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Zlbe ©pen Court
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE
S)ev>ote& to tbe Science of IReliolon, tbe IRelioion of Science, an& tbe Extension of tbe IReligious parliament "ffbea
Editor: Dr. Paul Carus. Associates: \ ^: ^ Hegkler.
I Mary Carus.
VOL. XVII. (no. 11) November, 1903. NO. 570
CONTENTS :
Frontispiece. The Kiosk of Phil^e.
Hebre7v Fiction. Rev. Edward Day 641
P'A-Lek. (Illustrated.) Editor 651
The Body of the Future Life : Is It Electrical? Chari.ks Hallock, M.B.S. 657
The Siloam Inscription. (Illustrated.) Editor 662
Falkland. (With Portrait. ) Henry Beers 667
A Word that Hath Been — A Sound Which Ever Lingers. General Horatio
G. Gibson, U. S. A 681
Obituary. Major- General D. M. Strong 691
The Goal. D. M. Strong 691
The Body of Resurrection According to Mr. Hallock 693
The Germanic Museum of Cambridge 695
Charles Carroll Bonney. In Memoriam. Callie Boxney Marrle . . . 696
The Uddiia 696
Book Reviews and Notes 698
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Hbe ©pen Court
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE
S)ev>ote& to tbe Science ot IReUoion, tbe IRelioion of Science, anO tbe ^Extension of tbe IRcligious parliament lOea
Editor: Dr. Paul Carus. Associates: \ ^: ^ Heckler.
( Mary Carus.
VOL. XVII. (no. 11) November, 1903. NO. 570
CONTENTS :
Frontispiece. The Kiosk of Phil/E.
Hebrejv Fiction. Rev. Edward Day 641
F'A-Lek. (Illustrated.) Editor 651
The Body of the Future Life : Is It Electrical ? Chari.ks Hallock, M.B.S. 657
The Siloam Inscription. (Illustrated.) Editor 662
Falkland. (With Portrait. ) Henry Beers 667
A Word that Hath Been — A Sound Which Ever Lingers. General Horatio
G. Gibson, U. S. A 681
Obituary. Major- General D. M. Strong 691
The Goal. D. M. Strong 691
The Body of Resurrection According to Mr. Hallock 693
The Germanic Museum of Cambridge 695
Charles Carroll Bonney. In Memoriam. Callie Boxnev Marble . . . 696
The Uddna 696
Book Revie7tis and Notes 698
CHICAGO
Ube ©pen Coutt publisbing Company
LONDON : Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., Ltd. Per copy, 10 cent5 (sixpence). Yearly, $1.00 (in the U. P. U., 58. 6<l.).
Copyright, 1903, by The Open Court Publishing Co. Entered at the Chicago Post OlEss as Secend-CIass Matter
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VOL. XVII. (no. II.) NOVEMBER, 1903. NO. 570
Copyright by The Open Court Publishing Co., 1903.
HEBREW FICTION,
BY REV. EDWARD DAY.
IT is curious to what extent the processes of the Hebrew mind, as those processes reveal themselves to us in the Old Testa- ment, have been misconceived. The reason for this misconception probably may be found very largely in the old theory of inspiration. So long as men held to the thought of a verbally inspired Bible, they naturally conceived it to be in the main a plain statement of facts. Indeed, we may say that in accordance with this conception of the Scriptures there was little reason for supposing that the He- brew mind had much to do creatively in making the literature pre- served for us in the Old Testament canon. Such mental processes as were necessary to other peoples in the making of their literatures were supposedly unnecessary here. Not thus is it with the new conception of the Bible which is, happily for us, surely, though all too slowly, winning its way among thoughtful people. This reveals the folk-stories and the poetry, the legal codes and the prophetic writings, as well as other parts of the Old Testament, to have been as truly products of the Hebrew mind as the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Platonic dialogues and the tragic poetry were of the Greek mind.
In his fascinating study of Se7fiitic Origins Prof. George Aaron Barton speaks of the Bedawi as the modern representatives of the Semitic peoples who anciently lived in Arabia. He reminds us that they are always underfed, that they suffer constantly from hunger and thirst, and that their bodies, thus weakened, fall an easy prey to disease. He further reminds us that "they range the silent desert, almost devoid of life, where the sun is powerful by day and the stars exceedingly brilliant by night." Dr. Barton then
642 THE OPEN COURT.
goes on to remark that "this environment begets in them intensity of faith of a certain kind, ferocity, exclusiveness, and imagination. These are all Semitic characteristics wherever we find the Semites; and there can be little doubt but that this is the land in which these traits were ingrained in the race." I find myself heartily as- senting to these words; especially do I feel that this scholar is right in speaking as he does of the imagination of the Semites. There are scholars who have failed to recognise this trait of the Semitic peoples. Repeatedly have we been told that they were destitute of imagination. Some seem to have taken the statement, "The Semite is unimaginative," as a sort of working hypothesis. This has led to a misunderstanding of the Hebrews among other Semitic peoples. Unquestionably it is partly in consequence of this that though there has been steady progress towards more in- telligent conceptions of the Bible, the movement has on the whole been painfully slow. In time we shall, I trust, hear it confidently and unqualifiedly asserted that the Hebrew has ever shown himself as a man of letters gifted imaginatively, and that much, if not most of his work as it appears in the literary remains of his past, and especially as it comes before us in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha is in the nature of fiction.
The time may yet come when we shall have to conclude that much of the imaginative literature of the Indo-European peoples reveals in manifold ways traces of Semitic influence. The time is not yet ripe for any serious, not to say exhaustive, attempt to set forth the influence of Babylonia upon the Greeks. Such finds as that of the library of Assurbanipal, which Hilprecht dug out of a room in the ancient temple of Bel at Nippur and brought with him to the University of Pennsylvania recently, must be deciphered be- fore we can safely speak with any reasonable degree of assurance. Yet even those of us who are unskilled in cuneiform can easily dis- cover points of similarity between Homer and certain of the Baby- lonian epics, as the Gilgamesh epic.
To most of us the question as to the capacity of the Hebrew mind for imaginative literature has to do largely with the Old Tes- tament. Has it any fiction ; and if so, how much and what is to be so considered? Our examination must necessarily cover, though in a somewhat cursory way, the whole Old Testament field. That much of it is imaginative we shall find. This is the direction in which the most fearless scholarship is moving to-day. Not only shall we find that much was purely imaginative, but we shall also find that nothing wholly escaped the play of their fancy. Even
HEBREW FICTION. 643
their chronicles which purported to be narratives of actual occur- rences were often as untrue to fact as were their folk-lore and their poetry; while their legal codes, their proverbs and their psalmody were embedded in fictions manifold.
There are parts of the Old Testament which have long been recognised by many as fictitious. That the Book of Job is an im- aginative poem, we have frequently been told. The dialogues are cast in a fictitious mold; but the story of the prologue is as truly fictitious. To the writer belonged the credit of conceiving both the slight story upon which he built his poem and the form in which he cast it. We might accept the statement of certain schol- ars that there was a typical patient man, known to Israel and alluded to in Ezekiel as Job, if it were not for our suspicion that the Book of Ezekiel is a Maccabean production in which it is not at all surprising that there should be mention of the Job of this very poem. All this has not been as frankly recognised as that the dialogues of this great drama of the inner life, or soul, are imagi- nary. The unknown writer, as he wrestled with the gigantic prob- lem which the presence of evil and misfortune among men flung in its provoking way in his face, as though to mock him, puts words now in the mouth of his supposed patriarch and anon in that of some imaginary friend of his.
That Canticles, or the so-called Song of Solomon, is an imagi- native love poem has been widely asserted for some time. Just now the contention of Herder in a modified form, that the little book consists of a number of independent love poems or dities, is growing in favor. ^ Such a conception of the work leaves its imagi- native character unquestioned. Though we no longer consider it a drama of pure love in which a certain number of characters play their separate parts consistently throughout, we still must admit that the different songs have their dramatic situations and charac- ters of a purely fictitious nature. Accepting the book in this new light, we are helped to understand the vein of coarseness, or lewd- ness, which runs through these sensuous songs, a vein our English translations but partially conceal.
That certain of the shorter poems, as the so-called Blessing of Jacob, the song Israel is said to have sung at the Red Sea, the Song of Moses found in Deuteronomy, the Song of Deborah found in Judges v., the Psalm of Hannah in i Samuel ii., have some sort of basis in the folk-lore of Israel, if not in fact, must be admitted; but that their writers treated such material as they found at hand
1 See Biblical Love Ditties. Paul Haupt.
644 THE OPEN COURT.
in a highly imaginative way is unquestionable. Compare for ex- ample at many points the Song of Deborah, a poem written prob- ably eight or ten centuries after the event it celebrates could have transpired, with the folk-tale of Judges iv., the data of which are themselves seriously open to question ; and you will find a wide divergence as to the number of Hebrew tribes engaged, two in the folk-tale to several in the poem ; as to the number of men in arms, 10,000 in the folk-tale to 40,000 in the poem ; as to the place of rendezvous, the side of Tabor in the folk-tale, Esdraelon in the poem. Notice, too, that while the crude, unfeeling folk story rep- resents the nomad woman Jael to have slain Sisera after she had taken him as a guest into her tent, an outrageous violation of the sacred laws of hospitality, the poem as the work of a more cultured age, with greater sensitiveness to the obligations and proprieties of life, represents her to have struck the warrior with a mallet a stag- gering blow upon the head as he bowed himself to drink of a bowl of milk at her tent door. Notice also with what consummate art this imaginative poem closes as the attention is taken from the car- nage of battle and the tragic death of Sisera to the distant home where the women of the harem peer forth, watching for the return of their lords, questioning one another meanwhile as to their indi- vidual share in the spoil, spoil such as early Israel could not have yielded their enemies.
Even more noteworthy is the purely imaginary character of the poem of i Samuel ii., the Psalm of Hannah, as it is called. There is not a sentence that could have had any appropriateness as the words of an overjoyed mother. It is safe to say that the sanity of a mother who should improvise such a poem under simi- lar circumstances to-day would be seriously questioned by her phy- sician and friends. I chance to know a little miss to whom, after relating the narrative of i Samuel i., a father read this poem. She instantly and innocently remarked that it was in apropos. "I can't see," she added, "what it has to do with the story." In her intui- tive insight she was right, though she had as a tiny literary critic left hopelessly behind the learned fathers of the Church for nearly two thousand years.
Passing from the imaginative poetry to the prose which has been regarded by many scholars as fictitious, we notice that the imaginative character of the Book of Ruth has long been recog- nised, though there are still those who are loath to think of Boaz and Ruth in any other light than as actual progenitors of David. Fortunately the fact that it is a tale after the style of those in the
HEBREW FICTION. 645
Decameron is disguised for us by our translators. A certain He- brew euphemism is invariably mistranslated. We, therefore, con- tinue to speak of "this wonderfully beautiful idyl"; as we also persist in thinking of the book as a magnificent protest against the policy of Ezra and Nehemiah who are said to have forbidden for- eign marriages.
A word should be said concerning Esther as a piece of fiction. That there is nothing in the way of historical data back of the story is widely admitted. In tone the book is pitilessly cruel ; yet that it is actually without moral significance we would not think to as- sert, for while we find its story of the awful reprisal and slaughter of the Gentiles by the Jews revolting, we do regard with compla- cency the story of Haman's fall and Mordecai's exaltation. Not only is the book a piece of fiction, but it is in its way apparently a novel with a purpose. We have something akin to a plot, which is crudely worked out, as we have a tragic conclusion which leaves the newly wedded queen to enjoy undisturbed her royal husband, while her uncle is in power and her people about her and through- out the realm are prosperous and happy. All this was written to account for the institution of the feast of Purim and, it would seem, to deepen among the Jews a hatred of other peoples and to revivify, and to intensify withal, their national consciousness.
Popular attention has been so directed to the Book of Jonah that it is not surprising that many conservative Biblical students should have been forced to accept the conclusion of progressive scholars, that it is a fiction of the late post-exilic time designed to beget in the Jews more liberal views of the scope of their religion and to lead them to look upon their Gentile neighbors as within the reach of Yahveh as a pitiful and forgiving God. To so under- stand this little prophetic book is to find it the most akin to the New Testament evangel of any book in the Old Testament. It is to be hoped that sometime we may have a great oratorio of Jonah. The story, if only we can forget all the foolish things said of it, as we forget those said of our first parents when listening to Hayden's great oratorio of the creation, has magnificent possibilities in this direction.
There is one other book which should be noticed as belonging to the imaginative literature of the Hebrews, the book of Daniel, which is without any basis in fact. Even the thought of Daniel as the typical wise man of Israel, who finds mention in Ezekiel, must be surrendered, and for similar reasons to those which necessitate our concluding that there was no such typically patient man as Job
646 THE OPEN COURT.
before the Book of Job was written. The only prominent actor taken from actual history, Nebuchadnezzar, was entirely miscon- ceived by the writer who could have known little of the man him- self, glorious as was his reign, for he lived four centuries prior to his time. Antiochus Epiphanes was the unprincipled ruler he had in mind, as he was the man he wished to see humbled. Here again we have fiction with a purpose. As a piece of early Maccabean writing this was designed to comfort the people in their distress and to hearten and reinforce them in their unequal and awful con- test with Syria. Just here it may be remarked that William Stearns Davis, who has deserved the favor with which "A Friend of Caesar" and "God Wills It" have been received, has ingloriously failed in " Belshazzar," because he has depended so slavishly on the Book of Daniel. We might excuse him for using the material of Daniel for purposes of fiction did he not profess to find it at crucial points more reliable than the well- attested conclusions of our best students of Babylonian life.
We by no means leave all the imaginative literature of the Old Testament behind when we turn to what purports to be the annals of Israel's past, for here we come upon myth, legend, and folk-lore which can have little, if any, historical basis. Here we find the Hebrew playing fancifully with his conceptions of tie cosmos and nature as well as the supposed incidents of his own history in much the same way early peoples of other lands have ever done with theirs. If we look to this literature for facts, or for material that may be used in the moral instruction of the young, we need to be extremely cautious. Dr. G. Stanley Hall and a cer- tain New York divine both lay themselves open to criticism just here. They tell us that here is something with which we should begin in our moral training of the young. That children, boys es- pecially, enjoy these Old Testament stories must be admitted; that they may therefore be used for purposes of entertainment to some extent may be granted; but that there is danger if we try to get a moral out of them we may create the impression on the part of the children that we are subjecting them to undue strain, I for one believe. Some two years ago a prominent American sculptor appealed to me to name two or three small volumes which would be helpful to him in his use of the Old Testament in his family. His children were daily putting to him the most perplexing ques- tions, critical questions such as few children thought to raise twenty-five years ago. A short time before, so he told me, he was reading some of the folk-stories of Genesis to his little boy when
HEBREW FICTION. 647
he was interrupted and startled by the remark : "Pop! Seems to me these stories are like those I sometimes tell which wont bear 'vestigation." The little fellow was right: many of these stories are unmoral if not immoral. This is true of the Samson stories; it is also true of that thrice told tale in which a patriarch to save him- self puts his wife in peril. The only moral of the story of Jacob's contest with the mysterious stranger at Peniel is the one indirectly suggested. The adversary in his wrestling bout with the patriarch strikes, and strikes below the belt. In other words, he, to use a modern athletic term, fouls. He should in consequence have been counted out. If the story means anything to us, it is that none, even an angel, should use his power illegitimately; but this the story was never designed to teach. In reality it reveals the dispo- sition of Israel as a people in the late time to glory in themselves as those who could hold their own with celestial powers when fairly treated and as those who could, even when worsted, win their heart's desire at the hand of these powers by their importunity. We find, then, that Israel's legends and folk-tales, as highly fanci- ful and imaginary literature, must be recognised for just what they are; and must in consequence be used with extreme caution lest we press them too far.
When we turn to the old chronicles, the J and E narratives, as they are called, we find that the story of an Egyptian sojourn and a bondage there suffered bears many marks that lead us to surmise that it is fictitious. May it not be purely imaginative ; and may it not reflect to a considerable extent the experiences du- ring the time of the Babylonian exile? The conclusion of scholars that these chronicles belong to the pre-exlic time cannot be said to be considered an irreversible one.
