up, in perfect preservation, out of the wreck of the oldworld. 

About eight miles from Ludlow, in the county of Herefordshire, oncestood the abbey of Wigmore. There was Wigmore Castle, a stronghold ofthe Welsh Marches, now, we believe, a modern, well-conditioned mansion;and Wigmore Abbey, of which we do not hear that there are any remainingtraces. Though now vanished, however, like so many of its kind, thehouse was three hundred years ago in vigorous existence; and when thestir commenced for an enquiry, the proceedings of the abbot of thisplace gave occasion to a memorial which stands in the Rolls collectionas follows:--[R]

 Articles to be objected against John Smart, Abbot of the Monastery of Wigmore, in the county of Hereford, to be exhibited to the Right Honourable Lord Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal and Vice-gerent to the King's Majesty. 

 1. The said abbot is to be accused of simony, as well for taking money for advocation and putations of benefices, as for giving of orders, or more truly, selling them, and that to such persons which have been rejected elsewhere, and of little learning and light consideration. 

 2. The said abbot hath promoted to orders many scholars when all other bishops did refrain to give such orders on account of certain ordinances devised by the King's Majesty and his Council for the common weal of this realm. Then resorted to the said abbot scholars out of all parts, whom he would promote to orders by sixty at a time, and sometimes more, and otherwhiles less. And sometimes the said abbot would give orders by night within his chamber, and otherwise in the church early in the morning, and now and then at a chapel out of the abbey. So that there be many unlearned and light priests made by the said abbot, and in the diocese of Llandaff, and in the places afore named--a thousand, as it is esteemed, by the space of this seven years he hath made priests, and received not so little money of them as a thousand pounds for their orders. 

 3. Item, that the said abbot now of late, when he could not be suffered to give general orders, for the most part doth give orders by pretence of dispensation; and by that colour he promoteth them to orders by two and three, and takes much money of them, both for their orders and for to purchase their dispensations after the time he hath promoted them to their orders. 

 4. Item, the said abbot hath hurt and dismayed his tenants by putting them from their leases, and by enclosing their commons from them, and selling and utter wasting of the woods that were wont to relieve and succour them. 

 5. Item, the said abbot hath sold corradyes, to the damage of the said monastery. 

 6. Item, the said abbot hath alienate and sold the jewels and plate of the monastery, to the value of five hundred marks, _to purchase of the Bishop of Rome his bulls to be a bishop, and to annex the said abbey to his bishopric, to that intent that he should not for his misdeeds be punished, or deprived from his said abbey_. 

 7. Item, that the said abbot, long after that other bishops had renounced the Bishop of Rome, and professed them to the King's Majesty, did use, but more verily usurped, the office of a bishop by virtue of his first bulls purchased from Rome, till now of late, as it will appear by the date of his confirmation, if he have any. 

 8. Item, that he the said abbot hath lived viciously, and kept to concubines divers and many women that is openly known. 

 9. Item, that the said abbot doth yet continue his vicious living, as it is known, openly. 

 10. Item, that the said abbot hath spent and wasted much of the goods of the said monastery upon the foresaid women. 

 11. Item, that the said abbot is malicious and very wrathful, not regarding what he saith or doeth in his fury or anger. 

 12. Item, that one Richard Gyles bought of the abbot and convent of Wigmore a corradye, and a chamber for him and his wife for term of their lives; and when the said Richard Gyles was aged and was very weak, he disposed his goods, and made executors to execute his will. And when the said abbot now being ---- perceived that the said Richard Gyles was rich, and had not bequested so much of his goods to him as he would have had, the said abbot then came to the chamber of the said Richard Gyles, and put out thence all his friends and kinsfolk that kept him in his sickness; and then the said abbot set his brother and other of his servants to keep the sick man; and the night next coming after the said Richard Gyles's coffer was broken, and thence taken all that was in the same, to the value of forty marks; and long after the said abbot confessed, before the executors of the said Richard Gyles, that it was his deed. 

 13. Item, that the said abbot, after he had taken away the goods of the said Richard Gyles, used daily to reprove and check the said Richard Gyles, and inquire of him where was more of his coin and money; and at the last the said abbot thought he lived too long, and made the sick man, after much sorry keeping, to be taken from his feather-bed, and laid upon a cold mattress, and kept his friends from him to his death. 

 15. Item, that the said abbot consented to the death and murdering of one John Tichkill, that was slain at his procuring, at the said monastery, by Sir Richard Cubley, canon and chaplain to the said abbot; which canon is and ever hath been since that time chief of the said abbot's council; and is supported to carry crossbowes, and to go whither he lusteth at any time, to fishing and hunting in the king's forests, parks, and chases; but little or nothing serving the quire, as other brethren do, neither corrected of the abbot for any trespass he doth commit. 

 16. Item, that the said abbot hath been perjured oft, as is to be proved and is proved; and as it is supposed, did not make a true inventory of the goods, chattels, and jewels of his monastery to the King's Majesty and his Council. 

 17. Item, that the said abbot hath infringed all the king's injunctions which were given him by Doctor Cave to observe and keep; and when he was denounced _in pleno capitulo_ to have broken the same, he would have put in prison the brother as did denounce him to have broken the same injunctions, save that he was let by the convent there. 

 18. Item, that the said abbot hath openly preached against the doctrine of Christ, saying he ought not to love his enemy, but as he loves the devil; and that he should love his enemy's soul, but not his body. 

 19. Item, that the said abbot hath taken but small regard to the good-living of his household. 

 20. Item, that the said abbot hath had and hath yet a special favour to misdoers and manquellers, thieves, deceivers of their neighbours, and by them [is] most ruled and counselled. 

 21. Item, that the said abbot hath granted leases of farms and advocations first to one man, and took his fine, and also hath granted the same lease to another man for more money; and then would make to the last taker a lease or writing, with an antedate of the first lease, which hath bred great dissension among gentlemen--as Master Blunt and Master Moysey, and other takers of such leases--and that often. 

 22. Item, the said abbot having the contrepaynes of leases in his keeping, hath, for money, rased out the number of years mentioned in the said leases, and writ a fresh number in the former taker's lease, and in the contrepayne thereof, to the intent to defraud the taker or buyer of the residue of such leases, of whom he hath received the money. 

 23. Item, the said abbot hath not, according to the foundation of his monastery, admitted freely tenants into certain alms-houses belonging to the said monastery; but of them he hath taken large fines, and some of them he hath put away that would not give him fines: whither poor, aged, and impotent people were wont to be freely admitted, and [to] receive the founder's alms that of the old customs [were] limited to the same--which alms is also diminished by the said abbot. 

 24. Item, that the said abbot did not deliver the bulls of his bishopric, that he purchased from Rome, to our sovereign lord the king's council till long after the time he had delivered and exhibited the bulls of his monastery to them. 

 25. Item, that the said abbot hath detained and yet doth detain servants' wages; and often when the said servants hath asked their wages, the said abbot hath put them into the stocks, and beat them. 

 26. Item, the said abbot, in times past, hath had a great devotion to ride to Llangarvan, in Wales, upon Lammas-day, to receive pardon there; and on the even he would visit one Mary Hawle, an old acquaintance of his, at the Welsh Poole, and on the morrow ride to the foresaid Llangarvan, to be confessed and absolved, and the same night return to company with the said Mary Hawle, at the Welsh Poole aforesaid, and Kateryn, the said Mary Hawle her first daughter, whom the said abbot long hath kept to concubine, and had children by her, that he lately married at Ludlow. And [there be] others that have been taken out of his chamber and put in the stocks within the said abbey, and others that have complained upon him to the king's council of the Marches of Wales; and the woman that dashed out his teeth, that he would have had by violence, I will not name now, nor other men's wives, lest it would offend your good lordship to read or hear the same. 

 27. Item, the said abbot doth daily embezzle, sell, and convey the goods and chattels, and jewels of the said monastery, having no need so to do: for it is thought that he hath a thousand marks or two thousand lying by him that he hath gotten by selling of orders, and the jewels and plate of the monastery and corradyes; and it is to be feared that he will alienate all the rest, unless your good lordship speedily make redress and provision to let the same. 

 28. Item, the said abbot was accustomed yearly to preach at Leynt-warden on the Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, where and when the people were wont to offer to an image there, and to the same the said abbot in his sermons would exhort them and encourage them. But now the oblations be decayed, the abbot, espying the image then to have a cote of silver plate and gilt, hath taken away of his own authority the said image, and the plate turned to his own use; and left his preaching there, saying it is no manner of profit to any man, and the plate that was about the said image was named to be worth forty pounds. 

 29. Item, the said abbot hath ever nourished enmity and discord among his brethren; and hath not encouraged them to learn the laws and the mystery of Christ. But he that least knew was most cherished by him; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath] disdained when his brothers would say that 'it is God's precept and doctrine that ye ought to prefer before your ceremonies and vain constitutions. ' This saying was high disobedient, and should be grievously punished; when that lying, obloquy, flattery, ignorance, derision, contumely, discord, great swearing, drinking, hypocrisy, fraud, superstition, deceit, conspiracy to wrong their neighbour, and other of that kind, was had in special favour and regard. Laud and praise be to God that hath sent us the true knowledge. Honour and long prosperity to our sovereign lord and his noble council, that teaches to advance the same. Amen. 

 By John Lee, your faithful bedeman, and canon of the said monastery of Wigmore. 

 Postscript. --My good lord, there is in the said abbey a cross of fine gold and precious stones, whereof one diamond was esteemed by Doctor Booth, Bishop of Hereford, worth a hundred marks. In that cross is enclosed a piece of wood, named to be of the cross that Christ died upon, and to the same hath been offering. And when it should be brought down to the church from the treasury, it was brought down with lights, and like reverence as should have been done to Christ himself. I fear lest the abbot upon Sunday next, when he may enter the treasury, will take away the said cross and break it, or turn it to his own use, with many other precious jewels that be there. 

 All these articles afore written be true as to the substance and true meaning of them, though peradventure for haste and lack of counsel, some words be set amiss or out of their place. That I will be ready to prove forasmuch as lies in me, when it shall like your honourable lordship to direct your commission to men (or any man) that will be indifferent and not corrupt to sit upon the same, at the said abbey, where the witnesses and proofs be most ready and the truth is best known, or at any other place where it shall be thought most convenient by your high discretion and authority. 

The statutes of Provisors, commonly called Præmunire statutes, which, forbade all purchases of bulls from Rome under penalty of outlawry, havebeen usually considered in the highest degree oppressive; and moreparticularly the public censure has fallen upon the last application ofthose statutes, when, on Wolsey's fall, the whole body of the clergywere laid under a præmunire, and only obtained pardon on payment of aserious fine. Let no one regret that he has learnt to be tolerant toRoman Catholics as the nineteenth century knows them. But it is aspurious charity which, to remedy a modern injustice, hastens to itsopposite; and when philosophic historians indulge in loose invectiveagainst the statesmen of the Reformation, they show themselves unfit tobe trusted with the custody of our national annals. The Acts ofParliament speak plainly of the enormous abuses which had grown up underthese bulls. Yet even the emphatic language of the statutes scarcelyprepares us to find an abbot able to purchase with jewels stolen fromhis own convent a faculty to confer holy orders, though he had neverbeen consecrated bishop, and to make a thousand pounds by selling theexercise of his privileges. This is the most flagrant case which hasfallen under the eyes of the present writer. Yet it is but a choicespecimen out of many. He was taught to believe, like other modernstudents of history, that the papal dispensations for immorality, ofwhich we read in Fox and other Protestant writers, were calumnies, buthe has been forced against his will to perceive that the supposedcalumnies were but the plain truth; he has found among the records--forone thing, a list of more than twenty clergy in one diocese who hadobtained licences to keep concubines. [S] After some experience, headvises all persons who are anxious to understand the EnglishReformation to place implicit confidence in the Statute Book. Everyfresh record which is brought to light is a fresh evidence in itsfavour. In the fluctuations of the conflict there were parliaments, asthere were princes, of opposing sentiments; and measures were passed, amended, repealed, or censured, as Protestants and Catholics camealternately into power. But whatever were the differences of opinion, the facts on either side which are stated in an Act of Parliament may beuniformly trusted. Even in the attainders for treason and heresy weadmire the truthfulness of the details of the indictments, although wedeplore the prejudice which at times could make a crime of virtue. 

We pass on to the next picture. Equal justice, or some attempt at it, was promised, and we shall perhaps part from the friends of themonasteries on better terms than they believe. At least, we shall add toour own history and to the Catholic martyrology a story of genuineinterest. 

We have many accounts of the abbeys at the time of their actualdissolution. The resistance or acquiescence of superiors, thedismissals of the brethren, the sale of the property, the destruction ofrelics, &c. , are all described. We know how the windows were taken out, how the glass appropriated, how the 'melter' accompanied the visitors torun the lead upon the roofs, and the metal of the bells into portableforms. We see the pensioned regulars filing out reluctantly, or exultingin their deliverance, discharged from their vows, furnished each withhis 'secular apparel, ' and his purse of money, to begin the world as hemight. These scenes have long been partially known, and they were rarelyattended with anything remarkable. At the time of the suppression, thediscipline of several years had broken down opposition, and prepared theway for the catastrophe. The end came at last, but as an issue which hadbeen long foreseen. 

We have sought in vain, however, for a glimpse into the interior of thehouses at the first intimation of what was coming--more especially whenthe great blow was struck which severed England from obedience to Rome, and asserted the independence of the Anglican Church. Then, virtually, the fate of the monasteries was decided. As soon as the supremacy wasvested in the Crown, enquiry into their condition could no longer beescaped or delayed; and then, through the length and breadth of thecountry, there must have been rare dismay. The account of the LondonCarthusians is indeed known to us, because they chose to die rather thanyield submission where their consciences forbade them; and theirisolated heroism has served to distinguish their memories. The pope, ashead of the Universal Church, claimed the power of absolving subjectsfrom their allegiance to their king. He deposed Henry. He called onforeign princes to enforce his sentence; and, on pain ofexcommunication, commanded the native English to rise in rebellion. Theking, in self-defence, was compelled to require his subjects to disclaimall sympathy with these pretensions, and to recognise no higherauthority, spiritual or secular, than himself within his own dominions. The regular clergy throughout the country were on the pope's side, secretly or openly. The Charterhouse monks, however, alone of all theorder, had the courage to declare their convictions, and to suffer forthem. Of the rest, we only perceive that they at last submitted; andsince there was no uncertainty as to their real feelings, we have beendisposed to judge them hardly as cowards. Yet we who have never beentried, should perhaps be cautious in our censures. It is possible tohold an opinion quite honestly, and yet to hesitate about dying for it. We consider ourselves, at the present day, persuaded honestly of manythings; yet which of them should we refuse to relinquish if the scaffoldwere the alternative--or at least seem to relinquish, under silentprotest?

And yet, in the details of the struggle at the Charterhouse, we see theforms of mental trial which must have repeated themselves among allbodies of the clergy wherever there was seriousness of conviction. Ifthe majority of the monks were vicious and sensual, there was still alarge minority labouring to be true to their vows; and when one entireconvent was capable of sustained resistance, there must have been manywhere there was only just too little virtue for the emergency--where theconflict between interest and conscience was equally genuine, though itended the other way. Scenes of bitter misery there must have been--ofpassionate emotion wrestling ineffectually with the iron resolution ofthe Government: and the faults of the Catholic party weigh so heavilyagainst them in the course and progress of the Reformation, that wecannot willingly lose the few countervailing tints which soften thedarkness of their conditions. 

Nevertheless, for any authentic account of the abbeys at this crisis, wehave hitherto been left to our imagination. A stern and busyadministration had little leisure to preserve records of sentimentalstruggles which led to nothing. The Catholics did not care to keep alivethe recollection of a conflict in which, even though with difficulty, the Church was defeated. A rare accident only could have brought down tous any fragment of a transaction which no one had an interest inremembering. That such an accident has really occurred, we may consideras unusually fortunate. The story in question concerns the abbey ofWoburn, and is as follows:--

At Woburn, as in many other religious houses, there were representativesof both the factions which divided the country; perhaps we should say ofthree--the sincere Catholics, the Indifferentists, and the Protestants. These last, so long as Wolsey was in power, had been frightened intosilence, and with difficulty had been able to save themselves fromextreme penalties. No sooner, however, had Wolsey fallen, and thebattle commenced with the papacy, than the tables turned, the persecutedbecame persecutors--or at least threw off their disguise--and werestrengthened with the support of the large class who cared only to keepon the winning side. The mysteries of the faith came to be disputed atthe public tables; the refectories rang with polemics; the sacredsilence of the dormitories was broken for the first time by lawlessspeculation. The orthodox might have appealed to the Government: heresywas still forbidden by law, and, if detected, was still punished by thestake. But the orthodox among the regular clergy adhered to the pope aswell as to the faith, and abhorred the sacrilege of the Parliament asdeeply as the new opinions of the Reformers. Instead of calling in thehelp of the law, they muttered treason in secret; and the Reformers, confident in the necessities of the times, sent reports to London oftheir arguments and conversations. The authorities in the abbey wereaccused of disaffection; and a commission of enquiry was sent downtowards the end of the spring of 1536, to investigate. The depositionstaken on this occasion are still preserved; and with the help of them, we can leap over three centuries of time, and hear the last echoes ofthe old monastic life in Woburn Abbey dying away in discord. 

Where party feeling was running so high, there were, of course, passionate arguments. The Act of Supremacy, the spread of Protestantism, the power of the Pope, the state of England--all were discussed; and thepossibilities of the future, as each party painted it in the colours ofhis hopes. The brethren, we find, spoke their minds in plain language, sometimes condescending to a joke. 

Brother Sherborne deposes that the sub-prior, 'on Candlemas-day lastpast (February 2, 1536), asked him whether he longed not to be at Romewhere all his bulls were?' Brother Sherborne answered that 'his bullshad made so many calves, that he had burned them. Whereunto thesub-prior said he thought there were more calves now than there werethen. '

Then there were long and furious quarrels about 'my Lord Privy Seal'(Cromwell)--who was to one party, the incarnation of Satan; to theother, the delivering angel. 

Nor did matters mend when from the minister they passed to the master. 

Dan John Croxton being in 'the shaving-house' one day with certain ofthe brethren having their tonsures looked to, and gossiping, as men doon such occasions, one 'Friar Lawrence did say that the king was dead. 'Then said Croxton, 'Thanks be to God, his Grace is in good health, and Ipray God so continue him;' and said further to the said Lawrence, 'Iadvise thee to leave thy babbling. ' Croxton, it seems, had been amongthe suspected in earlier times. Lawrence said to him, 'Croxton, itmaketh no matter what thou sayest, for thou art one of the new world;'whereupon hotter still the conversation proceeded. 'Thy babblingtongue, ' Croxton said, 'will turn us all to displeasure at length. ''Then, ' quoth Lawrence, 'neither thou nor yet any of us all shall dowell as long as we forsake our head of the Church, the Pope. ' 'By themass!' quoth Croxton, 'I would thy Pope Roger were in thy belly, or thouin his, for thou art a false perjured knave to thy prince. ' Whereuntothe said Lawrence answered, saying, 'By the mass, thou liest! I wasnever sworn to forsake the Pope to be our head, and never will be. ''Then, ' quoth Croxton, 'thou shalt be sworn spite of thine heart oneday, or I will know why nay. '

These and similar wranglings may be taken as specimens of the dailyconversation at Woburn, and we can perceive how an abbot with the bestintentions would have found it difficult to keep the peace. There areinstances of superiors in other houses throwing down their command inthe midst of the crisis in flat despair, protesting that their subjectbrethren were no longer governable. Abbots who were inclined to theReformation could not manage the Catholics; Catholic abbots could notmanage the Protestants; indifferent abbots could not manage either theone or the other. It would have been well for the Abbot of Woburn--orwell as far as this world is concerned--if he, like one of these, hadacknowledged his incapacity, and had fled from his charge. 

His name was Robert Hobbes. Of his age and family, history is silent. Weknow only that he held his place when the storm rose against the pope;that, like the rest of the clergy, he bent before the blast, taking theoath to the king, and submitting to the royal supremacy, but swearingunder protest, as the phrase went, with the outward, and not with theinward man--in fact, perjuring himself. Though infirm, so far, however, he was too honest to be a successful counterfeit, and from the jealouseyes of the Neologians of the abbey he could not conceal his tendencies. We have significant evidence of the _espionage_ which was establishedover all suspected quarters, in the conversations and trifling detailsof conduct on the part of the abbot, which were reported to theGovernment. 

In the summer of 1534, orders came that the pope's name should be rasedout wherever it was mentioned in the Mass books. A malcontent, by nameRobert Salford, deposed that 'he was singing mass before the abbot atSt. Thomas's altar within the monastery, at which time he rased out withhis knife the said name out of the canon. ' The abbot told him to 'take apen and strike or cross him out. ' The saucy monk said those were not theorders. They were to rase him out. 'Well, well, ' the abbot said, 'itwill come again one day. ' 'Come again, will it?' was the answer; 'if itdo, then we will put him in again; but I trust I shall never see thatday. ' The mild abbot could remonstrate, but could not any more command;and the proofs of his malignant inclinations were remembered against himfor the ear of Cromwell. 

In the general injunctions, too, he was directed to preach against thepope, and to expose his usurpation; but he could not bring himself toobey. He shrank from the pulpit; he preached but twice after thevisitation, and then on other subjects, while in the prayer before thesermon he refused, as we find, to use the prescribed form. He only said, 'You shall pray for the spirituality, the temporality, and the soulsthat be in the pains of purgatory; and did not name the king to besupreme head of the Church in neither of the said sermons, nor speakagainst the pretended authority of the Bishop of Rome. '

Again, when Paul the Third, shortly after his election, proposed to calla general council at Mantua, against which, by advice of Henry theEighth, the Germans protested, we have a glimpse how eagerly anxiousEnglish eyes were watching for a turning tide. 'Hear you, ' said theabbot one day, 'of the Pope's holiness and the congregation of bishops, abbots, and princes gathered to the council at Mantua? They be gatheredfor the reformation of the universal Church; and here now we have a bookof the excuse of the Germans, by which we may know what heretics theybe: for if they were Catholics and true men as they pretend to be, theywould never have refused to come to a general council. '

So matters went with the abbot for some months after he had swornobedience to the king. Lulling his conscience with such opiates as thecasuists could provide for him, he watched anxiously for a change, andlaboured with but little reserve to hold his brethren to their oldallegiance. 

In the summer of 1535, however, a change came over the scene, verydifferent from the outward reaction for which he was looking, and abetter mind woke in the abbot: he learnt that in swearing what he didnot mean with reservations and nice distinctions, he had lied to heavenand lied to man; that to save his miserable life he had perilled hissoul. When the oath of supremacy was required of the nation, Sir ThomasMore, Bishop Fisher, and the monks of the Charterhouse--mistaken, as webelieve, in judgment, but true to their consciences, and disdainingevasion or subterfuge--chose, with deliberate nobleness, rather to diethan to perjure themselves. This is no place to enter on the greatquestion of the justice or necessity of those executions; but the storyof the so-called martyrdoms convulsed the Catholic world. The pope shookupon his throne; the shuttle of diplomatic intrigue stood still;diplomatists who had lived so long in lies that the whole life of manseemed but a stage pageant, a thing of show and tinsel, stood aghast atthe revelation of English sincerity, and a shudder of great awe ranthrough Europe. The fury of party leaves little room for generousemotion, and no pity was felt for these men by the English Protestants. The Protestants knew well that if these same sufferers could have hadtheir way, they would themselves have been sacrificed by hecatombs; andas they had never experienced mercy, so they were in turn without mercy. But to the English Catholics, who believed as Fisher believed, but whohad not dared to suffer as Fisher suffered, his death and the death ofthe rest acted as a glimpse of the Judgment Day. Their safety becametheir shame and terror; and in the radiant example before them of truefaithfulness, they saw their own falsehood and their own disgrace. So itwas with Father Forest, who had taught his penitents in confession thatthey might perjure themselves, and who now sought a cruel death involuntary expiation; so it was with Whiting, the Abbot of Glastonbury;so with others whose names should be more familiar to us than they are;and here in Woburn we are to see the feeble but genuine penitence ofAbbot Hobbes. He was still unequal to immediate martyrdom, but he didwhat he knew might drag his death upon him if disclosed to theGovernment, and surrounded by spies he could have had no hope ofconcealment. 

'At the time, ' deposed Robert Salford, 'that the monks of theCharterhouse, with other traitors, did suffer death, the abbot did callus into the Chapter-house, and said these words:--"Brethren, this is aperilous time; such a scourge was never heard since Christ's passion. Yehear how good men suffer the death. Brethren, this is undoubted for ouroffences. Ye read, so long as the children of Israel kept thecommandments of God, so long their enemies had no power over them, butGod took vengeance of their enemies. But when they broke God'scommandments, then they were subdued by their enemies, and so be we. Therefore let us be sorry for our offences. Undoubted He will takevengeance of our enemies; I mean those heretics that causeth so manygood men to suffer thus. Alas, it is a piteous case that so muchChristian blood should be shed. Therefore, good brethren, for thereverence of God, every one of you devoutly pray, and say this Psalm, 'Oh God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy templehave they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of stones. The dead bodiesof thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of the air, andthe flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the field. Their blood havethey shed like water on every side of Jerusalem, and there was no man tobury them. We are become an open scorn unto our enemies, a very scornand derision unto them that are round about us. Oh, remember not our oldsins, but have mercy upon us, and that soon, for we are come to greatmisery. Help us, oh God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins for thy name's sake. Wherefore do the heathensay, Where is now their God?' Ye shall say this Psalm, " repeated theabbot, "every Friday, after the litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon thehigh altar, and undoubtedly God will cease this extreme scourge. " Andso, ' continues Salford, significantly, 'the convent did say thisaforesaid Psalm until there were certain that did murmur at the sayingof it, and so it was left. '

The abbot, it seems, either stood alone, or found but languid support;even his own familiar friends whom he trusted, those with whom he hadwalked in the house of God, had turned against him; the harsh air of thedawn of a new world choked him: what was there for him but to die? Buthis conscience still haunted him: while he lived he must fight on, andso, if possible, find pardon for his perjury. The blows in those yearsfell upon the Church thick and fast. In February 1536, the Bill passedfor the dissolution of the smaller monasteries; and now we find thesub-prior with the whole fraternity united in hostility, and the abbotwithout one friend remaining. 

'He did again call us together, ' says the next deposition, 'andlamentably mourning for the dissolving the said houses, he enjoined usto sing "Salvator mundi, salva nos omnes, " every day after lauds; and wemurmured at it, and were not content to sing it for such cause; and sowe did omit it divers days, for which the abbot came unto the chapter, and did in manner rebuke us, and said we were bound to obey hiscommandment by our profession, and so did command us to sing it againwith the versicle "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered. Letthem also that hate him flee before him. " Also he enjoined us at everymass that every priest did sing, to say the collect, "Oh God, whodespisest not the sighing of a contrite heart. " And he said if we didthis with good and true devotion, God would so handle the matter, thatit should be to the comfort of all England, and so show us mercy as heshowed unto the children of Israel. And surely, brethren, there willcome to us a good man that will rectify these monasteries again that benow supprest, because "God can of these stones raise up children toAbraham. "'

'Of the stones, ' perhaps, but less easily of the stony-hearted monks, who, with pitiless smiles, watched the abbot's sorrow, which should soonbring him to his ruin. 

Time passed on, and as the world grew worse, so the abbot grew morelonely. Desolate and unsupported, he was still unable to make up hismind to the course which he knew to be right; but he slowly strengthenedhimself for the trial, and as Lent came on, the season brought with it amore special call to effort; he did not fail to recognise it. Theconduct of the fraternity sorely disturbed him. They preached againstall which he most loved and valued, in language purposely coarse; andthe mild sweetness of the rebukes which he administered, showed plainlyon which side lay, in the abbey of Woburn, the larger portion of thespirit of Heaven. Now, when the passions of those times have died away, and we can look back with more indifferent eyes, how touching is thefollowing scene. There was one Sir William, curate of Woburn Chapel, whose tongue, it seems, was rough beyond the rest. The abbot met him oneday, and spoke to him. 'Sir William, ' he said, 'I hear tell ye be agreat railer. I marvel that ye rail so. I pray you teach my cure theScripture of God, and that may be to edification. I pray you leave suchrailing. Ye call the pope a bear and a bandog. Either he is a good manor an ill. _Domino suo stat aut cadit. _ The office of a bishop ishonourable. What edifying is this to rail? Let him alone. '

But they would not let him alone, nor would they let the abbot alone. Hegrew 'somewhat acrased, ' they said; vexed with feelings of which theyhad no experience. He fell sick, sorrow and the Lent discipline weighingupon him. The brethren went to see him in his room; one Brother DanWoburn came among the rest, and asked him how he did; the abbotanswered, 'I would that I had died with the good men that died forholding with the pope. My conscience, my conscience doth grudge me everyday for it. ' Life was fast losing its value for him. What was life tohim or any man when bought with a sin against his soul? 'If the abbot bedisposed to die, for that matter, ' Brother Croxton observed, 'he may dieas soon as he will. '

All Lent he fasted and prayed, and his illness grew upon him; and atlength in Passion week he thought all was over, and that he was goingaway. On Passion Sunday he called the brethren about him, and as theystood round his bed, with their cold, hard eyes, 'he exhorted them allto charity;' he implored them 'never to consent to go out of theirmonastery; and if it chanced them to be put from it, they should in nowise forsake their habit. ' After these words, 'being in a great agony, he rose out of his bed, and cried out and said, "I would to God, itwould please him to take me out of this wretched world; and I would Ihad died with the good men that have suffered death heretofore, forthey were quickly out of their pain. "'[T] Then, half wandering, hebegan to mutter to himself aloud the thoughts which had been working inhim in his struggles; and quoting St. Bernard's words about the pope, heexclaimed, 'Tu quis es primatu Abel, gubernatione Noah, auctoritateMoses, judicatu Samuel, potestate Petrus, unctione Christus. Aliæecclesiæ habent super se pastores. Tu pastor pastorum es. '

Let it be remembered that this is no sentimental fiction begotten out ofthe brain of some ingenious novelist, but the record of the true wordsand sufferings of a genuine child of Adam, labouring in a trial too hardfor him. 

He prayed to die, and in good time death was to come to him; but not, after all, in the sick bed, with his expiation but half completed. Ayear before, he had thrown down the cross when it was offered him. Hewas to take it again--the very cross which he had refused. He recovered. He was brought before the council; with what result, there are no meansof knowing. To admit the papal supremacy when officially questioned washigh treason. Whether the abbot was constant, and received someconditional pardon, or whether his heart again for the moment failedhim--whichever he did, the records are silent. This only we ascertain ofhim: that he was not put to death under the statute of supremacy. But, two years later, when the official list was presented to the Parliamentof those who had suffered for their share in 'the Pilgrimage of Grace, 'among the rest we find the name of Robert Hobbes, late Abbot of Woburn. To this solitary fact we can add nothing. The rebellion was put down, and in the punishment of the offenders there was unusual leniency; notmore than thirty persons were executed, although forty thousand had beenin arms. Those only were selected who had been most signally implicated. But they were all leaders in the movement; the men of highest rank, andtherefore greatest guilt. They died for what they believed their duty;and the king and council did their duty in enforcing the laws againstarmed insurgents. He for whose cause each supposed themselves to becontending, has long since judged between them; and both parties perhapsnow see all things with clearer eyes than was permitted to them onearth. 

We also can see more distinctly. We will not refuse the Abbot Hobbes abrief record of his trial and passion. And although twelve generationsof Russells--all loyal to the Protestant ascendancy--have swept Woburnclear of Catholic associations, they, too, in these later days, will notregret to see revived the authentic story of its last abbot. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Q] From _Fraser's Magazine_, 1857. 

[R] Rolls House MS. , _Miscellaneous Papers_, First Series. 356. 

[S] Tanner MS. 105, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 

[T] Meaning, as he afterwards said, More and Fisher and the Carthusians. 

ENGLAND'S FORGOTTEN WORTHIES. [U]

1. _The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knt. , in his Voyage in theSouth Sea in 1593. _ Reprinted from the Edition of 1622, and Edited by R. H. Major, Esq. , of the British Museum. Published by the Hakluyt Society. 

2. _The Discoverie of the Empire of Guiana. _ By Sir Walter Ralegh, Knt. Edited, with copious Explanatory Notes, and a Biographical Memoir, bySir Robert H. Schomburgk, Phil. D. , &c. 

3. _Narratives of Early Voyages undertaken for the Discovery of aPassage to Cathaia and India by the North-west_; with Selections fromthe Records of the Worshipful Fellowship of the Merchants of London, trading into the East Indies, and from MSS. In the Library of theBritish Museum, now first published, by Thomas Rundall, Esq. 

The Reformation, the Antipodes, the American Continent, the Planetarysystem, and the infinite deep of the Heavens, have now become common andfamiliar facts to us. Globes and orreries are the playthings of ourschool-days; we inhale the spirit of Protestantism with our earliestbreath of consciousness. It is all but impossible to throw back ourimagination into the time when, as new grand discoveries, they stirredevery mind which they touched with awe and wonder at the revelationwhich God had sent down among mankind. Vast spiritual and materialcontinents lay for the first time displayed, opening fields of thoughtand fields of enterprise of which none could conjecture the limit. Oldroutine was broken up. Men were thrown back on their own strength andtheir own power, unshackled, to accomplish whatever they might dare. Andalthough we do not speak of these discoveries as the cause of thatenormous force of heart and intellect which accompanied them (for theywere as much the effect as the cause, and one reacted on the other), yet at any rate they afforded scope and room for the play of powerswhich, without such scope, let them have been as transcendant as theywould, must have passed away unproductive and blighted. 

An earnest faith in the supernatural, an intensely real conviction ofthe divine and devilish forces by which the universe was guided andmisguided, was the inheritance of the Elizabethan age from CatholicChristianity. The fiercest and most lawless men did then really andtruly believe in the actual personal presence of God or the devil inevery accident, or scene, or action. They brought to the contemplationof the new heaven and the new earth an imagination saturated with thespiritual convictions of the old era, which were not lost, but onlyinfinitely expanded. The planets, whose vastness they now learnt torecognise, were, therefore, only the more powerful for evil or for good;the tides were the breathing of Demogorgon; and the idolatrous Americantribes were real worshippers of the real devil, and were assisted withthe full power of his evil army. 

It is a form of thought which, however in a vague and general way we maycontinue to use its phraseology, has become, in its detailed applicationto life, utterly strange to us. We congratulate ourselves on theenlargement of our understanding when we read the decisions of grave lawcourts in cases of supposed witchcraft; we smile complacently overRaleigh's story of the island of the Amazons, and rejoice that we arenot such as he--entangled in the cobwebs of effete and foolishsuperstition. Yet the true conclusion is less flattering to our vanity. That Raleigh and Bacon could believe what they believed, and could bewhat they were notwithstanding, is to us a proof that the injury whichsuch mistakes can inflict is unspeakably insignificant: and arising, asthey arose, from a never-failing sense of the real awfulness and mysteryof the world, and of the life of human souls upon it, they witness tothe presence in such minds of a spirit, the loss of which not the mostperfect acquaintance with every law by which the whole creation movescan compensate. We wonder at the grandeur, the moral majesty of some ofShakespeare's characters, so far beyond what the noblest among ourselvescan imitate, and at first thought we attribute it to the genius of thepoet, who has outstripped nature in his creations. But we aremisunderstanding the power and the meaning of poetry in attributingcreativeness to it in any such sense. Shakespeare created, but only asthe spirit of nature created around him, working in him as it workedabroad in those among whom he lived. The men whom he draws were such menas he saw and knew; the words they utter were such as he heard in theordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleighand with Sidney, and at a thousand unnamed English firesides, he foundthe living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which wecan form with the English of the age of Elizabeth, the more we aresatisfied that Shakespeare's great poetry is no more than the rhythmicecho of the life which it depicts. 

It was, therefore, with no little interest that we heard of theformation of a society which was to employ itself, as we understood, inrepublishing in accessible form some, if not all, of the invaluablerecords compiled or composed by Richard Hakluyt. Books, like everythingelse, have their appointed death-day; the souls of them, unless they befound worthy of a second birth in a new body, perish with the paper inwhich they lived; and the early folio Hakluyts, not from their own wantof merit, but from our neglect of them, were expiring of old age. Thefive-volume quarto edition, published in 1811, so little people thencared for the exploits of their ancestors, consisted but of 270 copies. It was intended for no more than for curious antiquaries, or for thegreat libraries, where it could be consulted as a book of reference; andamong a people, the greater part of whom had never heard Hakluyt's name, the editors are scarcely to be blamed if it never so much as occurred tothem that general readers would care to have the book within theirreach. 

