-i^ 
 
DELIVERANCE 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
DELIVERANCE 
 
 THE FREEING OF THE SPIRIT IN THE 
 ANCIENT WORLD 
 
 BY 
 HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR, Litt.D. 
 
 Liberth va cercando 
 
 » .» J » 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1915 
 
 A// rights reserved 
 

 Copyright, iqis. 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1915. 
 
 J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
IN MEMORIAM 
 
 SAMUEL ISHAM 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/deliverancefreeiOOtaylrich 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Prologue i 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. CHALDiEA AND EgYPT 6 
 
 II. China: Duty and Detachment .... 14 
 
 III. The Indian Annihilation of Individuality . 46 
 
 IV. Zarathushtra 68 
 
 V. The Prophets of Israel 75 
 
 VI. The Heroic Adjustment in Greek Poetry . 121 
 
 VII. Greek Philosophers 150 
 
 VIII. Intermediaries 180 
 
 IX. Jesus 207 
 
 X. Paul 218 
 
 XI. Augustine 238 
 
 XII. The Arrows are beyond Thee , , , . 276 
 
DELIVERANCE 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 WE have Homer's word for it, that not all 
 dreams are from Zeus. No truly ! Dreams 
 are as foolish as the gibbering of souls in Orcus — 
 till they, souls or dreams, have drunk the blood of 
 waking. But a wise country lies before the gates 
 of sleep, and vistas of insight come to them who 
 are waiting there. Very different from dreams, 
 these wakeful watches of the night, when thought, 
 disentangled from the day's variety, is sponta- 
 neous and limpid. 
 
 Recently with me such waking hours have 
 been made peaceful by thought of freedom from 
 anxiety over the ways of men, even by thought of that 
 final peace or freed activity, which is death. But 
 however fruitful or fruitless these " night thoughts," 
 there surely follows the disturbing yet wholesome 
 correction of the forenoon's intending of the mind. 
 For be sure, O possible gentle reader, that I sub- 
 ject to the sober verification of the day whatever 
 in the watches of the night came as happy in- 
 tuition. 
 
 Often turning back through my scattered 
 
2 ' ' bfeLlVt'j^ANCE 
 
 knowledge of the past, I see that these thoughts 
 of mine are old, and that they have done duty in 
 the minds of men before me. One finds them 
 harnessed in the systems of those Great Ones, 
 those apparent sources of the world's convictions, 
 who in their time set in new-found relationships, 
 and made living, the disjecta membra of human 
 experience and casual reflection. Yet the thoughts 
 may be ours as well as theirs, by virtue of the very 
 same title of having them flash joyfully upon the 
 mind. 
 
 One realises a universal kinship in human need 
 and aspiration when following such thoughts 
 seemingly afar in the minds of these Founders 
 who have passed on. They who may have died 
 ages ago are nearer to us than the alien masses 
 among whom we move. They are the spiritual 
 fathers of us all, and we make ourselves con- 
 sciously their sons by coming to know them in 
 their achieved or striven for adjustment of them- 
 selves with the eternal, and in their attunement 
 of their desires to human limitations. Some men 
 live in the eternities, and must at their peril keep 
 in tune with them. The need of adjustment 
 belongs to them peculiarly. Yet, in some degree, 
 it pertains to all who are touched with medita- 
 tion; and the endeavour for it, which is an en- 
 deavour for peace and spiritual freedom, is an 
 element of life which carries across centuries 
 
PROLOGUE 3 
 
 and millenniums. Although that which those 
 Ancients reached, or even that which they tried for, 
 may not be for us, still the contemplation of their 
 efforts is as the effect of noble sculpture and 
 poetry, bringing something like the final calm, 
 the emotional purge, of tragedy. 
 
 In some such way my thoughts set themselves 
 in the watches of the night, and were confirmed or 
 criticised in the hours of the day. They have 
 encouraged me to attempt some ordering and 
 statement of the ways in which our spiritual 
 ancestors of all times and countries adjusted them- 
 selves to the fears and hopes of their natures, thus 
 reaching a freedom of action in which they ac- 
 complished their lives; or, it may be, they did 
 but find peace; yet brought it forth from such 
 depth of conviction that their peace became peace 
 for thousands and for millions. It did not seem 
 well to enter circumstantially upon the ante- 
 cedents or even the setting of these men, for fear 
 these "watches of the night" might become a 
 history of human conviction. Nor will the at- 
 tention be more than casually directed to the 
 ways in which they were influenced, or influenced 
 others. I would set forth rather in themselves, 
 and simply, those individuals who most clearly 
 illustrate phases of human adjustment with life, its 
 limitations, aspirations, and conceived determining 
 powers, working within or from without. 
 
4 DELIVERANCE 
 
 But however we may seek to simplify our reflec- 
 tions, we cannot limit ourselves to any one category 
 of adjustment. The needs of men are not the same 
 universally ; and the human adjustment may relate 
 to conduct or to speculation, to distress at Hfe's 
 chain of torment, or to fear of extinction ; it may 
 relate to the impulse to speculate and know, or to 
 the need to be "saved." For one man shall find 
 his peace in action, another in the rejection of action, 
 even in the seeming destruction of desires. An- 
 other shall have peace and freedom through intel- 
 lectual enquiry, while another must obey his God, 
 or love his God, and may stand in very conscious 
 need of divine salvation. The adjustment sought 
 by Confucius was very different from that which 
 drew the mind of Plato, or led Augustine to the 
 City of God. Often quite different motives may 
 inspire the reasonings which incidentally bring men 
 to like conclusions. The Absolute Brahma of the 
 Upanishads and the Being of Parmenides have cer- 
 tain common metaphysical foundations; but the 
 motives impelling the Hindu and the Eleatic to 
 somewhat similar results were as different as the 
 Greek and Indian temperaments, — as different as 
 those which likewise brought Gotama and Hera- 
 cleitus to the conviction that existence is ceaseless 
 flux. The life-adjustment of the early Greek phi- 
 losophers had to do with scientific curiosity; they 
 were seeking hypothetical explanations of the world 
 
PROLOGUE 5 
 
 about them, themselves perhaps implicitly included ; 
 they were not, like Gotama, seeking relief from the 
 tedious impermanence of personal experience, any 
 more than they were seeking to assure their own 
 eternal welfare in and through the love of God — 
 the motive around which surged the Christian yearn- 
 ing for salvation. Evidently every "religion" is a 
 means of adjustment, or deliverance ; but there are 
 other adjustments, which are not religious in any 
 current acceptation of the word. 
 
 There is an advantage in commencing, and it 
 may be ending, with the seers of the ancient world, 
 and their early Christian successors to the suffrages 
 of men. For they are fundamental, verily ele- 
 mental in their exemplifications of the main divisions 
 of the human need for an adjustment between the 
 instincts and faculties of human nature and the 
 powers conceivably controlling its accomplishment 
 and destiny. We shall never altogether issue from 
 between the projected lines of their achievement, 
 however far we may seem to have advanced. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Chald^a and Egypt 
 
 TTT'HEN did the need for adjustment begin? 
 ^ ^ To answer this is to answer the unanswerable 
 question — when did men begin ? Thirty thousand 
 years ago, on the cave walls at Alt ami ra, there 
 were paintings of animals, possibly carrying tote- 
 mistic import. Without disturbing these "pre- 
 historic" enigmas, we may more fruitfully consider 
 "historic" beginnings, say in Chaldaea and Egypt, 
 — these being ancient times for us, when men's 
 so-called minds were filled with notions which 
 human experience has since found irrational and 
 indeed incomprehensible. 
 
 It is always difficult for one time to understand 
 another; among contemporaries mutual under- 
 standing rarely extends beyond the range of con- 
 geniality ! With physical needs fundamentally the 
 same, men have always been desirous, restless, 
 apprehensive, anticipating evils real or imaginary, 
 striving to guard against them, — evils of this life 
 or touching existence after death. Although archaic 
 adjustments with imagined anxieties seem so foolish 
 now, the underlying human nature and human need 
 are related to ourselves. Hundreds of thousands 
 
 6 
 
CHALD^A AND EGYPT 7 
 
 of men and women are seeking to adjust themselves 
 with the eternal ways, and hope to see the everlast- 
 ing stars. All is mystery still, albeit the forces 
 holding man are no longer "supernatural," and the 
 desired adjustment refers little to the life to come. 
 Let no one think that he has shaken off the past ! 
 We are in and of it, if we are also of ourselves. 
 Our thoughts and the images in which we clothe 
 them, what ancestry they trail out of a dim and 
 ever lengthening distance, back through Rome to 
 Greece, and through Greece backward still and 
 eastward to the valleys of the Nile and the Eu- 
 phrates. And there the receding trail only begins, 
 for further back it passes, not ceasing, only to our 
 blindness vanishing in a remote and semihuman 
 past. 
 
 It is well to recognise the pit from which we have 
 been digged. Therefore, if for no other purpose, 
 let us contemplate, for a little, one or two ancient 
 lines of attempted adjustment, of endeavour after 
 some sort of spiritual deliverance, to which the name 
 of no individual attaches, but rather that of a 
 people or a land, in this case Mesopotamia and 
 Egypt. The peoples of Mesopotamia as well as 
 the Egyptians accumulated a colossal material 
 equipment, and made a large advance in the social 
 ordering of life. A certain King Hammurapi has 
 of late years become the central figure of Meso- 
 potamian history. At the opening of the second 
 
8 DELIVERANCE 
 
 millennium before Christ, he established the King- 
 dom of Babylon, and reigned as a King of law and 
 righteousness, as well as might. It was a period, 
 it was indeed a land, of trade and agriculture, regu- 
 lated by law and custom. Hammurapi issued a 
 code of laws, the most signal legal document of far 
 antiquity, and a worthy predecessor for the civil 
 law of Rome, of which it may have been a remote 
 and partial source. Thus the Babylonian people 
 show how deftly they had settled themselves in 
 their human relationships, and had reached some 
 facile freedom of conduct. Yet their lives were 
 overhung with dread. They were very fearful of 
 the unseen — of the imagined powers which they 
 sought to coerce by magic, or move through prayer. 
 They had thus devised nostrums for their hamper- 
 ing fears, and yet had found no sure stay for their 
 furthest hopes — dreary at best, and at worst filled 
 with horror, was existence within and beyond the 
 grave. No spell or prayer had been devised to 
 help the dead. Magic and prayer, the warning of 
 the sheep's liver, the portents of the storm, the phases 
 of sun and moon and stars, availed only the living. 
 As the centuries went on, the Babylonians and 
 Assyrians improved their conceptions of the Gods ; 
 ascribed justice to them, beneficence, righteousness, 
 even pity. Yet always with fear and abasement: 
 "Thy slave who bears the weight of thy wrath 
 is covered with dust"; and centuries later Nebu- 
 
CHALD^A AND EGYPT 9 
 
 chadnezzar says that he loves the fear of God. There 
 had also come to the Babylonians and Assyrians 
 quite positive thoughts of their own shortcomings, 
 omissions, social crimes. All such delinquencies, 
 when thought of with reference to the gods, fell 
 within the category of sin. They bewailed their 
 sins prostrate before their gods, and begged forgive- 
 ness. Yet they never distinguished clearly between 
 involuntary oversight and intended wrong. Cere- 
 monial omission, eating or treading on the forbidden 
 thing, brought divine anger with plague and punish- 
 ment, just as quickly as fraud, incest, and murder. 
 There also rose among them the wailing cry of per- 
 plexity over the good man brought low, the cry of 
 one who has done his best and yet has been afflicted : 
 "If I only knew that such things were pleasing before 
 God ! But that which seems good to a man is 
 evil before God. Who may understand the counsel 
 of the gods in heaven ?" ^ 
 
 At all events, for him who has been guilty, as 
 for him who can find in himself no sin, penitence 
 and abasement can only affect the remainder of his 
 days on earth. After death the same fate awaits 
 the evil and the good, and no help for either. Satis- 
 faction, vengeance, sense-gratification, the pleasures 
 of daily life and the tranquillising occupations of 
 
 ^ Zimmern, Babylonische Hymnen, etc., pp. 27, 29. Jastrow, 
 "A Babylonian Parallel to Job," Journal of Biblical Lit., Vol. 
 XXV. 
 
lO DELIVERANCE 
 
 labour, — all were had in this rich river land ; its ma- 
 terial welfare and order, the degree of civilisation 
 there attained, attest the existence of a sufficiency 
 of practical justice and law-abidingness. But Meso- 
 potamia never evolved either a religion, a philosophy, 
 or an ethical scheme that could lead the human 
 spirit to freedom or peace. 
 
 It may be doubted whether the Egyptians thought 
 more clearly ; but their temperament was different, 
 and their Hves would seem to have been calm and 
 stable. All this, however, is no explanation of the 
 marvels of constructive foolishness, no explanation 
 whatsoever of the grossly impossible continuation 
 of life after death, which they fabricated. It is 
 natural as well as universal not to think of death 
 as ending all ; the natural man has neither the data 
 nor a sufficient clarity of mind to reach the notion 
 of extinction. His impulse is to imagine how the 
 dead can goon under conditions so obviously changed. 
 But any elaboration of such imaginings is apt to 
 bear an inverse relation to his intelligence and power 
 to discern inconsistencies. The Egyptian fabrica- 
 tion of a cumulative scheme of Hfe beyond the 
 tomb was unhampered by any sense of the impos- 
 sible. Provision for it had to be made on earth, 
 and the expense was beyond the means of all except 
 Pharaohs and the great nobles. Pyramids bul- 
 warked the post-mortem life of Egypt's kings. The 
 texts within set forth the further means whereby 
 
CHALDiEA AND EGYPT n 
 
 that existence should be continued and supported, 
 should be filled with authority, dignity, occupation, 
 supplied with dainty food and with pleasures dis- 
 tinctly of the flesh. Every measure was taken to 
 make the post-mortem life of Pharaoh and his 
 nobles as luxurious as . if they still commanded 
 countless slaves on earth. Their tombs were fur- 
 nished with symbolical conveniences, with serving 
 statuettes, and chapters from the Book of the 
 Dead, which magically caused these statuettes to 
 do the work of men in the nether world. The 
 venal sacerdotal imagination encompassed that sub- 
 terranean life with dangers at every turn, and even 
 devised conditions of sinfulness, so that priests and 
 scribes might also furnish, for a price, charms to 
 quell the dangers and scrolls to disavow the sinful- 
 ness, just as Indulgences pertaining to the nether 
 world were to be bought for money three thousand 
 years afterwards. Yet during those early Egyp- 
 tian centuries, a clearer morality introduced rewards 
 and punishments into the scheme of the life to come. 
 To some extent, the post-mortem welfare of the 
 great, and possibly of the lowly, became dependent 
 on the virtues of their lives on earth. 
 
 In this combination of ethical thought with 
 means magical, religious, or material, for support- 
 ing life beyond the tomb, lay the most striking Egyp- 
 tian endeavour to free the human spirit from fear, 
 and adjust man to the conditions and possibilities 
 
12 DELIVERANCE 
 
 of his life. As a part of this freeing of the spirit, 
 Egyptian conceptions of the divine gained ethical 
 discrimination and universal breadth. The gods, 
 or the one god for the moment deemed supreme, 
 would be less capricious if clothed with right and 
 justice, and could, if omnipotent, bear more effi- 
 cient aid. A surer sense of peace was won, as men 
 realised the might of the divine favour, and more 
 clearly saw, or thought they saw, how it should be 
 won and held. Their gods were righteous, and 
 would save the righteous; and their power was 
 adequate since they, or rather the momentarily 
 supreme one among them, had come to be conceived 
 as Lord and Creator not of Egypt alone, but of all 
 earth's lands, and as supreme also in the world of 
 the still sentient dead. The final intimate comfort 
 came with the thought that this eternal Lord and 
 Maker of Life might also enter the king's heart, 
 and bring him wisdom and life. God had become 
 the mother and father of all that he had made, and 
 had filled Egypt with his love. One king at least, 
 the revolutionary Amenhotep IV (C. 1375 B.C.), 
 possessed these thoughts, and could pray that his 
 eyes might be satisfied daily with beholding Aton 
 (the supreme and universal Sun-god) when he dawns 
 in his temple, and fills it with his own self by his 
 beams, loving and life-giving forever. 
 
 The name was nothing. Aton had taken many 
 of the qualities of Amon and Osiris ; and when the 
 
CHALD^A AND EGYPT 13 
 
 name of Aton was stamped out In the succeeding 
 reaction, Amon received back from his rival attri- 
 butes which had once been his, but which in Aton 
 had come to added grace and power. And then a 
 last advance was made ; these beautiful conceptions 
 spread themselves among men, even among those of 
 low estate, whose lot in by-gone times had been scant 
 burial and scant equipment for any life thereafter. 
 Amon had become a god coming to the silent, sav- 
 ing the poor, listening to the cry of their affliction. 
 "O Amon-Re, I love thee and I have filled my 
 heart with thee. Thou wilt rescue me out of the 
 mouth of men in the day when they speak lies : 
 for the Lord of Truth, he liveth in truth." ^ 
 
 * See Breasted, Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, 
 PP- 334. 355 and passim. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 China: Duty and Detachment 
 
 /'CHINESE meditation, quietism, individualistic 
 ^^^ inaction, as well as the more constructive social 
 energies of the race, reached personal exemplifica- 
 tion and classic expression at about the same time 
 in two remarkable personalities. Lao Tzu and 
 Confucius were Chinese incarnations of the vita 
 contemplativa and the vita activa, the ^tbs OewprjTiKo^ 
 and irpaKTLKo^. One might whimsically call them the 
 Mary and Martha of China. 
 
 These two modes of human life may rest on 
 different motives and assume different forms with 
 different peoples. The contemplative life may 
 issue from the detached intellectual temperament, 
 which is supremely interested in knowing, or it 
 may issue from brooding aversion to life's more 
 blatant activities, or from horror over a sinful 
 world and fearful or loving consecration to one's 
 own salvation and the God with whom that lies. 
 The active life may embrace many and diverse in- 
 tellectual interests, may have religious or secular 
 aims, may represent devotion to the social fabric 
 or fierce ambition. 
 
 For the sake of clarity one distinguishes these 
 14 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 1 5 
 
 tendencies rather sharply, and speaks of them as 
 opposites. But, of course, they mingle in the same 
 individuals. Moreover, in every land, those who 
 exhibit markedly one tendency will have much in 
 common with those who represent the other, be- 
 cause of like environment and racial characteristics 
 underlying the idiosyncrasies of individuals. So 
 the views of Confucius and Lao Tzu show affinity 
 as well as opposition. It is better to speak first of 
 Confucius, because Lao Tzu, although the elder by 
 some fifty years, embodies a reaction against the 
 more dominant Chinese qualities represented in the 
 younger man.^ 
 
 How did Confucius consider life and his relation- 
 ship to the world, and set himself to reach such 
 freedom in thought and corresponding act as he 
 was capable of.? He may seem a very bounden 
 man; but he was free, though his freedom lay in 
 reverent self-adaptation to chains — as they appear 
 to us. Confucius looked sadly upon the state of 
 affairs about him, and with admiration on the past 
 as he read it in that ancient history and poetry 
 which he tended with such care. He wished to 
 conform his conduct to the ways of ancient worthies, 
 and raise the misrule of the Chinese princes to the 
 measure of the (imagined) government of the an- 
 cient (imagined) kingdom. In the adjustment of 
 his conduct, he appears to have been faultless ; and 
 ^ Confucius' birth is securely set at 551 B.C. 
 
l6 DELIVERANCE 
 
 while he realised little of his public purpose, he did 
 much to prescribe the ideal which China has ever 
 since revered. His life began with learning, and 
 continued learning many things, the wisdom of 
 the ancient sages and the appointed rites and cere- 
 monies. With this went ceaseless effort to per- 
 form the rites, and make them the garment of a 
 character conforming to the Way of Heaven, whose 
 sure and righteous power presented the ultimate 
 sanction of conduct, — and so the standard of man's 
 life-adjustment. It was all established in the nar- 
 ratives and teaching of the old History : "The way 
 of Heaven is to bless the good, and make the bad 
 miserable"; again, "It was not that Heaven 
 had any private partiality for the lord of Shang; 
 it simply gave its favour to pure virtue." And the 
 old History also taught as an inspiration that 
 "The glory and tranquillity of a state may arise 
 from the goodness of one man." ^ 
 
 Accordingly, the entire endeavour of Confucius 
 was to model his conduct upon the Way of Heaven 
 as illustrated in the Book of History and the over- 
 interpreted teaching of the classic Odes. By this 
 means his character would become such that his 
 life and precepts might tranquillise the land, a re- 
 sult which might be hoped for, as the Shu King said, 
 from the goodness of one man. 
 
 1 The closing words of the Shu King (the classic Book of His- 
 tory). Legge's Translation. 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 17 
 
 Says Confucius, speaking of the stages of his 
 progress : "At fifteen my mind was bent on learn- 
 ing ; at thirty I stood firm ; at forty I had no doubts ; 
 at fifty I knew the decrees of Heaven ; at seventy 
 I could follow what my heart desired, without 
 transgressing." ^ So through a long life came his 
 adjustment, conforming to the most surely sanc- 
 tioned standards that he could conceive, and bring- 
 ing with it spiritual peace and freedom. 
 
 The contents of this adjustment will be seen to 
 include an endless series of observances, minute, 
 meticulous, painful, — the conventions, ceremonies, 
 rites, controlling the intercourse of society, and 
 prescribing the ceremonials of marriage, burial, 
 ancestor worship, worship of Heaven, and pro- 
 pitiation of all the spirits affecting human lots for 
 good or ill. These rules of propriety and rites and 
 ceremonies illustrate the graded distinctions obtain- 
 ing between Heaven and earth. To know them 
 and carry them out reverently will mould the char- 
 acter aright. The finish comes from Music, which 
 exhibits the Harmony prevailing between earth and 
 Heaven.2 
 
 Thus music and ceremonies supplement each 
 other, and unite in the Confucian scheme. Within, 
 the character and will must correspond with the 
 
 * Confucian Analects, II, 4. Legge's Translation. 
 2 See the great collection of the Li Ki, translated by Legge; 
 Sacred Books of the East, Vols. 27 and 28. 
 c 
 
1 8 DELIVERANCE 
 
 truth and righteousness of the Way of Heaven. 
 "The Superior Man in everything considers right- 
 eousness to be essential. He performs it according 
 to the rules of propriety — bringing it forth in 
 humility, completing it in sincerity." He seeks 
 truth rather than emolument; and is distressed 
 only at his own shortcomings, not at poverty, ill- 
 treatment, or death. He seeks friendship with the 
 upright, not with the glib-tongued ; he finds enjoy- 
 ment in the study of ceremonies and music, not in 
 idleness and feasting; he guards himself against 
 lust, anger, avarice ; he stands in awe of the ordi- 
 nances of Heaven, of great men, and of the words 
 of the sages. 
 
 Certain disciples suspected that the Master was 
 obsessed with the learning of many things. Per- 
 ceiving this, he said: "Those who know virtue are 
 few. I seek a unity all-pervading." It was asked 
 what these words might mean, and the answer came 
 from one of the disciples : "The doctrine of our 
 Master is to be true to the principles of our nature 
 and the benevolent exercise of them toward others." 
 
 The correlated unity of the whole matter is made 
 to appear in the most comprehensive of Confucian 
 statements : "What Heaven has conferred is called 
 the Nature : an accordance with this Nature is 
 called the Path ; the regulation of the Path is called 
 Instruction. 
 
 "The Path may not be left for an instant. If it 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 19 
 
 could be left, it would not be the Path. On this 
 account the superior man does not wait till he sees 
 things, to be cautious, nor till he hears things, to 
 be apprehensive. . . . 
 
 "While there are no stirrings of pleasure, anger, 
 sorrow, or joy, the mind may be said to be in the 
 state of Equilibrium. When those feelings have 
 been stirred, and they act in their due degree, there 
 ensues what may be called the state of Harmony. 
 This EquiHbrium is the great root, and this Har- 
 mony is the universal Path. 
 
 "Let the states of Equilibrium and Harmony 
 exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail 
 throughout heaven and earth, and all things will 
 flourish." 1 
 
 That is to say, these principles, properly filled 
 out with the accumulated precepts of political and 
 social wisdom, will, if observed, insure the tran- 
 quillity of the state and produce correct and reverent 
 ties between ruler and people, father and son, 
 husband and wife, elder brother and younger, and 
 between friend and friend. 
 
 Here is presented, not altogether clearly, the 
 standard and the sanction of Confucius* adjust- 
 ment of his life to the order of Heaven — which is 
 
 * This is from Chapter I of the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of 
 the Mean, ascribed to the grandson of Confucius, and recog- 
 nised as an authoritative statement of the Master's teaching. 
 Cf. also, ib., II, 8. 
 
20 DELIVERANCE 
 
 the aggregate of the divine spontaneously creative 
 forces and man's share of them which constitutes 
 his nature. Conformity to Heaven's high ordain- 
 ments — to the Path — frees the sage from the fear 
 of all things opposed or irrelevant to these his rules 
 of conduct. The people also should be kept in Hke 
 free conformity ; — they should be instructed in the 
 rules of propriety and should be led through their 
 virtue, not coerced by laws. "The Master said: 
 *If the people be led by laws, and uniformity be 
 sought to be given them by punishments, they will 
 try to avoid the punishment, but will have no sense 
 of shame. If they be led by virtue, and uniformity 
 be sought to be given them by the rules of pro- 
 priety, they will have the sense of shame, and, 
 moreover, will become good.' " 
 
 But there was need of exertion on the part of 
 rulers to keep the people in the Path — that had 
 been the way of the ancient sage Emperors. Virtu- 
 ous and energetic ministers should be employed, and 
 not the useless. Possibly, when all things were well 
 administered, the ruler himself might gravely and 
 sedately, without active exertion, occupy his throne. 
 
 One observes that this cautious Chinaman, in 
 his adjustment, did not go beyond the necessary 
 assurance of his convictions, and refused to discuss 
 from the religious or metaphysical point of view 
 the ordinances of Heaven, or death, or the service 
 of the spirits of the dead. Such matters did not 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 21 
 
 fall within the needs of his personal adjustment, 
 nor within the needs of his mission to his land. 
 
 Turning now to Taoism, and observing what its 
 doctrines had in common with the system of Con- 
 fucius, one notices first the name. That was taken 
 from the broad Confucian, or rather Chinese, con- 
 ception of the TaOy — meaning the Path, the Way 
 or Method. While retaining these meanings, Tao 
 also drew to itself in the thought of Lao Tzu and 
 Chuang Tzu (perhaps his greater follower) a com- 
 plementary meaning, that of the universal power, 
 to wit, "Heaven" or nature spontaneously creative 
 — of which Tao is the Way. Likewise the Tao of 
 man and beast might be not only the Way but also 
 the Nature of man and beast. Then, through a 
 suppression of distinctions or a union of contraries, 
 Tao became an obscurely conceived Absolute. 
 Neither Confucianism nor Taoism had any definite 
 conception of a God above Nature and distinct 
 from it; although both drew current notions of 
 invisible spirit-existences or influences from the 
 common fund of Chinese superstition and tradition. 
 Both systems emphasized the effect of virtue and 
 character, — the exertionless influence of the sage. 
 But, besides this, Confucius taught the regular 
 efficiency of action and exertion on the sage's part, 
 while Lao Tzu insisted on despising it. 
 
 To Confucius the web of proprieties was nearly 
 all in all ; while Lao Tzu relied consistently on the 
 
22 DELIVERANCE 
 
 inherent virtue of the Tao. Thus it was that the 
 former held fast to the thought (so replete with the 
 "proprieties") of reciprocity: Do not, of course, 
 do ill to any man; but recompense goodness with 
 goodness, and evil with justice, — the last thought 
 may sanction punishment if not revenge. But 
 Lao Tzu, holding fast to the goodness of the Tao, 
 would treat evil with goodness, of a mild and pass- 
 ive sort, one may imagine ; and would not take up 
 the foolish way of exertion in order to punish the 
 evil-doer. It fell in with Taoism to emphasise the 
 passive virtues of gentleness and humility, approved 
 likewise by Confucius. Beyond this, the inaction 
 and indifference of Taoism proceeded easily along the 
 lofty, somewhat scornful, path of the obliteration of 
 differences and identification of opposites. 
 
 One may contemplate with advantage and 
 amusement the manner of the life-adjustments of 
 Lao Tzu, and Chuang Tzu, who stand to each other, 
 only with more generations between, as Socrates to 
 Plato. Lao Tzu, a deliciously enigmatic person, 
 appears, if Taoist sources may be trusted, to have 
 quite dumfounded Confucius in a most improbable 
 interview; he left a composition since called the 
 Tao-U-Kingf of which, however, his authorship has 
 been strenuously denied. The work represents at 
 all events the more amorphous strata of Taoist 
 doctrine, and one may as well ascribe it to this 
 incomprehensible dragon of a Lao Tzu. The trans- 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 23 
 
 lations vary ; * and no man knows what Lao Tzu 
 meant by Tao. Doubtless he himself did not 
 know, a fact to comfort us and lead to better under- 
 standing on our part. Whatever we make of Tao, 
 the book represents an adjustment of an individual 
 to his world, with thoughts touching the fussiness 
 of men over the unimportant. It also is as a hall 
 of echoes, where one catches mocking notes of 
 Brahma, of Heracleitus, or of Jesus. 
 
 Lao Tzu, like Confucius, lived when China was a 
 group of disorderly and often hostile states. Past 
 and present were in his mind. Had there not been 
 in the foretime plenty of sage rulers and energetic 
 ministers, all benevolently inclined ? What had 
 come of it but this confusion ? Confucius (if Lao 
 Tzu ever heard of him) with his well-meaning and 
 tedious efforts at reform, might seem to crown a 
 line of futile endeavourers. Perhaps it was all a 
 mistake to try to control the people. Since coercion 
 brought evil, why not try the opposite method of 
 leaving men to the virtue of their inherent nature ? 
 After all, what did it matter ? Why not muse in 
 peace and quiet, contemplating this basic human 
 nature which was good ? 
 
 Lao Tzu is a puzzle.' If one could be certain that 
 the Tao-te-King is his ! and if its translators only 
 
 1 Notice those by Legge {Sacred Books of the Easty Vol. 
 XXXIX), by de Harlez in Annales de la Musee Guimety and by 
 Dr. Paul Carus (Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago, 1898). 
 
24 DELIVERANCE 
 
 agreed a little better ! We may be inclined to won- 
 der whether in the Tao-te-King the Chinese musing 
 spirit was not assisted by the spirit of the vine, a 
 very frequent aid to meditation in those old times. 
 These are queer sentences: "I alone appear Hstless 
 and still, as if my desires had not dawned ; like an 
 infant which has not yet smiled ; dejected, forlorn, 
 like one who has no home. I seem to be drifting 
 on the sea." This drifter knew at least to what 
 he would not tie himself, or direct his course by. It 
 should not be action, action taken with the purpose 
 of getting things, or impressing or compelling other 
 men. There had been too much of that ! What 
 had the ruler's meddling ever brought but lawless- 
 ness ? And as for coercion, as for war — after an 
 army, briars and thorns spring up ! Did some far 
 tradition come to Lao Tzu that the great sage- 
 rulers of the imagined past had done nothing, and 
 under them the people had thriven in blissful igno- 
 rance that there was a government ? As he tested 
 kindred thoughts in his own case, the principle of 
 inaction, with passivity, proved itself valid. He 
 found his kingdom within him : — without going 
 abroad, one understands; no need to look out of 
 the window to see the Tao of Heaven. "Let us 
 go," said someone, "and wander over the world." 
 "No," replied Lao Tzu, "the world is just as you see 
 it here." 
 
 Indeed, what is the use of learning many things .? 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 25 
 
 Better discard such knowledge and restless wisdom. 
 It is the softest thing that overcomes the hardest. 
 The advantage hes with inaction. Let one be as 
 humble and non-assertive as water, always taking 
 the lowest place. 
 
 A thoughtful man seeks to rest his temperamental 
 convictions upon some absolute principle, at once 
 sure and sufficing. Lao Tzu found such in an eternal 
 unchanging root within the nature of man and 
 behind the ways of Earth and Heaven. Thereupon 
 all things became for him fundamentally the same, 
 fundamentally one. Differences were but surface 
 fooHshness ; complete inaction with respect to them 
 approved itself as life's true rule. One can almost 
 feel him groping after this changeless first beginning 
 and eternal principle of all things, thus perhaps: 
 "There was something undefined and complete, 
 coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. 
 How still it was and formless, standing alone, and 
 undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and 
 exhaustless. It may be regarded as the Mother of 
 all things. I do not know its name, and I give it 
 the designation of the Tao. . . . Man takes his 
 law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from 
 Heaven; Heaven from the Tao. The law of the 
 Tao is its being what it is." ^ 
 
 ^ Tao-te-King, 25. Is not this a far-ofF pre-natal echo of 
 the One of Plotinus ? The translator (Legge) felt doubtful 
 of the last sentences. 
 
26 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Therein lay mystery, unapproachable, ineffable, 
 not to be imparted. As the goodness of doing good 
 is not the real good, so the Tao that can be attained, 
 that can be trodden as the Path, is not the endur- 
 ing and unchanging Tao. Evidently the name that 
 can be named cannot be the name of the Enduring 
 and Unchanging. This cannot be known and 
 named so distinguishably : things distinguishable 
 and namable are not the Tao. 
 
 Producing all things, the Tao strives not, cloth- 
 ing all as with a garment, yet not asserting itself as 
 Lord ; existing alike in the smallest and the greatest. 
 Out of weakness, strength; thus it proceeds by 
 contraries. Heaven and Earth, its grand embodi- 
 ments, do not act from benevolence. They do not 
 strive, yet always overcome ; the meshes of Heaven's 
 net are large, but let nothing escape. It lessens 
 abundance, it supplements deficiency. Heaven 
 shows no favour ; it is always on the side of the good 
 man. 
 
 Likewise the sage, says Lao Tzu, he who knows 
 and holds the eternal Tao, will show no nepotism. 
 The good he will meet with good, and what else 
 has he within him with which to meet the bad ? 
 To embody and imitate the Tao was Lao Tzu's per- 
 sonal adjustment. As touching his effect on other 
 men, Tao-like he would proceed by contraries, 
 making no effort, renouncing sageness, discarding 
 benevolence. 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 27 
 
 The Tao's way is plain — but the people love 
 by-paths. The sage shall not even try to teach those 
 in whom there may be no place for truth. He will 
 do nothing, and the people will be transformed of 
 themselves. All definitely directed effort departs 
 from the purposeless indistinguishable effectiveness 
 of Tao, and will result in the opposite of what is 
 willed : out of law, lawlessness ; out of the pro- 
 prieties, disorder. 
 
 Not very clear and perhaps foolish, much of this 
 Tao-te-King! Perhaps we have been barking up 
 the wrong tree in following Lao Tzu, and the real 
 game for us is Chuang Tzu after all — not Socrates 
 but Plato. At all events, in Chuang Tzu, Chinese 
 musing and indifference has metaphysical depth and 
 wayward charm; he is not merely a puzzle, but a 
 delight. 
 
 Artist as well as metaphysician, Chuang Tzu in his 
 dialogues gives his arguments to various worthies, 
 putting them even in the mouth of a somewhat 
 apocryphal Confucius. In this he shares the faculty 
 (one feels incompetent to proceed further with the 
 comparison) of a Plato. One is embarrassed by his 
 riches and his waywardness. He has also proved a 
 hard nut to scholars,^ and to the Chinese them- 
 
 * There are two English translations made with ripe knowledge ; 
 that of Legge in Vols. 39 and 40, Sacred Books of the Easty and 
 that of Herbert A. Giles (Quaritch, 1889). One who does not 
 know Chinese may at least enjoy the delightful charm of the 
 
28 DELIVERANCE 
 
 selves, for whom he is more heretic than orthodox. 
 He lived from the fourth into the third century 
 before Christ, and a century or two later a Chinese 
 historian compared his teachings to a flood which 
 spreads at its own sweet will; consequently none 
 could apply them to any definite use; they were 
 too far-reaching. Long after, at the close of the 
 Ming period, a Chinese commentator speaks ap- 
 positely of his style: "The sudden statement and 
 the sudden proof; the sudden illustration and the 
 sudden reasoning; the decision, made to appear as 
 no decision; the connexion, now represented as 
 no connexion; the repetition, turning out to be no 
 repetition : — these features come and go in the 
 paragraphs like the clouds in the open firmament, 
 changing every moment and delightful to behold. 
 Some one describes it well : 'the guiding thread 
 in the unspun floss; the snake sleeping in the 
 grass.'"! 
 
 Chuang Tzu proceeds from Lao Tzu, or at all events 
 represents a further stage in the progress of Chinese 
 quietism and its justification. He stands upon the 
 adjustment reached by his Master, but there he 
 does not rest. The basis of this adjustment is the 
 Tao. More clearly than his predecessor, Chuang Tzu 
 
 latter. It is the one from which I have taken my extracts, 
 though with qualms over the differences between Prof. Giles and 
 Dr. Legge. 
 
 1 From Legge, Sacred Books of the Easty Vol. 40, p. 275. 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 29 
 
 shows the Tao to be the transcendental root and core 
 of oneness beneath the apparent manifold of exist- 
 ence, and also the Norm of living for every creature. 
 With this conception of Tao as his basis, he shows 
 the relativity of qualities and the subjectivity of 
 concepts, also the folly of applying the measure of 
 one thing to the being or action of another. Pro- 
 ceeding further, he discloses the Identity of Con- 
 traries, and posits as a working principle the sup- 
 pression of the silly phenomenal self with its passions 
 and desires, while he establishes the real eternal 
 Self as one with the Tao.^ Thus Chuang Tzu's 
 adjustment, compared with Lao Tzu*s, elaborates the 
 identification of Self with the Tao, and the identi- 
 fication of right living with the ways of the Tao's 
 aimless omnipotence. 
 
 These principles may be trite, their discussion 
 somewhat banal. But they came to Chuang Tzu 
 with the freshness of dawn, and made the matter 
 of delightful argument and the stimulus of dreams 
 dreamed with a purpose. Through this picturesque 
 argumentation let us track, if we can, his adjust- 
 ment with life. 
 
 The monstrous Roc flying high above the earth 
 is as a mote in the sunbeam : after this and other 
 illustrations of the subjective relativity of times and 
 magnitudes, the argument turns to the identity of 
 
 * He reaches something like the conception of the Atman 
 Brahman in the Upanishads. Cf. post, Chapter III. 
 
30 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Subjective and Objective, the one emanating from 
 the other; then to the blending of apparent con- 
 traries, which merge in an infinite One. 
 
 "Separation is the same as construction; con- 
 struction is the same as destruction. Nothing is 
 subject either to construction or to destruction, for 
 these conditions are brought together into One. 
 Only the truly intelligent understand this principle 
 of the identity of all things. . . . But to wear out 
 one's intellect in an obstinate adherence to the in- 
 dividuality of things, this is called Three in the 
 morning" 
 
 "What is Three in the morning?" exclaims someone. 
 
 "A keeper of monkeys," replies the speaker, 
 "said with regard to their rations of chestnuts that 
 each monkey was to have three in the morning and 
 four at night. But at this the monkeys were very 
 angry, so the keeper said they might have four in 
 the morning and three at night; with which ar- 
 rangement they were all well pleased. The actual 
 number of the chestnuts remained the same, but 
 there was an adaptation to the likes and dislikes of 
 those concerned. Such is the principle of putting 
 oneself into subjective relation with externals." 
 
 "There is nothing," continues the speaker after 
 further interrogatories, "under the canopy of heaven 
 greater than the tip of an autumn spikelet. A vast 
 mountain is a small thing. Neither is there any age 
 greater than that of a child cut off in infancy. 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 31 
 
 The universe and I came into being together; and 
 I and everything therein are One." 
 
 At the end, the argument bathes in the mystery 
 of life : "The revolutions of ten thousand years 
 leave the Sage's Unity unscathed. . . . How do 
 I know that love of life is not a delusion after all ? 
 How do I know but that he who dreads to die is 
 not as a child who has lost the way and cannot find 
 his home ? . . . Some will even interpret the 
 very dream they are dreaming; and only when 
 they awake do they know it was a dream. By and 
 by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find 
 out that this life is really a great dream. Fools 
 think they are awake now, and flatter themselves 
 they know if they are really princes or peasants. 
 Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who 
 say you are dreams, — I am but a dream myself. 
 . . . Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I 
 was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither. I was 
 conscious only of following my fancies as a butter- 
 fly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a 
 man. Suddenly I awaked, and there I lay, myself 
 again. Now I do not know whether I was then a 
 man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am 
 now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." 
 
 So much for relativity and the futility of apparent 
 contraries, and so much for the mystery of it all. 
 Chuang Tzu oflFers a different illustration of the 
 folly of conventional human judgements in a chap- 
 
32 DELIVERANCE 
 
 ter beginning thus: "It was the time of autumn 
 floods. Every stream poured into the river which 
 swelled in its turbid course. The banks receded 
 so far from one another that it was impossible 
 to tell a cow from a horse. Then the Spirit of 
 the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of 
 the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the 
 stream he journeyed east, until he reached the 
 ocean. There, looking eastwards and seeing no 
 limit to its waves, his countenance changed. And 
 as he gazed over the expanse, he sighed and said 
 to the Spirit of the Ocean, *A vulgar proverb says 
 that he who has heard but part of the truth thinks 
 no one equal to himself. And such a one am I. . . .' 
 
 "To which the Spirit of the Ocean replied, *You 
 cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature 
 of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to 
 a summer insect, the creature of a season. You 
 cannot speak of Tao to a pedagogue ; his scope is 
 too restricted. But now that you have emerged 
 from your narrow sphere and have seen the great 
 ocean, I can speak to you of great principles.'" 
 He then explains how vast the ocean is, and how tri- 
 fling a thing it is in the Universe. But man, as com- 
 pared with all creation, is as the tip of a hair upon a 
 horse's skin. 
 
 "Very well," replied the Spirit of the River, 
 "am I then to regard the universe as great and the 
 tip of a hair as small ?" 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 33 
 
 "Not at all," said the Spirit of the Ocean. "Di- 
 mensions are limitless ; time is endless. Conditions 
 are not invariable; terms are not final. Thus the 
 wise man looks into space, and does not regard the 
 small as too little, nor the great as too much ; for 
 he knows that there is no limit to dimension. He 
 looks back into the past, and does not grieve over 
 what is far off, nor rejoice over what is near, for he 
 knows that time is without end. He investigates 
 fulness and decay, and does not rejoice if he suc- 
 ceeds, nor lament if he fails; for he knows that 
 conditions are not invariable. He who clearly 
 apprehends the scheme of existence, does not re- 
 joice over life, nor pine at death ; for he knows that 
 terms are not final." 
 
 The great man acts differently from others, but 
 takes no credit, nor does he despise those who act 
 otherwise. "Perfect virtue acquires nothing; the 
 truly great man ignores self; this is the height of 
 self-discipline. . . . From the point of view of Tao 
 [the Spirit of the Ocean is speaking] there are no 
 extremes of value or worthlessness. Men indi- 
 vidually value themselves and hold others cheap. 
 The world collectively withholds from the individual 
 the right of appraising himself. 
 
 "If we say that a thing is great or small because 
 it is relatively great or small, then there is nothing 
 in all creation which is not great, nothing which is 
 not small. ... If we say that anything is good 
 
 D 
 
34 DELIVERANCE 
 
 or evil because it is either good or evil in our eyes, 
 then there is nothing which is not good, nothing 
 which is not evil. . . ." 
 
 "One might as well talk of the existence of 
 heaven without that of earth, or of the negative 
 principle without the positive. . . . Rulers have 
 abdicated under different conditions, dynasties 
 have been continued under different conditions. 
 Those who did not hit off a favourable time and 
 were in opposition to their age, they were called 
 usurpers. Those who did hit off the right time and 
 were in harmony with their age, they were called 
 patriots. Fair and softly, my River Friend ; what 
 should you know of value and worthlessness, of 
 great and small V* 
 
 "In this case," replied the Spirit of the River, 
 "what am I to do and what am I not to do .? How 
 am I to arrange my declinings and receivings, my 
 takings-hold and my lettings-go .?" 
 
 "From the point of view of Tao," said the Spirit 
 of the Ocean, "value and worthlessness are like 
 slopes and plains. . . . Tao is without beginning, 
 without end. Other things are born and die. 
 They are impermanent; and now for better, now 
 for worse, they are ceaselessly changing form. 
 Past years cannot be recalled; time cannot be 
 arrested. The succession of states is endless ; and 
 every end is followed by a new beginning. Thus 
 it may be said that man's duty to his neighbour 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 35 
 
 IS embodied in the eternal principles of the uni- 
 verse. 
 
 "The life of man passes by like a galloping horse, 
 changing at every turn, at every hour. What should 
 he do, other than let his decomposition go on ?" 
 
 "If this is the case," retorted the Spirit of the 
 River, "pray what is the value of Tao ?" 
 
 "Those who understand Tao," answered the 
 Spirit of the Ocean, "must necessarily apprehend 
 the eternal principles above mentioned and be clear 
 as to their application. Consequently, they do not 
 suffer injury from without." 
 
 Much knowledge is a curse ; one should know the 
 inner principles. Chuang Tzu states his underlying 
 doctrine thus : "At the beginning of the beginning, 
 even Nothing did not exist. Then came the period 
 of the Nameless. When One came into existence, 
 there was One, but it was formless. When things 
 got that by which they came into existence, it was 
 called their virtue. That which was formless, but 
 divided {i.e. allotted), though without interstice 
 (unbroken in continuity) was called Destiny. 
 Then came the movement which gave life, and things 
 produced in accordance with the principles of life 
 had what is called Form. When form encloses 
 the spiritual part, each with its own characteristics, 
 that is called its nature. By cultivating this nature, 
 we are carried back to virtue; and if this is per- 
 fected, we become as all things were in the begin- 
 
36 DELIVERANCE 
 
 ning. We become unconditioned, and the uncon- 
 ditioned is great." 
 
 Chuang Tzu, like Lao Tzu, represents the human 
 need to grope for a foundation, upon which to 
 stand with certainty of soul and freedom of action. 
 When it is found, reliance upon one's principles is 
 all that is needed, and acquiescence. Chuang Tzu 
 sums up his own acquiescence (which was his ad- 
 justment to life) in a phrase several times repeated : 
 "Tao gives me this form, this toil in manhood, this 
 repose in old age, this rest in death. And surely 
 that which is such a kind arbiter of my life is the 
 best arbiter of my death." 
 
 Evidently one should immerse oneself in that 
 essential virtue which lies far beneath the active 
 manifestations of social relationships. This will be 
 to keep oneself out of the web of conventional 
 duties, free to muse and think and live within one- 
 self and Tao. More fundamentally still it will 
 consist in looking within for the real Tao-accordant 
 Self, and in throwing off the passions and desires 
 of the Self's surface entanglements. Such a life 
 and such a Self will for the world express itself in 
 categories of inaction. 
 
 This philosopher can put his principles pic- 
 turesquely : When Chuang Tzu's wife died, a friend 
 went to console, and found "the widower sitting on 
 the ground, singing, with his legs spread out at a 
 right angle, and beating time on a bowl." The 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 37 
 
 friend thinks self-restraint well enough, but this is 
 going too far. 
 
 "Not at all," replied Chuang Tzu; "when she 
 died, I could not help being affected by her death. 
 Soon, however, I remembered that she had already- 
 existed in a previous state before birth, without 
 form or even substance ; that while in that uncon- 
 ditioned condition, substance was added to spirit; 
 that this substance then assumed form; and that 
 the next stage was birth. And now by virtue of a 
 further change she is dead, passing from one phase 
 to another like the sequence of spring, summer, 
 autumn, and winter. And while she is thus lying 
 asleep in Eternity, for me to go about weeping and 
 wailing would be to proclaim myself ignorant of 
 these natural laws. Therefore I refrain." 
 
