Chapter 1

part of Sankhyaists. Though himself intelligence (not merely intelligent) Brahman may give birth to a non-intelligent world, seeing that like does not always spring from like [see above].

Atomists hold that there is apparent difference and separateness in things. "Where, then," they ask, "is the oneness, the monism, for which the Vedantists argue?" It is replied that it is only superficial thought that fixes itself upon the manifoldness of things, losing sight of their oneness. Deeper thought sees underneath the many a oneness which binds them, and of which they are only the outward expressions. The great ocean is one, but its waves and ripples are many. All at bottom is but one: the Universal Being.

A non-intelligent first cause (_Prakriti_), such as the Sankhyaists postulate, could never call into being an orderly world, for how could unreason produce reason? Nor could atoms set in motion produce a planned or intelligent universe, as the Atomists falsely say. There must be an intelligent power controlling the atoms and contemplating the result to be attained.

The view put forth by the Sankhya philosophers, that an external and internal world exists in mutual independence, is contrary to thought and experience--is, in fact, unthinkable. We know no external world: we have never had any experience outside the region of our own consciousness; yet what is regarded as external to the individual consciousness is not _Maya_, as is taught in some of the Upanishads, and maintained by later philosophers. This external world as a fact of consciousness is as real as that consciousness and as the individual mind which makes mental experience possible, and is the great All, of which the individual mind is the working and manifestation.

THE RELATION OF BRAHMAN TO ELEMENTS AND THE SOUL

Are the elementary substances (ether, air, etc) co-eternal, with Brahman, or do they issue from him? It can be shown, and is shown, that one elementary substance proceeds from another (_e.g._, air from ether), and that in the last resort all such substances have come forth from Brahman, who has not only produced them, but also guided and effected their evolution.

The individual soul is, according to the scriptures [Vedas and Upanishads], eternal and permanent, and has not been produced by Brahman; who is, however, as noted, the producer of the elementary substances. Like Brahman himself, the individual soul is uncreated and eternal. What is in time and belongs to time is the connection of the soul with the conditions of space and time. This is the interpretation given by Sankara. Ramanuga, however, holds that the soul is a creature of Brahman, though an eternal one, it having existed ever as a mode of the great All [compare the doctrine of the eternal procession of the Son].

WHAT IS SOUL?

What is soul? It is _gna_, or knowledge. [The etymology of both these latter words is identical--compare Greek _gnosco_, etc.] This means, according to Sankara, that knowledge is of the very essence of soul, and not a mere attribute of it. The soul is not merely a knower (_gnatri_), but it is knowledge. Ramanuga, on the other hand, explains that the knowledge spoken of in this Sutra means "the knower"; that the soul is not knowledge, but that which can and does know.

Is the soul limited in size, and capable, therefore, of occupying but a restricted space? Or is it, on the contrary, omnipresent?

Sankara maintains that the Sutra in question teaches the latter; the soul is everywhere. Ramanuga makes the same Sutra teach the very contrary. As a matter of fact, the Sutra in question seems to teach both these contradictory doctrines, perhaps because it registers different traditions. Sankara, however, explains further on that as long as the soul is passing through the changes involved in Samsara [= transmigration] it is limited and local, but on reaching Brahmanhood it becomes omnipresent. In this way the great commentator seeks to reconcile teaching apparently contradictory in this Sutra.

Is this soul an agent? Some of the Sutras say it is, others say it is not. How are the conflicting statements to be reconciled? Sankara does this in the following way. As long as the soul is tied down to material conditions--that is, is passing through the processes of Samsara--it is an agent. But as soon as it has escaped from this bondage of transmigration it dwells in a state of perfect repose, inactive and restful. In all its activities the soul is prompted by Brahman, without whose inspiration and guidance the soul could perform nothing, and could never, therefore, reach the true goal of all souls, absorption in the one All, which can be obtained in no other way than by the performance of good deeds, which means action.

_BOOK III.--OF THE SOUL AND ITS SUMMUM BONUM_

When at death the soul passes from the body its subtle material elements still cling to it. Good souls pass on to the moon, whence they afterwards descend in a form and state determined by their former actions [Karma]. If the previous life has been a moral failure, the new life now entered upon will belong to a lower level of being, _i.e._, the man may become an animal, the higher, animal may become a lower one. On the other hand, there may be an ascent in the scale of being.

When the soul is a-dreaming, what it thinks it sees and hears, etc., is all illusion, for it does not see or hear, etc., what it thinks it does. In a state of profound dreaminess the soul leaves the body and lives in close fellowship with Brahman.

How is the soul to obtain final release from the thraldom of material conditions? By meditating on Brahman as he is set forth in the sacred scriptures. Brahman must be thought about and meditated on in all his attributes, and this produces identity with the one great self of existence.

Though Sankara makes this to be the teaching of the Sutras, in another place he insists that Brahman is without attributes. He is not, therefore, consistent. The meditation on Brahman which leads to soul-freedom must have regard also to Brahman's negative qualities, _i.e._, his not being gross, nor subtle, wise nor foolish, etc.

THE RELATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT

The knowledge of Brahman is independent of action, and not subordinate to it. It is _vidya_ [compare _vision_, which has the same etymology], or knowledge, that is alone prescribed in the holy writings, not conduct. Where, however, there is right knowledge, there will be rightness of life. But mere rightness of life is nothing; it is that which leads to it and is the cause that is alone commanded and commended [compare the controversy among Christian theologians about faith and works]. The knowledge which saves and enfranchises may be reached by a man in this present life, and will be, if the appropriate means are employed.

OF BRAHMANHOOD

Meditation is a duty to be observed to the very close of life, and the amount and intensity of it are the measure of a man's virtue and piety. When he has reached the full knowledge of Brahman, a man is freed from the consequences [karma] of all his evil deeds, past, present, and future. [One would think that the state of Brahmanhood excluded the possibility of sin, but this Sutra seems to imply the contrary. The Sutras, however, make a distinction between a lower state of Brahmanhood and a higher. See below.]

What happens to the knowing one (_vidvan_) at death? The soul of him who has at death the lower Brahman knowledge merges into the subtler elements. But when the highest knowledge is attained there is complete absorption in Brahman. Whoever dies in possession of this highest knowledge is at once merged in Brahman, and rests eternally and perfectly in him.

The Upanishads describe the stations on the way which leads up to Brahman. These stations are to be understood not merely as terminuses of the various stages of the journey, but they denote also the divine beings who direct the soul in its progress and enable it to move forward and upward. According to some Sutras in this book the guardians of the path conducting to the gods lead the departed soul, not to the highest Brahman, but to the effected (_karya_), or qualified (_saguna_), Brahman. But in other Sutras in this book the opposite view is stated and defended, according to which the _vidvan_, or knower, goes direct to the highest Brahman without halting anywhere short of that god.

The Sutras teach, on the whole, the doctrine that the enfranchised soul, being identical with Brahman, is inseparable from him just as a mode of substance is incapable of existing apart from the substance of which it is a mode. Ramanuga points out, however, that some of the Sutras in this book give it clearly to be understood that the freed soul can exist in isolation and in separation from the great All.

The released soul can enter several bodies at the same time, since it is not subject to space relations as other souls are.

* * * * *

THOMAS À KEMPIS

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST

Thomas à Kempis, whose family name was Haemmerlein, received the name of Kempis from Kempen, in Holland, the place of his birth. Either Thomas Haemmerlein or Thomas Kempensis would be a more correct name than the form "à Kempis," by which he is generally known; and "Musica Ecclesiastica" is the more correct title of the "Imitatio Christi." It is not even certain that Thomas was the author of it, for the names of other authors have been put forward with more or less probability; but he was certainly its copyist, and the balance of evidence is in favour of his authorship. Thomas was born in 1379, the son of a shoemaker; entered in 1400 a monastery at Agnetenberg, near Zwolle, and died in the monastery on August 8, 1471, with a great reputation for learning and for sanctity. The "Imitation" was completed about 1420. Editions and translations in all principal languages are innumerable; but the definitive edition is the Latin text by Dr. Carl Hirsche, of Hamburg (1874), from which the following epitome has been made. The "Imitation" consists of four books of meditations, which are among the most priceless treasures of Christian literature.

_I.--ADMONITIONS USEFUL TO THE SPIRITUAL LIFE_

"Whoever follows Me does not walk in darkness," says the Lord. These are the words of Christ by which we are admonished how far we should imitate His life and manners if we wish to be truly illumined and liberated from all blindness of heart. Let it, therefore, be our supreme study to meditate on the life of Jesus Christ.

Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity, except to love God and to serve Him only. The highest wisdom is to strive towards celestial kingdoms, through contempt of the world. It is, therefore, vanity to seek the riches that are about to perish, and to hope in them. It is vanity also to solicit honours, and to exalt oneself to high place. It is vanity to follow after the desires of the flesh, and to seek that for which we must soon be heavily punished. It is vanity to wish a long life, and to care little about a good life. It is vanity to attend only to the present life, and not to provide for things which are to come. It is vanity to love that which passes away so speedily, and not to hasten thither where eternal joy remains.

Remember often that proverb--"The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing." Study, therefore, to withdraw your heart from the love of visible things, and turn yourself to the invisible. For those who follow their sensuality stain their conscience, and lose the grace of God.

Every man naturally desires to know, but what does knowledge signify without the fear of God? The humble peasant who serves God is far better than the proud philosopher who neglects himself and considers the courses of the stars. Whoever knows himself well contemns himself, and takes no delight in human praise. If I should know all things in the world, and yet not be in charity, what would it advantage me in the presence of God, Who is about to judge me for my deeds?

Desist from too much desire of knowing, because great distraction and deception are found in it. Those who know, desire to seem and to be called wise. There are many things of which the knowledge is of little or no value to the soul, and the man is very foolish who turns to other things than those which subserve his health. Many words do not satisfy the soul; but a good life cools down the mind, and a good conscience affords great confidence towards God.

We might have great peace if we did not occupy ourselves with the words and deeds which are no concern of ours. How can he remain long in peace who meddles with cares which are foreign to him, who seeks opportunities without, and recollects himself little or rarely? Blessed are the simple, for they shall have much peace.

Without charity, an outward work is of value; but whatever is done from charity, however small and trivial it may be, becomes wholly fruitful. For God weighs more the source from which an action comes than the work which it does. He does much who loves much. He does much who does the deed well. He does well who serves the community rather than his own will.

That often seems to be charity which is rather carnality; for natural inclination, one's own will, the hope of reward, and the liking for comfort are rarely absent. But whoever has true and perfect charity seeks himself in nothing, but desires only the glory of God. He envies no one, because he loves no joy of his own, nor cares to rejoice in himself; but wishes, above all good things, to find felicity in God. Whoever has a spark of true charity feels at once that all earthly things are full Of vanity.

_II.--ADMONITIONS LEADING TO INWARD LIFE_

"The kingdom of God is within you," says the Lord. Turn yourself with your whole heart to the Lord, and leave this miserable world, and your soul shall find rest. Learn to despise outward things, and to give yourself to inward things, and you shall see the kingdom of God rise within you. For the kingdom of God is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, and is not given to the impious. Christ shall come to you showing you His consolation, if you prepare within you a home fit for Him. All His glory and beauty are from within, and it is there that He delights Himself. He often visits the man of inward mind, with sweet colloquy, pleasant consolation, great peace, and most astounding familiarity.

If you know not how to contemplate high and celestial things, rest in the passion of Christ, and willingly dwell in His holy wounds. For if you devoutly have recourse to the wounds of Jesus you will feel great comfort in trouble, care little for human contempt, and easily bear detracting words. For Christ, in the world, was despised by men, and in His greatest need was deserted, among insults, by His friends. Christ willed to suffer and to be despised, and shall you dare to complain of anything? Christ had enemies and detractors, and do you wish to have all friends and benefactors? Whence shall your patience be crowned if you have suffered no adversity? If you desire to suffer nothing contrary to you, how shall you be the friend of Christ?

He to whom all things taste as they really are, and not as they are spoken of or esteemed, is the truly wise man, taught by God rather than by men. Whoever knows how to walk from within, and to put little value on things without, needs not to find a place nor wait a time for his devout prayers. The man of inward mind quickly recollects himself, because he never spends himself wholly upon outward things.

First hold yourself in peace, and then you will be able to pacify others. The pacific man is of more service than the learned. But the passionate man turns even good to evil, easily believing evil. The peaceful man is good, and turns all things to good. The man who is well at peace is suspicious of nothing, but the discontented and turbulent is agitated by divers suspicions. He can neither himself be quiet, nor leave others in quiet. He often says what he ought not to say, and leaves undone what he ought to do. He thinks about what others ought to do, and neglects his own duty.

Man is raised from earthly matters by two wings--namely, simplicity and purity. Simplicity should be in his intention, and purity in his affection. Simplicity tends towards God, purity takes hold of Him.

Always to do well, and to hold oneself in small esteem, is the mark of a humble soul. To desire no consolation from any created thing is the sign of great purity and inward confidence. The man who seeks no witness for himself from without has plainly committed himself altogether to God. For "not he who commends himself is approved," says blessed Paul, "but he whom God commends." To walk with God within, and to be held by no affection without, is the state of the inwardly-minded man.

Jesus has now many lovers of His celestial kingdom, but few bearers of His Cross. He has many who desire consolation, but few who desire tribulation. He finds many companions of His table, but few of His abstinence. All wish to rejoice with Him; few are willing to bear anything for Him.

In the Cross is safety; in the Cross is life; in the Cross is protection from enemies; in the Cross is the sweetness of heaven; in the Cross is strength of mind; in the Cross is the perfection of sanctity. There is no health for the soul nor hope of eternal life except in the Cross. Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus.

If anything were better and more useful for the welfare of men than to suffer, Christ would have shown it both in His words and in His example. For He calls to the disciples who follow Him, and to all who desire to follow Him, and says: "If any will come after Me, let him deny himself, and lift up his cross and follow Me." When all has been read and studied, let this be our conclusion--"That through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God."

_III.--OF INWARD CONSOLATION_

I will hear what the Lord God may say in me. It is a blessed soul which hears the Lord speaking in it, and receives the word of consolation from His lips. Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.

"I have taught the prophets from the beginning," says the Lord, "and until now I have not ceased to speak at all; but many are deaf and hard to My voice. Many listen more willingly to the world than to God, and more easily follow the appetite of the flesh than God's good pleasure. The world promises small and temporary things, and is served with great eagerness; I promise supreme and eternal things, but the hearts of mortals are torpid. Who serves and obeys Me in everything with so great care as the world and its lords are served? Men run a long way for a trifling reward, but for eternal life many scarcely lift a foot once from earth."

Lord God, you are all my good. And who am I that I should dare to speak to you? I am the poorest and least of your servants, a wretched little worm, far more miserable and contemptible than I know or dare to say, Yet remember me, Lord, because I am nothing, I have nothing, and am worth nothing. Do not turn your face from me; do not defer your coming; do not withdraw your consolation, lest my soul become like a waterless land before you. Lord, teach me to do your will; teach me to walk worthily and humbly in your presence; because you are my wisdom, who truly know me, and knew me before the world was made and before I was born in the world.

"Son, walk in My presence in truth, and seek Me always in the simplicity of your heart. Whoever walks in My presence in truth will be kept safe from the assaults of evil, and truth will liberate him from those who lead astray and from the detractions of unjust men. If truth shall have liberated you, then you will be truly free, and you will not care for the vain words of men."

It is true, Lord, I pray that it may be done with me as you say. Let your truth teach me and guard me, and keep me to a salutary end. Let it liberate me from every evil affection and inordinate love, and I shall walk with you in great liberty of heart.

"I will teach you," says Truth, "what things are right and pleasing in my Bight. Think on your sins with great displeasure and sorrow, and never imagine yourself to be anything because of your good works. You are really a sinner, liable to many passions and entangled in them. Of yourself, you are always tending to nothingness; you quickly slip, you are quickly overcome, you are quickly disturbed, you quickly pass away. You have nothing in which you can glory, but much for which you ought to hold yourself cheap; you are far more infirm than you are able to understand.

"Some do not sincerely walk before me, but, led by a certain curiosity and arrogance, wish to know my secrets, and to understand the high things of God, neglecting themselves and their welfare. These often fall into great temptations and sins, when I resist them on account of their pride and curiosity. Fear the judgments of God; be exceedingly afraid of the anger of the Omnipotent. Do not discuss the works of the Highest, but scrutinise your iniquities, and see how gravely you have offended and how many good deeds you have neglected.

"There are others, enlightened in their minds and purged in their affections, who are always panting after eternal things and listen unwillingly to earthly things; these perceive what the spirit of truth says within them.

"Love is a great thing, altogether a great good, which alone makes light everything that is heavy, and carries evenly all that is uneven. For it bears the burden without being burdened, and makes sweet and tasteful everything that is bitter. The noble love of Jesus drives on to great deeds, and always excites to the desire of more perfect things. Love wills to rise upwards, and not to be held back by the lowest things. Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing is stronger, nothing higher or broader; nothing is more delightful or fuller in heaven or in earth; for love is born of God, and cannot rest except in God, above all created things."

_IV.--DEVOUT EXHORTATION TO HOLY COMMUNION_

The voice of Christ, "Come to Me all who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you," says the Lord. "The bread which I will give you is My flesh for the life of the world. Receive and consume it; this is My body which will be delivered for you; do this in commemoration of Me. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in him. The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life."

These are your words, Christ, Eternal Truth, although not given at one time nor written in one place. Because they are yours, and true, they are all to be received gratefully by me. They are yours, and you pronounced them; and they are mine also because you uttered them for my welfare. I gladly accept them from your lips, that they may be more closely buried in my heart. Words of such kindness, full of sweetness and love, arouse me. But my own sins frighten me, and my impure conscience repels me from taking hold of such great mysteries.

You bid me come to you trustfully if I would have part with you; and to receive the food of immortality if I wish to obtain eternal life and glory. "Come to Me," you say, "all who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you." O sweet and friendly word in the ear of a sinner, that you, my Lord God, invite the destitute and poor to the communion of your most holy Body.

Lord, all things in heaven and in earth are yours. I desire to offer myself as a willing oblation, and to remain yours in perpetuity. Lord, in the simplicity of my heart I offer myself to you to-day to be for ever your servant--offer myself for obedience and for a sacrifice of eternal praise. Receive me with this holy offering of your precious Body, which I offer to you to-day in the presence of angels, assisting though unseen, that it may be for my welfare and for the welfare of all your people.

The voice of the beloved: "God does not deceive you; he is deceived who trusts too much to himself. God walks with the simple, reveals Himself to the humble, gives understanding to the feeble, opens His meaning to pure minds, and hides His grace from the inquisitive and proud. Human reason is weak and may be deceived, but true faith cannot be deceived.

"All reason and natural investigation ought to follow faith, and not precede it nor impair it. For faith and love excel here most of all, and work in hidden ways in, this most holy and transcendent sacrament. The eternal and immeasurable God of infinite power does great and inscrutable things in heaven and in earth, and there is no finding out of His wonderful works. If the works of God were such that they could easily be seized by human reason, they would not deserve to be called wonderful or ineffable."

* * * * *

THE KORAN

The Koran, the sacred book of Islam, and of more than a hundred millions of men, is the least original of all existing sacred books. Muslims agree in believing that it is from beginning to end, and word for word, inspired; and that it existed before the Creation on what is called the "Preserved Tablet." This tablet was brought by the Archangel Gabriel from the highest to the lowest heaven, whence it was dictated sura [chapter] by sura, verse by verse, and word by word, to the Prophet Muhammad. Its matter is, however, taken for the most part from the Old Testament, especially the narrative portions of the Pentateuch; from the New Testament; from the traditions of the ancient Arabs; and also from Zoroastrian and other scriptures or traditions. It is not likely that Muhammad used literary sources, except in a small measure. But there were Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others in and around Arabia, and he must have learned from their lips the principal doctrines of their respective religions. Nevertheless, planless and fragmentary compilation though it be, the Koran, particularly in the earlier suras written at Mekka, has much of the grandeur and poetry of style and the passionate exaltation of a true prophet, the sincerity of whose zeal is unquestioned.

