LECTURES AND ESSAYS

OF

WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH

Uniform with this Volume.

THE LIFE OF
WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH

Bv JOHN SUTHERLAND BLACK
AND GEORGE CHRYSTAL

AGENTS

AMERICA . THE MACMII.LAN COMPANY

64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

AUSTRALASIA THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE

CANADA . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.

ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE, 70 BOND STRFKT, TORONTO

INDIA . . MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.

MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY

309 Bow BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA

PROFESSOR WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH

From a Posthumous Portrait by Sir George Reid, R.S.A., now in the Free Church College,

Aberdeen.

LECTU RES © ESSAYS

OF WILLIAM
ROBERTSON SMITH

EDITED BY

JOHN SUTHERLAND BLACK

AND

GEORGE CHRYSTAL

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

MCMXII

BR

PREFACE

THE present volume contains a selection from the writings
of Professor Robertson Smith which are either wholly
unpublished or have not yet been collected in book-form.
It has not been found possible within the compass even
of a large volume to give more than a strictly limited
selection from the manuscript material in the hands of the
editors, and much that in their opinion is of considerable
interest and value must be withheld, at any rate for the
present.

Their main purpose in compiling this volume has been
to provide a supplement to Professor Smith's Life and to
furnish a series of illustrative documents possessing an
intrinsic interest of their own, but also valuable as throw
ing light on the development of his mind and of his
attitude towards the theological controversies and the
scientific inquiries which were the chief concern of his life.

The Scientific Papers which form the first group now
reprinted belong to the period before Professor Smith
was definitely settled in his theological career, or at any
rate before he was finally embarked on the series of critical
inquiries which led to the celebrated heresy case. In
their capacity as biographers the editors consider these
papers worthy of reproduction as illustrating the remark
able acuteness and vivacity of Professor Smith's mental
powers as a very young man. They were received with

vi LECTURES AND ESSAYS

marked favour by Lord Kelvin, Professor Tait, and other
eminent men of science with whom he was then associated,
and the editors are permitted to print an estimate which
has been kindly furnished by the present Sadleirian Pro
fessor of Pure Mathematics at Cambridge who was
Smith's colleague and friend during his Cambridge
period. Professor Hobson writes :—

" The three papers entitled ' Theory of Geometric
Reasoning/ ' Hegel and the Metaphysics of the Fluxional
Calculus/ and ' Dr. Stirling, Hegel, and the Mathe
maticians ' are of a controversial character, and relate to
the Philosophy of Mathematics. The incisive vigour with
which they are written, and the acuteness of the dialectic
therein displayed, are characteristic of Robertson Smith.
At the present time their interest is, however, mainly
biographical and historical. Much of the criticism of
Hegel's views relating to the Infinitesimal Calculus is no
doubt valid, but it is clothed in a form which implies
ideas of the foundations of Analysis which are not in
accord with the conceptions of mathematicians at the
present time. Robertson Smith's criticism of Mill's ideas
about the nature of geometric reasoning are made from
the point of view of a disciple of Kant in relation to the
space- problem. The study of the foundations of Geometry,
to which a vast amount of attention has been given
since the time of the publication of this criticism, has
resulted in revelations which make the ideas of Kant in
this regard no longer tenable, at least without very con
siderable modification. The paper ' On the Flow of
Electricity in Conducting Surfaces ' is not controversial,
and thus comes under a different category. It contains
detailed work which amounted to a distinct contribution
to the development of the subject of which it treats at the
time it was published, and was regularly consulted by

PREFACE vii

students for years afterwards. It shows that Robertson
Smith possessed powers which would have enabled him
to produce further useful contributions to Mathematical
and Physical Science, had he not turned away from these
branches to quite other domains."

The editors have to express their cordial thanks to
Mr. D. B. Mair, ex-Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge,
who was kind enough to read the proofs of this part of
the book, and to undertake the necessary corrections.

Of the Theological Essays and Lectures composing the
next three sections it is enough to say generally that they
have been selected with a view to exhibiting the evolution
of Professor Smith's opinions on Biblical questions, the
ever- widening range of his scholarship, and the painstaking
and cautious character of his teaching. The undergraduate
papers of the second section show the effects of his first
contact with the German theological genius in Rothe, the
first-fruits of the influence of Ritschl, and an approxima
tion to his final views of the results reached by the School
of Kuenen. The Aberdeen Lectures in Sections III. and IV.
give a series of characteristic samples of the educational
work he was able to do for Theology and for the Church
before his ecclesiastical career was cut short.

The controversies which centre round the topics
treated in these papers have to some extent lost the
freshness which they had in Smith's time ; new points of
detail have arisen, and with the advance of scholarship
new internal evidence has been accumulated. But the
fundamental positions in Biblical criticism are almost as
keenly debated as ever, and the spirit of the conflicting
tendencies in criticism is practically the same as it was in
the days of the Aberdeen Heresy. The reprint, therefore,
of a selection from Smith's earlier critical writings, which
in the opinion of those competent to judge are models of

viii LECTURES AND ESSAYS

their kind, will, the editors hope, be of more than an
antiquarian or even a purely biographical interest.

The task of making the selection from Professor Smith's
later writings which is presented in the last two sections
was comparatively simple. The two reviews of Wellhausen
and Renan respectively were chosen by the editors as
good examples of the great mass of occasional writing to
which Professor Smith gave so much of his time, and in
which so much of his best work was done. No representa
tive collection of his papers would be complete which did
not include the paper on Animal Worship, which was one
of his most original contributions to knowledge, and the
desirability of reprints of the Letters from the Hejaz,
which at the time of their publication received the highest
commendation from the most eminent Orientalists of the
day was equally obvious.

The difficulty of presenting a correct and scholarly
version of these letters was considerable, and the editors
are deeply indebted to the invaluable help of Mr. Stanley A.
Cook, ex-Fellow and Lecturer, Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge, to whom they wish to express their obligation.
Mr. Cook kindly agreed to read the proofs, and to deal with
the necessary alterations of detail. The editors are per
mitted to quote the following observations by Mr. Cook
on the text of this section as it is now presented :

" Professor Smith unfortunately left no marked copy of
the letters, and the task of seeing that they were reprinted
in a satisfactory manner was one of some difficulty. They
were written at intervals and for popular publication, and
contained various not altogether scientific spellings ;
these it did not seem necessary to change. But there were
some inconsistencies of transliteration and several obvious
misprints, and these have been corrected. The dialect
spoken in the Nejd has certain peculiarities of its own,

PREFACE ix

and to adjust the spellings to the ordinary written forms
would have been a step which Professor Smith himself
clearly did not propose. Where the forms are in virtual
agreement with those in other sources (e.g. Lane, Doughty,
Jaussen) they have been left. In some cases, however,'
the misprints were unintelligible, and it was necessary
to resort to emendation. I have to express my indebted
ness to Professor A. A. Bevan for some valuable correc
tions, but am myself responsible for any obvious errors
that still remain uncorrected."

Mr. Cook's assistance was not limited to Section V.,
and the editors are grateful to him for helpful advice and
suggestions on points of Oriental scholarship arising
throughout the volume.

J. S. B.
G. W. CH.

April 24, 1912.

CONTENTS

i

SCIENTIFIC PAPERS (1869-1873)

CHAP. PAGE

I. THEORY OF GEOMETRICAL REASONING (February i,

1869) . . 3

II. HEGEL AND THE METAPHYSICS OF THE FLUXIONAL

CALCULUS (May 17, 1869) . . . .13

III. ON THE FLOW OF ELECTRICITY IN CONDUCTING SUR

FACES (February 21, 1870) . . . 44

IV. NOTE ON PROFESSOR BAIN'S THEORY OF EUCLID I. 4

(June 6, 1870) . . . . .67

V. DR. STIRLING, HEGEL, AND THE MATHEMATICIANS

(April 1873) ... .71

II
EARLY THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS (1868-1870)

I. PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY : A FRAGMENT (January

1868) ... . ... . . 97

II. CHRISTIANITY AND THE SUPERNATURAL (Jan. 1869) . 109

III. THE WORK OF A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY (Nov. 1869) 137

IV. THE QUESTION OF PROPHECY IN THE CRITICAL SCHOOLS

OF THE CONTINENT (April 1870) . . . 163

xi

Xll

LECTURES AND ESSAYS

CHAP

III
EARLY ABERDEEN LECTURES (1870-1874)

I. WHAT HISTORY TEACHES us TO SEEK IN THE

BIBLE (November 1870) • 207

II. EXTRACTS FROM EARLY LECTURES (1870-1872) . 235

III. THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY (January 1871) . 253

IV. THE PLACE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN RELIGIOUS

INSTRUCTION (September 1871)
V. INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ON THE PSALMS (1872) . 294

IV
LATER ABERDEEN LECTURES (1874-1877)

I. THE PLACE OF THEOLOGY IN THE WORK AND GROWTH

OF THE CHURCH (March 1875) • 3°9

II. Two LECTURES ON PROPHECY (June 1876) . . 341

III. ON THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN 1876

(July 1877) . . 367

IV. ON THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (July 1877) . 400

V
ARABIAN STUDIES (1880-1881)

I. ANIMAL TRIBES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT (July 1880) . 455

II. A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ (1881) • 484

VI
REVIEWS OF BOOKS

I. WELLHAUSEN'S GESCHICHTE ISRAELS (May 17, 1879) 601

II. RENAN'S HISTOIRE DU PEUPLE tf ISRAEL (1887) . 608

I

SCIENTIFIC PAPERS

(1869-1873)

I. THEORY OF GEOMETRICAL REASONING. (Feb. i, 1869.)

II. HEGEL AND THE METAPHYSICS OF THE FLUXIONAL
CALCULUS. (May 17, 1869.)

III. ON THE FLOW OF ELECTRICITY IN CONDUCTING SUR

FACES. (Feb. 21, 1870.)

IV. NOTE ON PROFESSOR BAIN'S THEORY OF EUCLID, I. 4.

(June 6, 1870.)

V. DR. STIRLING, HEGEL, AND THE MATHEMATICIANS.

(April, 1873.)

THEORY OF GEOMETRICAL REASONING

Mr. Mill's Theory of Geometrical Reasoning Mathematically Tested.1

AN amusing and instructive example of the way in
which logicians are accustomed to dogmatise upon the
theory of sciences that they do not understand is afforded
by Mr. Mill's explanation of the nature of geometrical
reasoning.

Those who remember that Mr. Mill assures Dr. Whewell
that he has conscientiously studied geometry (Logic,
7th ed. i. 270), will probably find some difficulty in
believing that the demonstration of Euc. I. 5, which Mr.
Mill offers as an illustration of the justice of his theory
of geometrical reasoning, depends on the axiom, that
triangles, having two sides equal each to each, are equal
in all respects. Such, nevertheless, is the case ; and
when one sees this absurdity pass unmodified from
edition to edition of Mr. Mill's Logic, and when even
Mansel, Mr. Mill's watchful enemy, tells us that " against
the form of the geometrical syllogism, as exhibited by
Mr. Mill, the logician will have no objections to allege "
(Mansel's Aldrich, 3rd ed., p. 255), one cannot but think
that logic would make more progress if logicians would
give a little more attention to the processes they profess
to explain.

1 Communicated by Professor Tait to the Royal Society of Edinburgh
on February i, 1869, and published in its Proceedings, vol. vi. pp. 477-
483-

3

I
4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

It may perhaps be worth while to show how Mr. Mill
was led into this extraordinary mistake. We shall find
that Mr. Mill chooses rather to sacrifice geometry to his
philosophy, than to modify his philosophy in accordance
with the facts of geometry.

Mr. Mill holds that all general knowledge is derived
from experience ; meaning by experience the com
parison of at least two distinct experimental facts. In
other words, all knowledge is ultimately gained by
induction from a series of observed facts. That any
general truth can be got at intuitively, by merely looking
at one case, Mr. Mill emphatically denies. The fact that
two straight lines cannot enclose a space is not self-
evident as soon as we know what straight lines are
[i.e. can mentally construct such lines] ; but is got at
only by experiments on " real " or " imaginary " lines
(Logic, i. pp. 259, 262). Now it is certain that, in the
demonstrations of Euclid, we are satisfied of the truth
of the general proposition enunciated, as soon as we have
read the proof for the special figure laid down. There is
no need for an induction from the comparison of several
figures. Since then one figure is as good as half a dozen,
Mr. Mill is forced to the conclusion that the figure is no
essential part of the proof, or that " by dropping the use
of diagrams, and substituting, in the demonstrations,
general phrases for the letters of the alphabet, we might
prove the general theorem directly " from " the axioms
and definitions in their general form " (p. 213).

We may just mention, in passing, that this view,
combined with the doctrine that the definitions of geo
metry are purely hypothetical, leads Mr. Mill to the
curious opinion that we might make any number of
imaginary sciences as complicated as geometry, by
applying real axioms to imaginary definitions. We
mention this merely to illustrate Mr. Mill's position— our
present business is to see how these views of geometry
work in practice.

i873] GEOMETRICAL REASONING 5

Mr. Mill's example, as we have said, is Euclid I. 5,
which he undertakes to deduce from the original deductive
foundations. We have first (p. 241)
some preliminary remarks, which
afford a remarkably happy instance
of the way in which Mr. Mill is ac
customed to keep himself safe from
all opponents, by alternately sup
porting each of two contrary views
of a subject. " First," says he,
speaking of the angles ABE, CBE ;
ACD, BCD, "it could be perceived
intuitively that their differences were
the angles at the base." If this intuition is really a step
in the proof, then since intuition is just actual looking at
the figure, what becomes of the doctrine that the figure
is not essential, or of the still more fundamental doctrine,
that no general truth can flow from a single intuition ? ]
In this, however, Mr. Mill only falls foul of himself. A
more serious matter is, that when he sets about his
regular demonstration, he falls foul of the truths of
geometry.

Having shown that AD = AE, Mr. Mill proceeds thus :—
" Both these pairs of straight lines " [AC, AB : AD, AE]
" have the property of equality ; which is a mark that,
if applied to each other, they will coincide. Coinciding
altogether means coinciding in every part, and of course
at their extremities, D, E, and B, C." Now, " straight
lines, having their extremities coincident, coincide. BE
and CD have been brought within this formula by the
preceding induction ; they will, therefore, coincide." [!]
If Mr. Mill generalises this conclusion, I think he will

1 This is no mere slip on Mr. Mill's part. To show that the angles at
the base are the differences of the angles in question, without appealing
to the figure, we must have a new axiom [proved, of course, by induc
tion I], viz. that if a side of a triangle be produced to any point, the line
joining that point with the opposite angle falls wholly without the
triangle.

6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

find it to be that two triangles, having two sides of each
equal, are equal in all respects ; and from this theorem
he may at once conclude, by his own fourth formula
[" angles having their sides coincident, coincide "], that
angles contained by equal straight lines are equal ! It is
clear that Mr. Mill did not see that the point is to show
that, the triangles ABE, ACD, remaining rigid, AB may
be applied to AC, and AE to AD at the same time. But
this can only be brought out by figuring to oneself AB
moved round to coincide with AC, and then the triangle
ABE rotated about AB through two right angles ; and
this process was not competent to Mr. Mill, whose theory
bound him to prove the equality of the triangles by pure
syllogism from the two formulas, " equal straight lines,
being applied to one another, coincide," and " straight
lines, having their extremities coincident, coincide."

But Mr. Mill may say, " I have only to add, that equal
angles applied to one another coincide."

Very well, you have then three syllogisms :—
Equal straight lines coincide I Equal straight lines coincide

if applied ; if applied ;

AC, AB, are equal. AD, AE, are equal.

Equal angles coincide if applied ;

CAD, BAE, are equal.

Logically these three syllogisms can give only three
independent conclusions :—

AC, AB coincide if applied. | AD, AE coincide if applied.

The angles CAD, BAE coincide if applied :—
but by no means the ONE conclusion that the rigid figure
ABE, ACD coincide if applied. If Mr. Mill still contends
that there is no need for intuition here, let him sub
stitute for the words " equal straight lines," " equal arcs
of great circles." The premises of his syllogisms are still
all right ; but, owing to circumstances that must be seen
to be understood, the spherical triangles cannot be made
to coincide.

1873] GEOMETRICAL REASONING 7

There are only two courses open to Mr. Mill — either to
confess that the attempt to square geometry with a
preconceived theory has forced him into a grossly erro
neous demonstration, or to invent a new formula, viz.
that if in two plane figures any number of consecutive
sides and angles taken one by one may be made to coin
cide, they may also be made to coincide as rigidly con
nected wholes. But, then, Mr. Mill must maintain that
the man who reads Euc. I. 4 for the first time does not at
once conclude the general truth of this formula from the
one figure before him, but either brings the formula with
him to the proof as a result of previous induction, or
requires to pause in the proof, and satisfy himself of
the truth of the formula by a comparison of a series of
figures.

It is easily shown, by the same species of analysis as
we have adopted here, that wherever a real step is made
in geometry we must either use the figure or introduce a
new general axiom [not of course in mere converses, as
Euc. I. 19, I. 25]. All geometrical construction is in the
last resort a means of making clear to the eye complicated
relations of figures.

Now, if we can at once and with certainty conclude
from the one case figured in the diagram to the general
case — if, that is, axioms are proved not by induction,
but by intuition, and are necessarily true — there is no
difficulty about geometrical reasoning ; but if each new
axiom is gained by a new induction (and that, on Mr.
Mill's showing, an " inductio per enumerationem simpli-
cem "), we get a difficulty which Mr. Mill curiously enables
us to state in his own words (i. p. 301) — " If it were
necessary," in adding a second step to an argument,
" to assume some other axiom, the argument would no
doubt be weakened." But, says Mr. Mill, it is the same
axiom which is repeated at each step. If this were not
so, " the deductions of pure mathematics could hardly
fail to be among the most uncertain of argumentative

8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

processes, since they are the longest." If now we do
call in new axioms whenever we construct an essentially
new figure, must not Mr. Mill admit, on his own showing,
that every advance in geometry involves an advance in
uncertainty ; that the geometry of the circle is less
certain than that of the straight line, solid geometry
than plane, conic sections than Euclid, etc. ? Surely
this is a reductio ad absurdum of the whole theory.

The principles of geometry involved in the question
are so important that we may profitably separate them
from Mr. Mill's blunders in a special case.

I. The proofs of geometry are clearly not inductive.
There is no mental comparison of various figures needed
during the proof. The inductions involved (if any)
must have been previously formed.

II. The proofs then must be reduced either to actual
perception (intuition), or to deduction from axioms.
But since the proof is general, the former assumption
involves the reality of general intuition, i.e. of a general
judgment from a single perception.

III. The theory of intuition is sufficient, but is dis
puted in two interests :—

(a) In the interest of syllogism, which claims to give
indefinitely extensive conclusions from limited premises
[but many, as Whewell, hold that these premises are
intuitive axioms].

(ft) In the interests of empiricism, which makes all
arguments be ultimately from particulars to particulars.

Mr. Mill combines the two objections.

Now we have seen that if objection (a) falls (i.e. if
the premises of geometry are not reducible to a limited
number of axioms from which everything follows ana
lytically), the security of geometric reasoning can be
established only if each premise has apodictic certainty.
To overthrow Mill's whole theory, it is therefore enough
to show the fallacy of the limited -number -of -axioms
hypothesis. On this we observe : —

i873] GEOMETRICAL REASONING 9

is^, The axioms are more numerous than Mr. Mill
thinks, for his proof of Euc. I. 5 is lost for want of more
axioms.

2nd, The indefinite extension of geometry depends on
the power of indefinitely extended construction [but
where there is construction there is intuition — nay, mental
intuition is mental construction] . Now here our opponents
may suppose [A] that the general conclusion really flows
from the particular construction, which, in the language
of logic, supplies the middle term. But since the con
struction is particular, we should thus be involved in the
fallacy of the undistributed middle. Again, [B] it may
be said that the construction is only the sensible repre
sentation of a general axiom. But as the construction is
new and indispensable, the general axiom must be so
also. Therefore, if geometry is proved from axioms,
these axioms must be unlimited in number.

$rd, Obviously it is not by logic that we can satis
factorily determine how far geometry contains synthetic
elements peculiar to itself. We have, however, in analyti
cal geometry a ready criterion how far geometry can be
developed without the addition of new geometrical con
siderations.

Now we find that we cannot begin analytical geometry
from the mere axioms and definitions. We must by
synthetic geometry, by actual seeing, learn the qualities
of lines and angles before we can begin to use analysis.
Then, given so many synthetic propositions, we can
deduce others by algebra ; but only by a use of actual
intuition, first, in translating the geometrical enunciation
into algebraic formulae ; and, second, in translating the
algebraic result (if that result is not merely quantitative)
into its geometric meaning. The answer to a proposition
in analytical geometry is simply a rule to guide us in
actually constructing, by a new use of our eyes or imagina
tion, the new lines which we must have to interpret the
result. Analysis does not enable us to dispense with

io LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

synthetic constructions, but simply serves to guide us
in these constructions, and so to dispense more or less
completely with the tact required to find out the geo
metrical solution. This is true in every case, but most
obviously in the investigation of new curves. The
tracing of curves, from their equations, is a process in
which no man can succeed by mere rule without the
use of his eyes. Suppose asymptotes, cusps, concavity,
everything else found, the union of these features in one
curve will remain a synthetic process.

Still more remarkable is the use made in analysis
of imaginary quantities. To the logician an imaginary
quantity is nonsense, but geometrically it has a real
interpretation. The geometrical power gained by a new
method like quaternions is radically distinct from that
gained by the solution of a new differential equation.
The latter is a triumph of algebra, the former is a triumph
of synthetic geometry — the discovery of a whole class of
new guides to construction.

[A brief discussion followed, in the course of which
Professor Tait remarked that an excellent and inter
esting instance of the incapacity of metaphysicians to
understand even the most elementary mathematical
demonstrations, had been of late revived under the
auspices of Dr. J. H. Stirling. His name, with those of
Berkeley and Hegel, formed a sufficient warrant for
calling attention to the point.

It is where Newton, seeking the fluxion of a product,
as ab, writes it in a form equivalent to

^ [(a + i adt) (b + \bdt} -(a- \adt] (b -

which gives, at once, the correct value

ab + ba.

Now Berkeley, Hegel, Stirling, and others have all in
turn censured this process as a mere trick (or in terms

i873] DISCUSSION ii

somewhat similar) and say, in effect, that it is essentially
erroneous. The fact, however, is that, as in far greater
matters, Newton here shows his profound knowledge of
the question in hand ; and adopts, without any parade,
a method which gives the result true to the second order of
small quantities. The metaphysicians cannot see this,
and Dr. Stirling speaks with enthusiastic admiration of
the clear-sightedness and profundity of Hegel in detecting
this blunder, and for it " harpooning " Newton !

What Newton seeks is the rate of increase of a quantity
at a particular instant. Instead of measuring it by the
rate of increase after that instant (as the metaphysicians
would require) he measures it by observing, as it were,
for equal intervals of time before and after the instant in
question.

Any one who is not a metaphysician can see at once
the superior accuracy of Newton's method, by applying
both methods to the case of a rapidly varying velocity ;
such as that of a falling stone, or of a railway train near
a station.

In reference to what Professor Tait had said, Mr.
Sang remarked that the line of argument attributed to
Newton had been used by John Napier before Newton's
birth. Napier's definition of a logarithm runs thus
(Descriptio, lib. i. cap. i. def. 6), (Constructio, 23, 25)
that if two points move synchronously along two lines,
the one with a uniform velocity (arithmetice), the other
(geometrice) with a velocity proportional to its distance
from a fixed point, the distance passed over by the first
point is the logarithm of the distance of the second from
the fixed point. In order to compare this variable
velocity at any instant with the constant velocity, he
takes a small interval of time preceding, and another
succeeding the given instant, shows that the true velocity
is included between the two velocities thus obtained, and
(28, 31) takes the arithmetical mean as better than either,
and as true (inter terminos).

12 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-1873

It may be added, that Napier devotes several sections
of his Constructio to the discussion of the doctrine of
limits (de accuratione) ; that his logarithms were de
nounced by the metaphysicians of his day as founded
on the false system of approximation, but that, fortun
ately for the progress of exact science, their objections
were unheeded.

Sir W. Thomson said that the metaphysicians, wishing
to find the speed of a vessel at 12 o'clock from an hour's
run, would choose the hour from 12 to i ; whereas
Napier, Newton, and the rest of the world would
take it from 11.30 to 12.30.]

II

HEGEL AND THE METAPHYSICS OF THE
FLUXIONAL CALCULUS1

IT is now many years since Dr. Whewell drew the
attention of the Cambridge Philosophical Society to the
courageous, if somewhat Quixotic, attempts of Hegel to
cast discredit on Newton's law of gravitation, and on
the mathematical demonstrations of Kepler's laws given
in the Principia. At the time when Whewell wrote, it
would probably have been difficult to find in Britain any
one ready to maintain the cause of Hegel in this matter,
or even to hint that the astounding arguments of the
Naturphilosophie flowed from any deeper source than
self-complacent ignorance.

The present state of matters is different. The philo
sophy of Hegel is now for the first time beginning to have
a direct and powerful influence on British speculation.
Men are beginning to study Hegel ; and an author whose
works confessedly demand the labour of years, if they
are to be fully understood, can hardly be studied at all
except by devoted disciples. A man whose determina
tion to master Hegel's philosophy survives the repelling
impression which the obscurity and arrogance of the
philosopher are sure to produce at first, is very likely to
be carried away by the calm assumption of omniscience
which runs through Hegel's writings. It is not, therefore,

1 Communicated by Professor Tait to the Royal Society of Edin
burgh on May 17, 1869, and published in its Transactions, vol. xxv.
pt. ii. pp. 491-511.

13

i4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

surprising that Dr. Stirling extends his admiration to
Hegel's physical positions ; and if he does not venture
to say that Hegel's proof of Kepler's laws is right, at least
feels sure that it would repay the attention of mathe
maticians.

It would not, perhaps, be impossible to rob Dr. Stirling
of even this sorry consolation ; but there is less occasion
for retracing any part of the ground gone over by Whewell,
in so much as The Secret of Hegel calls attention to
another point, in which Hegel criticises Newton, and in
which Dr. Stirling has no hesitation in pronouncing
Hegel's findings " perfectly safe from assault," and
Newton guilty of an obvious mathematical blunder.

Such a statement, proceeding from the most powerful
of our living metaphysicians, and recently reiterated in
the newspaper press, as a sort of challenge to mathe
maticians, seems to call for some remark from a mathe
matical point of view. It is true that a confirmed Hegelian
is not likely to be influenced by any reasoning that we can
offer. " The judgment of a pure mathematician," we
are told, " has really been so peculiarly trained that,
perhaps, any such will never prove decisive as regards
any Hegelian element." We are told, too, that Hegel's
" most important note " on the mathematical infinite
" has remained hitherto absolutely sealed," for C. Frantz,
who does take up the subject " as in opposition to, is to be
assumed ignorant of, the views of Hegel, which plainly, so
far as they go, are inexpugnable " (!)

Now I do not profess to be able to treat this question
from the standpoint of Hegel's own philosophy. I have
no desire to criticise Hegel's doctrine of the Infinite, in so
far as it forms an integral part of his system. But the
note to which Dr. Stirling calls attention is itself a critical
note, in which Hegel proposes " to consider in detail the
most remarkable attempts to justify the use of the mathe
matical notion of the Infinite, and get rid of the difficulties
by which the method feels itself burdened " (Hegel's

i873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 15

Werke, in. 286). l What Hegel seeks to show is, " that
the mathematical Infinite is at the bottom the true
Infinite " (p. 283) ; imperfectly conceived, however, by
the mathematicians, who have therefore never been able
to put the higher calculus on a basis thoroughly free from
confusion, or even error. Thus, not to speak of Fermat,
Leibnitz, Euler, and others, whose views Hegel takes up
more or less fully, we are told that Newton himself,
although his fundamental thought was quite in harmony
with Hegel's views, was not so far master of his own
thought as to be able fairly to deduce the practical rules
of his method. In the actual application of the new
instrument, Newton clung " to the formal and superficial
principle of omission because of relative smallness." He
thus fell into real errors ; and even so fundamental a
problem as the determination of the fluxion of a product
was solved in a manner analytically unsound. Now
these, I maintain, are assertions that can fairly be
examined by one who does not profess to have mastered
Hegel's system. They even afford a fair test whether
that system is really so complete in all its parts, and so
light-giving in its applications, as we are told to believe.
If Newton is really confused and in error, it must be
possible to make this clear by an argument based on
Newton's own principles. For if to the mathematician
Newton's method is perfectly clear and self-contained,
and if its errors can only be observed from an entirely
different point of view, we have not one truth, but two
truths, mutually destructive. And this surely Dr. Stirling
will not assert.

It is possible, however, to go further than this. To
the subject of the calculus Hegel devotes two notes. The
first of these alone is taken up by Dr. Stirling. And in
this note Hegel adds to the destructive criticism of which

1 Here and elsewhere I adopt, as far as possible, the language of
Dr. Stirling's own translations from Hegel, which may be viewed as
authoritative.

16 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

we have been speaking only a very general account of the
principles on which he would base the calculus. These
general principles are, as Hegel says, " abstract " (we
would rather say vague), " and therefore in themselves
also easy " (p. 327). The real difficulty lies " in the con
crete side," in the deduction from these generalities of
the practical rules of the method. To this subject Hegel
devotes his second note, professing to point out a purely
analytical method whereby, without any application of
the doctrine of limits, everything necessary for practice
can be deduced. If we can demonstrate that the ana
lytical method is radically unsound, producing results
mathematically false, it will surely be vain to appeal in
defence to any " deficiency in the judgment of a pure
mathematician."

The plan that suggests itself is therefore the following :
— First, to consider the real character of Newton's method,
and to show what may, I think, be made quite clear to an
unprejudiced mind, that that great man really did know
what he was doing ; and, in the second place, to show
that Hegel having refused to be instructed by Newton's
real knowledge, but having acutely enough caught sight
of something like the ghost of an idea, which he could not
for want of solid knowledge really make his own, was first
ensnared by the plausible but fallacious method of
Lagrange, and then, in attempting to improve that
method, lost any glimpse of the truth that he had before,
and was swamped in hopeless absurdity.

The ingenuity of a great deal that Hegel has said on
this subject I do not wish to dispute. No doubt he,

" with as delicate a hand,
Could twist as tough a rope of sand "

as any man that ever lived. But the question is, after
all, one of plain truth and error ; and however much we
may admire the chivalry with which Hegel rushes into an
unequal encounter with so gigantic an antagonist as
Newton, it will never do to

i873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 17

" Coin a formal lie on't
To make the knight o'ercome the giant."

We must begin, then, by examining the principles on
which Newton based his doctrine of Fluxions. In doing
this, it is not necessary to inquire how far Newton's own
views varied during his life. Hegel knows Newton's
method from the Principia only, and a quotation from the
second Lemma of the Second Book (Werke, iii. 305) shows
that it was the current text of the Principia (that of the
second edition) which he had before him. In fact, Hegel's
acquaintance with Newton's writings was clearly of the
most superficial character, embracing apparently little
if anything beyond the section on Prime and Ultimate
Ratios, and the Lemma just referred to. These facts
make all merely bibliographical inquiries superfluous in
dealing with Hegel's objections. I may refer, however,
to a paper by Professor de Morgan, in the Philosophical
Magazine for 1852, on the " Early History of Infinitesimals
in England," in which it is shown " that Newton never
varied in his meaning of ^ " ; or, in other words, that
Newton "held to the conception of the velocity or fluxion,"
although he at first " used the infinitely small increment "
(only of the first order, however), " as a means of deter
mining it." What follows will, I hope, serve to show that
these facts imply that Newton had all along a firm grasp
of the principle of his method, and that his frequent
employment of abbreviated practical processes was really
based on a consciousness of the strength of his method,
according to the general principle of mathematicians,
who never hesitate to apply the boldest symbolical
methods in detail, when they feel confident of the starting-
point in the use of these symbols. This, in fact, is a point
that metaphysicians have never properly attended to.
One is disposed to cap Dr. Stirling's wish that some great
analyst would study Hegel, by expressing a hope that
some metaphysician of real ability may pay sufficient
attention to what are technically called the " Symbolical

2

i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

Methods " of mathematics, to enable him to appreciate
Boole's profound preface to his treatise on " Differential
Equations." This exercise would at least make it clear
that metaphysical criticism on mathematics is still— I
speak without any desire to be disrespectful— in the circle-
squaring stage, i.e. still treats as the real questions for
discussion points that mathematicians have long seen to
be merely special cases of general principles, and therefore
to be no longer possessed of independent interest.

To return from this digression. Newton saw that there
were two ways in which quantities might be conceived as
generated. The first of these is that which the usual
processes of arithmetic have made familiar to everybody,
viz. the addition of discrete units. The theory of numbers
thus viewed is contained in the arithmetic of integers,
to which may be added the doctrine of arithmetical
fractions as an extension of the method reached by
supposing the unit itself to change in value. Newton
was especially attentive to the importance of the doctrine
of decimal fractions, in which the change of unit is so
regulated as to give the greatest possible increase of power
that the arithmetical conception of quantity admits of ;
and the opening pages of his Geometria Analytica are
expressly directed to show that these advantages may be
made available in literal as well as in numerical calcula
tions. [See also the treatise De Analysi per Equationes
Numero Terminomm Infinites.]

Newton saw, however, that arithmetic in its most
perfect form could give full mastery over quantity, only
on the supposition that quantity, as it comes before us in
the universe, is always produced by the synthesis of
ultimate units, or, in other words, of indivisibles. And
this, says Newton, is contrary to what Euclid has proved
concerning incommensurables in the tenth book of the
Elements (Princ. lib. i. sec. i. schol.).

Instead, therefore, of endeavouring to eke out this
view of quantity by arbitrary assumptions, Newton

1873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 19

resolved to turn to Nature herself, and inquire how
quantity is really generated in the objective universe.
" Lineae," he writes, " describuntur ac describendo
generantur non per appositiones partium sed per motum
continuum punctorum ; superficies per motum linearum ;
solida per motum superficierum ; anguli per rotationem
laterum ; tempora per fluxum continuum et sic in caeteris.
Hae Geneses in rerum natura locum vere nabent et in motu
corporum quotidie cernuntur." (Introd. ad Quad. Curv.}

In a word, Newton's fundamental position is, that the
arithmetical conception of quantity is not that with
which Nature herself presents us, and is not, therefore,
universally applicable. On the other hand, every quantity
that has objective reality [i.e. is an object of real intuition]
is generated by continuous motion, with definite (constant
or variable) velocity within definite limits of time. The
metaphysical nature of time and motion Newton has
nothing to do with. It is enough for him that mathe
matical time, conceived as an independent variable
flowing uniformly, is clearly the true time made known
to us in nature (Principia ; Schol. to the Defs.), and that
the existence of a definite velocity at each point of a
motion is in like manner an undoubted physical fact.

By means of these profound yet simple considerations,
Newton is at once able to revolutionise the whole theory
of quantity, and to substitute for the relation of unit and
sum that of velocity and quantity generated, or, in
Newton's own language, of fluxion and fluent. It must
be remembered that we have said nothing of space, so
that fluent is not limited to extensive quantity, while
velocity, or as we should rather say rate, has a corre
spondingly wide application. Thus, any fluxion may
itself be treated as a fluent quantity, and its fluxion
sought, the only independent variable being time, which
is thus a fluent which has no variable fluxion.

This conception of time, as the one absolute and
independent variable, is undoubtedly one of the most

20 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

splendid and fruitful in the history of human thought,
and well deserves the attention of metaphysicians. Only
let it be said that no criticism of Newton's time, which
starts from the arithmetical view of quantity, and urges
the old objections about infinite divisibility, and so forth,
is competent ; for the arithmetical theory is a product
of abstract reflection, and so stands on a lower platform
than the pure objective notion of Newton.

There is no difficulty in comprehending the mathe
matical power which the conception of fluxions at once
puts in Newton's hands, if we remember that it is not in
any sense an extension of the theory of numbers that he is
seeking. It is true that the calculus has revolutionised
algebra as well as geometry ; but it has done so by trans
forming algebra from the abstract science of numbers to a
physical science— the science of pure time. In Newton's
own mind, however, this conception was probably not
explicitly present. What he did see was, that all diffi
culties in geometry (and to Newton, as to the old geo
meters, geometrical magnitude is the type and exponent
of all magnitude whatsoever, when viewed with respect
to its generation) are reducible to the general form :-
" Given the fluent as a function of time to determine the
fluxion and vice versa."

The one class of problems that can be thoroughly
treated without explicit reference to a generation by flux,
is that which has for its geometrical type systems of
straight lines; and thus geometers were tempted to
introduce the fiction of indivisibles, in order to reduce
higher problems to this type.

But these higher problems are not simply complicated
cases of the rectilineal type ; on the contrary, that type
is produced by one of the two essentially distinct elements
(generated and generating quantity), which usually
appear side by side, ceasing to be explicitly manifest.

Take, for example, Newton's own instance at the
beginning of the " De Quadratura." Suppose the abscissa

HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 21

AB of a curve to flow uniformly, in which case it may be
taken as the graphic representation of the independent
variable, i.e. of time, while the ordinate BC is of course
a function of the abscissa.
Then Newton shows that the
reason why the determination
of the tangent at C is a diffi
cult problem is that the ratio
of the ordinate BC to the

sub-tangent VB is the graphical representation of the
fluxion of the ordinate. In fact, the meaning of the
tangent is, that it is the direction in which the curve is
flowing at the point C ; and ah1 attempts to give it another
explanation without reference to motion simply ignore
the real gist of the problem, and of course end in difficulties
that can be escaped only by violent assumptions. It is
only in the straight line where the fluxion of the ordinate
is constant, or the tangent sinks into the curve, that the
conception of rate can be dispensed with.

Before we go farther, it is proper to remark that in
criticising Newton, Hegel coolly ignores the whole founda
tion of the doctrine of fluxions as here developed. " The
thought," says he (Werke, iii. 302 ; Stirling, ii. 354),
" cannot be more correctly determined than Newton has
given it ; that is, the conceptions of movement and
velocity (whence fluxion) being withdrawn as burdening
the thought with inessential forms and interfering with
due abstraction " — i.e. because Hegel thought that the
calculus should be based, after the manner of Lagrange,
on purely analytical considerations, it never enters his
head that if Newton thought otherwise there might be
some deeper ground for this course than a want of insight
into his own method. On the contrary, Hegel comments
in the most edifying manner on the " early still naive
period of the calculus " in which " mathematicians sought
to express, in words and propositions, results of the newly
invented calculus, and to present them in geometrical

22 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

delineations," assigning to the " definitions and proposi
tions so presented a real sense per se," in which sense they
were " applied in proof of the main positions concerned."
If there is any meaning at all in these statements, which
are the gist of a somewhat lengthy discussion (Werke, iii.
324 ; Stirling, ii. 375), that meaning must be that Newton
and others first differentiated a function, then sought a
geometrical construction to suit, and finally invented a
physical proposition to correspond. Purely analytical
considerations without any physical basis were held,
Hegel thinks, to furnish in this way physical laws. In
support of this view, Hegel triumphantly refers to " the
Newtonian proof of his fundamental proposition in the
theory of gravitation compared with Schubert's A stronomy,
where it is admitted that ... in the point, which is the
nerve of the proof, the truth is not as Newton assumes
it " [!] And so upheld by the dictum of this forgotten
astronomer, Hegel goes on to inveigh against the mere
jugglery by which Newton, already knowing Kepler's
results, avails himself of the " mist of the infinitely little "
to bring out apparent mathematical proofs of these
results. One does not know whether the singular perver
sity of this accusation against Newton's moral character,
or the incredible ignorance of the argument by which it is
supported, is most to be wondered at ; for, not only do
the reasonings of the Principia rest throughout on the
experimental laws of motion on which Newton's first
proposition is expressly based, but the proof itself depends
not on the interpretation of an analytical process, but on
the essentially physical or, more definitely, kinematical
considerations above developed. Nay, so little is it the
case that the " mist of the infinitely little " is needed to
give a show of plausibility to Newton's process, that the
whole gist of the proof lies in the one conception of quantity
generated at a definite though variable rate, and that
thus, without any change in the spirit of the proof, by
simply introducing explicitly a theorem about moments

1873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 23

of velocity which the demonstration in the Principia
implies, the law of equal areas can be deduced without
even that apparent use of the infinitely little which, as
Newton himself warns his readers, is always merely
apparent (Thomson and Tait's Natural Philosophy, § 234) .
In one word, Newton's proofs are always physical through
out, and really belong to the essence of the thing to be
proved ; while Hegel first shuts his eyes to the real import
of the fluxional method, insisting that it must be made
purely analytical, and then rails at Newton for using the
method to do work for which, if it had been purely alge
braic, it would not have been fit. A Hegelian calculus,
as we shall see, would certainly have been of little service
to physics ; but the doctrine of fluxions is itself a part of
physics, and absolutely indispensable in some form or
other to the right understanding of physical problems.

We have still, however, to see how it is that Newton's
system comes to have anything at all to do with the
infinitely little which, as he himself says (Introd. ad Quad.
Curv. § n), it is the peculiar merit of that system to
render unessential. The reason is simply, as we are told
in the scholium at the end of the first section of the
Principia, that he was anxious to provide for ease of
conception, and also to introduce all legitimate abbrevia
tions in his arguments. When Newton is called upon to
justify his method, he always refers to the simple fact that
a velocity definite, yet never for the shortest space of time
uniform, is a notion really furnished by nature, and that
the true measure of that velocity is to be got by allowing
the motion at any point to become uniform for a unit of
time. But if one wishes, as Hegel would say, to substitute
for this notion a convenient " Vorstellung " to assist the
imagination, Newton is ready, by means of the doctrine
of prime and ultimate ratios, to point out a way in which
we may avail ourselves of the method of indivisibles,
always remembering that this method shall have merely
a symbolic value, and so must be used with caution,

24 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

If two quantities have the same fluxion at any moment,
they begin at that moment to increase at the same rate.
It does not follow from this that the two quantities shall
receive equal increments in any space of time however
small, unless during that time the rates of flow remain
constant. But Newton shows that in a very large class
of cases, which he takes up one by one in the first section
of the Principia, not only may we, by taking the time of
flow small enough, make the difference of the increments
generated in that time as small as we please, but if we
enlarge both increments on the same scale up to any given
size, we may make the differences of the increased incre
ments as small as we please, while the time of flow has still
a definite value. Since, then, the ratio of the increments
is always nearer to unity the less the time of flow, and may
be brought as near to unity as we please by taking the
time short enough, but still finite, the ratio must ultim
ately be unity — i.e. that quantity which, varying accord
ing to a definite rule, always represents at any given time
the ratio of the increments, may still be constructed when
the time is made zero, and is now equal to unity, or is
equal to the ratio at which the increments start, \vhich
Newton calls their prime or ultimate ratio.

The practical application of this reasoning is, of course,
that in virtue of it, we may in certain cases with strict
accuracy treat the increments of two variables (of a curve,
for example, and its tangent) as equal, if, before closing
our reasoning, we proceed to take the limit. Thus, if any
one finds that it assists his imagination to deal with
magnitudes as if they were composed of indivisibles,
instead of confining himself to fluxions, Newton provides
in the method of prime ratios a criterion by which the
applicability of the process may be judged. The details
by which it is shown in the Principia, that the limit of the
ratio of the increments is equal to the ratio of the fluxions
whenever the fluents may be geometrically represented as
curves of continuous curvature, involve no new principle

i873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 25

in geometry. Everything is as plainly and undeniably
reduced to ordinary geometrical intuition as anything in
Euclid, when we once bring with us the fundamental
kinematical ideas of velocity and acceleration. It is

obvious, moreover, that to Newton the fraction -, as

above explained, means simply the ratio of the rates at
which two quantities are flowing at the moment at which
they pass together through the point from which we have
agreed to reckon their magnitude backwards and forwards.
Except where such rates can be assigned possessing a

definite ratio, Newton does not pretend to recognise -

as a mathematical reality.

This outline of Newton's principles is, of course, very
meagre. It will probably, however, suffice to enable us
to estimate the real value of Hegel's criticisms.

Hegel highly approves of Newton's statements of what
he means by prime and ultimate ratios, viz. that he
always deals not with indivisible, but with vanishing
divisibles. This is very satisfactory so far, but the next
paragraph makes one doubt whether Hegel knew what he
was approving.

" Newton," we are told, " only explained what he
means by his terms, without showing that such a notion
has internal truth." l

This is an accusation constantly recurring in various
forms. Its source is, of course, that determination which
we have already noticed in Hegel to pay no regard to
considerations of velocity and motion. Now it is quite
true that Newton does not condescend to offer any
explanation of his " notion " to the man who has failed
to familiarise himself by actual intuition with the nature
of velocity, and acceleration, and the genesis of quantities

1 Dr. Stirling (ii. 355) seems to have read " Nach dem damaligen
Stande der wissenschaftlichen Methode wurde nun erklart." In the
collected edition of the Werke, iii. 303, I read " wurde nur erklart,"
which seems to give a more intelligible sense.

26 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

by flux. But these notions are just as truly capable of
being constructed by pure intuition as those of ordinary
geometry, and so Newton's definitions enjoy fully the
advantage which Kant ascribes to mathematical defini
tions in general. They cannot err, because they simply
unfold a construction by means of which the notion is
actually produced.

If Hegel, however, shut his eyes to Newton's notion,
he has got one of his own, which he is sure is just what
Newton wanted. I do not intend to attempt to take up
anything but the concrete applications of this notion ;
but perhaps it may be well to give here part of Hegel's
abstract statement of what he conceives to be the mathe
matical infinite. " Das unendliche Quantum . . . ist
nicht mehr irgend ein endliches Quantum, nicht eine
Grossebestimmtheit die ein Daseyn als Quantum hatte,
sondern es ist einfach, und daher nur als Moment ; es
ist eine Grossebestimmtheit in qualitativer Form ; seine
Unendlichkeit ist als eine qualitative Bestimmtheit zu
seyn" (iii. 289; Stirling, ii. 341). Now, says Hegel,
this is clearly what Newton needs. His vanishing
magnitudes have ceased to exist as quanta, and exist only
as sides of a relation ; but further, the relation itself, in
so far as it is a quantum, vanishes. ;' The limit of a
quantitative relation is that in which it both is and is not,
or, more accurately, that in which the quantum has
disappeared, and there remains the relation only as
qualitative relation of quantity." This sentence must
mean that in the equation

the left-hand side vanishes as quantum in the same sense
in which Sx and 8y vanish, or, as Hegel often puts it, ~

u>X

is " infinite," just as truly as 8y and 8x. Now, we are told
again and again that the " infinity " of the Sx and 8y

i873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 27

does not lie in their being infinitely small, but in their
having ceased to be any determinate magnitude, and only
representing the qualitative principle of a magnitude.
To this statement Newton would probably not have
objected, as his whole use of infinitely small quantities is,
as we have seen, merely to help the imagination, and
scientific strictness is given to his method from another
side. But certainly he would never have dreamed of ad
mitting that •? is also indeterminate ; for both numerator

sv

and denominator of this fraction are in their nature
definite quantities. That the fraction can be expressed

as - is to Newton by no means the essential point. On

the contrary, he argues distinctly that - must have a

definite value, just because this is the form in which
certain processes present to us a quantity which, from
kinematical grounds, we know to be definite. To Hegel,

however, the fascinating element is just this -, which

for his ends would be quite spoiled by being evaluated.
That would reduce it to a mere quantum ; but, in the
meantime, it is "a qualitative relation of quantity,"
which is a far finer thing. Not unnaturally, however,
Hegel has now to ask himself, what is to be the practical

use of this Lt^, which certainly "expresses a certain

oX

value which lies in the function of variable magnitude."
In asking this question, he still supposes himself to be
criticising Newton and the mathematicians, and accord
ingly proceeds, with much severity of manner, to knock

down the indeterminate -2 which he has just set up

(p. 318). To apply the conception of limit in the concrete
we must determine the limit. This is done by Taylor's
theorem, from which if y=f(x) we get

28 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

Q=p + q8x + etc.,

and then letting Sx and 8y vanish Lt~ = # ;— not as it

O^

should have been = -. This, of course, is sadly incon
sistent ; for instead of our fine qualitative determination,
here is a stubborn quantum turning up. Now, says
Hegel, the mathematicians try to get over this by saying

that p is not really = --, but is only a definite value, to

which - comes as near as you please. Of course, if this
is so, it is as evident as anything can be that the difference
between p and - is not a quantitative one. But, adds the
philosopher, naively enough, that doesn't help one over
j~ = -. Suppose now that we were to say J- really = p (a

definite quantity), as, in fact, mathematicians do say, then
it is obvious that Sx couldn't have been = 0. Or if,

finally, it is conceded that ~ = 0 (which Hegel seems to

oX

think most likely, since 8y and &x vanish together), then
what can p be ?

Now, can any one say that the man who devised this
argument knew what he was doing ? When did any

mathematician suppose that after evaluation - is in
determinate ? Or had Hegel never read Newton's first
lemma, with its " fiunt ultimo aequales " ? Or, again,
if Hegel allows that there is no quantitative difference

between p and -, why does he assume a qualitative one ?

Or, above all, why try to explain Newton's doctrine
without ever deigning more than a contemptuous glance
at the one central point of the whole ? Hegel boasts that

1873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 29

half an hour would suffice to learn the calculus. Certainly
he might have employed a good many hours in unlearning
his false conceptions of it.

Hegel has next something to say about the way in which
mathematicians have developed the details of the calculus.
Since none of them had a clear notion of the matter in
hand, their proofs, we are told, are very weak. They
always fall back into methods merely approximate,
subjecting infinitely small quantities to the laws of finite
quanta, and yet rejecting them as relatively unimportant,
in despite of these laws. Of course, adds Hegel, we need
not look for the rigour of demonstration of the old geo
metry, for the analysis of the infinite is of a nature
essentially higher than that geometry. However, mathe
maticians have sought this rigour, and they have all
failed. — Of course, it would be easy for any one to point
out numerous mathematicians who have failed ; but let
us simply ask whether Newton has done so. Hegel
unhesitatingly affirms that he has, and Dr. Stirling is
jubilant at the discovery.

The error is supposed to lie in the deduction in Prin. ii.
Lem. 2, of the fluxion of a product. The statement of
Newton is as follows : If A B be two quantities increas
ing continuously, and their moments or rates of change a
and b, the moment or change of the rectangle A.B is
aB + bA. By moment Newton does not mean the incre
ment actually received in any time, however short, but the
nascent principle of the fluent quantity — a notion, of
course, made clear by the previous discussion of prime
and ultimate ratios. The moments, in fact, are any
quantities proportional to the rates at which A and B
are flowing — the products of the fluxions of A and B by
an arbitrary increment of time. If moments, then, are
called increments, the meaning is increments which would
be received if the rate of flow remained constant, and the
ratio of two moments is simply the ratio of the fluxions,
and therefore equal to the limit of the ratio of the actual

30 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

increments, while it is quite independent of the magnitude
of the separate moments. Now, says Newton, when A
and B are diminished by half their moments, the rectangle
is AB - JflB - |6A + %ab ; and when A and B are increased
by half their moments, it is AB + J#B + JfrA + \db ; and
so to the increments a and b in the sides corresponds an
increment 0B + bA in the rectangle. This demonstration
is certainly very curt, and intended only for those who
have mastered Newton's fundamental notions, and may
therefore be saved the tedium of a long reductio ad absur-
dum. More at length, the proof would be of this kind.
The fluxion of the rectangle must, since the flow is con
tinuous, be a definite quantity, depending only on the
magnitudes and fluxions of the sides at each moment.
Thus the fluxion of AB will be unchanged, if we suppose
that from the values A - $a, B - %b the sides flow with
uniform velocity, equal to A and 6, until they attain the
values A + %a, B + %b. In this case the increments a
and b will represent exactly upon the same scale the
fluxions A and B. Meantime, the rectangle has been
flowing with a constantly increasing velocity, which at the
moment when the value AB was reached, was the velocity
Newton is seeking to determine. The whole increment of
the rectangle is aB + bA, which therefore represents the
average velocity of the rectangle on the same scale as a, b
represent the uniform velocities of the sides. Clearly the
average velocity with which the increment is described is
greater than the velocity at the beginning of the motion,
and less than that at the end, and therefore, since the
velocity is continuous, is strictly the velocity at some
intermediate point. But this point can be none other than
that at which the rectangle = AB, for were it any other
point, we could take a and b small enough to throw this
point out, and there would still be another point at which
the fluxion of the rectangle must = aE + bA. But this is
contrary to the intuitive fact that the velocity is con
tinuously increasing. To the mathematician, however,

i873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 31

this roundabout process is unnecessary. He sees at once
that if the average velocity is independent of the duration
of flow, and depends solely on a certain point being in
cluded within the flow considered, the velocity at that
point must be strictly the average velocity, for in the
limit the two coincide.

Now, Hegel, of course, did not see this, because he would
not admit the kinematical reality of fluxions. He, there
fore, supposes that Newton wants to find the differen
tial of AB — a way of stating the problem which Newton
would have rejected as misleading. The differential
can be nothing else than (A + dA)(B + dB) - AB. But
Newton writes instead of this (A + $dA) (B + JdB) -
(B- |^A)(B - JdB), thereby making an error in so
elementary a process as the multiplication of two bi
nomials ! But where is Hegel's justification for saying
that what Newton is seeking is (A + dA)(B + dB) - AB ?
Newton says nothing about differentials at all ; his a is,
as we have seen, not the infinitely small increment of A,
but an arbitrary multiple of the fluxion of A, which need

not be infinitely small. Newton's - '- is, if you please,

_ T , (A + dA) (B + dB) - AB
~IK~ ";

but even this, which is very different from what Hegel
writes, is simply a different, by no means a more funda
mental, view of the problem than Newton's.

Dr. Stirling tells us that Hegel's expression is what
Newton's says his is, " the excess of the increase by a whole
dA and dB.'' But what Newton says is only that when
the sides are increased from A - \a and B - J&, through
increments a and b the rectangle increases by aB + bA.
That this is true surely cannot be denied. In fact
(A + a) (B + b) - AB would have represented not the
velocity at value AB, but the average velocity of the
rectangle during the interval between values AB and

32 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

(A + a) (B + b) , and therefore the real velocity at a point
between these limits which Newton was not wanting.
We know, in fact, that it would have been the velocity

when the sides are = A + - and B + -. Instead, therefore,

2 2

of Newton rejecting a quantity on the ground of relative
smallness, we find that Hegel has gratuitously introduced
such a quantity.

Of course, the Hegelian will reply to all this, that our
method is " rendered impure by the concrete adjunct
of motion." And here, of course, we can say nothing,
except that the fluxional calculus is essentially kinematical,
and that to construct it apart from motion is as likely
a task as to make a geometry without lines. To make
bricks without straw is a light task compared with that
which Hegel has set himself.

Happily unconscious of these difficulties, Hegel goes
on to moralise with much satisfaction upon Newton's
melancholy self-deception, in palming on himself such a
proof.

After this specimen of Hegel's analytical subtilty, it
is perhaps sufficient to confront the assertion which im
mediately follows (Werke, iii. 313 ; Stirling, ii. 364), that
Newton, in finding fluxions by the method of expansions,
uses a process analogous to his method of solving approxi
mately numerical equations, constantly " neglecting what
is relatively unimportant," with the explicit words of the
De Quadratura (Introd. § 5)— " Errores quam minimi in
rebus mathematicis non sunt contemnendi." The terms
omitted are, of course, always terms which we know to
become not relatively but absolutely zero in proceeding
to the limit. The motive for using such expressions as
" minuatur quantitas o in infinitum," instead of simply
saying, let o = zero, is merely to show that o becomes zero
not by a discontinuous process, as subtraction, but by a
continuous flow. Nay, cries Hegel, for in the 3rd Problem
of Book ii. of the Principia, Newton fell into an error, by

i873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 33

" throwing out, as Lagrange has shown, the very term
which — for the problem in hand — was wanted. Newton
had erred from adhering to the formal and superficial
principle of omission from relative smallness. ' ' This error,
by the way, is only in the first edition of the Principia,
which Hegel, one may safely affirm, had never seen.
The whole statement here is taken from Lagrange, and
applies much better to Lagrange's analytical way of
putting Newton's argument than to that argument in its
geometrical form.

Newton, in fact, investigating the law of resistance,
that a body under gravity may describe a given path,
seeks a geometrical expression for the moment of the
sagitta — a small quantity of the third order. It is clear,
therefore, that no such expression can be exact unless
account is taken of every small quantity of an order not
higher than the third in the geometrical construction
involved, for such quantities will not vanish in the limit,
or are not " relatively small/' in a mathematical sense.
The principle of the problem, then, presents no difficulty
on Newton's method ; and the true account of the error is,
that by a mere slip in the details of a complicated process,
Newton failed to see that he was omitting a term (or
better, a line) not small relatively to the moment of the
sagitta. Hegel, however, conceives that so far as this
goes Newton was all right. The error, according to him,
lies in neglecting a term which, though " relatively small,"
' ' possessed the qualitative value sought . " "In mechanic ,
a particular import is attached to the terms of the series
in which the function of a motion is developed, so that the
first term, or the first function, relates to the moment of
velocity, the second to the accelerating force, and the
third to the resistance of forces." The terms are thus to
be regarded as " qualitative moments of a whole of the
notion " ; and, of course, in a problem about resistances
Newton needed the third term. Now here we have,
firstly, a laxness in the use of terms so gross as to make

3

34 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

it hardly possible to criticise our author fairly. Luckily,
we can see that Hegel is leaning entirely on Lagrange, and
that " the series in which the function of a motion is
developed must therefore mean the series which ex
presses space in ascending powers of time. And this
enables us to ask, secondly, What reason Hegel has for
supposing that it is in this series that we are to find the
basis for a truly philosophical view of kinetics ? It was
Hegel's misfortune to live at a time when, among other
fruits of the " Aufklarung," Lagrange's "formal and super
ficial " method of treating physics was in great repute ;
and surely it was a cruel fate that the great enemy of the
"Aufklarung" should, through a defective mathematical
education, be made a willing captive to a mathematical
" Aufklarung/' which has, from its intrinsic weakness,
fallen as fast as it rose. In details, it is true, Hegel is
keen enough in detecting the unsatisfactory character
of Lagrange's standpoint (see, for example, a note at this
very point) ; but that the whole method was artificial he
could not see, not for want of mental power, but because,
having never studied the subject, he knew nothing what
ever about it — had not even mastered its technicalities.
Then, again, if it is true that successive differential co
efficients have a qualitative difference, how can that be
brought out except in virtue of the relations established
in mathematics between quantity and quality, relations
which are not reached by pure analysis, but only in
Newton's way, i.e. by intuition ? And would not these
relations be violated, and all mathematics rendered absurd,
if the term that is qualitatively important could be
quantitatively negligible ? And, last of all, let me
challenge Hegel to bring forward any proof on his own
principles, that the third term relates to the resistance of
forces ; or for that matter, to show that this statement
has any real meaning whatever.

But most men, I imagine, have now had enough of
Hegel's criticisms — criticisms which simply show that the

1873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 35

" half-hour " which he had devoted to the calculus had
not sufficed to give him any just idea of that great method.
It is certainly much to be regretted that so able a man
did not study mathematics thoroughly, for such a course
might have proved useful to the theory of mathematics,
and could not have failed to be profitable to himself. As
it is, he has only given us criticisms such as we have seen,
and an attempt to which we now proceed to establish the
calculus on a new and very inadequate basis.

The point which we have always found Hegel urging
is, that mathematical functions, when they become
quantitatively indefinite or " infinite," may still have
a real qualitative value. Passing over the fact that this
is not the technical sense of infinite in mathematics, we
may grant that there is a kind of meaning, however vague,
that may be attached to the view. Thus an incom
mensurable is infinite in the Hegelian sense, not because
it can be expressed arithmetically only by an infinite
series, but because it is essentially not a sum of units, but,
as Hegel vaguely says, a " relation." For relation we
should say function, and then we should be able to read in
Hegel's words some meaning like this. Algebraic and
geometrical functions are qualitatively different from
mere arithmetical functions. They imply an entirely
different way of looking at quantity, expressing, in fact,
steps in time or space (or in kinematics, both in time and
space). So, again, the differential coefficient which takes

the form - ceases to be intelligible on the mere arithmetical

view, but gives us a real result of a different quality, when
we understand it as equivalent to a proposition about the
rates of the vanishing quantities. But then Hegel does

not seem to have seen that - has a real quantitative value,

expressing accurately a definite quantity of a different
quality. And further, there was in Hegel a rigid deter
mination not to see the real qualitative difference between

36 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

the continuous quantity of the higher analysis and of
actual nature, and the discrete quantity of arithmetical
abstraction.1 He thus fell into the delusion, that a writer
like Lagrange who, from the extreme nominalistic stand
point of the eighteenth century, seeks to make analysis
a merely formal instrument, in no way expressing the
essence of things, and who, for example, boasts that in his
Mecanique Analytique one will find no such unnecessary
incumbrances as figures — Hegel, I say, imagined that such
a writer had really reached a higher generality than
Newton, when he had only reached an untenable extremity
of one-sided abstraction, and hence, without a moment's
hesitation, resolved that by simply treating the successive
differential coefficients as the successive derived functions
obtained by expanding y in terms of x, we shall be quit
" of the formal categories of the infinite, and of infinite
approximation, and of the equally empty category of
continuous magnitude " (iii. 320).

The differential calculus, then, is a special branch of
mathematics which has to deal (by purely arithmetical
methods) with qualitative forms of quantity, i.e., says
Hegel, with relations of powers. A power, it should be
said, means with Hegel a quantity raised to a higher
power than the first, and the link between the clauses of
the foregoing sentence is as follows : "In the equation

- =; a the relation of y to % is an ordinary quantity, and -

a common fraction, just like T, so that the function is
only formally one of variable magnitudes. On the

y2 y

contrary, if — =p, - has no determinate quotient, and, in

x x

fact, x has no ratio to y, but only to y2. Now the relation

1 Hegel absolutely identifies analysis with arithmetical process —
" Auf analytische d. i. ganz arithmetische Weise " (iii. 328). Had
Hegel ever studied the treatment of incommensurables in ordinary
algebra ? If algebra is " ganz arithmetisch," the whole doctrine of
indices is false.

i87s] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 37

of a magnitude to a power is not a quantum, but quali
tative." It is needless to say that the man who could
make " no constant ratio " identical with " no ratio/'
and who did not see that J$x has a definite value for each
value of x, or who did not see that p is a quantum, though
not of the same dimensions as y2 (which probably was
what confused Hegel), is hardly fit to construct a new
theory of the calculus. But let us pass on.

The subject matter of the calculus is then, we are to
believe, equations in which one variable appears as a
function of a second, one of these at least occurring in a
power higher than the first. In such a case the variation
of the variables is qualitatively determined, and therefore
continuous. It would be vain to ask why ; but since we
are told that in the equation s = ct there is no scope for

differentiation, - not being qualitative, we may at least
t

conclude that Hegel does not regard uniform motion as
continuous !

So far as the principle goes it is quite sufficient, continues
Hegel, to consider the equation y = xn; the advance to
more complicated functions is quite mechanical. Now
both y and x are really numbers, and so may be expressed
as sums. (This, of course, is a very bold assumption, as
Hegel says nothing of the possible case of incommensur-
ables.) The simple and yet comprehensive way of repre
senting x as a sum is to write it as binomial. Now expand
xn as a binomial function, and we have a series of terms
which are " wholly functions of the potentiation and
the power." The differential calculus seeks the relation
between these terms and the original components of x.
As we are not concerned with the sum, but merely with
the relation of the terms of the expansion, it would be best
simply to expand (x + i)n, and to define the particular
" Potenzenbestimmung " got by considering the second
term of this series as the first derived potence-function
of y. In short, the true mathematical commencement in

38 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

this part of analysis is no more than the discovery of the
functions determined by the expansion of a power.

We see at once that this is simply an excessively clumsy
adaptation of the method of Lagrange, which is based on
the proposition that f(x + i) can always be expanded in a
series of ascending integral powers of i, and then defines
the successive fluxions (or derived functions) of fx with
reference to the series. Hegel adds to Lagrange nothing
but confusion, and a degree of vagueness which is quite
pitiable ; and, of course, his method has the same funda
mental fallacy as that of Lagrange, in so much as f(x + i)
cannot always be expanded as Lagrange proposes, or, what
comes to the same thing, the details of the calculus cannot
be deduced by processes purely arithmetical from the

dxn
definition (for it is no more) -y- = nxn~l. I do not,

therefore, think it needful to go into details on this part of
Hegel's method. The really important point is the use
to be made of these magical " Potenzenbestimmungen,"
which, according to Hegel, depends on the discovery of
concrete relations which can be referred to these abstract
analytical forms. Hegel proceeds as follows :—

There is always a fall of one dimension in passing to the
first derived function. Hence the calculus is useful in
cases where we have a similar fall in the powers. We are
also to remember that, by differentiating an equation, we
get not an equation, but a relation. Whenever, then, we
wish to investigate relations connected with any equation,
but of a lower dimension, we have room for the calculus.
A case in point is the investigation of the relations between
the tangent, subtangent, and ordinate, for example, in a
curve of the second degree. These relations are linear,
while the equation contains squares. They depend,
therefore, on the first derived function (pp. 341, 342,

344).

That such a statement is mere guesswork is clear, if
we observe that by a linear relation Hegel means indiffer-

1873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 39

ently the ratio of two straight lines, or a ratio involving
only first powers of x and y. Or, again, since the value
of the radius of curvature is also on Hegel's principles
linear, why does it involve the second derived function ?
Let us, however, follow our philosopher further. "Suppose
we have zax - x* = y2, and take the derived function, we
get a ratio a-x: y, — a linear ratio representing the
proportion of two lines. The real point is to show that
these two lines are the ordinate and subtangent." This
is very plausible, no doubt ; but let us try a cubic equa
tion, say zax - x2=y*. Now the resulting ratio, to put it
in Hegel's way, is 2(0, -x) : 3y2. Is this a linear ratio ?
Yet it still represents the ratio of the ordinate and sub-
tangent. Clearly Hegel does not know that when x and
y become definite co-ordinates of a point on the curve, the

ratio ~— ceases to be a linear function of variables in

a-x

any proper sense, and is simply a determinate fraction.
This mistake augurs ill for the validity of Hegel's proof,
that the two lines, whose ratio is the ratio of the derived
functions, are really ordinate and subtangent. But he
has Lagrange luckily to help him, who, he says, has
entered on the truly scientific way. We get, therefore, a
wordy and loose description, which would be utterly
unintelligible to any one who did not know the thing
before, of the way in which Lagrange proves that the line
q=fx- xf'x + pfx lies nearer to the curve y=fx in the
neighbourhood of the point (x, y) than any other straight
line through that point. Hegel's confusion is not
diminished by the fact, that Lagrange deduces this
proposition from a general theorem about the contact of
curves, and originally writes the straight line as q = ¥p.
This piece of tactics so puzzles the philosopher that, after
all his invective against the differentiation of linear
functions, he allows Lagrange, without rebuke, to write
/'#=F'*.

In other respects, however, we have great improve-

40 LECTURES AND ESSAYS fo

ments on Lagrange. It is absurd to write q = a -f bp l as
the equation of the line to be compared with the tangent,
q = pb being quite general. That the line q = bp would not
necessarily pass through the given point of the curve at
all is, of course, a trifling consideration !

A still greater improvement regards the process by
which Lagrange shows that we can always find a point
(with abscissa x + i), at which q =fx - xfx + pf'x shall be
nearer the curve than any other assigned straight line.
At this point Hegel begins to dread (not unjustly) that
the conception of limit, or rather " das beriichtigte
Increment/' is to be employed. However " this appar
ently only relative smallness contains absolutely nothing
empirical, i.e. dependent on the quantum as such ; it is
qualitatively determined through the nature of the
formula, when the difference of the moment on which the
magnitude to be compared depends, is a difference of
powers. Since this difference depends on i and i2, and
i, as a proper fraction, is necessarily greater than i'2, it is
really not in place to say anything about taking i of any
size we please, and any such statement is quite super
fluous " (p. 347). One word in explanation of these.
Lagrange takes an abscissa (x + i) , and gets

and

or for the straight line given above,

=fx + ifx.
Thus the difference of the ordinates of the curve and

straight line with abscissa x + i is -f"(x+j)> For any
other straight line the difference may be written mi.

Now, the ratio of these increments is i* ^x+^ which

2m

1 Hegel uses p = aq + b, but I keep Lagrange's own letters throughout.

i873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 41

may always be made less than unity by taking i<

Hegel, however, asserts that -/" (x +j)<mi, whenever i

is a proper fraction, which is an obvious analytical
absurdity, and, in fact, is equivalent to saying that it is
impossible to draw a chord to a curve, the difference of
the abscissae of whose points of section is less than unity,
since for the chord through (x, y) cutting the curve again
at (x + i), mi = 0. In the face of this absurdity, it is
scarcely necessary to add, that Hegel having resolved
to simplify matters, as we saw, by getting his derived
functions from the expansion of (x + i)n, has no right
even to form for every curve the expansions on which
Lagrange's proof depends.

I shall, in passing from the subject of geometry, merely
enunciate a simple deduction from Hegel's result in an
intelligible form. " At any point of a curve there are
an infinite number of tangents, which may be got by
uniting that point with any other point on the curve
whose abscissa is not different by a quantity greater than
unity." I present this proposition, which is entirely due
to Hegel, and in the development of which my share has
been " purely mechanical," for the admiration of all
Hegelians whatsoever.

Hegel's account of the application of the calculus to
mechanic is much briefer, and presents less interest after
what Whewell has written on a connected point. I cull
only one or two illustrative points. For the purposes of
the calculus, Hegel classes motion as uniform, uniformly
accelerated, and motion returning into itself, alternately
uniformly accelerated and retarded. Variable accelera
tion, which in the form of harmonic motion is by far the
most common in nature, is quite ignored.

Again, criticising the assertion that j- represents the

u>t

velocity at any point of a course, he tells us that it is

42 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

" schiefe Metaphysik " to speak of the velocity at the end
of a part of time. " This end must still be a part of time ;
if it were not, there would be rest, and no motion ; velocity
can be measured only by the space passed through in a
definite time " (p. 352). An appeal to Attwood's machine
would probably be too empirical for our philosopher,
but the law of energy might surely convince Hegel of the
reality of a variable velocity dependent on potential
energy lost or gained. It is clear, at least, that Hegel
lacked the first elements of physical notions, and these
were not likely to be supplied by the method of Lagrange
to which he adheres, beginning with s=ft, and deducing
every other consideration by differentiation.

The following criticism on a remark of Lagrange is
splendid : "We find," says Lagrange, "the motion repre
sented by s = atz in the actual fall of bodies. The next
simplest motion would be s = cf, but nature shows no such
motion, and we do not know what c could mean." (The
ground of this is, of course, to be found in the law of
the conservation of energy.) " If so, we have at least
a motion whose equation is sB = at'2, — Kepler's law of
planetary motion ; and here the investigation of the first

o ///

derived function f-^, etc., the direct treatment of this
3s

equation by differentiation, the development of the laws
of that absolute movement from this starting-point, must
certainly be a most interesting task, in which analysis
would appear in the brightest splendour " [!]. That
t and s in Kepler's law are not variables, but constants
determined for each planet ; that the equation has no
analogy whatsoever with the equation of motion ; that
its differentiation would be meaningless unless space were
filled with planets ; and that then it would have nothing
to do with " the determinations of that absolute motion,"
are considerations that never entered Hegel's head.

It is rather hard that, from a metaphysical standpoint,
a man is still allowed to write about things he has not

i873] HEGEL AND THE CALCULUS 43

studied ; and more than this, that men so able as Dr.
Stirling should be found imploring great mathematicians
to come and read such utter nonsense as naturally results
from the attempt. Certainly Hegel's fame is not likely to
rise higher the more his notes on the calculus are studied ;
for these notes show quite clearly — first, substantial
ignorance of the subject in hand, bolstered up by some
hasty glances at the " literature of the subject " ; secondly,
great disingenuousness in criticising Newton, without
having ever given his views a careful study ; thirdly,
almost incredible confusion of mind, in so far as he seems
to have thought that he knew his own meaning when he
really had no meaning at all ; and lastly, to add nothing
more, such a degree of self-complacent arrogance as led
him to fancy the results of his " half-hour " more valuable
than the fruit of the whole life of men like Newton.

This paper has already grown to such a length that it
seems better to say nothing of Hegel's remarks on integra
tion in the closing pages of his second note on the calculus,
or of the third note, in which he treats " some other forms
connected with the qualitative determination of quantity."
The subject, in fact, has a purely adventitious interest,
and no one will care to linger longer over such a mass
of confusion, both as to language and thought, than is
absolutely necessary in self-defence. And the preceding
pages may perhaps suffice to show that he who would
exchange Newton's clear ideas, based on nature's own
showings, and alike removed from shallow empiricism and
self-conceited dogmatism, for the vague pomposities of a
Hegel, exchanges

Ill

ON THE FLOW OF ELECTRICITY IN
CONDUCTING SURFACES *

THE conditions of a steady flow of electricity in a con
ducting surface are completely determined, if we know
either the nature of the electrical distribution throughout
the surface, or the direction and intensity of the flow at
every point. On the first of these ways of considering the
question, the problem is solved if we can express the
potential v at any point as a function of the co-ordinates,
and the nature of the distribution will be indicated to the
eye by forming the equipotential curves

v = const. . . . (i).