 Doubtless Chuang Tzu also had temperamental 
 preference for the principles which he held, — and 
 loved his freedom. He "was fishing in the Pu 
 when the prince of Chu sent two high officials to 
 ask him to take charge of the Chu State. Chuang 
 Tzu went on fishing, and without turning his head 
 said, *I have heard that in Chu there is a sacred 
 tortoise which has been dead some three thousand 
 years, and that the prince keeps this tortoise care- 
 fully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral 
 temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead 
 and have its remains venerated, or be alive and 
 wagging its tail in the mud ?' 
 
38 DELIVERANCE 
 
 "'It would rather be alive,' replied the two 
 officials, *and wagging its tail in the mud/ 
 
 "* Begone !' cried Chuang Tzu. *I too will wag 
 my tail in the mud/" 
 
 Likewise Lao Tzu (in Chuang Tzu's book) shows 
 explosively that virtue lies deeper than practice : 
 "Confucius visited Lao Tzu, and spoke of charity 
 and duty to one's neighbour. Lao Tzu said, *The 
 chafF from winnowing will blind a man's eyes so 
 that he cannot tell the north from south. Mos- 
 quitoes will keep a man awake all night with their 
 biting. And just in the same way this talk of 
 charity and duty to one's neighbour drives me nearly 
 crazy. Sir ! I strive to keep the world to its own 
 original simplicity. And as the wind bloweth where 
 it listeth, so let Virtue establish itself. Wherefore 
 such undue energy, as though searching for a fugi- 
 tive with a big drum ?'" 
 
 These philosophers not only believed, but reasoned 
 in accordance with their principles, that "for the 
 perfect man who is unavoidably summoned to power, 
 there is naught like Inaction.^* This is how Chuang 
 Tzu has Lao Tzu put it, when asked how men's 
 hearts are to be kept in order without government : 
 "Be careful," replied Lao Tzu, "not to interfere 
 with the natural goodness of the heart of man. 
 Man's heart may be forced down or stirred up. In 
 each case the issue is fatal. By gentleness, the 
 hardest heart may be softened. But try to cut and 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 39 
 
 polish It, — 'twill glow like fire or freeze like ice. 
 In the twinkling of an eye it will pass beyond the 
 limits of the Four Seas. No bolt can bar, no bond 
 can bind, — such is the human heart. 
 
 "Of old, the Yellow Emperor first caused charity 
 and duty to one's neighbour to interfere with the 
 natural goodness of the heart of man. In conse- 
 quence of which, Yao and Shun wore the hair off 
 their legs in endeavouring to feed their people. 
 They disturbed their internal economy in order to 
 find room for charity and duty to one's neighbour. 
 They exhausted their energies in framing laws and 
 statutes. Still they did not succeed." They en- 
 deavoured to coerce evil men, but the Empire con- 
 tinued in unrest. "By and by the Confucianists 
 and the Mihists [another very moral sect] arose; 
 and then came exultation, and anger of rivals, 
 fraud between the simple and the cunning, recrimi- 
 nation between the virtuous and the evil, slander 
 between the honest and the dishonest, until deca- 
 dence set in, men fell away from their original virtue, 
 their natures became corrupt, and there was a general 
 rush for knowledge. 
 
 "The next thing was to coerce by all kinds of 
 physical torture, thus bringing utter confusion into 
 the Empire, the blame for which rests upon those 
 who would interfere with the natural goodness of 
 the heart of man. In consequence, virtuous men 
 sought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers of 
 
40 DELIVERANCE 
 
 States sat trembling in their ancestral halls. Then 
 when dead men lay about pillowed on each other's 
 corpses, when cangued prisoners and condemned 
 criminals jostled each other in crowds, then the 
 Confucianists and the Mihists, in the midst of 
 gyves and fetters, stood forth to preach! . . . 
 Therefore I said, abandon wisdom and discard 
 knowledge, and the Empire will be at peace." 
 
 Our old friend Lao Tzu had a fit disciple, who 
 "alone had attained to the Tao of his master. He 
 lived up north on the Wei-lei Mountains. Of his 
 attendants he dismissed those who were systemati- 
 cally clever or conventionally charitable. The 
 useless remained with him ; the incompetent served 
 him. And in three years the district of Wei-lei 
 was greatly benefited." 
 
 A final statement of the matter perhaps is touched 
 with a sHght sneer: "The difficulty of governing 
 lies in the inability to practise self-effacement." 
 
 Likewise for the individual; let him too prac- 
 tise self-effacement, efFacement, that is to say, of 
 particular desires, passions, anxieties, and efforts. 
 Chuang Tzu illuminates this with one of his best 
 narrative-disquisitions : A wise man with an un- 
 rememberable name "paid a visit to the prince of 
 Lu. The latter wore a melancholy look; where- 
 upon the philosopher inquired what was the cause. 
 
 "*I study the doctrines of the ancient Sages,' 
 replied the prince, * I carry on the work of my pred- 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 41 
 
 ecessors. I respect religion. I honour the good. 
 Never for a moment do I relax in these points ; yet 
 I cannot avoid misfortune, and consequently I am 
 sad.' 
 
 "*Your Highness* method of avoiding misfor- 
 tune/ said the philosopher, *is but a shallow one.' 
 A handsome fox or a striped leopard will live in a 
 mountain forest, hiding beneath some clifF. This 
 is their repose. They come out by night and keep 
 in by day. This is their caution. Though under 
 the stress of hunger and thirst, they lie hidden, 
 hardly venturing to slink to the river bank in search 
 of food. This is their resoluteness. Nevertheless, 
 they do not escape the misfortune of the net and the 
 trap. But what crime have they committed .? 
 'Tis their skin which is the cause of their trouble; 
 and is not the State of Lu your Highness' skin ? I 
 would have your Highness put away body and skin 
 alike, and cleansing your heart and purging it of 
 passion, betake yourself to the land where mortality 
 is not {i.e. Tao). . . . Thither would I have your 
 Highness proceed, power discarded, and the world 
 left behind, only putting trust in Tao.* 
 
 "'The road is long and dangerous,' said the 
 prince. 'Rivers and hills to be crossed, and I with- 
 out boat or chariot; — what then .?* 
 
 "'Unhindered by body and unfettered in mind, 
 your Highness will be a chariot to yourself.* 
 
 "*But the road is long and dreary, and unin- 
 
42 DELIVERANCE 
 
 habited. I shall have no one to turn to for help; 
 and how, without food, shall I ever be able to get 
 there?'" 
 
 "* Decrease expenditure (of energy) and lessen 
 desires,' answered the philosopher, * and even though 
 without provisions, there will be enough. And 
 then through river and over sea your Highness will 
 travel into shoreless illimitable space. From the 
 borderland, those who act as escort will return; 
 but thence onwards your Highness will travel far. 
 It is the human in ourselves which is our hindrance ; 
 and the human in others which causes sorrow. 
 And I would have your Highness put off this hin- 
 drance and rid yourself of this sorrow, and roam 
 with Tao alone through the realms of Infinite 
 Nought.'" 
 
 It is also taught consistently in Chuang Tzu's 
 book that neither man's life nor his individuality 
 is his own, being in either case the delegated har- 
 mony and adaptability of the spiritual powers con- 
 stituting it. 
 
 "Man passes through this sublunary life as a 
 white horse passes a crack. Here one moment, 
 gone the next. One modification brings life; then 
 another, and it is death. Living creatures cry out ; 
 human beings sorrow. The bow-sheath is slipped 
 off; the clothes-bag is dropped ; and in the con- 
 fusion the soul wings its flight, and the body fol- 
 lows, on the great journey homel 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 43 
 
 **The reality of the formless, the unreality of 
 that which has form, — this is known to all. Those 
 who are on the road to attainment care not for these 
 things, but the people at large discuss them. At- 
 tainment implies non-discussion ! Manifested, Tao 
 has no objective value ; hence silence is better than 
 argument. It cannot be translated into speech; 
 better, then, say nothing at all. This is called the 
 great attainment." 
 
 Much of this argumentation, if such it be, or 
 personal adjustment, has meaning and appeal, or 
 has it not, according as one may take it, or perhaps, 
 according as one is constituted. Thus it may be 
 either appealing or foolish. The way lies near to 
 an exposition of the real Self which might seem to 
 have come out of the Indian Upanishads : "That 
 Self is eternal ; yet all men think it mortal ; That 
 Self is infinite ; yet all men think it finite. Those 
 who possess Tao are princes in this life and rulers 
 in the hereafter. Those who do not possess Tao 
 behold the light of day in this life, and become 
 clods of earth in the hereafter." 
 
 One sees that Chuang Tzu's philosophy is held 
 within his adjustment with life. The philosopher 
 himself is still human, can recognize half humorously 
 his own imbecility and occasional falling away from 
 his principles, as in this story: Wandering in a 
 park, he saw a strange bird with great wings, which 
 flew close past his head to alight in a chestnut grove. 
 
44 DELIVERANCE 
 
 "What manner of bird is this ?" cried Chuang 
 Tzu. "With strong wings it does not fly away; 
 with large eyes it does not see." 
 
 So he picked up his skirts and strode towards 
 it with his cross-bow, anxious to get a shot. Just 
 then he saw a cicada enjoying itself in the shade, 
 forgetful of all else. And he saw a mantis spring 
 and seize it, forgetting in its act its own body, 
 which the strange bird immediately pounced upon 
 and made its prey. And this it was which had 
 caused the bird to forget its own nature. 
 
 "Alas !" cried Chuang Tzu with a sigh, "how 
 creatures injure one another. Loss follows the pur- 
 suit of gain." So he laid aside his bow and went 
 home, driven away by the parkkeeper, who wanted 
 to know what business he had there. 
 
 After this he did not quit his house for three 
 months, till a disciple, wondering, asked why. 
 "While keeping my physical frame," replied Chuang 
 Tzu, "I lost sight of my real self. Gazing at muddy 
 water, I lost sight of the clear abyss. Now when I 
 strolled into the park, I forgot my real self. That 
 strange bird which flew close past me to the chest- 
 nut grove, forgot its nature. The keeper of the 
 chestnut grove took me for a thief. Consequently 
 I have not been out." 
 
 No, he had rather dwell within his house, within 
 himself. How clearly he could lay aside non- 
 essentials and cast himself upon the elements of his 
 
DUTY AND DETACHMENT 45 
 
 being, is shown in the final scene: "When Chuang 
 Tzu was about to die, his disciples expressed a 
 wish to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang 
 Tzu said, 'With Heaven and Earth for my coffin 
 and shell, with the sun, moon and stars as my burial 
 regalia; and with all creation to escort me to the 
 grave, — are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to 
 hand ?' 
 
 "'We fear,' argued the disciples, 'lest the carrion 
 kite should eat the body of our master'; to which, 
 Chuang Tzu replied, 'Above ground, I shall be 
 food for kites; below, I shall be food for mole- 
 crickets and ants. Why rob one to feed the other ?' " 
 
 Thus it was for this man who knew: "Birth 
 is not a beginning; death is not an end. There 
 is existence without limitation; there is continuity 
 without a starting point. Existence without limi- 
 tation is Space. Continuity without a starting 
 point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there 
 is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through 
 which one passes in and out without seeing its form, 
 that is the Portal of God — which is non-existence, 
 from which all things spring." 
 
 As certain also of your own poets have said : 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Indian Annihilation of Individuality 
 
 TNDIAN thinking is driven by a temperamental 
 -"- need of adjustment with the Infinite, and by a 
 temperamental aversion for the incessant round of 
 life and death. The adjustments attained were 
 shaped through a tenacious dialectic; yet they 
 were impelled by the Indian yearning for emanci- 
 pation from impermanence and recurrent death. 
 By the close of the fifth century before Christ, 
 cognate and complementary solutions had been 
 reached, which were religious and also metaphysical. 
 These solutions affected the spiritual destinies of 
 Asia. They were, moreover, in their intellectual 
 bearings representative of the opposite positions 
 regarding men and things in which philosophers in 
 various lands have always tended to range them- 
 selves. The Brahman-Atman doctrines of the 
 Upanishads and the teachings of Buddhism which 
 seemingly rose out of them, by the way of dissent if 
 not of revolution, present opposite poles of thought. 
 The Brahman pole points to an Absolute All-One, 
 empirically unknowable, but felt religiously, and dem- 
 onstrated as metaphysical verity. Vaguely it was 
 
 46 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 47 
 
 to be lived unto as a religious goal, and patterned 
 upon as a norm of conduct. The Buddhist solution 
 refused assent to any Absolute, which of a cer- 
 tainty could not be found in the changing world 
 and the passing experience of man. 
 
 Yet transience and change were as intolerable to 
 one Indian phase of thought as to the other; and 
 the Buddha preaches emancipation from phe- 
 nomenal life as earnestly as if behind there lay an 
 Absolute instead of Nought. But these opposite 
 poles in India are not in all respects distinguishable. 
 The Absolute of the Upanishads does not differ 
 practically from Nought, but only metaphysically. 
 In other systems, however, away from India, 
 Being or the Supreme Being is the antithesis of 
 Nought in many further modes, and one may fruit- 
 fully reflect upon the different motives, the differ- 
 ent processes, and the different goals of supreme 
 desire, or its seeming renunciation, which have 
 drawn men to one conclusion or the other in com- 
 pany, shall we say, with Yajnavalkya or Gotama, 
 with Plato or Heracleitus, with Christ or with 
 Apollyon. 
 
 There have always been men to despise or con- 
 demn the lures of life, although their condemnation 
 has proceeded along different lines of misprisal. 
 Some have been moved by fear of sin, some by the 
 sorrow of impermanence, and some by contempt 
 for whatever does not share in the steadfastness of 
 
48 DELIVERANCE 
 
 the conceptions of the mind. The Indian mis- 
 prisal united the last two reasons, and was a thing 
 of mood as well as thought. Conversely, the higher 
 Indian modes of spiritual freedom were harmonies 
 of mood and argument. 
 
 After what one is prone to call the Vedic age of 
 probable Aryan advance and conquest in India, 
 the thoughtful men of the succeeding generations 
 gave themselves over to profound, if not the happiest, 
 meditation. The remark of the Greek observer 
 Megasthenes, who visited India in the train of 
 Alexander, that the Indian sages, — forest dwellers 
 he calls them — think much on death, would have 
 applied centuries before his time. Many of those 
 temperamentally motived philosophic treatises which 
 are called Upanishads and are attached as appen- 
 dices and reconsiderations to the Vedic literature, 
 are earlier than the fifth century before Christy 
 presumably and probably, for dates are never cer- 
 tain in India. They consider death inordinately (as 
 we might say, if we chose to forget our own monkish 
 literature), and present the ancient Brahmanical 
 adjustment of the human spirit — with life and 
 the universe ? yes, perhaps ; but it were more to 
 the point to speak of this adjustment as an emanci- 
 pation of the soul from death, and constantly re- 
 curring death. 
 
 To anyone who would extract a system from 
 them, these Upanishads will prove tangled paths. 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 49 
 
 Yet the topics of discussion throughout are much 
 the same, and the general tenor of the solutions. 
 There is frequent dialogue, question and answer, 
 with youchs and kings and Brahmans for speakers. 
 It would be interesting, were it justifiable, to attach 
 the argumentation to the name of some ancient and 
 dramatic Brahman, like Yajnavalkya. And per- 
 haps it may be well to follow closely some instance 
 of his dramatic arguments, if only to illustrate 
 vividly the point that the Upanishads form a huge 
 attempt, or series of attempts, to bring peace and 
 freedom to the anxious human spirit, emancipate 
 the soul from death, and possibly win for it eternal 
 felicity. 
 
 Belief in the transmigration of souls is either 
 inculcated or assumed. Therefore the soul has to 
 be freed from its torment of rebirth and redeath. 
 This goal is reached through mazes of symbolism 
 and metaphysics intended to establish the Absolute 
 All-One, and identify the Soul, the Self, with It, — 
 the Atman with Brahman. For the Atman is this 
 Absolute Self within each one of us, if we will but 
 know it ; and Brahma, a word which in the Vedas 
 had meant prayer, has at length through turns of 
 monstrous symbolism and subjectivity, been trans- 
 formed to that prayer which has worked its own 
 fulfilment, which has not merely reached but has 
 become its own uttermost desire, the unchanging 
 and imperishable Absolute. The Self is That; 
 
50 DELIVERANCE 
 
 That is the Self; and beyond it there is Nought; 
 only Maya, the delusion of Name and Form. 
 
 This Absolute is to be attained through enlighten- 
 ment; by knowing it and desiring nothing else. 
 But can it be known } Yes and no. It cannot be 
 known by observation, perhaps not in consciousness 
 in any way. Will the path of cumulative predica- 
 tion lead to It .? — It is this, and that and every- 
 thing, the One within the Many: and this, and 
 that, and everything art Thou. Negation may 
 prove the surer way; for neither that, nor this nor 
 anything is It. It cannot be known through rest- 
 less tossings, but only dreamlessly. Where then is 
 consciousness ? Has that too vanished in this 
 dreamless knowledge ? He who has realized Brah- 
 man, and that the Self is It, for him there will be 
 no desire in this life, and no rebirth unto redeath; 
 for him it will be true, as Yajnavalkya declares r 
 "There is no consciousness after death." 
 
 Listen to Yajnavalkya speaking with his wife 
 Maitreyi, as he is about to enter the final seclusion 
 of the forest ; he will divide his goods between her 
 and another wife. Maitreyi stops him: "If the 
 wealth of the whole earth belonged to me, would it 
 make me immortal ? " 
 
 "No," replied Yajnavalkya,V'like the life of rich 
 people will be thy life; there is no hope of im- 
 mortality by wealth." 
 
 "What should I do with that by which I do not 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 51 
 
 become immortal ? That which my Lord knoweth, 
 tell to me." 
 
 Yajnavalkya replied: "Come, thou that art 
 truly dear to me, sit down and I will explain it to 
 thee. Verily a husband is dear not for the hus- 
 band's sake, but for the SelPs sake: likewise wife, 
 sons, kingdoms, the world and all the gods, these 
 are dear, not for their own, but for the SelPs sake ; 
 in order that thou mayest love the Self alone. We 
 should meditate upon the Self. He who has seen, 
 heard and known the Self, knows the Universe. 
 He who looks for anything save in the Self will be 
 deluded, — as if he should seek for the notes of 
 lute or drum beyond the instrument producing 
 them ! And as when a fire is laid with damp wood, 
 clouds of smoke are spread around, so from this 
 great Being has all knowledge and doctrine been 
 breathed forth. It is the meeting-place of all 
 forms, as waters meet in the ocean, sounds in the 
 ear, colours in the eye, and perceptions in the mind. 
 And as a lump of salt, dissolved in water, cannot be 
 taken out, and the water will always taste salt, so 
 this great Being which is all knowledge, vanishes in 
 the elements from which it rises. There is no con- 
 sciousness after death." 
 
 "Now thou hast bewildered me," said Maitreyi. 
 
 "O Maitreyi, I say nothing that is bewildering. 
 For when there is as it were duality, then one sees 
 the other, one smells the other, one hears the other, 
 
52 DELIVERANCE 
 
 one salutes the other, one perceives and knows the 
 other. But when the Self is all this, how should 
 He see another, hear another, salute another, or 
 perceive and know another ? How should He 
 know Him by whom He knows all this ? That 
 Self is to be described by No, No ! He is incom- 
 prehensible, for he cannot be comprehended; he 
 cannot perish; he does not attach himself; un- 
 fettered, he does not suffer. How, O beloved, should 
 he know the knower ? Thus, O Maitreyi, thou hast 
 been instructed." When he had thus spoken, 
 Yajnavalkya went away into the forest.^ 
 
 Note the "as it were" of this last passage — 
 duality, manifoldness, only as it were, not really. 
 The Atman-Brahman is the sole reality; it is the 
 All; it is free from desire, it is also essentially un- 
 knowable, for it is You. Knowledge of this is in 
 itself emancipation, and looses the soul from the 
 delusions of rebirth. "He who is without desire, 
 desire having been laid to rest, is himself his own 
 desire — he is Brahman." So spake Yajnavalkya. 
 
 The Upanishads throughout their repetitious in- 
 volutions do not flinch from the principle of eman- 
 cipation through non-desire. Yet they seem to 
 flicker down from these pale heights of Yajnavalkya ; 
 and through concessions to the insistent calls of 
 
 * Condensed from Brihadaranyaka-Upantshadyll, 4 and IV, 5, 
 mainly as rendered by Max Miiller, Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 
 XV, with emendations from Deussen. 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 53 
 
 empirical knowledge, the Atman-Brahman becomes 
 more active, more cosmogonic if one will, and more 
 knowable. It fills the roles of Creator, Preserver, 
 and Destroyer — "the womb of nature and perhaps 
 her grave." "At the bidding of this imperishable 
 one, O Gargi (again speaks Yajnavalkya) sun and 
 moon are kept asunder, heaven and earth are kept 
 asunder; the minutes and the hours are kept 
 asunder, the days and nights, the months and 
 seasons and the years. At the bidding of this im- 
 perishable one, O Gargi, the streams run from the 
 snow mountains, some to the east and some to the 
 west, whithersoever each goes. At the bidding of 
 this imperishable one, men praise the bountiful 
 givers, the gods desire the sacrificer, the fathers the 
 offerings to the dead." ^ 
 
 It is thus that to the high strain of that adjust- 
 ment which lies in the dreamless Unity of the Abso- 
 lute, the Upanishads add props and comfortings, 
 sops to the insistent barkings of man's actual en- 
 vironment. Yet they still teach unwaveringly the 
 emancipation lying in detachment and freedom from 
 desire. 
 
 Religion attaches itself by the ways of hope and 
 aspiration to aims and objects which may or may 
 not prove clear and consistent when critically 
 analysed. Logic and metaphysics, issuing from 
 
 ^Brih.-Up. Ill, 8, 9 (Deussen). 
 
54 DELIVERANCE 
 
 other phases of human faculty, are likely to devi- 
 talise the objects of religious yearning. In ratioci- 
 nation the religious impulse is checked, its emotion 
 distracted, while the seamy sides of the method 
 and Object of Religion are disclosed. Other 
 emotions, arising in the progress of debate, may 
 confirm the combatants' positions; but they are 
 the emotions of conflict. The creators of religions 
 are those who have voiced anew men's yearnings 
 and given new life to their hopes, and with such 
 sufficiency of definiteness that others could take up 
 the impulse and echo its expression, — an expres- 
 sion, an actualisation, mark you, of their own poten- 
 tialities of aspiration. 
 
 The most ancient Buddhist writings are in Pali, 
 a language current in parts of northern India about 
 the time when Gotama lived, in the fifth or sixth 
 century before Christ. If they are tediously 
 dialectical, they still deprecate the discussion of 
 whatever goes beyond salvation's needs ; and though 
 the argumentative form seems to point backward 
 to the actual methods of Gotama, one may be sure 
 that he brought again to true expression those In- 
 dian aspirations and those notes of Indian sorrow 
 which had been over dialecticised in the Upani- 
 shads. A comfort deeper than argument drew men 
 to the Buddha, and evoked their cry : "I take refuge 
 in the Buddha, in his Teaching, and in the Brother- 
 hood." There is in fact no ground for questioning 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 55 
 
 what is vouched for by the concurrence of all the 
 early records : that as the adjustment which Gotama 
 reached was reached through meditation, so he set 
 it forth in the form of reasoned statements which 
 made their own transforming and vitalising use of 
 the Brahmanical argumentation of his time. 
 
 Gotama's attainment and the whole content of 
 the Buddha's system, which from pity he imparted 
 to those who were fit for wisdom, may, from our 
 point of view, be bounded within the conception of 
 the individual's adjustment with life. The cir- 
 cumstances of the attainment of this noble Sakya 
 youth to Buddhahood have been told, usually 
 with an accumulation of myth, millions of times. 
 Shall we say, the tale is the more impressive 
 the more nakedly it is presented in the closest 
 approximation to the probable facts ? There is 
 profound absurdity in this idea : the probable facts ! 
 they were of the spirit in its crisis and in its prepa- 
 ration too. With scarcely less foolishness might 
 one seek for the "probable facts" of the Forty 
 Days in the wilderness or the night upon Geth- 
 semane ! Possibly the myth-making instinct of the 
 Buddha's followers has wisely adorned the tale, in 
 order that it might symbolise the ineffable value of 
 this achievement for mankind. Alack ! this rever- 
 ent mythopoesy is only too apt to be fond and 
 foolish : in India it has done as foolishly in Birth- 
 stories of the Buddha's countless previous lives, as 
 
56 DELIVERANCE 
 
 it was to do in our apocryphal Gospels, filling out 
 the child-life of Jesus to accord with the imperative 
 silliness of the human mind. Only let us be also 
 sure that any attempt to discover the truth of 
 such experiences, through critical weighings of the 
 sources, is a process likely to fool the wise more 
 dangerously than legends fool the babes. 
 
 Gotama was born and lived in northeastern India. 
 His temper was impregnated with the moods, and 
 his mind was filled with the thoughts, which are 
 expressed in the Upanishads. He was a child of 
 the Indian discussion of the Absolute and Unabso- 
 lute, and the Indian aversion to the phenomena of 
 life. His system drew its manner, its setting, most 
 of the substance of its argument, — or by repulsion 
 its denials — from the spiritual environment of its 
 founder. Its point of view, its temper, its purpose 
 are practically those of Brahmanism. Said the 
 young Brahman to Death : " Keep thou thy horses, 
 keep dance and song for thyself. Shall we be happy 
 with these things, seeing thee V* ^ "How is there 
 laughter," says the Buddhist, "how is there joy, as 
 the world is always burning .? Why do ye not seek 
 a light, ye who are surrounded by darkness ? This 
 body is wasted, full of sickness and frail ; this heap 
 of corruption breaks to pieces, life indeed ends in 
 death." "Let no man love anything; loss of the 
 
 1 Katha-Up. i, I, 26. 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 57 
 
 beloved is eviL Those who love nothing and hate 
 nothing have no fetters. From love comes grief, 
 from love comes fear; he who is free from love 
 knows neither grief nor fear." ^ Buddhism, finally, 
 is at one with Brahman doctrine, in teaching that 
 ignorance is the ground of human misery, while in 
 knowledge lies salvation. 
 
 But in its metaphysics and psychology, Buddhism 
 was revolutionary, denying the Absolute Brahman 
 and the Absolute Self in man. It was also revolution- 
 ary in abjuring caste and abandoning sacrifices 
 along with asceticism. 
 
 Who does not know the outline of external cir- 
 cumstance, fairly historical, enveloping Gotama's 
 attainment to the Buddhahood f This highborn 
 youth of the Sakya people marries, begets a son, 
 and as the years leave him the graver for their 
 passage, he abandons his home and becomes an 
 ascetic "in the forest." It was not unusual for a 
 man thus to seek detachment and salvation; and 
 Gotama came in search of this adjustment. 
 
 He practised asceticism, it is said, for seven 
 years. Apparently gaining no help from his aus- 
 terities, he stopped them. At this evident relapse, 
 five ascetics who had been his followers left him — 
 alone. One night he perceived, we are told, the 
 universal principle of the causation and dependency 
 
 ^ Dhammapada, 146, 148, 211, 215. 
 
58 DELIVERANCE 
 
 of all phenomena relating to man, or constituting 
 states of human consciousness ; thereupon realising 
 the pain of everything pertaining to individual life, 
 he was loosed from the craving which is sorrow, 
 and entails rebirth. This was his adjustment. 
 Having attained the peace of complete enlighten- 
 ment, he became the Buddha, or as he later called 
 himself, the Tathagata — the perfected one. 
 
 Gotama's adjustment with life, the enlightenment 
 through which he became the Buddha, consisted of 
 this principle of dependency and causation, and of 
 the contents of the more practical working formulae 
 of the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths. 
 The Eightfold Path and the Four Truths, according 
 to the concurrent testimony of the early records, 
 made the kernel of his teaching when addressing 
 those whose minds were open. When they had 
 received this instruction, he would impart more 
 fundamentally the difficult principle of causation 
 and dependency. To the intellectual mood of 
 which Buddha was the exponent, everything em- 
 braced within the cravings of individuality, in fact 
 all states of human consciousness, were painful; 
 blessedness lay in release : that was Salvation. It 
 was this path of happy release which he set forth 
 to his disciples, and upon which he himself had 
 entered by the way of the principle of causation 
 and dependency. This expressed his understand- 
 ing of life's painful round — the giro of conscious- 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 59 
 
 ness — and the manner of release. Let us therefore 
 consider it, before referring to the embodiment of 
 the teacher's doctrine in his current preaching. 
 
 Buddha did not state his principle of causation 
 in the categories of western thinking, nor did he 
 ever expound it in a way that we can deem satis- 
 factory. Attempts to present it to our minds seem 
 to become more futile as they become more analytic 
 and explicit. One may as well admit that it can- 
 not be made quite clear, nor accommodated to our 
 ways of thinking, without introducing much that 
 the Buddha did not intend. But at all events the 
 scheme is striking, and impresses where it may not 
 convince or satisfy. 
 
 Gotama did not learn of pain in the forest, for 
 the realisation of it had driven him from his home. 
 In the forest, he gained insight into the way of its 
 origin and cessation. But since all life was filled 
 with pain, insight into its origin and cessation in- 
 volved enlightenment as to the origin and cessation 
 of all experience entering human consciousness. 
 So questions of origination, coming to pass, becom- 
 ing, of passing away, cessation, and release, pressed 
 on his mind ; the solution raised Gotama to Buddha- 
 hood. Here it is — in its Englished inexpressibility. 
 
 "In dependence upon ignorance arise the San- 
 khara (conformations, Gestaltungen, a term which 
 will fit itself into no single European word — or 
 many European words) ; in dependence upon them 
 
6o DELIVERANCE 
 
 arises consciousness; in dependence upon con- 
 sciousness arise name and corporeal form (or mind 
 and body) ; from name and form spring the six 
 fields (i.e. the senses, which include thought as a 
 sixth) ; from them comes contact (between the 
 senses and their objects) ; from contact springs sen- 
 sation (or feeling) ; from sensation springs thirst 
 (or desire) ; from thirst springs grasping or clinging 
 (to individual existence) ; from grasping springs 
 becoming (or possibly the predisposition to becom- 
 ing) ; from that comes birth (perhaps rather re- 
 birth) ; and in dependence upon birth follow old 
 age and death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejec- 
 tion and despair. Such is the origin of the whole 
 realm of pain." 
 
 This being the origin of pain, release lay in the 
 counter truth ; and thus the Buddha supplemented 
 his principle of dependent origination by that of 
 cessation on the removal of the cause: "But, if 
 ignorance be removed through the complete de- 
 struction of desire, this effects a removal of the 
 Sankhara; through their removal, consciousness 
 ceases ; by the cessation of consciousness, name and 
 form will cease; thereupon the fields of sense fall 
 away; then there is no contact, sensation ceases, 
 thirst is destroyed and with it falls the grasping 
 after existence; thereupon becoming ceases and 
 birth (or rebirth) ; and old age and death and the 
 whole realm of sorrow are destroyed." 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 6l 
 
 Again be it said, it is futile to discuss the incidents 
 of this scheme of causal or conditioned taking place; 
 there is, as will be seen, no being in it. But we may 
 realise that Gotama, affected by current doctrines 
 of transmigration, did not think of any life as 
 beginning at birth and ending at death; and we 
 shall fail to understand this causal scheme unless 
 we feel it lapping over from one living to the next. 
 In Brahmanism that which passes over is the soul 
 held in the destiny of its desires and deeds. In 
 Buddhism this entity of soul is dissipated, and it is 
 the power of the act (Karma) which carries over, 
 and somehow impregnates a new consciousness and 
 imposes itself upon name and form anew. The 
 "ignorance" appearing as the first in the chain of 
 evil, means ignorance of the Buddha's teachings, 
 especially as set forth in the Eightfold Path and the 
 Four Noble Truths. 
 
 The early stories tell of the Buddha's hesitancy 
 to impart to purblind men the adjustment which 
 had brought him peace at last, after such years of 
 meditation. At last from goodness, from pity, or 
 from a complexity of benignant or functional 
 motives escaping our analysis, and difficult for us to 
 reconcile with Buddha's doctrine, he decides to 
 preach. So he sets out to instruct those five ascet- 
 ics who had been his followers until repelled by 
 his abandonment of asceticism. Perhaps in view 
 of their cavillings, this famous sermon of the eight- 
 
62 DELIVERANCE 
 
 fold path and four truths, first spoken as men say 
 in the deer-park Isapatana at Benares, is, in some 
 versions, made to open thus : 
 
 "There are two extremes which he who has 
 given up the world ought to avoid : a life given to 
 pleasures and lusts, which is degrading, sensual, 
 vulgar and profitless ; and a life given to mortifica- 
 tions, which is painful, ignoble and profitless. By- 
 avoiding these two extremes the Tathagata has 
 gained knowledge of the Middle Path, which leads 
 to insight and wisdom, to peace and to Nirvana. 
 It is the way to the abatement of suffering, the Holy 
 Eightfold Path of Right BeHef, Right Decision, 
 Right Speech, Right Act, Right Life, Right En- 
 deavour, Right Thought, and Right Meditation. 
 
 "This, ye Monks, is the noble truth of suflFering: 
 Birth is suffering, age is suffering, sickness is suffer- 
 ing, death is suffering, the presence of the unloved, 
 the absence of the loved, is suffering, not to obtain 
 our desire is suffering; in fine, the fivefold clinging 
 to existence is suffering. 
 
 "This, ye monks, is the noble truth of the Origin 
 of Suffering : it is the thirst that leads from rebirth 
 to rebirth, with pleasure and lust finding its delight 
 here and there : thirst for pleasure, for becoming, 
 for the transitory. 
 
 "This, ye monks, is the holy truth of the Cessa- 
 tion of Suffering: the cessation of thirst through 
 the complete destruction of desire, letting it go, 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 63 
 
 abjuring it, freeing oneself from it, giving it no 
 place. 
 
 "This, ye monks, is the holy truth of the Way 
 of the Cessation of Suffering : it is the Holy Eight- 
 fold Path of right faith, right resolve, right speech, 
 right act, right life, right effort, right thought, right 
 meditation." 
 
 One has here the outline of the Buddha's adjust- 
 ment and calming of the spirit, into reconciliation, 
 into peace made perfect — into blessedness. One 
 notices, moreover, that his entire doctrine, what he 
 attained for himself, and what he preached to 
 others, is essentially adjustment, religion one may 
 call it. Gotama certainly had a mind of power. 
 Prodigious mental effort was involved in carrying 
 through such an analysis of the origination, depend- 
 ence and extinction of the chain of individual con- 
 sciousness, the virtual sum total of what we know 
 and feel, what we conceivably have been and are 
 becoming. The result, partly derived, partly orig- 
 inal, and, as a whole, constructive, was a law uni- 
 versal and not to be escaped from, the law of the 
 effect or power of the Act, whether mental or 
 realised in deeds. This reaches through all con- 
 scious or sentient living, from the insect to the per- 
 fected disciple about to attain Nirvana. It was a 
 wonderful explanatory scheme of the origin and 
 course of individuality, with its cravings to realise 
 itself on and on; a scheme forming the dialectic 
 
64 DELIVERANCE 
 
 basis of the religion or doctrine of the way to blessed 
 release from the successive stages of an existence 
 made up of suffering. 
 
 Suffering — that is the question. How does one 
 think and feel about life as he has experienced it .? 
 Does one like or dislike it on the whole, feel it to be 
 desirable or intolerable ? Before Gotama*s birth 
 the meditative temper of India had pronounced 
 against life's transient round, and had cast itself 
 upon the endeavour to construct a refuge, a state, 
 a being, freed from conditions of origination and 
 cessation, set beyond change and suffering, and 
 winnowed from all elements of becoming. The 
 result had been the superconscious Brahman- 
 Atman, the absolute being, and the corresponding 
 announcement of Yajnavalkya, there is no con- 
 sciousness after death for the completed and desire- 
 less sage. 
 
 Gotama likewise sought, and as the Buddha 
 attained, release from that chain of individuahty 
 and craving which was suffering, and which was 
 also a ceaseless becoming; but he perceived no 
 Absolute in which to share, nor any sure unalter 
 able Self. Consequently when the suffering, when 
 the becoming, is stopped, is there anything beyond 
 the blessedness of release ? 
 
 If the Buddha's life-adjustment included the 
 answer to this query, we do not know it, — he did 
 not impart it to his disciples. He had reached the 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 65 
 
 way of release from suffering, a path of peace, 
 which may be entered on even before death. He 
 refused to say whether the Tathagata and other 
 perfected ones would or would not exist thereafter. 
 Nor would he solve the question of an ego or no- 
 ego, whether there was any being within the uni- 
 versal process of becoming. Far less would he enter 
 on a discussion as to whether the world was finite 
 or infinite, eternal or perishable. Such discussions 
 were as if a man, shot with a poisoned arrow, should 
 delay its removal till he had learned the name and 
 city of him who had drawn the bow, or whether the 
 arrow was feathered from the wings of a hawk or 
 a vulture. The religious life, leading to the blessed 
 release, did not depend on answering such questions. 
 Sufficeth to know how bodily form arises and 
 perishes, how sensation, perception, predispositions, 
 and consciousness arise, and how they perish. This 
 is the knowledge which brings deliverance.^ The 
 Buddha is many times reported to have said, "As 
 the great ocean has but one taste, the taste of salt, 
 so my doctrine has but one flavour, the flavour of 
 emancipation." 
 
 So he stopped with the great adjustment; and 
 with teaching a way of life and accordant precepts 
 for conduct enabling men to attain it. He evinces 
 no detached and disinterested pursuit of knowledge : 
 
 ^ Cf. H. C. Warren, Buddhism in Translationsy §13, pp. 1 17-127. 
 (Harvard Oriental Series, Fifth Issue, 1909.) 
 F 
 
(£ DELIVERANCE 
 
 his adjustment had involved enough of wrestling 
 with life's data; to have gone further would have 
 extended needlessly the sorrow-filled states of human 
 consciousness. We may say that a pursuit of 
 knowledge here and there would have countered 
 the very principles of his adjustment; but then 
 likely we shall be talking in terms of our own, and 
 not in his. Doubtless Buddha never put the matter 
 in this way ; and how, if in any way, he put it, we 
 do not know. 
 
 It was enough. He had won peace; and having 
 won it, he lived on and taught it to the brotherhood, 
 putting it probably to the more enlightened in those 
 same self-reliant reasonings in which he had won 
 it for himself. To attain to this emancipating 
 knowledge, and conform one's thought and conduct 
 to its principles, was sufficient disciplina to fill the 
 most strenuous life. The path to be trodden by 
 the disciples of the Buddha was not less arduous 
 than the path to be trodden by the disciples of the 
 Christ. And when the Tathagata had passed away, 
 no aid, beyond the inspiration of his example, re- 
 mained for those Buddhist monks who would attain 
 the blessedness of peace. They were cast upon 
 their own endeavours. So he had adjured them, 
 "Be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge 
 unto yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external 
 refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Look 
 not for a refuge to anyone beside yourselves. Let a 
 
ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY (ij 
 
 monk as he dwells in the body so regard the body 
 that he being strenuous, thoughtful and mindful, 
 may whilst in the world overcome the grief which 
 arises from the bodily craving; so also, as he 
 thinks, or reasons, or feels, let him overcome the 
 grief which arises from the craving due to ideas, 
 or to reasoning, or to feeling. . . . Behold now, I 
 exhort you, saying. Decay is inherent in all things. 
 Work out your own salvation with diligence. These 
 were the last words of the Perfected One." ^ 
 
 1 Book of the Great Decease, Zacrei Books of the East, Vol. XI. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Zarathushtra 
 
 A STRIKINGLY non-Indian and militant ad- 
 -^^ justment was achieved by a man of kindred 
 race, Zarathushtra, the prophet of Iran.^ He won 
 his spiritual freedom through creating a new faith 
 and consecrating himself to a chosen cause, the 
 faith and cause of Mazda. He had found no peace 
 in the worship of his people's gods. Apparently 
 they had become to him abominations. His peace 
 required a god who could satisfy his intellect and 
 moral consciousness; and his nature cried for a 
 mighty righteous One to whom his heart might 
 turn and whom his strength might serve; who in 
 return would bring efficient aid and the victory 
 that was alike his and his servant's. 
 
 Zarathushtra would have found no rest in the 
 nature-gods and wavering symbolism of the Indian 
 pantheon, nor in an unresponsive Absolute, nor in 
 such a godless gospel of relief from sorrow as the 
 
 1 Cf. A. V. W. Jackson, "Zoroaster the Prophet of Ancient Iran" 
 (1899), also, James Hope Moulton, "Early Zoroastrianism," 
 Hibbert Lectures for 1912. The date and birthplace of Zara- 
 thushtra are not known. He may have lived as late as the sixth 
 century before Christ, or as early as the tenth. And where in 
 Persia or Media (Atropatene ?) he was born is also unknown. 
 
 68 
 
ZARATHUSHTRA 69 
 
 Buddha preached. There is utter disparity between 
 Indian convictions and the Zarathushtrian temper. 
 Is it that travelling north and westward, crossing 
 the Hindukush, we have come to a new spiritual 
 atmosphere ? We have certainly left the region of 
 Taoism's anaemic inaction and the heaven-approved 
 ethics of Confucius. Nor do we find conceptions 
 of a still and fathomless relationship with the 
 divine, as of Atman and Brahman, nor any self- 
 reliant, godless, scheme of quenching the thirst, the 
 suffering, and the consciousness of man. 
 
 One feels the futility of placing Confucianism, 
 Brahmanism, Buddhism, along with the fighting 
 faiths of Zarathushtra and the Hebrew prophets, 
 under the same general concept of religion; like- 
 wise the futility of separating the intellectual from 
 the practical driving elements within these systems ; 
 and finally the dangers besetting the attempt to 
 draw broad lines between them and the inquiring 
 intellectualism of Greek philosophy. Beneath all 
 systems lies the universal need of human nature to 
 function according to its faculties, while the differ- 
 ences inhering in those faculties and arising through 
 their exercise involve the whole human complex, 
 and will not lie snug on separate shelves of ethics, 
 religion, philosophy. 
 
 How the motives vary with the tempers of the 
 men ! All great exponents of the human need of 
 adjustment, masters likewise of the rational and 
 
JO DELIVERANCE 
 
 emotional faculties through which that need is 
 satisfied, seek to learn and know; but with such 
 different inspiration and in such different fields. 
 Perhaps those who are entitled to the name of 
 philosopher would learn for knowledge's sake; but 
 with equal ardour the founders of ethical or religious 
 systems have sought in knowledge a rational basis 
 for their working principles and a justification for 
 their ideals, — only with what a tumult of diversity 
 they move I These great ones, moreover, approve 
 or inculcate like ways of conduct — benevolence, 
 truth, respect for others' rights, the virtues on 
 which society everywhere must stand. Yet how 
 the sanction or reason for the practice of these 
 virtues varies ! Indeed, so great is the diversity 
 both of motive and intellectual energy that one is 
 equally impressed by the sameness of the under- 
 lying need to function and the heterogeneous modes, 
 the temperamental diversity, of its manifestation. 
 
 Zarathushtra was a man hard-pressed between 
 the resistance of opponents and his own impulse to 
 fight and make others fight for the faith which moved 
 him. He comes close to the Hebrew prophets in 
 the temper of his life-adjustment. This begins in 
 reflection and prayer, rises to a sense of divine call, 
 and completes itself in consecration of his energies 
 to the cause of Mazda. The fiery lines of thought 
 along which Zarathushtra may be deemed to have 
 broken from the beliefs about him and to have set 
 
ZARATHUSHTRA 71 
 
 as his star the mental vision of Ahura Mazda, are 
 suggested in the Gathas: ^ 
 
 "With outspread hands I will pray, O Mazda, 
 to fulfil all the works of the good spirit, that I may- 
 please Good Thought. ... I who would serve 
 thee, Mazda, — grant me the blessings of the two 
 worlds, that of the body and that of the spirit, by 
 which Ahura places in happiness them that delight 
 him; I who give myself to thee, O Righteousness, 
 and to Good Thought, and to Ahura Mazda, to 
 whom belong imperishable dominion . . . come at 
 my call to my help. I who through Good Thought, 
 and knowing the rewards of Mazda, will while I 
 have strength teach men to seek the good. . . . 
 Come with Good Thought and Righteousness, O 
 Mazda by thy sure words give mighty and enduring 
 help to Zarathushtra." 
 
 Hard upon such thought of Ahura and the 
 thinker's ardour to bring to pass Good Thought and 
 the divine Righteousness, comes the call. It is as 
 when Isaiah beheld Yahweh high and lifted up, 
 heard the "Holy, Holy, Holy!" and the words, 
 "Whom shall I send ?" to which not alone his lips 
 but his Hfe answered, "Send me!" So the Hfe of 
 Zarathushtra responded to the nature and com- 
 
 *The portions of the Zend-Avesta known as the Gathas 
 (Yasna, 28-34, 43-51, 53) are the most direct evidence we have 
 of Zarathushtra's thought. But the translations are still difiicult, 
 if not uncertain. 
 
72 DELIVERANCE 
 
 mands of Ahura Mazda. He is speaking as from 
 a later period in his life : 
 
 "And I knew thee as an holy one, Ahura Mazda 
 when Good Thought came to me, asking. Who art 
 thou ? To whom dost thou belong ? And I 
 straightway answered : Zarathushtra. A foe will 
 I be to the liar but a strong help to the righteous, 
 that I may reach heaven. I praise and worship 
 thee, O Mazda I 
 
 "And I knew thee as an holy one, Mazda, 
 when Good Thought came to me, and to my ques- 
 tions made answer : Ask what thou wilt ; for thine 
 asking is as that of a mighty one. . . . 
 
 "And I knew thee as an holy one, Ahura Mazda, 
 when Good Thought came to me, and by thy words 
 revealed the sorrow to be brought through my 
 devotion to that which thou hast declared to be 
 the best. Zarathushtra chooses for himself every 
 Holy Spirit of thine." 
 
 One may think that out of the struggles of his 
 later life, Zarathushtra realised the import of his 
 early visions and the call to do battle for Ahura. 
 In their lyric way the Gathic hymns of the Avesta 
 give the accents of the story, suggesting a time in 
 the prophet's life of gathering strength and clear- 
 ing insight, of cumulative impulse becoming master- 
 ing purpose, till the man becomes the prophet. He 
 has then not only found his god, but his god has 
 found him, the one man amid a dumb multitude. 
 
ZARATHUSHTRA 73 
 
 Ahura's spirit, Good Thought, speaks to Ahura, 
 the supreme Lord Wisdom : "One man only have 
 I found who will hear thy instruction and with 
 accordant mind teach men thy law and declare the 
 faith of Mazda." 
 
 For Zarathushtra, the false gods and all the 
 filth and evil of the world have set themselves 
 against the Holy Spirits of Ahura, even against that 
 Supreme Wise Lord, Creator of righteousness and 
 truth and all things good. The history of the 
 world is the history of this conflict between "the 
 world's two primal spirits, the holier one of which 
 did thus address the evil: * Neither do our minds, 
 our teachings, our beliefs, our words, our deeds, or 
 our souls agree.'" Zarathushtra's faith lifts itself 
 into a militant dualism ; but a dualism endowed with 
 trust in the Good, and a vision which looks across 
 the plain of battle to the final victory, at the world's 
 end: "And I knew thee as an holy one when I 
 beheld thee bringing to pass retribution for the 
 wicked, reward for the good, at the world's last 
 change, when thou, with thy holy spirit, Mazda, 
 shalt appear with the power of Right Order and with 
 Good Thought, through whose working men in- 
 crease in Truth and Righteousness." 
 
 Direct personal trust in Mazda and the good 
 spirits which seem his attributes or (sometimes) 
 emanations, with fiery devotion to their cause, 
 this is Zarathushtra's adjustment, his free will offer- 
 
74 DELIVERANCE 
 
 ing wherein lies the attainment of his spiritual free- 
 dom : "And Zarathushtra, he makes offering of his 
 life. He gives to Mazda's spirits the guidance of 
 his acts and words." Through defeat, through 
 discouragement, he will look for aid and guidance 
 to Ahura, to whose nature and commands he will 
 conform his life, and compel others so far as he may. 
 He is thwarted, pressed by defeat, forsaken of men : 
 "To what land shall I turn ? Followers and kin 
 forsake me. How can I advance thy cause, Ahura ? 
 I am stripped of herds and men. I cry to thee for 
 help; grant me support as friend to friend. Teach 
 me to strive for Good Thought and insight." 
 
