Part 7

Religion in Rome had the two fold character of public and private. The family had its household gods, its Lares and Penates. The city had its tutelary deities, under various forms and names, but all amounting to the same thing, to wit: the expression of the abstract power of the state. The state was the highest divinity that the Roman knew. The gods Jupiter, Quirinus, Janus, etc., all meant the might of Rome. The deification of abstractions was carried out to a degree of superstitious whimsicality that astonishes us. There was conceived a god or goddess for every process of growth and decay and for every instrumentality of the natural or of the spiritual, and there was a divinity that made the bones grow in the child, and a divinity that assisted the flow of the sewers.

The Roman conception of the divine defined it as some invisible power that could be made useful to the individual or the state by some sacrifice or service performed toward it. The Roman therefore made vows to a particular deity when he found himself in an emergency. If the deity gave him success he fulfilled his vow with the greatest punctiliousness, offering a sacrifice, or founding a temple, or establishing some worship, in return for the service obtained. Thus the principle of contract entered the Roman idea of religion.

Contract is the essential legal basis for the transfer of property in such a manner as to secure joint freedom of individuals. Contract in religion as the relation of the individual to God seems the most terrible of all impiety. But the Roman in effect made contracts with his gods, showing the all-powerful hold of the idea of property and legality over the mind of this nation.

In the family there prevailed a form of ancestor worship almost as primitive as we found among the Chinese. All other nations, according to De Coulanges, had ancestor-worship at one time. It would seem that a more spiritual faith superseded it in other nations quite early. The special circumstances of Rome and China encouraged the preservation of family traditions. In China the entire state government is patriarchal, and thus wholly conservative of the principle of the family. In Rome on the other hand the state separates, as public affair, from the family, as a private affair, and carefully defines the limits between itself and the family so as to preserve the latter in the primitive form. Each family worshiped with stated ceremony the male ancestors of the family, the oldest son acting as the priest after the death of his father.

This principle of non-interference with the family customs and a careful guarding of the sacred privacy of the family developed a very noble type of woman. The Roman matrons were sublime examples of heroism, dignity and purity. The mother had much more influence in the education of the Roman youth, than in the education of youth in any other of the ancient nations. On the ninth day the Roman child was enrolled on the citizen’s register. But up to his fifteenth year his education was chiefly at home under the supervision of the mother. He studied reading, writing, and arithmetic, much the same as the boy of other nations. But he committed to memory the laws of the Twelve Tables as carefully as the Hebrew child learned the Ten Commandments. The Roman child was educated to be a soldier, to fight for Rome and to be a supporter of the laws. In his sixteenth year he studied Roman law with some jurist. One may read in Plutarch, or in Shakspere’s _Coriolanus_, how powerful was the influence of the mother over her son, and how devoted was the mother to Rome. Roman education prepared the world for Christianity, by breaking down national idiosyncrasies and leading up to the idea of the human race—_genus humanum_.

The system practiced by the Romans after the conquest of a country was to conscript the young men into the army and send their legions to a distant frontier. The young men from Britain might be sent to Spain or Egypt, and those from Illyria and the Danube, to Britain. In the presence of a hostile people, speaking a foreign tongue, the raw conscript found his only safe course to be a faithful adherence to the Roman eagles. He could not revolt with any hope of success. In a few years he had become attached to the Roman cause and cherished it as his second nature; while his relatives and countrymen afar away had also been obliged to obey Roman laws until their customs and usages had also changed to Roman. Thus each conquered nation became a means in turn of subduing every other nation and converting them into Romans.

The Persians had conquered nations and held them in subjection, but they had not attempted to mould the character and institutions of the conquered people, but had left them untrammeled, only requiring them to acknowledge supremacy and pay tribute. After a people recovered independence from Persia, little evidence remained of Persian influence. The Roman institutions, on the other hand, became so firmly rooted among a conquered people that they remained ever after substantially Roman in character.

The Greeks, we saw, were a cheerful people. They made games a religious ceremonial, celebrating the physical beauty of the gods by becoming beautiful themselves. Beautiful bodies and graceful movements seemed to them divine. The gods and goddesses fell in love with beautiful mortals. The Romans on the contrary, were sober and serious, and would not exercise for the sake of developing personal beauty, but only to become good soldiers for Rome. It was shameful in the estimation of the Roman to expose the naked body. Even within the family the utmost care was taken to develop and foster the sense of shame and of decency in the care of the person. The Roman was a haughty spectator at the games, but would not himself condescend to appear as a contestant. He bought slaves or forced his prisoners taken in battle to exhibit their skill in the arena. He delighted in spectacles where death-contests of beasts and men took place, because he felt its symbolic expression of the struggle within his own character, and his sacrifice of self for the state, and of his arbitrary will for the general abstract law. The Roman was sober and thoughtful because his life was occupied in self-restraint. He perpetually watched himself lest he should go beyond the limits fixed between the private and the public spheres of duty.

