The light of the world, being the second part of the Life and teachings of Our Lord, in verse

Front matter

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C, vT

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Contents

PAGE

The Preface, xi.-xxxi.

I. The Kingdom of God. — Christ's discourse wit/i Nicodetmis. The New Birth. God's great love. The Son of Man lifted up. Hymn. i

Preface

npHE EVANGEL,* forming the First Part of ''The Life and Teachings of Our Lord," in Verse, barring some anticipations of events, stopped at the threshold of His ministry; and the present Volume — The Light of the World — is a continuation of the same through the entire Four Gospels to the end. Since the publication of that First Part, other Lives of Christ in Prose have appeared; but if it be true as George Herbert supposes,

" A verse may find him who a sermon flies,"

the writer indulges the hope that the novelty of a Complete Life in Verse, including all His Words, conscientiously faithful, and one from which everything fictitious is care-

*There has appeared, since the first publication of The Evangel, Mr. Edwin Arnold's interesting (but somewhat misleading) Poem entitled " The Light of Asia, or, the Great Renunciation, being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince of India and Founder of Buddhism." Four hundred and seventy millions of our race, the author estimates, live and die in the tenets of Gautama. Who was Gautama ? Did such a person ever exist? If so. What was the purport of his teachings? According to our author, he was born in the seventh century before Christ; other authorities make his birth two centuries later. Gautama was the family name ; his individual name was Siddartha ; Buddha was titular, meaning "The Enlightened One." He appeared as a Reformer of Brahminism, and an Opposer of Caste. His history is full of fable. Concerning his teaching, the author remarks, there has arisen prodigious controversy among the learned. He states his "own conviction that a third of mankind could never have been brought to believe in blank abstractions, or in Nothingness as the issue and crown of Being." The battle has raged chiefly around the import of three terras xii. PREFACE.

fully excluded — if tolerably executed, may still find acceptance at the hands of some readers. All people are not alike. Tastes differ. Some people seldom or never read a line of poetry, good or bad. Another class are so exclusive in their likings as to deny even the name of poetry to some of the most admired pieces in the language. They will not allow, for example, that Goldsmith's " Deserted Village " has any just claim to be called poetry. They affirm, and aftirm truly, that it contains no expression that might not

viz.: " Nirvana," " Dharma" and " Karma." According to most authorities, Nirvana means annihilation, the Buddhist's Sumnum Bonum ; for, to beis to be miserable ; all existence is sorrow. Dharma is law or truth or righteousness. Karma (literally "doing") expresses the sum of a man's deservings, both his merits and demerits, •which is the only thing that survives when a man dies. The soul and self cease to exist, but this Karma, which is a pure abstraction, a mere word, and not an entity at all, is, nevertheless, the active cause of a new being ; and transmigration consists in innumerable transfers, not of a soul for that has perished, but of merit and demerit, until at last all demerit being done away with. Nirvana is reached, which is the end of births and the final extinction of being. When a bad man dies, the demerit may be such, as that, passing by the vilest of animal forms, it shall descend to originate a new existence in one of the 136 Buddhist hells situated in the interior of the earth, where the shortest term of punishment is ten millions of years ; the longest incomputable. This is what makes Nirvana so desirable, that all existence even the highest, that of' deva or god, involves the possibility of this degradation. Never was there a system more intensely pessimistic. Mr. Arnold has given us only the brighter side — in obedience, as he says, to the laws of poetic art, omitting much- Beyond some humane and excellent precepts. Buddhism has little to recommend it. Its highest hope is a horror, and this is attainable only on impossible conditions. No one may pray, for there is no one to pray to, no Helper. This is Buddhism at its best; as it was— not as it is, "sorely overlaid with corruptions," its vitality gone. Woe to the race, if it had no other Gospel. In view of the disposition exhibited on the part of some to challenge a comparison between the system of BuddTiism and Christianity, to set up Gautama as a rival to Christ, the writer has been led to give to this Second Part the title of The Light of the World, in contradistinction to that of the somewhat invidious one, The Light 0/ Asia, adopted by Mr. Arnold for his work.