 So Zarathushtra fights through his life, aided by 
 many converts, among whom is a king, Vistaspa. 
 We are not concerned with the subsequent fortunes 
 of the faith which in some way the Parsees still 
 hand on, which also seems to have affected later 
 Jewish thought and was the ancestor of Mithraism 
 and Manicheism. Zarathushtra's own adjustment 
 was not peace, but freedom to fight for the faith in 
 which he trusted. Even through our partial knowl- 
 edge, we are impressed with the elevated spirituality 
 of his conceptions, with the power of his trust in 
 Mazda, with the energy of the thought which 
 marshalled in adverse camps the good and evil of 
 the world, and with the strength of his assurance 
 of lasting reward for the good, and perdition for 
 the wicked, at the world's final end. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 The Prophets of Israel 
 
 '' I V3 some extent with every people the ideals of 
 -*- human conduct and human life have tended 
 to conform to their conceptions of the supreme 
 Power or the Supreme Being. This form of the 
 statement carries more truth than the converse 
 one, that men have formed their ideas of God along 
 the lines of their best thoughts of humanity. Either 
 confusedly, as in primitive thought, or upon mature 
 reflection, men usually have felt that the Power or 
 Powers, good, evil, or elemental, outside themselves 
 were different from men in nature and function. 
 Mankind has hesitated to build up its thoughts of 
 them wholly along conceptions of what belonged 
 to human life or was good in human conduct. But 
 prudential motives have always influenced men to 
 propitiate those powers, and in some way adjust 
 their lives to the ways or will of the divine, for the 
 sake of their own adjustment with life and the 
 powers of life. In fine, even if all conceptions of 
 the divine will and nature be deemed the fruit of 
 the human mind, nevertheless men are less apt to 
 model them directly on the image of man than they 
 
 75 
 
^S DELIVERANCE 
 
 are to conform their own lives to the Hkeness or 
 the will of the Divine which they have made. 
 
 Confucius, for example, could scarcely have 
 modelled his idea of "Heaven" and the "way of 
 Heaven" upon man; and yet to imitate the way 
 of Heaven was to be a sage. Neither did Lao Tzu 
 or Chuang Tzu form the Tao on any obviously human 
 pattern, although anxious to fashion their conduct 
 according to its ways. In India it would likewise 
 seem that Brahman, the Universal Absolute, was 
 the primary, and the Atman or eternal Self the 
 secondary and conforming concept. Both repre- 
 sent, however, the Indian ideal of undisturbed 
 existence. Gotama's teachings followed the mood 
 of the Upanishads, while revolting from their meta- 
 physics and establishing a new psychology. But if 
 the Absolute God and Self were dissipated, there 
 remained a most real peace and freedom from desire, 
 which Buddhism gradually bulwarked with eternal, 
 more than human. Influences, to whose ways man's 
 conduct should conform. We entered another 
 world with Zarathushtra and his fighting God, 
 Ahura Mazda, whom the Prophet of Iran conceived 
 in accordance with his most strenuous ideals, and 
 whose will he strove to carry out with a masterful 
 devotion, paralleled only among the prophets of 
 Israel. 
 
 We have but uncertain knowledge of the spiritual 
 background of Israel's religion. There were ele- 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 77 
 
 ments in the religions of Chaldaea and Canaan 
 suited to form the nucleus of her fierce tribal faith ; 
 and in Egypt waves of fluctuating monotheism were 
 not unusual. But it was centuries after any early 
 Egyptian associations had been severed that Israel's 
 tribal worship broadened to the conception of 
 Yahweh as the sole God of all the earth ; while on 
 the other hand, generally speaking, Israel's religious 
 development advanced through strenuous disavowal 
 both of the pressing influences of Canaan and any 
 possible reminiscences of Chaldaea. This little book, 
 which is not intended to be learned, may be pardoned 
 if it turn directly to the adjustment with God 
 reached by Israel's prophets and the most righteous 
 of her kings. 
 
 What a picture do we have of the life-adjustment 
 of Israel's first and apparently greatest prophet, 
 Moses ! But unhappily the earlier lines in the 
 Pentateuch portrait are from tradition rather than 
 from life, and have been freely painted over by 
 later hands inspired by priestly thoughts. Each of 
 us for himself may scan this chequered picture 
 under the guidance of the connoisseurs who have 
 separated layer from layer. Only we may be sure 
 that the earlier pigments reflect in some way a 
 man of power, whose adjustment of his life with 
 the commands of Yahweh forecasts the train of 
 kingly and prophetic effort to bring to pass that 
 obedience to Yahweh's will which should draw down 
 
78 DELIVERANCE 
 
 prosperity betimes, but lead at last through tribu- 
 lation to a larger understanding of the ways of God. 
 
 It is safer to pass on to David, where the record 
 is somewhat surer. Through a life of peril and 
 success, as a man of war and stratagem and as a 
 king, he is also winning his adjustment with the 
 power which guides and guards him. David was a 
 hero even in the Epic sense, combining traits of 
 Achilles and Odysseus. The Homeric heroes also 
 relied on their gods, but not with such growth of 
 reciprocating devotion as marks David's attitude 
 toward Yahweh. And yet he is less devotedly a 
 servant of Yahweh than the prophets, who serve 
 their God without regard to self. Yahweh is to 
 David as a father, — who can also punish : and 
 David, after the manner of sons, realises Yahweh's 
 goodness to him only in the evening of his life. 
 Then we see that a religious development has been 
 running through his life-adjustment. If he always 
 looked for aid to Yahweh, in the end, besides obedi- 
 ence, he offers in return humility and thankfulness, 
 devotion and desire to build Yahweh an house. 
 David's best acts, his righteous conduct, as when 
 he would not kill the sleeping Saul, had accorded 
 with his recognition of Yahweh's will ; and the en- 
 noblement of his character proceeds through a larger 
 understanding of Yahweh's love. 
 
 The records of David's life-adjustment bear wit- 
 ness to the fulness of his life from the beginning, 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 79 
 
 with its eager energy and loving impulses dis- 
 closed, for instance, in those confused, but lovely, 
 stories of his first meeting with Saul. That his 
 presence, his lyre-playing, could assuage the king's 
 dark moods, that Saul's son and daughter loved 
 him, that the people sang his praises, all bespeak a 
 personality abounding in capacity for deeds, for 
 counsel, for affection, even for that outpour of 
 mood in song and movement which has immemorially 
 belonged to the heroic nature — to David, to 
 Achilles, or to the men of the Norse sagas. 
 
 The readiness of his genius appears in all his acts, 
 as when he pays the bride-price for Michal, and 
 then escapes from Saul's spear as well as from his 
 plot to murder him in bed, and concerts with 
 Jonathan a plan of safety. With cunning and 
 bravery he keeps his hunted head through his 
 outlawed career until made king ; and no later king 
 in Israel was to equal his energy of rule, before the 
 weakness of old age came on him. 
 
 A simple faith in Yahweh quickened his courage. 
 It was shown in his young confidence that Yahweh 
 would dehver him from the paw of bear and lion 
 and from Goliath's spear. It pervaded and gradu- 
 ally beautified his life, and moulded the sense of 
 right and wrong so strong in him. He must keep 
 well with righteousness — or bitterly repent ! And 
 righteousness with him was always that which 
 corresponded with Yahweh's will, while every 
 
8o DELIVERANCE 
 
 wrongful act was a sin against God, as it had been 
 and ever was to be in Israel : " How can I do this 
 great wickedness, and sin against God ?" had been 
 Joseph's thought; and the repentant Psalmist's 
 cry will be: "Against Thee, Thee only, have I 
 sinned." 
 
 The incidents of David's progress in that right- 
 eousness which was identical with Yahweh's will 
 and part of David's faith mark the course of his 
 adjustment. He had always asked, and followed, 
 Yahweh's counsel; and in every crisis his sense of 
 Yahweh helped him to act righteously, as when he 
 would not slay Yahweh's anointed who sought his 
 life, and under other circumstances allowed himself 
 to be turned from his revenge on the churl Nabal 
 by the words of Abigail. A little after this, his 
 conviction that victory and recovery of spoil are 
 from Yahweh showed him the justice of awarding 
 an equal share to those who kept the camp and those 
 who went down into the battle. 
 
 The news reaches David of the flight of Israel 
 and the death of Saul and Jonathan. Does he exult 
 that his enemy is no more and that the crown is 
 his ? Rather he feels the blow fallen on Yahweh's 
 people, and with his men he mourns and fasts, 
 while he chants that dirge : 
 
 "Weep O Judah ! 
 Grieve O Israel ! 
 How are the mighty fallen !" 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 8l 
 
 a dirge which dwells on the public calamity until 
 the singer's grief for Jonathan presses back other 
 thoughts : 
 
 " I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan : . . . 
 Thy love to me was wonderful. 
 Passing the love of women." 
 
 A like piety and sense of right moves him to 
 declare before Yahweh his innocence of Abner's 
 blood and to follow the bier in sackcloth. And it 
 was heroic piety that moved him, pent up by war, 
 when his mighty men had brought him water at the 
 risk of life, to pour it out before his God. 
 
 King of all Israel, with Jerusalem taken and 
 made the City of David, he thinks to honour Yah- 
 weh by bringing up the Ark of God. The death of 
 the rash Uzzah frightens him for a time, till he is 
 reassured. Then with sacrifices and the shouting 
 of Israel, and with the king himself dancing before 
 Yahweh with all his might, the Ark is brought up. 
 For a great man thus to uncover himself before his 
 maid-servants was a sheer Semitic horror — so it 
 seemed to Michal, as she taunted him returning to 
 his house. But David answers: "It was before 
 Yahweh, who chose me above thy father and above 
 all his house to appoint me prince over his people 
 Israel — I will be more vile than this, and base in 
 my own sight." 
 
 Then, having rest from all his enemies, David 
 
82 DELIVERANCE 
 
 plans to build Yahweh a house, as told in the 
 seventh chapter of Second Samuel. Yahweh, by 
 the mouth of Nathan, stays the plan, but bids the 
 prophet tell his servant David how he took him 
 from the sheepcote to be prince over Israel, and 
 had been with him always, and had made him a 
 name above the great; and now would promise 
 him to estabHsh his house and his seed after him in 
 the kingdom, chastening that seed as a father, but 
 not rejecting it. To this, David answers with full 
 recognition of Yahweh's mercy and greatness, and 
 begs him to make good his promise, in order that 
 Yahweh*s name may be great forever and that his 
 servant's house may forever be established before 
 him. "And now O Lord Yahweh, thou art God. 
 And thy words are truth, and thou hast promised 
 this good thing unto thy servant; now therefore 
 let it please thee to bless the house of thy servant 
 that it may continue forever before thee." 
 
 There follows the untoward episode of numbering 
 the people, and the king's atoning sacrifice to stay 
 Yahweh's mysterious wrath ; then the slow incrimi- 
 nating story of David's crime against Uriah, and his 
 realisation of it at the word of Nathan, and that he 
 had sinned against Yahweh. Out of this crime and 
 sin issues the dark and moving tale of unnatural 
 lust, vengeance, ambition, and treachery in David's 
 house — from which the sword should not depart I 
 David's efficient penitence and the atonement which 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 83 
 
 lay in the growth of a contrite character were to be 
 evinced in the old king's acceptance of the foul 
 calamities coming on him and on his house from 
 the wickedness of the children of his loins. As the 
 king flees before Absalom he will not have the 
 priests carry forth with him the Ark of God : " Carry 
 back the Ark of God into the City : if I shall find 
 favour in the eyes of Yahweh, he will bring me 
 again and show me both it and his dwelling; but 
 if he say thus, I have no delight in thee ; behold 
 here am I, let him do to me as seems good to him." 
 When Shimei curses and casts stones, the contrition 
 abiding in the king's heart and the sorrow that has 
 long been his cause him to hold back his followers : 
 " Behold my son which came forth from my bowels 
 seeks my life : how much more may this Benja- 
 mite ? Let him alone and let him curse ; for Yah- 
 weh has bidden him. It may be that Yahweh will 
 look on the wrong done me and will requite me good 
 for the cursing of this day." 
 
 In brave and faithful acts, in love of friend, in 
 justice, in sin, repentance, righteousness and mercy, 
 and through a deepening knowledge of Yahweh's 
 goodness, David maintained his freedom of act and 
 confidence of soul. In the fulness of his years, 
 blessing Yahweh for having given one to sit upon 
 his throne, his end came as the end of 
 
 ** One that ruleth over men righteously, 
 That ruleth in the fear of God." 
 
84 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Hebrew prophecy may be included altogether 
 under our conception of adjustment, as the har- 
 monising of the human spirit with the powers shap- 
 ing human destiny. The obvious function of the 
 prophets was to enlighten the people, more par- 
 ticularly the rulers, touching the efficient nature, 
 the commands, and the purposes of Yahweh ; and 
 to admonish them to act accordingly. The pro- 
 phetic adjustment was religious, knowing no other 
 sanction than Yahweh's will. Progressing with the 
 enlargement of the prophetic mind, it does not rep- 
 resent an unchanging view of the character of 
 the divine, but a magnificent development as the 
 conception of Yahweh grows from age to age under 
 the further enlightenment of experience and medi- 
 tation, through which in divers ways God inspires 
 his prophets. And one will see that the prophet's 
 thoughts of Yahweh advance to an emphatic and, 
 one may say, international monotheism, through 
 observation of Yahweh's power fashioning the fate 
 of Israel and the destinies of nations, and operative 
 within the heart of man. In like manner, Zara- 
 thushtra's thought of Ahura Mazda sprang forward 
 from exigency to exigency, pragmatically as it were, 
 and not through ontological meditations on the 
 divine nature, such as arose in India. 
 
 So the adjustment which the prophets demanded 
 of Yahweh's people was moulded, and continually 
 remoulded, on those enlarging thoughts of Yahweh's 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 85 
 
 will and purposes with which succeeding prophets 
 were inspired. The untowardness of events was a 
 stumbling-block and then again a goad, driving the 
 prophets on to the attainment of conceptions con- 
 stantly uplifting. Never did the remnant of a 
 people so wrestle with God for an adjustment of 
 their minds with the course of their destinies and 
 the power controlling them, as did the larger minded 
 Jews, crushed beneath the shock of Syrian and Assy- 
 rian, of Babylonian, Persian, Greek. 
 
 The prophetic adjustment drives, or is driven, on. 
 With respect to thoughts of God, it wins its way from 
 Yahweh as the peremptory god of Israel, to Yahweh 
 as the sole and only god, supreme in the power of 
 his righteousness over all nations; and with respect 
 to thoughts of man, of Israel, it wins its way through 
 the spent hopes of national prosperity, the con- 
 viction of common sin and a people's responsibility, 
 to the thought of each individual's guilt or inno- 
 cence; whereupon it seems incited to discriminate 
 obscurely between the lots of the righteous and 
 the wicked beyond the grave ; but with the ineradi- 
 cable tribal consciousness of the Jew, it turns more 
 surely to the thought of a national adjustment 
 thrown forward to some future time, and harbouring 
 within the walls of a triumphant New Jerusalem, 
 which is sanctified through Yahweh's presence; or 
 the prophetic thought bows down sublimely before 
 an ideal of Israel as Yahweh's servant, afflicted and 
 
86 DELIVERANCE 
 
 redeemed in the service of his other children on the 
 earth. 
 
 In the careers of the prophets there is none of 
 Jacob's patriarchal egotism or David's royal fore- 
 handedness. They are Yahweh's spokesmen. As 
 for their personal adjustment, that may appear in the 
 light of their exhortations to others. Moreover, 
 since Israel was one people, bound together through 
 blood, as well as through Yahweh's covenant made 
 with them as a people, the personal adjustment of 
 the prophets was merged in this common solidarity. 
 Did not that include Yahweh, of whom it was 
 declared, " In all the affliction of his people he is 
 afflicted" .? Likewise his prophets were afflicted in 
 the affliction of his people and blessed in their 
 prosperity. But we may think that a prophet's 
 surest stay was the sense that he was Yahweh's 
 servant, admitted to his confidences, and to a 
 knowledge of his will and purposes : " Surely Yahweh 
 does nothing unless he reveals his secrets to his 
 servants the prophets." 
 
 Elijah's understanding of Yahweh's will affords 
 an opening illustration of the prophetic adjustment. 
 Ahab is king of northern Israel ; he has married the 
 Sidonian princess Jezebel, has led his people to 
 worship Baal, and sorely persecuted the prophets of 
 Yahweh. Elijah has to his face foretold his punish- 
 ment through a consuming drought upon the land; 
 and when the drought is in its third year, he again 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 87 
 
 confronts Ahab with the challenge to determine 
 whether Baal or Yahweh be God — for Elijah's 
 Yahweh will tolerate no other god or idol in his land. 
 When the king has gathered all Israel unto Mount 
 Carmel, Elijah demands of the people, "How long 
 halt ye between two opinions : if Yahweh be God, 
 follow him, if the Baal, then follow him." And 
 after the test is ended, and Yahweh's fire has con- 
 sumed the burnt oflFering and the altar, there comes 
 the word, "Take the prophets of the Baal, let not 
 one of them escape." 
 
 Yahweh will endure no other god in Israel — this 
 conviction is one phase of Elijah's adjustment. 
 The other is his realisation of Yahweh's justice, so 
 fiercely to be vindicated upon Ahab and Jezebel for 
 the crime of Naboth murdered for his vineyard : 
 " In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, 
 shall dogs lick thy blood." But in the meanwhile, 
 even after his triumph on Mount Carmel, flying 
 from Jezebel, a very queenly woman, Elijah in the 
 cave on Horeb, has known the earthquake and the 
 tempest there; and after them, in the contrasted 
 quiet, he has heard Yahweh's still small voice direct- 
 ing him. 
 
 Elijah's mantle fell on Elisha, who seems his 
 master's replica, but with his story set in rather 
 questionable miracles. It is not clear that he 
 advanced the thought of God. So we pass on to 
 Amos, the earliest prophet whose writings, or at 
 
88 DELIVERANCE 
 
 least utterances, survive. Since Elijah's death a 
 hundred years had passed. Now the prophetic 
 vision had need to embrace not only the small rival 
 peoples surrounding the kingdoms of northern Israel 
 and Judah, but beyond them the powerful Damas- 
 cus, and Assyria impending from afar. The vision 
 of Amos has thus widened, with the result that he 
 knows Yahweh as the just god of all these nations, 
 and not of Israel alone. Very penetrating was the 
 vision of Amos ; if he came from among the shep- 
 herds of the village of Tekoa, his knowledge of 
 life could scarcely have been gained within their 
 circle. 
 
 Seemingly Israel, the northern kingdom to which 
 Amos spoke, was then prospering. He saw the 
 idolatry practised there, and the injustice and 
 oppression which prevailed — prevailed at least 
 for the stem eye whose business was to see evil. 
 This eye also saw Israel as a people, and foresaw 
 the punishment which was to come upon that 
 people, and make no distinction between individuals. 
 His vision did not extend beyond the present life 
 to discern the discriminating awards of a life beyond 
 the grave. But if the judges of the people would 
 hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the 
 gate, perhaps the God of hosts would still be gracious 
 to a remnant of Joseph.^ Then would come firm na- 
 
 ^ Amos V. 15. Joseph here means Israel in the sense of the 
 northern kingdom, exclusive of Judah. One applies the name 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 89 
 
 tional well-being, in which the fortunes of obedient 
 Israel would be adjusted with Yahweh's beneficent 
 disposition toward his people. His people indeed ! 
 there was the pivot of the difference between 
 Amos and the moral blind in Israel. They looked 
 on Yahweh as their partisan, their god to help and 
 keep them; Amos also knew that they were Yah- 
 weh's people, led by Him and known of Him ; but 
 for that very reason Yahweh's justice must visit on 
 them all their iniquities. A sad reversal here of 
 the view so naturally popular ! The people looked 
 foward to the "day of Yahweh," as a day of 
 triumph I They would find it darkness. 
 
 To give point to his denunciations, Amos set 
 forth Yahweh as a righteous god, impartial and of 
 universal power, creator of the world: "It is he 
 that maketh the stars ; who formeth the mountains 
 and createth wind, and declareth his thought to 
 man; maketh sunrise and darkness and marcheth 
 over the heights of the earth; and his name is 
 Yahweh the god of hosts. 
 
 "He toucheth the earth and it melts, and all who 
 dwell in it mourn, and it shall rise up wholly and 
 sink like the River of Egypt. He it is who buildeth 
 his chambers in the heaven and foundeth his vault 
 upon the earth. 
 
 Israel to all the tribes, and then again to the northern kingdom, 
 separated from Judah after the death of Solomon. The words 
 "Ephraim" and "Samaria" apply to the northern region. 
 
90 DELIVERANCE 
 
 "Are ye not as the sons of the Cushites to me, ye 
 sons of Israel, — saith Yahweh. Did I not lead up 
 Israel from Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, 
 and the Syrians from Kir ? Behold, the eyes of 
 Yahweh are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will 
 destroy it from the face of the earth, only I will not 
 utterly destroy the house of Jacob." 
 
 Harsh indeed the message of Amos. His younger 
 contemporary Hosea softens it through telling of the 
 clinging love of Yahweh, which will not willingly 
 cast ofF — nay which will draw Israel back to her 
 god, if only that may be! — "When Israel was 
 young, I loved him, and out of Egypt called my son 
 hither. So much the further have they gone astray; 
 to Baal they sacrifice, and burn incense to graven 
 images. Yet I taught Ephraim to walk, held him 
 by his arms." The prophet knows that the sword 
 must consume Ephraim's iniquity, yet he hears 
 Yahweh's voice crying, " Oh ! how shall I give thee 
 up, Ephraim ? abandon thee, Israel ? Oh, how 
 shall I treat thee as Adma, make thee as Zeboim ? 
 Mine heart is turned within me. I will not execute 
 the heat of mine anger, will not destroy Ephraim; 
 for I am God, and not man ; Holy in thy midst." 
 
 Israel was as a silly dove, running to and fro, 
 looking for aid now to Egypt, now to Assyria. All 
 foolish wickedness — from the prophetic point 
 of view. Yahweh will have Israel trust him alto- 
 gether. And his love, the prophet declares, is 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 91 
 
 ready to attach itself anew to Israel's repentance. 
 "Return, O Israel, unto Yahweh thy God ! For 
 you have stumbled with your guilt. Take with you 
 words of penitence, return and say to Yahweh, 
 'Forgive all guilt, and accept what is good. We will 
 offer our repentant lips instead of bullocks. Assyria 
 shall not save us, [Egypt's] horses we will not ride, 
 nor any more call the work of our hands our god.' 
 *I will heal their . falling away, gladly love them; 
 for mine anger is turned away. I will be as dew 
 unto Israel ; he shall blossom as the lily, and thrust 
 forth his roots as Lebanon.'" 
 
 Yahweh is god universal; the other gods are 
 nought. Hosea says it clearly: "Samaria's calf! 
 a workman made it, and it is no god." This is 
 monotheism, though its scope may be extended with 
 riper experience. Hosea's forecasting spirit seems 
 to waver: by the visible evil and approaching 
 danger, he is drawn to prophesy destruction; yet 
 Yahweh's saving love endures — if only the people 
 will repent ! 
 
 The mind of Hosea, like the mind of Amos, and 
 in general, the mind of the Old Testament prior 
 to the Exile, dwells in the conviction that obedience 
 to the righteous will of Yahweh will establish Israel 
 in safety and gladness. The righteous prosper, — 
 that is a basic conviction. The prophetic adjust- 
 ment still abides in this assurance; it has not yet 
 taken refuge in the hope of a future Israel redeemed 
 
92 DELIVERANCE 
 
 and reestablished in obedient communion with 
 Yahweh, forever in their midst. Still less has there 
 come the thought of a recompense for the down- 
 trodden righteous in the resurrection of the dead. 
 Life for these earlier prophets is altogether in the 
 body, though its best part be a communing 
 with Yahweh. He upholds his people in their 
 homes, in their comings and goings, their flock- 
 raisings and godly businesses throughout their land, 
 and will uphold them so long as they obey, or for 
 his love's sake, perhaps a little longer. But Amos 
 and Hosea see disobedience throughout the northern 
 kingdom and foresee the ruin coming as its conse- 
 quence from Assyria. That also will be Yahweh's 
 act. 
 
 One doubts the validity of the one horn or the 
 other of the prophetic thesis. Israel herself was to 
 learn that the righteous may not prosper, and that 
 the ungodly often prosper obviously. In these re- 
 spects the prophetic adjustment does not satisfy; 
 although the prophets in their assurance of Yahweh, 
 their god, who rules all nations in the power of his 
 righteousness, have established what will prove 
 valid for ages. 
 
 Younger than Hosea and Amos, the Judean Isaiah 
 lived to see the northern kingdom fall, and a like 
 ruin threaten his own Jerusalem. Gifted of Yahweh 
 beyond other men, and taught by what he saw and 
 foresaw, it was his lot to test the prophetic adjust- 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 
 
 93 
 
 ment already reached, invest it with new glories of 
 imagery and new power of expression, qualify and 
 amplify it through further consideration of its 
 conclusions in the light of his knowledge of Yahweh 
 and experience of disasters coming upon men; 
 and then deepen and enlarge it through the power 
 of his genius. Isaiah's name is hallowed, not only 
 through the utterances which were his, but also 
 by reason of those ascribed to him, to which have 
 clung the hopes of men. But it is difficult, in the 
 changing lights of modern criticism, to decide which 
 portions of the first thirty-nine chapters of the great 
 prophetic book should be ascribed to this Judaean, 
 whose eyes were stricken with the sight of present 
 evil, and calamities approaching, in the second half 
 of the eighth century before Christ. 
 
 Isaiah's convictions as to the character and 
 commands of Yahweh may be said to combine those 
 of Amos and Hosea. Only in him monotheism is 
 deepened and illuminated. He saw more clearly 
 than his elders that the nations were but Yahweh's 
 instruments, rods of his anger, the axes with which 
 God hews ; and with scornful clarity he showed 
 the folly of presenting in expiation before Yah- 
 weh anything but faith and righteousness. Reli- 
 ance on heathen aid — upon Egypt — is madness. 
 Faith in Yahweh, joined with right conduct and 
 freedom from idolatries of thought and act, are the 
 horsemen and the chariots of Judah. Righteousness 
 
94 DELIVERANCE 
 
 and national well-being go together, are bone of 
 each other's bone, flesh of each other's flesh ; they 
 are included and assured in obedience and faith. 
 
 How could Isaiah doubt of this, knowing Yahweh 
 to be righteous and all-powerful and Israel's god, who 
 held Israel as sons reared by him, — how could he 
 doubt but that Judah would prosper if obedient, 
 established in the land which Yahweh had given 
 to his people ? But Judah's actual state drives this 
 assurance from his mind, which perforce is filled 
 with realisation of the suicidal disobedience and 
 folly of rulers and people, their empty rites and 
 no-gods, their sought-for pleasant answers and wilful 
 falsities of hope and policy, — sin added to sin, 
 bringing destruction. Hence most of the prophet's 
 utterances are warnings and denunciations and 
 predictions of ruin, now falling on Israel, soon to 
 fall on Judah, finally to fall upon that rod of Yah- 
 weh's wrath, Assyria. 
 
 Is Isaiah moved, a little in the manner of those 
 who afterwards wrote marvels in his name, to 
 push forward his hopes, beyond the horizon of the 
 present, to some assurance of future restoration or 
 individual blessedness ? He possessed that most 
 unshaken of Old Testament convictions, that of 
 Yahweh's faith-keeping with his people, his mercy 
 and benevolence, and his saving purpose. Yahweh 
 had no more delight in Israel's disasters than in the 
 sins of which they were the result: he did not 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 95 
 
 willingly afflict or grieve his people. But in those 
 closing decades of the eighth century, a man with 
 Isaiah's mind could not but foresee the probable 
 realisation of his conditional prediction, the down- 
 fall of Judah as well as of that northern kingdom, 
 which fell before he had ceased from prophesying. 
 If he expected Judah's fall, must he not modify his 
 hopes, his convictions regarding Israel, in fine his 
 adjustment, in order to hold fast to his assurance of 
 Yahweh's love and mercy ? Did it come to him to 
 project this assurance into the future, and behold in 
 certain hope a restoration, a redemption of a people 
 now staggering to ruin ? Was it given only to some 
 later seer, or did Isaiah foresee the time when 
 the people who walked in darkness should behold 
 a great light, when the yoke of Israel should be 
 broken, and a child should have been born upon 
 whose shoulder dominion shall rest ? who shall 
 be the Prince of Peace upon the throne of David, 
 and to whose kingdom there shall be no end ? A 
 time when a king shall reign righteously, and princes 
 rule justly, like water courses in a parched land and 
 the shadow of a high rock ! When the folly of the 
 fool and the knavery of the knave shall be laid bare ; 
 but the eyes of them that see shall not be dim and 
 the ears of them that hear shall hearken, and the 
 stammerer's tongue speak plain ? ^ 
 
 * Isaiah ix. 1-7 ; xxxii. 1-8. 
 
96 DELIVERANCE 
 
 If this vision was not Isaiah's, his refuge still was 
 Yahweh's righteousness to be shown in the chasten- 
 ing, perhaps in the necessary destruction of his 
 people; for Isaiah did not advance to a discrimina- 
 tion between the righteous Israelites who should be 
 saved and the wicked who should perish. That 
 progress in the prophetic adjustment was left to 
 Jeremiah and Ezekiel, — and perhaps to the Book 
 of Deuteronomy. 
 
 The book last named may have been written not 
 very long before the year of Jeremiah's call (626 B.C.) 
 and was "found" by Hilkiah the high priest in the 
 temple in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign 
 (621 B.C.). Its burden was the Covenant between 
 Yahweh and his people; and its exhortation was to 
 keep from graven images, from heathenism, and 
 wickedness, to fear Yahweh, and walk in all his 
 ways, and keep his statutes, and love and serve him 
 alone with entire heart and soul and strength; 
 so would Yahweh fulfil the Covenant which he 
 swore unto their Father Abraham, and unto them 
 at Horeb when he commanded them to keep his 
 statutes; then he would make his people blessed 
 and numerous as the stars, in the land which he 
 had promised unto Abraham. But their covenant to 
 obey did not lie in outer acts alone; they should 
 circumcise the foreskin of their heart. And al- 
 though the time-honoured thought of visiting the 
 sins of the fathers upon the children is retained as 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 97 
 
 of course in the Deuteronomic decalogue, neverthe- 
 less in that book Yahweh's statutes are brought 
 home to every IsraeHte, making him individually- 
 responsible for his acts : "The fathers shall not be 
 put to death for the children, neither shall the chil- 
 dren be put to death for the fathers, every man shall 
 be put to death for his own sin." ^ Thus the book 
 seems to set before each man, as well as before the 
 nation, life and death, the blessing and the curse, 
 that the people and every one of them may choose 
 life, to love Yahweh and cleave to him, as their 
 life and length of days, so that they may dwell in 
 the land promised to their fathers. 
 
 Composed during the flickerings out of kingship 
 in Judah, Deuteronomy still earnestly treats the 
 people as a nation, still exhorts them to the per- 
 fected fulfilment of Yahweh's statutes, and to the 
 final obedience of love. And the king, Josiah, under- 
 took a reform and purification of his kingdom accord- 
 ing to the mandates of this new-found book.^ But 
 the end could not be averted. Josiah was but a 
 child when he began to reign, and to reward his 
 youthful reforming righteousness, Yahweh held 
 back the ruin of his kingdom for the little while 
 until he should sleep with his fathers. The pro- 
 phetic work of Jeremiah began in the thirteenth year 
 of Josiah; it continued forty years, through the 
 
 * Deut. xxiv. 16. See Deut. v. 9, and Ex. xx. 5 and xxxiv. 7. 
 
 * 2 Kings xxii. and xxiii. 
 
98 DELIVERANCE 
 
 foolish reigns of the last kinglets. He saw the first 
 siege of Jerusalem and the carrying into exile of its 
 better part (597 B.C.) ; and eleven years later the final 
 destruction of the city by the Chaldaeans. Judging 
 from the general tone of Jeremiah's admonitions, the 
 reforms of Josiah had but scratched the surface of 
 Judah's guilt; perhaps they had helped to blow up 
 the false hope that an observance of ritual would 
 ward off the Babylonian attack. 
 
 Jeremiah was not born in the city, but in a village 
 a few miles to the north. One may think of him as 
 a young, well-nurtured countryman abruptly struck 
 with the luxury and corruption of the capital ; and 
 yet he was not more impressed by it than the high- 
 born and city-bred Isaiah had been before him. 
 This country youth, in spite of his bashful sense of 
 his own ineptitude, knows that he is chosen, even 
 before he came forth from the womb, to be a " brazen 
 wall against the kings of Judah, the princes and the 
 common people." 
 
 It is largely the old, old story of denunciation 
 of idolatry, luxury, wickedness — of so much that 
 made the common round of life in town and country. 
 Such admonitions reached their final Cassandra stri- 
 dency in the utterances of this man who realised 
 the shifty folly of Judean politics and foresaw their 
 consequences. And yet how could a little crumbling 
 state do otherwise than turn from one to another of 
 its dominant neighbours, according to the apparent 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 99 
 
 shifting of power ? The affairs of western Asia and 
 Egypt were in a flux as the seventh century ended 
 and the sixth began — when Scythians had made 
 breaches in the Assyrian empire, and the Medes 
 had entered therein; when Babylon had risen to 
 the south, strong and independent, and a dynastic 
 revolution had made Egypt for the time aggressive, 
 yet had not given her the strength to stand against 
 the arms of Babylon. 
 
 The emotional and one might say overwrought 
 utterances of this prophet have sustained the tradi- 
 tion of a man of contention and lament, who was 
 wont to curse the day of his birth, because of the 
 burden of his life and his prophetic office; who 
 frequently besought Yahweh to avenge him of his 
 enemies, — deliver over their children to famine, 
 their young men to the sword, their wives to widow- 
 hood. He was beset with danger and contumely, 
 mobbed in his own village, in the capital cast into a 
 putrid cistern, again imprisoned, threatened with 
 death ; all of which quite naturally was put upon one 
 who would prophesy nothing but evil, and appeared 
 in Jerusalem's streets with a yoke upon his neck to 
 signify the yoke which Nebuchadnezzar would set 
 on the neck of Judah. In the end when the last 
 weak king had rebelled against the overlord to whom 
 he had pledged his fealty, Jeremiah advised men to 
 escape from the city and seek safety in the Chaldaean 
 camp. He himself attempted to go out, but was 
 
lOO DELIVERANCE 
 
 arrested at the gate. Surely some fear of Yahweh 
 must have lain on king and princes, that they did 
 not kill such a grievously clear-seeing man ! 
 
 How could Jeremiah cherish any present hope of 
 the people of Judah ? Weeping, he had implored 
 Yahweh, and Yahweh had answered that though 
 Moses and Samuel should plead for them, yet 
 would he cast them forth (Jer. xv. i). So, fore- 
 seeing their destruction as a nation, and the de- 
 struction of that symbol of nationality, the Temple, 
 Jeremiah reached the conception of a further adjust- 
 ment. His faith discriminates; let the wicked 
 perish and the righteous live. If Yahweh indeed 
 was known as a god to "recompense the iniquity 
 of the fathers into the bosoms of the children," 
 still would not the time come when it should no 
 more be said that the fathers have eaten sour grapes 
 and the children's teeth are set on edge .? when, 
 rather, every man should die for his own iniquity ? 
 But then would not Yahweh's covenant be broken ? 
 — at least, how could its counter-conditions be ful- 
 filled by a nation which was to be destroyed before 
 the prophet's eyes ? Jeremiah's conception, if it still 
 remained national, became spiritual ; and he found 
 his grand adjustment in a new covenant between 
 Yahweh and the House of Israel, not like the 
 covenant made with their fathers when he brought 
 them out of the land of Egypt — which they broke : 
 
 "But this is the covenant that I will make with 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL lOI 
 
 the House of Israel, after those days, says Yahweh. 
 I will put my law in their breast, and write it in 
 their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall 
 be my people. And they shall teach no more 
 every man his neighbour and every man his brother, 
 saying. Know Yahweh, for they shall all know me, 
 from the least of them to the greatest of them, says 
 Yahweh ; for I will forgive their iniquity and I will 
 remember their sin no more." 
 
 This new Covenant is with the House of Israel. 
 But it is written on the heart of every Israelite, 
 and not on tablets of stone set in a public place. 
 Can we say that the House of Israel consists of those 
 in whose hearts this righteousness is written, rather 
 than of those who are born Israelites ? Or shall it 
 be that all who are of that stock in those days will 
 be righteous ? Jeremiah looked forward certainly 
 to Israel's restoration, and symbolised his assurance 
 by purchasing his uncle's field, and putting the deed 
 away to remain for years to come, when, as Yahweh 
 said. Houses and fields and vineyards should be 
 possessed again in the land. His book has proph- 
 ecies of future restoration. Some of them may 
 not have been uttered by this man who saw Judah's 
 ruin and the carrying away of her sons. But as he 
 heard the voice in Ramah of Rachel weeping for 
 her children and refusing to be comforted, so he 
 also heard Yahweh bidding him cry: Refrain thy 
 voice from weeping and thine eyes from tears; 
 
102 DELIVERANCE 
 
 for they shall come again from the land of the 
 enemy, and thy children shall return — Ephraim 
 as well as Judah. 
 
 There is a noble consideration of the ways of God 
 in the third poem of that book of Dirges so long 
 ascribed to Jeremiah, and composed after the city's 
 fall. Yahweh's hand has been heavy on the speaker 
 and on Judah, but his soul chants, — "it is of 
 Yahweh's mercies that we are not utterly consumed, 
 because his compassions fail not. They are new 
 every morning : great is thy faithfulness. Yahweh is 
 my portion, saith my soul ; therefore will I hope in 
 him. ... It is good that a man should both hope 
 and quietly wait on the salvation of Yahweh. . . . 
 For Yahweh will not cast off forever ... for he 
 doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of 
 men. . . . Let us search and try our ways and 
 turn again to Yahweh. . . . Mine eye runneth 
 down with rivers of water for the destruction of the 
 daughter of my people. ... I called upon thy name, 
 O Yahweh, out of the low dungeon. Thou heardest 
 my voice. ... O Yahweh, thou hast pleaded the 
 causes of my soul ; thou hast redeemed my life." 
 
 Was any people ever so spiritually quickened by 
 tribulation as the Jews .? They reached their highest 
 thoughts of God, of their god, Yahweh, only when he 
 had cast them down in exile. It was then that they 
 conceived more clearly the duties of their fealty and 
 the privileges of their hope in him. They realised 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 103 
 
 not only his sole sovereignty over all the peoples of 
 the earth, but also his purpose, in that they were to 
 be his people not for themselves alone, but for the 
 glory of his name and as a light to the nations. 
 Ezekiel, the priest prophet, and the great unnamed 
 ones whose utterances make part of the Book of 
 Isaiah, present these latter stages of the prophetic 
 adjustment, the last before prophecy became what 
 is called apocalyptic. 
 
 The idea of individual responsibility is set forth in 
 Ezekiel's eighteenth chapter: "Behold all souls are 
 mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of 
 the son is mine : the soul that sinneth, it shall die. . . . 
 The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, 
 neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son : 
 the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon 
 him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon 
 him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins 
 that he has committed, and keep all my statutes, 
 and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely 
 live, he shall not die. . . . Have I any pleasure in the 
 death of the wicked ? . . . But when a righteous 
 man turneth away from his righteousness, and com- 
 mitteth iniquity, he shall die." Ezekiel's own 
 righteousness was to be that of a watchman to the 
 House of Israel, to warn the wicked man from his 
 way — and if he turn not from his wickedness, he 
 shall die : but thou hast saved thyself.^ 
 
 ^Cf. Ez. Hi. 16-21; xiv. 9-20; xxxiii. 1-9. 
 
I04 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Thus explicitly, with more emphasis than clarity, 
 the principle of individual responsibility thrusts 
 itself to the front of Ezekiel's adjustment. Yet 
 his interest still centres in Israel as a people; as is 
 evident in the promises which follow of future res- 
 toration when Yahweh shall make a covenant of 
 peace with his ill-shepherded flock, and set over them 
 my servant David. The tenor of this restoration, 
 with its forgiveness and its spiritual regeneration, 
 are set forth : " Son of man, when the house of 
 Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by 
 their ways and doings . . . wherefore I poured out 
 my fury upon them . . . and I scattered them 
 among the nations. And when they came among 
 the nations, they profaned my holy name. . . . 
 Therefore say unto the house of Israel, I do not this 
 for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my holy 
 name, which ye have profaned among the nations 
 whither ye have gone. And I will sanctify my great 
 name . . . which ye have profaned, and the nations 
 shall know that I am Yahweh. . . . For I will 
 take you from the nations, and gather you out 
 of all countries, and will bring you into your 
 own land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon 
 you, and ye shall be clean. ... A new heart 
 also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within 
 you. . . . And I will put my spirit within you, and 
 cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep 
 my judgements, and do them. And ye shall dwell 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 105 
 
 in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye 
 shall be my people, and I will be your God. . . . 
 Then shall ye remember your evil ways . . . and 
 ye shall loath yourselves in your own sight for your 
 iniquities and abominations" (Ez. xxxvi.)- 
 
 The vision of the valley of dry bones reclothed 
 with flesh symbolises the character of the restoration 
 — the dry bones both of (northern) Israel and Judah 
 shall be made one nation in the land, under one king. 
 Then Yahweh's victory shall follow over the nations 
 who assault his people. After this comes the build- 
 ing of that temple, so elaborately described, in which 
 Yahweh shall forever dwell, in his people's midst. 
 
 In Ezekiel's closed and priestly mind, this restora- 
 tion is of the people of Israel ; and the Temple is 
 for their god, exclusively for him and them. The 
 nations have no share. Yahweh's service is purified 
 from every gentile taint, even from lay participation, 
 and is confided to the holy priesthood; his ritual 
 becomes as strict as the statutory righteousness which 
 he demands of his people. EzekieFs adjustment 
 was formal and for Israel alone ; and his ideals were 
 to dominate the legalistic phases of later Judaism. 
 But others spoke more universal hopes, and other 
 minds than that of this priest-prophet applied 
 themselves to the mystery of the connexion between 
 righteousness or sin and the prosperity or misery of 
 the righteous or sinning individual or people. From 
 the period of the exile, the Old Testament writings 
 
Io6 DELIVERANCE 
 
 may be regarded as a literature of adjustment of 
 the facts and hopes of Israel, of the Israelites, of 
 universal man, with the power and the steadfastly 
 assumed righteousness of God. 
 
 It is difficult not to regard the Exile as providen- 
 tial. Who has not realised how in some way he, or 
 she, has learned through tribulation ? From suffer- 
 ing, wisdom, said ^schylus. Israel furnishes na- 
 tional illustration of the theme. For centuries 
 they had felt themselves a people, delivered and 
 preserved through the power of their righteous god, 
 whose special care they were; he had established 
 them for ever in the land which he had covenanted 
 to them. Now this people, and, more especially, 
 that better part which most keenly felt itself Israel, 
 had been taken from their heritage to labour as a 
 captive community in the midst of their overweening 
 enemies. It was for them to brood upon their 
 lot as a people collectively chastened, punished, 
 cast out by their god, — for a time ? forever ? 
 with what intent ? — or they might muse upon God's 
 treatment of the individual, the good or wicked man. 
 How was Israel to be repaired, restored again, in some 
 conformity with these exiles' unshakable conviction of 
 Yahweh's power and righteousness and peculiar care 
 of his people ? And, considering like matters less 
 nationally, more particularly, how reconcile God's 
 justice with the divers lots of men ? and having 
 regard to this more individual adjustment, how 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 107 
 
 teach man to conduct his life ? Struggling for the 
 solution of these problems, certain Israelites, either 
 of the Exile or still dwelling in an orphaned land, 
 reached the sublimest expression of their faith in 
 Yahweh*s righteousness and love. Their solutions 
 did not rest on human wisdom and energy. Yahweh 
 did all, inspired the thoughts of men, fulfilled or 
 frustrated them, and brought to pass the destinies of 
 nations. 
 
 With the fall of Jerusalem and the extinction of 
 every ray of present national hope, those whose 
 minds clung to the destinies of Israel were forced 
 to look far into the future and draw their peace from 
 thoughts of redemption and restoration. It was 
 partly thus with Jeremiah and wholly thus with 
 Ezekiel. And when Jerusalem's fall brought further 
 bands of exiles to Babylon, the nation of Israel 
 seemed broken into small communities settled in 
 the midst of alien multitudes. The restoration of 
 such bands to national integrity and territorial 
 power in far-off Judea gradually lost material likeli- 
 hood. Yahweh could accomplish even this; but 
 his purposes were clothed with the majesty of 
 righteousness. Israel's restoration must be such 
 as to exemplify the character, sublime and spiritual, 
 of the god of all the earth. Evidently Yahweh's 
 purpose, as his power, was of world-wide scope. 
 It would not simply restore Israel to what she was 
 before : her restoration must be an incident, a means 
 
I08 DELIVERANCE 
 
 for the accomplishment of Yahweh's universal 
 plan of righteousness. In consonance with these 
 necessities of thought, the idealising prophets of 
 the Exile raised and sanctified their conceptions 
 of Israel's restoration and final destinies. 
 
 It were futile to set forth the adjustments of 
 Israel's destinies with Yahweh's character and 
 purposes as conceived in the exilic portions of the 
 Book of Isaiah, save in those words and images 
 which have compelled men's imaginations and 
 spoken their most sacred hopes for the last two 
 thousand years. The imagery clothing the thought 
 and feeling of these writings has lent itself to the 
 plastic conceptions of successive and diverse genera- 
 tions. Representing the highest truth of poetic 
 expression, it does not gain in clarity by analytic 
 restatement. Yet we may recall the background 
 of these utterances. In certain chapters of the 
 first part of Isaiah (whether he be their author, or 
 another) Yahweh works his purpose with a re- 
 deemed and sanctified Israel, through a king of 
 David's line whose righteousness is Yahweh's 
 righteousness, and whose power is Yahweh's power.^ 
 Unto him shall the nations seek. This idea was 
 natural before David's house had fallen utterly, 
 and it continued long afterwards to move men in 
 whom the memory of that house was strong. Yet 
 as one decade of servitude succeeded another, and 
 * Is. ix., xi., xxxii. Cf. the much disputed Zech. ix. 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 109 
 
 the hope of a royal embodiment of Yahweh's rule 
 waned with the exiles, it was replaced by a counter- 
 thought of profounder religious content. Righteous 
 kings, prophets, and priests had held themselves 
 and the people also to be Yahweh's servants. As 
 their religion rose to the thought of one righteous 
 God of all the earth, the conception of their service 
 rose in correspondence. Serving Yahweh meant 
 serving his design of world-wide redemption. In 
 Babylon, Jews were not kings, but servants : the 
 visible servitude of their condition might suggest 
 new aspects of their destiny and mission. If 
 Israel was to be redeemed and restored, might it 
 not be in the role of Yahweh's servant, at a time 
 when Yahweh's name should be honoured throughout 
 the earth ? 
 
