•YAJUE^HHIIVEIRSira'Y-

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

STAR OF OUR LORD:

08,

CHRIST JESUS, KING OP ALL WORLDS,
BOTH OF TIME OR SPACE. ,

Thoughts trn Inspiration,

J|,stratttimic Btxufrt as to ISlmstiamtij*

By FRANCIS W. UPHAM,
Author ov w The "Wise Men : "Who they "Wkbe ; How they Game to
Jerusalem.11

The root and the offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star. Bev. xxii, 16.

NEW YORK:
KELSON & PHILLIPS.
CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDENL
18Y3.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
NELSON & PHILLIPS,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.
THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
Power of the Heart to' control the Intellect — Unbe
lief not of intellectual origin : — in its last analysis, the
dislike of the Heart to the Word of God, because of its
holiness— That Holiness, convincing evidence of the
Divine origin of the Bible — This proof of its Divine
origin not confined to the learned only, but open to all
— Sir Walter Scott's witness to the One Book — Heine's
reproof of those critics who have tried to utter the
mystery of the power of the Hebrew Bible.
Unbelief tends to unsettle the Intellect — Example
of this in the Fellows of the Royal Society of London
— Their Denial of God, and their Denial of Man — Dan
gerous consequences of such doing away with venera
tion for the Deity, and respect for Humanity — Some of
those recent discoveries which infidel scientists would
wrest against the Scripture, in some degree, anticipated,
and only intelligible, through its Revelations of scien
tific truths.
The present forms of scientific Atheism evanescent,
like the forms of Atheism that have come before, and
others that are sure to come hereafter — Of chief in
terest as one of many warnings of an approaching

IV CONTENTS.
Faith-Crisis, the signs of which are now visible
throughout Christendom — Evidence of this Crisis, in
the reason assigned for the Convocation of the Council
of the Vatican ; and in the recent outbreak of Unbelief
within the Church of England — The cause of this
Crisis not the growing weakness, but the growing power,
of true Christianity ; and the clearer perception by the
Human Heart of its spirituality and holiness ; and of
the changes it is bringing to pass in the earth — The
Written Word the centre of this conflict — The Human
Heart, though not willing to submit to the holy teach
ing of the Bible, may yet shrink from the rejection of
Christ, when it clearly sees that barbarism is the only
alternative for Christianity.
Of the inexhaustible fullness of Truth which there is
in Holy Scripture — In it a Divine Inbreathing — To
give like authority to aught of man's device, sin — Ex
amples of this heresy, in the claims made for the Church,
for Creeds, Confessions, or Usages of meji, as of equal,
and even superior authority to the Divine Word — Also,
in the claim of Inspiration in other men, the same in
kind as that of the Sacred Writers — Unloyalty of Chris
tians to the word of God more the cause of Infidelity,
than any collision between Science and Scripture —
The Bible an unwelcome Book to many, because of its
social teachings, and the changes they are bringing
to pass — New Truth ever coming forth from the
Holy Scriptures  xiii-xlii

CONTENTS.

THE STAR OF OUR LORD.

CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE OF TIME.
In all Beginnings, the coming to light of powers that
shape the future — At one of the beginnings in the His
tory of the Church, Balaam prophesied — His World,
Character, and Mission — reasons why these need here
be considered — That Cycle of Time to which he be
longed — dates from the Great Flood — first recorded
event, the dispersion of the nations — ends with him.
Boundaries of his World — Outline-sketch of his Time,
inwrought into his history — Balaam's religion patri
archal in its origin; and in this the same with that of
Moses — A Prophet of Assyria or the East — this, long
the dwelling-place of Noah, and of Shem ; and to the
colonists from Assyria who settled Syria the West, not
only the Old Country, the home of their forefathers,
but also the primal seat of their religion, the Holy
Land — Balaam, a Prophet in the Oriental sense of the
term, in which is implied a knowledge of the Past —
The history of Abraham, and of the Israelites, known
to him — His worship of Jehovah — The Consistency of
his History — His Definition of Religion— In his his
tory the first recorded alliance of king and priest —
Why he was called into the West — Intent of the Curse
it was thought he would pronounce upon Israel — Of
the Character of Balaam, in Conclusion. . . .,  3-48

VI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
The embassy to Balaam of common interest to those
tribes whose chiefs came to hear his interdict — Cir
cumstances in which Balaam at last revealed to them,
the Vision of Time — Of Revelation as of Script
ure only — Interpretation of Balaam's Last Oracle — Of
the writing out of his Oracles ; and their coming into
the hands of the Israelites— Special Interpretation,
with reference to the question in this Chapter — In
spired words must have for us, in some degree, the same
meaning as for those who heard them — This Rule pre
vents not the Bible from being read by the People with
edification — Remarks on Translations, as the best of
all comments — How the meaning of the Oracle as to
the Star, as understood by those who heard it, can now
be ascertained — Understood by them literally— Replies
to Enquiries  49-77
CHAPTER III.
THE STAR OF OUR LORD ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN.
Evidence of this in the word, Star — in the fact that
the Magi in Jerusalem, said nothing which implied it
was not a Star — Their words gave the opposite im
pression — Of the fullness of St. Matthew's knowledge
of the Pilgrimage, and its bearing on the argument —
The burden of proof on those who say, the Magi dis
covered no Star — The description of the night-journey
to Bethlehem usually held to be evidence of this ; yet so
written as to forbid this idea — The Argument in proof
of this prepared for by Thoughts on Language and

CONTENTS. VU
Inspiration — Error, that the Star unexpectedly reap
peared—Error, that its guiding proves it was no Star
— Application of ideas as to the miracle of this Guid
ing, to astronomic difficulties as to certain other mira
cles — Evidence in subsequent chapters, of that Truth
which in this is defended  78-1 1 1
CHAPTER IV.
THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING.
Its most universal Lesson, an assurance of Divine aid
for those who seek the Lord — The way it is described,
pre-ordained to this end — Yet some, instead of rejoic
ing in this beautiful illustration of the thoughtful mercy
of the Lord in his Guiding by this Star, feel as if vio
lence were thus done to the scientific idea of the uni
verse : answer to this astronomic Doubt  n 2-1 16
CHAPTER V.
MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR : CONTINUED.
Its fitness to those before whom it was wrought— They
were Representatives of the Divine Mercy to all Na
tions ; and Witnesses of it for all Nations — The Mira
cle has Lessons suited to these facts— Its Lesson against
Nature-Worship— Two forms of this Worship : — their
power and prevalence — The Divine purpose to do away
with Nature-Worship, one of the Keys to much of He
brew history— Three Classes of Miracles — That
f of the Star closes the oldest series — Its Greatness —
shown by comparison with that of the Sun — Reason of
that Miracle — Remarks on the fitness of the Old Mira
cles, showing the difference between the spirit of the
older, Oriental idolatry, and that of the Roman Empire—

V11L CONTENTS.
The Greatness of the Miracle shown by its effect — on
the Empire ; with Remarks on the power of the written
gospel to convert the World : — on the Teutonic Races.
— The Miracle prophetic of the Service of Nature to
Man — Final proof of its greatness — Confirmation of
this in subsequent chapters  ,  117-157
CHAPTER VI.
THE RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
The new Star at the birth of Christ Jesus, the sign
that His Dominion would be over the starry worlds —
Gleams of this fact in the Three Scriptures only in
which He is named with a Star — Also, in the Title of
His Kingdom — This, written out, is, The Kingdom of
the King of the Heavens — This Title manifold in
meaning — It points to the most ancient and universal
of the Divine Names — found only in St. Matthew's
gospel — it is given in the others as, The Kingdom of
God — The question, Could those Jews who heard this
Title proclaimed have had this idea of its space-extent : —
a question in which there comes out a difficulty as to the
whole Bible — Interpretation of the Last of the Three
Scriptures : — I am the Bright and Morning Star —
Scriptures which reveal that the Office of the Redeem
ing and the Creating Lord is, in some sense, one and
the same — In Redemption the participation of all the
Divine Being — The Revelation of God which runs
through all Time and Space " finished " on the Cross —
Without this finishing of the Revelation therein, Crea
tion would not have been — Therefore, well might the
Redeeming Lord have come attended by some high
symbol of His glory as the Creating Lord, and this have
been a long predicted Star  158-198

CONTENTS. IX
CHAPTER VII.
the astronomical doubt as to christianity.
Introduction to this Essay  199-213
Statement of the Astronomic Doubt — Reaching all, it
has more to do with modern Unbelief than all the
other intellectual elements in it. Confession of its
power by Webster — Reply to it, in five sections — That
the Earth is too small to have been the scene of the
Advent : answer to this, Sec. I, II — That the Knowl
edge of those Wonders of Grace of which, accord
ing to the Scriptures, the Earth has been the scene,
must have been meant for all the intelligent uni
verse : answer to this, in the Revelation that in some
Hereafter all the Worlds will be put under that New
Race of Man born of the Will of God, Sec. Ill — In
most power of this Doubt : answer to this, in connec
tion with what has been said, in Chapter VI, of the
mysterious presence of the Word of God in all Nature
and all Life  213-282
Note. — So far as this Doubt arises from what seems
to it the insufficiency of the Christian System, it is a
sufficient reply to it to show what that System is, so far
as here brought out for that purpose. Its truth is not
here in question ; and the argument is addressed to be
lievers in the Bible. As to reasons for which, see The
Wise Men, 187, 188. CHAPTER VIII.
THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
Glance at the self-evidencing character of the history
of their Pilgrimage — Two of its lesser difficulties con-

X CONTENTS.
sidered. Statement of an argument against it, for the
purpose of calling attention to the fact in the Sacred
Record that answers it — The Worship of the Magi evi
dence in them of the New Life, which Christ Jesus
brought to light — Their Worship consequent upon the
Faith of the Blessed Mother  283-298
CHAPTER IX.
THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE.
Faith in Christ Jesus the Life of Science — Sympathy
with Him in his great work of freeing the world from
sorrow and pain, the correlative of His greater work of
freeing it from Sin, the only Motive that has power
forever to hold Science to its hard task of subduing
Nature to the Service of Man. Prophecy in the Wor
ship of the Magi of the Future of Science. . . . 299-308
CHAPTER X.
THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
The Dreams of the Magi and of Joseph — They lead
.to the Flight of the Magi to Persia, and of the Holy
Family to Egypt — The Massacre of the Boys of Beth
lehem consequent upon these divinely ordered events.
Blessedness of these Children — Argument from their
Salvation, and from Scripture, to prove the Salvation of
all Children who have died — Introduction to this Argu
ment : — Sketch of Ecclesiastical Teaching as to the
Hereafter of Children who die ; and Thoughts on Orig
inal Sin — Conclusion  3°9-357

Jj5) RETHREN, we are now ere long to part asunder, and
the Lord knoweth whether ever I shall live to see your
faces again. But whether the Lord hath appointed it
or not, I charge you before God and his blessed angels to fol
low me no further than I have followed Christ. If God should
reveal any thing to you by any other instrument of his, be as
ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my
ministry ; for / am very confident the Lord hath more truth and
light yet to break forth out of his holy Word. — John Robin
son's Farewell to the Pilgrim, Fathers at Leyden, A. D. 1620.
As it is owned, the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet under
stood ; so, if it ever comes to be understood, before the restitu
tion of all things, and without miraculous interpositions, it must
be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at — by the
continuance and progress of learning and liberty ; and by par
ticular persons attending to, comparing, and pursuing, intima
tions scattered up and down it, which are overlooked and dis
regarded by the generality of the world. For this is the way
in which all improvements are made ; by thoughtful men's
tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped us by nature ac
cidentally, or which seem to come into our minds by chance.
Nor is it at all incredible, that a book, which has been so long
in the possession of mankind, should contain many truths as
yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena, and the same
faculties of investigation, from which such great discoveries in
natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age,
were equally in the possession of mankind- several thousand
years before. And, possibly, it might be intended that events
as they came to pass should open and ascertain the meaning

of several parts of Scripture. — Butler's Analogy of Natural
and Revealed Religion, A.D. 1736.
It has been with religion as with the glory of arms and with
the splendor of literature. According to a mysterious but in
disputable law, it is always from east to west that progress,
light, and power have proceeded. Like the light of day, they
are born in the East, but it is to arise and to shine more and
more in proportion as they advance toward the West. — M. de
Montalembert .

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.

fS it said, The Mind must decide according to the
evidence it has ? The mind sees ; it reasons, it
never decides ; and that a man always decides ac
cording to the evidence is no more true than that he
never does. Out of nothing the jealous heart makes
evidence. The angry heart makes nothing of what is
evidence. In Unbelief the mind is the instrument of
something whose origin and seat of power is in other
regions of the soul. It is the Heart — here using the
word as when it is written, The fool hath said in his
heart, No God — it is the Heart that sways the intellect,
alike in the unbelieving disobedience of the believer,
and in the open denial of tbe Bible. In its last anal
ysis, Unbelief is the dislike of the heart to the word of
God, because that word sits in judgment on its sins.
Were man all mind, all that is said by all the long
array of witnesses, whom the prince of this world
calls to the stand to swear foolishly or falsely against
the Bible, would weigh as nothing against the proof
in its holiness of its divine origin.
PROOF OF THE BIBLE OPEN TO ALL.
Though some little part of the evidence for the
Bible be open only to some few of the learned, very
much more of it is entirely within the common reach ;

Xiv THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
and there is one kind of its evidence, apart from and
superior to all the others, that is not hidden away in
the Astor Library ; it is open to all. It requires no
critical learning, no searching of the past. It comes
with the book, and it goes with it wherever the
book goes. It is the Voice of the Book, the voice of
no other. That voice speaks in no earthly tone. It
is a voice from the Holy One, saying, " Be ye holy,
for I am holy." It is a voice of warning, saying,
" Turn ye, for why will ye die ? " It is a voice in
sadness, saying, " They will not come unto me that
they might have life." The soul may not at once
hear this divine tone in every part of the book ; but
hearing it in any part thereof, it hears that, which so
hearing nowhere else, and knowing it to be God's
own voice, it is sure the book is, as no other book can
ever be, God's own Book.
In the loud tumult of passion within, in the din of
life's many voices, the soul may not always hear
this Divine voice. Scott — whose heart, burning with
Scottish love and pride, yet had more sympathy
with the murderer, Claverhouse, than with those
martyrs slain for the word of God, who kindled a
light of glory that shall never fade over Scottish
heath, and moor, and glen, and mountain cave, and
those waters where women fastened to the stake were
drowned* by the rising tide of the Solway — Scott,
*"Upon the nth of May, 1685, Margaret Lauchlane and
Margaret Wilson were brought forth for execution. They put
the old woman first into the water, and when the water was
overflowing her, they asked Margaret Wilson what she thought
of her. She said, ' What do I see but Christ wrestling there ? '

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XV
when near his end, said to his son-in-law, " Read to
me." "What book shall I read?" said Lockhart;
"There is but One," the dying man replied: the ear
of the soul, too much closed in life, opening in death.
Heine — the rarest spirit in the German world of
letters since Gothe ; whose untranslatable songs the
boys and women of the Fatherland know by heart,
of a soul so unique that it laughs at critical analysis
as he did at every thing, an atheist who in years of
pain said he made his peace with God, yet in so
strange a mood as to scandalize the Christian as
much as it provoked the infidel, of so mocking a will
as to be cast out of every communion, whom all must
censure, pity, and wonder at, a witness whose witty,
burning scorn of unrealities proves the worth of his
testimony to what is real — Heine said of the criticism
that from the time of the Greek, Longinus, until now,
Margaret Wilson sang Psalm xxv from the seventh verse, read the
eighth chapter of Romans, and then the water covered her." —
Record of the Kirk Session of Pennington, the native parish of
Margaret Wilson, February 25, 171 1, twenty-six years after
this martyrdom. It also states : " The Session having certain
knowledge from eye-witnesses of the foresaid sufferings, many
living that have all these fresh in their memory do attest the
same.'' The Record of the Session of Kirkinner, the native
parish ofthe elder Margaret, states, April 15, 171 1 : "That she
was of known integrity and piety from her youth ; was in her
own house taken off her knees in prayer and carried to prison ;
was sentenced by Sir Robert Grier, of Lagg, to be drowned at
a stake within the flood-mark, just below the town of Wigton."
This perpetuation of testimony by these Churches was at the
request of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
The graves of these martyrs are in the town named. The
elder Margaret was about seventy years old, the younger was
eighteen.

XVI THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
has so often tried to utter the mystery of the power
of the Hebrew Bible, " Vain words ! vain tests of
human judgment ! It is God's work, like a tree, like
a flower, like the sea, like man himself. It is the
Word of God. He that has lost his God can there
find him again ; and toward him who never knew him, it
wafts the spirit and the breath of the Divine word." *
UNBELIEF TENDS TO UNSETTLE THE INTELLECT.
The Soul of Man dreads this known voice of its
Maker. The heart calls upon the intellect to dis
credit it. The intellect hears and obeys, but obeys
with a complaining that fills the world.f the wailing
* Heine, in his inimitable way, says : " The Jews, who are
well versed in valuables, well knew what they were about when,
at the burning of the second temple, they left the golden and
silver vessels of sacrifice, the candlesticks and lamps, and even
the richly-jeweled breastplate of the high-priest behind them,
and saved only the Bible. It is a plain old book, modest as
nature itself, and as simple, too — like the sun that warms, or
the bread that nourishes us. It is indeed justly called Holy
Writ." t In " Childe Harold " this unrest of unbelief broke into the
world of poetry in all the grandeur of a storm, its deep tones
once subsiding into this exquisite cadence :
" Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be
A land of souls beyond the sable shore,
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore ;
How sweet it were in concert to adore
With those who made our mortal labors light !
To hear each voice we feared to hear no more ! "
Now, the unconscious frequent repetitions of the Byronian
skepticism, without its stormy sublimity of power, by feeble
poets, such as Matthew Arnold and many others, as in these
lines, good as the best where all are commonplace —
" There is no rest at all, afar or near,
Only a sense of things that moan and go—

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. Xvii
of the Intellect of Man coerced to this work. And
whenever this coercion by the heart largely succeeds
in making it do this work, the Intellect of the World
strongly tends to go mad. Of this a passing illus
tration may now be seen in the vagaries of some few
English philosophers and men of science.* A logical
have become insufferable, mingled as this whining usually is
with the poetaster's insincere confession that he could have
been a poet had he been born in some congenial and noble
pagan or feudal past : as if Paris were not pagan enough or
Mexico mediaeval enough ; as if this century were not so rich in
the heroic as to set little store by heroes, a time of high achieve
ment and of higher aspirations, and thrilling in its heart with the
influences of the Spirit of the Lord ; confronting great dangers,
no doubt, yet with such powers, and hopes, and prophecies, as
to prove what was written of old : Say not of former times, they
are better than the present, for thou dost not reason rightly
concerning the matter !
* For the moment they have almost made out to pass them
selves off for British science. A little while ago the " London
Spectator " said : " We ask any one who knows English society
at all, if we exaggerate when we say there are hundreds of able
men in England who refer honestly and confidingly to the au
thority of science, exactly as men once referred to the authority
of the Church, who disbelieve in God, or rather in God's govern
ment, because, as they think, Science has dispelled that ancient
delusion." As this authority it names " Huxley, Tyndall, and
the rest." Somewhat the like may be true as to this country. But
this is mistaking for the power of a steam-engine the black cloud
and sparks thrown off by the fire that burns within. In both
countries the scientists who do the work are Christian men ; as
was Faraday, as Morse, as Maury, whose dying blessing to his
children was, " The peace of God which passeth all under
standing be with you all." Soon after " The Wise Men " was
printed Professor Morse wrote to the author — it was then mid
winter — to come and see him. The venerable man was in his
spacious library, his tall form erect, his eye not dim, nor his
natural force abated. A large open Bible was on the library
2

XV111 THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
necessity drives them on from the denial of bis Word
to the denial of God as the ruler of the world, and
this chastisement of their sin farther drives them on
from this denial of God to the denial of Man. These
Fellows of the Royal Institution of London banish
the Omnipresent to an almost inconceivable remote
ness from the worlds he made, and, so far as man is
concerned, annihilate the Eternal, by saying, in con
tradiction of laws out of which no mind can think,
however much it may suppose it does, that matter de
velops all things — life, thought, feeling, and will — out
of itself, by an evolvement without meaning and with
out end. Thus — like a railway train supposed to have
its cranks ever turning, wheels ever revolving, by the
self-contained conflict of fire and water ever evolving
force — the world, moving on by itself, passes out of its
Maker's care. Reason and conscience compel them
to mutter his holy name, and they say nothing can
be known of him ; or they deny him every thing that,
so far as man is concerned, amounts to any thing.
Their God can answer no prayer, can hear none.
He is deaf and dumb. Man to him is nothing. He
is nothing to man. With wit enough to make every
thing, he has not sense enough to take care of any
thing. As a thoughtless boy blows away a soap-
bubble, he has blown the world from him away. He
has given the world over to blind chances within it
self, and by the world may as well be forgotten.
table. He laid his hand upon it, and speaking with earnestness
and reverence, almost his first words were these : " 7" know of
no better employtnent for my last years than to give them to the
study of this book.''

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. xix
These Fellows of the Royal Institution, having rid
the world of its worship of Him in whom it lives and
moves and has its being, with a remorseless consist
ency that shows a latent capacity for reasoning, in an
equally convincing way, go on to rid man of belief in
himself; and denying to our Father in heaven all that
is attractive, they deny to his children all that is
humane, saying, Man is a beast of a larger brain than
the tiger, and when his life's fitful fever is over, sleeps
forever in the abyss of annihilation with his kinsman,
the baboon.
UNBELIEF HOSTILE TO THE PEACE OF SOCIETY.
Were their power equal to their conceit, these in
fidels would snatch from sin the hope of salvation,
from misery the thought of heaven, from poverty the
weapon of prayer ; they would give over the little ones
of God to the wicked, whose tender mercies are cruel ;
they would relieve wealth of the sense of account
ability, destroy the self-control that takes hold on
immortality, unchain the tiger in the human breast.
The peace of society is only possible through the
adjustment to each other of those divine and human
forces in that inner world of thought and feeling, of
which the outer world of fact is expression, image,
and effect. The widely prevailing negation of the pres
ence and power of God in nature, in life, and in the
government of man, makes in both worlds a great
void ; then into the vacuum comes the sin-avenging,
commissioned storm — as at the close of the last cen
tury it came to Bible-denying, Christian-murdering
France — and before the wild fury of that equilibrium-

XX THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
restoring tempest, ever go the exalted ravings of
philosophic and scientific lunatics.
ANTICIPATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH IN SCRIPTURE.
To poison truth is as real a sin as to poison the
Croton River; yet these celebrity-loving lecturers
seek to wrest against the Scriptures some scientific
truths which they did not discover, but which they
have interfused with crudities and falsities that trans
form them into grotesque and malignant errors. The
field of the Bible is the spiritual, which the eye sees,
the ear hears not; and yet even of some of those
natural truths, the knowledge of which they suppose
to be wholly modern, and whose experimental verifi
cation is of recent date, something is shown in the
passing glimpses of scientific truth revealed in Holy
Scripture. Thus: the new evidence that races of plants and
animals are earth-born products, indigenous in cer
tain circles of the globe, and that new races of plants
and animals appeared in some of the past aeons of
this planet, accords with the revelation, that while
the Father of our spirits breathed into man " the
breath of lives," there was given to the Earth, by the
going forth of his Word, a plant and animal producing
power.* This Power, immanent in the globe through
* " And God said, Let the Earth bring forth the living creature1
after his kind." Gen. i, 24. In " The Six Days of Creation," Dr.
Lewis points to this power. Once seen, the wonder is every
body did not see it before. First, The power is revealed ; " God
said," and his saying is doing. Second. When God said, " Let
there be light," nothing is revealed between the word and its
result ; the action of the power seems immediate. It is mediate

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXI
all the cycles of its duration, in itself being ever the
same, those products, of which it is one of the factors,
would ever preserve a certain likeness, and it may be
a seeming continuity ; and yet, their other factor
in the creation of animals ; it empowers the Earth to bring forth
living creatures. Between immediate and mediate divine power
the Scripture makes not, usually, the distinction we make ; it
speaks as when we say, " God made us;" but after saying, The
animal kingdom is earth-born, goes on to say, (v. 25,) God
made the living creatures, taking care the scientific truth shall
not hide the moral truth. Third, This law is revealed ; the
earth is to bring forth animals producing their kind. Was this
power given for once only ? As the result of each of the other
goings forth of the divine word is permanent, so it would seem
this must be. Yet, as the earth-born living creatures produce
their kind, the power given to the Earth is evidently to be put
forth at intervals ; and, doubtless, at intervals commensurate
with the vastness which Dr. Lewis has proved to be in the
time-scale of the world's generation.
That new living things have been formed by chemical art,
animalculas made in the laboratory, has several times been as
serted; as also the spontaneous generation of minute living
creatures. Up to this hour there is no proof of either ; but, were
the latter proved, it would seem to be evidence of the genera
tive power in the Earth as still existing, and stirring in peculiar
conditions in a humble way. The doing of the former is not
given up ; and if the news were telegraphed, true beyond a
doubt, that it had been done in the laboratory at Bowdoin, Mid-
dletown, or elsewhere, there would doubtless be a widespread
feeling that the Bible religion must end. But this would only
. be because what there is in the Bible has not been brought out,
or rather because he who brought it out has not been listened
to while every skeptic had a hearing ; for it would only show
that man had reached to the threefold generative power (see
1 1 . 20. 24) which the Bible reveals as abiding in the globe ;
something, perhaps, no more impossible than that he should
have reached to, and gained some control over, the electric
power which seems to pervade all nature.

Xxii THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
being variable, those products must have ever
changed with the great changes in the forming
world. Geology has partially traced out some of the
workings of this power in the ages before man was
made. It still abides in this planet ; and when this
aeon ends in fire, as the Bible reveals it will, "and
the elements shall melt with fervent heat," it may be,
that, rising to higher effects in the new conditions of
the globe, this power will clothe with plant and ani
mal life, surpassing the beauty of all before, the new
earth of the sons of God.
Thus: the experimental verification of the, unity of
certain of the known forces in nature is recent ; but
the thought that there is only one substance and one
force runs clear through old philosophic thinking,
and that such is the fact is revealed. The loss of
the oriental interpretation of the genesis, when the
Church with all the wealth of her ancient records
passed over from Asia into Europe, obscured this
revelation ; and when that great cycle of time and
thought, the Ancient World, came to an end, this
thought nearly died out from human thinking.
Modern science treated as an element every thing it
could not decompose, and discountenancing intui
tion, wisely proceeded by experiment and classified
by observation. Beginning at the circumference, it
humbly, cautiously, yet swiftly, sounded its experi
mental way toward the center, and this inductive
science now begins to come in sight of these grand
old central, intuitive, and religious ideas.* It is
* That modern science would at last prove the old idea — sure
from Scripture, and born, it may have been, of oldest revelation —

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. xxiii
natural enough that some of its votaries are driven
by this glimpse of them almost out of their senses.
In the whirl of their wonder, they loosen their bold
on the experimental method by which Baconian sci
ence wrought its toilsome way into the secret
chambers of nature ; they give themselves over to
the guiding of the imagination ; they lapse into un
scientific ways, and distractedly mix up physics and
metaphysics ; they wildly run out true ideas into
heathenish speculations ; and, talking of what they
know little about, they prate of the religion of science
and the science of religion.*
These things are only a little more evidence that
Theology, though not unaffected by prevailing opinions
became my opinion years ago, and with it a belief in the future
harmonizing of much of modern thought with much of the
thought in the old world in which the Scripture was given : of
which more hereafter. But I did not look for the experimental
proof ofthe one substance in my time, nor do I understand this
to be as yet. Baconian science has done great things in dis
covering some of the hidden forces and resolving them into one ;
it has not done the like as to the so-called elements ; and to as
sume their sameness would be to forego the rewards that go
with the experimental verification of intuitive ideas. To give
the reasons for calling the ideas of one substance and one force
intuitive, would be to discuss the nature and range of the intui
tive power ; and here it is enough, that the idea of one substance
and one force was old, common, and long held. In spite of
the fifty elements, and more, that yet hold their places in chem
istry, the belief in but one substance has become that of many
chemists. In this they agree with the Alchemists, the last
workers in the old cycle of thought, who aimed to reach the
one substance.
* See the " Chips " and " Lectures on the Science of Re
ligion " by Max Mailer — a man with a magical art of popu
larizing what he does not understand.

Xxiv THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
and usages, even in error has power to rule the ebb and
flow of human thought, as the moon the tides. From
out of the poisonous fumes of a sensuous religionism
there went forth a little time ago a word of vanity,
the all-reconciling, all-explaining, talismanic word,
Development. Of course there now goes forth, in the
subservient sphere of earth-born scientific gnosti
cism, the magical, wonder-working, open sesame,
Evolution. EVANESCENCE OF THE PRESENT FORMS OF ATHEISM.
Those forms of philosophic and scientific atheism
that do now appear will soon of themselves resolve
to nothingness, and in their place will others appear,
to pass away. In themselves, these things are more
curious than alarming. These are the effervescings
and the exhalations of decay. It is the corrupting
of the Old World that breeds these things, and across
the whole purifying breadth of the waters sends them
over here with the opera bouffe and the cholera.
There were such things before, and more will come
after. The air hath bubbles as the water hath, and
these are of them. It is only the spirit of this eva
nescence that is alarming, and this only as a vanish
ing warning of what is of lasting and world-wide
moment. THE FAITH-CRISIS THAT NOW IS, AND IS TO COME.*
The Holy Ghost, who came to convince of sin and
of righteousness, has purified the eye till it sees in
* Of a faith-crisis the signs are clear. In the Decree of the
Vatican Council, (A,D, 1870.) De Fide Catholico?, On CathoUg

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXV
the three orders equally ordained of God, concurrent
in their function, independent in their sphere, sees
in the Family, in the State, and in the Church, the
Beautiful, the Good, the Just, as they were never seen
Faith, it is declared— -'Late nimis per orbem vagata, there is
too widely spread through the world the doctrine of rationalism
or naturalism, that labors with all its might to exclude Christ
from the life and morals of nations ; and the true God and his
Christ being denied, multorum mens, the minds of many have
fallen into the abyss of pantheism, materialism, and atheism.
Moreover, as this impious doctrine is spreading every-where, it
has unhappily come to pass, ut plures etiam e catholiccB ecclesice
filiis a via verce pietatis aberrarent, that not a few even of the
children of the Catholic Church have wandered from the way
of true piety." This seems to be the reason assigned for the
Convocation at Rome of all the Catholic Bishops ; and whatever
be thought of how it met the crisis, the fact has passed into
history, that the only Council of the Catholic Churches for the
last three hundred years was convened in view of Infidelity, or,
more exactly, of Atheism.
In i860, a Book, having in its seven authors a weight of au
thority, came forth from the ecclesiastical Universities of Oxford
and Cambridge, denying inspiration, prophecy, and miracle.
Those " Essays and Reviews " called forth much zeal in the
Christians in the British Isles, and yet these facts remain : Of
the five living writers of that book, two have since been raised
to the headship of houses of Oxford, and another to the
rank of a bishop ; four thousand of the clergy of the establish
ment hold similar heresies, though all have signed the articles,
pray out of the Prayer-book, and recite the Creeds ; and such
teaching has since been decided to be permissible under the
ecclesiastical law of the realm.
If there be any Churches whom this conflagration has not
reached, the neighboring houses are on fire, and they may as
well take the warning. Dr. J. F. Hurst, whose " History of
Rationalism " gives the causes and course of this state of things,
in his " Essay on Modern Theology in Holland," says : '* The
conflict in Holland is only part of the general warfare. The

XXVi THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
before, and the Spirit now impels man to realize what
He thus reveals in vision. The eye of the mind sees
the vision darkly, for it is darkened by the heart,
which resists the divine impulsion. The heart knows
not itself, nor the power working to unknown ends.
The heart feels that the religion of the Spirit is both
destructive and constructive, and it mourns what is
passing and fears what is coming to pass. The light
shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth
it not. Insheathen Rome when the Christians came to the
strength of numbers there came a union of Church
and State, brought about more by policy than prin
ciple, and ever resulting in the struggle of each to
subjugate the other. This course of events was fore
seen by the apostles, some of its causes were at work
while they were living, and its end was foretold by
the Lord. The heart now makes a last struggle to
prolong this sacerdotal and political misery from
which the redemption of the Church " draweth nigh,"
and foreseeing its failure in this, it prepares open gen
eral war against Christ. It has aroused that Culture
lines of truth and error extend the whole length of Christendom.
In the American Church only the skirmishers have been en
gaged. The time is yet to come — it will likely reach us before
the century closes — when the strife between orthodoxy and skep
ticism will be as intense, as bitter, and the result as far reach
ing ,as any page of the history of the Church recalls. But the
cause of truth has never permanently lost ground by these con
flicts. Let us go on devising, planning, warming with our
work, foUowing our enemies to their own chosen battle fields,
cherishing the broadest sympathy with every partner in arms
of whatever name, each believingly and cheerfully striving for a
victory that shall cover every acre ofthe ground."

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXVii
which, found only in Christendon owes much of its
strength to Christianity, to withstand in all possible
ways the onward world-wide movement of the Holy
Ghost. Some of this culture is sensitive to his influ
ence, and it sometimes seems to itself fighting Chris
tianity while warring with what is anti-Christian ; and
yet much of all the culture of Christendom, whether
churchly or worldly, is aristocratic, sin-cherishing, and
in spirit is bitterly hostile to the Spirit of the Lord.
In the selfishness of its self-love, this patrician cul
ture secretly betrays or openly wars against the
religion of Him whose blessing, seeking out neither
the strength of riches nor the splendors of power,
neither Rothschild nor Bonaparte, falls on the poor in
spirit ; the religion of labor, of self-denial, of purity,
of truth ; that manger-born religion which preaches
the equality of all souls before God, whence follows
equality before the law ; the religion of Him who
earned his daily bread till he was about thirty years
of age by one of the handicrafts of Roman slaves ;
the religion of Him who said, " My father worketh
hitherto and I work ; " the religion of Him who,
striking the chains from serf and slave, calls the people
into being, calls into being the laity,* fulfilling that
* See Dr. Stevens' " Essay on the Priesthood of the People "
in the "Methodist Quarterly Review," January, 1873. Few
subjects are now of equal moment, whether regard be had to
its religious or to its political importance ; and few such subjects
have been treated with like breadth and clearness of thought,
or so fairly brought within the comprehension of all. Any
form of Christianity false to the teachings of the New Testa
ment, and to the belief of the early Christians as to this doc
trine, must in the end prove so hostile to all civil liberty that one

XXVU1 THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
divine purpose to the beginning whereof St. Peter wit
nessed, saying " to the strangers scattered throughout
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, Ye
are a royal priesthood ; " and St. John, saying to the
seven Churches in Asia, " Unto Him that hath made
us kings and priests unto God be glory and dominion
forever." MISTAKE AS TO THE CAUSES OF THIS CRISIS.
There are some who think that Christianity driven
by this assault gives up aggressive war, which would
be its confessed defeat, and its abandonment of all
claim to a divine origin. This mistake is the reversal
of the fact, the opposite of the truth. The Nasaretu
delivers this battle. His religion stands not still ; it
has no tears for the beauty of the pagan past ; it wills
the unchristianized present shall not stay ; it wages
war with the exclusiveness or spirit of caste that
hardly can be exorcised from a Family, a State, or the
Church ; it has good-will to man, but cannot look
upon his iniquities with the least allowance ; and of
the approaching conflict, whatever the end designed
in the eternal councils be, that conflict is no evidence
of the weakness, it is the sign of the growing power
of Christianity. For much of the culture of Chris
tendom now begins to see the Christian religion is
not a device to hold the working classes quiet while
the rich and the great enjoy the hard earnings of
misery, and keep as their own the gold which repre-
or the other must perish ; and it would be well that this paper
should be read by every one in our Republic, which, though it
has no foes to fear without, has many foes within.

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXIX
sents labor and suffering ; begins to see the Christian
religion is not a sensuous luxury for pampered and
dreaming intellects, the aesthetic sabbath delecta
tion of fashion rivaling the opera, the gilding of
social pageantry, the fine touch that harmonizes the
vanities of life with the solemnities of death ; knows
the hour cometh, and now is, when the Father will
have no patterning after those withdrawn splendors
of Samaria or of Jerusalem ; hears the voice of one
not clad in colored garments, his leathern girdle
binding round his loins the robe of the desert, hears
what sensuous religionists will not hear though it
warn them of the " wrath to come, " hears the
barbarian voice of the uncultured Baptist sternly
cry in the wilderness of the world, " Prepare ye the
way ofthe Lord ;" sees the Star, as in the vision ofthe
apostate Seer, blazing terror ; knows all farther trust
in any priestly compromising with sin is gone for
ever ; feels driven to choose between God and
Mammon ; must submit to the holy and equal laws
of the Nazarene or utterly reject him ; and there
fore, making up its mind to go on in its own name,
it looks to the heavens, saying,* there is nothing
* These are words from the Westminster Review : " When
once the ambition to know the unknowable is awakened, Titan
will strive upward. Better the Olympian lightning hurl him
back, than that he make his way within the misty chambers
where it is bred, and find there no Indra, no Thunder-bearer,
no Providing Father. Still higher up there soars a glittering
peak, far up ! Never may it be his destiny to surmount it.
Titan would survey from thence a desolate and spiritless uni
verse. Never may it be given him to scale the footsteps of the
throne itself and behold it vacant."

XXX THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
there, and denies the Lord Jesus, saying, We will not
have this man to reign over us ; bewildered and be
guiled by the old temptation, ever new, "Ye shall
not die, ye shall be as gods."
WITHOUT CHRIST, RELIGION AND CIVILIZATION NO
LONGER POSSIBLE.
For Christendom to renounce Christ would be the
end of all religion. The patriarchs had the promise
of " things not seen," the guiding of a vision whose
light brightened into the presence of the Lord, and
that childlike feeling of nearness to God which gives
to the patriarchs an inexpressible charm, through
Christ continueth forever ; but the patriarchal re
ligion belongs to a world that has passed away.
The colder Deism preached by Mohammed may be
traced to the primeval religion, it became the creed
of nations and races, it has nurtured heroes, scholars,
and devotees, it has done grand things and lasted
long, it still teaches the Koran to the heathen of
Africa, but within its circle of great triumphs it is
waning to nothingness ; and its history, while it
proves the power of Deism as a religion, proves it has
no place in the future.
Christendom is from Christ ; and for Christendom
to renounce Christianity would be the destruction of
the whole frame-work of society. Christ is every
thing for man, or for man there is nothing. Apart
from the revealing of the Father by the Son, it is no
longer possible to believe in God ; apart from God, it
is not possible to believe in Man. These two truths
survive in the heart of man, or there perish together.

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXxi
Therefore, the only alternative for life and light in
Christ is atheism and barbarism. This is the mean
ing of the conflict which is to be as to Christianity, and
which is now in so much of the thought of our time,
often in unsuspected forms, and comes to light in al
most everything — in law-making, in science, in poetry,
in the march of armies. Even now the sky is darken
ing and glowing with the mingled gloom and light of
the cloud of this battle. History records not the
like. The changes to come in its progress none can
foreknow, nor the way or time of its end.
THE WRITTEN WORD THE CENTER OF THIS CONFLICT.
What is Christianity ? who are Christians ? what
in the Christianity among us is of man's selfish de
vice, and what of God ? what the positions that must
be held in this war? — as to these questions the ap
proaching conflict will bring out a difference of opin
ion among Christians that will set a man at variance
against his father and the daughter against her
mother. A man's foes shall be they of his own house
hold, and he that findeth his life shall lose it, and he
that loseth his life for Christ's sake shall find it ; but
the position which must be held or all be lost, the
central position, is determined already by the lines of
assault upon Christianity ; for, begin where they
may, whether within what is called the Church or
without it, run where they will, they all at last con
verge to the Bible, and there they all unite. In this
unity of direction in so many lines of thought and
feeling there is something not of the human will ;

XXXII THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
this concentration of so many forces at one point is
proof of what many deny, that there is in the human
world an evil Being at work who is not human.
THE HEART NOT AT ONE WITH ITSELF IN THIS WAR.
The prayer of the Psalmist, " Unite my heart to
fear thy name," holds in its small compass more of
soul-wisdom than some large books of metaphysics.
In the heart the moral feelings are set over against
the passions : these gather strength from the seen,
those from the unseen ; these from the perishable,
those from the everlasting ; they strive together as to
the Bible, and few there be, or none, who can say
from the heart at all times, " Thy word is pure, there
fore thy servant loveth it." Yet the conscience is so
responsive to the word of God that it cannot wholly
perish so long as that word is honored ; nor can that
word be wholly dishonored while the moral nature
remains. And more than this, the Living Word and
the Written word are so related that no man can hold
to the one and despise the other. Not by chance,
then, does the prince of this world lead forth a line of
attack upon the written word, a parallel line against
the moral nature of man, and a third against Christ
himself. The lower nature in man looks with favor upon
the denial of Christ, but infidelity will not have it all
its own way when the higher nature sees this will
be its own destruction. Yet only by this destruction
can the prince of this world make the soul like unto
his own, and in many ways he seeks this end : as by
teaching that what is natural is right, but treating

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXxiii
the conscience, which is as natural to a man as his
passions, and was meant to be their rule and guide,
as a matter of education, a conventional thing, a
superstition, a hinderance to freedom and manhood ;
calling only the sensual natural, and so making the
gratification of the appetites and passions their only
law ; or else saying that men are equally right in fol
lowing after sin or holiness, their preference for either
being a matter of taste or temperament, and their
true course to do what they like, even as do the hap
pier brutes — the difference between right and wrong
being a difference in name and not in fact ; * and thus
many perish through the pride of a false knowledge
fatally conjoined with lusts of the flesh. Yet when it
becomes clear that infidelity would make a world with
nothing in it divine or human, would degrade all men
and all women to the immoral state of those danger
ous classes in great cities whose lusts, cruelties, and
crimes act out the gospel of unbelief, there is reason
to hope that man will not crucify his immortal long
ings though full of doubt and pain, will accept neither
chimpanzee nor gorilla for his parent, will not choose
blind fate for his God, will remember the peace and
joy of home, the mother's holy prayer, and human
nature recoil from this immediate, unclean damna-
* " Nature as we know her is no saint. She comes eating, and
drinking, and sinning. If we will be strong with her strength,
we must not harbor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed,
too, from the consciences of other nations. Good and bad are
but names, very readily transferable to that or this. All the
universe over there is but one thing ; this old two face creator-
creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, of which any proposition
may be affirmed or denied." — Ralph Waldo Emerson.
3

XXXIV THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
tion. But in the inscrutable councils of the human
will, if the choice be atheism, what then ? Of the
world's last day and hour no man may know ; but
this is known : from heaven suddenly the Lord will
come, "in like manner as he was seen by men of
Galilee to go into heaven/' and this coming will be
in a time of luxurious civilization.* If, then, the
world's choice be atheism, doubtless, the world will
not be suffered to pass into barbarism, as left to itself
it must. At the height of its unbelief it will hear the
archangel call the last judgment of the Son of man.
THE TRUTH THERE IS IN THE BIBLE.
All those who think of giving up the Bible, before
they make up their mind to this would do well to
find out more of what there is in the Bible. All that
volume is no more known than all the volume of
nature. Something in each a little child may read,
and man knows no more of much there is in each
than the babe that shall be born to-morrow. The
Bible contains the answers to questions no man has
answered, and no man living can answer ; and to find
out all there is in it is impossible. No one soul can
inbreathe all its lifegiving. Nor can any one time, for
the Bible is the book for all time. In it there is re
serve of wisdom from which man cannot foreknow
what will come. Each successive generation only
feels a little more of its unsearchable infinity of
power. In the Bible there is the Divine Breath whereby,
* Luke xvii, 26, 27, 30.

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXXV
in the beginning, man "became a living soul."*
That Divine Breath so passed from the soul, that
what man calls life, the Scripture calls death. Christ
quickeneth this death. By "the Spirit of Christ
which was in them," prophets prophesied ; f words
of the Old Testament are so ascribed to Christ that
a reader of the later Scripture only, could not but
think they were spoken by our Lord when he dwelt
among us in the form of man ; J and when he drew
his last breath on the cross, he so repeated the
opening of one of the Psalms as to make the whole
of that Psalm his dying voice. || Our Lord said, " I
am the Life : § because I live ye shall live also ; " ^[
and he said, " The words that I speak, they are spirit
and they are life."** There is, therefore, in the
Bible more than that Divine Inbreathing through
which the Adam became a living soul ; for " the first
man was of the earth, the second man is the Lord
from heaven." ff If any man be in Him he is " a
new creation," $ J quickened into the " image "|||| of
Him who hath "brought life to light in the Gos-
pel."§§ Unto such the Apostle Peter said, " Ye are
born of incorruptible seed by the word of God, which
liveth and abideth forever, and this is the word which
by the Gospel is preached unto you."
UNLOYALTY OF CHRISTIANS TO THE WORD OF GOD.
It has been, with some reason, said : — "The truth
of the Gospel history is now (A. D. 1864) more
* Gen. ii, 7. ¦)¦ 1 Peter i. 11. § Heb. x, 5-9. || Matt, xxvii, 46 ;
Psa. xxii. §Johnxi, 25. ^ John xiv, 19. **Johnvi, 63. ft I Cor,
xv, 47. XX 2 Cor- v> J7- 111 I Cor. xv, 49. §§ 2 Tim. i, 10.

XXXVI THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE,
widely doubted in Europe than at any time since the
conversion of Constantine," (A. D. 323). If so this be,
the chief cause is, that so many of those who call
themselves Christians depreciate the pure word of
God. They are many who make tradition concur
rent, additional, and superior authority to that of the
Bible.* By traditions they bind the consciences of
* " Our Roman Catholic brethren, and some even among
ourselves, if I understand them rightly, regard the doctrinal
statements of the Church as forms of doctrine immediately
communicated to the apostles by our Lord and the Holy Spirit,
independent of Scripture, and traditionally preserved through
the successors of the apostles. The Nicene Creed, for example,
is a collection of some of these divine sayings, possessing its own
authority, independent of the Scriptures. To depart, accord
ingly, at all from the language of the formularies, they regard
as deviating from divine truth itself ; nay, erven ?nore than to de
part from the expressions of Scripture. Such was not the
view of Athanasius. Speaking of the term Homoousian in that
creed " — of one substance with the Father — " he says distinctly,
the meaning was gathered out of Scripture." — The Scholastic
Philosophy, by R. D. Hampden, Bishop of Hereford, Professor
of Divinity in the University of Oxford. P. xxxi. London, 1 848.
In the " Replies " to " The Essays," sanctioned by Wilber-
force, Bishop of Oxford, 1862, one writer assumes "the con
tinuous existence of a certain creed from the beginning ; " and
if by this were meant an interpretation of Scripture reaching far
back, and of effect like that in the case of a book in a language
no longer spoken, which guides or controls the judgment as to
the meaning of its words, it would be sound sense and indis
putable fact ; but this writer goes on to say a creed " upon be
lief in which that book was founded " — meaning the New Tes
tament, and contradicting Athanasius and the early fathers ;
and he says that certain men, believing certain things, wrote
them in a book, "which is the embodiment of the words of in
fallible men." Essentially this is the doctrine of the Essays,
and of Strauss also ; for, as to the element of infallibility, these
would grant that in the writings of men honestly writing what

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXXVii
men, and give to doctrines not taught, to ceremonial
rites, and to observances of times and seasons no
where enjoined by Scripture, the like authority as if
there taught or there enjoined. Thus they compel
those who in any way countenance them to concede
to them the sanction of, Thus saith the Lord ; and
thus they make of none effect the difference between
the word of God and words of men. Essentially,
this is a denial that there is any word of God ; and
it opens the door to Naturalism, which saith all is of
man, or to Pantheism, which saith all that is of man
is divine. From this setting up of traditions of men
in the high place of commandments of God, it has
come to pass that Naturalism and Pantheism are, as
the Council of the Vatican affirmed, widely spread
abroad ; and these errors will not cease so long as
what is not in Holy Scripture is upheld and taught
as of equal authority with what is.
As some think more of Councils and the early
they knew, or even thought to be true, there would be less or
more of infallible truth. These two factions in the English
establishment disparage the Scriptures, one of them in favor of
scholasticism, the other of sacerdotalism. The one would de
liver up the Church to the philosopher, the other to the priest ;
and between the two the word of God is crucified.
This disparaging of the word of God, by putting in its place
traditions of men, marked from the first the Oxford heresy. In
his "Apologia," Dr. Newman says: "Hurrell Froude was a
pupil of Keble's, formed by him, and in turn reacting upon him.
A friend to whom I owe so much. He professed openly his
hatred of the Reformers. He felt scorn of the maxim, " The
Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants ; " and he
gloried in accepting tradition as a main instrument of religious
teaching.''

XXXVIII THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
Fathers, so others think more of Confessions of Faith
and the later Fathers, than of Scripture. In all these
things there is a claim to inspiration in things of
men that cannot be distinguished from that claim
to inspiration sometimes made for the Zendavesta,
or the Vedas, or the Koran ; for Zoroaster Spitama,
for Buddha, for Confucius, for Socrates ; or, to come
down to later times, for Anacharsis Clootz, "the
orator," and Hegel, the philosopher, " of the human
race." Were it, in any case, only a claim that some
thing of divine influence may at times have merci
fully blended with thoughts of men, it might have
more or less of truth, but the result is treated as of
the same effect with Holy Scripture ; that which is
less is thus evened with that which is higher and
different ; and disparaged is that " sure word " to
which St. Peter gave a higher place than to the won
ders of glory " he beheld in the holy mount."
To some the Bible is their own system of theology ;
that, and nothing more. They read it solely to prove
that. Some think more of the Prayer-book than of
the Bible. Some put their spiritual director in the
place of the Scriptures.* Some, their consciences.
* In the Journal of Eugenie de Guerin, a book to which the
prize given by the French Academy was awarded, and well
known in its English translation, under date of April 28, 1835,
a confessor is called, " that friend of the soul, its physician, its
master, its light, the man to whom we speak on our knees,
calling him like God our Father. Faith makes him truly God
and Father." Yet our Lord said, " Call no man your father
upon the earth : for one is your Father, which is in heaven.
Neither be ye called masters : for one is your Master, even
Christ." Matt, xxiii, 9, 10.

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. XXXIX
They subject its teachings to their own notions of
right and wrong, and thus " bring to the clearing of
the word of God the very darkness it was intended
to illumine." And there is a criticism of the Bible
whose lines of erasure run nearly through the whole
book. All these things are now of error and sin, and
they come of an unbelief in the word of God like
that among the Jews, whereof this was written for
an everlasting warning, that as yet grows not old :
"Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which
were of Jerusalem ; he answered and said unto them,
ye have made the commandment of God of none
effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did
Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth
nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me
with their lips ; but their heart is far from me. In
vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men. Then came his disciples,
and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees
were offended ? He answered, Every plant, which my
heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up."
INFIDELITY MORE AN EFFECT OF THIS UNLOYALTY
TO THE WORD OF GOD, THAN OF SCIENCE.
The feeling that almost every one has met with,
and not in the world only, that the Bible is suited
only to a Past that is ever receding and is ever more
and more becoming an old-fashioned relic, is much
more owing to this Christian unloyalty to, the word
of God than to any " oppositions of science." From
time to time Science has brought to light new truths,

Xl THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
or what have seemed to be such, and, as first un-
vailed, they have seemed to contradict truth in
Scripture, and the like may long continue so to be.
What then ? Is there any reason to fear from these
things lasting evil ? None whatever. If they are
not truths, they will come to naught ; if they are, it is
hardly too much to say they will harmonize them
selves with Scripture. At some points where the
Scripture has scarcely been thought of at all, or not
well thought of, they will lead to its more earnest
study, and this will be only for good ; for the inter
pretation of the scientific thoughts in Scripture is no
more complete and final now than that of its religious
teaching, as to which the thought of the Church ever
has been as the shining light, "that shineth more
and more unto the perfect day."
Over the whole realm of knowledge the Scripture
lifts its scepter, and the Star of our Lord is as truly
the guiding light of science as of faith. The truths of
men are to be encompassed, they are to be illumined
by the truth in Scripture ; and from it they are to learn
what without it they cannot know. For there are
truths that Science sublimely believes ; " it labors in
their light and journeys in their hope," but it cannot
prove them ; it is ever drawing nearer to them, but
it cannot touch them ; these truths the Bible makes
certain. The Bible is to be harmonized with itself
alone ; that is, so far as possible, its truth is to be
seen in its unity. Vainly into comparison with it is
brought any thing or every thing else, for it is written,
God hath magnified his word above all his name.
The Bible has outlasted forms of society, systems of

THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE. xli
science. It will outlive them all. Thousands of years
are gone since it was written, The grass withereth
and the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall
stand forever. Its everlasting truth is of another dura
tion than pertains to the material worlds whose years
are numbered. Behind that Book and with that
Book there is superhuman power. It can no more
perish in any blaze of man's kindling than could the
three in the furnace of fire, with whom, walking, the
astonished king beheld, One whose form was " like
the Son of God."*
That the Bible teaches only religious truth has
been said by some who would like to have it so. It
has become the common answer to much of the
hostile criticism of the Bible, and yet is either weak
or dishonest ; for there is no truth that is not relig
ious, and there is no such limit to the range of the
power of the Bible as this evasion implies. Nor
could it have become so common, were there not a
great want of appreciation of the power the Bible has
put forth and does put forth. The Bible was the first
book ever printed ; and when printed by stealth, and
read by the people at the risk of life, its social teach
ings at once began to put an end to those barbaric
ages, which some ignorantly call, Ages of Faith. Its
social teachings are now changing the face of society ;
and it is these changes which, to many, make the
Bible an unwelcome book.
As deep into the secret of things as go its moral
and spiritual teachings, so deep into the secret of
* Dan. iii, 25.

xlii THOUGHTS ON THE BIBLE.
things go the scientific', the historical, and the social
teachings of the Bible. As known from the revela
tion delivered unto us from oldest time by the hand
of Moses, the element Light is the creative agency
that makes the habitable world, entering as the con
structive constituting force into solid abiding things
that seem farthest removed from its more spiritual
essence. The like is true of the revealed word of
God. As to all worlds of thought and feeling, there
is truth in the Bible yet to come out in such fuller
measure that it will seem to be new truth. Its ever
shining is never lessening its power to shine. In
this time of doubt and trial we may hope and believe
the Spirit will cause more of light to come forth from
the Bible ; and the prayer of all true Christian hearts
should be, Open Thou our eyes to behold wondrous
things out of thy law.

THE

STAR OF OUR LORD.

JIT NQUIRY into the Lessons of the Pilgrimage of the Wise
(js^ Men who worshiped Christ Jesus in Bethlehem, having
" seen his Star," leads far into the mysteries of the kingdom
of the Lord. It opens with the question, Was the celestial
sign which they beheld foretold ? for its answer leads on to,
and becomes a part of, the answer to the greater question,
Was it one of the stars of heaven ?

All the old prophecies of the Messiah are now obscured
with excess of light, as stars are vailed with the brightness of
the dawn. Some of these prophecies burn with fire so bright
as ever to be visible, but they were meant to gladden the
evening before the "morning was." To see them we must
sit in the twilight with those who " searched diligently what
the spirit of Christ that was in them did signify when it testi
fied beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that
should follow ; " with those of old, to whom each prophecy
was " a light shining in a dark place." Then the firmament
of old Scripture will brighten overhead as before the day-
spring visited the world, its planets will come out from the
obscure, its constellations stand in their order on high.

CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE OF TIME.
, T the feeble fountain whence the living water
chose its path to either sea, at the river-head,
there Mythology built her temple ; * dreaming
the river-god would not unfold all that should come
and go on his shores forever, where broadflowing he
mirrored Memphis and the Pyramids, but in the dif
ficult solitude far away, " beside the well-spring deep
and lone of Egypt's mighty flood."
All beginnings strike the mind as prophetic ; for
in them come forth to sight powers before unseen,
whose common direction, or first strife, betokens
what will come afterward ; and this, it may be, for an
exceeding duration. To the mere sense-conception,
what is afterward seems the greater ; but the mysteri
ous interest that attaches to the beginning returns no
more. * The most eastern fount of the sacred Jordan flowed out
from under a cavern in a steep red limestone cliff at the foot of
Mount Hermon. This grotto-fountain sanctuary was conse
crated by the Greeks to the sylvan god, Pan — whence the name
of the town Paneas, which still survives in the name Banias, the
town called in Matt, xvi, 13, Mark viii, 27, Cssarea Philippi.
See Josephus, Antiq., xv, 10, 3 ; Robinson, iii, 404. The god to
whom this cavern-fount was consecrated was the same of whom
the legend ran, that certain sailors sailing on the sea in the
night when Christ was born, heard a loud lamenting that in the
darkness cried, " Great Pan is dead ! "

4 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
In human life there is one beginning at birth, one
when the child knows good from evil, one when
Satan shows to youth the kingdoms of the world ;
and so in the life of the Church there are many be
ginnings. At one of these beginnings Balaam uttered this,
his last oracle, in the day when, from the hill of Moab,
he looked out on the people of Israel in the plain of
the Jordan, "abiding in tents according to their tribes,"
as they were about to cross the dividing, mystic river
and begin the conquest of Canaan, the type of the
soul, under Joshua the captain, who, by name and
office, was a type of Jesus Christ :
" Balaam, the Son of Beor, said, the man whose
eyes are open said, which heard the words of
God, and knew the knowledge of the Most High,
which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling
into a trance, but having his eyes open : I shall
see him, but not now : I shall behold him, but
not nigh. There shall come a Star out of Jacob,
and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall
smite the corners of Moab and destroy all the
children of Sheth.* And Edom shall be a posses-
* This oracle was from outside of the Hebrew world, and yet
there is little doubt as to its terms, except the term, " children
of Sheth." Possibly this is a proper name. Some render it
" children of tumult," which is true enough to the general idea.
The term rendered " the city," seems to be the name of one of
the capitals of Moab. " Coasts of Chittim " are shores of the
Mediterranean, then the unexplored great Sea of the West.
Chittim, afterward called Cyprus, the most eastern of its
greater islands, could just be seen from some of the hills of
Canaan.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 5
sion for his enemies ; and Israel shall do val
iantly. Out of Jacob shall come he that shall
have dominion, and shall destroy him that re
maineth of the city. And when he looked on
Amalek, he took up his parable, and said, Amalek
was the first of the nations ; but his latter end
shall be that he perish forever. And he looked
on the Kenites, and took up his parable, and said,
Strong is thy dwelling place, and thou puttest
thy nest in a rock. Nevertheless the Kenite shall
be wasted, until Asshur * shall carry thee away
* Asshur is put for the Assyrians, of whom he was the great
ancestor : Gen. x, 1 1 ; and so Eber, or as it should be, Heber,
is put for the Hebrews : Gen. x, 21, 24, 25 ; xi, 10, 16, 26 ; and,
xiv, 13, "Abram the Hebrew." There the Septuagint has,
"the passer-over," the one who came over the Euphrates, as
Abraham did — and as for that, so did all the people in Pales
tine. All Shemitic titles have a meaning often traceable only
through the words. From this, no doubt, came this error ;
for the Targums (as to which see the Index) show a Jewish
rage for derivations more fantastic than that of later critics —
though not more so than the finding in Balaam, " destroyer of
the people." A red Indian, running to his lodge whooping
from an ambush with scalps of men, women, and children at
his belt, might take to himself such a title, but Beor never
could have given it to his new-born son.
This error of the Septuagint was set right in our Version, and
long before that, in the Vulgate. It is repeated in " Lange's
Commentary." There it is set right in a note by one ofthe sense-
keepers set over the American translation, often wiser men and
better scholars than those they translate ; and happily so for true
religion; for this comment often accedes to the wildest unreason
of unbelief — as_ where it sails Abraham " a heathen Chaldee "
and says, he was about fo murder Isaac as Moloch worshipers
murdered their children.
The genealogy of the Shemites opens with styling Shem the

O THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
captive. And he took up his parable, and said,
Alas, who shall live when God doeth this ! And
ships shall come from the coast of Chittim, and
shall afflict Asshur, and shall afflict Eber, and
he also shall perish forever." — Num. xxii ; xxiii ;
xxiv, 15-25.
To comprehend the scene on the hill of Moab
when Balaam looked out on the camp of the Lord is
to comprehend much of the meaning of all history.
Much ofthe world, as it was then, was there; and our
Hope was in those goodly tents of Jacob. In its
"great and terrible wilderness" conspiring against
Israel — as now, in its greater and more terrible wilder
ness, the world is conspiring against Christ — and
feeling, with the sensitiveness of the desert, that
spiritual power was on the side of Israel, and know
ing this moves and determines the course of human
events, Arabia * had called to its help other spiritual

father of the children of Eber. Of course, the Eber it thus
points out must be the Eber it names a little farther on. The
Scripture calls that Shemitic people whose history it traces,
Hebrews. Between these facts comes in its calling Abraham —
children of whom this people loved to call themselves — "the
Hebrew : " and yet some deny the force of all this, because they
say "nothing is known of Heber — "as if the fact which the
Shemitic genealogy at its opening makes known about him,
that he was the great forefather of the Hebrews, was nothing !
In the rendering of this oracle the Septuagint corrects its
blunder in the other place, by giving as a paraphrase of the
same word, 'EPpaiovc, Hebrews; so the Syriac. The Vulgate
has, vastabuntque Hebrmos — shall destroy the Hebrews.
* Of the vast Arabia of modern geography, so much as skirts
the west and south of Palestine. This is sometimes called
Arabia in Scripture. The people on the western and southern

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 7
power. Arms had failed, and another plan had been
devised. Four times the princes of Midian and Moab
had journeyed across the breadth of the Syrian
Desert ; his first embassy to Balaam had failed, but
"Balak, the son of Zippor, who was king of the

fringes of Palestine belonged to this desert, as sailors to the
sea. They were all troubled by the landing of pilgrim Israel
on their coasts ; and, though little or no use has been made of
this, it is one of the keys that unlock the history. To prove
they were troubled, it is enough to ask, How could it have been
otherwise? And the facts are these: Midianites went with
Moabites on the embassies to Balaam ; the Ammonites had a
chief part in this thing, as may be seen from Deut. xxiii, 3, 4 ;
Neh. xiii, 1-3 : the Amorites had been scattered by a defeat
that probably led to it. Balaam on the mountain addressed
Amalek ; and the Kenites also, who as a tribe ate salt with the
Israelites, but some of whom seem to have made common cause
with the other tribes. It goes to show the Jewish opinion that
all southern and eastern Palestine took part in the calling in of
Balaam, that Philo, when narrating this event, says of the exode
of Israel, (though with a touch of his usual exaggeration,) " all
the Asiatic nations were disturbed by it." It is curious evidence
of this opinion, that in the Septuagint Og is lugged into the his
tory with a violence that dislocates the oracle : "And he looked
upon Og and said, Who shall live when God doeth this ? "
This favorite giant comes in quite unexpectedly in the" wild
legends of the Jews. Thus, in Gen. xiv, 13, one came to
Abraham with news that Lot was a captive. In the Targum
of Palestine : " Og came, who had been spared from the giants
drowned in the Deluge, and had ridden protected on the top
of the ark,sustained with food by Noah." Perhaps this naming
of Og in the Septuagint came from the killing of Og of Bashan
by the Israelites in an inroad into his country about this time.
On these last two facts no stress can be laid ; but the twice
sending.for Balaam could not be a secret, and great publicity
was given to it. The desert tribes must have felt an interest
in it, and that they all, or nearly all, were active in it, seems
proved by the evidence above cited from Scripture.
4

8 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
Moabites at that time," sent "princes, more, and
more honorable than they," and said, " I will do what
soever thou sayest ; " and so at last they had brought
with them, " from the mountains of the East," " the
greatest of the prophets at that time," " the diviner
renowned above all, and his glory spread every
where," "the rival, the possible conqueror of
Moses." *
WHAT WAS THE WORLD, THE TIME, THE CHARACTER
OF THIS MAN, AND THE PURPOSE IN HIS COMING?
In general history, and even in Church history,
there is an under-estimate of Balaam's time, and
with some a reticence as to both his character and
the meaning of his mission, all of which have tended
to make his history needlessly perplexing. Beyond
the seas some would not be suffered, either by their
ecclesiastical or their secular rulers, fully and truth
fully to interpret the history of Balaam to the people ;
and there are some, even with us, who would not if
they could. It opens deep and difficult questions
that here can only be rapidly touched ; yet as it has
* See Numbers xxii ; xxiii, 7 ; xxiv. Philo- Judaeus, Life of
Moses, sec. xlviii ; Josephus, Antiq., Lib. iv, chap, vi ; Stanley's
Jewish Church, lee. viii. The two Jews lived in the first Chris
tian century. Some record as to Balaam is quoted by the
prophet Micah, chap, vi, 5-9, which is not in the Mosaic Books ;
but this was before the exile, some seven hundred years before
Josephus or Philo lived; and it is not probable they had any
other means of knowing about Balaam than what are now in
the Bible. They only give a sermonizing amplification of what
is there. It is of no historical value, save as reflecting the im
pression the Bible-history made on them. Time itself is the
true and only interpreter of this history.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 9
become with so many a scoff and a jeer, which with
those who understand it even a little, it can never
be, it must here be more fully treated than would
otherwise be required to answer those questions
as to the Star of our Lord which arise out of his
Oracle. When the monuments of history are traced back
for about four thousand years a chasm is reached be
yond which nothing can be seen, while on this side
of it there is a quick emergence of civilization. It
is as if some river were traced to where it flowed in
large volume from an underground lake, while be
yond the sudden greenness all was the empty silence
of a tenantless desert. The tools, the work, the
sculptured sphinx, the painted mummy-chamber, the
cutting, drawing, and lifting up on high of the hard
and heavy obelisk, the placing and proportions of the
pyramids, show a working in the metals, a skill in the
arts, in engineering and astronomy, that could have
been attained only by a long course of experiments
and discoveries. Evidently, in some long pre-exist
ing world, the wisdom competent to results of so
sudden and so high an order, was slowly gained ; but
whenever and wherever that world may have been, it
has vanished like "the baseless fabric of a vision."
The Great Flood, whose memory long continued with.
many nations,* and of which the record of an eye-
* Certain as many of the facts of geology are, its theories
come and go like shadows in a wizard's glass ; and if, as said
by some, it cannot as yet recognize any traces of the Flood, the
honesty of this confession is praiseworthy ; but when it would

10 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
witness is preserved in the Bible, explains this fact,
that in the earliest historic age there was a some
what high and complex civilization in a thinly peopled
world. From the Great Flood the Bible reader passes on
to the miracle commonly called the Confusion of
Tongues. This might better be known as the call
ing forth of new languages. Of this, the dispersion
of those who were to become nations was a conse
quence. Here, as before, there is some evidence
outside of the Bible of what it records. Several
languages have been classed into one family (to
which the Hebrew and the Arabic belong) and into
another, called the Aryan, still more, because of
resemblances proving that each family has been gen
erated from some one original form. From the
original Aryan form have come the Zend of Persia,
the Sanscrit of India, the Greek, the Latin, the
Celtic, Teutonic, Sclavonic, and other languages ; and
since the Dispersion there has been ample time for
these changes, as is sufficiently evident from the
fact that the Italian, Spanish, French, and English
languages are but a few hundred years old.
One nature is common to the Shemitic-speaking
Arab, and to the Aryan-speaking American whom he
guides through the desert of Sinai. The changes that
have come about in the language of either can be
wrest this ignorance against the Bible, the older and graver
science of history rebukes and silences the younger; for the
Flood itself is proved as conclusively as any historical fact, by
records of history, outside of the Bible.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 1 1
accounted for ; but not the unchanging, original un-
likeness between the two languages. They are as
unlike in their structure as the palm-tree and the oak.
Their oldest specimens, more than three thousand
years old, differed as sharply as any two of them differ
now. And the conclusions drawn from these facts
remain substantially unaffected when the one, two,
or more forms into which all other languages may be
classed, are considered.
The Scriptures, which record the calling forth from
the human nature of new forms of speech at Babel,
witness to the unity of that nature ; and, as this
miraculous power acted upon and through the human
nature, its quick results present themselves to the
scientific eye as if produced by the slow action of
natural causes.* Yet there is confirmatory evidence
* Through, and beyond these two propositions, can be seen
the truth, that collision between the Scripture here, and the
Science of Languages is impossible. For the sake of clearness
in the brief treatment of the subject above, only languages are
spoken of as evoked at Babel ; but, as the special facts in the
miraculous effect are not given in the Scripture, there may
have been a calling forth of dialects as well; and these might
present some of the stages of the natural growth of less into
more perfect speech. If, then, the existing forms of speech
should all be resolved into one ground-form, into an elementary
utterance, of which all others might appear to be a growth,
this ought not even to look like a collision with what is here
revealed. These thoughts touch not the reality of the superhuman
power. They only bring out the truth that the Divine super
natural usually acts through, and in conformity with the nature
and laws, it ordained for the natural. This the Scripture points
out, as will be shown hereafter. The idea itself is so rea
sonable, that it would seem only to need to be stated to be

12 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
of the Scripture in the fact that it is so difficult, if
not indeed impossible, to show scientifically how the
Shemitic and Aryan tongues could have come from
one parent form ; as may readily be shown of the
very different looking and widely separated varieties
of either. Thus, to the discoveries of the science of
philology, or of the comparison of language, the Scrip
tures give the explanation.
What was done at Babel was recorded, not to
gratify the pride of the intellect, and not as a page
of philology, but for spiritual ends ; and yet it is per
missible to reason from the record to facts of infer
ence or conjecture. The economy of power in mira
cles makes it probable that one language was not
changed. Among the handful in Babel * there were
some who could not have been of the Tower-builders,
for Noah and Shem were there ; and the speech-
effacing, speech-evoking judgment, passing those,
may have spared the language of Shem and Noah,
assented to, and yet seems not to have been thought of in much
that has been said of miracles.
* As every body was there, one is apt to think there were
many ; but on the earth then there were only Noah and his
children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and a few babies
of the fourth generation. Peleg, in the one hundred and
first year after the Great Flood, was named from the division
of those few kindred families, and so must have been born in
the year of the miracle. This smallness of the number at Babel
takes from the grandeur of the mere sense-conception of the
scene, yet brings out the far-reaching wisdom and mercy in the
Divine intervention. And it brings out the fresh vigor of life
on that "green undeluged earth," shown in that city-building,
empire-founding cycle which followed, and felt far down in the
later cycles of time, as attested by colossal enduring monuments
of early days, scattered far and wide.

