Essays from "Good words,"

Preface

All the following Essays, except the last, were written for Good Words. As five other Essays, contributed to the same periodical, have been already published in the volume containing the new edition of " Reason and Faith," the present volume has been made uniform with it in type and appearance.

Critics have of late sometimes complained of the frequency of reprints from periodical literature ; and perhaps not unreasonably. Yet surely, it is a venial offence, for if any be injured, it must be the publishers and authors alone. The public, if it does not like " the wares," need not, and will not, purchase them ; and knowing beforehand what they are, will not be liable to be taken in by its own false preconceptions, or a pretentious advertisement.

It is not for me to say whether the following Essays be intrinsically worthy of a separate republication.

iv Preface.

The subjects indeed are, for the most part, of great importance and enduring interest. Of the mode of treatment the reader must judge. But it is only just to myself to say that the whole of the Essays have been very carefully revised, many additions and alterations made, and no inconsiderable portions almost rewritten.

One reason among others which has induced me to issue them in the present form, is, that I have been told by some of my coevals, whose eyes, like mine, are getting dim, that they would be glad to read them in a larger type.

The last Essay, on M. Renan's " Les Apotres," — which I was desirous to include in this volume, as the former contained one on his " Vie de Jesus," — was written for the Fortnightly Review at the request of the accomplished editor, Mr. Lewes, and is here reprinted by the courtesy of the proprietors.

I was in doubt whether it would be possible for me to prepare such an article as he would deem admissible ; but I told him that if I were permitted to write just as freely as I should for the Edinburgh or any other periodical, I could have no objection. Mr. Lewes frankly replied that it was his wish that I should do so ; that it was his earnest desire to get men of widely different views, especially on important points of theology and philosophy, to argue them in the Fortnightly Review as on neutral ground ; where the

Preface. v

pro and con might be fairly and candidly exhibited, and (as might be presumed) with somewhat of the temper and courtesy usually manifested in the personal intercourse of those who are contesting each other's opinions. It is needless to say that Mr. Lewes carried out the " convention " with scrupulous impartiality.

While it would be preposterous to wish that periodicals in general should be conducted on such cosmopolitan principles, I must say I think it would be a good thing if there were one such organ in every national literature ; — an organ, the object of which should be, to give temperate expression to antagonistic views, by those best deemed able to expound them. It would be attended with, at least, these advantages : — Since truth is stronger than error, though it might sometimes be placed at a disadvantage, yet, having a fair field, it would on the whole, be a gainer. Those who are in error would have a greater chance, at least, of seeing the truth exhibited, and in forms least likely to repel them. Even for those who are in possession of the truth, it would be well to see an inoffensive exhibition of what can be said against it ; for in this way only can we learn adequately to defend it. It would also teach us to abate our own dogmatism, and to exercise charity towards those who differ from us. Lastly, and above all, writers, feeling that they spoke in the presence of adversaries, would for the most part do so with a candour, calmness, and vi Preface.

moderation, which they are too apt to forget when they are the champions and echoes of their own applauding party.

It would of course be a difficult thing to conduct such a periodical with judicial impartiality \ to offend neither in the tone of advocacy, nor in the proportions of space assigned to this or that subject; but if these difficulties can be fairly met, I have no doubt such a periodical would be of considerable advantage, not only to literature, but to truth.

Contents

I. THOUGHTS FOR THE NEW YEAR

II. NOVEL ANTIQUITIES ..

III. CHRISTIANITY VINDICATED FROM DENCIES TO PERSECUTION

I

TT is a happy characteristic of our nature, that Hope is stronger than Fear ; and rarely do we see a more striking or comprehensive proof of this than in that unanimity of pleasant auguries, " the nods and becks and wreathed smiles," the universal shaking of hands and mutual felicitations, with which almost all nations in all ages have agreed to usher the New Year in. Every one seems astrologer enough to cast the horoscope of the young stranger, and to pronounce that the planetary aspects are benign ; every one is his own soothsayer, and the omens are always favourable !

And yet nothing is darker than the prospect on which Hope gazes with such rapt eyes. It is as if

* Though, the "Thoughts " in this Essay are for the most part equally applicable to every "New Year," an allusion here and there makes it necessary to state that they were originally written for 1865.

B travellers, having gained the summit of the Righi in a deep mist, which enveloped alike the fairer and the sterner features in that wondrous scene, should clap their hands, and break out into acclamations, at the beauty of the landscape.