 In many ways thoughts of peace and blessedness, 
 springing from free responsive service, would touch 
 devoted minds, whose conviction of Yahweh's 
 righteousness had never faltered. A service of 
 universal mediation was disclosed; and thoughts 
 came of atonement through suffering, atonement 
 for Israel and for the sinful nations ; then an assur- 
 ance of forgiveness, of redemption and restoration 
 within the scope of Yahweh's purposes, and of final 
 peace and comforting through Yahweh's presence 
 in a redeemed Israel. Service and atonement would 
 be sanctified in blessedness, and rewarded with 
 pre-eminence among the nations. 
 
no DELIVERANCE 
 
 A very marvellous adjustment, or series of adjust- 
 ments, is unfolded by the prophet, or prophets, of 
 the last twenty-seven chapters of the Book of Isaiah. 
 It is an adjustment with God, and is brought to pass 
 through Yahweh's forgiveness, his redeeming love, 
 and the power of his spirit moving the destinies of 
 men, and acting within their hearts. Israel (not 
 as the prophet knows her to be, but as he dreamed 
 of her) acts and suffers in obedience and responsive 
 love. It is Yahweh who redeems her surely, and 
 compels the nations to his ends. Yahweh omnipo- 
 tent in the world, the sole power that accomplishes ; 
 also resistless in the heart, wakening its ear morning 
 by morning. He bruises his servant, makes him 
 one to bear men's sicknesses, and the sin of many, 
 and lay down his soul an offering for guilt. In his 
 service the Servant is very close to Yahweh, who had 
 been afflicted in all the afflictions of his people, 
 had cried out like a woman in travail, and had 
 drawn into his passionate redemptive purpose this 
 Servant, in order to make many righteous, and 
 thereby make redemption possible for Israel and 
 the nations. The willingness to suffer ! the Servant 
 has this in common with his God. As he has been 
 bruised and his visage marred, so from the travail 
 of his soul shall he also be satisfied, when there shall 
 be proclaimed "an acceptable year of Yahweh, and 
 a day of vengeance of our God; to comfort the 
 mournful ones of Zion, to give them oil of joy for 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL III 
 
 the raiment of mourning. . . . And they shall 
 build up the ruins of old, and renew the wasted cities. 
 . . . And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, 
 shall be your ploughmen and vine-dressers; but ye, 
 priests of Yahweh shall ye be called; men shall 
 name you the messengers of our God ; ye shall eat 
 the riches of the nations and make your boast of 
 their glory." 
 
 Tumultuous words these, and many more: ven- 
 geance on the oppressor, restoration, triumph, and 
 priestly mediation to the nations, of whose riches 
 the redeemed shall eat. Tumultuous thoughts! 
 The vision of Yahweh overcomes at last: "Hark 
 thy watchmen ! They lift up their voice : they cry 
 together, for they see eye to eye the return of Yahweh 
 to Zion." Threats and promises mingle to the end 
 of the prophecy, and world-wide mediation follows 
 upon Israel's victory, through her god, over her 
 enemies. But the wicked ones of Israel shall also be 
 cut off, and not impede the salvation of the faithful. 
 "I will create a new heaven and a new earth . . . 
 and I will exult in Jerusalem and rejoice in my 
 people." Rites and sacrifices shall be nothing. 
 "Thus saith Yahweh : Heaven is my throne, and 
 the earth is my footstool; what manner of house 
 would ye build me .? and where is the place of my 
 habitation ? All these my hand has made, and all 
 these are mine. But I have regard for him that is 
 of a poor and contrite spirit, and trembles at my 
 
112 DELIVERANCE 
 
 word." Tumultuous words ! But the infinity and 
 spirituality of God pierces through them, and the 
 comfort of the Servant's presence with his god. 
 
 It is still the redemption of the nation that is 
 borne in mind, though its chaff will be sifted from its 
 wheat. The prophet who is speaking is very near 
 to Yahweh, folded in the assurance of his presence. 
 Likewise the Servant, whether that Servant be an 
 individual or an ideal Israel. This intimate assur- 
 ance is the stronghold of his peace and freedom. His 
 also is that holding close to God, that passionate 
 adjustment which fills the Psalter and makes it the 
 supplement and completion of the exhortations and 
 the warnings of the prophets, — an adjustment held 
 in religious feeling, and resting on the assurance of 
 God and the sense that man's vital relationship with 
 God is sufficient for him. Since He moves and 
 surely governs all, and holds man in His hand, 
 even to His heart, making man to be part of the 
 divine purpose and event, then come what may, 
 welfare or misery, life or death, nothing can divide 
 man from the rock of his salvation, the living God. 
 
 The Psalms set forth God's greatness, righteous- 
 ness, spirituality, his compassion and loving-kind- 
 ness. But their veritable theme is the consciousness 
 of man before his God. The emotions of the Psalmist 
 may be occasioned by the incidents of human lots ; 
 but they spring from man's realisation of the over- 
 whelming relationship of God to man. The Psalms 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 113 
 
 express the Israelite's sense of self before Yahweh, — 
 a sense of shortcoming, but sometimes of integrity ; 
 a sense of littleness before Yahweh's grandeur, of 
 impotence beneath Yahweh's power, of awe before 
 Yahweh's works : and then a sense of the desolation 
 which is severance from God. There presses to 
 utterance the fear of Yahweh, love of Yahweh, zeal 
 and jealousy for him, and yearning for his presence : 
 with these come repentance and turning from sin, a 
 longing to be pure in Yahweh's sight, and to be 
 forgiven; a longing for God's love, even for His 
 sympathy. Thus the nature of man in its whole 
 compass, sets as the tide toward God, to be met by 
 the flooding sense of God's loving-kindness and the 
 majesty of his ways. Any feeling of the untoward 
 lot of the Psalmist is blotted out. 
 
 How shall Yahweh not be enough for man ? 
 
 "O Yahweh, thou hast searched me and known me; 
 Thou knowest my downsitting and my uprising. 
 Thou understandest my thought afar off. 
 
 ** Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. 
 It is too high, I cannot attain unto it. 
 Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? 
 Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 
 If I climb up into heaven, thou art there. 
 If I take the wings of the morning, 
 If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
 Even there shall thy hand lead me, 
 And thy right hand shall hold me. 
 
114 DELIVERANCE 
 
 ** And how precious unto me are thy thoughts, O God ! 
 How great is the sum of them ! 
 If I would tell them they are more in number than the 
 
 sands ; 
 When I awake, I am still with thee." 
 
 Truly can the Psalmist exclaim : Thy loving- 
 kindness is better than life; and can realise how 
 God's love covers all : Thou makest the outgoings of 
 the morning to sing for joy. And as for life's 
 hard phases : 
 
 " Fret not thyself because of evil-doers ! 
 Hold thee still for Yahweh, and hope in him." 
 
 Yahweh's sufficiency, — to abide in that is the life 
 of the righteous : and what part have the wicked in 
 the felt presence of the living God .? 
 
 **Like as a hart which panteth after the water-brooks, 
 So panteth my soul after thee, O God." 
 
 The Psalter has also its depths of woe : My God, 
 my God ! why has thou forsaken me ? The melan- 
 cholia, the depression when man feels forsaken of God, 
 this is the Psalmist's grief, which crushes other woes. 
 Beneath it, his thoughts seem to break in sorrow, 
 and suggest a bitter lack of the assurance of a life 
 beyond the grave. It would seem so in the eighty- 
 eighth psalm. 
 
 **0 Yahweh, God of my salvation, 
 I have cried day and night before thee. 
 Let my prayer come before thee. 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 1 15 
 
 Incline thine ear to my cry. 
 
 For my soul is full of troubles, 
 
 And my life draweth near unto the grave. 
 
 I am counted with them that go down into the pit, 
 
 "Whom thou rememberest no more. 
 
 • ....•••■• 
 Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead ? 
 Shall the dead arise and praise thee ? 
 Shall thy loving-kindness be told in the grave ? 
 
 " And thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness ? 
 
 "Why, O Yahweh, casteth thou off my soul ?" 
 
 Yet even without this further hope, the Psalmist, 
 save in black moments, conquers through his faith, 
 which is a realisation of Yahweh — and of man. 
 That is the Psalmist's adjustment. But a lack of 
 this assurance keeps the Book of Job from presenting 
 an adjustment for souls torn by the question, why 
 does the righteous man suffer ? The Book remains, 
 in the eye of reason, a majestic statement of the 
 problem. Yet in Job, as in the Psalms, if Yahweh's 
 majesty does not satisfy the sufferer's longings, it 
 overwhelms his mind and closes his mouth. 
 
 Stung by the ruthless one-sided arguments of the 
 friends, Job flings himself upon his thought of God, 
 his determination to be justified by Him, — if not 
 now, hereafter. From beneath the surges of his 
 afflictions, the thought of God in His infinite works 
 
Il6 DELIVERANCE 
 
 lifts the sufferer above his doubts of God's righteous- 
 ness : 
 
 " Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways, 
 And how small a whisper do we hear of him ! 
 But the thunder of his power, who can understand ? " 
 
 Job is confident that, though the righteous may- 
 suffer, it is not well with the wicked, whose cry shall 
 surely be unheard of Him who decrees that for man 
 the fear of Yahweh is wisdom, and to depart from 
 evil is understanding. That furthest wisdom, 
 which is Yahweh*s plan and understanding, is His 
 alone. The sufferer is mastered by his yearning for 
 restored communion : he is ready for that vision of 
 power which is Yahweh's answer from the whirl- 
 wind. Man, dost thou know, dost thou possess, 
 anything wherewith to plumb the ways of God ? 
 "Now that mine eyes have seen thee," is Job's 
 answer, "I abhor myself and repent in dust and 
 ashes." 
 
 Such is Job's adjustment — though the Hebrew 
 sense of fitness insisted that the book should end 
 with Yahweh's giving Job "twice as much as he had 
 before."! 
 
 Unavoidably the prophetic adjustment or situa- 
 tion, the adjustment in the Psalms, and the crushing 
 answer to Job's problem, all moved together toward 
 
 ^ In its practical gnomic way the teaching of the Book of 
 Proverbs parallels the argumentation of the Book of Job. 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 117 
 
 the completion which one and all implicitly de- 
 manded, that is to say toward the supplementing of 
 earthly life with a life beyond the- grave. This 
 aspiration dawns through Job's agonies, and here 
 and there touches the surface in the Psalter. In the 
 nineteenth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of 
 Isaiah, written in the fourth or fifth century before 
 Christ, the resurrection of the dead is plainly stated, 
 and more elaborately in the still later book of Daniel : 
 "And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great 
 prince which standeth for the children of thy people ; 
 and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never 
 was since there was a nation even to that same time ; 
 and at that time thy people shall be delivered, 
 every one that shall be found written in the book, 
 and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth 
 shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to 
 shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be 
 wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; 
 and they that turn many to righteousness as the 
 stars for ever and ever." 
 
 Throughout the prophets it was the nation that 
 should be restored, rise again from its ashes, a 
 thought which does not involve the recall to life of 
 those myriad Israelites who had long slept with their 
 fathers. The distinctive promise of the Old Testa- 
 ment is that Israel shall endure for ever, rather than 
 that its dead shall rise, or individual lives continue 
 immortally. 
 
Il8 DELIVERANCE 
 
 But Israel's faith in her restoration by the hand 
 of Yahweh had to adapt itself to the postpone- 
 ment of its realisation, because of the fact of Israel 
 so glaringly unrestored. As that consummation 
 appeared more and more remote, its features 
 ceased to resemble the realities of the past or present. 
 Prophecy became a revelation of the distant and 
 the different, of that which is supermundane if not 
 spiritual : it changed to what is called apocalyptic. 
 No longer drawing its substance from experience, 
 it lost the faculty of presenting reality. 
 
 The vision of Ezekiel enters upon these marvels 
 of revelation; and while the first part of Daniel 
 seems pious fiction, the latter part is sheer apocalyp- 
 tic. Through the last two pre-Christian centuries 
 and the first century of our era, apocalyptic writings 
 form the most curious, if not most interesting, 
 part of Jewish literature. The writers screen them- 
 selves under the holy names of the past: Enoch, 
 The Twelve Patriarchs, Psalms of Solomon, Baruch, 
 Ezra, — even Sibylline Oracles appear. Their com- 
 positions do not lack in power and impressiveness ; 
 but such revelations of a grandiloquently restored 
 Israel, when regarded as an adjustment of the human 
 spirit with any probabilities of human lot, are with- 
 out that reality which is drawn from the arguments 
 of experience. 
 
 One element of reality, however, or at least of 
 universal human hope, pressed gradually to expres- 
 
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 119 
 
 sion in this literature of fantastic and fanatical 
 adjustment. It was the conviction that at least 
 the righteous dead should rise again, a conviction 
 frequently supplemented by the further hope that 
 the wicked should be punished. As the decades 
 passed, the conception of the resurrection life of 
 the righteous tended rather waveringly to rise from 
 earth to heaven, and to abandon the thought of an 
 Israel glorified and restored upon a paradisic earth, 
 for that of a more spiritual kingdom and an eternal 
 life in heaven. Until that resurrection, which shall 
 coincide with a final day of God, a true Last Judge- 
 ment, the spirits of the righteous are at rest guarded 
 by Angels.^ In portions of this literature the figure 
 of a Messiah advances to prominence, becomes the 
 protagonist of the consummation, the Judge of the 
 World, a more than human being, — called some- 
 times the Christ, The Righteous One, "The Son 
 of Man." 2 Again that figure passes out of view. 
 
 Were these conceptions of the resurrection of 
 Israelitish origin or derived from contact with the 
 Persian religion ? They were required by the 
 previous development of Jewish thought, and thus 
 seem to represent organic growth. In this respect 
 
 1 This is the teaching of the Ethiopia book of Enoch, xci-civ. 
 See Charles, " Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish and Christian,** 
 Second edition. 
 
 2 In the " Similitudes," chapters xxvii-lxx of the Ethiopic 
 Enoch (94-64 B.C.) Charles, o.c. 
 
I20 DELIVERANCE 
 
 they appear as IsraeFs own, although suggestions 
 may have come from without. On the other hand, 
 the idea of souls entering immediately after death 
 into an immortality of blessedness or perhaps of 
 punishment, as held by Alexandrian Jews, repre- 
 sented draughts of Hellenism. With these Alexan- 
 drians, for instance in the Book of Wisdom or 
 the writings of Philo, there is no resurrection of the 
 body, but the soul rises to immortality upon the 
 body's death. 
 
 It is not hard to find a sort of spiritual parting 
 of the ways throughout the prophets from Isaiah 
 down to the latest composers of apocalyptic. A 
 parting of the ways as to the purpose and result of 
 the redemption and restoration of Israel : was that 
 to herald the victory and domination of the Jewish 
 nation over the peoples of the earth .? or was it in- 
 tended as a sign to the peoples and the means of 
 spiritual regeneration for the world ? These twin 
 conceptions wrestled with each other through Israel's 
 centuries. The one met with overthrow from the 
 legions of Titus and of Hadrian : the other led to 
 Christ. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Heroic Adjustment in Greek Poetry 
 
 TT is through no accident that what survives of 
 -*- the literature of Israel is religious and turned 
 toward God, while the great surviving literature of 
 Greece has to do with the wisdom and goodliness of 
 man; for the spiritual stress of either people ac- 
 corded with the literature that has happily come 
 down to us. Different principles of life, and different 
 ways of arriving at them, made the Greek race 
 illustrious and sanctified the Jew. In Judea, the 
 ways and commands of Yahweh were the sanction 
 of conduct and the crown of life. In Greece, man's 
 adjustment of his life with its anxieties and control- 
 ling destinies was by no means unrelated to concep- 
 tions of the gods and the sovereign will of Zeus ; but 
 it was more constantly moulded through a rational 
 consideration of whatever lay open to perception, 
 and could make part of human knowledge, and be 
 tested by human reason. 
 
 The Greek drew confidence and certitude from 
 his temperament and the eagerness of his desires, 
 from consideration of events, and from reflection 
 upon their source and moving causes; also from 
 
 121 
 
122 DELIVERANCE 
 
 the serenity arising through the exercise of his body 
 and the intending of his mind. The deed accom- 
 plished, or the broad explanatory thought reflected 
 on, could free the Greek from hampering fears, 
 and constitute for him that liberty of life and action 
 which is felicity and peace. 
 
 One will find the Greek adjustment as many- 
 sided as the Greek nature, and as manifold as Greek 
 desires. Its varied phases may be followed from 
 Homer, through the lyrical and dramatic poets, to 
 the philosophers. The epic freedom sounding in 
 the heroic temper is succeeded by the more analyti- 
 cally conceived, but still heroic, serenity of the 
 perfect deed of which Pindar sings. One passes 
 readily to the fateful consideration of conduct with 
 ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. But the 
 adjustment of the philosophers seemingly rests on 
 another principle — the satisfaction which for minds 
 capable of large detachment lies in sheer considera- 
 tion of the universe and man. Yet an Hellenic 
 kinship extends through these adjustments, and a 
 progress will be perceived from those which are 
 simple and almost physical, to those which rest on 
 thought. 
 
 Our strict concern is with that adjustment with 
 life and the powers of life which constitutes spiritual 
 freedom. But Greece lures us to wander and ad- 
 mire. Her manifold excellences are so pleasant, 
 so provocative of comment. How can one speak 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 123 
 
 of Homer without dwelling on the grandeur of the 
 Epics, the beauty and elevation of their diction, 
 the living power and measured swiftness of their 
 narratives, their glowing scenes of life and character, 
 all making up that glorious tale of Troy ? 
 
 Yet the very excellence of the Epics, the full 
 round of humanity which they set forth, their way 
 of making all things great and beautiful, the eager- 
 ness and power of the Heroes, the love of beauty 
 inherent in the poems and in the minds of the 
 dramatis personcs, are all pertinent to the Homeric, 
 which is to say, the Heroic, adjustment. Through 
 courage and power of resolve, rather than in their 
 conscious reasoning, Achilles and Odysseus, or 
 Hector and Diomede, present the heroic adjustment 
 with life's fated limitations. And so it is with 
 "Homer" himself, that is to say, with the Epics 
 and their way of inculcating wisdom, not so much by 
 maxim, as by setting forth the tragic courses of 
 events, with some unavoidable pointings of the tale. 
 The narrative itself is pregnant with reflection upon 
 life. 
 
 The Homeric adjustment is swung between the 
 realisation (in every sense of the word) of the great- 
 ness of man and the shortness and pain of human 
 life. The negative pole is conspicuous enough : 
 "even as the generations of leaves are the genera- 
 tions of men"; men are heavy-fated, Svo-Trjvoi; the 
 gods speak of them as "wretched mortals." The 
 
124 DELIVERANCE 
 
 most splendid lives may be the most grievously 
 stricken. "For the gods have made it the lot of 
 wretched mortals to live in affliction while they are 
 without sorrow. Two jars stand on the floor of 
 Zeus filled with evil gifts, and another with blessings. 
 He to whom Zeus gives a mingled lot, at one time 
 encounters evil, at another good. But him to whom 
 Zeus gives of the evil kind he makes a wretch of; 
 hunger drives him over the broad earth, and he 
 wanders honoured neither by gods nor men." So 
 speaks Achilles to Priam; and both knew. The 
 gods interfere to direct the counsels of men, and 
 aid or thwart their endeavours. The masterful will 
 of Zeus intertwines with fate, which is the dumb 
 necessity of things in their common courses, or the 
 appointed, if sad, event of some heroic life. 
 
 The positive pole of the adjustment is fixed in the 
 dpcTij and TTLvvT-qy the virtus and prudentia, the 
 temper and consideration of the heroes. With each 
 man it is set in the intensity of his passions and 
 desires, in his imaginative or beautifying enhance- 
 ment of the objects of his wishes, in his strength of 
 will to obtain them, in fine, in his greatness of charac- 
 ter. Yet the broad and balanced view belonging to 
 conscious reasoning is rarely absent. For example, 
 the recurring note in the character of Sarpedon, the 
 Lycian king and son of Zeus, is aiSws, which is the 
 inbred sense of honour with its complement of shame 
 at all things shameful. Whenever Sarpedon ap- 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 125 
 
 pears, atSws is the motive of his conduct, even as 
 when he calls to the Lycians broken before Patroclus, 
 ''Shame on you Lycians; where are you running ? 
 Courage ! I will withstand the man." Before 
 this day when he went forward to his fate, he had 
 urged on the pensive Glaucus with words which 
 give the argument of this instinct of his nature: 
 "Why, Glaucus, is high honour paid to thee and me 
 in Lycia, and all look on us as gods ? and why do we 
 hold a rich and fair domain by the banks of Xanthus ? 
 For this we must meet the hot fight with the fore- 
 most, that the cuirassed Lycians may say, not in- 
 glorious are our kings who rule in Lycia and eat 
 fat sheep and drink sweet wine. Child ! if by shun- 
 ning this battle we should be freed from age and 
 death, I would not fight nor send you into the 
 combat. But since death's myriad shears beset us 
 always, and no man can escape, let us on, and win 
 fame or give it." 
 
 Throughout the Epics it is manifest that the sum 
 of a man's impulses, which is his character, is the basis 
 of his opinions and the source of his determination 
 and conduct. Statement and argument are the 
 justification of what his nature has determined. 
 His more intellectual faculties give articulate form to 
 his instinctive adjustment with the powers that con- 
 strain his lot. Yet character still intensifies the 
 thought and ennobles the expression of it. 
 
 Take the great instances : Hector, Achilles, 
 
126 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Odysseus, Helen ! Bunyan might have named 
 the first of these "Greatheart." Courage, devotion, 
 magnanimity, determine Hector's acts and form 
 his adjustment with his fate, ignorant as he is when 
 the gods will slay him at the hands of the Greeks. 
 Through these qualities he is Troy's defence; they 
 likewise transform his disapproving words to Paris 
 into an exhortation to do the duty of a prince. 
 He talks to Helen with the kindliest courtesy; 
 and one cannot speak of the scene with Andromache 
 without drawing it down to the level of our poorer 
 words. A high sense of shame impels him to 
 action, well knowing that the day will come when 
 mighty Troy shall perish ; and his dearest grief is the 
 fate that then will fall on his wife and child. Yet 
 he comforts Andromache with the pale thought 
 that no one shall send him to Hades before his time, 
 nor has coward or brave ever escaped his fate. So 
 he answers the cautious Polydamus that he cares not 
 whether the vultures rise on the right hand or the 
 left ; he trusts the will of Zeus and the best omen, 
 which is to fight for one's country. Evidently 
 Hector's adjustment with what fate had in store for 
 him is fixed in his courage and temper. 
 
 The same is true of a greater hero, whose life 
 is held in fate more definitely than Hector's. The 
 grandeur of the Homeric Achilles should be measured 
 by the greatness of the qualities that are his, and by 
 the moving beauty of their unison in this being so 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 127 
 
 passionate, yet strong in self-restraint, cruel in 
 wrath, tender in love of friend, convulsive in grief, 
 in revenge a raging bane, in sorrow passing the com- 
 prehension of other men, then graciously pitying, 
 and withal endowed with the faculty of true consider- 
 ation. His decisions spring from the heroic temper, 
 from the passion for brave conduct and the glory of 
 it. He could not but make the hero's choice of 
 warfare around mighty Troy, rather than long 
 life. He was easily first in deeds among the Achaeans 
 until outrage was put on him by Agamemnon. 
 Then anger thrusts glory from his mind; and 
 under its dulling influence he thinks it were better 
 to sail home to Phthia, comfort himself with a 
 wife, live those long years once conditionally prom- 
 ised him, and for a time escape the stricken lot of 
 Shades. His mind may have been turning, through 
 those hours while he sat quieting his mood by singing 
 the famous deeds of men. But when he hears the 
 words of the Envoys asking aid, anger against Aga- 
 memnon again possesses him, and his indignation 
 takes the form of that high argument with which he 
 answers and refuses. Its impetus carries him on 
 to declare that all the wealth of Ilium is no pay for 
 the life of man — "Kine may be had for the harry- 
 ing, and tripods and horses, but the breath of man 
 comes back neither by raid nor foray, when it once 
 has passed the barrier of his teeth. My mother, 
 Thetis of the silver feet, said that one of two different 
 
128 DELIVERANCE 
 
 fates IS bringing me to my death : if, staying here, 
 I fight about the city of the Trojans, my return is 
 cut off, but my fame will be imperishable ; but if I 
 sail home to my own country, my good fame perishes, 
 but my life shall be long." 
 
 Imagine Achilles actually sailing away from the 
 war ! The thought leaves him with the violence of 
 his anger. Glory and an early death had been his 
 choice before; and after Patroclus has fallen, when 
 Thetis tells him his fate will follow upon Hector's, 
 though moved, he answers : "Then let me die, 
 since I did not ward off death from my comrade. He 
 perished far from his home, and lacked me to defend 
 him. But now, since I shall not return to my own 
 country, neither was I a light of refuge to Patroclus 
 or the many others who were overcome by divine 
 Hector, but sit by the ships a burden to the earth, 
 may strife perish from among gods and men ! . . . 
 I go to meet Hector the destroyer of that dear head : 
 and I will take my death whenever Zeus wills to 
 bring it to pass, and the other gods. For not even 
 the might of Heracles escaped death, though dearest 
 of all to Zeus; but fate overcame him and Hera's 
 hate." 
 
 Achilles knows his greatness and his mortality. 
 It is as in words of remorseless fate that he refuses to 
 spare Priam's son, Lycaon : "Fool, speak not to me 
 of ransom ! until Patroclus met his fatal day, it was 
 my pleasure to spare the Trojans, and many I took 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 129 
 
 alive and sold. But now there is not one that shall 
 escape death, whom the God gives into my hand 
 before Ilium. But, friend, even thou must die. 
 Why dost thou wail ? Patroclus is dead, a far 
 better man than thou. Dost thou not see how big 
 I am and goodly .? — sprung from a noble father 
 and a goddess bore me ? But upon me as well as 
 thee lie death and heavy fate. It may be in the 
 morning or the afternoon or mid-day, when some one 
 shall take my life with cast of spear or arrow." 
 
 Besides the heroic temper and the mental sight 
 which is clear as to the event of every life, there is 
 in Achilles a further nobility of motive, rising, if one 
 will, from a sense of life's finer fitnesses and the 
 reverence due to its pitiableness. As the passions 
 of grief and vengeance spend themselves, a calm 
 comes to him through obedience to the gods and 
 pity for the sorrows of Priam. When the old man 
 has clasped the hands which have slain his son, and 
 Achilles, weeping for his own father and his dead 
 friend, has raised him up and spoken those words 
 of high consideration of the lot of man, has placed 
 Hector's body on the wagon, then with the story of 
 Niobe he induces in himself and Priam the tragic 
 calm arising from contemplation of the calamities of 
 men in their larger aspects. 
 
 The heroic temper is also a constant element in 
 the adjustment presented by Odysseus, but with 
 an equally constant weighing of life's values. His 
 
 K 
 
I30 DELIVERANCE 
 
 adjustment is that of the heroic intelligence. It is 
 achieved by the steadfastness and right action of 
 a much-experienced man, who acts with veritable if 
 canny heroism, with loyalty to his comrades and a 
 full sense of what it behooves him their leader to 
 dare and do for them — the sense of aiSws. His 
 hero-spirit flashes ever and anon; never inoppor- 
 tunely. For his nerve is iron. As in the hollow 
 horse he had kept the chiefs from crying out on 
 hearing Helen's voice, so in rags in his own house 
 he can keep his counsel, bear the wooers' insults, 
 watch the shameless maid-servants, and still hold 
 his hand: "Endure, heart! A shamefuUer thing 
 didst thou bear on that day when Cyclops devoured 
 thy brave comrades. Then thou didst endure till 
 thy cunning brought thee out from the cavern where 
 thou thoughtest to die." 
 
 Odysseus' words always carry the wisdom of 
 experienced intelligence; his admonitions express 
 the convictions of a mature right-minded man. 
 Thus he warns the least evil of the wooers : "Am- 
 phinomus, you seem to me intelligent and the son 
 of a good father; so listen to me and consider. 
 Nothing is feebler than man of all that earth 
 nourishes. He thinks ill will never come on him, 
 so long as the gods give him hardihood and sustain 
 his knees ! But when the blessed gods bring woes 
 on him, he bears them also, though unwilling ! . . . 
 Therefore let no man be wicked, but let him possess 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 131 
 
 In silence the gifts of the gods, whatever they may 
 give." 
 
 No man excelled Odysseus in wisdom or in sacri- 
 ficing to the gods : the two go together. With 
 reverence for the heavenly powers, he checks the 
 shrill joy of the old nurse at the death of the wooers : 
 "In thy heart, old woman, rejoice, nor cry aloud. 
 It is impious to exult over slain men. These the 
 doom of the gods overcame and their evil deeds; 
 for they respected no man. . . . Wherefore through 
 their wickedness they have met a shameful fate." 
 Thus the wisdom of Odysseus takes measure of 
 the heavenly powers. 
 
 Perhaps the highest chord of the whole Hellenic 
 adjustment also murmurs in the Odyssey — the 
 joy of satisfying human curiosity, and knowing 
 things. It is the opening note of the poem : "Tell 
 me, muse, of the man, the ready one, who wandered 
 far after he had destroyed the mighty citadel of 
 Troy, and saw the cities of many men, and learned 
 to know their mind." Wherever the hero is cast, 
 he is eager to find out what manner of men live 
 there. Bound to the mast, he listens to the Siren- 
 song — attuned to answer his own nature: "Oh ! 
 come hither, renowned Odysseus, glory of the 
 Achaeans; stop the ship and hear our voices. 
 For none has ever driven past in his black ship 
 till he has heard from our lips the sweet song, but, 
 having enjoyed it, he sails on, and knowing more. 
 
132 DELIVERANCE 
 
 For we know all things — whatever in the broad 
 land of Troy, Argives and Trojans suffered at the 
 will of the gods; and we know whatever happens 
 on the teeming earth." 
 
 And still another more pervasive conception 
 gave finish and a proportionment of values to the 
 Homeric adjustment — the thought of beauty, that 
 which is KaXoVf a thought embracing all things 
 physical, passing over into the sphere of the mind, 
 and finally reflecting Homer's judgement as to what 
 was right and proper, most broadly well for man. 
 The thought of beauty becomes the reflex of Homer's 
 broadest wisdom. We may even take it as the 
 moving principle which built the Epics, gave them 
 their mighty plan, their splendid movement, their 
 episodic propriety, and perhaps that verity of in- 
 cident, discourse, and event, through which they 
 exemplify life's facts and teaching. Homer's people 
 apply the thought of beauty to the human form and 
 visage, to trappings and utensils, arms and armour, 
 horses and chariots, to the lyre of Apollo and the 
 voices of the Muses, to human speech and conduct. 
 
 Beauty, like greatness, may justify and vindicate. 
 That which not only was seen in Helen's face, but 
 inhered in every word and act, raised her above 
 blame. Her mortal grace forbade reproach. She was 
 divine among women. So Achilles was justified 
 by his greatness, uplifted above common judge- 
 merit, but not above mortal fate. Homer was too 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 133 
 
 wise to condemn great beings, save upon considera- 
 tion of all their attributes. His ethics included the 
 proportionment of everything entering life. Helen 
 speaks of herself and Paris "on whom Zeus has 
 set such an evil fate that we shall be a theme of 
 song to men in times to come." Justification, as 
 well as adjustment, rises from that beauty or that 
 greatness which is its own excuse for being and 
 makes a theme of song — a joy to men, a heightening 
 of knowledge, an expansion of thought. Herein is 
 the vindication of Achilles, of Helen, and the fate 
 of Troy — 
 
 Sil/Lfjiov oij/iTeXcarov, oov kXco? ov ttot* oXctrat.^ 
 
 The content which the common man finds in his 
 daily work or occupation is his practical adjustment. 
 The strenuous man proceeds more vigorously, and 
 the high-minded man more ideally, trying to ac- 
 complish what seems the best to do, or attain, or be. 
 This endeavour constitutes his working satisfaction ; 
 herein lies his spiritual freedom — his freedom to 
 fulfil his nature, his release from fear, his actual 
 adjustment with Hfe and the eternal ways. Such an 
 adjustment represents the kinetic principle, the 
 Aristotelian hipyeui, man's highest energy wherein 
 he enters on an efficient unison with his best ideals, 
 attains his freedom and his peace — may even 
 
 1 //., II, 325. Late and late accomplished, the fame of which 
 shall never fade. 
 
134 DELIVERANCE 
 
 reach the working peace of God which passes under- 
 standing. 
 
 From such a point of view, one may regard the 
 Greek poetic and artistic adjustment, of which 
 the Homeric was the elemental stage. In Hesiod, 
 in the greater lyrists, in the dramatists, at least 
 until Euripides, the elemental poetic adjustment 
 of Homer advances to deeper consciousness, with 
 little change of principle or motive. Like all 
 serious adjustments, whether sounding in active 
 human energy or in contemplation, the adjustment 
 presented in the higher modes of Greek poetry 
 proceeded from an estimate of the facts of human 
 life, their relative permanence, their proportionate 
 values, the possibilities of their attainment, the 
 happiness therefrom arising, and the fitting principles 
 of conduct and regard. 
 
 The Greek poetic adjustment accepted the bounds 
 of mortality, while perceiving the greatness of 
 man although held within them. It sprang from 
 the heroic temper, worked itself out through heroic 
 valour and intelligence, and rested in heroic achieve- 
 ment. Primarily heroic, it remained royal or aris- 
 tocratic, suited to those whose nature and position 
 set them above the common mass. Yet as it recog- 
 nised mortality's limitations, its deepest ethics lay 
 in its insistence on the retribution overtaking those 
 who insolently would reach beyond, or impiously 
 transgress the principles of righteousness, which were 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 135 
 
 thought to rest upon the sanction of the gods, of 
 Zeus above all. 
 
 All this is in Homer; but is developed with 
 varied temperamental color and profound considera- 
 tion by Pindar and iEschylus and Sophocles. Be- 
 fore them had come Hesiod, reputed the most 
 terre-d-terre of the Greek poets — an honest and 
 rehgious soul. Impressed with the value of just 
 dealings among men, he believed that Zeus and the 
 other gods observed just and evil deeds, rewarding 
 the one and punishing the other. The just prosper, 
 their city flourishes, peace is in their borders, their 
 land bears its crops, their sheep are heavy with 
 wool, their wives bear children like their parents; 
 while ill-fortune comes to the wicked {Works, 255 
 sqq.). Not for long could the Greeks hold to this 
 old crass conviction (for a while held by the Jews !), 
 which further reflexion must show to be faulty. 
 
 Nearer to Pindar were the earlier lyrists, those 
 who uttered their keen notes of restless but not 
 unmeasured daring, like Archilochus and Alcaeus; 
 those who were saddened or embittered over life's 
 mortality, like Mimnermus, or Theognis, in some 
 of the verses bearing the latter's name : — as for 
 Sappho, the flames of passion and the love of beauty 
 made the summit of her being. Apparently the 
 best adjustment in these poets clung to the principle 
 of Measure — the widely applicable thought of y^yfitv 
 ayav, which reverted to Hesiod's injunction to ob- 
 
136 DELIVERANCE 
 
 serve measure, and his famous saw, "the half is 
 better than the whole." 
 
 Pindar's thought of life, its possibilities and satis- 
 factions, its adjustment with its fated bounds, is 
 more complete. He is in the line from Homer, 
 prizing all the qualities — for the most part coming 
 from <f>vai, one's inborn nature — which fill out man's 
 greatness, and not those alone which are more 
 especially ethical. He holds to strength and beauty, 
 swiftness, valour, bravery, and apt intelligence; 
 also the wealth and position proper to greatness : 
 an aristocrat altogether. But let not wealth and 
 power overween ! It behooves man to seek things 
 suitable (coiKora), such as are meet for mortals, 
 knowing where his feet must come ! ^ And what- 
 ever be his valour or his wit, let him not boast, but 
 remember that success comes from the gods : it is 
 Zeus that gives or withholds.^ Yet success — from 
 the gods — comes only to those who have striven. 
 Toil and effort — by these means victory is won, 
 and happiness, though man be a thing of a day! 
 From victory comes forgetfulness of toil and anxious- 
 ness and death. There are values which do not 
 sound in permanence — like the perfect instant, 
 the perfect deed ! That has absolute worth trans- 
 cending its own briefness ; and, crowned by victory, 
 it brings the high mood which is the zenith for 
 mortals, and makes the doer's adjustment with 
 
 1 Pyth., Ill, 59 sqq. * Pyth., Ill, 103 ; Isth., IV, 50. 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 137 
 
 life's limitations and the Powers which set them.^ 
 Beyond this, there is also the report which lives after 
 a man, and reveals his life to the poets, which is 
 fame. 
 
 Pindar is unrivalled in his phrased sententiousness. 
 And yet more splendidly his fourth Pythian ode 
 exemplifies these principles in action, telling the 
 glorious story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, 
 through which breathes the living truth of the 
 Pindaric adjustment, drawing its being from the 
 perfect deed. 
 
 iEschylus was a Titan dominated by moral and 
 religious principles : crimes entail punishment ; 
 right conduct cannot wreck the doer; the Mean is 
 safest ; great prosperity does not of itself bring over- 
 throw, but is apt to beget insolence, with the en- 
 suing round of crime and ruin. These convictions 
 were rooted in faith in the punitive and benign rule 
 of Zeus and the subsidiary divine potencies. The 
 gods will cast down the proud man who has sinned, 
 and his overweening children; but suffering shall 
 bring wisdom to those who act aright, although they 
 are involved in the fatal dilemmas of a blood- 
 stained house. This is Zeus's law — a stern fore- 
 runner of Plato's thought and Paul's announcement, 
 that to them who love God all things work to- 
 gether for good. The iEschylean adjustment lies 
 in adherence to these ethical and divine principles, 
 iCf.O/.,I,97; 11, 56; vni,72. 
 
138 DELIVERANCE 
 
 this sequence of the Zeus-supported power of the 
 act working itself out even in pain and blood. 
 Man's proper freedom of action lies within the 
 constraint of these laws; which are incarnate in 
 the story of the house of Atreus. 
 
 The Agamemnon opens with the weariness of the 
 watchman on the roof at Argos, and the boding 
 anxiousness of the chorus, which is checked rather 
 than lifted by the announcement that Troy has 
 fallen. Too much evil conduct has gone before 
 to allow a happy issue to those enmeshed in this 
 crime-spotted web. Sorrow ! Sorrow ! may the 
 good prevail ! — The chorus can throw off their 
 burden only through appeal to Zeus, who leads 
 mortals to be wise, who has set through suffering 
 the path of wisdom — a kindness enforced. To 
 have summoned Greece to general slaughter for 
 one guilty woman ! — a fit prelude to the fatal 
 dilemma of the fleet, wind-bound at Aulis, and 
 no release except through sacrifice of the guilt- 
 less for the guilty, of Iphigeneia to win back 
 Helen ! That was a sin, by whatsoever stress of 
 need entailed. 
 
 The first report is made certain: The Greeks 
 have taken Troy — surely the stroke of Zeus on 
 Paris and on Priam's city. There is no stronghold 
 for him who tramples on sanctities, and in the 
 arrogance of wealth spurns the altar of justice. 
 But what if the guilty have been guiltily destroyed 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 139 
 
 by the avengers ? In the place of living men, how 
 many urns of ashes have come back from Ilium I — 
 men fallen because of another's wife ! Heavy with 
 anger is the city's voice, filling the function of a 
 public curse. How dangerous is too much glory ! 
 Let me neither a captive nor a spoiler be ! 
 
 It is unnecessary to sketch the action of this (as 
 many think) greatest of all tragedies. It is enough 
 to observe the sequence of recurring crime and 
 more unrighteous vengeance. Clearer becomes the 
 old men's view of that flower of loveliness, that 
 fawning lion's cub of doom, Helen, bane to city, 
 man, and ship. It is not prosperity that brings 
 retribution; the righteous house may remain fair 
 and blessed ; it is the sinful act that begets children 
 like itself; the old v/8pts, when the time is ripe, 
 engenders a new v^pts in the wicked which is their 
 doom. 
 
 The sequence is quite clear. Cassandra's cry, 
 her utterance becoming more articulate, till she lays 
 bare the tale of ancestral crime, handed on from one 
 generation to another, through conduct never free 
 from guilt — this backward-reaching forward-reach- 
 ing vision, which raises the Agamemnon to the sum- 
 mit of all tragedy, makes plain the scheme of the 
 iEschylean adjustment. She scents the track of 
 crimes done long before, sees the harsh chorus of 
 Erinyes, drunk with human blood, not to be cast 
 out, still chanting that primal impious act, the 
 
I40 DELIVERANCE 
 
 brother's couch defiled, and then those children 
 slaughtered by their kin, holding out hands filled 
 with flesh, a dish for their own father. 
 
 It is thus that the cursed act, an infection for 
 the unborn wicked, passes on through blood; and 
 now with Agamemnon's murder, in which likewise 
 is the will of Zeus, it seizes the blood-guilty Cly- 
 temnestra, vaunting her crime, entangling herself 
 in that same curse which she points to as her ex- 
 culpation. 
 
 The Furies are not yet appeased; they shall 
 become those of a mother slain; and then, after 
 purification of the slayer, shall change from curses 
 to potential blessings, from Erinyes to Eumenides. 
 Through the drama of vengeance and that of excul- 
 pation, the Choephoroi and the Eumenides, the old 
 Greek point of view is to be seen : the mandates 
 and threats of the murdered Agamemnon (through, 
 rather than by virtue of, the oracle of Apollo) 
 drive Orestes to kill Clytemnestra ; the son who 
 fails to avenge his father shall be eaten by disease, 
 disowned by all, and cast out from the city to perish 
 vilely.^ When Orestes is about to kill the murderess, 
 she threatens him with the "hounds of a mother's 
 hate"; at which he demands how can he escape 
 
 * Choeph.y 261 (269) sqq. A considerable part of the Choephoroi 
 consists of Electra's and Orestes' invocation of the dead Agamem- 
 non and the mighty curses of the slain to aid them in their ven- 
 geance. 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 141 
 
 his father's, if he forbear to kill her ? {Choeph., 
 910 (925)). When the deed is done, Orestes states 
 in justification that he killed his mother, his father's 
 murderess and an abomination to the gods; and 
 adduces the oracle of Apollo that he should be 
 without blame if he did it, but subject to penalties 
 unnameable if he forbore. With a suppliant's 
 branch, he will go, as Apollo bade him, to the god's 
 shrine for refuge. And he rushes out, pursued by 
 his mother's Furies. 
 
 At the opening of the Eumenides, Clytemnestra's 
 Furies are asleep around Orestes seated at the cen- 
 tral altar of the temple. He has undergone the pre- 
 scribed rites of purification. Apollo enters with the 
 words, "I will not fail thee," and sends him to 
 Athens under Hermes* guard, there finally to be 
 freed. Orestes leaves the temple as Clytemnestra's 
 ghost rouses the sleeping Furies in pursuit. 
 
 Orestes comes to Athene for a final decree of 
 justification, in order that his mother's Furies may 
 cease from troubling him while living, or when he 
 has passed to Hades, a great corrector of impiety 
 below the earth. In a tremendous ode, the Furies 
 chant the iEschylean ethical sequence, fearful as 
 they are lest the old laws be made null, and all 
 restraint removed from crime, if Orestes be ac- 
 quitted : " There are times when fear is well, abiding 
 as a warder of the mind. Wisdom through suffer- 
 ing profits. What man, what city, freed from 
 
142 DELIVERANCE 
 
 dread, will revere justice ? Praise thou neither the 
 despot-ridden nor the lawless state. Everywhere 
 God gives might to the Mean. From impiety is 
 born insolence ; but from health of mind that for- 
 tune much prayed for, dear to all. I counsel thee, 
 always revere the altar of right, nor spurn it with 
 godless foot, thine eyes set on gain. For punish- 
 ment shall follow, and the fitting end awaits. . . . 
 He who, unforced, is just, shall not be unblest, and 
 never can be utterly destroyed. But the rash 
 transgressor shall in time haul down his yard-arms 
 broken; he calls on those who do not hear in the 
 storm, while the god laughs at the man of boasts, 
 who, failing to weather the point, is wrecked on the 
 reef of Justice, and perishes." ^ 
 
 The judgement of Athene, on grounds quite curious 
 to us, takes the case of Orestes out of this sweep of 
 retribution, this sequence whose validity is in no 
 way impugned by the turn of the drama; while 
 the Furies (Erinyes) are placated and won to dwell 
 beneath the Areopagus, as the Eumenides, awarders 
 of blessings for the righteous people of Athene. 
 
 Character, good or bad, a criminal or benevolent 
 disposition, either philosophically viewed or tragi- 
 cally treated, is part of the broad matter of human 
 freedom and responsibility, and their compatibility 
 with fate or the divine will or foreknowledge. In- 
 
 ^ Eum.j 490-565, condensed. 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 143 
 
 herited tendencies, the sins of the fathers visited 
 upon the children, even the specific curse entailed, 
 may be regarded as possible elements of our uni- 
 versal mortality, passing down from generation to 
 generation. A Greek tragedy might present such 
 elements of life through the spectacle of the un- 
 happy turns of human lot occasioned by them ; but 
 its mode of treatment did not solve, so much as 
 deepen and render terrible, the mystery of their 
 action, ethical, divine, physical, or quasi-physical. 
 
 Having sought in the great trilogy of ^schylus 
 for what seemed his mind*s adjustment with the 
 powers of retribution and reward, we turn to look 
 for the peace of Sophocles in those of his dramas 
 which have to do with the unspeakable deeds of 
 (Edipus and the fate of his house. The adjustment 
 presented by their chief characters is noble and 
 beautiful. It also is heroic, resting in that high 
 conduct and temper which belong only to great men 
 and women. It is thus in line with the Homeric 
 and i^schylean adjustment, being established in the 
 might of a rational and temperamental adherence 
 to powers and principles held to be the most potent 
 and the best. Its peace is made firm through con- 
 stancy of noble mood, rather than through the 
 reasoning processes which support it. 
 
 This path of surest satisfaction, which in freedom 
 of soul a man may tread, is presented in the first 
 strophe of the ode chanted by the chorus when the 
 
144 DELIVERANCE 
 
 drama of CEdipus the King has reached its final 
 stress of tension, and the discovery is imminent : 
 "May destiny still find me winning the praise of 
 reverent purity in all words and deeds sanctioned 
 by those laws of range sublime, called into life 
 throughout the high clear heaven, whose father is 
 Olympus alone ; their parent was no race of mortal 
 men, no, nor shall oblivion ever lay them to sleep; 
 the god is mighty in them, and he grows not old." ^ 
 So long as man fulfils this prayer, he is possessed 
 of the best that comes to man ; with peace in his 
 soul, he is in accord with the mightiest arbiters of 
 his destiny. But CEdipus unwittingly, and yet 
 because he was himself, has shattered these laws 
 through deeds which the tongue refuses to utter. 
 It may be that no man is evil through unwitting 
 sin; and that toward such, men's anger softens 
 (Soph. Frag., 599; Track., 727). Yet all the absolv- 
 ing powers of life cannot make CEdipus as if he had 
 not done these deeds; and as the deeds cannot be 
 undone, neither can the consequences involved in 
 them — any more than when a blind man steps off 
 a precipice, one born blind, say, for a parent's sin ! 
 As easy can a man cease to be himself as throw off 
 the entailments of his acts. He can only live them 
 out, as he lives out his life. So the CEdipus at 
 Colonus comes as the drama of the close of a long 
 expiation, no paltry exculpation by foolish or angry 
 ^(Ed, Tyr.y 863-871. Jebb's Translation. 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 145 
 
 argument; though as against a shameless accuser, 
 (Edipus can free himself from blame quite over- 
 whelmingly : " Bloodshed — incest — misery — all 
 this thy lips have launched against me, — all this 
 that I have borne, woe is me ! by no choice of mine : 
 for such was the pleasure of the gods, wroth, haply, 
 with the race from of old. Take me alone, and 
 thou couldst find no sin to upbraid me withal, in 
 quittance whereof I was driven to sin thus against 
 myself and against my kin. Tell me, now, — if, 
 by voice of oracle, some divine doom was coming 
 on my sire, that he should die by a son's hand, how 
 couldst thou justly reproach me therewith, who was 
 then unborn, whom no sire had yet begotten, no 
 mother's womb conceived ? And if, when born to 
 woe, as I was born, I met my sire in strife, and slew 
 him, all ignorant what I was doing, and to whom, 
 — how couldst thou justly blame the unknowing 
 deed r 1 
 
 Thus the blind old man strikes away the ground 
 from his accuser's feet; but not thus would he cut 
 the ground away from fact. He had said with 
 deeper truth: "My deeds have been sufferings 
 rather than acts." Long fellowship with sorrows, 
 and a noble nature have brought resignation. 
 Through bearing thus the consequences of his deeds, 
 he attains his peace. At last he is accepted by the 
 Powers which absolve and consecrate. At the 
 
 1 (Ed. Col.y 962-977. Jebb's Translation. 
 L 
 
146 DELIVERANCE 
 
 thunder signal, understood by him, he rises, and 
 with no need of guidance for his sightlessness, moves 
 onward to the place where he may hide his life with 
 the dead, or rather where, somehow from the gods, 
 the lower world opens for him in kindness, without 
 pain: his passing "was not with lamentation or in 
 sickness and suffering, but above mortal's won- 
 derful." 
 