THE FrRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 1 3
which was the language of Enoch and of Adam. On
some of the less guilty the .judgment, falling less
heavily than on the worst, may have called forth the
original Aryan tongue, one of whose forms, the
Greek, was to voice the glad tidings to all people.
In the worst it may have chilled the fount of thought,
and hence have come a language fitted, like the
Chinese, for stationary or humble forms of society,
and comparing with the Hebrew, deep and clear
breathing from the inmost recesses of the soul, or
with the flexile eloquence of the Greek, as the talk
of paralyzed lips with the fullness of human speech.
Those few people in the Plain of Shinar, whose
souls were haunted by the roar of the waters that
drowned the world, naturally clung together ; and
there was something of a pitiable weakness in their
making their refuge and strength a tower their, own
hands would build, as well as of a proud conscious
ness of strength in their will to carry it up into
heaven. But the weakness, the sin of the children
baffled not the Father's wisdom. It is the glory of
God to conceal a thing ; and the miracle which dis
persed those who were to be the nations over the
habitable earth, like the appointed doom of labor,
was a blessing in disguise. Change, variety, and
fullness of thought on some themes are so little con
sonant with the genius of the Shemitic tongue, un
bending and sterile though sublime, that but for this
intervention the w$rld would h^ve been more wicked.
Thus the Dispersion increased the power of the forces
working on toward the time when the knowledge of
the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters fill the

14 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
sea. But for this, that diversified drama, "its four
first acts, already past," which now opens through
scenes of conflict and terror the sublimity of its
last, never could have unfolded so rapidly. That
Dispersion was a part of the World-Plan the Spirit
reveals ; and, recording the Dispersion before the
miracle which caused it, it seems to emphasize how
it followed the nations as they trend off into darkness
and shadow. Then it traces the true line of history,
the line of the children of Eber, for of them was
Christ to be born, in whom and through whom the
separating nations would regain their lost unity.
The companion-hour to this hour of the Dispersion
seems to be when there came a sound from heaven
as of a rushing mighty wind, and cloven tongues like
as of fire, and all the apostles began to speak as the
Spirit gave them utterance, and devout men from
every nation came together, and every man heard
them speak in his own language the wonderful works
of God. Of what is yet to be, here was symbol,
prophecy, and the fact itself. Time will interpret the
whole. From Holy Scripture it seems to appear
that the Most High doth vouchsafe to those called
of him to rule in the earth something of a far open
ing reach of vision ; and on the 4th of March, 1873,
our people heard, and all people heard, or yet shall
hear, for they have passed into history, these words
of one called of the Most High to one of the high
places of human power : " I believe that our great
Maker is preparing the world, in his own good time,
to become one nation, speaking one language, and when
armies and navies will be no longer required"

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 1 5
The Cycle of Time and Thought to which Balaam
belonged dates back to the Dispersion of the nations
in the fourth generation after the Great Flood, and it
ended with him, its last great prophet.* Babel was
* The Thought of Time-Cycles is one of those Oriental
thoughts not fully comprehended by the Western mind, though
known to the Greeks, the germs of whose civilization were
quickened from the East. But there are every-where traces of
this thought, for nature and life every-where suggest it. Nat
ural time-cycles are made by Life. Those historic time-cy
cles the Bible speaks or hints of, are made and determined by
Truth. Either by the unfolding of the truth within them into
a higher cycle, or by its tending to die out, the cycle comes to
its end.
When, through the Gospel, the European mind awakened
from long enfeebling heathenism it did not firmly grasp this
thought. Verygreat has been the harm to philosophy and science.
And history without this thought is a tangled wilderness of facts,
trodden with as much difficulty and as little satisfaction as a
jungle in India.
In the Bible this thought comes out in facts ; and sometimes
in words where this cannot be seen in our translation. " By
whom also he made the worlds" (rove aiuvar), should read the
lime-worlds; whether it point to the ages of history, or to the
Six Great Days in the Creation, or to that Hebrew idea of worlds
on worlds of time, to which, of English phrases, " world with
out end " comes the nearest. Heb. i, 2.
With Noah a world-cycle began, that continues over a great
part of the world. Many cycles have unfolded within this.
Some of these, like the Greek cycle, have ended ; and some
continue, as that of China, of India, of Islam. There is one
other world-cycle. It began with Christ Jesus. As this ex
pands, it in part absorbs or effaces other cycles and fills their
places ; and it will expand till it covers the world.
The call of Abraham marked the opening of a new cycle of
time. That he lived before Balaam, does not disprove what is
said in the text, of his cycle. For the arcs of time-cycles inter
sect. They do not merely touch at a point. Before one is

1 6 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
within the limits of his world, and perchance he may
have seen the unfinished tower yet standing in that
town which long afterward grew to be the great and
mighty Babylon. Balaam spoke the language of
Shem, and his world in the main was a Shemitic-
speaking world. Its boundaries and limits were de
fined and fixed by nature. On the east was the
mountain-wall of the Zagros, that beyond the plain
of the Tigris and Euphrates runs from the southern
point of the Caspian Sea to the northern point of the
Persian Gulf ; on the west was the Great Sea and the
Libyan Desert west of the land of Egypt.; on the
north the mountain-ranges that fill up the space be
tween the western shore of the Caspian and the north
eastern angle of the Mediterranean ; and to the south
was the Arabian Desert and the ocean. It was the
flat country of the Tigris and Euphrates, with a part
of the highlands north of it ; all of Syria and the
island of Chittim, afterward known as Cyprus ; with
the land of Egypt, and some undeterminable part of
Arabia. Beyond the natural limits of his world
there was nothing which now comes clearly within
the range of the eye. On bleak plains, among the
snowy mountains and by the. seas of Central Asia,
there was then the germination of races that since
have made the circuit of the world ; but they remain
as little known, and as unknowable, as what those
same races long afterward were doing to the north
of the Black Sea, in the heart of the Teutonic and
rounded, another begins within it : as the cycle of a boy's life
begins in his father's, and the two run on together for awhile..
the one contracting, the other expanding.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 1 7
Scandinavian forests, along the coasts of the Baltic
and of the German Ocean, before the Celt and the
Teuton came into the Roman Empire, there, at last,
to be taught again what they had forgotten of truths
that were in the religion of that age and world to
which Balaam belonged. For in his cycle of time
and in his world there were the elements of all the
truth there was in all the world till Christ came.
That early time, and the time before the Flood, was
the birth-time of our religion, which, Hke our God, is
the Ancient of Days.
OF THE RELIGION OF BALAAM'S WORLD AND TIME.
Some Germans, of the class of men so wittily and
well hit off by President Grant " as those who do not
believe the Bible because they did not write it," have
said, the Oracles of Balaam must be the clever for
geries of some unscrupulous Jew who lived much
later, for they show a religious knowledge not pos
sible at the time when Balaam lived. There is need
to disprove this assertion fully ; for the Bible reader is
apt to form his idea of that time from the dark and
foul idolatry of the Canaanites, and then to transfer
this back to the whole of his cycle.* For though it
was a long time from the Dispersion to Joshua's
conquest of the Canaanites, yet duration is measured
* According to the Hebrew text, Abraham's call from Haran
was 266 years, and his death 366 years, after the Dispersion.
At the time of that call he was 75 years old ; he died aged 175.
The time from that call to the coming of Israel out of Egypt is
given as 430 years ; the wandering in the desert was 40 years.
The duration, then, of the first cycle of time, as dating from the
Dispersion and ending about the time of Balaam's death, in

1 8 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
by events, and as the record of this time is not
filled up it hardly affects us as time at all ; and so
the heathenism that characterized the end of this
cycle, and was intensely evil in Canaan, seems to
characterize the whole of it. But in Canaan there
was true religion when Abraham was there. In that
palm-growing tropical plain, where now is the Dead
Sea sunk a thousand feet and more below the ocean-
level, and with a heat reflected back from its cliffs
hotter than that of India, there were corrupt cities
on whom deservedly fell the fire from heaven ; but
on hills that look down on that plain, and beholding
the smoke of burning Sodom, there was the capital
of a king of righteousness ; and a little farther south,
and nearer the great Sea of the West, there was a
righteous people whose capital was Gerar. It was
during the sojourn of Israel in Egypt that the knowl
edge of the true God died out in Canaan ; and
Abraham's blunder as to the king and people of
Gerar should have prevented that German blunder
ing, for Abraham frankly confessed to Abimelech
and said, " I thought the fear of the Lord was not in
this place."
All that the Bible says of the religious character
and history of Balaam accords with all it makes
known of the earliest historical cycle of time. This
can be shown to be minutely, thoroughly consistent ;
and the source of the wisdom that died with Balaam
round numbers would be 750 years, or more exactly, 736. The
Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint make it longer ; but
the Hebrew text has the higher claims, and the shorter time
makes the sacred history more consistent with itself.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 19
in the land of Midian is no more an enigma than of
that which lived in the line of Moses, of Elijah, and
of John the Baptist. In the first cycle of time there
was not only truth, but culture as well ; for Noah, who
was heir of the righteousness that is by faith, was
also the heir of the civilization that was antecedent
to the judgment of the Great Flood. The Bible
points to but a few of the facts that went to make up
the history of that cycle of time, and yet to all
those that are of lasting importance. Mountain
peaks with sun-light touched bring out the outlines
of a country, when plains, valleys, and cities lie hid
den in mist ; and so the scripture-rays touching the
persons of Melchisedek, Abraham, and Balaam, light
up that time. In Melchisedek its spiritual height
can be measured, and a wonderful height it was.
The Jews thought he was Shem, the son of Noah.
The silence of the Scripture is against this ; though
Shem was living somewhere in that world when
Melchisedek and Abraham partook of the bread and
wine — foreshadowing the Christian sacrament*
Abraham, and Melchisedek, which, by interpreta
tion, is King of Righteousness, also King of Salem,
which is King of Peace, worshiped the same God
of heaven. This marks the truth in their world ;
and the city of the one west of the Jordan, the
birthplace of the other beyond the Euphrates and
his journeying to the Nile, mark the space-extent of
their world. * Gen. xiv, 17-20.

20 .THE' FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
OF HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE HISTORY AND RELIGION
OF ISRAEL.
Balaam was of that country by the Euphrates out
of which Abraham came into the West. He was a
prophet from the sacred East* He traced his line
age back to Shem, as did most of those who appear
in his history. Among all those Shemitic-speaking
nations there seems to have been a peculiar tradi
tionary literature that, with but little help from letters,
was both commonly known and permanently re
membered. With them history took on the form of
genealogy, as it tends to do among primitive peoples.
* When Noah died Abraham was fifty-eight years old ; and
Abraham died thirty-five years before Shem, who lived through
more than half the first historic cycle. Probably Noah and Shem
both lived in the East, for there is no mention of either in the
West, then the chief scene of the sacred history ; and it is not
likely that either of them went beyond their world with any of
those scattered far by the Dispersion. In the East the sacred
wisdom of the past survived the Flood with Noah for 350 years,
and with Shem 502 years. Shem may have known Methuselah,
who was the son of Enoch and may have talked with Adam.
So long as this patriarch lived, to whom were known saints
before the Flood, the East must have kept in the eyes of the
colonists of the West the sacredness that seemed to belong
to it as the site of Eden ; and though, even while Shem lived,
religion there, as every-where else, was corrupting, the West
must have long looked back to the East, not only as the Old
Country, but as the chief seat, the primal home of its religion,
the Holy Land. There may have been a tinge of this feeling
in Balaam's saying, " They brought me from the mountains of
the East;" and all these feelings must have heightened that
prophet's fame in the West. With this view of the religious
relations of the East and the West his religious character and
his history agree ; and without it, they are hardly explicable.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 21
Among the Shemitic nations this genealogical in
stinct has the strength of passion and the firmness of
principle; and in the first historic cycle it was stim
ulated by the activity of that colonizing, city-building,
empire-founding time. For what God then said to
Abraham, " I will make of thee a nation," he then said
to others in his providence ; and thus to the men of
that day those genealogies, reaching back to the three
sons of Noah, were much more than the dry lists of
names that now look so meaningless to some. They
were the names of the fathers of the nations then
peopling the world ; they were much of all there was
of history then ; and even now, the construction and
wording of those genealogies teach of the course of
empire and the will of God. Those records, which
the patriarchs so faithfully remembered, were then
of common interest ; and, in some form, must have
been as well known to Balaam as to Moses. The
bent of his intellect was religious. By nature and by
grace he was a prophet in the oriental, which is the
true sense of the word ; that is, not one who merely
sees into the future, but one, as well, who is wise in
the wisdom of the past. Known from the Euphrates
to the Jordan, he was a great man in his day ; and
he would have been a great man in any day. Such
a man must have been acquainted with the brief
genealogies of the fathers of his time ; and there
could have been little that was doing, or that had
been done in his world in the few centuries between
him and the Dispersion of the Nations, especially
of a religious kind, of which he could have been
ignorant.

22 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
Balaam must have known of Abraham, though he
lived some hundreds of years after him ; for Abraham
was one of the few historical personages of his own
cycle of time and of his own world ; and throughout
that cycle of time every thing that was going on in
that world, from the Zagros Mountains to the Libyan
Desert, was soon known from one side of it to the
other. People had curiosity then and less to exer
cise it upon than now; and in that region they had
about as good means of intercommunication then as
now, and with stronger motive for it ; for now, every
thing there is formed and fixed and somewhat dead>
then, all that world was in motion, colonizing and
settling.* And there never has been a time when

* In our own land something like this has been and is passing
before our eyes, in the colonizing from the East of the West, the
Far West, of California and Oregon — a world where some of
the natural features of Asia repeat themselves. Some of the
facts here are on a broader scale ; but in the settling of California
especially, where emigration overpassed unoccupied spaces, and
regions with half a continent between were brought into sud
den intercourse, there was the quick calling forth of latent
human energies, the same in kind as in that earlier eastern
world. The crowding population in the narrow garden-plain of the
Euphrates hearing of the fertile country beyond it, cleared the
desert at a bound. Emigration from Assyria overflowed Syria.
So long as this was going on, intercourse between them must
have been active. There are as many signs of this as should
be looked for in sacred history; which here is very much that
of the one family.in whom all are to find Him, who is the center
of all history. One of these signs is in the fact (Gen. xiv, 1-16)
that, from beyond the Tigris, chiefs — for, as yet, kings and
nations hardly were, and such grand titles as theirs petty rulers
have often worn — had some hold on colonists clear over bevond

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 23
any thing of much interest there, such as the Crusade
of Coeur de Lion, or the Landing of Napoleon in
Egypt, that was not speedily known from the Nile to
the Tigris, through the intervening, quick-eyed, wan
dering children of the desert, whose tribes have
ever telegraphed to each other in ways that were un
known to Morse.
Abraham in his own day was a man of mark. He
was treated in Egypt by its Pharaoh with something
that looks like equality — certainly with respect ;
though it should here be added, it clearly appears
from this fact, which thus is of much historical value,
that the eminent power and glory of the Pharaohs,
which some without any evidence would throw back
thousands of years, was yet to come. He came up
out of Egypt rich in the wealth of that time — in
cattle, in silver, and in gold — and this was before his
the Jordan. Other signs of this are to be seen in Gen. xi, 31, 32
with xii, 1,4, 5, 6 ; and Gen. xxiv, 2, 3, 4, 10, Gen. xxviii, 1, 2, 5,
Gen. xxxvi, 37, where " the river " is the Euphrates ; and in the
sending for and the coming of Balaam from " the East."
At the closing of a later cycle, a conquering activity, like the
earlier colonizing activity, spurned the breaks and distances of
that world. Eastern Assyrian hordes then overran the Syrian
West. The fountains of the great deep of human nature were
broken up ; an army from Egypt fought at Carchemish on the
Euphrates ; and, (the eastern bound of the world enlarging,)
from the highland that overlooks the flat Mesopotamia, the
Persian Eagle swooped over to the valley of the Nile. In a still
later cycle, the Greek successor to Alexander's empire in the
East had one of his capitals at Seleucia, on the Tigris which
finds the Persian Gulf, and another at Antioch, by the Orontes
which flows into the Mediterranean. (See " The Wise Men,"
page 48.) Again, something of the like was repeated in the far-
ruling of the Caliphs of Bagdad. 5

24 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
battle with the five Kings of the East. Though not
a man of war, Abraham was a warrior in the sense
that every noble was in the feudal ages, as now is
every emir or sheik marching, spear in hand, before
his tribe. The three hundred and eighteen whom
he led to that fight were his own people, his own
trained men at arms. Not many ; only a few more
than the Spartans who fell in the Pass at Ther
mopylae ; but the world itself was but a handful then ;
and battles are not measured by the number of the
slain, as witnesses the fight at Lexington and Concord.
The battle that Abraham fought at the Springs of
the Jordan was not the least noteworthy of all that
in the years since have been fought in the same
region, for it must have spread Abraham's name from
one side of his world to the other. A quiet, unas
suming herdsman, his home a tent, his cattle brows
ing along the hills and on the plains of a country
where the settlements were few, he plowed no field,
built no fort, yet every-where was treated as a king.
A stranger and a sojourner, he asked only for a
burying-place, and the children of Heth answered
and said, " Thou art a mighty prince among us ; in
the choice of our sepulchers bury thy dead."
As Abraham's history must have been known to
Balaam, so no doubt the history of his family, as
much of this was known throughout a large part
of his world. The romantic story of the fortunes of
Joseph lost nothing as told by the camp-fires of the
children of the desert, some of whose legends of
those days, six hundred years after the Christian era,
were recorded for the first time by Mohammed in the

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 25
Koran* The marvels of the Flight from Egypt
must have been heard of in all of what was then the
world. What is it that now on every Sabbath-day
so mysteriously hushes the roar of traffic in this busi
est spot of all the earth, this mart of nations, and far
inland, clear across this continent, from these waters
that wash the shores of Spain, to where San Fran
cisco through the Golden Gate looks out on the ocean
that encircles the islands of Asia ?
'Tis heaven's commanding trumpet long and loud,
'Tis Sinai's thunder pealing from the cloud.
And can there be a doubt that some echo of those
events, now heard of the wide world around, was
* " The great interest of this wonderful book, whose poetic
form and nature are so little understood, consists in its inde
pendent narration of some of the leading events in the early Old
Testament history. We cannot here state the argument, but
there is abundant internal evidence that the stories of Abraham,
of Noah, of Joseph, of Ishmael, together with other ancient
events not mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures, such as the ac
counts of the prophets Hud and Saleh, were not derived from
the Bible, but came down from independent collateral tradition
among these sons of the desert ; and that these traditions date
away back to the times of Ishmael, and even to Joktan, who
was the son of Eber, the great ancestor both of the Jews and
the Arabians." — The Divine Human in the Scriptures. By
Tayler Lewis. Page 393.
This confirms what is said of Shemitic culture on page 20.
The many, to whom Dr. Lewis' unsurpassed mastery of the
Shemitic tongues and the close consideration he gives to all he
utters is known, will not doubt that the argument alluded to
was fully before his mind ; and yet, as this mention of the Book
of Islam may sound to others as if taken from some of the many
passing echoes of the words of other men, the writer may state
that he has seen six or seven volumes in manuscript of his notes
on peculiar phrases in the Arabic of the Koran.

26 The first historic cycle,
then thrown back from the mountain barriers of that
narrower world, or lost amid its surrounding deserts
and seas ? In the generation after Pharaoh and his
host were destroyed, that woman of Canaan said to
the spies, "We have heard how the Lord dried up
the Red Sea for you, and your terror has fallen upon
us ; for Jehovah, your God, he is God in heaven
above, and in the earth beneath." *
The religion of the rival prophets, Balaam and
Moses, in some sense, was the same ; for each wor
shiped the God of Abraham and of Shem, even as
Shem worshiped the God of Enoch and of Abel.
More than this, Balaam worshiped the God of Israel.
Balaam's own name for God, which in our version
throughout his history is uniformly rendered Lord,
is no other than Jehovah ; as, " I cannot go beyond
the word of Jehovah, my God ;" and his adoption
and use of this name, with other facts, prove some
knowledge on his part of the history of Israel in the
Desert. OF HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE PROMISES TO ISRAEL.
The evidence of his knowledge of the promises
made to the children of Israel is equally convincing.
The general tenor of the history goes to prove that
the King of Moab knew something of these. It
could hardly have been otherwise, for Moab and his
confederate, Ammon, were descended from Abra
ham's brother ; his confederates, the Midianites, and
his neighbors of Edom, traced their lineage to the
* Joshua ii, 9, 10, m.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 27
great patriarch ; so did the Ishmaelites, and one of
the tribes called Amalekites.
No doubt Abraham was silent as to the promise
of the land of Canaan, to those settlers there of whom
he asked for nothing but a grave ; but within his
own family it seems to have been no secret. While
his descendants were in Egypt there is no note of
any intercourse between them and their far away
kindred ; but there is no record of those days ; with
those peoples traditions were history ; all the de
scendants of Abraham must have continued to know
about each other, for the limits of some of those
tribes ran close over to the land of Goshen ; Egypt
was attractive to the dwellers in the neighboring
desert ; and all the time those wandering Ishmaelites,
who carried Joseph down there, were going back
ward and forward. With all this agrees the request
which Moses sent to Edom, that he might pass along
"the king's highway:" "Thus saith thy brother
Israel, thou knowest how our fathers went down into
Egypt, and the Lord has brought us out ; let us pass
through thy country." *
The emergence of Israel from his house of bond
age, and his appearing on their borders, must have
revived the memories of their kinsmen ; and they
could easily have gained a knowledge of all the rea
sons that led to the new movement. There was a
diplomatic craft among them that would soon have
found out the whole secret. It may seem a mistake
to speak of the diplomacy of those who were tribes
* Numbers xx, 14-21.

28 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
rather than nations, whose cities were small and
few, whose kings were petty chiefs, whose manners
were as simple or coarse or wild as those daguerre-
otyped in the Iliad ; but though diplomacy is a
modern term, the thing is old ; it is in the blood
of the Shemitic races ; and the Scriptures show it
among the patriarchs themselves. But no craft was
needed to find out the mission of the Israelites. It
was widely known. That woman said, who had heard
of their passing through the Red Sea, " I know the
Lord hath given you this land."
To all those oriental tribes who knew of the
history of Israel, the Israelites proclaimed in a very
impressive and oriental fashion that they were seek
ing that land of Canaan beyond the Jordan where
the bones of their great Ancestor lay; that land to
whose border an august funeral long before, but no
where then forgotten in all that region,* had carried
the embalmed body of Jacob, whose son was prime
minister of Egypt ; a funeral procession, not the
least memorable of all the funeral processions, from
that when the Greeks through subject nations bore
the body of their youthful general from Babylon to
Alexandria, the city he had founded near the Nile,
t Gen. 1, 1-14. This "seven days" mourning was beyond
the Jordan at the threshing-floor of Atad. " And the inhabit
ants of the land said, this is a grievous mourning to the Egyp
tians, wherefore the name of it was called Abel-Misraim " —
the Egyptian meadow. Abel, meadow on plain, is a prefix to
several names. Here, the Septuagint by a slight change in
the letters needlessly enlarges the meaning of the phrase into
mourning of Egypt ; an example of what was before said as to
Jewish derivations in the note on page 5.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 29
to that funeral where the corpse of the Liberator,
Lincoln, was borne to a still greater distance, through
cities and mourning States, from the Potomac to the
unifying River of the West ; that earliest recorded
of all funeral processions, when Joseph went up out
of Egypt to bury his father, and with him went up
all the servants of Pharaoh and all the elders of the
land of Egypt, and there went up with him both
chariots and horsemen, and it was a very great com
pany ; for the dying Jacob had said, " Bury me with
my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron
the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Mach-
pelah, which Abraham bought for a burying-place;
there they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife,
there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and
there I buried Leah;" and now there was about to
pass into that same land of Canaan beyond the Jor
dan the longest of all funeral processions, not meas
ured, as Lincoln's, by weeks, nor as Alexander's, by
months, but moving on for forty years, and its pall
bearers died on the way and were buried in the desert
sands before it was done ; that funeral procession
bearing in his " coffin" the embalmed body of a man
who had much to do with the coming up of Israel
out of Egypt ; for when Moses, eloquent not in words
but in deeds, making his last appeal to his people,
lifted up that coffin and " took the bones of Joseph
with him," then the children of Israel "journeyed
from Succoth and encamped in Etham in the edge
of the wilderness;" that funeral procession of all
the most sublime, for the children of Israel bore the
coffin of their Prophet through the waters of the Red

30 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
Sea, and they set it down before the burning mount
to hearken to the voice of God, when there were
thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the
mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud,
and Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because
the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the voice of
the trumpet sounded long and waxed louder and
louder ; and through all the desert leading on that
funeral, the Lord himself went before it in a pillar of
cloud by day, and by night in a pillar of fire ; for by
faith Joseph when he died made mention of the de
parting of the children of Israel, and gave command
ment concerning his bones.
The Israelites sought the west of the Jordan ; but
their battle with the Amorites, and the seemingly
more pacific but not less hostile policy of Moab,* on
the east of that river, looks as if some whisper had
gone abroad of the promise to Israel of the whole

* Just before the calling in of Balaam, the warlike Amorites
had wrested from Moab all their land to the north of the chasm
of the river Arnon, and slain in battle Balak's father. Their
defeat by the Israelites, in which their King Sihon was slain,
was commemorated in a song that took words of an Amorite
song of triumph for its opening. It is one of the oldest pieces
of poetry in the world. Num. xxi, 27-30. The Moabites were
a pastoral community ; they speak of the Israelites as " a people
who would lick up those round about them as an ox licketh up
the grass of the field." They were not as unsettled as the
Midianites, nor as warlike as the Amorites, nor as fierce as the
Amalekites ; they seem to have been more civilized than their
near neighbors, and more pacific — though we read of " two lion
like men of Moab," slain by "a valiant man,'' who also "slew
a lion in a pit on a snowy day," and whom David "set over
his guard." 2 Sam. xxiii, 20 , 1 Chron. xi, 22.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 3 1
broad country from "the river of Egypt unto the
great river, the river Euphrates." And that which,
on the whole, must thus be held for certain of Balak's
knowledge of the history of the Israelites, and of
the promises made to them, is quite as certain of
Balaam's. Besides all his other means of knowing of
that series of events running back to Abraham's day,
which now led to the appearing of Israel on the
borders of Canaan, the embassy that was sent to
him gave him the means of knowing all that Moab
knew of the Israelites. He shows some knowledge
of the history of Israel when he says, God brought
him out of Egypt ; and of their genealogies, or of
genealogies like theirs, in the way he speaks of Asshur
and of Eber. His own words to Balak seem to show
that he knew of the blessing pronounced on Israel,
" How shall I curse whom God hath not ? " when taken
with his words, " Who can count the dust of Jacob ? "
in which there seems to be an allusion to the promise
to Jacob, "Thy seed shall be as the dust of the
earth" — a word of meaning to those who had seen
the desert of Arabia — and when taken with the words,
"Rise up, Balak, and hear" — for not even kings may
sit to hear the word from the King of kings — " Rise
up and hear ; God is not the son of man that he should
repent ; hath he not spoken and shall he not make it
good ? " Undoubtedly these last words immediately
refer to the blessing which Balaam himself had just
pronounced on Israel, and yet both the king and the
prophet may then have had in mind this blessing
and promise to Abraham and his family : " I will bless
thee, and thou shalt be a blessing," though they may

32 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
not have chosen to remember those other words
which only the future-seeing God could then have
spoken, "In thy seed shall all the nations ofthe earth
be blessed " — words whose fulfilling to the uttermost
is hastening now on all the winds pf heaven.
OF THE CONSISTENCY OF HIS HISTORY.
This history, for Scripture, is uncommonly minute ;
and every way it is explanatory of itself. The Seer's
intelligence of the past may have been one of the
conditions of that intelligence of the future which
can be referred to no human source, as when he says,
" This people shall dwell alone ; " and this conditioning
of the supernatural upon the natural also appears in
the advance of his prophecy from one stage of it to
another. For as the stubbornness of Pharaoh called
forth more and more of the Will above the human
will, so the unyielding mind of Moab called forth
more and more of the Mind that is above the human
mind. The first stage of this prophecy is hardly
more than the prophet's refusal to curse Israel. In
its second stage the prophet hears the shout of a king
in that democratic camp, and explains this by say
ing, " God is in the midst of them." In the third his
vision of this king takes on a human form ; and this
king in Israel is higher than Agag, the common
name of the kings of the Amalekites, as Pharaoh was
of the Egyptian kings ; and why they were taken as
representative of all kings, comes out when Amalek
is called " the first of the nations." His words thus
point to him of whom Daniel said, " Behold, one like
unto the Son of man came to the Ancient of Days,

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 33
and there was given him a kingdom, that all peoples,
nations, and languages, should serve him."
But all these prophecies together do hardly pre
pare for the reserve of power that comes out in the
last, where the breadth of illumination and prophetic
grandeur is in harmony with its belonging to a class
of prophecies of world-endings of which there is a
series in the Bible; and which, it would seem from
other Scriptures, could only have been uttered in the
end of a world. But to make this thought more
clear, it should be said that time is conceivable only
as a cycle or a succession of cycles ; and so the no
tion of any endless rectilinear progress is not only
irrational, but unthinkable. The cyclical idea of
time is the only idea of time that we can have, and
it is upheld by all the manifestations of created life,
each of whose forms is every-where passing through
its cycle of growth and decay. In harmony with this
law of our thinking and with the whole constituting
of nature, there is every-where recognized in the
Bible a succession and series of time-worlds ; or, to
take the modern word that comes nearest to its
thought, of ages ; and of successive world-endings,
more and more resembling that when time shall end
— that is, the cycle of duration measured by the cir-
clings of our planet round the sun.
The spirit of prophecy ever seems to awaken the
soul of the prophet to discern from afar this world-
end in those previous world-endings, each of which, in
truth, is a Coming, or judgment of Christ. It was by
means of such comings that he described his final
coming; and as the Bible-idea of Ae_fj^erwor].d-

34 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
endings has been much obscured, so has what he
says of the end of the world, and what the apostles
say of his coming in their own day.
The last of Balaam's oracles is concerning what he
himself calls "the end of days" that is, of time-
worlds. The truth there is in a time-world is its
life ; it gives to it character, and determines its dura
tion. Balaam belonged to a time-cycle that was then
passing away ; the truth there was in it died with
him;* and his mental relations to the fact that his
time-world was ending, may have been one of the
conditions of the revelation to him of the endings of
time-worlds that were to come farther down in the
abyss of Time. For though the Natural seems to
* In this revelation of the divine purpose in the Call of Abra
ham, " In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,"
there is seen the beginning of a new cycle from which others
were to unfold till they covered all the earth. Yet a quarter of
a century passed before an heir was born to Abraham, and cen
turies before the new age began to be manifest to human eyes.
It was so, when Israel came out of Egypt ; it was fully so, when
in Canaan Israel took its seat among the nations ; and coinci
dent with this, it would seem, must have been the ending of the
preceding cycle of time. The prophet Balaam withstood the
new age inaugurated by the prophet Moses ; and when Balaam
died, the past, which in his heart he desired to uphold, seems to
have descended with him into the sepulcher. His Oracle is the
last religious word of the once sacred, highly favored East. In
his history the religion of Shem and of Noah as there corrupted
and debased, yet still keeping something of its primal glory and
light, found a last solemn expression, that is a monument and
a warning. As sometimes there are strange contrasts in the
utterances of a dying man — flashes of intelligence mingling with
delirium — so there are in this last apparition of the old Religion ;
and then in the East the silence of death.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 35
have permanence and law, and the Supernatural may
seem to be sudden and fitful as the lightning flashing
at irregular intervals, it is the supernatural that abides
the same, while the natural, even in the heart of the
mountain and the depths of the planet, is ever pass
ing through some fraction of its round of change.
If, then, in any one case, the conditions can be deter
mined in the multiform and ever-changing natural,
in which the supernatural has manifested itself, it is
known, because of its unchangingness, that in similar
conditions it may again be manifest. Now it was at
the ending of a time-world that Daniel beheld the
time-worlds that were to be ; and it was at the end
ing of a time-world that our Lord revealed the end of
time. From the mount of Olivet the mountain of
Moab can be seen ; and it was the same Lord who,
on the one as on the other, caused something of the
vision before the Almighty to be made known in the
midst of that obstinate unbelief and presumptuous
determination in the will of man to withstand the
newer will of God, which, ever characterizing the
wickedness of a dying world, gives occasion alike for
the Prophecy and the Judgment.
It now becomes more clear, from a purely human
point of view, why Balaam could not anathematize
the children of Israel. He knew too much about
them. His bad heart was not bad enough wholly to
darken his clear-seeing intellect. And the divine in
fluence which held him back from this sin could act
in harmony as well as in conflict within the heart of
the man who could pray he might die the death of
the righteous, who mingled his wail with his vision

2,6 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
of coming judgment, and felt he should see the Lord
only afar off; and thus, that divine influence could
make him in a certain sense the willing voice of its
purpose ; and thus, while the divine control of human
events is here manifest, it is also manifest that even
in that hour of ecstasy, no violence was done to the
human will.
In a way that shows in him some sharpness of in
sight, Moab discerned this willingness in Balaam,
and it made him very angry. The king " smote his
hands together," yet, respecting the sacred office of
the prophet, and fearing to trust himself, he bade
him fly. Balaam had courage. He firmly stood his
ground till the king controlled his anger ; and so
there was occasion given for that last revelation, after
which no more is heard of the king's wrath against
the prophet. They part, for a time, in silence. So
ends a scene which is a true comment on words
which go as deep into the mystery of evil as any in
Holy Writ : " Surely the wrath of man shall praise
thee ; the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain."
It is wonderful how in that old time, and far away
off there on that hill of Moab, these two men not
only do make, but anticipate history. King and
priest have usually found a " holy alliance " conven
ient and profitable ; but when, as often has happened,
there has been strife between them, the pride of a
priest never yet quailed before the anger of a king.
OF HIS DEFINITION OF RELIGION.
The crowning evidence, alike of Balaam's clear,
deep insight into religion, and of truth in his cycle,

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 37
which, though dying with him, in other ever-widen
ing cycles lives on forever, comes out in the defini
tion of religion he gave to Moab, the best definition
of it ever given — a lightning flash in the darkening
horizon of his time, only less vivid than those proph
ecies of his that light up the horizon of time itself.
Hardly less instructive than those words are the cir
cumstances in which they were spoken ; and the
consideration of the two completes all that here need
further be said of the character and the mission of
the prophet.
The amity and peace which Israel proffered, Moab
would not hear of, for he knew too well what was
going on. He beheld what king never beheld before.
He saw a new power in the earth, and its leader was
like no king. No regal tent was in that camp. No
royal banner was displayed before that march. Moab
could not fathom the future of that democratic move
ment, which from that far off beginning, " perplexing
monarchs with the fear of change," now gloriously
moves on in all the earth ; yet this apparition of
slaves whom Christ had delivered from the kingly
and priestly bondage, the splendid miseries, the bitter
mockeries, the unrequited toil of what the world
called civilization then, as it calls it now, of slaves
changed to men and trained to arms, of a people
emerging from a desert, was to him a sight of dread ;
and this sight of a people awakened in him, as it
does in all kings, priests, and aristocrats like him,
unfathomable fears.
This ante-type of Philip of Spain and of Charles
Stuart of England, determined to crush that people.

38 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
The warlike Amorites had been utterly defeated, and
when after that the Arabian kings took counsel to
gether, the military was succeeded by the ecclesias
tical plan. With wealth and power, power like a
king, they at last succeed in bribing the High-Priest
of the time : — to carry back a word that in those regions
belongs to a later date, but which is the true word
here to use, if regard be had to essential likeness of
idea in the midst of unlike outward circumstances.
In like manner, the peculiar form their policy as
sumed, the calling in of this prophet to curse Israel,
only becomes intelligible when the idea and the fact
repeat themselves in ages long afterward. Those
princes and kings meant to array against that people
the religious feeling of their world, and thus to strike
terror into them, to divide them, and to encourage
their enemies to assault them as men divinely doomed
to certain destruction. The Pontiff of that time was
sent for from afar to excommunicate that kingless
people.* * The power of a scheme that fails is apt to be misjudged.
This attempt of Moab and his confederates to harm Israel
seemed to me for a great part of my life (as it may have seemed
to others) so childish, meaningless, and feeble, that the inter
vention of the Almighty would have been beyond belief, had
not a reverence for Scripture come in aid of inadequate inter
pretation of the history. Now, reading with more intelligent
eyes, I see clearly that had the prophet in this matter been suf
fered to forward the evil intent of Moab, as in other instances
religious men of evil influence have been suffered to forward
the intent of evil kings, it would have united the disunited, irre
solute peoples whose hearts were hostile to Israel, in a military
frenzy of fanaticism that would have swept before it the army
of Moses, as the whirlwind the sands of the desert. The dan-

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 39
It was to accomplish this, that Balaam set out from
the town of Pethor by the Euphrates, with a retinue of
princes ; riding, as in those days and countries kings
rode ; as in the end of the next cycle of time another
prophet rode into the city of Jerusalem. It was to
accomplish this that the king of Moab went out to
meet Balaam " in the uttermost coast " of his realm.
Here, then, was the same alliance of king and priest
which put to death that other Prophet, the true King
of men, the only Priest, in the city of Jerusalem ;
and has put to death so many of his followers since.
Here, then, was the beginning of unnumbered woes
All this can be clearly seen in a purely human
view of these events ; and when the vail of things
else hidden from knowledge is drawn back, and
mingling with the light of all other history unearthly
light is let in upon the scene, it is not strange
that strange things are revealed, that one of those
cattle in whose stable our Lord was born, one of
those mute creatures whose "earnest expectation
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God,"*
that through the divine will and power "the dumb
ass, speaking with a man's voice," rebuked "the
madness of the prophet," f the angel drew his sword,
and these secret things were brought to light that
all might know that in the war against Christ the
mute creation, below and around us, and the heavens
ger was real and great. To this witnesses the law of the Lord,
that because of their calling in of Balaam, an Ammonite or a
Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord forever.
Deut. xxiii, 3, 4.
* Rom. viii, 19. t 2 Pet. ii, 16.
6

40 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
above us, have an interest in what man is doing;
and that to all might be manifest the unbending will
of man — for the brave bad prophet rode on — and
the will of the Most High ever to uphold and for
ever to guard against the freedom of the human will.
To guard against the freedom of the human will —
evidently for this these marvels were made to come
to pass ; for, strike them out of the history, and it is
past understanding why on that perilous mountain
this bold man did not give in to those who sent
for him ; why this false prophet did there fulfill the
office of a prophet that was true ; why he did not be
come as recreant to God then as he did afterward.
He dared not speak otherwise than as God told him
to speak, and so through his own will he became the
instrument of the Almighty's will, for the sword of
the angel brought with it salutary fear. Though,
with the same willfulness that, knowing it was wrong,
had brought him so far, he would not turn back on
his path, yet as he looked forward to meeting with
the king this made him firmly make up his mind to
obey God, not indeed through any high motive, yet
not the less clearly illustrating how the will of God
works its will in the will of man. This was at the
last moment. Moab then was near at hand ; for,
as Balaam's own servants only were with him, the
princes must have gone on to meet the king and
to announce the prophet's coming; and as at the
close of the words of the angel they were in sight,
they must then have been returning to escort him to
the presence of the king, with whom his meeting
seems almost instantly to follow.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 41
The intelligent belief of Moab in interventions of
God is so consistent with the mode of revelation in
the first cycle of time, that it is one of the facts which
make the supposition, that this history is later than
its date, as reasonless to a pure criticism, as it is to
that reverence for the word of God, which has too
sure foundations to be shaken by any little difficulties
in the Scriptures, where, if there were not difficulties
both little and great, there could be neither antiquity
nor depth. Vision and voice, and the angel of the
Lord revealed to eye and ear in human form and act,
were in that world ; and hence the king's sure feeling
there were communications from the Most High that
were neither to be concealed nor disobeyed. And yet
with this true intelligence there blended a childish
notion that the prophet had some power or art to
mold to his own purposes the will of the Most High,
and that the king might justly be enraged with him
if he failed to put this forth. In this thought and
hope of Moab there was presumption and folly, and in
the prophet's countenancing it — and his coming did
so — there was guilt. The next step in sin for a priest
is to counterfeit such a power, and for a king, knowing
the fraud, to uphold him in it, it being agreed between
them that the fraud shall be made to further their com
mon selfish ends. This could be, but not till a later
day of riper wickedness. This was to come in ages
more atheistic in spirit and deeper in guilt. It was to
come, but the time of such iniquity was not yet.
Somewhere in the course of events, which reached
its height on the mountain — probably before that, but
whether before or after, there seems to be nothing

42 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
that tells — the king of Moab, feeling that God was on
the side of Israel, thought to bring him over to his
side by some most costly and precious offering —
a vain, presumptuous thought, yet common and nat
ural in the human breast, though the form of the
sacrifice that Moab thought to make was horrid in
deed. Moab was ready to make the same dread
offering that, long afterward, Mesha,* one of his suc
cessors, did make of his own son to Chemosh, the
national god of the Moabites ; and let us be just, each,
no doubt, thinking it would be for good. For even
* 2 Kings iii, 26, 27. This king having failed to cut his way
with seven hundred men out of the last of his strongholds,
Kir Haraseth, (the modern Kerak,) then sacrificed his son and
heir to the fire-god, on the wall, in sight of his enemies on
the amphitheater of hills so closely encircling the rock of the
town that from them slingers could throw stones into the
citadel. What followed is evidence (though the time was
later) of that quickness of the people of those regions to relig
ious impulses, named when speaking of what might have been,
had the prophet cursed the children of Israel. Though
flushed with the hope of the instant capture of the city and
king, there fell on the beseigers a religious fear, an overmaster
ing dread, and they all withdrew. Before that town they no
longer dared abide.
This may have much depended on the fact that the victim
was the king's son, for human sacrifices were known in all
that part of the world. There are some traces of this horrid
rite among most of the heathen, as even among the Romans
as late as the Christian era ; yet with Aryan peoples — and prob
ably with the Moabites — it was rare. But this inhumanity
seems to have been a common part of the ritual of some of the
peoples of Western Asia — one of many facts that show the pe
culiar and remarkable hardness, fierceness, and audacity in the
Shemitic and Hamitic apostasy from the faith, hereafter spoken
of in chapter v, 134-140.

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 43
in the cruel thought of Moab there seems to have
been something like the feeling ascribed in the re
ligious fables of the Romans to Curtius, when, clad
in armor, he leaped his horse into the gulf, which, ever
yawning wider in the Forum, the oracle said would
close only when the most precious things in Rome
were thrown into it. Moab was ready to offer " thou
sands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil ; " and
rising to a great height of patriotic self-devotion, and
identifying himself with the sin of his nation, he
asked the priest, if he " should sacrifice his first-born
for his transgression, the fruit of his body for the sin
of his soul." So, in the end of another cycle of time,
Caiaphas counseled that one man should die for
many, knowing in his heart that he was speaking of
the best and holiest in the land. Moab spoke of the
oldest prince of the blood. As kings usually are
when they see an uprising of the people, Moab was
terribly in earnest and very sincere. Caiaphas was
worse than Moab, Balaam better than either. He
rejected the thought of the king, saying to Moab,
" The Lord hath showed thee, O man, what is good ;
and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to
do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with thy God?" Micah vi, 5-8. Sublime words,
sublimely applied ! and which seem to be taken —
but the Scripture is before you, and let each one
judge for himself — from some common authoritative
source, known as such both to the king and the
prophet. Certain Germans have said that those words show
a religious knowledge that could have been developed

44 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
only in later ages. Those words show a knowledge
of the intent and meaning of sacrifice ; but sacrifice
is a type whose origin reaches back to the beginning
of the human race ; and while others forgot and per
verted its meaning, there were few more certain than
this great prophet to have done neither ; and that he
saw through the dark heathenism of Moab, and fear
lessly reproved its injustice, cruelty, and presumption,
accords with his courage, his religion, and with all
.the Bible records of the spiritual illumination of the
•early ages of the world.
Doubtless Balaam saw, what every clear-sighted
man must see, that all the right doing that man can
do is but his reasonable service, and that he has no
way of making up for his sins. As the people of
God had ever known this, doubtless he knew it was
an error to think God delighted in burnt-offering; a
debasement, and denial of the typical and prophetic
meaning of sacrifice. He was too intelligent a
priest to have the slightest confidence in any priestly
thing. He had too much intellectual honor to cheat
the king. His words to him set aside the idea that
in the matter of his sins man is to propitiate God in
any way of sacrifice. In this, true and false religion
differ. So they differ now, and they have always
so differed. All this difference is in the wisdom
of Abel and the presumption of Cain. As in that
beginning, so ever since, the hate of the false to the
true religion, of the pride of the one to the humility
of the other, of its haughty trust in works to the
other's faith in Christ, seldom fails at last to reach
the wrath of murder ; and so those of the true

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 45
religion, like the righteous Abel, often seal their wit
ness to it with their own blood — even those slain for
the word of God whose souls from under the altar
cry, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not
avenge our blood ! And many are the signs that do
now foretell that the last conflict between true and
false religion draws nigh.
OF THE CHARACTER OF THIS PROPHET.
Balaam was no more a heathen than he was a
Hebrew. He inherited that temperament sensitive
to spiritual impressions, which belongs alike to wizard
and prophet. He was born when the sky of his
world was darkened, when true religion was inter
mingled with magic, priestcraft, and idolatry ; yet he
knew much truth, he was very religious, and came
very near being good. Were his a human history
only, in his temptations, what now read as words of
God would read as the utterings and pleadings of
his own conscience ; but in the Scripture the vail is
withdrawn, and we are permitted to know, what in
like cases with ourselves few of us do know, and yet
what Balaam knew so well, the divine voice that
blends into one tone with the voice of the conscience
till all seems human. He gave in to the twice re
peated temptation, when the king said, I will pro
mote thee to very great honor ; thinking to himself,
though I go into this sin I will not sin, which, again,
is translated for us unto a higher than human dialect ;
and he goes, intelligent that he can only do the Di
vine will, yet seeking his own ends, goes with eyes
wide open on his self-determined way to ruin. Yet

46 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
it was hard for him, as it is hard for any man, to
baffle the wish of the Father in heaven, whose tender
mercies are over all the works of his hands, to save
him. He barely escaped eternal life.
Neither Balaam nor Moab was the worst of men.
They were like many that have come after them.
King-type and priest-type of an evil sort are they ;
and long the war of king and priest against the
people of God, which they began ; and much tbe
same as theirs, the means all like them have used.
Yet the good in Balaam is brought out in his history
as clearly as the evil ; making it a true picture of the
inconsistencies and contradictions there may be in a
religious man ; a picture, not the less instructive now
because it is a very old picture, of the spiritually
minded and worldly minded minister. The last line
is given to the drawing of his character, and he fully
justifies the sympathy of the king, when he tells him
to use the beauty of the women of Moab and of
Midian to seduce the men of Israel to sensual wor
ship. In this the history marks in him the blending,
not unknown in our day, of the clairvoyant and the
licentious in the same nature. It marks, too, that
when in this beginning priest counseled king, the
priest divined how destructive to true religion is re
ligion that gives license and gratification to the
senses. The words, " God is a spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit," every-where
do now oppose the spirit of Balaam's evil counsel ;
and yet, while every age has admired his insight into
true religion, the experience of every age has justified
his insight into false religion ; and in this as in many

THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE. 47
ways, this history is a magic glass showing before,
the coming time.
Moses was more tempted than Balaam, yet by faith
he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter,
choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of
God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin ; esteeming
the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treas
ures of Egypt, and fearing not the wrath of the king,
he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. Balaam
was a prophet, a poet, and a soldier, as Moses was;
and a man of the world, as Moses was not. He was
a great man ; in death the sacred history gives him
rank with kings, but in trying to combine the char
acter of a man of God and a man of the world he
failed where none will ever succeed.
Some dreamed of old that the Great Cycle of Time
would so repeat itself that all things would at length
come round to the same state again. Nature in its
cycles seemed to hint at something of this sort, as
when the second childhood repeats the first ; and
owing to the cyclical law of all being that is not
eternal, there often are what look like recurrences in
nature and in life. As we look down towards the
close of the next time cycle after him, we see re
semblances between him and Caiaphas. Each wield
ed a commanding religious influence ; each had a
prophetic gift ; each was placed at the intersection
of two cycles of time ; and showing that, as in
these cycles the truth is ever widening and height
ening, so the evil is ever growing more intense,
in the earlier cycle kings sought the aid of the
priest, in the later priests sought the aid of kings;

48 THE FIRST HISTORIC CYCLE.
and all had the same intent, to stay the inevitable
coming of the future which God ordained.
In that time- world to which Balaam belonged,
Melchisedek, the highest form, is of course higher
than Abraham, with whom a new time-world began.
Abraham paying tithes to Melchisedek is the new
time, rendering its fitting tribute of honor to the old ;
Melchisedek giving his benediction to Abraham, after
his defeat of the five kings, is the old time recogniz
ing and blessing the new.
In that time-world to which Balaam belonged,
Abraham represents the spiritual principle in al
liance with God. He is firm in faith, cheerful, hope
ful, and sure of the coming age. Balaam represents
its spiritual principle in alliance with sin ; he is
wavering, conscious of guilt, corrupt, and the cor
rupter of others. He is foiled and slain. The dying
voice of the evil of his time is heard from his lips —
that wail of sorrow and of fear which is ever wrung
from the unbelief of a departing age as it confronts
the glory and hope of a new time. Of Balaam's grave
no man knoweth, or whether he had a grave ; but
the unviolated sepulchre of Father Abraham is with
us till this day.

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 49

CHAPTER II.
WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
JHE prophet's coming sent a thrill of fear through
the twelve tribes.* It sent a thrill of hope
through the Arabian tribes. They felt as Ba
lak did when his messengers went to Pethor, saying
to Balaam, " Behold, there is a people come up out
of Egypt, they cover the face of the earth ; come now
curse me this people, peradventure I shall be able to
overcome them ; " and so the sheikhs of those tribes
came to hear this prophet utter his malediction, his
interdict of the people of Israel, which was to kindle
to religious fanaticism the martial hatred of their
kinsmen of the desert, f This scheme was so peril-

* The Moabites could not have kept their sending for Balaam
a secret if they had so wished. Before the failure of their
schemes, which they did not look for, they had every motive for
making it public, and they did so. Balak went out as far as his
last town to welcome Balaam ; and coming with him to Kirjath-
huzoth, (the city of streets, Strasburg,) Num. xxii, 36, 39, 40,
he there openly did honor to him and the princes with him.
About this time there was a good deal of intercourse between
the Midianites, Moabites, and the Israelites ; and all that was
going with either of these two parties was of interest to the
other. The Israelites could not but have found out all about
the sending for Balaam ; and, as they were only less supersti
tious than their hostile kinsmen, they must have feared what
might come of it.
t Stanley, lee. viii : " The eye follows the Two as they climb
upward from height to height of the extended range ; to the

50 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
ous and so wicked as to call in the known interven
tion of God ; and twice, overmastered by superior
influence, the baffled seer told the king the truth —

high places (Num. xxii, 41) dedicated to Baal, ' on the top of
the rocks ; ' the bare hill close above it, (xxiii, 3, 9 ;) ' the culti
vated field ' of the watchmen, (xxiii, 14) (Zophim,) on the top
of Pisgah, (xxiii, 28 ; ) to the peak where stood ' the sanctuary
of Peor that looketh toward the waste.' . . . Behind him lay
the vast expanse of desert extending to the shores of his native
Assyrian river. On his left were the red mountains of Edom
and Seir ; opposite were the dwelling places of the Kenite in
the rocky fastnesses of En-gedi ; farther still was the dim out
line of the Arabian wilderness where ruled the then powerful
tribe of Amalek ; below him lay the vast encampment among
the acacia groves. Beyond, on the western side of Jordan, rose
the hills of Palestine, with glimpses through their valleys of an
cient cities towering on their crested heights." Stanley is the
Claude Lorraine of history. In the Scripture-pieces of each the
figures are lost in the landscape. Without faith in its super
natural, Hebrew history is cloud-land and shadows. In faith
Stanley is deficient and wavering. To the school of Bunsen, of
which he is a disciple greater than his master, there is want
ing a clear perception of the truth in this saying of Bolingbroke,
which, skeptic though he was, shows good English common
sense : " The miracles of the Bible are not like those in Livy,
detached pieces that do not disturb the civil history, which goes
on very well without them ; the whole history is founded on
them, and if it were not a history of them it would be a history
of nothing." Stanley's calling Balaam "the rival, the possible
conqueror of Moses," is a gleam of historic genius, but nothing
in his lecture explains or confirms these words. He is one of
the great writers on Hebrew history ; and his error in speaking
of Balaam and the king as alone on the mountain, is shared by
those I have consulted. It is an error that stands in the way of
insight into the calling in of Balaam. It is an error that is
strange indeed ; for, who built the seven altars and slew on
each the ox and the ram ? And is it not said in Num. xxiii, 6,
there were with the king " all the princes of Moab ? "

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 5 I
true for all time — " there is no enchantment against
Jacob, no divination against Israel ;" yet Moab would
not give up — prefiguring the Heart of Man persistent
in its unrelenting determination to wrest the Intellect
to the service of its evil desires. For the third time
the reluctant prophet is constrained to go and plead
with Jehovah, while the smoke of sacrifice ascends,
and expectant kings and nobles wait by their red
altar-fires burning on the mountain. For the third
time the word from before the Lord made known his
decrees, but they bowed not their will before the
manifest will of Heaven. Therefore, to warn them,
to warn many who should come after them, and with
appropriateness to this beginning in the long war of
the Church and the World, at last there was unvailed
before the prophet the Vision of all time. Nothing
less can harmonize all there is in the record ; and no
doom-dealing oracle of Ezekiel, no imperial vision of
Daniel, no other prophecy opens with words giving
so startling an idea of its grandeur as these, which,
twice repeated, go before utterances of Balaam : He
heard the word of God, knew the knowledge of the
Most High,, saw the vision of the Almighty.
OF REVELATION, AS OF SCRIPTURE ONLY.
Thus there comes out, even in this early time, that
idea and fact of Revelation which distinguishes the
true religion from the religions of the world. Well
nigh universal has been the thought of some di
vine influence as possessing seer or sibyl, and open
ing the future in dream, vision, or ecstasy, as well as
kindling, exalting, and purifying utterance, in which

52 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
form it was prayed for by the poet in his invocation
to the Muse ; but revelation in Scripture goes so far
beyond all this that it becomes something quite un-
thought of by the heathen world. It is no disclosure
of isolated events, but of the whole plan and purpose
of God in time. There was no word that did, or could,
have this meaning in classic Greek ; nor does any
word have quite this full significance in the Greek of
the New Testament. The idea had to precede its
name, the fact had to become clear to the mind, be
fore any one word could set it forth. It is all Script
ure that enables us to give to the word Revelation
the full sense in which we have come to use it ; it is
all Scripture that has made that meaning so familiar
to us that we have become too little sensible to
its sublimity, and almost insensible to its novelty
outside of the Bible. Yet the thought is quite as
conspicuous in the Old Testament as in the New.
In neither is Revelation merely the unvailing of moral
laws obscured by sin ; it is historical rather than
didactic ; and it every-where points to Christ as the
center of itself, as Him in whom the purpose of God
in space and time, finds its meaning and its end.
GENERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE LAST OF BA
LAAM'S ORACLES.
As the divine influence smote the Seer, he fell to
the ground; and in the sleep of his senses, saw*
* In the same paragraph (Num. xxiv, 15, 16) our version
twice speaks of the prophet's open eyes ; but the Hebrew is not
the same in both places, and it is disputed whether in the first
it should be translated open, or, curiously enough, shut. The ¦

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 53
with " the unsleeping eye of the soul." The awe and
terror of what he beheld wrung from the depths of
his shuddering conscience words, the same in spirit
with those other words of his, " Let me die the death /
of the righteous Vjf these dread words of wailing, " I
shall see Him, but not now ; I shall behold Him,
but not nigh." This real human cry is convincing
evidence of the reality of what Balaam beheld ; it
puts the human soul en rapport with his ; yet were it
not for his thrilling outcry that suggests so much to
which the human conscience makes response, his
oracles at their first hearing would hardly seem to
equal the awful promise of the words that go before
them. His thoughts come back so quick from be
yond the bounds of this world to Amalek and Edom,
his far-opening words so suddenly contract, that
some hear them as if they foretold a mere smiting
of the corners of Moab. They do not see the uni
versal, shining through the particular ; how one word
must stand for many as he would utter the unutter
able ; how natural the inevitable glimpse revealed of
his own new world of feeling and thought ; then that
he recalls the star that burned, the scepter that
smote; then that Moab, Edom, Amalek draw the
lightning; while with the personal and the present
so blend the far and the universal as to bear out the
disputants make the word point to a physiological fact. It is
perhaps possible that both words point psychologically, and
denote states or stages of spirit-vision. The latter certainly
does. On this the best comment is I Sam. iii, I, a verse rich
in suggestion. In Israel there came an evil time when " there
was no open vision." This verse confirms the meaning above
given to the latter phrase, as above quoted from Philo.

54 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
declaration, made when little had come to pass to
confirm it, but now with the witness of ages, that he
saw the Vision before the Almighty : so through the
lifting mist is seen the troubled boundless ocean, and
felt its power, as landward rolling waves smite with
thunder the isles, the rocks, and shores.
Balaam foresaw something of that which the world-
conscience ever foresees. He foresaw a series of
divine judgments in such long and orderly succession
that at last they awakened in his soul a true pre
sentiment of what would be beyond them all — even
of the coming of Him by whom those visitations
came, his appearing at last to put an end to the
guilty world, and to sit in judgment on the quick and
the dead.
The want of perspective, this apparent confusion
of the far and the nigh, is the seal of truth. The
prophet could not set forth under the law of time
what was over and beyond all time, nor declare the
vision "before" the Almighty in words of men.*
Still his broken words are in keeping with the far-
determining import of the hour. They open the
future, and yet are naturally limited and determined
by the circumstances in which he is placed. As he
comes out of his trance and struggles clear of his
personal feelings, in the group around, gathering
close to listen, he recognizes haughty Amalek, chief
of the swarthy riders of the desert, and the Kenites,
proud of their strongholds in the rocks : " And when
* Where our Version has of, the Targums of Palestine and
Jerusalem have before — "The vision before the Almighty."
Of this every one must feel the sublimity.

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 55
he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and
said, Amalek was the first of the nations ; but his
latter end shall be that he perish forever. And he
looked on the Kenites, and took up his parable, and
said, Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest
thy nest in a rock. Nevertheless the Kenite shall be
wasted, until Asshur shall carry thee away captive."
Utterance failed ; for though his thought
Flashed o'er the future, bidding men behold
Their children's children's doom, already brought
Forth from the abyss of time that is to be,
The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality,
he had no words that could describe the foreshadowed
future of nameless nations then unborn. Catching
at the hint in the only name that could then point to
the track of his thought, history fills out the blank
with devastations that, rising out of the East, swept
over Syria ; judgments that so touch his soul, dis
tracted between good and evil, that he cried out, in
words so like all his personal utterances, "Alas ! who
shall live when God doeth this ! "
Still struggling to set forth in the language that
was, things that were to be, he makes known, as best
he might, what was to come farther down in the
abyss of time : " And ships shall come from the
coast of Chittim, and shall afflict Asshur, and shall
afflict Eber, and he also shall perish forever." Those
words were written in a language that was dead be
fore they came to pass. They were spoken
When Tiber slept beneath the cypress gloom,
And silence held the lonely woods of Rome,

56 WAS A STAR FORETOLD ?
when the Greek empire existed only in the purpose
of God. A thousand years before the gulf and shore
of Salamis knew the fight that in after ages sent the
world-traversing army of Alexander to the Indus,
longer still before the galleys of Rome bore her
avenging legions to Palestine, those words foretold
that from the shores of the Great Sea of the West,
the Greek would come to humble the pride of the
East, and after him, the Roman to destroy the
Hebrews : * and they also foretold the ruin of those
**The wondrous foresight of the oracle here is strangely
limited by some orthodox critics. They make Asshur stand for
Assyrians on this side of the Euphrates, Heber for those on the
other. This has no countenance from geography or history.
It may seem to have some from the Targum of Onkelos, but
the language of this is explained by the two other Targums,
which here speak of " the children beyond the river," meaning
Hebrews of the Far East. Their rendering probably grew out
of the error as to Gen. xiv, 13. (See note pp. 5, 6.) On the
other hand the " Speaker's Commentary " makes Asshur and
Shem mean "the descendants of Shem generally" — a wide
sweep, and happily with no countenance from Scripture ; for
neither sacred nor common history knows of any fulfillment of
the prediction so wildly interpreted as to include all those
Shemitic Arabs who were never subdued. Each of these no
tions runs counter to the interpreting mind and memory of the
Church, as represented by the Septuagint, the Syriac Version,
and the Vulgate, which here understand, the Hebrews.
Some refer the words "and he also shall perish forever"
to the Hebrews : but he that is to come in ships, he it is that
shall also perish. The Greeks so came. The fight at Salamis
by land and sea is taken to represent that series of victories
which repelled from Europe the Asiatic invasion of the hordes
of Xerxes. This afterward fired Alexander to conquer Asia ; he
thus unconsciously beginning the fulfillment of the prophecy ut
tered by Noah, when Noah and his three sons were all the men

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 57
who would come from the West in ships, whom the
prophet could not name, for as yet they had no name ;
and thus his words here reach down through the
third and fourth of the cycles of time, through the
Greek kingdom of brass, and the Roman kingdom of
iron, revealed in a vision of the night to the king of
Babylon. Thus, in the same vision, the prophet beheld the
future glory of Israel, and something of the misery
which has befallen the children of Heber in all the
earth ; his last words, revealing this insight into
future time, being only less wonderful than his first,
which reach beyond all time. Most truthful, too, was
of the human race. Gen. ix, 27. These words of 1 Maccabees
i, 1, 2, clearly pointing to the oracle of Balaam, show it was
then understood of the Greeks : " Alexander, son of Philip,
the Macedonian, came out of the land of Chettiim " — the old
form of the word used by Balaam — " smote Darius, King of the
Persians and the Medes, made many wars, and took spoils of
many nations, insomuch that the earth was quiet before him."
That Balaam here prophesied of the Greeks none will doubt
who hold that he prophesied at all. Did he of the Romans
also ? When all the peculiarities of the case are fairly con
sidered, his words seem to encompass all those, nameless to
him, who came sailing from the West, to destroy the Assyrians
and the Hebrews. To this the interpreting mind and memory
of the Church assent in the Targums of Palestine and of
Jerusalem ; and in the Vulgate, which with a bold paraphrase
says, Venient in trieribus de Italia, " They shall come in triremes
from Italy." Thus the time-plan of the world as seen by
Balaam is the same as in the vision seen by Nebuchadnezzar,
King of Babylon, which was interpreted by the prophet Daniel,
and as revealed on the Mount of Olives. I ought, perhaps, to
say I did not reach this thought by reasoning back, but, first
having made up my mind as to the reach of the oracle, then
came to see its agreement with later revelations.

58 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
Israel, and the conviction sure, that Balaam "knew
the knowledge of the Most High," for on the same
page, so bright with glories to come, is transcribed
from his lips the doom of the Hebrews.
With difficulty the human memory recalls the
hour when Amalek was the first of the nations. It
was far " in the dark backward and abysm of time "
when Balaam looked out on the host of the Lord ;
yet the presaging pageant, which then, in that far-
off beginning, foreshadowed the long war of the peo
ple of God, still makes known the pre-ordained tri
umph of the chieftain born in the house of Jacob.
Viewed thus in its true historical and representative
character, this scene calls to mind the grand Messi
anic psalm, Quare fremuerunt gentes, " Why do the
heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing ?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers
take counsel together, against the Lord and against
his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands
asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that
sitteth in the heavens shall laugh : the Lord shall
have them in derision." The scope of the psalm is
universal. There are no local or temporary allusions
in it. It is a psalm for the Church militant to chant
forever. Yet such is the identity and continuity of
thought in Scripture, though the thought is ever en
larging and brightening, that it might fittingly have
been sung by Israel when Balaam went away to die
in the land of Midian, in the last battle fought by the
command of Moses.*
* Something here should, perhaps, be said on the question,
How did the Israelites get hold of the oracles of Balaam ? as

WAS A STAR FORETOLD ? 59
SPECIAL INTERPRETATION OF THE ORACLE WITH
REFERENCE TO THE QUESTION DISCUSSED IN THIS
CHAPTER.
The last of Balaam's oracles has nothing of the
familiarity of Dante with sights of his own making ;
to which needless uneasiness has been shown. In all history,
whether of yesterday or to-day, there are things that cannot be
explained, because there is always that which cannot be known.
The first thing here to be thought of is this : Num. xxii, xxiii,
and xxiv, recites facts known only to Balaam, and the recital of
the oracles is evidently from him. This record; then, is his. In
this fact, thus far, there is nothing strange. It was the fixed
habit of the Hebrew prophets to write down their prophetic
and sacred thoughts. A late instance of this is the Song of the
Blessed Virgin, as it may be read in St. Luke. Is there any
reason to think that among the Shemitic peoples this was pe
culiar to the Jews, or of a later date than Balaam ? None at
all. There never was any need to prove to readers of the Bible
that writing then was known ; and the illusion that it was not,
has already passed away. It was one of the phantoms conjured
up against the Bible by an assumed historical knowledge that
was ignorance. That Balaam wrote out his oracles, inter
weaving with them, as Daniel did with his, something of his
own history, is almost as certain as that he uttered them. I
have seen the conjecture that, after he parted in silence from
Moab, he may have gone over to the Israelites for a time : this
is barely within the wide limits of possibility ; but if he had he
would never have gone back alive. There is no need to resort
to any thing improbable. The calling in of Balaam has been
proved to have been a public thing, well known to the Israel
ites ; and this being so, the Israelites must have been bent upon
getting hold of his version of his oracles, and there may have
been so little of difficulty about it that they never thought of
stating how they did it. They must have had their spies among
the Moabites, and easily enough their gold could have bought
of Balaam his oracles. My last thought here, which naturally
might have been my first, but which came after this note was

60 WAS A STAR FORETOLD ?
and yet, its reach and unity are beyond Dante's
genius. As natural with his awe-struck conscience,
his overburdened brain, his words are few and
broken ; yet they so cohere as to shadow forth the
unutterable whole ; and what they speak of being
known in the past through history, or foreknown
through revelation, it is clear that his vision was
suited to the evil heart of the man. In words that
make him personify the human Intellect as it wages
its unavailing war against Christ, wailing he cries : I
shall see him, but not now : I shall behold him, but
not nigh. Of this outcry the next words give the
cause, in disclosing the symbolism through which the
idea was given him of the One whom he could not
see : " There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a
Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall destroy all
the children of Sheth." Balaam had seen the in
signia of the Son of man, each of the epochs of whose
kingdom is a day of judgment, his spiritual coming
to judge the nations, and each and all of which
prophesy and prefigure his last and visible coming.
The ensigns of a divine being had been shown to
Balaam, and these were all that he could have beheld.
These, and no more, can be shown to the intellect.

written, shows how readily some historical difficulties as to
Scripture might vanish if every thing were known, or, rather, if
all the Scripture tells were thought of — when Balaam was
killed in battle his effects may have fallen i?ito the hands of
Moses. Josh, xiii, 21, 22 : Sihon, king of the Amorites, which
reigned in Hesbon, Moses smote, with the princes of Midian :
Balaam also, the soothsayer, did the children of Israel slay with
the sword among them that were slain.

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 6 1
What is behind them it cannot see. Only the pure,
heart can see God..
Dies irae, dies ilia
Solvet seclum in favilla .
Teste David cum Sibylla.
The day of wrath, that dreadful day,
Will melt the world in flame away :
So David, so the Sibyls say.
Per sepulchra regionum, " through the regions of the
sepulcher," the trumpet will send its call ; the im
mortal Seer will stand up superior to and amid his
brethren of all time, and then the prophecy in his dread
consciousness will be fulfilled. The wizard intellect
of man, in him prefigured on the hill of Moab, will then
confess its king, when every eye shall see the Son
of man come in his glory.
To his friends his kingdom is " fair as the sun and
clear as the moon," to his enemies "terrible as an
army with banners." This contrast of feeling thus
comes out in the Apocalypse : while kings lament
when they see the smoke of a great burning, and the
merchants of the earth, weeping and wailing, say,
Alas ! that great city that was clothed in scarlet and
decked with gold, then was heard a voice, saying, Re
joice, thou heaven and ye holy apostles and prophets,
for in her was found the blood of saints ; and there
was heard the voice of a great multitude, as the voice
of many waters and as the voice of mighty thunder
ings, saying, Alleluia ! for the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth. The prophet beheld the march of Christ's kingdom
as in the thought of its king when he said, / am come
to send fire on the earth. In the symbolism through

62 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
which these things to Balaam were revealed, there
was a Star and a Scepter. Soon as the prophet frees
his soul of its personal forebodings he names this
star and this scepter ; and, so doing, he makes known
the way in which the idea was given him of that In
visible King from whom his soul recoiled in sorrow
and in fear. Evidently in that star and that scepter
centered that which overmastered his courage ; the
Star, perchance, setting the world in a blaze, and
lighting up the wide desolations, while the Scepter
smote kingdoms to dust.
Did this foreshadowing imagery, besides its office
of revealing a kingdom, did this star and this scepter
point also to realities directly answering to them
selves ? As this vision through its revelation of the
things done in time attested to the power of Christ,
I look into the Gospel to find what there may an
swer to the Scepter, and there, so answering, is the
Cross. If this be so, the air-drawn scepter pointed
to a literal scepter, and something as visible and real
must have been prefigured by the Star ; whether it
were some light that, looking like a star, might be
described as such, an optical star ; or whether it
were — and this is a great question hereafter to be
earnestly thought of — whether it were one of the
stars of heaven.
I am persuaded that the scepter prefigured the
Cross ; and yet there seems to be need further to
prove that the star and the scepter foreshadowed
things literally answering to themselves. This sym
bolism did foreshadow a real kingdom ; but did it
also point to other real things to be seen in their

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 63
foreseen order, first a Star and then a Scepter ? This
office of the imagery in addition to what assuredly it
did prefigure, and to the use it would seem must
have been made of it in the vision, this wheel within
these wheels, may seem to complicate matters ; and
yet there are three arguments in proof of this, each
of which seems to be decisive.
If those who heard the oracle, interpreted what it
says of the star and the scepter as foretelling what
would literally come to pass, then it must be so in
terpreted by us. In the interpretation of inspired
words no idea is permissible which they did not in
some degree awaken in the minds of those to whom
they were given — a rule that again and again will
have to be applied in the course of this volume. As
often and as far as this plain rule of common sense
is disobeyed, the Scripture is made over after man's
device. This has often been done ; Scripture has
often become a palimpsest, where, the sacred text
rubbed out, something else is written over it. This
is often so unconsciously done, that it were harsh to
call it forgery of Scripture, though nearer to it than
it is to interpretation.
This may seem to make the Bible a book not to
be read by the people with edification ; but there is
much in the Bible to which this rule has no applica
tion ; that is to say, there is much in it which does
not call for what is styled interpretation ; much as to
whose meaning a scholar has no advantage over other
men, and where he is sometimes comparatively at a
disadvantage. In other cases, where in the reading
of the Scriptures some critical knowledge of old

64 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
forms of thought and of ancient ways is needed, the
Scriptures themselves are the great storehouse of
material for their own illustration. They contain
within themselves so full, so clear, so living a por
traiture of that old world under whose forms of
thought they were given, that the Bible through all
the changes of the world is a self-interpreting book.
The more it is read, the clearer it grows ; and this
not by reason of its morally illuminating power only,
but of its mentally illuminating power also. Work
ing to the same end, the providence of God may be
seen in the fact, that the Scriptures must be read by
the people in a translation. Much of all that scholar
ship can do to make their old forms of thought in
telligible is done in a translation by rendering them
into corresponding forms of later thought ; as where,
to give an almost trivial illustration, it is said, He
gave to every man a penny. With the Scriptures
translated, the common reader has in this matter
much the greater part of all the help that language-
learning can give. Dead languages can suffer no
more change, and so are the only languages that live
unchanged forever. When the languages in which
it was written became dead, the Scripture could not
change ; and the language in which Scripture was
written became dead, not that the people might not
understand the Scripture, but that they might under
stand it better. The translation of the Old Testa
ment into Greek, made at Alexandria some two
hundred years before the birth of our Lord, conveyed
to those Jews who spoke only the Greek language
much of all the light that scholars could then throw

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 65
on the meaning of the old Hebrew words. For the
English speaking world the like is done by the En
glish version ; and the great argument for its revision
is, that the later results of a somewhat finer and truer
insight into the meaning of some few words may thus
be incorporated into it. A translation tries to em
body the interpreting mind and memory of the
Church by reproducing in another language the
word of God precisely as it was in the language in
which it was written ; and this by giving each word
as uttered in the old time its exact equivalent in the
new. To this end all the old versions are consulted,
all recorded thought bearing on the subject is inter
rogated, and the agreeing voice, so far as it can be
ascertained, is the translation. Should, then, a Bible-
reader know something of the old thought-world in
which the Bible was given ? a Bible-reader cannot
but know something of this. Nowhere else is that
world so portrayed as in the Bible. Open its pages
and you are in it, you breathe its air, you become
familiar with it. As you read the book, the world of
the book opens around you. In the translation you
have much of the best means of understanding the
Bible, the very essence of comment, once scattered
in thousands of volumes or piled away in hundreds of
libraries ; you hear the voice of the universal, ever-
living Church, repeating to you in your own tongue,
word by word, the holy Scripture.
Some of my readers may say, the interpretation
that has been given of the oracle of Balaam does
the very thing the rule laid down condemns ; if this
were so, it would be fatal to that interpretation, but

66 WAS A STAR FORETOLD ?
in it there has been no putting into the oracle of
more than could have been in the thoughts of those
who heard that oracle ; and the modern comment,
that denies its prediction of a real star, leaves out
what must have been in their thoughts. In the
light of these latter days its burning words have
ceased to be luminous ; and to decipher them we
must sit with those of old in the evening before the
dayspring visited the world, till from the darkness
the letters once more come out in fire. For though
more may now be seen in the prophecies than was
seen by them of old time, not only must that more
be essentially the same, but the very condition of
rightly seeing this, is first to see what they did.
Otherwise, all that seems to be seen may be illu
sion ; but if we go back to their stand-point, and
look along the same line they did, we then may be
hold the same truths, with further, larger, brighter
vision, for along this true line the increasing light
brightens forever.
But can the meaning this oracle had, to those who
heard it so far back in time and within the circle of a
darkening and heathenizing world, now be reached ?
Direct means of ascertaining how Moabite, Ammon
ite, or Amalekite, how Edomite or Kenite understood
this oracle there are none; and there never will be
any, not though a dozen Moabite stones were found
or forged ; yet this can be reached, though no other
line of their literature now exists, and no monument
of theirs as ancient as this oracle. For what their
interpretation of this oracle must have been is very
clear when their thinking is known on certain other

WAS A STAR FORETOLD ? 6j
matters, as to which the thought of the ancient world
at all times and every-where was similar, so far as it
can be traced, and which can be traced so far and
wide as to leave no reasonable doubt it was universal.
They were heathenized men who heard this oracle,
but this similarity of thinking made its meaning
much the same to Israel and to Moab.
Of old the sky seemed not beyond the reach of
men. A tower might be built up into it. To the
heathen it was the dwelling place of superior beings
who sometimes walked the earth, and of heroes who
from the earth had gone up among the stars. As
the over-world seemed near to them, so did the under
world. Of this the ancient universal notion is pict
ured in these words of a Hebrew to the ghost of a
king of Babylon : " Hades from beneath is moved for
thee, to meet thee at thy coming : it stirreth up the
dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth. It
hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of
the nations." Into that under-ground cavern of the
dead, men had gone down and come back. Coming
up from thence Samuel's ghost was seen by her of
Endor,* and heard to warn the king of Israel that
on the morrow he should he there with him.
To the men of those days their oracles were the
highest and the surest kind of truth. Into them
they looked with the fixed, undoubting eyes to which
* I Sam. xxviii, 3-25 : The heading of this chapter in the
Vulgate says, Saul consulit Pythonissam, " Saul consults a
Pythoness." The choice, whether wise or not, of this word,
Pythoness, shows that between Greece and Syria the translator
recognized the similarity just spoken of.