That the Israelites were nomads when they forded the Jordan and settled in Canaan we know; they had been so from time im- memorial. That the picture drawn in the late time of the old des- ert life was highly colored we know. They lived as nomads on their flocks and herds, not on manna, whatever that was conceived to be, and on quails; and they had to maintain themselves among their enemies by force of their own right arms. But what of the conquest, or rather of the settlement? We must go to the first chapter of Judges for anything approximating the truth, not to the Book of Joshua, which gives us the late priestly misconception of the supposed conquest of the land. A more curious piece of fic- tion it would be difficult to find anywhere. The very personality as well as the name, of this leader is open to question. The name
648 THE OPEN COURT.
means one whom Yah or Yahveh helps or delivers. Presumably he was conceived to be a deliverer or saviour. With him in story was associated the fish, for "Nun," the name of the supposed father, is the Chaldaic for fish. In Caleb, on the other hand, we encounter a Semitic clan which became absorbed in the tribe of Judah, for Caleb is the Hebrew for dog, a clan name.
Fictitious as is this reputed history, it is scarcely less so than the stories of Samuel and Saul and those related of David and Sol- omon. Passing strange too is the way in which Josiah and Ezra figure in the history of Israel. One is idealised and made to play a mighty part as a Deuteronomic reformer; the other appears to have been created de novo for the part the priests wished him to play as the great scribe.
The men known to scholars as Deuteronomists, who gave Is- rael Deuteronomy which they fictitiously represented Moses to have promulgated just before the people entered Canaan and who redacted, or edited, the historical books, wished the people to think there had been an effort made in the pre-exilic time to conform the life of the people to their peculiar conceptions and legal codes. So they told a wondrous story of the finding of a law-book and of a bloody reprisal and reform which Josiah in consequence brought about, thus rooting out all idolatrous practices and centralising the pure worship of Yahveh their God in Jerusalem. Then a century or so later, when the priests wished to promulgate their Levitical codes, they told a marvellous story of a man whom they called Ezra, and of a return of thousands under the patronage of Cyrus. That there is not a shred of truth in it all. Dr. C. C. Torrey of Yale University has shown in his masterly treatise published as his doctor's thesis in Germany a few years ago.^
Of the many other fictitious stories which were woven into the old chronicles I need not speak. Israel was in its meager way making history in those times, but such history as it made had little interest, and left few traces, while the stories told in the late time to give prestige to some party, or to further some reform, were carefully preserved. Most of the early poetry, to which we find occasional reference, and many of the old chronicles appear to have been lost, while this other literature was painstakingly pre- served.
In speaking of Hebrew fiction I can linger only to call atten- tion to the fact that both the liturgic and the gnomic poetry were ascribed by their late writers to men of the early time as David
1 The Com/iosition and Historical Value of Ezra-Neheniiak.
HEBREW FICTION. 649
and Solomon. Whether the prophetic literature was also pseud- epigraphic is a question which has been as yet scarcely raised by Hebrew scholars. If I have done anything in the way of original work beyond showing the fictitious nature of the Josiah story of the promulgation of Deuteronomy, it has been what I have done with my collaborator in revealing, what I take to be a fact, that such books as Amos, Hosea, and Micah were, as prophetic litera- ture, written in the late post-exilic time and attributed to supposed prophets who, though they do not appear in the old chronicles as actual personages, were conceived to have existed and to have played an important part as moral reformers and statesman.^ These fictions whereby the poetic and prophetic writings were dated back and ascribed to real or imaginary persons of the earlier centuries have their counterparts in the Apocrypha which in its general characteristics and its contents resembles large parts of the Old Testament.
It may seem at first thought as though the recognition of the fact that so much of the literature of the Hebrews is imaginative must disparage it as literature. Such is not the case. The value of the legal codes, the prophetic writings, and the liturgic and gnomic poetry, is scarcely touched by the fictions into which they are cast or enveloped. The thread of incident found in Jeremiah may be as purely imaginary as that which runs through Leviticus; but the discovery of the fact does not thereby discredit the pro- phetic thought. So far as purely fictitious parts of the Old Testa- ment are concerned, we need to remember that the purposes back of these writings gave them their value to Israel, as they may en- hance their interest for, if they do not increase their value to us. The growing life and thought of the people may be traced by us, albeit not as easily as would be possible had we a matter-of-fact narrative.
We should bear in mind the fact that the great masterpieces of the world belong to imaginative literature : the Iliad and the Odyssey, the /Eneid, the Divine Comedy, Faust, Paradise Lost, and the Dramas and the Comedies of Shakespeare, all are imagi- native. We need also to bear in mind the fact that it is not until recent years that history, save in exceptional instances, has been made a narrative of facts, if, indeed, it be yet. It has become cus- tomary to denounce the excessive novel reading of our day, though we personally read our full share of modern fiction. It should be
1 " Is the Book of Amos Post-Exilic," by Edward Day and Walter H. Chapin, in The Ameri- can yournal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, January, 1902.
650 THE OPEN COURT.
remembered that men and women have ever shown an appetite for romance and that now that history and certain other forms of liter- ature have lost much that is grotesque and fanciful, those who read must necessarily for the most part turn to fiction for entertainment. At all events nothing is gained through concealing the real nature of Hebrew literature.
Much of the literature of Israel is charged with moral purpose; it has in consequence certain ethical values for us. Yet even here quite apart from any beauty of form, there must be some sort of critical knowledge of its contents or its mission to the individual student or reader is an imperfect one. We would master it as lit- erature that we may the more truly appreciate its worth and beauty. So far as its ethical values are concerned, we may leave it largely to the pulpit and its supposedly trained exegetes. We surely may go to it as one of the world's great literatures to be thrilled by whatever is sublime and to be charmed by whatever is beautiful; to be entertained by its pleasing fictions and rendered more devout by its unsurpassed devotional poetry.
P'A-LEK.
BY THE EDITOR.
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDi ! The most bcautiful monument of Egyptian antiquity is wiped out from the face of the earth. P'a-lek or Philae is submerged in the flood of the Nile and the highest buildings only appear above the surface of the water.
Phil.e from the North. (After Langl.^
PhilvE is the Hellenised form of the Egyptian philak, a mod- ification of PHALEK or PALEK which mcaus "the Island of the End." "p" or "ph" is the article; "a" means ''Island" and "lak," ''ceasing" or "finishing." Egyptian pilgrims called it by that name because here was the end and goal of their journey.
The island, the most southern of the several tombs of Osiris
1 Reproduced from Erman's Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 8.
652
THE OPEN COURT.
was sacred to the spouse of the god, to the divine wife and mother, Lady Isis, Queen of Heaven.
It is now known under its Greek name "Philae" all over the civilised world but the natives of Egypt and Nubia call it Geziret Anas-elWogud after the hero of a love story in the "Arabian Nights."
And, indeed, the island has always been famous for the pecu- liar charm of its fairy tale atmosphere. Under the cloudless sky cf Egypt it lay like a green emerald, all the more precious by the con- trast to the bare gray rocks which surrounded its northern shore. As a gem is set on a silver foil, so it rises from the shining current
THE TEMPLE OF ISIS. — PANORAMA
of the mysterious river. The serene columns and temple walls, painted in gay colors, were fringed with lofty date palms, and the quietude of the near desert on either side of the granite bluffs made this fascinating spot a fit retreat for religious contemplation. A landscape poem, a hymn of adoration visualised, a dream of peace and bliss made real, — so Philae appeared to many visitors that came from afar to worship the weird powers of the life and to be initiated into the mysteries which were confidently believed to give comfort in death, divine assistance to the soul in its journey through the land of shades, and strength to overcome the terrors of Hades. A great dam at Assuan, which, it is hoped, will bring an an- nual increase to the Egyptian revenues of thirteen million dollars,
p'a-lek. 653
has there changed the valley of the river into a broad lake. A number of villages which dotted the banks are inundated, and one of the most sacred spots of pagan worship which has been visited by millions of worshippers in ancient days and remained down to modern times the goal of many thousands of curious travellers, scholars, and archaeologists, is now fast becoming a booty of the floods. The water of the Nile now laves the columns of the temple walls, and the moisture creeps up to the mural paintings. It is only a question of time when they will be destroyed entirely and when the stones themselves will be underwashed and crumble away.
OF PhIL.E THE KIOSK.
Philae was a small granite island, only 1200 feet long and 450 feet broad, but it was famous on account of the sanctity of its an- cient temple. Here, at the southern frontier of Egypt, remote from the turmoil of the busy world, must we seek the last resort of pagan devotees. This is the place where for several centuries after the rise of Christianity, in spite of the edicts of Theodosius prohib- iting all pagan worship, the festival of Osiris continued to be cele- brated, and where paganism had entrenched itself so strongly that it could be ousted only by force at a direct command of Emperor Justinian in the middle of the sixth century of the Christian era.
Philae does not belong to Egypt proper. It is situated above the cataract at Assuan, in a district which was even in historical
654
THE OPEN COURT.
King Usirtasen's Stele of Wady Halfa.
PHIL.li FROM THE NOKTHWEST.
P A-LEK.
655
times inhabited by savage tribes. The southern trade of the Egyp- tian inhabitants of Elephantine suffered much from depradations until the kings of Egypt decided to establish their authority in this part of the country, and King Usirtasen I. of the twelfth dynasiy
Kiosk of Phil.e, from the North. (according to Budge about 2758 B. C. ) succeeded in conquering the tribe of Konusit and extended the authority of the Pharaos to Korosko, a place above the cataract of Wady Haifa, which is easily defended. There he built a fort on either bank of the Nile and
656 THE OPEN COURT.
erected a triumphal stele in which he recorded his victory over the barbarians. Since then the sovereignty of Egypt in these parts remained forever firmly established.
Usirtasen's triumphal stele, which has been acquired by the Museum of Florence, has been repeatedly translated, first by Cham- pollion, then by Rosellini, and finally by Berend.^ The stele, which is dated the eighteenth year of Usirtasen,^ commemorates a decisive victory over several negro tribes, the Kas, the Shemyk, the Khe- saa, the Shat, the Akherkin, etc. It shows the King with a rope in his hand to which are attached ten names encircled in battle- mented cartouches and mounted by the portraits of ten negro chiefs. The inscription declares that the King presented them bound and their arms tied on their backs before god Ammon and sacrificed them at the altar with his own hand.^
Philae is situated within the territory conquered by Usirtasen I. and must have been used as a sacred spot since olden times, per- haps since the days of that great conqueror, but it is not mentioned before the reign of Nektanebas II., a king of the Thirtieth Dynasty who reigned in the middle of the fourth century B. C, when Egypt had lost its independence and had become a province of the Per- sian empire. It is touching to notice that the priests of Palek ignored the government of the foreign invader and clung to their legitimate king, recording his name as if he had ruled in fact, while we know that he was merely a private person and a power- less pretender.^
(to be concluded.)
1 ~rincipaux Monu}nents dn Mus^e Egyptien de Florence, pp. 51-52.
2 The date is established by a fragment recently discovered by Captain Lyons.
3 See Budge, History of Egypt , Vol. I,, p. 163, and Maspero, Dawn 0/ Civilisation, p. 4S4.
i The Century magazine ior Octohex contains an illustrated article on " The Destruction of Philae " by Alonzo Clark Robinson. The author denounces the destruction of the island as a " tragedy ' ' and a " murder." He says : " The temple of Rameses III. at Thebes is more impos- ing, Karnak is larger, the Pyramids are older, the decorations which blaze upon the walls of Abydos are more varied and numerous, the pillars of Dendera excel in height and majesty ; but Philae was the most beautiful, the most loved."
The illustrations in T/te Century Magazine show the temple ruins in their present lament! able condition surrounded by the hostile waters of the risen river.
THE BODY OF THE FUTURE LIFE:
IS IT ELECTRICAL?
BY CHARLES HALLOCK, M. B. S.
THE thought that the body of the future life may be electrical was suggested to the writer by the wireless message and the flight of the angel Gabriel as mentioned in Daniel ix. 21. It is onl}' a surmise. It does not amount to a conviction. How can we know? It is not within the mental scope of man to penetrate the realm of the unknowable. If science fail to support, and Bible revelation be rejected, what avenue to knowledge is left? How can the truth be known? Reason itself is sh}'.
At the same time it cannot be denied that Scripture seems to support the postulate here presented in a startling manner. . There were a great many phenomena associated with the life of Christ as recorded by the Apostles which appear in evidence.
The Apostle Paul has made an imperfect attempt in Cor. xv. to define the substance and nature of the spiritual body which is to traverse celestial space after its transformation at the putative Res- urrection : but psychology was a crude study in Paul's days, and his exposition does not satisfy. Modern science, however, does help to explain many phenomena which were formerly unaccount- able, or accounted as miracles, and to give meaning to texts of Scripture which have hitherto seemed void of significance.
During all historic time a large proportion of mankind has be- lieved in the immortality of the soul. Since Christ came many be- lieve also in the resurrection of the body. What body? Our car- nal natural body Avhich is subject to decay and corruption? Which has been put away in the grave diseased, deformed, dismembered, or torn to shreds by explosions? Christ and his disciples say, "No." But we are told that when the final call shall come "we shall all be changed." And we are assured furthermore that "flesh
658 THE OPEN COURT.
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." [This postulate is diametrically opposite to Job's idea in the Old Testament times. Job xix. 26.]
Now, as man was "created in God's own image," and Christ, the divine emanation, "took upon himself the form of a man," and as "God is a spirit," and "his angels (who were created be- fore the world was made) are they not all ministering spirits," the main split in the analogy seems to consist in the fact that human beings are at first mortal, and so subject to physical death and dis- solution, whereas the Godhead and angels, archangels, seraphim, cherubim, and other celestial beings so often spoken of in the Scriptures, are immortal. But we are taught that in due time our "spirits shall return to God who gave them," and then we shall be like them. In what guise or substance, then, will they return? The transfiguration of the Saviour on the Mount gives an inkling.
All the angels who have ever had intercourse with man on earth resembled men, and we have Scripture record of one hundred and thirty of their visitations in Old and New Testament times ; so that their form, behavior, features, missions, and characteristics are not altogether hypothetical. In the cases of Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, and some others, their visits were so frequent that their persons became familiar. Although these messengers usually ap- peared in human form, they often disguised themselves, just as Christ did during his last forty days (Matt, xxviii. 3; Luke xxiv. 37), or transformed themselves at pleasure (Mark xvi. 12). Quite frequently their faces were luminous (Rev. x. i ; Rev. i. 14, 15, 16). On occasions their effulgence was so dazzling as to terrify (Matt, xxviii. 3, 4). They seemed to eat, speak, taste, hear, see, feel, and assimilate food as mortals do. Three of them sat at meat with Abraham. Two ate with Lot. In some instances they ordered what should be served. One wrestled with Jacob, showing inher- ent athletic strength. But they manifested supernatural powers as well. They appeared and vanished at will. Obstacles did not intercept their passage or their vision. Distance did not limit their sight or hearing. Levitation in fire, air, and water was a per- sonal endowment. One of them ascended in the flame of Manoah's altar and was not consumed. They had phenomenal powers dele- gated to them and were often employed on errands of mercy, or as nuncios, or as agents of destruction, armed with thunderbolts, to execute God's wrath. They seemed to possess in a modified de- gree the divine attributes. So likewise Christ ate and drank with his disciples and others after Ids carnal body had been discarded, par-
THE BODY OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 659
taking of bread, meat, honey, and fish at sundry times. At times he changed his features so that his intimate male and female asso- ciates did not recognise him (Mark xvi. 12; Luke xxiv, 16, 17). He walked on the water; he was caught up in the air: he appeared and vanished at will. At times his face was luminous, and at the transfiguration his whole body was aglow with incalescence. In like phase he vanished out of their sight at the last.
All this preamble is pertinent to the query: What shall be our future body in life immortal? The Scripture saith : "It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we shall be like Him.'"'' (i John iii. 2.) And again: "When I wake up after thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it." (Ps. xvii. 16.) Christ has said: "I and the Father are one." He has repeatedly declared his kinship with mankind. He assured his disciples of their oneness with the Father and with himself. Therefore we argue from analogy what our body will resemble, and we may gather by the same logical process what its substance will be.
Let us consider :
While the Saviour was "of the earth earthy," he was subject to physical limitations. After his resurrection he was exempt. His face was radiant. A halo of light at times encircled his head, and on occasion "his countenance shone like lightning." Were not these phenomena purely electrical? Was not his new body an elec- trical body peculiarly adapted to the realm of infinitude? Why not electrical? The idea is not preposterous. Modern science has discovered that electricity is not matter. (?) Can there not be en- tities which we wot not of, so different from our own that the Sa- viour himself would not attempt to describe them, simply because, as he declared, his disciples would not comprehend; any more, perhaps, than a fish (as some philosopher has cited) which has known only aquatic life can imagine a species of beings living out of water and breathing air?
