THE LION TAMER.
1. It has been often of late announced as a new discovery, that man is
a creature of circumstances; and the fact has been pressed upon our
notice, in the hope, which appears to some people so pleasing, of
being able at last to resolve into a succession of splashes in mud, or
whirlwinds in air, the circumstances answerable for his creation. But
the more important fact, that his nature is not levelled, like a
mosquito's, to the mists of a marsh, nor reduced, like a mole's,
beneath the crumblings of a burrow, but has been endowed with sense to
discern, and instinct to adopt, the conditions which will make of it
the best that can be, is very necessarily ignored by philosophers who
propose, as a beautiful fulfilment of human destinies, a life
entertained by scientific gossip, in a cellar lighted by electric
sparks, warmed by tubular inflation, drained by buried rivers, and
fed, by the ministry of less learned and better provisioned races,
with extract of beef, and potted crocodile.
2. From these chemically analytic conceptions of a Paradise in
catacombs, undisturbed in its alkaline or acid virtues by the dread of
Deity, or hope of futurity, I know not how far the modern reader may
willingly withdraw himself for a little time, to hear of men who, in
their darkest and most foolish day, sought by their labour to make the
desert as the garden of the Lord, and by their love to become worthy of
permission to live with Him for ever. It has nevertheless been only by
such toil, and in such hope, that, hitherto, the happiness, skill, or
virtue of man have been possible: and even on the verge of the new
dispensation, and promised Canaan, rich in beatitudes of iron, steam,
and fire, there are some of us, here and there, who may pause in filial
piety to look back towards that wilderness of Sinai in which their
fathers worshipped and died.
[Illustration: Plate III.--AMIENS. JOUR DES TRÉPASSÉS. 1880.]
3. Admitting then, for the moment, that the main streets of
Manchester, the district immediately surrounding the Bank in London,
and the Bourse and Boulevards of Paris, are already part of the future
kingdom of Heaven, when Earth shall be all Bourse and Boulevard,--the
world of which our fathers tell us was divided to them, as you already
know, partly by climates, partly by races, partly by times; and the
'circumstances' under which a man's soul was given to him, had to be
considered under these three heads:--In what climate is he? Of what
race? At what time?
He can only be what these conditions permit. With appeal to these, he
is to be heard;--understood, if it may be;--judged, by our love,
first--by our pity, if he need it--by our humility, finally and
always.
4. To this end, it is needful evidently that we should have truthful
maps of the world to begin with, and truthful maps of our own hearts
to end with; neither of these maps being easily drawn at any time, and
perhaps least of all now--when the use of a map is chiefly to exhibit
hotels and railroads; and humility is held the disagreeablest and
meanest of the Seven mortal Sins.
5. Thus, in the beginning of Sir Edward Creasy's History of England,
you find a map purporting to exhibit the possessions of the British
Nation--illustrating the extremely wise and courteous behaviour of Mr.
Fox to a Frenchman of Napoleon's suite, in "advancing to a terrestrial
globe of unusual magnitude and distinctness, spreading his arms round
it, over both the oceans and both the Indies," and observing, in this
impressive attitude, that "while Englishmen live, they overspread the
whole world, and clasp it in the circle of their power."
6. Fired by Mr. Fox's enthusiasm,--the otherwise seldom fiery--Sir
Edward proceeds to tell us that "our island home is the favourite
domicile of freedom, empire and glory," without troubling himself, or
his readers, to consider how long the nations over whom our freedom is
imperious, and in whose shame is our glory, may be satisfied in that
arrangement of the globe and its affairs; or may be even at present
convinced of their degraded position in it by his method of its
delineation.
For, the map being drawn on Mercator's projection, represents
therefore the British dominions in North America as twice the size of
the States, and considerably larger than all South America put
together: while the brilliant crimson with which all our landed
property is coloured cannot but impress the innocent reader with the
idea of a universal flush of freedom and glory throughout all those
acres and latitudes. So that he is scarcely likely to cavil at results
so marvellous by inquiring into the nature and completeness of our
government at any particular place,--for instance in Ireland, in the
Hebrides, or at the Cape.
7. In the closing chapter of the first volume of 'The Laws of Fésole'
I have laid down the mathematical principles of rightly drawing
maps;--principles which for many reasons it is well that my young
readers should learn; the fundamental one being that you cannot
flatten the skin of an orange without splitting it, and must not, if
you draw countries on the unsplit skin, stretch them afterwards to
fill the gaps.
The British pride of wealth which does not deny itself the magnificent
convenience of penny Walter Scotts and penny Shakespeares, may
assuredly, in its future greatness, possess itself also of penny
universes, conveniently spinnable on their axes. I shall therefore
assume that my readers can look at a round globe, while I am talking
of the world; and at a properly reduced drawing of its surfaces, when
I am talking of a country.
8. Which, if my reader can at present do--or at least refer to a
fairly drawn double-circle map of the globe with converging
meridians--I will pray him next to observe, that, although the
old division of the world into four quarters is now nearly
effaced by emigration and Atlantic cable, yet the great historic
question about the globe is not how it is divided, here and there, by
ins and outs of land or sea; but how it is divided into zones all
round, by irresistible laws of light and air. It is often a matter of
very minor interest to know whether a man is an American or African, a
European or an Asiatic. But it is a matter of extreme and final
interest to know if he be a Brazilian or a Patagonian, a Japanese or a
Samoyede.
9. In the course of the last chapter, I asked the reader to hold
firmly the conception of the great division of climate, which
separated the wandering races of Norway and Siberia from the calmly
resident nations of Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Dacia.
Fasten now that division well home in your mind, by drawing, however
rudely, the course of the two rivers, little thought of by common
geographers, but of quite unspeakable importance in human history, the
Vistula and the Dniester.
10. They rise within thirty miles of each other,[24] and each runs, not
counting ins and outs, its clear three hundred miles,--the Vistula to
the north-east, the Dniester to the south-west: the two of them together
cut Europe straight across, at the broad neck of it,--and, more deeply
looking at the thing, they divide Europe, properly so called--Europa's
own, and Jove's,--the small educationable, civilizable, and more or less
mentally rational fragment of the globe, from the great Siberian
wilderness, Cis-Ural and Trans-Ural; the inconceivable chaotic space,
occupied datelessly by Scythians, Tartars, Huns, Cossacks, Bears,
Ermines, and Mammoths, in various thickness of hide, frost of brain, and
woe of abode--or of unabiding. Nobody's history worth making out, has
anything to do with them; for the force of Scandinavia never came round
by Finland at all, but always sailed or paddled itself across the
Baltic, or down the rocky west coast; and the Siberian and Russian
ice-pressure merely drives the really memorable races into greater
concentration, and kneads them up in fiercer and more necessitous
exploring masses. But by those exploring masses, of true European birth,
our own history was fashioned for ever; and, therefore, these two
truncating and guarding rivers are to be marked on your map of Europe
with supreme clearness: the Vistula, with Warsaw astride of it half way
down, and embouchure in Baltic,--the Dniester, in Euxine, flowing each
of them, measured arrow-straight, as far as from Edinburgh to London,
with windings,[25] the Vistula six hundred miles, and the Dniester
five--count them together for a thousand miles of _moat_, between Europe
and the Desert, reaching from Dantzic to Odessa.