From the second point of view, we should endeavour
to determine the lines of flow by equations of the form

« = const. . . . (2).

The curves determined by equations (i) and (2) are
obviously orthogonal, and since

d-v d'2v _

dtf + W~"'
we know, by a theorem of Lame" and Stokes,2 that

<Pu &u_

dx* + dy*~
Kirchhoff, in the year 1845, took up the problem for plane

1 Communicated by Professor Tait to the Royal Society of Edin
burgh on February 21, 1870, and published in its Proceedings, vol. vii.
pp. 79-99.

2 See Thomson and Tail's Natural Philosophy, i. 542.

44

1869-1873] STREAM LINES 45

surfaces l in the first of the two ways we have indicated.
By an application of Ohm's law he expressed analytically
the conditions to be satisfied by v. When the electricity
enters and issues by a number of individual points, he
found (apparently by trial) that an integral of the form
2 (a log r), where rl r^ etc. are the distances of the point
(x, y) from the successive points of entrance and issue,
satisfies these conditions when the plate is infinite. For
a finite plate it is necessary that the boundary of the
plate should be orthogonal to the curves

2(a log r) = const. . . (3).

He was thus led to form the orthogonal curves, whose
equation he gives in the form

2(a [r, R]) = const. . . (4),

where [r, R] is the angle between r and a fixed line R.
These equations he applies to the case of a circular plate,
completely determining the curves when there is one exit
and one entrance point in the circumference, and showing
that in any case a proper number of subsidiary points
would make the equipotential lines determined by (3),
cut the circumference at right angles. KirchhorFs paper
is throughout properly busied with the function v, and
the stream lines are only dealt with incidentally. There
is no attempt to give a physical meaning to the equa
tion (4).

In 1846 Thomson drew attention to the orthogonal
systems (3) and (4), as an example of Lame's theorem.2
He showed that the rings and brushes of biaxal crystals
are a special case of these curves. They correspond, in
fact, as we shall see, to the equipotential lines and lines
of flow in an infinite plate with two equal sources of
electricity.

Maxwell, in 1856, suggested the application to problems

1 Poggendorff's Annalen, Bd. Ixiv.

2 Camb. and Dub. Math. Journ. vol. i. p. 124.

46 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

of electric currents of his beautiful theory of the motion of
an immaterial incompressible fluid in a resisting medium,
but does not appear to have developed the suggestion.1

The object of this paper is to show that, by regarding,
in accordance with Maxwell's suggestion, every point of
exit or issue as a source or sink, spreading or absorbing
electricity, independently of all other sources, Kirchhoff's
general equations may be deduced by easy geometrical
processes, and extended to certain cases of flow in curved
surfaces. We shall, by this method, be naturally led to
look mainly at the function u, which in the analytical
investigation is subordinated to v. The equation u = 0
will receive an obvious physical interpretation, and we
shall then proceed to consider in detail the nature of the
flow in certain special cases apparently not yet examined.

If a source P, in an infinite uniformly resisting plate,
steadily give forth a quantity of electricity E per unit of
time, the flow per second over the whole circumference of
all circles with P as centre is equal. Hence the rate of
flow at each point of the circumference of such a circle is

jr
inversely as the radius and = — . The potential due to P

satisfies the equation

dr~ 2irr
or, E

The potential due to any number of sources Pl P2 etc.,
and sinks P/ P2' etc., all of equal power, is got by simple
superposition. If E be equal for all points,

v = C - 2— log r + 2— log /,

2ir 2TT

where r corresponds to a source, and r' to a sink. Hence
the equipotential lines are

r^fe = c • (5)>

1 Cambridge Phil. Trans, vol. x.

i873] STREAM LINES 47

The equation of the lines of flow follows at once from
the equation of continuity. Across any element ds of a
stream line subtending angles d01 d02 etc. at the sources,
and d9^ d02r etc. at sinks, no fluid must flow. But the

quantity of fluid per second reaching ds from Pn is — E.

2vr
dO'

The quantity withdrawn by P'n is -— E. Hence the

27T

differential equation of the stream line is

Integrating, 2(9 - 20' = const.

where 0 and 0' are the angles between radii vec tores and
any fixed lines. If we agree to reckon 0 in opposite
directions for sources and sinks, the equation becomes

^0 = a . . . (6).

The following are elementary consequences of this
equation :—

(a) When we have one source P and one equal sink P',
the stream line through any point Q has for its equation

2<9 - QPF + QFP =- - PQF - «.

Hence the locus of Q is a circle through P and P', which
is Kirchhoff's case. The orthogonals are circles whose
centres (R) lie in PP' produced, and whose radii

(b) If we have two equal sources
and no sinks, or what is the same
thing, sinks at an infinite distance,
the stream lines are rectangular
hyperbolas. For in this case,

QPN + QP'N = a = QN* if we make P'QN-QPN.
Also QN touches the circle through PP'Q, therefore

48 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

the equation of a rectangular hyperbola through P and

P', whose centre is the middle point of PP', and which is
referred to conjugate diameters inclined at angle a. The
orthogonal system in this case consists of the lemniscates
rr' = c. One of the hyperbolas consists of the straight line
PP', and the line equidistant from P and P'. Dividing
the plate along the latter line, we have the case of one
source in a plate bounded in one direction by an infinite
straight line, but otherwise unlimited or bounded by a
lemniscate of infinite conductivity, having P and its image
due to the boundary line for poles.

(c) To find the image of
any point in a circular bound
ary, i.e. to find the source
which in combination with a
source at the centre of the
circle, and an equal sink at
any other point, will make
the circle a stream line.
Let A be the centre of the circle, and P the given sink.
In AP take P', so that AP.AP' = AQ2. Then PAQ and
QAP' are similar triangles, and QPA = AQP'.

Therefore QAP + QP'A + QPA = 2*, or (6) is satisfied
for any point in the circle by assuming at P' a sink = P.

(d) Hence if there be within a circle m sources and
n sinks, we must assume the same number of sources
and sinks without the circle, and n - m sources at the
centre.

(e) The straight line equidistant from two equal sources
of the same sign is clearly a stream line for these points.
Hence the image of any point in a straight line is an equal
point, which is its optical image.

I have constructed the equation

2(9 = a

on the assumption that all the sources are equal, because
the degree of the stream line is equal to the number of
equal sources (positive and negative) to which the system

1873] STREAM LINES 49

can be reduced. For if h, k be the co-ordinates of P, the
equation becomes

//y _ h\

If ( y -- ) denote the sum of all the combinations of

\h - x/m

At . r>

expressions ± - — j-, taken m at a time, we may write this

!, x — n

-&c. = 0 (8),

an equation of the nth degree if there be in all n
sources.

The degree of the equipotential lines is also = n if there
be an equal number of sources and sinks. In general,
if there be m sources of one sign, and n - m of another,
and m>n-m, 2m is the degree of the equipotential
lines. This is one of many features which make it more
convenient to work with stream lines.

It is obvious from equation (8), that every stream line
must pass through all the sources. Thus, the circle in
case (c), which passes through no source, is not a complete
stream line, the other branch being the straight line APP',
which passes through all the sources. Distinct stream
lines can intersect only at a source, for at no other point
can 20 be indeterminate. Where two branches of the
same stream line intersect the velocity is necessarily zero,
changing sign in passing through the point. The physical
meaning of a branch is that two streams impinge, and are
thrown off with an abrupt change of direction.

The same result is easily found from the analytical

condition for a singular point -.:- - -=- =0.

ax dy

For --=- = -=- = velocity parallel to axis of y,

du dv , .,

T- = -7- = velocity parallel to axis of x,

or directly by differentiation

50 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

(9).

The nature of the intersection of the branches
of a stream line at a multiple point is easily deter
mined.

At an w-point, the angles at which the branches cut the
axis of x are the roots of the equation—

10.

Where, since Jx*= ~d*

dmu dmu dmu

dmu dmu

dxm~ldy
Whence 10 becomes

. t

dxm \ 1.2

We can choose the axes so that j~™ = °> and reduce the

equation to

>+...=0 (n),

or tan m<f> = 0 . . (12),

<f, = — , where / is any integer from i to m.
m

Thus the branches make equal angles with each other.
This proposition depends solely on the relation

i»73] STREAM LINES 51

It is therefore true, also, for the equipotential lines, as is
otherwise obvious.1

The general nature of the stream lines will be different,
according as the number of sinks is or is not equal to the
number of sources. In the former case, 2(0) = 0 is satisfied
at all points infinitely distant, the radii being all parallel,
and the positive and negative angles equal in number.
Hence one stream line has the straight line at infinity as a
branch, or intersects the straight line at infinity at right
angles, and therefore has an asymptote. This stream line
will, in general, be of the n - Ith degree. In some cases it
may be of a lower degree ; as, for example, when the
conic at infinity is its other branch. A case of this sort
will be given below. The other stream lines of the system
cannot meet the line at infinity, and cannot have asymp
totes. However far they run out, they must therefore
loop and return.

When there are more sources than sinks, 20 becomes
indeterminate at an infinite distance, as might have been
anticipated from the fact, that in this case there is a
constant flow of electricity outwards, implying a sink at an
infinite distance. The line at infinity is not in this case
a stream line, and will be cut by all the stream lines,
which do not loop except at finite distances, and have all
asymptotes.

The asymptotes, in this case, may be easily constructed
by the aid of equations (6) and (8).

At the infinitely distant point of contact the velocities
due to all sources are in the same direction, or the asymp
tote must be parallel to the radii.

If there are m sources and n-m sinks, the stream line
whose asymptote makes an angle a with the initial line is
obviously

1 I have since found that this result has been already proved for
plane curves by Professor Rankine and Professor Stokes (Proc. R.S.,
1867), and for spherical harmonics by Sir W. Thomson and Professor
Tait, in their treatise on Natural Philosophy.

52 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

20= (2m - n)a = tan C. . (13).
This equation has 2m - n roots

7T 27T Q

a-., a, + — , cu H — , CXC.

2m -n : 2m -n

So that each stream line has 2m - n asymptotes equally
inclined to one another.

Transforming to rectangular co-ordinates, and choosing
the asymptote as axis of x, (8) reduces to

(y^\(y^\, . . =0.

\x - h/i \x - h/s
When y = 0, x has two roots = oo if

2(±&) = 0 . (14).

Hence the asymptote is such that the algebraic sum of
the perpendiculars from the sources diminished by the
sum of the perpendiculars from the sinks is zero. It is
obvious without analysis that this condition is necessary,
that the velocity perpendicular to the asymptote, at its
point of contact with the curve, may be absolute zero.
If sinks weigh upward, all lines passing through the centre
of gravity of the system are asymptotes, and 2m- n of
these lines, equally inclined to each other, belong to one
stream line. The system must have a centre of gravity,
for by pairing sources and sinks we produce couples which
will always give a single resultant when compounded with
the weights of the extra sources.

A complete system has no centre of gravity, but (14)
is satisfied for all lines perpendicular to the axis of the
resultant couple. If the axis of the couple formed by
pairing a source and sink at distance pm. makes an angle \j/m
with the axis of the resultant couple,

0. . (15),

an equation with only one root to determine the direction
of the asymptote. In this case the asymptote meets the

1873] STREAM LINES 53

curve in a double point, and has contact of the third order,
or x has three roots = oo .

The condition for this is obviously—

2(±fcA) = 0. . . (16),

which since 2 ( ± k) = 0, does not depend on the point of
the asymptote from which h is reckoned.

If (15) is satisfied identically, the asymptote meets the
curve in a triple point. Two of the branches belong to
the line at infinity, and the finite branch sinks to the
n-2 degree.

In this case not only 2 ( * k) = 0, but 2 ( ± h) = 0. Hence
(16) no longer gives a fixed point on the asymptote, but
only fixes its direction. A further analytical condition is
easily found, but is unnecessary. For in this case the
centre of gravity of the sources coincides with the centre
of gravity of the sinks. The stream lines due to the
sources alone would have the same sets of asymptotes as
those due to sinks. One of these sets is necessarily
asymptotic in the complete system, which has always one

line with real asymptotes. The set will consist of - rays,

all passing through the common centre of gravity of the
sources and sinks, and equally inclined to one another.

Rectilineal Branches are asymptotes coinciding with
their curves.

Hence, in an incomplete system, all straight lines pass
through the centre of gravity of the system, and belong
to one stream line, unless the centre of gravity be a source.
In any case they are equally inclined to one another, for
if not branches of one stream line, they would be so for
the system got by removing the source at their inter
section.

In a complete system there can be only one rectilineal
stream line, unless sinks and sources have a common centre

A/I

of gravity. In the latter case, there can be at most -

54 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

straight lines, forming equally inclined rays through that
point.

The condition for a rectilineal branch is in general
that the sources must be either on the line or be two by
two, each other's images on the line. For if not, remove
all the sources on the line and all pairs of sources which
are each other's images in the line. Next, remove all
sources on one side of the line by placing equal sources of
opposite sign at the place of their images. The straight
line is still a stream line, and on one side of it there are no
sources, and therefore constant potential, which is absurd.
Similarly it can be shown that a circle is a possible stream
line only when the sources are on the curve or image each
other. From this it follows that no finite number of
sources can give parallel rectilineal streams or non-
intersecting circular streams.

A similar investigation applies to equipotential lines.
The image of a point in a rectilineal equipotential line is
the same in position as the image in a stream line, but of
opposite sign. No source can lie on an equipotential line.
Hence, to show that for right equipotential line the points
must image two by two, we have only to remove all
sources on one side of the line, placing equal sources of the
same sign at their images. The line is still equipotential,
therefore we may suppose it charged to constant potential,
and all sources removed. Hence all stream lines become
rectilineal, which is absurd. Similarly if a circle is equi
potential, the sources must balance about it two by two,
i.e. must be in a straight line with its centre, at distances
to which the radius is mean proportional — otherwise we
can find a system reducible to a single point at the centre
of the circle, and in which all stream lines are rectilineal.
Hence, no incomplete system can have a rectilineal or
circular potential line.

Points of Inflexion occur at all points on the locus—

d'2u d'2u dy d-u ~dy*

T-O + 2 T- j- -/ + j-o • :r- = 0 . 17 .

dx~ dxdy dx dy2 dx

1873] STREAM LINES 55

Remembering that

d'2u _ d2u _ / si
^~2~~Sv2~ V ~

we can readily bring (17) into the form

sin 20\^fcos (6 + tf)\ /cos 20\^(sm (0

or,

In this last expression 0' and 8" may assume the value 0.

The radius of curvature may be similarly expressed,
but such expressions can hardly have a practical applica
tion.

The cases of practical interest are mainly those where
the number of sources is small. We have already examined
the cases of two sources of the same or opposite signs.
We will now proceed to consider the cases that arise when
there are three or four sources.

Three Sources. — In general the curves will be cubic
passing through the three sources, and having asymptotes
determined as above. The direction of flow at any point
of the field may be found by observing that if <f> be the
angle between the tangent and a radius vector,

It will sometimes be possible to find the direction of flow
geometrically by the following obvious theorem.

If a circle be described touching a stream line at any
point, and cutting off from the radii vectores of that point,
fractions of their lengths, ^ // etc., where ^ is negative
if the point of intersection is in the radius vector produced,
and also negative if the radius vector is drawn from a sink,
then—

ZM-0.

When the number of sources is large this theorem is

LECTURES AND ESSAYS

[1869-

not in general convenient, but it is often applicable where
there are only three points.

The lines of flow can, however, be readily described
with any degree of accuracy when there is one sink, by
describing segments of circles with constant difference of
angle through the sink and one source, and drawing
through the other source straight lines with the same
difference of angle. The stream lines will be diagonals of
the quadrilaterals into which the field is thus divided.
The process may be extended to the case of two sources
and two sinks by taking the intersections of two sets of
circles.

When there are two sources and one sink, the singular
points may be found by an easy geometrical method.
Let A, B, be sources, C the sink, and P a point of zero
velocity. The resultant velocity due to A and C is in the
tangent to the circle PAC, and also — since P is a singular
point — in the line PB. Therefore—

Similarly

BPC = PAC.

APC - PBC.

Hence PCA, BCP are similar
triangles, and there are two points
of zero flow, P and P', lying in the
line bisecting the angle C, and such
that PC is a mean proportional to
BC and AC. The directions of the
orthogonal branches at P bisect
the angle APB and its supplement.
For the initial line is a tan
gent at the singular points if

± sin 2(9

_
-

(19).

Let now APC - a, BPC = - - a = /3, and assume the bi
sector of APB as initial line. Then

i87s] STREAM LINES 57

C/ i i \ sin a - ft _v sin 20

Sin I -i-^ A <» T~»-r~»n ) T

2 VPS PBV PC2 r2

which since

I

i

sin2 ft'
sin2-

sin2 a

PA2"

i
PF2 =

PC2'

i

PC2'

sin2-

2

becomes

sin2 p - sin2 a + sin a - j3 . sin a + /3 = 0,

which satisfies (19).

The chief interest lies in the cases where the cubic
breaks up into a straight line and a conic. This takes
place for one stream line of the system when all the
sources lie on a straight line, or when they form an
isosceles triangle with points of the same sign at the base.
The cases are—

1. Two Sources and a Sink. — The conic is always a
circle with the sink as centre. If the sink lies in the line
of the sources produced, the radius of the circle is a mean
proportional to the distances of the sink from the sources.
If the sink lie between the sources, the circle is impossible.
If the sink is the vertex of an isosceles triangle, the circle
passes through both sources, and all asymptotes meet in
the point of zero flow furthest from the sources. If the
sink is half way between the sources, there are two straight
lines and a real and impossible circle.

2. Three Sources of the same Sign. — Every stre"am line
has three asymptotes, meeting in the centre of gravity,

and inclined at angles of -. If one of these asymptotes

o
becomes a branch, the other branch is a hyperbola, with

centre of gravity as centre, and axes in ratio of v/3 to i.
If the points form an isosceles triangle, the hyperbola
passes through the extremities of the base. If the triangle
is equilateral, the hyperbola coincides with its asymptotes.

58 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

If the vertical angle is less than -, the rectilineal branch

is the transverse axis ; if greater than -, it is the conjugate.

If the points are all in a line, the vertices of the hyperbola
lie on that line, and are the points of zero flow, which are
easily found. If one point is half way between the other
two, we have two rectilineal branches and two hyperbolas,
the conjugate axis of the one being equal to the transverse
axis of the other. The hyperbolas are, therefore, confocal.

Four Points. — Complete System.

Singular Points. — If A and B are sources, C and D
sinks, there is a singular point at P, if the circles APC,
BPD, and also APD, BPC touch at P. Hence, there are
no real singular points if the sides of the quadrilateral
ACBD intersect, unless all the points be on a circle,
which in this case contains all the singular points.

Straight Lines. — The one stream line which has as
asymptote is of the third degree. If a straight line is one
factor, the other factor is a conic, which is always a circle.
For if A, C are the images of B, D respectively in the
straight line, a circle can be drawn through them, which
is obviously the branch sought. But if A, B lie without
the line, and C, D on it, a circle through A, B having its
centre O in CD produced, so that OA is a mean propor
tional between OC and OD is the circle required. If
ABCD are all on a straight line, the other branch is
manifestly a circle with centre on the line.

Conies. — The parabola is an impossible conic for any
finite number of points. For the parabola has two
asymptotes meeting at infinity. Hence the centre of
gravity of an incomplete system, or of the sinks and
sources separately in a complete system, must be at an
infinite distance, which is absurd. The conies are there
fore central.

The hyperbola, which has two asymptotes, is only

1873] STREAM LINES 59

possible when the cubic reduces to a conic. This demands
that the centre of gravity of sinks and sources shall
coincide, i.e. that AB, CD are diagonals of a parallelo
gram. The asymptotes must meet at right angles, and the
hyperbola is equilateral. It is obvious, indeed, that in
this case the sources and sinks give separately sets of
concentric rectangular hyperbolas, of which the one
passing through the four points belongs to both sets, and
is the only asymptotic curve of the complete system.

In this case the equipotential lines are lemniscates.
Let the origin be the centre of the system, 20, and 2b the
diagonals of the parallelogram, a and /3 their angles with
the initial line. At any point P

AP2 . BP2 + ACP2 . DP2 = 0.
That is,

r* + a* - 2aW cos 2 0 - a + A(r4 + fr - 2&V2 cos 2 d - /3) = 0

(i + A) (r4 + 04) - 2f2 cos 20 (a2 cos 2a + Afr2 cos 2/3)

+ 2r'2 sin 20 (a2 sin 2a + Afr2 sin 2/3) = 0.

Wi a2sin2a

Wnen A = - -- — -, the curve becomes

(b2 sin 2/3 - a2 sin 2a) (r4 + a4) - 2a?b2r2 sin 2(y8 - a) cos 20 = 0,

a lemniscate, with foci on the initial line, and centre at the
origin.

If the parallelogram is a rectangle a = b, and the curve is

H - 20V2 COSjL_! cos 20 + a4 - 0.

COS /3 + a

It is easily shown that the stream lines orthogonal to
these are lemniscates with the same centre, passing
through the four points, one of which becomes a circle
when the parallelogram is rectangular.

The ellipse appears to be an impossible conic for four
points, for conies occur in pairs orthogonal to each other.
The orthogonal of the ellipse must be a confocal hyperbola,
which is impossible, the only hyperbola being that dis-

60 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

cussed above. Orthogonal circles, however, are possible,
and fall under two classes, according as all the points are
on one circle, or two on each.

If A B C D lie on a circle, that circle is obviously a
stream line. Let BA.DC produced meet in O. Then
OA.OB = OC.OD, and the circle, with centre O and radius
\/OAXXB is the other branch of the stream line. If O lies
within the circle ABCD, the second circle becomes
impossible. If CA.BD produced meet R and CB.AD in
S, R and S are centres of equipotential circles, only one of
which is real, unless the second stream circle is imaginary.
We may take as an example the case of a rectangle, points
of the same sign lying on the same diagonal. Let the
circle through the four points be (20 and 26 being the
sides of the rectangle)

x<2+y2_a2_tf = Q.

The other branch is the imaginary circle

x2+y2 + a* + b2 = 0;
and we know that another stream line is the hyperbola

y2 - x2 - a2 + b2 = 0.
Hence the stream lines are

(x2 + y2)2- (a2 + b2)2 + \(y2 - x2 - a2 + b2) = 0,

lemniscates as above.

The equipotential circles degenerate into the straight

lines

x = 0 and y- 0.

If O be the point in CD produced which is equidistant
from A and B, and OC.OD = OA2 = OB2, the circle with
O as centre passing through A,B is a line of flow.

The circle having its centre P in AB produced, and
passing through CD, is obviously orthogonal ; and since
PA.PB = PC2 = PD2 is also a line of flow. In this case
both circles are necessarily real.

It is clearly impossible that the same system should

i87s] STREAM LINES 61

have two pairs of circular stream lines of either of the
classes we have analysed. Nor can two complete pairs of
different classes occur, since otherwise two stream lines
would intersect. But three real and an imaginary circle
are possible, if A B C D lie on a circle, and at the same time
obey the condition for a pair of circles of the second class,
that is, if AB produced pass through the pole of CD with
respect to the circle ABCD. The three circles are mani
festly orthogonal, and their radical centre is centre of the
fourth (imaginary) circle.

If the circle through ABCD is

S = x*+y*-a* = 0,
the lines AB, CD respectively

u = hx + ky - a2 = 0

v = h'x + k'y - a2 = 0,
we have

hh' + kk'-a*=Q,

and the second and third circles become

S - 2u = 0
S - 2v - 0.

The fourth or imaginary circle is

S - 2W = 0,

where

*g(fr-*)*a8(*-*/)y -
' hk'-kh " hk'-kti'

w = 0 representing the polar of the intersection of AB, CD.
Thus the equation to the stream lines may be written

(S - 2U) (S - 2V) + AS(S - 2W) = 0,

or,

(i + A)S2 - 2(u + v + \w)S + 4uv = 0,

which degenerates into a cubic when A = - i.

The equations may, in general, be simplified by a
proper choice of co-ordinates.

Take, for example, the case when S - 2u, S - zv are
equal circles.

Then A2 + k2 = W + k"2,

62 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

and by proper choice of axes,

h= -h'
k= k'
&-W = a\
Hence,

a*y 9

w = -±- - a2.
k

The lines become

+ A)S2 - 22^ - 202 + - Aa2s + 4(ky - 02)2 - 4h*x* = 0.
If the three circles are equal, we have further,

N/2

Accurate drawings of this case, and of the lemniscates
in the case of a rectangular parallelogram, have been
prepared, to accompany this paper, by Messrs. Meik and
Brebner, in the Physical Laboratory of the University.
The dotted lines in these diagrams show the lines of flow
when the signs of a source and sink are transposed.1

Verifications have been sought by determining equi-
potential lines experimentally, and superposing them
upon drawings of the stream lines. The experiments
were executed by students in the Physical Laboratory.
The process employed was essentially that of Kirchhoff,
but the use of Thomson's galvanometers has made it much
more rapid, as well as more delicate.

Spherical Surfaces. — To extend the method above used
to spherical surfaces, we must take as starting-point, not
a single source, but a source and sink at the extremi-

1 That a greater variety of curves might be given, without over
crowding the figure, the two sides of one of the diagrams have been
made unsymmetrical, some of the curves being given (in half) on the
one side, others on the other.

i873] STREAM LINES 63

ties of a diameter. For brevity, we shall speak only
of the source, assuming the existence of a corresponding
sink.

When there is one source, the stream lines are mani-

Lines of flow when the sources form a rectangular parallelogram,
whose diagonals make an angle of -. The unbroken lines are lines of
flow when sources of the same sign are diagonally opposite. One line
sinks to a circle, another to a rectangular hyperbola, the rest are
lemniscates. When a source and sink are transposed, the circle is still
part of a stream whose other branch is a straight line, but the lemnis
cates pass over into the dotted curves.

64 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

festly great circles through it, and the equipotential lines
small circles, of which it is the pole.

If the radius of the sphere is a, the circumference of the
small circle, whose angular radius is 0, is lira sin 0. Hence

if u be the potential,

du i
JO^sm^d

i , i - cos 0

2 i + cos 0
For any number of sources the potential will be

i/ i - cos
-( 2 ± log

2\ ° I + COS

and the equation of the equipotential lines,

i - cos 0-, i - cos 09 ~ i - cos 0' i - cos 0'2

i . ^ I JL ^

I + COS0J ' I + COS02'" I + COS0'1 ' I + COS0/2'"

the accented angles belonging to sinks.

For the lines of flow we have, precisely as in a plane,
2( ± c/>) = c, where $ is the angle between the great circle
through a source and a point on the line, and a fixed great
circle through the source.

Let us take, as an example, the case of one source and
one sink. Let the co-ordinates of these points be h, k, 0 ;
h, - k, 0, and those of any point on an equipotential line,
x,y, z.

We have for the equation of this line,

I - COS 0 I - COS0'

i + cos 0 i + cos & ~
where

hx + ky n, hx - kv
cos 0 = s-A cos 0 = s-A

Hence the projections of the equipotential lines on the

plane of xy have as equation,

(a2 _ ^ _ ky) (a2 + hx- ky) + A(#2 -hx + ky) (a2 + hx + ky) = 0,

or—

- 2

1873]

STREAM LINES

—a series of similar hyperbolas, whose centres lie on the
axis of y, whose axes are parallel to the co-ordinate axes,
and inversely proportional to the co-ordinates of the

Case of two sources and two sinks giving three equal stream circles
with two points of zero flow. When a source and sink are transposed,
the lower circle is still a line of flow. The other lines assume the
dotted form.

source, and which all cut the axis of x at points distant

eft
±- from the origin. Obviously one of the lines is

66 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-1873]

the great circle perpendicular to the line joining the
sources.

For the stream lines we have in this case,

observing that

az

, - az
tan d> =

-5- — j- •
xk + hy

This equation becomes

a cone which intersects the tangent plane to the sphere
at the extremity of the axis of x, in a series of similar
ellipses, having their centres on the intersection of the
plane with the plane of xz, and passing through the

points a, ± ^, 0. Two of the stream lines are manifestly

great circles, whose equations are x = 0 and z = 0.

If we divide the sphere along the former of these circles,
we cut off the subsidiary source and sink, and get the case
of a hemisphere, in which the source and sink are equi
distant from the pole. A curious hemispherical case is
got by dividing the sphere along the equipotential hemi
sphere. In this case we have two sources of the same
sign within the hemisphere, one being the subsidiary
source of the removed sink. But in order that the
distribution may remain unchanged, we must have the
potential maintained constant at the edge of the hemi
sphere. This may be effected by making the base a
conductor with a sink at its centre, or, indeed, by placing
the sink at the vertex of any conducting surface of revolu
tion which joins the hemisphere. From these hemisphere
cases, obvious cases of half and quarter hemispheres
follow.

IV

NOTE ON PROFESSOR BAIN'S THEORY OF
EUCLID I. 41

IN a paper communicated to this Society last session
I pointed out that the proof of Euc. I. 5, given by Mr. Mill,
is unsound ; endeavouring, at the same time, to show
that this is no mere accident, but that it is impossible to
give a mathematically correct analysis of the processes
of Synthetic Geometry on any theory that holds figures
to be merely illustrative, and does not admit that intuition
in the Kantian sense — i.e. actual looking at a single
engraved or imaginary figure — may be a necessary and
sufficient step in a demonstration perfectly general. I
now venture to draw the attention of the Society to the
confirmation which I conceive that this argument derives
from the way in which Euc. I. 4 is treated by Professor
Bain in his recent Logic — a book which, on the whole,
is based on Mr. Mill's principles, and which is mainly
original in an attempt, which I cannot regard as felicitous,
to bring these principles into closer contact with the
special sciences, especially with Physics and Mathematics.
It will be remembered that Mr. Mill, undertaking to
demonstrate Euc. I. 5 from first principles, has to supply,
in the course of his proof, a demonstration of Euc. I. 4,
and it is in the attempt to give to this process the form of

1 Communicated by Professor Tait to the Royal Society of Edin
burgh on June 6, 1870, and published in its Proceedings, vol. vii.
pp. 176-179.

67

68 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

syllogistic inference from Euclid's axioms that he errs.
Professor Bain does not attempt to defend the blunder
of his predecessor. He admits that Euclid's proof cannot
be reduced to a chain of syllogisms. But, instead of
surrendering Mr. Mill's theory of mathematical reasoning,
he concludes that Euclid has not demonstrated his
proposition— that the superposition which he enjoins is
only an experiment, and that " if his readers had not made
actual experiments of the kind indicated, they could not
be convinced by the reasoning in the demonstration." l

Now I believe, and in my former paper expressly
pointed out, that the position that Euc. I. 4 is really an
inductive truth, and that the usual demonstration is not
in itself convincing, is the only ground that remains to
Mr. Mill and his adherents. So far, then, I am confirmed
by Professor Bain : it remains only to show that this
new position is mathematically as untenable as that from
which Mr. Mill has been dislodged. If Professor Bain
grants that the proof of Euc. I. 4 is not by syllogism from
axioms— if, again, mathematically it is plain that there
is none the less a real proof, not merely an induction— we
shall have gone far to establish the validity of proof by

intuition.

Professor Bain teUs us that Euclid, while professedly
going through a process of pure deduction, requires us
to conceive an experimental proof. There is surely an
ambiguity here. Does Mr. Bain mean that Euclid merely
calls to our mind former concrete experiments with
triangles of card-board or paper, for these alone are actual
and concrete to our author? Does Euclid's "experi
ment " agree with the descriptions of experiments in
books of Physics, save only in this, that we have all made
Euclid's experiment before ? Clearly not. In picturing
to myself an experimental proof in the usual sense, I
imagine mentally, or with the help of a diagram, certain
arrangements, and then I am told to imagine a certain

1 Logic, vol. ii. p. 217.

1873] BAIN ON GEOMETRY 69

result following — or rather, I am told to believe this
result, for to picture it is quite superfluous and often
impossible. Euclid, on the other hand, tells me to super
pose ideally the point A on C, the line AB on CD, and so
forth, and then I do not require to be told that the coin
cidence of the whole triangles follows. I have no choice
to imagine coincidence or non-coincidence. I see that it
follows, and that quite apart from previous experiment.

Professor Bain allows the possibility of ideal experi
ments on mathematical forms.1 I presume, therefore,
that he will not deny that the intelligent reader of our
proposition does, as he reads, make a valid experiment in
favour of the proposition. But if this be so, where is the
deception in Euclid's proof, and what is the necessity of
supplementing that proof by further " ideal " or " actual
experiments " ? The course of Euclid's argument shows
that the two triangles are not only equal, but equal in
virtue of the way in which they have been constructed,
viz. the equality of the two sides and the included angle.
The fact that the proof is not syllogistic does not make
it any the less a case of that parity of reasoning which
Professor Bain, in another connection, admits to be not
induction but demonstration.2

Our author draws a broad line between the fourth
proposition, with its " appeal to experiment or trial in
the concrete," and the mass of geometrical proofs in which
the figure is referred to for verification only, " the effect
of every construction and every step of reasoning being
judged of by actual inspection." But if the inspection
follows the construction, what is the construction itself ?
A construction is not proved by syllogism from axioms.
It is necessarily drawn, and in the drawing (mental or
other) looked at. Every construction involves a figure
and an intuition, which, while it looks at the individual
figure, sees in it the general truth.8 Mr. Bain grants that

J Logic, vol. i. p. 225. - Ibid. vol. ii. p. 5.

8 Cf. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunjt, p. 478, Ed. Hartenstein, 1867.

70 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-1873]

of such consequences as that the diagonal of a parallelo
gram divides it into two triangles, Euclid offers no other
proof than an appeal to the eye.1 In fact, no other proof
can be offered. Yet surely it will not be asserted that this
too is an induction. In one word, if no proposition is fairly
demonstrated where it is essential to look at the figure,
there is no sound demonstration in synthetic geometry.

Finally, Professor Bain himself seems not quite satisfied
as to the inductive nature of Euc. I. 4. ' The proof,"
he says, " rests solely on definitions," and hence " the
proposition cannot be real — the subject and predicate
must be identical." Surely an identical proposition is
not an induction ! And surely, too, the proof rests not
on definitions merely, but on definitions and the use of the
figure ! But I do not think that Professor Bain means
to speak here in strict logical terms, for he straightway
adds in explanation, " The proposition must, in fact, be
a mere equivalent of the notions of line, angle, surface,
equality — a fact apparent in the operation of understand
ing these notions. It is implicated in the experience
requisite for mastering the indefinable elements of
geometry, and should be rested purely on the basis of
experience." We should have known better what this
sentence means, if the author had adopted here the
distinction between synthetic and analytic judgments.
He cannot mean that a truth that is an induction, and
rests on experience, is an analytic judgment, that it can
be reached by a purely formal dividing and compounding
of the definitions of terms. Such a proposition could be
shown to be true without any figure or any experiment.
Yet the proposition is, we are told, involved in the
notions ; we cannot know what lines, angles, etc., are
without knowing this too. If this means anything, it
means that Euc. I. 4 is a synthetic judgment a priori ;
and that, after all, Kant and the mathematicians are
right, and Mr. Mill and the empirical logicians wrong.

1 Logic, vol. ii. p. 218.

V

DR. STIRLING, HEGEL, AND THE
MATHEMATICIANS

(From the Fortnightly Review, April 1873)

THE names which head this paper will suggest to those
who are interested in metaphysical and scientific dis
cussion a controversy which has never been quite extinct
since Dr. Whewell attacked Hegel's statements on the law
of gravitation, and which from time to time has burst
into somewhat lurid flame. The controversy as opened
by Dr. Whewell dealt with questions of physics. But in
the year 1865, Dr. Stirling, in the second volume of The
Secret of Hegel, enlarged the field of discussion by trans
lating Hegel's note on the precise nature of the notion
of the mathematical Infinite, in which the philosopher
joins issue with the mathematicians, particularly with
Newton, on certain alleged imperfections in their treat
ment of the fluxional calculus. To his translation Dr.
Stirling subjoins remarks laudatory of Hegel, and emphas
ising those defects in the mathematical doctrine on which
Hegel animadverts. Such imperfections are —

" Quanta by very definition no longer Quanta, yet
treated as Quanta ; — omission because of insignificance,
but omission obligatory and indispensable in spite of
insignificance, proof necessary from elsewhere, yet pre
tensions above any elsewhere ; great results of the
operation, but the operation itself granted incorrect ; an
incorrect operation, but absolutely correct results/'
(Secret, ii. 380.)

Dr. Stirling further refers to striking and instructive

71

72 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

" observations in regard to the show of mathematical
proof " (put forth by mathematicians) " in matters
known from experience alone," takes delight in the
felicitous home-thrusts delivered to Newton and others
(p. 381), and above all, finds that in a criticism of the
process by which the second lemma of the second book of
the Principia determines the fluxion of a product, " Hegel
has succeeded in striking his harpoon into that vast
whale— Newton " (p. 363). These utterances were virtu
ally a challenge to mathematicians, and the challenge
became express and personal when Dr. Stirling, anim
adverting in the Edinbiirgh Evening Courant on allusions
to Hegel made by Professor Tait in a University lecture,
called that gentleman's attention to the " harpoon "
passage just cited, and asked him " whether or not even
in his opinion Hegel is right and Newton wrong ? '
This challenge appeared December 21, 1868. On
February i, 1869, Professor Tait and Sir William Thomson
found opportunity to allude to the matter in a discussion
in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and without entering
into detail, showed by concrete examples of varying
velocity, such as are offered by railway trains and steam
boats, that Newton's process was that which was naturally
suggested by his physical conception of a fluxion, and
that Hegel's criticism was based on an unnatural (and
therefore incorrect) view of the problem. It seemed,
however, to be desirable to take up the matter more fully ;
and on May 17 Professor Tait laid before the Society a
paper on " Hegel and the Metaphysics of the Fluxional
Calculus," written by me. The publication of this paper
elicited a newspaper controversy between Dr. Stirling and
myself, in which neither party gave way on any point ;
and then the discussion slumbered for three years, to be
again awakened by the publication of Dr. Stirling's recent
book.1 Of this book about forty pages are devoted to

1 Lectures on the Philosophy of Law. Together with Whewell and
Hegel, and Hegel and MY. W.' R. Smith, a Vindication in a Physico-
Mathematical Regard (1873).

i873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 73

the vindication of Hegel in the mathematical reference,
partly criticising my paper, partly giving new statements
of Hegel's doctrines on this head.

Were the controversy thus reopened, one merely
personal between Dr. Stirling and myself, it would be
unfair to claim for it the interest of the literary public.
But the little history which I have just given will suffice
to show that the cause of which I appear as advocate is,
in fact, the cause of mathematics, and particularly of
Newtonian mathematics, impugned by the head, in our
country, of a great metaphysical school. And while I
alone am responsible for the way in which the cause is
conducted, the interests at stake are not merely those of
my own literary reputation — though that certainly must
suffer a severe shock if Dr. Stirling's strictures are just-
but essentially the interests of mathematical science, and
especially of that physico-mathematical school which is
the heir of Newton's methods and ideas. So much Dr.
Stirling evidently feels when he " laments the compromise
I have brought upon important interests " (p. 105), and
when he associates with my paper " the rabid nonsense,
not only in English, but even in French, that our mathe
maticians have written against him" (p. 139). The last
allusion must necessarily be obscure to the public ; but
those who have followed the controversy in its earlier
stage will judge that the reference is to a translation in a
French journal of the remarks of Professor Tait and Sir
William Thomson, already referred to as forming part of
the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Let
me observe, in passing, that the words of these leaders of
science were confined strictly to the mathematical point
involved in Newton's process. Dr. Stirling, I imagine,
is the only man in Europe who would care to apply to such
a statement of such men the words " rabid nonsense."

But while Dr. Stirling is correct in assuming that I did
not step forth in this controversy without the conviction
that I have the mathematicians on my side, he has fallen

74 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

into serious errors of fact as to the malign influence which
he supposes me to have exercised over the opinions of the
leaders of physical science in Scotland. It is asserted at
p. 127 that a supposed mistake in my paper (which I shall
presently show to be no mistake) " misled " these gentle
men into their statements before the Royal Society of
Edinburgh—statements we have seen made months before
my paper was written, and nearly a year before it was
published.1

Let us pass, however, to take up on their own merits
the questions in dispute. The dispute, it has been seen,
turned in the first instance on a single point — on the
correctness of the process by which Newton derives the
fluxion of a product. But, as every mathematician knows,
this point is so cardinal that any flaw in the deduction
necessarily vitiates the whole processes of the fluxional
calculus. When Hegel, therefore, in this connection speaks
of an operation performed by Newton which, though
elementary, is nevertheless incorrect ; when he talks of
the pressing necessity which could bring a Newton to palm
on himself the deception of such a proof, he, in fact, teaches
that the whole proof of the algebraic relation between
fluent and fluxion is deceptive and unsound. Dr. Stirling
does not seem to see this ; but I think it may be possible
to convince him of so much on Hegel's own showing.
" The whole method of the calculus," says Hegel at the
commencement of his second mathematical note,2 " is
settled in the proposition that dxn = nxn~ldx . . . the
derivation of the following forms — of the differential of a

1 Still more extraordinary is the liberty which Dr. Stirling has
allowed himself in suspecting my influence in certain utterances of
Professor Tait with regard to Leibnitz — a suspicion utterly ungrounded,
and which can have occurred only as the development of a fixed idea, by
which Dr. Stirling has come to conceive of me as the evil genius of
Scottish physicists.

2 Werke (Ed. 1841), vol. iii. p. 316. The paging of this edition differs
from that of the edition quoted by Dr. Stirling and formerly by myself.
Passages cited from the book now before me will be found about eleven
pages further on in the other edition.

1873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 75

product, of an exponential magnitude, and so on, flows
mechanically therefrom." That is, the method of the
calculus is settled (absolvirt) when the fluxion of %H is
known. And Dr. Stirling must see that if I know the
fluxion of xy, I have only to put y = % to get the fluxion of
x2, from which, by an ordinary mathematical induction,
I can again rise to #3, #4, and finally to xn, so putting myself
in possession of the whole method. Thus surely the vital
nature of the deduction of the fluxion of the product xy
is abundantly manifest, and if Newton deceived himself
in this matter the whole structure of his calculus is built
on delusion. For Newton certainly imagined that his
method rested on a system of strict mathematical deduc
tion, in which " the very smallest errors are not to be
neglected " (Introd. ad quadraturam curvarum), and the
keystone of this system of deduction is just the fluxion
of a product.

Will it then be believed that under these circumstances
Dr. Stirling flatly denies that Hegel in this matter accuses
Newton of any error whatever ? The only errors of
Newton to which Hegel has made any allusion are, we
are told, two quite different mistakes, made known to the
philosopher by Lagrange and Schubert respectively. For
in the matter of the fluxion of the product, Hegel admits
the result to be right, and objects only " to the formal expedient
in justification of it," that is, to the mathematical proof of
the result (p. 109). Is not Dr. Stirling aware that the
gravest charge of error that can be brought against a
mathematician is by universal consent just this, that he
has brought out a true result by expedients formally
incorrect ? Were Dr. Stirling a man of less moral earnest
ness, one would be tempted to see in such an argument
a mere play of conscious sophistry. But manifestly in
this case the apparent jest is put forth in bitter earnest.
It is even made matter of grievous accusation against me
that I have " enormously misrepresented " Hegel, " con
founding logical unsatisfactoriness with mathematical

76 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

inaccuracy," when I venture to state that the German
philosopher represents Newton as having fallen into " real
errors," and as having determined the unlucky fluxion
before us "in a manner analytically unsound." The
expressions " real errors," " analytically unsound," are
quoted from my Royal Society paper, and the second
expression is recurred to by Dr. Stirling on p. 127, as a
clear proof that I have misunderstood'Hegel. The latter
" knows the result to be analytically sound ; he only
objects to an apparent arithmetical " (more correctly
algebraical, since the operation is performed on letters,
not on numbers) " stratagem in deduction of it." At
first sight this sentence appears meaningless, for every
arithmetical or algebraic operation falls as species under
the genus Analysis ; and so the objectionable arithmetical
(algebraical) stratagem involves of necessity analytical
unsoundness. But Dr. Stirling, as we learn at page 124,
has a meaning of his own for the word analysis, which
shall indicate what concerns the higher calculus, as
opposed to what is merely arithmetical. Dr. Stirling
seems to have concluded that I must necessarily take the
word in this sense because I had taken objection to Hegel
for identifying analytical with arithmetical process. In
fact my objection was directed against the identification
of the genus with the species. This would have been
obvious to any one familiar with mathematical language ;
and it is simply the lack of such familiarity that has led
Dr. Stirling to say that I have " utterly failed to see what
Hegel meant, whether arithmetically or analytically." l

The sum of our argument then is this : Hegel admits
the correctness of Newton's result, in the sense of admit
ting that the fluxion which Newton gives is that which,
applied in concrete problems — say of geometry — gives
correct results. But he denies that Newton has got the

1 I am thus not called upon to go into the lesson on the etymological
sense of the word " analytical " which Dr. Stirling reads me at p. 124.
But a very moderate knowledge of Greek would have shown that the
word cannot possibly mean " dissoluble."

i87s] STIRLING AND HEGEL 77

fluxion by a process analytically, technically, algebraically,
formally correct. To Dr. Stirling, this seems a small
matter, a matter of logic rather than of mathematics, a
matter not amounting to real error. But to Newton, and
to all Newtonians, the charge is of the gravest order ;
for they know that with the deduction of this fluxion the
whole calculus, in its concrete applications as well as in
its theory, must fall, and that Newton's grand scheme
of subduing the unconquered realms of geometry by a
method rivalling the logical precision of the ancients,
must be reckoned as a vain chimsera. But they know,
too, that Newton's plan is no chimaera, that his method
does possess every particle of the precision of the ancient
method of exhaustions, and therefore they regard with
contempt, rather than with anger, the attempt of Hegel
to subvert the insubvertible. And, strange to say, they
have Dr. Stirling on their side. For it is now admitted
that the expedient which in The Secret of Hegel, and in
letter after letter in the Courant, was declared utterly
indefensible, is, as a matter of fact, " unimpeachable, and
in its simplicity and efficiency does the usual honour
to Newton's extraordinary penetration and unrivalled
resource " (p. 129).

In admitting for himself and Hegel a " misleading "
on this point, Dr. Stirling is careful to observe that his
admission " is wholly unavailable in excuse of Mr. Smith,
who has utterly failed to see what Hegel meant, whether
arithmetically or analytically." But perhaps the recollec
tion of former persistency for so many years in one error,
may dispose a man so candid as Dr. Stirling to contemplate
the possibility of his having misrepresented me as well as
Newton. He may possibly be aided in this contemplation
by the statements of the present paper ; and he may even
be inclined to admit that the fact that I and the other
mathematicians, whose utterances are characterised as
" rabid nonsense," have always upheld the view which
Dr. Stirling now admits to be right, creates an appreciable

78 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

presumption in favour of the hypothesis that we have
some understanding of the matter in hand. But instead
of dwelling on these purely personal, and therefore in
different, matters let me signalise the important conse
quences for this whole controversy of the admission so
gracefully made by Dr. Stirling. In one word — if Newton
is right in this matter it appears, on Dr. Stirling's and
Hegel's own showing, that the whole theory of the calculus,
which can be deduced from this one determination by the
very processes which Hegel himself calls mechanical (as
quoted above, p. 3), is " really unimpeachable," is free
from the paradoxes enumerated in The Secret of Hegel
(above, p. i), and, in brief, is a reasoned system of mathe
matical truth which gives no ground whatever for Hegel's
assertion " that there is a contradiction in the very
method on which, as a science, it rests " (Hegel, iii. 274 ;
Secret, ii. 339). And with this result the mathematicians
may very well rest satisfied, and, while heartily inviting
metaphysicians to study so invaluable a branch of science,
and to find, if they can, its place in the whole of human
thought, they are quite entitled to use their own freedom
in deciding whether they shall concern themselves further
with the lucubrations of a philosopher who, as Dr. Stirling
himself suggests (p. 129), did not give himself the trouble
to examine Newton's investigations at first hand.

But while this position is very legitimate to mathe
maticians as a class, I, personally, am bound to go further,
having undertaken in my former paper not merely to
vindicate Newton, but to inquire into the positive mathe
matical worth of the remarks which Hegel offers in order
to clear up in his own way that obscurity which he finds
spread over the statements of mathematicians on the
theory of the calculus. Now there are, of course, unwise
mathematicians, as there are unwise metaphysicians. It
was, therefore, quite possible for Hegel to find utterances
about the calculus in which an acute, even though mathe
matically unpractised, eye could detect obvious absurdity.

i873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 79

But on the whole the result to which my investigation led
me was, that the darkness experienced by Hegel was due
to his imperfect training, not to any defect in the mathe
matical theory, notably at least not in Newton's theory.
And I found that in this darkness Hegel was so unlucky as
to stumble upon the method of Lagrange, and to accept
it as relatively best as his guide. This method he proposes
to bring " into its due abstraction " (cf. Stirling, p. 134),
but, while still darkly labouring at his task, is clumsy
enough to make modifications on the method, which not
only changes its mathematical character and analytical
accuracy, but really (though, of course, unconsciously)
amount to the suggestion of what I have ironically called
" a Hegelian calculus." On these results Dr. Stirling
joins issue with me, and, curiously overlooking the obvious
irony of my statements, assumes that I imagine that Hegel
intended to suggest new mathematical processes. I am
assured, therefore, that I have simply deluded myself,
and that Hegel never made a mathematical suggestion
in his life. I shall show in due time that he made more
than one such suggestion ; but of course I shall not deny
that he did so in ignorance, out of sheer incompetence
to distinguish between metaphysical and mathematical
modification of the statements of Lagrange. And thus
Hegel points to his own disciples the lesson that no one has
a right to speak on the principles of a science which he has
not mastered in its essential detail.

My work, then, falls very clearly into two parts.
Hegel and Dr. Stirling detect in the calculus an obscurity,
manifesting itself to their eyes in the logical inconsistency
of processes correct in result ; and they claim a light
thrown on the method by the introduction of the "Notion"
which suggests that the operation shall be made " to
depend not on the quantity but on the quality required "
(Stirling, p. 129). To this I object, jfo's/, that the supposed
obscurity and logical inconsistency are to be found in the
mind of Hegel, not in the processes of Newton ; and

8o LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

second, that be the Notion what it may, we need not look
for light from it on this matter, since it has lighted its great
master himself — into a mathematical ditch.

Now the first of my two points seems really to be proved
when we find Hegel vitally wrong in so essential a matter
as the fluxion of a product. Dr. Stirling, however, is too
little of a mathematician to be able to distinguish between
vital and venial error in such a subject, and finds that
" on the whole Hegel made himself very sufficiently
acquainted with whatever he was minded to talk upon."
If this means only, as regards the case before us, that
Hegel had glanced through a number of mathematical
books, new and old, I have nothing to object ; but if
it is claimed that he understood what he read, I can only
say that he thoroughly miscomprehended Newton and
Lagrange, and that he never learned what mathematicians
mean by a Limit, by Continuity, and by Evaluation. I
offered in my former paper a few of the many proofs of
these assertions, which are heaped up a misura di carboni
in Hegel's writings. The proofs were given by me as far
as possible in the precise and unambiguous language and
formulae of mathematics ; and I am the less called upon
to repeat these technical arguments, that it is perfectly
evident that Dr. Stirling was unable to follow my symbolic
statements. But as this inability has not modified the
fierceness of assertion with which he condemns all this
portion of my work as absolute misapprehension, I may
be permitted to offer some examples of the way in which
he has thought it fair to cut knots that he cannot untie.

My first example shall be one in which Dr. Stirling rests
his case on a charge of garbling Hegel's words. In my
paper of 1869 I wrote as follows :—

" Purely analytical considerations without any physical
basis were held, Hegel thinks, to furnish in this way
physical laws. In support of this view, Hegel triumph
antly refers to ' the Newtonian proof of his fundamental
proposition in the theory of gravitation, compared with
Schubert's Astronomy, where it is admitted that ... in

i873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 81

the point, which is the nerve of the proof, the truth is not
as Newton assumes it.' (!) And so, upheld by the dictum
of this forgotten astronomer, Hegel goes on to inveigh
against the mere jugglery by which Newton, already
knowing Kepler's results, avails himself of the ' mist of the
infinitely little,' to bring out apparent mathematical
proof of these results."

I naturally add that this judgment not only indicates
incredible ignorance of the reasonings of the Principia,
but casts a most unfair slur on Newton's honesty. Now,
Dr. Stirling does not pretend to say that there is any real
error in Newton's reasonings. But he urges (p. 112) that
Hegel had been told, if not by Newton, yet certainly by
others, that these proofs amount to a supersession of
Kepler's discovery ; and that the philosopher's protest
is directed simply against this idea. The answer to this
apology is that Hegel was told no such thing by any one
able to read the Principia ; for, in fact, Kepler's discovery
is the express experimental basis of the Newtonian theory.
And it is plain from the reference to Schubert that Hegel
is objecting, not to some sense put by others on Newton's
work, but to that work itself viewed as mathematical
reasoning.1 Hegel, therefore, cannot be defended unless
it can be shown that I have misstated the force of his
reference to Schubert. This Dr. Stirling accomplishes as
follows : —

" Hegel has to allude to an astronomer, Schubert, who
shall have ' admitted that in the point which is the nerve
of the proof, it is not exactly so situated as Newton
assumes.' Mr Smith's manner of stating this is as follows.
. . . That one sees is categorical, and to accomplish this
categorical effect, Mr. Smith made a break in his quotation,
and omitted the italicised ' not exactly.' Yet one might
not be very wide of the truth if one said, that very

1 In dealing with Whewell on this same subject of Kepler and
Newton, Dr. Stirling observes, " that what Hegel means by proof is
Hegel's own metaphysics " (p. 97). But this observation cannot apply
here ; for the defect of proof, which Hegel has heard of from an astro
nomer, must be mathematical, not metaphysical.

6

82 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

italicising of ' exactly ' is precisely the ' nerve ' of the
quotation/' (Pages'ioS, 109.)

This is a grave charge. Yet, strange to say, it is my
translation that is right, and Dr. Stirling's that is wrong ;
for what Hegel says is, " dass es sich nicht genau so, d.i.,
in dem Punkte, welcher der Nerv des Beweises ist, sich
nicht so verhalte, wie Newton annimmt." And still more
strangely, Dr. Stirling himself translates the passage
correctly in The Secret of Hegel, ii. 377, " admitted that the
truth is not exactly so, i.e. that in the point which is the
nerve of the proof the truth is not as Newton assumes it."
I simply transcribed Dr. Stirling's own words ; and, if I
omitted the words " not exactly so," I gave Hegel's own
explanation of their meaning.

This is not the only case where philological inexactitude
has prevented Dr. Stirling from doing justice to my
arguments.

In the case of a falling body, the space described is
proportional to the square of the time during which the
body has been falling. Lagrange, stating this fact,
remarks that Nature does not present any case in which
the distance passed through is proportional to the cube of
the time. On this Hegel, always full of Kepler's laws,
says that we have at least a motion for which the cube of
the distance is proportional to the square of the time, and
begs the mathematicians to apply their calculus to the
differential of this motion. This remark of Hegel is
equivalent to a proof of absolute mathematical incom-
petency. Kepler's law does not mean that the cube of the
distance traversed by the planet is proportional to the
square of the time during which it has been moving ; but
simply that each planet goes round the sun in a time the
square of which is proportioned to the cube of its mean
distance from the sun. The proposal to differentiate the
formula expressing this fact shows that Hegel did not
know what sort of quantities are really capable of differ
entiation. Now, Dr. Stirling's own knowledge on this

i873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 83

matter is plainly on a level with Hegel's, for, without
admitting or denying the justice of my comments on so
ludicrous an error, he simply shrinks behind the aegis of
Lagrange. He repeats Hegel's citation from Lagrange,
and the philosopher's own remark, in one continuous
quotation, and adds : " What part Lagrange has in this
must be determined by others. Hegel certainly begins
by quoting Lagrange." Now, I will not urge that Dr.
Stirling was bound to consult Lagrange's book for himself ;
but it was his duty to observe that Hegel carefully
distinguishes, by the use of indirect speech, between
Lagrange's statement and his own comment. To ignore
this implies either serious philological inaccuracy, or a
conscious imitation of the tactics of the ostrich when
overtaken by her pursuers.1

Perhaps the most absolute proof of Hegel's incompet-
ency to criticise the doctrine of the calculus, as set forth
by mathematicians, is to be found in the fact that he never
learned to understand such fundamental notions as limit,
variable, and continuous quantity. This fact was brought
out in my paper with the aid of a certain array of mathe
matical symbols which I cannot reproduce here. But as it
is precisely this part of my work which has been most
vigorously impugned by Dr. Stirling, I shall leave my
symbols to fight their own battle, which they are very well

1 These are not the only cases in which Dr. Stirling's translation is
defective. Thus, in the passage cited at p. 120, there is no contrast
between generative and generated magnitudes, but only between
generated and vanishing magnitudes. Again, at p. 112, a variation
from the text of Hegel, which I ventured to point out, is defended as a
necessary emendation against " the air of correctness to the contrary
due to — Mr. Smith's judicious collocation of passages." This sneer is
uncalled for, as I simply pointed out a fact, in justification of a trifling
divergence from the translation given in the Secret. But I have no
hesitation in saying that Dr. Stirling's emendation is based on absolute
misapprehension of Hegel's meaning, which is not that " Newton now
proceeds to explain what is to be understood by such and such an
expression," but that it was the custom of the time merely to explain
the way in which terms are to be understood. Dr. Stirling's rendering
does violence to the context, and demands, not simply the change of
nur to nun, but of wurde erkldrt to wird erkldrt.

84 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

able to do, and will endeavour to give fresh proof of my
assertions in a more popular form.1

I begin with the conceptions of variation and continuity,
conceptions which in the calculus occur associated, in the
notion of continuous variation. A variable quantity is one
which can take various values. A quantity continuously
variable, which is the only kind of quantity that admits of
differentiation, is one which between certain limits can
have any value you please, which, in fact, runs on between
these limits, not by leaps, but by a continuous flow.
Time, for example, is such a quantity ; for since the birth
of Christ it has run through every possible value between
o and 1872 years. But the time which a planet takes to
go round the sun is not continuously variable ; for you
cannot find a planet to fit any periodic time you may please

1 One or two remarks may be allowed by way of note on certain
criticisms directly affecting the use of symbols. At the foot of p. 113,
Dr. Stirling seems to take an objection in limine against the translation
of " perfectly general " Hegelian language into symbols which Hegel
had not before him. He might as well object to translation from
German into English. Again, to my statement, that a differential
coefficient, or, what is the same thing, the ratio of the fluxion of y to the
fluxion of x, is a fraction with definite numerator and denominator,
it is replied that Newton himself cannot have regarded mere symbols as
possessing "definite values" (p. 114). Here perhaps Dr. Stirling
and I are at cross purposes from attaching different senses to the word
definite, which I do not use as equivalent to constant. But questions of
language apart, the matter is clear. What I assert, and what of course
is a mathematical truism, is that the differential coefficient of y with
respect to x is no more indeterminate, no less fully quantitative than
x and y themselves. This Hegel denies, when he says (iii. 292) that on
proceeding to the limit the ratio £ vanishes " insofern es ein Quantum
ware." This is what I mean when I speak of Hegel as setting up an
indeterminate j£. Dr. Stirling, not observing that the " nerve " of this
expression lies in the word indeterminate, allows himself (p. 125) to be
sarcastic on me for " seeing Hegel ' set up ' |£." Again, this false
conception of ^ vanishing, quatenus Quantum, leads Hegel to find
certain insoluble logical difficulties in the mathematical use of a binomial
expansion to determine the actual value of ^- This I have called
" knocking down the indeterminate J£ which he has just set up." Dr.
Stirling calls these words "incredibly inapposite" (p. 130). But if a
philosopher insists on holding a quantity to vanish when it does not do
so, and then, a few pages later, expatiates on the contradictions arising
from his own conceptions, he surely is knocking down what he set up.

1873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 85

to name. If Hegel had mastered this distinction, he could
not have made that unlucky suggestion about differentiat
ing Kepler's law of periodic times. Nevertheless, Dr.
Stirling holds that the great merit of Hegel in this depart
ment is just the stress he lays on the qualitative difference
between continuous and discrete quantity ; and he can
not conceal his amazement that I should have asserted
the opposite (p. 124). Obviously there is some mis
understanding here as regards the meaning of words. In
fact, the idea which Dr. Stirling attaches to continuity is
not that of quantity running through a continuous series
of values, but that of quantity hanging together ; of a
connected space, for example, as contrasted with a series
of unconnected lines. That is, continuity is not to his
mind associated with the idea of variability, but with the
idea of squares and cubes, in which we pass from relatively
discrete lines to continuous area, and from relatively
discrete planes to continuous solids. It is with transitions
of this sort that Hegel and Dr. Stirling conceive the
calculus to be interested. We have not yet reached a
point where we can ask what value pertains to this way of
looking at the matter. But as Dr. Stirling and his master
are clearly quite unconscious that they have here diverged
in language as well as in thought from the mathematicians,
it is quite plain that they have not apprehended the
meaning which the latter attach to continuous variation.

As to the limit, I can be more brief. Mathematical
tyros almost invariably stumble at this notion, and Hegel
is no exception to the rule when he speaks of the calculus,
in contrast to the method of indivisibles, as beginning with
" limits between which the independently determinate
thing (das Fursichbestimmte) lies, and at which it aims as
its goal" (iii. 353). No more absolute misapprehension
is possible. A mathematical limit is not the boundary
within which something lies, but the actual value of a
quantity under certain extreme circumstances. For
example, the line joining the points in which two circles

86 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

intersect becomes in the limit a common tangent — i.e.
the tangent is the substitute for the chord, when the
circles come to touch instead of to cut. But evidently
the tangent is in no sense a boundary within which the
chords lie, nor is any implication of inexactness or approxi
mation to be found in the expression. I may observe that
the application to the calculus of the idea of a limit is not
to be accomplished in a satisfactory way, except in con
nection with the idea of rate, which Hegel is quite absolute
in refusing to admit. This is the source of all the supposed
logical difficulties which he finds to encompass the method
of limits, but which really attach to his own refusal to
conceive of quantity as generated by flux.

Now, to Dr. Stirling this refusal is one of Hegel's chief
virtues. To call on the philosopher, as I have done, to
look at quantity in the Newtonian way, is to introduce
" contradictory commixture of the dross and slag of the
Vorstellung with the metal of the Begriff," is to " muddle
and puddle the notion — the quality — that that Newton
himself declares independent of quantity — by mixed
expressions through which the due abstraction only shows
but to an eye that is educated." Or again, Hegel says the
same thing as I, reporting Newton, say, only he says it in
due abstraction, " in the language of the Begriff." Now
if this were only true, one would be very glad to have it so.
If Hegel had understood Newton's notion as Newton
himself states it, and then had freed it from unnecessary
dross, we could have nothing but admiration for his
philosophic skill. But what I object to Hegel is, that he
applied his powers of abstraction to Newton's language
before he understood its meaning, and so cut himself off
from all intelligent contact with Newtonian processes, and
fell into the absurd errors which have been sufficiently
exposed. In fact, here as elsewhere, Hegel and Dr.
Stirling have simply been indulging in that metaphysical
pride which goes before a fall. Had they first learned the
calculus as Newton teaches it, and condescended to use for

i873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 87

a time the humble but perfectly truthful Vorstellungen
of the fluxional method, they might have spoken with
authority, and found willing hearers. But when Dr.
Stirling, disclaiming for himself " all pretensions to the
position even of a student " in mathematics, takes it upon
him to separate the dross from the pure gold of a Newton,
the incongruity between the humility of the disclaimer
and the arrogance of the enterprise is manifest to every
reader. And of course we find accordingly that Dr.
Stirling is not even able to reproduce the despised Vorstel-
lung with accuracy. He tells us that Newton himself
declares the quality independent of the quantity (p. 113).
Newton does no such thing. He tells us that a " square
is a quantum ; but it may be conceived as increasing or
decreasing, and if it be so conceived, there can be con
ceived also to lie in it a principle that, whether there be
increase or decrease, is always the same — infinite, then,
non-quantitative, qualitative only" (p. 121). Newton
would have held up his hands in horror at such a caricature
of his view, and would have told his critic that, to say
nothing of other points, one great use of the moment was
to show, by changes in itself, whether the quantity of which
it is the moment is increasing, diminishing, or stationary.
Again, Dr. Stirling obviously misunderstands the sense
in which Newton says that Nature shows us the generation
of quantity by flow. " Who ever saw lines flowing into
planes, planes into solids, or sides rotating into angles ?
And yet who has not seen sand and salt . . . and a
pocketful of marbles ? " (p. no). Well, no one has ever
seen sides rotating into angles ; and Dr. Stirling would
not have imagined that Newton had said this, had he not
been hampered by his queer conception of mathematical
continuity, by which the continuum must always arise
out of the discrete — the angle out of something that is not
angle. What Newton says is that when Nature presents
us with the process of measuring out quantity, the opera
tion is not performed by successive applications of foot-

88 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

rule, but by continuous motion. The astronomer, for
example, has to deal with the eccentric angle of the
earth's orbit. Is it according to Nature to say that for
every minute of time some two seconds of arc are clapped
on to this angle ? Does not Nature compel him to say
that the sides of the angle are opening out continuously,
and that so the angle grows ? So blind is the critic to this
sense that, in quoting from my paper Newton's statements
on the point, he breaks his quotation in order to omit the
decisive sentence which I had carefully italicised. Hae
Geneses in renim natura locum vere habent et in motu
corporum quotidie cernuntur. And now, in passing from
this head, I will simply ask Dr. Stirling whether he believes
in a geometry without intuition, whether the necessity for
intuition may not extend to the geometry of motion as well
as the geometry of rest, and whether, therefore, it may not
be the case that in this matter the notion is inseparable
from the intuition ? A presumption at least that this is
the case flows from the fact which I now pass on to
establish, that Hegel's own abstract notion breaks down
mathematically in the completest way. This, it will be
remembered, is the second and last part of the work
before me.

In The Secret of Hegel, only the first of Hegel's mathe
matical notes were reproduced. But as the philosopher
himself considers the real difficulty of the calculus to lie
in its application, my paper extended to the second note,
and showed that it is just in the application that Hegel's
notion fails. Dr. Stirling now suggests that it is best
to begin with the third note, which deals mainly with
Cavalleri's method of indivisibles. There is something to
be said in favour of this suggestion. Cavalleri's method,
in its more elementary examples, is easier than the general
theory of Newton, and on the whole Hegel has understood
the mathematical work involved pretty well. He does
not, however, follow with intelligence anything that is not
extremely elementary, and still very remote from that

i873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 89

general doctrine of fluxions which is the proper subject
of the present controversy ; and he again (iii. 356 ;
cf. Stirling, p. 117) talks absolute nonsense about Kepler's
laws. The advantage to be drawn from the study of this
note is a clearer grasp of that Hegelian view of the relation
of the continuum to the discrete, which I have already
signalised, and to which I need not now return. But
before passing on to the controversy proper, I may observe
that Dr. Stirling certainly does not understand Cavalleri.
Thus, he says that there is present in a parallelogram " a
single regula, a single proportion, which is determinative
of it," and which " is wholly qualitative," " is the spiritual
soul, as it were, of the actual parallelogram." This
mystical conception of the regula runs through several
pages, and gives a fine Hegelian colour to Cavalleri's work.
And obviously the regula is supposed to be at bottom one
with the Newtonian moment, of which we have found a
similar account (cf. p. 126). But what is the regula?
Simply as its name denotes, a rule or ruler, a perfectly
arbitrary straight line, set down in order that other lines
may be drawn parallel to it. Give me a parallelogram,
and any line anywhere in the plane of the parallelogram
may be taken as the regula, the ruler by which lines
important for the investigation shall be drawn. The
regula is just as much the spiritual soul of the parallelo
gram as the carving-knife is the soul of a leg of mutton.
Dr. Stirling, then, has not understood Cavalleri, and I
suspect, though here I speak with diffidence, that he has
not understood what Hegel says of Cavalleri ; for though
the German philosopher is unmathematically vague in
what he says of regula, he does not seem to give any
countenance to the error of his expositor.

Although thus, as regards Cavalleri and the mathe
matical side of Hegel's third note, Dr. Stirling is talking
quite beside the question, we are told that the gist of what
Hegel says in this note is pretty well " the gist, at the same
time, of all that he has to say in the mathematical reference

9o LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

generally." Hegel, namely, teaches us to regard " the
mathematical infinite, whether as in series or as in the
fiction of infinitesimals," as a mere disguise by which it is
attempted to conceal the necessary incommensurability of
quantities differing in quality (pp. 118, 119). Right lines,
for example, are not curves, and so when we attempt to
rectify a curve— i.e. to treat it as if it were homogeneous
with the straight line— incommensurability arises (p. 115).
Hence the mathematical obscurity of the calculus, the
necessity for introducing infinite series to fill up the
practical rift between the pieces. It would probably be
vain to object that the mathematical doctrine of the
incommensurable is by no means connected with the
doctrine of infinitesimals in the way here supposed — that
no mathematician ever used an infinitesimal to express or
elude incommensurability. But in view of the distinct
assertion that the rectification of a curve always gives rise
to infinite series or their equivalents, I will state that the
perimeter of the cardioid is four times the length of the
straight line which divides the curve symmetrically. It
appears, therefore, that the " gist " of Hegel's mathe
matical remarks involves a proposition mathematically
untrue ; and the inconsistency with fact here brought out,
of course vitiates the subsequent argument, that the
algebraic exponent of difference of quality is the occurrence
of squares or higher powers in the variables, and that
therefore the presence of powers higher than the first is
the essential character of such variability as invites
fluxional treatment. All this only shows that Hegel and
his expositor, instead of learning the science on which they
desire to theorise, have made a few superficial and in
accurate abstractions from half-digested facts, and have
covered the nakedness of their scientific induction with
the ample and impenetrable mantle of the Notion.

Instead of dwelling on this point, I shall bring the whole
matter to a final issue by taking up the application of this
Hegelian notion. We have seen, in dealing with the

i873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 91

criticism of Newton, that Hegel finds invincible logical
obstacles to all attempts to give a mathematical proof of
the relation of fluxion to fluent. The fluxion, he says, is
simply one term of a mathematical expansion — the term,
namely, in which a certain qualitative meaning lies. It
is vain to attempt to isolate this term from the other terms
of the series by regarding the latter as relatively insignific
ant in quantity ; you should simply define such a term of
the expansion as the fluxion, and then show, in concrete
problems of geometry, that this term has a geometric (and
so qualitative) meaning. Any other way of dealing with
the matter, and therefore all ways previous to Lagrange,
involve certain inadmissible logical assumptions, and so
give but a simulation of proof, where there is really only
the observation of the fact, that the calculus, regarded as a
rule of art, gives (methodically and more easily) results
which the ancient geometry had proved synthetically.
These strictures are developed in a passage translated by
Dr. Stirling (p. 134, sq.) with special reference to Barrow,
but it is certain that Hegel regarded them as not wholly
inapplicable to Newton. It is really incredible that Dr.
Stirling should not see that the whole state of the case as
here set down is quite changed, when we find that
Newton, contrary to Hegel's belief, had actually succeeded
in proving the deduction of the fluxion without any
objectionable use of the infinitely small. For in this case
the supposed " simulation " had disappeared from the
calculus long before Lagrange was born, and there is no
particle of ground for bestowing on the French analyst the
credit of " striking into the scientific path proper."
Therefore I have said, and now repeat, that Hegel stumbled
on Lagrange's method in the dark, through sheer ignorance
of what Newton had already achieved.

But, again, Hegel pursues Lagrange's method in dark
ness, or rather, proposing to pursue it, diverges from it into
absurdity. What the mathematician and the meta
physician have in common is to make the formation of the

92 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1869-

fluxions matter of mere definition, and thereafter to seek
for them a geometrical or other practical meaning. To
this end, Lagrange proves (but in a way not convincing)
that it is always possible to expand f(x + i) in ascending
powers of i, and defines the coefficients of the expansion
as derived functions (fluxions) of / x. Hegel, to simplify
matters, expands, not f(x + i), but/(# + 1), i.e. takes unity
as the increment of x. In view of this change, his process
becomes what I have formerly called " an excessively
clumsy adaptation of the method of Lagrange." Yet
Dr. Stirling without comparing, without even professing
to compare, Hegel with Lagrange, " sees no reason for
assuming Hegel not to have correctly described what he
had simply before him" (viz. Lagrange's method), and
finds that in using the word adaptation I have " mis
apprehended what it is all about " and " fooled myself
into a formal wrangling against a mathematical ratiocina
tion that nowhere exists." That is, Hegel shall make the
mathematical change from i, which is sense, to 1, which is
nonsense, and the mathematician who checks him shall
be " fooling himself." x

The next step is to find the use of the fluxions after we
have derived them, and this Hegel does, still in dependence
on Lagrange, for the special problem of the tangents of
curves. As Lagrange in this problem uses from the very
first x + i, and not Hegel's useless x + 1, there is something
touching in the naiveti with which Hegel here throws him
self into the arms of his friend. But soon his natural
independence of spirit revives, and, having signalised
himself by proposing to throw away a constant in one of
Lagrange's equations, by which the meaning of the equa
tion is utterly changed, he is emboldened to tamper again
with the it to which he seemed for a moment to have

1 In re-reading my paper, I observe with regret that on p. 507, 1. 10,
i has been printed instead of 1. This erratum obscures the magni
tude of Hegel's divergence from Lagrange, but should have been at once
observed by any one who had his eye on the quite explicit statements
of Hegel (iii. pp. 326, 327) to which I refer.

i873] STIRLING AND HEGEL 93

resigned himself. Lagrange cannot prove his point unless
he is allowed to make i as small as he pleases. Hegel,
afraid of the " notorious increment," will have it that this
demand is quite " out of place," and only allows it to
become a proper fraction. No doubt in all this the
philosopher is not conscious of spoiling Lagrange's mathe
matics, to which, as I have said, he returns from time to
time with affecting confidence and confusion. But the
error is not the less for that ; and the last touch about i
involves, as my former paper showed, certain very
diverting geometrical absurdities.