68 WAS A STAR FORETOLD ?
alone the secret things of prophecy appear ; and men
of spiritual insight, in that darker time, readily divined
their deeper, hidden meanings, where now, through
excess of light, the lines are faint almost to invisi
bility. In this ancient oracle of Balaam the lines
were then sharp and clear ; and with their notions of
the over and the under-world, those who heard the
fearful outcry, " I shall see him but not now," must
have caught the idea, deepening with every other
word, of some demi-god whose rule would be from
the bright realm of ether to the dark under-ground.
In a way easy and natural to them, they would have
combined in their thoughts of him the divine and
the human ; nor would it have seemed to them in
credible or passing strange, that in some way he
would be of mortal birth, and this world the scene
of his reign. Were this oracle a newly discovered
fragment of old mystic lore, it could only read as a
prophecy of some personage at once human and super
human, standing in some close relation to Israel, and
whose dominion, to all save Israel, would be a vision
of dread. This meaning in the fragment would at
once be present to our minds, far removed as we are
from that cycle of time in which such thoughts were
familiar things ; and thus far, the modern and the an
cient sage would interpret such an oracle much alike,
however much more it might have, for the former, of
intensity of interest and vivid reality of truth. Yet
the modern and European reader, would see in the
star and in the scepter only a prophecy of dominion,
and not look for any thing literally to correspond
with them. Not such would be the thought of an

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 69
Oriental reader, then or now. The symbolism through
which the power and glory of this divine-man was
portrayed, would seem to him at once symbolism and
literalism. The staff, or wand, or scepter of a magi
cian king, such as Solomon is always said to have
been in the legends of the East, has every-where
been held in the East, to be both the symbol and the
instrument of his wonder-working. In the legends
of the Jews, which, in the Targum of Palestine, are
enshrined in their Scriptures, that is, are interwoven
into a free translation or paraphrase of the sacred
text, it is said that after the world was made, " be
tween the suns at the coming in of the Sabbath,"
ten wonders were created, and among these " the rain
bow, the cloud of glory, the ten tables of the law,
and the rod of Moses!' We may be sure, then, that
the thoughts of those who, on the hill of Moab,
listened to the wizard, were fastened intently on that
rod of empire, foreseen though undescribed. They
would have said to themselves, of the shape or the
powers of the wand of so mysterious a being we can
not know ; but they could have no doubt it would be
as real as the king himself. With those words ring
ing in their ears they could no more have disjoined
the thought of such a wand from such a king, than
we can disjoin from such a king the thought of
power. The like is true as to the star. They thought the
starry world was co-ordinate and sentient with the
human world ; they thought the stars foreshaped and
fixed the human destinies ; and even without any word
suggesting it, they would have thought the birth of

70 WAS A STAR FORETOLD ?
one whose power was to be so new and great in the
earth would be marked by an outshining star. What
was said of the star must have given this idea to
them ; and as this was its meaning to them, it must
be its meaning as designed by the Spirit who re
vealed the vision and inspired the words.
That they did thus interpret those words literally
is proved by their literal interpretation by the Jews ;
for, as to the single question now before us, Was a
star foretold ? if we can be sure of the interpretation
of this oracle by any one ancient Oriental people,
we may be quite sure of that of all others. In the
Gospel of St. Matthew alone, there is sufficient evi
dence that the Jewish interpretation of the oracle
was at this point a literal one.* Mark the words of
the Magi, " Where is He that is born King ofthe Jews,
for we have seen his star ? " These words do not sound
as if the idea of a star at the birth of this king was
strange and new ; and the evangelist records them
without explanation, evidently because he thought
they needed none. These words, then, and still more
the record of them, prove the expectation of a star at
the Messiah's birth was common among the Jews.
But, save the oracle of Balaam, nothing in their sacred
books warranted this ; for though the figures under
which the Lord is spoken of in their Scriptures are
many, as when he is called a Sun, a Tower, a Shield,
* There is farther evidence of this in the fact that the leader
of the Jews in the rebellion in the reign of the Emperor Ha
drian, which led to the extirpation of that people from Judea,
(A. D. 1 20,) took to himself the name Barchochab, that is, the
Son of the Star.

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 7 1
the Rose of Sharon, the Rock of Ages, yet there He
is never called a Star. This was a natural figure in
a country where the night is more grateful than the
day, but the oracle of Balaam stood right in the way
of its use ; and the fact that nowhere else in the He
brew Bible is the Messiah named with a star, proves
that the Hebrew belief in a star at his birth, a belief
spread so widely as to be known to Persian Magi, had
its root in this prediction.
Thus, while this oracle, " A star shall arise out of
Jacob and a scepter from Israel," to us would only be
a purely figurative prediction of some glorious and
kingly personage, with the modes of thought that
must be attributed to those to whom it was given,
it was also to them naturally and inevitably a predic
tion of a star at his birth. Their kindred, a people
of similar language, and, as touching this matter, of
similar modes of thought, understood this oracle as a
prediction of a star. As clearly as in this language
and imagery there is to us the prediction of a king,
so, with this, there was to the Jews of old the pre
diction also of a star ; and they looked as certainly
for the fulfillment of the oracle in the one respect as
in the other. A star, which according to this ante
cedent Hebrew interpretation this oracle did predict,
according to the Gospel, did appear at the birth of
Jesus the Christ. And it greatly strengthens this
threefold argument, that the Fathers, who read this
oracle with notions as to the stars somewhat like
those of the time when it was given, gave to it, at
this point, the same interpretation as did the Jews;
and held it to be fulfilled in what the Magi saw.
8

72 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
There is one argument more : The life of his peo
ple of old more or less foreshadowed the life of
Christ, because the spirit of Christ was in them.
Their lives, and even that of the Hebrew nation,
were in some measure controlled for the purpose of
making this prophecy of him more expressive and
complete ; his life was the theme of revelations sup
plementing these ; and thus very many of its events
were naturally, or supernaturally, foreshadowed or
foretold : of his infancy, that he would be born of a
virgin, in the family and town of David, that his life
would be in danger, that he would go down into
Egypt and be called from thence ; of the close of his
life, that no bone of his should be broken, the casting
of lots for his vesture, the laying of his body in a rich
man's tomb. It would seem, then, that the celestial
sign at his birth, whose appearing was interpreted
afar off, the Star heard of by the nations with joy,
must have been predicted of old.*
REPLY TO INQUIRIES THAT MAY ARISE.
i. Some may ask, How could Moab, or Amalek,
or Edom, have aught to do with Christ : they were
* There is some disposition in the Church to limit Messianic
prophecy to a few verses, and some in the world, caused in part
by this, to deny all prophecy, Together they indicate an omi
nous darkening of spiritual insight. More " open vision " will
come mainly through the heart. Messianic prophecy is not
of intellectual perception merely. As the spirituality of the
Hebrew Scriptures is more deeply felt, their Messianic prophecy
is more clearly seen. Messianic prophecy is their life-giving
and life-preserving element. The revelation of the Lord per
vades the Old Testament as it does the New. As it is aWfrom
him so it is all of him. It was the Old Testament which Christ

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 73
long before his time ? Into the making of a World,
the element of Time enters as really as the element
of Space. He by whom the world was made " dwelt
among us" near the close of the four thousandth
year of history, but the day or the year of his birth
no man knoweth ; so little have clock-measured days
or sun-measured years to do with Him, who is " the
same yesterday, to-day, and forever." The all-time
is the time of Christ.
2. Others may say, to believe in the far-reaching
prevision ascribed to Balaam is unphilosophical. If
philosophy had humbly refrained from daring and
fruitless inquiries into things beyond the human
mind, and explored more of the fathomless depths
and untold wonders of the soul of man, it would have
much less of a controversial spirit in things religious.
As a matter of words, foresight in the soul may be a
dispute without end ; as a matter of fact, all men act
upon it. To Balaam there was a miraculous revela
tion, yet in his trance there may have been a super
natural exaltation of natural power ; for, at this very
hour, the spirit there is in man hath a prevision of
the onburning of the fire the Lord kindleth in the
earth, as real, and as really terrible to the world,
though foreseen but in part, as the whole, when fore
seen by the world's greatest prophet. And some
thing of what he beheld in vision, every generation
has beheld in fact. Balaam beheld in vision the on-
burning fire that ever runs before the Lord. What,
interpreted, when beginning at Moses and the prophets he ex
pounded in all the Scriptures the things pertaining to himself.
Luke xxiv, 13-32.

74 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
as a whole, he saw in vision, this generation beheld
in part, as a dread reality, when it consumed slavery
at Gettysburg, and the empire at Sedan. Call it un
philosophical to believe in his vision, the fact remains.
It can no more be dissolved in any scientific melting-
pot, than the mountain on which the prophet stood —
that same Pisgah whence Moses saw the Promised
Land. Long before some of the events by Balaam
foretold came within the horizon of time, the language
in which his vision stands recorded ceased to be
spoken among men ; and every age bears clearer wit
ness to its reality as the dream of the world draws
nearer to its waking.
3. Others may say, If the star seen by the Magi
had been foretold, St. Matthew would have said, as
elsewhere he does so often say, Then was the Script
ure fulfilled. This idea has bewildered some Chris
tian critics, and needs a decisive refutation* The
evangelist does not always use this formula when he
might. He does not use it, in this very chapter,
when he says, " They are dead that sought the young
child's life ;" words recalling like words as to Moses,
and bringing out a correspondence between him and
Christ. In his time the few and costly manuscripts
were committed to memory, and oral teaching stood
for the printed page. On the Sabbath the Scriptures
* On the other hand, Hengstenberg maintains, as the learned
and judicious Archbishop Trench well says, "with great in
genuity and, in the main, success," that the other facts in this
part of St. Matthew's Gospel are selected to show how the
history of Christ has its roots in the Old Testament ; and, if so,
then, this coming of the Wise Men, moved to undertake a pil
grimage by a star.

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? 75
were read aloud, and the Hebrews, the only people
of old who had common schools, were so familiar
with their scriptures (as any one may see from the
New Testament) that some references to them would
then have been more clear than now.
Most of St. Matthew's references to the Hebrew
Scripture are to verses not likely to have been famil
iar, or not understood as he understood them, or not
so applied as he applied them ; neither was the case
here. The Hebrews knew the story of Balaam well.
In all their history little could have been better
known. More space was given to it than to almost
any other event in their Wandering ; and it was re
ferred to in several other places in Scripture. All
there was of interest about the man was told. The
name of his father is given,* and his country and
town are twice named. An ordinance, unparalleled in
the legislation of Israel, an ordinance without repeal,
and reaffirmed after the return of the Jews from Baby
lon, shut out the Moabites and the Ammonites from
the congregation of the Lord forever, because they
called in Balaam against Israel. All that pertained
to that event was minutely told, and the interest of
the story deepened with every scene. It touched the
national heart when the malignant enemies of Israel
* Given in the New Testament also — 2 Peter ii, 1 5 — slight
evidence, and yet some, of how the particulars of Balaam's
history were written on the Hebrew mind ; so too, that in the
Books of Philo in six places there is some note of Balaam. He
is also named by St. Jude, verse 1 1 ; and by our Lord. Rev.
ii, 14. Besides, there are a number of places in the Old Testa
ment where, on closely comparing the words in the Hebrew,
there are seen to be allusions to the oracles of Balaam.

76 WAS A STAR FORETOLD?
were confounded ; it touched the heart of faith when
the bright spirit of true prophecy overmastered the
self-willed, reluctant seer. It kindled national and
religious enthusiasm when it foretold the Messiah's
dominion. It had the fascination of the weird and
wonderful. It was a life-long memory. Beneath the
star-lit night, on the house-tops of Judah, Benjamin
and all Israel, outside of the black hair tents of
Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh, in the
open fishing-boats of Zebulon and Naphtali as they
sailed over the Sea of Galilee, it was a tale to children
told; and once heard could never be forgotten.
There were such resemblances between Balaam
and the Magi as diviners and foreigners, and their
histories were so related to the Messiah that the one
could not but recall the other. The fact, then, that
the evangelist does not say the oracle of Balaam was
fulfilled in the star the wise men saw, is one of the
minor evidences of the truth of his Gospel. For the
words of the Magi so point to the popular belief in
the oracle of Balaam, that this would have been worse
than useless. Even those boys of Jerusalem, who
watched round the gates of King Herod's palace to
catch a passing glimpse of his princely guests, well
knew those Magi had seen what Balaam had foreseen.
From thence onward to the burning of the city and
Temple, the popular interest in the Messiah ever
deepened, and had St. Matthew directly connected
the words of the Magi with the words of Balaam, he
would have affronted the intelligence of those for
whom he wrote.
Thus it has been shown that those who heard the

WAS A STAR FORETOLD? fj
oracle of Balaam must have interpreted it as foretell
ing a real star ; and that it was so interpreted by the
Jews. This interpretation was verified in what the
Magi told. The Fathers all agree that, at this point,
such is the meaning of Balaam's prophecy, such its
fulfillment ; and in the criticism of these days there
is nothing that can be set against this view of the
oracle as its words stand undisputed on the record,
and as they have been understood by the consentient
wisdom of all the past

78 THE STAR OF OUR LORD

CHAPTER III.
THE STAR OF OUR LORD ONE OF THE STARS OF
HEAVEN.
tHE foretelling of the Star of our Lord a thou
sand years before, suits not the common notion
that the star was some sort of a miraculous
jack-o'-lantern, flickering for a while and then going
out. Yet, such is the almost universal, almost un
questioned error ; and it were hard to tell the diffi
culty or the need of effacing this prevailing folly from
the mind of Christendom.
Out of this delusion some few have escaped into
the delusion that the Star was a conjunction of plan
ets. In times past, some have fancied the star was
a comet ; others that it was the brightness of an
angel. These conjectures, with the common one of
an exalted, marvelous jack-o'-lantern, all go forth in
as happy-go-lucky freedom from the control of the
sacred text, as if the evangelist's name for what was
seen in the sky when our Lord was born had very
little to do with determining what it was.
Even if it might, perhaps, be doubtfully granted,
that in the high-wrought poetic language of prophets,
a will-o'-wisp might, possibly, have been called a
star, here the question is, What does that word mean
in the plain prose of St. Matthew ? And against
the notion that the Star was some optical apparition
which was not a star, there is a strong presumption

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. 79
arising out of the fact, that the meaning of the word
is as sharply defined, and as well fixed to one mean
ing, as that of any word well can be. It is not a
name for every thing in the sky, not for the lightning,
cloud, or storm ; not for the zodiacal light, nor the
northern lights ; nor for a meteor, nor a comet. If
used for a meteor or a comet, it is with the aid of an
adjective, as, a "shooting" star, or of some other word
or phrase. So nice is the instinctive discrimination
of speech, that if, using the word out of its common
meaning, one cries out, I see a star ! the tone, the em
phasis tell of an uncommon light. Ideas have differed
as to what are those points of light which look out
nightly all over the sky ; but the word for them is one
of those terms whose meaning is so fixed by nature
herself, that the name for them in any language has
always had its exact equivalent in every other.
The Magi tell of a Star, and, save their words imply
it was a new star, these astronomers speak of nothing
else which distinguishes it from the stars of heaven.
But the legend-making love of the marvelous has
ever been at work inventing such things. Thus,
some have wildly dreamed the star led the pilgrims
all the long way, not much less than a thousand
miles, from the East, around the Syrian desert, to
Jerusalem. If so, the star's leading them from Jeru
salem to Bethlehem, towns six miles apart) is a little
thing in comparison. Consistently with this notion,
the apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy makes no men
tion of any special guiding on the way to Bethlehem,
that being only a short section of the miracle thus
long drawn out. This it draws out still longer by

80 THE STAR OF OUR LORD
making the star continue to lead the pilgrims, donee
in patriam suam, revertentur, " till they got back to
their own country." These long journeys were made
by daylight, but what of that, if " round the Star," as
St. Ignatius wrote to the Ephesians, " the sun, moon,
and stars formed in a ring, and its light outshone the
whole." These inventions, and the notion that the
star was a conjunction of planets, are good illustra
tions, whether in the second century or the nine
teenth, of how the simple and precise words of
Scripture may be transformed into legends, of how
the word of God may be made of none effect by
poetic or scientific traditions.
The error that the Star guided the Magi on all their
long way to Jerusalem has been common enough ;
and still more common has been the error, that the
star faded out when the Magi were in the East and
they saw not its like again till the night of the jour
ney to Bethlehem. So far as this error arises out of
what is told of that journey, it will be considered
hereafter ; here the inquiry is limited to what is said
before the Magi left Jerusalem. This is very little ;
but in the art of saying much in a few words the
ancients are the despair of the moderns. Modern
history tells us what to think, how to feel, and shapes
the facts to the sermon. In ancient history, and in
sacred history more than any other, the facts tell
their own story. " Where is He that is born King
of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the East,
and are come to worship him ? " are words that hold
much of meaning in their small compass. They give
the impression it was a new thing ; a feeling which

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. 8 1
the evangelist strengthens by the cry of wonder,
" Behold ! there came," so quickly followed by the
mention of the star ; and this was enough, as the
thought of new stars was familiar to the popular
mind,* though the fact was something so out of the
common course as to be a wonder and sign. But
thus telling the star was a new one, the Magi by their
silence tell something more than this ; for had it dis
appeared, assuredly they would not have given the
contrary impression. Their words gave that impres
sion then ; for though a light suddenly shining and
suddenly withdrawn, its mission being only to mark
the birth of the Lord, would now, wherever astro
logical thoughts have vanished away, answer to their
words, it would not have so answered there and then.
Any such notion comes far short of the astrological
thoughts of those times — universal then throughout
all Asia, and there universal even nowf — and so it

* No doubt familiar to the scientific mind also. The Roman
naturalist, Pliny, refers to the fact as assuredly known.— Hist.
Nat., lib. xi, 22. In ipso ca>lo Stella repente nascunlur — In
the firmament stars suddenly are generated. New stars may
have been noted in the astronomical tables of the Chaldeans,
as to which, see " The Wise Men," p. no.
t Sir John Malcolm, one of those who built up the British
empire in India, being charged with a difficult mission to the
Shah of Persia, waited on horseback, with all his retinue, out
side of the capital, Teheran, till the minute when the Persian
astrologers, whom he consulted, said the stars would be propi
tious ; and then he crossed the city line. To this all Iran at
tributed the success of his mission ; a success natural enough
when an Englishman had the tact thus to compliment a power
ful class and to humor a popular illusion. In his History of
Persia (181 5) he says, "Astrology is cherished throughout the

82 THE STAR OF OUR LORD.
comes far short of the meaning of the Magi to those
who heard them. There could then have been no
thought of so evil an omen as His star's fading
out* The shepherds saw a light in the sky, but
when they saw it fade they could not have mistaken
it for the star of the Messiah. According to the
popular thought of the time, the new star must shine
while the king should live. That beautiful thought
was true, and the King lives forever !
If the Magi discovered a star, they had so to name
it, and the name was its perfect description. If it
was not a star, they were not shut up to this one
word. They had any number of phrases with which
to describe it ; or they could have said they had seen
a wonder in heaven. To say they called it a star to
connect it with the oracle of Balaam, the Seer of the
Gentiles, as they called it that of the King of the
Jews to connect it with the great prophecy of Daniel,
chief of the wise men of the East, does not do away
with the force of this ; for though this was the fact,
still there was no sufficient reason why they should
have made this one word their sole description of it,
unless it were a perfect description.
whole of Asia." He says that, even from Europe, belief in div
ination by the stars has but recently passed away ; and in proof
of this in France, with other facts, he cites the statement of
Voltaire, that an astrologer was secreted near the bed-chamber
of Anne of Austria when Louis XIV. was born ; and that
Louis XIII. was surnamed the Just, because he was born under
Libra, the sign of the Balance.
* The fading out of a birth-star would have been a dreadful
omen. It would have portended the greatest calamities, such
as captivity or death.

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. 83
OF ST. MATTHEWS KNOWLEDGE OF THIS PILGRIMAGE.
As such a description their historian sets it forth.
As will soon be made to appear, this is very deci
sive of what it really was, if St. Matthew well knew
all about this pilgrimage. There should not be a
doubt that he did ; and yet this needs to be clearly
and fully established ; for most of those who have
touched upon it (and none have done more than
this) betray the feeling that on several points St.
Matthew was much in the dark as to this pilgrimage ;
though his tone and language do not at all warrant
this; and the fact that they are in the dark does not
prove that he was.
Lest, however, I seem to undervalue the fair suc
cess of much that has been written as to the Gospel
of St. Matthew, let me say, that while the beauty of
the story of this pilgrimage touches the eye of a child
like that of a rose or a star, and some of its truths
write themselves on every heart, the lost meaning
of some of its words and phrases has been a problem
so baffling that its solution was possible only to the
thought of years, and needs for its full appreciation
so much of the same qualities by which it was
wrought out, applied to the same end, that the exact
determination of its true value, as did that of Kepler's
discovery, abides its appointed time.
My re-discovery of the answer to the questions,
Who were the Wise Men ? and How came they to
Jerusalem ? was made through the conviction that
each of St. Matthew's terms had a definite meaning
in his own mind ; while back of this was the cer-

84 THE STAR OF OUR LORD
tainty that the Gospel is not, as some hold it to be, a
conglomerate of sayings and doings rounded into
something like unity and completeness by the pious
labors of many, and stamped at last with an apostolic
name, not in attestation of its authorship but of its
truth ; the certainty that it is not, as others say, the
work of St. Matthew, yet as a history not much bet
ter in point of style than the crude, unsatisfactory
chronicles of the Dark Ages ; and the certainty it is
the Gospel of one who proceeds throughout accord
ing to the highest method, whose grasp of his theme,
whose wisdom in selecting and stating his facts,
every-where approve him worthy of his election as
one of the apostolic biographers of Christ. Had not
a study of his Gospel, as a whole, given to this knowl
edge a certainty that could know of no increase, the
continuous thought I gave to his history of this pil
grimage would have strengthened it. For this made
it certain to me, that St. Matthew knew every thing
about the pilgrimage which the historian of so remark
able an event ought to have known. St. Mark, St.
Luke, and St. John say nothing of it, as though St.
Matthew had left nothing to be said. His narrative
answers every question concerning it that need arise,
and almost every question that reasonably can arise.
This it does when the difference between a great and
a little historian is understood. Each supposes him
self, and is supposed by his readers, to be able to set
forth a sufficiently full account of the subject of which
he treats. Each tries to do this; but the little historian
fritters away in petty nothings those grand impressions
in which the highest truth of history consists. What

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. 85
the one labors in vain to give through many words,
the other conveys through a few ; and, this done, he
will neither stoop nor stop to answer idle questions.
The great historian instructs by his silence as really
as by his speech ; and to impute that silence to igno
rance is to mistake the man and his method.
To illustrate this : Let us suppose that, looking only
to vain thoughts that cling to St. Matthew's narra
tive like barnacles to the keel of a ship, and in this
case are sometimes mistaken for a part of its cargo —
looking only to idle notions that are common enough,
let us suppose it possible that we could now approach
St. Matthew and reverently address to him these
inquiries : " Did some commissioned angel, or some
dream divinely sent, or word from heaven, reveal to
the Magi that what they saw was the Star of the
King of the Jews ? Did the sign fade out as soon as
seen, or did it guide them all their long way from
the East to Jerusalem ? Was it in fact no star at
all, but only a conjunction of the planets Jupiter,
Saturn, and Mars ? Or was it a meteor, or some
sort of a comet ? " No doubt these inquiries would
astonish him as much as the answer it is to be sup
posed he would give — " Had any of these things
been, I had said so" — would astonish those who
have entertained these vagaries, instead of learning
from his silence as well as from his words.*
* It will be easy to belittle the force of this by saying, After
all, St. Matthew may not have known every thing about this
pilgrimage ; for example, the conjunction of planets, through
which the Magi identified the new star. Yet his silence proves
there was no supernatural cause for their knowledge, and,

86 THE STAR OF OUR LORD
Standing much alone in my opinion of the fullness
of St. Matthew's knowledge of this pilgrimage, I dare
not weaken the strength of the evidence of this, for
fear the manner of presenting it should be misunder
stood. The strength of that evidence discovers itself
only in this proposition : If St. Matthew's knowledge
of this pilgrimage was not very complete, then there
never was any such pilgrimage ; that pilgrimage was
a very public thing in Judea, if there ever was any ;
the people of Jerusalem were greatly moved by the
coming of those men from the East, if those men
ever came at all ; what kings openly do is no secret
in their realm, and Herod's parliament never could
have assembled at his summons to answer a question
that stirred every Judean heart like the noise of a
battle, and the facts which caused its convocation have
been forgotten within fifty years, while yet the city,
the palace that gave audience to the Magi, the hall
where the Sanhedrim met, were untouched by fire,
and some still living who had seen the priests, schol
ars, and nobles assembling in that council ; these
facts, not in themselves to be soon forgotten, were
written on the hearts of the Judean mothers and
children of that generation ; St. Matthew, whether as
a man, a historian, a Hebrew, a Christian, an Apostle,
or as an Evangelist, must have felt great interest in
this matter ; not far from the time when he wrote,
therefore, he must have felt a strong interest in its natural
causes. He may have known them, and have thought that in
his Gospel they were out of place. Yet, of course, what con
clusions from a writer's silence are certain, and what are more
or less probable, it is for common sense to decide.

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. 87
probably at the time, there was in Jerusalem, at the
house of St. John, the blessed Mother who had
talked with the Magi, and whose recollections of that
interview are in his narrative ; and since these things
are so, to think that St. Matthew was ignorant of any
fact as to this pilgrimage, such as any intelligent
man, who professed to treat of it, would properly be
supposed to know, is treating it as an idle legend.
The bearing of all this on the question, What did the
Magi see ? is decisive, when the historian's method,
at this point in his history, is understood. For much
the Magi must have said in reply to the many eager
inquiries in Jerusalem as to what they had seen. The
masterly hand of St. Matthew, than whom no writer
was better able to give a comprehensive statement in
fewest words, compressed all of this he thought there
was need to record, into a very few words of theirs.
Had they said, the sign faded out from the sky, or
said any thing else inconsistent with its being a star,
it is very certain he would have recorded the fact. It
was a star, is, then, the answer the Magi gave to the
persistent questionings in Jerusalem as to what they
had discovered in the sky ; according to the Evangelist,
it is, substantially, their complete and only answer. It
tells how it looked, what they thought it was, all they
knew about it. And their word for it St. Matthew
makes his own ; the Evangelist sanctions it ; through
out the history the inspired Evangelist names it a star.
THE STAR ONE OF THE LIGHTS OF THE HEAVENS.
So far as we have gone in the study of this history,
the conclusion seems to be certain that the Star of
9

88 THE STAR OF OUR LORD
our Lord was one of the great lights of the immeas
urable heavens ; first seen by the eye of man when,
in mercy to the need of the human heart, God re
vealed himself in human form ; a star whose rays,
journeying thitherward through long preceding time,
touched the firmament of the human world with
glorious light when the Word, by whom all things
were made, came to dwell among us ; a star now
shining in that firmament, and there to shine till, at
the word of Christ who called it into being, that
firmament shall pass to whence it came. In the ma
terial world which exists for, and in conformity with,
the higher world of spirit, that spiritual world hath
its marks and shadows ; and the shining of this star
into the human world was to Man the sign, in the
material creation, of that union of the spirit of man,
whose frame is of the dust, with the eternal Word,
which visibly brought together in its Creator and
Lord the whole material and spiritual universe.
The appearing of this star prophesied of a sphere
higher than that of miracles. Miracle is of the
present cycle of time, but the work of Christ goes
beyond this. The Word, in the form of the man
Christ Jesus, opened a new era in the eternal king
dom of God. He came to create a new race of men,
a new heavens and a new earth. This being so, the
harmonies of truth require some open visible mani
festation of his creating glory when his purpose be
gan to pass into open visible accomplishment. As
certain astronomers, studying the harmonies of the
planetary movements, rightly said, there must be a
planet in a certain quarter of the heavens, so, the

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. 89
Reason would affirm, that decisive moment was
marked in the material universe by some sign of the
new glory of the all-creating Word, even had the fact
been outside of the province of revelation, and so
wanted its absolute confirmation. To this sign the
Magi witness. This sign the Evangelist records. It
points far onward. It intimates that the influences
of the Incarnation reach beyond the paths of the
planets. It prepares for the prelude to the Gospel
of St. John, revealing that by the Word who became
flesh all things were made ; and for the words of St.
Paul, By him were all things created, that are in
heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible; all
things were created by him, and for him.
THE BURDEN OF PROOF ON THOSE WHO DENY THIS.
If any will say, This is not so, it is for them to
prove, that in defining that which shone into the
firmament of the human world when Christ was born,
the sole witnesses thereof to all the world forever,
the Magi and the Evangelist, improperly named it a
star. Against this the protest of common sense and
of reverence is so strong that it can be established
only by strong evidence. Nothing else will suffice
for this save to prove it is impossible they properly so
named it.
As new stars have appeared, this cannot be proved
solely, or directly, by the fact that it was not seen
before ; still this might be confirmatory evidence of
it, if in some other way it appeared it was not like
a star. It is said, This does so appear; for the
narrative is to be taken as a whole, and then these

OX> THE STAR OF OUR LORD.
verses make it certain the evangelist does not use
the word properly : " They departed ; and, lo, the
star, which they saw in the East, went before them,
till it came and stood over where the young child
was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with
exceeding great joy. And when they were come
into the house, they saw the young child and Mary
his mother, and fell down and worshiped him." It
is said : First, these verses show that the Light seen
by the Magi beyond the Euphrates was not seen by
them again till they went from Jerusalem, and, there
fore, could not have been a star : Second, that what
these verses say of its Guiding proves it could not
have been a star.
Against the first of these propositions there is the
fact that the history does not say the light disap
peared. There is also against it the presumption,
before noted, from the name of the light, and here
this is somewhat strengthened. If the facts were as
this argument supposes, then, with the accuracy only
of any well-written history, the statement would have
been, Lo ! a light like the one they had seen in the
East went before them ; for, on this supposition, the
light seen on the night-journey to Bethlehem, though
it might have been similar, could not have been the
one seen in Babylonia months before ; and this suppo
sition almost compels us to take up with the childish
notion of the Apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy, that
the Magi saw an' angel, no other light than one
emanating from such an apparition well answering to
the narrative as thus understood. But the evangelist
here knows nothing of any angel, or of any magical

ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION. 9 1
light ; and only, in both times and places, of one and
the same Star.
The Scripture thus said to teach that the light unex
pectedly reappeared not ofily does not say so, but was
written in the manner and form it is written for the
very purpose of forbidding this idea. But so lax are
the usual ideas as to the binding force of a writer s
zvords, and of his method, in a description ivhere form
is of the substance, that I have to prepare the way for
the argument in proof of this by some
Cjjongfrts on language anb Inspiration.
Writing may have the certainty of figures. Often
times nothing is less sure than what is written, giving
rise to endless lawsuits ; but this touches not the
rare precision to which language can attain. In
masterpieces of utterance, such as the best verse of
Milton, the place of each sentence, clause, and word, as
well as the choice of each word, is determined by
laws which, consciously or unconsciously, genius
obeys ; and any change at all in any of these can
hardly be made without some loss of meaning or
variance of effect.
Some may grant this of poetry in its perfection, but
not of prose; but while there is a plain difference
in form between poetry and prose, it is not easy to
fix upon any essential distinction between the two ; *
and though poetry may be the higher achievement,
* Wordsworth — Preface to Lyrical Ballads — says : " It would
be a most easy task to prove that some of the most interesting
parts of the best poems will be found to be strictly the language
of prose, when prose is well written."

92 ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION.
there is some reason for thinking it is not the most
difficult. It goes to show this, that song is known
among barbarians. It goes to show this, that poetry
is earlier than prose ; Homer coming before Herod
otus, the rhyme of Spenser before the prose of
Dryden. So, too, that it seems easier to conceive
of the ideal of a song, an ode, or an epic poem, than
of an essay, a biography, or a history. Is it said,
this is because there are good models of these, and
not of those — if it be so, the inference is the same :
Empires have moldered from the face of earth,
And tongues expired with those who gave them birth.
Without the glory such a strain can give
As e'en in ruin bids the language live :
but of prose this is still more true. In Greek there
may be some as little perishable as any Greek poetry ;
but of the English-speaking races where is the master
whose prose, because oi its perfection of style, will live
as long as the best English verse ?
In music there is harmony, another name for order,
and this, again, for obedience to law. Music is the
most free because the least lawless of all the soul's
voices, and so is the symbol of the social joy of
heaven. So far as it is free obedience, the music in
the soul, when breathing out in verse, has a symbol
in rhyme or rhythm. This rhythm tends to forbid
whatever is out of proportion, or out of place. It
were hard to tell the secret of its magic, to bound the
compass of its power ; but one plain consequence of
this accompaniment of the thought is that exactness
of expression in poetry to which we now look, the

ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION. 93
better to know the possibility and the fact of its like
in prose.
Poetry, though one of the voices of emotion, is
self-regulating, and the best is the most so of all.
Unconsciously, or without seeming effort, its move
ment is like that of a child at play. One of the con
ditions, unmarked it may be, of what is so admirable
in each, is precision, without which there is neither
safety nor grace. Prose is less exact than poetry, but
there is no need of this, for poetry is the chosen ut
terance of emotion, prose, of judgment. Feeling per
vades the one, deliberation is more characteristic of
the other ; and it has more of self-conscious will and
a freedom in the choice of words that makes up for
the self-regulating magic of rhyme.
There is nothing mechanical in any utterance of
the soul, whether distinctly rhythmical or not. Life
is the secret of this fountain. The word of the soul,
outspoken, or heard only' by itself and God, is ever
going forth, ceaseless as the.beating pulse. The re
lation between thought and word resembles that be
tween the soul and the body. Thought and word,
soul and body, are alike inseparable unities. The
body is the limit of the soul, and so is the condition
of its personality. The word is the limit, and so is
the form of the thought. If we would think of a
soul without its body, or of a thought without its
word, it eludes us. Whether it can be said to be or
not we cannot tell, for in either case there is only
that which is formless and void. To think of a thing
is to form some image thereof; and there can be no
image of a spirit without body, for that is a spirit with-

94 ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION.
out form ; and so there can be no image of a thought
without its word either audible or inaudible. The
possibilities of thought, like those of feeling and will,
which belong to the complete idea of the word of the
soul, are limited. Those possibilities, whether thought
of as present or future, actual or ideal, are the same
as those of utterance, without which they have no
form, that is, no being of which we can form to our
selves any idea.
Trying to fill out the farthest bound of its thought,
the life of the soul in the thought determines its form
as more or less full, and as more or less real. If this
life be weak and ghostly, the utterance will be im
perfect or shadowy. Intense life, of which high
emotion is the sign, tends to clear form. Hate lacks
not precision of words, nor does love, nor prayer.
Overwrought feeling breaks out in incoherence ;
but this is the breaking down of the soul from a
higher to a less dangerous mood. When death is in
the house, how clear of sight the still feeling before
the spirit, sinking down into wailing, blurs its vision
with tears. If that deep clear seeing speaks, its
words are more than eloquence ; as when St. Matthew
tells of the passion of his Lord.
One body embodies the all of one soul ; so may one
form of words the all of one thought. Of this some
of the sayings which have passed into proverbs are
good illustrations.
Man is body and soul. In his audible and inau
dible utterance, in every word of his never voiceless
being, there is the material and the spiritual. The
life pf the sou} make!! the material breath of its

ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION. 95
words imperishable things ; and by our words shall
we be justified, and by our words condemned. The
word of the soul, here includmg in it looks and deeds,
that is, the whole of its manifestation, is an intelligible
image of the man, who can be known only through
this word. Further than this no man can pierce
into the spirit there is in man. It is unseen and un
seeable. No light can make it visible. It is un
known and unknowable. Its being is manifest only
through its word; and this mystery of human utter
ance is a sign, very nigh at hand, even within us and
inseparable from our being, of one of the high mys
teries of our holy religion.
The written or printed page is an intelligible image
of the soul's utterance in words which lie back of it ;
and still back of this is something of its thought,
feeling, and will, or of all the soul's only revelation
of itself. Each so represents the other that com
muning with the written or printed page is as near
as possible to communing with the soul itself. If
God, who made man in his own image, so touches
the spirit there is in man as through its thoughts, feel
ing, and will, of which its words are the sign, to speak
intelligibly to other souls, then communing with the
page, which is the sign of that divinely human utter
ance, may thus be communing with God.
The sacred writers stand apart from other men in
a class by themselves. To them Inspiration was
given, and to them alone. Of this word the mean
ing has been dangerously lowered. It has been reck
lessly applied to other writings than to those to which
alone it belongs ; and with many Revelation, a word

96 ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION.
of less effect, has come to be greater than Inspiration.
It may exist apart from it ; for to St. Paul things
were revealed which he was not inspired to utter.
Dream, vision, and ecstasy are states which are be
low that of inspiration, and revelation issuing from
them does not take rank with words of inspiration.
There is revelation now, there always has been, and
in the future there will be more than in the past ; for
of these last days God hath said, " I will pour out
of my Spirit upon all flesh : your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see
visions, and your old men shall dream dreams ; and
I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in
the earth beneath." (See Acts ii, 17-21.) But the
sacred writers have no successors. Their office was
to portray the word of God, even Christ Jesus, who
is " the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," and with
the Holy Scripture their work was done. By in
spiration they wrote what God willed should be writ
ten in the Bible, and this whether of things within
their own knowledge, or of things which only the
Spirit could have revealed. The book is what God
willed it should be ; and when taken as a whole, so
that what is incomplete in one part is made complete
in another, it has a divine completeness, as well as
a divine authority, that can belong to no other writ
ing. To set up any device of men — whether creed,
confession, law, or usage of the Church — as of equal
authority savors of blasphemy, for Holy Scripture is
clothed by our Lord with the same divine authority
as his own divine words. Our Lord never set up the
authority of the Hebrew Church in attestation of any

ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION. 97
truth ; he repeatedly and openly denounced its teach
ings, and unloosed the conscience from their bind
ing ; while often and usually he spake of the Scripture
as having power to bind the conscience, declaring it
to be the word of God, as he did his own words, and
making them of the same effect,
Authority is often claimed for the apostles which
they disclaimed for themselves ; for the Apostle Paul
wrote to the Corinthians saying (2 Cor, i, 24) he
had " no dominion over their faith ; " but over faith
the Scripture hath dominion, for it is not the word
of men but the word of God. The apostles com
pleted this Holy Word. For this they were chosen
as disciples, and then as apostles. They were to
"bear witness" of Christ, and the reason is thus
given by the Lord himself, " Because ye have been
with me from the beginning." For this he promised
them the Spirit, saying, " He shall bring all things
to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto
you." (John xv, 27 ; xiv, 26.) Thus they were em
powered to complete the " volume of the Book." By
them and through them this was done, though in
this work others had a part — the blessed Mother
of our Lord, the evangelists Mark and Luke — and
the New Testament, attested to the Holy and Uni
versal Church by the apostles, was received by the
Church as of like divine authority with the Old
Testament, which our Lord declared to be the word
of God ; and when St. John, the last evangelist and
the last apostle, died, the Church knew the Scripture
was finished, for there was no one then, commis
sioned of the Lord, to add to it by his own writings,

98 ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION.
or by his sanction to the inspiration of the writings
of others.
Inspiration is spoken of in Scripture as a divine
inbreathing. It is not possible to interrogate the
sacred writers, nor, if it were, is it to be supposed
they could disclose more than this. In that which
was written by inspired men there is, then, a divine
element which makes it the word of God ; and yet it
is a human utterance intelligible to human beings.
Of that divine element in itself we can know nothing,
and any attempt to pierce into it is presumptuous
and utterly vain.
It seems to be otherwise as to the limits and the
laws of human utterance ; but all that my purpose
requires or admits of, is to waken up the soul to see
that certainty of meaning is possible in human utter
ance ; and that in proportion as thought is clear,
feeling strong, and the will firm, so sure will be the
words, their intelligible image. This must be so, as
far as the spirit there is in man can find utterance in
language ; and the possibilities of any language, de
spite all poets, orators, or philosophers ever born, are
unknown ; for they are as exhaustless as the soul,
which is the fount of thought, and of the words
through which thoughts have form and being. Since,
then, there may be in language certainty of meaning,
there must be in the language of the Scriptures ;
for the soul is an instrument so fashioned as to be
capable of self-regulating and perfect utterance, and
there its chords are struck by the creative hand.
What is called the artlessness of the evangelists
may seem to make against their precision ; but if by

ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION. 99
this artlessness be meant that they use common
words, and write out facts in their utmost simplicity,
with no embellishment and no comment, this is the
way that witnesses, thoroughly in earnest and entirely
sincere, tell of things so great that in trying to state
them, just as they were, they lose all thought of every
thing else. In this natural kind of writing,each word,
the turn of each phrase, and the place of each clause
and sentence, is significant; for in it the facts are written
out just as they wrote themselves on the soul. If by
their artlessness be meant that they have no order,
or only of the slightest kind, this is at once refuted
by the fact that, beyond all other writings, theirs give
a oneness of impression.
It is true there is the greatest ease in the narra
tive of the Gospels ; but, as has been seen, precision,
far from being opposed to this, is one of its condi
tions. The union of symmetrical effect with such
freedom that the story seems to tell itself, may find
one of its conditions in the fact that these writers
are freely and entirely obedient to the laws of utter
ance within their own souls ; and it may be, that so
far from thinking of inspiration as freeing from those
laws, it should rather be thought of as keeping the
soul up to them.
This might be with unlearned men as easily as if
they had been trained in the rhetoric of the schools,
for the words of the uneducated go more straight to
the mark than those of book-learned men ; and though
the words in a language may be multiplied by its
culture, those later words have not the pictorial charm,
the naturalness, freshness, and force of those that

IOO ON LANGUAGE AND INSPIRATION.
make up the less copious but more living language
of the people.
In virtue of its endowment of speech, and of its
perceptions and feelings, there are in the soul, even
of a savage, the principles of the grammarian, and
something of the system of the rhetorician. Gram
mar merely writes down some of the forms of utter
ance as it has heard them ; rhetoric notes this for
others ; but neither makes them ; and if either tries to
do so, it is worse than useless. The order, then, in
the Gospels, so far as it has for its sole cause the
full and free exercise of human faculties, is in the
line of the art of the grammarian and the rhetorician,
though far beyond all reach of art ; and this order, so
far as it comes from a power above the human facul
ties, comes from no violence done to the laws of the
soul, but is like the order in nature, which is wrought
out, not over, but through, the qualities of natural
objects. The ideal of human utterance is actualized in the
Gospels ; yet it has been often said they have no
style ; and, though far from wise, this is natural
enough ; for thoughts are shown in a good style as
things are in the pure light of day, while that which
shows them is unthought of. In the style of the
Gospels there is very much more than this inimitable
transparency. In them there is an order whose
secret is past finding out, even as there is in nature.
The hills group themselves freely, at their own will
the streams wind along, carelessly grow the woods
along the uplands ; yet the outline of every mountain,
the path of each river, the place of each wood, why

THE STAR OF OUR LORD. IOI
it is that moss grows on this side of the rock and
not on the other, why these shrubs fringe this thicket
and those reeds and grasses grow in that meadow,
are all determined by laws, through which comes
that order in nature felt as beauty, that peace which
comforts the heart of care and gives the wounded
spirit healing. The ever-varying heavens are ruled
by laws quick as their own changes, keeping the
unbroken harmony of the earth and the sky. Nature
is not lifeless. Therein is the presence of the Word
of God, through whom in the beginning it arose out
of the formless and void, a presence whose indwelling
within the forms of material things is felt by the
living soul. Felt or unfelt, it is, alike in Scripture
and in nature, the assurance of that known under
other names, in its comprehensible manifestation, as
order, harmony, or obedience to law. As there is a
reason why a fern grows here and a flower there,
why pine and not oak crowns yonder headland, a
reason for every wind that blows, a reason for the
shape and color of every cloud, a reason for every
thing and for the place of evety thing in the world of
Nature, even so it is in the world of Scripture.
OF THE ERROR THAT THE STAR UNEXPECTEDLY
REAPPEARED.
Almost irresistible evidence has been given to
prove that the New Star of whose appearing the
astronomers of Persia told, was one of the great
lights of heaven ; evidence is to come that will con
firm this ; but I would not hide from my readers
that if the exceeding great joy of the Magi on the

102 THE STAR OF OUR LORD
night of their journey to Bethlehem was caused by
an unexpected reappearing of the Star, all this evi
dence goes for nothing. If here the argument fail,
the reader must make a better one ; or else may as
well close this book, so far as one of its main lines
of thought is concerned.
There is a divine element of certainty in the lan
guage of Scripture ; yet my argument will assume no
greater accuracy in the Evangelist 's description of the
journey to Bethlehem than properly belongs to any good
writing; that is, the argument is the same as if the
description were found in Herodotus, in Tacitus, or
any well-written ancient history.
The words, "when they saw the star they rejoiced
with exceeding great joy," are generally thought to
prove the Star unexpectedly reappeared. But this is
explained by the common want of appreciation of
the fullness and precision which the description of
this night-journey combines with brevity; together
with the fact that these words so often float in and
out of memory apart from the context. For, if the
narrative be not rightly understood, and these words
be remembered by themselves, as usually they are,
they do suggest this. But when the whole descrip
tion is before the mind, they forbid the idea, if the
rejoicing be placed where the Evangelist places it,
not when the Star began to move, but some hours
afterward when the Star stood still.
The evangelist's mention of the exceeding joy of
the pilgrims is not at all in the nature of a pictorial
embellishment. It teaches truths well worth the
knowing. The height of their joy when the house

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. IO3
was pointed out by the Star to those pilgrims who
went from the holy city by night and alone, marks
the depths of their disappointment in Jerusalem. It
also reveals the witness to their history of one who
had talked with the pilgrims after they came to
Bethlehem ; doubtless, of some one who within that
house heard their joyful outcry in the stillness of
the night. It is but a little less than certain that
this was the blessed Mother of our Lord, who from
these words in the Gospel of St. Matthew, and from
those chapters in the Gospel of St. Luke which no
other could have written, is gladly and reverently
to be hailed Regina Evangelorum — Queen of the
Evangelists. The whole picture of this night-journey covers less
than a hand's-breadth ; but in a little picture, even
more than on the broad canvas, there is meaning
in every touch and shadow of a touch. The more
this picture is studied the clearer it becomes. As
out from under the gloomy archway in the wall of
strictly-guarded Jerusalem the pilgrims ride into the
gathering night, suddenly the star goes before them.
Whether they had seen the star every night, or
but once before, their feeling must naturally have
been that of astonishment. It is the Evangelist him
self who marks this ; for the cry of wonder is his, and
so is the identification of the Star, which, in his de
scription of the scene, is a thing of course. It is
most natural to suppose their state of mind must
then have been that of silent astonishment. A great
outburst of exceeding joy would hardly have been
natural then. The portent was too surprising, too
10

104 THE STAR OF OUR LORD
unaccountable. The awe which the manifestation
of the supernatural ever awakens must have been
upon them. With throbbing hearts, wide-open, eager
eyes, even those kings in the world of thought must
have followed the portent going before. A blend
ing of many feelings hushed them to the silence
of breathless expectation, as, with wonder, hope, and
religious fear, they questioned within themselves what
this strange thing might mean, where this would
end. The Star leading the way, they come to the
village of Bethlehem. The Star leading on, they pass
along the silent street. It stands still over a house.
Expectation changes to certainty, all doubt is gone.
As well as if a voice from heaven had told them,
they knew, before they went into the house, the Star
"stood still over where the young child was," and
that is the moment when " they rejoiced with exceed
ing great joy." By placing these words where he
does, the evangelist marks the instant when, and he
gives the reason why, their souls kindled to ecstasy ;
and at that instant their joy is so natural that we
might have been sure of it had we not been told.
The word-picture of this night-scene reproduces
the feelings of the pilgrims, because the facts are
written out just as they wrote themselves on their
souls. Scott could almost have expanded the one
into a romance, Shakspeare the other into a drama,
and have said nothing unsuggested by its swift and
simple words. Even in the line, "over where the
young child was," there is much wisdom in word-
painting. Change it to " over the house " and light
suddenly fades from the picture. A good deal of

ONE OF THE STARS PF HEAVEN. 105
meaning is gone from it at once. The less definite
phrase leaves the mind more open to think, as the
pilgrims then thought, wholly of Him, whom both
the guiding and its description honor. It marks
that before they went into the house the pilgrims
felt sure he was found, as well they might and
must have felt. Some have called this a very in
definite line ; * but in it great definiteness of feel
ing is expressed. The soul of the pilgrims shines
through it. No speech, no language, no voice, yet
the star told them, He is there ! and no wonder they
broke out into loud rejoicing, knowing their long
pilgrimage was happily ended.
Then to this picture the full touch of precision is
instantly given, " when they went into the house they
saw the young child." Minds corrupted by books
cannot appreciate a style like this. Its brevity mis
leads them as to both its fullness and its precision.
The book that Hamlet was reading f is the book
now read ; the grain of gold is beaten out into pages
of glittering tinsel ; and this story-devouring genera
tion is so used to having the work of the imagination
all done and ill done for it, that it has scarcely the
critical sense left to reason from the structure of a
description so perfect as this.
There are mosses and little flowers, fair, fragrant,
and full of grace, that disclose all the wonders of their
fabric only when enlarged under the microscope,
* Alford and some others say, it may mean over the town
of Bethlehem.
t Hamlet, act ii, scene ii. Polonius. What do you read, my
lord ? Hamlet. Words, words, words.

106 THE STAR OF OUR LORD.
which changes nothing of proportion and yet brings
out a world of wisdom. Let something like to this
be done with the description of this night-journey —
it requires no scientific apparatus — only let each
word be followed to where it leads, only let the mind
pause and dwell upon each line till it fills out to its
fullness the meaning, and the fact that the joy of the
pilgrims was caused by the star's pointing to where
they knew the child was, and not by an unlooked-for
appearing of the Star, comes out with the certainty
of a proposition in Euclid.
The identification of the star being a thing of
course, the description of the scene fixes the reader's
mind upon the Guiding, even as upon it the narrator's
mind was fixed. The cry of wonder marks not the
star, which they had seen every night, but this unex
pected miracle ; lo ! the star which they had seen in
the East, went before them. To this miracle the de
scription continues to hold our attention. It went
before them till it came and stood over where the
young child was. Not till after all this guiding has
been thought of and thought out to the end ; not till
after we have gone, mile by mile, with these pilgrims
star-led on their unknown way through the strange
scenery and the night ; not till after we have kept
company with them for wondering hours while the
narrow camel- track wound steep down the hill-side,
over the dusky plain, and along the vale of Bethlehem ;
not till the star's out-shining in that evening sky is
miles behind in space, and hours away in time ; not
till the house is in sight and the guiding star stands
still above it — not till then is the joy of the pilgrims

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. 107
named. The Evangelist does not say they departed,
and lo ! the star they had seen in the East appeared
again, and they rejoiced with exceeding great joy, and
it went before them ; he separates his mention of the
joy from the coming out of the star ; he places it
after the star's guiding ; he connects it immediately
with its standing still over where the child was ; and
thus the evangelist marks that the star's pointing out
the house caused the rejoicing. N
Nowhere does the Evangelist give any countenance
to the notion that the wise men had not seen the
Star since they were in Babylonia. Nowhere does he
say the star of the Lord was the passing phantom of
an hour. His silence as to any such fact proves that
he knew of no such fact ; and if he knew of none
such, there was none. Only let some little justice
be done to St. Matthew as a man, only let there be
some little appreciation of his merit as a historian,
and it is clear and certain that by the form and man
ner of his narrative the Evangelist forbids the heresy
that the star of the Everlasting Lord, shining once
into the world of man, shines not there forever.
ITS GUIDING CONSISTENT WITH ITS BEING A STAR.
That astronomy forbids the belief that the light
which led to the house in Bethlehem was a star
seems to be a common opinion, and from this error
comes the Second of the two propositions before
named : Its guiding proves it could not have been
a star. More fully stated, the argument here is this :
If the Magi saw a star, its guiding was the result of
motion imparted for this especial purpose to a world

108 THE STAR OF OUR LORD.
further away from the earth than the sun, and at least
equal to it in size. This is not to be thought of, because
the power thus put forth would have been so utterly
out of all proportion to the thing to be done. It would
baffle the calculus to compute, the imagination to
conceive, the contortions and complications of the
star's motion before it could have piloted through
the crooks and turns of the six miles from Jerusalem
to the house in Bethlehem. It is irrational to think
that a world so independent of the earth, so great, so
far away, was thus wildly perturbed. It is irreverent
to believe that even the Almighty would have put
forth such power to do a thing so easily done in other
ways as clearly supernatural.
The very sound of this argument is imposing, but
there is nothing in it. It is merely a wrong infer
ence from the language of Scripture. It is almost
a sufficient reply to it to say that, like some other
arguments against Scripture, it takes for granted
what cannot be known. It takes for granted that
this miracle was wrought in the way it points out,
and could have been wrought in no other way. If no
other way could be pointed out by man, it might be
modest to remember that God might know of some
other. But here faith need not fly for refuge to the
grand old truth, that his thoughts are not as our
thoughts, his ways as ours. A way, other than that
supposed, can be pointed out in which this star may
have led the pilgrims, and yet the great orb in its far
distant height have been no more disturbed than the
great God himself by the putting forth of the power
which accomplished the miracle, however that power

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. IO9
may have been put forth. For it is more than pos
sible, it is probable, that the power which wrought
the miracle of the Guiding was not put forth upon the
body of the star, but only upon some few of its rays
after they had come within the atmosphere of the
earth. This supposition is so in harmony with the
common and proper use of language that it perfectly
answers to the words of the Evangelist. For when a
man speaks of seeing a star, he always means seeing
it in and through a few of its rays that touch his eye.
And yet he rightly says, I see the star, because his
Creator so made him as thus to think, and so to
speak. According; then, to natural usage, uniform in
every language under heaven, when the Evangelist
speaks of the star's guiding, he speaks of a guiding by
some of its rays. Just so much the words of the Evan
gelist affirm, and this is all that his words do affirm.
The Scripture in no way, further than this, commits
itself to how the guiding was brought about.
To get rid of the incredible power it is supposed
must have been put forth to bring about guiding by
a star, the theory of a supernatural light, looking so
like a star that it might be described as such, is
now upheld ; but the difference between the power
on that theory, and the power if the miracle was
wrought in the way pointed out, is not worth esti
mating.* * If it be assumed that the early Christians thought the star
was within our atmosphere, (which it is probable they did,) and
so their belief came nearer to that of a transient meteor, a
luminous globe, an optical, a seeming but not a real star, than
to that which holds it to have been one of the stars of heaven,

HO THE STAR OF OUR LORD.
If the guiding were wrought in the way pointed
out, this touches not the reality of the miracle, and
it touches the greatness of the miracle but very little
if at all. For a miracle affects the soul not chiefly by
the quantity of power supposed to be put forth, of
which it has poor means of judging, but rather by the
feeling that is above the height of human power ; and
this is, perhaps, as vivid if the miracle were wrought
in its rays as if they were wrought in the body of the
star. If wrought in the way pointed out, the miracle
was accordant with the analogy of Scripture. In
the miracles of Scripture there is that which looks
like economy of power. When the Lord clove a
path through the sea, and its waters were a wall unto
the Israelites on their right hand and on their left,
supernatural power allied to itself natural power, for
all that night the waters were divided and the sea
made dry land by a strong east wind. This economy
of God, like every thipg else revealed of Him, teaches
a lesson to man, It is one of the marked differ
ences between the miracles of the Bible and those in
legends and myths. The analogy of Scripture, then,
all things else being equal, leads to a preference of
that idea as to the power in a miracle which reduces
it may be said, they could not make the wide distinction made
by us between those stars and any such passing light. To
them the stars of heaven seemed not far off, and not large. They
knew comparatively little about them ; and yet, doubtless, would
have said, It matters not what they are, the Scripture teaches
this Star was one of them — which is the fact, now, from
astronomical considerations, denied,

ONE OF THE STARS OF HEAVEN. Ill
it to the smallest limit, rather than of the one that
carries it to a greater height.
If the miracle of the guiding was wrought in the
way pointed out, it was wrought only in those rays
of the star which touched the eyes of the pilgrims.
Thus the sense-conception of the grandeur of the
miracle may seem to be lessened, but its moral worth
is greatly increased. For here, the true idea of this
miracle, as wrought in the rays of one of the stars
of heaven, opens an idea applicable to three other
miracles where, to many, there seem astronomical
difficulties in the way of believing them that are in
surmountable ; yet those difficulties vanish before
this idea in connection with what else has been said
of this Guiding. Those miracles are, the standing
still of the sun on Gibeon; the going back of the
shadow on the sun-dial of Ahaz ; and the sickening
of the light over the land of Judea while the Son of
God was dying on the cross.
Through the fact that it was seen only by those it
led, and was known to others only as witnessed to
by them, this great wonder and sign at the opening
of the new age was a type and prophecy of that
guiding by the Holy Spirit which was to mark the
coming time ; and which, even in one of its most
peculiar characteristics, was thus foreshadowed in
the guiding of the Star of our Lord.*
* Some further evidence that this star was one of the stars
of heaven will be given in the chapters on The Relation of the
Universe to Christ, and on The Astronomical Doubt as to Chris
tianity, which follow the two on The Miracle of the Guiding.

112 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING.

CHAPTER IV.
THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING.
TOj^7"HEN the firmament of the Christian soul is
J^T)T all darkness the Star of our Lord shines out
as real to the spirit as when it led to where
the young child was. So bright is the assurance of
divine sympathy and aid for all who seek the Lord,
which ever abides in the gospel of the guiding of his
Star! This is the most touching, the most needed,
and the most universal of all its many lessons. It
teaches this of itself. None need to point it out ; and
every Christian is a witness to its truth. The expe
rience of the many is in the words of one,* who,
changing the imagery, but not the truth, in the
Evangel of the Star, thus wrote from his heart :
Once on the raging seas I rode ;
The storm was loud, the night was dark ;
The ocean yawned, and rudely blowed
The wind that tossed my foundering bark.
Deep horror then my vitals froze ;
Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem ;
When suddenly a star arose —
It was the Star of Bethlehem.
It was my guide, my light, my all ;
It bade my dark forebodings cease ;
And through the storm and danger's thrall
It led me to the port of peace.
* Henry Kirke White.

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING. II3
Now, safely moored, my perils o'er,
I'll sing, first in night's diadem,
For ever and for evermore,
The Star, the Star of Bethlehem !
Oftentimes there is evidence ofthe inspiration ofthe
Scriptures not only in their truths, but even in the way
they embody those truths in words. To me this seems
to be so here. For, studying the word-picture of the
guiding of those pilgrims traveling in the night the un
known road, in the unknown country, seeking the" un
known Christ, I see this night-journey is naturally told
just as it struck the narrator's mind : first, the thrill
of wonder at the star's motion, then its moving on
till by its standing still it pointed out the house, and
then that great rejoicing ; I see that a few more words
easily thrown in would at once have made clear to
the first glance of every eye the time, the place, and
the reason of that exceeding joy ; and I also seem to
see that here the very form of words was pre-ordained
as the one best fitted to awaken just such emotions
in just such hours as gave birth to that hymn. It niay
also have been a thing ordained, that until this, the
most common, the most personal, and the most helpful
of its teachings should be universally and lastingly in
wrought into the heart of the Church, the eye should
be held from beholding, in this variously teaching sign,
other truth which shines from it in consequence of the
astronomical disclosure of the greatness of the stars.
A FURTHER ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO THIS
MIRACLE.
Astronomy has made a star of heaven a most fit
ting material emblem of the spiritual glory of Christ ;

114 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING.
and yet, as it now becomes certain and clear that the
guiding light which pointed to the house in Bethle
hem was one of those stars, there will be some, who,
instead of rejoicing in the beautiful lessons of this
beautiful miracle, where nature in its grandest form
led to Christ, and not seeing that nature apart from
its spiritual uses is of no account, will feel as if, by a
star's leading to Bethlehem, violence were done to
the scientific idea of the universe. It is the harder
to do away with this and with all the other astro
nomical doubts as to the Bible, because of the fact,
almost without a parallel, that while usually the
shock of new ideas is dissipated and new truths are
adjusted to the old in some short space of time, the
astronomical heavens so come anew into the youth
ful wonder of each generation, that the human mind
seems ever to be surging with the emotions of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And yet
the distance and grandeur of the heavenly bodies
can have no rational power to dissuade from belief
in the miraculous guiding of the star, if with the
scientific we hold on, as we should do, to the natural
thought of the world. The astronomical thought is,
that our earth belongs to the solar system ; the natu
ral thought is, that the sun, moon,, planets, and stars
belong to our world. It comes, in a measure, from
that apparent circling of the heavenly bodies around
the human world, which no doubt prefigures some
high truth as to man ; and it seemed to be upheld
by it, until, in the sixteenth century, the Coperni-
can theory of the solar system referred the seeming
motion of the sun to motion in the earth itself. But

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING. 1 15
the apparent circling of all the starry host around
the earth, as if to do it honor, is not essential to the
evidence for the natural idea of the earth, and, though
set aside, the proof of it still remains. This natural
idea of the round world is just as true as the scien
tific ; for the sun, planets, and stars are parts of our
world, as really so as the earth is part of the solar
system and particle of the universe. They are parts
of the world by their uniform presence and uses in it.
They are indispensable to its idea. Our world would
not be a world without them. They give light and
heat, and without them there would be no life. They
mark times and seasons ; and, regulating time, they
regulate thought. They adorn the sky of our world.
They lead man over the desert and over the waters.
The science that whispers to his awe-struck mind
something of their far-off glory but heightens for
man those ministrations, in virtue of which they
are his.
The star-struck mind may wonder that the Lord
should have made a world millions of times larger
than the earth, and millions of miles away from it, the
guide of men ; but did not the Dipper point the
unlettered bondman to the North, and may not we,
like him, recognize a guiding office in those far-off
worlds? Things like this guiding on the way to
Bethlehem, the creating Lord meant the stars should
do ; and things like this they have ever done, from
the time when Abraham journeyed from Chaldea to
Egypt, star-led, across the naked plains of the deserts,
until now, when, freighted with the wealth of nations
and trusted with priceless lives, navies are crossing

Il6 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING.
the seas, star-led, from continent to continent. Ever
since upward-gazing man was on the earth it has
been the office of the stars to guide ; and this guid
ing by a star to Bethlehem, so far from being unnat
ural, only carried what nature has always done to a
supernatural height in honor of the Lord of nature.
As the Lord so made the stars as ever to light and
cheer the way of man, it is as credible now as before
the blue arch melted into an infinite expanse, that
He, who from evening to evening guides by his stars
the wanderers on the sea, the redeeming Lord, lifting
his mercy in the realm of nature to higher glory in
the realm of grace, for the encouragement of all who
should come after them, should have made his own
Star miraculously guide the pioneers of the long
procession of numberless, benighted, heart-tired, sin-
weary pilgrims who have sought, are now seeking, or
shall hereafter seek, not the lowly house in Bethle
hem, but that where He now is, that house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens.

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 117

CHAPTER V.
THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR : CONTINUED.
J HE gold, here and there on the earth's surface,
was thrown up from unknown depths holding
wealth that man will never explore. This gold,
once thought to belong only to the place where it is
found, runs traceable in continent-traversing veins,
and systems of veins, related to ranges of hills and
to the plan of the globe. As the globe is traversed
by gold veins and systems of veins, so the Bible is
traversed by veins and systems of veins of miracle.
These veins of miracle-gold have been wrought on
the surface. But their lines of direction, unity, and
purpose have not been traced as far and well as they
might be. Nor have shafts been sunk very deep into
their unfathomable caves.
In the world of Nature, each event is a part of the
whole ; each event has fitness of time, of place, man
ner, and occasion ; and each has some lesson or
lessons to teach. The like is true in the world of
Grace, and very true of those eminent events, the
miracles. OF THE FITNESS OF THIS MIRACLE.
The Miracle of the Guiding Star was every way
suited to the character and the circumstances of those
before whom it was wrought. Star-gazers were led

1 1 8 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
by a star. " The shepherds, as of Jewish extraction,
were guided by an angel, but the wise men by a star ;
those by a revelation which was familiar to them,
these by nature, with whose aspects they were famil
iar." The pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem to
worship its King, were now to find him for the Holy
City. For the Jews, strangers were to find the son
of David, the son of Abraham ! a prophetic fact,
pointing far onward to what even now is to come ;
every way a strange fact, and a trying one to the
faith of those foreigners. They were severely tried,
but they stood the trial. Learning less than they
thought to have learned, this they did not despise.
A path was shown them, and though they had little
encouragement to follow it from those who should
have gone with them in multitudes, on they went
alone. The high-wrought persuasion of the truth of
their art, common to astrologers, may have had some
thing to do with this, and yet all heaven been glad to
see it. In high resolve there is often safety from un
known dangers, and their quick decision saved them
from the perilous honor of an escort of spies of
Herod ; but their sudden departure must alarm the
tyrant, and his emissaries will soon follow them.
They need straightway to find the Child and to go
from the country. They need a sign from heaven,
not for guidance merely, for other they might find,
but to guide them quickly. They need a sign from
heaven to cheer their hearts. If ever men did, they
deserved one. It was to such men, in these circum
stances, that the guiding of the star was given. And
it was given in the hour of miracle — for that the

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. I 19
supernatural was very manifest at the birth of our
Lord is the most natural of all things.
Because it was the most spiritual of the nations,
great wonders were shown to Israel ; pre-eminent
signs were displayed before the most spiritual three
of the disciples ; and so, to the most spiritual men
of the world the guiding of the star was given.
This miracle was as well suited to the calling, to the
virtue, and to the instant need of these men as if
only they were thought of; and yet, has world-wide
lessons, fitting to the world-wide time, and to their
character and office as representatives of the mercy
of God in all the earth, and as witnesses of it to all
the nations. It has lessons of truth that reach out
far toward other truths, and lead far into the mys
teries of the kingdom of heaven.
THE LESSON OF THE MIRACLE AS TO NATURE-
WORSHIP.
The witnesses of this miracle were of the nations;
and its immediate great lesson was appropriate to the
nations, rather than to the people of Israel. This
great lesson was uttered against Nature-worship ;
and to comprehend it the mind with patience of
thought must strive to comprehend Nature-worship —
then, and now, the worship of the majority of the
human race.
Nature is a word not easy to define. It is used
with different meanings, and with different shades of
the same meaning, in consequence of man's vacilla
tion as to what he would express by it. Sometimes
it means the whole scheme of things ; sometimes its
11

120 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
laws ; sometimes it means that which makes a thing
what it is in distinction from every thing else ; some
times a semi-deity. Its meanings, all taken together,
point to all that is not God. This includes them all,
and fills out the widest compass of the word. The
root-meaning of the word is, that which is born ; and
this idea in the word brings out a contrast between
the idea of Nature and the idea of Him who is. For,
as Nature exists but in birth and change, it is in this
an antithesis of Him with whom there is no shadow
of changing.
Worship includes in it Reverence and Service ;
and, as hereafter used, Nature-service is to be under
stood as having in it some touch of Reverence ; for,
even in Christendom, men serve passion and pleasure
with a love, zeal, a self-abandonment, a prostration
of soul, a sacrifice of themselves and of others, that,
essentially, is worship. Christendom is a great and a
real fact, but those who come into it from Persia,
India, China, or Japan find in it much of heathenism.
The religious symbols of the old gods have passed
from Christendom, but not the old gods themselves.
In Christendom no temples are consecrated to Bacchus,
Venus, or Mars, but the sacrifices to Wine, and Lust,
and War are costly, and the worshipers of Mammon
are many. It is written, Covetousness is Idolatry :
there is, then, a Service of things in Nature, that is,
a Worship of them ; and, in its widest meaning,
Nature-worship has two forms, one expressed in
religious rites, and the other not. It means all
Service, as the word is here used, paid to aught save
God, and thus denotes the Life of fallen man.

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 121
OF THE PREVALENCE AND POWER OF NATURE-
WORSHIP.
It is not the least curious of all the many facts
found out in this century, that long before the Chris
tian era some of the Hindoos held that in all the
varieties of Nature-worship, as expressed in religious
symbols, there was unity of idea. In this they
were right. Deep down beneath all facts or forms
of idolatry, at last is found the underlying hope that
the World is God, or that God is the World ; feelings
distinguished as Atheism or Pantheism, yet coming to
the same thing, as each is unwilling to say Creator, or
Father. The hope that nature is all and there is no
God beside, and the hope that God is the only sub
stance and all else that seems to be is illusion, are
the two sides of the same lasting heresy. The latter
was the more prevailing feeling in the Hindoo heart.
This dream of ancient India was never fully dreamed
out in less speculative Europe while Nature-worship
as a system of religion there survived ; but, every way
strangely enough, a little after the middle of the
seventeenth Christian century, at Amsterdam, the
pantheistic spirit of Indian heathenism took posses
sion of Baruch Spinoza, a Jew by birth, but disowned
by his own people, and some time after it entered into
a succession of thinkers, his kindred in soul though
not in blood, the most famous of them three Ger
mans of the present century, Fichte, Schelling, and
Hegel, men of subtilty, of patience in crooked think
ing, and " mad at the root." Each of these patented
the old heathenism as a new invention of his own.