[Footnote 24: Taking the 'San' branch of upper Vistula.]
[Footnote 25: Note, however, generally that the strength of a river,
cæteris paribus, is to be estimated by its straight course, windings
being almost always caused by flats in which it can receive no
tributaries.]
11. Having got your Europe moated off into this manageable and
comprehensible space, you are next to fix the limits which divide the
four Gothic countries, Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Dacia, from the
four Classic countries, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Lydia.
There is no other generally opponent term to 'Gothic' but 'Classic':
and I am content to use it, for the sake of practical breadth and
clearness, though its precise meaning for a little while remains
unascertained. Only get the geography well into your mind, and the
nomenclature will settle itself at its leisure.
12. Broadly, then, you have sea between Britain and Spain--Pyrenees
between Gaul and Spain--Alps between Germany and Italy--Danube between
Dacia and Greece. You must consider everything south of the Danube as
Greek, variously influenced from Athens on one side, Byzantium on the
other: then, across the Ægean, you have the great country absurdly
called Asia Minor, (for we might just as well call Greece, Europe Minor,
or Cornwall, England Minor,) but which is properly to be remembered as
'Lydia,' the country which infects with passion, and tempts with wealth;
which taught the Lydian measure in music and softened the Greek language
on its border into Ionic; which gave to ancient history the tale of
Troy, and to Christian history, the glow, and the decline, of the Seven
Churches.
13. Opposite to these four countries in the south, but separated from
them either by sea or desert, are another four, as easily
remembered--Morocco, Libya, Egypt, and Arabia.
Morocco, virtually consisting of the chain of Atlas and the coasts
depending on it, may be most conveniently thought of as including the
modern Morocco and Algeria, with the Canaries as a dependent group of
islands.
Libya, in like manner, will include the modern Tunis and Tripoli: it
will begin on the west with St. Augustine's town of Hippo; and its
coast is colonized from Tyre and Greece, dividing it into the two
districts of Carthage and Cyrene. Egypt, the country of the River, and
Arabia, the country of _no_ River, are to be thought of as the two
great southern powers of separate Religion.
14. You have thus, easily and clearly memorable, twelve countries,
distinct evermore by natural laws, and forming three zones from north
to south, all healthily habitable--but the races of the northernmost,
disciplined in endurance of cold; those of the central zone, perfected
by the enjoyable suns alike of summer and winter; those of the
southern zone, trained to endurance of heat. Writing them now in
tabular view,
Britain Gaul Germany Dacia
Spain Italy Greece Lydia
Morocco Libya Egypt Arabia,
you have the ground of all useful profane history mapped out in the
simplest terms; and then, as the fount of inspiration, for all these
countries, with the strength which every soul that has possessed, has
held sacred and supernatural, you have last to conceive perfectly the
small hill district of the Holy Land, with Philistia and Syria on its
flanks, both of them chastising forces; but Syria, in the beginning,
herself the origin of the chosen race--"A Syrian ready to perish was
my father"--and the Syrian Rachel being thought of always as the true
mother of Israel.
15. And remember, in all future study of the relations of these
countries, you must never allow your mind to be disturbed by the
accidental changes of political limit. No matter who rules a country,
no matter what it is officially called, or how it is formally divided,
eternal bars and doors are set to it by the mountains and seas,
eternal laws enforced over it by the clouds and stars. The people that
are born on it are its people, be they a thousand times again and
again conquered, exiled, or captive. The stranger cannot be its king,
the invader cannot be its possessor; and, although just laws,
maintained whether by the people or their conquerors, have always the
appointed good and strength of justice, nothing is permanently helpful
to any race or condition of men but the spirit that is in their own
hearts, kindled by the love of their native land.
16. Of course, in saying that the invader cannot be the possessor of
any country, I speak only of invasion such as that by the Vandals of
Libya, or by ourselves of India; where the conquering race does not
become permanently inhabitant. You are not to call Libya Vandalia, nor
India England, because these countries are temporarily under the rule
of Vandals and English; neither Italy Gothland under Ostrogoths, nor
England Denmark under Canute. National character varies as it fades
under invasion or in corruption; but if ever it glows again into a new
life, that life must be tempered by the earth and sky of the country
itself. Of the twelve names of countries now given in their order,
only one will be changed as we advance in our history;--Gaul will
properly become France when the Franks become her abiding inhabitants.
The other eleven primary names will serve us to the end.
17. With a moment's more patience, therefore, glancing to the far East,
we shall have laid the foundations of all our own needful geography. As
the northern kingdoms are moated from the Scythian desert by the
Vistula, so the southern are moated from the dynasties properly called
'Oriental' by the Euphrates; which, "partly sunk beneath the Persian
Gulf, reaches from the shores of Beloochistan and Oman to the mountains
of Armenia, and forms a huge hot-air funnel, the base" (or mouth) "of
which is on the tropics, while its extremity reaches thirty-seven
degrees of northern latitude. Hence it comes that the Semoom itself (the
specific and gaseous Semoom) pays occasional visits to Mosoul and
Djezeerat Omer, while the thermometer at Bagdad attains in summer an
elevation capable of staggering the belief of even an old Indian."[26]
[Footnote 26: Sir F. Palgrave, 'Arabia,' vol. ii., p. 155. I gratefully
adopt in the next paragraph his division of Asiatic nations, p. 160.]
18. This valley in ancient days formed the kingdom of Assyria, as the
valley of the Nile formed that of Egypt. In the work now before us, we
have nothing to do with its people, who were to the Jews merely a
hostile power of captivity, inexorable as the clay of their walls, or
the stones of their statues; and, after the birth of Christ, the
marshy valley is no more than a field of battle between West and East.
Beyond the great river,--Persia, India, and China, form the southern
'Oriens.' Persia is properly to be conceived as reaching from the
Persian Gulf to the mountain chains which flank and feed the Indus;
and is the true vital power of the East in the days of Marathon: but
it has no influence on Christian history except through Arabia; while,
of the northern Asiatic tribes, Mede, Bactrian, Parthian, and
Scythian, changing into Turk and Tartar, we need take no heed until
they invade us in our own historic territory.
