ground for what is said of Christ, and elsewhere of John the Baptist,
that he opened his mission by preaching "repentance." Why "repentance"?
Why then, more than at any other time? Her reason for addressing this
remark to me was, that she fancied there might be some error in the
translation of the Greek expression. I replied that, in my opinion,
there was; and that I had myself always been irritated by the entire
irrelevance of the English word, and by something very like cant, on
which the whole burden of the passage is thrown. How was it any natural
preparation for a vast spiritual revolution, that men should first of
all acknowledge any special duty of repentance? The repentance, if
any movement of that nature could intelligibly be supposed called for,
should more naturally _follow_ this great revolution--which, as
yet, both in its principle and in its purpose, was altogether
mysterious--than herald it, or ground it. In my opinion, the Greek word
_metanoia_ concealed a most profound meaning--a meaning of prodigious
compass--which bore no allusion to any ideas whatever of repentance. The
_meta_ carried with it an emphatic expression of its original idea--the
idea of transfer, of translation, of transformation; or, if we prefer a
Grecian to a Roman apparelling, the idea of a _metamorphosis_. And this
idea, to what is it applied? Upon what object is this idea of spiritual
transfiguration made to bear? Simply upon the _noetic_ or intellectual
faculty--the faculty of shaping and conceiving things under their true
relations. The holy herald of Christ, and Christ himself the finisher of
prophecy, made proclamation alike of the same mysterious summons, as
a baptism or rite of initiation; namely, _Metanoei_. Henceforth
transfigure your theory of moral truth; the old theory is laid aside as
infinitely insufficient; a new and spiritual revelation is established.
_Metanoeite_--contemplate moral truth as radiating from a new centre;
apprehend it under transfigured relations.
John the Baptist, like other earlier prophets, delivered a message
which, probably enough, he did not himself more than dimly understand,
and never in its full compass of meaning. Christ occupied another
station. Not only was he the original Interpreter, but he was
himself the Author--Founder, at once, and Finisher--of that great
transfiguration applied to ethics, which he and the Baptist alike
announced as forming the code for the new and revolutionary era now
opening its endless career. The human race was summoned to bring a
transfiguring sense and spirit of interpretation (_metanoia_) to a
transfigured ethics--an altered organ to an altered object. This is by
far the grandest miracle recorded in Scripture. No exhibition of blank
power--not the arresting of the earth's motion--not the calling back of
the dead unto life, can approach in grandeur to this miracle which we
all daily behold; namely, the inconceivable mystery of having written
and sculptured upon the tablets of man's heart a new code of moral
distinctions, all modifying--many reversing--the old ones. What
would have been thought of any prophet, if he should have promised to
transfigure the celestial mechanics; if he had said, I will create a new
pole-star, a new zodiac, and new laws of gravitation; briefly, I will
make new earth and new heavens? And yet a thousand times more awful it
was to undertake the writing of new laws upon the spiritual conscience
of man. _Metanoeite_ (was the cry from the wilderness), wheel into a new
centre your moral system; _geocentric_ has that system been up to this
hour--that is, having earth and the earthly for its starting-point;
henceforward make it _heliocentric_ (that is, with the sun, or the
heavenly for its principle of motion).
2. A second remark of mine was, perhaps, not more important, but it
was, on the whole, better calculated to startle the prevailing
preconceptions; for, as to the new system of morals introduced by
Christ, generally speaking, it is too dimly apprehended in its great
differential features to allow of its miraculous character being
adequately appreciated; one flagrant illustration of which is furnished
by our experience in Affghanistan, where some officers, wishing to
impress Akhbar Khan with the beauty of Christianity, very judiciously
repeated to him the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount, by both
of which the Khan was profoundly affected, and often recurred to them;
but others, under the notion of conveying to him a more _comprehensive_
view of the Scriptural ethics, repeated to him the Ten Commandments;
although, with the sole exception of the two first, forbidding idolatry
and Polytheism, there is no word in these which could have displeased or
surprised a Pagan, and therefore nothing characteristic of Christianity.