122 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
Each petted it in his own fashion, and uttered it in
words of his own coining. In various disguises, and
with oracular speech, they sent the old heresy forth
on travels far and wide ; and no small part of the cult
ure of Europe has listened to it as the opening of
every secret, the sum of all knowledge, the latest and
the last word of truth. Yet, in the long time this
ghost was working his way underground from the
Ganges to the Rhine, he gained little in ideas and
lost in clearness of speech. On through interminable
volumes his unholy, barbarous jargon runs, while dev
otees mistake obscurity for wisdom, and the less they
understand the more they admire. This philosophy
is so extravagant in its claims, so clumsy and so dark
in its utterance, that it only becomes intelligible
when it is clearly seen that its aim is to explain the
inexplicable mystery of Creation. This being its aim,
it must and does, in all its rival sects, start from, and
it must and does come round again at last to the old
Hindoo assertion, that the Creator and the created
are the same. This assertion is the beginning and
end of all this Teutonic Brahminism, whose philo
sophical explanation of Creation is merely a denial
of the fact. Between the point from which it starts
and to which it comes back it does nothing but re
iterate this assertion through all the realm of Nature
and all the realm of History. Its positive, its ob
scure, and its continuing reiteration of it, it takes to
be the proving of an assertion which contradicts the
reason born with us. Even the words that set it
forth contradict it. They cannot do otherwise, for
there are no words that do not contradict the foolish-

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 23
ness of the Atheist or the Pantheist. Language
cannot do their godless bidding. They torture, they
mar, and they barbarize it, but all in vain ; Language
is not the slave of the human will ; the soul is so
made that its utterance cannot but witness to its
Maker. In this barbarous philosophy a very wide circle of
error in space and time is at last rounded by Hegel
into completeness. But here neither its history nor
aught else about it has any place, save the one fact
that it is a justification of all idolatry, a resurrection
of heathenism, which in Europe, though not every
where buried out of sight, was long ago charitably
thought to be dead. In its weird uprising it repeats,
as before, that God is the phantom of the mind, the
soul's own being, every-where projected before and
around it, and mocking it from the stars, the waves
and all that seems to be, and is naught but the soul
itself — one's own shadow on the wall ; self, wall, and
shadow equally Him who being every thing is noth
ing. The conclusion, then, of this philosophy is this :
When man, by as unintelligent an impulse as stirs
the winds or the tides, is moved to worship, he may
worship one thing as reasonably as another. Thus
rises the Pantheon again, on a foundation broad as
the world. What heathen Rome, or Greece, or As
syria, or Egypt did, is more thoroughly done. Every
hill is consecrate, and grove and stream, each bird
or beast, each reptile bred in slime, and creeping,
biting, stinging thing.
Of this philosophy, which comes here from over
the sea, as the cholera bred in Hindoo filth came

124 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
from Europe, ship-borne to these shores, breathing
death, the crowning dogma is, that God rises to con
sciousness in man. It has an incoherent, contra
dictory, jumbled notion (if it can be called even a
notion) of a universal something which, within the
ground, is the constituting principle ofthe ground, and
also the very ground itself; which blindly outstruggles
in mastodon, or crocodile, and all the reptile crew;
and, as out of the ocean the flying-fish darts up into
the world of light and air, rises into a higher world
of being in man. This philosophy may here seem
to appropriate to itself somewhat of the old heathen
notion of the Soul of the World ; but in the center
and height of this nonsensical blasphemy, namely,
that God comes to self-consciousness in man there
is an egotistic vanity, a crazy arrogance, an utter
foolishness that classic heathenism would have been
ashamed of. By one who knows any thing of him
self, or of the Allwise Creator of men, this heresy is
apprehended with difficulty ; and any one who appre
hends it at all, and is not morally insane, must recoil
from those who utter it, abhorring their low thoughts
of the Most High, and loathing their silly conceit of
their miserable selves.
But, again, nothing of this madness concerns us
here, save the fact that this philosophy makes each
low passion, each vile man, divine. Thus the altars
to Tiberius, at whose sins Rome shuddered, thus the
altars to crazy Nero, rise again. The madness of
Caligula, who would have compelled the Jews to
worship him in the Temple at Jerusalem, becomes
respectable, he having the wish to enforce the wor-

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 25
ship of himself, while they, who scorned this degrada
tion, were stiff-necked because of their ignorance.
Thus, with an arrogance in sin which the bounds
set to human guilt do not permit to be greater,
the Culture of that strange old transatlantic World,
where men seem ever learning and never able to
come to a knowledge of the truth, gives an exhaust
ive justification of their groveling and polluting idol
atries to the half-civilized and barbarian worlds.
Most manifestly, then, tlie wickedness that, denying
the living God, builds temples to Nature, and though
in body exorcised from Christendom thus comes back
in spirit, can be rooted out of the Earth only with
difficulty. OF THE PURPOSE TO DO AWAY WITH NATURE-
WORSHIP.
The soul hides from its Maker behind every other
object of worship. Creation worshiped is creation
interposed between the soul and its Maker ; and if
he would reclaim his erring creature to himself he
must do away with all such worship. His purpose
to do away with the worship of Nature, and his pur
pose to do away with the service of Nature, that is
essentially a worship of it, so blend, that when the
one is attained the other may still be furthered by
the revelation of the means used for the former.
This is possible, because whatever enforces the truth
that the Creator is the only object of Worship sets
him forth as the true object of Service. These two
purposes went on together ; but the former was the
more prominent for a time ; and the first chapter of

126 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
the Bible, the first command of the Ten, and the
bent of the Miracles of old, were directed against
Nature-worship. It seems probable that Nature-worship would yield
long before. Nature-service showed signs of any very
great impression being made upon it. And when
the set time was fully come for doing away with
Nature-service, God sent his own Son into the world,
the Holy Ghost came from heaven, and the whole
Bible was given. Since then nineteen hundred years
are well-nigh gone, yet the waters of sin prevail, the
earth is without form and void, darkness on the face
of the deep. Very long and very difficult the doing
away with the Service of Nature ! So long, to human
thought so slow, that to some the work seems to have
begun only to fail. And shaken is the faith of those
Christians who try to measure, with the radii of the
circle of a year or a life, the Time-cycles of Him who
inhabiteth eternity. Let such remember the diffi
culty of doing away with the worship of Nature
among one people only. Of that difficulty the sacred
history of that people is one continuing illustration,
for a time not much less than that from the coming
of the Holy Ghost until now. When the glory of the
Lord was like devouring fire on the top of Mount
Sinai the children of Israel cried unto Aaron, " Up,
make us gods !" Seven hundred years later, He who
"worketh hitherto," ever in earnest, and < hastening
on his purposes with all the resources of omnipotence,
had only in all Israel reserved unto himself seven
thousand men who had not bowed the knee in wor
ship of the sun. Yet He speaks of this in words of

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 27
cheer to Elijah, the most fiery soul that ever Israel
knew, yet so disheartened, even after the great public
miracle on Mount Carmel, that he wandered down
into the desert where the fathers of those priests of
the Sun whom he slew by the river Kishon heard
the thunderings and the trumpet exceeding loud, and
there, poorly screened by a bush from the burning
eye of God's great rival, he laid down to die. Who
ever is so in sympathy with this overtried man as to
feel what he had to contend with, whoever will enter
into the spirit of the long war with the Worship of
Nature from when Abraham abandoned heretical
Assyria to when his children for their idolatries were
dragged back there, captives of the Assyrian gods,
will not faint at the slow doing away from the human
heart of the Service of Nature, though ten times ten
thousand years should pass before the earth is filled
with the beauty of holiness.
The idolatry of Western Asia with which Israel
had to contend, through its faith in itself, had strength
known to no other. No sufficient idea can be formed
of it from the idolatry of the classic world ; none of its
wickedness from the sober morality of the earlier
Romans, none of its strong fascination from the
fairy-like mythology of the Greeks. Israel struggled
with it, like a bird struggling with the charming of a
serpent. It could be met only by miracles, swept
from the earth only by the whirlwind of war. Even
miracles did not suffice to hold back the heart of
Israel from the sins of Moab, of Philistia, Phoenicia.
Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon ; nor did they withstand
their enchantments till they witnessed the punishment

128 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
of that guilty world by the Persian, whom, in words
luminous for history, God said he would raise up,
" that they may know from the rising of the sun and
from the west that there is none beside Me" Thence
onward there was no prophet in Israel till one cried
in the wilderness of Judea, " Prepare ye the way of
the Lord." From this point of view, the signs and
wonders of old Hebrew history, from those wrought
in Egypt by Moses to those wrought in Babylon by
Daniel, are so appropriate to what had to be done
and was done, that, to the Christian reason, the natu
ral in that history is good evidence that the miracles
recorded in the Hebrew Bible could not have been
otherwise than so.
OF THE THREE CLASSES OF MIRACLES.
Of miracles there are three great classes or pro
cessions. Those wrought by his Spirit before Christ
came ; those wrought by Him in person ; and those
wrought by the Holy Ghost. There are significant
differences between them. The sphere of the first is
Nature, of the last, Spirit. The class that intervened
partook of the characteristics of each. Its miracles
are transition miracles. They bridge over the chasm
between the first class of miracles and the last. In
some things they are like the first ; in all things they
are types and prophecies of the last.*
* The Edinburgh Review, October, 1864, says : " The Ro
manist believes in the miracles of Scripture ; he believes, also,
that a continuing Church continues to possess the power of
working miracles. The Protestant believes in Scripture mira
cles, but he believes that the power to work such miracles ceased

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 29
When the first class of miracles is compared with
that which followed, it seems adapted to an earlier
stage in the reclaiming of man. The former impress
the senses, the latter the reason. The former seem
more stupendous, the latter are more convincing.
To minds trained up to appreciate the higher pro
cession of miracles which Christ led forth in his own
person, and that invisible procession of miracles, higher
than either, now led forth by the Holy Ghost, the
earlier miracles seem unspiritual though stupendous.
Thus they should seem, for the object was suited to the
subject ; the miracles were fitted to unspiritual ages
that were Titanic in conception, colossal in achieve
ment, the ages that wrought the wonders of Thebes
and Babylon. The colossal miracles of old were for
the purpose of abasing Nature-worship. The colossal
miracles of old were to teach man that he was not
made to be the idolater of Nature. With many
aims, this was one great aim, one great Lesson of the
Miracle of the Guiding Star. And in this point of
view it belongs in the same class with the miracles
of old ; though in them, in the first instance, regard
was had for one people, and in this for all.
OF THE GREATNESS OF THIS MIRACLE.
As the divine method in the reclaiming of man
discloses itself in the world-history, one of its rules
seems to be, to train up a few to be teachers of the
many. Of this the history of the Hebrews is the
after the time of the apostles, for which he can give no very
cogent reason." Evidently, the writer would insinuate, that no
reason ever has been, or can be, given.

130 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
grand illustration and evidence ; and as soon as there
were men fit to give full scope to the truths learned
by the Hebrews, and for truths for which those had
prepared the way, this work was given those men,
small as their number was. There was a varied and
wonderful preparation for their doing this work ; but
all thought of this must here be restricted to the fit
ness of the miracle of the star to aid in the Chris
tianizing of the Roman world.
As this Nature-humbling miracle was the closing
miracle of a long series directed to one end, and
summed up all the Lesson as to Nature-worship
which Israel had learned in all the past, would it not
transcend all the miracles before it, and be the great
est because the last ? a question which merely indi
cates the line of the thought that is to be followed
and not a predetermined conclusion. I am not of
those who know what the Infinite One should do,
and say, and do, and then judge the Gospel by it. I
force no ideas upon the miracle. I learn from the
miracle what the miracle' should be. The Greeks
said, a circle is the most perfect form, and therefore
the heavenly bodies must move in circles ; but the
planets, paying no heed to either assertion, moved on
as before, while their circles covered the skies with
a maze of confusion.. Astronomy was content to
trace the elliptical paths of the planets. The lesson
is a good one, and whether in the world of Nature or
in the world of Grace, let us get at the facts if we can.
This I try to do. I disclaim all speculation. I report
what I see.

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. I3I
THIS MIRACLE COMPARED WITH THAT OF THE SUN.
The comparative greatness of the Miracle of the
Star is brought to its proper test when it is compared
with the standing still of the sun on Gibeon, the
moon on the valley of Aijalon. This was the last of
the procession of miracles that marched with Israel
from Egypt into Palestine, and it was pre-eminent
over them all, as if thus only could it bring that epic
cycle of signs and wonders to its fitting close. Its
occasion was greater than that of any of the train of
miracles that preceded it, for that battle- day grew
out of all the past of Israel and secured all the future.
The battle-day of Marathon is no more to be com
pared with it than Miltiades with Joshua. What was
gained at Marathon and at Yorktown is to be uni
versal and immortal only through what was gained
at Bethhoron. What should we have been had Israel
been hurled down into the chasm of the Jordan, and
driven back into the desert, where it had been train
ing for forty years to fight this very battle ? When
on the verge of that desert the sand-cloud told of
Pharaoh's coming, and from it rode out the horse
men, till on either hand, and behind, was the circling
enemy, and the sea was before those frightened slaves,
then deliverance rightly came by miracle, for so only
could it come. Then by the waters of the Red Sea
it was the hour of the right hand of God. In the
pass at Bethhoron it was the hour of man. To the
good conduct of the children of those herdsmen of
Goshen, bondsmen of Egypt, was then trusted the
world's deliverance from Idolatry, which, tracing the

132 THE MIRAOLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
vivifying of Heat in every thing under heaven, then
as now, universally culminated in the worship of the
burning sun. The battle it was given them to fight
at Bethhoron, they were left to fight without the aid
of miracle.
There is a life in nature of which little is, or per
haps can be, known ; but as it seems to have sym
pathized with its Lord when he was dying on the
cross, so here it may have been in sympathy with his
purpose in this deciding hour ; for when the faithful
people were driving the apostates from the living
God down the long pass that leads to the Philistine
border of the Western Sea, the Lord suffered the
wild fury of the elements to go forth against the fly
ing infidel. It is the pleasure of Christ that nations,
like men, shall work out their own salvation ; and
that prayer of Joshua's, which perhaps might not
have been heard had it been for help in a battle that
was to be fought, was a prayer that he might secure
unto God the fruits of a victory won. On that day
God found, what in the long war with infidelity he
has hardly found again, a man in sympathy with his
own intensity of purpose to destroy it. When Joshua
heard the roar of the elements begin to mingle with
the roar of the receding battle, the spirit of the cap
tain of the host of the Lord so rose to the thought
of the Almighty that the Man was as great as the
moment. Then, for once, there was in a man full
ness of sympathy with God ; and so there was the
intense feeling, the courage like a grain of mustard
seed that can move the mountains. Then, there was,
for once, in a man the faith before which it is the

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 33
Almighty's pleasure that the Laws of Matter shall
dissolve like blazing flax. Then there was that with
out which the Scripture would be incomplete. For
when the Jesus of old commanded the Sun to stand
still on Gibeon, the moon on the valley of Aijalon,
then, there was, for once, in that old prophetic world,
that mystic garden where were sown the seeds of
every future, the full quickening into life of the spirit
there is in man, which in some far Hereafter will
approve itself superior to all the orbs of heaven.
On that great day the greatness of the great Wonder
and Sign is not in the Sun, it is in the Man. By the
prayer of such a man well might the Sun be made
to complete the discomfiture of its worshipers. No
better thing has it done since it began to mark times
and seasons. Find another such hour and another
such man and you shall behold an equal miracle.
Vain the search ! the Spirit of all wisdom said
"there was no day like that before it or after it."*
So great the occasion, and to it the greatness of the
miracle corresponds.
The occasion of the Miracle of the Guiding Star
* Volumes might be written on this text. All history ap
proves its truth. Or rather, it will, when it is written as it
ought to be. As yet there is very little, outside of the sacred
volume, that deserves the name. It is enough to show how far
that which passes as such comes short of the true idea of his
tory to point, among the English, to Gibbon, Hume, and to
Macaulay ; and as further showing the prevailing want in this
order of literature of any true idea of that in which the true life
of history consists, Professor Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles
of the World — a book which as well as most historical essays
deserves a place in a library — may here be referred to. From
this book the Battle of Bethhoron is left out.

134 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
was greater. One cycle of time was ending, another
cycle of time was opening. A conquest, wider than
that of the land between the Lebanon and the Desert,
the Jordan and the sea, was about to begin, even of
the Canaan of the Globe, under the Captain mightier
than Joshua, who said, " All power is given unto me
in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have com
manded you ; and, lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world."
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THIS MIRACLE THE TRUE
TEST OF ITS GREATNESS.
It would seem, then, that the Miracle of the Star
must have been the greater. But surely not in pub
licity, not in quick effect upon the imagination ; for
in these respects the wonder wrought by day above
one army flying and another pursuing, in the great
Light of our heavens, seems to take precedence of
the miracle wrought by night, before a few pilgrims,
in a star. Yet, as the effectiveness of a miracle may
be a better test of its comparative greatness, then,
while the miracle at Bethhoron may have been the
more astounding, the miracle on the way to the house
in Bethlehem may have been the greater.
The older struggle with the idolatry of the Shem
itic races in Western Asia, though mainly within one
people, was more severe than that which broke in
pieces the idolatry of the Aryan races in the Roman
Empire ; and in that older struggle there were mani-

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 35
festations of supernatural power, that, seen from this
altered world, look so strange, that with many belief
in them has changed into wonder and doubt. As
the correspondence between those miracles and that
world is better seen, this wonder and doubt lessens.
And, as tending to relieve those miracles of an air of
exaggeration and unreality, somewhat of that corre
spondence will here be shown : but while, for this
reason, more will be said on this subject than other
wise would have been, it will also serve to show some
what of the difference in spirit between the idolatry
of the older Bible times and that of the Roman
Empire at the time of the Miracle of the Star.
THE FITNESS OF THE OLD MIRACLES TO THE TIMES
OF OLD.
In one night one hundred and eighty-five thousand
of the soldiers of Sennacherib were slain by the angel
of Jehovah. In suddenness this humbling of the
military pride of Assyria was like that of Egypt. But
at the Red Sea Israel could have been saved only by
the quick intervention of superhuman power, while
Sennacherib had withdrawn his soldiers to some dis
tance from the Holy City to abide the onset of an
army marching against him from Upper Egypt. The
need, then, of the later marvel is not so clear ; and
the reason why
The might of the Gentile, urismote by the sword,
Melted like snow in the glance of the Lord,
is, in part at least, iri the audacity that characterized
the Shemitic apostasy from the faith. A clear proof
of that audacity is the message delivered by Sen-
12

I36 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
nacherib's herald in the name of his king to the
citizens of Jerusalem : " Who are they among all the
gods ofthe countries that have delivered their country
out of mine hand, that the Lord should deliver Jeru
salem out of mine hand ? " Sennacherib's belief in
the God in Israel was as real as his belief in the gods
of his own country, and his theological controversy
with the citizens in Jerusalem was only concerning
their comparative power. But whom of the gods of
Assyria does he set forth as superior to the God in
Zion ? Mark, in the words of his herald, Sennach
erib's claim that he himself was a god superior to the
God in Israel. Mark, also, the close of these words
from Isaiah's magnificent Psalm of Triumph on his
death. Poetry more grand has seldom been written,
but in it there is history as well : " The whole earth
is at rest and is quiet. They break forth into singing,
yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee and the cedars of
Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller
is come up against us. Hell from beneath is moved
for thee to meet thee at thy coming. It stirreth up
the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth ;
it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of
the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee,
Art thou also become weak as we ? art thou become
like unto us ? Thy pomp is brought down to the
ground and the noise of thy viols ; the worm is spread
under thee and the worms cover thee. How art thou
fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning !
how art thou cut down to the ground that didst weak
en the nations ! For thou hast said in thy heart, I
will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 37
the stars of God ; I will ascend above the heights of
the clouds, I will be like the Most High."
Even though it be clear to the intellect, a thought
or feeling is apt to have an air of unreality when there
is no sympathy with it ; and it is hard to understand
an exaltation that borders on and passes over into
madness, for to understand any phase of the soul, one
should have a little fellow-feeling with it. Sennach
erib thought he was a god ; he felt he was as truly
so as Jehovah ; and though his thought and feeling
have now become strange, unreal, incomprehensible
almost, that thought and feeling were real to him.
His people thought and felt as he did ; and so, no
doubt, did some in Israel.
In the annals of Greece or Rome there is nothing
quite equal to this. Against nations protected by
their own deities the Romans went forth to wage
victorious war, but always in the name of the gods
of Rome. It was the Genius of the Eternal City, the
Jupiter of the Capitol, that humbled the local deities.
With the Greeks it was the Olympian Zeus. In his
own name went forth Sennacherib to wage war with
the gods of the nations. Thought he they were not
gods ? In his time there was no such thought out
side of the peculiar people, and it was not believed
by all even of them. The message of the King of
Assyria claimed that he had proved himself stronger
than the gods of the cities he had conquered, and in
it he more than evens himself with the God of Zion.
It was in form and in fact a personal challenge to
that Deity. Sennacherib so meant it, and it was so
understood by the citizens of Jerusalem, who heard

138 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR,
his herald, as they crowded to listen on the battle
ments of Zion.
That the king is a representative and vicegerent
of God has ever been a feeling common to all Asia,
and there it has ever tended to pass into worship of
the monarch. All of any similar feeling in Europe
as to the divine right of kings has been but a faint
semblance of the intensity of this feeling in the Ori
ental heart; while in Europe the worship of the
monarch has been almost unknown. Alexander's
affectation of divinity, and the senatorial decrees
awarding divine honors to Roman emperors, were
spiritless mimicries of Asiatic frenzy, hollow tricks
of state-policy, laughed at in private by those who
took part in them in public. Not such the feeling
of Sennacherib, Lord of Assyria and Babylon, proud
inheritor of the daring spirit that built the tower of
Babel. Within the memory of living men antiquity was
the classical world. Rome and Greece filled up the
field of clear vision, and what lay back of them was
so indistinct that they only seemed to be seen. Then
the dark confused background of the time-picture
cleared up. A world opened behind the world. The
Greeks and the Romans seemed nearer to us, and
more like ourselves. As when the traveler from
Geneva to the Valley of Chamouni, journeying through
hills like those of New Hampshire, suddenly beholds
far up in the sky the sharp and bristling points of the
higher Alps, so sudden the apparition of a world older
than Rome or Greece.
Before this, in the world of Hebrew Scripture

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. I39
•
great and awful forms, with nothing like them within
a range of sight, that seemed to reach to the begin
ning of history, awoke uncomprehending wonder.
This was not very trying to faith until in this century
a desire to make the past real, stirred like a new
sense, not in travelers only like Burckhardt, or en
thusiasts like Du Perron, but in the common heart.
Then it became far otherwise. For a generation
trained up to feel that the world began with the
siege of Troy, and familiar only with classic history,
could hardly make real to itself the older world of
Abraham ; or think of Moses, of Balaam, of Elijah, or
ofthe star-led Eastern Magi, as men of flesh and blood,
Christ ever grants new confirmations of his Truth to
meet the ever-varying phases of the human mind ;
and while the new frenzy of inquiry, misled by false
analogies, was explaining away the marvels of Hebrew
history as it had the pre-historic myths and fables
of Greek and Roman story, He changed the whole
aspect of the case by enlarging the bounds of re
corded Time.
For a long while I could never make out why such
abiding memorials were wrought, at so many places
on the face of the earth, in the Ages after the Flood ;
why to Egypt the power was given to build temple
and pyramid that so dominate over the imagination
and haunt the memory, human memorials that will
abide the coming of the Son of Man. I now see
that through these we commune with their builders ;
and know the Time and the spirit that wrought the
more perishable but equal wonders of Nineveh and
Babylon, and the later marvels of Persepolis. In a

140 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
divine frenzy, those early Times wrought for the
Times that are, those monuments of themselves, once
so silent, now so eloquent. With history reaching
only to the classical world, the Tower of Babel and
the Pilgrimage of the Magi were possible only to faith.
The Tower of Babel, impossible in Greece, on the
plain of Shinar was possible. Pharaoh, that hard
man, so lifelike yet so unlike life, impossible in the
modern world, equally so as a Roman Consul or a
Greek General, was possible as the Lord of Egypt.
Sennacherib, impossible as a Roman Emperor, was
possible as a Babylonian King.
Divine manifestations, suited to the men and the
times that have risen from the dead, must have been
unlike those in subsequent ages. Through the resur
rection of a world so unlike' the classical, or the
world that now is, the miracles in Hebrew Scripture
admit of becoming as reasonable to the Reason as
they are certain to Faith ; and this will at length be
clear to all, save those who think that nowhere, in no
circumstances, can God have ever done any thing
they have not seen Him do.
GENERAL EVIDENCE OF THE EFFECT OF THIS MIRACLE
ON THE "ROMAN WORLD.
Inasmuch as the fervor of idolatry in Europe never
was equal to that of the Shemitic races in Western
Asia in the earlier cycles of civilization, the Miracle
of the Star, though less astounding than that of the
Sun, as wrought against European heathenism, may
have had the superior grandeur of greater effective
ness. The strong impression that it had is all I can

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. I4I
attain to. It is not a matter of rigorous demonstra
tion. Yet thus much is certain: while there is no
evidence that the Jewish heart was so touched by
the Miracle of the Sun as especially to distinguish it
from the other Signs and Wonders of their history,
the Miracle of the Star had an especial effect in the
struggle of Christianity with the heathenism of the
Roman world ; and though its power cannot be sepa
rated from the many other influences combined with
it and measured as a thing apart, yet there is good
reason to think this miracle had more to do with the
Conversion of Europe than any other.
To limit the evidence of this to the Guiding of the
Star is too narrow. All the facts that gave occasion
for the miracle, or that were connected with it, should
be taken into the account ; in a word, all the second
chapter of St. Matthew. This chapter was peculiarly
fitted to conciliate the Roman world to Christianity.
Before the age of the Apostles, the people of whom
Balaam truly prophesied, "they shall dwell alone,"
had been dispersed " among every nation under
heaven ; " and the Gospel, going forth from Judea and
preached by Jews, had to contend with a common
and bitter prejudice against the Jews and their
religion. The second chapter of St. Matthew is so
well fitted to take advantage of one of these feelings,
while trying to overcome the other, that the wonder
is some of the celebrity-loving men who have tried
to do away with the Gospel have not set up the
charge that it was most adroitly forged for this very
purpose. In it the Persians are wiser than the Jews ;
Ctesiphon than Jerusalem ; the Magi know of the

142 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
birth of the Messiah while it is unknown to the
Capitol and the Sanhedrim of the Jews.
The Roman and the Greek had come to doubt their
own mythologies ; but their moral sense survived the
decay of their religions, and they were proud of their.
intellectual powers. There was a void in their hearts ;
but they did not feel they were wholly without Truth,
and there was no reason why they should. St. Paul
availed himself of those feelings when he preached at
Athens. What there he did, and much more, was
done by this chapter. In the story of the Magi,
looked at with reference to the human element in it,
there was an opening of the way for the reception of
the Gospel, by a recognition of the Truth among the
heathen, that was conciliating to a reasonable self-
respect. Heathen philosophers could see that in it
heathen philosophy was honored. Those who were
not philosophers could see those Magi, so much
wiser than the Jews, like themselves were not Jews.
The human element in the history was purely such
up to the time the Wise Men left Jerusalem. No
miracle pointed out the New Star. It was a human
and a heathen discovery. And so, too, was the im
mediate finding of the Child, so far as the Jews were
concerned. The divine element in the chapter was equally well
fitted to conciliate the heathen mind to Christianity.
The exclusiveness of Jehovah was his reproach
among the nations. The feeling that He was so,
though most unjust, was very natural to the Jews.
From them it passed into the Gentile mind ; and it
was intolerable to the polished Greek and the strong

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 143
Roman that he should prefer the Jews to them. In
his wonderful guiding of the Magi to the cradle of
his Son this feeling met with a corrective. The
beautiful fact was better than long arguments. It
touched the heart of a heathen as it could not touch
the heart of a Jew ; and it gave to the heart so
touched a sense of the thoughtful kindness of God,
such as a heathen could not gain of any one of his
own deities from all the fables of his mythology.
The Gospel of the Star conveyed to him in a most
beautiful way a thought as beautiful as it was new.
And this chapter was for him. Jacob's part in it was
very little. This chapter was for him, the Gentile.
It was his Gospel, and it was all his.
That the conversion of whole nations ceased after
the tenth and eleventh centuries is worthy of more
thought than seems to have been given to it. One
of its causes was political. Europe, then more or
less Christianized, was barred out from Asia and
Africa by the Mohammedan powers. From the Black
Sea and the Caspian, on the East, round to Egypt
and along the southern shore of the Mediterranean
Sea into Spain, they drew a military cordon which
the Crusades failed to break through. After those
aggressive movements, Europe, in its turn, had as
much as it could do to protect itself from the Turks
down even into the seventeenth century. The ocean
road, from the western coast of Europe around Africa
to the remote and ancient East, hardly began to be
used before the seventeenth century, and the old
route thither by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean
was not reopened till this century. Thus, through

144 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
causes felt as early as the seventh century and last
ing almost to our own day, Asia and Africa became
almost impenetrable. This problem is here referred
to, merely to show, by pointing to one of its various
causes, that its explanation cannot be altogether the
same as the explanation, whatever it be, of another
that looks somewhat like it : namely, that missions
in this century have resulted in no such sweeping
changes as did those down to the tenth century. It
is with no wish to disparage what these later mis
sions — whose end is not yet — have thus far accom
plished, but because the full presentation of my
argument seems to require it, that it is here said,
the heathen (or, to give the meaning of a word that
should oftener have been translated, where it has
been transferred into the English Scriptures from
the Greek,) the Nations may have been addressed
by the missionaries too much as if they had never
had the Truth, or were now wholly without it. If so
this be, it gives countenance to the heresy that
denies the unity of the human race ; and to the her
esy that denies the scriptural account of the Disper
sion of the Nations. A truer view of the nations
sees in them the younger brother to whom the Father
divided the inheritance. With the utter spending of
this comes a keen sense of want ; and where this is
not felt the inheritance cannot be all gone. The
thoughts of some of the more Eastern peoples are
slow ; providentially so ; for this is a consequence of
the languages they spoke after the miracle at Babel ;
and as their thoughts are very slow, so their thoughts
are very old. Some of these peoples are not without

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. I45
some reminiscences of the truth ; not without the
presence in times past, or it may be now, of provi
dential teachers ; and none of them have ever been
without moral sense ; and none without the mercy
of God. The Chinese, one third of the people of the
world, the roots of whose ancient civilization can be
traced into the patriarchal age, the Mohammedans,
one tenth of the people of the world, whose religion
is an offshoot from Judaism, seem not further gone
from the Truth, perhaps not so far, as the Roman
Empire was in the days of the Apostles.
The Apostles were never denunciatory. At the
Pentecost St. Peter went to the edge of the truth
when, in words showing how grandly his soul was
exalted above all natural bitterness of feeling toward
those who murdered his Lord, he told the Jews they
did it ignorantly. At Athens the tone of St. Paul, the
Apostle to the Gentiles, was conciliatory and appre
ciative. Still more instructive and decisive is the
fact that divine Wisdom so ordered the course of
events in the Kingdom of Grace that the Gospel
should, in its opening chapter, bear witness to a like
spirit in the religion of Christ.
There is no reason to doubt the substance of this
second chapter of St. Matthew was well known and
much thought of by the earliest converts to Chris
tianity. Though printing then was not, thinking
was ; and the facts of the new religion were much
thought and talked of. The Gospel to the nations
was the Life of the Lord ; and the apostolic recital
of this must often have been carefully committed to
memory in the sacred congregations. This must

I46 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
have begun before any of the four Gospels were writ
ten, and have continued afterward ; and so the Gospel
then, like the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Command
ments now, was written on the heart.*
There is not one direct reference to any one of our
Lord's parables, not to one of his miracles, nor, save
his birth, transfiguration, passion, resurrection, and
ascension, to one of the many events of his life in all
the Epistles. The entire absence of any such refer
ences to any of the many events recorded by the
Evangelists is startling, yet how accordant with the
supposition of the oral, memoriter teaching of the
Gospel in the apostolic age! So accordant, that it
is good evidence of such teaching, when it is well
understood what the Gospel then was. As the word
is now used, what is the Gospel ? or rather, what is
it not ? The Gospel then was the Life of Christ.
In the middle of the first century the Scriptures were
the Old Testament, and the Gospel-truth in them,
forewritten in types and ceremonies, inwrought into
history, or uttered in prophecy, was shown to the
people in preaching — of this the Epistle to the
Hebrews may be taken as an example. Preach
ing then reproved sin, corrected error, encouraged
righteousness — of this the spirit may be seen in all
the Epistles ; but the Gospel itself was the Gospel
* The written Gospel of St. Matthew went forth before the
others ; and so the fact that the Pilgrimage of the Magi is not
mentioned in those later written Gospels does not even raise a
presumption that it was not a part of all the apostolic preaching
of the Gospel, and has no bearing on the question of its effect
on the nations.

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 47
of the Son of God, or, in the words of St. Paul, Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. The story of his life in
such form and order as the Apostles gave it, and as
committed to memory by others from their lips, this
was, at first, the Gospel. Then, after a time, and
often using zvords and phrases current in that un
written Gospel, and so familiar to the Evangelist in
his preaching of it, came the Gospel according to
St. Matthew ; its peculiar title, followed in all the
others, being in harmony with the facts as here
stated. Then came the Gospel according to St.
Mark ; and this essentially, is the Gospel according to
St. Peter, as thus it might very naturally have been.
Then the Gospel according to St. Luke, which, in
like manner, may be held to be essentially the Gospel
according to St. Paul ; and when the last Apostle
was nigh a hundred years old there came, as from
the bosom of the Lord, the Gospel according to
St. John. What the unwritten Gospel was may be
known from the written Gospel. In this written
Gospel, no utterance of human feeling was permitted,
not one word of gladness when the angels sang Glory
in the highest, not one word of wonder when the
widow's son rose up on the bier, not one word of ad
miration when the Sermon on the Mount was done,
not one word of pity when Jesus was scourged and
crowned with thorns and nailed to the Cross, not one
word of wonder by his empty grave. What Christ
Jesus said and did, not what even inspired Evangel
ists felt and thought about it, this was the Gospel that
evangelized the world. Even before Christianity be
came the established religion of the Empire, it tended

I48 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
to make heathen philosophy thoughtful and moral.
This apostolic mode of teaching and hearing the Gos
pel may be the secret, untold by Gibbon or Guizot,
of that rapid spread of pure Christianity among
the common people to which the Catacombs attest.
When it is again taught and learned in the same way
the Gospel will again have the same power. Restore
this method again, by making Church-members learn
by heart the Gospel according to St. John as their
profession of faith, by making the children learn by
heart the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and the
Gospel, not according to man's device but as given
by the Spirit, will convert the world.
SPECIFIC EVIDENCE OF THE EFFECT OF THIS MIR
ACLE ON THE ROMAN WORLD.
Thus far, only general evidence has been given of
the effect of the second chapter of St. Matthew on
the Roman world ; and from the scantiness of the
memorials of the early Christian ages, specific evi
dence of it is hardly to be looked for;* yet I find

* Of the early and great effect of St. Matthew's narrative on
the imagination, the exaggerations of it in the Gospel of the
Infancy, and in the Epistle of St. Ignatius, (see pages 79, 80,)
may be evidence. Since this chapter was written, I have marked
in the Anti-Nicene Library, vol. ix, p. 195, a Narrative of events
in Persia. As to its date, I have no sufficient means of judging.
It there appears among " Fragments of the Third Century."
Like much of the Apocryphal Gospels it is sheer romance,
though claiming to recite what is " inscribed upon golden plates
and laid up in the royal temples of Persia:" — a country as to
which the writer shows the ignorance spoken of in the Wise
Men, page 4. The Persian King goes to a temple, which is

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. I49
such in the history of the feast of the Epiphany.
Among the sacred events in the life of our Lord, com
memorated in the early Churches by set observances,
such as His Passion and Ascension, was the Mani
festation of His Divine Nature ; and it would seem
that the occasion chosen for this might well have
been His Baptism, when the heavens opened and the
Spirit descended and rested upon Him. The East-
quite after the Greek or Roman style, and is told by the priest
that all the gods are in commotion because Juno hath conceived.
The statues begin to sing, "whatever creatures were within,
whether quadruped, or fowl, k in silver or gold, uttered their
voices," and a star descends and stands above the image of
Juno. Of course, the King calls for all his interpreters ; and he
sends to Judea " some of the Magi, the star showing the way."
They find the mother, whose " color was like that of ripe wheat,
and she was of a round face, and had her hair bound up ; " and
the child, "who was in his second year," and was "in part the
likeness of his mother." To him they offer gifts. The Magi
say : " As we had along with us a servant skilled in painting
from the life, we brought with us to our country a likeness of
them both, and it was placed in the temple with this inscription
upon it : 'To Jove, the Sun, the mighty God, the King of the
Jews, the Power of Persia dedicated this.' "
Evidently the inventor of this extravagance meant to set forth
a conciliatory recognition of other religions, though firmly hold
ing out the supremacy of the true, for when the Star descends
" all the statues fall on their faces." As evidently, he seeks to
take advantage of the popular dislike of the Jews ; for he makes
the interpreters say, " Of Judah a Kingdom has arisen that shall
subvert all the memorials of the Jews ; " and he makes the
Magi report, that in Jerusalem the priests would have bribed
them to hush up the whole matter. The fragment ends with
these words, supposed to have been spoken by the Magi : " We
saw Christ our Saviour, who was made known both as God and
man : to Him be the glory and power unto the ages of ages.
Amen."

150 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
ern Christians did elect this occasion for the feast of
the Epiphany. The Western Christians accepted
this feast, but changed the occasion of it from the
Lord's Baptism to the Worship ofthe Magi, and this
change was acceded to in the East. Every way this
is remarkable ; for in three of the Gospels not one
event is named in the life of our Lord while he dwelt
at Nazareth, in the other but one event is named ;
and thus the Gospel emphasizes the contrast between
the secluded life of the obedient child or humble
workman before His Baptism, and the public and
wonderful life afterward. This, together with what
took place at His Baptism, explains its commem
oration by the feast of the Epiphany ; and, at first
thought, there seems nothing that can be put in its
stead, save the Birth of the Lord, the Miracle at Cana
of Galilee, or the Transfiguration. Neither of the
latter two were chosen ; and, the Birth of the uncon
scious Infant not fully answering to what was to be
commemorated, the feast of Christmas left a feeling
which still required that of the Baptism, whose intent
was to mark the showing of Christ to the World as
God manifest in the flesh. The Gospel almost
seemed to conjoin those two great moments, the
Birth and the Baptism, by leaving all between them
so much of a blank. The reasons, then, determining
the Eastern Churches to commemorate the Baptism
by the feast of the Epiphany were weighty; and the
Worship of the Magi, at first thought, suggests little
reason for the change in the occasion of the feast, or
for its selection at all. Though it is not to be sup
posed that the change is thus wholly explained, yet

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 151
one who traces the course of natural causes as con
joined with spiritual, must in part account for it by
the personal interest the heathen converts, who in
the West especially were the great body of the
Church, felt in the Worship of the Wise Men. They
must have had a peculiar and strong desire that this
might have a place among the sacred festivals; for
the manifestation of the Lord to the Magi seemed
His manifestation to themselves, and their wonderful
recognition of Him His recognition by themselves.
This fastened their thoughts upon it, till it seemed
to them the great event it really was. It quickened
a divine instinct till they felt, a spiritual perception
till they saw the manifestation of the glory of Christ
to the Magi, as proved by their Worship, should be
commemorated as the Epiphany rather than any thing
else ; and the place be given to it which was before
given to the Baptism. Hereafter, in the chapter on
the Manifestation of Christ to the Nations, a fuller
explanation will be presented of the worship of the
Magi than I have elsewhere given ; and, with reference
to this, I would that my readers should here mark in
this change in the occasion of this Feast the feeling
of the Church that in this Worship, or rather in that
of which it was the effect and sign, there was that
which gave it a high place among the mysteries of
Redemption. Another of the holy festivals found its occasion in
the second chapter of St. Matthew. This is, also,
peculiarly convincing evidence of the deep impres
sion it made on the early Christian converts ; for the
philosophic mind must be struck with the commem-
13

TJ2 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
oration of the Massacre of the Innocents ; an event
on its human side so dark and pitiable that it might
seem wiser to have kept it out of sight than to have
so held it up as to fasten upon it the public gaze.
Here, again, it is so far from my heart to deny that a
true spiritual perception led to the election of this
mysterious event for special commemoration, that in
a chapter hereafter I hope to disclose confirmation
of this never before brought to light. But what con
cerns my immediate purpose is, that the natural cause
of this festival may have been that the mind of Chris
tianizing Heathendom in the freshness of its new
emotions loved to dwell in an especial and peculiar
manner on this chapter ; and that each of these feasts
is evidence, and the more convincing the more it is
thought upon, of the strong and deep impression
early made by the train of events which began with
the outshining of the Star of our Lord.
In the view that has thus been taken of the second
chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, its teachings may
seem to have been directed less to the abasing of
Nature-worship than to other ends ; but in the Pil
grimage of the Wise Men there was the " manifold "
wisdom of God working at the same time, and through
the same means, manifold results. Even while it
disarmed the bitter hatred of the Nations toward the
Jews and their religion, its Lesson against Nature-
worship was far from being needless to any of them,
and in the ruder districts of the Empire was as much
needed as ever.*
* See Acts xiv, 1 1-18 : " And when the people saw what Paul
had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lyca-

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 153
THE EFFECT OF THIS CHAPTER ON THE TEUTONIC
RACES.
Besides this, the great work of the Conversion of
Europe was not finished when Constantine proclaimed
Christianity the religion of the Empire, I am not
speaking of how thorough the Conversion of the
Empire may have been, but of the struggle which
followed with the heathenism of the Teutonic races,
of the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Burgundians,
Franks, Saxons, Danes, Normans, and other peo
ples, such as the Huns, from whom the Goths fled as
from barbarians more barbarous than themselves.
Some labor has been wasted of late in trying* to show
that the earlier Conversion of the Roman world was
no great thing ; but it may have a good effect if it
turn attention to the longer, and, perhaps, even more
arduous struggle of Christianity with the North
ern hordes that overran the Empire, and made it
necessary to convert Europe all over again. It was
a little less than three hundred years from the Pente
cost to the decree of Constantine, but the time of the
conversion of those heathen was more than twice
that number of years. Among those forest-born
dwellers in the bosom of Nature, the worship of
Nature was not nerveless and decaying, as within
onia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.
And they called Barnabas, Jupiter ; and Paul, Mercurius, be
cause he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Jupiter
brought oxen and garlands, and would have done sacrifice ;
which when the apostles heard of, they rent their clothes, and
ran in among the people, and scarce restrained they the peo*
pie, that they hadnotdone sacrifice unto them."

154 THE MIRACLE OF IHE GUIDING STAR.
much of the pale of Greek and Roman civilization.
Every feeling of theirs was full of vitality. Here,
again, it is not possible to trace out by itself the
effect of the second chapter of St. Matthew on their
quick imaginations and sensitive hearts ; but it can
be seen, that while there was no prejudice with them
against Christianity as proclaimed by Jews, for they
knew it only as the religion of a vast Empire whose
grandeur, even in ruins, inspired veneration, yet to
them, as heathen and worshipers of Nature, all the
story of the Magi must have had special instruction
and peculiar charms. And that it did appeal per
suasively to their hearts and dwelt much in their
thoughts will not be doubted by one familiar with
the legendary lore which early in the Middle Ages
accumulated around this Pilgrimage, with all the
volume of feeling that at last found so grand an ex
pression in the Cathedral of the Three Kings at
Cologne. The Sun stood still, the Star moved on, and as it
moved drew nations to Christ. Such was its glory
then. Such again shall its glory be. In the cold
eclipse that is beginning to shroud the intellectual
heavens this Star will so shine out again, and with a
light unknown before :
The Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning
Will dawn on our darkness and lend us its aid.
The Sun stood still, the Star moved on ; nor is it
trifling to note this difference, for in the world of
Scripture, as in the world of Nature, nothing is
trifling. This difference between the two miracles

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. 1 55
is the breadth of the difference between the vegeta
tive and the next higher cycle of life ; between the
rooted trees, whose waving boughs prophesy of the
gift of motion, and the animals who, shorter-lived and
less grand to look upon, yet born into a higher life,
are free to roam among the majestic oaks that stand
in the same spot for centuries. This difference be
tween the miracles accords with the fact that the
latter was wrought as one cycle of miracle was pass
ing into another and higher. By the one miracle
Nature was arrested in her course, by the other she
was made to go before man. In that early age, as in
the ages since, Nature led man away from God. In
the grandest visible manifestation of the divine energy
in one great cycle of typical events, Nature all repre
sented in the center of that light and heat without
whose effluence there would be no life, was stopped
in her course. In the corresponding putting forth
of divine energy in the beginning of a new Time,
Nature was made to wait upon man as a servant.
The latter miracle was prophetic of that service of
Nature to man, so wonderfully coming about through
Science, as born anew through Christianity. And it
accords with this, that the witnesses to this prophe
sying Star were men of Science in that old world
then beginning to give place to the new.
THE FINAL EVIDENCE OF THE GREATNESS OF THE
MIRACLE.
These thoughts uphold the Miracle of the Star in
its test comparison ; and yet, after all, it might have
been forever a perplexing fact, that, by all the superior

I56 THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR.
splendor of the sun, the miracle of the Jesus of old
should have seemed greater than that of the Jesus of
whom he was but the type, had not astronomy con
firmed the records of faith by disclosing that some of
the stars surpass the great orb that lights the solar
system. Astronomy here brings aid to faith. It
shows this miracle may have been wrought in a star
with which the sun compares as the glory of the
Jesus of old with the glory of his Lord. And, it will
hereafter be proved, the Scriptures make this cer
tain by revealing that the miracle on the way to the
house in, Bethlehem was wrought in the symbol in
the material universe of the all-creating Lord, in the
Bright Star of all the worlds.
Thus, of the long procession of Nature-humbling
Miracles this wonder and sign was the mightiest, as
it was the last. It summed up the Lesson of them
all. And it is grandly accordant with the long pro
cession of the miracles against idolatry, that the
Lord, who sent them forth by his Spirit of old, Him
self in person closed the series, before he opened that
higher procession of miracles that bridge over the
chasm between the miracles of the old Dispensation
and those miracles that distinguish the new Dispen
sation, wrought not in the unintelligent creation, but
in the heart of man.
From the first the Lord by his free handling of
nature broke up the bondage of man in nature, and
freed him from that idea of its immutability before
which he sinks into worship. The heavens were the
noblest shrine, the orbs on high the universal objects
of idolatry. Well directed then the sweep of the In-

THE MIRACLE OF THE GUIDING STAR. T57
fant arm that swept every heathenish constellation
from the painted sky. At the opening of the Uni
versal Kingdom of the Lord no more appropriate sign
could have been shown to the nations not yet free
from Nature-worship. No more fitting lesson could
have been taught to man, than that Nature, which
before he had blindly worshiped, was thereafter to
serve him. It is more than this. It is a prophecy
of man's dominion over Nature, this day fulfilling. It
is a prophecy that in higher spheres of being is to
have a still higher fulfillment.
The sign thereof was not conformed to the limited
ideas of the time, but while answering to those, was
conformed to the highest conception man would ever
form of the starry heavens. It was shown to the
Representatives of the Human Race, themselves the
sign that all nations in their appointed time and
order would move on to Bethlehem. It was shown
to them as they were about to come into the presence
of the Lord. It completed the cycle of the miracles
of ancient days. It closed the first volume of the
Book of the Redemption of Man.

I58 THE CREATION OF THE STAR.

CHAPTER VI.
THE CREATION OF THE STAR, AND THE RELATION OF
THE UNIVERSE TO THE LORD.
, S Archbishop Trench has well said, on the
story of the Pilgrims star-led to Bethlehem,
the Church " meditates with an interest ever
new, a wonder ever growing, as it more and more
perceives how deep are the mysteries of faith it pre
sents in simplest historic guise."
WAS THE STAR CREATED AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST?
Two facts seem to make against this. The seventh
of those Days, not measured by the sun, which are
classed together in Genesis, is not yet ended ; and
thus it is known from the Bible that the generation
of the earth was going on for a vast indefinite time.
Astronomy tells us that the light of some stars is
thousands of years in coming to the earth. If, then,
the New Star was like one of these, or the time of its
generation like that of the earth, is not the idea of its
creation at the Advent of our Lord an illusion of the
fancy and not a fact for the reason ? This may de
pend on which meaning of the word "create" is
taken ; for by a world-creation the whole world-mak
ing may be meant, or the completion of the process ;
and so the Star may be said to have been created
at the Incarnation if its making was then finished ;
if that which was not so before then became a world,

THE CREATION OF THE STAR. 1 59
Nor would the emission of light by the Star prove that
it was, in this sense, created before, for it is revealed
that the element Light, of which heat, electricity,
and other forces are manifestations, is the form-giving
force in the generation of a world. The revelation,
that in the sixth great Day "the heavens and the
earth were finished and all the host of them," is per
haps more decisive ; yet, as the Earth, with all that
to the senses seems to belong to it, and so far as be
longing to it, was finished then, and as this chapter
is, in the main, a picture of the generation of this
round world, it may be these words are to be under
stood of this finishing.
But, from pressing such hard inquiries the mind is
relieved by the truth, that the unknown and the un
created are so much the same to man, that a star
may be said to be created for him when, coming
within the grasp of his senses, it visibly becomes a
part of his world ; and, so, whatever truth the abso
lute creation of the Star at the Incarnation might
reveal, is revealed through its being then made
known to man. The coincidence of the two events
has the same significance for him as if the star were
then absolutely created ; for a sign to human beings
must be conformed to the human faculties. The ex
istence, then, of the Star before the Nativity does
not do away with the significance of its shining into
the world at the Birth of Christ. Its pre-existence to
that event makes it a more speaking symbol of Him
who was " before the world was."

l6o THE CREATION OF" THE STAR.
THE TRUTH SIGNIFIED BY THIS COINCIDENCE.
To some the coincidence between His manifesta
tion in the world of man and that of His Star may
seem a thing minute beneath the dignity of God — as
if, indeed, such a thing could be — but the fact, that
when the movements of all the worlds were ordered
to an instant, this Star's shining into our sky was
adjusted to a foreseen event — the ground of its
prophecy — accords with what science makes known
of the nicety of the Creator's ¦ work, alike in small
things and in great. Things called great on things
called small do so depend, that for the distinction
between them there is hardly a sufficient reason ;
and none will think the coincidence of these two
events a small thing who see the truth it signifies.
To think it accidental, is almost equivalent to think
ing that all things are given over to blind chance ;
to think it unmeaning, is almost thinking the Father
deludes his children with signs to which no realities
correspond. That some truth, or truths, are shad
owed forth through the simultaneousness of these
two events is one of those ideas which bring with
them their own evidence. What truth, or truths, then,
does this coincidence signify ?
THE THREE SCRIPTURES AS TO THE STAR.
Thrice, and thrice only, in the Bible is the Lord
named with a star. Once when Balaam prophesied
of a King, whom he should see after his own death,
who would be Lord of the realm of the dead, Lord
of the celestial sphere, and yet be a man. He fore
told that one of his ensigns would be a star; and

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. l6l
when the Man was born, who could not be holden of
death, and when a New Star shone out in the heavens
at his Birth, the Gospel recording this answers to the
words of old ; and the truth of the oracle is vindi
cated by its fulfillment. Of these three Scriptures,
the next is the second chapter of St. Matthew. The
phantom-star in the vision of the seer, which fore
tokened the real star at the Birth of the Lord, and
the real star alike signified that the dominion of
Christ would reach beyond this planet. Thus, sep
arate in time from later and clearer revelations of it,
at each of the two epochs, the entry of Israel into
Canaan and the Birth of Christ, there was a fore-
gleaming of this fact. There was at a third epoch
also ; at the beginning of His ministry, in the Title
of his Kingdom ; and before passing on to the last
of the three Scriptures, let us here consider the
space-extent of the meaning of this Title.
OF THE TITLE, "THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN."
In the Greek it is, " The Kingdom of the Heavens."
It is found nowhere but in St. Matthew's peculiarly
Hebraic Gospel. In the rest of the New Testament it
is, so to speak, translated by " The Kingdom of God."
The reason of this may be, that " The Kingdom of
the Heavens" would not have given to the heathen
the ideas it gave to the children of Israel ; for when
the Psalmist cried, "O Thou that dwellest in the
heavens ! " he thought of " God alone," " glorious in
holiness ; '' but to the heathen the heavens were the
abode of a crowd of deities, the like of some of whose
deeds if done by men were punished by the laws.

1 62 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
This translation ofthe title, "The Kingdom ofthe
Heavens" by "The Kingdom of God," brings out
with authority the chief of the ideas in it ; yet our
Lord used both titles. The one is not the exact
equivalent of the other, and it still leaves us to in
quire into its meaning.
It is no casual title. John the Herald cried, " The
kingdom of the Heavens is at hand ; " the King made
the same proclamation ; and when He sent out his
Disciples, he told them to cry, " The kingdom of the
Heavens is at hand." The title by which this king
dom was thrice solemnly proclaimed must be its offi
cial Title.
The official title of a kingdom is apt to be manifold
in meaning. It usually sums, up several facts. It
speaks to all, but says more to the historian, or
statesman, than to the peasant ; and as the same title
has more of significance in the same generation for
some than for others, so the significance of the Title
of an everlasting kingdom might differ, in like man
ner, for different generations. Conveying from the
first some common ideas, its meaning might open
more and more as its eternal year rolled on ; and if
those who heard this kingdom proclaimed did not
receive from its title an idea it could convey, this
might be a natural, perhaps even a necessary, conse
quence of its everlasting significance.
In the minds of those who heard it proclaimed, the
title of this kingdom awakened thoughts as to its
meaning that were somewhat determined by their
thoughts as to the heavens, and still more so by their
thoughts as to the Messiah. Those thoughts were

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 163
imperfect, and are imperfectly known. The bearing
of each of these on the interpretation of this Title
will hereafter be inquired into ; but they are not the
full measure of its meaning.
THE HEAVENS A COMMENT ON THIS TITLE.
The thoughts which the boundless firmament was
meant to call out from the human soul are of real
moment in determining its full significance ; and if
you would decipher all you may of its hidden wis
dom, look up to the skies and listen to what they
are saying. That " the heavens declare the glory of
God," is no late discovery of the telescope. The
heavens have ever been the theme of the musing, re
ligious mind. Believers in the Living God have ever
felt they were his dwelling-place ; a feeling that is the
medium of some unutterable truth, for the Scripture
saith, " Heaven is God's throne." The heavens were
divinely appointed to awaken feelings that else might
not awake. They shadow forth what the soul cannot
grasp/and of which there is no other picture than the
encircling heavens, above, over, beneath, and around
all, the picture-symbol of the all-encompassing, all-
embracing infinitude of God. By day the blue depths
of ether whisper of this mystery. In the night its
shadow passes across the mirror of the soul. Be
yond the widest reach of thought, every way expands
this image of the infinitude of Him whom the heaven
of heavens cannot contain. Heaven is God's throne,
and each planet and each star, as truly as the earth,
is his footstool.
Some undevout astronomers seem to themselves

I64 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
to have dispelled this most religious idea. It looks
to them like a childish notion. They scale the heav
ens ! Up into the clouds they carry the Tower of
Babel ! Through the space-penetrating telescope
they look along the fraction of an inch on the dial-
plate of the universe, and report, not the light in
which dwelleth the King Invisible, but the blazing of
unnumbered worlds. Yet their discoveries touch not
the heavens of the musing, religious mind. Those all-
encircling heavens, where all those worlds float like
clouds in air, remain. The telescope, widening their
circle, makes them but the more expressive symbol
ofthe Being above all beings ! Mighty One !
Whom none can comprehend, and none explore
Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone,
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er :
Being whom we call God, and know no more.
The Heavens shadow forth the mystery of Creation.
The ancient thought of Night as the mother of all
things — a dim reminiscence of the story of creation
as divinely told — was upheld by the daily birth of the
visible world from the Darkness. The solemn, relig
ious Night ever awakens the feeling of the Infinite ;
and when from the Night goes forth the Day, then
passes before the soul a semblance of the miracle,
when, through the creation of the world, " the invisi
ble things of God were clearly seen." When from
the unknown the known appears, when from out of
the formless Darkness shines the form-giving Light,
then shines out in the soul the thought ofthe Creating
Word coming forth from His unsearchable hiding.

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. l6$
Thus, in the light of thoughts and feelings which the
skies awaken, this title, " The Kingdom of the Heav
ens," is deciphered as meaning the Kingdom of the
Infinite One, who hath revealed Himself through the
goings forth of the Word, who was in the beginning
with God, who was God, by whom all things were
made, and in whom the Life in Nature was visible
when He became flesh and dwelt among us.
THE OLDEST OF THE DIVINE NAMES.
In connection with this title it is Well to trace in
the Bible one of the Divine Names, a name in us6
long before the Hebrews were a people, and once
common to all the earth. This name, the Highest, or
the Most High, expresses " that earliest thought of
God which rises in- the mind of man as he looks up
ward to the firmament of heaven and is led to believe
in One on high, above him in the infinite distance,
above him and all created things in the infinite per
fection of his nature." * Its first recorded use is in
the Scripture, telling that Melchisedek and Abraham
together worshiped the Most High ; from which it is
certain that west of the Jordan Abraham found the
same religion he brought with him from east of the
Euphrates. Balaam, like Abraham, came to Pales-

* See " Biblical Studies," by E. H. Plumptre, Professor of
Divinity, King's College, (London, 1870, pp, 17-37,) which has
here for the most part been followed in tracing this name in the
Scriptures. He does not speak of any relation between the
Title of Christ's Kingdom and this name, nor of its use in the
more remote East. He thinks there may be a trace of it amorig
the Phoenicians arid their descendants, the Carthagenians.

1 66 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
tine from beyond the Euphrates, and he " knew the
knowledge of the Most High."
In the Books of Moses the name is again heard in
this verse, which contains the whole philosophy of
ancient history, and whose unbroken thought, passing,
in the Gospel, over from the typical nation to the
Christian Church, contains the philosophy of all
modern history as well, in its suggestion of the fact
that the bounds of the nations, and if so, their lan
guage, laws, and development, are ordained of God
with reference to his people, as the parts of the hu
man body are framed, co-ordinated, and distributed
with reference to the heart : " When the Most High
divided to the nations their inheritance, when he
separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of
the people according to the number of the children of
Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people ; Jacob
is the lot of his inheritance." Deut. xxxii, 8, 9. The
world-wide significance of the name, the Most High,
here comes out with great clearness, for the Founder
of the Hebrew Commonwealth uses it when speaking
of the Creator as God of all the children of Adam,
while in the same breath he uses the name Jehovah
when speaking of him as God of the children of Israel.
In the historical and prophetic books this name is
not found again,* until the Israelites knew the em
pires rising beyond the Euphrates. From the Book
of Daniel it seems to have been in common use in
those Eastern regions : " There fell a voice from
* But this name occurs in seventeen of the Psalms, where,
generally, it is used of " the wider sovereignty, the universal
providence of God." See Psa. xlvii, 2 ; lxxxiii, 18.

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 67
heaven, saying, O King Nebuchadnezzar, thy dwell
ing shall be with the beasts of the field until thou
know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of
men. At the end of days, I lifted up mine eyes unto
heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me,
and I blessed the Most High, whose dominion is an
everlasting dominion, and he doeth according to his
will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabit
ants of the earth." Daniel was taught in the king's
palace the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans,
and with him this was the most common of the
divine names : " The kingdom and dominion and the
greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven
shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most
High'.' Nebuchadnezzar, the Assyrian, and Cyrus,
the Persian, in some of their proclamations, used a
title where the thought is so much the same that it
must be regarded as the same title, the God of
Heaven. The Persian name for the Deity being
Ormazd, this was no more a Persian than a Hebrew
title ; and it would seem it must have been older
than the divine names peculiar to either country ; a
name coming down from the days before the Most
High appointed their bounds to the Persian, to the
Chaldean, or to the Hebrew ; and its use by Cyrus,
in his proclamation, " The Lord God of Heaven hath
given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath
charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem,"*
like -its use by Moses, proves, that more than any
other Name, it conveyed the idea of sovereignty over
all the children of men. * Ezra i, 2.
14

1 68 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
In the New Testament, John the Baptist is called
by his father Zacharias, the Prophet, Christ Jesus is
called by the angel Gabriel the Son, of the Highest.
This name is used by the man possessed with devils,
who had his dwelling in the tombs, "And when he
saw Jesus afar off, ran and worshiped him, and cried
with a loud voice, What have I to do with thee, Jesus,
thou Son of the Most High God ? " and by the girl
at Philippi, in Macedonia, who had a spirit of divina
tion, and followed Paul and those with him, crying,
" These men are the servants of the Most High." *
In the ancient Scripture, most closely of all related
to the title of the kingdom of Christ, it is said, the
King of Babylon dreamed a dream wherewith his
spirit was troubled, but it was gone from him ; and
he called on his magicians and astrologers to tell him
his dream and the interpretation thereof; and they
said, There is none other that can show it before the
king except the gods whose dwelling is not with the
flesh. Then the king's decree went forth, that they
should be slain, and with them Daniel and his fellows.
Daniel besought of the King time, and of his com
panions that they would pray to the God of Heaven.
Unto Daniel the secret was revealed in a vision of
the night ; and he blessed the God of Heaven, and
said, There is a God in Heaven who maketh known
unto the King what shall be in the latter days.
Thou beheld a great image, its brightness excellent,
and the form thereof terrible. A stone was cut out
* See Luke i, 76, and 32, 35. Mark v, 7. Luke viii, 28. Acts
xvi, 17. It is used also in the speech of St. Stephen. Acts
vii, 48,

RELATION OF TH% UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 169
without hands, which smote the image, and the iron,
the brass, the silver, and the gold became like chaff,
and the wind carried them away ; and the stone that
smote the image became a mountain and filled the
whole earth. Thou, O King, art this head of gold.
After thee shall arise another kingdom ; a third,
which shall bear rule over all the earth ; the fourth
kingdom shall be strong as iron ; and the God of
Heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall consume
all these, and it shall stand forever. With this should
be joined the vision of Daniel himself: Behold, one
like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven,
and came to the Ancient of days. And there was
given him a kingdom, that all people, and nations,
and languages, should serve him : his dominion is an
everlasting dominion, and his kingdom shall not be
destroyed. (See Dan. ii ; vii, 13, 14.)
In the title of the kingdom which he proclaimed
the Lord Jesus Christ revived the most ancient and
universal of all the Divine Names. He proclaimed
the Kingdom of Him whose name on the lips of
Melchisedek in the West, of Balaam from the High
lands of the Upper Euphrates, of the Chaldean King
of Babylon, and of the Persians, was the God of
Heaven ; a name that, surviving from the age of the
Great Flood, in the remote unchanging East, is still
known in the mountains of Thibet, and is heard in the
Worship of the patriarch-priest-Emperor of China.*
* Pekin is the Rome of China. In it are many garden-rsanc-
tuaries, with altars in the midst of groves, as, to the Earth, the
Sun, the Moon. The most venerated is known as the Temple
of Heaven. This is a spacious park, in which are two altars,

170 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST,
Thus viewed in the light of history this Title points
to the Kingdom of all the earth ; viewed in the light
raised on triple marble terraces. Near one of these is a circu
lar building called the Palace of Heaven. In it there are no
images. There, in the spring, the Emperor prays for a harvest.
The other altar is a quarter of a mile distant. There, once a
year, is sacrificial worship of the God of Heaven. In a carriage
drawn by elephants, kept for that ceremony, the emperor comes
and spends the night in the Hall of Penitential Fasting. Before
the dawn he mounts from terrace to terrace up to the altar;
where a bullock is sacrificed in a furnace. The name of the
altar means light-giving. All the nobility of the court are on
the steps of the terraces. The light is from the burning sacri
fice. This the emperor, alone, offers to Shang-Ti, Supreme
Lord of Heaven. This name the missionaries have adopted to
render the word God. There seems to be no idolatry in this
the most solemn service of the State religion of China. This
religion is confined to the capital. It is different from the three
prevailing religions of the empire, the Buddhist, the Confucian,
and the Tauist. The emperor is the only priest of this State
religion. It seems a relic of the age after the Great Flood ;
when, every-where, the patriarch-priest of the family or tribe
worshiped the God of Heaven. The only change seems to
be that at Pekin, the patriarch-priest has become the priest-
Emperor. In these, and other altars at Pekin, are traces of the old,
mystic science of numbers, spoken of in the Wise Men, p. 75 n.
The ascent to each of the three terraces has 9 steps. The
pavement on the circular top has "9 circles of marble slabs.
The central circle has 9 slabs, the second 18, and so on, till the
number in the uttermost is 81, the square of nine. This numer
ical symbolism runs into the steps, balustrades, rails, and other
parts of the structure. It is described in official accounts of
these altars. Odd numbers, as 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, enter into the con
struction of the Altars to Heaven ; no doubt, as suggesting
something of indefiniteness, and so of infinity. The numbers
are even in the Altar to the Earth at Pekin. Its paving bricks
are multiples of 6 and 8. The Altars to Heaven are circular ;
the Altar to the Earth is square.

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 171
of nature, it points to the Kingdom of Him who re
veals himself in creation. Viewed in the light of the
Gospel, this world-wide title becomes wider than this
world and points to the dominion over all the worlds,
which the Father gave to the Son after his death on
the Cross, even that of which Christ spake when he
said, All power is given unto Me in heaven and in
earth. This title, then, whose usual meaning is the King
dom of Christ on earth, is of manifold meaning.
Through the contrast of the calmness of the heavens
with the turmoil of earth, it gives the idea of a
kingdom of peace ; through that of the heavens as
His dwelling-place, of the Kingdom of God; and
when the mind turns from its character to think of
its extent, it hints that each star is a province of
that Kingdom ; and its physical glory the comple
ment of its spiritual glory. This last thought is in
the corresponding phrase also ; for universality belongs
as surely as holiness to the Kingdom of God.
A DIFFICULTY AS TO ALL OF THE BIBLE.
It may be said, You read this Title in the light of
Astronomy ; you set forth ideas of the nineteenth
century ; the modern thought of the Universe, with
its numberless worlds far greater than the Earth, was
unknown to those Hebrews who heard this Kingdom
proclaimed ; how, then, could its Title include them ?
Are we not bound to take it as they did ?
The answer to these questions meets with a diffi
culty as to the whole Bible. Much of Scripture is
plain beyond any thing else ever written. " Like as

172 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
a Father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth
them that fear him ; for he knoweth our frame, he
remembereth that we are dust," are words as plain as
they are old. To them " the common pulse of man
keeps time." Yet, sometimes, there is a deal of diffi
culty iri fixing the relations of forms of ancient
thought in Scripture to forms of modern thought;
as, sometimes, there also is in fixing the relations of
its Oriental to Occidental forms of thought, and of
translating to Europe the feeling as well as the words
of Asia. Fully to do this, as to the former, would be
the triumph of interpretation. It is something even
to see, that the truths of Scripture, so far as given
under the forms of thought, of a Time-Cycle whose
course has run, must pass into corresponding forms
of thought of a Time-Cycle of wider sweep and fill
its utmost compass, while yet unchanged in its
essence. If the Bible can thus pass from the Old
Time World and fill the New, it is an indestructible
thought of the Eternal Mind ; and it will pass un
harmed through the future Time-Cycles of this
Planet, even when it shall rise from its ashes.
Whether the Bible is to be in the future the ac
knowledged master of all Thought, much depends
on this finding of itself by the Thought of the new
Time Cycle in the revelation given in the old Time
Cycle. But this is a difficult and great thing. To
track the windings of a Thought through the ages ; to
identify it, as, like a comet, it appears at different
points, in different forms, at different times ; to see
it as a star that is seen for an instant and then is
hidden in mist and cloud, remaining as a rnemory and

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 73
not as a presence, till the tempest sweeps the face of
heaven and it shines again for the mariner ; to watch
and wait while God hides it in the hollow of his hand,
cherishing and fostering it till it breaks forth in sud
den luxuriance of growth ; to see the tomb-buried
seed growing like the cedars on Lebanon ; to trace
in and from the Bible the course of all the rivers
that have silently and invisibly descended from above
the clouds ; to find all the fountains of every Nile ; all
this is not the work of one generation. And yet any
new Thought may and should find itself in the old
form of Scripture words, and in so doing it will find
that germ in which is both its principle of Life and
its Law of Growth.
Here there can be shown only a little of the bear
ing of this, by answering the questions just asked.
It is said, "the Hebrews did not have the modern
idea of the Universe." What is that idea ? Can the
notions, theories, and facts of any one, or of all the
sciences, be adjusted into any satisfactory answer?
Who can tell what the universe is ? Who has
stretched the line upon it ? Who can tell what is in
it ? Motion and change seem to be conditions of its
being, but who can tell how it conies, or whither it
goes ? It is said, the astronomical idea is, that the
universe is the creation of the one God : if that be it,
those Hebrews to whom mdny think the all-wise
Creator of man could have taught little of things
heavenly, because they knew little of things earthly,
knew that much better than some men of science
know it now. How does Astronomy know that ?
As Astronomy it knows it nbt at all. Its comments

174 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
on the fact are new and grand ; but it gets the fact
just as the Hebrews got it, however that may have
been. It is further said, The astronomical idea of the
extent of the universe is more sublime than that of
the Hebrews. It may be so ; but it is time that a
little tardy justice should be done to the thoughts that
were of old.
In lieu of the modern idea of the breadth of the
heavens, the Hebrews had an idea of their height
quite equal to it in grandeur. It was that three
fold idea of the heavens, of which there is a trace -in
the words of St. Paul ; of the heavens where the
winds blow, the clouds gather, the storms move on ;
beyond this, of the heaven of the sun, moon, and
stars ; and still beyond, of the heaven of heavens,
from whose unutterable height God looked down to
behold the things in the lower heavens and in the
earth. The old thought could no more measure their
height than the new thought can measure their ex
tent. The old thought was lost in the one, as the
new is lost in the other. Each passes the picturing
power of the mind.
Modern Thought loves to project into the second
heavens the spectrum of the first. When some of
its nebulous clouds are resolved into the commingling
blaze of distant worlds faintly gleaming along the
void it feels disappointed, rather liking to get lost in
star-mist and to flounder about among forming and
dissolving nebulosities like a Parisian balloon escaping
in fogs and clouds. The Hebrew picture of the
second heavens as calm, untroubled, and silent, may
be as near as any to the existing facts ; and yet

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 75
thought or fancy may play as freely among the
second heavens as among the cloud-castles of the
first heavens ; may have as much star-mist as it will,
and as many world-evolutions ; may repeat, as often
as it likes, in the second heavens, the dissolving
views of the first ; and all will be well if the soul but
say, as Moses said of old, " Behold, the heaven and
the heaven of heavens is the Lord's thy God ; " if round
all it sweep the immeasurable thought of Solomon at
the Great Temple's dedication, " heaven and the heav
en of heavens cannot contain Thee."
To the Hebrews the stars were the revolving or
fixed lights of the firmament, numberless like the
sands of the sea, and declaring the glory of Him
" who calleth them all by their names." * As to
their distance and size their ideas fell far short of
ours, but this quantitative difference is only of de
gree ; and, essentially, their ideas were so like ours
that they might unfold into all that Astronomy has
made known.
* Another Hebrew idea as to the stars comes out clearly in
Job xxxviii, 7 : " When the morning stars sang together, and all
the sons of God shouted for joy." Here, as is usual in Hebrew
verse, the second clause repeats the thought in the first in such
a way as to throw light upon it. The Hebrews thought of the
stars as under the watch and ward of angels, and seem in their
language almost to identify them ; somewhat in the same way
that we sometimes identify the World and Man. In each case
the glory and being of either is for the moment wholly thought
of as being in the intelligence that presides over it. In this
Hebrew thought I find an explanation of words which, till thus
explained, may seem to wear an astrological sense : '' They
fought from heaven ; the stars in their courses fought against
Sisera." Judges v, 20.