 After the death of CEdipus, the accursed frat- 
 ricidal struggles of his sons were doomed to come, 
 and draw to a devoted death that perfect flower of 
 Greek womanhood, Antigone. Like the tale of 
 CEdipus or Agamemnon, her story needs no telling. 
 Antigone's adjustment was Antigone; it lay in her 
 character, her essential being; an adjustment of an 
 heroic woman's perfect devotion, her perfect follow- 
 ing of the best. Its power was her high constant 
 mood, supported by the reasonings of her mind, but 
 scarcely needing them. Though death must follow, 
 there is neither hesitation nor need of any prior 
 dialectic stimulation in her resolve to bury her 
 brother's corpse. She, being herself, could not fail 
 so to resolve and act, — koXov fwi tovto Troiova-r) OaveLV, 
 
 she tells her weaker sister, Ismene : "Well for 
 me to die doing this; as a loved one I shall lie 
 with him, a loved one, sinless in my crime; since 
 what I must do to satisfy the dead is for a longer 
 time than what is owed the living : there I shall lie 
 forever." And when the helpless act is done, and 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 147 
 
 Antigone is to die, she bids Ismene, now vainly 
 seeking to have part with her : " Be of good cheer ; 
 thou livest; but my soul died long ago, so that I 
 might serve the dead." 
 
 The drama turns upon the conflict between the 
 ruler's decree, the law proclaimed by man, and those 
 higher laws and sanctities established in the divine 
 order, — which Roman jurists and the Middle 
 Ages were to recognise as the lex naturalis. They 
 have been acclaimed in the (Edipus Tyr annus ; and 
 now as against Kreon's decree, which Antigone 
 admits having wilfully disobeyed, she appeals to 
 them : "For it was not Zeus that had published me 
 that edict ; not such are the laws set among men by 
 the justice who dwells with the gods below; nor 
 deemed I that thy decrees were of such force, that 
 a mortal could override the unwritten and unfailing 
 statutes of heaven. For their life is not of to-day 
 or yesterday, but from all time, and no man knows 
 when they were first put forth. 
 
 "Not through dread of any human pride could I 
 answer to the gods for breaking these. Die I must, 
 — I knew that well even without thy edicts. But 
 if I am to die before my time, I count that a gain : 
 for when any one lives, as I do, compassed about 
 with evils, can such a one find aught but gain in 
 death ? 
 
 "So for me to meet this doom is but a trifling 
 grief; but if I had suffered my mother's son to lie 
 
148 DELIVERANCE 
 
 in death an unburied corpse, that would have 
 grieved me." ^ 
 
 To disobey a ruler's decree, in order to follow the 
 law of conscience, seemed to the chorus of old 
 Thebans, even in this clear case, a questionable 
 course. A halting sympathy, tending to disap- 
 proval, leaves Antigone hapless, despairing almost, 
 as she is led to her living tomb, "unwept, unfriended, 
 without marriage-song." Unhappy, she is still 
 convinced, — if these judgements of men are pleas- 
 ing to the gods, why, she may learn her fault here- 
 after ! Her last utterance is of noblest poise and 
 truth : "Behold, princes of Thebes, the last daugh- 
 ter of your kings, what I suffer, and from whom, 
 because I revere piety." That was her adjustment. 
 
 As an expression of the human adjustment with 
 the powers controlling human destiny, sculpture 
 and painting cannot be as definite as poetry, which 
 has language for its medium. Nevertheless, for 
 those who have the interpretive imagination, an 
 impressive temperamental adjustment lies in the 
 remains of the noblest Greek sculpture : that of the 
 greatness of man in spite of fate, and with an added 
 element of serenity, which it is sculpture's preroga- 
 tive to express in a pre-eminent degree. 
 
 The remains of the sculptures of the Parthenon 
 exemplify this adjustment. Their general theme 
 
 * Ant., 450-468, Jebb's Translation. 
 
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 149 
 
 was the greatness of Athens, attained (according to 
 the fond Periclean-Phidian ideal) through rever- 
 ence for the gods as well as through human intelli- 
 gence, valour, and self-sacrifice; and a greatness 
 likewise to be rejoiced in fittingly and righteously. 
 On the east pediment, Athene breaks into full and 
 potent being ; on the west, she conquers Poseidon in 
 vindication of her pre-excellent claim to be recog- 
 nised as the goddess of Athens. The metopes show 
 Olympian gods victorious over earth-born giants, 
 Greeks conquering Amazons, Lapiths defending the 
 sanctity of their marriage-festival against brutal 
 Centaurs, and, it may be, Athenians victorious over 
 Persians: victories of mind and civilisation and 
 freedom over their brutal or slavish opposites. 
 
 So there was rendered the divine and human 
 struggle through which safety and order and free- 
 dom were attained, and also, in Athene's birth, the 
 glorious inception of her city's destiny. Finally, the 
 frieze pictured the serene beauty of Athens' present, 
 her youths and stately maidens, her wise elders, 
 and the presence of the gods abiding there. Athens 
 has achieved ; in human power and in reverence 
 for the gods she is most bravely blessed. Rhythms 
 of sculptured harmony reflect the discipline and self- 
 control, the temperance and grace of spirit, which, 
 ideally viewed, formed the serene greatness of her 
 civic state — her corporate adjustment with her 
 destinies. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Greek Philosophers 
 
 TJEING Greeks, the early Greek philosophers 
 -*-' cared for much that entered the heroic ideals 
 of the epic and dramatic poets. We are not to take 
 too narrowly their main aspiration, which was to 
 know and understand. For they were not recluses, 
 but members, often active, leading, or even revolu- 
 tionary, of city-states; and while they sought 
 knowledge for the satisfaction which lay in know- 
 ing, the search was well related to the business of 
 human living. Their human ideal looked to the 
 fulfilment of the whole rational man, and included 
 all objects which the intellect might commend. 
 Yet of this whole, the wisdom which is assimilated 
 knowledge was the noblest portion, that which in 
 itself could satisfy, and without which the other 
 human felicities either were unattainable, or, if 
 quickly grasped, were likely to prove worthless. 
 Knowledge was the test and standard, as well as 
 the necessary guide, of life. 
 
 Accordingly the deliverance of the human spirit 
 which lies in early Greek philosophy — its libera- 
 tion from anxieties unto its freest being — pertains 
 
 ISO 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 151 
 
 to investigation, contemplation, and reflexion, rather 
 than to heroic action, or to material or emotional 
 gratification : it is the OetoprjrLKo^ ^Co'Sy the vita 
 contemplativa. With the very earliest of these 
 philosophers, this vita lay in the function of curiosity 
 engaged in observing, 0€(iipia in the primary sense 
 of looking at things, but with the mind's eye as well 
 as with the bodily organ. If one enquires what 
 they were looking at or looking for, it may be 
 answered, they were looking for the stable cause, 
 source rather, of the changing things about them, 
 including their mortal selves. That, once discerned, 
 would satisfy their intellectual natures, since it 
 would provide a basis for all life and the thought 
 about it; would thus prove for themselves a sure 
 intellectual satisfaction. 
 
 The well-known names of these men may be men- 
 tioned, if only to make sure that there were ideas 
 and temperamental elements common to them all, 
 which will justify some generalisation as to their 
 views and their adjustment. Certainly the opinions 
 of those first open-eyed and open-minded lonians — 
 Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes — did not agree; 
 and the thoughts of the Ephesian Heracleitus dif- 
 fered from them deeply. Still more fundamentally 
 the physics of Parmenides and Zeno differed from the 
 scheme of Heracleitus. They were Western Greeks, 
 called Eleatics after Greek Elea founded in an Italy 
 not yet Italian. That the hypotheses of all these 
 
152 DELIVERANCE 
 
 men differed is not the point, but rather that they 
 were all impelled to investigate and consider, and 
 seek satisfaction in the contemplation of the world 
 and in the strength of their meditations. 
 
 The three first-named were citizens of Miletus, a 
 powerful and rich and active-minded city of Asia 
 Minor. Yet not alone within its walls, but through 
 this Ionia, both insular and of the mainland, in 
 the seventh and following centuries, curiosity was 
 sleepless, and the mind moved toward Oeoypirj, 
 <f)L\oar(j)Lrj, and iaropLr] — physical observation, specu- 
 lation, and the human story. Thus it was in 
 Ionia, and when colonies of these lonians sailed 
 westward, where cities might be founded in a 
 benignant land, far from the power of Lydians and 
 Persians, the colonists did not change their minds 
 by changing the skies above them. 
 
 The opinions of these early Greek thinkers about 
 the world are not to be despised, just because we 
 deem ourselves some points closer to the great 
 infinite truth of things than they. What should we 
 think about the world if we were to regard it newly, 
 with no advantage from the range of thought behind 
 us, including the opinions of these very men f 
 From the fragmentary remains and corrupt reports 
 of them, it is hard to ascertain even their main 
 tenets, and impossible to do more than hazardously 
 imagine their data and methods of reasoning. 
 Each facet of their thinking, as when they thought 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 1 53 
 
 of Sun and Earth, had not the significance of the 
 like-named symbols, when we use them in our 
 thoughts. The same words have other meanings 
 now. 
 
 Yet one cannot read the reports concerning 
 them, and the fragments of their utterances, with- 
 out realising the largeness of their thinking; and 
 if their ideas seem crude and curious, we also know 
 how they passed into the theories of Plato and 
 Aristotle, to be made over or furbished up so as to 
 be presentable to the human mind for ever since. 
 And a still more vital bond between us and them 
 lies in the assumption, which may well be an assur- 
 ance, that as common intellectual appetitions tended 
 to unite their minds, so the circle of human unity 
 may readily extend to include those even among 
 ourselves who find contentment in research and 
 meditation. These men are gone, and but seeming 
 dust remains of the philosophies with which their 
 thoughts were occupied and their lives made free. 
 Yet it is pleasant for us, who know too many things 
 and not enough, to turn back to elemental hypotheses 
 and feel the ancestry of the men who devised them. 
 
 The first matter of the world is water, said Thales; 
 and tradition assures us of the constancy with 
 which his mind was busied with the phenomena of 
 the earth and heavens, while he also abstracted his 
 thoughts through geometry. Likewise, apparently, 
 his hearer Anaximandros, and then Anaximenes, 
 
154 DELIVERANCE 
 
 found satisfaction in an elemental main hypothesis, 
 while it is also plain that each of them kept his 
 mind active upon nature's curious phenomena. 
 What kind of investigation and imagination brought 
 the former to assert that living creatures came from 
 the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun, 
 and that man was like a fish in the beginning ? or 
 led the latter to pregnant conceptions of world- 
 formation through rarefaction and condensation ? 
 Then how did the problematic Pythagoras come by 
 his thought of transmigration, for example ? He, 
 too, took comfort in geometry and numbers, and 
 realised how deeply numerical relationships enter 
 the core of things. His possible contemporary, 
 Xenophanes, seems to have won his soul's content 
 by raising within himself an idea of God, neither in 
 form or thought like mortals, but sheer sight and 
 thought and hearing; toilless and moveless, ruling 
 by his thought. Did he find satisfaction also in the 
 sense that the gods had not revealed all things in 
 the beginning .? It was for man to seek and find in 
 time what was the better. Was not that indeed 
 the blessed sweat of his mind, by which he should 
 truly live ? 
 
 Perhaps the same was felt by the oracular Hera- 
 cleitus, who said that "Nature loves to hide," or 
 remain hidden, for the Greek verb is in the middle 
 voice. He lashed the stupidity of others, — of the 
 common many who neither know nor learn, also 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 155 
 
 even of those, reputed wise, who mistake knowing 
 many things for understanding; perhaps most par- 
 ticularly all those who would not listen to his own 
 satisfying doctrine that everything entrains its 
 opposite, becomes its opposite, and in truth is its 
 opposite, or at least cannot exist without its oppo- 
 site. There can be no One without a Many, to 
 speak in later phrase. Conversely, if there be a 
 conversely, the strife of opposites is equally an 
 attunement, a procreation — war is father of all. 
 So all things pass into each other: the world, un- 
 created by god or man, is an everlasting rekindling 
 fire-transformation : in this the God is day as well 
 as night, summer as well as winter, both death and 
 life. 
 
 Was there not enough adjustment for this man 
 in such a conception of the universe ? Especially 
 when he saw law and measure permeating the eternal 
 flux, and in human affairs recognised the abundant 
 flow of law divine from which human laws are fed, 
 and in the individual man perceived that his char- 
 acter was his fate ? 
 
 Such thoughts made this man's peace and free- 
 dom; as likewise did the thought of Parmenides 
 for him. From opposite convictions the two drew 
 equal satisfaction — the one resting in the concep- 
 tion of ceaseless change, the other in that of per- 
 manent and solid being. This other was grandly 
 reliant on his thought about things — as he thought. 
 
1 56 DELIVERANCE 
 
 so must they be; so must Being be: "for it is the 
 same thing that can be thought and that can be." 
 Thought and thought's end or source are the same. 
 Hence existence, which is a moveless corporeal 
 plenum, conforms to the philosopher's necessary 
 thought of it. Comfort enough here ! There is 
 neither coming into being, nor passing away. It is 
 interesting to note that Parmenides, with his 
 "Greek" love of the definite, conceived his plenum 
 of being as a finite, though eternal, sphere. But 
 his follower, Melissus, saw the impossibility of 
 spatial limit to reality. 
 
 One is obliged to mention that strange wonder- 
 worker, and yet scientific investigator and philoso- 
 pher, Empedocles of Agragas, with his fateful four 
 elements, which were really six. For to the four 
 must be added Love and Strife, Love the mixer. 
 Strife the separator and refashioner — two effi- 
 cient causes, comments Aristotle, and yet material, 
 being themselves measurable portions of the brew. 
 
 The difficulty, as it would seem, of conceiving 
 force or agency save as a ponderable corporeal 
 thing, was a pregnant confusion, out of which 
 Greek thought was destined most profitably to rise. 
 The process of this evolution, as yet incomplete, 
 appears in the nimble and potent agency of forma- 
 tive creation which Anaxagoras devised and desig- 
 nated by the name of Nous, the Greek word for 
 mind. It was he who came to Athens on Pericles' 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 157 
 
 invitation, doubtless to his advantage, and yet also 
 to be the first of the philosophers persecuted by 
 that jealous and suspicious demos. Holding, as he 
 did, that all things are constituted of an infinite 
 number of infinitesimal seeds, so that all things are 
 in everything, and no thing is so small as not to par- 
 take of all, holding to this view, he felt the need of 
 an efficient Arranger of the infinite constituent seeds 
 of things, something apart from them. And thus 
 he describes it : 
 
 "All other things partake in a portion of every 
 thing, while Nous is infinite and self-ruled, and is 
 mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. 
 For if it were not by itself but were mixed with 
 anything else, it would partake in all things if it 
 were mixed with any . . . and the things mixed 
 with it would hinder it, so that it would have 
 power over nothing in the same way that it has now, 
 being alone by itself. For it is the thinnest of all 
 things and the purest, and it has all knowledge 
 about everything and the greatest strength; and 
 Nous has power over all things, both greater and 
 smaller, that have life. And Nous had power over 
 the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve 
 in the beginning. And it began to revolve first 
 from a small beginning; but the revolution now 
 extends over a larger space, and will extend over a 
 larger still. And all the things that are mingled 
 together and separated off and distinguished are all 
 
158 DELIVERANCE 
 
 known by Nous. And Nous set in order all things 
 that were to be, and all things that were and are 
 not now and that are, and this revolution in which 
 now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon, 
 and the air and the aether that are separated off. 
 And this revolution caused the separating off, and 
 the rare is separated off from the dense, the warm 
 from the cold, the light from the dark, and the dry 
 from the moist. And there are many portions in 
 many things. But no thing is altogether separated 
 off nor distinguished from anything else except 
 Nous. And all Nous is alike, both the greater 
 and the smaller; while nothing else is like any 
 thing else, but each single thing is and was most 
 manifestly those things of which it has most in 
 it." 1 
 
 Nous is thus a moving, ordering, and knowing 
 substance. With but a mechanical mentality it is 
 not yet sheer immaterial mind. Yet it is groping 
 thither — dreaming on thoughts to come. We 
 may be sure of its vital importance in the scheme of 
 thought wherein this philosopher found his con- 
 tent. And as for the man's effect, one perhaps may 
 say that he started the Mind on its career as Demi- 
 urge, and made way for the conception of the 
 Divine Will as Creator of the Universe. 
 
 Early Greek thought, unspiritualised in its con- 
 
 * Translation taken from J. Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy y 
 p. 301 (2d Ed., 1908), to which the writer is otherwise indebted. 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 159 
 
 ceptions, and looking to matter as the primeval 
 source, might well regard matter and being as co- 
 extensive. Matter and no-matter, conceived as 
 equivalent to Being and no-Being, led to the Eleatic 
 denial of motion, the most universal fact of obser- 
 vation as well as the necessary postulate of any 
 explanation of the World. An escape from this 
 dilemma was furnished by the Atoms of Leucippus 
 and Democritus, infinite in number, indivisible, of 
 every shape, possessing the eternal and indestructible 
 qualities of the Eleatic Being, but separated from 
 each other by narrow fissures of space, and in cease- 
 less motion. Their falling whirl produced the 
 natural forms of the visible Kosmos, and even the 
 souls of men, which consisted of fiery atoms having 
 the liveliest motion.^ 
 
 There is no need to say more of this mightiest 
 and most fruitful of all Greek physical hypotheses, 
 the substance of which apparently Leucippus 
 delivered to Democritus. But the latter extended 
 and coordinated and humanised philosophy as none 
 had done before him. How can one sum up such a 
 
 ^ The notions of matter and reality or existence not having 
 been distinguished before Leucippus's time, he could predicate the 
 existence of empty space only in uncouth and equivocal terms. 
 He had to say that what is not {i.e. not matter) is of no less 
 account than what is {i.e. matter), and "that both are alike the 
 causes of things that come into being." Simplicius quoting 
 from Theophrastus — Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker^ 2d Ed., 
 Bd. I, p. 345, and trans, by Burnet, Early Greek Phil., p. 384. 
 
l6o DELIVERANCE 
 
 man from the fragments that remain of his many 
 and admirable books, — of whom Aristotle says 
 that no one had so profoundly considered growth 
 and change ? His was a prodigious vision, a vision 
 of the mind, inductive, microscopic, penetrating to 
 the infinitesimal, and extending to an infinitude of 
 worlds beyond the range of mortal eye. It is hard 
 for us to make his fiery soul-atoms think; but we 
 are amazed at his insight into the ways of the ap- 
 prehending mind, as when he distinguished between 
 the "primary" and "secondary" qualities of objects. 
 Busied with physical investigations, he fruitfully 
 recognised the need to consider the differences 
 between the convincing apperceptions of the atoms 
 of his soul and the confusions issuing from the 
 atoms of sensation. Although he did not, like his 
 very different contemporary Socrates, try his 
 thought in the dialectic of definition, he formed a 
 canon of principles by which to discriminate between 
 the means and method of true knowledge and the 
 ways of fallacious opinion, springing from the five 
 senses. 
 
 Rational knowledge became for this man the 
 standard not only of thinking but of living. Before 
 its bar he endeavoured to order the contents of life, 
 — whatever entered into human welfare or misery. 
 While his fundamental physical hypotheses held to 
 the laws of that necessity which left no place for 
 divine interposition, he yet evolved from his clearly 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS i6l 
 
 graduated discrimination a finely spiritualised ethics. 
 Knowledge, virtue, happiness, were at one in his 
 scheme of life. "From understanding proceed good 
 counsel, unerring speech, and right conduct." With 
 him, thought and intent are always the criterion, 
 and the good things of the spirit are more divine. 
 "Happiness and misery are of the soul." A con- 
 tented mind makes the best life for man ; tempering 
 one's will to avoid the tumult of desire. "Good- 
 ness lies not merely in doing no wrong, but in wish- 
 ing to do none." "A man should be most ashamed 
 before himself." For all men, education in virtue 
 is better than the constraint of laws. 
 
 A cheerful soul was this Democritus, who said 
 that a "life without its festivals was a long road 
 without an inn to rest at." But a veritable mon- 
 arch in his thought was he, who desired knowledge 
 rather than the wealth of the Great King, and knew 
 that "to the wise man the whole earth is open; 
 for the Universe is the fatherland of a noble soul." 
 Thus his temper and philosophy made a large ad- 
 justment, a home of peace, a spring of freedom for 
 this great-minded man. 
 
 The immediate antecedent of Plato is Socrates; 
 but Plato's philosophy holds all prior and contempo- 
 rary Greek thought and feeling, from Thales to the 
 Sophists and Plato's own generation of Socrates' sup- 
 posed disciples, and from Homer to Euripides and 
 Aristophanes. A further fringing background for his 
 
1 62 DELIVERANCE 
 
 thought is the supposed traditional wisdom of the 
 older Mediterranean world. 
 
 The Sophists played an educational role, and also 
 introduced an analytic self-consciousness into Greek 
 thinking. But their exaggerated insistence upon 
 the individual as the measure of all values, includ- 
 ing truth, loosed men from their proper anchorages 
 in moral conviction and philosophic certitude. No 
 veritable adjustment, no surety of spiritual freedom, 
 could come through such intellectual dissipation. 
 
 Save by reaction. That gained moral force and 
 took dialectic form in Socrates, and flowered with 
 many a dazzling hue in Plato. We have all known 
 the former from our childhood ; none the less is he 
 an enigma. Undoubtedly this keenest of ques- 
 tioners so conducted his inquiries as to lead on and 
 up to well-defined conceptions; and undoubtedly 
 in this way he deepened the self-consciousness and 
 self-criticism of philosophic thinking. So, no one 
 disputes the measured words of Aristotle which 
 ascribe to him the inductive method and general 
 concepts or definitions. We also believe that, with 
 unswerving ethical earnestness, he strove con- 
 stantly, through this method, and making use of 
 the resulting definitions, to arrive at laws of conduct 
 valid for all men, because founded on conceptions 
 true for all. With confidence, finally, we ascribe 
 to him the principle that wisdom and virtue are the 
 same: true knowledge must produce right con- 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 163 
 
 duct; since no one errs or sins willingly. This, at 
 all events, was true of Socrates himself, and made 
 the basis of his adjustment in that fearless and 
 rational freedom of right conduct, which has held 
 the admiration of mankind. 
 
 Cicero's memorable statement, that Socrates 
 called Philosophy down from the heavens and estab- 
 lished her in the abodes of men, and, as we say, set 
 her upon the study of man, is eulogy which Socrates 
 may well deserve, but which, in justice, he must 
 share at least with Democritus and the Sophists. 
 
 A number of gifted human beings seem bound 
 together in the personality of Plato; and the ad- 
 justment wherein so manifold a nature could bring 
 its different faculties to harmonious action had need 
 to include more than one field of satisfying activity, 
 more than one fount of peace. Plato was hotly in 
 love with mortal beauty; and doubtless often had 
 to bridle what we of northern climes and modern 
 times might call his sensuality. More constantly, 
 however, the image-building, story-building imagi- 
 nation of this poet and dramatist, superseding the 
 importunities of sense, dispersed his passion in 
 poetic myths, or employed his faculties in dramas 
 of the mind, with plots formed from the stress and 
 pitfalls of dialectic. Plato's desires change and are 
 transfigured as they pass from the lower to the 
 higher planes of his nature. Its topmost needs were 
 those of its metaphysical energies; its sublimest 
 
1 64 DELIVERANCE 
 
 insistency was as to the reality of mind and the 
 validity of concepts mentally visualised, and tested, 
 if not formed, by an argumentation which might be 
 destructive or constructive, severe, stupendous, 
 whimsical, but captivating usually, and always 
 carried forward by a resistlessly creative imagination. 
 What other man ever had such joy in the work 
 and play of his mind as Plato ! Here was his real 
 absorption, his real deliverance — that which veri- 
 tably made his spiritual freedom and his peace. It 
 satisfied him, and he trusted it. His was a great 
 faith. His confidence was absolute in the convic- 
 tions of his mind, as well as in the certainty of the 
 realisation of its imperative demands. Magnificent 
 as was his dialectic, strenuous as might be its argu- 
 ments, Plato's faith was pinned to none of them. 
 While willing to follow whither the living and breath- 
 ing argument might lead, he may be no more serious 
 in his reliance on its procedure or conclusion, than 
 he is upon the truth of the illustrative tales he 
 knows so well to weave. For, as the precursor of 
 all that after him might be named Platonic or Neo- 
 platonic, he is always conscious that no argument 
 can compass the whole truth — of which the 
 processes of dialectic mirror the broken rays. 
 Throughout the Dialogues, his parables, whether 
 parables of the poetic imagination or the less obvious 
 parables of dialectic, change and pass; and while 
 he may have been earnest with them at the time. 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 165 
 
 they remain but tentative, open to refutation, ready 
 to be exchanged for something truer or more illu- 
 minative. None the less was he insistent that his 
 convictions should be set in reason, should be 
 reasoned out through argument — if that were only 
 possible ! 
 
 The most famous and influential form assumed by 
 Plato's conviction of the absolute reality of things 
 spiritual was the "Platonic Idea." The mind con- 
 templates the universals in all things, sees them 
 everywhere. With Plato, these type-ideas, from 
 existing solely in the mind, likewise transcend it, 
 and are beheld as absolute spiritual entities, and as 
 the creating shaping powers of the objects of sense- 
 perception — which are their creatures or images. 
 Noblest and realest of all is the idea of the Good, 
 the most absolute of ideal prototypes as well as 
 perhaps the most universal plaistic power. Shall it 
 not be as God, — the Fashioner of the World, the 
 Mea^sure of all things ? 
 
 With Plato, the conceptions of the mind are like- 
 wise the desires of his soul. His spiritual nature 
 flows out to them desirously, yearning to bring 
 them to realisation in his soul. This is the soul's 
 health and well-being, its blessed happiness : to 
 mirror and realise within itself beauty, justice, 
 goodness, the excellence of every virtue. In this 
 realisation, this making real, are set the freedom 
 and the peace of Plato, the blessed mood which 
 
1 66 DELIVERANCE 
 
 sometimes we also may gain from reading the 
 Phcedo or the Phadrus, the Gorgias or the Theatcetus. 
 
 One sees how Plato's ethical convictions, whether 
 received from his master, or his very own, have 
 root in these conceptions of the mind which are also 
 the desires of his soul. Knowledge and Virtue are 
 the same : How can one know these beautiful ideas 
 and not desire them ? and not realise them ? Only 
 through knowing them imperfectly can one sin or 
 err. And again, even more obviously, justice is an 
 excellence of the soul, of man's veritable self: it is 
 almost a truism — if only the world would accept 
 it — that the unjust man cannot be in a state of 
 well-being, cannot be veritably happy. The best 
 that can come to him is to be punished, which is 
 to be healed. How then can one doubt that it is 
 better to suffer, than to do, injustice ? Or how 
 can any harm whatever be his who has realised 
 that Best within him which is the idea of the Good ? 
 Or, in common words, how can ill come to a good 
 man ? And as for truth, — is it not the verity of 
 the good ? how shall one not crave it and esteem it 
 always ? 
 
 Plato's freedom dwelt in these convictions, and 
 in his faith in them. As he grew older, he held 
 with increasing assurance that the world is ruled 
 by Mind, and not left, a chance medley, to unreason 
 (Philebus). Did not God create it, and create it 
 because he was good, and form it somehow in the 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 167 
 
 likeness of God, and with a soul throughout its 
 being ? {Timaus). In his earlier as well as later 
 Dialogues, he assumes the existence of the spiritual 
 when he is not engaged in proving it: the con- 
 viction of the reality and the eternal indestructibility 
 of the human soul abides with him, and he in it. 
 It was Plato who added this philosophic conviction 
 of immortality to the human adjustment lying in the 
 6e(i}prp-LKo<s Plo^ — the search and contemplation of 
 truth. In one dialogue at least {Phcedo) he argues 
 with clear austerity that only after separation from 
 the body can the soul attain its fairest being in 
 knowledge of the truth. 
 
 The Platonic ideal, which the Platonic faith 
 realises and transforms into the Platonic deliverance 
 of the soul, lies — if one dare make any such 
 assertion as to this Protean genius — in the com- 
 plete and beautiful perfecting of the soul, which is 
 man's spiritual and immortal part: the perfecting 
 of it in the knowledge of virtue and the virtue of 
 knowledge; the rendering of the soul perfect and 
 fair, in truth and in right conduct, in geometry 
 and music and dialectic (with fitting conceptions of 
 the Universe and its Maker) as well as in courage 
 and justice. The things of the world of sense- 
 perception have their value too, giving temperate 
 pleasure and satisfaction to the outer man, and to 
 the soul as well, so long as they head no revolt 
 against its leadership. All these phases of human 
 
1 68 DELIVERANCE 
 
 concern are included, and the lower subordinated 
 to the higher, in that consideration of Hfe and its 
 regulation, which Plato wrote in his last years, and 
 called the Laws. It holds the soul and God 
 above all, and impresses one as the most devout and 
 religious composition of the classic world. If it 
 suffers somewhat from an octogenarian prolixity, it 
 has broader human wisdom than the much earlier 
 Republic. It contains the last turns of Plato's 
 thinking and will be found a storehouse of Aristo- 
 telianism (that virtue is a mean is in it), and later 
 thought. 
 
 No more than in the case of Plato, is there any 
 need for us to attempt a statement of the contents 
 of Aristotle's system. We have but to consider 
 the end, or rather spring, of his philosophy — the 
 final cause, if one will use the term, by reason of 
 which he philosophised, and through which this 
 most prodigious of philosophers found his satis- 
 faction. 
 
 Aristotle clearly stated his ideal of the noblest and 
 most satisfying, as well as the most divine, mode of 
 life that man can reach : and then he exemplified 
 this ideal in himself, and demonstrated that it held 
 his best freedom of action, his best activity, his 
 actualisation, his ei/rcXex^ia, the fulfilment of him- 
 self in the attainment of his final end and actuality. 
 This was, of course, the life of mind, and pre- 
 eminently of the mind fixed upon the contemplation 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 169 
 
 of ultimate causes; while from this highest func- 
 tion of the soul, the true activities of man sloped 
 downward, broadening to a base of virtues which 
 are rooted, and also have their end, in character and 
 conduct. 
 
 Aristotle's intellect penetrated every province of 
 investigation. He drew all human knowledge to 
 himself, added to it from his own thinking and re- 
 search, and stamped the whole indelibly with the 
 methods through which he mastered it and the forms 
 in which he apprehended it. Which province 
 satisfied him best, is hard to tell, even though he 
 says that a knowledge — the investigation — of 
 final causes is the most delightful. Nor, per- 
 haps, is it right to decide this point by the result of 
 his labours, estimated in the light of our present 
 views upon the universe and human society. Speak- 
 ing from this standpoint, we might term him (in 
 our presumption) an unhappy physicist, especially 
 in astronomy fatally reactionary, and blind to those 
 conceptions of his time which proved themselves 
 the best. In the further realm of metaphysics 
 (more properly named ontology), no one would 
 dare not call him great. Then in the constructive 
 analysis and classification of the forms and cate- 
 gories of valid statement, he was, for good or ill, 
 for mental discipline or sterilisation, the creator of 
 formal logic. Further, he wrote most notably upon 
 the Soul or Life of man, and of its faculties and 
 
170 DELIVERANCE 
 
 ways of apprehension. Then, wonderful to say, 
 with powers unimpeded by such preoccupations and 
 sometimes even detached from them, he was a great 
 biologist, pre-eminent as a classifier of living organ- 
 isms, and as a comparative anatomist and em- 
 bryologist. Finally, how can we think him less 
 interested in human society and human conduct, 
 a,nd in the arts which captivate and delight men ? 
 — seeing that he composed a work on Ethics 
 rightly admired by many generations of mankind, 
 and a work on Politics of enormous influence, and 
 also works on Rhetoric and the Art of Poetry. No, 
 we will not presume to say in what department of 
 intellectual creation this stupendous Aristotle took 
 the keenest joy, but simply recall to mind certain 
 of his statements and bits of his exposition of human 
 nature and its proper functions, wherein he shows 
 at once his ideal of happiness, and the method of 
 his spiritual freedom. 
 
 That which man always seeks for its own sake, 
 as a final end, is his happiness, his well-being, — 
 cvSai/xovwx. It is this which suffices of itself, and 
 makes life desirable. It is man's true self-fulfil- 
 ment, through the proper activity or functioning 
 of his nature. But his nature, or, if one will, his 
 life, is in part shared by the plants and the animals 
 other than man, all obviously below him in the scale 
 of being. That which is his unshared own, and the 
 best that is in him, is his rational intelligence, 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 1 71 
 
 which most clearly knows itself and is most amply- 
 self-conscious. Or we may say this highest part of 
 man is the highest part of that which constitutes his 
 organic life, or, rather, the first stage of its actuali- 
 sation or fulfilment, its first ivTcXexcui, to wit, his 
 soul. For soul, with Aristotle, is most comprehen- 
 sive, and means the life of the whole human organ- 
 ism taking its first form, entering indeed upon a 
 composite self-realisation, to wit, of its nutritive 
 and sensitive faculties, as well as its faculty of 
 thought. 
 
 So the highest and most peculiar and proper 
 part of man and of his soul or life, is intelligence. 
 But that, like all of life, is an activity, or at least 
 actualises or fulfils itself as an activity, and not as 
 a passive state. Life is action, and the highest 
 part of life consists in the self-conscious action of 
 the understanding. And herein consists man's 
 evSaiixovMy — his final end and happiness, — and from 
 our present point of view, his peace and freedom 
 and dehverance. 
 
 Let us make this more explicit. The rational 
 part of the soul or life of man, the ^v)(rj, is twofold, 
 practical and contemplative. The practical j/'vx? 
 is occupied with contingent changing things, which 
 may be affected by our action; the contemplative 
 is directed to the speculative knowledge of that 
 which is of necessity and changeless. These psychic 
 faculties, termed respectively, if one will, prudence 
 
172 DELIVERANCE 
 
 and wisdom, represent the practical, or ethical, and 
 the speculative virtues, though the term virtue is 
 usually appropriated to the former. The practical 
 virtues are requisite for the happiness of man as a 
 social animal. They do not come through instruc- 
 tion as much as through constant practice, thereby 
 becoming ingrained as habits of conduct, which, 
 inasmuch as they spring from reason or obey it, 
 are to be deemed purposeful or selective. Their 
 characteristic is the avoidance of excess, or the pur- 
 suance of the proper mean, in conformity to the 
 conduct and opinions of the best men. For their 
 practice, moreover, opportunity is needed, and some 
 moderate supporting share of material goods. 
 
 To a less, but still to some, degree, material goods 
 are needed for that highest happiness which con- 
 sists in the enduring activity of the speculative 
 reason, and has solely knowledge as its end. It is 
 sought for the sake of no advantage beyond itself, 
 and thus is free from all practical and contingent 
 aims. Well we know that Aristotle was a lover of 
 all knowledge, even of the meanest creatures and 
 their smallest functions. And yet this man of 
 universal intellectual appetition, who recognised 
 something wonderful in every work of nature, 
 desired to rise from these broad low fields of knowl- 
 edge of the caused and changeable to the investi- 
 gation and contemplation of the changeless causes, 
 in their uncontingent absoluteness: — surely the 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 173 
 
 freest of all sciences and the most self-sufficing, and 
 its votaries the freest of mankind, and the most 
 divine, the most like God. 
 
 For God, in Aristotle's scheme of physics and 
 ontology, as well as in his consideration of human 
 and divine happiness, is the moveless mover, draw- 
 ing all things through their desire for the supreme 
 Good that he is. But he is also the Contemplator 
 par excellence ; and if the Contemplator, what should 
 be worthy of his contemplation save Himself? 
 Therefore the man who leads the life of knowledge 
 is like God, and he whose mind is fixed, so far as 
 may be possible for man, upon the causes of all being, 
 is most like God. 
 
 The highest pleasure forms part of this highest 
 happiness. Happiness is an active energy; and 
 pleasure {rjhovrj) is part and parcel of its true and 
 unimpeded action, its perfecting, its reXciWi?. 
 Pleasure thus perfects (tcXcioi) the energy (cVc/oyctav) 
 which is happiness and which is life. It is so closely 
 part of the perfect energising of the energy, that one 
 need not ask which is loved for the other's sake. 
 
 The progress of Greek thought did not cease with 
 Aristotle; but its energies separated into several 
 channels. Astronomy, mathematics, physics, botany, 
 through Theophrastus, Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, 
 Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Euclid, and Archimedes, were 
 still to make notable advance; and these pursuits 
 brought peace to the keen minds absorbed in 
 
174 DELIVERANCE 
 
 them. But on the other hand, philosophy, prop- 
 erly or popularly so-called, lost its balanced uni- 
 versality. Plato and Aristotle, while profoundly 
 conscious of the relation of philosophic knowledge to 
 man's practical well-being, loved knowledge abso- 
 lutely, for its own sake and for the joy of it. But 
 Stoicism, a partial exotic, since its founder Zeno was 
 a Syrian, had narrower interests. It regarded 
 knowledge as a means; ethics, with human well- 
 being as its practical end, was the real Stoical con- 
 cern. Altered political and social conditions were 
 among the causes of this change. As the city-states 
 gave way to huge Hellenistic kingdoms, which were 
 in turn to yield to Roman rule, men realised their 
 political impotence, and felt but a loosened interest 
 in public affairs. It was enough for them to keep 
 their lives clear of misfortune. And so philosophy, 
 its spirit somewhat quelled with the contracted 
 freedom of its votaries, turned from the search for 
 independent and objective truth, and concentrated 
 its efforts on that which should insure to the philo- 
 sophic individual a happy life, or one free from 
 pain. In Stoicism, philosophy became a palpable 
 adjustment of human conduct with the Stoic view 
 of human nature and the nature of the world, and 
 a self-conscious endeavour after that freedom which 
 is peace. The same may be said of Stoicism's 
 apparent opposite. Epicureanism, which was also a 
 sheer adjustment, and did not strive as strenuously 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 175 
 
 as Its rival to base its practical principles upon a 
 knowledge of man and the world he dwelt in. Both 
 systems thus endangered the progress of that with 
 which they really were concerned. For whenever 
 the enthusiastic and apparently disinterested quest 
 of knowledge weakens, ethics loses the enlarging 
 basis of increasing wisdom needed for ethical ad- 
 vance. 
 
 But in the meanwhile, in its Greek periods before 
 it became adapted to the Roman temperament, 
 Stoicism looked earnestly to the constitution of the 
 universe for a basis of its conviction that reason is 
 man*s essential nature, and that his sole good con- 
 sists in acting according to its dictates : such action 
 is virtue, which thus becomes a thing of reason and 
 of the firm will to act in accord. But human reason 
 is part of the reason of the universe, part of uni- 
 versal law, which likewise is felt to be the law or 
 will of God — all-ruling, all-permeating, moving 
 everything with purpose as with power, suiting and 
 harmonising each with all. 
 
 Viewing Stoicism from this end, one wonders to 
 find its ethics set in a materialistic conception of the 
 universe, including God and the human soul and 
 virtue itself: all being is material; the universe, in- 
 cluding God and man, consists of matter in a state 
 of tension, or, if one will, of passive matter com- 
 plemented by its activity of force. God is this 
 force or law, all-moving, all-commingling, moulding 
 
176 DELIVERANCE 
 
 all things to their proper ends. The human soul is 
 part of this force, this law, this soul of the universe, 
 which is God. It is diffused like warm breath 
 throughout the body, and though it may for a while 
 continue individual after the body's dissolution, it 
 will eventually be resolved into the world-soul. Its 
 master part, its truest activity, is reason. 
 
 Thus, having doubtless leapt over many incon- 
 sistencies, we are back at reason and human conduct 
 rationally directed by the will, which is virtue and 
 man's sole good and happiness. All else is indif- 
 ferent. The emotions are to be suppressed; pleas- 
 ure, likewise pain, is a thing of naught. These con- 
 victions made the fortress of the Stoic's peace ; they 
 also made the sphere of his freedom,, where no fear 
 might enter, nor tribulation disturb. Within this 
 sphere of freedom, the lure of pleasures and the 
 shackles of tyrants were alike irrelevant. Such 
 convictions were not merely highminded figments 
 of the Stoic imagination, but even formed the Stoic 
 practice. Yet in time, the famous Stoic apathy was 
 replaced by self-mastery and obedience to the will 
 of reason, amid pains and pleasures. These like- 
 wise were raised from the class of things indifferent 
 to that of things preferential. And all the while 
 the Stoic, from his recognition of the unity of the 
 world and the oneness of its purpose, perceived the 
 common brotherhood of man, and gained a wider 
 peace in virtuous civic conduct. 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 1 77 
 
 This was one sign of the coming time. Another 
 was the strong rehgiousness with which the Stoic 
 soul turned to the central source of virtue, the 
 personification of all-ruling law — God. This fer- 
 vour finds a voice in the devout hymn to Zeus by 
 Cleanthes, Zeno's successor, wherein the Stoic 
 heart has personified the all-permeating power so 
 that it may have some One to adore. This hymn 
 seems as a tentative bridge across the abysmal con- 
 trast between Aristotle's conception of the Un- 
 moved Mover sunk in self-contemplation, and the 
 God of the coming time, to whom men should pray 
 with new devotion, and in love of whoni they should 
 win their adjustment and fulfil their lives. Yet one 
 may deem that there was no such great chasm 
 between the new-found living and loving God, and 
 the God of Plato's Laws, 
 
 In the meanwhile, if the tide of Stoic devotion 
 overflowed its logic, there was its sister of the Gar- 
 den, whose gods were undisturbed either by their 
 own beneficence or the prayers of men. Epicurus 
 was Zeno's younger contemporary. Both of them 
 were intent upon living in accord with nature (Kara 
 4>v<nv) or reason; but while Zeno interpreted this 
 to mean Kar apeTrjvy or virtuously, Epicurus said 
 it meant Ka$* r/hoin^Vy or pleasurably. Epicurus 
 deemed that he had found, as well as Zeno, the peace 
 and quiet of the mind. For he held that the dis- 
 sipation of pain and anxiety insured happiness. 
 
178 DELIVERANCE 
 
 and that the pleasures of the mind were surer and 
 more lasting than sense-joys. As for knowledge, 
 he made no pretence of caring for more of it than 
 would assure the votary of mental ease that his 
 calm should be undisturbed. Philosophy was but 
 a help to happiness. In order to provide a suffi- 
 ciency of conviction, it should afford a test of truth. 
 So Epicurus recognised sensation as the canon of 
 reality for man. Beyond that, the remembered and 
 multifariously combined images of previous sense- 
 perceptions make the substance of thought; what- 
 ever thus presents itself effectively in consciousness 
 is real. For a philosophy of being, he took the 
 atomic theory of Democritus, with its universe 
 constituted by the flux of atoms, and the soul of 
 man made of the very finest. The gods, part of 
 the cosmos, exist in bliss and never interfere. He 
 saw no ground for any other conviction than that 
 pleasure and pain were the absolute good and bad 
 for man. His temperament dwelt more on mental 
 pleasures than on bodily, and tended to set chief 
 store upon a state df divine calm, utterly free from 
 want. To this end, he wisely recognised how small 
 and trifling were the body's needs. And the pleas- 
 ure of his undisturbed and fearless repose was as 
 much the fruit of will and reason as the Stoic virtue. 
 Virtue also was desirable because pleasant; while 
 friendship, compassion, gentleness were among the 
 loveliest joys of life. Thus for himself and many 
 
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 179 
 
 followers he won freedom and peace of mind. But 
 his creed offered no bulwark against the lower 
 frailties of men — among whom at least it fostered 
 suavity. 
 
 So we have sketched the adjustment with life 
 offered by the love of knowledge and exercise of 
 reason in the minds of Greek philosophers. Begin- 
 ning in the contentment springing from investiga- 
 tion and thought upon the world's origin and laws, 
 this adjustment rose, with Plato and Aristotle, to 
 the sublimest satisfaction of consummate intellectual 
 appetition. But thereupon it narrowed to direct 
 desire for peace of soul, which perhaps is won more 
 surely through employing to their full the highest 
 energies of the mind. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Intermediaries 
 
 T XZE are considering the striking modes in which 
 " ^ great men have adjusted their hopes with 
 what seemed to them the possibihties of their lives; 
 and if we have to touch on less salient ways of 
 adjustment, we may treat them as introductory to 
 those which appear more important in the economy 
 of spiritual progress. In some way, for good or 
 ill, each period of history prepares for that which 
 follows; and great men stand on the shoulders of 
 the great before them — only they need sturdy 
 shoulders for their feet. Heracleitos and his oppo- 
 site, Parmenides, each lent a shoulder to Plato, 
 affording him a vantage ground needful for his 
 vision, which had been cleared by the dialectic of 
 his master Socrates. And now still looking from 
 the standpoint of adjustment, we may proceed 
 selectively and treat all that follows after Plato and 
 Aristotle, and Zeno and Epicurus, as intermediate 
 and even mediating adjustments making for the 
 acceptance, if not for the origin, of Chrisrianity. 
 If the Hebrew prophets were Christ's truest fore- 
 runners, and Jewish formalism his fulcrum of re- 
 
 i8o 
 
INTERMEDIARIES l8l 
 
 pulsion, later Hellenism, moved and modified by 
 Eastern influences, formed the milieu in which his 
 Gospel was transplanted after his death ; a milie : 
 which both contributed to the conquering faith and 
 shaped it to the limitations of this milieu's own 
 receptiveness. Accordingly, one may truly say 
 that from the second century before Christ, the 
 course of Hellenic thought and mood, the inter- 
 mingling of Eastern religious influences, and the 
 consequent changes occurring in Roman and Greek 
 paganism, all made for the acceptance of that su- 
 preme adjustment which was Christianity. 
 
 And indeed adjustment was what the world was 
 seeking — adjustment, nay, rather, assurance, and 
 indeed salvation. Even intellectual men no longer 
 found their adjustment in rational investigation, in 
 $€(jDpux ; but were seeking some spiritual stay beyond 
 their reason. Such men, as well as the less intel- 
 lectual and more emotional millions, now looked to 
 the assurances of religion, in order to free themselves 
 from anxiousness, and gain salvation. Moreover, 
 commonly having found their own opinions insufii- 
 cient and their ancestral beliefs unsatisfying, they 
 were catching at whatever seemed likely to afford 
 assurance. Men were stirred to a new religious 
 receptiveness and were stimulated morally. Under 
 these conditions, the sharp edges of opinion were 
 relaxed, and opposing systems borrowed from each 
 other. \ Cults travelled from the Eastern to the 
 
l82 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Western boundaries of the Empire, gathering new 
 elements along the way, and themselves gathered 
 in as new elements of old beliefs. Heterogeneous 
 religions formed fruitful unions, while a none too 
 happy give and take seemed to pervade the world. 
 ^ All this represented need; and the most real 
 answerjaras-^hc Gospel of Christ, and its^ preaching 
 andministration. \ Let us follow for a little these 
 changes, this loss of intellectual self-reliance, this 
 consequent yielding of thought, this mingling of 
 currents and more ready acceptance of novel opinions 
 and strange beliefs. To start fr om a concrete ex- 
 ^ ample — Stoicism. It began, and for a while con- 
 tinued, as a self-reliant adjustment. Then it 
 softened. By admitting the decent comforts of 
 life as desirable, it relaxed the strictness of its main 
 ethical principle, that the virtuous action of a ration- 
 ally self-directing will is man's only good. It also 
 humanised its philosophic theology by recognising 
 the people's very human gods. Since the world 
 was full of divine force, why not accept these gods 
 as its personifications ? And why not also per- 
 tinently accept the Oracles and divination and 
 astrology ^ Symbolism, allegory, and plastic ety- 
 mologies for the divine names, made ready helps 
 to this desired end — the stoical intelligence thus 
 devising the means and method of believing in 
 accordance with prevailing human needs. Such 
 arguments were applicable, when there was call. 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 1 83 
 
 to Egypt's gods and Syria's, as well as those of 
 Greece. 
 