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be used in eloquent and descriptive prose. For like reasons they regard Dryden and Pope as clever versifiers, but not as entitled to take rank as poets; so true is it, that bigots are not confined to religion. These devotees of a creed and slaves of a theory scornfully reject what does not conform to their standard. But that narrowness, which refuses to let people be pleased in their own way, is unamiable to say the least.

In view of the impossibility of framing a definition of Poetry, that shall so fix its meaning, as to furnish a just rule for determining in all cases what is Poetry and what is not, it is fortunate, that some security, against the caprice of individual opinion and the tyranny of fashion, can be found in one easily applied test, if not of genuineness, of fitness. It is within everyone's reach, and no one need fear to apply it. Poetry is certainly Verse, even if it be something more. Verse, regarded as a means to an end, which is pleasure — either the pleasure of beauty or utility, one or both — is always, it is safe to say, a legitimate instrument, when it serves these purposes, whether men choose to dignify it with the name of Poetry or not. The mere fact, that Pope's " Essay on Man " has passed through numerous editions, and given pleasure to countless readers during a hundred and fifty years and more, is a sufficient vindication of its metric form, in spite of all that has been said, or can be said, in regard to the unfitness of the subject for xiv. PREFACE.

poetical treatment. His biographer, Dr. Johnson, says: "Its reception was not uniform: some thought it a very imperfect piece, though not without good lines." To say that it is shallow in its philosophy, and sophistical in its reasoning, and of no moral value, besides being, in no proper sense, Poetry, only strengthens the evidence in favor of the superior effectiveness of Verse; since, in that case, it would be due to the inherent buoyancy of this alone, that a showy piece of pretentious wisdom has been kept afloat so long.

Some go so far as to assert, that Didactic Poetry is a contradiction in terms; and that no poetry can have the function of teaching; which, if it be true, so much the worse for Poetry; for if the name is to be so restricted, as to sever Poetry from all moral and religious uses, then is there relegated to Verse distinctively, a preeminent office of instruction and delight, not attainable to Prose and unfitted for Poetry, making it the nobler of the two. It suffices for the argument, that Verse has been used from time immemorial for setting forth highest things; and found to be an admirable expedient for stimulating attention and awakening interest, less perfectly accomplished by other means. If Pope chooses to trammel Jiimself with the incumbrance of metre and rhyme in a Moral Piece, having found that he could express himself with greater conciseness, force and grace in that way than any other, he surely ought to be al-

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XV, lowed to do so, without subjecting himself to the imputation of folly. Doubtless his Essay could have been written in prose. Indeed it was declared at the time that it was so written, and that the poet did little more than translate Bolingbroke's prose into verse. But in prose it is certain that it would have had but few readers.

Hegel is credited with saying, "That metre is the first and only condition absolutely demanded by poetry, yea, even more necessary than figurative, picturesque diction."

Sir Philip Sidney wrote a Defense of Poetry. We are satisfied to limit ourselves to a Defense of Verse. Archbishop Trench in the Introduction to his Sacred Latin Poetry elaborates a Defense of Rhyme. He says: " The non-recognition of this, man's craving after, and deep delight in, the rhythmic and periodic — a craving which nature everywhere meets and gratifies and which all truest Art seeks to gratify as well — a seeing nothing in all this but a trick and artifice applied from without, lies at the root of that singular theory concerning the unfitness of poetry to be the vehicle of our highest addresses to God, and most reverent utterances about Him. * * * Everyone who has watched the effect on his own mind of the orderly marching of a regiment, or of the successive breaking of the waves upon the shore, or aught else which is thus rhyth?nic and periodic, knows, that in this, inspiring as it does the sense of order and proportion and purpose, there is ever an elevating and xvi. PREFACE.

solemnizing power." Young, in his "Essay on Lyric Poetry," accounts for th.^ pleasure of rhyme on the principle, that "difficulties overcome give grace and pleasure." He further remarks: "It holds true in the province of writing as of war, the more danger the more honor." To a person engaged in a hazardous undertaking such a thought is certainly encouraging.