Through all this Dr. Stirling remains grimly resolute
not to consult Lagrange — whose analysis, in fact, is rather
difficult to read — and sternly determined to " see no
reason for assuming Hegel not to have correctly described
what he simply had before. him."

II

EARLY THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS
(1868-1870)

I. PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY: A FRAGMENT. (Jan. 1868.)
II. CHRISTIANITY AND THE SUPERNATURAL. (Jan. 1869.)

III. THE WORK OF A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. (Nov. 1869.)

IV. THE QUESTION OF PROPHECY IN THE CRITICAL SCHOOLS

OF THE CONTINENT. (April 1870.)

I

PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY

A FRAGMENT

WHILE it is true that history and prophecy alike are
in all their parts the work of God, it is equally true that
both in all their parts are products of human personality.
Some, perhaps, who agreed to our previous leading
principle may object to this statement as evacuating
prophecy of its properly supernatural character. But
such an objection is baseless ; history as well as prophecy
is supernatural, and if we recognise in miracles not mere
occasional outbreaks of divine power, but the continuous
manifestation of God in history terminating in the great
permanent miracle of the incarnation, we shall not fear
to dishonour prophecy by placing it side by side with
history. And just as history, in spite of the supernatural
factor that has always been present in it, and still is

present in the working of the divine Spirit in believers,

as history is notwithstanding in all its parts the product
of human personality ; so it is with prophecy also. The
prophet in becoming a prophet never for one instant
ceased to be a man. Not one element of his personality
was destroyed or suspended ; the prophetic inspiration
added something, but took away nothing of the feelings
and thoughts and desires that built up his previous life.
It is not enough to say that the prophet is not a mere

97 7

98 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

lyre struck by the plectrum of the Spirit ; to admit that
the revelation was not only through the prophet but to the
prophet, and so had to be intelligently apprehended by
him before it could be given forth to others — this is not
enough unless we carefully observe how much of real
personal activity such an intelligent apprehension in
volves. For many who claim to have risen above a mere
mechanical theory of prophecy yet seem to think that
what the Spirit presented to the prophet was a ready-
made thought or a complete visionary picture of a purely
objective kind which he was then able to lay hold of,
embody in words, and utter.

Now this view seems to me not so much false as
meaningless. For whatever difference of view exists as
to the objective per se (Noumenon or Ding-an-sich) , there
is no difference of opinion among competent psychologists
as to the fact that what appears to us as objective is
really a product of personal activity acting on certain
subjective elements, that the objective is never appre
hended except through the subjective. If, for example,
a picture stands before me, I do not perceive the colour,
figure, etc., as noumenon, I receive from the picture only a
series of subjective impressions which an exercise of my
own personality builds up into the picture I really see.
And since all that I really get from without is a series of
impressions which an act of mental activity combines
into a whole, the only guarantee that this whole — the
picture as seen by me — will not contain certain other
elements (that the recollection of colours and forms
previously seen, for example, will not mingle with the
sensations I am now receiving, and modify my appre
hension of the picture), are the superior vividness of the
sensation over the recollection, and the power I have of
correcting my false impression by constantly renewed con
templation of the object. These guarantees are clearly
not perfect, and in fact no two men ever carry away the
same image of an object. On the contrary, if the painter

i87o] PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY 99

being omniscient knew exactly what recollections were
running through my mind, he might — though no doubt
the skill required would be infinite — so arrange his
colours that the impression they produced plus what my
own mind added would give me exactly the image he
desired.

To apply this to the case of Revelation. The objective
nature of the vision seems to have been postulated as a
security for the infallibility of the Revelation. But if
nothing can be apprehended as objective in the first
instance, since the vision must anyhow be first broken
down into subjective feelings and built up again by the
person affected before he can apprehend it, — this being
so, it is clear that no absolute security can be given that
the prophet will not add elements of his own. The
amount of such addition might be indefinitely reduced by
a great vividness of the vision, or by the lengthened
presence thereof, to the eye of the prophet ; but no
complete freedom from admixture would be possible unless
all the prophet's previous recollections were for the time
cancelled, i.e. unless he lost his self-consciousness, which
we know he never did. After all, this would not matter
practically if all revelation were, like that on Sinai, an
actual vivid spectacle before the eye of sense and real
words directed to the bodily ear, but no one will maintain
that the objectivity of the prophetic revelation was of
the nature of material externality to the body. On the
contrary, we have reason to suppose that the outward
senses were generally closed and the vision seen, or
words heard, presented within. And in this case all talk
of an objective vision is absurd. When the external
senses are closed to the world without, nothing can remain
but certain subjective feelings succeeding and mingling
with one another, from which objective images or ob
jective thoughts are produced by the pure activity of
the mind. Now suppose that some of these feelings are
directly excited by the action of the Spirit, yet if self-

TOO LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

consciousness be not annihilated, others will mix with
these which are purely natural, and the thoughts or
pictures that the mind of the prophet produces— and
produces, observe, wholly by its own activity— must
contain a mixture of these two elements. We are thus
forced to the conclusion that, since the prophetic con
sciousness was continuous with the ordinary conscious
ness, the supernatural revelation was not independent of
the previous thoughts of the prophet but only supple
mented these thoughts so as to bring forth a new and
perfect revelation. The result of the whole process is
an image, visible or audible, if the process of mental
combination be carried on unconsciously ; a thought, if
the operation of the mind be conscious. In the first
case the whole process falls under the ordinary laws of
mental association, and may be regarded as fully explained
by psychologists. The process by which certain suc
cessions of feelings are interpreted into certain images,
sounds, etc., has in every one become by long habit
quite instinctive, requiring no conscious exertion of the
mind. Here the Divine action must, I think, be confined
to the production of certain of the ultimate subjective
elements thus to be combined. These elements would
be connected with the organs of sight or hearing according
as the object was to produce a vision or an internal
voice ; and as there is little doubt that such feelings are
invariably connected with excitation of the nerves of
sense, we may reasonably suppose that the point at which
the natural explanation fails us and the supernatural
must come in, is when we have traced back the prophetic
visions to an excitation of the nerves not explicable on
natural causes and not subject to any natural limitation.
But the capacity of the nerves themselves to conduct
certain definite excitations only will limit the range of
the feelings thus miraculously excited, to which may be
added the further limitation that only a feeling previously
experienced can form part of a visionary image that owes

1 87o] PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY 101

its formation to the laws of association. These restric
tions might be interesting in regard to such visions as
contain theophanies, but otherwise are of little import
ance. They do not seem to prevent almost any tableau
of a visionary kind being presented to the prophet, pro
vided only that tableau were of such a kind as to in
corporate the feelings which the continued natural action
of the mind would engender, and which would correspond
to the material excitations propagated by the cerebrum
through the nerve circles. Every mental operation has
for its counterpart a bodily phenomenon. Mental re
production is thus connected with the spontaneity of
the cerebrum propagating currents outwards through
the nerves of sense. By the dynamical principle of the
" superposition of small motions " these undulations
would produce their own effect in spite of the superadded
supernatural excitation.

But this spontaneity of the cerebrum may flow out in
many different channels, and the supernatural stimulation
will serve in great measure to draw the spontaneous flow
into its own channel, if no strong emotion is present.
But strong emotion or a strong bias of character in any
direction has also a coercing power over the spontaneity,
strongly forcing it into a special course. The course of
these natural movements would more or less readily be
assimilated to those of the supernatural very much in
proportion to the harmony between the vision produced
and the general emotional and intellectual character of
the prophet. Now the prophets seem to have been
generally men of strong character, whose minds could
not readily have been forced out of their current course.
But at the same time that course was almost always, I
believe, the course that the revelation followed. The
strong productiveness of the prophet's mind became a
most important factor in the production of the divine
visions even where the prophet's personality was properly
not involved ; and these visions were generally built out

102 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

of the various elements familiar to the mind of the seer.
In the case of men possessed, like all prophets, of a
strong historic sense we must expect that the events of
contemporary history would play an important part in
moulding the visions.

These remarks apply not only to visions proper, in
which, perhaps, the poetic sensibility of the prophet would
be most important, but also to such divine communica
tions as took the form of an internal voice. Here, how
ever, the matter becomes more complicated, for while
the uncontrolled play of the associative powers generally
produces visible images, the internal voice is the form in
which voluntary thinking is generally carried on. For
the present voluntary thought must be excluded ; we
are dealing only with the case, parallel to vision, when
the divine word arose unbidden in the prophet's breast,
and appeared to come from without. In dreams and
even in reveries such cases occur. The course of thought
is determined by the associative powers and kept in a
more or less rational channel not by the will but by
some cause — generally emotive — that retains the mental
currents in a definite course.1

On the current supposition that the whole prophecy
was supernaturally announced, it seems impossible that
the naturally generated currents should have failed to
interfere with the divine word, and so the prophet could
not have given a true prophecy. But clearly there was
no double process, a divine word and a running accom
paniment of suggested human reverie. Nor was the
human thought suppressed ; on the contrary, so much
stimulus was given as kept the associations in the right
course and produced precisely the required effect, without
suspending any natural law. This clearly was only
possible where the prophet's mind was in natural harmony

1 This is clearly brought out by lessen (Psychologie, p. 710), who,
however, hardly reaches the general principle ; for which see Bain's
Senses and Intellect (esp. pp. 570, 599).

i87o] PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY 103

with the revelation. Perhaps the want of this harmony
and the necessity of crushing down conflicting currents
by a more violent action on the nerves may explain the
physical and mental prostration that we read of in the
cases of Saul and Balaam.

These considerations tend to show that wherever the
prophet was deeply absorbed in the history of his time,
all the revelations presented to his mind would be deeply
coloured thereby. The deep insight into the hearts of
men and the moral bearings of events with which the
prophets were gifted must have produced a habitual
disposition to view everything in its bearings on the
moral necessities of the age. And so, even in the in
voluntary associations we are treating of, no long train of
thought could fail to incorporate some very direct refer
ence to the ethical position of the time. This quite
coincides with one half of the principle laid down in the
first part of our inquiry, viz. that prophecy could omit no
important moral development of the prophet's period.
More delicate is the question whether any new moral
development of history, which represented quite a new
turn in the contest of good and evil, and was not merely
the bringing into prominence of something lying latent,
could be brought into prophecy.

Such an element could not be manifested in a vision
proper, but only in the word of the Lord explaining the
vision. We have seen that it would be presumptuous to
limit the range of the pictorial part of the revelation. If
we admit the supernatural, no reason can be given why
infinitely various combinations and successions of images
might not rise up in the prophet's mind. But the vision
without an accompanying word would give very little
real information for two reasons :

i. The coexistent and the successive can never be
clearly separated in a vision. In actual life the distant
in space and the distant in tirne are distinguished by the
fact that the former is brought near by muscular exertion

io4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

(at least by moving the eyes), while the second ap
proaches independently of bodily movement. In the
panoramic vision this difference vanishes, and everything
rises in a sort of vague succession without even a clear
measure of time.

2. The vision per se gives only external circumstances
which, uninterpreted, would be void of prophetic signifi
cance.

Thus if a new moral development be laid open to the
prophet, this must happen through the prophetic word.
Moreover, the question is not whether it is physically
possible that the prophet should be lifted out of his own
age to consider the new necessities of a future time, but
whether this is morally possible. Now the possibility of
really new developments of evil in the world depends on
the fact that evil is not an impersonal leaven propagating
itself among men, but is disseminated by the active
personal thought and energy of evil spirits. So the new
element of evil is really a new evil thought, and as this
cannot be objectively presented to the prophet, he would
have to think it out for himself. We have not yet come
to speak of the conscious thought of the prophet ; but that
only makes matters worse. If the prophet could antici
pate a new development of evil, this would be by virtue
of a Satanic thought coming to him, built up in his mind
by precisely the same inspiration that produced the
Divine word. There would be a very great moral
difficulty in supposing this. But, moreover, there is a
great, though not perhaps insuperable psychological
difficulty. The emotion which filled the whole mind of
the prophet was faith in God, a full sympathy with the
Divine activity in Redemption. The grand idea that
filled the prophet's mind and formed the substratum of
all revelation, conditioning all the mental processes by
which the details of prophecy were filled in, was that
which for the Hebrews was summed up in the word
Jehovah. There can be no doubt that this feeling was

1870] PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY 105

greatly intensified during the prophetic inspiration which
always crushed down all mere personal imperfect feelings
which separate man from full harmony with God. There
can be no doubt that the symbolism of Isa. vi. points to
this. In a mind so elevated every mental association
would have its direction determined accordingly. The
difficulty that prevented depraved men from becoming
prophets of divine truth would still more thoroughly
prevent the prophetic inspiration from running along
the course of a new development of evil. I do not think
this resistance could be overcome without a mental
struggle violent enough to raise the prophet from the state
of reverie to a state of conscious thought.

Before passing to this perhaps more interesting part
of prophecy, where the prophet was conscious of mental
effort in producing his prophecies, we may sum up
briefly the results already obtained.

The apparent objectivity of any revelation does not
prove that it was given objectively to the prophet, but
only that his involuntary mental energy built it up from
subjective elements. These latter are partly super
natural, but also of necessity partly natural, the super
natural part being so adjusted that the result, be it
dream or vision, is exactly the desired revelation. But
this revelation is built up from its subjective elements
by a natural process of association determined in its
direction, partly by the material it is working on, but in
great measure by the habitual character of the prophet
and his emotional state at the time. In this respect the
prophetic vision and Divine word do not differ from an
ordinary dream or reverie ; for these too depend in part
only on recollections present to the mind and impressions
transmitted by the not wholly dormant senses, and
receive their whole colouring and character from the
character and emotions of the mind in which they are
produced. It does not therefore appear that the revela
tions thus presented could ever free themselves from the

106 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

limitations of those historical circumstances in which the
prophet was so deeply immersed, and least of all in such
a way as to incorporate a new development of evil, to
think out a new Satanic thought.

I must add, with some hesitation, a doubt whether any
of the highest forms of revelation, any essentially new
thought, not a mere combination of old principles, could
occur where the personality of the prophet was not con
sciously at work. The laws of association are only capable
of rearranging representative notions (Vorstellungen)
already familiar to the mind. An entirely new element
supernaturally presented, could find no place in a whole
produced without conscious effort according to these laws,
but could only be apprehended by an effort of person
ality. Mere predictions of new events might be thus
given, for a new event does not imply a new thought. So
far then as prophecy means merely the applying of old
principles to new events, this quasi-objective or impersonal
prophecy might suffice ; but where a new thought had
to be reached, some new principle deduced from the
general law of Jehovah's working among men and reveal
ing a new part of the redemptive work — here, I imagine,
the prophet must have felt that he was thinking out quite
a new thought. In the case of Moses, to whom God spake
face to face, this effort would be just like the effort we
use to follow a new thought spoken or written by another.
But to other prophets God spoke bekiddth, an expression
that can hardly mean " in enigmas," but rather points to
the more general fact that the divine revelation was not
given fully and directly, but so that thought was necessary
to apprehend it and bring it into an articulate form.
We must not suppose that hidah is like a cypher which
only needs translation. The Hebrew enigma does not
contain the thought that is expressed in the answer, but
only hints at it and affords a direction for the thoughts
of the person to whom it is proposed. Analogously,
though not identically, the prophetic revelation, when it

i87o] PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY 107

did not come purely in dream or vision, called for a
conscious effort of inventive thought to elaborate it. The
matter from which the new thought is to be elaborated
is, as Rothe points out,1 certain ideas and representa
tive notions ("Begriffe" and " Vorstellungen ") already
present to the prophet's mind. These, however, may be
either natural or embrace images presented in super
natural vision — for, as we have already seen, a perfectly
new image presented in such a vision will at once call
for an exercise of personal thought. Upon the matter
thus presented the prophet's mind must now act to supply
the formal element of the thought which is what is pro
perly new. The method must be a teleological reasoning
bringing the matter into subordination to the general
principle of God's redemptive work. But no mere
natural deduction could suffice for this ; and here comes
in the feature that distinguishes prophecy from other
forms of the supernatural. No mere material super
natural modification of the nerves can serve here. The
power of producing a new thought depends on man's
spiritual nature, and the only means by which this faculty
can be raised to correspond with the necessities of prophecy
is by a direct action of the Spirit of God on the spirit of
man. What this action is we cannot tell ; it lies in a
region even the natural features of which have baffled
human science. All that we know is that the formal
part of thought is that in which the human and therefore
the Divine Spirit come into play — in that unexplained
process by which general and abstract truth is extracted
from concrete notions. But this perhaps suffices to show
how far this mysterious process can affect the relation of
prophecy to history. So far as the resulting truth is
abstract and general, it will rise above all the conditions
of a special time ; but, so far as a concrete element
remains, that concrete element will not be a new one
but what was already present. So the relation of pro-

1 As quoted by Tholuck, Die Propheten, u.s.w., p. 45.

io8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-1870

phecy to history will still depend on the result of the more
concrete processes already analysed, and can only be
modified in so far as the new thought lies out of relation
to time and circumstance altogether.

In general, then, prophecy has two factors : the one
abstract and formal, viz. the grand idea of rnrrs of a
divine immanence in history swaying all things to a
perfect end, the other concrete and relative, containing
all conditions of time, place, and so on. The former is
the same for all time ; the latter must always attach itself
to the concrete and conditioned in the prophet's own life,
that is, to his own place in history. The synthesis of
these two factors will produce a prophecy that goes
directly from the concrete basis — the history of the
prophet's age — to the final solution. The events that
link these together may be revealed with any degree of
fulness, but of course in subordination to the [explicit
MS.l

II

CHRISTIANITY AND THE SUPERNATURAL

IT is a common observation that all theology is running
into apologetics. It might be difficult to say how far
an analysis of the theological activity of our age and
country would justify this statement ; but the currency
of the saying proves at least that apologetics is the
branch of theology which bulks most largely in the
minds of men at large.

We live in an age which is not much interested in strict
theology. The mass of the laity and not a small pro
portion of the clergy do not view a strong interest in
practical Christianity as at all inconsistent with small
regard for Christian science or even with scepticism as
to the possibility of such science.

But to this apathy as to theological questions there is
one marked exception. Almost every one feels a keen
interest in some branch of apologetics. No one seems
to grudge learning, ability, or labour bestowed in the
defence of Christianity against unbelievers. We do not
seem much interested in the internal development of
Christian science. We either acquiesce in the traditional
solution of nice theological questions, or regard the
solution of the questions either way as unimportant ;
but the outposts as it were of theology — all points that
touch on science, history, criticism, and, in so far, on
philosophy — are guarded with restless jealousy.

At first sight the statement that theology is running

109

no LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

into apologetics seems intelligible enough ; but the thing
is not so clear when one begins to look at it. The word
apologetical seems to point rather to a peculiar treatment
than to a peculiar class of theological problems. Do we
mean then that theology is ceasing to be constructive
and must henceforth stand on the defensive only ? If so,
what are we called upon to defend ? A theology already
completely and scientifically constructed ? Surely not ;
for when a scientific system is complete, it ceases to
demand apologetical treatment. Or are we called on to
admit that theological science has not attained, never
can attain, constructive completeness ? Then it will be
no longer the results of theology that we are required
to defend, but something prior to theology. What we
shall have to defend is not our Christian knowledge but
our Christian belief.

As a matter of fact there seems no doubt that those
who view the increasing importance of apologetics as
natural and inevitable must hold this view. They not
only reject the intelligo ut credam of Abelard for the credo
ut intelligam of Anselm, but they deny that any advance
in the intelligam can modify the necessity or limit the
sphere of the credo. All positive theology starts not
from axioms but from postulates to be believed, not to be
proved.

It is with these postulates then that apologetics will
have to do — not to demonstrate them but to show that
it is not unreasonable that we should believe them ; nay,
that reason itself calls for this belief. But still there is a
difficulty here. I can understand a man saying that our
belief in the postulates of Christianity rests on purely
subjective grounds — that we can enter into no argument
whatever on the subject — but this position abolishes
apologetics. I can understand also that a man should
refuse to accept this view, and say that he can give as
good a reason for this belief as for any other belief he
holds ; but in this case, too, why the name apologetics ?

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL in

I believe many things that cannot be demonstrated—
the great facts of history, for example ; but the moral
evidence by which I support this belief is as little apolo-
getical, is as fully constructive, as the demonstrative
evidence of geometry.

How is it then that in supporting our belief in
Christianity we must be always rebutting objections, and
can never say : Here is a complete and reasoned exposi
tion of the grounds of my belief which no new facts and
no new arguments can ever shake ?

There is an ambiguity about the word belief. A man
is said to believe a thing when he cannot prove it, but
has got something towards a proof. The object of
belief is in this case really a hypothesis which suits
certain facts so much better than any other hypothesis
that I feel bound to accept it till further facts turn up
pro, or con. There is a strong tendency to class our
belief in Christianity under this head — a good instance
of which may be found in Butler's Analogy.

But, if so, whence the moral warmth that mingles
with our discussion of Christianity ? Why are we
eagerly apologetic in behalf of a hypothesis ? What
interest can we have to maintain this hypothesis more
than any other which will suit the facts equally well ?
I am sure no Christian would feel that a hypothetical
Christianity was worth having. And the reason is plain.
For the essence of personal Christianity lies in love to a
personal Saviour. That such a Saviour really lives and
really loves me must be more than a hypothesis if I am
really to love Him.

In the other sense of the word I believe that which I
receive as truth from a person whose veracity I trust.
It is not possible, as many would do, to reduce this kind
of belief under the previous head. This is not the place
for a philosophic discussion ; but I do not think that
sound philosophy will deny that the relations of person
to person are the deepest and truest in human life, and

ii2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

must lie at the foundation of all explanations of human
knowledge and belief. The sifting of the masses of
evidence where the character of the witness is not access
ible does fall under the rules of mere probability ; but
no one can deny that it is possible for one human soul
to penetrate into another with such full appreciation and
sympathy as to render faith in that other something
far deeper than a mere balancing of probabilities.

Clearly it is a faith of this sort that must lie at the
bottom of Christianity. A faith in mere probable
evidence may be good ground for calling a man acute or
stupid, but can never be a subject for moral blame or
approbation. But my faith in a fellow-man is a subject
on which I am not only allowed but bound to show
warmth of feeling. If a man doubts the veracity of my
friend, whose pure and guileless character he has had
every means of learning, I am bound to resent the insult.
A truth that I believe on a friend's testimony becomes
morally sacred to me. Here and here only do we find
the type of the feeling with which every Christian regards
divine truth.

A belief in certain truths resolving itself ultimately
into a belief in a person may of course have various
degrees. I may so far understand and believe in a man
without that thorough interpretation of character above
described. All certainty in history may be referred to
this. History that merely balances probabilities is never
certain ; but where we have a historian in whose works
we may so far read his character, we have a basis for
higher certainty. In estimating the evidence of an
event, each man must learn for himself to enter into the
historian's mind. The argument can never be reduced
to mere calculation. And yet we do not find that the
standard of historical truth is necessarily vague or doubt
ful, and therefore we must conclude that one man can
really be known by others even if we have only his writings
or actions before us, and never met him face to face.

1870] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 113

We come then to this conclusion. So far as our belief
in the postulates of Christianity is based on mere
phenomenal probabilities, it contains no moral element,
and does not justify an apologetic. So far as it resolves
itself into a belief in a person or persons there is a moral
element involved ; but we should not despair of gaining
an objective criterion of the truth of our beliefs. There
is no reason why here, as elsewhere, men should not come
at length to a consistent judgment as to how far this
personal faith is justifiable. Whatever, on the other
hand, lies beyond the limits of those personal relations on
which Christianity rests is not a subject for apologetic
treatment but for impartial criticism.

It is not difficult to see the practical bearing of
these somewhat abstract arguments. What makes our
Christianity precious to us is that it is essentially a real
fellowship between God and man mediated through
Jesus Christ as our Redeemer from sin. It is a personal
relation to Christ and to God in Christ that we seek in
Christianity, and it is the reality of this relationship that
we are concerned to maintain with all the energy we may
against all who deny it.

Here for the first time we come in proper contact with
the subject indicated in the title of this essay.

For such a fellowship with God as Christianity con
templates is necessarily supernatural. To say that no
such fellowship naturally subsists between God and
man is no more than to say that mankind is sunk in sin
and misery — a fact that lies patent to all observation
and in no sense is a specifically Christian doctrine. But
what Christianity does assert is that there is no remedy
for misery where there is no redemption from sin, and
the hope that Christianity holds out for the world is
the hope of entering into new and deeper personal relations
with God. The universe of man is not and never can be
self-contained. God must come down into the world
and appear working among men, loving man and loved

8

ii4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

by man before a truly harmonious universe of persons can
be constituted.

Personal fellowship is ever based on personal action
and reaction, and so must it be in Christianity. The
Christian consciousness of God as our God rests on His
historical manifestation of Himself to man, — rests, in a
word, on a supernatural history. There is more in history
than a record of human passions and activities, of human
love and hatred, ambition, heroism, or crime. Nor
must we think that we explain history, if behind these
human forces we see the unconscious workings of an
all -pervading world-spirit moulding man's career with
benignant but inexorable fatality. It is the personal
working of God on man consciously exerted and con
sciously responded to that gives history its life and hope.
All men's lives indeed are unconsciously moulded by an
all-pervading divine providence ; but this could never
have sufficed to redeem the world. Man must know that
God is dealing with him in person and must willingly
submit himself to the divine influence. This it is that
constitutes Christianity supernatural. Our Christian
faith that God in Christ Jesus has made Himself personally
known to us, has entered into personal relations with us,
is then in one word our faith in a supernatural self-
manifestation of God ; and the apologetic in which we
seek to justify our Christian faith must have for its
central point this idea of the supernatural.

Thus in the widest sense all apologetic turns about the
personality of God as speculatively true and historically
manifested. The strong dislike to this doctrine, taking
the double form of deism or pantheism, which runs
through modern speculation, is what really forces us into
apologetics. If men were as ready a priori to admit a
divine personality working in history as to refer the
facts of history to human persons as cause, there would
be no difficulty in justifying our Christian faith. Not
the remoteness or imperfect evidence of the supernatural

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 115

history that culminated in the resurrection of Christ, but
an a priori refusal to acknowledge such a history as
reconcilable with the philosophic idea of God, is what
we have to contend against in apologetics. It is a
notorious fact that the school that attacks the historic
truth of Christianity takes for its presupposition the
impossibility of the supernatural — does not for a moment
profess to be able to carry out its destructive criticism
without this presupposition. With such a school
Christianity can proclaim no truce. Such theories we
can never consent to view as matter for friendly dis
cussion. Our Christian loyalty is tampered with when
we are invited to embrace a Christianity that leaves no
room for personal intercourse between God and man.
All this of course will seem to all of us obvious enough.
The danger rather is that we may think that our argument
has carried us further than it really has done. We must
remember that, while postulating the supernatural as the
characteristic of Christianity, our definition of the super
natural is still in the most abstract form. We have seen
no cause to deny the name of Christian to any one who
believes that through the mediatorship of Christ man
has entered into true personal relation with God — who
sees in history God dealing personally with man. How
this personal dealing is to be more nearly defined, how we
are to conceive God's self-manifestation as carried out,
is still an open question, and a question, so far as appears,
for free and friendly discussion within the pale of a
common Christianity, not for apologetic handling. And
this, be it observed, is a most weighty point in the present
state of theological opinion. I may be allowed in illus
tration to quote a few words from the writings of Bunsen,
which will show that this much-misrepresented man
stands fully on the side we have recognised as Christian.
" It is," says Bunsen, " a thoughtless delusion or a bitter
mockery when men are now arising who would make
themselves or us believe that " on the mythical theory of

n6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

the gospel history a common Christianity can still endure.
" If the gospel of John is not the historical testimony of
an eye-witness, but a myth, there is no historical Christ ;
and without an historical Christ all the common faith of
Christians is a phantom — all Christian confession, mockery
or delusion, and Christian worship a juggle." In these
words, I repeat, Bunsen thoroughly sets himself on our
side. He appears as a friend, not as a foe. And yet
Bunsen refused to believe in the possibility of miracles —
he refused to believe that God's personal dealings with
men could interfere with the fixed laws of nature. Nor
does Bunsen stand alone in this. The opposition to
miracles, so strong in Schleiermacher, to whom Christianity
owes so much, still prevails among many whom we dare
not call enemies of our faith. I believe indeed that this
tendency is growing less strong in Germany. I believe,
and I hope in this essay to do something to show, that a
belief in miracles is the necessary development of the
conception of the supernatural above laid down. But I
do urge that with such examples before us we must give
serious and earnest thought, lest in drawing the line
between the friends and foes of our faith we shut our
selves out from fellow-feeling with men who are them
selves fighting on behalf of God.

There is none of us, I suppose, who has not felt puzzled
on this point. We are constantly forced to recognise
true Christian feeling in men who seem, from the stand
point of our Scottish orthodoxy, to reject most precious
and fundamental truth. We rather feel than know that
amidst differences that seem vital we and they are yet
really at one. But it is most dangerous to leave the
decision in these cases to subjective feeling. We are
imperatively called on to find an objective — I do not say
a doctrinal — criterion between Christian and pseudo-
Christian thought.

That our current apologetic possesses such a criterion
I cannot but deny. It is a fact that is pressing itself

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 117

on all thoughtful men that there is much Christian
thought which we may perhaps sympathise with in
spite of our theological position, but which our theology
refuses to have anything to do with. And this, I suppose,
more than anything else, is what is leading educated men
to doubt and disparage all theological truth ; to give
very little confidence to a Christian teaching that dares
not offer recognition to men that only a bigot can call
infidels.

No one can say that our apologetical theology stands
on firm ground while these things are so. It is weak,
and because weak unjust, and because unjust tends
continually to repel from Christianity all who are not
drawn to the truth by a moral necessity strong enough
to overpower their sense of this weakness and injustice.

It is absurd to attempt to compensate for this narrow
ness of scientific view by cultivating a sentimental breadth
of sympathy. It is not unreasoning sympathy but
thoughtful recognition, combined if you will with dissent,
that is called for. In a word, we must reconsider the
whole treatment of the premises of Christianity. Such a
reconstruction.the Germans have long seen to be necessary,
and have in no small measure succeeded in effecting. I
do not therefore speak on my own authority simply, but
seek to lay before you what in a land more favourable
to theological progress is regarded as an established
fact, when I say that the guiding conception in this recon
struction must be the notion of the supernatural above
laid down.

The leading thought of our present apologetics is
very different. The older orthodoxy held that the
foundation of our Christianity is " a knowledge of the
religious object communicated to men from without in
the form of doctrine." In the words of our Confession :
' The light of nature is not sufficient to give the know
ledge of God and of His will, which is necessary to salva
tion ; therefore it pleased the Lord to reveal Himself

n8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

and declare His will unto His Church." Divine revelation,
then, is a communication of truth from God to man.
Only by apprehending this truth is salvation possible,
and so, in the words of Rothe, " All religious interests in
Christianity seemed finally to converge in the necessity
of experiencing with certainty where the religious doctrine
promulgated among men by divine revelation is deposited
in trustworthy fashion."

Such an authoritative statement of saving truth the
Protestant churches could seek in Scripture only, and
hence the belief in the authority and infallibility of the
Bible was necessarily conceived as the indispensable
foundation of all other religious convictions. Till this
belief is established, no Christianity seemed possible, and
so an apologetic was called for which should treat of the
possibility, necessity, and criteria of a supernatural
communication of truth, and should maintain that these
criteria are found in Christianity, and that the truth itself
is contained in an infallible book. Only when these
results are reached can we on this theory feel that we
have our feet on firm ground, and all who cannot go
thus far with us must be viewed as consciously or un
consciously sapping the very foundations of Christianity.

This is not the place to dwell in detail on the for
midable difficulties and unending toils to which such an
apologetic is exposed. The point on which we have to
dwell is the position here assigned to the supernatural in
Christianity. The supernatural appears on the traditional
theory primarily as a supernatural communication of
truth. Christianity is necessarily supernatural, because
the truth needed for salvation cannot be reached by the
natural intellect. It is not to some positive principle in
man's nature but to a weakness and deficiency of our
faculties that the supernatural in Christianity is due.
We must put this proposition side by side with the
doctrine that the weakness of human reason is one part
of the corruption brought in by sin. Our Protestant

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 119

theology justly includes under regeneration the illumina
tion and strengthening of the reason ; so that the
Christian advances more and more in rational compre
hension of saving truth. And so while the truths of the
Bible are, in the language of Dogmatic, supra rationem
empiricam, we cannot think them as also supra rationem
absolutam. And thus the significance of the supernatural
is only relative and temporary. A supernatural com
munication of truth from God to man — a supernatural
inspiration to secure an infallible record of this truth—
these are necessary only while man's redemption is
imperfect, and must fall away when all that is partial and
transitory is abolished.

It is this way of looking at things, making as it
does the supernatural a merely accidental feature in
Christianity, which has rendered us so jealous of specula
tive theology. Every attempt at a rational demon
stration of Christian doctrines is viewed as an attempt
to diminish the value of the Bible — for the Bible is held
valuable only as communicating to us supernaturally
what natural reason cannot attain to. A complete
speculative theology, we imagine, would supersede the
Bible just as many have supposed that a body of doctrine
drawn from Scripture — say the Shorter Catechism —
might supply the place of the Bible.

The supernatural features in Christianity, however,
cannot be all brought under the heads of prophecy and
inspiration. What is the significance which on the
current theory attaches to miracles ? This is the point
wherein the most obvious deficiencies appear. Clearly
the importance of miracles must be secondary only.
Miracles must somehow be subsidiary to the revelation
of truth. The accidental character which attached to
the supernatural communication of truth still more
clearly belongs to miracles as the supernatural attestation
of divine truth. The miracles of the Old and New
Testament have no value in themselves, but serve to

120 LECTURES AND ESSAYS fl

attest that the miracle-worker is a divinely commissioned
ambassador of God. Miracles, in short, are, in common
with prediction, the criteria of revelation.

Thus viewed, miracles have merely an apologetic
function. And yet it may be questioned whether they
have not given far more trouble than assistance to
apologetic theology. We propose to use the miracles
recorded in Scripture as one link in the proof of the
paramount authority of Scripture ; but we are con
fronted with the objection that a book relating such
occurrences cannot possibly be trustworthy. And as
this argument is generally based by recent objectors on
the moral, not on the metaphysical, difficulties of a belief
in miracle, we can meet the objection fairly only by
showing that miracles have more than a mere adventitious
importance in Christianity.

That this is really the case is obvious from a glance
at the greatest of all miracles — the incarnation and
resurrection of our Lord. These are not events of a
mere apologetic value, they are the central facts of
Christianity. And these events are only the culminating
point of a long miraculous history. The miracles of
Scripture are not isolated facts but a connected chain
running onwards from the fall, and so interwoven with
the history of redemption, that that history evacuated of
miracles would be absolutely meaningless. Now the
current apologetic teaches us only that the scheme of
redemption required to be supernaturally made known
and attested to men, — it takes no account of the fact that
redemption was miraculously worked out among men.
And hence arises the vast disadvantage that while the
idea of the supernatural must always remain the key of
our Christian position, which we must defend at all
hazards, that idea has on the current view no intrinsic
value to correspond to its strategic importance. The
fate of the whole citadel depends on a single outwork.

Let us look a little more closely at the neglected fact

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 121

that the work of redemption is itself supernatural. The
saving truth by believing which men are to become
Christians has the form of history. I am not to be saved
by believing some eternal truths about God. I must
believe that my salvation is rendered possible only by
the work of Christ which took place historically and
among men. The old dogmatic does lay stress on this
point, maintaining in the doctrine of the atonement that
our salvation is rendered possible only by a divine trans
action. But the neglected point is that we have not
here a divine transaction supernaturally made known
to man, but a transaction that is at once human and
divine — a transaction supernaturally worked out in
human history in the person of the Godman. And here
we return to the conception of the supernatural developed
in the first part of this essay, viz. the conception of a
personal intercourse between God and man, and see that
thus viewed the supernatural is the very centre of
Christianity. But from this point of view we can no
longer hold that Christian piety is primarily a belief in
Christian doctrine. For then our Christianity would be
quite different from the Christianity of the apostles. To
the companions of Christ the history of redemption was
not presented as something external to be believed : it
was a matter of fact in which they were personally
engaged. ;< That which we have heard, which we have
seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled of the word of life." This it is
that the apostles testify to. The essence of their
Christianity was their actual fellowship with their Master,
and the new life of which in this fellowship they were
conscious. And so must it be still. For the fellowship
of men with God in Christ, which was realised in the life
of our Lord on earth, can be no passing gleam in the
world's history. " The history of Jesus," says Hofmann,
" which issues in resurrection and glorification, in His
state of exaltation, cannot remain without an activity

122 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

of the Exalted one, in virtue whereof we actually become
what this issue of the history promises. Whoever then
holds the historical for the essence of Christian teaching
is convinced thereby that the Christianity which has its
origin in such a history is no mere doctrine."

" Whoever," adds Hofmann, " recognises the fact of
regeneration as the beginning of a new life of joyous
peace with God and free love to God affirms hereby that
Christianity is an essentially new relation between God
and man, and so a matter of fact which only bears witness
to itself in the word of Christian doctrine — not a human
doctrine of divine things which has merely some kind
of influence in determining and shaping an already
present relation between God and man." So soon as
we come to view personal Christianity not as belief in a
bygone history but as participation in a present history,
when we see that Christians are not mere passive recipients
of the benefits of a transaction in which they take no
part, but that the conscious moral agency of man is one
factor throughout all the history of redemption, the
whole course of our apologetic is changed. We can no
longer sever the work of redemption from the com
munication of the knowledge of that work to men, and
demand of apologetic as a preliminary to all theological
inquiry a complete theory of this latter point. For the
work of redemption, like all other facts of history, made
itself known to men by being actually worked out among
them. And so God's activity in revelation is not some
thing added to, but one form of His activity as Redeemer.
It would be absurd to say that we cannot be assured
that Christ's redeeming work ever took place till we
have proved that the Bible is an infallible record of that
work ; for it is only through the Christian miracles, i.e.
through the phenomena of Christ's supernatural work,
that the way is cleared for the doctrine of inspiration.

The traditional dogmatic draws only a formal dis
tinction between revelation and Bible, and often inter-

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 123

changes these conceptions. From the modern stand
point such a course would entail inextricable confusion.
The Bible is not revelation but the record of divine
revelation — the record of those historical facts in which
God has revealed himself to man. That God really has
so revealed Himself to man — not that we possess an
inspired record of this revelation — is the point on which
Christianity stands or falls. Of course on this view we
can no longer speak of revelation as a revelation of
truths. The knowledge given in revelation is not the
knowledge of facts but the knowledge of a Person. What
God reveals is simply HIMSELF — His own character and
His disposition towards men. Thus the death of our
Lord is not a fact of revelation. The apostles believed
it on the evidence of their senses ; we believe it on their
testimony accredited to us by their known character.
But in this historical fact God revealed Himself as the
God who so loved the world, that He gave His only be
gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.

It cannot be too strongly urged that our Christian
faith is no mere subjective feeling — no mere self-con
sciousness, but essentially consciousness of God. " Is
it correct/' asks Dorner, " that we first come to a know
ledge of God and Christ by syllogism from the fact of our
being redeemed and enlightened ? Much rather we are
led by the Son to the Father through the Holy Ghost, who
illuminates us with His gifts. To the religious process
which culminates in the atonement belongs not only an
act of God but consciousness of God and Christ. In
faith and to faith the eye of the understanding is opened,
and God is revealed to this eye — namely, God in Christ."
The immediate object of faith is thus no act of God, no
truth about God, but God Himself.

Such a faith, in which we feel ourselves brought into
personal knowledge of and fellowship with God, becomes
possible only in virtue of the work of redemption, for

124 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

sin brought in a real alienation between God and man.
As the objective effects of sin run through the whole
human universe, the work of redemption is also a many-
sided work. This is not the place to attempt an analysis
of the various forms in which God's redemptive activity
presents itself ; but this at least must be common to all
these forms — that they set before us an action of God
upon human personality. Not an organic but a personal
redemption of the world is what Christianity teaches.
Man is not saved without his own personality, much less
in spite of his personality, but in and through his
personality. This is the reason why the work of re
demption is a gradually progressive work. A personal
redemption cannot be effected at a blow by external
forces ; for personality cannot be shaped from without,
but must be developed from within by its own self-
determining power. And so the redemptive agencies must
be brought down among men and work historically upon
men age after age, gradually moulding the whole universe
through no magical force from without, but by the moral
influence of the presence in history of a divine personality.
" The Christian religion," says Rothe, " is characteristic
ally distinguished from all other religions as the essenti
ally moral religion and accordingly as morally, i.e.
personally, mediated. In virtue of this, Christianity is
the truly human, the truly spiritual, in every sense the
true religion, and so the diametrical antithesis of the
heathenish or magical religions ; for in the sphere of the
spiritual the magical is just that which is not personally
or morally mediated."

This canon, which virtually coincides with the con
ception of the supernatural in Christianity developed
above, enables us to work out more fully the nature of
the Christian revelation ; and on this point I shall follow
somewhat closely the ideas laid down in the epoch-making
work of Rothe. That I should do so is indeed inevitable,
for it was from Rothe that my first clear insight into

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 125

the subject was gained. I do not, however, profess to
expound the views of Rothe further than they have
recommended themselves to me as true ; so that while
I think it right to express my obligations to this author,
no one but myself is responsible for the details of my
argument.

If Christian faith is rendered possible only by the
work of redemption, and if this faith is essentially con
sciousness of God, it follows that no true consciousness
of God is possible to sinful man except through the work
of redemption. Revelation then is that form of God's
redemptive activity whereby man's consciousness of
God is purified and strengthened, and so man is enabled
rightly to apprehend God. And here I must repeat, at
the risk of being tedious, that the knowledge communi
cated directly by revelation is from this very conception
of revelation knowledge of God only. " Indirectly in
deed," as Rothe beautifully expresses it, " revelation
diffuses its light over everything else, over the whole
world. For by making the sun of the true idea of God
rise in our firmament it sheds over the whole world the
brightness of day in which we perceive all things quite
otherwise than in the dim twilight in which we wander
without revelation." There is surely no obscurity here ;
no knowledge of phenomena will save man — it is a
personal acquaintance with God that is required. And
so soon as this is given all other knowledge receives its
proper significance — the whole world appears no longer
a dismal and insoluble problem, " for God who com
manded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in
our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

How then is this knowledge of God imparted to men ?
Clearly not by a mere mechanical process — not by a sheer
exertion of omnipotence infusing certain conceptions into
men's minds. God must so act on man that man may
come to know Him just as he comes to know any other

126 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

person by an exertion of his own mental powers. Thus
the first step in revelation must come to man from
without. God must manifest himself to man in external
events of such a kind that man is constrained to see
God in these events just as I see a person in his actions.

All the phenomena of nature are of course a mani
festation of God ; but this manifestation cannot suffice
for the purpose in hand. A true consciousness of God
must embrace a right conception of God's moral and
personal character, and must therefore be based on an
historical manifestation of God. We must learn that
God is ready to enter into deeper relations with man
than those of nature. We must know God as coming
nearer to man than nature brings him. God must enter
as an actor into human history so that even the eye
dimmed by sin cannot fail to recognise His presence.
The essential point here is, of course, that revelation is
no mere organic process, no mere evolution of energies
naturally existent in the world, but a new and specifically
divine history let down into human history. Now it is
not of course impossible for a man to maintain that this
is possible without any disturbance of the laws of nature.
At all events we cannot directly characterise such a
statement as unchristian. In fact, it is not uncommon
to find orthodox writers speaking of miracles as products
of a higher law of nature, which is in fact to concede all
that men like Bunsen would ask. Only, of course, the
orthodox writer, believing in the infallibility of Scripture,
would say that all the miracles of the Bible must be
instances of this ; while Bunsen would allow himself
to apply a detail criticism to many of the recorded
miracles.

At the same time, I think that a clearer consideration
of what is involved in revelation as above determined
will show that no mere adjustment of the laws of nature
will serve the purpose of a divine revelation. For any
such adjustment whereby God manifests Himself in a very

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 127

peculiar providence, is not essentially different from the
ordinary revelation of God in nature, which on the
fundamental Christian antithesis of sin and grace has
shown itself to us to be quite insufficient, revealing only
what we may call the natural, not the personal, side of
God.

We may conceive the natural providence of God as
so adjusted that mankind once possessing a true con
sciousness of God would always see Him as personally
active in the world ; but what revelation has to supply
is precisely the want of such a consciousness. The
process by which we find God in nature is always more
or less a ratiocinative one ; so that in this way the
knowledge of God as our Redeemer would be a deduction
from our experience of the benefits of redemption. But
this, as our whole argument shows and an appeal to the
Christian consciousness will confirm, is a precise reversal
of the true state of the matter. The first step in re
demption is revelation, if the first step in salvation is
personal faith. The divine revelation must be primarily
an immediate manifestation of God ; a manifestation of
God in events that are at once seen to form no part of
the chain of nature but to be directly personal and
explicable only as acts of God. If any step whatever
must be intercalated in tracing the manifestation up to
God the sinful intellect can still stop short with this
natural explanation, and has no new necessity laid upon
it of ascending to a higher cause. In a word, God's
supernatural manifestation of Himself in redemption is
miraculous, — breaking through the natural course of
the universe. We do not in saying this deny the reality
and necessity of a natural manifestation of God ; but
we say that such a manifestation is valuable only as
subsidiary to a miraculous and immediate manifestation.

Deny this and it is still possible to maintain that in
Christianity man enters into personal fellowship with
God; but the realising of this fellowship appears no

128 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

longer as the first step in salvation, but as the crowning
point of an organic process. The growing belief in
God's moral kingdom on earth follows instead of pre
ceding the successive development of that kingdom ;
and so Christianity, though thoroughly personal in its
issue, is not thoroughly personal at each stage of its
growth. And so, as is notably the case with Bunsen, the
history of redemption ceases to be the history of the
establishment of God's kingdom on earth and becomes
the history of the progress of faith in that kingdom.
But a theory which thus destroys the immediacy of
faith, making it the gradual product of an historical pro
cess not the immediate outgoing of man's personality to
God, is obviously not a theory which satisfies the facts
of Christian consciousness or can be reconciled with the
substantial identity of saving faith in all dispensations.

Without dwelling on the essential importance of
miracles here developed, or the inconsistency of the
theories that attempt to get rid of miracles while yet
holding Christian ground, let us look at the necessity
that God's miraculous self-manifestation should consist
not of isolated acts but of a continuous history. As a
witness to doctrine isolated miracles might suffice ; but
as a display of God's character a continuous action of
God in history is needful. There must be a plan in the
divine miracles as there would be in the activity of a
human actor in history. Not one act but a whole life is
needed fully to declare a character. And then this
supernatural activity of God is not merely something
superadded to natural history, but enters into natural
history, gradually moulding it in conformity with God's
redemptive purpose. Each manifestation of God is more
than a meteor flashing through the sphere of man's
spiritual vision ; it " remains henceforth, like the sun in
the firmament, a shining fact in human consciousness."
And so each manifestation prepared mankind for a new
and higher display of God's character, until at length in

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 129

the fulness of time God Himself became man and in the
person of our blessed Lord the supernatural was per
manently and inseparably incorporated in human
history. In the incarnation God's self -manifestation
was absolutely complete, and that in no mere external
manner, but in the perfect union of the divine and human
natures.

Beyond this point it was not necessary that the
series of miraculous occurrences should be continued.
No more perfect manifestation of God was possible — the
remainder of the world's history has for its task the full
recognition by all mankind of this perfect revelation of the
divine character.

And this consideration leads us to see that in the
divine manifestation revelation has not yet reached its
goal. It is not enough that God manifest Himself to
men unless this manifestation be rightly understood.
And here it will be convenient to separate the recognition
of divine manifestation by us who are not brought face
to face with it from the right understanding thereof by
those who were themselves actors or onlookers in super
natural events. That all who stood in the latter position
did not rightly comprehend the divine manifestation is
a familiar fact. Nay, it is obvious that no fallen man
can naturally comprehend even the clearest display of
God's character. Our consciousness is not only weakened,
but distorted by sin. And it is not enough that we should
be forced to recognise a superhuman agency in the
history of redemption — we must so recognise God as to
love Him. To effect such a recognition of God no
strength of external impression could suffice ; it was
needful that God as He showed Himself to men should
also by the inner operation of His spirit enlighten man's
consciousness rightly to apprehend His self -manifestation.
It is clear that this influence falls under the regenerating
work of the Spirit. It is not an imparting of knowledge,
it is a renovation of the human consciousness whereby

9

130 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

man is enabled to see God in manifestation. Clearly such
an inspiration without a manifestation would be meaning
less and void of all power to save mankind. To say
that a spiritual renewal of man's consciousness of God is
possible except as attaching to and dependent on a
supernatural activity of God in history, is equivalent to
saying that regeneration is not dependent on an objective
redemptive work. And this is to sink back into the
Socinian doctrine which makes our Lord only an inspired
teacher.

In revelation then we must distinguish and yet regard
as inseparable two sides. The outer and objective side
is manifestation, the inner and subjective inspiration.
The manifestation becoming part of history must neces
sarily have men as its organs. In all the miracles of
Scripture human agencies are more or less directly
engaged. It is among these agents then that we must
specially look for inspiration. If the manifestation re
mained unintelligible to these it could never enter into
human history at all. Only by being rightly, though
not necessarily exhaustively, comprehended by those
who are in actual contact with it does the supernatural
event become a permanent force in the world ; for all
redemptive activities must flow through personal
channels. And so side by side with the stream of miracle
we have a stream of inspired prophecy. The develop
ment of this side of revelation would demand an essay
for itself, and it is the more necessary that I should pass
over this topic because I have had on a former occasion
an opportunity of directing the attention of the Society
to the manner in which prophecy and history are inter
woven — so that each new step in redemptive history is
in prophecy truly interpreted under the inspiration of
God's Spirit, and so interpreted becomes at once a power
to shape history and a key whereby the prophet is enabled
more and more fully to unriddle God's eternal purpose in
history. Especially important is it to understand that

1870] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 131

prophecy does not merely follow history, but strictly
rather precedes history. For, though every new step in
prophecy is dependent on a divine manifestation, that
manifestation is not properly absorbed into human
history till interpreted in prophecy. This consideration
might, I think, be profitably worked out in reference to
the peculiar nature of revelation in the pre-Mosaic dis
pensations.

It need hardly be said that the conception of inspira
tion just developed is by no means identical with the
ecclesiastical notion of inspiration. Nor does this inspira
tion necessarily present itself as exclusive of that generally
received. For even writers like Dr. Bannerman are forced
to distinguish revelation and inspiration, and all that we
have yet said falls (so far as our theory can at all fall under
the forms of one so diverse) under the former of these
heads.

So long, however, as revelation is treated as a revelation
of doctrines, the infallible communication of truth may
be distinguished, but cannot be separated, from a pro
vision for the infallible transmission of the truth. That
prophets or apostles were miraculously enabled to com
municate divine truths to men would be quite a valueless
fact to us did we not know that these saving truths have
been authentically handed down to us. The process of
revelation is itself incomplete till the fleeting word is
fixed in the abiding letter, for only then does the truth
gain complete objectivity even for the prophet himself.

On our view the state of things is quite different.
The true objectivity of the revelation is secured in the
divine manifestation, while inspiration brings this objective
datum into real union with man's consciousness. This
done, the revelation is already a power in the world ;
an historical fact not to be got rid of. So far as the
generation which was in contact with the divine mani
festation is concerned no further supernatural step is
necessary to give the revelation its full force. But the

132 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

divine manifestation is to remain a permanent power in
history. It is not enough that the saving influences
flowing from the Person of our Lord should be trans
mitted from generation to generation so that to us the
Church would fill the room of the divine manifestation.
It is necessary that every generation should be able to
stand directly under the influence of the historical
manifestation of Christ. Now this is only possible
through an historical tradition, fixed in writing, during
the very course of the revelation itself. Without such an
original record both of the manifestation and inspiration —
a record breathing the fresh life of the age from which it
flows — it would be impossible for us to have such a
lively vision of the events of revelation as to feel ourselves
to be under the personal influence of the divine mani
festation. Apart from this no knowledge of religious
truths can save us. We must have such a record of
revelation as may serve as the medium to bring us into
personal contact with Christ. That the events of revela
tion can be brought before us in a perfectly real and
lively form only by a record at first-hand — a record
whose author was himself an actor in the history he
records and whose narrative thus becomes itself a part
of the history — is obvious. The great point is not the
superior accuracy of a contemporary record, but its
superior personality. In the record of an actor the
events of history live again. A subsequent historian
may by the help of criticism produce a much more
accurate narrative, but never a narrative possessing the
same living power. The authors of Scripture are in great
part the men who were directly in contact with the
divine manifestation, and in whom themselves one part
of revelation — that which we have called inspiration-
took place. These men then are of necessity the
authentic expositors of revelation. If they did not
understand it rightly revelation fell dead upon the world.
And thus arises at once — without any inquiry into the

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 133

infallibility of Scripture, without any theory of inspiration
in actu scribendi — the complete proof of the normative
authority of the Bible.

The doctrine of Holy Scripture, if developed from this
point of view, cannot be placed as the foundation of all
Christian belief. The belief in the normative authority
of Scripture is here developed not from grounds of pure
reason, but on grounds of faith — on the assumption that
Christianity is really supernatural and possesses a real
revelation. But indeed I do not believe that any man
ever believed in Christ because he believed in the
authority of Scripture ; our belief in the authority of
Scripture much rather is derived from a belief in Christ.
It is the testimony of the Holy Spirit to which our
Protestant theology ultimately refers the authority of
Scripture. And what can this mean but that Scripture
is the medium through which we come face to face with the
divine revelation in Christ, and being thus brought under
the living influence of the Person are by the Holy Spirit
enabled rightly to apprehend Him as so presented to us,
and so of course to recognise the medium whereby alone
we can approach the historical Christ as really divine ?

That this view of the function of the Bible is far more
true to Christian experience than that which seeks in
Scripture primarily a body of infallible truth seems
undeniable. " I confidently appeal," says Rothe, " to
the testimony of all really thoughtful readers of the
Bible, whose own experience will witness to them that
that which so peculiarly edifies them in their intercourse
with the Bible is far less the instructions and admonitions
that they draw from it than the purifying and quickening
influences of a holy world ruled by supernatural powers ;
yea, of the immediate nearness of God and Heaven itself
into which they find themselves raised as soon as they
cross the threshold of the wondrous book."

On these grounds we would wholly exclude the doctrine
of the infallible inspiration of Scripture from the sphere

134 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

of apologetics and relegate it to dogmatic theology. The
true place for the doctrine of Holy Scripture is indeed
already indicated in Protestant dogmatic. In our
Catechisms, for example, Scripture is mentioned not
only as the starting-point of the whole system, but in the
discussion of the means of grace. Now we would refer
the subject altogether to this latter sphere, to which
alone it properly belongs, and choose as the basis of our
Christianity not the record of revelation, but the historical
facts of revelation themselves. Not on the Bible as an
infallible book, but on the historic manifestation of God
in Christ must our faith rest. And when this is under
stood we shall no longer be constantly uneasy at the
progress of criticism in Scripture. We shall not hesitate
to test the doctrine of inspiration like every other doctrine
of Christianity with all impartiality and calmness and by
all additional light that science or criticism can cast
upon it.

No criticism can take from us our personal fellowship
with God in Christ — no criticism can withdraw from the
Bible its living power as the medium wherein we are
brought face to face with Christ ; for a personal faith lies
too deep to be touched by criticism. All historical
certainty rests ultimately on personal belief, and no
attack on the Gospel history can have such a personal
weight as is at all comparable to the Christian's con
viction of the reality of the historical Christ. And if this
be so, criticism may aid us in gaining more and more
clear knowledge, but cannot destroy personal faith. We
may or may not be able to satisfy ourselves of the in
fallibility of Scripture, but we can never doubt that
Scripture gives all that is required to attain a true image
of our Lord. And if this function of Scripture does not
involve infallibility (and it cannot so far as we have
seen be declared at once that it does), the criticism,
scientific or historic, that lays bare this fact will have done
us the good service of removing a false impression which,

i87o] CHRISTIANITY AND SUPERNATURAL 135

as false, could not fail to be most injurious to the full
understanding and even a stumbling-block in the way
of a true belief of Christianity. We are not bound to
welcome a science that bases itself on antichristian assump
tion ; but we must ever welcome the freest criticism
that rests on impartial weighing of facts, and an apolo
getic which cannot take up once for all a position which
no such criticism can approach transcends its just limits
and confesses its own weakness. The root of a true
apologetic must be in the immediate certainty of Christian
faith wherein we feel ourselves supernaturally brought
into fellowship with a divine personality ; and the
scientific development of our apologetic must take the
form of a speculative theology in which the subjective
consciousness of redemption is objectively evolved into
a harmonious theory of the universe as reconciled to God
in Christ. It is the business of Christianity to conquer
the whole universe to itself and not least the universe of
thought.

" Attacks on our Christian faith," says an eminent
thinker, " can come only from the region of thought
that is not yet thoroughly incorporated in and appro
priated by Christianity. The more thoroughly the yet
hostile territories are conquered for Christianity and the
Christian view of the universe, the more secure is our
faith from these attacks." But such conquests can be
gained only by free thought in the spirit of Christianity,
not by urging men to build their faith on a completed
system of infallible doctrine. How thoroughly this con
viction has worked for good in the recent theology of
Germany, and how little the interests of living Christianity
have to fear from the adoption of these convictions in our
own land, may perhaps be best illustrated by a brief but
weighty quotation from one of the most truly Christian
of modern theologians. " So long," says Dorner, " as
we suppose that faith in inspiration and the divine
authority of Holy Scripture is the first step in Christian

136 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-1870]

piety, so long we must fall into distress and terror, when
[those doctrines seem to be impugned]."

The secret of the equanimity of our newer theology,
even in the dangers of critical operations, lies precisely
in the clear knowledge that faith in the inspiration of the
ecclesiastical canon is not the condition, not the necessary
first step, in coming to faith in Christ — that with such a
faith in Scripture Christian faith is not yet given or even
grounded. We draw our conviction of the authority of
Scripture from the authority of Christ ; after His re
demptive power and worth has been made certain to us
in faith, Scripture and the Word of God are never given
to separate us from Christ or to fill the place of Him and
His Spirit. Were communion with the Bible to fill for us
the place of communion with Christ, we should treat the
Bible with superstition and be guilty of sin against
Christ who is Lord and Master of the Scripture, and not
less against Scripture which seeks only to be His minister
to lead us up to Christ and to keep us close to Him.

Ill

THE WORK OF A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

GENTLEMEN, — On the first evening of a new session,
when we find ourselves gathered again in the old familiar
room to renew our fellowship for another winter, it is
natural that we should wish to set clearly before us the
work which as a Society we are met together to do.
And it is all the more necessary that we should be able
to give a distinct utterance on this point, because we see
among us to-night not a few who are not yet of our
number, but whom we must hope to interest for the
work of our Society if that work is to be carried on with
vigour and success.

Clearly it is not enough to have recourse to the official
definition of our Society as a Theological Society meeting
to discuss subjects connected with theology ; for a
common interest in theology is by no means a sufficient
guarantee for the degree of unity of standpoint, method
and aim, without which friendly discussion is impractic
able. And that our discussion must be friendly dis
cussion lies in the very conception of an organised society.
Were we in principle divided against ourselves our
house could not stand. The floor of a Theological Society
must not be the arena for the contest of opposing parties,
each striving to pull down what the other has built up ;
all the members must feel that they are labouring at
the same work and that in that work the labour of each
finds a fitting place.

138 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

This mutual recognition of one another's services
implies more than the consciousness of a common aim,
for we may be compelled to regard efforts made from a
false starting-point and by an unfitting method as only
prejudicial to the aim they are meant to further. The
best intentions do not constitute a man a fellow-worker
unless we see some fruit of his work which we can recog
nise as valuable. It is true that unity of aim may form
a basis for mutual respect, and therefore in a sense for
friendly discussion in spite of fundamental differences
as to the way in which the aim is sought. But in this
case the friendliness is personal and the discussion in
itself is still polemical ; for the object of the discussion
is not mutual instruction by a dialectical process, but
the destruction of the whole position of the one or of the
other disputant. The friendliness in fact is merely
personal, the discussion itself is of the nature of
war.

But from a Society like ours hostile discussion must
be excluded. The opposition of opinions must be dia
lectical, not polemical ; that is, we must recognise that
different views are maintained not from opposing interests,
but only because unequal stress is laid by various speakers
on different parts of those determining principles which
all admit to have real weight.

And so it will be found that the subjects discussed
by us have always been more or less of a concrete nature,
and so soon as an abstract and ultimate difference of
principles appears in the course of a discussion we all
feel that the progress of the debate is cut short at that
point. The debate is profitable only so long as each
side feels that the other is bringing out in a clearer light
some point which is really weighty, which really is a
moment in the solution of the question, although perhaps
in this case pushed too far. And the advantage to be
reaped from such debate is far less change of opinion on
concrete points of detail than a clearer grasp of the

1870] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 139

principles which must regulate us all in the formation of
our theological views.

For in fact, although our opinions on specific points
can never be really firm and satisfactory until they are
evolved from definite principles, it is always in the con
sideration of secondary questions that we first reach a
clear view of these principles ; and to be able to lay
down the guiding notions according to which the system
of our theological beliefs is constructed and by which
our theological researches are directed is by no means
an early or an easy acquisition. Principles which are to
form the basis for the activity of a whole life cannot be
given from without ; they must grow up within us and
gradually unfold themselves before us as the explicit
development of that which is already implicitly a necessary
part of our life. Nor is the value of that dialectic in
which we are here practised merely educational. Not our
progress in theology alone, but the advancement of
theology itself is subject to the conditions just described.
The difficulties of theology, though it is in points of detail
— in exegesis, perhaps, or in the details of some minor point
of doctrine — that they first come to be felt, are really
difficulties as to principle, and are to be solved only by
determining more justly than has hitherto been done the
real order and true balance of the fundamental notions of
the whole science. A progress thus conditioned by constant
successive reflections between the concrete question and
the general principle is necessarily of a dialectic character.

From these considerations, I think, it is manifest that
our Society has acted rightly in always refusing to
formulate the unity of spirit and aim which is necessary
to our success. Were all first principles fixed, not dis
cussion, but deduction would remain ; were some principles
fixed and others left undetermined we should render our
discussions one-sided and lose that free play of dialectic
which is gained by bringing all the principles involved to
bear freely on one another.

140 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

To dwell on the real opposition between the dia
lectical and deductive methods of advancing a science
would, of course, be out of place here. It will, I suppose,
be readily admitted that the distinction here drawn
between the dialectical and deductive methods is a real
one, that an orderly deductive argument proceeding from
conceded premises may admit of refutation or vindication,
but hardly in the proper sense of discussion, and that
true discussion is found where the inquiry starts not from
explicit principles, but from a consciousness which is not
yet fully given as scientific knowledge, and from which
general principles and special applications may be evolved
side by side. But when it is further maintained that
theology necessarily advances by discussion, whether
that discussion be between a man and himself as he
allows now this, now that, moment of the fundamental
consciousness to assert itself, or whether the different
parts be maintained by different persons who all share
that consciousness, but on whom the various moments
thereof act with unequal force : when this is maintained
one can hardly expect to meet with general concurrence.
For practically there is a very considerable part of
theology which not a few regard as quite exempt from
any discussion save that polemical discussion which we
have carefully excluded from our consideration. We
were recently told, for example, by a man of great mark
in our Church, that the function of a Professor of Dogmatic
Theology is simply the elucidation and vindication of
the system of doctrines already deduced from Scripture
and embodied in our Confession of Faith and other
orthodox confessions. We are to believe that systematic
theology has passed entirely and conclusively from the
dialectic to the deductive stage ; the dogma of the
Reformed Churches admits only of such discussion as
may serve to vindicate it from attack.

But if systematic theology is really in this state it is
vain to speak of theology as a science advancing dia-

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 141

lectically. We cannot even say that the other parts of
theology are dialectical ; for it is the characteristic of a
dialectical progress that all parts advance together,
and no one part can be perfect before the others. But,
in fact, we have seen reason to assert that the organism
of theology is such that no one part can be mastered till
the whole is known. We have been able to appeal to
experience as establishing the fact that a serious con
sideration of any vexed theological question invariably
drives us to ask for clearer principles, and surely till these
are supplied systematic theology is not complete and
not impeccable. I may in illustration refer to a familiar
instance. So soon as we pass from the merely gram
matical to the real interpretation of Old Testament
prophecy, we find a series of difficulties arise which may
ultimately be shown to depend in great measure on the
true theory of the Hebrew theocracy ; and that again
is a problem which goes far beyond the sphere of exegesis
and can only be resolved from the general principles
of God's historical dealings with man. And this is clearly
a question for systematic theology, but one which the
orthodox dogmatic has no means of solving. If now
our dogmatic is not a loose collection of doctrines, but
an organic unity, the existence of such a defect neces
sarily implies a positive faultiness in the system. But,
indeed, the same thing will appear without going beyond
the limits of systematic theology itself. " The orthodox
Confessions of the Reformed Churches," which embody,
we are told, the true system of dogmatic theology, are
themselves not absolutely alone. Even if we assume
an entire unity between the Calvinistic Confessions — an
assumption that will hardly be made out — what are we
to say to the articles of the Lutheran Church ? Are we
justified in excluding these articles from the number of
the orthodox confessions wherever they disagree with
us ? True, the Lutherans and Calvinists are in principle
at one. The differences are minor differences ; but these

142 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

minor differences, running as they do through the whole
system of theology, are not mere slips on the one side or
on the other in a process of logical " deduction from
Holy Scripture rightly interpreted." Slips of that kind
may be made by individuals, but not surely by all
theologians of one Church and no theologian of another.
The cause of the theological differences of Churches must
be looked for in the character of the Churches them
selves ; in the fact that the same Reformation principles
are not grasped quite in the same way by Lutherans and
Calvinists, that the tendency is for the two Churches to
lay stress on different sides of the same truth ; that in
short, there is between the two branches of reformed
theology that dialectical opposition which is not incon
sistent with fundamental unity, and which, for that very
reason, can never be got over by the refutation of the
one party, but only by the advance to a higher position,
which, while it adopts the individual conclusions now
of this, now of that party, not seldom it may be of neither,
will differ from eclecticism by satisfying and reducing
to harmony the divergent tendencies of both Churches.

It is absurd to think that such a position can be
honestly aimed at unless we are prepared to allow that
there may be in our present theology not only defect,
but error, that even leading ideas may have a relative
rather than an absolute validity, and that those require
ments of the Christian consciousness which they supply
approximately may be fully supplied partly by a new
arrangement, partly by real modifications of our main
theological principles.

The source of that confidence in the absolute truth of
the confessional dogmatic, which has in some measure
come to play the same part in the Reformed Churches
as the belief in the infallibility of the Church does in the
Romish Communion, is very aptly indicated in the ex
pression quoted above — " System of doctrines fairly
and honestly deduced from the Holy Scriptures rightly

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 143

interpreted." It would be calumnious to suppose that
it is as for human compositions that Protestants are so
jealous for their symbolical books. The confessions
are reverenced as containing plain deductions from the
teaching of inspired writ or, in the words of a recent
Moderator of our General Assembly, because we are
satisfied that our standards " are but an echo in human
language of the infallible Word." Now so long as the
confessional theology is viewed in this light we must
receive with suspicion and dislike every suggestion that
the historical circumstances and religious character of
the several branches of the Protestant Church have
influenced more than the mere externals of the orthodox
theology ; that something more than Scripture and the
rules of logic went to the formation of the Reformed
Confessions. For this something more must have had a
purely negative and injurious effect, serving only to make
the " echo of the infallible Word " imperfect and incorrect
or to make the path of theological deduction swerve from
the true line of logical accuracy. It is not strange that
the Church should indignantly refuse to admit that any
influence, wholly and purely perverting and therefore
unchristian and sinful, permeates her whole official teach
ing, for that would be to admit that the theology of the
Church can be corrected only by a hostile hand, — only
through the pangs and dangers of another Reformation.

It is clear that we are here brought face to face with
a very serious dilemma. So long as we hold fast the
theory that the true ideal of Protestant dogmatic is a
mere echo of the infallible Word in human language, we
must either despair of the Reformation theology or shut
our eyes to obvious historical facts which forbid us to
suppose that only accidental causes have operated to
prevent the realisation of that ideal in the confessional
theology. If it is impossible for us to rest in either of
these alternatives we must venture to open up the
question of the true relation of theology to Scripture.

144 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

At this point, however, we encounter a somewhat per
plexing degree of haziness in the current theological
opinions. The old theologians were on this as on most
points very explicit. They held that every fundamental
dogma was so clearly propounded in some place of
Scripture that only guilty negligence or perversion could
miss the truth. And accordingly they are accustomed
to deny that theology is properly a science. " For
every science," says Owen in his Theologumena, " is the
effect of, and is, therefore, regulated by the activity of, the
intellect with regard to its special object ; but theology
which is nothing else than the revelation of the divine
mind and will, the purum putum Dei verbum, neces
sarily goes before every conception of our mind concerning
its proper object and is the infallible rule of all our know
ledge " (pp. 36, 37, 38). " Scriptura," says Owen ex
pressly, " est nostra theologia." So far as a theological
statement or confessional book aims at being more than
a mere compend of statements each of which rests im
mediately on divine revelation, it passes beyond the
bounds of theology.

This position of Owen, though it rests on the false
conception of revelation as a supernatural communica
tion of doctrines and on the false identification of
Scripture and revelation which were current in his day,
is manifestly clear and consistent. The conservative theo
logy of our day on the other hand, though not free from the
influence of the fundamental errors of the older view, has
felt itself constrained to make very considerable modifica
tions on that view which by no means tend to clearness.

No one now feels able to assert with Owen that the
doctrinal statements of Scripture yield in clearness to
no science. On the contrary, it is admitted — I quote
from Dr. Cunningham — " that there is not one of the
peculiar doctrines of the Christian system which is set
forth in Scripture with such an amount of explicitness
as it was abstractly possible to have given to the state-

1870] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 145

ment of it " (Hist. Th. ii. 231). And hence we no longer
treat our symbols as a compendious statement of those
saving truths which the Church rejoices to have found
clearly laid down in Scripture and which she feels herself
bound to re-echo with all her might, not because she can
make them clearer or plainer than she found them in
Scripture, but because it is her duty and privilege as a
Church to profess to the praise and glory of God her faith
in the way of Salvation which He has provided. The
confession is to us no longer the spontaneous utterance
of the faith of the Church, offered for subscription only
because no one who sincerely accepts Scripture could for
a moment hesitate to endorse its doctrines, but a theo
logical formula claiming an independent theological value
as a statement of doctrine, and devised as a more crucial
test of theological views than the words of Scripture afford.

I do not think it can be questioned that the current
theory of the necessity of confessions as the legal standard
of theological orthodoxy does imply that as a statement of
doctrine the symbols of our Church are better and more
distinct than Scripture. And it seems equally plain
that this can be reconciled with the paramount authority
which, as Protestants, we must ascribe to the Bible only
by admitting a difference of kind between the Bible and
the confession, i.e., since there can be no question that
the contents of the confession are dogma, by denying
that Scripture comes to us in the first instance at least
as a book of doctrines. But this is just the point which
the orthodox theology of our days seems unable either
to concede or to deny ; and it is this half- hear tedness
that exposes us to the insinuations of those without that
we really set our orthodox theology above the Bible.

