“When I upon the heavens do look,
Which all from thee their essence took,
When moon and stars my thought beholdeth,
Whose life no life but of thee holdeth.”
Verse 5.—That thou lookest on him; ἐπισκέπτῃ αυτον, ‘art a bishop to
him.’ The Greek word is the same in the verse “I was sick and ye
visited me.”
Verse 6.—Thou hast lessened him;—perhaps better, thou hast made him but
by a little, less, than the angels: ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι. The
inferiority is not of present position merely, but of scale in being.
Verse 7.—Sheep, and all oxen, and the flocks of the plain: κτήνη τοῦ
πεδίον. Beasts for service in the plain, traversing great spaces,—camel
and horse. ‘Pecora,’ in Vulgate, includes all ‘pecunia,’ or property in
animals.
Verse 8.—In the Greek, “that walk the paths of the seas” is only an
added description of fish, but the meaning of it is without doubt to
give an expanded sense—a generalization of fish, so as to include the
whale, seal, tortoise, and their like. Neither whales nor seals,
however, from what I hear of modern fishing, are likely to walk the
paths of the sea much longer; and Sidney’s verse becomes mere satire:—
“The bird, free burgesse of the aire,
The fish, of sea the native heire,
And what things els of waters traceth
The unworn pathes, his rule embraceth.
Oh Lord, that rul’st our mortal lyne,
How through the world thy name doth shine!”
These being, as far as I can trace them, the literal meanings of each
verse, the entire purport of the psalm is that the Name, or knowledge,
of God was admirable to David, and the power and kingship of God
recognizable to him, through the power and kingship of man, His
vicegerent on the earth, as the angels are in heavenly places. And that
final purport of the psalm is evermore infallibly true,—namely, that
when men rule the earth rightly, and feel the power of their own souls
over it, and its creatures, as a beneficent and authoritative one, they
recognise the power of higher spirits also; and the Name of God becomes
‘hallowed’ to them, admirable and wonderful; but if they abuse the
earth and its creatures, and become mere contentious brutes upon it,
instead of order-commanding kings, the Name of God ceases to be
admirable to them, and His power to be felt; and gradually, license and
ignorance prevailing together, even what memories of law or Deity
remain to them become intolerable; and in the exact contrary to
David’s—“My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God; when shall I
come and appear before God?”—you have the consummated desire and
conclusive utterance of the modern republican:
“S’il y avait un Dieu, il faudrait le fusiller.”
Now, whatever chemical or anatomical facts may appear to our present
scientific intelligences, inconsistent with the Life of God, the
historical fact is that no happiness nor power has ever been attained
by human creatures unless in that thirst for the presence of a Divine
King; and that nothing but weakness, misery, and death have ever
resulted from the desire to destroy their King, and to have thieves and
murderers released to them instead. Also this fact is historically
certain,—that the Life of God is not to be discovered by reasoning, but
by obeying; that on doing what is plainly ordered, the wisdom and
presence of the Orderer become manifest; that only so His way can be
known on earth, and His saving health among all nations; and that on
disobedience always follows darkness, the forerunner of death.
And now for corollary on the eighth Psalm, read the first and second of
Hebrews, and to the twelfth verse of the third, slowly; fitting the
verse of the psalm—“lunam et stellas quæ tu fundasti,” with “Thou,
Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth”; and
then noting how the subjection which is merely of the lower creature,
in the psalm, becomes the subjection of all things, and at last of
death itself, in the victory foretold to those who are faithful to
their Captain, made perfect through sufferings; their Faith, observe,
consisting primarily in closer and more constant obedience than the
Mosaic law required,—“For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast,
and every transgression and disobedience received its just recompence
of reward, how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” The
full argument is: “Moses, with but a little salvation, saved you from
earthly bondage, and brought you to an earthly land of life; Christ,
with a great salvation, saves you from soul bondage, and brings you to
an eternal land of life; but, if he who despised the little salvation,
and its lax law, (left lax because of the hardness of your hearts,)
died without mercy, how shall we escape, if now, with hearts of flesh,
we despise so great salvation, refuse the Eternal Land of Promise, and
break the stricter and relaxless law of Christian desert-pilgrimage?”
And if these threatenings and promises still remain obscure to us, it
is only because we have resolutely refused to obey the orders which
were not obscure, and quenched the Spirit which was already given. How
far the world around us may be yet beyond our control, only because a
curse has been brought upon it by our sloth and infidelity, none of us
can tell; still less may we dare either to praise or accuse our Master,
for the state of the creation over which He appointed us kings, and in
which we have chosen to live as swine. One thing we know, or may know,
if we will,—that the heart and conscience of man are divine; that in
his perception of evil, in his recognition of good, he is himself a God
manifest in the flesh; that his joy in love, his agony in anger, his
indignation at injustice, his glory in self-sacrifice, are all eternal,
indisputable proofs of his unity with a great Spiritual Head; that in
these, and not merely in his more availing form, or manifold instinct,
he is king over the lower animate world; that, so far as he denies or
forfeits these, he dishonours the Name of his Father, and makes it
unholy and unadmirable in the earth; that so far as he confesses, and
rules by, these, he hallows and makes admirable the Name of his Father,
and receives, in his sonship, fulness of power with Him, whose are the
kingdom, the power, and the glory, world without end.
And now we may go back to our bees’ nests, and to our school-benches,
in peace; able to assure our little Agnes, and the like of her, that,
whatever hornets and locusts and serpents may have been made for, this
at least is true,—that we may set, and are commanded to set, an eternal
difference between ourselves and them, by neither carrying daggers at
our sides, nor poison in our mouths: and that the choice for us is
stern, between being kings over all these creatures, by innocence to
which they cannot be exalted, or more weak, miserable and detestable
than they, in resolute guilt to which they cannot fall.