Of Lives of Christ in Prose there are many and excellent. The present one in Verse grew out of the conviction that a true non-epical Life in Verse (there being none) was a desideratum; that it was fitting, feasible, and calculated to be useful; that if a Prose Life was lawful, a Life in Verse was equally so; that no objection could be urged against the one, that did not lie against the other; that if a Life in Verse involved a change in diction, so did a Life in Prose involve it; so did every translation out of the original Greek, the most literal as well as the most free, involve it; so did all exegesis and interpretation involve it; the plain conclusion being, that nothing is sacred but the sense; and that to a proper understanding of this even, the employment of verbal and sentential equivalents is often indispensable. As well might one quarrel with his Dictionary, as to make these inevitable changes a ground of offense. Were they less inevitable, they would still be useful, for everybody knows how much light is derived from synonyms — from putting, that is to say, the same truth into new words.

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It is surprising, how much real ignorance is to be found among not a few habitual readers of the Bible, so that, if singly asked, * Understandest thou what thou readest ?' they would suddenly be roused to the consciousness, how imperfect was their knowledge of the meaning of words with which they had been familiar from childhood; for nothing is more delusive, than this external familiarity with the mere garb of thought, the language and nothing more. The mind, under the benumbing spell of these incessant repetitions of old words, may have come to perceive vaguely or not at all their import; so that an important point is gained, if, startled by the strangeness of new phraseology, this slumber of the faculties is broken. For nothing profits, unless it is understood.

It may be reckoned among the advantages of the poetical form that it necessitates these explanatory changes. Owing, moreover, to the fact, that the poetic diction is naturally allied to the antique style of the Received Version, and shares its aloofness from everyda}^ speech, a Poetic Life may fairly claim this as weighing in its favor, against the exclusive pretensions of Prose. This matter of literary perspective is not a thing to be slighted. An object can be too close to the eye. A certain remoteness is favorable for right vision. No writer, without necessity, would wish to cut himself off from the benefit to be derived from this source. But in the present case, the haze of distance b xviii. PREFACE.

would not be the only gain, could the writer, when he had transported himself back to the time when our matchless English Version was first made, so far catch the spirit of the age, as to animate and mould his diction into some likeness of the prevailing form — for, by so doing, he might hope to appropriate a portion of that favor accorded to the sweetness and charm of that Version so dear to all hearts.

There is a fashion in Verse no less than in dress. The reigning mode of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries differed from that of the seventeenth and eighteenth. The earlier mode was characterized by a greater naturalness, variety and freedom — "robes loosely flowing," a graceful negligence, " a wild civility," not unfrequently more be-

Avitching,

" Than when art Is too precise in every part."

The later mode is chiefly distinguished from this, by having no lines overlapping and running into each other, but each complete in itself; weighed as well as measured; a nice adjustment and balancing of parts; a rigid properness and stateliness, and a strictness of etiquette, requiring you

" Still to be neat, still to be drest As you were going to a feast."

This kind of Verse in long poems is apt to tire from its monotony ; and, owing to its artificial structure, is particularly

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unfavorable, in translating, to exactness and fidelity. The earlier mode was therefore chosen, both because of its contemporaneousness and its greater suitableness for his purpose.

