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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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 he Representative Men 
 
 - of the Bible by GrEorGE 
 “MATHESON D.DeauinD er R.S- Ee tote 
 merly Minister of the Parish of 
 St. Bernard’s Edinburgh 4 $ 
 
 ~ ; s 
 Se ef 
 Oe, col ¥, t Ce wud 
 
 ES CANE I SEE SDE SAA YN HIE SINR RW TN A 
 
 NEW YORK S@ So S@. 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 
 3 AND*5 WEST 18TH STREET Som 
 LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 1902 Se Se 5) Ga 5 as 
 
Edinburgh: T. and A. ConsTaBLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty 
 
BRE By Bey, Gin Le 
 
 By ‘The Representative Men of the Bible’ I 
 mean the men of the Bible who represent phases 
 of humanity irrespective of place and time; 
 and I consider them only in those incidents in 
 which they ave thus representative. I offer this 
 volume by way of experimental instalment. 
 I have exhibited but a single row of figures. 
 Should the volume meet with acceptance, I 
 may exhibit a second row contemporaneous 
 with the first; and ultimately, I should like 
 to extend the line into the New Testament. 
 It is this anticipation of future work that 
 explains the omissions in this volume. You 
 may say, Why has /shmael been omitted from 
 your chapter on Abraham, why have Aaron 
 and Balaam been left out of your chapter 
 on Moses? It is.because I have desired to 
 give these a place on their own account and 
 have wished to avoid repetition. These studies 
 are not historical, they are not critical; they 
 
 are an analysis of the Portraits as we see 
 
 v 
 
vl PREFACE 
 
 them—without any attempt to inquire how 
 or when they came. I have imagined myself 
 in a studio, looking at the forms as delineated, 
 and simply asking the question, What did the 
 artist mean? Personally, I have no doubt 
 as to the historical basis for the patriarchal 
 life—not to speak of lives further down the 
 stream. But I have been actuated in the 
 meantime by the desire to find ground that 
 is neutral to the two extremes—the Higher 
 Criticism on the one hand and the Old 
 Orthodoxy on the other. That common 
 ground is the fact that the figures are now 
 before us, and that, if there be a Revelation, 
 it is through them, in the last result, that the 
 Revelation must come. Here, for the present, 
 hands may be joined, here, for the time, views 
 may be united; and those who differ as to 
 dates and origins can meet in the recognition 
 of a spiritual beauty. I have sought to give 
 the book a semi-devotional tone by closing 
 each chapter with a short invocation or prayer. 
 
 G. M. 
 
 EDINBURGH, 1902. 
 
© On INGE GIN as 
 
 CR AGE Baran I 
 
 PAGE 
 INTRODUCTION, . Ht . Bye é I 
 
 CPAs H Ty Re Lek 
 
 ADAM CCH EG CHILD. (4) rt. rent iis Seyi 23 
 
 CyTIvAs Pei Rae TE t 
 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED, : : AS 
 
 CELA Pal ELV. 
 
 ENOCH THE IMMORTAL, . ‘ : ‘ : 67 
 
 CARA Ey Ra iV. 
 
 NOAH THE RENEWER, j ; [ ; ‘ 89 
 
 Crank i ER VoL 
 
 ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN, 4 * : | 110 
 
 CohiA be BRP Ve Lr 
 
 ISAACLIHEL DOMESTICATED Ui Manis t iil Muni nase DS 
 
 GIEINA Py DEN vet hid 
 
 FACOBSTHECAS PIRING IME lcd Citi iibuy W lava ee 152 
 
 Vil 
 
 ~ 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 GHA Pet Eke Tx 
 
 JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST, 
 
 GB ACP ot ER ee 
 
 MOSES THE PRACTICAL, 
 
 Cre VAT ha geen 
 
 JOSHUA THE PROSAIC, 
 
 CHAP Te ER SXotal 
 
 SAMUEL THE SEER, 
 
 Gin ACPD te tea 
 
 DAVID THE MANY-SIDED, 
 
 CAH PASE AT a Rae WV 
 
 SOLOMON THE WISE, . 
 
 CbUA Pela ay, 
 
 ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE, 
 
 CHA PER vel 
 
 ELISHA THE IMITATIVE, 
 
 Ci ACP aL IRS XV tie 
 
 JOB THE PATIENT, 
 
 218 
 
 239 
 
 261 
 
 283 
 
 304 
 
 326 
 
 349 
 
CRED ee al 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IN a previous work I attempted a study of 
 the Portrait of Christ, as delineated by the 
 Four Evangelists. I propose to stand once 
 more in the Great Gallery of the Jewish 
 nation and to study for a while those other 
 figures which have made the history of ancient 
 Israel more familiar to the average man than 
 the history of modern England. I would 
 come to the new study as I came to the old. 
 I would leave historical questions in the back- 
 sround. I would not ask what is proved, but 
 what is painted. It matters not to me when 
 the artist lived; it matters not whether the 
 Portrait has been attributed to the real hand ; 
 it matters not even, to my present purpose, 
 whether the events delineated on the canvas 
 were reproduced from the actual life. The 
 Ad 
 
2 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 point is that the Portraits are there, that they 
 speak to us from a far past, and that their 
 voice, which originally was local and national, 
 has in the course of the years become cosmo- 
 politan and universal. I want to ask, what do 
 they say? When you hear a stir around you, 
 caused by certain words that have escaped your 
 ear, is not that the question you first ask? 
 You do not inquire, who is the speaker? how 
 is he dressed? where does he come from? 
 You inquire, what has he sazd to raise such a 
 commotion? So is it here. We ‘seekerne 
 reason for a universal interest. That reason 
 cannot lie in anything historical. It must lie 
 in something which belongs to no special 
 date, no particular town, no single land. To 
 localise it is to weaken it. To associate it 
 with a definite place and time is to lessen 
 its interest for the race. The Biblical critic 
 may insist on knowing the name of Jacob’s 
 wrestling angel; but the man in the Gallery 
 is content with the message to the eye, content 
 to see the picture and to receive the blessing. 
 
 I intend, then, to study these Portraits, not 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 as historical figures, but as art figures. We 
 will enter into the Gallery and shut the door. 
 We will allow no voices from the outside to 
 distract us. We will bring with us no cata- 
 logue containing information regarding the 
 artists. To us there will be but one artist— 
 God Almighty. It is the pencil of ¢#zs Artist 
 that we will try to trace. We will endeavour 
 to detect, not the evidence of local colouring, 
 not the vestiges of a special culture, not the 
 indications of a life that has passed away, but 
 the element in them which is abiding, per- 
 manent, the same yesterday and to-day and 
 for ever. It is precisely where these Portraits 
 desert the sphere of history that they are great. 
 It is precisely where the environment of the 
 man is dimly seen that the universal element 
 in the Picture shines out most clearly and most 
 resplendently. It is where I lose sight of the 
 manner in which Enoch was translated, in other 
 words, it is where his case ceases to be special, 
 that his figure becomes to me a revelation ; for 
 it is then I appropriate his story as something 
 possible for me. It is where I lose sight of 
 
4 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Elijah’s chariot that Elijah’s chariot brings 
 a message to my soul, for it is then that I read 
 in #zs experience a thing which can be repro- 
 duced in my own. A revelation from God is 
 not a statement of what men once did; itis a 
 statement of what men may always do. There 
 lies the power of the Bible! It is not the 
 revelation of something which was once 
 revealed to a little band of worshippers ; it is 
 a revelation of how God always reveals. It 
 is the special announcement of that which is 
 not special—of the wuzversal order of God’s 
 word and ways to man. It tells not how He 
 spoke ozce, but how He speaks always. It is 
 the proclamation that there is spiritual law 
 in the natural world, and the enumeration of 
 those eternal principles by which that law is 
 enforced and maintained. The men of the 
 Bible Gallery are photographed because they 
 are universal men. 
 
 But now a questicn arises. Was Judah the 
 best field for the selection of universal types? 
 Conceding that the selection has been a 
 
 success, would it not have been more success- 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 ful still if it had been made from some other 
 sphere? I have often been struck with the 
 observation attributed to the outside world 
 by the writer of the Acts, ‘ Are not these men 
 Galileans!’ It was the early expression of 
 a feeling which has survived to this day—the 
 contempt for provincialism. Galilee was not 
 the metropolis; it was a mere province. 
 Being but a province, it seemed an unlikely 
 sphere for the founding of a universal lan- 
 guage. Christianity was attempting to initiate 
 a common speech—a cosmopolitan medium 
 of intercourse. Why try to inaugurate it in 
 the provinces, where men proverbially resist 
 a uniformity of standard ; why not begin with 
 Jerusalem, where people were more likely to 
 think in companies! And what was said 
 of the New Testament had been also said 
 of the Old. What Galilee was to Judah, 
 Judah was to the world—a province. It was 
 outside the fashion of the great capitals. It 
 was regarded as the abode of a peculiar people 
 —a people who had not learned the conven- 
 
 tions of society. Other empires moved in 
 
6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 masses; Judah was always a divided land. 
 Other empires were subject to a single human 
 will; Judah had ever her individual opinions, 
 and wavered between her prophet, her priest, 
 and her king. Other empires had extinguished 
 private judgment, had enjoined conformity toa 
 common standard; Judah had proclaimed to 
 each separate. man that he was personally 
 responsible to the King of kings. Was not 
 Judah, then, less favourable to permanence? 
 Were not her types of mind likely to be more 
 transitory, more evanescent, more perishable? 
 Was not humanity more likely to be per- 
 manently revealed in stereotyped forms of 
 fashion, than in the spontaneous outbursts of 
 individual independence ? 
 
 I answer, No; and in that answer, I have 
 touched the secret of the Bible’s appeal to all 
 ages. The things which persist throughout 
 the history of Man are not the characteristics 
 of the race, but the traits of the individual. The 
 element distinctive of any one race, however 
 long and however extensively it is propa- 
 
 gated, can never furnish a type of universal 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 humanity. The men in that race who are 
 representative of the world will be precisely 
 those who have broken over the traces, who have 
 ventured to diverge from the spirit of their 
 time. The men who represent humanity are 
 just those who have stepped over their bound- 
 ary line and dared to revert to the primitive 
 type of Nature. Search the galleries of the 
 world for an assemblage of representative men, 
 you will find it, not in conformity of indi- 
 viduals to races, but at the point where the 
 man diverges from his race—at the spot 
 where he steps out from the environment of 
 his birth and reveals himself in the attitude of 
 climbing the wall. 
 
 The scene for such a selection, then, is 
 always a Galilee—a place where conventional- 
 ism is broken. It is a mistake to think that 
 Jesus chose the men of Galilee to show that 
 the weak things of the world could confound 
 the strong. That is not the principle of 
 God’s election to amy work. When a Saul 
 of Tarsus is chosen to represent humanity, it 
 is not because he is weak, but because he is 
 
8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 -strong—because he has already within him 
 the promise and the potency of life. Even so 
 were the men of Galilee elected. Their dis- 
 tance from the capital of the world was 
 acceptable, not as a disadvantage, but as a 
 qualification. Jesus was in search of wld 
 flowers. He was seeking specimens of zmre- 
 strained humanity—of humanity uncurbed by 
 conventionalism and unmutilated by arti- 
 ficiality. He was in quest of the spirit of 
 childhood. Why does He place a child in the 
 midst of the disciples? Why does He pro- 
 claim that such as ¢hkese were to represent His 
 kingdom? On account of their humility? 
 No, but the opposite—on account of their 
 greatness. It was because childhood repro- 
 duces from age to age that which is distinc- 
 tive of Man—that which is neither Greek 
 nor Egyptian nor Roman, but simply human. 
 To the eye of Jesus the essential attributes of 
 Man were the spontaneous instincts of the 
 soul; and He found them in the child. That 
 is why His eye rested first on Galilee. It 
 was the home of luxuriant human nature. 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 Its men and women were overgrown children, 
 displaying the primitive types of the heart, 
 and therefore revealing that which is eternal 
 in Man. To Him Galilee was the real capital, 
 and all beside were only provinces; for the 
 centre of humanity was to Him the heart of a 
 child, and the key to all success was the 
 spontaneous joy of youth. 
 
 In this sense a/so what Galilee was to Judah, 
 Judah was to the world; it was a land of children. 
 It was this that made it a land of promise. 
 Childhood is distinctively the age that sees 
 the promised land. It never looks back, even 
 to an Eden; its watchword is ‘to-morrow.’ 
 But childhood has another characteristic, and 
 it is one more pertinent to the present study. 
 It is the age of variety. I do not think there 
 is any period of human life in which the 
 attributes of Man are revealed in so many 
 different forms. Old age exhibits a general 
 uniformity ; the shades of difference are 
 tempered down as we reach the valley of life. 
 Manhood exhibits a general uniformity; we 
 
 strive to adopt the fash7on of the day when 
 
Io THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 the day of life isin its meridian, and nothing 
 would so distress us as to be told that we did 
 not live as Rome lives. But childhood sings 
 the Song of Existence to many variations. 
 Childhood reveals human nature in its varie- 
 ties. In other periods of existence the tune 
 is played on a single instrument. But here 
 it rings in a hundred different forms—from 
 harp, violin, lute, clarion, trumpet, lyre. 
 Here it is shown how unity can exist in 
 diversity—how Man can be changeless amid 
 the mutable, constant amid the flow. Here 
 alone can we look for a representative gallery 
 _ of universal men—a gallery that shall be 
 more than local, more than national, more 
 than the product of an age and clime—a 
 gallery which shall enfold the one in the 
 many, and include the many in the life of the 
 one. 
 
 Now, in the ancient world, in the pre- 
 Christian world, I know of only one such 
 gallery—that which contains the Portraits of 
 the Jewish nation. Nowhere else do we find 
 
 a gallery representative of man as man. I 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 can find galleries representative of man as 
 Greek, man as Roman, man as philosopher, 
 man as soldier, man as slave—but not else- 
 where man as man. And the reason is that 
 no other gallery reaches the varzeties of 
 human nature. Variety belongs to the life of 
 childhood, and that is precisely what the 
 secular nations of the world have not thought 
 worth painting. They have confined them- 
 selves to the age of manhood, and therefore 
 they have entrammelled their pencil. They 
 have been limited to one phase of humanity— 
 often a temporary phase. Let us look into 
 one or two of these galleries of the world 
 popularly called heathen. They are all much 
 larger than that of the Jew; but they are far 
 more easy to scan. When you have seen one 
 form, you have seen all; when you have 
 studied one, you have studied all. You see 
 in each collection but single attitudes of Man 
 —the attitude of the nation which has framed 
 it. Not any group standing alone, not all the 
 groups joined together, would suffice to make 
 the universal type of one human soul. 
 
12 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 We enter the Chznese Gallery, and survey 
 the portraits. What do we find? An enormous 
 collection of figures—a collection representing 
 a vast empire, but, for that very reason, of 
 representing humanity. The empire which 
 these pictures mirror has all through the ages 
 maintained a single attitude—looking Jdack. 
 We often speak of the Chinese Empire as in 
 a state of stagnancy; and no doubt the descrip- 
 tion is true. But it would be a great mistake 
 to imagine that the stagnancy of the empire 
 has resulted from its want of aspiration. It 
 has never been without aspiration. It would 
 not be too much to say that its unprogressive- 
 ness has come from its aspiration. There is 
 an aspiration which retards progress. If a man 
 is bent upon the worshipping of his ancestors, 
 that is a state of aspiration ; it is a longing to 
 look back. And just for that reason it is 
 a state of unprogressiveness ; if our treasure is 
 in the past, all the instincts of our nature bid 
 us linger near it. Our impulse is, if possible, 
 to retreat; if that is impossible, to stand still. 
 That is the position of the Chinese Empire. 
 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 Her resistance to progress does not come from 
 the adsence of an ideal, but from the presence 
 of an ideal. Her heart is in the past, and so 
 her treasure is in the past. She has noimpulse 
 to press forward, because she has no motive to 
 press forward. All her flowers have been left 
 behind her. Her Paradise is a Garden of 
 Eden—a garden at the degznning of things. 
 The spectacle at which her eye kindles is not 
 one of prospect but one of retrospect. She 
 worships her ancestral dead. The Nebo on 
 which she stands is not a spot from which she 
 beholds a land of promise, but a spot from 
 which she sees a land of memory. She does 
 stand on a Neboas firmly as ever Moses stood; 
 but unfortunately she stands /ongerthan Moses 
 would have stood ; she is standing there up to 
 this day. And the reason is that she has no 
 motive for descending. Canaan is not before 
 her; it is behind her. Her vision bids her 
 stay—stay near the primitive fountain, stay on 
 the confines of a past world. The men in ¢zs 
 gallery are all looking back; their eye is on 
 the morning hills. 
 
14 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Let us pass to the Gallery of India, and 
 here we find a new phase of Man. It is a 
 phase equally one-sided, yet entirely different. 
 Here again we see figures in a single attitude ; 
 but the attitude of India is not the attitude of 
 China. If I might be allowed to describe the 
 difference epigrammatically, I should say that, 
 while the men of China are looking back, the 
 men of India are looking upward. The Hindu 
 figures have their faces turned toward the 
 sun. Their eye rests neither on the past nor 
 on the future. It cannot be said to rest even 
 on the present. To the men of this gallery all 
 time is a delusion. Everything which we call 
 the real world is to them wzmwzreal; everything 
 which we call unreal is to them reality. Those 
 objects which engross the Western mind are 
 disregarded by the eye of India. If this were 
 a mere difference of ¢aste there would be 
 nothing strange init. But it is not a difference 
 of taste; it is a difference of judgment. The 
 Englishman and the Hindu are doth in search 
 of a real world. They are both opposed to 
 the sway of the imagination; they both seek 
 
INTRODUCTION Is 
 
 a world of prose as distinguished from a world 
 of poetry. But the strange thing is that what 
 the Englishman calls prose the Hindu calls 
 poetry, what the Englishman calls poetry the 
 Hindu calls prose. To the man of modern 
 London, the prose of life, the reality of life, 
 lies in the streets of the great city with their 
 buying and selling and chaffering. To the 
 man of ancient India, all such spectacles are 
 scenes of fancy, of imagination, of poetic 
 dreaming. To him the only prose realities 
 are the things zoz¢ seen, the things transcen- 
 dental, the things above. Such a gallery 
 could never enfold the world’s representative 
 men. It expresses only one attitude —an 
 attitude elsewhere rarely found—the face up- 
 turned to the height, and the hand outstretched 
 to grasp the mist upon the mountains. 
 
 Look next at the Gallery of Greece. It 
 depicts a phase of humanity distinct from 
 either China or India. Yet equally with them 
 it depicts but one phase. If the Chinaman 
 looks back, if the Indian looks upward, I should 
 describe the Greek as looking on-a-level. He 
 
16 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 aspires in everything to the wzdd/e course. 
 He is ‘moderate in all things.” The virtues 
 he follows are the sober virtues—prudence, 
 temperance, fortitude. He aims at the quali- 
 ties that hold an even balance between ex- 
 tremes. He prefers friendship to love; it is 
 the middle term between the heat and the 
 coldness of the heart. He would rather be 
 a citizen than the member of a nation, for the 
 city is the middle point between the unit and 
 the multitude. He neither creeps nor flies; 
 he walks; his ideal is ‘the golden mean.’ 
 But by this very fact the possibility of a 
 universal gallery is excluded. Variety belongs 
 to the spirit of the child just because the spirit 
 of the child is opposed to the golden mean. 
 Childhood has no half-measures; it is either 
 on the hill or in the vale. The mind which 
 has always moved on the plain will never 
 represent united Man, even though it be the 
 mind of a national hero. Plato was a greater 
 man than David; but David is a more repre- 
 sentative man than Plato. Take away Plato’s 
 
 works, and his figure is a shadow; take away 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 David’s Psalms, as the critics do, and his form 
 remains undimmed. Whence this difference? 
 It is because the figure of Plato moves on the 
 plain—that plain which favours philosophy but 
 impairs biography, while the form of David 
 passes from valley to height and so connects 
 the extremes of universal Man. 
 
 There is one more gallery at which we may 
 look ; it is that of the Roman. Geographically 
 speaking, it zs a universal gallery; Rome 
 claimed to be mistress of the world. Yet this 
 gallery proves how little geographical distri- 
 bution has to do with representation. Physi- 
 Pally.) home is} the! ycapital:/of (the earth; 
 mentally, she is only one of the provinces. 
 She is as provincial as either China or India 
 or Greece. She too presents only one side of 
 Man, a single human attitude. Itis a different 
 attitude from all the foregoing ones, Let me 
 again express myself epigrammatically. If 
 the men in the Chinese Gallery are looking 
 back, if the men in the Indian Gallery are 
 looking upward, if the men in the Greek 
 Gallery are looking on-a-level, I would say 
 
 B 
 
18 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 that the men in the Roman Gallery are looking 
 down. They are looking down at their own 
 burden—not at the burden of others. They 
 have not reached the stage which Goethe calls 
 Man’s reverence for things beneath him ; theirs 
 is the gaze not of attraction but of repulsion. 
 Lord Byron speaks of death as the doom 
 Man ‘dreads yet dwells upon.’ Such is the 
 Roman’s attitude to the burdens of life. He 
 loathes them, but for that very reason he 
 cannot take his eyes from them. His whole 
 life is a preparation to meet them. His educa- 
 tion, his training, his discipline, is deszgned to 
 meet them. He is taught to keep his eyes on 
 the ground where his burden lies, knowing 
 that one day he will have to lift it and bear it. 
 For that hour of lifting and bearing he schools 
 himself. He hardens his heart to impressions. 
 He suppresses feeling. He restrains emotion. 
 He cultivates coldness. He lops from his tree 
 of life the branches which luxuriate. He 
 curbs enthusiasm ; he moderates affection; he 
 clothes his mind in the mantle of the Stoic; 
 he practises the presence of calamity. 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 All these galleries reveal but the acczdental 
 features of Man. They are not galleries of 
 human nature itself. They are in want of 
 variety ; and they are in want of variety 
 because they are in want of the spirit of 
 childhood. But I am now coming into a 
 gallery which, smaller than all the others in 
 extent, has yet embraced within its compass 
 every side of the human soul; I mean the 
 Gallery of the Land of Judah. Gathered 
 within a narrow space, exhibited to a tiny 
 number, unappreciated by most of those 
 around them, the Portraits of this Gallery 
 are none the less a miniature of Man. They 
 are a delineation of the desires and intents 
 of the heart throughout the wide world. 
 They are no local mirror, no reflection of 
 a special place or time. They exhibit not 
 the national but the universal. We forget 
 that the men were Jews. We forget their 
 vicinity to Mount Zion and the Jordan and 
 the Temple. We forget even their environment 
 by Asia. We find that they have kept pace 
 with Europe. Our shifting western scenery 
 
20 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 has not made them an anachronism. They 
 are abreast of our varieties. They reveal 
 human nature not only in its eternal sameness 
 but in its eternal variations. And why? 
 Because they are all portraits of youth—the 
 age of spontaneity. Is not this the very 
 ground of national greatness assigned by one 
 of Israel’s poets? Speaking of the Messiah’s 
 glory he says, ‘ Thy people shall be willing in 
 the day of Thy power; from the womb of the 
 morning Thou hast the dew of Thy youth’— 
 the refreshing influence of Thy young men. 
 What does he mean but this: ‘That which 
 makes this people a representative people is 
 its spontaneity—its willingness, and that which 
 makes it spontaneous is the everlastingness of 
 its spirit of youth. The men of Israel are as 
 fresh as morning dew because they have a 
 child’s heart in them. They are a nation of 
 young men—men of the morning. Obedience 
 has not made them slaves; service has not 
 robbed them of their elastic spring ; the burden 
 and heat of life’s day has not caused them to 
 wax old.’ 
 
’ INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 EAD me through the Great Gallery, O 
 Lord! On the threshold I wait for 7“%ee! 
 
 Who shall interpret the Gallery “ke Thee! 
 Thou who hast the gift of Eternal Life canst 
 explain to me how Youth could do so much for 
 Man. I ask the powers of Nature why these 
 men are still alive; they cannot tell. But Thou 
 canst, for their secret is Thy secret. Thou Life 
 Eternal, Thou Spirit of Immortal Youth, in 
 Thy light would I tread this Gallery, by Thy 
 light would I read these Portraits. Go Thou 
 on before me, and I will follow Thee; in Thy 
 light shall I see light. Lead me from face to 
 face, lead me from form to form! Interpret 
 Pomeiie che sicatures 7 .-Explain to, me the 
 attitudes! Show me the shades of expression; 
 reveal to me the colours of the soul! Inspire 
 me to perceive the subtle beauties that are hid 
 from the common eye! Help me to see why 
 the universal man, the Man Christ Jesus, came 
 not from China, not from India, not from 
 Greece, not from Rome, but from Judah! 
 Show me how He was indebted to no foreign 
 soil! Teach me how He wreathed into one 
 
22 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 garland the dispersed flowers of Israel, and 
 how all their blossoms are reproduced in Him! 
 Then shall I know the artistic plan. Then 
 shall I see whither the Portraits are tending ; 
 and the secret of their endurance will appear 
 when I know them to be tints of the Life 
 Eternal. 
 
Cas by Ul ei 9 Bed og 8h a 
 ADAM THE CHILD 
 
 I HAVE said that the characteristic of the 
 Jewish Portraits is their derivation from the 
 period of youth. Unlike any other national 
 gallery, the Gallery of Judah has painted her 
 sons by the light of morning. The traits it 
 has selected are the qualities which other 
 nations deem zot great—the qualities which 
 mark the early hours. And this chord is 
 struck at the very beginning, The Portrait on 
 the threshold of the Gallery is that of a child. 
 It has the physical height of a man, but its 
 mental attitude is that of a child. It is a 
 figure representative of all childhood—always, 
 everywhere. It is professedly the first figure 
 not only of the Hebrew race but of the race of 
 Humanity; yet from one point of view it is 
 
 perhaps the least primitive of all forms. We 
 93 
 
24 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 often speak of the story of Adam as a very 
 childish narrative. So it is; but why? Be- 
 cause it is a description of childhood itself. 
 Childhood is a permanent element in the 
 human race—as naive and artless to-day as it 
 was in the world’s dawn. The man who 
 painted Adam £uew he was painting a child; 
 the simple question is, has he painted a repre- 
 sentative child—a child that will stand either 
 for Eden or for London? Has he succeeded 
 in photographing that artlessness of thought, 
 that naiveté of expression, that simplicity of 
 action, which belong to the child normal, the 
 child universal? Has he avoided the mistake 
 of forgetting this artlessness, of ignoring this 
 simplicity? Has he eliminated from life’s 
 dawn all ideas which pertain only to the 
 afternoon? Is his Picture, in short, childlike 
 enough to be universal ? 
 
 Do not imagine the delineation of a child’s 
 portrait is an easy thing. It is precisely the 
 work in which most galleries have failed. 
 There have been two extremes to which the 
 
 human artist has been prone; he has either 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 25 
 
 made too little of the child or he has made too 
 much, The Old Pagan world erred on the first 
 side. It underrated the importance of child- 
 hood as a subject for the gallery. To that old 
 world the early years of life were no part of 
 history. They were something to get through, 
 something to surmount, something to outgrow. 
 That the nursery was the making of the man 
 did not enter into Pagan calculation. That 
 the most important stage of education is that 
 preceding the reign of the actual schoolmaster 
 was an idea as yet beneath the sea. The 
 disciples of Christ murmured at a child being 
 put in the mzddle of their ring; but the 
 disciples of a Pagan sage would have mur- 
 mured if a child had been put in their ring at 
 all. To them a child was the antithesis of 
 wisdom, the opposite of philosophy. He was 
 too sensuous for the Platonist, too weak 
 for the Roman, too tiny a thing for the 
 nations that moved in masses. It was only 
 a corner of the gallery that the world we 
 call heathen would assign to the figure of 
 the child, 
 
26 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 But if ancient Paganism spoiled the portrait 
 of childhood by wxder-colouring, Medieval 
 Christianity fell into the opposite extreme—it 
 coloured too much. It put into its picture of 
 ideal childhood more than belonged to it. 
 Take its earlier portraits of the Babe of Beth- 
 lehem. What is their defect? It is just 
 their transference to a child of the attributes of 
 aman. The artist of that day, the historian 
 of that day, thought he was magnzfying the 
 childhood of Jesus by making it miraculous. 
 He surrounded His head witha nimbus. He 
 encircled His cradle with prodigies. He im- 
 printed on His face what was meant to be 
 an expression of glory, but what was really 
 an expression of unnaturalness. He put a 
 sagacious look in the eyes, a far-seeing thought- 
 fulness in the countenance. He stamped upon 
 every feature the impress of a heavenly wisdom 
 which, if it could only speak, would say won- 
 derful things. It was a delineation intended 
 to honour the childhood of Christ; in reality, 
 it detracted from the swaddling bands of Beth- 
 
 lehem. It was a conception neither esthetic 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 27 
 
 in art nor reverent in theology. It destroyed 
 that very ideal which it was meant to nourish. 
 It killed the child by letting in the man. It 
 sacrificed the cradle by placing within it, not 
 a babe, but a savant. 
 
 I have alluded to these errors with the view 
 of showing that the task undertaken by the 
 writer in Genesis was by no means an easy 
 thing. We speak with much patronage of the 
 simplicity of the culture implied in his narrative. 
 My formula would rather be that the compara- 
 tive maturity of his culture is shown by the 
 simplicity of the portrayal. He has done 
 what neither the Ancient Pagan world nor the 
 Medizval Christian world succeeded in doing. 
 He has painted a child—a real child, a type of 
 all childhood. He has given us an absolute 
 and accurate description of the simplicity of 
 a child’s thought, of the crudeness of a child’s 
 ideas, of the sequence of a child’s conceptions. 
 Do you think he could have done this if he 
 himself had not been already standing on 
 the 47/7? Do you imagine that it is in the 
 
 valley we see the valley? No, it is from the 
 
28 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 mountain. A simple mind cannot describe 
 simplicity. It can no more describe simplicity 
 than a born-blind man can describe darkness 
 or a deaf-mute delineate the effects of silence. 
 No man can see his lower self except by the 
 light of his new morning. The man who 
 declares that his righteousness is as filthy rags 
 is the man who is already clothed in the best 
 robe of his Father’s house; for it is by the 
 perfection of the new garment that he learns 
 the dilapidation of the old. He who can 
 paint a genuine child must himself have far 
 ascended the slope of manhood. 
 
 This artist, then, has no prentice hand; his 
 is the touch of a master. Nowhere is the 
 touch so masterly as where the record seems 
 most childish, for that is precisely the aspect 
 in which his Picture is most true to the subject. 
 There is a great difference between a primitive 
 picture and a picture of the primitive. The 
 former will be foolish but not childlike; the 
 latter will be childlike but not foolish. This 
 Portrait of the child Adam is the latter. You 
 
 ask if it is historical. I answer, It has been 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 29 
 
 again and again historical ; it has been repeated 
 in your history and in mine. This child is not 
 dead ; it lives in the experience of every human 
 soul. It can be verified by the testimony 
 of consciousness. Every step of this Garden 
 Story is your story. The child Adam is your 
 looking-glass—the mirror of your yesterday. 
 Come and look into the glass; come and 
 survey the mirror! You will read there your 
 own biography. It will bea record of child- 
 hood no doubt, and, if you will, a childish 
 record ; but it will not be the less modern, not 
 the less cosmopolitan, on that account. The 
 record of childhood is never an anachronism. 
 Let it be only sufficiently childlike, only 
 sufficiently simple, and it will always be abreast 
 of every age. The Garden scene has never 
 become obsolete. It is not superannuated by 
 the flight of years, not antiquated by the 
 change of customs, not eclipsed by the growth 
 of later things. And the reason is that it is 
 planted in that field of humanity whose pro- 
 ducts neither grow nor decline—that field of 
 
 childhood whose fruits spring up spontaneously 
 
30 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 and abide for ever the same. Let us describe 
 the portrait of this typical child. 
 
 Not as an absolute beginning does the child 
 Adam burst upon our view. We are accus- 
 tomed to figure him so. We think of him as 
 coming into the world with no experience, as 
 bringing upon the scene a mind absolutely 
 vacant and waiting for nature to give it a 
 character. Not thus does the great artist 
 depict this child. He leads upon the stage of 
 time no vacant soul, no empty life. He brings 
 a child, but not a child without experience. 
 Adam begins the world with capital. He is 
 the first of his race, yet there is in him a long 
 stream of heredity. Nay, there are two long 
 streams of heredity. The child Adam comes 
 into this world with two worlds already in his 
 breast. He enters life with a double bias— 
 a bias from earth and a bias from heaven. 
 Two elements are in him—not necessarily 
 diverse, but different and capable of conflict 
 —the dust of the sround and the breath of 
 the Father. He does not get his character 
 from the Garden ; he gives his character Zo the 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 31 
 
 Garden. He clothes the grounds of Eden in 
 his own attributes—dust and divinity. He 
 looks at the trees and says, ‘They are good 
 for food, and they are pleasant to the eyes.’ 
 There spoke both sides of his heredity — his 
 parentage from the earth and his parentage 
 from the breath of God. The one was the cry 
 of the outer man; the other was a voice of 
 the spirit. The one welcomed the Garden as 
 a means of sustenance; the other hailed it as 
 a source of beauty. The one claimed bread, 
 the means of livelihood, the support of the 
 physical life; the other expressed its convic- 
 tion that Man could not live by bread alone. 
 ‘Good for food,’ ‘pleasant to the eyes’—it 
 was the marriage in one mind, in a child’s 
 mind, of the lower and the higher. It was 
 the wedding of the Philistine and the Greek, 
 the union of prose and poetry, the bridal morn 
 of two instincts which few nations have united 
 —the pursuit of utilitarian ends, and the repose 
 in zsthetic pleasures. 
 
 Now, why do I say that this is a representa- 
 tive picture? Because in the dawning con- 
 
32 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 sciousness of your own infant you will find 
 exactly the same mixture of dust and divinity. 
 There are two objects which almost simul- 
 taneously attract that dawning consciousness 
 —the thing which nourishes and the thing 
 which shines. The child cries for food; it 
 is the voice of the body, the call of the outer 
 life—and it breathes a prayer which is common 
 to the animal and the man. But there is 
 another hunger which has a place in the breast 
 of the infant and which in the man is destined 
 to acquire a quite special significance; it is 
 the hunger of the eye. Pass a shining object 
 before the sight of infancy, and the little hand 
 will be outstretched to grasp it. The impulse 
 which dictates that movement cannot be from 
 the dust—not even though it be shared by the 
 eye of many a feathered songster. Place it 
 where you will, it is the germ of the love of 
 beauty, and, as such, it is above the dust. 
 Wherever it is found, it is the breath of the 
 Father. And itis found in the infant. On the 
 very threshold of human existence there is a 
 
 gate called Beautiful side by side with a gate 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 33 
 
 unadorned. The unadorned gate and the beauti- 
 ful gate both open together. The one leads 
 to the plain; the other conducts to the moun- 
 tain. Seen from each, the Tree of Life looks 
 different. From the gate of the plain I see its 
 fruits ; from the gate of the mountain I behold 
 its blossoms. The one gives the view of its uses; 
 the other gives a sight of what merchants can- 
 not buy. Young Adam ever beholds both. 
 But look again at the development of your 
 child, and you will see how cosmopolitan is 
 this biography of the primeval Adam. I have 
 said that the typical child begins with the 
 search for that which nourishes and the search 
 for that which shines. But there comes a 
 phase later than either—the search for that 
 which magnifies. If the child begins with the 
 hunger of the mouth and the hunger of the eye, 
 it passes by and by into a third form of appetite 
 —the hunger of the hand. The love of posses- 
 sion comes. Adam looks at the tree and 
 cries, ‘If I could get up there, I should be as 
 high as God.’ There has come to hima new 
 instinct—the instinct of ownership. He wants 
 C 
 
34 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 to have the sense of being the proprietor of 
 the Garden, the joy of being able to say, ‘It 
 is mine. Any other book than the Bible 
 would have made the primal man crouch in 
 abject terror before the new-found majesty of 
 Nature. But with the Bible the primal man’ 
 is a child—and children are not timid. The 
 characteristic of a child is the wish for mastery, 
 the desire for superiority. All imitation comes 
 from it, and imitation is the earliest step of 
 human development. Why does a child imitate 
 his playfellow? It is because he sees on the 
 Tree of Life a bit of fruit which he himself 
 has not got, an experience which he has not 
 appropriated. It is a grand stroke in the 
 painter of the first man that at any cost he 
 feels bound to make him an imitator. When 
 he has painted him as the occupant of a soli- 
 tary garden where there is none but himself 
 and God Almighty, he boldly makes him take 
 the Almighty as his model, and expresses the 
 child’s inveterate love of possession by causing 
 him to look at the topmost branch and say, 
 ‘If I reach that, I shall be like God.’ 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 35 
 
 Let us pursue the development. We have 
 seen three phases of the child Adam—phases 
 reproduced from Paradise to Paris, from Eden 
 to England—the sense of want, the sense of 
 beauty, and the sense of possession. As yet 
 there is a phase which we have zo¢ seen—the 
 sense of sin. The reason I take to be that pos- 
 session must precede transgression. What is 
 transgression? It literally means the stepping 
 over into another’s ground. I cannot do that 
 until I have reached the idea of a boundary—of 
 a disputed boundary. Very finely, to my mind, 
 is this thought sketched by the great artist in 
 Genesis. The child Adam has stretched his 
 hand towards the trees of the Garden and said, 
 ‘They are mine.’ Through the cool air a 
 voice comes, ‘They are not af yours; it is 
 a divided ownership.’ With that voice came 
 the first possibility of actual transgression—of 
 stepping into another’s field. That other was 
 here the Creator; there was no rival chzld to 
 say, ‘This part belongs to me;’ therefore the 
 Almighty said it. The first thing prohibited 
 was trespassing on the Dzvzne field—for the 
 
36 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 simple reason that there was no rival human 
 field. The earliest moral appeal was an appeal 
 to human justice—that is the grand feature of 
 the Picture. It is an appeal to the child to be 
 just to his Creator. No artistic conception 
 was ever more original. It is not a demand 
 for reverence, a demand for homage, a demand 
 for sacrifice; it is a demand for bare justice. 
 ‘We parted this field between us, you and 
 I; let us keep to our contract! I gave you 
 one side of the Garden; I retained the other. 
 You had the Tree of Life; I had the Tree of 
 Knowledge. Why should you break over the 
 prescribed limits! Is it not enough to have 
 dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl 
 of the air and the cattle of the meadow ; why 
 should you claim an empire in the realm of 
 the unseen!’ 
 
 I have emphasised this point because I think 
 it is the one point where the Picture has been 
 misunderstood. The common view is that the 
 artist is describing a case of mere disobedience. 
 I do not think that is the deepest idea of the 
 Picture. I hold that the primitive narration 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 34 
 
 has attached itself, not to the portrayal of 
 obedience, but to the portrayal of justice. 
 It is not a question of resistance to Divine 
 authority ; it is a question of interference with 
 Divine possession. God, for the moment, has, 
 in the view of the artist, ceased to be a 
 sovereign; He has become the co-partner in 
 an estate by reason of His own contract. He 
 has divided His inheritance with the child 
 Adam; He has apportioned the limits within 
 which each shall rule. But the child Adam is 
 restive under the contract. He would fain be 
 uncontracted, he would fain be free. He is 
 offended by the “mt to his sway. He objects 
 to a partition wall between the two rows of 
 trees. He is bent on trespassing, on claiming 
 the whole Garden for himself. The law which 
 he seeks to violate is not a law of authority ; 
 it is a law of justice, of equity, of the relation 
 of meum and tuum, That is, in my view, the 
 meaning of this old Picture. Milton has told 
 us that the secret of Paradise lost was ‘Man’s 
 first disobedience and the fruit of that for- 
 bidden tree.’ I do not think that is the secret 
 
38 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 which the painter had in his mind. To him 
 the central thought was not the violation of 
 authority, but the violation of justice. It is 
 not the dependant forgetting the respect to his 
 master ; it is the partner ignoring his contract, 
 the associate breaking his bond, the sharer of 
 dual rights attempting to encroach upon the 
 rights of the other. 
 
 Now, I appeal to you who have studied 
 the life of the nursery, if this is not the real 
 beginning of the moral training of every 
 child. You cannot teach your child morality 
 by teaching it obedience. Obedience is in 
 itself neither good nor bad—may be ezther 
 good or bad; it depends upon whom we obey. 
 Nor is the quality which you desire for your 
 child that of absolute obedience. There is 
 not a mother in the land who does not long 
 for the day when the actions of her child shall 
 cease to be dictated by her own will. The 
 dearest moment to the heart of a parent 
 is the moment of a child’s spontaneity—the 
 day when it anticipates the ordinary command 
 and does the deed of its own accord. What 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 39 
 
 zs the joy of that moment to the parental 
 heart? It is the recognition that the reign 
 of absolute obedience is past and that the 
 reign of volition has begun. It is the per- 
 ception that the child has ceased to be a 
 subordinate and has become an equal—ani- 
 mated by the same motive, inspired by the 
 same will, I have been greatly struck by the 
 traces of this parental instinct even in the 
 earliest delineation. When I am told that ‘the 
 Lord God brought every beast of the field to 
 Adam to see what he would call them,’ what 
 does that mean? What else than this, that 
 obedience is not enough for the heart of a 
 father! Why does not the artist paint the 
 Divine Father as adzctating to the child the 
 names of the creatures? Because he knows 
 human nature, Divine nature, better than that. 
 He knows that the sweetest music to any 
 parent is the voice of the child’s co-operation, 
 and that the summer of a father’s love is 
 perfected in the hour when the relation of 
 authority is superseded by the sympathy of 
 
 communion. 
 
40 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Obedience, then, is not the beginning of a 
 child’s morality. What zs the beginning? I 
 say it is justice, the inculcation of fairplay. 
 Whether in the garden or in the playground, 
 it is the primary moral lesson of youth. The 
 difference between his and yours is the first 
 thing which your child should know. Let 
 him see the limits of his own Eden. Put him 
 in a garden where there is a divided posses- 
 sion. Tell him to make an impartial division of 
 the trees. Insist that he shall share the fruits 
 with his playmate or brother. Impress him 
 with the injustice of trespassing, transgressing, 
 overstepping his own property. Never pro- 
 hibit for the sake of prohibition. If you want 
 to forbid the use of any tree, let it be for the 
 reason that the tree belongs to another. Pro- 
 hibition in itself is not helpful to the child 
 any more than the maiming of a wing is 
 helpful to the bird. But justice zs helpful. 
 Justice is worth the maiming of a wing. 
 Justice sanctifies prohibition. To teach your 
 child justice, the shutting of one door upon 
 its liberty is a small price to pay. The 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 4I 
 
 forbidden fruit becomes then the fruit of 
 knowledge. 
 
 This is my philosophy of the Garden of 
 Eden, and I am convinced it was the philo- 
 sophy of the artist. The temptation of young 
 Adam is the temptation to his justice; the 
 fall of young Adam is his fall from the hezght 
 of justice. With the theology that has circled 
 round the Picture I have here noconcern. I 
 will only say that a fall from the height of 
 justice is the most contagious fall which can 
 be conceived. If the sin of the first man lay 
 in the breach of a contract which he believed 
 to be binding, I can understand why the spirit 
 of his deed should have been propagated 
 from age to age. I cannot understand why 
 an act of disobedience should have been pro- 
 pagated, for the simple reason that it zs an 
 act. Deeds, as such, are not transmittable ; 
 my blood alone can flow into the heart of 
 my descendants. The emotions of the hour 
 are not transmittable ; they would require to 
 be transmitted for many hours through many 
 generations. But injustice is not a deed, not 
 
42 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 an emotion ; it is a full-fledged spirit. It is 
 as full-fledged after a single deed as after 
 years of unrighteousness. An act of injustice 
 is never the beginning of a process; it is 
 always a culmination, an acme, a climax. 
 An act of disobedience zs a beginning, a first 
 step. But an act of injustice only comes 
 when the spirit of injustice is full grown. It 
 presupposes a long train of dishonest thoughts. 
 The most dangerous looks which Adam cast 
 on the coveted tree were not the looks of 
 the eye; they were the glances of the heart. 
 Our coveted trees are never so tempting 
 as when they are seen in imagination; it 
 is there the fruit looks luscious, it is there 
 the branches seem splendid. The actual 
 climbing of this tree was to young Adama 
 moral bagatelle. He had been up, in fancy, a 
 hundred times. He had robbed the orchard 
 where the law could not reach him — in his 
 heart. The serpent which tempted him was 
 within; he had yielded before he touched 
 the tree. His real fall was dishonesty of 
 
 thought. The moment he considered the 
 
ADAM THE CHILD 43 
 
 chances of detection, he had already fallen ill 
 —ill with a thoroughly contagious disease, 
 with a malady full-grown. This child, like 
 every after child, has his tragedy inside, his 
 dramatic personages inside, his dialogues in- 
 side. I do not think the tragedy would be 
 less complete if the outward deed had been 
 omitted ; for the final act of injustice, in the 
 sight of heaven, is ever consummated in 
 
 the region of the soul. 
 
 ORD, let me not forget 7%y share in life’s 
 garden! Let me remember to make all 
 
 its fruits ‘ fruits of the spirit’! Let me not ask 
 only if the tree is good for food, or pleasant 
 to the eyes, or a source of human dignity ; 
 let me inquire also if it can minister to Love! 
 If I forget that, I am not just to Zee; I am 
 stealing Zhy part of the fruit. Thou hast 
 not denied to me the human side of the 
 garden. Thou hast allowed me to seek the 
 food; Thou hast permitted me to see the 
 beauty ; Thou hast authorised me to feel the 
 
 q 
 
44 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 dignity. But is there to be no share for Thee 
 —for Love! Am I never to ask how this 
 fruit shall pass from my hand into another 
 hand! Am I never to ponder how I shall 
 send it down the ages! Am I never to 
 inquire whether it can gladden parched lips 
 or cheer the couch of an invalid! If not, I 
 am stealing the fruit from Zee. I say the 
 tree is pleasant to my sight; it is well; Thou 
 wouldst not have it otherwise. But am I 
 never to consider the lane and alley! Am I 
 never to ask whether the green leaf can be 
 brought to weary eyes, to hearts that are 
 strangers to the leisure hour! If not, I am 
 stealing the leaf from Tee, robbing the 
 orchard on the side of Love. Make me 
 just to Zzy vineyard, O Lord! Shall all my 
 prayers be for Eshcol! Shall I have no 
 palms for Elim! Shall I have no tree for the 
 waters of Marah! Shall I have no manna 
 for my brother’s desert! Shall I have no 
 leaves whose mission is the healing of the 
 nations! Then Eden ztse/f to me will be 
 
 Paradise lost. 
 