And yet those five volumes may be called the Prose Epic of the modernEnglish nation. They contain the heroic tales of the exploits of thegreat men in whom the new era was inaugurated; not mythic, like theIliads and the Eddas, but plain broad narratives of substantial facts, which rival legend in interest and grandeur. What the old epics were tothe royally or nobly born, this modern epic is to the common people. Wehave no longer kings or princes for chief actors, to whom the heroismlike the dominion of the world had in time past been confined. But, asit was in the days of the Apostles, when a few poor fishermen from anobscure lake in Palestine assumed, under the Divine mission, thespiritual authority over mankind, so, in the days of our own Elizabeth, the seamen from the banks of the Thames and the Avon, the Plym and theDart, self-taught and self-directed, with no impulse but what wasbeating in their own royal hearts, went out across the unknown seasfighting, discovering, colonising, and graved out the channels, pavingthem at last with their bones, through which the commerce and enterpriseof England has flowed out over all the world. We can conceive nothing, not the songs of Homer himself, which would be read among us with moreenthusiastic interest than these plain massive tales; and a people'sedition of them in these days, when the writings of Ainsworth and EugèneSue circulate in tens of thousands, would perhaps be the most blessedantidote which could be bestowed upon us. The heroes themselves were themen of the people--the Joneses, the Smiths, the Davises, the Drakes; andno courtly pen, with the one exception of Raleigh, lent its polish orits varnish to set them off. In most cases the captain himself, or hisclerk or servant, or some unknown gentleman volunteer, sat down andchronicled the voyage which he had shared; and thus inorganically arosea collection of writings which, with all their simplicity, are fornothing more striking than for the high moral beauty, warmed withnatural feeling, which displays itself through all their pages. With us, the sailor is scarcely himself beyond his quarter-deck. If he isdistinguished in his profession, he is professional merely; or if he ismore than that, he owes it not to his work as a sailor, but toindependent domestic culture. With them, their profession was the schoolof their nature, a high moral education which most brought out what wasmost nobly human in them; and the wonders of earth, and air, and sea, and sky, were a real intelligible language in which they heard AlmightyGod speaking to them. 

That such hopes of what might be accomplished by the Hakluyt Societyshould in some measure be disappointed, is only what might naturally beanticipated of all very sanguine expectation. Cheap editions areexpensive editions to the publisher; and historical societies, from anecessity which appears to encumber all corporate English action, rarely fail to do their work expensively and infelicitously. Yet, afterall allowances and deductions, we cannot reconcile ourselves to themortification of having found but one volume in the series to be eventolerably edited, and that one to be edited by a gentleman to whomEngland is but an adopted country--Sir Robert Schomburgk. Raleigh's'Conquest of Guiana, ' with Sir Robert's sketch of Raleigh's history andcharacter, form in everything but its cost a very model of an excellentvolume. For the remaining editors, [V] we are obliged to say that theyhave exerted themselves successfully to paralyse whatever interest wasreviving in Hakluyt, and to consign their own volumes to the sameobscurity to which time and accident were consigning the earliereditions. Very little which was really noteworthy escaped the industryof Hakluyt himself, and we looked to find reprints of the mostremarkable of the stories which were to be found in his collection. Theeditors began unfortunately with proposing to continue the work where hehad left it, and to produce narratives hitherto unpublished of othervoyages of inferior interest, or not of English origin. Better thoughtsappear to have occurred to them in the course of the work; but theirevil destiny overtook them before their thoughts could get themselvesexecuted. We opened one volume with eagerness, bearing the title of'Voyages to the North-west, ' in hope of finding our old friends Davisand Frobisher. We found a vast unnecessary Editor's Preface: and insteadof the voyages themselves, which with their picturesqueness and moralbeauty shine among the fairest jewels in the diamond mine of Hakluyt, weencountered an analysis and digest of their results, which Milton wascalled in to justify in an inappropriate quotation. It is much as ifthey had undertaken to edit 'Bacon's Essays, ' and had retailed what theyconceived to be the substance of them in their own language; strangelyfailing to see that the real value of the actions or the thoughts ofremarkable men does not lie in the material result which can be gatheredfrom them, but in the heart and soul of the actors or speakersthemselves. Consider what Homer's 'Odyssey' would be, reduced into ananalysis. 

The editor of the 'Letters of Columbus' apologises for the rudeness ofthe old seaman's phraseology. Columbus, he tells us, was not so great amaster of the pen as of the art of navigation. We are to make excusesfor him. We are put on our guard, and warned not to be offended, beforewe are introduced to the sublime record of sufferings under which a manof the highest order was staggering towards the end of his earthlycalamities; although the inarticulate fragments in which his thoughtbreaks out from him, are strokes of natural art by the side of whichliterary pathos is poor and meaningless. 

And even in the subjects which they select they are pursued by the samecurious fatality. Why is Drake to be best known, or to be only known, inhis last voyage? Why pass over the success, and endeavour to immortalisethe failure? When Drake climbed the tree in Panama, and saw both oceans, and vowed that he would sail a ship in the Pacific; when he crawled outupon the cliffs of Terra del Fuego, and leaned his head over thesouthernmost angle of the world; when he scored a furrow round the globewith his keel, and received the homage of the barbarians of theantipodes in the name of the Virgin Queen, he was another man from whathe had become after twenty years of court life and intrigue, and Spanishfighting and gold-hunting. There is a tragic solemnity in his end, if wetake it as the last act of his career; but it is his life, not hisdeath, which we desire--not what he failed to do, but what he did. 

But every bad has a worse below it, and more offensive than all these isthe editor of Hawkins's 'Voyage to the South Sea. ' The narrative isstriking in itself; not one of the best, but very good; and, as it isrepublished complete, we can fortunately read it through, carefullyshutting off Captain Bethune's notes with one hand, and we shall thenfind in it the same beauty which breathes in the tone of all thewritings of the period. 

It is a record of misfortune, but of misfortune which did no dishonourto him who sunk under it; and there is a melancholy dignity in the stylein which Hawkins tells his story, which seems to say, that though he hadbeen defeated, and had never again an opportunity of winning back hislost laurels, he respects himself still for the heart with which heendured a shame which would have broken a smaller man. It would haverequired no large exertion of editorial self-denial to have abstainedfrom marring the pages with puns of which 'Punch' would be ashamed, andwith the vulgar affectation of patronage with which the sea captain ofthe nineteenth century condescends to criticise and approve of hishalf-barbarous precursor. And what excuse can we find for such anoffence as this which follows. The war of freedom of the Araucan Indiansis the most gallant episode in the history of the New World. TheSpaniards themselves were not behindhand in acknowledging the chivalrybefore which they quailed, and, after many years of ineffectual efforts, they gave up a conflict which they never afterwards resumed; leaving theAraucans alone, of all the American races with which they came incontact, a liberty which they were unable to tear from them. It is asubject for an epic poem; and whatever admiration is due to the heroismof a brave people whom no inequality of strength could appal and nodefeats could crush, these poor Indians have a right to demand of us. The story of the war was well known in Europe; Hawkins, in coasting thewestern shores of South America, fell in with them, and the finestpassage in his book is the relation of one of the incidents of thewar:--

 An Indian captain was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and for that he was of name, and known to have done his devoir against them, they cut off his hands, thereby intending to disenable him to fight any more against them. But he, returning home, desirous to revenge this injury, to maintain his liberty, with the reputation of his nation, and to help to banish the Spaniard, with his tongue intreated and incited them to persevere in their accustomed valour and reputation, abasing the enemy and advancing his nation; condemning their contraries of cowardliness, and confirming it by the cruelty used with him and other his companions in their mishaps; showing them his arms without hands, and naming his brethren whose half feet they had cut off, because they might be unable to sit on horseback; with force arguing that if they feared them not, they would not have used so great inhumanity--for fear produceth cruelty, the companion of cowardice. Thus encouraged he them to fight for their lives, limbs, and liberty, choosing rather to die an honourable death fighting, than to live in servitude as fruitless members of the commonwealth. Thus using the office of a sergeant-major, and having loaden his two stumps with bundles of arrows, he succoured them who, in the succeeding battle had their store wasted; and changing himself from place to place, animated and encouraged his countrymen with such comfortable persuasions, as it is reported and credibly believed, that he did more good with his words and presence, without striking a stroke, than a great part of the army did with fighting to the utmost. 

It is an action which may take its place by the side of the myth ofMucius Scævola, or the real exploit of that brother of the poetÆschylus, who, when the Persians were flying from Marathon, clung to aship till both his hands were hewn away, and then seized it with histeeth, leaving his name as a portent even in the splendid calendar ofAthenian heroes. Captain Bethune, without call or need, making hisnotes, merely, as he tells us, from the suggestions of his own mind ashe revised the proof-sheets, informs us, at the bottom of the page, that'it reminds him of the familiar lines--

 For Widdrington I needs must wail, As one in doleful dumps; For when his legs were smitten off, He fought upon his stumps. '

It must not avail him, that he has but quoted from the ballad of ChevyChase. It is the most deformed stanza[W] of the modern deformed versionwhich was composed in the eclipse of heart and taste, on the restorationof the Stuarts; and if such verses could then pass for serious poetry, they have ceased to sound in any ear as other than a burlesque; theassociations which they arouse are only absurd, and they could only havecontinued to ring in his memory through their ludicrous doggrel. 

When to these offences of the Society we add, that in the long labouredappendices and introductions, which fill up valuable space, whichincrease the expense of the edition, and into reading which many readersare, no doubt, betrayed, we have found nothing which assists theunderstanding of the stories which they are supposed to illustrate--whenwe have declared that we have found what is most uncommon passedwithout notice, and what is most trite and familiar encumbered withcomment--we have unpacked our hearts of the bitterness which thesevolumes have aroused in us, and can now take our leave of them and go onwith our more grateful subject. 

Elizabeth, whose despotism was as peremptory as that of thePlantagenets, and whose ideas of the English constitution were limitedin the highest degree, was, notwithstanding, more beloved by hersubjects than any sovereign before or since. It was because, substantially, she was the people's sovereign; because it was given toher to conduct the outgrowth of the national life through its crisis ofchange, and the weight of her great mind and her great place were thrownon the people's side. She was able to paralyse the dying efforts withwhich, if a Stuart had been on the throne, the representatives of aneffete system might have made the struggle a deadly one; and the historyof England is not the history of France, because the resolution of oneperson held the Reformation firm till it had rooted itself in the heartof the nation, and could not be again overthrown. The Catholic faith wasno longer able to furnish standing ground on which the English or anyother nation could live a manly and a godly life. Feudalism, as a socialorganisation, was not any more a system under which their energies couldhave scope to move. Thenceforward, not the Catholic Church, but any manto whom God had given a heart to feel and a voice to speak, was to bethe teacher to whom men were to listen; and great actions were not toremain the privilege of the families of the Norman nobles, but were tobe laid within the reach of the poorest plebeian who had the stuff inhim to perform them. Alone, of all the sovereigns in Europe, Elizabethsaw the change which had passed over the world. She saw it, and saw itin faith, and accepted it. The England of the Catholic Hierarchy and theNorman Baron, was to cast its shell and to become the England of freethought and commerce and manufacture, which was to plough the ocean withits navies, and sow its colonies over the globe; and the firstappearance of these enormous forces and the light of the earliestachievements of the new era shines through the forty years of the reignof Elizabeth with a grandeur which, when once its history is written, will be seen to be among the most sublime phenomena which the earth asyet has witnessed. The work was not of her creation; the heart of thewhole English nation was stirred to its depths; and Elizabeth's placewas to recognise, to love, to foster, and to guide. The Governmentoriginated nothing; at such a time it was neither necessary nordesirable that it should do so; but wherever expensive enterprises wereon foot which promised ultimate good, and doubtful immediate profit, wenever fail to find among the lists of contributors the Queen's Majesty, Burghley, Leicester, Walsingham. Never chary of her presence, forElizabeth could afford to condescend, when ships were fitting fordistant voyages in the river, the queen would go down in her barge andinspect. Frobisher, who was but a poor sailor adventurer, sees her waveher handkerchief to him from the Greenwich Palace windows, and he bringsher home a narwhal's horn for a present. She honoured her people, andher people loved her; and the result was that, with no cost to theGovernment, she saw them scattering the fleets of the Spaniards, planting America with colonies, and exploring the most distant seas. Either for honour or for expectation of profit, or from that unconsciousnecessity by which a great people, like a great man, will do what isright, and must do it at the right time, whoever had the means tofurnish a ship, and whoever had the talent to command one, laid theirabilities together and went out to pioneer, and to conquer, and takepossession, in the name of the Queen of the Sea. There was no nation soremote but what some one or other was found ready to undertake anexpedition there, in the hope of opening a trade; and, let them go wherethey would, they were sure of Elizabeth's countenance. We find letterswritten by her, for the benefit of nameless adventurers, to everypotentate of whom she had ever heard--to the Emperors of China, Japan, and India, the Grand Duke of Russia, the Grand Turk, the Persian'Sofee, ' and other unheard-of Asiatic and African princes; whatever wasto be done in England, or by Englishmen, Elizabeth assisted when shecould, and admired when she could not. The springs of great actions arealways difficult to analyse--impossible to analyse perfectly--possibleto analyse only very proximately; and the force by which a man throws agood action out of himself is invisible and mystical, like that whichbrings out the blossom and the fruit upon the tree. The motives whichwe find men urging for their enterprises seem often insufficient to haveprompted them to so large a daring. They did what they did from thegreat unrest in them which made them do it, and what it was may be bestmeasured by the results in the present England and America. 

Nevertheless, there was enough in the state of the world, and in theposition of England, to have furnished abundance of conscious motive, and to have stirred the drowsiest minister of routine. 

Among material occasions for exertion, the population began to outgrowthe employment, and there was a necessity for plantations to serve as anoutlet. Men who, under happier circumstances, might have led decentlives, and done good service, were now driven by want to desperatecourses--'witness, ' as Richard Hakluyt says, 'twenty tall fellows hangedlast Rochester assizes for small robberies;' and there is an admirablepaper addressed to the Privy Council by Christopher Carlile, Walsingham's son-in-law, pointing out the possible openings to be madein or through such plantations for home produce and manufacture. 

Far below all such prudential economics and mercantile ambitions, however, lay a chivalrous enthusiasm which in these dull days we canhardly, without an effort, realise. The life-and-death wrestle betweenthe Reformation and the old religion had settled in the last quarter ofthe sixteenth century into a permanent struggle between England andSpain. France was disabled. All the help which Elizabeth could sparebarely enabled the Netherlands to defend themselves. Protestantism, ifit conquered, must conquer on another field; and by the circumstances ofthe time the championship of the Reformed faith fell to the Englishsailors. The sword of Spain was forged in the gold-mines of Peru; thelegions of Alva were only to be disarmed by intercepting the gold shipson their passage; and, inspired by an enthusiasm like that which fourcenturies before had precipitated the chivalry of Europe upon the East, the same spirit which in its present degeneracy covers our bays andrivers with pleasure yachts, then fitted out armed privateers, to sweepthe Atlantic, and plunder and destroy Spanish ships wherever they couldmeet them. 

Thus, from a combination of causes, the whole force and energy of theage was directed towards the sea. The wide excitement, and the greatnessof the interests at stake, raised even common men above themselves; andpeople who in ordinary times would have been no more than mere seamen, or mere money-making merchants, appear before us with a largeness andgreatness of heart and mind in which their duties to God and theircountry are alike clearly and broadly seen and felt to be paramount toevery other. 

Ordinary English traders we find fighting Spanish war ships in behalf ofthe Protestant faith. The cruisers of the Spanish Main were full ofgenerous eagerness for the conversion of the savage nations toChristianity. And what is even more surprising, sites for colonisationwere examined and scrutinised by such men in a lofty statesmanlikespirit, and a ready insight was displayed by them into the indirecteffects of a wisely-extended commerce on every highest human interest. 

Again, in the conflict with the Spaniards, there was a further feeling, a feeling of genuine chivalry, which was spurring on the English, andone which must be well understood and well remembered, if men likeDrake, and Hawkins, and Raleigh are to be tolerably understood. One ofthe English Reviews, a short time ago, was much amused with a story ofDrake having excommunicated a petty officer as a punishment for somemoral offence; the reviewer not being able to see in Drake, as a man, anything more than a highly brave and successful buccaneer, whosepretences to religion might rank with the devotion of an Italian banditto the Madonna. And so Hawkins, and even Raleigh, are regarded bysuperficial persons, who see only such outward circumstances of theirhistory as correspond with their own impressions. The high nature ofthese men, and the high objects which they pursued, will only rise outand become visible to us as we can throw ourselves back into their timesand teach our hearts to feel as they felt. We do not find in thelanguage of the voyagers themselves, or of those who lent them theirhelp at home, any of that weak watery talk of 'protection ofaborigines, ' which, as soon as it is translated into fact, becomes themost active policy for their destruction, soul and body. But the storiesof the dealings of the Spaniards with the conquered Indians, which werewidely known in England, seem to have affected all classes of people, not with pious passive horror, but with a genuine human indignation. Athousand anecdotes in detail we find scattered up and down the pages ofHakluyt, who, with a view to make them known, translated Peter Martyr'sletters; and each commonest sailor-boy who had heard these stories fromhis childhood among the tales of his father's fireside, had longed to bea man, that he might go out and become the avenger of a gallant andsuffering people. A high mission, undertaken with a generous heart, seldom fails to make those worthy of it to whom it is given; and it wasa point of honour, if of nothing more, among the English sailors, to dono discredit by their conduct to the greatness of their cause. The highcourtesy, the chivalry of the Spanish nobles, so conspicuous in theirdealings with their European rivals, either failed to touch them intheir dealings with uncultivated idolators, or the high temper of thearistocracy was unable to restrain or to influence the masses of thesoldiers. It would be as ungenerous as it would be untrue, to chargeupon their religion the grievous actions of men who called themselvesthe armed missionaries of Catholicism, when the Catholic priests andbishops were the loudest in the indignation with which they denouncedthem. But we are obliged to charge upon it that slow and subtleinfluence so inevitably exercised by any religion which is divorced fromlife, and converted into a thing of form, or creed, or ceremony, orsystem--which could permit the same men to be extravagant in a sinceredevotion to the Queen of Heaven, whose entire lower nature, unsubduedand unaffected, was given up to thirst of gold, and plunder, andsensuality. If religion does not make men more humane than they would bewithout it, it makes them fatally less so; and it is to be feared thatthe spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers, which had oscillated to the otherextreme, and had again crystallised into a formal antinomian fanaticism, reproduced the same fatal results as those in which the Spaniards hadset them their unworthy precedent. But the Elizabethan navigators, fullfor the most part with large kindness, wisdom, gentleness, and beauty, bear names untainted, as far as we know, with a single crime against thesavages of America; and the name of England was as famous in the Indianseas as that of Spain was infamous. On the banks of the Oronoko therewas remembered for a hundred years the noble captain who had come therefrom the great queen beyond the seas; and Raleigh speaks the language ofthe heart of his country, when he urges the English statesmen tocolonise Guiana, and exults in the glorious hope of driving the whitemarauder into the Pacific, and restoring the Incas to the throne ofPeru. 

 Who will not be persuaded (he says) that now at length the great Judge of the world hath heard the sighs, groans, and lamentations, hath seen the tears and blood of so many millions of innocent men, women, and children, afflicted, robbed, reviled, branded with hot irons, roasted, dismembered, mangled, stabbed, whipped, racked, scalded with hot oil, put to the strapado, ripped alive, beheaded in sport, drowned, dashed against the rocks, famished, devoured by mastiffs, burned, and by infinite cruelties consumed, and purposeth to scourge and plague that cursed nation, and to take the yoke of servitude from that distressed people, as free by nature as any Christian?

Poor Raleigh! if peace and comfort in this world were of much importanceto him, it was in an ill day that he provoked the revenge of Spain. Thestrength of England was needed at the moment at its own door; the Armadacame, and there was no means of executing such an enterprise. Andafterwards the throne of Elizabeth was filled by a Stuart, and Guianawas to be no scene of glory for Raleigh; rather, as later historians arepleased to think, it was the grave of his reputation. 

But the hope burned clear in him through all the weary years of unjustimprisonment; and when he was a grey-headed old man, the base son of abad mother used it to betray him. The success of his last enterprise wasmade the condition under which he was to be pardoned for a crime whichhe had not committed; and its success depended, as he knew, on its beingkept secret from the Spaniards. James required of Raleigh on hisallegiance a detail of what he proposed, giving him at the same time hisword as a king that the secret should be safe with him. The next day itwas sweeping out of the port of London in the swiftest of the Spanishships, with private orders to the Governor of St. Thomas to provoke acollision when Raleigh should arrive there, which should afterwards costhim his heart's blood. 

We modern readers may run rapidly over the series of epithets underwhich Raleigh has catalogued the Indian sufferings, hoping that theyare exaggerated, seeing that they are horrible, and closing our eyesagainst them with swiftest haste; but it was not so when every epithetsuggested a hundred familiar facts; and some of these (not resting onEnglish prejudice, but on sad Spanish evidence, which is too full ofshame and sorrow to be suspected) shall be given in this place, howeverold a story it may be thought; because, as we said above, it isimpossible to understand the actions of these men, unless we arefamiliar with the feelings of which their hearts were full. 

The massacres under Cortez and Pizarro, terrible as they were, were notthe occasion which stirred the deepest indignation. They had the excuseof what might be called, for want of a better word, necessity, and ofthe desperate position of small bands of men in the midst of enemies whomight be counted by millions. And in De Soto, when he burnt his guidesin Florida (it was his practice, when there was danger of treachery, that those who were left alive might take warning); or in Vasco Nunnez, praying to the Virgin on the mountains of Darien, and going down fromoff them into the valleys to hunt the Indian caciques, and fling themalive to his bloodhounds; there was, at least, with all this fiercenessand cruelty, a desperate courage which we cannot refuse to admire, andwhich mingles with and corrects our horror. It is the refinement of theSpaniard's cruelty in the settled and conquered provinces, excused by nodanger and provoked by no resistance, the details of which witness tothe infernal coolness with which it was perpetrated; and the greatbearing of the Indians themselves under an oppression which theydespaired of resisting, raises the whole history to the rank of aworld-wide tragedy, in which the nobler but weaker nature was crushedunder a malignant force which was stronger and yet meaner than itself. Gold hunting and lust were the two passions for which the Spaniardscared; and the fate of the Indian women was only more dreadful than thatof the men, who were ganged and chained to a labour in the mines whichwas only to cease with their lives, in a land where but a little beforethey had lived a free contented people, more innocent of crime thanperhaps any people upon earth. If we can conceive what our own feelingswould be--if, in the 'development of the mammalia, ' some baser but morepowerful race than man were to appear upon this planet, and we and ourwives and children at our own happy firesides were degraded from ourfreedom, and became to them what the lower animals are to us, we canperhaps realise the feelings of the enslaved nations of Hispaniola. 

As a harsh justification of slavery, it is sometimes urged that men whodo not deserve to be slaves will prefer death to the endurance of it;and that if they prize their liberty, it is always in their power toassert it in the old Roman fashion. Tried even by so hard a rule, theIndians vindicated their right; and, before the close of the sixteenthcentury, the entire group of the Western Islands in the hands of theSpaniards, containing, when Columbus discovered them, many millions ofinhabitants, were left literally desolate from suicide. Of the anecdotesof this terrible self-immolation, as they were then known in England, here are a few out of many. 

The first is simple, and a specimen of the ordinary method. A Yucatancacique, who was forced with his old subjects to labour in the mines, atlast 'calling those miners into an house, to the number of ninety-five, he thus debateth with them:'--

 'My worthy companions and friends, why desire we to live any longer under so cruel a servitude? Let us now go unto the perpetual seat of our ancestors, for we shall there have rest from these intolerable cares and grievances which we endure under the subjection of the unthankful. Go ye before, I will presently follow you. ' Having so spoken, he held out whole handfuls of those leaves which take away life, prepared for the purpose, and giving every one part thereof, being kindled to suck up the fume; who obeyed his command, the king and his chief kinsmen reserving the last place for themselves. 

We speak of the crime of suicide, but few persons will see a crime inthis sad and stately leave-taking of a life which it was no longerpossible to bear with unbroken hearts. We do not envy the Indian, who, with Spaniards before him as an evidence of the fruits which their creedbrought forth, deliberately exchanged for it the old religion of hiscountry, which could sustain him in an action of such melancholygrandeur. But the Indians did not always reply to their oppressors withescaping passively beyond their hands. Here is a story with matter in itfor as rich a tragedy as OEdipus or Agamemnon; and in its stern andtremendous features, more nearly resembling them than any which wereconceived even by Shakespeare. 

An officer named Orlando had taken the daughter of a Cuban cacique to behis mistress. She was with child by him, but, suspecting her of beingengaged in some other intrigue, he had her fastened to two wooden spits, not intending to kill her, but to terrify her; and setting her beforethe fire, he ordered that she should be turned by the servants of thekitchen. 

 The maiden, stricken with fear through the cruelty thereof, and strange kind of torment, presently gave up the ghost. The cacique her father, understanding the matter, took thirty of his men and went to the house of the captain, who was then absent, and slew his wife, whom he had married after that wicked act committed, and the women who were companions of the wife, and her servants every one. Then shutting the door of the house, and putting fire under it, he burnt himself and all his companions that assisted him, together with the captain's dead family and goods. 

This is no fiction or poet's romance. It is a tale of wrath and revenge, which in sober dreadful truth enacted itself upon this earth, andremains among the eternal records of the doings of mankind upon it. Assome relief to its most terrible features, we follow it with a storywhich has a touch in it of diabolical humour. 

The slave-owners finding their slaves escaping thus unprosperously outof their grasp, set themselves to find a remedy for so desperate adisease, and were swift to avail themselves of any weakness, mental orbodily, through which to retain them in life. One of these proprietorsbeing informed that a number of his people intended to kill themselveson a certain day, at a particular spot, and knowing by experience thatthey were too likely to do it, presented himself there at the time whichhad been fixed upon, and telling the Indians when they arrived that heknew their intention, and that it was vain for them to attempt to keepanything a secret from him, he ended with saying, that he had come thereto kill himself with them; that as he had used them ill in this world, he might use them worse in the next; 'with which he did dissuade thempresently from their purpose. ' With what efficacy such believers in theimmortality of the soul were likely to recommend either their faith ortheir God; rather, how terribly all the devotion and all theearnestness with which the poor priests who followed in the wake of theconquerors laboured to recommend it were shamed and paralysed, theythemselves too bitterly lament. 

It was idle to send out governor after governor with orders to stay suchpractices. They had but to arrive on the scene to become infected withthe same fever; or if any remnant of Castilian honour, or any faintestechoes of the faith which they professed, still flickered in a few ofthe best and noblest, they could but look on with folded hands inineffectual mourning; they could do nothing without soldiers, and thesoldiers were the worst offenders. Hispaniola became a desert; the goldwas in the mines, and there were no slaves left remaining to extract it. One means which the Spaniards dared to employ to supply the vacancy, brought about an incident which in its piteous pathos exceeds any storywe have ever heard. Crimes and criminals are swept away by time, naturefinds an antidote for their poison, and they and their ill consequencesalike are blotted out and perish. If we do not for give the villain, atleast we cease to hate him, as it grows more clear to us that he injuresnone so deeply as himself. But the [Greek: thêriôdês kakia], theenormous wickedness by which humanity itself has been outraged anddisgraced, we cannot forgive; we cannot cease to hate that; the yearsroll away, but the tints of it remain on the pages of history, deep andhorrible as the day on which they were entered there. 

 When the Spaniards understood the simple opinion of the Yucatan islanders concerning the souls of their departed, which, after their sins purged in the cold northern mountains should pass into the south, to the intent that, leaving their own country of their own accord, they might suffer themselves to be brought to Hispaniola, they did persuade those poor wretches, that they came from those places where they should see their parents and children, and all their kindred and friends that were dead, and should enjoy all kinds of delights with the embracements and fruition of all beloved beings. And they, being infected and possessed with these crafty and subtle imaginations, singing and rejoicing left their country, and followed vain and idle hope. But when they saw that they were deceived, and neither met their parents nor any that they desired, but were compelled to undergo grievous sovereignty and command, and to endure cruel and extreme labour, they either slew themselves, or, choosing to famish, gave up their fair spirits, being persuaded by no reason or violence to take food. So these miserable Yucatans came to their end. 

It was once more as it was in the days of the Apostles. The New Worldwas first offered to the holders of the old traditions. They were thehusbandmen first chosen for the new vineyard, and blood and desolationwere the only fruits which they reared upon it. In their hands it wasbecoming a kingdom, not of God, but of the devil, and a sentence ofblight went out against them and against their works. How fatally it hasworked, let modern Spain and Spanish America bear witness. We need notfollow further the history of their dealings with the Indians. For theircolonies, a fatality appears to have followed all attempts at Catholiccolonisation. Like shoots from an old decaying tree which no skill andno care can rear, they were planted, and for a while they might seem togrow; but their life was never more than a lingering death, a failure, which to a thinking person would outweigh in the arguments againstCatholicism whole libraries of faultless _catenas_, and a _consensuspatrum_ unbroken through fifteen centuries for the supremacy of St. Peter. 

There is no occasion to look for superstitious causes to explain thephenomenon. The Catholic faith had ceased to be the faith of the largemass of earnest thinking capable persons; and to those who can best dothe work, all work in this world sooner or later is committed. Americawas the natural home for Protestants; persecuted at home, they sought aplace where they might worship God in their own way, without danger ofstake or gibbet, and the French Huguenots, as afterwards the EnglishPuritans, early found their way there. The fate of a party of Coligny'speople, who had gone out as settlers, shall be the last of thesestories, illustrating, as it does in the highest degree, the wrath andfury with which the passions on both sides were boiling. A certain JohnRibault, with about 400 companions, had emigrated to Florida. They werequiet inoffensive people, and lived in peace there several years, cultivating the soil, building villages, and on the best possible termswith the natives. Spain was at the time at peace with France; we are, therefore, to suppose that it was in pursuance of the great crusade, inwhich they might feel secure of the secret, if not the confessed, sympathy of the Guises, that a powerful Spanish fleet bore down uponthis settlement. The French made no resistance, and they were seized andflayed alive, and their bodies hung out upon the trees, with aninscription suspended over them, 'Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics. ' AtParis all was sweetness and silence. The settlement was tranquillysurrendered to the same men who had made it the scene of their atrocity;and two years later, 500 of the very Spaniards who had been most activein the murder were living there in peaceable possession, in two fortswhich their relation with the natives had obliged them to build. It waswell that there were other Frenchmen living, of whose consciences theCourt had not the keeping, and who were able on emergencies to do whatwas right without consulting it. A certain privateer, named Dominique deGourges, secretly armed and equipped a vessel at Rochelle, and, stealingacross the Atlantic and in two days collecting a strong party ofIndians, he came down suddenly upon the forts, and, taking them bystorm, slew or afterwards hanged every man he found there, leaving theirbodies on the trees on which they had hanged the Huguenots, with theirown inscription reversed against them--'Not as Spaniards, but asmurderers. ' For which exploit, well deserving of all honest men'spraise, Dominique de Gourges had to fly his country for his life; and, coming to England, was received with honourable welcome by Elizabeth. 

It was at such a time, and to take their part amidst such scenes asthese, that the English navigators appeared along the shores of SouthAmerica, as the armed soldiers of the Reformation, and as the avengersof humanity. As their enterprise was grand and lofty, so for the mostpart was the manner in which they bore themselves worthy of it. Theywere no nation of saints, in the modern sentimental sense of that word;they were prompt, stern men--more ready ever to strike an enemy than toparley with him; and, private adventurers as they all were, it wasnatural enough that private rapacity and private badness should be foundamong them as among other mortals. Every Englishman who had the meanswas at liberty to fit out a ship or ships, and if he could producetolerable vouchers for himself, received at once a commission from theCourt. The battles of England were fought by her children, at their ownrisk and cost, and they were at liberty to repay themselves the expenseof their expeditions by plundering at the cost of the national enemy. Thus, of course, in a mixed world, there were found mixed maraudingcrews of scoundrels, who played the game which a century later wasplayed with such effect by the pirates of the Tortugas. Negro hunterstoo, there were, and a bad black slave trade--in which Elizabethherself, being hard driven for money, did not disdain to invest hercapital--but on the whole, and in the war with the Spaniards, as in thewar with the elements, the conduct and character of the English sailors, considering what they were and the work which they were sent to do, present us all through that age with such a picture of gallantry, disinterestedness, and high heroic energy, as has never beenovermatched; the more remarkable, as it was the fruit of no drill ordiscipline, no tradition, no system, no organised training, but was thefree native growth of a noble virgin soil. 

Before starting on an expedition, it was usual for the crew and theofficers to meet and arrange among themselves a series of articles ofconduct, to which they bound themselves by a formal agreement, theentire body itself undertaking to see to their observance. It is quitepossible that strong religious profession, and even sincere profession, might be accompanied, as it was in the Spaniards, with everything mostdetestable. It is not sufficient of itself to prove that their actionswould correspond with it, but it is one among a number of evidences; andcoming as most of these men come before us, with hands clear of anyblood but of fair and open enemies, their articles may pass at least asindications of what they were. 

Here we have a few instances:--

Richard Hawkins's ship's company was, as he himself informs us, anunusually loose one. Nevertheless, we find them 'gathered together everymorning and evening to serve God;' and a fire on board, which onlyHawkins's presence of mind prevented from destroying ship and crewtogether, was made use of by the men as an occasion to banish swearingout of the ship. 

 With a general consent of all our company, it was ordained that there should be a palmer or ferula which should be in the keeping of him who was taken with an oath; and that he who had the palmer should give to every one that he took swearing, a palmada with it and the ferula; and whosoever at the time of evening or morning prayer was found to have the palmer, should have three blows given him by the captain or the master; and that he should still be bound to free himself by taking another, or else to run in danger of continuing the penalty, which, being executed a few days, reformed the vice, so that in three days together was not one oath heard to be sworn. 

The regulations for Luke Fox's voyage commenced thus:--

 For as much as the good success and prosperity of every action doth consist in the due service and glorifying of God, knowing that not only our being and preservation, but the prosperity of all our actions and enterprises do immediately depend on His Almighty goodness and mercy; it is provided--

 First, that all the company, as well officers as others, shall duly repair every day twice at the call of the bell to hear public prayers to be read, such as are authorised by the church, and that in a godly and devout manner, as good Christians ought. 

 Secondly, that no man shall swear by the name of God, or use any profane oath, or blaspheme His holy name. 

To symptoms such as these, we cannot but assign a very different valuewhen they are the spontaneous growth of common minds, unstimulated bysense of propriety or rules of the service, or other official influencelay or ecclesiastic, from what attaches to the somewhat similarceremonials in which, among persons whose position is conspicuous, important enterprises are now and then inaugurated. 

We have said as much as we intend to say of the treatment by theSpaniards of the Indian women. Sir Walter Raleigh is commonlyrepresented by historians as rather defective, if he was remarkable atall, on the moral side of his character. Yet Raleigh can declareproudly, that all the time he was on the Oronoko, 'neither by force norother means had any of his men intercourse with any woman there;' andthe narrator of the incidents of Raleigh's last voyage acquaints hiscorrespondent 'with some particulars touching the government of thefleet, which, although other men in their voyages doubtless in somemeasure observed, yet in all the great volumes which have been writtentouching voyages, there is no precedent of so godly severe and martialgovernment, which not only in itself is laudable and worthy ofimitation, but is also fit to be written and engraven on every man'ssoul that coveteth to do honour to his country. '

Once more, the modern theory of Drake is, as we said above, that he wasa gentleman-like pirate on a large scale, who is indebted for the placewhich he fills in history to the indistinct ideas of right and wrongprevailing in the unenlightened age in which he lived, and whotherefore demands all the toleration of our own enlarged humanity toallow him to remain there. Let us see how the following incident can bemade to coincide with this hypothesis:--

A few days after clearing the Channel on his first great voyage, he fellin with a small Spanish ship, which he took for a prize. He committedthe care of it to a certain Mr. Doughtie, a person much trusted by, andpersonally very dear to him, and this second vessel was to follow him asa tender. 

In dangerous expeditions into unknown seas, a second smaller ship wasoften indispensable to success; but many finely intended enterpriseswere ruined by the cowardice of the officers to whom such ships wereentrusted; who shrank as danger thickened, and again and again tookadvantage of darkness or heavy weather to make sail for England andforsake their commander. Hawkins twice suffered in this way; so did SirHumfrey Gilbert; and, although Drake's own kind feeling for his oldfriend has prevented him from leaving an exact account of his offence, we gather from the scattered hints which are let fall, that he, too, wasmeditating a similar piece of treason. However, it may or may not havebeen thus. But when at Port St. Julien, 'our General, ' says one of thecrew, --

 Began to inquire diligently of the actions of Mr. Thomas Doughtie, and found them not to be such as he looked for, but tending rather to contention or mutiny, or some other disorder, whereby, without redresse, the success of the voyage might greatly have been hazarded. Whereupon the company was called together and made acquainted with the particulars of the cause, which were found, partly by Mr. Doughtie's own confession, and partly by the evidence of the fact, to be true, which, when our General saw, although his private affection to Mr. Doughtie (as he then, in the presence of us all, sacredly protested) was great, yet the care which he had of the state of the voyage, of the expectation of Her Majesty, and of the honour of his country, did more touch him, as indeed it ought, than the private respect of one man; so that the cause being throughly heard, and all things done in good order as near as might be to the course of our law in England, it was concluded that Mr. Doughtie should receive punishment according to the quality of the offence. And he, seeing no remedy but patience for himself, desired before his death to receive the communion, which he did at the hands of Mr. Fletcher, our minister, and our General himself accompanied him in that holy action, which, being done, and the place of execution made ready, he, having embraced our General, and taken leave of all the company, with prayers for the Queen's Majesty and our realm, in quiet sort laid his head to the block, where he ended his life. This being done, our General made divers speeches to the whole company, persuading us to unity, obedience, love, and regard of our voyage, and for the better confirmation thereof, willed every man the next Sunday following to prepare himself to receive the communion, as Christian brethren and friends ought to do, which was done in very reverent sort, and so with good contentment every man went about his business. 