What other substance than electricity is so subtle that solid bodies present no obstacle to its passage, and yet so potent that it can smash rocks to atoms? Christ's resurrected body possessed this nature. Its character was manifested by the aureola which enveloped him at his transfiguration and final ascension. He was electrically luminous when he walked on the water, and the sailors "thought it was a spirit." His electrical nature was manifested especially in his power of levitation. The same peculiarity invested the "shining ones" who sat by the Saviour's vacated tomb, and it has characterised the presence of all angels, "saints in light" (Col.
66o THE OPEN COURT.
i. 12), who appeared in visions to Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and St. John, in their spiritual seances and interviews. The glare in almost every instance was blinding : its effect stunning. At the Pentecost the Holy Spirit showed itself in "tongues of fire." It blinded St. Paul on his way to Damascus It was present in the "Shechina" of the inner tabernacle, in the "pillar of fire" which preceded the Israelitish vanguard like an ignis fatuiis in their wilderness journey, and in the Ark of the Covenant. It was conspicuously manifested when Nahum inadvertently put out his hand to steady the ark and fell dead as if he had touched a live wire. It kindled the wood of Elijah's altar and licked up the water in its trench. It explains the transcendent glory of the New Jerusalem which was beyond the power of St. John to describe; it is ever present in the spec- tacular drama of the Revelation, sometimes in brilliant corusca- tions, and again accompanied by thunder and tremors. Presumably it will scintillate from the "crowns of glory" which are promised to the blessed.
This theory of the electrical body, if accepted, makes the vis- ible phenomena of modern spiritualism possible and real. It makes the hypothesis of annihilation quite as possible, for lightning often consumes and leaves no trace behind. An agent so potential, if wielded by a Gabriel or a Raphael under divine direction, would eradicate all material things as easily and completely as they did Sodom and Gomorrah ; if it so pleased the Almighty, rather than to exercise the divine fiat, which presumably can unmake as easily as it can create.
"I am the light of the world." God said: "Let there be light, and there was light." What kind of light? It could not have been of the planets, for suns, moons, and stars had not yet been created. Was it not electrical light like the aurora borealis, whose displays have at times within the past century lighted up a hemisphere simultaneously? "His lightnings gave shine unto the world." (Ps. xcvii. 4.) At creation the earth was given a physical light of its own, quite irrespective of the great "Light of lights." But in the future of immortality there will be no need of the sun, "for the Lord giveth them light." (Rev. xxv. 5.) "By his light we shall see light," just as by the solar light we see the sun.
The passage of man's spiritual body, the "vital spark,'" through space in the eternal hereafter, is certainly not more wonderful or mysterious than the transit of a wireless message through the ter- restrial atmosphere. That appreciable time is occupied in its pas- sage from the celestial realm to earth, or at least through the domain
THE BODY OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 66l
of the stellar universe (beyond which, according to Wallace, all is infinity) is evident from the divine injunction to the angel Gabriel, on one occasion, to "fly quickly.''' In the terrestrial envelope flight would be retarded; in vacuity the duration of transit would prob- ably be not appreciable. It might be as quick as thought itself! But the object of an electrical body is not to facilitate transit, but to serve as a visible medium of identification between those who have been acquainted on earth aforetime. Our carnal faculties of perception and our ever changing bodies would be unreliable fac- tors to depend on, indeed ! Any soul that loves has a yearning for a visible and tangible presence. Telepathy does not satisfy ; con- tact is desired. A living soul needs a vitalised body. Electrified, the spiritual body becomes the visible expression of a living soul. Its audible expression has been heard in the " still small voice, " as well as in the thunders of Sinai !
If mortal man on earth can animate an electric spark, give it voice, and dispatch it from continent to continent in three seconds, God the all-Powerful can animate a "ministering spirit" of the same nature as His own and make its flight instantaneous. "He maketh his ministers a flaming fire." (Ps. civ. 4.) In like manner the human-divine being when translated can go where it will. No mortal body will clog or impede its passage. The law of gravita- tion will not confine it, but its flight will annihilate time and space. Its presence would be almost ubiquitous. Thereby we prove our kinship with the "Father of Lights."
"I have said, ye are gods !"
Taking this view of our oneness with the Trinity, as taught by the Saviour, we get rid of the skeptic's specious objection that man is too insignificant to engage the special interest of a Supreme Cre- ator who deals with the infinite and illimitable; and that the idea of a vicarious sacrifice of the Divine Son for fallen man is prepos- terous. Is there anything more unique or improbable in the as- sumption that the ultimate purpose of the Deity in creating the universe was to subserve the production of a living soul to be de- veloped in a perishable body, than there is in the scientific fact that the infinitesimal germ or protoplasm should enlarge into a creature so many million times its size as to be beyond mental or mathematical comprehension?
THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION.
BY THE EDITOR.
BOYS playing in the pool of Siloam at Jerusalem crawled into the ancient aqueduct, and one of them, a native, slipped and fell into the water. On rising, he noticed in the gloom of the tun- nel a tablet bearing an inscription. He told his teacher, Dr. Schick, a German architect residing at Jerusalem who on inves- tigation discovered characters of the Phoenician alphabet which was used in Palestine before the Babylonian captivity. This hap- pened in 1880, and when Professor Sayce came to Jerusalem in 1881 he entered the conduit and copied the inscription by the dim light of a candle. Six weeks later. Dr. Guthe removed the deposit of lime and other sediment of the water and obtained an exact copy of the inscription. A cast was taken and squeezes made from the cast which now could be studied at leisure and in good light. The inscription is situated on the right side of the wall of the conduit, nineteen feet from the exit that opens upon the Pool of Siloam. At that place the tunnel is very high, but it grows smaller and smaller and is in places not higher than two feet. It leads the water down from the Virgin Spring and measures 1708 yards in length. It does not run down in a straight line, and in the center there are two blind alleys which originated by mistaken measure- ments. The inscription runs thus :
1. Lo, the tunnel (n^pn, piercing through) ! Now this is the his
tory of the tunnel. Whilst yet [the miners were plying]
2. The pick each toward his fellow and while there were yet three
cubits to be cut, there was heard the voice of a man
3. Calling to his fellow, for there was a misdirection (niT)^ in the
rock on the right hand and, on the day
IThe word zada/i (m*) is otherwise unknown in Hebrew. Professor Sayce translates it (Records of the Past, New Version, Vol. I., p. 173) by " excess " or " obstacle." At the same time he suggests that the obliterated part contains a statement beginning with the words " and on the left." Rev. Stanley A. Cook, in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, p. 883, suggests the meaning " fissure,"
THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION.
663
The original, now in the Museum at Constantinople,
A squeeze taken from the original.
'5^ .^S^-j. :az ^.r. f. -^ M
A tracing made from the squeeze. The Siloam Inscription.
which he thinks the context seems to require. While we believe that Professor Sayce's judgment the situation is correct, we think that he missed the true meaning of the word, which can only mean the opposite of excess, viz., a deficit ; a manco ; a shortage.
664 THE OPEN COURT.
4. Of tunnelling through, the cutters smote pick against pick, and
there flowed
5. The water from the channel to the pool, 12,000 cubits and
6. Cubits was the height of the rock over the heads of the excava-
tors."
We translate the doubtful word mt, by "misdirection," for we believe that it is connected with ".*, "haughty, impudent, sinful," and with V'"'l> "haughtiness of heart." These words presuppose, according to Gesenius," the root r("M=TT, which can only mean "to sin against, to trespass, to err." Thus the word zadah should mean an error, or a miscalculation which if referred to the tunnel- ling indicates that the miners who began at the two ends missed their connection. There was a manco, as the Italians say. The two parties of excavators missed each other on the right. But the miners came so close to each other that the workers on one side could hear the voices of their fellows on the other side, and the noise of their picks. Then they broke through the rock sideways and met. Hence the two blind alleys in the tunnel ! They are still left as indications of both the difficulties which the ancient mining engineers (probably Phoenicians) had to encounter, and the cor- rectness of this interpretation of the questionable word "zadah."
The lacuna must have contained the word "They turned," i. e., the miners changed the direction of tunnelling and turned toward each other.
The water conduit has been assigned to the reign of Hezekiah, because in 2 Kings xx. 30 it is stated that this king made a pool and a conduit and brought water into the city, and in 2 Chronicles xxxii. 30 we read that he "stopped the upper water course of Gihon and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David," but the conduit of our inscription seems to be of older date. The work was made by engineers whose knowledge was very incom- plete, and a passage in Isaiah viii. 6 speaks of the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, implying that an aqueduct must have been in ex- istence at his time. Thus all we know about the tunnel is the statement of the inscription and further that it is older than Isaiah ; but Isaiah uttered his prophecy while Ahaz the father of Hezekiah was still reigning over Israel.^
1 The word here, which begins with m and ends with i, is doubtful, and Sayce suggests some word like " part " or " portion." The rock above the excavators at the exit of the tunnel is only about ten feet, while toward the north it is one hundred and seventy feet. Mr. Cook suggests that it may mean the average thickness of the rock above the tunnel.
2 German edition, I., p. 530.
3 Sayce, Fresh Ligkt/rom the Ancient Monuments, p. 104.
THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION. 665
There is another ancient aqueduct which is straight and we may assume that this latter one was built by Hezekiah, while the tunnel, referred to in our inscription, may date back to the reign of Solomon.
The alphabet in which the inscription is written is the so called Phcenician script. It is the same as the alphabet used by Moab in the Moabite stone. Says Professor Sayce i^
" They are characterised by a peculiarity which shows not only that writing was common, but also that the usual writing material was papyrus or parchment, and not stone or metal. The ' tails ' attached to certain letters are not straight as on the Moabite Stone or in Phoenician inscriptions, but rounded."
The Hebrew characters which are now used are the more ele- gant Chaldaean script which the Jews adopted during their sojourn in the Babylonian captivity.
The inscription of Shiloah is very important because it is the oldest Hebrew inscription extant.
1 R. o/the P., second series, I , p. 173.
FALKLAND.
BY HENRY BEERS.
IF our methods of studying history are open to criticism, it might be not unjustly said that they too often cause us to leave a very desirable object out of account. We are not taught to be suf- ficiently diligent and careful to find the link that really connects other times and other men with the present and ourselves. We are thankfully conscious of great improvement in the methods of historical science. Almost within our own day the necessity of measuring perspective has for the first come to be clearly under- stood and reckoned with. True, we often measure it wrongly, but that is no great matter, for our mistakes can be corrected : the great thing is our having learned that we must measure it at all. But while we are, as I say, thankfully conscious of this benefit among many, we must also be conscious of the duty that is in some measure consequent upon it. It is not enough that by the aid of this improved science we should see things more nearly as they are, that we should see men in more nearly true relation to their circumstances, that we should reach nearer the true significance of certain critical periods. If we sincerely desire to increase the prac- tical value of this' most valuable study, we should also, as we sur- vey these men and circumstances and critical periods, clearly mark what it is that they have specifically /cr us; what they offer us that we can profitably use to aid us in adjusting ourselves to our own conditions. This duty is no doubt quite regularly ignored ; and because it is ignored, perhaps a practical good is often done, not by making a detailed description of epochs and characters, but by the less ambitious task of extracting and exhibiting what it is that these present that will really help and serve us. To such a task this essay is addressed : it is meant to draw attention to a noble but neglected man by showing how he belongs to us, by showing the relation that he maintained with the future, with ourselves.
FALKLAND. 667
The fatal taint in the Stuart blood which earned Rochester's pitiless epigram, had precipitated the inevitable contest between Church and Dissent. The hateful mixture of religion and politics, which ruins both, was being busily compounded. The noble reli- gious spirit of the earlier Puritans as it appears in their protest against loose and vicious living, had given way to mere partisan political bigotry and bitterness, /ure divino Episcopacy was met hy jure divino Presbyterianism. Laud was at Canterbury and Main- waring in the pulpit. Shakespeare and Spenser were gone, and in their place were Davenant and Milton. Comus was followed by Lycidas. Puritanism was jealous of the Establishment, and the Establishment was vexing Puritanism : and in the intensely politi- cal aspect that organised religion took on, one could see a certain forecast of the day approaching, — hastened by the reverses that Protestantism had just been experiencing in France and Germany, — when any other aspect that religion might be thought to have would be impenetrably veiled ; a day of clouds and thick darkness; a day of ill-conceived, hasty, and random action, and of rancorous temper.
Placed between these two forces, both quickened to the utmost energy of fanaticism,— an unintelligent and intolerant High Church royalism on the one side and an unintelligent and intolerant Puri- tanism of considerable popular strength on the other, — was a man who has somehow lived to see our day, — Falkland. We do not know him. Knox we know, and Laud we know; Pym and Hamp- den, Baxter and Montague we know, but this name does not sound familiar. Clarendon speaks of Falkland at length. Hume gives him a paragraph. His name is barely mentioned once or twice in the more compendious of our ordinary histories. Yet it is hard to see how Falkland could take a larger place in such works as our English histories commonly are. Their necessary limitations allow them hardly a line of digression. Much of their space must be de- voted to the ins and outs of politics, and Falkland was no politi- cian. They must notice strenuous men of action, and Falkland was not strenuous. They must trace the progress of military affairs, and Falkland, though brave, was not distinguished as a soldier, even to the degree of having an independent command. Falkland was a student, a man of letters; but the few trifles of his writing that are preserved are hardly above literary mediocrity. In his personal appearance he was undersized and homely, and his voice was unpleasant. He died at the age when most of us are only beginning to ripen, — thirty-four. What claim can a man who
668
THE OPEN COURT.
accomplished apparently so little, whose share in epoch-making was apparently so small, who left so light an impress upon his own time, — what claim can such a man have upon us? Let us go deeper into the little that is known about his life.
Sir Lucius Gary, Lord Falkland, was born about 1610, edu- cated at Dublin and Oxford, and seems also to have been for a time at Cambridge. At twenty one he married the sister of his friend Morison; a marriage which brought upon Falkland the severe displeasure of his father, by reason of the lady's compara-
FALKLAND. 66g
tive poverty. Falkland withdrew into Holland, looking for an op- portunity to take military service; but finding none, returned to England and applied himself seriously to literary and philosophical pursuits. The death of his father in 1633 interrupted these, but Falkland resumed them as soon as he could. His usual residence was the manor of Great Tew in Oxfordshire, about ten miles from the University. In 1640 he entered Parliament as member for Newport in the Isle of Wight. Eighteen months before his death he became Secretary of State, and entering the royal army at the out- break of the Civil War, was killed in the undecisive battle of New- bury, Sept. 20, 1643. The record of his burial, dated three days later, is found in the register of Great Tew church.
Seven years of literary leisure, three years of uneventful pub- lic life, a violent and untimely death, — this is all. It is true that during his public career great events took place ; but Falkland had almost no part in them. Beside the Straffords, the Cromwells, and the Iretons of the period, we might regard him as hardly more than an onlooker. He did his work faithfully in public office, and did it exceedingly well : but in the world of politics as in the world of society and religion, his attachments were nearly always to the losing cause. In short, he was unpopular and unsuccessful.
Let us now turn to what has been said about Falkland. The first thing we notice is that for an unpopular and unsuccessful man who cut so small a figure on the public stage, he is most extrava- gantly praised. Extravagantly, because it seems if he really de- served the encomiums he received, he could not help counting for more than he did : and the sober verdict of history is that he hardly counts at all. His praise is sung in verse by Ben Jonson, Sir Francis Wortly, Suckling, Waller, and Cowley, in a strain amount- ing to panegyric. But these were friends, and something must be allowed for the amiable weakness and partiality of friendship, and something perhaps, as well, for the current fashion of compliment and ceremony, which would now seem possibly a little strained and Oriental. Clarendon, however, may be taken more nearly at his face value. He speaks of Falkland's death as "a. loss which no time will suffer to be forgotten and no success or good fortune could repair." He praises Falkland's abilities and accomplish- ments, and says all that can be said about the worth of his public services : but that Falkland could not live by these is as evident to Clarendon as it is to us. There is a strain, however, running al- most continuously through this account, which shows that Claren- don had seized and fastened upon the characteristic that justifies
670 THE OPEN COURT.
all the praise of Falkland, that makes him eminent, that makes him really ours. In the first ten lines of Clarendon's account this strain appears. Barely does he mention Falkland's "prodigious parts of learning and knowledge ; " before he sets forth his "inimi- table sweetness and delight in conversation, his so flowing and ob- liging a humanity and goodness to mankind, his primitive simpli- city and integrity of life." And it is to this view of Falkland that Clarendon perpetually recurs. He says, "his disposition and na- ture was so gentle and obliging, so much delighted in courtesy, kindness and generosity, that all mankind could not but admire and love him." Again; "His gentleness and affability, so tran- scendent and obliging that it drew reverence and some kind of compliance from the roughest and most unpolished and stubborn constitutions, and made them of another temper of debate in his presence than they were in other places." Recounting the attempts made upon Falkland by the Church of Rome, he tells us that "he declined no opportunity or occasion of conversation with those of that religion, whether priests or laics. . . . He was so great an enemy to that passion and uncharitableness which he saw produced by dif- ference of opinion in matters of religion, that in all those disputa- tions with priests and others of the Roman Church, he affected to manifest all possible civility to their persons and estimation of their parts. . . . He was superior to all those passions and affections which attend vulgar minds.. ..The great opinion he had of the upright- ness and integrity of those persons who appeared most active, espe- cially Mr. Hampden, kept him longer from suspecting any design against the peace of the kingdom : and though he differed from them commonly in conclusions, he believed long their purposes were honest."