The aspect of the outward world exhibits meanwhile a striking contrast with this universal hilarity. This concert of happy omens takes place when, as one would imagine, it would be least likely. It is the midnight of the year, and all nature mourns in desolation ; and this universal chirrup of hope and joy is as if the song-birds began their carol in the depth of winter ; as if the cuckoo's note were heard in the leafless w r oods ; as if the gay butterfly fluttered and the cricket chirped amidst the dry ferns of the last autumn.

Everything without, seems to remind us rather of ruin and decay, blasted hopes and dreary prospects, than of coming joy and gladness. More natural would our gratulations seem if we began the year still, as our forefathers once did, at the vernal equinox, when the bud is bursting and the young grass is springing, and Mother Earth is recovering from her long winter's trance ; or if we celebrated the New Year's festival, as did the Jews, in the month Nisan, when the jocund sun and the green earth were painting all nature in harmonious colouring with the vivid imagery of man's hopes, or typifying his various combinations of hope and fear by the alternate lights and shadows, the blending tears and smiles, of a changeful April day. But as it is, the wind sighs mournfully through the leafless trees, telling of man's too speedy decay, or the snow wraps all nature in that shroud which seems the emblem of his winding-sheet : and yet from out all his habitations goes forth the cry of gladness : from each reeling steeple come the merry chimes of bells ; and every face smiles as every lip utters the words, " A Happy New Year." Doubtless it is a strong proof of what we began with, that " hope springs immortal in the human breast :" else as in other cases, nature's face would have waked a responsive and sympathetic echo in the bosom of her chosen child ; even as the vernal or the autumnal day surprises him, with silent force, into spontaneous mirth or involuntary sadness.

Again ; what is all too actual in the present and too certain in the future, would, one would think, qualify in some degree the exuberant buoyancy of the hour. Not only is it certain that during the very last moments of the Old Year, and the very first of the New, was the great reaper Death gathering his sheaves just as usual ; not only is it true that on the morning of this great holiday there lies in almost every street one or more of whom we sadly say that they count by years no longer, and on whose eyes has broken " another morn than ours ;" not only does it dawn upon multitudes to whom the first day of this new year will also be their last ; -not only must it open upon thousands more to whom Love, as it draws the curtain, and anxiously gazes at the pale wan face on which Death has set his seal, can hardly say without faltering, " A Happy New Year," — too well knowing that before the leaves shall open, perhaps before the snowdrop shall peep from under its winter mantle, the " robin redbreast will be chirping upon their grave /' not only are there thousands more to whom, as the sun of the last year went down in clouds, so the first sun of the new year rises in them, and to whom the mere transition from one epoch to another makes no difference ; not only is all this true, but when we consider further how large a fraction — no less than a fortieth part or so — of those who welcome the new year with gratulation will never see the end of it, or who beginning it in prosperity, which naturally justifies their hopes, will end it in adversity, which will too surely prove the vanity of them ; one would not unreasonably expect that such facts and reflections as these would repress somewhat of that hilarity which is apt to inspire us all at this season.

It cannot be required indeed (for it would not be natural, and would assuredly be ungrateful) that we should put on sackcloth and sit in ashes, or allow our fears to preponderate over our hopes; nor that we should suspend over the heads of the guests at the convivial meetings which celebrate this annual festival the sword of Damocles, — for that would take away the appetite altogether ; but in imagination, methinks, we might do well to provide ourselves with some such device as that of the wise Saladin, and teach ourselves to " Remember that we are mortal!" Standing on this isthmus of time between the two eternities, we should temper our hopes with our fears, and allow a sober wisdom, derived from the lessons of the past, to shade the brightness of the fair illusions in which we are apt to array the unknown future.

Yet no sooner is the knell of the Old Year tolled at the last stroke of midnight, than the merry chimes ring out the birth of his glad successor. It is as when other monarchs die : " The King is dead — long live the King !" and all mankind (true courtiers in this case) hasten to " salute the rising sun." The dead monarch, whatever his claims to remembrance or the benefits of his reign, is forgotten as soon as he is gathered to the sepulchre of his fathers ; and the loyal flatterers begin, as usual, the work of adulation.

The image which leads us to toll the knell of the Old Year, and greet with merry chimes the New, is, of course, a very obvious one ; the Old Year is no doubt in one sense dead and buried ; the New is just born, and is, and will be for 365 days and a little more, a living reality. Yet as everything may be taken by two handles (or, for that matter, by a thousand), there would be almost as much propriety if these symbols were, not inverted perhaps, but greatly changed.