176 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
THE SPACE-EXTENT OF THE TITLE OF THE MESSIAH'S
KINGDOM TO THE SPIRITUAL IN ISRAEL.
But did the Hebrews think the stars were within
the Messiah's kingdom ? As to this it is of little
consequence what Caiaphas thought, though he was
of high ecclesiastical rank ; or what Gamaliel thought,
able lawyer that he was ; or what the people thought,
though they read in the Law that " Christ abideth
forever." Spiritual things are spiritually discerned ;
and in this, and all similar inquiries', the thoughts of
the most spiritual are to be sought for, and in their
most spiritual moments, for the search is into the
depths of thoughts which, though human, have in
them something that is divine. That must be for us
the Hebrew interpretation of the space-extent of the
Title of the Messiah's kingdom, which is the highest
possible to men like Joseph of Nazareth, Zacharias,
and Simeon ; to women like Elizabeth and Anna.
Saints like these must at times have had such an
idea of the dominion of the Messiah as would in
clude the realm of the universe, wide as that realm
might unfold. Not that they often rose to this
height. Heart answers to heart though ages lie be
tween ; and on this their hearts, like ours, could not
take an ever-abiding hold. Their more common
thought must have been of the Lamb of God who
taketh away the sins of the world ; yet they read the
divine names of the promised Lord ; of the angels
commanded to worship him ; of his coming to the
Ancient of Days to receive the investiture of a uni
versal dominion, and at moments they must have

REIATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 77
thought of his kingdom as including all things. True
it is, and it is evidence of the truth of the Gospels
that they declare it openly, they knew not their own
idea of the Messiah when vailed in a humiliation they
did not understand ; still, their belief in his universal
dominion existing before His coming, struggled
through this disappointment, till at last they adored
in Him the fullness of the Godhead bodily. We have
to say this must have been so, rather than it was so ;
but it is to be remembered how few are the words
that utter their hearts ; and with their Bible open
before us, there should be no doubt there were some
of the pious in Israel, wise in the Scriptures, whom
the Star at His Birth, and the Title of His Kingdom,
assured that the rule of the Messiah would be over
all there might be in the heavens.
The Interpretation that has here been given of the
Title of the Kingdom of Christ disturbs none of the
pre-eminent ideas it commonly conveys. It com
bines with them the idea that the stars are provinces
of the Kingdom of Him who was crucified under
Pontius Pilate. As to many questions it may awaken
it is, of course, silent. And it is not to be inferred
from it that Heaven is in the Sun, or in one of the
Stars ; for it is written, Christ hath ascended up far
above all heavens.
THE LAST OF THE THREE SCRIPTURES.
The third, and last, Scripture where the Lord is
named with a Star, is almost the close of the Bible and
last word of the Lord : " I am the Root and the Off
spring of David, and the Bright and Morning Star."

178 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
Whenever Scripture cannot be understood by it
self alone, other Scripture throws light upon it. In
the first and second Scriptures, where the Lord is
named with a star, one and the same star is spoken
of. In the last, the comparison, implied in the per
sonification, seems to be a specific one. Some one
particular star seems to be the occasion of the figure.
Christ is the Bright and Morning Star. From their
very abruptness the words seem to allude to some
well-known star. One such Star there was, and only
one. Balaam's prophecy had made one Star well
known to the Hebrew Church ; its fulfillment had
made it still more so to the Christian Church ; and
the presumption is very strong that this Star, fore
told and recorded, this familiar Star, gave the occa
sion for this image. This becomes a certainty when
it is called the Morning Star ; for the epithet iden
tifies it. It is the Star of Bethlehem. It is the
Morning Star of the Great Day that opened in the
Eternal Year, when the Word took unto Himself the
Human Form.
Astronomers marked this Star as it appeared amid
the constellations' visible to man. Their knowledge
of it passed away. This may have been by some di
vine decree, lest the Star should be worshiped ; but
the Scripture reveals truth of higher worth as to this
Star, and through which it is, perhaps, possible this
lost scientific knowledge may be regained.
Few the words so comprehensive as these, of all
that mortal ear hath heard : "lam the Root and the
Offspring of David, and the Bright and Morning Star."
Dr. South well says of the first clause of this verse :

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 79
" Though the Book of Revelations be confessedly a
book of mysteries and a system of occult divinity, it
can contain nothing more mysterious and stupendous
than the mystery wrapped up In the words where we
have Christ declaring Himself the Root and the Off
spring of David" These words set forth our Lord's
whole relation to man ; and in comprehensiveness and
grandeur the words "and the Bright and Morning
Star" must be their counterpart.
But why above all the stars, is the Star of Bethle
hem the emblem of the Lord ? On this light is
thrown from the words, " I am the Root of David."
Here the thought is more comprehensive than the
words ; the thought takes in the human family ; the
words are limited to a section of its most living fiber,
to a section only of that central line of life which is
traced by St. Luke for four thousand years, from
Adam to Christ. The thought comprehends the
whole family of man, the words are limited to its
pre-eminent house, the house of David. Seeing this,
and seeing there must be something of correspond
ence in the two parallel clauses of the verse, " I am
the Root and the Offspring of David, and the Bright
and Morning Star," there is seen the relation to the
universe of the Star with which our Lord identifies
Himself. The stars differ in glory. The planets circle round
the sun. Some mysterious movement pervades the
deep of worlds ; and these things may hint at some
pre-eminent star, holding a central relation to the
universe. But here let us think quietly; the word
central, though here convenient, means too much, is

180 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
too definite, and must be used somewhat figuratively.
For the shape of the universe is- unknown ; and the
circling of the planets round the sun, with other facts
like this, are partial facts, which may no more point
to that form, than its blood-currents, or the play of
its atoms, point to the human frame. Nor is it cer
tain that the size of a world would determine its
rank ; for in the human body the rank of the organs
does not correspond to their bulk. It were wiser,
then, to avoid any too precise expression as to the
rationale of the pre-eminence of this Star ; saying
generally, its relation to the universe would, if known,
be more suggestive of the creative glory than that
of any other of the orbs of heaven.
This must be true of the Star of Bethlehem, for it
is the divinely-chosen emblem of Him whose goings
forth constitute that Time-world which, all summed
up and expressed in the word Day, the Timeless One
contrasts with his Eternal Being when he saith, Be
fore the Day I am. So far as a material emblem
could do this, these unutterable facts were symbol
ized by the Star of Bethlehem, the Bright Star
of all the worlds and Morning Star of the Day
when the Word, without whom there was not any
thing made, took up unto Himself the spirit and
the body of man, and visibly made the Universe
one in Himself who is its center and its source.
Thus, the form of the utterance in the last clause
of the verse, I am the Root and the Offspring
of David and the Bright and Morning Star, correr
sponds to the form of the utterance of the thought
in the first clause ; and the truth in the one equals

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. l8l
the truth in the other in comprehensiveness and
sublimity.THE CREATIVE AND REDEEMING WORK, IN ONE VIEW,
THE SAME.
Each of the Scriptures consulted give some inti
mation of the truth that seems clearly to come out
from all of them together, that the Kingdom of the
Lord Jesus Christ is over the starry worlds ; and
this continuous, related interpretation is established,
when that, which these four Scriptures intimate, other
Scriptures plainly reveal. Those other Scriptures
seem to set forth the work of the Lord redeeming
as the completion of the work of the Lord creating.
One of these is the prelude to the Gospel of St. John,
which, with an almost legal carefulness and precision
in the balancing and repeating of phrases, utters the
most luminous, and yet the most profound, thoughts
ever written down by mortal hand : " In the be
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
The same was in the beginning with God. All
things were made by Him ; and without him was
not any thing made that was made. In Him was
Life ; and the Life was the Light of men. And the
Light shineth in darkness ; and the darkness over-
taketh it not. There was a man sent from God,
whose name was John. The same came for a wit
ness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men
through him might believe. He was not that Light,
but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That
was the True Light, which enlighteneth every man
that cometh into the world. He was in the world,

1 82 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
and the World was made by Him, and the World
knew Him not. He came unto his own and his own
received Him not. But as many as received Him,
to them gave He power to become the sons of God,
even to them' that believe on his Name ; which
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word
was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld
his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the
Father,) full of grace and truth."
On first reading this might seem to recite the glory
of the Lord creating, to enhance the glory of the
Lord redeeming ; but, as it is read, and re-read, and
meditated upon, there comes the feeling that there is
in it deeper meaning ; that, in the mind of St. John,
the idea of the Lord redeeming was so identified
with that of the Lord creating, that what are usually
thought to be two offices of the same Divine Being,
must, in some sense, be one. This impression each
one must gain for himself, if at all ; yet one word
may help toward this : The thought of the Word
Creating, that opens this Scripture, may seem to be
lost sight of, from the third to the tenth verse, yet it
runs unbroken through it all. The apostle, as seen
from his first words, had in mind the first chapter of
Genesis. From it he took that figure of Light which,
throughout these verses, sets forth the Word ; and
by this figure he meant to keep before the mind the
creative office of the Word, the thought of which is
the key-note of this prelude to his Gospel. It is
heard in the first verse ; and, that it may not be
forgotten, suddenly it strikes in, loud and clear, in

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 83
the tenth, " the world was made by Him!' It ever
should be in our thoughts as from the Word in " the
beginning," the apostle leads them on to the Word
made flesh and dwelling among us :
" We have redemption through His blood, even the
forgiveness of sins ; who is the image of the invisible
God, the first-born of every creature; for by Him
were all things created, that are in heaven, and that
are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers :
all things were created by Him, and for Him." Here
the Apostle Paul reproduces the impression made
by the Apostle John. In this Scripture the office of
the Word Incarnate is felt to be the same with His
office in " the beginning," when by Him " all things
were made." It so blends the thought of the Lord
creating and of the Lord redeeming, that the dis
tinction between them disappears ; and it becomes
certain, that from some point of view the one may be
seen to be the completion of the other. (Col. i, 14.)
THE CROSS, THE FINISHING OF THE REVELATION OF
GOD IN THE UNIVERSE.
As the angel who foretold the Birth of Christ to
Joseph said, He saves his people from their sins.
For man this is the greatest of all facts ; and also for
the angels who never sinned, it is the greatest of all
facts. For though the expiatory suffering of the Son
of God avails for sinners as it need not, and does not,
avail for the holy angels, yet the Cross is the finish
ing of the whole Revelation of the Divine. Well
may the angels desire to look into it ; for, in this
15

184 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
point of view, its intent and scope is not limited to
the World of man. It is the center and height of all
Revelation, to all created Intelligence that now is, or
is to be, in all Space and Time.
In the purely mechanical study of the Creation,
what seem to human thought great difficulties are
seen to be overcome ; but in Creation there are
greater difficulties than these. Revelation is a chief
end in Creation, but can the Infinite be revealed to
the Finite? The inquiry is heard by the Reason
with doubt, and weighed with despair. That which
is to be received must be proportioned to the re
cipient. If so, must not a revelation of the Infinite
pre-suppose, what for the want of a better word will
be called, self-limitation ; and must there not be in
volved in this what for the same reason will be called,
self-renunciation ; or something that seems to resem
ble (though whether it does so is quite beyond our
knowing) that which takes place when a man, stoop
ing to converse with a child, holds part of his being
in abeyance, so that it is as if it were not ?
Without being drawn away to consider how far
any revelation of the Infinite to the Finite can fully
answer to its name ; nor whether the possibility of
any revelation must not find its antecedent condition
in that mystery, of which the word Trinity is the
accepted symbol, our thoughts must here be limited to
difficulties shadowed forth in such inquiries as these.
In his self-revealing of the Infinite must not the
Word of God accept the conditions of an outworking
that is to be apprehensible by limited intelligence ?
Must he not come, so to speak, within the limitations

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 85
of Space and Time? But what shall measure the
recoil of the Omnipresent from Space, of the Eternal
from Time ? Who can understand how the Unlimited
can abide the presence of the Limited ? the Perfect of
Imperfection ? the Infinite One of the Finite World ?
How shall the All-wise suffer the presence of error ?
or, mystery or mysteries ! how can the Holy Omni
present God endure to be confronted with sin ? In
the dim, uncertain light of thoughts shadowed forth
in such inquiries as these, something of self-renun
ciation is seen in all the Divine Self-revealing. It
may have been this which the Son of God had in
mind when he prayed to the Father that he might
be glorified, not with his glory as the Creating Lord
before he took to himself the vesture of mortality ; not
the glory he had in his goings forth when he made
the heavens and the earth, but with the glory he
had before the world was ; his thought passing back
through all the ages to when the Holy Three, the
United One, in themselves were blessed, and there
was God alone.
The revelation of the mystery of the Word in all
Nature and in all Life is much lost sight of in the
Church. And yet, only through the seeing of this
mystery in all Nature and in all Life is the power to
see all that is revealed in Christ Jesus. And, there
fore, St. John in the prelude to his Gospel leads our
thoughts on from the wider expression of this mys
tery in the universe to its highest form. Of this
mystery of the Word in all Nature, Hebrew Scripture
is full. The thunder is the voice of the Lord. The
hoar-frost, so beautiful, and under the microscope so

1 86 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
wonderful with its geometrical figures, is "by the
Word of the Lord that runneth very swiftly." Of the
mystery of the Word in life Hebrew Scripture is full.
The tribes of animated Nature are created by the
breath of the Lord ; and, in later Scripture, it is
written, " in Him we live and move and have our
being." How this may be it is not given us to know ;
though after this secret science and philosophy are
ever blindly groping. We cannot understand either
the making or the upholding of a nature, and there
fore cannot understand wherein the difference be
tween them consists. How the Word of God can
be in all Nature, and yet Nature be ; how He is the
upholding ground of Nature, while yet Nature hath
a self-hood of her own, her own forces, properties, and
laws, her own inevitable cycling from birth, through
growth, to decay and change, we cannot tell. At
tempts to find this out run clear through all the
world's recorded thinking. This is the dream of
what is called Philosophy ; a dream more vain and
wild than that of the Astrologers or the Alchemists.
This the philosophy of India tries to find out ; this
the philosophy of Greece ; this the Gnostics in the
early Christian ages ; this Scotus Erigena in the
Middle Ages ; this Spinoza, Hegel, and the evolu
tionists ofthe passing hour. But here human thought
reaches to where it is said, " Thus far but no farther,
and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." The
Eve-born and curiously persistent soul must at last
give over this problem ; and then may hear the same
voice saying, "Faith is the evidence of things not
seen." What is imperfect in the human knowledge

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 87
is made perfect by Faith. Through faith we under
stand that the worlds were framed by the Word of
God, so that the things which are seen were not made
of things that do appear.
The mystery of the Word in Christ none may
fathom ; and yet it explains all things, while it is ex
plained of none. The old thought of man as a micro
cosm, or little world, hath in it ascertained truth ; as
well as the suggestion of much which may yet be
proved to be true. For science has shown that the
body of man is made of the same particles as this,
and all the worlds. It is framed after patterns and
ante types in the lower animals, and in him their
passions and instincts reappear. Man is akin to the
brute and the clod, yet he is akin to the angels. He
is as much above the insect that basks in the sun
beam for its hour as he is below Gabriel who stands
in the presence of God ; and yet, the ends of the
whole orb of created being touch in him. All Life
below seems tending upward toward man ; all Life
before seems preparing for, and prophesying of, man ;
and so, as if one continuous and heightening purpose
were in it all, in the Central Place of Man in the
Circle of Life, and in his all-comprehensive sympathy,
there seems to be a preparing for, and, it may be, a
prophesying of, God-Incarnate.
But yet, though toward man, even from the be
ginning of the world, the lines of the Artificer's
wisdom seem tending, Man fails to re-present in him
self the perfection that seems of him foretold. In
touching him, some of those lines so readily bend
downward that men often tend to a degradation

1 88 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
lower than all the brutes. Man awakens the thought
that he should hold the Central Place in the Creation,
but he does not hold it ; and, therefore, the religious
ly scientific mind sees that his state corresponds to
the record of his Creation and his Fall ; and it sees
man, as he was in the thought and purpose of his
Maker, only in Jesus. In him the Divine Wisdom
in the making of man is vindicated. He is man as
made in the beginning in the image of God; that
man to whom full Dominion over Nature was given ;
and, it seems to me, that some of the marvels Jesus
wrought may have been things natural to such a
man. He was that man ; and he was more. He is
Son of man and Son of God ; and so is the Central
Form, not only in the Human World, but in that
Great Circle of Being whose circumference no created
hand may touch. He is the Center of this Circle
and its Circumference ; for the Incarnation of the
Word of God in the Man Christ Jesus is the " finish
ing" of a mystery that begins with Time and per
vades Space. The Universe is a Temple-shrine. In
that Temple visibly and suddenly the God appears.*
And He is the same who built and upholds that
Temple-shrine, and through whom and in whom it
hath unity, meaning, and end. In the thought of
the World-Artificer, His coming in human form was

* As promised to the saints of old : " The Lord, whom ye seek
shall suddenly come to his temple." Mai. iii, i. In Jerusalem
no doubt. But Christ was "greater than the temple," Matt.
xii, 6, "which was a figure for the time then present," Heb.
ix, 9, of " a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with
hands." Heb. ix, ii.

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 89
before the worlds were made, and may have been
foreshadowed when the Divine Breath was breathed
into the body of man, and he became a living soul.
THE LORD'S DOMINION CONSEQUENT UPON HIS DEATH J
THEREFORE, THE EFFICACY OF HIS DEATH MUST
IN SOME WAY BE UNIVERSAL.
The Word made all things, He upholds all things ;
in the form of man He took all things unto Himself;
and, therefore, it would seem, that the Reason must
acknowledge the Man Christ Jesus, in whom was all
the fullness of the Godhead bodily, as the Head of
the Universe ; yet not one nor all of these mysteries
(if indeed they be not one and the same mystery in
a threefold form) was the immediate efficient cause
of the Dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ over all
things created. Phil, ii, 8-1 1, " He became obedient
unto death, even the death on the Cross. Wherefore
God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a
name which is above every name : that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
and things in earth, and things under the earth ; and
that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father." This Script
ure so clearly reveals that the Dominion of the Man
Christ Jesus is over all created beings, that there is
no need to cite other Scriptures revealing the same
fact. It as clearly makes known that His Dominion
is consequent upon His Death ; and the almost irre
sistible inference is, that in some way the efficacy of
His Death extends beyond this inferior orb and fallen
race. He reigns every-where because He dies ; and

190 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
it would seem that the space-extent of His Domin
ion must be the measure of the influence of His
Death ; that the compass of each must be the same ;
that, as the Dominion of the Lord is universal, so, in
some way, must be the efficacy of His Death. And,
in some way, it is ; for the universality revealed in
express and clear terms as to the one, in terms
equally express and clear is revealed of the other.
In harmony with the impression given by other
Scriptures, that the work of the Lord Creating and
of the Lord Redeeming is, in some true sense, one
and the same, and with the Scriptures declaring that
in Him all things consist, it is written, " It pleased
the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell;"
which seems to mean, that fullness or completeness
by which all the manifestation of Himself through
his Word, in Time and Space, becomes acceptable
unto Him who inhabiteth Eternity. This appears
from the next words, which point to what Christ did
for man, and then reach far beyond the human world.
" It pleased the Father . . . having made peace
through the blood of His Cross, to reconcile all
things unto Himself by Him, whether they be things
in earth, or things in heaven." Col. i, 19, 20.
ALL THE DIVINE, PARTICIPANT IN THE SUFFERING
ON THE CROSS.
Of his Life Christ said, No man taketh it from me.
His suffering, then, on the Cross was voluntary.
" Being in the form of God, He thought it not robbery
to be equal with God, but made Himself of no repu
tation ; and being found in fashion as a man, He

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 191
humbled Himself, and became obedient unto Death."
His Death, then, reached beyond his human nature.
The denial of this is the denial of this Scripture ; and
yet scholastic theology holds, that only the human
nature of Christ participated in his death. The rea
son of this may be in the impression made on the
soul through the senses by the phenomena of Death.
What dying is, the living can hardly know. It looks
like a ceasing to be. The eye sees not the departing
ghost. The most thrilling cry hears no answer from
the dead ; and there are moments when the soul can
hardly feel they live any more. It may be, that be
cause this dark feeling darkened thought, scholastic
theology denied this Scripture ; for when the mind,
freeing itself from the impression made by the phe
nomena of dying, sees in it but a change in the mode
of existence, then, against the fact that God might,
if so He willed, die as a man, nothing can be said
that could not also be said against the possibility
that He could live as a man. The mystery of the
Word living as man lives is incomprehensible ; and
so is the mystery of the Word dying as man dies ;
but the one no more so than the other ; and the pos
sibility of the one involves the possibility of the other.
When the Word became flesh, there was involved in
this assumption of the human nature the antecedent
condition of the possibility of his dying, and the pur
pose also ; for He became, of his own will, like unto
fallen man, in all points, save sin ; and it is appointed
unto fallen man once to die.
His Death saves his people from their sins. On
this their thoughts have ever been, and ever will be

192 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
fixed ; but this thought, not taking its place, or in
any way changing or disturbing it, may be associated
with it : in His giving up of His Life that self-renun
ciation, which runs through the whole manifestation
of God in the universe, reached its foreseen and abso
lute fullness ; the sin of man becoming the occasion,
through the Death of Christ, of the perfection of the
whole Divine revelation in Space and Time. Every
where else in the revelation of the Divine, the Word
who was with God and who was God, gives and gives
up ; and while thus in the whole manifestation of the
Divine, there is self-renunciation consequent upon the
omnipresence of the Word in the universe, whether
as originating or as upholding it, this reached its full
ness in the Word who became flesh, even in Christ
and Him crucified, who is Alpha and Omega, the
beginning and the end of Creation and Revelation,
these being, in this point of view, one and the same.
And yet it is most true, that in this view of the
Cross far more is lost than gained, if in the least it
hinders the perception of the truth, that in the Passion
of the Son of God there is something beyond self-
renunciation — in the same line it may be, yet so in
finitely beyond it, that nothing before it gives assur-
rance even of its possibility. Self-renunciation may
be so generous and free as to be painless ; heroic
emotion can make it sweet to die ; but in the dying
of the Son of God there was something beyond the
pain of death. To the saint dying is giving up this
unreal, unsatisfying world, and waking in a real blessed
state. It is dying to Self, it is waking in God. Many
have died in Christ's name, saying, " O Death, where

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. I93
is thy sting ? O Grave, where is thy victory ? "
What then was that agony of Christ in Gethsemane
when he sweat, as it were, great drops of blood ?
What was that agony so great that He would have
died had not the angel strengthened Him ? * The
mockery of his trial, the scourge, the nails, touch not
the soul so deeply as this solitary agony. Into that
hour none may look. It is enough to know that " the
chastisement of our peace was on Him," who was truly
God and truly man.
The names Father and Son shadow forth to human
thought some distinction in the Godhead, and reveal
in those thus distinguished, unity of essence. Scho
lastic theology, fastening upon the difference, has held
that the Father was impassive to the suffering of His
Son ; but over against this may be set words warm
from the hearts of the Fathers, of divines of every
age, of all fervent preachers of the Cross, and the
chants and hymns of the Church Holy and Uni
versal. It dishonors the Father to think he could have
been untouched by the unmerited suffering of Jesus,
even though he had not been his only begotten Son —
whatever those words may mean. If it be the scho
lastic idea that the Deity is above emotion, this makes
Him below the gods of the heathen. He is perfect,
and therefore unchangeable ; but emotion implies no
* The Passion of our Lord is sacred and unsearchable ; yet,
from his repeating the first line of the Twenty-second Psalm
just as he died, it may be known that with all, and more than
all, that man can know of agony in death, there was hope, and
trust, and assurance of union with God.

194 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
change in essence ; and, if He is unfeeling, He is
neither perfect nor blessed. He is angry with sin
ners ; but is anger a finer emotion than sympathy ?
does not the one as much imply a change of essence
as the other ? and is not the one emotion as con
sistent as the other with blessedness arid perfec
tion ?
Beginning with the foreshadowing of the Divine ex
piation of sin, when Isaac gave himself up to death
at his father's call, when any one would choose the
sharp, short anguish of the young man before the
slow life and heart consuming sorrow of the old man
— beginning from this ancient parable, the truth of
what has been said might be shown from many Script
ures, such as this : " God so loved the world that he
sent his only begotten Son into the world, not to con
demn the world, but that the world through Him
might be saved." Of the Third Person of the Holy
Trinity, the one God blessed forever, the same is re
vealed in these words : " Christ through the Eternal
Spirit offered Himself without spot unto God." Heb.
ix, 14.
The strange notion which, blindly seeking to en
hance the glory of God, in denying Him feeling denies
His very being, does not see that where there cannot
be emotion in view of what is evil, there cannot be
emotion in view of what is good. It confounds things
not the same ; not seeing that the feeling it calls
sorrow outweighs joy. This strange error has often
gone so far as to make the Father and the Son an
tagonists at the Cross. The words Son and Father,
revealing unity of essence and unity of love, rebuke

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. I95
this ; words borrowed from the forms of human
nature, yet showing the Father and the Son were
moved by a common emotion to a common purpose.
A minister, troubled at the difficulty of understand
ing God's giving up His Son for man, conferred with
an aged slave about it, but she could not see his
difficulty at all, saying, " it was just like God ; " and
saying this, she said all that can be said or thought.
Behold, then, perfectly manifest the unselfishness of
God ! Behold this in the unsearchable sufferings of
Gethsemane and of Calvary ! Here opens in cloud
less glory the being of God in contrast with the
nature of man. Man would have all for himself, God
gives up all for others. Self-moved, He makes satis
faction to His own sense of justice, and relieves
misery by expiating guilt. Herein is love ; not that
we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent His
only begotten Son to be the propitiation for our
sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of
the whole world. It has well been said : " We have
not the least reason to suppose any similar transac
tion has occurred on the theater of the universe, or
will ever occur again in the annals of eternity. It
stands amid the lapse of ages and the waste of worlds,
a single and solitary monument."
These thoughts end in this : in the Cross of Christ
the revelation of the Infinite to finite beings is
" finished ; " and in view of this finishing of the whole
revelation in the universe, the whole universe was
permitted to be. Short of this, that revelation would
have been imperfect ; and it being imperfect, creation
would not have been. Because of the Cross, then, the

I96 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
stars in Orion burn, and the soul of man lives. The
imperfection of the parts of the manifestation of the
Divine are so made perfect on the Cross in the per
fecting of the whole to which they belong, that as
parts of that perfected whole, they are acceptable unto
Him who is perfect. " It pleased the Father that in
Christ Jesus should all fullness dwell." In Him " all
things consist," that is, stand up together, the Word
in Christ Jesus being Mediator between the Infinite
God and the Finite World, through the perfection of
the revelation made complete in His self-renunciation
and sacrifice, when He who had in Himself all power
and wisdom, unselfishly giving up all things in giving
up Himself to die, not for His friends but for His
enemies, is " the brightness of the Father's glory and
the express image of His Person."
The Cross of Christ * is the center ofthe manifesta
tion of the Godhead, holding it all in one ; and there
dwells in it that spiritual attraction of which Christ
spake when, signifying what death he should die,
He said, " If I be lifted up I will draw all unto me."
Man, dead in trespasses and sins, looks on His Cross
and lives. By the expiation on the Cross there is
remission of sins. But if we would dare so to do,
in vain we try to look through the mystery of Godli
ness, the center, and depth, and height of which is
the Cross. At the Cross of Christ knowledge finds
her life in losing it, in rising from knowledge into
adoration. The Cross of Christ may well be thought of as a
timeless fact, rather than as in the four thousandth
* These words being taken as equivalent to His Passion.

RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST. 1 97
year of History. Chronologically, its place is there ;
but logically, it is beiore Time was. He was the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world ; and
for Him all things were made. The Cross is not
consequent upon man. It is the cause, as it is the
center and the sum, of the whole revelation of the
Infinite, in all worlds, angels, or men. The Cross
of Christ is the reason for all that is not eternal, for
all that exists in birth and change. It is corner-stone
and key-stone of the universe.
Since the Creating Word and the Word made flesh
are one and the same, it is in accord with the finest
conception of the fitness of things that the Word Re
deeming came attended by the highest symbol of His
glory as the Word Creating ; that at the Birth of
Jesus Christ, the outshining of His Star in the firma
ment of the human world marked for man the fact,
that the seemingly two offices of this Divine Person
are, in one point of view, essentially one and the same.
Well might this have been a long predicted Star.
When the Conquest of Canaan began, one of those
true beginnings of History, in which there ever seems
blending something prophetic ; when every thing
was of a long-continuing, world-wide consequence,
and of a typical character, foreshadowing in the
march of an earthly kingdom, a kingdom not of this
world ; when, on the dark mountains that look down
so frowningly on the Holy Land, against Israel,
powers of earth combined with powers of Hell, well
might the Spirit reveal to the apostate Prophet the
Sign of the Dominion of Christ the Lord. Since it
was the Sign of Universal Dominion, well might this

I98 RELATION OF THE UNIVERSE TO CHRIST.
Prophecy be wrung from the lips of one of His ene
mies ! Well it might be uttered by one not of the
house of Israel ! Well might it be an extra-Judean
prophecy, and have an extra-Judean attestation ! In
the Bible such correspondencies may every-where be
seen, filling the soul with wonder, yet known only to
the fixed eye and the believing heart.
Within that awful volume lies
The mystery of mysteries !
Happiest they of human race,
To whom our God has granted grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch and force the way ;
And better had they ne'er been born
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
The Incarnation, through its inseparable connec
tion with the Death of Christ, and thus with His
Universal Dominion, might well be attended with
some foretoken, that, even on the bosom of the
Blessed Mother, the Word made flesh was the ap
pointed heir of all things. The Star of Bethlehem
does more than prophesy of this. It translates the
fact, that the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is
over the starry worlds, from the realm of faith to the
realm of sight.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 1 99

CHAPTER VII.
THE ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
|^r ODERN THOUGHT is a phrase sometimes
c^J^ used as an imposing name for that Doubt as
to Christianity which rises out of the seem
ing, or real collision of scientific inquiries, in their
many forms, with the science of Theology. In this
the science of Theology is mistaken for the system
of Christianity. Between the two there is this differ
ence — the one has the wisdom in perfection that be
longs to God, the other something of the imperfec
tion and error ever present in man's thinking. When
this proper distinction is made, it should be apparent
that truth may collide with error and error with
truth, as between Science and Theology, from either
side, and the system of Christianity not be touched.
Yet this collision has given rise to serious ques
tionings, to the partial surrender, or the full denial, of
the word of God.
Free Thought is another well-sounding phrase,
sometimes used much in the same way. While this
use of the term Modern Thought hints at more than
is true, this use of the term Free Thought insinuates
that Christianity is not compatible with Freedom.
Dogma and usage give occasion for this accusation,
and from them I appeal to the Bible, That Great
16

200 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
Charter creates Rights by defining Duties ; and there
Free Thought will be found to be a duty that cannot
be foregone without sin ; for God hath said, " Come, let
us reason together." It is written, " The Truth shall
make you free ; " but how can the soul be free to act,
or free to feel, if it be not free to think ? Intelligence
and freedom are not mere antecedents of Faith; they
are of its essence. In Faith, the soul is clear-seeing
and free. In Faith, with the purest intelligence there
is the most perfect Liberty. The opposite to Liberty
is Lawlessness. There is no freedom in the thinking
of a madman. Lawless thought is not free Thought.
It is power, going forth in conformity with its own
laws and with the nature or laws of that in which
and through which it is put forth, that awakens the
idea or the consciousness of Freedom. Through
union with the Divine, and only through this union,
the Human Spirit so comes into harmony within
itself, that it moves in free obedience to all the laws
of its complex unity of being. To Thought-power
the Spirit gave laWs ; and in Words having the com
pass, depth, and manifold meaning of all divine words,
it is written, " Where the Spirit of the Lord is there
is Liberty." Christianity is not responsible for any co
ercing or enslaving of free thought, for the Word of
God ever addresses the free intelligence. The intel
lectual rights, alike of those who deny liberty of con
science, and of thdse who so wrest Science against
Christianity as to make it the vehicle of notions
despised by common sense, abhorred by morality,
and that consist not With civilization, are not to be
denied because of their unrighteousness. Those fal-se

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 201
scientific teachings make it none the less a Christian
duty to recognize all the truth the Lord has commis
sioned each and every science to make known. Only
thus is the conciliation of Modern Thought to Chris
tianity desirable. For any Science to surrender any
truth at the bidding of any ecclesiastical authority is
as antichristian, as it is for any ecclesiastical author
ity to demand it in Christ's name.
Of Modern Thought in this restricted sense, the
origin is more directly traceable to Astronomy than
to any other of the sciences. It gave the scientific
impulse to Doubt : and if the questions raised as to
the Bible, by this, the first in order, and perhaps in
rank, of those sciences which, since the sixteenth
century, seem to be the complement of the new
spiritual firmament then dawning on the thought of
man, can be answered, it will be felt that what is
thus done for one science may be done for all. And
in this altered state of feeling many difficulties as to
the Bible will almost vanish of themselves.
The measurement of the good or of the evil influ
ence upon Modern Thought, in the widest sense of
the phrase, of the discoveries as to the stars, which
began in the sixteenth century, would be more diffi
cult than was the measuring or weighing of the plan
ets. Yet, so surely as the good has been great, so
surely has the evil been great. The accuracy of
astronomy is brought home by the almanac ; it is
proved to the common eye by the coming on of an
eclipse ; all it says is of common interest ; however
astounding, is readily taken on trust ; and somewhat
.of .disastrous effect, in-its ..disclosures is widely .spread

202 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
abroad. For ever since the astronomical discoveries
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there has
been a growing wonder at what has been thought to
be, the silence of Scripture as to the creative glory in
the astronomical heavens. There has been a conse
quent lessening of reverence for the Bible : and some
have come to feel, that the place once given by the
wisdom and piety of less scientific ages to the Book
of God, ought rather to be given to the Book of
Nature. Through a confluence of causes this feeling
seems to be growing rather than lessening ; yet those
who are under this delusion are ignorant of
WHAT THE BIBLE IS.
The Written Word is the Book of the Spiritual.
The Living Word framed the spiritual and the mate
rial into one universe. His Written Word reveals
the beginning and the end of material things, and it
sends thrills of light through all the natural world :
but, in the main, it is a revelation of those spiritual
things on which the things material depend ; of the
unseen behind that which is seen. Through all in
space and time, it makes known the infinite and the
eternal. It is the spiritual history of man down to
the Dispersion of the Nations ; and then of one
family, tribe, and people. As to them, it draws back
the vail of things hidden from human eyes. Inspira
tion could take to itself the guise of their annals and
their literature, because it utters truth, not in the
articles of a creed, but in a series of events. It
almost seems at times to lose its way amid the multi
tude of its facts, but it never does. Its chronological,

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 203
ethnological, genealogical tables, its statistical, legal,
biographical records, its pictures of the face of nature,
of the thoughts, feelings, and manners of men, are
consequent upon that historical form, only in which
the historical presence of the Living Word in the
human world could be revealed ; and viewing them
as a whole, all these things can be seen to be subor
dinate and subservient to its controlling purpose.
Man has lost the sense which discerned the spiritual.
Holy Scripture was given by the Holy Spirit, and
through it the Holy Spirit gives and preserves to the
congregation of those who deal justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with God, that knowledge of the
spiritual which, of himself, Man cannot know, or
which his eye, clouded by sin, but darkly beholds.
The Scriptures utter the eternal Being of Him in
whom is the secret of the universe, even of the Word
of God; his creative glory; his presence in all He hath
made ; his life on earth in the form of the man Christ
Jesus ; who now ruleth over all created things ; and
who, in the world of Thought, is the Truth ; and in
the worlds of Nature and of Soul, is the Life.
As to the form of such a revelation man can de
cide little beforehand. What the Bible ought to be
is hardly a thing of anticipation, and can be deter
mined only by ascertaining what it is. To ask why
this Book, so mysteriously wise, did not teach astron
omy, is really to ask much more. For whatever reason
be given why it should have taught astronomy holds
good for chemistry, botany, machinery, for the com
pass, the art of printing, the circulation of the blood,
the secret of vaccination, the galvanic battery, the

204 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
steam-engine;, the telegraph. If the Bible should
have done what astronomy has done, then it should
have done what Columbus did, or what Fulton, or
Morse have done. If it should have taught astron
omy, then, geography; and, like the Zendavesta, it
should have had treatises on agriculture;, on work
manship of various kinds, on trees, on fishes, on
beasts, on midwifery, and medicine.
But those made infidels by the telescope do not
think that the* Bible should have been a school-house,
though their reasoning comes to this, but only that
it should have given some hint of the vastness of the
Divine Dominions. By this restriction, their argu
ment against the- Bible seems to gain immensely in
power, and yet is plausible only because it is unjust..
For the earnest declarations of Scripture, that none
by searching can find out the Almighty to perfection,
pass over by open consequence from things spiritual
to things, material ; and astronomy has only verified
this thought of Scripture in one of many ways. As
tronomy gives outwardness to this thought in one
direction far beyond what it ever had before; but
the thought of a vastness that mind cannot compass
in the Divine Dominions, which seems to it a dis
covery of its own, is anticipated in the Scriptures, in
their own. way, through spiritual facts. Astronomy
hints that star-worlds may be the homes of countless
orders of beings. It has not proved this; and there
is no reason to think it ever will. The Scripture does
more than this. That there are intelligent beings
other than those of this planet, which is only an as
tronomical probability, the Bible makes known as a

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 205
fact. The heavens, seen by the naked eye or swept
by the telescope, are the lower, material counterpart
of higher, spiritual heavens, not made with hands, in
describing whose orders of beings the Scriptures ex
haust the wealth of language— their thrones, domin
ions, principalities, and powers, angels and archangels,
rising toward the King Invisible, who dwells in un
approachable light, whom none may see and live.
It may be said ; this is somewhat evasive, for though
indeed sublime, this supercelestial world is not the
same world that astronomy makes known — but it
fairly meets the thought, that the Bible falls short of
astronomy in the sublimity of its revelation of the
Creator's glory.
The Bible sows broadcast the seeds of truths of all
kinds ; and the soul oftentimes seems to have as
little perception of their origin, as trees and flowers,
growing up far away from and knowing nothing of it,
have of the plant that grew their seed ; and even less
than they have of the warmth and light that quick
ens and nourishes their germ. When Mitchell sa.id,
" The Bible utters all the soul of the devout astron
omer ; " he expressed his own true feeling ; and the.
Hke is true of so many of the feelings of men, that it
is. some evidence that the Bible was. divinely meant
for the Human Family.*
In the same line with what Mitchell said there is
a further truth, which those, who think less of the
* Of this one other brief illustration may here be given : As
the Bible utters all the soul of devout watchers of the stars, so
of those who go down to the sea in ships ; and yet, the Hebrews
were no astronomers, and no sailors.

206 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
Bible because of astronomy, or of the other sciences,
would do well to consider. It is a truth which opens
a glimpse of the power of the Word given in the old
Thought- World, to fill out the whole compass of the
New. The foundation of the science of astronomy
and of all the other physical sciences, the main root
from which all their growth is fed, is that belief in
the order and unity in nature which comes from a
knowledge of the fact, that the one God made the
heavens and the earth. Losing this knowledge, the
science of the Old World grew decrepit and old ;
and regaining this, the science of the Modern World
has gone on its way shouting like a giant awakened
out of sleep, and refreshed with wine. The Bible
is full of this thought of a divine order and law in
the universe ; and with this thought it has filled all
thought. Many suppose this to be a discovery of
science. They connect it with the names of Kepler
and Newton. But its light shines around science
from a sphere higher than that of science. It has
not been verified by science. Its scientific verifica
tion is impossible. For though law and order rule
so far as science can see, that which it does see may
be little to what it cannot see. It has no warrant for
carrying the fact of law and order beyond where it
can go itself ; has no knowledge that all beyond where
it can go is not the reign of " Chaos and old Night ;"
save in the word, that came of old, saying, " Forever,
O Lord, thy law is settled in heaven" — not the heav
en of the telescope, but that of which the telescope
sees but an inconsiderable fraction.
Through their belief in the one Maker of the

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 207
heavens, the Hebrews reached the thought of Law
as pervading all celestial space. They knew of the
Law, and of its Reason. With them it was not a
generalization of facts, not a meaningless abstraction,
a name and nothing more, as so often it is with us.
With them it was a force obedient unto God. The
Hebrew who said, Forever, O Lord, thy word (that
is, thy law) is settled in heaven ; thou hast established
the earth and it abideth ; they (that is, the heavens
and the earth) continue to this day according to thine
ordinances, for all are thy servants, believed this
as devoutly (and looking to the quality and not to
mere quantity of his intelligence, it must be said, be
lieved this as wisely) as Newton or Kepler did : and
had not they, in common with the greatest scientific
thinkers, had that belief in the unity of all that is
made, which comes from belief in the Divine Unity,
Newton and Kepler would never have made known
what they did. More than this : all the science that
now reads such marvelous new things in the volume
of Nature dates from the time when the Bible began
to be read by the people in their own tongue. It
dwells only in Christendom. It is one of the conse
quences of the soul's reinvigoration, and of the quick
ening and guiding of its aspirations to regain its lost
dominion over nature by the Holy Ghost. And of His
light-giving and life-giving, the Scriptures are among
the chief media.
As it has been shown that the belief in order, as
commensurate with the universe, which hath sure
foundations, comes, and can only come, from revela
tions of the Most High, it may seem less hopeless-

208 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
to try to point out in the Bible that idea of the almost
infinite number of the stars, often thought to be.
wholly of modern date. The first of Genesis may
give a different impression : for, after saying, God
made the great lights, it says, "the stars also," as if
they were little thought of ; but that chapter describes
the making of the World of man, and this naming of
the stars is all that should be looked for in such a
description. But more is said as to the stars in Genesis. A
father and son consented to crucify their affections:
the father an old man's love for his only child, the
son a man's love for life, the son doing the father's
will in giving himself up for a sacrifice. This they
did in the same place where the Father and Son,
in like manner, united in the sacrifice that taketh
away the sin of the world. A sacrifice which was
then foreshadowed, and its spirit equaled, so far as
the Human may approach the Divine, by that Father
and that Son, through the Spirit of Christ that was
in them. Then to that father it was said, "By My
self have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou
hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son,
thine only son, in blessing I will bless thee, and
in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars
of heaven and as the sand which is upon the sea
shore ; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the
earth be blessed ; because thou hast obeyed my voice."
If my own experience be that of others, then, not
from what the telescope has seen, or the astronomer
told, and not from the face of the evening sky, but
from these words come our earliest, our most abiding

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 209
thought of the great multitude of the stars. It is not
difficult to count the stars in some small square in
the evening sky, and thence to pass to some rough
estimate of the whole number. This Scripture goes
beyond that. It was just after the old man seemed
to have lost his only son, and so was in the mood to
hear what the Lord had to say to him of that child's
children's children, that he was told, " Multiplying I
will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven ; "
these words were uttered in reiteration and confir
mation of a promise made many years before, that he
should be " the father of many nations ; " and in that
moment of high-wrought feeling, who can doubt, this
comparison gave to Abraham the idea of a multitude
whom no man could number ? Yet, grouped around
or sheltered within the Emir's tents, the tribe of
Abraham, his household, or as the Arabs would say,
his children, on that very day,equaled in number all
the stars that can be- seen in the evening sky.* The
comparison might then have belittled his hope, had
it not been for the parallel comparison, which coming
from Him who alone knew the number of the stars,
made Abraham feel and know that it equaled that.
of the sands of the sea-shore. This promise, then,
accredited to him, and strengthened that sense of
multitude, in the stars which the evening sky tends
* There are between two and three thousand stars visible to
the naked eye. There were three hundred and eighteen men-
at-arms in the tents of Sheik. Abraham ; and on any com
putation ofthe others, old and young, women and children, the
number of his tribe must then have nearly equaled the number
of the stars visible in our hemisphere.

210 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
to awaken, by seeming to hide in its depths more
than it reveals. Through all the Scriptures runs
the chord which begins to vibrate here. " The Lord
telleth the number of the stars. He calleth them all
by their names. Great is the Lord, his understand
ing is infinite."
Astronomy, at first, may heighten the glory of this
promise ; yet here, as every-where, we at last have
to feel, that it baffles all human effort to surpass the
wisdom of Scripture. Search as far and wide, find
out as much of truth as we may, when we turn to
look back to the Scripture it ever seems to look
out serenely upon us, with a supreme intelli
gence that knows all our knowing. As if it were
ordained that no thought of man should glory in the
presence of Scripture, when Astronomy kindles up
the light in the divine promise to Abraham, it so
beams forth that in its light that of the science grows
pale. For it was the Creator who said, the spiritual
children of faithful Abraham would equal in number
the stars of heaven. His thought embraced all the
worlds, and the astronomer, who has opened to us
something more of its breadth, can no more compass
it with the telescope than with the naked eye.
Abraham had a vision in his tent before this.
(Gen. xv.) Led forth, he is told to look up and see
the stars. Afterward the sun went down. Was he
not, then, told to look up to the sky in the day-time ?
If so, may he not have seen more than the tele
scope can bring within our vision ? So far as a
mortal might, may he not have looked through the
starry heavens? Let each judge for himself. But

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 2 1 1
this is certain : — away back, in that early time,
there was revealed that number of the spiritual chil
dren of Abraham before which the difficulty in the
seemingly slow and as yet partial prevalence of Chris
tianity vanishes. For when Astronomy talks of the
stars as so many,that in trying to grasp or to express
that number thought breaks down and language fails,
that is the divine number of the spiritual children of
Abraham, and, glory to God ! Christ hath not died
in vain.
There is reserve in the Bible as to other mansions
in the Father's house. But this is like its reserve as
to so many of the nations of the earth. The one may
seem to differ from the other in this : though it
is silent as to many of the nations of the earth, the
Bible reveals that God made all men and redeemed
all ; but there is no difference here. There was
no direct occasion for open mention of other worlds
in the Scriptures. ' It might have perplexed those to
whom the word came of old. It might have given aid
to idolatry, whose prevailing form was the worship of
the starry host, and against which of old the Spirit ,
was contending. The Scripture makes known the
higher knowledge of the supercelestial dominions ;
there may be unknown reasons for its reserve (for
such it really is, rather than silence) as to the other
material worlds : and yet it abandons them to the
Astronomer only as it abandons to the Geographer
the nations of whom it makes no direct mention ; for
it reveals that the heavens were made by the Word
of God, who dwelt among us, and that the Lord
Jesus Christ is Ruler over all that was made. Even

212 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
were what is said of the stars in the first of Genesis
all that is said in the Bible as to the number of the
stars, the case would stand thus : Suppose a boy were
taught by his father that God made all people, the
only people known to the boy being those of his own
family, of his own village, and of some small neigh
boring towns, suppose this boy, grown to a man, and
become familiar with capitals, should despise his
father's words, because he found New York had a
million, and London three millions of people would
he not feel, and reason, as do those who think what
the Scriptures say of the host of heaven is proved to
be inadequate and childish by Modern Science ?
With the astronomical argument against the
Scriptures drawn from the number of the stars,
there blends the Thought of the stars as Worlds.
In a sense hereafter defined, no doubt they are so:
and if it be true, that even one star only, is a world
millions of times larger than this world, the silence
of Scripture as to this fact might well be perplexing,
though other stars were but spangles of light. It is
no doubt true, not of one star only, but of stars so
many, that " if the world were crumbled to the finest
dust and scattered through the universe there would
not be an atom of the dust for each star : " * and when
this thought meets the feeling (whose justice is here
-admitted) that the Scriptures give the impression
that this world is, in some sense, the chief world in the
universe, is it a matter of wonder, that some begin to
* Nathaniel Hawthorne.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 213
believe that the Bible is an outgrown book which be
longs to a Past that is ever receding ? With these
thoughts of the number and magnitude of the star-
worlds, other thoughts, related to or awakened by
these, combine, till they constitute what may be called
%\t %&itanamk §0ubi as ta €lgxWmmtv.
This Doubt presents one of the most difficult
problems ever yet offered to the Human Intellect.
It was never more forcibly stated than in these
words : " Though it is not a direct article of the
Christian religion, that the world we inhabit is the
whole of the habitable universe, yet it is so worked
up therewith, that to believe God hath created a
plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we
call the stars, renders the Christian system of faith
at once little and ridiculous. The two beliefs cannot
be held together, and he who thinks he believes them
both has thought but little of either. It is a solitary
conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds
equally dependent upon his protection, should come
to die in this world."
This is a clear presentment of a Doubt that widely
prevails in both the scholastic and " the silerit yet ever-
inquiring common mind." The spirit of a statement
is as worthy of thought as its logic ; and the sarcastic
assurance of this, its exulting bitterness, reflects the
hope, strong in many to arrogance, that the system of
the Universe is crushing out the system of Christianity.
This Doubt, arising in varied forms out of the con
trast between the bounded littleness of the world of
man and the immeasurable -heavens, and insisting

214 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
upon the insignificance of the Christian System as
seen from one point of view, and its disproportionate
greatness as seen from another, has more to do with
modern unbelief than all the other i?itellectual ele
ments in it. They who feel nothing of its power, if
any such there be, will hardly understand how it
wrings from Christian hearts the imploring, " Lord,
increase our faith." It troubles the humblest and
the strongest minds. Beneath the words, " Lord, I
believe, help Thou mine unbelief," Daniel Webster
had this confession of it cut into the rock of his
sepulcher : " Argument drawn from the vastness of
the universe in comparison with the apparent insig
nificance of this globe has sometimes shaken my rea
son for the faith that is in me ; but my heart has al
ways assured and reassured me that the Gospel of
Jesus Christ must be a divine reality."
There is great need that, if possible, we should
fully comprehend the life that pulsates in all this
dubious thinking, pierce clear into the soul that ani
mates it all, and not merely silence this Doubt, but
answer it.
I. If the mystery of God manifest in the flesh were
limited in its influence to the world of man, yet, as
man is immortal, it would not be incredible, because
the size of this planet is seemingly insignificant in
comparison with that of many of the spheres of
heaven, nor because its population is infinitesimal to
that which may people the universe ; for finite mind
cannot compute a consequence, which, though sup
posed to unfold along a comparatively narrow line,
unfolds forever ; nor can it set bounds to Infinite

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 215
mercy. Still there is in this doubt that which is not
thus answered; and near the end of this chapter this is
set forth, and the attempt is there made to answer it.
II. This Doubt takes on several forms, each of
which needs to be considered. Rightly presupposing
that so great a mystery could only have been in the
place most fitting for it in all the universe, this star-
born Doubt sometimes comes saying : A world more
vast would have been a more suitable place for this
manifestation of the Creator of all the Worlds ; it
should have been in the grandest star of all. But if
there be any thing in such reasoning, can any star be
big enough to be in harmony with this manifestation ?
a question that looks forward to thoughts hereafter,
and should be remembered.
Who can decide even upon the physical conditions
of a mystery so utterly beyond the power of the mind
to compass ? Is the size of this world in comparison
with that of many others too utterly insignificant?
Yet rank is not always, and in every thing, dependent
on bulk. The constituent atoms of all the worlds, no
doubt, are the same, and so they are in charcoal and
diamond ; yet a little diamond outweighs in value tons
of uncrystallized carbon.
On the not unreasonable supposition that Death
may not have invaded the other worlds, the fact of
Death here bears upon the rank of this world as com
pared with that of the others. For that rank cannot
depend on the cubic feet of matter, but on the numT
ber of intelligent free beings (here supposed to be in
other respects equal) of which each is the homestead ;
and a little world whose population is ever vacating
11

2l6 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
and ever filling it again, would in time not only out
rank each other world whose inhabitants, not being
subject to the law of death, ever remained the same
in number, but would in time be of more account
than the collective universe of worlds. This rests
upon a conjecture as to that intolerable, hard mystery
of death : but with this thought we return to solid
ground of fact. In this world of man, twice a thou
sand millions live and die in less than threescore
years and ten, a multitude the mind can no more
grasp than it can the multitude of the stars ; and
granting a sufficient duration for the human race,
enough souls made " kings and priests unto God "
might here live and die, to rule over or to people all
the orbs of heaven.
The worlds may differ in development. It is not
probable they all grow at the same rate, one just as fast
as another. The few known facts that bear upon this
question go to prove the contrary; and there is no
such monotony in the growth of other things. The
generation of a little world might take up less time
in its completion than that of a great one. This may
be the only finished world ; and if it be so, this would
more than counterbalance any pre-eminence based on
bulk alone.
As yet this world may be the only world of much
account. There are bigger worlds than this, very
much bigger ; but is there another that is yet peo
pled ? Astronomy cannot tell. Conjecture is not
knowledge. That the Earth is peopled now does not
prove the like of any other world. For that our Earth
was not peopled for immeasurable Days, the Scripture

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 217
said of old : and the same may yet be the case with
every star in the heavens.
As we know not our Place in the universe, cannot
reckon our latitude or longitude in the ocean of
space, nor tell whether we are near center or shore,
top or bottom, so we cannot make out our Time in
the Universe, whether it be far down toward the end,
near the middle, or just at the very beginning. In
the universe of worlds intelligent life has begun, for
we are of it. It must have begun somewhere in that
universe, and perhaps as well in this planet as any
where else. Why not ? Why may not the first
brightening of free intelligence in the Creation have
been right here ? right here in old mother Earth ?
The revelations of which the Earth has been the
scene so look. So does the marvel, Man ; so does the
mystery, Death. In the Creation, Life as high in rank
as the human life may have first begun here ; and as
yet, it may have begun only here. This world may
be the only hearthstone on which fire is blazing in
the unfinished universe.
This cannot be proved. It may seem incredible ;
and no doubt the stars are worlds, in a sense thus
defined — it is what they are meant to be. They are
here supposed to be palaces, though palaces as yet
unfinished or unfurnished. With this idea Science
has no quarrel. The nearest celestial bodies, the
planets, and the sun, hardly seem as yet to furnish
the conditions in which intelligent free life can well
be supposed to exist ; and were it proved that some
of the astronomical worlds are now inhabited, still, if
all were known, it might appear that the development

2l8 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
of those worlds had been keeping time with that
of the human race, whose members, by millions
on millions, are ever passing out from beyond our
vision. It is hardly probable this question can ever be set
tled from our post of observation on this planet. But
according to the opinion of scientists, all the worlds
pass through changes of which the Earth contains, as
to itself, some record which may be sufficiently true
for the other worlds : and as there have been several
stages in the generation of the Earth when, accord
ing to Scripture, plant, animal, or human life did not
exist, and when Geology, attesting to Scripture, says,
in the conditions of the planet they could not have
then existed, it is to be presumed that similar stages
are common to all the worlds ; and why should it seem
impossible, in the nature of things, that the stars
have no inhabitants now, to those who hold that such
was the fact in some past time ? If this be incredible
now, why nbt always ? Geological times are con
fessedly indefinite ; let us then say, a million years
ago there was no plant, animal, or human life in the
universe. Now, if that can be true of a million years
ago, or of any other number of years, then it may,
perchance, be true now, with the evident exception
of this planet, and perhaps of some particles of the
unfinished whole !
Yet this theory need not be burdened with any
weight that does not belong to it. It does not as
sume that all the worlds are now empty and silent.
Some of them, many of them, and were it not for
scientific facts that look as if it could not be so, it

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 219
might be said, all of them may now be teeming with
some kinds of life, the happy homes of multitudes of
rejoicing creatures ; for the Scriptures say, the Earth
was, long before there was breathed into a human
body the life-breath of a true human race : and yet,
could a man now traverse the starry sphere, it might
be, that throughout its whole extent, he would find
no living creature, the peer of himself.
It cannot be proved. Yet the completeness of the
answer it furnishes to some arguments against the
system of Christianity that have a look of power, be
comes a kind of evidence for it. With it the first of
Genesis may fairly be said to be in harmony ; for it
seems to contemplate the sun, moon, and stars only
in their relations to this world. Much the same
seems to be true of all Scripture. Its words are
the fitting utterance of the emotions of the devout
astronomer. It intimates that the stars are number
less beyond what is seen ; it speaks of them as de
claring the glory of God ; it clothes the heavens with
something of a mysterious interest ; and beyond this is
silent. If what has here been set forth as a conject
ure be a fact, that silence is the silence of intelligence.
How much there is in Scripture of the silence of in
telligence may be known from the latent harmony
between the Old and the New Testaments ; and from
the comparison of the intimations of truths in Script
ure with those truths as unfolding in Nature and
History. The divine silence of Scripture is only less
wonderful than its speech, and full of wisdom.
It cannot be proved : what then ? it cannot be dis
proved ; and, though only a conjecture, it has full

220 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
power to countervail what is also only a conjecture,
that this orb is so inferior that it could not have been
the scene of the mystery in Christ.
III. Another form of the Astronomical Doubt as
to the Christian system, wisely presupposing the
Revelation on the Cross will nowhere be repeated,
wisely presupposing, also, that the knowledge of the
Cross must be meant for all the worlds, denies any
possibility of this knowledge ever reaching the multi
tudinous, far-distant orbs of heaven. It paralyzes
the imagination by the inconceivable distance of the
stars. To meet this, by saying there may be as yet
no peopled world save this, is partially in vain. For
beyond all question, at some time all the world will
be mansions of free intelligence. And it is also in
vain to try to meet it by the thought of the varied
ways of the Omnipresent, or of the ministry of angels.
For if we will here think with the fearless candor be
coming so grand a theme, it must be clear that the
most fitting instruments would be employed for this
purpose, and that these can only be redeemed souls.
Herein, this form of the Astronomical Doubt as to
the system of Christianity seems to be intuitively
wise ; and it will be met, at this point, by a combina
tion of thoughts conformed to its just requirements.
Matter, though its phenomena vary, seems every
where, so far as it is possible to test this, the same
in its essence, general properties, and laws ; and with
certainty the like may be said of mind. " Each par
ticular world in the universe may be supposed to
have its own botany, its own geology, its own miner
alogy, its own natural history ; but a spiritual neces-

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 221
sity, a behest of the reason, compels us to say, that
in all worlds there must be the same logic, the same
grammar or universal laws of language, whether by
sounds or signs, the same laws of thinking, the same
geometry, the same pure mathematics, the same
ultimate rules of taste, the same principles of art,
the same aesthetic and moral philosophy. In other
words, the good, the beautiful, the true, in themselves
must be essentially the same, and cannot be con
ceived as having a diversity for different parts of the
universe." *
What the angels are the redeemed may become.
Thought is lost as it travels along this line of limit
less aspiration. Yet Christ's humblest child, as the
unfolding of his everlasting life goes on, may become
the equal of Gabriel, as he stands at this hour in the
presence of God. The angels are ministering spirits
unto heirs of salvation ; and it is possible that heirs
of salvation, made like unto the angels, may make
known in other worlds the things done in this.
Even nature hints that man's seclusion from the
other worlds may not last forever. Shall this planet
have relations with every planet and star, the dust
of the earth have earthy relations with far-off worlds,
and the spirit of man have no relations with them,
now, nor ever ? Such there are even now. The
spirit there is in man is touched by planet, sun, and
star. Those far-shining orbs allure him. f They
awaken the feeling that somehow they belong to his
H Tayler Lewis.
t Those isles of light,
So wildly, spiritually bright,

222 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
spiritual domain : a feeling perhaps prophetic, an
aspiration wherein there may be evidence that it will
be gratified.
And that Star of the Incarnation ! that Star of the
new morning in the Eternal Year does away with
that isolation of the Earth from the great City on
high, which paralyzes the imagination, as man look--
ing out into space vainly tries to comprehend the
distance to the nearest world. That Star is a sign of
some close relation between Christ and the starry
worlds, and may foretoken the like for them he calls
his brethren.
Back of all thus far thought of as going to make
up the Astronomical Doubt as to Christianity, and
intensifying it all, is a feeling that the truths of
astronomy are more august and sublime than the
revelations of the Bible. We are now coming into
full sight of revelations in whose presence any such
comparison, not with the disclosures of astronomy
alone, but of all the sciences, is vain and idle ; and
let it here be said, that not in this case only, but
whenever the Bible, of all books the best and the
least understood, is in question, the true way to vindi
cate it is to bring out the truth there is in it.
Never reversed will be the relative rank of the
volume of Inspiration and of the volume of Nature.
As letters to words, as words to language, so are the
Who ever gazed upon them shining
And turned to earth without repining,
Nor wished for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray,

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 223
thoughts of Science and Reason to those of the Bible
as to things spiritual and eternal. Yet "the invisi
ble things are understood by the things that are
made." The all in Space and Time is a manifestation
of Him who is in this all, but is neither it, nor of it.
What we know not now we shall know hereafter. Yet
would the desire might fully awaken to know more
of the Divine Presence in Nature, in History, and in
every human life ! and there seems to be an increas
ing Divine purpose that in all things the Divine shall
more and more be manifest. It may be seen in all
the unvailings of knowledge, and even in the times
thereof. When the telescope opened to view worlds
so numberless that the mind was breaking down
under their weight into the feeling that the Great
Creator would not concern Himself about such an
infinitesimal as a man, and when the wonder of geo
logic time, with its millions of years, matched the
wonder of astronomic space, and the mind was fur
ther broken down by the thought that the Eternal
would not concern Himself about so evanescent a
thing as aman; then the eye was turned downward,
and the microscope matched the wonders of the
telescope, discovering within the ample area of a drop
of water a world of beings to whose brief date the
duration of threescore years seems eternal, discovering
myriad millions of worlds of atomies, fashioned with fit
ness to all their surroundings, as perfect as that of man
or the world of man ; and seemingly so much more so
as almost to suggest that the Creator gives nicest
finishings to humblest things.
What the Hebrews called the finger of God is in this

224 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
antithesis and completion of truth, in these contrasted
and combining lessons of wonder and adoration, from
over our heads and from under our feet : and yet not
only these, but all the scientific unvailings of the crea
tive wisdom do but confirm the words, " Canst thou
find out the Almighty to perfection ? It is high as
heaven, what canst thou do ? deeper than hell, what
canst thou know ? " Does Astronomy unroll the heav
ens, till the soul feels there is no room left for their
Creator ? of old there came this Voice : " Thus saith
the Holy One, Lift up your eyes on high and behold
who hath created these, that bringeth out their hosts
by number : He calleth them all by their names ; by
the greatness of his power not one of them faileth."
Does Geology unroll the Time of the world till man
is hard driven to feel the Ancient of Days would not
care for a being so evanescent ? there was this Voice
of old : " Thus saith the high and lofty One that in-
habiteth Eternity, I dwell in the high and holy place,
with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit."
Still it is not chiefly, even by utterances such as
these, that the Bible counterpoises the down-crushing
of the universe. It is the Revelation in Christ Jesus
and Him Crucified, that shields against the temptation
there is in the overshadowing majesty of Nature
for the soul to deny itself, and in denying itself to
deny its Creator. And yet, all that may be, cannot
be known of the greatness of man, till the Hebrew
Scriptures are studied, and studied in the light thrown
upon them by the Gospel.
The truth that the Cross will be made known in
all the worlds through the redeemed, is involved in

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 225
THE REVELATION OF THE DIGNITY AND DESTINY OF
MAN IN THE EIGHTH PSALM.
That brief Psalm is the highest word of Revelation
as to the Destiny of Man. On that brief Psalm is
laid the whole weight of the Universal Dominion
of Christ Jesus over all things created, in this use
of it in the second chapter of the Epistle to the
Hebrews :
" Unto the angels hath he not put in subjection
the world to come, but one in a certain place testified,
saying, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ?
or the Son of man, that Thou visitest him ? Thou
madest him a little lower than the angels ; Thou
crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set
him over the works of thy hands : Thou hast put all
things in subjection under his feet. He left nothing
that is not put under him. But now we see not yet
all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who
was made a little lower than the angels for the suf
fering of death, crowned with glory and honor ; that
he by the grace of God should taste death for every
man. For it became him for whom are all things,
and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons
unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation per
fect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth
and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which
cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." *
* So far as my reading goes, I have not been able to see how
any of those who have written upon the Psalms or the Epistle
make out in this Psalm the truth inspiration declares to be
there, or even how some of them think they make it out ; and
I thus set forth the originality of the interpretation of it now to

226 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
In the eighth Psalm the Spirit of Him who was
" lowly in heart " comes to us wearing a guise that is
humble indeed. This word of revelation is given in
the form of a little evanescent song, such as, in the
stillness of the night, for companionship, the lonely
shepherd sings to the answering hills. Some have
thought it was a song of the boy David, watching his
sheep on the field of Bethlehem. But this is not the
song of a boy. It is the Psalm of the old king of
Israel, looking out on the skies from the flat roof of
his house on Mount Zion.
" O Lord our Lord, how excellent is Thy Name
in all the earth ! who hast set Thy glory above the
heavens. " Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast
thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that
Thou mightest still the Enemy and the Avenger.
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy
fingers, the moon and stars, which Thou hast or
dained ; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him ?
and the Son of man, that Thou visitest him ! For
Thou hast made him a little lower than God, to crown
him with glory and worship. Thou madest him to
have dominion over the works of Thy hands. Thou
hast put all things under his feet : all sheep and
oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field ; the fowl of the
air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth
through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord,
how excellent is thy name in all the Earth ! "
be given, that my readers may hear it with the patient con
scientious attention of jurors impaneled to render in the vei-
dict as to its truth.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 227
In this Hymn the thoughts are as deep as the
words are few. It is a Hymn on the Dignity of
Man ; and like man, is little in form, great in spirit.
Thus, as man does, it gives occasion for different
opinions. To one, a man seems to be a machine of
finer action than the spinning jenny ; another, taking
less humble tone, esteems himself an ape-evolved
brute : and in a man there is a fine machinery that
wastes away in running ; in a man there is a life that
is common to him and to "the mute creation:"
but to see in a man no more than these, is like see
ing in this Psalm only the cunning rhythm and the
feelings of the poet. The frame of a man is of the
dust ; in him are all the passions of that mute crea
tion of which he is the language-speaking Lord ; yet
there is a spirit in a man, a mystery from God, a
flame of his kindling, the breath of immortality. So,
too, within the human minstrelsy of this little song
there is a Divine inbreathing that lives on while
races wither from the earth, and will live on when the
earth shall pass away. This Hymn is a Voice from
God, for whose elucidation there is need of the whole
volume alike of History and of Inspiration ; and after
all that human thought can do, it will remain as
luminous and fathomless as the Destiny of Man.
The Glory of man fills the central circle of this orb
of song. Around this sweeps the wider circle of the
Glory of God, as round the center of the divinely-
* The mute creation — this exquisite phrase, so tender and
true, should banish from our language the coarser phrase — the
brute creation. The former was coined by the eloquent advo
cate, Lord Erskine.