The simple majesty of this anecdote can gain nothing from any commentwhich we might offer upon it. The crew of a common English shiporganising, of their own free motion, on that wild shore, a judgmenthall more grand and awful than any most elaborate law court, is not tobe reconciled with the pirate theory. Drake, it is true, appropriatedand brought home a million and a half of Spanish treasure, while Englandand Spain were at peace. He took that treasure because for many yearsthe officers of the Inquisition had made free at their pleasure with thelives and goods of English merchants and seamen. The king of Spain, whenappealed to, had replied that he had no power over the Holy House; andit was necessary to make the king of Spain, or the Inquisition, orwhoever were the parties responsible, feel that they could not playtheir pious pranks with impunity. When Drake seized the bullion atPanama, he sent word to the viceroy that he should now learn to respectthe properties of English subjects; and he added, that if four Englishsailors, who were prisoners in Mexico, were molested, he would execute2, 000 Spaniards and send the viceroy their heads. Spain and England wereat peace, but Popery and Protestantism were at war--deep, deadly, andirreconcileable. 

Wherever we find them, they are still the same. In the courts of Japanor of China; fighting Spaniards in the Pacific, or prisoners among theAlgerines; founding colonies which by-and-by were to grow into enormousTransatlantic republics, or exploring in crazy pinnaces the fiercelatitudes of the Polar seas, --they are the same indomitable God-fearingmen whose life was one great liturgy. 'The ice was strong, but God wasstronger, ' says one of Frobisher's men, after grinding a night and a dayamong the icebergs, not waiting for God to come down and split the icefor them, but toiling through the long hours, himself and the restfending off the vessel with poles and planks, with death glaring atthem out of the rocks. Icebergs were strong, Spaniards were strong, andstorms, and corsairs, and rocks and reefs, which no chart had thennoted--they were all strong; but God was stronger, and that was allwhich they cared to know. 

Out of the vast number of illustrations it is difficult to make wiseselections, but the attention floats loosely over generalities, and onlyindividual instances can seize it and hold it fast. We shall attempt tobring our readers face to face with some of these men; not, of course, to write their biographies, but to sketch the details of a few scenes, in the hope that they may tempt those under whose eyes they may fall tolook for themselves to complete the perfect figure. 

Some two miles above the port of Dartmouth, once among the mostimportant harbours in England, on a projecting angle of land which runsout into the river at the head of one of its most beautiful reaches, there has stood for some centuries the Manor House of Greenaway. Thewater runs deep all the way to it from the sea, and the largest vesselsmay ride with safety within a stone's throw of the windows. In thelatter half of the sixteenth century there must have met, in the hall ofthis mansion, a party as remarkable as could have been found anywhere inEngland. Humfrey and Adrian Gilbert, with their half-brother, WalterRaleigh, here, when little boys, played at sailors in the reaches ofLong Stream; in the summer evenings doubtless rowing down with the tideto the port, and wondering at the quaint figure-heads and carved prowsof the ships which thronged it; or climbing on board, and listening, with hearts beating, to the mariners' tales of the new earth beyond thesunset. And here in later life, matured men, whose boyish dreams hadbecome heroic action, they used again to meet in the intervals of quiet, and the rock is shown underneath the house where Raleigh smoked thefirst tobacco. Another remarkable man, of whom we shall presently speakmore closely, could not fail to have made a fourth at these meetings. Asailor boy of Sandwich, the adjoining parish, John Davis, showed early agenius which could not have escaped the eye of such neighbours, and inthe atmosphere of Greenaway he learned to be as noble as the Gilberts, and as tender and delicate as Raleigh. Of this party, for the present weconfine ourselves to the host and owner, Humfrey Gilbert, knightedafterwards by Elizabeth. Led by the scenes of his childhood to the seaand to sea adventures, and afterwards, as his mind unfolded, to studyhis profession scientifically, we find him as soon as he was old enoughto think for himself, or make others listen to him, 'amending the greaterrors of naval sea cards, whose common fault is to make the degree oflongitude in every latitude of one common bigness;' inventinginstruments for taking observations, studying the form of the earth, andconvincing himself that there was a north-west passage, and studying thenecessities of his country, and discovering the remedies for them incolonisation and extended markets for home manufactures. Gilbert wasexamined before the Queen's Majesty and the Privy Council, and therecord of his examination he has himself left to us in a paper which heafterwards drew up, and strange enough reading it is. The most admirableconclusions stand side by side with the wildest conjectures. 

Homer and Aristotle are pressed into service to prove that the oceanruns round the three old continents, and that America therefore isnecessarily an island. The Gulf Stream, which he had carefully observed, eked out by a theory of the _primum mobile_, is made to demonstrate achannel to the north, corresponding to Magellan's Straits in the south, Gilbert believing, in common with almost everyone of his day, that thesestraits were the only opening into the Pacific, and the land to theSouth was unbroken to the Pole. He prophesies a market in the East forour manufactured linen and calicoes:--

 The Easterns greatly prizing the same, as appeareth in Hester, where the pomp is expressed of the great King of India, Ahasuerus, who matched the coloured clothes wherewith his houses and tents were apparelled, with gold and silver, as part of his greatest treasure. 

These and other such arguments were the best analysis which Sir Humfreyhad to offer of the spirit which he felt to be working in him. We maythink what we please of them; but we can have but one thought of thegreat grand words with which the memorial concludes, and they alonewould explain the love which Elizabeth bore him:--

 Never, therefore, mislike with me for taking in hand any laudable and honest enterprise, for if through pleasure or idleness we purchase shame, the pleasure vanisheth, but the shame abideth for ever. 

 Give me leave, therefore, without offence, always to live and die in this mind: that he is not worthy to live at all that, for fear or danger of death, shunneth his country's service and his own honour, seeing that death is inevitable and the fame of virtue immortal, wherefore in this behalf _mutare vel timere sperno_. 

Two voyages which he undertook at his own cost, which shattered hisfortune, and failed, as they naturally might, since inefficient help ormutiny of subordinates, or other disorders, are inevitable conditionsunder which more or less great men must be content to see their greatthoughts mutilated by the feebleness of their instruments, did notdishearten him, and in June 1583 a last fleet of five ships sailed fromthe port of Dartmouth, with commission from the queen to discover andtake possession from latitude 45° to 50° North--a voyage not a littlenoteworthy, there being planted in the course of it the first Englishcolony west of the Atlantic. Elizabeth had a foreboding that she wouldnever see him again. She sent him a jewel as a last token of her favour, and she desired Raleigh to have his picture taken before he went. 

The history of the voyage was written by a Mr. Edward Hayes, ofDartmouth, one of the principal actors in it, and as a composition it ismore remarkable for fine writing than any very commendable thought inthe author. But Sir Humfrey's nature shines through the infirmity of hischronicler; and in the end, indeed, Mr. Hayes himself is subdued into abetter mind. He had lost money by the voyage, and we will hope hishigher nature was only under a temporary eclipse. The fleet consisted(it is well to observe the ships and the size of them) of the 'Delight, '120 tons; the barque 'Raleigh, ' 200 tons (this ship deserted off theLand's End); the 'Golden Hinde' and the 'Swallow, ' 40 tons each; and the'Squirrel, ' which was called the frigate, 10 tons. For the uninitiatedin such matters, we may add, that if in a vessel the size of the last, amember of the Yacht Club would consider that he had earned a club-roomimmortality if he had ventured a run in the depth of summer from Cowesto the Channel Islands. 

 We were in all (says Mr. Hayes) 260 men, among whom we had of every faculty good choice. Besides, for solace of our own people, and allurement of the savages, we were provided of music in good variety, not omitting the least toys, as morris dancers, hobby horses, and May-like conceits to delight the savage people. 

The expedition reached Newfoundland without accident. St. John's wastaken possession of, and a colony left there; and Sir Humfrey then setout exploring along the American coast to the south, he himself doingall the work in his little 10-ton cutter, the service being toodangerous for the larger vessels to venture on. One of these hadremained at St. John's. He was now accompanied only by the 'Delight' andthe 'Golden Hinde, ' and these two keeping as near the shore as theydared, he spent what remained of the summer examining every creek andbay, marking the soundings, taking the bearings of the possibleharbours, and risking his life, as every hour he was obliged to risk itin such a service, in thus leading, as it were, the forlorn hope in theconquest of the New World. How dangerous it was we shall presently see. It was towards the end of August. 

 The evening was fair and pleasant, yet not without token of storm to ensue, and most part of this Wednesday night, like the swan that singeth before her death, they in the 'Delight' continued in sounding of drums and trumpets and fifes, also winding the cornets and hautboys, and in the end of their jollity left with the battell and ringing of doleful knells. 

Two days after came the storm; the 'Delight' struck upon a bank, andwent down in sight of the other vessels, which were unable to render herany help. Sir Humfrey's papers, among other things, were all lost inher; at the time considered by him an irreparable misfortune. But it waslittle matter, he was never to need them. The 'Golden Hinde' and the'Squirrel' were now left alone of the five ships. The provisions wererunning short, and the summer season was closing. Both crews were onshort allowance; and with much difficulty Sir Humfrey was prevailed uponto be satisfied for the present with what he had done, and to lay offfor England. 

 So upon Saturday, in the afternoon, the 31st of August, we changed our course, and returned back for England, at which very instant, even in winding about, there passed along between us and the land, which we now forsook, a very lion, to our seeming, in shape, hair, and colour; not swimming after the manner of a beast by moving of his feet, but rather sliding upon the water with his whole body, except his legs, in sight, neither yet diving under and again rising as the manner is of whales, porpoises, and other fish, but confidently showing himself without hiding, notwithstanding that we presented ourselves in open view and gesture to amaze him. Thus he passed along, turning his head to and fro, yawning and gaping wide, with ougly demonstration of long teeth and glaring eyes; and to bidde us farewell, coming right against the 'Hinde, ' he sent forth a horrible voice, roaring and bellowing as doth a lion, which spectacle we all beheld so far as we were able to discern the same, as men prone to wonder at every strange thing. What opinion others had thereof, and chiefly the General himself, I forbear to deliver. But he took it for _Bonum Omen_, rejoicing that he was to war against such an enemy, if it were the devil. 

We have no doubt that he did think it was the devil; men in those daysbelieving really that evil was more than a principle or a necessaryaccident, and that in all their labour for God and for right, they mustmake their account to have to fight with the devil in his proper person. But if we are to call it superstition, and if this were no devil in theform of a roaring lion, but a mere great seal or sea-lion, it is a moreinnocent superstition to impersonate so real a power, and it requires abolder heart to rise up against it and defy it in its living terror, than to sublimate it away into a philosophical principle, and to forgetto battle with it in speculating on its origin and nature. But to followthe brave Sir Humfrey, whose work of fighting with the devil was nowover, and who was passing to his reward. The 2nd of September theGeneral came on board the 'Golden Hinde' 'to make merry with us. ' Hegreatly deplored the loss of his books and papers, but he was full ofconfidence from what he had seen, and talked with eagerness and warmthof the new expedition for the following spring. Apocryphal gold-minesstill occupying the minds of Mr. Hayes and others, they were persuadedthat Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself some such discovery which he hadsecretly made, and they tried hard to extract it from him. They couldmake nothing, however, of his odd, ironical answers, and their sorrow atthe catastrophe which followed is sadly blended with disappointment thatsuch a secret should have perished. Sir Humfrey doubtless saw Americawith other eyes than theirs, and gold-mines richer than California inits huge rivers and savannahs. 

 Leaving the issue of this good hope (about the gold), (continues Mr. Hayes), to God, who only knoweth the truth thereof, I will hasten to the end of this tragedy, which must be knit up in the person of our General, and as it was God's ordinance upon him, even so the vehement persuasion of his friends could nothing avail to divert him from his wilful resolution of going in his frigate; and when he was entreated by the captain, master, and others, his well-wishers in the 'Hinde, ' not to venture, this was his answer--'I will not forsake my little company going homewards, with whom I have passed so many storms and perils. '

Two-thirds of the way home they met foul weather and terrible seas, 'breaking-short and pyramid-wise. ' Men who had all their lives 'occupiedthe sea' had never seen it more outrageous. 'We had also upon ourmainyard an apparition of a little fier by night, which seamen do callCastor and Pollux. '

 Monday the ninth of September, in the afternoon, the frigate was near cast away oppressed by waves, but at that time recovered, and giving forth signs of joy, the General, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out unto us in the 'Hinde' so often as we did approach within hearing, 'We are as near to heaven by sea as by land, ' reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify that he was. The same Monday night, about twelve of the clock, or not long after, the frigate being ahead of us in the 'Golden Hinde, ' suddenly her lights were out, whereof as it were in a moment we lost the sight; and withal our watch cried, 'The General was cast away, ' which was too true. 

 Thus faithfully (concludes Mr. Hayes, in some degree rising above himself) I have related this story, wherein some spark of the knight's virtues, though he be extinguished, may happily appear; he remaining resolute to a purpose honest and godly as was this, to discover, possess, and reduce unto the service of God and Christian piety, those remote and heathen countries of America. Such is the infinite bounty of God, who from every evil deriveth good, that fruit may grow in time of our travelling in these North-Western lands (as has it not grown?), and the crosses, turmoils, and afflictions, both in the preparation and execution of the voyage, did correct the intemperate humours which before we noted to be in this gentleman, and made unsavoury and less delightful his other manifold virtues. 

 Thus as he was refined and made nearer unto the image of God, so it pleased the Divine will to resume him unto Himself, whither both his and every other high and noble mind have always aspired. 

Such was Sir Humfrey Gilbert; still in the prime of his years when theAtlantic swallowed him. Like the gleam of a landscape lit suddenly for amoment by the lightning, these few scenes flash down to us across thecenturies: but what a life must that have been of which this was theconclusion! We have glimpses of him a few years earlier, when he won hisspurs in Ireland--won them by deeds which to us seem terrible in theirruthlessness, but which won the applause of Sir Henry Sidney as too highfor praise or even reward. Chequered like all of us with lines of lightand darkness, he was, nevertheless, one of a race which has ceased tobe. We look round for them, and we can hardly believe that the sameblood is flowing in our veins. Brave we may still be, and strong perhapsas they, but the high moral grace which made bravery and strength sobeautiful is departed from us for ever. 

Our space is sadly limited for historical portrait painting; but we mustfind room for another of that Greenaway party whose nature was as fineas that of Gilbert, and who intellectually was more largely gifted. Thelatter was drowned in 1583. In 1585 John Davis left Dartmouth on hisfirst voyage into the Polar seas; and twice subsequently he went again, venturing in small ill-equipped vessels of thirty or forty tons into themost dangerous seas. These voyages were as remarkable for their successas for the daring with which they were accomplished, and Davis's epitaphis written on the map of the world, where his name still remains tocommemorate his discoveries. Brave as he was, he is distinguished by apeculiar and exquisite sweetness of nature, which, from many littlefacts of his life, seems to have affected everyone with whom he came incontact in a remarkable degree. We find men, for the love of MasterDavis, leaving their firesides to sail with him, without other hope ormotion; we find silver bullets cast to shoot him in a mutiny; the hardrude natures of the mutineers being awed by something in his carriagewhich was not like that of a common man. He has written the account ofone of his northern voyages himself; one of those, by-the-by, which theHakluyt Society have mutilated; and there is an imaginative beauty init, and a rich delicacy of expression, which is called out in him by thefirst sight of strange lands and things and people. 

To show what he was, we should have preferred, if possible, to havetaken the story of his expedition into the South Seas, in which, undercircumstances of singular difficulty, he was deserted by Candish, underwhom he had sailed; and after inconceivable trials from famine, mutiny, and storm, ultimately saved himself and his ship, and such of the crewas had chosen to submit to his orders. But it is a long history, andwill not admit of being curtailed. As an instance of the stuff of whichit was composed, he ran back in the black night in a gale of windthrough the Straits of Magellan, _by a chart which he had made with theeye in passing up_. His anchors were lost or broken; the cables wereparted. He could not bring up the ship; there was nothing for it but torun, and he carried her safe through along a channel often not threemiles broad, sixty miles from end to end, and twisting like the reachesof a river. 

For the present, however, we are forced to content ourselves with a fewsketches out of the north-west voyages. Here is one, for instance, whichshows how an Englishman could deal with the Indians. Davis had landed atGilbert's Sound, and gone up the country exploring. On his return hefound his crew loud in complaints of the thievish propensities of thenatives, and urgent to have an example made of some of them. On the nextoccasion he fired a gun at them with blank cartridge; but their naturewas still too strong for them. 

 Seeing iron (he says), they could in no case forbear stealing; which, when I perceived, it did but minister to me occasion of laughter to see their simplicity, and I willed that they should not be hardly used, but that our company should be more diligent to keep their things, supposing it to be very hard in so short a time to make them know their evils. 

In his own way, however, he took an opportunity of administering alesson to them of a more wholesome kind than could be given withgunpowder and bullets. Like the rest his countrymen, he believed thesavage Indians in their idolatries to be worshippers of the devil. 'Theyare witches, ' he says; 'they have images in great store, and use manykinds of enchantments. ' And these enchantments they tried on oneoccasion to put in force against himself and his crew. 

 Being on shore on the 4th day of July, one of them made a long oration, and then kindled a fire, into which with many strange words and gestures he put divers things, which we supposed to be a sacrifice. Myself and certain of my company standing by, they desired us to go into the smoke. I desired them to go into the smoke, which they would by no means do. I then took one of them and thrust him into the smoke, and willed one of my company to tread out the fire, and spurn it into the sea, which was done to show them that we did contemn their sorceries. 

It is a very English story--exactly what a modern Englishman would do;only, perhaps, not believing that there was any real devil in the case, which makes a difference. However, real or not real, after seeing himpatiently put up with such an injury, we will hope the poor Greenlanderhad less respect for the devil than formerly. 

Leaving Gilbert's Sound, Davis went on to the north-west, and in lat. 63° fell in with a barrier of ice, which he coasted for thirteen dayswithout finding an opening. The very sight of an iceberg was new to allhis crew; and the ropes and shrouds, though it was midsummer, becomingcompassed with ice, --

 The people began to fall sick and faint-hearted--whereupon, very orderly, with good discretion, they entreated me to regard the safety of mine own life, as well as the preservation of theirs; and that I should not, through overbouldness, leave their widows and fatherless children to give me bitter curses. 

 Whereupon, seeking counsel of God, it pleased His Divine Majesty to move my heart to prosecute that which I hope shall be to His glory, and to the contentation of every Christian mind. 

He had two vessels--one of some burthen, the other a pinnace of thirtytons. The result of the counsel which he had sought was, that he madeover his own large vessel to such as wished to return, and himself, 'thinking it better to die with honour than to return with infamy, ' wenton, with such volunteers as would follow him, in a poor leaky cutter, upthe sea now in commemoration of that adventure called Davis's Straits. He ascended 4° North of the furthest known point, among storms andicebergs, when the long days and twilight nights alone saved him frombeing destroyed, and, coasting back along the American shore, hediscovered Hudson's Straits, supposed then to be the long-desiredentrance into the Pacific. This exploit drew the attention ofWalsingham, and by him Davis was presented to Burleigh, 'who was alsopleased to show him great encouragement. ' If either these statesmen orElizabeth had been twenty years younger, his name would have filled alarger space in history than a small corner of the map of the world;but if he was employed at all in the last years of the century, no_vates sacer_ has been found to celebrate his work, and no clue is leftto guide us. He disappears; a cloud falls over him. He is known to havecommanded trading vessels in the Eastern seas, and to have returned fivetimes from India. But the details are all lost, and accident has onlyparted the clouds for a moment to show us the mournful setting withwhich he, too, went down upon the sea. 

In taking out Sir Edward Michellthorne to India, in 1604, he fell inwith a crew of Japanese, whose ship had been burnt, drifting at sea, without provisions, in a leaky junk. He supposed them to be pirates, buthe did not choose to leave them to so wretched a death, and took them onboard; and in a few hours, watching their opportunity, they murderedhim. 

As the fool dieth, so dieth the wise, and there is no difference; it wasthe chance of the sea, and the ill reward of a humane action--amelancholy end for such a man--like the end of a warrior, not dyingEpaminondas-like on the field of victory, but cut off in some poor brawlor ambuscade. But so it was with all these men. They were cut off in theflower of their days, and few of them laid their bones in the sepulchresof their fathers. They knew the service which they had chosen, and theydid not ask the wages for which they had not laboured. Life with themwas no summer holiday, but a holy sacrifice offered up to duty, and whattheir Master sent was welcome. Beautiful is old age--beautiful as theslow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with her blessings; shefills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by hischildren and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to agrave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should notcall it beautiful. It is beautiful, but not the most beautiful. There isanother life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with bleeding feet andaching brow; the life of which the cross is the symbol; a battle whichno peace follows, this side the grave; which the grave gapes to finish, before the victory is won; and--strange that it should be so--this isthe highest life of man. Look back along the great names of history;there is none whose life has been other than this. They to whom it hasbeen given to do the really highest work in this earth--whoever theyare, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves--one and all, their fate hasbeen the same--the same bitter cup has been given to them to drink. Andso it was with the servants of England in the sixteenth century. Theirlife was a long battle, either with the elements or with men; and it wasenough for them to fulfil their work, and to pass away in the hour whenGod had nothing more to bid them do. They did not complain, and whyshould we complain for them? Peaceful life was not what they desired, and an honourable death had no terrors for them. Theirs was the oldGrecian spirit, and the great heart of the Theban poet lived again inthem:--

 [Greek: Thanein d' hoisin ananka, ti ke tis anônumon gêras en skotô kathêmenos hepsoi matan, hapantôn kalôn ammoros?]

'Seeing, ' in Gilbert's own brave words, 'that death is inevitable, andthe fame of virtue is immortal; wherefore in this behalf _mutare veltimere sperno_. '

In the conclusion of these light sketches we pass into an elementdifferent from that in which we have been lately dwelling. The scenes inwhich Gilbert and Davis played out their high natures were of the kindwhich we call peaceful, and the enemies with which they contended wereprincipally the ice and the wind, and the stormy seas and the dangers ofunknown and savage lands. We shall close amidst the roar of cannon, andthe wrath and rage of battle. Hume, who alludes to the engagement whichwe are going to describe, speaks of it in a tone which shows that helooked at it as something portentous and prodigious; as a thing towonder at--but scarcely as deserving the admiration which we pay toactions properly within the scope of humanity--and as if the energywhich was displayed in it was like the unnatural strength of madness. Hedoes not say this, but he appears to feel it; and he scarcely would havefelt it if he had cared more deeply to saturate himself with the temperof the age of which he was writing. At the time, all England and all theworld rang with the story. It struck a deeper terror, though it was butthe action of a single ship, into the hearts of the Spanish people; itdealt a more deadly blow upon their fame and moral strength than thedestruction of the Armada itself; and in the direct results which arosefrom it, it was scarcely less disastrous to them. Hardly, as it seems tous, if the most glorious actions which are set like jewels in thehistory of mankind are weighed one against the other in the balance, hardly will those 300 Spartans who in the summer morning sate 'combingtheir long hair for death' in the passes of Thermopylæ, have earned amore lofty estimate for themselves than this one crew of modernEnglishmen. 

In August 1591, Lord Thomas Howard, with six English line-of-battleships, six victuallers, and two or three pinnaces, was lying at anchorunder the Island of Florez. Light in ballast and short of water, withhalf his men disabled by sickness, Howard was unable to pursue theaggressive purpose on which he had been sent out. Several of the ships'crews were on shore: the ships themselves 'all pestered and rommaging, 'with everything out of order. In this condition they were surprised by aSpanish fleet consisting of 53 men-of-war. Eleven out of the twelveEnglish ships obeyed the signal of the admiral, to cut or weigh theiranchors and escape as they might. The twelfth, the 'Revenge, ' was unablefor the moment to follow. Of her crew of 190, ninety were sick on shore, and, from the position of the ship, there was some delay and difficultyin getting them on board. The 'Revenge' was commanded by Sir RichardGrenville, of Bideford, a man well known in the Spanish seas, and theterror of the Spanish sailors; so fierce he was said to be, that mythicstories passed from lip to lip about him, and, like Earl Talbot orCoeur de Lion, the nurses at the Azores frightened children with thesound of his name. 'He was of great revenues, of his own inheritance, 'they said, 'but of unquiet mind, and greatly affected to wars;' and fromhis uncontrollable propensities for blood-eating, he had volunteered hisservices to the queen; 'of so hard a complexion was he, that I (JohnHuighen von Linschoten, who is our authority here, and who was with theSpanish fleet after the action) have been told by divers crediblepersons who stood and beheld him, that he would carouse three or fourglasses of wine, and take the glasses between his teeth and crush themin pieces and swallow them down. ' Such Grenville was to the Spaniard. Tothe English he was a goodly and gallant gentleman, who had never turnedhis back upon an enemy, and was remarkable in that remarkable time forhis constancy and daring. In this surprise at Florez he was in no hasteto fly. He first saw all his sick on board and stowed away on theballast; and then, with no more than 100 men left him to fight and workthe ship, he deliberately weighed, uncertain, as it seemed at first, what he intended to do. The Spanish fleet were by this time on hisweather bow, and he was persuaded (we here take his cousin Raleigh'sbeautiful narrative, and follow it in Raleigh's words) 'to cut hismainsail and cast about, and trust to the sailing of the ship:'--

 But Sir Richard utterly refused to turn from the enemy, alledging that he would rather choose to die than to dishonour himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship, persuading his company that he would pass through their two squadrons in spite of them, and enforce those of Seville to give him way: which he performed upon diverse of the foremost, who, as the mariners term it, sprang their luff, and fell under the lee of the 'Revenge. ' But the other course had been the better; and might right well have been answered in so great an impossibility of prevailing: notwithstanding, out of the greatness of his mind, he could not be persuaded. 

The wind was light; the 'San Philip, ' 'a huge high-carged ship' of 1, 500tons, came up to windward of him, and, taking the wind out of his sails, ran aboard him. 

 After the 'Revenge' was entangled with the 'San Philip, ' four others boarded her, two on her larboard and two on her starboard. The fight thus beginning at three o'clock in the afternoon continued very terrible all that evening. But the great 'San Philip, ' having received the lower tier of the 'Revenge, ' shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment. The Spanish ships were tilled with soldiers, in some 200, besides the mariners, in some 500, in others 800. In ours there were none at all, besides the mariners, but the servants of the commander and some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many enterchanged vollies of great ordnance and small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to enter the 'Revenge, ' and made divers attempts, hoping to force her by the multitude of their armed soldiers and musketeers; but were still repulsed again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own ship or into the sea. In the beginning of the fight the 'George Noble, ' of London, having received some shot through her by the Armadas, fell under the lee of the 'Revenge, ' and asked Sir Richard what he would command him; but being one of the victuallers, and of small force, Sir Richard bade him save himself and leave him to his fortune. 

This last was a little touch of gallantry, which we should be glad toremember with the honour due to the brave English sailor who commandedthe 'George Noble;' but his name has passed away, and his action is an_in memoriam_, on which time has effaced the writing. All that Augustnight the fight continued, the stars rolling over in their sad majesty, but unseen through the sulphurous clouds which hung over the scene. Shipafter ship of the Spaniards came on upon the 'Revenge, ' 'so that neverless than two mighty galleons were at her side and aboard her, ' washingup like waves upon a rock, and falling foiled and shattered back amidstthe roar of the artillery. Before morning fifteen several Armadas hadassailed her, and all in vain; some had been sunk at her side; and therest, 'so ill approving of their entertainment, that at break of daythey were far more willing to hearken to a composition, than hastily tomake more assaults or entries. ' 'But as the day increased, ' saysRaleigh, 'so our men decreased; and as the light grew more and more, byso much the more grew our discomfort, for none appeared in sight butenemies, save one small ship called the "Pilgrim, " commanded by JacobWhiddon, who hovered all night to see the success, but in the morning, bearing with the "Revenge, " was hunted like a hare among many ravenoushounds--but escaped. '

All the powder in the 'Revenge' was now spent, all her pikes werebroken, 40 out of her 100 men killed, and a great number of the restwounded. Sir Richard, though badly hurt early in the battle, neverforsook the deck till an hour before midnight; and was then shot throughthe body while his wounds were being dressed, and again in the head. Hissurgeon was killed while attending on him; the masts were lying over theside, the rigging cut or broken, the upper works all shot in pieces, andthe ship herself, unable to move, was settling slowly in the sea; thevast fleet of Spaniards lying round her in a ring, like dogs round adying lion, and wary of approaching him in his last agony. Sir Richard, seeing that it was past hope, having fought for fifteen hours, and'having by estimation eight hundred shot of great artillery throughhim, ' 'commanded the master gunner, whom he knew to be a most resoluteman, to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing might remain ofglory or victory to the Spaniards; seeing in so many hours they were notable to take her, having had above fifteen hours' time, above tenthousand men, and fifty-three men-of-war to perform it withal; andpersuaded the company, or as many as he could induce, to yieldthemselves unto God and to the mercy of none else; but as they had, likevaliant resolute men, repulsed so many enemies, they should not nowshorten the honour of their nation by prolonging their own lives for afew hours or a few days. '

The gunner and a few others consented. But such [Greek: daimoniê aretê]was more than could be expected of ordinary seamen. They had dared doall which did become men, and they were not more than men. Two Spanishships had gone down, above 1, 500 of their crew were killed, and theSpanish admiral could not induce any one of the rest of his fleet toboard the 'Revenge' again, 'doubting lest Sir Richard would have blownup himself and them, knowing his dangerous disposition. ' Sir Richardlying disabled below, the captain, 'finding the Spaniards as ready toentertain a composition as they could be to offer it, ' gained over themajority of the surviving company; and the remainder then drawing backfrom the master gunner, they all, without further consulting their dyingcommander, surrendered on honourable terms. If unequal to the English inaction, the Spaniards were at least as courteous in victory. It is dueto them to say, that the conditions were faithfully observed; and 'theship being marvellous unsavourie, ' Alonzo de Bacon, the Spanish admiral, sent his boat to bring Sir Richard on board his own vessel. 

Sir Richard, whose life was fast ebbing away, replied that 'he might dowith his body what he list, for that he esteemed it not;' and as he wascarried out of the ship he swooned, and reviving again, desired thecompany to pray for him. 

The admiral used him with all humanity, 'commending his valour andworthiness, being unto them a rare spectacle, and a resolution seldomapproved. ' The officers of the fleet, too, John Higgins tells us, crowded round to look at him; and a new fight had almost broken outbetween the Biscayans and the 'Portugals, ' each claiming the honour ofhaving boarded the 'Revenge. '

 In a few hours Sir Richard, feeling his end approaching, showed not any sign of faintness, but spake these words in Spanish, and said, 'Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do that hath fought for his country, queen, religion, and honour. Whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do. ' When he had finished these or other such like words, he gave up the ghost with great and stout courage, and no man could perceive any sign of heaviness in him. 

Such was the fight at Florez, in that August of 1591, without its equalin such of the annals of mankind as the thing which we call history haspreserved to us; scarcely equalled by the most glorious fate which theimagination of Barrère could invent for the 'Vengeur. ' Nor did thematter end without a sequel awful as itself. Sea battles have been oftenfollowed by storms, and without a miracle; but with a miracle, as theSpaniards and the English alike believed, or without one, as we modernswould prefer believing, 'there ensued on this action a tempest soterrible as was never seen or heard the like before. ' A fleet ofmerchantmen joined the Armada immediately after the battle, forming inall 140 sail; and of these 140, only 32 ever saw Spanish harbour. Therest foundered, or were lost on the Azores. The men-of-war had been soshattered by shot as to be unable to carry sail; and the 'Revenge'herself, disdaining to survive her commander, or as if to complete hisown last baffled purpose, like Samson, buried herself and her 200 prizecrew under the rocks of St. Michael's. 

 And it may well be thought and presumed (says John Huighen) that it was no other than a just plague purposely sent upon the Spaniards; and that it might be truly said, the taking of the 'Revenge' was justly revenged on them; and not by the might or force of man, but by the power of God. As some of them openly said in the Isle of Terceira, that they believed verily God would consume them, and that he took part with the Lutherans and heretics . .. Saying further, that so soon as they had thrown the dead body of the Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Grenville overboard, they verily thought that as he had a devilish faith and religion, and therefore the devil loved him, so he presently sunk into the bottom of the sea and down into hell, where he raised up all the devils to the revenge of his death, and that they brought so great a storm and torments upon the Spaniards, because they only maintained the Catholic and Romish religion. Such and the like blasphemies against God they ceased not openly to utter. 

FOOTNOTES:

[U] _Westminster Review_, 1853. 

[V] This essay was written 15 years ago. 

[W] Here is the old stanza. Let whoever is disposed to think us too hardon Captain Bethune compare them:--

 'For Wetharrington my harte was wo, That even he slayne sholde be; For when both his leggis were hewen in to, He knyled and fought on his knee. '

Even Percy, who, on the whole, thinks well of the modern ballad, givesup this stanza as hopeless. 

HOMER. [X]

Troy fell before the Greeks; and in its turn the war of Troy is nowfalling before the critics. That ten years' death-struggle, in which theimmortals did not disdain to mingle--those massive warriors, with theirgrandeur and their chivalry, have, 'like an unsubstantial pageant, faded' before the wand of these modern enchanters; and the Iliad and theOdyssey, and the other early legends, are discovered to be no more thanthe transparent myths of an old cosmogony, the arabesques and frescoeswith which the imagination of the Ionian poets set off and ornamentedthe palace of the heavens, the struggle of the earth with the seasons, and the labours of the sun through his twelve signs. 

Nay, with Homer himself it was likely at one time to have fared nobetter. His works, indeed, were indestructible, yet if they could not bedestroyed, they might be disorganised; and with their instinctive hatredof facts, the critics fastened on the historical existence of the poet. The origin of the poems was distributed among the clouds of pre-historicimagination; and--instead of a single inspired Homer for their author, we were required to believe in some extraordinary spontaneousgeneration, or in some collective genius of an age which ignorance hadpersonified. 

But the person of a poet has been found more difficult of eliminationthan a mere fact of history. Facts, it was once said, were stubbornthings; but in our days we have changed all that; a fact, under theknife of a critic, splits in pieces, and is dissected out of belief withincredible readiness. The helpless thing lies under his hand like afoolish witness in a law court, when browbeaten by an unscrupulousadvocate, and is turned about and twisted this way and that way, tillin its distraction it contradicts itself, and bears witness againstitself; and to escape from torture, at last flies utterly away, itselfhalf doubting its own existence. 

But it requires more cunning weapons to destroy a Homer; like his ownimmortals, he may be wounded, but he cannot have the life carved out ofhim by the prosaic strokes of common men. His poems have but to bedisintegrated to unite again, so strong are they in the individuality oftheir genius. The singleness of their structure--the unity ofdesign--the distinctness of drawing in the characters--the inimitablepeculiarities of manner in each of them, seem to place beyond seriousquestion, after the worst onslaught of the Wolfian critics, that bothIliad and Odyssey, whether or not the work of the same mind, are atleast each of them singly the work of one. 

Let them leave us Homer, however, and on the rank and file of facts theymay do their worst; we can be indifferent to, or even thankful for, whatslaughter they may make. In the legends of the Theogonia, in that ofZeus and Cronus, for instance, there is evidently a metaphysicalallegory; in the legends of Persephone, or of the Dioscuri, a physicalone; in that of Athene, a profoundly philosophical one; and fused as theentire system was in the intensely poetical conception of the earlythinkers, it would be impossible, even if it were desirable, at thistime of day, to disentangle the fibres of all these various elements. Fact and theory, the natural and the supernatural, the legendary and thephilosophical, shade off so imperceptibly one into the other, in thestories of the Olympians, or of their first offspring, that we can neverassure ourselves that we are on historic ground, or that, antecedent tothe really historic age, there is any such ground to be found anywhere. The old notion, that the heroes were deified men, is no longer tenable. With but few exceptions, we can trace their names as the names of theold gods of the Hellenic or Pelasgian races; and if they appeared laterin human forms, they descended from Olympus to assume them. Diomed wasthe OEtolian sun-god; Achilles was worshipped in Thessaly long beforehe became the hero of the tale of Troy. The tragedy of the house ofAtreus, and the bloody bath of Agamemnon, as we are now told withappearance of certainty, [Y] are humanised stories of the physicalstruggle of the opposing principles of life and death, light anddarkness, night and day, winter and summer. 

And let them be so; we need not be sorry to believe that there is nosubstantial basis for these tales of crime. The history of mankind isnot so pure but that we can afford to lose a few dark pages out of therecord. Let it be granted that of the times which Homer sunghistorically we know nothing literal at all--not any names of any kings, of any ministers, wars, intrigues, revolutions, crimes. They are allgone--dead--passed away; their vacant chronicles may be silent as thetombs in which their bones are buried. Of such stuff as that with whichhistorians fill their pages there is no trace; it is a blank, vacant asthe annals of the Hottentot or of the Red Indian. Yet when all is said, there remain still to us in Homer's verse, materials richer, perhaps, than exist for any period of the ancient world, richer than even for thebrilliant days of Pericles, or of the Cæsars, to construct a history ofanother kind--a history, a picture not of the times of which he sang, but of the men among whom he lived. How they acted; how they thought, talked, and felt; what they made of this earth, and of their place init; their private life and their public life; men and women; masters andservants; rich and poor--we have it all delineated in the marvellousverse of a poet who, be he what he may, was in this respect the greatestwhich the earth has ever seen. In extent, the information is littleenough; but in the same sense as it has been said that an hour at anAthenian supper-party would teach us more Grecian life and characterthan all Aristophanes, Homer's pictures of life and manners are soliving, so distinct, so palpable, that a whole prose encyclopædia ofdisconnected facts could give us nothing like them. It is the marvellousproperty of verse--one, if we rightly consider it, which would excuseany superstition on the origin of language--that the metrical andrhythmic arrangement of syllable and sound is able to catch and expressback to us, not the stories of actions, but the actions themselves, withall the feelings which inspire them; to call up human action, and allother outward things in which human hearts take interest--to producethem, or to reproduce them, with a distinctness which shall produce thesame emotions which they would themselves produce when really existing. The thing itself is made present before us by an exercise of creativepower as genuine as that of Nature herself; which, perhaps, is but thesame power manifesting itself at one time in words, at another inoutward phenomena. Whatever be the cause, the fact is so. Poetry hasthis life-giving power, and prose has it not; and thus the poet is thetruest historian. Whatever is properly valuable in history the poetgives us--not events and names, but emotion, but action, but life. He isthe heart of his age, and his verse expresses his age; and what matteris it by what name he describes his places or his persons? What matteris it what his own name was, while we have himself, and while we havethe originals, from which he drew? The work and the life are all forwhich we need care, are all which can really interest us; the names arenothing. Though Phoeacia was a dream-land, or a symbol of the Elysianfields, yet Homer drew his material, his island, his palaces, hisharbour, his gardens of perennial beauty, from those fair cities whichlay along the shores of his own Ionia; and like his blind Demodocus, Homer doubtless himself sung those very hymns which now delight us so, in the halls of many a princely Alcinous. 