_INTRODUCTORY_

The word "Koran," or "Quran,"[13] from a root _qara_ = to read, means literally "what is to be read," _i.e._, the written authority on all matters, religions, etc. It is the exact equivalent of the Rabbinical Hebrew word "Miqra" (from the Hebrew _qara_ = to read). The idea involved in both the Arabic and Hebrew words is that what is so designated is the ultimate authority deciding all questions. The Rabbis of post-Biblical times (compare the Jewish Qabbalah) regarded the Old Testament as an encyclopaedia of universal knowledge. In the best-known Muslim universities of modern times philosophy, science, and everything else are taught from the Koran, which is made in some way to contain implicitly the latest words of modern thought, invention, and discovery.

The Koran did not exist as a whole until after the Prophet Muhammad's[14] death. It was then compiled by the order of Abu Bekr, the first Sunnite Caliph. Its contents were found written on palm leaves white stones, and other articles capable of being written on. The compilers depended, to a large extent, upon the memory of the prophet's first followers, but the Koran, as we now have it, existed without any appreciable divergence by the end of the first year, after Muhammad's death (A.D. 632).

This Muslim Bible has no scheme or plan because it is an almost haphazard compilation of unconnected discourses, uttered on various unexplained occasions, and dealing with many incidents and themes. There is practically no editing, and no attempt is made to explain when, or how, or why the various speeches were delivered.

The earliest native writers and commentators on the Koran arranged its suras in two main classes: (1) Those uttered at Mekka before the flight in A.D. 622; (2) those written at Medinah during the next ten years.

Most recent scholars follow the chronological arrangement proposed by the great Orientalist Nöldeke in 1860. Friedrich Schwally in his newly revised edition of Nöldeke's great work on the Koran follows his master in almost every detail. Rodwell's translation of the Koran, recently issued in "Everyman's Library," arranges the suras chronologically according to Nöldeke's scheme. In the summaries that follow, it is this chronological order that is adopted. In the Arabic editions followed by the well-known and valuable translations of Sale, E.H. Palmer (Clarendon Press, "Sacred Books of the East," vols. 6 and 9), and others, the principle adopted is to put the longest suras first and the shortest last.

The Mekkan suras are much more original than the Medinah ones, especially those of the first period--_i.e._, those belonging to the first four years of Muhammad's prophetic mission, _e.g._, suras 96, 74, etc. In these suras the style is grander, more passionate, and fuller of poetry. The prophet appears in a state of great mental exaltation, full of a zeal which no words can adequately express, and of a sincerity which few scholars have questioned.

The suras of the second period, the following two years of the prophet's mission (_e.g._, suras 54, 37, etc.), have the same general character, but are less vehement. Still less vehement and more restrained are the suras of the third Mekkan period--_i.e._, from the seventh year of the prophet's mission to his flight in A.D. 622 (_e.g._, suras 32, 41, etc.). The style of the Medinah suras resembles that of the Mekkan revelations of the third period, only they are still more matter of fact and restrained, and are largely made up of appeals to Jews, Christians, and others to abandon their "unbelief," and to accept the prophet who had come to them with the true religion, a religion as old as Abraham, though forgotten for many ages.

The Koran differs from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, including the Apocrypha, in that these latter are much-more varied, as emanating from many minds, and belonging to very different occasions. The Koran is, from beginning to end, the effusions (often very wild) of one man.

The present editor has kept before him the Arabic text of Maracci, Fluegel, and Redslob, and also several Oriental editions (Cairo, Constantinople, Calcutta, etc.). But, of course, the best known translations, and also the native commentaries (Baidhawi, etc.), have been consulted.

In the summaries which follow, numerals following the paragraphs indicate the number of the sura or suras in the Arabic text as well as in Sale's translation.

MEKKAN SURAS

I.--FIRST PERIOD (A.D. 613-617)

_MUHAMMAD'S FIRST CALL TO READ THE KORAN_

In the name of the gracious and compassionate God.[15]

Recite in the name of thy Lord, who created man and taught men to write, recite what God has revealed to thee His Prophet, and be not afraid. Consider not the opposition of Abu Gahl, who has threatened to put his foot on thy neck if thou dost worship Allah. (96.)

_DENUNCIATION OF ABU LAHAB_[16]

Abu Lahab's two hands shall perish, and he himself shall perish. His wealth shall not avail him, nor all that he has gained. He shall be burnt in the fiery flames[17] of Hell, his wife carrying wood for fuel, with a cord of palm-tree fibres twisted round her neck. (III.)

_MUHAMMAD COMMANDED TO OFFER SACRIFICES_

We have given to thee, O Prophet, great wealth and abounding riches. Pray thou to Allah, and offer Him suitable sacrifices out of what He has bestowed upon thee. (108.)

[Compare with this paragraph the following, from sura 22 of the Medinah group:

We have ordained that ye offer sacrifices unto Allah, and that ye receive much benefit therefrom. When, therefore, ye slay your camels let the name of Allah be pronounced over them. Then eat of them and give to those who ask humbly, giving also to the poor and needy who ask not. Flesh and blood can never reach unto Allah (God), but your obedience and piety will reach unto Him.]

_BELIEVERS AND UNBELIEVERS_

We will make the path to happiness easy and safe to all such as fear Allah, and give alms, and believe the truth proclaimed by Allah's messenger. But we will make easy the path to distress and misery for all such as are niggardly, are bent on making riches, and deny the truth when it is proclaimed to them. When these last fall headlong into Hell, their wealth will avail them nothing. In the burning furnace they shall burn and broil. (92.)

_THE DUTY OF EXERCISING CHARITY_

Verily, We (God) have created some men in such poverty and distress as to need the help of others. What does that braggart man mean when he says, "None shall prevail over me; I have and have scattered riches boundless"? Does he not know that there is a Divine eye that sees him? Have not We created him with a capacity of distinguishing between the two highways, that which descends towards evil, and that which ascends towards the good? This niggardly man, however, makes no attempt to scale the heights. What is it to ascend the upward road? It is to free the prisoner, to feed the hungry, to defend the orphan who is akin, and the down-trodden poor. Besides this, it is enjoined that men believe in Allah and His Prophet; that they encourage each other to be steadfast in the faith, exercising mutual consideration and sympathy. All such as do these things shall be the people of the right hand. But all those who disbelieve Our signs shall be the companions of the left hand, over whom shall be a vault of fire. (90.)

_MUHAMMAD COMMANDED TO ARISE AND PREACH_

O thou mantle-wrapped one, arise and warn the people, and magnify the Lord. The Day of Judgment will be a sad day for unbelievers. Leave thou thine enemy in Mine hands, and let Me visit upon him his well deserved punishment. For he has ridiculed the Koran; he has said: "This is nothing else than magic, they are the words of a man." I [God] will cast him into Hell, where he shall burn in torment. The fires of this Hell leave nothing unconsumed. It scorches men's flesh. We have appointed nineteen angels as guardians over Hell fire. But why nineteen? That believers may be sure of the veracity of this Book, and that unbelievers may have occasion for denying the divinity of the Koran, saying: "What means this number?" (74.)

_THE KORAN GIVEN TO MUHAMMAD_

Verily, We have brought down to Muhammad the Koran on the Night of Power.[18] This one Night of Power is better than a thousand months. On that night did Gabriel and the angels descend and reveal to Our Prophet all the words of the Koran. (97.)

_MUHAMMAD NOT MAD NOR AN IMPOSTOR_

Believe thou not, O Messenger of Mine, when they say, "Thou art bereft of thy senses," when they charge thee with imposture. Thy Lord knoweth who are bereft of their senses, and who are the impostors. Warn thou those maligners of the awful judgment which awaits them. (68.)

_GOD'S PROMISE TO HELP MUHAMMAD TO RECITE THE KORAN_

We [Allah] shall enable thee to remember all the parts of the Koran, so that thou mayest recite them for the encouragement of those who believe and as a warning to all unbelievers. Nor shalt thou forget aught of this Revelation except what We please.[19] All those who fear God will receive the prophet's warning, but all those who disbelieve shall be cast into terrible fire where they will neither live nor die. This doctrine which We command thee to preach is that taught in the ancient Books, the Books of Abraham and of Moses, who were faithful Muslims. (87.)

_THE KORAN INSPIRED_

By the falling star, your comrade Muhammad does not err, nor does he speak his own mind. What he utters has been revealed to him. The Koran is from God through Gabriel; it is not the work of man. Why worship ye goddesses like Allat and Al'Uzza and Manah? There are no goddesses.[20] (53.)

_THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN BELIEVERS_

When believing women come to you as fugitives, leaving behind them unbelieving husbands, send them not back to the infidels, but test their faith, and if they are found true Muslims, pay back to their husbands the dowries which they have expended. Then may ye marry them, provided ye give them the accustomed dowries. (60.)

_GOD'S UNITY_[21]

Say "He is but one God, the everlasting God who begets not,[22] nor is begotten, and there is none like unto Him." (10.)

_FORMULæ OF EXORCISM_

I flee for refuge to the Lord, that He may protect me against the evil things which He has created. Against night goblins when the night comes on, and from witches who bind by their magic knots, and from such as injure by the evil eye; I seek refuge with the Lord from charmers, from jinns [demons], and from evil men. (113.)

_THE HEAVEN OF THE MUSLIMS_

All who believe in Allah and His Prophet shall be admitted hereafter into delightful gardens [Paradise]. They shall repose for ever on couches decked with gold and precious stones, being supplied with abundance of luscious wine, fruits of the choicest variety, and the flesh of birds. They shall be accompanied by damsels of unsurpassed beauty, with large black, pearl-like eyes. (56.)

II.--SECOND PERIOD (A.D. 617-619)

_WINDS AND DEMONS SUBJECT TO SOLOMON_

And We made a strong wind subject to Solomon, so that it conveyed him whither he would. We also gave him the power of commanding demons, so that they dived into the sea to bring him pearls, and did everything else that he wished.[23] (21.)

_THE MIRACULOUS BIRTH OF JESUS_

Remember Mary, who preserved her virginity, and into whom We breathed Our own spirit, so that when her son Isa [Jesus] was born, mother and son became a sign unto all mankind. (21.)

_THE VIRGIN MARY_

After Mary, the Virgin, had begotten her son Isa [Jesus] she was found one day carrying the child in her arms when some pious men met her and rebuked her, saying: "O Mary, thou sister of Aaron,[24] what is this strange thing thou hast done? Thy father Amram was an upright man, and thy mother was no harlot, as thou seemest to be." In answer to all this the infant child, not having previously lisped a syllable, said, "Verily, I am the servant of Allah, who has given me the Book of the Gospel, and appointed me to be His Prophet. He has made me blessed, and to be a blessing. Happy the day wherein I was born, and the day wherein I shall die, and the day whereon I shall be raised again." (19.)

_DEVILS SENT BY GOD TO MAKE MEN SIN_

De ye not know that We [God] send devils against the unbelievers to move them, by their suggestions, to the sin of which these unbelievers become guilty? (19.)

_SOLOMON'S ARMY OF MEN, BIRDS, AND JINNS (DEMONS)_

Solomon was able to understand the speech of birds and to make them understand his speech.[25] There gathered to him on a certain day his entire army of men, birds, and jinns in the Valley of Ants. The crowd was so great that one of the ants said to his fellows, "Get you at once into your ant-homes, or you will be trampled to death by one of these myriad feet."

_THE QUEEN OF SHEBA'S VISIT TO SOLOMON_

Solomon, one day reviewing his varied troops, missed among the birds the hoopoe, and asked whither this bird had gone, threatening all manner of punishments for his absence. Soon the missing bird came flying to the king, uttering the words, "I have just come from Sheba, where I have looked upon the most wonderful queen, sitting upon the most magnificent throne that I have ever set eyes on. But this queen and her subjects, unfortunately, worshipped not Allah, the true God, but the sun."

"I will test the truth of thy words!" replied the angry monarch. "Take thou this note of mine to the queen thou laudest so highly, bidding her come to my kingdom to acknowledge my authority."

Almost in a twinkling the hoopoe was back with the queen's answer consenting to visit Solomon and his dominions. Solomon, having received this answer, asked the nobles of his kingdom, "Which of you will bring me at once the Queen of Sheba's throne, to be here before she arrives?"

"I will!" said one of the wickedest of the jinns.

"And so will I, in a whiff!" answered a jinn that was well acquainted with the Scriptures.

In a very short time the throne was in Solomon's palace. "Alter ye it," said the king, "as much as ye may, to see whether she has any supernatural knowledge to identify it."

When the queen arrived, she was asked, "What throne is this?"

She replied, "It is mine--strangely mine." After she had witnessed the glory and wisdom of Solomon, she gave up her idols, and became the worshipper of Allah, the true God. (27.)

III.--THIRD PERIOD (A.D. 619-622)

_PUNISHMENT FOR VIOLATING THE SABBATH_

Ye know how We tested and proved those wicked people who dwelt in Elath on the Red Sea. On the Sabbath day We made the fish come right up to them, as if asking to be caught; but not so on other days. Those who yielded to the temptation, and thus violated the sanctity of the sacred day, We turned into apes as a punishment for their wrong-doing. (7.)

_MOUNT SINAI SHAKEN ABOVE THE ISRAELITES_

When the Israelites doubted the authority of the Law which We had given them through Moses, Our servant, We caused Mount Sinai to rear itself above them as a covering, so that the people feared it was going to fall upon them. And We said to them, "Receive ye with reverence that Law which We have given you, and remember what is contained therein, taking heed thereto."[26] (7.)

MEDINAH SURAS

_SALVATION FOR OTHERS THAN MUSLIMS_

All such as believe in Allah and in the last day, and who do that which is right, whether they are Jews, Christians, Sabeans, or Muslims, shall have their reward from Allah, who will take away from them all fear and grief. (3.)

_Muslims Only to be Saved_

No one that follows any other religion than Islam will be accepted by God or saved from perishing in the life that is to come. (2.)

_ABRAHAM, ISHMAEL, ISAAC, JACOB, AND THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL ALL MUSLIMS_

Do ye Jews say that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes of Israel were Jews, or do ye Christians say that they were Christians? But God knows better, and has revealed to you the truth that all these were Muslims, followers of the religion of Islam. But God is cognisant of your unbelief, and will bring you to account. (2.)

_THE QIBLAH CHANGED FROM JERUSALEM TO MEKKA_

Foolish men will say, "Why have they changed the Qiblah[27] from Jerusalem to the Kaabah[28] in Mekka?" Say to them, "God's is the east and the west, and He has commanded us to turn our face, when we pray, to the sacred mosque at Mekka." (2.)

_AGAINST JEWS AND CHRISTIANS, WHO CAPRICIOUSLY CHOOSE AND REJECT WHAT DIVINE REVELATIONS THEY PLEASE_

Why, then, do ye believe part only of the Book, and deny that part which authenticates the mission of the Prophet of Allah? All those who are guilty of this sin shall have shame in this life, and on the Resurrection Day shall be driven into the most excrutiating torments. (2.)

_THE MEKKA TEMPLE FOUNDED BY ABRAHAM_

It was Abraham, our father, who first entered the Kaabah sanctuary at Mekka, and it is our bounden duty, if at all able, to visit this sacred house. (3.)

_JESUS PREDICTS THE COMING OF MUHAMMAD_

Jesus, Mary's Son, said, "O Israelites, I am Allah's Apostle, sent to confirm the Law of the Old Testament, and to bring you good tidings of a great Apostle to come after me, whose name is Ahmad."[29] (61.)

_MUHAMMAD THE LAST AND GREATEST OF GOD'S MESSENGERS_

In the former times We sent Our apostles with convincing arguments and all decisive miracles, and We gave them the Scriptures. We sent to men Noah, Abraham, and the prophets, but many believed not. Then We sent Our apostles, after whom came Jesus, Son of Mary. Then, last of all, came Our great apostle, Muhammad. O all ye believers, fear God and obey the words of Allah's messenger. (57.)

_THE KORAN CONSISTENT THROUGHOUT_

Why do they not carefully and impartially consider the Koran? If it had not been wholly of God, unbelievers would have been able to find out contradictions. (4.)

_MUHAMMAD CONTRADICTS THE FACT OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST_

Christians say that Christ Jesus, Son of Mary, was slain. But He was not slain, nor crucified, but another was taken for Him. The true Isa [Jesus] was taken up by God unto Himself, not seeing death. (4.)

_MUHAMMAD ADMITS THE FACT OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST_

And God said, "O Isa [Jesus], I will cause Thee to die, but I will take Thee up to Myself and deliver Thee from unbelievers!" (4.)

_ONE GOD, NOT THREE GODS, ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURE_

O ye who have received the Scriptures, do not believe more than these sacred writings teach! Jesus, Son of Mary, was God's Apostle, His Word, a spirit proceeding from God. Do not say there are three gods--Allah, Isa, and Mary.[30] There is but one God, and He can have no son. (4.)

_FORBIDDEN FOOD_

Ye are forbidden to eat that which dies of itself, blood, swine's flesh, and that on which the name of any other god than Allah has been invoked;[31] that which has been strangled, or killed by a blow, or by a fall, or what has been gored to death, and whatever has been sacrificed to idols. (5.)

_DIVINATION BY ARROWS CONDEMNED_

It is not allowed you to make division by casting lots with arrows.

_DENIAL OF THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST AND THE TRINITY_

Those are unbelievers who say that God is the Christ [lit., Messiah], Son of Mary. Nay, this Christ Himself said, "O Israelites, worship God, My Lord and yours!" He who associates with God any companion His equal shall be excluded from Paradise, and have his place in Hell fire. (5.)

_Jesus Denies that He and His Mother were Gods_

At the last day God will say unto Isa, "O Isa, Son of Mary, didst Thou say unto men, 'Take Me and My Mother for two Gods in addition to Allah'?" And He shall answer, "Praise be unto Thee. Thou knowest all things, and Thou knowest that I commanded men to worship Allah alone."

* * * * *

CARDINAL NEWMAN

APOLOGIA PRO VITâ SUA

That most remarkable ecclesiastic of the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman, born in London on February 21, 1801, was of Dutch extraction, but the name itself, at one time spelt "Newmann," suggests Hebrew origin. His mother came of a Huguenot family, long established in England as engravers and paper manufacturers. His early education he obtained at a school at Ealing, where he distinguished himself by diligence and good conduct, as also by a certain aloofness and shyness. The only important incident Newman connects with this period is his "conversion," an incident more certain to him "than that he had hands and feet." In 1820 he graduated at Trinity College, Oxford. The various phases of his religious career are amply set forth in his famous "Apologia pro Vitâ Sua" ("Apology for His Life"), afterwards called "A History of my Religious Opinions." The work was called out by an attack, in January, 1864, by Charles Kingsley, in a review of Froude's "History of England." Kingsley wrote: "Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and, on the whole, ought not to be." Challenged to withdraw or substantiate this charge, Kingsley did neither, whereupon Newman, after much correspondence, wrote his "Apologia," which was published in bi-monthly parts. Newman died on August 11, 1890.

_I.--HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS TO 1833_

I was brought up to delight in the Bible, but I had no formed religious convictions till I was fifteen. Of course, Ï had a perfect knowledge of my Catechism. But when I was fifteen I fell under the influence of a definite creed, and believed that the inward conversion of which I was conscious, and of which I am still more certain than that I have hands and feet, would last into the next life, and that I was elected to eternal glory. This belief faded away at the age of twenty-one; but it had had some influence on my opinions, in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me, in confirming my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena, and in making me rest in the thought of two, and two only, absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator. At the age of fifteen also I was deeply impressed by the works of Thomas Scott, by Law's "Serious Call," by Joseph Milner's "Church History," and by Newton, "On the Prophecies." Newton's book stained my imagination, till 1843, with the doctrine that the Pope was Antichrist. At this same time, the autumn of 1816, I realised that it would be the will of God that I should lead a single life, and this anticipation strengthened my feeling of separation from the visible world.