CHUA Dh BRACE} 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 
 
 THE second figure in the group of the Great 
 Gallery is Abel. One of the spectators in 
 that Gallery, the writer of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, has distinctly declared him to have 
 been among the world’s representative men. 
 ‘By faith he being dead yet speaketh.’ The 
 idea is clearly that of timelessness. It is 
 suggested that the man has not become an 
 anachronism, that at the time when this spec- 
 tator lived his voice was quite a modern voice. 
 It had not become superannuated. He had 
 personified something which did not pertain to 
 any special age, something which was cosmo- 
 politan and therefore everlasting. Other 
 things had ‘waxed old’ and were ‘ready to 
 vanish away.’ Much in the past was but a 
 
 ‘shadow, and had shared the evanescence of a 
 45 
 
46 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 shadow. But the Portrait of this man revealed 
 a quality which was vital to humanity, whether 
 Jewish or Pagan or Christian. It had revealed 
 something which belonged, not to any par- 
 ticular form of worship, but to worship itself— 
 to the religious instinct in all its forms of life 
 and in all’its stages of progress. By that 
 cosmopolitan quality Abel was kept alive— 
 alive amid the changing environment, alive 
 amid the traces of the dead; he has a present 
 voice, he yet speaketh. 
 
 What zs this quality of which Abel is the 
 inaugurator, and by whose inauguration he 
 lives? The spectator I have quoted says it 
 is ‘faith, and he defines faith to be ‘the 
 evidence of things not seen.’ It is belief which 
 is in advance of experience. To say that a 
 man ‘died in faith’ is, with the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, equivalent to saying 
 that the man’s experience was arrested before 
 it reached its full development. When Abel 
 
 1 Though the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews applies 
 
 the phrase to the whole Gallery, Abel’s early death is evidently 
 to him a case of sfec¢a/ immaturity. 
 
ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 47 
 
 is called the first man of faith, it is implied 
 that he died too soon for realisation, that he 
 did not live to see the fulfilment of his plans, 
 that his sun went down while it was yet noon. 
 Abel, in short, is the type of the undeveloped. 
 If the figure of Adam represents the child, the 
 figure of Abel represents the man arrested in 
 his youth. He stands for the life interrupted, 
 the life cut short. Heis the unfinished build- 
 ing, the incomplete work, the fragment of an 
 unrealised whole. We feel, in looking at him, 
 what we feel in reading the beginning of a 
 book which its author has not lived to finish— 
 a sense of what might have been, of possible 
 work not done. His very name expresses the 
 thought of evanescence; it signifies ‘ breath, 
 ‘vapour, ‘vanity.’ He has come down to us 
 as the type of the unsurviving class, of the 
 unfit class, of the invalid class. He is the 
 forerunner of those who physically are driven 
 to the wall. 
 
 The startling thing is that the Bible should 
 have put such a form on its canvas. No other 
 
 gallery would have done that. On every 
 
48 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 other canvas the forms inscribed are the 
 forms of the physical survivor. Here the type 
 selected is that of the class outstripped in 
 the outward race. And the most remarkable 
 thing is that the Bible Gallery has made this 
 choice not unconsciously, but deliberately. 
 Abel’s is not an accidental portrait; it is the 
 result of a preference. He gets a more 
 prominent place in the Gallery than his elder 
 brother. For he as an elder brother, a 
 brother who, in addition to his seniority, is 
 in every respect more suited to his age. If 
 Abel is physically weak, Cain is physically 
 strong. If Abel seems behind in his earthly 
 work, Cain appears to be in advance with his. 
 ‘IT have gotten a man from the Lord, cries his 
 mother while yet he was a child. From the 
 world’s point of view Cain was a precocious 
 child, suggesting that the man had already 
 begun. As his form stands before us we feel 
 that he is exactly the man who in his own day 
 was fitted to win. And in his own day he 
 does win. Abel has no chance with him. He 
 monopolises by main force. He utilises for 
 
ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 49 
 
 his own advantage all the gifts of life. He 
 builds a city. He founds a dynasty. He 
 inaugurates a civilisation. He becomes the 
 progenitor of those who forge weapons of war. 
 His name is caught up by the earliest poetry ; 
 his deeds are sung to the primitive music. 
 He belongs to the world’s physical side, and 
 therefore he is distinctively the prominent man 
 of his time. 
 
 Yet he is not the prominent man in the 
 Gallery... The artist of later days has hung his 
 Portrait high. The place he had among his 
 contemporaries is refused him by the Great 
 Academy; it is assigned to his unobtrusive 
 brother. In the light of posterity Abel is the 
 commanding figure. It is the lowest hung of 
 the two Portraits. And it is so for the reason 
 that it is deemed more modern than that of 
 Cain, ‘He being dead yet speaketh.’ From 
 an earthly point of view, his life was short, his 
 work interrupted, his mission a failure. From 
 the Divine side, his life was long, his work 
 continuous, his mission a grand success. He 
 is the representative of all the great who die 
 
 D 
 
50 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 young. The Picture is meant to declare that 
 no really great work is ever interrupted. The 
 voice of Abel’s blood is described as crying 
 from the ground. It is a fine picture of the 
 permanence of his work. Dead, buried, for- 
 gotten by his contemporaries, this man is 
 declared to be speaking from beneath the very 
 soil that had covered him! His life-work, 
 seemingly arrested, is going on underground! 
 As by an unconscious cerebration, it is 
 influencing the years! Unseen, unnoted, 
 unreckoned with amid the factors of human 
 progress, it is exerting a force whose silence is 
 equalled by its strength and which is destined 
 one day to flash before the eyes of men! 
 
 And indeed it has been so. This under- 
 ground voice of Abel has been the germ not 
 only of the Hebrew nation, but of the deepest 
 life of humanity. What is that work which 
 peculiarly marks the Jewish nation? It is the 
 elaboration of a system of sacrifice. That 
 system seemed to spring spontaneously from 
 the dust. But dd it? Was the sacrificial life 
 of Israel indeed a sudden thing, a thing unpre- 
 
ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 51 
 
 pared for in the history of the past? No, says 
 the Great Gallery, it had its root in the life of 
 an individual man, a man little known in his 
 day and little seen by his generation, yet 
 sowing below the soil seed that refused to die. 
 His voice was drowned during life; but he spoke 
 after death. He was early compelled to rest 
 from his labours; but his works followed him. 
 His memory completed what he himself had 
 left unfinished. His influence worked under- 
 ground. His image, cherished at first by only 
 a few hearts, moulded these hearts and spread © 
 beyond them. His example created imitators, 
 The leaven permeated the mass. The ideal 
 he had left behind kindled a spark. It first 
 scintillated, then shone, then blazed. It 
 became a candle with Abraham, a lamp with 
 Moses, a fire with the prophets of Judah, until 
 at last it burst into a conflagration on the 
 summit of the Hill of Calvary. 
 
 Such I conceive to be the place given to 
 Abel in the Great Gallery. It is the place of 
 a germ-cell—the germ-cell of that particular 
 
 spirit of sacrifice which, originally peculiar to 
 
52 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 the Jewish nation, has ultimately given its law 
 to man as man. Come, then, and let us look 
 at this germ-cell—this thing by which the dead 
 Abel yet speaketh. Let us stand before the 
 Picture and study its simple features; their 
 simplicity may give us light. There are some 
 who profess to read human history by the 
 hand; I will try to read ¢hzs history by the 
 Picture. By the aid of imagination I will 
 endeavour to weave together those threads of 
 the narrative which are presented loose and 
 scattered. Imagination contributes to reality 
 if it can supply the missing links in fact. My 
 object is to detect, if possible, the meaning 
 which the artist had in view. The rough 
 sketch meant more to him than it does to us. 
 If we can disentangle that meaning, we shall 
 have reached the secret of that idea which 
 has made Abel’s Portrait the picture of a 
 representative man. 
 
 I have said that the Portrait of the primeval 
 Adam reveals a mixture of dust and divinity. 
 Here the dust and the divinity again meet us, 
 but they are no longer combined in a single 
 
 J 
 : 
 
 
 

 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 53 
 
 life; they reappear in the two contrasted 
 lives—Cain and Abel. Cain is a child of the 
 dust ; Abel is a product of the Divine breath. 
 Cain views the field as a source of food; Abel 
 contemplates it as pleasant to the eyes. Nor 
 alone does the contrast lie in secular things ; 
 it distinguishes the religion of the men. Both 
 the brothers are religious, so far as the form 
 of worship is concerned. Both offer a sacrifice 
 to the Lord; both offer an appropriate sacri- 
 fice. Each gives the fruit of his own profession. 
 Abel is a shepherd ; it is right that his offering 
 should be from the fold. Cain is an agricul- 
 turalist; it is well that his gift should be from 
 the soil. TZhzs side of the contrast is only 
 proper; it grows out of their respective call- 
 ings. The difference between the dust and 
 the divinity does not lie in the diversity of 
 these men’s gifts, but in the diversity of their 
 spirit. The eye of an outward observer could 
 have detected no difference in quality. The 
 writer to the Hebrews says so. He says it 
 was ‘by faith’ that Abel offered a better 
 
 sacrifice than Cain. What he means is that 
 
54 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 it was faith that made the betterness. The 
 comparison was not between gift and gift; it 
 was between soul and soul. It was not 
 grounded on the relative value of the animal 
 and the vegetable; it was based on the fact 
 that the human was better than either—that 
 the surrender of a man’s life to God is a more 
 acceptable service than all the produce of the 
 fields or all the cattle of the meadows. The 
 whole point of the narrative lies in the superi- 
 ority of a human offering. Let me try to 
 reproduce what I conceive the thought of the 
 artist to have been in depicting the attitude 
 of these two brothers. 
 
 I figure Abel going into the field and thus 
 with himself communing: ‘This is indeed a 
 beautiful world! I have heard in my childhood 
 that the footsteps of the Lord God used to be 
 audible in the cool of the day. I do not wonder 
 they were; I only wonder they are not heard 
 still. I am sure the Lord God is walking still; 
 I have faith enough in Him to believe ¢haz. 
 Why, then, do I not hear Him? The fault 
 
 must be in we. My ear must have become 
 
 Ne i a 
 

 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 55 
 
 dull to the heavenly movement by listening 
 too much for the sounds of earth. Is it not 
 that I have been growing too selfish? My 
 flocks have been increasing, and so has my 
 joy of possession. I have been so busy in 
 counting the number of my sheep that I have 
 not heard the sweep of my Father’s garment 
 passing by. This ought not to be. If I 
 were to sacrifice something of this selfish life, 
 I wonder if the sound of the footsteps would 
 come back. If I were to select a portion of 
 this treasured wealth of mine and offer it as a 
 gift to God, would there not be a chance that 
 I should hear once more the music which long 
 ago was wont to haunt the dell! I will try. I 
 will attempt to atone to the Lord God for 
 this selfish life. I will sacrifice to Him the 
 best part of my worldly gains. I will remove 
 from my sight, from my hearing, that which 
 curtains eye and ear from Him; and when the 
 door of my heart is opened, it may be that 
 He will reveal the presence which I know is 
 there: 
 
 Cain also goes out into the field ; and think- 
 
56 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 ing of his crops, with himself he thus dis- 
 courses: ‘How dependent we all are on wind 
 and weather! It would bea pity if anything 
 happened to spoil the harvest! Would it not 
 be well that I should try to propitiate the 
 creat Power that rules the elements! I have 
 heard that to gain God’s favour is to gain the 
 world. I have been told that when God was 
 acknowledged as the planter of the trees, man 
 was made wonderfully happy—that he was 
 placed in a Paradise of fruits and flowers, 
 where rivers clear as crystal traversed lands 
 rich with gold. Was not the prize worth 
 the homage! Would it not repay me to 
 make an offering to the Lord of some pro- 
 duce of my soil! It would be a sacrifice 
 to-day, but it would bring gain to-morrow. 
 It would not only avert calamity, but increase 
 my store. It is a highly profitable thing to 
 save one’s soul if thereby he gain the world. 
 I will not murmur to yield this oblation to 
 the Lord God, for I shall get it back, in 
 interest, tenfold.’ 
 
 The offerings are made, and each brother 
 

 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 57 
 
 retires to his home. Time passes; and by 
 and by there happens a strange thing. These 
 brothers meet with opposite destinies. Abel 
 has a splendid year; his flocks are multiplied, 
 his cattle are on a thousand hills. Of course 
 this is not an answer to his sacrifice, nor does 
 he take it as such. He has received the only 
 answer he wanted—an increased sense of God’s 
 presence. Yet to the eye of Cazz it looks as 
 if his brother had been answered by material 
 prosperity. And what about Cain himself? 
 He has experienced another fate than that of 
 Abel. For him the wheel of fortune has 
 turned the opposite way. The winds of Nature 
 have been adverse; great rains have blighted 
 the produce of the fields; fierce storms have 
 swept the horizon; floods have accompanied 
 the time of ingathering; disease has laid its 
 hand upon the crops; the harvest has been a 
 miserable failure. Cain is filled with indigna- 
 tion. His is the anger of a man defrauded. 
 Had he not invested his money in a bank that 
 promised good interest! Had he not presented 
 a gift to the Lord God with a view to achieving 
 
58 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 worldly success! Was this fair treatment from 
 the Lord God! Was he to get no equivalent 
 for his sacrifice! Had he not given up the 
 best fruits of his last year’s harvest! Would 
 a man do that for nothing! If he served God, 
 was he not entitled to a service from God! 
 Was it right that a man who had been so 
 liberal with his means should be rewarded 
 with blight and mildew! Did he not well to 
 be angry! 
 
 The artist, in Genesis, declares that Cain 
 was under an error of judgment. Have you 
 ever considered the fine expostulation which 
 he puts into the mouth of the Lord God, 
 ‘Why art thou wrathful, and why is thy 
 countenance fallen; if thou doest well, shall 
 thy countenance not be wflifted!’ What is 
 the meaning of these words? I understand 
 them to mean this: ‘Cain, you are mistaking 
 the terms of your own investment. You 
 expected to receive interest for your sacrifice. 
 You were right; true sacrifice always brings 
 its interest. But what zs the interest of true 
 
 sacrifice? Is it houses and servants and lands ; 
 
 i ie a 
 

 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 59 
 
 is it flocks and herds; is it fruits and trees? 
 No; it is the uplifting of the countenance. 
 There is only one sign of the acceptance of a 
 sacrifice; it is the inward joy of the offerer. 
 Not the clearing of clouds from the sky—even 
 though they de cleared—is the mark of My 
 favour; not the presence of clouds in the sky 
 —even though they de present—is the mark of 
 My distance.. The test of My nearness to your 
 brother is not the riches of his pastures; the 
 test of my absence from you is not the scanti- 
 ness of yourcrops. The interest to be reaped 
 from sacrifice is not the bright sky, but the 
 bright face; if your countenance is fallen, you 
 may be sure that at the door of your sacrifice 
 there is lurking some secret sin.’ 
 
 But the narrative says this reasoning is 
 beyond Cain. To him the aggravation is not 
 so much his failure as the fact that he has 
 failed where his brother has succeeded. As 
 the firstborn, he can brook no such superiority. 
 How deep is this picture of envy! Could 
 any ¢zyro have painted it! Think of the bold 
 
 paradox of making the first scene of inhumanity 
 
60 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 arise in the sphere of religion! Think of the 
 mental acumen implied in the discernment 
 that envy is not so much your wish to get a 
 thing as the wish that / should zo¢ get it! 
 Very striking seems to me this latter point. 
 Cain has positively nothing to gain by the sup- 
 pression of Abel. What would the shepherd’s 
 life be to Azm! His line of livelihood lay in 
 another direction. The wealth of Abel would 
 have been useless in his hands. It was no 
 object of 4zs ambition to lead the sheep by the 
 green pastures and beside the still waters. 
 What riles him in the sight of his brother’s 
 wealth is not the possession, but the prestige. 
 There lies the sharp distinction between envy 
 and covetousness. Covetousness is for things; 
 envy is for persons. Covetousness is the wish 
 to possess; envy is the wish to dzspossess. 
 Covetousness is your desire to win; envy is 
 your desire that / should Jose. Cain has begun 
 with covetousness ; he has developed into envy. 
 His sacrifice has been prompted by avarice; 
 his aversion to his brother has not. He has 
 passed from the mark of the beast to the 
 

 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 61 
 
 number of the beast. The mark of the beast 
 is the indulgence of self; the number of the 
 beast is the exclusion of others—it is Number 
 One. The sin of the Garden has become 
 procreative. Adam had been content to say, 
 ‘All these things shall be mine’; Cain has 
 reached the darker thought, ‘They shall at 
 least not be my brother’s,’ 
 
 And now comes the final scene of the 
 Picture. We have seen Abel alone in the 
 field ; we have seen Cain alone in the field; we 
 now see both in the field—they ‘talk together.’ 
 What do they talk about? I can imagine; 
 and I think my imagination expresses the 
 thought in the mind of the artist. I conceive 
 the following dialogue. Cain says, ‘ You shall 
 make no more offerings to the Lord God; I 
 am the eldest born, and to me belongs the 
 right to sacrifice. Abel answers, ‘I dare not 
 concede the privilege of personal approach to 
 God.’ ‘A privilege for you zudeed) sneers 
 Cain; ‘it has added to your sheepfold!’ 
 ‘Nay, answers Abel, ‘I offered sacrifice just 
 to save me from holding such things to be 
 
62 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 privileges of religion; my offering was meant 
 to wean me from the fold.’ ‘Then, cries the 
 elder brother, ‘you were praying against me, 
 praying me down. You have been winning 
 the love of the Lord God by the pretence of 
 a disinterested devotion. You have been 
 setting your romance against my reality, and 
 with success. My crops have faded and your 
 flocks have flourished; you have been the 
 thorn to my rose. Desist, I say, from these 
 detrimental prayers! Throw down your 
 domestic altar of self-immolation! Cease to 
 be a barrier to my gains! I will tolerate no 
 current running counter to mine!’ Cries 
 Abel: ‘I dare not disobey my conscience—not 
 for the love of gold, not for the fear of you. 
 Your sacrifice is a mockery, because it is a 
 merchandise. It deserves nothing du¢ the 
 famine; it could reap nothing but the blight. 
 I do not wonder that yours has been this year 
 a barren harvest.’ But even while he speaks 
 he reels backward. A blow from his brother’s 
 hand has struck him—swift, impetuous, pas- 
 
 sionate. He staggers, he falls, striking his 
 
 
 

 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 63 
 
 - head in a vital part; he rises no more; he seals 
 his conviction with his blood. 
 
 Now, the point of the Picture lies in the fact 
 that this martyrdom was an arrest of develop- 
 ment, In the view of the artist, in the view of 
 the early spectator, Abel has not /fuzshed his 
 work of sacrifice. It is only a germ-cell that 
 has appeared when he is called away. That 
 critic of the Gallery to whom I have already 
 alluded has put it very tersely and very finely. 
 Looking at the Portrait of Christ, he cries, 
 ‘We are come to the blood of sprinkling, which 
 speaketh better things than that of Abel.’ 
 Language could not more clearly express the 
 incipient nature of Abel’s sacrifice. Why is the 
 blood of Christ declared to be a better offering 
 than the blood of Abel? Because Christ’s is 
 ‘the blood of sprinkling.’ It is not merely 
 shed; it is shed on others, shed /or others. 
 Abel’s is not a ‘blood of sprinkling.” It is a 
 beautiful offering, an inward offering, a spiritual 
 offering, but not yet an impersonal offering, It 
 is a sacrifice for the wellbeing of his own soul, 
 but not for the souls of posterity. He desires 
 
64 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 communion with his God, a sense of personal 
 fellowship with the Author of his being ; he 
 has rightly discerned the things that belong 
 to his peace. But he has not discerned the 
 things that belong to the peace of coming 
 Jerusalems. Equally with Cain he would per- 
 haps have said, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper!’ 
 His was a protest in favour of the higher over 
 the lower life; a protest against utilitarian 
 worship, against buying and selling in the 
 temple of God. But it was his owz higher 
 life that he vindicated. He broke the box of 
 ointment, but its fragrance did not yet fill the 
 House of Humanity ; it was not a gift for the 
 prospective world. He was beyond his times, 
 for his times were the times of Cain; but his 
 march was arrested midway before he was 
 able to attain the times of Jesus. 
 
 THANK Thee, O Lord, that the Great 
 Gallery has enshrined a form which the 
 world thought unfit for survival. I thank Thee 
 that man’s judgment has not been the final 
 

 
 ABEL THE UNDEVELOPED 65 
 
 judgment. I thank Thee that in the many 
 mansions of this Gallery Thou hast prepared 
 a place for what I called failure. Abel would 
 never have been one of my representative 
 men; I should have chosen Cain as the ‘man 
 from the Lord. I have no place in my philo- 
 sophy for the bud which has never flowered. 
 I have no niche in my gallery for the life 
 that has been only promise. But Thou hast 
 enshrined the bud that the storm forbade to 
 flower ; Thou hast preserved on the canvas the 
 life of unfulfilled destiny. Thou hast taught 
 me that the dead can speak, that the work 
 _ need not end when the life has closed. Thou 
 hast taught me that the influence can outlive 
 the hand that shed it. Thou hast taught me 
 that much of this world’s work is done by the 
 departed—that we live by the afterglow of 
 many vanished days. Help me to remember 
 the afterglow! When I see lives interrupted 
 and am tempted to say, ‘To what purpose is 
 this waste!’ help me to remember the after- 
 slow! Help me to remember that the shed 
 blood cries to Zee, that the interrupted life 
 E 
 
66 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 works for Thee! Help me to remember that 
 among the forces of earth there is none more 
 potent than that of those whom we call the 
 dead! So, in the time of depression, when 
 men point to the unfinished glory and say, 
 ‘Where is the providence of God!’ I will 
 look at the Picture in the Gallery and answer 
 
 ‘He being dead yet speaketh.’ 
 
 
 

 
 CA BE hv 
 ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 
 
 STANDING in the Great Gallery, we have seen 
 that the two first figures of the group bear 
 the impress of youth. The first represents 
 the spirit of childhood—the child of all times 
 and of all places. The second represents 
 the life unfinished, the life that has not 
 seen its meridian sun, and whose work re- 
 mains a fragment; this also is a morning 
 view. We are now come to the study of a 
 third figure; it is that of Enoch. Agazz we 
 are in the light of the morning, in the atmo- 
 sphere of youth. I have said that the charac- 
 teristic of youth is to look forward, that it is 
 distinguished by the absence of retrospect. 
 Enoch is the representative of this morning 
 attitude of life. His eye is on the west—on 
 
 the glory of the evening sun; only, it is not 
 67 
 
638 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 contemplated as a settzng. The gates of the 
 eastern Paradise have closed behind him, 
 but he turns not back to look at them. The 
 rivers that issued from Eden are still beside 
 him, but his gaze is not on these. He has 
 forgotten yesterday, he has become oblivious 
 of to-day ; he is straining towards to-morrow. 
 Enoch is the universal symbol of Man’s 
 immortal hope. In the view of that old world, 
 he is the man who escaped the sight of 
 death. Examine your own hope of immor- 
 tality in your most hopeful moments, and you 
 will find that the experience you seek is the 
 experience of Enoch. In your most vitalised 
 hours your protest is not so much against 
 annihilation as against the existence of 
 death at all. What in such hours you wish 
 to see is not merely a vision of something 
 beyond the grave; it is a transfiguration of 
 the grave itself. What you hope to find is, 
 that death, as we understand it, has proved 
 to be a delusion—that from the inside it has 
 a totally different aspect from that which it 
 presents to the outward eye. It is a very 
 
 
 

 
 ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 69 
 
 remarkable circumstance and has often struck 
 me as not merely accidental, that the full- 
 fledged hope of Christian Immortality has 
 reproduced the primitive hope expressed in 
 the translation of Enoch. ‘He that liveth 
 and believeth in me shall never die,’ is the 
 utterance in which Christ’s latest Gospel 
 reveals the sense of Immortality. Is it not the 
 same hope which centred round the person- 
 ality of Enoch! It is not simply the solace 
 that beyond the valley and the shadow there 
 are mansions of abiding glory. It is the 
 proclamation that for the spirit of Man the 
 valley itself may be exalted and the shadow 
 transfigured into asunbeam. The watchword 
 of Christianity is the initial word of the Book 
 of Genesis—‘ Eternal Life ’—not ‘life re- 
 stored, not ‘life resuscitated,’ but ‘life eternal.’ 
 There are many watchwords between; but 
 the first is like the last. The initial note of 
 immortality which is struck in the narrative 
 of Enoch is the latest chord which vibrates in 
 the teaching of the Son of Man. 
 
 I do not think we have sufficiently grasped 
 
70 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 the significance of this fact in relation to the 
 hope of the Old Testament. We think of the 
 Portrait of Enoch as a thing which has no 
 national bearing. We think of it as the 
 individual freak of a peculiar artist who 
 tried to paint a future life which his nation 
 did not believe in. On the contrary, I think 
 the narrative of Enoch’s translation expresses 
 the earliest conviction of the united Hebrew 
 race. We have become so accustomed to 
 believe in the late development of the Jewish 
 faith in immortality, that we have come to 
 look upon the narrative of Enoch as an ex- 
 crescence. I hold, on the contrary, that the 
 latest growth was the thing earliest planted, 
 and that the belief in Eternal Life had its 
 flower in the Gospel just because it had its 
 root in the genesis of the Jewish common- 
 wealth. For, be it observed that this earliest 
 picture of immortality is the picture of 
 Eternal Life. It is not resurrection; it is 
 not even the awakening out of sleep. It is, 
 in the strictest sense, immortality—undying- 
 
 ness. It is the record concerning a man 
 
 
 
ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 71 
 
 whose animation was never suspended—not 
 for an hour, not for a moment. It is the 
 exhibition of one whose life on earth was so 
 full of God that what we call death took 
 for him the form of transition. That is what 
 the large majority of Christian men and 
 women among us actually hope for—that 
 there may be a life within them whose con- 
 tinuity shall not be broken by the hand of 
 Death. And what has its sublimest con- 
 summation in the Christian consciousness had 
 its crude form in the Portrait of Enoch. 
 That Portrait was God’s message of universal 
 hope. Every man of the future aspired to be 
 an Enoch. Every man strove to light a torch 
 within his own soul which should not be put 
 out by the gusts of the dark valley—a torch 
 which should defy the power of the withering 
 blast to extinguish and should forbid the 
 damp of death to quell. 
 
 Do you doubt that such was the aspira- 
 tion of the men who recorded the trans- 
 lation of Enoch. Look, then, at the earliest 
 
 Pictures in the Gallery. What is their pro- 
 
he THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 minent characteristic in relation to the hope 
 of immortality? It is the effort to grasp 
 Eternal Life, here and now. When I survey 
 these Portraits, I can almost see the hand of 
 the artist at work on the elaboration of the 
 idea. I see one thought dominating the 
 canvas—the perpetuation of that ideal which 
 is expressed in the translation of Enoch. 
 There is a perpetual attempt to resist the 
 inroads of time, to keep the Portrait ever 
 young. Nay, there is an inversion of the 
 recognised order of life; the progress of each 
 day is made a progress toward the morning. 
 The men of the Pentateuch grow younger 
 with the striking of the hours. Whenever 
 their years are full, the inspired hand hastens 
 to throw a mantle of youth around them. 
 Their fullest blossom is in late autumn; their 
 brightest glow is in old age; their lark’s song 
 is at evening time. Abraham’s glory only 
 begins where ordinary life is fading. Jacob 
 becomes for the first time a poet when the 
 shadows of age might well have chilled him. 
 The dreams of Joseph’s youth become his 
 
 
 

 
 ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 73 
 
 certainties in the closing hour. Moses, whose 
 manhood has run through a desert, beholds at 
 the age of a hundred and twenty years a 
 vision which the spirit of youth alone could 
 see—the vision which belongs to an eye 
 undimmed and a natural strength unabated. 
 Now, what does all this mean? What but 
 this, that the Picture of Enoch is no accident 
 in the Hebrew annals. It is not something 
 which occupies an eccentric position in the 
 Gallery ; it is a symbol of the earliest thought 
 of the race which produced it. The idea 
 expressed in the translation of Enoch, so far 
 from being an eccentric idea, is the pre- 
 dominant thought of the Pentateuch and the 
 latest sentiment of the Christian Evangel. 
 The passion for Eternal Life is the first and 
 the last passion of the Hebrew race. To live 
 for ever, to see no corruption, to keep un- 
 dimmed life’s pristine glow—that is the aspir- 
 ation which feeds on the sight of Enoch, and 
 that is the aspiration which permeates the 
 morning and the evening of the Jewish day. 
 The thought which kindles that morning and 
 
74 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 that evening is not the waking from the sleep 
 of death; it is rather the hope that the soul 
 will never sleep; it is the impulse of the spirit 
 of Man to see its Promised Land before death, 
 to meet God face to face in some period of the 
 present world, and to have the life preserved 
 by receiving a breath of the Eternal. The 
 ideal of Enoch’s immortality is the spirit 
 which pervades Genesis and the thought 
 which inspires St. John. It illuminates the 
 night of Bethel; it dispels the tears of 
 Bethany. It is the Alpha and the Omega; it 
 marks the beginning and the end. 
 
 And now the question occurs, Where lay 
 this early hope of immortality? Each nation’s 
 hope of immortality lies in the ideal of that 
 nation; where the heart is, there will the 
 treasure be. The Hindu’s hope lay in the 
 mind’s power of thinking, the Roman’s in the 
 hand’s power of acting, the Greek’s in the 
 eye’s power of seeing. What was the Jew’s? 
 A nation should reveal the ground of its hope 
 at the very first, from the very dawn of its 
 history. /wdah does. Here, on the threshold 
 
 
 

 
 ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 75 
 
 we have the germ of all her expectations 
 and the secret of all her aspirings. Come and 
 let us look at this early biographical notice. 
 It is the summary of a life very brief, very 
 uneventful, very prosaic—a life which to the 
 outward eye would have revealed nothing 
 but the commonplace. Whatever glory it has 
 is within. Whatever claim to immortality it 
 has is centred in the soul. The physical side 
 presents nothing romantic, nothing brilliant, 
 nothing which the world calls heroic. Thus 
 briefly runs the record of its days: ‘And 
 Enoch lived sixty and five years and begat 
 Methuselah; and Enoch walked with God 
 after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, 
 and begat sons and daughters; and all the 
 days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and 
 five years; and Enoch walked with God, and 
 he was not, for God took him.’ 
 
 Yet, brief as it is, this record is a biography 
 —the description of a rounded life. Three 
 times the curtain rises and falls. We see first 
 an ordinary man—a life in no way distinguished 
 
 from his contemporaries—engrossed in family 
 
76 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 cares and engaged in secular pursuits. At the 
 end of sixty-five years he has done nothing 
 to mark him out from his fellows. Suddenly 
 there comes a change—drastic, complete, re- 
 volutionary. Up to the birth of his son 
 Methuselah he has merely ‘lived;’ he now 
 begins to ‘walk with God.’ He makes a 
 mysterious transition—a transition from the 
 vegetative to the vital. How it comes, we 
 know not. The dramas of the Bible are all 
 internal; they are acted in the secret places 
 of the soul. There may or there may not 
 have been an outward catastrophe. There are 
 lives which are transformed from vegetation 
 into vitality by no visible hand; not every 
 Saul of Tarsus needs a physical light to trans- 
 figure him. In any case, it is the inward act 
 that the Bible photographs. Very deliberately 
 is this indicated here. The narrative declares 
 that when Enoch began to walk with God it 
 made no change in his outward environment. 
 He had lived sixty-five years as a man of the 
 world occupied with the cares of a household. 
 When he changes mere ‘living’ into ‘ walking 
 
ENOCH THE IMMORTAL ny) 
 
 with God, he goes over precisely the same 
 geround—he is still occupied with the care of 
 ‘sons and daughters.’ No outward eye could 
 have detected any difference. Religion is not 
 a change of space; it is a change of spirit. It 
 is not a new road, but a new perception. It 
 finds its earliest glory in retracing the old way. 
 Enoch, in his vegetating days, has gone the 
 round of certain household duties, has borne 
 certain burdens which as a parent he was 
 bound to bear. When he begins to walk with 
 God he walks on the same path where he had 
 vegetated. He repeats the old duties with a 
 new light in his soul. He bears the old 
 burdens with a new strength in his arm. He 
 meets the old faces with a new love in his 
 heart. He treads again the path which he trod 
 yesterday; but yesterday he walked alone, 
 to-day he walks with God. 
 
 And now, for a second time, the curtain 
 falls. And, when it rises again, we have a 
 third and distinctively unique scene. Enoch 
 himself has disappeared ; there is no trace of 
 
 him. But there are traces of all his contem- 
 
78 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 poraries. We are standing in the midst of 
 a vast cemetery. Around us are the graves of 
 a world—that world in which Enoch lived and 
 moved. Inscribed on each tombstone are the 
 names of those who had stood by his side, of 
 those who had preceded him, of those who had 
 followed him. Adam is there—outside the 
 gates of Eden. Abel is there—in the field of 
 his martyrdom and of his glory. Seth is there 
 —in a piece of hallowed ground. Enos is 
 there—and beside his grave is the first place 
 of public worship. Cainan is there—inheriting 
 the only possession which his race was des- 
 -tined to keep. Methuselah is there—remind- 
 ing us that, however long, life comes to an end. 
 But Enoch is zo¢ there. There is no grave for 
 him. There is the place where a grave should 
 have been, and there is a tablet above the 
 spot; but on the tablet are inscribed the 
 words, ‘He is not here; he is risen.’ 
 
 That is the picture of the life of Enoch. 
 What is its message of immortality? Why is 
 this man represented as escaping death? It is 
 
 1 “Cainan’ #zeans ‘ possession.’ 
 
ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 79 
 
 on the ground of holiness; it is because he 
 ‘walked with God.’ Do you think that is an 
 accidental connection of ideas? It is the key- 
 note to all the subsequent teaching both of the 
 Old Testament and of the New—the prelude 
 to all the coming music. ‘He walked with 
 God, and God took him,’ are words which 
 never cease to echo through every corridor of 
 Bible history. They ring through the Desert ; 
 they resound through the Tabernacle; they | 
 peal through the Temple; they sing through 
 the Exile; they breathe through the songs of 
 the Restoration; they vibrate through the 
 Sermon on the Mount. From Enoch to 
 Moses, from Moses to David, from David to 
 the Son of David, there is one prevailing note 
 of revelation, and its message is this: The 
 connection between morality and immorality. 
 If the Jew doubted a future life, it was be- 
 cause he doubted human goodness. It was not 
 the sight of a dead body that made him a 
 sceptic ; it was the sight of a dead soul. ‘The 
 soul that sinneth, z¢ shall die, was the thought 
 at the very root of his being. That a man 
 
80 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 without holiness should see the Lord was to 
 him an impossibility. To abide in God’s 
 Tabernacle, there was required a man with 
 clean hands and a pure heart, free from life’s 
 vanity and uncorrupted by earth’s treachery. 
 The problem of the Jew was, ‘Who shall dwell 
 in everlasting burning!’ and by that he meant, 
 not ‘Who shall dwell in the flames of hell!’ 
 but ‘Who shall dwell in the flames of heaven!’ 
 —‘Who shall abide with the burning purity 
 of God!’ That was with him the one question, 
 the crucial question. Physical difficulties were 
 nowhere; intellectual difficulties were nowhere ; 
 his one dread of death was his sense of the soul’s 
 unpreparedness for meeting the holiness of God. 
 
 That great spectator of the Gallery—the 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews—has an 
 observation regarding the Portrait of Enoch 
 which to my mind singularly illustrates the 
 point we are considering. He says, ‘By faith 
 Enoch was translated that he should not see 
 death, for before his translation he had this 
 testimony—that he pleased God.’ For a long 
 
 time these words conveyed to me an impres- 
 

 
 ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 81 
 
 sion of artistic incongruity. The thing which 
 vesthetically jarred on me was the latter clause. 
 I: seemed an anti-climax. To say that Enoch 
 was translated to an upper world was a tre- 
 mendous statement—a statement which lifted 
 the mind at once to the very top of the hill. 
 But to add that previous to this mighty event 
 he had the testimony of having pleased God— 
 was not this a coming down from the hill! 
 Was it not like saying, ‘The man got a sight 
 of the sun ; but before he got a sight of the sun 
 he had a glimpse of the candle’! Surely the 
 getting to heaven was the climax of all blessed- 
 ness, and rendered superfluous any statement 
 of previous and minor revelations to his soul ! 
 So I reasoned ; and I reasoned wrongly. For 
 the art was really on the side of the writer to 
 the Hebrews. What I called an anti-climax 
 was in truth a culmination, a completion of 
 the whole story, a statement without which it 
 would be zot complete. Let us consider why. 
 
 No Jew would have accepted the belief that 
 translation to heaven would zzse/f be a boon. 
 Paul says that if the last day of the world 
 
 F 
 
82 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 were come and those who remained alive were 
 to be caught up without dying, they would 
 have as much need to be changed as those w'io 
 pass through the valley of the shadow. And 
 is he not right! Is he not right apart from re- 
 ligion altogether—as a mere matter of common 
 sense! If you were told that, by the influence 
 of lightning or some other known or unknown 
 physical agency, one of your friends had 
 been suddenly carried up to the planet Jupiter, 
 would you not feel on his account considerable 
 discomfort? Assuredly ; and for this reason, 
 that you had no evidence of your friend having 
 received a previous revelation from that planet. 
 Everything would depend on that previous 
 revelation, on that foregoing ‘testimony.’ It 
 would not help your peace to know that 
 Jupiter is a grander planet than the Earth, nor 
 even to be told that its inhabitants enjoy a hap- 
 piness to which the Earth is a stranger. The 
 question for you would be, Was the happiness 
 
 of Jupiter in congruity with the dnd of the 
 
 Earth? Had there come to your friend, un- 
 
 { 
 
 known to you and in the silence of the night, | 
 
 ee ete 
 
ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 83 
 
 intimation of the nature of that world to which 
 he was going, indications of a kindred sym- 
 _ pathy, messages that he would not find himself 
 “an alien, revealings that there was a place in 
 that planet prepared for him? Nothing but 
 thts would satisfy the solicitude of your soul. 
 Now, before you criticise the writer to the 
 Hebrews, remember that the same thought 
 was in A#zs mind. He had before him the 
 picture of a man taken up bodily into heaven. 
 He did not feel that this was by itself a boon. 
 He wanted to know something more. Was 
 the man fit for his new environment? Was 
 there a congruity between him and his fresh 
 surroundings? Would he find when trans- 
 planted a soil where he could grow? Could 
 flesh and blood see the kingdom of God; 
 could corruption inherit incorruption! Did not 
 translation suggest such a query even more 
 than death did! Death was at least a weed- 
 ing out of much that corrupts—of the old 
 body and the lusts thereof. But to be lifted 
 into heaven wz/k the old body, to be taken 
 up with the faded garment still hanging 
 
84 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 round him, to be ushered into the presence of 
 God without losing those elements which had 
 attracted to the earth—this was something 
 which wakened the inquiry, ‘Who is sufficient 
 for these things!’ 
 
 Do you not see now how the statement of 
 Enoch’s preliminary message comes as a 
 climax. It supplies the one thing needed to 
 suggest exaltation. It says that Enoch was 
 not transplanted into /forezgn soil. It says 
 that translation was preceded by revelation— 
 that before going out into the new world he 
 had a picture of that world in his mind. It 
 tells us that the beginning of the process was 
 not the approach of earth to heaven; it was 
 the approach of heaven to earth. He did not 
 first go to Eshcol to try the taste of the grapes; 
 he had specimens of the fruit droughé to him— 
 sent into his desert as a foretaste. And this 
 foretaste was the climax of the glory ; it made 
 the glory, when it came, not wholly new. The 
 whelly new cannot be the wholly beautiful. 
 Before I am translated into any scene I must 
 have a testimony concerning that scene. The 
 
 
 
 
 
ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 8s 
 
 fields of God may be adsolutely lovely ; but I 
 want them to be relatively lovely—lovely to 
 me. To be that, they must speak to my past, 
 to my yesterday, to my remembrance. In so 
 far as their beauty transcends me, they will 
 be to me zo¢ beautiful. If they would speak 
 to my heart, they must vemznd me of some- 
 thing. 
 
 And I think this keynote of the Jewish 
 message explains a fact which has puzzled 
 all the historians of the land of Israel—her 
 extreme reticence as to the future life. No 
 man can say that this reticence was the result 
 of ignorance. Her youth had been spent in 
 the very soil where the thought of immortality 
 grew luxuriant. Egypt was of all lands that 
 which dreamed most of the life beyond; its 
 whole interest was in a world to come. It 
 was for this it raised its piles of architecture ; 
 it was for this it inaugurated its rites of 
 worship ; its very manual of religious devotion 
 was entitled ‘The Book of the Dead.’ From 
 this land of the Eternal Shadows, Judah came; 
 
 we should have expected her to have shared 
 
86 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 in these shadows. We should have thought 
 that the religion of Israel would have been a 
 constant call to prepare for a world to come. 
 On the contrary, such a note is conspicuous 
 by its absence. On every experience of earth 
 the changes are rung; but there is a silence 
 over Man’s futurity. The Jewish Psalmody 
 is the richest of all music; but it lacks a 
 chord which vibrates in lower harmonies—the 
 message of a world beyond. Why? Do you 
 think it can be accident? No; it must bea 
 designed silence—silence for a reason. And 
 what better reason can there be than the 
 thought whose keynote was struck in the 
 translation of Enoch! The Jew is reticent 
 about the future because with him the solemnity 
 lies in the present. His first meeting with 
 God is not to be on the farther shore; it is 
 demanded here and now. Eternal Life is 
 with him not something which /ollows death; 
 it is something which precedes death. His 
 God is not beyond the grave, and therefore 
 his immortality is not beyond the grave. Im- 
 mortality without God would be his despair. 
 
 
 
ENOCH THE IMMORTAL 87 
 
 If he is to go into another world and not be 
 a stranger, he must carry something over from 
 thes world ; and he can carry nothing but God. 
 Therefore his one solemnity is the meeting 
 with God now—under the oak of Mamre or 
 on the hilltop of Moriah. ‘Prepare to meet 
 thy God, O Israel!’ are very solemn words 
 of the Old Covenant; but the contemplated 
 meeting was not in a scene beyond the tomb, 
 but on the earthly side of the Valley of Death. 
 
 TOO need first the vision of Thyself, O 
 
 Lord! I would not taste of death until 
 I have seen Zee! Even were I told that death 
 was but translation, I would not taste it till I 
 had seen Zee! No chariot of fire can bear 
 me to glory unless the glory be already in my 
 heart! Invain Thy crystal river shall sparkle 
 if I have no eye for beauty! In vain Thy 
 choristers shall sing if I have no ear for music! 
 In vain Thy day shall be nightless if I have 
 no thirst for knowledge! In vain Thy sea 
 
 shall be stormless if I have no wish for expan- 
 
88 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 sion! In vain Thy work shall be painless if I 
 have no mission for my hands! In vain Thy 
 city shall be gateless if there be no love im- 
 prisoned in my soul! Not to seek Thee in 
 heaven would I come; come and seek me on 
 earth! JI would be translated defore death; I 
 would taste Thy grapes in my desert. Thy 
 Life is zot beyond the grave; it is here, it is 
 now. I can reach it without dying; I can 
 breathe it without expiring. I need not the 
 wings of a dove to find it; I require not an 
 angel’s flight to lead me to its rest. I have 
 heard men say, ‘Death 1s the gate of Life. 
 Nay; Zhou art the gate, and Death is the 
 shady avenue. Not on the other side would 
 
 , 
 
 I see Thy face unveiled; meet me on Zhzs 
 bank of the crystal river! Meet me in the 
 mist and in the rain! Come to me in my 
 cloud! Speak to me in my struggles! Wait 
 for me at the ofenzng of the valley! Trans- 
 late me into Thy presence ere I tread the 
 narrow way! Send me the morning before 
 
 the evening! Show me heaven ere I die! 
 
 i ee me a 
 

 
 GE ERAN: 
 NOAH THE RENEWER 
 
 As we pass to the next figure of the group 
 there is, as it seems to me, a point of develop- 
 ment well worthy of attention. In the two 
 preceding figures we have seen the human 
 soul struggling with the defects of its environ- 
 ment. In neither of these cases has the soul 
 really conquered; it has only escaped and 
 flown away. Abel has a higher ideal of 
 sacrifice than Cain; but Cain is stronger than 
 Abel. All that can be done with Abel is to 
 transplant him, to remove him from the evils 
 that are coming on the earth. Enoch is walk- 
 ing on a higher plane than his contemporaries— 
 walking with God. But one man cannot stem 
 the torrent of a nation’s iniquity; all that can 
 be done for Enoch is to translate him, to carry 
 
 him into a purer air where he will have 
 39 
 
go THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 freedom to pursue his walk unmolested. But 
 with the figure of Noah we are brought face 
 to face with a new conception. The old con- 
 ditions are there, the old struggle is there; but 
 the result is different. Hitherto, the problem | 
 has been solved by the translation of the maz ; 
 it is now to be solved by the translation of the 
 world. Hitherto, the only sequel has been 
 the removal of the man from his environment ; 
 there is now introduced a new solution—the 
 renewal of the environment to suit the man. 
 For the first time in the Great Gallery, we are 
 confronted with the idea of reform. Noah is 
 not the first to protest, but he is the first 
 to reform. Enoch’s walk was a protest, but it 
 did nothing for the world; it only saved him- 
 self. But with Noah there begins the first of a 
 series of efforts to save the wor/d—to translate, 
 not the man, but the earth. That the seed of 
 the woman should be carried into the wilderness 
 where the dragon cannot hurt it, is doubtless 
 a consoling thing; but it would be something 
 more consoling still if the seed of the woman 
 
 should bruise the ead of the dragon! 
 