Lessing is undoubtedly right in considering, that the Gospels are immortal masterpieces, which it would be vain to hope to rival. " Who," he asks, " after the Evangelists will venture to write the Life of Jesus ? " So far from dissenting from this view, it is the writer's own ; and therefore it is, that he has studiously avoided the slightest departure from those divine originals. He has reverently and faithfully followed them word by word, line by line, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, each Gospel apart and the four together. At the same time, he has been glad to avail himself of the labors of those (Robinson in particular) who have devoted much time and study to the necessary task of rearranging, blending and harmonizing the statements of the Inspired Four, without which a complete and consecutive Life were impossible. The Evangelists wrote in Greek. Of course, the great critic could not have intended to interdict translations; nor would he mean to say that there should be no new versions. A new version is not a new Life nor a different one. While no version can have the authority of the Greek Original, still in view of the great excellence of our Protestant Version, its claim to consideration is hardly inferior. The writer, taking this for a basis, has

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sought to preserve unaltered, as far as possible, its abounding felicities of expression; to retain, as it has been itself so successful in retaining, the unstudied simplicities and sincerities of the Sacred Story; to imitate the swift brevities of a record, which finds means to crowd into the narrow compass of a few pages the prodigious fulness of an unparalleled Life and Mission. Aiming at something higher than merely chopping up prose into rhymed couplets, he has labored to combine, with his attempt to weave into a seamless oneness the Fourfold Gospel, an exegetical purpose, making his work interpretative like a Commentary. In the spirit of loyalty to the Greek Original as well as to the English Version he was careful to consult both; and to avail himself of such critical helps as were within his reach, in order that he might get at the right meaning and the exact shade of meaning. In performing a task so delicate and difficult, it would have been unpardonable not to have done so.

Great and good men for many hundred years, having given their lives to the study and explanation of these Divine Writings, it would be strange, if their learned labors had not yielded some fruit worth the gathering. Besides what has come down to us from the past, the modern press is teeming with new publications of the greatest value, all having reference to one great central Figure. The shelves of our libraries groan with the weight of voluminous Com.

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mentaries — conspicuous among these is a most painstaking and excellent one (Stier's) consisting of nine large volumes devoted to " The Words of Jesus " alone. The entire field having been found too large for cultivation, it has been divided into sections, one of which is given to "The Miracles of Our Lord," another to " The Parables," etc., forming books of ample size — the last few rnonths having added two more on the Parables to those already existing. During the last decade the Lives of Christ have multiplied as never before, eloquently written and rich in information.

With these sources of knowledge and help open to him, it would seem that he ought to have been well equipped for his undertaking; and that his only difficulty would be the embarrassment arising from abundance. But while he endeavored to glean from all these fields, what was adapted to throw light upon the Sacred Text, he aimed to make all subservient to a textual, not a glossarial, enrichment, and a completer setting forth, elucidation and unfolding of the entire Gospel story in unadorned verse, relying on the intrinsic beauty and grandeur of the theme for awakening interest, making a book, which should be at once a Life and a Commentary, that could be easily read in a few sittings. Any attempt to add to or take from the sacred narrative, except in the way of elucidation, he felt was a kind of impiety. Besides, he saw no occasion for any profane inventions. Nothing was wanting to completeness in respect to plan or xxii. PREFACE.

material. It has its own beginning, middle and end, and all needful machinery within itself. To seek to refashion it according to heathen models was, therefore, he considered, to place the human above the divine; and was sanctioned neither by religion nor taste.

A writer setting out to produce an Epic Poem of which Christ should be the Hero, his first step, in conform.ity with all custom, is from the region of Truth into that of Fable. The Muse, to be sure, is now no longer tethered and held down by reality: but while in this there may be some poetical gain, it cannot be denied that this ampler freedom has, in this case particularly, a most serious drawback; for unhappily, the ornaments of fiction tend, as has been repeatedly said, to give to truth itself the appearance of fable. It is difficult for those, not under the dominion of classical prejudice, to become wholly reconciled to the introduction of these heathenisms, or any modification of them, into a Christian Poem. At best, they belong to another age, and deserve to become obsolete. Poetry loses nothing by the rejection of these pedantic fopperies — the cast-off finery of former times; and the substitution of a direct and manly utterance for glittering prettinesses, insincerities and affectations. Even Virgil's,

" Oceanum interea surgens Aurora reliquil — " is a round-about and pretty way of saying that the sun

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rose, but is not necessarily more poetical than the statement of the fact in plain words.