The prose historian may give us facts and names; he may catalogue thesuccessions, and tell us long stories of battles, and of factions, andof political intrigues; he may draw characters for us, of the sort whichfigure commonly in such features of human affairs, men of the unheroic, unpoetic kind--the Cleons, the Sejanuses, the Tiberiuses, a Philip theSecond or a Louis Quatorze, in whom the noble element died out intoselfishness and vulgarity. But great men--and all MEN properly so called(whatever is genuine and natural in them)--lie beyond prose, and canonly be really represented by the poet. This is the reason why such menas Alexander, or as Cæsar, or as Cromwell, so perplex us in histories, because they and their actions are beyond the scope of the art throughwhich we have looked at them. We compare the man as the historianrepresents him, with the track of his path through the world. The workis the work of a giant; the man, stripped of the vulgar appendages withwhich the stunted imagination of his biographer may have set him off, isfull of meannesses and littlenesses, and is scarcely greater than oneof ourselves. Prose, that is, has attempted something to which it is notequal. It describes a figure which it calls Cæsar; but it is not Cæsar, it is a monster. For the same reason, prose fictions, novels, and thelike, are worthless for more than a momentary purpose. The life whichthey are able to represent is not worth representing. There is no personso poor in his own eyes as not to gaze with pleasure into alooking-glass; and the prose age may value its own image in the novel. But the value of all such representations is ephemeral. It is with thepoet's art as with the sculptor's--sandstone will not carve like marble, its texture is too loose to retain a sharply moulded outline. Theactions of men, if they are true, noble, and genuine, are strong enoughto bear the form and bear the polish of verse; if loose or feeble, theycrumble away into the softer undulations of prose. 

What the life was whose texture bore shaping into Homer's verse, weintend to spend these pages in examining. It is, of course, properly tobe sought for in the poems themselves. But we shall here be concernedmainly with features which in the original are rather secondary thanprominent, and which have to be collected out of fragments, here a line, and there a line, out of little hints, let fall by Homer as it were byaccident. Things too familiar to his own hearers to require dwelling on, to us, whose object is to make out just those very things which werefamiliar, are of special and singular value. It is not an enquiry whichwill much profit us, if we come to it with any grand notions of the'progress of the species, ' for in many ways it will discourage thebelief in progress. 

We have fallen into ways of talking of the childhood and infancy of therace, as if no beards had grown on any face before the modernReformation; and even people who know what old Athens was underPericles, look commonly on earlier Greece as scarcely struggling out ofits cradle. It would have fared so with all early history except for theBible. The Old Testament has operated partially to keep us in our modestsenses, and we can see something grand about the patriarchs; but this isowing to exceptional causes, which do not apply to other literature; andin spite of our admiration of Homer's poetry, we regard his age, and thecontemporary periods in the other people of the earth, as a kind ofchildhood little better than barbarism. We look upon it, at all events, as too far removed in every essential of spirit or of form from our own, to enable us to feel for it any strong interest or sympathy. More orless, we have, every one of us, felt something of this kind. Homer's menare, at first sight, unlike any men that we have ever seen; and it isnot without a shock of surprise that, for the first time, we fall, inreading him, across some little trait of humanity which in form as wellas spirit is really identical with our own experience. Then, for themoment, all is changed with us--gleams of light flash out, in which thedrapery becomes transparent, and we see the human form behind it, andthat entire old world in the warm glow of flesh and blood. Such is theeffect of those few child scenes of his, which throw us back into ourold familiar childhood. With all these years between us, there is nodifference between their children and ours, and child would meet childwithout sense of strangeness in common games and common pleasures. 

The little Ulysses climbing on the knees of his father's guest, coaxingfor a taste of the red wine, and spilling it as he starts at the unusualtaste; or that other most beautiful picture of him running at Laertes'sside in the garden at Ithaca, the father teaching the boy the names ofthe fruit-trees, and making presents to him of this tree and of thattree for his very own, to help him to remember what they were called;the partition wall of three thousand years melts away as we look back atscenes like these; that broad, world-experienced man was once, then, such a little creature as we remember ourselves, and Laertes a calm, kind father of the nineteenth century. Then, as now, the children lovedto sport upon the shore, and watch the inrolling waves;--then, as now, the boy-architect would pile the moist sand into mimic town or castle, and when the work was finished, sweep it away again in wanton humourwith foot and hand;--then, as now, the little tired maiden would clingto her mother's skirt, and, trotting painfully along beside her, look upwistfully and plead with moist eyes to be carried in her arms. Nay, andamong the grown ones, where time has not changed the occupation, and theforms of culture have little room to vary, we meet again with veryfamiliar faces. There is Melantho, the not over-modest titteringwaiting-maid--saucy to her mistress and the old housekeeper, and alwaysrunning after the handsome young princes. Unhappy Melantho, true childof universal nature! grievous work we should make with most households, if all who resemble thee were treated to as rough a destiny. And thereare other old friends whom it is pleasant enough to recognise at so longa distance. 'Certain smooth-haired, sleek-faced fellows--insolent wheretheir lords would permit them; inquisitive and pert, living but to eatand drink, and pilfering the good things, to convey them stealthily totheir friends outside the castle wall. ' The thing that hath been, thatshall be again. When Homer wrote, the type had settled into its longenduring form. 'Such are they, ' he adds, in his good-natured irony, 'asthe valet race ever love to be. '

With such evidence of identity among us all, it is worth while to lookcloser at the old Greeks, to try to find in Homer something beyond finepoetry, or exciting adventures, or battle-scenes, or material forscholarship; for awhile to set all that aside, and look in him for thestory of real living men--set to pilgrimise in the old way on the sameold earth--men such as we are, children of one family, with the samework to do, to live the best life they could, and to save theirsouls--with the same trials, the same passions, the same difficulties, if with weaker means of meeting them. 

And first for their religion. 

Let those who like it, lend their labour to the unravelling the secretsof the mythologies. Theogonies and Theologies are not religion; they arebut its historic dress and outward or formal expression, which, like alanguage, may be intelligible to those who see the inward meaning in thesign, but no more than confused sound to us who live in anotheratmosphere, and have no means of transferring ourselves into thesentiment of an earlier era. It is not in these forms of a day or of anage that we should look for the real belief--the real feelings of theheart; but in the natural expressions which burst outspontaneously--expressions of opinion on Providence, on the relation ofman to God, on the eternal laws by which this world is governed. Perhapswe misuse the word in speaking of religion; we ought rather to speak ofpiety: piety is always simple; the emotion is too vast, toooverpowering, whenever it is genuine, to be nice or fantastic in itsform; and leaving philosophies and cosmogonies to shape themselves inmyth and legend, it speaks itself out with a calm and humble clearness. We may trifle with our own discoveries, and hand them over to the fancyor the imagination for elaborate decoration. We may shroud over supposedmysteries under an enigmatic veil, and adapt the degrees of initiationto the capacities of our pupils; but before the vast facts of God andProvidence, the difference between man and man dwarfs into nothing. Theyare no discoveries of our own with which we can meddle, but revelationsof the Infinite, which, like the sunlight, shed themselves on all alike, wise and unwise, good and evil, and they claim and they permit no otheracknowledgment from us than the simple obedience of our lives, and theplainest confession of our lips. 

Such confessions, except in David's Psalms, we shall not anywhere findmore natural or unaffected than in Homer--most definite, yet neverelaborate--as far as may be from any complimenting of Providence, yetexpressing the most unquestioning conviction. We shall not oftenremember them when we set about religion as a business; but when theoccasions of life stir the feelings in us on which religion itselfreposes, if we were as familiar with the Iliad as with the Psalms, thewords of the old Ionian singer would leap as naturally to our lips asthose of the Israelite king. 

Zeus is not always the questionable son of Cronus, nor the gods alwaysthe mythologic Olympians. Generally, it is true, they appear as a largerorder of subject beings--beings like men, and subject to a highercontrol--in a position closely resembling that of Milton's angels, andliable like them to passion and to error. But at times, the father ofgods and men is the Infinite and Eternal Ruler--the living Providence ofthe world--and the lesser gods are the immortal administrators of hisDivine will throughout the lower creation. For ever at the head of theuniverse there is an awful spiritual power; when Zeus appears with adistinct and positive personality, he is himself subordinate to anauthority which elsewhere is one with himself. Wherever either he or theother gods are made susceptible of emotion, the Invisible is beyond andabove them. When Zeus is the personal father of Sarpedon, and hisprivate love conflicts with the law of the eternal order, though he haspower to set aside the law, he dares not break it; but in the midst ofhis immortality, and on his own awful throne, he weeps tears of blood inineffectual sorrow for his dying child. And again, there is a powersupreme both over Zeus and over Poseidon, of which Iris reminds thelatter, when she is sent to rebuke him for his disobedience to hisbrother. It is a law, she says, that the younger shall obey the elder, and the Erinnys will revenge its breach even on a god. 

But descending from the more difficult Pantheon among mankind, theDivine law of justice is conceived as clearly as we in this day canconceive it. The supreme power is the same immortal lover of justice andthe same hater of iniquity; and justice means what we mean by justice, and iniquity what we mean by iniquity. There is no diffidence, noscepticism on this matter; the moral law is as sure as day and night, summer and winter. Thus in the sixteenth Iliad--

'When in the market-place men deal unjustly, and the rulers decreecrooked judgment, not regarding the fear of God, ' God sends the storm, and the earthquake, and the tempest, as the executors of his vengeance. 

Again, Ulysses says--

'God looks upon the children of men, and punishes the wrong-doer. '

And Eumæus--

'The gods love not violence and wrong; but the man whose ways arerighteous, him they honour. '

Even when as mere Olympians they put off their celestial nature, and mixin earthly strife, and are thus laid open to earthly suffering, amystery still hangs about them; Diomed, even while he crosses the pathof Ares, feels all the while 'that they are short-lived who contend withthe Immortals. ' Ajax boasts that he will save himself in spite ofheaven, and immediately the wave dashes him upon the rocks. One lightword escaped Ulysses in the excitement of his escape from the Cyclops, which nine years of suffering hardly expiated. 

The same spirit which teaches Christians that those who have no earthlyfriend have specially a friend above to care for and to avenge them, taught the Ionians a proverb which appears again and again in Homer, that the stranger and the poor man are the patrimony of God; and ittaught them, also, that sometimes men entertained the Immortalsunawares. It was a faith, too, which was more than words with them; forwe hear of no vagrant acts or alien acts, and it was sacrilege to turnaway from the gate whoever asked its hospitality. Times are changed. Theworld was not so crowded as it is now, and perhaps rogues were lessabundant; but at any rate those antique Greeks did what they said. Wesay what they said, while in the same breath we say, too, that it isimpossible to do it. 

In every way, the dependence of man on a special heavenly Providence wasa matter of sure and certain conviction with them. Telemachus appeals tothe belief in the Council at Ithaca. He questions it at Pylos, and is atonce rebuked by Athene. Both in Iliad and Odyssey to live justly is thesteady service which the gods require, and their favour as surelyfollows when that service is paid, as a Nemesis sooner or later followssurely, too, on the evil-doers. 

But without multiplying evidence, as we easily might, from every part ofboth Iliad and Odyssey, the sceptical and the believing forms of thoughtand feeling on this very subject are made points of dramatic contrast, to show off the opposition of two separate characters; and this is clearproof that such thoughts and feelings must have been familiar to Homer'shearers: if it were not so, his characters would have been withoutinterest to his age--they would have been individual, and not universal;and no expenditure of intellect, or passion, would have made men care tolisten to him. The two persons who throughout the Iliad stand out inrelief in contrast to each other are, of course, Hector and Achilles;and faith in God (as distinct from a mere recognition of him) is asdirectly the characteristic of Hector as in Achilles it is entirelyabsent. Both characters are heroic, but the heroism in them springs fromopposite sources. Both are heroic, because both are strong; but thestrength of one is in himself, and the strength of the other is in hisfaith. Hector is a patriot; Achilles does not know what patriotismmeans;--Hector is full of tenderness and human affection; Achilles isself-enveloped. Even his love for Patroclus is not pure, for Patroclusis as the moon to the sun of Achilles, and Achilles sees his own gloryreflected on his friend. They have both a forecast of their fate; butHector, in his great brave way, scoffs at omens; he knows that there isa special providence in the fall of a sparrow, and defies augury. To dohis duty is the only omen for which Hector cares; and if death must be, he can welcome it like a gallant man, if it find him fighting for hiscountry. Achilles is moody, speculative, and subjective; he is too proudto attempt an ineffectual resistance to what he knows to be inevitable, but he alternately murmurs at it and scorns it. Till his passion isstirred by his friend's death, he seems equally to disdain the greatnessof life and the littleness of it; the glories of a hero are not worthdying for; and like Solomon, and almost in Solomon's words, he complainsthat there is one event to all--

 [Greek: En de iê timê ê men kakos êe kai esthlos. ]

To gratify his own spleen, he will accept an inglorious age in Thessaly, in exchange for a hero's immortality; as again in the end it is but togratify his own wounded pride that he goes out to brave a fate which hescorns while he knows that it will subdue him. Thus, Achilles is thehero of the stern human, self-sufficing spirit, which does not deny orquestion destiny, but seeing nothing in it except a cold, iron law, meets force with force, and holds up against it an unbroken, unbendingwill. Human nature is at its best but a miserable business to him; deathand sorrow are its inevitable lot. As a brave man, he will not fear suchthings, but he will not pretend to regard them as anything butdetestable; and he comforts the old, weeping king of Troy, whose age hewas himself bringing down to the grave in sorrow, with philosophicmeditations on the vanity of all things, and a picture of Zeus mixingthe elements of life out of the two urns of good and evil. 

Turn to Hector, and we turn from shadow into sunlight. Achilles is allself, Hector all self-forgetfulness; Achilles all pride, Hector allmodesty. The confidence of Achilles is in himself and in his own arm;Hector knows (and the strongest expressions of the kind in all the Iliadare placed pointedly in Hector's mouth) that there is no strength exceptfrom above. 'God's will, ' he says, 'is over all; he makes the strong manto fear, and gives the victory to the weak, if it shall please him. ' Andat last, when he meets Achilles, he answers his bitter words, not with adefiance, but calmly saying, 'I know that thou art mighty, and that mystrength is far less than thine; but these things lie in the will ofthe gods, and I, though weaker far than thou, may yet take thy life fromthee, if the Immortals choose to have it so. '

So far, then, on the general fact of Divine Providence, the feeling ofHomer, and therefore of his countrymen, is distinct. Both the greatpoems bearing his name speak in the same language. But beyond thegeneral fact, many questions rise in the application of the creed, andon one of these (it is among several remarkable differences which seemto mark the Odyssey as of a later age) there is a very singulardiscrepancy. In the Iliad, the life of man on this side the grave isenough for the completion of his destiny--for his reward, if he livesnobly; for his punishment, if he be base or wicked. Without repinings orscepticisms at the apparent successes of bad men, the poet is contentedwith what he finds, accepting cheerfully the facts of life as they are;it never seems to occur to him as seriously possible that a bad mancould succeed or a good one fail; and as the ways of Providence, therefore, require no vindicating, neither his imagination nor hiscuriosity tempts him into penetrating the future. The house of Hades isthe long home to which men go when dismissed out of their bodies; but itis a dim, shadowy place, of which we see nothing, and concerning whichno conjectures are ventured. Achilles, in his passion over Patroclus, cries out, that although the dead forget the dead in the halls of thedeparted, yet that he will remember his friend; and through the Iliadthere is nothing clearer than these vague words to show with what hopesor fears the poet looked forward to death. So far, therefore, his faithmay seem imperfect; yet, perhaps, not the less noble because imperfect;religious men in general are too well contented with the promise of afuture life, as of a scene where the seeming shortcomings of the Divineadministration will be carried out with larger equity. But whetherimperfect or not, or whatever be the account of the omission, the theoryof Hades in the Odyssey is developed into far greater distinctness; thefuture is still, indeed, shadowy, but it is no longer uncertain; thereis the dreadful prison-house, with the judge upon his throne--and thedarker criminals are overtaken by the vengeance which was delayed inlife. The thin phantoms of the great ones of the past flit to and fro, mourning wearily for their lost mortality, and feeding on its memory. And more than this, as if it were beginning to be felt that somethingmore was wanted after all to satisfy us with the completeness of theDivine rule, we have a glimpse--it is but one, but it is like a ray ofsunshine falling in upon the darkness of the grave--'of the far-offElysian fields where dwells Rhadamanthus with the golden hair, wherelife is ever sweet, and sorrow is not, nor winter, nor any rain orstorm, and the never-dying zephyrs blow soft and cool from off theocean. '

However vague the filling up of such a picture, the outline is correctto the best which has been revealed even in Christianity, and it speaksnobly for the people among whom, even in germ, such ideas could rootthemselves. But think what we will of their notions of the future, theold Greek faith, considered as a practical and not a theological system, is truly admirable, clear, rational, and moral; if it does not professto deal with the mysteries of evil in the heart, it is prompt and sternwith them in their darker outward manifestations, and, as far as itgoes, as a guide in the common daily business of life, it scarcelyleaves anything unsaid. 

How far it went we shall see in the details of the life itself, the mostimportant of which in the eyes of a modern will be the socialorganisation; and when he looks for organisation, he will be at once ata loss, for he will find the fact of government yet without definedform;--he will find law, but without a public sword to enforce it; and a'social machine' moving without friction under the easy control ofopinion. There are no wars of classes, no politics, no opposition ofinterests, a sacred feeling of the will of the gods keeping every one inhis proper subordination. It was a sacred duty that the younger shouldobey the elder, that the servant should obey his master, that propertyshould be respected; in war, that the leader should be obeyed withoutquestioning; in peace, that public questions should be brought beforethe assembly of the people, and settled quietly as the Councildetermined. In this assembly the prince presided, and beyond thispresidency his authority at home does not seem to have extended. Ofcourse there was no millennium in Ionia, and men's passions were prettymuch what they are now. Without any organised means of repressing crimewhen it did appear, the people were exposed to, and often sufferedunder, extreme forms of violence--violence such as that of the suitorsat Ithaca, or of Ægisthus at Argos. On the other hand, what a state ofcultivation it implies, what peace and comfort in all classes, whensociety could hold together for a day with no more complete defence. And, moreover, there are disadvantages in elaborate police systems. Self-reliance is one of the highest virtues in which this world isintended to discipline us; and to depend upon ourselves even for our ownpersonal safety is a large element in moral training. 

But not to dwell on this, and to pass to the way in which the men ofthose days employed themselves. 

Our first boy's feeling with the Iliad is, that Homer is pre-eminently apoet of war; that battles were his own passion, and tales of battles thedelight of his listeners. His heroes appear like a great fightingaristocracy, such as the after Spartans were, Homer himself like anotherTyrtæus, and the poorer occupations of life too menial for their noticeor for his. They seem to live for glory--the one glory worth caring foronly to be won upon the battle-field, and their exploits the one worthytheme of the poet's song. This is our boyish impression, and, like othersuch, it is very different from the truth. If war had been a passionwith the Ionians, as it was with the Teutons and the Norsemen, the godof battles would have been supreme in the Pantheon; and Zeus wouldscarcely have called Ares the most hateful spirit in Olympus--mosthateful, _because_ of his delight in war and carnage. Mr. Carlyle looksforward to a chivalry of labour. He rather wishes than expects that atime may come when the campaign of industry against anarchic nature maygather into it those feelings of gallantry and nobleness which havefound their vent hitherto in fighting only. The modern man's work, Mr. Carlyle says, is no longer to splinter lances or break down walls, butto break soil, to build barns and factories, and to find a highemployment for himself in what hitherto has been despised as degrading. How to elevate labour--how to make it beautiful--how to enlist the_spirit_ in it (for in no other way can it be made humanly profitable), that is the problem which he looks wistfully to the future to solve forus. He may look to the past as well as to the future; in the old Ioniahe will find all for which he wishes. The wise Ulysses built his ownhouse, and carved his own bed. Princes killed and cooked their ownfood. It was a holy work with them--their way of saying grace for it;for they offered the animal in his death to the gods, and they were notbutchers, but sacrificing priests. Even a keeper of swine is callednoble, and fights like a hero; and the young princess of Phoeacia--theloveliest and gracefullest of Homer's women--drove the clothes-cart andwashed linen with her own beautiful hands. Not only was labour free--forso it was among the early Romans; or honourable, so it was among theIsraelites, --but it was beautiful--beautiful in the artist's sense, asperhaps elsewhere it has never been. In later Greece--in what we callthe glorious period--toil had gathered about it its modern crust ofsupposed baseness--it was left to slaves; and wise men, in theirphilosophic lecture-rooms, spoke of it as unworthy of the higherspecimens of cultivated humanity. 

But Homer finds, in its most homely forms, fit illustrations for themost glorious achievements of his heroes; and in every page we find, insimile or metaphor some common scene of daily life worked out withelaborate beauty. What the popular poet chooses for his illustrationsare as good a measure as we can have of the popular feeling, and theimages which he suggests are, of course, what he knows his hearers willbe pleased to dwell upon. There is much to be said about this, and weshall return to it presently; in the meantime, we must not build onindirect evidence. The designs on the shield of Achilles are, together, a complete picture of Homer's microcosm; Homer surely never thoughtinglorious or ignoble what the immortal art of Hephaistos condescendedto imitate. 

The first groups of figures point a contrast which is obviouslyintentional; and the significance becomes sadly earnest when we rememberwho it was that was to bear the shield. The moral is a very modern one, and the picture might be called by the modern name of Peace and War. There are two cities, embodying in their condition the two ideas. Inone, a happy wedding is going forward; the pomp of the hymenealprocession is passing along the streets; the air is full of music, andthe women are standing at their doors to gaze. The other is in theterrors of a siege; the hostile armies glitter under the walls, thewomen and children press into the defence, and crowd to thebattlements. In the first city, a quarrel rises, and wrong is maderight, not by violence and fresh wrong, but by the majesty of law andorder. The heads of the families are sitting gravely in themarket-place, the cause is heard, the compensation set, the claimawarded. Under the walls of the other city an ambush lies, like a wildbeast on the watch for its prey. The unsuspecting herdsmen pass on withtheir flocks to the waterside; the spoilers spring from theirhiding-place, and all is strife, and death, and horror, and confusion. If there were other war-scenes on the shield, it might be doubtedwhether Homer intended so strong a contrast as he executed; but fightingfor its own sake was evidently held in slight respect with him. Theforms of life which were really beautiful to him follow in a series ofexquisite Rubens-like pictures: harvest scenes and village festivals;the ploughing and the vintage, or the lion-hunt on the reedy margin ofthe river; and he describes them with a serene, sunny enjoyment which noother old world art or poetry gives us anything in the least resembling. Even we ourselves, in our own pastorals, are struggling with but halfsuccess, after what Homer entirely possessed. What a majesty he hasthrown into his harvest scene! The yellow corn falling, the boysfollowing to gather up the large arms-full as they drop behind thereapers; in the distance a banquet preparing under the trees; in thecentre, in the midst of his workmen, the king sitting in mellow silence, sceptre in hand, looking on with gladdened heart. Again we see theploughmen, unlike what are to be seen in our corn-grounds, turning theirteams at the end of the furrow, and attendants standing ready with thewine-cup, to hand to them as they pass. Homer had seen these things, orhe would not have sung of them; and princes and nobles might have sharedsuch labour without shame, when kings took part in it, and gods designedit, and the divine Achilles bore its image among his insignia in thefield. 

Analogous to this, and as part of the same feeling, is that intenseenjoyment of natural scenery, so keen in Homer, and of which theAthenian poets show not a trace; as, for instance, in that nightlandscape by the sea, finished off in a few lines only, but soexquisitely perfect! The broad moon, gleaming through the mist as itparts suddenly from off the sky; the crags and headlands, and softwooded slopes, shining out in the silver light, and earth and seatransformed into fairy land. 

We spoke of Homer's similes as illustrative of the Ionic feelings aboutwar. War, of course, was glorious to him--but war in a glorious cause. Wars there were--wars in plenty, as there have been since, and as it islike there will be for some time to come; and a just war, of all humanemployments, is the one which most calls out whatever nobleness there isin man. It was the thing itself, the actual fighting and killing, asapart from the heroism for which it makes opportunities, for which wesaid that he showed no taste. His manner shows that he felt like acultivated man, and not like a savage. His spirit stirs in him as hegoes out with his hero to the battle; but there is no drunken delight inblood; we never hear of warriors as in that grim Hall of the Nibelungen, quenching their thirst in the red stream; never anything of that fierceexultation in carnage with which the war poetry of so many nations, lateand old, is crimsoned. Everything, on the contrary, is contrived so asto soften the merely horrible, and fix our interest only on what isgrand or beautiful. We are never left to dwell long together on scenesof death, and when the battle is at its fiercest, our minds are calledoff by the rapid introduction (either by simile or some softer turn ofhuman feeling) of other associations, not contrived, as an inferiorartist would contrive, to deepen our emotions, but to soften and relievethem. Two warriors meet, and exchange their high words of defiance; wehear the grinding of the spear-head, as it pierces shield andbreast-plate, and the crash of the armour, as this or that hero falls. But at once, instead of being left at his side to see him bleed, we aresummoned away to the soft water meadow, the lazy river, the tall poplar, now waving its branches against the sky, now lying its length along inthe grass beside the water, and the woodcutter with peaceful industrylabouring and lopping at it. 

In the thick of the universal mêlée, when the stones and arrows areraining on the combatants, and some furious hailstorm is the slightestillustration with which we should expect him to heighten the effect ofthe human tempest, so sure Homer is that he has painted the thing itselfin its own intense reality, that his simile is the stillest phenomenonin all nature--a stillness of activity, infinitely expressive of thedensity of the shower of missiles, yet falling like oil on water on theruffled picture of the battle; the snow descending in the _still_ air, covering first hills, then plains and fields and farmsteads; coveringthe rocks down to the very water's edge, and clogging the waves as theyroll in. Again, in that fearful death-wrestle at the Grecian wall, whengates and battlements are sprinkled over with blood, and neither Greeksnor Trojans can force their way against the other, we have, first, as animage of the fight itself, two men in the field, with measuring rods, disputing over a land boundary; and for the equipoise of the two armies, the softest of all home scenes, a poor working woman weighing out herwool before weaving it, to earn a scanty subsistence for herself and forher children. Of course the similes are not all of this kind; it wouldbe monotonous if they were; but they occur often enough to mark theirmeaning. In the direct narrative, too, we see the same tendency. Sarpedon struck through the thigh is borne off the field, the long speartrailing from the wound, and there is too much haste to draw it out. Hector flies past him and has no time to speak; all is dust, hurry, andconfusion. Even Homer can only pause for a moment, but in three lines helays the wounded hero under a tree, he brings a dear friend to his side, and we refresh ourselves in a beautiful scene, when the lance is takenout, and Sarpedon faints, and comes slowly back to life, with the coolair fanning him. We may look in vain through the Nibelungen Lied foranything like this. The Swabian poet can be tender before the battle, but in the battle itself his barbaric nature is too strong for him, andhe scents nothing but blood. In the Iliad, on the contrary, the verybattles of the gods, grand and awful as they are, relieve rather thanincrease the human horror. In the magnificent scene, where Achilles, weary with slaughter, pauses on the bank of the Scamander, and the angryriver god, whose course is checked by the bodies of the slain, swells upto revenge them and destroy him, the natural and the supernatural are sostrangely blended, that when Poseidon lights the forest, and god meetsgod and element meets element, the convulsion is too tremendous toenhance the fierceness of Achilles; it concentrates the interest onitself, and Achilles and Hector, flying Trojan and pursuing Greek, forthe time melt out and are forgotten. 

We do not forget that there is nothing of this kind, no relief, nosoftening, in the great scene at the conclusion of the Odyssey. All isstern enough and terrible enough there; more terrible, if possible, because more distinct, than its modern counterpart in Criemhildas Hall. But there is an obvious reason for this, and it does not make againstwhat we have been saying. It is not delight in slaughter, but it is thestern justice of revenge which we have here; not, as in the Iliad, heromeeting hero, but the long crime receiving at last its Divinepunishment; the breaking of the one storm, which from the beginning hasbeen slowly and awfully gathering. 

With Homer's treatment of a battle-field, and as illustrating theconclusion which we argue from it, we are tempted to draw parallels fromtwo modern poets--one a German, who was taken away in the morning of hislife; the other, the most gifted of modern Englishmen. Each of these twohas attempted the same subject, and the treatment in each case embodies, in a similar manner, modern ways of thinking about it. 

The first is from the 'Albigenses' of young Lenau, who has since diedlunatic, we have heard, as he was not unlikely to have died with suchthoughts in him. It is the eve of one of those terrible struggles atToulouse, and the poet's imagination is hanging at moon-rise over thescene. 'The low broad field scattered over thick with corpses, allsilent, dead, --the last sob spent, '--the priest's thanksgiving for theCatholic victory having died into an echo, and only the 'vultures cryingtheir Te Deum laudamus. '

 Hat Gott der Herr den Körperstoff erschaffen, Hat ihn hervorgebracht ein böser Geist, Darüber stritten sie mit allen Waffen Und werden von den Vögeln nun gespeist, Die, ohne ihren Ursprung nachzufragen, Die Körper da sich lassen wohl behagen. 

'Was it God the Lord who formed the substance of their bodies? or didsome evil spirit bring it forth? It was for this with all their mightthey fought, and now they are devoured there by the wild birds, who sitgorging merrily over their carrion, _without asking from whence itcame_. '

In Homer, as we saw, the true hero is master over death--death has noterror for him. He meets it, if it is to be, calmly and proudly, andthen it is over; whatever offensive may follow after it, is concealed, or at least passed lightly over. Here, on the contrary, everything mostoffensive is dwelt upon with an agonising intensity, and the triumph ofdeath is made to extend, not over the body only, but over the soul, whose heroism it turns to mockery. The cause in which a man dies, iswhat can make his death beautiful; but here nature herself, in herstern, awful way, is reading her sentence over the cause itself as awild and frantic dream. We ought to be revolted--doubly revolted, onewould think, and yet we are not so; instead of being revolted, we areaffected with a sense of vast, sad magnificence. Why is this? Because welose sight of the scene, or lose the sense of its horror, in the tragedyof the spirit. It is the true modern tragedy; the note which soundsthrough Shakespeare's 'Sonnets, ' through 'Hamlet, ' through 'Faust;' allthe deeper trials of the modern heart might be gathered out of those fewlines; the sense of wasted nobleness--nobleness spending its energiesupon what time seems to be pronouncing no better than a dream--at anyrate, misgivings, sceptic and distracting; yet the heart the while, inspite of the uncertainty of the issue, remaining true at least toitself. If the spirit of the Albigensian warriors had really brokendown, or if the poet had pointed his lesson so as to say, Truth is alie; faith is folly; eat, drink, and die, --then his picture would havebeen revolting; but the noble spirit remains, though it is borne downand trifled with by destiny, and therefore it is not revolting, buttragic. 

Far different from this--as far inferior in tone to Lenau's lines, as itexceeds them in beauty of workmanship--is the well-known picture of thescene under the wall in the Siege of Corinth:--

 He saw the lean dogs beneath the wall Hold o'er the dead their carnival; Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb; They were too busy to bark at him! From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh, As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh; And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull, As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grew dull, As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed; So well had they broken a lingering fast With those who had fallen for that night's repast. And Alp knew, by the turbans that roll'd on the sand, The foremost of these were the best of his band:

 . . . . . . . . . 

 The scalps were in the wild dog's maw, The hair was tangled round his jaw. Close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf, There sate a vulture flapping a wolf, Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away, Scared by the dogs, from the human prey; But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, Pick'd by the birds, on the sands of the bay. 

For a parallel to the horribleness of this wonderfully painted scene weneed not go to the Nibelungen, for we shall find nothing like it there:we must go back to the carved slabs which adorned the banquet halls ofthe Assyrian kings, where the foul birds hover over the stricken fields, and trail from their talons the entrails of the slain. 

And for what purpose does Byron introduce these frightful images? Was itin contrast to the exquisite moonlight scene which tempts the renegadeout of his tent? Was it to bring his mind into a fit condition to beworked upon by the vision of Francesca? It does but mar and untune thesoftening influences of nature, which might have been rendered morepowerful, perhaps, by some slight touch to remind him of his past day'swork, but are blotted out and paralysed by such a mass of horrors. 

To go back to Homer. 

We must omit for the present any notice of the domestic pictures, ofwhich there are so many, in the palaces of Ulysses, of Nestor, or ofAlcinous; of the games, so manly, yet, in point of refinement, sosuperior even to those of our own middle ages; of the supreme good oflife as the Greeks conceived it, and of the arts by which theyendeavoured to realise that good. It is useless to notice such thingsbriefly, and the detail would expand into a volume. But the impressionwhich we gather from them is the same which we have gathered allalong--that if the proper aim of all human culture be to combine, in thehighest measure in which they are compatible, the two elements ofrefinement and of manliness, then Homer's age was cultivated to a degreethe like of which the earth has not witnessed since. There was morerefinement under Pericles, as there is more in modern London and Paris;but there was, and there is, infinitely more vice. There was morefierceness (greater manliness there never was) in the times offeudalism. But take it for all in all, and in a mere human sense, apartfrom any other aspect of the world which is involved in Christianity, itis difficult to point to a time when life in general was happier, andthe character of man set in a more noble form. If we have drawn thepicture with too little shadow, let it be allowed for. The shadow wasthere, doubtless, though we see it only in a few dark spots. TheMargites would have supplied the rest, but the Margites, unhappily forus, is lost. Even heroes have their littlenesses, and Comedy is truer tothe details of littleness than Tragedy or Epic. The grand is always moreor less ideal, and the elevation of a moment is sublimed into the spiritof a life. Comedy, therefore, is essential for the representing of men;and there were times, doubtless, when the complexion of Agamemnon'sgreatness was discoloured, like Prince Henry's, by remembering, when hewas weary, that poor creature--small beer--_i. E. _ if the Greeks had gotany. 

A more serious discoloration, however, we are obliged to say that wefind in Homer himself, in the soil or taint which even he is obliged tocast over the position of women. In the Iliad, where there is no sign ofmale slavery, women had already fallen under the chain, and though theredoes not seem to have been any practice of polygamy, the femaleprisoners fell, as a matter of course, into a more degraded position. Itis painful, too, to observe that their own feelings followed thepractice of the times, and that they composed themselves to bear withoutreluctance whatever their destiny forced upon them. When Priam venturedinto the Grecian camp for Hector's body, and stood under the roof ofAchilles, he endured to do what, as he says, no mortal father had everyet endured--to give his hand to his son's destroyer. Briseis, whose bedwas made desolate by the hand of the same Achilles, finds it her onegreatest consolation, that the conqueror stoops to choose her to sharehis own. And when Hector in his last sad parting scene anticipates alike fate for his own Andromache, it is not with the revolted agony ofhorror with which such a possible future would be regarded by a modernhusband; nor does Andromache, however bitterly she feels the danger, protest, as a modern wife would do, that there was no fear forher--that death by sorrow's hand, or by her own, would preserve her torejoin him. 

Nor, again, was unfaithfulness, of however long duration, conclusivelyfatal against a wife; for we meet Helen, after a twenty years'elopement, again the quiet, hospitable mistress in the Spartan palace, entertaining her husband's guests with an easy matronly dignity, and notafraid even in Menelaus's presence to allude to the past--in strongterms of self-reproach, indeed, but with nothing like despairingprostration. Making the worst of this, however, yet even in this respectthe Homeric Greeks were better than their contemporaries in Palestine;and on the whole there was, perhaps, no time anterior to Christianitywhen women held a higher place, or the relation between wife and husbandwas of a more free and honourable kind. 

For we have given but one side of the picture. When a woman can be thetheme of a poet, her nature cannot be held in slight esteem; and thereis no doubt that Penelope is Homer's heroine in the Odyssey. One design, at least, which Homer had before him was to vindicate the character ofthe virtuous matron against the stain which Clytemnestra had inflictedon it. Clytemnestra has every advantage, Penelope every difficulty: thetrial of the former lasted only half as long as that of the latter. Agamemnon in leaving her gave herself and his house in charge to adivine [Greek: aoidos], a heaven-inspired prophet, who should standbetween her and temptation, and whom she had to murder before herpassion could have its way. Penelope had to bear up alone for twentyweary years, without a friend, without a counsellor, and with even achild whose constancy was wavering. It is obvious that Homer designedthis contrast. The story of the Argos tragedy is told again and again. The shade of Agamemnon himself forebodes a fate like his own to Ulysses. It is Ulysses's first thought when he wakes from his sleep to findhimself in his own land; and the scene in Hades, in the last book, seemsonly introduced that the husband of Clytemnestra may meet the shades ofthe Ithacan suitors, and learn, in their own tale of the sad issue oftheir wooing, how far otherwise it had fared with Ulysses than withhimself. Women, therefore, according to Homer, were as capable of heroicvirtue as men were, and the ideal of this heroism is one to which wehave scarcely added. 