When a bill was proposed to exclude the bishops from the House of Lords, Falkland supported it. He regarded the conduct of the clergy as a nuisance. He thought they aroused discontent and disturbed the public peace. He perceived that the things which interested them were entirely beside the mark. "The most frequent subjects," said he, "even in the most sacred auditories, have been the divine right of bishops and tithes, the sacredness of the clergy, the sacrilege of impropriations, the demolishing of Pu- ritanism." The chief concern of the clergy in Falkland's view should be with religion ; and with all this, he clearly saw, religion had nothing to do. "Love, Joy, concord, lotigsi/ffering, gentleness, goodness, trust, mildness, self-control,''^ — these were the things that in- terested Falkland, these the things that he believed religion should
FALKLAND. 67I
promote. And he saw that so far from promoting this grace and peace, religion, tainted by its debasing admixture of politics, was then bringing forth only confusion and every evil work. Laud, busily countering on the most inveterate prejudices in his effort to maintain a theory of the priesthood, repelled him. He went out of his way to profess admiration for the Archbishop's learning and talents, but his mind was large enough to know that religion is a temper, an inward life, and that Laud had clean missed it. He saw that the object of religion is not a theory of the priesthood, nor has religion anything to do with a theory of the priesthood ; he saw that the object of religion is grace and peace. Nor did the enterprise of the Puritans, the effort to organise a spiritual democ- racy, attract him more; for the object of religion, again, is not an organisation, but grace and peace. But the largeness of mind that enabled him to see all this, also condemned him to stand alone.
We find Falkland, then, advocating the removal of the bishops from the House of Lords, as an available measure for turning them back upon their proper business. But when an attempt was made later to abolish Episcopacy, Falkland stood out against it. For this he was promptly taxed with insincerity and vacillation by Hampden, as was natural. It would be too much to expect from a man of Hampden's narrow range of mind that he should understand how Falkland could repudiate 'Ldiud's Jure divino notion of bishops, and yet not be for going to the opposite extreme and doing away with bishops altogether. Falkland was out with the Laudian clergy for his action on the bill for the removal of the bishops; he was out with the popular party for refusing to aid in abolishing Episcopacy; he had to face the charge of inconsistency from both, he was dis- liked by both. But alas for Laud and Hampden alike, this incon- sistency of Falkland's was simply seriousnessl Falkland was grandly serious, he saw things as they are. He saw that Episcopacy was a great and venerable institution that had collected about it an enormous accretion of sentiment and poetry, and was therefore not lightly to be put away, for it had in it an immense power that should be used and used rightly; but he saw also that before this power could be used rightly, the institution itself must be trans- formed and brought to a better sense of its original intention. He opposed Laud and the High Church clergy, yet refused to concur in abolishing their order; which means no more than that he saw so many good reasons for maintaining Episcopacy that he disliked to see so much made of a bad one. He saw that Laud's contention and the Puritan contention were alike devoid of any real solidity.
672 THE OPEN COURT.
that they were not serious; and that between the triumph of either there was not a pin to choose. The triumph of jure divino Epis- copacy meant that the form of Church government which Falkland really thought the best possible,- — and in the long run, religion it- self,— would be brought into disrepute : while the triumph of the Puritan spiritual democracy held no better prospect for religion, and in an ecclesiastical way meant merely the triumph of each man for himself, the unchecked sway of individual self-assertion, crudeness, and vulgarity. Hence he was not for helping on the triumph of either, but he was for the renovation and transformation of both. In his speech on the London Petition for abolishing gov- ernment by bishops, he said : "Mr. Speaker, I do not believe them to be jure divino ; nay, I believe them not to be jure divino ; but neither do I believe them to be injuria humana. I neither consider them as necessary nor as unlawful, but as convenient or inconveni- ent. But since all great mutations in government are dangerous, even where what is introduced by that mutation is such as would have been profitable upon a primary foundation; and since the greatest danger of mutations is that all the dangers and inconveni- ences they may bring are not to be foreseen ; and since no wise man will undergo great danger but for great necessity; my opinion is that we should not root up this ancient tree, as dead as it ap- pears, until we have tried whether by this or the like lopping of the branches, the sap which was unable to feed the whole may not serve to make what is left grow and flourish."
O happy country of England, which could at this time suffer so much as one voice of clear reason to be raised above the hoot- ings of her maddened mobs !
The practical disadvantage of establishing a thing upon a false basis is that sooner or later people find it out: and when they have found it out, they rarely exercise the calmness and patience to take what is valuable in the thing itself and reestablish it rightly. More often in their disappointment they let the good go with the bad and make a clean sweep of both together. To appear under this disadvantage is a fault; and it is a fault which disfigures and vulgarises much of our apologetic literature. Archdeacon Brown — now, I believe, a bishop in some Western diocese — writes a book called The Church for Americans, in which he seeks to recommend the Protestant Episcopal Church, largely by examining its histori- cal claims. This, in itself, is excellent, for by following out a line of investigation such as Archdeacon Brown proposes, some at least, of the real power of that history is bound to be felt. But
FALKLAND. 673
when Archdeacon Brown begins to account for this power by ap- plying the jure divino notion of Apostolic Succession, the reader of to-day feels that thereby he does no more than show an uncom- mon gift of seeing into a millstone. The reader of ten years hence will simply close the book at this point, saying that it cannot pos- sibly benefit him. And yet, Archdeacon Brown appeals to a very real sense, — a sense of the vast and beneficent influence of a great institution. But he encourages us to account for that influence in a way that is not serious: he would have us think that if his way of explaining that benefit turns out to be erroneous, the benefit itself is a delusion, — and this is levity.
The biographer of Cowley says that the poet was especially attracted to Falkland by two things : the generosity of his mind and his neglect of the vain pomp of human greatness. Falkland's fortune descended directly to him from his maternal grandmother: and when he contracted the marriage that brought upon him the displeasure of his father, he at once proposed to make over the whole of it to his parents and accept an allowance, meanwhile withdrawing himself from his father's sight. As Secretary of State he refused to countenance two practices which he found estab- lished,— the employment of spies and the opening of letters. Hor- ace Walpole criticises this conduct as "evincing debility of mind." Hallam speaks of Falkland as an excellent man, but intimates that his early training and habits unfitted him for public service; and so much is also admitted by Clarendon who rather naively puts it that "his natural superiority.. ..made him too much a contemner of those arts which must be indulged in the transaction of human affairs." That is, he was no courtier. He disliked the court: he saw there far more intrigue and pettiness than suited him. He hated his appointment as Secretary of State because it bound him too closely to the policy and fortunes of the court. But for his conscientiousness he would have refused it. The tragedy of Falk- land's life was that of one who finds himself in a situation from which there is no escape. As the Civil War drew on, he could plainly see that little good could come from the triumph of either side, — he feared the success of the king almost as much as he feared the success of the Puritans, for neither cause had any real stability, — and yet he was powerless to mend matters and give them a better direction, for there was no one else who could see what he could. He supported the crown because it was the best approximation he could find to his notion of what was needful, but no one knew as well as he the enormous disparity between the ideal
674 THE OPEN COURT.
monarchy and the government of Charles I. Despairing of peace- ful transformation, which he knew to be the only fruitful reform, he went into battle and owned defeat by losing his life, happy only in being taken away from the evil to come. Hume says of his death, quite in the familiar vein of Clarendon, that it was a regret to every lover of ingenuity and virtue throughout the kingdom.
The Puritans won the day and set up their banners for tokens. They established their civilisation without let or hindrance. Let us survey this for a moment. Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in the first of his charming Studies in History, praises it with no uncertain sound. "It is no longer necessary," he says, "to enter into argu- ment to show that Oliver Cromwell was the greatest soldier and statesman combined that England has ever produced j that John Hampden is, on the whole, the finest representative of the English gentleman, and John Pym one of the greatest, as he was one of the earliest, in the splendid line of English Parliamentary leaders. The grandeur of the period which opened with the Long Parliament and closed with the death of the Protector is established beyond the pos- sibility of doubt. ''^ Well, this would depend, we would think, upon what one's notion of grandeur is: but Mr. Lodge proceeds: "Du- ring that period Church and crown were overthrown, a king was executed, great battles were fought, Scotland was conquered, and Ireland pacified for the first and last time." Of course, if one chooses to regard this in itself as grandeur, he may call it so if he likes; but perhaps most of us would have misgivings about apply- ing the name without considering more closely the upshot of events like these. Overthrowing a Church and crown merely to see them fall, without replacing them by something better; executing kings because they are kings, and fighting great battles for the sake of fighting, — all this, while stirring work, would hardly merit the name of grandeur. I hope I shall not be suspected of representing Mr. Lodge as standing at any such extreme as this, for his fairness and candor are so remarkable that they disarm any unfairness of criticism; yet there are indications that Mr. Lodge does not limit his use of the word grandeur precisely as we would. ^^ Ireland was pacified for the first a7id last tinier True, but how, and with what result? The French writer Villemain, in his Histoire de Cromwell, describes the general effect of Cromwell's policy of pacification thus: "Ireland became a desert which the few remaining inhabi- tants described by the mournful saying. There was not water enough to drown a man, not wood enough to hang him, not earth enough to bury him.'' An interesting survival of this pacification of Ireland
FALKLAND. 675
appears to-day in the common speech of Irishmen. Mr. Lodge need have met no more than two or three of the race to learn that the curse o' Crum'll is one of the bitterest that is ever invoked upon an enemy. As to Cromwell's policy itself, we might almost think we were following the later career of the other great Nonconform- ist, Mr. Chamberlain, when we read how the thirty persons left alive out of the town of Tredagh were condemned to the labor of slaves. After this exploit Hugh Peters, a chaplain, wrote: "We are masters of Tredagh; no eneniy was spared; I just come from the church where I had gone to thank the Lord." Wexford and Drogheda shared the same fate with Tredagh at the hand of Crom- well. And yet in spite of efforts like these, which certainly did not err on the side of moderation, to recommend the religion and civilisation of Puritanism to an unprepared people, we find the Protestant Archbishop Boulter, of Armagh, writing in 1727 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that "we have in all probability in this kingdom at least five Papists to every Protestant," and testifying that when the most rigorous laws were in force against popery, the number of conversions from Rome to Protestantism was far ex- ceeded by those from Protestantism to Rome.
But Mr. Lodge is possibly prepared to think that the Puritan system as Cromwell brought it in was an improved and effective substitute for the system which it displaced. Some such convic- tion perhaps ought to be assumed to explain his placing himself in what turns out to be an extremely awkward situation. Regard- ing the Puritan system as highly as Mr. Lodge does, the question must occur. If it was so good, why did it so soon collapse? And why, above all, did it collapse as promptly in New England as in Old England? Mr. Lodge raises this question himself, faces it squarely, faces it with his customary ability; but his explanations serve only to embarass the reader, because they are a good deal embarassed themselves. A glance at one of Cromwell's speeches such as can be found in Milton's State Papers, a glance at Hamp- den occupied with his favorite exercise of seeking the Lord, will supply the true answer,— indeed, Mr. Lodge himself unconsciously supplies it in the essay following the one we have quoted, entitled "A Puritan Pepys." Between the lines there quoted from the diary of the New England Puritan Sewall, we can read the reason of Puritanism's failure. But we gain perhaps the clearest insight from a note in the fifty-sixth chapter of Hume's history, in which he gives the names of a jury that was empaneled in the county of
676 THE OPEN COURT.
Sussex in the full blaze of Cromwell's protectorate. Here are some of them :
Accepted Trevor, Stand Fast on High Stringer,
Redeemed Compton Fly Debate Roberts,
Faint not Hewit, Fight the good Fight of Faith White,
Kill Sin Pimple, More Fruit Fowler.
Now, what permanence could possibly be expected for a civil- isation, more than for a religion, so narrow, so grotesque, so utterly fantastic and hideous, as these names reflect it? "Cromwell," says Hume, quoting Cleveland, "hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament. You may learn the genealogy of our Saviour by the names of his regiment. The adjutant hath no other list than the first chapter of St. Matthew."
Hume here undoubtedly puts his finger on the element in Puri- tanism that was its undoing, — its onesidedness, its unloveliness. But he does more. He goes on to relate in a kind of allegory the verdict that humanity has passed on Puritanism itself. All this, strange to tell, — the answer to the question that so troubles and perplexes Mr. Lodge, and the fate pronounced upon the Puritan ideal by the clear reason and judgment of mankind, — all this may be extracted from Hume's footnote as from some wonderful horn of plenty. Cromwell's first Parliament is commonly known as the Barebones Parliament, from the name of a leather-seller of London who made himself prominent in its councils, and who was called Praise God Barebones. Now, this Praise God Barebones had a brother who was called If Christ had not died for thee, thou hadst been damned Barebones. "But the people," says Hume, "tired of this long name, retained only the last word, and commonly gave him the appellation of Damned Barebones. ^^ There it is. Puritan- ism had plenty of strength, plenty of energy, plenty of resolution, but it had no beauty, it was unamiable, unattractive, hideous. And in the unhappy fate that overtook this poor man, one can see hu- manity turning the pretentiousness of the Puritans into a byword, looking unmoved upon their very virtues and saying that it would not care to have them at the price. Mankind, sooner or later, de- mands the whole of life and refuses to be satisfied with less, refuses a civilisation that offers less. It refused the civilisation of the Pu- ritans because it felt with George Sand that for life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a joy, and the Puritans had nothing to offer that could be felt as a joy. Finally, after repelling the rest of mankind, the dulness and hardness of Puritanism reacted on itself, wearied itself, and Puritanism disintegrated.
FALKLAND. 677
No, we must dissent from Mr. Lodge's conclusion that Hamp- den is on the whole the finest representative of the English gentle- man. Nor can we find in either Laud or Baxter a wholly satisfactory model of religion. If we are to look to those times for an example of the best that appears in social life, or for a true, adequate, and solid conception of religion, let us find it in Falkland. Falkland lives by his temper, by his "setting free the gentler element within himself." At a time when all the concerns of religion were given over to the most infatuated levity, Falkland was serious. Amidst a riot of the worst passions and the meanest prejudices, Falkland saw that "there are forces of weakness, of docility, of attractive- ness or of suavity, which are quite as real as the forces of vigor, of encroachment, of violence or of brutality." Nay, he saw that these are the permanent, the constructive, the transforming forces, against which there is no reaction, and he allied himself with them. Falkland was against onesidedness and incompleteness; he was for adjustment, for the harmoniouness and balance of all the claims and the full, free play of all the qualities that are properly human. We see in Falkland, too, an abundance of the sentiment that over- threw Puritanism, ^ — there were other forces working to the same end, but this was the force that really beat it, — the sentiment in favor of beauty and amiability, the sentiment against crudeness and dismalness. The lesson that the Commonwealth has to teach us is the plain one which history is perpetually teaching, but which we somehow never learn, — that mati doth not live by bread alone \ that man revolts, sooner or later, against being offered a part of life under the pretence that it is the whole of it. The Puritans presented a part of life, quite the largest part, quite the best part, but still a part and not all of it. For a time they persuaded men that it was all of it : and the indignant reaction against this decep- tion brought forth the Buckinghams and Sedleys, the Wycherleys and Rochesters of the Restoration, brought forth Thomas Hobbes and the Deists in religious philosophy and Ashley Cooper in poli- tics,—and the triumph of Falkland's ideal was set back a genera- tion.