228 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
wrought shield of Achilles, whereon the Life of man
was pictured, swept the world-surrounding ocean-
stream. Yet. still the all-encircling thought is of the
Lord as our Lord, and thus in its widest sphere this
Hymn is at one with itself. As it begins so it ends,
" O Lord Our Lord, how excellent is thy name in
all the Earth ! "
Taking a little Child in his arms Christ Jesus said,
" Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Some kindred
thought was the germ of this Psalm : and this thought
grew out of something the Psalmist had seen in some
child-Samuel, or group of little ones, chanting the
hymns of Zion ; musing on which, in the night and
alone, his heart flowed forth in praise and song. There
is, to my mind, confirmation of this idea in the Gospel
of St. Matthew. On the day of our Lord's entry into
Jerusalem " the multitudes that went before, and that
followed, cried, saying, Blessed is he that cometh in
the name of the Lord. When the chief priests and
scribes saw the children crying in the temple, and
saying, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were
sore displeased ; " and Christ reproved them in the
words of the second verse of this Psalm. But what
ever may be thought of this : that the fact was as just
stated, will be clear to every one who will read the
first and second verses of the Psalm, leaving out for
the moment the words, who hast set thy glory above
the heavens. This thought, evidently, was born of
the star-lit infinitude, whose presence is felt through
out the Psalm, and over against which is set the
Glory of God and then the Glory of man ; and, as
evidently, the thought in the words, " Out of the

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 22g
mouth of babes and sucklings, Thou hast ordained
strength," was not born of the presence of the Night.
Before this, there must have been something, musing
on which the Psalmist said, " Out of the mouth of
babes and sucklings Thou hast ordained strength,
because of the Enemy and the Avenger."
Those thoughts and words of the Psalmist are more
than his. The outflowing Psalm has a twofold source :
the spirit of the aged Prophet, deep-musing on Nature,
Man, and God, seeing in humblest things the Eternal
Wisdom ; and the divine Spirit, amplifying, determin
ing his Thought, making it clear and true, lifting it to
heights of truth before unthought of, unknowable
by man but for such divine help, giving to it the
authority, and making it the medium of universal
and everlasting revelation.
The Enemy, no doubt, is the Enemy of the Right
eous in the prelude to the Drama of Job, and the same
who in Eden wrought the ruin of man. But what
children are these who are to still this Enemy ? and
how strange so mighty a thing should be ascribed to
babes and sucklings! The Thought that God or
dained that babes should conquer His Enemy was a
strange thought even to the Psalmist, as shown by
the instant passing over of his unexpressed feeling
of the weakness of Children into that of the weak
ness of Man. And in his Psalm, there may be dis
cerned a trace of some previous influence from the
Night, that had nearly overpowered him with a sense
of human insignificance. Its illusive fires had de
graded all, save the children of Abraham, to wor
ship them. They had tempted this Prophet not to

23O ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
the sin of idolatry, but to the greater and more dan
gerous sin of materialism; that is, to a Denial of
Man such as involved in it the Denial of God. They
had tempted this Prophet, and he had not given in to
this astronomical feeling. They had tempted him
and failed. It were in vain to try to conjecture the
consequence had he yielded to the dark feeling, had
Israel in the person of its great leader fallen back,
in this first outset, before the barriers of materialism ;
but certainly his great victory foretokened, and may
have predetermined, that of the people of God over
that delusion.
Nature had tempted the Prophet but had not pre
vailed. " When I consider the heavens, the work of
Thy fingers, the moon and stars, which Thou hast
ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him ? "
are words betraying that back of them there had been
a struggle in his soul. But that struggle was past.
These are the words of a Faith which rose superior to
Nature ; and because in that Temptation the spirit
of this Prophet did so rise above Nature, he was
fittingly made percipient of truths as to the dig
nity of man, the highest ever revealed to Prophet or
Apostle. In this Psalm there are two revelations. These two
are quite distinct, though there may be a relationship
between them, as would be natural in so brief an
oracle. The one is, that God, who chooseth the weak
things to confound the mighty, out of the mouth of
babes hath ordained strength that He might still the
enemy ; the other, that man is to have dominion over
all the works of God's hands — a dominion whose im-.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 23 I
mensity the Lord made known by Copernicus, Kep
ler, Newton, and other men of the same God-seeking
spirit, and of the same order of science as those of
old, who discovered in the heavens the outshining of
the Star at His Birth.
Upon the last of the two revelations in the Eighth
Psalm we must dwell. Light is thrown from afar
upon it, even from this Great First Charter of the
Rights of Man, all whose Rights are God's gifts :
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness : and let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So
God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him ; male and female created he
them. And God blessed them, and God said unto
them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Gen.
i, 26-28. The historical and precise tone character
istic of all revelation is heard in this, its oldest utter
ance ; a tone which belongs to it as indestructible
fact, as historical in form, and therefore multifarious
and exhaustless in its teachings, but yet precise in
language. This Charter stands at the head of all
legal documents, the first Grant on record, and few
have been so clear. The historical narrative is so
interwoven with it as to form a part of it ; and, taking
this instrument as a whole, no father, making a Deed
of Gift to a son and a daughter, and meaning to make
18

232 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
them equal in the gift, could have been more precise
in his terms. The Charter runs first to man to guard
the truth of the unity of the human race, then its
style changing, it runs to man and woman ; granting
the dominion it conveys equally to each and all to
each. To use the language of the Common Law, it
does not make them tenants in common, but joint-
tenants ; " they have one and the same interest, ac
cruing by one and the same conveyance, commencing
at one and the same time, and held by one and the
same undivided possession."*
This Document establishes the Equality of Man
and Woman on the same basis as every other fact,
on the will of God. This truth, as inwrought into
this Document, was far from being apprehended by
the Hebrews. They treated Woman better than the
more Eastern nations, or the Greeks, or the Romans,
did. Yet this Document seems to have been almost
a dead letter, till Christ made it the basis ofthe Law
of Marriage, and thus quickened the germ of the
Thought, nowhere as yet come to maturity, of the
Equality of Woman and Man. f
This Great Charter, though forfeited by Man and
Woman, was afterward partially revived, and our Lord
treated its teaching as authoritative. In this Charter,
* Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Book
II, chap. xii.
t In this, as in every thing else, Christendom is so far below
Christianity as to prove its religion came from above. Of
Woman's Rights the Bible is the title-deed ; and if woman, be
cause she has not all her rights, will burn up the Bible, she acts
as an heiress, who, because she has not full possession of an
estate that of right belongs to her,, burns up her title to it.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 233
the purpose that man shall have Dominion over the
Earth, follows so closely upon that of his creation as
to give the reason for it. For if a king were to say,
let us send for a General and give him command of
an army, it would be a natural way of saying, he
was to be sent for to command the army ; and might
be preferred, because, while clear as to this reason, it
would not exclude others that might enter into the
royal purpose. In like manner, the wording of this
Charter makes known a relation between the making
man in the image of God, and the dominion that was
given him.
" So God created man in his own image and said,
Have Dominion :'' — his dominion then was made
known to man through a grant of lordship over the
earth. This grant of lordship over all the life in the
world carried with it lordship over all there was in the
world. Being over what was highest, it carried with
it lordship over all that was lower. A grant of abso
lute sovereignty over- the people of a country carries
with it sovereignty over all the wealth on the sur
face, or under ground — all the soil, and all the mines,
every thing in the country. So, this grant of lordship
over the life of the world carried with it Dominion
over all the powers in Nature.
Upon man's likeness to God this grant was con
ditioned.* To Noah, the patriarchal head of the
* " In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God
made he him." Gen. v, i. As this was said before, and as it
precedes the words, •¦ Adam lived a hundred and thirty years,
and begat a son in his own likeness," here is one of the articles
of the creeds in historical form ; for this restatement marks that

234 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
family that survived the judgment of the Flood, " the
heir of the righteousness that is by Faith," this grant
was confirmed, but in terms that conform to the
altered state of man : " The fear of you, and the dread
of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth, and
upon every fowl of the air, and upon all the fishes of
the sea ; into your hand are they delivered." To the
Original Charter this grant was annexed : " I have
given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the
face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is
the fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to you it shall be for
meat." In "the grant to Noah, how great the change
from the lordship of man as made in the image of
the Creator of every living thing! and musing on
it these words come to mind, "The whole creation
groaneth, and travaileth in pain together until now.
For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God." *
this Child, born after the Fall, was not born in that likeness to
God in which man was made. This is the more evident be
cause this child was not the first-born, that murderer, but the
pious Seth. Yet, the reason given to Noah for the sacredness
of life is, that man is made in the image of God ; and the con
clusion is, the divine likeness is obscured, but not wholly lost.
With this the human character and history agree. Men and
women are by nature far-gone from righteousness ; yet as they
are not angels, so they are not fiends.
* Rom. viii, 19 and 22. Words so clear and yet so dark !
words that reach down into that world without language where
we cannot follow them ! and yet in the patient, waiting eye of
the ox, in the wistfulness of my dog to speak, I seem to see
the earnest expectation of the creature, and know that God will
remember the mute creation, on whose sufferings philosophy
can throw no light. His mode, his time, how dark ! yet clearly
related to the Hereafter of man.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 235
Man keeps something of the divine likeness, has
some marred vestiges left of the human beauty; and
so, too, of the human dominion. So far as this
dominion is still in the human race, it seems to be
somewhat in proportion as it is in the divine likeness.
In the barbarian this likeness has almost faded out ;
he has only of this robe of glory a few shreds left to
cover his nakedness. In the semi-civilized peoples
the spiritual life, from which came so much as they
have of civilization, has hardly more than sufficed to
keep it from mouldering away. It is only Christian
ized man who is regaining the lost dominion over the
powers of Nature.
The thoughts of the Eternal Mind as uttered in
Nature, in History, or in the Bible, are not uttered
in their fullness at once, but in successive times, and
to those who are under the law of Time. Yet the
human intellect may try to conjoin those instants ;
for, though their revealings being successive must
be partial, the thoughts of God are timeless, and the
thoughts of God are one. Did the Divine Thought,
that man should be Lord of the Earth, in part come
to naught ? It looks so. But what looks like a defeat
of a divine purpose is ever the occasion of the un
folding of a further purpose ; and the one that seemed
thwarted is a part of this. Hence the failure of
man to hold his rank as Lord of the world, Vice
gerent of heaven, could have been but the foreknown
condition of a purpose of greater scope ; later in its
appearing, yet the older ; and so including the other,
as a part of itself, that the seeming two are one.
The divine thought of Man's Dominion seemed to

236 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY
fail, and then was first made known that Superior
Thought, ever including in it that seeming failure.
Or, rather, the making this known then began. For
the promise of Him who should destroy the Tempter
who had been suffered to work out the degradation
of man, had not for its sole or its immediate aim to
vindicate the sovereignty that knows of no defeat
and no delay; but was rather meant to console the
bitter human misery of that disastrous hour, and to
awaken its despair into hope. All these things look
as if man would regain his dominion over nature, as ,
far and as fast, as in Christ he regains the likeness
of his Maker ; but whether he will ever reach the
fullness of either in this Cycle of Time, and in the
present condition of this planet, as to this, who can
tell? Yet, even if in this Cycle of Time, the Redeemer
should call man back into the divine likeness, and
so re-invest him with full dominion over the world,
the fact of his previous dishonor, and the consequent
long years of sorrow and pain to him and the whole
creation, would still remain as a seeming triumph
of evil. If things were only put back as they were
before, this failure of the scheme, though but for a
time, would be wholly unprepared for. Unless it were
the foreseen occasion of something further, greater,
and higher, this triumph of evil would be more than
a seeming one, for though ended in the present, it
would be real in the past. There can be no such
triumph of evil, no such defeat of the Divine Sov
ereignty ; and this must be more and more manifest,
as the Divine Thoughts so unfold in time, that man

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 237
may contemplate more and more of their timeless
image. If there be some Divine thought as to man, supe
rior to that of his Dominion over the Earth, includ
ing in it the seeming, partial, and temporary failure
of this, and contemplating something further and
greater, then, both Thoughts must be in the same
line : that is, the end contemplated in each must be
of a like character. If so, the one Thought might
pass into the other, as a lesser light may be absorbed
in a greater, without being lost and without changing
its nature. That further and greater Thought as to
man is uttered in the Eighth Psalm ; for whose inter
pretation, as said before, the whole volume both of
History and of Revelation is required.
The fullness of the original Grant of Dominion
never vested in the fallen children of men ; nor did
the Psalmist have them in mind. The pious He
brews knew that by nature all are alike, even as all
are alike under the government of the Most High.
They knew that " He beholdeth all the sons of men :
He fashioneth their hearts alike." They said, " The
Earth is full of the goodness of the Lord ; " " His ten
der mercies are over all his works ; " " How excellent
his loving-kindness ! therefore the children of men
put their trust under the shadow of his wings." Even
the word of Christ,. " He maketh his sun to rise ou
the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the
just and on the unjust," is not a clearer statement
of the Universal Benevolence than some in the
Psalms ; and yet in them is felt the difference marked
by Him, between man as born of woman, and man as

238 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
born from above. The Psalms witness to the fact,
stated by one of his Apostles with the precision of
science, " If any man be in Christ he is a new crea
tion," and clothed by another with unuttered promise,
when he said, " Now are we the sons of God, and it
doth not yet appear what we shall be." Light was
thrown upon the rationale of the two Races by Him
who is the Light of philosophy as well as morals :
and there was a master in Israel who knew not of
this higher race ; but our Lord seemed surprised at
this ; and it was strange in one who had read the
Psalms ; for the Psalms are the voices of a Life that
is not the human life. The Life we inherit through
Adam is a Life concentered in self and burning
downward. In the Psalms there is a Life where this
selfishness is consuming away, a Life blazing upward.
The masters in Israel tell of some who said "there
is no God ; " * of some who held Him to be a Power
as untouched by prayer as the power of gravitation,
saying, "Is there knowledge with the Most High?"f
of some with " no fear of God before their eyes ; " J
of others who through pride would not " seek after"
Him ; § of others satiated with sin, and saying " who
will show us any good : || — how unlike those voices
of the Race whose life is from Adam, are these of
the new Race, whose life is from Christ ! " O, how
great is thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for
them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for
them that trust in Thee before the sons of men !
Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence
* Psa. xiv, 1. t Psa. Ixxiii, 11. J Psa. xxxvi, 1.
§ Psa. x, 4. || Psa. iv, 6.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 239
from the pride of man. The Lord is the strength of
my life, of whom shall I be afraid ? Thy statutes
have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.
As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so pant-
eth my soul after God. Whom have I in heaven but
Thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire
beside Thee. I am a stranger in the earth. My
heart and my flesh faileth, but God is the strength
of my heart, and my portion forever. Though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, for thou art with me. The men of the world
have their portion in this life ; as for me, I will be
hold thy face in righteousness ; I shall be satisfied
when I awake with thy likeness."
To one of these Races the thoughts of this Psalm
are given, even as the affections of the Psalmist were.
Its opening and its closing words, O Lord, our Lord,
encircle only them, and he makes himself one with
them, as Moses did when he said, " Lord, Thou hast
been our dwelling-place in all generations." *
* The words, " mindful of him," do not prove the Psalmist was
not thinking of the children of Adam, forthe Lord "looketh upon
all the inhabitants of the earth, He considereth all their works,"
(Psa. xxxiii, 13-15 ;) yet His mindfulness ofthe pious of old was
dear to them : " many," they said, " are thy thoughts to usward,"
(Psa. xl, 5,) and " precious are they." (Psa. cxxxix, 17.) " The
eye of the Lord is upon them that hope in his mercy," (Psa.
xxxiii, 18,) a looking down to the looking up, thus pictured:
"As the eyes of servants look unto the hand 'of their master:;,
and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, so
our eyes wait upon the Lord." (Psa. cxxiii, 2.) Thus while the
words, " mindful of him," do not prove the Psalmist thought
only of the sons of God, they accord with it ; and it is proved
by the words, " Thou visitest him ;" in which the thought is

24O ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
" When I consider the heavens, what is Man'" are
words often quoted and often called to mind, as the
motto of human insignificance. In doing so, the verse
is cleft in twain, half is remembered, the rest forgot
ten; and thus the Psalmist is made to seem to say,
what it is his glory never to have thought. He was
thinking of the new Race of children of God, of
His regard for such, and not of their insignificance.
That is, not at the instant of his speaking. Some
such thought had tempted him ; but before the instant
of the Psalm, it had been repelled, and was gone.
Even for the infancy of this new Race such strength
is ordained, that through its babes and sucklings God
is to still the Enemy. And when this was revealed to
the Psalmist, it was natural that he should then have
been led on to those thoughts, whose utterance make
this Psalm the highest word of Revelation as to this
New Race of Men.
The mind will receive more readily, and the better
comprehend that Revelation, if it consider, and with
some carefulness and fullness : First, How the king
attained to his Thought of the superiority to all the
other Divine creations of the kind of man whom he
had in mind ; Second : The greatness of the victory in
that Thought over Materialism ; Third : The fitness
more clear when the line of it is traced on to where Christ
says of the man who loves him and keeps his commandments,
" My Father will love him and we will come to him and make
our abode with him." (John xiv, 23.) A visit from a king is a
signal favor. None such is named in Scripture as conferred on
the children of men. The Psalmist, then, had in mind only
those spoken of by Christ, as born again. John iii, 1-21.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 24 1
of that Thought and that victory to the character of
the Prophet.
1. Even in the Scripture, there are few words that
so unvail the Divine Nature, so touch the human
heart, as these persuasive words, " I love them that
love me ; " and few more wonderful chapters than the
eighth of Proverbs. It is wonderful for what it is in
itself; and wonderful is the way in which other Script
ure, like a torch to smouldering fire, resolves it into
flame and warmth. The Wisdom, who was " before
the works of old, before the mountains, before the
earth," is the Word who was " in the beginning." *
" In the beginning " when the heavens and the earth
were made, Wisdom was there with God, "rejoicing
always before him" — not as the English version has
it, "like one brought up with him," but, "as the
World-builder" — a correction that, brings out the
harmony of the two Scriptures. What is poetry and
figure in the earlier, becomes history and matter of
fact in the later Scripture, where it is written of the
Word, "all things were made by Him." This Wis
dom, "whose instruction is better than silver, whose
knowledge than fine gold, with whom all things that
are to be desired are not to be compared," in this
older Scripture saith, I am understanding : to which,
in later Scripture, the parallel is, I am the Truth.
By this Wisdom, "kings reign and princes decree
justice : " a truth unrolled to the fullest, when it is
declared of the Word, " He is the Light that enlight-
* This rendering of the Greek, Logos, by Word, cannot be
better ; and yet, in the term Wisdom, something that is in the
Greek, is more clearly reproduced.

242 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
eneth every man." This Wisdom sends forth his
cry " in the places of the paths, at the entry of the
city, at the coming in of the doors ; and " in the last
great day of the feast Christ stood and cried, saying,
" Come unto me," and he said, " Behold I stand at the
door and knock." This Wisdom, then, is the Word
who " was with and who was God, who became flesh
and dwelt among us." And as in thinking or speak
ing of men, we for the most part, think and speak of
the spirit that inhabits and will survive the mortal
frame, somewhat so in view of the highest in that
which constituted his being, it seems to be said of
Christ Jesus, in whom was "all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily," he is "the same yesterday, to-day,
and forever." In that day, when the Queen of the
South came from the uttermost parts of the earth to
hear the wisdom of Solomon, even then it was true
of Christ, "Whoso findeth Him findeth life, but he
that sinneth against Him wrongeth his own soul, and
they that hate Him love death."
As light is thrown on this eighth of Proverbs from
the prelude to the Gospel of St. John, so from this
older Scripture light is thrown back on these oldest
of all Scriptures, " Let us make man," and " In the
beginning Elohim " * — a term translated God, but a

* From the plural Elohim, some have tried to make it out
that out of older belief in many gods rose the Hebrew belief in
the One : to this it has been well answered, that history no
where records the rising of polytheism into a purer faith, that
in the Shemitic languages plural nouns are sometimes joined
to verbs in the singular ; and the thought I would bring out is
this : If Scripture was to be consistent with itself, it must find

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 243
plural noun with a verb in the singular — " made the
heavens and the earth." Tlie eighth chapter of
Proverbs and the first of Genesis perfectly agree as
to the Love for Man of this Wisdom, who is the
World-Artificer. Compare the plural Elohim with
the words, " Let us make man," and running the eye
along the first page of Genesis, mark how each stage
of the world-building is pronounced good, and how
in the later Scripture the World-builder, like a cheery
carpenter building higher and higher the stories of his
house, is " always rejoicing ; " then in the older Scrip
ture how this house of the World is for man, so that
when man is made, Elohim rests, and then mark how
exactly the eighth of Proverbs tallies with this, the
or form some such word as Elohim, or some phrase equivalent
to it. In no other way could there be harmony between the
first of St. Johii and the first of Genesis. As the first verse of
Genesis is written in Hebrew, there is such ; but as it stands in
the English and other versions, there is not the harmony be
tween them which there must be between divine words.
Unity is one of those simple ideas that cannot be analysed,
and so cannot be defined ; but surely it is not what it is often
assumed to be by those who deny the Trinity on the ground,
that it conflicts with the Unity of God. Such mistake the idea
of Unity, or else the doctrine ; for in man the idea of the Unity
of his being is indestructible ; and yet he says : It seems to me
wise, I feel it is right, and will do it ; language as contradictor)'
of Unity of being as those Scriptures where the Trinity appears,
such as " Elohim made the heavens," and " Let us make man."
Some arguments against the doctrine are as good against the
true Philosophy, which in the Unity of the Soul distinguishes the
Mind, the Heart, and the Will : but it is not well to reason from
the one mystery to the other, as if they were the same, for we
neither understand the three-fold Unity within, nor the three
fold Unity around us and above us.

244 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
poetry of the one with the history of the other, when
in words not the least instructive of all the words in
Holy Writ, the World-builder says, "my great joy
was with the sons of Adam." This double record
of the world's building runs up into the same thought
of the Divine Love for man ; and this Love, astound
ing as it may be to some forms of philosophy falsely
so called, and even conflicting with some systems of
theology, has in all the Bible the same touching,
human-like expression as in the words, " I love them
that love me." Words uttered so long ago ! — yet
from them whoever would be loved of God may know
how to gain his love ; and whoever will test these
words will find out more of himself, and more of his
Father in heaven, than man can teach.
Through his consciousness of that Divine Love
which said, " I love them that love me ; '' of the same
individualizing Divine Love that loved Abraham and
the disciple John ; the Love through which the soul
may become a Temple-shrine wherein the Spirit of
God, loving and beloved, may dwell ; that Love of
which Christ said, " If a man love me, he will keep
my words, and my Father will love him, and we will
come and make our abode with him" — through his
consciousness of that same Love, the greatness of
man became clear to the soul of the Prophet. It is
inwrought into the language of his Psalm, that through
his consciousness of that Divine Love which came to
visit him, he felt that man must be superior to all
the other Divine creations. This he then felt as it
was never before felt by any man, even among his
own people, who kept the ancient idea of the Creator,

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 245
while all the world around, and many even of the
Israelites esteeming themselves as nothing in com
parison, bowed down in worship of the mountain, the
grove, the river, the moon, the sun, and all the host of
heaven. In that hour, what before was, and yet was not,
became a new thing in the world of thought. Until
a Thought is thus born, it has at most but a nebulous
being, floating from brain to brain, with such form
and consistency as a cloud may have; but when, sud
denly, in some one soul, it is condensed into a star,
thence onward, by its own light, it shines forever.
From the soul, where by the will of God it thus is
born, its light ever tends to kindle up its own light,
and to become common to all kindred souls. When
thus a thought comes clearly within the field of intel
ligence, the soul so takes hold upon it as never after
ward quite to let go its hold. For none of such
things as these are without some divine foreworking,
some gracious ordering of the circumstances, some
lasting decree. God orders these beforehand as a
father, who praying, believing, and arranging aJl
things, leads on a little child to where it may, per
chance, behold some new truth, and in that blessed
moment so lay hold upon it, that it shall never after
ward cease to be a part of the moral being of that
dear child. The first demonstration of some new law
or force in Nature is a grand moment in science, be
cause its discovery by one is felt to be its discovery
by all, even though it be foreseen that ages will roll
away before it become such. And so, the moment
when this Thought of the superiority of man in the

246 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
Creation was thus born in the soul of the Psalmist,
was a grand moment in Religion : for a Truth known
to one as this Truth then became known to him, is,
in like manner, known to all.
To every one who will think steadily upon it, it
must be clear, that before Man could apprehend the
Divine manifestation in Christ Jesus, there must have
been a prevision of several spiritual truths, of which
truths, this, that Man is superior to Nature, is one.
Of such truths, the knowledge could not pass away;
because of the Record of them given by that Mercy
that has done for man all he could not do for himself.
The many vain attempts ofthe Nations show it is diffi
cult to seize hold upon spiritual truths, very difficult to
preserve and transmit them pure : and if any one, in
spite of this lesson, will still think all recording of such
spiritual truths and facts as those might well enough
have been intrusted solely to the human faculties, let
him consider that it would not have been possible,
without especial divine aid, to have so discerned them
as to set them forth beforehand, in their historical
and logical relations to the Divine manifestation in
Christ. And with reference to the portraying of the
Life of Christ Jesus, let him further consider that no
man can rightly describe another unless he be that
man's equal, and so the biographies of Caesar or Na
poleon satisfy no one ; that no man, be he ever so
wise, can comprehend the soul of another man, be he
ever so humble : and then he will hardly fail to see
that, if there were to be any just portraiture of that
Son of Man and Son of God, of whom men wonder
ing could only say, What manner of man is this ?

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 247
the Spirit of God must quicken and uphold the human
spirit to the achievement. And seeing all this, he
will then see how needful is the light of all the truth
in Scripture before that in the New Testament, to
the full illumination of the portraiture of this pre-
existent and wonderful Being.
2. " One morning as I was sitting by the fire, a
great cloud came over me, and a Temptation beset
me; and I sat still and it was said, All things come
by Nature, and the elements and the stars came over
me, so that I was in a measure quite clouded with it ;
but inasmuch as I sat still under it and let it alone,
a lively hope arose in me, and a true voice arose in
me which said, There is a living God which made all
things ; and the Temptation vanished away, and Life
rose over it all, and my heart was glad, and I praised
the living God." Like the Psalmist, George Fox
was tempted by the Thought of an all-containing,
ever coming, ever changing Nature, wherein man is
an appearing and vanishing " bubble, lashed from the
foam of ages." This is the same Temptation before
which the infidels of these times succumb. King
David overcame it by the affirmation of God and the
affirmation of Man. They yield to it in their denial
of God and their denial of Man.
This two-fold denial is the mathematical sum of
that many-voiced, vociferous folly of those who deny
the Supernatural ; or the possible knowledge of it ; or
that it ever intervenes in the course of human events ;
who deny Creation and substitute for it endless and
meaningless evolution. The field of this philosophy
is a wide, flat marsh, where the noisome taint of
19

248 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
death is every-where to be smelt, and for the song of
birds and the pure breath of heaven, is the chant of
the wizard, the sharp scream of unclean poets, and
the dreariness of Milton's hell without its sublimity.
According to this unreason, man is a link in a neces
sitated endless chain. Nature is all, all is nature ;
and this nature is a passing show. Wisdom and
folly, good and evil, right and wrong, sin and holi
ness, God and man, are as fabulous as the unicorn,
the phoenix, the fairy, or the ghost. Spiritual reali
ties, grand, solemn, eternal, vanish at the lively crow
ing of these philosophers over natural facts of whose
deeper meanings they know no more than the barn-
fowl, cackling over the fallen grain, know of the mys
tery of life and the power of God. These infidels
seek to put their Creator as far away, and as much
out of the way as they can. Multitudes of men do
the like ; yet with self-reproach, owning it is wrong,
and hoping at some more convenient season to make
their peace with God : but these illuminati glory in
their sin and shame ; they style it the perfection
of reason ; and try to sneer at those who are mean
enough to believe " it is appointed unto all men once
to die, and after death the judgment." In the place
of Our Father they set up a sort of blind, irrational
fate, that is mighty and ridiculous. The tenor of their
folly is determined by their hatred of their Lawgiver
and Judge, who saith, " Be ye holy : the soul that
sinneth it shall die." Dig down to the intertwisting
roots of this poison-tree, and you will find they are
a base love of wickedness interwoven with the fear of
damnation.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 249
If man the creature be, God the Creator is : and,
of course, there goes with this denial of God, a denial
of Man. They have to say, that Man is an illusion ;
an ever-evolving unreality, necessitated by the cir
cumstances in which and of which it is a part, to
think, feel, and act as it does ; and that there is no
power within it, and none without it, that can alter
this. This ever-evolving phantom can have no real
relations with the past, or with the future. It can
know nothing of either.
Evolution, as they preach it, is arbitrary, irrational,
universal predestination. As to what seem to be
living beings, they preach the election of strong, and
the reprobation of weak, races. How long their elec
tion of strong races may hold, they know not. By
their own showing, their science and their philosophy
is mere illusion ; yet unhesitatingly and inexorably
they decree the annihilation of the strong as well as
of the weak ; and this of the human being, as well as
the brute. In the stream of nature, ever, for noth
ing, madly rushing from nowhere, and ever rushing
back there, drowned Man is lost. With him all vir
tue is gone. There is but one moral character to
actions : that is, none at all. The dead, whom, look
ing beyond the visible to the eternal heavens whence
Christ shall come again, we buried in faith, are for
ever dead ; and there is one doom of annihilation for
all. The Temptation, then, for a man to degrade
himself into a Materialist, is even now a Tempta
tion. And from this glance at the world around,
I go far back to that first recorded hour, when a
man trampled this Temptation down in the name

250 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
of God, and then in the name of the man who is born
again of the Spirit of God.
3. Rising to this great height of faith, through
some quickening in what he had just seen in some
children of God, probably in some little children, and
setting the glory of God and then this glory of man
over against and above that might and majesty of
Nature which almost overpowered him, the Psalmist
had vanquished the dark thought that Nature is all,
and his first word is the breath of victory : " O Lord,
our Lord, thou hast set thy glory above the heavens."
This was a thought of his fathers, an heirloom in the
family of Heber. It was inbreathed with the words,
In the beginning Elohim made the heavens. But
his thought of counterpoising the whole down-crush
ing of the universe by the Man whom God loves, was
a New Thought, then and there born to everlasting
human life in the soul of this Prophet.
Of all men this poet, warrior, king, was the man in
whom this thought might have been born. Caesar's
will is proverbial ; but in David we can hardly say
there was more of one manly element than another ;
more of will than of heart, more of heart than of
mind. Solomon had more wisdom, Joshua was a
stronger man, Elijah had more of fire, though David
had enough ; but, to say all in a word, there was
more man in him than in any man. He was "the
man after God's own heart ; " and though pious ped
ants may call this an orientalism by way of a disguise
of ignorance, it is an orientalism not used of Moses,
or even of faithful Abraham. It must mean some
thing. It does mean a good deal. It throws some

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 25 I
light on the King of the Hebrews, and more on the
King of Kings, if, instead of evading its force, we
find out its meaning. The materials are ample. The
portraiture of David is more full than of any of the
old Bible men, as should be that of the man after
God's own heart. It is twice drawn ; in his history
and in his songs. Unlike most of those who have
written about themselves in prose or verse, this poet
was as honest as the light, whose nature it is to
reveal all and hide nothing. If ever soul was self-
revealed, it was his. To this self-portraiture there is
no parallel.* Let a man read the Fifty-first Psalm
as a voluntary public confession, a lasting testimony
to his own sin and shame, given to all his people, by
an Eastern king ; let him remember the sacred minis
terial character, as well as the despotic power of
Oriental monarchs ; let him ask himself, if he has
ever known, or has ever read of any man who could
have made this confession, the like of which no king
had ever made before ; and if he knows, or has heard
of any such man; and if he thinks he could have
done as well; and thinks that he himself is without
sin — no doubt this worthy Pharisee would stone this
penitent sinner. All others may find for themselves
a lesson in this murder and adultery : not the vulgar
lesson taught by so much of history, that lust and
murder haunt the palaces of kings, the secure places
of irresponsible power ; not even the better lesson
that from such depths the soul may rise to the heights
* The songs of Burns are more like it than any thing else,
though so different, and in so many ways. And there was a
good deal of man in Robert Burns.

252 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
of penitence and praise ; but the lesson in the words —
the man after God's own heart.
They were said of this man's life as a whole : and
in his life this crime so stands out, that the human
conscience cannot accept these words till the soul
sees what justifies them, even in that course of events
where murder had its part. This murder the Bible
conceals not, defends not, palliates not. Through the
Prophet Nathan it utters condemnation, re-uttered by
every tongue. It must, then, be David's penitence
that approves him the man after God's own heart; and
the words teach that the Father's mercy for those
who rise out of sin is more than his anger at their
falling into it. This, which is the teaching of the
whole Gospel, is taught with great power in the very
words, which the ministers are ashamed of, and the
people hear with uneasy wonder. The king's abhor
rence of what he had done, shown beyond all doubt
in his willing eagerness to own it for the warning of
his people, the uprising of his soul to a height higher
than where he stood before his crimes, prove those
words not unworthy of the Judge of all, when they
are placed where they belong ; which is, after those
dark and terrible events end in confession. Through
those words is then revealed in the Judge of all the
earth, the spirit from which salvation came. For
Christ came into the world to call sinners to repent
ance. There were no others to call. His call to
repentance, with his promise of pardon and of accept
ance with the Father, is the Gospel of the Son of
God ; and to enforce this Gospel, the waitings of
this criminal are heard forever in the songs of Zion :

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 253
" Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy
loving-kindness : according to the multitude of thy
tender mercies blot out my transgressions. For I
acknowledge my transgressions : and my sin is ever
before me. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O
God, thou God of my salvation : and my tongue shall
sing aloud of thy righteousness. Thou desirest not
sacrifice, else would I give it ; thou delightest not
in burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit : a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt
not despise." In the Bible voice answers unto voice,
though ages come between. In all this confession
of guilt there is the assurance of mercy ; and were
not this thought of mercy whispered from on high it
were here presumptuous indeed. Ages pass ; and
the thought out-breathing from the heart of this peni
tent sinner, in the low sad tones of his Psalm, is
heard loud and clear from the unutterable height :
" Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne and
the earth is my footstool, for all these things hath
mine hand made, but to this man will I look, even to
him that is poor, and of a contrite heart, and that
trembleth at my word."
By his own heart-portraiture, and by his history,
David is better known to us, from boyhood to the
hour of his death, than any other man ; and in re
ligion it is a question that leads to unexpected results,
what sort of a man was he ? As a boy was he the
forerunner of the worthy youth often held up to
passive, enforced admiration, whose lack of power to
make the evil there is in him stand out, is mistaken
for something better ? Was he the matter-of-fact

254 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
man, self-recollecting and controlled by self, some
times chosen for a deacon ? Was he one of the
sanctimoniously ambitious who plod their politic way
into a high seat in the synagogue ? Was he of that
safe sort of stuff of which some think that bishops
ought to be made ? Not after their sort his soul of
fire. He was thoroughly alive : and how can a man
dead to any thing but sin, be thoroughly alive to
religion, when religion is every thing ? Salvation is
life — that is the root meaning of the word. Christ is
the Life-giver. Christ was David's son and Lord,
and David was the most living of those Hebrew men
who live forever. He was ever in earnest, and he
ever meant what he said. His words are all soul,
and yet he is the most impersonal of all poets.
Though speaking of himself he so forgets self in
feeling and thought that his soul-voice becomes the
voice of every soul, the psalms of David every body's
psalms. A musician, he brought music into the
worship of Zion. A poet, he gave the tone to the
lyric poetry of Israel, which was to be the song of the
universal Church forever.
David was a genius. This does not set him apart
from other men, for man ate not of the tree of knowl
edge for nothing ; and genius, like sin, is the birth-
fact common to all. How could the Greeks respond
to Homer, the English speaking races to Shakspeare,
and all the world to Beethoven, if there were not in
all something of the same genius there was in Homer,
Shakspeare, and Beethoven ? Bonaparte had more of
genius than any of the soldiers of the Army of Italy ;
but the same genius there was in him there was in

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 255
them, for only through this in them could they have
sympathized with it in him. Whether they knew
it as such or not, and though one word cannot de
scribe that wonderful fusion of many elements, yet
it was this immortal fire, more than aught else, which
blazed out till the world saw the light and was
astonished, when this unromantic people, whose feu
dal castles are at Moyamensing and Sing-Sing, this
unchivalric people, who own no lord but the Lord in
heaven, this trading, mechanical, farming generation,
at the firing on Fort Sumter, rose to arms, that this
land might be free from Slavery forever. Respect
ability-seeking hypocrites hate men of genius, as they
do all who any way surpass themselves, yet they
whiten their sepulchers ; and the people honor men
of genius, living or dead, feeling that there is in them
the might of God-given power. They feel this be
cause there is the like power in themselves. But for
this, they could neither rejoice in, nor recognize its
fuller measure in others.
David was a genius ; and it is of great moment for us
to know this, because he was eminent among those
of old, through whom, as types of Him, it was meant
we should be better able to understand David's Son
and Lord. I will not say of Him he was a man of
genius. In his presence human language is abashed
and put to silence. His words and his deeds describe
Him. We can only, wondering, say, He was Son of
Man and Son of God. Yet, in his words and deeds
may be seen every characteristic of genius. This
does not remove Him away from us ; for it is the
genius there is in every soul which, more than any

256 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
thing else, individualizes that soul, and makes it real
to itself. Genius is often deep buried. Some there
are who live only to pile higher and higher the sand
on its grave within the soul. But genius is by nature
in every one. It is the best thing there is by nature
in any one. It is the secret of fine sympathy. It is
the spring of noble achievement. Its moments stand
for years. Strike its pulses out of the threescore
years and ten and they are little worth.
Alive in every feeling, as passionate in friendship
as in war, a man of varied genius, musician, poet,
soldier, and king, was the man after God's own heart.
He was the finest kind of a man ; his varied life, even
from a boy, brought out every power of his soul ; and
therefore, in him of all men, would most naturally be
born the highest thought of man. To any other of
the great of the Hebrew line, great as they were, and
varied in character and life, the Revelation made to
him of the Dignity and Destiny of Man would not
have been so appropriate. Some of them must have
dimly seen some such idea as that of David ; but all
great divine truths are born in some one soul out of
such a half-conscious existence into fullness of life
with preordained fitness of time, place, and circum
stance ; and such Thoughts are rounds ofthe ladder let
down from heaven for man to climb above the stars.
In no other place in the Bible does man so fairly
confront the Temptation in the thought that all is
nature, as here ; and nowhere else does he bid it de
part in the name of man. The moment of the Eighth
Psalm recalls that when Abraham obeyed the Voice
calling him out of heretical Chaldea, and that of the

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 257
confession of St. Peter. It does not rank with those
supreme moments: still it was a great moment in Re
ligion, when the old soldier won his victory over the
Goliath of Materialism, and more than matched the
combat of his youth. In that hour his Faith rose
to a height to which the Soul must rise if the Divine
purpose to reclaim man was to go on. He won this
glorious victory through the Spirit of Christ that was
in him. And he won it not for himself alone. He was
our Champion, and stood for us. All these things
make it natural, there should then have followed —
the highest of the revelations as to the Dignity and
the Destiny of Man.
When he had just risen above the Temptation in
the overshadowing mystery in Nature for the soul to
think so meanly of itself in the comparison, as to
deny God in denying itself, and when he was think
ing of the Divine regard for the sons of God, then it
was, that, with a boldness suited to that hour, and born
of that triumph, David would know more of what he
had discerned by faith. Then this king in Judah would
know, why in the sight of his all-wise Creator man is
superior to all the works of His hands. At that mo
ment, the king felt that the man whom he had in
mind, was grander than Nature in her grandest show ;
and he boldly prayed to Jehovah that he might know,
What is man ?
The desire to know this is so human, that, when
the Thought of man's greatness, as it was in the
mind of David, was once firmly grasped, this desire
was very sure to come out somewhere in the Bible.

258 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
For the Bible is the Book of the spirit there is in
man, as well as the Book of the Spirit of God. As
the Divine is mirrored there, so is the Human.
The quick asking of this question was like David.
In the question there was a boldness born of the love
that casteth out fear, yet like David, boy and man.
And there was a Divine wisdom that doth not err,
in his making the Divine visiting of those who are
born from above, the sole proof of human greatness.
This does prove it of them. For the feeling whence
this visiting cometh is not the complacency with
which, as said in Genesis, the Creator looks on his
inanimate works ; not his good will toward the mute
creation, of which there are touching instances in the
Scriptures ; not the same with his pity and kindness
for the children of men. It is different from and far
beyond all those. It is a personal liking, the thought
of which is foolishness to philosophy. It is the love
that to our Lord was proof of the immortality of
Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob.
In tbe Human, as distinguished from the Christian,
Race, (meaning by the latter all who before, as since,
the Incarnation, have worked righteousness,) in the
Human Race there is nothing entirely or truly great.
There is nothing entirely or truly great in man as
born in the likeness of the fallen Adam,
In doubt his mind or body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err,
Sole judge of truth in endless error hurled,
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.
There is nothing in the works of this man that will
not perish ; and the sophist is alike convincing

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 259
whether he declaims of their greatness or their little
ness. Hamlet, crying, — " What a piece of work is a
man ! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties !
in form and motion, how express and admirable ! in
action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like
a god," — countervailed this truly Shaksperean elo
quence, by calling him " the paragon of animals, the
quintessence of dust ! " With a latent sarcasm, wor
thy of Mephistopheles, with a serene unconscious
ness of how fitly these words picture himself, Goethe,
its grandest impersonation, pointed out to modern
Thought in Hamlet, some strange, foreshadowed
likeness of itself; and, in the sneer with which it
ends, this jeering of the heathen Dane did anticipate
what with some now passes for science.
If it be said; this word-mongering about man is in
keeping with the unsubstantial, theatrical pageant
where stalks the wisely-foolish Hamlet, half feigning
madness and half mad, but that nothing can be more
unfair than such parading of this sickness of the
heart as philosophy or science ; and that true science
is proof of the greatness of Man : — I reply, Such
things are the indirect confession of science and
letters that man is vanity; and that, while true
science is evidence of a greatness in man, it is not
possible in true science to separate the work of the
Human and the Christian Intellects. Its pioneers,
its creators, its masters, its Keplers and Newtons —
to whom such workmen as La Place and Humboldt
are as masons who pile bricks, and plaster in mortar,
to architects — have been devout men ; and the sci
ence of Christendom is no evidence of greatness in

260 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
man, apart from the spirit of Christ. Man is only
great when he dwells in God, and God in him.
Of the man who dwells in God, and God in him,
the Psalmist prays to know what that man is ; and
the soul hushed to stillest expectation listens for the
word of reply from heaven. Only irreverent rash
ness would dare prefashion that answer ; but, may it
not be frankly said, that when it comes it seems
at first not as great as looked for? When the
Creator utters his purpose in the original Creation
of Man, there is a like feeling — of which it may be
some evidence, that no creed repeats that utter
ance. For a moment let us think of that older and
kindred revelation. There is nothing metaphysical
about it. As set forth, the purpose is not, as theo
logians have it, the glory of God, nor, as philanthro
pists have it, the good of man ; though, it may be,
that each is included in it. In that Council in
Eternity, it is declared, that man is created to have
Dominion over the Earth. That is the revelation ;
and that is the whole of it: — an unexpected, dis
appointing, yet a thoroughly self-vindicating revela
tion, when at last it is seen the Divine purpose in the
making. of man is to confer upon him that, which,
more than any thing else, is the Divine Prerogative.
This Council in Eternity seems to have been before
Time was, or Space ; and how its purpose was to
come to pass, this all the then future revelation
makes known : — a thought which gives a startling
glimpse of the unity of the written Word from its
beginning. Through his purpose to share his Dominion with

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 26 1
man, God is indeed revealed ! and his Decree is har
monious with itself: Let us make man in our image,
and let him have Dominion. This Divine Word
comes ever to look more and more beautiful, as the
Divine ever does. It is accordant with an instinctive
desire implanted in the soul by its Creator, whose
strength may be known from its artless, intense de
light in every new achievement that enlarges the
human dominion. This is the feeling that so exults,
when the sleepless pilot of the unknown seas, tired
Columbus, to whom, in a vision long years before,
the Almighty had given the keys of the doors of the
ocean, beholds through the darkness the light moving
on the shore ; when Vasco de Gama, fulfilling the
prophecy of Noah, that God should enlarge Japheth,
opens the ocean-road to the ancient East from whence
the sons of Japheth came, as with difficulty his frail
barque rounds that Cape of Storms, ever after to wear
the name of Good Hope ; when the thought-worn
Fulton sees the masts and spires of this fair city,
anchored eternal on its tributary floods, retire in the
distance, as his steam-barge slowly stems the cur
rent of the Hudson ; or when Morse sends the light
ning with the message, What hath God wrought.
This feeling is in harmony with the Thought of the
Creator in that oldest of his revelations, which makes
known that they who extend man's dominion over the
world work on in the line of His purpose in making
Man. They who are doing this feel they are doing
His will. Deep down beneath every other feeling,
more efficient than every other, this sent Livingstone
to Africa; and when men go on this errand the

262 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
heart of Man goes with them. This feeling, rejoicing
in hope, now takes possession of the soul, as if the
eternal purpose revived. It works with a will ; and,
however blended with lower motives, drives home
every spike in the railroads that are belting the globe,
with a glow of hope which mere love of gain could
never awaken : — so does the Divine purpose in man's
creation commend itself to man.
As there is nothing metaphysical in the Revelation
of the Divine purpose in the Creation of Man, so
there is nothing metaphysical in the revelation that
answers the question, What can man be that God
should think so much of him ? though here, even
more than in the former revelation, we might look
for something of the kind. Here, again, the revela
tion does not seem, at first, to be the great thing
looked for ; and here, as before, the soul at last is
filled with unutterable content.
A philosopher might answer the question by an
analysis of the faculties of the soul, and if so, we may
be sure the Divine answer would come in some other
form. Such a philosophical answer would come no
nearer to the secret of what man is, than the knife
of the anatomist, searching the nerves, muscles, and
bones of a dead man, comes to the secret of life ; and
man can make such analysis as that for himself. The
Divine answer does not attempt to do what all phi
losophy has always been trying to do, and always for
naught.* Its Luciferian, proud curiosity has ever
* " Mystery," said Cousin, " is a word that belongs to religion
but not to philosophy. Philosophy is content to offer gently its
hand to Christianity, and to aid it in ascending to a higher ele-

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 263
had the impossible aim to pierce into the secret of
Creation, and this, because there is involved in that,
the secret of the soul. But the secret of Creation is
the Creator's secret. It is incommunicable. For the
conceiving of it, man has no faculty. Creating is
putting forth a power that pertains only to the Cre
ator, and its secret cannot be known by any created
being. That man is, and that God is, can be known ;
the one fact as certainly as the other ; but each are
known through the outworking word of each, which
is all that we can apprehend of either. Thus much
is man's, all else is God's. Here, then, the teaching
silence of this Revelation gives to the endless toil
and vain endeavor of all philosophy a reproof as much
needed as it has been little regarded ; while its speech
gives to the question, What is man ? all the answer
that in the nature of things can be given. It answers
not to the words of its Prayer, but to the soul's desire
and need ; and it gives to each appropriate and suffi
cient satisfaction.
To know what man is, passes man's power of know
ing ; to know what he is to do, which, even as to this
life, he never seems to know, and cannot know of the
life beyond this, is all that can be revealed to him.
The first revelation as to Man is, that he is made to
rule over all the earth ; the purpose as to Man re
vealed in and through the Eighth Psalm is similar,
yet of almost infinitely greater amplitude : " Thou
vation." Thus, false science, profiting nothing by the Christian
doctrine of Humility, is still the same as when St. Paul said,
" beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit." 20

264 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
hast made him to have dominion over all the works
of thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his
feet." These words sound like the breathing of the
Prophet's own soul ; and from words which soon fol
low them, some may take them for a high-wrought
description of the human dominion then known to
the Psalmist as a man. But if this were so, his Psalm
would not be merely high-wrought or over-wrought,
but incoherent. For in the same breath he speaks of
the moon and stars as works of God's fingers; and
what dominion over the moon and stars fully answer
ing to the exceeding breadth and force of his words
could he have thought that man then had ?
It is perfect union of the human spirit with the
•Divine, which here so gives to the human and Divine
j thought in the soul of the Prophet so much the form
of his own thought, that he seems himself to answer
'the very prayer he uplifts to the Most High. And
thus it also is, that what as yet had hardly begun to
be, seems to be spoken of as something that now
fully is. This is not wholly because of his perfect
assurance of the fulfillment of the decree ; but rather,
because that in the sublime exaltation of his spirit
the Divine decree is, so to speak, not read off to him,
but read off by him; and that neither past, present,
or to come, are to be predicated of these timeless
thoughts of the Eternal Mind.
" Thou hast made Man a little lower than God : "
the Hebrew trarislators of the Bible dared not utter
this thought and thus toned it down— -Thou hast made
Man a little lower than the angels. They seem to have

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 265
been driven to make this change in the meaning of
the text by their reverence for the High and lofty
One who stoopeth to behold the things in heaven.
Whence, then, came into the mind of the Hebrew
prophet, his Thought as it is in the Hebrew ? It is
not explicable according to the laws of the human
intellect. " Thou hast given him dominion over all the works
of Thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his
feet." These are the words of one looking out upon
the night ; they are uttered in the same breath in
which he speaks of the moon and the stars that were
shining down upon him ; and, though the idea of
Asiatic amplitude and exaggeration of speech might
be called in to lessen their compass, if these words
stood alone, or if they could be construed apart from
their context ; or, it might be said, this frenzy of poetic
feeling should be translated into the soberness of
prose with largest limitation ; yet here these words
of one looking out upon the star-lit sky are so related
to what he has just said of the heavens, that no line,
save one that measures the heavens, can measure
their extent.
But can the Thought in the Psalmist's words be so
enlarged as to compass the astronomical heavens, and
this without substituting another thought in the place
of it ? The human form of a Thought of inspiration
has for its bounds those of the human spirit in which
it was born to human life, and the Divine form of the
thought may transcend these to any degree : — as in
two minds there may be essentially the same Thought,
and yet higher, deeper, greater, and every way reach-

266 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
ing further in the one than in the other. Only thus
could the Bible be an everlasting oracle, which the
Church may grow more and more to comprehend,
but never can outgrow. Only thus is intelligible
revelation through a Book possible. For the human
form of the Thought is the rule by which alone the di
vine form of the Thought is determinable.*
The Psalmist's words may be enlarged to the com
pass of the astronomical heavens, if between his
thought of the skies and the astronomic thought
there is the correspondence which there is between a
less and a greater form of the same thought. If so,
then Astronomy may open more of the Divine form

* Much as the human form of the Thought may and should
be enlarged, so that more and more it may correspond with the
divine form of it, this must be done with exact conformity to its
lesser form ; just as the face in a miniature must be exactly re
produced when it is enlarged to life-size, or else it is not the
same face. Precisely to determine the human form of the
thought as it was in the mind of the inspired writer, and then
to give to it enlargement in right proportion, is what the vast
expansion of Thought in the Modern World — the chief cause
of which is the Bible itself — now makes so imperative. Unbe
lief will have done no harm in bringing out so openly the fact
that there is a wide and deep chasm between the thoughts of the
Bible and those of the Modem World, if it shall drive the Chris
tian intellect earnestly to the work of bridging over that chasm.
But in no case can the idea be resorted to that inspired men
knew nothing of the sense even of their profoundest utterances.
This degrades inspiration into something, magical, and Scripture
into something cabalistical. It makes such Scripture a mere
useless display. For if they knew nothing of the sense of their
words none can know. Their idea of what their words meant
is the only ground on which can be placed the ladder that
reaches up into the heavens.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 267
of his thought, which is essentially the same with its
human form. The compass of the Psalmist's thought
of the starry sphere to that of the astronomic thought
may have been as is that of its seed to the broad-
shading elm ; and yet it was such that the one could
open into the other. For, of the thoughts of Astron
omy, the only one that need here come into view, is
that of a vastness in the heavens which makes them
so fitting a symbol of the Divine Infinity; and that
the skies were to the Psalmist also, a symbol of that
infinity, and that he had an idea of the expanse
above him which might enlarge into the compass of
the astronomic heavens without changing its nature,
are too certain and too plain for argument.
As there was in the Prophet's mind that from
which, as from a germ, the Thought of all the orbs
of heaven might unfold; so there was that which
might, as to man's dominion over them all. The dis
tinctions of past, present, or to come, do not attach
to words of ecstasy ; yet, for that very reason, they
must be as really of the present, as of the future.
The words themselves bind down their interpreta
tion to something which was not then entirely in the
future, not wholly promised, but then existing. They
embrace the heavenly bodies so far as these were
known to the Prophet. But could the Prophet have
then thought of these as any way under man's
dominion ? It is impossible that he could have
thought of them as wholly so. Absolute dominion
belongs to God alone. But there may be a sense of
dominion every way different from this, and which
is a thing of degrees. One who feels a sense of

268 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
superiority to certain objects, one who feels that it
is the will and pleasure of Him who made them
and has absolute dominion over them, that they
should serve him, and who feels that they do serve
him, surely might feel a true sense of dominion
over such objects, even though in some respects he
had no power over them at all. Like to this, and
no more than this, was the feeling of dominion in
the monarch of Israel over the people of Israel. As
that such was the relation of the heavenly hosts to
the Psalmist was a chief part of his knowledge of
them, such may have been his feeling toward them ;
and such it seems to have been at the instant of this
Psalm. The fullness of our astronomical knowledge
of the heavenly bodies would have been in the way
of any such feeling ; and it would have been as
impossible to the heathen of old, as it would be
now to those pseudo-philosophers who hold to the
inviolability and immutability of natural laws. As
the heathen did, they deify nature; and so bow
down before it, that the idea of man, under God,
as the Lord of nature, can find no entrance into
their souls.
The idea of Man's superiority to Nature carried far
beyond all possibility of his knowing it of himself
constitutes one of the two great revelations in the
Eighth Psalm. It is here regarded as a truth partly
wrought out by the Psalmist in his own soul ; and
then as confirmed and unfolded within him to the
utmost by the spirit of Christ. For in this Psalm
there are signs of a wrestling for truth and a seizing
hold upon it, blending with which and rewarding it

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 269
with further and higher vision of truth, is the influ
ence of the Divine Spirit : and so it would seem that
even inspired Prophets had to work out what they
knew of truth with fear and trembling ; it being God
who worked in them, and only to those thus working
with him, granted knowledge of truth unattainable
by the unaided powers of man. Before the Psalmist
rose to his Thought of man's superiority to nature,
he had to gain an immense victory over thoughts
which reigned every-where outside of Israel, and had
great power among the Israelites themselves. This
victory was his own victory; though it was so condi
tioned upon all the struggles and experience of the
children of God, that, without the light and strength
which came down to him from the sacred past, it
would have been impossible. Through these he was
so ready to meet the Temptation which beset him,
that in the hour when its strength was to test the
strength of man, there was a man prepared of God
to overcome it : — even as there was when a greater
Temptation came, and the " power of darkness " test
ed all the strength there is in man : and in all the
temptations of his people recorded by inspiration
of old, it was the spirit of Christ which struggled, as
really,as in that great Temptation it was the Captain
of this host, Christ himself as a man, who at last
won the whole battle for man.
It seems difficult almost to the verge of impossi
bility, for those who have wound themselves in the
meshes and tied themselves with the cords of a false
science, to rise where a true vision is gained of the
superiority of Man to Nature. Yet this could have

270 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
been hardly less difficult for the Psalmist in that old
heathen world, in which he may properly be thought
as living ; for it then encompassed Judea, as now a
degrading, heathenish, and false science encompasses
the Church, with a potency of evil which made way
on every side into that inclosed garden of the Lord,
as may be known from the apostasy of his son and
successor, and of most of the subsequent kings of
Judah and Israel.
A bald statement of the difference between his
thought of the heavens and that of the heathen
around him, gives hardly an intimation of the mental
and moral firmness of the grip with which he fastened
upon it and held on to it ; and still less of the bold
ness of its challenge of all heathenism, through all
time and of whatever name, through its containing
in itself, as it did, the germ of the perfect Divine idea
of Man, when born of the Spirit, as above Nature;
and this as a necessary consequence of his affiliation
with God. Yet, the briefest and simplest statement
of that difference is all that can here be given. The
heathen thought the sun, moon, and stars were gods ;
David thought of them as creations of God, and made
by Him for man. The heathen thought they were
to serve the sun, moon, and stars ; he thought of
them as servants of man. There may have been
more than this in his thought of them ; and probably
there was; for his words show something that looks
like the astronomical feeling. But he thought of them
as made for the need and benefit of man as really
as the flocks of the valley or the cedars of Lebanon ;
and this, though not an exhaustive thought, and

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 27 1
probably not supposed by him to be such, was a true
thought. Alike, then, as to the grandeur of the
skies, and as to the superiority of the soul to the
stars, his were germinant Ideas, capable of almost
infinite expansion : and Inspiration caused him to
utter them in words corresponding to their extent in
the Infinite Mind, the Eternal Will.
The compass of his Thought changed with the
words, "All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of
the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea,
and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the
seas." Do these words limit those before them to
this planet ? No ; those words cannot be so limited :
and this instantaneous change in the compass of the
Thought is comprehensible; the real wonder being
the height and expansion of the thoughts before, and
not this sudden narrowing of their range. Even if
the lowest view of these words be taken, they are the
almost human seizing upon visible, humble tokens
and confirmations of the truths just uttered. But
they may allude to the oracle as to Man's creation ;
and some allusion to this is rather to be looked for
here. For into the channel of older inspiration later
inspiration flows, and together they form that river
with far-off fountains, fed from above the skies, whose
streams make glad the city of God. Thus, these
words may be a prophecy of the return on Earth
again of the original Dominion of man over the world :
but whether in this, or in some future Time- Cycle,
who can tell ? Even should this be so, there is still
an instant narrowing of almost boundless thoughts ;
yet, admitting this to the utmost, and holding to the

272 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
very widest compass of those before, it can be ex
plained. In the twinkling of an eye, the soul can
pass from the widest to the narrowest range of related
thought. In the boundlessness of the star-lit skies
thought may lose itself, and yet, if the glow-worm in
the grass attract the eye, the mind may at once link
the unseen insect's fitful fire with those far lights as
works of the same hand, or through His all-pervad
ing symbol, the element Light. Thinking of the
Divine Fatherhood over the multitudes of men and
angels, the mind can pass in an instant, without the
least jar, or violence of turning in its thought, to an
earthly father's humbler love, and find in the less an
image and confirmation of the greater.
Troubled by the mystic lights on high, oppressed
by the grandeur of the awe-inspiring night, the
Psalmist put forth a sublime faith in man's superi
ority to the heavens. In that same instant, and
when he was thinking of the heavens as the work of
God's fingers, their glory pales in the splendor of his
vision of the glory of Man, for it is shown to him that
Man is to have dominion over all the works of God's
hands. From this super-celestial height the stoop
of his thought is sudden, yet not more so than its
previous exaltation. Quick as the glance of the eye
from heaven to earth are the changes of thought ; but
the narrower sweep of vision cannot do away with
the higher and wider, from which, like the eagle that
has soared above the clouds, it stoops to the ground.
If the close of the Psalm so narrows its range that
man is to be Lord only of the fowl and the brute, if
the higher and wider thought be not in it, the Psalm

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 273
is here incoherent, and it contradicts itself. If the
higher thought be there, all is in keeping, all is uni
fied. It is the same thought, varied only as passing
from a higher and wider to a lower and a lesser circle.
Almost infinite expansion is given by the Divine
Spirit to the words of the Psalmist, when, in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, He applies them to the
Second Man, the Lord from heaven. But the Spirit
cannot have brought out of the words what was not
in them, nor have put into the words what was not
before in them. For then they would not be as He
sets them forth to be, the Psalmist's words, but new
and other words from heaven. Therefore, all there
is in the words as applied to the Son of Man was in
the words when they were spoken : and as thus read,
they test the faith of every man in the Bible ; they
show how infinitely beyond all possible disclosures
of science or conjectures of philosophy are its revela
tions, every way how different, and such as it hath not
entered into the heart of man to conceive of. For these
words were spoken not of one man, but of a Race of
Men. Before, we distinguished between the Human and
the Christian Race ; we must now make a distinction
within the Christian Race. Before, we withdrew the
title man from the Human Race ; we must now with
hold it in its full, mature sense from the Christian
Race ; for as yet there is but one True Man, the Man
Christ Jesus. Man perfect in obedience and love to
God is to have dominion over all the works of God's
hands. In the Son of Man this obedience and love

274 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
was perfect. To Him the Spirit applies this prophecy,
and then it is written, in close connection with it,
" Both He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified
are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to
call them brethren." The same connection of these
two ideas appears when it is written of Christ, in
words again taken from the Eighth Psalm, " God hath
put all things under his feet, and given Him to be
head oyer all things to the Church."
As yet all things are not put under "the Second
man," and there is no man save Him alone. The age
of the True Man is yet to come. In the light of this
fact we can apprehend the first of the two wonderful
revelations in this wonderful Psalm ; for whose eluci
dation, though simple its form and lew its words, I
repeat again, the whole volume is required both of
Nature and of Revelation. Out of the mouth of those
who are babes in Christ, God, who chooseth the weak
things of this world to confound the mighty, ordain-
eth strength because of His enemies, that He might
still the Enemy and the Avenger. This peculiar and
very ancient language is in harmony with language of
far later Scripture : " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these
things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them
unto babes."
The prophesied work of these babes and sucklings
of the Christian Race goes noiselessly yet surely on ;
and the human race works with them, unconsciously
against its will, and knowing nothing of what will
come from its labor, though it fills the air with many
Voices and loud clamors. So in the resounding forest,

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 275
the Tyrians hewed the cedar beams for a Temple they
were not to see, and in the set time, without a sound,
the goodly house of the Lord rose above the holy
mountain :
No workman's steel, no ponderous axes rung ;
Like some tall palm the stately fabric sprung.
Majestic silence !
Of that Race of which, save One, there are but the
children not grown to the stature of men, of that Race
who are to rule over all the stars of heaven, the Psalm
ist could have had, even as we can have, but the
faintest idea ; yet he thought of the race of the chil
dren of God, who, born as babes, were to grow to be
men. Just glimmers before us the sheen of its future
perfect glory. Through what untried vicissitudes of
being, in what far off ages the vision shall come true,
only God knows. Yet, if our imperfect conception
of the True Race of Man admits of expansion into
the fullness of the truth, if the light that just gleams
before our eyes may go on to noon-tide splendor, that
which would be true of this idea, as foretokening the
future, would also be true of the Psalmist's. Our
conception of it may assume a definiteness beyond
that possible to one who lived before the manifesta
tion of the Second Man, the Man Christ Jesus ; it
may fill out a wider circle ; yet, like his, it is tenta
tive, ill-defined, imperfect, though germinant, and
capable of perfection. Even now, the circle of the
truest Humanity is felt to be the circle circumscribed
by the Church on the map of the globe ; but this
feeling points onward and upward to a truth, the

276 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
height of which it does not attain, the truth that man
is truly man, only when he is a son of God.
What is in the future is revealed and unrevealed,
seen and unseen. Will the barbarian perish or be
reclaimed ? Will the semi-civilized people be Chris
tianized ? Will the children through centuries on
centuries of growth grow up to be Men ? or will the
world come quickly to an end ? amid some earth-
changing convulsion the dead in Christ arise, those
living in Christ be changed, and a new Race of Men
possess the new Earth ?
Here, it matters not how, or when, or where, this
Race shall come to its pre-ordained perfection. Much
in Scripture seems to point to a glorious hereafter of
the Church on this Earth ; and any and all the hopes
of this in the hearts of believers, as they have read
the prophecies, may come true ; and yet a purpose of
God that the Christian Race, the true race of Men,
shall have Dominion over all the works of His hands,
have its set time in a higher chronology than that of
this planet. The Earth has had its changes. It may
have more to come — but the Earth is mortal, Man is
immortal. Through all the worlds the Cross will be revealed :
but the time of its universal revelation may be de
layed for as long a period, measured on the great dial-
plate of the Universe, as will correspond with the
time the fact itself was delayed, as measured on the
dial-plate of this planet ; and this fullness of the
universal time may be beyond the Great Day of the
General Judgment, beyond all the mutations of this
planet, beyond the fated hour when the Earth's frac-

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 277
tion of the everlasting duration, Time as measured
by days and years, shall be no more.
Are there large spaces in the System of the Uni
verse ? over against them are set times of more than
corresponding greatness in the System of Christianity.
Does man seem too feeble to be put over all the
works of God's hands ? Man is all contrasts. Weak
as he is, in him there is the breath of the Almighty.
Made of the earth, he is the imperishable tenant of a
perishable world. Long he may cling to his home
stead, but Man must quit it at last to become the
Pilgrim of Eternity:— a cold thought to flesh and
blood, but Eternity, with its many mansions, is his
Father's house.
Is it thought incredible that far down in the Ages
all created things may be put under the race of Man ?
All power now is given to the Man seated on the
right hand of God ; and, if there be those whom he
calls his brethren, may he not share with them his
dominion ? That universal dominion is His, because,
being equal with God, he became obedient unto
death ; and what may he not do for them for whom
he has done so much ? and God who gave his own
Son to die for them, may He not with Him give
them all things ? Hath not his Spirit written in that
mysterious Book, whose Thoughts all may under
stand and none can fathom, they are "heirs of God
and joint-heirs with Christ?"
As the star'born Doubt as to Christianity con
fronts us, wrapped in a benumbing shroud of immen
sity, it may be righteously confronted with thoughts
of more than equal grandeur. Such thoughts have

278 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
their permitted hour. Yet we may well be thankful
all the future is not clearly revealed. The silence
of Scripture is full of mercy, as of wisdom. The
Lord knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we
are dust. Flesh and blood is not strong enough to
bear the full burden of this exceeding and eternal
weight of glory. More grateful to the wayworn pil
grim, tired with life's weary march, the soothing
words of the Spirit, Blessed are the dead who die in
the Lord — they may rest from their labors. But let
us hear no more of any comparison of the revelations
of science with those of the Bible, or that Christian
ity as a System of Faith is belittled and made ridicu
lous by the System of the Universe ! Let us hear
no more that the results of Christ's Death on the
Cross are incommensurate with his glory as the only
begotten Son of God !
IV. So far from being in hostility to the facts of
Christianity, the Astronomical Discovery that Stars
are Worlds, brings to light the unknown and unsus
pected fact of the correspondence of the size of the
World where the Word of God was manifest in form
as man, with the humility of the manger, and with all
the lowliness of His advent. Three hundred years
ago, the discovery of the inferiority of the Earth to
the rival spheres of heaven was made ; three thou
sand years ago, the similar fact was foretold, that
little Bethlehem of Judea would be the birthplace of
the Lord : — a fact that may have tried the faith of the
Magi, familiar with the imperial cities of the East.
If mere comparative magnitude of place be a condi-

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 279
tion precedent to the mystery in Christ, ruling all
other considerations, then it is incredible that the
Son of God was born in Bethlehem. If the Earth,
because it is little, could not have been the place of
the Advent, Bethlehem could not. For though our
mere sense-conception of the vastness of some of the
worlds that make up the Universe overpowers the
reason till it is lost in wonder, yet the instant that
reason reasserts itself, it cannot but see that, if the
argument be good in the one case, it is good in the
other. Is the Earth smaller than some of the
planets ? So was Bethlehem smaller than some of
its sister villages. Is the Earth smaller than the
sun, or the stars ? So was Bethlehem smaller than
Jerusalem, than Antioch, than Alexandria, or Rome.
Is the Earth but a small part of the solar system, and
a still less particle of the Universe ? the parallel is
still exact : Judea was but a small part of the Empire,
the Empire of the World.
Unlike the contrast between the vastness of the
worlds and the littleness of the globe, the contrast
between the ineffable grandeur of the mystery in
Christ and the humility of Bethlehem is no modern
discovery; nor was it first thought of by man. A
thousand years before, the Spirit seems moved even
to wonder at the littleness of the birthplace of the
Maker of the heavens and the earth, at the contrast
between his going forth from Bethlehem, and His
goings forth in the Creative Days of the beginning :
"Thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be least
among the thousands of Israel, yet out of thee shall
he come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in Israel ;
21

280 ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
whose goings forth have been from of old, from the
Days of Eternity." *
The volume of nature runs parallel, so far as may
be, with the volume of Revelation, each proceeding
from the same Lord ; and Reason, illumined by
Faith, seeing the comparative littleness of the vil
lage birthplace of the Son of God requires the com
parative littleness of the Earth, sees that the moral
considerations that determined the one must have
determined the* other. Hence, when we read in
the lower volume of nature of the littleness of the
Earth, this should be heard, so far as it bears upon
the Advent of the Universal Lord to this inferior
orb, as a truth known before. We should see the
parallel in the size of the village where the Lord
was born, as compared with the cities of the Earth,
and the size of the Earth in comparison with the
worlds of the Universe ; should mark that each fact
is the counterpart of the other ; and apply to this
Orb the twofold thought of the Prophecy : Thou
Earth art both little and great among the thousands
of the Universe, for out of thee goeth forth the Ruler,
whose goings forth have been from of old, from
Everlasting. »
V. Yet this untiring Doubt still says : Even though
the contrast of the humility of the Birthplace of the
Son of God with his creative glory was foretold, and
though the events of which it has been the scene, and
the destiny of the Redeemed, make it not the least
among the thousands of the universe, even as Beth-
* Micah v, 2. See marginal reading.

ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY. 28 1
lehem was not least among the thousands of Israel,
and though the Earth may be the oldest, or the only
peopled world, and though the Cross should be known
through all the worlds for the instruction and bless
ing of the whole intelligent creation, even though all
these things be so, I am not satisfied : I still feel
that in the one indivisible universe the Advent of
God cannot have been a thing so separate and alone
as it seems to be in view of the isolation of the Earth.
In this feeling throbs the very life and soul of the
Astronomical Doubt as to Christianity. The replies
as yet given to it, though all bearing directly upon it,
do in fact rather silence than answer it. It cannot be
satisfied unless there be something from " the begin
ning" pervading all the indivisible universe, which,
in some sense, is one with the mystery of the Incar
nation. Nothing short of this can satisfy the feeling,
that by the Advent of God the Earth not only be
comes the pre-eminent world, against which reason
can allege nothing, but a world so apart and alone
that the indivisibility of the spiritual, and of course
of its correlative, the material universe, is broken up
by the appearing within its common conditions of
space and time of something apart from, and not
truly related to the whole, and that the unity of the
Creation of the One God is clean gone forever. This
is a very subtile feeling ; it was long before I was so
conscious of it, that I could drag it to the light to
find in it that which, undiscovered before in the
searching of years, had hindered my mind from rest
ing content with the several answers to this Doubt
already given. It is a truly rational feeling, and one

282 , ASTRONOMICAL DOUBT AS TO CHRISTIANITY.
that can be met only by what the Bible reveals of the
mystery of the Word of God, in all Nature and in all
Life. This is a secret hidden in all created being, toward
which science has not made even infinitesimal prog
ress ; though in its investigation of natural laws some
times startled by a feeling that the universe is no
machine, no corpse for the knife of the anatomist,
and is informed with a life, the intimations of whose
nearness fill it with a momentary awe, but into the
chamber of whose secrecy it can never come.
The Presence of the Word in the universe is some
thing that even revelation hints at, rather than re
veals ; as if man had no faculty for conceiving of it.
It is seen in flashes of intelligence that leave the soul
in darkness. It is a vision that tarries for no ques
tion. We cannot touch the hem of its garment.
The Creation is no illusion, and yet exists in and
through the Word of God ever present therein ; and
may not this mysterious presence of Himself with
what He hath made, be thought of as His Advent in
the Creation, "finished" in His Death on the Cross?
Thus, the mystery of the Incarnation, though in this
world rising to a height not seen or prophesied else
where, has a wider field than this planet, even the
one indivisible universe. It fills all Time, all Space —
its center the Cross, its circumference every-where.

THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI. 283

CHAPTER VIII.
THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
tHE outshining of the Bright and Morning Star
at the Birth of the Redeeming Lord was the
symbol of His glory as the Creating Lord. Its
Guiding ended the long procession of the miracles of
old. It prophesied of that guiding by the Spirit
which marks the new Age. In the framing together
of the Time-worlds made by the goings forth of the
Eternal Word, this star was the Evening Star of a
day then setting, and the Morning Star of a new
Dayspring from on high.
The outshining and guiding of this star so prove
themselves to the Christian Reason as to prove the
history of the Wise men ; for the proof of its greater
facts proves the less. Yet thought may well be
here given to some of those lesser facts. For St.
Matthew's words, and his method, ceasing to be well
understood, there gathered around the Wise men an
air of mystery. Their story seemed to have neither
prelude nor conclusion. Unthought of and suddenly
those strangers came, and they went as suddenly.
There was not a word about them afterward, and
who they were no one knew. They almost seemed
like beings from another world. They appeared, no
one knew whence ; they told a wonderful story, and
they vanished. In this state of things some called

284 THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
the second chapter of St. Matthew the first Legend
of Christianity, and with a show of reason ; for diffi
culties thickened with every line, alike as to the
facts, and as to the truths interwoven with them,
until the supernatural in the history seemed to them
incredible, and the historical fabulous.
TWO MINOR DIFFICULTIES AS TO THIS CHAPTER.
Two of the minor facts in this history thus came
to look unhistorical — the boldness of the Wise men;
and the Tyrant's welcome to strangers bringing such
unwelcome news. But these facts look reasonable
when it is known who these Pilgrims were ; and when
that which befell them at Herod's court is read with
the knowledge of the time and its usages, which St.
Matthew assumes. For religious dignitaries of the
dreaded Parthians, coming under the safe conduct of
their Generals on the Upper Euphrates, or of their
King himself in Ctesiphon, were as sure of honor
from Herod, and as safe from harm, as religious
dignitaries of the Russian Empire would once have
been from Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, or any of those
petty German rulers, whose names so lately passed
from the roll of kings. The bearing of these strangers
accords with the high rank of chiefs of the Parthian
Magi. In calling them kings, the Middle Ages
showed a historical insight which was keen and true,
compared with that which has seen in them only beg
garly fortune-tellers, of questionable character and
wandering habits. These Eastern Magi act like men
unaccustomed to have their actions questioned. They
make no secret of their mission. All Jerusalem knows

THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI. 285
why they came. Apparently, they go straight to the
palace : and St. Matthew would have thought it need
less expressly to state this ; for to whom else should
strangers, of such rank that for them the Council of
the kingdom is called together, report themselves but
to the King in person ? The bloody tragedy in Beth
lehem makes their boldness strange : and yet it was
natural with their religious ideas of Him they sought ;
and Herod's conduct agrees with that of Pilate.
Jesus told this officer of Tiberius, that jealous Em
peror, I am a King ; yet Pilate said to the Jews, I
find no fault in him ; and surely Herod might dis
tinguish between a spiritual and a political claim, as
well as this Roman Governor. But the Jews did not
understand that the Messiah's kingdom was not of
this world ; and for that quick, warlike, and oppressed
people to believe the Messiah was born was of dan
gerous import, because to them it was a political as
well as a religious fact. To the Magi it was purely
a religious fact ; and their inquiry set forth that they
were seeking a spiritual Lord. They came to find a
babe whose Birth was signified to them from heaven.
They styled him King of the Jews, but took this
Title from the Prophecy of Daniel the Magian ; and
it must have been clear to all that they used it in a
religious sense, for they said, they came to worship
Him. Other strangers in Judea nailed this Title to
the Cross of Christ. The Wise Men used it in rev
erence, Pilate in scorn ; but it had with each only a
religious meaning.
Otherwise, the course of the Wise Men in Jeru
salem, high as was their rank, would have been in

286 THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
open disregard of the requirements of prudence and
common sense. Nor could they have thought the
Messiah was a descendant of Herod. For had they
started from the furthest bound of Parthia, wholly
ignorant of the politics of Judea, before they had
come so far into Herod's country, they must have
heard his children were grown up, and that he was
old. Nor would they have asked, Where is he that is
born ? had they thought him a son or a grandson of
Herod. They seem to have made their inquiry of
Herod himself; and if so, could have had no idea
that it would kindle his jealousy. A European king
might have treated such singular visitors quite dif
ferently; but Herod's bearing suits the traditionary
policy of Oriental kings, which has ever led them to
pay a popular show of respect to all forms of religious
faith or delusion. Ignoring its political bearings, he
treated their inquiry as if it were of spiritual import
only. He sought the confidence of the Magi in a
bold, thorough, kingly style ; and he gave to their
coming most public recognition, meaning to deceive
his own people also. In a measure, this was forced
upon him by the rank of the Magi ; and yet it accords
with the adroit but fearless character of Herod, who
was one of those few men who have made themselves
kings by craft and courage. He trusted to the ig
norance of those foreigners as to the state of things
around them, to the charm of regal courtesy, to the
credulity of the pious when listening to pious words
from politicians, and to his own well-trained power
of dissembling. He thought to play with the Magi
till the Holy Child was found ; and for this he thought

THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI. 287
they would be his best, and meant they should be
his willing instruments.
Policy that fails seems poor policy ; but that of
Herod was shrewd, if there be included in our esti
mate of it one thing, which St. Matthew may have
thought too plain to mention, but lost sight of in
losing sight of the rank of Herod's guests. Herod
meant that a guard should attend these Parthian
noblesse, who were journeying in his country to do
honor to a Child in whom he professed to feel a re
ligious interest. If he wished no great publicity
given to this journey, a few trusty soldiers would
have been enough ; but less honor than this would
have been unusual and uncourteous. The quickness
of the Magi thwarted the king. The Session of the
Sanhedrim and their private audience must have
taken up the day ; yet they left Jerusalem before its
gates were shut for the night ; and even the sagacity
of Herod could not foresee that guests so courteously
treated would hurry from his capital.
Their haste may be accounted for in two ways.
Some Israelite may have warned them not to trust
Herod. Their keen eyes may have detected trouble
and alarm in the Sanhedrim. Around the Tyrant
there was an atmosphere of dread. The astuteness
of priests matches the craft of kings. " The Persians
are, of all nations, the quickest to read character."
It may have been, that the Wise Men distrusted the
perilous honor of a guard, and meant to prevent it by
their instant departure. On the other hand, it is not
likely they met with the Sanhedrim; or that any
warning could have reached strangers of rank in a

288 THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
palace, and who were watched all the time by spies
of the king. Enthusiasts are easily beguiled ; and
Herod, by pointing from his palace-windows to the
Temple he had magnificently rebuilt, could seem
to prove to those strangers that he took a great in
terest in religious things. He could readily give a
sanctimonious coloring to his really strong desire to
find the Child. The wily old politician's show of
cordiality must have been a masterpiece of polite
dissembling ; and it was a success, for the Wise Men
meant to come back to him.
There is another explanation of their hasting away,
which is even better suited to their character. The
quality of these men was of the best. In their hast
ing from Jerusalem undoubting faith instantly passed
into corresponding action ; showing they were of a
kind of men whom, from Abraham to Paul, God
seems greatly to prize. Such strong souls finish
their course. Irresolute, double-minded men, an
Apostle saith, receive nothing of the Lord ; and the
Lord himself said, the violent take the Kingdom of
Heaven by force. When the Wise Men had learned
where the child of their desire must be, their need
of rest, the honors of the court, converse with the
wise, even the services of the Temple, could not stay
their pressing on. Theirs, the resolution our Lord
so often enjoins. Theirs, the hope his Apostles so
earnestly commend, that runs to win. Theirs, the true
spirit of the Christian race, as they pressed on to the
mark of the prize of their high calling of God in
Christ Jesus. This is one of the Lessons of their
history : and it accords with the beauty of the whole

THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI. 289
ordering of the Kingdom of Grace, that the first of
the nations who sought the Lord, set this high ex
ample of earnest resolve.
Their faith was born of his oracles. They believed
in his Scriptures ; and this, too, is one of the Les
sons, as it is one of the evidences, of their history.
If it be inquired, How could Persians have believed
in Hebrew Scripture ? the answer, elsewhere more
fully given,* is this : they believed in the God of
Israel, as did their King Darius ; they believed in
Hebrew Scripture, as did Cyrus, the High Priest,
and Founder of their nation. The Temple which met
their eyes in Jerusalem was built by his decree, and
it attested to his faith in Hebrew prophecy. Thus,
in Scripture, one event answers to another. Its
great facts tower above long intervening wastes of
time, like the far-severed yet kindred peaks of a
mountain range.
A DIFFICULTY NOT HERETOFORE CONSIDERED.
How consistent the intervention of the Supernat
ural with the natural when the Pilgrims went forth
from what was to them the Holy City but in name,
how accordant their Guiding with their virtue and
need, how appropriate to the opening of the king
dom of all nations, and how prophetic of the Age
that then began — has been shown. The reasoning
against it, that errs in opposing the astronomical to
the natural idea of the heavens, has been answered.
For a theory as to the mode of that miracle that
makes it almost incredible, there has been substituted
* See The Wise Men, chap, iii, pp. 90, 91.