Herodotus tells a story of the Trausians, a tribe of Thracians, who were so far from rejoicing w T hen a "man child was born into the world," that its kith and kin — including the disconsolate parents, the authors of this new mischief — gathered in a circle round the forlorn object, and howled out their lamentations on the hapless condition of the young pilgrim of life, under the vivid sense of all the ills he was heir to in coming into this bleak world ; while, for similar reasons, they celebrated the obsequies of a departed friend with rejoicings and triumph, as having escaped them. They tolled man into life, and rang a merry peal at his death ! Whether they learned these singular notions and equally singular customs from the miseries of their own barbarous condition, or from profoundly moralizing on the condition of human life — in other words, whether they were more savages or philosophers in this matter — may be doubted. We must, at any rate, confess that in these, and in some other traits of their character (if it be truly delineated by the shrewd old annalist), they were very original savages ; though it must also be confessed that their grim " Welcome, little stranger," was by no means so true to nature, nor, therefore, to philosophy, as that fond wish expressed in the exquisite Hindoo epigram :

" Naked on parent's knees, a new-born child Thou satt'st and wept, while all around thee smiled ; So live, that sinking to thy last long sleep, Thou then may'st smile, while all around thee weep :"

when that wish is fulfilled, Solomon's paradox becomes true, " That the day of a man's death is better than the day of his birth ;" and Paul's, that however good to be here, it is " far better to depart."

But though we could not, like the Trausians, celebrate the obsequies of the Old Year with a merry peal, yet is it not too significant to toll its funeral knell, as if it were to be buried, cut off from all communication with us, and be henceforth nothing to us ? Would it not be as wise to bid it farewell, as a friend departing from our shores, — not dead in truth, nay, ?iever to die to us,- — with a strain of pensive and solemn music ? And if we cannot for very shame imitate those savages of Herodotus, and meet the New Year with lamentations, yet might we not with propriety welcome it in strains which should intermingle the sense of awe and mystery with the aspirations of hope and joy, as an orchestra attunes the minds of an audience to the unknown scenes of wonder which the rising curtain is to unveil ?

The past, in truth, still lives to us, and, connected by the slight ligament of the present moment, is all that really does. The future does not live as yet. The past is the region, properly speaking, of fact,— pleasing or painful, of aspect benign or frowning, chiefly as we ourselves have made it ; over it, imagination has little power. As to the future, we live only in imagination, — "that forward delusive faculty," as Butler calls it, "ever obtruding beyond its sphere," — and the counterpart of that future it paints will never live in reality : it is, in truth, as much a land of shadows as any other in the realms of this great Enchanter. And even if we prefer to gaze on the unknown future rather than on the familiar past; if its very mask piques our curiosity, and leads us to speculate on what is behind it, it may yet be naturally expected that we should not be absolutely engrossed by it ; that, courteously greeting the New Year, as a stranger, of whom we at present know nothing, we should dwell with pensive and grateful retrospect on the many blessings the Old Year has brought us, if we have been happy in it ; or, if we have had our trials and sorrows, that we have been brought safely through them, and that at least so much of the more toilsome, hazardous parts of life's pilgrimage will have to be traced no more ; or if we have fallen into grievous errors, that we should take that appropriate moment for penitently confessing them, thanking God that they have not been our ruin, and resolving to walk more warily for the time to come : in a word, that we should let the present be the meeting-place of the past and the future, and allow the lessons of severe experience taught us by the one, to chastise and instruct the anticipations we are too ready to form of the other.

Hope, genuine hope, is not symbolized by that mock sun, that parhelion of fancy, which promises unclouded brightness, but by the rainbow ; and the rainbow of hope, like that of the sky, is the offspring alike of sun and shower — of the bright lights and tearful clouds of experience.

Admirable was that emblem of the two-faced Janus, by which the wise old Romans signified the New Year \ one face looking back upon the past and the other forward to the future. For it is only as we wisely exercise retrospect, that we can have any power of anticipation : except as that shall enlighten the future, it is all dark, or lighted only by the willo'-the-wisps of fancy. So that if Janus had not had his face that looked backward, that which looked forward could have been properly represented only as blind. As an old writer observes, he who will not " take the past to guide him in regulating his hopes of the future, so far from having, like Janus, two heads, must rather be counted as having no head at all."