The compromise which is often attempted lies, as stated
by Dr. Cunningham, in the observation " that Scripture
was constructed upon the principle of testing our candour
and love of truth ; that the peculiar doctrines of the
Christian system are set forth in Scripture with a force

10

146 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

of evidence amply sufficient to satisfy every candid man,
so that the resistance of these doctrines proves a hatred
of the truth." The reasonableness of trying men in this
method is maintained by an appeal to the general principles
of God's moral government. That is, those who after
Butler adopt this line of argument still go on the view
that Scripture is essentially a revelation of doctrines
necessary to salvation, so that eternal blessedness follows
from the acceptance of these doctrines. And then it is
argued that man would be no longer dealt with as a moral
being, if the acceptance of saving doctrine was forced
upon him from without by the doctrines being so framed
that no sane man could reject them. But as it would be
absurd to suppose that this moral element was to be gained
only by an imperfection and want of clearness in the
book whose aim was just to reveal the doctrines necessary
to salvation, the explanation is compelled, on the other
hand, to speak as if not the ready-made doctrines but
their materials lay in Scripture, or, as Cunningham
puts it, " God has given us sufficient evidence of what He
requires us to believe."

And in this case either the act of faith ceases to be in
immediate contact with Scripture (which is unprotestant) ,
or else it is no longer the doctrine that is the object of
saving faith but only the materials from which the
doctrine is educed and which are directly presented to
us in Scripture. And further these materials cannot be
themselves fragments of doctrines which are merely placed
side by side in our Confessions, for the fragments of
doctrines are still doctrines, and so the whole round of
objections just urged would begin anew. The compro
mise, in short, is self-contradictory, and yields on examina
tion no escape from the conclusion that doctrine is not
the object of saving faith, and that the communication
of doctrine is not the object of Scripture.

And hence dogmatic theology is not an echo of
Scripture, nay, since like can only be deduced from like,

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 147

our theological systems are not simply deductions from
Scripture, or, to come back to our first line of thought,
they are the product of an activity of the human mind
which is not merely formal, not mere classification of
immediately revealed data, but the development, in a
dialectical process, into more and more definite scientific
form, of a religious consciousness which must always find
its canon in Scripture, but which none the less has a life
and growth of its own specifically determined, now in
this direction, now in that, by historical circumstances
and individual or national character, so that the true and
harmonious growth of theology as a whole is only attain
able through the dialectical action and reaction of many
one-sided growths of the theological consciousness of
various individuals or Churches.

Now in all this investigation we have remained, as it
were, outside of the real nature of theology and have
busied ourselves only with its method. And, in fact, our
results have been mainly negative. We have not seen
what the real principle of theological progress is, except
in so far as it has appeared that theology does not advance
by deduction from axioms which lie outside of the theo
logian, and therefore, if it be a science at all, can only
advance by the evolution of a consciousness lying within
him. And therefore our results, though they certainly
go to justify our position here as a Society for the dis
cussion of theology — for real discussion in which each
man is called upon to give free play to his own individu
ality — do not give us any light as to the positive principles
of theological progress, the common consciousness con
trolling and moulding the various individualities, the
objective canon by which that consciousness is to be
measured. It is from the consideration of these points
that we can gain positive guidance in our theological
work, whether in this Society or by ourselves ; and there
fore I propose to devote the remainder of this paper to
some remarks — not exactly in systematical form — which

148 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

may help to show what are the real principles of theological
progress as they have been manifested in the history of
the Church, and must be grasped by us and manifested in
us if we are to do real service to theology.

It is not altogether accidental that our negative results
have preceded this positive investigation. For the line
of thought which brought us face to face with the problem
of the relation of theology to Scripture and convinced us
that theology is no mere deduction from Scripture is a
line of thought in the main historical. We saw that the
transition from the position of Owen to that of Cunning
ham takes place through the influence of the philosophy
of the eighteenth century as exhibited in Butler. And
the conclusion that theology must ultimately rest on an
inner consciousness, not on purely objective data, repre
sents the stage of thought which essentially characterises
our own century and belongs to the rebellion against
the formalism both of the old rationalism and the old
supernaturalism which marks the religious tendencies of
the present day. No^ this new current of thought
which surrounds us all and from which we cannot, even
though we would, entirely separate ourselves, has a positive
as well as a negative side ; but historically viewed it
was the negative side that appeared first. Thus the first-
fruits of the new movement in German theology appeared
to be wholly destructive. The overthrow of the old
rationalism seemed to be bought too dear by the fall of
the old supernaturalism and by the rise of a school which
attacked Scripture in a way of which the rationalists
had never dreamed. Even Schleiermacher appeared to
observers in this country to be a baneful power in theology.
But soon the so-called reaction followed, and we began
to assert that Germany was returning to the old theology ;
whereas, in fact, the properly reactionary movement was
very narrow indeed, and the real restorers of a believing
theology were disciples of the new school, followers
mainly of Schleiermacher, in whom the positive side of

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 149

the new movement was beginning to assert itself. While
we still talk of a probable return of the Continental schools
to the conservative theology, the men who are the real
hope of Germany are conscious that as impassable though
not as wide a gulf exists between the new theology and
the old supernaturalism as between the new theology and
the old rationalism.

We are at this moment surrounded by indications that
the movement which has passed over Germany is about
to pass, mutatis mutandis, over us. And with us as in
Germany, it is the negative side of the movement which
has come first. There is an uneasy feeling abroad that
the current theology has not rightly defined its relation
to Scripture and its relation to human thought. It is
not, of course, to be supposed that this movement touches
theology only ; something analogous, no doubt, must run
through the whole religious life. But, speaking generally,
the practical side of our Church is so far in advance of the
theoretical that within the Church at least it is mainly
the confessional theology that men are dissatisfied with.
There is a pretty widely diffused impression, not so much
that individual doctrines of the Church are false as that
the whole method and system of theology is artificial,
insecure, and hampering to the legitimate freedom of the
individual ; and it would be quite a mistake to suppose
that this sort of feeling is to be found only among
irreligious men. It must be granted, indeed, that the
mass of earnest church-members are still satisfied with
the confessional theology, the power of which they
have actually experienced, but there is a growing feeling
that that theology does not fully supply the needs of the
Church and the individual.

Now the answer which is too often given to this feeling
is simply a challenge to lay down definite points in which
the confessional theology is in error, i.e. to show that in
certain cases the opposite of the confessional teaching is
laid down in Scripture. This answer ignores the difficulty,

150 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

which is not whether the doctrine of the Church is relatively
true as against the opposite heresy, but whether it is
absolutely and scientifically reliable, and whether the
whole system of the confession is a mere reproduction of
express Scripture doctrine. Very often, however, those
who are unable thoroughly to rest in the old dogmatic
are not able exactly to point out the real source of their
uneasiness, and are quite ready to grasp at the suggestion
that the true remedy is a more careful exegesis of Scripture
which is expected to result either in a clear proof or in a
clear refutation of the puzzling points. But when the
round of exegesis has been gone through the old questions
always return unsolved. Everything goes weU so long
as we stick to grammatical exegesis ; but after all the
result is not dogma, and when we come to build up our
dogmatic system the proof -texts are no more decisive
than before. And the consequence is that men who are
by no means unbelievers practically give up theology
altogether, resolving that exegesis is the beginning and
end of theological science. And this again is a mere
transition point ; for if exegesis is not to do service for
theology it comes to be asked in what sense exegesis is
profitable to the Christian life. Is the spiritual life of
the religious subject ministered to by an exact exegesis
better than by the simple study of perspicuous passages ?
It is easy to see that through questions of this sort the
whole question of the nature, functions, and authority
of Scripture may be opened up and that in a way which
leaves little hope of a satisfactory solution. And, in fact,
we see that the inspiration of Scripture is precisely one of
the points around which the greatest amount of offensive
and defensive activity is at present gathered.

These hints may serve to indicate how vain it is to
try to meet the new currents of thought from the old
point of view in which the attitude of the theologising
subject is one of mere receptivity over against Scripture.
The constant appeal to Scripture proof in the sense of the

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 151

old dogmatic, combined with an apologetic activity in
justification of the conception of Scripture on which this
system of proof rests, cannot yet dispose of doubts which
are based on the perception of the real inadequacy of
very much in the present attitude of the conservative
theology. And thus the only way to escape the wave of
violent unbelief which has already swept over the German
Churches is frankly to recognise the need of progress in
our theological conceptions, not to suppress the new
currents of thought as wholly dangerous, but to urge the
positive side of a movement which if discouraged by the
Church can express itself only in doubt and negation.
And this we are justified in doing if it is really the case
that it is no unchristian motive but simply a fair con
sideration of undeniable facts that compels us to refuse
to regard theology as a system of deductions from fixed
axioms or a mere compend of Scripture statement, and
calls for a recognition of a positive activity of the theo-
logising subject dialectically evolving the contents of an
internal consciousness.

Every view of this kind is liable to be accused at first
sight of being rationalistic. For we have been accustomed
to accept the contrast of reason and revelation as quite
ultimate. There are two kinds of theology according
to the common teaching, consisting respectively of
doctrines revealed by God or doctrines devised by human
reason, and so soon as we speak of a theological conscious
ness we commit ourselves to the latter kind. Happily
the answer to this prima facie objection is not difficult.
The hostility of Rationalism to Revelation is only a part
of the wider enmity between Pelagianism and Free Grace.
It is only where Revelation is recognised as a part of
God's redemptive work that Rationalism has ever refused
to acknowledge it. The Socinians themselves are quite
ready to submit themselves to Scripture if Scripture is
accepted as a book of doctrines only, and not as a means
of grace. Rationalism, in short, is Pelagianism of the

152 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

intellect, the assertion of man's natural ability to know the
things of the Spirit of God quite apart from the question
whether it is by Revelation or not that these spiritual
things are first set before man's reason. The true anti
thesis to Rationalism is the position which the Reforma
tion theology justly urges, that there can be no true theology
where there is no true Christian life, that no knowledge
of revelation will make a man a theologian without the
regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit. " Theologia,"
says Amesius, "est doctrina Deo vivendi." " Theologicae
vitae natura est vivere Deo." " And this life," adds
Amesius, " is the spiritual act of the whole man by which
he lays hold of God ; and therefore it is the will or heart
that is the proper seat of theology."

It is obviously quite in the spirit, almost in the very
words, of these statements of Amesius that the recent
theology speaks of the Christian consciousness of fellow
ship with God through Christ Jesus our Redeemer,
as the necessary foundation of theology, or says in
the words of Neander, " Pectus est quod theologum
facit."

The older theologians failed, however, to carry this
view in its full force all through the system of theology.
So long as revelation was treated not as a revelation of
God's person but as a communication of doctrine, so long
as doctrine was regarded as even in a secondary sense the
object of faith, the great principle which was always
acknowledged at starting could hardly fail to get im
prisoned under the rubrics De Analogia Fidel or De
Fundamentalizm. For if there are certain theses which
are of such a kind that, to speak with Turretin, to believe
in them necessarily brings salvation, while to be ignorant
of them is damnable, to doubt dangerous, to deny them
impious, the postulate of theological life naturally resolved
itself into the postulation of these theses as the rule or
analogy by which all doctrines must be tried.

Yet this apparently obvious step is in reality dangerous,

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 153

even fatal, to a living theology. For even with regard to
the fundamentals of Christianity there is a wide difference
between an intellectual assent and an experimental con
viction. Granted that no true Christian could fail to
subscribe the " fundamentalia," it was not made out that
a theology that held the doctrines was necessarily a
" theologia regeneratorum." And then theology might
be quite orthodox and yet stand in no necessary relation
to the Christian life ; thus the living faith of the Reformers
passed over into the lifeless orthodoxy from which the
rationalism of the eighteenth century arose. In fact,
it was already rationalism to assert that intellectual
assent to certain fundamentals secured the existence of
the true Habitus Theologicus, without which divine truth
could not be understood.

The merely formal conception of the analogy of faith
was surrounded also by theoretical difficulties. What is
the criterion of a fundamental doctrine ? How can we
know that a doctrine is necessary for salvation except
from the actual experience of the saved ?

In the main, with some attempts to reach a firmer
basis, the criterion of a fundamental doctrine was sought
in an express declaration of Scripture. But then the
" dogma de S.S. theopneustw, sola et perfect a fidei
regula," is in turn one of the fundamentals, and necessarily
that fundamental on which all the others rest. And does
not this position involve a vicious circle ? In what sense
is it possible that the authority and inspiration of Scrip
ture can be proved at once from its own words ? When
the question reaches this stage the original religious signi
ficance of the Analogy of Faith is lost altogether, and the
real basis of theology becomes (as we find it, for example,
in the manual of Hodge) an apologetical inquiry into the
evidences of Christianity with the view of bringing out
the doctrine of inspiration in isolation from all other
doctrines as the absolute prius in the system of Christian
theology, capable of being demonstrated by evidence

154 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

convincing even to those who have not experienced the
power of Christianity.

It must be admitted that the decline into this way of
looking at theology is from one point of view so easy
and natural that we need not be surprised that many
men conceive that in upholding it they are true to the
principles of the Reformation. And yet it is an historical
fact that this way of thought first sprang up in an age
which had ceased to be absorbed in the great problem of
the Reformation — the problem of realising experimentally
in the individual consciousness and in all the functions
of social and Church life no less than in the schools what
true Christianity is. Nor, indeed, could it be otherwise.
So long as the Church of the Reformation was rejoicing
in the discovery that forgiveness of sins and all the
privileges which Christ bought for His Church are not to
be applied to men in a magical manner by a privileged
caste which alone can say whether the application is
effectual, but that fellowship with God in Christ is a living
personal fellowship of which we can be as fully assured as
of fellowship with our fellow-men ; so long as it was
understood that the consciousness of this fellowship with
God is no mere subjective feeling but the consciousness
of a life far more true than the natural life which no
man dreams of doubting — a life which is not bounded by
the circuit of my own subjectivity, but in which I am
linked together with all my fellow-believers with the
whole Church and its glorious Head — a life which is hid
with Christ in God, but which is not so hid that it does
not manifest itself even now as a real life in, though
not of the world, absorbing into itself my whole earthly
life ; so long as all this was felt, it was impossible for the
Church to turn away from the assurance of its calling
in Christ which it bore within itself and base the scientific
exposition of its position as a Church — and to be such
an exposition is the aim of Protestant theology — on mere
grounds of natural reason and probability.

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 155

The Church is not redeemed by its theology ; it
theologises because it is redeemed. Theology has done
its work when it has given scientific expression to all
that is bound up in the consciousness of redemption and
the life that flows therefrom. And therefore the theology
of a living Church must not start from the mere outward
form and vehicle of Christianity, be that form never so
divine, but from the true substance of Christianity which
the Church knows that she has already grasped. In this
spirit it is that the Reformers with one accord, and no
where more clearly than in our own Confession, assert that it
is only the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness
with the Word in our hearts that is the true evidence
of the infallible truth and divine authority of Scripture.
The authority of the Church, or a mere natural contempla
tion of its incomparable excellences, may serve to make
us bow before a mystery that we cannot comprehend ;
but so long as God's revelation stands only over against
us — even though it stand before us as evidently divine —
we have not even won a starting-point from which to
develop the confession of our faith. The testimony of
the Church begins with the inward work of the Holy
Spirit — with a Christianity realised in the heart.

From this standpoint it was simply impossible for
theology to start from an apologetical estimate of the
outer evidences of Christianity. Apologetic speaks to
those that are without the Church and serves to make the
opponents of Christ inexcusable, to reduce them to silence
before a phenomenon that they cannot fathom. But
theology speaks to the Church, to those to whom Christi
anity is no mere phenomenon but a part, the only valuable
part, of life. To suppose that the Church has to be
nurtured on Christian evidences is to suppose that she
has forgotten her own identity. And, therefore, it was a
melancholy day for Christendom when the Reformation
Church ceased to vindicate its rights as a Church by
striving more and more fully to realise its calling in Christ,

156 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [isl

and began to justify itself to itself much more than to the
world without by constantly reiterating the evidences
of Christianity. For what clearer proof could be given
that the Church had forgotten itself, had come to look
upon Christianity as only a doctrine, not a life, or as a
body of past history, not as the kernel of all history, and
so as something quite external to be accepted on the
authority of the miraculousness of its form, not to be
fed on and assimilated in virtue of the divineness of its
substance ?

It is no accident that the age of the supremacy of
" The Christian Evidences " is also the age of moderatism
in which the truest spiritual life, the deepest Christian
thought, is forced to be unchurchly, and therefore too
often sinks into sectarianism and heterodoxy.

But not only is the apologetic way of starting in
theology perverse and unchurchly — it is also inconsistent
with itself. For to show that Christianity bears in its
outer form previous to any realisation of its substance
infallible marks of divine authority is only possible when
it is agreed what manner of marks these must be. On
this point, it is clear, no appeal to natural reason can
suffice. The Deist of the old type saw the sure marks
of deception in the very miracles which to his opponent
proved Christianity to be from God. In short, the
Christian even in his so-called natural theology reasons
from a conception of God — a consciousness of the relation
of God to man which is not merely natural — because
not shared by honest antagonists, — which is in a word
specifically Christian, though not supporting itself by an
appeal to the authority of Scripture. The sure proof
that natural theology is not the scientific basis of re
vealed theology lies in the fact, which the history of the
Deistic controversy made abundantly plain, that natural
theology, as a knowledge of God true as far as it goes, is,
apart from Christianity, an absolute fiction.

If now it appears that even the doctrines which were

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 157

supposed natural, and which the written word always
presupposes, are consequences, not presuppositions, of
true Christian faith, it follows that Christianity is in the
first instance so absolutely a thing of the heart that it
has to construct for itself even the very elements of a
knowledge of God. The subjective consciousness of
union with God in Christ is absolutely the first thing in
true Christianity, and it is from this consciousness out
wards that the Christian develops for himself a true
notion of God and a true notion of man. All doctrine
even of revelation that had previously been presented
to a man's mind from the outside has to be made over
again from the inside as soon as the Holy Spirit has
begun true faith in the soul.

Thus the rejection of natural theology in the sense of
the old theology bears with it the characteristic principle
of the new theology that subjective religion necessarily
precedes true religious knowledge. That is, theology is
no longer the sum of those doctrines by believing which
we are united to God in faith and which, from the witness
of the Holy Spirit to this their saving power, are received
as indubitably true ; but the doctrines of theology are
the product of faith, the knowledge of the subject and
object of faith which are evolved by dialectical necessity
from the assurance of the primitive act itself.

It may perhaps be granted that there is force in the
argument which repels the accusation of rationalism so
often brought against the new theology. But then,
some will say, you fall back into the no less dangerous
extreme of mysticism, giving an unbounded play to an
unrestrained subjectivity. The analogy just mentioned
will readily suggest the true answer here. A conscious
ness originally subjective in character is not, therefore,
purely subjective in origin. And so the Christian con
sciousness does not arise in man from within. Faith is
wrought in the believer only by the Holy Spirit making
known Christ unto us. It is a real objective revelation

158 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

which operating in our hearts produces a consciousness
in the first instance indeed subjective, but capable of being
developed into true knowledge of the revealing God.

It is, indeed, true that this explanation would be in
adequate on the old idea of revelation as a body of truth
received on the testimony not of a human witness but of
God ; for truth received on testimony is either not under
stood at all or at once grasped in its full objectivity.
But the truth that has a saving power is truth experienced.
It is an experimental knowledge of God Himself in Christ,
an experimental knowledge of sin and salvation, that must
be the content of Christian theology.

A mere dictation from on high of truths about God
and man would be revelation in a heathen, not in a
Christian sense.

The true idea of revelation is such an activity of God
among and towards men as shall enable man to apprehend
God in His holiness, justice, and redemptive love, just by
the same kind of experience as enables us to know our
fellow-men. It is the record of such a revelation that
lies before us in Holy Scripture. For there we read how
God from the earliest time dealt personally with mankind
in a supernatural history culminating in the incarnation,
death, and resurrection of our Lord, and how, from age
to age, the Church of God was able to lay hold on the
divine person thus manifested, by faith unto salvation.
Christ Himself appears in this history as the full manifesta
tion of God. He is the Word of God, i.e. revelation is
a word not in the sense of a truth dictated by God but as
the living expression of the inmost heart of the speaker.

Let us look for a moment at the way in which the
historical personality of Christ influenced those that were
brought face to face with Him. We know from the Gospel
history, especially from that Gospel which is the direct
record of an apostle's experience, that the bond which
knit the faithful disciples to their Master was not in the
first instance a distinct conception of the Godhead im-

1870] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 159

manent in Him. The surrender of their whole heart to
Christ was the condition, not the fruit, of a correct Christo-
logy. Even the Resurrection left much that was vague
in the Apostles' theology, and perhaps the full develop
ment of the Christology of John was only attained to
wards the end of a long life of devoted service to a risen
Saviour. And yet the actual historic personality of the
Saviour did not vary, but was as truly divine when John
first saw Him as after the Ascension. Not mainly the
addition of new facts, of new phenomena, in the life of
our Lord, but a growth in the regenerated personality of
the disciple, explains the growth of John's theology. The
first effect of contact with Christ was the production of
faith and love, and then it required only the continued
presence of the same contact with the Saviour to develop
a true knowledge of Him with whom the life of the apostle
was now inseparably bound up. And so the historical
Christ was ever the foundation and rule of John's Christo
logy, though only the inner life of union with Christ
supplied the power to pierce through the phenomena and
know what this wondrous person really is.

The growth of the Christian personality cannot be
essentially different for an apostle and for the Christian
in our own day. And this essential identity must clearly
extend itself to the growth of that necessary knowledge
whereby the new man comes to understand his own new
life. With us, too, the first thing must be that we are
brought through the word read and preached into con
tact with the historical realities of Christianity. We can
no longer see Christ with our bodily eyes, but to us, as
Luther delighted to say, "the written word is the o-a/>£
Xpio-rov, the outward vehicle which manifests the person
of the God-man." But this mere outer contact with the
phenomenal Christ has no saving power. Nor can we
by natural reason construe for ourselves the true living
person set before us in the word. Only the Spirit working
faith in us can carry us beyond the form and bring us

160 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

into living union with the substance. Our first appre
hension of a living Christ lies in the first spark of love for
Him who first loved us. And then, when this bond of
inner sympathy unites us to the person of Christ, the true
living substance shines effulgent through all the form, but
not at first in clear lineaments. Only by a gradual
growth, by constant experimental intercourse with the
historical person of Christ, i.e. by comparing every point
in the gospel history with our own personal necessities,
does our faith develop into knowledge. And even so
this knowledge is as yet empirical, in crude practical
form not grasped with scientific exactness. Side by side
with Christian experience, and acting on the data it
furnishes, must go an exercise of real hard thought before
our knowledge takes scientific shape and is really worthy
to be called theology.

In this process Scripture is not, as it was in the old
dogmatic, the sole instrument of theology. Much rather
the instrument of our theology is the whole compass of
the regenerated mental powers. But Scripture is still the
sole foundation and rule of theology, for in Scripture only is
the object of that faith which we desire to comprehend
laid down in an authoritative form, i.e. as it presented
itself historically and was apprehended by men enlightened
by God's Spirit to grasp it truly. And, therefore, we are
called upon to construe the object of faith to ourselves,
as it appears in Scripture, to see the true depth of meaning
lying in the history. If our intelligible Christ differs
from the Christ of history, if the salvation we receive
differs from the salvation which Christ bestowed on those
who were eye-witnesses of His saving work, then we
may be sure either that we have argued falsely from our
faith, or that our faith itself is false, having its source within
ourselves and not in a true operation of God which can
never be out of harmony with His working in days gone by.

The truth of all this is not really affected by the fact
that no theologian goes through this process in its ideal

i87o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 161

simplicity. So far, our theology is always presented ready-
made for our acceptance, not constructed by ourselves
at first hand. Even Scripture contains not only normal
Christian experience, but in some measure developed
theology. But all this only simplifies, does not dispense
with, the necessity of re-thinking a theology which is
actually to become part of our personality. The thing
has still to be thought out by every man for himself,
though not thought out without guidance from those
who have gone before.

The mutual support and assistance which men can
thus render one another in thinking out their Christianity
into an intelligible form is just one case of the general
doctrine of the Church as an organism in which no part
can be developed save in and through the development of
the whole. And thus we pass from the theology of the
individual to the theology of the Church. The theology
of the individual is always a one-sided imperfect develop
ment of that common faith which binds the whole Church
to Christ. But all these imperfect developments supple
ment each other. And because the individual is united
not only to Christ but to his fellow-believers, every growth
of one member reacts on the others and makes it easier
for them to grow in that direction. And thus in each
age arises a unity in the theology of the whole Church—
a theology which is not strictly the explanation of any
one-sided individual development, but which is the ex
planation of the faith of the Church as one whole. And
as this theology of the Church is a part of the life of the
Church it reacts on all other departments of life, so that
the next generation of the Church grows easily and
naturally into the ideas which the fathers elaborated with
much toil. Thus room is given for a further develop
ment of theology according to the new experiences of the
new generation, so that wherever the Church is really
strong in faith and living union with its Head, theology
advances to an ever fuller and fuller comprehension of

1 1

162 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-1870]

the ideal relation between Christ and the Church made
perfect.

In all this Scripture can never wax old. To Scripture
we must ever turn to realise the true historic Christ until
the Risen and Ascended One returns to His people. But
all theology must advance, if it were only because the Christ
of the gospels so far transcends the theology of any age
that to cling to an unchangeable dogma is really to cease
to look to Him whom we must ever seek to comprehend
more fully, to love more singly, to follow more devotedly.
Finally, to apply all this in one word to our own case :—
Three things, I suppose, will make our theological work
harmonious and profitable.

1. That we take Christ as the A and ft of our theology :
the foundation of our theology, the historical Christ mani
fested in the gospel ; and the goal of our theology, Christ
coming again in glory as the Head of a spotless Church.

2. That we seek to think and reason, not in our own
strength, but by the Holy Spirit strengthening us to see
Christ as He is.

3. That we patiently and laboriously avail ourselves
of our historical position as inheritors of the theological
fund which the Church has already gained, not yielding
our freedom to man's judgment, yet not forgetting that
we are but parts of a great whole, and that true advance
is possible only by diligently developing those results
which God's providence has already given to the Church.

And now may the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of
whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named,
grant us according to the riches of His glory to be
strengthened with might by the Spirit in the inner man,
that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we,
being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to com
prehend with all saints what is the length and breadth
and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ
which passeth knowledge that we may be filled with all
the fulness of God.

IV

ON THE QUESTION OF PROPHECY IN
THE CRITICAL SCHOOLS OF THE CONTINENT

(From " The British Quarterly Review," April 1870)

THE works whose title head this article J are too divergent
in character and purpose to allow us to think of completely
discussing them in a single paper. We propose to make
use of them only in their bearing on a single subject — the
present state of the question of prophecy in the Continental
critical schools ; and we have chosen these books partly
because they are among the most recent that deal with
the subject of prophecy, and partly because they seem to
us to be typical in their character, marking out leading
lines of thought among the very various conceptions of
prophecy which prevail in Continental theology at the
present day. In saying this, we do not, of course, mean
that these books are of equal or even similar intrinsic
value. In Ewald's great work, despite the waywardness
and arbitrary self-reliance which so often disfigure his
criticism, we everywhere recognise a man of original and
creative power, who never fails to put great questions in
a fresh and instructive light. In Kuenen, again, we are
most impressed by the cold pellucidity of thought which

1 [They were four in number, viz. : the second edition of Ewald's
Prophets (1867-68) ; the second part of Kuenen's Historical and Critical
Inquiry (1863) ; the first part of Kuenen's Religion of Israel (1869) ;
and the first part of Gustav Baur's History of Old Testament Prophecy
(1861).]

163

164 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

lays bare to himself and others the real principles and
unavoidable problems of a purely naturalistic criticism ;
while in Gustav Baur, with less genius than Ewald, and
less acuteness than Kuenen, we find most fully the
qualities, happily by no means rare among German
critics, which seem to us to give most hope for the future—
an honest painstaking spirit of inquiry which, though
heartily devoted to the critical method, has reached, and
is not afraid to speak out, the conviction that that is not a
true criticism which refuses to find in the Old Testament
the special hand of a revealing God.

In the choice of these typical writers, we confine
ourselves to disciples of the critical school— men who
approach the questions of prophecy from the historical,
not from the theological side. We do not think that this
is the only line of inquiry that can be fruitful ; we are
persuaded, indeed, that the want of a clear theological
position has greatly limited the real value of the work of
men like Ewald, and we see in the labours of such theo
logians as Hofmann and Delitzsch, to mention two names
only, very much which has merited the lasting gratitude
of every Old Testament student. But in their starting-
point, at least, the historical and theological methods are
so different, even where they lead ultimately to the same
result, that it is impossible to speak of both in the limits
of a single article ; and in our country the critical method
seems most to call for exposition, especially in view of
the unscrupulous pertinacity with which the enemies of
Christianity in England are accustomed to claim every
critic as a witness on their side.

The fundamental principle of the higher criticism lies
in the conception of the organic unity of all history. We
must not see in history only a medley of petty dramas
involving no higher springs of action than the passions
and interests of individuals. History is not a stage-play,
but the life and life-work of mankind continually unfolding
in one great plan. And hence we have no true history

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 165

where we cannot pierce through the outer shell of tradition
into the life of a past age, mirrored in the living record of
men who were themselves eye-witnesses and actors in the
scenes they describe. Not mere facts, but the inner kernel
of true life, is what the critical student delights to find in
every genuine monument of antiquity ; and the existence
of such a kernel is to him the last criterion of historical
authenticity. A tradition that violates the continuity of
historical evolution and stands in no necessary relation
to the conditions of the preceding and following age must
be untrue ; and, above all, an ancient writing which is no
frigid product of the school, but is instinct with true life,
must be the product of that age which contained the
conditions of the life it unconsciously reflects.

It is clear that this theory of history contains much
that is true. That a unity of plan runs through all
history, all must hold who in any sense believe in Provi
dence. But just as the name of Providence may be used
to express the most diverse theories of God's working in
the world, the word organic, applied to the providential
development of history, may cover the widest differences
of thought ; for to one thinker the organic development
of history will mean the unbroken sweep of natural law
without one breath of the creative Spirit from on high,
while to a higher school of thought the one purpose of
history is the purpose of everlasting love, worked out, in,
and through human personality, by a personal redeeming
God. Now, the sphere in which all differences on this
point appear in clearest relief is that part of history of
which the Bible is the most authentic monument. For
the problems of Israel's history are essentially religious
problems. Rightly to conceive the progress of religious
faith, thought, and life in the people of Israel, until the
theocratic development received its absolute conclusion in
the life of Him who gathered all the rays of splendour
that flash through the Old Testament into the effulgent
focus of His transcendent personality, and in the course

166 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

of this task to inweave the Bible record with the history
of which it is itself a part— such is the critical problem of
the theocratic history.

Of all the monuments of Israel's history, the most
precious by far to the critical student are the Old Testa
ment prophecies, witnessing as they do to the inner life
of the noblest and truest Israelites, representing at once
the purest religious conceptions and the deepest national
feelings that these ages could show. These are qualities
to which no disciple of the higher criticism can remain
insensible. The time is gone when the sources of the
prophetic inspiration could be sought in an artificial
aesthetical culture, in political intrigue, above all, in pious
fraud. The starting-point in all critical study of prophecy
lies in the acknowledgment that the prophetic writings are
the true key to the marvellous religious development,
which is, in fact, the kernel of all Israel's history. And
with this awakened sense of the historical value of pro
phecy has come the universal conviction that such writings
cannot be forgeries. It may be fair to ask whether they
belong in all instances to the prophets whose names they
now bear ; but that they really are the writings of prophets,
unquestionable witnesses to the true life of the age that
produced them, no one doubts. In truth, the tendency
of the critical school is rather to overvalue the historical
importance of these monuments at the expense of books
properly historical. The dislike for the miraculous which
the long predominance of rationalistic philosophy has
almost engrained into German thought, has often pro
duced, even in critics like Ewald — who, we hope to show,
are by no means naturalistic at heart — an unwarranted
mistrust for many Old Testament narratives, and has
encouraged the formation of arbitrary historical theories
for which scattered hints in the prophets form almost the
only basis. Yet it would be unfair to dwell only on this
side of the case. It is certain that much of the Old
Testament history is not contemporary ; and the truest

i8;o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 167

history must always bear witness not only to the age of
which it speaks, but to the age in which it was written,
in a way that often makes it hard to read the inner life
that underlies the historical fact, save by the aid of
contemporary records. It can hardly, in truth, be
doubted that, if we desire to gain the clearest insight
into the religious history of Israel, our true starting-
point must be the period of the earliest extant prophetic
writings.

If we put out of account the Book of Joel, the date of
which is still disputed, the age to which we are thus
referred is the eighth century before Christ, the age of
Amos and Hosea, of Isaiah and Micah. This period is
known to historians as the Assyrian period of Israel's
history. But the early years of the century are not yet
impressed with the destroying stamp of the monarchs of
Nineveh. The century opens on a period of prosperity
both in Judah and in Ephraim . Jeroboam 1 1 . had restored
the ancient frontier of his realm ; Judah flourished under
the vigorous sceptre of Uzziah. In one of these prosperous
years there appeared at the great sanctuary at Bethel,
at which the whole northern kingdom was met for solemn
festival, a prophet from Judah, Amos, a herdsman of
Tekoa. With unsparing words he laid bare the inner
disorders of the realm, that combination of the rudest
violence with effeminate luxury so characteristic of the
breaking up of society in an oriental kingdom. But it
was not with the eye of a statesman that Amos viewed
these corruptions. They were fatal because they were
the fruit of a national rebellion against Jahveh,1 the God

1 Since Delitzsch in the second edition of his Psalmen renounced the
pronunciation Jahavah, Continental scholars may be said to be agreed
in regarding Jahveh as the true punctuation of the " ineffable " Name.
The example of Delitzsch was at once followed by his disciples, e.g. by
Kohler, of Bonn (now of Erlangen), who in his habilitation thesis of the
year before had defended Delitzsch's earlier view. When men like the
lamented Hupfeld write Jhvh, they do so only to confine themselves
to what MSS. authorise — not because they doubt that Jahveh or
Jahaveh is the true pronunciation. By adopting a pronunciation

168 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

of Israel. The corrupt and sensual service of Bethel and
of Gilgal — half Jahveh- worship, half Canaanitish idolatry-
was the root as well as the symbol of the sickness of the
land. " Thus saith Jahveh, Seek me, and live ! " Stroke
after stroke from the hand of Jahveh had fallen upon the
people, and yet they refused to turn to Him. And now
the judgment must be final : " The high places of Isaac
shall be wasted, and the sanctuaries of Israel destroyed.
. . . And Israel shall go forth as a captive from his land. " l
Nor does the prophet content himself with vague fore
bodings of woe. His keen vision detects the instrument
of Jahveh's wrath in the distant Assyrians — as yet so
unfamiliar to his hearers that he describes them with
precision, without once mentioning their names.2

This sketch of the prophecy of Amos enables us to
illustrate the kind of questions of detail which divide the
critical school. That Amos prophesied the fall of Israel
by the Assyrians, and the overthrow of Jeroboam's house
at a time of undisturbed prosperity, all are agreed. Not
less unanimous, on the other hand, is the resolution to
find the true centre of the prophecy not in this prediction,
but in the religious and ethical ideas drawn from a pro
foundly spiritual Theism which constrain the prophet to
look for an inevitable judgment. But the question
remains, how far the definite colouring of this judgment
passes beyond the limits of the impressions which present
facts would naturally make on an able and reflecting mind.
That is, in the present case, How far had the westward
development of the Assyrian empire extended itself when
Amos wrote ? Ewald, whom we have mainly followed
above, judges from Amos vi. 2, that even Ctesiphon
on the Tigris had not yet fallen before Assyria. Accord
ingly he places Amos in the first half of Jeroboam's reign,
when Israel was still the first of the nations (chap. vi. i)

which, though little current amongst us, is heard in all the lecture-rooms
of Germany, we shall, moreover, avoid the awkwardness of writing the
name differently in extracts from our authors and in the text itself.
1 Amos vii. 9-11. 2 Ewald, Propheten, i. 118.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 169

knowing no neighbour of equal strength.1 Kuenen,
again, draws from the same passage (we cannot but think
at the expense of the context) the conclusion that Ctesiphon
had already fallen,2 and so that it was not more than
natural that the prophet should see in the Assyrians the
nation designed to fulfil the judgment which he firmly
expected. On this view Amos is brought down to the
latter half of Jeroboam's reign, when Assyria, as appears
from Hosea, was already much nearer the thoughts of the
Israelites. It is easy to see the divergent tendencies of
these views. Ewald is ready to ascribe to the prophet
a spiritual insight into the course of Jahveh's purpose
which no man could attain by mere natural reasoning.
They are the thoughts of Jahveh, not thoughts of his own,
that the prophet thinks ; and so he is able to apprehend
new combinations in history before they begin to arise.
Kuenen, on the other hand, would have everything
explained by the psychology of ordinary life. He ascribes
to the prophet no really new creative thought, as will
appear more clearly when we trace the way in which he
accounts for the rise of a spiritual conception of the God
of Israel. If we hold fast the clue which this instance
affords, we shall soon see how wide the difference is
between two men who on the surface may seem closely
allied, and whom, in fact, Kuenen declares to hold the
same principles of prophetic criticism.3

The predictions of Amos received a speedy fulfilment.
The death of Jeroboam was the signal for an outburst of
anarchy which overthrew the house of Jehu, and dissolved
every band of political and social union. A struggle
conducted with barbarous ferocity placed in the hands of
Menahem a sceptre so feeble that only foreign aid could
ensure his position. And so for the first time the Assyrians
became the arbiters of Israel's fortunes, a position from
which they never again retired.4 The remaining history

1 Propheten, i. 152. 2 Onderzoek, ii. 334.

3 Ibid, ii. 25. * 2 Kings xv. 8-20.

170 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

of the kingdom of Ephraim is tumultuous and confused.
Again and again the throne is gained and lost by violence.
A truly national policy never appears. Pekah alone felt
himself strong enough in combination with Syria, the old
enemy of Israel, to attack the kingdom of Judah. But
this attempt at a bolder policy only served to drive Judah,
too, into the hands of Assyria.1 The fall of Damascus
brought the outposts of the king of Nineveh close to the
land of Canaan, which seemed now no more than the
" bridge of battle " between the rival empires of the Nile
and the Tigris. Pent up between two such monarchies,
the most daring politician could not hope for the in
dependence either of Judah or of Ephraim. The only
importance of the land lay in the strength of the almost
impregnable mountain fastnesses which Egyptians and
Assyrians alike were eager to secure. The utmost that
the Hebrew princes could hope for was to maintain a
partial independence by holding these fortresses in the
interests of one or the other powers. Thus all political
life, at least in the northern kingdom, resolved itself into
a struggle between an Egyptian and an Assyrian party,
whose every step was guided from without, and whose
alternate victories were marked by more than one bloody
revolution. At length King Hoshea threw himself with
decision into the cause of Egypt. Then came the final
heroic struggle with Nineveh. The last energies of the
people were concentrated in the defence of Samaria, and
the fall of the city marks the disappearance of the ten
tribes from history.

If the last years of the kingdom of Ephraim showed us
nothing more than the passionate death-struggle of a long-
forgotten monarchy, we might claim for this narrative a
tragic interest, but hardly a place among the great events
of the world's history. But, side by side with the political
parties that we have sketched, there existed in Israel a
third party, which stood so far apart from both the others,

1 2 Kings xvi. ; Isa. vii.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 171

and which was guided by principles so remarkable as to
possess an undying interest for the student of history.
This party — to borrow the language of Kuenen —

" was as averse to alliance with the stranger as to sub
jection under his yoke. A citizen of the kingdom of
Ephraim, Hosea the son of Beeri, condemns the league
both with Asshur and with Egypt. Ephraim and Judah,
he writes, were sick ; the former had sought help from
Assyria, but ' they cannot cure you, and cannot heal your
wound/ To call now on Assyria, now on Egypt, is folly.
' Ephraim is like a silly dove, without understanding/
To make a league with Assyria, to send balsam to Egypt
is ' to herd the wind, to pursue the east wind ' ; it is of
one piece with the fact that ' they multiply lies and
violence all day long/ The time is coming when the nation
itself shall confess, ' Asshur cannot save us, we will not
ride upon war-horses,' the time when bow and sword
shall be broken and war cease from the earth/ . . .
' Strange as this policy may seem to us, at first sight/
adds Kuenen, ' it is quite explicable when we view it in
connection with the religious convictions of which it is
the counterpart. When the men whose words we have
quoted condemn alliance with the stranger, reliance on
chariots and horses — in one word, trust in man, and in
man's strength, it is because they wish Israel to rely on
Jahveh, and on him alone." l

In truth, the political attitude of Hosea and his
fellow-prophets, however remarkable, is not the side from
which their characteristic standpoint may be best compre
hended. Their policy, if such a word is applicable, was
mainly negative. At an earlier time, we know, there had
been prophets in Israel who habitually directed great
affairs of state — who had more than once made and
unmade kings. The prophets of the eighth century had
no such ambition. In the northern kingdom their political
influence was almost inappreciable ; for, in these days of
violence, a political party could exist only by the sword.
But, even had they been able to influence the heads of the
people, it is certain that they had no policy to propose.

1 Godsdienst, p. 40.

172 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

Amos, we saw, had ceased, even during the brilliant
administration of the house of Jehu, to believe that any
policy could save a nation that had departed so far from
Jahveh and His law. And now the dimmest eyes could
see that the days of the nation were numbered. When
Hosea calls upon the people to turn from schemes of
Egyptian alliance or Assyrian vassalage, he does not
dream that the result will be present deliverance. He
calls not for the correction of a political error, but for the
forsaking of political sin. The worldly policy of the rulers
is of one piece with the moral corruption that pervades the
whole people. " The people," he says, " fear not Jahveh,
and what can a king do for them ? " 1 The calf worship,
the Baal worship, the impurity, the deceit and violence
that filled the land, called for a judgment that could not
fail.

The trumpet to thy lips !

He swoops like an eagle On the House of Jahveh,

Because they have transgressed my covenant,

Trespassed against my law . . .

Israel hath cast off the gracious One,

The foe pursue him ! 2

The prophet is conscious indeed that he is called to
proclaim truths which, if listened to, would save the
people. Could they be brought to trust in Jahveh, and
obey Him, He would save them ; but so little does he look
for such an issue that he feels that the prophetic spirit
too must stumble and fall in the general ruin. But with
all this, there is in Hosea another side, which we may
characterise in the words of Ewald :—

" If Hosea had resigned himself to these painful feelings
alone, he might have been a poet, but could never have
been a prophet. As a prophet of Jahveh, he can indeed
forebode the necessity of the fall of the present form of
the kingdom, but must not overlook the eternal truths and
hopes that lie beyond ; and to these, in the last instance,
he must expressly point, as the only light which dissipates
the darkness of the present and the nearest future. . . .

1 Hosea x. 3. '2 Ibid. viii. i seq.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 173

To Hosea the corner-stone of the truth of all hopes is just
this : Jahveh, whose love long since created and formed
the people, cannot for ever forsake his own work ; his love
must complete what it has designed, the salvation of the
people, which, just because it has from the first experienced
this love, must at length remember its origin, and turn
again to the true source of love and salvation ; and just
when the more powerful human foreboding is ready to
utter the final sentence of eternal extinction — just then it
springs back confounded, and itself extinguished before
the higher Divine presentiment which, at the decisive
moment, presses forward with overpowering force." l

In this unshaken confidence in Israel's future all the
prophets are agreed. But by none, perhaps, is the love
of Jahveh for His people delineated so profoundly and
tenderly as by Hosea — himself a man of the tenderest
affections, chastened and deepened by the calamities of
his people. The history of mankind contains no more
touching instance of faith than the way in which Hosea
closes a book that again and again foretells the captivity,
by introducing the converted people addressing Jahveh
in words of submission and thanksgiving.2 So striking
a union of faith that no mishap could shake, with an in
sight that never failed to read the fatal signs of the times,
marks off the prophets as clearly from ordinary religious
enthusiasts as from ordinary moral teachers.

In the kingdom of the ten tribes, as Hosea himself
foresaw, even the prophetic word must be swept away
helpless in the general ruin, finding no response in the
hearts of the people. But in Judah it was otherwise.
There, too, the people had sunk, under Ahaz, into deep
religious and social corruption. The heathenism into
which that fantastical king threw himself from the first,
was accompanied by a rapid growth of luxury and
sensuality, and by a general decay of the vigorous theo
cratic system by which alone the small and isolated
kingdom could maintain its position among its neighbours.

1 Propheten, i, 179. 2 Hosea xiv. 3.

174 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

Soon the foreign wars of the king were marked by con
tinual reverses, which only drove the court to seek deliver
ance in still wilder superstitions, and at last in the horrid
worship of Moloch — the fruit of that lowest grade of
religious feeling which knows no sentiment but terror.
But meantime the true national and spiritual life of
Israel gathered round the prophets of Jahveh. Two of
these prophets, Isaiah and Micah, we know from their
extant writings. In external circumstances no two
men could be more unlike. Isaiah was a man of noble
family and high culture, moving in courtly circles and
versed in all the political movements of the day. Micah,
a simple unpolished countryman, knew only so much
of the state of the nation as a keen, uneducated sense
could read in the affairs of his own province. Yet so
thoroughly did the prophetic fire penetrate and assimilate
the whole natural life, that, amidst considerable differences
of detail, these men represent at bottom precisely the
same religious and political standpoint. Let us pause for
a moment at this point. The critical study of prophecy
has by no means borne out the view that, in points of
detail, especially in predictive details, the prophets are
fully at one. But, precisely, these discrepancies bring out
in stronger relief the substantial unity of the prophetic
spirit. The unity did not lie in a system of dogmas. The
prophets were familiar indeed with the old theocratic
legislation and the writings of their own predecessors,
but their attitude towards both was perfectly free. They
knew that Jahveh was guiding His people to a higher
standpoint, in which even prophecy itself must fall away.
It was not by a system of externals, but by participation
in the spirit of Jahveh, that the prophets felt themselves
bound together. Nor was a man a prophet merely in
virtue of his earnest faith in the God of Israel. The
prophet felt the hand of Jahveh upon him, impelling him
in a course that he could not have chosen for himself ;
and, in this course, his individuality was not obliterated,

1870] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 175

but absorbed and swayed by the one Spirit of all prophecy.
He speaks and thinks, not his own thoughts, but the
thoughts of Jahveh, the living God, whose eternal purpose
flows in ever-varying form, but ever in substantial unity,
through all the history of his people. The man who,
amid the tumult of the ungodly within, the impotent
raging of the heathen without, can hear the voice of
Jahveh pealing through history, he is of necessity a
prophet :

The lion hath roared, who will not fear ?

The Lord Jahveh hath spoken, who can but prophesy ? l

We return to the work of Isaiah. Very early in life
he began to proclaim the judgment of Jahveh against his
countrymen, in tones not unlike those of the prophets of
Ephraim. But while in the northern kingdom no judg
ment could suffice that was not — as regarded the present
order of things — final, in Judah there were still elements
of hope. A remnant shall yet return ; Jahveh will still
give help to them that call upon Him ; these are the
corner-stones of hope on which Isaiah's life-work was
built.2 But the hope is only in Jahveh, only in return to
him. Not by chariots and by horsemen — " By returning
and resting shall ye be saved, in being still and trusting is
your strength." 3

It was not long ere these principles were put to the test.
The united armies of Syria and Ephraim seemed ready to
crush the enfeebled kingdom. Ahaz and all his court
were filled with panic, and saw no hope except in the
oppressive protection of Assyria. Isaiah alone remained
calm, and confidently foretold the speedy desolation of
the hostile lands. But let Ahaz beware of seeking this
deliverance at the hands of man. " If ye will not believe,
ye shall not endure." 4 And when the king did refuse
belief, and persisted in his Assyrian policy, the prophet
boldly maintained that such a course would indeed end

1 Amos iii. 8. 2 -Ewald.Propheten, L 274.

3 Isa. xxx. 15. 4 ifofa vn- g

176 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

in the overthrow of his enemies, but also in the no less
certain humiliation of his own land before the Assyrians,
who would pour over Judah like the Euphrates in flood.
Yet the faithlessness of Ahaz cannot change the issue of
God's care for His own. Suddenly, as he describes these
calamities, the prophet turns against the invading heathen:

Arm yourselves — and be undone ;
Arm yourselves — and be undone ;
Devise a counsel, and it shall be broken ;
Speak a word, and it shall not stand,
For with us is God.1

And so Isaiah rises again to a bright vision of hope, when
the throne of David shall no longer be held by a renegade
like Ahaz ; but when the whole people, reconciled to
Jahveh, and joyful in the light of His countenance, shall
flourish under the unending government of a great and
perfect Davidic king, in whose days even the heathen
nations shall forsake their idols and join themselves to
Jahveh, God of Israel.

In this scheme, which grew up in Isaiah's mind at an
early stage of his prophetic activity, there was much that
could not be verified in his own lifetime. There never
lived a true prophet whose hopes and aspirations were
bounded by the circle of his own circumstances. True
prophecy is always ideal, seeking to grasp not the immedi
ate future, but the eternal and unchanging principles
which Jahveh, the living God, is ever working out more
fully among His people. The critical study of prophecy
has done no greater service than to point out how small
a fraction of the prophetic writings is strictly predictive.
Not detailed events lying in the future, but broad religious
principles, are the ground on which the prophets are at
home. But then these principles are grasped with such
firmness, with so concrete a hold, that they never remain
floating, as it were, in the air, but are always applied with
confidence to the special needs and special circumstances
of the theocracy. And so it was with Isaiah. Part, at

1 Isa. viii. 9.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 177

least, of his general scheme did come to be tested in the
most crucial way during his own lifetime.

The Assyrians came as he had foretold, overthrew the
enemies of Judah, but pressed their allies scarcely less
hardly. Meantime, the words of the prophet and his
compeers had not fallen dead upon the land. A vigorous
reaction was at hand, which should unite in one cause the
patriotism and the faith of the kingdom. Hezekiah, the
son of Ahaz, threw all his heart into the cause of the
prophets. A great religious reformation ensued, and, as
always was the case in Judah, there sprung up at the same
time a powerful revival of patriotic feeling. The king and
his nobles were eager to throw off the yoke of the Assyrian,
whose armies were no longer at their gates, and whose
superior force they hoped to counterbalance by an
Egyptian alliance. There was much in this plan that
might naturally attract the prophet, who, beyond doubt,
had entered with lively interest into the religious reforma
tion, and who was now an acknowledged power in the
nation. Yet Isaiah steadily set his face against the
Egyptian alliance. Deliverance must come from God
Himself.

The Egyptians are men and not God,

Their horses flesh and not spirit ;

Jahveh stretches out His hand,

And the helper stumbles and the holpen falls ;

All of them perish together.1

It is very obvious that this policy of Isaiah was in fact
the prudent course. We can hardly doubt that, but for
the persistence with which he exposed and combated the
plans of the Egyptian party, Jerusalem would have shared
the fate of Samaria. But it is not in this light that the
prophet's course can be appreciated aright. He feared
Assyria as little as he trusted Egypt ; he knew only that
so long as Nineveh was executing God's judgment on the
nations, no alliance could contend against it, but that
Jahveh Himself would give deliverance from a power that

1 Isa. xxxi. 3.

12

178 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

went beyond his commission. And therefore, as Senna
cherib's host rose to deeds of ever wilder violence, as the
yoke was tightened around the neck of Jerusalem and
human help seemed more distant, Isaiah's spirit rose.
He stirred up the king and people to some share of his
own confidence, persuaded them to reject an offer of
alliance from Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia,1 and to collect
their strength within the fortresses in patient expectation
of a God-sent deliverance. And now Sennacherib lay at
the gates, deliberately preparing to sweep Judah from the
face of the earth, and so remove the last barrier that lay
between him and Egypt, and secure an impregnable posi
tion in which to await the assault of Tirhakah. The
strength but not the faith of the nation was exhausted,
but Jahveh fought for His people. A terrible pestilence
ravaged the host of the Assyrians, and the panic-stricken
remnant sought their own land in the wildest confusion.

We cannot better characterise this great blow, from
which Assyria never recovered, than in the words of
Ewald :—

" In the evolution of these great events, Jerusalem
had been the last knot round which all turned, but also
the strong rock on which the arrogance of the Assyrian
was broken ; and further, the fire that burned between
Assyrian and Jew was no mere war of subjugation, but
had at last risen to the height of a purely religious con
flict.2 If, then, the victory here remained on the side of
Jerusalem, it is no less true that Faith in the might of the
spiritual God, whom the Jews worshipped, had gained a
visible victory, as glorious as we can well conceive. It
was one of those rare days when the truth, which is not to
be grasped with hands, and which is so slow to find deep
entrance among men, once more forced itself, with over
whelming certainty on the people. . . . The long and
weary straits that went before, the hard temptation, the
swift surprising deliverance, the compression of everything
into Faith in the true Helper, makes this time parallel to
the first foundation of the theocracy. And hence its

1 Isa. xviii. 2 On both sides. See Isa. xxxvi. 18 sqq.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 179

influence on the future was extraordinary, and the history
of the kingdom of Judah stands here at its third turning-
point." i

In our sketch of these events we have inserted no
trait on which the latest historians are not agreed. If
Hitzig does not enter so warmly as Ewald into the spirit
of the narrative, he concedes as completely the extra
ordinary effects of Isaiah's prophetic faith and prophetic
word ; and Kuenen admits fully the unwavering con
fidence, based on religious faith, with which Isaiah foretold
the wondrous deliverance.2 Even the distinctest pre
diction of the trial and deliverance (chap. xxix. 1-8) to
which Bleek 3 appeals, as perhaps the most striking proof
of the real predictive gifts of the prophets, he unhesitat
ingly places before the event ; but with these general
admissions he seeks by one or two touches to give the
whole narrative a far less striking colour than it possesses
in the German histories. Without venturing direct
affirmation, he hints that the account of the final disaster
is vague and incomplete, suggests that Isaiah was really
encouraging the people to endurance, in the hope that
Tirhakah's army would divert Sennacherib from the
siege — an attitude not very consistent with the answer
made by the prophet to the Ethiopian ambassadors, nor,
indeed, psychologically reconcilable with the whole tone
of his utterances — and insinuates that to no small extent
the deliverance was the natural consequence of this
policy. It is clear, however, that these ingenuous sugges
tions derive their whole force from the hypothesis, nowhere
directly stated, but in the Godsdienst plainly hinted at,
that it was really a campaign with Tirhakah that broke
the Assyrian force. Unluckily the accounts preserved by
Herodotus, in which the defeat of Sennacherib is associated
with the field-mouse — a recognised symbol of pestilence —
by no means favour this view.4

1 Geschichte (ed. 2), iii. 636.

2 Onderzoek, ii. 92, 96. Godsdienst, 39. 3 Einl. ins A.T., 437.
4 Cf. Hitzig, Geschichte Israels, p. 125 (1869).

180 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

It is not necessary for our present purpose to trace
farther in historical order the phenomena of Hebrew
prophecy as recorded in the contemporary sources. To
sketch even in outline the activity of the various prophets
and the special character of their teaching, would require
a volume, and would often involve much difficult discus
sion. It would be impossible to avoid intricate questions
as to date and authorship depending frequently on purely
technical arguments. Even to analyse Isaiah's works
with accuracy is a task which critics have not yet accom
plished with unanimity. We are able, indeed, to form a
very distinct conception of his figure from prophecies of
quite unambiguous date. A large part of the book of
Isaiah fits together with the historical records of the time
into a picture of such obvious genuineness that no critic
doubts the authenticity of these utterances. But, side
by side with these, the book contains many prophecies not
less genuine and vigorous, not less obviously inspired by
a religious feeling that was in full rapport with contem
porary life, which yet find no historical basis in the known
life of the prophet. This is a phenomenon which the
critic cannot pass over. In Hosea, in Amos, in Micah,
in the other parts of Isaiah's own writings, we find every
word not only instinct with Divine eternal truth that
stretches far into the future, as its roots run far back into
the past, but instinct also with fresh human life, with the
daily experience of the prophet and his hearers. The
prophets prophesied into the future, but not directly to
the future. Their duties lay with their own age, and only
by viewing them as they move amidst their contemporaries
does the critic learn to love and to admire them. A pro
phecy, then, coming to us in the name of Isaiah, but
having no roots in Isaiah's age, is to the historical student
either an inexplicable phenomenon, or a phenomenon
misplaced. Certainly, he is called upon to admit that
another inquirer approaching the problem from a theo
logical standpoint, taking the prophet on the Divine side,

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 181

may be able to explain what he cannot understand. But,
meanwhile, we cannot deny him the right to test the
phenomenon in his own fashion, to transpose the un
intelligible utterance into a different historical setting,
to ask whether, so transposed, it may not become doubly
resplendent with the twofold brilliancy of an eternal
Divine thought and a manifest historical propriety. The
principle on which the modern criticism herein acts is
carefully to be distinguished from the old rationalistic
absurdity of bringing down all prophecy post eventum :
not the aim to which the prophet tends, but the starting-
point from which he advances, affords to the historical
inquirer the basis of his critical activity. Take, for
example, the second half of Isaiah, the grand trilogy that
describes the restoration from the captivity in Babylon.
It is not the prediction of the return that makes these
chapters be placed by all critics in the later years of the
captivity itself, for a prediction as precise was certainly
uttered by Jeremiah ; it is not the conception of a
captivity of Babel that is viewed as impossible to Isaiah,
for Micah we know anticipated such an event ; it is not
even the mention of Cyrus by name that is urged, for
those who are puzzled by that fact could much more
readily suggest an interpolation. But the author of
these chapters speaks everywhere to the exiled people ;
he speaks to them face to face, with the pathos, the hope,
the indignation of one who shared their sufferings and
beheld their sins : he speaks to them in conceptions fitted
to an age when Jerusalem stood no longer, and the Davidic
House had ceased to reign : he has dropped, for example,
the notion of a Davidic Messiah, and gives a still deeper
and more wondrous picture of salvation through the
suffering and death of the Servant of Jahveh, followed up
by a glorious triumphal appearance of the Covenant God
in person, filling His land and illumining His people with
eternal radiance : in one word, if Isaiah wrote these
chapters he lived two lives — not a natural and a prophetic

182 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

life, but two prophets' lives, one in his own day, and one
in the far future. And if this be the real state of the case,
Isaiah will be to the critic, for all practical purposes, two
men ; the whole historical significance of these chapters
must still be transferred from the age of Hezekiah to the
age of Labynetus.1

But, instead of pursuing these intricate questions, our
present purpose calls us rather to consider the way in
which critics of divergent tendencies have sought to
explain the phenomena of Hebrew prophecy that are
undisputed by the most sceptical inquirer. We have
learned to regard the prophets as the leaders of the
religious life of Israel, rising above the people, as men
who bear within them a higher ground of trust in God,
a deeper insight into His purpose, than falls to the lot of
their fellow-countrymen. A prophet like Isaiah main
tains, we can hardly fail to see, a kingly attitude. Nor
was it the mere accident of success that enabled him to
assume this position. The northern prophets, whose
career was lighted up by no gleam of present hope, who
were never privileged to take part in a national success,
speak with no less undoubted authority. That the people
whose sins they denounced, and whose speedy fall they
proclaimed, hated and persecuted them, is not singular.
But the persecutors were never able to proceed against
the prophets as impostors, or as mere turbulent revolu
tionaries. The name in which they spoke, the life that
witnessed to their words, inspired respect and even awe
among their bitterest enemies. The explanation of this
fact is not far to seek. It lies not in the person of the
prophet himself, for no historical fact can be clearer than

1 The way in which believing critics, men who acknowledge not only
the supernatural but the miraculous, deal with questions of date and
authorship, is most instructively exemplified in Kamphausen's Lied
Mosis. The arguments employed in that work are not the less interest
ing because the learned author is an admiring disciple of a man who
left a strong personal mark on all his hearers — we refer to the late
lamented Rothe.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 183

that the prophets were men of the most varied character
and capacity. It lies simply in this that what they
spoke, they spoke as the word of Jahveh, the God of
Israel — a name which the rebellious people might often
forget, but never dared to repudiate. We are not entitled
to assume that when the prophets and the people spoke of
Jahveh they had before their minds equally lofty or
equally ethical ideas ; but it is obvious, as Kuenen puts
it, that

" The whole preaching of the prophets would be
unintelligible if we may not assume that their funda
mental positions were generally conceded. The freedom
with which they stand forth in the name of Jahveh,
rebuking, approving, announcing punishment and reward,
is an enigma if they did not stand, with their hearers, on
the common ground of faith in the wholly peculiar relation
of Jahveh to Israel." l

In a word, the historical circumstances of the eighth
century leave no doubt that in that age Jahveh was fully
acknowledged as the ancestral God of Israel — a God whose
authority over His people was so supreme that His servants
and ambassadors stood high above the ministers of all
other gods. This conclusion may seem, perhaps, too
obvious to demand formal statement, yet the consequences
that flow from it are of the weightiest. It is not by a
slow, insensible process that one among many gods can
reach such a pre-eminence. A polytheistic nation has
often gradually chosen out one god for special veneration ;
but here we have one God so elevated above the rest that
the men who, in His name, denounced all other gods as
helpless idols were acknowledged by the idolaters them
selves to be speaking with a name and a power that they
dared not gainsay. Not an inward devotion of heart to
the peculiar tenets of Jahvism, which much rather were
impatiently borne and gladly cast aside, but the feeling
that, by infallible signs, Jahveh had shown Himself a
true God must have lain at the root of this reverence.

1 Godsdienst, 77.

184 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

And such a demonstration of the might of Jahveh the
history supplies in the deliverance from Egypt through
Moses. Of this deliverance the prophets always speak
as the creation of the people. They appeal to the Exodus,
the wilderness journey, the law-giving, the establishment
in Canaan, as undoubted proofs that Jahveh alone is the
God of Israel, and the people silently admit the argument.
Nor can the modern criticism refuse to add its assent. If
the faith in Jahveh did not arise in the days of Moses, no
subsequent crisis in the history can suffice to explain its
origin. The growth of a purely fantastic myth about the
Exodus is infinitely more inexplicable than the truth of
the event.1 That Moses really lived, that he led the
people out of Egypt in the name of Jahveh, that he im
pressed upon his countrymen an imperishable conviction
that to his God they stood in a peculiar indissoluble rela
tion, — in short, in a covenant union which called on their
side for a moral service, and, on the other hand, assured
them of the all-powerful support of the Rock of Israel, is
no longer questioned ; and the universal acquiescence in
this result is due, not to the study of the Pentateuch, in
which Kuenen, for example, acknowledges only the
substance of the Decalogue as properly Mosaic, but to the
critical study of the prophecy of the eighth century.
This result, however, carries us but a little way. A
prophet is more than a worshipper of Jahveh asserting
the ancestral religion against modern corruptions, for his
authority is no less marked over the true worshippers of
the God of Israel. We have seen that the prophet ex
plained his words to himself as the words of Jahveh. So
broadly, as Kuenen has observed, does the seer " dis
tinguish between the inspiration of Jahveh and his own
conceptions that there sometimes arises in him a struggle
between his personal wishes and views and the thoughts
of Jahveh, to which he yields only perforce." 2 How

1 See this fully granted by Kuenen (Godsdienst, p. 121).
2 Onderzoek, ii. 32.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 185

are we to construe to ourselves these remarkable
facts ?

We know that the prophetic revelations were often
associated with visions. May we assume that these
ecstatic or half-conscious states were to the prophet the
stamp of a Divine communication ? In opposition to the
Montanists, the early church answered this question in the
negative. Quite recently a view, closely allied to that of
the Montanists, was revived by Hengstenberg, and has
left no inconsiderable mark on the conservative theology
of Germany. But with the critical school the theory has
found little favour, least of all with those critics whose
decided supernaturalism brings them nearest to the
theological convictions of its author. By far the nearest
approach to Hengstenberg is to be found in the stress
which Kuenen lays upon the prophetic ecstasy. It is,
indeed, clear that the theory of vision leaves the historical
influence of the prophets quite unexplained. That they
did not speak to the people in a state of ecstasy is certain.
Their prophecies bear on every page the stamp of a vigor
ous, healthy, waking life. Their influence lay not in their
words only, but in the force of their whole personality
which everywhere shines through their utterances. " The
true prophet/' to speak with Ewald, " never utters the
word of Jahveh that has come to him until it has become
within him quite clear and certain, a part, as it were, of
his inmost life and thought." The theory of ecstasy is an
attempt to divide the prophet from the prophetic word,
while in truth the peculiar power of men like Amos and
Isaiah lay just in the thoroughness with which the word
of Jahveh filled and elevated the natural personality of
the speaker. This argument assumes slightly different
phases according as the ecstasy is conceived as super
natural or natural. If, as we believe, God really dealt
with Israel in an extraordinary way, entering personally
into the history of the people, it is plain that this super
natural activity must have been so directed as to enter

186 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

into organic unity with the human life of Israel. There
are not in the Old Testament two histories, a Divine and
a human, but one history, in which the Divine agency
never quenches human personality. In the word of
Jahveh, spoken by the prophets, this fusion of the Divine
and human is already complete. The supernatural word
penetrates and quickens, but never suppresses the person
ality of the prophet. Sometimes, as we have just seen,
there arises a contest between the prophet's own desires
and the thoughts of Jahveh. But the end of this contest
is always that the prophet is not only silenced, but
convinced. Now, a supernatural thought that reaches the
prophet in a state of ecstasy has not these qualities. The
dualism of the Divine and human is not yet overcome,
and hence the Divine word has no power to enter directly
as a living factor into history. The theory of ecstasy,
therefore, explains nothing, unless we interpose between
the reception and the utterance of the revelation a living
personal power whereby the prophet makes the Divine
word his own. We must seek the true mark of the
prophet in something higher than passive ecstasy — in the
personal sympathy between himself and Jahveh, by virtue
of which the God-sent thought approves itself to him
inwardly, and not by mere external authority. In this
conclusion lies the key to the position of the believing
school of critics. History deals with persons, not with
things. The historical interest of prophecy does not
lie in tracing a sharp line of separation between the Divine
and human, but in realizing the personal union of these
two factors in the evolution of Israel's history. And so
the prophet presents himself to the critical inquirer, less in
the light of one who is the passive subject of supernatural
influence, than as a man whose life and thoughts are
determined by personal fellowship with Jahveh and by
intelligent insight into his purpose. No doubt what is
personal always rests on a background of the non-personal,
a background of merely physical elements which are

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 187

initially passive under the creative hand of God ; but to
deal with these elements is not the function of historical
inquiry. The limit of personal life is the limit of critical
investigation. By what creative and inexplicable power
God first wrought in the spirit of the prophet that sym
pathy with His own character which is the true character
istic of the prophetic life is a question for the theologian,
not for the historian.

That this way of looking at prophecy is really applicable
and fruitful, will, we hope, be clear even from the very
scanty examples which we have given of the sort of
phenomena that fall to be explained. Perhaps, however,
the clearest illustration of the peculiar attitude of the
prophets to Jahveh is to be drawn from the way in which
they themselves describe their first call to their life work.
What Ewald says on this point is both instructive and
characteristic : —

" No man can be a true prophet of Jahveh till he
has first cast his glance into the full majesty and holiness
of Jahveh Himself, and there has gained such an inner
appreciation of the true eternal life that it now lives on,
firmly grounded within him as his new life. The incipient
prophet must, once for all, become unalterably sure of the
true relation of the world and Jahveh ; gazing in a clear
image on the whole lofty and holy essence of Jahveh, and
feeling himself borne on by Him alone ... he must have
entered wholly, with all his inner powers of work and deed,
into the Divine thoughts, and be so fettered by them for
ever, that in this constraint he has found the truest force
and freedom ; such is the first condition, the true begin
ning of all prophetic activity, the holy consecration and
inner calling, without which no man becomes a true
prophet. . . . When such a prophet undertook a written
book he placed at its head, with just perception, the
description of the holy moment when he first recognised
Jahveh in His true majesty, and felt himself consecrated,
strengthened, called by Him." x

1 Propheten, i. 22, referring to Isa. vi., Jer. i., Ez. i. 52. The attitude of
Kuenen towards these narratives is, as usual, much less sympathetic.
Yet he recognises the narrative of Isa. vi. as recording an actual experi-

i88 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

What Ewald says on this topic could not be said in
the same sense by all members of the critical school ; for
it is manifest that Ewald writes as a believer in prophecy.
He is persuaded that the prophets really did enjoy a
peculiar communion with their God which sharply distin
guished them from their fellow-men, and bestowed upon
them the power of penetrating into eternal truths hid
from their contemporaries. And these eternal truths
are not bare abstract generalisations about God. The
prophet is essentially a seer. His insight into the purpose
of Jahveh takes the form of a spiritual intuition, a clear,
ideal picture of past, present, and future history. The
natural man stands in the midst of a vast and complicated
scene, filled with groups of actors moving to and fro without
unity of order and purpose. Of these actors he is himself
one, but he understands his own destiny as little as that of
others, hurried along as he is by momentary impulses and
necessities. But the prophet has gained the key to this
complex drama. He has seen the Invisible One who
rules all by His irresistible will. He has submitted himself
to that will, and now his own path opens up plainly before
him. But he sees more than this. He sees one plan in
all the movements of history. He does not, indeed,
perceive in full detail how the drama must be carried on ;
but his hold of the plot is so firm, and his comprehension
of the present situation so just, that scene after scene
opens before him in visionary outline leading on to the
great final issue when the purpose of Jahveh shall be fully
accomplished. Thus when Ewald speaks of prophecy
as in the main intuition, rather than pure thought, he is
not thinking of vision in the sense of ecstatic mental
phenomena. The conscious thought of the prophet must
take the form of a shifting series of pictures, all developed
out of the divinely illumined picture of the present which

ence of the prophet, which was decisive in forming his career. In Jer. i.
he recognises a groundwork of fact freely embellished ; in Ezekiel's
vision, hardly even so much as this (Onderzoek, ii. 56, i?3 seq. 262 seq.).

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 189

he is enabled to form by his sympathy with the mind of
Jahveh. This seeing, in truth, is not peculiar to the
prophet. No man can really understand past or present
history unless he has it vividly before him. The real
peculiarity lies in the way in which the prophetic image is
gained by "an effort of the gazing spirit starting from a
definite truth, to represent with more distinctness the
conformation of the future, and to break through the veil
of the unseen." l The starting-point in this construction
is always the relation of the present to the Divinely-
appointed end. And herein lies, according to Ewald, the
practical superiority of prophecy over mere moral teach
ing ; for in pointing the way in which the difficulties of
the present must, according to God's purpose, be resolved,
the prophet points out at the same time the principles of
action which he and his hearers, in following God's will,
are not only bound, but encouraged to make their own.

To Ewald, then, the reality of prophecy is an historical
fact. The prophets really were what they claimed to
be — privileged ambassadors of God. And the proof that
they were so lies not in the supernatural process by which
they received the Divine message, not in the fulfilment of
individual predictions, but in their work as a whole.
That work was true work. It proved itself by its opera
tion in history to be what it professed to be, no mere
natural efflux of the past history and past development of
the people, but a new and living power, the utterance of a
new life, which, because it is a new life, can spring only
from the infinite source of all life. Just at this point of
Ewald's conception there is indeed a certain indistinctness,
which makes it difficult to put his position into words
without saying either too much or too little. The new
life of which Ewald speaks so decidedly has its origin
above the sphere of history. But instead of acknowledg
ing the limits of his sphere, and admitting that history
itself has its beginning in the creative Spirit of God, the

1 Ewald, Propheten, i. 29.

igo LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

historian is often tempted to shade off the boundaries of
history with a deepening haze, losing himself in vague
generalities about the relation of the Divine and human
spirit, couched in terms that might easily be taken to
imply that the mere natural development of man's faculties
brings with it all that gift of fellowship with God which is
the end of history. Thus Ewald himself has been claimed
as a champion of the opinion that there was no specific
difference between Hebrew and heathen prophecy. In
spite of some expressions that might seem to support it,
we do not hesitate to deny the justice of the allegation.
Ewald holds, indeed, with all Protestants, that man, as
created, has the capacity for fellowship with God. But
this capacity is but a germ which lies dead till a Divine
agency calls it into life. All through history this quicken
ing agency works, calling men into a new life of fellowship
with God. Thus there lies in every man the possibility
of becoming a prophet — as, indeed, the prophets them
selves look forward to a time when all men shall see as
fully into the mind of Jahveh as the greatest prophet of
an imperfect dispensation. But the realization of this
possibility is limited to a few. Ewald does not hesitate
to speak of the spiritual religion of Israel as standing in
direct antithesis to heathenism as the true religion. In
the very striking declaration of his faith which stands at
the head of the second edition of the Propheten, he speaks
of the Bible, and the Bible alone, as the mirror in which
we can read all the conditions and stages of the perfect,
true religion, which is necessary for all future generations
of men.1 He has the keenest perception of the historical
significance of Judaism and of Christianity. But the one
question which is not historical — wherein namely the
specific agency of God lies, which so singles out individual
men and an individual nation to do so special a work in
the world — he never seems to have set before him. The
question, of course, is a theological one. On the answer

1 Propheten, iii. 14.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 191

to it depends the whole conception of Divine grace. The
historian is not bound to give the answer, but he ought to
see that such a question does exist.