NOAH THE RENEWER gI 
 
 I have said that Noah represents the begin- 
 ning of such efforts. It is well to emphasise 
 the point. The popular notion is that he 
 represents xothzng—that he died with the ante- 
 diluvians. We think of him as having been 
 the hero of a unique and unparalleled cata- 
 strophe, and as therefore outside of our daily 
 experience. No man has suffered so much 
 from the flood as Noah. It has drowned his 
 reputation. It has quenched his fame as a 
 representative man. The flood has infected 
 his memory with the mist of its own antiquity. 
 The more universal we make the deluge, the 
 more local we make Noah—the more do we 
 isolate him from the common experience of 
 mankind. We come to think of him as a man 
 in a miraculous environment—a man whose 
 life-tragedy lay in circumstances that have 
 never occurred since, and will never occur 
 again ; and we feel that, whatever may have 
 been his interest to his generation, his influence 
 has perished for posterity. 
 
 Now, the truth is that, in so reasoning, we 
 have entirely mistaken the real point of signi- 
 
g2 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 ficance in Noah’s experience. The tragedy of 
 this man’s life is not the flood at all. From 
 any historical point of view, from any artistic 
 point of view, the least interesting feature 
 about him is precisely his sojourn in the ark. 
 His interest for posterity lies in the dbuclding 
 of the ark, not in the sailing of it. It lies in 
 the fact that he was the first who made an 
 effort at reform. He was not the first of 
 dissatisfied men. Enoch was dissatisfied. But 
 Enoch was content to make his escape from 
 the earth and leave things as they were. 
 Noah was not thus content. He saw things 
 in as bad a light as Enoch did; he deplored 
 them as muchas Enoch deplored them. But 
 Enoch’s goal was not enough for dzm. Ata 
 certain stage of despair, to drop the curtain 
 and be done with the world is a very easy 
 thing; but at no stage is it the highest thing. 
 The highest thing is to refuse to accept the 
 position of the world as final, to insist on 
 remaining within it until its sin is washed 
 away. That is the attitude of Noah. He is 
 
 the sad spectator of a scene of moral corrup- 
 
NOAH THE RENEWER 93 
 
 tion. His heart is heavy with the burden of 
 a degenerate race. Yet he refuses to abandon 
 the rdle of a declaimer. He clings to the 
 hope that when the ship is shattered by the 
 storm, there may be left entire a single plank 
 which shall come forth purified by the waters, 
 and become the nucleus of a new vessel 
 destined for wider and nobler service. 
 
 What, then, was this vision of corruption 
 which Noah saw?—that is the first question 
 which lies before us. It is very graphically and 
 very characteristically answered by the sacred 
 narrative, ‘ All the imaginations of the thoughts 
 of man’s heart were only evil every day.’ This 
 is not the description we should have expected. 
 It is characteristic of the Bible, but it is not 
 characteristic of human nature. We should 
 have thought that an ancient narrative wishing 
 to expose the wickedness of a short-lived race 
 would have begun by making a catalogue of 
 its actual crimes. So would any ofher ancient 
 narrative in the world. But the Bible is on 
 the very threshold true to its future self. It 
 strikes here a chord from which it never 
 
94 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 deviates—the chord of inwardness. With sur- . 
 
 prising modernness, it refuses to indicate cor- 
 ruption by a catalogue of deeds done. It goes 
 to the root of the matter—to the deeds ot 
 done, the deeds in the imagination. That is 
 the refrain of the Bible from Genesis to 
 Revelation. Paul cries to the Philippians, 
 ‘Whatsoever things are pure and lovely and 
 of good report, think of these things!’ We 
 expect him to say, ‘Do these things!’ But 
 he has simply reproduced the message which 
 was given to primitive humanity, ‘ Beware of 
 your zdeal!’ There is not a more profound 
 sentiment in all ethical literature. The radical 
 difference between a good man and a bad man 
 lies in what they ¢kznk, The boundary line 
 between virtue and vice is situated in the 
 ‘imagination. The germ-cell of a man’s 
 character is his ideal, his answer to the ques- 
 tion, ‘What makes life worth living?’ So 
 said this early artist. He looks at the stream- 
 ing crowd and cries, not ‘What are they 
 doing!’ but ‘What are they thinking of!’— 
 ‘What are they dreaming of!’—‘What are 
 
NOAH THE RENEWER 95 
 
 they enamoured of!’ He does not ask what 
 their hand is touching, but what their eye is 
 seeing. He draws his colours from within. 
 Perhaps the man amongst them who has 
 least violated the law appears to him the most 
 hopeless subject; for the measure of each is 
 determined, not by the height of his deeds, 
 but by the height of his imaginings. 
 
 The danger, then, of this age was the danger 
 which besets the young men of every age—an 
 unworthy ideal of glory. What was, in the 
 view of this artist, this unworthy ideal of 
 slory? It was the admiration for the Portrait 
 of Cain, the preferring of the physical to the 
 mental. No one can read the early chapters 
 of Genesis without being impressed with the 
 fact that the memory of Cain has become the 
 world’s ideal. The recurrence of his name in 
 the names of his successors would alone bear 
 evidence of this. When we hear one called 
 Cainan, another designated Tubal-Cain, what 
 does that imply? Clearly this, that he was 
 the hero of the people, the man after whose 
 
 likeness parents moulded their children. But 
 
96 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 there is higher evidence than that. The 
 memory of Cain had found its way, not only 
 into the names of his successors, but into the 
 literature of the succeeding age. There arose 
 in that age a great poet, a poet the rhythm of 
 whose words has not been drowned by the 
 noise of the deluge. A fragment of his verse 
 has come over the flood, and is known to us 
 as ‘The Song of the Sword.’ It is sung to 
 his two wives, perhaps in accompaniment to 
 one of those musical instruments which had 
 their origin in his family. The striking 
 feature of this fragment is its inspiration by 
 the memory of Cain. Brief as it is, Cain 
 figures there—figures in his violence, takes a 
 heroic place in his very deed of shame. He 
 appears as the successful homicide—the homi- 
 cide who secures immunity by his very crime, 
 and is protected by that which should have 
 assailed him. The poet has evidently caught 
 fire from a current enthusiasm—the admira- 
 tion for brute force successfully exerted and 
 followed by no catastrophe on the person of 
 the delinquent. 
 

 
 NOAH THE RENEWER 97 
 
 Now, when a man’s example finds its way 
 into literature, that man has conquered his 
 age ; he has won an empire compared to which 
 the power of the monarch grows pale. And if 
 it be a dad example, words cannot describe the 
 detriment which an age suffers. When the 
 poets of a nation chant songs of the sword, 
 when they sing in rolling numbers the glories 
 of oppression, when they ring the triumphs of 
 might victorious over right and of tyranny 
 trampling upon truth—it is then that there 
 comes to life, and especially to the life of youth, 
 the greatest danger that can meet a human 
 soul—the danger of mistaking evil for good. 
 
 Now, this was the danger of that old world. 
 It had caught the fever of a false enthusiasm. 
 Its disease was a disease of the imagination— 
 an admiration for the thing least admirable. 
 The danger of the Jew has always been an 
 image, graven or ungraven. It has come, not 
 from the object, but from the reflection of the 
 Opiect in Nis, eye.) 50) was ity here. ‘There 
 were giants on the earth in those days,’ cries 
 the narrator. There was no harm in that, 
 
 G 
 
98 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 assuredly! But then, he naively adds that 
 these giants ‘were of old the men of renown, 
 There the harm began! This race, as I 
 understand it, had fixed upon the physical 
 development as the one end in life. They had 
 enthroned in their imagination the men of 
 bodily might, the men of muscle, the men of 
 bone and sinew. They had recognised as the 
 crown of human glory the qualities that could 
 crush, the qualities that could break and bend. 
 They had begun to experience that sentiment 
 which they were to bequeath to their de- 
 scendants—the offence of the cross. They 
 had come to look upon meekness, mercy, 
 compassion, as unmanly things. Their ad- 
 miration for crushing strength was beginning 
 to act on the body-politic. It was becoming 
 the woman’s motive for choosing a husband— 
 the ground of her sexual selection. Not 
 
 obscurely is this hinted in the fifth chapter of . 
 
 Genesis. As I read its record, 1 feel myself 
 in the presence of a shrewd utilitarianism 
 proposing to regulate the marriage-tie on 
 
 purely prudential principles, 
 
 
 
NOAH THE RENEWER 99 
 
 Unfortunately, the course proposed was not 
 really prudential. The motive of this people 
 was that which afterward found expression in 
 the Tower of Babel—to secure permanence 
 for their race. It had never occurred to them 
 that permanence cannot be secured on a 
 merely physical basis, that to build on such a 
 basis was to build upon the sand. The 
 suggestion of danger came from a voice 
 outside—the J/ast voice which was likely to 
 influence the zwside. There appeared a man 
 who would now be called a street-preacher. 
 The second epistle which bears the name of 
 St. Peter calls him ‘a preacher of righteous- 
 ness.’ The expression is significant. It in- 
 dicates that the mission of Noah was not that 
 of a soothsayer, of a man who cried, ‘ There is 
 a flood coming on the earth; come into my 
 ark and you will be saved!’ No, to read it 
 thus is to read it wrongly. No one can study 
 the Picture without coming to the conclusion 
 that the original aim of Noah was to avert the 
 flood. He was not a prophet in any other 
 sense than Jonah was a prophet. He was not 
 
1oo)§6€0—,W-. THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 magically to foretell the inevitable occurrence 
 of an event. Rather was he to proclaim that its 
 occurrence was xzo¢ inevitable—that it might or 
 might not happen, according to the righteous- 
 ness of the community. Let me try to exhibit 
 this point; it has been habitually lost sight 
 of, and by losing sight of it we have reduced 
 the personality of Noah from the height of a 
 teacher to the stature of a magician. 
 
 Out from the giants of the antediluvian 
 world, there strides this silent, unobtrusive 
 figure. Silent and unobtrusive he has hitherto 
 been. His name suggests this; ‘Noah’ means 
 ‘rest.’ Amid the bustle of his age he has been 
 marked out, perhaps stigmatised, as ‘the quiet 
 man.’ Nobody looked for a reaction through 
 him. On the contrary, his contemporaries ex- 
 pected that he would loyally follow in the 
 worldly path of his forefathers. ‘He shall 
 comfort us concerning the work of our hands, 
 because of the ground which the Lord hath 
 cursed.’ Such was the hope which centred round 
 his life. I understand the words to mean, ‘ His 
 piety shall profit us, his prayers shall bring good 
 
 
 
NOAH THE RENEWER 101 
 
 harvests.’ Yet this is the man who becomes a 
 thorn in the side of that old world! There he 
 stands—a solitary figure over against a multi- 
 tude! He plants himself suddenly in the 
 highway and raises into shrill accents that 
 voice which hitherto had been silent. The 
 note of his preaching is Reform. He calls to 
 his countrymen: ‘You are ina delusion. You 
 think you are building on the solid earth. I 
 tell you that you are separated by a thin crust 
 from a flood of waters. You and [J are in the 
 path of an overwhelming tide, and I do not 
 mean to sfay there; I must have something to 
 breast the coming waves. Will you not avert 
 their coming! Will you not realise before it is 
 too late that if you crush out mind by matter 
 you have broken the only embankment that re- 
 strains the sea! Will you let in a rush of waters 
 that will drown society, engulf order, submerge 
 law, swamp the paths of peace, overwhelm the 
 meek and gentle, bury fathoms deep the 
 aspirations of the heart!’ 
 
 Such I believe to have been the original 
 
 message of this earliest of preachers—before 
 
102 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 even to his own mind, it took concrete form. 
 Even when it did take concrete form, the 
 message of Noah was a moral message. The 
 ark of safety which he proposed to build for 
 the world was at no time the ark of gopher- 
 wood. The ark of gopher-wood was never 
 meant for the safety of the world, but, as the 
 writer to the Hebrews says, ‘for the saving of 
 his own house’; it was only to be used when 
 the world refused to be saved. The edifice he 
 proposed to build for his countrymen was not 
 a ship to save men from the flood; it was a 
 structure to prevent the flood from coming. 
 He was no clairvoyant looking into the future 
 and beholding an inevitable catastrophe in 
 to-morrow’s sky. The danger he saw was xot 
 in the future; it was in the present. The 
 district was unclean—unclean in its streets, 
 unclean in its houses. He saw that such 
 
 corruption would involve a plague, and he 
 
 prepared a hospital in case of that plague. 
 
 Yet he felt that the real cure was not the 
 devising of the hospital, but the cleansing of 
 the causeway—not the minimising of the pesti- 
 
 ———E———— CU Sl —— 
 
 ea a er ee 
 
NOAH THE RENEWER 103 
 
 lence when it came, but the prevention of the 
 pestilence from coming. To read Noah other- 
 wise is to misread him—to misread on the 
 threshold the nature of Bible prophecies. The 
 prophecies of the Bible are never announce- | 
 ments of what shall be; they are announce- 
 ments of what must be if things remain as 
 they are. I will not admit a single exception 
 to this. When the prophet cries,‘God will 
 judge Assyria!’—‘ Egypt shall not escape !’— 
 ‘Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ what does he 
 mean? That if Assyria and Egypt and 
 Nineveh fail to cleanse their streets, they will 
 get the plague. It is not meant that the 
 plague will come irrespective of the cleansing. 
 Do you doubt this? Take one crowning 
 instance as the proof of all. The fall of 
 Jerusalem was predicted in detail; yet at her 
 eleventh hour a greater than all her prophets 
 said that He would have gathered her children 
 under His wings if, even in this her day of 
 tribulation, she had known the things that 
 belonged to her peace. 
 Accordingly, the tragedy of every Jewish 
 
104 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 reformer lies in his hours of waiting—waiting 
 for the spiritual dawn. This is‘Noah’s tragedy 
 —the tragedy of the mother watching the 
 symptoms of the sick child. His eye is not 
 on the coming flood; it is on the ebb and flow 
 of Man’s fitful fever. His eagerness is not 
 that his prediction should be fulfilled; it is 
 that it should zot be fulfilled. His desire is 
 that the limb may not need to be amputated ; 
 he waits for signs of amendment. It is for 
 this he has to labour so long—not for the 
 completion of the wooden ark. The Divine 
 power which could bring a flood of retribu- 
 tion might well have brought the ark on its 
 bosom. But this preacher had to wait for 
 something which Divine power could zot 
 bring, without destroying Man more effec- 
 tively than by the deluge. He had to wait 
 for something which must be voluntary—a 
 change in the human soul, the dawning of a 
 new day in the heart of the creature. Such 
 a dawn must be free—not forced; it may be 
 prayed for, but it must be waited for. The 
 tragedy of Noah’s life is that solitary vigil. 
 
 4 
 
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NOAH THE RENEWER 105 
 
 He is to my mind the most solitary figure 
 ever painted on the canvas of history—except, 
 perhaps, One. Noah’s solitude is solitude in 
 a crowd—and it is all the deeper on that 
 account. We see an eager man in the heart 
 of an eager multitude; but the eagerness of 
 the man is not on the same ground as the 
 eagerness of the multitude. The man is bent 
 on the things of the spirit; the multitude is 
 intent on the life of the flesh. There can be 
 no solitude more intense than an experience 
 like this. The desert is not so lonely, the 
 pathway of the forest is not sodrear. To be 
 the spectator of an unsympathetic crowd is 
 the climax of lonesomeness. 
 
 If I were asked to photograph the life of Noah 
 in one expression, I would say that its charac- 
 teristic is solitary waiting. From beginning 
 to end this is its leading feature. As with the 
 life of Enoch, there are three risings and fallings 
 of the curtain. We first see the man in the 
 midst of the world, lifting a solitary protest 
 against the life of that world. Itis the lonely 
 vigil of a single human soul through the 
 
106 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 watches of a night lit up by the lamps of 
 revelry and heated by the fires of licence; it 
 is Faith watching and waiting for the dawn. 
 Then the scene changes. The man is lifted 
 above the world—almost translated like Enoch. 
 He is floated in the air on a lonely sea—a 
 sea whose waters have covered every rood of 
 land and have buried in their depths that giant 
 strength of which earth was so proud. But 
 even in this vast solitude this human soul is 
 waiting—waiting for an earth renewed, waiting 
 for the green leaf to reappear, waiting for the 
 emergence of the mountain’s brow. He is 
 sending forth the raven and the dove as his 
 messengers to bring ‘him tidings of the re- 
 appearing land. Then comes the third vision, 
 and it is different from both. The night is 
 gone and the waters are gone. The world has 
 risen baptized from its corruption, but with 
 the weariness of a weaned child. The old life 
 is past, but the new is not yet come. And 
 there stands Noah—solitary, waiting still! 
 For the first time in his vigil he waits under 
 a rainbow. The new life has not come, but 
 
 
 
NOAH THE RENEWER 107 
 
 hope has dawned. Light is in the east; morn- 
 ing is in the air; the breath of spring is 
 pulsating in the ground. Everywhere there is 
 the joy of a Jeginning. Everywhere there is 
 the sense of a fresh start in life. Everywhere 
 there is the proclamation of a second chance 
 for Man—a chance of emancipation from the 
 old heredity, of liberation from the yoke of 
 yesterday, of freedom from the ancestral 
 stain. When the last curtain falls it leaves 
 Noah waiting; but he is waiting under the 
 rainbow. 
 
 THANK Thee, O Lord, that even where 
 
 corruption has risen into a flood, it has 
 never conquered the world! I thank Thee 
 that one stream of holiness has ever been more 
 powerful than an ocean of iniquity! I thank 
 Thee for that promise made by the rainbow 
 that, however hereditary be the course of sin, 
 it shall never overflood the earth! Often do 
 I marvel at the fulfilment of this promise. I 
 have heard the floods lifting up their voice 
 
108 «=©606pkTHE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 with a great noise; I have seen the waves 
 of unrighteousness cover the land. I said in 
 my heart, ‘God is conquered ; evil has pre- 
 vailed; faith has been a delusion!’ But as I 
 watched and waited, the deluge became the 
 delusion; the waves sank, the winds lulled, 
 the waters dried up, and Ararat raised her 
 head to greet the sun! Why is it that, when 
 the waters of sin are so deep and the streams 
 of purity so shallow, the streams have always 
 proved mightier than the waters? It is be- 
 cause holiness is more hereditary than zzholi- 
 ness. Thou hast no rainbow of promise for 
 the propagation of evil; it has only the 
 promise of the fourth generation; it gets 
 weaker as it goes. But love, Zy love, has 
 the rainbow! Though it were only one spark 
 in a rayless night, though it were only one 
 seed in a barren soil, though it were only one 
 throb in a lifeless pulse—it has the rainbow! 
 There is no “mzt to its power of descending ! 
 When I tread it in the dust, it blossoms; when 
 I crucify it, it is crowned; when I bury it, 
 it rises from the dead ; when I degrade it, it 
 
NOAH THE RENEWER 109 
 
 sits upon a throne; when I depress it, it is 
 exalted; when I clothe it in rags, it assumes 
 white raiment; when I bring it to Calvary, it 
 hails the Easter Morning! I thank Thee, O 
 Father, that no cross can kill Thy Christ; I 
 bless Thee that Thy rainbow-promise is to the 
 flower—not to the flood! 
 
CHAP TTR ay Tt 
 ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 
 
 THERE is, as it seems to me, a strong analogy 
 between the figures of Enoch, Noah, and 
 Abraham. They are all, in a sense, translated 
 men—men who have been lifted above their 
 immediate surroundings and led to anticipate 
 other surroundings. Enoch has dreamed of 
 heaven; Noah has dreamed of a land beyond 
 the sea; Abraham is to dream of a land 
 beyond the years. To this last has been 
 accorded a great distinction. The most 
 mature of all the Gospels declares that he 
 anticipated the Christian Era—‘ Your father 
 Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw 
 it, and was glad.’ In what sense is it meant 
 that Abraham foresaw the day of Christ? 
 Not in the sense of a clairvoyant; that would 
 
 have been no real revelation of Christ. The 
 110 
 
 
 
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ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 111 
 
 only way in which I can foresee the day of 
 another is by living the life of that day. 
 There are days in the heart of winter which 
 may be said to anticipate the summer—days of 
 sunshine, days of warmth, days of calm. So 
 is itin the winter of the moral world. There 
 are hours in which humanity seems to make a 
 leap into other centuries and other scenes. 
 There are men who are before their time. 
 They stand upon a hill and see the other side. 
 They narrowly miss being heralds of the 
 future. They only miss that destiny because 
 their age is not ripe for them. Like Paul, 
 they are ‘born out of due time’—born too 
 soon. They have an Easter vision while it is 
 yet winter, and therefore the winter loves 
 them not. They are not looked upon as pre- 
 mature, but as immature—as unripe fruits of 
 the tree of life, whose branches ought to be 
 cut down to prevent disease and death. They 
 are in advance of their age, and therefore they 
 are the victims of their age. They are ever 
 the men of sacrifice. 
 
 Such a man is Abraham. He is born too 
 
112 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 soon. The father of a vast multitude, he is 
 himself a lonely figure—above his surround- 
 ings, unappreciated by his age. And why is 
 this? It is because he has conceived an idea to 
 ‘which his age is a stranger—an idea the working 
 out of which z¢se/f involves sacrifice. We are 
 in a great mistake about the life of Abraham. 
 We think of it as a brilliant morning followed 
 by a splendid noonday and a stormy night— 
 as an existence whose dawn and _ whose 
 meridian were marked by personal triumph, 
 but whose evening had to bear the cross. A 
 more untrue description of the artist’s thought 
 cannot be conceived. This life is all cross 
 together—morning, noon, and night. It is 
 from beginning to end a life of sacrifice. 
 Mount Moriah is not what we imagine—an un- 
 fortunate accident which disturbed his sun- 
 shine at the last. No; it is only the dark 
 close of a dark day, the latest step of that 
 long ascent which had begun in Ur of the 
 Chaldees with the climbing of a steep hill. 
 
 Let us consider this beginning. A youth 
 in the land of Ur conceives the desire to 
 
ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 113 
 
 emigrate. It comes to him in the form of a 
 Divine command—in the sense of a destiny, 
 ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy 
 kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a 
 land that I will show thee; and I will make 
 of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, 
 and make thy name great; and thou shalt be 
 a blessing ; and in thee shall all families of the 
 earth be blessed.’ Now, the popular view is that 
 this is the record of a young man’s amdztzon. 
 We figure Abraham as a youth tired of his mean 
 surroundings, eager to get out from the narrow 
 precincts of a paltry village into the life and 
 air of the metropolis—a man wishing to make 
 his fortune and seeking for a wider field of 
 labour. We figure him so, and so figuring 
 him, we make light of his velzgion. We say, 
 ‘Who would not obey a Divine command like 
 that—a command to better one’s self, a com- 
 “ mand to be prosperous, a command to have 
 purple and fine linen and sumptuous faring 
 every day; would not any man be pious on 
 these terms !’ 
 
 But we have entirely misinterpreted the 
 
 H 
 
II4 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 meaning of the artist. The Picture he seeks 
 to draw is exactly the opposite of that which | 
 our mind has sketched. It is not that of a 
 young man striving to be rich; it is that of a 
 youth who in the enthusiasm of a great cause 
 is willing to be poor. It is not the delineation 
 of a life which is impressed with the narrow- 
 ness of its surroundings and longs for wider 
 room; it is the unselfishness of a life which 
 feels the largeness of its room and pities the 
 narrow surroundings of others. Abraham is 
 not the man of a village seeking a metropolis ; 
 he is the man of a metropolis seeking to 
 extend a village. Ur of the Chaldees was no 
 home in the desert ; it was a centre of civilisa- 
 tion, a seat of worldly prosperity. The dream 
 which there burst upon the soul of Abraham 
 was the hope of being a secular missionary, a 
 colonist of waste places. He looked out from 
 a scene of culture upon a scene of surrounding 
 barbarism, or, at least, of surrounding primi- 
 tiveness. There came to him the thought that 
 his culture was a gift from God—a gift not to 
 retain, but to bestow. Was it not the part of 
 
ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 115 
 
 a benefited nation to bless those lands which 
 had not been benefited! If he had a lamp of 
 blessing, it was surely given that he might 
 share it! Had he any right to sit contentedly 
 beside his fire while others were cold!. Should 
 he not go out into the cold and teach others 
 how to make a fire! Would not his own 
 comfort durvz him if he monopolised it! Was 
 it not his duty to leave his country and his 
 kindred and his father’s house—that he might 
 plant the blessings of civilisation in countries 
 and kindreds and houses which were still 
 untouched by its light! 
 
 The truth is, I regard the Portrait of Abra- 
 ham as the earliest attempt to represent a 
 cosmopolitan man—a man seeking to make 
 the world a recipient of his own blessing. 
 You will go wrong, in my opinion, if you 
 find his antitype in the youth who seeks to 
 agerandise himself. You will find it rather 
 in him who is eager to spend himself—to pour 
 out all the treasures of his life for the good of 
 humanity. He is the forerunner of that great 
 missionary band which, whether in the sphere 
 
116 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 of religion or of culture have been the pioneers 
 of a new era to lands that were outside the pale 
 —the forerunner of Duff, of Livingstone, of 
 Moffat, of Carey, of Stanley, of Nansen, of Sir 
 John Franklin—of all in every age who have 
 travelled and explored for purposes of human 
 development. Abraham is the man with the 
 cosmopolitan spirit—the man who realises the 
 common rights of the human race and seeks 
 to secure them for the race. This will always be 
 his proudest distinction and his highest glory. 
 
 And it will also be found to have been 
 the root of his sacrificial life. No man in the 
 days of Abraham could be a cosmopolitan 
 without incurring the command, ‘Get thee out 
 of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father’s house!’ To be a cosmo- 
 politan is now a noble thing; it was then a 
 suspected thing. Man had not learned the 
 rights of human nature. He had not learned 
 that the fact of being a sufferer itself confers 
 the right to be succoured, shielded, comforted. 
 The morality of each nation was national. To 
 
 be touched with sins and sorrows outside was 
 
ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 117 
 
 unpatriotic. Patriotism was the highest virtue; 
 the love of country was the highest love. 
 When a man’s inner nature said to him, ‘Get 
 thee out of thy country!’ and when for the 
 benefit of other countries he felt constrained 
 to obey that voice, he was likely to go alone. 
 By his act of cosmopolitan sympathy he had 
 divorced himself from zatzonal sympathy. If 
 the brook insists on widening into an ocean, 
 it will thereby cease to be a brook. No doubt 
 it will make a grand exchange; but an eye 
 untrained to the vast will prefer the narrower 
 precincts and look with regret on the enlarge- 
 ment of the waters. Even so was Abraham 
 regarded. The cosmopolitan impulse that 
 came upon him was an enlargement of spirit ; 
 it transformed a brook into a sea. But, for 
 that very reason, it was a curtailment of his 
 sphere among contemporaries. It exposed 
 him to social ostracism. It separated him 
 from his age. It expelled him from current 
 sympathies. It caused him to be looked upon 
 as a visionary, as a dreamer, as a man unfit 
 for his kind. The path selected by Abraham 
 
118 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 was a path which the world of his day did 
 not deem heroic. 
 
 Look now at this phase of Abraham’s life 
 in the light of the later saying that he saw 
 the day of the Lord. Is not the initial 
 movement of this man’s life precisely the 
 initial movement ascribed to the Messianic 
 course of Jesus! Paul declares that the first 
 thing Jesus did was to ‘empty Himself’—to 
 select a path of impoverishment and privation. 
 ‘He who was rich, for our sakes became poor,’ 
 are the suggestive words in which he emphasises 
 the sacrifice involved in the cosmopolitan path 
 of the Son of Man. From beginning to end 
 the charge against Him was the fact that His 
 mission was more than national; that He 
 deemed the welfare of humanity an object of 
 higher interest than the welfare of His country. 
 Could any period of past history mirror that 
 fact in anticipation more clearly than the ex- 
 perience of Abraham! If you read it as we 
 have read it, as I believe the artist meant it 
 to be read, you will see in it a forecast shadow 
 of the Gospel delineation. Here is a man who 
 

 
 ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 119 
 
 might have been rich taking a course which 
 involved his becoming poor. No doubt he is 
 promised large possessions; but these are only 
 promised—they had to be accepted by faith. 
 _ What had to be accepted as fact was present 
 privation—hardship, weariness, distrust by old 
 friends, coldness from strangers, isolation from 
 the life of all. All this was involved in the 
 cosmopolitan path of Abraham. It was a 
 lonely path, a thorny path, a hitherto untrodden 
 path—a path which was only to be trodden in 
 its fulness when the feet of the Son of Man 
 should overstep the boundaries of nations. 
 
 The life of Abraham, then, begins with an 
 experience which, in germ, is identical with 
 that of Jesus. On the threshold of his ministry 
 I am struck, too, by the analogy between the 
 first three trials of Abraham and the three 
 temptations of Jesus. Taking the order of 
 these temptations from the narrative of St. 
 Matthew, they correspond to the order of the 
 trials of Abraham. Of course, it is an unde- 
 signed coincidence; it is neither prophecy on 
 
 the part of Genesis nor reproduction on the 
 
120 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 part of the Gospel, but it is ali the more striking 
 on that account. Look at the experience 
 attributed to Jesus. The tempter comes to 
 Him and says, ‘Command that these stones 
 be made bread’ ; it is an appeal to the physical 
 nature—the sense of outward want. The 
 scene changes, and there is a new appeal— 
 what I might call an appeal to the imagina- 
 tion. Christ stands on a pinnacle of the 
 temple, and a voice cries, ‘Cast thyself down— 
 try to reach your goal by the road of physical 
 power. Then comes the final trial—the moral 
 conflict of the soul. Before the eye of Jesus 
 there stretch two fields of possible possession— 
 the one rich and luxuriant, the other at present 
 a bleak and desert waste, and between these 
 two He is called to choose. The tempter 
 emphasises the glory of the luxuriant field, 
 ‘All these things will I give thee if thou wilt 
 fall down and worship me.’ 
 
 Abraham too, as it seems to me, has these 
 three trials at the outset of his ministry. He 
 is first assailed by famine; the bodily nature 
 is made on the very threshold to protest 
 
ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 121 
 
 against the enterprise; it is a temptation to 
 abandon the work. Then comes a temptation, 
 not to abandon, but to accelerate it by an 
 exercise of physical power. It appears in the 
 subtle effort to win the favour of Pharaoh by 
 a worldly policy. Nor does Abraham come 
 forth scatheless from the trial; he does cast 
 himself down from the pinnacle of 4zs temple. 
 But the third temptation is destined to redeem 
 him, to wash him white. To him as to the 
 future Messiah, there: comes the call to an 
 act of choice between worldly possessions. 
 You will find it in the eleventh chapter of 
 Genesis. Two fields stretch before the eyes of 
 Abraham—the one fertile, the other seemingly 
 barren. His kinsman Lot! is in search of the 
 fertile field; he looks upon it with longing 
 gaze as a source of independent empire. He 
 would choose it if he could; but the choice 
 lies not with him; it lies with Abraham. 
 Will Abraham permit it? Will he allow a 
 vassal to get the richer possession? Will he 
 
 1 This is one of the characters whom I hope to treat in- 
 
 dependently in a subsequent volume. 
 
122 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 suffer a dependant to receive the kingdoms of 
 the world and the glory of them while he him- 
 self is ¢onfined to the seemingly barren waste? 
 Remember where Abraham’s temptation to 
 the rich kingdom lay. It lay where Christ’s lay 
 —not in covetousness but in usefulness. What 
 could the pioneer of civilisation not have done 
 with such a kingdom! Might not the cause 
 of humanity be helped by riches! Might not 
 the labours of the missionary be aided by the 
 possession of private means! Might not the 
 influence of the new movement be rendered 
 more powerful if it were felt to come, not from 
 the valley, but from the hill! 
 
 Does Abraham, then, choose the richer pos- 
 session? No; he selects the apparently barren 
 one. Why? Because he does not want his 
 followers to become a nation through out-door 
 relief. God was to make of him a great 
 nation. The race which he was to develop 
 was to be developed by se/f/-culture—not by 
 culture from without. To use his own words, 
 no man was to say, ‘I have made Abraham 
 
 rich. And so he gave up the mountain for 
 
ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 123 
 
 the valley. He went down—down to priva- 
 tion, down to wandering, down to a life without 
 a home, down to days of marching and nights 
 of weariness. And with that selection of the 
 valley there came to him another hour of the 
 day of Jesus. When Christ took the lowly 
 path in preference to the high one, ‘many of 
 His disciples walked no more with Him.’ So 
 is it here. The man enriched by Abraham’s 
 own abstinence becomes the attraction. There 
 is an exodus from the vale—an exodus from 
 the camp of Abraham to the camp of Lot. 
 The prospect of the loaves is too tempting. 
 The chivalry of the master has itself provided 
 the servant with the chance for desertion. 
 Why seek a land in the future when there was 
 aland here and now! Why journey through 
 endless plains when there was a rest at the door! 
 Was not home better than hardship, quiet 
 superior to struggle, abundance preferable to 
 scarcity! It was surely folly to pursue a dream 
 when the waking reality stood before the eyes! 
 
 And so, the camp of Abraham was thinned. 
 
 His humanitarian scheme received a chill— 
 
124 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 a chill which came from the heat of his own 
 generosity. This was the saddest hour of his 
 life, as I think the corresponding period was 
 the saddest hour in the life of Jesus. Yet, as 
 to the soul of Jesus this hour was the prelude 
 to a great revelation, so to the spirit of 
 Abraham it was the forerunner of a vision of 
 glory ; here again was the experience of the 
 missionary to anticipate the Day of the Lord. 
 Abraham too was in the hour of his seeming 
 failure to have a scene of transfiguration. 
 While he stands dejected on the desert waste, 
 there flashes before his sight a wonderful 
 vision. An empire rises to his view—an 
 empire such as Man had never seen. It 
 stretches to all ends of the earth—north, south, 
 east, west. It embraces all ages of time—it is 
 to endure for ever. It comprehends all varieties 
 of men—its inhabitants are to be as the dust 
 of the earth for multitude. Above all, it is 
 a kingdom whose foundation is to be laid in 
 righteousness—a kingdom bestowed by God, 
 chartered by the will of heaven, ‘unto thee will 
 I give it. Such is the vision which in his 
 
ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 125 
 
 hour of sadness floats before the eyes of 
 Abraham. From the place where he stood he 
 saw the promised land; and the place where 
 he stood was transfigured. _It lost its obscure 
 character; it became a centre, a metropolis, a 
 highway for the nations. He beheld it already 
 clorified—transformed from a field of tents 
 into a city of palaces within whose walls are 
 gathered the worshippers of the living God. 
 The scene passed, and Abraham descended 
 into common day. He came down into life’s 
 rough reality. And the reality was rough 
 indeed. Around him was a growing corrup- 
 tion. The plains of Sodom were a sink of 
 iniquity. They seemed to breathe derision 
 upon his dream of moral glory. Yet, here 
 again, if chronology did not prevent it, we 
 should almost persuade ourselves that we 
 heard the coming tread of the Man of Nazareth. 
 We remind ourselves that it is after Christ’s 
 vision of transfigured glory that He meets the 
 demoniac on the plain, and that the power of 
 healing lay with the Heart which had seen the 
 glory. We hear the question asked by the 
 
126 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 disciples who had remained below, ‘Why 
 could not we cast out the demon?’ and we 
 feel the answer to be, ‘Because you did zot see 
 ‘ the glory.’ All this passes before us as we 
 stand in front of the Picture of Abraham. 
 This man is strengthened for Sodom by the 
 vision of the glory. In sublime accents he 
 lifts up his voice to plead for the doomed land. 
 Almost, for a moment, we should imagine that 
 we heard Christ weeping over Jerusalem! I say 
 ‘almost’ and ‘for a moment. Do not think 
 that the day of Abraham ever reached beyond 
 the dawz of Christ’s day. With all its analogies 
 of experience, it was still the analogy between 
 the child and the man. The tears of Abraham 
 over Sodom do not really equal the tears of 
 Jesus over Jerusalem. The pity of Abraham 
 was pity for the righteous; the pity of Jesus 
 was pity for the fallen. Abraham beheld gold 
 amid the clay, and lamented that the gold 
 should perish wz the clay; Jesus beheld the 
 clay wzthout the gold, and wept because its 
 wealth had never come. Abraham prayed for 
 the ten righteous men who might possibly be 
 
 CO eee 
 
ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 127 
 
 left in Sodom ; Jesus shed tears of agony over 
 those degenerate thousands who crowded the 
 streets of Jerusalem. The reign of absolute 
 mercy had not yet begun; the Gospel of 
 unconditional grace was still afar off. It was 
 as yet rather charity than love—rather the 
 suspending of judgment than the following of 
 condemnation by forgiveness. Abraham was 
 only in the dawn; but he was in the dawn. 
 He had caught a glow of the sunrise—of human 
 possibilities; he had gathered fresh hope for 
 Man. It was for other ages to extend his 
 labours. 
 
 And here the cosmopolitan picture shades 
 into another. Have you ever marked the 
 peculiarity in the delineation of this figure of 
 Abraham? The ordinary course of life is to 
 begin in the interior and then spread out 
 ‘toward the sea. But Abraham’s life begins by 
 the sea, and then makes its way to the interior. 
 Most of us are individuals first and cosmopoli- 
 tans afterwards; Abraham is a cosmopolitan 
 at the beginning, and an individual at the end. 
 His life opens on the pathway of the nations. 
 
128 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 He feels that he has a mission to the masses. 
 The destiny which floats before him is a world- 
 destiny. His first visions are visions on a 
 large scale. He contemplates not men, but 
 kingdoms—not units, but multitudes. His aim 
 is to found an empire—an empire for God and 
 righteousness. His eye is on things which 
 suggest the boundless; he looks at the stars 
 of night and dreams of magnitudes. Such is 
 the morning; what of the afternoon? Here 
 all is changed; the broad sea becomes a 
 narrow lake. The man who at the opening of 
 the day has only an eye for multitudes sub- 
 sides at evening into the family circle. The 
 starry dome is exchanged for the precincts of 
 the tent. The sacrificial character remains; 
 but its sphere is altered. It ceases to be a 
 sacrifice for the zazzons ; it becomes a surrender 
 to the hearth. Its range at morning was 
 humanitarian ; towards evening it has become 
 a household fire. The life which began with 
 obedience to the mandate, ‘ Get thee out of thy 
 country!’ culminates in a submission of the 
 
 will to a threatened family bereavement. Into 
 
ABRAHAM THE COSMOPOLITAN 129 
 
 this inland experience our study follows him 
 not. It is an experience which has had special 
 interest for the ¢heologian; to us its only in- 
 terest is its bearing on the succeeding Portrait. 
 We will leave Abraham where we found him— 
 standing by the humanitarian sea. 
 
 THANK Thee, O Lord, for my glimpses 
 
 of the coming day! I thank Thee that 
 there are prophetic moments in which I have 
 sight of what zwz// be! Why should I zot have 
 such moments! Hast Thou not given to the 
 swallow the vision of a summer which is yet 
 far away! Hast Thou not given to the bee 
 the vision of many mansions that are to come! 
 And shall my soul have no guide toward zt¢s 
 morrow; shall my heart have no prophecy 
 of the undawned day! My Father, Thou hast 
 not left me thus comfortless. To me, as to 
 Abraham, there have come intimations of a 
 larger country and premonitions of a wider 
 brotherhood. As I have strayed below the 
 stars, I have asked myself if these alone have 
 
 I 
 
130 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 unity. I have asked if there is no law that can 
 so bind human lives. I have said, ‘Is Thy 
 blessing alone for Esau—for rough material 
 things; hast Thou no word for Jacob—no bond 
 of the spirit!’ And as I said it, I knew that it 
 was a voice from Zee, a prophecy from Thee. 
 I bless Thee for that prophecy, O my God! 
 Henceforth the stars say to me, ‘So shall thy 
 seed be!’ Hasten, my Father, this day of 
 Thy Christ! Unite the souls of men as Thou 
 hast united the orbs of heaven! May the 
 bells of union ring across the snow! Ring out 
 the separation of countries and kindreds! 
 Ring out the pride of race and the jealousy of 
 privilege! Ring out the passion for monopoly 
 and the lust for special power! Ring out the 
 wars that sever the cities of the plain! Ring 
 in the bond of brotherhood, the law of love, 
 the harmony of helpfulness, the chord of com- 
 passion, the fulness of fellowship, the music of 
 mercy, the chant of charity, the symphony of 
 now silent souls! I deszve to hear it ; and when 
 I hear it I shall be glad. 
 
 Ee — 
 
GEA Pele Rave by 
 ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 
 
 SIDE by side with the figure of Abraham 
 stands in the Great Gallery the form of his 
 son Isaac. Yet nothing can exceed the con- 
 trast between these figures. One would imagine 
 that they were painted by two artists of differ- 
 ent lands. No ancient nation but Israel could 
 have exhibited such variety in its types of 
 heroism. Abraham, spite of his cosmopolitan- 
 ism, has an element in common with the ideal 
 of the o/d world. He is the type of masculine 
 strength. He represents human activity— 
 man cleaving his way by the sheer manipula- 
 tion of energy. But Isaac is distinctively a 
 female type. He reveals human nature in a 
 passive attitude—precisely that attitude which 
 the old world did not like. In passing from 
 
 Abraham to Isaac, we seem to be passing from 
 131 
 
132 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 a mountain torrent to a stagnant pool. We 
 come from the running into the rest, from 
 the hurry into the hush, from the sound into 
 the silence. Abraham is the father, and Isaacis 
 the son; yet the sphere of the son seems more 
 curtailed than that of the father. We expect 
 generations to be progressive, to branch out as 
 they grow. But here, as the generation grows, 
 it would almost seem as if the original branches 
 were lopped away and the tree of life were 
 diminished. As the two figures stand before us 
 we are tempted to say, ‘ Abraham is the young 
 man and Isaac the old. In coming from the 
 father to the son, we have come from the 
 world into the nursery, from the guidance of 
 nations to the care of children. Abraham has 
 the foreign mission; Isaac has the home 
 mission. Abraham has to civilise a world; 
 Isaac has to train a family. Abraham plants 
 colonies; Isaac digs wells. Abraham over- 
 awes his opponents; Isaac shrinks from con- 
 flict. Abraham treads a political arena and 
 restrains wrong; Isaac walks within his own 
 house and restrains himself. 
 
 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 133 
 
 But, conceding the full force of the contrast, 
 are you sure that it indicates an anti-climax ? 
 Admitting that Abraham’s sphere is the world 
 and Isaac’s the domestic altar, are you certazx 
 that the latter is the scene of a diminished 
 energy? I am myself quite certain of the 
 contrary. I feel convinced that service be- 
 comes more arduous in proportion as the 
 sphere narrows. I have often been struck with 
 these words of Jesus, ‘He that is faithful in 
 that which is least, is faithful also in much.’ 
 They are not the common measurement. The 
 common measurement is, ‘He that is faithful 
 in that which is large, is faithful in that which 
 is small.’ On what ground does Christ invert 
 the order? On the ground of deep spiritual 
 insight—insight which experience has con- 
 firmed. Many a man has been great in the 
 winter blast and fretted in the presence of the 
 summer shower. Many a man has borne his 
 cross in public with splendid magnanimity and 
 sunk beneath it in the silence of his own room. 
 Many a man in the exchange and in the forum 
 has an admirable command of temper, who 
 
134 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 yet in the precincts of his home is a bully and 
 a tyrant. Many aman is the soul of chivalry 
 to strangers, and the essence of rudeness to his 
 own sisters or daughters. Why is this? The 
 short and easy answer is that there is hypocrisy 
 in the human race. I do not think that is the 
 explanation. I take the reason to be the 
 principle enunciated by Jesus. The wider 
 sphere may be more prolific in influence, but 
 the narrow one is richer in sacrifice. It is 
 richer in sacrifice because it is more barren of 
 stimulus. It reveals no cloud of witnesses. It 
 displays no prizes for success. It offers no 
 prospect of outward plaudits. The virtues of 
 the home circle are spontaneous virtues. They 
 have nothing to cultivate them from without ; 
 they must grow by their own strength, or not 
 grow at all. 
 
 There is a remarkable passage in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews in which it is stated that Jesus 
 ‘suffered outside the camp.’ I take the idea 
 to be that the trials of a captain are greater 
 when they are unappreciated by the army— 
 when they have to be borne in the silence of 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED ews 
 
 his own breast. The life of Isaac is from 
 beginning to end a suffering in private. His 
 was that form of sacrifice which does not show, 
 which wins no reputation for heroism. But 
 just on that account it had a value all its own. 
 The sacrifices of Abraham were on the line of 
 the world’s march, and they received the 
 stimulus which comes from being conscious of 
 the world’s eye. The sacrifices of Isaac came 
 from the unaided heart. They were the pro- 
 duct of an unassisted will. They were the 
 revealing of private sentiments, of strength 
 exhibited in seclusion. In Isaac we have the 
 impression not of hearing, but of overhearing. 
 We seem to be listening to a beautiful singer 
 who imagines himself unheard; and we give 
 him the credit of the imagined solitude. We 
 feel that his singing comes purely from de- 
 votion to the music. He is like an artist 
 painting in a desert—painting in the firm belief 
 that none will ever see his work. We bow 
 reverently before the evidence of unconstrained 
 devotion, of unalloyed love for that which is 
 intrinsically fair; and we feel that the absence 
 
136 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 of witnesses has itself contributed a fresh 
 homage to the worship of truth and beauty. 
 
 I think you will find that in the delinea- 
 tions of the Great Bible Gallery each life has 
 one typical incident—one event which in small 
 compass expresses the whole essence of the 
 character. Peter is typified by his sea-walk- 
 ing—his alternate moments of buoyancy and 
 sinking. John is epitomised in his rest on the 
 bosom of Jesus. Paul is summed up in his 
 Adriatic voyage—tossed between the intel- 
 lectual waves of Asia and Europe. Elijah is 
 typed in his chariot of fire. David is photo- 
 sraphed sweeping the strings of the harp— 
 weaving the discords of Israel into a great and 
 glorious harmony. Abraham has his keynote 
 in the command to leave his country for a 
 larger country—for the citizenship of the world. 
 Isaac ¢oo has his typical incident, the event 
 which sums up his whole life. What is that? 
 It is the sacrifice of Mount Moriah. As a 
 mere incident it would have little significance ; 
 its importance lies in the fact that in one 
 touch of the pencil it portrays the character, 
 
 i 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 137 
 
 the life, the distinctive destiny of the man. 
 Let us consider this. 
 