The result of mingling all nations in the Roman armies brought about a feeling of brotherhood among the soldiers and then among the people. There arose conviction that peculiarities of nation and even of race are accidents that do not affect the substance of a common humanity. The objects of affection for the individual—his native land, his country’s gods, his ties of kindred and friendship, were all ruthlessly broken by the irresistible might of the Roman empire, and for these objects of the heart were substituted only the abstract devotion to the state and devotion to the private right of property. There resulted a deep heart-hunger for a spiritual faith that would give to all an object commensurate with this new idea of the _human race_. This want was supplied by Christianity.

RENUNCIATION.

By A. C. M.

“Nevertheless I die daily.”

Like the voice of the storm, like the sound of the sea, Is this tempest of longing for what can not be. If wishes could waken the joys of the past, If prayers could deaden the sorrows that last, Now and for ever,—

A cry for the souls of a thousand in pain— “Give us death or forgetting, or Heaven again.” And the dead on the winds of Eternity sigh— “Silence and peace. It is Heaven to die, Now and for ever.”

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GROSS ignorance produces a dogmatic spirit. He who knows nothing, thinks that he can teach others what he has himself just been learning: he who knows much, scarcely believes that what he is saying can be unknown to others, and consequently speaks with more hesitation.—_La Bruyère._

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THE fate of no man, not even the happiest, is free from struggles and privation; for true happiness is only then attained, when by the government of the feelings we become independent of all the chances of life.—_Von Humboldt._

OLD PAINTINGS.

By ROBERT KEMPT.

The oldest picture, known at present, painted in oil colors on wood, is preserved in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. According to Beckmann’s “History of Inventions,” it was executed in the year 1297 by a painter named Thomas de Mutuia, or de Muttersdorf, in Bohemia. Two other paintings, in the same gallery, are of the year 1357; one is by Nicholas Wursnser, of Strasburg, the other by Thierry of Prague. It appears, therefore, that painting in oil was known long before the epoch at which that invention is generally fixed; and that it is erroneously ascribed to Hubert Van Eyck and his brother and pupil John Van Eyck, otherwise called John of Bruges, who lived about the end of the fourteenth century, and not the beginning of the fifteenth century, as is commonly supposed. It is pointed out, however, that there is evidence in the books of the Painters’ Company, under the date of the eleventh year of the reign of Edward I. (1283), that oil painting was in use at that time. _Vide_ a communication from Sir Francis Palgrave, in Carter’s “Ancient Sculpture and Paintings in England.” It may be added that the art of wood engraving seems to be older than the invention of printing, to which, perhaps, it gave rise. The names of the first engravers on wood are, however, not known. In the _Athenæum_ for 1845, page 965, is given a fac-simile of a wood engraving bearing date 1418, which was discovered at Malines in 1844, and is now preserved in the public library at Brussels.

Old paintings naturally lead to inquiries about old art schools, one of the most venerable and interesting of which is to be found in the quaint old Devonshire borough of Plympton, England. Here the greatest of English painters, Sir Joshua Reynolds, learnt the first principles of drawing. Here, too, Northcote, his clever and eccentric pupil, acquired his education. This was also the first school of Sir Charles L. Eastlake, P.R.A., and the _alma mater_ of poor Benjamin Haydon. A few months before his tragic death Haydon visited the old grammar school, and wrote his name in pencil on the wall, where it may still be seen:

“B. R. Haydon, Historical Painter, London, Educated here 1801, Rev. W. Haines (Master) Head boy then.”

Nor must it be forgotten that Plympton had the honor of being represented in Parliament by the greatest of English architects, Sir Christopher Wren, who was elected in May, 1685, and was the first architect ever returned to the House of Commons. To return to Reynolds. He was born in the Master’s house adjoining the school, and some rough sketches drawn by him in his youth on the walls of the bed-room in which he first saw the light were to be seen when Haydon and Wilkie visited the house in 1809, but have since been obliterated by some barbarous whitewasher. In 1772 Sir Joshua was elected to the aldermanic gown of his native town, and in the following year he was chosen mayor of the borough. To show his appreciation of what he deemed a high honor, Reynolds presented to the town his own portrait, painted, as it seems, expressly to commemorate his mayoralty. It was placed in the corporation dining-room, but the common council had the effrontery to sell the picture for £150 when Plympton was disfranchised in 1832.