 The Syrian-born Greek, Poseidonius (cir. 135 to 
 cir. 51 B.C.), pupil of the Rhodian Panaetius, em- 
 bodied the change coming over Stoicism. After 
 his master's death, he left Rhodes, his adoptive 
 home, and travelled far, visiting Egypt, Nubia, 
 Spain, Gaul, and Italy. In all these countries, he 
 studied and investigated, and also saw his great 
 contemporaries, meeting Marius (!) in Rome, and 
 later having Cicero for an auditor at Rhodes. In 
 the universality of his knowledge he seemed a 
 child of Aristotle. None the less was he a child of 
 Plato, of the aged Plato so very absorbent of Py- 
 thagoreanism. He was a man of religious feeling 
 and catholic tolerance, even of catholic receptivity ; 
 and was much given to those direct and unreason- 
 ing modes of realising the divine, and thereby gain- 
 ing life, which are called mystic. For his philoso- 
 phy and working religion, he mustered the resources 
 of astronomy, geography, history, astrology, demon- 
 ology, divination, everything that might enlarge 
 the intellect and assure the mood of man. His 
 knowledge was broad, his reasoning loose, and his 
 constructive faculties were equal to the demands 
 of his ethical and religious enthusiasms. A great 
 and typical figure, he was the protagonist of the 
 spiritual revolution taking place throughout the 
 world of Hellenic thought, and was representative 
 
1 84 DELIVERANCE 
 
 of the tendencies afterwards to culmkiate in Neo- 
 platonism.i x ^, sl. r^M>^ d^TV*^ 
 /^^^ have now to do with the onental religions 
 which seerrPtO project themselves into the Hellenic 
 and also the Latin world. They represent ways of 
 thinking and feelint — religious adjustments — ac- 
 cepted in Asia Mimir, Syria, and Egypt, lands tinged 
 with HellenisrnJJ/ We have then to consider the 
 Hellenism penetrating the East, but whose home 
 was in the Greek cities and the Greek lands, a Hel- 
 lenism which had become as productive, or recep- 
 tive, of religions as it was of systems of philosophic 
 adjustment. All these adjustments, of oriental cult 
 and Greek orientalised philosophy, will be seen, 
 through a congeniality in need and mood and prin- 
 ciples, to prepare men's minds for the Christian 
 deHverance. 
 
 There had always been some exchange of blows, 
 and wares, and ideas between the Greeks and the 
 non-Hellenic Mediterranean civilisations. But, of 
 course, with the opportunities and exigencies arising 
 through Alexander's conquest, Hellenic energy cast 
 itself with a new power upon Asia Minor and Persia 
 and Syria and Egypt. Under Alexander's succes- 
 sors, and finally under the Romans, political and 
 social conditions never ceased to further an inter- 
 
 1 On Poseidonius, see Christ-Schmid, Ges. der Griech. Lit.y 5th 
 Ed. II, pp. 268 sqq.y and compare P. Wendland, Hellenistisch- 
 Romisch Kultur, 2d Ed., pp. 134 sqq. 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 1 85 
 
 change of ideas, and expose Greek and Syrian and 
 Egyptian to the influence of each other's moods and 
 though4;s. Lest one should be surprised at the 
 effect of the East upon Hellenism, and then upon the 
 Roman West, one should remember that, at least 
 in Roman times, Syria and Egypt surpassed Greece 
 and Italy in fertility and wealth and civilization. 
 
 Wh atever came from the East was in answer to 
 the cravmgs or susceptibilities of the We st — of 
 ^e (ireek and Roman yorld. In the third and 
 second centuries before Cnrist, there was still a vast 
 amount of science and .Erudition at Alexandria and 
 other centres of Hellenic culture. And, in Italy, 
 Rome was at the height of her republican energy. 
 Nevertheless, undei" the strain of the last dragging 
 years of the second Punic war, the Senate (b.c. 205) 
 decreed the honoured reception of Cybele, the 
 Phrygian Great Mother, — which was as if a dour 
 Presbyterian synod in our own time should make a 
 place for Mother Eddy and her Christian Science in 
 the Westminster catechism.^ Likewise j from the 
 close of the second century, the wide-spread and so 
 largely expatriated Hellenic peoples were yielding 
 tb the religious impulse which was supplanting their 
 self-reliance. A widely pertinent illustration majr 
 be given of this change of mood. As the satisfying 
 power of reason weakened, the goddess Tyche ^ — 
 Chance, blind Fortune — threatened the supremacy 
 * Cf. Rohde, Der griechische Roman, pp. 276-282. 
 
1 86 DELIVERANCE 
 
 of the divine universal law in the world's affairs. 
 She was not reasonable; nor could the rational 
 human will find satisfaction in acquiescing in blind 
 happenings toward which an attitude of voluntary 
 obedience was absurd. And this Tyche-Fortune was 
 worse than blind; she seemed malignant. At all 
 events, with the extension of this wilful Power, the 
 conception of Evil developed as an independent 
 principle hostile to the Good — a conception foreign 
 to classical Greek thought. 
 
 Inasmuch as the human will could not render 
 obedie|(ce either to Tyche or to the principle of 
 Evilmnen were spurred to seek protection against 
 ^ tKese irresponsible or malignant foes to human 
 pea^fij and so, reason having failed them, they 
 turned to religion with a new appeal, and sought to 
 link it with such philosophy as they still might 
 cherish. Gree k religion, whatever else it was> l^ ad 
 always been a means of adjustment, a medium^ of 
 aid between humanity and the divitieV^This chief 
 function of religion entered and formed a strain in 
 Greek philosophy, passing betimes from the Orphic 
 mysteries to the system of Pythagoras, and then on 
 into the thought or mood of Plato. It became 
 negation in Epicureanism, since in that system man 
 needed only to assure himself of the indifference of 
 the gods. In Stoicism it was positive, earnest, 
 austere. Even the Scepticism of the later Academy 
 cast sheep's eyes on it. 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 1 87 
 
 Outside of such self-respecting and unorientalised 
 systems, the endeavour of the man, thinker or 
 votary, to adjust himself with the divine and gain 
 its support was more unrestrained. It was driven 
 by the desire for unendangered happiness, the 
 yearning for salvation. But as the Roman religion, 
 in t[ie strain of the Punic wars, had failed to satisfy, 
 sfl^enerally Hellenic men and women were looking 
 tor fuller satisfaction and more responsive aid than 
 their ancestral worship afforded. T he orie ntal 
 cults gave the emotional satisfaction so widely 
 craved. They appealed to the senses and the 
 sentiments, and offered their elaborate symbolism 
 to beguile the minds of the intelligent. They might 
 demand strenuous purification of their votaries, for 
 which they prescribed the method. They also 
 brought the promise of immortality. Wherever 
 accepted, at first casually or by a few, they worked 
 upon the tempers of their votaries, and their dif- 
 fusion was facilitated through this inclining of men's 
 minds. So the gods and goddesses, and their cults, 
 seemed to gain in power and vogue within the 
 Eastern lands, where they drew adherents from 
 among the Greek strains of population, as at Antioch 
 or Alexandria/^ Then they advanced beyond those 
 borders to invade the Greek and Latin West. From 
 Phrygia came the Great Mother, Cybele of many 
 forms and names ; Attis with her, and his orgiastic 
 rites of mutilation, death, and resurrection; then 
 
1 88 DELIVERANCE 
 
 from Egypt, Isis, Osiris, Serapis; then many gods 
 from Syria, tending to transmute themsel^s to 
 solar manifestations of universal godhead^ lastly 
 and most potently out of Persia, Mithr:^ne mili- 
 tant, to be recognized by Diocletian as protector 
 of the Empire ^ ; and behind or through them all, 
 astrology and magic, veritable faiths that alluringly 
 taught a divine astral fatalism with ways of pro- 
 pitiating its decrees. 
 
 The acceptance of these cults by Greeks and 
 Romans was not a matter of haphazard chance, 
 although the motley religious aspect of the later 
 pagan Empire might lead one to think so. It was 
 affected by their suitability. For example, the 
 Greeks of Alexandria, and other Greeks or Romans 
 following suit, adopted only those Egyptian cults 
 (of the Osirian circle) which had become half- 
 Hellenised through Greek influence; they were 
 syncretistic, exceptionally plastic, and adaptable to 
 the thoughts and moods of tfieir new votarieW On 
 the other hand, Mithraism? half-Persian in 'origin, 
 and inspired by a strenuous dualism, never touched 
 the Greeks. Essentially a soldier's faith, and 
 adapted to militant imperial needs, it passed directly 
 to the Latin world, which it subdued with power. 
 All these faiths were offered to their Greek and 
 
 * See generally, Cumont, Les Religions orientates dans le Pagan- 
 isme Tomain (1905). There is an English translation and a 
 second edition. 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 189 
 
 Latin converts under the guise of "mysteries" 
 accessible only to the duly instructed and initiated, 
 a mode of religious propagation familiar to Greeks 
 and Romans/ Their object was union with the god, 
 attained by the priest in ecstasy, and revealed to 
 the votaries. These "mysteries" were secret, as the 
 name implies; they brought intuition, vision, even 
 fruition of the divine. In the initiated, there took 
 place an ecstatic passing away of self, and a rebirth 
 through which the virtues of the god were acquired 
 — his spirit, his power, his immortality. / But 
 Osiris, Attis, or Adonis, with whom the devotee was 
 united, had been men, had suffered death, and had 
 risen as gods. Through their mysteries, what they 
 had undergone is not merely learned or seen by the 
 votary, but is veritably experienced and made his 
 own; he .is, reborn and metamorphosed into the god.J 
 So these religions provided scope for religious 
 passion, and suggested measureless means, both 
 ascetic and voluptuous, for satisfying it. They 
 were direct and personal in their power of assur- 
 ance, requiring no intervention of state function- 
 aries or promptings of state interests, of which they 
 might indeed be careless. They tended to regroup 
 society according to religious affinities and ties; 
 no more Greeks or Romans, bond or free, but all 
 equal in the mysteries of the Great Mother, of 
 Serapis or Isis. They also brought sure means of 
 purification, and promised a happy immortalityJ^A^-"^ 
 
190 DELIVERANCE 
 
 So they worked a change in Greek, and more 
 markedly (because of its deeply contrasting qualities) 
 in Latin paganism, took the backbone from the 
 latter, broke its rigidity of temper, rendered it 
 fluid, yielding, open to any suggestion or assurance 
 of that salvation which men were craving. And in 
 this religious flux, with its loose assimilation of god 
 and god, goddess and goddess, and their manifes- 
 tations concrete or symbolical, the more lofty- 
 minded votary could readily think of one god su- 
 preme and universal, operative or manifested in 
 many divine forms; he could also purify his faith, 
 and form a synthesis of moral precept agreeing with 
 his gifts. Thus he might harmonise the assurance 
 gained from religion with the adjustment of his 
 
 mora l reason . - 
 
 ''Trom the oriental religions, we turn to certain feat- 
 ures of that paganism into which they were passing 
 and were to some extent transforming. It was a 
 Greco-Roman paganism ; primarily, of course, Greek 
 in thought, with deflections combined with moral 
 stiffening due to the Roman temperament. Indeed, 
 for our present purpose, the tale begins with those 
 temperamental modifications of Hellenic philosophies, 
 which were worked out by Hellenically educated 
 Romans who retained the strength of their Roman 
 natures. It leads on through later phases of a pagan- 
 ism wherein Roman qualities are scarcely distinguish- 
 able in the Hellenic-oriental blend, out of which will 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 19I 
 
 then be seen to issue that last great pagan philo- 
 sophic-reHgious adjustment of man to the god within 
 him and without, which we call Neoplatonism. 
 
 Let us notice certain Roman very personal re- 
 adjustments of Hellenic attitudes toward life. 
 Looking to the days of the Republic, we are im- 
 pressed by the almost portentous figure of Lucretius, 
 — a great talent, an austere and powerful tempera- 
 ment. Who does not at least know of his poem 
 De natura rerum, in which he invoked Lady Venus 
 and hailed pleasure as Life's Leader — " Dux vitae 
 dia voluptas." But the poem was written to release 
 himself and other mortals from the anxieties and 
 ills that men had made for themselves out of 
 their vain fear of the gods. Relief from fear, reliance 
 on reason, and acquiescence in the knowledge of 
 the nature of things, which reason had won, made 
 the adjustment of this man, whose hatred of 
 religion, uniting with Roman austerity, chose to 
 reset the Stoic temper and ethical ideal in the 
 Epicurean scheme of physics and theology. 
 
 As of course, in the great days of the Republic, 
 the individual Roman citizen, somewhat inarticu- 
 lately and unconsciously, had merged himself in the 
 fortunes of his country. Largely speaking, that was 
 his devotion, and that was his adjustment; his for- 
 tunes stood with hers; and he felt his own Hfe 
 carried on in the lives of his children, themselves 
 again making part of the all-enveloping respublica. 
 
192 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Both he and the Republic were scrupulous in their 
 religious observances, that they might not err and 
 lose the favour of the gods. In all of this, we may 
 think the Romans self-taught, instructed by their 
 temper and their exigencies ; yet any part of this 
 Roman adjustment might have been learned from 
 Sparta, or from the great days of Athens. 
 
 Likewise one sees that the Ideal Vergilian adjust- 
 ment is the Augustan or imperial. The great 
 pagan heart of the supreme Roman poet knew the 
 sorrow entailed by endeavour, and felt the pathos 
 of mortal lives. This depth of feeling, this realisa- 
 tion of the sacrifice required, gives truth and power 
 to the lesson of the iEneid, which teaches fulfilment 
 of duty, yea, of destiny, and in obedience to God. 
 The energy of a great epoch was needed to attain 
 this imperial adjustment, valid for the Empire, and 
 perhaps ideally vahd for its citizens if only they 
 would be staunch. In fact. It was real and satis- 
 fying for but few — perhaps it was too politically 
 inspired. An adjustment coming closer to the 
 individual was needed even by noble natures. 
 
 Such a one was Horace, in whose urbanity were 
 mingled the finest flavours of Epicureanism and 
 Stoicism. Kindness, knowledge of men, tolerance 
 of human faults, fondness for pleasure, consciousness 
 of Its insufficiency, self-control within his limita- 
 tions, all contributed to the well-being of this ad- 
 mirably trimmed and balanced nature. He leaned 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 193 
 
 toward Epicureanism while life's pleasures ran in 
 their early grooves ; but the thoughtfulness of years 
 and the pathos of mortality drew him — inter- 
 mittently perhaps — toward a more stable satis- 
 faction. He began to praise virtue, the sterling 
 Vergilian virtues of old Rome. The thought of 
 them gave him strength. And while he still felt 
 that the contented mind, the aequum animum, must 
 rest upon itself, he looked more constantly to God 
 to support and enrich his life — for which he would 
 be grateful : 
 
 Tu quamcumque deus tibi fortunaverit horam 
 Grata sume manu, neu dulcia differ in annum. 
 
 Perhaps he thought it best to seize the sunny 
 day — carpe diem ! — even within the providence of 
 God I 
 
 Three men lived under the Empire, belonging to 
 three generations, in whom Stoicism is clothed and 
 decent, not given to religious orgies, and yet is 
 moving with the tendencies of the time toward the 
 expression of a religious ethics corresponding at 
 many points with the ethics of patristic Christianity. 
 Their adjustment with life still rested in reason and 
 the resolutely accordant will; and yet their still 
 rational adjustment was becoming prayerful, seek- 
 ing some assurance from God. No need to say that 
 these men were Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus 
 Aurelius. 
 
194 DELIVERANCE 
 
 The finished Stoical aphorisms of the first do not 
 inspire complete confidence. One doubts whether 
 the frail disposition of man could live up to any- 
 thing so perfect. A mind despising the accidents 
 of fortune, and happy in virtue, is the summum 
 bonum, and constitutes the human adjustment with 
 Seneca. Accordingly, no evil can come to a good 
 man; misfortune is his opportunity, — and many 
 more like cheering utterances. Yet Seneca made 
 the conventional Stoical concessions to the weakness 
 of human nature — one prefers to have joys to 
 moderate, rather than griefs to repress. The sage 
 is not a stone: how could virtue be virtue unless 
 it felt its trials. He also recognised social duties, 
 which had long been part of virtue. And he was 
 religious : in regno nati sumus ; deo parere libertas 
 est, — Obedience to God, that is our liberty. 
 Seneca's god is the perfect and stern Stoic sage, 
 having no weaknesses, and recognising none ! There 
 is friendship, as there is likeness, between God and 
 good men, for whom he reserves his disciplinary 
 benevolence, while he lets the wicked wanton in 
 their lusts. He tries the good man with adversity, 
 and delights to watch the struggle. Neither God, 
 nor the Stoic sage, sorrows over human misfortune ; 
 but views all life through the eyes of the Stoic 
 reason. 
 
 Epictetus was not so rich as Seneca, and his life 
 rings truer to his principles. He thinks more con- 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 195 
 
 stantly of God; philosophy has become religion 
 with him. He can be thankful to God not only for 
 the vine and wheat, but for the virtuous mind, 
 which is indeed a part of God, who has set the law 
 that man's good shall lie in his rational will, in- 
 vincible from without, even by God. But let man 
 reflect always on God and the divine providence in 
 the world; let him attempt nothing without God. 
 The true philosopher will "know that he is sent a 
 messenger from Zeus to men about good and bad 
 things, to show them that they have wandered and 
 are seeking the substance of good and evil where it 
 is not." 1 
 
 Born a slave and made a freedman, Epictetus was 
 a contented man, his happiness established in his 
 reason and his will, and warmed with entire trust in 
 God. But Marcus was a different kind of pagan 
 saint. He was burdened with the rule of an Empire, 
 a thankless, hopeless task filling him with intellectual 
 melancholy. His philosophy, his religion, was essen- 
 tially the same as that of Epictetus. His palace 
 was to him as the freedman's cottage ; for he needed 
 as few things as Epictetus. Indeed he might have 
 been happier in a lowly station, which would have 
 left him untried and undisciplined by such harassing 
 responsibilities. Marcus is disposed to pray to the 
 gods even for things within his own power, for 
 freedom from anxiety and fear and grief, as well as 
 ^ Dis. Ill, 22. Long's translation. 
 
196 DELIVERANCE 
 
 from vain desires. Though strong in his reason and 
 Stoic virtue, he felt the need of aid. 
 
 "Follow God and love mankind," says Marcus, for 
 love of one's neighbour is a property of the rational 
 soul, conscious of its affinity to other souls and God. 
 Satisfaction lies in always acting thus — obediently 
 and in accordance with right reason. All is prepared 
 from eternity — the thread of thy being, along 
 with other things ! The Universe loves whatever 
 is to be ; and as it loves, so love I. Yet in Marcus 
 this philosophic satisfaction might become mere 
 resignation. He was a little weary of the universe 
 he loved. He feared his imagination, was distrustful 
 of his heart, or at least felt the need to steel it 
 through meditation on mortality as an incident in 
 the universal necessity of dissolution. If his soul 
 was not embittered, still the whole whirl and flux 
 of life seemed but a pointless warfare, from which, 
 when released, he would depart satisfied. 
 
 Stoicism is tired in Marcus; it no longer cheers. 
 It has depressed the human heart; it has shut its 
 eyes too resolutely against feelings which it could not 
 entertain, against hopes which it could not justify. 
 Stoicism could not really approve of love, which is 
 longing and anxiety and rapture, and not unmoved 
 benevolence. In fine, the Stoic God could not love, 
 the Stoic physics admitted no immortality. The 
 age demanded both, and Stoicism became a dis- 
 carded creed. 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 1 97 
 
 The treatises of Seneca and the Discourses of 
 Epictetus survive as illustrious examples of the 
 philosophic propaganda and ethical exhortation 
 current in the first and second centuries of what was 
 scarcely yet the Christian era. Many austere 
 figures moved through the Empire, endeavouring 
 to recall men from their folly to a truer realisation 
 of their nature, and instructing them how they might 
 be saved from the evil of the world. This preaching 
 drew from the moral stores of the Hellenistic philos- 
 ophies, which were becoming religious faiths. It 
 sought to cast men on their inner selves, upon their 
 spiritual lives, and point out how their true and 
 enduring natures might be rescued and saved. It 
 taught higher thoughts of God, and the yielding 
 oneself to the divine will as the truest sacrifice. 
 In life as well as doctrine, these men had much in 
 common with the life and message of those who were 
 preaching Christianity. Yet the fullest approxima- 
 tion to contemporary Christianity, and the most 
 efficient influence upon human moods making for 
 its acceptance, was that final Hellenistic system of 
 philosophy and religion, called Neoplatonism, 
 which also offered men the adjustment, or perhaps 
 deliverance, nearest to the salvation offered by the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 There were apparently abysms of difference be- 
 tween Stoicism and Neoplatonism. Yet the philo- 
 sophic and pietistic eclecticism of the latter had its 
 
198 DELIVERANCE 
 
 antecedent in the eclectically expanded Stoicism of 
 Poseidonius; though, to be sure, the system of 
 which he was the nominal adherent seems again to 
 contract its phylacteries in Seneca and Marcus. 
 That may be referred, however, to their personal 
 tempers, rather than to any tendency of their time. 
 /Neoplatonism was the creature of mood and 
 metaphysics. It united metaphysics and ethics 
 with religious ecstasy. Plotinus, who died in the 
 year 270 a.d., was its constructor. He was a meta- 
 physical genius and also a man so austere in spirit 
 that it cost him little effort to ignore the body's 
 needs. He drew upon the previous great systems of 
 Greek thought, — upon Aristotle, upon Stoicism, 
 above all upon Plato. But while he was a master- 
 builder with their reasonings, he had no aptitude 
 for physical science. Hence his philosophy royally 
 neglected the accumulated scientific knowledge of 
 the past, and thus fell in with the tendencies of its 
 time. In part, Plotinus's system was a last result of 
 Plato's idealism. But with this metaphysical Egyp- 
 tian, far more fatuously than with the great Athenian 
 master of knowledge as well as dialectic, the aspira- 
 tions of the soul became the criterion, and the sum, 
 of human knowledge. 
 
 To attain its ends, Neoplatonism made use of 
 means which would have been abominations to the 
 purer Greek philosophies. It wantoned in allegory, 
 and in that way explained and justified any foolish- 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 1 99 
 
 ness to which its followers felt drawn. From the 
 beginning it was touched with the Orient; and then 
 quickly embraced those motley cults and super- 
 stitions in which the Orient had the greater part. 
 Even Plotinus was driven by a yearning to be saved 
 from the confusion of mortal life. His aim was 
 neither knowledge nor the satisfaction springing 
 from the ultimate consideration of facts and values, 
 which is philosophy. His mind was filled with the 
 desire of ecstatic spiritual well-being, which his 
 reason could neither attain nor justify. The goal he 
 looked to was supra-rational ecstatic union with the 
 Absolute One. 
 
 To be sure, this goal was led up to through the 
 discipline of ethics and long lines of metaphysical 
 prolegomena, — with Plotinus. His disciple Por- 
 phyry still liked to reason, and had that faculty; 
 but his temper was distraught, and religious anxious- 
 ness drove him to questionable spiritual drugs. 
 He was incredulous as to demons — how can they 
 harm a pure soul ? But his imagination, Hke the 
 age he lived in, swarmed with them. He talks of 
 them continually, as did Tertullian, and the great 
 Origen, and that doughty pagan, Celsus, against 
 whom Origen wrote. The age was obsessed with 
 demons. It were best to take them without qualms 
 and cheerfully, as Plutarch had done, and as lambli- 
 cus, the Neoplatonic hierophant who followed 
 Porphyry, was to do. With him Neoplatonism 
 
200 DELIVERANCE 
 
 casts ofF restraint, flings wide its arms to every 
 superstition, and endeavours on principle to 
 justify belief in the incredible and reliance upon 
 the absurd — upon theurgy with all its magic words 
 and acts. Thenceforth it kept open house for all 
 phases of popular paganism. Yet its more intellec- 
 tual adherents might still attach themselves to its 
 metaphysics, its system of emanation of life and 
 being from the One to the Nous, and from the 
 Nous to the World-soul and the souls of men. 
 
 In its strenuous and more consistent phases, Neo- 
 platonism was ascetic. For, pushing on along the 
 dualistic currents of the time, it had come to dis- 
 credit matter for its lack of metaphysical reality, 
 and hate it for its defilements of the flesh-entangled 
 soul, the lures with which it stopped the soul's 
 progress toward ecstatic union with the All-spirit, 
 the All-real, the All-One. 
 
 Obviously, even with its metaphysical inceptor, 
 Neoplatonism, rising above human reason, yearning 
 for salvation from material unrealities, looking 
 toward union with the Ineff'able, demanded the 
 immediate support of that toward which the soul 
 was reaching as tjie goal of bliss, and which by itself 
 the soul could not attain. The Divine draws on 
 the ardent philosopher by its own perfect Being: 
 it awaits the upward striving soul. But how when 
 the soul is blind and feeble .? Will not the Divine 
 in some way meet tjie soul, reveal Itself, and hold 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 20I 
 
 out aid ? Can It not be induced to aid ? Are there 
 not mediatorial means ? The soul of Plotinus was 
 strong with spiritual impulse; the souls of others 
 after him required stimulus and aid and guidance. 
 They called for a lowering of the mediatorial means, 
 and looked for plain and palpable modes of revela- 
 tion. Neoplatonism became whatever its votaries 
 required. It took what they wished from Egypt, 
 accepted the Sun and planetary worship from Syria ; 
 it filled itself out with divination and astrology. 
 Accepting the ritual and method of the Eastern 
 mysteries, it developed means of mediation, educated 
 a priesthood skilled in magic, able to win the god's 
 aid and reveal his will ; able likewise to defend the 
 votary from the myriad demons which beset men 
 everywhere, benumbing, frightening, or distracting 
 the worshipper, even thronging the temples, and 
 requiring dispersal before the true god can appear. 
 Neoplatonism represents the last and most in- 
 clusive blending of Hellenic-oriental elements in a 
 final paganism, a final pagan religion, having its 
 reason and unreason, its decencies and indecencies, 
 suited to the motley multitude of its votaries^^/ 
 
 From our point of view it was the last Hellenic 
 adjustment — an adjustment quickly overflowing 
 reason, seeking assurance and salvation from with- 
 out, becoming a religion. Plotinus, incredulous of 
 matter, pressed toward ecstasy and union with the 
 One, through his own reason and his own spiritual 
 
202 DELIVERANCE 
 
 energy. That was his adjustment, — an adjustment 
 needing little assurance beyond the power of its 
 impulse. But Porphyry, his disciple, already fearful, 
 is all too conscious of the waverings of his soul, its 
 hankerings after all manner of indecorous enchant- 
 ments which his reason could not quite effectively 
 contemn. For his adjustment, he needed magic 
 nostrums as well as the deeper assurances of faith. 
 And after Porphyry, though some men might have 
 rational thoughts, none drew back from whatever 
 spiritual comfort might be suggested by fancy or 
 current superstition. For ten that yearned for 
 union with the One, thousands sought the stay and 
 strength, the protection, power, even the immortal 
 nature, of whatever god into whose "mysteries" 
 they were initiated. 
 
 Contemporaries, though they may disavow and 
 anathematise each other, have nearly everything 
 in common except perhaps the specific points on 
 which they think they differ. Gnostics, Neo- 
 platonists, Manichaeans, Arians, Catholic Christians 
 of the third and fourth centuries, had indefinitely 
 more in common than we can have with any of 
 tjiem, whatever be our sympathies. Yet on the 
 other hand, the fuller our knowledge becomes of 
 the manifold likenesses between Christianity and all 
 t;he other religions swarming in those centuries, the 
 more surely we are driven to the recognition of 
 dynamic qualities in Catholic Christianity by which 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 203 
 
 It emerged victorious from the maze of contem- 
 porary systems, even though it never freed itself 
 from the current views and superstitions of the age 
 which accepted and partly fashioned it. 
 
 One may safely emphasise the likenesses between 
 Neoplatonism and Christianity, in practical mo- 
 rality, in occasional asceticism, in religious anxious- 
 ness (especially concerning the besetting hosts of 
 devils), in the conscious need of saving mediation, 
 and generally in credulity and receptive mood. The 
 spiritual needs of Neoplatonists and Christians were 
 similar, though the two religions had very different 
 means of satisfying them. 
 
 One may say much the same of tjie Gnostic 
 systems, a group of religious phenomena taking 
 their rise before the Christian era, but afterwards 
 acquiring more striking features and enormous 
 vogue. Gnosticism carried a mixture of oriental 
 and Hellenic elements, and tended to become a 
 sort of bastard Christianity. It was by no means 
 unrelated to Neoplatonism, since it strove to intuit 
 and behold its god, and so unite with him and gain 
 his strength; it even sought to effect such union 
 through veritable experience of the divine, the 
 supernatural or supermaterial. The Gnostic union 
 with the Divine might take place in passionate 
 sense modes. Gnosticism was also dualistic, finding 
 everywhere the action of good and evil. Indeed its 
 various systems seem almost to arise out of this 
 
204 DELIVERANCE 
 
 problem of the origin of evil. Of course, the Gnostic 
 religions were full of demons, and erudite with spells 
 to drive them from the soul journeying on to its 
 salvation. Salvation was its aim ; and that drew it 
 to Christianity. But the Gnostic salvation had 
 been a weird and mystic process entwined with man's 
 origin, rather than conceived as springing from a 
 definite historical event. Gnosticism would adopt 
 the Christian Saviour: but diverse and grotesque 
 were the struggles of its sects to make the Saviour 
 into an element of their belief; for no Gnostic sect 
 could accept him in the reality of his manhood, or 
 admit that the Saviour died upon the cross. 
 
 The struggle of Gnosticism to become Christian, or 
 to make Christianity Gnostic, was the supreme peril 
 of early Christianity wherein it was in danger of be- 
 coming a hybrid. But it gained strength from its 
 resistance, and greater definitude of creed ; thereby, at 
 the same time, proving itself a living thing, an or- 
 ganic faith, that could not blend with another system. 
 
 So Catholic Christianity became itself more clearly 
 through this miraculous process of pulling itself out 
 of the swirl which surrounded and almost seemed to 
 have cradled it. In this it clung to its adjustment, of 
 Christ, and in Christ and the Church; and this 
 clinging to its adjustment, its assurance, its salvation, 
 was at the same time, necessarily, a rejection of the 
 similar or dissimilar adjustments, the insufficient 
 assurances and revelations, the vague mediatorial 
 
INTERMEDIARIES 205 
 
 means, and the unreal, the fantastic, the unhuman 
 and undivine salvations, which were not its own. 
 
 Arianism and Manichaeism were the last two 
 systems, so Hke and yet so fatally unHke Catholic 
 Christianity, which it had to disclaim, or from 
 which it had to free itself. The former was a Chris- 
 tian heresy, filled in its time with the possibilities 
 of all kinds of dogmatic idolatry — not merely the 
 harmless genial worship of the saints, which Catholic 
 Christianity held to. If Gnosticism had impugned 
 the reality of Christ's manhood, Arianism impugned 
 the reality of his godhead. But Catholic Chris- 
 tianity was to cling to this dual reality as the suffi- 
 cient mediatorial means of salvation. 
 
 More from without, and yet with many dangerous 
 likenesses, was Manichaeism, — from which our 
 final example of deliverance, Augustine, will be 
 seen to drag himself with pain. It was a drastic 
 dualism, sprung mainly from Persian Magianism, 
 but absorbing also Christian matter, and making 
 a particularly malignant and pessimistic blend. Nor 
 was this tare ever rooted out ; for as the rankest of 
 heresies it clung to the skirts of Christianity through 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 Fingit sibi quisque colendum, mens vaga quod suadet.* 
 
 Setting these words of some Latin poet as the 
 epitaph of these oriental pagan systems, we shall 
 
 * From Rohde, Griechischer Roman, 2d Ed., p. 19. 
 
206 DELIVERANCE 
 
 now turn to Christianity, whose man-god was not 
 fashioned by the rambHng mind. In that there was 
 not only reality, but reality manifold if not inconsist- 
 ent ! Whatever appears real in the others, is some- 
 how absorbed in Catholic Christianity, and raised 
 to a higher power, — morals, asceticism, needs, 
 and the means of their satisfaction. It was even a 
 yoking of opposites, blind faith and rational en- 
 lightenment, obedience and disobedience, all accord- 
 ing to the spirit. A mighty exercise of mind begins 
 within the Church, in which these opposites work 
 together for the building up of the Christian man, 
 and the making firm of the Christian adjustment, 
 the Christian assurance, the Christian salvation. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Jesus 
 
 * I ^HE prudent mind halts before the mystery 
 -■- of Jesus Christ. It will hesitate to attempt 
 to characterise the adjustment with life and God 
 of one from whom proceeded modes of deliverance 
 for mankind. How shall one conceive of the personal 
 assurance of salvation in him who soon was to be held 
 the salvation of the world .? We have the records, 
 and with whatever differences of opinion we may 
 regard them, we should not deliver ourselves over 
 to the sweet conceit of selecting what seems probable, 
 and rejecting what does not. If we suspect the 
 records, or reject them, what other means of informa- 
 tion have we touching this being, human or divine, 
 or both, as to whom we must hold some opinion, 
 seeing that he was at least the fountain-head of 
 our religion ? Recent scholarship has gathered 
 and arranged the multifarious array of contempo- 
 rary resemblances to nearly everything in primitive 
 Christianity, and has set forth the moulding and 
 remoulding influences into which the Gospel of 
 Christ was cast. Nearly every element, even in 
 that first Gospel core, seems to have had its ahen 
 counterpart. But even then these alien counter- 
 
 207 
 
208 DELIVERANCE 
 
 parts were jaded phantasms ; while the Gospel was 
 a thing of human and divine reality. Its life made 
 its originality. He who would search into the vital 
 truth of it needs all his scholarship, and yet must 
 not spend himself on husks, or be satisfied with 
 analogies between what is dead and what is living, 
 between the vagaries of the tired imagination, and 
 principles rooted in human, if not divine, verity. 
 
 In the main, we must keep to the records, proceed- 
 ing exegetically, and not building too much from 
 our own modern minds, or our conceptions of what 
 must have been. We can scarcely expect to see 
 into the inscrutable adjustment of Jesus, which 
 rested in his nature and his relationship to God. 
 In the oneness of this adjustment, there is duality. 
 For we shall find no adjustment in the man Jesus, 
 unless we treat him as the Messiah and the Son of 
 God — as he deemed himself. His adjustment can- 
 not be treated as that of a simple man, for in the rec- 
 ords he is more than man. It is inseverable from 
 his more than human function as the Saviour of 
 men : it forms part of the Gospel, part of the King- 
 dom of God, which is the salvation of mankind. 
 
 One will also recognise the originality of Jesus, 
 both in his adjustment and in his Gospel to men. 
 He had antecedents, and he moved in an environ- 
 ment from which he drew his fund of incidental 
 knowledge or ignorance as to man and the visible, 
 even the invisible, world. Let us take a striking 
 
JESUS 209 
 
 example : the men of Jesus' time, and those of the 
 following centuries, were surrounded by demons; 
 all life was enveloped with them. The minds 
 even of the best, Plutarch, Celsus as well as Origen, 
 all the Church Fathers, are infested with them, 
 and are disposed to gauge the efficacy of a faith by 
 its power over demons, the demons of pollution, 
 the demons of madness, the demons of disease. 
 Jesus also, just as he preaches and heals the sick, so 
 with equal potency he casts out demons; he gives 
 his apostles authority to preach and cast out demons : 
 Krjpva-a-eLv and €K/3aAAetv to, Sat/AoVia go together from 
 the beginning of his ministry. Thus exorcism 
 pervades the Gospel, and will pervade the whole 
 Church through the following centuries. Yet does 
 it really penet;rate to the life of Christ and the Gospel 
 of Christ ? At all events not in any explanatory 
 manner: for it is incidental and detachable, and 
 though it was certainly part of the working Gospel 
 for many years, we know that Christ and his Gospel 
 were not the fruit of these opinions of the time. 
 Consideration of such environing or antecedent 
 beliefs gives but a partial and superficial view of 
 him. Not by these ways shall we penetrate the 
 nature of Christ, and enter the sphere of his moving 
 convictions, which constituted his adjustment, his 
 relationship with God. 
 
 Now, following our records, and perhaps distrust- 
 ful both of ourselves and them, let us see at all 
 p 
 
2IO DELIVERANCE 
 
 events how we may understand the adjustment 
 wherein Jesus kept his Hfe at one, with peace of 
 mind, and spirit free to do its perfect work. God 
 was his father. Strength, confidence, peace, Hfe, 
 in fine, came from him, and on the Son's part was 
 energised by the single motive of doing the Father's 
 will. The power and compass of this motive was 
 the will of God, his Father, as Jesus realised it within 
 himself and brought the inner realisation to outer 
 actuality in word and act. His dependence was 
 entire ; his faith included the perfect faith of a man. 
 His conduct represented the perfect righteousness of 
 man, fulfilling, for example, those unified "Beati- 
 tudes" of the "Sermon on the Mount," as well as 
 all the precepts grouped within that "Sermon's'* 
 amplitude. It fulfilled whatever Jesus demanded 
 of men. 
 
 But many sayings in the Gospels, which apply to 
 him and his relationship to God, and, as it were, 
 disclose features of his adjustment, do not apply 
 to men. One may pass from general precepts 
 binding upon all, to other statements which illumine 
 their significance, and yet relate directly to Christ 
 alone. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy 
 mind — and thy neighbour as thyself " : these two 
 commands, which Jesus more clearly than the ancient 
 writers knew to contain the purport and content 
 of the Law, he lived and dwelt in. " He who seeks 
 
JESUS 211 
 
 to save his life, shall lose It, and he who loseth his 
 life for my sake shall save it" : here again Jesus 
 was the incarnate fulfilment of his own words to men. 
 We turn to other words of his which reflect illumi- 
 nation on the giving up of life for the Gospel's sake, 
 and on the love which men shall have for God, and 
 yet primarily set forth a relationship between the 
 Son and Father which is beyond human participa- 
 tion : "All things have been delivered unto me of 
 my Father : and no one knoweth the Son save the 
 Father ; neither doth any know the Father, save the 
 Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal 
 him." The next verses continue: "Come unto me 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest. Take my yoke [i.e. my precepts] 
 upon you, and learn of me." Jesus points to himself 
 as the end and goal, just as he speaks of the Kingdom 
 of God as that wherein men reach the relationship 
 to God which is salvation. His love was the 
 Father's love, and his life did the Father's work of 
 love toward men. He demanded faith in himself, 
 in his Christhood, his power from God to save. 
 Consider the sequence of the verses in the eighth 
 chapter of Mark: "If any man would come after 
 me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and 
 follow me. For whosoever would save his life 
 shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for my 
 sake and the Gospel's shall save it. For what doth 
 it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit 
 
212 DELIVERANCE 
 
 his life ? For what should a man give in exchange 
 for his life ? For whosoever shall be ashamed of 
 me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful 
 generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of 
 him, when he cometh in the glory of his Father 
 with the holy angels. And he said unto them. 
 Verily I say unto you, there be some here of them 
 that stand by, which shall in no wise taste of death, 
 till they see the Kingdom of God come with power." ^ 
 Thus Jesus discloses his conception of himself. 
 It was at one with his conviction of his mission to men 
 and his relationship to God. "Verily the Son of man 
 came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and 
 to give his life a ransom for many." Often, and under 
 varied circumstances, Jesus tells his disciples that 
 he shall be put to death and, on the third day, 
 rise again. There is no statement coming from him 
 so frequently repeated in the Gospels. It seems 
 to represent the core of his assurance of his mission, 
 and the bleeding heart of his faith in God his Father, 
 — who should bring him to his death and also raise 
 him up on the third day. The power of his faith 
 sees even further — and shall we consider this also 
 a feature of his personal adjustment or assurance ? 
 The Son of man shall come in great power and 
 glory, to judge the world, and send the angels to 
 gather his elect. It may be that Jesus drew the 
 form of his convictions as to his final coming from 
 1 Cf. Matt. xvi. 24-28 ; xxv. 3 1-46. 
 
JESUS 213 
 
 Messianic expectations current with his race, even as 
 he accepted prevalent beliefs as to demoniac posses- 
 sion. But, again, the borrowed form, so far as it 
 was borrowed, casts but a surface gleam upon the 
 moving energies of his faith. 
 
 Such seems to me the nature of Jesus' adjustment 
 of himself with God. Amplifications will suggest 
 themselves — indeed they fill the Gospels, or con- 
 stitute the Gospel. And so far we have kept to the 
 Synoptics as the more generally accepted record. 
 The Fourth Gospel seems to issue from a stage of 
 further reflection upon the earthly life and death 
 of Jesus, and upon the eternal power and love and 
 life of Christ. Thoughts to be held to, thoughts 
 to be rejected, had pressed upon the writer, arising 
 or suggested (some of them, perhaps, by Paul 
 or his Epistles) since the time when Jesus walked on 
 earth. But their effect upon the uplifted mind of 
 this evangelist does not impair the value of his under- 
 standing of Christ. I do not see why our historical 
 consciousness should be shocked at taking his Gospel 
 as spiritually complementary to the Synoptics, and 
 as throwing the light of completion upon such con- 
 ceptions of Jesus' personal adjustment as they give. 
 This further and completing adjustment is of the 
 divine love, which is life and gives life. 
 
 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only 
 begotten son, that everyone believing on him 
 should not perish, but have eternal life." 
 
214 DELIVERANCE 
 
 "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all 
 things into his hand. He that believeth on the 
 Son, hath eternal Hfe" (iii. i6, 35, 56). 
 
 "Even as the Father hath loved me, I also have 
 loved you; abide ye in my love. If ye keep my 
 commandments, ye shall abide in my love ; even as 
 I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide 
 in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, 
 that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may 
 be fulfilled." 
 
 "This is my commandment that ye love one 
 another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath 
 no man than this, that a man give up his life for 
 his friends" (xv. 9-12, 13). 
 
 In these passages, a number of cognate thoughts 
 tend to unite, to become in and of each other: 
 God's love for his Son and for the world ; the Son 
 abiding in the Father's love, and sharing in the 
 Father's love of man; men doing the divine will, 
 abiding in the divine love, and loving one another. 
 With the result that they shall be saved and have 
 eternal life, which is theirs who abide in the love of 
 God, — the love which wills eternal life and makes to 
 live. The end is the union of believers, the union of 
 obedient lovers, in Christ and God. It is evident 
 that the Son's adjustment with the Father embraces 
 the salvation of mankind, is even identical with it. 
 
 This will appear more clearly if we turn back 
 and follow the Gospel for a little. "God is spirit," 
 
JESUS 215 
 
 Jesus has said to the Samaritan woman ; and when 
 his disciples have returned to the well, and ask him 
 to eat, he answers that he has meat they know not 
 of, which is to do the will of him who sent him. 
 After the healing at the Bethesda pool, he says to 
 the Jews, "He that heareth my word, and believeth 
 him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not 
 into judgement, but hath passed out of death into 
 life. . . . For as the Father hath life in himself, 
 even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself. 
 ... I can do nothing of myself." And at another 
 time: "I am come down from heaven, not to do 
 mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. 
 And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all 
 that which he hath given me, I should lose nothing, 
 but should raise it up at the last day." 
 
 Here it is clear, that as Christ's adjustment 
 is to do his Father's will, which is that no believing 
 life shall be lost, so that adjustment must include 
 the imparting of eternal life to all believers. The 
 absolute life-giving power of spirit is next declared. 
 "I am the bread of life," — a hard saying to the 
 Jews. In the explanation to the disciples, Jesus 
 says : "It is the spirit that maketh life" : ro Trvevfxai 
 ia-TLv TO ^(ooiroLovv. Even as it is the truth that maketh 
 free, free from the bondage to sin, wherein there 
 cannot be the eternal freedom of the spirit. 
 
 "... and I lay down my life for the sheep. 
 • . . My sheep hear my voice . . , and I give 
 
2l6 DELIVERANCE 
 
 them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and 
 no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My 
 Father, which hath given them unto me, is greater 
 than all ; and no one is able to snatch them out of 
 the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." 
 
 The final discourses with the disciples contain the 
 fullest expression of the adjustment of the Son with 
 and in the Father; they also set forth the ultimate 
 phases of that love and life which Christ is, in and of 
 the Father, and which those receive who love him, 
 and thereby become one with him and the Father. 
 They include the fourteenth chapter of John, and 
 then the fifteenth with its image of the true Vine, 
 also the sixteenth, a chapter of love's consolations, 
 — "that in me ye may have peace" ; and finally the 
 seventeenth, where analysis may well hesitate. 
 
 "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son that 
 the Son may glorify thee : even as thou hast given 
 him authority over all flesh, that whatsoever thou 
 hast given him, to them he should give eternal life. 
 And this is life eternal, that they should know thee, 
 the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, 
 even Jesus Christ. I glorified thee on the earth, 
 having accomplished the work which thou hast given 
 me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me 
 with thine own self with the glory which I had with 
 thee before the world was." 
 
 Thereupon the prayer turns directly to the 
 disciples and those who are to believe through their 
 
JESUS 217 
 
 word: "Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is 
 truth . . . that they may all be one ; even as thou, 
 Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may 
 be in us : that the world may believe that thou didst 
 send me. And the glory which thou hast given me 
 I have given unto them; that they may be one, 
 even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, 
 that they may be perfected into one . . . that the 
 love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, 
 and I in them." 
 
 So far as the mystery of Christ may be unveiled, 
 these words declare that the adjustment, the assur- 
 ance, the salvation, which was his and in his life, 
 consummates itself in the life of God and in the 
 salvation of men, through the divine love and the 
 imparting of life through love's sanctifying truth. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Paul 
 
 "pAUL'S antecedents as a Jew and education as 
 ■^ a Pharisee drastically shaped the creative 
 working of his religious genius, and set the ways 
 through which he reached that power of conviction 
 which was to move the Gentile world. ^ The intellec- 
 tual necessities of this Jew and Pharisee, in conflict 
 and in alliance with his experience of Christ, moulded 
 the form of his adjustment, his devotion, and his 
 assurance of salvation. Some of his phrases, even 
 some of his conceptions, may have been taken from 
 the mystery-religions of the Hellenistic world he 
 moved in. When the phrases or the ideas of those 
 ubiquitous cults offered themselves as vehicles for 
 the expression, or means for the clarification, of his 
 thoughts of Christ and his new relationship to God 
 through Christ, he naturally used tjiem. 
 
 Leaving his birthplace, the Hellenistic city of 
 Tarsus, Paul went to Jerusalem as a youth, where he 
 diligently studied the law of Israel at the feet of 
 Gamaliel. That honoured Pharisee appears as the 
 most tolerant and patient-minded of his class. It 
 was he who stayed the first persecution of the 
 apostles, warning the Sanhedrin to beware, since 
 
 218 
 
PAUL 219 
 
 perchance the teaching in the name of Jesus might be 
 of God (Acts v). Yet he was a learned master and 
 strict observer of the law ; and there was at least 
 one zealot in his school. That zealot, somewhat 
 later, is found approving of the death of Stephen, 
 and then becomes an eager persecutor of the followers 
 of Jesus. Active at Jerusalem in committing them 
 to prison, he takes letters from the High Priest to 
 the Damascus synagogues, in order that he may hunt 
 them there. 
 
 Although Saul's persecution of the Church is 
 frequently referred to in the Acts and in his own 
 Epistles, we are not intimately informed as to its 
 motives, save that it sprang from zeal for the law : 
 **Ye have heard," he writes to the Galatians, "of 
 my manner of life in time past in the Jews' religion, 
 how that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of 
 God, and made havoc of it : and I advanced in the 
 Jews' religion beyond many of mine companions 
 among my countrymen, being more exceedingly 
 zealous for the traditions of my fathers." 
 
