Part 4 (1/2)
Hebraism,--and here is the source of its [152] wonderful strength,-- has always been severely preoccupied with an awful sense of the impossibility of being at ease in Zion; of the difficulties which oppose themselves to man's pursuit or attainment of that perfection of which Socrates talks so hopefully, and, as from this point of view one might almost say, so glibly. It is all very well to talk of getting rid of one's ignorance, of seeing things in their reality, seeing them in their beauty; but how is this to be done when there is something which thwarts and spoils all our efforts? This something is sin; and the s.p.a.ce which sin fills in Hebraism, as compared with h.e.l.lenism, is indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and rising away from earth, in the background. Under the name of sin, the difficulties of knowing oneself and conquering oneself which impede man's pa.s.sage to perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active ent.i.ty hostile to man, a mysterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey the other day, in one of his impressive sermons, compare to a hideous hunchback seated on our shoulders, and which it is the main business of our lives to hate and oppose. The discipline of the [153] Old Testament may be summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die to it. As h.e.l.lenism speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things in their essence and beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to achieve, so Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious of sin, of awakening to a sense of sin, as a feat of this kind. It is obvious to what wide divergence these differing tendencies, actively followed, must lead. As one pa.s.ses and repa.s.ses from h.e.l.lenism to Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels inclined to rub one's eyes and ask oneself whether man is indeed a gentle and simple being, showing the traces of a n.o.ble and divine nature; or an unhappy chained captive, labouring with groanings that cannot be uttered to free himself from the body of this death.
Apparently it was the h.e.l.lenic conception of human nature which was unsound, for the world could not live by it. Absolutely to call it unsound, however, is to fall into the common error of its Hebraising enemies; but it was unsound at that particular moment of man's development, it was premature. The indispensable basis of conduct and [154] self-control, the platform upon which alone the perfection aimed at by Greece can come into bloom, was not to be reached by our race so easily; centuries of probation and discipline were needed to bring us to it. Therefore the bright promise of h.e.l.lenism faded, and Hebraism ruled the world. Then was seen that astonis.h.i.+ng spectacle, so well marked by the often quoted words of the prophet Zechariah, when men of all languages of the nations took hold of the skirt of him that was a Jew, saying:--”We will go with you, for we have heard that G.o.d is with you.”+ And the Hebraism which thus received and ruled a world all gone out of the way and altogether become unprofitable, was, and could not but be, the later, the more spiritual, the more attractive development of Hebraism. It was Christianity; that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and rescue from the thrall of vile affections, not by obedience to the letter of a law, but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing example. To a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity offered its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice; to men who refused themselves nothing, it showed one who refused [155] himself everything;--”my Saviour banished joy” says George Herbert. When the alma Venus, the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, so fondly cherished by the Pagan world, could not save her followers from self- dissatisfaction and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came bracingly and refres.h.i.+ngly: ”Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of G.o.d upon the children of disobedience.”+ Throughout age after age, and generation after generation, our race, or all that part of our race which was most living and progressive, was baptized into a death;+ and endeavoured, by suffering in the flesh, to cease from sin. Of this endeavour, the animating labours and afflictions of early Christianity, the touching asceticism of mediaeval Christianity, are the great historical manifestations. Literary monuments of it, each, in its own way, incomparable, remain in the Epistles of St. Paul, in St. Augustine's Confessions, and in the two original and simplest books of the Imitation.*
Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the [156] one, on clear intelligence, the other, on firm obedience; the one, on comprehensively knowing the grounds of one's duty, the other, on diligently practising it; the one on taking all possible care (to use Bishop Wilson's words again) that the light we have be not darkness, the other, that according to the best light we have we diligently walk,--the priority naturally belongs to that discipline which braces man's moral powers, and founds for him an indispensable basis of character. And, therefore, it is justly said of the Jewish people, who were charged with setting powerfully forth that side of the divine order to which the words conscience and self-conquest point, that they were ”entrusted with the oracles of G.o.d;”+ as it is justly said of Christianity, which followed Judaism and which set forth this side with a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider influence, that the wisdom of the old Pagan world was foolishness compared to it. No words of devotion and admiration can be too strong to render thanks to these beneficent forces which have so borne forward humanity in its appointed work of coming to the knowledge and possession of itself; above all, in those great [157] moments when their action was the wholesomest and the most necessary.
But the evolution of these forces, separately and in themselves, is not the whole evolution of humanity,--their single history is not the whole history of man; whereas their admirers are always apt to make it stand for the whole history. Hebraism and h.e.l.lenism are, neither of them, the law of human development, as their admirers are p.r.o.ne to make them; they are, each of them, contributions to human development,--august contributions, invaluable contributions; and each showing itself to us more august, more invaluable, more preponderant over the other, according to the moment in which we take them, and the relation in which we stand to them. The nations of our modern world, children of that immense and salutary movement which broke up the Pagan world, inevitably stand to h.e.l.lenism in a relation which dwarfs it, and to Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it.