It need hardly be added that Sir Joshua Reynolds’s tomb (adorned by one of Flaxman’s best works) is almost close to that of Sir Christopher Wren in the crypt of St. Paul’s, both in life connected with the little Devonshire town, though by different ties and at different periods of its history, and both resting from their labors in the great temple which Wren built, and which Reynolds sought to adorn with his matchless pencil.

THE EMPLOYMENTS OF HEAVEN.[A]

By REV. L. T. TOWNSEND, D. D.

The subject for this evening, “The Employments of Heaven,” is in some respects very difficult and, I fear that, to some of you, the discussion will be less satisfactory. The science and philosophy of this subject are chiefly by implication and suggestion. We have, therefore, to depend almost entirely upon written revelation. I am not unmindful of the fact that there are not a few people who say: “Why talk of what the Bible says on this subject? We are not believers in the Bible, and to us there is no more authority in it upon this subject than there is in the Odyssey of Homer, or the Shastas of India.” Yes, I understand you, but, all the same, let us study the book because of the limited light we have upon this subject from other sources, and because it has very much to say respecting this topic, and because such a man as Sir Walter Scott has said: “There is but one book—the Bible.” May we not wisely investigate what the Bible says upon the subject of the hereafter? In discussing this subject, let us guard against the charge of mistaken statement concerning things not revealed, and let us, on the other hand, dwell with a fair degree of fullness upon those points which, through the teaching of the sacred scriptures, have been made known to us.

There is one thought that I would like to mention, because sometimes it is a relief to that skeptical doubt which is common to the human heart. It is this: That the world in which we now live, and the fact that we are alive and in this world, and are conscious, active agents here, are of all others the chief surprises and the chief wonders. And, therefore, the fact of the future world, and of our personal joy and activity in it, should not seem unreasonable. Think of it! Is any greater wonder possible than that we are! Is the wonder greater that we are to be conscious after we are dead, and that we are to be in a place called heaven, than that we are now conscious and here now in a place called this world! How came we first in possession of this personal, wonderful consciousness? This is the thing which is incredible, if anything is incredible. When a human being can say, “I now am,” or as some one admirably put it, “I am here anyhow,” all further wonder ends. To exist at all is a greater mystery than to exist forever.

In unfolding the subject before us, we begin with the revelation variously and repeatedly set forth that, in the future life, there are to be what may not be improperly termed entertainments, and among them will be royal banquets. Feasts it is true, though spiritualized, seem contrary to our ordinary notions of a heavenly life, and seem quite contrary to other biblical revelation. These things seem to involve litter, clatter, rubbish. Still we have to confess that the Bible is quite full and quite clear on this subject. Note, for instance, the following passages: “For I say unto you I will not drink henceforth of the fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in my father’s kingdom.” Elsewhere he has said: “And I appoint unto a kingdom, as my father hath appointed unto me: that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Saith John in Revelation: “He that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it.”

We may modify these passages by one other, namely: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, or any heat.” It is, therefore, feasting without hunger, and drinking without thirst. But, says some one, “This is all figurative.” Perhaps so, we have not said that it is not figurative; but, if figurative, figurative of what? is a fair question. A figure implies something represented by the figure. If not, there is no figure. Without pressing any one for an immediate answer, we may be allowed to remark that it is not always what one eats that constitutes a feast, not the appetite only, but the soul enjoys the richest festal occasion. This introduction of the kitchen and of kitchen service and utensils into the kingdom of heaven is repugnant to our best thought. Between the spiritual and the carnal, we must, therefore, carefully distinguish. The latest deduction of both physiology and psychology is that smell and taste are the senses most employed, especially that of taste; but as yet there has been made no discovery of what it is that gives us the sense of smell or taste. It is, certainly, not the objects themselves. Here is a rose. I don’t smell the rose but I smell something which comes from that rose through the atmosphere, called the odor or aroma. Science tells us that it is an extra organic substance that we smell. Here is a lump of sugar which I place in my mouth. I do not taste that sugar, but it is an extra organic substance that I taste, and not the sugar itself. The most, therefore, that can be said is not that the rose is sweet, nor that sugar is sweet, but what we call the aroma of the rose and the flavor of the sugar are sweet, and of this aroma and flavor science is as ignorant as a child. Indeed, experiments show that electricity if delicately applied to certain nerves may variously produce the various sensations of taste and smell. Now, take into account this extra organic substance, recognized in every department of modern science, especially when the human organism is spiritualized, then you may lift the spirituality of Heaven as high as you please. You may make it as immaterial as a dream, still there will be abundant opportunity to eat and drink at the Lord’s Table in the kingdom of the Father Infinite and without any kitchen service required. The kitchen is dispensed with, the table spread by hands of angels, spread with this extra organic fruit and food, which are imperishable, which are not literally eaten, but which none the less awaken every pleasureable sensation and emotion of the soul. It is, then, that the spiritual can say to the carnal, “I have meat to eat of which ye know not of.” It will be the fullness of joy with no earthly inconvenience, its very privilege, to wait the fulfillment of Christ’s words. “But I say unto you I will drink no more the fruit of the vine until the day that I drink it new with you in the kingdom of God.”