For the rest, there is no trace of any oriental seraglio system. Thesexes lived together in easy unaffected intercourse. The ladies appearedin society naturally and gracefully, and their chief occupations werehousehold matters, care of clothes and linen, and other domesticarrangements. When a guest came, they prepared his dressing-room, settled the bath, and arranged the convenience of his toilet-table. Intheir leisure hours, they were to be found, as now, in the hall or thesaloon, and their work-table contained pretty much the same materials. Helen was winding worsted as she entertained Telemachus, and Andromacheworked roses in very modern cross-stitch. A literalist like Mr. Mackay, who finds out that the Israelites were cannibals, from such expressionsas 'drinking the blood of the slain, ' might discover, perhaps, a similarunpleasant propensity in an excited wish of Hecuba, that she might eatthe heart of Achilles; but in the absence of other evidence, it isunwise in either case to press a metaphor; and the food of ladies, wherever Homer lets us see it, is very innocent cake and wine, with suchfruits as were in season. To judge by Nausicaa, their breeding must havebeen exquisite. Nausicaa standing still, when the uncouth figure ofUlysses emerged from under the wood, all sea slime and nakedness, andonly covered with a girdle of leaves--standing still to meet him whenthe other girls ran away tittering and terrified, is the perfectconception of true female modesty; and in the whole scene between them, Homer shows the most finished understanding of the delicate andtremulous relations which occur occasionally in the accidents ofintercourse between highly cultivated men and women, and which he couldonly have learnt by living in a society where men and women met and feltin the way which he has described. 

Who, then, was Homer? What was he? When did he live? History hasabsolutely nothing to answer. His poems were not written; for the art ofwriting (at any rate for a poet's purpose) was unknown to him. There isa vague tradition that the Iliad, and the Odyssey, and a comic poemcalled the Margites, were composed by an Ionian whose name was Homer, about four hundred years before Herodotus, or in the ninth century B. C. We know certainly that these poems were preserved by the Rhapsodists, orpopular reciters, who repeated them at private parties or festivals, until writing came into use, and they were fixed in a less precariousform. A later story was current, that we owe the collection toPisistratus; but an exclusive claim for him was probably only Athenianconceit. It is incredible that men of genius in Homer's ownland--Alcæus, for instance--should have left such a work to be done by aforeigner. But this is really all which is known; and the creation ofthe poems lies in impenetrable mystery. Nothing remains to guide us, therefore, except internal evidence (strangely enough, it is the samewith Shakespeare), and it has led to wild conclusions: yet the wildestis not without its use; it has commonly something to rest upon; andinternal evidence is only really valuable when outward testimony hasbeen sifted to the uttermost. The present opinion seems to be, that eachpoem is unquestionably the work of one man; but whether both poems arethe work of the same is yet _sub judice_. The Greeks believed they were;and that is much. There are remarkable points of resemblance in style, yet not greater than the resemblances in the 'Two Noble Kinsmen' and inthe 'Yorkshire Tragedy' to 'Macbeth' and 'Hamlet;' and there are moreremarkable points of non-resemblance, which deepen upon us the more weread. On the other hand, tradition is absolute. If the style of theOdyssey is sometimes unlike the Iliad, so is one part of the Iliadsometimes unlike another. It is hard to conceive a genius equal to thecreation of either Iliad or Odyssey to have existed without leaving atleast a legend of his name; and the difficulty of criticising styleaccurately in an old language will be appreciated by those who havetried their hand in their own language with the disputed plays ofShakespeare. There are heavy difficulties every way; and we shall bestconclude our own subject by noting down briefly the most striking pointsof variation of which as yet no explanation has been attempted. We havealready noticed several: the non-appearance of male slavery in the Iliadwhich is common in the Odyssey; the notion of a future state; andperhaps a fuller cultivation in the female character. Andromache is asdelicate as Nausicaa, but she is not as grand as Penelope; and in markedcontrast to the feeling expressed by Briseis, is the passage where thegrief of Ulysses over the song of Demodocus is compared to the grief ofa young wife flinging herself on the yet warm body of her husband, andlooking forward to her impending slavery with feelings of horror andrepulsion. But these are among the slightest points in which the twopoems are dissimilar. Not only are there slaves in the Odyssey, butthere are [Greek: Thêtes], or serfs, an order with which we are familiarin later times, but which again are not in the Iliad. In the Odyssey theTrojans are called [Greek: epibêtores hippôn], which must mean _riders_. In the Iliad, horses are never ridden; they are always in harness. 

Wherever in the Odyssey the Trojan war is alluded to (and it is veryoften), in no one case is the allusion to anything which is mentioned inthe Iliad. We hear of the wooden horse, the taking of Troy, the death ofAchilles, the contention of Ulysses with Ajax for his arms. It might besaid that the poet wished to supply afterwards indirectly what he hadleft in the Iliad untold; but again, this is impossible, for a verycurious reason. The Iliad opens with the wrath of Achilles, which causedsuch bitter woe to the Achaians. In the Odyssey it is still the wrath ofAchilles; but singularly _not with Agamemnon, but with Ulysses_. Ulyssesto the author of the Odyssey was a far grander person at _Troy_ than heappears in the Iliad. In the latter poem he is great, but far from oneof the greatest; in the other, he is evidently the next to Achilles; andit seems almost certain that whoever wrote the Odyssey was working fromsome other legend of the war. There were a thousand versions of it. Thetale of Ilium was set to every lyre in Greece, and the relative positionof the heroes was doubtless changed according to the sympathies or thepatriotism of the singer. The character of Ulysses is much stronger inthe Odyssey; and even when the same qualities are attributed to him--hissoft-flowing tongue, his cunning, and his eloquence--they are held invery different estimation. The Homer of the Iliad has little liking fora talker. Thersites is his pattern specimen of such; and it is thecurrent scoff at unready warriors to praise their father's courage, andthen to add--

 [Greek: alla ton huion geinato heio cherêa machê, agorê de t' ameinô. ]

But the Phoeacian Lord who ventured to reflect, in the Iliad style, onthe supposed unreadiness of Ulysses, is taught a different notion ofhuman excellence. Ulysses tells him that he is a fool. 'The gods, 'Ulysses says, 'do not give all good things to all men, and often a manis made unfair to look upon, but over his ill favour they fling, like agarland, a power of lovely speech, and the people delight to _look_ onhim. He speaks with modest dignity, and he shines among the multitude. As he walks through the city, men gaze on him as on a god. '

Differences like these, however, are far from decisive. The veryslightest external evidence would weigh them all down together. Perhapsthe following may be of more importance:--

In both poems there are 'questionings of destiny, ' as the modern phrasegoes. The thing which we call human life is looked in the face--thislittle chequered island of lights and shadows, in the middle of an oceanof darkness; and in each we see the sort of answer which the poet findsfor himself, and which might be summed up briefly in the last words ofEcclesiastes, 'Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is thewhole duty of man. ' But the world bears a different aspect, and theanswer looks different in its application. In the Iliad, in spite of thegloom of Achilles, and his complaint of the double urn, the sense oflife, on the whole, is sunny and cheerful. There is no yearning foranything beyond--nothing vague, nothing mystical. The earth, the men, the gods, have all a palpable reality about them. From first to last, weknow where we are, and what we are about. In the Odyssey we arebreathing another atmosphere. The speculations on the moral mysteries ofour being hang like a mist over us from the beginning to the end; andthe cloud from time to time descends on the actors, and envelopes themwith a preternatural halo. The poet evidently dislikes the expression of'suffering being the lot of mortals, ' as if it had been abused alreadyfor ungodly purposes. In the opening of the first book, Zeus reprovesthe folly of mortal men for casting the blame upon the gods, when theythemselves, in spite of all the gods can do to save them, persist intheir own perverseness; and we never know as we go on, so fast we passfrom one to the other, when we are among mere human beings, and whenamong the spiritual or the mystical. Those sea-nymphs, those cannibals, those enchantresses, if intended to be real, are neither mortal nordivine--at any rate, like nothing divine which we had seen in Olympus, or on the plains of Ilium; and at times there is a strangeness even inthe hero himself. Sometimes it is Ulysses painfully toiling his way homeacross the unknown ocean; sometimes it is we that are Ulysses, and thatunknown ocean is the life across which we are wandering, with too manyCirces, and Sirens, and 'Isles of Error' in our path. In the same spiritdeath is no longer the end; and on every side long vistas seem tostretch away into the infinite, peopled with shadowy forms. 

But, as if this palpable initiation into the unseen were stillinsufficient or unconvincing, the common ground on which we are treadingsometimes shakes under us, and we feel as Humboldt describes himself tohave felt at the first shock of an earthquake. Strange pieces ofmysterious wildness are let fall in our way, coming suddenly on us likespectres, and vanishing without explanation or hint of their purpose. What are those Phoeacian ships meant for, which required neither sailnor oar, but of their own selves read the hearts of those they carried, and bore them wherever they would go?--or the wild end of the ship whichcarried Ulysses home?--or that terrible piece of second sight in theHall at Ithaca, for which the seer was brought from Pylos?--or thoseislands, one of which is for ever wasting while another is born intobeing to complete the number?--or those mystical sheep and oxen, whichknew neither age nor death, nor ever had offspring born to them, andwhose flesh upon the spits began to crawl and bellow?--or Helen singinground the horse inside the Trojan walls, when every Grecian chief'sheart fainted in him as he thought he heard the voice of his own dearwife far away beyond the sea?

In the far gates of the Loestrygones, 'where such a narrow rim ofnight divided day from day, that a man who needed not sleep might earn adouble hire, and the cry of the shepherd at evening driving home hisflock was heard by the shepherd going out in the morning to pasture, ' wehave, perhaps, some tale of a Phoenician mariner, who had wanderedinto the North Seas, and seen 'the Norway sun set into sunrise. ' Butwhat shall we say to that Syrian isle, 'where disease is not, norhunger, nor thirst, and where, when men grow old, Apollo comes withArtemis, and slays them with his silver bow?' There is nothing in theIliad like any of these stories. 

Yet, when all is said, it matters little who wrote the poems. Each isso magnificent, that to have written both could scarcely have increasedthe greatness of the man who had written one; and if there were twoHomers, the earth is richer by one more divine-gifted man than we hadknown. After all, it is perhaps more easy to believe that thedifferences which we seem to see arise from Homer's own choice of thematerial which best suited two works so different, than that nature wasso largely prodigal as to have created in one age and in one people twosuch men; for whether one or two, the authors of the Iliad and theOdyssey stand alone with Shakespeare far away above mankind. 

FOOTNOTES:

[X] _Fraser's Magazine_, 1851. 

[Y] Mackay's _Progress of the Intellect_. 

THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS. 

1850. 

If the enormous undertaking of the Bollandist editors had beencompleted, it would have contained the histories of 25, 000 saints. Somany the Catholic Church acknowledged and accepted as her ideals--as menwho had not only done her honour by the eminence of their sanctity, butwho had received while on earth an openly divine recognition of it ingifts of supernatural power. And this vast number is but a selection;the editors chose only out of the mass before them what was mostnoteworthy and trustworthy, and what was of catholic rather than ofnational interest. It is no more than a fraction of that singularmythology which for so many ages delighted the Christian world, which isstill held in external reverence among the Romanists, and of which themodern historians, provoked by its feeble supernaturalism, and by theentire absence of critical ability among its writers to distinguishbetween fact and fable, have hitherto failed to speak a reasonable word. Of the attempt in our own day to revive an interest in them we shall saylittle in this place. The 'Lives' have no form or beauty to give themattraction in themselves; and for their human interest the broadatmosphere of the world suited ill with these delicate plants, which hadgrown up under the shadow of the convent wall; they were exotics, notfrom another climate, but from another age; the breath of scorn fell onthem, and having no root in the hearts and beliefs of men any more, butonly in the sentimentalities and make-beliefs, they withered and sank. And yet, in their place as historical phenomena, the legends of thesaints are as remarkable as any of the Pagan mythologies; to the full asremarkable, perhaps far more so, if the length and firmness of holdthey once possessed on the convictions of mankind is to pass foranything in the estimate--and to ourselves they have a near and peculiarinterest, as spiritual facts in the growth of the Catholic faith. 

Philosophy has rescued the old theogonies from ridicule; theirextravagancies, even the most grotesque of them, can be now seen to havetheir root in an idea, often a deep one, representing features ofnatural history or of metaphysical speculation, and we do not laugh atthem any more. In their origin, they were the consecration of thefirst-fruits of knowledge; the expression of a real reverential belief. Then time did its work on them; knowledge grew, and they could not grow;they became monstrous and mischievous, and were driven out byChristianity with scorn and indignation. But it is with humaninstitutions as it is with men themselves; we are tender with the deadwhen their power to hurt us has passed away; and as Paganism can nevermore be dangerous, we have been able to command a calmer attitudetowards it, and to detect under its most repulsive features sufficientlatent elements of genuine thought to satisfy us that even in theirdarkest aberrations men are never wholly given over to falsehood andabsurdity. When philosophy has done for mediæval mythology what it hasdone for Hesiod and for the Edda, we shall find there also at least asdeep a sense of the awfulness and mystery of life, and we shall find amoral element which the Pagans never had. The lives of the saints arealways simple, often childish, seldom beautiful; yet, as Goetheobserved, if without beauty, they are always good. 

And as a phenomenon, let us not deceive ourselves on the magnitude ofthe Christian hagiology. The Bollandists were restricted on many sides. They took only what was in Latin--while every country in Europe had itsown home growth in its own language--and thus many of the mostcharacteristic of the lives are not to be found at all in theircollection. And again, they took but one life of each saint, composed inall cases late, and compiled out of the mass of various shorter liveswhich had grown up in different localities out of popular tradition; sothat many of their longer productions have an elaborate literarycharacter, with an appearance of artifice, which, till we know how theycame into existence, might blind us to the vast width and variety ofthe traditionary sources from which they are drawn. In the twelfthcentury there were sixty-six lives extant of St. Patrick alone; and thatin a country where every parish had its own special saint and speciallegend of him. These sixty-six lives may have contained (Mr. Gibbon says_must_ have contained) at least as many thousand lies. Perhaps so. Tosevere criticism, even the existence of a single apostle, St. Patrick, appears problematical. But at least there is the historical fact, aboutwhich there can be no mistake, that the stories did grow up in some wayor other, that they were repeated, sung, listened to, written, and read;that these lives in Ireland, and all over Europe and over the earth, wherever the Catholic faith was preached, stories like these, sprang outof the heart of the people, and grew and shadowed over the entirebelieving mind of the Catholic world. Wherever church was founded, orsoil was consecrated for the long resting-place of those who had died inthe faith; wherever the sweet bells of convent or of monastery wereheard in the evening air, charming the unquiet world to rest andremembrance of God, there dwelt the memory of some apostle who had laidthe first stone, there was the sepulchre of some martyr whose relicsreposed beneath the altar, of some confessor who had suffered there forhis Master's sake, of some holy ascetic who in silent self-chosenausterity had woven a ladder there of prayer and penance, on which theangels of God were believed to have ascended and descended. It is not aphenomenon of an age or of a century; it is characteristic of thehistory of Christianity. From the time when the first preachers of thefaith passed out from their homes by that quiet Galilean lake, to go toand fro over the earth, and did their mighty work, and at lastdisappeared and were not any more seen, these sacred legends began togrow. Those who had once known the Apostles, who had drawn from theirlips the blessed message of light and life, one and all would gathertogether what fragments they could find of their stories. Rumours blewin from all the winds. They had been seen here, had been seen there, inthe farthest corners of the earth, preaching, contending, suffering, prevailing. Affection did not stay to scrutinise. When some member of afamily among ourselves is absent in some far place from which sure newsof him comes slowly and uncertainly; if he has been in the army, or onsome dangerous expedition, or at sea, or anywhere where real orimaginary dangers stimulate anxiety; or when one is gone away from usaltogether--fallen perhaps in battle--and when the story of his end canbe collected but fitfully from strangers, who only knew his name, buthad heard him nobly spoken of; the faintest threads are caught at;reports, the vagueness of which might be evident to indifference, are tolove strong grounds of confidence, and 'trifles light as air' establishthemselves as certainties. So, in those first Christian communities, travellers came through from east and west; legions on the march, orcaravans of wandering merchants; and one had been in Rome, and seenPeter disputing with Simon Magus; another in India, where he had heardSt. Thomas preaching to the Brahmins; a third brought with him, from thewilds of Britain, a staff which he had cut, as he said, from a thorntree, the seed of which St. Joseph had sown there, and which had grownto its full size in a single night, making merchandise of the preciousrelic out of the credulity of the believers. So the legends grew, andwere treasured up, and loved, and trusted; and alas! all which we havebeen able to do with them is to call them lies, and to point a shallowmoral on the impostures and credulities of the early Catholics. AnAtheist could not wish us to say more. If we can really believe that theChristian Church was made over in its very cradle to lies and to thefather of lies, and was allowed to remain in his keeping, so to say, till yesterday, he will not much trouble himself with any faith whichafter such an admission we may profess to entertain. For, as this spiritbegan in the first age in which the Church began to have a history, soit continued so long as the Church as an integral body retained itsvitality, and only died out in the degeneracy which preceded and whichbrought on the Reformation. For fourteen hundred years these storiesheld their place, and rang on from age to age, from century to century;as the new faith widened its boundaries, and numbered ever more and moregreat names of men and women who had fought and died for it, so longtheir histories, living in the hearts of those for whom they laboured, laid hold of them and filled them: and the devout imagination, possessedwith what was often no more than the rumour of a name, bodied it outinto life, and form, and reality. And doubtless, if we try them by anyhistorical canon, we have to say that quite endless untruths grew inthis way to be believed among men; and not believed only, but heldsacred, passionately and devotedly; not filling the history books only, not only serving to amuse and edify the refectory, or to furnish matterfor meditation in the cell, but claiming days for themselves of specialremembrance, entering into liturgies and inspiring prayers, forming thespiritual nucleus of the hopes and fears of millions of human souls. 

From the hard barren standing ground of the fact idolator, what astrange sight must be that still mountain-peak on the wild west Irishshore, where, for more than ten centuries, a rude old bell and a carvedchip of oak have witnessed, or seemed to witness, to the presence longago there of the Irish apostle; and where, in the sharp crystals of thetrap rock, a path has been worn smooth by the bare feet and bleedingknees of the pilgrims, who still, in the August weather, drag theirpainful way along it as they have done for a thousand years. Doubtlessthe 'Lives of the Saints' are full of lies. Are there none in the Iliad?or in the legends of Æneas? Were the stories sung in the liturgy ofEleusis all so true? so true as fact? Are the songs of the Cid or ofSiegfried true? We say nothing of the lies in these; but why? Oh, itwill be said, but they are fictions; they were never supposed to betrue. But they _were_ supposed to be true, to the full as true as the'Legenda Aurea. ' Oh, then, they are poetry; and besides, they havenothing to do with Christianity. Yes, that is it; they have nothing todo with Christianity. Religion has grown such a solemn business with us, and we bring such long faces to it, that we cannot admit or conceive tobe at all naturally admissible such a light companion as theimagination. The distinction between secular and religious has beenextended even to the faculties; and we cannot tolerate in others thefulness and freedom which we have lost or rejected for ourselves. Yet ithas been a fatal mistake with the critics. They found themselves off therecognised ground of Romance and Paganism, and they failed to see thesame principles at work, though at work with new materials. In therecords of all human affairs, it cannot be too often insisted on thattwo kinds of truth run for ever side by side, or rather, crossing in andout with each other, form the warp and the woof of the coloured webwhich we call history: the one, the literal and external truthscorresponding to the eternal and as yet undiscovered laws of fact; theother, the truths of feeling and of thought, which embody themselveseither in distorted pictures of outward things, or in some entirely newcreation--sometimes moulding and shaping real history; sometimes takingthe form of heroic biography, of tradition, or popular legend; sometimesappearing as recognised fiction in the epic, the drama, or the novel. Itis useless to tell us that this is to confuse truth and falsehood. Weare stating a fact, not a theory; and if it makes truth and falsehooddifficult to distinguish, that is nature's fault, not ours. Fiction isonly false, when it is false, not to fact, else how could it be fiction?but when it is--to _law_. To try it by its correspondence to the real ispedantry. Imagination creates as nature creates, by the force which isin man, which refuses to be restrained; we cannot help it, and we areonly false when we make monsters, or when we pretend that our inventionsare facts, when we substitute truths of one kind for truths of another;when we substitute, --and again we must say when we _intentionally_substitute:--whenever persons, and whenever facts seize strongly on theimagination (and of course when there is anything remarkable in themthey must and will do so), invention glides into the images which formin our minds; so it must be, and so it ever has been, from the firstlegends of a cosmogony to the written life of the great man who diedlast year or century, or to the latest scientific magazine. We cannotrelate facts as they are; they must first pass through ourselves, and weare more or less than mortal if they gather nothing in the transit. Thegreat outlines alone lie around us as imperative and constraining; thedetail we each fill up variously, according to the turn of oursympathies, the extent of our knowledge, or our general theories ofthings: and therefore it may be said that the only literally truehistory possible is the history which mind has left of itself in all thechanges through which it has passed. 

Suetonius is to the full as extravagant and superstitious as Surius, andSuetonius was most laborious and careful, and was the friend of Tacitusand Pliny. Suetonius gives us prodigies, where Surius has miracles, butthat is all the difference; each follows the form of the supernaturalwhich belonged to the genius of his age. Plutarch writes a life ofLycurgus, with details of his childhood, and of the trials andvicissitudes of his age; and the existence of Lycurgus is now quite asquestionable as that of St. Patrick or of St. George of England. 

No rectitude of intention will save us from mistakes. Sympathies andantipathies are but synonyms of prejudice, and indifference isimpossible. Love is blind, and so is every other passion. Love believeseagerly what it desires; it excuses or passes lightly over blemishes, itdwells on what is beautiful; while dislike sees a tarnish on what isbrightest, and deepens faults into vices. Do we believe that all this isa disease of unenlightened times, and that in our strong sunlight onlytruth can get received?--then let us contrast the portrait, forinstance, of Sir Robert Peel as it is drawn in the Free Trade Hall atManchester, [Z] at the county meeting, and in the Oxford Common Room. Itis not so. Faithful and literal history is possible only to an impassivespirit. Man will never write it, until perfect knowledge and perfectfaith in God shall enable him to see and endure every fact in itsreality; until perfect love shall kindle in him under its touch the onejust emotion which is in harmony with the eternal order of all things. 

How far we are in these days from approximating to such a combination weneed not here insist. Criticism in the hands of men like Niebuhr seemsto have accomplished great intellectual triumphs; and in Germany andFrance, and among ourselves, we have our new schools of the philosophyof history: yet their real successes have hitherto only beendestructive. When philosophy reconstructs, it does nothing but projectits own idea; when it throws off tradition, it cannot work without atheory: and what is a theory but an imperfect generalisation caught upby a predisposition? What is Comte's great division of the eras but atheory, and facts are but as clay in his hands, which he can mould toillustrate it, as every clever man will find facts to be, let his theorybe what it will? Intellect can destroy, but it cannot restore life; callin the creative faculties--call in Love, Idea, Imagination, and we haveliving figures, but we cannot tell whether they are figures which everlived before. The high faith in which Love and Intellect can aloneunite in their fulness, has not yet found utterance in modernhistorians. 

The greatest man who has as yet given himself to the recording of humanaffairs is, beyond question, Cornelius Tacitus. Alone in Tacitus aserene calmness of insight was compatible with intensity of feeling. Hetook no side; he may have been Imperialist, he may have been Republican, but he has left no sign whether he was either: he appears to have siftedfacts with scrupulous integrity; to administer his love, his scorn, hishatred, according only to individual merit: and his sentiments arerather felt by the reader in the life-like clearness of his portraits, than expressed in words by himself. Yet such a power of seeing intothings was only possible to him, because there was no party left withwhich he could determinedly side, and no wide spirit alive in Romethrough which he could feel. The spirit of Rome, the spirit of life hadgone away to seek other forms, and the world of Tacitus was a heap ofdecaying institutions; a stage where men and women, as they themselveswere individually base or noble, played over their little parts. Lifeindeed was come into the world, was working in it, and silently shapingthe old dead corpse into fresh and beautiful being. Tacitus alludes toit once only, in one brief scornful chapter; and the most poorly giftedof those forlorn biographers whose unreasoning credulity was piling upthe legends of St. Mary and the Apostles, which now drive theecclesiastical historian to despair, knew more, in his divine hope andfaith, of the real spirit which had gone out among mankind, than thekeenest and gravest intellect which ever set itself to contemplate them. 

And now having in some degree cleared the ground of difficulties, let usgo back to the Lives of the Saints. If Bede tells us lies about St. Cuthbert, we will disbelieve his stories; but we will not call Bede aliar, even though he prefaces his life with a declaration that he hasset down nothing but what he has ascertained on the clearest evidence. We are driven to no such alternative; our canons of criticism aredifferent from Bede's, and so are our notions of probability. Bede wouldexpect _à priori_, and would therefore consider as sufficiently attestedby a consent of popular tradition, what the oaths of living witnesseswould fail to make credible to a modern English jury. We will call Bedea liar only if he put forward his picture of St. Cuthbert as a pictureof a life which he considered admirable and excellent, as one afterwhich he was endeavouring to model his own, and which he held up as apattern of imitation, when in his heart he did not consider it admirableat all, when he was making no effort at the austerities which he waslauding. The histories of the saints are written as ideals of aChristian life; they have no elaborate and beautiful forms; single andstraightforward as they are, --if they are not this they are nothing. Forfourteen centuries the religious mind of the Catholic world threw themout as its form of hero worship, as the heroic patterns of a form ofhuman life which each Christian within his own limits was endeavouringto realise. The first martyrs and confessors were to those poor monkswhat the first Dorian conquerors were in the war songs of Tyrtæus, whatAchilles and Ajax and Agamemnon and Diomed were wherever Homer was sungor read; or in more modern times, what the Knights of the Round Tablewere in the halls of the Norman castles. The Catholic mind wasexpressing its conception of the highest human excellence; and theresult is that immense and elaborate hagiology. As with the battleheroes, too, the inspiration lies in the universal idea; the varietiesof character (with here and there an exception) are slight andunimportant; the object being to create examples for universal humanimitation. Lancelot or Tristram were equally true to the spirit ofchivalry; and Patrick on the mountain, or Antony in the desert, areequal models of patient austerity. The knights fight with giants, enchanters, robbers, unknightly nobles, or furious wild beasts; theChristians fight with the world, the flesh, and the devil. The knightleaves the comforts of home in quest of adventures, the saint in questof penance, and on the bare rocks or in desolate wildernesses subduesthe devil in his flesh with prayers and penances; and so alien is it allto the whole thought and system of the modern Christian, that he eitherrejects such stories altogether as monks' impostures, or receives themwith disdainful wonder, as one more shameful form of superstition withwhich human nature has insulted heaven and disgraced itself. 

Leaving, however, for the present, the meaning of monastic asceticism, it seems necessary to insist that there really was such a thing; thereis no doubt about it. If the particular actions told of each saint arenot literally true, as belonging to him, abundance of men did for manycenturies lead the sort of life which saints are said to have led. Wehave got a notion that the friars were a snug, comfortable set, afterall; and the life in a monastery pretty much like that in a modernuniversity, where the old monks' language and affectation ofunworldliness does somehow contrive to co-exist with as large a mass ofbodily enjoyment as man's nature can well appropriate. Very likely thiswas the state into which many of the monasteries had fallen in thefifteenth century. It was a symptom of a very rapid disorder which hadset in among them, and which promptly terminated in dissolution. Butlong, long ages lay behind the fifteenth century, in which, wisely orfoolishly, these old monks and hermits did make themselves a very hardlife of it; and the legend only exceeded the reality in being a veryslightly idealised portrait. We are not speaking of the miracles; thatis a wholly different question. When men knew little of the order ofnature, whatever came to pass without an obvious cause was at once setdown to influences beyond nature and above it; and so long as there werewitches and enchanters, strong with the help of the bad powers, ofcourse the especial servants of God would not be left without graces tooutmatch and overcome the devil. And there were many other reasons whythe saints should work miracles. They had done so under the olddispensation, and there was no obvious reason why Christians should beworse off than Jews. And again, although it be true, in the modernphrase, which is beginning to savour a little of cant, that the highestnatural is the highest supernatural, nevertheless natural facts permitus to be so easily familiar with them, that they have an air ofcommonness; and when we have a vast idea to express, there is always adisposition to the extraordinary. But the miracles are not the chiefthing; nor ever were they so. Men did not become saints by workingmiracles, but they worked miracles because they had become saints; andthe instructiveness and value of their lives lay in the means which theyhad used to make themselves what they were: and as we said, in this partof the business there is unquestionable basis of truth--scarcely evenexaggeration. We have documentary evidence, which has been filteredthrough the sharp ordeal of party hatred, of the way in which some men(and those, not mere ignorant fanatics, but men of vast mind and vastinfluence in their days) conducted themselves, where _myth_ has no roomto enter. We know something of the hair-shirt of Thomas à Becket; andthere was another poor monk, whose asceticism imagination could noteasily outrun; he who, when the earth's mighty ones were banded togetherto crush him under their armed heels, spoke but one little word, and itfell among them like the spear of Cadmus; the strong ones turned theirhands against each other, and the armies melted away; and the proudestmonarch of the earth lay at that monk's threshold three winter nights inthe scanty clothing of penance, suing miserably for forgiveness. Oragain, to take a fairer figure. There is a poem extant, the genuinenessof which, we believe, has not been challenged, composed by Columbkill, commonly called St. Columba. He was a hermit in Arran, a rocky island inthe Atlantic, outside Galway Bay; from which he was summoned, we do notknow how, but in a manner which appeared to him to be a Divine call, togo away and be Bishop of Iona. The poem is a 'Farewell to Arran, ' whichhe wrote on leaving it; and he lets us see something of a hermit's lifethere. 'Farewell, ' he begins (we are obliged to quote from memory), 'along farewell to thee, Arran of my heart. Paradise is with thee; thegarden of God within the sound of thy bells. The angels love Arran. Eachday an angel comes there to join in its services. ' And then he goes onto describe his 'dear cell, ' and the holy happy hours which he had spentthere, 'with the wind whistling through the loose stones, and the seaspray hanging on his hair. ' Arran is no better than a wild rock. It isstrewed over with the ruins which may still be seen of the oldhermitages; and at their best they could have been but such places assheep would huddle under in a storm, and shiver in the cold and wetwhich would pierce through the chinks of the walls. 

Or, if written evidence be too untrustworthy, there are silent witnesseswhich cannot lie, that tell the same touching story. Whoever loitersamong the ruins of a monastery will see, commonly leading out of thecloisters, rows of cellars half under-ground, low, damp, andwretched-looking; an earthen floor, bearing no trace of pavement; a rooffrom which the mortar and the damp keep up (and always must have keptup) a perpetual ooze; for a window a narrow slip in the wall, throughwhich the cold and the wind find as free an access as the light. Such asthey are, a well-kept dog would object to accept a night's lodging inthem; and if they had been prison cells, thousands of philanthropictongues would have trumpeted out their horrors. The stranger perhapssupposes that they were the very dungeons of which he has heard suchterrible things. He asks his guide, and his guide tells him they werethe monks' dormitories. Yes; there on that wet soil, with that drippingroof above them, was the self-chosen home of those poor men. Throughwinter frost, through rain and storm, through summer sunshine, generation after generation of them, there they lived and prayed, and atlast lay down and died. 

It is all gone now--gone as if it had never been; and it was as foolishas, if the attempt had succeeded, it would have been mischievous, torevive a devotional interest in the Lives of the Saints. It would haveproduced but one more unreality in an age already too full of such. Noone supposes we should have set to work to live as they lived; that anyman, however earnest in his religion, would have gone looking for earthfloors and wet dungeons, or wild islands to live in, when he could getanything better. Either we are wiser, or more humane, or moreself-indulgent; at any rate we are something which divides us frommediæval Christianity by an impassable gulf which this age or this epochwill not see bridged over. Nevertheless, these modern hagiologists, however wrongly they went to work at it, had detected, and wereendeavouring to fill, a very serious blank in our educational system; avery serious blank indeed, and one which, somehow, we must contrive toget filled if the education of character is ever to be more than a namewith us. To try and teach people how to live without giving themexamples in which our rules are illustrated, is like teaching them todraw by the rules of perspective, and of light and shade, withoutdesigns in which to study the effects; or to write verse by the laws ofrhyme and metre, without song or poem in which rhyme and metre areexhibited. It is a principle which we have forgotten, and it is onewhich the old Catholics did not forget. We do not mean that they set outwith saying to themselves, 'We must have examples, we must haveideals;' very likely they never thought about it at all; love for theirholy men, and a thirst to know about them, produced the histories; andlove unconsciously working gave them the best for which they could havewished. The boy at school at the monastery, the young monk disciplininghimself as yet with difficulty under the austerities to which he haddevoted himself, the old one halting on toward the close of hispilgrimage, --all of them had before their eyes, in the legend of thepatron saint, a personal realisation of all they were trying after;leading them on, beckoning to them, and pointing, as they stumbled amongtheir difficulties, to the marks which his own footsteps had left, as hehad trod that hard path before them. It was as if the Church was forever saying to them:--'You have doubts and fears, and trials andtemptations, outward and inward; you have sinned, perhaps, and feel theburden of your sin. Here was one who, like you, _in this very spot_, under the same sky, treading the same soil, among the same hills andwoods and rocks and rivers, was tried like you, tempted like you, sinnedlike you; but here he prayed, and persevered, and did penance, andwashed out his sins; he fought the fight, he vanquished the Evil One, hetriumphed, and now he reigns a saint with Christ in heaven. The sameground which yields you your food, once supplied him; he breathed, andlived, and felt, and died _here_; and now, from his throne in the sky, he is still looking lovingly down on his children, making intercessionfor you that you may have grace to follow him, that by-and-by he mayhimself offer you at God's throne as his own. ' It is impossible tomeasure the influence which a personal reality of this kind must haveexercised on the mind, thus daily and hourly impressed upon it through alife; there is nothing vague any more, no abstract excellences to strainafter; all is distinct, personal, palpable. It is no dream. The saint'sbones are under the altar; nay, perhaps, his very form and featuresundissolved. Under some late abbot the coffin may have been opened andthe body seen without mark or taint of decay. Such things have been, andthe emaciation of a saint will account for it without a miracle. Dailysome incident of his story is read aloud, or spoken of, or preachedupon. In quaint beautiful forms it lives in light in the long chapelwindows; and in the summer matins his figure, lighted up in splendour, gleams down on the congregation as they pray, or streams in mysterioustints along the pavement, clad, as it seems, in soft celestial glory, and shining as he shines in heaven. Alas, alas! where is it all gone?

We are going to venture a few thoughts on the wide question, whatpossibly may have been the meaning of so large a portion of the humanrace, and so many centuries of Christianity, having been surrendered andseemingly sacrificed to the working out this dreary asceticism. If rightonce, then it is right now; if now worthless, then it could never havebeen more than worthless; and the energies which spent themselves on itwere like corn sown upon the rock, or substance given for that which isnot bread. We supposed ourselves challenged recently for our facts. Hereis an enormous fact which there is no evading. It is not to be slurredover with indolent generalities, with unmeaning talk of superstition, ofthe twilight of the understanding, of barbarism, and of nurserycredulity; it is matter for the philosophy of history, if the philosophyhas yet been born which can deal with it; one of the solid, experiencedfacts in the story of mankind which must be accepted and considered withthat respectful deference which all facts claim of their severalsciences, and which will certainly not disclose its meaning (supposingit to have a meaning) except to reverence, to sympathy, to love. We mustremember that the men who wrote these stories, and who practised theseausterities, were the same men who composed our liturgies, who built ourchurches and our cathedrals--and the gothic cathedral is, perhaps, onthe whole, the most magnificent creation which the mind of man has asyet thrown out of itself. If there be any such thing as a philosophy ofhistory, real or possible, it is in virtue of there being certainprogressive organising laws in which the fretful lives of each of us aregathered into and subordinated in some larger unity, through which ageis linked to age, as we move forward, with an horizon expanding andadvancing. And if this is true, the magnitude of any human phenomenon isa criterion of its importance, and definite forms of thought workingthrough long historic periods imply an effect of one of these vastlaws--imply a distinct step in human progress. Something previouslyunrealised is being lived out, and rooted into the heart of mankind. 

Nature never half does her work. She goes over it, and over it, to makeassurance sure, and makes good her ground with wearying repetition. Asingle section of a short paper is but a small space to enter on so vastan enterprise; nevertheless, a few very general words shall be venturedas a suggestion of what this monastic or saintly spirit may possiblyhave meant. 

First, as the spirit of Christianity is antagonistic to the world, whatever form the spirit of the world assumes, the ideals ofChristianity will of course be their opposite; as one verges into oneextreme, the other will verge into the contrary. In those rough timesthe law was the sword; animal might of arm, and the strong animal heartwhich guided it, were the excellences which the world rewarded; andmonasticism, therefore, in its position of protest, would be thedestruction and abnegation of the animal nature. The war hero in thebattle or the tourney yard might be taken as the apotheosis of thefleshly man--the saint in the desert of the spiritual. 