19. Using therefore the terms 'Gothic' and 'Classic' for broad
distinction of the northern and central zones of this our own territory,
we may conveniently also use the word 'Arab'[27] for the whole southern
zone. The influence of Egypt vanishes soon after the fourth century,
while that of Arabia, powerful from the beginning, rises in the sixth
into an empire whose end we have not seen. And you may most rightly
conceive the religious principle which is the base of that empire, by
remembering, that while the Jews forfeited their prophetic power by
taking up the profession of usury over the whole earth, the Arabs
returned to the simplicity of prophecy in its beginning by the well of
Hagar, and are not opponents to Christianity; but only to the faults or
follies of Christians. They keep still their faith in the one God who
spoke to Abraham their father; and are His children in that simplicity,
far more truly than the nominal Christians who lived, and live, only to
dispute in vociferous council, or in frantic schism, the relations of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
[Footnote 27: Gibbon's fifty-sixth chapter begins with a sentence which
may be taken as the epitome of the entire history we have to
investigate: "The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the
Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of
Italy." I use the more general word, Goths, instead of Franks; and the
more accurate word, Arab, for Saracen; but otherwise, the reader will
observe that the division is the same as mine. Gibbon does not
recognize the Roman people as a nation--but only the Roman power as an
empire.]
20. Trusting my reader then in future to retain in his mind without
confusion the idea of the three zones, Gothic, Classic, and Arab, each
divided into four countries, clearly recognizable through all ages of
remote or recent history;--I must farther, at once, simplify for him the
idea of the Roman _Empire_ (see note to last paragraph,) in the manner
of its affecting them. Its nominal extent, temporary conquests, civil
dissensions, or internal vices, are scarcely of any historical moment at
all; the real Empire is effectual only as an exponent of just law,
military order, and mechanical art, to untrained races, and as a
translation of Greek thought into less diffused and more tenable scheme
for them. The Classic zone, from the beginning to the end of its visible
authority, is composed of these two elements--Greek imagination, with
Roman order: and the divisions or dislocations of the third and fourth
century are merely the natural apparitions of their differences, when
the political system which concealed them was tested by Christianity. It
seems almost wholly lost sight of by ordinary historians, that, in the
wars of the last Romans with the Goths, the great Gothic captains were
all Christians; and that the vigorous and naïve form which the dawning
faith took in their minds is a more important subject of investigation,
by far, than the inevitable wars which followed the retirement of
Diocletian, or the confused schisms and crimes of the lascivious court
of Constantine. I am compelled, however, to notice the terms in which
the last arbitrary dissolutions of the empire took place, that they may
illustrate, instead of confusing, the arrangement of the nations which I
would fasten in your memory.
21. In the middle of the fourth century you have, politically, what
Gibbon calls "the final division of the _Eastern_ and _Western
Empires_." This really means only that the Emperor Valentinian,
yielding, though not without hesitation, to the feeling now confirmed in
the legions that the Empire was too vast to be held by a single person,
takes his brother for his colleague, and divides, not, truly speaking,
their authority, but their attention, between the east and the west. To
his brother Valens he assigns the extremely vague "Præfecture of the
East, from the lower Danube to the confines of Persia," while for his
own immediate government he reserves the "warlike præfectures of
Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul, from the extremity of Greece to the
Caledonian rampart, and from the rampart of Caledonia to the foot of
Mount Atlas." That is to say, in less poetical cadence, (Gibbon had
better have put his history into hexameters at once,) Valentinian kept
under his own watch the whole of Roman Europe and Africa, and left Lydia
and Caucasus to his brother. Lydia and Caucasus never did, and never
could, form an Eastern Empire,--they were merely outside dependencies,
useful for taxation in peace, dangerous by their multitudes in war.
There never was, from the seventh century before Christ to the seventh
after Christ, but _one_ Roman Empire, which meant, the power over
humanity of such men as Cincinnatus and Agricola; it expires as the race
and temper of these expire; the nominal extent of it, or brilliancy at
any moment, is no more than the reflection, farther or nearer upon the
clouds, of the flames of an altar whose fuel was of noble souls. There
is no true date for its division; there is none for its destruction.
Whether Dacian Probus or Noric Odoacer be on the throne of it, the force
of its living principle alone is to be watched--remaining, in arts, in
laws, and in habits of thought, dominant still in Europe down to the
twelfth century;--in language and example, dominant over all educated
men to this hour.
22. But in the nominal division of it by Valentinian, let us note
Gibbon's definition (I assume it to be his, not the Emperor's) of
European Roman Empire into Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul. I have already
said you must hold everything south of the Danube for Greek. The two
chief districts immediately south of the stream are upper and lower
Moesia, consisting of the slope of the Thracian mountains northward
to the river, with the plains between it and them. This district you
must notice for its importance in forming the Moeso-Gothic alphabet,
in which "the Greek is by far the principal element",[28] giving
sixteen letters out of the twenty-four. The Gothic invasion under the
reign of Valens is the first that establishes a Teutonic nation within
the frontier of the empire; but they only thereby bring themselves
more directly under its spiritual power. Their bishop, Ulphilas,
adopts this Moesian alphabet, two-thirds Greek, for his translation
of the Bible, and it is universally disseminated and perpetuated by
that translation, until the extinction or absorption of the Gothic
race.
[Footnote 28: Milman, 'Hist., of Christianity,' vol. iii. p. 36.]
23. South of the Thracian mountains you have Thrace herself, and the
countries confusedly called Dalmatia and Illyria, forming the coast of
the Adriatic, and reaching inwards and eastwards to the mountain
watershed. I have never been able to form a clear notion myself of the
real character of the people of these districts, in any given period;
but they are all to be massed together as northern Greek, having more
or less of Greek blood and dialect according to their nearness to
Greece proper; though neither sharing in her philosophy, nor
submitting to her discipline. But it is of course far more accurate,
in broad terms, to speak of these Illyrian, Moesian, and Macedonian
districts as all Greek, than with Gibbon or Valentinian to speak of
Greece and Macedonia as all Illyrian.[29]
[Footnote 29: I find the same generalization expressed to the modern
student under the term 'Balkan Peninsula,' extinguishing every ray and
trace of past history at once.]
24. In the same imperial or poetical generalization, we find England
massed with France under the term Gaul, and bounded by the "Caledonian
rampart." Whereas in our own division, Caledonia, Hibernia, and Wales,
are from the first considered as essential parts of Britain,[30] and
the link with the continent is to be conceived as formed by the
settlement of Britons in Brittany, and not at all by Roman authority
beyond the Humber.
[Footnote 30: Gibbon's more deliberate statement its clear enough.
"From the coast or the extremity of Caithness and Ulster, the memory
of Celtic origin was distinctly preserved in the perpetual resemblance
of languages, religion, and manners, and the peculiar character of the
British tribes might be naturally ascribed to the influence of
accidental and local circumstances." The Lowland Scots, "wheat eaters"
or Wanderers, and the Irish, are very positively identified by Gibbon
at the time our own history begins. "It is _certain_" (italics his,
not mine) "that in the declining age of the Roman Empire, Caledonia,
Ireland, and the Isle of Man, were inhabited by the Scots."--Chap. 25,
vol. iv., p. 279.