29O THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
another, against which rationalism, save that it would
deny all things, can allege nothing ; and having set
aside these and other objections to the history of the
Wise Men, I would now offer one, that through its
answer, one fact in that history, which is far too little
thought of, may stand out in bolder relief.
St. Peter's Confession of the Divinity of the Lord
Jesus, from which time the Church began,* with a
Life, the same in essence with that in the old Dis
pensation but so much higher in degree, that the
least in the new is greater than the greatest prophet
in the old.f — a Confession in the worship of these
Persians like unto his, proves them partakers in the
same life with the Apostle. The proof that they had
this life is this : our Lord said, " He that believeth
in Me hath Life," and they believed in Him. This
belief appears simultaneously with the Life. The
one is the vital breath, the other its breathing.
These Persians, then, were born before the time
into the Kingdom of Heaven. It may seem strange
to say this, when the kingdom of heaven seems not
then to have begun to be ; but in both the kingdom
of Nature and the kingdom of Grace, there are facts
which, in a time point of view, are similar. To speak
paradoxically, there are in each, beginnings before
the beginning. In both worlds the Word of God
exults in type and prophecy. In one cycle of time
* Matt, xvi, 13-20.
t Matt, xi, 11 : "Verily I say unto you, Among them that are
born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the
Baptist : notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of
heaven is greater than he."

THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI. 29 1
and life the naturalist sees the appearing of what
seems to belong to a later time and higher cycle of
being ; and the like may be seen in the spiritual
world. In each cycle of life, whether natural or
spiritual, fore-intimations are given of higher life.
In the spiritual cycle, this higher stage of life is
through the quickening of the same life-giving Spirit
by whom what was before was so made, that the
new might thus be quickened within the old. Such
changes come about at great epochs wherein old
things give place to new. And, before these, there
are premonitions and foretokens of the coming
change ; and, highest prophecy thereof, the fact that
is to be, itself appears. One clear illustration of
this in the Kingdom of Grace, is the Resurrection of
many saints in Jerusalem, on the Day of the Cruci
fixion, before our Lord's Resurrection, a prophetic
fact, and sign of the Resurrection of all saints. An
other is this : the Descent of the Third Person of
the Holy Trinity was on the Day of Pentecost, yet
before that day our Lord breathed on his disciples
and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
Facts, such as these, make it probable that the
Life in the Soul, higher in degree in the new Dis
pensation than in the old, may have appeared in the
Old when the time of its end drew nigh, as sign and
evidence of the spiritual unity of the new and the
old. This typical, prophetic quickening of the New
Life could only have been in some few who were the
flower and crown of the old religion. Only in such
could its types and prophecies of a higher spiritual
life have passed over into the fact itself. It is diffi-

292 THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
cult to believe this could have been even in Israel ;
and if the New Life appeared in any of the heathen,
it would seem that it must have been inbreathed into
their souls by the Holy Spirit through the contact
of their spirits with some in Israel in whom there
was the breath of this New Life. For the Christian
Reason can no more do without the cardinal fact of
the oneness of the spiritual being of the children of
God from the beginning to the end of the world,
constituting them all one race, than the Scientific
Reason can do without the cardinal fact of the one
ness of all Life in nature. If the connection in
these chains of related being be severed anywhere,
for one instant, in one minutest link, the king
dom of God is no longer his kingdom, and never
could have been his kingdom at all, for every-where
and at all times his kingdom is one. The Christian
Reason denies there can be any break in the chains
of being, whether in the realms of nature, life, or
grace ; yet here, in the highest of these realms in
whose indivisible trinity is the unity of the universe,
this seems to appear in the Worship of the Lord by
the Wise Men in Bethlehem.
The explanation elsewhere given of that Worship,
combined their Oriental, Persian idea of a king as
God's representative on earth, their ancient patri
archal traditions, the teaching of Hebrew prophets
in the Far East, and the Miracle of the Guiding ; yet
is there given only as its partial explanation. It is
too outward. It does not reach far enough. It does
not touch the heart of the mystery. All those things
prepared for that worship, they tended toward and

THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI. 293
were in harmony with it ; but they were not in con
tact with it. Its immediate, efficient, only cause was
the Holy Spirit ; and it would seem that the medium
of His influence which imparted a new Life to their
souls could only have been some soul or souls in
Israel to whom this new life had been given before.
That new Life from which came the Worship of
Christ by the Magi could not have been inbreathed
into their souls through contact with the Church
they found in Jerusalem, for it had but a name to
live and was dead. Here, then, is a fault in the chain
of spiritual being ; and this argument against the fact
that the Magi worshiped Christ is here presented in
order to secure a hearing for the only interpretation
of this part of the history of the Wise Men that can
give to it an answer.
THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI CONSEQUENT
UPON THE FAITH OF THE BLESSED MOTHER.
As the spiritual children of Abraham were ever
distinct from Abraham's race, so, distinct in spirit
from that Church in Jerusalem, which knew not the
Messiah was born, which learned it with alarm from
strangers, and which crucified the Lord — distinct
in spirit from that dead Church, there was a living
Church in Israel. The silence of Scripture seems to
make it certain that with this living Church the Magi
were not in contact in Jerusalem. Whether or not
they clearly understood this, they must have felt it ;
for the hardest trial of souls seeking Christ is, to find
a Church that is dead, to touch what is thought to
be the Lord's body, and to touch a corpse. How

294 THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
this tried their faith, and how marvelous their faith,
is known when Nature was made to give them the
guidance man should have given and did not give.
By the guiding of His star they found the Lord
outwardly, even as the soldiers of Herod would have
found Him had they gone with them ; but this could
not have been that spiritual finding of Him of which
their worship is sign and evidence. Their true find
ing of Him was in their own souls. His Life in them
recognized its source in Him, and adored his un
create, essential Deity. This Life in them must
/have been inbreathed through communion with his
Church in Israel ; and without the fact of such com
munion their history would be imperfect, and being
so, could not be sacred history.
By these words the sacred history is made perfect :
" And when they were come into the house, they saw
the young Child with Mary his Mother, and fell down,
and worshiped Him." This naming of the presence
of the Blessed Mother at the instant of their worship
reveals that there was some relation between that
worship of her Son and Her who is named in such
close connection with it. Here the form of the
statement is of the substance of the truth conveyed.
It is not written — When they saw the young Child
they fell down and worshiped Him. The Holy Spirit
¦ gives the facts in this form : " They saw the young
Child with Mary his Mother, and fell down, and
worshiped Him'.' In this naming of the Blessed
Mother there is the record of the fact that seemed
wanting on the sacred page.
To this Worship all this history tends. It gives

THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI. 295
unity and highest meaning to all before. For this
the Star was seen in the distant East at its first
shining into these heavens. For this the Star was
made to guide the Magi to that house where they
beheld Him of whom the heavens had prophesied.
In describing this worship the Holy Spirit speaks of
their beholding Him " with his mother " before their
falling down and worshiping Him is told; and He
thus reveals that the Blessed Mother was the human
cause of that worship, whose Divine cause was the
Holy Ghost.
Trains of events converged to that hour from the
birth of time. Events in history, from when the
Prophet, suborned by kings to curse the Prince of
the House of David in the person of his people, was
made to predict the Star of the Lord, from when
Daniel interpreted to Cyrus words of the God of
Heaven commanding him to rebuild His house in
Jerusalem while consenting Magi wondered and ap
proved, the Star in the sky above, and faith in the
hearts of men below, all met together in that central
hour in honor of Christ. But the Spirit of God marks
only that She was there, the Blessed Mother. For
Her, as one of its ends, had been the election of
Israel, that in the family of Abraham, the house of
David, should be born the Woman worthy to nurture
the Holy Child — the Woman predicted in the hour of
man's ruin — the Woman who is in the place of the
Woman who fell — the Woman who, as the Mother of
Jesus, is the Mother of all the Living. In the Blessed
Mother the Representatives of the Nations found the
Church they did not find in Jerusalem. To the
22

296 THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
Blessed Mary those strangers were known in their
true relation to the ancient prophecy of a stranger,
and in them the Mother of our Lord welcomed the
Nations to her Son. Through her lips the Holy
Spirit may have opened to them the Scriptures. But
the Evangelist, who must have received his knowl
edge of this hour from the Blessed Mother, was not
permitted to record her words of salutation, nor theirs
of reply. His silence seems to reveal, that when the
Holy Child was shown no word was spoken. There
is a soul-like speech of the eye, perhaps a fore-
gleaming of the language of seraphs reading in and
through the eye the thoughts of seraphs, and may
not that moment of the Epiphany have been too
spiritual and holy for other language ?
In a lonely dwelling those Pilgrims, familiar with
the palaces of earthly kings, saw a little, helpless,
speechless babe, but with Him they saw His Mother.
In her, that religion which the Word of God from the
hour of the fall of man had instituted for all was in
carnate. The light of its burning types and prophe
cies was in her eyes. When the Blessed Mother
showed to the Magi her Son, the love and adoration
of those eyes may have met the eyes of the Pilgrims,
the first of an endless succession, and through that
look of Hers, the Eternal Spirit may, in that instant,
have so kindled their faith, that sinking to the earth
they worshiped him as the Eternal God. The man
ner of her influence is unrevealed, but the fact is
there on the Record. This spiritual miracle, this
prophetic miracle at the opening of the new age, this
great miracle, higher in degree than that ofthe Star,

THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI. 297
was wrought through Her Faith, whom all nations
shall call Blessed.

NOTE. — Exceptions are often taken to the manner of the pres
entation of truth which hinder its reception, even though they
do not touch the substance of the truth presented. What here
is of the substance is, 1. The spiritual miracle in the worship
of the Magi : (as to the greatness of this, see chap, iii, pp.
149-15 1.) 2. The revelation that the Blessed Mother was in
strumental in their worship of her Son. To some of the opin
ions set forth above, others may be preferred, without its really
touching these great and sure facts. Possibly, in the East, or
in the Far East, the Magi may have met with some of Israel,
like Simeon or Anna ; or even in Jerusalem. The silence of
Scripture makes strongly against the probability of the latter
supposition. But if either were the case, and if the Magi thus
became participant in that New Life, which then could only
have been most rare, and only in the highest spiritual condi
tions, while this would, in some respects, change what is writ
ten above, it would not change those two great facts.
It may be said, that as the Magi came " to worship the King
of the Jews," they only carried out their previous intent in Beth
lehem, and so the Blessed Mother could have had nothing to do
, with their worship. But, while the word which is rendered
worship is in both cases the same, it may have had a higher
religious significance on the lips of the Evangelist than on those
of the Magi in Jerusalem. Its meaning, as used by him, is de
termined by this use of it in the last chapter of his Gospel, 17,18:
"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a
mountain where Jesus had appointed them, and when they saw
Him they worshiped Him, but some doubted."
My opinion is firmly held, that in Bethlehem the Magi recog
nized the true Divinity of Christ, as did the eleven disciples
(that is, as most of them did) on that mountain in Galilee ; but
even if their worship reached not so far, the two great facts re
main. The religious honor given to the Lord by those not of
the house of Israel, and after the faith of those strangers had
been so tried in Jerusalem, is still a great and (as they were
the Representatives of the Nations) a prophetic spiritual fact.

298 THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST BY THE MAGI.
That even to the lower form of faith in her Son the presence of
the Blessed Mother may have been helpful, will be readily ad
mitted by those who remember St. Peter's paroxysm of doubt
as he walked on the water. The human spirit has often faltered
in the moment of the decisive act, that very moment to which
it had long been going forward with scarce a doubt, and then at
a look, or word of cheer and faith from another, has cleared
what else it would seem it could not pass. How many death
beds have shown all that !
The minds of the Magi were high-wrought by the miracle
outside of the house — how natural a reaction, how sudden may
have been a sinking of their hearts at the instant when they
lost sight of the Star within that poor little, humble room !
Would this have been more strange, would it not have been
quite as natural as Elijah's running away, after the sight of the
miracle on Mount Carmel, into the desert and lying down to
die ? The poverty of the place may have frightened them. But
the woman there ! She enriched the room. She made them
feel it was the house of God, the very gate of heaven. To the
lower view of their worship she may then have been indispensa
ble. To the higher view of it she must have been. Take either
view of their worship, yet the fact that she then was indispensa
ble to it appears on the Record. On her faith, in her reply to
the annunciation by the angel, (Luke i, 38,) the Incarnation fol
lowed ; on her faith, at the marriage in Cana of Galilee (John •
iii, 5) followed the first miracle wrought by her Son ; and in
Bethlehem the worship of Him by those who were the first fruits
of the Nations. Whatever the worship of the Magi, whatever
their need, and however the aid of the Blessed Mother was
given to their worship, whether by word, or look, or prayer, or
all combined, or by some act of Hers worshiping Him, the fact
is revealed that of their worship, She was the immediate hu
man cause. Not thus to honor the faith of His Blessed Mother
is not to do fitting honor to her Son, who is " the author and
finisher of Faith."

THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE. 299

CHAPTER IX.
THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE.
"OW that the cloud around the pilgrimage to
Bethlehem is dissolved in light, Men of Science
may read the lesson, set for them to learn, in
the evangel of the Magi. But as the culture of
the Eastern world was all represented by the Magi,
the compass of the phrase, Men of Science, must
here be enlarged to the breadth of this fact. It must
here include all men of letters and of art. To the
poet, sculptor, painter, to the philosopher and the
historian, to the chemist, to the physician, to each
and all of the students of nature, as well as to the
astronomer, the lesson in this Gospel is addressed.
The Magi believed there was more in Nature than
the natural, more in human affairs than the human.
" Conversant with His works, they searched for God
diligently." * It was this God-seeking spirit in them
which God honored, when they made the greatest of
astronomical discoveries ; when the scientific finding
of the secret of the universe was prefigured as Nature
led them to the house in which was the Lord ; and
when the Magi, unconsciously prophesying of the
future of science, worshiped Christ as God. The
lesson in their history reveals the spirit in which the
greatest discoveries in nature are made ; and that
* Wisdom of Solomon, chap, xiii, 7.

3CO THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE.
the highest office of Nature is to guide to Christ, the
true end of Science, the worship of the Lord.
Faith in the Divine Unity was early broken up
into a worship of many gods. Yet some lingering
reminiscence of the One Supreme Being long gave
aspiration and impulse to Science, which in the
earliest historic ages seems every-where to have
been religious. It must be confessed, by all who are
willing to do justice to great men whose works are
their only records, that the achievements of the men
of ancient Science go far to equal those of the men
of modern Science — due regard being had to the
novelty and difficulty of the problems they solved ;
and if belief in the one God, though rapidly degen
erating, so quickened and so upheld their Science, it
might seem that the full belief of this truth might
suffice to stimulate and encourage the scientific spirit
to the utmost and forever.
But there is a Divine lesson in modern History
that teaches otherwise. God rent the orb of civiliza
tion in twain. He gave the southern half to Deism,
the northern half to Christianity. He made the con
trast between the two religions sharp, the struggle
between them well-balanced and severe ; and the les
son of it plain. The religion of Islam drew from the
patriarchal religion traditions traceable in the Koran,
.and resembling those in Genesis, but independently
preserved in the memory of the desert ; it owed much
to the Hebrew, a little to the Christian religion ;
and was truth in comparison with Arabian idolatry.
Its central idea of the unity of God kindled in de
generate Ishmael the genius of science and art; and

THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE. 301
for a time Deism grew a civilization better than that
of Christian countries. Humanizing barbarians, it
built in the Ottoman Empire hospitals of charity and
mercy, solid, immense structures which, though now
uncared for and empty, yet more than the chambers
of the Alhambra, attest to the ennobling power of
Deism. But this quick and brilliant spring of Mo
hammedan civilization ripened into no summer. By
its aspiration and impulse Deism carried civilization
to a certain height ; and then it helplessly and hope
lessly curved downward. The minarets of the once
Christian cities, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Je
rusalem, still send forth the call to prayer, " God is
great ; " yet well the Moslem forbodes the coming
end of the long historical experiment that proves the
inferiority of Deism to Christianity.
Is it said, that if the Thought of God, the grandest
of all thoughts, cannot uphold man in any thing it is
well for him to do, there is none that can ? it is true
only when said of the Father as revealed by the Son :
for it is written, no man knoweth the Father but the
Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him. The
grand old Patriarchal Idea of God was but the gate
way to the Mystery of Redemption ; and so it is but
the gateway to the Mystery of Nature. The Patri
archs sought to look into Redemption, the sages of
old to look into Nature ; but even the Prophets could
not then clearly behold the Lord, through whom
alone is manifest all that can be known of nature.
The science of these last days has clearer vision of
God, and therefore is wiser and firmer in purpose
than the science of old ; but more than Deism is

302 THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE.
needed by science. The work of the Lord redeeming
is one with His work creating ; and Science must
trace in Nature the purposes, and carry out the work
of the redeeming Lord, or at last her sight and her
strength will fail, and her path will end.
The Earth seems but a poor home for women and
children when storms are wide-raging on the sea, and
— Like a drop of rain
Man sinks into its depths, with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown ;
when earthquakes, like that of Lima, crush and
drown twenty thousand, or that of Lisbon sixty thou
sand, human beings ; or when the pestilence walks
in darkness and wastes at noon-day. Horrors like
these have ever kindled the doubt whether there be
not a lack of power, or of wisdom, in the Maker of
the world ; or whether, if not merciless, He be not
at least careless of his creatures. These doubts were
ever rebuked by manifold tokens of benevolence in
all the Divine works ; yet the heathen world, at its
best estate, has ever been full of such dark and troub
ling thoughts, as it is now. Even to Christians, there
has ever been, and there still is, much in this world
that is very dark — as the sufferings of the mute
creation, and the death of infants. All this darkness
seems to have been meant to drive man to faith, to
make him look beyond this changing scene of men
and things. But there has been and is so much on
the earth that is strange and fearful ; since the Chris
tian era the problem of sin has grown so much greater
and more intense, through many iniquities unknown
before, such as the burning to death by the Inquisi-

THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE. 303
tion in Spain of twenty thousand persons for their
religious belief, that faith such as the patriarchs had
could hardly continue in the earth, were it not for
the light ever more and more shining forth from the
Cross upon this increasing darkness.
But, withdrawing our thoughts from spiritual and
moral guilt, and limiting them to those physical evils
against which Christ has set science to contend ; —
even from their presence, science can bring no full
relief. There seems to be no hope that science will
free the world of poverty, old age, and death. And,
so far from being a sufficient Teacher of religious
truths, a purely Deistic science culminates in the
experimental verification of seemingly immutable
laws. These, though awe-inspiring symbols, reveal a
Being on whom the heart can take so little hold, that
at length the Deism of science tends to congeal into
Atheism. That which was known of God in the patriarchal
ages must open into the fullness of the Divine mani
festation in Christ Jesus, or it cannot completely and
forever so satisfy the Heart, as forever more and more
to quicken the Mind. Only in Christ and him cruci
fied is the Divine Mercy and Love for man beyond
all doubt. Only when it is known that, by its seem
ing imperfection, the Creating Word conformed the
world to his foreseen work as the Redeeming Word,
is the ever-increasing darkness of the world touched
and dissolved with light. A perfect world might
have done for angels ; this imperfect world is suited
to men. It is perfect in this, that it perfectly an
swers its moral ends. It is the fit dwelling-place for

304 THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE.
an apostate race, whom the Lord Jesus would bring
back to God, alike by restraint and freedom, by sor
row and gladness, by fear and gratitude, by punish
ment and mercy. Believing that in Nature the j ustice
of the Judge of all the earth is every-where tempered
by his love and mercy, believing that the Lord in the
making of the world every-where thought of man, and
pre-fashioned the powers in Nature to the human
powers, Science in his name can evoke them from
their hiding places, in full assurance of faith, that they
must do her bidding.
What is the finding of Christ by Men of Science ?
It is the being filled with his Spirit. What is the
worship of the Lord by Men of Science ? It is the
working with Him in his great work of redeeming
the world from sorrow and pain, the correlative of his
greater work of redeeming it from sin. Through
this worship of Christ by Men of Science, the wilder
ness and the solitary place shall be glad for them,
and the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose.
It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and
singing. Faith is the life of Science, and losing this it would
soon turn to corruption and pass into nothingness.
Only by faith in the Redeeming Lord can science be
firmly and forever held to the severe task of subdu
ing Nature. Without the thought of the unity of all
Nature, and of great purposes that run through all
time and all worlds, which science receives from
Christ, even her rich rewards and worldly honors
would not long lead on her toilsome march, nor pre
serve her past acquisitions. Those rewards never

THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE. 305
had much to do with the efforts of men of science.
The Divine Thought that Man is to have dominion
over the powers of Nature overmasters their souls.
They seem to feel as if the set time for this drew
nigh. Their sympathies seem to be with the humble
rather than with the great. They seem to see that
the Star of our Lord points not to kings' houses, but
to the manger and the babe. To soften the lot of
labor they have labored, and to help the poor they
have been poor. They have cheered life with com
forts, adorned it with elegancies, in which their own
share has been small. They have realized the wild
dreams of the Alchemist and the Magician: but not
for themselves. They have enriched others. How
much of Christ-like work they have done, lessening
labor and pain ! How much of this with a martyr
like zeal, sacrificing to it every other hope, and with
little or no wish save that of doing this for man !
often hardly conscious of their best motive, yet sus
tained by it through unrequited years ! How many
of these direct and simple men have done these
things and not known for Whom ! When the Son
of Man shall come in his glory, He will say to some :
" I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat : I was
thirsty, and ye gave roe drink : I was naked, and ye
clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited me." And,
surely there will be men of Science among those be
wildered by His words and saying, " Lord, when saw
we Thee an hungered, and fed Thee ? or thirsty, and
gave Thee drink ? when saw we Thee naked, and
clothed Thee ? when saw we Thee sick, and came
unto Thee ? And the King shall answer and say unto

306 THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE.
them, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of
these, ye did it unto me."
Science has too little known Christ, who is her
guide. She has been led by Him in ways she dimly
knew. She is not in cordial, intelligent accord with
Faith. In the main she has wrought for Christ,
yet sometimes has fought hard against Him. Where
is her path, and what her bourne ? There are those
who fear that Science is passing into Atheism. The
reason seems to be this : a purely Deistic Science
must report that inflexible, remorseless Law is all
that it can discern ; when it tries to pronounce the
Word of God as the sum of Nature's teaching, it can
not reconcile all the word now suggests with what it
sees ; and so Deism, its . first utterance changed on
the lips of the astronomer La Place, and Humboldt
the naturalist, into Atheism.
Is Atheism, then, to be the teaching of Nature
and the end of Science ? No. Look again into the
evangel of the Magi, and there see Nature guiding
men of Science to Christ. From time to time the
Lord holds out to all students of Nature signs and
symbols of his presence, which He alone can inter
pret to the reason, and these He interprets through
his written word and by his Church. Thus in new
ways and forms, the opening ofthe evangel of his Star
ever repeats itself. It is so in Astronomy; it is so
in History, in Medicine ; it is so in Music and Art.
With its facts in part interpreted by means of religious
ideas and traditions, Science comes to what claims to
be the Church, to know more. In the parable of the
Wise Men of old a king is troubled, and all his city

THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE. 307
with him, at their news of the discovery of a divine
signal in the realm of Nature. King and priest have
to take cognizance of the wonderful tidings. A politic
encouragement is given to those men of Science.
With an honorable pretense, with a purpose which
is deceitful and deadly, they are told to go and find
out more, to return and report what they find. A
Divine dream warns them not to return to Herod,
and Science no more goes back to Jerusalem.
The Church in Jerusalem had failed to do her full
office. The Lord had come very nigh, but she knew
it not till she was thus strangely told, and she was
then filled with alarm. Then her office to guide men
seeking in Nature for more than the natural, seeking
in the Human for the Divine, was given to Nature.
In this there seems prefigured what has been and is.
Science has been to Jerusalem. She has there con
ferred with king and priest, and she has turned her
back upon them. To them she joins herself no more*
She is following a light in Nature. The awe of the
supernatural is upon her. She is led by Nature, but
it is Nature controlled and made to guide her from
on high. Whither she is going she knows not. The
night is around her and she is alone. She follows
the moving light, but knows not what it is. She
is seeking she knows not what, even as the Magi

* Science put the musket into the hands of the common man.
The first ball that pierced the plate-armor of a knight shivered
the feudalism of the Middle Ages. Then the day of the King
was done. Science put the printed Bible into the hands of the
people, for them to read it. Then the day of the Priest was
done.

308 THE LESSON TO MEN OF SCIENCE.
knew not what they were seeking. The natural,
supernatural light pointed the Magi to a house, and
they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. That house
was a Temple. It was a figure of the Temple of the
universe. There the Guiding of Nature ended. The
Magi came into the presence of Christ. The thing
that has been is the thing that shall be, and there is
nothing new under the sun. What was thus pre
figured has come, and will come to pass. It was a
sure word of prophecy, when at the opening of His
universal kingdom, His own Star led to Christ men
who represented the Science of the world ; and thus
runs on this prophecy : " When they saw the young
Child and his Mother, they fell down and worshiped
Him ; and when they had opened their treasures, they
presented unto Him gifts"

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 3O9

CHAPTER X.
THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
tHE Holy Spirit, and the holy angels, move the
soul in ways which are conformed to the soul's
estate. As star-gazers, the Magi were led by a
Star ; as dreamers, they were led by a Dream.
DREAMS OF THE MAGI AND OF JOSEPH.
In the New Testament six dreams are told ; and
all in the Gospel by St. Matthew. For telling these,
some of those infidel scholars, whose show of acute-
ness and learning is but a show, have called the
writer of that Gospel a credulous man,bending a list
ening ear to legendary tales. Here, as usual, they
evidently have not looked into the facts with that
closeness of observation which the facts in Scripture,
like those in nature, ever reward. Matthew natu
rally thought much of the dream of the wife of the
Roman Governor of Jerusalem, because he himself
had been in the service of Rome ; and this warning
dream, which came on the night before the Cruci
fixion to Claudia Procula, Pilate's wife, and was told
to Pilate in the Judgment-hall, meant too much, and
the word she sent with it meant too much, for them
to pass unrecorded.
In the common dreaming that comes of light or
broken slumbers, the half-awake soul is no fit recipi
ent of supernatural influences ; but there is a deep

3IO THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
repose, a seeming death of all but organic life, in
which, if the soul awake to full consciousness, it may
be in a most fitting state to hold coriverse with the
invisible powers. This is so peculiar a state, that
its repetition in the same person would be probable ;
and, so, the temperament of Joseph, the Dreamer,
which may have determined the form of his first
spiritual visitation, as naturally may have determined
the form of the second, the third, and the fourth.
This goes some way to make the recital of his four
dreams but as the recital of one.
Five of the six dreams were caused by questions
so arising out of supernatural interventions as to
call for supernatural answers. The Magi meant to
go back to Jerusalem ; but that may naturally have
come up again at Bethlehem. There, for the first
time, perhaps, they seriously began to consider it. A
word' or start of alarm from Joseph at their coming,
and what they could not but have seen in the face
of old Herod, double-faced as he was, or have heard
of his history, little as they may have understood
the politics of his kingdom, would have been enough,
when they saw that poor and defenseless Family, to
set them thinking. Viewed on its human side, their
dreaming shows they passed, with this trouble on
their minds, into that land of shadows, where they
were warned not to go back to Herod.
It was a glorious, yet a troubled night. To Joseph,
troubled by the publicity which the coming of the
Magi gave to the birth and dwelling-place of the
child, there came the angel, who told him to go down
into Egypt. But for this, Joseph could no more have

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 3 1 1
known what he ought to do than the Magi, of them
selves, could have known what they ought to do. It
was too much for him to decide to take the Holy
Child out of the Holy Land. The City and Temple
of God were there, and there it must have seemed
to him that the Holy Family should dwell. That he
took the Holy Child away from the Holy Land was
so strange, that the Evangelist, as if it were hard to
believe, points to Israel sojourning in Egypt ; thus
revealing, that as many in Israel were, so was Israel
itself, a type of Christ.
To the Magians a dream appeared ; to the child
of Jacob, in a dream, the angel of the Lord. Thus,
these supernatural visitings were every Way suited to
those to whom they came ; and from the agreement
in one minutest particular, of the dream of the Magi
with the last dream of Joseph, may be drawn impor
tant conclusions, which throw some new light ori one
of the most difficult questions as to the harmony of
the Gospels. The troubled Magi, warned not to go
back to Herod, went, of course, to their own country.
Their warning, and that in the last dream of Joseph,
furnish evidence of what has been said before : — that,
while in Nature there is that which looks like waste,
a thousand acorns falling and one oak growing, Super
natural power runs not even to seeming profusion.
The higher up in the world of grace the more simple
seem the means, the greater the economy of power :
— something as in this world, where the rich, the
strong, the wise, proportion the means to the end,
while the poor, the weak, and the foolish are improvi
dent and wasteful. The Holy Family were on a
23

312 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
journey at the time when Jesus was born; their home
was at Nazareth, within the old limits of the land of
Israel. In Egypt Joseph was told to take the young
Child and go into the land of Israel. It would seem
then, that, when he came up out of Egypt he would
have known where to go. But as all Jews then felt
that Judea was exclusively the Holy Land, no doubt
Joseph thought he must take the Holy Child back to
the town or city of David. No doubt he was going
to one of these, but — probably after he had crossed
the desert into the settled plain along the sea, where
the Judean highlands could be seen along the eastern
horizon — such unlooked for bad news met him from
Jerusalem that he was afraid to go up into Judea,
and he knew not where to go. Then, divinely told,
just as the Magi were, where not to go and nothing
more, he gladly hastened* to cross the border line
of Galilee; and then naturally turned aside to his
old home, and dwelt in Nazareth.f Galilee was then
very much a heathen country. Part of it was called
Galilee of the heathen. It had passed into a proverb,
that from Galilee no prophet came. It was as thick
ly studded with towns and villages as Belgium is
now; and among those towns Nazareth had a well-
* All this seems to be in the Greek avaxapyasv.
t Skeptics have said that the Evangelists Matthew and Luke
contradict each other as to the home of the Holy Family, and
that St. Matthew did not know that Joseph had before lived in
Nazareth. Yet here is evidence that he did — of a peculiar kind
no doubt, yet to my mind good evidence of it. I think the rea
sons can be given why St. Matthew was silent as to what "was
afterward told by St. Luke, but the full consideration of this is
reserved for a book of Thoughts on the Gospel of St. Matthew.

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 313
known evil reputation.* The knowledge of the rea
son of this has passed away, but the fact appears in
the Gospel. That so thoughtful a man as Joseph
brought up the Holy Child in one of the wickedest
towns f in that wicked Galilean country, never could
be accounted for from St. Matthew's Gospel only.
St. Luke tells us how it came about. God had ap
pointed this town to Joseph as his home, before that
through the decree of Caesar Augustus, he sent him
on his journey to Bethlehem. Hence, when it was
made known to Joseph that the Holy Child need
not be brought up in the Holy Judea, his road to
Nazareth was as clear as theirs to the Magi, when
they went to their own country. Thus, the fulfilling
of what all prophecy had prophesied of Christ — that
He should be despised of men — was, as naturally as
it was unconsciously brought about by Joseph, so far
as this — the manifestation of Christ unto Israel was
from a town so bad that it was enough to ruin a
man's reputation to have lived there.
After the Wise Men left the village of Bethlehem
no more is known of them; and here we might take
leave of their history had not the murder of the boys
of Bethlehem been consequent upon their Pilgrimage.
The gold of the Magi came in good time for the flight
of the Holy Family ; and Joseph, the blessed Mother,
and the Holy Child, were on their way down into
Egypt, and the Magi on their way to Persia, before
Herod, perhaps, knew the Magi had left his guarded
town. When he knew they had left his country he
* John i, 46. t Luke iv, 28, 29.

314 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
was exceeding wroth. In wrath, in madness even,
there was a quick cunning in Herod, and knowing
that such pretenders to the throne of his house would
be most dangerous, he did not try to single out the
One, but meant to be rid of all the boys to whom the
coming of the Magi might in future afford a pretext
for appealing to the Star. His murder of all the
boys of Bethlehem suits his. well-known sagacity and
thoroughness. It was so effectual, that no political
adventurer of the next generation in Judea connected
his birth with the Pilgrimage to the town of David.
A thrice-repeated swiftness, not to have been fore
seen, baffled the king. He failed, as man must fail
when Heaven opposes. In his youth the wrath of
Herod was the wrath of a king ; in his old age he was
at times little better than a madman ; and the wonder
of certain critics at his order to slay all the boys in
Bethlehem of two years old is reasonless.
But this is a great wonder ! how this cruel wrong
could ever have been suffered to be ! The first-born
of the girlish Jewish wife and her graceful husband,
the youngest born, the fond delight of doating grand
parents, the sweet babes of Bethlehem, in whose
cradles were hopes more precious than all the gold
of the Temple, were murdered, and the quiet hills
resounded with wailing. Their mothers looked up
to the skies and cursed the king. Herod dies. Yet
how strange the consequences of the Witness of the
Wise tb the Son of God ! the exile of Jesus, the death
of those boys ! In the first lines of life, the Holy One
is subject to more than the common lot. The infant
Redeemer seems to be the destruction of those born

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 315
with Him. In all the darkness of human life, what is
there so dark as the death of an infant ? yet here it
seems a consequence of the Birth of the Life Him
self! And then it is so strange, that the murder of
those boys should have been consequent upon the
Pilgrimage of heaven-guided worthies, that he who
believes and yet inquires may reverently ask, Might
it not have been as well had their little bodies been
buried out of sight, this horror forgotten ? — a ques
tion that leads on to a great truth which is revealed
through the massacre of the Innocents of Bethlehem.
THE HISTORICAL FORM OF THE WRITTEN WORD.
Though the Globe endure for a time proportioned
to the long ages of its growth, there will ever come
to light in the Bible more and more of the wisdom it
brings nigh to man, not in abstract forms, but in
wrought into human lives and trains of events, which
through the essential sameness of all human things
are everlasting parables. Though Christianity is often
said to be a system of truths, even its most mysteri
ous truths are facts. In the Written Word truths
are not usually set forth in the form of principles, but
embodied in facts ; and the seeming exceptions to its
historical way of presenting truths are, in most cases,
more seeming than real. Through the facts in Script
ure the soul receives the clearest and highest form
of a truth it can at once receive ; and the study of
the facts, more and more brings out that truth which
dwells in them. The final reason for the historical
form of the Written Revelation may be this : tbe In
finite reveals Himself through the forthgoings of his

3l6 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
Word ; only through history can these be portrayed,
for the soul can form no picture of these goings-forth
in themselves ; words are but pictures of thoughts,
and the Written Word must conform to the limita
tions of the soul and of its language.
The visible things are so fashioned as to help the
soul's thinking of the things invisible. As seen from
this, that all names of things spiritual were originally
names of visible things, bearing some fancied or real
resemblance to the spiritual things of which they
are supposed to be pictures, though in truth they
are little or nothing more than symbols. Thus, in
many languages, breath, the original meaning of
the word spirit, became the name for the imma
terial essence there is in man, because it seemed
the best picture-symbol of itself the soul could find.
This picture-like stage of words tends to pass away,
and their symbolic meaning fades out. Thus they
change into mere names that stand directly for
thoughts. In this change in speech something of
freshness, of clearness, and wisdom, passes from
thoughts, as well as from words. Thus, languages
grow old ; and had not languages, other than the one
before common to all the living, been called out at
Babel, so that different tongues might act and inter
act upon each other, and had not some of these been
providentially renovated, Language, the great instru
ment of thought, would have worn out with using.
Of each spiritual thing we may know that it is ;
we can name it from some symbolic thing, and trace
its effects, though we know not what, or how, it is.
Philosophy tries to find out things in their essence ;

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 317
but in that direction there is a barrier to knowledge,
while its field opens wide in another direction. Take
that of which the word Life is the picture-symbol,
and then the name : — all attempts to find out what
Life is in itself end in calling it a form of matter, or
a form of God ; and these materialistic and pantheistic
speculations, old as recorded thought, and ever recur
ring in new forms with nothing new but the form,
show such attempts are vain But in the direction of
its conditions, effects, and laws, what endless fields
Life opens ! what difficult, useful, delightful Sciences,
boundless enough for all human desire and effort !
The mode of the Written Word may, perhaps, be
illustrated by the way all that can be known of Life
is known. For Life is the consequence of the forth
goings of the Living Word. It is written, " That which
was made in Him was Life."* In Life in this high,
deep, and broad sense of the term ; in Life as running
clear down through all things, in Life as expressing
the material as well as the spiritual creation, in Life
in this universal sense, the Word of God glasses
Himself, so that from it His image is thrown back, as
the image of the sky from the mirror of a lake. The
lake-mirror is real, the sky is real, the image is nei
ther the one nor the other : so, the Living Universe
is not the Word of God, nor is it his image. It is
the mirror from which his reflected image meets the
eye of the soul ; and the clearness of the reflection
will be as the polish of the mirror, and the purity of
the eye.
The self-revealing of the Living Word follows in
* This seems to be the meaning in John i, 3.

jIO THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
the Written Word the same mode as in all Space
and Time. With no vain effort to set forth the In
finite One. in words, with none of those grotesque or
horrible genealogies of the Creator that provoke our
wonder in the mythologies of the nations, the ravings
of the Gnostics ; with no attempt at the impossible
elucidation of how it was done, as in the Indian
dreams of Spinoza and Hegel; it is written; Gpd
created the heavens and the earth. Then follows the
recital of six goings forth of the Eternal Word, with
divine compression ofthe facts, tracing the continuous
line of these in nature up to the creation of man.
The ongoings of the Word are then, for the most
part, revealed in the central family of the human
race, until this portraiture of Him completes itself in
Christ Jesus and Him Crucified, and in the vision
of his universal and everlasting kingdom.
The Bible is a compend of the whole Revelation of
God in Space and Time ; and, if man will take the
Bible for his guide and light, he can make all nature
and all history like unto the Bible in reflecting his
glory. For not the history of the Jews only, but all
history, is a mirror that reflects the image of the Word
of God. The Bible itself is the proof of this. For it
begins where Time began, it draws its line to where
Time shall end, and it includes all Time between.
In bringing to light the Presence of the Word with
one people, it does not mean to deny it with others,
but to illustrate it. If the history of other nations
had been divinely written, the reflection of His Pres
ence from, their history might have been far less
spiritually instructive, but would have been no less

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 3I9
real than from that of the Jews. In its recital of the
history of one people, the Bible makes the history of
all intelligible, by disclosing the spiritual forces, ideas,
and aims that fashion all history ; by throwing light
on the character and destiny of man, and on the be
ing, purpose, and mode of working of the Word of
God ; and by prophetic light that suffuses all the
future, awaking and guiding thought, even where it
can hardly be said to illuminate it. It never contem
plates other than the whole world. In presenting the
central line of the world's life, how could the Word
of God lose sight of the other lines, when to do this
would be to lose sight of His own workings ? and
every-where in the Scripture are clear intimations
of the Spirit, that he never does lose sight of these.
St. Matthew opens his Gospel with a genealogy of
Christ that has a narrow, Jewish look ; but he grandly
alters all the impression of this by the Coming from
afar of the Witnesses of the Nations to the Lord.
To the Birth of the Lord he gives a few verses, to
this a chapter. By this brevity in the one case,
(whatever other reasons for it he may have had,) and
by this fullness in the other, he at once gave to his
Evangel universality ; and to. his Lord his true place
as the center of all humanity. Marking this, turn to
the end of his Evangel, and see, how its opening and
its close agree. Turn then to the other Evangels :
the Gospel according to St. Luke traces the geneal
ogy of Christ to Adam ; in the opening of the Gospel
according to St. Mark there is no note of the family
or nation of Christ Jesus, He is the Son of God ; in
the opening of the Gospel according to St. John He

320 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
is the Maker of all things, through whom and in
whom Life is in nature, Light is in the soul.
The upholding Presence of the Word in Nature
and in Life, while yet they have a real existence, a
true and proper selfhood, is the Great Mystery that
explains all things, and is explained of none. By his
mysterious presence therein the volume of Nature
and the volume of History have everlasting signifi
cance. In those books of secrecy, it may be, that
little can be made out of the spiritual meaning ; but
there is good hope of doing this as to the facts He
chose, fashioned, and recorded for the instruction of
man ; and whose meaning ever grows more clear,
because he guides and orders events to this end.
Through its presentment of these facts the Bible
re-presents the Word of God ; and this it does in all
the Scripture before His coming in the Form of man
as in all afterwards ; all being historical in spirit or
in form, till, at its close, Prophecy takes the place of
History in a vision of His ongoings to the end of
Time and the World. Thus the whole Bible is the
perfect mirror of his uncomprehended Deity. The
Old Testament, like the New, is incorruptible and
full of his glory. It was of the Old Testament that
the Lord himself said, " In the Volume of the Book it
is written of me."
OF THE TRUTH EMBODIED IN THE GOSPEL OF THE
INNOCENTS.
These general ideas as to Scripture compel me to
presuppose, that some truth of great moment is revealed
through its history of the Massacre of the Innocents

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 32 1
Its very strangeness and horror the more compel me
to presuppose, that the open secret of the Almighty's
permission of a murder so confounding to all precon
ceived ideas of the blessings the Holy Child would
diffuse around Him, seemingly so out of keeping with
the hallowed place and time, must be in some Lesson
commensurate with the wide significance of those
surpassing events with which it belongs.
What, it would seem must here be the fact, may
be illustrated by what is written of the Death of our
Lord : let us suppose the Evangel of His Life was
before us for the first time and all at once ; the
prophecies which foretold, the wonders that attested
his birth ; how Nature and Death obeyed Him ; till at
last, nailed to the cross, he died. We should feel, we
could not but feel, this was no common dying ; that
such a view of it was out of all fitness to the preced
ing life ; that some great truth must be shrouded in
that darkness, which, if seen, would enshrine that
pale form in a brightness above that of the sun ; that
the whole history of the man Christ Jesus was inco
herent and impossible, unless there were some Divine
Mystery in the Cross.
Even thus, when the death of the infants in Beth
lehem is joined to that train of preceding events with
which it belongs, we feel — with all of the certainty
there is in the truth that Divine Wisdom ordereth in
the affairs of men we know, this tragedy closed this
grand procession with some Lesson of commanding
moment. To the eye of sense how pitiable, that a
Pilgrimage ordained before the heavens, led on by
miracle, finding the Eternal Word manifest in the

322 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
flesh, should leave as its monument in the town of
David only the mound where lie the little associates
of Jesus in the Mystery of Birth ! It cannot be, unless
some treasure is buried in that grave. It cannot be,
unless there cometh from that mound a voice which
vindicates that sepulcher, unless the Gospel of these
murdered Innocents reveals some truth that makes
this strange thing harmonious with the whole of
these events in manifesting the Divine glory. With
any just idea of how truth is embodied in the facts
of Scripture, we cannot but believe that the record
of this massacre teaches more than the well known
cruelty of man, or the sudden and bitter disappoint
ment of tenderest and holiest hopes ; we must be
lieve it reveals some truth grandly consonant with
the intent of all Scripture to bring to light the hid
den things of the Kingdom of the Lord.
OF THE REVELATION OF THE BLESSEDNESS OF THESE
CHILDREN.
It is reasonable to think this truth is related to the
revelation in this Scripture, that those children are
in Paradise. It does not reveal this in terms ; and
to have done so would have broken the law of silence
as to the dead, which runs through all Scripture ; but
it gives this impression, and even as to the first mar
tyr, Revelation gives no more. In the Bible, as in
life, when the eye would follow the dying saints, a
cloud receives them out of sight.
Let us try to see how St. Matthew gives this im
pression ; for if the attempt should fail the fact will
remain. Though fully to analyze a painting may

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 323
pass our skill, yet the further we look into his work
ing toward the effect he produces, the more sure we
are that we feel as the painter would have us feel.
With less than a divine courage, St. Matthew might
have feared to put the Massacre of the Innocents into
a chapter whose design is to set forth the glory of
the Lord ; but far from trying to disjoin his Birth
from the Murder, he joined them as closely as he
could. The foundation fact of his Gospel is named
only in the story of this Pilgrimage : " Now when
Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, there came
to Jerusalem Wise Men, saying, Where is He that
is born King of the Jews, for we have come to wor
ship Him." This single, this incidental mention of
His birth is indeed remarkable ; and though it can
not be the only reason for this, yet assuredly one of
its reasons was, to join closely to the Birth, the Pil
grimage. Just so closely he joins to the Pilgrimage,
the Murder: "Now when Herod saw he was mocked
of the Wise Men, he was exceeding wroth, and sent
forth and slew all the boys in Bethlehem and the
coasts thereof." The flight of the Magi was the occa
sion of this decree, but they fled because they were
told from heaven to fly. The Magi, not knowing
what would come of their flight, were innocent of
blood ; and may it not reverently be said, that in
commanding their act, God, in some sense, took upon
himself this consequence of it. Thus, from his first
line throughout, the Evangelist so writes that all
shall feel that if Christ had not been born, those
children had not died ; that as truly as their murder
followed the wrath of Herod, and this the flight of

324 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
the Magi, so truly it entered into the determinate
counsel of heaven. This calm boldness, that so
thoughtfully and clearly points out the Birth of the
Lord and the Divine warning as the superhuman
antecedents of an event so black and terrible on its
human side, shows how fully the Holy Spirit made
St. Matthew feel that Death is the minister of God,
doing his bidding.
Yet the Evangelist's tone is not cold. He brings
out all the wonder and pity of the death of these
infants, by the figure of the long-buried Rachel weep
ing for her children ; by this striking image he makes
the strangeness of the murder felt, while with this he
combines the thought that these infants are not
motherless where they are gone. The Wife of Israel
throws her arms around them. She claims these
little ones. They are all safe in Rachel's bosom.
Misled by the fact that Rachel's tomb was nigh to
Bethlehem, some have said, that St. Matthew here
used the words of Jeremias by poetic license ; but he
himself says, that he applies them to an event within
their prophetic significance. How it was so included
is seen when the old prophet's image, which is some
thing quite apart from other prophecy, is understood.
It is one of those grand images where the Spirit
of the Lord molds, not of lifeless clay but of living
beings, prophetic forms that approve him the arche
typal artist of painting, sculpture, and poetry. Rachel,
sought so long and loved so well, the wife of the
last of the Patriarchs, the happy wife, the unhappy
mother, dying as she gave birth to the youngest
of the Twelve Fathers of the Tribes, the beautiful,

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 325
the sorrowing Rachel, is transfigured by the Spirit
of Prophecy into the sorrowing Angel of her Nation,
ever watching and mourning as her people mourn,
and never forsaking them in the miseries that befall
them because of their sins.
The prophecy embodied in this image is for all
time. In the world of the imagination, Rachel is
the wakeful mother on whose ear falls every cry of
weeping Israel. As that cry is heard, by the rivers
of Babylon, in the persecution of Antiochus, when
Jerusalem fell, or in the massacres of the Jews in the
Middle Ages, ever the voice of the weeping Rachel
is heard in Ramah mourning for her children, and re
fusing to be comforted because they are not. Of old,
the Lord said to this mourning Rachel, Refrain from
thy weeping, thy children shall come again. This
voice of comfort is for all time. Ever when Rachel is
disquieted in her grave, the Lord quiets her with this
assurance that her children shall come again. The
image and the voice abide till Jerusalem is no " more
trodden down," till what was typified when the mid
wife said to the dying mother, Thou shalt have this
child also, doth come to pass. To readers familiar
with this prophecy, St. Matthew needed but to quote
its opening to assure them, that those murdered
boys of Bethlehem were safe with the Angel of their
nation. By making the death of the Innocents part of a
narrative whose burden is the glory of the Lord, and
through the image of Rachel, the Evangelist taught
that, truly as the Lord's birth was the occasion of the
death of these children, so truly was He their salva-

326 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
tion. He thus revealed, that these flowrets were by
Him transplanted from the bleak hills of Palestine to
the garden of Paradise : * a truth, no doubt, divinely
whispered to the souls of their parents, who tried to
believe in God against such seeming cause of un
belief.OUTLINES OF ECCLESIASTICAL TEACHING AS TO THE
HEREAFTER OF INFANTS WHO DIE.
Whenever any Scripture, historical in form, every
where and at all times gives one and the same impres
sion, it would seem that the impression thus given
must be the very truth it was designed to give. The
Christian heart has ever felt on reading the second
chapter of St. Matthew, that the Innocents who died
in Bethlehem were blessed. Revealing this, it reveals
much more. It reveals that infants are immortal,
and that their salvation is possible ; truths that many
will think need no revelation, yet as to which there
has been much strange discussion ; and when this
Scripture is conjoined with other Scripture, it reveals,
that so surely as those infants slain in Bethlehem were
saved, so surely are all infants saved that have ever
died. The time was, when this assertion would have been

* Here a latent correspondence comes to light between the
history of Balaam and that of the Magi, in whose history it is
not visionary to see somewhat of a contrast, counterpart, and
complement to his. As in the former, so in the latter, the man
born in the house of Jacob is Lord alike of the material and the
spiritual world, Lord of the starry hosts, and of those Whom,
unwisely, we call the dead.

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 327
condemned as heresy : and a brief sketch of some of
the facts of the doctrine as to the damnation of In
fants, may well precede my argument from the Gospel
of the Innocents in connection with other Scripture,
in proof that all infants who die are saved. Till the
fourth Christian century, the doctrine of the damna
tion of infants dying unbaptized was nowhere affirmed
in the Christian Church. It became a dogma of the
Western or Catholic Churches, in the fifth century,
in the Pelagian controversy. Thence onward to the
middle of the ninth century, it was there universally
held, so far as records show.
Neander's opinion as to the date of this doctrine
may be gleaned from these words : " The doctrine
of infant damnation, which even from the time of
Cyprian had become predominant in the North Afri
can Church, appeared to the Pelagians revolting." *
Yet even the Pelagian believed, the infants, though
free from guilt, could only be translated into the
Christian nature by baptism, and dying unbaptized,
" though exempt from punishment, were still excluded
from that higher state of being, and attained only to
a certain intermediate state." If this were not an
unimaginative sequence of their denial of a part of
the common creed, then, of those beings whom the
Pelagians thought of as going to people the spirit
ual spheres, unstained with guilt, yet incapable of
attaining to the life in Christ, there is a felicitous

* Dr. Neander's Histdry of the Christian Religion and Church.
Translated by Professor Joseph Torrey, of the University of
Vermont. Bohn's London edition, vol. iv, p. 433,
24

328 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
picture in the description which the White Lady of
Avenel gives of herself, as —
Something that neither stood nor fell,
Something betwixt heaven and hell ;
Neither substance quite, nor shadow,
Haunting lonely moor and meadow,
Dancing by the haunted spring,
Riding on the whirlwind's wing ;
Aping, in fantastic fashion,
Every change of human passion ;
While o'er our frozen minds they pass,
Like shadows from the mirrored glass.
Had Sir Walter Scott availed himself of the old
Pelagian notion, and made the apparition an unbap
tized daughter of the Founder of the house of Avenel,
the unreality and weakness of the tie that binds the
Spirit to the fortunes of Avenel would not be felt ;
and no change would be required to adapt to this her
words on Good-Friday :
This is the day when the fairy kind
Sit weeping alone for their hapless lot,
And the wood-maiden sighs to the sighing wind,
And the mer-maiden Weeps in her crystal grot :
For this was the day that a deed was wrought
In which we have neither part nor share ;
For the children of clay was salvation bought,
But not for the forms of sea and air.
Thus, in ways unthought of by itself, genius helps
to interpret Thought. But this fine creation of " the
Ariosto of the North" found as little favor with the
culture of the time of George IV. as did the Pel
agian fancy with the Numidian Saints. Those hard
thoughts, that gained for St. Augustine this title

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 329
Durus infantum Pater— the Father so hard upon
children, carried the day, It was a liard time. The
vandal was on his war-path ; there was fear in Car
thage then; and Rome herself with bowed head
awaited the inevitable barbarian. Few were the
Christians then who could have cared much for the
future blessedness of those whom they heartily wished
had never been born at all, those savages who were
then rifling the shrines of the holy martyrs, burning
towers, and murdering priests. Their own children
were baptized, and what became in death of the off
spring of such, was a matter that could have made
no strong appeal to their sympathies at a time when
the heathen were ravaging the Christian countries,
and the great Augustine lay dead in a town besieged
by the Vandals.
I do not mean that at any time after the rite of in
fant baptism was established, (whenever that may
have been,) that it was not much thought of. Even
with the newly converted peoples baptism was ever
of prime importance.* Of this the best of all evi-
* As may be seen from a preface to some of the manuscripts
of the Salic Laws, the oldest code of the French ; from which,
as given by M. Guizot, in his History of Civilization in France,
I quote here and there, not from the lack of earlier evidence of
this, but because it is so curious a monument : " The nation of
the Franks, illustrious, mighty in arms, noble and healthy in
body, of a singular fairness and beauty, bold, active, and fierce
in fight, lately converted to the Catholic faith and free from
heresy, the Salic Law was dictated by the chiefs of their nation :
afterward when Chlodwig, the long-haired, the beautiful, the
illustrious- king of the Franks, had first received the Catholic
baptism, every thing in this that was unfitting was amended.

330 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
dence is in the fact, that in extreme cases, where no
priest could be had, any one might baptize. No con
secrated place, no laying on of hands, was then requi
site to the validity of the sacrament. Though bap
tized from the bloody brook by the hands of a slave
or a woman, in the ages of Faith often ranking no
higher than a slave, the mysterious efficacy of Bap
tism, whatever it might be, was all believed to pass
to the wounded soldier dying in the forest, as per
manently and as well, as if the rite had been admin
istered with water 'fetched from the Jordan in a vase
of gold, in the sacred fane, with lighted tapers, the
burning of incense, and by priest, or bishop, arch
bishop or cardinal.
Such, with unimportant exceptions, has ever been,
from early Christian times to the present hour, the
Christian usage ; and this historical, providential fact,
fairly interpreted, is of this high consequence : what
ever the efficacy of the ordinance may be, the power
to administer it inheres in each and in all of the con
gregation. It would seem that this fact must at
length drive those who call themselves High Church
men to modify their idea of the intent and efficacy
of Baptism, or to confess the Priesthood of all the
People. For if their teaching as to Baptism be right,
then the Christian Church hath ever declared and

Honor to Christ who loves the Franks ! May he preserve their
kingdom ! May he protect their army ! For this is the nation
which, £mall in numbers, but valorous and powerful, shook from
its head the hard yoke of the Romans, and which, after having
recognized the sacredness of baptism, sumptuously adorned with
gold and precious stones the bodies of the holy martyrs."

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 33 1
affirmed full powers in each one and in all of its Peo
ple to unlock the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven.
In this cheering fact, the finger of God seems to
point to a future when all errors as to the rite of
Baptism will share the same fate already befalling that
dogma of Infant damnation, which is one of the most
curious of the many chapters in the long annals of
Human Error.
And a dreary chapter it is. For even the Pelagi
ans were almost ashamed of their charitable feelings
toward unbaptized infants. This comes out in these
words of Neander — where, for the sake of the argu
ment to be presented hereafter, I would have my
readers mark the clear intimation of the most learned
of the historians of the Christian Church, that his
own opinion is, that Scripture is silent as to the sal
vation of dead children : " Pelagius himself shrunk
from expressing any opinion as to unbaptized infants :
he affirmed that of one thing he was sure, they could
not suffer punishment consistently with the divine
justice, but what became of them was more than he
knew ; * doubtless because he was of the opinion,
that no distinct declaration on this point could be
found in the sacred Scriptures."
The Pelagian controversy covered a good deal of
ground ; and in it the decision of the question as to
infants was incidental to and contingent upon the
decision of other questions. Yet the dream of an in
termediate state for infants dying unbaptized was
* He quotes these words of Pelagius : " Quo non eant scio,
quo eant nescio " — Into what they go not, that I do know ; into
what they do go, that I know not. — Neander, vol. iv, p. 434.

332 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
anathematized at Carthage, A. D. 418, by a Council
of more than common authority, though not a Gen
eral Council: "The Council of Carthage, in its
second Canon, condemned the doctrine of an inter
mediate state for unbaptized children, on the ground
that nothing could be conceived as existing between
the Kingdom of God and perdition ; but then, too,
according to this Council, the eternal perdition of all
unbaptized infants was expressly affirmed. It is
worthy of note, however, that this particular passage
of the Canon is wanting in a portion of the manu
scripts." * There can be little doubt this matter then
came up ; hardly a doubt how it was decided, if de
cided at all ; and as to this, Neander evidently
thought the positive evidence outweighed the nega
tive. However this may be, these words of infallible
Pope Gregory prove that in A. D. 600 the dogma of
infant damnation was received in all the Western
Churches : " Some are taken from this present life
before they come to have any good or ill deserts by
their own deeds, and not having the sacrament of sal-

* Comparing statements of M. Guizot, I find, that at a
Council not long before at Carthage, and concerning the same
matters, there were sixty-eight Bishops present; at this one,
two hundred and three. In the interim, Pope Innocent had
condemned the Pelagians ; and his successor Zosimus had
granted them a rehearing, and had written to the African
Churches that he was satisfied with their explanations. This
did not satisfy the Council. At its instigation the Emperor
Honorius issued an edict against the Pelagians as heretics.
Zosimus then convened a new assembly ; the Pelagians were
condemned ; and eighteen Italian Bishops, who held with them,
were banished from Italy.

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 333
vation for their deliverance from original sin, though
they have done nothing of their own here, yet they
come adtormenta, to torments." * In a Latin Treatise,
De Fide, On Faith, which from the sixth century
down near to the time of the Reformation, (that is, ,
for a period of eight or nine hundred years, and in a
time when books were so few that a book might be
a more trustworthy monument of opinion than it can
well be now,) passed current among the clergy as a
convenient and authoritative compend of the faith,
there is this spiritual direction : " Most firmly hold,
and doubt not in the least, that the little ones quick
ened to life, whether still-born or born alive, if they
pass from this world without the holy sacrament of
Baptism are punished with the everlasting punish
ment of eternal fire."f
Yet, on the other hand, while from deference to
the authority of St. Augustine and other of the Latin
Fathers, the Schoolmen would not disavow this
dogma, they softened it in a way that has been ridi
culed by some, who have not caught their meaning.
With their characteristic subtilty of thought, the
Schoolmen described that fire where these infants

* The History of Baptism. By William Wall. Oxford, 1844.
Vol. ii, p. 206.
t Milman's Latin Christianity, book iii, chap, x, gives this
sentence from De Fide, as quoted by Vossius, Hist. Pelag., p.
257. In translating, I have softened the Latin in the third line,
the rest is literal : " Firmissime tene et nullatenus dubites, par-
vulos, sive in uteris matrum vivere incipiunt et ibi moriuntur,
sive cum de matribus nati, sine sacramento sancto baptismatis
de hoc seculo transeunt ignis aeterni sempiterno supplicio
puniendos."

334 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
were, as a dark fire that would not burn. From this
we should learn that they thought of hell-fire not as
a material flame, but as the burning anger of God ;
and that such infants were deprived of the light and
warmth of his countenance. Yet all mothers felt it
was hard for little children to be shut up forever in
a dark place. Even this milder exposition of the doc
trine contradicted the mercy of the human heart as
flatly as it seemed to contradict the nature of fire.
Ever the ecclesiastical dogma of infant damnation was
undermined by human feeling and common sense :
and in the Council of Trent there was some disposi
tion to anathematize those who held that the human
nature deserved damnation ; an opinion of St. August
tine and the Latin Fathers, revived in all its original
sternness by the Reformed ; and of which the doctrine
of the damnation of infants has seemed to many a
logical consequence.*
* " The Orthodox " asserted that, " without baptism, none
could be saved. It was allowed, indeed, by the Schoolmen,
that the wish (votum) to receive baptism might avail, in a case
of impediment to the actual reception of it. The blood of mar
tyrdom, too, was supposed to flow with regenerating efficacy.
For thus had the Holy Innocents been baptized in blood : the
sword of the murderer consecrating them to the Saviour, for
whom they unconsciously suffered. But, as no wish or vow of
receiving the rite could be conceived by the infant, it was im
possible that dying unbaptized — humanity may shrink at the re
cital of such a tenet — it could not escape the punishment due
to Original Sin."
In the above, Bishop Hampden ("The Scholastic Philos
ophy," lee. vii, p. 328) speaks first of the time of the Pelagian
controversy, but the citation covers the whole period that has
here passed in review. It is noteworthy as giving the curious
evasion of the difficulty in the way of the salvation of the Inno-

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 335
Luther was a monk of the Augustinian order, the
Reformers were not as well read in the Greek as in
the Latin Fathers, and they shaped their philosophy
of the human nature not so much in accordance with
the earlier teachings of the former, as with those
that, after the Fourth Century, and through the mind
and will of St. Jerome and St. Augustine, prevailed
in the West. Under Luther's direction, Melanchthon
drew up a Confession of Faith presented to the Em
peror Charles V. at a Diet, holden in 1530, in the
old town of Augsburg. This was the model of the
creeds ofthe Reformed. It is substantially that ofthe
Lutheran and Moravian Churches now. It teaches
that "After the fall of Adam all men descended
one from another after a natural manner," that is,
all save Christ Jesus " have original sin ; and we
mean by original sin, that which the holy fathers do
so call, namely, that guilt whereby all that come into
the world are, through Adam's fall, subject to God's
wrath and eternal death. This original blot is sin
indeed, bringing eternal death upon them that are
cents of Bethlehem by those who, forgetting that the Apostles
and Prophets and Patriarchs were not baptized, hold that with
out baptism there can be no salvation. The learned Bishop in
the last sentence could not but have had in mind some of his
own communion who had recently asserted the damnation of
unbaptized infants ; and, perhaps, some high Churchmen, who,
malignant in error, and ignorant of Church history, had denied
the validity of baptism by Dissenters ; — the case being then re
cent, of charges against an Episcopal minister for suffering a
child to be buried in consecrated ground who had been bap
tized by a Methodist minister, brought in the ecclesiastical
courts, where the validity of the administration of the ordinance
was, of course, sustained, and the suit dismissed.

336 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
not born again by baptism and the Holy Ghost."
This the source from which the Ninth Article in the
Creed of the Church of England is derived. That
Article, adopted in 1801 by the English Churches in
the United States, declares, "that original sin in
every person born into this world deserveth damna
tion." In 1643 Parliament convened the Assembly
of Divines who drew up the Westminster Confession ;
this was approved by Act of Parliament in 1645 : also
by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland,
and is now the Confession of the Scottish Churches
in the United States. It declares that original sin
" doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner,
whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and
curse of the law, and so made subject to death with
all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal." The
Savoy Confession, drawn up by the Congregational
Churches in London in 1658, approved by those in
Massachusetts, at Boston, in 1680, and by those in
Connecticut, at Saybrook, in 1708, has the same
words. The Confession ofthe Seven Baptist Churches
of London, in 1646, holds "that in consequence of the
fall of Adam his posterity are now conceived in sin,
are by nature the children of wrath, the servants of
sin, the subjects of death and other miseries, unless
Christ doth set them free." The Confession of Bel
gium and Holland, published in 1563, in French and
in Dutch, runs thus, in almost the very words of the
treatise De Fide : " We believe that through the dis
obedience of Adam the sin called original hath been
spread through all mankind. It is an hereditary evil
wherewith even the very infants in their mothers'

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 337
wombs are polluted, and it is alone sufficient for the
condemnation of all." The Confession of the Re
formed in France, drawn up at a Synod in Paris, in
1566, and presented to Francis IL, declares, "We
believe that all the offspring of Adam is infected with
the contagion which is called original sin : this is in
deed sin, because it maketh every man, not so much
as those little ones excepted, which as yet lie hid in
their mother's womb, guilty of eternal death." The
Confession ofthe Swiss Reformed, in 1566, approved
by the Reformed of Savoy, Poland, and Hungary,
declares "that man was in the beginning created in
righteousness, but falling from goodness became sub
ject to sin, death, and divers calamities : and such as
he became by his fall, are all his offspring ; by death,
we understand, not only bodily death, but also ever
lasting punishments due to our corruptions and to
our sins." The Synod of Dort was convened in
1618-19 by the States General of Holland. James I.
of England, as the head of the English Churches, by
his embassador and by letters urged its convocation.
By invitation of the States General, some eighty
eminent theologians from other countries were pres
ent. Among them were an English Bishop, and two
Presidents of Colleges of the English University of
Cambridge ; these three signed the Article of this
Synod declaring, " that all men sinned in Adam and
became exposed to eternal death ; that God would
have done no injustice to any one had he determined
to condemn them ; " and anathematizing all who
teach that no one on account of original sin is liable
to be damned.

338 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
THOUGHTS AS TO THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN.
That birth-fault whereby all partake of the com
mon misery of a nature inclined to evil, and incapable
of ' holiness, without the help of some power from
without, working within and abiding in the soul, is
the fact which theologians set forth by the name of
Original Sin : — a name not now to be changed for
another. The explanations that have been offered
of the fact, together with the consequences deduced
from it as so explained, are things quite different from
the fact itself. It is possible to reject most, or all of
those explanations, and to deny some of those conse
quences, and yet to hold firmly to the fact. Its affir
mation, as truly as any other, is the article of a
standing or a falling Church. To yield it is, in the
end, to yield every other distinctively Christian fact.
As to this fact, all experience is at one with the
Scripture. It seems to have been the Divine Will
that all history should proclaim it ; and if something
of burden and misery is about to be lifted from the
world, (of which there seem to be omens,) it may
have been sufficiently taught by the sin and misery
of all the past. As to the reality of the fact, no
language can be too strong; and the social conse
quences of holding to this truth are only less mo
mentous than the religious consequences.
But against the way in which this fact was long
explained, and against some conclusions that have
been drawn from it, the Christian reason now reacts
so powerfully as to warp its perception of the fact
itself. Let us then relieve it of the odium of the

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 339
name — Total Depravity, as now used. This is a close
rendering into English of a Latin phrase used by the
Schoolmen ; and yet it now means something quite
different from what it meant in the Latin. Its current
meaning is, that man is as bad as he can be, which
would seem to do away with the difference between
men and devils. But this was not at all the mean
ing of the Latin phrase. It affirmed that all alike,
the mighty and the mean, the Chatelain in her castle,
the Crusader bound for Palestine, the King at his
coronation, the Judge in his ermine, the Priest at the
sacrament, were stained with the same human guilt ;
that none were born free from a depravity total in
this sense, that there was no one whose nature needed
not the healing of the blood of Christ. It embodied
the truth through which the Spirit of the Lord pro
tested against the military and priestly aristocracy of
the Middle Ages.
In this sense it was uttered by many, who, could
they have foreseen them, would have little desired
the changes it was to bring about. For the human
conscience, touched by the Spirit, at last made true
response to this truth. It was long seemingly in
operative as a social power, yet when its appointed
time was come, it began to change, and it is now
changing, the face of the world. Though kings and
nobles remembered not the nakedness of their birth ;
and denied the dishonor of the grave; with heraldic
blazonries, and banners drooping above their tombs,
in death affirming they were knightly and noble ; yet
at the bidding of this truth the barbaric vaunt of
social and ecclesiastical Feudalism slowly, but for-

340 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
ever, retired ; and through this truth Christ called
the People into Being — a creation which resembles
the creation of Man in this, that man was created in
the Age of mighty and great Beasts, who were to
pass away from the earth before him.
It is true, that His calling the People into being
is to be ascribed to His whole ordering of the affairs
of men, clear back through all time, and was not
brought about by any one truth, but rather by all
of His truth ; that the sum of all this is the Cross,
and only in the light diffused from it can that sick
ened estate of man by nature be clearly seen, the
seeing of which is a condition precedent of soul-
health, which is the root-meaning of the word salva
tion ; and true, that man's pride will hardly suffer
him to confess the sin-sickness of his soul till pride
is given up at the foot of the Cross ; and yet it is
also true, that while all Christian truths combine
their power, each Christian truth has a sphere, and a
work, and a history of its own.
This is very often such as the foresight of man
could never foreknow. For a Christian truth sown in
human hearts is like a seed planted in the mould,
which puts forth the life that is quick within it, and
though its germination may be imperceptible, diffi
cult, and long, draws to itself the means of its growth,
till at last there is a tree wonderfully different from
any thing which it seemed could grow from out the
seed. From the Truth of the evil estate of man by
birth, it looks as if there might come the humility of
the individual ; but who could ever have foreseen that
from it would grow the mighty tree of Liberty, under

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 34 1
whose overshadowing branches the nations are to re
pose? Yet so it is. Forinalltheother facts of human
life, in all save what Byron calls " the hard decree,
the ineradicable taint of sin," there may be occasion
for a feeling of difference among men ; and the entire
reasonableness of equality before the Law, without
which there can be no perfect Christian society, is
clear to the heart only when, feeling its evil by nature,
it knows that all are alike in the sin that is born with
us; a truth before which the boast of heraldry is
dumb, and kings and nobles are the relics of the un
christian past.
The silently gathering experience of ages becomes
a mighty enduring power, when some divine decree
embodies it in multitudes of men. Coming thus, it
comes to stay. In the fullness of its appointed time,
at the close of the Feudal Ages, the truth those
Ages were commissioned to teach as to the evil
there is in man, a truth for whose evidence there was
needed this Christian experience in addition to all
heathen experience, was embodied in the People. A
sense of their long suffering in the past, mingled with
the sense of their present suffering, till the miseries
of starving serfs, of prisoners without trial tortured
to death in dungeons underground, all the before
voiceless wrongs of a thousand unhallowed, lawless,
guilty years, then came forth in a cry that deepened
into the thunders of battle.
Democracy was not born of the assertion of rights,
but of the Christian denial that by any law of birth
any human being can inherit rights not common to
all human beings. With a due sense of the birth-sin

342 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
of all, no one would assert these for himself, or suffer
their assertion by Bonaparte or Bourbon to the com
mon harm. Democracy denies that any hereditary
and personal right can inhere in kings, nobles, or
priests, because they are men. Yet that democratic
feeling which was born of the doctrine of original
sin is utterly hostile to anarchy, is easily content to
accept governments that are monarchical in form, if
they derive their powers from the common assent,
and wield them for the common good ; for its humble
sense of the human infirmity makes it grateful for
human good conduct, and wisely tolerant of imper
fection and error. When feudal power would give
no hope of the redress of intolerable wrongs, when it-
avowed it would hold its slaves forever, only then
has this democratic sentiment, by a divinely irresist
ible impulse, been transformed into belligerent force.
When Philip of Spain, in violating the right to wor
ship according to the conscience, forbade religion
on pain of death, then his patient vassals, the long-
enduring, slow-moulded Dutch, broke down their
dykes. It was only when Charles Stuart denied to
the peaceful, law-abiding Puritan the rights he valued
as the bulwarks of liberty of conscience, that the
Puritan no longer on his knees supplicated corrupt
priests conspiring with licentious nobles, rose to his
feet, drew his sword, and, affirming he was " noble by
the right of an earlier creation, priest by the imposi
tion of a mightier hand," appealed to the Lord of
Hosts ; and prelates and princes became as the storm-
scattered chaff of the threshing-floor, when the Lord
answered the Puritan out of the whirlwind of battle.