 When the scene of Isaac’s life opens, he is a 
 youth. But itis not with the wonted attributes 
 of youth that he is introduced to us. Youth 
 is wont to manifest itself in the effort at 
 ‘independence; Isaac appears before us bound. 
 Our first sight of him is the sight of an unre- 
 sisting victim on an altar of sacrifice. His 
 father Abraham has bound him there in the 
 belief that heaven had commanded it. But 
 you will miss the point if you imagine that 
 the attitude of Isaac is that of a mere victim. 
 It is that of acquiescence. The light in which 
 he is brought before us is that of filial 
 obedience, not of constrained obedience. He 
 is seen umresistingly submitting to an act 
 because it is the work of his father. He 
 does not understand the wisdom of the act 
 any more than his father understands it. 
 What he does understand is that he is obeying 
 his father. The obedience is with him a 
 voluntary deed, a surrender of zwz//. In the 
 deepest sense, Isaac has bound Azmself to the 
 
138 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 altar. He has submitted to self-effacement 
 for the sake of his family. That submission 
 is, I say, the type of his whole life. He is 
 always bound to a domestic altar. From first 
 to last he is offered up in sacrifice to the will 
 of his family. At every turn of life he is 
 forced to give up the public for the private 
 sphere, to exchange the gaze on the ocean 
 for the walk by the stream. He is the fore- 
 runner of all domestic drudges, of all who 
 lose promotion through the impediments of 
 home. Isaac is the bird that is prevented 
 from soaring by the requirements of its nest. 
 When he puts out his wings to fly, he finds 
 ever that he is bound fast to a family altar— 
 that identical altar to which early in life’s 
 morning he was bound by his father Abraham. 
 
 We see a remarkable instance of this in 
 the first revelation which Isaac receives from 
 heaven. It is the revelation to a young man, 
 but it is very unlike that form of inspiration 
 which we poetically associate with youth. We 
 associate youth with the wings of the morning, 
 with the promise and the power of a majestic 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 139 
 
 flight. We hear God speaking to every young 
 man in his aspiration to rzse, to break from 
 his narrow limits and soar to higher spheres. 
 So had the voice come to Abraham, ‘ Get thee 
 out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father’s house, into a land which I 
 will show thee!’ That is the typical revela- 
 tion to the spirit of youth. But what would 
 you think if your son were to say to you one 
 morning, ‘I have been offered a_ lucrative 
 appointment of commanding influence, but I 
 intend to refuse it; God has revealed to me 
 that my sphere is one of humble service and 
 commonplace duty!’ Would you not deem it 
 an incongruous thing that a lad with the world 
 before him and with the possibilities of the 
 world in his view, should voluntarily elect to 
 shut himself in a cellar! 
 
 Now, some such want of enterprise seems 
 at first sight to be involved in the revelation 
 claimed by Isaac. There is a famine in the 
 land of Gerar, the humble place of his abode. 
 This is, in other words, to say that it was a 
 place with no prospect of promotion. The 
 
140 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 eyes of the young man naturally turned to 
 Egypt. It was a centre, a place of possi- 
 bilities, a thoroughfare for the nations. The 
 census periodically tells us that our villages 
 are gradually being depopulated by migration 
 into the towns. From a cosmopolitan stand- 
 point, Gerar was a village and Egypt a town. 
 The natural impulse of Isaac was to emigrate, 
 to seek the centre. What prevented him? 
 He said he had a prohibitive revelation. He 
 maintained that the voice of the Lord had 
 come to him with the command, ‘Thou shalt 
 not go down into Egypt; dwell in Gerar!’ 
 Could he be right in his conclusion! Could 
 such a message come from God! Is it not a 
 breach of religious art to represent itso! Is 
 not the Picture of Abraham more true to the 
 Divine ideal than the Picture of Isaac! Why 
 should a Divine revelation be described as 
 coming for the express purpose of curtailing 
 the energies of a man! 
 
 But in asking this we are under the delusion 
 that a curtailed sphere is a curtailed energy. 
 
 It is not; a service is more arduous in propor- 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED T4I 
 
 tion as it is humble. My own opinion is 
 that there is nothing which demands so much 
 religious strength as the sense of a shut 
 gate. Let us try to put the’ experience ‘of 
 Isaac in a modern dress; you will find that 
 probably this was also its original dress. Let 
 us say that this young man at the moment 
 when he was about to step into a wider arena 
 was prostrated by sudden illness—an illness 
 which permanently enfeebled his capacities 
 for outward work. Let us say that for an 
 hour he fretted and fumed over the narrowing 
 of his destiny, and cast a longing eye on the 
 Egypt which he could not enter. Let us say 
 that then there came into his mind a thought 
 which breathed an unspeakable calm, ‘Is not 
 this sickness the voice of God, is not this door 
 shut by God!’ I say that to be calmed by such 
 a thought is the greatest triumph religion ever 
 secured. It is easy to hear God’s voice com- 
 manding you to go out; but it needs faith to 
 recognise it when it bids you go in. When 
 Paul hears a voice, ‘I will send you far hence 
 
 to the Gentiles,’ he can readily say, ‘It is the 
 
142 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Lord’; but when Isaac hears a voice, ‘ Stay at 
 home!’ he may well ask,‘ Who speaks?’ It 
 is a grand thing in Isaac to recognise the 
 Lord’s voice in the accident that maimed him. 
 It is a grand thing that he is able to say, 
 ‘The altar to which I am bound is z¢se/f my 
 destiny. We deem that man godly who can 
 accept a wider field of labour; but I think the 
 man requires more godliness still who can 
 accept as a gift from God the curtailment of a 
 field which he believed to be all his own. 
 What, then, is this corner to which Isaac is 
 limited? It is the most commonplace work in 
 the world. He has exchanged the firmament 
 for the farmyard. His father Abraham had 
 swept the horizon with the eye of faith and 
 read his destiny in the stars of heaven. The 
 gaze of Isaac is on the ground; his eye rests 
 on pools of water. Read that passage so 
 remarkable in its prosaicness, which occurs in 
 the twenty-sixth chapter of Genesis: ‘Isaac 
 digged again the wells of water, which they 
 had digged in the days of Abraham his father ; 
 for the Philistines had stopped them after the 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 143 
 
 death of Abraham: and he called their names 
 after the names by which his father had called 
 them. Is this the occupation of ahero! It 
 does not seem so. But.if you look deeper into 
 this dusty soil, you will find diamonds—the 
 most sparkling diamonds of Isaac’s life. No- 
 where to my mind does his character shine 
 out so resplendent as in this commonplace 
 passage. We see again a man bound to a 
 domestic altar-—the altar of filial love. Again 
 he offers himself, as a sacrifice, to his father 
 Abraham. Abraham is dead, but his memory 
 lives, and his memory is potent with Isaac. 
 It is not often that a new generation aims at 
 elorifying the generation that has passed away. 
 We are all apt to have a patronising pity for 
 the wells which our fathers have dug—to feel 
 how much better our workmanship would have 
 been. But here is a man on fire with the love 
 of yesterday! His whole aim is to glorify 
 the past—even at his own expense to glorify 
 it. He disclaims originality for his workman- 
 ship. He says, ‘These wells were made by 
 
 my father; I have no credit in their construc- 
 
144 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 tion; I am only restoring the work which he 
 did, and which after his death the Philistines 
 undid. There is something very grand in 
 the self-effacement implied in the words, ‘He 
 called them by the names which his father 
 Abraham had called them.’ Plagiarism would 
 have been very easy; by no possibility could 
 it have been detected; the signs of the 
 original hand had been all obliterated. What 
 made Isaac disclaim the authority? It was 
 filial love. He was sze/Z bound to the altar 
 of his father. Still, in spirit, was he standing 
 upon Mount Moriah. Still was he offering 
 himself to a parent’s service. Still was he 
 surrendering his own life to crown the life that 
 gave him birth. There is no more beautiful 
 episode than the naming of these common- 
 place wells! 
 
 I am not at all sure that this self-effacement 
 on the part of Isaac came from a quiet nature ; 
 nor do I think this is the conception of the 
 artist. I think he wants us to contemplate 
 Isaac as a very strong man. ‘There are two 
 
 kinds of self-effacement—very different from 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 145 
 
 each other, but equally implying power. There 
 is a self-effacement which consists in taking 
 on, and there is a self-effacement which con- 
 sists in giving up. The first was that of 
 Abraham. His surrender was not so much 
 a parting with possessions as a sharing of 
 possessions. If he gave up his country and 
 his kindred, it was for a larger country and 
 a wider kindred. His watchword was not 
 ‘abnegation,’ but ‘sympathetic appropriation’ ; 
 he took on him the burdens of others. But 
 Isaac belongs to the second order. His sacri- 
 fice takes the form of personal divestiture. It 
 is true he has to give up nothing but his will. 
 Neither on Mount Moriah nor afterwards is 
 he required to divest himself of an actual 
 garment. His sacrifice is all inward—all of 
 the will. What he gives on Moriah is not his 
 life, but his willingness to surrender it; what 
 he gives in Gerar is not a possession, but his 
 consent to abstain from it. Yet the man who 
 can give his will has given everything. He 
 who can empty himself of his dearest desire 
 has reached the acme of self-abnegation—a 
 K 
 
146 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 height of abnegation to which nothing could 
 add. And there is nothing which could accom- 
 plish such a work but energy, the perfection 
 of mental strength. It is a strong thing to 
 lift your brother’s burden and put it on your 
 own shoulders; but to lift your own joy and 
 put it away from you, to refuse to stretch out 
 your hand to grasp a coming gain, requires, 
 I think, a nerve stronger still. 
 
 A fine instance of this occurs in the waiving 
 of his partiality for his best loved son Esau in 
 favour of the less loved son Jacob. We speak 
 of Abraham offering up his son Isaac; did it 
 ever strike any one that Isaac offered up his 
 son Esau? We almost seem to find the in- 
 fluence of heredity—the two acts are so much 
 alike. In both cases it is a surrender of will; 
 in both it is a surrender to what is believed to 
 be the Divine pleasure. Isaac, like Abraham, 
 has ason whom he loves. He sends for him 
 to bless him. But it is in the days of his old 
 age,and his eye has become dim. His hands 
 are guided to the head of the wrong man; he 
 gives the blessing to Jacob that was meant for 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 147 
 
 Esau. Immediately, he accepts the accident 
 as the will of God. Though it is dead against 
 his own will, though it is the result of a cruel 
 deception, he receives it as the decree of 
 heaven. With a determined fatalism he cruci- 
 fies his own desire in obedience to what he 
 deems the counsel of eternity. It is in vain 
 that Esau pleads. His father’s heart is with 
 him ; but his creed is stronger than his heart. 
 That creed is the belief that whatever happens 
 becomes God’s will—even though it has been 
 produced by bad agencies. The misguiding 
 of the blind man’s hand was a sin; but the 
 touch of that hand was a fact. Being a fact, 
 it had passed into the hands of God. It had 
 become part of the universe. Man could not 
 revoke it; anger could not annul it; regret 
 could not gainsay it—it was henceforth the 
 will of heaven. 
 
 Now, the question which I put is this, Did 
 the artist mean this Portrait to be the re- 
 presentative of sentimental weakness? Is it 
 not clear he meant the reverse! To me the 
 fisure of Isaac suggests rather one of Crom- 
 
148 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 well’s Ironsides than one of earth’s weaklings. 
 The blood in his veins is akin to that of the 
 Puritans. His was the surrender of a will, 
 not the crushing of a will—there is a great 
 difference between these two. The crushing of 
 a will brings vacancy ; the surrender of a will 
 is itself an exercise of will-fower. To my 
 mind there is no more majestic spectacle than 
 that of the old blind man bereft of all the 
 qualities which constitute pagan greatness, yet 
 ruling his clan with authority unbroken. It 
 is one of the finest tributes to the majesty of 
 inward strength which has ever been painted 
 by any literature. It is a tribute to f/emznzine 
 strength, bearing strength, passive strength— 
 a tribute which was not to be excelled till the 
 Son of Man built on the Mount His monu- 
 ment to the greatness of a surrendered will, 
 and inscribed on it the words, ‘Blessed are 
 the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
 heaven !’ 
 
 And is it not a sense of this feminine type 
 of greatness which has constrained the artist 
 
 in Genesis to give woman a place so high! 
 

 
 ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 149 
 
 Nowhere is the Bible so modern as in its 
 opening pages. The domestic hearth of the 
 Book of Genesis hardly seems an ancient 
 picture. There the kingdom of woman is 
 recognised. There she is the head of the 
 home—I had almost said, the head of the 
 Patriarchs, At a time when elsewhere she is 
 either a drudge or a plaything the Gallery of 
 Genesis has represented her as free. Nay, she 
 is there more than free; she is compelling. 
 Woman would almost seem to give the law 
 to man. Sarah dominates Abraham ; Rebekah 
 sways Isaac. It would make no difference 
 though you could prove that the empire only 
 existed in the fancy of the artist. The value 
 lies in the thought, the idea, the aspiration. 
 Tipiiesin the ifact that in these davs there 
 were minds that aspired to the emancipation 
 of woman, minds that saw afar off the recog- 
 nition of her equal rights with man. And 
 they saw this because they saw more. Their 
 appreciation of the claims of woman came from 
 their appreciation of passzve strength. They 
 thought her worthy to be exalted, because 
 
150 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 they thought the domestic virtues worthy to 
 be exalted. They had an anticipative vision 
 of the Mount of Beatitudes, an impression that 
 the time would come when the virtues of the 
 valley would be hailed as the virtues of the hill. 
 The fruit of that vision is the enthroning 
 among the patriarchs of a distinctively feminine 
 soul—a soul whose greatness lay in self-denial 
 and whose majesty was his willingness to take 
 the lower room. 
 
 THOU who on the mount hast blessed 
 
 the virtues of the valley, let me enter 
 
 into that blessing! Let me stand on the hill 
 with Thee and see the exalting of lowly 
 things! I used to think the Isaacs of life 
 were unfit to survive. I thought they had no 
 force, no character, no strength to breast the 
 storm. I thought they would be swept away 
 by the first wind that blew. I was wrong. 
 Not undesignedly does Isaac precede Ishmael 
 in Thy Gallery! The Isaacs have had the 
 znward strength; theirs has been the king- 
 
ISAAC THE DOMESTICATED 151 
 
 dom of heaven, theirs has been the inherit- 
 ance of the earth, theirs has been the fame 
 of being called the children of God. I passed 
 them by on the way; I rejected them as 
 stones for my building; but they have 
 become the chief pillars in 7hy house. I 
 thank Thee that Thou hast made a crown 
 for Calvary! I thank Thee that Thou hast 
 wreathed the brow of patient pain! I thank 
 Thee that Thou hast a palm for the unrepin- 
 ing! No more can I behold the invalid with 
 condescending pity. No more can I view him 
 as a lame man before a shut gate. His weak- 
 ness is itself his possible gate to glory. Thou 
 hast made his pain his portal. Thou hast 
 called his waiting work. Thou hast deemed 
 his silence service. Thou hast regarded his 
 patience as praise. Thou hast accepted his 
 tearlessness as tribute. Thou hast received 
 his faith as a fighting. Thou hast hailed his 
 valley as a victory. The hearts that have sung 
 in the night are the heroes of 7/y Pantheon ; 
 in this Thou hast fulfilled the promise, ‘In 
 Isaac shall thy seed be called.’ 
 
CHAPTER E Raw. Dur 
 JACOB THE ASPIRING 
 
 THE figure which next meets us in the Bible 
 Gallery is one which in my opinion has been 
 generally misinterpreted; it is the form of 
 Jacob. The common view is that this Picture 
 is a delineation of human inconsistency. We 
 are accustomed to think of Jacob as a charac- 
 ter of lights and shadows mingling without 
 reason. We see in him an unstable tempera- 
 ment—a life that has no settled purpose, no 
 forecast plan, but which is swayed alter- 
 nately by impulses of good and impulses of 
 evil. We figure him as essentially a weak 
 nature—vacillating ever between the day and 
 the night, and unable to concentrate his mind 
 upon a definite resolve. 
 
 And indeed, as commonly understood, the 
 
 Portrait of this man does present an inconsis- 
 152 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING 153 
 
 tency. Let us consider the recognised inter- 
 pretation. There are two young men, we are 
 told, of absolutely opposite characters—the 
 brothers Jacob and Esau. Esau is the man of 
 the present ; Jacob is the man of the future. 
 Esau is never able to look beyond the hour ; 
 Jacob has his thoughts always on the morrow. 
 Esau is absorbed in the pleasures of sense ; 
 Jacob is intent on the pursuit of gain. Esau 
 cares for nothing but a merry life; Jacob is 
 willing to endure laborious days in the acquisi- 
 tion of material wealth. Esau has the dis- 
 position of a spendthrift; Jacob has the nature 
 of a miser. 
 
 By and by there happens the inevitable. 
 Esau finds himself in temporary embarrass- 
 ment. He asks his brother fora loan. Jacob 
 consents on one condition—that he will sell for 
 the loan his birthright, his right to inherit his 
 father’s property. Esau agrees; the impulse of 
 the moment is too strong for him. But when 
 the moment has passed he regrets; he would fain 
 undo. He feels that he has been overreached— 
 that his brother has traded upon the weak 
 
154 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 point in his character. Dark thoughts rise 
 within him; he prepares for vengeance. Jacob 
 has a premonition of danger; he takes refuge 
 in flight. All day he travels in wild haste; 
 and at night, footsore and weary, he comes to 
 a desert spot, a weird and waste solitude. 
 Uninviting as; it is “for “rest; shewicanesas 
 no farther; he throws himself down ex- 
 hausted upon a heap of stones, and falls 
 asleep. 
 
 And then begins the seeming inconsistency. 
 This apparently bad man has a_ beautiful 
 dream—a dream so beautiful that it has 
 become immortal. What the dest men of the 
 past had not seen, this fraudulent youth beholds. 
 Heaven is opened to his sight, and the home 
 of the Eternal is brought nigh. From earth 
 to sky there stretches a great ladder, and on 
 its steps ascend and descend the angels of 
 God. Now, the question we ask is this, Why 
 did the artist give such a vision to such a 
 man? Are not our dreams the product of our 
 past! Do we ever in any sphere see a breach 
 
 of evolution! Does a prosaic man leap all at 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING Isc 
 
 once into poetry; does a worldly life bound 
 _without warning into religiousness! On the 
 contrary, when you see sudden changes, you 
 know assuredly that somewhere in the past 
 there was a match struck. We see Nicodemus 
 embalming the dead Christ, and we marvel; 
 by and by we find that he had previously met 
 Jesus by night. We behold Saul of Tarsus 
 transformed into Paul the Apostle, and we 
 wonder; presently we learn that for a long 
 time he had found it hard to struggle against 
 the majesty of Jesus. The same such wonder 
 meets us here. The youth who of all others 
 is apparently most immersed in the waters of 
 earth has a clearer view of the sunlight than 
 all who had gone before him. Can we explain 
 the paradox? 
 
 I think we can explain it, but not on the 
 old interpretation of the narrative. On the 
 supposition that Jacob was a common miser 
 living only for the acquisition of material 
 gain, his vision of the heavenly communion 
 remains either a psychological puzzle or an 
 aitistio Diemish.es Bute is: this the correct 
 
156 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 supposition? I say itis not. I feel sure that 
 the previous life of Jacob has not been that 
 prosaic thing which the popular view would 
 have us believe. I am convinced that, accord- 
 ing to the narrative, according to the concep- 
 tion of the artist, this dream of the night was 
 in the first instance a dream of the morning, 
 and that the vision which Jacob sawin the 
 desert was the vision which had followed 
 him amid the haunts of men. I will try to 
 indicate the reason which has led me to this 
 conclusion. 
 
 To the ordinary English reader there is a 
 sharp contrast between Jacob’s coveting of the 
 birthright and Jacob’s dream of Divine com- 
 munion. Really, however, so far from being 
 contrasted, the latter is a development from 
 the former. Jacob’s coveting of the birthright 
 was nothing more or less than the beginning 
 of hisdream. What was this birthright ? The 
 inheritance of the father’s property, you say. 
 Yes; but what was the father’s property which 
 the eldest son inherited? In England we 
 
 associate that institution with something very 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING 157 
 
 material—with stone and lime, fields and 
 acres, houses and lands. But in Patriarchal 
 days this was ofits association. Toason of 
 the Patriarchal House the birthright of the 
 firstborn was the High Priesthood. In the 
 public estimation Abraham and Isaac were not 
 simply rulers; they were the priests of the 
 clan, the sacred ministers of the community. 
 To them it belonged to offer sacrifice, to them 
 it pertained to pour out intercession. They 
 were the ladders of communion between earth 
 and heaven, on whose steps went up the 
 prayers of the people; they bore the weight 
 of the national supplication. It was to this 
 ministry in holy things that the firstborn was 
 heir. This was his right of primogeniture ; 
 this was his prospective privilege. And it 
 was this which Jacob coveted. This was from 
 the beginning his dream—the dream of being 
 the ladder of family communion. By order 
 of birth he was debarred from that privilege. 
 Esau was the firstborn, and Esau had the 
 claim. But to the eye of Jacob, Esau was 
 
 unfit for the office. He was a secular man, a 
 
158 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 man of weights and measures; he had no 
 taste for matters ecclesiastical. To Jacob it 
 was a hard thing that the lot had fallen upon 
 the wrong man; and the sense of the incon- 
 sruity made him dream all the more. 
 
 Jacob, then, appears from the very outset as 
 a mentally aspiring man. His dream at Bethel 
 was no accident; it was a result of his whole 
 past. What he there saw under the stars, 
 he had seen in his heart from the very dawn. 
 It had been the dream of his life to be this 
 ladder, this medium of communion. To 
 express it in modern language, his ambition 
 was to be a son of the Church. He wanted to 
 be the cleric of the family, the ecclesiastic of 
 the clan; this was his aspiration, this was his 
 dream. And in itself it was a noble dream. 
 I do not wish to obscure the defects of Jacob ; 
 but I cannot see either from the standpoint 
 of the artist, or from the standpoint of the 
 historian, that one of these defects was the 
 desire for the birthright or the regret that it 
 had not fallen to him. Paul says there isa 
 noble covetousness; he bids us ‘covet the 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING 159 
 
 best gifts.’ Jacob’s position was not unlike 
 that of many a poor student—poor, I mean, 
 in worldly goods, who is prevented by that 
 poverty from gratifying the dearest desire of 
 his life—the desire to be a minister of religion. 
 He sees hundreds entering into the temple 
 from which he is excluded—hundreds with- 
 out his gifts, securing the upper seats in the 
 synagogue. Is it strange, is it ignoble, that 
 he should fret against the bars! Jacob hada 
 similar excuse for his covetousness. His 
 barrier was not want of money, but want of 
 primogeniture; yet it was equally an external 
 barrier. It was a merely technical disqualifi- 
 cation for a post which otherwise was in every 
 way adapted to his abilities. No wonder he 
 dreamed of his missed destiny night and day! 
 No wonder that, amid the cold and weariness 
 of his Bethel vigil, the fancies of his sleep 
 took neither the form of cold nor of weariness, 
 but assumed the shape of a ladder between 
 earth and heaven ! 
 
 But let us not forget that in Jacob’s Bethel 
 
 dream there is a penal as well as a pleasurable 
 
160 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 element. He pronounced the spot of the vision 
 to be a ‘dreadful place.’ This indicates that 
 in some sense the scene Jarred upon him—that 
 it was not in every respect harmonious with 
 his nature. The dream, in other words, had a 
 retributive as well as a rewarding function. 
 Before we can understand the nature of the 
 retribution, we must put our hand upon the 
 fault. Jacob Aad a fault. His moral danger 
 lay precisely at the point in which he was 
 most strong—his lofty aspiration. His desire 
 for the birthright was noble; it was the wish 
 to enter the Church, to become a minister of 
 religion. But why? Not yet for the Jove of 
 the profession, but for the frzde of the profes- 
 sion. He felt that to be a ladder of communion 
 between earth and heaven was to assume a 
 commanding position, the most commanding 
 position in the world. The estate he desired 
 was not one of stone and lime; but none the 
 less was it one of exaltation. His eye was 
 rather on the ascent than on the descent of 
 the ladder. To be a churchman in those days 
 
 was to be a power; it was to wield an influ- 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING 161 
 
 ence far beyond the strength of the secular 
 arm. Jacob felt what many a young man 
 now feels—the social uplifting involved in the 
 clerical office; and he had more veasonz to feel it 
 than any man has in our day. This was the fly 
 in his ointment ; this was the bane of his dream. 
 
 And this was the feeling which the vision 
 reproved.. What was the cause of that dread 
 which Jacob experienced after his Bethel 
 dream? It was the sight of ascending and 
 descending angels. To a selfish man, was 
 there anything dreadful in such a spectacle 
 as that? Not according to the common inter- 
 pretation. The common interpretation is that 
 some angels went up the ladder and others 
 came down. I do not think this was the 
 artist's meaning. Taking into account the 
 ministrant character which the Hebrew attri- 
 buted to the angels, I hold the meaning to be, 
 not that some went up and others went down, 
 but that those who went up came down again. 
 This is evidently Paul’s view. When speaking 
 of Christ’s union of exaltation and humiliation, 
 he says: ‘He that descended is the same as 
 
 L 
 
162 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 He that ascended.’ I understand him to mean 
 that this is the true interpretation of Jacob’s 
 ladder. Supposing it to be so, we get a flood 
 of light upon the whole narrative—light which 
 illuminates both the past and the future in the 
 life of Jacob, light which helps us to compre- 
 hend the weak point of his youthful dream, 
 light which enables us to see the meaning of 
 the shrunk sinew on the heights of Peniel. 
 
 For, what does the vision say to the life- 
 dream of Jacob? Is it not something like 
 this: ‘ Jacob, you have been in a great delusion 
 about this matter. You have been seeking 
 the Divine Priesthood as a source of worldly © 
 power; it is in the first instance a source of 
 worldly weakness. He who becomes the 
 ladder between earth and heaven must bear 
 henceforth the weight of the multitude. On 
 him the crowd presses, on him the care 
 descends. He goes up only that he may 
 come down. If he ascends into the light of 
 God, it is that he may descend into the night 
 of Man. If he rises into the heavenly rest, it 
 is that he may learn the earthly tossing on the 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING 163 
 
 pillow of stone. The birthright you seek is 
 not to be found on the mountain, but in the 
 valley. You think the securing of the prize 
 would make you the superior of Esau; no, it 
 would make you in a more direct sense than 
 ever before the servantof Esau. The higher you 
 would climb, the deeper must be your bending. 
 The Divine right of kings is their right to be 
 servants—servants to the lowliest, servants to 
 those who lie on couches not of down. If you 
 desire your brother’s birthright, it should be 
 on the ground, not that you will gain more 
 riches, but that you are capable of more sacri- 
 fice than he.’ 
 
 And is not the principle of this mystical 
 ladder eternally true. Is it not a matter of 
 experience that in the mental sphere the 
 sacrifice belongs to the ezght. It is not a 
 sense of want that stimulates sympathy; it 
 is a sense of possession. Infirmaries came 
 not from the sick, but from the strong. What 
 has instituted asylums for the blind? It is 
 the vision of “ght; had darkness been per- 
 petual and universal, there could have been no 
 
164 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 such institutions, What has instituted asylums 
 for the imbecile? It is the sense of mental 
 power; insanity knows not its own unsound- 
 ness. What has instituted reformatories? It 
 is the ideal of purzty; the unobstructed presence 
 of sin would have made such homes impossible. 
 The burdens of humanity belong to a soul in 
 proportion to its perfection—not its imperfec- 
 tion. I would apply this even to the education 
 of children. Do not choose your nursery 
 governess on the principle that, as she is only 
 for the nursery, she had better not be too 
 learned. The man or woman who has the 
 highest knowledge of a subject will be the 
 clearest teacher of that subject, will make it 
 most plain to beginners. Those who are half- 
 way up the ladder of knowledge never speak 
 in parables; they are incapable of breaking 
 the bread to their childlike disciples. » But he 
 who is on the topmost round can speak to the 
 lowliest. He is the only teacher who is clear 
 to the unlettered crowd. To him belongs the 
 power of making simple; he alone can dis- 
 
 course in parables. 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING 165 
 
 And does not the climax of this principle 
 appear in the great central fact of Christianity 
 itself. What zs that central fact? It is the 
 sin-bearing of the sinless. The Fourth Evan- 
 gelist calls Christ in express terms the ladder 
 of Jacob. Whyso? Clearly because in Him 
 the principle of that ladder finds its culmina- 
 tion—the principle that the highest are the 
 servants of the lowest. Of all the sons of the 
 human race, there is only one who stands at 
 the foot of the ladder—the Man who has been 
 at the top of it. The hospital of the moral 
 pestilence gets no support from any moral 
 invalid. Each man of dyed garments avoids 
 brushing against the dyed garments of his 
 brother. Simon will not speak to Magdalene ; 
 they have both dyed garments, and neither 
 will tolerate the others dye. Neither Simon 
 nor Magdalene has yet been up the ladder ; 
 neither has received the birthright of priest- 
 hood. But oze man has; amongst many 
 brethren Jesus is the firstborn. And, because 
 He alone has the birthright, He alone has the 
 pain. The man who goes up to the heights of 
 
166 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 holiness is the man who must come down to 
 the depths of sin—down to Simon, down to 
 Magdalene, down to the lepers of corruption 
 and the demoniacs of passion. Imagine a 
 constitution of things in which every physical 
 blow gave its pain, not to the man struck, but 
 to some ofher man. We do not see this in the 
 material world; but Christianity says that it 
 is the law of the moral world. According to 
 Christianity, it is the angel at the ‘of of the 
 ladder who is bruised by the pillow of stone. 
 The deepest moral corruption is unfelt by the 
 man who possesses it. It is felt by the man 
 who does zo¢ possess it, who walks in white by 
 the side of the crystal river. The penalty of sin 
 falls heaviest on the holy ; the Cross of Calvary 
 first crucifies the pure. Spiritual elevation can 
 never bring worldly elatzon. When Jacob 
 reaches that summit of the ladder from which 
 Esau is debarred, the sight of his debarred 
 brother will be, not a triumph, but a trial. 
 What was the effect of Jacob’s dream? In 
 one word, it was ‘Peniel.’ We are in a great 
 
 mistake if we imagine that there is no 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING in 
 
 connection between the angels he beheld on the 
 ladder and the angel with whom he wrestled 
 until the breaking of the day. He never 
 would have wrestled at Peniel if he had not 
 dreamed at Bethel. The dream at Bethel gave 
 him a conscience; there lay its terror, there 
 lay its glory. It told him that the birthright 
 he had received was a burden, a burden he 
 was bound to bear. It told him that to be an 
 angel of God was a very serious thing; it 
 asked him if he had realised ow serious. 
 When Jacob awoke, he awoke as a new man, 
 or rather, with an additional man zz him. He 
 had lain down a single individual; he rose a 
 double consciousness. Two lives were within 
 him, strove within him. There was the old 
 life which he knew so well, and which he used 
 to call ‘himself’ That was still there, but it 
 was no longer there alone. Another stood 
 Opposite to it and disputed its rule. That 
 other was a life of strange appearance. It 
 was like a flattering portrait of himself; but it 
 seemed also to contradict himself. It resembled 
 
 one of the angels of his dream. It was the 
 
3 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 presence in his soul of a new ideal—a new 
 object for living. Hitherto, he had lived to 
 overtop Hsau; but the new presence said, 
 ‘Let Esau overtop you!’ The new presence 
 became very troublesome. It disputed with 
 him constantly. It interrupted him in the 
 market-place. It checked him at the receipt 
 of custom. It barred him at the buying of 
 land. It cried out when he gave false measure. 
 It said at the most inconvenient times, ‘Remem- 
 ber your brother!’—‘ Remember your neigh- 
 bour!’—‘ Remember your fellow-man!’ It 
 made him less sharp in bargaining, less acute 
 in things pertaining to his interest. A certain 
 kind of energy departed from him—the force 
 called ‘grasping.’ Men saw the change, and 
 described it to his disparagement. They 
 expressed it epigrammatically by saying that 
 there had been a shrinking in the sinew of his 
 thigh. Yet it came not from a diminished, 
 but from an added, energy; it was all the 
 effect of the new conscience—the ministrant 
 angel of the Bethel dream. 
 
 There is a curious suggestion in the picture 
 
JACOB THE ASPIRING 169 
 
 of this conflicting period of Jacob’s life. The 
 ~ angel with whom he is struggling is represented 
 as saying, ‘Let me go! for the day breaketh.’ 
 I understand this to mean that Jacob found 
 it easier to be good by night than by day. 
 I understand it to mean that he formed fine 
 resolutions under the stars which he tended to 
 break in the sunshine. He is not singular in 
 this; it is to some extent the experience of us 
 all. There is a special solemnity about the 
 night. Ido not think it lies where it is sup- 
 posed to lie—in the vastness of the spaces. 
 Rather do [ attribute it to an opposite impres- 
 sion—the sense of individual nearness to the 
 centre of things. Jacob grows solemn when he 
 sees that heaven and earth have a ladder 
 between them. This is ever the source of 
 night’s solemnity. The individual feels him- 
 self less the member of a crowd, more an 
 object of solitary contemplation. The narrative 
 says of Jacob, ‘When he was alone there 
 wrestled with him aman.’ It is by night that 
 we most feel this solitude—so favourable to 
 the wrestling angel. Our importance as units 
 
170 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 is magnified in the night. We seem to our- 
 selves more worthy; therefore the ideal man 
 within us awakes from his sleep and upbraids 
 us. But when the day comes, we lose our 
 individuality once more. Our sense of im- 
 portance dies. We feel ourselves to be frag- 
 ments again—atoms in the crowd, drops in the 
 ocean of life. Conscience is never so low as 
 when the pressure of the multitude makes me 
 undervalue my own soul; and it is the day- 
 break that brings the pressure. Night says, 
 ‘You are alone with God’; morning says, 
 ‘How can God be affected by a puny life like 
 you!’ 
 
 And this, I think, explains the fact that 
 conscience is often most powerful in the hour 
 of death. Then, as in the night, I feel myself 
 alone. The crowd has melted from my view, 
 and the fashion of this world is dissolving like 
 a mimic scene, and there is none but God and 
 I. Very finely has this principle been grasped 
 by the great artist in Genesis. With strong 
 persistency he has been making the solitary 
 hours of Jacob his grand hours; the night of 
 
 
 

 
 JACOB THE ASPIRING 171 
 
 Bethel has been his golden dream, the night of 
 Peniel his golden struggle. But his greatest 
 glory is reserved for his hour of greatest 
 solitude—the hour of death. There the angel 
 of the ladder and of the struggle appears once 
 more, and he appears as the climax of his 
 former self. He is still the angel of ministra- 
 tion; but he is no longer a mere helper to 
 Jacob—he is inciting Jacob to bless others. 
 The dying man becomes for the first time the 
 universal benefactor. In his hour of death 
 the ministrant conscience becomes dominant, 
 supreme, overmastering. Even the poetry of 
 his language, grand as it is, is left in the shade 
 by the glow of his altruism. He has no thought 
 for anything private, anything local, anything 
 personal. He has emancipated himself from 
 individual ambition. His aspiring has become 
 unselfish. His own griefs and joys are for- 
 gotten. The ¢rzbes of Israel glitter in his 
 sight—their duties and their dangers. The 
 burdens of the people crowd upon his heart— 
 their weightedness and their soreness. His 
 hour of death is his hour of priesthood; he has 
 
172 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 only reached the birthright in the valley of 
 the shadow. 
 
 ORD, give me the blessing of Jacob— 
 
 his best blessing—his power to bless! 
 Doubtless it must come with a shrunk sinew ; 
 I cannot keep the song of the lark when I get 
 the seal of sonship; I must enter into the pain 
 of my Lord. Yet that pain is better than the 
 world’s joy. I have heard men speak of pain 
 as a blot on Thy universe. They were wrong ; 
 it is the birthright of the wzblotted. Give me 
 this birthright,O my God! Put the scar of 
 sympathy in my heart! Let me feel my 
 brother’s thorn! Make it impossible for me 
 to stay at the top of the ladder, even though 
 that be heaven! Send me down the golden 
 stair—down to the pillows of stone, down to 
 the nights of sorrow, down to the limbs that 
 are languid, down to the souls that are sad! 
 Send me with a breath of Eden, send me with 
 a flower of Paradise, send me with a cluster of 
 
 the grapes of Canaan! Send me to the hours 
 

 
 JACOB THE ASPIRING 173 
 
 that precede the daybreak—those darkest 
 hours which come before the dawn! Send me 
 to the hearts without a home, to the lives 
 without a love, to the crowds without a com- 
 pass, to the ranks without a refuge! Send me 
 to the children that none have blessed, to the 
 famished that none have fed, to the sick that 
 none have visited, to the demoniac that none 
 have calmed, to the fallen that none have 
 lifted, to the leper that none have touched, to 
 the bereaved that none have comforted! Then 
 shall I have the birthright of the firstborn ; 
 then shall I have the blessing of the mighty 
 God of Jacob. 
 
CHAP REST 
 JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 
 
 THE figure which stands next in the group 
 of the Great Gallery is perhaps the most 
 popular of all the Old Testament Portraits. 
 There are few who are not familiar with the 
 story of Joseph. Even those who know little 
 of the Bible—to whom Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob are mere names, and the less prominent 
 figures not even so much, can tell you all about 
 Joseph. Why is this? Is it because the story 
 of Joseph is painted in more vivid colours than 
 any of the other narratives? It is not so 
 painted. It is less graphic in its delineation 
 than the portraiture of the Garden of Eden; 
 it is less sublime than the description of the 
 Flood ; it is less poetic than the vision of Bethel 
 or the scene of Peniel. Yet neither the Garden 
 
 of Eden nor the slopes of Ararat, neither the 
 174 
 

 
 JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 175 
 
 plain of Bethel nor the heights of Peniel, 
 have yielded so many flowers to fancy as the 
 ground trodden by the feet of Joseph. Or is it 
 because Joseph is a greater character than his 
 predecessors and successors? He is not 
 greater. He never reaches the sacrificial 
 heights of Abraham nor the sacrificial depths 
 of Isaac. Like Moses, he is in Egypt; but he 
 is mot, like Moses, a maker of history. It is 
 difficult to see how his brilliant government 
 contributed anything to the Exodus or in- 
 fluenced in any respect the fortunes of Egypt 
 herself. Neither the personality nor the public 
 position of Joseph accounts for his effect on 
 posterity. How is that effect to be ex- 
 plained ? 
 
 If I were allowed to express the answer in 
 childlike language, I would say that the cause 
 of the narrative’s attractiveness is that the 
 story has a good end. What I mean is, not 
 only that it culminates in brightness, but that 
 the brightness is found to have been produced 
 by the actual clouds of the narrative. This is, 
 I think, a point in which the Portrait of Joseph 
 
176 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 is unique amongst Old Testament figures. 
 You will find any number of narratives that 
 wind up with the prosperity of their heroes; 
 but I cannot at present recall another in which 
 the trial is found to be a fart of the prosperity. 
 Noah emerges from the flood into the sun- 
 shine; but the flood remains a calamity still. 
 Daniel is saved from the lions; but he is saved 
 by the allaying of their fury. Job gets back 
 his possessions; but he gets them back as a 
 reversal of his adverse circumstances, not as 
 a result of these circumstances. The case of 
 Joseph is very different. His peculiarity is not 
 that he rises to a pinnacle of earthly splendour ; 
 most of the Old Testament figures do that. 
 It is that his splendour has come out of his 
 dungeon. Weare made to see, to feel, that he 
 would never have been on the pinnacle at all 
 if it had not been for his misfortunes in the 
 
 valley, that his sunshine has come from his 
 
 suffering, that the avenue of shade has led him ~ 
 
 to the palace of light. 
 
 I have said that this is a unique experience © 
 in the Old Testament; but it is the universal 
 
 
 

 
 JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 177 
 
 experience in the New. The New Testament 
 is nearer to the view of suffering expressed in 
 the Portrait of Joseph than to any other theory 
 whatever. The doctrine of the Gospel is, not 
 simply that after dark the light comes, but 
 that the garment which at night we call dark 
 is that which in the morning we pronounce 
 luminous. The words of the latest Evangelist 
 are, ‘ Your sorrow shall be turned into joy. It 
 is the transformation of sorrow rather than 
 the abolition of sorrow that is contemplated. 
 The watchword of Christianity is ‘perfect 
 through suffering.’ The glory of Christ is not 
 something which He reaches as a compensa- 
 tion for the cross; it is the lifting up of the 
 cross itself. It has become a simple matter of 
 history that Christ has triumphed by the very 
 steps which were taken to defeat Him. He 
 has not been lifted out of the valley; it is the 
 valley itself that has been exalted. He has 
 not been freed from service ; it is service itself 
 that has ceased to be ignominious. He has 
 not been exempted from further stooping; 
 He has been exempted from hindrances to 
 M 
 
178 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 further stooping. His sorrow has been ‘ turned 
 into joy.’ 
 
 Now, I say that the nearest analogy which 
 the Old Testament presents to this standpoint 
 is the Portrait of Joseph. Even the Book of 
 Job does not reach the summzt of the hill. 
 That book does not attain the zghest 
 optimism—even in its climax. It shows us a 
 good man rewarded for his patience in trial. 
 That is satisfactory, but it is not purely opti- 
 mistic; the trial still remains as so much lost 
 time. Ifa man has been interrupted in a race, 
 it does not reinstate him to set him on the road 
 once more. He has lost ground in the interval ; 
 his competitors are on before him; the re- 
 newal of his original power may never again 
 secure his original object. But if you could 
 tell the man that the interruption came to him 
 when he was on the wrong road, if you could 
 tell him that he tripped just when he was 
 about to take the false turning, a turning which 
 has led his competitors astray, the matter 
 would assume a very different aspect. He 
 
 would then regard his interruption as itself his 
 
 
 

 
 JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 179 
 
 greatest stroke of good fortune; his fetter 
 would be found to be his wing. Pure optimism 
 is not the belief that all will come right; it 
 ismthe ys belicf ‘that /allyiis M right’) vow, that 
 nothing has ever been wrong. It is not simply 
 the contemplation of an ultimate abundance; 
 it is the wreathing with glory of times of 
 scarcity. It is the exaltation of trial itself 
 into the position of a step in the great ladder 
 by which Man ascends to the summit of his 
 nature. Now, this is the optimism which is 
 reached in the story of Joseph. It is an 
 alternation of lights and shadows; but in the 
 shadows, as in the lights, the man equally 
 moves upward. The tragedy and the triumph 
 alike minister to his progress, alike conspire 
 to make him the benefactor of his kind. It is 
 not that he is lifted into the sunlight; his 
 crosses are lifted into the sunlight. He 
 succeeds by reason of his seeming failure. 
 His thorn of yesterday becomes his flower of 
 to-day ; his strength is perfected in weakness. 
 The truth is, the Portrait of Joseph is to 
 my mind a philosophical picture—the earliest 
 
180 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 attempt to delineate a theory of the universe 
 in the form of a narrative. I do not mean 
 that it had not its basis in fact. I mean that 
 here, for the first time, there was an eye to 
 observe the fact. The man who narrated this 
 life is more than a recorder; he is a theorist. 
 He has not only exhibited the materials; he 
 has woven them together. What he has in 
 his mind is really an essay or sermon. If he 
 had entitled it ‘An Inquiry into the Causes 
 of Human Suffering, he could not have more 
 clearly revealed his intention. That intention 
 is to vindicate by experience the ways of God 
 to Man. Instead of vindicating by an argu- 
 ment, he selects a life—a life which shall run 
 from youth to age, and be the normal type of 
 all lives. And I am bound to say that in this 
 delineation he has passed quite beyond his 
 time, beyond his race. He has claimed a 
 larger empire for God than his countrymen 
 claimed for Him. None of his countrymen, 
 so far as I know—not even the author of the 
 Book of Job—recognised suffering as a part of 
 the mosaic; it is always either a penalty or a 
 
 
 
JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 181 
 
 trial. Here it is a fragment of the building— 
 a necessary fragment, a contribution to that 
 creat temple whose completion is to perfect 
 the praise of God. Joseph himself is made 
 the spokesman of the new evangel. He comes 
 before us as the advocate for optimism. He 
 confronts the facts of his own life, and claims 
 absolute good fortune. He does not say that 
 the joy has exceeded the sorrow. He does not 
 say that on the whole the lights have out- 
 weighed the shadows. He denzes the shadows. 
 He refuses to admit the realty of the clouds. 
 He claims his adversaries as his unconscious 
 friends, ‘As for you, ye thought evil against 
 me; but God meant it for good.’ 
 
 Let us look at the philosophy of this life of 
 Joseph. Those who are conversant with music 
 tell us that each of Chopin’s Preludes has three 
 parts, which embody a distinct sequence. In 
 the first, the melody is free and unrestrained. 
 In the second, it seems to move through 
 tangled places—to be impeded in its way by 
 the intervention of resisting elements. But in 
 
 the third, the melody comes out into the open 
 
182 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 once more; the tangles vanish, the impedi- 
 ments are removed, and the notes of the first 
 part reappear in a new connection and with 
 a fresh power. Now, this is precisely the 
 music which I find in the life of Joseph. 
 He is one of Chopin’s Preludes. He has his 
 three periods. He has his period of youthful 
 freedom, when his life flies through the open 
 with wings of fire. Then comes a seeming 
 closure. He is no longer in the outer air. He 
 is shut within a tunnel; he is to all appearance 
 debarred from progress, evermore. All at once 
 he makes a discovery. The tunnel has been 
 itself a progress. He has been moving 
 underground all the time he thought himself 
 stranded—has been moving by a shorter way. 
 The dark road has been the quicker road. 
 The notes of the morning are repeated 
 in the afternoon; but they are sung on a 
 higher hill and under a purer sky. Come, and 
 let us traverse these three parts of the Prelude 
 —the notes of the morning, the notes over- 
 shadowed, the shadows themselves merging 
 into the symphony! We shall find in it the 
 
 
 
JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 183 
 
 earliest effort of the Hebrew race to transcend 
 itself, its first deliberate attempt to break 
 away from its own theories, and to seek a 
 humanitarian basis for the action of God. 
 