The higher civilization and feebler courage of the Lowland _English_
rendered them either the victims of Scotland, or the grateful subjects
of Rome. The mountaineers, Pict among the Grampians, or of their own
colour in Cornwall and Wales, have never been either instructed or
subdued, and remain to this day the artless and fearless strength of
the British race.]
25. Thus, then, once more reviewing our order of countries, and noting
only that the British Islands, though for the most part thrown by
measured degree much north of the rest of the north zone, are brought
by the influence of the Gulf stream into the same climate;--you have,
at the time when our history of Christianity begins, the Gothic zone
yet unconverted, and having not yet even heard of the new faith. You
have the Classic zone variously and increasingly conscious of it,
disputing with it, striving to extinguish it--and your Arab zone, the
ground and sustenance of it, encompassing the Holy Land with the
warmth of its own wings, and cherishing there--embers of phoenix
fire over all the earth,--the hope of Resurrection.
26. What would have been the course, or issue, of Christianity, had it
been orally preached only, and unsupported by its poetical literature,
might be the subject of deeply instructive speculation--if a
historian's duty were to reflect instead of record. The power of the
Christian faith was however, in the fact of it, always founded on the
written prophecies and histories of the Bible; and on the
interpretations of their meaning, given by the example, far more than
by the precept, of the great monastic orders. The poetry and history
of the Syrian Testaments were put within their reach by St. Jerome,
while the virtue and efficiency of monastic life are all expressed,
and for the most part summed, in the rule of St. Benedict. To
understand the relation of the work of these two men to the general
order of the Church, is quite the first requirement for its farther
intelligible history.
Gibbon's thirty-seventh chapter professes to give an account of the
'Institution of the Monastic Life' in the third century. But the
monastic life had been instituted somewhat earlier, and by many
prophets and kings. By Jacob, when he laid the stone for his pillow;
by Moses, when he drew aside to see the burning bush; by David, before
he had left "those few sheep in the wilderness"; and by the prophet
who "was in the deserts till the time of his showing unto Israel." Its
primary "institution," for Europe, was Numa's, in that of the Vestal
Virgins, and College of Augurs; founded on the originally Etrurian and
derived Roman conception of pure life dedicate to the service of God,
and practical wisdom dependent on His guidance.[31]
[Footnote 31: I should myself mark as the fatallest instant in the
decline of the Roman Empire, Julian's rejection of the counsel of the
Augurs. "For the last time, the Etruscan Haruspices accompanied a
Roman Emperor, but by a singular fatality their adverse interpretation
by the signs of heaven was disdained, and Julian followed the advice
of the philosophers, who coloured their predictions with the bright
hues of the Emperor's ambition." (Milman, Hist. of Christianity, chap.
vi.)]
The form which the monastic spirit took in later times depended far more
on the corruption of the common world, from which it was forced to
recoil either in indignation or terror, than on any change brought
about by Christianity in the ideal of human virtue and happiness.
27. "Egypt" (Mr. Gibbon thus begins to account for the new
Institution!), "the fruitful parent of superstition, afforded the
first example of monastic life." Egypt had her superstitions, like
other countries; but was so little the _parent_ of superstition that
perhaps no faith among the imaginative races of the world has been so
feebly missionary as hers. She never prevailed on even the nearest of
her neighbours to worship cats or cobras with her; and I am alone, to
my belief, among recent scholars, in maintaining Herodotus' statement
of her influence on the archaic theology of Greece. But that
influence, if any, was formative and delineative: not ritual: so that
in no case, and in no country, was Egypt the parent of Superstition:
while she was beyond all dispute, for all people and to all time, the
parent of Geometry, Astronomy, Architecture, and Chivalry. She was, in
its material and technic elements, the mistress of Literature, showing
authors who before could only scratch on wax and wood, how to weave
paper and engrave porphyry. She was the first exponent of the law of
Judgment after Death for Sin. She was the Tutress of Moses; and the
Hostess of Christ.
28. It is both probable and natural that, in such a country, the
disciples of any new spiritual doctrine should bring it to closer
trial than was possible among the illiterate warriors, or in the
storm-vexed solitudes of the North; yet it is a thoughtless error to
deduce the subsequent power of cloistered fraternity from the lonely
passions of Egyptian monachism. The anchorites of the first three
centuries vanish like feverish spectres, when the rational, merciful,
and laborious laws of Christian societies are established; and the
clearly recognizable rewards of heavenly solitude are granted to those
only who seek the Desert for its redemption.
29. 'The clearly _recognizable_ rewards,' I repeat, and with cautious
emphasis. No man has any data for estimating, far less right of judging,
the results of a life of resolute self-denial, until he has had the
courage to try it himself, at least for a time: but I believe no
reasonable person will wish, and no honest person dare, to deny the
benefits he has occasionally felt both in mind and body, during periods
of accidental privation from luxury, or exposure to danger. The extreme
vanity of the modern Englishman in making a momentary Stylites of
himself on the top of a Horn or an Aiguille, and his occasional
confession of a charm in the solitude of the rocks, of which he modifies
nevertheless the poignancy with his pocket newspaper, and from the
prolongation of which he thankfully escapes to the nearest table-d'hôte,
ought to make us less scornful of the pride, and more intelligent of the
passion, in which the mountain anchorites of Arabia and Palestine
condemned themselves to lives of seclusion and suffering, which were
comforted only by supernatural vision, or celestial hope. That phases of
mental disease are the necessary consequence of exaggerated and
independent emotion of any kind must, of course, be remembered in
reading the legends of the wilderness; but neither physicians nor
moralists have yet attempted to distinguish the morbid states of
intellect[32] which are extremities of noble passion, from those which
are the punishments of ambition, avarice, or lasciviousness.
[Footnote 32: Gibbon's hypothetical conclusion respecting the effects
of self-mortification, and his following historical statement, must be
noted as in themselves containing the entire views of the modern
philosophies and policies which have since changed the monasteries of
Italy into barracks, and the churches of France into magazines. "This
voluntary martyrdom _must_ have gradually destroyed the sensibility,
both of mind and body; nor _can it be presumed_ that the fanatics who
torment themselves, are capable of any lively affection for the rest
of mankind. _A cruel unfeeling temper has characterized the monks of
every age and country._"
How much of penetration, or judgment, this sentence exhibits, I hope
will become manifest to the reader as I unfold before him the actual
history of his faith; but being, I suppose, myself one of the last
surviving witnesses of the character of recluse life as it still
existed in the beginning of this century, I can point to the
portraiture of it given by Scott in the introduction to 'The
Monastery' as one perfect and trustworthy, to the letter and to the
spirit; and for myself can say, that the most gentle, refined, and in
the deepest sense amiable, phases of character I have ever known, have
been either those of monks, or of servants trained in the Catholic
Faith.]