Here at last we find the hold that Falkland had upon the fu- ture. It is in his testimony that an ideal of civilisation which does not include the whole of life, cannot be permanently maintained, for a community attempting to maintain it is fighting against nature and will one day be found out ; and then the old story of rebellion, reaction and readjustment has to be gone through. Let us see what this has to do with us. Mr. Matthew Arnold said that America had
678 THE OPEN COURT.
solved the political problem and the social problem, but that it had not solved the human problem. Mr. Matthew Arnold nods as sel- dom as does Homer himself, but he has here contrived to make a surprising blunder; surprising, because Mr. Matthew Arnold spent a fruitful lifetime in teaching line upon line that the human prob- lem comes first. It is the essence of Mr. Matthew Arnold's doctrine that when the human problem is solved, the political and social problems will not need to be solved, for they will disappear: but that until the human problem is solved, the others can never be. What America has done towards solving the political problem, we are all rather easily aware. What it has done in the direction of the social problem, we can best grasp perhaps by imagining Mr. Matthew Arnold himself obliged to associate with such as are com- monly taken to represent our social life, and thinking what insuffer- ably bad company he would find them. As to the human problem, the civilisation that creates large industrial fortunes, that makes our social life what it usually is, that gravely tinkers with the out- side of the Westminster Confession, that gravely refuses the Chris- tian Scientists of Pennsylvania a charter, not because Christian Science is nonsense, but because it is a business \ the civilisation that creates the peculiar phase of political Socialism which is abroad in the land,, — nay, the civilisation whose herald and prophet, accord- ing to weighty foreign authority, is Walt Whitman ! — the civilisa- tion that brings out a literature like the novels we all read, that creates faces like the faces we all see and voices like the voices we all hear: why, this has never seriously attacked the human prob- lem, it does not know that there is a human problem. It offers humanity a part of life, — not the largest part nor the best, — and loudly asserts that it is the whole of it.
This is what America signally fails to do; and hence it does not really touch the human problem. But it was primarily the human problem that interested Falkland, and he addressed himself to it and solved it. When one lives as nearly a human life as pos- sible, and helps others all he can to live likewise, he may be said relatively to have solved the human problem. Thus Falkland solved it.
Finally, and above all, everywhere about him Falkland saw a dismal, illiberal temper manifesting itself not only in a dismal, illib- eral life but also in a dismal, illiberal religion. There were opposing forces, each tied to its narrow, onesided, and mechanical notion of religion and the Church ; forces that were really complemental, that ought to be united. And he saw that what was needed to unite
FALKLAND. 679
and heal them was simply the understanding of religion as a temper, an inward condition. Now this is precisely the situation that we have to meet. We look into the soul of denominational religion as it commonly appears, let us say, in theological seminaries; often in pulpits, in the religious press and in the public utterances of repre- sentative men : and we see there self-edification, self-assertion, jeal- ousy of watchwords, notions, speculations, — a whole phantasmago- ria of images so dull, so unreal, so alien to religion itself, that we are loth to examine them. " Who would not shun the dreary, uncouth place?^^ Keble might well ask. But let us consider one practical measure. The reunion of Protestantism is a vast undertaking, and our generation can perhaps take no more than the preliminary steps towards it; but as a beginning, let us think of the increased strength that would accrue to Christianity from the union of as much as two Protestant bodies, the Presbyterians and the Episco- palians. What hinders this union? Simply the Laudian notion and the Puritan notion of the nature of the ministry; and both of them from the standpoint of religion itself, sheer levity. The Pres- byterian Church declares its basis in Church order; but at present it is hardly up to the Reformation contention that Episcopacy is sinful. There is an uneasy sense of the lack of seriousness in this contention that weakens it, and many now are for placing their main stress elsewhere. Among the Episcopalians, too, to a degree, but most of all among the Christians who are outside the Churches, there is the spirit of increasing seriousness; the increasing reluc- tance to account for things in ways that involve palpable extrava- gance ; the increasing distrust of fancy-sketches. The only wise way to deal with this spirit is to deal with it truly.
But some one may ask, does this wise and true dealing mean that the Protestant Episcopal Church should at all loosen its hold upon Episcopacy? Emphatically, no. It means no more than the giving up of so much of an opinion about Episcopacy as is found to be unsound and untenable. It means the substituion of a good reason for Episcopacy in place of the bad one that has been given all along. The reason for Episcopacy assigned by Laud did not and does not commend itself to most clearsighted persons, because it lies within no one's experience, it is not sound, it is not serious, it is a pure fancy-sketch. The reason assigned by Falkland does commend itself, because not only is it sound and serious, but any one who will may prove by experience that it is so. Episcopacy in Falkland's view is a development of Christian antiquity, having the same bearing and power as Christian liturgies, music, and
68o THE OPEN COURT.
architecture, — the power of sentiment and imagination. It goes to satisfy that sense in man which is a real and legitimate sense and must be satisfied, — the sense of beauty and poetry.
Falkland's spiritual children were Whichcote, More, Cudworth, and John Smith ; and the later generation of churchmen that in- cluded Tillotson and Stillingfleet. One of these, Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, made a proposition concerning Episcopacy, which de- serves careful reexamination at the present time. It was substan- tially renewed by Stillingfleet. By it, the English Presbyterians were to be included in the Church without reordination of their present ministers ; but subsequent ordinations were to be made only by the bishops, who were regarded ecclesiastically as the presidents of diocesan boards of presbyters. Such a measure as this, because it is reasonable, because it is conciliating, because above all, it springs from a true and not a notional conception of what religion really is, — such a measure would be wonderfully fruitful now. It would wonderfully help the understanding of Christianity as a tem- per. Well might it therefore interest for once the legislative author- ities of the Episcopal Church : much more worthily, one would think, than most of the irrelevant trifles that have latterly been posed before that Church as "burning questions," — such as the Provincial System, changing the name of the Church, and whimsies about divorce and marriage with a dead wife's sister.
A WORD THAT HATH BEEN— A SOUND WHICH EVER LINGERS.
P.Y GENERAL HORATIO G. GIBSON, U. S. A.
FIFTY-EIGHT years ago, the writer attended the commence- ment exercises of a Catholic college in the city of Baltimore, and had the pleasure of hearing the address delivered on the occa- sion by that accomplished writer and gentleman, the late Joseph R. Chandler, of Philadelphia, in which he advanced, upon the authority of an eminent scientist, the theory that the waves of sound produced by the human voice never ceased to vibrate and pulsate the air and space; that every word uttered or thought ex- pressed would be preserved among the last syllables of recorded Time. This theory as strange as fascinating, and though old as the days of Chaucer new to the writer, elaborated by Mr. Chandler with graceful felicity, made an indelible impression, and has fur- nished food for thought in many a leisure hour. A quarter of a century later, it was vividly recalled in reading the delightful essays — "Among My Books" — by the late William B. Reed, also of Philadelphia.^ More recently, the writer came across an allu- sion to the theory by Thackeray in his introduction to the last — an unfinished work "Emma" — by the late Charlotte Bronte:
" Is there any record kept anywhere of fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn ? Some day will they assume form in some yet undeveloped light ? If our bad un- spoken thoughts are registered against us, and are written in the awful account, will not the good thoughts unspoken, the love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity, which pass through the breast, and cause this heart to throb with silent good, find remembrance too ? A few weeks more and this lovely ofifering of the poet's conception would have been complete to charm the world with its beautiful mirth. May there not be some sphere unknown to us where it may have an exist- ence ? They say our words once out of our lips, go travelling in omne oevum, re- verberating forever. If our words, why not our thoughts ? If the Has Been, why not the Might Have Been ? "
1 World's £«a>j—" Among My Books," New York : E. J. Hale & Son. 1871.
682 THE OPEN COURT.
May not the gifted Byron have caught a glimpse of the start- ling theory when he wreaked his thoughts upon expression in the following stanza :
" But words are things ; and a small drop of ink, Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think ; 'Tis strange, the shortest letter man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link Of ages ; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper — even a rag like this —
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his."
This kindred idea of the great poet — the survival of the written word — is found embodied in an ancient Coptic prayer : "And there is no scribe that shall not pass away, but what he has written will remain forever," and finds like apt expression in a quotation given by Mr. Reed in two of his essays from the writings of William Cobbett — that strange combination of fierceness and gentleness, of Ishmaelite and Samaritan, who so sorely vexed the souls of the goodly people of Philadelphia over a century ago by the quills upon his fretful Porcupine : "A man, as he writes on a sheet of paper, a word or a sentence, ought to bear in mind that he is writing some- thing which may, for good or evil, live forever," and as if suggested by this impressive thought, in his essay "Sermons — Barrow to Manning," Mr. Reed thus makes his first reference to the allied theory which forms the salient feature of this article : "If there be anything in Sir Charles Babbage's theory, which old Dan Chaucer prefigured, of the air undulations which make the utterances of the human voice immortal, these computations (of English sermons in one year) become overwhelming. If the clangour of strife at Mara- thon, or the words of Demosthenes and ^schines, be yet sounding in illimitable space, enormous surges of clerical twaddle, masses of pulpit platitudes, are rolling onward too."^
In the essay on "Henry Reed," also of Philadelphia, the the- ory is more explicitly set forth :
"In one of his lectures on Early English Literature is this passage in refer- ence to Chaucer's House of Fame:
" ' It contains a passage which has struck me as in curious anticipation of a scientific hypothesis suggested in our own days, poetic imagination foreshadowing the results of scientific reasoning. In the ninth Bridgewater Treatise from the pen of Mr. Babbage, he propounded a theory respecting the permanent impressions of our words — spoken words — a theory startling enough to close a man's lips in per-
1 Inasmuch as my paternal grandfather and all his sons were of the ministerial profession, this reflection on the reverend clergy ought, perhaps, to be resented or at least ignored by me, but my otfence hath this extent, no more — its necessary quotation.
A WORD THAT HATH BEEN. 683
petual silence ; that the pulsations of the air, once set in motion by the human voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they give rise ; that the waves of air thus raised perambulate the earth and ocean's surface ; soon every atom of its atmosphere takes up the altered movement, due to the infinitesimal portion of the primitive motion which has been conveyed to it through countless channels, and which must continue to influence its paths through its future existence. 'Every atom,' says Mr. Babbage, 'impressed with good and with ill, retains at once the motions which philosophers and sages have imparted to it, mixed and combined, in ten thousand ways, with all that is worthless and base. The atmosphere we breathe is the everliving witness of the sentiments we have uttered, and, in another state of being, the offender may hear still vibrating in his ear the very words, uttered perhaps thousands of centuries before, which at once caused and registered his own condemnation.'"
The "curious anticipation" and "coincidence worthy of no- tice," to which Mr. Henry Reed refers, appear in these lines in The House of Fame :
"Sound is naught but air that's broken, • And every speeche that is spoken,
Whe'er loud or low, foul or fair.
In his substance is but air :
For as flame is but lighted smoke,
Right so is sound but air that's broke ;
Eke when that men harpstrings smite.
Whether that be much or lite, —
Lo, with the stroke the air it breaketh ;
Thus wot'st thou well what thing is speeche.
Now henceforth I will thee teach
However each speeche, voice or soun'.
Through his multiplication.
Though it were piped of a mouse.
Must needs come to Fame's House.
I prove it thus : taketh heed now
By experience, for if that thou
Throw in a water now a stone
Well wot'st thou it will make anon
A little rounded as a circle.
Par venture as broad as a coreicle,
And right anon thou shalt see well
That circle cause another wheel.
And that the third, and so forth, bother.
Every circle causing other.
Much broader than himselfen was, —
Right so of air, my live brother.
Ever each air another stirreth.
More and more and speeche up beareth
Till it be at the ' House of Fame."
In 1845, Henry Reed visited England, and made the acquaint- ance of Sir Charles Babbage, and in conversation with him related
684 THE OPEN COURT.
this incident of the introduction of the subject of this startling the- ory, and spoke of the effect it had upon some of the audience who had said "that it almost made them afraid for some days to speak from the dread that the sounds were to last, and mayhap come back to them in the hereafter." When he told Mr. Babbage that he had cited the passage in connection with a curious parallelism in Chaucer, the philosopher expressed great surprise.
After reference to this, the latter explained that he had not used light to illustrate his subject because it would have been less effective with the general reader. That Sir Charles was, however, duly impressed with its force and fitness as a means of illustration is evident from his relation of a conversation between Sir John Herschel and Sir William Hamilton, in which the latter said : "Well, if one could travel away from the earth with a velocity ex- ceeding that of light, he would at last be able to look back on the waves of light first set in motion by the battle (that of Marathon and Actium had been mentioned) and so get a good sight of it."
In this age of miracles in revelation, invention, and discovery, when in all the realms of Nature no secrets are hid ; when
"Ye read the sky's illumined page, And the dark hills ; And make the sun paint, lightnings speak,"
who can say that this theory is not a revelation as real in fact as startling in expression, — another grand discovery in the wonders of Creation, demonstrable alike to the ordinary and the cultivated in- tellect; that the conception of the great Chaucer is but a mere fancy of the dreaming poet or a like hypothesis of the scientist or philosopher, and not a physical reality in the great universe of God; that the waves of sound are not as eternal as the realms of air and space, — as the waves of light from Creation's dawn to Cre- ations close? Can we realise the awful solemnity of the fact that every thoughtful, thoughtless word ; every utterance, pious or pro- fane, grave or gay, lively or severe, wise or otherwise; every prayer from unco-righteous lips or afar off publican ; every kind or cruel expression from the lips; every cry of pain or terror, joy or sorrow, shall forever echo through the corridors of Time and of Eternity, — survive the wreck of matter, the crash of worlds and like the words of Him who died on Calvary never pass away? And hath He not said: "For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed ; nothing hid that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that
A WORD THAT HATH BEEN. 685
which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed on the housetops?"
The electric fluid — that mysterious subtle force of Nature — conveys our words and utterances throughout each region of the earth, — to distant lands beyond the sea, and from hill to vale, from vale to plain, from gulch to canon dark, from sleeping hamlet to bustling mart, with lightning speaks the friend to friend, no other medium than the throbbing wire or the circumambient air. If the tones of the human voice can thus be carried many, many a league onward, may not "sound but air that's broke by speeche or voice," be endowed with some potent occult influence of Nature to bear the words from mortal lips throughout and beyond this earthly sphere, — perchance to find record in the recording angel's Book of Life beneath the throne of God? And have we not all reason to pray that the angelic scribe shall drop a tear upon the page and blot it out forever?
Chaucer, as we have seen, illustrates the wave theory of sound by his description of the disturbance of the waters, and a poet of less renown tells us :
"Go, take the bright shell From its home on the lea, And wherever it goes It will sing of the sea ; "
and the master-poet Byron conveys the same idea in his relation of the story of the mutineers of the Bounty :
" The ocean scarce spoke louder with its swell Than breathes the mimic murmurer in his shell, As far divided from his parent deep, The sea-born infant cries, and will not sleep. Raising his little plaint in vain, to rave For the broad bosom of his nursing wave."
If many a shell in his hollow-wreathed chamber thus ever re- tains and preserves the sounds of his home on the lea; if what the wild waves are saying is never, never lost, can it be more marvel- lous that the sounds evoked by the human voice should ever fill the chambers of air and space? And has not practical science in its applications of electricity demonstrated like marvels in the transmission and perpetuation of sound? The latest — the most wonderful and remarkable of these — is the Marconi system of tele- graphy, in explanation of which recent writers in the magazines of the day make use, not only of Chaucer's illustrations of the disturb- ance of the waters, but also otherwise elucidate the wave theory as
686 THE OPEN COURT.
manifested in the electrical phenomena in the realms of ether, — like unto the vibrations of sound in the realms of air :
"We say that electricity (or vibrations in the ether) flows in a wire, but noth- ing really passes but an etheric wave, for the atoms composing the wire, as well as the air and earth, and even the hardest substances, are all afloat in ether. Vibra- tions, therefore, started at one end of the wire travel to the other. Throw a stone into a quiet pond. Instantly waves are formed which spread out in every direc- tion ; the water does not move except up and down, yet the wave passes on indefi- nitely. But the ether exists outside of the wire as well as within ; therefore, hav- ing the ether everywhere, it must be possible to produce waves in which it will pass anywhere, as well through mountains as over seas." '
" Throw a pebble into a pool of water and small waves will be produced and spread out over the surface of the water, and finally die away (apparently). A luminous body, such as the sun, sends forth light-waves which may be likened to these water-waves. But if we state that light travels in waves, we imply that there must be something through which it travels. This mysterious something cannot be air ; for light travels millions and millions of miles through space completely devoid of air. If not air, what then ? Evidently something that fills seemingly vacant space, and permeates all solids and liquids, and serves as a medium for the transmission of light, of heat, and other manifestations of force." ^
"Nature, though convulsive, is curiously cautious. She possesses a sort of stock in trade of which her supply is uniform. That stock is energy. She trans- forms it, transmutes it, and transposes it. But never does she suffer a speck of it to get away. She may store in microbe or man, sporules or stars, but on to it all she holds very tight." ^
"An ether like this will transmit the transverse vibrations that constitute light without being affected by waves of condensation, and its structure will account for many other phenomena that it has hitherto been difficult to explain. The etheric medium is the grand reservoir of natural forces where naught is created and naught is lost." *
" Doubtless matter is immortal, and being revivified continually by solar heat, it is destined to live without end ; doubtless also no form of energy is lost, and what has been vital activity will live eternally in the form of undulations and vibra- tions that nothing can annihilate, in the limitless spaces of the universe."^
If these mysterious properties of ether and of matter are mani- fest in the conveyance through them or by them of light and heat and electricity, why should not the waves of sound, once started in the chambers of air, be received into those of ether, and passed on like them forever through boundless space? The lightning's flash conveyed by the etheric waves we know sensibly precedes the sound of the air waves from the thunderbolt of the storm- clouded sky, but is the latter, therefore, only a moment heard —
^ McClure's Magazine, February, igo2. 2 Woman's Hovie Compatiion. March, 1902.