Meantime my second remark was substantially this which follows: What is
a religion? To Christians it means, over and above a mode of worship,
a dogmatic (that is, a doctrinal) system; a great body of doctrinal
truths, moral and spiritual. But to the ancients (to the Greeks and
Romans, for instance), it meant nothing of the kind. A religion was
simply a _cultus_, a _thræskeia_, a mode of ritual worship, in which
there might be two differences, namely: 1. As to the particular deity
who furnished the motive to the worship; 2. As to the ceremonial, or
mode of conducting the worship. But in no case was there so much as
a pretence of communicating any religious truths, far less any moral
truths. The obstinate error rooted in modern minds is, that, doubtless,
the moral instruction was bad, as being heathen; but that still it was
as good as heathen opportunities allowed it to be. No mistake can
be greater. Moral instruction had no existence even in the plan or
intention of the religious service. The Pagan priest or flamen never
dreamed of any function like that of _teaching_ as in any way connected
with his office. He no more undertook to teach morals than to teach
geography or cookery. He taught nothing. What he undertook was, simply
to _do_: namely, to present authoritatively (that is, authorized and
supported by some civil community, Corinth, or Athens, or Rome, which
he represented) the homage and gratitude of that community to the
particular deity adored. As to morals or just opinions upon the
relations to man of the several divinities, all this was resigned to
the teaching of nature; and for any polemic functions the teaching was
resigned to the professional philosophers--academic, peripatetic, stoic,
etc. By religion it was utterly ignored.
The reader must do me the favor to fix his attention upon the real
question at issue. What I say--what then I said to Lady Carbery--is
this: that, by failing to notice as a _differential_ feature of
Christianity this involution of a doctrinal part, we elevate Paganism
to a dignity which it never dreamed of. Thus, for instance, in the
Eleusinian mysteries, what was the main business transacted? I, for my
part, in harmony with my universal theory on this subject,--namely, that
there could be no doctrinal truth delivered in a Pagan religion,--have
always maintained that the only end and purpose of the mysteries was a
more solemn and impressive worship of a particular goddess. Warburton,
on the other hand, would insist upon it that some great affirmative
doctrines, interesting to man, such as the immortality of the soul,
a futurity of retribution, &c., might be here commemorated. And now,
nearly a hundred years after Warburton, what is the opinion of scholars
upon this point? Two of the latest and profoundest I will cite:--1.
Lobeck, in his "Aglaophamus," expressly repels all such notions; 2.
Otfried Mueller, in the twelfth chapter, twenty-fourth section, of his
"Introduction to a System of Mythology," says: "I have here gone on
the assumption which I consider unavoidable, that there was no regular
instruction, no dogmatical communication, connected with the Grecian
worship in general. _There could be nothing_ of the kind introduced
into the public service from the way in which it was conducted, for
the priest _did not address the people at all_." These opinions, which
exactly tallied with my own assertion to Lady Carbery, that all religion
amongst the Pagans resolved itself into a mere system of ceremonial
worship, a pompous and elaborate _cultus_, were not brought forward in
Germany until about ten or twelve years ago; whereas, my doctrine was
expressly insisted on in 1800; that is, forty years earlier than any of
these German writers had turned their thoughts in that direction.
Had I, then, really all that originality on this subject which for
many years I secretly claimed? Substantially I had, because this great
distinction between the modern (or Christian) idea of "a religion" and
the ancient (or Pagan) idea of "a religion," I had nowhere openly
seen expressed in words. To myself exclusively I was indebted for it.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that this conception must have been long
ago germinating in the world, and perhaps bearing fruit. This is past
all denial, since, about thirteen or fourteen years ago, I read in some
journal (a French journal, I think) this statement: namely, that some
oriental people--Turks, according to my present impression, but it might
have been Arabs--make an old traditional distinction (so said the French
journal) between what they call "religions of the book" and all other
religions. The religions of the book, according to them, are three, all
equally founded upon written and producible documents, namely: first,
the Judaic system, resting upon the Pentateuch, or more truly, I should
imagine, upon the Law and the Prophets; secondly, the Christian system,
resting upon the Old and New Testaments; thirdly, the Mahometan system,
resting confessedly upon the Koran. The very meaning, therefore, of
styling these systems, by way of honorable distinction, _religions of
the book_, is, not that accidentally they had written vouchers for
their creed, whereas the others had only oral vouchers, but that they
severally offer to men's acceptance a large body of philosophic truth,
such as requires and presupposes a book. Whereas the various religions
contradistinguished from these three--namely, the whole body of Pagan
idolatries--are mere forms of adoration addressed to many different
divinities; and the brief reason why they are essentially opposed to
religions of the book is, not that they _have_ not, but logically that
they _cannot_ have, books or documents, inasmuch as they have no truths
to deliver. They do not profess to teach anything whatsoever. What they
profess, as their justifying distinction, is, to adore a certain deity,
or a certain collective Pantheon, according to certain old authorized
forms--authorized, that is to say, by fixed, ancient, and oftentimes
local traditions.