30. Setting all questions of this nature aside for the moment, my
younger readers need only hold the broad fact that during the whole of
the fourth century, multitudes of self-devoted men led lives of
extreme misery and poverty in the effort to obtain some closer
knowledge of the Being and Will of God. We know, in any available
clearness, neither what they suffered, nor what they learned. We
cannot estimate the solemnizing or reproving power of their examples
on the less zealous Christian world; and only God knows how far their
prayers for it were heard, or their persons accepted. This only we may
observe with reverence, that among all their numbers, none seemed to
have repented their chosen manner of existence; none perish by
melancholy or suicide; their self-adjudged sufferings are never
inflicted in the hope of shortening the lives they embitter or purify;
and the hours of dream or meditation, on mountain or in cave, appear
seldom to have dragged so heavily as those which, without either
vision or reflection, we pass ourselves, on the embankment and in the
tunnel.
31. But whatever may be alleged, after ultimate and honest scrutiny,
of the follies or virtues of anchorite life, we are unjust to Jerome
if we think of him as its introducer into the West of Europe. He
passed through it himself as a phase of spiritual discipline; but he
represents, in his total nature and final work, not the vexed
inactivity of the Eremite, but the eager industry of a benevolent
tutor and pastor. His heart is in continual fervour of admiration or
of hope--remaining to the last as impetuous as a child's, but as
affectionate; and the discrepancies of Protestant objection by which
his character has been confused, or concealed, may be gathered into
some dim picture of his real self when once we comprehend the
simplicity of his faith, and sympathise a little with the eager
charity which can so easily be wounded into indignation, and is never
repressed by policy.
32. The slight trust which can be placed in modern readings of him, as
they now stand, may be at once proved by comparing the two passages in
which Milman has variously guessed at the leading principles of his
political conduct. "Jerome began (!) and ended his career as a monk of
Palestine; he attained, _he aspired to_, no dignity in the Church.
Though ordained a presbyter against his will, he escaped the episcopal
dignity which was forced upon his distinguished contemporaries."
('History of Christianity,' Book III.)
"Jerome cherished the secret hope, if it was not the avowed object of
his ambition, to succeed Damasus as Bishop of Rome. Is the rejection
of an aspirant so singularly unfit for the station, from his violent
passions, his insolent treatment of his adversaries, his utter want of
self-command, his almost unrivalled faculty of awakening hatred, to be
attributed to the sagacious and intuitive wisdom of Rome?" ('History
of Latin Christianity,' Book I., chap. ii.)
33. You may observe, as an almost unexceptional character in the
"sagacious wisdom" of the Protestant clerical mind, that it
instinctively assumes the desire of power and place not only to be
universal in Priesthood, but to be always _purely selfish_ in the ground
of it. The idea that power might possibly be desired for the sake of its
benevolent use, so far as I remember, does not once occur in the pages
of any ecclesiastical historian of recent date. In our own reading of
past ages we will, with the reader's permission, very calmly put out of
court all accounts of "hopes cherished in secret"; and pay very small
attention to the reasons for mediæval conduct which appear logical to
the rationalist, and probable to the politician.[33] We concern
ourselves only with what these singular and fantastic Christians of the
past really said, and assuredly did.
[Footnote 33: The habit of assuming, for the conduct of men of sense
and feeling, motives intelligible to the foolish, and probable to the
base, gains upon every vulgar historian, partly in the ease of it,
partly in the pride; and it is horrible to contemplate the quantity of
false witness against their neighbours which commonplace writers
commit, in the mere rounding and enforcing of their shallow sentences.
"Jerome admits, indeed, with _specious but doubtful humility_, the
inferiority of the unordained monk to the ordained priest," says Dean
Milman in his eleventh chapter, following up his gratuitous doubt of
Jerome's humility with no less gratuitous asseveration of the ambition
of his opponents. "The clergy, _no doubt_, had the sagacity to foresee
the _dangerous_ rival as to influence and authority, which was rising
up in Christian society."]
34. Jerome's life by no means "began as a monk of Palestine." Dean
Milman has not explained to us how any man's could; but Jerome's
childhood, at any rate, was extremely other than recluse, or
precociously religious. He was born of rich parents living on their
own estate, the name of his native town in North Illyria, Stridon,
perhaps now softened into Strigi, near Aquileia. In Venetian climate,
at all events, and in sight of Alps and sea. He had a brother and
sister, a kind grandfather, and a disagreeable private tutor, and was
a youth still studying grammar at Julian's death in 363.
35. A youth of eighteen, and well begun in all institutes of the
classic schools; but, so far from being a monk, not yet a
Christian;--nor at all disposed towards the severer offices even of
Roman life! or contemplating with aversion the splendours, either
worldly or sacred, which shone on him in the college days spent in its
Capital city.
For the "power and majesty of Paganism were still concentrated at Rome;
the deities of the ancient faith found their last refuge in the capital
of the empire. To the stranger, Rome still offered the appearance of a
Pagan city. It contained one hundred and fifty-two temples, and one
hundred and eighty smaller chapels or shrines, still sacred to their
tutelary God, and used for public worship. Christianity had neither
ventured to usurp those few buildings which might be converted to her
use, still less had she the power to destroy them. The religious
edifices were under the protection of the præfect of the city, and the
præfect was usually a Pagan; at all events he would not permit any
breach of the public peace, or violation of public property. Above all
still towered the Capitol, in its unassailed and awful majesty, with its
fifty temples or shrines, bearing the most sacred names in the religious
and civil annals of Rome, those of Jove, of Mars, of Janus, of Romulus,
of Cæsar, of Victory. Some years after the accession of Theodosius to
the Eastern Empire, the sacrifices were still performed as national
rites at the public cost,--_the pontiffs made their offerings in the
name of the whole human race_. The Pagan orator ventures to assert that
the Emperor dared not to endanger the safety of the empire by their
abolition. The Emperor still bore the title and insignia of the Supreme
Pontiff; the Consuls, before they entered upon their functions, ascended
the Capitol; the religious processions passed along the crowded streets,
and the people thronged to the festivals and theatres which still formed
part of the Pagan worship."[34]
[Footnote 34: Milman, 'History of Christianity,' vol. iii. p. 162. Note
the sentence in italics, for it relates the true origin of the
Papacy.]