There is, however, another class of critics, of which
Kuenen is our chosen representative, who with no small
gain in clearness do face this question. They say dis
tinctly that no discriminating Divine grace exists. God
works everywhere, and everywhere in the same sense.
All religion is true, and no religion is perfect. All men are
in true communion with God, but no man is in full com
munion with Him. Thus to Kuenen " the prophecy of
Israel is a product of the religious disposition of the nation
as it developed itself under the guidance of its fortunes
and the continuous influence of God's Spirit. The prophets
are geniuses or heroes in the ethico-religious field, produced
by Israel in the same sense as every nation produces its
great men. They differ from other Semitic prophets in
degree, not in kind. The difference corresponds to the
high superiority of the Israelitish religion, and like the
latter must be explained by the providential co-operation
of national spirit and national history." l The mention
of Providence and of the Spirit of God must not mislead
us, and has not misled Kuenen as to the true nature of
the problem which Hebrew history on such a view presents.
The influence of God's Spirit is not on this theory some
thing over and above national disposition and history.
These alone must give the full explanation of the pheno
mena of prophecy, though we must at the same time
believe that God's hand was in all. Ewald could appeal
to a new life which marked off the prophets, and enabled
them to see truths which no heathen saw ; but the
elements of religious life which are postulated in Kuenen's
construction must be simply those which are common to
all men. Everything over and above this is the product
of natural development, and hence the question between
the positive and negative criticism resolves itself into a

1 Onderzoek, ii. 27.

192 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

plain question of historical fact : Is the prophetical
consciousness the highest fruit of a development common
to the whole people, and reacting on the nation only as the
explicitly stated will always draw out what is only im
plicitly present ? Or is the work of the prophets of a
higher kind — really as well as in expression in advance of
their age, and leading it on to higher and new life ?

The prophets themselves would have accepted this
way of stating the question. All that distinguished
Israel from other nations it has, according to their view,
received at the hand of prophets. " By a prophet," says
Hosea, " Jahveh brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a
prophet he was watched over." l From Kuenen's stand
point such a notion is inconceivable. Moses, he expressly
says, was not a prophet. In truth, prophecy, as a
phenomenon peculiar to the nation of Israel, must, on the
negative theory, only appear after the national character
had reached a very considerable development. To carry
out this view involves a double task. The earliest prophets
whose writings we know appear, as we have seen, not only
as men who did a remarkable work in their age, but as
members of an order to which the people looked for
remarkable work. It is necessary, then, for Kuenen not
merely to explain the extraordinary career of individual
prophets, but to explain the no less singular position of
the prophetic order as a whole. These two tasks separate
pretty widely, insomuch as he does not recognise that all
prophets of the eighth century who really had a right to
claim the name were of the type of Hosea or Isaiah. In
short, it was not by performances analogous to those of
the great spiritual prophets that the prophetic order
gained, according to Kuenen, its recognised position.
To Ewald all prophecy is spiritual, but to Kuenen the
spiritual prophecy of the eighth century is a new develop
ment of a religious phenomenon which originally rested
on a purely physical basis. That basis he finds not

1 Hosea xii. 14 (Ev. 13).

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 193

unclearly indicated in the Hebrew word the most general
designation of the prophets. In opposition to most
scholars,1 who regard this word as an active participle,
denoting one who speaks forth, or interprets, a word en
trusted to him, Kuenen gives to the passive sense of a
man inspired by the Divinity.2

" What Divinity remains undetermined. We hear in
the Old Testament not only of prophets of Jahveh, but of
prophets of Baal and Ashera. The person who is seized
and breathed into by the Godhead falls into ecstasy ;
either into so strong a transport that he wholly loses his
self-possession, utters sounds without clear consciousness,
and even resembles a madman, or, it may be, simply into
an excited condition, in which he expresses with emphasis
and enthusiasm the testimony of the Godhead in his inner
man." 3

It is because history shows no trace that Moses ever was
subject to this species of frenzy that Kuenen denies to him
the name of prophet.

The psychological phenomena which, according to this
view, are the physical bases of prophecy, are unquestion
ably associated with a sickly state. The arguments
which forbade us to find in a supernatural ecstasy the
true essence of prophecy, apply to such a state with double
force. It is hard to believe that the life of Isaiah, in whom
Kuenen himself recognises a religious hero — a life every
where inspired by the noblest and clearest spiritual
impulses — can have anything in common with mental
disease. It is, in fact, not quite plain how far Kuenen
supposes the ecstatic state to have characterised the later
prophets. In the very latest prophets — as, for example,
in Ezekiel — he is disposed to ascribe almost everything to
sober thought. But in general a greater or less measure
of ecstasy appears to him the only assumption that

1 Ewald, Propheten, i. 7 ; Baur, Gesch. 381 ; Fleischer in Delitzsch's
Genesis, p. 634 seq., may suffice as examples.

2 Onderzoek, ii. 3. Compare the long note to chap. iii. of the
Godsdienst.

3 Godsdienst, 187 seq.

13

194 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

accounts for the prophet's firm conviction that he speaks,
not his own words, but the words of Jahveh. It was the
belief of the age that Jahveh did exercise an immediate
influence in nature. Hence mental phenomena really
natural could honestly be ascribed to Him by men unable
to trace their origin. It naturally followed that visions
and dreams were viewed as desirable, and this very desire
operated to make them more common. Yet, on the
other hand, Kuenen seems to allow that with the greatest
prophets visions were not very frequent. The operation
of a single ecstasy occurring at a decisive moment of life,
might produce upon the prophet the impression of a
consecration to Jahveh which would give him confidence
to speak as His messenger during all his future life. But
how was it possible that a whole class of men could come
to be characterised by ecstasy ? How could such a
phenomenon attain such a measure of organization as to
become identified with a peculiar function in society ?
The origin of prophecy, answers Kuenen, falls in the
days of Samuel.1 Before his time the " seers " of Israel
were little different from vulgar sooth- say ers. The
prophetic ecstasy was associated, not with Jahvism, but
with Canaanite nature- worship, to which indeed, in the
period of the Judges, the Hebrews had no formed aversion;
but towards the end of that period a more hostile attitude
sprung up between the Hebrew invaders and the old
population. In the religious sphere this hostility appears
in the rise of the Nazarites, of whom Samson is the type,
and whose simple and austere life betokens a reaction
against the sensual worship of the Canaanites. Such a
reaction was not without its historical justification ; for
though, according to Kuenen, Jahveh was to Moses still a
nature-god, of whom fire and light were the essence, and

1 The less negative criticism, on the other hand, makes Samuel the
founder, not of prophecy, but of the prophetic order. ' ' Before Samuel, ' '
says the latest writer on this point, " prophecy had no special determin
ate form, no enduring position among the powers of the state."
(Schultze, Alttestamentliche Theologie, i. p. 151 ; Frankfurt, 1869.)

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 195

not merely the symbol, it is yet plain that the relation of
Israel to this God, was conceived by him in such a sense
as to give a strong impulse to national monotheism.

Of the monotheistic party, Samuel became the leader.
By his national and religious zeal, the danger of an
absorption of Jahvism in the Canaanite religions was for
ever set aside ; but this success was accomplished, not by
following in the steps of the Nazarites, but by the assimila
tion of a Canaanite element. In the prophetic ecstasy,
Samuel saw an instrument worthy of adoption by his party.
He enlisted this peculiar enthusiasm in the service of
Jahveh, and he did so with enormous effect. A school of
prophets was formed at Ramah, in which, by the use of
music and by a sort of psychical infection, the ecstatic state
was rendered chronic. But in this school Samuel ruled all.

;< The enthusiasm which, left to itself, might easily
have led to all manner of excesses, was confined within
definite bounds, and made serviceable to the maintenance
of Jahvism. The seer accustomed to practical efforts,
the statesman whose eye was opened to the great neces
sities of his nation, laid his hand, as it were, on the
awakened enthusiasm, and forced it to co-operate towards
the mark at which he aimed." l

From this time prophecy and the prophetic schools had
an acknowledged place in Israel ; but towards the age of
Amos they had lost much of their vigour and influence.
Their original enthusiasm had worked itself out and gave
place to artificial stimulation. Then it was that a new
kind of prophecy arose, not formed in the prophetic
schools, but drawing its inspiration "from the same source
from which these societies had originally sprung, from the
enthusiasm that appeared among the people without
artificial stimulation, as the fruit of their religion."
Prophets like Amos and his successors appeared as
ambassadors of Jahveh, without special preparation, just
because they heard within them His call to the prophetic
life.

1 Godsdienst, p. 192.

196 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

We cannot here criticise in detail the historical assump
tions of this ingenious theory ; but it is important to
consider what species of religious feeling is consistent with
such a kind of prophecy. If we seek a historical parallel
for Kuenen's Samuel, we can hardly fail to think of
Loyola. The " exercitia " of the Jesuits are the modern
counterpart of the disciplined enthusiasm of Kuenen's
scheme. Was it, in truth, a religious spirit of this kind
that did such marvels in Israel ? The theory, indeed, has
not one particle of plausibility without the assumption
that we have no records of the earlier prophecy which
have not been strongly coloured by the more advanced
religious views of a later age. And even if we allow the
theorist, on the strength of this assumption, to evacuate
whole centuries of Old Testament history of almost all
their moral earnestness, the exigencies of the negative
school are not half met. Can we evolve the life-work of
the newer prophets from the categories of natural religious
feeling, physical enthusiasm, national temperament,
historical circumstances ? To gain even a show of
plausibility for such an attempt, the critic is forced
everywhere to look away from the noble spirituality, the
lofty comprehensiveness of view, which he cannot deny
to the prophets, and seek by a petty pragmatism to bring
out into exaggerated prominence the limitations of their
natural and religious convictions. Not even in so great
a crisis as the fall of Sennacherib, can he afford to look
at the grand and instructive side of the history. Every
where his eye is directed to discover some inexactness
in the fulfilment of a prediction, some natural method by
which the fulfilment might have been foreseen or brought
about, forgetful how completely the facts forbid us to
identify the foresight of a prophet with the calculations of
a man of the world, and how often we are able not only
to say that certain predictions were made and fulfilled,
but in some measure to lay bare the Divine process by
which the prophet came to make them.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 197

But the justice of Kuenen's views may be tested on
other ground than these points of detail. The great
question is, after all, to explain the origin in Israel of the
spiritual conceptions of the prophets. Let us briefly
sketch Kuenen's theory on this point.

Moses, as we have already seen, is not conceived as the
upholder of a spiritual Jahvism. The children of Israel,
in the times of Egyptian servitude, were, according to
Kuenen, polytheists of no high type. Of their many gods
one was an object of special veneration, a consuming fire-
god, nearly allied to the Canaanitish Moloch, who bore
the name of El Shaddai— the " mighty " or " violent god."
Moses, a man of strong religious and national spirit,
shared the faith of his brethren in an intenser form. The
contest between Israel and Egypt seemed to him a war
between the native gods of the oppressors and the majestic
Fire God of his own people. He felt himself entrusted by
El Shaddai with a mission to deliver his people. Associ
ated with this mission was the introduction of the name
Jahveh, by which Moses sought to express a new and
higher conception of the God, probably his life-going
power. The course of history could not fail to strengthen
the religious convictions of the leader of Israel. The God
who had delivered Israel was too great a God to suffer any
rival. Let Israel worship Him, and Him alone ! Thus
viewed, the monotheism of Moses is neither absolute nor
spiritual. Yet one important step towards the separation
between God and nature Moses must be conceived as
having taken. He brought Jahvism into union with
moral ideas.

;< The enduring merit of Moses was, not that he intro
duced into Israel certain religious forms and services, but
that he established among his people a moral worship of
Jahveh. ' I will be to you a God, and ye shall be to me a
people ' : so speaks Jahveh, by the mouth of Moses, to
the tribes of Israel. The union between Jahveh and his
folk sealed by the deliverance from bondage, is secured

198 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

by this, that the ark, the dwelling of Jahveh,1 accompanies
the Israelites during the wandering, and afterwards is set
up in their midst. . . . But, on the other hand, the people
must remain true to the conditions of the covenant with
Jahveh. The chief of these conditions are moral. Jahveh
is distinguished from other gods by deserving to be served,
not only by offerings and feasts, but, in the first place,
by the following of the moral commands, which make up
the main contents of ' the ten words.' " 2

But was this great step a fruit of natural development ?
Yes, according to our author. The Israelites indeed were,
before Moses, in a very low stage of development. But
Moses was educated as an Egyptian, and in Egypt ethics
were developed in connection with religion to no incon
siderable extent. The revulsion of feeling which Moses
undoubtedly experienced against Egyptian religion might
not extend to this sphere. On the religion of his own
fathers he engrafted the moral ideas of the Egyptian
priests. There is surely something violent in this hypo
thesis. If, as Kuenen is persuaded, Moses borrowed
absolutely nothing from the religion of Egypt, could he
have looked on Egyptian moral teaching in a more
favourable light ? Or again, if he valued the ethics of
the Egyptian priests so highly, could he ever have become
such an enemy of their gods ? And yet we are to believe
that the monotheism of Moses was based on his persuasion
that Jahveh had covered these gods with the shame of a
crushing defeat ! Once more, why did the Egyptian
ethics remain without advance while the same teaching,
brought over to a much less cultivated nation, bore fruits
so remarkable ?

So far is Kuenen from ascribing to Moses a truly
creative influence, that he tells us that " what distinguished
Moses from his people remained the personal property of
himself and a few kindred spirits ; the popular way of
thought assimilated only so much as was reconcilable with

1 According to Kuenen, Jahveh was thought by Moses really to
dwell between the Cherubim.

2 Godsdienst, p. 289.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 199

itself." Most Israelites probably remained blind to the
real difference between the Jahveh of Moses and their old
god. They still continued to worship other gods, though
they never quite lost hold of the idea of a peculiar moral
covenant between Israel and Jahveh. We have seen how
Kuenen connects Samuel with a revival of Mosaic ideas.
From the time of this revival, we are told, Jahvism grew
steadily but slowly. But Jahveh was not yet a spiritual
God. The steer -worship of Jeroboam, though a retro
gression from Solomon's temple- worship, was not incon
sistent with the conceptions of Jahveh that prevailed
even among the prophets. The continual struggle of the
true prophets against the idolatrous Jahveh worship of
Bethel and Dan, depicted in the Book of Kings, is rejected
by our author as a fable. Jehu, he urges, could not have
upheld the steer- worship against the wishes of the prophets,
who raised him to the throne. In one word, the prophets
of the tenth century had not yet reached that spiritual
view of God which Ewald, Hitzig, and the whole weight of
German critics ascribe without hesitation to Moses and
himself. Towards the end of the tenth century, Ahab
ascended the northern throne, and influenced by his
Tyrian queen, though he did not forswear Jahvism,
favoured and endowed the worship of Baal. The prophets
of Jahveh were jealous of the innovation, and did not
hesitate to express their displeasure in a way that trans
formed the naturally liberal Ahab into a persecutor.
The struggle lasted for many years, till Jehu, the champion
of Jahvism, overthrew the dynasty of Ahab and extin
guished the worship of Baal. But the contest had left
deep marks on the national faith. Jahvism had gained
in the bloody struggle a deeper and more spiritual char
acter. How great must that God be than to forsake
whom it was better to die ! Not by calm arguments, but
by passionately earnest thought, the persecuted Jahvists
learned to contrast their God with all other gods in a way
they had never done before. And then, when at length

200 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

Baal was overthrown, there was no return of national
prosperity ; Jahveh had delivered his people into the
hand of Hazael, not because He was weak, but because
He was angry — angry that even for a time His people
had thought of other gods. Now, the moral attributes of
Jahveh already furnished a basis for a deep distinction
between Him and other gods. And so earnest worshippers
began more and more to lay weight on this side of his
character, and dropped the natural basis of the old
religion, in order to realize more fully the deep separation
between the God of Israel and all heathen gods.

It was not in the prophetic schools that these new ideas
rose. The movement went on in the heart of the nation,
especially among the simple nomadic families from whom,
for example, Amos sprung. And thus it was that the
great thoughts were ripened which burst forth in the new
prophecy of the eighth century.

For this theory, Kuenen does not claim to have
historical proof. He gives it as the only plausible method
of explaining the advance in religious conceptions between
the tenth and eighth centuries. We cannot regard it as a
happy theory. Everywhere it reverses the order of cause
and effect. It is true that only spiritual views of God
could agree with a faith shaken neither by persecution
nor by national misfortune. But surely, these views
must have been already present to the men who suffered
so much, not for leave to worship Jahveh, but to escape
tolerating Baal beside Him. And when Baal fell, and
misfortune, not prosperity, followed, could aught but
spiritual faith have resisted the argument that the wrath
of Baal was stronger than the favour of Jahveh ?

We do not care to develop these objections. The
whole theory, ingenious as it is, bears with it not only its
own condemnation, but the condemnation of the principle
on which it rests. That is not a true historical criticism
which does not acknowledge in history a higher element
than the merely natural.

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 201

It is from a criticism that has learned this lesson, that
can approach the weighty problems of prophecy from the
human side without ignoring the hand of God, that we
look for real fruit. Already, indeed, the results of such a
criticism extend through the whole field of prophecy, and
are ignored by no school of theologians.1 Readers of last
year's Bampton Lectures cannot have failed to observe
how great an influence recent inquiry into the Old Testa
ment from the human side has exerted on a theologian
so little disposed as Dr. Payne Smith to do homage to the
spirit of criticism, or to yield to the temptations by which
even believing Continental thought is so readily beset.

The way in which the fundamental ideas, which are now
the common property of the more positive criticism, are
grasped and developed by believing inquiry, may be best
illustrated by a few brief extracts from the third of our
typical books — Gustav Baur's careful and learned History
of Old Testament Prophecy, unhappily still unfinished : —

" The peculiar interest of the Old Testament prophecies
is due, purely, to their connection with the greatest fact
in the world-history, the appearance of Christianity, and
to the question, Have they found their fulfilment in
Christianity or not ? . . . The religion of Israel stands to
Christianity in the relation of its nearest positive prepara
tion, and as the true sense of a riddle cannot be understood
till its answer is known, so the full understanding of Old
Testament prophecy is only possible from the Christian
standpoint. . . . We are willing that our standpoint
should be called theological, if it is only conceded that,

1 Our limits forbid us to dwell on detailed results of critical investiga
tion. Many questions of Prophecy are so difficult, whether approached
critically or theologically, that we must thankfully accept the smallest
additional insight into them. But almost all these questions have
gained something from critical treatment. We may refer in particular
to the subject of prediction, which critics have sometimes treated
rather lightly, but which has again begun to receive the attention it
deserves. The Essays of Bertheau, in the Jahrbucher fur Deutsche
Theologie (1859-60), in which a most interesting attempt is made to
define the conditional element in prediction, while the results of this
inquiry are applied to the long -vexed chiliastic problems, deserve
special mention.

202 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868-

without so much of the theological attitude, a thorough
historical understanding of the Old Testament is impossible,
while, on the other hand, we gladly admit that a theo
logical conception is good for nothing which violates the
fact and laws of history. From this side, too, the under
standing of prophecy has suffered much, especially at the
hands of the restored traditional exposition, which in
the Protestant Church, at least, has no right to claim the
name of Churchly. If Revelation is really Revelation,
not unintelligible dead communication, if the faith that
grasps it is to be a living faith, the human spirit must
be prepared for its reception ; and such a preparation
must obey the law of continuity. ... To seek the New
Testament fulfilment in the Old Testament preparation,
or to seek in the New Testament the fulfilment of every
single hope that grew up on the always limited Old Testa
ment ground, is to rob oneself of the possibility of gaining
a true insight into the wondrous course of Revelation."

From this point, prophecy appears to Baur as the " hope
and ever more and more distinct conception of the most
perfect religious relation, which developed itself out of the
consciousness of the insufficiency of the Old Testament
standpoint." But this development is no merely natural
one, but due to a new principle of life implanted by
revelation in the natural God-consciousness through the
medium of a pre-eminent personality. Thus Abraham is
to Baur the first recipient of the Divine revelation that is
peculiar to Israel. But this one creative impulse was not
enough. In Egypt, Israel must undergo a second birth,
not by mere natural development, but again through the
creative force of the personality of Moses. With Moses
appeared the Covenant and the Law, and from the Law
prophecy in the strict sense grew. Left to mere nature,
the Divine principles laid down in the Law must soon have
died out. But the prophets, who themselves were pene
trated with the truths of the Law, continually stirred up
the religious life of their countrymen by reassertion of the
principle of the Old Testament religion. In the discharge
of this task, they learned to know the imperfection as well
as the divineness of the Law, and so were led ever more

i87o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 203

and more clearly to look forward to a yet future salvation
in which all these imperfections should be supplied.

With this outline of Baur's position we may appropri
ately close, for it shows more clearly than any comment
of ours could do the attitude in which, on the whole, not
one writer only, but the great mass of believing critics,
stand toward the question of Old Testament prophecy.
And may we not say that such an attitude, if still far from
thoroughly consistent and complete, at least holds forth
the hope of no mean advance in the study of a part of
human history which, in deep and enduring interest, is
second only to the history of the earthly life of Him to
whom all prophecy points.

Ill

EARLY ABERDEEN LECTURES

(1870-1874)

I. WHAT HISTORY TEACHES us TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE.
(Nov. 1870.)

II. EXTRACTS FROM VARIOUS LECTURES. (1870-72.)
III. THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. (Jan. 1871.)

IV. THE PLACE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN RELIGIOUS
INSTRUCTION. (Sept. 1871.)

V. INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ON THE PSALMS. (1872.)

I

WHAT HISTORY TEACHES US TO SEEK IN
THE BIBLE

Ax a time when one school of theologians is loudly calling
upon us to study Scripture in subordination to the
teachings, and in accordance with the methods, of the
Old Catholic Church, while another school, no less eagerly,
proclaims that he only can understand the Bible who
wholly abandons every theological standpoint, it will, I
think, be not amiss that we should begin our winter work
by endeavouring to gain a clear idea of the way in which
the great principles of the Reformation, which must guide
all our studies, bear upon the sciences that aim at a just
interpretation and appreciation of Scripture. Let us
try to understand how the defective hermeneutic and the
unhistorical exegesis of the pre-Reformation Church were
bound up with defects not less glaring in the Old Catholic
representation of the first principles of Christianity ;
and how, on the other hand, the truer conception of the
essential nature of the Christian faith, to which the
Reformation awoke, contained within it, at least im
plicitly, the necessary principles of all true Criticism and
Exegesis.

Every one is familiar with the fact that the Reforma
tion vindicated for Scripture the place of the highest,
the only theological authority, over-against the traditions
of men and the decrees of the Church. At first sight this
principle appears to possess a purely negative character.

207

208 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

It seems even, viewed as a distinctive principle, to be
subordinate in importance, and to contain no very
pointed antithesis, to the doctrine of the Roman Church.
For in general, the recognised teachers of the Church
admitted the supremacy of Scripture. " Our faith,"
says Thomas, " rests on the revelation made to the
Prophets and Apostles who wrote the canonical books,
not on such revelations as may have been made to other
teachers " (Summa, i. i).

It was not till the Council of Trent that the Roman
Church expressed the full co-ordination with Holy
Scripture of traditiones sine scripto. Accordingly, the
early Protestants were not conscious of being on this
head in antagonism to the voice of the Church. The
Augustan Confession and the Smalcald Articles contain
no discussion of the authority of Scripture ; and when,
among the abuses to be removed, human traditions are
enumerated, these are not spoken of as authorities
formally set up against the Bible, but are condemned on
their material side as burdening consciences and pointing
out false ways of coming to peace with God.1 Not till
the days of the Epigoni did the Lutheran Church feel it
necessary to lay down at the head of the Formula Con-
cordiae the position that Scripture is " the only rule and
standard by which all dogmas and all teachers must be
valued and judged " (A.D. 1580). In the Reformed
Churches the need of an express symbolical statement
as to the place of Scripture was sooner felt. So early as
1536 the Helvetica prior declares that " canonic Scrip
ture, the word of God, the most perfect and ancient of all
philosophies, alone contains perfectly all piety, and the
whole rule of life " ; 2 and the subsequent Confessions of
France, Holland, Scotland, etc., follow this example.
But in the Helvetic Confession, as in the Lutheran

1 Conf. Aug., p. i, Art. xv. ; Artt. Smalc. p. 3, Art. xv.

2 Art. i. — Scriptura Canonica, verbum Dei, omnium perfectissima et
antiquissima philosophia, pietatem omnem, omnem vitae rationem, sola
perfecte continet, — Niemeyer, pp. 105, 115.

i874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 209

standards, the antithesis lies not between Scripture and
Tradition, as mere formal authorities, but between
Scripture as revealing God's goodwill to us, in Christ
Jesus, to be received by faith alone (Art. 5), and human
Traditions that lead us away from God and true faith.
That it was from this material side that the Swiss, no
less than the Saxon, churches first contemplated the
antithesis of Scripture and Tradition, we see clearly from
the Zurich articles of 1523, where value, independent of
the Church, and pre-eminent over all other doctrine, is
assigned, not to Scripture, but to the Evangelium, whose
sum is " that our Lord Christ Jesus, very Son of God,
has revealed to us the will of the Heavenly Father, and
with his innocence has redeemed us from death, and
reconciled us to God." l

You see then that the motive of the Reformers, in all
their symbolical utterances as to Scripture, was not the
theological motive of a desire to lay down more sharply
the nature of the authority to which Christian teaching
appeals, but the religious motive of a determination to
assert the divinely revealed way of salvation against the
corruptions and additions of men. I do not suppose that
the Roman Church would have objected to an attempt
to define more exactly the relative authority of Scripture
and Tradition. That question indeed was not new, and,
so long as men continued to be convinced that Scripture
and Ecclesiastical Tradition taught the same doctrines,
could not be regarded as dangerous. The theologians of
the Church, though practically their method of reasoning
put the Bible into a very secondary place, had no sus
picion that they were dealing unfairly with it. It is
most instructive to observe how Luther, in his earliest
polemical writings, appeals to Scripture with the fullest
confidence that in so doing he is following a line of argu-

1 Artt. i, 2, cf. Zwingli, Uslegenund Griind der Artikel.—(Werke, ed.
1828, i. 175 sqq.)

210 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [fo

ment which no one can challenge.1 The new and deeper
conception of the Gospel, which he had drawn from
Scripture, could not possibly be heresy. And on this
ground the earliest antagonists of the Reformation were
content in great measure to take their stand. They
conceived themselves able to meet Scripture with Scrip
ture. But now it became manifest that the two parties
had very different conceptions of Scripture proof. To
Luther, the Scripture, as a whole, was clear, transparent,
one consistent unity. His opponents treated it as a
collection of fragments. If Luther had a text on his
side, they had a text on theirs. The whole question, so
far as the appeal to Scripture went, reduced itself to a
balancing of texts or interpretations, in which everything
seemed involved in an uncertain flux, unless the inter
pretations were backed up by the authority of the Fathers
and the Church. And so we find Luther urging, on the
one hand, the eternal consistency and unchangeableness
of God's Word, and on the other complaining bitterly
of the way in which his opponents read God's Word,
dealing with it, as he says of Tetzel, " like a sow
with a bag of oats," i.e. grubbing in it blindly and
unintelligently, seeking only what may serve their own
profane uses.2

Soon, indeed, the superior freedom and power of
Luther's use of Scripture became manifest even to his
opponents. All, he complains, who wrote against him
were afraid of Scripture, knowing well their own ignor
ance of it, and therefore using every manoeuvre to reach
a position in which they should not be compelled to
attack him with Scripture proofs, or receive the blows
which he, armed with Scripture, aimed at them.3 The

1 So, for example, in the Protestation at the end of the Wittenberg
Theses, the " Freiheit des Sermons vom Ablass," etc.

2 " Freiheit des Sermons," etc. (Werke, ed. Irmischer, vol. 27, p. 13).
Cf. the answer to Emser (xii. in Irmischer, vol. 27), especially " v. d.
bleiernen Degen Emsers," p. 243.

3 Compare the similar complaints of Zwingli. — Werke, i. 77.

1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 211

natural issue of these tactics was the decree of Trent,
which, for the first time, formally denied to the Bible
supremacy over Tradition.

It is plain, then, that the divergence of view as to the
authority of Scripture, which gradually became more
distinct as the contest between Rome and the Reforma
tion went on, really springs from the fact that the Re
formers had got a new way of looking at the Bible, a way
that enabled them to find in Scripture a living and
powerful Gospel, enunciated with a clearness and fulness
of which their opponents had no idea ; and that made
the Bible in their hands a weapon that could be wielded
for defence or attack with a readiness and effect that
were new to the Church and to Theology. If Scripture
has a higher place in the Reformed than in the Roman
Church, it is because the Reformation has learned to
wield it better, because it for the first time showed how
the bow of Ulysses must be bent.

But in order thoroughly to comprehend what we owe
to the Reformation in this sphere, we must look back to
the way in which the Bible was handled in the earlier
ages of the Church.

In the last generation no point of theology has been
discussed with keener interest than the nature and origin
of the Old Catholic Church. Whatever these discussions
have left unexplained, it can no longer be questioned
that the Old Catholic Christianity deviated from the
first from the apostolic model.

It has been shown that the main source of this decad
ence lay in the incapacity of the Gentile Christians to
understand the Old Testament ideas on which the teaching
of Christ and His Apostles was built.1 The Old Catholic
Church was concerned on the one hand to maintain
against the Gnostics that the Old Testament is a Divine
revelation, and therefore canonic for the Christian Church,
and on the other hand to assert against the Jews the

1 See Ritschl, Die Entstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche (ed. 2).

212 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

superiority of the Christian standpoint, as that to which
the whole Old Testament pointed, the rights of the
Christian Church as the true Israel of God. But a true
historical sense of the organic connection between the
Old and New Testaments was altogether lacking. The
Apostles had lived under the Old Testament. Their own
experience witnessed to them the nature of the new
things brought in by Christianity. If not in the shape of
an explicit historical theory, yet in the form of deep
personal experience, they did understand how the New
Testament was rooted in the Old, and grew out of it by a
process of true development. The early post -apostolic
teachers had no such experience, and did not feel the need
of supplying its lack by a historical study of the Old
Testament. They approached the Old Testament (which
you must remember was, until the formation of the New
Testament Canon, Scripture in an exclusive sense) with
no further guide than the general principle that Christ
and Christian truth was everywhere the true substance
of what they read. Reading mainly with a view to
practical edification and purposes of exhortation, they
were content to believe that they had understood a
passage so soon as they could in any way detect in it a
meaning that bore on Christian truth or Christian life.
What the Scriptures had taught to the men of the old
covenant it was not necessary to ask ; God's meaning
at least is unchangeable, and that meaning is revealed
in Christ.1 That in the Old Testament, for paedagogic
ends, the eternal truth was wrapped up in obscure forms,
seemed a matter of no special interest to Christians ;
their business was only to pierce through the letter to the
spirit that lay within, and which was precisely the same
as the spiritual truth of the New Testament, both in the
intention of the inspiring Spirit and in the apprehension
of the inspired writer. You see that this theory is
intelligible only on the supposition that the essence of
1 Cf. Justin. Dial. c. Tryph. cap. 90, 92, etc.

i874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 213

Christianity lies in a series of formulae expressing eternal
abstract truths or unchanging principles of morality,
which before the time of Christ were obscurely revealed,
but which He, in His quality of the great Prophet and
Lawgiver of His people, set forth clearly. No room was
left for a recognition of the fact that salvation is made
possible to man not merely by a revelation of Divine
truth, but by an exertion of Divine power — by a historical
work of redemption : that the Old Testament dispensa
tion prepared the way for Christ, not by the enunciation
of theoretical dogmas, but by the actual manifestation in
a long miraculous history of a special redemptive activity ;
and that Christ Himself was incarnate, died, and rose
again, not merely to announce Divine truths, but to
complete the Divine work begun in the former dispensa
tion. It was impossible to ignore the meaning of the
Old Testament history, and yet to understand the
historical position and work of Christ, or to appreciate
the historical ground on which the Apostles stand in
their delineations of Christianity. The life and work of
Christ, even the resurrection, to which in Paul's teaching
justifying faith stands in so direct a relation, sink into
the background, and the Saviour appears simply (I quote

from Origen, Prin. 4, 156) as o eiV^yryn)? TWI/ Kara
XptcrTLavicr/Jibv (TWTTJ/HWV Soy/xariov — dogmas which, COnsist-

ing partly of truths to be believed, and partly of a law
to be obeyed, become saving to us if we give an intellectual
assent to the regula fidei, and submit our lives to the new
Law of Christ. In a word, the Church was speedily cut
off from all historical appreciation of Revelation and
Redemption, became unable to grasp in their fulness the
deepest teachings of the Gospel, and was thrown back
on an unhistorical intellectualism, that found its ex
pression in a neonomian theology and an allegorical
exegesis.

The allegorical exegesis was not the invention of the
Old Catholic Church. It had already been applied to

214 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

the Old Testament by the Hellenistic Jews, in their
efforts to force into harmony the abstract speculations
of the Greek philosophers and the living concrete truths
of Jehovah's personal dealings with His people. It was,
indeed, the only system of exegesis which was in natural
harmony with the spirit of Hellenic philosophy, which
always moved by preference in a region apart from
the wants of common humanity, and inevitably tended
to a one-sided exaltation of the eternal, unchangeable,
unhistorical voiV The Christian Church was urged
towards the same exegesis by many causes : the desire
to draw from every verse of Scripture a direct practical
application to Christian duty — the perception that in
Old Testament prophecy much is really symbolical — the
necessity of finding an answer to the Jewish objection
that many prophecies were in no proper sense fulfilled
in Christ. But after all, the real reason why men failed
rightly to understand the record of redemption, was
because they had no true comprehension of the work of
redemption. The theological conception of Christianity
as a new law did justice neither to the Christian con
sciousness of personal union to Christ nor to the historical
facts of Christ's work. It was impossible to interpret
Scripture rightly so long as men sought in it for what it
did not contain, — for a system of abstract intellectual
truth instead of a Divine history of God's workings
among mankind, and in men's hearts, to set up on earth
the kingdom of heaven. Meantime the theological
authority of Scripture was fully acknowledged as supreme.2
The words of the Old Testament writers, equally with
those of the incarnate Saviour, are the words and doctrine
of Christ, from which alone the faithful gain the wisdom

1 We need only call to mind the interpretation of an ode of Simonides,
given by Socrates in the Protagoras, c. 26 sqq., to see how thoroughly
prone the Greek culture was to spiritualizing exegesis.

2 Origen, Prin. iv. 156 Rue, KOIVO.I Zvvoiai and evdpyeia rCjv

are not sufficient. Therefore 7rpo<77rapa\a/u/3d^o^ej' /jLctprvpLo. TU>V
v ifuf elvai

1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 215

that incites to a good and blessed life.1 It is only to the
ignorant that the supernaturalness of the thoughts [T&
v-rep avfipuTTov TW i/ vo?//xaTwv] does not manifest itself in
every letter.2 These and similar utterances ascribe to
Scripture not less, but more than its due ; for they give
to an intellectual assent to the doctrines of Scripture
the power to mould man's life without any direct personal
relation to Christ. More or less unambiguously they
make Scripture not an avenue to approach to Christ,
but in and by itself a Divine phenomenon magically
endued in every letter with saving treasures of wisdom
and knowledge. But this high perfection belongs to
Holy Writ, not in its obvious sense,3 but in virtue of the
higher unhistorical sense. Now the heretics also pro
fessed to find in Scripture spiritual mysteries favouring
their system. Nor could it be said that their way of
exegesis was radically worse than much of the inter
pretation practised in the Church. Both parties alike
were seeking in Scripture a kind of truth that it is not
meant to teach, and so neither could be convinced of
error by arguments strictly hermeneutical. But if it
was vain to suppose that a criticism of methods could
distinguish the true sense of Scripture from the false,
there must at least be a standard to try results. And
therefore (again to quote Origen), " cum multi sint qui
se putant sentire quae Christi sunt, et nonnulli eorum
diversa a prioribus sentiant, servetur vero ecclesiastica
praedicatio per successionis ordinem ab apostolis
tradita et usque ad praesens in ecclesia permanens : ilia
sola credenda est veritas quae in nullo ab ecclesiastica
et apostolica discordat traditione." Accordingly, when

1 Or. Prin. i. 47 Rue.

2 Or. ut supra, 162.

3 " Forrnae enim," says Origen (Prin. i. 4, 8), "sunt haec quae
descripta sunt sacramentorum quorundam, et divinarum rerum
imagines. De quo totius ecclesiae una sententia est, esse quidem
omnem legem ( = Scripture from context) spiritualem : non tamen
ea quae spirat lex esse omnibus nota, nisi his solis quibus gratia Spiritus
S. in verbis sapientiae ac scientiae condonatur."

216 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

Origen lays down in the fourth book of the TTC/H 'Apxwv
the laws of interpretation which, in their essential points,
became normative for the whole ancient Church, he sets
forth as the starting-point of his whole theory the three
positions : that Scripture is Divinely inspired ; that
interpretation must follow the ecclesiastical canon ; and
that in Holy Scripture certain mystic dispensations are
made manifest (p. 166 Rue). On these bases Origen
erects his famous distinction of a triple sense in Scripture,
—the flesh or literal sense, the soul or moral sense, the
spirit or intelligible and heavenly sense. Everywhere
the principal aim of the Spirit had reference to the
" ineffable mysteries of matters concerning mankind "

[aTTopprjTa p.v(rri']pio. TWV Kara rov<$ dvOptoTrovs irpa.yu<iruv\.

This sense alone was continuous through Scripture, and
so carried out that a teachable mind throwing itself into
the depths of the intelligible sense could fathom all the
higher truths [Soy/xara] of the Divine counsel (172).
True, it is a special mark of God's power and wisdom,
that in many parts of Scripture these spiritual truths are
wrapped up in "a not unprofitable " shell of history,
capable of benefiting many of weaker capacity (173) ;
but, allegorizing after Hermas (169), Origen speaks of
those who understand this sense only as orphans who
cannot call God their Father, widows not yet worthy of
the Bridegroom. Nay, often the literal sense is im
possible, absurd, immoral, and this designedly even in
the New Testament, lest cleaving to the letter alone
men should remain at a distance from the Soy/mra, and
learn nothing worthy of God (173).

On the whole, as I have said, these principles of Origen
became normal for the Church, and their influence was
scarcely diminished by the condemnation afterwards
pronounced on the peculiarly bold system of Christian
philosophy which Origen himself evolved by their aid.
How far they were accepted in the Western Church, even
in the school which in its conception of Christianity

i874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 217

departed most widely from the intellectualism of the
Greek fathers, and anticipated most fully much of the
Reformation theology, may be readily judged by reference
to Augustin's hermeneutical treatise de Fide Christiana.
Augustin, like Origen, appeals to the regula fidei as the
highest criterion of interpretation, as containing the
compass of the res which the signa in the Scriptures
must unfold. Under the signa, again, he includes not
words only as logical signs, but the literal sense of a
passage whenever it does not enounce a spiritual truth
(cf. i. 2, iii. 5, etc.). On the other hand, Augustin gives to
Scripture a more practical character than Origen, inso
much as the heavenly things with which it is busied are
conceived not as mere philosophemes, but as res qua
fruendum est, that is God Himself, whom we are enabled
to enjoy if we hold fast the Christian precepts of faith,
hope, and love (i. 39). Thus the end of the law and
of all Scripture (i. 35) is the love of God, whom it is our
end to enjoy, and of the fellow-men who can enjoy
Him along with us. And manifestly this end is often
served by the literal sense. So we are not always to
look for an allegorical interpretation, but only to re
member that " whatever has no proper bearing on the
rule of life or the verity of faith, must be recognised as
figurative."

It is easy to see that in these rules a much deeper
Christianity than that of Origen is struggling more than
half unconsciously with the radical defects of view
common to the whole ancient Church. Christianity is
still a law — the law of faith, hope, and love. The
historical sense is valuable not as history of Redemption,
but as inculcating the Christian law. For manifestly
there can be no true recognition of the historic in Scripture,
where it is held that almost every narrative of the Old
Testament has a figurative as well as a literal meaning,
that the same truths may be expressed indifferently in
letter or figure, nay, that the truth figuratively conveyed

2i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

is more telling (ii. 6), because " facile investigata plerum-
que vilescunt," and " nemo ambigit per similitudinem
libentius quaeque cognosci." And lastly, it is manifest
that on Augustin's principles the richness of Scripture is
entirely lost. Wherever any ambiguity occurs, recourse
is at once to be had to the praescriptum fideli. It is only
in the second instance that an appeal is made to the
original language or other such helps (iii. 3). In tropical
passages interpretation is a sheer system of guessing
which of the truths comprised in the rule of faith can be
got out of the words (iii. 24). Perhaps several good
senses are possible. If so, the inspired author (who
was always spiritually illuminated (iii. 39), though his
first readers might not get beyond the letter) probably
saw both senses, and certainly the Holy Spirit foresaw
both. Can anything be more fatal to a true appreciation
of Scripture than this artificial confinement of every
thought it contains within the narrow compass of a crude
theological system, a truly Procrustean bed, of which
not even the earliest thoughts of the Old Testament
must fall short, and which the ideal completeness of the
New Testament must not transcend ? Yet, amidst all
these false notions, the purely rational part of Augustin's
hermeneutics is, on the whole, admirable. He fully
apprehends that the function of the interpreter is simply
the reproduction of the thoughts of the writer. The
error lies far deeper than the formal principles of exegesis.
It lies in a conception of the essentials of Christianity,
a theory of the things that inspired men must wish to
speak about, that is utterly discordant with facts.

The great interpreter of the Western Church, through
all the middle ages, was Augustin's contemporary,
Jerome. As inferior to the former in original power,
as superior to him in learning, Jerome exhibits in his
exegesis a closer adherence to the methods of Origen. All
Scripture, he grants, shines even in the bark, but it is
sweeter in the pith, " fulget etiam in cortice, sed dulcius

i874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 219

in medulla est," i.e. in the spiritual sense, which not only
in Moses, but in the Evangelists and Apostles, is covered
with a veil.1 In an important letter to Paulinus (ii. 2)
in which he gives a general sketch of Scripture, he dwells
with delight on the Apocalypse, which has as many
mysteries as words. Nay, even this praise, he adds,
falls short of the merit of a book in which every vocable
conceals manifold meanings. Of the historical books
he speaks half apologetically. Thus the Acts seems
only a bare history of the infancy of the Church ; though
no doubt Luke, the admirable physician, has concealed
in every word some medicine for the languishing soul.
As if, forsooth, next to the Gospel history, anything
could be more profitable to the soul than the plain literal
history of the first days of the Church ! For the rest,
the allegorical interpretation is carried out by Jerome
with greater formality, but with more timidity than by
the boldly self-conscious Origen. It was from him,
perhaps, that the mediaeval Church derived its scheme
of four senses, Literal, Ethical, Dogmatic or Allegorical,
and Anagogic.2 But in carrying out this scheme he is
oppressed by a feeling of insecurity, a dread of falling into
forced interpretations.3 If a prophet like David must
pray that his eyes may be opened before he can see the
wonderful things of God's law, " qua nos putas parvulos
et paene lactantes inscitiae nocte circumdari ! " There
is something more than modesty in these expressions of
infantile weakness face to face with God's Word, which
are only too closely copied through all the middle ages.4
They imply a real sense that the current methods gave

1 Ad Paulinum ii. 14 of Ep. Sel., Paris, 1639.

2 Clemens Al. had already hinted at this. Cf. Reuss, Gesch. d. N.T.
sect. 510. In the west Reuss finds it first in Eucherius. But Jerome on
Amos iv. (T. vi. p. 270, ed. Veron., 1736), already distinguishes the Alle
goric and Anagogic sense, though he maintains the division into three
senses by uniting the Literal and Ethical.

3 E.g. Comm. on Micah ii. T. vi. p. 459.

4 Cf. Diestel, Gesch. des A.T.p. 157, sect. 20.

220 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

no true insight into the spirit of Scripture, which, in
Jerome, led to an increasing dependence not only on the
ecclesiastical faith, but on the exegetical labours of his
predecessors, and which soon bore fruit in the entire
subjection of all interpretation, not simply to the general
rule of faith, but to every detail of an authoritative
exegetical tradition. In this last step the subordination
under human teaching of the still nominally supreme
authority of Scripture was really completed. Nor was it
possible, without a complete upturning of all established
foundations, to vindicate for the Word its true place.
[ On purely exegetical ground some advance was made
during the middle ages, especially since Nicolaus de Lyra.
Hebrew began to be studied. More attention was paid
to the literal sense as the foundation of higher meanings.
But a radical improvement was impossible except in
connection with a religious reformation, which should
convince men that the real essence of Christianity lay
in something deeper than mere instruction in supernatural
things, that Christian faith was not simply a function of
the intellect, assenting to higher truths than those of
reason.] And these were convictions which the School
Theology never reached, even in the person of those
doctors who most closely followed Augustin, and thus
come nearer to the Reformation, and have least in
common with the post-Tridentine forms of Roman
doctrine.

Thus Thomas begins his Summa with the consideration
that salvation becomes possible by the existence, in
addition to philosophic science, of a doctrine per revela-
tionem de Us quae hominis captum excedunt et nonnullis
etiam aliis quae humana ratione investigari possunt, a
doctrine argumentative indeed in its conclusions, but
resting in its principles on the authority of Scripture,
and so to be received by faith. Faith, then, and reason
stand opposed. They are two methods of reaching
truth : even the same truth, for, as Thomas elsewhere

1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 221

says, that we may gain a knowledge of God more speedily
and firmly, we are to believe, not only things supernatural,
but also things that may be investigated by the light
of nature. Manifestly a faith directed indifferently to
supernatural or natural truth must be essentially in
tellectual. In short, fides est cum assensu cogitare, faith is
thought accompanied by assent free from vacillation,
and in matters where sight is excluded. Thomas seeks,
indeed, to bring faith into connection also with the will,
partly in so far as assent is an act of will, and partly by
the famous distinction of fides informis, or faith without
charity, which is no virtue, and fides formata, " faith
working by love," which turns to the divine Good (which,
as Augustin had already taught, is the essence of the
higher truths which the believer apprehends), and sees
in that Good its highest end. But valuable as this
distinction is as giving a practical escape from mere
intellectualism, it has no firm basis in the theory. After
all, caritas non per se pertinet ad fidem. The sterile fides
informis is at bottom the same " habit " as the living
fides formata. The possession of either delivers from the
crowning sin of infidelity : both are supernatural gifts,
the merum Dei donum, lifting a man above his nature ;
and both are wholly lost by the heretic who departs even
from one article of the Symbolum fidei put forth by the
Supreme Pontiff with the authority of the universal
Church over which he presides. How thoroughly do
these determinations ignore, almost exclude, a personal
relation to the believer to Christ ! How entirely do they
tend to make Christian faith a dead thing, having only
a secondary relation to God's Word, and resting primarily
on merely human authority ! For in truth only an
implicit belief is required in what Scripture teaches,
while explicit faith has for its object the ecclesiastical
articuli fidei. With all this it squares well that the
" intelligible " truths of Scripture are represented as
difficult to understand. Our rude minds can rise to

222 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

intelligible only through sensible truth. Metaphor is,
therefore, necessary and useful, and though all truths are
somewhere given in the literal sense, the main use of
Scripture lies in those figures through which the ray of
Divine revelation elevates us ad cognitionem intelligi-
bilium. It is plain, indeed, that this argument is not
satisfactory to Thomas's own mind. He devises or
collects many subsidiary reasons for the allegorical form
of Scripture. But it was not possible to him to suppose
that the literal sense is everywhere that which is truly
profitable and truly fitted to awake and nourish faith,
so long as faith was conceived as an intellectual assent
to the prima veritas, not as personal trust on God in
Christ.

A personal trust on God in Christ L In these words
lies the key-note of the great Reformation. It was from
this conception of faith, not merely adopted as a theo-
logumenon, but realised as that by which the believer
must live, that the Reformers drew all their strength,
and not least the strength to wield the Bible as it had
never been wielded before. Let us look at this point a
little more closely. All must have observed in how
great a measure the history of the beginnings of the
Reformation is just the story of the inner religious life
of one man, who, agonized by a deep sense of sin, finding
no rest in the habits and feelings prescribed by the
traditional ascetic, at length gained peace when he was
able to feel for himself through personal experience,
through the witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart, the
meaning of Paul's great doctrine of justifying faith. In
Luther's personal experience of sin and grace, an experi
ence that had gone through all its stages long before he
entered into any antagonism to the Roman Church, lay
implicitly all that was new in the Reformation, while,
in the explicit development that ended in the great
division of the Church, Luther and his followers were
rather borne on in spite of themselves by the self-asserting

i874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 223

power of the truth already quick within them, than
busied in spontaneously working out new principles.

It is plain that this quite singular phenomenon does
not find its explanation in the vitality of Luther's own
Christianity, or the impulse he gave to vital Christianity
in others. The mediaeval Church has never been without
vital Christianity. Experience of sin and experience of
grace were no new things. Again and again religious
movements the most genuine, often springing from the
influence of the intense religious experience of one in
dividual, had proved to the Church before the Reforma
tion, as similar movements have proved to the Roman
Church since the Reformation, sources not of division but
of strength. Nay, was not Augustin, the greatest doctor
of the Western Church, as deeply versed as Luther in
the antithesis of sin and grace ? But in the old Church
the notion of grace is bound up, above all, with the
doctrine of the sacraments ; in the Reformation it is
bound up with the notion of justifying faith. Of course
I do not mean by this that the old Church saw no con
nection between grace and faith, that Luther would
allow none between grace and the sacraments. But
while the one said, The sacrament gives me grace ex
opere operate, because I receive the sign, the other said,
The sacrament is a vehicle of grace only in so far as by
faith I pass beyond the sign and lay hold of God's promise
signified^ Now I do not wish to go into the theological
niceties of this difference, nor to ask how far the whole
old Church would have gone against Luther's position.
What I have just said represents sufficiently the attitude
of the two parties as you will find it expressed, e.g., in
Luther's book on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church ;
and the meaning of the difference is very plain. To the
mediaeval Church grace is a magical thing ; to Luther it
is a moral, a personal thing. The Reformers are separated
from their fore-goers not by a mere difference of theo
logical opinion, but by a growth of the religious con-

224 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

sciousness. I cannot better explain what this means than
by an illustration drawn from man's natural life. The
life of an infant is the same as the life of a grown man.
Not the mere animal processes only, but the functions
of the mind follow the same law in both ; yet it is only
gradually that the child begins to comprehend its life,
to grasp the meaning of its own personality, and of the
relation in which it stands to other persons ; and so the
child's life is in a great but ever decreasing degree a
magical life, surrounded by wonders, supported and
guided by outward rules and signs, the reasons and mean
ing of which it cannot understand. Every one has
observed how formal children are, how necessary for them
it is always to do the same thing in the same way. This
is but one of many marks of an incapacity to separate the
sign from the thing signified, of inability to grasp the
personal kernel of life directly, of a need of bodily things
to typify all personal relations. But step by step the
child becomes a man, and at length a time comes when
all these signs and forms have lost their magic and their
power, — when the symbol is known to be only a symbol,
and through the now transparent organism of the out
ward life the full-grown personality looks face to face
into the spiritual world around, and there alone finds its
true interests and its worthy aims. Just so it is in the
history of the Church. f~~The Christian life is in all ages
the same life — a life worth living only in so far as it is a
life of personal relation to God in Christ) But this life
is not in all believers or in all ages equally self-conscious.
Although in Christ's incarnation, life, and death, God's
self -manifestation was perfect and freed from type, it
did not follow that all Christians could look face to face
at once on the glory that shone in the Saviour's coun
tenance. The incarnate Word was the absolutely full
and clear revelation of the Divine will, of the Divine
essence. But every word has an outer as well as an
inner side, an expression as well as a meaning. The

1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 225

real meaning of every true heart-spoken word is just the
opening up of the heart of him who speaks it ; and only
he understands the word aright who pierces through
the expression and sees in the word this and this alone.
To possess such an understanding is the mark of a full-
grown man. Where the meaning is confounded with the
mere outer impersonal expression, there we may be well
assured the understanding is that of a child ; and there,
too, the word must be rested on, not with a full self-
conscious personal trust in the speaker, but, in so far at
least, with a reliance on the magical power of the symbol.
So it was in the old Church. Whether in the intellec-
tualism that viewed the Aoyos merely in correlation to
the rational faculty, or in the sacramentalism that
supplemented the defects of the former conception by
ascribing a magical power to the " natural body of
Christ," * the Christian consciousness of the middle ages
fell far short of grasping the personality of God's Word.
It was still the consciousness of the child, who does not
fully understand either his own life or the life of those
around. But with the Reformation begins a great
awaking into new self-conscious personal life. Luther
saw that the Word of God, in which he had learned to
live, and in which the Church too must live, was not an
outward letter, but a deep personal thing. " Neither
in heaven nor on earth hath the soul any other thing in
which to live pious, free, and Christian, save the holy
gospel; the word of God preached of Christ, as He Himself
says, I am the Life and the Resurrection, whoso believeth
on me liveth for ever/' " As the word is, so the soul
becomes thereby ; even as iron becomes red and glowing
like fire, by union with the fire." — And then " not only
does Faith give so much that the soul becomes like the
Divine Word, full of all grace, free and blessed, but it
unites the soul to Christ as a bride to her bridegroom." z

1 Luth. Sermon v. d. Sacrament, 2oth head.

2 Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, Th. i.

15

226 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

" Let us open our eyes," says Luther at another time,
" and learn to look at the word more than the sign, at the
faith more than the work." You see, then, how Luther
conceives of Christianity : on the one side God pouring
out his whole heart, revealing the inmost treasures of his
righteousness and love in Christ the incarnate Word;
on the other side, the believing soul looking straight
through all works and all symbols to Christ Himself, and
united to Him by faith in the closest personal union.

Such was the blessed consciousness to which the
Reformation awoke — the consciousness of direct fellow
ship between the believer and God incarnate in Christ-
not an impersonal unio mystica such as the middle ages
sighed for, but such a personal union as there is between
loving human souls, mediated by the twofold stream of
God's personal Word coming down to man, and man's
personal faith going up to God.1

Now we see at once that in this new conception of the
correlation of word and faith is given implicitly an entire
new theory of revelation. The pre-Reformation definition
of the inner word is, to speak with Thomas,2 " intellectum
prout est in intelligente," while, by the outer word,
" hoc significamus quod interius in intellectu compre-
hendimus." And so, as we have already seen, Christ
was conceived above all things as a Teacher, and revelation
as the imparting of speculative truth. But to the
Reformers the Word of God is the direct personal message
of God's love to me ; 3 not doctrine but promise, not the
display of God's thoughts, but of His loving purpose, in a
word, of Himself as my God. " The Word of God," says

1 Very notable in this connection is an argument of Zwingli's in the
Sermon " Von klarheit und gewiisse des worts Gottes." The image of
God in man must be something much more special than the possession
of intellect, will, and memory ; it must lie mainly in a regard to God
and to His Word. The great mark of our creation in the likeness of God
is the desire that all men have after fellowship with God (Werke, i. pp. 58,
60). The whole development of the thought is well worth attention.

z Compendium Theologiae, cap. 37.

3 Freiheit ernes Christenm., 6th head of Pt. I.

1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 227

Zwingli,1 "is God Himself"; or, as Calvin2 puts it,
" He not only teaches His elect to look to God, sed SE
quoque exhibet in quern respiciant." 3

1 Wevke, i. 70.

a Institutio, Lib. i. cap. 6., cf. Lib. iii. cap. 2, esp. sect. 6 : " Verbum
ipsum, utcunque ad nos deferatur, instar speculi esse dicimus in quo
Deum intueatur fides."

3 It is, I think, correct to say that the whole of God's redemptive
activity, all His saving manifestation of Himself, falls for the Reformers
under the head of God's word, just as His creative activity, His natural
self-manifestations, are spoken of as His works. Thus to Luther work,
word, heart, form an ascending scale. Speech, he says in his Preface
to the German Psalter, is the mightiest and noblest activity of man,
especially such speech as shows how the heart stands. " I would much
rather hear a saint speak than see his works." A beast can do, only a
man can speak. Thus word as opposed to work is personal as opposed
to impersonal activity. This way of looking at the word was kept
always before the Reformers, by the great stress they laid on the con
ception of Christ as the living Word. From this point of view, it is not
surprising that faith in Christ the incarnate Word, faith in Christ's work,
and faith in the Gospel word, are so readily used as synonymous in the
Reformation theology. It is in great measure this identification, com
bined with such unguarded statements as could not be wanting among
men whose intuition of spiritual truths greatly outran the power of
giving them dogmatical precision, that has led some writers — and even
such a man as Rothe — to say that the Reformation Church viewed
Revelation simply as a supernatural communication of doctrine (Rothe,
Zuv Dogmatik, p. 56). Certainly this view of Revelation did enter the
Protestant dogmatic, in proportion as the religious spirit of the Reforma
tion declined, and men sank back into the superficial conception of the
word as a mere sign of impersonal truth. But this was a decline from
the true principles of the Reformation, and one that never obscured
altogether the truer insight that found its expression in the doctrine of
the Word and of Faith. We must remember that the philosophical and
psychological treatment of the subject of personality, which alone can
furnish the basis for a complete dogmatical separation between the
deeper and shallower conceptions of Word of God and Revelation, is
even now a new thing. A certain measure of confusion was thus in
evitable ; but while one school of theology (culminating curiously
enough in Turretin, whose skill in exposition has brought him into undue
favour in Scotland) drifted through this confusion into the error which
Rothe condemns, another and deeper school, of which Ames is one of
the best representatives, always held fast the personal character of
Faith and of Revelation. It is instructive to observe how the want of a
sharp distinction between Religion and Theology leads Ames — not to con
ceive of Christianity as a mere scientific doctrine, but conversely to rescue
the personal character of Revelation by the position : " Primum et pro-
prium Theologiae subjectumesse voluntatem." — Medulla Theologica, i. 9.

228 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

And now how does all this tell on the point from which
we started, the bearing, namely, of the Reformation on
the right understanding of Scripture ?

That Scripture was God's Word all were agreed. The
mediaeval Church, understanding by God's Word an
intellectual revelation, looked in Scripture for that alone,
and where no intellectual mysteries appeared, saw only,
as Luther complains, bare dead histories, " which had
simply taken place, and concerned men no more." Not
so the Reformers. If God's Word is the opening up of
what is in God's heart, the declaration of the eternal love
in which alone man can rest, the story of God's dealings
with the believers of bygone days can never become a
dead history. " Let no pious Christian," says Luther
in the Preface to his German Bible, " stumble at the
simple Word and Story that meet him so often in Scrip
ture. Nay, let him not doubt that, plain as they may
seem, they are the very Words, Works, Judgments, and
History of God's high Majesty, Might, and Wisdom."
Or again, in his exposition of Genesis, he shows that the
Bible history is a sacred history, because God's Word
gleams forth in it. All history shows the great works
of God ; but the great pre-eminence of the Bible history
is that in it God speaks. Israel's history is precious to us,
because it tells of the relations in which the people
stood to God : but above all stands Abraham's history,
" because it is filled so full of God's Word, with which
all that befell him is adorned and made fair, and because
God everywhere goes before him with His Word, promising,
commanding, comforting, warning, that we may verily
see that Abraham was God's special trusty friend. Let
us mirror ourselves, then, on this holy father Abraham,
who walks not in gold and velvet, but girded, crowned,
and clothed with Divine light, that is, with God's Word."
We shall hardly be wrong, in the face of these and
similar utterances, in saying that Scripture is precious
to Luther, because it shows to us the actual realization

1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 229

among men of that personal fellowship with God through
word and faith which alone can satisfy our souls, and so
assures us that the life of faith in Christ, which is the
grand ideal of the Reformation, is no vain phantom,
but a real fellowship with a self - revealing God. The
Bible, to use Luther's own phrase, is the garment of
Christ.1 We do not lay hold of Christ by grasping His
garment, we have not fellowship with Christ by a mere
head - knowledge of the Gospel history ; but Christ is
wrapped up in the historic record, and it is only within
this garment that faith can find Him.

It is certainly true that this historical conception of
the Bible was by no means defined with theoretical
clearness, or grasped with perfect firmness, by the Re
formation theology ; 2 but just as the principle of personal
faith is the foundation of all the fresh life of the Reforma
tion, so the principle of a historical treatment of Scripture
is at bottom, though far less clearly apprehended, the
principle of the whole Reformation exegesis. I venture
to say, that from this one principle flows all that is new
and true in the Protestant interpretation of the Bible ;
that the understanding of Scripture has advanced or
gone back in the Evangelical Churches just in proportion
as this principle, in connection with the great principle
of justifying faith, has been held fast or overlooked ; and
that we, too, if we are really in earnest with our study of
the Bible, if we desire to deal truly with Scripture and
our Protestant freedom, must regulate all our exegesis
and all our criticism by the great principle that we are
to seek in the Bible, not a body of abstract religious
truth, but the living personal history of God's gracious
dealings with men from age to age, till at length in

1 On Ps. xxii. 19 (18), in his " Operationes in duas Psalmorum
Decades."

2 Compare on this point an instructive Essay by Diestel, " Die kirch-
liche Anschauung des A. T.f" in the Jahrbb. f. D. Theol, 1869, p. 232
sqq. Professor Diestel shows how two views of the Old Testament soon
branched off in the Protestant Churches.

230 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

Christ's historical work the face of the Eternal is fully
revealed, and we by faith can enter into the fullest and
freest fellowship with an incarnate God.

With what power this principle bears on all those
parts of Scripture which, through the long ages before
the Reformation, were almost wholly sealed to the
Church, what a flood of fresh light it casts even on the
plainest parts of the Sacred Record, how it fills with fresh
and ever -varying interest the narratives that to the
ancient Church afforded only a dreary monotonous
round of allegory, how it enables the reader to enter
everywhere into a personal fellowship with the saints
and the church of bygone days, and, if God's Spirit go
with the reading, into fellowship also with the great
Revealer Himself — these are things that can only be
learned by such a study of the Bible in its details, as we
must begin together in our meetings here, and carry out
each for himself in the prayerful labours of a whole life.
At this time it is only possible briefly to indicate a few of
the directions in which the new principle became fruitful
at the time of the Reformation, and may still be fruitful
to us.

I. Firstly, then, the new conception of Scripture gave
a death-blow to the allegorical way of interpretation, the
theory of a fourfold sense, which by its half-contemptuous
" liter a gesta docet " made the history a dead history,
useless in teaching faith.1 " There is," says Luther,
" one single, simple sense" : and this is the principle of
the whole Reformation ; for, however far the overstrained
typology of some Protestant schools may re-open an
entrance for what is really sheer allegorical exposition,
the principle of allegory is effectually condemned by the
symbolical definition of all Protestant Churches, that the
interpretation of Scripture must be drawn from Scripture
itself, i.e. as Bullinger explains in the Helvetica Posterior,
from the genius of the original language, the due con-

1 Cf. Luther on Ps. xxii., ut supra.

1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 231

sideration of the circumstances, with comparison of like
and unlike passages.1

II. The last of these postulates of a true interpretation
raises the question of the relation of exegesis to the
analogy of faith, which forms a long and perplexed
chapter in the history of the decadence, as well as the
growth, of Protestant theology. But it is to be observed
that the Reformers everywhere place Scripture above the
Ecclesiastic Canon, in virtue of its own innate perspicuity
to every one that approaches it in the spirit of faith.
And so to the Reformers and their truest followers the
analogy of faith means not a dead rule of dogma, but
the living sympathy of a renewed soul living in fellow
ship with Christ, with the historic record of God's ever-
consistent working towards the establishment of His
kingdom upon earth. Just as it requires a historic sense
to understand profane history, it requires a spiritual
sense to understand sacred history.

III. If the perspicuity of Scripture rests on the one
side on the illumination given by the Spirit to the faithful
reader, it is no less grounded on the other side on the
historicity of Scripture. God's dealings with His people
were always personal. What His prophets and apostles
spoke, they spoke because by the Spirit they understood,
and would have others to understand, how God was
dealing with men. And if we possess the same spirit, we,
too, shall understand the Word so soon as we place our
selves in the historical position of the first hearers. Hence
the Reformers emphasise the fact that the Old Testament
prophets (who, more than any other Scripture writers,
have been supposed to talk things unintelligible to their
first hearers) did in Israel precisely the work that ministers
of the Gospel must do now in ministering by special
application of the principles of law and grace to the ever-

: Niemeyer, p. 469. — The circumstantiae are, I presume, mainly the
verbal context ; but the principle implies that the historical circum
stances be also considered.

232 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

varying needs of the people.1 And so Luther writes in his
Preface to Isaiah, that if we will understand prophecy
we must study the contemporary history, and learn
how things stood in the land ; how men's minds were
bent, what designs of war or peace they had in hand,
and, above all, their attitude to God, the prophet, and
religion.2

IV. It is mainly to the comprehensive genius of Calvin
that we owe the further development of these principles
in the conception of the exegetico-historical problem in
its totality. What Calvin set before him as the goal of
Biblical studies, was the gathering up into one whole of
all God's dealings with men from the fall to the Re
surrection of Christ, the history of true religion, the
adoption and education, from age to age, of the Church,
in a continuous scheme of gradual advance. It is true
that in that age the means for justly carrying out so
great a conception were still lacking. The very idea of
an historical evolution was but imperfectly understood.
There were many tendencies, both in the age and in
Calvin's own character, that prevented him from doing
so much justice to the difference as to the unity of suc
cessive dispensations. But not only did the example
point out a course on which, after long neglect, the newer
theology, armed with richer apparatus, must enter with
fresh ardour ; the very idea of such a scheme gave to
Calvin an elevation of view, a freedom of judgment,
a superiority to prejudices that the mere student of
details could hardly break through, which have justly
elevated him to the rank of the greatest of uninspired
expositors, and have left to his followers an ever precious
example of believing courage in dealing with the Scrip
tures.

V. It is impossible to pass from this topic without in

1 Cf . Calvin, Praefatio in Esaiam.

2 Yet side by side with this goes another line of thought. " Der
Prophezeien Art und Natur ist, dass sie ehe erfiillet denn verstanden
sind," says Luther, at one time. The two views are not irreconcilable.

i874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 233

one word pointing out that a necessary consequence of
this way of treating the Bible is the honest practice of a
higher criticism. The higher criticism does not mean
negative criticism. It means the fair and honest looking
at the Bible as a historical record, and the effort every
where to reach the real meaning and historical setting,
not of individual passages of the Scripture, but of the
Scripture Records as a whole ; and to do this we must
apply the same principle that the Reformation applied
to detail Exegesis. We must let the Bible speak for itself.
Our notions of the origin, the purpose, the character of
the Scripture books must be drawn, not from vain
traditions, but from a historical study of the books
themselves. This process can be dangerous to faith only
when it is begun without faith — when we forget that the
Bible history is no profane history, but the story of
God's saving self-manifestation.

VI. And, finally, one word on the bearing of the
Reformation principle on the use of Scripture for edifica
tion. In the Bible history, as the Reformers conceived
it, we hear two voices — the voice of God speaking love
to man, and the voice of the renewed man answering in
faith to God. :< The Scripture," says Jurieu, " is almost
nothing else than a tissue of prayers and thanksgiving " ; l
and this loving communion of God and man is no dead
bygone thing, but a thing in which we may share. " God
is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live
unto Him." And so when we draw near in faith to the
Bible, we feel ourselves entering into a higher, holier
world :— " not to the mount that might be touched, and
that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness,
and tempest ; but unto mount Sion, and to the city
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an

1 "L'£criture n'est presque autre chose que cela, qu'un tissu de
prieres et d'actions de graces " — (Jugement sur les Methodes, etc., Rott.
1688, p. 84). Luther's views on the answer of man to God, as expressed
in Scripture, are beautifully developed in the Preface to the German
Psalter.

234 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-1874

innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly
and church of the first-born which are written in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just
men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new
covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh
better things than Abel. . . . Wherefore, we receiving
a kingdom that cannot be moved, let us have grace,
whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence
and godly fear : for our God is a consuming fire."

II

EXTRACTS FROM EARLY LECTURES

i. The Nazirate ; date of P. (June 19, 1870).

THE history of the Nazirate is, so far as our records go,
very brief. All leading critics assign the law Num. vi.
i -2 1 to the so-called Grundschrift, Book of Origins — Book
of the Elohist — which, though not the earliest written
document entering into the Pentateuch, is regarded by
those who reject Mosaic authorship as the first complete
chronicle of the early history of Israel. This book is
generally assigned to the time of Saul, or David's early
years, and is viewed by all sober critics as a very weighty
authority. Thus, apart from all questions of Mosaic
authorship, inspiration, etc., it would generally be allowed
that our record is correct in supposing the Nazirate to
reach back to Moses (Ew. Alt. 117, with some hesitation ;
cf. Gesch. ii. 560 ; Knobel, Kr. d. Pent. p. 522, 593). The
law, indeed, as we have it seems to be rather the regulation
of an older institution.

2. Beginnings of Prophetic Literature (Jan. 1871).

There is no trace of prophets writing down their oracles
till long after the epoch of Samuel. In truth, that prophets
like Elijah and Samuel, who were essentially men of deeds
rather than words, should have committed their prophecies
to writing is in itself improbable. On the other hand, the
prophetic schools seem to have early developed a literary

235

236 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

activity in connection with the history of Israel. Inas
much as the general diffusion of history in an age when
few can read must mainly take place by ballads, it is
natural (with Kuenen, Godsd. i. 208) to find a connection
between the historical labours of the prophetic societies
and the musical studies already described. The Psalter
still contains many historico - religious ballads. In
i Chron. xxix. 29, we read that the acts f^l^) of David
were written in the history (O17 hx) of Samuel the seer,
and in the history of Nathan the prophet, and in the
history of Gad the seer. In this statement we cannot see
evidence of books written by Samuel, etc., as the sense
of dibre 5. must be " history of Samuel," parallel to the
preceding dibre D.

But doubtless the records referred to, and which
treated the history of the nation in connection with the
work of distinguished prophets, were written in the
Schools of the Prophets, and are referred to by the
chronicler as old and authentic accounts. Moreover,
the point of view from which the history is treated in the
Books of Samuel and other parts of the Old Testament
leaves no doubt that the history as we possess it is in
great measure compiled from the labours of prophets or
their disciples. In 2 Chron. ix. 29, the " Acts of Nathan,"
mentioned above, are associated with two other prophetic
books, " the prophecy (ntra:i) of Ahijah the Shilonite,"
and " the visions of Iddo the seer concerning Jeroboam."
Whether these books, which by their titles appear to have
contained not only historical matter but written oracles,
had for authors the prophets themselves, or were also
collected by disciples, is uncertain. Perhaps the fact
that they are now lost may so far favour the latter sup
position, and show that they had not the authority of
exact reproductions of the prophets' words. At all
events the properly prophetic literature is of a later date,
and naturally took its rise in the Southern School of
Prophecy, which, as we have seen, separated itself from

1874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 237

the older and more impetuous Prophecy of the northern
kingdom in a way that made written prophecy much
more suitable to its purposes.

With regard to the motives that might lead a prophet
to commit his speeches to writing, " Nothing," says
Ewald (Proph. i. 48), " is more instructive than what
Isaiah tells us in his own case. When his contemporaries
refused to comprehend and believe great truth which he
had repeatedly preached, then especially the prophetic
spirit which had led him to speak summoned him also to
write, that by this means he might work for his own time,
and lay down in an everlasting memorial for ages what
he felt to be as true as his own life (viii. i, 16; xxx. 8).
Or, if a prophet had already laboured long and experienced
much, and now looked back on his whole past activity,
he might think it well to perpetuate the weightiest of his
speeches and deeds in writing as an enduring monument
for the instruction of far and near, of present and future
ages. Thus we read in Jer. xxxvi., that in the fourth
year of Joiakim, Baruch wrote to Jeremiah's dictation a
roll containing all the words which God had spoken to
him since his first call under Josiah — that is, through a
period of more than twenty years. Of course, such a
collection could not reproduce verbally all the prophet's
inspired speeches, but would gather together in a con
densed form all that was most memorable, and present
these materials in a form shaped by the prophet's own
free judgment." Ewald further points out that such
passages as Is. viii. i ; xxx. 8, indicate that besides actual
prophetic books the prophets were accustomed to express
leading thoughts in short proverbial forms upon tablets
exposed to public view. This appears to have been done
in presence of witnesses (viii. 2 ; xxx. 8, DriN with them
(witnesses), and in a large bold character (OFON Enm),
so as to be easily read (cf. Hab. ii. 2). An age in which
this was an effective way of appealing to the people at
large was manifestly one in which education was widely

238 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

diffused. Long before this time, therefore, there must
have been in Israel all the conditions of literary activity,
and sufficient motives to induce the prophets to write
their oracles at large. Accordingly, Joel iii. 5 appears to
contain a quotation from an earlier prophet. Similarly
Isaiah ii. 2, 4, and Micah iv. i, 4, quote the same passage
from a predecessor, who may perhaps have been Joel
himself. But whatever relics of early written prophecies
may thus have been preserved, prophetic authorship in
a strict sense begins for us in the book of Joel.

(For further information on the literary activity of
Prophets, see Ewald, Pro. i. 47.)

3. Authorship o/Isa. xiii. 2-xiv. 23. — Prophecy of the
Fall of Babel (1871).

v. i. What weight belongs to this title must appear
below. Meantime, I quote only Delitzsch : "If this
' burden of Babel ' lay before us entirely by itself, and
without Isaiah's name attached to it, we would never
venture to ascribe it to that prophet. . . . Here, at a
time when the Assyrian empire was still standing, the fall
of the Chaldean is without any connecting link foretold."