SSmart Set, January, 1902. ■* T/ie Literary Digest, April 20, 1901.
6 The Literary Digest, February, 1901. I might add to these quotations from the writings of other in the same or a kindred vein of thought, as from time to time I have met with them in print, but I forbear being warned thereunto.
A WORD THAT HATH BEEN. 687
then lost forever? The rays of light from planet, sun and star, — the rays of solar heat which ever brighten and gladden the earth and universe never cease nor "bide a wee " in their abundant flow, and the electric waves ever speedily and silently pass within and without matter as solid as the ever-lasting hills, limited only by the bounds of space and of eternity. Can it be then that the sounds of the human voice disturb only for a moment the atmosphere of earth, and forever thereafter hold their peace, — ephemeral in char- acter and existence? In the wonderful economy of Nature, in the grand scheme of Creation, is there anything that can be irrevocably lost, void and of none effect?
Does not Nature abhor a vacuum, and are not the elements and forces within the metes and bounds of the universe ever in restless commotion? The tiny feather breaks the camel's back, — the trickling leak brings the watery flood with ruin in its path, — a great matter a little fire kindleth, — a drop of water constant in its flow like faith can remove mountains, and are the waves of ether and of air less potential? In life, — in death, the spirit of change, in all its motions and emotions, is ever active — ever mysterious in its operations and transformations. The natural body, sinless or sinful, perfect or deformed, is raised a spiritual body — the dying grain buds and blossoms and blooms in the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear; all of which, like the mysteries of ether, air, and space, we see through a glass darkly, and can only conjecture, ponder, and pray : " Lighten our darkness, O Lord, we beseech Thee."
The resultant of the forces of Nature, active or latent, occult or known, we see on every hand, and behold they show us a mys- tery. Contrasted with these manifestations, does it seem that this theory, startling though it be, of the permanent disturbance of the waves of air, once "broken by speeche or voice or soun'," can be altogether irrational, factitious, or inconceivable? This concep- tion of the poet Chaucer, coincident with the results of the scien- tific reasoning of the philosopher Babbage, and also of which the accomplished Chandler and Reeds of Philadelphia seem to be the latest exponents — is an apt illustration of the truth of the statement that "it is the charm of certain ideas that beginning as fancies they end as facts." We know that Sir Charles Babbage was an eminent mathematician, and therefore not given to accepting fan- cies as facts, or solving any equation or problem except with known quantities as factors, and our Philadelphia coterie were noted for their high literary character and culture. Thus confronted by a
688 THE OPEN COURT.
condition not a theory — by a fact not a fancy, are we not com- pelled to receive it implicitly, or by rejecting take no stock in Na- ture's supply of energy, or in the scientific axiom that "sound that can be projected a mile can be projected a million miles — to the ends of space, if ends there are,"^ or the fact that "the ether waves, once started in free space, travel on — to the moon, to Mars, to Sirius, and the North Star."^ Is this projection, perpetuation, or preservation of the waves of sound in the realm of air, ether and space, more remarkable or incredible than the fact stated by an eminent architect that the vibrations of the delicate violin, iterated and re-iterated, can destroy the most solid structure that can be designed and constructed, and that a man on an iron-clad vessel can feel the vibrations of its attuned chords, and yet be insensible, though blessed with ears to hear, to the concord of sweet sounds — that like Tara's harp in Tara's halls the soul of music shed?
The similarity or identity in their true inwardness of unlike substances of matter furnishes a marvel quite as difficult of com- prehension and explanation. The rare and costly diamond is but carboniferous matter — carbon pure and undefiled, but though thus allied to the more abundant coals that Mr. Micawber at one time turned his versatile genius and attention to, and which have lately given great concern to our people, yet in its aspect to the eye it does not suggest the fiery furnace, but in its barbaric splendor at- tractive adornment to lady fair or vulgar man. The loveliest pearl that ever lay under Oman's green water, or that the dark un- fathomed caves of ocean bear, is but the diseased encrustation of the luscious bivalve the epicure delights in, and doth quickly lose its identity, form, and brilliancy when dissolved in the wine-cup — perchance at the whim of some capricious beauty, like unto Cleo- patra in the days of her "mad Antony." The gold of the mine re- sists the most powerful acids known save one, and to that it yields up its substance and becomes as though it were not, and the coin of the realm, with which we pay tribute unto the Caesars of the earth, and its other artistic products — utile et dtdce — subjected to this acid's influence, disappear in a solution of purple — their colors lost in the action. Absorbed in the mercury of the alchemist, it effaces itself in an amalgam, from which it can be released only by another chemical process, all of which we see and seek in vain for an explanation that will explain and enlighten.
And worthy of note and a fair corollary to our theme, the roots of the humble weed (a salad for the solitary or the social, and the
1 Edgar Saltus in Smart Set, January, 1902. 2 Current History, March, 1902.
A WORD THAT HATH BEEN. ' 689
bland ingredient of the fragrant berry "in its cups") have been known to force themselves through solid concrete or more solid masonry or rock; and the writer has seen a feeble sapling push its way through a fallen monarch of the forest, and become a sturdy tree, whereon the fowls of the air might rest and nest. The waters of the sea, slowly percolating through the crust of the earth, bring forth from the bowels of the land fracture, violence, and fire, whilst
" Adown a mighty steep, a Niagara, Of gory-red lava rolls into the sea,"
which gave it birth. Deep in the wave the coral grove by ceaseless accretions from insect life is transformed into islands, keys, and continents, whereon the sea-birds mew and the pelican and bittern build their nests, and in the cycles of time on earth, thereon and thereafter, science may erect her temples and religion her sacred fanes. The insignificant atoms of soil and rock, of plant and tree, aye of all created things, moribund, disintegrated or dissolved, be- come the powerful agents of destruction, construction, and re-con- struction— through chemical, electrical, or other occult action. And who that reflects on these mighty workings of Nature, in her calm or angry moods, can say that chaos may not come again and all the abomination of desolation, or in more beneficent design she may not scatter plenty o'er a smiling land with a richer endowment of utility, beauty, and fertility, and all
" The stores of earth like streams that seek the sea Pour out the tribute of their wealth"
to every creature who, with devout and thankful heart, may gladly sing his Benedicite :
" O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him forever."
The earth hath bubbles as the water has, but the bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, or on the surface of the water, or on the face of the solid globe itself, may not in fact be as evanescent as they appear to mortal vision, and as
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy,"
can it not be that the elements of ether and of air possess qualities or properties more permanent in existence — more potent in influ- ence and effect — more amazing in ubiquity and utility than any yet revealed to mortal ken? Then, restless mortal, marvel not at all, but with meet and silent awe,
690 THE OPEN COURT.
"Forbear, vain man, to launch with reason's eye Through the vast depths of dark immensity, Nor think thy narrow but presumpt'ous mind The least idea of thy God can find.
Thought, crowding thought, distracts the lab'ring brain, For how can finite Infinite explain ? Then God adore, and conscious rest in this. None but Himself can paint Him as He is." ^
lit was my original intention to use this quotation without explanation, note, or comment, but the lines have a history other than that of my own recollection of them. The engraving — described in the following extract from a Baltimore journal — long hung over the mantle-piece in my grandfather's office, and thus became indelibly impressed upon my childish memory. Inas- much as this representation of " The Conversion of Galen " has lately attracted some attention, and as the skeleton in the forest was no doubt as great a revelation to Galen as Babbage's theory of soundings in the air is to us, I cannot think this explanatory note altogether out of place here. With one exception — in a family memoir — the lines have appeared in print only as hereinafter stated :
"Baltimore County Medical Association.
"Dr. William J. Todd presented the picture 'The Conversion of Galen," and gave the fol- lowing description :
"The following was copied from The American Dojnestic Medicine or Medical Adtnonisher, by Horatio Gates Jameson, M. D., Honorary Member of the Medical Society of Maryland, and a late surgeon in the General Hospital for the army in Baltimore, printed there in 1818 by John D. Toy. The plate Dr. Jameson refers to has been lost from the book, but the explanation no doubt explains the plate, 'The design is from a picture in the possession of my father. Dr. David Jameson, of York, Pa. It represents the celebrated Galen (viewing a skeleton) of whom it was said, though an atheist he was a strict observer of Nature, till by chance finding a skeleton he thought it of too curious a construction to be the work of chance. The vast and sudden expan- sion of his views of the Deity in the following lines (already given) while they agreeably surprise us, are a strong confirmation of the existence of a light that lighteth every man.' "
In a letter to the writer. Dr. William J. Todd states that the print was cut from a pamphlet sent out by a medical firm in New York State ; underneath was a note : "We have thus far been unable to trace the history of this plate, or to discover its significance, and we will be pleased to have some medical antiquarian enlighten us concerning same."
MISCELLANEOUS.
MAJOR-GENERAL D. M. STRONG.
OBITUARY.
With deep regret we learn of the death of Major-General D. M. Strong, re- tired from the British army. In the year 1900 the editor of The Open Coiat had the privilege of meeting the General personally and being a guest for several days at his congenial home at Edinburgh. It was truly a pleasure to stay at the fireside of the worthy old soldier in the circle of his family, all of them interested in music, art, religion, and science.
General Strong was a thinker and a scholar. He had studied Pali and took considerable interest in Buddhism. His writings in this line were so successful that he gained an honorable place among the Pali scholars of the world. We must specially mention his translation of the Udana, or The Soleyyui Utlerayices of the Buddha, which was published by Luzac & Co., London, 1902.
We had still in hand an unpublished manuscript of his entitled The Goal, which he wrote in contemplation of Chapter XLI. of The Gospel of Buddha, and we propose to publish it in the present number.
We express our deepest sympathy with Mrs. Strong, her sons and her daugh- ters, all of whom are now adult and have grown up to be a just pride of the gallant General, who knew so well how to combine soldierly vigor with a noble gentleness.
''THE GOAL.
BY D. M. STRONG.
Why thus SO long by Karma tied ?
O Bikshus, listen ! you and I The four great truths have set aside.
Not understanding ; that is why —
Through rock and plant and heati.ng things Migrate the wandering souls of each.
Till they, beyond imaginings
The perfect light of Buddha reach.
Karma inexorable reigns !
E'en though you fly from star to star,
1 Chapter XLI., Gospel 0/ Buddha.
6g2 THE OPEN COURT.
The Past on you imprest remains And what you were is what you are.
To new births onwards you must press Before the hill of light you see,
Where shines the Beacon Righteousness From transmigration's bondage free.
The higher birth, I've reached, O friends, I've found the truth, rebirth's surcease,
I've taught the noble path that wends To kingdoms of eternal Peace.
I've showed to you Ambrosia's lake Which all your sins will wash away,
The sight of truth your thirst will slake And Lust's destroying strife allay.
He who has passed through Passion's fire And climbed Nirvana's radiant shore,
His bliss the envious gods desire, His heart defiled by sin no more.
As lotus leaves upon the lakes The pearly drops do not retain,
So he the noble path who takes,
Though in the world, the world disdains.
A mother will her life bestow To safely guard her only son.
But he'll unmeasured mercy show And give his life for any one.
Firm in this state let man remain, Whether he stand or walk or rest,
Living or dying, sick or sane. Of all, this state of heart is best.
If Truth's bedimmed by Lust of Sense, Reborn, he must again o'erpass
The desert tracks of Ignorance Illusion's mirage, sin's morass.
But when Truth holds entire sway. With it migration's cause departs.
All selfish cravings melt away
And Truth its saving cure imparts.
O Bikshus, true deliverance this. The only heaven to which we soar.
This is salvation's endless bliss.
Here, within sight. Nirvana's shore
MISCELLANEOUS. 693
THE BODY OF RESURRECTION ACCORDING TO MR. HALLOCK.
Some of our readers will be astonished to find in the present number an article under the caption "The Body of the Future Life; Is it Electrical?" — a subject which prima facie seems to condemn itself, and we need not hesitate to say that we make room for it not because we endorse the author's theory. The author, Mr. Hallock, a member of the Biological Society of Washington, frankly admits that his proposition is bold. He submitted his views to such among his friends as he had reason to consider good critics, and he communicated to us several letters with full permission to publish them. All are critical and reject Mr. Hallock's theory. One of the correspondents is a theologian and Doctor of Divinity, another, a classical scholar and a graduate of Oxford, England, is an avowed agnostic. The former says :
" I was greatly interested in your essay, as well as in the criticism [of your friend] which could hardly have been different, from his view-point.
"From my own, — the article is suggestive, very ! and most interesting. It is not supposed to be a conclusive argument as I apprehend it, perhaps not an argu- ment at all, — but a tentative hypothesis; as such it seems to have some value. You have certainly started thougJit , and the man who does that is a benefactor. I would rather like to have you cast it into the form of a suggestion and an argument not zcholly and avowedly based upon an ecclesiastical conception of Scripture authority, — but clearly stating your postulate and using Scripture as incidental, or confirmatory proof of ) our position. So considerable a fraction of even the Chris- tian thinkers of to-day demur at your estimate of the aulhority of Scripture that you delimit the number of sympathetic readers by so unequivocal a defining of your position. You repel the scientific mind ; and many religious men of the hour are decidedly leaning toward the scientific processes, and are largely open to de- ductions of that nature."
Mr. Hallock's agnostic friend is severer still. He says:
' ' Well, my friend, you have certainly given full play to your undoubted power of imagination in this essay, and I am not surprised that any editor, up-to-date in the history and scientific knowledge of the day, should decline to print it in any pop- ular magazine. I almost hope Dr. Carus will decline it, for, in my opinion, it will do you no credit as a scientific thinker.
" I am quite willing to admit that your paper may be beyond the grasp of my poor intellect. I can conceive an electrical principle animating a material body ; I can even conceive that electricity in some form may he t/tc frincipie 0/ life in the vegetable and animal worlds. But an "electrical body" — by which I suppose you mean a hnman body made or composed of electricity (which, by the way, you say is not matter), which can think, is to me utterly uitthinkable !
"There may be, as I am told there are, some gifted intellects that can con- ceive of a fourth dimension in space, or, to put it more plainly, a geometry of four dimensions. To these I must leave the mental feat of conceiving an electrical human being who can think, as well as flash through space, and "levitate" through stone walls and steel chambers ; it is quite beyond the power of my humble ' think-tank.'
' ' I am sorry to see that the only reasoning you employ in support of your thesis consists of numerous quotations from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures ; if, in- deed, this can properly be called ?-easoning-.
694 THE OPEN COURT.
"Leaving out of this question all that "the higher criticism" by the ablest scholars has shown, let us take the facts brought to light by recent explorations of Dr. Delitzsch, Harnack, and Hilprecht in the ruins of Babylon and Nippur. . . .
" One thing is made clear past contradiction : whoever wrote the Pentateuch, Moses did not, and all that story about the God-given tables of stone, written by the finger of God, falls into its proper place as folk-lore, with no more claim to a Divine origin than the Rig-Vedas, the Shastras, the Puranas, or the Sagas of the Norsemen ! . . . .
"This being undoubtedly the case, you will perceive how worse than futile are all your quotations and references to the folk-lore of the Old and New Testa- ments to support your notion of an electrical body. Were it susceptible of irre- fragable proof that all your references are inspired by God, as you believe, they would not go far to strengthen your theory in the face of other texts which are more clear and conclusive, — less free from ambiguity. I will mention only Job xix. 26: "And though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in xny flesh shall I see God.' See also that passage of nonsense and ignorance found in i Cor. XV. 35 to the end. Also see John xx. 24 to the end, as to the nature of Christ's body after he got out of the tomb."