So obviously natural is it, in all who have reached the mature age of reflection, to chequer the gay with the grave on this day, that one cannot be surprised to see how often our " Essayists," when they io Thoughts for the New Year.

have given their readers their New Year's greetings, have fallen rather into a vein of pensive musing than of mirth ; of musing which has caught its tone and hues more from sober retrospect, than from joyous anticipation. Thus in that exquisite paper on " New Year's Eve," Elia says : " The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution ; and the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it, indeed, and if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now, shall I confess a truth ? I feel these audits but too powerfully ; I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser's farthings."

And even the " Lounger," anticipating the image of Charles Lamb, says on a similar occasion : " As men advance in life, the great divisions of time may

Thoughts for the New Year. i r

indeed furnish matter for serious reflection ; as he who counts the money he has spent, naturally thinks of how much smaller a sum he has left behind."

We often bewail our ignorance of the future, on which our experience of the past sheds so feeble a light; yet it is no paradox to affirm, that that ignorance is the only safe condition on which Ave can encounter it. It is the source of the hopes with which we anticipate it, and ought to suggest the wary wisdom with which we should enter upon it. If man could, by consulting some magic mirror of the old adepts, or some transcendental science as yet unborn, exactly foreknow the events of all his future life, and the mode and time of his death ; if he could see in unerring vision the last cast of the sexton's office, and hear by anticipation the shovelful of dust rattle on his coffin, would the oracle of the all-knowing Sidrophel be thronged with applicants ? I fancy not ; at least not to ascertain their own destiny, however curious they might be to know the history of their neighbours. If, on the other hand, they flocked to the oracle only to know that, the world would soon wish to relapse into ignorance with all convenient speed ; and in any case, I imagine, the chief charm of existence would be lost to us. Men would find, like our first parents, that they had bought knowledge at too costly a price, and that ignorance in Paradise was better than science outside of it. Whereas hope is now stronger than fear, then, not only would fear be stronger than hope, but hope would be quenched, and the chief stimulus of life quenched with it. Hope would be extinguished, but so would not fear ; and the soul would sink into utter apathy, were it not — hard alternative ! — that the dread of foreseen evil would keep it only too sensitive, while it would poison all the pleasure of the foreseen good. As it is, whether in adverse or prosperous circumstances, this ignorance (if we have learned the lessons of past experience aright) may minister to us the hope which is our solace in the one condition, and that distrust and caution which should accompany the other.

Do we enter on the year in gloom and sadness, to which the external aspect of nature is only too responsive? Do we walk in the gay procession of this crowded holiday with the air of mutes at a funeral ? Are we unable to reply to the universal salutation of " A happy New Year," except with the looks of an undertaker? or do we attempt to reciprocate it in mumping tones which stick in our throat, and choke us to utter them ? Let us recollect how easy it is for Him, in whose hands we believe our life is, to " turn the shadow of death into the morning !" As we cannot tell what " a day may bring forth," how much less a year ! As the winter of nature passes away, so may this winter of our sorrow with it : and the

Thoughts for the New Year. i o summer sun and the golden harvest find us in a prosperity of which they shall be pleasant emblems. And even should this prove illusion, yet if we have learned those lessons which a wisdom greater than our own would teach us by the discipline of life, then, even though happiness be yet longer delayed than during this little circle of the months, nay, delayed till we shall reckon by months no more, we shall enjoy a sunshine of the soul, however dark the scene without, of which we cannot be robbed, and which will make even this year one of genuine prosperity.