Of their instincts, I believe we have rather held too high than too low
estimate, because we have not enough recognized or respected our own.
We do not differ from the lower creatures by not possessing instinct,
but by possessing will and conscience, to order our innate impulses to
the best ends.
The great lines of Pope on this matter, however often quoted
fragmentarily, are I think scarcely ever understood in their
conclusion. [34] Let us, for once, read them to their end:—
“See him, from Nature, rising slow to Art,
To copy instinct then was reason’s part.
Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake:
Go,—from the creatures thy instructions take,
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield,
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field,
Thy arts of building from the bee receive,
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave.
Here too all forms of social union find,
And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind.
Here subterranean works and cities see,
There, towns aerial on the waving tree;
Learn each small people’s genius, policies,
The ants’ republic, and the realm of bees:
How those in common all their wealth bestow,
And anarchy without confusion know;
And these for ever, though a monarch reign,
Their separate cells and properties maintain.
Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state—
Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate;
In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,
Entangle justice in her net of law,
And right, too rigid, harden into wrong—
Still for the strong too weak, the weak, too strong.
Yet go, and thus o’er all the creatures sway,
Thus let the wiser make the rest obey,
And for those arts mere instinct could afford
Be crowned as monarchs, or as gods ador’d.”
There is a trace, in this last couplet, of the irony, and chastising
enforcement of humiliation, which generally characterize the ‘Essay on
Man’; but, though it takes this colour, the command thus supposed to be
uttered by the voice of Nature, is intended to be wholly earnest. “In
the arts of which I set you example in the unassisted instinct of lower
animals, I assist you by the added gifts of will and reason: be
therefore, knowingly, in the deeds of Justice, kings under the Lord of
Justice, while in the works of your hands, you remain happy labourers
under His guidance
Who taught the nations of the field and wood
To shun their poison, and to choose their food,
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand.”
Nor has ever any great work been accomplished by human creatures, in
which instinct was not the principal mental agent, or in which the
methods of design could be defined by rule, or apprehended by reason.
It is therefore that agency through mechanism destroys the powers of
art, and sentiments of religion, together.
And it will be found ultimately by all nations, as it was found long
ago by those who have been leaders in human force and intellect, that
the initial virtue of the race consists in the acknowledgment of their
own lowly nature and submission to the laws of higher being. “Dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” is the first truth we have to
learn of ourselves; and to till the earth out of which we were taken,
our first duty: in that labour, and in the relations which it
establishes between us and the lower animals, are founded the
conditions of our highest faculties and felicities: and without that
labour, neither reason, art, nor peace, are possible to man.
But in that labour, accepting bodily death, appointed to us in common
with the lower creatures, in noble humility; and kindling day by day
the spiritual life, granted to us beyond that of the lower creatures,
in noble pride, all wisdom, peace, and unselfish hope and love, may be
reached, on earth, as in heaven, and our lives indeed be but a little
lessened from those of the angels.
As I am finishing this Fors, I note in the journals accounts of new
insect-plague on the vine; and the sunshine on my own hills this
morning (7th April), still impure, is yet the first which I have seen
spread from the daybreak upon them through all the spring; so dark it
has been with blight of storm,—so redolent of disease and distress; of
which, and its possible causes, my friends seek as the only wise
judgment, that of the journals aforesaid. Here, on the other hand, are
a few verses [35] of the traditional wisdom of that king whose
political institutions were so total a failure, (according to my
supremely sagacious correspondent,) which nevertheless appear to me to
reach the roots of these, and of many other hitherto hidden things.
“His heart is ashes, his hope is more vile than earth, and his life of
less value than clay.
Forasmuch as he knew not his Maker, and him that inspired into him an
active soul, and breathed in him a living spirit.
But they counted our life a pastime, and our time here a market for
gain; for, say they, we must be getting every way, though it be by evil
means. [36] Yea, they worshipped those beasts also that are most
hateful; (for being compared together, some are worse than others, [37]
neither are they beautiful in respect of beasts,) but they went without
the praise of God, and his blessing.
Therefore by the like were they punished worthily, and by the multitude
of beasts tormented.
And in this thou madest thine enemies confess, that it is thou who
deliverest them from all evil.
But thy sons not the very teeth of venomous dragons overcame: for thy
mercy was ever by them, and healed them.
For thou hast power of life and death: thou leadest to the gates of
hell, and bringest up again.
For the ungodly, that denied to know thee, were scourged by the
strength of thine arm: with strange rains, hails, and showers, were
they persecuted, that they could not avoid, for through fire were they
consumed.
Instead whereof thou feddest thine own people with angels’ food, and
didst send them, from heaven, bread prepared without their labour, able
to content every man’s delight, and agreeing to every taste.
For thy sustenance declared thy sweetness unto thy children, and
serving to the appetite of the eater, tempered itself to every man’s
liking.
For the creature that serveth thee, who art the Maker, increaseth his
strength against the unrighteous for their punishment, and abateth his
strength for the benefit of such as put their trust in thee.
Therefore even then was it altered into all fashions, and was obedient
to thy grace, that nourisheth all things, according to the desire of
them that had need:
That thy children, O Lord, whom thou lovest, might know that it is not
the growing of fruits that nourisheth man: but that it is thy word,
which preserveth them that put their trust in thee.
For that which was not destroyed of the fire, being warmed with a
little sunbeam, soon melted away:
That it might be known, that we must prevent the sun to give thee
thanks, and at the dayspring pray unto thee.”