We are fully aware of the serious objections that can be made to Mr. Hallock's theory, and after some hesitation we decided to publish it because the idea is from the standpoint of the old point of view so naturat that it almost suggests itself, and should have been elaborated long ere this by spiritualists, theosophists, Christian scientists, or other representatives of the New Thought. Both of Mr. Hallock's friends blame him for limiting his arguments to Scriptural evidences, but that in my opinion is one of his strongest points. It proves how deeply rooted his theory is in the best recognised source of traditional religious thought. It would be easy enough to multiply arguments from other sources. I will here only mention that according to Egyption belief, one form in which the soul after death appears is the khu or khiiu, which means " luminous." The khit is supposed to haunt the places to which it is attracted by some attachment formed during life. Its dim misty form appears in the shape which it possessed in its lifetime, it is dressed in the same garments which it wore on earth, and is called " the luminous," because it is said to emit a pale light. ^
Other nations possess similar ideas of ghosts and appearances. Man's imagi- nation selects that substance for the sonl which is least material, the shadow, breath, or light. Since we know that both light and electricity are phenomena of the ether, it is but natural to think that the physical substratum of a ghost should be a phenomenon of ether.
Mr. Hallock's arguments and all additional evidence from kindred sources do not prove that the body of the resurrection is electrical or luminous, but it is merely material for anthropological investigation, briefly, it belongs to the depart- ment of folklore. The truth is that certain ideas develop naturally. Animism at a certain period of man's development is all but universal, but the universality of the belief, e consensu gentium, as the theologians call it, is not an argument in its favor, but only a proof that the idea develops necessarily. The scriptural evidences on which Mr. Hallock relies prove only that some of the authors of the Scriptures shared with the Egyptians and other nations a belief in the luminosity of the body of resurrection.
We might enter into a physical discussion of the subject, a task which to some
1 See (or instance Maspero, The Dawn of Civilisation, p. 140.
MISCELLANEOUS. 695
extent Mr. Hallock's agnostic friend has undertaken. A thorough discussion of the difiBculties to explain the body of resurrection as consisting either of light or of electricity would lead us too far, but even if the idea were tenable, we would have to insist on it that, in that case also, our body consisted of matter, however, attenu- ated it might be, and would be subject to decay, no less than the grosser flesh and blood.
The difficulties of a body of resurrection are certainly not removed by Mr. Hallock's theory, and we publish his article merely as an interesting suggestion.
THE GERMANIC MUSEUM AT CAMBRIDGE.
The Germanic Museum of Cambridge, Mass., affiliated to Harvard University is to be opened on Tuesday afternoon, November loth, at 3 o'clock, by solemn exercises in which it is expected a number of representative men of both Germany and the United States will take part. The founding of this museum is not without great significance, for it has been called into existence not only through the interest of the American supporters of the idea, but also through the encouragement and material assistance of the German Emperor, whose aid was secured through the intercession of Prince Henry.
The Germanic Museum is a monument of the good relations between Germany and the United States, and may be considered as a pledge of peace and friendliness which should not be doubted in spite of what is frequently said to the contrary in newspaper columns and sometimes even by more considerate observers of the po- litical situation.
It is well known that Prof. Albion Small on his return from Germany expressed himself very plainly in university circles of Chicago on the relation between both countries as being so strained that there was a growing danger of war. It is quite true that on both sides of the Atlantic there are hotspurs, commonly called "Jingos," but they have no influence nor any chance of ever gaining an influence upon the destiny of either nation. The government of Germany sees too plainly the advan- tages of keeping on good terms with the United States, and the United States has too much respect for German ability, German science, and German energy, not to reciprocate the friendly feelings which the Emperor himself has repeatedly taken occasion to show. And even if the two governments were not on the best terms, what use could there be of a war between these two great nations, whose spheres of interest are so radically different ! A war with the United States would ruin the most prosperous portion of the German trade, and nothing is gained by a defeat of the United States. The same is true vice versa : the United States cannot acquire German territory beyond the seas, and would in case of victory have a poor satis- faction from the destruction of the German navy. War from either standpoint would be so stupid as to be out of question.
The only cause of irritation is the Monroe Doctrine which is an eye-sore to the Germans, because they have always been on the lookout for colonies in South Amer- ica, but even this question could easily be settled to mutual satisfaction if the German Government would only understand that the Monroe Doctrine does not exclude the Germans from colonising South America, but only prohibits there the establishment of the imperial government. The Germans can either settle in the states which already exist, or wherever they are so completely in the majority as to be able to introduce German as the official language of the country they may found German states. If these states would adopt a republican form of govern-
6g6 THE OPEN COURT.
ment and not be incorporated in the German Empire, the United States would have no objection to the foundation of German settlements in South America. The bonds between a German republic in South America and the Fatherland could be as intimate as the colonists might desire ; it should only not be an officially recog- nised subjection under the sceptre of the monarchical government at home. This solution of the difficulty cannot be objectionable either to the German colonists or to the German government, and assuming that the Germans have truly the desire to colonise South America, the scheme could very well be actualised without pro- voking any ill feeling on account of the Monroe Doctrine.
CHARLES CARROLL BONNEY.
IN MEMORIAM.
BY CALLIE BONNEY MARBLE.
Not the Destroyer, but the Restorer, Death,
Who takes the soul, grown weary with earth's strife.
And, bearing 'way his sorrow, care, and pain, Throws wide the portal of immortal life.
And so He welcomed him, the one late gone.
Who to religions all oped wide the door Of fellowship, that the varied sects might know
All men as brethren here forevermore.
And still for concord, justice, love, and right,
He lives in land eterne beyond the stars ; And one — on earth the dearest and the best —
With welcome meet the pearl-bound gate unbars.
[The news of Mr. C. C. Bonney's death reached one of his daughter's Mrs. Earl Marble, while dangerously ill. She was greatly affected and dictated to her hus- band the lines here printed. We regret to add that according to our latest infor- mation she is still in a critical condition, and her recovery is more than doubtful.]
THE UDANA.
Among the publications of our friend General D. M. Strong, his translation of The Uddna, or Solemti Utterances, is important because these ancient essays contain several passages which express some of the deepest thoughts cf the philos- ophy of Buddhism. We published some time ago a review of this book, but it may be well to enter more deeply into the subject and bring out some of its most promi- nent features.
General Strong prefaces his translation with an introduction explaining the main features of Buddhism, which he sums up in three statements:
" I. That all the constituents of being are transitory.
" 2. That all the constituents of being are misery.
" 3. That all the elements of being are lacking in an Ego."
"Constituents of being" is a Buddhist term which is also sometimes and per- haps more appropriately translated by "compounds." All material things are of a compound nature, and Buddha taught that what is compounded is subject to decay;
MISCELLANEOUS. 697
it originates by growth, and will be dissolved again. This condition is called Birth and Death. The immediate result of this is suffering and since all concrete things originate by being compounded, there is no permanent entity in them ; there are no things-in-themselves, there is no "Atman," there is no Ego, or as some trans- late less appropriately, there is "no soul." ' Accordingly all egotism in the interest of our compound existence of our bodily incarnation is vain, and the only ideal worth striving after is the realisation of a perfect life called in religious language "Saint-ship." This ideal is reached by emancipation from desire, called "salva- tion " or " deliverance. "
Salvation or deliverance comes not by belief in the miraculous but by knowing and keeping the precepts, in other words, by understanding the nature of exist- ence, and leading a moral life. Thus the ethics of Buddhism is condensed in the verse of the DJiammafdda 183 : -
" Commit no evil ; but do good And let thy heart be pure. That is the gist of Buddhahood, The lore that will endure."
The final aim of Buddhism is Nirvana, the actualisation of deliverance.
It is difficult to understand and appreciate the Buddhist ideal of Nirvana, but some of the passages of the Udana are apt to throw light on the subject. Nirvana is no extinction, but is the actualisation of that which is eternal and it can there- fore be attained in this bodily life. Now there is in this world something that is unchangeable. It is what Plato calls the "idea" and what Schiller praises as " pure form." Bodies are material form, and all material forms belong to the realm of birth and death, they are subject to decay, but the eternal types constitute the essence of existence, and the world of bodily forms is conditioned by laws of pure form, the latter being as immutable as are the theorems of mathematics and the laws of nature. They are the rai'son d'etre of the world-order. They are the permanent in the transient. They are the Tnmidus iyrtelligibilis of Swedenborg and Kant. They give us the key to a comprehension of nature, and are the indis- pensable condition of our moral aspirations.
Plato describes the eternal ideas as the incorporeal moulds of things which are above space and time. They have not been made but they are the laws according to which everything that exists is formed. They are neither born nor can they die, yet they determine birth and death.
Buddhism anticipates Plato as well as Schiller, and all the other thinkers whose thoughts lean in the same direction. We read in the Udana :
" Thus have I heard. On a certain occasion the Blessed One dwelt at Savat- thi, in the Jetavana, the garden of Anathapindika.
"Now at that time the Blessed One was instructing, arousing, animating, and gladdening the Bhikkus with a religious discourse on the subject of Nirvana.
"And these Bhikkhus grasping the meaning, thinking it out and accepting with their hearts the whole doctrine, listened attentively.
"And the Blessed One, in this connection, on that occasion, breathed forth this solemn utterance :
" 'There is, O Bhikkhus, a state where there is neither earth, nor water, nor
1 We have frequently pointed out that the translation of " Stman " by "soul " is misleading. Buddhism does not deny the existence of mentality nor the reality of psychical facts.
2 We substitute here for General Strong's translation, our own metric version.
698 THE OPEN COURT.
heat nor air, neither infinity of space, nor infinity of consciousness, nor nothing- ness, nor perception, nor non-perception, neither this world nor that world, both sun and moon.
" ' That, O Bhikkhus, I term neither coming nor going, nor standing, neither death nor birth. It is without stability, without procession, without a basis : that is the end of sorrow.' "
We see here an attempt to describe the abstract state of pure form where there is no corporeality, no sensation, no perception, neither this world, nor the world to come, neither death nor birth and yet this world of pure idea is a reality. It is the most essential part of existence, for it conditions the creation of things, and with- out it no comprehension is possible. The Udana continues :
" Hard is it to realise the essential. The truth is not easily perceived, Desire is mastered by him who knows, To him who sees (aright) all things are naught."
"There is, O Bhikkhus, an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed. Were there not, O Bhikkus, this unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed, there would be no escape from the world of the born, originated, created, formed.
"Since, O Bhikkhus, there is an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, originated, created, formed."
Nirvana is the attainment of this rmindus inteJUgibilis, the realm of ideas, the comprehension of existence, the state where there is neither birth nor death. It is as Spinoza expresses it, a view of the world sub specie ceterni, i. e., under the aspect of the eternal. The belief in the eternal is the Buddhist God-conception.
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES.
Radiant Energy. "Qy Edgar L. Larkui, Director Lowe Observatory, etc., etc. Baumgardt Pub. Co., Los Angelos, California. Illustrated.
The title of this book and its general appearance are misleading. It suggests the discussion of some mysterious power of nature, and friends of the reviewer who happened to pick up the book did not hesitate to class it among occult publi- cations. This is a mistake, however, as even a furtive glance over the first chap- ter will amply prove. The author, Edgar L. Larkin, is an astronomer of good standing. He is the director of Lowe Observatory on Echo Mountain, California, and his booklet is a popular exposition of the methods of modern astronomy, in- cluding the elementary laws of astrophysics, among which, radiant energy, known as heat, light, and electricity, is of prominent significance.
Astronomers as a rule presuppose in their reports a general knowledge of the elementary facts of the actions of ether and also of the history of their discovery. Professor Larkin attacks the subject with an exposition of the simplest phenomena, and some chapters might almost be used in the kindergarten, so plain is his narra- tive of the nature of a ray of light, isolated in a slit of the darkroom, of refraction, of spectrum-analysis and the Fraunhofer lines. The book may be too simple for physicists, but it will be welcome to readers, who wish to have information con- cerning the mysterious undulation of light and the mode in which its qualities have been discovered.
Professor Larkin is perhaps given to a love of the occult, for he quotes as mot- toes over his several chapters lines from the Rig- Veda, the Zend-Avesta, Neopla-
MISCELLANEOUS. 699
tonists or other Greek mystics, religious texts of Oriental lore, including the Egyp- tian and Assyrian monuments ; but he remains always on the aslrafirma of exact science.
He discusses: (i) the nature of radiant energy, that is, light; (2) spectrum analysis; (3) the spectroscope; (4) Fraunhofer's spectrum; (5) diffraction and in- terference ; (6) the analysis of energy by means of the spectrum ; (7) astronomical spectroscopy; (8) absorption ; (9) exploration of the universe; (10) solar spectro- scope; (11) spectroscopy of the sun ; (12) radiant energy and its fixation (photogra- phy); (13) solar spectrography ; (14) spectrum analysis of the sun; (15) Hale's spectro-heliograph ; (16) solar spots ; (17) jets on the sun and their effect on the earth ; (18) the terrestrial influence of sun spot activity ; (19) the aurora and sun spots; (20) aurol*al displays; (21) the sun's potential; (22) heat potential of the sun ; (23) dynamics of the sun ; (24) solar heat potential ; (25) total energy of the sun ; (26) the ancient sun ; (27) the radiant sun ; (28) the spectro-bolometer ; (29) the stars ; (30) renewed efforts to find stellar parallax; (31) the sidereal structure ; (32) the stellar universe ; (33) binary suns ; (34) discovery of spectroscopic binaries; (35) spectroscopic binaries ; (36) stellar evolution ; (37) evolution wrought by tides; (38) evolution of the earth and moon ; (39) evolution now in activity ; (40) wide diffusion of matter ; (41) primordial electrical induction ; general summary.
The appendix (entitled Addenda) contains some items on the Lowe Observa- tory, and a few short articles and illustrations which did not find a place in the body of the book.
The book is profusely illustrated, and many pictures as well as diagrams are excellent, but it is to be regretted that some of them are too small to show the de- tails with sufficient clearness, and we hope that if there should be a call for a sec- ond edition, they will be replaced by larger ones.
We ought to add that the book suffers from an excusable local patriotism, and an apparent inclination to advertise the Lowe Observatory. We learn of the pa- trons that enabled Professor Larkin to carry on his work and to publish his book, and though the general public will care little about the personalities, the introduc- tion of these particulars will do no harm, and it is but meet that the author should credit generous donors for the sacrifices which they brought for science. p. c.
Neue Gedichte. Vors. Arthur Pftctigst. Berlin: Ferd. Diimmler's Verlagsbuch- handlung. 1903. Pages, 128. The third edition of Pfungst's poems lies before us, a little book which reflects the thoughts of a German who stands up for liberalism in religion and politics. The poet, a citizen of Frankfort-on-the-Main, is favorably known in Germany for his translations of kxVioldiS Light of Asia, the Sutta Nipata, and other Buddhist scriptures, Rhys Davids's Buddhis7ti, and also for a philosophical epic called " Laskaris " in which he treats the difficult problem whether or not life is worth living. He, however, allows us here in his collected poems to peep into the more intimate folds of his heart. His poems were written in hours of reflection and re- pose, a disposition characterised in the " Dedication," which begins with the fol- lowing stanza :
" In des Lebens wildem Weh'n,
Wo die B'luten dich uinrauschen.
Wag' es einmal still zu steh'n,
Auf dein inn'res Wort zu lauschen ! "
Some poems are addressed to men of the times, Ca^sare Lombroso, Dreyfus Zola, Giziki, etc., others are pictures of still-life, still others meditations on the
yoo THE OPEN COURT,
destiny of man, life's ideals and duties, but throughout Pfungst's personality shows itself as kindhearted and thoughtful. p. c.
Book of Nature. 'Qy Joluiny Jones, Spelling by his Mother. San Francisco: Paul Elder & Co. 1903. Pages, 32. This pamphlet contains children's verses, describing in nursery rhymes almost all the animals that came within reach of infantile imagination. The script is a facsimile of writing in capital letters, such as children would prefer when they be- gin to read, and the illustrations are of the kindergarten style. The booklet no doubt will be a welcome amusement to children between four ^nd eight years of age.
The English edition of Bahel and Bible by Professor Delitzsch now lies before us, and it is interesting to compare it with the American edition. The latter is in octavo, while the size of the former is duodecimo, somewhat smaller than the Ger- man edition. The pictures of the English edition are exactly the same, and of the ^ame size, as those of the German original, while in the American edition they are replaced by larger illustrations. The translations have been made independently of each other. The American edition of the First Lecture appeared in The Open Court very soon after its delivery ; but it seems that the English translator, Mr. C. H. W. Johns, did not know of the existence of the American edition, or at least he appears not to have taken any notice of it. The translations, although different in detail, are both well made, each in its own way.