4. Date of Zech. ix.-xi. (March 1871).

Besides Hosea and Amos we possess in the judgment
of most critics an important prophecy referring to the
decay of the N. Kingdom in Zech. ix.-xi.

Doubts whether Zechariah is the real author of these
chapters began very early. In 1653 Mede concluded
from Mt. xxvii. 9, that Jeremiah is the true author of the
whole section Zech. ix.-xiv. It was an Englishman also,
Newcome, 1785, who first separated ix.-xi. from xii.-xiv.,
and placed the composition of the former chapters before
the fall of the kingdom of Ephraim. Of late this view
has been supported by the whole strength of the critical
school, and though opposed by Hengstenberg, Havernick,

1874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 239

Keil, Kohler, etc., is supported by arguments so strong
that, e.g. Pressel, a man not attached to the critical school,
has lately given his assent to it. In this defection we
may, probably, see the signs of a final abandonment of
the traditional view on all hands.

Were we discussing the Book of Zechariah as a whole,
we should begin by calling attention to the great difference
of style and manner between ch. ix.-xi. and the preceding
part of the book. Such differences are enumerated in
the Commentaries and Introductions (pro : Hitz. Kno. ;
con: Bleek, Havern.), and are best felt by reading
the two texts side by side. Our plan confines us to a
constructive plan. Laying aside the traditional view
altogether for the present, let us examine this prophecy
just as we examined that of Joel. If there we clearly
were able to assign a date, it is surely not presumptuous
to expect to find a similar task possible here ; especially
as the prophecy is most rich with concrete historical
colouring.

The outline is as follows : —

ix. i. The threatening word of Jahveh — the God
whose eyes view the heathen and the tribes of Israel
alike— sweeps like a storm through Syria and alights upon
Damascus. Thence it passes to Hamath, and on to the
rich cities of Phoenicia, smiting them with destruction.
Still flying southward it lights upon the Philistines, and
destroys the pride and independence of their cities, but
at the same time drives them from their idols and unites
them to Judah on the same terms as the Jebusites (whom
Solomon made tributary). Meantime, God who has now
looked down from heaven and seen what is done on earth,
encamps over His house that it may no longer suffer from
hostile incursions and oppression. And now (v. 9) , amidst
joyous shouts, the Messiah comes riding upon an ass, not
escorted by chariots and horses and all the panoply of
war, but upheld by His righteousness and so ever victori
ous. For before this peaceful king the hostile armaments

240 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

that oppress Ephraim and Jerusalem shall fall — the
kingdom shall regain its ancient limits, and the sovereign
of Zion shall enjoin peace on all nations. Yea, the
memory of the blood -sealed covenant moves God to
deliver the captive Israelites, and even now His heralds
proclaim a double recompense for all their woes. In
God's hand Judah and Ephraim are like bow and spear
to strike down their oppressors — of whom the sons of
Javan are expressed by name, who in Joel also appear as
masters whose yoke is specially grievous. Jahveh appears
in a storm-cloud shielding His own, the lightnings are His
arrows and the thunders His trumpets. His people rush
forth with irresistible fury against their enemies and, the
victory finally secured, enjoy peace and plenty in their
land (ix. 13).

Chap. x. begins a new strain :—

Such are the blessings God gives ; but now it seems
the people are apter to trust in teraphim, wizards, and
dreams, than to pray to Him for help. And so they are
like a flock wandering without a shepherd, or rather the
wrath of Jahveh has smitten the shepherds and the he-
goats (i.e. the violent, insolent nobles : Ez. xxxiv.) ; but
His flock, the house of Judah, He visits and strengthens
and organises into an invincible host before which the
riders on horses shall be ashamed. He gives salvation to
Ephraim and Judah, helping them as if He had never
thrust them from Him, and these scattered children return
at His call. True ! this restoration is not the first thing.
First, they must in chastisement be sown among the
Gentiles. But even in captivity they take root and
increase, and at length remembering God are brought
back, a great multitude, from Assyria and from Egypt
to occupy Gilead and Lebanon, and even there not to
find room. And while they walk joyously in God's name,
the Nile and the Euphrates are smitten and the might of
Egypt and Asshur pass away (x. n, 12).

But to these bright hopes there is a counterfoil. In

i874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 241

x. 9 the prophet has already indicated that a period of
suffering and captivity lies between the present state of
sin and the future state of salvation. And this dark
side, especially the dark present, is the subject of ch. xi.
In vv. 1-3 the destruction of the nation is figured, appar
ently with reference to the storm of chap, ix., under the
image of a fire devouring the cedars of Lebanon and the
oaks of Bashan, wasting the pastures and the thickets of
the Jordan. This short burst of lyric lamentation serves
to introduce the subsequent verses in which the fate of
the people is handled in connection with the history of his
own work among them. Jahveh sent him to feed the
sheep of the shambles, i.e. the nation of Israel bought and
sold by cruel and treacherous rulers who care not though
the people perish if they themselves are enriched.

For Jahveh has no more pity on His people ; but sends
civil strife among them and discord between people and
king, so that the land is wasted and no help is found.
Yet amidst these sad circumstances the prophet assumes
the task of shepherd, armed with two staves, the staff of
God's protecting (kindness) grace for His people and the
staff of (harmony) union between Judah and Ephraim.
Three of the false shepherds fall before the prophet in one
month ; but his soul is wearied with his thankless charge,
and the nation loathes his wholesome constraint. So he
resolves to leave them to their fate, breaks the staff of
grace (DM not just = 7Dn) and sets free against the
people the foreign nations whom Jahveh had till now
restrained. Nor was this an empty symbol. Its fulfil
ment followed straightway, and the few who still hearkened
to his word recognised hereby the divine mission of the
seer. But still no such repentance follows as to lead him
to draw back from his demission of the shepherd's office.
That that demission may be formal and with mutual
consent — that he may not, as Jonah or Elijah did, flee
from his work — he demands of his flock such hire as they
may think his due. His reward is the price of the meanest

16

242 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

slave — a price that he is commanded to cast into the
treasury of the temple, for a prophet does not serve to
enrich himself, and it is God, not man, whom they reward
so meanly. Then he breaks his second staff, and Ephraim
and Judah are allies no longer. And now the prophet
must symbolise the foolish and worthless shepherd that
rules over the nation which rejects God's care, a shepherd
who has no care for the weak and suffering, but who
feasts on the flesh of the fatlings and breaks the hoofs
of the sheep by driving them on stony roads (not like
Jahveh's p-j$ ^p). The prophecy closes with a
denunciation of wrath against this wicked ruler. A
sword upon his arm and upon his right hand, his arm
shall be dried up and his right eye wholly extinguished.

A single glance shows that in this prophecy it is ab
solutely impossible to separate between the question of
authorship and date and the exegesis of the passage.
If we are to follow an historical interpretation at ail-
that is, if we are to suppose that here, as elsewhere, the
prophet is speaking primarily to his own contemporaries
and from the circumstances of his own time— or indeed, if
we are to interpret literally at all, the idea of authorship
by Zechariah is out of the question.

a. This appears clearly from individual traits. (a)
Ephraim and Judah or Israel (or Joseph) and Judah
appear as distinct throughout. Certainly an allusion to
this distinction is not impossible in a prophet writing after
the captivity. Zechariah (viii. 13) writes: "As ye have
been a curse among the nations, O house of Judah and
house of Israel, so will I save you." (Zech. ii. 2, Mai. ii. n
quoted by Havernick are irrelevant here.) And Ezekiel
(xxxvii. 15 sq.) prophesies the restoration of Ephraim and
Judah and their reunion into one kingdom. And so in
our passage, though the use of the two names is much
more extended, it may fairly be said that where a restora
tion of Judah and Joseph is mentioned (Ezek. x. 6), there
is no instance against Zechariah as author. But quite

1874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 243

different is the prophecy of the breaking of concord
between Judah and Ephraim. That cannot apply to the
Siao-Tropd, and so is interpreted by Hengstenberg and Keil
of the divisions in Judaea between Christ's time and the
fall of Jerusalem, by Hofmann (ii. 2, p. 608) of the division
between Christian and unbelieving Jews. In either case
not historico-literal but symbolical allegorising interpret
ation.1

ft. In ch. ix. God's judgment lights on Damascus,
Phoenicia, Philistia. All the states seem to be brought
in as independent and as hostile to Israel. In Philistia
especially there is still a king and the old aristocratic
pride in pure blood which is to be brought down when
a bastard population occupies Ashdod. It is answered
that these nations still remained and were hostile to Israel
after the Exile, and that the king who is destroyed from
Gaza may be a Persian vassal. But if the king is a
vassal his fall is not a proper expression for the trans
ference of the sovereignty to the people of Israel ; and this
is what our prophet expects (ix. 7). If in this case the
post-exile authorship rhymes badly with literal interpret
ation the inconsistency is admitted in regard to Egypt
and Asshur (lower, esp. ch. x.). These, it is admitted
(Keil, Introd. § 103, 4 ; cf. Hengstenberg, Integrity, E.T.
307), are mentioned merely as types and representatives of
the enemies of the Kingdom of God. That is, the concrete
colouring is here also not drawn literally from present
history but allegorisingly from the past. (But cf. Ps.
Ixxxiii., where most critics make TNDN non-historical.)

y. The teraphim and false prophets of x. 2 are precisely
analogous to the similar institutions mentioned in Hosea
iii. After the Exile there were certainly false prophets

1 According to Hengstenberg, Christol. E.T., 422, this is the literal
fulfilment also of the obviously distinct step in the prophecy (ch. xi. 6)
where for the rest the king is Caesar (cf. tebo wn -iis'i* Hos. xi. 5). But
to Keil PNH is the land outside Israel — the earth and king distributive
like »>\x.

244 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

(Neh. vi. 10 sqq.) . There was even a certain mixture with
idolatrous nations (Ezra ix.). But there is no polemic in
the post-exile prophets or in Ezra and Nehemiah against
idolatry, and such a national idolatry as is here depicted
seems inconceivable at this epoch. Here, too, Hengsten-
berg allegorises : " This is nothing more than Zechariah's
usual (?) mode of depicting the one main idea. The
people are led away by deceivers who draw them away
from the source of all truth, the revealed will of God."

8. Most complete is the departure from the historical in
terpretation in ch. xi. Here the symbolical actions do not
in any sense represent, according to Hengstenberg, Keil,
etc., the prophet's own activity, but in general Jahveh's
dealings with His people. The three herdsmen are the
civil authorities, the priests and prophets deposed from
their office during our Lord's ministry on earth (Hgstbg.
ch. iv. 28 sqq.), or the rulers of the three world monarchies
(Keil). The "month" remains a stumbling-block, and
Keil can only suggest that ten days are given for the
destruction of each shepherd. What follows is referred
directly to the rejection of Christ by the Jewish people
and the calamities following. Finally, the foolish shepherd
who follows the rejection is, to Hengstenberg, collectively
the bad rulers of the Jewish nation, to Keil the master of
the world-power. This is not the place for a full discussion
of these interpretations ; but every one sees that by thus
shutting out the prophet's own person and age, and
finding a direct instead of a typical Messianic interpreta
tion, the commentators just quoted lose themselves in the
usual confusing alternation between the Kingdom of
God in the universal sense and the literal nation of
Israel. Part of the prophecy applies to the one, part to
the other. This in the by -going. But what must be
admitted from the instances just adduced is, that if the
concrete colouring of the picture is to be interpreted
historically — that is, according to the analogy of prophecy
in general— the prophet must have stood before the exile.

1874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 245

If Zechariah is the author, the concrete colouring is
allegorical and symbolical.

Now this conclusion may not seem to carry us far in
our present enquiry. But it is very important as regards
the general theory of Old Testament criticism as regards
the prophetical writings. It is often maintained that
the only ground for disputing traditional authorship is
rationalism — i.e. a desire to dispute the divine illumination
of the prophet. But the present discussion shows us
that this is not true, unless all literal interpretation is
rationalism and allegorical exegesis is alone evangelical.
And how little this is the case, we have already seen in
discussing the book of Joel. Let us suppose that our
prophecy had come to us in a separate form like the book
of Joel without date. No one would have seen in it traces
of composition after the Exile. Such traces are, indeed,
sought by Hengstenberg and others (see a condensed list in
Koehler's article in Herzog, xviii. 358), but rather weigh
on the other side (are either futile or self-destructive).
The mention of Greece (ix. 13) may be explained by Joel
iv. 6, 7 ; or if this be denied, is it easier to explain it in
connection with Zechariah's time ? Ch. ix. 8 is said to
imply a previous destruction of the temple. Really the
oppressor in this verse is not a sovereign like the Great
King, levying regular tribute, but a passing conqueror,
making a raid in the land and again withdrawing. This
suits the first times of the Assyrian invasions or such a
plundering of Jerusalem as we found indicated in Joel
iv. 6, 7; (cf. 2 Chron. xxi. 17-18). Again (Havern. 424)
the time of the exile is said to appear in ix. 12, 10, 6, as
already present. But the first passage has an exact
parallel in Joel iv. (cf. Is. xi. 15-16; Micah vii. 12), while
with the second we must connect the next verse in which
the " sowing among the nations " appears as future — i.e.
just as in Amos and Hosea, etc., chastisement must
precede deliverance.

Quite different, as we have seen, are the indications of

246 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

authorship before the exile. Of these we have enumer
ated only some of the more pointed which indicate in
general a date before the exile. But if we gather the
various details up into one, we get (always assuming at
present the literal interpretation) a much more definite
result. Asshur has already entered, but has not left the
stage of history. Nay, the judgment on Syria is still
future (ix. i). Jerusalem has probably not yet suffered
from Assyria at all, else that power would appear in
ch. ix. 1-6. The threats of captivity (ch. x.) to be
followed by deliverance agree with and probably pre
suppose Amos. The references to teraphim suit the age
of Hosea (ch. iii.). Once more, the returning captives
in ch. x. 10 occupy not the whole land but Gilead and
Lebanon, of which the former was greatly desolated so
early as the Syrian wars and the latter never occupied
fully. Parallel is Micah vii. 14, where the prophet prays
that the flock dwelling solitary in the wood of Carmel
may repossess Bashan and Gilead. According to all this,
the prophet would be later than Amos, and a younger
contemporary of Hosea, an older contemporary of Isaiah.
But as the bright side of his prophecy lies in the future,
the dark side which is present is most instructive here.
Now, if in ch. ix. the prophet appears as specially
interested in the Southern Kingdom, of which indeed he
may be supposed a citizen (from the general tone, the
personal IDVF^N ix. 7, and the fact that retiring from
his office he goes to the temple), yet in ch. xi. he is
chiefly concerned with Ephraim. This is shown by the
introductory verses which threaten ruin to Lebanon,
Jordan, and Bashan. In Ephraim, then, are sought the
slaughter-sheep. Here it is that the prophet ministers
with so little acceptance amidst evil rulers, anarchy,
civil war, then attacks from without, and finally broken
friendship between Israel and Judah. All this is found
in the period following Jeroboam's death, and exactly
in the order here mentioned — first internal tumult, then

1874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 247

Phul whose bargain with Menahem suits the buying and
selling of the flock (xi. 5), then under Pekah the quarrel
with Judah. Still more definite is the destroying of three
shepherds by the prophet — i.e. in accordance with God's
Word — in one month. Is it an accident that Shallum,
the murderer of Zechariah himself, fell in a month before
Menahem ? (2 Kings xv. 13) . And though few will agree
with Ewald that the Hebrew text (2 Kings xv. 10) still
shows the name of a third usurper, it is nothing strange
that a third claimant to sovereignty should have appeared
at the same time. Finally, the prophet's withdrawal
from his office seems to be in close connection with the
rise of the foolish shepherd, in whom it is easy to recognise
Pekah, the ruthless violent Gileadite. That the whole
narrative of the prophet's pastoral work is to be taken as
a narrative more or less symbolically expressed, seems
plain from its standing in the perfect while the predictions
are given in the imperfect. And such a point as the
immediate sequence of invasion on the breaking of the
staff and the acceptance of this by the believing sheep
as a proof of divine mission, is absolutely unintelligible
except on the historical interpretation.

If, then, we had no external motive for going to a
time after the exile, we could find a natural historical
setting for our prophecy. Should we by doing so lose
anything of the religious meaning ? Surely not. We
should still retain the great Messianic passage in ch. ix.,
we should have all through, as might easily be shown, a
precise analogy to prophecies of Hosea, Amos, Isaiah,
etc. It can only be questioned if we do not lose the
reference to Christ in ch. xi. Surely not. If the prophecy
be taken as having its first application to Christ we get
rather into greater difficulties. Thus the price was not
given to our Lord but to Judas. It was Judas that
threw it into the House of the Lord. Our Lord did not
refuse to feed the theocracy in a way just corresponding
to this. Again, the same person who first bears the two

248 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

staves afterwards takes up the instruments symbolic of
an evil shepherd. If the reference is primarily to him,
why is all this so ? But the difficulty vanishes if the
prophet's action is typical of Christ's ; for every type
must not only have some things in common with, but
some things diverse from, the antitype. And thus, too,
we get over the confusion above remarked between the
true Kingdom of God and the fleshly Israel. In the
days of our Lord these fell apart. But in the prophet's
day the two were really bound up together, so that the
whole prophecy is from his historical standpoint one and
consistent.

And now there comes the question : Shall we cast all
these harmonious internal evidences to the winds to save
the tradition of authorship ? Surely not, if we are to
hold the Protestant principle that the Bible is to be
interpreted by itself and not by tradition. A tradition
that overturns the whole natural exegesis must have
strong proofs, indeed, to lead us to adopt it. But, in fact,
we have no distinct external evidence. We have only
the juxtaposition with Zechariah — unaccompanied by
any such formal title as heads each of the prophecies
that form Zech. i.-viii. We have not even the assurance
that when the prophetic books were first collected this
work was held to be Zechariah's, or that anything but
its position made such an opinion prevail. And, finally,
there is at least one plausible theory that might explain
how this state of things arose. In Isaiah viii. 2 there
appears in association with the prophet Isaiah a certain
Zekharjahu, son of Jeberekhiahu. Now the post-exile
prophet who in Ezra is called the son of Iddo appears
in the heading of his prophecy as son of Berekhja, son
of Iddo. Berekhiah and Berekhiahu are the same name.
The older Zechariah from his association with Isaiah
may have been a prophet, and if there were two prophets
sons of Berechiah the juxtaposition of their oracles ceases
to be surprising. But this is, of course, only a conjecture

i874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 249

as to how the case might have arisen, and stands on quite
a different footing from the real arguments for dating
ix.-xi. from the 8th century. And it is characteristic
of the way in which certain critics are unable to dis
tinguish conjecture from proof that Kuenen, without
hesitation, in his Godsdienst assumes this conjectural
identification of the author of the chapter as historical
fact.

5. The Book of the Covenant (Oct. n, 1872).

Every discussion of the Covenant made at Sinai must
start from Exodus xix.-xxiv., the so-called Book of the
Covenant. The name rmin HDD is in these chapters
themselves given to that first sketch of the Mosaic con
stitution, given from Sinai, to the observance of which
the people formally pledged themselves. And the same
name is rightly enough extended to the whole section
which simply contains these laws with the needful
historical elucidations. The six chapters of the Book
of the Covenant stand out in distinct relief from the
surrounding parts of the Pentateuch, and competent
critics of all schools are pretty much at one as regarding
them as forming the oldest part of the Pentateuch, the
basis of all subsequent legislation.

6. The History of the Ark (Dec. 13, 1872).

You may probably be inclined to think that before
saying anything of the history of the ark, one should go
on to the description of the tabernacle in which the ark
was preserved. A few years ago this would have been
the natural course to follow. But in recent times the
historicity of the Tabernacle, as described in the book of
Exodus, has been exposed to severe assaults, which do
not touch the historicity of the ark. In fact, the most
negative critics of the present day admit that the ark,
and of course a tent for its protection, were carried about

250 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

by the Israelites in the wilderness.1 But the same critics
who gladly admit this very often maintain that the whole
description of the Mosaic tabernacle is a fancy-piece in
imitation of the arrangements of Solomon's temple.
This view, after various sporadic utterances on the part
of other critics, was set forth with much zeal and in
genuity by Graf in several publications, of which the
most accessible is his book — Die geschichtlichen Bucher
des A.T. (Leipzig, 1866). The same view is warmly
supported, among other living critics, by Noldeke,
Untersuchungen zur Kritik des A.T., 1869, p. 12, and
by Kuenen, Godsdienst van Israel, 1869-70, ii. 75, etc.
Now, I have endeavoured throughout these lectures to
build upon ground which is historically undisputed, so
that you may see how much of the character of the Old
Testament dispensation stands on a basis that cannot
be shaken. I have endeavoured to give the lesson of
institutions which every one admits to have existed,
though every one, of course, does not recognise in them
the same spiritual religion. This is the case with the ark
itself. There are critics who are bold enough to overlook
altogether the witness that the ark with its tables of the
law bears to the moral and spiritual character of the
religion of Moses and to assume against the whole history
that the ark must originally, like the arks of heathen
nations, have contained something in the shape of tera-
phim or a holy image.2 These are theories to which one
is not bound to give any consideration. They are utterly
devoid of anything like testimony in their favour, and
are wholly suggested by an a priori belief that all reli
gion was at first unspiritual. But when real historical
difficulties are brought forward such as seem to exist

1 So among others Kuenen ; see his article in Theol. Tijdschrijt, 1872,
p. 660. Almost a solitary exception is Hupfeld ; see his (posthumous)
views on the subject communicated by Riehm, Stud. u. Krit., 1871,
p. 422.

2 So Kuenen (as probable) : Godsdienst, i. 232 ; similarly Noldeke,

P- 5i.

i874] VARIOUS EXTRACTS 251

with regard to the tabernacle (and thus also with regard
to certain points as to the Levitic priesthood which you
remember I reserved for later treatment), we are bound
to give these difficulties" careful consideration and pro
ceed step by step from the clear to the obscure. In
accordance with this principle, it will, I think, be best to
speak first of the history of the ark, which in every
sense carries much more important issues than that of
the tabernacle while, at the same time, it is much clearer.
The history of the ark is, in fact, the history of the idea
of God's permanent revealing residence in Israel ; that
of the tabernacle touches only secondary points dependent
on this residence. And the theological ideas taught by
the tabernacle are after all taught with certainty by the
temple in a way that no one disputes.

To the preceding extracts, with their careful references
to the latest literature on the subjects to which they
relate, may be added a seventh, which, though it does
not occur in a class lecture, may be taken as illustrative
of the character of Professor Smith's teaching on ques
tions of criticism at this early period. It is from the
notice of the latest issues of the Theologisch Tijdschrift,
which he contributed to the British and Foreign Evan
gelical Review in July 1871.

7. The Leiden School of Theology (July 1871).

The organ of the " Leiden " or " modern " School of
Dutch Theology enters on its fifth year without diminu
tion in the scientific activity and zeal which claim our
respect, but also without modification of the extremely
rationalistic principles which separate it from our sym
pathy. In every page of the Tijdschrift we feel our
selves face to face with men to whom theology is a
matter not of the Church, but of the School ; and
Christianity itself not the principle of a new life, but an
affair of religious philosophy. A theology that springs
from such principles is, of course, uncompromisingly

252 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-1874

radical. But the real merit of the school is just that its
radicalism is openly avowed. There is no pretence of
absolute impartiality in the discussion of theological
topics. The criticism, in particular, of the biblical
records, to which a great part of the strength of the
school is directed, has for its avowed end the explanation
of the religious ideas and progress of the Old and New
Testament, in accordance with a theory of the philo
sophy of religion that refuses to see a difference in kind
between Christianity and the other religions of the world.
We are not disposed to find fault with this departure
from the standpoint of absolute impartiality which is so
often urged as the necessary quality of a critic. We,
too, are of opinion that the " objectivity " which science
calls for is not really perilled, though we approach in
dividual problems with strong convictions as to what
Christianity is in itself and must be to us. But for this
very reason we decline to believe that we and the men
of the Theologisch Tijdschrift are really fellow-workers on
one scientific edifice. It is absurd to ask for scientific
fellowship where there are radically opposite aims. We
are antagonists, but we, at least, can afford to be
honourable antagonists, believing that our opponents
are honestly seeking the truth ; that, like all truth-seekers,
they must in some measure be truth-finders ; and that
our theology can only gain in firmness of foundation and
accuracy of construction by being confronted with a
bold and consistent development of opposing principles.

Ill

THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY

I. GENERAL STATEMENT AS TO THE PROBLEM

EVERY attentive reader of the Old Testament has observed
that the Hebrew prophets not only always find the
starting-point of their admonitions, threats, and promises
in the covenant relations already subsisting between
Jahveh and His people, but that their predictions as to the
future glory of God's kingdom are all cast in the mould of
the Theocracy under which they themselves lived. It is
certain that the prophets were alive to the imperfection
of the Old Testament dispensation ; that they longed
for a more direct and personal relation between God and
His people than that which was maintained by the
theocratic ordinances, that they looked for a time when a
new covenant should be established, according to which
the Law of Jahveh should be written on the hearts of the
people, when all should know Jahveh, when He should
forgive their guilt and remember their sins no more.
But while these features in their hopes clearly separate
the views of the prophets from the crass material expecta
tion of Judaistic thought, the fact remains, that whenever
any degree of definite colouring is given to the prophetic
images of the Messianic times, that colouring is drawn
from the theocratic institutions. In the writings of the
prophets all these institutions are idealised, spiritualised —
but not in such a way as to deprive them of their char
ts

254 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

acteristic shape and substance. The most notable example
of this is, of course, the idea of the rr&ttD. The Messiah
of the prophets and the psalms is the ideal Davidic King,
and he appears as swaying a visible monarchy over the
Jews and the dependent nations (Amos ix. n, 12). His
throne is obviously conceived as set up on Mount Sion
(Is. xi., cf. Is. ii. 2 sqq.). The nations bring tribute to him
(Ps. Ixxii.). He goes out to battle, and the Lord at his
right hand smites hostile kings before him (Ps. xlv., ex.),
although from another point of view he appears as the
Prince of Peace. In short, his features are those of
David or Solomon, cleansed from all stain of imperfec
tion, elevated into ideal majesty and illuminated by the
unchanging light of God's presence. We are so accustomed
to apply one by one the prophetic lineaments of the
Messiah to the person of Christ, that we seldom ask
ourselves what picture of the Messiah as a whole the Old
Testament saints were able to put together from the
scattered hints of prophecy. No doubt the fragmentary
character of the old revelation which the New Testament
so distinctly recognises (n-oXvpiepus) , left much to be filled
up by every one according to his own spiritual insight,
or (it might be) his own carnal fancy ; but the slowness
of the apostles to adjust their preconceived notion to the
reality revealed in Christ Jesus, surely shows something
more than a merely personal dulness of heart. It proves
that the whole dispensation in which they had been
brought up was so framed, that the idea of the Messiah
necessarily appeared in it in a shape by no means obviously
coincident with the historical figure of Christ. It is not a
sufficient, taken alone it is not even an accurate, repre
sentation of our Saviour to view Him as the idealised
David. But it is true that all that a second David could
have done for Israel, Christianity has done, and continues
to do, in a higher and wider sense. Our Lord Himself, if
we may judge from the scanty specimens of His exegesis
of the Old Testament which the evangelists have preserved

i874] THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY 255

(Matt. xxii. 31, 32, 42 sqq.), was accustomed to vindicate
His spiritual understanding of the older revelation, not by
mere citation of texts, but by a process of dialectic. The
same way of handling the Scriptures is yet more apparent
in the apostolic writings.1 Manifestly, the application of
such a method implies that it does not everywhere lie
on the surface that the New Testament gives the fulfil
ment of the former dispensation, but that it is only when
encumbrances are cleared away, the earthly shell rubbed
off, a more comprehensive view gained by the occupation
of a higher standpoint, that the necessary harmony of the
two dispensations is fully vindicated.

These considerations with regard to the fulfilment of
prophecies so central as those that point to the person and
work of Christ, may serve to suggest to us caution in
considering other portions of the prophetic conception of
the future of Israel. If even the figure of the Messiah as
delineated in the Old Testament bears traces of the
limitation of the dispensation, — if while its essential
features are manifestly fulfilled in Christ the whole setting
of these features must be conceived, in conformity with
the New Testament, as very different from that which
was suggested to the Old Testament saints from the forms
under which they had been brought to realise God's
kingdom, — if, I say, all this is manifestly true with regard
to a matter so central, we shall do well to be prepared to
find the same characters even more markedly impressed
on other parts of prophecy. We must be prepared to
distinguish throughout the Old Testament between the
spiritual truth that can, and must, find its fulfilment in a

1 Cf. Gass, s.v. " Erfiilling " in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon : The proof of
fulfilment could be given either (i) by direct citation of the original
passages from the Old Testament, or (2) rather in a historical way by
delineation of the new gospel principle of faith as a providential
development out of the preceding religious dispensation with which it is
so closely and inwardly connected; (i) prevails in Gospels, but even
there citation stands, not for its own sake, but as proof of an inner
harmony of plan, while (2) prevails in the Epistles in the notions of
TOV 7r\77/x6yuaTos ruv Kaipwv, /u,i>(TT7?/HOJ', 7rp<50ecr(s, etc.

256 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

spiritual dispensation, and the merely local and temporary
setting in which that truth presented itself to the men
of the Old Covenant.

Now, the general truth of this position is, and always
has been, in some sense admitted by the great body of
Christian theologians. The theory of extreme literalism,
which forbids the application of any dialectic whatever to
the prophetic books, which allows no distinction between
essence and form, no development in the Old Testament
theology except by simple addition — which insists that
every word of every prediction either has been, or will be,
fulfilled exactly as it is written — which expects that the
earth shall still see Ezekiel's temple with its sacrifices, and
which regards a literal Feast of Tabernacles as an element
in the Millennium, has never succeeded in gaining a place
in the theology of the Church. Its natural home is in the
bosom of sectarianism, for it can only subsist in connection
with a thoroughly perverse view of the administration
and ends of the economy of grace. The man, for example,
who expects a literal Ezekiel's temple is in this dilemma.
Either he supposes that the existence of such a temple
in the latter days, and the offering of sacrifices therein,
is an essential element in the glorification of God's people,
and so, in direct opposition to the New Testament writings,
places himself on the standpoint of the Pharisaic Christians
who withstood Paul — or, conscious that such a view
would be unchristian, he must suppose that the temple
shall belong to the restored but unconverted Jews — in
which case the interpretation is untrue to the whole
purpose of prophecy and to the manifest design of Ezekiel
himself, which is to describe the times of the restored
theocracy. But it is unnecessary to dwell on this school
of thought, or rather on these unthinking fancies which
have their origin partly in an unhistorical, unbiblical
theory of inspiration, partly in a perverse and superstitious
curiosity, and partly in impatience at the real difficulties
that beset the attempt to do justice at once to the limita-

i874] THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY 257

tions and the transcendence of the Old Testament religion.
(If we set these extreme views on one side, there still
remains a wide range of view as to the fulfilment of
prophecy among theologians, not of sects, but of the
Church.) At the other extreme from this view stands the
so-called purely historical or historico-psychological inter
pretation of prophecy, which finds the explanation of
every oracle solely in the historical position and natural
mental experience of the prophet, and which, agreeing
with the opposite extreme school in rejecting all fulfilments
not strictly literal, maintains that many prophecies have
never in any sense been, and never will be, fulfilled,
inasmuch as prophecy on the whole does not rest on
God-given revelation, but is solely the fruit of natural
hopes and desires.

These extreme views I only mention to set them on one
side. As theories neither of them can satisfy the theo
logian who desires to reach a view with regard to prophecy
which shall form an organic member in the system of the
theology of the Church. On some points of detail, indeed,
he may approach either the one or the other view. We
may expect, as some do, a literal fulfilment of many
prophecies which have already received what is called a
partial fulfilment in the New Testament dispensation.
Yet in principle we differ from the extreme literalists
so long as we do admit a distinction between the spirit
and the outer form and limitations of prophecy as of every
other feature of an imperfect dispensation. Or, again,
we may hold (e.g. Fairbairn) that there is in certain
prophecies a conditional element, so that for certain
reasons they are not to be fulfilled. Yet in this position
we do not join hands with the negative school so long as
we recognise the difference in kind between God-given
revelation and human hopes, and, if we say that such a
prophecy is not to be fulfilled, do so on grounds based on
the recognition of the Divine economy in the Old Covenant.
Well, setting aside these extreme views (our coincidences

17

258 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

with which can at most lie in certain details), we shall yet
find a wide divergence of theories as to the fulfilment of
prophecy awaiting our consideration. The great problem
which, as we have already seen, comes before us for
solution is this :—

The hopes and predictions of the Old Testament
prophets with regard to the consummation of God's
gracious and righteous purpose are always moulded by
the forms of the theocratic constitution under which they
themselves stood. They present, in fact, an idealised
image of the theocracy as it was theoretically laid down in
the law, and, practically at least, aimed at from age to age
by believing Israelites. Rising above the mere letter of
the special Mosaic ordinances, the prophets always regard
as the great feature of the Messianic age the realisation of
the spirit of the theocratic constitution. But while they
certainly seem to expect that, in the latter days, many
limitations shall disappear and must assume new forms,
it is yet plain that whenever they seek to give distinct
form and body to their Messianic hopes, the forms that
offer themselves to them are at bottom those of the
theocracy which they themselves knew. They idealise
and elevate these forms, but they do not change them.
The categories of prophet, priest, and king, the holy land,
Mount Sion, the temple, and the visibly luminous glory
of Jahveh therein — all these still form the basis of the new
theocracy as they did of the old. Even the covenant
blessings retain their earthly shape. Victory over enemies,
long life, plenty in the midst of a land restored to bound
less fertility and beauty— such are the blessings which
appear as the necessary counterpart of the sense of God's
favour and forgiveness, the indwelling of His Spirit, the
renovation of the heart in conformity with His law. The
prophets, in short, never think that they can do more
honour to the spiritual things of their religion by cutting
them off from the earthly forms of the theocracy. Rather
these earthly forms are themselves to be idealised by

i874] THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY 259

becoming full of spiritual meaning. For there is not in
the Old Testament one particle of Manichseism. Jahveh's
sovereignty over the earth is so absolutely supreme that
the shifting phases of material creation are essentially
an expression of His good pleasure or wrath towards men.
If at present the temporal experiences of God's people,
at least of individuals, cannot entirely be explained by
this principle — and that this is, indeed, the case the Book
of Job shows — yet this darkening of the essential trans
parency of the earthly organisation by which Jahveh is
constantly acting on men is temporary only. In the
Messianic age there shall be full harmony between heaven
and earth. The regenerated theocracy is also blessed
with earthly glory — and (for here is the critical point) on
the whole with just such earthly glory as in a lower degree
has already been attained at every time when the nation
walked mindfully of its covenant relations. The glorious
times of David's kingdom are the type of the glories of the
Messianic days.

Now, then, given so much as to the prophetic hopes as
matter of general agreement, to what extent can we assume
that the theocratic forms and principles which to the
prophets appeared eternal really are so ? How far is the
constitution of Christ's kingdom identical with, and how
far merely analogous to, the constitution of David's
kingdom ? In how far have the elements of the Old
Testament theocracy found their realisation in New
Testament times, or in how far may we still expect to see
them realised ? Or, on the other hand, in what measure
is the New Testament dispensation not merely an eleva
tion — an idealisation — of the Old Testament, but some
thing really and qualitatively new, which the Old Testa
ment only shadowed forth without presenting essential
identity or even such an identity that the one can flow
from the other by mere regular growth ?

This is the real problem of the interpretation of Old
Testament prophecy ; but it is also the really critical

260 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

problem for the whole significance of the Old Testament
in the Christian Church. What are the new things brought
in by Christ, and in what relation do they stand to the
things of the Old Dispensation ?

I propose to examine some of the more current views
on this head ; but before beginning to do so, I premise
one or two general remarks.

i. The question now before us is not a mere question
of exegesis. The problem of exegesis is to determine by
means of the written word the precise mind of the writer,
or the precise meaning which he desired his words to
convey. And it is manifestly one thing to ask how the
prophet conceived, and how he sought to make his hearers
conceive of the future glory, and quite another thing to
ask how far the highest conception possible under an
imperfect dispensation can be precisely reproduced in
Christ. We must look at this point more closely ; for
much confusion has arisen from neglect of it. In fact,
the precise question of exegesis with regard to prophecy
is often not very sharply conceived. In dealing with
inspired writings, a certain ambiguity appears to attach
to the expressions " mind of the writer," " meaning
which he desired to convey." For who is in this case the
writer ? Is it the mind of the prophet, or the mind of
the Spirit that is meant ? Did perhaps the Spirit mean
more than the prophet himself understood ? And, again,
was there precisely one meaning to be conveyed ? Might
not the words have various senses addressed to different
ages, so that to us the meaning may be deeper than
to the prophet's first hearers ? These are quite usual
suppositions. And they seem to give to the exegetical
question of prophecy such a breadth that it must come
to take in the whole question which we are now discussing.
For the Spirit, it is said, must have meant the prophecy
in the sense of its final fulfilment, and we, as Christians,
may by fair exegesis bring more out of the passage than
was designed to be conveyed to the first hearers or even

i874] THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY 261

to be understood by the prophet himself. This you all
know is quite a common course of argument, but a course,
I venture to say, so essentially confused as to give no hope
of good fruit.

For, in the first place, the distinction between the
mind of the Spirit and the mind of the prophet as it is
here conceived has no biblical ground. In the passage,
i Peter i. 10-12, which is usually quoted in its support,
there is no distinction between the comprehension of the
prophet and the intention of the revealing Spirit, but only
(as Calvin long ago pointed out) between the " privatum
desiderium " and the " publica functio " of the prophet
himself. The revelation vouchsafed to them, and which
bare witness to the sufferings appointed for Christ and
the glory to follow, was incomplete and limited — especially
it was limited in so far as related to the indication of the
time of consummation. The prophets knew only that the
evangelic truths which were the substance of their ministry
were to be realised in a future time, and so that the fruit
of their labours should be reaped by those who followed
after them. Thus they knew that their work and word
was not in vain, even though in their own generation
it seemed fruitless ; yet this consciousness could not
suppress the natural longing with which they strained
their eyes to gain a clearer view of the time of fulfilment.
And this circumstance the apostle uses to impress on his
readers a sense of their privileges. ' ' Salutis huius pretiurn
inde commendat, quod in earn toto studio intenti fuerunt
prophetae " (Calvin).

Thus understood, Peter gives no support to the idea
that the prophets did not understand all that was revealed
through them, or to the supposition that their words can
have a sense for us that they had not for themselves.
The reason why we, more than they themselves, reap
the fruit of their ministry, is simply because we have
entered into possession of those good things which they
saw afar off.

262 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

When this supposed biblical support has been removed
from the opinion now under consideration, we shall have
no difficulty in showing its thorough untenableness. If
the prophet were a mere mechanical organ of the Spirit,
exegesis would, of course, have nothing at all to do with
his personality. The human element would disappear
from the Old Testament. The exegesis of prophecy
would have nothing in common with the principles of the
interpretation of human writings because the psychological
basis of all hermeneutic could have no application where
the Divine Spirit is conceived as the immediate author.
In general I presume the absurdities of extreme literalism
are based on a fallacy at this point. The human side of
prophecy is ignored in favour of an overstrained doctrine
of inspiration, and yet the canon of human hermeneutic
which bids us always adopt the natural sense unless a
figure is manifestly designed, is without scruple applied
to utterances from which all human character has been
withdrawn. If the divine revelation destroyed the
human personality of the speakers, are we entitled to
assume that it respected the principles of human expres
sion ? Far more consistent, though not less fanatical, is
the theory that, since divine revelation is a thing absolutely
sui generis, it must also have its own canon of interpreta
tion.

If, on the other hand, the prophet's personality is
not suppressed in the production of his prophecies, if he
remained self-conscious, and if his own mind was at work
in expressing the truth to which by divine revelation he
had attained, it is impossible to speak of the Spirit as the
author of the prophecy in any strict sense. Nor are the
Spirit and the prophet joint authors, so that something
comes from God and something is added by man. Such
an hypothesis is both religiously inadequate and critically
untenable. Every prophecy of the Old Testament has a
beautiful unity of plan. There is nothing of patchwork
about the prophetic utterances. They flow, as the

i874] THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY 263

Germans say, from a single mould. We must therefore
regard the prophet alone as the true author of his writings.
The operation of the revealing Spirit lies in a higher
sphere. Whether the prophet records a vision vouchsafed
to him, or, as is oftener the case, works out a line of
thought to which he has been enabled to rise by spiritual
illumination, every link of the argument must be
thoroughly his own. The whole is shaped in his own
mind before it is committed to paper. And so he is the
real author of the whole, and what exegesis has to do is
just to determine what the thoughts were which the
prophet was expressing. Nor, again, will it do to say that
the prophet had more than one sense in view, — a lower
sense for his contemporaries or for weaker men, a higher
sense for the spiritual or for a future dispensation. This
is the essential position of the exploded allegorical exegesis.
It stumbles against the plain fact that a single line of
thought can have but a single meaning. If two meanings
are covered by one expression, they can be so only by
virtue of a clever artifice by which two lines of thought
in place of receiving their natural twofold expression are
forced under a single verbal formula. No one will suppose
that the prophets consciously engaged in such a process
of cryptography. The parallels would be in Bacon's
" Omnia per omina," or in such verses as " Aio te Aeacida,
etc." The theory of a double sense is always held on the
supposition that the two senses are so connected that the
one grows in a manner out of the other, that naturally,
and not by mere artifice, more lies in the prophet's words
than he directly expressed.

Now if we put this thought in its most general form,
we see that it is just an attempt to formulate the fact that
the fulfilment in Christ belongs to a higher sphere than the
view of the prophets themselves. But the formula of a
double sense is inaccurate, in so far as it attempts to reduce
to a question of mere exegesis what is really based on the
difference of dispensations, and seeks by the hypothesis

264 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

of a twofold interpretation to get over the limitations of
the old Covenant.

2. What the real nature of the question is becomes
clearer when we put the Prophecy and the Typic of the
Old Testament side by side. On this important point I
give at this stage only a hint. When we say that Old
Testament kings and priests were types of Christ, that
Old Testament institutions were types of heavenly things,
we mean this — that what Christ does for His people the
king or priest really, though in a lower way, did for the
Old Testament nation — that all these institutions played
in a measure the same part in the preservation of a people
for God's glory in the Old Testament, as Christianity and
New Testament institutions play in the New Testament
dispensation. Then it was the earthly kingdom of God ;
now it is the spiritual. But the functions necessary for
the maintenance of even an earthly theocracy must have
much not only analogous, but really common, to the
functions of the spiritual kingdom of God ; and this is
what we mean when we constitute between the two the
relation of type and antitype. Now surely the same
thing will apply to prophecy too. The prophetic hopes
rise above the mere historical type and stretch on towards
the spiritual fulfilment. But how far do they succeed in
doing this ? Do they not in many parts of their descrip
tions of things to come remain limited to the mere typical
sphere ? so that, just as the Old Testament institutions
have disappeared in the New Testament things which
contain all their true spiritual meaning without the
earthly husk ; so in some parts of prophecy the fulfilment,
while a real fulfilment of the spiritual idea of the prophecy,
may not carry out that idea in the form which was limited
by the prophet's Old Testament standpoint.

3. Once more, and again in a single word, let me
indicate that it is only in this way that the idea of suc
cessive fulfilments of prophecy can receive an intelligible
form and a firm basis. The prophets are accustomed

1874] THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY 265

to view the latter-day glory in connection with repentance
on the part of the people from present sin, and with
deliverance from present calamity. The whole course of
history possesses to the prophets' eyes the unity of a
God-given plan. Every turn in the history of the chosen
people exemplifies the eternal principles of righteousness
and grace by which the immovable kingdom of God is
finally to be built up — and therefore the prophets are
always able to rise from the consideration of God's dealings
with their contemporaries to the ideal manifestation of
the same divine principles of government in the consum
mation of all things. But really between the empirical
exemplification and the ideal consummation there lies a
long interval. During all this time God's principles of
rule and of redemption are the same, and from time to
time they appear with increasing clearness, affording ever
fresh illustrations or fulfilments of the prophetic ideas.
But always the actual historical forms in which these
ideas are realised take new shapes, and, when the final
consummation comes, and with it that absolute triumph
of God's kingdom which constitutes the full fulfilment
of the prophecy, it will no doubt come in a way that has
never entered into the heart of man. And so you see that,
as God's purpose gradually unfolds in human history, the
hopes of the prophets may again and again receive partial
fulfilments besides the great final fulfilment. But neither
the final nor the partial fulfilments will exactly fit into the
setting which the prophet drew from his own surroundings.
Now these remarks I only throw out as hints of the
kind of result that we may expect to find in conformity
with the twofold truth of the unity of purpose and the
variety of dispensation in God's dealings with men.
Such general hints do not solve the difficult question of
prophecy ; they only show us how to attack it. The
real point that must be solved is how far circumstances of
the new dispensation render the hopes of that preceding
invalid ; where the line is to be drawn between the

266 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

changing form and the permanent substance of prophecy ;
and, further, what are the principles on which the changes
of form depend. This is a question so vexed and on the
whole so difficult that I can only propose to approach it
tentatively in the consideration of some of the current
views.

II. APPLICATION OF PRECEDING STATEMENT TO NEWMAN'S
THEORY OF PROPHECY, CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF
GOD, ETC.

The point dwelt on in last lecture, as to the connection
that necessarily subsists between any theory of the
fulfilment of prophecy and the views of the theoriser as
to the relation between the old and new dispensation as
wholes, has not always been clearly borne in mind. I
propose to-day to call your attention to a theory advo
cated in J. H. (now Father) Newman's Sermons on Subjects
of the Day which puts in a very strong light the truth that,
as a matter of fact, the two things of which I speak always
must go together. Sermons XIV. and XV. of Mr.
Newman's volume are, in short, at once a theory of
prophetic interpretation and a deduction from this theory
of a doctrine as to the relation of the Jewish Theocracy
and the Christian Church, which coincides with the
position maintained by the English High Church party.
A glance at the way in which a question which is often
thought to be merely curious is thus brought to bear on
one of the most vital practical questions of our time can
hardly fail to be instructive ; besides which we shall find
it impossible to come to a distinct judgment on Mr.
Newman's views except by developing principles that
possess an independent value quite beyond their applica
tion in this special case.

" When the power and splendour of the family of David
were failing, and darkness was falling on the Church, and
religious men were fighting against dismay and distrust,
then the Prophets foretold that the kingdom of the saints

iS74] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 267

should one time be restored ; and that, though its glories
were then setting, a morrow would come in due course,
and that a morrow without an evening. Has this promise
yet been fulfilled or no ? and if fulfilled, in what sense
fulfilled ? Many persons think it has not yet been
fulfilled at all, and is to be fulfilled in some future dispensa
tion or millennium ; and many think that it has indeed
been fulfilled, yet not literally, but spiritually and figura
tively ; or, in other words, that the promised reign of
Christ upon earth has been nothing more than the influence
of the Gospel over the souls of men, the triumphs of
Divine Grace, the privileges enjoyed by faith, and the
conversion of the elect.

" On the contrary, I would say that the prophecies in
question have in their substance been fulfilled literally,
and in the present Dispensation ; and, if so, we need no
figurative and no future fulfilment. Not that there may
not be both a figurative and a future accomplishment
besides ; but these will be over and above, if they take
place, and do not interfere with the direct meaning of the
sacred text and its literal fulfilment." 1

Such is Mr. Newman's general position — a literal
fulfilment in the present dispensation of the Old Testa
ment hopes of theocratic glory. In the promises thus to
be fulfilled are to be enumerated, not only such spiritual
promises as the giving of a new Covenant and a law
written on the heart, but such as the following : " David
shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house
of Israel, neither shall the priests the Levites want a man
before Me to offer burnt offerings . . . continually " —or,
" Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth and the
mountain of the Lord of Hosts the holy mountain," and
so on. Particularly among the things literally fulfilled
fall " a conquest, a kingdom, a body politic, a ritual, a
law." It is urged that, according to the words of James
at the Council of Jerusalem, the restoration of the fallen
tabernacle of David was in course of fulfilment in the
apostolic times in the conversion of the Gentiles. And
the fulfilment thus spoken of as present will also be

1 J. H. 'Newman, Sermons bearing on Subjects of the Day, pp. 180-
181, ed. 1869.

268 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

recognised as literal, if we remember " that there has been,
in matter of fact, in Christian times a visible church, a
temporal kingdom, a succession of rulers such as the
prophecies do describe." By this view, moreover, we
shall not only indicate the literal truth of the prophetic
oracles, but do strict justice to the strong language in
which Moses inculcates the eternal obligation of the
theocratic law. In a word, temporal as well as spiritual
greatness, visible dominion as well as secret influence,
were under the Law promised to the Church in the future,
and according to the promise has already come to pass in
gospel times. In thus ascribing to the Church the char
acter of a visible theocracy, Mr. Newman of course takes
the usual standpoint of his school, according to which
Christ's church " is a temporal power, and necessarily
interferes in the concerns of this world " (p. 252) by means
of the outward organisation of governors which she has
in common with other temporal powers.

So far as this argument goes, it is not, you see, precisely
self-supporting. It is rather assumed as otherwise
manifest, that the Church of Christ is a temporal power ;
and then this result is in part applied in proof of, and in
part itself confirmed by, the theory that prophecy is
literally fulfilled. This arrangement of the argument—
not unsuitable for the ends of a sermon — is none the less
scientifically unfortunate, and in the present case it serves,
I think, to conceal the very fallacy so dangerous in the
interpretation of prophecy. For while it is assumed that
the temporal power of the Church can be deduced from
Old Testament prophecy by a simple application of the
exegetical canon, that the most literal interpretation is
always to be preferred, we shall find on viewing the
matter a little more narrowly, that a great deal more than
a mere formally exegetical canon is assumed. In short,
while Mr. Newman supposes himself to be discussing a
question purely exegetical, and thence deducing a view
as to the relation of the two covenants, this apparently

i874] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 269

sound argument moves in a vicious circle in so much as
the quasi-exegetical canon involves a lemma from the
High Church Theology. To understand this, let us
observe that Mr. Newman is by no means to be identified
with the extreme literalists who are also of necessity
extreme futurists. Jerusalem is to him not the capital of
Judaea, but the Church of Christ, Israel not the bodily
descendants of Abraham, but the Chosen people, just as
David in the prophecies means Christ.

In short, the literal fulfilment of a prophecy does not
imply the literal acceptation of every word of the pro
phecy. And this position is justified by the very obvious
remark " that the use of figures in a composition is not
enough to make it figurative as a whole. We constantly
use figures of speech when we speak ; yet who will say on
that account that the main drift of our conversation is not
to be taken literally?" This, our author continues, will
apply to the language of the prophets. On the one hand
they use such figures as were natural to their poetic style,
and speak figuratively, with an allusion to the times
before the fall, of the lion lying down with the lamb and
the like. Figures of this kind, however, are less frequent,
while, on the other hand, the language of the prophets
shows certain standing figures, such as David, Israel,
Jerusalem, which in truth are not so much figures as
proper names that have a figurative origin, or words
which, having first had a confined sense, come as language
proceeds to have a wide one.

Something, I think, might be said in criticism of both
classes of figures which Mr. Newman here regards as not
sufficient to make the tenor of prophecy as a whole
allegorical. But for the sake of simplicity, I will quite
pass over the so-called poetical figures, and look only at
those to which he himself gives most weight, — the stand
ing expressions, " Jerusalem," " David," and the like.

And here I observe (i) that even of the three names,
David, Jerusalem, Israel, Mr. Newman does not give

270 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

such an account as shall put them exactly on the same
footing. The name of David for Christ is a proper name
with a figurative origin ; Christ is called David just as
Simon is called Peter. The name, therefore, is based
on a resemblance to David. On the other hand the use
of the name Israel for the chosen people is not based on
a mere resemblance. It is an extension of the name of
the chosen people in one age to cover the elect in all ages.
So when Jerusalem is taken " for the body politic of the
chosen people in which the power lies, and from which
the action proceeds," we have, on Mr. Newman's views, not
a mere analogy, but a certain substantial identity between
the new and old Jerusalem, in a sense not stated as appli
cable to the relation of David to Christ. To produce
uniformity here, and to give any support to the argument
that Israel means the chosen people because the Christian
Church is the continuation of the Jewish, we must formu
late in the same way the relation of Christ to David, and
say that Christ's kingdom is the continuation of David's.
And I presume that Mr. Newman, though he does not
adopt, would not disapprove of this way of putting the
matter by which alone his view becomes consistent.
And so the figurative element comes to be just this, that
the names of the temporary sovereign of the theocracy,
of the temporary seat of the government of the Church,
and of the temporary possessors of the privileges accorded
to God's chosen people, are used in a universal and non-
temporary sense.

(2) Now certainly if this were the whole extent of the
difference between the Old Testament prophecy and the
New Testament fulfilment, we might be justified in
regarding the fulfilment as literal. If it could be shown
that under other names merely the Christian Church
is — as Mr. Newman says — a great empire comprising
all that a great empire ordinarily exhibits— extended
dominion not only over its immediate subjects, but over
the kings of other kingdoms — aggression and advance

i874] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 271

—warfare against enemies, acts of judgment on the
proud, acts of triumph over the defeated — high imperial
majesty towards the suppliant, and so on — if, I say, the
Christian Church really does manifest all these attributes
just in the literal sense in which they are meant by the
prophets, and does so as the continuation of the Jewish
theocracy, then I think we may fairly admit that Mr.
Newman has justified his assertion of a present literal
fulfilment of prophecy in spite of the figurative character
of the mere names, and the poetical character of some
descriptions in the Old Testament. But, on the other
hand, Newman's theory is not proved unless it can be
shown (a) that the Christian Church is a theocracy,
(b) that the Church is in substance (names and poetic
ornament apart) just such a theocracy as the prophets
describe. Now both of these positions I deny ; and I
maintain further that unless Mr. Newman had approached
the subject with the a priori conviction that the Church
is a theocracy, he would never have dreamed of asserting
on purely exegetical grounds that it is literally such a
theocracy as the prophets looked for. In looking at
this matter more closely, let us begin with the latter-
point.

What is meant by a literal fulfilment ? I do not
think the expression is a very happy one ; but its meaning
must be a fulfilment which in all fulness corresponds
with the principle and details of the prophecy as these
appear by a process of literal exegesis ; i.e. a literal ful
filment is an exact fulfilment of the prophecy literally
interpreted. In comparing the fulfilment with the
prophecy we may, as already said, be allowed to make
deduction of names that are mere names, and of manifest
poetic figures ; but if in any farther point the fulfilment
falls short of the prophecy, it can no longer be proved to
be the true fulfilment by mere exegesis, but some theo
logical principle as to the proper relation between prophecy
and fulfilment must be applied. Now I conceive that

272 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

there is in the Old Testament prophecies very much that
is neither matter of mere words nor matter of poetical
diction, which even Mr. Newman cannot suppose fulfilled
in the Christian Church.

Let us for the moment concede to our author the
right to choose for comparison with the prophecies the
Medieval Church at the time when it was most fully
persuaded that it was its function to realise the theocracy
of the prophets, and when accordingly its rulers con
sciously gave it, as far as possible, the shape of a visible
empire over the kings of the earth. Did the Church
even in that day appear as in literal agreement with the
images of prophecy in anything beyond the most vague
generalities ? Can we suppose that any prophet would
have realised in that Church the literal reproduction of
his image of the theocracy ?

True, there were certain points of agreement. He
looked for a visible sovereignty of God's people, and
here was an asserted sovereignty of the Church over the
kings of the earth. He looked perhaps for the continu
ance of the priestly office and functions, here we have
priests offering the Sacrifice of the Mass. He looked for
a sovereignty of God's law in the theocracy ; the Church
professes to rule by the new law of the gospel which is
the continuation of the old. Let us concede farther that
the prophet would so far fall in. with the spirit of the
Catholic Church as not to pierce through the hollowness
of these pretensions, and declare that all this was but the
parody of a theocracy ; he yet could not see in the then
state of the Church a literal glorification of the theocracy.
The Kingdom of the Church if on the whole it had the
upper hand over the kingdoms of the earth, yet found
in them no willing subjects. There was no permanent
visible security of the unending dominion of God's people.
And at the time when the subjection of the powers
of earth to the Western Church was most complete the
Church itself was a divided Kingdom. Once more, the

i874] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 273

dominion of the Church was so far from universal that in
some parts of the earth it was continually falling back
before the infidel powers. All these features are utterly
inconsistent with the hopes of the prophets. Say what
you will of the poetic colouring of their oracles, it is yet
absurd to say that the continuance of a visible body
politic of God's people, and of literal priests, was the real
substance of their prophecies, but that the universality
and final irrevocable victory of the theocracy were mere
accidents. Surely it is fair to say that the real essence
of the prophetic hopes lay not in the features which they
simply transplanted from their own times to the latter
days, but in the points in which the latter days were to
be superior — in the more visible presence of God to His
people — in the renewed hearts of the people themselves —
in the overcoming in a regenerate earth of the blight of
the fall — in the complete and willing subjection of the
whole earth to the Messianic Kingdom. In short, the
mere continuance of a visible God- Kingdom holding its
own with varying success amidst or even over the kingdoms
of the earth is no fulfilment of the prophets' hopes. That
was a state of things actually present to them — not the
object of their hopes, but the basis from which their hopes
rose. Only in so far as the theocracy was spiritualised,
strengthened, widened, so far as God came nearer to man,
and man became liker God, and then the whole earth
bore testimony to this reconciliation of the creature and
the creator, could they acknowledge a literal or any true
fulfilment of their hopes.

And surely, tried by this test, the Church has at no
time approved itself such a theocracy as has already
entered into visible possession of the latter-day glory to
which the prophets looked.

How then could Newman think that he saw in the
Church a literal fulfilment of Prophecy ? Simply because
from his High Church standpoint the greatest glory of
the Church is to be a theocracy — because what with the

18

274 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

prophets was the starting-point — the existence of a God-
Kingdom on earth is with him the culminating point ;
because all his notions of the excellency of Christianity
culminate in the visible Church, and in that Church in
the shape of an imperial power. In short, the Mediaeval
idea of the Church, an idea undoubtedly grand, and well
calculated to occupy men's minds, really stands before
him when he approaches prophecy, and everywhere he
sees as the centre of prophecy the very image which he
has himself brought with him to its study.

Now the very fact that to us it seems so obvious that
the Christian Church never has taken the shape of a
visible realisation of the prophetic latter-day theocracy,
while to our opponent it is equally obvious that it has
done so, makes it plain that we stand on ground so different
that we can hardly argue about the fulfilment of prophecy
in detail until we have adjusted our mutual relations on
a more general question. Are we and the High Church
party at one on the question if the Church is, or is yet
designed to be, a visible Theocracy at all ? I think we
are not. The question is not merely one of present or
future fulfilment. It is not merely one of literal or figura
tive fulfilment. While our antagonist holds that above
all things the Church is a theocracy, an imperial power in,
though not of, the world — we, I think, must hold that
such a power the Church neither is now, nor ever shall be.
I do not expect that you will all be prepared to give your
assent to this proposition without further explanation.
You will perhaps be inclined to say that I am running
into the opposite extreme from our High Church antagon
ists ; but I beg at least thatyou will suspend judgment
till I explain more fully what I mean.

The High Church position is (as we know) that the
Church is essentially a Kingdom, that it is in the form of
a Kingdom that it becomes visible, and that the present
constitution of that Kingdom in the hands of a visible
hierarchy is essentially the form of the final glory predicted

1874] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 275

by the prophets ; so that even now the Church as a
theocracy exercises legitimate sway over the kingdoms of
the earth.

We know, too, how this theory was carried out in the
mediaeval Church. If the Church is now a visible imperial
power among the nations, she must not only have a visible
hierarchy of rulers, but some palpable sign to distinguish
her subjects. This sign was sought in the Sacraments.
The use of the Sacraments constituted a man a member
of the Theocracy ; just as birth in a certain land or some
other outward sign made him member of a world-kingdom.
True Church membership implied possession of an inward
grace, but this grace was conveyed by the Sacrament
ex opere operate. The Reformers rose against this view.
They denied the power of the mere external sacrament to
convey grace ex opere operate. To be a member of the
Church implies, they said, direct personal union to the
Head of the Church. Hence the sign of membership in
Christ's body is not an outward visible mark like the sign
of union to an earthly kingdom. It is an invisible bond
that binds together the mystic body of Christ ; and the
Church so constituted — the Church invisible — is an object
of faith, not of sight. Yet the Church is not wholly
invisible. What is not an object of sight is only the one
point — the bond uniting each of those who are true
Church members to Christ. But there are certain functions
that pertain to the Church, and by the existence of which
we have to recognise the real presence of the Church.
Wherever the word of God is truly preached and the
sacraments purely administered, there we must recognise
a sign of the presence of the Church — only we cannot judge
what individuals among the hearers of the word and
partakers of the sacrament are true members of Christ.
And again, the open visible functions of worship which the
Church is called to perform — the administration of word
and sacrament — can only be carried out by a visible
organisation. And hence arises the right and the necessity

276 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

of an orderly Church-government chosen out of those
who, by participation in the outward functions of the
Church, profess adherence to Christ, and in the judgment
of charity are to be regarded by us who cannot try hearts
as really members of Christ. Now, I say that the Church
so conceived is in no sense a visible theocracy. For
Protestant Church government has for its aim solely the
administration of the word and sacraments, and the
discipline in its hand is purely spiritual for the maintenance
of the purity of the word and preventing of profanation of
sacraments. This is a function which in no sense conveys
authority over the kingdoms of the world, while on the
other hand, being itself purely spiritual, it can tolerate no
control from these kingdoms. Moreover, a government
which can only admit to, and exclude from, outward
privileges, which has no list of the true members of
Christ's body, and no right to admit to, or exclude from,
the privileges of union to Him, cannot even with regard to
the Church itself be an imperial government, but is simply
ministerial. The Church, then, as organised is not and
cannot be a theocracy, in so much as its rulers have not
the kind of power without which a kingdom proper cannot
exist. And if the Church of Christ as visible and organised
is not a kingdom, then the theocratic prophecies neither
now are, nor ever can be, fulfilled in the glorification of the
visible Church.

And this argument, I conceive, touches some others
than Christians of the Roman Catholic or English High
Church. For we ourselves sometimes hear it asserted
that the proper fulfilment of the prophecies of homage to
be done by the kings of the earth to the renewed theocracy
must lie in gifts offered by governments for the support
of the organisation of the visible Church. But if the
visible Church is not the theocracy, and if its organisation
is not the imperial organisation of Christ's Kingdom, this
argument must fall to the ground. But surely, you may
urge, the invisible Church is the true Kingdom of Christ,

i874] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 277

the theocracy to which all are bound to do homage, and
this homage can become visible only as done to the visible
Church. Hence, the final glorification of the theocracy
must become manifest just in the exaltation of the visible
Church.

But what do we mean by the final glorification of
God's Kingdom ? Is it not, according to the prophets
and according to the teaching of our Lord Himself, the
visible dominion of Christ and Christ's Kingdom over all
the earth ? And can this find its expression in honour
and homage done to the visible Church ? Surely not.
For the organisation of the visible Church to which alone
such homage could be paid is essentially ministerial, and
so has no right to accept sovereignty over the world.
No doubt every advance of Christ's Kingdom will bring
increased respect for the visible organisation of the Church;
but this one result is not the full expression of the advance
of the theocracy.

And if this is so, it is at least an incorrect expression
to call the invisible Church the Kingdom of Christ. No
doubt the same persons make up the body of Christ and
the Kingdom of Christ, but they do so under different
categories. The old sound Reformed doctrine is that
there are not two churches, a visible and an invisible, but
one Church — visible in respect to its organisation for the
administration of the word and sacraments, invisible in
respect to the criterion of individual faith in Christ.
Hence, the only organisation of the Church qua Church is
the organisation of visible Church government for the per
formance of purely spiritual actions. And so my actions
as a member of the Church, and under the organisa
tion thereof, are purely spiritual actions — the worship of
God and the bearing witness among men to his grace
by special acts of cultus. But as a member of Christ's
Kingdom my functions are not purely spiritual. That
Kingdom is to subdue all the earth, and so every action
has a relation to it. My discharge of my daily calling on

278 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

earth falls under the cognisance of the Church only in so
far as it is, or is not, outwardly inconsistent with my
public profession and participation in the cultus of the
Church. But my whole life falls under the Law of God's
Kingdom, by which I am bound in every action to aim at
the advance of Christ's cause. In the discharge of this
calling I am not answerable to man, but directly to the
King who, by His providence, has given me a special
calling to a post in His Kingdom and a work to do therein.
The organisation of God's Kingdom is not then an outward
Church organisation, but a hidden organisation of God's
providence by which every man's calling in Christ is so
ordered that each, while doing his own work for Christ,
is doing a harmonious part of the great work that shall
yet fill the whole earth. So long as Christ Himself is in
heaven, the Kingdom that is leavening the earth is essenti
ally invisible save to the eye of faith. True, the outward
effects of Christianity are seen, but the system, the
harmonious organisation in which some have a higher,
some a lower place, is unrevealed till the day when the
fire shall try every man's work, and when, all being burnt
up that is not of Christ's Kingdom, the city of God shall
stand forth in its full proportions.

And now let us ask how all this applies to the fulfil
ment of prophecy. We may, I think, safely maintain
three positions.

(1) There is a continuity between the Old Testament
and the New Testament Kingdom of God. The earthly
fabric of the Old theocracy did not perish till its spiritual
forces had been implanted in the invisible Kingdom of

Christ.

(2) Hence, though we cannot say that the theocratic
prophecies have found a fulfilment in the Christian Church,
they have already found a fulfilment in Christ.

(3) And yet the full historical fulfilment of the theo
cratic prophecies has not yet come. For the New Testa
ment no less than the Old looks to a future glory, to a

1874] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 279

time when at Christ's second coming the empire of God's
Kingdom over the world shall become visible to all.
A word or two on each of these positions : —
(i) We are told by Mr. Newman that the theocratic
prophecies are fulfilled in Christ because the Christian
Church is a theocracy, a visible temporal power. Not
very dissimilar in principle is the opposite extreme position
which maintains that no fulfilment can be regarded as
real which does not apply to the literal people of Israel.
For both of these views alike maintain that continuity of
political existence is the necessary criterion of the identity
of the people of the promise and the people of the fulfil
ment.1 Now, I admit that the prophets do always
represent continuity of political existence as the normal
condition of the theocracy, so that suspension of this
existence is to them always associated with a state of
exile. I do not think that any prophet fully, or even
approximately, conceived that the first grand step towards
the final realisation of the kingdom of God would consist
in the substitution of an invisible for a visible Kingdom,
of a hidden leaven for an external conquering power.
None of them had fully comprehended that the Kingdom
of God cometh not with outward show. But then the
question arises : Does this constant assumption on the
part of the prophets that on the whole the earthly theo
cracy reaches on — continuously or broken by captivities —
into the latter days belong to what was revealed to them,
or is it simply the natural filling-up of what was left
dark by the circumstances actually present to them ? It
is expressly taught in the New Testament that the
prophetic revelations were partial. No prophet had a
full image of the time to come. So far, then as the contrary
was not clearly taught him, he must more or less see the
divine revelation against a background of present theo
cratic circumstances. And this was the more necessary

1 Is not the interpretion of "till Shiloh come" mediaeval, having no
significance except on this theory of continuous political existence ?

28o LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

because it is a special peculiarity of prophecy that the
time of fulfilment is always vague. The teaching of the
prophets takes this shape. These things God will bring
about ; but the first step must be the people's repentance.
And when that might be they did not know. It might be,
often they seem to have hoped that it would, be soon.
Thus Joel seems to see the glory of the latter days in
direct connection with the great national repentance he
himself had witnessed. And if this was so, the background
of the theocracies would always be of necessity drawn
from those present circumstances, which as the prophets
hoped and prayed would really be the very vestibule of
the latter-day glory. We must, then, always aim at
distinguishing this mere background from the spiritual
hopes and promises that rose from it.

I do not say that it is easy to do this in detail. But
in general it is plain that to the prophets the real kernel
of the theocracy which was the true centre of their
promises lay in the spiritual things of God's Kingdom.
To the prophets, even as to the New Testament, the great
hinges of the whole development of God's Kingdom are
sin and grace. Would they not always be ready to admit
that that is the true theocracy which fights against sin
most manfully, and which contains the strongest forces for
the subjugation of the world to God ? It may be that
they always associated the victory of God's Kingdom
over sin with the victory of Israel over the Gentiles, that
the continual gracious presence of God with redeemed
man could be conceived by them only in a form derived
from Jahveh's glory enthroned on the Cherubim, and so on.
But if the spiritual things of their prophecies are accom
plished in Christ in a fuller sense without these accessories,
would they not themselves have rejoiced to acknowledge
that in Him the true fulfilment of their oracles is
found ?

The true theocracy is found wherever those forces are
found, organised by the hand of God Himself and obeying

i874] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 281

His kingly word, which are strong enough and pure enough
to subdue all things under Him.

(2) Now, I need not say that all these forces are summed
up in the one person of Christ, and that by His Spirit they
vivify every member of His body. Whoever has the
spirit of Christ is a member of the true theocracy ; for he
is equipped with strength from God to do a work for Him
in the world. That all will admit. But where, you ask,
is the theocracy as a whole ? To the existence of a state
belong not only citizens, but organisation. Now we have
seen that the present organisation of the theocracy is
not the organ of the visible Church. That is the organisa
tion of public worship and Christian ordinances, the
organisation by which a public and purely religious
testimony to God's grace is kept up ; but it is not the
organisation by which the world is subdued under Christ.
And the proof of it is that just in proportion as the Church
has striven to bring all the Christian work for Christ under
her outward organisation, the real work of bringing in
those that are without has always declined.

Shall we then say that there are at present members
prepared for a future theocracy ; but that now the
Kingdom of God is suspended — that the chosen people is,
as it were, in exile ? Far from it. Rather the Kingdom
of God, though its organism is now invisible even as the
King is invisible, is as truly and really existent among
men as Christ is truly with us always even to the end of
the world. Already in His sojourn among men, Christ
could say to the Pharisees that the Kingdom of heaven
was in their midst. And is not this much more true now ?
The Kingdom of God organised by His invisible providence,
preserved in oneness of plan and development by the
operation in all its citizens of the one Spirit of Christ, is
now upon earth and in our midst in a sense so far raised
above the highest point ever reached by the Old Testa
ment prophecies that even now we must acknowledge a
true fulfilment of the prophetic hopes. And if we will

282 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

have the proof of this, we must not turn our eyes to the
mere outward organisation of the Church — we must not
even be content to behold the really great work which all
can see that Christianity has already wrought on earth ;
we must look up with the eye of faith to those heavenly
places where Christ our king, sitting at the right hand of
God, rules His kingdom with a wisdom and an omnipotence
far different from aught that appertained to the noblest
princes of the house of David. Now here again an objec
tion may be made. The theocracy of which we are
speaking, we may be told, is visible only to the eye of
faith ; but the old Hebrew theocracy, and similarly the
Messianic theocracy of the prophets, was seen by the eye
of sense. Between two such quantities there is no
compatibility. To say that the one is the fulfilment of
the other must be, after all, mere spiritualising. At first
sight, perhaps, such an objection is plausible ; but let
us ask : was the theocracy as a theocracy visible to the
Israelite by the eye of sense or by the eye of faith ? Was
not the Kingdom of Israel to the unspiritual man a mere
earthly kingdom ? That God was the true King of His
people, that His providence was everywhere the special
support of the nation, was then, as now, a doctrine of
faith ? True, the Old Testament dispensation was a
dispensation of miracles. But in this respect it differs
from the Christian dispensation only in this, — that while
in the Old Testament the element of miracle runs through
the whole history, the miracles of the New Testament
were requisite only at the founding of the dispensation.
And in truth, the reason why the faith of the Old Testa
ment people needed to be maintained by constantly
recurring miracles, was just because in those days the
God-Kingdom was so much more easily lost sight of—
so much more easily confused with the world-kingdom
than it is now ; because to us the one great miracle of the
resurrection of Christ contains within itself all that could
be shown to us by a whole dispensation of miracles. It is

i874] NEWMAN'S THEORY OF PROPHECY 283

not then true that Christ's Kingdom would be more real
if it possessed the outward form of a world-kingdom.
It is not true that it was essentially easier to believe in
God's Kingdom when it took the form of an earthly
power. Rather the necessity of such a theocracy as that
of the earthly Israel is a mark of the inferiority of a
dispensation in which spiritual truth had not yet shaken
itself free from limitations that disappeared in Christ.
And so the Kingdom of Christ is the fulfilment of the
Old Testament Theocracy, because it contains all that
made of it a God-Kingdom, though it has shaken itself free
from the forms of a world-kingdom. And this change the
prophets themselves, in some degree at least, anticipate
when they prophesy that in the Messianic age God's law
shall be written on men's hearts. For this is a mark
that the forms of a world-kingdom, in which the law
is always something external administered by a visible
executive, shall in the future theocracy be broken through.
(3) And yet Christianity, as we now see it, is not yet
the actual, though it is the potential, fulfilment of the
prophet's hopes. In Christ the Kingdom of God is
equipped with all the world-subduing powers which the
old theocracy did not possess. The victory is already
sure, but it is not already complete. This is a distinction
not foreign to the Old Testament prophecy. First the
spiritual renewal of Israel gathered around the Messiah —
then the victorious advance against the world-powers —
such is always the Old Testament conception. And such,
too, is the teaching of Christ. We are still saved by hope-
by a hope not yet seen. WTe are still looking for the day
when the Kingdom of the world shall become the Kingdom
of our Lord and of His Christ (Rev. xi. 5), — nay more,
for the day " when the creation itself shall be delivered
from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the
glory of the children of God." And in the New Testa
ment, as in the Old, it is everywhere clear that when the
victory of God's Kingdom is thus complete, it shall be

284 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-1874]

visibly complete, and shall be testified not only by the
regeneration of man, but by the restoration of the harmony
of the whole creation. This, I say, is clear without any
ignoring of the principle already laid down that we must
not confuse the mere setting of prophecy with the sub
stance of the predictions themselves. For the visible
glory of God on Zion, the visible signs of his reconciliation
with His people in the New Earth, are not modelled on
anything that was part of the prophets' own circumstances.
The ever openly visible glory of God above His people
had no parallel since Sinai, the regeneration of the earth
had no parallel save in Eden. These were new things-
things essential in every way to the whole conception of
the full Theocratic Glory. And these very things are
ensured to us in the New Testament, not merely by the
word of the whole New Testament, but by the cardinal
New Testament fact, by the resurrection of our Lord in a
glorified body which is at once the pledge of that physical
regeneration which Paul calls the liberation of the creature,
the " redemption of our bodies," and the actual constitu
tion of that indissoluble bond between heaven and earth,
which ensures to the glorified theocracy the unending
bodily presence of its King.