But this interpretation is slight, imperfect, and if true at all onlypartially so. The animal and the spiritual are not contradictories; theyare the complements in the perfect character; and in the middle ages, asin all ages of genuine earnestness, they interfused and penetrated eachother. There were warrior saints and saintly warriors; and those grandold figures which sleep cross-legged in the cathedral aisles weresomething higher than only one more form of the beast of prey. Monasticism represented something more positive than a protest againstthe world. We believe it to have been the realisation of the infiniteloveliness and beauty of personal purity. 

In the earlier civilisation, the Greeks, however genuine their reverencefor the gods, do not seem to have supposed any part of their duty to thegods to consist in keeping their bodies untainted. Exquisite as wastheir sense of beauty, of beauty of mind as well as beauty of form, withall their loftiness and their nobleness, with their ready love of moralexcellence when manifested, as fortitude, or devotion to liberty and tohome, they had little or no idea of what we mean by morality. With a fewrare exceptions, pollution, too detestable to be even named amongourselves, was of familiar and daily occurrence among their greatestmen; was no reproach to philosopher or to statesman; and was notsupposed to be incompatible, and was not, in fact, incompatible with anyof those especial excellences which we so admire in the Greek character. 

Among the Romans (that is, the early Romans of the republic), there wasa sufficiently austere morality. A public officer of state, whosebusiness was to enquire into the private lives of the citizens, and topunish offences against morals, is a phenomenon which we have seen onlyonce on this planet. There was never a nation before, and there has beennone since, with sufficient virtue to endure it. But the Roman moralitywas not lovely for its own sake, nor excellent in itself. It wasobedience to law, practised and valued, loved for what resulted from it, for the strength and rigid endurance which it gave, but not loved foritself. The Roman nature was fierce, rugged, almost brutal; and itsubmitted to restraint as stern as itself, as long as the energy of theold spirit endured. But as soon as that energy grew slack--when thereligion was no longer believed, and taste, as it was called, came in, and there was no more danger to face, and the world was at their feet, all was swept away as before a whirlwind; there was no loveliness invirtue to make it desired, and the Rome of the Cæsars presents, in itslater ages, a picture of enormous sensuality, of the coarsest animaldesire, with means unlimited to gratify it. In Latin literature, aslittle as in the Greek, is there any sense of the beauty of purity. Moral essays on temperance we may find, and praise enough of the wiseman whose passions and whose appetites are trained into obedience toreason. But this is no more than the philosophy of the old Roman life, which got itself expressed in words when men were tired of the reality. It involves no sense of sin. If sin could be indulged without weakeningself-command, or without hurting other people, Roman philosophy wouldhave nothing to say against it. 

The Christians stepped far out beyond philosophy. Without speculating onthe _why_, they felt that indulgence of animal passion did, in fact, pollute them, and so much the more, the more it was deliberate. Philosophy, gliding into Manicheism, divided the forces of the universe, giving the spirit to God, but declaring matter to be eternally andincurably evil; and looking forward to the time when the spirit shouldbe emancipated from the body, as the beginning of, or as the return to, its proper existence, a man like Plotinus took no especial care whatbecame the meanwhile of its evil tenement of flesh. If the body sinned, sin was its element; it could not do other than sin; purity of conductcould not make the body clean, and no amount of bodily indulgence couldshed a taint upon the spirit--a very comfortable doctrine, and onewhich, under various disguises, has appeared a good many times on theearth. But Christianity, shaking all this off, would present the body toGod as a pure and holy sacrifice, as so much of the material worldconquered from the appetites and lusts, and from the devil whose abodethey were. This was the meaning of the fastings and scourgings, thepenances and night-watchings; it was this which sent St. Anthony to thetombs and set Simeon on his pillar, to conquer the devil in the flesh, and keep themselves, if possible, undefiled by so much as one corruptthought. 

And they may have been absurd and extravagant. When the feeling isstronger than the judgment, men are very apt to be extravagant. If, inthe recoil from Manicheism, they conceived that a body of a saint thuspurified had contracted supernatural virtue and could work miracles, they had not sufficiently attended to the facts, and so far are notunexceptionable witnesses to them. Nevertheless they did their work, andin virtue of it we are raised to a higher stage--we are lifted forward amighty step which we can never again retrace. Personal purity is not thewhole for which we have to care: it is but one feature in the idealcharacter of man. The monks may have thought it was all, or more nearlyall than it is; and therefore their lives may seem to us poor, mean, andemasculate. Yet it is with life as it is with science; generations ofmen have given themselves exclusively to single branches, which, whenmastered, form but a little section in a cosmic philosophy; and in life, so slow is progress, it may take a thousand years to make good a singlestep. Weary and tedious enough it seems when we cease to speak in largelanguage, and remember the numbers of individual souls who have been atwork at the process; but who knows whereabouts we are in the durationof the race? Is humanity crawling out of the cradle, or tottering intothe grave? Is it in nursery, in schoolroom, or in opening manhood? Whoknows? It is enough for us to be sure of our steps when we have takenthem, and thankfully to accept what has been done for us. Henceforth itis impossible for us to give our unmixed admiration to any characterwhich moral shadows overhang. Henceforth we require, not greatness only, but goodness; and not that goodness only which begins and ends inconduct correctly regulated, but that love of goodness, that keen purefeeling for it, which resides in a conscience as sensitive andsusceptible as woman's modesty. 

So much for what seems to us the philosophy of this matter. If we areright, it is no more than a first furrow in the crust of a soil whichhitherto the historians have been contented to leave in its barrenness. If they are conscientious enough not to trifle with the facts, as theylook back on them from the luxurious self-indulgence of modernChristianity, they either revile the superstition or pity the ignorancewhich made such large mistakes on the nature of religion--and, loud intheir denunciations of priestcraft and of lying wonders, they pointtheir moral with pictures of the ambition of mediæval prelacy or thescandals of the annals of the papacy. For the inner life of all thosemillions of immortal souls who were struggling, with such good or badsuccess as was given them, to carry Christ's cross along their journeythrough life, they set it by, pass it over, dismiss it out of history, with some poor commonplace simper of sorrow or of scorn. It will not do. Mankind have not been so long on this planet altogether, that we canallow so large a chasm to be scooped out of their spiritual existence. 

We intended to leave our readers with something lighter than all this inthe shape of literary criticism, and a few specimens of the biographicalstyle: in both of these we must now, however, be necessarily brief. Whoever is curious to study the lives of the saints in their originals, should rather go anywhere than to the Bollandists, and universally neverread a late life when he can command an early one; for the genius inthem is in the ratio of their antiquity, and, like river-water, is mostpure nearest to the fountain. We are lucky in possessing severalspecimens of the mode of their growth in late and early lives of thesame saints, and the process in all is similar. Out of the unnumberedlives of St. Bride, three are left; out of the sixty-six of St. Patrick, there are eight; the first of each belonging to the sixth century, thelatest to the thirteenth. The earliest in each instance are in verse;they belong to a time when there was no one to write such things, andwere popular in form and popular in their origin. The flow is easy, thestyle graceful and natural; but the step from poetry to prose issubstantial as well as formal; the imagination is ossified, and weexchange the exuberance of legendary creativeness for the dogmaticrecord of fact without reality, and fiction without grace. Themarvellous in the poetical lives is comparatively slight; theafter-miracles being composed frequently out of a mistake of poets'metaphors for literal truth. There is often real, genial, human beautyin the old verse. The first two stanzas, for instance, of St. Bride'sHymn are of high merit, as may, perhaps, be imperfectly seen in atranslation:--

 Bride the queen, she loved not the world; She floated on the waves of the world As the sea-bird floats upon the billow. 

 Such sleep she slept as the mother sleeps In the far land of her captivity, Mourning for her child at home. 

What a picture is there of the strangeness and yearning of the poorhuman soul in this earthly pilgrimage!

The poetical 'Life of St. Patrick, ' too, is full of fine, wild, naturalimagery. The boy is described as a shepherd on the hills of Down, andthere is a legend, well told, of the angel Victor coming to him, andleaving a gigantic footprint on a rock from which he sprang back intoheaven. The legend, of course, rose from some remarkable natural featureof the spot; as it is first told, a shadowy unreality hangs over it, andit is doubtful whether it is more than a vision of the boy; but in thelater prose all is crystalline; the story is drawn out, with a barrenprolixity of detail, into a series of angelic visitations. And again, when Patrick is described, as the after-apostle, raising the dead Celtsto life, the metaphor cannot be left in its natural force, and we have along weary list of literal deaths and literal raisings. So in many waysthe freshness and individuality was lost with time. The larger saintsswallowed up the smaller and appropriated their exploits; chasms weresupplied by an ever ready fancy; and, like the stock of good works laidup for general use, there was a stock of miracles ever ready when anydefect was to be supplied. So it was that, after the first impulse, theprogressive life of a saint rolled on like a snowball down a mountainside, gathering up into itself whatever lay in its path, fact or legend, appropriate or inappropriate--sometimes real jewels of genuine oldtradition, sometimes the débris of the old creeds and legends ofheathenism; and on, and on, till at length it reached the bottom, andwas dashed in pieces on the Reformation. 

One more illustration shall serve as evidence of what the reallygreatest, most vigorous, minds in the twelfth century could accept aspossible or probable, which they could relate (on what evidence we donot know) as really ascertained facts. We remember something of St. Anselm: both as a statesman and as a theologian, he was unquestionablyamong the ablest men of his time alive in Europe. Here is a story whichAnselm tells of a certain Cornish St. Kieran. The saint, with thirty ofhis companions, was preaching within the frontiers of a lawless Paganprince; and, disregarding all orders to be quiet or to leave thecountry, continued to agitate, to threaten, and to thunder even in theears of the prince himself. Things took their natural course. Disobedience provoked punishment. A guard of soldiers was sent, and thesaint and his little band were decapitated. The scene of the executionwas a wood, and the heads and trunks were left lying there for thewolves and the wild birds. 

 But now a miracle, such as was once heard of before in the Church in the person of the holy Denis, was again wrought by Divine Providence to preserve the bodies of these saints from profanation. The trunk of Kieran rose from the ground, and selecting first his own head, and carrying it to a stream, and there carefully washing it, and afterwards performing the same sacred office for each of his companions, giving each body its own head, he dug graves for them and buried them, and last of all buried himself. 

It is even so. So it stands written in a life claiming Anselm'sauthorship; and there is no reason why the authorship should not be his. Out of the heart come the issues of evil and of good, and not out of theintellect or the understanding. Men are not good or bad, noble orbase--thank God for it!--as they judge well or ill of the probabilitiesof nature, but as they love God and hate the devil. And yet the story isinstructive. We have heard grave good men--men of intellect andinfluence--with all the advantages of modern science, learning, experience; men who would regard Anselm with sad and serious pity; yettell us stories, as having fallen within their own experience, of themarvels of mesmerism, to the full as ridiculous (if anything isridiculous) as this of the poor decapitated Kieran. 

 Mutato nomine, de te Fabula narratur. 

We see our natural faces in the glass of history, and turn away andstraightway forget what manner of men we are. The superstition ofscience scoffs at the superstition of faith. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Z] Written in 1850. 

REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 

1850. 

From St. Anselm to Mr. Emerson, from the 'Acta Sanctorum' to the'Representative Men;' so far in seven centuries we have travelled. Theraces of the old Ideals have become extinct like the PreadamiteSaurians; and here are our new pattern specimens on which we are tolook, and take comfort and encouragement to ourselves. 

The philosopher, the mystic, the poet, the sceptic, the man of theworld, the writer; these are the present moral categories, the _summagenera_ of human greatness as Mr. Emerson arranges them. From everypoint of view an exceptionable catalogue. They are all thinkers, tobegin with, except one: and thought is but a poor business compared toaction. Saints did not earn canonisation by the number of their folios;and if the necessities of the times are now driving our best men out ofaction into philosophy and verse-making, so much the worse for them andso much the worse for the world. The one pattern actor, 'the man of theworld, ' is Napoleon Bonaparte, not in the least a person, as we are mostof us at present feeling, whose example the world desires to seefollowed. Mr. Emerson would have done better if he had kept to his ownside of the Atlantic. He is paying his own countrymen but a poorcompliment by coming exclusively to Europe for his heroes; and he wouldbe doing us in Europe more real good by a great deal if he would tell ussomething of the backwoodsmen in Kentucky and Ohio. However, to let thatpass; it is not our business here to quarrel either with him or hisbook; and the book stands at the head of our article rather because itpresents a very noticeable deficiency of which its writer is eitherunaware or careless. 

These six predicables, as the logician would call them, what are they?Are they _ultimate genera_ refusing to be classified farther? or isthere any other larger type of greatness under which they fall? In thenaturalist's catalogue, poet, sceptic, and the rest will all beclassified as men--man being an intelligible entity. Has Mr. Emerson anysimilar clear idea of great man or good man? If so, where is he? what ishe? It is desirable that we should know. Men will not get to heavenbecause they lie under one or other of these predicables. What is thatsupreme type of character which is in itself good or great, unqualifiedwith any farther _differentia_? Is there any such? and if there be, where is the representative of this? It may be said that the generic manexists nowhere in an ideal unity--that if considered at all, he must beabstracted from the various sorts of men, black and white, tame orsavage. So if we would know what a great man or a good man means, wemust look to some specific line in which he is good, and abstract ourgeneral idea. And that is very well, provided we know what we are about;provided we understand, in our abstracting, how to get the essentialidea distinctly out before ourselves, without entangling ourselves inthe accidents. Human excellence, after all the teaching of the lasteighteen hundred years, ought to be something palpable by this time. Itis the one thing which we are all taught to seek and to aim at formingin ourselves; and if representative men are good for anything at all, itcan only be, not as they represent merely curious combinations ofphenomena, but as they illustrate us in a completely realised form, whatwe are, every single one of us, equally interested in understanding. Itis not the 'great man' as 'man of the world' that we care for, but the'man of the world' as a 'great man'--which is a very different thing. Having to live in this world, how to live greatly here is the questionfor us; not, how, being great, we can cast our greatness in a worldlymould. There may be endless successful 'men of the world' who are meanor little enough all the while; and the Emersonian attitude will confusesuccess with greatness, or turn our ethics into a chaos of absurdity. Soit is with everything which man undertakes and works in. Life has growncomplicated; and for one employment in old times there are a hundrednow. But it is not _they_ which are anything, but _we_. We are the end, they are but the means, the material--like the clay, or the marble, orthe bronze in which the sculptor carves his statue. The _form_ iseverything; and what is the form? From nursery to pulpit every teacherrings on the one note--be good, be noble, be men. What is goodness then?and what is nobleness? and where are the examples? We do not say thatthere are none. God forbid! That is not what we are meaning at all. Ifthe earth had ceased to bear men pleasant in God's sight, it would havepassed away like the cities in the plain. But who are they? which arethey? how are we to know them? They are our leaders in this lifecampaign of ours. If we could see them, we would follow them, and saveourselves many and many a fall, and many an enemy whom we could haveavoided, if we had known of him. It cannot be that the thing is sosimple, when names of highest reputation are wrangled over, and suchpoor counterfeits are mobbed with applauding followers. In art andscience we can detect the charlatan, but in life we do not recognise himso readily--we do not recognise the charlatan, and we do not recognisethe true man. Rajah Brooke is alternately a hero or a pirate; and fiftyof the best men among us are likely to have fifty opinions on the meritsof Elizabeth or Cromwell. 

But surely, men say, the thing is simple. The commandments are simple. It is not that people do not know, but that they will not act up to whatthey know. We hear a great deal of this in sermons, and elsewhere; andof course, as everybody's experience will tell him, there is a greatdeal too much reason why we should hear of it. But there are two sortsof duty, positive and negative; what we ought to do, and what we oughtnot to do. To the latter of these, conscience is pretty much awake; butby cunningly concentrating its attention on one side of the matter, conscience has contrived to forget altogether that any other sort existsat all. 'Doing wrong' is breaking a commandment which forbids us to dosome particular thing. That is all the notion which in common languageis attached to the idea. Do not kill, steal, lie, swear, commitadultery, or break the Lord's day--these are the commandments; verysimple, doubtless, and easy to be known. But, after all, what are they?They are no more than the very first and rudimental conditions ofgoodness. Obedience to these is not more than a small part of what isrequired of us; it is no more than the foundation on which thesuperstructure of character is to be raised. To go through life, andplead at the end of it that we have not broken any of thesecommandments, is but what the unprofitable servant did, who kept histalent carefully unspent, and yet was sent to outer darkness for hisuselessness. Suppose these commandments obeyed--what then? It is but asmall portion of our time which, we will hope, is spent in resistingtemptation to break them. What are we to do with the rest of it? Orsuppose them (and this is a high step indeed) resolved into love of Godand love of our neighbour. Suppose we know that it is our duty to loveour neighbour as ourselves. What are we to do, then, for our neighbour, besides abstaining from doing him injury? The saints knew very well what_they_ were to do; but our duties, we suppose, lie in a differentdirection; and it does not appear that we have found them. 'We haveduties so positive to our neighbour, ' says Bishop Butler, 'that if wegive more of our time and of our attention to ourselves and our ownmatters than is our just due, we are taking what is not ours, and areguilty of fraud. ' What does Bishop Butler mean? It is easy to answergenerally. In detail, it is not only difficult, it is impossible toanswer at all. The modern world says--'Mind your own business, and leaveothers to take care of theirs;' and whoever among us aspires to morethan the negative abstaining from wrong, is left to his own guidance. There is no help for him, no instruction, no modern ideal which shall beto him what the heroes were to the young Greek or Roman, or the martyrsto the middle age Christian. There is neither track nor footprint in thecourse which he will have to follow, while, as in the old fairy tale, the hillside which he is climbing is strewed with black stones mockingat him with their thousand voices. We have no moral criterion, no idea, no counsels of perfection; and surely this is the reason why educationis so little prosperous with us; because the only education worthanything is the education of character, and we cannot educate acharacter unless we have some notion of what we would form. Young men, as we know, are more easily led than driven. It is a very old story thatto forbid this and that (so curious and contradictory is our nature) isto stimulate a desire to do it. But place before a boy a figure of anoble man; let the circumstances in which he has earned his claim to becalled noble be such as the boy himself sees round himself; let him seethis man rising over his temptation, and following life victoriously andbeautifully forward, and, depend on it, you will kindle his heart as nothreat of punishment here or anywhere will kindle it. 

People complain of the sameness in the 'Lives of the Saints. ' It is thatvery sameness which is the secret of their excellence. There is asameness in the heroes of the 'Iliad;' there is a sameness in thehistorical heroes of Greece and Rome. A man is great as he contends bestwith the circumstances of his age, and those who fight best with thesame circumstances, of course grow like each other. And so with our ownage--if we really could have the lives of our best men written for us(and written well, by men who knew what to look for, and what it was onwhich they should insist), they would be just as like as each other too, and would for that reason be of such infinite usefulness. They would notbe like the old Ideals. Times are changed; they were one thing, we haveto be another--their enemies are not ours. There is a moralmetempsychosis in the change of era, and probably no lineament of formor feature remains identical; yet surely not because less is demanded ofus--not less, but more--more, as we are again and again told on Sundaysfrom the pulpits; if the preachers would but tell us in what that 'more'consists. The loftiest teaching we ever hear is, that we are to work inthe spirit of love; but we are still left to generalities, while actiondivides and divides into ever smaller details. It is as if the Churchsaid to the painter or to the musician whom she was training, you mustwork in the spirit of love and in the spirit of truth; and then adding, that the Catholic painting or the Catholic music was what he was _not_to imitate, supposed that she had sent him out into the world equippedfully for his enterprise. 

And what comes of this? Emersonianism has come, modern hagiology hascome, and Ainsworth novels and Bulwer novels, and a thousand moreunclean spirits. We have cast out the Catholic devil, and the Puritanhas swept the house and garnished it; but as yet we do not see anysymptoms showing of a healthy incoming tenant, and there may be worsestates than Catholicism. If we wanted proof of the utter spiritualdisintegration into which we have fallen, it would be enough that wehave no biographies. We do not mean that we have no written lives of ourfellow-creatures; there are enough and to spare. But not any one isthere in which the ideal tendencies of this age can be discerned intheir true form; not one, or hardly any one, which we could place in ayoung man's hands, with such warm confidence as would let us say ofit--'Read that; there is a man--such a man as you ought to be; read it, meditate on it; see what he was, and how he made himself what he was, and try and be yourself like him. ' This, as we saw lately, is whatCatholicism did. It had its one broad type of perfection, which incountless thousands of instances was perpetually reproducing itself--atype of character not especially belonging to any one profession; it wasa type to which priest and layman, knight or bishop, king or peasant, might equally aspire: men of all sorts aspired to it, and men of allsorts attained to it; and as fast as she had realised them (so to say), the Church took them in her arms, and held them up before the world asfresh and fresh examples of victory over the devil. This is what thatChurch was able to do, and it is what we cannot do; and yet, till we canlearn to do it, no education which we can offer has any chance ofprospering. Perfection is not easy; it is of all things most difficult;difficult to know and difficult to practise. Rules of life will not do;even if our analysis of life in all its possible forms were as completeas it is in fact rudimentary, they would still be inefficient. Thephilosophy of the thing might be understood, but the practice would beas far off as ever. In life, as in art, and as in mechanics, the onlyprofitable teaching is the teaching by example. Your mathematician, oryour man of science, may discourse excellently on the steam engine, yethe cannot make one; he cannot make a bolt or a screw. The master workmanin the engine-room does not teach his apprentice the theory ofexpansion, or of atmospheric pressure; he guides his hand upon theturncock, he practises his eye upon the index, and he leaves the scienceto follow when the practice has become mechanical. So it is witheverything which man learns to do; and yet for the art of arts, thetrade of trades, for _life_, we content ourselves with teaching ourchildren the catechism and the commandments; we preach them sermons onthe good of being good, and the evil of being evil; in our highereducation we advance to the theory of habit and the freedom of the will;and then, when failure follows failure, _ipsa experientia reclamante_, we hug ourselves with a complacent self-satisfied reflection that thefault is not ours, that all which men could do we have done. The freedomof the will!--as if a blacksmith would ever teach a boy to make ahorseshoe, by telling him he could make one if he chose. 

In setting out on our journey through life, we are like strangers set tofind their way across a difficult and entangled country. It is notenough for us to know that others have set out as we set out, thatothers have faced the lions in the path and overcome them, and havearrived at last at the journey's end. Such a knowledge may give usheart--but the help it gives is nothing beyond teaching us that thedifficulties are not insuperable. It is the _track_, which these others, these pioneers of godliness, have beaten in, that we cry to have shownus; not a mythic 'Pilgrim's Progress, ' but a real path trodden in byreal men. Here is a crag, and there is but one spot where it can beclimbed; here is a morass or a river, and there is a bridge in oneplace, and a ford in another. There are robbers in this forest, and wildbeasts in that; the tracks cross and recross, and, as in the oldlabyrinth, only one will bring us right. The age of the saints haspassed; they are no longer any service to us; we must walk in theirspirit, but not along their road; and in this sense we say, that we haveno pattern great men, no biographies, no history, which are of realservice to us. It is the remarkable characteristic of the present time, as far as we know--a new phenomenon since history began to be written;one more proof, if we wanted proof, that we are entering on another era. In our present efforts at educating, we are like workmen setting aboutto make a machine which they know is to be composed of plates andjoints, and wheels and screws and springs:--they temper their springs, and smooth their plates, and carve out carefully their wheels andscrews, but having no idea of the machine in its combination, theyeither fasten them together at random, and create some monster ofdisjointed undirected force, or else pile the finished materials into aheap together, and trust to some organic spirit in themselves which willshape them into unity. We do not know what we would be at--make ourchildren into men, says one--but what sort of men? The Greeks were men, so were the Jews, so were the Romans, so were the old Saxons, theNormans, the Duke of Alva's Spaniards, and Cromwell's Puritans. Thesewere all men, and strong men too; yet all different, and all differentlytrained. 'Into Christian men, ' say others: but the saints were Christianmen; yet the modern Englishmen have been offered the saints'biographies, and have with sufficient clearness expressed their opinionof them. 

Alas! in all this confusion, only those keen-eyed children of this worldfind their profit; their idea does not readily forsake them. In theirsubstantial theory of life, the business of man in it is to get on, tothrive, to prosper, to have riches in possession. They will have theirlittle ones taught, by the law of demand, what will fetch its price inthe market; and this is clear, bold, definite, straightforward--andtherefore it is strong, and works its way. It works and will prevail fora time; for a time--but not for ever, unless indeed religion be all adream, and our airy notions of ourselves a vision out of which our wiseage is the long-waited-for awakening. 

It would be a weary and odious business to follow out all the causeswhich have combined to bring us into our present state. Many of them liedeep down in the roots of humanity, and many belong to that large systemof moral causation which works through vast masses of mankind--which, impressing peculiar and necessary features on the eras as they succeed, leaves individuals but a limited margin within which they may determinewhat they will be. One cause, however, may be mentioned, which lies nearthe surface, and which for many reasons it may be advantageous toconsider. At first thought it may seem superficial and captious; but wedo not think it will at the second, and still less at the third. 

Protestantism, and even Anglo-Protestantism, has not been without itsgreat men. In their first fierce struggle for existence, these creedsgave birth to thousands whose names may command any rank in history. Butalone of all forms of religion, past or present, and we will add (as wedevoutly hope), to come (for in her present form, at least, the Churchof England cannot long remain), Protestantism knows not what to do withher own offspring; she is unable to give them open and honourablerecognition. Entangled in speculative theories of human depravity, ofthe worthlessness of the best which the best men can do, Protestantismis unable to say heartily of any one, 'Here is a good man to be lovedand remembered with reverence. ' There are no saints in the EnglishChurch. The English Church does not pretend to saints. Her children maylive purely, holily, and beautifully, but her gratitude for them must besilent; she may not thank God for them--she may not hold them up beforeher congregation. They may or they may not have been really good, butshe may not commit herself to attributing a substantial value to theactions of a nature so corrupt as that of man. Among Protestants, theChurch of England is the worst, for she is not wholly Protestant. In theutterness of the self-abnegation of the genuine Protestant there issomething approaching the heroic. But she, ambitious of being Catholicas well as Protestant, like that old Church of evil memory which wouldbe neither hot nor cold, will neither wholly abandon merit, nor whollyclaim it; but halts on between two opinions, claiming and disclaiming, saying and in the next breath again unsaying. The Oxford student beingasked for the doctrine of the Anglican Church on good works, knew therocks and whirlpools among which an unwary answer might involve him, andsteering midway between Scylla and Charybdis, replied, with laudablecaution, 'a few of them would not do a man any harm. ' It is scarcely acaricature of the prudence of the Articles. And so at last it has cometo this with us. The soldier can raise a column to his successfulgeneral; the halls of the law courts are hung round with portraits ofthe ermined sages; Newton has his statue, and Harvey and Watt, in theacademies of the sciences; and each young aspirant after fame, enteringfor the first time upon the calling which he has chosen, sees highexcellence highly honoured; sees the high career, and sees its nobleending, marked out each step of it in golden letters. But the Church'saisles are desolate, and desolate they must remain. There is no statuefor the Christian. The empty niches stare out like hollow eye-socketsfrom the walls. Good men live in the Church and die in her, whose storywritten out or told would be of inestimable benefit, but she may notwrite it. She may speak of goodness, but not of the good man; as she mayspeak of sin, but may not censure the sinner. Her position is critical;the Dissenters would lay hold of it. She may not do it, but she will dowhat she can. She cannot tolerate an image indeed, or a picture of herown raising; she has no praise to utter at her children's graves, whentheir lives have witnessed to her teaching. But if others will bear theexpense and will risk the sin, she will offer no objection. Her wallsare naked. The wealthy ones among her congregation may adorn them asthey please; the splendour of a dead man's memorial shall be, not as hisvirtues were, but as his purse; and his epitaph may be brilliantaccording as there are means to pay for it. They manage things better atthe museums and the institutes. 

Let this pass, however, as the worst case. There are other causes atwork besides the neglect of churches; the neglect itself being as much aresult as a cause. There is a common dead level over the world, to whichchurches and teachers, however seemingly opposite, are alike condemned. As it is here in England, so it is with the American Emerson. The faultis not in them, but in the age of which they are no more than theindicators. We are passing out of old forms of activity into others newand on their present scale untried; and how to work nobly in them is theone problem for us all. Surius will not profit us, nor the 'Mortd'Arthur. ' Our calling is neither to the hermitage nor to the roundtable. Our work lies now in those peaceful occupations which, in agescalled heroic, were thought unworthy of noble souls. In those it was theslave who tilled the ground, and wove the garments. It was the ignobleburgher who covered the sea with his ships, and raised up factories andworkshops; and how far such occupations influenced the character, howthey could be made to minister to loftiness of heart, and high andbeautiful life, was a question which could not occur while theatmosphere of the heroic was on all sides believed so alien to them. Times have changed. The old hero worship has vanished with the need ofit; but no other has risen in its stead, and without it we wander in thedark. The commonplaces of morality, the negative commandments, generalexhortations to goodness, while neither speaker nor hearer can tell whatthey mean by goodness--these are all which now remain to us; and throwninto a life more complicated than any which the earth has yetexperienced, we are left to wind our way through the labyrinth of itsdetails without any clue except our own instincts, our own knowledge, our own hopes and desires. 

We complain of generalities; we will not leave ourselves exposed to thesame charge. We will mention a few of the thousand instances in which wecry for guidance and find none; instances on which those who undertaketo teach us ought to have made up their minds. 

On the surface at least of the Prayer-book, there seems to be somethingleft remaining of the Catholic penitential system. Fasting is spoken ofand abstinence, and some form or other of self-inflicted self-denial isnecessarily meant. This thing can by no possibility be unimportant, andwe may well smile at the exclusive claims of a church to the cure of oursouls, who is unable to say what she thinks about it. Let us ask herliving interpreters then, and what shall we get for an answer? either noanswer at all, or contradictory answers; angrily, violently, passionately, contradictory. Among the many voices, what is a young manto conclude? He will conclude naturally according to his inclination;and if he chooses right, it will most likely be on a wrong motive. 

Again, _courage_ is, on all hands, considered as an essential of highcharacter. Among all fine people, old and modern, wherever we are ableto get an insight into their training system, we find it a thingparticularly attended to. The Greeks, the Romans, the old Persians, ourown nation till the last two hundred years, whoever of mankind haveturned out good for anything anywhere, knew very well, that to exhort aboy to be brave without training him in it, would be like exhorting ayoung colt to submit to the bridle without breaking him in. Step bystep, as he could bear it, the boy was introduced to danger, till hispulse ceased to be agitated, and he became familiarised with peril ashis natural element. It was a matter of carefully considered, thoroughlyrecognised, and organised education. But courage nowadays is not apaying virtue. Courage does not help to make money, and so we haveceased to care about it; and boys are left to educate one another bytheir own semi-brutal instincts, in this, which is perhaps the mostimportant of all features in the human character. Schools, as far as themasters are concerned with them, are places for teaching Greek andLatin--that, and nothing more. At the universities, fox-hunting is, perhaps, the only discipline of the kind now to be found, andfox-hunting, by forbidding it and winking at it, the authorities havecontrived to place on as demoralising a footing as ingenuity coulddevise. [AA]

To pass from training to life. A boy has done with school and college;he has become a man, and has to choose his profession. It is the onemost serious step which he has yet taken. In most cases, there is norecalling it. He believes that he is passing through life to eternity;that his chance of getting to heaven depends on what use he makes of histime; he prays every day that he may be delivered from temptation; it ishis business to see that he does not throw himself into it. Now, everyone of the many professions has a peculiar character of its own, which, with rare exceptions, it inflicts on those who follow it. There is theshopkeeper type, the manufacturer type, the lawyer type, the medicaltype, the clerical type, the soldier's, the sailor's. The nature of aman is

 Like the dyer's hand, Subdued to what it works in;

and we can distinguish with ease, on the slightest intercourse, to whatclass a grown person belongs. It is to be seen in his look, in hiswords, in his tone of thought, his voice, gesture, even in hishand-writing; and in everything which he does. Every human employmenthas its especial moral characteristic, its peculiar temptations, itspeculiar influences--of a subtle and not easily analysed kind, and onlyto be seen in their effects. Here, therefore--here, if anywhere, we wantMr. Emerson with his representatives, or the Church with her advice andwarning. But, in fact, what attempt do we see to understand any of this, or even to acknowledge it; to master the moral side of the professions;to teach young men entering them what they are to expect, what to avoid, or what to seek? Where are the highest types--the pattern lawyer, andshopkeeper, and merchant? Are they all equally favourable to excellenceof character? Do they offer equal opportunities? Which best suits thisdisposition, and which suits that? Alas! character is little thought ofin the choice. It is rather, which shall I best succeed in? Where shallI make most money? Suppose an anxious boy to go for counsel to hisspiritual mother; to go to her, and ask her to guide him. Shall I be asoldier? he says. What will she tell him? This and no more--you may, without sin. Shall I be a lawyer, merchant, manufacturer, tradesman, engineer? Still the same answer. But which is best? he demands. We donot know: we do not know. There is no guilt in either; you may takewhich you please, provided you go to church regularly, and are honestand good. If he is foolish enough to persist further, and ask, in whatgoodness and honesty consist in _his especial department_ (whichever heselects), he will receive the same answer; in other words, he will betold to give every man his due and be left to find out for himself inwhat 'his due' consists. It is like an artist telling his pupil to putthe lights and shadows in their due places, and leaving it to thepupil's ingenuity to interpret such instructive directions. 

One more instance of an obviously practical kind. Masters, few peoplewill now deny, owe certain duties to their workmen beyond payment at thecompetition price for their labour, and the workmen owe something totheir masters beyond making their own best bargain. Courtesy, on the oneside, and respect on the other, are at least due; and wherever humanbeings are brought in contact, a number of reciprocal obligations atonce necessarily arise out of the conditions of their position. It isthis question which at the present moment is convulsing an entire branchof English trade. It is this question which has shaken the Continentlike an earthquake, and yet it is one which, the more it is thoughtabout, the more clearly seems to refuse to admit of being dealt with bylegislation. It is a question for the Gospel and not for the law. Theduties are of the kind which it is the business, not of the State, butof the Church, to look to. Why is the Church silent? There are duties;let her examine them, sift them, prove them, and then point them out. Why not--why not? Alas! she cannot, she dare not give offence, andtherefore must find none. It is to be feared that we have a rough trialto pass through, before we find our way and understand our obligations. Yet far off we seem to see a time when the lives, the actions of thereally great, great good masters, great good landlords, great goodworking men, will be laid out once more before their several orders, laid out in the name of God, as once the saints' lives were; and thesame sounds shall be heard in factory and in counting-house as oncesounded through abbey, chapel, and cathedral aisle--'Look at these men;bless God for them, and follow them. '

And let no one fear that, if such happy time were come, it would resultin a tame and weary sameness; that the beautiful variety of individualform would be lost, drilled away in regimental uniformity. Even if itwere so, it need not be any the worse for us; we are not told todevelope our individualities, we are told to bear fruit. The poorvagabond, with all his individualities about him, if by luck he fallsinto the hands of the recruiting sergeant, finds himself, a year later, with his red coat and his twelve months' training, not a little thebetter for the loss of them. But such schooling as we have been speakingof will drill out only such individualities as are of the unworthy kind, and will throw the strength of the nature into the development of thehealthiest features in it. Far more, as things now are, we see mensinking into sameness--an inorganic, unwholesome sameness, in which thehigher nature is subdued, and the _man_ is sacrificed to the profession. The circumstances of his life are his world; and he sinks under them, hedoes not conquer them. If he has to choose between the two, God'suniform is better than the world's. The first gives him freedom; thesecond takes it from him. Only here, as in everything, we mustunderstand the nature of the element in which we work; understand it;understand the laws of it. Throw off the lower laws; the selfish, debasing influences of the profession; obey the higher; follow love, truthfulness, manliness; follow these first, and make the professionserve them; and that is freedom; there is none else possible for man. 

 Das Gesetz soll nur uns Freiheit geben;

and whatever individuality is lost in the process, we may feel assuredthat the devil has too much to do with, to make us care to be rid of it. 

But how to arrive at this? so easy as it is to suggest on paper, so easyto foretell in words. Raise the level of public opinion, we might say;insist on a higher standard; in the economist's language, increase thedemand for goodness, and the supply will follow; or, at any rate, menwill do their best. Until we require more of one another, more will notbe provided. But this is but to restate the problem in other words. Howare we to touch the heart; how to awaken the desire? We believe that thegood man, the great man, whatever he be, prince or peasant, is reallylovely; that really and truly, if we can only see him, he more thananything will move us; and at least, we have a right to demand that theartificial hindrances which prevent our lifting him above the crowd, shall be swept away. He in his beautiful life is a thousand times moreGod's witness than any preacher in a pulpit, and his light must not beconcealed any more. As we said, what lies in the way of our sacredrecognition of great men is more than anything else the Protestantdoctrine of good works. We do not forget what it meant when the worldfirst heard of it. It was a cry from the very sanctuary of the soul, flinging off and execrating the accursed theory of merits, the sickeningparade of redundant saintly virtues, which the Roman Church hadconverted into stock, and dispensed for the benefit of the believers. This is not the place to pour out our nausea on so poor, yet sodetestable a farce. But it seems with all human matters, that as soon asspiritual truths are petrified into doctrines, it is another name fortheir death. They die, corrupt, and breed a pestilence. The doctrine ofgood works was hurled away by an instinct of generous feeling, and thisfeeling itself has again become dead, and a fresh disease has followedupon it. Nobody (or, at least, nobody good for anything) will lay aclaim to merit for this or that good action which he may have done. Exactly in proportion as a man is really good, will be the eagernesswith which he will refuse all credit for it; he will cry out, with allhis soul, 'Not unto us--not unto us. '

And yet, practically, we all know and feel that between man and manthere is an infinite moral difference; one is good, one is bad, anotherhovers between the two; the whole of our conduct to each other isnecessarily governed by a recognition of this fact, just as it is in theanalogous question of the will. Ultimately, we are nothing of ourselves;we know that we are but what God has given us grace to be--we did notmake ourselves--we do not keep ourselves here--we are but what in theeternal order of Providence we were designed to be--exactly that andnothing else; and yet we treat each other as responsible; we cannothelp it. The most rigid Calvinist cannot eliminate his instincts; hisloves and hatreds seem rather to deepen in intensity of colouring as, logically, his creed should lead him to conquer them as foolish. It isuseless, it is impossible, to bring down these celestial mysteries uponour earth, to try to see our way by them, or determine our feelings bythem; men are good, men are bad, relatively to us and to ourunderstandings if you will, but still really, and so they must betreated. 