They are inevitably p.r.o.ne to take Hebraism as the law of human development, and not as simply a contribution to it, however precious. And yet the lesson must perforce be [158] learned, that the human spirit is wider than the most priceless of the forces which bear it onward, and that to the whole development of man Hebraism itself is, like h.e.l.lenism, but a contribution.
Perhaps we may help ourselves to see this clearer by an ill.u.s.tration drawn from the treatment of a single great idea which has profoundly engaged the human spirit, and has given it eminent opportunities for showing its n.o.bleness and energy. It surely must be perceived that the idea of the immortality of the soul, as this idea rises in its generality before the human spirit, is something grander, truer, and more satisfying, than it is in the particular forms by which St.
Paul, in the famous fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians,+ and Plato, in the Phaedo, endeavour to develope and establish it. Surely we cannot but feel, that the argumentation with which the Hebrew apostle goes about to expound this great idea is, after all, confused and inconclusive; and that the reasoning, drawn from a.n.a.logies of likeness and equality, which is employed upon it by the Greek philosopher, is over-subtle and sterile? Above and beyond the inadequate solutions which Hebraism and h.e.l.lenism here attempt, extends the immense [159] and august problem itself, and the human spirit which gave birth to it. And this single ill.u.s.tration may suggest to us how the same thing happens in other cases also.
But meanwhile, by alternations of Hebraism and h.e.l.lenism, of man's intellectual and moral impulses, of the effort to see things as they really are, and the effort to win peace by self-conquest, the human spirit proceeds, and each of these two forces has its appointed hours of culmination and seasons of rule. As the great movement of Christianity was a triumph of Hebraism and man's moral impulses, so the great movement which goes by the name of the Renascence* was an uprising and re-instatement of man's intellectual impulses and of h.e.l.lenism. We in England, the devoted children of Protestantism, chiefly know the Renascence by its subordinate and secondary side of the Reformation. The Reformation has been often called a Hebraising revival, a return to the ardour and sincereness of primitive [160]
Christianity. No one, however, can study the development of Protestantism and of Protestant churches without feeling that into the Reformation too,--Hebraising child of the Renascence and offspring of its fervour, rather than its intelligence, as it undoubtedly was,--the subtle h.e.l.lenic leaven of the Renascence found its way, and that the exact respective parts in the Reformation, of Hebraism and of h.e.l.lenism, are not easy to separate. But what we may with truth say is, that all which Protestantism was to itself clearly conscious of, all which it succeeded in clearly setting forth in words, had the characters of Hebraism rather than of h.e.l.lenism. The Reformation was strong, in that it was an earnest return to the Bible and to doing from the heart the will of G.o.d as there written; it was weak, in that it never consciously grasped or applied the central idea of the Renascence,--the h.e.l.lenic idea of pursuing, in all lines of activity, the law and science, to use Plato's words, of things as they really are. Whatever direct superiority, therefore, Protestantism had over Catholicism was a moral superiority, a superiority arising out of its greater sincerity and earnestness,--at the moment of its apparition at any [161] rate,--in dealing with the heart and conscience; its pretensions to an intellectual superiority are in general quite illusory. For h.e.l.lenism, for the thinking side in man as distinguished from the acting side, the att.i.tude of mind of Protestantism towards the Bible in no respect differs from the att.i.tude of mind of Catholicism towards the Church. The mental habit of him who imagines that Balaam's a.s.s spoke, in no respect differs from the mental habit of him who imagines that a Madonna of wood or stone winked; and the one, who says that G.o.d's Church makes him believe what he believes, and the other, who says that G.o.d's Word makes him believe what he believes, are for the philosopher perfectly alike in not really and truly knowing, when they say G.o.d's Church and G.o.d's Word, what it is they say, or whereof they affirm.
In the sixteenth century, therefore, h.e.l.lenism re-entered the world, and again stood in presence of Hebraism,--a Hebraism renewed and purged. Now, it has not been enough observed, how, in the seventeenth century, a fate befell h.e.l.lenism in some respects a.n.a.logous to that which befell it at the commencement of our era.
The Renascence, that [162] great re-awakening of h.e.l.lenism, that irresistible return of humanity to nature and to seeing things as they are, which in art, in literature, and in physics, produced such splendid fruits, had, like the anterior h.e.l.lenism of the Pagan world, a side of moral weakness, and of relaxation or insensibility of the moral fibre, which in Italy showed itself with the most startling plainness, but which in France, England, and other countries was very apparent too. Again this loss of spiritual balance, this exclusive preponderance given to man's perceiving and knowing side, this unnatural defect of his feeling and acting side, provoked a reaction.
Let us trace that reaction where it most nearly concerns us.