IV

THE PLACE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN
RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

IT is only in comparatively recent times that the ques
tion of this paper has come into prominence in our coun
try. The Scottish Reformers, like the other Protestant
Churches, were content to " believe and confesse the
Scriptures of God sufficient to instruct and maik the man
of God perfect " [Confession of 1560] without drawing
any distinction between the use of the two Testaments ;
nay, affirming that by the " Evangell " they understood
" nott onlie the Scripturis of the New Testament, but
also of the Auld, the Law, Prophettis, and Histories, in
quhilk Christ Jesus is no less conteaned in figure than
we have him now expressed in veritie " [ist Book of
Discipline]. These utterances indicate the principle of
the diligent use of the Old Testament, for which Scotland
has ever since been noted. Our Scottish love for the
Old Testament does not proceed from adherence to a
legal or Judaising standpoint, but from the belief that,
in the Old Testament as in the New, Christ and the
truths of His gospel are set forth with Divine authority.
Nor can we say that this is a vain belief, if we remember
that it is of the Old Testament (the New Testament
Canon being not yet formed) that Paul affirms that it is
able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which
is in Christ Jesus — if we remember how deeply our
Lord Himself had drunk of the Spirit of the Old Testa-

285

286 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

ment, how closely His words attached themselves to its
teaching, how He found foreshadowed in the Books of
the Old Covenant everything which in His own person
and history is " now expressed in verity." At bottom,
then, we must still hold fast the old Reformation position,
that the Old Testament, like the New, is able to make
us wise unto salvation, comes to us, not with transient
human authority, but with eternal Divine power, and so
must always occupy, in religious instruction, a place
side by side with the New.

A large question, however, remains. Though the
Old Testament, like the New, is the record of a Divine
Revelation, they belong to different stages of Revelation.
The Old Testament leads up to Christ, but the New
Testament shows us Christ. What the Old Testament
left incomplete, the New Testament fills up. The one
plan of salvation unfolded itself gradually, and only the
New Testament gives the plan in its full development.
How are these facts to bear on our practical use of the
record of the growing and of the completed Revelation ?
This is a question which the Reformers, and still more,
their successors, never fully answered, indeed, never fully
set before them. They were more interested in the
unity than in the differences of the two dispensations.
Justly laying stress on the fact that Christ is to be found
in the Old Testament, they were often tempted to find
Him there in the same way, and with the same clearness
as in the New. And so in spite of the better example
of Calvin and other great divines, a tendency arose to
ignore the historical character of Revelation, the gradual
development of God's saving purpose from age to age.
That use of the Old Testament came to be thought
soundest which extracted from it the greatest amount of
specifically New Testament doctrine. And doctrine
being thus thrust into one-sided prominence, the Old
Testament History came to be valued only as an illustra
tion of doctrine. It was forgotten that without saving

1 874] THE OLD TESTAMENT IN TEACHING 287

history there could be no saving doctrine, because with
out a work of redemption actually realised there could
be no doctrine of redemption.

The erroneous way of thought which I have just
characterised is still common enough amongst us, and
we have all seen how it works in the use of the Old Testa
ment for instruction. It issues either (i) in arbitrary
spiritualising, or (2) in dry and shallow moralising, (i)
The first of these ways of using the Old Testament is
probably less common in the school than in the pulpit,
and can never again reach the predominance accorded to
it by some pre- Reformation Romish theologians, who
value the Old Testament history only in so far as an
allegorical reference to New Testament truth can be
extracted from it. Yet the warning is not unnecessary,
that the disposition everywhere to find types and figures
is one of the most ensnaring tendencies with which we
can approach the Bible ; for there is no surer method
of eliminating from the Scripture narratives that endless
variety of human interest which is a chief source of their
charm and power, and reducing them to limp and colour
less uniformity. Take, for example, the story of Abraham
offering Isaac. Can anything show more powerfully,
not only to the understanding, but to the heart, the
nature of the faith with which we are to cling to God,
through all apparent hardness in His dealings with us,
than this narrative taken literally ? But if instead of
trying to bring ourselves, or those we teach, under the
direct influence of Abraham's faith on the one side, and
the issue that justified that faith on the other, we proceed
to spiritualise, and seek in Isaac a type of Christ, instantly
the rich direct personal lesson is gone, and we are brought
back, in a roundabout way, to the doctrine of the Atone
ment in general. Of course there are real types in the
Old Testament, but in them the typical lesson rises
naturally out of the literal lesson, and shares its direct
concrete personal character. Such types alone can

288 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

profitably be used for instruction. But when we are
always hunting for artificial types, it may be fairly asked
whether there is any profit in using the Old Testament
in order to get, by a round-about process, doctrines which
could be got in quite the same shape, and much more
directly, from the New Testament, or even from the
Catechism. (2) More common is the fault of artificial
abstract moralising. Let me illustrate this by an extract
or two from a Sabbath school syllabus, in which side by
side with the lessons from Old Testament history stand
associated " Doctrines to be proved." The following are
consecutive pairs :— Joseph's brethren accused. Honesty
is the best policy. Joseph makes himself known to his
brethren— Brethren should love one another. Joseph
meets Jacob— Parents to be honoured. Jacob blesses
Joseph— The death of a believer is happy. Jacob's
burial— Sin brought death. The way of teaching which
such a scheme suggests, and to which in many hands it
certainly leads, is this :— to cut up the history into little
sections, in each section to find a doctrine or moral
precept illustrated, and to regard this precept as the
chief " lesson " of the passage. As a matter of course the
lesson must often be far-fetched. For the Old Testament
was not compiled as a series of short lessons, but as a
narrative of the continuous history of God's dealings
with His people. Thus the story of Joseph's brethren
was never meant to teach that honesty is the best policy ;
it is narrated because it was necessary to show, in detail,
how God's providence brought Israel into Egypt. If we
concentrate our attention on the doctrines to be gathered
from little atoms of the history— doctrines of a kind so
general that they find hundreds of illustrations, not only
in the Bible, but in everyday life— we throw into the
background that which is the real peculiarity of Bible
history — viz. that it is the history of salvation. It is
only by laying stress on this last character, only by
showing how in the Bible the invisible and eternal things

1874] THE OLD TESTAMENT IN TEACHING 289

of God's Kingdom became visible to the faith of the men
of the old covenant, that we can hope to impress on those
we teach the continual sense of a Kingdom of Christ,
into which we are brought by His redeeming work, and
to which we must consecrate all our lives. We do not
need the history of Joseph to teach us that parents are
to be honoured and brethren loved ; conscience teaches
that. We do not need Jacob's burial to add another to
the many proofs that sin brings death, for indeed it
proves no such thing. But we do need these narratives
as links in the long unbroken proof, which is a proof
only because it is unbroken, that God's Kingdom, His
kingdom of grace ruleth over all. When this unity of
the Old Testament is thrown aside, and fragments of
history tortured till they yield fragments of doctrine
and morals, it is not strange that many should ask, what
is the profit of teaching the Old Testament to children
at all ?

Having thus glanced at the false methods which
bring into discredit the use of the Old Testament for
instruction, insisted on by our ancestors, let us now see
how the evangelical principles, handed down to us from
the Reformation, point out a sounder method of viewing
the Books of the Old Covenant. What the Evangelical
Churches seek is a personal message of love from God in
Christ, to which we can return a personal answer of
faith. Such a personal message cannot come as dry ab
stract doctrine. A word of salvation, on which we can
rest, must be a practically convincing declaration of God's
love ; a declaration convincing, because made on the
analogy of the way in which men show love to one
another ; made, that is, by words joined to deeds, by
God drawing nigh to men in history, and really proving
Himself a redeeming and gracious God. Such a God He
showed Himself to Israel at the Exodus, and through the
long course of Old Testament history, in which He con
tinually watched over His people, bearing with their

19

2QO LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

hard heart and dull ears, gradually showing them more
and more of His will, His perfections, His glorious decree,
and so leading on to the full manifestation of His saving
purpose in Christ Jesus. In the life, death, and re
surrection of our Lord, God's saving self -manifestation
is absolutely complete. The sum and substance of
personal Christianity is just to come under the influence
of Christ's person as His Apostles did, giving up our
whole lives to Him, as one who shows Himself to us as
the ever-living, all-powerful, and all-loving Son of God,
by whom God reconciles the world to Himself. Such a
Christianity cannot be taught, for no third party can
teach me to love and trust even the most lovely char
acter. Saving faith is a thing directly between me and
God, and faith in Christ can be inspired only by God's Spirit,
by the Spirit of Christ. What a third person, what
religious instruction can effect is to display and impress
on the mind of the pupil, as vividly as possible, a lively
image of God's self-manifestation, to present the Sacred
History, which is the ground of all faith, in such a way
that the child shall, from his earliest years, be accustomed
to give to God and to Christ a real place in his daily life,
a place as real as he gives to his father or his brother.
If we look at the three first Gospels, we see that this
was just the character of our Lord's own teaching. The
Kingdom of Heaven — that kingdom, which, though
unseen, is really in our midst, and to which our true and
eternal interests belong, of which we must learn to feel
ourselves members, giving our allegiance to Him as the
King — such is the constant burden of His teaching to
which He seeks to give reality by every variety of state
ment and illustration. But whence does this doctrine
of the kingdom come ? From the Old Testament !
Everywhere He assumes that there are certain ideas as
to the nature of the kingdom which do not now, for the
first time, need to be stated and proved. His miracles
proved the authority of Christ, as of Him by whom the

i874] THE OLD TESTAMENT IN TEACHING 291

kingdom should be realised ; but the Old Testament
History had already shown that God had resolved to set
up a kingdom, and choose out a people upon earth. And
this being so, the life teaching and saving work of Christ
can never be fully understood, except as the climax of
the Old Testament History.

In a word, the history of the Old Testament dispensa
tion must be taught—

1. As the history of the preparation for Christ, with
out which much of His teaching cannot be understood.

2. As the visible illustration and proof of many things
which, though involved in Christ's work, did not in His
life on earth receive detailed manifestation. In the New
Testament, the King is manifested, but the kingdom, the
actual providential scheme by which the earth is being
conquered for and by Christ, is hidden and known by
faith only. But in the Old Testament the kingdom, not
in its highest spiritual form, but cased in earthly forms,
became really manifest. Thus there are many truths
about the kingdom, especially about the final victory of
the kingdom, of which the Old Testament alone gives us
clear illustrations by which to explain in our teaching the
spiritual things of the New Testament. For example,
the power to overthrow His enemies by angelic help,
which Jesus claims, but did not use, is the same power
which was manifested in the fall of Sennacherib's host.

But, indeed, it is not needful to enlarge on the enormous
value of the Old Testament in every attempt to make
the spiritual, heavenly world appear real to those we
teach. To children, reality is very much limited to
things that can be seen and handled. Ideas — abstract
doctrines — are not suited for them. They cannot be
expected to look much — it is not well they should look
much — at a life beyond the grave. But they can and
should learn to recognise the supernatural, the saving
love and providential guidance of God in the present life.
Now this is just the strong point of the Old Testament.

LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

The Old Testament believers had but vague views of
future life, but little apprehension of abstract doctrines.
But they had the most intense, child-like faith in God's
ever-present hand that can be conceived. In the whole
Old Testament history, God appears as in no other
history, as direct chief actor, ever near to His people ;
and so that history is indispensable for the religious
teaching of the young.

This sense of God's immediate presence to all our
lives, which inspires the whole of the Old Testament,
appears in various shapes. In the history, we have the
actual proof of God's redeeming providence. To give
this proof full weight, the narrative must be taught
continuously and vividly, not made a text for abstract
doctrine, but just allowed to impress its own lesson, on
the principle that what God was in Old Testament
times that He is now. Then, again, we have the Psalms
—those inimitable answers of the believing heart to God.
The Psalms are best explained by the history which
shows the circumstances in which the prayers and praises
they contain arose, and so at once gives their application
to our case. Moreover, they are an indispensable com
panion to the history, for side by side with God's message
to us, they show us how we shall answer to God. With
the Psalms, as with the histories, nothing is more to be
avoided than a fragmentary treatment. Let children
begin with short Psalms, or with Psalms like cxix., where
each verse is independent, and then, as they grow older,
let them learn to enjoy the beautiful unity of thought in
longer Psalms. The Prophetical and Didactic Books are
only in part suitable for elementary instruction. The
Proverbs, indeed, as the maxims of a wisdom resting on
the fear of God, have an obvious and easy use. Books
like Job and the Preacher will be admired for their
poetry before they are understood in their argument.
Parts of the prophets are easily understood, especially in
the New Testament development of the truths they

i874] THE OLD TESTAMENT IN TEACHING 293

suggest. But for children, the main thing is to learn to
understand the prophets as men, and their work in
Israel. The details of their books are but little under
stood, even by adults who have access only to the English
Version. But one thing is to be avoided above all — the
fantastic eschatology, or anticipations of the future
history of the world, in which some take delight, but
which inevitably result in hopeless confusion and per
version of the clearest principles of Biblical study.

ON THE VALUE OF CRITICAL STUDY OF THE
PSALMS FOR THEIR PRACTICAL EXPOSITION

THE most interesting way of discussing the questions
connected with the separate poetical books of the Old
Testament would be to give a history of Hebrew poetry.
Such a history would begin with the ancient fragments
preserved in the Pentateuch — then pass on to the grand
song of Deborah, and perhaps some other fragments of
the age of the judges, and thereafter introduce us to
Samuel, who appears in the Old Testament history as the
reviver not only of prophecy, but of religious song among
his people. These considerations would carry us on to
the age of David, who, according to the whole testimony
of the Old Testament, is the father of psalmody proper,
then to the reign of Solomon, whose name is as indis-
solubly connected with the Gnomic Literature of the
Hebrews, and so forth.

At least one attempt — that of E. Meier — has been
made to write in this way the history of the Old Testament
poetic literature. But however interesting the attempt
may be, there are good reasons for our declining to imitate
it. There is so much uncertainty as to the dates of the
various Hebrew poems, and so much discussion even as to
the age of such as bear the name of known authors, that
we should at every step have to deal largely in conjecture

294

[1870-1874] CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PSALTER 295

and assumption, or pause to take up the most abstruse
critical questions in a way not very profitable for our
present purpose. Thus, for example, such poems as the
Blessings of Jacob and Moses have been subjects of so
much discussion that we could make no use of them
without entering on the question of their genuineness.
Again, the dates of the Book of Job and of some parts of
Proverbs are still unsettled. The Song of Solomon is
still so far a mystery that critics are not agreed whether
it is a drama or a collection of lyrics. And, finally, the
Psalms themselves, which are in many respects the most
important productions of all, are in part unprovided with
titles, in part titled in a manner so doubtful as to give
us little help. We are not then, at present, in a state
to attempt the construction of a really trustworthy
history of Hebrew poetry ; though after proceeding a
certain length with such critical enquiries as seem
absolutely unavoidable, we may be able to reconstruct
with some certainty certain chapters in that history.
But in the first instance at least we must be content to
take up the books one by one, and to go as far into the
criticism of them as seems needful in preparation for the
proper study of their contents. In particular I wish to go
somewhat fully into the questions connected with the
Psalter, a book which for the Christian minister is perhaps
the most important in the Old Testament, and which
cannot be used with full profit even for devotional purposes
without considerable scientific preparation, both in the
way of historical criticism and in the line of Biblical
Theology.

The Psalter is, as you know, the inspired hymn-book
of the Old Testament, containing a collection of songs of
prayer and praise, didactic pieces and the like, for use in
the service of the temple and in private devotion. These
songs are of the most various age and character, and
reflect the religious convictions, hopes, prayers, and joys
of faithful Israelites under the most diverse circumstances.

296 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

There are no human feelings so catholic and unchanging
in their character as those of true and deep personal
religion developed, as the religion of the Psalms was, in
contact with and under the guidance of God's special
Revelation to His own. The Psalter, as was to be expected
from its character as a Theocratic poetry — a poetry of
God's Kingdom and Church — is quite free from all that
one-sided individualism and fanaticism by which many
later hymns, however deeply they may express a real
personal conviction, are rendered unfit to express the
experience of the Church and of God's people at all times.
The Psalms are in the fullest sense hymns of the Old
Testament Church, sung that is by men whose sense of
personal relation to God was always based on and rooted
in their sense of God's redeeming relation to Israel. No
doubt there must have arisen in Israel hymns of another
kind, reflecting a disturbed, one-sided, impure religious
consciousness — in a word, uninspired. That such poems
have found no place in the Old Testament Canon is
doubtless the fruit of a similar providence to that which
guided the New Testament Church to the rejection of
the Apocryphal Gospels. In neither case must the
separation between Canonical and Uncanonical be ascribed
to a judicious exercise of historical criticism — as if
books and psalms were rejected which could not prove
themselves to be the work of men recognised as inspired.
Such considerations had at most a secondary part to play
in the selection, which was guided rather by the fact that
the same Spirit of God which breathes in the sacred
writings is the Spirit that providentially rules the Church
and that lives in every believer. The forming of the
Canon was a gradual thing, and before the collection of
Psalms was closed every one of them would have been
tested by its fitness to express the prayers and praises of
God's people for many years, or even for many generations.
And this testing process was rendered still more sifting
by two things, (i) The whole or the greater part of the

i874] CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PSALTER 297

time during which the collection was growing was an age
of prophecy. And though we cannot show, and must not
assume, any formal collection by the hands of prophets,
yet at least the individual psalms would be subjected,
again and again, to be tried by that gift of SiaKpuns
Trvev/zarwv which, as Paul teaches us, is closely associated
with prophecy (i Cor. xii. 10). And again (2) just as in
New Testament times, a special sifting was no doubt the
fruit of the persecutions and distress of the people, particu
larly in the exile, not only the people themselves but their
literature would be smelted in the furnace of affliction.
Where it was possible to rescue so little from the destruc
tion of the nation and all its accumulated treasures,
mental as well as material, that would, of course, be
saved which had planted itself most deeply in the hearts
of the true worshippers of Jahveh. Thus, then, while
much that was valuable in the ancient poetry of Israel was
no doubt lost before the close of the Canon, we have at
least received in the Book of Psalms a collection of the
noblest kind, embracing the most precious utterances of
the faith of the Old Testament, each one of which had by
long use and trial become the common property of the Old
Testament Church, which recognised in them a fitting
expression of her own faith, hopes, and prayers. And
again, whatever differences there are between the Church
of the Old and the New Testament, it is at least certain
that it is the same Spirit which gave life to both, and that
the Psalms in which our Lord found His own spiritual
experiences as Head and Saviour of the Church so fully
mirrored, must remain a no less necessary and sufficient
picture of true spiritual life for the Church, which is His
body, and for every believer who claims to be His follower.
And so, if we simply take the Psalms as they stand with
out enquiring at all into their origin, their authors, or the
occasions on which they were written, — if we simply take
them as utterances of a spiritual life far deeper and purer
than we have attained to, but yet similar in kind to those

298 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

we should aim at, if we take them as an inspired expression
of the faith and hopes which we ourselves must seek to
realise — if, that is, we read the Psalms in the light of our
own Christian life and strive, God helping us, to realise
more and more of the Spirit of the Psalms, in this way
without any scientific preparation, we may read the
Psalter aright and profitably, if only we are by grace
partakers of the same Spirit as wrought in the Psalmists.
And whatever may be said of the incompleteness of the
religious life of the men of the Old Covenant, and of a
supposed incompatibility between the more enlightened
Christian consciousness and some veins of thought that
run in the Psalms, I conceive it has yet to be proved that
any simple Christian ever suffered in his spiritual life by
unreservedly drinking in the streams of spiritual experience
that flow through these hymns. But while I confess that
to me it seems an idea too absurd to need refutation that
the Psalms require, as so many seem to think, a sort of
remodelling, Christianising, even — to the mind of some —
an expurgation before they can be safely taken into the
mouths of simple Christians — while such an idea seems to
me to savour of Romanism, and to be nothing less than a
denial of the great Protestant principle that every part of
Scripture is precious to the meanest Christian who reads
with the help of God's Spirit — while this is so, it must be
held that to understand the Psalter fully, to get from it all,
or nearly all, its proper richness of meaning, we must arm
ourselves with all the apparatus of a scientific criticism,
and prepare, as I have already said, to face and answer
not a few difficult questions both historical and theological.
And in particular there is no book to which more fully
than to the Psalter the great truth applies, that while
every one who is taught of the Spirit is able to learn from
the Bible, not every one is fit to teach from it — no, not
every one even who has, what nowadays is often thought
to be sufficient, a familiarity with Bible language and a
certain readiness of speech. In a word, while no man is

1874] CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PSALTER 299

fit to be a teacher from Scripture who does not study the
Bible devotionally, no man is fit to teach whose study is
merely devotional, or devotional and rhetorical. On this
point there is current so much practical confusion of
mind, and the temptations to neglect strict scientific study
in premature pursuit of a practical readiness in preaching
to which you are exposed during your divinity studies are
so many, that you will allow me to point out with reference
to the Psalter the grounds for insisting that you should all
habituate yourselves to the practice of a strict scientifical
and critical examination of Scripture as the necessary
groundwork for all really profitable teaching.

That which commends the Psalter to us as an authori
tative book is, of course, its inspiration. But what is
it that this inspiration guarantees ? You will perhaps
reply infallibility. But that is still a very vague term in
its application to a book like the Psalter, in which the
communication of matter of fact or religious doctrine is
quite subordinate to the expression of religious feeling.
On the other hand, it appears from what we have already
said that the test at least of the Canonical quality of the
Psalter which practically guided the formation of the
collection, which commended it to the Old Testament
Church and commends it with the authority of Christ
Himself to the Church of the New Testament, is its fitness
to serve at all times as a model and perfect image of the
Spirit of true devotion. The Psalms, that is, are the
utterances of men who had learned by the Spirit rightly to
understand God's redeeming voice to them, and rightly
to return answer thereunto. And because God's voice in
revelation brings in all ages — though not always with
equal clearness — the same message of love and grace, so
in all ages the right answer of faith must breathe the same
spirit and be based on the same model, and the Christian
can never be wrong in expressing his devotional feelings
in the language of the Psalms.

But when we begin to teach from the Psalms the case

3oo LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

is different. In teaching from the pulpit— and to this
kind of teaching I confine myself — the object of the speaker
is to stimulate and guide devotional feeling in his hearers,
in whom as professing Christians he must in the judgment
of charity assume a certain measure of grace, a certain
degree of capacity to discern spiritual things, but who as
sinful and imperfect men fall far short of such a normal
spirit of devotion as breathes in the Bible.

Now this comparative dullness and imperfection in the
spiritual life must, in so far as the true notion of Christian
life is that of fellowship and converse with God through
Christ, have two sides — a dullness to hear what God says
to us, and an unreadiness or want of faith to make right
answer to Him. How then can the Word of God taught
be made instrumental in remedying these two defects?
The principle of such a use of the word seems to be this—
Whatever God speaks to me He speaks to me, not as an
individual, but as a member of His Church, as one of His
own elect. And thus, while on the one hand I have no
right to seek for myself with the mystics a private revela
tion in which others have no share, I have the much
nobler right of taking to myself every manifestation
of God's love and grace made to any part of His Church
in any age. And so, on the other hand, to answer God's
message aright is not to make some private answer for
myself alone, but to take up with full personal appropria
tion the one great answer of faith and hope, of praise and
prayer, which goes up in all ages from the Church Uni
versal. Now, in both respects the Bible has normative
authority. It contains the true message of God to His
Church, the true answer of the Church to God, not in the
way of bare abstract statement, but in a living picture,
of which one side is the gradual development of God's
plan of redemption, while the other side shows us from
age to age the faith and answer of the Church. To get
into fellowship and sympathy with these two sides of the
Bible is, therefore, the true way to the elevation of our

i874] CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PSALTER 301

spiritual life on both its sides. Now sympathy involves,
firstly, community of spirit. Where that is wanting, no
preaching can edify. The preacher, as we have already
said, can hope to build up his hearers only in so far as he
has a right to assume the presence of God's Spirit in the
visible Church, i.e. wherever the Word and Sacraments
are, there God's Spirit blesses the means. But there is
another thing necessary to sympathy, viz. recognised
similarity of position. Why, for example, does the
reading of the Decalogue often fail to move us, even
though there be in our hearts the germs of a true love to
God's Law ? It is because we come to the Decalogue
without having passed through the Red Sea and marched
through the Wilderness ; because we are not standing
beneath Mt. Sinai while the thunder rolls above us and the
lightnings flash in our eyes. And so the minister who
would preach effectively from the Decalogue must seek
so to set before his hearers the essential oneness of what we
have experienced of God's mercy, with that experience
which prepared the Israelites for Sinai. He must do this,
not in the fashion of the Jesuit preachers by simply
catching the outward aspects of the scene and impressing
these on the imaginations of his hearers, but by going
deeper into the heart of the matter, and bringing out by
careful critical and theological study the real oneness
of the spiritual meaning of the law then and now. He
must (i) reconstruct for himself by painstaking historical
study the position of the Israelites, and then (2) by theo
logical knowledge and by the help of his own Christian
experience and insight, he must lay hold of and draw out
of the historical situation the true and unchangeable
spiritual meaning which we are still called upon to enter
into, showing -how the Israelites, though they had come
through external manifestations of God's purpose towards
them more startling than we have known, yet at bottom
stood in no other spiritual relation to the law than we do.
Thus opening up to his hearers their essential similarity in

302 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

position to the men of the Old Covenant, the preacher
does his part to awake such a sympathy with the spiritual
meaning of his text as is the really edifying thing in the
reading and preaching of the Word. He helps his hearers
to feel God's message not merely as a general message
,to man, but as a very special message addressing itself
directly to distinct needs and capacities in the first hearers
which are still needs and capacities of ours. Every Word
of God is plain, direct, and powerful in its true historical
setting. It is the restoration of this historical setting
which is the real task that lies at the basis of interpretation,
and therefore also of practical application.

Now the Psalms do not so much give us the Word of
God to man in its direct form, as the true answer of faith
in which, of course, the promise on which faith rests is
taken up, and so expressed from the side of the believer.
But here also the truth comes in, that these models of the
believer's true attitude to God's Word will not work upon
us to the purifying and strengthening of our Christian life,
except in proportion as we add to the prime requisite of
the beginnings at least of grace in our own soul, an
appreciation of those points in which the experiences that
called forth these expressions of Old Testament faith are
our experiences also. No doubt this requisite is some
times attained through the heart alone without careful
study or analysis. The uneducated believer will learn
to understand the Psalms in this way — He takes up his
Psalter under the influence of a particular phase of
devotional feeling. He finds that feeling expressed and
developed in a much fuller way in some Psalm, and so at
one and the same time his own spiritual life is nourished
and strengthened, and the Psalm becomes for ever clear
to him in such a way that it may afterwards serve to evoke
the feeling which at first it had only strengthened. But
this method can never apply to public teaching from the
Psalms. The preacher must so handle the Psalm as to
make it speak even to those who are not specially pre-

i874] CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PSALTER 303

disposed to hear its lesson, even to those who may be
backsliding and averse to its teachings. Nor will it do
for him simply to dwell on such sides of religious truth
as find a special echo in the present circumstances of his
own spiritual life. For then his teaching would be quite
as much the teaching of his own imperfect, even abnormal^
experiences as the teaching of the pure Word of God.
The only thing that he would really contribute to his
hearers over and above what each of them could read for
himself would be illustrations drawn from his own inner
life ; his preaching might be experimental, but it would
be morbidly, pathologically, experimental. If he were an
honest man it would be often impossible for him to enter
the pulpit at all ; and all idea of being able from week to
week to feed his flock with a word not his own but the
Word of God Himself must be given up. Now what is the
alternative for this false style of teaching ? Manifestly
to draw the experimental side of preaching from the normal
experience laid down in the Bible — to let the Psalmists
speak for themselves. And surely they speak more
clearly, truly, powerfully than you can speak. If they
are not clear to us now, it is because we have not been
their companions in the experiences of which they sing —
and what they say will become clear to us if we recognise
the outward circumstances in which they stood, the
character of the revelation that supported them, the
nature of the temptations by which they were encompassed,
the sins that they were fighting, and the like. And all
this is matter of strict scientific enquiry. No doubt it
needs spiritual insight too. But when we set to study the
Psalms in this way, with the head as well as with the
heart, we shall be immeasurably freer from the risk of
putting our own word in the place of God's, immeasurably
more likely to preach the Psalmist's experience instead
of our own. And, then, there is another thing. The
Psalmists were neither perfect men nor did they stand
under a perfect revelation. As the spiritual gifts they

304 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870-

enjoyed did not interfere with the law that all sanctifica-
tion is gradual, so neither did they violate the law that
all revelation is gradual. And so we are always apt to
go wrong if we begin to draw inferences from the Psalms
without clearly keeping in view the amount of light that
the writers possessed. But in public teaching one must
draw inferences. It is impossible, even were it desirable,
to remain wholly in the region of subjective devotional
feeling. And the moment one begins to argue, to general
ise, to theologise, every step must be guarded by the
closest scientific study. It will never do to be content to
deal with proof-texts at haphazard, just as we can draw
them from so varied a collection as our Psalms. The
subjective fitness of each utterance in the Psalter can form
the basis for an objective theological inference only when
the relations of the utterance, not only to the textual
context but to the whole position of the singer, are clearly
laid down. And so it comes about that the Psalms,
though the plainest of all books for purposes of simple
devotion, demand in those who would use them for
teaching a patient labour, a clearness of judgment, an
exactness of analysis of the very highest kind. Every
individual Psalm, which for the most part is found stand
ing as an isolated fragment, must be again built into its
place in the historical and theological development of the
old Covenant, into its place in the spiritual life of the
singer, before we can exhaust its meaning. It is, of course,
not often possible, and not often necessary, to give exact
place and date of authorship ; but at least we must
always aim at a historical exposition to the extent of
reconstructing in as full detail as may be the kind of
circumstances and experience from which the Psalm
sprang, and the general state of the Church's growth at
the time. The precise degree of exactness with which
these desiderata can be satisfied cannot, of course, appear
even approximately till we have made some way in
discussing the various questions of introduction to which

1874] CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PSALTER 305

we are now to proceed — the formation of the collection—
the value of the inscriptions, and so forth. But I believe
that the more carefully the Psalms are studied the more
fully shall we be impressed that the historical interpreta
tion of the Psalms is both possible and necessary in a much
higher degree than is admitted by some even of those
commentators who have done best service in the sphere
of grammatical exegesis. No doubt when a writer like
Hupfeld maintains that we can only hope on the one
hand to distinguish by general marks of style, older from
younger, original from imitative pieces, and on the other
hand, historically to separate Psalms that presuppose
the independence of the nation from Psalms of the Exile
or the Return, he is actuated by a not altogether unjust
opposition to the blind dependence on the traditional
superscriptions which marks one class of commentators,
and to the bold subjection of all probabilities to precon
ceived hypothesis which governs expositors like Olshausen
and even in great measure Hitzig. But that the reaction
against these extremes has led Hupfeld himself into a
not less false position, is manifest in the details of his
exegesis which often lacks precision, in spite of his gram
matical exactness, on account of his obstinate determina
tion to generalise statements and expressions that have
plainly a single specific reference. And even at this stage
you will readily see that that is not a safe principle of
exegesis which leads to the assertion " that though David
cannot be without his share in the Psalter, it is not
possible to identify a single Psalm as certainly his," — as if
David's life were so common a one, or the stamp it im
pressed on his poetry could be so obscure, that none of his
extant Psalms should bear indisputable traces of their
author.

But it is premature to go farther into this question just
now. We must return to it when we have made some
progress in a critical analysis of the Psalter as it now
stands.

20

IV

LATER ABERDEEN LECTURES

(1874-1877)

I. THE PLACE OF THEOLOGY IN THE WORK AND GROWTH
OF THE CHURCH. (Mar. 1875.)

II. Two LECTURES ON PROPHECY. (June 1876.)

III. ON THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN 1876.

(July 1877.)

IV. ON THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. (July 1877.)

I

THE PLACE OF THEOLOGY IN THE WORK
AND GROWTH OF THE CHURCH

THE study of theology may be looked at from several
distinct points of view. It is manifest, in the first
place, that a study which enters so deeply into the region
of personal life is capable not only of being loved and
cultivated, but of being hated and proscribed. This is a
character which in great measure distinguishes all the
sciences that deal with man from those that are con
cerned with nature. But the prerogative of appealing
to the heart as well as to the intellect belongs in peculiar
measure to the topics with which theology concerns
itself. No problems are so radical in their influence on
the whole scheme of human life as those that handle
the existence, the nature, the revelation of God ; and so
the very right of theology to exist and to discuss these
things becomes, in a pre-eminent degree, subject of fierce
controversy. But even the enemies of theology are
divided into several distinct camps. There are those
who regard all theology as jugglery, because they hold
all religion to be superstition. Religion is conceived
as a morbid condition, affecting certain stages of human
development ; and the study of its phenomena forms part
of the science of social pathology. A more modern school
of thinkers detects the unhistorical complexion of this
view, observing that religion has exerted an unquestion
able influence in carrying forward the moral and social

3°9

3io LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

development of our race. An active and useful factor in
history cannot be a mere disease of humanity ; but it is
imagined that the truly beneficent forces of which religion
has hitherto been the vehicle have been clothed in a
false idealism, and unnecessarily engrafted on transcen
dental theories as to the relation of man to God. It is
held that a better social philosophy would enable us to
find on earth all those ethical motives and all those
springs of bliss which the imagination of early ages
placed in heaven. And this new religion of humanity
has no need for a theology, because it finds no place for
a God. The religion of humanity is as yet in a some
what undeveloped state, and its adherents are, for the
most part, either unable or unwilling to lay down with
logical precision the features that distinguish it from
Christianity. But when we hear it asserted that religion
is a necessary and an excellent thing, while theology, on
the contrary, is useless or noxious, we may in general
assume that we have to deal with a man who, more or
less consciously, derives his views from the school in
question. A religion without theology means, for the
most part, a religion without God. It can mean nothing
else in the mouth of any man who does not possess that
mystical habit of mind which conceives of communion
with God as a state of the soul too purely passive to
become an object of intellectual cognition, too purely
individual to be the basis of a general doctrine. And
this extreme form of mysticism is at present so rare and
so uninfluential that it cannot be credited with any
share in establishing the currency of the formula which
contrasts religion with theology. That formula has a
clear meaning only for the man who has satisfied himself
that the really valuable elements of religion are quite
separable from all belief in God, or in any other tran
scendental fact. It is a formula, therefore, which is so
far from being the self-evident foundation of a new
religious liberalism, that it possesses no value for any man

is;;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 311

who has not got at it as the last result of an elaborate
criticism of all religious ideas, who has not satisfied him
self, by a strictly philosophical inquiry, that the tran
scendental convictions of Christianity are not the true
mainsprings of Christian life, but simply an illogical
projection into the superhuman sphere of notions, which
have always had their reality and power only in im
manent relations of a region purely human. When the
assertion that theology perishes but religion remains
passes from mouth to mouth, among men who have no
pretensions to have even looked at these difficult problems
of the philosophy of religion, who, being either destitute
of all habits of exact thought or occupied only with purely
physical science, do not possess the most elementary
qualifications for the researches which alone can give
their words a meaning, — in the mouths of such men
the formula in question is nothing more than a cant
phrase, which decently veils pretentious ignorance, or
nothing less than a disguise of affected sentiment cast
over the nakedness of shamefaced atheism.

Thus if we set aside, on the one hand, the objections
drawn from a mysticism too exaggerated to deserve
serious refutation, and, on the other hand, those derived
from that old-fashioned atheism which, in its plain-
spoken contempt for all religion, can so easily be proved
unhistorical that even its friends are glad to disguise it
in scraps of new-fashioned philosophy, — if we set both
these classes of objections aside, it appears that the
only serious attack which can be made on theology as a
whole must proceed from a system of the philosophy of
religion not less elaborate in construction than Christian
theology itself. The right of theology to exist can no
longer be disputed in limine. The contest must now be
between the developed systems of the philosophy of
Christianity and the philosophy of the religion of
humanity. Each of these systems must base its argu
ment, not merely on speculative considerations, but on

312 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

the closest study of the whole history of religion, especially
of the religion of Christ. The battle with unbelief which
in last century was fought on broad general grounds and
with arguments addressed to the general intelligence, is
now resolving itself into a series of detailed contests,
intelligible for the most part only to men specially
trained, and extending over every theological discipline.
True, this new phase in the contest between Christianity
and infidelity has not yet been adequately realised by
either side. Nor can a time ever come when those cruder
forms of unbelief, which have their strength in passion
and prejudice, shall cease to advance the old objections
and call forth the old replies. But ever since the publica
tion of Strauss's first Life of Jesus, the new conditions
of the battle have been growing more and more visible.
The more sober and cultivated opponents of our faith
have ceased to regard theological studies as unworthy of
their attention. Theology, it is admitted, can be over
thrown only by theologians. Unlike those superstitions
that vanish at once before the light of superior truth,
Christianity can be subverted only by the most refined
process of criticism operating against the detailed de
velopments of Christian belief. This new wager of
battle has not been refused by the defending camp. The
critical study of Christianity has been taken up both by
friend and foe, with an energy which indicates con
siderable revival of interest in exact theological research ;
and the conception of theology as a science, which in this
country had very much dropped out of sight, is again
impressed upon men's minds.

At first sight, the stimulus which has thus been given
to theological inquiry seems very valuable. But before
we give ourselves up to the unreserved self-congratulation
which we hear around us, it is well that we should ask
whether it is a wholesome thing that all theological
interest is at present so exclusively supported by apolo-
getical and polemical motives. We should ask whether

is;;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 313

such a theology is likely to be really fruitful, and whether
such interest is likely to be really lasting. Both these
questions, I apprehend, must be answered in the negative.
Discussions which have for their object the defence or
overthrow of Christianity as a whole may, indeed, attach
themselves to the detailed problems of theology, but
cannot possibly devote to questions of detail the loving
interest by which alone the sciences advance. Such
discussions, therefore, can hardly be very fruitful. Nor
can they continue to inspire a wide and deep interest.
For the apologetic problems are becoming yearly more
intricate, so that, in an increasing degree, they either
cease to interest all but a very few, or attract the attention
of the many only when set forth in a superficial and
inaccurate manner. The fact is, that no religion which
contains within it such elements of power as still reside
in Christianity, can be annihilated by a process of critical
dissection. Both assailants and defenders will at last
weary of this endless conflict of detail. The battle,
which can never cease, will assume a new form. It is
probable enough that instead of a mere war of opinion
we may have to face attacks of a more practical kind.
But at all events, the preparedness of the Church to
meet a new onset can bear a very remote relation to the
completeness with which an apologetic adapted to the
present system of attack has been organised. The
merely propugnacular part of theology has very transitory
value. A theology capable of doing permanent service
must not allow itself to be shaped with reference to the
present attitude of unbelief. It must not, in the first
instance, look at unbelief at all, but must be framed in
accordance with a large and just view of the service
which systematic Christian knowledge is able to do in
promoting the internal growth and the natural work of
the Church herself.

The point of this argument may perhaps become more
clear if put in another way. Apologetic theology, though

3i4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

practical in its bearing on those who are without the
Church, has, for those who are within the Church, either
no value at all, or a value purely speculative. The most
finished apologetic which can be conceived would, in
fact, be a complete theoretic delineation of the relations
of the different parts of the Christian system, and a
complete critical philosophy of the history of our religion.
But as apologetic is entirely directed to persons who
have no sympathy with the practical tasks that lie before
the Church, the theoretic disciplines in question would,
in the hands of the apologist, be necessarily framed in
quite an abstract manner. And, therefore, when all the
unbelievers were convinced, a new and higher theological
task would arise ; it would be necessary to recast the
abstract theory of Christianity, and construct a practical
theology for the guidance of the Church in the positive
task of attaining the ideal set before her by her Lord.
But of course a perfect apologetic can never be constructed
by an imperfect Church. It is the actual imperfection
of the existent state of the Church, much more than the
theoretic imperfection of our present theology, which is
the source of unbelief ; and it is not possible to give a
perfect theory of an imperfect organism. Thus not only
the highest, but the most immediately practical task of
theology, is to guide the internal growth and activity of
the Church. Those who allow themselves to be carried
away from this aim by the apparent urgency of danger
from without, and who, therefore, according to the
fashion of the present day, direct their whole energies,
as theologians, to apologetical tasks, misapprehend the
real needs of the Church and the real sources of the
weakness and the strength of Christianity, which is
always invincible from without, except when weakened
by corruption and divisions within.

It appears, then, when the thing is looked at more
closely, that the extreme and one-sided development of
apologetic in the recent theological literature of our

is;;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 315

country is by no means an unambiguous sign of a healthy
interest in theology. On the contrary, this is rather
to be regarded as one of many signs that we are lament
ably deficient in theological interest of the right kind,
that we have very little sense of the real services which
theology ought to perform for the Church and kingdom
of Christ. When we observe that our whole theological
literature, even when not apologetical in subject, is
impregnated with an apologetic flavour ; that the most
popular commentaries, the most current works on doc
trine, do little or nothing to carry theology forward to
new results, and direct all their energy to the refutation
of attacks from without, we are constrained to ask,
whether the Church itself is likely to be aggressive if her
theology is purely defensive. But, in fact, the mass of
men seem to think that, for all purposes except the
refutation of new objections, our theology is already
quite perfect enough. It is not felt that one main
reason why the Church falls short of her true ideal is
that the ideal has not yet been accurately conceived in
thought.

But, in truth, where the need for a growing theology is
not felt, the theological results which the Church has
already reached are sure to be very inadequately mastered
by individuals, and very imperfectly applied to the
details of Church work. When the Church as a whole
is quite content with the theology which she already
possesses, individual ministers and students will very
readily be content with the amount of theology which
they already possess. If all our ministers were fully
impressed with the conviction that a thorough discharge
of their ministry is only possible if they bring to bear on
the details of their work the most developed theological
grasp of the meaning of the Church and the Church's
work as a whole, we should no longer have to complain
of a stationary theology. But, in the meantime, the
general indifference to the growth of theology finds

316 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

its counterpart in individual indifference to theological
acquisition and thought. If nothing new is brought out
except in the way of sermons, books of practical religion,
and apologetic, it is only natural that our ministers and
students in great measure confine their reading to these
less profitable topics, and that their pastoral efficiency
is correspondingly impaired. Finally, this indifference
to theology is not confined to the ministry. It is widely
spread among the members of the Church, and takes
shape in depreciation of the value of a regularly trained
ministry, and in an inclination to believe that personal
earnestness, some natural eloquence, and a fair measure
of familiarity with the easier parts of the Bible, and
perhaps with the Shorter Catechism, are all that can
reasonably be thought necessary to fit a man for the
office of a teacher in the Church.

Against all these delusions we possess, humanly speak
ing, only one strong practical barrier — the institution of
the divinity hall for the systematic training of our
ministers. When we part for the session, after spending
five months together in practical protest against tendencies
which surround us on every side, and which sometimes
threaten to exert an evil influence on our own minds, it
is fit that we should endeavour to carry with us a clear
conception of the purpose and value of the methodical
studies on which we have been engaged. I propose,
therefore, to spend the rest of this lecture in an attempt to
develop, in a constructive manner, the subject which in my
remarks up to this point I have approached indirectly,
and in the way of criticism of current habits of thought.

Christianity is a new life. The Christian takes his
place in a society where his life is guided by new motives,
and supplied with strength arising from his new relation
to God. Every point in this new situation implies
knowledge of a quite definite kind. The believer's
relation to God is not of the nature of a physical union,
which can be realised in him without his knowing what

is;;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 317

kind of relation it is. The new motives that stir him
have power only in proportion as they are intelligently
grasped. He is not mechanically grafted into Christ,
but becomes a member of the mystical body only in
conscious submission to the Head. And the new strength
of grace by which he lives is not given magically by
physical infusion but morally to those that seek it by
prayer, and therefore with a real knowledge both of their
need and of the way in which it must be supplied. In
short, whatever of real living power there is in Christianity
is moral, and deals with man as a conscious, intelligent
personality, who is in no sense fulfilling the ends for which
God placed him on the earth, if he is not fulfilling them
in the free play of understanding and of will. A moral
growth such as Christianity sets before us means that
every step in advance is deliberately taken in pursuit of
a moral ideal already grasped in thought. It is, indeed,
a law of such growth that the ideal unfolds itself more
and more perfectly as we come nearer to it, just as the
towers and spires of a fair city display themselves with
increasing clearness of detail to the pilgrim who approaches
its gates. But the very first step of true advance towards
the goal implies a true, though it may be only a general,
knowledge of the ideal pursued. No kind of moral
action, be it Christian or not, is an affair of pure sub
jectivity. All morality implies purpose, and all purpose
is conditioned by antecedent knowledge of the thing
proposed. If we refuse to apply this law to the Christian
life, we degrade religion to a mere material thing, and
place it on one line with the functions of bodily growth.
For every part of life that goes on working, whether it is
understood or not, is physical, not moral. And so the
theorist who proposes as possible a life in God which is
not based on a knowledge of God, is really depicting
Deity in the manner of pantheistic materialism, as a
subtle principle of physical influence, which a man sucks
in as he does the breeze and the sunshine.

318 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

This extreme antithesis to the position that all real
Christian life rests on true Christian knowledge, is char
acteristic of pronounced unbelief, with which in this part
of our discussion we are no longer concerned. But even
within the Christian Church, the pantheistic notion of
God has always influenced a certain class of minds, and
shows itself in that tendency to conceive spiritual and
moral facts on the analogy of physical processes, which
is technically called mysticism. The mystical schools
incline to make Christianity an affair of feeling and
instinct rather than of knowledge and will ; though,
of course, where this tendency is limited by positive
Christian motives, it results not in absolute denial, but
only in certain modifications of the moral character of
our religion. The palmy days of mysticism fall in the
Middle Ages, and in these ages, it must be remembered,
even the Catholic Church exempted a most weighty part
of the spiritual energies of Christianity from the laws of
moral action. The doctrine of the opus operatum in the
sacraments unquestionably reduces certain features of
the spiritual life to the level of a physical process, and
this doctrine alone makes it possible for the Church of
Rome to regard with complacency a degree of ignorance
on the part of the laity, which is quite inconsistent with
truly moral growth.

But in Protestantism, at least, it should be otherwise.
When the Reformers taught that the means of grace are
effective only in so far as they bring the Word of God into
contact with personal faith, they distinctly asserted that
all true religious life is morally nourished. For the
Word of God meant to the Reformers the direct personal
message of God's love in Christ ; so that saving faith is
neither a mere intellectual persuasion, nor a mere sub
jective habit of mind, but the intelligent and moral
outgoing of the personality and will towards a personal
revelation of God. Hence the intense zeal with which
early Protestantism threw itself on the study of the

i87;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 319

Bible, no longer seeking therein, with the Middle Ages,
a body of intelligible truths not directly in contact with
the practical Christian life, but that living voice of God
Himself, which, heard and joyously received into the
heart, becomes the direct principle of all spiritual growth.

This principle is formulated in our Larger Catechism,
in the proposition that Christ communicates to His
Church the benefits of His mediation by means of His
ordinances, the word, sacraments, and prayer. With
this must be taken the doctrine — which historically was
the very starting-point of the Reformation — that the
effectual factor in the sacraments is not the outward sign,
but the word of promise signified. Thus the proposition
is, that all participation in the benefits purchased by
Christ is to be gained in converse with God, in hearken
ing continually to His Word, and in making thereto the
answer of prayer and thanksgiving. All Christian life
becomes a thing of the understanding and of the will.
Each step towards Christian perfection is possible only
in the form of conscious submission of the will to a
promise or precept of God, definitely grasped by the
mind. The operation of the Holy Spirit in the calling
and sanctification of the believer does not substitute a
new and incomprehensible process for this plain rule of
moral growth, but only makes that growth possible by
enlightening the understanding and renewing the will.

Every endeavour to set forth the importance of
theology to the Church must necessarily rest on a clear
apprehension of the importance of Christian knowledge
for the individual religious life. And I have thought it
the more necessary to recall to you the characteristic
attitude of Protestantism on this point, because, where
theology is undervalued by persons standing within
the Protestant Churches, it will very often be found
that behind this there lies a wrong conception of the
whole nature of Christian faith and life. Instead of the
Christian life being conceived as a conscious converse with

320 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

God, by the aid of the ordinary means of grace, an
inclination will be found to imagine that the highest
religious experiences dispense with these means alto
gether. In extreme cases, of course, this tendency leads
to claims of special inspiration. But it is not in its
extremest forms that the tendency does most harm, for
then its falseness is easily seen. More generally what is
put in the place of the objective converse of faith with
God is some kind of subjective emotion or persuasion.
Faith, instead of going outwards towards God in Christ,
is turned inward upon itself. It is supposed that a
man is saved by believing that he is saved, by gaining,
through some kind of empirical experience, a conviction
that he has passed from death to life. Of course such a
faith is not belief in God, but in something internal to
oneself, and therefore has no necessary relation to any
true knowledge of God, and gives no starting-point for
a theology. But the people who hold these views still
use the name of justification by faith, and so often
imagine that they are sound Protestants. In reality they
are a kind of Protestant mystics, greatly inferior to the
old mystics in richness of aesthetic fancy and warmth
of religious feeling ; and when they become sufficiently
conscious of their own position to separate themselves
from the Church, they form these monotonous sects,
whose one spiritual weapon is the ever repeated question,
" Have you believed ? " and whose theology consists
wholly of abusive polemic and millenarian dreams.

It is plain, from what has already been said, that the
tendency to depreciate theology which marks a leaning
towards these views must be met in the first place by
emphasising the true Protestant view of faith, and of
its relation to the Word of God. It must not, however,
be supposed that when due stress is laid on these points
everything is done which is necessary to vindicate for
theology its proper place. Indeed, at this part of the
argument an error is frequently committed, which,

i877] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 321

though precisely opposite in character to that of the
sects just characterised, is very nearly as fatal to a true
understanding of the nature and business of theology.
It is often said or implied that because all true Chris
tianity involves definite knowledge of God and His Word
of Revelation, there is, therefore, no real difference between
religion and theology. The specific Christian knowledge
which every believer possesses is called his theology, and
is hastily identified with the theology of the Church in
general. It is not, of course, pretended that every believer
is necessarily master of all theology, but it is held that
the knowledge indispensable to faith is, so far as it goes,
theological.

Now it is to be observed that the only kind of know
ledge which it is necessary for every Christian to possess
is knowledge which stands in direct contact with faith and
practice. 1% is not necessary that the knowledge in
question be systematised, logically formulated, put into
any scientific shape. It is not even necessary that he
who has it shall be able to enounce it with precision in
words, if it is always at hand to him when he wishes to
act on it. In all practical ways of life there is a great
deal of knowledge requisite which is perfectly definite,
but which the practical man never learns to put into
words. He has acquired his knowledge by practice.
And so when any practical question arises he knows the
right thing to do, though perhaps he could not explain
so as to make another know it. An extreme instance of
the kind, which illustrates what I mean in the simplest
form, is the power of hitting a mark with a stone. This
involves a real and accurate intellectual judgment of
the object, its distance, and so forth. Implicitly, this
judgment contains applications of a number of laws of
anatomy, optics, dynamics, but not one of these laws is
present as a law to the mind of the actor. The same
thing obviously holds good with regard to moral action.
Take the personal converse of a little child with its

21

322 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

father. This converse, which is one of faith, love, and
obedience, is guided by a real knowledge of the father's
love and the father's wishes. But the child could not
describe its father's character, or tell you how it reads
his meaning in his face. The knowledge is a real know
ledge, serving as a foundation for true moral action, but
it cannot be expressed in propositions.

It is certain that similar considerations apply to
the case of Christianity. The early Christians had
no formulated doctrine of the person of Christ, and no
theory of the atonement. But in a practical way they
knew that Christ was a Divine Person, for they worshipped
Him ; and they knew that He had reconciled them with
God, for they walked in the joyful consciousness of
reconciliation. The Mediaeval Church had no doctrine
of justification by faith, yet certainly in all ages the
Church is justified by faith.

Now, how does this bear on the position, that the
specific Christian knowledge of the believer is always
made up of theological propositions — differing only in
extent and not in kind from a complete theological
system ? We have seen that true Christian knowledge
is often unsystematic, even inarticulate, presenting itself
to the mind of the believer not in the form of proposi
tions, but only as a sound practical judgment in each
special act of Christian life. To reconcile this fact with
the notion that all faith implies a measure of theological
knowledge, one of two things must be done. Either it
must be urged that, however inarticulate much of the
believer's knowledge is, there must always be some part
of it, embracing essentials, which is clearly formulated ;
or, on the other hand, it must be maintained that clear
formulation, logical arrangement, systematic structure,
are not essential to theology at all. In general, I
believe those who uphold the position which we are
at present examining are disposed to combine these
arguments. But both arguments are inadequate, and

i877] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 323

both tend to establish a practical depreciation of
theology.

Look first at the assertion, that every believer must at
least have a definitely formulated knowledge about
essentials, which is his theology. This argument is
pertinent to establish the identity of theology with
practical Christian knowledge, only on the assumption
that it is the formulated part of his knowledge on which
the Christian acts, the rest being really a superfluity.
And this is obviously untrue, for the very doctrines
which we rightly consider pre-eminently practical were
not formulated till a comparatively late date in the
history of the Church. And without any appeal to
history, it is enough to point to the fact that genuine
practical insight often keeps the simplest believer in the
right path, on questions the theological discussion of
which is full of subtleties. Here, obviously, we have
action based not on elementary formulated knowledge,
but on deep inarticulate knowledge elaborated in practice.
The argument, then, is powerless for the end proposed
to it. But it is very powerful in leading people to under
value theology. For when an eminent degree of practical
Christian wisdom and goodness is found in a man whose
explicit knowledge is scanty, this argument prevents
people from seeing that between these two things there
lies a great development of unformulated knowledge.
The importance of theology is supposed to be magnified
by ignoring inarticulate knowledge altogether, and the
result is, of course, that we have people saying on every
hand, " What is the good of an elaborate theology when
a man who is so little a theologian as A or B is so excellent
and so useful a man ? " This is an objection which can
only be answered by showing that the supposed useless
elaborations of theology are just explicit statements of
the very truths which, in an inarticulate form, in the
shape of practical tact and insight, lie at the root of
un theological wisdom.

324 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

I pass now to the second way of defending the notion
that all true religious knowledge is theology. Theology
is often taken in a loose sense, and permitted to include
all manner of unsystematic illogical odds and ends of
Christian thought and knowledge. A book of sermons,
for example, or a volume of practical meditations, is
taken to be a contribution to theology. In this loose
sense of the word, at least, every Christian, it is main
tained, has a theology.

But this is also a thoroughly false position. Loose, un-
shaped knowledge, never leads to clear and decided action.
If a practical man can only tell in a rude, general way
the rules on which he works, you may be sure that he
does not think of these rules at all in the actual process
of his toil. The loose, vague rule is only an awkward
attempt to express in words some piece of knowledge of
which he has a practical grasp, perfectly firm and definite.
In fact, vague and inaccurate theological generalisations
are only a hindrance to Christian life. All generalised
knowledge, which is not scientifically precise in its
expression, contains some element of positive error, and
applied in practice may very readily prove misleading.
It will be found that the simple Christian argues safely
only when, by direct personal sympathy with the personal
Word of God, he takes it home to his own special case
without any generalisation whatever. He does this with
the perfectly definite knowledge that the word is spoken
by God to him ; but this personal appropriation of a
personal message of love is surely not by any straining
of words to be called theology.

Let me, in a word, sum up this part of our argument.
Personal Christianity is not a play of subjectivities, but
moral converse with God practically dominating the life.
Such converse is necessarily intelligent : there is no faith
without knowledge. But the essential quality of the
knowledge is its personal and practical character. The
believer must be able to say, I know that God speaks

is;;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 325

thus to me ; that He gives me such a hope in my present
trouble, such a command as to present duty. But this
personal knowledge is not, for the most part, reached by
making a special application of a general truth : it is got
at by sympathetic appropriation of the concrete and
personal utterances of God's Word. It is a mistake to
call such knowledge theology. For however the notion
of theology is stretched, it always must, to a certain
extent, imply a knowledge which can be put into words,
and so imparted to a man who has not shared the ex
perience of him who imparts it. And of such knowledge
a most experienced Christian may have very little, and
that little very loose and inaccurate. And if it is sup
posed that this theology is really what his faith feeds
on and his life is guided by, we must draw the inaccurate
and dangerous inference, that a most rudimentary
theology is practically quite as serviceable as the com
pletes t system of truth.

But, says one, if theology is not that by which in
dividual Christians live ; if, on the contrary, the great
majority of Christians have theological notions so de
fective that any attempt to live by them exclusively
would do more harm than good, what is the use of
theology at all ? And the answer to this question is,
that the use of theology is to direct the administration of
the Church.

So long as Christianity is looked upon as a purely
individual thing, a converse of me by myself, and of you
by yourself, with God in Christ, it is really not possible
to make out for theology a sphere of genuine practical
importance. For strictly individual religion, that growth
in knowledge and spiritual wisdom which is got by pure
practice without generalisation or system, seems adequate
enough. But the moment we begin to contemplate
Christianity as a social thing, as organised into a Church,
we reach a point where inarticulate knowledge of divine
truth breaks down.

326 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

Let us consider what sort of Christian society it is
possible to form, on the hypothesis that every member
has just that knowledge which is directly given in his
own personal religious experiences. Every society is
bound together by a common aim and common principles.
This society must be bound together by its common
Christianity. But the Christianity of each man presents
itself to him, on the hypothesis, only in the form of
strictly individual religious experiences and frames of
thought, so that the only bond of Christian union possible
is similarity of experience in details, identity of individual
frames and habits of mind. The society which arises
when men come together on this ground is a society of
the like-minded, all busy with their common religious
experiences. The principle of union goes no farther
than the similarity of experience. Two men, whose
Christian lives have run different courses, are, in pro
portion to the extent of this difference, debarred from
Christian fellowship. We all recognise the description of
such a society. It is not the Church, but the conventicle,
the ecclesiola in ecclesia, the fellowship of separatists and
sectarians. It is a society which can never be catholic,
never a spiritual might, never permanent ; never catholic,
for its breadth of comprehension is limited by purely
individual accidents of Christian experience ; never a
spiritual might, for the attraction of homogeneous in
dividuals means the repulsion of the heterogeneous ;
never permanent, for if it does not split up in the first
generation by the development of different types in the
farther experience of those who started from a common
point, it must at least fall to pieces in the next generation,
from the certainty that the children will not be like the
parents.

It appears, then, that the assertion that mere personal,
inarticulate knowledge serves all the necessities of
Christian growth, is necessarily bound up with another
assertion, — namely, that the whole growth of Christianity

i87;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 327

on earth is simply the sum of the independent growths
of individuals; that Christian fellowship is not an
essential factor in Christian life, but merely an orna
mental addition to that life, — a pleasure which the
believer enjoys when he falls in with men of like religious
tastes, not a Christian duty towards men even of unlike
tastes. But all Christianity which has any pretence to
be catholic, not sectarian, proceeds on very different
principles, remembering that, according to the New
Testament, it is the Church as an organic unity that is
the object of God's electing love and of Christ's re
deeming work, and that each member of the mystical
body of Christ grows up towards Him who is the Head
only in sympathy with the growth of the whole body.
On this view Christian fellowship is an essential thing ;
and like all the essentials rof Christianity it is a thing
which cannot be left to be secured by unconscious
agencies. It is true that every believer is ipso facto a
member of the organic body of Christ. But this member
ship is a moral, not a physical fact, and thus it is a supreme
Christian duty to give practical and conscious realisation
to the truth that growing union to Christ means fellow
ship in the united growth of all them that are His. The
Church, therefore, is a Divine ordinance, in which men of
all possible types of religion, and in every stage of spiritual
growth, are to come together on the broad ground of
professed faith in Christ and obedience to Him, and
unite in such common activities as shall give fit expression
to their unity and conduce to common edification.

There can be no difficulty in deciding the nature of
the common exercises in which the Church of Christ
expresses its conscious catholicity and seeks common
edification. The fellowship of the Church is oneness in
fellowship with God in Christ ; the growth of the Church
is increasing nearness to God of the life of the whole
society. Thus the proper activity for which the Church
is visibly organised is just to sist itself before God in

328 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

visible oneness of faith, thanksgiving and prayer. Wher
ever the fellowship of believers is able to lay hold of
the Gospel promise with common faith, to raise to God
the voice of common thanksgiving, to unite with one
mind in common confession and joint petitions ; there
the unity of all believers in Christ receives a fitting prac
tical utterance, and the whole Church is edified together.

At first sight this appears a very simple thing, so
simple that it may seem impossible that it should fail to
be realised wherever there is true Christianity at all.
But a glance at the present divided state of Christendom
is enough to show that this is not so, and that the attain
ment of an object, apparently so easy, really requires
Christian wisdom and Christian knowledge of no ordinary
kind. However simple the elements of Christianity may
be, their simplicity is that of a living germ, not of a
mechanical complex, and they are, therefore, capable of
development into an endless variety of distinct types of
life and feeling. And because of the continued presence
of sin and imperfection in the Church, not one of these
types will be a pure type. All will err, both by unequal
development of certain Christian motives to the neglect
of others, and by the admixture of motives which are
not Christian at all. Nor does this divergence between
brethren in Christ end in the establishment of personal
types not perfectly sympathetic. Personal differences
become embodied in formulated opinions and definite
courses of action, and so the unity of all believers is con
fronted with the sharp antagonism of parties.

On the sectarian theory, at which we have already
glanced, this state of things is accepted as inevitable.
No attempt is made to give practical expression to the
catholicity of the Church. The like-minded simply come
together, and remain together as long as they can. The
unlike-minded are suffered to depart, and, in the stricter
forms of sectarianism, are even supposed to have no
share 'in Christ. An opposite extreme characterises the

i877] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 329

Broad Church. It is observed that the divergent
tendencies of Christians become fixed in the antagonism
of parties only when allowed to take shape in explicit
doctrines and courses of action. It is suggested, there
fore, that the catholicity of the Church may be secured by
avoiding all such explicitness. Let it be understood that
constructive theology, which has so long placed barriers
between the Churches, has a purely speculative and
individual interest. The bond of Christian love should
be sufficient to secure unity among Christians, whatever
their individual type may be. This theory is so vague
in all points that it is difficult to criticise it. But it is
obvious that no society can be organised simply on
mutual love. Organised fellowship implies common
interests, a common aim, some function in which the
whole society visibly combines. In a word, the Church
is not the fellowship of Christian love — which requires
no unity of organisation — but the fellowship of Christian
worship. The common worship of many individuals
must be the expression in intelligible form of their
common relation of faith towards God. We have already
seen that all personal faith implies personal knowledge.
The intelligent expression of faith, therefore, implies
explicit and formulated knowledge. Put face to face
with this argument the Broad Church breaks at once
into two camps. The one camp gives up the conception
of the Church as the fellowship of worship, and proposes
to have a national church simply as an instrument of
national culture, a view essentially Socinian. The other
camp proposes either to omit everything from worship
with which some may differ, or aims at a spirit of Christian
charity which shall enable a man to be edified even by
expressions of a faith which is not his own. On the first
alternative, the Church must perish from inanition ; on
the second, worship becomes a mere sentimental enjoy
ment, and is no longer a real approach to God through
Christ. But both the Sectarians and the Broad Church

330 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

forget that church - fellowship has a moulding and up
building power on those who take part in it, that all
believers are led by the one spirit of Christ, and that the
unity of faith is stronger than the diversity of personal
experience. It is not the shallowest and most jejune
apprehension of Christianity which forms the basis for
a worship truly Catholic. A full and all-sided develop
ment of Christian motives cannot fail to appeal to all
true faith, if its fulness is not that of individual fancy,
but of generalisation from the normal data of the Bible.
Wheresoever the mind of Christ is set forth, there faith
will be awakened and instructed. Men of diverse ex
perience will not, indeed, lay hold with equal fulness and
readiness on every aspect of Christian truth ; but a truth
really Christian, when set forth in a devotional shape,
will at length draw forth the sympathy of every child
of God.

These considerations, I think, make it clear enough
what the real problem of Church administration is, and
in what direction its solution must be sought. The
object to be attained is the practical expression of the
catholic faith of the Church in acts of worship, in which
the fellowship of believers unites to the praise of the
glory of God in Christ. The faith that utters itself in
such acts is necessarily articulate, otherwise there could
be no conscious fellowship. If the articulate utterance
of faith expresses only the personal experience of an
individual, the like-minded alone are edified ; if it avoids
everything that is definite, no one is edified at all. But
the extremes of sectarianism and the Broad Church may
both be avoided if we observe that there is such a thing
as a normal Christian faith, which is, in fact, the faith of
the Church made perfect, and which has the power to draw
all believers to it ; that whenever this normal faith is
intellectually apprehended in all its bearings, and practic
ally applied to the administration of every function of
the Church, the Church has attained to catholicity, and

i877] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 331

that on this external unity cannot fail to follow. Thus
the unity of the Church is not impracticable as the
sectarians suppose — nor is it to be attained by com
promise and mutual toleration on the principles of the
Broad Church. Catholicity must be produced by the
internal growth of the individual communions which
actually exist, before it can be manifested in the dis
appearance of Church parties in an outward unity. The
catholicity of an ecclesiastical communion means nothing
else than that all its functions are so adjusted that in
them every truly Christian impulse of the believing heart
towards God finds utterance, and that every side of the
gospel message is fully set forth to faith. And failures
in catholicity are of two kinds : (i) failures lying in the
direction of sectarianism — the admission into the con
stitution and worship of the Church of elements of local
and temporary value, distinctive principles — political,
national, or personal — which go beyond normal Chris
tianity ; and (2) failures lying in the direction of the
Broad Church, that is, the omission to make prominent
genuine Christian motives which are capable of social
expression. The Church is now imperfect and divided,
because there is no communion which is free from defects
in both these directions ; but every communion deserves
the name of catholic only in proportion as it sets before
it as the ideal aim of all Church administration to
attain more and more fully to the expression in every
social function of a full-grown, all-sided, and normal
faith.

Thus the progress of the Church depends on the
presence of two things — first, a vigorous theology,
diligently engaged in bringing into clearer light all sides
of Christian truth, giving to each Christian motive and
belief its due prominence and right place in a compre
hensive system, and placing in the light of this knowledge
the present attainments of the Church. And with this
must be conjoined in the second place a wise administra-

332 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

tion, by which every gain of insight into the ideal to
which the Church has to attain is duly applied in
government, discipline, and worship, so that the new
insight, which is in truth nothing more than the explicit
development of something involved in all true faith,
may now be consciously presented to the whole com
munity, and find an answer in the hearts of all.

To recapitulate : The functions of the Church as the
society of public worship are imperfect, unless discharged
in a way corresponding to the ideal unity of the fellowship
of the Redeemed. Thus all Church worship must aim at
catholicity, and genuine catholicity is the principle that
must guide the whole government and administration of
the Church. But catholicity does not mean toleration
and compromise. It means the gathering up of all aspects
of truly Christian converse with God into a unity of
devotional expression in which every believer can join.
This is an ideal remote from the present state of the
Churches. But it is an ideal that must at length be
realised. For it is certain that a normal expression of
Christian faith has the power of appealing to every
believer, and of doing so, not in virtue of any abstractness
and hazy generality, but just in proportion to the fulness
with which it takes up everything that lies in the whole
compass of Christian truth. Such a normal statement of
Christian faith, rich in all Christian knowledge, but freed
from everything of human idiosyncrasy, is what every
communion that claims to be a branch of the Church
Catholic must seek to attain by theological research, and
to apply to the constant improvement of the practical
administration of Church functions. A Church which
ceases to theologise ceases in the same moment to grow,
while conversely, from the constant action and reaction
that connect knowledge and practice in all moral
organisms, a Church whose life grows dull will also cease
to theologise aright.

And now let me, in conclusion, draw some practical

i877] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 333

deductions as to the value of theology as a preparation
for office in the Church.

When we say that every living Church must have a
living theology we do not, in accordance with our argu
ment, imply that every Church member must be familiar
with the theology of the communion to which he belongs.
On the contrary, our argument has been that a Church
becomes capable of attracting and edifying every true
Christian, whatever his stage of knowledge and growth
may be, just in proportion as every act of public worship
and every ecclesiastical function rests on full and normal
theological attainments. Public worship is not a theo
logical exercise in which men meet on the basis of common
scientific knowledge ; it is an exercise of common faith,
in which the gospel message is personally set forth and
received with personal affection and obedience. Thus
no theology is required in order that a man may with
edification join in the worship of the Church. Theology
is the affair of him who conducts that worship, the
system of knowledge by which he is enabled to lead the
service, not as a man calling on the like-minded to
sympathise with his own personal experience, but as one
who, out of the riches of an all-sided grasp of the fulness
of the gospel, can bring forth words of promise and
admonition, words of thanksgiving and prayer, suited to
every Christian need, and yet free from all individualism.
And what is true of the central function of public worship,
is true of every Church act. There is, indeed, no act of
government or discipline in which Church rulers can deal
with imperial authority, indifferent to the necessity of
carrying with them the mind of the whole Church. But
it is not necessary that each Church member should have
the knowledge requisite to judge for himself from the
first on all questions of administration. It is Church
rulers that must use their special knowledge to solve
each practical question ; but the question is not solved
till the decision upon it is put into a form which,

334 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

expressing the mind of Christ Himself, and so appealing
directly even to uneducated faith, does carry with it the
hearty sympathy of the faith of the whole Church.

Thus our principle assumes the practical shape that no
Church act, whether of policy, discipline, or worship, can
be rightly conducted except on the basis of a sound
theology, and with such an application of theological
principles as shall appeal to personal faith. The applica
tion of this rule demands a combination in the govern
ment of the Church of theological attainments with
practical tact and sympathy with the untheological
Christian, which is very fitly acknowledged in our
Presbyterian system of Church Courts. But it is to be
observed that Presbyterianism distinctly provides what
there is now some inclination to forget, that no exercise
of Church power shall take place, and no ordinance be
administered, except under the presidency or with the
active participation of men theologically trained. That
is, the Presbyterian theory is strictly in accordance with
the result of our argument, and is violated when a man
who has not been duly recognised as adequately instructed
in the theology of the Church takes upon him any such
independent and individual piece of administration as
the conducting of an ordinary diet of worship. The
equality of the elder with the minister in acts of rule does
not, in the sense of Presbyterianism, imply indifference to
the position that every Church act must be theologically
directed, but is the practical expression of the principle
that theological knowledge is not rightly applied to
practical questions, when it is not so applied as to carry
the conviction of God-fearing and right-minded men who
are not theologians.

Thus every candidate for the ministry who contem
plates a sphere of life in which he shall be called to
administer Church ordinances, to supply general principles
of Christian knowledge for the whole internal administra
tion of a congregation, and at the same time to take an

i877] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 335

active part among the technically instructed members
of the higher courts, is looking forward to a life-work for
which the first and most indispensable qualification is a
sound and thorough knowledge of theology. A minister
who is not a theologian may be a useful man in his parish
in the way in which an influential private Christian or a
good ruling elder is useful, but it is wholly impossible that
he can do well that work for which the Church places him
in ministerial office.