In 1822, at Oxford, I came under new influences. Dr. Hawkins, then vicar of St. Mary's, a man of most exact mind, led me to the doctrine of tradition, and taught me to anticipate that before many years there would be an attack made upon the books and the canon of Scripture. He gave me Summer's "Treatise on Apostolic Preaching," by which I was led to give up my remaining Calvinism, and to receive the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. I now read Butler's "Analogy," from which I learned two principles which underlie much of my teaching: first, that the idea of an analogy between the separate works of God leads to the conclusion that the less important system is sacramentally connected with the more momentous system; and secondly, Butler's doctrine that probability is the guide of life led me to the question of the logical cogency of faith.

I owe much to Dr. Whately, who taught me the existence of the Church as a substantive corporation, and fixed in me those anti-Erastian views of Church polity which characterized the Tractarian movement. That movement, unknown to ourselves, was taking form. Its true author, John Keble, had left Oxford for a country parish, but his "Christian Year" had waked a new music in the hearts of thousands. His creative mind repeated, in a new form, Butler's two principles: that material phenomena are the types and instruments of real things unseen; and that, in religious certitude, faith and love give to probability a force which it has not in itself.

Hurrell Froude, one of his pupils and a man of high genius, taught me to venerate the Church of Rome and to dislike the Reformation. About 1830 I set to work on "The Arians of the Fourth Century," and the broad philosophy of Clement and Origen, based on the mystical or sacramental principle, came like music to my inward ear.

Great events were now happening at home and abroad. There had been a revolution in France, and the reform agitation was going on around me as I wrote. The vital question was, how were we to keep the Church from being liberalised? I saw that reformation principles were powerless to rescue her. I ever kept before me that there was something greater than the Establishd Church, and that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, of which she was but the local presence and the organ. She was nothing, unless she was this. I was now disengaged from college duties; my health had suffered from work; and in December, 1832, I joined Hurrell Froude and his father, who were going to the south of Europe. I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean. I saw nothing but what was external; of the hidden life of Catholics I knew nothing. England was in my thoughts solely, and the success of the liberal cause fretted me. The thought came upon me that deliverance is wrought not by the many but by the few, not by bodies but by persons.

I began to think that I had a mission. I reached England on July 9, and on July 14 Mr. Keble preached in the university pulpit on "National Apostasy." This day was the start of the religious movement of 1833.

_II.--WITH THE TRACTARIANS_

A movement had begun in opposition to the danger of liberalism which was threatening the religion of the nation. Mr. Keble, Hurrell Froude, Mr. William Palmer, Mr. Arthur Purceval, Mr. Hugh Rose, and other zealous, and able men had united their counsels. I had the exultation of health restored, a joyous energy which I never had before or since. And I had a supreme confidence in our cause; we were upholding that primitive Christianity which was delivered for all time by the early teachers of the Church. Owing to this supreme confidence, my behaviour had a mixture in it both of fierceness, and of sport, and on this account it gave offence to many.

The three propositions about which I was so confident were as follow: First was the principle of dogma; my battle was with liberalism--and by liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle and its developments. I have changed in many things, but not in this; religion, as a mere sentiment, has been to me from childhood a dream and a mockery. Secondly, I was confident that there was a visible Church, with sacraments and rites which are the channels of invisible grace. Here, again, I have not changed. But, thirdly, I held a view of the Church of Rome which I have utterly renounced since.

The attack of liberalism upon the university and upon the old orthodoxy of England began in 1834. Thus, in a pamphlet by Dr. Hampden it was maintained that religion is distinct from theological opinion, that it is but a common prejudice to identify theological propositions with the simple religion of Christ; and so on. The tracts were widely read and discussed, but the counter-attack against liberalism was not a power until Dr. Pusey joined us. His great learning, his immense diligence, his simple devotion to the cause of religion, no less than his great influence in the university, at once gave us a position and a name. He taught us that there ought to be more sense of responsibility in the tracts and in the whole movement. Under his influence I wrote a work defining our relation to the Church of Rome, namely, "The Prophetical Office of the Church viewed relatively to Romanism and to Popular Protestantism." The subject of this volume, published in 1837, is the "Via Media." This was followed by my "Essay on Justification," and other works; and so I went on for years up to 1841. It was, in a human point of view, the happiest time of my life. We prospered and spread.

But the movement was to come into collision with the nation, and with the Church of the nation. In 1838 my bishop made some light animadversions on the tracts. But my tract on the Thirty-nine Articles, designed to show that the Articles do not oppose Catholic teaching, and but partially oppose Roman dogma, while they do oppose the dominant errors of Rome, brought down, in 1839, a storm of indignation throughout the country. I saw that my place in the movement was lost.

_III.--A THEOLOGICAL DEATH-BED_

In the long vacation of 1839 I began to study the history of the Monophysites, and was-absorbed in the doctrinal question. It was during this course of reading that for the first time a doubt came upon me of the tenableness of Anglicism, and by the end of August I was seriously alarmed. My stronghold was antiquity; yet here, in the fifth century, I found Christendom of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries reflected.

The drama of religion and the combat of truth and error were ever one and the same; the principles of the Roman Church now were those of the Church then; the principles of heretics then were those of Protestants now; there was an awful similitude. Be my soul with the saints! In the same month the words of St. Augustine were pointed out to me, _"Securus judicat orbis terrarum";_ they struck me with a power which I had never felt from any words before; the theory of the "Via Media" was absolutely pulverised.

In the summer of 1841, in retirement at Littlemore, I received three blows which broke me. First, in the history of the Arians I found the same phenomena which I had found in the Monophysites: the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and Rome now was what it was then. Secondly, the bishops, one after another, began to charge against me in a formal, determinate movement. Third, it was proposed by Anglican authorities to establish an Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem--a step which amounted to a formal denial that the Anglican Church was a branch of the Catholic Church, and to a formal assertion that the Anglican was a Protestant Church. The Jerusalem bishopric brought me to the beginning of the end.

From the end of 1841 I was on my death-bed, as regards my membership of the Anglican Church, though at the time I became aware of it only by degrees. A death-bed has scarcely a history; it is a tedious decline, with seasons of rallying and seasons of falling back. My position at first was this: I had given up my place in the movement in the spring of 1841, but I could not give up my duties towards the many and various minds who had been brought into it by me; I expected gradually to fall back into lay communion; I never contemplated leaving the Church of England; I could not hold office in its service if I were not allowed to hold the Catholic sense of the Articles; I could not go to Rome while she suffered honours to be paid to the Blessed Virgin and the saints which I thought in my conscience to be incompatible with the supreme glory of the One, Infinite and Eternal; I desired a union with Rome under conditions, Church with Church; I called Littlemore my Torres Vedras, and thought that some day we might advance again within the Anglican Church; I kept back all persons who were disposed to go to Rome with all my might.

The "Via Media" was now an impossible idea; I abandoned that old ground, and took another. I said, "Much as Roman Catholics may denounce us at present as schismatical, they could not resist us if the Anglican communion had but that one note of the Church upon it--sanctity." I was pleased with my new view, but my friends were naturally offended at a novel line of argument which substituted a sort of methodistic self-contemplation for the plain and honest tokens of a divine mission in the Anglican Church.

In spite of my ingrained fears of Rome, in spite of my affection for Oxford and Oriel, yet I had a secret longing love of Rome, the Mother of English Christianity. It was the consciousness of this bias in myself which made me preach so earnestly against the danger of being swayed in religious inquiry by our sympathy rather than by our reason. I was in great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood; I incurred the charge of weakness from some men, and of mysteriousness and underhand dealing from the majority. But I have never had any suspicion of my own honesty.

In July, 1844, I wrote to a friend: "I am far more certain, according to the fathers, that we _are_ in a state of culpable separation than that developments do _not_ exist under the Gospel, and that the Roman developments are not the true ones." I then saw that the principle of development was discernible from the first years of the Catholic teaching up to the present day. I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind must embrace either the one or the other. I saw that no valid reasons could be assigned for continuing in the Anglican Church, and that no Valid objections could be taken to joining the Roman.

In February, 1843, I had made a formal retraction of all the hard things which I had said against the Church of Rome, and in September I had resigned the living of St. Mary's, Littlemore included. I began my "Essay on the Development of Doctrine" in the beginning of 1845, and was hard at it till October. Before I got to the end, I resolved to be received into the Catholic Church. Father Dominic came to Littlemore on October 8, and did for me this charitable service. I left Oxford for good on February 23, 1846.

_IV.--THE FAITH OF A CATHOLIC_

From the time that I became a Catholic of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. I do not mean that I have given up thinking on theological subjects, but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace; I never have had one doubt.

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles which are not found in the Anglican creed. I am far from denying that every article of the Christian creed is beset with difficulties, and it is simple fact that I cannot answer those difficulties. But ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.

Starting, then, with the being of a God, which is as certain to me as my own existence, I look out of myself into the world of men, and there I see a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress. The world seems simply to give the lie to that great truth, of which my whole being is so full; I look into this living, busy world, and see no reflection of its Creator. To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the defeat of good, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the dreary, hopeless irreligion--all this is a vision to dizzy and appal, and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution. What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence.

And now, supposing it were the blessed will of the Creator to interfere in this anarchical condition of things, what would be the methods which might be necessarily or naturally involved in His purpose of mercy? What must be the face-to-face antagonist, by which to withstand and baffle the fierce energy and passion and the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries? There is nothing to surprise the mind, if He should think fit to introduce a power into the world, invested with the prerogative of infallibility in religious matters. Such a provision would be a direct, immediate, active, and prompt means of withstanding the difficulty; and when I find that this is the very claim of the Catholic Church, not only do I feel no difficulty in admitting the idea, but there is a fitness in it which recommends it to my mind.

I am defending myself from the charge that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to hold doctrines which I cannot possibly believe in my heart, but that I also believe in a power on earth, which at its own will imposes upon men any new set of _credenda_, when it pleases, by a claim to infallibility; and that the necessary effect of such a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward rebellion relieving itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of ignoring the whole subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of mechanically saying everything that the Church says. But this is far from the result; it is far from borne out by the history of the conflict between infallibility and reason in the past, and the prospect in the future.

The energy of the human intellect thrives and is joyous, with a tough, elastic strength, under the terrible blows of the divinely fashioned weapon. Protestant writers consider that they have all the private judgment to themselves, and that we have the superincumbent oppression of authority. But this is not so; it is the vast Catholic body itself, and it only, which affords an arena for both combatants in that awful, never-dying duel. St. Paul says that his apostolical power is given him to edification, and not to destruction. There can be no better account of the infallibility of the Church. Its object is, and its effect also, not to enfeeble the freedom or vigour of human thought in religious speculation, but resist and control its extravagance.

I will go on in fairness to say what I think _is_ the great trial to the reason when confronted with that august prerogative of the Catholic Church. The Church claims, not only to judge infallibly on religious questions, but to animadvert on opinions in secular matters which bear upon religion, on matters of philosophy, of science, of literature, of history, and it demands our submission to her claim. In this province, taken as a whole, it does not so much speak doctrinally, as enforce measures of discipline.

I will go on to say further, that, in spite of all the most hostile critics may urge about these verities of high ecclesiastics in time past, in the use of their power, I think that the event has shown, after all, that they were mainly in the right, and that those whom they were hard upon were mainly in the wrong. There is a time for everything, and many a man desires a reformation of an abuse, or the fuller development of a doctrine, or the adoption of a particular policy, but forgets to ask himself whether the right time for it is come.

There is only one other subject which I think it necessary to introduce here, as bearing upon the vague suspicions which are attached in this country to the Catholic priesthood. It is one of which my accusers have before now said much--the charge of reserve and economy. I come to the direct question of truth, and of the truthfulness of Catholic priests generally in their dealings with the world, as bearing on the general question of their honesty, and of their internal belief in their religious professions. First, I will say that when I became a Catholic, nothing struck me more at once than the English outspoken manner of the priests. There was nothing of that smoothness or mannerism which is commonly imputed to them. Next, I was struck, when I had more opportunity of judging of the priests, by the simple faith in the Catholic creed and system, of which they always give evidence, and which they never seemed to feel in any sense at all to be a burden.

Vague charges against us are drawn from our books of moral theology. St. Alfonso Liguori, for instance, lays down that an equivocation is allowable in an extraordinary case. I avow at once that in this department of morality, I like the English rule of conduct better. Yet, great English authors, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Paley, Johnson, distinctly say that under extraordinary circumstances it is allowable to tell a lie. Would anyone give ever so little weight to these statements, in forming an estimate of the veracity of the writers? And, in fact, it is notorious from St. Alfonso's life that he had one of the most scrupulous and anxious of consciences; and, further, he was originally in the law, and was betrayed on one occasion by accident into what seemed like a deceit, and this was the very occasion of his leaving the profession.

If Protestants wish to know what our real teaching is, let them look at the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Let me appeal also to the life of St. Philip Neri, founder of the Oratory: "As for liars, he could not endure them, and he was continually reminding his spiritual children to avoid them as they would a pestilence."

These are the principles on which I have acted before I was a Catholic, these are the principles which, I trust, will be my stay and guidance to the end.

* * * * *

THOMAS PAINE

THE AGE OF REASON

In 1774, Thomas Paine, thirty-seven years of age, landed unknown and penniless in the American colonies. Born at Thetford, Norfolk, England, Jan. 29, 1737, of poor Quaker parents, he had tried many occupations, and had succeeded in none. Within two years he had become an intellectual leader of the American Revolution. Beginning his literary career with an attack on slavery, he continued it in 1776 by publishing his pamphlet "Common Sense," which gave an electric inspiration to the cause of separation and republicanism among the colonists. After serving the new commonwealth in office and with his pen, he went to France on an official mission in 1781; then returned to his native England, intent on furthering his views. In 1793 Paine wrote the first part of "The Age of Reason," which aroused a storm of indignation, but undaunted, he added a second and a third part to the work, consisting mostly of amplifications of some of the contentions advanced in the first part, in the writing of which Paine had no Bible to consult. The book, the first part of which was published in 1794, the second part in 1795, and the third in 1801, is an exposition of Deism on a purely scientific basis; the visible creation was everything to Paine in his reasonings, the religious hopes, fears and aspirations of men were nothing at all--this universal human phenomenon was curtly dismissed by him as a universal human delusion. Many of his comments on the Bible were rather crude anticipations of the modern Higher Criticism. But in dealing with the Bible, Paine showed the animus of a prosecuting counsel rather than the impartiality of a judge. His stormy life ended on July 8, 1809. (See also ECONOMICS, Vol. XIV.)

_I.--REVEALED RELIGION_

It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion. As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow citizens of France, have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself.

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolise power and profit.

Each of those churches show certain books which they call "revelation," or the word of God. The Jews say that the word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say that their word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of these churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only.

When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is a revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other; consequently they are not obliged to believe it, for they have only the word of the first person that it was made to him.

The world has been amused with the terms "revealed religion," and the generality of priests apply this term to the books called the Old and New Testament. There is no man that believes in revealed religion stronger than I do; but it is not the reveries of the Old and New Testament that I dignify with that sacred title. That which is a revelation to me exists in something which no human mind can invent, no human hand can counterfeit or alter.

The word of God is the Creation we behold; and this word of God revealeth to man all that is necessary for him to know of his Creator.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of his creation.

Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed.

Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth.

Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful.

Do we want to contemplate his will, so far as it respects man? The goodness he shows to all is a lesson for our conduct to each other.

In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation.

_II.--THEOLOGY AND RELIGION_

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a compound made up chiefly of manism with but little Deism, and is near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness.

That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.

As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God Himself in the works that He has made, but in the works or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the bag of superstition.

It is an inconsistency, scarcely possible to be credited, that anything should exist under the name of a religion that held it to be irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that God had made. But the fact is too well established to be denied. The event that served more than any other to break the first link in the long chain of despotic ignorance is that known by the name of the Reformation by Luther. From that time, though it does not appear to have made part of the intention of Luther, or of these who are called Reformers, the sciences began to revive, and liberality, their natural associate, began to appear. This was the only public good the Reformation did; for with respect to religious good it might as well not have taken place. The mythology still continued the same; and the multiplicity of national popes grew out of the downfall of the Pope of Christendom.

The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes at last rank hypocrisy. When men from custom or fashion, or any worldly motive profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and, being no longer honest in their own minds, they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others. It is from the influence of this vice, hypocrisy, that we see so many church and meeting-going professors and pretenders to religion so full of tricks and deceit in their dealings, and so loose in the performance of their engagements that they are not to be trusted further than the laws of the country will bind them. Morality has no hold on their minds, no restraint on their actions.

One set of preachers make salvation to consist in believing. They tell their congregations that if they believe in Christ their sins shall be forgiven. This, in the first place, is an encouragement to sin; in the next place, the doctrine these men preach cannot be true.

Another set of preachers tell their congregations that God predestined and selected from all eternity a certain number to be saved, and a certain number to be damned eternally. If this were true, the day of judgment is past; their preaching is in vain, and they had better work at some useful calling for their livelihood.

Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind, and, though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius and by some of the Greek philosophers many years before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

_III.--THE BIBLE_

If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or accident whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of God; and therefore the word of God cannot exist in any written or human language.

The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the word of God. The word of God exists in something else.

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematised each other about the supposable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing; another, that it meant directly the contrary; and a third, that it meant neither the one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible.

Now, instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible, these men ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them, that the first thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient authority for believing the Bible to be the word of God, or whether there is not.

I therefore pass on to an examination of the Books called the Old and the New Testament. The case historically appears to be as follows:

When the Church mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament are in the same state in which these collectors say they found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.

Be this as it may, they decided by _vote_ which of the books out of the collection they had made should be the word of God, and which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes they voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people since calling themselves Christians, had believed otherwise; for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the people were that did all this we know nothing of; they call themselves by the general name of the Church; and this is all we know of the matter.

There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Ben, in France; by the English Government in the East Indies; or by any other assassin in modern times. Are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by His authority? To read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.

But it can be shown by internal evidence that the Bible is not entitled to credit as the word of God. It can readily be proved that the first five books of the Bible, attributed to Moses, were not written by him nor in his time, but several hundred years afterwards. Moses could not have described his own death, nor mentioned that he was buried in a valley in the land of Moab. Similarly, the book of Joshua was not written by Joshua; it is manifest that Joshua could not write that Israel served the Lord not only in his days, but in the days of the elders that over-lived him. The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it. The books of Samuel were not written by Samuel, for they relate many things that did not happen till after his death.

The history in the two books of Kings, which is little more than a history of assassinations, treachery, and war, sometimes contradicts itself; and several of the most extraordinary matters related in Kings are not mentioned in the companion books of Chronicles. The book of Job has no internal evidence of being a Hebrew book; it appears to have been translated from another language into Hebrew; and it is the only book in the Bible that can be read without indignation or disgust. It is an error to call the Psalms the Psalms of David because historical evidence shows that some of them were not written until long after the time of David. The books of the prophets are wild, disorderly, and obscure compositions, the so-called prophecies in which do not refer to Jesus Christ, but to circumstances the Jewish nation was in at the time they were written or spoken.

I now go on to the book called the New Testament. Had it been the object of Jesus Christ to establish a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or procured it to be written in His lifetime. But there is no publication extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and profession, and he was the Son of God in like manner that every other person is; for the Creator is the Father of All.

The first four books--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--are altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place. They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others did and said to him; and in several instances they relate the same event differently. Revelation, therefore, is out of the question with respect to these books. The presumption, moreover, is that they are written by other persons than these whose name they bear.