36. Here, Jerome must have heard of what by all the Christian sects
was held the judgment of God, between them and their chief enemy--the
death of the Emperor Julian. But I have no means of tracing, and will
not conjecture, the course of his own thoughts, until the tenor of all
his life was changed at his baptism. The candour which lies at the
basis of his character has given us one sentence of his own,
respecting that change, which is worth some volumes of ordinary
confessions. "I left, not only parents and kindred, but _the
accustomed luxuries of delicate life_." The words throw full light on
what, to our less courageous temper, seems the exaggerated reading by
the early converts of Christ's words to them--"He that loveth father
or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." We are content to leave,
for much lower interests, either father or mother, and do not see the
necessity of any farther sacrifice: we should know more of ourselves
and of Christianity if we oftener sustained what St. Jerome found the
more searching trial. I find scattered indications of contempt among
his biographers, because he could not resign one indulgence--that of
scholarship; and the usual sneers at monkish ignorance and indolence
are in his case transferred to the weakness of a pilgrim who carried
his library in his wallet. It is a singular question (putting, as it
is the modern fashion to do, the idea of Providence wholly aside),
whether, but for the literary enthusiasm, which was partly a weakness,
of this old man's character, the Bible would ever have become the
library of Europe.
37. For that, observe, is the real meaning, in its first power, of the
word _Bible_. Not book, merely; but 'Bibliotheca,' Treasury of Books:
and it is, I repeat, a singular question, how far, if Jerome, at the
very moment when Rome, his tutress, ceased from her material power,
had not made her language the oracle of Hebrew prophecy, a literature
of their own, and a religion unshadowed by the terrors of the Mosaic
law, might have developed itself in the hearts of the Goth, the Frank,
and the Saxon, under Theodoric, Clovis, and Alfred.
38. Fate had otherwise determined, and Jerome was so passive an
instrument in her hands that he began the study of Hebrew as a
discipline only, and without any conception of the task he was to
fulfil, still less of the scope of its fulfilment. I could joyfully
believe that the words of Christ, "If they hear not Moses and the
Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the
dead," had haunted the spirit of the recluse, until he resolved that
the voices of immortal appeal should be made audible to the Churches
of all the earth. But so far as we have evidence, there was no such
will or hope to exalt the quiet instincts of his natural industry; and
partly as a scholar's exercise, partly as an old man's recreation, the
severity of the Latin language was softened, like Venetian crystal, by
the variable fire of Hebrew thought, and the "Book of Books" took the
abiding form of which all the future art of the Western nations was to
be an hourly expanding interpretation.
39. And in this matter you have to note that the gist of it lies, not in
the translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into an easier and a
common language, but in their presentation to the Church as of common
authority. The earlier Gentile Christians had naturally a tendency to
carry out in various oral exaggeration or corruption, the teaching of
the Apostle of the Gentiles, until their freedom from the bondage of the
Jewish law passed into doubt of its inspiration; and, after the fall of
Jerusalem, even into horror-stricken interdiction of its observance. So
that, only a few years after the remnant of exiled Jews in Pella had
elected the Gentile Marcus for their Bishop, and obtained leave to
return to the Ælia Capitolina built by Hadrian on Mount Zion, "it became
a matter of doubt and controversy whether a man who sincerely
acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued to observe
the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation!"[35] While, on the
other hand, the most learned and the most wealthy of the Christian name,
under the generally recognised title of "knowing" (Gnostic), had more
insidiously effaced the authority of the Evangelists by dividing
themselves, during the course of the third century, "into more than
fifty numerably distinct sects, and producing a multitude of histories,
in which the actions and discourses of Christ and His Apostles were
adapted to their several tenets."[36]
[Footnote 35: Gibbon, chap. xv. (II. 277).]
[Footnote 36: Ibid., II. 283. His expression "the most learned and most
wealthy" should be remembered in confirmation of the evermore
recurring fact of Christianity, that minds modest in attainment, and
lives careless of gain, are fittest for the reception of every
constant,--_i.e._ not local or accidental,--Christian principle.]
40. It would be a task of great, and in nowise profitable difficulty
to determine in what measure the consent of the general Church, and in
what measure the act and authority of Jerome, contributed to fix in
their ever since undisturbed harmony and majesty, the canons of Mosaic
and Apostolic Scripture. All that the young reader need know is, that
when Jerome died at Bethlehem, this great deed was virtually
accomplished: and the series of historic and didactic books which form
our present Bible, (including the Apocrypha) were established in and
above the nascent thought of the noblest races of men living on the
terrestrial globe, as a direct message to them from its Maker,
containing whatever it was necessary for them to learn of His purposes
towards them, and commanding, or advising, with divine authority and
infallible wisdom, all that was best for them to do, and happiest to
desire.
41. And it is only for those who have obeyed the law sincerely,
to say how far the hope held out to them by the law-giver has been
fulfilled. The worst "children of disobedience" are those who accept,
of the Word, what they like, and refuse what they hate: nor is this
perversity in them always conscious, for the greater part of the sins
of the Church have been brought on it by enthusiasm which, in
passionate contemplation and advocacy of parts of the Scripture easily
grasped, neglected the study, and at last betrayed the balance, of the
rest. What forms and methods of self-will are concerned in the
wresting of the Scriptures to a man's destruction, is for the keepers
of consciences to examine, not for us. The history we have to learn
must be wholly cleared of such debate, and the influence of the Bible
watched exclusively on the persons who receive the Word with joy, and
obey it in truth.
42. There has, however, been always a farther difficulty in examining
the power of the Bible, than that of distinguishing honest from
dishonest readers. The hold of Christianity on the souls of men must
be examined, when we come to close dealing with it, under these three
several heads: there is first, the power of the Cross itself, and of
the theory of salvation, upon the heart,--then, the operation of the
Jewish and Greek Scriptures on the intellect,--then, the influence on
morals of the teaching and example of the living hierarchy. And in the
comparison of men as they are and as they might have been, there are
these three questions to be separately kept in mind,--first, what
would have been the temper of Europe without the charity and labour
meant by 'bearing the cross'; then, secondly, what would the intellect
of Europe have become without Biblical literature; and lastly, what
would the social order of Europe have become without its hierarchy.
43. You see I have connected the words 'charity' and 'labour' under
the general term of 'bearing the cross.' "If any man will come after
me, let him deny himself, (for charity) and take up his cross (of
pain) and follow me."
The idea has been _exactly_ reversed by modern Protestantism, which
sees, in the cross, not a furca to which it is to be nailed;
but a raft on which it, and all its valuable properties,[37] are to be
floated into Paradise.
[Footnote 37: Quite one of the most curious colours of modern
Evangelical thought is its pleasing connection of Gospel truth with
the extension of lucrative commerce! See farther the note at p. 83.]
44. Only, therefore, in days when the Cross was received with courage,
the Scripture searched with honesty, and the Pastor heard in faith,
can the pure word of God, and the bright sword of the Spirit, be
recognised in the heart and hand of Christianity. The effect of
Biblical poetry and legend on its intellect, must be traced farther,
through decadent ages, and in unfenced fields;--producing 'Paradise
Lost' for us, no less than the 'Divina Commedia';--Goethe's 'Faust,'
and Byron's 'Cain,' no less than the 'Imitatio Christi.'