There is no more mischievous falsehood than to persist in railing atman's nature, as if it were all vile together, as if the best and theworst which comes of it were in God's sight equally without worth. Thesedenunciations tend too fatally to realise themselves. Tell a man that nogood which he can do is of any value, and depend upon it he will takeyou at your word--most especially will the wealthy, comfortable, luxurious man, just the man who has most means to do good, and whom ofall things it is most necessary to stimulate to it. Surely we should notbe afraid. The instincts which God has placed in our hearts are toomighty for us to be able to extinguish them with doctrinal sophistry. Welove the good man, we praise him, we admire him--we cannot help it; andsurely it is mere cowardice to shrink from recognising itopenly--thankfully, divinely recognising it. If true at all, there is notruth in heaven or earth of deeper practical importance to us; andProtestantism must have lapsed from its once generous spirit, if itpersists in imposing a dogma of its own upon our hearts, the touch ofwhich is fatal as the touch of a torpedo to any high or noble endeavoursafter excellence. 

'Drive out nature with a fork, she ever comes running back;' and whilewe leave out of consideration the reality, we are filling the chasm withinventions of our own. The only novels which are popular among us arethose which picture the successful battles of modern men and women withmodern life, which are imperfect shadows of those real battles whichevery reader has seen in some form or other, or has longed to see in hisown small sphere. It shows where the craving lies if we had but thecourage to meet it; why need we fall back on imagination to create whatGod has created ready for us? In every department of human life, in themore and the less, there is always one man who is the best, and onetype of man which is the best, living and working his silent way toheaven in the very middle of us. Let us find this type then--let us seewhat it is which makes such men the best, and raise up theirexcellencies into an acknowledged and open standard, of which theythemselves shall be the living witnesses. Is there a landlord who isspending his money, not on pineries and hothouses, but on schools, andwashhouses, and drains, who is less intent on the magnificence of hisown grand house, than in providing cottages for his people where decencyis possible; then let us not pass him by with a torpid wonder or avanishing emotion of pleasure--rather let us seize him and raise him upupon a pinnacle, that other landlords may gaze upon him, if, perhaps, their hearts may prick them; and the world shall learn from what one manhas done what they have a right to require that others shall do. 

So it might be through the thousand channels of life. It should not beso difficult; the machinery is ready, both to find your men and to usethem. In theory, at least, every parish has its pastor, and the state ofevery soul is or ought to be known. We know not what turn things maytake, or what silent changes are rushing on below us. Even while thepresent organisation remains--but, alas! no--it is no use to urge aChurch bound hand and foot in State shackles to stretch its limbs in anywholesome activity. If the teachers of the people really were the wisestand best and noblest men among us, this and a thousand other blessedthings would follow from it; till then let us be content to work andpray, and lay our hand to the wheel wherever we can find a spoke tograsp. _Corruptio optimi est pessima_; the national Church as it oughtto be is the soul and conscience of the body politic, but a man whosebody has the direction of his conscience we do not commonly consider inthe most hopeful moral condition. 

FOOTNOTES:

[AA] Written 1850. 

REYNARD THE FOX. [AB]

Lord Macaulay, in his Essay on Machiavelli, propounds a singular theory. Declining the various solutions which have been offered to explain how aman supposed to be so great could have lent his genius to the doctrineof 'the Prince, ' he has advanced a hypothesis of his own, which may ormay not be true, as an interpretation of Machiavelli's character, butwhich, as an exposition of a universal ethical theory, is asquestionable as what it is brought forward to explain. We will not showLord Macaulay the disrespect of supposing that he has attempted anelaborate piece of irony. It is possible that he may have beenexercising his genius with a paradox, but the subject is not of the sortin which we can patiently permit such exercises. It is hard work withall of us to keep ourselves straight, even when we see the road with allplainness as it lies out before us; and clever men must be good enoughto find something else to amuse themselves with, instead of dusting oureyes with sophistry. 

According to this conception of human nature, the basenesses and theexcellencies of mankind are no more than accidents of circumstance, theresults of national feeling and national capabilities; and cunning andtreachery, and lying, and such other 'natural defences of the weakagainst the strong, ' are in themselves neither good nor bad, except asthinking makes them so. They are the virtues of a weak people, and theywill be as much admired, and are as justly admirable; they are to thefull as compatible with the highest graces and most lofty features ofthe heart and intellect as any of those opposite so called heroismswhich we are generally so unthinking as to allow to monopolise the name. Cunning is the only resource of the feeble; and why may we not feel forvictorious cunning as strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, openbearing of the strong? That there may be no mistake in the essayist'smeaning, that he may drive the nail home into the English understanding, he takes an illustration which shall be familiar to all of us in thecharacters of Iago and Othello. To our northern thought, the free andnoble nature of the Moor is wrecked through a single infirmity, by afiend in the human form. To one of Machiavelli's Italians, Iago'skeen-edged intellect would have appeared as admirable as Othello'sdaring appears to us, and Othello himself little better than a fool anda savage. It is but a change of scene, of climate, of the animalqualities of the frame, and evil has become good, and good has becomeevil. Now, our displeasure with Lord Macaulay is, not that he hasadvanced a novel and mischievous theory: it was elaborated long ago inthe finely tempered dialectics of the Schools of Rhetoric at Athens; andso long as such a phenomenon as a cultivated rogue remains possibleamong mankind, it will reappear in all languages and under any number ofphilosophical disguises. Seldom or never, however, has it appeared withso little attempt at disguise. It has been left for questionable poetsand novelists to idealise the rascal genus; philosophers have escapedinto the ambiguities of general propositions, and we do not rememberelsewhere to have met with a serious ethical thinker deliberately layingtwo whole organic characters, with their vices and virtues in full lifeand bloom, side by side, asking himself which is best, and answeringgravely that it is a matter of taste. 

Lord Macaulay has been bolder than his predecessors; he has shrunk fromno conclusion, and has looked directly into the very heart of thematter; he has struck, as we believe, the very lowest stone of ourethical convictions, and declared that the foundation quakes under it. 

For, ultimately, how do we know that right is right, and wrong is wrong?People in general accept it on authority; but authority itself mustrepose on some ulterior basis; and what is that? Are we to say that inmorals there is a system of primary axioms, out of which we develope ourconclusions, and apply them, as they are needed, to life? It does notappear so. The analogy of morals is rather with art than with geometry. The grace of heaven gives us good men, and gives us beautiful creations;and we, perceiving by the instincts within ourselves that celestialpresence in the objects on which we gaze, find out for ourselves thelaws which make them what they are, not by comparing them with anyantecedent theory, but by careful analysis of our own impressions, byasking ourselves what it is which we admire in them, and by calling thatgood, and calling that beautiful. 

So, then, if admiration be the first fact--if the sense of it be theultimate ground on which the after temple of morality, as a system, upraises itself--if we can be challenged here on our own ground, andfail to make it good, what we call the life of the soul becomes a dreamof a feeble enthusiast, and we moralists a mark for the sceptic's fingerto point at with scorn. 

Bold and ably-urged arguments against our own convictions, if they donot confuse us, will usually send us back over our ground to re-examinethe strength of our positions: and if we are honest with ourselves, weshall very often find points of some uncertainty left unguarded, ofwhich the show of the strength of our enemy will oblige us to see betterto the defence. It was not without some shame, and much uneasiness, that, while we were ourselves engaged in this process, full ofindignation with Lord Macaulay, we heard a clear voice ringing in ourear, 'Who art thou that judgest another?' and warning us of the presencein our own heart of a sympathy, which we could not 'deny, ' with thesadly questionable hero of the German epic, 'Reynard the Fox. ' With ourvulpine friend, we were on the edge of the very same abyss, if, indeed, we were not rolling in the depth of it. By what sophistry could wejustify ourselves, if not by the very same which we had just been soeagerly condemning? And our conscience whispered to us that we had beenswift to detect a fault in another, because it was the very fault towhich, in our own heart of hearts, we had a latent leaning. 

Was it so indeed, then? Was Reineke no better than Iago? Was the soledifference between them, that the _vates sacer_ who had sung theexploits of Reineke loved the wicked rascal, and entangled us in lovinghim? It was a question to be asked. And yet we had faith enough in thestraight-forwardness of our own sympathies to feel sure that it mustadmit of some sort of answer. And, indeed, we rapidly found an answersatisfactory enough to give us time to breathe, in remembering thatReineke, with all his roguery, has no malice in him. It is not in hisnature to hate; he could not do it if he tried. The characteristic ofIago is that deep motiveless malignity which rejoices in evil as itsproper element--which loves evil as good men love virtue. Incalculations on the character of the Moor, Iago despises Othello'sunsuspicious trustingness as imbecility, while he hates him as a manbecause his nature is the perpetual opposite and perpetual reproach ofhis own. Now, Reineke would not have hurt a creature, not evenScharfenebbe, the crow's wife, when she came to peck his eyes out, if hehad not been hungry; and that [Greek: gastros anankê], that craving ofthe stomach, makes a difference quite infinite. It is true that, likeIago, Reineke rejoices in the exercise of his intellect: the sense ofhis power and the scientific employment of his time are a real delightto him; but then, as we said, he does not love evil for its own sake; heis only somewhat indifferent to it. If the other animals venture to takeliberties with him, he will repay them in their own coin, and get hisquiet laugh at them at the same time; but the object generally for whichhe lives is the natural one of getting his bread for himself and hisfamily; and, as the great moralist says, 'It is better to be bad forsomething than for nothing. ' Badness generally is undesirable; butbadness in its essence, which may be called heroic badness, isgratuitous. 

But this first thought served merely to give us a momentary relief fromour alarm, and we determined we would sift the matter to the bottom, andno more expose ourselves to be taken at such disadvantage. We went againto the poem, with our eyes open, and our moral sense as keenly awake asa genuine wish to understand our feelings could make it. We determinedthat we would really know what we did feel and what we did not. We wouldnot be lightly scared away from our friend, but neither would we anymore allow our judgment to be talked down by that fluent tongue of his;he should have justice from us, he and his biographer, as far as it laywith us to discern justice and to render it. 

And really on this deliberate perusal it did seem little less thanimpossible that we could find any conceivable attribute illustrated inReineke's proceedings which we could dare to enter in our catalogue ofvirtues, and not blush to read it there. What sin is there in theDecalogue in which he has not steeped himself to the lips? To the lips, shall we say? nay, over head and ears--rolling and rollicking in sin. Murder, and theft, and adultery; sacrilege, perjury, lying--his verylife is made of them. On he goes to the end, heaping crime on crime, andlie on lie, and at last, when it seems that justice, which has been solong vainly halting after him, has him really in her iron grasp, thereis a solemn appeal to heaven, a challenge, a battle ordeal, in which, bymeans we may not venture even to whisper, the villain prospers, andcomes out glorious, victorious, amidst the applause of a gazing world. To crown it all, the poet tells us that under the disguise of the animalname and form the world of man is represented, and the true course ofit; and the idea of the book is, that we who read it may learn thereinto discern between good and evil, and choose the first and avoid thelast. It seemed beyond the power of sophistry to whitewash Reineke, andthe interest which still continued to cling to him seemed too nearly toresemble the unwisdom of the multitude, with whom success is the onevirtue, and failure the only crime. 

It appeared, too, that although the animal disguises were tootransparent to endure a moment's reflection, yet that they were sogracefully worn that such moment's reflection was not to be come atwithout an effort. Our imagination following the costume, didimperceptibly betray our judgment; we admired the human intellect, theever ready prompt sagacity and presence of mind. We delighted in thesatire on the foolishnesses and greedinesses of our ownfellow-creatures; but in our regard for the hero we forgot his humanitywherever it was his interest that we should forget it, and while weadmired him as a man we judged him only as a fox. We doubt whether itwould have been possible, if he had been described as an openacknowledged biped in coat and trousers, to have retained our regard forhim. Something or other in us, either real rightmindedness, or humbug, or hypocrisy, would have obliged us to mix more censure with our likingthan most of us do in the case as it stands. It may be that the dress ofthe fox throws us off our guard, and lets out a secret or two which wecommonly conceal even from ourselves. When we have to pass an opinionupon bad people, who at the same time are clever and attractive, we sayrather what we think that we ought to feel than what we feel in reality;while with Reineke, being but an animal, we forget to make ourselves up, and for once our genuine tastes show themselves freely. Some degree oftruth there undoubtedly is in this. But making all allowance forit--making all and over allowance for the trick which is passed upon oursenses, there still remained a feeling unresolved. The poem was notsolely the apotheosis of a rascal in whom we were betrayed into takingan interest; and it was not a satire merely on the world, and on the menwhom the world delight to honour. There was still something which reallydeserved to be liked in Reineke, and what it was we had as yet failed todiscover. 

'Two are better than one, ' and we resolved in our difficulty to try whatour friends might have to say about it. The appearance of the Wurtemburganimals at the Exhibition came fortunately _apropos_ to our assistance:a few years ago it was rare to find a person who had read the Fox Epic;and still more, of course, to find one whose judgment would be worthtaking about it. But now the charming figures of Reineke himself, andthe Lion King, and Isegrim, and Bruin, and Bellyn, and Hintze, andGrimbart, had set all the world asking who and what they were, and thestory began to get itself known. The old editions, which had long sleptunbound in reams upon the shelves, began to descend and clothethemselves in green and crimson. Mr. Dickens sent a summary of it roundthe households of England. Everybody began to talk of Reineke; and now, at any rate, we said to ourselves, we shall see whether we are alone inour liking--whether others share in this strange sympathy, or whether itbe some unique and monstrous moral obliquity in ourselves. 

We set to work, therefore, with all earnestness, feeling our way firstwith fear and delicacy, as conscious of our own delinquency, to gatherjudgments which should be wiser than our own, and correct ourselves, ifit proved that we required correction, with whatever severity might benecessary. The result of this labour of ours was not a littlesurprising. We found that women invariably, with that clear moralinstinct of theirs, at once utterly reprobated and detested our poorReynard; detested the hero and detested the bard who sang of him with somuch sympathy; while men we found almost invariably feeling just as wefelt ourselves, only with this difference, that we saw no trace ofuneasiness in them about the matter. It was no little comfort to us, moreover, to find that the exceptions were rather among the half-men, the would-be extremely good, but whose goodness was of that dead andpassive kind which spoke to but a small elevation of thought oractivity; while just in proportion as a man was strong, and real, andenergetic, was his ability to see good in Reineke. It was really moststrange: one near friend of ours--a man who, as far as we knew (and weknew him well), had never done a wrong thing--when we ventured to hintsomething about roguery, replied, 'You see, he was such a clever rogue, that he had a right. ' Another, whom we pressed more closely with thattreacherous cannibal feast at Malepartus, on the body of poor Lampe, said off-hand and with much impatience of such questioning, 'Suchfellows were made to be eaten. ' What could we do? It had come tothis;--as in the exuberance of our pleasure with some dear child, noordinary epithet will sometimes reach to express the vehemence of ouraffection, and borrowing language out of the opposites, we call himlittle rogue or little villain, so here, reversing the terms of theanalogy, we bestow the fulness of our regard on Reineke because of thattranscendently successful roguery. 

When we asked our friends how they came to feel as they did, they hadlittle to say. They were not persons who could be suspected of anylatent disposition towards evil-doing; and yet though it appeared as ifthey were falling under the description of those unhappy ones who, ifthey did not such things themselves, yet 'had pleasure in those who didthem, ' they did not care to justify themselves. The fact was so: [Greek:archê to hoti]: it was a fact--what could we want more? Some fewattempted feebly to maintain that the book was a satire. But this onlymoved the difficulty a single step; for the fact of the sympathyremained unimpaired, and if it was a satire we were ourselves theobjects of it. Others urged what we said above, that the story was onlyof poor animals that, according to Descartes, not only had no souls, butscarcely had even life in any original and sufficient sense, andtherefore we need not trouble ourselves. But one of two alternatives itseemed we were bound to choose, either of which was fatal to theproposed escape. Either there was a man hiding under the fox's skin; orelse, if real foxes have such brains as Reineke was furnished withal, nohonest doubt could be entertained that some sort of conscience was notforgotten in the compounding of him, and he must be held answerableaccording to his knowledge. 

What would Mr. Carlyle say of it, we thought, with his might and right?'The just thing in the long run is the strong thing. ' But Reineke had along run out and came in winner. Does he only 'seem to succeed?' Whodoes succeed, then, if he no more than seems? The vulpine intellectknows where the geese live, it is elsewhere said; but among Reineke'svictims we do not remember one goose, in the literal sense of goose; andas to geese metaphorical, the whole visible world lies down complacentlyat his feet. Nor does Mr. Carlyle's expressed language on this very poemserve any better to help us--nay, it seems as if he feels uneasy in theneighbourhood of so strong a rascal, so briefly he dismisses him. 'Worldly prudence is the only virtue which is certain of its reward. 'Nay, but there is more in it than that: no worldly prudence wouldcommand the voices which have been given in to us for Reineke. 

Three only possibilities lay now before us: either we should, onsearching, find something solid in the Fox's doings to justify success;or else the just thing was not always the strong thing; or it might be, that such very semblance of success was itself the most miserablefailure; that the wicked man who was struck down and foiled, and foiledagain, till he unlearnt his wickedness, or till he was disabled from anymore attempting it, was blessed in his disappointment; that to triumphin wickedness, and to continue in it and to prosper to the end, was thelast, worst penalty inflicted by the divine vengeance. [Greek: Hin'athanatos ê adikos ôn]--to go on with injustice through this world andthrough all eternity, uncleansed by any purgatorial fire, untaught byany untoward consequence to open his eyes and to see in its trueaccursed form the miserable demon to which he has sold himself--this, ofall catastrophes which could befal an evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and most savouring of hell, which the purest of the Grecian moralistscould reason out for himself, --under which third hypothesis many anuneasy misgiving would vanish away, and Mr. Carlyle's broad aphorismmight be accepted by us with thankfulness. 

It appeared, therefore, at any rate, to have to come to this--that if wewanted a solution for our sphinx enigma, no OEdipus was likely to riseand find it for us; and that if we wanted help, we must take it forourselves. This only we found, that if we sinned in our regard for theunworthy animal, we shared our sin with the largest number of our ownsex; comforted with the sense of good fellowship, we went boldly to workupon our consciousness; and the imperfect analysis which we succeeded inaccomplishing, we here lay before you, whoever you may be, who havefelt, as we have felt, a regard which was a moral disturbance to you, and which you will be pleased if we enable you to justify--

 Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his uttere mecum. 

Following the clue which was thrust into our hand by the markeddifference of the feelings of men upon the subject, from those of women, we were at once satisfied that Reineke's goodness, if he had any, mustlay rather in the active than the passive department of life. Thenegative obedience to prohibitory precepts, under which women are boundas well as men, as was already too clear, we were obliged to surrenderas hopeless. But it seemed as if, with respect to men whose business isto do, and to labour, and to accomplish, this negative test was aseriously imperfect one; and it was quite as possible that a man whounhappily had broken many prohibitions might yet exhibit positiveexcellences, as that he might walk through life picking his way with theutmost assiduity, risking nothing and doing nothing, not committing asingle sin, but keeping his talent carefully wrapt up in a napkin, andget sent, in the end, to outer darkness for his pains, as anunprofitable servant. And this appeared the more important to us, as itwas very little dwelt upon by religions or moral teachers: at the end ofsix thousand years, the popular notion of virtue, as far as it could getitself expressed, had not risen beyond the mere abstinence from certainspecific bad actions. 

The king of the beasts forgives Reineke on account of the substantialservices which at various times he has rendered. His counsel was alwaysthe wisest, his hand the promptest in cases of difficulty; and all thatdexterity, and politeness, and courtesy, and exquisite culture had notbeen learnt without an effort, or without conquering many undesirabletendencies in himself. Men are not born with any art in its perfection, and Reineke had made himself valuable by his own sagacity and exertion. Now, on the human stage, a man who has made himself valuable is certainto be valued. However we may pretend to estimate men according to thewrong things which they have done, or abstained from doing, we in factfollow the example of Nobel, the king of the beasts: we give them theirplaces among us according to the service-ableness and capability whichthey display. We might mention not a few eminent public servants, whomthe world delights to honour--ministers, statesmen, lawyers, men ofscience, artists, poets, soldiers, who, if they were tried by thenegative test, would show but a poor figure; yet their value is too realto be dispensed with; and we tolerate unquestionable wrong to secure theservices of eminent ability. The world really does this, and it alwayshas really done it from the beginning of the human history; and it isonly indolence or cowardice which has left our ethical teaching haltingso far behind the universal and necessary practice. Even questionableprima donnas, in virtue of their sweet voices, have their praises hymnedin drawing-room and newspaper, and applause rolls over them, and goldand bouquets shower on them from lips and hands which, except for thosesaid voices, would treat them to a ruder reward. In real fact, we takeour places in this world, not according to what we are not, butaccording to what we are. His Holiness Pope Clement, when hisaudience-room rang with furious outcries for justice on BenvenutoCellini, who, as far as half-a-dozen murders could form a title, was asfair a candidate for the gallows as ever swung from that unlucky wood, replied, 'All this is very well, gentlemen: these murders are badthings, we know that. But where am I to get another Benvenuto if youhang this one for me?'

Or, to take an acknowledged hero, one of the old Greek sort, the themeof the song of the greatest of human poets, whom it is less easy torefuse to admire than even our friend Reineke. Take Ulysses. It cannotbe said that he kept his hands from taking what was not his, or histongue from speaking what was not true; and if Frau Ermelyn had tocomplain (as indeed there was too much reason for her complaining) ofcertain infirmities in her good husband Reineke, Penelope, too, mighthave urged a thing or two, if she had known as much about the matter aswe know, which the modern moralist would find it hard to excuse. 

After all is said, the capable man is the man to be admired. The man whotries and fails, what is the use of him? We are in this world to dosomething--not to fail in doing it. Of your bunglers--helpless, inefficient persons, 'unfit alike for good or ill, ' who try one thing, and fail because they are not strong enough, and another, because theyhave not energy enough, and a third, because they have notalent--inconsistent, unstable, and therefore never to excel, what shallwe say of them? what use is there in them? what hope is there of them?what can we wish for them? [Greek: to mêpot' einai pant' ariston]. Itwere better for them they had never been born. To be able to do what aman tries to do, that is the first requisite; and given that, we mayhope all things for him. 'Hell is paved with good intentions, 'theproverb says; and the enormous proportion of bad successes in this lifelie between the desire and the execution. Give us a man who is able todo what he settles that he desires to do, and we have the one thingindispensable. If he can succeed doing ill, much more he can succeeddoing well. Show him better, and, at any rate, there is a chance that hewill do better. 

We are not concerned here with Benvenuto or with Ulysses further than toshow, through the position which we all consent to give them, that thereis much unreality in our common moral talk, against which we must be onour guard. And if we fling off an old friend, and take to affecting ahatred of him which we do not feel, we have scarcely gained by theexchange, even though originally our friendship may have been misplaced. 

Capability no one will deny to Reineke. That is the very _differentia_of him. An 'animal capable' would be his sufficient definition. Here isanother very genuinely valuable feature about him--his wonderfulsingleness of character. Lying, treacherous, cunning scoundrel as he is, there is a wholesome absence of humbug about him. Cheating all theworld, he never cheats himself; and while he is a hypocrite, he isalways a conscious hypocrite--a form of character, however paradoxicalit may seem, a great deal more accessible to good influences than theother of the unconscious sort. Ask Reineke for the principles of hislife, and if it suited his purpose to tell you, he could do so with thegreatest exactness. There would be no discrepancy between the professionand the practice. He is most truly single-minded, and therefore stablein his ways, and therefore, as the world goes, and in the world's sense, successful. Whether really successful is a question we do not care hereto enter on; but only to say this--that of all unsuccessful men in everysense, either divine, or human, or devilish, there is none equal toBunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways--the fellow with one eye on heaven and oneon earth--who sincerely preaches one thing, and sincerely does another;and from the intensity of his unreality is unable either to see or feelthe contradiction. Serving God with his lips, and with the half of hismind which is not bound up in the world, and serving the devil with hisactions, and with the other half, he is substantially trying to cheatboth God and the devil, and is, in fact, only cheating himself and hisneighbours. This, of all characters upon the earth, appears to us to bethe one of whom there is no hope at all--a character becoming, in thesedays, alarmingly abundant; and the abundance of which makes us find evenin a Reineke an inexpressible relief. 

But what we most thoroughly value in him is his capacity. He can do whathe sets to work to do. That blind instinct with which the world shoutsand claps its hand for the successful man, is one of those latentimpulses in us which are truer than we know; it is the universalconfessional to which Nature leads us, and, in her intolerance ofdisguise and hypocrisy, compels us to be our own accusers. Whoever cansucceed in a given condition of society, can succeed only in virtue offulfilling the terms which society exacts of him; and if he can fulfilthem triumphantly, of course it rewards him and praises him. He is whatthe rest of the world would be, if their powers were equal to theirdesires. He has accomplished what they all are vaguely, and withimperfect consistency, struggling to accomplish; and the character ofthe conqueror--the means and appliances by which he has climbed up thatgreat pinnacle on which he stands victorious, the observed of allobservers, is no more than a very exact indicator of the amount of realvirtue in the age, out of which he stands prominent. 

We are forced to acknowledge that it was not a very virtuous age inwhich Reineke made himself a great man; but that was the fault of theage as much as the fault of him. His nature is to succeed wherever heis. If the age had required something else of him, then he would havebeen something else. Whatever it had said to him, 'Do, and I will makeyou my hero, ' that Reineke would have done. No appetite makes a slave ofhim--no faculty refuses obedience to his will. His entire nature isunder perfect organic control to the one supreme authority. And the oneobject for which he lives, and for which, let his lot have been cast inwhatever century it might, he would always have lived, is to rise, tothrive, to prosper, and become great. 

The world as he found it said to him--Prey upon us; we are your oyster, let your wit open us. If you will only do it cleverly--if you will takecare that we shall not close upon your fingers in the process, you maydevour us at your pleasure, and we shall feel ourselves highly honoured. Can we wonder at a fox of Reineke's abilities taking such a world at itsword?

And let it not be supposed that society in this earth of ours is ever soviciously put together, is ever so totally without organic life, that arogue, unredeemed by any merit, can prosper in it. There is no strengthin rottenness; and when it comes to that, society dies and falls inpieces. Success, as it is called, even worldly success, is impossible, without some exercise of what is called moral virtue, without someportion of it, infinitesimally small, perhaps, but still some. Courage, for instance, steady self-confidence, self-trust, self-reliance--thatonly basis and foundation stone on which a strong character can rearitself--do we not see this in Reineke? While he lives, he lives forhimself; but if he comes to dying, he can die like his betters; and hiswit is not of that effervescent sort which will fly away at the sight ofdeath and leave him panic-stricken. It is true there is a meaning tothat word courage, which was perhaps not to be found in the dictionaryin which Reineke studied. 'I hope I am afraid of nothing, Trim, ' said myuncle Toby, 'except doing a wrong thing. ' With Reineke there was no'except. ' His digestive powers shrank from no action, good or bad, whichwould serve his turn. Yet it required no slight measure of courage totreat his fellow-creatures with the steady disrespect with which Reineketreats them. To walk along among them, regardless of any interest buthis own; out of mere wantonness to hook them up like so manycock-chafers, and spin them for his pleasure; not like Domitian, with animperial army to hold them down during the operation, but with no otherassistance but his own little body and large wit; it was something toventure upon. And a world which would submit to be so treated, whatcould he do but despise?

To the animals utterly below ourselves, external to our own species, wehold ourselves bound by no law. We say to them, _vos non vobis_, withoutany uneasy misgivings. We rob the bees of their honey, the cattle oftheir lives, the horse and the ass of their liberty. We kill the wildanimals that they may not interfere with our pleasures; and acknowledgeourselves bound to them by no terms except what are dictated by our ownconvenience. And why should Reineke have acknowledged an obligation anymore than we, to creatures so utterly below himself? He was so clever, as our friend said, that he had a right. That he _could_ treat them so, Mr. Carlyle would say, proves that he had a right. 

But it is a mistake to say he is without a conscience. No bold creatureis ever totally without one. Even Iago shows some sort of conscience. Respecting nothing else in heaven or earth, he respects and evenreverences his own intellect. After one of those sweet interviews withRoderigo, his, what we must call conscience, takes him to account forhis company; and he pleads to it in his own justification--

 For I mine own gained knowledge should _profane_ Were I to waste myself with such a snipe But for my sport and profit. 

Reineke, if we take the mass of his misdeeds, preyed chiefly, like ourown Robin Hood, on rogues who were greater rogues than himself. If Bruinchose to steal Rusteviel's honey, if Hintze trespassed in the priest'sgranary, they were but taken in their own evildoings. And what isIsegrim, the worst of Reineke's victims, but a great heavy, stupid, lawless brute?--fair type, we will suppose, of not a few Front-de-Boeufsand other so-called nobles of the poet's era, whose will to do mischiefwas happily limited by their obtuseness. We remember that Frenchbaron--Gilbert de Retz, we believe, was his name--who, like Isegrim, hadstudied at the universities, and passed for learned, whose after-dinnerpastime for many years, as it proved at last, was to cut children'sthroats for the pleasure of watching them die. We may well feelgratitude that a Reineke was provided to be the scourge of such monstersas these; and we have a thorough pure, exuberant satisfaction in seeingthe intellect in that little weak body triumph over them and tramplethem down. This, indeed, this victory of intellect over brute force, isone great secret of our pleasure in the poem, and goes far, in theCarlyle direction, to satisfy us that, at any rate, it is not given tomere base physical strength to win in the battle of life, even in timeswhen physical strength is apparently the only recognised power. 

We are insensibly falling from our self-assumed judicial office intothat of advocacy; and sliding into what may be plausibly urged, ratherthan standing fast on what we can surely affirm. Yet there are caseswhen it is fitting for the judge to become the advocate of an undefendedprisoner; and advocacy is only plausible when a few words of truth aremixed with what we say, like the few drops of wine which colour andfaintly flavour the large draught of water. Such few grains or drops, whatever they may be, we must leave to the kindness of Reynard's friendsto distil for him, while we continue a little longer in the same strain. 

After all, it may be said, what is it in man's nature which is reallyadmirable? It is idle for us to waste our labour in passing Reinekethrough the moral crucible unless we shall recognise the results when weobtain them; and in these moral sciences our analytical tests can onlybe obtained by a study of our own internal experience. If we desire toknow what we admire in Reineke, we must look for what we admire inourselves. And what is that? Is it what on Sundays, and on setoccasions, and when we are mounted on our moral stilts, we are pleasedto call goodness, probity, obedience, humility? Is it? Is it really? Isit not rather the face and form which Nature made--the strength which isours, we know not how--our talents, our rank, our possessions? Itappears to us that we most value in ourselves and most admire in ourneighbour, not acquisitions, but _gifts_. A man does not praise himselffor being good. If he praise himself he is not good. The first conditionof goodness is forgetfulness of self; and where self has entered, underhowever plausible a form, the health is but skin-deep, and underneaththere is corruption. And so through everything; we value, we are vainof, proud of, or whatever you please to call it, not what we have donefor ourselves, but what has been done for us--what has been given to usby the upper powers. We look up to high-born men, to wealthy men, tofortunate men, to clever men. Is it not so? Whom do we choose for thecounty member, the magistrate, the officer, the minister? The good manwe leave to the humble enjoyment of his goodness, and we look out forthe able or the wealthy. And again of the wealthy, as if on every sideto witness to the same universal law, the man who with no labour of hisown has inherited a fortune, ranks higher in the world's esteem than hisfather who made it. We take rank by descent. Such of us as have thelongest pedigree, and are therefore the farthest removed from the firstwho made the fortune and founded the family, we are the noblest. Thenearer to the fountain, the fouler the stream; and that first ancestor, who has soiled his fingers by labour, is no better than a parvenu. 

And as it is with what we value, so it is with what we blame. It is anold story, that there is no one who would not in his heart prefer beinga knave to being a fool; and when we fail in a piece of attemptedroguery, as Coleridge has wisely observed, though reasoning unwiselyfrom it, we lay the blame, not on our own moral nature, for which we areresponsible, but on our intellectual, for which we are not responsible. We do not say what knaves, we say what fools, we have been; perplexingColeridge, who regards it as a phenomenon of some deep moral disorder;whereas it is but one more evidence of the universal fact that _gifts_are the true and proper object of appreciation; and as we admire men forpossessing gifts, so we blame them for their absence. The noble man isthe gifted man; the ignoble is the ungifted; and therefore we have onlyto state a simple law in simple language to have a full solution of theenigma of Reineke. He has gifts enough: of that, at least, there can beno doubt; and if he lacks the gift to use them in the way which we callgood, at least he uses them successfully. His victims are less giftedthan he, and therefore less noble; and therefore he has a right to usethem as he pleases. 

 * * * * *

And, after all, what are these victims? Among the heaviest chargeswhich were urged against him was the killing and eating of that wretchedScharfenebbe--Sharpbeak--the crow's wife. It is well that there are twosides to every story. A poor weary fox, it seemed, was not to be allowedto enjoy a quiet sleep in the sunshine but what an unclean carrion birdmust come down and take a peck at him. We can feel no sympathy with theoutcries of the crow husband over the fate of the unfortunate Sharpbeak. Wofully, he says, he flew over the place where, a few moments before, inthe glory of glossy plumage, a loving wife sate croaking out her passionfor him, and found nothing--nothing but a little blood and a few tornfeathers--all else clean gone and utterly abolished. Well, and if it wasso, it was a blank prospect for him, but the earth was well rid of her;and for herself, it was a higher fate to be assimilated into the body ofReineke than to remain in a miserable individuality to be a layer ofcarrion crows' eggs. 

And then for Bellyn, and for Bruin, and for Hintze, and the rest, whowould needs be meddling with what was no concern of theirs--what isthere in them to challenge either regret or pity? They made love totheir occupation. 

 'Tis dangerous when the baser nature falls Between the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites: They lie not near our conscience. 

Ah! if they were all. But there is one misdeed, one which outweighs allothers whatsoever--a crime which it is useless to palliate, let ourother friend say what he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so. Itsate heavy, _for him_, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of hislife we are certain that he wished it undone--the death and eating ofthat poor foolish Lampe, the hare. It was a paltry revenge in Reineke. Lampe had told tales of him; he had complained that Reineke, underpretence of teaching him his Catechism, had seized him and tried tomurder him; and though he provoked his fate by thrusting himself, aftersuch a warning, into the jaws of Malepartus, Reineke betrays anuneasiness about it in confession; and, unlike himself, feels itnecessary to make some sort of an excuse. 

Grimbart, the badger, Reineke's father confessor, had been obliged tospeak severely of the seriousness of the offence. 'You see, ' Reinekeanswers:--

 To help oneself out through the world is a queer sort of business: one can not Keep, you know, quite altogether as pure as one can in the cloister. When we are handling honey we now and then lick at our fingers. Lampe sorely provoked me; he frisked about this way and that way, Up and down, under my eyes, and he looked so fat and so jolly, Really I could not resist it. I entirely forgot how I loved him. And then he was so stupid. 

But even this acknowledgment does not satisfy Reineke. His mind isevidently softened, and it was on that occasion that he poured out hispathetic lamentation over the sad condition of the world--so fluent, somusical, so touching, that Grimbart listened with wide eyes, unable, till it had run to the length of a sermon, to collect himself. It istrue that at last his office as ghostly father obliged him to put in aslight demurrer:--

 Uncle, the badger replied, why these are the sins of your neighbours; Yours, I should think, were sufficient, and rather more now to the purpose. 

But he sighs to think what a bishop Reineke would have made. 

And now, for the present, farewell to Reineke Fuchs, and to the song inwhich his glory is enshrined--the Welt Bibel, Bible of this world, asGoethe called it, the most exquisite moral satire, as we will call it, which has ever been composed. It is not addressed to a passing mode offolly or of profligacy, but it touches the perennial nature of mankind, laying bare our own sympathies, and tastes, and weaknesses, with as keenand true an edge as when the living world of the old Swabian poet wincedunder its earliest utterance. 

Humorous in the high pure sense, every laugh which it gives may have itsecho in a sigh, or may glide into it as excitement subsides intothought; and yet, for those who do not care to find matter there eitherfor thought or sadness, may remain innocently as a laugh. 

Too strong for railing, too kindly and loving for the bitterness ofirony, the poem is, as the world itself, a book where each man will findwhat his nature enables him to see, which gives us back each our ownimage, and teaches us each the lesson which each of us desires tolearn. 