While the American edition has been adapted to the interests of the American public, the English edition faithfully preserves the original German text. From the American edition those passages are omitted which have reference to German conditions only, such as the propaganda which Professor Delitzsch makes for the German Oriental Society, a picture of the house of the German expedition at Baby- lon (the slanting walls of which are presumably due to the faulty lense of the cam- era), and further in the appendix such notes of Professor Delitzsch's as are of a purely personal character : all these points can have no interest outside of Ger- many. On the other hand, the American edition contains extracts from the most significant criticisms of Professor Delitzsch's views, especially Halevy, Harnack Cornill, a Roman Catholic verdict, Alfred Jeremias, and among them we find in full the letter of Emperor William, written in reference to the religious significance of these interesting lectures. Professor Delitzsch's answers to the several points are summed up in short articles under appropriate headings.
The English edition contains no additional material except the translator's in- troduction in which he characterises Professor Delitzsch's position against the old and uncritical conception of the Bible. Mr. Johns says on page xxvi. of the intro- duction :
" The men who claim to decide everything by their own mother-wit have con- demned the Professor and tried to influence the public by an appeal to sentiment and prejudice. We wish that the man, his facts and his conclusions, should have a patient hearing. The lectures will at least be found free of the ill-natured gibes at us which pass for wit with some of his critics. There is no need to swallow everything whole, nor to toss the Bible on the shelf as antiquated rubbish. If the Bible owes much to Babylonia, so do astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. We
MISCELLANEOUS. 701
use still the Babylonian time measures and perhaps also their space measures. The debt of Greece and Rome to Babylon has yet to find its Delitzsch, but he is soon to appear.
" Much has been made of the pain which comes to those who see old beliefs perish. But that is salutary pain. We have all to take pains, or pain. Either we must learn, research, investigate, deduce, conclude, or, if we will not take such pains, we are liable at any time to suffer pain from finding some cherished belief perish, without our being able to defend it, or even give it decent obsequies. As Dr. Kinns of old said, when he had proved to his satisfaction that the ark did not really harbor lions and tigers (in which he proved more a destructive critic than Professor Delitzsch), ' It may seem a little too bad to deprive pictures and chil- dren's toys of this interesting feature, but there is strong evidence. . . .' ; so when there is strong evidence we can only feel pity for those who have believed many things on evidence no better than that which justified the lions and tigers. . . .
" Men accepted what they were told as babies. As men they need to put away childish things. They are babes still if they accept what is told them with no more effort to examine and verify. To throw aside all, and henceforth believe nothing is as childish as before. To such adult infants this book may give the ele- ments of an education such as they sorely need. If their so-called faith be un- settled, a very little more education will very likely settle it again ; or, which comes to much the same thing with this sort of faith, they will forget all about it and be- lieve as much or as little as before, the same things or something else, with equal complacency. The men of deep religious faith, who alone count for the progress of the race, will rejoice and take courage at a fresh proof that the Father has never left Himself without witness among men, and that even the most unlikely elements have gone to prepare the world for Him who was, and still is, to come."
The English edition can be had in the United States through G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, and though the price is twice as high as that of the American edition, we gladly recommend it to all those of our readers who wish to compare the two versions, or who for some reason or other would care to have a translation of the omitted passages. *
Buddhism, an illustrated quarterly review, edited by Bhikkhu Ananda Mai- triya, is a stately magazine, the first number of which has just been published. It contains a poem by Sir Edwin Arnold, the great author of the Light of Asia, an essay on Buddhist ethics by Prof. C. A. F. Rhys Davids, a translation from the Majjhima iVikaya by Dr. Karl E. Neumann, and also articles by Eastern Bud- dhists. Taw Sein Ko writes of "Pali Examinations" ; M. M. Hla Oung on "The Woman of Burma" ; Maung Po Me on "Animism or Agnosticism." Not the least significant feature of the new periodical are the essays of the editor, the Buddhist monk Ananda Maitriya, who writes on "The Faith of the Future" and on " Nib- bana." In addition to the essays there is also a wealth of notes, some of purely local interest, as for instance on the "Riots in Ceylon," the goldplating of the dome of a temple, news about pagodas, obituaries, and notes about the Buddhist
^ Babel and Bible. Two Lectures Delivered Before the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in the presence of the German Emperor, by Friedrich Delitzsch, Ordinary Professor of Oriental Phi- lology and Assyriology in the University of Berlin. Edited, with an Introduction, by C. H. W. Johns, M. A. New York : G.P.Putnam's Sons. London: Williams & Norgate. 1903. Pages 226. Price. $1.50.
702 THE OPEN COURT.
priesthood. In addition there are some of general importance, the " Wonders of Radium," the "Application of Finsen Light to Leprosy," the "Animals Petition,'' etc.
We learn from the department "Buddhist Activities" that a Young Men's Buddhist Association is established in Ceylon, that they are in connection with the Young Men's Buddhist Association of Japan, that Maitriya is lecturing in Colombo, that there are Buddhist schools established, etc.
The objects of the International Buddhist Society, which also characterise the periodical Buddhism, are defined as follows:
" Firstly, to set before the world the true principles of our Religion, believing, as we do, that these need only to be better known to meet with a wide-spread ac- ceptance amongst the peoples of the West, — an acceptance which, if manifested in practice, would in our opinion do much to promote the general happiness.
"Secondly, to promote as far as lies in our power, those humanitarian activ- ities referred to in the latter portion of ' The Faith of the Future' ; and
"Thirdly, to unite by our journal, as by a common bond of mutual interest and brotherhood, the many Associations with Buddhist aims which now exist."
In his editorial, "The Faith of the Future," the merits of Buddhism are fer- vidly set forth in a kind of Buddhist sermon which betrays no mean power of elo- quence. It closes with the following exhortation :
"'Truth' — it is written in our Sacred Books — 'Truth verily is Immortal Speech.' Knowing this so, we send forth from the East these echoes of an ancient Faith : — a Faith so old that the great hills have wasted and the galaxies of heaven have changed, since first the Master of Compassion taught it beneath the Hima- layan snows, under the watching stars of the still Indian night. Have yet the ages dimmed either the love He taught, shrouded the Wisdom of His Words, or sealed the entrance to the Valley of Peace He shewed ? Nay, surely, — and whatsoever of that ancient Truth may linger in the tale we tell, whatever of His Teaching yet re- sounds in this, its far-off echo, that will find place within the hearts of these who wait for it ; that will endure, after our lips are dumb in death. The rest is naught, all other speech is vain : — Truth the Immortal will alone survive ; will live on through the ages, shrined in the Temple of Humanity ; until the fires of Passion, Hatred and Delusion shall be quenched forever, and the Veil of Nescience be torn aside: — till all mankind, blent at the last in one fair Brotherhood of Peace, shall own one Law, one Hope, one Faith : — that Faith of Pity and of Wisdom and of Love which shall survive all lesser lights, — fair blossom on the Tree of Human Thought ; the Faith of all Humanity, the Faith of the Future ! "
This new magazine is one of the most significant symptoms of the re-awaken- ing of Buddhism. Buddhism has found in Ananda Maitriya a man who promises to become a power in the world.
What shall Christians think of this re-awakening of Buddhism ? Shall they be alarmed for the sake of their own religion ? We think not ! We believe that the awakening of a greater interest in any one religion can only help to bring out the truth, whatever the truth may be. A renewal of the life of Buddhism will stimu- late the religious life of Christianity. Competition is wholesome not only in the world of commerce, but also in the domain of thought and ideal aspirations. Bud- dhism seemed to be dead in Japan until Christian missionaries came, and it owes to them its recent regeneration. There are Buddhist priests of Japan who recog- nise their indebtedness to Christianity, and most of them feel very friendly toward the representative of the foreign faith. The same will be true of Christianity at
MISCELLANEOUS. 703
home and abroad. The more earnest the pagans are, the better it will be for Christianity. The Buddhists begin to learn from the Christians, and if there is anything good in Buddhism let the Christians learn from the Buddhists.
Federal Chrtstetidom is a new periodical which advocates a cooperation of the Churches, not as an organised union but as a loose federation, in which every Church (perhaps every congregation) is left to formulate its own creed, and all of them join in an alliance, which would be mutually strengthening, and an exchange of thought and ideals. The editor says in his editorial announcement :
"This publication, of which we wish to continue the issue at intervals, is in- tended to be an organ for expressing the mind of those who, in a humanitarian spirit, desire the inter-recognition of the Denominations of Christianity as one sin- gle inter-covenanted Church. We do not knowingly offer any arbitrary views of our own upon the status of American Christianity. Our purpose in this publica- tion is to bring forward, subject to due corrections, wherever an error can be shown, a statement of the existing facts in the case, concerning Religion in America to-day. We ask for nothing more than that a fait accompli should have its due public recognition, and that the unorganised, and in part unconscious unity of Christendom in America to-day may proceed in its own logical order towards a conscious and organised fulfilment."
From the pledge of the inter-church Covenant, we select the following sen- tences :
"We confess our faith in the sanctity of individual conscience, and in the di- vine worth of the faith of every religious man, which faith we hold to be the staff of the life of the World.
"We pledge ourselves not to belittle the faith and religious hopes of other men.
" We devote ourselves to the maintenance of the sanctities of domestic life.
" We aspire together that peace may forever reign between all men and amid all the nations of the world."
On page 13 we find " a scheme for a society for establishing an inter-church federal communion " under the name of "Federal Religious Society," the first ob- ject of which is to be "to gather together for friendly discussion and cooperation all those who are interested in the Reunion of Christendom and in the establish- ment of friendly intercourse between the members of all Religions."
It is claimed that Christendom is vitally and organically one, and although a reunion can never be achieved by fusion or compromise, it is hoped that it is pos- sible on the basis of a freedom of the churches and a recognition of the place of each separate church as well as the rights of individual consciences.
While the scheme aims at a union of Christian churches, it does not want to exclude the non-Christians, but suggests (in the appendix to the articles of organi- sation, page 16) also the discussion of the non-Christian faiths if possible by rep- resentatives who are themselves believers in their religion.
A single copy of Federal Christendom is 10 cents, twelve issues (which will be published as occasion may arise) are $1.00. Strange to say, this first number bears no imprint, and we only know from private correspondence that the main editor is Rev. R. B. DeBary, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of England, formerly of England, recently of Denver, Colorado, and at present temporarily at 486 Main St., Springfield, Mass.
704 THE OPEN COURT.
" Serve the Eternal" {Dem Ezvigen !) is the title of a pamphlet issued anon- ymously in behalf of the members of the Theosophical Society of Germany. ^ The motto is taken from Jakob Bohme and reads :
" Wem Zeit Wie Ewigkeit Und Ewigkeit Wie Zeit, Der ist befreit Von allem Streit." ["To whom Time is as Eternity, and to whom Eternity is as Time, He is liberated from the tur- moil of the World."]
The eternal in everything is the Self, and the theosophist is exhorted to live for the elevation of Self, the eternal principle in him. While the author recognises the genuineness of spiritualistic phenomena, he regards theosophy as opposed to spiritualism, in so far as the latter is an endeavor to elevate oneself up to the eter- nal, while the spiritualist with the help of mediums tries to bring spirituality down to the lower level of man.
The book contains many noble moral maxims, but is, as might be expected, vitiated by a hankering after and a belief in the occult.
The pamphlet is neatly printed and contains little sketches which give it an artistic appearance.
The picture of Chevalier Pinetti published in the last number of The Of en Court is a rare print from the collection of Dr. Saram R. Ellison of New York City, who kindly enabled Mr. Evans to have it reproduced in the article that ap- peared in the October number of The Of en Court. Dr. Ellison has collected many rare and curious works on necromancy, magic, and kindred subjects, and it is just announced by the papers that he has made a gift of this valuable library to Co- lumbia University of New York.
'^Deni Ewigen. C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn. Berlin.
The Book of the Hour in Germany
BABEL AND BIBLE
Two Lectures on the Significance of Assyriological Research for Religion ; Embodying the Most Important Criticisms and the Author's Replies
BY
DR. FRIEDRICH DELITZSCH
Professor of Assyriolotry i" the University of ISerlin.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY
THOMAS J. McCORMACK AND W. H. CARRUTH
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE EDITION
PAGES 167. PRICE BOUND, 75 CENTS NET
The illustrations of the American edition are of larger size than those of the German original. They have been supplemented by pertinent additional pictures and by those materials which have done so much to make these lectures interesting, especially the Emperor's Letter, and the most important passages extracted from essays written by Delit/.sch's critics.
''A very useful service has been done by the publication of a translation of Dr De- htzsch s " Babel and Bible " ; it brings together in brief and well-considered shape, by a man thoroughly familiar with the subject, the broad general outlines of the results of the explora- tions of the past half-century.... Taken as a whole, this little thin volume, with its rapid survey its illustrations, and its grasp of the entire subject gives exactly what many have wanted on Babylonian discoveries."— 77(c Philadelphia Press.
" ^^^ "^T'^^^ ^"^ g''^^^ calmness and moderation From the beginning to the end of his lecture he displays a noble attitude of humility which lends an irresistible charm to his ex- haustive scholarship . .There is no danger that any established conclusion of modern learn- ing will be refused admittance to the halls of Catholic scholarship."— CaZ/^o/zV irorld
';For one Nvjbo 's anxious to know just what Assyriology has done in elucidating the meaning of the Old Testament and in establishing its chronology, no better reference work could be suggested than this timely little book of Professor Delitzsch's ''—Hartford Sem- inary Accord.
"The little book is to be heartily recommended as a popular expos^ of the present status of Semitic research in reference to its bearing upon the Bible "~Nezu York Times
"It is a fascinating story, simply and vividly told,-the story of a philosopher to an emperor, of a teacher to his students."— 6^w //J ^
" This little book will be read with interest Succeeds in conveying some clear no- tions of the high Babylonian civilisation that held sway in Western Asia during the third and second millenniums B. C— surely one of the most wonderful phenomena of history which has been literally unearthed during the present generation, having been wholly un- known and unsuspected before the excavations of our own d.3iy."— Tablet.
"The work is pleasant reading and gives a very complete resume of the results of As- syrian research in relation to Biblical studies It should be of use to students and teach- ers. — London Globe.
" This lecture created a profound sensation when delivered before the German Emperor It gives in popular language, with fifty-nine illustrations, the best succinct account we know of the results of recent studies in Assyriology."— i^Av/ioo'/s^ iMa^azine and Peviezu
'• Has stirred up much excitement among the people who have hitherto paid little atten- tion to the mass of information which the recently discovered remains of ancient Assyria have contributed to our knowledge of the history and of the ideas of the Bible.'— Biblical Ivor Id.
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History of Their Origin, Their l)issemiuatio7i and Influence in the Roman Etnpire, Their Doctrines and Liturgy, Their Struggle luith Christianity, Mithraic Art, etc. By FRANZ CUMONT, Professor in the University of Ghent, Belgium. I'rcuislated by THOMAS J. McCORMACfC. With jo illustrations and a map of the Roman Empire Pp., circa 2^0. Price, $i.Jo net (6s. 6d.). This zvork is a sketch of one of the most important but historically most neglected religious m,ovem.enls of the Roman Em,pire. Mithraisin zuas the rival of Christianity, and greatly resembled the latter religion. 7 he story of the struggle betzueeyi the tzuo creeds, here told in its ejitirety for the first time, is unmatched in its tlirilling interest.
Professor Cumojit zuent to great expense and trouble in the preparatioyi of the re- searches of luhich this zvork is a summary. It represents years of labor and travel and throzvs an entirely nezu light on the interesting life of the Roman zuorld in the first ce7i- turies of the Christiati era.
The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago
324 Dearborn Street.
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Geometric Exercises in Paper=FoIding
By T. SUNDARA ROW. Edited and revised by W. W. Beman and D. E. Smith. Pp., x, 148. Price, cloth, $1.00 net (4s. 6d. net).
"Simply a revelation in the possibilities of paper folding," — Teachers' Jnsti- tute, N. Y.
"The editors have performed a genuine service in bringing this work before our public, and in such neat and attractive form. The twenty-six exquisite half tone illustrations with which they have replaced the line drawings of the original, are a decided enrichment of the volume." — Science. " For teachers of elementary geometry the book is really of considerable value, and it shows in a forcible and tangible way how properties vaguely known to us by experience are logical and necessary consequences of a few definitions. A set of colored squares of paper is provided with the book." — 'Journal of Physi- cal Chemistry.
" A most welcome contribution to concrete geometry, well worthy the attention of teachers." — Charles DcCarmo, Cornell University. " A helpful and stimulating book for teachers." — El. AT. Langley, Bedford, Eng.
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