45. Much more, must the scholar, who would comprehend in any degree
approaching to completeness, the influence of the Bible on mankind, be
able to read the interpretations of it which rose into the great arts of
Europe at their culmination. In every province of Christendom, according
to the degree of art-power it possessed, a series of illustrations of
the Bible were produced as time went on; beginning with vignetted
illustrations of manuscript, advancing into life-size sculpture, and
concluding in perfect power of realistic painting. These teachings and
preachings of the Church, by means of art, are not only a most important
part of the general Apostolic Acts of Christianity; but their study is a
necessary part of Biblical scholarship, so that no man can in any large
sense understand the Bible itself until he has learned also to read
these national commentaries upon it, and been made aware of their
collective weight. The Protestant reader, who most imagines himself
independent in his thought, and private in his study, of Scripture, is
nevertheless usually at the mercy of the nearest preacher who has a
pleasant voice and ingenious fancy; receiving from him thankfully, and
often reverently, whatever interpretation of texts the agreeable voice
or ready wit may recommend: while, in the meantime, he remains entirely
ignorant of, and if left to his own will, invariably destroys as
injurious, the deeply meditated interpretations of Scripture which, in
their matter, have been sanctioned by the consent of all the Christian
Church for a thousand years; and in their treatment, have been exalted
by the trained skill and inspired imagination of the noblest souls ever
enclosed in mortal clay.
46. There are few of the fathers of the Christian Church whose
commentaries on the Bible, or personal theories of its gospel, have
not been, to the constant exultation of the enemies of the Church,
fretted and disgraced by angers of controversy, or weakened and
distracted by irreconcilable heresy. On the contrary, the scriptural
teaching, through their art, of such men as Orcagna, Giotto, Angelico,
Luca della Robbia, and Luini, is, literally, free from all earthly
taint of momentary passion; its patience, meekness, and quietness are
incapable of error through either fear or anger; they are able,
without offence, to say all that they wish; they are bound by
tradition into a brotherhood which represents unperverted doctrines by
unchanging scenes; and they are compelled by the nature of their work
to a deliberation and order of method which result in the purest state
and frankest use of all intellectual power.
47. I may at once, and without need of returning to this question,
illustrate the difference in dignity and safety between the mental
actions of literature and art, by referring to a passage, otherwise
beautifully illustrative of St. Jerome's sweetness and simplicity of
character, though quoted, in the place where we find it, with no such
favouring intention,--namely, in the pretty letter of Queen Sophie
Charlotte, (father's mother of Frederick the Great,) to the Jesuit
Vota, given in part by Carlyle in his first volume, ch. iv.
"'How can St. Jerome, for example, be a key to Scripture?' she
insinuates; citing from Jerome this remarkable avowal of his method of
composing books;--especially of his method in that book, _Commentary on
the Galatians_, where he accuses both Peter and Paul of simulation, and
even of hypocrisy. The great St. Augustine has been charging him with
this sad fact, (says her Majesty, who gives chapter and verse,) and
Jerome answers, 'I followed the commentaries of Origen, of'--five or
six different persons, who turned out mostly to be heretics before
Jerome had quite done with them, in coming years, 'And to confess the
honest truth to you,' continues Jerome, 'I read all that, and after
having crammed my head with a great many things, I sent for my
amanuensis, and dictated to him, now my own thoughts, now those of
others, without much recollecting the order, nor sometimes the words,
nor even the sense'! In another place, (in the book itself further
on[38]) he says, 'I do not myself write; I have an amanuensis, and I
dictate to him what comes into my mouth. If I wish to reflect a little,
or to say the thing better, or a better thing, he knits his brows, and
the whole look of him tells me sufficiently that he cannot endure to
wait.' Here is a sacred old gentleman whom it is not safe to depend upon
for interpreting the Scriptures,--thinks her Majesty, but does not say
so,--leaving Father Vota to his reflections." Alas, no, Queen Sophie,
neither old St. Jerome's, nor any other human lips nor mind, may be
depended upon in that function; but only the Eternal Sophia, the Power
of God and the Wisdom of God: yet this you may see of your old
interpreter, that he is wholly open, innocent, and true, and that,
through such a person, whether forgetful of his author, or hurried by
his scribe, it is more than probable you may hear what Heaven knows to
be best for you; and extremely improbable you should take the least
harm,--while by a careful and cunning master in the literary art,
reticent of his doubts, and dexterous in his sayings, any number of
prejudices or errors might be proposed to you acceptably, or even
fastened in you fatally, though all the while you were not the least
required to confide in his inspiration.
[Footnote 38: 'Commentary on the Galatians,' Chap. iii.]
48. For indeed, the only confidence, and the only safety which in such
matters we can either hold or hope, are in our own desire to be rightly
guided, and willingness to follow in simplicity the guidance granted.
But all our conceptions and reasonings on the subject of inspiration
have been disordered by our habit, first of distinguishing falsely--or
at least needlessly--between inspiration of words and of acts; and
secondly by our attribution of inspired strength or wisdom to some
persons or some writers only, instead of to the whole body of believers,
in so far as they are partakers of the Grace of Christ, the Love of God,
and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost. In the degree in which every
Christian receives, or refuses, the several gifts expressed by that
general benediction, he enters or is cast out from the inheritance of
the saints,--in the exact degree in which he denies the Christ, angers
the Father, and grieves the Holy Spirit, he becomes uninspired or
unholy,--and in the measure in which he trusts Christ, obeys the Father,
and consents with the Spirit, he becomes inspired in feeling, act, word,
and reception of word, according to the capacities of his nature. He is
not gifted with higher ability, nor called into new offices, but enabled
to use his granted natural powers, in their appointed place, to the best
purpose. A child is inspired as a child, and a maiden as a maiden; the
weak, even in their weakness, and the wise, only in their hour.
That is the simply determinable _theory_ of the inspiration of all
true members of the Church; its truth can only be known by proving it
in trial: but I believe there is no record of any man's having tried
and declared it vain.[39]
[Footnote 39: Compare the closing paragraph in p. 45 of 'The Shrine of
the Slaves.' Strangely, as I revise _this_ page for press, a slip is
sent me from 'The Christian' newspaper, in which the comment of the
orthodox evangelical editor may be hereafter representative to us of
the heresy of his sect; in its last audacity, actually _opposing_ the
power of the Spirit to the work of Christ. (I only wish I had been at
Matlock, and heard the kind physician's sermon.)