Examples of the Epic, with Christ for the subject, are not wanting. One of the earliest and most famous of these is Vida's "Christiad, //? A'jc Books," written, we are told, in the purest Virgilian Latin, and " first published in the year 1535, with an apologetical advertisement at the close of the work, in which the author excuses the boldness of the attempt by informing the reader, that he was induced to begin and to persevere in his undertaking by the solicitations and munificence of the two pontiffs Leo X. and Clement VII."* Vida was born at Cremona; and it is to his " Christiad " that Milton refers in the fourth line of the fourth verse of his poem on "The Passion:"

" Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound."

It is mentioned as one of the merits of his work that " he avoids the error of mingling the profane fables of the heathen mythology with the mysteries of the Christian Religion," by which, however, is not meant that he dispenses with all fiction. A specimen of the Poem may be seen in the following extract, descriptive of the descent of the Holy Ghost as a dove at the baptism of Jesus:

*Roscoe's Life of Leo X.

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C/irisfiad IV., 2/4-222.

In German, we have Klopstock's "Messiah, in J^i/teefi Books,'' which came to be regarded, by many of his own countrymen at least, as an Epic equal to those of Dante, Milton and Tasso. In English, Samuel Wesley, the father of John and Charles, wrote " The Life of Christ, a Heroic Poem, in Ten Books,'' more remarkable, it is thought, for piety and learning than poetic merit; although it did not want admirers among contemporaries.

The only other attempt of this kind known to the writer is "The Christiad, a Divine Poem," by Henry Kirk White. It was a work, it seems, that lay very near the poet's heart, and he touchingly laments in a couple of stanzas appended to the unfinished work, written a short tiine before his death, that he should not live to complete it. His biographer, Southey, while praising the Fragment as evincing great power in its execution, nevertheless objects to it, for the reason already adverted to, that "the mixture of mythology makes the truth itself appear fabulous."

A common cause of failure in this and other undertakings, no doubt, is over-ambition. Did we not know that what

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is simple and what is obvious is apt to be despised or overlooked, we should be at a loss to explain why some poet qualified for the undertaking, has not long ere this, discarding fiction and the high heroic method, been tempted, out of the sufficient and matchless materials supplied in the authentic memorabilia contained in the Four Gospels, to compose a True Life instead of a partly false one. It can hardly be pretended, that the reason for such a Life remaining so long among " things unattempted," is its unfitness in that naked shape for poetic treatment. If a noble life purely human, as Milton imagines, is of itself a true poem, surely a Life divinely perfect like that of Christ cannot be less; and the supposition that it stands in need of fictitious aid to make it beautiful is wholly inadmissable.

The writer is not sure, that it will be accepted as an apology for his temerity, that, believing in the utility of such a work, lie ventured because there was no one else to venture. Having observed that verse lent itself wonderfully to the requirements of brevity and strength, he knew no reason why it should not be used in unfolding the unspeakable uniqueness of that Divine Personalitj^, manifested both in the sphere of speech and conduct, with which we are made familiar in the Gospels. Painting and Sculpture have done their best; but neither pencil nor chisel has been able to produce anything better than a lifeless copy of the Divine Original. But portrayed in the pages of the Four Evangelists, the picture lives :

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" Let be, let be ; What was he that did make it? See, my lord.

Would you not deem it breathed, and that those veins Did verily bear blood ?"

He did not hide from himself the difficulties or dangers of the undertaking; or his individual unfitness to execute it worthily. If, as Cowper says, "A just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible, since no human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing everj' couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense and only the sense of the original," how could he hope to succed in a work, certainly not less difficult, and infinitely more delicate — owing to the sacredness of the matter — that of turning the plain prose of the Gospels into easy rhyme, without injury to the sense or expression ? Had he shared in the opinion that it was impossible, he would, of course, have abstained from an attempt, which imposed not only the duty of fidelity to the sense, but such a literalness of rendering and preservation of the precise diction of the English version, as that the likeness should be perceptible to the ear as well as to the understanding.