 The drama opens with the picture of a 
 petted boy—a child of his father’s old age. 
 He has two qualities by heredity, and one by 
 education. From his grandfather Abraham 
 he has received the spirit of optimism; and 
 that is good. From his father Jacob he has 
 received the spirit of ambition; and that is 
 also good. But from his mode of education 
 he has received the spirit of selfishness; and 
 that vitiates everything. He is an optimist 
 for his world; but his world unfortunately 
 contains only one person—this little boy 
 himself. He has too wide a horizon, too 
 unobstructed a view. No interest has been 
 allowed to clash with /zs interest. His father’s 
 will has been zs will. Brothers have been dis- 
 counted ; he has been the favoured child. He 
 is eager to preserve his pre-eminence. He feeds 
 the flame of his father’s partiality; he tells 
 everything that can disparage his brothers. And 
 
184 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 because he ¢hznks of their disparagement, he 
 dreams of their disparagement. The wishes of 
 his night repeat the wishes of his day. He is 
 always seeing 4zs star overtopping the other 
 stars, his sheaf outgrowing the other sheaves. 
 That the streets of London are to be paved 
 with gold is a small thing; but the bells 
 are ringing out that 4e is to be Lord Mayor 
 of the golden city—and that makes its pro- 
 sperity worth a hymn of praise. Joseph’s 
 world has as yet but one inhabitant—him- 
 self. 
 
 Now, what is wrong here? He needs to get 
 his mind widened, you say. Not at all; he 
 needs to get his mind narrowed. He has too 
 many gates open in /z/e, and therefore he has 
 too few gates open in sympathy. The in- 
 firmity of this boy Joseph is just his want of 
 encumbrances. He has never met with a shut 
 door, never encountered an opposing wall, 
 never had to ask for anything twice. There 
 has not been cultivated in him the spirit of 
 prayer—the spirit of need ; and therefore there 
 has not been cultivated in him the spirit of . 
 
 
 
JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 185 
 
 sympathy. All inward widening is produced 
 by outward narrowing. How shall I pass 
 from the life of the egotist to the life of the 
 humanitarian? Only through my own strait 
 gate. The wing by which I fly to your trouble 
 is the wing which is wounded; the hand by 
 which I help you is the hand which is maimed. 
 In vain shall I enter your desert till I have 
 tasted the waters of Marah. Not by fearless 
 running shall I overtake and lift your burden, 
 but by halting on my own thigh. The educa- 
 tion in sympathy is the experience of personal 
 bruises; of every true comforter we can say, 
 ‘By his stripes we are healed,’ 
 
 And so, Joseph must have the second part 
 of the Prelude—the period of enclosure. It 
 comes; and, lo, the gates which were all open 
 are all shut! The boy had run in the free air 
 of heaven.; the youth is cribbed, cabined, and 
 confined. The hours of morning had owned 
 no master; the noonday is one perpetual, one 
 enforced service. His prospect in life is seem- 
 ingly blotted out. He is stolen from home. 
 
 He is proclaimed to be dead. Heis sold asa 
 
186 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 slave to a band of Ishmaelites. He is trans- 
 ferred by them to an Egyptian soldier. He is 
 suspected innocently of grave offences. He is 
 immured ina dungeon. Time and space seem 
 to have ended for him. In his own land he is 
 already numbered among the dead; in this 
 foreign land he is wznumbered either among 
 dead or living—he isa cypher. He might be 
 painted at this moment with his foot resting 
 upon his own grave. 
 
 And, all the time, beneath that grave there 
 is a gold-mine. Never in all his life has 
 Joseph been so near to glory—moral and 
 physical glory. For the first time in his 
 existence he puts out his hand to help an- 
 other; and accidentally it touches the gold- 
 mine. Having no longer a dream of his own 
 to interpret, he begins to interpret the dreams 
 of his fellow-prisoners. He reveals his poetic 
 genius as he never has revealed it before, just 
 because he is not listening to his own singing; 
 and he reveals it to some purpose. Little did 
 he imagine when he entered that dungeon 
 that he was to have such an audience! One 
 
 
 
JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 187 
 
 of his fellow-prisoners is, in three days, to be 
 in touch with royalty—in touch with a royal 
 personage who wants, beyond all things, an 
 interpreter of dreams. Joseph might have 
 ranged the plains of his native Mesopotamia 
 in wild freedom for a hundred years and never 
 have found such a chance of promotion as came 
 to him within the precincts of that gloomy and 
 stifling dungeon. 
 
 Then comes the third part of the Prelude. 
 We are in a new scene—the court of Pharaoh ; 
 Joseph stands beside the throne. The boy 
 of the desert, the youth of the dungeon, has 
 become the adviser of royalty. Yet, strangely 
 do the notes of the first part blend with those 
 of the third! Mesopotamia has come over 
 into Egypt! The enemies of his boyhood are 
 there—those brothers whom he had wronged, 
 and who had wronged him! His aged father 
 is there—that father who had believed him to 
 be dead! The old patriarchal life is there, 
 like a song of home in a strange land! But 
 they are all changed—they are all more worth 
 having. The father has given up his unjust 
 
188 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 partiality ; Joseph no longer xeeds his special 
 care. The brothers have given up their 
 jealousy; the Prime Minister of Egypt is 
 beyond their jealousy. /oseph has given up 
 his selfishness; his dreams are now humani- 
 tarian. The relieving of the pain of others led 
 him at first to a gold-mine, and, ever since, it 
 has become a joy for its own sake. And, 
 remember, all this reunion, all this better 
 union, has come from a dark cloud. What is 
 it that has joined the hands of Joseph and his 
 brethren? It is famine. They have fled to 
 Egypt for corn; they have heard of the great 
 economist who administers there. They dream 
 not it is their brother. They are flying in 
 panic from to-day, and they meet their yester- 
 day. They are driven by fear, and they fall 
 into the arms of hope. They come to beg of 
 a stranger, and they find themselves féted by 
 a brother. 
 
 There is only one feature of this Portrait 
 which has been alleged to be an artistic 
 blemish—a blemish in its picture of optimism. 
 It has been said, Why did Joseph let his father 
 
 
 
JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 189 
 
 believe him to be dead for so many years? 
 We are asked, Could you imagine a high- 
 souled young man, living within a reasonable 
 distance from the place of his birth, and aware 
 that his father was still residing in his old 
 home—yet keeping his existence for years 
 concealed from that father, and allowing the 
 paternal heart to count him among the dead! 
 I heard one of the most eloquent of preachers 
 the other day, in strong detraction from the 
 character of Joseph, put this side of the case 
 with great force and with great ability. ‘What 
 do you think of that!’ I said afterwards to 
 one of the audience. ‘Oh, was the reply, ‘he 
 ought to remember that it was the fault of the 
 dramatist \" 
 
 I must confess that I do not regard this 
 answer as satisfactory. What we want to 
 know is, why such an otherwise admirable 
 Picture should apparently contain such a flaw. 
 It is beside the question to discuss whether 
 that flaw lay in the life or in its delineator. In 
 either case the problem to be solved is on the 
 
 canvas. The seeming blemish is now part of 
 
190 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 the’ Picture, and there lies | the sting.) (ihe 
 Picture is, otherwise, beautiful. It describes 
 the development of a life from selfishness to 
 unselfishness. If it has recorded an act of heart- 
 lessness at the climax, it has failed in portray- 
 ing its own plan. But has it? What if this 
 so-called act of heartlessness is in reality an 
 act of deart? What if the seeming blemish is 
 a colour of new beauty? What if the apparent 
 flaw is an added flower? Iam convinced that 
 itis. This act of Joseph is no neglect either 
 on his part or on the part of the dramatist. 
 It is a designed silence—a pause in the music 
 which is meant to give effect to the music. It 
 is no sign of crudeness either in the man or in 
 his biographer ; it is the mark of ripe develop- 
 ment, of autumn fulness. 
 
 For consider, had not Joseph’s life in youth 
 been a thorn to his father—the greatest moral 
 thorn of his father’s old age! Had not the 
 life of this son been the one rock on which 
 Jacob’s ship had been in danger of foundering! 
 Had not his partiality for Joseph been the 
 bane to family union, the barrier to the pro- 
 
 
 
JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST IQ 
 
 gress of the kingdom of God! MHad it not 
 threatened to hasten the severance of the 
 twelve tribes of Israel! Had not the fancied 
 death of Joseph been a great Joon to his 
 father! It had brought family peace. It had 
 secured unity around the hearth. It had 
 broken a régime of manifest injustice. Was 
 it not well that the delusion should be pre- 
 served! Was it not best that for the present 
 the old man should be allowed still to think 
 that his son was dead! Did not Joseph him- 
 self owe this as an atonement to his brethren! 
 Had not he too been unjust, selfish, monopolis- 
 ing, eager to grasp more than his share! How 
 could he better make reparation than by effacing 
 himself, allowing his name to be blotted out 
 from the living members of that circle whose 
 harmony he had done so much to disturb, and 
 whose unity he had helped to destroy! 
 
 I hold, then, that this seemingly dark side is 
 a part of the bright mosaic, a contribution to 
 the artist’s conception that all things work 
 together for good. I cannot detect a single 
 feature in the Portrait of Joseph which has 
 
192 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 not been placed there for the express purpose 
 of advocating the cause of optimism. Even 
 the closing scene of all, the hour of his death, 
 is grandly consistent with the ideal of the 
 Picture. Why is it that the writer to the 
 Hebrews, that great spectator of the Great 
 Gallery, has fixed upon this final hour of 
 Joseph as the typical hour of his life? ‘By 
 faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention 
 of the departing of the children of Israel, and 
 gave commandment concerning his_ bones.’ 
 One would have thought the life was rich 
 enough in incidents to make it unnecessary to 
 draw illustrations from its close. Why not say 
 that the optimistic faith of Joseph appeared in 
 the dreams of his boyhood, or in the courage 
 of his youth, or in the beneficence of his man- 
 hood! Why not go back to the sanguineness 
 on the Mesopotamian plains or the fortitude 
 in the Egyptian dungeon! Why select the 
 example from the hour which least distin- 
 suishes one life from another—the period of 
 the dark valley! It is because, to be opti- 
 mistic in that valley is optimism indeed, 
 
 
 
JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 193 
 
 because the man who can ‘¢here keep the 
 light in his soul has proved that his faith is 
 supreme. And is there any optimism like that 
 of Joseph’s closing hour! Was it not a bold 
 thing to believe that Israel would come out of 
 Egypt! Was it not a daring thing to dream 
 that this little band would not be absorbed in 
 the Egyptian waves, but would issue forth as 
 an independent river! Was it not a brave 
 thing to hope that this insignificant clan 
 would keep its nationality and its name amid 
 the rush and roar of waters! Nay, is not this 
 still the crowning marvel of Israel! Blended 
 with every land, deprived of local habitation, 
 denuded of temple and sacrifice, denied a 
 voice among the nations, refused a place in the 
 political arena of the world, this people holds 
 fast its hope and will not let it go. And its 
 hope is the faith of the dying Joseph—the 
 faith that Egypt will not absorb it, that culture 
 will not outgrow it, that modern life will not 
 supplant it, that in the days to come it will 
 
 vesume its reign. 
 
194 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 ORD, teach me the power of life’s seem- 
 
 ing arrests! Often have I felt the 
 
 srief of Joseph. Often have the bright dreams 
 of youth appeared to fade, and the shadows 
 of the prison-house to close over the growing 
 man. I have cried in the bitterness of my 
 soul, ‘The promise of the morning is broken; 
 I shall never zow find the treasure for which 
 I have sought so long!’ And lo, I have found 
 it zz the prison-house, zz the dungeon, in a 
 panel of the locked door! I had sought it in 
 all likely places—in the fields, in the woods, in 
 the homes of the rich and mighty; and it has 
 come to me in the one spot where its presence 
 seemed impossible. Thou hast answered me 
 as Thou answeredst Job—‘out of the whirl- 
 wind’ I had been looking to all calm places 
 for an answer. I had looked to the gentle 
 dawn; I had gazed on the roseate morning; 
 I had stood in the pensive twilight; I had 
 communed with the still and starry night; I 
 had listened upon my bed when the pulse of 
 life beat low. From none of these did my 
 
 answer come. Then the whzrlwind swept by, 
 
 
 
JOSEPH THE OPTIMIST 195 
 
 and I said, ‘ There will be Divine silence zow ; 
 I cannot hope for Thy voice any more!’ And 
 behold, it was from the whirlwind that Thy 
 voice came! What earth’s silence could not 
 give, what earth’s calmness could not give, 
 what earth’s zephyrs could not give, was 
 given by the storm! Let me never again fear 
 the shut gate; let me never more dread the 
 interrupted journey! Teach me that my 
 Calvary may be my crown! Tell me that 
 my Patmos may be my promotion! Show 
 me that my Damascus darkness may be my 
 dazzling daylight! Reveal to me that there 
 may be progress through life’s pauses, voices 
 in life’s valley, symmetry in life’s sighs, music 
 in life’s maladies, beauty in life’s burdens, work 
 in life’s wilderness! Then shall I know why 
 this Portrait has been placed in the Great 
 Gallery of deathless souls. 
 
CIDAD RE Rosa 
 MOSES THE PRACTICAL 
 
 AS we pass from the Portrait of Joseph to the 
 Portrait of Moses, we make the transition to a 
 new phase of Semitic life. All the foregoing 
 figures are those of idealists. They are all 
 seeking something beyond the actual, some- 
 thing that would abolish the present order of 
 things. Young Adam wants a transference 
 of the Eden government, a transference which 
 would make him lord of the whole Garden. 
 Abel wants a form of sacrifice altogether in 
 advance of his age. Enoch is aiming after a_ 
 life which can only be realised in heaven. 
 Noah is seeking a reform which must involve 
 a renovation of the earth. Abraham is trying 
 to establish in the world a kingdom of Divine 
 righteousness. Jacob is in search of a ladder 
 
 between earth and heaven. Joseph is the 
 196 
 
 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL 197 
 
 representative of youth’s romantic dreams. 
 They are all men of the future—men who seek 
 the stones for their temple from scenes and 
 circumstances not present to the eye. But, 
 with the Portrait of Moses, we enter another 
 world—the real world. Here for the first time 
 we are confronted by a man who proposes to 
 build the temple with the actual stones of the 
 quarry. He says to his countrymen, ‘ You 
 have been looking too far away to find the 
 material for your Tower of Babel; this com- 
 mandment is not in heaven, neither is it beyond 
 the sea; but the word is very nigh unto thee, 
 in thy mouth, and in thy heart.’ 
 
 Here is the advent of a new régime. Man 
 has begun to contemplate the possibility of a 
 palace which shall be reared out of earthly 
 elements, a palace which shall rise from the 
 daily work of ordinary human souls. Salva- 
 tion by obedience to law, salvation by the 
 performance of the hourly duty and the fulfil- 
 ment of the habitual task, salvation by the 
 adequate discharge of the common round of 
 
 earth’s requirements for the labouring man— 
 ro) 
 
198 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 that was the goal which glittered before the 
 eyes of Moses. It is in the pursuit of this 
 goal that Moses is distinguished from all his 
 predecessors. His name has been associated 
 with many things. It has been associated with 
 the building of the tabernacle. It has been 
 linked with the origin of the Jewish ritual. 
 It has been connected with the deliverance 
 from Egypt. It has been intertwined with the 
 life of the desert. It has been identified with 
 the discovery of the Promised Land. But 
 none of these things is a@zstzuctive of Moses. 
 You will find each of them foreshadowed in 
 the previous figures. You will find an earlier 
 tabernacle in Eden. You will see an earlier 
 ritual in Abel. You will behold an anticipa- 
 tion of a promised land in Enoch. You’ 
 will meet faith sustained amid a desert in 
 Abraham. You will witness the provision for 
 an Egyptian deliverance in the closing act of 
 Joseph. But there is one sphere in which 
 Moses stands alone, in which he is the first 
 founder, the primitive inaugurator. It is in the 
 
 discovery that common life may be religious 
 
 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL 199 
 
 life. That God was in the Garden, men knew; 
 that God was in the sanctuary, men knew; that 
 God was -beside the altar, men knew. But 
 that God should be in secular places, that the 
 home should be itself a sanctuary, that the - 
 household fire should be an altar fire, that 
 the honouring of a human parent should be 
 deemed an act of piety, that the observance of 
 a neighbour’s rights should be esteemed one 
 of the rites of worship—this was a new depar- 
 ture in the religious life of Man! 
 
 To Moses belongs the inauguration of this 
 development. Our first impression is that the 
 task set before him was a very easy one. It 
 seems a simple thing to teach the common 
 duties of life. Ifit were a creed that had to be 
 taught, if it were a system of philosophy, or 
 even an order of worship, we could appreciate 
 the need for a great founder; but the most 
 ordinary mind would seem adequate to the task 
 of saying, ‘ All the duties of your life are to be 
 counted velzgtous duties, Yet in truth this 
 impression is entirely wrong. It was simply 
 
 the most difficult thing in the world for a man 
 
200 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 of that time to reach such a conclusion. It 
 has not been particularly easy in any age. 
 Religion has ever tended to present itself to 
 the mind as the antithesis to the world. Grace 
 has ever appeared as the opposite of nature, 
 faith as the antagonist of sight. What St. 
 James pronounces a completed development 
 of the religious life—the visiting of the widows 
 and the fatherless—would still be regarded by 
 many as only an incipient Christianity. So 
 foreign to the natural mind is the Mosaic 
 idea, that men in all ages have required to 
 grow into it. Moses required to grow into 
 it. Did it ever strike you that, of all the 
 lives depicted in the Gallery, he is the most 
 tardy in entering on his mission. All the 
 previous figures of the Gallery accept their 
 vocation the moment it is presented to them. 
 Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, move at 
 once toward the beckoning light; even Jacob 
 does, though his old nature struggles within 
 him. But Moses holds back. He is long 
 in accepting, slow in obeying, late in achiev- 
 ing. Do you think this is an accident 
 
 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL 201 
 
 in the Portrait of the Great Gallery! It is 
 one of its most designed features. The 
 painter of this figure knew that the sphere 
 selected for it was not a natural sphere. 
 Therefore he describes Moses, not as rushing 
 into it, but as creeping into it. Let us follow 
 the pencil of this inspired artist. He has re- 
 vealed to us that process of development by 
 which a man learns the religious value of 
 practical morality. Let us stand in the Great 
 Gallery and observe that process. Let us 
 trace it; let us expound it; let us apply it to 
 our daily lives. 
 
 There are four periods in the education of 
 Moses—four stages through which he climbed 
 into the place prepared for him. The first 
 might be called his period of unconsciousness 
 —the time when he was not a moral giver, but 
 a moral recipient. We a// begin with such 
 a period. Our first lessons in morality are 
 derived, not from the good we do, but from 
 the good we receive. I am deeply impressed 
 with the truth of this principle in human 
 experience. Ido not think we get our earliest 
 
202 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 notions of morality from active service, but 
 from passive recipiency. Where did you first 
 learn the beauty of justice? Was it from 
 doing a just action? No; it was from having 
 a just action done to you. Where did you 
 first learn the charm of sympathy? Was it 
 from condoling with another’s distress? No; 
 it was from being condoled with by another in 
 your distress. Our original moral lessons do 
 not come to us in the form of lessons, but in 
 the form of benefits—kindness received, gifts 
 bestowed, dangers averted, penalties remitted. 
 It was these that wakened within us the im- 
 pulse of generosity. It was these that stirred 
 
 within us the sense of beneficence. It was 
 
 these that set before us the ideals of chivalry. 
 
 It was these that roused in our hearts the love 
 of mercy. The recognition of the law of con- 
 science was in the beginning an unconscious 
 recognition ; it was produced by favours 
 received. _ 
 
 Now, this was the first stage of the moral 
 training of Moses. In early days he was 
 
 merely a recipient. He was more indebted to 
 
 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL 203 
 
 the goodness of others than was any man in 
 the Gallery. The writer to the Hebrews 
 naively says, ‘By faith Moses was hid three 
 months.’ No doubt; but by the faith of 
 whom? Not of Moses himself, but of kind 
 friends who wanted to give him a chance in 
 life. The civilisation of the day had deter- 
 mined to give him zo chance. It looked upon 
 his infancy and said, ‘This is one of the 
 children unfit to live; let him die; let him 
 make room for other and stronger lives!’ And 
 so, the culture of Egypt rejected the child 
 Moses, cast him out to perish in the waters of 
 the Nile. He was found by the hands of 
 philanthropy; he was rescued by human com- 
 passion. Hecomes before us as a foundling, 
 a child of charity. He is the first of that 
 great company of waifs and strays whom 
 human benevolence has gathered into the fold. 
 He is cast upon the waters as one unfit to 
 survive ; he is rescued by way of experiment. 
 Human charity gives him a chance—a chance 
 to show his power of survival. He is taken 
 
 up by royal hands, Egyptian hands. He is 
 
, 204 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 planted in an Egyptian environment; he is 
 trained in the culture of the Pharaohs; he is 
 withdrawn from all the associations of his own 
 people. Everything is done to make him 
 forget—forget his Hebrew origin, forget the 
 traditions of his race. He is educated in 
 Egypt’s wisdom, nursed in Egypt’s ritual, 
 stimulated by Egypt’s promises. If he will 
 give his life to Egypt, the ball of fortune is 
 already at his feet; he may, if he will, become 
 the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 
 
 Meantime, by that same Egypt his own 
 people are being oppressed, enslaved. Every 
 form of injustice is being practised upon them 
 —extortion, violence, insult, treachery, con- 
 tempt, scorn. The eye of young Moses sees 
 that injustice. How has he come to see it? 
 Simply by his own experience of the contrary. 
 By her very kindness to himself, Egypt has 
 taught him her wzkindness to his countrymen. 
 She has put into his hands the mirror by which 
 he sees and condemns her. And so, the first 
 period closes and the second period begins. 
 When next the scene opens, Moses is a young 
 
 
 
 
 
 aes ete 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL 205 
 
 man. He stands on the brow of life’s hill. 
 There has come to him that period which 
 comes to every man—the hour when he is 
 called to make his choice between two roads 
 in life. The writer to the Hebrews does not 
 scruple to say that the choice presented to 
 Moses was identical with the choice presented 
 to Christ, ‘By faith Moses, when he was come 
 to years, refused to be called the son of Phar- 
 aoh’s daughter, esteeming the reproach of Christ 
 greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.’ 
 And is he not right! Was not the choice 
 of Christ in the wilderness precisely the choice 
 of Moses! The tempter said to the Son of 
 Man, ‘ Which of the two will you have—royalty 
 or rags?’ He offered Him on the one hand 
 the kingdoms of the world and the glory of 
 them, on the other a life of privation for the 
 good of humanity. The reproach of Christ 
 was that He chose the latter. He lost favour 
 in the eyes of men, because He preferred the 
 life of humanitarian sacrifice to the life of 
 gilded splendour. Even such was the choice 
 of Moses. He selected that alternative which 
 
206 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 was afterwards Christ’s reproach. Two des- 
 tinies lay before him—to be the son of 
 Pharaoh’s daughter or to be a son of despised 
 Israel—to bask in the sunshine of Egypt or to 
 share the obloquy of the Hebrew race. Which 
 should he take—the glitter or the gloom? 
 Should he ascend into a position of worldly 
 slory, or should he go down into a life of 
 virtuous obscurity? It is a moment of crisis 
 —that crisis which marks the transition from 
 youth to manhood. Presently, his decision is 
 made; he has chosen. He will go down.. He 
 will take the lot of his people. He will forego 
 his bright prospects, forego the glitter and the 
 gold. He descends into the valley; and the 
 world laughs loud and long. The hearing of 
 that laugh is the bitterest part of the pain; it 
 is the message of Egypt’s reproach. ‘What 
 matter!’ says the writer to the Hebrews, ‘a 
 greater than Moses is to bear the same re- 
 proach in the days to come; he may well 
 endure a ridicule which has placed him on the 
 path of the Son of Man!’ 
 
 Here closes the second period. It is the 
 
 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL 207 
 
 period in which he abjures the world and with- 
 draws from its temptations. Is it, then, the 
 completion of his training? No; there is 
 still a great gulf fixed between him and his 
 goal. To abjure evil is much, but it is not 
 all. It is only half of the process—the ascetic 
 half. The task for which Moses was training 
 was humanitarianism—the taking up of the 
 burdens of Man. That which was required of 
 him was no mere abjuration of the world; it 
 was a reforming of the world. It was not 
 simply a refusal to join in the oppression of his 
 people ; it was the effort to lift that oppression. 
 Accordingly, when the third period of Moses 
 opens, the impression we receive is one of 
 disappointment. The youth has become a 
 middle-aged man; the courtier of Egypt has 
 become a shepherd in Midian. The ardour of 
 his choice has not been supplemented by ardour 
 of deed. Its only result has been asceticism. 
 He has fled from the scene where his people 
 were oppressed, but he has done nothing to 
 relieve the oppression. He has been seemingly 
 wasting his time. It would have been a real 
 
208 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 waste of time in any other sphere; but in the 
 sphere of morality the example of Moses is 
 to become a precedent. I am struck by the 
 fact that between the age of moral choice and 
 the period of outward action the Bible loves 
 to interpose a time of rest. The Child-Jesus 
 sees His mission at the age of twelve, but only 
 enters upon it at the age of thirty. The man 
 of Tarsus beholds a light from heaven and is 
 eager at once to follow it; but he is sent for 
 three years to ponder in the solitudes of 
 Arabia. There is a time in moral history 
 when a voice says to every man, ‘Come up 
 into this desert place, and rest a while!’ It 
 would seem as if the morning were not the 
 test of a man, as if the hour of excitement 
 were not the hour of surest promise. The 
 Divine Voice says: ‘Go, and think over it. 
 Do not yield at once to the impulse of the 
 morning. Try how long it will survive. Test 
 it by the circling of the hours. See if it will 
 outlast the season of excitement. You can 
 march to battle at the sound of trumpet and 
 the beat of drum; can you be resolute for the 
 
 , 
 ‘ 
 2* ’ : 
 
 
 

 
 MOSES THE PRACTICAL 209 
 
 struggle when there are no accompaniments of 
 glory! Only then can you say that you have 
 received your call.’ 
 
 That is the meaning of a saying which is 
 applied to Moses during this third period, 
 ‘He endured as seeing Him who is invisible.’ 
 It means that Moses kept his humanitarian 
 impulse in the absence of human motives—kept 
 it spite of silence and solitude, kept it when 
 the sands of life were low. He had never 
 ceased to hear that suppressed cry which from 
 the days of his youth had sounded through the 
 land of bondage—the cry of that enslaved 
 Israel whose blood was his own. And now 
 the probation is over, and the call comes. 
 The fourth period opens. The scene is the 
 desert of Horeb where Moses has gone to 
 tend his flocks. It is a day of sweltering 
 heat ; the bushes seem on fire. The shepherd 
 is weary—weary from the burden of the sun, 
 weary from the burden at his heart. He lies 
 down to rest. He fixes his eye on one of the 
 seared and flaming bushes—a stability favour- 
 able to slumber. In that attitude he falls 
 
 O 
 
210 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 asleep. Hedreams. His dream is half from 
 nature, half from God. God speaks to him 
 through the environment he had _ himself 
 chosen. He had fixed his waking eye on one 
 flaming bush. That one bush remained in his 
 dream. It seemed to burn perpetually, yet 
 inconsumably. Then, from the midst of it, 
 there came a voice—the voice of the Lord. 
 And what it said was virtually this: ‘Moses, 
 itis /that am burning. It is I that am on fire 
 with the pain of humanity. It is I that am 
 scorched with the heat of man’s day. It is 
 time now you came to help Me. You have 
 lived long enough in the sentzment; it is time 
 you began to act. You have had the righteous- 
 ness to abandon Egypt; but there awaits you 
 a deeper righteousness. You must go back to 
 Egypt once more—to bring out My treasures. 
 You have pitied the burning bush; you must 
 become part of that bush. You have refused — 
 to conform to the fashion of Egypt ; you must 
 consent to lead the humanitarian band.’ 
 
 For, be it observed that the call of Moses is 
 a call to humanitarianism. There is nothing 
 
 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL 211 
 
 local about it, nothing national. He is not 
 sent simply to break the bonds of a people. 
 His ultimate mission is to gzve them bonds— 
 bonds of a new kind—the bonds of human 
 brotherhood. He is sent to put them under 
 law in a region where before they were lawless. 
 He is to bind each man by the rights of his 
 brother—by the claims of justice, by the ties 
 of sympathy, by the instincts of the heart. He 
 is to introduce a restraining force, a force 
 which will say, ‘Thou shalt not.’ Not the 
 liberation from Egypt, but the binding of 
 Mount Sinai, is the supreme object of the 
 mission of Moses, He is’ wakened into 
 humanitarianism that he may lead his country- 
 men into the service of Man. 
 
 For, remember that the law of Mount Sinai 
 isa humanitarian law. It is not local, it is not 
 temporal; itishuman. When Moses ascended 
 the mount to commune with God, he ascended 
 ‘above all principalities and powers.’ He 
 went up to receive a law which was to be 
 distinctive of no nation—which was to be 
 
 neither Jewish nor Egyptian nor Greek nor 
 
212 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Roman nor English, but the property of the 
 whole world—of man as Man. And when he 
 came down from the mount, it was such a law 
 he drought with him—a law which broke 
 the boundaries of separate lands, which rested 
 the obligations of morality on things which 
 were universal, which proclaimed the sacred- 
 ness of the family and the value of life and the 
 rights of personal possession and the solemnity 
 of man’s word to man. And why was Moses 
 thus successful in the framing of a universal 
 law? I have no hesitation in saying it was 
 because he had felt the needs of the lowest. 
 The needs of men at the foot of the ladder are 
 the needs of man universal. If Moses had 
 only been trained in the wants of Egypt, he 
 would only have been the lawgiver for the upper 
 classes, for the men who possessed ‘the 
 treasures. But when he was trained in the 
 wants of the slave population, when he was 
 confronted by the bush of life as it burned 
 in the valley, he met with the wants of 
 humanity itself. The sorrows of the valley are 
 
 cosmopolitan sorrows—they will be found on 
 
 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL 213 
 
 plain and mountain too. There are wants on 
 plain and mountain that do not reach the vale; 
 but the wants of the vale ascend to plain and 
 mountain. He who has felt the fire of the 
 bush in Midian is able to legislate for the 
 world. 
 
 I believe the cosmopolitan character of the 
 work of Moses is the thought which dominates 
 the final scene with which the Great Gallery 
 associates his name. That final scene is 
 painted with dramatic boldness; Moses is 
 buried in an unknown sepulchre by the hand 
 of God alone. What is symbolised in the 
 burial by the hand of God we need not 
 inquire. Perhaps it is a metaphorical way of 
 saying that he was buried by Nature, not by 
 Man. Did he ascend the heights of Pisgah as 
 an explorer of the Promised Land? Was he 
 smitten on the summit by the winter cold; 
 and did he, in returning, leave his body 
 wrapped in wreaths of snow? We cannot tell. 
 But, one thing is clear. In the thought of the 
 artist, in the thought of the Great Gallery, 
 the hiding of his burial-place is a designed 
 
214 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 thing. Whence this concealment? Lest his 
 countrymen should reverence him too much? 
 I think the meaning of the artist is the 
 contrary. It was lest his countrymen should 
 reverence him too little, should localise him, 
 should say, ‘He is one of ours.’ In the con- 
 cealment of the body of Moses the Divine 
 Voice is represented as proclaiming: ‘I do 
 not want this to be a local man. I do not 
 want him to be the man ofa class or party. I 
 do not want men to say that he is a Hebrew 
 teacher, a Syrian teacher, an Egyptian teacher. 
 I want him to belong to the wor/d—in the 
 length of it, in the breadth of it. I would 
 have him claimed by no nation; I would have 
 him associated with no soil ; I would have him 
 known as the property of Man.’ 
 
 And has not Moses fulfilled that destiny! 
 Has the first voice of Sinai ever lost its cosmo- 
 politan ring! Have its commands ever become 
 merely national! ‘Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God ’—is ziat national ; is it not the voice 
 to humanity! ‘Thou shalt not make any 
 
 graven image’—is that national ; is it not the 
 

 
 MOSES THE PRACTICAL 215 
 
 ignoring of all physical limits! ‘Honour thy 
 father and thy mother’—is that national; are 
 not the ties of family universal! ‘Thou shalt 
 not kill’—is that national; is not life every- 
 where dear! ‘Thou shalt not steal’—is that 
 national; are not possessions everywhere 
 precious! ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’ 
 —is that national; have not all lands sought 
 the secret of truth! Even the command to 
 keep a day of rest, seemingly the most local 
 of all the Decalogue precepts, is based upon no 
 national observance—no Jewish holiday, no 
 patriotic anniversary, no commemoration of a 
 people’s triumph. It is based upon the fact 
 of creation, on the constitution of Nature 
 itself, on that design of the world which makes 
 all things one,‘ Remember the Sabbath Day 
 to keep it holy, for in six days the Lord made 
 heaven and earth. Such universalism is grand 
 —in the old world it is unique. It can only 
 belong to a race which has in it the conscious- 
 ness and the conscience of humanity—a race 
 which feels within its veins not merely its 
 native blood, but the blood of all ages and the 
 
216 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 - 
 
 heart of all climes. Such a race had a right 
 to its Messianic aspirations. 
 
 EVEAL to me, O Lord, that fire which 
 burns and yet does not consume—the 
 
 fire of love! My life will be consumed wzthout 
 the burning of that: fire. It) is want #of 
 enthusiasm that kills me, wears me away. 
 My soul dies through lack of burning. I never 
 really live unless I catch fire. The danger of 
 my bush is not its heat, but its wilderness. It 
 is the commonplace that consumes me. I am 
 never so weary as when I am aimless, never so 
 fatigued as when I have nothing to do. Set 
 fire to my heart, O Lord! Kindle me into the 
 love of humanity! Inflame me with the passion 
 to make my brother glad! Give me a tele- 
 pathic sense of others’ pain! Let me feel the 
 sorrows of those to whom Egypt is a foreign 
 land—who are not adapted to their life’s 
 environment! Layon my heart the burden of 
 the bondsman, the troubles of the toiler, the 
 
 weights of the weary! Help me to live fora 
 
MOSES THE PRACTICAL Zh ty 
 
 day, for an hour, yea, even for a moment, in 
 the experience of human struggle! Call me 
 up to the burning bush where Jhou dwellest, 
 where Thou sufferest! Teach me that the 
 burning bush is the Tree of Life in the midst 
 of Thy Paradise! I speak of the fires of hell ; 
 teach me that there is a fire in heaven—a 
 sense of sorrows not my own! Give me this 
 Divine pain, 7zy pain, the pain of Calvary! 
 When I have overcome my selfish heart I shall 
 inherit Thy Tree of Life—that burning bush 
 of sacrifice which is the glory of Thy Garden. 
 
CEA Teks Kiel 
 JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 
 
 THERE is a type of human character which 
 belongs to all ages and to all nations, but 
 which is absent from all wsatzonal galleries. 
 I allude to the type of humanity called prosaic. 
 When a nation employs the hand of a painter 
 to place on canvas the figures of the men she 
 deems heroic, she never includes among these 
 the prosaic man. She may include the man 
 immersed in ordinary business ; Confucius was 
 such a man—and China painted Confucius. 
 But then, Confucius was a business dzrector. 
 He was not the sudject of commercial and 
 municipal rules; he was the maker of these 
 rules; that itself removes him from prosaic 
 associations. The prosaic man is the subor- 
 dinate man, the man who obeys orders. It 
 
 matters very little in what sphere these orders 
 218 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 219 
 
 are received. The cleaner of telescopes for 
 the observations of a Galileo is not a whit 
 nearer to the stars than is the carrier of parcels 
 for a firm of merchandise. He, too, is but a 
 carrier of parcels; he is not the inaugurator 
 of his own work—he is deriving his move- 
 ment from the impact of others. 
 
 I have said that such a man figures in no 
 national gallery. But he figures in the one 
 gallery that is zo¢ national—the Gallery of the 
 Bible. Here there emerges into heroic pro- 
 minence that type which everywhere else has 
 been esteemed the reverse of heroic—the man 
 who obeys orders. We should have missed 
 something if in this Gallery there had been no 
 place prepared for 42m, if the sphere of subor- 
 dinate duty had been the one spot where the 
 possibility of heroism was not recognised. 
 Hitherto, as these successive figures have 
 passed before us, we have not found a repre- 
 sentative of subordinate duty. All the spheres 
 we have examined have been those of leaders 
 or of such as wzsh to be leaders. Adam wants 
 
 to rule the Garden. Abel wants an independent 
 
220 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 worship. Enoch and Noah want to change 
 the fashion. Abraham seeks to found a state. 
 Isaac labours to consolidate a household. 
 Jacob aspires to establish a priesthood. Joseph 
 dreams of a city of gold. Moses aims at 
 universal legislation. There has been no place 
 as yet for the follower, the satellite, the man 
 who obeys orders. There has been no recog- 
 nition of the hewers of wood and the drawers 
 of water—of those whose mission is not to 
 plan, but to execute, and whose action con- 
 stitutes three-fourths of the conduct of life. 
 But now this recognition is coming. A 
 figure is about to appear which is to embody 
 the desiderated idea. That figure is Joshua. 
 He is from beginning to end the representative 
 of the satellite, of the men who follow. As we 
 pass from Moses to Joshua we feel as if we 
 were passing from poetry to prose. Practical 
 though Moses was, his sphere was on the height. 
 The mountain was his native element. It was 
 on the mountain that he had to prepare for 
 the plain. It was the soul of a poet that led 
 
 him to glorify common things; his sober 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 221 
 
 practice came from his ecstatic elevation. 
 Joshua, on the other hand, had never stood on 
 the height, had never required to occupy it. 
 He had not possessed the genius to discover 
 the Promised Land. He was no explorer, no 
 investigator, no Columbus. His work began 
 where that of Columbus ended. When he 
 entered on the scene zs America had been 
 already found. Moses was moving toward 
 the Land of Promise. Everything had been 
 planned ; everything had been arranged. All 
 that was needed was a patient drudge to 
 execute the orders—a man who would be con- 
 tent to take the servant’s place. No prophetic 
 vision was required, no foresight, no insight. 
 The thing wanted was rather an absence of 
 these qualities—a man who would not look 
 before him, who would not look within him, 
 who would simply listen for the word of 
 command, and do as he was bid. The head 
 and the heart of the enterprise were already 
 there; all that remained was “to seek a 
 hand. 
 
 Now, this place was to be filled by Joshua. 
 
220 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 More than any other figure of the Gallery he. 
 represents the working man. From first to 
 last his duties were mechanical. He began 
 with the post of a servant, and he ended with 
 the post of a servant. He never at any time 
 reaped personal credit from his achievements 
 —not even when he was head of the army. 
 He was always indebted to circumstances. 
 The results he achieved were stupendous ; 
 they more directly influenced the modern 
 world than did the life of Abraham or the 
 prime-ministry of Joseph, for the conquest of 
 Canaan issued in the creed of Christendom. 
 Yet Joshua comes not before us as a pioneer. 
 He appears merely as an instrument. He 
 seems to be /ed into the Promised Land. He 
 is rather an occasion than a cause. The 
 wreaths of victory fell not on Az. The prize 
 of glory eluded his grasp. He was ever merely 
 an instrument. He is only once recorded as 
 using his own judgment—when he made a 
 league with Gibeon; and on that occasion 
 he was overreached. He may be. described 
 
 epigrammatically as a man who madea fortune 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 223 
 
 whose acquisition was ever afterwards attri- 
 buted to another. He could well have reversed 
 the words of a later countryman and said, 
 ‘TI have laboured, and other men have entered 
 nto my labours—have reaped the glory of 
 what I have sown.’ 
 
 Let me now proceed to illustrate this feature 
 of the Portrait of Joshua. We first meet with 
 him in the battle of Rephidim. He is still a 
 young man; but he has been intrusted with 
 the entire command of the forces during the 
 engagement. One would think that this was 
 a very responsible post, and that the man who 
 held it was the main factor in the battle. Not 
 thus is it represented in the Great Gallery. 
 Here, the real scene of battle is placed outside 
 the physical combat altogether—on the top of 
 a hill where Moses stands in prayer! The 
 alternations of the battle do not come from 
 the movements of the contending parties. 
 They come from the variations of intensity 
 with which the jetztions rise. Moses is the 
 real combatant ; the prayers of Moses are the 
 real weapons. Are the hands of Moses lifted 
 
224 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 in supplication; then Joshua is seen to triumph. 
 Are the hands of Moses drooping wearily ; then 
 Amalek gains ground. Does Joshua at last 
 achieve the victory over Amalek ; it is not by 
 might, nor power, nor skill; it is because the 
 supplicating hands of Moses have been held 
 up by other hands and prevented from grow- 
 ing weary. The battle of Rephidim is a battle 
 of will-force—the will-force of one not engaged 
 in the fray. That is the Picture in the Gallery. 
 Joshua fights with Amalek on the plain, and 
 Amalek falls back before the sword of Joshua. 
 But the real fighting power is not on the 
 plain, not with the sword, not in Joshua. It is 
 up on a neighbouring mountain, where an old 
 man stands and prays that Joshua may win. 
 It is this will-force called prayer that sways the 
 battle. It is this silent thing, this voiceless 
 thing, this unseen and unheard thing, that is 
 the prime mover, the real mover. It is this 
 that nerves the arm of Israel; it is this that 
 repels the host of Amalek. Joshua might be 
 nowhere. He is acypher, a mute, a pageant set 
 
 on the way to hide the vea/ source of power. 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 225 
 
 Do not imagine that this is an accidental 
 trait in the delineation of the great artist. It 
 is the most deliberate touch of his pencil. The 
 battle of Rephidim is not merely a preliminary 
 event; it is a typical event. It is a keynote, 
 a prelude to the whole piece. In all the 
 shifting of the scenes there is no shifting of 
 the principle. Joshua may be transferred from 
 the desert to the Promised Land; he may be 
 raised from the business of a delegate into 
 the post of a leader; he may assume the out- 
 ward robe which Moses used to wear—but, 
 place him where you will, clothe him as you 
 will, he never ceases to be a subaltern. His work 
 is ever that of a subordinate. Apparently a 
 mighty conqueror, he has at no time either 
 the kingdom, the power, or the glory. His 
 position is that of an instrument blown by the 
 wind into strains of harmony. He derives no 
 credit from his own melodies. He is a passive 
 agent in their formation. They come not from 
 him; they only breathe ¢hrough him; he is 
 himself the product of a higher will. 
 
 He stands before the walls of Jericho. His 
 
 P 
 
226 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 army is equipped for battle. All is ready for 
 the assault. Every preparation has been made 
 to storm the city, to vindicate the military 
 glory of the nation. The issue of the siege is 
 not doubtful; God has promised that Israel 
 shall possess the land. Why,then, delay! Why 
 not give the signal to advance, and sweep like 
 an avalanche upon the foe! So, perhaps, thinks 
 Joshua. Not such is the will of the Almighty. 
 The voice of God comes to him and says: ‘I 
 send you to do great deeds, but you shall go 
 by a lowly path—by the way of the valley. 
 Leave the battle to Me, the shaking of the 
 walls to Me! Take you the servan?’'s post, the 
 menial’s post! Walk round the city in pro- 
 cession, you and your followers; walk, and 
 blow the trumpets! Once every day, for six 
 days, shall you compass it; and on the seventh 
 day you shall compass it many times! Make 
 no effort to break through the fortified places! 
 J will make the breach; keep you to the 
 marching and the blowing of the trumpets! 
 Do not ask what is the use of your work; do 
 not say that your talents are bound in a 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 227 
 
 napkin! No man is an agent in the Azstory 
 of this world. I alone am the agent. It is I 
 who make the breach in the walls of every 
 Jericho. The most brilliant deed of man is 
 only a signal for the moving of My hand. All 
 are but blowers of the trumpet; all are but 
 beaters of the drum. Why should you object 
 to be a public revelation of that which is really 
 a universal law!’ 
 
 Again. He stands on the field of Gibeon— 
 that bloodiest and most decisive field in the 
 war for the conquest of Canaan. Yet, decisive 
 as it was, it owed not its finality to Joshua. 
 The Bible virtually says that the narrative of 
 the battle is encumbered with legend. We 
 will try to-disentangle it from the legend. 
 Five kings of the Amorites have combined 
 their forces to overwhelm the little state of 
 Gibeon. Gibeon has made a league with Israel 
 —that is her offence. The five kings are afraid 
 to attack Israel, but they will punish that small 
 kingdom which has proclaimed itself her ally. 
 Against such heavy odds Gibeon cannot stand. 
 She sends up a cry of great despair. Joshua 
 
228 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 hears it. Should he allow his ally to perish for 
 being an ally! MHis heart forbidsit. It is true, 
 Gibeon has obtained the alliance by false 
 pretences; but she fas obtained it. Joshua 
 regards Gibeon as blind old Isaac had regarded 
 Jacob. Gibeon, like Jacob, had obtained a 
 promise by deceit ; none the less, the promise, 
 once given, was the will of God. It may have 
 been wrong to make it; now that it was made, 
 it was a part of God’s universe. Joshua will 
 confirm the blessing to Gibeon as Isaac con- 
 firmed the blessing to Jacob. He will not let 
 her be crushed on #zs account. He will hasten 
 to her relief; he will defend her; he will 
 rescue her. 
 
 And so, the army of Gibeon and the army 
 of Israel join hands against the host of the 
 Amorites; and there is fought one of the 
 bloodiest fights of history. It is to me one 
 of the most interesting battles of the Bible, 
 because it is fought, not for revenge, not for 
 supremacy, not even for the cause of the 
 Hebrew race, but simply and solely for motives 
 
 humanitarian—for honour, for chivalry. It is 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 229 
 
 fought in behalf of a foreign land, in the 
 impulse of human generosity, in obedience to 
 the claims of man as man. One would almost 
 think that the principles of the universal 
 Decalogue had begun to inoculate the people 
 of Israel, and that through the roar of battle 
 and the clang of national jealousies there 
 were discerned already the still small voice 
 of brotherhood. 
 