The teaching seems to be, then, that without anything that is gross, without meat or drinks that are perishable, without fragments, yet in company with friends and companions, in company with royal souls, and in company with the Master, there will be fields of spiritual enjoyment that resemble in some respects the most royal and festive occasions of this earth. In other words, royal festival occasions on earth are typical of the royal festal occasions of the kingdom of heaven.

But there is another kind of employment. It is reasonable, as well as scriptural, to suppose that investigations into the various realms of truth will invite our active and restless minds. One of the most prominent characteristics of mankind is its unchangeable curiosity. How intensely interested it is to learn the history of the ruder and early times! How interested in every scrap of intelligence which reaches us from the old dead world! How interested, too, in any light thrown upon the civilization which preceded ours! What would not a man give for an hour with Socrates or Plato! What would he not give to have pictured out vividly before him some incident in the life of Christ! How entrancing it will be in company with our dearest friends to explore the secrets of eternity, the secret of God’s purpose, the divine methods, with ample time, with an all power of intellect, with the doors of knowledge flying wide open. We look, we enter, we contemplate, until the soul is full, and the heart now almost leaps to bathe itself in this infinite ocean of wisdom and knowledge.

Another thought growing out of our general subject, is that of regal service and employment.

It is often represented in the Bible that redeemed men in the kingdom of heaven will be a race of kings. Administration is natural to the best types of humanity. The redeemed, too, by the discipline of life, will be qualified for regal affairs.

“He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” “And I appoint unto you a kingdom as my father has appointed unto me.” “And I saw thrones and the saints of God sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them.” “Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?”

It is clear, therefore, according to biblical theology, that God is to share chief glories, not with angels nor archangels. They are only ministering spirits. It is manhood and nothing else that has the grandest coat of arms worn in God’s great empire. Just how, just where, we may not understand, but the fact is clearly revealed that, as the ages go on, the administration of universal affairs will be committed to redeemed men.

But, in addition to princely entertainments, search for truth and royal service, it is clearly revealed that friendly intercourse and association are to be found in the future life. Man, the king, will have kingly associates. Said Socrates, as reported by Plato: “Who would not part with a great deal to purchase a meeting with Xenophon and Homer?”

Charles Lamb wonderingly asks: “Shall I enjoy friendships in heaven, or do all these things go out with my human life?”

No, we cannot believe upon scientific grounds that it is possible for these associations to go out. And upon Bible grounds we are assured that they will be continued and range through the intermediate ages, and then on through the eternal ages of the kingdom of heaven.

“Neither marriage nor giving in marriage, but as the angels of heaven” are words that show that the carnal and the transitory depart, but the heart is none the less tender toward the heart which associates with it: “I shall go to him,” says David, speaking of his dead boy. And Christ says: “Father I will that they also whom thou has given me be with me, where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me.”

So, I think, we may say with perfect confidence that the association of old time friends, of mutual rejoicings and congratulations among old acquaintances, and the pursuit of truth in the same fields and pathways side by side with those whom we have known and loved on earth, are as well assured as any other doctrine in philosophy which has any bearing upon the future life. Those words of the apostle that “We are already surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” are a kind of mighty assurance that those whom we love are already in watching to clasp our hands in their own.

Once more among the clearly revealed entertainments of the kingdom of heaven are those of the service of music. There will be songs and singers in heaven. Indeed, we are informed definitely as to some of the words which are to be employed. Three hymns, at least, are named which are to be sung—“And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways thou King of Saints.”

“And they sang a new song, saying: Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation.”