What was the great practical inference from the new distinction which I
offered? It was this: that Christianity (which included Judaism as
its own germinal principle, and Islamism as its own adaptation to a
barbarous and imperfect civilization) carried along with itself its own
authentication; since, whilst other religions introduced men simply to
ceremonies and usages, which could furnish no aliment or material for
their intellect, Christianity provided an eternal _palæstra_ or place of
exercise for the human understanding vitalized by human affections: for
every problem whatever, interesting to the human intellect, provided
only that it bears a _moral_ aspect, immediately passes into the field
of religious speculation. Religion had thus become the great organ of
human culture. Lady Carbery advanced half-way to meet me in these new
views, finding my credentials as a theologian in my earnestness and my
sincerity. She herself was painfully and sorrowfully in earnest. She had
come at this early age of seven or eight and twenty, to the most bitter
sense of hollowness, and (in a philosophic sense) of _treachery_ as
under-lying all things that stood round her; and she sought escape, if
escape there were, through religion. Religion was to be sought in the
Bible. But was the Bible intelligible at the first glance? Far from
it. Search the Scriptures, was the cry in Protestant lands amongst all
people, however much at war with each other. But I often told her that
this was a vain pretence, without some knowledge of Greek. Or perhaps
not always and absolutely a pretence; because, undoubtedly, it is true
that oftentimes mere ignorant simplicity may, by bringing into direct
collision passages that are reciprocally illustrative, restrain an error
or illuminate a truth. And a reason, which I have since given in print
(a reason additional to Bentley's), for neglecting the thirty thousand
various readings collected by the diligence of the New Testament
collators, applied also to this case, namely: That, first, the
transcendent nature, and, secondly, the _recurrent_ nature, of
Scriptural truths cause them to surmount verbal disturbances. A
doctrine, for instance, which is sowed broadcast over the Scriptures,
and recurs, on an average, three times in every chapter, cannot be
affected by the casual inaccuracy of a phrase, since the phrase is
continually varied. And, therefore, I would not deny the possibility
of an effectual searching by very unlearned persons. Our authorized
translators of the Bible in the Shakspearian age were not in any
exquisite sense learned men; they were very able men, and in a better
sense able than if they had been philologically profound scholars, which
at that time, from the imperfect culture of philology, they could not
easily have been; men they were whom religious feeling guided correctly
in choosing their expressions, and with whom the state of the language
in some respects cooperated, by furnishing a diction more homely,
fervent, and pathetic, than would now be available. For their apostolic
functions English was the language most in demand. But in polemic or
controversial cases Greek is indispensable. And of this Lady Carbery was
sufficiently convinced by my own demur on the word _metanoia_. If I were
right, how profoundly wrong must those have been whom my new explanation
superseded. She resolved, therefore, immediately on my suggesting it,
that she would learn Greek; or, at least, that limited form of Greek
which was required for the New Testament. In the language of Terence,
dictum factum--no sooner said than done. On the very next morning we all
rode in to Stamford, our nearest town for such a purpose, and astounded
the bookseller's apprentice by ordering four copies of the Clarendon
Press Greek Testament, three copies of Parkhurst's Greek and English
Lexicon, and three copies of some grammar, but what I have now
forgotten. The books were to come down by the mail-coach without delay.
Consequently, we were soon at work. Lady Massey and my sister, not being
sustained by the same interest as Lady Carbery, eventually relaxed in
their attention. But Lady Carbery was quite in earnest, and very soon
became expert in the original language of the New Testament.
I wished much that she should have gone on to the study of Herodotus.
And I described to her the situation of the vivacious and mercurial
Athenian, in the early period of Pericles, as repeating in its main
features, for the great advantage of that Grecian Froissart, the
situation of Adam during his earliest hours in Paradise, himself being
the describer to the affable archangel. The same genial climate there
was; the same luxuriation of nature in her early prime; the same
ignorance of his own origin in the tenant of this lovely scenery; and
the same eager desire to learn it. [Footnote: "About me round I saw Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains,
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these
Creatures that lived and moved, and walked or flew;
Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled;
With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflowed.