 Here, then, is an occasion for romantic 
 heroism! Joshua has come in chivalry; will 
 not the conflict prove his personal prowess ; 
 will not his arm this day be revealed as the 
 conquering arm! Such we expect; but such 
 we do not find. The struggle at Gibeon is 
 undertaken by the generosity of Joshua; but 
 it is decided by the elements of nature. In 
 the midst of the combat the sky is overcast 
 and a storm gathers. From ever-deepening 
 clouds there pours a torrent of fierce hail, 
 which the wind bears right into the faces of 
 the Amorites. They are disheartened; it 
 seems as if heaven were shooting its arrows 
 
 in favour of Israel. By and by the darkness 
 
230 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 becomes dense. The expression of the narra- 
 tive is, ‘The sun became silent. It is not, 
 ‘The sun stood still,’ as our translation has it. 
 The silence of light is a metaphor not for 
 continuous shining, but for ceasing to shine. 
 We read of the morning stars ‘singing together’; 
 this means that they. were shining together. 
 What the Amorites see at Gibeon is not a 
 prolonged day, but a premature night. And 
 that night is their destruction. Beyond all 
 things they are afraid of darkness. Their God 
 is the sunshine. This premature sunset at 
 Gibeon makes them feel that God has averted 
 His countenance; He is against their enter- 
 prise, on the side of their enemies! Vain is 
 it to strive, vain is it to dare! Panic seizes 
 them—the panic of believing that God has hid 
 His face. They faint, they totter, they break 
 into fragments. Unprepared for work in the 
 night, they have no torches—they cannot fly. 
 But Israel has torches, for “ery God rules by 
 
 1 IT understand Joshua x. 12 to mean that Joshua saw the 
 sky overclouding and uttered a prayer for a premature darkness 
 so that it might confound the Amorites. 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 231 
 
 night as well as by day. And so, Israel presses 
 forward, and the Amorites fall thick and fast. 
 It is a crushing defeat and a deadly carnage. 
 But @gaim is Joshua only a follower of the 
 stream. Here, as at Rephidim, here, as at 
 Jericho, his part has been that of a spectator. 
 He has not been a leader; he has been a satellite. 
 He has derived his power from influences not 
 his own—from the wind, from the hail, from 
 the darkness. The possession of genius has 
 been denied him; the gift of originality has 
 been denied him; his one merit has been 
 that he has been content to take the lower 
 room. 
 
 I wonder if any one realises what a merit 
 that really is. I have said that the zational 
 galleries do not. There are three classes of 
 men in this world—the men in advance of their 
 time, the men wz to their time, and the men 
 followmg their time. The first are decidedly 
 original ; they have their place in every gallery. 
 The second are ¢vyzmg to be original; and they 
 have their place in many galleries. The third 
 have no originality ; they wait to obey orders ; 
 
Z3¢ THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 and they have a place in zo gallery—save in 
 that of the Bible. But I think, in preparing a 
 place for this third class, the Bible Gallery has 
 shown a superior discernment. For, have you 
 considered the merit of a man like Joshua! 
 Have you considered the extreme difficulty of 
 doing exclusively the work of routine! That 
 work, as I have said, comprehends three-fourths 
 of the business of life. It is the most necessary 
 work in the world. Without it, human society 
 would be dissolved in a single year. But, 
 because it is the most common work, do we 
 imagine it is therefore the easiest! To my 
 mind, the marvels of humanity are not the 
 men on the mount, but the men perpetually 
 on the plain. I think Moses a greater man 
 than Joshua; but I can account for Moses 
 better than I can account for Joshua. I can 
 understand why a man of high poetic instinct 
 and strong aspirings after glory should occa- 
 sionally do a commonplace thing well. But 
 that a man whose feet have never touched the 
 hills, that a man whose eye has never seen the 
 
 heights, should repeat from day to day the 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC Pie ig 
 
 habitual task and make no mistake therein— 
 this is, to me, the miracle of miracles, this is 
 the wonder of the world! 
 
 We often express surprise that one who has 
 for years been employed in routine work 
 should, at the eleventh hour, make a glaring 
 mistake. Our surprise is founded on the 
 notion that the longer we pursue the same 
 mechanical routine, the better we shall per- 
 form it.) libelicveit tobe jjust the reverse. 1 
 have been told by preachers who were com- 
 pelled to speak from memory, that they no- 
 where felt in such danger of tripping as in the 
 Lord’s Prayer. Why so? Simply because 
 they knew it so mechanically. Its words had 
 become to them a matter of routine; they 
 were so familiar that they had ceased to waken 
 self-reflection. It is precisely the same with 
 the reiteration of every process which is merely 
 physical. Tell Joshua to take, each day, a 
 certain number of steps round Jericho, tell him 
 to blow, each day, a certain number of blasts 
 in front of the city, and it is probable his steps 
 will decrease in accuracy and his blasts 
 
234 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 diminish in regularity. And if, in spite of this 
 probability, Joshua obeys to the letter, if, in 
 spite of prognostics to the contrary, he keeps 
 the order of the march and of the signals, 
 ought we not to conclude that Joshua is a 
 worthy man—a man woftthy of all reverence, 
 deserving of all esteem, demanding a perman- 
 ent place in the gallery of human souls! 
 
 The truth is, there is a kind of service that 
 we have not sufficiently appreciated — the 
 service given by unpoetic souls. The popular 
 view is that unpoetic souls are better able to 
 be drudges dy reason of their want of poetry. 
 We say, ‘Martha is a matter-of-fact woman ; 
 it is zxatural to her to have much serving.’ 
 It is not; it is wznatural to her ; and it is so 
 precisely because she zs a matter-of-fact 
 woman. The service of Martha is a sacrifice 
 to duty. She has been obliged to put duty in 
 the place of poetic impulse. She is working 
 under privation—the want of poetry. She is 
 in the position of one of the blind who make 
 baskets; she would make them better with 
 sight, but she must do the best she can with 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 235 
 
 her existing faculties ; and she deserves credit 
 for doing so well in such adverse circumstances. 
 Now, remember that the large majority are in 
 Martha’s position. The mass of mankind have 
 no illuminative vision. Is it not a great credit 
 to them that they do their work without it! 
 Does it not show that there is a strong sacri- 
 ficial power on the common plane of humanity, 
 when the men who cannot stand on Mount 
 Nebo nor see the burning bush in the wilder- 
 ness are yet able, from. day to day, from 
 month to month, from year to year, to go 
 the prescribed round and perform the allotted 
 task ! 
 
 And is it not well that this merit should 
 be acknowledged! If other galleries have 
 neglected to acknowledge it, is it not well 
 that the old Hebrew Bible has repaired the 
 omission! Moses would have had his place in 
 any gallery; Joshua has his place only here. 
 I plead the claims of Joshua! I defend the 
 selection which has given him a recognition in 
 the records of the human race! I am glad he 
 has received a niche in the temple of fame, a 
 
236 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 corner amid the representative men of the 
 world! Let him keep that corner—let the 
 class which he represents keep it! Let the 
 men who toil in the vineyard for the pay of 
 each hour receive a tribute deyond the hour— 
 the tribute of human admiration for work done 
 without the support of an adequate motive 
 and under the pressure of commonplace 
 routine! That will be our best monument 
 
 to the memory of Joshua! 
 
 | Baran there are times when I get work to 
 
 do whose good I cannot see! Some- 
 times, before the walls of Jericho, there is put 
 into my hand a trumpet when I think it should 
 be a sword! Sometimes I am sent a long 
 circuitous march when I expect to be retained 
 for the assault! These moments are very 
 hard to me. It is not the work that is hard ; 
 it is the want of vision. It is easy enough 
 to blow the trumpet; it is a light thing 
 to walk round the city. The hard thing is to 
 see the good of it, to believe that I am not 
 
JOSHUA THE PROSAIC 237 
 
 shunted from the race. Help me at such 
 moments, O Lord, to say, ‘One step enough 
 for me’! When the distant scene is denied 
 me, when the gloom encircles me, when the 
 things of to-morrow are veiled from me, help 
 me to say, ‘One step enough for me’! When 
 the voice of Moses is heard no more on the 
 hill, when the Song of Miriam has been 
 drowned by the roaring wind, when the fire of 
 the bush has been hid by intervening trees, 
 help me to say, ‘One step enough for me’! 
 Let the one step be the ordered step, the com- 
 manded step! Let me not ask how the sound 
 of my trumpet can aid the fall of Jericho! 
 Let me not ask why I am to go round about 
 when there is a short and easy way! If I am 
 not to be Moses, let me be Joshua; if I am 
 not to see the whole, let me see nothing—let 
 me leave allto Zee! I would have no half- 
 vision, O my Father, for half-vision is a mis- 
 leading thing. Either let me see the Promised 
 Land with Moses, or with Joshua let me be 
 led blindfold by Thee! When I see not the 
 Promised Land, let me feel the Promised 
 
238 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Hand! When I behold not Thine Ararat, let 
 me touch Thine Avm! When I view not Thy 
 Glory, let me have Thy Guzdance! When 
 there is no dove from heaven, let there be a 
 duty of the hour! When I have lost sight of 
 Thy coming, let me strain the ear for Thy 
 command! I shall not weep the want of the 
 wing if only I can say, ‘One step enough for 
 
 me’! 
 

 
 CHAE. Takes 
 SAMUEL THE SEER 
 
 I HAVE said that there is a distinction between 
 the earlier and the later forms in the Great 
 Gallery —that, contrary to expectation, we 
 proceed from the ideal to the actual. We have 
 seen the religious life beginning in that which 
 transcends the life of the hour, seeking a 
 larger environment than that which earth can 
 sive. We have seen the Adams claiming a 
 wider garden, and the Enochs aspiring to a 
 fairer world. The story of the Tower of 
 Babel itself, though the record of an act of 
 impiety, is singularly illustrative of the 
 religious tendencies of the Early Gallery; it 
 shows us the child-man still in search of a build- 
 ing ‘behind the veil.’ But, as we enter further 
 into the Gallery, we have observed a change. 
 
 We have witnessed in Moses the beginning of 
 239 
 
240 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 anew régime. Religion has come down from 
 the clouds to tread the narrow way, the 
 common, dusty way. This Gallery tells us it 
 has been with first faith as it is with first 
 poetry. Poetry begins with the stars, and 
 clothes celestial things in human forms. But 
 by and by it descends. Its whole Azstory has 
 been a descent—a gradual stooping from the 
 height to the valley. Each step has been a 
 step nearer to the commonplace. Its dawn has 
 been with the gods of mythology, its morning 
 with the heroes of Homer, its forenoon with 
 Dante’s vision of human destiny, its midday 
 with Milton’s moral retrospect, its evening 
 with Wordsworth’s little girl sitting with her 
 porringer beside the grave. Even such is the 
 course which this Gallery claims for relzgzon— 
 a path from the high to the lowly, a road from 
 the gold to the grey, a progress from the 
 stones of the heavenly temple to the stones of 
 the earthly quarry. 
 
 Is the Gallery right? Yes; it is true to 
 experience. It describes the course of faith 
 
 in the heart of every man. At the opening of 
 

 
 SAMUEL THE SEER 241 
 
 life we see God in mysterious things—things 
 which we cannot understand. We see Him 
 in sudden death; we hear Him in the thunder- 
 storm; we trace His footprints in the dread 
 catastrophe. As we advance in years our 
 standpoint is changed ; we find God nearer the 
 ground. We begin to discover Him in what we 
 do understand. We used to see His wonders 
 in what we believed to be abnormal; but there 
 comes a time when the marvel of a thing is its 
 naturalness. The Psalmist says, ‘Open Thou 
 mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things 
 zn Thy law’—‘in Thy commonplace require- 
 ments. He had always been able to find 
 such marvels in what he believed to be outside 
 the law—the miraculous, the supernatural, the 
 inexplicable. But he feels that the triumph 
 of worship only truly comes when God is 
 reverenced in His ordinary steps and recog- 
 nised in the objects of the common day. He 
 feels that the summer of religion will only be 
 reached in that hour when the duties of prosaic 
 life shall be duties done to God, and when 
 Man’s interest in the affairs of Man shall be 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 recognised as his surrender to the Father's 
 will. 
 
 I can almost trace the steps of gradation 
 which mark the phases of faith displayed by 
 the Great Gallery. At the most remote end 
 of the Gallery stands Enoch. He has a far- 
 away look. His eye is upturned toward the 
 heavens. His God is ¢here, and he feels that 
 he must ascend there to find Him. Then 
 comes Noah. With him the Divine Spirit is 
 no longer a silent spectator in the heavens; He 
 moves on the face of the waters; He reveals 
 His presence in the flood. Religion has come 
 into contact with the earth, has shown itself 
 as a world-power. Still, it has only touched 
 the world on a grand scale. It has revealed 
 itself in a big catastrophe, in a mighty revolu- 
 tion, in a stupendous act of Providence. Man 
 needs more than ¢hat for his spiritual sus- 
 tenance. And so, as we traverse the Gallery, 
 the Divine Spirit comés nearer still. It meets 
 Man in his hours of special trouble. It meets 
 the toiling Abraham under the oak of Mamre, 
 the fretted Isaac in his struggles at Gerar, the 
 
SAMUEL THE SEER 243 
 
 impoverished Jacob in his pillow of stone at 
 Bethel. Yet Man wants more than even this. 
 Life is not made up of moments fraught with 
 crisis. It is made up of moments fraught with 
 commonplace; and, if we would have a present 
 God, He must meet us eve. And so, God 
 draws nearer still to Man’s ordinary day. He 
 comes to Moses in the revelation of a universal 
 law—the law of conscience dictating the duty 
 between man and man. Can He approach 
 closerthan that? Yes. Zatwas the revelation 
 of God in the community. But I want more 
 than the life of the community; I want my 
 own life made strong. Therefore, by and by, 
 there appears in the Gallery a life distinguished 
 only in this, that his physical strength is 
 ‘inspired by God, that his bodily force is 
 stimulated and renewed by the direct action 
 of the Divine Spirit. In that Picture—the 
 figure of Samson, the Divine has come into 
 closer touch with the human than even in the 
 Portrait of Moses. Tat was the illumination 
 of conscience; 7Zkzs is an illumination more 
 
 condescending still—the entrance of the 
 
244 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Divine strength into a tabernacle of human 
 clay. 
 
 I shall not linger, however, before the figure 
 of Samson. I pass him by, for the simple 
 reason that he is not the climax of the process. 
 The climax appears in the next figure — 
 Samuel. In Moses we have God touching the 
 moral man ; in Samson we have God touching 
 the physical man; but in Samuel we have a 
 deeper stretch of condescension—God in com- 
 munion with the life of a child. You have 
 seen the noonday sun, in the course of its 
 progress, centre for a moment its illumination 
 on one corner of a valley. Even such is 
 the illumination of Samuel. The light of 
 heaven which has been long impending 
 reaches in him the corner of the valley. We 
 see a meeting of extremes—God and the 
 child. That Divine Life which has dwelt in 
 the heavens, moved in the flood, throbbed 
 in the night of Bethel, and glittered in the 
 revealings of Sinai, is seen concentrating its 
 whole energy on the inspiring of a little boy. 
 It is the latest stooping of the Spirit of God 
 
 St he -— er 
 
SAMUEL THE SEER 245 
 
 which the Gallery has yet proclaimed. Come, 
 and let us meditate on this bridal of the earth 
 and sky, this newest marriage ring which God 
 has wrought for Man! Let us try to disregard 
 all local circumstances! Let us ignore the 
 things peculiar to the time; let us fix our eyes 
 on that which is universal! Let us consider 
 the meaning of this Portrait, not to the house 
 of Israel, not to the house of Eli, not even to 
 that visible house of God where the Jewish 
 Priesthood ministered, but to you and me, to 
 the furthest ends of the world, to the heart and 
 conscience of humanity! 
 
 In the days when the High Priest Eli was 
 Judge of Israel, there appeared in the sanctuary 
 of Shiloh a wonderful child; his name was 
 Samuel. It was a dark and stormy time; 
 there were fears within and fightings without. 
 Israel was climbing a steep hill—arduously, 
 painfully. Her progress was slow; she was 
 alternately worsted and victorious—to-day left 
 in the valley, to-morrow gaining a_height. 
 And the struggle was more arduous from the 
 fact that there was no prophecy. It was an 
 
246 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 age of materialism. The hands of Moses were 
 no longer uplifted on the mountain; the eyes 
 of Moses no longer gazed on a promised glory. 
 Religion had become a form; its sfzvzt had 
 fled. There were few remains left of that 
 heroic time when Joshua had fought for God, 
 and Deborah had sung for God. The nation 
 had lost its poetry, and had lost its faith, 
 These had to be recreated, kindled anew at the 
 lamp of heaven. Where was the new kindling 
 to begin? Where was the Divine Spirit to 
 touch the world once more? In the heart of 
 the sage? No. In the breast of the old man? 
 No. In the leaders of the Jewish armies? 
 No. It was to begin in the soul of a little 
 child. Out of the mouth of a babe in 
 knowledge, God was to ordain strength. All 
 Israel was startled by the tidings that there 
 had appeared a prophetic chz/ld. From Dan 
 to Beersheba there ran a thrill of wonder. 
 Israel had been asking when the next Moses 
 would appear. Here he came—in the garb of 
 a tiny boy! Men were speechless with sur- 
 
 prise. It was a surprise that was never to be 
 
SAMUEL THE SEER 247 
 
 equalled until that day when Christ was to puta 
 little child in the centre of the apostolic band. 
 Was he a miracle—this little Samuel? No 
 —in the view characteristic of the Bible he is 
 the real and normal aspect of humanity. So 
 normal is he that Christ says we must all 
 return to his state before we can become seers. 
 What, think you, does Jesus mean when He 
 declares that we can only realise the beauty of 
 the kingdom through the eyes of a little child? 
 Is it not simply this, that to see the beauty of 
 anything we require a first eye? Take the 
 Bible itself. Perhaps of all literary produc- 
 tions it is, from a literary point of view, the 
 least appreciated. Why so? Just because 
 its words are the most familiar. To see the 
 beauties of the Bible, one would require to say 
 to us what the prophet said to Hezekiah, ‘ Let 
 the shadow go back ten degrees!’ We should 
 need to be transported back into life’s morning, 
 to divest ourselves of all preconceived opinions, 
 to imagine that we were reading the record for 
 the first time. That is precisely the standpoint 
 which Christianity promises to create. It 
 
248 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 professes to make old things new, in other 
 words, to let us see the old things as they looked 
 when they were new, and so to give us a true 
 sense of their power and beauty. What is this 
 but to recreate in us the life of Samuel! 
 What is this but to say that the true seer must 
 ever be a child, that, however grown-up he be, 
 it is by the survival of his childhood that he 
 sees the kingdom of God! Little Samuel is 
 no miracle. He reveals the normal law of 
 faith. He is the first of the prophets because 
 he is the first of inspired children. He isa 
 representative maz in religion because he is a 
 representative child. All seers of God’s king- 
 dom have seen it by the light of their child- 
 hood. We do not drop our childhood when 
 we become men; we carry it with us zzfo 
 the life of men. Every sage bears within 
 his bosom a little Samuel—an_ instinctive 
 child-life which concludes without reasoning, 
 adores without arguments, worships without 
 symbols, prays without words. The man who 
 listens to ¢hzs voice is a prophet of the 
 
 Kingdom. 
 
 
 
SAMUEL THE SEER 249 
 
 Let us look now at the form in which this 
 voice came to the child Samuel. We all like 
 to witness the beginning of things. We learn 
 more from the origin of a process than from 
 all its future manifestations. We are permitted 
 to witness the first hour of the religious vision 
 of Samuel. If that first hour were something 
 abnormal, it would not be worth considering. 
 But it is not abnormal ; it is the rule according 
 to which all Divine vision comes. There are 
 two things about Samuel’s illumination which 
 are very prominent in the Picture, and which 
 seem to me to be typical of religious illumina- 
 tion in general. Let us glance at each of them 
 as they are exhibited in the Great Gallery. 
 
 The first is that the call of Samuel does not 
 come to him as a call from heaven, but as a 
 voice from earth. This is all the more remark- 
 able in the light of the fact that from the very 
 outset Samuel was placed in a religious 
 environment. His parents wished him to be 
 a pious child. From the dawn of his intelli- 
 gence they consigned him to the care of the 
 
 High Priest Eli, in whose house he became a 
 
250 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 servant. His employment was in the things 
 of the sanctuary. He ministered in the temple 
 of Shiloh. What he did, we do not exactly 
 know. Of course, it must have been work 
 external to the actual service of the sanctuary ; 
 yet he wore a little ephod to mark the fact 
 that he was engaged in temple duty. In any 
 case, he was breathing every moment the 
 atmosphere of the house of God and using 
 every day the symbols of things Divine. 
 We expect it will be in the discharge of 
 these duties that his illumination will come. 
 No. It is when the work of the day is done, 
 when the little priest has retired to rest, 
 that the message from heaven greets him. 
 And it does not greet him as a message from 
 heaven. A voice cries ‘Samuel!’—he never 
 dreams it is any other voice than that of Eli. 
 He rises from his couch to get his orders from 
 human lips; ‘I did not call you,’ says his 
 master. He lies down again; and again a 
 voice cries ‘Samuel!’ A second time he 
 deems it to be only human ; a second time he 
 
 is told there has been no human call. Once 
 
SAMUEL THE SEER 251 
 
 more he seeks his rest, and once more the 
 voice cries ‘Samuel!’ Even then he believes 
 it to be human; even then he deems it a 
 summons from earthly lips. The voice of God 
 has assumed the accents of a man. 
 
 Now, in this feature of the Portrait the artist 
 has recorded not an abnormal, but a universal 
 symptom of the religious life. Our deepest 
 impressions of spiritual things come to us 
 indirectly. It is not by a voice from heaven 
 that a man believes himself to be in the 
 presence of God; it is by the blending of 
 earthly voices. When two or three circum- 
 stances, distinctively different in origin and 
 emanating from different points of the compass, 
 appear to converge towards one definite result, 
 we are constrained to say, ‘ This is the will of 
 God.’ How does a man get inspired with the 
 belief that God has a mission for him? By 
 imagining he hears voices from the sky? 
 Very rarely has it been ¢hus. In the large 
 majority of cases the sense of a Divine mission 
 has come from observing how independent 
 events have conspired in place and time to 
 
252 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 further an individual destiny. An Egyptian 
 princess happens to be passing when a child is 
 floating on the Nile river; that child in after 
 years will probably feel that his life was pre- 
 served for something. A band of Ishmaelites 
 is on its journey at the very spot and hour in 
 which a boy is about to experience violence ; 
 that boy in the days to come will claim a 
 special destiny. A ram is caught by the horns 
 in a thicket at the very moment when a man is 
 debating within himself what would be the 
 most suitable burnt offering; that ram will 
 assuredly be accepted as the object of sacrifice 
 preferred by heaven. 
 
 There is a remarkable passage in the Jewish 
 Scriptures, ‘Ye shall hear a voice dehind you, 
 saying, “This is the way; walk ye in it!”’ 
 I believe that to the Jew the voice of God ever 
 came from behind—from the region of past 
 experience. He followed because he felt he 
 had been already led—led by a stream of 
 tendencies over which he had no control, and 
 whose united currents had been produced by 
 
 a connection he could not understand. He 
 
 
 
SAMUEL THE SEER 253 
 
 heard the Divine because he had first heard 
 the human. The voice of God came to him 
 as the voice of Eli—as the voice of earthly 
 influences. It was in looking back that he 
 saw their sacred character. It was in retrospect 
 that he recognised the presence of the Spirit 
 of God beneath those seemingly mechanical 
 movements which had shaped his worldly way. 
 
 But there is a second feature in this call of 
 Samuel which is worthy of our attention. 
 From the moment in which he recognised the 
 real origin of the message, he perceived it to be 
 something which would disturb the calm of his 
 life. It brought not peace, but a sword. What 
 was this message which young Samuel re- 
 ceived? It was the command to denounce the 
 wickedness of the house of Eli. I do not 
 suppose that he then heard of this wickedness 
 for the first time; doubtless there had already 
 rung in his ears many human complaints. But 
 now for the first time it was borne in upon him 
 that these human complaints were the voice of 
 God. His conscience told him that, if he were 
 a true minister at the Divine altar, it was 
 
254 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 incumbent on him to bring before the High 
 Priest Eli the iniquity of his own family. 
 When conscience spoke, Samuel resolved to 
 obey ; but consider what that resolve meant to 
 him! To obey it, was to endanger all his 
 worldly interests. It was likely to procure his 
 dismissal from the service of the High Priest; 
 and to be dismissed from the service of a 
 High Priest would be, in the opinion of the 
 Jewish race, to contract an indelible stain. 
 The choice before Samuel was the choice 
 between the rose and the thistle. On the one 
 side was comfort for the present and an open 
 door for the future; on the other there was 
 a probable expulsion into the cold world and 
 a shutting of all the gates which led to pro- 
 motion. 
 
 Now, although the case of Samuel is an 
 accentuated one, the call of duty is nearly 
 always a call to struggle. The very idea of 
 duty implies restraint or constraint. Duty is 
 the middle term between compulsion and love ; 
 it is halfway between Egypt and Canaan ; it is 
 the desert. Outward force has passed, but 
 
 we Cg he? a Oe of 
 
SAMUEL THE SEER 26n 
 
 spontaneity has not yet come. I move volun- 
 tarily ; but I move witha burden, and I move 
 slowly. I have met my angel, but I strugele 
 with my angel; I have seen God face to face, 
 but I halt upon my thigh. Our moments 
 of duty are never unconscious moments, never 
 light-hearted moments. They have always a 
 sense of pressure, always an obstruction at the 
 door. The life of Samuel is, from the dawn, 
 a life of sacrifice. The path on which his 
 childhood went forth was a path of thorns; 
 and he took it knowing it to be so. All who 
 have followed his steps have had to tread the 
 Same narrow way. In all ages Herod has 
 sought the young child to kill it. The Divine 
 life has always run counter to a worldly 
 principle, and has required to make its way in 
 conflict with that principle. The road of in- 
 dividual pleasure is not parallel with the road 
 of virtue. They will diverge with you as they 
 diverged with Samuel—at the very point where 
 duty calls. The hour of his spiritual promotion 
 was precisely that hour which presaged his 
 material degradation. The experience of the 
 
256 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 first prophet will be the experience of all 
 Christian seers. 
 
 I have confined myself to the opening of 
 Samuel’s life, because it is in the opening of 
 his life that he is universally representative. 
 He was to live long, to do much, to suffer 
 many things. He was to purify public wor- 
 ship, to root out idolatry, to judge the tribes 
 of Israel, to humble the pride of the Philistine, 
 to be the maker and the unmaker of kings. 
 The sense of his presence in the nation was 
 to be so vivid that it was to outlast even his 
 life, for, after he had passed away, men were 
 to believe in the apparition of his spectre. But 
 these things belong to the annals of Judaism, 
 not to the annals of humanity. What belongs 
 to humanity is the fact that the spirit of pro- 
 phecy came to him through the spirit of a 
 little child. This is the one abiding element in 
 the life of Samuel. It is the one element 
 which is not connected with Shiloh, with 
 Ramah, with Gilgal, with any local haunt 
 whatever, but which is found in every place 
 and at every time. The name of Samuel is 
 
 OO 
 
SAMUEL THE SEER 25 
 
 traditionally associated with the establishing 
 of the prophetic school; and his spirit of 
 prophecy came to him in childhood. That is 
 the fact of permanent interest in this delinea- 
 tion of the Great Gallery ; for it is still through 
 the intuitions of the child-life that Man sees 
 the kingdom of God. 
 
 There were three great functions in the 
 Jewish nation whose simultaneous existence 
 was contemporary with the life of Samuel— 
 Pew rovuetyathemrriest, andy the: Kingwin! 
 believe these three represent the three periods 
 in the conception of time—yesterday, to-day, 
 and to-morrow. The Priest is the representa- 
 tive of the past. He exists as a salve to the 
 pains of memory—the memory of sins com- 
 mitted in days of old; his sacrifices are efforts 
 to wash these away. The King represents the 
 present. He exists to guide the hand at the 
 actual hour, to give the law which shall regu- 
 late the immediate course of action. But the 
 Prophet is the representative of the future... 
 He exists to tell, not merely of forthcoming 
 events, but of eternal principles. It is his 
 
 R 
 
258 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 - mission to reveal the issues of right and wrong 
 —to proclaim how, by an inevitable law, the 
 one will bring joy and the other pain. And 
 therefore it is that the organ of the prophetic 
 life is ever the spirit of the child. Childhood 
 is the time that looks forward. Old age 
 habitually looks dack; it is the time for memory. 
 Manhood generally looks round; it is the time 
 for observation. But childhood looks forward ; 
 it is the time for hope. Judaism provided for 
 all three; she comforted the soul on every i 
 
 side. Her Priest comforted the memory; he 
 
 i 
 4 
 % 
 i ; 
 f 
 i 
 ' 
 
 suggested an expiation of the past. Her King 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 gave strength for present weakness; he sur- 
 rounded her with defensive bulwarks. Her 
 Prophet pointed her on to a bright morning, 
 to a day when the harvest sown in tears 
 should be reaped in joy, and when the desert 
 should be glad and blossom as the rose. The 
 nation equipped with these is equipped indeed. 
 
 Y Father, prepare a place for the child- | 
 life that lingers in my heart! Prepare 
 a place for that instinct which points toward 
 
% 
 
 SAMUEL THE SEER 259 
 
 to-morrow! Thou hast prepared a place for 
 my yesterday—Thou hast cancelled the dark 
 deeds of my past. Thou hast prepared a 
 place for to-day—Thou hast promised strength 
 for the hour. But I have a need beyond my 
 yesterday, beyond to-day; I have a yearning 
 for to-morrow. Shall this be the only part of 
 my soul for which there is no environment! 
 Thou hast provided for memory—Thou hast 
 suffered my heart to see its past glorified. 
 Thou hast provided for the vision of to-day— 
 Thou hast sent the energy with the emergency 
 and the refuge with the storm. But is there 
 to be no provision for hope, O my Father! 
 Thou hast a voice to greet my ear when I 
 turn dackward; Thou hast a voice to greet 
 my ear when I turn vound; hast Thou no 
 voice to greet my ear when I look forward! 
 Shall the door of my future be the only 
 unopened door! Why, then, hast Thou taught 
 me to £uock there! When I knock at the 
 door of memory, I am answered; I can undo 
 much that tarnished my yesterday. When I 
 knock at the door of to-day, Iam answered ; 
 
260 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 I can help to move the wheel that moves the 
 world. But when I knock at the door of to- 
 morrow, shall there be no answer but the 
 delusive echo of my heart! Shall hope be a 
 blind-alley—the one blind-alley of the universe! 
 Shall aspiration be winged—for no atmosphere! 
 Shall faith be fledged—for no flight! Shall 
 foresight be given—for no future! Shall there 
 be longings on the sea—when there never was 
 land! Shall there be a sense of prophecy— 
 when there has been no word of promise! It 
 
 cannot be, O my Father! 
 
 
 
 BES i Sor 
 
CRAG ia hee Ll 
 DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 
 
 IT is very rarely that a nation has associated 
 all her attributes with the life of a single man. 
 tesay rarely to; avoid the * possibility? of 
 exaggeration; but I do not myself know one 
 instance of a purely national gallery having 
 done so. The pride of a country has generally 
 been to have a diversified gallery—to divide 
 her great professions among different men. 
 Britain places her Shakespeare in a unique 
 position of glory; but she would not seek to 
 claim for him a union of af the professions. 
 She is content to behold his genius in his 
 special sphere—the sphere of the poet. She 
 does not insist on recognising in him a con- 
 centration of all departments—the science of 
 a Newton, the logic of a Bacon, the states- 
 
 manship of a Chatham, the military skill of a 
 261 
 
262 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Marlborough. She is proud to think that in 
 enumerating her different sources of glory she 
 can assign each of them to a separate name. 
 But in that one Gallery which is not national 
 we meet with the spectacle which is elsewhere 
 absent. We find a people, through long 
 centuries of its history and through devious 
 changes of its fortune, consistently ‘and per- 
 sistently agreeing to heap upon a single 
 individual the aggregate glories of every pro- 
 fession in life. Israel has fixed her affections 
 upon an ideal whose very name expresses the 
 object uniting all desires—David—the beloved. 
 To claim one man as the object of all national 
 desires is a claim not easily sustained. It can 
 only be supported on the supposition that this 
 one man has passed through every national 
 experience, has filled every sphere, has par- 
 taken of every circumstance. Accordingly, 
 the David of Israel is not simply the greatest 
 of her £zmgs; he is the man great in every- 
 thing. He monopolises all her institutions. 
 He is her shepherd boy—the representative of 
 her zozleng classes. He is her musician—the 
 
DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 263 
 
 successor of Jubal and Miriam and Deborah. 
 He is her soldier—the conqueror of all the 
 Goliaths that would steal her peace. He is 
 her knight-errant—bringing mercy into war. 
 He is her king—numbering her armies and 
 regulating her polity. He is her priest— 
 substituting a broken and contrite spirit for 
 the blood of bulls and rams. He is her 
 prophet—presaging with his latest breath the 
 everlastingness of his kingdom. He is her 
 poet—all her psalms are called by his name. 
 The truth is, in the estimation of Israel this 
 man is a personification of the nation itself— 
 the embodiment of her qualities, the incarna- 
 tion of her spirit, the type of her destiny. A 
 conception so unique deserves consideration. 
 - How can we better photograph the form of 
 David than by presenting the analogy between 
 the picture of his life and the life of ancient 
 Israel—that Israel which saw in him a mirror 
 of her own soul! 
 Even the “zstory of Israel seems to repeat 
 itself in David. What do we see at the 
 outset of his life? A shepherd boy. with a 
 
264 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 very unlikely prospect of success and a very 
 big presentiment of glory! Like the nation, 
 he was born to a pastoral life; he fed his 
 father's sheep on the plains of Bethlehem. 
 Like the nation, he was deemed, in his 
 morning, very insignificant. He had seven 
 brothers—strong, stalwart, gigantic men. Zhese 
 were pointed to as the men who would serve 
 their country. Little David was, like little 
 Israel, a pigmy among the giants; and the 
 world said, ‘ He will never equal his brothers!’ 
 Yet little David had within that soul of his 
 an ambition, compared to which that of his 
 brothers was a molehill. He, like his tiny 
 country, had a dream of empire—that dream 
 which had its beginning when Abraham heard 
 his mission under the Chaldean stars. He, 
 like Abraham, had received a prophetic voice, 
 had felt the touch of an anointing hand. 
 Ever, amid the bleating of the sheep, there had 
 sounded in his ear a deep refrain, ‘ You will be 
 king of Israel! you will be king of Israel!’ 
 He kept the dream in his heart, he told it not; 
 but all the warmer did it burn because it could 
 
DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 265 
 
 not be spoken. And though it could not be 
 spoken, it could be sung; it made songs with- 
 out words. It tuned the strings of his harp; 
 it accompanied his music; it imparted to his 
 notes a wild dash and daring which made them 
 seem to strike the stars. He was unconscious 
 of their power; he played spontaneously— 
 played to relieve himself. But just on that 
 account he was overheard ; unconscious genius 
 ever zs overheard. Men stood and listened in the 
 night to the great musician. They spread his 
 fame. They told how a nightingale had come. 
 They spoke of a harp with chords inspired. 
 And by and by the tidings reached the 
 most august ear in all the land. They came to 
 the royal palace; they were heard by Saul the 
 king. Saul was passing through an hour of 
 mental darkness. There had come to him, as 
 there comes to many of us, an unaccountable 
 unrest. We are told of a peace that ‘ passeth 
 understanding’; there is also a dspeace that 
 ‘passeth understanding.’ There are clouds in 
 themind which arenot explained bycloudsin the 
 sky, for they often come in our days of outward 
 
266 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 sunshine. Saul had such an experience. He 
 was afflicted from within—afflicted in the midst 
 of his exaltation, on the pinnacle of that 
 proud height to which fortune had raised him. 
 Matertal conditions had not caused the 
 malady; material conditions could not remove 
 the malady. Might not zmaterial conditions 
 be tried! If the disorder originated from 
 within, might it not be conquered from within! 
 Might not muszc have power to minister to a 
 mind diseased! Why not call in the aid of 
 this wonderful player whose powers of melody 
 were bruited everywhere! Why not send for 
 David! 
 
 David is sent for, and comes; and, as he 
 comes, the Gallery repeats in him another of . 
 its past stages. He has already heard the call 
 of Abraham; he is about to experience the 
 call of Isaac. The call of Abraham was the 
 summoning to a life of glory; the call of Isaac 
 was the summoning to a life of domestic 
 ministration. When David entered the house 
 of Saul he abandoned, for the time, his dream. 
 
 He laid aside his desire to rule; he tried to 
 
DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 267 
 
 serve, to dig wells of comfort for the heart of 
 another. And not without success. As he 
 played, the malady of Saul subsided; the 
 clouds parted, and a stream of sunshine burst 
 upon his soul. If a pupil in a Sunday-school 
 were asked, ‘ Who was the first man influenced 
 by the Psalms of David ?’ he would not go very 
 far wrong if he answered, ‘Saul.’ It is true, 
 these melodies were songs without words; but 
 they were not songs without thoughts. On 
 the poor wandering soul of the monarch they 
 had all the effect of a sweet and solemn 
 Draverns they said, mibeaceunbBerstul ly: ieihey 
 were the earliest psalms of David—psalms of 
 unspoken words, psalms of undefined comfort, 
 psalms whose Divine message came only in 
 music. When the critics have disposed of all 
 the rest, they will leave to the minstrel these 
 jirsé chords. 
 
 And now the scene changes once more, and 
 there is repeated another past phase of the 
 Hebrew Gallery. The experience of David 
 has echoed the call of Abraham and the 
 
 domestic ministration of Isaac; it is now to 
 
268 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 echo the troubles of Joseph. He has had the 
 dream of empire; he has had the stage of 
 domestic life ; he is now to have the experience 
 of private jealousies—jealousies of which, like 
 Joseph, he is to be, not the sharer, but the victim. 
 There is a passion which music cannot quell, 
 which culture cannot calm, which art cannot 
 allay; it is envy. In the court of Israel the 
 personality of the young minstrel is magnetic ; 
 he draws all eyes, he wins all hearts. Men 
 begin to contrast his face of morning bright- 
 ness with the dark and lowering countenance 
 of their monarch. Saul awakes from his 
 nervous derangement and looks round. He 
 sees the situation at a glance. He is losing 
 ground; he is being superseded in the 
 affections of his people—superseded by a 
 Stripling! He must vemove this centre of 
 magnetism from the eyes of men. What is he 
 to do! How is he to get rid of him! By 
 open violence? No; that would be unpopular. 
 He will follow the method of Joseph’s 
 brethren ; he will cause him to disappear by 
 ‘seeming accident. He will make him captain 
 
DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 269 
 
 of a thousand men ; he will send him into the 
 front of battle, into positions where death 
 will be almost inevitable. By means that will 
 waken no suspicion he will remove this 
 shepherd boy. 
 
 But the means are allin vain. David at the 
 head of the thousand is only more magnetic 
 still He performs deeds of prowess and 
 becomes the right hand of Israel. What is to 
 be done with this troublesome prodigy! <A 
 new device presents itself to the mind of Saul— 
 so at least I read the narrative! He will 
 simulate a return of his malady. He will 
 pretend to be agazz mad ; and in this seeming 
 madness he will give David his deathblow. 
 Again the project fails; the musician eludes 
 the javelin. Did the penetrating eye of David 
 see through the subterfuge? I think it did. 
 Be this as it may, the mask is now withdrawn. 
 The baffled monarch turns at bay. He has 
 failed in strategy ; he will take means direct, to 
 rid himself of this rival. David is warned— 
 
 1 T think the incident recorded in t Samuel xviii. 11 a” 
 misplaced anticipation of that recorded in 1 Samuel xix. Io. 
 
270 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 warned from within the palace, warned by 
 Saul’s own son. There is but one refuge— 
 flight. David disappears from court. He 
 wanders a while in the secluded parts of Israel. 
 But no part of Israel is secluded enough to 
 screen him from the eye of Saul. He must fly 
 farther. He must leave his country altogether. 
 He must become a stranger in a strange land. 
 Again the national history repeats itself in 
 David. He, like his country, becomes an 
 exile, and wanders in a land of Egypt. He 
 treads a foreign soil; he is a fugitive and an 
 outcast; he is indebted to the charity of others. 
 He is oppressed and weary, now on the 
 mountain, now in the vale—to-day skirting a 
 ravine, to-morrow lurking in a cave—some- 
 times alone in the wilderness, sometimes within 
 touch of his adversary. At one moment heis 
 seen in Philistia; at another he treads the 
 mountains of Engedi; at a third he is by the 
 waters of the Dead Sea. The sea of his own 
 life is dead; he has hung his harp on the 
 willows; he has resolved to sing no more. 
 Then the curtain rises anew, and the life of 
 
DAVID THE MANY-SIDED ag sh 
 
 David continues to repeat the history of Israel. 
 After the exile comes the exodus; after the 
 land of bondage comes the conquest of Canaan. 
 David's life has hitherto been itself a harp of 
 many strings. Each chord has renewed the 
 existence of some bygone age of the national 
 annals. He has begun with the shepherd life 
 of-Abel: ‘He ‘has: received the anointing 
 mission of Abraham. He has served at the 
 domestic hearth with Isaac. He has experi- 
 enced the envy that assailed the life of Joseph. 
 He has passed into that exile where dawned 
 the day of Moses. He is now to emerge into 
 that struggle which secured the land to Joshua, 
 and to repeat in his own life the transition 
 from exile into empire. 
 
 Nor is there wanting a point of resemblance 
 between the conquest by Joshua and the con- 
 quest by David. In both cases there is an 
 absence of personal glory. I have shown this 
 in the case of Joshua; it is even more marked 
 in the case of David. It is not really David’s 
 prowess that wins him the kingdom; it is the 
 
 trend of circumstances—or, as men would then 
 
243 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 have called it, the hand of the Lord. The 
 battle which shattered the fortunes of Saul was 
 not fought by David—was not fought even in 
 the interest of David. It was the Phzlstines 
 that made room for David in Israel—made 
 room without meaning to do so. It was on 
 the field of Gilboa that the pride of Saul was 
 extinguished—a field on which Israel and 
 Philistia fought for their own ends. That 
 battle almost annihilated the house of Saul. 
 He perished; three of his sons perished; the 
 flower of his army perished. Israel was in the 
 position of England after the Wars of the 
 Roses. She had lost ‘the last of the barons ’— 
 the last of the great leaders on whom Saul’s 
 house could depend. Any strong hand would 
 be sure to hold the reins in a nation so struck 
 with panic. Yet, even in this panic-struck 
 nation, the strong hand of David did not at 
 once become supreme. There was a lingering 
 loyalty to the house of Saul. Eleven of the 
 tribes clung to his memory and enthroned his 
 son. One tribe alone declared for David—the 
 
 tribe of Judah. For seven years there were 
 

 
 DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 243 
 
 two kings in Israel—each claiming undivided 
 empire. For seven years there was internecine 
 war between David and the remnant of Saul’s 
 house; and, though the balance of success 
 inclined to David, his final triumph came not 
 from his sword. It came from an act of 
 desertion on the part of an enemy, from the 
 abandonment of the house of Saul by one of 
 its leading supporters. On the whole, I am 
 disposed to think that David realised his 
 mission mainly by the grace of God; or, if you 
 prefer its rationalistic equivalent, mainly by 
 the stream of tendencies which converged, in 
 place and time, so as to effect the issue. His 
 stage of climax was the stage of Joshua. The 
 walls of his Jericho happened to fall precisely 
 at the moment when he happened to blow the 
 trumpet. He was little more than a sfectator 
 of the scene which crowned him. His merit 
 was in waiting for the tide and taking the 
 tide. Hewas never more humble than on his 
 road to the throne. 
 
 I have thus sought to institute a parallel 
 between the history of David and the history 
 
 S 
 
274 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 of the Jewish race. The evolutionist tells us 
 that in the stages of birth the human individual 
 passes through the phases of the ascending 
 animal series from the fish to the mammal. 
 I think the individuality of David repeated the 
 history of its Auman ancestors — incarnated 
 within itself the previous life of the nation. 
 But it is not only David’s Azstory that reveals 
 the collective life of Israel; his character does 
 so too. There is not in all biography a more 
 remarkable delineation than the character of 
 David. We have pictures of strikingly good 
 men; we have pictures of singularly bad men ; 
 we have pictures of men who are half good and 
 half bad. None of these designations will cover 
 David. Measured by a Christian standard, he 
 is no saint. Measured by a heathen standard, 
 he is no sinner. Measured by ay standard, 
 he is no mixture—he never exhibits a blending 
 of good and bad. How, then, shall we describe 
 him? If he is not a telescope of uniform 
 sublimities, nor a microscope of uniform little- 
 nesses, nor yet a union of telescope and, micro- 
 
 scope in which one eye can see the sublime 
 

 
 DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 275 
 
 and the other the small, what is he? Heisa 
 kaleidoscope. He reveals a series of seemingly 
 disconnected scenes of which the later often 
 reverses the picture given by the earlier. In 
 each scene appears, not a phase of the man, 
 not a quality of the man, but the whole man. 
 Yet the David of to-day is often a direct 
 contrast to the David of yesterday; but for 
 his face and form we should not recognise 
 him. Yesterday, he had one pure spiritual 
 friendship—the devotion to Jonathan ; to-day, 
 he has many sensuous loves. Yesterday, he 
 was modest and retiring; to-day, through 
 vanity, he vaunts the number of his fighting 
 men. Yesterday, he was open and confiding ; 
 to-day, he deceives his benefactor Achish. 
 Yesterday, he was chivalrous to his enemies; 
 to-day—if the passage be genuine—he denies 
 forgiveness to his greatest general. Yesterday, 
 he saved the life of Saul, his foe; to-day, he 
 takes the life of Uriah, his friend. How came 
 such a character to exist? Is there any con- 
 nection in its acts beyond what is effected by 
 the shaking of life’s kaleidoscope? Can we 
 
276 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 account for a phenomenon seemingly so 
 grotesque and really so contradictory ? 
 