The book of Acts of the Apostles belongs also to the anecdotal part. All the rest of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas called the Revelation, are a collection of letters under the name of epistles, and the forgery of letters under the name of epistles. One thing, however, is certain, which is that out of the matters contained in these books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the Church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and reverence in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

_IV.--MYSTERY, MIRACLE, AND PROPHECY_

I proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been employed in all ages and perhaps in all countries to impose upon mankind.

These three means are mystery, miracle, and prophecy. The two first are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected. With respect to mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a mystery to us. Our own existence is a mystery, the whole vegetable world is a mystery. We know not how it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself.

The fact, however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a mystery, because we see it; and we know also the means we are to use, which is no other than putting the seed in the ground. We know, therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of the operation that we do not know, and which if we did we could not perform, the Creator takes upon Himself and performs it for us.

But though every created thing is in this sense a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth, and not of mystery. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.

Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God, so far from having anything of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, becauses it arises to us out of necessity. And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a practical imitation of the goodness of God, is no other than our acting towards each other as he acts benignly towards all.

When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, they were under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar to all inquiries and speculations. The word "mystery" answered this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which in itself is without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries.

As mystery answered all general purposes, "miracle" followed as an occasional auxiliary. Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that of miracle is the most inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief, it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the character of a showman, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter who says that he saw it; and therefore the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were a lie.

As mystery and miracle took charge of the past and the present, prophecy took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. The original meaning of the words "prophet" and "prophesying" has been changed, the Old Testament prophets were simply poets and musicians. It is owing to this change in the meaning of the words that the flights and metaphors of the Jewish poets, and phrases and expressions now rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with the local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. Everything unintelligible was prophetical.

_V.--DEISM_

Fom the time I was capable of conceiving an idea, and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system or thought it to be a strange affair. It seems as if parents of the Christian profession were ashamed to tell their children anything about the principles of their religion. They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call Providence. But the Christian story of what they call God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it--for that is the plain language of the story--cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him it was done to make mankind happier and better is making the story still worse; and to tell him that all this is a mystery is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.

How different is this from the pure and simple profession of deism! The true deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavouring to imitate him in everything moral, scientific, and mechanical.

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers; but they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of the Quaker could have been consulted at the creation what a silent and drab-coloured creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, not a bird been permitted to sing.

Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of His wisdom and His beneficence, become enlarged as we contemplate the extent and structure of the universe. The solitary idea of a solitary world rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of space gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance, but we forget to consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.

But what are we to think of the Christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one world? Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space and the almighty power of the Creator? From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest and come to die in our world, because they say one man and one woman had eaten an apple?

It has been by rejecting the evidence that the word or works of God in the creation affords to our senses, and the action of our reason upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith, and of religion, have been fabricated and set up. There may be many systems of religion that so far from being morally bad are in many respects morally good; but there can be but one that is true, and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever-existing word of God that we behold in His works.

I shall close by giving a summary of the deistic belief:

First, that the creation we behold is the real word of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaims His power, it demonstrates His wisdom, it manifests His goodness and beneficence.

Secondly, that the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all His creatures. That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards each other, and consequently that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty.

It is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all religions agree. All believe in a God. The things in which they disagree are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and, therefore, if ever an universal religion should prevail, it will not be in believing anything new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed at first. But in the meantime let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and the worship he prefers.

* * * * *

BLAISE PASCAL

LETTERS TO A PROVINCIAL

Blaise Pascal, mathematician, theologian, and one of the greatest writers of French prose, was born on June 19, 1623, at Clermont-Ferrand, and died on August 19, 1662. His mother died in his fourth year, and the father, an eminent lawyer, took the boy with his two sisters to Paris. Pascal showed the most astonishing mathematical genius; he produced at the age of seventeen a profound work on conic sections, and devoted the following years to physical researches and to investigations in the higher mathematics. In 1654, Pascal, having experienced a remarkable vision, which he recorded on a parchment known as his "amulet," renounced the world and entered on the ascetic life, in close relations with the Jansenist community. Hence, in the interests of Arnauld, the Jansenist leader, Pascal issued the famous "Letters Written to a Provincial" ("Lettres Écrites par Louis de Montalte à un Provincial de ses Amis"), a series of eighteen tracts directed with the keenest and bitterest irony against the casuistry of the Jesuits. The "Letters" appeared during a period of fourteen months, the first being dated January 23, 1656, and the last March 24, 1657. They took the form of little pamphlets, each of eight or twelve quarto pages; they had a very large circulation, and created an immense impression throughout Catholic countries. They are open letters, intended really for the public and not for any individual.

_I.--LAX CASUISTS_

SIR,--I send you, as I promised, the chief outlines of the moral teaching of these good Jesuit fathers, these "men so eminent in doctrine and in wisdom, who are led by that divine wisdom which is more trustworthy than all philosophy." Possibly you think that I speak in jest. I speak seriously, or, rather, it is they who have spoken thus of themselves. I only copy their words where they write, "It is a society of men, or, rather, of angels, foretold by the prophet Isaiah." They claim to have changed the face of Christianity. We must believe it, since they have told us so; and, indeed, you will see how far they have done so, when you have mastered their maxims.

I took care to be instructed by themselves and trusted to nothing which my friend had told me. I had been told such strange things that I could hardly believe them, until I was shown them in their own books; and then I could say nothing in their defence, except that these must be the principles of certain isolated Jesuits, and not those of the whole society. Indeed, I was able to say that I knew Jesuits who were as severe as these were lax.

It was on that occasion that the spirit of the society was explained to me, for it is not by any means known to every one. I was told as follows:

"You imagine that you are speaking in their favour when you say that there are among them fathers who are as obedient to the principles of the Gospel as others are distant from those principles, and you conclude therefore that these loose opinions do not characterise the whole society. That is true. But since the society admits of so licentious a doctrine within it, you must conclude that its spirit is not one of Christian severity."

"But what then," said I, "is the purpose of the whole institution? Is it that everyone should be free to say whatever he may happen to think?"

"That is not so," was the reply. "So great a society could not exist without discipline, and without one spirit governing and ruling all its movements."

The objects of the Jesuits is not to corrupt morals, but, on the other hand, they have not in view as their single object the reformation of morals, because they would find this a political disadvantage. Their principle is this: they have so high an opinion of themselves as to believe that it is advantageous, and even necessary, to the good of religion that their credit should extend everywhere and that they should govern all consciences. And as the severe maxims of the Gospel are suitable for governing certain temperaments, they make use of these whenever they serve their purpose. But since these same maxims do not at all suit the wishes of the generality of mankind, they usually put them aside so as to be able to please everyone.

Therefore, having to do with people of all sorts and conditions, and of diverse nationalities, they need casuists suited to all this diversity. From this principle you will easily see that if they had none but lax casuists they would defeat their chief purpose, which is to include the whole world. Truly pious people seek a more severe direction, but as there are not many who are truly pious the Jesuits do not need many strict directors to guide them. They have a few for the few who need them. On the other hand, the vast number of their lax casuists are at the service of the innumerable multitude who seek the broad and easy way.

It is by this obliging and accommodating conduct that they open their arms to all the world. Thus, if someone comes to them already determined to make restitution of goods which he has wrongly acquired, you need not fear that they will dissuade him. On the contrary, they will praise and confirm his holy resolution. But if another should come wishing to have absolution without making restitution, their position would be a difficult one, if they had not the means of giving him his desire. It is thus that they keep all their friends and defend themselves against their enemies. And if anyone accuses them of extreme laxity, they immediately bring forward their most austere directors, and certain books which they have written on the severity of the Christian law; and simple and uninquiring people are contented with these proofs.

They have proofs for all sorts of people, and make such ingenious replies to every question that when they find themselves in countries where a crucified God seems like madness, they suppress the scandal of the Cross and preach only Christ in glory. This they have done in India and China, where they even condone idolatry by a subtle device; they allow their people to carry with them hidden images of Christ, to which they should address the public worship ostensibly paid to their idols. This conduct led to their being forbidden under pain of excommunication to permit the adoration of idols, under any pretext, or to hide the mystery of the Cross from those whom they instruct in religion, and they have been forbidden to receive anyone in baptism until he has this knowledge, and are enjoined to erect in their churches the image of the crucifix.

Thus they have spread over the whole earth in the strength of their doctrine of "probable opinions," which is the fount and origin of all these irregularities. You may learn of this from themselves, for they take no pains to hide it, except that they cover their human and political prudence with the pretence of a divine and Christian prudence. They act as if the faith and the tradition which maintains it were not for ever invariable at all times and in all places, and as if nothing more were required, in order to remove the stains of guilt, than to corrupt the law of the Lord, instead of regarding that stainless and holy law as itself the instrument of conversion, and conforming human souls to its salutary precepts.

_II.--THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION_

Sir,--I must now let you know what the good Jesuit father told me about the maxims of their casuists, with regard to the "point of honour" among gentlemen. "You know," said he, "that this point of honour is the dominating passion of men in that rank of life, and is constantly leading them into acts of violence which appear quite contrary to Christian piety. Indeed, we should have to exclude all of them from our confessionals, if our fathers had not in some degree relaxed the severity of religion and accommodated it to the weakness of men. But since they wished to remain attached to the Gospel by their duty towards God, and to men of the world by their charity towards their neighbour, they had to seek expedients by which they might make it possible for a man to maintain his honour in the ordinary way of the world without wounding his conscience. They had to preserve, at the same time, two things which are apparently so opposed to one another as piety and honour. But, however valuable their purpose might be, its execution was exceedingly difficult."

"I am surprised," I said, "that you find it difficult."

"Are you?" he replied. "Do you not know that on the one hand the law of the Gospel commands us never to render evil for evil, and to leave vengeance to God; and that on the other hand the laws of the world forbid that we should suffer injury without executing justice, even by the death of our enemies? Is it possible that two precepts should be more contrary to one another?"

"What I meant to say was, that after what I have seen of your fathers, I know that they can easily do things which are impossible to other men. I am quite ready to believe that they have discovered some means of reconciling these two precepts, and I beg of you to inform me what it is."

"You must know, then," he replied, "that this wonderful principle is our grand method of _directing the intention,_ a principle of great importance in our moral system. You have already seen certain examples of it. Thus, when I explained to you how servants could carry with a clear conscience certain harmful messages, you must have seen that it was by diverting their intention from the evil of which they are the bearers and by turning it to the gain which they receive for their service. This is what we call 'directing the intention.' In the same way you have seen that those who give money in return for benefices would be guilty of simony unless they diverted their intention from the transaction. But I am going to show you this grand method in all its beauty in relation to homicide, which it justifies under a thousand circumstances."

"I am ready to believe," I said, "that your principle will permit everything, and that nothing will escape it."

"Not at all," he replied; "you are always running from one extreme to the other. We by no means permit everything. For instance, we never permit the formal intention of sin, for the mere sake of sinning, and we will have nothing to do with anyone who persists in seeking evil as an end in itself, for that is a devilish intention, in whatever age, sex, or rank it may be found. But so long as there is no such unhappy disposition as that, we try to put in practice our method of directing intention, which consists in proposing a lawful object as the end of one's actions. In so far as it is in our power, we turn away from forbidden things; but when we are unable to prevent the action, we at least try to purify the intention, and so correct the vice of the means by the purity of the end.

"That is how our fathers have been able to permit the acts of violence which are committed in the defence of honour. It is only necessary to turn away one's intention from the desire of vengeance, which is criminal, and to restrict it to the desire of defending one's honour, which is a lawful desire. It is thus that our fathers are able to fulfil their duties towards God and towards men alike. They please the world by permitting the actions, and they satisfy the Gospel by purifying the intentions. It is a method which was unknown to the ancients, and is entirely due to our fathers. Do you understand it now?"

"I understand it very well," I said. "You allow to men the external and material effect of the action, and you give to God the internal and spiritual movement of intention, and thus reconcile the human with the divine law. But though I understand your principle well enough, I should like to know what are its consequences.--I should like to know, for instance, all the cases in which your method permits one to kill. You have told me that whoever receives a blow may repay it with a sword-thrust without the guilt of vengeance, but you have not yet told me how far one may go."

"You can hardly make a mistake," said the father. "You may go as far as to kill the man. One of our authorities speaks: 'It is permitted to kill a man who has given a blow, even though he runs away, on the condition that it is not done through hatred or through vengeance, and that one's actions do not lead to murders which are excessive and harmful to the state.' The reason is, that one may thus run after one's honour as if after a stolen object. For though your honour is not exactly in the hands of your enemy as if it were something which he had picked up, you can yet recover it in the same way by giving a proof of greatness and of authority, and by thus acquiring human esteem. Indeed, he continues: 'Is it not true that he who has received a blow is considered disgraced until he has slain his enemy?'"

This appeared to me so horrible that I had difficulty in restraining myself. I felt that I had heard enough.

_III.--THE CHARGE OF RAILLERY_

Reverend Fathers,--I have read the letters which you have published in answer to some of mine on the subject of your moral principles; and I find that one of the principal points in your defence is that I have not spoken seriously enough of your maxims. You repeat this charge in all your writings, and you go so far as to say that I have turned holy things into ridicule.

This is a surprising and very unjust reproach; for where is a passage to be found in which I have treated holy things with raillery? It is true that I have spoken with little respect of the teachings of certain among you, but do you suppose that the imaginations of your authors are to be taken as the verities of the faith? Is it impossible to laugh at passages of Escobar, and at the very fantastic and unchristian conclusions of others of your authors without being accused of ridiculing religion? Are you not afraid lest your reproaches should give me a new subject for ridicule, or lest it should be seen that when I make sport of your moral principles I am as far from laughing at holy things as the doctrine of your casuists is far from the holy teaching of the Evangel!

Truly, fathers, there is a great difference between laughing at religion, and laughing at those whose extravagant opinions are its profanation. It would be impious to be wanting in respect for the truths which the Spirit of God has revealed, but it would hardly be less impious that we should not show our contempt for the falsities which the human spirit has opposed to them.

I pray you to consider that just as Christian truth is worthy of love and of respect, the errors that are contrary to it deserve our contempt and hatred. For there are two qualities in the truths of our religion, a divine beauty which compels our love, and a holy majesty that demands our veneration; and there are two qualities in error, the impiety which makes it horrible, and the impertinence which renders it absurd.

Do not hope, therefore, to persuade the world that it is unworthy of Christians to deal with errors as absurdities, since this method has been common to the early fathers of the church, and is authorised by Holy Scriptures, by the example of the greatest saints, and even by that of God himself. For do we not see that God at the same time hates and despises sinners in such a degree that at the hour of their death, when their condition is at its saddest and most deplorable, the divine wisdom is said to unite mockery and laughter with the vengeance and fury which condemns them to perpetual torments.

Nay, it is worthy of our notice that in the first words which God spake to man after the fall the fathers of the church have discovered a tone of mockery, a stinging irony. After Adam had disobeyed, in the hope that the devil had given that he would then be made like a God, it appears from Scripture that God's punishment made him subject to death, and that after having reduced Adam to the miserable condition which his sin had deserved, God mocked him with words of piercing irony, saying: "There is the man who has become as one of us."

You see, therefore, that mockery is sometimes designed to turn men from their follies, and is then an act of righteousness. Thus Jeremiah says that the deeds of the foolish are worthy of laughter because of their vanity. And, again, St. Augustine says that the wise laugh at the foolish because they are wise, but in virtue not of their own wisdom, but of the divine wisdom which will mock at the death of the wicked.

What? Must we call in Scripture and tradition to prove that cutting down one's enemy from behind, and in an ambush is a treacherous murder? Or that giving a present of money to secure an ecclesiastical benefice is to purchase it? Of course, there are teachings which deserve our contempt, and can only be dealt with by mockery. Are you, fathers, to be permitted to teach that it is lawful to slay in order to avoid a blow and an affront, yet are we to be forbidden to refute publicly so grave an error? Are you to be at liberty to say that a judge may conscientiously retain a bribe given him to purchase injustice, yet may we never contradict you? Are you formally to pronounce that a man may be saved without ever having loved God, and yet close the mouths of those who would defend the truth of the faith, on the ground that their defence must wound fraternal charity by attacking you, and must grieve Christian modesty by laughing at your maxims?

_IV.--THE SIN OF SIMONY_

Reverend Fathers,--I was about to write to you concerning the accusations which you have so long brought against me, wherein you call me impious, buffoon, rogue, impostor, calumniator, swindler, heretic, disguised Calvinist, one possessed of a legion of devils. I wish the world to know why you speak thus, for I should be sorry that anyone should think thus of me; and I had already made up my mind to complain publicly of your calumnies and impostures when I saw your replies, wherein you bring the same charges against me. You have thus forced me to change my purpose. Yet I shall still carry it out in some degree, inasmuch as I hope that my defence will convict you of more real impostures which you have imputed to me. Truly, fathers, your position is more open to suspicion than mine, for it is very unlikely that I, being alone as I am, and without strength or human support against so powerful a society as yours, and being sustained only by truth and sincerity, should have exposed myself to the risk of losing all, by exposing myself to a conviction of imposture. But your position, fathers, is different; you can say of me what you please, and I can find no one to whom I may complain. Well, you have chosen your ground, and the war shall be made in your country and at your expense. Do not fear that I shall be tedious; there is something so diverting about your maxims that they never fail to rejoice the world.

Let me closely explain, for instance, your doctrine with regard to simony. Finding yourself in a dilemma between the canons of the church, which forbid with the severest penalties any trade in ecclesiastical benefices, and the avarice of so many people who promote this infamous traffic, you have followed your ordinary method, which is to give to men what they desire, and to offer to God nothing but words and appearances. For what do simonfacal persons demand, if not that they shall receive money in return for their benefices?

But that is precisely the transaction which you have cleared from the guilt of simony. Yet, since you cannot do away with the name of simony, and there must be some matter to which the name attaches, you have devised for that purpose an imaginary idea, which never enters the minds of simoniacs at all, and indeed would be quite useless to them. This is, that simony consists in valuing the money, considered in itself, as highly as the spiritual privilege, considered in itself. Who would ever dream of comparing things which are so disproportionate and of such different kinds? Yet, according to your authors, so long as a man does not entertain this metaphysical comparison, he may give his benefice to another, and may receive money in return, without incurring the guilt of simony. It is thus that you make game of religion in order to pander to human passions.

The abusive language which you utter against me will never clear up our differences, nor shall any of your threats restrain me from defending myself. You trust in your strength and impunity, but I believe that I possess truth and innocence. The war by which violence attempts to oppress the truth is a strange and a long one, for all the efforts of violence are unable to weaken truth, and serve only to make it more evident. On the other hand, all the light of truth can do nothing to arrest violence, but rather inflames it. When force combats force, the stronger destroys the weaker; when argument is opposed to argument, true and convincing reasoning confounds that which is based on vanity and lies; but violence and truth have, no power one over the other. That is not to say that these two things are equal. There is this extreme difference between them: the career of violence is limited by the divine order, which determines its effects to the glory of the truth which it attacks; but truth, on the other hand, exists externally, and triumphs at last over its enemies, because it is eternal and powerful as God Himself.

_V.--HOMICIDE_

Let us now see, fathers, how you value that life of man, which is so jealously safeguarded by human justice. It appears from your novel laws that there is only one judge in a case of affront or injury, and that this judge is to be he who has received the offence. He is to be at the same time judge, plaintiff, and executioner. He demands the death of the offender, sentences him to death, and immediately executes the sentence; and so, without respect either for the body or for the soul of his brother, slays and imperils the salvation of him for whom Christ died. And all this is to be done to avoid a blow, a slander, an insulting word, or some other offence for which neither the law nor any authorised judge could assign the penalty of death.

Not only so, but even a priest is held to have contracted neither sin nor irregularity in this infliction of death without authority and against law. Can these be religious men and priests who speak in this way? Are they Christians or Turks--men or demons? Spread over the whole earth, according to St. Augustine, there are two peoples and two worlds--the world of the children of God, who form one body, of which Jesus Christ is king, and the world of the enemies of God, of whom the devil is king.