Science has now made visible to everybody the great and pregnant elements of difference which lie in race, and in how signal a manner they make the genius and history of an Indo-European people vary from those of a Semitic people. h.e.l.lenism is of Indo-European growth, Hebraism is of Semitic growth; and we English, a nation of Indo- European stock, seem to belong naturally to the movement of h.e.l.lenism. But nothing more strongly marks the essential unity of man than the affinities we can [163] perceive, in this point or that, between members of one family of peoples and members of another; and no affinity of this kind is more strongly marked than that likeness in the strength and prominence of the moral fibre, which, notwithstanding immense elements of difference, knits in some special sort the genius and history of us English, and of our American descendants across the Atlantic, to the genius and history of the Hebrew people. Puritanism, which has been so great a power in the English nation, and in the strongest part of the English nation, was originally the reaction, in the seventeenth century, of the conscience and moral sense of our race, against the moral indifference and lax rule of conduct which in the sixteenth century came in with the Renascence. It was a reaction of Hebraism against h.e.l.lenism; and it powerfully manifested itself, as was natural, in a people with much of what we call a Hebraising turn, with a signal affinity for the bent which was the master-bent of Hebrew life.
Eminently Indo-European by its humour, by the power it shows, through this gift, of imaginatively acknowledging the multiform aspects of the problem of life, and of thus getting itself unfixed from its own over- [164] certainty, of smiling at its own over-tenacity, our race has yet (and a great part of its strength lies here), in matters of practical life and moral conduct, a strong share of the a.s.suredness, the tenacity, the intensity of the Hebrews. This turn manifested itself in Puritanism, and has had a great part in shaping our history for the last two hundred years. Undoubtedly it checked and changed amongst us that movement of the Renascence which we see producing in the reign of Elizabeth such wonderful fruits; undoubtedly it stopped the prominent rule and direct development of that order of ideas which we call by the name of h.e.l.lenism, and gave the first rank to a different order of ideas. Apparently, too, as we said of the former defeat of h.e.l.lenism, if h.e.l.lenism was defeated, this shows that h.e.l.lenism was imperfect, and that its ascendency at that moment would not have been for the world's good.
Yet there is a very important difference between the defeat inflicted on h.e.l.lenism by Christianity eighteen hundred years ago, and the check given to the Renascence by Puritanism. The greatness of the difference is well measured by the difference in force, beauty, significance and usefulness, between [165] primitive Christianity and Protestantism. Eighteen hundred years ago it was altogether the hour of Hebraism; primitive Christianity was legitimately and truly the ascendent force in the world at that time, and the way of mankind's progress lay through its full development. Another hour in man's development began in the fifteenth century, and the main road of his progress then lay for a time through h.e.l.lenism. Puritanism was no longer the central current of the world's progress, it was a side stream crossing the central current and checking it. The cross and the check may have been necessary and salutary, but that does not do away with the essential difference between the main stream of man's advance and a cross or side stream. For more than two hundred years the main stream of man's advance has moved towards knowing himself and the world, seeing things as they are, spontaneity of consciousness; the main impulse of a great part, and that the strongest part, of our nation, has been towards strictness of conscience. They have made the secondary the princ.i.p.al at the wrong moment, and the princ.i.p.al they have at the wrong moment treated as secondary. This contravention of the [166] natural order has produced, as such contravention always must produce, a certain confusion and false movement, of which we are now beginning to feel, in almost every direction, the inconvenience. In all directions our habitual courses of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and control, both with others and even with ourselves; everywhere we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound order and authority. This we can only get by going back upon the actual instincts and forces which rule our life, seeing them as they really are, connecting them with other instincts and forces, and enlarging our whole view and rule of life.
NOTES
145. +Proverbs 29:18 is the source of the first pa.s.sage. I have not found the exact language of the second quotation, but the thought resembles that of Psalms 19:9-10: ”The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.” King James Bible.
148. +Romans 3:31. ”Do we then make void the law through faith? / G.o.d forbid: yea, we establish the law.” King James Bible.
148. +Zechariah 9:12-13. ”Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double unto thee; / When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man.” King James Bible.
149. +Proverbs 16:22. ”Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it: but the instruction of fools is folly.” King James Bible.
149. +John 8:12. ”Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” And again: John 9:4-5.
”I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. / As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” King James Bible.
149. +John 8:31-32. ”Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; / And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
King James Bible.
149. +James 1:25. ”But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” King James Bible.
149. +Proverbs 2:20-21 may be the pa.s.sage Arnold has in mind, although the language differs: ”That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. / For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.” One of the central devices in Proverbs is the metaphor of the ”path”--of uprightness, folly, etc. King James Bible.
150. +Romans 1:18. ”For the wrath of G.o.d is revealed from heaven against all unG.o.dliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” King James Bible.
150. +Philomathes, ”fond of knowledge, loving knowledge.” (Liddell and Scott.) GIF image:
154. +Zechariah 8:23. ”Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pa.s.s, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that G.o.d is with you.” King James Bible.
155. +Ephesians 5:6. ”Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of G.o.d upon the children of disobedience.” King James Bible.