 I think we can. I believe this man epitomised 
 not only the past history, but the past passions, 
 of Israel. I believe the two streams of heredity 
 which had run in separate channels through 
 the path of the nation met at last in a 
 single life—the life of David. If I were to 
 christen these two streams, I should call them 
 ‘The Lion’ and ‘The Lamb.’ Look back over 
 the history of the Hebrew race, you will find 
 the moral life of that race ever depicted as a 
 strife between two. Go where you will, you 
 are ever confronted by a pair. Every lamb 
 has its opposing lion. Abel has his Cain; 
 Abraham has his Lot; Isaac has his Ishmael ; 
 Jacob has his Esau; Joseph has his‘ Brethren’ ; 
 Moses has his Amalek; Joshua has his Achan. 
 In David the two pass into one. He becomes 
 the heir to a double heredity. The strings of 
 his life-harp are swept by two impulses— 
 a south wind and a north—the one bringing 
 music, the other discord. When you see him 
 proceeding from the altar of God to a life of 
 

 
 DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 277 
 
 sensuality, it is not correct to say that he has 
 had a fall from grace. If you walk through a 
 town and at certain parts come to vacant 
 spaces, will this prove that the city is losing 
 its inhabitants? It will prove the reverse. 
 These vacant spaces are the survivals of yester- 
 day. They suggest that yesterday there were 
 no buildings at all—that the present amount of 
 population has been planted on spots which 
 were originally in the same condition. So is 
 it with the bad deeds of David. They are sur- 
 vivals of an old time—not falls from new grace. 
 Not all at once could the city of God be built 
 within him. Not all at once could the barren 
 swamps be filled with homes and hearths of 
 culture. Not all at once could the wild beasts 
 of the forest be rooted out and the voice of 
 Man be made to echo through the waste places. 
 Not all at once could the forms of the past that 
 lived within him die—the violent Cain, the wild 
 Ishmael, the selfish Lot, the reckless Esau, the 
 deceitful brethren of Joseph. These remained 
 as the memories of yesterday ; they waited the 
 
 expansion of the city to clear them away. 
 
278 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Here, then, was a region in which David was 
 not king—the region of the heart. I mean, his 
 own heart. He had a power of captivating 
 the heart of others; but he never took captive 
 his own. All the winds of the past strove for 
 the mastery of that great sea. Each prevailed 
 in turn. Sometimes it was swept by the gust 
 of anger, sometimes by the blast of impurity, 
 sometimes by the storm of doubt, sometimes 
 by the breeze of generous sympathy. At 
 morning it caught the glow, at noon the glare, 
 at evening the gloom. It was the heart of a 
 child ; the impression of the moment ruled it. 
 David fe/¢t the weakness, and cried out for a 
 king over kzmself. Hecalled aloud for some one 
 mighty enough to still the tempest of his heart. 
 This is the deepest note of his whole biography 
 —his distrust of himself, of his own power, of 
 his own judgment. I do not wonder the hymns 
 of Israel are called the psalms of David; they 
 reflect him, they mirror him—mirror most of 
 all his distrust of himself. When they cry 
 ‘I have made the Most High my Refuge !’— 
 when they exclaim, ‘O God my Shield, look on 
 
DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 279 
 
 the face of Thine anointed !’—when they pray, 
 
 "Hide me’ in the ‘secret, of Ehy pavilion |’ do- 
 we not hear the refrain of that life which could 
 
 find no help but in God! There is not in the 
 
 whole Gallery the picture of a soul so conscious 
 
 of its weakness. David will do nothing without 
 
 God. He will neither lead an army nor build 
 
 a temple without the preliminary Voice. He 
 
 has no confidence in his own will. Sau/ had 
 
 confidence in his own will. He was a weaker 
 
 man all round; but he rarely felt the need of 
 the Lord. David has in his veins the strength 
 
 of two conflicting streams of heredity ; yet his 
 
 deepest sense is that of his own nothingness. 
 
 His name has become almost a synonym for 
 
 the conviction of personal sin. 
 
 And do you not see that David’s sense of 
 moral impotence has originated precisely in 
 the strength of the contending elements within 
 him. Had there been only one element— 
 whether good or bad—he would never have felt 
 that impotence. Had he been simply an 
 amiable passionless creature untempted by 
 
 violent impulses and unassailed by the glitter 
 
280 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 of vice, he might have done less harm to his 
 veneration, but he would never have cultivated 
 his special flower—the thirst for God. Why 
 is this man ever longing in a dry parched land 
 where no water is? Precisely because his was 
 not an untempted nature. He wanted to be 
 good, but he could not. He had too big an 
 inheritance of past corruption to believe in his 
 own strength. His thirst for God came from 
 his personal experience of the meagreness of 
 his own soul. A placid nature would never 
 have felt the impotence and would never have 
 known the thirst; he would have failed to 
 cultivate David’s special flower. David stands 
 in the Gallery with a unique message—that 
 the forces of the natural world are not sufficient 
 to make a man good. It is the message 
 commonly called evangelical. The man who 
 preaches it from his heart must ever be one 
 who has come fresh from the storm. He who 
 knows not the power of passion, who feels not 
 the seductions of sense, who never sails except 
 on summer seas, may say indeed, ‘ Give us our 
 daily bread,’ but will find little need to say, 
 
DAVID THE MANY-SIDED 281 
 
 ‘ Deliver us from evil,’ If David is to cultivate 
 the flower whose ‘ language’ is that prayer, he 
 will have to hear the roar of the breakers and 
 experience the crash of the timbers and learn 
 what it is to utter the piercing cry, ‘Save us; 
 we perish!’ That was the education adapted 
 to him; that was the education he received. 
 To the city of his habitation he was led by a 
 rough way, because the rough way was for him 
 the only right way; his mission was to pro- 
 
 claim the heart’s need of God. 
 
 Y heart needs Thee, O Lord, my heart 
 needs Thee! Wo part of my being 
 
 needs Thee like my heart. All else within me 
 can be filled by Thy gz/ts. My hunger can be 
 satisfied by daily bread. My thirst can be 
 allayed by earthly waters. My cold can be 
 removed by household fires. My weariness 
 can be relieved by outward rest. But no 
 outward thing can make my heart pure. The 
 calmest day will not calm my passions. The 
 
 fairest scene will not beautify my soul. The 
 
282 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 richest music will not make harmony within. 
 The breezes can cleanse the air; but no breeze 
 ever cleansed a spirit. This world has not 
 provided for my eart. It has provided for 
 my eye; it has provided for my ear; it has 
 provided for my touch ; it has provided for my 
 taste; it has provided for my sense of beauty 
 —but it has not provided for my heart. 
 Provide 7hou for my heart, O Lord! It is the 
 only unwinged bird in all creation; give it 
 wings, O Lord! Earth has fazed to give it 
 wings; its very power of loving has often 
 dragged it inthe mire. Be Zhou the strength 
 of my heart! Be Thou its fortress in tempta- 
 tion, its shield in remorse, its covert in the 
 storm, its star in the night, its voice in the 
 solitude! Guide it in its gloom; help it in its 
 heat; direct it in its doubt; calm it in its 
 conflict ; fan it in its faintness; prompt it in 
 its perplexity ; lead it through its labyrinths ; 
 raise it from its ruins! / cannot rule this heart 
 of mine; keep it under the shadow of Thine 
 
 own wings! 
 

 
 CUTAN Bale Rae Ni 
 SOLOMON THE WISE 
 
 IN standing before the Picture of Solomon, I 
 am conscious of an impression which I have 
 not hitherto experienced—an absence of the 
 dramatic element. All the previous figures 
 have stood in critical situations. Adam in the 
 earden,; Abel in’ the field, Noah sin: the 
 presence of the Divine Judgment, Abraham 
 in his arduous mission, Isaac in his life of 
 domestic sacrifice, Joseph in his dungeon,’ 
 Moses in his desert, Joshua in his wars, 
 Samuel in his call to imperil his worldly 
 prospects, David in his exile from home and 
 country—all have exhibited the spectacle of 
 difficulty and danger. In Solomon we have a 
 life where the difficulty and danger are nod 
 exnimited.. hey, are there; but: they are 
 
 unseen. What we do see, in the foreground, 
 283 
 
284 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 is an event which will be found to pertain to 
 the life of every young man in the world—the 
 choice of a profession. Solomon is asked, as 
 many boys and all youths are asked, what he 
 would like to be. Hewas already a king ; but 
 one may be a king in many ways. Solomon 
 is asked what gift he would chiefly prize asa 
 sign of real greatness. There is spread before 
 his fancy what is spread before the fancy of 
 all romantic young men—a choice of golden 
 possibilities. Would he be rich? Would he 
 be powerful? Would he be famous? Would 
 he be an object of admiration? Would he be 
 a wise man, aman of prudence and sagacity ? 
 Solomon says, ‘ Let me be wise!’ 
 
 This seems a very commonplace introduction 
 to a great life. But is it? It is undramatic, 
 no doubt; it is homespun. But what if the 
 crisis of national history has shifted from the 
 theatre to the home! What if in the transi- 
 tion from David to Solomon the drama of 
 human life has z¢se/f assumed an undramatic 
 garb! What if the possibility of tragic 
 
 issues has begun to lie, not in war of nations, 
 

 
 SOLOMON THE WISE 28x 
 
 not in rise of dynasties, not in political com- 
 binations, but just at the fireside and around 
 the family hearth! Would not this alter our 
 view of the commonplaceness! Would it not 
 lead us to reconsider our estimate of the 
 Gallery’s introduction to the life of Solomon— 
 to ask if, after all, there may not be something 
 in this narrative as rich in possible tragedy as 
 was the threatening of a deluge, or the resis- 
 >» tance to an Egyptian bondage! 
 
 Now, I am prepared to show that it was so, 
 that Solomon’s choice of a profession was 
 really one of the most tragic acts of Jewish 
 annals—an act on whose decision was sus- 
 pended an issue as momentous as ever hung 
 on the prayers of Moses or on the sword of 
 Joshua. Did you ever ask yourself what is 
 the reason that the decision made by Solomon 
 is so highly commended? To me the answer 
 seems clear. His decision is applauded, not 
 mainly because it was a proof of personal 
 character, but because it furnished the hope of 
 escape from a national danger. If Solomon 
 
 had set his heart either upon riches or upon 
 
286 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 military glory, there would have been no 
 guarantee that the silent mine beneath his 
 feet would not explode. For, there was a 
 mine beneath his feet. Peaceful as looked the 
 scene, calm as were the surroundings, there 
 were subterranean fires which one thoughtless 
 deed might bring to the surface. There was, 
 below the crust of the soil, an underground heat 
 which any moment might be fanned into 
 flame by a giddy head or an unsteady hand. 
 The only security from the warmth below 
 was to have absolute coolness above. A hot- 
 headed sovereign, a man on the throne ani- 
 mated by personal motives, would be certain 
 at some point to fire the train. There was 
 wanted on the seat of royalty a balanced 
 mind, an impersonal mind, a mind in whom 
 all private ambitions were subordinated to zeal 
 for the common good. Let us consider this 
 necessity a little more in detail. 
 
 I said that when David came into the un- 
 divided possession of the empire, Israel was 
 very much in the position of England after 
 the Wars of the Roses. There had been a 
 
SOLOMON THE WISE 287 
 
 slaughter among the great leaders. The land 
 was like a steed that had lost his rider; it was 
 moving aimlessly, it was directed nowhere. 
 David obtained the supremacy without a 
 rival, and he transmitted the kingdom to his 
 son. But you will commit a great mistake if 
 you imagine that the party of Saul was crushed 
 because his house was crushed. I hold very 
 strongly that the eleven tribes who followed 
 Saul never submitted to David in their hearts. 
 Poor Rehoboam gets the credit of having split 
 the kingdom into two; I do not believe it 
 was ever really one. It was never anything 
 more than a patched garment. Judah and 
 Benjamin were never truly united. Their 
 union was like the assembling together of an 
 audience to hear a great preacher. David was 
 the preacher. The audience had no bond of 
 brotherhood—not even the acceptance of the 
 preacher’s doctrine. They were kept together 
 simply by the spell of a presence, by the power 
 of a personality, by the commanding chords of 
 a human voice. It wasa frail and impotent 
 
 thread on which to suspend a kingdom! 
 
288 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 For now the voice of the preacher is still! 
 His presence has been withdrawn; another 
 stands in the place he used to occupy. David 
 is dead, and a man of different mould has 
 mounted the rostrum. Will Solomon sway 
 the masses as David did? By natural gifts, 
 no. The new preacher has not the elements 
 of the old. In every respect they are con- 
 trasts. David was extemporaneous; Solomon 
 is elaborately prepared. David spoke in out- 
 bursts; Solomon deals in rounded periods. 
 David was unconventional ; Solomon is steeped 
 in culture. David appealed to human experi- 
 ence; Solomon expounds abstract principles, 
 David revealed the man ; Solomon exhibits the 
 scholar. David was the sermon; Solomon 
 gives the sermon. Clearly, if each is to be 
 judged by his natural powers, the second can- 
 not keep together the audience of the first. : 
 
 To drop the metaphor, young Solomon had 
 a problem before him. He had to ask him- 
 self the question, How shall I keepthis already 
 disunited mass from skowzng its disunion? It 
 
 was clear to him that to effect this he needed 
 
SS 
 
 SOLOMON THE WISE 289 
 
 a very special gift—a gift quite distinct from 
 the power of making money, or the brilliancy 
 that wins fame. I think, indeed, that the task 
 before Solomon was the greatest that can be 
 imposed on any king, and that the man who 
 performs it deserves to be reckoned amongst 
 the greatest of all sovereigns. We are gener- 
 ally in a mistake on this matter. We are 
 under the impression that to be a king in 
 times of open revolution is a more arduous 
 thing than to be a king in times of unex- 
 pressed dissatisfaction. Itis the reverse. In 
 times of open revolution a sovereign requires 
 but one power—an adequate army. But when 
 the currents are underground, when the 
 factions are invisible, inaudible, undefinable, 
 when the ferment of discontent is working 
 below the surface and the subterranean heat 
 is making no sign, he who guides the state 
 must have the powers of a prophet. He must 
 have the gift of imagination, the gift of in- 
 sight, the gift of anticipative sympathy, above 
 all, that gift which defies definition—the thing 
 called tact. The man who can preserve 
 th 
 
290 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 tranquillity among elements of inward dis- 
 cord is every inch a king. 
 
 Now, remember that for nearly forty years 
 this was what Solomon did. His is character- 
 istically the reign of peace ; there is not such 
 a period of protracted peace in all the Jewish 
 annals. This in itself would not be a matter 
 of greatness; there is a calm which comes 
 from lethargy—from the absence of vital force. 
 But the peace of Solomon’s reign is the peace 
 of ariver ; it is calm, not through stagnation, 
 but through balanced movement. It is a 
 peace produced in the midst of natural an- 
 archy, in a sphere where elements tend to stand 
 apart from one another. It is a result achieved, 
 not by the suspension of regal force, but by 
 the prolonged operation of that force. The 
 spectacle afforded to the eye is one of power 
 —of greater power than could be evinced by 
 any military conquest. The military conquest 
 requires an effort suited to the emergency; 
 the preservation of tranquillity amid turmoil 
 needs an energy uniform at all times. 
 
 Were I to put the question, Was Queen 
 
SOLOMON THE WISE 291 
 
 Elizabeth or Charles 1. the greater sovereign ? 
 there is not a schoolboy who would not 
 answer, ‘Queen Elizabeth. But why do we 
 hold that the earlier is more worthy of praise 
 than the later ruler? Is it because Elizabeth 
 was fortunate and Charles was not? No; 
 our judgment would be quite the same if 
 Charles had won the field of Naseby and 
 levelled his enemies with the dust. The merit 
 of Elizabeth lies in the fact that under her 
 the Revolution never ‘ook place. She had 
 elements of discord in her kingdom as fierce 
 as any which marked the reign of Charles; 
 but Charles let them explode, Elizabeth kept 
 them quiet. We pronounce Elizabeth the 
 creater potentate because her power went 
 deeper down than the power of Charles would 
 have gone even had it been victorious; it 
 could retain an empire in tranquillity when 
 everything conspired to make a conflagration. 
 
 Now, I have always felt that there is a strong 
 historical parallel between the Portrait of King 
 Solomon and the Portrait of Queen Elizabeth. 
 I do not know of any two characters living at 
 
292 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 so wide a distance from each other in space 
 and time who present such a _ remarkable 
 analogy in their public lives. Both had a very 
 remote prospect of reaching the thrones which 
 they eventually secured. Both attained their 
 position through storm and stress. Both came 
 to a kingdom in which the democracy had 
 been elevated to power through the fall of great 
 families. Both ruled over a state thick-sown 
 with secret dissensions—a state where hostile 
 parties nursed their unspoken jealousies. Both 
 for almost an equal period kept down public 
 disquiet without any display of authority and 
 without any exercise of severity. I am tempted 
 to add one parallel more. Both almost at the 
 last heard the beginnings of a long-suppressed 
 storm—a storm which their successors were 
 to hear with appalling clearness; and the 
 one reign, like the other, had an evening bereft 
 of gold. The marvel in each case is, not that 
 the evening should have been dim, but that the 
 hours of the day should have continued so long 
 bright. Nothing could be a stronger testimony 
 
 to the greatness of either sovereign. 
 
SOLOMON THE WISE 293 
 
 Turning now exclusively to Solomon, let us 
 observe the means adopted by him which, in 
 securing this internal tranquillity, succeeded 
 so long and so well. And, first of all, I wish to 
 direct attention to the fact that his whole life 
 is built upon a plan. We are, in my opinion, 
 under a widespread misapprehension as to the 
 character of Solomon. The popular view is 
 that he is the delineation of a double person- 
 ality—a life divided between wisdom and folly. 
 We picture a man alternating between the 
 cares of state and the pleasures of the 
 sensualist. We figure him as swayed by two 
 opposite impulses—the proclivities of thestates- 
 man and the tendencies of the man of idleness; 
 and we are disposed to regard the latter as the 
 reaction from the former. Now, this is not the 
 view I take of the life of Solomon. . To me 
 he presents the picture of one man. Every 
 incident of his life is to my mind the expres- 
 sion of one and the same tendency. I do not 
 think he ever deviates from his political 
 purpose, nor ever forgets it for a moment. 
 
 That he went far astray in his pleasures, that 
 
204 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 he was not always loyal to his religion, that 
 he was unduly prodigal in his expenditure, I 
 freely admit. But his errors were political 
 errors. They were not moments of reaction 
 from state cares; they were themselves part of 
 his state policy. That they were mistakes, no 
 one will deny; but they were mistakes of the 
 king rather than of the man. They were 
 committed in the pursuance of his plan of 
 statecraft, not in the forgetfulness of it. That 
 plan of statecraft never varied in its aim—to 
 keep dormant that faction of the kingdom 
 which still, with pertinacious loyalty, clung to 
 the memory of the house of Saul. 
 
 How was this to be done? One or other of 
 two methods was available—the awakening of 
 a common danger or the suggestion of a 
 common interest. The former has been the 
 usual method of kings in the circumstances 
 of Solomon; they have sought to purchase 
 domestic peace by the incurring of foreign 
 war. A nation divided by factions has often 
 been driven into unity by the call to arm 
 
 against another nation. It was so with the 
 
SOLOMON THE WISE 295 
 
 France of 1792; it was so with the Germany 
 of 1870. Many a despot has found outside 
 war conducive to his indoor peace and has not 
 scrupled to strike the match of international 
 discord. A foreign irritant has often produced 
 a home sedative, and the producing of a sedative 
 by this means has often been a policy. It was 
 the successful policy of Napoleon the Great ; 
 it was the attempted policy of Napoleon the 
 Little. But it was not the policy of King 
 Solomon. He felt that to cure strife on the 
 homeopathic principle was but a poor salva- 
 tion—that to heal domestic discord by outdoor 
 discord was but a superficial gain. He wanted 
 peace all round—peace not only in the inner 
 parts, but on the borders and at the gates. 
 Accordingly, he chose another way—what 
 seemed to him a more excellent way. Reject- 
 ing the aid of a common danger, he turned for 
 support to a common interest. It seemed to 
 him that he could best bind the heart of Judah 
 to the heart of Benjamin, that he could best 
 reconcile his own tribe with the refractory 
 
 eleven tribes, by presenting to them a positive 
 
296 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 rather than a negative ground for union. It 
 was for this that he strove through all the 
 years. His whole reign was an application of 
 his principle. Sometimes he chose right 
 measures, sometimes wrong; but with the 
 principle itself he was never inconsistent. 
 There is no side of his character which does 
 not, to my mind, bear the stamp of this 
 peacemaking design. 
 
 Take) the)domestic) side.) sHere shame 
 decidedly reprehensible. The vast number 
 of matrimonial alliances which he personally 
 and simultaneously contracted are a disgrace 
 to family life; and even for an Eastern 
 monarch, they place him in a low moral 
 category. Yet I do not believe that their 
 dominant motive was sensuality. I think his 
 design was that the family of David should 
 ramify in as many directions as possible at 
 home and abroad. He felt that a common 
 interest is greatly promoted by a common 
 blood. He felt that nothing would weaken the 
 memory of the house of Saul like consanguinity 
 to the house of David. The more branches 
 

 
 
 
 SOLOMON THE WISE 297 
 
 the Davidic tree could shoot forth in the land 
 of Canaan and the adjacent lands, the more 
 would it be endeared to Semitic eyes. This, I 
 believe, was the motive, the main motive, which 
 lighted the myriad nuptial torches of Solomon. 
 His marriages, regular and irregular, had a 
 political aim. They were meant to graft his 
 blood upon the Hebrew race, to connect that 
 race for the future with his name and lineage, 
 and to elicit the verdict of the generation yet 
 unborn, ‘ The whole land of Israel has a stone 
 in the house of David.’ 
 
 Take the commercial side. Here at first 
 sight Solomon appears to be the typical money- 
 maker, living exclusively for the wealth he can 
 gather. He seems to have deserted the choice 
 of wisdom for the choice of gold. His ships 
 travel the seas in search of merchandise; they 
 touch at every port where the spirit of 
 commerce dwells. His caravans range the 
 land in the service of the trader ; they go forth 
 with native produce and return with foreign 
 treasure. His commercial enterprise extends 
 
 tomallesesions. »)iltivisits | lyre) (iit reaches 
 
298 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Arabia. It treats with Egypt. It has inter- 
 course with Babylon. It probably touches the 
 shores of India. To outward appearance, the 
 whole aim of his life and of his labours is the 
 amassing of wealth, the acquisition of personal 
 gain. But look deeper, and you will form 
 another view. You will come to the conclusion 
 that, to his mind, the value lay in the pursuing, 
 not in the thing pursued. You will come to 
 see that this itself had for him a political 
 value. The aim of Solomon, as I take it, was 
 to keep the mind of the nation in united 
 employment. Civil war would keep men in 
 aisunited employment. But the battle of 
 human industries was a battle which his people 
 might all fight side by side. Commercial 
 enterprise loomed before the eye of Solomon, 
 not so much in the light of a personal gain as 
 in the light of a popular attraction. Here was 
 an object on which the admirers of the house of 
 Saul and the adherents of the house of David 
 might unite! Here was a cause in which they 
 might work together! Here was at once a 
 
 labour and a pleasure in whose pursuit each 
 

 
 SOLOMON THE WISE 299 
 
 might forget its wrongs and become the ally 
 of the other! And when the result of this 
 commercial prosperity should appear, when the 
 opulence of the nation should be manifested in 
 its magnificent pageants and its splendid build- 
 ings, here was a source of common pride to 
 Judah and Benjamin, a work whose triumph 
 both could claim and whose glory each could 
 share! 
 
 But it is on the religious side that the 
 wisdom of Solomon is most resplendent. I do 
 not, of course, speak of those concessions 
 to idolatry which tarnish his later years. I 
 believe these to have been mistaken attempts 
 at conciliation—things in which the wisdom of 
 Solomon failed. But that which exhibits the 
 true religious sagacity of this man is the deed 
 which is indissolubly associated with his name 
 —the building of the temple. Why did he 
 build that temple? I think in losing sight of 
 the man’s character we have missed the full 
 significance of the deed. What was his motive 
 for the; erection’ of » that! stately: piler To 
 fulfil a wish of his father? Partly. To satisfy 
 
300 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 a personal impulse of devotion? Partly. But 
 I think neither of these standing alone nor 
 both united would have impelled Solomon to 
 such a work. Remember that this man was 
 before all things a politician. David would 
 have built the temple for ‘glory to God in the 
 highest’; Solomon -required the additional 
 motive, ‘Peace on earth; goodwill among 
 men. What Solomon wanted above all things 
 was a bond of national unity. Two rival 
 ideals were dividing his empire—the house 
 of David and the house of Saul. To the heart 
 of Solomon there came the suggestion of a 
 third and higher watchword —the house of 
 God. Might not the two other houses be 
 united in this wzder building! Might not the 
 memory of the long feud be made to perish in 
 the common effort to inaugurate another king- 
 dom, in the co-operation of both parties for 
 the construction of a new and glorious palace 
 —a palace compared to which the residence 
 of a Saul and of a David would alike grow 
 dim—a dwelling for the habitation of the King 
 of Kings! 
 

 
 SOLOMON THE WISE 301 
 
 Can you fail to see how in the building of 
 this temple the idea of common co-operation 
 occupies so prominent a place! Why are so 
 many invited to contribute gifts? Why are 
 such numbers solicited to lend a hand? Why 
 is the work divided and subdivided between 
 so many classes of labourers? Why is there a 
 place for those who bear, and a place for those 
 who hew, and a place for those who chip? 
 Why is there such an enormous number of 
 workmen as a hundred and _ eighty-three 
 thousand and six hundred in a work pro- 
 tracted over seven years? Can there be any 
 answer but one? Dowe not see that Solomon 
 wants to be engaged in a work which will be 
 the work of the nation—of the whole nation 
 in all its parts and in all its members. He 
 wants his people to be able to say, not only, 
 ‘Solomon did it,’ but, ‘We all did it with 
 Solomon. He desires that every representa- 
 tive of Jewish life shall have a stone in the 
 building. The children shall bring their gifts 
 to it; the adults shall bring their hands to it; 
 the aged shall bring their prayers to it. The 
 
302 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 rich shall adorn it with gems; the poor shall 
 serve it with their workmanship. The men of 
 action shall break stones for it; the men of 
 patience shall carry burdens for it; the men 
 of taste shall contribute decorations for it. 
 The poets shall make its songs; the musicians 
 shall weave its memories; the theologians 
 shall form its ritual. That is the hope of 
 Solomon—the dream of repiecing the rent 
 garment. It is the hope that the tribe of 
 Judah and the tribe of Benjamin may become 
 tributaries to the river of God, that the wars 
 sown in a divided empire may be forgotten in 
 a united worship, and that the house of Saul 
 may be joined to the house of David by that 
 mysterious secret passage which runs through 
 the house of the Lord. 
 
 ORD, Thou art building a temple greater 
 than that of Solomon—the temple of 
 
 the Holy Ghost! Give me a stone in the 
 building of that house! Give me a place in 
 the work, suited to my soul! If I have many 
 places in my soul, give me many duties for 
 
SOLOMON THE WISE 303 
 
 the temple! In my time of singing, train me 
 for its choir! In my time of business, enrich 
 me for its maintenance! In my time of health, 
 strengthen me to raise its walls! In my time 
 of sickness, give me patience to bear its 
 burdens! I would bring all my possessions 
 of body and mind as subscriptions to the 
 building. I bring Thee my gladness for its 
 morning hymn. I bring Thee my sadness 
 for its evening song. I bring Thee my beauty 
 for its adorning. I bring Thee my defects 
 for its altar of sacrifice. I bring Thee my 
 strength that I may support some part; I 
 bring Thee my weakness that some part may 
 support me. I bring Thee my moments of 
 faith that there may be service by day; I 
 bring Thee my moments of doubt that there 
 may be service by night. I bring Thee my 
 full cup for the hour of thanksgiving; I bring 
 Thee my empty cup for the hour of prayer. 
 Let all the gates of Thy temple be open to my 
 soul, O Lord ; for I know not, in life’s revolving, 
 
 before what portal I may need to stand! 
 
CoH DAT, RON OG 
 ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 
 
 THERE are three men whom the Bible Gallery 
 dissociates from the idea of death—Enoch, 
 Moses, and Elijah. Of each of these it is 
 virtually declared that no one can picture for 
 them a burying-place. Enoch has left no 
 record of a closing life; Moses has left no 
 trace of a physical decay; Elijah has left no 
 sign of an extinguished fire. It is not, I think, 
 by accident that the Great Gallery has dis- 
 sociated these three forms from the idea of the 
 dark valley. These three forms represent three 
 qualities which have no historical limit, which 
 are found side by side in every age—the spirit, 
 the conscience, and the heart. Enoch represents 
 the spirit—the craving for Divine communion. 
 Moses represents the conscience—the eternal 
 
 law of human duty. Elijah represents the 
 304 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 305 
 
 heart—the power that acts from the impulse 
 of the moment. These three phases of mind 
 cannot be localised; they are _ historically 
 immortal. We cannot say that spirituality 
 belongs to one century, conscience to another, 
 impulse to a third. Wecannot even say that 
 within the memory of civilised man these 
 three have developed. Spinoza is not in 
 advance of Plato; Paul is not morally the 
 superior of Moses; Luther is not more intense 
 than Simon Peter. In all ages of civilised time 
 man has exhibited equally these three phases 
 —the spiritual, the moral, and the intuitive. 
 They have been, within this limit, not only 
 deathless, but seemingly changeless. The 
 Gallery has proclaimed their immortality. It 
 has incarnated each in the person of a separate 
 life, and then it has shown us that life standing 
 apart from the elements of decay. Enoch has 
 no tomb; Moses has no shroud; Elijah has 
 no setting to the chariot of his sun. 
 
 There is nothing which localises a man like 
 the record of his death. When you announce 
 the date of a man’s death, you fix the limit of 
 
 U 
 
306 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 his personal development in the present world. 
 When you announce the date of his marriage, 
 or the date of his first publication, you give no 
 clue to his ultimate mental standpoint. But 
 the inscription on the tombstone is the latest 
 possible record concerning the man; it stamps 
 indelibly his century upon him; it marks the 
 final stretch of his environment. Here lies 
 the szguzficance of this record of the Gallery! 
 When it shows us Enoch translated, when it 
 conceals the body of Moses, when it reveals 
 Elijah ascending in his chariot of fire, it 
 virtually says: ‘Do not regard these men as 
 belonging to a particular century. Look at 
 them as symbolising those three phases of 
 the human mind which are the same in all 
 centuries. View them as embodiments of the 
 fact that there are three permanent elements 
 in humanity—the devotional, the moral, and 
 the instinctive. Consider them as revealers 
 of the truth that, whatever e/se may faint or 
 grow weary, these three will never die—the 
 breathings of the spirit, the commands of the 
 
 conscience, and the impulses of the heart.’ 
 

 
 ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 307 
 
 I have attributed to Elijah the third of these 
 positions. I regard him as distinctively the 
 man of impulse, the man who is prompted by 
 instinctive dictates. His life is.one of sudden 
 movements, of surprises. He is more like a 
 lance than a sword. He does not fence; 
 he darts. He breaks forth suddenly from 
 the silence, and as suddenly vanishes. Every- 
 thing about him is abrupt; his beginning and 
 his ending are abrupt. He comes without 
 introduction, and he goes without warning. 
 He appears before us like Melchizedek—with- 
 out father or mother or descent. We see no 
 childhood. We discover no home. We recog- 
 nise no domestic interest. He comes before 
 us as the Christ of St. Mark comes before us— 
 full-grown, developed, equipped for his mission. 
 He stands forth all at once in the political 
 arena. In a moment, in the twinkling of an 
 eye, we are confronted by a spectral form 
 denouncing idolatry, predicting vengeance. 
 Not in the valley does he first appear. We 
 see no trace of one who needs to climb. When 
 we earliest meet him, it is at the top of the 
 
308 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 hill. He hurls his rebuke right at the throne. 
 Reformers as a rule begin with the masses 
 and creep up gradually to the classes. Elijah 
 begins at the social summit. He stands in the 
 court of Ahab, in the court of Jezebel; our 
 first vision of him is in the presence of kings. 
 He bursts upon us in full meridian. There 
 is no gradation between the depth of silence 
 and the blare of trumpets—yesterday he was 
 voiceless ; to-day he is thunder. It is written 
 of John the Baptist, ‘He was in the desert 
 till the day of his showing unto Israel.’ That 
 could be written of Elijah. His development 
 is quite hid from us. There is no boundary 
 line between his desert and his glory. We 
 do not see him rise; we behold himrisen. A 
 few minutes ago there was darkness all round ; 
 suddenly we are in the presence of a great 
 fire whose kindling has been invisible to us, 
 and whose origin we do not know. 
 
 It is my opinion that the history of Elijah, 
 as recorded in the Great Gallery, is the history 
 of all impulsive minds. The course of all such 
 
 minds is a process not of increasing, but of 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 309 
 
 subsiding flame. I do not mean that they 
 ever diminish the actual amount of their heat ; 
 but they diminish the amount of their heat 
 in any one direction. All impulse is at first 
 onesided. It sees only a single way —the 
 drastic way. It looks at the barren fig-tree 
 and says, ‘Cut it down; why cumbereth it 
 the ground!’ In after times it loses its haste 
 —not from declining zeal, but from increasing 
 vision. It sees that there are other ways of 
 dealing with the fig-tree—that zeal may be 
 intense without being drastic. This, if I mis- 
 take not, is the course of Elijah—a gradual 
 - subsiding from the roar into the whisper. It 
 iS a voice growing softer, becoming ever more 
 calm—not because the heat has lost its passion, 
 not because the soul has drooped its wing, but 
 because the eye has seen more clearly the hope 
 of ultimate success. 
 
 Let us examine this process in the life of 
 Elijah—this gradual subsiding of noise. He 
 begins most vociferously. Like the Baptist, he 
 comes out of his desert and shouts, ‘ Repent!’ 
 
 His motive, however, is different from that of 
 
310 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 the Baptist. The Baptist denounced loose 
 living; Elijah denounces idolatry. The Old 
 Testament Prophet is more allied to the 
 John who stood before Queen Mary than to 
 the John who stood before King Herod. To 
 John Knox, indeed, he presents a strong 
 parallel. Elijah, like Knox, is the child of 
 a Protestant reaction. He appears as the 
 champion of a faith which he believes to be 
 the primitive faith—the worship of an invisible 
 God. Men had sought to worship God in a 
 material form, to see Him enshrined in some 
 object of human sense. Elijah calls them to 
 come back—back to the forest primeval, back 
 to those grounds of Eden where God was 
 distinct from the trees of the garden. Elijah is 
 the uncompromising Protestant of his time, an 
 opponent of the image in the sanctuary. But 
 his weapons as yet are purely physical. He 
 brings no arguments; he exhibits no reasons. 
 The message he delivers is a menace, ‘ Abandon 
 your ideals, or die!’ He recognises but one 
 force—outward compulsion, ‘You have bowed 
 
 down to idols; you will have drought and 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 311 
 
 famine!’—that is the burden of his message. 
 There is no appeal to philosophy; there is no 
 invitation to a controversy ; there is no attempt 
 to exhibit the inherent nature of the sin. There 
 is simply a call to arms—a command to ex- 
 tirpate those who revered the forms of Nature. 
 
 Elijah, then, displays at the outset the full 
 amount of his fire—his fire concentrated ona 
 single point. The problem is, how to get that 
 fire distributed. We do not wish to see it 
 extinguished ; we do not even wish to see it 
 reduced; we want to see it diffused—spread 
 in different directions—made less onesided. 
 The effect of all onesided emotion is a collapse 
 of the man who feels it. It is so with Elijah. 
 Where do we next meet with him? In a 
 desert place by the side of the brook Cherith. 
 What has brought him there? The fear of 
 King Ahab, says the Bible student. I do 
 not believe it. Has he not just been in the 
 presence of Ahab, bearding him to the face, 
 denouncing his idolatry, proclaiming his retri- 
 bution! If Elijah had been a timid man, then 
 was the time for fear. Could you imagine a 
 
512 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 man who braved Ahab to his face running 
 off in terror when Ahab had turned his back! 
 No—not in terror. But I could imagine him 
 doing so in physical prostration. In fact, no 
 other explanation can be given. Why should 
 this brave, bold man, who had met the hour 
 of danger with unblanched cheek, be found, 
 when the crisis was past, lurking in a desolate 
 spot by the brook Cherith! It can only be 
 accounted for by nerve-exhaustion— by the 
 process of reaction from strong emotion. 
 Elijah at the brook Cherith is an illustration 
 of that principle which has ruled in all minds 
 of onesided impulse. If he had been divided 
 between anger and sorrow and pity, he would 
 have experienced no mental reaction; the 
 alternations of feeling would have saved him 
 from collapse. But he abandoned himself to 
 a single impulse, and the inevitable result was 
 the prostration at the waters of Cherith. 
 
 And now I have to observe that this re- 
 action was the finest training which the man 
 could possibly have received. It gave him 
 his first lesson in something he had much 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 313 
 
 need to learn—the superiority of mental force 
 to material force. He had been conquering 
 Ahab by physical strength; but immediately 
 afterwards he is himself conquered by a 
 silently-working influence—a power impalp- 
 able to sense, independent of weapons. He 
 has been prostrated by a process working 
 quicker than famine, quicker than drought, 
 quicker than pestilence — prostrated by the 
 very sweep of his own mental energy. Was 
 not this a message to his soul that he had 
 mistaken the comparative strength of the 
 natural forces! Did it not say to him that 
 he had chosen the least powerful agency 
 when he selected drought and famine as the 
 ministers of God! Did it not tell him that 
 he should have appealed to the mznd of Ahab 
 —that he should have tried to exhibit rather 
 the inner than the outer majesty of God! 
 Elijah was to be taught that the best cure 
 for idolatry was not the exhibition of the’ 
 Divine hand, but the exhibition of the Divine | 
 heart, that God was better than the idol, not , 
 because He could break the idol, but because 
 
314 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 He could give what the idol could not—help 
 
 \ in the day of trouble. 
 
 Elijah, then, must be taught that the highest 
 glory of true religion, and what distinguishes 
 it from false religion, is its power to minister. 
 And this, by the brook Cherith, is God’s lesson 
 to his soul. The ravens unconsciously bring 
 him food. Unable in the famine to find grain, 
 they bear to the spot the bodies of animals 
 which they have slain, and deposit them there 
 for their future use. Elijah inherits the fruit 
 of their labours. He appropriates the spoil 
 they have gathered; but he regards them as 
 his unconscious almoners. Yet, by his country- 
 men the raven had always been deemed an 
 unholy thing. It was ill-omened. The lamb, 
 the dove, and the goat were objects of Divine 
 association; the raven was not—men did not 
 present it in sacrifice. But here God presents 
 it in sacrifice—tells Elijah to receive it as His 
 minister. And then there comes a strange 
 call to Elijah which perhaps I may be allowed 
 to paraphrase: ‘Elijah, there are better modes 
 of teaching My service than breaking and 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 315 
 
 bruising. You have been ministered unto by 
 creatures which you deem unholy; will not 
 you minister unto such! If I can make sacri- 
 legious things My instruments, shall you be 
 afraid to fouch them! Will you not best 
 conquer them by showing them the beauty of 
 holiness! Come, and I will tell you how to 
 show the beauty of holiness to one of those 
 whom you call sacrilegious. There is a widow 
 in great want in the country of Tyre and 
 Sidon. She is beyond the boundaries of your 
 land. She belongs to a heathen population. 
 She worships Me not after the pattern of your 
 fathers. But she has a body of like passions ~ 
 with you. She has felt the hunger which you 
 have felt—the hunger which the ravens have 
 fed. Go, and minister to her as the ravens 
 have ministered to you! You will reveal to 
 her the power of your God more clearly by 
 that deed than by all the storms of denuncia- 
 tion and all the instruments of destruction.’ 
 Do we not see that the aim of this call is 
 to broaden Elijah—to lead him to the belief 
 
 that the absence of true religion is not so 
 
316 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 much something to be punished with famine as 
 something which proves famine to be already 
 there. He is to be made to feel that the man 
 or woman so afflicted is primarily an object, 
 not of anger, but of pity. He is to be led to 
 realise that the subjects of this malady are 
 experiencing a sense of want, and therefore 
 are objects of charity rather than marks for 
 vengeance. That is the reason why every 
 stage of Elijah’s course is a humbling stage. 
 He is constantly met by some privation; 
 every morning of hope is followed by a night 
 of despair. Why so, we are inclined to ask; 
 why should God obstruct the missionary 
 work of His servant? Simply because the 
 obstruction of the work is, in his case, the 
 advancement of the man. What he needs to 
 know, above all things, is the sense of want— 
 the sympathy with human weakness. He has 
 been born with too much independence in his 
 heart. His native instinct is towards self- 
 reliance. What he deems easy he thinks 
 everybody should deem easy. The lesson he 
 
 needs from life is an experience of individual 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE city, 
 
 feebleness. Elijah is the natural opposite of 
 David. David had conflicting currents in him, 
 and therefore he felt weak ; Elijah had origin- 
 ally only one current, and therefore he felt 
 strong. The aim of the Almighty is to send 
 new currents through him, and soto make him 
 feel more conflict. He is not humanitarian 
 enough, because he is not near enough to the 
 ground. He does not make allowance for 
 human frailty, because he is too confident of 
 himself. We must be taught self-distrust, that 
 he may learn the needs of Man. The greatest 
 convert made by Elijah’s mission was to be— 
 Elijah. 
 
 Not all at once did this conversion come; 
 it was gradual. When next the curtain rises, 
 he is already in some measure liberalised. 
 He consents to meet the idolaters at an 
 CEcumenical Council on Mount Carmel. That 
 was a large concession from a man of his 
 uncompromising spirit. This was not the 
 method in which he had first met Ahab. 
 Then he had allowed zo discussion; he had 
 
 simply said, ‘Accept the doctrine or receive 
 
318 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 the scourge!’ Now it is otherwise. He 
 proposes a test of truth—-a mental test—the 
 comparative power of prayer. Let us try, he 
 says, which of our prayers will impart most 
 fire to life! That was a fair field of battle; 
 what can be a better test of religion than its 
 power to impart vital fire! It was a field on 
 which Elijah was sure to win. No unspiritual 
 worship is ever kindling; love alone can 
 illuminate the commonway. Elijah triumphed 
 in the argument ; he showed what on his side 
 had been wrought by prayer. It would have 
 been well had he rested with that victory. 
 But the militant instinct was not dead within 
 him. The meeting closed in _ bloodshed. 
 What happened I do not exactly know; the 
 Picture in the Gallery leaves something to the 
 imagination. I suppose that Elijah, heated by 
 his new kind of triumph, harangued the crowd 
 and rhetorically called upon his countrymen 
 to root out from among them these corrupters 
 of the national faith. I suppose that the 
 * crowd, mistaking rhetoric for prose, and inter- 
 preting the exhortation to extirpate a principle 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 319 
 
 as the command to slay its adherents, rushed 
 frantically and tumultuously on the prophets 
 of Baal and gave them the crown of martyr- 
 dom. That Elijah designed the deed, I do 
 not believe; that he regretted it, I firmly hold. 
 Yet it was the fruit of his onesided passion, and 
 it brought a dark night to close a bright day. 
 The martyrdom he had given to Baal was 
 znadeed a crown; violence always helps the 
 cause on which it tramples. The clamours of 
 the land rose against Elijah. To a man con- 
 scious of the justice of his deed this would 
 have been little; but Elijah’s inner man rose 
 against /zmsel/f. The prophet of God fled. 
 From whom did he flee? Was it from Ahab? / 
 Was it from Jezebel? Was it from the friends ) 
 of the martyred men of Baal? No; it was — 
 from his own inner man, Elijah saw his other / 
 self—the self that was bound for heaven. It | 
 was as yet only a child; but it made him 
 tremble. It shook his nerves; it paralysed his 
 self-confidence. He ran to escape the child, 
 but the child ran with him; the child was his 
 angel sent from God. He ran to Beersheba ; 
 
320 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 he found the child at Beersheba. He fled into 
 the Arabian desert; he met the child there. 
 He lay down to die, under a juniper tree; the 
 child sustained him. He came to Horeb and 
 hid himself in a mountain cave; the child 
 suddenly became full-grown, and Elijah 
 recognised his true self, 
 
 For now there bursts upon his view a 
 wondrous vision—the vision of his own life; 
 and, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
 he finds that he has been on the wrong way. 
 He hears a roaring wind; he says, ‘Is it Thou, 
 Lord?’—there is no answer. He feels a 
 trembling of the earth; he says, ‘Is it Thou, 
 Lord ?’—there is no answer. He sees a ball 
 of fire shot into the air; he says, ‘ Is it Thou, 
 Lord ?’—there is no answer. He catches the 
 sound of a still, small voice, so low that he can 
 hardly detect it; he says, ‘Is it Thou, Lord?’ 
 —and the answer comes, ‘ It is I.’ 
 
 Could anything more completely reveal the 
 plan of the Gallery in delineating the figure of 
 Elijah! The design is popularly thought to 
 be the exhibition of a physical heroism. It is 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 321 
 
 the reverse. It is the exhibition of a process 
 by which a great soul was made meet for 
 heaven by altering its ideal of heroism from 
 the physical to the mental. The plan of the 
 Picture is to reveal a work of transition—a 
 work in which the original mountain became 
 a valley and the original valley became a 
 mountain. In the cave of Horeb the transi- 
 tion was complete. The old Elijah was buried 
 there, and the new Elijah emerged full-grown. 
 The child had conquered the man and left his 
 body in the cave; the still, small voice had 
 triumphed over the wind, the earthquake, and 
 the fire. Henceforth I see a change in Elijah. 
 His alternations of hope and despair have 
 vanished, and in their room there has come 
 an equable calm.. He is more’ trustful in 
 adversity ; he is more merciful in prosperity. 
 His later denunciations are rather against 
 inhumanity to Man than against errors in creed 
 or ritual. He avenges, and rightly avenges, 
 the wrongs of Naboth; but, for the first time 
 in the record of his life, his vengeance is mixed 
 with leniency—a leniency all the more remark- 
 x 
 
322 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 able because it was exercised towards his 
 consistent and inveterate enemy, Ahab. No 
 man can resist the conclusion that the Elijah 
 who emerges from the cave of Horeb is an 
 altered being. He is no longer a flaming 
 sword; he is a human voice—wakened by 
 human sympathies, tuned by human feelings. 
 He has been made more fit to meet Moses on 
 the Mount; the power of action has been 
 joined to the power of waiting. 
 
 The working of this change was doubtless 
 mainly from within. But it was not wholly so. 
 That voice in the cave of Horeb said many 
 things; but it said one thing which, to my 
 mind, was specially helpful to the future 
 development of Elijah—it directed him where 
 to find a human friend. If there was one 
 thing Elijah needed to mellow him, it was 
 that! He seems never to have felt the 
 influence of home ties. We read of no brother 
 or sister; we hear of no wife or child. His 
 life throughout had been one of war, of public 
 commotion, of political and religious strife. 
 