And not less instructively does this ignorance of the future speak to those (though less docile to the teaching than the children of sorrow) who enter on the year in great prosperity. That ignorance rebukes, if anything but experience can, the presumption of anticipating the continuance or the constancy of so fickle a thing. To teach man humility, to " hide pride " from him — a lesson which it is always hard to learn, but which is never so hard as in the days of prosperity — is far too precious an object in God's estimate, not to make it well worth while to enforce it, if need be, at so slight a cost as the ruin of our temporal prosperity; at least, such abatements or fluctuations in it as shall convince us of its instability. Man's tendency, indeed, in all states, is to believe in that law of " continuance," as Bishop Butler says, which suggests that things will be as they are, unless we have the most palpable proofs to the contrary. But the tendency is never so strong as when it is very agreeable to a man to believe that the state of things will be permanent ; that he has built an eyrie on the rock, to which the spoiler cannot climb ; an " abiding city" where he can take up his rest. A uniform prosperity — more than anything else — tends to engender or foster those dispositions which are inconsistent with either the true knowledge of ourselves, or our due subjection to God. If pride, hardness of heart, contempt of others not so happy as ourselves, or scant sympathy with them, be not the effect, (and they too often are), inordinate love and misestimate of the present, and gradual oblivion of the future, except to presume that it will be like the present, take too ready possession of the soul. There are, accordingly, few who can so enjoy long-continued prosperity as not to be sensibly the worse for it. A few may be observed, indeed, of two opposite classes, who enjoy it to the last : the one, those who seem past learning the lessons of adversity, and who are allowed to " spread as a green bay tree ;" and the other, those who, being " taught of God," have learned them so well, are so skilled to use the world without abusing it, and so daily mindful by whose donation all blessings are given, and by what tenure of homage to the Supreme Lord they are alone held, that they do not seem in any appreciable degree injured by them.

These, God seems to permit to walk through life in almost unclouded sunshine ; not, indeed, without some trials, yet with few, and none of them what we should call great and signal reverses, — with little experience of the " ups and downs of life," as people say. But there are few of us who do not need, and who do not get, the lessons which adversity must teach us • and of the generality it may be said, they are never more in danger than when they have been long prosperous. The ancients well understood the connection between signal prosperity and some coming reverses, though they accounted for the fact which experience taught them, by an erring philosophy. One of the best known and most instructive stories of Herodotus teaches us how deep was the heathens' conviction of the fact, and how insufficiently heathen speculation reasoned upon it. It was, it seems, the divine " envy," cj>66vos, which made the gods grudge the continued or exuberant prosperity of poor mortals • and Nemesis, therefore, never failed, in due time, to lay the proud structure in the dust, or send the cankerworm to the root of the fair tree. The historian tells us that Amasis, king of Egypt, had a dear friend in Polycrates, prince of Samos \ but the latter was so happy, that his friend could not help, in accordance with the theory just mentioned, regarding him as the most miserable of mortals, and plainly marked out for the speedy bolts of the divine Nemesis. Amasis exhorted him therefore (if so be he might render the gods propitious by making himself miserable, instead of waiting to let them make him still more so), to disarm, by anticipating, their anger; and to essay this by sacrificing the thing he most valued. Polycrates, impressed by the conspicuous wisdom of this advice, and this reasonable view of the divine government, made choice of a costly ring which he highly valued, and cast it into the sea. Strange to say, it was swallowed by a fish ; the fish was caught by a fisherman, and was sent as a present to Polycrates, whose cook found in its maw the ring the prince had intended as his fiiaculuin, and restored it to its owner ; whereupon King Amasis renounced his friendship utterly, as one so fatally prosperous that even what he threw away came back to him ; who, therefore, must be predestined to be made an example of terrible reverses ; and who, as he could not fail to involve his friends in his ruin, ought to be carefully shunned, as rats run from a falling house. And the event, according to Herodotus, showed the justice of the fears of Amasis, and also his singular discretion !

Far different, happily, are a Christian's views of Him who cannot grudge any of His own gifts, seeing that they are " without repentance," and that from Him all receive "life, and breath, and all things." Nevertheless, long-continued prosperity is in various ways so inconsistent with man's highest good, that it is as nearly certain that it will have (because it will need) the correctives of adversity, as if, in truth, envy of mortal happiness, and not the desire to endow us at last with something better, were the genuine cause of it.

But most effectually shall we be prepared for the future, if, in implicit reliance upon a wisdom which sees the future for us and has provided for it, we can learn the lessons our Saviour would teach us ; and trusting in Him who " feeds the fowls of the air, and clothes the lilies of the field," will take no excessive self-vexing care — so the word means — for the morrow. " Take no thought," says our version • and as it now stands, the text is apt to suggest a meaning which it was not originally designed to convey. "Take no thought" did not enjoin absolute thoughtlessness about the morrow, or indifference to what prudence tells us it will probably "bring forth," or indolence in discharging what prudence tells us is our duty in reference to it, but the absence of all excessive, anxious thought. This is the force of the Greek word fjuipifiva, and our English word ■' thought," when the version was made, suggested a parallel meaning. The meaning of this word is well illustrated by Archbishop Trench, in his little work on the "Authorised Version of the New Testament,"' in which he cites some striking passages from our older writers in confirmation of his criticism.