"An interesting and somewhat unusual sight was seen in Derbyshire on
Saturday last--two old fashioned Friends, dressed in the original garb
of the Quakers, preaching on the roadside to a large and attentive
audience in Matlock. One of them, who is a doctor in good practice in
the county, by name Dr. Charles A. Fox, made a powerful and effective
appeal to his audience to see to it that each one was living in
obedience to the light of the Holy Spirit within. Christ _within_ was
the hope of glory, and it was as He was followed in the ministry of
the Spirit that we were saved by Him, who became thus to each the
author and finisher of faith. He cautioned his hearers against
building their house on the sand by believing in the free and easy
Gospel so commonly preached to the wayside hearers, as if we were
saved by 'believing' this or that. Nothing short of the work of the
Holy Ghost in the soul of each one could save us, and to preach
anything short of this was simply to delude the simple and unwary in
the most terrible form.
"[It would be unfair to criticise an address from so brief an
abstract, but we must express our conviction that the obedience of
Christ unto death, the death of the Cross, _rather_ than the work of
the Spirit in us, is the good tidings for sinful men.--Ed.]"
In juxtaposition with this editorial piece of modern British press
theology, I will simply place the 4th, 6th, and 13th verses of Romans
viii., italicising the expressions which are of deepest import, and
always neglected. "That the _righteousness of the_ LAW might be
fulfilled _in us_, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit.... For to be carnally _minded_, is death, but to be
spiritually _minded_, is life, and peace.... For if ye live after the
flesh, ye shall die; but if _ye through the Spirit_ do mortify the
_deeds_ of the body, ye shall live."
It would be well for Christendom if the Baptismal service explained
what it professes to abjure.]
49. Beyond this theory of general inspiration, there is that of
special call and command, with actual dictation of the deeds to be
done or words to be said. I will enter at present into no examination
of the evidences of such separating influence; it is not claimed by
the Fathers of the Church, either for themselves, or even for the
entire body of the Sacred writers, but only ascribed to certain
passages dictated at certain times for special needs: and there is no
possibility of attaching the idea of infallible truth to any form of
human language in which even these exceptional passages have been
delivered to us. But this is demonstrably true of the entire volume of
them as we have it, and read,--each of us as it may be rendered in his
native tongue; that, however mingled with mystery which we are not
required to unravel, or difficulties which we should be insolent in
desiring to solve, it contains plain teaching for men of every rank of
soul and state of life, which so far as they honestly and implicitly
obey, they will be happy and innocent to the utmost powers of their
nature, and capable of victory over all adversities, whether of
temptation or pain.
50. Indeed, the Psalter alone, which practically was the service book of
the Church for many ages, contains merely in the first half of it the
sum of personal and social wisdom. The 1st, 8th, 12th, 14th, 15th,
19th, 23rd, and 24th psalms, well learned and believed, are enough for
all personal guidance; the 48th, 72nd, and 75th, have in them the law
and the prophecy of all righteous government; and every real triumph of
natural science is anticipated in the 104th.
51. For the contents of the entire volume, consider what other group
of historic and didactic literature has a range comparable with it.
There are--
I. The stories of the Fall and of the Flood, the grandest human
traditions founded on a true horror of sin.
II. The story of the Patriarchs, of which the effective truth is
visible to this day in the polity of the Jewish and Arab races.
III. The story of Moses, with the results of that tradition in the
moral law of all the civilized world.
IV. The story of the Kings--virtually that of all Kinghood, in David,
and of all Philosophy, in Solomon: culminating in the Psalms and
Proverbs, with the still more close and practical wisdom of
Ecclesiasticus and the Son of Sirach.
V. The story of the Prophets--virtually that of the deepest mystery,
tragedy, and permanent fate, of national existence.
VI. The story of Christ.
VII. The moral law of St. John, and his closing Apocalypse of its
fulfilment.
Think, if you can match that table of contents in any other--I do not
say 'book' but 'literature.' Think, so far as it is possible for any
of us--either adversary or defender of the faith--to extricate his
intelligence from the habit and the association of moral sentiment
based upon the Bible, what literature could have taken its place, or
fulfilled its function, though every library in the world had remained
unravaged, and every teacher's truest words had been written down?
52. I am no despiser of profane literature. So far from it that I
believe no interpretations of Greek religion have ever been so
affectionate, none of Roman religion so reverent, as those which will be
found at the base of my art teaching, and current through the entire
body of my works. But it was from the Bible that I learned the symbols
of Homer, and the faith of Horace; the duty enforced upon me in early
youth of reading every word of the gospels and prophecies as if written
by the hand of God, gave me the habit of awed attention which afterwards
made many passages of the profane writers, frivolous to an irreligious
reader, deeply grave to me. How far my mind has been paralysed by the
faults and sorrow of life,--how far short its knowledge may be of what I
might have known, had I more faithfully walked in the light I had, is
beyond my conjecture or confession: but as I never wrote for my own
pleasure or self-proclaiming, I have been guarded, as men who so write
always will be, from errors dangerous to others; and the fragmentary
expressions of feeling or statements of doctrine, which from time to
time I have been able to give, will be found now by an attentive reader
to bind themselves together into a general system of interpretation of
Sacred literature,--both classic and Christian, which will enable him
without injustice to sympathize in the faiths of candid and generous
souls, of every age and every clime.
53. That there _is_ a Sacred classic literature, running parallel with
that of the Hebrews, and coalescing in the symbolic legends of
mediæval Christendom, is shown in the most tender and impressive way
by the independent, yet similar, influence of Virgil upon Dante, and
upon Bishop Gawaine Douglas. At earlier dates, the teaching of every
master trained in the Eastern schools was necessarily grafted on the
wisdom of the Greek mythology; and thus the story of the Nemean Lion,
with the aid of Athena in its conquest, is the real root-stock of the
legend of St. Jerome's companion, conquered by the healing gentleness
of the Spirit of Life.
54. I call it a legend only. Whether Heracles ever slew, or St. Jerome
ever cherished, the wild or wounded creature, is of no moment to us in
learning what the Greeks meant by their vase-outlines of the great
contest, or the Christian painters by their fond insistence on the
constancy of the Lion-friend. Former tradition, in the story of
Samson,--of the disobedient prophet,--of David's first inspired victory,
and finally of the miracle wrought in the defence of the most favoured
and most faithful of the greater Prophets, runs always parallel in
symbolism with the Dorian fable: but the legend of St. Jerome takes up
the prophecy of the Millennium, and foretells, with the Cumæan Sibyl,
and with Isaiah, a day when the Fear of Man shall be laid in
benediction, not enmity, on inferior beings,--when they shall not hurt
nor destroy in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace of the Earth shall
be as far removed from its present sorrow, as the present gloriously
animate universe from the nascent desert, whose deeps were the place of
dragons, and its mountains, domes of fire.
Of that day knoweth no man; but the Kingdom of God is already come to
those who have tamed in their own hearts what was rampant of the lower
nature, and have learned to cherish what is lovely and human, in the
wandering children of the clouds and fields.
AVALLON, _28th August_, 1882.