FOOTNOTES:

[AB] _Fraser's Magazine_, 1852. 

THE CAT'S PILGRIMAGE. 

1850. 

PART I. 

'It is all very fine, ' said the Cat, yawning, and stretching herselfagainst the fender, 'but it is rather a bore; I don't see the use ofit. ' She raised herself, and arranging her tail into a ring, and seatingherself in the middle of it, with her fore paws in a straight line fromher shoulders, at right angles to the hearth-rug, she looked pensivelyat the fire. 'It is very odd, ' she went on, 'there is my poor Tom; he isgone. I saw him stretched out in the yard. I spoke to him, and he tookno notice of me. He won't, I suppose, ever any more, for they put himunder the earth. Nice fellow he was. It is wonderful how little onecares about it. So many jolly evenings we spent together; and now I seemto get on quite as well without him. I wonder what has become of him;and my last children, too, what has become of them? What are we herefor? I would ask the men, only they are so conceited and stupid theycan't understand what we say. I hear them droning away, teaching theirlittle ones every day; telling them to be good, and to do what they arebid, and all that. Nobody ever tells me to do anything; if they do Idon't do it, and I am very good. I wonder whether I should be any betterif I minded more. I'll ask the Dog. '

'Dog, ' said she, to a little fat spaniel coiled up on a mat like alady's muff with a head and tail stuck on to it, 'Dog, what do you makeof it all?'

The Dog faintly opened his languid eyes, looked sleepily at the Cat fora moment, and dropped them again. 

'Dog, ' she said, 'I want to talk to you; don't go to sleep. Can't youanswer a civil question?'

'Don't bother me, ' said the Dog, 'I am tired. I stood on my hind legsten minutes this morning before I could get my breakfast, and it hasn'tagreed with me. '

'Who told you to do it?' said the Cat. 

'Why, the lady I have to take care of me, ' replied the Dog. 

'Do you feel any better for it, Dog, after you have been standing onyour legs?' asked she. 

'Hav'n't I told you, you stupid Cat, that it hasn't agreed with me; letme go to sleep and don't plague me. '

'But I mean, ' persisted the Cat, 'do you feel improved, as the men callit? They tell their children that if they do what they are told theywill improve, and grow good and great. Do you feel good and great?'

'What do I know?' said the Dog. 'I eat my breakfast and am happy. Let mealone. '

'Do you never think, oh Dog without a soul! Do you never wonder whatdogs are, and what this world is?'

The Dog stretched himself, and rolled his eyes lazily round the room. 'Iconceive, ' he said, 'that the world is for dogs, and men and women areput into it to take care of dogs; women to take care of little dogs likeme, and men for the big dogs like those in the yard--and cats, ' hecontinued, 'are to know their place, and not to be troublesome. '

'They beat you sometimes, ' said the Cat. 'Why do they do that? Theynever beat me. '

'If they forget their places, and beat me, ' snarled the Dog, 'I bitethem, and they don't do it again. I should like to bite you, too, younasty Cat; you have woke me up. '

'There may be truth in what you say, ' said the Cat, calmly; 'but I thinkyour view is limited. If you listened like me you would hear the men sayit was all made for them, and you and I were made to amuse them. '

'They don't dare to say so, ' said the Dog. 

'They do, indeed, ' said the Cat. 'I hear many things which you lose bysleeping so much. They think I am asleep, and so they are not afraid totalk before me; but my ears are open when my eyes are shut. '

'You surprise me, ' said the Dog. 'I never listen to them, except when Itake notice of them, and then they never talk of anything except of me. '

'I could tell you a thing or two about yourself which you don't know, 'said the Cat. 'You have never heard, I dare say, that once upon a timeyour fathers lived in a temple, and that people prayed to them. '

'Prayed! what is that?'

'Why, they went on their knees to you to ask you to give them goodthings, just as you stand on your toes to them now to ask for yourbreakfast. You don't know either that you have got one of those brightthings we see up in the air at night called after you. '

'Well, it is just what I said, ' answered the Dog. 'I told you it was allmade for us. They never did anything of that sort for you?'

'Didn't they? Why, there was a whole city where the people did nothingelse, and as soon as we got stiff and couldn't move about any more, instead of being put under the ground like poor Tom, we used to bestuffed full of all sorts of nice things, and kept better than we werewhen we were alive. '

'You are a very wise Cat, ' answered her companion; 'but what good is itknowing all this?'

'Why, don't you see, ' said she, 'they don't do it any more. We are goingdown in the world, we are, and that is why living on in this way is suchan unsatisfactory sort of thing. I don't mean to complain for myself, and you needn't, Dog; we have a quiet life of it; but a quiet life isnot the thing, and if there is nothing to be done except sleep and eat, and eat and sleep, why, as I said before, I don't see the use of it. There is something more in it than that; there was once, and there willbe again, and I sha'n't be happy till I find it out. It is a shame, Dog, I say. The men have been here only a few thousand years, and we--why, wehave been here hundreds of thousands; if we are older, we ought to bewiser. I'll go and ask the creatures in the wood. '

'You'll learn more from the men, ' said the Dog. 

'They are stupid, and they don't know what I say to them; besides, theyare so conceited they care for nothing except themselves. No, I shalltry what I can do in the woods. I'd as soon go after poor Tom as stayliving any longer like this. '

'And where is poor Tom?' yawned the Dog. 

'That is just one of the things I want to know, ' answered she. 'Poor Tomis lying under the yard, or the skin of him, but whether that is thewhole I don't feel so sure. They didn't think so in the city I told youabout. It is a beautiful day, Dog; you won't take a trot out with me?'she added, wistfully. 

'Who? I' said the Dog. 'Not quite. '

'You may get so wise, ' said she. 

'Wisdom is good, ' said the Dog; 'but so is the hearth-rug, thank you!'

'But you may be free, ' said she. 

'I shall have to hunt for my own dinner, ' said he. 

'But, Dog, they may pray to you again, ' said she. 

'But I sha'n't have a softer mat to sleep upon, Cat, and as I am ratherdelicate, that is a consideration. '

PART II. 

So the Dog wouldn't go, and the Cat set off by herself to learn how tobe happy, and to be all that a Cat could be. It was a fine sunnymorning. She determined to try the meadow first, and, after an hour ortwo, if she had not succeeded, then to go off to the wood. A Blackbirdwas piping away on a thornbush as if his heart was running over withhappiness. The Cat had breakfasted, and so was able to listen withoutany mixture of feeling. She didn't sneak. She walked boldly up under thebush, and the bird, seeing she had no bad purpose, sate still and sungon. 

'Good morning, Blackbird; you seem to be enjoying yourself this fineday. '

'Good morning, Cat. '

'Blackbird, it is an odd question, perhaps. What ought one to do to beas happy as you?'

'Do your duty, Cat. '

'But what is my duty, Blackbird?'

'Take care of your little ones, Cat. '

'I hav'n't any, ' said she. 

'Then sing to your mate, ' said the bird. 

'Tom is dead, ' said she. 

'Poor Cat!' said the bird. 'Then sing over his grave. If your song issad, you will find your heart grow lighter for it. '

'Mercy!' thought the Cat. 'I could do a little singing with a livinglover, but I never heard of singing for a dead one. But you see, bird, it isn't Cats' nature. When I am cross, I mew. When I am pleased, Ipurr; but I must be pleased first. I can't purr myself into happiness. '

'I am afraid there is something the matter with your heart, my Cat. Itwants warming; good-bye. '

The Blackbird flew away. The Cat looked sadly after him. 'He thinks I amlike him; and he doesn't know that a Cat is a Cat, ' said she. 'As ithappens now, I feel a great deal for a Cat. If I hadn't got a heart Ishouldn't be unhappy. I won't be angry. I'll try that great fat fellow. '

The Ox lay placidly chewing, with content beaming out of his eyes andplaying on his mouth. 

'Ox, ' she said, 'what is the way to be happy?'

'Do your duty, ' said the Ox. 

'Bother, ' said the Cat, 'duty again! What is it, Ox?'

'Get your dinner, ' said the Ox. 

'But it is got for me, Ox; and I have nothing to do but to eat it. '

'Well, eat it, then, like me. '

'So I do; but I am not happy for all that. '

'Then you are a very wicked, ungrateful Cat. '

The Ox munched away. A Bee buzzed into a buttercup under the Cat's nose. 

'I beg your pardon, ' said the Cat, 'it isn't curiosity--what are youdoing?'

'Doing my duty; don't stop me, Cat. '

'But, Bee, what is your duty?'

'Making honey, ' said the Bee. 

'I wish I could make honey, ' sighed the Cat. 

'Do you mean to say you can't?' said the Bee. 'How stupid you must be. What do you do, then?'

'I do nothing, Bee. I can't get anything to do. '

'You won't get anything to do, you mean, you lazy Cat! You are agood-for-nothing drone. Do you know what we do to our drones? We killthem; and that is all they are fit for. Good morning to you. '

'Well, I am sure, ' said the Cat, 'they are treating me civilly; I hadbetter have stopped at home at this rate. Stroke my whiskers! heartless!wicked! good-for-nothing! stupid! and only fit to be killed! This is apleasant beginning, anyhow. I must look for some wiser creatures thanthese are. What shall I do? I know. I know where I will go. '

It was in the middle of the wood. The bush was very dark, but she foundhim by his wonderful eye. Presently, as she got used to the light, shedistinguished a sloping roll of feathers, a rounded breast, surmountedby a round head, set close to the body, without an inch of a neckintervening. 'How wise he looks!' she said; 'What a brain! what aforehead! His head is not long, but what an expanse! and what a depth ofearnestness!' The Owl sloped his head a little on one side; the Catslanted hers upon the other. The Owl set it straight again, the Cat didthe same. They stood looking in this way for some minutes; at last, in awhispering voice, the Owl said, 'What are you who presume to look intomy repose? Pass on upon your way, and carry elsewhere those pryingeyes. '

'Oh, wonderful Owl, ' said the Cat, 'you are wise, and I want to be wise;and I am come to you to teach me. '

A film floated backwards and forwards over the Owl's eyes; it was hisway of showing that he was pleased. 

'I have heard in our schoolroom, ' went on the Cat, 'that you sate on theshoulder of Pallas, and she told you all about it. '

'And what would you know, oh, my daughter?' said the Owl. 

'Everything, ' said the Cat, 'everything. First of all, how to be happy. '

'Mice content you not, my child, even as they content not me, ' said theOwl. 'It is good. '

'Mice, indeed!' said the Cat; 'no, Parlour Cats don't eat mice. I havebetter than mice, and no trouble to get it; but I want something more. '

'The body's meat is provided. You would now fill your soul. '

'I want to improve, ' said the Cat. 'I want something to do. I want tofind out what the creatures call my duty. '

'You would learn how to employ those happy hours of your leisure--ratherhow to make them happy by a worthy use. Meditate, oh Cat! meditate!meditate!'

'That is the very thing, ' said she. 'Meditate! that is what I like aboveall things. Only I want to know how: I want something to meditate about. Tell me, Owl, and I will bless you every hour of the day as I sit by theparlour fire. '

'I will tell you, ' answered the Owl, 'what I have been thinking of eversince the moon changed. You shall take it home with you and think aboutit too; and the next full moon you shall come again to me; we willcompare our conclusions. '

'Delightful! delightful!' said the Cat. 'What is it? I will try thisminute. '

'From the beginning, ' replied the Owl, 'our race have been consideringwhich first existed, the Owl or the egg. The Owl comes from the egg, butlikewise the egg from the Owl. '

'Mercy!' said the Cat. 

'From sunrise to sunset I ponder on it, oh Cat! When I reflect on thebeauty of the complete Owl, I think that must have been first, as thecause is greater than the effect. When I remember my own childhood, Iincline the other way. '

'Well, but how are we to find out?' said the Cat. 

'Find out!' said the Owl. 'We can never find out. The beauty of thequestion is, that its solution is impossible. What would become of allour delightful reasonings, oh, unwise Cat! if we were so unhappy as toknow?'

'But what in the world is the good of thinking about it, if you can't, oh Owl?'

'My child, that is a foolish question. It is good, in order that thethoughts on these things may stimulate wonder. It is in wonder that theOwl is great. '

'Then you don't know anything at all, ' said the Cat. 'What did you siton Pallas's shoulder for? You must have gone to sleep. '

'Your tone is over flippant, Cat, for philosophy. The highest of allknowledge is to know that we know nothing. '

The Cat made two great arches with her back and her tail. 

'Bless the mother that laid you, ' said she. 'You were dropped by mistakein a goose nest. You won't do. I don't know much, but I am not such acreature as you, anyhow. A great white thing!'

She straitened her body, stuck her tail up on end, and marched off withmuch dignity. But, though she respected herself rather more than before, she was not on the way to the end of her difficulties. She tried all thecreatures she met without advancing a step. They had all the old story, 'Do your duty. ' But each had its own, and no one could tell her whathers was. Only one point they all agreed upon--the duty of getting theirdinner when they were hungry. The day wore on, and she began to thinkshe would like hers. Her meals came so regularly at home that shescarcely knew what hunger was; but now the sensation came over her verypalpably, and she experienced quite new emotions as the hares andrabbits skipped about her, or as she spied a bird upon a tree. For amoment she thought she would go back and eat the Owl--he was the mostuseless creature she had seen; but on second thought she didn't fancy hewould be nice: besides that, his claws were sharp and his beak too. Presently, however, as she sauntered down the path, she came on a littleopen patch of green, in the middle of which a fine fat Rabbit wassitting. There was no escape. The path ended there, and the bushes wereso thick on each side that he couldn't get away except through her paws. 

'Really, ' said the Cat, 'I don't wish to be troublesome; I wouldn't doit if I could help it; but I am very hungry, I am afraid I must eat you. It is very unpleasant, I assure you, to me as well as to you. '

The poor Rabbit begged for mercy. 

'Well, ' said she, 'I think it is hard; I do really--and, if the lawcould be altered, I should be the first to welcome it. But what can aCat do? You eat the grass; I eat you. But, Rabbit, I wish you would dome a favour. '

'Anything to save my life, ' said the Rabbit. 

'It is not exactly that, ' said the Cat; 'but I haven't been used tokilling my own dinner, and it is disagreeable. Couldn't you die? I shallhurt you dreadfully if I kill you. '

'Oh!' said the Rabbit, 'you are a kind Cat; I see it in your eyes, andyour whiskers don't curl like those of the cats in the woods. I am sureyou will spare me. '

'But, Rabbit, it is a question of principle. I have to do my duty; andthe only duty I have, as far as I can make out, is to get my dinner. '

'If you kill me, Cat, to do your duty, I sha'n't be able to do mine. '

It was a doubtful point, and the Cat was new to casuistry. 'What is yourduty?' said she. 

'I have seven little ones at home--seven little ones, and they will alldie without me. Pray let me go. '

'What! do you take care of your children?' said the Cat. 'Howinteresting! I should like to see that; take me. '

'Oh! you would eat them, you would, ' said the Rabbit. 'No! better eat methan them. No, no. '

'Well, well, ' said the Cat, 'I don't know; I suppose I couldn't answerfor myself. I don't think I am right, for duty is pleasant, and it isvery unpleasant to be so hungry; but I suppose you must go. You seem agood Rabbit. Are you happy, Rabbit?'

'Happy! oh, dear beautiful Cat! if you spare me to my poor babies!'

'Pooh, pooh!' said the Cat, peevishly; 'I don't want fine speeches; Imeant whether you thought it worth while to be alive! Of course you do!It don't matter. Go, and keep out of my way; for, if I don't get mydinner, you may not get off another time. Get along, Rabbit. '

PART III. 

It was a great day in the Fox's cave. The eldest cub had the nightbefore brought home his first goose, and they were just sitting down toit as the Cat came by. 

'Ah, my young lady! what, you in the woods? Bad feeding at home, eh?Come out to hunt for yourself?'

The goose smelt excellent; the Cat couldn't help a wistful look. She wasonly come, she said, to pay her respects to her wild friends. 

'Just in time, ' said the Fox. 'Sit down and take a bit of dinner; I seeyou want it. Make room, you cubs; place a seat for the lady. '

'Why, thank you, ' said the Cat, 'yes; I acknowledge it is not unwelcome. Pray, don't disturb yourselves, young Foxes. I am hungry. I met a Rabbiton my way here. I was going to eat him, but he talked so prettily I lethim go. '

The cubs looked up from their plates, and burst out laughing. 

'For shame, young rascals, ' said their father. 'Where are your manners?Mind your dinner, and don't be rude. '

'Fox, ' she said, when it was over, and the cubs were gone to play, 'youare very clever. The other creatures are all stupid. ' The Fox bowed. 'Your family were always clever, ' she continued. 'I have heard aboutthem in the books they use in our schoolroom. It is many years sinceyour ancestor stole the crow's dinner. '

'Don't say stole, Cat; it is not pretty. Obtained by superior ability. '

'I beg your pardon, ' said the Cat; 'it is all living with those men. That is not the point. Well, but I want to know whether you are anywiser or any better than Foxes were then?'

'Really, ' said the Fox, 'I am what Nature made me. I don't know. I amproud of my ancestors, and do my best to keep up the credit of thefamily. '

'Well, but Fox, I mean do you improve? do I? do any of you? The men arealways talking about doing their duty, and that, they say, is the way toimprove, and to be happy. And as I was not happy I thought that had, perhaps, something to do with it, so I came out to talk to thecreatures. They also had the old chant--duty, duty, duty; but none ofthem could tell me what mine was, or whether I had any. '

The Fox smiled. 'Another leaf out of your schoolroom, ' said he. 'Can'tthey tell you there?'

'Indeed, ' she said, 'they are very absurd. They say a great deal aboutthemselves, but they only speak disrespectfully of us. If such creaturesas they can do their duty, and improve, and be happy, why can't we?'

'They say they do, do they?' said the Fox. 'What do they say of me?'

The Cat hesitated. 

'Don't be afraid of hurting my feelings, Cat. Out with it. '

'They do all justice to your abilities, Fox, ' said she; 'but yourmorality, they say, is not high. They say you are a rogue. '

'Morality!' said the Fox. 'Very moral and good they are. And you reallybelieve all that? What do they mean by calling me a rogue?'

'They mean you take whatever you can get, without caring whether it isjust or not. '

'My dear Cat, it is very well for a man, if he can't bear his own face, to paint a pretty one on a panel and call it a looking-glass; but youdon't mean that it takes _you_ in. '

'Teach me, ' said the Cat. 'I fear I am weak. '

'Who get justice from the men unless they can force it? Ask the sheepthat are cut into mutton. Ask the horses that draw their ploughs. Idon't mean it is wrong of the men to do as they do; but they needn't lieabout it. '

'You surprise me, ' said the Cat. 

'My good Cat, there is but one law in the world. The weakest goes to thewall. The men are sharper-witted than the creatures, and so they get thebetter of them and use them. They may call it just if they like; butwhen a tiger eats a man I guess he has just as much justice on his sideas the man when he eats a sheep. '

'And that is the whole of it, ' said the Cat. 'Well, it is very sad. Whatdo you do with yourself?'

'My duty, to be sure, ' said the Fox; 'use my wits and enjoy myself. Mydear friend, you and I are on the lucky side. We eat and are not eaten. '

'Except by the hounds now and then, ' said the Cat. 

'Yes; by brutes that forget their nature, and sell their freedom to themen, ' said the Fox, bitterly. 'In the meantime my wits have kept my skinwhole hitherto, and I bless Nature for making me a Fox and not a goose. '

'And are you happy, Fox?'

'Happy! yes, of course. So would you be if you would do like me, and useyour wits. My good Cat, I should be as miserable as you if I found mygeese every day at the cave's mouth. I have to hunt for them, lie forthem, sneak for them, fight for them; cheat those old fat farmers, andbring out what there is inside me; and then I am happy--of course I am. And then, Cat, think of my feelings as a father last night, when my dearboy came home with the very young gosling which was marked for theMichaelmas dinner! Old Reineke himself wasn't more than a match for thatyoung Fox at his years. You know our epic?'

'A little of it, Fox. They don't read it in our schoolroom. They say itis not moral; but I have heard pieces of it. I hope it is not all quitetrue. '

'Pack of stuff! it is the only true book that ever was written. If it isnot, it ought to be. Why, that book is the law of the world--_lacarrière aux talents_--and writing it was the honestest thing ever doneby a man. That fellow knew a thing or two, and wasn't ashamed of himselfwhen he did know. They are all like him, too, if they would only say so. There never was one of them yet who wasn't more ashamed of being calledugly than of being called a rogue, and of being called stupid than ofbeing called naughty. '

'It has a roughish end, this life of yours, if you keep clear of thehounds, Fox, ' said the Cat. 

'What! a rope in the yard! Well, it must end some day; and when thefarmer catches me I shall be getting old, and my brains will be takingleave of me; so the sooner I go the better, that I may disgrace myselfthe less. Better be jolly while it lasts, than sit mewing out your lifeand grumbling at it as a bore. '

'Well, ' said the Cat, 'I am very much obliged to you. I suppose I mayeven get home again. I shall not find a wiser friend than you, andperhaps I shall not find another good-natured enough to give me so gooda dinner. But it is very sad. '

'Think of what I have said, ' answered the Fox. 'I'll call at your housesome night; you will take me a walk round the yard, and then I'll showyou. '

'Not quite, ' thought the Cat, as she trotted off; 'one good turndeserves another, that is true; and you have given me a dinner. But theyhave given me many at home, and I mean to take a few more of them; so Ithink you mustn't go round our yard. '

PART IV. 

The next morning, when the Dog came down to breakfast, he found his oldfriend sitting in her usual place on the hearth-rug. 

'Oh! so you have come back, ' said he. 'How d'ye do? You don't look as ifyou had had a very pleasant journey. '

'I have learnt something, ' said the Cat. 'Knowledge is never pleasant. '

'Then it is better to be without it, ' said the Dog. 

'Especially, better to be without knowing how to stand on one's hindlegs, Dog, ' said the Cat; 'still you see, you are proud of it; but Ihave learnt a great deal, Dog. They won't worship you any more, and itis better for you; you wouldn't be any happier. What did you doyesterday?'

'Indeed, ' said the Dog, 'I hardly remember. I slept after you went away. In the afternoon I took a drive in the carriage. Then I had my dinner. My maid washed me and put me to bed. There is the difference between youand me; you have to wash yourself and put yourself to bed. '

'And you really don't find it a bore, living like this? Wouldn't youlike something to do? Wouldn't you like some children to play with? TheFox seemed to find it very pleasant. '

'Children, indeed!' said the Dog, 'when I have got men and women. Children are well enough for foxes and wild creatures; refined dogs knowbetter; and, for doing--can't I stand on my toes? can't I dance? atleast, couldn't I before I was so fat?'

'Ah! I see everybody likes what he was bred to, ' sighed the Cat. 'I wasbred to do nothing, and I must like that. Train the cat as the catshould go, and the cat will be happy and ask no questions. Never seekfor impossibilities, Dog. That is the secret. '

'And you have spent a day in the woods to learn that, ' said he. 'I couldhave taught you that. Why, Cat, one day when you were sitting scratchingyour nose before the fire, I thought you looked so pretty that I shouldhave liked to marry you; but I knew I couldn't, so I didn't make myselfmiserable. '

The Cat looked at him with her odd green eyes. 'I never wished to marryyou, Dog; I shouldn't have presumed. But it was wise of you not to fretabout it. But, listen to me, Dog--listen. I met many creatures in thewood, all sorts of creatures, beasts and birds. They were all happy;they didn't find it a bore. They went about their work, and did it, andenjoyed it, and yet none of them had the same story to tell. Some didone thing, some another; and, except the Fox, each had got a sort ofnotion of doing its duty. The Fox was a rogue; he said he was; but yethe was not unhappy. His conscience never troubled him. Your work isstanding on your toes, and you are happy. I have none, and that is why Iam unhappy. When I came to think about it, I found every creature out inthe wood had to get its own living. I tried to get mine, but I didn'tlike it, because I wasn't used to it; and as for knowing, the Fox, whodidn't care to know anything except how to cheat greater fools thanhimself, was the cleverest fellow I came across. Oh! the Owl, Dog--youshould have heard the Owl. But I came to this, that it was no use tryingto know, and the only way to be jolly was to go about one's own businesslike a decent Cat. Cats' business seems to be killing rabbits andsuch-like; and it is not the pleasantest possible; so the sooner one isbred to it the better. As for me, that have been bred to do nothing, why, as I said before, I must try to like that; but I consider myself anunfortunate Cat. '

'So don't I consider myself an unfortunate Dog, ' said her companion. 

'Very likely you do not, ' said the Cat. 

By this time their breakfast was come in. The Cat ate hers, the Dog didpenance for his; and if one might judge by the purring on thehearth-rug, the Cat, if not the happiest of the two, at least was notexceedingly miserable. 

FABLES. 

I. --THE LIONS AND THE OXEN. 

Once upon a time a number of cattle came out of the desert to settle inthe broad meadows by a river. They were poor and wretched, and theyfound it a pleasant exchange; except for a number of lions, who lived inthe mountains near, and who claimed a right, in consideration ofpermitting the cattle to remain, to eat as many as they wanted amongthem. The cattle submitted, partly because they were too weak to helpit, partly because the lions said it was the will of Jupiter; and thecattle believed them. And so they went on for many ages, till at last, from better feeding, the cattle grew larger and stronger, and multipliedinto great numbers; and at the same time, from other causes, the lionshad much diminished: they were fewer, smaller, and meaner-looking thanthey had been; and except in their own opinion of themselves, and intheir appetites, which were more enormous than ever, there was nothingof the old lion left in them. 

One day a large ox was quietly grazing, when one of these lions came up, and desired the ox to lie down, for he wanted to eat him. The ox raisedhis head, and gravely protested; the lion growled; the ox was mild, yetfirm. The lion insisted upon his legal right, and they agreed to referthe matter to Minos. 

When they came into court, the lion accused the ox of having broken thelaws of the beasts. The lion was king, and the others were bound toobey. Prescriptive usage was clearly on the lion's side. Minos called onthe ox for his defence. 

The Ox said that, without consent of his own being asked, he had beenborn into the meadow. He did not consider himself much of a beast, but, such as he was, he was very happy, and gave Jupiter thanks. Now, if thelion could show that the existence of lions was of more importance thanthat of oxen in the eyes of Jupiter, he had nothing more to say; he wasready to sacrifice himself. But this lion had already eaten a thousandoxen. Lions' appetites were so insatiable that he was forced to askwhether they were really worth what was done for them, --whether the lifeof one lion was so noble that the lives of thousands of oxen were notequal to it? He was ready to own that lions had always eaten oxen, butlions when they first came to the meadow were a different sort ofcreature, and they themselves, too (and the ox looked complacently athimself), had improved since that time. Judging by appearances, thoughthey might be fallacious, he himself was quite as good a beast as thelion. If the lions would lead lives more noble than oxen could live, once more he would not complain. As it was, he submitted that the costwas too great. 

Then the Lion put on a grand face and tried to roar; but when he openedhis mouth he disclosed a jaw so drearily furnished that Minos laughed, and told the ox it was his own fault if he let himself be eaten by sucha beast as that. If he persisted in declining, he did not think the lionwould force him. 

II. --THE FARMER AND THE FOX. 

A farmer, whose poultry-yard had suffered severely from the foxes, succeeded at last in catching one in a trap. 'Ah, you rascal!' said he, as he saw him struggling, 'I'll teach you to steal my fat geese!--youshall hang on the tree yonder, and your brothers shall see what comes ofthieving!' The farmer was twisting a halter to do what he threatened, when the fox, whose tongue had helped him in hard pinches before, thought there could be no harm in trying whether it might not do him onemore good turn. 

'You will hang me, ' he said, 'to frighten my brother foxes. On the wordof a fox they won't care a rabbit-skin for it; they'll come and look atme; but you may depend upon it, they will dine at your expense beforethey go home again!'

'Then I shall hang you for yourself, as a rogue and a rascal, ' said thefarmer. 

'I am only what Nature, or whatever you call the thing, chose to makeme, ' the Fox answered. 'I didn't make myself. '

'You stole my geese, ' said the man. 

'Why did Nature make me like geese, then?' said the Fox. 'Live and letlive; give me my share, and I won't touch yours; but you keep them allto yourself. '

'I don't understand your fine talk, ' answered the Farmer; 'but I knowthat you are a thief, and that you deserve to be hanged. '

His head is too thick to let me catch him so, thought the Fox; I wonderif his heart is any softer! 'You are taking away the life of afellow-creature, ' he said; 'that's a responsibility--it is a curiousthing that life, and who knows what comes after it? You say I am arogue--I say I am not; but at any rate I ought not to be hanged--for ifI am not, I don't deserve it; and if I am, you should give me time torepent!' I have him now, thought the Fox; let him get out if he can. 

'Why, what would you have me do with you?' said the man. 

'My notion is that you should let me go, and give me a lamb, or goose ortwo, every month, and then I could live without stealing; but perhapsyou know better than me, and I am a rogue; my education may have beenneglected; you should shut me up, and take care of me, and teach me. Whoknows but in the end I may turn into a dog?'

'Very pretty, ' said the Farmer; 'we have dogs enough, and more, too, than we can take care of, without you. No, no, Master Fox, I have caughtyou, and you shall swing, whatever is the logic of it. There will be onerogue less in the world, anyhow. '

'It is mere hate and unchristian vengeance, ' said the Fox. 

'No, friend, ' the Farmer answered, 'I don't hate you, and I don't wantto revenge myself on you; but you and I can't get on together, and Ithink I am of more importance than you. If nettles and thistles grow inmy cabbage-garden, I don't try to persuade them to grow into cabbages. Ijust dig them up. I don't hate them; but I feel somehow that theymustn't hinder me with my cabbages, and that I must put them away; andso, my poor friend, I am sorry for you, but I am afraid you mustswing. '

PARABLE OF THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE. 

It was after one of those heavy convulsions which have divided era fromera, and left mankind to start again from the beginning, that a numberof brave men gathered together to raise anew from the ground a freshgreen home for themselves. The rest of the surviving race weresheltering themselves amidst the old ruins, or in the caves on themountains, feeding on husks and shells; but these men with clear headsand brave hearts ploughed and harrowed the earth, and planted seeds, andwatered them, and watched them; and the seeds grew and shot up with thespring, but one was larger and fairer than the rest, and the otherplants seemed to know it, for they crawled along till they reached thelarge one; and they gathered round it, and clung to it, and grew intoit; and soon they became one great stem, with branching roots feeding itas from many fountains. Then the men got great heart in them when theysaw that, and they laboured more bravely, digging about it in the hotsun, till at last it became great and mighty, and its roots went downinto the heart of the earth, and its branches stretched over all theplain. 

Then many others of mankind, when they saw the tree was beautiful, camedown and gathered under it, and those who had raised it received themwith open arms, and they all sat under its shade together, and gatheredits fruits, and made their homes there, rejoicing in its loveliness. Andages passed away, and all that generation passed away, and still thetree grew stronger and fairer, and their children's children watched itage after age, as it lived on and flowered and seeded. And they said intheir hearts, the tree is immortal--it will never die. They took no careof the seed; the scent of the flowers and the taste of the sweet fruitwas all they thought of: and the winds of heaven, and the wild birds, and the beasts of the field caught the stray fruits and seed-dust, andbore the seed away, and scattered it in far-off soils. 

And by-and-by, at a great great age, the tree at last began to cease togrow, and then to faint and droop: its leaves were not so thick, itsflowers were not so fragrant; and from time to time the night winds, which before had passed away, and had been never heard, came moaning andsighing among the branches. And the men for a while doubted anddenied--they thought it was the accident of the seasons; and then abranch fell, and they said it was a storm, and such a storm as came butonce in a thousand years. At last there could be no doubt that theleaves were thin and sere and scanty--that the sun shone throughthem--that the fruit was tasteless. But the generation was gone awaywhich had known the tree in its beauty, and so men said it was alwaysso--its fruits were never better--its foliage never was thicker. 

So things went on, and from time to time strangers would come amongthem, and would say, Why are you sitting here under the old tree? thereare young trees grown of the seed of this tree, far away, more beautifulthan it ever was; see, we have brought you leaves and flowers to showyou. But the men would not listen. They were angry, and some they droveaway, and some they killed, and poured their blood round the roots ofthe tree, saying, They have spoken evil of our tree; let them feed itnow with their blood. At last some of their own wiser ones brought outspecimens of the old fruits, which had been laid up to be preserved, andcompared them with the present bearing, and they saw that the tree wasnot as it had been; and such of them as were good men reproachedthemselves, and said it was their own fault. They had not watered it;they had forgotten to manure it. So, like their first fathers, theylaboured with might and main, and for a while it seemed as if they mightsucceed, and for a few years branches, which were almost dead when thespring came round, put out some young green shoots again. But it wasonly for a few years; there was not enough of living energy in the tree. Half the labour which was wasted on it would have raised another noblerone far away. So the men grew soon weary, and looked for a shorter way:and some gathered up the leaves and shoots which the strangers hadbrought, and grafted them on, if perhaps they might grow; but they couldnot grow on a dying stock, and they, too, soon drooped and became as therest. And others said, Come, let us tie the preserved fruits on again;perhaps they will join again to the stem, and give it back its life. Butthere were not enough, for only a few had been preserved; so they tookpainted paper and wax and clay, and cut sham leaves and fruits of theold pattern, which for a time looked bright and gay, and the world, whodid not know what had been done, said--See, the tree is immortal: it isgreen again. Then some believed, but many saw that it was a sham, andliking better to bear the sky and sun, without any shade at all, than tolive in a lie, and call painted paper leaves and flowers, they passedout in search of other homes. But the larger number stayed behind; theyhad lived so long in falsehood that they had forgotten there was anysuch thing as truth at all; the tree had done very well for them--itwould do very well for their children. And if their children, as theygrew up, did now and then happen to open their eyes and see how itreally was, they learned from their fathers to hold their tongues aboutit. If the little ones and the weak ones believed, it answered allpurposes, and change was inconvenient. They might smile to themselves atthe folly which they countenanced, but they were discreet, and theywould not expose it. This is the state of the tree, and of the men whoare under it at this present time:--they say it still does very well. Perhaps it does--but, stem and boughs and paper leaves, it is dry forthe burning, and if the lightning touches it, those who sit beneath willsuffer. 

COMPENSATION. 

One day an Antelope was lying with her fawn at the foot of the floweringMimosa. The weather was intensely sultry, and a Dove, who had soughtshelter from the heat among the leaves, was cooing above her head. 

'Happy bird!' said the Antelope. 'Happy bird! to whom the air is givenfor an inheritance, and whose flight is swifter than the wind. At yourwill you alight upon the ground, at your will you sweep into the sky, and fly races with the driving clouds; while I, poor I, am bound aprisoner to this miserable earth, and wear out my pitiable life crawlingto and fro upon its surface. '

Then the Dove answered, 'It is sweet to sail along the sky, to fly fromland to land, and coo among the valleys; but, Antelope, when I have sateabove amidst the branches and watched your little one close its tinylips upon your breast, and feed its life on yours, I have felt that Icould strip off my wings, lay down my plumage, and remain all my lifeupon the ground only once to know such blessed enjoyment. '

The breeze sighed among the boughs of the Mimosa, and a voice cametrembling out of the rustling leaves: 'If the Antelope mourns herdestiny, what should the Mimosa do? The Antelope is the swiftest amongthe animals. It rises in the morning; the ground flies under itsfeet--in the evening it is a hundred miles away. The Mimosa is feedingits old age on the same soil which quickened its seed cell intoactivity. The seasons roll by me and leave me in the old place. Thewinds sway among my branches, as if they longed to bear me away withthem, but they pass on and leave me behind. The wild birds come and go. The flocks move by me in the evening on their way to the pleasantwaters. I can never move. My cradle must be my grave. '

Then from below, at the root of the tree, came a voice which neitherbird, nor Antelope, nor tree had ever heard, as a Rock Crystal from itsprison in the limestone followed on the words of the Mimosa. 

'Are ye all unhappy?' it said. 'If ye are, then what am I? Ye all havelife. You! O Mimosa, you! whose fair flowers year by year come again toyou, ever young, and fresh, and beautiful--you who can drink the rainwith your leaves, who can wanton with the summer breeze, and open yourbreast to give a home to the wild birds, look at me and be ashamed. Ionly am truly wretched. '

'Alas!' said the Mimosa, 'we have life, which you have not, it is true. We have also what you have not, its shadow--death. My beautifulchildren, which year by year I bring out into being, expand in theirloveliness only to die. Where they are gone I too shall soon follow, while you will flash in the light of the last sun which rises upon theearth. '

LONDON

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. 

NEW-STREET SQUARE

Transcriber's Notes:

Page 67: popositions: typo for propositions. Corrected. 

Page 118: seventeeth: typo for seventeenth. Corrected. 

Page 198: assults: typo for assaults. Corrected. 

Page 279: reely: typo for freely. Corrected. 

Page 300: appal: alternate spelling for appall. 

Page 301: doggrel: alternate spelling for doggerel. 

Page 316: throughly: alternate spelling for thoroughly. 

Page 322: ougly: alternate spelling for ugly. 

Page 329: rommaging: alternate spelling for rummaging. 

Page 330: carged: In 'a huge high-carged' [May mean high-charged as withmany weapons, or cargo, as heavy freight?]

Page 330: enterchanged: alternate spelling for interchanged. 

Page 408: befal: alternate spelling for befall. 

Page 440: wanton: probably means to frolic or move freely in thiscontext. 

Page various: sate: alternate, archaic spelling for sat.