Now, Christ has founded honour on suffering; the devil has founded it on the refusal to suffer. Christ has taught those who receive a blow to offer the other cheek; but the devil has taught those who are in danger of a blow to kill the enemy who threatens them.

Consider, therefore, fathers, to which of these two kingdoms you belong. You have heard the language of the city of peace, which is called the mystical Jerusalem, and you have heard the language of the city of turmoil, which is called in the Scriptures the spiritual Sodom. Which of these two languages do you understand? According to St. Paul, those who belong to Christ act and speak on his principles; and, according to the words of Christ, those who are the children of the devil, who has been a murderer from the beginning of the world, follow his maxims. We listen, therefore, to the language of your teachers, and ask of them whether when a blow is threatened, we ought to suffer it rather than slay the offender, or whether we may kill him in order to escape the affront?

Lessius, Molina, Escobar, and other Jesuits say that it is lawful to kill the man who threatens a blow. Is that the language of Jesus Christ?

* * * * *

WILLIAM PENN

SOME FRUITS OF SOLITUDE

William Penn was born in London on October 14, 1644. In early life he joined the Quakers, and while still a young man underwent imprisonment for the expression of his religious views. For "A Sandy Foundation Shaken," an attack on the Athanasian Creed, he was in 1668 sent to the Tower, where he wrote, "No Cross, No Crown." Under James II., however, he was high in the favour of the court, and received a grant of the region afterwards known as Pennsylvania, whither he went with a number of his co-religionists in 1682. After his return to England, he suffered by the fall of James II., but under William III. was acquitted of treason, and spent his later years in retirement. He died at Ruscombe, in Berkshire, on July 30, 1718. "Some Fruits of Solitude, or the Maxims of William Penn," evidently the result of one of his sojourns in prison, was licensed in 1693. It was followed by "More Fruits of Solitude." The whole forms a collection of maxims which are shrewd, wise, and charitable, informed with a good courage for life, and a contempt for mean ends, if in their variety they do not always escape the touch of the commonplace. The book has become known as a favourite of R.L. Stevenson, who said of it that "there is not the man living--no, nor recently dead--that could put, with so lovely a spirit, so much honest, kind wisdom into words."

_TO THE READER_

Reader, this Enchiridion I present thee which is the fruit of solitude; a school few care to learn in, though none instructs us better. Some parts of it are the result of serious reflection; others the flashings of lucid intervals. Writ for private satisfaction, and now published for an help to human conduct.

The author blesseth God for his retirement, and kisses that Gentle Hand which led him into it; for though it should prove barren to the world, it can never do so to him.

He has now had some time he could call his own; a property he was never so much master of before; in which he has taken a view of himself and the world; and observed wherein he hath hit and mist the mark; what might have been done, what mended, and what avoided in his human conduct; together with the omissions and excesses of others, as well societies and governments, as private families and persons. And he verily thinks, were he to live over his life again, he could not only, with God's grace, serve Him, but his neighbour and himself, better than he hath done, and have seven years of his time to spare. And yet perhaps he hath not been the worst or the idlest man in the world, nor is he the oldest. And this is the rather said, that it might quicken thee, reader, to lose none of the time that is yet thine.

There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this world. Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst; and for which God will certainly most strictly reckon with us, when time shall be no more.

The author does not pretend to deliver thee an exact piece; his business not being ostentation, but charity. 'Tis miscellaneous in the matter of it, and by no means artificial in the composure. But it contains hints that may serve thee for texts to preach to thyself upon, and which comprehend much of the course of human life. Since whatever be thy inclination or aversion, practice or duty, thou wilt find something not unsuitably said for thy direction and advantage. Accept and improve what deserves thy notice; the rest excuse, and place to account of good will to thee and the whole creation of God.

_IGNORANCE_

It is admirable to consider how many millions of people come into and go out of the world ignorant of themselves and of the world they have lived in. If one went to see Windsor Castle or Hampton Court it would be strange not to observe and remember the situation, the building, the gardens, fountains, etc., that make up the beauty and pleasure of such a seat. And yet few people know themselves; no, not their own bodies, the houses of their minds, the most curious structure of the world, a living walking tabernacle: nor the world of which it was made, and out of which it is fed; which would be so much our benefit as well as our pleasure to know. We cannot doubt of this when we are told the Invisible things of God are brought to light by the things that are seen; and consequently we read our duty in them as often as we look upon them, to Him that is the Great and Wise Author of them, if we look as we should do.

The world is certainly a great and stately volume of natural things; and may not be improperly styled the hieroglyphics of a better. But, alas! how very few leaves of it do we really turn over! This ought to be the subject of the education of our youth, who at twenty, when they should be fit for business, know little or nothing of it.

_EDUCATION_

We are in pain to make them scholars, but not men; to talk rather than to know, which is true canting. The first thing obvious to children is what is sensible; and that we make no part of their rudiments.

We press their memory too soon, and puzzle, strain, and load them with words and rules; to know grammar and rhetoric, and a strange tongue or two, that it is ten to one may never be useful to them; leaving their natural genius to mechanical and physical, or natural knowledge uncultivated and neglected; which would be of exceeding use and pleasure to them through the whole course of their life.

To be sure, languages are not to be despised or neglected; but things are still to be preferred.

Children had rather be making of tools and instruments of play; shaping, drawing, framing, and building, etc., than getting some rules of propriety of speech by heart; and those also would follow with more judgment and less trouble and time.

It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things, and acted according to nature; whose rules are few, plain, and most reasonable.

Let us begin where she begins, go her pace, and close always where she ends, and we cannot miss of being good naturalists.

The creation would not be longer a riddle to us: the heavens, earth, and waters, with their respective, various, and numerous inhabitants: their productions, natures, seasons, sympathies, and antipathies; their use, benefit, and pleasure would be better understood by us: and an eternal wisdom, power, majesty, and goodness very conspicuous to us through those sensible and passing forms: the world wearing the mark of its Maker, whose stamp is everywhere visible, and the characters very legible to the children of wisdom.

And it would go a great way to caution and direct people in their use of the world that they were better studied and known in the creation of it.

For how could man find the confidence to abuse it, while they should find the Great Creator stare them in the face, in all and every part thereof?

Their ignorance makes them insensible and that insensibility hardy in misusing this noble creation, that has the stamp and voice of a Deity everywhere, and in everything to the observing.

It is pity, therefore, that books have not been composed for youth, by some curious and careful naturalists, and also mechanics, in the Latin tongue, to be used in schools, that they might learn things with words: things obvious and familiar to them, and which would make the tongue easier to be obtained by them.

Many able gardeners and husbandmen are yet ignorant of the reason of their calling; as most artificers are of the reason of their own rules that govern their excellent workmanship. But a naturalist and mechanick of this sort is master of the reason of both, and might be of the practice, too, if his industry kept pace with his speculation; which were very commendable, and without which he cannot be said to be a complete naturalist or mechanic.

Finally, if man be the index or epitome of the world, as philosophers tell us, we have only to read ourselves well to be learned in it. But because there is nothing we less regard than the characters of the Power that made us, which are so clearly written upon us and the world He has given us, and can best tell us what we are and should be, we are even strangers to our own genius; the glass in which we should see that true instructing and agreeable variety, which is to be observed in nature, to the admiration of that wisdom and adoration of that Power which made us all.

_FRUGALITY OR BOUNTY_

Frugality is good, if liberality be joined with it. The first is leaving off superfluous expenses; the last bestowing them to the benefit of others that need. The first without the last begins covetousness; the last without the first begins prodigality. Both together make an excellent temper. Happy the place wherever that is found.

Were it universal, we should be cured of two extremes, want and excess: and the one would supply the other, and so bring both nearer to a mean; the just degree of earthly happiness.

It is a reproach to religion and government to suffer so much poverty and excess.

Were the superfluities of a nation valued, and made a perpetual tax on benevolence, there were be more alms-houses than poor, schools than scholars; and enough to spare for government besides.

_INDUSTRY_

Love labour; for if thou dost not want it for food thou mayest for physick. It is wholesome for thy body, and good for thy mind. It prevents the fruits of idleness, which many times come of having nothing to do, and lead too many to do what is worse than nothing.

A garden, an elaboratory, a work-house, improvements and breeding, are pleasant and profitable diversions to the idle and ingenious; for here they miss ill company, and converse with nature and art; whose variety are equally grateful and instructing; and preserve a good constitution of body and mind.

_KNOWLEDGE_

Knowledge is the treature, but judgment the treasurer of a wise man.

He that has more knowledge than judgment is made for another man's use more than his own.

It cannot be a good constitution, where the appetite is great and the digestion is weak.

There are some men like dictionaries; to be looked into upon occasions, but have no connection, and are little entertaining.

Less knowledge than judgment will always have the advantage over the injudicious knowing man.

A wise man makes what he learns his own, t'other shows he's but a copy, or a collection at most.

_ON THE GOVERNMENT OF THOUGHTS_

Man being made a reasonable, and so a thinking creature, there is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and employment of his thoughts; since upon this depends both his usefulness to the publick and his own present and future benefit in all respects.

The consideration of this has often obliged me to lament the unhappiness of mankind, that through too great a mixture and confusion of thoughts have been hardly able to make a right or mature judgment of things.

Clear, therefore, thy head, and rally, and manage thy thoughts rightly, and thou wilt save time, and see and do thy business well; for thy judgment will be distinct, thy mind free, and the faculties strong and regular.

Always remember to bound thy thoughts to the present occasion.

Make not more business necessary than is so; and rather lessen than augment work for thyself.

Upon the whole matter employ thy thoughts as thy business requires, and let that have place according to merit and urgency, giving everything a review and due digestion, and thou wilt prevent many errors and vexations, as well as save much time to thyself in the course of thy life.

_FRIENDSHIP_

Friendship is an union of spirits, a marriage of hearts, and the bond thereof virtue.

There can be no friendship where there is no freedom. Friendship loves a free air, and will not be penned up in strait and narrow enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is 'twill easily forgive, and forget, too, upon small acknowledgements.

Friends are true twins in soul; they sympathise in everything, and have the same love and aversion.

One is not happy without the other, nor can either be miserable alone. As if they could change bodies, they take their turns in pain as well as in pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse conditions.

What one enjoys the other cannot want. Like the primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no property but in one another.

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.

Death cannot kill what never dies.

Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship.

If absence be not death, neither is theirs.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

For they must needs be present that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die yet their friendship and society are in the best sense ever present, because immortal.

_OF CHARITY_

Charity has various senses, but is excellent in all of them.

It imports, first, the commiseration of the poor and unhappy of mankind, and extends an helping hand to mend their condition.

Next, charity makes the best construction of things and persons; it makes the best of everything, forgives everybody, serves all, and hopes to the end.

It is an universal remedy against discord, an holy cement for mankind.

And, lastly, 'tis love to God and the brethren which raises the soul above all earthly considerations; and as it gives a taste of heaven upon earth, so 'tis heaven in the fulness of it hereafter to the truly charitable here.

This is the noblest sense charity has, after which all should press as being the more excellent way.

Would God this divine virtue were more implanted and diffused among mankind, the pretenders to Christianity especially; and then we should certainly mind piety more than controversy, and exercise love and compassion instead of censuring and persecuting one another in any manner whatsoever.

* * * * *

ERNEST RENAN

LIFE OF JESUS

Ernest Renan, the most widely read writer of religious history in his day, was forty years old when the "Vie de Jésus," his most popular book, appeared as the first volume of a "History of the Origins of Christianity." He was born at Tréguier in Brittany, France, Feb. 27, 1823, a Breton through his father and a Gascon through his mother. Educated for the Church, under priestly tutelage, he specialised in the study of Oriental languages, with the result that he found it impossible to accept the traditional view of Christian and Jewish history. After holding an appointment in the Department of Manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale, he became Professor of Hebrew in the Collège de France. At the age of 55 he was elected a member of the French Academy. His works include "A History of Semitic Languages," a "History of the Origins of Christianity," and a "History of the People of Israel," besides many volumes of essays and criticism, and several autobiographical books of great charm. Everybody read Renan, and disagreed with him. The orthodox rejected his opinions, and the unorthodox his sentiment. But his books marked an epoch in religious criticism. "The Life of Jesus" was the outcome of a visit to Palestine in pursuance of research studies of Phoenician civilisation. A feature is the importance given to scenic surroundings which he could so happily describe. Renan died on October 2, 1892, widely admired, honoured, and also condemned, and was buried in the Pantheon.

_THE HOUR AND THE MAN_

The principal event in the history of the world is the revolution by which the noblest portions of humanity have forsaken the ancient religions of Paganism for a religion founded on the Divine Unity, the Trinity, and the Incarnation of the Son of God. Nearly a thousand years were required to achieve this conversion. The new religion itself took at least three hundred years in its formation. But the origin of the revolution is a historical event which happened in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. At that time there lived a man of supreme personality, who, by his bold originality, and by the love which he was able to inspire, became the object, and settled the direction, of the future faith of mankind.

The great empires which succeeded each other in Western Asia annihilated all the hopes of the Jewish race for a terrestial kingdom, and cast it back on religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre passion. The establishment of the Roman empire exalted men's imaginations, and the great era of peace on which the world was entering gave birth to illimitable hopes. This confused medley of dreams found at length an interpretation in the peerless man to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of the Son of God, and that with justice, since he gave religion an impetus greater than that which any other man has been capable of giving--an impetus with which, in all probability, no further advance will be comparable.

_YOUTH AND EDUCATION_

Jesus was born at Nazareth, a small town in Galilee, which before his time was not known to fame. The precise date of his birth is unknown. It took place in the reign of Augustus, probably some years before the year one of the era which all civilised peoples date from the day of his birth. Jesus came from the ranks of the common folk. His father, Joseph, and his mother, Mary, were people in humble circumstances, artisans living by their handiwork in the state, so usual in the East, which is neither ease nor poverty. The family was somewhat large. Jesus had brothers and sisters who seem to have been younger than he. They all remained obscure. The four men who were called his brothers, and among whom one at least, James, became of great importance in the early years of the development of Christianity, were his cousins-german. The sisters of Jesus were married at Nazareth, and there he spent the early years of his youth.

The town must have presented the poverty-stricken aspect still characteristic of villages in the East. We see to-day the streets where Jesus played as a child in the stony paths or little lanes which separate the dwellings from each other. No doubt the house of Joseph much resembled these poor domiciles, lighted only by the doorway, serving at once as workshop, kitchen, and bedroom, and having for furniture a mat, some cushions on the ground, one or two clay pots, and a painted chest. But the surroundings are charming, and no place in the world could be so well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness. If we ascend to the plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, above the highest houses, the landscape is magnificent. An enchanted circle, cradle of the Kingdom of God, was for years the horizon of Jesus, and indeed during his whole life he went but little beyond these, the familiar bounds of his childhood.

No doubt he learnt to read and write according to the Eastern method; but it is doubtful if he understood the Hebrew writings in their original tongue. His biographers make him cite translations in the Aramean language. Nevertheless, it would be a great error to imagine that Jesus was what we should call an ignorant man. Refinement of manners and acuteness of intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education. In all probability Jesus did not know Greek. His mother tongue was the Syrian dialect, mingled with Hebrew. No element of secular teaching reached him. He was ignorant of all beyond Judaism; his mind kept that free innocence which an extended and varied culture always weakens. Happily, he was also ignorant of the grotesque scholasticism which was taught at Jerusalem, and which was soon to constitute the Talmud. The reading of the books of the Old Testament made a deep impression on him, especially the book of Daniel, and the religious poetry of the Psalms was in marvellous accordance with his lyrical soul, and all his life was his sustenance and support. That he had no knowledge of the general state of the world is evident from every feature of his most authentic discourses, and he never conceived of aristocratic society, save as a young villager who sees the world through the prism of his simplicity. Although born at a time when the principles of positive science had already been proclaimed, he lived in entirely supernatural ideas. To him the marvellous was not the exceptional but the normal statf of things, since to him the whole course of things was the result of the free-will of the Deity. This led to a profound conception of the close relations of man with God.

_IDYLLIC SURROUNDINGS_

A mighty dream haunted the Jewish people for centuries, constantly renewing its youth. Judaea believed that she possessed divine promises of a boundless future. In combination with the belief in the Messiah and the doctrine of an approaching renewal of all things, the dogma of the resurrection had emerged and produced a great fermentation from one end of the Jewish world to the other. Jesus, as soon as he had any thought of his own, entered into the burning atmosphere created in Palestine by these ideas, and his soul was soon filled with them. A beautiful natural environment imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all the dreams of Galilee. During the months of March and April that green, shady, smiling land is a carpet of flowers of an incomparable variety of colours. The animals are small and extremely gentle--delicate and playful turtle-doves, blackbirds so light that they rest on a blade of grass without bending it, tufted larks which almost venture under the feet of the traveller, little river-tortoises with mild bright eyes, storks of gravely modest mien, which, casting aside all timidity, allow men to come quite near them, and indeed seem to invite his approach. In no country in the world do the mountains extend with more harmonious outlines, or inspire higher thought. Jesus seems to have had an especial love for them. The most important events of his divine career took place upon the mountains. This beautiful country in his time was filled with prosperity and gaiety. There Jesus lived and grew up. True, every year he knew the sweet solemnity of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and it is believed that early in life the wilderness had some influence on his development, but it was when he returned into his beloved Galilee that he once more found his Heavenly Father in the midst of green hills and clear fountains, and women and children who with joyous soul awaited the salvation of Israel.

_A CHARACTER TO LOVE_

Jesus followed the trade of his father, which was that of a carpenter. In this there was nothing irksome or humiliating. The Jewish custom required that a man devoted to intellectual work should learn a handicraft. Jesus never married. His whole capacity for love was concentrated upon that which he felt was his heavenly vocation. He was no doubt more beloved than loving. Thus, as often happens in very lofty natures, tenderness of heart was in him transformed into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, a universal charm.

Through what stages did the ideas of Jesus progress during this obscure early period of his life? A high conception of the Divinity, the creation of his own great mind, was the guiding principle to which his power was due. God did not speak to him as to one outside of himself; God was in him; he felt himself with God, and from his own heart drew all he said of his Father. The highest consciousness of God which ever existed in the heart of man was that of Jesus; but he never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. From the first he looked upon his relationship with God as that of a son with his father. Herein was his great originality; in this he had nothing in common with his race. Neither Jew nor Musselman has understood this sweet theology of love. The God of Jesus is our Father. He is the God of humanity. The Jesus who founded the true Kingdom of God, the kingdom of the humble and meek, was the Jesus of early life--of those chaste and simple days when the voice of his Father re-echoed within him in clearer tones. It was then, for some months, perhaps a year, that God truly dwelt on earth.

_A STIMULATING ACQUAINTANCE_

An extraordinary man, whose position remains to some extent enigmatical, appeared about this time and unquestionably had some intercourse with Jesus. About the year 28 of our era there spread through the whole of Palestine the reputation of a certain John, a young ascetic, full of fervour and passion. The fundamental practice which characterised his sect was baptism; but baptism with John was only a sign to impress the minds of the people and to prepare them for some great movement. There can be no doubt he was possessed in the highest degree with hope for the coming of the Messiah. He was of the same age as Jesus, and the two young enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hatreds, were able to lend each other mutual support, Jesus recognizing John as his superior, and timidly developing his own individual genius. John was soon cut short in his prophetic career, and cast into prison, from which, however, he still exercised a wide influence.

Jesus returned from the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea and the Jordan to Galilee, his true home, ripened by intercourse with a great man of very different nature, and having acquired full consciousness of his own originality. From that time he preached with greater power and made the multitude feel his authority. The persuasion that he was to make God reign upon earth took absolute possession of his spirit. He looked upon himself as the universal reformer. He aimed at founding the Kingdom of God, or, in other words, the Kingdom of the Soul. Jesus was, in some respects, an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government. He never showed any desire to put himself in the place of the rich and mighty. The idea of being all-powerful by suffering and resignation, and of triumphing over force by purity of heart was his peculiar idea. The founders of the Kingdom of God are the simple--not the rich, not the learned, not the priests; but women, common folk, the humble, and the young. He now boldly announced "the good tidings of the Kingdom of God," and himself as that "Son of Man," whom Daniel in his vision had beheld as the divine herald of the last and supreme revelation.