As in music, amid the most complex variations, the original melody is perpetually suggested; so, to meet the ideal requirement, his poetical reproduction would need in the reading, to be resonant with the voices and echoes of the'prose original, more or less distinctly heard in every

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line. He dare not hope that he has achieved more than a moderate success: but did he suppose that he had failed to do fair justice to the letter and spirit of the sacred narrative, equal to what would be attainable in prose, he would not be justified, he considers, in publishing. It is an experiment which he felt was worth the making just for the once. It has cost him a good deal of time and labor which if thrown away, he cannot help it. It will be his own loss, not that of the critic nor the public.

A single word in regard to another point. The writer considers, that a man's utterances ought to be his own. and not another's. Unless he has something to say. it is his duty to keep silent. The timidity, that limits itself to parrot-like repetitions of what has been said ten thousand times, is of little account. So long as we speak sincerely. we may speak boldly, and the more boldly, because the right of dissent is inherent. A conscientious man would hardly dare to speak at all. if he knew that all he said would be received as unquestionable truth. He is honestly glad that, if he is wrong, even,-body is at liberty to show it. The writer, having ventured in some cases to deviate from received interpretations, he congratulates himself that they will carry with them no weight outside of the reasons that accompany them. He firmly believes that the interests of truth have suffered from no one cause more than from the authority of great names.

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Upon the general question of the propriety and suitableness of scriptural subjects for poetry, the opinion of Cowley even in our day is entitled to some weight. He says: "All the books of the Bible are either already admirable and exalted Poesy, or are the best materials for it''

As bearing on questions which have been much discussed, touching the authenticity of the Gospels and the reality of the Divine Life they portray, we append the following remarkable admissions coming from men of the highest genius, whose value and force are, certainly, enhanced rather than diminished by the fact, that their authors have generally been classed with unbelievers. One cannot help honoring their candor, whatever may bethought of their consistency:

"I esteem the Gospels to be thoroughly genuine, for there shines from them the reflected splendor of a sublimity proceeding from the person of Jesus Christ of so divine a kind, as only the divine could ever have manifested upon earth." — Goethe.

'' I confess the majesty of the Scriptures astonishes me, and the holiness of the Gospel speaks to my heart. Behold the books of philosophy, with all their pomp, how small they appear beside this! Can it be, that a book at once so sublime and so simple, is the work of man ? Can it be, that He who forms its history is only a man ? What sweetness, what purity in His manners! What touching grace in His instructions! What elevation in His maxims! What pro-

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found wisdom in His discourses! What presence of mind! What fineness, what justness in His answers! What empire over His passions! Where is the man, where is the philosopher, who knows how to act, to suffer and to die without feebleness and without ostentation? When Plato painted his imaginary just man, covered with all the opprobrium of crime, and worthy of all the rewards of virtue, he gave an exact portrait of Jesus Christ. The resemblance is so striking and unmistakeable that all the fathers perceived it. What prejudice, what blindness, to compare the son of Sophroniscus with the son of Mary! What a distance one from the other! Socrates, dying without pain, without ignominy, sustained easily his part to the end. His death philosophizing tranquilly with his friends, is the sweetest that cotdd be desired; that of Jesus, expiring in agony reviled, mocked, cursed by all the people, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, taking the poisoned cup, blessed him who wept as he presented it to him; Jesus in the midst of frightful tortures, prayed for his infuriated executioners. Surely, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a philosopher, the life and death of Jesus Christ were those of a God! Shall we say that the Gospe, History is an invention ? My friend, it is not so easy to invent; and the facts concerning Socrates are not so well attested as those concerning Jesus Christ. Indeed, this were but to shift the difficulty without destroying it. It