Myself I then perused, and limb by limb
Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran
With supple joints, as lively vigor led;
_But who I was or where, or from what cause_,
Knew not."--_Paradise Lost_, Book viii.
The _who_, the _where_ (in any extended sense, that is, as regarded the
_external_ relations of his own country), and the _from what cause_--all
these were precisely what the Grecian did _not_ know, and first learned
from Herodotus.] The very truth, and mere facts of history, reaching
Herodotus through such a haze of remote abstraction, and suffering a
sort of refraction at each translation from atmosphere to atmosphere,
whilst continually the uninteresting parts dropped away as the whole
moved onwards, unavoidably assumed the attractions of romance. And thus
it has happened that the air of marvellousness, which seems connected
with the choice and preferences of Herodotus, is in reality the natural
gift of his position. Culling from a field of many nations and many
generations, reasonably he preferred such narratives as, though possible
enough, wore the coloring of romance. Without any violation of the
truth, the mere extent of his field as to space and time gave him great
advantages for the wild and the marvellous. Meantime, this purpose
of ours with regard to Herodotus was defeated. Whilst we were making
preparations for it, suddenly one morning from his Limerick estate of
Carass returned Lord Carbery. And, by accident, his welcome was a rough
one; for, happening to find Lady Carbery in the breakfast-room, and
naturally throwing his arm about her neck to kiss her, "Ruffian," a
monster of a Newfoundland dog, singularly beautiful in his coloring,
and almost as powerful as a leopard, flew at him vindictively as at a
stranger committing an assault, and his mistress had great difficulty in
calling him off. Lord Carbery smiled a little at our Greek studies; and,
in turn, made us smile, who knew the original object of these studies,
when he suggested mildly that three or four books of the "Iliad" would
have been as easily mastered, and might have more fully rewarded our
trouble. I contented myself with replying (for I knew how little
Lady Carbery would have liked to plead the _religious_ motive to
her husband), that Parkhurst (and there was at that time no other
Greek-_English_ Lexicon) would not have been available for Homer;
neither, it is true, would he have been available for Herodotus.
But, considering the simplicity and uniformity of style in both
these authors, I had formed a plan (not very hard of execution) for
interleaving Parkhurst with such additional words as might have been
easily mustered from the special dictionaries (Græco-Latin) dedicated
separately to the service of the historian and of the poet. I do not
believe that more than fifteen hundred _extra_ words would have been
required; and these, entered at the rate of twenty per hour, would have
occupied only ten days, for seven and a half hours each. However, from
one cause or other, this plan was never brought to bear. The preliminary
labor upon the lexicon always enforced a delay; and any delay, in
such case, makes an opening for the irruption of a thousand unforeseen
hindrances, that finally cause the whole plan to droop insensibly. The
time came at last for leaving Laxton, and I did not see Lady Carbery
again for nearly an entire year.
In passing through the park-gates of Laxton, on my departure northward,
powerfully, and as if "with the might of waters," my mind turned round
to contemplate that strange enlargement of my experience which had
happened to me within the last three months. I had seen, and become
familiarly acquainted with, a young man, who had in a manner died to
every object around him, had died an intellectual death, and suddenly
had been called back to life and real happiness--had been, in effect,
raised from the dead--by the accident of meeting a congenial female
companion. But, secondly, that very lady from whose lips I first heard
this remarkable case of blight and restoration, had herself passed
through an equal though not a similar blight, and was now seeking
earnestly, though with what success I could never estimate, some similar
restoration to some new mode of hopeful existence, through intercourse
with religious philosophy. What vast revolutions (vast for the
individual) within how narrow a circle! What blindness to approaching
catastrophes, in the midst of what nearness to the light! And for
myself, whom accident had made the silent observer of these changes, was
it not likely enough that I also was rushing forward to court and woo
some frantic mode of evading an endurance that by patience might have
been borne, or by thoughtfulness might have been disarmed? Misgivingly I
went forwards, feeling forever that, through clouds of thick darkness,
I was continually nearing a danger, or was myself perhaps wilfully
provoking a trial, before which my constitutional despondency would
cause me to lie down without a struggle.
II.
THE PRIORY.