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 343
The doctrine of Original Sin, like all other Christian
doctrines, is of social as well as of religious power;
and where it is thoroughly taught and learned, those
changes which nothing can stay will be beneficial ;
but where it is not taught and not learned, there the
inevitable ascendency of the working-class is fraught
with inevitable destruction. Born of this doctrine,
Democracy must be nurtured upon it, or it will be
come death unto death. They who think the world
would get on without Christianity, would do well to
consider the difference between a people who, in
humility receiving and profiting by this doctrine,
honor God by works of mercy, justice, and love as
they are taught to do in the Gospel of Christ, and
those peoples whose souls are poisoned and mad
dened by the conceits of infidelity. As a Parisian
truly said, It was not petroleum that set fire to Paris,
but materialism.
The historical origin of the explanations which St.
Augustine gave of Original Sin, and which as intro
duced by him were generally and long held, the
consequences deduced from the doctrine as thus ex
plained, the revival of those ancient theories at the
Reformation, and the silent changes of thought since
that epoch, which, almost without open argument,
have altered some of those opinions, although they
still hold a place in the Creeds and Confessions
handed down from that period, open wide and invit
ing fields of inquiry, where much yet remains to be
learned. They cannot now be traversed. Apart
from all supposed explanations of it, and from a single
25

344 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
point of view, somewhat of the importance of a com
mon belief in the evil there is in the human nature
has been set forth, that the fact itself — known from
experience, from observation, and from Scripture —
might not seem to be denied or under-rated in the
followingARGUMENT IN PROOF OF THE SALVATION OF ALL IN
FANTS WHO DIE.
F We call that man dead who is alive no more to
/ generous impulse or noble feeling, from whose soul
/ all higher, better life is gone, on whom there seems
/ to have passed what, in the fearful language of the
Written Word, is called the second death. From his
lower plane of feeling and thought, and in the fierce
deliriufn of his passions, such a man, losing sight and
memory of the higher life that once was his, may
seem to himself more alive than ever; while the
friends of his youth, remembering what he was, think
of him as dead : — so, remembering Adam as made in
the holy, divine image, the Bible speaks of that lower
darkened life, into which his children are born, as
death. Of this birth-fault of all of the human race,
the Scriptures plainly teach that the sin of Adam is
more than the antecedent. But, on the questions
touching the relation between them, much of the
speculation has been merely the audacious running
out of one line of thought to farthest extremes; the
sole fact that human nature is the same as that of
Adam,* after his fall being taken as its point of start
ing. Such narrow thinking is wholly inadequate to
* See note on page 233.

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 345
compass this relation and the consequences that de
pend upon it.
It was said to Adam and Eve, "In the day thou
eatest of the forbidden fruit thou shalt surely die ; "
yet they lived, as to their bodily life, for many years
after their transgression. No children were born to
them before their fall, and so on this suspension of
the full force of the edict the whole relation between
the birth-state of the human family and the sin of
Adam depended. Adam and Eve seem first to have
known that the death of their bodily life would not
be an immediate consequence of their sin, from these
words to their Tempter : " I will put enmity be
tween thee and the woman, between thy seed and
her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel." Such seems to have been the fact,
so far as the record goes to show ; and as to this, its
silence is to be considered as well as its speech.
Thus in the sacred hieroglyph of what took place in
the Garden of Eden, the suspension of the full force
of the edict of death is revealed in the prophecy of
the Son of the Virgin ; and, to a mihd open to the
way in which, in the Scriptures, truth is embodied in
facts, the plain teaching is, that had not the Incarna
tion entered into the divine foreknowledge, Adam
and Eve would then have died, and there would have
been no human race. On the Life of the Lord,
therefore, depended the living of the children of
Adam. One man may now, in some degree, determine the
condition of another. By one man poverty, or dis
ease, or dishonor may come to another man without

346 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
his knowledge ; and even death may come without
his will. This seems very hard, and yet none will
deny the fact. It is a universal sweep of this else
where partial law, that certain evils of our mortal
state are consequent upon Adam's transgression.
Yet, on the face of the record it seems to be clear
that these consequences would not have been per
mitted ; it seems to be clear that Adam and Eve
without children would have died, body and soul, at
the time of their transgression, had it not been for
Him, foretold as " the Seed of the woman " — a hope-
inspiring oracle, darkly clear, yet never cleared up,
till Christ was born of the Virgin. Hence, it would
seem that there would have been no infants, bom but
to die, had not God predetermined to send his Son
into the world. Our birth-fault, then, the common
calamity of the race of man, that which theologians
call Original Sin, would not have been, irrespective
of the common mercy in Christ Jesus.
Does this view of these facts prevent the common
mercy of God in Christ Jesus, which it sets over
against the common calamity, from being a free
gift? Does it change this grace into a thing of
right ? Undoubtedly it does, if you place the divine
purpose after the birth of Cain ; but not, if you place
it where it belongs, before man or the world was
made. For whether such beings as men were to be
born, depended on the purpose of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, to offer to them
all, life in their death. It depended on the divine
determination of the Holy Trinity to offer them sal
vation from their lost and evil estate through the

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 347
agony of Gethsemane, the blood of the Cross ; which
purpose must be held to be wholly of grace, as it is
to be regarded as antecedent to the existence of the
children of Adam, and as their existence depended
wholly on the divine will.
That the state in which all the children of Adam
are born is really more hopeful, and in this sense
better, than that in which Adam was made, would
seem to be a true inference from the facts, that sin
ning once, he suffered the penalty, while his children,
though sinning many times, may yet lay hold on the
hope set before them in Christ. And if it be said,
this does not meet the case, because only part of the
children of Adam have the Gospel, the reply is, in
this full sense of the word, patriarchs and prophets
knew it not ; and if their imperfect knowledge of it
sufficed for their salvation, how dare we so limit the
power of the Creator of man, as to say that a knowl
edge of so much of His mercy as may avail to give
life to the soul that is born with us, may not be given
to every one? Who hath so read the Divine, or
even the human breast, that he can intelligently
affirm, that even with God this cannot be ? Who
shall dare to say the Almighty cannot graduate down
his truth, retaining the essential life-giving, to the
heart of a savage, or a child ? Is it not uttered in
the same breath that reveals the pre-existent eternal
Being of Christ, is it not written on the same page
that declares His universal creative glory, He is the
true light which lighteth every man that cometh into
the world ?
The true explanation (which is almost purely his-

348 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
torical) of the once common Doctrine, that the birth-
fault ofthe children of Adam is their punishment be
cause they sinned in him, together with the various
modifications of it, cannot here be given. All that
can here be said of this philosophizing is, that in
trying to look into the permission, reason, or explana
tion of this birth-fault, it does not sufficiently regard
the most important of all the facts in Scripture which
are related to it ; namely, that had the birth-estate of
the human family been that of the righteous, unfallen
Adam, there could not have been that manifestation
of the Divine Nature into whose mystery of Grace the
angels desire to look. It is written, "The Scripture
hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith
of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe." *
Limiting now our view of these great matters to
the bearing of the facts that have been made promi
nent, on the fate of Infants who die before they sin
" after the similitude of Adam's transgression," there
is seen the same relation between them and the Life
of the Lord, that was seen between the children in
Bethlehem and his Life. The certainty and the rea
son of the salvation of the children in Bethlehem is
in the relation of the Life of the Lord to their living
but to die. Because of his Life those few lived but
to die. So did the many. The relation, then, of the
deaths of all children to the Life of the Lord is the
same as that of the deaths of the children in Bethle
hem. If, then, those children were saved, all children
that die are saved ; and as those children were saved,
all the children who have ever died must also have
* Gal. iii, 22.

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 349
been saved. As surely, then, as those boys in Beth
lehem are in Paradise, so surely all dead children are
now in Paradise.
The fact, then, in Bethlehem was permitted to be,
and the Divine Record of it preserved, that through
this Wonder and Sign in connection with other
Scripture, there might be a certain knowledge that
all children who die are saved ; a clear and certain
knowledge that all such children are now with Christ
the Lord, whether children of Seth or of Cain, wheth
er of Jew or of Gentile. The conclusion to be drawn
from this Scripture is broad as the fact of death in
childhood. Had there been among those boys slain
in Bethlehem some boy of Egyptian, or Chaldean, or
Scythian blood, could there have been any doubt of
his salvation ? They were Jew boys, slain by the
sword of a Jewish king, seeking among them to mur
der the Prince of the House of David ; yet back of
this, the occasion of their murder was the act of the
Representatives of the Nations. Here the breadth of
meaning in this tragedy begins to open. All partial
ideas as to Israel, all narrowness of thought as to
Christian paternity and baptism, are rebuked by the
spirit of this chapter, which throughout is that of
universality. Its scope is unlimited as that of the
universe. It pertains not to Judea, but to the world ;
not to Abraham's children, but to the human race.
It is one page from the unrevealed history of the
grace of God to all nations. Its lessons are pre
eminently lessons for the whole race of man.
Back of the sword of Herod was the flight of the
Magi, and back of this the Divine Command telling

35° THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
them to fly. The Evangelist holds back the veil, and
the Almighty is seen altering the course of human
events so that the death of these children shall come
to pass. Antecedent to the cruel purpose of the
king, he makes known the counsel of Him who,
through the laws He hath pre-ordained, and through
His ordering of all human affairs, worketh all things
after His own will ; the determinate wisdom of Him
who said to Cyrus, the Persian, " I create evil." God
put an end to the lives of the children in Bethlehem
by the sword of Herod ; and by agencies such as He
saw fit to use — by the earthquake, by pestilence or
war, as well as by the diseases of which so many
children die — He has done the like in the case of the
greater number of all the children ever born ; and
since, in the case of the death of the child who dies
by fire or water, by the rage of man or brute, by
carelessness or ignorance, by accident or disease, the
Lord's life is the divinely foreseen condition without
which they had not lived but to die, it follows as
surely as in the case of those children to whose lives
God put an end by the sword of Herod, that " where
sin did abound, grace much more abounding," God,
for Christ's sake, gives to all such children life ever
lasting, life which is life indeed, for this death in
temptation, sin, and sorrow.
Hosanna to the Prince of Light !
Who clothed Himself in clay,
Entered the iron gates of Death,
And tore the bars away !
One of the causes of the fact, that the salvation of
all who have died in infancy has not been an article

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 35 1
in the creeds of the Christian Churches, may have
been in some lack, heretofore, of clearness of insight
into the way in which doctrines are interwoven with
the facts of Scripture. The reason why Infant Sal
vation was not revealed in such express and clear
terms that it must have been an article in those
Creeds, may have been that, in a world so full of sin
and misery as this has been, such a revelation must
have tended to infanticide. The Living Word, who
in framing the human heart there set strong safe
guards of infant life, would hardly have formed the
Written Word so as to tempt to their breaking down.
It might be that He would not permit the silence of
his oracle to break into speech till the time had
come when the truth, as to the salvation of all infants
who die, might be harmlessly uttered. There are
terrible household crimes in Christendom that awak
en the doubt whether that set time even yet has
come ; but if not, the discovery, here made known,
will abide till in some happier, holier future, it take
hold on the Christian mind. The light of the Divine
Revelation to man is ever miraculously graduated to
the human eye and the human need. The Divine
Spirit presides over this, alike, in the case of individ
uals and of generations. There is ever shining from
His Scripture into the world of man all the light that
man can bear. Of this there is evidence in the fact,
that while its revelation of this truth has never before
been verified to the Christian intellect, it has ever
been sufficiently clear to the Christian heart. This
fact foreseen may have been one of the reasons why
it was not uttered in unmistakable words. For the

352 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
Christian feeling as to the salvation of infants has
heretofore met the wants of the Christian heart, and
with no evil attendant upon it. In despite of erro
neous philosophizing, the Christian heart, touched by
the tenderness of Christ's words as to children, has
ever known that when God takes children out of the
world he takes them in mercy. It may not have
thought to extend this to all the infants who have
died, but within the scope of its own experience it
has ever felt this. And the individual Christian
heart can hardly do more than this, in the way of
verifying to itself many of the world-wide truths of
Scripture. Thus, if in the all of history, or even in
any important period of history, it tries to discern the
Divine mercy, or even the Divine will, it may only
bewilder itself in the darkness of seeming confusion
rather than rejoice in the light of order ; and yet
within the sphere of its own experience it may be
able to see what it cannot trace out in the world
wide plan. What it thus feels is true of its own little
circle, it may still feel must be true throughout all
time and all space, though it cannot think this out.
The very attempt to d6 this may rather tend to over
power the feeling ; and yet in this feeling there is
true wisdom, and, essentially, all the knowledge of
this truth that ever will be known. In the like man
ner, the heart of the mother who feels that her own
infant, lost to her, is with the Lord, may feel that
other lost infants are safe with Him, even though
her mind may have been schooled into a seeming
acceptance of the doctrine that by the Will of Him,
whose tender mercies are over all the works of His

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 353
hands, all dying heathen infants pass out of misery
into misery. The horror of infant damnation, as thus
urged upon her, may bewilder and trouble her ; yet
the Grace that, through her sense of the tenderness
of the Lord toward little children, quieted her sorrow
for her own child, quiets this in the same way; or
else calls her mind back from it, and forbids her
thinking of it at all.
What her heart thus teaches the Christian mother
beside the lifeless body of her little child, seems to
have been the feeling of the Hebrew as well as of
the Christian heart. For King David must have
believed in the salvation of his dead infant when he
said, " I shall go to him." * The words of our Lord,
" Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid
them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," f
have ever encouraged and cherished that same feel
ing toward dying children, which made the royal
penitent put away from him all signs of sorrow when
his child had passed away : and whatever of error
may have clouded the Christian intellect in this mat
ter, the Christian heart has ever affirmed the truth
that has just been" shown in Holy Scripture.
That there is divine wisdom in the reserve of the
Bible and in the gradual outshining of more and
more of its exhaustless light, is beyond all doubt. It
is equally beyond all doubt, that the Word of God to
man will ever give sufficient answers to all proper
questions touching His government ; and give to all
human sorrow its appropriate consolation. This is
taking very high ground as to the Bible. But this is
* 2 Sam. xii, 1 5-23. t Matt, xix, 14 ; Mark x, 14-

354 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
the ground that all true Christians have always taken,
which they always will take, and which they can de
fend. If this be so, then assuredly the Bible is the
everlasting oracle of the human family.
Its assurance of the salvation of all infants who
die, clears up much of the darkness that broods over
the past and over the present world. As at least one
half of all those that have ever been born have died
in childhood, more than half of all those that have
ever been born are now in Paradise ; and this is the
fact, although in all past ages the heathen have
been, even as they now are, the great majority of the
children of Adam.
Z*~ In the sayings of our Lord there are depths on
depths of knowledge. All see something of what his
words mean, but who can see all that his words
meant to Him ? When He took little children in
his arms, when he blessed "them, and said, "Suffer
' little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,
for of such is the kingdom of heaven," all must see
his love and tenderness ; all may see that He recog
nized in them traits that would mark his disciples ;
but it required the experience of ages to see that He
may have thought also of the fact, that they who
would come to him in childhood were ever to be the
greater number, even in His Church on the earth ;
and it required the full comparison of all the lan
guage of Scripture to see that He may also have
thought of the fact, that of children not grown to the
stature of men, his kingdom on earth would be, till
some great cycle of that kingdom had rolled away;
and it may be He then also thought, that of such

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 355
little ones as he held in his arms were the greater
number of those whom He himself, passing as a con
queror through the Gates of Death," was soon to visit
in Paradise.
AS TO THE SECOND CHAPTER OF ST. MATTHEW, IN
CONCLUSION.
The revelation of the Salvation of the greater num
ber of those born into this world of sin and sorrow is
most appropriately inwrought into the Evangel of the
Wise Men, because they were the Representatives
of the Grace of God to all nations. Their office
gives great antecedent probability to the idea that
world-historic signs would be wrought before them,
and great truths come to light in their history. For
those Magi of Persia were not only the Representa
tives of the Grace of the Lord to all nations, but they
were also the Witnesses of his Grace for all the na
tions. As from time to time this idea of the office
of those Wise Men has risen before us, it may have
seemed to some that while their Representative
office may be readily accepted, those men who, un
thought of, come to Judea and suddenly depart, leav
ing no trace of themselves in the known history of
their own generation, and with no record save a few
lines by St. Matthew in the next generation, cannot
be called Witnesses for the nations ; yet in this same
thing their history is in accordance with the ways of
God. It is written, the Kingdom of Heaven cometh
not with observation, or, as better translated, is not
ushered in with parade. This secresy of their Wit
ness at the first, in the little village, the lowly dwell-

356 THE HOLY INNOCENTS.
ing, the depths of the night, is in harmony with the
ways of Him whose glory it is to conceal a thing,
that the soul of man may search it out.
Divinest things often seem very small and faint in
their beginnings ; but at length the Divine Word
cometh forth out of Darkness into Light that Dark
ness overtakes no more. As from the cloud the light
ning shines from east to west suddenly, so before the
end of the first Christian century the Witness of the
Wise Men shone from beyond the Euphrates to the
shores of Spain. We cannot fail to be struck with
its permanence of interest, as well as its universality.
While the Church was converting Europe to Chris
tianity, it told of nothing, save the Cross, that took
more ready hold on the nations. It raised them from
idolatrous prostration before the host of heaven. It
seemed a personal pledge of the tender interest of
the Lord in far-off wanderers in the night of heathen
ism ; and in many ways the deep impression made
by this history on the mind and heart of Europe may
be seen down to the end of the Middle Ages. At
that world-changing epoch, the whole idea of the
heavens was so changed that it might be said, the
old heavens passed away. Did the interest of the
history of the Wise Men pass away ? It had fired to
ecstasy the devotion of ages that beheld the heavens
of old ; but when the new astronomical heavens
were seen, then only could be known the highest
glory of the fact to which the Magi witnessed for all
coming time. This higher glory will suffer no dim
inution, no change, save that of increase, so long as
the heavens shall endure.

THE HOLY INNOCENTS. 357
What think ye of Christ ? is a question very
near to the heart of the present age. Its thought
turns to Him as the Son of man with more appreci
ating earnestness of consideration than ever before.
The Religious Thought of this century seems ab
sorbed in the wonder of His Humanity, as that of the
fourth century was in the wonder of His Divinity;
but a true idea of His Humanity is impossible with
out a true idea of His Divinity. We cannot attain
to a true idea of the Redeeming Lord until He is
known as one and the same with the Creating Lord,
the great Truth symbolized at His Birth in the
Bright and Morning Star.

INDEX.
analytical and explanatory.

Abel and Cain. Representatives of True and False Religion, 44.
Abraham. A New Time Cycle began with him, 15, 48. Date of
his Call, 17, 20. See Gen, xii, 1-4. His Religion the same as that
of Melchizedek, 19. Battle at the Springs of the Jordan, 24.
Offering of Isaac, 194, 208. Misrepresentation of, in Lange, 5.
His Seed as the Stars in number, 208-21 1. See also Gen. xii, 1-4 ;
xiii, 14-16; xv, 1-18 ; xvii, 15-22; xxii, 1-18.
Ammonites. Joined with the Moabites in the calling in of Ba
laam, 7.
Amorites. Their defeat by the Israelites, 30, may have led to
this policy, 7.
Anacharsis Clootz. Referred to, xxxviii. A profane, eccentric
Prussian, who took for his surname that of an old, wandering
Scythian philosopher ; styled himself the " orator of the human
race ; " figured in Paris in the opening scenes of the Revolution ;
elected member of the National Convention in 1792; guillotined
in 1794.
Arabia. Sometimes used as the name for the deserts adjacent to
Palestine, 6, 7.
Apostles. Chosen as Witnesses to the Life of Christ, they com
plete the volume of Inspiration, 97.
Astrology. The Art of Divination by the Stars. Belief in, uni
versal in Asia even now, 81. Example of, in Europe, at the
birth of Louis XIV. of France, (A.D. 1638,) 82.
Astronomical Doubt as to Christianity. Statement of, 213.
See Table of Contents, Chap. VII.
Atheism. Atheism and Pantheism come to much the same thing,
121. Atheism the only alternative for Christianity, xxx, xxxi.
Evanescence of the present forms of Scientific Atheism, xxiv.
Balaam. Unwillingness of some that his history should be inter
preted to the people, 8. References to, by Philo and by Josephus,
8; by Stanley, 8; ses also 48, 49. Error as to- the derivation
of his name, 5. . The date of this reaches back to the Targums,
26

36O INDEX.
but they avoid the objection stated by saying his birth-name was
Laban— for this there is no Scripture warrant, and see, 59, line
11, n. Boundaries of his World, 16. Of Shemitic race and lan
guage, 17. His religion and that of Moses, the same in origin, 26.
A prophet, in the Oriental sense of the word, 21. From the Sacred
East— this one of the causes of his influence in the West, 20,
34. He is, however, called in Josh, xiii, 22, a Soothsayer, a
term nearly equivalent to Wizard, and compare Num. xxii, 7.
His knowledge of the history and religion of Israel, 20-32.
Worship of Jehovah, 26. The conditioning of his prophetic upon
his human intelligence, 35. Relation of his prophesying, to the
end of his Cycle of Time, 32-36. His Definition of Religion, 43.
His mission, 38. Character, 45-48, Of the writing of his
Oracles, 59. How they may have come into the hands of Moses,
59, 60. His death, 58, 60. Allusions to Balaam in the New Tes
tament, 75. In the Old Testament, there are, or may be, allu
sions to his words in Judges xi, 25 ; I Sam. xv, 29 ; 1 Sam.
xiv, 47, 48, compared with Num. xxiv, 18 ; 2 Sam. xxiii, 1 and
Prov. xxx, 1, with Num. xxii, 24; Hab. i, 13, with Num. xxiii, 20;
Obad. 3, 4, 17-19, and, especially, Jer. xlviii, 45, with Num. xxiv,
17. See essays by E. C. Robbins, Bibliotheca Sacra, May and
November, 1846. See, also, Oracles of Balaam.
Bible. What it is, 202, 203. Reasons for its historical form,
315-320. Its revelation of the World-Plan : early example of this
in the Oracles of Balaam, 51, 52. Inspiration includes Revelation
as one of its elements, 95-98. The Gift of the Sacred Writers
only, 96, xxxviii. In the Bible a Divine Inbreathing, xxxiv, xxxv.
How communing with the Written Word may be communing
with God, 95. Of the Human and the Divine element in the
Book, whereby it is an intelligible and an everlasting Oracle,
265, 266. Of the universality of its tone, 205. With it there is
Superhuman Power, xli. One of the media of the influences of
the Holy Spirit, 207. Our Lord ascribed to words of Hebrew
Scripture the same power to bind the conscience as to his own, 97.
The Bible reveals glimpses of scientific truths, xx-xxiii, and teaches
social as well as religious truth, xl, xli. It sows broadcast seeds
of truth of many kinds, whose origin is often unthought of, 205.
See also 172, 173. The foundation truth of all natural science
sure only from the Bible, 205, 207. Of the Truth in the Old Tes
tament, as indispensable to the full and true portraiture of the
Word of God, as " made flesh and dwelling among us," 246, 247.
A Translation the most perfect of all comments on the original
Scriptures, 63-65.

INDEX. 361
China. Worship of the God of Heaven by its patriarch-priest-
Emperor, 169.
Chittim. Ancient name for the island of Cyprus, 4. See also, 57.
Confusion of Tongues. This miracle better described as The
Calling forth of New Languages, 10. Evidence of it outside of
the Bible, 10-14.
Conjunction of Planets. 78. This is such a seeming nearness of
planets as to be a rare fact in Astronomy and a sign in Astrology.
In the year of Rome 747 there were three conjunctions of
Jupiter and Saturn, and one with Mars, also, in the next year.
One of those years may have been the Annus Domini. From
those planetary phenomena, astrologers would have believed that
some great event was about to come to pass, and some think they
were what the Magi meant by the Star. For a discussion of this
opinion, and for the reasons for rejecting it, see The Wise Men,
Chap. VII, Kepler's Discovery. Also see here the argument from
the word Star, 78 ; from its adoption by the Evangelist, 87, and
from his method, 87.
Cross of Christ. The Creative and the Redeeming work of the
Lord, in one view, the same, 181-183. All the Divine participant
in the Passion of Christ, 190-195. His Passion the "finishing"
of the revelation of the Divine, 183-188. Christ's Universal
Dominion consequent upon his Death, and the influence of the
latter as wide as that of the former, 189, 190. The Cross a time
less fact, 73, 196. The reason for all that is not eternal, the-
corner-stone and key-stone of the universe, 196, 197.
Culture. So far as aristocratic and sin-cherishing, it dislikes
equality and holiness, xxiv-xxviii. Its perception of the growing
power of spiritual, true Christianity the cause of its growing hos
tility, xxviii-xxx.
David. How this prophet attained to the Thought of the Super-
ority of the Children of God to all other Divine Works, 240-247.
Greatness of the victory in that Thought over Materialism,
247-250. Fitness of his character to the revelation made through
him of the Dignity and Destiny of man, 250-257. His belief in
the salvation of his Child, 353.
DAY. All created things suggest their Time as naturally as their
Space, and the former as really as the latter enters into their
idea, 73, and, of the two, it most clearly points to the Creative
mind. Of the two, it is the most prominent in the Bible. In
Isa. xliii, all that exists in birth and change (see 120) is viewed
solely in its time-aspect, 180. Perhaps no Scripture so shields
from Pantheism. AU that is not eternal is there summed up in

362 INDEX.
the word, Day. There the whole sweep of Time is, the Day : —
as in the Latin idiom where Dies (day) is put for Tempus, (time.)
So far, then, as one example could show this — it agrees with
Hebrew modes of Thought and Language to give to the Six Days
in Genesis a duration commensurate with their Great Works ; (see
also 158. ) The prophet Micah calls them, Days of Eternity : com
pare 279-280 with the verses from John, 181. Thus the Scripture
anticipates the discovery of long Times in the growth of the
World. See xx, line II ; 210, line 10.
Deism. Has no place in the future : this shown from the history of
Mohammedanism, xxx. Also, that it cannot forever foster Science
and Art, 300-302. Reasons, for this, 303, 304.
Dispersion of the Nations. The mercy mingled with this judg
ment : the lost unity to be regained in Christ : prophecy of this at
the Pentecost, 13-15.
Dominion of Man. Great First Charter of, to Adam and Eve,
231 ; its purpose, to confer the Divine prerogative, 260. Consist
ency of this with the words, let us make man in our image, after
our likentss, 261. This is very clear in the noteworthy rendering
of the Targum of Onkelos — as our likeness. This Dominion over
the life, carried with it dominion over the forces, of the world —
the grant of the less being implied in that of the greater, 233 ;
was conditioned upon holiness, and forfeited by the Fall, 233, 237 ;
yet revived in part in the Grant to Noah, 234 ; its implied
Equality of Woman and Man, made by our Lord the basis of
Christian Marriage, which may be proof that the Charter is still
of some effect, 232. The Divine purpose disclosed in it, commends
itself to the soul, 261. The Original purpose that Man should
have Dominion over this World, extended in and through Christ
to the Universe of Worlds, 235-237, 273-278. The Time of this,
in the far-future and unknown, 276. The Unity of Scripture seen
from its earliest word, it all being a revelation of the carrying out
of this Divine purpose, 260.
Dreams. The six told by St. Matthew, 309-313.
Elohim. The plural Hebrew noun rendered God, Gen. i, 1, 242, 243.
Faith-Crisis. Signs of : declaration of the Council of the Vati
can; the denial of Christianity within the Church of England,
xxiv, xxv ; the Oxford heresy, xxxvi, xxxvii. Its cause, the grow
ing power of spiritual, true religion, xxiv-xxx. Its occasion, the
unloyalty of Christians to the Word of God, xxxv-xxxix. The
assault upon Christianity combines all its forces against the Bible,
xxxi. Its issue unknown, save that it will be as He wills to whom
all Power is given, sxxi, xxxiv.

INDEX. 363
Flood. Evidence of this outside of the Bible, 9, to.
Free-Thought. A duty enjoined by Scripture. Intelligence and
Freedom, of the essence of Faith, 200.
Froude. Opinion of, — on the prevalence of Doubt as to the
Gospel History, xxxv.
Funeral. That of Jacob memorable, that of Joseph sublime,
28-30.
Grant. Quotation from his Inaugural, March 4, 1873, 14. See,
also, 17.
Guiding, Miracle of. Wrought in the rays of the Star, 109. Its
fitness, 117-119; Lesson as to Nature-worship, 119-154; need of
this in the ruder districts of the Roman Empire, 152. The Great
ness of this Miracle, 129-157 ; as compared with that of the Sun,
131-134 ; shown from its effectiveness in Christianizing the Ro
man World,- general evidence of this, 140-148 ; specific, 148,
152 ; the Teutonic Races, 153, 154. It closed the procession of
the Miracles of Ancient Days, 129, 156, 157. Prophetic — of the
Service of Nature to Man, 155; of the Guiding by the Holy
Spirit, m. Wrought in the pre-eminent Star of the Heavens,
156. As to this, see Star of Our Lord.
Guerin, Eugenie De. Her worship of her confessor compared
with the command of her Lord, xxxviii.
Heavens. The picture-symbol of the all encompassing Infinitude
of God, 163. They shadow forth the mystery of Creation, 164.
The Hebrew thought of their height, as sublime as the modern
thought of their extent, 174. Moses' words as to the heavens
(Deut. x, I4) and Solomon's (1 Kings viii, 27), 175.
Heber. The forefather from whom the Hebrews took their name,
S, 6.
Heine. Of Jewish parentage, born at Dusseldorf, 1800, died in
Paris, 1856. His reproof of those critics of the Hebrew Bible
who have tried to utter the mystery of its power, xv, xvi.
Hegel. Born in 1770, died at Berlin, 1831. His aim— to explain
the inexplicable mystery of Creation; his explanation merely a
denial of the fact. The aim and the result was the same, in the
cosmological speculations of the ancient Hindoos; of the Gnostics
(philosophical heretics of the first three Christian centuries) ; of
Scotus Erigena (ninth century) ; of Spincsa and his school ; and
of the Evolutionists, who now re- utter the philosophic jargon of
other days in the terms of natural science, and try to prove it by
natural phenomena, which are comprehensible only through
glimpses of natural truth revealed in Scripture. See xx-xxiv.
The Denial of Creation has but two possible forms, the Atheistic

364 INDEX.
and the Pantheistic. Its causes, a pride of knowledge which
aspires beyond possibility, and a dislike to the thought of the
Maker of the World, the Father of man, before whom the Human
creature must bow in adoration. See 121-125, compared with
262, 263 and 185, 186 aud 247-250.
Herod. The secret of his policy in making the Wise Men his
agents in finding the Child, lost, in losing sight of their rank, 287.
Infants. Outline of Ecclesiastical teaching as to the Hereafter of
those who die, 326-337. Argument in proof of the Salvation of
all Infants who die, 344-355.
Innocents of Bethlehem. Herod's decree putting those to
death, 313, reached to male children only. There could hardly
have been more than 5,000 people in the bounds it specified, and
the number of Boys slair., hardly more than 50. Yet, Milman
states, the " Greek Church canonized 14,000 Innocents ; even
later, Jeremy Taylor, in his Life of Christ, (A.D. 1651), admits
the 14,000 without thought.'' Forthe Reasons for the Silence of
Josephus as to this murder and other facts in the Gospel History,
see " The Church and Science." Andover, i860, pp. 278, 279.
Inspiration. A word of wider meaning than Revelation. 'The
gift of the Sacred Writers only, 95-98. Dangerous use of this
word in any other sense, xxxviii. See also, 95. Thoughts on
Language and Inspiration, 91-101.
John. The prelude to his Gospel, 181-183. A different rendering
of its third verse, 317. This changes the pointing only: it joins
the last three words of the third verse, namely, that was made, to
the next verse. As those words now stand in the English version,
they seem to be superfluous.
Jordan. Grotto-sanctuary at its fountain, sacred to the heathen
god Pan, 3.
Joshua. The Greek form of this Hebrew name is Jesus : hence the
name, 156, line 1, compare, 4. On the day of the battle of
Bethhoron (or of Gibeon) when the sun stood still, the greatest
sign, not in the heavens, but in the man, 131-134.
Kingdom of Heaven. This Title, official, 162; found in St.
Matthew only, 161, in the other Gospels, translated, as it were, by
Kingdom of God ; probable reason for this, 161. The Heavens a
comment on this Title, 163-165. Its relation to the oldest of the
Divine Names, 165-169. Its space-extent, to the spiritual in
Israel, 176, 177.
Koran. A witness to some few facts of early Scripture as pre
served in the memory of the Desert, and interwoven by Mohammed
(A.D. 570-632) into the Koran. 25.

INDEX. $63
Matthew. Fullness of his knowledge of the Pilgrimage of the
Magi, 83-87. Bearing of his method on the question, Was the
Star one of the stars of heaven ? 87. Evidence of what some
have denied, that he knew of Nazareth as the home of Joseph be
fore Jesus was born in Bethlehem, 311, 312.
Maury. His dying benediction on his children, xvii.
Morse. His words as to the Study of the Bible, xvii. See 23, 261.
Mesha. Sacrifice of his son to the fire-god, by this Moabite
King, 42.
Messianic Prophecy. The life-giving and life-preserving element
in the Old Testament, 72, 73. Messianic prophecy now obscure
with excess of light, 2 ; compare, 66.
Micah. Prophesied in the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
Ahaz set up the worship of Moloch "in the valley of Hinnom,"
(Tophet), under the wall of the Holy City ; and there " he burnt
his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen : "
2 Chron. xxviii, 3 : — convincing proof of the dread reality of the
long struggle of the Spirit of God with idolatry, even among the
chosen people, 126-128. Hence, Micah's rebuke of this crime, in
words of Balaam to the King of Moab, who but proposed to do,
what this king of Israel did. The Hebrews had books, not of t|ie
Scriptures. From one of these, the Prophet quotes that, which, as
quoted by him, is under" the seal of inspiration. The inquiry for
the reader, 43, is, whether the words of Balaam — which by his use
of them he may be said to make his own — may not have been from
one of those revelations, of which there seem to be indications in
the First Historic Cycle, 41, that have not come down in Holy
Writ. Micah's use nf the term, Days of Eternity, (v, 2), to de
scribe the Days in the Generation of the World, 280. Compare
' with the words in italics, 14, these words of this ancient prophet,
iv, 1. 3, 4 — " In the last days it shall come to pass that — nation
shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn
war any more, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken it."
Midianites. Arabs of the deserts south and east of Palestine,
called Ishmaelites in Judges viii, 24; of wandering habits, yet
sometimes settling in the villages taken in war ; often making
their way into the plains of Jericho and Esdraelon — see The Wise
Men, 35-37. In the time of the Judges they came into Palestine,
"like the locusts for multitude and their camels as the sand which
is by the sea-side," (the number is given as 135,000), and Israel
fled " to the dens whjch are in the mountains." Judges vi, 2 ; vii,
12; viii, 10. The, Targum of Palestine says, that Balak, King of
Moab, was a Midianite, the custom being " to have kings from

366 INDEX.
this people and that by turns." Whether so or hot, the Moabites
and the Midianites (all akin and of one language) were then in
close alliance ; and, so far- as the wandering tribes recognized such
authority, Balak was king over them all. These facts go to
show what might have been the military effect had Balaam been
suffered to lay the Israelites under a religious interdict and of
themselves are sufficient tb justify what is said, note, 38.
Miracles. The Divine Supernatural may act through and in con
formity with the laws of the natural, 309, and use their help, 310,
no. This may, in some degree, have been the fact even in
Prophecy and Inspiration, 99, 100, and 240, line 15, and 256 com
pared with 268, 269, also 33-36. Economy of power one of the
characteristics of miracles, 1 10, 11 1 ; 12, 312, line 16. Three Great
Classes of Miracles, 128, 129. Allusions to that of the Flood
(Gen. vi, vii, viii), 9, 10 : The Confusion of. Tongues (Gen. xi,)
10-14: Of the Sun (Josh, x), 131-133, also in. At the Red
Sea (Exod. xiv), no, 131,26: The Destruction of the Assyrian
army, (2 Kings xix) 135-140 : The Sun-Dial of Ahaz, (2 Kings xx)
in : Darkness over the land of Judea (Luke xxiii, 44, 45), in.
At Cana of Galilee (John ii), 298.
Moabites. Some of their characteristics, 30, also 27, 28.
Mother of Our Lord. The Worship of Christ by the Magi con
sequent upon Her Faith, 293-298, and the Miracle at Cana of
Galilee, 298. See also, 87, 103.
Names. The most ancient and universal of the Divine names re
vived by Christ Jesus in the title of the Kingdom which He pro
claimed ; which, supplying the ellipsis, would read — The Kingdom
of the King of the Heavens. This, found only in St. Matthew's
Gospel, should be compared with the equivalent Title in the other
Gospels — The Kingdom of God, 165-169.
Nature- Worship. Its two forms; prevalence and power; the
Divine purpose to do away with it, 119-128.
Og. Legend of this giant in the Targum of Palestine, 7.
Oracle of Balaam. The term rendered parable in the English
Version, Num. xxiii, 7, might, perhaps, have there as well been
rendered — oracle. It is used fqr the speech of Job, xxix, 1, for
Proverbs, and in other places, as Psa. xlix, 4, but not for the
writings of the Hebrew Prophets. Possibly, a Moabite term, that
came into the Hebrew from its use in Numbers. As to the Star,
the meaning of Balaam's oracle, must, in certain respects at least,
be the same to us that it was to those who heard it, 63-66 ; how
that meaning can now be ascertained, 66-70 ; interpreted by the
Jews as predicting a Star, 70-75 : — gee Star of Our Lord. It Wfts

INDEX. 367
so interpreted by the Fathers, Origen, Jerome, Ambrose, and
others; and as a prediction fulfilled in what the Magi saw, 71.
General Interpretation of Balaam's last Oracle, 52-59 ; specific,
with special reference to the Star, 59-72. Why St. Matthew did
not say, that in the Star4his Scripture was fulfilled, 74-77. Reply
to other inquiries, 72-74.
Proverbs. Part of the Eighth Chapter, as compared with John i,
and other Scriptures, 241-244.
Psalm. The Eighth ; cited in Hebrews ii, 6-1 1, to prove the Uni
versal Dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ, 225 ; see also 1 Cor.
xv, 27. Interpretation of this Psalm, 225-274.
Revelation. As the unveiling of the whole Divine Plan of the
World, unknown outside of the Bible, 51, 52. Early appearing
of this fact in the Oracle of Balaam, 51. Revelation of less
import than Inspiration, of which it is one of the constituting
elements, 95, 96.
Rod of Moses. The legend in the Targum of Palestine, on Numbers
xxii, 27, referred to, 69, runs thus : — " Ten things were created
after the world had been founded at the coming in of the Sabbath
between the Suns — the manna, the well, the rod of Moses, the
diamond, the rainbow, the cloud of glory, the mouth of the earth,
the writing of the tables of the covenant, the demons, and the
speaking ass."
Sennacherib. The son of a man greater, perhaps, than himself.
Not long ago, see Barnes' notes, the father, Sargon, as named,
Isa. xx, 1, wa% a perplexity ; now, his history is known ; and his
statue, found in Cyprus, (and so marking the breadth of his con
quests,) is in the Museum at Berlin: — one proof of the resurrection
of a world older than Rome or Greece, 138. There seems evi
dence outside the Bible, in an Egyptian tradition, (Herodotus,
B. 11, 141,) of the destruction of the soldiers of Sennacherib : — ¦
he calls them Assyrians and Arabians, a iise of the word similar
to that, 6. It seems strange the Tyrant died not with his men : —
yet Napoleon came back alive from Russia. That afterward
Sennacherib *' worshiped his gods," does not contradict the evi
dence that he held himself a god : Atheism is a crime later than
his date, his claim of superiority may not have reached to his own
deity, the fever of his mind may have abated — and why seek for
consistency in such a heart ? That such was his claim was pointed
out by George Smith, Gentile Nations, I, chap. v. He does not
cite Isaiah, 136, as evidence of this. Stanley, who does not note
this claim, refers to " a strong argument," to prove the occasion
of the Psalm (Isa. xiv, 4-22) was the death of Sennacherib. To

368 INDEX.
my mind this is settled by this fact. It is the feller of the Sacred
Cedars who is dead, and this was Sennacherib. He was murdered
in.the temple at Nineveh by two of his sons. 2 Kings xix, 37 ; Isa.
xxxvii, 38. See 135-140. — In this book the bearing of only one
fact upon the fitness of this miracle hq$ been pointed out ; much
more would need be said to bring out all there is in Scripture by
which this might be illustrated.
Stars. Hebrew idea of the heavens and the stars, 174, 175. Ex
planation of Judges v, 20. " They fought from heaven ; the stars
in their courses fought' against Sisera,'' 175.
Star of Our Lord. Foretold, chap. n. One of the stars of
heaven, chap, in: argument to prove this, from the word, Star,
78, 79 ; from its use by the Evangelist, 87 ; bearing of his method
on this, 83-87. Error, that it was a conjunction of planets, see
this Title ; error, that it guided the Magi from the East, 79 ; error,
that it was not seen ;after they' left the East, till they went to
Bethlehem, 80-87. Its disappearing — of evil omen, 82. The re
joicing of the Magi not because the Star unexpectedly reappeared,
89-107. Its Guiding not inconsistent with its being a Star, 107-
111. Its Creation, 158, 159. This Star, the occasion of the
personification, (see 177, 178,) I am the Bright and Morning Star,
Rev. xxii, 16. Its place in the universe, 179, 180. Significance of
its appearing, 160, 197. The regaining of the lost knowledge of
this Star, perhaps, possible, 178. The loss of this knowledge is an
argument against the fact that the Magi beheld a Star, but is not
one of much weight. The Magi, as astrologers, were as familiar
with the face of the starry sky as astronomers now are. Other
wise they would hardly have felt sure that what they discovered
was in fact a new star, — unless, indeed, it came out close to one of
the planets, or to one of the few well-known stars, such as the
Polar Star. Had such been its place, they might have identified
it to others, so that its place would have been easily and long re
membered. But, if an astronomer now points out some one star,
not in a place such as has just been named, is it probable that the
person to whom it is so pointed out, can single it out again, on
the next night ?
Targum. The Captive Jews were among those whose speech was
so like their own, that they learned it, yet so unlike, that their own
Scripture ceased to be understood ; and as it was read in the syna"-
gogues, a word-of-mouth interpretation of it was given. This was
known as — The Targum. It dates back to Ezra's time, but was
written out some two hundred years after Christ. This unwritten,
mctnoriter, oral Scripture is important as bearing on a like oral

INDEX. 369
Gospel : See 145, 146. On Moses, the Targums are, that — of
Onkelos ; of Jonathan, or of Palestine ; and of Jerusalem ; — the
two last may not have been distinct works. The Targums on the
rest of Scripture are not of equal antiquity. That of Onkelos is
a close translation ; the others are paraphrases, in which are in
woven legends and fancies of the Jews : — see 7, and, Rod of Moses.
Substantially, these three give the interpretation of Moses, in
Judea, in the Apostle's day. They were translated (1862) by the
late J. W. Etheridge, an English scholar of the Wesleyan persua
sion. 1. As to Balaam, they say — " secret mysteries hidden from
the prophets were revealed to him : " compare 8 : 2. Where the
Hebrew says, Amalek was first of the nations, 5, they go on to
say — who made war on Israel. This mere conjecture, like some in
later criticism, obscures a fact of value. For that the Amalekites
once held the rank given them by Balaam (who speaks of the past)
is probable enough ir. itself, and the fact bears on the antiquity of
the power of Egypt. See, also, 23, where a like fact is noted.
3. All the Targums conceal the Star, though they briug out the Mes
sianic meaning of the Oracle : as thus : — " Meshiha, the Power —
Sceptre of Israel, will bring to nothing all the children of Sheth."
This may seem to conflict with 70, 71 as to the meaning of the
Oracle to Jews of St. Matthew's day ; but may not this conceal
ing of the Star have been caused by the Second Jewish war, (see
70, note) and by the effect of the Second of St. Matthew on the
spread of Christianity ? See 141-143. 4. As Etheridge proves in
pages of much value, an idea of the Word of God, like that in
St. John, runs through the Targums. So, too, through the
writings of Philo-Judaeus, cotemporary with St. John. He said, —
" The eternal Word of the everlasting God — from the center to
the extremities, and from the utmost limit to the midst, pervades
the long range of nature, binding together all its parts. For
the Father who begat Him hath made Him the indissoluble bond
of the universe." Philo, and other Jews of Alexandria, spoke
Greek, and his ideas as to the Logos, or Word of God, are often
said to have been Platonic. It were hard to find them in Plato.
But they are in the Targums. When the Jew of his day read the
opening of St. John's Gospel, he read of truths not unknown to
him, until he came to this, — " The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us, and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the
Father." The bearing of this on what is said, 247, line 3, will be
clear to all, and also on that organic unity of the Bible, which is
one of the miny proofs that the Spirit presided in and over its for
mation.

37O INDEX.
Translation. The most perfect comment on Scripture, 63-66.
Webster, Daniel. Born 1782. Died 1852. The remarkable
epitaph oil his tomb at Marshfield, Mass., given in part, 214, has
no word as to his services or honors. It was written by himself.
In full it reads thus : " Philosophical argument, especially that
drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the
apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my
reason for the faith which is in me ; but my heart has always as
sured and reassured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a
Divine Reality. - The Sermon on the Mount cannot be a mere
human production. This belief enters into the very depths of my
conscience. The whole history of man proves it."
The Wise Men. Nothing said of them in Scripture, save in Gospel
of St. Matthew, 84 ; and nothing after they left Palestine, 313.
But fable and legend have filled up this void with their conversion
by St. Thomas, not in Arabia, where one ancient tradition placed
them, nor in their own Persia, but in India ! Legend farther tells,
that in the fourth century, Helena, mother of the Emperor Con
stantine, having made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in search
of relics, and having found the cross, -the four nails, and the blue
robe of the Virgin, journeyed into India and thence brought back
the bones of the three Kings. In legend their names usually are
— Melchior, representing the children of Shem, Balthazar, of
Japhet, and Gaspar, of Ham. The bones held to be those of the
Magi were deposited in the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople.
They were afterward presented to Eustorgius, Bishop of Milan, a
Greek by birth. When Milan was captured by the German Em
peror, Frederick Barbarossa, those bones became the prize. of the
captor, and were carried by him to Cologne. The first stone of
the Cathedral built to receive them, 154, was laid in 1248, and the
relics were deposited there in 1322. The work of completing this
vast edifice, which had been suspended for three hundred years, was
resumed in 1842. See "The Wise Men," 173.

THE END.

WHO THEY WERE, AND HOW THEY CAME TO JERUSALEM.
By FKAUCIS W. UPHAM, LL.D.

We place at the head of our notice of this book, by the
request ofthe writer, this opinion of his late brother,
Prof. THOMAS C. UPHAM,
the eminent metaphysician, well known to the Christian
world :
" This book throws much and satisfactory light upon a
hitherto obscure aud unsettled subject. The title, however,
fiils to give an adequate idea of the richness and extent of its
contents. Its careful reader, especially one who takes an in
terest iu the origins of human thought and belief, will not fail
to find himself rewarded with instruction of a very rare kind."
We also call attention to these words of
ABEL STE VENS, D.D., LL.D., the Historian of Methodism.
" It shows thorough historical knowledge of the period and
localities of its theme, and extraordinary critical power, with
equal candor in the treatment of the difficulties of the subject.
None of these are evaded. This unusually interesting and im
portant book, though suited, to the highest critical demands, is

well adapted to the popular mind, and should be in our
Sunday-school libraries and families. It proves that the faith
of the Church is as intelligent as it is, to the unbeliever,
mysterious;" J. P. THOMPSON, D.D., LL.D., the Learned Egyptologist.
" Tlie author has exhausted the historical and scientific learn
ing upon his subject. His book establishes the historical
reality of what many regard as only a poetic legend; "
And to this frankly honorable and noteworthy statement
of Dr. Deems, in his admirable "Life of Jesus:"
" This book is the' first successful attempt that I have seen
to clear up this pilgrimage ; after reading it I canceled what
I had before written on the subject." — Note on page 46.

A Readable Book for All.
The Publishers belieye that learned hooks need not, neces
sarily, be dull or obscure. It is true that common readers
generally turn from such books; but it is because so manv of
Ihem are written as if they were meant only for scholars. We
think the time has come when the historical and doctrinal
questions touching Christianity ought to be. and can be, po
treated that the people can pass upon them intelligently;
and that it would help tlie truth, and make scholars more
thoughtful and more wise in their thinking, if they more felt
they were addressing the sober sense ofthe people. The writer
of this book has steadily kept in view " the silent yet ever in
quiring common mind;" and has tried to put all his readers
in a position to judge of what he says. Any person of or
dinary intelligence can understand his book; and if 0111
ministers will give the assurance that it is not beyond the
common capacity, they will find that it will be read, and read
with interest, and with profit. The way to shutout bad books
is to encourage tlie reading of those that are good.

Difficulties as to the Second Chapter of St. Matthew.
How did the Magi know the star was the star ofthe King of
the Jews ? A great astronomer opened the way to answer this
question more than two hundred years ago, and at last the
auswer has been clearly drawn out. How came the tyrant to
give such honor to strangers asking a question so provoking
his wrath ? By pointing to the adjacent Parthian Power, by
briefly proving that under its rule in Persia the Magi held on
to tlieir old rank, and by laying his finger on a fact in the
youth of Herod before unnoted in this connection, Dr. Uphnm
gives a well-proven answer to this difficulty. 80 also to the
caviling of Strauss and others at this chapter, a3 countenancing
astrology, or divination by the stars. But while these and
other questions were not fully and clearly answered, many
came to regard this chapter as the first Legend of Christianity ;
and the venerable Dr. Tholuck well said, of " The Wise Men : "
"This book ought long since to have been written." The
Duke of Somerset, in a recent book republished in this country,
which professes to give " the opinions now prevalent among
the cultivated classes" in England, says, they "feel themselves
justified iu discarding this portion ofthe Gospel from authentic
history." Stanley, Dean of Westminster, in a paper read be
fore an association of clergymen, gives it as his opinion " that
the truth of the Gospel History is now more widely doubted
in Europe than at any time since the conversion of Constan
tine." In view of such facts, the clearing up of this chapter is
more important than the finding of the Moabite stone.

Dr. Norton's Rejection of this Chapter from the Gospel.
In the Unitarian controversy, by the side of Dr. Channing
stood Dr. Norton, Professor of Sacred Literature in Harvard
University, a man whose rare scholarship was acknowledged
by the critics of both hemispheres. Dr. Norton, though of a
school of criticism then regarded by its orthodox opponents as

destructive, was of a reverential spirit, and his opposition to
the Transcendental Infidelity is to be held in remembrance.
Yet in his work on the Genuineness of the Gospels, Dr.
Norton spoke of this chapter as " a strange mixture of
astrology and miracle ; " and in his Translation of the Gos
pels, published in two octavos at Boston, 1862, he degraded
this chapter from its place in the Gospel into an Appen
dix to the Notes in his second volume. This was Dr.
Norton's dying challenge to the Orthodox. Translating its
twenty-first verse, his pen stopped forever; the other two
verses were translated by another. To this challenge the
theological schools of Princeton, Yale, and Andover, with
whom much of his life was a conflict, ventured no reply.
England and Germany gave them no real help, aud they
answered not a word.
During that long controversy we, as a Church, had no
trouble with that Rationalism, or spirit of unbelief, which is
now very common ; nor have we ever suffered from it at any
time hitherto, nor do we suffer now ; and yet we are firmly
persuaded that in the future we can only be secure from it by
great earnestness in Christian work. While some Christians
crowd on the walls to gaze on the new engines brought for the
destruction of Zion with an eagerness of curiosity that looks,
to her assailants, like applause, and tends neither to quench
their conceit nor cool their zeal, it the more becomes our
Church to welcome every thing that defends the Bible and
opens more of the wisdom of the Word of God. In this spirit
we have acceded to the wish of some of our ministers aud
laymen, that we should bring out an edition of this book, to
gether with another by the same writer, and we earnestly
commend them to all Christians. NELSON & PHILLIPS,
805 Broadway, New York.

DR. TATLER LEWIS,
author, of- "the six dais or oreatioh."
I'havff no hesitation in saying, of "The Wise Men," it is a remark
able production^-of remarkable excellence, I mean. It is learned,
original, instructive, and most suggestive. The dissertation on the
East and the Far East is important, cloar, and, I think, accurate. The
chapter on the 'Persians must have the highest interestfor readers of every
class ; and the application of it at the end, in the argument respecting
the worship the Magi paid to Christ, is to my mind triumphant and
conclusive. The chapters on the connection between the Magi and the
Chaldeans, and the Magi and Daniel, open evidence for the- inspiration
of the Scriptures which is in a great measure new. *• * * The
book exhibits not only learning and talent, but that higher thing, genius.
There ie hardly a page on which' vie are not startled' by something strikingly
original, while at the same time leaving upon the mind' an impression of its
profound truth. Scriptural ideas are set in a new light. Passages in the
Gospels, which have been.passed oyer as having little interest, as well
as many similar parts of the Old Testament, are presented in such a
way, and' in such connections, ae to give them a power-and a freshness
unperceived- before.- Whoever reads this, book must acquire -a -new interest in
the study of Scripture.
The subject discussed presents, a field on which few have ventured,
and to a certain class of minds there may be suggested the question:
Howris the essential Christian truth concerned with our knowing who >
the Wise Men were? The reading of the book at once supplies the
answer. There is a deep interest in connecting the Messianic idea with
nations other than the Jewish; in showing that primitive revelation,
though specially preserved in the religious history of one people, sent its
early rays far beyond their narrow bounds, and that the adient of a re
deeming Messiah* wasin fact a world, idea. It is this. especially that gives-
to>the third chapter; in connection with that on the relation of- the,
Persian to the' Jewish religion, a transcending importance, tor all who
believe in a true historical kingdom of God on earth.
RET. CYRUS HAMLIN, D.D., LL.D.,
THIKTT TEAE8 A MISSIONARY RESIDENT IN ASIA. MINOR : PRESIDENT OF
ROBERT COLLEGE, CONSTANTINOPLE.
Messbs. Editobs : Will you allow me to call attention to a.little book
entitled " The Wise Men," hy Dr. F. W. Upham. Not only is the subject
oriental, but the book is also, to a singular degree, in its substance, breadth, and.
spirit, an oriental product. I know not that Br. Upham hat ever even trav^
eled in the East, but his book ItaveSitht' impression of it* having UeawriUev

hy one who has resided there. This Magian aroma doubtless results from
his thorough study of the subject, and from a consequent nice and
delicate apprehension of things very remote in time and place from all
our common spheres of thought. The subject itself, in its relations to
Christ in history, is interesting and important. Who were the Magi ?
If we consider them as belonging to the class so strongly condemned
by Philo and by Roman writers, the whole scene, as narrated by Mat
thew, is incomprehensible. If, on the other hand, as Dr. Upham en
deavors to show, they were Persians, then the scene is harmonious,
credible, and beautiful. It shows that in those distant regions and
ancient times, and outside of Israel, Christ was the true light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The sixth chapter gives
a new interest to the remarkable life and history of the prophet Daniel.
* * * It is a work of Biblical literature in its true and best sense ;
and every minister, or intelligent layman, who loves the study of the
Scriptures, will find * rich reward in its careful perusal. — N. T.

REV. HOWARD CROSBY, D.D., LL.D.,
CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
We wish to express our' sense of refreshment at the appearance of a
little book written by a scholar and profound thinker. It is modest and
condensed in style, but full of information and suggestion. * * *
The author reduces the expressions (in the narrative of Matthew) for
the " East " from a vague to a specific import. In a very masterly and
convincing manner he shows that the plural and singular avaiaXdv
and i,vaTo7.rj are not used in an indiscriminate way, but conform to the
Hebrew Mizrach and Kedem, and are the Far East a!nd the East, and
that these were to the Jews of Matthew's day geographical designations,
the Far East representing the Medo-Persian country beyond the
Zagros mountains, and the East, Babylonia. * * * Apart from the
main argument, we prize the volume for its healthy tone, its common
sense, its true manliness as it deals incidentally with the questions of
inspiration and interpretation. There has been such a confined atmos
phere of pseudo-philosophy around us of late on these matters, the car
bonic acid of diseased breathings and sulphuretted hydrogen of undi
gested learning, that it is a great relief to reach the oxygen again.
We commend Professor Upham's chapter, on "The Relation ofthe
Persian and Hebrew Religions," to that profound historian, Agassiz. It
may lead him to be a little more modest in his statements as to Jewish
traditions.* — N. T. Evangelist, Jan. 20, 1872.
* Undoubtedly tho Chancellor refers to -words in the oration, a few weeks be
fore, at the Humboldt Centennial at Boston. This was widely read, the eulo

MRS. MARY S. ROBINSON.
Among religious American works we can recall but few which, while
preserving the severity of their scholarship and the solidity of their
thought, are adapted to the intelligent reading public ; such, for ex
ample, as " The Interior Life," by Professor Thomas C. Upham, a book
which obtained a wide circulation in our own denomination some years
ago, and still finds place between the Bible and the a Kempis of many a
devout Methodist.
A monograph from the pen of Dr. Francis W. Upham, a younger
brother of the above-mentioned venerable scholar, deserves to take
rank among the very best of the class of books to which we have just
alluded. Its topic is religious ; the inquiry evinces protracted study and
profound learning ; yet it is so far a popular book that no intelligently
religious person can fail to read it with delight. We know of a young
lady, claiming no more than an average capacity for reflection, who
affirms that, to her surprise, her attention did not flag through the
earlier chapters — in which the argument is developed — and that she
fairly held her breath for interest as she read the concluding pages. On
account of this rare adaptation, and of other combinations of merit,
some of them equally rare, this treatise deserves a place in our standard
religious literature ; and as the works of the senior Upham were widely
read by our Church people, we could wish that this production of his
jrother may also receive a welcome proportioned to its excellence. The
latter possesses the simplicity, the luminousness of the former, and an
endowment of genius distinctively his own. His book, though by no
means voluminous, evinces a freshness and wealth of thought suggest
ive of a well-nigh exhaustless mental reservoir, and a tendency of its
thought-currents to flow out in self-discovered channels. * * *
Throughout this inquiry we are conscious of being led by a guide
endowed with rare spiritual illumination, discernment into the Script
ure, and a skill of collation and interpretation of its texts such as no
writer has possessed — none that we can now recall — since Robertson
of Brighton left us his wonderful sermons. * * * Thoroughly evan
gelical, it is thu s mentioned in a Review by Professor Brigham, one
of the most learned of Unitarian scholars : " Even to those whose
faith is different, the reading of a treatise so reverent, so wise, and so
gentle in its spirit, cannot be without profit." — GhrUtian Advocate.
gist being as well known as him he eulogized. After stating what Humboldt did
for science, he tried to shield his friend from the charge of Atheism. Pressed
by the difficulty of this, he seems to have forgotten the many learned clergy
who were there to show their appreciation of science, and did not expect such
¦tuff as this : Humboldt " had too much regard for truth, and knew too well the
Arian origin of the traditions collected by the Jews, to give his countenance to
any creed based on them."

REV! 0. H. BRIGHAM, (Unitarian,)
PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTOET.
* * * <i>he union of the critical faculty; with a devout . in*
agination is not common in our time. Yet occasionally we meet with
writers in whom the critical faculty is aided rather than hindered by the
imagination, and whose sight is made insight by the: soaring of thei:
thought. This possible union of devout imagination with scientific
analysis, without injury to critical candor, is proved very strikingly in a
small book just published on "The Wise Men of the East."
* * * The legal training of the author: shows itself . in the
clearness of statement, the arrangement of the argument, the steady
logical progress, the accurate references which give chapter and verse
for every citation, and the judicial calmness with.whieh-therwork goes'
on. In this respect the book resembles the famous book. of: Dupin, on
" The Trial of Christ." Everything here is well considered: There :ia-
not a rash. or random word. With a wealth of research, with notes, as1
full and as rich in variety as the text is close to the subject, the im
pression is always of sincere work ; that all is for the: illustration of thes
subject, and nothing from the vanity of authorship.
The second chapter of the volume -is an exceedingly close and ingen
ious discussion of the meaning of the word avaroVjoi by which Matthew
characterizes the place from which: the Magi came. * * * If
patient pleading and the collation of historic and archaeological facts can
establish so nice a ; proposition, an excellent prima facie case has-
certainly been made out. The argument, too, is justified' bythe use of
language in prophecies of the. Hebrew Bible. * * *
The orthodoxy of the writer does not, that we can see, prevent his-
impartial examination ofthe story, his appreciation of- its difficulties, or
his admission of the objections against it. He could not treat a classic
myth more fairly. * * *
This volume will be, to i all who read it in sympathy with its faith;
most interesting and fascinating. It belongs to a class of which we have
too few specimens in our life of sensation and intellectual conceit. —
Christian Examiner, No. cclxxvi, pp. 259-270.
From an Editorial in " Zion's Herald."
THE WISE MEN; WHO THEY WERE, AND. HOW THEY CAME. TO JERUSALEM.
Under this title, Professor Francis W. Upham, LL.D.", of New York,
has Tecently issued a little volume of more than ordinary, fascination.
Its key-note is struck in its opening sentence.: "There is- a spirit that.
believes, and yet inquires." It is devoted to.an investigation ofthe visit .
of the Wise Men to Jerusalem in seaich of the King of the. Jews. The

author well says that this wonderful pilgrimage will be none the less in
structive for being better understood. Even the most elaborate Life of
Christ, or most extended commentary, can scarcely more than'hhvtat
thevarie'd proofs of the historical character of ' the Magian story. Only
in a special monograph, like the present, can the event be considered
in all its bearings, and the ages, and languages, and literatures be
made to give in their strangely confluent testimonies.
Professor Upham is the youngest brother of Dr. Thomas C. Upham, so
well known as the author of a system of Mental Philosophy, and other
works. His father was for several years a member of Congress from
New Hampshire. A brother, of note as a judge, in the same State, died
last year. He was himself educated for the legal* profession. IHis , legal
training has admirably fitted him for.thetask of weighing evidence, har
monizing discrepancies, and. summing up opposing arguments. * * *
From a Critique in the Christian Intelligencer.
.'Ancient tradition' makes the wise men Arabs. And. Dr. Lange, in his
great Commentary — the most recent exegesis of the Bible— says : " The
particular part of the East from which they came cannot be deter
mined." Dr. Upham has satisfactorily demonstrated their nationality,
and the geographical region from which they came. * * *
-As a whole, the work-in style, method, and interest, ranks amongcthe
finest ; productions of English classical literature. It is a model for in
vestigations of the kind. No one can read it without feeling a new in
terest in the Bible, and the Saviour itTeveals.

The Watohman and Reflector.
The first question, of course, is that which the title indicates, Who
were these men? The answer is decisive, emphatic, and proven:
Magi from Persia. The reasons for the answer are drawn out with
wonderful clearness. So far the simple words lead the way. But in
order that such a visit from Persian Magi should seem credible, it was
necessary to go farther yet. Accordingly the character and religion of
the Persians are briefly but graphically portrayed. Here the author
shows a research and power of analysis unsurpassed by any of the
scholars of the Old World. * * * No one who takes it up will
willingly lay it down till he has seen the end. Z.
The Evening Post.
ft exhibits a.soholarship elegant, searching, profound. It evinces the
rare quality of an acute analytic .power allied with the imagination. Its

style, is flowing, elegant, musical. The subject is treated from a
position of "orthodoxy;" but mild, gracious, not forbidding, character
ized by the spirit of untrammeled inquiry, and the enthusiasm of belief ;
by power and freshness of thought, and by adoration.
The Hartford Post.
If a pot of old ooin is dug up in the ruins of some forsaken city, the
telegraphic wires quiver round the world, announcing the great discovery.
But here is a discovery of quite another kind ! — the solution of a historic
al and religious mystery. It is announced so quietly that we do not
realize what a great fact this is. * * * This book meets the
enemy in the gate. We recall our childish impressions of this Pil
grimage — our more mature ideas were not much better. We recall
our very picture of the Magi ; of the bowed forms of three giant-like old
men ; men of little account ; a sort of Fakirs or fortune-tellers wander
ing from a very great but indefinite distance, lonely, humble, tattered, and
forlorn, in their long, dusty, graceless and travel-stained gowns, turbaned
and sandaled ; wandering, they know not whither, to find the King of the
Jews. Who were they? Whence came they ? How could they learn
of the King of the Jews by a star ? and what was the King of the
Jews to them? What the book seeks to prove comes out point by
point, till nothing is left to ask for. This old story of the Magi is made
alive again, as with felicitous touch, and in brilliant coloring, Dr.
Upham paints for us picture after picture, till we feel that these
grand old Persians stand before us, and that the manners, religion, and
history of the East are in harmony with this pilgrimage. * * * It is
seldom that learned people take the trouble to bring things within the
comprehension of the common people, but this is a book for the people, and
they feel it magnetically. Its sentences are like new coins, just struck
from the mint, the lines well cut, clear, and distinct. Any one can see
the thought, yet it is often so deep that the longer it is looked into the
deeper it seems — as this, " Christianity is often said to be a system of
truths, but even its most mysterious truths are facts." A third or fourth
reading yet brings out something new. As with the flight of a Parthian
arrow, it takes us into the East. The interest deepens from chapter to
chapter, and the last, " On the Hebrew Religion," is the best of all.
The style has passages of wonderful eloquence. It flows like a swift
river, deep and full, yet clear as crystal. * * *
In the light of this unique book we read the thrilling story of the
coming of the Wise Men as we never read it before ; and in the still
night we look with new wonder and awe into the blue depths above, and
wish we knew which of all these glittering orbs was the one created to
" herald through all worlds, and date through all time," the advent of
Him who was the Maker of all the worlds.

The Catholic World.
A book written with sound and solid learning, and originality of
thought. Congregational Quarterly.
The book is a model of its kind. While it explains a mystery, it does
so in so pleasing a manner as to captivate the reader.
Methodist Quarterly Review.
Professor Upham has been singularly felicitous in concentrating a
large amount of new knowledge and fresh criticism upon a very old and
difficult question. This little monograph is not only an original contri
bution to Biblical literature, but a fascinating book for the inquiring
reader. The Examiner.
The book, holds the reader with a wonder that so much solid and
varied information can be gathered about a single fact of the record. Its
conclusive answer of one difficulty shows how a great number of objections
now urged against the sacred narrative may, by deeper study, become
strong defenses.

Letter to the Author from the late
My Deak Sie :
I cannot refrain from expressing to you my great gratification in
the perusal of your profound, yet clear, investigation of that most
interesting event in Scripture history, the visit of the Wise Men
ofthe East to the infant Saviour. The narrative by the Evangelist
Matthew doubtless suggests to many minds certain difficulties, perplex
ing especially to astronomers, in regard to the new and peculiar star ;
but these difficulties, I have no doubt, are perfectly solvable, and cer
tainly in regard to the country whence the Magi came, and why they
were directed to come to Jerusalem, and how they came, your masterly
research on these points leaves nothing further to be desired. Accept
my warmest congratulations. With sincere respect, Your obed't serv't,
Sam. F. B. Morse.

Letter from a mother in Israel to a lady-relative who had
sent her " Tiie Wise Men," and with whose permission it is
published. It seems to have been jotted down from day to
day. Some paragraphs are omitted, but no word changed.
As a life-picture of Christian old age, of a type that is passing
away, it is worth preserving.
Dear L. : When I took up my pencil to write, came this thought — the
bush burning but not consumed may illustrate the afflictions of the
Church in the world, and of individual Christians. I am now "past
'seventy. How have I been cheered and sustained inmyvaried life by
events explained by Providence ! So my soul was joyful in her King.
I have read " The Wise Men " once. I am now reading it again with
the notes. This book will live. I have just closed the chapter — Kep
ler's Discovery. My soul is full of wonder, is oppressed with emotions
I cannot utter I Ah, I have a poor head ! The Wise Men, I had thought
of them with, pain, that such characters — sort of wizards — should come
to worship ; now these Magi have become -brethren to my soul, like
Simeon and Anna.
Surely if I understand the times, loving Bible-Christians are few com
pared with the numbers who are Church-members. They have forsaken
the fountain of living waters. The Bible is a dusty book in parlor and
hovel. I find myself often saying, Christ has a Church, and will keep it
to the end. The chapter on Inspiration is so comforting. I take true
delight in the thoughts of that book. Truly " the Scripture is a fount
ain, not a reservoir." Each reading I find something new ; a few pages
day by day. I want to see that book in every family. !• am going to
send for six copies. I have a few poor friends I would like to send it to.
I keep it here with Bible on my table. I never saw tlie care God has
taken of his Church, nor felt the ages that have passed, as in reading this
book. I enjoy much the quiet of my own room, toward the rising sun,
Boston's book on Providence, with Doddridge, Baxter, and Bunyan ; so
you see I am not alone. May you be greatly blessed on every side, and
at peace, waiting the call of Christ our Lord !
Youis lovingly, CM.

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