 Superiors he had, inferiors he had; but, so far 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 222 
 
 as I know, he had hitherto possessed no equals. 
 There had been no comrade of his heart, no 
 companion of his soul, none to take his hand 
 and say, ‘We are brothers.’ A man in such a 
 position is in want of one-half of life’s music. 
 Was it not well to send him the friend Elisha! 
 When the voice sent him to Elisha, it sent him 
 to a new school—a school in which he would 
 meet a kindred mind and experience at the 
 last those ties of human sympathy to which 
 ‘the days of his actual childhood had been 
 strangers. There, in the companionship of 
 Elisha, we will for the present leave him— 
 ripening for a higher destiny and preparing for 
 enrolment in a loftier band than the prophets 
 
 of ancient Israel. 
 
 THANK Thee, O Lord, that to Elijah and 
 
 to me Thou hast revealed a new and better 
 
 way. I thank Thee that the still, small voice has 
 taken the place of the wind, the earthquake, 
 and the fire. I used to think that Zaw would 
 redeem Thy world. T thought that stern 
 
324 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 penalties would repress the course of crime. [| 
 thought the thunders of Sinai would make the 
 sinner pure. I thought the vision of the lake 
 that burneth with fire and brimstone would 
 put out the love of evil. Thou hast taught me 
 better, O my Father! Thou hast taught me 
 that the love of evil can only be extinguished 
 by another love. My heart cannot be con- 
 quered by the hand. If it is centred on 
 the Prince of Evil, it will not be cured by 
 the zmprisonment of that prince; I should love 
 him in his prison, I should love him in his 
 bonds. If I am to cease loving him, I must 
 have a mew prince—the Prince of Peace. 
 Send me this new Prince, O my Father; 
 nothing but Christ will put out Barabbas from 
 my heart! I love wrongly, but none the less do 
 I love intensely; nothing but axother love will 
 set me free. Famine will not; Carmel will 
 not; wind and earthquake and fire will not; 
 the burning lake itself would not extinguish 
 my love! Therefore, my Father, let me love 
 again, let me love anew! Send into my heart 
 
 a fresh ideal! Send me a sight of the 
 
ELIJAH THE IMPULSIVE 325 
 
 ‘altogether lovely’! Send me a vision of the 
 ‘chief among ten thousand’! Send me a 
 picture of Him who is ‘fairer than the children 
 of men’! Break the old ideal by the vision of 
 a higher beauty! Let my night fade in Thy 
 morning, my thorn vanishin Thy flower! One 
 leaf of Thy summer’s bloom will disenchant 
 me of the winter’s charm. The idols will be 
 ‘broken in the temple of Baal’ when I see Thy 
 King ‘on the holy hill of Zion.’ 
 
CHARTER ANE 
 ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 
 
 As I pause before the figure of Elisha, perhaps 
 the thought suggested to a bystander will be, 
 Why do you make ¢/zs a representative man! 
 Is not the most distinctive feature about him 
 just his want of originality! Is he not almost 
 a direct copy of the form and face of Elijah— 
 so direct that, if there were no name inscribed 
 below the Picture, we should deem it simply 
 a second likeness by an inferior hand! If so, 
 why /inmger over the second delineation! We 
 have seen the fire in the eye of the master ; 
 why pause to describe in the disciple the same 
 eye wzthout the fire! Should we not be better 
 employed if we passed to fresh woods and 
 pastures new! 
 
 Let me admit at once that the parallel zs 
 
 326 
 é 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE gieay 
 
 striking—far too striking to be the result of 
 accident or unconscious workmanship. Elijah 
 and Elisha are twin figures—what the one 
 does, the other does. Their lives are set to 
 the same music ; the latter is the refrain of the 
 former sung by a weaker voice and tuned toa 
 slower measure. Does Elijah smite the waters 
 of Jordan; Elisha does so too. Does Elijah 
 ascend Mount Carmel; Elisha does so too. 
 Do the words of Elijah cause a bloody tragedy ; 
 the words of Elisha do so too. Is Elijah 
 appealed to in times of drought; Elisha is so 
 too. Does Elijah multiply a widow’s store; 
 Elisha does so too. Does Elijah raise a 
 widow’s son; Elisha raises one too. Does 
 Elijah carry his beneficence beyond the con- 
 fines of Judaism; Elisha does so too—if the 
 one ministers to a woman of Zarephath, the 
 other cures the captain of a Syrian band. 
 Finally, does Elijah in his last earthly moments 
 hear the triumphant cry, ‘ The chariots of Israel 
 and the horsemen thereof;’ Elisha in Azs last 
 earthly moments listens to the same sound, 
 and experiences at the hour of death what 
 
328 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 his master had experienced at the hour of 
 ascension. 
 
 If, then, I admit this remarkable parallel, if 
 I regard Elisha as a designed imitation of 
 Elijah, why do I not pass him by as a repetition 
 of old material? It is because this imitation 
 of character is itself in the Old Testament 
 Gallery a new and unique thing. I do not 
 know whether it has occurred to any one that 
 the relation of Elisha to Elijah supplies a 
 desideratum in the Gallery. Amongst the 
 figures of this collection I look in vain for any 
 evidence of that community of mind which in 
 the New Testament is called fellowship. Up 
 to this point we have not found in these studies 
 two men who have been united by similarity 
 of spirit. The one has rather been the comple- 
 ment of the other, has supplied what was 
 lacking in the other. Isaac has little likeness 
 to Abraham; Joseph moves in a different 
 sphere from Jacob; Solomon has few points in 
 common with David. Joshua may be called 
 the disciple of Moses, but only in a figurative 
 sense. He is more a servant than a son; he 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 329 
 
 carries out his orders, but he does not stand 
 with him on the Mount. The truth is, kindred 
 sympathy is a very rare thing to get. Personal 
 liking —the feeling that subsisted between 
 David and Jonathan—is very easily acquired ; 
 but the congruity of thought, the identity of 
 experience, which made the bond between 
 Elisha and Elijah—that is something which is 
 never acquired at all; the germ of it must be 
 born in each soul. To exhibit this double 
 portion of one experience is a work which may 
 well absorb the interest of the religious artist. 
 
 This, then, is a case of intellectual friendship 
 which is unique in the Old Testament Gallery. 
 I have said that in germ Elisha must have had 
 from birth the spirit of Elijah. But the ques- 
 tion occurs, To which of the Elijahs was he 
 allied? We have seen that there were two— 
 that one died in the cave of Horeb, and that 
 the other came out of the cave full-grown. 
 Elisha never saw the first ; his personal contact 
 was with the second. The second Elijah, the 
 Elijah who emerged from the cave, was of 
 a gentler nature than the first ; he had aban- 
 
330 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 doned for the still, small voice the wind, the 
 earthquake, and the fire. Elisha was by nature 
 allied to this /ater Elijah. God had given 
 him a tender heart, a heart of love. When first 
 we meet with him, it is in the circle of family 
 life; and we have evidence that his ties of 
 home were dear. Elijah finds him at the 
 plough and calls him to quit the world for the 
 prophetic sanctuary. He asks to be allowed 
 to bid his father and mother goodbye. 
 And that goodbye is a fine revelation of 
 character. He makes a feast to his old friends. 
 He wants them to understand that he has not 
 parted with them in anger, has not left the 
 world because the grapes are sour or the 
 vintage bad. When a man is going abroad, 
 we often give him a parting dinner to wish 
 him well. But if a man going abroad gives us 
 a parting dinner, the act has a still deeper 
 significance. It says that, however prosperous 
 he may be in the new country, he wishes it to 
 be understood that the old land will still be 
 dear to his heart. He says, in effect, I do not 
 leave you through disgust; I do not quit you 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 331 
 
 through disapproval ; I do not say that it is bad 
 for you to remain; I part from your world 
 not in a blast of anger, but in a flood of joyous 
 memories which, even while it bears me away, 
 repeats the echoes from my native shore. 
 Elisha, then, even in the hour of his election, 
 is no ascetic. He brings to Elijah a human 
 heart. It was the latest and the best gift 
 Elijah had ever received—a pure earthly 
 friendship. Elisha gave him his heart, his 
 whole heart, his unrestrained heart. I cannot 
 too strongly emphasise this point ; it is some- 
 thing unique in the Old Gallery. Men had 
 hitherto come to God through a crucifixion of 
 their human nature. They had approached 
 Mount Sinai with fear and trembling; they 
 had drawn near the burning bush with un- 
 covered feet. But Elisha comes unshorn of his 
 humanity. He comes to the Divine Presence 
 in the dress of a man, with the heart of a man. 
 He is drawn to the heavenly Father by the 
 love of an earthly drvother. He is not ashamed, 
 from the very outset, to lean upon a human 
 arm. This utilising of earthly help remains 
 
CRE THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 his characteristic through life ; it colours every 
 sphere through which he moves. I will take 
 four of these spheres—the moral, the intellec- 
 tual, the zsthetic, and the practical. We shall 
 find, I think, in each, abundant material for 
 reflection and abundant sources of suggestion. 
 
 The first illustration of Elisha’s tendency to 
 use secular help is in his moral choice. His 
 master, Elijah, has a premonition of his own 
 early removal. He asks the disciple what 
 mark of his favour he would like best to receive 
 as a parting gift. Elisha answers, ‘Let a 
 double portion of thy spirit be upon me!’ 
 By ‘a double portion’ I understand ‘a repeated 
 portion—a repetition of your own experience.’ 
 It is the request for a token of human love. 
 He does not wish the grace of God to be for 
 him a supernatural thing. He wants to be like 
 some one whom he loves, and whom he loves 
 on account of his goodness. Is not Christianity 
 the selfsame prayer on a higher plane. Is it 
 not simply the wish that in our hearts the 
 grace of God would assume the likeness of one 
 whom we love—the Man Christ Jesus. Like 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 333 
 
 Elisha, we cannot worship an abstract grace. 
 We must see it embodied if we are to love it. 
 Our desire to be clothed in it must be the 
 desire to be clothed in the likeness of one who 
 was dear tous. St. John was animated by a 
 human \ove of Jesus; therefore he does not 
 say, ‘When He shall appear we shall be good,’ 
 but, ‘When He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him.’ 
 
 That Elisha’s aspiration was the request for 
 a token of love is confirmed by Elijah’s 
 answer, ‘Thou hast asked a great thing; 
 nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken 
 from thee, it will be so unto thee; if not, it 
 shall not be so. He says that whether his 
 disciple’s desire be or be not granted is a 
 question that can only be tested by Elisha’s 
 future remembrance. Separated from the 
 figurative envelope which contains them, his 
 words amount to this: ‘The test of a kindred 
 Spirit is sight in absence. Can you sustain 
 that test? Can you see me when I am taken 
 up? Can you feel the power of my presence 
 when that presence is no longer with you? 
 
334 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Can you be impelled by my influence when 
 I have withdrawn my hand? Can I be a 
 motive to your life when I have ceased to be 
 in touch with it? If so, then you have indeed 
 received into your soul a duplicate of my 
 image! You have proved your possession of 
 a kindred nature; you have maintained your 
 right to wear my mantle!’ 
 
 Remember that the test proposed by Elijah 
 is also the test proposed by a greater than 
 Elijah. What else does Christ mean by the 
 parable of a man going into a far country and 
 bidding his servants work till his return, It 
 is to ascertain whether they are fit for the 
 mantle, whether they have received his spirit. 
 The test of that will be their power to think 
 of his presence in his absence, to feel as if he 
 were near when he is far away. The evidence 
 of the disciple’s communion with Christ is 
 identical with Elisha’s evidence for his com- 
 munion with Elijah; it is the ‘seeing him who 
 is invisible, the bending to an influence which 
 is not manifested either to the eye or to the 
 ear or to the hand. Elisha saw Elijah after he 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 335 
 
 was taken up, the disciples worshipped Jesus 
 after the cloud had received Him out of their 
 sight ; in both cases it was an evidence that 
 the mantle had descended. 
 
 Elisha, then, was helped to the grace of 
 God by a human love; and that human love 
 abode with him long after its object had been 
 hid from his outward sight. It is the first 
 instance of the kind we have met with in the 
 Great Gallery ; but it has been the forerunner 
 ormimany similar’ experiences, There) are 
 hundreds whose belief in God sprang at first 
 from belief in Man. There are hundreds 
 who have given their allegiance to the Divine 
 by fixing their eye upon some beauty in the 
 human. There are hundreds who, like Elisha, 
 have served the God whom they have zoz seen 
 simply because they have loved the brother 
 whom they dave seen. This old Painting is 
 not superannuated, not dead. It is living, 
 breathing, vitalising. It is mirrored in myriad 
 lives ; itis reproduced in countless experiences ; 
 it is a picture which is not Jewish nor Greek 
 
 nor Roman, but human. It expresses, not the 
 
336 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 bias of a nation, but an instinct of the heart ; 
 and therefore its colours are not dimmed 
 by time—they are as fresh and vivid to-day as 
 they were in the streets of ancient Israel. 
 
 The second illustration of Elisha’s secular 
 attitude will be found in the intellectual 
 sphere. He has been left alone; the master 
 whom he loved has passed into the silent land. 
 Elisha has no doubt that he has been trans- 
 lated into heaven; he is as sure of that as he 
 is of his own existence. But Elisha is a pro- 
 fessor in a college. He has the Chair of 
 Apologetics—the direction of what was then 
 called‘ The School of the Prophets.’ He has 
 a host of young men who listen to his instruc- 
 tions, and for whose training he is responsible. 
 These young men are tinged with the spirit of 
 a new age—an age of rationalism. They are 
 very unwilling to admit a miracle. They 
 are eager to reduce everything to natural 
 causes. They propose to subject the belief 
 in Elijah’s ascension to scientific experts. 
 They suggest that his chariot may have been 
 one of the wild blasts of the desert. Instead 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 337 
 
 of being taken to heaven, he may have been 
 carried to the summit of some hill, where he 
 may be lying bruised and broken. Will not 
 Elisha allow a search to be made. Instead of 
 cherishing a mystical exaltation, will he not 
 let fifty strong men go forth in search of the 
 vanished prophet. If they should find him, it 
 would be the death of sentiment, but it might 
 produce a result which would prove more 
 valuable than any sentiment—the preserva- 
 tion of a physical life. 
 
 At first Elisha said, No; but afterwards he 
 said, Yes. That saying ‘Yes’ is to my mind 
 one of the finest things in old literature. 
 Why does he say ‘Yes’? Is it because he 
 has any doubt of the truth of his first impres- 
 sion? He has no doubt. But he has cast 
 himself down from his own pinnacle; he 
 has put himself in the place of his students ; 
 he has tried to live in the experience of those 
 who have less strong faith than himself. He 
 feels that he has Elijah for his model. Did 
 not Elijah hold a council for research on 
 Mount Carmel—Elijah who needed no investi- 
 
 $e 
 
338 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 gation, no argument. Should the disciple be 
 above his master. Might not he, Elisha, do 
 what was virtually done by the prophet of fire. 
 If his master could sink himself to help 
 idolaters, might not e sink himself for the 
 sake of his own students. Should he not go 
 down to them who were as yet unable to come 
 up to hkzm. 
 
 Now, I say this was grand in Elisha. If 
 all his prophetic powers should come to be 
 ignored, he ought to live by this deed alone. 
 It was the best lesson he ever gave to his 
 students—this accommodation to their intel- 
 lectual need. It is a lesson for professors as 
 well as students. I would say to a teacher: 
 Never force your certainty upon your pupil. 
 Borrowed convictions are of no value. Com- 
 mand not assent to former testimonies—not 
 even to the authority of your own vision. Let 
 the pupil search for Elijah. Let him seek 
 him on every hill; let him inquire for his 
 steps in every valley. Lend him all facilities 
 for the search. Open every avenue; unlock 
 every gate; clear every barrier that would 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 339 
 
 impede his way. At the end of many days he 
 may reach by climbing the height which you 
 have gained by a moment on the wing. 
 
 The third of those spheres in which Elisha 
 leans upon material help in the things of 
 Divine grace is the esthetic region—the 
 attempt to exhibit the beauties of holiness. 
 Elisha has gone to meet three kings. It is a 
 period of political emergency, and they have 
 summoned him into their presence to ask his 
 counsel. Elisha is impressed with the august 
 character of his audience. He wishes to speak 
 well. He is not only desirous to do his duty 
 in the sight of God, but to magnify his office 
 in the sight of Man. He has the feeling 
 which belongs to every popular preacher—the 
 wish to produce an esthetic effect upon his 
 hearers; and it is a feeling which is quite 
 compatible with the most earnest religious 
 devotion. Accordingly, he wishes to rise to 
 the occasion. In order to do so, he would 
 like the aid of a stimulus. The stimulus he 
 selects is music. ‘Bring me a minstrel!’ he 
 
 says. He feels that he would speak better if 
 
340 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 he has a pleasant environment; he evokes 
 the aid of nature to help him in the sphere of 
 grace. 
 
 Now, this is a very startling thing. We 
 all admit the power of natural beauty in the 
 region of natural work. That a poet is 
 helped by a sunbeam, that a literary style 
 is influenced by fair surroundings, that 
 imagination is stimulated by a starry night or 
 quickened by a mountain view—all this is 
 universally accepted. But in the sphere of 
 grace we are apt to think such helps super- 
 fluous. We are apt to believe that the Spirit 
 of God is a solitary agent acting by its own 
 strength and conquering by its own power. 
 We think of the beauties of holiness as them- 
 selves sufficient to inspire. Shall the heavenly 
 manna seek an ally in the earthly music! 
 Shall the hand of God work in unison with 
 the harp of man! Shall the soul be aided 
 to its vision of Divine glory by listening to 
 the strains of a purely human melody, and 
 thrilling to the notes of an instrument with 
 
 mundane strings ! 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 341 
 
 Elisha says, Yes; he calls for a minstrel 
 before prophesying. The minstrel was pro- 
 bably a man vastly inferior to himself, and 
 was perhaps not a religious man at all; yet 
 Elisha was not ashamed to use him for the 
 service of God. Was he here again influenced 
 by the memory of Elijah, by the tendency to 
 imitate his master? Did he remember how 
 that master was fed by ravens? Did he 
 remember how the mightiest was supported 
 by the ministration of the meanest? Did he 
 remember how the mere secular forces of life 
 had been made to serve the kingdom of God? 
 I think it likely. Elisha must have felt that 
 if the tempestuous soul of his master could be 
 content to be fed by earthly streams, the quiet 
 river of his own life might well be thus satis- 
 fied too. At all events, he was content. He 
 was Satisfied to sun himself in a. worldly 
 beauty, to cheer himself into the work for 
 God by a study of the work of man. In his 
 moment of spiritual exhaustion he sought a 
 secular stimulus. At a time when he had 
 nothing to draw with, he let a Samaritan 
 
342 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 bring the pitcher. In the hour when his 
 alabaster box was broken, he allowed his 
 costliest treasures to be carried in earthen 
 vessels. 
 
 And the Christian Church has followed the 
 example of Elisha. The voice of that Church 
 has ever increasingly been, ‘Bring me a 
 minstrel!’ She began wzthout the ministrel— 
 in the humble precincts of an upper room. 
 But she found that she needed stimulus. She 
 was marching as an army to battle, and, like 
 an army marching to battle, she required a 
 blast of music. Christianity has ascended the 
 hill to the tune of trumpets on the plain; the 
 feet of the Christian soldier have moved in 
 unison with the measure of an earthly melody. 
 The religion of the Cross has proceeded up 
 the Dolorous Way crowned with the flowers 
 of the world’s field. It has availed itself of 
 every secular aid. It has beautified the places 
 of its worship. It has imparted human graces 
 to its heavenly services. It has cultivated by 
 natural art the voices of its choristers. It 
 
 has sent its prophets to drink at the wells of 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 343 
 
 worldly wisdom. It has given a literary form 
 to its liturgies. It has incorporated with its 
 psalmody the sentiments of men wo¢ called 
 inspired. When we see the Christian Church 
 ascending, we cry with Elisha, ‘The chariots 
 of Israel and the horsemen thereof!’ but we 
 feel that the chariots and the horsemen belong 
 to different worlds—that the horsemen are of 
 heaven, the chariots of earth. 
 
 I come now to the fourth of these spheres 
 in which Elisha allies himself to the secular ; 
 it is the practical sphere—the sphere of the 
 physician. The incident to which I allude is 
 the healing of Naaman the Syrian. He is a 
 leper, and he repairs to Elisha in the hope of 
 acure. Elisha tells him to bathe seven times 
 in the waters of Jordan. Naaman is incensed ; 
 he thinks the prophet has insulted him. Why 
 so? Myriads of sermons have been written 
 on the subject; and the prevailing note of all 
 has been that Naaman was offended by the 
 simplicity of the proposed remedy. Do you 
 think that likely! If I go to a doctor, expect- 
 
 ing to be prescribed a drastic operation, and 
 
344 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 if I am told instead simply to bathe in cold 
 water,am I not likely rather to congratulate 
 myself than to feel angry! Naaman himself 
 says in the narrative that he would have been 
 content with something much more simple— 
 a mere touch of the prophet’s hand. The 
 sting lay in the fact that the prophet himself 
 took no fart inthe cure. He handed Naaman 
 over to the powers of Nature—to the waters 
 of Jordan. Naaman wanted to be the subject 
 of a supernatural influence—to be directly 
 favoured by the emissary of the God of Israel. 
 That emissary, instead of calling in mysterious 
 helps, instead of engaging in prayer or in- 
 dulging in incantations, sent him to a bathing 
 establishment and told him to continue his 
 attendance there until the cleansing process 
 was complete. Naaman very naturally felt 
 that he might have found such institutions 
 nearer home. The entire ground of his anger 
 lay in the knowledge that Elisha was not 
 eager to be thought the agent in the cure, 
 that, instead of being proud to have so 
 august a patient, he had calmly handed him 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 345 
 
 over to the care of one of his assistant 
 physicians—to the medical skill of the waters 
 of Jordan. 
 
 What to Naaman was a source of anger is 
 to us a source of satisfaction; we are glad 
 that Elisha, when he sought the help of God, 
 sought it through the channels of Nature— 
 that he claimed the secular forces as workers 
 of the Divine will. But I think that here, as 
 elsewhere, Elisha was influenced by that per- 
 sonal memory which had been his constant 
 suide. Why does he send Naaman to the 
 waters of Jordan? Was it not because these 
 waters embodied the latest memory of him 
 whom he loved—that memory which had im- 
 parted to Elisha himself a healing touch in 
 every hour of weariness, and had inspired him 
 with fresh strength amid the burden and heat 
 of the day. It was onthe banks of Jordan that 
 he had gazed on Elijah almost for the last time ; 
 it was on the banks of Jordan that he had seen 
 his very last act of power. It was love’s latest 
 image in his soul. In sending Naaman to 
 Jordan, he felt that he was sending him to 
 
346 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Elijah. He was putting him in hands that 
 were mightier than his own: He was evoking 
 the spirit of his departed friend to help his 
 healing work, nay, to be the sole agent in that 
 work. He says, in effect, ‘I commit this man 
 into thy hands; thou who hast smitten the 
 waters of Jordan, smite, wfon these waters, the 
 leprosy of Naaman!’ From first to last the 
 spirit of Elijah had remained his guiding star. 
 It had spoken to him from the silent land. 
 He had dedicated everything to its memory, 
 to its example. To that memory he dedicated 
 the waters of Jordan too. They were; to him, 
 sparkling with the sunset of yesterday, and he 
 sent the leper Naaman to be partaker of their 
 beams. 
 
 THANK Thee, O Father, that in the 
 Pictures of the Great Gallery there is a 
 memorial to human friendship—to the love of 
 two human souls. I thank Thee that Thou 
 hast suffered Elisha to be swayed by the 
 memory of a departed friend ; it is Thine own 
 
ELISHA THE IMITATIVE 347 
 
 imprimatur on the sacredness of earthly love. 
 I thank Thee that Thou hast allowed my heart 
 to wear the mantle of the departed. Thou 
 hast not forced me to think of the chariots 
 and horsemen that have borne him away. 
 Thou hast permitted me to picture my Elijah 
 in the old scenes. Thou hast allowed me to 
 figure him on the heights of Carmel and on 
 the banks of Jordan. Thou hast suffered me 
 to hear his footsteps on my earthly way—to 
 be guided by his example, to be inspired by 
 his remembrance. Why hast Thou not bid 
 me jorget? Why hast Thou not told Elisha 
 to think of his own way and let his friend 
 rest behind the veil? Why hast Thou coun- 
 selled him to look up and see if any mantle 
 from his vanished friend is falling? Is it not 
 to tell him, to tell me, that love is eternal! 
 Is it not to tell me that the chariot of fire 
 cannot part human friendships! Is it not to 
 tell me that the fire of death cannot burn up 
 the mantle of earthly influence! Often in the 
 vision of departing chariots I am complaining 
 
 of the wasze of life. I see men taken up before 
 
348 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 their work is done, and I weep for their un- 
 finishedness. Teach me by this scene in the 
 Great Gallery that Elijah can finish his work 
 from Jeyond the grave! Teach me that the 
 box of ointment is zot wasted when it is 
 broken! Teach me that the fragrance can 
 fill the house when the fragments are on the 
 floor! Teach me that a departed life may 
 hold in my heart an empire which no /vesent 
 life can claim! So shall I learn the immor- 
 
 tality of love! 
 
GIA RB DER cov Es 
 JOB THE PATIENT 
 
 THE Portrait of Job has been attributed to 
 every date between the extremes of a thou- 
 sand years—from the call of Abraham to the 
 calling back of Judah’s bondage. My own 
 opinion is that it dates from the Persian period 
 I think that an artist of that day delineated 
 the facts of a real historic tradition ; but I be- 
 lieve that he used them to express an allegory. 
 Job is to me not merely an individual; he is 
 that and something more. He is the per- 
 sonification of the Jewish race in captivity. 
 Through the personality of Job the artist aims 
 to show that the afflictions of his people ought 
 not to be attributed to any special sin, and 
 
 1 This chapter is an abstract of my Myrtle Lecture delivered 
 in the Mitchell Hall, Aberdeen University, on December 15, 
 Igol. 
 
 349 
 
350 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 that the exile they have been doomed to bear 
 may itself have been a part of their mission 
 from the Highest. The fact that when the 
 Portrait was being painted the national clouds 
 were already beginning to be parted by streaks 
 of sunshine, may have lent inspiration to the 
 thought. I turn, however, from the critical 
 to the human. I will view this not as the 
 portrait of a nation, but as the portrait of a 
 man, and I will only consider in it those 
 qualities which belong to the individual heart ; 
 Judah has passed away, but Job abides. 
 
 There have been four typical notes of 
 despair in the region of literature. The first 
 and most intense is the voice of Omar Khay- 
 yam. It is despair absolute, despair of life all 
 round, despair whose only relief is to drown 
 itself in wine. The second is the Book of 
 Ecclesiastes. I would call it despair of results. 
 It does not deny that it is a pleasant thing to 
 see the light of the sun; it does not dispute 
 that there is a time to dance as well as a time 
 to weep; but it asks, What is the good of it; 
 does it not all end in vanity! The third is 
 
JOB THE PATIENT 351 
 
 the cry of Pascal. It is despair of everything 
 finite—finite reason, finite love, finite pleasure ; 
 the only possible joy is joy in God. The 
 fourth is that dramatic portraiture which we 
 call the Book of Job. I would describe it as 
 the despair of old theories. It is the “ast 
 despondent of the group. It does not say 
 that the world is bad; it does not say that 
 life is vanity; it does not even say that finite 
 things cannot bring joy. What it does say is 
 that all the past theories to explain the evils 
 of the universe have been utterly powerless 
 to account for these evils, that none of them 
 is fit to sustain the weight of human woes, and 
 that all of them put together are inadequate 
 to wipe the tear from a single eye. The Book 
 of Job is not strictly a pessimistic book. It 
 does not despair of the universe—spite of all 
 its sorrows! What it does despair of is the 
 adequacy of any one of man’s existing theories, 
 or of all these theories united, to furnish a 
 solution of its sorrows. It does not deny that 
 there may be summer somewhere beyond the 
 sea; but it refuses to accept the doctrine that 
 
352 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 any of the previous swallows have ever touched 
 the gilded shore. 
 
 Now, observe carefully why the Book of 
 Job rejects old theories of the origin of pain. 
 It is because it has found a newtheory. All 
 the former ones had explained suffering as the 
 result of defect in the creature. Here, the bold 
 view is advanced that it had its origin in a 
 need felt by the Creator—the Divine need for 
 love. With startling originality, and for the 
 first time in history, this book declares that the 
 pains of earth were born in heaven, that they 
 originated in the counsels beyond the veil. 
 Let us stand before this Picture in the Great 
 Gallery; it is one of the most striking, not 
 only in all Scripture, but in all literature! It 
 reveals in the foreground a day in heaven. It 
 is a great day—a day of presentations. All 
 quarters of the universe are represented. Each 
 has sent up a deputy to stand before the throne 
 of God. Looking round the vast assembly, 
 the eye of the Almighty lights upon a strange 
 figure; it is that of Satan. ‘Where do you 
 come from,’ says the Almighty ; ‘what part of 
 
JOB THE PATIENT B5e 
 
 the universe has made you its representative ?’ 
 Satan answers, ‘I represent the earth—the 
 length of it, the breadth of it. ‘Not in its 
 whole extent,’ says the Almighty ; ‘there is a 
 man called Job down in the land of Uz who 
 loves Me fervently.’ ‘Oh!’ cries Satan, ‘nobody 
 loves you for yourself—not even Job! You 
 have made it worth while to serve you. You 
 have given to those who obey you houses and 
 brethren and lands. You have crowned them 
 with glory and honour; you have promised 
 them long life and prosperity. Take away 
 from Job the dowry he gets for loving you— 
 take away the rich possessions that have 
 rewarded his fidelity, and he will curse you to 
 your face!’ 
 
 The Almighty accepts this criticism. Satan 
 has put his hand upon a real weakness of 
 the Hebrew race—its association of Divine 
 love with temporal rewards. God tells Satan 
 to go forth and create a set of new conditions 
 —conditions unfavourable to Man’s love of the 
 Divine. He bids him put this man Job under 
 a testing probation—a probation in which he 
 
 Z 
 
354 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 will be denuded of every outward joy and 
 made to experience the fact that a man may 
 serve the Lord and get nothing in return. So 
 Satan goes out from the presence of the Lord, 
 and in the changing of Job’s environment he 
 constructs a unique figure in the Old Testa- 
 ment Gallery—a figure which has the stamp 
 of a distinctively new conception. Job is the 
 only man of the Old Gallery whose mission is 
 simply to bear. All the other men of the 
 group are men of action. Enoch had the 
 wreath of immortality; but Enoch’s life was a 
 walk with God. Elijah had a chariot of fire; 
 but Elijah was the prophet of fire. Noah rose 
 above the floods of fortune; but Noah was an 
 active shipbuilder. Abraham was highly 
 blessed; but Abraham was the founder of a 
 kingdom. Moses communed with God on the 
 Mount as a man talks with his friend; but 
 Moses was the maker of practical laws. All 
 these were great by reason of their working. 
 But this man Job comes upon the scene to do 
 nothing—simply to bear. To the eye of the 
 beholder it does not appear that the bearing has 
 
JOB THE PATIENT etain 
 
 any practical purpose. He is not weighted, as 
 Isaac was, with the cares of a household. He 
 is weighted seemingly for the sake of nobody, 
 but just with a view to his own pain. What 
 we see is a process of divestiture—and the 
 reason is known only to the spectator. He 
 comes to be dismantled. One by one the 
 beautiful robes are taken off, until every thread 
 of former majesty is gone, until the king 
 becomes a pauper and the millionaire a beggar 
 for bread. Let us follow the process. 
 
 First the outermost robe is removed— 
 
 worldly wealth takes wings and vanishes 
 | away; the labour of the olive fails and the 
 field supplies no meat. Job stands the test ; 
 his love for God wavers not. Then an inner 
 robe is removed—the ties of home are broken 
 by death. His had been a happy domestic 
 circle—a circle of family reunions. They met 
 at these reunions once a year in the rotation of 
 each son’s birthday. We all know the increas- 
 ing sadness of these gatherings—the sadness 
 of hearing voices that are no longer there. 
 Job had to bear this. Year by year the vacant 
 
356 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 chairs increased in prominence, and the touch 
 of vanished hands became more frequent. 
 Still he wavers not; no cry escapes his lips. 
 Then a more inward robe still is taken—health 
 breaks; bodily strength gives way. I call 
 that a more inward privation, because it pre- 
 vented him from recuperating. When a man’s 
 heart goes down, it may rise again if his body 
 keeps wp; but if his body falls too, the heart 
 will zof rise. That is what I understand our 
 Lord to mean when He says, ‘If the sa/¢ has 
 lost its savour, wherewith shall zt be salted!’ 
 —if the vital stream itself is low, what can 
 restore joy! Still Job blanches not. Nocom- 
 plaint falls from him. His deepest sense is 
 that of acquiescence in the Divine will, ‘The 
 Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away: 
 blessed be the name of the Lord!’ 
 
 Then comes the removal of a fourth gar- 
 ment—human sympathy. Job’s friends visit 
 him, and, in accordance with the Jewish view 
 of suffering, they assume that he must be a 
 special sinner. At first by gesture, and then by 
 
 words, they convey their impression that he has 
 
JOB THE PATIENT 357 
 
 done something to deserve it. And now for 
 the first time his great heart gives way. You 
 have seen a cloud that has hovered overhead 
 all the afternoon touched at last by a freezing 
 vapour and burst forth in torrents. So is it 
 with Job. He has borne up all through the 
 day—borne poverty, bereavement, sickness ; 
 but, when the freezing vapour touches him, the 
 fountains of the great deep are opened and 
 the flood descends. Hehas endured calamity ; 
 but that his calamity should be made a sign of 
 worthlessness is zoo much! The explosion is 
 simply terrific; it sweeps all before it. Yet it 
 is not illogical; there is a method in its gusts 
 Ofe passion. Let me try to gather up the 
 threads of argument which the blast carries on 
 its bosom. Let me endeavour to paraphrase 
 the spirit of these remarkable utterances in 
 which Job expresses his indignation at the 
 theory of his friends. 
 
 ‘Tell me not, he cries, ‘that I have deserved 
 it! Do not say that in any special sense I 
 have incurred the displeasure of the Almighty ! 
 
 I know I have sinned after the manner of 
 
358 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 Adam’s race. How shall a man be just before 
 God \!—if called to the bar of judgment, could 
 he answer for one, of a thousand, faults! But 
 that is not what you mean. You want me to 
 believe that I have been a sfeczal sinner, a 
 sinner above the average. My life refutes 
 the charge. Measured by the common 
 standard, my record is pure. The blessing of 
 him that was ready to perish came upon me, 
 and I caused the heart of the widow to sing 
 for joy. I was eyes to the blind and feet to 
 the lame. When the poor heard, then they 
 blessed me; when the eye saw, then it gave 
 witness. I delivered the fatherless and the 
 widow and him that had no helper. Mine 
 integrity I will hold fast and never let it go; 
 my heart will not reproach me as long as | 
 live. But suppose it were otherwise, suppose 
 I were the deep-dyed sinner you picture, is this 
 pain the way to convict me! If your God 
 wishes me to feel my sin, why does He send 
 me a physical suffering and physical weakness 
 which make it impossible for me to feel any- 
 
 thing at all! Why does He seal up my 
 
JOB THE PATIENT 350 
 
 transgressions in a bag—where they cannot 
 be seen! Why does He sew mine iniquities 
 in sackcloth—where they cannot be felt! 
 Why does He break me with a tempest if He 
 wants me to, have a vivid consciousness of 
 anything whatever! Does the sense of sin 
 come from mutilation, from curtailment, from 
 paralysis of the nerves! Does it not come 
 from expansion, from exaltation, from increas- 
 ing nearness to God! If I am to abhor 
 myself and repent in dust and ashes, it must 
 be, not in the hour of depression, but in the 
 hour of revelation—the hour when I meet 
 with God. I cannot accept your explanation 
 of my great and grievous pain,’ 
 
 But now, in the light of this outcry, the 
 question arises, Why do we speak of Job’s 
 patience? He has borne bravely three 
 calamities—the three sent from God; why 
 has he sunk before the one sent by Man? He 
 has accepted penury, bereavement, sickness; 
 why has he cried out at the mere suggestion 
 that these are penalties ; and why, in spite of 
 
 that vociferation, has his name been handed 
 
360 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 down as a synonym for patience! He has 
 stood the hurricane and the tempest; but he 
 has been made to cry out by the lashing of a 
 single wave! Does not the fact of being 
 fretted by so weak a foe deprive him of all 
 right to be the representative of those who 
 wait for God? 
 
 I answer, No; and I feel sure. that the 
 answer will be echoed by the Great Gallery. 
 I am convinced that, in the view of the artist, 
 the patience of Job is never so conspicuous as 
 in his outcry. Not in spite of, but by reason 
 of, that outcry has he earned his right to a 
 place among those who wait for God. Why 
 did Job cry out? Was it not in the zzzerest of 
 patience. Was it not patience that made him 
 cry out. His friends wanted to vod him of his 
 patience—to take away his power to wazt 
 without a veason. Is not that just the defini- 
 tion of intellectual patience—the power to 
 trust when there is no light, the ability to 
 possess. ‘one’s. soul in ‘the absence sotemat 
 explanation of that which afflicts it. Unless 
 we grasp this thought, the personality of Job 
 
JOB THE PATIENT 361 
 
 is meaningless—he is simply an impatient 
 child. But if his impatience springs from the 
 fact that his friends wish to rob him of his 
 patience, if his outcry is caused by his desire to be 
 allowed to wait for God, then, religiously and 
 artistically, the whole Portrait is illuminated 
 and the claim of Job to his traditional virtue 
 receives triumphant vindication. 
 
 Now, the friends of Job are really in this 
 position. They want to alter his attitude of 
 patience. They say: ‘It is not enough for you 
 to believe that it will be all right some day. 
 You must be able to trace the cause of your 
 calamity. You must be able to put your hand 
 upon some dark deed of your past life, or’— 
 as Elihu puts it—‘upon some unspoken 
 principle of evil which has not yet issued in a 
 deed, but which God sees in the silence of your 
 soul,’ Put yourself in the place of Job under 
 these circumstances. Imagine that you were 
 passing through a season of bereavement. The 
 light of your eyes has been extinguished, and 
 you are sitting disconsolate in a silent room. 
 
 Suddenly a solemn bell rings; and, draped in 
 
362 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 black, there enter three figures — Eliphaz, 
 Bildad, and Zophar. They take you by the 
 hand and say: ‘My friend, God is dealing 
 with you in chastisement. You have been too 
 fond of the world. You have been living for 
 the hour. You have been giving to earthly 
 things the honour which is due to His name. 
 Therefore He has spoken to you in His anger; 
 He has withered your gourd. Humble your- 
 self, and confess your sin!’ Would you not be 
 disposed to answer: ‘Am I dound to take such 
 a view! In a world where so much seems 
 arbitrary, where for a time “the tabernacles of 
 robbers prosper,’ where the good are often 
 clothed in sackcloth and the wicked wear the 
 purple robe, am I bound to believe that this is 
 a chastisement to me! Will you not let me 
 keep my patience! Will you not let me trust 
 my God without a theory! Will you not let 
 me believe that in some way unknown to me 
 things are working together for good! Why 
 do you deny me the privilege of the men who 
 watt for God!’ 
 
 Even such is the voice of Job. He utters a 
 
JOB THE PATIENT 363 
 
 protest in favour of patience. He appeals 
 from the God of his friends to his own God. 
 He says, in the spirit of a Greater : ‘My Father! 
 behold, Thou comest to me in clouds! Life 
 has been overcast for me; the hosannahs are 
 hushed, the palm-leaves are withered, the 
 friends of summer days have made their flight 
 in the winter. Men want me to ¢race Thee, 
 “Prophesy unto us, thou Christ; who is he 
 Elauesmotetncer mm Dut hl will? aoc s trace 
 Thee, “The cup which my Father has given 
 me to drink, shall I not drink it!” I accept 
 in the darkness the burden Thou hast laid 
 upon me; I take it unexplained. I come to 
 Thee in the night—the unvindicated night. 
 I come in the cold that has no explanation, in 
 the snow that is not accounted for. I accept 
 Thee in Thy mean attire, in Thine unattractive 
 raiment, in Thy repulsive dress, I do not seek 
 to comprehend Thee; I take Thee with Thy 
 mystery. Though Thou slay me, yet will 
 I trust in Thee, and believe that I keep Thy 
 favour.’ 
 
 But there is a second respect in which the 
 
364 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 patience of Job is vindicated by his outcry. 
 Can there be any patience without a certain 
 amount of inward outcry! If Job has ceased 
 to ‘ pray for his friends ’—in other words, if he 
 has ceased to care what his friends think of 
 him—where is there room for patience! Is it 
 not just this presence of the inner outcry which 
 distinguishes the patience of Christ from what 
 St. John’s Gospel calls ‘the peace which the 
 world gives’—Stoicism. The Stoic says: ‘If 
 you will only keep down your feelings, if you 
 will only practise the restraining of the bird 
 when it is about to fly, you will come in course 
 of time to have zo emotions ; you will be able 
 to walk in the funeral cortége, fearless, tearless, 
 passionless.’ Yes, and I would add, ‘ patience- 
 less. For, what you have lost in this case is 
 really patience. You have ceased to wazt for 
 anything ; you have given up the game. You 
 see a man undergoing one of those little 
 operations which flesh is heir to. He never 
 winces. ‘What admirable nerve!’ you say. 
 And yet, in reality, the calmness comes from 
 
 exactly the opposite cause. The nerve, so far 
 
JOB THE PATIENT 365 
 
 from being admirable, is dead; the man has 
 lost the necessity for patzence. 
 
 There is a question which must often have 
 occurred to an inquiring mind. Why is it that 
 we Christians, to whom the patience of Christ 
 is a watchword and the surrender of His will 
 a glory, are yet eager to select that part of 
 His life in which the outcry is most loud and 
 the struggle most apparent? Why do we 
 make our pilgrimage in crowds to the Garden 
 of Gethsemane? Why is to us the dearest 
 spot, the most sacrificial spot, precisely that 
 place where He poured forth His soul with 
 strong crying and tears? We could under- 
 stand why men who admire patience should 
 repair to the scene of the death of Socrates ; 
 but it seems a strange thing that they should 
 always take their journey to a place of human 
 outcry like the Garden of Gethsemane ! 
 
 But the answer, I think, is clear. We go to 
 Gethsemane in the zuterest of patience. We 
 feel that the outcry is the proof of the sacrifice. 
 Socrates has become deadened in the nerve 
 that gives pain; therefore he has no outcry. 
 
366 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 But the outcry of Jesus proves that He has xoé 
 lost His nerve, not lost His youth, not lost 
 His love of human things. It is easy to be 
 crucified by the world if you have ceased to 
 love the world. It is easy to be crucified by 
 your friends if your friends are looked upon 
 by you as simply so many flies to be brushed 
 aside and forgotten. But the glory of Geth- 
 semane is that life is still beautiful to Jesus— 
 that, with all its sins and sorrows, it still keeps 
 to Him its pristine glow—that the colour has 
 not gone out of the flower, nor the song of the 
 bird become silent, nor the freshness vanished 
 from the breezes. The world is yet worth 
 living in—bright and beautiful with possi- 
 bilities, fair with promise, radiant with hope. 
 That is what makes it so hard to be crucified 
 by the sons of men; that is what gives value 
 to the sacrifice. We measure the patience by 
 the strength of the cry. 
 
 Job also had the spirit of youth. However 
 dark his sky, he had not lost his sense of life’s 
 possibilities. Deep down in his heart there 
 
 was the conviction that the world in which he 
 
JOB THE PATIENT 367 
 
 suffered was an unnatural world. He felt that 
 things ought not so to be, and that therefore 
 they would not always so be. Clear through 
 the night his voice kept ringing: ‘I know that 
 my Vindicator liveth, and that He shall stand 
 at the last upon the earth; and, though the 
 process of destruction penetrate even beneath 
 the skin, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom 
 I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
 behold and not another!’ These are the 
 words of hope, not despair. They show 
 that the nerve is zo¢ dead, that the love of life 
 is not extinguished, that the spirit of youth 
 remains. If patience implies an outcry, it is 
 because it implies an outlook. It refrains 
 from tracing the way, but none the less does it 
 believe in the goal. So long as a man keeps 
 his love, he will keep his capacity for pain ; 
 but he will also keep his freedom from despair. 
 Where love is, there is no despair. The wind 
 may be raging fierce and cold around us, there 
 may be no star in our night and no present 
 rest in our journey—pbut if J/ove be not 
 
 quenched, the ground for hope is still abiding. 
 
368 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
 
 The gate of egress may be unseen, the avenue 
 of outlook may be undetected, but already 
 beyond the tombstone there will gleam the 
 Garden, and above the blood-stained heights of 
 Calvary there will glitter the sunlit peaks of 
 Olivet. 
 
 ORD, help me to keep my dove! What- 
 ever else I lose, may I never lose ¢hat! 
 Though all the lights go out from my life, 
 let not ¢hkzs torch be extinguished! There 
 is a peace which comes by the death of patience 
 —by ceasing any longer to wait or to, expect. 
 There is a peace which is zo¢ patience, because 
 it Zooks for nothing, longs for nothing, prays 
 for nothing—a peace which is painless because 
 it is numb, and is free from struggle because it 
 is dead. I would not have that gift, O my 
 Father! I have passed through the autumn 
 woods and heard no waving of the leaves, 
 not because there was no wind to blow, but 
 because there was no sap to nourish. I would 
 not have ¢hat gift, O my Father! That is the 
 
JOB THE PATIENT 369 
 
 peace ‘of the grave. But Thy peace is the 
 peace of the ocean. It is the calm that holds 
 depths beneath it. It is not the rest of life- 
 _lessness, but the rest of balance. Thy patience 
 is the patience not of spentness, but of 
 expectancy; it rests ‘in hope. Bring me 
 that peace of Thine,O God! Bring me the 
 peace of pulsation, the calm of courage, the 
 endurance that springs from energy! Bring 
 me the fortitude of fervour, the repose through 
 inner radiance, the tenacity that is born of 
 trust! Bring me the silence that comes from 
 serenity, the gentleness that is bred of joy, the 
 quiet that has sprung from quickened faith! 
 When I hear 7hee in the whirlwind, there 
 
 will be a great calm! 
 
 ANN 
 
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 Printed by T. and A, ConsTaBLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
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