_EARLY SUCCESSES_

The success of the new prophet's teaching was decisive. A group of men and women, all characterised by the same spirit of childish frankness and simple innocence, adhered to him, and said, "Thou art the Messiah." The centre of his operations was the little town of Capernaum, on the shore of the Lake of Genesareth. Jesus was much attached to the town and made it a second home. He had attempted to begin the work at Nazareth, but without success. The fact that his family, which was of humble rank, was known in the district lessened his authority too much; and it is moreover remarkable that his family were strongly opposed to him, and flatly declined to believe in his mission. In Capernaum he was much more favourably received, and it became "his own city." These good Galileans had never heard preaching so well adapted to their cheerful imaginations. They admired him, they encouraged him, they found that he spoke well, and that his reasons were convincing. The almost poetical harmony of his discourses won their affections. The authority of the young master increased day by day, and naturally the more that people believed in him the more he believed in himself. Four or five large villages, lying at half an hour's journey from one another, formed the little world of Jesus at this time. Sometimes, however, he wandered beyond his favourite region, once in the direction of Tyre and Sidon, a country which must have been marvellously prosperous at that time. But he returned always to his well-beloved shore of Genesareth. The motherland of his thoughts was there; there he found faith and love.

In this earthly paradise lived a population in perfect harmony with the land itself, active, honest, joyous, and tender of heart, and here Jesus became the centre of a little circle which adored him. In this friendly group he evidently had his favourites. Peter, for whom his affection was very deep, James, son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, formed a sort of privy council. Jesus owed his conquests to the infinite charm of his personality and speech. Everyone thought that he lived in a sphere higher than that of humanity. The aristocracy of the group was represented by a customs-officer, and by the wife of one of Herod's stewards. The rest were fishermen and common folk. Jesus lived with his disciples almost always in the open air, the faithful band leading a joyous wandering life, and gathering the inspirations of the Master in their first bloom. His preaching was soft and gentle, inspired with a feeling for nature and the perfume of the fields. It was above all in parable that the Master excelled. There was nothing in Judaism to give him a model for this delightful feature. He created it. In freeing man from what he called "the cares of this world" Jesus might go to excess and injure the essential conditions of human society; but he founded that spiritual exaltation which for centuries has filled souls with joy in the midst of this vale of tears. In our busy civilisation the memory of the free life of Galilee has been like perfume from another world, like the "dew of Hermon," which has kept drought and grossness from entirely invading the fields of God.

_A GOSPEL FOR THE POOR_

Jesus very soon understood that the official world of his time would by no means lend its support to his kingdom. He took his resolution with extreme daring. Leaving the world, with its hard heart and narrow prejudices, on one side, he turned towards the simple. A vast rearrangement of classes was to take place. The Kingdom of God was made for children, and those like them; for the world's outcasts, victims of that social arrogance which repulses the good but humble man; for heretics and schismatics, publicans, Samaritans, and the pagans of Tyre and Sidon. That the reign of the poor is at hand was the doctrine of Jesus. This exaggerated taste for poverty could not last very long, but although it quickly passed, poverty remained an ideal from which true descendants of Jesus were never afterwards separated.

Like all great men, Jesus was fond of common folk, and felt at his ease with them. He particularly esteemed all those whom orthodox Judaism disdained. Love of the people, pity for their powerlessness, the feeling of the democratic leader who has the spirit of the multitude quick within him, reveal themselves at every instant in his acts and sayings. He had no external affection, and made no display of austerity. He did not shun pleasure; but went willingly to marriage feasts. His gentle gaiety found constant expression in amiable pleasantries. Thus he journeyed through Galilee in the midst of continual festivities. When he entered a house, it was considered a joy and a blessing. Children and women adored him. The children, indeed, were like a young guard about him, for the inauguration of his innocent kingship, and gave him little ovations. It was childhood, in fact, in its divine spontaneity, in its simple bewilderment of joy, that took possession of the earth.

How long did this intoxication last? We cannot tell. But whether it filled years or months, the dream was so beautiful that humanity has lived upon it ever since. Happy he to whom it has been granted to behold with his own eyes this divine blossoming, and to share, if but for a day, the incomparable illusion! But yet more happy, Jesus would tell us, shall he be who, by the uprightness of his will, and the poetry of his soul, shall be able to create anew in his own heart the true Kingdom of God!

_THE PRIEST IN THE PATH_

Nearly every year Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. It was, it appears, in the year 31 that the most important of these visits took place. Jesus felt that to play a leading part he must leave Galilee and attack Judaism in its stronghold, Jerusalem. There the little Galilean community was far from feeling at home. Jerusalem was a city of pedantry, acrimony, disputation, hatreds, and pettiness of mind. Its fanaticism was extreme. All the religious discussions of the Jewish schools, all the canonical instruction, even the legal business and civil actions--in a word, all form of national activity, were concentrated in the temple. The Romans refrained from entering the sactuary; the surveillance of the Temple was in the hands of the Jews. It was in the Temple that Jesus spent his days during his sojourn at Jerusalem, and all that he saw aroused his aversion. These old Jewish institutions displeased him, and the necessity of conforming to them gave him pain. He who gave forgiveness to all men, provided they loved him, could find nothing congenial in vain disputations and obsolete sacrifices, and apparently he brought from Jerusalem one idea thenceforth rooted in his mind--that there was no understanding possible between him and the ancient Jewish religion. He no longer took his stand as a Jewish reformer, but as a destroyer of Judaism. In other words, Jesus is no longer a Jew. He is, in the highest degree, a revolutionary; he calls all men to a worship founded solely on the ground of their being children of God. Love of God, charity, and mutual forgiveness--in these consisted his whole law. Nothing could be less sacerdotal. It was on his return from Jerusalem, as he passed near Shechem, and when talking with a Samaritan woman, that Jesus gave utterance to the saying upon which will rest the edifice of eternal religion--Believe me, the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father ... but the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. On the day when he said these words he was truly Son of God.

Jesus returned to Galilee full of revolutionary ardour. His innocent aphorisms and beautiful moral precepts now culminated in a decided policy. The law is to be abolished, and it is he that will abolish it. The Messiah is come, and it is he that is the Messiah. The Kingdom of God is about to be revealed, and it is he that will reveal it. He knew well that he would be the victim of his own audacity, but it was by cries and the rending of hearts that the kingdom had to be established.

The proposition "Jesus is the Messiah" was followed by the proposition "Jesus is the Son of David," and, by an entirely spontaneous conspiracy, fictitious genealogies arose in the imaginations of his partisans, while he was still alive, to prove his royal descent. We cannot tell whether he knew anything of these legends. He never designated himself Son of David. That he ever dreamed of making himself pass for an incarnation of God is a matter about which no doubt can exist. Such an idea was entirely foreign to the Jewish mind. He believed himself to be more than an ordinary man, but separated by an infinite distance from God. He was the Son of God, but all men are, or may become so in divers degrees. Jesus apparently remained a stranger to the theological subtleties which were soon to fill the world with sterile disputations.

_TIME-WORM PROOFS_

Two means of proof--miracles and the accomplishment of prophecies--could alone establish a supernatural mission in the opinion of the contemporaries of Jesus. He himself, but more especially his disciples, employed these two methods of demonstration in perfect good faith. For a long time Jesus had recognised himself in the sacred oracles of the prophets. As to miracles, they were considered at this epoch the indispensable mark of the divine, and the sign of the prophetic vocation. Jesus, therefore, was compelled either to renounce his mission or become a thaumaturgist. It must be remembered that not only did he believe in miracles, but he had not the least idea of an order of nature under the reign of law. On that point, his knowledge was in no way superior to that of his contemporaries. Indeed, one of his most deeply-rooted opinions was that by faith and prayer man had entire power over nature. Almost all the miracles Jesus believed he performed seem to have been miracles of healing. The kind of healing which he most often practised was exorcism, or the expulsion of demons. There can be no doubt that he had in his lifetime the reputation of possessing the greatest secrets of the art. There were many lunatics in Judaea wandering at large, and no doubt Jesus had great influence over these unhappy beings. Circumstances seem to indicate that he became a thaumaturgist late in life and against his own inclinations. He accepted miracles exacted by public opinion rather than performed them.

_THE NEW KINGDOM OF GOD_

During the eighteen months between the return from the Passover of the year 31 and his journey to the feast of tabernacles in the year 32, all that was within Jesus developed with an ever-increasing degree of power and audacity. The fundamental idea of Jesus from his earliest days was the establishment of the Kingdom of God. This kingdom he appears to have understood in divers senses. At times it is the literal consummation of apocalyptic visions relating to the Messiah. At other times it is the spiritual kingdom, and the deliverance at hand is the deliverance of the soul. The revolution desired by Jesus in this last sense is the one which has really taken place. That the coming of the end of the world and the appearance of the Messiah in judgment was taken literally by the disciples, and at certain moments by the Master himself, appears absolutely clear. These formal declarations absorbed the minds of the Christian family for nearly seventy years. The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his disciples believed it would end. But it has been renewed and in one sense renewed as Jesus desired. By the side of the false, cold, impossible idea of an ostentatious advent, he conceived the real City of God, the raising up of the weak, the love of the people, esteem for the poor, and the restoration of all that is humble and true and simple. This restoration he has depicted, as an incomparable artist, in touches which will last for eternity. His Kingdom of God was doubtless the apocalypse which was soon to be unfolded in the heavens. But besides this, and probably above all, was the soul's kingdom, founded on freedom, and on the feeling of sonship which the good man knows in his rest on the bosom of his Father. This is what was destined to live. This is what has lived.

_THE CLASH OF OLD AND NEW_

Throughout the first epoch of his career, it seems as though Jesus met with no serious opposition; but when he entered upon a path brilliant with public successes the first mutterings of the storm began to make themselves heard. He recognised only the religion of the heart, while the religion of the Pharisees almost exclusively consisted of observances. As his mission proceeded, his conflicts with official hypocrisy became incessant. His goal was in the future, not in the past. He was more than the reformer of an obsolete religion; he was the creator of the eternal religion of humanity. A hatred which death alone could satisfy was the consequence of these controversies. The war was to the death. Judaea drew him as by a charm; he wished to attempt one last effort to win the rebellious city, and seemed anxious to fulfil the proverb that a prophet ought not to die outside Jerusalem.

At the feast of tabernacles in the year 32, his relatives, always malevolent and sceptical, pressed him to go there. He set out on the journey unknown to every one and almost alone, and never again saw his beloved northern land.

In Jerusalem, Jesus was a stranger. There he felt a wall of resistance he could not penetrate. At every step he met with obstinate scepticism. The arrogance of the priests made the courts of the Temple disagreeable to him, and his criticisms naturally exasperated the sacerdotal caste. Imagine a reformer going, in our own time, to preach the overthrow of Islamism round the Mosque of Omar! His teaching in this new world was greatly modified; he had to become controversialist, jurist, theologian, though when alone with his disciples his gentle and irresistible genius inspired him with accents full of tenderness.

_APPROACHING THE CRISIS_

Jesus spent the autumn and part of the winter in Jerusalem. In the new year he undertook a journey to the banks of the Jordan, the district he had visited when he followed the school of John. After this pilgrimage he returned to Bethany, a place he especially loved, and where he knew a family whose friendship had a great charm for him. In impure and depressing Jerusalem, Jesus was no longer himself. His mission weighed him down, and he let himself be carried away by the torrent. The contrast between his ever-increasing exaltation and the indifference of the Jews became wider day by day. At the same time the public authorities began to be bitter against him. In February, or early in March, the council of the chief priests asked clearly the question "Can Jesus and Judaism exist together?" The High Priest was Joseph Kaiapha, but beside and behind him we always see another man, Hanan, his father-in-law. He had been High Priest, and in reality kept all the authority of the office. During fifty years the pontificate remained in his family almost without interruption. The family spirit was haughty, bold, and cruel. It was Hanan, his family, and the party he represented, who really put Jesus to death. After the death of Jesus was decided, he escaped for a short time by withdrawing to an obscure town, Ephron, and letting the storm pass over; but when the feast of the Passover drew nigh, he set out to see for the last time the unbelieving city. His followers all believed that the Kingdom of God was about to be realised there. As to Jesus, he grew confirmed in the conviction that he was about to die, but that his death would save the world.

During these last days a deep sadness appears to have filled the soul of Jesus, which was generally so joyous and serene. The enormous weight of the mission he had accepted bore cruelly upon him. All these inward troubles were evidently a sealed chapter to his disciples. His divine nature, however, soon gained the supremacy, and henceforth we behold him entirely himself and with his character unclouded. Each moment of this period is solemn, and counts more than whole ages in the history of humanity. A lofty feeling of love, of concord, of charity, and of mutual deference, animated the memories cherished of these last hours.

_VICTORY THROUGH DEFEAT_

It was in the garden of Gethsemane that the guards of the Temple, supported by a detachment of Roman soldiers, executed the warrant of arrest. The course which the priests had determined to take against Jesus was in perfect conformity with the established law. The warrant of arrest probably came from Hanan, and before this powerful man Jesus was first brought for examination as to his doctrine. Jesus, with just pride, declined to enter into long explanations--he asked the ex-high priest to question those who had listened to him. Hanan then sent him to his son-in-law, Kaiapha, at whose house the Sanhedrim was assembled. It is probable that here, too, he kept silence. The sentence was already decided, and they only sought for pretexts. With one voice the assembly declared him guilty of a capital crime. The point now was to get Pilate to ratify the sentence. On being informed of the accusation, Pilate showed his annoyance at being mixed up in the matter, and called upon to play a cruel part for the sake of a law he detested. Perhaps the dignified and calm attitude of the accused made an impression upon him. To excite the suspicion of the Roman authorities, the charges now made were those of sedition and treason against the government. Nothing could be more unjust, for Jesus had always recognised the Roman government as the established power. Asked by Pilate if he really were the king of the Jews, Jesus, according to the fourth gospel, avowed his kingship, but uttered at the same time the profound saying, "My kingdom is not of this world." Of this lofty idealism Pilate understood nothing. No doubt Jesus impressed him as being a harmless dreamer. When, however, the people began to denounce Pilate's lack of zeal, in protecting an enemy of Caesar, he surrendered, throwing on the Jews the responsibility for what was about to take place. It was not Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic law. Intolerance is a Jewish characteristic. The Pentateuch has been the first code of religious terrorism in the world. It was, however, the chimerical "King of the Jews," not the heteradox dogmatist, who was punished, and the execution took the Roman form of crucifixion, carried out by Roman soldiers.

The horrors of that ignominious death were suffered by Jesus in all their atrocity. For a moment, according to certain narratives, his heart failed him; a cloud hid from him the face of his Father; he endured an agony of despair more acute a thousand times than all his torments. But his divine instinct again sustained him. In measure as the life of the body flickered out, his soul grew serene, and by degrees returned to its heavenly source. He regained the idea of his mission, in his death he saw the salvation of the world; the hideous spectacle spread at his feet melted from his sight, and profoundly united to his Father, he began upon the gibbet the divine life which he was to live in the heart of humanity through infinite years.

Rest now in thy glory, noble pioneer! Thy work is achieved, thy divinity established. At the price of a few hours of suffering, which have not even touched thy mighty soul, thou hast purchased the fullest immortality. For thousands of years the world will depend upon thee! A thousand times more alive, a thousand times more loved since thy death than during the days of thy pilgrimage here below, thou shalt become so truly the cornerstone of humanity that to tear thy name from this world were to shake it to its foundations.

Whatever the unexpected phenomena of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will constantly renew its youth; the legend of his life will bring ceaseless tears; his sufferings will soften the best hearts; all the ages will proclaim that amongst the sons of men none has been born who is greater than Jesus.

* * * * *

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

HEAVEN AND HELL

Emanuel Swedenborg, author of a strange system of mystical theology, was of Swedish nationality and was born at Stockholm on January 29, 1688. He was educated at Upsala, and after travelling for several years in Western Europe was appointed to a post in the Swedish College of Mines. Thenceforth, until he was 55 years of age, Swedenborg pursued, with equal industry and ingenuity, the career of a man of science, doing valuable work in mathematics, astronomy, navigation, engineering, chemistry, and especially in mining and metallurgy. These inquiries were followed by studies in philosophy and anatomy and physiology. But about the year 1744 certain visions and other mystical experiences began to take hold of his mind, and three years later Swedenborg had come to regard himself as the medium of a new revelation of divine truth. His message, or theory, or vision, was first promulgated in the eight quarto volumes of the "Heavenly Arcana," published in London from 1749 to 1756, and this was followed by "Heaven and Hell," 1758, the work now before us, the full title of which is "Heaven and Its Wonders, the World of Spirits, and Hell: described by one who had heard and seen what he relates," and several other apocalyptic books, all of which were written in Latin. The main features of Swedenborg's theology were a strong emphasis on the divinity of Christ, the proclamation of the immediate advent of the "New Jerusalem," foretold by the seer of Patmos, and the conception of correspondences between the natural, spiritual, and mental worlds. His followers, known as Swedenborgians, or more properly as "The New Church signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation," are widely spread but not very numerous, in England and in the United States. Swedenborg died in London on March 29, 1772.

_I.--OF HEAVEN_

The first thing necessary to be known is, who is the God of heaven; for everything else depends on this. In the universal heaven, no other is acknowledged for its God, but the Lord Alone; they say there, as He Himself taught, that He is One with the Father; that the Father is in Him, and He in the Father; that whosoever seeth Him, seeth the Father; and that everything holy proceeds from Him. I have often conversed with the angels on this subject, and they constantly declared that they are unable to divide the Divine Being into three, because they know and perceive that the Divine Being is one, and that He is One in the Lord.

The angels, taken collectively, are called heaven, because they compose it: but still it is the Divine Sphere proceeding from the Lord, which enters the angels by influx, and is by them received, which essentially constitutes it, both in general and in particular. The Divine Sphere proceeding from the Lord is the good of love and the truth of faith: in proportion, therefore, as the angels receive good and truth from the Lord, so far they are angels, and so far they are heaven.

As in heaven there are infinite varieties, and no society is exactly like another, nor indeed any angel, therefore heaven is divided in a general, in a specific, and in a particular manner. It is divided, in general, into two kingdoms, specifically, into three heavens, and in particular, into innumerable societies.

There are angels who receive the Divine Sphere proceeding from the Lord more and less interiorly. They who receive it more interiorly are called celestial angels; but they who receive it less interiorly are called spiritual angels. Hence, heaven is divided into two kingdoms, one of which is called the Celestial Kingdom, and the other, the Spiritual Kingdom.

The angels of each heaven do not dwell all together in one place, but are divided into larger and smaller societies, according to the difference of the good of love and faith in which they are grounded; those who are grounded in similar good forming one society. There is an infinite variety of kinds of good in the heavens; and every angel is such in quality as is the good belonging to him.

That heaven, viewed collectively, is in form as one man, is a mystery which is not yet known to the world: but it is well known in the heavens; for the knowledge of this mystery, with the particular and most particular circumstances relating to it, is the chief article of the intelligence of the angels; since many other things depend upon it, which, without a knowledge of this as their common centre, could not possibly enter distinctly and clearly into their ideas. As they know that all the heavens together with their societies are in form as one man, they also call heaven THE GRAND AND DIVINE MAN; divine, because the Divine Sphere of the Lord constitutes heaven.

From my experience, which I have enjoyed for many years, I can affirm that angels are in every respect men; that they have faces, eyes, ears, a body, arms, hands, and that they see, hear, and converse with each other; in short they are deficient in nothing that belongs to a man except that they are not super-invested with a material body.