 So we cannot tell just what was working in the 
 mind of the young man Saul, while the garments of 
 those who were stoning Stephen were in keeping 
 at his feet; nor what was surging in him while on 
 the way to Damascus. Zealous for the law, was he 
 wilfully hurrying on, lest he find himself stopped by 
 the reluctance of misgivings and the dissuasion of 
 counter impulses ? Such matters, and the more 
 
220 DELIVERANCE 
 
 definite stroke of illumination'and repentance which 
 overcame him, each of us will interpret for himself: 
 the resources of modern psychology are at our dis- 
 posal. That "vision/' however, was to be an up- 
 lifting — not an overturning — of tjie contents of 
 Paul's education and convictions. 
 
 After he was led into the city, and his sight had 
 been restored by brother Ananias, or, as he puts it 
 in his own words, looking back after many years' 
 consideration: "when it was the good pleasure of 
 God, who separated me, even from my mother's 
 womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal 
 his Son in me, that I might preach him among the 
 Gentiles, straightway I did not take counsel with 
 flesh and blood . . . hut I went away into Arabia" 
 (Gal. i). 
 
 We are ignorant of the nature and setting of this 
 retirement. Let us not imagine that we can think 
 as Paul; his very words, impressed with his ex- 
 perience and peculiar education, do not bear the 
 same meaning to us that they had for him. We 
 must not be too sure that we really understand the 
 argumentation of his Epistles; still less can we 
 penetrate the conflicts, or the reasonings within 
 himself, which we think he must have passed 
 through, before he attained to those convictions 
 and that power of faith which were to move the 
 Gentiles. But at least we must interpret this 
 journey into Arabia as a period of retirement and 
 
PAUL 221 
 
 reflection. It is inconceivable that he did not need 
 a time of quiet to restore his mind, and enable him 
 to get new bearings on the old sea of his fathomless 
 education and inheritance, before he could steer a 
 course by the light flashing within him. 
 
 As to arguments and communings with himself, 
 before his great convictions came, we can only 
 work back to them very uncertainly, by inference. 
 And yet it seems as if we could trace, for instance, 
 in a writing of such personal intensity as the Epistle 
 to the Galatians, something of the process by which 
 those convictions had become a very part of Paul, 
 belonging to his mental and religious growth, as we 
 might say, or, as he would deem, springing from the 
 power of Christ within him. 
 
 But before making this approach to a view of the 
 scope and contents of the great deliverance which 
 Paul attained in Christ, its basis, as it were the body 
 which was to be transformed and clothed upon, 
 must be grasped. Paul was a Jew, and to the end 
 remained a Jew, faithful to the God of his fathers, 
 and faithful to the law of Israel as he conceived that 
 law to have been fulfilled in Christ. If Jesus said 
 that not one jot or tittle of the law should pass 
 away till all things were fulfilled, so Paul, following 
 the argumentation in which he had been trained, 
 and holding fast to the law's elemental or pedagogic 
 authority, rises above it through its own reasonings, 
 compels the old to support the new, and so fulfil 
 
222 DELIVERANCE 
 
 itself in Christ. " Do we then make the law of none 
 effect through faith ? Nay, we establish the law" — 
 even in the principle of justification through faith. 
 Is not this a large part of the burden of the Epistle to 
 the Romans ? A burden which is carried with 
 strainings of the spirit ! The bearer is driven for- 
 ward by the sense of his own inability to fulfil the 
 law, — a deep and dreadful sense of his radically 
 evil nature, which compels him to do the thing he 
 hates. This body of sin and death must literally 
 be dispossessed and replaced by the spirit of Christ, 
 which we have through faith and hope and love. 
 
 It is wonderful how legal are Paul's arguments, 
 and through what tortuous and narrow-necked pas- 
 sages he emerges into the breadth of the truth of 
 Christ. It is all there in Romans: the twistings 
 seem to end with the seventh chapter, and with 
 the opening of the eighth, Paul has cast off the 
 body of this death and freed himself from the con- 
 demnation of the law: "There is therefore no 
 condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus . . . 
 and we know that to them that love God all things 
 work together for good. ..." And yet, perhaps 
 alas ! perhaps unavoidably, Paul must needs re- 
 trammel himself in arguments touching the right- 
 eousness of God's foreordainment as to the elect. 
 Because of such hamperings and hindrances, Paul, 
 with all his splendid breadth and truth of mind 
 and heart, perhaps seems to fail to dwell quite 
 
PAUL 223 
 
 easily in the absolute universality of the Fatherhood 
 of God and the spirit of Christ, life-giving, re- 
 creating. Yet with fervent power he makes even 
 that his own, through revelation and the grace of 
 God. 
 
 It will now be illuminating to follow the argument 
 of the Epistle to the Galatians. The fervour of 
 his exhortations to those people, well-meaning, and 
 yet foolish and bewitched, harks back to disputa- 
 tions with himself, in the years when he had need 
 to press his way through each successive difficulty 
 springing out of his education — thorns for his feet! 
 We feel the admonition of the superscription: 
 " Paul an apostle, not from men / . , , grace to you 
 and peace from God the Father, and our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that 
 he might deliver us out of this present evil world." 
 The admonition becomes explicit in the next sen- 
 tences. Then he recalls how he had made known to 
 them that the Gospel which he preached came to him 
 through revelation of Jesus Christ, not from the 
 instruction of James, Cephas, or John, who, never- 
 theless, in good time gave him the right hand of 
 fellowship, as having been intrusted with the Gospel 
 for the Gentiles. And he recounts that subsequent 
 argument with Cephas, in which he so energetically 
 bade him to remember that even he, Cephas, did not 
 live like a Jew, but believed in Christ in order to be 
 justified through faith in Christ, and not by works 
 
224 DELIVERANCE 
 
 of the law ; since by works of the law shall no flesh 
 be justified. 
 
 Then he turns and demands of them : "Received 
 ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hear- 
 ing of the faith ? Are ye so foolish ? having begun 
 in the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh?** 
 May not Paul have pricked himself with this same 
 sarcasm, and often asked himself these very ques- 
 tions, while he was adjusting his past with the call 
 through grace and the revelation of the Son in him, 
 which first took place on a certain day when on 
 the road to Damascus ? Some twenty years had 
 passed since then. And now he quotes to his 
 Galatians those words from the fifteenth chapter of 
 Genesis, which seem never to have left his mind — 
 repeatedly he quotes them, and how often must he 
 have said them to himself: "Abraham believed God, 
 and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness." 
 He draws for his hearers the inference, with which 
 doubtless he often had assured himself, that he still 
 was an inheritor of the promise made to Abraham : 
 "Know therefore that they which be of faith, the 
 same are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, 
 foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles 
 by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand unto 
 Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be 
 blessed." So then they which be of faith are blessed 
 with the faithful Abraham. 
 
 He passes to another comforting passage, this 
 
PAUL 225 
 
 time from Habakkuk : "The righteous man shall 
 live by faith/* But Paul comes to it in this Epistle 
 through the jarring curses of the law, and the re- 
 demption which the crucifixion worked — straining, 
 as it may seem to us, the connexion if not the meaning 
 of the passages. Had he meant that no one could 
 be justified by the works of the law, and yet whoever 
 failed in them had been accursed ; but now Christ, 
 hanging upon the tree, had abolished the curse for 
 his believers, and made firm their justification 
 through faith ? 
 
 He next argues that Christ is the seed, in whom 
 the covenant with Abraham is confirmed. The 
 law was added because of transgressions, till the 
 seed should come, to whom the promise had been 
 made, this promise which enures to the salvation of 
 those who believe in Christ. Till then, we were 
 wards of the law, but now are no longer in its tute- 
 lage. At this point, Paul's great conclusion — and 
 his own spirit — flings itself free: "For ye are all 
 sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus." And 
 the conclusion is immediately substantiated: "For 
 as many of you as were baptised into Christ did put 
 on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, 
 there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no 
 male and female : for ye are all one man in Christ 
 Jesus." Yet still the clinging Jew in Paul turns 
 back again to reassure his converts, as he once had 
 needed to reassure himself: "And if ye are Christ's, 
 
226 DELIVERANCE 
 
 then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs according to 
 promise." But while in tutelage as children, until 
 the time appointed by the Father, we were in bond- 
 age to the rudiments, the A-B-Cs, perhaps, the 
 elemental spirits {o-tolx'^ui tov koo-/xov; where did 
 Paul get this word so much used in primary edu- 
 cation and in philosophy ?), until in the fulness of 
 time God sent his Son, born under the law, that he 
 might redeem those under the law, and we might 
 receive the adoption of sons : would ye who now 
 know God turn back to the beggarly elements ! 
 
 Thus he fiercely clinches his argument; as in 
 times past he often may have driven it home to 
 himself. One must remember that none of Paul's 
 extant Epistles was written till many years after 
 the vision on the road; their fully reasoned out 
 assurances may have come to their author slowly 
 through toil and struggle.^ And how fierce and liv- 
 ing are the arguments in these Epistles I arguments 
 which Paul must so often have levelled at his own 
 difficulties. Indeed, did he ever altogether cast ofF 
 his reliance on these arguments which had established 
 his freedom from the law .? In this Epistle to the 
 Galatians, at least, he is not yet satisfied that he has 
 convinced them fully, for he allegorises from the 
 
 * Though it is hazardous to rely on Acts for the exact speeches 
 of Paul, Acts xiii. 16-41 seems to give an early stage of Paul's 
 preaching before he had fully worked out the arguments of his 
 Epistles. 
 
PAUL 227 
 
 two sons of Abraham, the one by a handmaid, born 
 after the flesh, the other by the free woman, bom 
 through promise, — the promise which is unto us. 
 Then he warns them not to receive circumcision; 
 for in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircum- 
 cislon availeth, but faith working through love. 
 
 In these last words, Paul's argument, and he with 
 it, again flings off its fetters; and he continues, 
 admonishing the Galatians practically with the 
 beautiful disencumbered ethics of Christ. Closing, 
 again he warns them against those who insist on 
 circumcision, and do not themselves keep the law 
 (no more than Cephas did !). They would glory in 
 your flesh 1 "But far be it from me to glory, save 
 in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which 
 the world has been crucified to me, and I unto the 
 world. For neither is circumcision anything, nor 
 uncircumcision, hut a new creature. And as many 
 as shall walk by this rule, peace be upon them, and 
 mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From hence- 
 forth let no man trouble me : for I bear branded on 
 my body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen." 
 
 Paul's phrases have long since become pious 
 commonplaces, emptied or filled with meaning 
 to suit the user. But Paul, when he said that 
 through the cross of Christ the world had been 
 crucified to him and he to the world, meant verily 
 that his old life — his sinful nature — had gone 
 
228 DELIVERANCE 
 
 out of him, and was replaced with the eternal life 
 of Christ, and that thereby he was literally a new 
 creature, from which the old had passed away. 
 We must accustom ourselves to read in such words 
 of Paul the veritable, almost corporeal, meaning 
 which they carried for him, if we would form an 
 idea of the adjustment which it was given him to 
 attain. 
 
 That may now be approached through a sheer and 
 well-nigh literal acceptance of what he is saying 
 in the opening chapters of the first Epistle to the 
 Corinthians. He is beseeching them to have done 
 with divisions, one saying, "I am of Paul," and 
 another, "I am of ApoUos"; and he is glad that 
 he himself baptised so few of them, lest they might 
 say they were baptised in his name. And thereupon, 
 according to the greatness of his nature, Paul lifts 
 the matter above their small contentions, into the 
 region of the truth of Christ. "For Christ sent 
 me not to baptise, but to preach the Gospel : not 
 in wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should 
 be made void. For the word of the cross is to them 
 that are perishing foolishness; but unto us which 
 are being saved it is the power of God" — 8vm/u.is 
 O^ov — literally, or rather, verily, the power of God. 
 . . . "We preach Christ crucified," a stumbling 
 for the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, "but 
 unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, 
 Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" 
 
PAUL ^ 
 
 — again, literally and veritably. And then ^ ,^ 
 Paul has referred to his own feebleness, and 
 
 he tells them he has not preached persuasiv 
 of wisdom, but set forth a demonstratior 
 and power: "that your faith should n 
 the wisdom of men, but in the pow 
 literally again, €v Swa/Act Oeov, "For 
 of God is not in word but in power." 
 He shows them that as the spiri* 
 stands human things, so "non* 
 of God save the spirit of God," 
 
 — again, literally. "Now th 
 not the things of the spirit 
 foolishness unto him . . 
 Christ," — we have bee 
 and it is that which ^' 
 
 old minds, understa^ 
 ye not that ye are 
 God dwelleth i 
 but also with 
 God dwelleth 
 that he is, ^ 
 sake, naked, 
 admonishes 
 splendid rel 
 tation ba*- 
 was to b' 
 body is 
 which 
 
DELIVERANCE 
 
 ■>9 ^jre moving in the atmosphere of Paul's ad- 
 
 t, and may now in some degree appreciate 
 
 .Its and periphery. His large nature needed 
 
 ce manifold and comprehensive, satisfying 
 
 as well as mind, and including the salva- 
 
 loved fellows. As a foundation, his feet 
 
 in the monotheism of the prophets of 
 
 ^ know that no idol is anything in 
 
 bat there is no god but one ... to 
 
 the Father, of whom are all 
 
 'm, and one Lord Jesus Christ, 
 
 1 things, and we through 
 
 'the image of the invisible 
 
 -eation; ... all things 
 
 m and unto him ; and 
 
 *m all things consist 
 
 ss of the Godhead 
 
 lom we have re- 
 
 . For it was 
 
 , through him 
 
 ' aving made 
 
 ." (Col. i). 
 
 Lord from 
 
 I trespasses, 
 
 therefore 
 
 . through 
 
PAUL 23 t 
 
 Paul's conception of the nature and function of 
 Christ is one of the wonderful things of history. 
 With him, God, the Father of all, is the source of 
 power and life and love. But the fulness of the 
 Godhead dwelleth bodily in Christ, and it is in Christ 
 that Paul virtually lives and moves and has his be- 
 ing : unto the measure of whose fulness tendeth the 
 stature of the full-grown man; he is the absolute 
 standard ; his love const raineth us, and the spirit of 
 Christ is life within us — that which does away 
 with the sinfulness and mortality of the flesh. 
 "The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus 
 our Lord" (Rom. vi. 23). "But ye are not in the 
 flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God 
 dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not (literally 
 "hath not") the spirit of Christ, he is none of his. 
 And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of 
 sin ; but the spirit is life because of righteousness. 
 But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from 
 the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ 
 Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal 
 bodies through his spirit that dwelleth in you" 
 (Rom. viii. 9). 
 
 It is hazardous to attempt to state Paul's thoughts, 
 his convictions, his expressions of the power through 
 which he lived, in any language save his own; 
 and even then we may doubt whether we grasp his 
 words in the significance they bore for him. Justifi- 
 cation by faith ! surely : yet how that legally ar- 
 
232 DELIVERANCE 
 
 rived at principle pales before the living Christ in 
 whom is life ! As Paul had risen from the law, and 
 had wrestled himself free from the bondage of its 
 arguments, his adjustment was to be no longer of 
 the reason only, or even mainly. It was of the whole 
 man, comforted, assured, dwelling in the lordship 
 and power of the loving and saving Christ. 
 
 "Though our outward man is decaying, yet our 
 inward man is renewed day by day. For our light 
 affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us 
 more and more an eternal weight of glory ... we 
 know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be 
 dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not 
 made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. . . . For 
 the love of Christ constraineth us, since we judge 
 that as one died for all, therefore all died ; and he died 
 for all, that they which live should no longer live 
 unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes 
 died and rose again. Wherefore we henceforth 
 know no man after the flesh ; even though we have 
 known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him 
 so no more. Wherefore if any man is in Christ, 
 he is a new creature: the old things have passed 
 away; behold, they are become new. But all 
 things are from God, who reconciled us to himself 
 through Christ. . . . God was in Christ reconciling 
 the world unto himself" (2 Cor. iv and v). 
 
 And how had not the great Apostle, to whom the 
 word of reconciliation had been committed (2 Cor. 
 
PAUL 233 
 
 V. 19), to whom had been vouchsafed visions, up- 
 liftings to the heavens, and the revelation of Christ 
 within himself, how had he not felt the power of God 
 in his own weakness, when he had prayed that the 
 "stake in the flesh" might be removed, and the 
 answer had been : "My grace is sufficient for thee; 
 for power is perfected in weakness." 
 
 One need not pause to say that in Paul's adjust- 
 ment, justification by faith — the spirit of Christ in 
 the believer ! — is organically united with all right- 
 eousness, and separated from all sin and sinfulness, 
 an ethical union and separation which is expanded 
 and emphasised throughout Paul's Epistles. The 
 final bond of all, and even the inmost principle of 
 salvation, is love — the love of God, the love of 
 Christ, the love of man. "Who shall separate us from 
 the love of Christ ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or 
 persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or 
 sword ? Nay, in all these things we are more than 
 conquerors through him that loved us. For I am 
 persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
 nor principalities, nor things present nor things to 
 come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
 other creature, shall be able to separate us from the 
 love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 
 All spiritual gifts, all manifestations of the power 
 of life within us, are they not of the same spirit 
 of God ? diversities of workings, and the same God 
 who worketh all things in all ? And are we not all 
 
234 DELIVERANCE 
 
 members of the same body of Christ ? For the ob- 
 taining of these gifts of the Spirit, these freely 
 bestowed powers of God, which are one in their 
 source of Christ, "a still more excellent way show I 
 unto you." And Paul breaks into his lyric chapter 
 on the indispensable and excellent sufficiency of 
 love, in that adjustment which unites the relation- 
 ships between men with the relationship of man to 
 God. It is this necessary principle and fact of love, 
 this having within himself the mind of Christ, which 
 will not permit Paul to rest in any adjustment, or 
 assurance of salvation, that does not include the 
 salvation of his loved fellow-beings: "Wherefore, 
 my brethren beloved and longed for, my joy and 
 my crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my beloved" 
 (Phil. iv. i). "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, 
 my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy 
 Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain 
 in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were 
 anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my 
 kinsmen after the flesh, who are Israelites" (Rom. 
 ix. i). 
 
 These are the horns, not so much of Paul's di- 
 lemma as of his full adjustment and salvation. 
 The fervour of his Epistles, which may become a 
 veritable /ttror, belongs to his passion to save men in 
 Christ. It pours through the Epistles to the Philip- 
 piansand the Thessalonians — through all his Epistles 
 indeed : " For I am jealous over you with a godly 
 
PAUL 235 
 
 jealousy ! . . . Of the Jews five times received I 
 forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with 
 rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck 
 ... in journeyings often, in perils in the city, in 
 perils in the wilderness ... in labour and travail, 
 in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness. Beside 
 those things that are without, there is that which 
 presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches. 
 Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is made to 
 stumble, and I burn not ?" (2 Cor. xi. 2 sqq.), 
 **For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying.? 
 Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at his coming ? 
 ... for now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord" 
 (i Thess. ii. 19; iii. 8). 
 
 In common with the disciples of Jesus, Paul 
 shared the expectation of the near coming of the 
 Lord, — even before their generation should have 
 passed away. Questions were rife in the first Chris- 
 tian communities as to the manner of the resurrec- 
 tion, and even as to the relative advantages or prec- 
 edence, on that day, of the living and the dead. 
 "But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, 
 concerning them that fall asleep. . . . For if we 
 believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them 
 also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring 
 with him. For this we say unto you by the word 
 of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left until 
 the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede 
 them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord himself 
 
236 DELIVERANCE 
 
 shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the 
 voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God : 
 and the dead in Christ shall rise first : then we that 
 are alive, that are left, shall together with them be 
 caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : 
 and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (i Thess. 
 iv. 13-17). Without a realisation of this conviction 
 of Paul's one cannot understand all parts of the 
 fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, as when he 
 says: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be 
 changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at 
 the last trump : for the trumpet shall sound, and 
 the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall 
 be changed. For this corruption must put on incor- 
 ruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." 
 
 Mightily Paul preached the resurrection, without 
 which his own peace, his adjustment, his assurance 
 of salvation, were an idle song, as he knew. "If 
 in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all 
 men most pitiable. ... If the dead are not 
 raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 
 And his comfort of assurance lay in the life in 
 Christ, and the sure expectation of the coming of 
 the Lord. Wherefore, in the midst of stripes and 
 persecutions, his heart did steadily rejoice, and bade 
 his brethren also to rejoice: "Rejoice in the Lord 
 always : again I will say, rejoice. . . . The Lord 
 is at hand. In nothing be anxious. . . . And the 
 peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall 
 
PAUL 237 
 
 guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus. 
 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, what- 
 soever things are honorable, whatsoever things are 
 just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
 are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; 
 if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
 think on these things" (Phil. iv). 
 
 Thus Paul joins together the factors of his peace, 
 which rested in the Lord, in his near coming, in the 
 joy of his own and his fellows' salvation, — saved 
 in part through his ministry; which rested also in 
 purity of life, and in the love which worketh all 
 things in love ; love which is very near to knowledge, 
 very near to the realisation of the purposes of God. 
 "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, 
 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is 
 named, that he would grant you, according to the 
 riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with 
 power through his spirit in the inward man; that 
 Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; 
 to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in 
 love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints 
 what is the breadth and length and height and 
 depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth 
 knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness 
 of God'' (Eph. iii. 14-19). 
 
 This last sentence, whether Paul wrote it, or it be 
 by another hand, is Paul, in the richness and power 
 of his manifold nature and his acceptance of Christ. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Augustine 
 
 TN the three centuries elapsing between the death 
 -*■ of Paul and the birth of Augustine, Chris- 
 tianity had pressed itself with vital insistency 
 upon the Greco-Roman world, until it had won 
 recognition as the religion of the Empire. If the 
 Gospel had triumphed, it was also to some extent 
 led captive through its adaptation to the ways in 
 which the centuries of its reception could understand 
 and accept it. Yet, at the same time, the Gospel, 
 or whatever constituted the vitality of Christianity, 
 was constantly advancing through emergence and 
 disclaimer, keeping itself free from those elements of 
 its environment which it could not accept or as- 
 similate without impairing its organic consistency 
 and power. 
 
 These are the two general and intimately com- 
 plementary phases of the process resulting in the 
 Christianity of the fourth century. Both are repre- 
 sented in Augustine. But his life evolved elements 
 of its own, those personal features of his own spiritual 
 growth which completed the Latin understanding of 
 Christianity, or, if one will, the mode of its reception 
 by the Latin world. Latin Christianity becomes it- 
 
 238 
 
AUGUSTINE 239 
 
 self in Augustine, who represents, resumes in his 
 experience and efforts the processes through which it 
 had become what it was, not in the year 354 when he 
 was born, but in the year 430, when he died, having 
 finished his work. For the matter of its growth, 
 the contents of its mutations, since apostolic times, 
 were purified and finished in his person. The greater, 
 or at least the better, part of what was to endure of 
 prior teaching was taken up and transmitted through 
 the unifying and somewhat transforming personality 
 of Augustine. He forms the basis, and even the 
 structure, of the Western Christianity of the next 
 thousand years. 
 
 Regarded from another point of view, Augustine 
 exemplifies the tremendous power carried in the 
 main interest or most vital energy of an age. What 
 would he have been, what would his life have 
 amounted to, had he not accepted Christianity ? 
 In it he developed his powers, and brought his 
 faculties to actualisation. He was bred to a pro- 
 fession which had lost all creativeness, and stood 
 for the final sterility of Greco-Roman culture. As 
 long as he remained a professor of rhetoric, — of 
 pagan literature and oratory, — he moved in that dry 
 atmosphere, his own faculties unvitalised, literally 
 unformed, for lack of a certain purpose and a goal. 
 Then he was led to become a Christian. With his 
 conversion, gradually, by no means at once, he and 
 all his faculties and all his knowledge gained form. 
 
240 DELIVERANCE 
 
 and a unity of inspiration, till they filled and ex- 
 panded with the fulness and the power of Christ. 
 
 The vast majority of the people of any age are 
 busied with their narrow daily interests. Their 
 further hopes and fears are not insistent; they are 
 but slightly moved either by religious devotion or 
 spiritual unrest. It is but the remnant that ex- 
 periences religious fervour or anxiety. The rest 
 accept suggestions, go with the tendency set by this 
 remnant, and so pass from one spiritual dulness to 
 another. Making these provisos, one may speak of 
 the pagan world, in the first centuries of the Christian 
 era, as restless and touched with yearning for a divine 
 salvation. The words of Augustine which have 
 always been taken as the key-note of the movements 
 of his soul, were applicable to that pagan world : 
 "fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum 
 donee requiescat in te." Manifestly, the pagan 
 world was seeking a new spiritual deliverance. 
 
 The Christian Gospel was a means to this salva- 
 tion, a balm for this unrest. In it, to note its tan- 
 gible form and the manner of its presentation, 
 Christ was the Saviour, and the healer of bodies as 
 well as souls. He offered eternal life, in the place of 
 mortality and death. He cured sin as a disease, 
 he the good physician, his ministers also healing in 
 the power of the Spirit. He saved, moreover, 
 from the demons which possessed and terrified the 
 world, causing insanity, disease, and sin. His 
 
AUGUSTINE 241 
 
 apostles, his bishops and preachers, were likewise 
 casters out of demons, bringers of sanity, exorcisers: 
 they were expelling sin and demons from among 
 men. In accordance with these functions of its 
 ministers, the Gospel moved in the power of love 
 and charity. Those accepting it formed a com- 
 munity, devoted to its transmission and to the care 
 of the human means and instruments. Each 
 community provided for its teachers, for its widows 
 and orphans ; for the sick, for slaves, for prisoners in 
 the mines, and for the bodies of the dead. The 
 Church, moreover, that is, the universal and duly 
 constituted body of believers acting through their 
 ordained representatives, was rapidly becoming 
 the fountain-head of divine power on earth. For 
 the Church possessed the authority to interpret 
 and declare the contents of the faith and the meaning 
 of the Old Testament, with its proofs of Christ and 
 wealth of prototypal institutions ; also the authority 
 not only to interpret, but even to make, the New 
 Testament, by establishing its canon; and finally 
 the authority to order and administer the Christian 
 rites of baptism and the Lord's Supper, which were 
 becoming sacramental mysteries, and to which other 
 sacraments were soon added. The sacramental 
 ritual grew apace, developing what was Christian 
 in origin and adopting unconsciously much from the 
 world to which believers, before conversion, had 
 belonged. Naturally these did not altogether lay 
 
242 DELIVERANCE 
 
 aside their former intellectual and spiritual habits 
 on becoming Christians. Dwelling in an atmos- 
 phere of religious emotion, the uncritical souls of 
 these early Christians were fertile receptacles for 
 superstitions which, wearing new masks or old, were 
 the same in Christianity and paganism. 
 
 Yet, although founded on concrete revelation, 
 and representing transmitted authority, and feeding 
 upon superstitions, the Church, which was the body 
 of believers, and in a mystic sense the body of Christ, 
 also admitted reason and reasonableness, as a co- 
 ordinate determinant of its rejections and accept- 
 ances. The Gospel was a faith with all ; with some 
 it might also be a philosophy. So, just as the 
 Church accepted superstitions and elements of 
 sacramental magic from the pagan world, it also 
 appropriated its knowledge and its reason; and 
 soon maintained, in self-justification, that pagan 
 philosophy, so far as it contained elements of truth, 
 received them from the Christian God, or borrowed 
 them from the Scriptures. The believing com- 
 munities constituting the Church of Christ made 
 a people newly set apart to God ; yet they conceived 
 themselves to have existed from the beginning 
 as the chosen Israel of God, the human vessel of 
 divine truth. Though still unrecognised by the 
 Jews and the pagan multitude, the Church had 
 become with Origen, in the third century, the all- 
 embracing and all-ordering kingdom, the Koa-fios tov 
 
AUGUSTINE 243 
 
 KocrfjMv.^ With Augustine, in greater power, it is, 
 had always been, shall always be, the City of God. 
 
 If a new religion, flung into the world, is to endure, 
 it must remain itself, and not become something 
 else. Yet if it would be accepted by the world, 
 it must present itself in intelligible modes, receive 
 from the world whatever is pertinent and not 
 hostile to its spirit, and adapt itself to the world 
 in matters of the world — thus rendering unto 
 Caesar what is Caesar's. While it cannot be eclectic, 
 it may be selective and synthetic. 
 
 This dual need of self-preservation and adaptation 
 to the world pressed upon the new-born Christian 
 faith. In meeting it the Gospel's energies took form 
 in three phases of constructive action : the organisa- 
 tion of the Christian Church, the ordering of the 
 Christian life, the formulation of the Christian 
 faith. They are not to be too sharply distinguished 
 in treatment, seeing how dynamically interwoven 
 in their action were these phases of Christian energy. 
 A vast amount of learning has been devoted to their 
 elucidation. 
 
 An outer, as it were, secular organisation of the 
 Church was needed for the preservation and regula- 
 tion of the life and faith of the Christian communi- 
 ties, and even for the maintenance of life and order, 
 in those centuries of political disintegration. The 
 
 1 Contra Celsum, viii, Chapters 67-75, cited by Harnack in 
 The Mission and Extension of Christianity, etc. 
 
244 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Latin, or Roman, Catholic Church (our mind is 
 fixed upon the West), which gradually took form in 
 response to this need, may not improperly be viewed 
 as the final creation of the Roman political genius, 
 though its creation was inspired with other motives 
 than those which had made great the Republic 
 and the Empire. The Church was the embodiment 
 of Christian unity and Christian order, of Christ's 
 divine authority on earth, of fellowship with Christ 
 and participation in salvation. The authority 
 which Christ was recorded to have delivered to the 
 Apostles, became in the course of time vested in the 
 bishops as their successors. These were ranged 
 under their metropolitans, and eventually under 
 the bishop of Rome; they acted corporately in 
 councils. The Church was intrusted with the 
 ministration of the Sacraments, which were the 
 means of grace, the vehicles of life, without which 
 no one could be saved. There was, therefore, no 
 salvation without the Church : Salus extra eccle- 
 siam non est, says Cyprian. Upon this conviction, 
 and its own grand organisation, the Church was 
 to hold itself erect while the Empire crumbled 
 about it. 
 
 Obviously the organising of the Church and its 
 investment with authority over many things of this 
 world, according to the needs of an earthly society, 
 could not but result in its partial secularisation. 
 The springs of the spirit, inconveniently vagrant 
 
AUGUSTINE 24s 
 
 in Apostolic times, were gathered to ecclesiastic 
 channels, and administered through sacerdotal 
 conduits, through which alone, and also unfailingly, 
 flowed the divine grace. In conflict with the revolt 
 of Montanist enthusiasts, in the late second century, 
 the Church maintained its exclusive official authority 
 over the gifts of the Spirit ; maintained, as well, its 
 authority to promulgate Christian doctrine and 
 order Christian life. 
 
 The need of an authoritative organ to declare, 
 and keep declaring, what was and what was not 
 Christian doctrine, had promoted the organisation 
 of the authoritative Church. The rapid encroach- 
 ments of a semi-Christian Gnosticism in the second 
 century threatened the Gospel's existence as a 
 definite fact and revelation. In order to combat 
 Gnosticism, throw it off", and keep Christianity 
 from becoming a congeries of phantasies, the Church 
 proclaimed the Apostolic Creed and fixed the 
 Apostolic Canon of the New Testament. Next, a 
 reciprocally correlated conception was reached (by 
 Irenaeus) of the Gospel both as the revealed rule of 
 belief and conduct, and as the way of veritable 
 transformation of corrupt and mortal manhood 
 through the spirit of Christ. Under the former 
 aspect, eternal life would appear as a reward; 
 under the latter, it was a supernatural gift. From 
 these broad bases the formulation of dogma pro- 
 ceeded according to the twofold need of presenting 
 
246 DELIVERANCE 
 
 the Gospel in conformity to the intellectual in- 
 sistencies of the Greco-Roman world, and of con- 
 demning what was not the Gospel and could not 
 make part of Christian truth. Accordingly the 
 doctrine of the nature of Christ, and of the two 
 natures of Christ, divine and human, was worked 
 out with infinite toil and fierce anathemas. In this 
 central field of Christian dogma, the Church argued 
 in the categories of Greek (mainly Neoplatonic) 
 philosophy ; although, in the Latin West, theologians 
 also employed the terminology and conceptions of 
 the Roman Law. While the formulation of these 
 dogmas proceeded largely through the disavowal 
 of propositions held erroneous, it was also a creative 
 process, resulting in the establishment of positive 
 propositions. They are contained in the Nicene 
 Creed. That did not contravene the teaching 
 either of Christ or the Apostles, and held to the 
 realities of the Christian Gospel. It was a necessary 
 formulation of the Gospel, if all manner of pagan 
 concepts were to be excluded. Yet it was not 
 the Gospel, but a restatement of it in terms of 
 Greek philosophy. If the Creed contradicted many 
 a thesis of Greek philosophy, Greek philosophy had 
 nevertheless entered its structure. As touching 
 these dogmas, the Latin West followed the Hellenic 
 East ; but of itself turned to a more intimate wrest- 
 ling with the problem of sin, and the relations 
 between the human will and divine grace ; in which 
 
AUGUSTINE 247 
 
 struggle he who proved himself the orthodox protag- 
 onist was Augustine. 
 
 The Church ; dogma ; the Christian life. The last 
 was builded from the matter of its own living appro- 
 priation of the Faith, and yet was affected by the 
 need to accept or reject the pagan life about it. It 
 began in those inspired enthusiasms of the new 
 Faith, when the recipients of the Spirit spoke with 
 tongues, or prophesied, or taught, or healed with 
 laying on of hands. If there were dissensions, 
 charity also overflowed. The widow, the fatherless, 
 the poor, the sick, were cared for. Abundant 
 giving, extending even to the abandonment of lands 
 and all possessions, marked the lives of the believers, 
 and from the first called for official administration. 
 As Christianity spread among the Gentiles, the 
 converts naturally withdrew from pagan worship 
 and from festivals or ceremonies involving sacrifices 
 or recognition of the pagan gods ; withdrew also 
 from the games of the circus and gladiatorial com- 
 bats, which shocked the newly awakened Christian 
 conscience. But many complicated problems rose 
 for believers : what trades might they pursue, or 
 follow what professions, when pagan practices 
 and observances touched the whole round of daily 
 life ? Could Christians serve in the army, when 
 the military oath involved recognition of the Em- 
 peror's divinity ? These exigencies might be met 
 according to circumstances and individual conviction. 
 
248 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Profounder dilemmas were involved in the ques- 
 tion of the pagan literature and pagan philosophy. 
 Might Christians teach, or even study, that profane 
 literature ? This was never answered on principle, 
 but was solved through acquiescence in the need of 
 education, which could be had only through pagan 
 books. As to pagan philosophy, there were sharp 
 divergences. Some would have none of it, or at 
 least so proclaimed ; but it was as necessary as the 
 breath of life, necessary indeed for those doctors 
 who would state the Faith in terms satisfying to their 
 own philosophically educated minds, or in a manner 
 to be convincing to educated pagans. Neither was 
 this problem solved on principle, but was worked 
 out, as Jerome and Augustine worked it out through 
 the needs of their lives and labours. 
 
 An even more ideal question — beauty. High- 
 minded Christians sought to turn from the lures of 
 sculptured ivory and living flesh to the beauties 
 of the Christian spirit — the beauty of the soul 
 and God. Plato had felt and thought the like 
 before them. Connected with beauty were lust 
 and love, which offered the most insistent of all 
 problems. Augustine was to reach a solution 
 filling the utmost reaches of his soul, as he merged 
 or proportioned human loves in the love of God. 
 But, before him, the Christian communities had 
 gone far toward setting the virgin state above the 
 married, and toward demanding celibacy of bishops 
 
AUGUSTINE 249 
 
 and presbyters ; while the most prodigious solution of 
 this problem, the Christian working answer to the 
 plea for severance from the lusts of paganism and the 
 sinful world, had been given in the hermit lives of 
 hundreds of imitators of St. Anthony, and in the 
 even mightier commencements of corporate monasti- 
 cism. 
 
 Did the hot sun of western Northern Africa 
 breed fiery, sensual, and spiritually grasping tempera- 
 ments ? It was an eager, even violent land. The 
 people who were not Christians held ardently to 
 their religions, hating the Christians who stood aloof 
 from long-cherished practices. Nowhere else was 
 persecution so fiercely called for by the pagan popu- 
 lation. On their side, the Christians were fervent. 
 The martyrs passed to the arena with devoted 
 constancy. Montanism had come originally from 
 Phrygia; but that unmanageable, irreconcilable 
 form of Christianity flourished nowhere as in Africa. 
 There it denounced the worldliness, and scorned the 
 authority, of the Church, itself spurning all adapta- 
 tion to the world. And there Tertullian, greatest 
 of Christian advocates and of Latin theologians 
 before Augustine, became a Montanist through his 
 headstrong ardour and tenacious egotism. 
 
 Augustine was African by birth and breeding. 
 He was a man of passion and desire, of restless 
 temper, gifted with an analytic and constructive 
 
250 DELIVERANCE 
 
 mind, and destined, under the impulsion of Christian- 
 ity, to prove a spiritual genius. He was loving and 
 devoted, and yet a constraining egotism marshalled 
 his faculties, impelled and informed their action, 
 and drove him on to the giving of himself to God 
 or rather to the winning of God. From his youth 
 he had thought on his ultimate adjustment with life ; 
 and he became ever more interested, if not absorbed, 
 in reaching some assurance, even an assurance of 
 salvation. No small subjective satisfaction could 
 accord with his largeness of mind. Assurance of 
 his personal salvation must include the final settle- 
 ment of his opinions, convictions as they became, 
 regarding everything of salient import for human 
 destiny. It was a necessity of his nature to bring 
 his thoughts on God and man and all things into a 
 religious unison, wherein they should work to- 
 gether for the assurance of the soul's salvation. If 
 in his Soliloquies, near the time of his conversion, 
 he desired to know only God and the soul, it was 
 because his previous thoughts had resolved every- 
 thing of vital interest for man into the relationship 
 between the soul and God. 
 
 Primarily and always, Augustine sought his peace 
 — in God. But as he reached the first stage of 
 certitude in his conversion, his energies expanded, 
 and took form in labours to complete his own salva- 
 tion, and, through a vindication of true doctrine, 
 safeguard the faith of the Church. Henceforth 
 
AUGUSTINE 251 
 
 the arguments with which he maintained Christian 
 truth and the Church's authority against Mani- 
 chaeans, against pagans, against Donatists and 
 Pelagians, served likewise to substantiate and perfect 
 the peace which he had won. For that peace 
 could be secured only through a spiritual progress 
 which should include theoverthrowof every threaten- 
 ing argument, and the settlement of the problems 
 pressing on the soul. 
 
 There is universal significance in the course taken 
 by Augustine's adjustment, in the manner, if one 
 will, of his working himself out of previous insufficient 
 adjustments till he found refuge in the Christian 
 God, — a refuge which he was to make large enough 
 for all. For the universality of his desiring and in- 
 vestigating nature led him on through all the stages 
 by which, before the time of his conversion, the 
 Church had won its triumph over the passion and 
 the reason of the heathen world, and also had 
 kept itself the true Church of Christ. But Augus- 
 tine's adjustment will lead further still. For, 
 living when many a searching Christian question 
 was unsettled, through one and the same series of 
 intellectual, or, rather, spiritual, achievements, 
 he perfected his deliverance and completed Christian 
 doctrine. 
 
 A general knowledge of Augustine's life may be 
 assumed. Recently a charming book has been 
 made of it: Saint Augustin, by Louis Bertrand. 
 
252 DELIVERANCE 
 
 One may say that he did not cease to be pagan in 
 his mode of life until he had become Christian in 
 his convictions. Only thus was he freed from lusts 
 of the flesh, and from a manner of living ministering 
 to them in a moderate degree. It is to our purpose 
 to follow the mental steps leading him from one 
 and another opinion not in accord with Christianity. 
 For each of these opinions represented an obstacle 
 to the acceptance of Christianity, and at the same 
 time a section of the path leading to it. 
 
 Certain elementary Christian lessons of his child- 
 hood were never quite forgotten. They seem to 
 have left a wavering longing or affection in his mind 
 for the wonderful figure of the Saviour ; the name 
 of Jesus was always sweet to him. And yet it was 
 but as a fugitive sound to hark back to, — as with a 
 hound that is worried, having lost the scent. His 
 school education at first had no religious bearing; 
 but gradually became pagan in its influence, as he 
 progressed in grammar and rhetoric and the study of 
 the profane literature which made the medium of 
 these disciplines. Evidently his reading of Cicero's 
 Hortensius, with its alluring persuasions toward 
 philosophy, made a deep impression, to judge from 
 his frequent mention of it. His reading it may have 
 been an awakening. In after life, he said it turned 
 his prayers toward God, and filled him with longing 
 for wisdom, which is with God. The book pleased 
 him especially since it held no brief for any sect, 
 
AUGUSTINE 253 
 
 but rather enkindled within him the loving quest of 
 wisdom. It lacked one thing which had touched 
 his heart, the name of Christ. And still the Scrip- 
 tures themselves, because of their humble guise, 
 repelled the young rhetorician {Conf. iii, 4 and 5). 
 
 He heard that name indeed in the vain mouthings 
 of the Manichaeans, as he said afterwards; and 
 partly with that lure they drew him to their sect. 
 Probably the impression of the evil and the suffering 
 in the world, and his lack of philosophic enlighten- 
 ment, made his mind a guest-chamber for their 
 opinions ; which were full of fantastic fables, and 
 heavy with material views of God. At the same 
 time he was painfully stumbling over the Old Testa- 
 ment narratives, of patriarchs with many wives, and 
 commended by the mouth of God, although their 
 conduct was such as men no longer could approve; 
 for he did not then comprehend the righteousness 
 which always is the same, and yet may ordain what 
 is suitable only for a certain time {Conf. iii, 7) ; 
 nor had he learned, as afterwards from Ambrose, to 
 interpret the Old Testament "spiritaliter" in its 
 allegorical truth. If he only could have "con- 
 ceived spiritual substance," he would quickly have 
 thrown out the Manichaean arguments {Conf. v, 14). 
 
 So in those years of his early manhood at Carthage 
 he kept company with the Manichaeans, and also 
 dallied with the Mathematici (astrologers), thinking 
 well of them because they neither sacrificed nor 
 
254 DELIVERANCE 
 
 prayed to any spirit to direct their divinations. He 
 did not realise the folly of their doctrine that a man's 
 sin or sinlessness is fixed by the stars. A certain 
 wise physician pointed out to him the deceit, or at 
 most haphazard agreement, of their vain prognostica- 
 tions, — and yet he clung to them, for want of a sure 
 refutation. 
 
 It was also in these Carthaginian years that the 
 death of a friend showed him the futility of "spilling 
 his soul upon the sand in loving that which was 
 mortal as if it were not," — a first lesson in the dis- 
 cipline which directs the mind toward the love of God 
 and the love of men in God. Although he deemed 
 beauty to be the chief element of the lovable, the 
 lower forms of beauty held his thoughts. Num 
 amamus aliquid nisi pulchrum, exclaimed his 
 sensuous or aesthetic nature; while his questing 
 spirit asked what is beauty ? what is this which 
 draws us to the things we love ? He made his first 
 essay on authorship, with a book upon this subject, 
 entitled "de pulchro et apto," "The beautiful and 
 fit." In later life he looked back upon this book 
 through the altered perspective of maturer thoughts : 
 "But I saw not yet the essential matter in thy art. 
 Almighty One, who alone makest marvellous things ; 
 and my mind was going through corporeal forms; 
 and I was defining and distinguishing what was 
 beautiful in itself, what was fit, and what gains grace 
 through adaptation to something; and I was 
 
AUGUSTINE 255 
 
 furnishing my argument with corporeal illustrations. 
 Also I turned me to the nature of the soul, and the 
 false view I had of spiritual substances did not per- 
 mit me to perceive the truth. ... I was averting 
 my mind from the incorporeal thing toward linea- 
 ments and colors and swelling magnitudes, and 
 because I could not find them in the soul, I thought 
 I could not see my soul. And since in virtue I 
 loved peace, and in vice hated discord, I saw unity 
 in the one and division in the other; and the ra- 
 tional mind as well as the essence of truth and of 
 the summum honum seemed set in that unity, while 
 in that division I deemed there dwelt I know not 
 what substance of irrational life, an essential sum- 
 mum malum — not only substance but life, and yet 
 not dependent on thee, my God, from whom are 
 all things" {Conf. iv, 15). 
 
 Some years before, he had been given the Cate- 
 gories of Aristotle, which he first gaped at as some- 
 thing divine, then quickly mastered, but only to 
 find little help ; since he could not imagine that the 
 attributes of God were in God as in a subject, seeing 
 that God is each of his attributes — as his magnitude, 
 his beauty. Perhaps Augustine's dissatisfaction 
 with the little Aristotelian masterpiece was a stage 
 in his approach to more spiritual thoughts of God ; 
 but not till long afterwards did he learn to know 
 that beauty, which God was, from which the creature 
 beauties had so long kept him. 
 
256 DELIVERANCE 
 
 The approach of his thirtieth year found him still 
 in Carthage, but very restless. Why not try his 
 fortune as a professor of rhetoric in Rome ? He set 
 sail, with letters from the Manichaeans of Carthage, 
 although he no longer approved their doctrines. 
 In Rome he realised that he and they must soon 
 part company; though he still had not freed him- 
 self from the thought of God as material substance, 
 nor from conceiving evil as a substance gross as 
 earth or thin as air, yet always some sort of bulk or 
 body, which the good God could not have created. 
 He still thought that God was limited and finite in 
 relation to evil. He imagined the Saviour as issu- 
 ing (porrectum) from a mass of the brightest divine 
 substance ; — how could he have been born of the 
 Virgin and not have suffered defilement as part of 
 her flesh .? 
 
 Amidst these doubts, his mind turned naturally 
 to the chief advocates of philosophic doubt, the 
 Academics — Carneades and others belonging to the 
 later Academy called of Plato. They seemed the 
 wisest in holding all things to be in doubt, because 
 of man's inability to know the truth. 
 
 In this state of mind, looking for adjustment 
 and assurance, and yet not unhappy in the play of 
 philosophic doubt, Augustine accepted a call to fill 
 the city chair of Rhetoric in Milan ; it was in the 
 year 384, and he was still but thirty years of age. 
 Milan was the usual residence of the imperial court. 
 
AUGUSTINE 257 
 
 then Catholic. The town was Christian, with sym- 
 pathies torn between Catholics and Arians; and 
 there Ambrose was bishop. On his arrival, Augus- 
 tine openly shook off Manichaean affiliations, and 
 resumed the position of a Christian catechumen; 
 for as such his mother had inscribed him when a 
 child. He lost no time in paying his respects to 
 Ambrose, his admiration for whom was soon to 
 deepen into reverence. 
 
 This is the period of Augustine's "Conversion," 
 touching which there is the later devotional testi- 
 mony of his Confessions. But earlier works, written 
 at the time, indicate a different mood, and disclose 
 the philosophic questions then busying his mind. 
 The Confessions are not Wahrheit und Dichtung; 
 but they are Wahrheit and piety. Ten years of 
 thought and study, of Hving and feeling, had elapsed 
 since he left Milan a baptised Christian. During 
 those years, his convictions had grown surer and 
 more definite, had become vibrant with emotion, 
 and Augustine had acquired the habit of devout 
 expression. The devoutness of those Confessions, 
 and their power of feeling, scarcely made part of his 
 nature in the more inchoate period of his faith. 
 Yet they do not contradict, so much as supplement, 
 the earlier writings, which by reason of their tenta- 
 tive as well as academic character scantily expressed 
 the emotional crises of that time. 
 
 The character of Ambrose drew Augustine toward 
 
2S8 DELIVERANCE 
 
 the Catholic fold. He listened to his preaching 
 diligently. He learned from it the method of 
 spiritual, that is to say, allegorical interpretation 
 of the Old Testament — its hard places, which 
 "when I had taken them literally, I was killed — 
 occidebar." Littera occidit, the letter killeth — that 
 he now learned, and was to understand in time how 
 the spirit maketh to live. This method of inter- 
 pretation cleared his mind of any lingering regard 
 for the arguments which the Manichaeans brought 
 against the Church. But he inclined the more 
 strongly toward certain of the Greek philosophers, 
 and yet "could not commit the cure of his soul's 
 languor to them, because they were without the 
 healing name of Christ." This languor of the half 
 dilettante pagan soul was, in fact, vigorously expelled 
 by the energy of the Christian faith, when that had 
 entered Augustine. 
 