Their habitations are exactly like our houses on earth, but more beautiful. They contain chambers, with-drawing-rooms, and bed-chambers, in great numbers, and are encompassed with gardens and flower-beds. Where the angels live together in societies the habitations are contiguous, and arranged in the form of a city, with streets, squares, and churches. It has also been granted to me to walk through them, and to look about on all sides, and occasionally to enter the houses. This occurred to me when wide awake, my interior sight being open at the time.

That it is by derelation from the Lord's Divine Humanity that heaven, both in whole and in parts, is in form as a man, follows as a conclusion from all that has been advanced.

There is a correspondence between all things belonging to heaven and all things belonging to man. It is unknown at this day what correspondence is. This ignorance is owing to various causes; the chief of which is, that man has removed himself from heaven, through cherishing the love of self and of the world. For he that supremely loves himself and the world cares only for worldly things, because they soothe the external senses and are agreeable to his natural disposition; but has no concern about spiritual things, because these only soothe the internal senses and are agreeable to the internal or rational mind. These, therefore, they cast aside, saying that they are too high for man's comprehension. Not so did the ancients. With them the science of correspondences was the chief of all sciences: by means of its discoveries, also, they imbibed intelligence and wisdom, and such of them as belonged to the church had by it communication with heaven; for the science of correspondences is the science of angels.

It shall first be stated what correspondence is. The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world; and not only the natural world collectively, but also in its individual parts: wherefore every object in the natural world, existing from something in the spiritual world, is called its correspondent. The natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world, just as the effect exists from the efficient cause.

Since man is both a heaven and a world in miniature, he has belonging to him both a spiritual world and a natural world. The interiors, which belong to his mind, and have relation to his understanding and will, constitute his spiritual world; but his exteriors, which belong to his body, and have reference to its senses and actions, constitute his natural world.

The nature of correspondence may be seen from the face of man. In a countenance which has not been taught to dissemble, all the affections of the mind display themselves vividly, in a natural form, as in their type; whence the face is called the index of the mind. Thus man's spiritual world shows itself in its natural world. All things, therefore, which take effect in the body, whether in the countenance, the speech, or the gestures, are called correspondences.

The angels rejoice that it has pleased the Lord to reveal many particulars to mankind. They desire me to state from their lips, that there does not exist, in the universal heaven, a single angel who was created such from the first, nor any devil in hell who was created an angel of light and afterwards cast down thither; but that all the inhabitants, both of heaven and of hell, are derived from the human race; the inhabitants of heaven being those who had lived in heavenly love and faith, and those of hell who had lived in infernal love and faith.

_II--OF THE WORLD OF SPIRITS_

The world of spirits is not heaven nor yet hell, but is a place or state intermediate between the two. Thither man goes after death; and having completed the period of his stay there, according to his life in the world he is either elevated into heaven or cast into hell.

The world of spirits contains a great number of inhabitants, because it is the region in which all first assemble, and where all are examined and are prepared for their final abode. Their stay there is not limited to any fixed period: some do but just enter it, and are presently either taken up to heaven or cast down to hell: some remain there only a few weeks; and some for several years, but never more than thirty. The varieties in the length of their stay depend upon the correspondence, or noncorrespondence between their interiors and their exteriors.

As men enter the world of spirits, they are distinguished by the Lord into classes. The wicked are immediately connected by invisible bonds with the society of hell, and the good, in a similar way, with the society of heaven, but notwithstanding these bonds, they meet and converse together. I saw a father conversing with his six sons, all of whom he recognised; but as they were different in disposition, resulting from their course of life in the world, after a short time they were parted.

The spirit of a man, when first he enters the world of spirits, is similar in countenance and in the tone of his voice to what he was in the world. The reason is, because he is then in the state of his exteriors and his interiors are not yet laid open. This is the first state of man after death. But afterwards his countenance is changed; being rendered similar to his governing affection or love, which is that in which the interiors belonging to his mind had been grounded while in the world, and which had reigned in his spirit while this was in the body. For the face of a man's spirit differs exceedingly from that of his body; the face of his body being derived from his parents, but that of his spirit from his affection, of which it is the image.

That his own life remains with everyone after death is known to every Christian from the Word. Everyone, also, who thinks under the influence of good and of real truth, has no other idea than that he who has lived well will go to heaven, and he who has lived ill will go to hell.

But by deeds and works are not merely meant deeds and works as they appear in their external form, but as they appear internally. Everyone knows, that every deed or work proceeds from the will and thought of the doer; for otherwise they would be mere motions, such as are performed by automatons and images. The deed or work, then, viewed in itself, is nothing but an effect, which derives its soul and life from the will and thought from which it is performed; and so completely is this the case that the deed or work is the will and thought in their effect, and is, consequently, the will and thought in their external form. It hence follows, that such as are, in quality, the will and thought which produce the deed or work, such, also, is the deed or work itself; and that if the thought and will are good the deeds or works are good; and if the thought and will are evil the deeds and works are evil, notwithstanding in their external form they appear like the former.

To sum up the truths concerning man's state after death, I will say, first: that man, after death, is his own love, or his own will; secondly: that, in quality, man remains to eternity, such as he is with respect to his will or governing love; thirdly: that the man whose love is celestial and spiritual goes to heaven, but that the man whose love is corporeal and worldly, destitute of such as is celestial and spiritual, goes to hell; fourthly: that faith does not remain with man, if not grounded in heavenly love; fifthly: that what remains with man is love in act, consequently his life.

_III.--OF HELL_

When treating above respecting heaven, it has everywhere been shown, that the Lord is the God of heaven, and thus that the whole government of the heavens is that of the Lord. Now as the relation which heaven bears to hell, and that which hell bears to heaven, is such as exists between two opposites, which mutually act against each other, and the result of whose action and reaction is a state of equilibrium, in which all things may subsist, therefore, in order that all and everything should be maintained in equilibrium, it is necessary that he who governs the one should also govern the other. For unless the same ruler were to restrain the assaults made by the hells, and to keep down the insanities which rage in them, the equilibrium would be destroyed, and with it the whole universe.

It is this spiritual equilibrium that causes man to enjoy freedom in thinking and willing. For whatever a man thinks and wills has reference either to evil and the falsity proceeding from it, or to good and the truth which comes from that source: consequently, when he is placed in that equilibrium he enjoys the liberty of either, admitting and receiving evil and its falsity from hell, or good in its truth from heaven. Every man is maintained in this equilibrium by the Lord, because he governs both--heaven as well as hell.

Hell, like heaven, is divided into societies; and every society in heaven has a society opposite to it in hell; which is provided for the preservation of the equilibrium.

It is by influence from hell that man does evil, and by influence from the Lord that he does good. But as man believes that whatever he does, he does from himself, the consequence is that the evil which he does adheres to him as his own. It hence follows that the cause of his own evil lies with man, and not at all with the Lord. Evil as existing with man is hell, as existing with him: for whether you say evil or hell, amounts to the same thing. Now since the cause of his own evil lies with man himself, it follows that it is he who casts himself into hell, and not the Lord; and so far is the Lord from leading man into hell, that he delivers from hell, so far as the man does not will and loves to abide in his own evil. But the whole of man's will and love remains with him after death: whoever wills and loves evil in the world, wills and loves the same evil in the other life; and he then no longer suffers himself to be withdrawn from it. It hence results, that the man who is immersed in evil is connected by invisible bonds with hell: he is also actually there as to his spirit; and, after death, he desires nothing more earnestly than to be where his evil is.

From an inspection of the monstrous forms belonging to the spirits in the hells, it was made evident to me that they all, in general, are forms of self-love and the love of the world, and that the evils, of which in particular they are the forms, derive their origin from those two loves. It has also been told me from heaven, and proved to me by much experimental evidence, that those two loves--self-love and the love of the world--reign in the hells and also constitute them; whereas love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour reign in the heavens and also constitute them: and that the two former loves, which are the loves of hell, and the two latter, which are the loves of heaven, are diametrically opposite to each other.

As by the fire of hell is to be understood all the lust of doing evil flowing from self-love, by the same is also meant torment, such as exists in the hells. For the lust flowing from that love is, in those who are inflamed by it, the lust of doing injury to all who do not honour, respect, and pay court to them; and in proportion to the anger which they thence conceive against such individuals, and to the hatred and revenge inspired by such anger, is their lust of committing outrages against them. Now when such a lust rages in everyone in a society, and they have no external bond to keep them under restraint, such as the fear of the law, and of the loss of character, of honour, of gain, and of the like, everyone under the influence of his own evil attracts another and, so far as he is strong enough, subjugates him, subjects the rest to his own authority, and exercises ferocious outrages with delight upon all who do not submit to him. All the hells are societies of this description: on which account, every spirit, and every society, cherishes hatred in his heart against every other, and, under the influence of such hatred, breaks out into savage outrages against him, as far as he is able to inflict them. These outrages, and the torments so occasioned, are also meant by hell fire; for they are the effects of the lusts which there prevail.

In order that man may be in a state of liberty, as necessary to his being reformed, he is connected, as to his spirit, with heaven and with hell: for spirits from hell, and angels from heaven, are attendant on every man. By the spirits from hell, man is held in his evil; but by the Angels from heaven, he is held in good by the Lord.

Thus he is preserved in spiritual equilibrium, that is, in freedom or liberty.

The particulars which have been delivered in this work respecting heaven, the world of spirits, and hell, will appear obscure to those who take no pleasure in acquiring a knowledge of spiritual truths; but they will appear clear to those who take pleasure in that acquirement; and especially those who cherish an affection of truth for its own sake,--that is, who love truth because it is truth. For everything that is loved enters with light into the ideas of the mind: and this is eminently the case, when that which is loved is truth: for all truth dwells in light.

* * * * *

THE TALMUD

The word "Talmud," from the Hebrew verb _lamad_, equalling "to learn," denotes literally "what-is-learning." Then it comes to mean "instruction," "teaching," "doctrine." What is usually called the Talmud consists of two parts: 1. The Mishnah (literally, "tradition" and then "traditional doctrine") a code of Jewish laws, civil, criminal, religious, and so forth; based ostensibly on the Pentateuch, expounding, applying, and developing the laws contained in the so-called five books of Moses. 2. The Gemara, a word which means literally "completion," or "supplement," _i.e._, in reference to the Mishnah. Some, however, explain the word as meaning "teaching." The word is used technically to denote the expansion, exposition, and illustration of the Mishnah which is found in the Talmud. Strictly speaking, the word "Talmud" denotes the Gemara only, but in its ordinary sense the word denotes the Mishnah together with its completion in the Gemara. In the Talmud itself, as usually printed, the section of the Mishnah to be commented on and illustrated is followed by the Gemara in which the opinions of the great Rabbi are stated and discussed.

As in the case of the Mishnah, so, also, the Talmud has six principal divisions: these will be followed in the subsequent epitomes and need not, therefore, be given here. There are two versions or forms of the Talmud: 1. The Babylonian, or that due to the studies and discussions of the Jewish doctors in the various Hebrew colleges of Babylon (Sura, Pumbaditha, and so forth): in this the Gemara is some ten times as large as the Mishnah. When we speak of the Talmud it is that of Babylon which is always meant. Its language is Eastern Aramaic. 2. The Palestinian Talmud, compiled and edited by the heads of the Hebrew schools in Palestine, Tiberius, Sepphoris, and so forth. Its language is Western Aramaic, and its final editor is said to be Rabbi Ashe, who died A.D. 427. This is often erroneously called the Jerusalem Talmud. In its present form it is only about one-fourth as large as the Babylonian Talmud. The latter discusses nearly every section of the Mishnah, whereas the Palestine Talmud passes by a large proportion of the Mishnah without note or comment. That is, however, because much of this latter Talmud has been lost, for, in the time of Maimonides (died at Cairo A.D. 1204) the Gemara of the Jerusalem Talmud discussed nearly every part of the Mishnah. The Mishnah is usually said to have been completed by Rabbi Jehudah Hannasi, or the Prince (Hannasi), called simply "Rabbi" by way of preeminence, who died in A.D. 210 in his sixtieth year. But there are parts of the Mishnah which are older, and parts also at least a century later than the death of that great scholar. There is no absolute proof that the Mishnah was committed to writing until some time after the completion of the Palestinian (about A.D. 400) or even of the Babylonian (about A.D. 500) Talmud, for, in neither Gemara is there any reference to a written Mishnah, nor is a written form of the Mishnah implied anywhere. The preservation of this wonderful code of Jewish laws was due to memory alone, men being appointed in the various synagogues to learn the Mishnaic sections and to recite them whenever it was necessary. Extracts will be given below from the Mishnah and also from the Gemara, the letters M and G preceding paragraphs indicating which of the two is summarised.

_DIVISION I.--CALLED SEEDS_

[This part deals first of all with prayer, and then most of all with the various tithes and donations which are due to the priests, Levites, and the poor, from the products of the land.]

SECTION I. TREATISE ON BLESSINGS _(Berakot)_. The time for reading or reciting the Shemang.[32]

_M_. At what time in the evening may shemang be read? From the time when the priests, having cleansed themselves, enter the sanctuary to partake of the offering (2) (_i.e._, when the stars come out) until the end of the first watch (about 10 p.m.). So says Rabbi Eliezar, but otherwise men extend the time until midnight. Rabbi Gameliel makes the time reach even to the dawn of the following day. It happened once that his sons returned home at midnight without having read the shemang. On asking their father if it was too late he replied that the obligation to perform the duties of each day is valid until the first light of morning shows itself.

The morning Shemang.

_M_. From what time may the morning shemang be read? From the moment when there is light enough to distinguish between purple-blue and white. Rabbi Eliezar says "between purple-blue and leek-green" (which are harder to distinguish) (3). Up to when may the morning shemang be read? Until the sun has risen. Rabbi Jose says "until the end of the third hour after sunrise, for it is the custom of kings' sons to rise in the third hour of the day. Yet a good act, such as shemang is, never loses its virtue whenever it is performed."

The attitude in which the shemang should be read.

_M_. The (strict) School of Shammai say men ought to bow in reading the evening shemang, but to stand upright when saying shemang in the morning, their scripture warrant being Deut. vi, 7, "when thou liest down and when thou risest up." But according to (the more liberal) School of Hillel, people must be allowed to read the shemang in whatever attitude they choose, referring to the words in the same passage: "When thou sittest in thy house and when thou walkest in the way." Why then the words "when thou liest down and when thou risest up?" Because these are the acts that men perform when the shemang would be usually read. Rabbi Tarphon said that once when journeying of an evening, he stooped in order to read the shemang, with the result that his goods were almost taken from him by unsuspected robbers. He was told that he would have deserved it, had he been actually robbed, for not having followed the decision of the Hillel School. The Gemara on the above Mishnahs gives the opinions of a large number of Rabbis, reporting also discussions in which they took part.

The benedictions before and after the Shemang.

_M_. Two benedictions (4) are to be said before the morning shemang, and one after it.

When the Shemang is rightly read.

_M_. He who reads the shemang without hearing his own voice has yet discharged his duty if only his heart has gone with the reading.

Persons not to read the Shemang:

Women, slaves, and minors are not commanded to read the Shemang, or to wear phylacteries. They are, however, expected to recite the eighteen benedictions, the grace after meat, and also to see that the Mezuza is attached to the doorpost.[33].

_G_. Where are we taught that the Shechinah rests upon _one_ who studies the law? In Exodus xx, 24, where it is written: "In all places where I record my name I will come unto _thee_, and I will bless _thee_." The Palestine Talmud paraphrases thus: "In every place in which ye shall memorialise My holy name, My word shall be revealed unto _you_, and shall bless _you_." Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God, even Jehovah is one. Deut. vi, 4. Whoever prolongs the utterance of the word _one_ (Heb. _ekhad_), his days and years shall be prolonged.

Once, the Rabbis say, the Roman government decreed that no Israelite should be allowed to study the Law. Immediately after, Rabbi Agiba was found teaching the Law to crowds of people who had gathered around him. Some one passing by asked him "Fearest thou not the Roman government?" To which he said, "I will answer by a parable: A fox was once walking by a river side when he saw the fish rushing distractedly hither and thither. On asking them the cause of all their perturbation, they replied: 'We are afraid of the nets which wicked men are ever setting to catch us.' 'Why, then,' said the fox, 'do you not leave that dangerous element and try the dry land with me?' 'Surely,' replied the fish, 'thou art in this most foolish and unfoxlike, for if it is dangerous for us to dwell in this, our native element, how much more would it be if we left it for the dry land?' So," continued Agiba, "all those who study the Law have the Divine Promise," Deut. xxx, 20: "He is thy life and the length of thy days."

_DIVISION II--FEASTS_ (MONGëD)

[contains directions for observing the festivals, including the Sabbath. The aim in all is professedly to make explicit what is implicit in the Pentateuch. But many late ideas and customs are brought into this division, of which the Pentateuch knows nothing. Even the feast of Purim mentioned here it quite unmencioned in the Pentateuch.]

1. TREATISE ON THE SABBATH. Law regarding transfer of goods on the Sabbath.

_M_. It is commanded in Exodus xvi, 29, that no man go out of his place on the Sabbath day. This implies that no one is to take goods from his own premises to those of another.(6). What, however, constitutes one's own premises? _(Reshut)._ There are many cases to be considered. Suppose a beggar stand outside and the master of the house inside. If the first reaches his hand through a window or door to the second, or takes something out of the hand of the latter, the beggar is guilty, but the master is absolved. If, on the other hand, the master puts his hand outside the house, and places something in the beggar's hands, he is guilty, but the beggar is absolved.

[There are in all four cases treating of the man inside and four of the man outside.]

_G_. Rabbi Mathra said to Abazi, "There are eight or even ten cases of transfer." Rab questioned Rabbi, "Suppose one from the outside were laden in the house with food, fruit, etc. How stands the law? Is the removal of his body tantamount to the removal of a thing from its place?" "Yes," said Rabbi; "this is not like the case of removing the hand, because the latter was not at rest, while in the former, the body, before and after removal, was entirely at rest." "Suppose," said one Rabbi to another, "that a person has put bread into an oven and it is not done by the time the Sabbath begins. May he take it out before it is spoiled?" "He may lawfully do so if he put it there, believing it would be fully baked before the Sabbath arrived."

Acts forbidden on Sabbath eve.

_M_. Just before the time of Sabbath evening prayer (7), a man is not allowed to sit to a barber, to enter a bath, a tanyard, to sit to a meal, or to begin to act as judge in a Law Court. He must first of all perform his devotions. But supposing that one has commenced any one of these acts, then let them be finished.

_G_. A man begins the act of haircutting when the barber's cloth is spread over him. Bathing has begun if the outer coat has been pulled off. A man has commenced to tan if his working apron has been tied around him. A meal begins when the hands are washed or (as some say) when the girdle has been removed. The process of judging has begun when the judges have donned their professional robes, or (as some have it) directly the litigants begin pleading.

The Jew and a non-Jew.

_M_. The school of Shammai forbids a Jew to sell anything to a non-Jew on the Sabbath eve, or to help him with a load unless the Jew can reach some neighbouring village before the Sabbath fully sets in. The School of Hillel, however, allows it.

Miscellaneous prohibitions.

_M_. A tailor must not go out on the Sabbath eve with his needle, lest he forget it and carry it during the Sabbath. Nor must the professional writer (scribe) go out with his writing reed on the Sabbath eve. According to the School of Shammai it is unlawful on the Sabbath eve to deliver skins to a heathen tanner, or clothes to be washed to a non-Jewish laundress, unless there be time enough for them to be got quite ready before the Sabbath begins. But the School of Hillel allowed perfect freedom in the matter. Rabbi Simeon ben Gemaliel says, "it was the custom in my parental home to hand over to the non-Jewish laundress things to be washed, three days before the Sabbath." It is forbidden to fry meat, onions, or eggs, on the Sabbath eve, unless they can be completely cooked before the Sabbath begins. Bread must not be put into the oven, nor cakes on the coal, unless there is time before the Sabbath comes in for the surface to become encrusted.

Concerning the Sabbath lamp.[34].

_M_. Wherewith may one light the Sabbath lamp? Not with wicks made with cedar moss, or raw flax, or silk fibre, or weeds growing in water, or ship moss. Nor shall pitch, wax, cottonseed oil, or oil of rejected offerings, or oil from sheeptail fat, be used for these lamps.

_G_. The Rabbis allowed the aforementioned ingredients to be used for the Sabbath fires, though not for the Sabbath lamps. Why are wicks made of the above materials prohibited? Because they give but a flickering light. The oily substances mentioned are forbidden because they do not adhere to the wick.

About extinguishing the Sabbath lamp.

_M_. He who extinguishes the Sabbath lamp for fear of non-Jews or robbers or of evil spirits, or in order that the sick may sleep, is free from guilt. But if the object is merely to save expense the lamp extinguisher stands condemned.

Three things to say on the Sabbath eve.

_M_. I. Have ye tithed the food to be eaten on the

Sabbath? 2. Have ye made the _erub?_ 3. Light ye the Sabbath lamp.

Man's two Sabbath angels.

_G_. As he returns home from the Synagogue on the Sabbath eve, every man is accompanied by two angels, one good, the other evil. If, on coming home, the man finds the lamp lit, the tables spread, and everything in order, the good angel says, "May the coming Sabbath be as this present one." To which the evil angel is compelled reluctantly to respond "Amen." But if everything be in disorder the bad angel says, "May the coming Sabbath be as the present one." To which the good angel is obliged reluctantly to respond, "Amen."

The overturning of Mount Sinai. (9).

_G_. When the Israelites refused to believe the words of Moses after he had returned from the mountain, the Holy One, blessed be He, inverted the mountain above them like a top, and said unto them, "If ye receive the Law, well, but if not, your graves shall be here."

Lucky and unlucky birthdays.

_G_. Rabbi Simon ben Levi said that whoever is born on the first day of the week (Sunday) will be either thoroughly good or thoroughly bad, because on that day light and darkness were created. If on the second day of the week, he will be stingy, because the waters were divided on that day. If on the third day, he will be rich and prosperous, because on that day abundant vegetation was created. If on the fourth day, he will be wise and happy, because on that day the luminaries were fixed. If on the fifth day, he will be good-natured, because fishes and fowls were then created, and these are fed by God alone. If on the sixth day, he will be likely to give himself to good works, because that is the Sabbath preparation day. If, however, he be born on the Sabbath, he will also die on the Sabbath, as a punishment for his desecration of that sacred day by his birth.

2. TREATISE ON THE PASSOVER (_Pesakhin_). No. 3 in order.

_M._ On the eve of the fourteenth Nisan, search must be made for leaven by the light of a lamp (10).

_G._ What means the Hebrew word _or_? (Translated above "on the eve of"). Rabbi Huna says it means, "when the day begins to dawn": but according to Rabbi Jehuda it means "at night," but in Genesis xliv, 3, and 2nd Sam. xxiii, 4, the verb means "to get day, to dawn," so that Rabbi Huna is right. Abazi said that no student should enter upon his studies just before the dawn of the fourteenth Nizan, lest he forget to search for leaven.

_G._ To Amorain (11) propose the following question: "Suppose a man let a house to another, telling him that he had removed all leaven but subsequently it was found that some leaven had been left. Is the agreement to take the house binding?" Abazi said, "Yes, it is, for it is better that each householder sees for himself that all leaven has been removed. Before beginning the search for leaven a blessing must be said, as, indeed, before any religious act is performed."

By the light of the lamp.

_G._ The light of the sun or of the moon or of a flame of fire may not be used in searching for leaven, as the Rabbis say is taught in Zephaniah i, 12 (I will search Jerusalem with lights), and Prov. xx, 27 (Man's soul is Jehovah's lamp searching the inner chambers of the body.)

3. TREATISE ON NEW YEAR'S DAY (_Rosh Hashshanah_). No. 8 in order.

_G._ The generation before the flood was punished with boiling water. (12).

4. TREATISE ON THE ROLL (13) _(Megillah)._ No. 10 in order.

_M_. The Megillah _(i.e._, Esther) is sometimes read on the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, or 15th of the month Adar, not earlier nor later (for details see the Mishnah and Gemara).

_G_. Rabbi Jehuda says on the authority of Samuel, that the book of Esther does not defile the hands (14), _i.e._, that this book was not given by the inspiration of God. Samuel, however, explained that Esther was dictated by the Spirit of God, but only to be orally repeated, and not to be written.

_G_. When a scroll of the Law has become through age unfit for use it is to be buried in an earthen vessel, as is said in Jeremiah xxii, 14, "And put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days." A scroll of the Law ought never to be sold unless the object be to enable the seller to study the Law better, or to take himself a wife. Rabbi Simon ben Gemaliel said "whoever sells a scroll of the Law, or a daughter, though he does it because he has nothing to eat, will have no good from the purchase money."

5. TREATISE DEALING WITH THE LAWS ABOUT FESTIVAL OFFERINGS. _(Khagiga)._ No. 12 in order.

Those under an obligation to offer the burnt offerings during the three _great_ annual Feasts.

_M_. Everyone is under an obligation to offer the burnt offering except the following: A deaf man, a fool, a child, one of doubtful sex, one of double sex, a woman, a slave, a lame man, a blind man, a sick man.

What is meant by a child? One not able to ride upon his father's shoulders in order to go up from Jerusalem to the Temple. So say the School of Shammai, but the Hillel School define child, "One unable to take hold of his father's hand to go from Jerusalem to the Temple."

_G_. What does the expression "everyone" include?

Him who is half a slave and half free and also him who is lame on the first day and well on the second day, as well as the man who is blind in one eye, except the deaf man, a fool, and à child, and so forth. A deaf man is like a fool and a child, for he is not responsible for his actions any more than they are.

THE WORD TOHU RIGHTLY TRANSLATED "VOID" IN GENESIS i. 2.

_G_. Tohu is a green line (Heb. Qav or Qaw) which surrounds the entire world, and from which darkness proceeds. (15).

THE SEVEN HEAVENS (16).

_G_. Resh Lagish used to say, "There are seven heavens, named as follows: 1. Vilon (equals Velum, a curtain). 2. Ragiang. 3. Sheklagim. 4. Zebul. 5. Mangon. 6. Makon. 7. Ngarabot."

SATAN AND HIS COMPANIONS ENDEAVOURING TO STEAL A HEARING OF GOD'S WORDS.

_G_. Satan and his fellow-fallen angels are in the habit of listening from behind a curtain to the words which God speaks to the angels in heaven (17).

_III.--WOMEN (NASHIM)_

[This division deals with betrothals, marriage, divorce, and the like. One treatise discusses vows.]

1. TREATISE ON WIDOWS UNDER AN OBLIGATION TO UNDERGO THE LEVIRITE MARRIAGE _(Yebamot)._ No. I in order (18).

_M_. A childless widow is under an obligation to marry the eldest unmarried brother of her deceased husband. If that brother-in-law refuses to marry her, she is allowed in the presence of the nation's leaders to loose his shoe from his foot, to spit in his face, and to say to him, "Thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his brother's house." (see Deut. xxii, 9).

The following classes of women are released from the necessity of marrying any brother-in-law: 1. The illegitimate daughter of the brother. 2. Her daughter. 3. The daughter of his illegitimate son. 4. His wife's daughter. 5. Her son's daughter. 6. Her daughter's daughter. 7. His mother-in-law. 8. The mother of his mother-in-law. 9. The mother of his father-in-law, and so forth.

2. TREATISE ON VOWS (_Nedarim_). No. 3 in order.

The Scriptures Given as a Punishment for Men's Sin.

_G._ If the Israelites had not been guilty of sin they would never have required more Scripture than the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. The last is indispensable as it records the way in which the land was divided among the Israelites. The other Scriptures (the Prophets and the Writing) because in much wisdom there is grief. (Eccles. i, 18).

3. TREATISE ON BETROTHALS (_Qidushin_). No. 7 in order.

The Families Who went up from Babylon to Jerusalem.

_M._ Ten kinds of families left Babylon for Palestine after the edict of Cyrus went forth in B.C. 538 permitting the nation to return. These were as follows: 1. Priests. 2. Levites. 3. Israelites. 4. Degraded Priests (lit. profaned ones). 5. Proselytes (19). 6. Freedmen. 7. Bastards. 8. Netinim. 9. Those of unknown lineage. 10. Foundlings. The three first are allowed to intermarry: the last six may also intermarry. All those whose mother is known but not their father are said to be of unknown lineage. A foundling is one picked up in the streets whose parents are both unknown.

The Evil of Idolatry.

_G_. The worship of idols is so grave a sin that he who renounces or disavows it does as much as if he confessed his belief in the whole law.

Sons More Desirable than Daughters.

_G_. The world cannot exist without males and females, yet blessed is he whose children are boys, and unlucky he whose children are girls. Cf. Baba Bathra, p. 113, col. I:--"Whoever does not leave a son to be heir, God will heap wrath upon him."

_IV.--CONCERNING PENALTIES_ (NEZIKIN)

[In this division the principal part of the civil and criminal court of the Hebrews is included. See especially the treatise "Sanhedrin."]

1. TREATISE CALLED LIT. Chap. I, or THE FIRST GATE. (20)(Heb. _Baba Qama_.)

Damages to be made good by those responsible for them.

_M_. There are four principal causes of damage to life and property. I. The Ox. 2. The Uncovered Pit. 3. The Man who sets fire to anything. 4. The Fire which starts of its own accord through neglect.

Whenever damage is done in any of these four ways the one that is responsible for it must make the loss good.

_G_. The Rabbis teach that there are many specific forms of the above four kinds of injuries, _i.e._, the ox can do an injury with his horns, his teeth, or his feet.

Accident through falling over a jug or barrel.

_M_. If anyone places a jug on a public road and another person stumbles over it and breaks it, the latter is not liable for the breakage. But if he is injured by the fall, the owner of the barrel is liable for the damage.

_G_. The Mishnah uses "jug" in the first clause and "barrel" in the second. Rabbi Papa said that the same thing is meant in both cases.

On breaking a jug full of water on a public road.

_M_. If a jug full of water breaks on a public road and its contents cause a person to slip, or if in any way one is injured by the pieces, he who carries the jug is liable for any injury. Rabbi Jehuda, however, says he is only liable if he breaks it intentionally.

2. TREATISE CALLED THE MIDDLE CHAPTER (Heb. _Baba Metsia_). 2nd in order.

_G_. It was Elijah's custom to frequent the Rabbi's council chamber. On one occasion, being later than usual, Rabbi asked him to explain his delay. Elijah answered as follows: "It is my business to wake up Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob one after the other, to wash each one's hand, and to wait until each one has said his prayers and returned to rest." "But," said Rabbi, "why don't they all rise at the same time?" "Because," was Elijah's reply, "if they all three prayed at once, their united prayers would precipitate the advent of the Messiah before its appointed time." "Then," said Rabbi, "have we amongst us such praying people?" Elijah said there were, mentioning Rabbi Khizah and his sons. Rabbi then proclaimed a fast, which Rabbi Khizah and his sons came to observe. When repeating the 18 benedictions (21) they were about to say "Thou restorest life to the dead" when the world was convulsed and it was asked in Heaven who revealed to them the secret. Elijah was then beaten sixty times with a rod of fire. He afterwards came down like a fiery bear and scattered the congregation.

3. TREATISE CALLED THE LAST CHAPTER _(Baba Bathra_). No. 3 in order.

_G_. The members of the Great Synagogue who wrote the Book of Ezekiel, the Books of the twelve minor prophets, the Book of Daniel, and the Book of Ezra (22).

4. TREATISE CALLED SANHEDRIN. NO. 4 in order. [It treats at length of the institution of the municipal and provincial courts called Sanhedrin from a Greek word, and also of the great Sanhedrin, or _Bethdin_, at Jerusalem.]

Jewish Courts and their Constitution.

_G_. [The Sanhedrin was composed of 71 members. If an Israelite had a point of law to decide, he first proposed it to the Court which met in his own city. If they failed to decide the matter, it was submitted to the judgment of the Court of the next city. If the Justices of the immediate district failed to come to a decision, the case was laid before the Court which met at the entrance of the Temple area. In the event of their failing to decide, they appealed to the Court which met at the entrance to the ante-court. Failure in this Court was followed by an appeal to the Supreme Court of 71, where the matter was finally disposed of by a majority of votes.

The Sanhedrin sat in a semicircle in order that the members might be able to see one another. There were two notaries, one on the right and the other on the left, to count the "Ayes" and "Noes" in all cases of voting.]

The authorship of the BOOK OF EZRA.

_G_. [The Book of Ezra was written by Nehemiah. He does not attach his name to it because he gave too much attention to his own merits, as it is written (Neh. v, 19) "Think upon me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for my people."

5. TREATISE ON IDOLATRY _(Aboda Zara_). No. 8 in order.

_M_. It is forbidden to have any dealings with non-Jews for three days before they hold their unholy festivals (23). One must not lend them any money, for that could be useful to them in preparing for the festival. Nor must one borrow from them, for they would gain thereby and be more able, out of the interest, to meet the expenses of their coming feasts. Similarly, one must not pay them any money, even though due, nor in return must payment be received.

Rabbi Jehuda, however, maintains that payment should be allowed because that is a displeasure and a disadvantage to those who pay.

_M_. When there is an idol in the city one may go to that city, providing that the road does not lead to the idol alone. Jews are not allowed to sell to non-Jews any of the following things, because they can be used for purposes of heathen worship:--Fir cones, white figs, or their stems, frankincense, and a white cock. A white cock may, however, be sold if one of its claws has been cut off, since non-Jews do not sacrifice an animal when an organ is lacking.

THE BOOK OF YASHAR (see 2nd Sam. i, 18).

_G_. What is meant by the Book of Yashar? Rabbi Khyiah bar Abba on the authority of Rabbi Jokhanan says "It is the book of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they being called righteous _(yesharim),_ and concerning whom it is written, Numb, xxiii, 10, 'Let me die the death of the righteous'" _(yesharim)._

6. TREATISE CALLED "SENTENCES OF THE FATHERS" (Heb. _Pirga Abot_). No. 9 in order.

[This treatise, on which no Gemara has been handed down, contains moral precepts, aphorisms, and so forth, of the elder Tannain. It has been often translated, an excellent rendering by the late Dr. Charles Taylor having been published by the Cambridge Press.]

The Two Tables of the Law.

_M_. The two Tables of the Law, handed to Moses on Mount Sinai, were created, along with nine other things, at the time when the world was made, and at sunset, before the first Sabbath began.

_V.--SACRED THINGS, SACRIFICES, MEASUREMENTS OF THE TEMPLE, ETC._

1. TREATISE ON THE MEASUREMENTS OF THE TEMPLE _(Middot)._ 10th in order.

Extent of the Temple Area.

_M_. The Temple Mount was 500 cubits square. The space was largest on the south, next largest on the east, the third largest being on the north, and the least, westward. All who entered this area did so on the south side, going round and passing on to the left.

_VI.--LEGAL PURIFICATIONS, LAWS OF CLEAN AND UNCLEAN, ETC._ (TEHAROT)

1. TREATISE ON PRESERVING THE HANDS FROM CEREMONIAL UNCLEANNESS. _(Jadaim)._

The Aramaic passages in Ezra and Daniel make the hands unclean (25). But Aramaic written in Hebrew characters and Hebrew written in Aramaic (Syriac) characters, or in the primitive Hebrew characters (much like the Phoenician) do not make the hands unclean. Scriptures, though the matter is the same, never make the hands unclean unless the characters or letters, in which they are written, are the square Assyrian letters introduced by Ezra, the second Moses.

* * * * *

ZOROASTRIANISM

ZEND AVESTA

Zoroastrianism, or, more correctly, Zarathustraism, is derived from Zoroaster, or, more strictly, Zarathustra, the founder of the religion. Modern scholarship inclines to the belief that this great religious leader was born in West Media about B.C. 600, and carried on his great work in Bactria. The religion with which his name is connected is really a reformed and spiritualised kind of that Magism which prevailed in Media and contiguous countries. The priests, who are called "Atharvans," fire-priests, in the Avesta (compare the same name in Hinduism, the Atharvan Veda, etc.) are identical with the Magi, priests of the religion which Zarathustra (Zoroaster) found in his original and adopted home. According to some, the founder of Zarathustrianism lived at a very much earlier time, and there are great scholars (Tiele, Darmesteter, Edouard Meyer) who wholly deny the historicity of such a character. No doubt, in later years, there gathered around Zarathustra an immense number of fictitious and silly legends, as was the case with Buddha, Jesus, and even Muhammad; but that each one of these religious teachers lived and wrought is beyond the reach of reasonable doubt.

_INTRODUCTORY_

This is the Bible of the Zarathustrians and of their modern representatives, the Parsees, who flourish for the most part in Bombay. The title "Zend Avesta" is an anomaly, for "Zend" is not the name of a language at all, but means "commentary," the word "Avesta" connoting the original text on which the commentary is written. The original title denotes Avesta and Zend, which is a correct description, for what is now known as the Zend Avesta is really a combination of text (Avesta) and commentary (Zend), just as the Jewish Talmud is a combination of Mishnah (text) and Gemara (commentary, or, literally, completion). The word "Avesta" denotes (perhaps literally) knowledge, being cognate with the Sanscrit word "Veda." But A.V.W. Jackson derives it from a form _Upasta_, denoting "the original text." Darmesteter makes the word Old Persian, denoting "law."

The existing Avesta is more like a prayer book than a Bible, for it is as a liturgical work that it took on its present form, and as such that it is now generally used, though the part called "Vendidad" includes a large number of laws for religious ceremonies and the like.

What is known to modern scholars as the Avesta is, however, only a portion of the original work, the latter having been largely lost through the conquests over Persia of Alexander the Great, and especially owing to the more thorough subjugation of the Sassanid Persians by the Muslims in A.D. 632. The latter were much more bigoted and uncompromising in their treatment of other religions and their literatures than were Alexander the Great and his successors. The original Avesta, as described in Pahlavi text which have come down to us, contain twenty-one Nasks or books. These existed, in a more or less incomplete state, down to the ninth century of our era, to which century the Pahlavi work "Dindard" belongs.

The Avesta which exists to-day may be divided thus:--

I. The strictly canonical parts, including the following, which will be more fully described in connection with the summaries.

1. Yasnas, including the Gathas. 2. Vispereds. 3. Vendidads.

II. The Apocryphal Avesta usually called the Khorda Avesta, or the short Avesta. This is much less esteemed than the Avesta proper. It comprises,

1. Yashts (invocation). 2. Minor Prayers.

The language of the Avesta can be correctly described only as Avestan, for no other literature in the same language exists. It resembles the Pahlavi, or Ancient Persian, but it is identical with no language. The Zend, or commentary, is written in the Pahlavi language.

The present writer wishes to express his obligation to the translation of the Avesta by Spiegel (in German); Hang in his "Essays on Sacred Language, Writing, and Religion of the Parsees "; and also to those by Darmesteter and L.H. Mills in the "Sacred Books of the East," volumes iv, xxiii, xxxiii. On the question whether or not the Achaemenian kings of Persia, Cyrus I., and so forth, were Zarathustrians, see "Century Bible,"--Ezra--Nehemiah--Esther.

_I.--YASNAS, OR SACRIFICIAL PRAYERS AND SONGS_

[This section of the Avesta constitutes the principal liturgical text-book of the great Yasna ceremony, which is made up chiefly of the preparation and offering of the Parahoma (the juice of the homa or soma plant mixed with milk and aromatic ingredients). There are seventy-two chapters in the Yasnas, though they contain a good number of repetitions. It is in this main part of the Avesta that the five metrical Gathas are to be found, these being the oldest and by far the most important of the Avesta.]