 The months passed, Augustine filling the duties 
 of his professorship ; studying also and constantly 
 turning over in his mind, or discussing with friends 
 from Africa, the opinions of the different philosophers. 
 He was still held by the comforts and pleasures of 
 the flesh, and but for his belief in a life after death, 
 would even have awarded the palm of the ethical 
 discussion to Epicurus {Conf. vi, i6). He had 
 put from him anthropomorphic conceptions of God, 
 and yet could not conceive him as incorporeal ; but 
 rather as something corporeal infused in the world 
 
AUGUSTINE 259 
 
 and diffused boundlessly about it, always incor- 
 ruptible and unchangeable: "So that the earth 
 should have Thee, and the heaven have Thee, and 
 all things be bounded in Thee, and Thou nowhere 
 bounded" {Conf. vii, i). Still the problem of 
 evil plagued him — as he set himself to understand 
 how that man's free will (liberum voluntatis arbit- 
 rium) was the cause of our evil-doing and God's 
 just judgement. But how then ? did not the good 
 God make him, and that will of his which preferred 
 evil ? then why should he be punished ? And 
 he began to imagine the creation vast and mani- 
 fold, and yet finite, with God surrounding and 
 penetrating it, everywhere infinite — as an infinite 
 sea holding and everywhere penetrating a huge 
 though finite sponge. Where, then, in such a uni- 
 verse made by omnipotent goodness, could there be 
 evil ? He was sore perplexed. 
 
 Yet, at least he was able to throw off all credence 
 in the horoscopes cast by the mathematici, astrolo- 
 gers. (Thus had such godless superstitions clung 
 to him !) For he considered seriously how different 
 were the fortunes even of twins, and others born 
 at the same instant. And still he could find no 
 outcome to the problem, whence is evil ? God alone, 
 and no man, knew how he was afflicted with it ! 
 
 He was to gain light from the works of the Greek 
 Neoplatonists, translated (for Augustine could 
 read but little Greek) by a rhetorician and philoso- 
 
26o DELIVERANCE 
 
 pher named C. Marius Victorinus, who in the end 
 had himself become a Christian (cf. Conf. viii, 2). 
 It seemed to him afterwards that the hand of God 
 had given him these books. He learned from them, 
 although in different words, and set forth with many 
 reasons, that "in the beginning was the Word and 
 the Word was with God and God was the Word : 
 this was in the beginning with God : all things 
 were made through him" — in fine, he learned the 
 teachings of the "prologue" to John's Gospel. 
 "There also I read that the Word, God, was born 
 not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, 
 but of God; but that the Word was made flesh, 
 and dwelt among us, I did not read there." Save 
 for this omission, Augustine drew from those books, 
 or read into them, substantially the Christian Gos- 
 pel — put in other words. 
 
 One need not cavil at Augustine's assimilation of 
 Neoplatonism with the Christianity of the fourth 
 century. The two had many common sources and 
 many similarities, — Neoplatonism and its doc- 
 trine of the One, the Nous, and the Soul, with 
 Christianity and its Trinity. Both systems 
 answered, though with unequal efficacy, to the re- 
 Hgious needs of educated men. Over such stepping- 
 stones thousands had travelled and still were 
 travelling to Christ. Augustine, by dint of his Neo- 
 platonic studies, won through to the conception of 
 God as spirit — to the conviction indeed that God 
 
AUGUSTINE 261 
 
 is spirit: irvcv/wa 6 6e6s. The view that evil was 
 not substance, but privation, also began to dawn 
 on him. But Neoplatonism lacked the clear and 
 lovable realisation of the divine, which Christianity 
 possessed in Christ; and Augustine, like many 
 others, kept on toward that with his arms out- 
 stretched. 
 
 One of the wonders of the Gospel is that its chief 
 stumbling-block to thoughtful minds is also the net 
 by which it captures souls, and holds them fast 
 when taken : to wit, the Incarnation, — God be- 
 came Man, the Word became Flesh, and dwelt among 
 us. It was this that Neoplatonism neither had, 
 nor could explain or assent to. The thought pre- 
 sented intellectual difficulties almost insurmount- 
 able. Yet the figure of Christ, his office as Media- 
 tor, his saving might as Saviour, drew men with 
 all the cords of anxiety and hope and dawning love. 
 To accept him thus, was to cease to be a Neo- 
 platonist and become a Christian. And this 
 Christ, when once accepted by the believer's mind, 
 and taken to his heart, became the fulness of certi- 
 tude, the blessedness of salvation, the ecstasy of 
 love. The whole mind and heart of man was 
 drawn in faith to the divine man Christ, and through 
 him on to God, realised in Christ as love as well as 
 power; whom for man to know and love is to be 
 saved, and in whom is man's delight for ever. 
 
 Augustine was led on by the books of the Neo- 
 
262 DELIVERANCE 
 
 platonists to think of God as incorporeal, and seek 
 him as the incorporeal truth. Yet they could not 
 bring him the stable enjoyment of this spiritually 
 conceived object of his thought, which should be 
 as well the object of his entire devotion. The 
 strength to rest in the thoughts and love of God, 
 as Augustine knew later, could be had only in and 
 through "the mediator of God and men, the man 
 Christ Jesus." But as yet he thought of Jesus 
 only as a man of excellent wisdom, and could not 
 grasp the mystery of the Word made flesh. 
 
 He began to study the Epistles of Paul; and in 
 them he found disclosed the mystery of the law in 
 his members warring against the law of God after 
 the inner man, the flesh lusting against the spirit; 
 and learned that from this conflict, the body of this 
 death, the one deliverance was the grace of God 
 through Jesus Christ. Only through the grace of 
 God in Christ could he reach that peace and stable 
 power of abiding in the love and knowledge and joy 
 of God. 
 
 He was now minded to become a Christian, and 
 one day was sharply pricked at hearing the story 
 of the life of St. Anthony. The impulses toward 
 Christ gathering in his soul moved him with power. 
 Their action is set in a dramatic scene in which his 
 bosom's friend Alypius is a silent actor. "What 
 are we about," he cried. "The unlearned storm 
 heaven before us, while we wallow in flesh and blood." 
 
AUGUSTINE 263 
 
 He went out from his house, into the little attached 
 garden, followed by his friend. His mind was in a 
 storm. If he could only end the war between the 
 world's desires and his higher consecration ! He 
 broke into tears, and moving away from his won- 
 dering friend, cast himself down, weeping, beneath 
 a fig tree. It was not long before a voice was heard 
 saying "take and read"; and remembering that 
 Anthony had been inspired from hearing a Gospel 
 passage, Augustine returned to where he had left 
 the volume of Paul's writings by the side of his 
 friend, opened and read, " not in rioting and drunken- 
 ness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in 
 strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in con- 
 cupiscentiis." He showed the passage to his friend 
 — they knew each other's hearts. Alypius read 
 further: "Him that is weak in faith, receive"; 
 which he applied to his own case. The two entered 
 the house, and told all to Augustine's mother, who 
 exulted and rejoiced. "For Thou didst turn me 
 to Thee, so that I no longer sought for a wife ; nor 
 any hope in this world." 
 
 Not long after this, Augustine gave up his public 
 professorship, and with his mother and sundry 
 close friends retired to the seclusion of a little villa 
 near Milan. There together they led — he as their 
 master — a life of academic intercourse and de- 
 votional meditation. Augustine spent much of his 
 
264 DELIVERANCE 
 
 time inditing philosophic dialogues — the early 
 writings before alluded to. The discussions in them, 
 after the manner of the time, had nothing to do 
 with exact knowledge, but rather circled round and 
 round the problems of man's happiness, his im- 
 mortality, and God's providence. Such topics en- 
 grossed the thoughts of spiritually minded pagans 
 who were seeking "truth," or rather their salvation, 
 and were inclining toward the assurances of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 Thus, in "three books," De Academicis or Contra 
 AcademicoSy Augustine takes up the arguments of 
 those philosophic doubters, and discusses whether 
 the search for truth, without its attainment, can 
 make one wise and happy ; also what is error, what 
 is wisdom, what is probable, and what is true ; the 
 opinions of a number of philosophers are considered. 
 He was composing at the same time his De heata 
 FitUy showing that one cannot be happy when he 
 has not what he wishes, and that no one is sapiens 
 who is not heatus. With such arguments Augustine 
 gently pushed himself along toward a Christian 
 conclusion, that the blessed life consists in the rever- 
 ent knowledge of the Truth and the full fruition of 
 it. At that time he also wrote his De Ordiney on 
 the divine providence; in which a reference to his 
 praying in tears — illacrymans — shows that the 
 Christian impulse was moving him emotionally. 
 As likewise appears in his Soliloquies, a book of 
 
AUGUSTINE 
 
 265 
 
 devotional reason written at the same time, where, 
 often Platonically, he discusses the two things he 
 desires to know, God and the soul. It may be added 
 that his letters as yet show little that is specifically 
 Christian. On his return to Milan, he wrote upon 
 the immortality of the soul, and afterwards (387- 
 389) composed six books of academic instruction, 
 De Musica, chiefly upon versification. 
 
 In this country retreat, Augustine had also en- 
 deavoured to instruct himself in the Scriptures, by 
 studying Isaiah upon the advice of Ambrose. He 
 was quietly baptised at the Easter celebration in 
 the year 387, his son Adeodatus and his friend 
 Alypius with him. After which it was decided to 
 return to Africa; and the little company journeyed 
 by slow stages to take ship at Ostia, where Monica, 
 his mother, died. It was there that Augustine and 
 his mother, gazing from a window, and discoursing 
 on the things of God, were rapt in an ecstasy of 
 contemplation, to which Christian souls do ever 
 and anon attain, but which as Augustine narrates 
 it, was quite as Neoplatonic as Christian. When 
 his mother was dead, he fell to praying for her soul, 
 as was the custom in the Church. 
 
 The stages of Augustine's conversion were affected 
 by his personal equation, and impressed with his 
 individuality. Perhaps they do not reflect directly 
 the general course of conflict with the various 
 phases of paganism, from which Christianity had 
 
266 DELIVERANCE 
 
 emerged triumphant. Augustine set forth that 
 conflict, which was also his, more universally in the 
 first ten books of the City of God. There, in the 
 name of Christianity, he first refuted the belief that 
 the heathen gods helped their worshippers effectively 
 to the good things of this world, and then the 
 opinion that their power was salutary for the life 
 to come. He also showed that neither fortune nor 
 the position of the stars was the cause of the power 
 of the Roman Empire. Afterwards he took up that 
 most difficult contest of the Faith with the theology 
 of those Greek philosophers who agreed that God 
 existed and had a care for men, yet were not satisfied 
 with worshipping him alone in order to obtain eternal 
 life, but must also practise the cult of many gods 
 besides. They recognised God as above the Soul, 
 the creator of it and of the earth and all things 
 visible; also that the rational principle (to which 
 genus the human soul belongs) is blessed by par- 
 ticipation in his unchangeable and incorporeal light. 
 They were called Platonists after the name of 
 Plato. 
 
 So Augustine brings Christianity triumphant out 
 from the herd of polytheistic opinions, and finally 
 vindicates its truth in distinction even from the 
 views of Plato (or of Plotinus and Porphyry) who 
 held that beatitude lay not in bodily enjoyment, or 
 even in the enjoyment of mind, but in the enjoy- 
 ment of God. " Plato calls God the true and highest 
 
AUGUSTINE 267 
 
 good, and will have it that the philosopher is a lover 
 of God, and since philosophy makes for the blessed 
 life, the enjoyer of God is that happy one who has 
 loved God" {Civ. Dei, viii, 8). 
 
 As against views so closely approximating to its 
 highest truths, Augustine could vindicate the Faith 
 only through that Way by which he himself had 
 come, — the name and function and dual nature of 
 Christ. Only through Christ can one come to the 
 true knowledge and the steadfast love and fruition 
 of God. Says Augustine in the Civitas Dei: "In 
 qua ut fidentius ambularet ad veritatem, ipsa Veri- 
 tas, Deus Dei filius, homine adsumto, non Deo 
 consumto, eandem constituit et fundavit fidem, ut 
 ad hominis Deum iter esset homini per hominem 
 Deum. Hie est enim mediator Dei et hominum, 
 homo Christus lesus. Per hoc enim mediator, per 
 quod homo, per hoc et via. Quoniam si inter eum 
 qui tendit et illud quo tendit via media est, spes est 
 perveniendi; si autem desit aut ignoretur qua 
 eundem sit, quid prodest nosse quo eundum sit ? 
 Sola est autem adversus omnes errores via muni- 
 tissima, ut idem sit Deus et homo ; quo itur Deus, 
 qua itur homo." ^ 
 
 ^ "In order that the mind might advance more confidently 
 toward the truth, the Truth itself, God the Son of God, manhood 
 assumed, deity not destroyed, established and found d this faith, 
 that to man's god there might be a way for man through man god. 
 This is the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 
 For in that he is man he is mediator and also the way. Since if 
 
268 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Thus with final orthodoxy, the Doctor of the 
 Church speaks for the universal Church; for him- 
 self he had said that he could not abide with the 
 Platonists because within their doctrines he had not 
 found "ilia aedificans caritas a fundamento hu- 
 militatis, quod est Christus Jesus" (Conf. vii, 20). 
 
 In attempting now to indicate the adjustment, 
 the joy and the assurance of salvation which Augus- 
 tine won, it will not be necessary, nor would it be 
 possible, to explore the broad regions of spiritual 
 development through which his rich nature diffused 
 itself. All writers upon Augustine have found the 
 man and his work, and his suggestiveness, to exceed 
 the compass of their power of formulation — and so 
 did the medieval Church! Even an attempt to 
 outline the manner of his peace is a presumption, 
 so far does the vast testimony of his works exceed 
 the power of our sifting. One may be permitted to 
 note the seemingly indicative points. 
 
 Augustine's chief intellectual difficulties had been 
 to conceive the spiritual nature of God, and realise 
 that evil was not substance, but privation or vitia- 
 tion : " Omnis natura, etiamsi vitiosa est, in quantum 
 natura est, bona est; in quantum vitiosa est, mala 
 
 between him who goes and the whither he goes, there leads a way, 
 there is hope of arrival. But if the way is wanting or he does not 
 know how to travel it, what help is there in knowing whither he 
 must go ? Now the only way fortified against error is when the 
 same person is at once God and man — God as the goal, man as 
 the way " {Civ. Dei, xi, 2). 
 
AUGUSTINE 269 
 
 est" (Enchiridion, 13). These difficulties sur- 
 mounted, then through the lure of Christ he came 
 to Christ, and through the mediatorship of Christ 
 he came to God. In the previous course of his life, 
 he had realised and proved the watchword (so fre- 
 quently quoted) of his Confessions: "fecisti nos ad 
 te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donee requiescat in 
 te." And thenceforth his adjustment, his assurance 
 of eternal salvation, was to lie, at the end of this un- 
 quiet course, in the ever fuller and more explicit 
 realisation of the words of the Psalm which were 
 always in his heart: "Mihi autem adhaerere dec 
 bonum est." 
 
 God had created us; we had sinned — how? 
 that is the dark question which Augustine darkly 
 answers. God by grace and love has redeemed us 
 through Christ; he has thus restored us to com- 
 munion with himself. The sin is ours, the grace is 
 his. The sin is against God, the redemption is 
 from him altogether, and without him we are help- 
 less, in sin and alienation from our true good, from 
 the one veritable object of our love and joy. 
 Through his grace and love we are restored, and 
 made a new creature, resting in God, — through 
 Christ. The power of God is perfected in the weak- 
 ness of human nature. If nearly all of this is Paul, 
 it is again made new and living with something 
 added, with something omitted, by which it should 
 remain the religion of the Western Christian man. 
 
270 DELIVERANCE 
 
 from the fourth century, through the Middle Ages, 
 and through the Reformation. 
 
 In the fulfilment of his role as defender of the 
 authority of the Church, as vindicator of its sacra- 
 ments, and as the reinspirer and manifold developer 
 of its doctrine, Augustine at the same time com- 
 pleted his own adjustment, strengthening it in those 
 parts where it was open to attack either by opponents 
 or by his own evolving thought. His exposition of 
 Church doctrine was always a part of his living 
 self, and followed the constructive needs of his 
 searching and desirous genius. The authority of 
 the Church as the efficacious and only channel of 
 grace on earth was attacked by the Donatists ; who 
 would also make the efficacy of its officially admin- 
 istered sacraments dependent on the faithfulness of 
 the officiating priest. In combating this sacer- 
 dotally untenable position, in maintaining that the 
 Church was the sole authority in matters of faith, 
 and the one door to salvation, Augustine responded 
 to his own need of such an authority, and to the 
 logical requirements of his ecclesiastic nature. For 
 the authority of the Church was a necessary ele- 
 ment of his personal peace, which demanded an 
 authoritative interpreter, even guarantor, of the 
 Christian Faith. Had not the authoritativeness of 
 Ambrose held him ? And was not the Church 
 verily the entire body of Christ ? templum dei, 
 hoc est totius summae trinitatis, sancta est ecclesia. 
 
AUGUSTINE 271 
 
 scilicet universa in caelo et in terra {Enchiridion, 
 56). The Church is one; the Church is holy; its 
 union with Christ, its possession of the sanctifying 
 virtue of the Spirit, is not lessened by the sinfulness 
 of any number of individuals belonging to it. It is 
 Catholic, it is Apostolic, it is infallible. Outside of 
 it, and without the virtue of its sacraments, there is 
 no union with God through Christ, there is no 
 redemption, there is no salvation. 
 
 Augustine's conceptions of grace and sin were 
 formed before the Pelagian controversy opened; 
 but his convictions fully unrolled themselves only 
 as he defended what was to him of the essence of 
 Christian doctrine and of his own adjustment with 
 God. His faith — the Christian Faith — centres in 
 God's act, that is, in God's grace and love; and 
 not in human virtue, or the building up of char- 
 acter through the action of a virtuously self-directing 
 will; which was the essence of Pelagianism as well 
 as Stoicism. And according to Pelagius's views, 
 human nature, with all its instincts, was essentially 
 capable of good — not essentially corrupted through 
 the inheritance of Adam's sin. 
 
 Augustine's human and religious experience had 
 proved for him the falsity of this. He had found 
 his nature corrupt in its concupiscence, and his 
 desires warring against the law of God. Not any 
 virtue of his, not even his own striving, nor any 
 effective energy of his floundering will, but the 
 
272 DELIVERANCE 
 
 freely given grace of God through Christ, had an- 
 nulled his sinfulness and made him a new creature. 
 First came grace, prevenient grace, acting in accord- 
 ance with God's predestinating purpose of salvation 
 for those who are to be called. Its action creates 
 the will to believe — the velle credere — in those 
 who are "called according to the purpose"; where- 
 upon with them it becomes cooperating grace. Thus 
 faith is of grace, God's gift. It begins with sheer 
 acceptance, proceeds through trustful obedience, 
 advancing in the perception of God, and works in 
 enlightenment and love. The visible and necessary 
 means of the annulment of original sin and of sins 
 previously committed is the Church's sacrament of 
 baptism. Thereupon the Holy Spirit sheds love in 
 the heart, in place of lust, and the grace of God 
 works itself out in the man's love and corresponding 
 acts, until he realises his justification by faith, and 
 his salvation in the love of God. Through grace 
 and through its sacramental means, man has thus 
 been delivered from a state of sin, in which from 
 lack of God and lack of goodness he could not 
 abstain from sinning further in pride and con- 
 cupiscence.^ 
 
 Pride and lust are replaced, through Christ, by 
 humility and love. By means of the exemplifi- 
 cation of the grace of God in Christ, the human 
 
 1 These last pages are somewhat indebted to Harnack's History 
 of Dogma. 
 
AUGUSTINE 273 
 
 Christ primarily, Augusdne reaches on to the love 
 and contemplation of God, wherein is man's sum- 
 mum bonum, his salvation and eternal life. "Faith, 
 hope and love, and the greatest of these is love ; " 
 it is clear that Augustine has worked out this truth 
 of Christ after the manner of Paul : " Nam qui 
 recte amat, procul dubio recte credit et sperat " 
 {Enchiridion^ 117). 
 
 In and through Christ had come the power and 
 assurance of Augustine's love of God, so that he 
 can say, "Not with doubt, but certitude. Lord, I 
 love thee. Thou hast smitten my heart with thy 
 Word, and I have loved thee. But also heaven and 
 earth and all that in them is, lo, from all sides 
 they tell me I should love thee. . . ." "That 
 is the happy life, — beata vita, — to rejoice con- 
 cerning thee, unto thee, and for thy sake. ..." 
 "Give me thyself, my God, restore thyself to me. 
 Lo, I love, and if it is little, I would love more. 
 I cannot tell how much my love lacks of what 
 is enough, that my life should run to thy em- 
 brace, nor be turned aside, before it is hidden 
 in the hiding place of thy countenance. This 
 much I know, that all is ill with me aside from 
 thee, not only without but within me, and that 
 all my plenty which is not my God, is want." ^ 
 The love of God is the sanction, the proportionment, 
 and the end of the love of all things else. "We 
 1 Conf. X, 6 and 22 ; xiii, 8. 
 T 
 
274 DELIVERANCE 
 
 must love all things with reference to God, other- 
 wise it is lust. Inferior creatures are to be used 
 {utendum) with reference to God {ad Deum) ; and 
 our fellows are to be enjoyed (fruendum) with refer- 
 ence to God, toward God ; so thyself; not in thyself 
 ought thou to enjoy {frui) thyself, but in him who 
 made thee; thus also shouldst thou enjoy him 
 whom thou lovest as thyself. Therefore let us enjoy 
 ourselves and our brothers in the Lord and not dare 
 to surrender ourselves unto ourselves, downwards as 
 it were." ^ 
 
 The Christian summum honum is eternal life. 
 The soul's love of God shall expand in knowledge, 
 and possess the peace of eternal fruition. This is 
 the perfect end, the peace of God, wherein God 
 may be enjoyed and known eternally. In this life, 
 our proper peace is through faith, a pre-fruition of 
 the eternal life which shall be through sight. The 
 peace of earth, — the peace of the body and the 
 soul, the peace of men with each other, lies in con- 
 cord and the mutual order of obedience — here 
 the great Roman ecclesiastic temper speaks: "the 
 peace of the state is the orderly concord of citizens 
 in commanding and obeying; the peace of the 
 heavenly city is the most ordered and concordant 
 communion in the fruition of God and of each 
 other in God" {Civ. Dei, xix, 13). 
 
 "God shall be so known to us that he shall be 
 ' De TrinitaUy ix, 13. 
 
AUGUSTINE 27S 
 
 seen by the spirit by each of us in ourselves and in 
 each other, and shall be seen in himself, in the new 
 heaven and the new earth and in every creature 
 which shall then exist. . . . And the thoughts 
 within each of us shall be manifest to the others" 
 (Civ. Dei, xxii, 29). "What other end is ours — 
 what other peace, what other adjustment, what 
 other salvation — than to come to the kingdom, of 
 which there is no end ?" A fitting closing sentence 
 for Augustine's greatest work, and for his life. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 The Arrows are beyond Thee 
 
 AT the end, what can we think or say of the 
 adjustments of these great men ? we pigmies ! 
 we little hills to talk of mountains, — of those ele- 
 mental beings who laid out the paths for humanity 
 to stray in, or, as we hope, move onward ; who gave 
 clearest voice to the fears which have oppressed, 
 and the hopes which ever since have lifted men to 
 freedom or to peace. Only a sympathetic and 
 understanding genius, and not the writer of this 
 little book, might haply from the vantage ground 
 of our rising modern decades, place these men, 
 finally analyse their temperaments, their feelings 
 and opinions, fit them into proper categories of 
 partially successful effort, give each his station. Or 
 perchance such a one might so feel the mystery of 
 great personality, his own as well as theirs, that he 
 would make no attempt to determine their posi- 
 tions, their universal values, the possible eternal 
 verities which they expressed. '< 
 
 Yet though we cannot plumb their depths, and 
 proportion their veritable values and relationships. 
 It behooves us, for our own discipline, to order our 
 thoughts concerning them as best we can. This is 
 
 276 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 277 
 
 less to place those somewhat immovable and un- 
 scalable beings, than to range ourselves with 
 respect to them. 
 
 At the outset it is easy to settle our minds as to 
 their tangible influence on one another; since we 
 can see where it existed, and where there was none. 
 Between ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, little 
 mediating influence appears ; nor has it been shown 
 with certainty that early currents flowed from 
 Mesopotamia to China. As between China and 
 India, nothing, save certain striking resemblances, 
 points to any interchange of spirit until long after 
 the epoch of Confucius and Lao Tzu, and Gotama, 
 their approximate contemporary. Some centuries 
 elapsed before the Buddha's teachings, considerably 
 expanded and corrupted, became known in China. 
 From India, toward the north and west, no strains 
 of Buddhism or of Brahmanism are found in the 
 religion of Zarathushtra. Nor, until a compara- 
 tively late period, did any Zarathushtrian or Per- 
 sian thought affect the Jews; though the influence 
 of Babylonia upon the children of Abraham is sup- 
 posed to have been from the beginning. 
 
 Again, no suggestion from China or India or 
 Persia or Israel stirred the minds of the Greeks, so 
 far as known, before the age of Alexander. After- 
 wards, with the approach of the Christian era, in- 
 fluences fuse together through the Mediterranean 
 world. Hellenism and Judaism affect each other 
 
278 DELIVERANCE 
 
 in the way of alien impact and some interpenetra- 
 tion, each carrying to this hostile conjunction what- 
 ever quasi-foreign elements it had previously 
 absorbed. Out of Judaism, Christianity arises; 
 and its conquest of the world is in part a shaking 
 off of paganism from its indignant feet, and in part 
 a refashioning of itself to pagan needs. 
 
 Turning from the question of traceable influence 
 between them, may we not advantageously proceed 
 from some fundamental human sameness ? The 
 impulse of life, of self-fulfilment, was strong in all 
 of them. Each was impelled to seek with the mind, 
 or gain practically through character and temper, 
 the peaceful freedom of thought and mood, or the 
 fearlessness of thought and action, making a suitable 
 adjustment with humanity's needs and limitations 
 — an adjustment which should ofi^er the best ful- 
 filment of the man, the fullest actualisation of his 
 powers and capacities. It may be that the respon- 
 sive action, the universal fact of responsive action 
 to this common human impulse, represents to our 
 minds a common human validity and truth. 
 
 This much at least we may recognise and admit 
 as a universal element, since we find it in ourselves : 
 "The fiend that man harries is [still!] love of the 
 best;" — not the fiend, really, but, as was meant, 
 the god, or human life in its progress. This still 
 drives man on, not to his perdition, but to a more 
 perfect peace, and to a freedom, as he hopes, ever 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 279 
 
 enlarging. Our need of the best, and aspiration to 
 win it, is a living and impelling truth with us, as it 
 was with them. This, whatever else was valid, 
 presents itself to us as the truth running through 
 all the adjustments, the attained freedoms, of 
 these ancient men. This primal verity lies first in 
 the need of the endeavour for the end of happiness 
 and peace. It lies next in the endeavour itself. 
 Who can say but that each great man, even in this 
 endeavour, may have builded better than he knew, 
 have won his good, reached his peace, and gained 
 perhaps the final truth for man ? For ourselves, 
 we have found no single answer to life's problem 
 other than life itself, its need-inspired, forward- 
 driving struggle, wherein endeavour is attainment 
 and the path is the goal. And yet with these an- 
 cient seers, as with our weakly faltering selves, the 
 tensest fibre of the endeavour which is attainment, 
 is the accompanying vision of a more absolute 
 attainment beyond the sheer endeavour, — the hope 
 for some of them and some of us of a divine and 
 eternal verity of attainment, standing as the clifF 
 upon which the waves of our endeavour beat. 
 
 So we think of these men in human generalities, 
 which include both them and us; and next may 
 think of them in generalities which contrast them 
 with ourselves. They, at least, harmonised, even 
 brought to unity, the different factors of their ad- 
 justments. Their thinking, and still more evi- 
 
28o DELIVERANCE 
 
 dently their feeling, was a reflex of their experience. 
 Their thought had to do with Hfe, with its ultimate 
 problems. Their intuitions and their reasoned 
 knowledge, working together, kept their convictions 
 whole, kept their lives at one, and themselves wholly 
 possessed of themselves. 
 
 This self-possession and unity of life would seem 
 to have sprung from a singleness of spiritual founda- 
 tion. With Confucius, the Way of Heaven made 
 at once his basic intellectual conception and his 
 supreme devotion. Lao Tzu*s and Chuang Tzu's con- 
 victions were all involved in their conception of the 
 Tao. The mind and the resolve of Yajnavalkya 
 turn to Brahma, a finished dialectic creation. And 
 with the Buddha, the whole current of his being 
 sets toward his goal of release from suffering, a goal 
 to be attained through dialectic and resolve, and 
 representing a harmony of reason and emotional 
 ardour difficult for us to conceive. The intuitions 
 of the Greek philosophers were likewise in accord 
 with their reason. Every fine concept of Plato's 
 mind was also a desire of his soul, and he brought 
 his desires together in a rejoicing unison within the 
 closure of his concept of God and the idea of the 
 good. 
 
 Passing to almost opposite modes of adjustment, 
 we are again convinced that Zarathushtra's devotion 
 to Ahura Mazda corresponded with his reason and 
 the best conceptions of his mind. Likewise, no 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 281 
 
 need to say that the devotion of the Hebrew prophets 
 to Yahweh was very part of their expanding thoughts 
 of Yahweh*s righteousness and the compass of his 
 function in the world. So Paul, the last Jewish 
 and first Christian prophet, and so Augustine, 
 finally, brought his mind's conceptions to accord 
 with the resistless devotion of his soul. 
 
 Whatever the forms of their adjustment, these 
 men possessed themselves in the accord between 
 their intellectual convictions and heartfelt devotions, 
 — one reason why they have proved satisfying to so 
 many millions. The long lapse of time, which limits 
 survivals and sifts the big out of the confusion of 
 the little, presents them to us as concrete and 
 definite and simple. And we are still their children, 
 we the so-called modern nations of the earth, fol- 
 lowing, as it were respectively, our great forbears. 
 How long ago the nations digged the pits in which 
 they were to lie ! Not so long, of course, if we com- 
 pare the lapse of previous time, supposedly human, 
 but long enough when measured by events. China 
 is still rooted in the Confucian pit and the morass 
 of Taoism — nay, perhaps, in these opposite phases 
 of her temperament. It were better to speak of 
 her as standing on the attainment of Confucius 
 and the considerations of Lao Tzu. So India might 
 still stand in contemplation, fixed on her somewhat 
 slippery Absolute. If Buddhism has gone forth 
 from her borders, its spirit still lives in its first home. 
 
282 DELIVERANCE 
 
 while its corrupted or expanded teachings fill so 
 much of eastern Asia. For us, we likewise are sons 
 of the Hebrew prophets, and let us hope, the chil- 
 dren of Jesus, — even still many of us children of 
 Paul and Augustine. And are we not as well the 
 sons of the Greeks ? 
 
 These men have passed on — 
 
 ** Leaving great verse unto a little clan." 
 
 Yet they were as the mustard seed, which should 
 become a mighty tree, with generations upon gen- 
 erations of fowls lodging in its branches. Did they 
 not excel in deep enthusiastic well-being ? reaching 
 their various adjustments with such assurance that 
 acquiescence on their part became cordial accept- 
 ance, even a passionate acceptance of what life, or 
 the universal ways, held for them, or God lovingly 
 bestowed ? 
 
 Modern thought has expanded the manifold of 
 life's mysteriousness. Perceiving its exhaustless 
 mysteries at so many more points than pricked 
 these ancients, men no longer can attain to such 
 clean and concrete adjustments, with such well- 
 hemmed edges. Which may be quite as it should 
 be, in the broadening ways of human progress. 
 
 Before trying at last to fit our categories of dis- 
 crimination to those men, we recall how thoughtful 
 were their adjustments, even those which rested 
 directly on heroic mood. It may also be said that 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 283 
 
 with none of them did the main feature of his 
 scheme of life exclude other factors of assurance. 
 With the most self-reliant, there is some looking 
 to a power not themselves, perhaps for aid, at all 
 events with a respectful taking of that power into 
 account. While those who throw themselves on 
 God, like Paul or Augustine, know that their own 
 efforts also are needed to maintain a conduct ac- 
 cording with their faith. "Not I, but the grace of 
 God, — not I, but the spirit of Christ within me," 
 — however whole-souledly Paul or Augustine might 
 trust in God, and accept his spirit to the disposses- 
 sion and replacement of their former selves, each 
 knew the strenuousness of the endeavour required 
 even to keep himself a cleanly vessel of God's grace. 
 
 Again disclaiming the ability to, place these men 
 according to their actual and lasting values, we must 
 try to distinguish, and order our own thinking in 
 regard to them. We must perforce use categories 
 sounding in our own conceptions of the kinds of 
 life which men may lead with serious approval. 
 If those ancients would not have recognised our 
 categories, as applied to them, they, nevertheless, 
 have been the source from which our constructive 
 thoughts largely have been taken. 
 
 Asia — the East — inclines to vagueness, and also 
 holds less firmly or less passionately than the West to 
 human personality, and to the demands and full de- 
 velopment of the individual. Confucius was a tre- 
 
284 DELIVERANCE 
 
 mendous person — Chinese tradition does not err in 
 making him nine feet high. He was a very great social 
 and political organiser. He would set his people, as he 
 had fixed himself, within a beneficent web of rites and 
 ceremonies, formative of character, constructive and 
 preservative of the State. It was a scheme follow- 
 ing the Way of Heaven, to which men must conform 
 with unremitting care. This made Confucius's ad- 
 justment. While the detail was a meticulous web, 
 the unifying principle, the norm of human life, 
 was vague and impersonal. It could utter no com- 
 mands, but could only exemplify itself and its ways 
 as the standard of conduct. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, 
 also looking to the Way, found therein quite other 
 exemplification — found therein the opposite of any 
 mandate of action, and no inducement to painstaking 
 and minute observance. Contemplation of the Tao 
 — the Eternal Way, the All, the Absolute, the What- 
 not — in its endless construction and undoing, was 
 their adjustment. Their contemplative acquies- 
 cence conformed to the laisser-aller of the Abso- 
 lute; and naturally with no obstinate retention of 
 the individuality of each temporary acquiescing 
 human form. As inaction is vaguer than action, so 
 Taoism is vaguer, even in its principles, than Con- 
 fucianism. 
 
 In India the human adjustment is not merely 
 careless of the individual; it has ensconced itself in 
 detestation of concrete, pestilentially changing, in- 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 285 
 
 dividuality : its end, its attainment, lies in the final 
 elimination of that. So with Brahmanism in its 
 affirmation of the Absolute; so with Buddhism in 
 its denial of the same. 
 
 A change indeed to reach the land of Zarathushtra, 
 the fighting ally of his righteous warring God. No 
 acquiescence here, no negative adjustment; but 
 victory over evil foes, and the reward of life there- 
 after. Ahura is somewhat less clearly conceived 
 than Yahweh — who also "teacheth my hands to 
 war and my fingers to fight." Of all celestial char- 
 acters, Yahweh is drawn with most trenchant line 
 — a tremendous dramatis persona. If we have not 
 seen his form, we have heard his voice, and through 
 unmistakable utterances have been taught his will, 
 and with what blows from his rod have been driven 
 to do it ! — his rod of punishment, his rod of love, 
 his rod of promise ! Yahweh was an individual ! a 
 personality 1 In obeying him, in following his ways, 
 the Jew developed his individuality, or, if one will, 
 the individuality of that most individual race. 
 
 The Greek gods possessed a full store of human 
 waywardness. They are revealed through poetry. 
 The Greek did not develop his character from con- 
 scious obedience to them ; but quite consciously out 
 of his own strength and reason, and out of the 
 sword-play and compromise of the energies of his 
 desires. Nor did the Roman draw motives of de- 
 velopment from his gods; rather, before as well as 
 
286 DELIVERANCE 
 
 after he had eaten of the Greek tree of knowledge, 
 he evolved himself by virtue of his own tenacity. 
 
 Christianity — Jesus, Paul, Augustine. Were they 
 not of the heritage of Israel ? and Augustine, per- 
 haps Paul, of the heritage of Greece and Rome as 
 well ? It may be that from Christianity came the 
 final building up of individuality for the ancient 
 world. Assuredly there came from it, both for that 
 world and our own, the final adjustment of the in- 
 dividual with God's power and love, in which he, 
 the individual Christian, was saved and completed 
 and fulfilled. He who giveth his life, shall save 
 and redeem and fulfil himself: bread thrown upon 
 the waters, returning after many days as the new 
 bread of life. The characters of Christians differed ; 
 in various ways they gained the peace and profitable 
 freedom of their great adjustment, through grace 
 freeing their spirits in the truth that maketh free, 
 and in perfect accord with almighty power, fulfilling 
 their lives to all eternity in the love of God. 
 
 Each of these marked adjustments of the an- 
 cient world held elements belonging to the rest. 
 One may observe that in their sequence and suc- 
 cession they tend to change and merge into each 
 other. Their protagonists, ranged according to the 
 attitude of each toward his individual destiny, will 
 fall into two loose-bordered groups : contemplators, 
 and those moved by a closer personal purpose. The 
 contemplator appears to stand outside his destiny, 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 287 
 
 and to contemplate it or something else. In the 
 other group, the man and his happiness, his peace 
 and freedom, are incorporate in his destiny, hang 
 upon it : he moves and has his being in the thought 
 of his fortunes upon earth or his lot thereafter. 
 
 In some way, the Contemplators find their peace 
 and freedom in considering the Universe, or in 
 meditating upon their natures and the connection 
 between their destinies and the universal order. 
 They may think or dream themselves around and 
 above the processes of nature and necessity. Thus 
 they become the equal or superior of what they can- 
 not resist, by realising its infinitude : " L'homme n*est 
 qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est un 
 roseau pensant ! " Lao Tzu is here, and his disciple 
 Chuang Tzu. They realise the universe, and their 
 own natures as held within its all-embracing ways. 
 They love its infinite range, and bathe in the amplitude 
 of the mystery of life. Potent dreamers they, who 
 could dream far out beyond the reach of their individ- 
 ual lot, which they held as lightly as it held them. 
 
 The Brahmans of India did not dream as suavely, 
 nor with equal imagination ; but they reasoned with 
 insistent metaphysical acuteness. They did not so 
 serenely rest above their personal destinies. 
 Chuang Tzu, knowing that his being would be 
 scattered to its elements, smiled at the prospect. 
 The Brahmans were pricked by the need to think 
 out their release. Their thought was not sheer 
 
288 DELIVERANCE 
 
 contemplation, but was goaded by longing for free- 
 dom from desire, and for freedom from the torment- 
 ing impermanence of individuality. As for Gotama, 
 the Buddha, the motive of his arduous thinking 
 appears the same. But the desire to point out to 
 others the path to salvation lifted his personal ad- 
 justment to Saviourhood, and made him the re- 
 vealer of a universal refuge; in other words, the 
 founder of a religion. 
 
 From the East to the West, the temper changes, 
 and contemplators may be called more fitly inves- 
 tigators. The Greek vita contemplativa becomes a 
 happy devotion to the quest of knowledge. At 
 first the philosophers are busier investigating the 
 world about them than in considering their place in 
 it, or their inner nature and particular destiny. 
 But, in time, the processes of thought and contem- 
 plation come homing back to the thinker. There- 
 upon the western tenacity of individuality impresses 
 itself on the intellectual energy which is occupied 
 with investigation, and the thinker can no longer 
 stand aloof from interest in his present welfare and 
 future destiny. The line of early Greek thinkers 
 passes on to Democritus, to Socrates, to Plato ; and 
 the search for truth is impressed forever with 
 eudaimonism, that is to say, with the compelling 
 sense of the determining significance and importance 
 of the welfare and happiness of the individual 
 thinker. It was Plato who enriched the contem- 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 289 
 
 plative adjustment with that blessed mood arising 
 from beautiful conceptions realised as part of the 
 soul of man and its perfecting. Then through the 
 belief, uplifted and glorified by him, of the immor- 
 tality of the ennobled soul, he made absolute the 
 central value of the individual man and his destiny. 
 This was his crowning contribution to spiritual free- 
 dom. After him, Aristotle gathered all knowledge 
 as the basis and content of his intellectual satis- 
 faction. With less temperamental geniality and 
 colder mentality than Plato, he fixed the apex of his 
 happiness in the contemplation of unmoved but all- 
 moving causes. 
 
 So Plato linked the contemplative adjustment to 
 the blessedness of the immortal soul. His golden 
 joinder of intellectuality and hope looked with a 
 lover's eyes to God — such lover's eyes becoming 
 rather steely gray with Aristotle. Succeeding to the 
 Aristotelian universality of intellectual interest, 
 philosophy, in Stoicism, ceased to be worthy of the 
 name, so narrowly did it restrict its considerations 
 to that which made for man's peace of mind. Stoi- 
 cism began as an adjustment of the self-reliant soul, 
 even as did Epicureanism. In the course of years, 
 the self-reliance staled; Epicureanism had nothing 
 to turn to, while Stoicism, through its more ener- 
 getic conception of the Divine, became prayerful — 
 the Stoic began to look beyond himself for the 
 complete assurance of his peace, 
 u 
 
290 DELIVERANCE 
 
 Thus the vita contemplativa, having centred its 
 interest in the contemplator's welfare and destiny, 
 found that it could not insure the one or fulfil the 
 other. Incidentally the self-reliant intellect has 
 proved itself limited, terrestrial, and unable to satisfy a 
 nature which is conscious of having to do with eternity. 
 As a means of human adjustment and deliverance, 
 philosophic thought has broken down. For aid and 
 comfort, for peace and assurance, for blessedness, in 
 fine, the thinker turns to God. The freedom and 
 assurance of his life have assumed the mode and form 
 of salvation. 
 
 Clearly we have passed from the group who stand 
 above their destinies, content to contemplate the 
 universe, and themselves as elements of its resistless 
 processes. We are in the company of those whose 
 adjustment with life is vitally incorporate in the 
 destiny of their individual selves. Moreover, we 
 have become, let us hope fruitfully, entangled with 
 another principle in the ordering of our adjustments. 
 Those men who stood above their destinies, in dis- 
 interested contemplation of the universe, or con- 
 tent with the quest of knowledge, were utterly self- 
 reliant, even unconsciously so : for the height of 
 self-reliance is to be unconscious of relying on one- 
 self and not upon another. As the former group of 
 adjustments pass into those which are insistent on 
 the welfare of the protagonist, they pass through 
 a stage of self-reliance which has become self-con- 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 291 
 
 scious; and then into the stage where conscious 
 self-reliance gives way to a conscious lack of it, and 
 at last becomes a yearning for divine salvation. 
 
 Hereupon, however, a complementary and final 
 element enters ; the love of that Power upon which 
 the man relies to safeguard and complete his destiny. 
 This may become absorbing devotion, an energy 
 which carries the man again beyond himself, and 
 once more may Hft him above personal anxiety. In 
 the great exemplars of this devotion — indeed in 
 the Great Exemplar — trust in God, communion 
 with Him, is perfect; while solicitude as to salva- 
 tion is lost in consecration to God's saving purposes. 
 In this way, the obedient and co-operating zeal of 
 the Servant in Isaiah is completed in the sonship of 
 Jesus: "Surely Yahweh will do nothing, but he 
 reveals his secret to his servants the prophets." 
 With more absolute union, "the Father loveth the 
 Son, and hath given all things into his hand," and 
 "the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he 
 seeth the Father doing." 
 
 In Paul, the need of salvation has become again 
 a driving energy, while devotion to the salvation of 
 his fellows, his working unison with the grace of 
 God, likewise consumes him. He symbolises the 
 varying moods of Christians after him, whose need 
 of salvation is compelling. Augustine is in this cate- 
 gory. With Paul and Augustine, however, and 
 countless other Christians, the sense of God and of 
 
292 DELIVERANCE 
 
 the Saviour's deed and constant function, leads to a 
 grateful surrender of the saved one to Him who has 
 saved him — a surrender offered in confidence and 
 love, if not in self-abandonment. 
 
 Who shall say whether the pendulum might not 
 thus swing back to an abandonment of human indi- 
 viduality ? The course taken by the development 
 of personality in Western Asia and Eastern Europe 
 had led to the need which only Christianity satisfied. 
 The need was a religious need ; a religious adjust- 
 ment was required. Through the near preceding 
 centuries, the human personality had become acutely 
 conscious of itself, and of its cardinal importance. 
 It had also arrived at the realisation that it could 
 not save and fulfil itself, and of itself attain its 
 rightful destiny. Christianity offered this salvation 
 and fulfilment, offered them through the agency of 
 divine and human personality, that of God the 
 Father and Christ. The Gospel was a reaching out 
 of the fulness of divine personality to the need of 
 human personality, — and not only a reaching out 
 in power but an intimate bestowal of comfort, with 
 love close and personal. Such a divine giving safe- 
 guarded and assured the recipient in the eternal love 
 and power of God. His most unqualified surrender 
 of himself could be only unto such safekeeping. 
 The conception of salvation is thus completed in the 
 answer of the human love to the divine ; the Chris- 
 tian fulfils himself in the love of God. Herein, as 
 
THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 293 
 
 a religious adjustment, Christianity would seem 
 final. 
 
 Another question of import as to the Gospel's 
 finality was to arise from the intellectual and in- 
 quisitive side of human nature, and keep itself in- 
 sistent. How did the Gospel bear upon the growth 
 and expansion of the human mind through knowl- 
 edge ? Was it antagonistic or favourable ? relevant 
 or irrelevant ? The varying answers which have 
 been given to this question, or have somehow been 
 lived out, extend through the centuries called by the 
 Christian name. The age which first received the 
 Gospel did not care supremely for knowledge. When 
 Augustine declared that he would know God and 
 the soul, and these alone, he uttered the intensest 
 cravings of his nature, which were not for knowledge. 
 With other men in other times, God and the soul 
 might include the universe of God-created things. 
 
 In its acceptance, or in its application to life, the 
 Gospel could be narrowed or broadened. It was 
 adapted to the humblest human want, and yet 
 sufficient for the soul uplifted to its heights of love 
 and spiritual consecration. It did not speak directly 
 to the inquisitive mind, not being a method of in- 
 tellectual living. But the mind of man, — the full 
 compass of his intellectual cravings and faculties, 
 — is from God. If the Gospel was salvation, was 
 it not to be salvation for the whole man ? Could 
 it not "save" the uttermost reaches of his mind, 
 
294 DELIVERANCE 
 
 as well as the purest impulses of his love ? How 
 should it hamper the humanity which it had come 
 to save eternally ? 
 
 And still the human personality gives one pause. 
 It seems so necessarily a passing phase, not to be 
 imagined as lasting forever, or as the vehicle of an 
 eternal here and now. Think of eternity and of 
 thyself, O man ! Do the two fit each other ? 
 The body is impermanent. The mind also unfolds 
 with the human years, changing and finite. Whether 
 embodied or disembodied, is it suited for eternity ? 
 Would it think its thoughts, or love its loves, for- 
 ever ? Must not its finitude tire ? Could it love 
 even God, and think on Him and the universe, 
 eternally? The last is perhaps the most tolerable 
 idea that can be linked with an enduring finite per- 
 sonality. Yet Christian rapture has tended to pass 
 on, through this conception, as it were ; has sought 
 to lose itself in God, to become in and of Him. 
 Musing saints have anticipated deliverance from 
 themselves. Only absorption in Deity contents 
 them. Through His eyes only would they see; 
 only through His heart would they love. Less 
 rapturous, more analytic, tempers also may conclude 
 that only infinite life is suited to eternity : not man, 
 but God. 
 
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 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THOUGHT AND 
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