The failure will be most striking and inevitable in the
pulpit, though perhaps it is just in the pulpit that such
men most readily imagine themselves strong. Many, it is
to be feared, go forward to the ministry with the convic
tion that the necessary conditions of effective pulpit
work are not at all theological, but consist merely in
personal earnestness, combined with certain powers of
vigorous expression and a measure of literary culture.
It is thought that a congregation must be interested by
good expression and literary grace, in order that so they
may be edified by sympathy with the expression of the
minister's faith. And so plausible does this view appear
to many that it is more than hinted that the ideal
divinity hall would be half a prayer-meeting and half a
school of rhetoric and style. But, in truth, rhetorical or
literary culture has just the same value to a minister as
to any other public man. Purely literary interest is
wholly out of place in the pulpit, when it ceases to stand in
direct subordination to the devotional aim of the service.
It is no merit in a sermon that it is attractive to those who
have not come together with the single motive of common
edification in joint worship. But the man who, when his
words are stripped of literary varnish, has nothing to offer
for the people's edification but sympathy with his own
faith, is not fit to be a minister. It is the Bible which is
the true manual of a catholic religious life ; and the Bible,
not interpreted by that personal experience which only
culls stray flowers from its pages, but set forth through

336 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

diligent study in that many-sided fulness by which it
supplies the Church's every need. That is no scriptural
and no catholic knowledge in which the normal religious
experience of the Old and New Testament is applied to the
worship of the congregation only through the non-normal
vehicle of uninspired experience. A man who handles
God's Word thus may sometimes, if his piety is deep and
his personality strong, become a great influence. He
may even be instrumental in saving souls ; but, on the
whole, his ministerial work will weaken the Church.
Working always under the guidance of his own partial and
impure religious life, he will carry with him the like-
minded, and will fail to edify others. All men whose
minds are not of a peculiar type will cease to be edified.
The all-sided growth of the congregation, which depends
mainly on the right and profitable administration of gospel
ordinances, will sustain a grievous check. The few like-
minded who retain some semblance of congregational
vigour will grow more and more narrow and one-sided,
being nourished, not on the sincere milk of the Word,
but on so much thereof as the minister can himself
assimilate ; and the usual marks of a sectarian develop
ment will appear in the alienation of the children of the
congregation, whose places are taken by deserters from
other churches. Of all the temptations to which the
student of theology is exposed, there is none more
insidious, and none more dangerous, than the temptation
to excuse want of diligence in study by concentration on
the qualification of personal piety. There is no path of
Christian duty in which a man can walk unless he walks
also near to God ; but, for this very reason, no advance
in Christian life is in itself a qualification for one sphere
of usefulness more than for another. Nay, a high degree
of spirituality cannot be maintained by any man except
in the discharge of duties for which he is properly qualified.
The man, therefore, who seeks the office of the ministry
in reliance on his personal piety and earnestness of

i877] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 337

purpose, will not only be deceived in his hopes of useful
ness, but grievously perils his spiritual life. Personal
piety is no call to the ministry, unless it is also a call to
full and zealous preparation for the ministry.

If the central function of presidence in Gospel ordin
ances is entrusted by our Presbyterian system only to
men theologically trained, the minister is associated in
all other parts of his congregational work with untrained
elders. But the minister who is supported by the Church
in order that he may give his whole time to functions
which the elders discharge voluntarily, manifestly lies
under special responsibility in these duties also. In all
congregational matters the minister is justly expected to
take a leading part, not only in the amount of work he
does, but in the way he does it. Yet it is absurd to
expect that in natural talent, in Christian experience,
in good sense and tact, the minister shall excel all his
elders. Even that pre-eminence which comes of greater
practice is not possessed by a young minister who is called
to preside in a court of old and experienced men. What
the Church reckons on in placing a young unpractised
man in such a position is simply his theological training,
his acquaintance with large views of truth, large principles
of administration, deduced from the careful study of the
Bible and the history of the Church. The minister who
is really thus equipped will not fail to take the right place
in his congregation, and to win corresponding respect ;
for all men feel that he has a claim to preside in practical
matters who is able to throw on them the light of general
principles. But the minister who is not a theologian is
nowhere weaker than in his own session or in the midst
of his congregation. He has no principles of knowledge
which can give him a wide grasp of administrative
questions. He maintains, therefore, only that influence
which is due to his purely personal qualities, or which he
can assert by clerical pretentiousness — by claiming for
his office, as an office, the respect which is due to the

22

338 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

right performance of its functions. He becomes a leader
only to those weaker than himself, and the best office
bearers, who should be his greatest helpers, either wholly
overshadow him or become objects of jealousy and centres
of party feeling. There is no such source of congregational
divisions as an ignorant ministry.

It is hardly necessary to remark that the theology
which our argument contemplates as the proper prepara
tion for congregational work does not mean such a
congeries of private speculations as some men pride
themselves upon. A theology useful for practical work
consists mainly (i) of Biblical knowledge, and (2) of a
grasp, both dogmatical and historical, of that system
based on the Bible which is embodied not only in the
constitution, but in the consciousness of the Church.
The man who is not prepared to discharge his functions
in the sense of the Church has no right to stand in the
ministry ; the pretension to subordinate the worship of a
congregation to personal conclusions of speculative
theology is in spirit sectarian, and must always be re
sisted by Church-government. An appreciative mastery
of the Church's present theology, with a recognition of its
positive value for practical work, is the true basis of
ministerial usefulness, and in congregational matters will
seldom fail to supply adequate guidance even to a man
destitute of theological originality. But the future of
our Church depends on the solution of problems not
purely congregational.

Every attentive student of the past history of Scottish
Presbyterianism, and especially of the last few years, must
admit that the larger problems that lie before a Church
which aims at visible catholicity, are not yet even
theoretically solved — that they remain problems partly
because our higher Church courts are not sufficiently
skilled in the practical application of our present theo
logical ideas, but partly also because these ideas themselves
are on many points too unclear and defective to serve

is;;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 339

present needs. The history of late events has shown
that even those branches of the Scottish Church which
have freed themselves from the hampering tutelage of the
State still fall short, not only in knowledge of one another,
but in clear comprehension of their own principles.

The fusion of separate communions has proved
impossible, mainly because of the lack of true unity in our
own Church ; because with much brotherliness of spirit,
and much common zeal for the advancement of Christ's
cause, there is not that clear oneness of Church con
sciousness which it is the object of a growing theology to
supply. The problem of advance in visible catholicity
remains unsolved, partly because a sound doctrinal and
historical appreciation of the present theology of the
Church in its relation to present needs is not diffused
throughout the ministry, or even among leaders in our
ecclesiastical courts, and partly because theology has not
yet spoken any decisive and convincing word on the
questions of the day ; because during two hundred years
of Church life there has been hardly any marked advance
in the Church's systematic knowledge.

It is plain that the supply of these two defects must
go hand in hand. Only by diffusing through the whole
ministry a higher ideal of theological attainments, a
greater aptitude for theological reasoning, a fuller under
standing of the historical personality of the Church, can
we ensure that those men shall come to the front who are
able to deal with practical questions in a way truly
catholic ; and that when the right solution of a problem
is set forth, its adequacy shall be generally realised.

Unquestionably this is the first step to the removal of
present evils. No novel speculations, no new theological
lights, can save a Church which has not learned thoroughly
to understand and appreciate her present constitution.
But withal it must be remembered that the theological
consciousness of the Church requires not only to be
awakened, but to be guided forward to higher conceptions

340 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-1877]

of the truth. The doctrine of theological finality can
never be accepted, save in a Church very ignorant of
her own principles, or very indifferent to their practical
application. It is not well that long years of bitter
conflict should be necessary to produce the conviction,
that on one very secondary point of doctrine and con
stitution, our theology has not yet reached completeness.
On the basis of a thorough knowledge of what has been
already obtained, it is the constant business of the Church,
in knowledge as in practice, to reach on to more perfection.
And this must be sought, not only by the private labours
of individuals, but by the organised effort of the Church
as a whole to increase her provision for the acquisition
and the advance of sound science. That Church is not
wise which grudges to spend her best wisdom, her ablest
men, her richest means, on the twofold task of theological
research and theological instruction.

II

ON PROPHECY
I. INTRODUCTORY

GENTLEMEN, — The subject which I propose to take up
in the course of lectures which we enter upon to-day is
Old Testament prophecy. I will not trouble you with
any lengthened exposition of the plan upon which I design
to treat the subject ; but it may be well to point out at
once what the main interests are by which our discussion
must be guided. In the first place, it must be our concern
to comprehend prophecy as &fact of history, as an element
which for many centuries was inwoven in the living
tissue of the life of the Old Testament people. In every
great crisis of Israel's history the prophets bore a part.
Their influence was always great, and often decisive
even, in shaping the external course of the history, while
no force of nearly equal importance operated on the
internal development of the people. And by this last
expression I do not wish merely to imply that prophecy
took a chief part in the development of the Old Testament
religion. That, indeed, is true, but it is not the whole
truth and not, to the historian, even the most striking
part of the truth. The remarkable thing about the
influence of the prophets on the inner life of Israel is that
they ultimately succeeded in moulding the whole national
life to a shape directly dependent on the religious ideas
of which they were the representatives. I say " ulti-

341

342 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

mately " — for the time when the national life directly
accepted the guidance of the prophetic ideas as paramount
in all its interests was not the time of Moses or of Samuel,
or even of Josiah, but the time of the great leaders of
the nation after the Captivity. That at this period some
of the prophetic ideas had already lost their freshness
and were misunderstood by those who applied them,
does not affect the truth of our statement. Rightly or
wrongly comprehended, the prophetic teaching furnished
from this time onwards the fountain-head from which
everything characteristic in the intellectual, moral,
spiritual, social life of the people flowed. I must not at
present go into details on this topic. The truth and
the importance of what I have just said will appear in
the course of these lectures. In the meantime I simply
ask you to remember that it will be one main part of our
business during the Session to attain a proper conception
of the part which prophecy played in the history of Israel,
and to comprehend how each prophet's actions, teaching
and writings stood in a living relation to the historical,
circumstances of his own time, and exercised a living
influence, first on his own contemporaries and then upon
those who came after. In order to do this it will be
necessary for us to follow step by step the historical
sequence of the prophets, and to interweave with our
account of the prophetic diadoche a more or less con
tinuous sketch of the main epochs of Hebrew history.

When I say that our first concern will be to under
stand prophecy as a factor in the Old Testament history,
you must not imagine that I forget that the interest which
must dominate all our studies in this hall is not historical,
but theological. To the Christian theologian Old Testa
ment prophecy has more than an historical interest.
To us the prophets are not merely the leaders of the
religious life of Israel and the guides of the nation in all
its highest attainments ; they are men who bore on their
lips the word of the only true God, a word that endureth

i877] PROPHECY AS A FACTOR IN HISTORY 343

for ever, and which is God's Word to us now as it was of
old to Israel.

In the view of some theologians this highest aspect
of the significance of prophecy entirely overshadows
all historical interest which may attach to the subject.
The inspiration of the prophets appears to them not
merely as the most cardinal fact which we can have before
us in studying their work and writings, but as a fact so
infinitely important that all human and historical aspects
of the matter are vanishing quantities in comparison.
The necessity for any critical enquiry into the history
of prophecy, and for any attempt to trace the evolution
of prophetical ideas, is held to be superseded, and even
to be rendered frivolous or profane by the paramount
consideration that what the prophets did and wrote they
did as organs of Divine Revelation. Every endeavour
to understand the prophets as men and to fit their work
into the general development of the national life of
Israel, with reference to the general laws of human history,
is supposed to involve some measure of indifference or
incredulity as respects the divine character of their
mission and equipment.

This view is nowadays at least not often put forth in
express terms by writers who profess to speak as scientific
theologians. But it is still the view which lies at the
bottom of a great part of current exegesis of the prophecies,
including the whole of the pseudo-apocalyptic speculation
which is still so fashionable in many circles. And on
those who have too much sense for the vagaries of this
school the unhistorical view of prophecy has at least a
negative influence, leading them to pass by as altogether
unintelligible many parts of the prophetic Scriptures
which become luminous as soon as we apply to them
the historical method of enquiry. That is, if we take up
any chapter of the prophecies at random, the unhistorical
method begins by saying : These are words of inspira
tion, let us try to find a lesson for us in each of them.

344 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

But perhaps the passage is such a one as the prophecy
against Moab in Isaiah xv., xvi. Here we have the
picture of a hostile invasion sweeping over Moab. The
Moabites flee southward and apply for protection to
the king of Judah. But he remains loyal to his obliga
tions of loyalty to the Israelites of the North, the old
enemies of Moab, and refuses to trust the promises of
the treacherous Moabites, whose destruction is thus
rendered inevitable and the powerlessness of their false
gods manifested. Looked at in an unhistorical manner
a prophecy like this is very puzzling: unless unlimited
freedom is given to an arbitrary typology only one or
two minor points attract the expositor, and these have
no individuality to give the prophecy special importance.
The powerlessness of Moab's religion, for example,
which appears to be the main lesson, is a lesson which
runs through the whole Old Testament with a reiteration
certainly not needed to impress upon the modern reader
the vanity of polytheism.

Accordingly those who are not disposed to treat Moab
as a type — in which case, by the way, the prophecy again
loses all individuality and becomes one of a hundred
typical expressions of the ultimate fall of the Kingdom
of the World — or who are not disposed to find arbitrary
references to modern events ; those, I say, who are too
sober for such exegesis and who yet value prophecy
only as an inspired lesson spoken directly to us, now,
will be able to make nothing of these chapters except
as a part of the evidence of prophecy, as one of many
marvellous predictions confirming the reality of Revela
tion. And here the difficulty arises that we have no
proof that the prophecy was ever fulfilled to the letter.
Or, rather, we are tolerably certain that it never was
so fulfilled. Such is a very simple example of the hope
lessness of any study of the prophecies which ignores
the necessity of basing all theological use of these parts
of the Old Testament on an historical study of the meaning

i877] PROPHECY AS A FACTOR IN HISTORY 345

of prophecy as a whole. It would, of course, be premature
to take up at this stage the historical exposition of these
chapters of Isaiah. But it may be advantageous to
say a few words in general on the way in which we shall
be able to rise from an historical view of prophecy to con
siderations confirming the Divine authority of the Old
Testament revelation, and enabling us to apprehend in
a living manner the abiding significance of the prophetic
word for the New Testament dispensation.

There are two aspects of prophecy which we must
bring together, trying if possible to understand the one
through the other. On the one hand the history of
prophecy is part of the history of Israel, — of a history,
that is, which is limited to a single nation and which
is in great measure concerned with matters of local
and temporary interest. These limitations have left
their mark on the whole history and work of the prophets.
Like all men who have left their names in the record of
human events, they were formed by circumstances. They
were the children of their country and of their age. All
that they did and said was conditioned by their historical
surroundings. Their inspiration itself was limited by
the law that supernatural revelation never breaks the
historical continuity of man's free agency and man's
responsibility. They were not so raised above their fellow-
countrymen that they ceased to be Israelites, thinking
and feeling like those around them, and having their
own share of concern, and that not merely as men, but
as prophets, in all the questions of their own time, how
ever local, temporary, and insignificant these may seem
to us. On the other hand, these same prophets form
part of the chain of the history of Revelation, and
their words are part of that progressive series of Divine
Self-manifestations which culminated in the manifestation
of Christ and in the bringing in of a salvation which is
free from all national limitations, from all local and
temporary colouring.

346 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

The difficulty of bringing these two aspects of prophecy
under a single point of view cannot be conquered by
merely shutting our eyes to the lower and transitory
elements in the phenomena of prophecy, and spiritualising
everything that does not fit at once into the Christian
scheme. For, be it observed, the difficulty about pro
phecy is part of a larger problem. The real difficulty
lies not in any one institution of the Old Testament, but
in the fact that the Christian dispensation was preceded
by an Old Testament dispensation at all. Let individual
limitations be spiritualised away as far as you please, it
will still be true that the Old Testament dispensation as
such is full of national, local, temporary interests. It will
still be true that it was the history of a single nation that
led up to the manifestation of Christ. Unless we are
prepared to throw away the Old Testament altogether,
and to say with ancient and modern Gnostics that the
God of the Jews is not the God of Christians, we must
face the fact that from Moses to Christ all knowledge of
the true God and of His plan of Salvation was encased in
local, national, temporary, earthly forms. The limita
tions of prophecy are the historical limitations of the
whole dispensation, and from these limitations prophecy
could not have been freed without ceasing to be Old
Testament prophecy at all.

Now the limitations of a dispensation of God's grace
must always be sought on the side of man, not on the side
of God, who is without limitation or mutability. If an
imperfect dispensation preceded Christianity, the meaning
of this is that God accommodated His work of revelation
and grace to the laws of limited human nature, that He
unfolded His plan under the conditions of historical pro
gress. The nexus of the successive steps in the develop
ment must be explained not with reference to Divine
omnipotence, which need not have been tied to a gradual
process at all ; but with reference to the incapacity of
man to receive spiritual truth except gradually, partially,

is;;] PROPHECY AS A FACTOR IN HISTORY 347

and under forms which interpreted it in its bearings on
his actual historical position and needs. We cannot
understand the Old Testament dispensation, either in its
own internal unity or in its unity with the New Testa
ment, except in this way of always looking at each step in
the development for a human continuity whereby the
new advance in the carrying out of God's plan of Revela
tion and redemption fits into the general progress of
history.

What is true in general must be true in the special
case of prophecy which was the main agency by which
God carried on His work in Israel, and led up to Christ.
The limitations of prophecy in general correspond to the
imperfection of the Old Covenant, which again expresses
the impossibility of bringing men to understand the
fulness of God's saving purpose otherwise than by a
gradual training process extended through many centuries.
And the particular limitations in prophecy, the local,
temporary, earthly colouring of individual parts of the
prophetic teaching, correspond to special features of
limitation in the Old Testament history, and can be
rightly appreciated only by the man who has learned
to fit the whole series of the prophets into their proper
historical setting. But as we learn to understand the
work of the prophets in its historical connection we shall
learn also to see how that work everywhere displays a
Divine unity manifesting itself through the historical
and variable circumstances which mould its temporary
form. The progress of the Old Testament history is not
a blind sequence of cause and effect, but a progress towards
an end revealed in Christ. The whole Old Testament
worked to prepare for Christ. And it did not work
blindly. Paganism, too, was a preparation for Christ,
but an unconscious preparation without any glimpse of
the future for which it was the providentially appointed
past. But the Old Testament development was never
unconscious of its own significance. No prophet saw

348 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

the fulness of the glory of Christ ; but every prophet
looked in the right direction, looked toward that glory,
and saw more or less clearly some of the great lines in
which the Kingdom of God must move forward. That
is the true significance of prophecy. It always pointed
Israel and the Old Testament dispensation towards an
end which in its realisation lost the idea of the nation in
that of the Universal Kingdom of God, and swallowed up
the Old Testament in the New. It is in this, and not in
individual predictions, that the supernatural inspiration
of the prophets is clearly seen. The immediate sphere
of their labours might be in some petty corner of national
life. Their immediate concern might be about some
treaty with Egypt, some war with Edom, some matter
which in its details was of the most transient importance.
But in the smallest matter they held to ideas which were
wide in their scope and distant in their range. They
taught the people to look at everything in the light of
God's work and God's purpose. And that purpose was
gradually made clearer and clearer to them till at length
when Christ came He could look to the prophets for a
declaration, unmistakable though undeveloped, of every
part of His work and every characteristic of His Kingdom.
To make out clearly this most wondrous characteristic
of prophecy, to show how all prophecy tends in one
direction, how through all the multiplicity of historical
circumstances it works ever consciously to one great end,
will be the second great aim of our winter's work. We
shall try as we trace the prophetic succession through its
work in Israel's history, to trace at the same time the
marvellous way in which the prophets reached with ever-
increasing clearness and fulness of view out beyond their
own times and their own dispensation towards the new
things of Christ and His spiritual kingdom. But these
Messianic hopes we must always seek to comprehend in
their connection with the circumstances and needs of the
prophet's own time. No prophecy can be mechanically

is;?] PROPHECY AS A FACTOR IN HISTORY 349

divided into a part which has only historical value and a
part which is ideal truth. The highest previsions of the
prophet are inextricably intertwined with the narrowest
limitations of his historical standpoint ; and if we lose
hold of the one side we shall never be able to apprehend
the other.

These remarks are of necessity very fragmentary, and
I fear in some parts obscure. The ideas on which I have
touched will come up from time to time, and will, I hope,
be clearer when they occur in more concrete shape in con
nection with the actual history of prophecy. To this
history we must now turn.

I. WAS THE PROPHETIC INSPIRATION SUPERNATURAL?

In carrying out in further detail our inquiry into the
prophetic inspiration, several courses may suggest them
selves to us. In the first place, we may follow either a
purely inductive or a constructive method. The in
ductive method will simply take note of the result which
we have already reached — the fact that no other religion
presents phenomena strictly parallel to the self-conscious
ness of the prophets of Israel. It will then endeavour to
describe the phenomena of Hebrew prophecy as fully as
possible without, in the first instance, assuming that they
are necessarily supernatural. Having got the phenomena
arranged, it will then begin to ask what the phenomena
involve, and will either seek a natural explanation for
them, or, failing to find any natural explanation, will
infer with more or less confidence the reality of a special
divine power in the prophets.

If such a rigorous investigation could really be applied
in all strictness and carried through to a successful con
clusion, there is no doubt that it would prove most
valuable. It may, however, be doubted whether in the
nature of things any purely religious fact falls within the
range of strict induction. The facts of religion are tran
scendental ; they involve the possibility and reality of

350 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

relations between God and man which rise quite above
the region of phenomena, i.e. which cannot be defined in
place and time. Let me illustrate this by a slight digres
sion, and call your attention for a moment to certain
religious facts of unquestionable reality, which are still
transacted in our midst, and which yet refuse to be
measured by any phenomenal standpoint. Take the
great fact of conversion. An inductive study of religious
phenomena will no doubt reach a valuable negative
conclusion on this head. It will be possible to show
that no mere empirical psychology has solved the question.
The phenomena are of a kind which baffle the psycho
logist. But for this very reason the psychologist cannot
prove by his inductive processes that conversion is the
work of God's spirit. He cannot even discover definite
empirical marks by which to recognise and identify cases
of true conversion. Certain schools of religion you know
have tried to do this — notably by the aid of a theory
which began with Ignatius Loyola, and, passing from the
Jesuits to Wesley, has formed the corner-stone of modern
as distinguished from true protestant Evangelicalism.

According to this theory, conversion can be localised
in time and place by certain psychical phenomena that
accompany it — e.g. (to accept the careful analysis given
by Loyola, Ex. Spir. Hebd. ii., ad fin., " Of choosings"),
when all doubt, or even power of doubting, is removed
from the mind so that it cannot but follow the impulse
to choose Christ, or when there is a clear persuasion of
the divine decree for salvation, or finally, when the choice
of a certain course of life as a means to salvation is
made with a perfect tranquillity of mind, the soul being
agitated by no contending blasts.

Such is the empirical theory of conversion ; but it
always breaks down before two classes of facts : (i) the
certainty that such experiences may be deceptive, and
that they may be produced by merely natural means.
(This experience, of course, does not puzzle Roman

is;;] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 351

Catholics, who have no doctrine of assurance apart from
use of sacraments with their opus operatum}. (2) Be
cause there are truly converted men who have never
passed through such experiences — whose conversion
being, as it is, a purely transcendental transaction with
God has never been manifested in a definite time and
place. Here, then, is an instance of a transcendental
religious reality surpassing induction — as in fact all true
cognition of God, so far as it becomes a personal thing,
and all true personal knowledge, even of our fellow-men,
is above inductive science. The well-known scepticism
of Hume shows how no inductive philosophy can prove
the existence of persons and personal relations. If
prophecy, then, is by its own profession one phase of the
personal fellowship of God with man, we must expect
that it also will be found to transcend induction.

And so, as a matter of fact, the opponents of Revelation,
whose main victories have always been gained by getting
leave to set questions in their own way, have found it to
their advantage to take up a purely inductive method
of investigating into prophecy. They first take up the
form of prophetic inspiration, and show that dreams,
visions, ecstasies, are not necessarily supernatural occur
rences. They then proceed (I follow the argument as it
is worked out by Kuenen, Profeten, i. p. 105 sq.) to ask
whether we can simply accept the testimony of the
prophets when they express to us their own conviction
of their divine inspiration. The modern rationalism of
Kuenen does not attempt to invalidate the self-witness of
the prophets by casting any doubt upon their honesty.
But it urges that the dilemma, " sent by God or else
deceivers," is superficial, and cannot be applied to any
ancient religion. We must, says Kuenen, take the
prophetic word itself and find some test of its supernatural
character.

The only test of an empirical character which can be
applied is then assumed to be the fulfilment of prophetic

352 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

prediction. The lofty character of the moral and religious
doctrine of the prophets is not (says Kuenen) a specific
mark of supernatural origin. The Old Testament literature
may be proved to be loftier in point of faith and ethics
than any other ancient writings, but such a difference in
degree will not constitute a difference of kind. Therefore,
says Kuenen, we will, with the consent of the supernatural-
ists themselves, take the predictions as our touch-stone.
Well, he analyses a vast mass of predictions, and shows
that many of them, referring partly to Israel, partly to
other nations, have not been fulfilled ; of course, since the
proposed test is empirical, he means not literally fulfilled.
Next, he tries to show that the fulfilled predictions are
not conclusive for the supernaturalistic view, while the
unfulfilled ones absolutely exclude it. How, then, shall
we explain the fact that the prophets claim to speak the
Word of Jahveh ? The explanation lies in the fact, that
the Word so spoken consists of inferences from the moral
character of Jahveh. The predictions flowed from
religious conviction. This source of the prophetic word
is the characteristic of true prophecy, — earnestness and
warmth of religious and moral conviction, that is the main
point. That is what constitutes the true prophet, for
that is what accounts for the courage and freedom with
which he appears as the interpreter of Jahveh. The
rank of each prophet is to be measured by the degree of
inwardness and purity which we ascribe to his religious
faith. In vain do we seek another criterion (ii. 103).

I give here the mere outline of Kuenen's method.
For our present purpose it is really not worth while to
ask whether there are not flaws in the details of his
argument, whether he has treated individual predictions
fairly, and so forth. If we did go into details, we should
no doubt have to differ from him on many points, as we
have already found him in error on so notable a point
as the question of the uniqueness of the prophetic con
sciousness. But grant the justice of his method of

i8;7] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 353

inquiry, and he can afford to be convicted of errors of
detail.

Allow him to start from the position that a purely
phenomenal and empirical measure is to be applied to
prophecy — that prophecy is to be measured by prediction,
and that prediction is to be tested on the letter of its
details, and the game is in his hands. But is this fair ?
What Kuenen says is, "I cannot admit that this is in a
special sense the word of God, unless you prove that it
told things, within the region of empirical verification,
which could not have been got at by human foresight."
But, according to the prophets' own account of the matter,
God's word has for its function to keep Israel in sympathy
— not with empirical facts, but with God's transcendental
plan and purpose. If it really discharged this function—
if it really enabled men to walk with God in a personal
fellowship of faith and love, and gave them so much
insight into His purposes as was needful at each moment
to cast light upon their path — if, as Isaiah puts it, the
prophets and those who hearkened to their word really
heard a word behind them saying, " This is the way, walk
ye in it," when they turned to the right hand or to the left
—then surely the prophets were right in saying that the
word was not theirs, but God's.

When the matter is put in this way, the question of
prediction and fulfilment does not cease to be important,
but it is no longer possible to treat it in the bare empirical
fashion proposed by Kuenen. On the one hand it is
perfectly conceivable that we might have the most
remarkable prediction of details verified in the most
literal way by subsequent events, and yet that in this
prediction we might receive no revelation of the heart and
purpose of God which should have the slightest religious
value, and therefore no real prophecy. Suppose that Dr.
Slade, when brought into the London police court, had
offered to prove his supernatural mission by telling the
price at which Russian stocks would be quoted on the day

23

354 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

when the Turkish conference broke up. The verification
of this prediction in the event would not have proved him
a true prophet. It might prove him to be an accurate
diviner, but the thing would have no religious value. It
would not bring God nearer to man, or in any sense
confirm to us the reality of a divine purpose and guidance
in human history. Though every prediction in Zadkiel's
Almanac for 1877 were fulfilled to the letter, Christianity
would remain precisely where it is. We might have
something to wonder at, but we should not have any
right to welcome a new revelation from God. On the
other hand, it is very possible that a prophet might have
a real message from God to men, enabling men to act
under an intelligent comprehension of his guidance and
purpose, and yet that the outcome of that guidance and
purpose might take a shape not literally described before
hand by the prophet. Why should we expect prophecy
to be a " history of future events," when we never think
of taking it as the test of the reality of the confidence
which a fellow-man reposes in us that he shall tell us
beforehand with literal precision the exact actions which
he is about to perform ? The man would be deceiving us
if, while pretending to make us his confidants, he did not
open up to us his heart, the way in which he views things
and in which his action is to depend upon them ; but that
is a different matter from saying that he is to give us
beforehand an exact picture of all that he is going to do.
Of course the case of divine Revelation differs from cases
of ordinary human intercourse, inasmuch as God, unlike
man, foresees the exact turn of every event even of such
as depend on human freedom. But then, if prophecy is
not to neutralise human freedom and destroy moral
responsibility, it is impossible for all that lies in omniscience
to be revealed to us. How much of the future God is to
reveal to the prophet, and what limitations of form are
to apply to the revelation is a question which depends on
a variety of considerations which cannot be rightly

is;;] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 355

weighed until we rise above the empirical standpoint and
look at the details of the question in the light of the ideal
design of prophecy as the expression of a personal and
confidential fellowship of God with His people. The
question of the fulfilment of prophecy is not the first
question to be taken up in dealing with prophetic inspira
tion, but the last. Instead of forming our ideal of
prophecy from the empirical facts, let us remember that
the empirical details are only intelligible in the light of the
idea of prophecy.

In fact, this whole argument of Kuenen is closely
analogous to the argument which certain men of science
lately sought to apply to the subject of prayer. You
remember that it was proposed to test the efficacy of
prayer by a series of experiments on selected patients in
an hospital. The answer to such a proposal is, of course,
that the very idea of prayer excludes such experiment.
Prayer in the name of Christ is the expression of that
fellowship with the Father into which we enter through
the redeeming work of Christ. We present our requests
to God for temporal as well as spiritual blessings,
because we believe that all our interests, of body as well
as of soul, are of consequence to God, that He is willing
to take account of them, and invites us to seek His help
in them. But we have no right to determine the form
which His interest and help shall take. It is not because
we receive literal answers to detailed petitions that we
believe in the efficacy of individual petitions, but because,
living in the constant exercise of a prayerful trust in Him,
we find our whole lives ordered by His grace, and are
enabled to trace His good hand upon us in every crisis of
our needs. The most certain answers to prayer are often
not those in which God's help comes just in the form in
which we asked it, but those in which God answers the
spirit of our prayer by denying the letter of it. Such
answers cannot be measured and numbered by inductive
science. They are addressed to the spiritual nature of

356 LECTURES AND ESSAYS Ll874-

the renewed man, even when they refer to his bodily and
temporal needs, and they are understood only by the
interpretation of His own spirit in our hearts.

The case of prophecy is quite of the same kind. The
fulfilment of prophecy means that the actual history of
God's redeeming work has corresponded with the spirit
of prophecy — that by His revealing word God really
taught His people what to look for and what to pray for.
That the hopes and prayers of the Old Testament Church
have in Christianity often been fulfilled in a form and in
concrete details which the prophets never thought of, and
could not even have conceived under the limitations of
the Old Testament standpoint, is a matter of no moment
if the fulfilment is spiritually adequate. But spiritual
adequacy is not to be measured by an empirical analysis,
in the manner of Kuenen, of all fulfilled and unfulfilled
prophecy.

I cannot at this stage of our inquiries go more fully
into the question of the principle on which prophecy is
fulfilled. But it may be well to come to close quarters
with Kuenen's method on one or two special features
which it contains.

In the first place, I have to dispose of an objection.
It will be argued that the Old Testament itself accepts
Kuenen's test of the reality of supernatural prophecy.
In Deut. xviii. 21 we read: " If thou say in thy heart, How
can we know the word which Jahveh hath not spoken ?
When a prophet speaks in Jahveh's name, if the thing
follow not, nor come to pass, that is the word which Jahveh
hath not spoken, the prophet hath spoken presumptuously,
]YTO, Thou shalt not be afraid of him." But here you
are to observe : (i) that the fulfilment of the individual
prophetic word is not here taken as the matter by which
the existence or non-existence of truly supernatural
prophecy is to stand or fall, but as a practical test by
which, the reality of true prophecy being assumed, the
divine commission of an individual prophet may be

i877] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 357

tested. Kuerten asks, How shall I know whether Jahveh
speaks to men by prophets ? The question in Deut.
is only, How shall I know the word which Jahveh hath
spoken ? Accordingly the application of the Deuter-
onomic test will be conditioned by a variety of considera
tions, derived in each individual case from the general
theory of prophecy. These will determine the measure
and nature of the fulfilment which it is fair to expect.

(2) Again, it is clear from the nature of the case that
this practical test does not cover all possible cases. It is
at best a negative test ; for in chapter xiii. 1-5 we read
that even though a prophet produces in support of his
divine commission an DD^ID IN JVIN which actually comes
to pass, this shall go for nothing if his teaching is
directed to withdraw the people from Jahveh.

(3) And, once more, it is clear that in many cases the
effect of the prophetic word would be wholly lost if no
heed were given to it until it had been verified in the
event. So the Deuteronomic test would stultify prophecy
altogether if it were raised to the rank of a universal rule.
It is only a subsidiary test which may be applied in cases
where the self-evidencing power of the prophetic word
is not conclusive. As a matter of fact we do not find that
it was customary for all prophets to confirm their com
mission by a fulfilled prediction ; and strictly viewed the
passage does not require any such thing. It is purely a
negative rule, and necessarily of occasional application
merely. So we find that Jeremiah applies it in the case
of Hananiah only because the prophecy of peace given
by the latter was in its own nature suspicious. In this
case of special conflict between true and false prophecy God
did give to Jeremiah (Jer. xxviii.) a special evidence that
he was the true prophet by enabling him to predict the
death of Hananiah within the year. But this was clearly
a special case which must not be extended to a general
rule. Contrast the quite different line taken by Isaiah
and Micah against the diviners, Isa. viii. 19, Micah iii. 5-8,

358 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

where the appeal is to the moral evidence of true
prophecy.

It is proper to observe in connection with Kuenen's
method that, while he regards the literal fulfilment of
prediction as the proper test of the supernatural character
of prophecy, he is very far from supposing that the
importance and value of prophecy stands or falls by the
result of this inquiry. He would have us to believe that
the prophets are quite wrong in supposing that they
possessed in any special sense a word from Jahveh. They
were not specifically different from other seers. What
they call the word of Jahveh and regard as an objective
communication from Him, is simply an inference drawn
from their subjective belief as to the unity, spirituality,
and ethical character of God. But this does not make
their work the less important. Their religious convictions
were very earnest and very noble. They had reached the
idea of spiritual monotheism, and they left that idea as
a legacy to the world. Professor Kuenen is not very
communicative as to the way in which they reached that
idea — whether they thought it out by a process of reason
ing, so that they were, in fact, a kind of philosophers, or
whether they seized it by a peculiar faculty of religious
intuition. But be it reasoning or intuition, their reason
ings and insight were juster than those of other ancient
nations and formed an important step in the religious
development of mankind.

Now, one is apt to suppose that if the prophets were
really inspired their inspiration must display itself most
clearly in the thoughts and convictions which gave to
their work its world-wide importance. If the predictions
are for the most part inferences which the prophets drew
from their religious convictions, the true question for us
to decide is, whether these religious convictions were,
or were not, given to the prophets by a special divine
influence. If, after all, the predictions form a small part
of the prophetic writings, if they are secondary in import-

i877] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 359

ance, and if, as Kuerten, like other scholars, admits, the
prophets themselves are fully alive to the fact that there
is a conditional element, at least in many predictions, it is
certainly curious logic to take these predictions first, and
to settle the question natural or supernatural off-hand
with reference to them alone, and without first ascending
to the really central facts of prophecy. Kuenen seems to
feel this, for in chapter ix. he makes some remarks by
way of showing (i) that conditional prediction is a thing
inconsistent with inspiration, and (2) that the prophetic
conception of Jahveh is itself not free from error, and
therefore cannot be viewed as of other than human origin.
But what he says on these two vastly important questions
falls far short of a full discussion, and need not long detain
us. The notion of conditional prediction is one which
must be separately discussed, but for our present purpose
it may be briefly stated thus. God's purpose of grace
towards man is absolute and must move on to sure
accomplishment. But it is to be accomplished not
mechanically upon man, but ethically in the hearts of
men, by a spiritual process. Two important means used
in this spiritual process are promises to the obedient,
threats to the rebellious. God gives His prophets these
promises and threats to address to the people, and, of
course, gives them in a form applicable to the times then
present. The promises to Israel take the form of blessings
which the nation at the time needed and could appreciate,
of such blessings as belonged to the Old Testament
dispensation. But the people's sins often deferred the
fulfilment of these promises — deferred them, not cancelled
them — for God will assuredly conduct His people to final
felicity. But, of course, as time moves on, as the church
emerges from the childhood of the Old Testament to the
full-grown manhood of Christianity, it would be no longer
fitting to give an Old Testament fulfilment to the deferred
promises. The promise will be fulfilled, but in a better, a
spiritual form. Of course, I do not now ask how much of

360 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

the Old Testament prediction is covered by this principle
and by the allied principle — clearly recognised in Jer. xxvi.
as a thing fully understood by the Hebrews themselves—
that repentance may avert predicted judgment. But the
principle at least seems clear. Prediction is not mechanical
but ethical, and is not meant to destroy but to direct
human freedom. Now all that Kuenen has to say to this
is, that the theory sacrifices the omnipotence and prescience
of God, and that the prophets were themselves convinced
" both of Jahveh's immutability and of man's powerless-
ness to determine the course of the government of the
world" (E.T. p. 335 [1877]). Here we begin to see that
Dr. Kuenen's method is not so purely inductive and free
from a priori presuppositions as it appeared at first sight
to be. For observe that it is an essential feature in the
theory of conditional prediction that God's purpose is
ultimately fulfilled, that His grace does in the long run
prevail over man's sin and backsliding. So when Dr.
Kuenen ignores this point (he does not even mention
it), and says that the theory (which, be it observed, is
due to the prophets themselves) is inconsistent with the
divine perfection, and makes Him responsible for what is
really mere ebb and flow in the temper of the prophet
himself (pp. 314, 315), it is plain that his conception of
the divine purpose is pantheistic in tendency — fatalistic,
not ethical. He wishes to banish from God's dealings
with man not only all that is anthropopathic but all that
is anthropomorphic. God's purpose must not only be
absolute in its aim, but rigidly mechanical in its execution.
It is to be wrought out in human history, but God must
not take man by the hand and adapt His language to man's
weakness as a father speaking with a child. Individual
personal dealing of God with His people is what Kuenen
really excludes when he says that conditional promises
and threats are unworthy of divine omnipotence and
omniscience. In this he does not stand alone. He
speaks the philosophy of his whole school. In Germany

1 877] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 361

and in Holland alike, the characteristic feature of the so-
called organic view of the development of religion is not
critical research, but pantheistic presupposition. And
now a word upon his statement that " the prophets'
conception of the righteousness of Jahveh deserves respect
for its earnestness, but cannot be accepted as truth "
(P- 354) • The prophets, says Kuenen, assume that in the
case of individuals, or at least of nations, outward fortune
is determined by moral condition. And this, he says, is
contrary to all experience. Now, in the first place the
prophets certainly teach that Divine retribution is
tempered by mercy and the purpose of grace ; and, in the
second place, though they have not the full New Testa
ment doctrine of fatherly chastisement, they at least know
— as comes out so clearly in the last chapter of Micah —
that the judgments sent on the godly differ from those
sent on the ungodly, not by a mere mechanical proportion
ing of the punishment to the offence but by the fact that
the former have a gracious purpose and operation, so that
they can be humbly accepted as consistent with God's
love. Grant these two limitations to the doctrine of
retribution, and it is not so plain that the doctrine is
inconsistent with experience. Or, rather, here again we
come into a region that transcends mere outer experience ;
we come to deal with quantities that have a spiritual
meaning. The divine righteousness appears as perfect,
not when it is regarded as a mechanical lex talionis but
when each external dispensation is read as a revelation
of the heart of God. The same judgment may have a
very different meaning and value to different men, or to
Israel and to the heathen, and this the prophets well knew.
But, thus understood and interpreted, God's righteousness
must be the law of the Universe if there is a God at all.
And it is impossible for religion to put this conviction too
strongly. The prophets do put it as strongly as possible,
but to fail to do so would have been to give up faith in
God. The limitation of their standpoint, their difference

362 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

from the New Testament, is that they give body to this
faith in the forms of the Old Testament dispensation—in
earthly forms which are inadequate and which have fallen
away. They always speak of God's righteousness as
finally manifested in the land of Canaan. And they could
not do otherwise, because God had not revealed to them
the inadequacy of the national covenant of Israel as the
sphere for the final realisation of His purpose. But how
does this limitation affect the truth that it was from God
Himself that they derived the knowledge of His righteous
ness and grace which they rendered articulate by express
ing it under these forms ?

It appears, then, that the arguments on which Kuenen
relies to disprove the supernatural inspiration of the
prophets are only valid against a purely mechanical
doctrine of revelation. It is plain that the revelation
given to the prophets had limitations. But these limita
tions are of a kind inseparable from the conception of a
truly ethical dealing of God with men. Now this we
know is the conception on which the prophets themselves
found. We find that prophecy is represented in the Old
Testament itself as the realisation of God's personal
guiding presence to His people. God receives the prophet
into personal confidence with Himself, dealing with him,
and with the people through him, on the analogy of
human intercourse. The very idea of such converse
implies that in the prophetic word something of the full
splendour of God's absolute knowledge is veiled. The
prophetic word is a limited revelation ; but to say that it
is necessarily no revelation at all is possible only upon
a priori assumptions which would be equally valid to
destroy the idea of conversion, the idea of prayer, and all
the other facts of personal religion which the Christian
Church does not receive from tradition, but realises in its
daily spiritual life.

But there is another point of view from which we may
look at Kuenen's arguments. We find him defining the

i877] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 363

true value of prophecy in two ways which are by no means
obviously coincident. At one time he tells us that our
judgment upon each prophet must rest upon " the
earnestness and warmth of his religious and moral con
viction, the depth and purity of his religious belief "
(PP- 363, 364). On the other hand, he concludes by
affirming that the permanent value of their work rests
on the fact that they created ethical monotheism, and have
made that belief the inalienable property of our race. On
the first statement the value of the prophetic convictions
appears to be in their subjective intensity ; on the second,
it depends on their objective validity as convictions
" which have become the inalienable property of our
race." How do these two views hang together ? The
mere intensity of prophetic conviction cannot be what
makes it a conviction of universal validity. No con
victions are intenser than those of a madman, but they
are not therefore of value or fit to become the inalienable
property of our race. The prophetic teaching can have
value only if it is true. Its truth is not proved by the
earnestness of the teacher. How then does Kuenen know
that ethical monotheism is a true belief ? To this
question we receive no answer except the negative one
that the prophets were wrong in supposing that the truth
came to them by personal communication from God
Himself.

The truth is, that the school to which Kuenen belongs
never seriously faces the question of the objective value
of religious truth. The so-called modern school sets
before it an entirely different question from that of the
old theology. The old theology treated of God, His
attributes, His manifestation, His dealings with men. The
new school treats of religion. Its theology is a discussion
of man's beliefs about God, of man's religious actions and
feelings. When these have been analysed, and when
their development has been traced, the modern theologian
is perfectly happy. Religion has been genetically ex-

364 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

plained from its beginnings down to the present time.
Its ideas are most valuable, for they are part of the organic
development of human thought. They are the inalienable
property of the human race, just like the Pyramids or any
other great work of men's hands. And there is no more
to be said about it, except that these ideas are sure to go
on developing in future time as they have done in the past.

It is plain, I think, that no one can rest satisfied with
a view like this unless he has first accepted some form of
absolute philosophy, some pantheistic theory according
to which everything in human history is the mechanical
evolution of a hidden principle working by equally in
flexible laws in the moral and physical spheres. What
ever is is a more or less pure manifestation of the divine.
The fundamental order of things is gradually clarifying
itself as it is worked out in history. But the only thing
that is real is this progress. The individual human soul
is of as little account as a single wave in the sea. It is
not therefore necessary that a personal religious reality
should present itself to the individual soul. It is only
necessary that the soul be swept on in the right course of
development by a supreme religious conviction. If we
have got the highest religious convictions current in our
time, we are, as it were, at the crest of the wave, and that
is the highest thing possible to us.

The prophets occupy this position. A great proportion
of their convictions has continued to work on in the
subsequent development of thought, and accordingly
they are greater men than the heathen seers who con
tributed very little religious thought that has lived.

On this view even the ethical monotheism of the
prophets has only a relative value. It is not an absolutely
true conception, but only an approximation to the true
conception of the unity of the universe which we accept
provisionally till a better formula is found. And, of
course, the idea of personal converse with God is a pure
delusion. The highest religious life means nothing more

i877] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 365

than sympathy with the highest accessible form of appre
ciation for the divine unity which underlies the progress of
humanity. This appreciation — the reflection, so to speak,
in the human mind of the stream of the divine progress
of the universe — is all that can be meant by communion
with God.

It is not my business to go into a refutation of this
pantheistic theory of the universe. It is, fortunately, a
theory which can be tested on other grounds than that of
religion, for every argument which it directs against the
true personality of God is also an argument against the
true personality of man.

But I ask you to observe that every spiritual power
which has stirred men's hearts, and tended to establish or
to spread the spiritual monotheism of which Kuenen so
freely admits the value, has been exerted by men whose
convictions were directly opposed to the theory. All the
prophets were filled with the conviction that they stood
face to face with a personal God and in personal communion
with Him. The spirit of Jahveh which filled them with
might was not the immanent spirit of the universe working
in their own hearts, but something distinct from them
selves. And so, too, Jesus, in whom Kuenen fully acknow
ledges the highest of religious personalities, was never
tempted to confound himself with the Father. " Not as
I will, but as Thou wilt." Where can we have more clearly
than in these words the distinct persuasion of personal
relation to, and personal distinction from, a personal
God ? Jesus, as clearly as the prophets, recognises the
sharp contrast between man's thoughts and God's revela
tion.

"Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my
Father which is in heaven/' Here, then, is the astounding
paradox of Kuenen's view. True religious ideas have been
created by those who expressly reject them. The
prophets advanced the truth by their intense faith in a lie.
Religious creativeness has in all ages depended on faith

366 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-1877]

in a relation to God which is purely imaginary. And,
conversely, those who have accepted the pantheistic or
organic theory of Kuenen have in the very measure of
this acceptance ceased to be religiously intense and
productive. If Christianity is a reality among us now
its vitality is due, not to the lofty theories of advanced
thinkers, but to the personal hold of a personal God which
is still given to the believer by a truly supernatural work
of the Spirit of Christ.

If these facts are consistent with Kuenen's theory,
the whole universe is a lie and all history a delusion.
If self-deception has done greater things than true
philosophy truth has no meaning at all. It is absurd to
say that the very feature in the religious consciousness of
the prophets which gave them their courage, their power,
the might to sway men's minds, is a mere accident in
their belief which truer insight sweeps away as false.

In concluding these remarks, I wish to speak one word
of warning against the inference which some of you may
draw, that a man who holds views like Kuenen's can have
no true religion at all. The fact is, that the pantheistic
theory is so unreal that no man can live consistently in it.
In proportion as a man does live in it his whole personal
life must be lamed. But it cannot be carried out. Pan
theists do not live as if personality were a delusion. And
so men who hold a virtually pantheistic view of the
place of God in the universe may, in their lives, break
through their theory. A man's speculations are often
very remote from his practice. They may be better, but
they may also be worse. You must never allow yourselves
to take a man's speculative errors as the proof of an
absence of personal faith, which often is nourished from
very different sources and lives in spite of a blighting
philosophy.

Ill

THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN 1876

IN attempting a brief sketch of what has been done for
Old Testament studies in 1876, I omit some works which
have already been noticed in these pages, and make no
pretence to bibliographical completeness, especially as
regards magazine articles and the like. Those who wish
to see complete lists of publications on our subject may
be referred to the fortnightly statements in the Theo-
logische Liter aturzeitung, and to Friederici's Bibliotheca
Orientalis for 1876 (London : Triibner & Co.).

Giving the customary precedence to works of an
encyclopaedic character, we first take up the new edition
of Herzog's great Encyclopedia, which began to appear
last year and is to be completed within seven or eight
years in 150 shilling parts. The articles bearing on the
Old Testament are almost all new, and several of the best
younger scholars of Germany are contributors. Thus
Schiirer writes on the Old Testament Apocrypha, and
Baudissin displays his great erudition in the difficult
field of Semitic polytheism in articles on Adrammelech
and Anammelech. The minor articles are mainly by
F. W. Schultz, and though carefully compiled, and better
than those in the former edition, are not always quite up
to the mark in fulness of information and references to
relevant literature. As a Bible dictionary, indeed, the
Encyclopedia, which is properly an encyclopaedia of

367

368 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

theology, does not aim at absolute completeness ; and
even those who possess it may be glad to have along with
it the very cheap and useful dictionary of biblical anti
quities (Handw'drterbuch des biblischen Alterthums), now
appearing under the editorship of Professor Riehm, of
Halle. This work, which is to be completed in one
volume of 1000 pages, at the price of about i6s., is
designed for educated readers in general, and makes no
parade of scholarly apparatus. But every article is the
work of a thoroughly competent author, who has made
a special study of his department, and the lucid accuracy
which is so characteristic of the editor penetrates the
whole work, which promises to be the best Bible dictionary
for general use, and one which scholars must not ignore.

Last year's contributions to pure philology must be
rapidly passed over, as this is not the place for technical
criticism. In lexicography we have to notice Ryssel's
new edition of Fuerst's Lexicon, which contains only such
improvements as were consistent with the continued use
of the old stereotype plates. In Hebrew grammar there
is a general feeling that what is most necessary at present
is careful investigation of detached questions. Working
in this direction, Dr. Giesebrecht has given us an elaborate
monograph on the preposition Lamed (Halle, Lip-
pert'sche Buchh., 112 pp.), which will be found useful in
spite of the unfortunate want of an index, which in such
a work is a serious inconvenience.

There have been some useful translations into English
of grammatical works. The explanation of Hebrew forms
by reference to a more primitive condition of the language,
which throws so much light on the apparent darkness of
the paradigms by which students are puzzled, was not
systematically carried through any grammar accessible
to the English reader till the appearance of Mr. Poole's
translation of Land's Principles of Hebrew Grammar
(Triibner, 1876). Unfortunately this work has serious
defects as a manual for learners, and the student who

i877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 369

wishes to get a clear and brief conspectus of the genesis
of the Hebrew forms will probably do better to procure
Mr. Curtiss's translation of Bickell's excellent Outlines
of Hebrew Grammar (Leipzig, 1877). Both books rest
mainly on the great grammar of Olshausen. The later
has a very admirable table of Semitic characters by
Euting, which is superior to anything of the kind pre
viously accessible. I have not seen a translation published
at New York of Luzzatto's valuable Chaldee grammar.

Let us turn in the next place to works that bear on the
text of the Old Testament. Among these the first place
undoubtedly belongs to Strack's magnificent facsimile
edition of the precious Petersburg MS. of the latter
prophets, dating from A.D. 916. The value of this codex
lies not merely in its antiquity, though it is the oldest
MS. of certain date, but still more in the fact that it is
the most perfect specimen of the Babylonian system of
vowel points, and exhibits more Oriental readings and
more points of agreement with the Targum than any
extant copy. Almost all other MSS., as is well known,
have the Western vowel points, and present occidental
readings in passages where the Eastern and Western
schools diverge. The Petersburg codex has the Massora
as well as the text. For the convenience of those who
wish to familiarise themselves with the very interesting
system of the Babylonian punctuation, Hosea and Joel
have been published separately at a low price. A second
important work on the Hebrew text is Frensdorff's
Massoretisches Woerterbuch (Hannover and Leipzig :
Cohen & Risch), which forms the first volume of a pro
jected edition of the Massora Magna, on which the author
has spent many years of labour. In ordinary Rabbinical
Bibles the Massora appears in a very confused shape.
The Massorets, or scholars, who made it their business
to take care of the exact transmission of the Hebrew text,
with every peculiarity of orthography and the like, wrote
their notes on the margin of the Bible, but provided no

24

370 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

cross references when several passages were illustrated
by one note. Frensdorff has now arranged all the notes
in alphabetic form, adding valuable explanatory com
ments.

But welcome as these works are, the most serious
faults of the current Hebrew text are not to be cured by
MSS. or Massora. As this conviction spreads among
scholars, the ancient versions are becoming the subject
of renewed study. Among last year's publications in this
field, the place of honour falls to Ceriani's magnificent
facsimile edition of the ancient Ambrosian MS. of the
Peshito, which dates from about the sixth century, and,
in the words of the editor, holds much the same place
among MSS. of the Syriac Old Testament as the
Amiatinus among copies of the Vulgate, and the Vatican
and Alexandrian MSS. among those of the LXX. The
first part of this splendid work contains the Pentateuch
and part of Job. By far the most important version,
however, as a check on the Massoretic text, is the LXX.
In a pamphlet published at Moers, as the Easter pro
gramme of the Gymnasium there, Hollenberg discusses
in a very effective way the character and critical value
of the LXX. of Joshua, and gains several valuable correc
tions of the Hebrew text. It is important to note that
the characteristic freedom with which Hebrew scribes
made additions to the texts they copied continued to so
late a date that in the historical books the Massoretic text
contains quite large interpolations which were wanting
in the copies that lay before the Greek translators. Thus,
in Josh. xx. 3-6, which is an Elohistic passage, and
originally, as in the LXX., corresponded exactly with
Num. xxxv. 11-12, our present Hebrew has a large
insertion after Deut. iv. and xix., while in chapter xv.,
where we now find thirty-six names in a list which should
contain only twenty-nine, a hint from the LXX. enables
Hollenberg to show that part of the list was interpolated
by a copyist from the book of Nehemiah. Facts like

1877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 371

these have an importance far beyond the passage which
they affect. They must be kept in view by every one who
wishes to understand the gradual process by which the
historical books of the Old Testament came to be the
complex structure which they are.

Lagarde's Psalterium lob Proverbia Arabice (Gottingen,
1876) is more important for Orientalists, and for the
history of the Christian East, than for text-criticism.

Among recent exegetical works none is less pretentious,
while very few are so truly scholarly and calculated to be
of such general use, as The Holy Bible, with various
Renderings and Readings from the best Authorities, pub
lished by Eyre & Spottiswoode. The Old Testament is
the work of Messrs. Cheyne and Driver, and the collection
of various readings and interpretations is singularly
accurate and complete. It is a book which should be in
the hands of every Bible reader, while at the same time
it will prove an invaluable help to beginners in Hebrew,
and a useful book of reference to more advanced scholars,
who will find it a convenient index of opinions often
collected from works difficult of access.

In striking contrast to the modest work of these
Oxford scholars is the flourish of trumpets with which
Messrs. Jennings and Lowe introduce their treatise, The
Psalms, with Introductions and Critical Notes (Macmillan
& Co. 3 vols. 1875-77). The necessary qualifications of
a good commentator are unfolded in a pompous preface,
claimed by implication for the authors, and illustrated by
a severe ex cathedra criticism on Professor Perowne.
The book itself does not display such exceptional scholar
ship as might justify this tone. The writers have not
been trained in the best school of Hebrew philology.
Their grammatical comments lack scientific precision
(as on i. 2) ; and they sometimes offer an impossible
translation (as ex. 3), or adopt the caprices of P. H.
Mason (as in Ixxxi. 5). On the other hand, they bring
to their task more rabbinical lore than is usual among

372 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

recent commentators, and have the merit of candour and
independence of thought along with very considerable
reading. On critical questions they are moderate con
servatives, not denying occasional corruptions in the text,
and admitting that the titles, to which they usually adhere,
are sometimes incorrect. Psalm li. is assigned to the
period of the Babylonian exile, and is supposed to be a
poetic conception of David's feelings. Three Psalms are
assigned to the Maccabaean period (xliv., Ixxiv., Ixxix.).
The introductions contain a good deal of useful matter,
together with not a little that is questionable. In
adopting Aben Ezra's highly probable view that the
title Al-taschcheth is taken from the opening words of a
well-known song, Mr. Lowe might have thought of the
vintage song, " Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it "
(Isa. Ixv. 8).

Last year saw the completion of the Speaker's Com
mentary on the Old Testament in a volume (vol. vi.,
" Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets ") which is
scarcely calculated to diminish the feelings of partial
disappointment with which this work has been generally
received. A note at page 83 shows that among Dr.
Currie's qualifications to write on Ezekiel, a knowledge
of the elements of Hebrew grammar is not included.
In discussing the great vision of the renewed Theocracy,
the commentator does not seem to be aware of the
importance which this section of the prophecies possesses
for the criticism of the Pentateuchal law. He under
stands the vision as " portraying immediately the Church
of Christ," without reference to any partial fulfilment
in the restoration of the material temple. " As the Jews
already knew something of the typical character of the
temple services, this vision was intended to teach
them more." At the same time, we are reminded that
the minute details are not all in themselves symbolically
important, but are requisite from the character of
visionary presentation, which sets a finished picture

i877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 373

before the eye. Manifestly, however, on this theory any
lines in the picture which are new and different from
the older ritual must have a special meaning. Thus,
on xlv. 23, Dr. Currie remarks, that instead of the
graduated scale of sacrifices for the Feast of Tabernacles
in Numbers, " the covenant number seven is preserved
throughout to indicate a perfect in lieu of an imperfect
covenant with God." But even such arbitrary
spiritualising will not cover all the remarkable details
of the case. What is the symbolism of the sentence
pronounced in chapter xliv. against the Levites ?
Here Dr. Currie admits a historical reference ; but, in
direct opposition to the plain words of the text, supposes
that vers. 10 sqq. speak only of certain apostate Levites,
not of the Levites as a body, whom he supposes to have
remained faithful. But what Ezekiel distinctly says is,
that the Levites as a whole are to be excluded from
proper priestly work, which is henceforth to be limited
to the house of Zadok ; and this exclusion is not based
on any previous law, though it precisely corresponds
with the middle books of the Pentateuch, but is set forth
as a new ordinance, a punishment for the services offered
by the Levites on the high places. What can we think of
a commentator who does not even notice the singular
problem raised by this passage, and on which Graf and
other critics have built arguments which are at present
agitating the whole world of Hebrew scholarship ?

Mr. Fuller's Daniel is a much more thorough piece of
work, which incorporates a great mass of valuable material
drawn, not only from books, but from MSS. communica
tions by Assyrian scholars. Great weight is naturally
laid on the testimony of Lenormant to the accuracy of
the Babylonian colouring in the book ; but the fullest
discussion of the subject by the French scholar in his
book, La Divination et la science des presages chez les
Chaldeens (Paris, 1875), Appendice. Les six premiers
chapitres de Daniel, seems to have appeared too late to be

374 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

referred to. I may, therefore, take this opportunity of
directing the reader to what is certainly the most import
ant recent contribution to the defence of the historical
character of the narrative part of the book. Lenormant
thinks that an original Hebrew narrative written under
the Persian empire was translated into Aramaic in the age
of the Seleucids, that part of the Hebrew text was lost
and replaced by this translation, which extends from
ii. 4 to the end of chapter vii. We are, then, not to trans
late ii. 4 as saying that the Chaldeans spoke in Aramaic
or Syriac. The words " in Syriack " are simply a note
that we here pass to a different dialect, and should be in
parenthesis. This view, which has been received with
some favour by Mr. Cheyne in his valuable article
" Daniel " in the Encyclopedia Britannica, supplies a
natural explanation of several difficulties which Mr.
Fuller has by no means been happy in solving. The
unquestionably Greek names of musical instruments in
chapter iii. may be viewed as due to the translator ; and
the fact that the dialect of the Aramaic chapters appears
to be Palestinian ceases to possess any critical importance.
I must add that Lenormant frankly admits that, as the
book now stands, it contains several historical blunders
and other corruptions which he ascribes to ignorant
correctors.1

It is impossible to speak in detail of the commentary
by six different hands on the Minor Prophets. It is
natural to compare this part of the work with the treatise
of Dr. Pusey, which is likely to be very much in the hands
of the same readers, and which has plainly exercised a
considerable, not to say an over-great, influence on the
views of the writers now before us. Professor Gandell's

1 Another publication of 1876, which touches on the Daniel contro
versy, is Dean Stanley's Jewish Church, vol. iii., presently to be noticed
in another connection. The statement of the case in a note on Lect.
xlii. is, however, inadequate on both sides, and there are one or two
positive errors (xrtdpa for x^a/nj, and the reference to the Syriac of
Matt. xxiv. 15).

1877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 375

Amos and Nahum are little more than an abridgment of
Dr. Pusey. This dependence on his predecessor has
lodged Mr. Gandell in the curious inconsistency of dating
Nahum in the time of Sennacherib, while he yet admits
a reference in iii. 8 to the capture of Thebes at a much
later date by Assurbanipal. Mr. Huxtable's Hosea, on
the other hand, is a distinct advance on Dr. Pusey ; and
though Mr. Meyrick follows the Oxford professor against
the best commentators in the date he assigns to Joel,
and in regarding the description of the plague of locusts
as a prediction, he rejects the figurative interpretation
of their ravages.

Notwithstanding the extreme conservatism on critical
questions which the Speaker's Commentary is throughout
designed to advocate, Canon Drake regards the integrity
of Zechariah as at least very doubtful, and in his exegesis
distinctly admits that the historical groundwork of
chapter xi. is to be sought in the disastrous times which
preceded the fall of the kingdom of Ephraim. It is very
noteworthy that a conclusion of the critical school, so
important as the plurality of authorship in Zechariah,
and which was so long resisted as a fruit of rationalism,
has at length gained almost universal acceptance, and is
generally allowed to be free from danger to the faith. It
may be remembered that there appeared in 1870 a com
mentary on Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, by Pfarrer
Pressel, a well-known and honoured name among the
evangelical clergy of Wiirtemberg, which had been pre
pared for Lange's Bibelwerk, but was rejected because it
did not accept the unity of Zechariah. No one apparently
has been found willing to submit to the conditions imposed
by the editor, for the missing part of the series has been
supplied, after an interval of six years, by a commentary
from the hand of Dr. Lange himself (" Die Propheten
Haggai, Sacharia, Maleachi." Bielefeld, 1876). In another
section of the Bibelwerk, which appeared last year (" Die
Biicher Esra, Nehemia, und Esther," by Professor

376 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

F. W. Schultz, of Breslau), there is considerable deflection
from the line of strict conservatism as represented
by Keil's Introduction. In accordance with the usual
opinion of recent critics, the Chronicler is recognised as
the author of Esra-Nehemiah, and a rigorously historical
character is not claimed for the book of Esther. As
regards exegesis, this is one of the best of the Lange series.
The second part of Professor Reuss's new French trans
lation of the Bible, with introductions and commentary,
embraces the prophets. (Les Prophetes. Par Edouard
Reuss. Paris, 1876. 2 vols.). The prophetic texts (in
which the book of Jonah is not included) are arranged in
chronological order according to the current principles of
criticism, and on grounds which are briefly set forth in the
introduction to each prophecy. The result is an arrang-
ment not very different from that of Ewald, though
modified in detail by the views of Hitzig and other critics,
and by the characteristic sobriety of the author in matters
of mere hypothesis. The comments, like the introduc
tions, may be taken as a fair account, in lucid and popular
style, of the general view of the prophetic books among
moderate German critics. There is very little that is
absolutely peculiar to the writer, and extreme and isolated
opinions of previous commentators are seldom followed
against the consensus of a majority of scholars. It will,
of course, be understood that a veteran theologian like
Professor Reuss represents rather the scholarship of the
masters who are rapidly passing away than that of the
newer school of rising Orientalists, whose investigations
seem sometimes to be unduly neglected. No part of the
book will be more interesting to readers in this country
than the general introduction which sketches the history
of prophecy, the leading features of the prophet's activity,
the main elements of their theology, and the character
istics of their written works. The questions which arise
under these heads are treated with a light but firm hand,
in a very suggestive though by no means exhaustive

i877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 377

sketch. The justification of the anthropomorphisms,
and the particularism of the prophets by reference to their
place in the divine preparation of mankind for the gospel,
is particularly instructive. Readers who are repelled by
the heavy style of German writers, and who are tempted
to take the extreme position of Kuenen as typical of
current criticism, may with much profit turn to the pages
of Reuss, who, though in no sense allied to the conservative
theology, and by no means the most orthodox of critics,
gives a very different picture of prophecy from the Dutch
scholar, and one much more representative. I remark,
in closing, that Professor Reuss seems to lay too great
weight on the notion of discipleship, as implied in the
expression, " Sons of the prophets." Though this is the
current view, it is almost certainly false. Throughout
the Semitic languages son means simply member of a
college or corporation. (See G. Hoffmann's Festschrift;
Kiel, 1873. Note 72.)

English evangelical literature has, as usual, been
enriched by several translations from the German. In
the American series of Lange's Bibelwerk there have
appeared vol. ii. " Exodus and Leviticus " ; vol. vii.
" Chronicles, Esra, Nehemiah, and Esther " ; vol. xiii.
" Ezekiel and Daniel." Lange's not very satisfactory
commentary on Exodus is sometimes usefully corrected
and supplemented by notes of Dr. Mead, the translator.
For Leviticus we receive not a translation of Lange, but
the incorporation of a large part of his material with an
independent commentary by Dr. Gardiner — a rather
clumsy arrangement for the reader, whose comfort, indeed,
is little consulted in this series. Professor Murphy's
notes on Zockler's " Chronicles " are mainly directed to
meet anything that appears a concession to the critical
school. In the additional note on Ophir, p. 185, it would
have been well to add a reference to Sprenger's Alte
Geographic Ar aliens (Bern, 1875), where there is an
important excursus on the subject. With the translation

378 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

of Schultz's " Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther," by Dr.
Briggs of New York, very serious fault must be found.
It is not only awkward, but sometimes positively mis
leading. For example, Schultz writing upon the subject
of poetical embellishment in the book of Esther says,
" If in this main passage we must recognise the influence
of transforming and embellishing fiction, it would be
inconsequent not to admit that the same influence may
possibly have place in other passages also/' etc. But
the translator has : " If we were to acknowledge the
influence of ... imagery in this chief stage of the drama,
this would still be negatived by its non-appearance in
other places." This is only one specimen, though the
most grave, of a series of changes which disguise even
when they do not, as in the passage cited, actually invert
the judgment of the German writer on the historicity of
Esther. Schroeder's commentary on Ezekiel, a very
mediocre production, is enlarged mainly by extracts from
the late Principal Fairbairn. To Dr. Zockler's comments
on Daniel are added a good many notes from Keil and
others, and some warm protests against the admission
that there are things in chapter xi. which must be post
eventum, and are therefore viewed by the commentator
as interpolations. This hypothesis of Zockler is certainly
not plausible ; but a translator has surely no right to
insinuate that, " notwithstanding the author's disclaimer,
the insidious tincture of the prevalent rationalism of
German criticism is evident in his conclusion on this
point." Dr. Strong's own right to speak on subjects of
criticism may be measured by his assertions, that " the
Revelation of St. John, if not the apostle's, is of course
under a fictitious name " ; and that the Aramaic parts of
Daniel are " extracts taken verbatim, and as such, from
the Babylonian State Records."

In Messrs. Clark's " Foreign Library " we have Keil's
Commentary on Ezekiel, translated by Rev. J. Martin,
(2 vols). and the "Theological Translation Fund" has

i877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 379

issued a second volume of Mr. F. Smith's translation of
EwakTs Prophets, comprising Isaiah, Obadiah, and Micah,
and carrying the reader to the end of the first volume of
the original. No student of the Old Testament can afford
to overlook this work of Ewald, which is not only of
first-rate importance for scientific exegesis, but full of
profound insight into the spirit of the prophetic writings,
and so is much more useful for practical exposition than
almost any other recent commentary. The translation
appears to be very accurate, though Ewald's somewhat
stilted style of expression looks more unnatural in the
English.

Among the exegetical monographs before me, a place
of honour is due to the collection of all Jewish interpreters
on Isaiah liii. (Oxford : Parker. Vol. i., Texts ; vol. ii.,
Translations], gathered from printed books and MSS.
by the well-known Orientalist, Ad. Neubauer, with
translations by the editor and Mr. Driver, and an intro
duction by Dr. Pusey, to whose zeal and liberality the
public owes so remarkable a contribution to the history
of exegesis. The outcome of the laborious and bulky
collection is essentially negative. No continuous thread
of ancient traditional exegesis runs through these Jewish
writings, — a conspicuous proof of the failure of the
synagogue to reach any consistent view of the passage
which with all its difficulties of detail has ever been
luminous to the Church. The student who desires to
practise himself in New Hebrew will find a valuable aid
in the translations.

The prominence given to the book of Job in university
lectures in Germany has made the literature of that
country unusually rich in exegetical studies on this part
of the Old Testament. To these have been added Con
tributions to the Criticism of Job, by Lie. Carl Budde
(Beitrage zur Kritik des Buches Hiob. Bonn : Marcus) ;
and Contributions to the Exposition of the book (Beitrage
zur Erklarung d. B. Job. Leipzig : Hinrich), by Dr. J.

380 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

Barth ; besides a new and thoroughly revised edition
of Professor Delitzsch's well-known Commentary. Dr.
Earth's pamphlet comprises an essay on the date of the
book, and notes on a series of difficult passages, directed
in good measure against notions and conjectures of
recent commentators, and for the most part worthy of
consideration. It is a plausible suggestion that in xviii.
7 rSmn is an inverted form of WDH ; and the proposal
to identify DiT^in in xxxix. 3 with the Assyrian habal = son
deserves attention in connection with Lagarde's explana
tion of xiii. 12 from the Assyrian igabbi = he spake. The
change of guttural which Kautzsch (T.L.Z., 1877,
Nr. 2) views as conclusive against Dr. Earth's proposal
appears from Sayce's Assyrian Grammar, p. 106, to be
no real difficulty. In what he says upon the date, our
essayist is successful in indicating the precarious character
of many arguments that have been adduced ; but he has
not always avoided what is equally precarious in discussing
the many points of contact between Job and other parts
of the Old Testament, though hehas doubtless strengthened
the already tolerably convincing proofs that the book is
later than the age of Solomon, and indeed than Isaiah.
The chief difficulty is with the terminus ad quern, which is
assumed without discussion to be given in the use of the
book by Jeremiah. But it is not impossible to argue that
the author of Job has rather quoted Jeremiah (comp.
Wellhausen in T.L.Z., 1877, 4) ; and a fresh examination
of this question is the more to be desired, that Earth's
essay makes it clear that the date of Job carries with it
important consequences for several other parts of the
Old Testament, whose age is subject of controversy.
He seems, for example, to have proved that Isaiah xxxv.,
which many critics refer to the time of the Exile, was
known to the writer of Job.

Lie. Budde defends the integrity of the book of Job in
two able and interesting essays — (i) " Recent Criticism
and the idea of the book " ; (2) " The linguistic character

is;;] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 381

of the speeches of Elihu." The second essay is much the
most complete comparison of the language of Elihu with
that of other parts of the poem which has hitherto been
instituted ; and the results, ingeniously tabulated in a
statistical form, will certainly modify current opinion.
The author goes no further than to claim as proved that
in point of language it is perfectly possible that Elihu 's
speeches are a genuine part of the book. In the first
essay the argument that the plan of the book would be
incomplete without Elihu is interwoven somewhat to the
disadvantage of the reader, with a refutation of the very
extreme theory of the original form of the book advanced
by Studer in the Jahrbiicher fur prot. Theologie, 1875.
To these German contributions is to be added the Dutch
commentary, Ret Boek Job vertaald en verklaard, door
J. C. Matthes (Groningen: Wolters. Part i., 1876, Parts
ii. and iii., 1877. To be completed in ten parts), which
is no mere revision of the author's earlier commentary,
but a new work. The exposition is lucid and scholarly,
and the survey of current views is both full and clear.

Wellhausen's contributions to the criticism of the
Pentateuch and Joshua in the Jahrbb. fur Deutsche
Theologie, 1876 (Hft. III. and IV.), extend only to the
historical parts of these books. I cannot attempt to
explain in a few words the results of a long and com
plicated examination of details. The main interest lies
in the analysis of the documents which, since Hupfeld,
have been known by the names of the Jhvhist and younger
Elohist, though the epithet younger is probably a mis
nomer. These documents, which our critic names J
and E, were as he holds fused together in a single context
JE by a third author who, in some parts (especially in the
account of the legislation at Sinai), added new matter of
his own. A much later redactor combined the work thus
produced with the document which Wellhausen calls Q or
Vierbundesbuch, which is what older critics call the book
of origins, or of the elder Elohist. Another important

382 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

point is the treatment of Exodus xxxiv. as a distinct
and independent source. It is to be hoped that Well-
hausen will soon add an analysis of the legal parts of the
Pentateuch, as his investigation, even in its present
imperfect state, points to inferences of great interest for
the history of the Old Testament.

In the historical studies which fall to be noticed in this
survey, the period subsequent to the Exile has received
most attention. The third series of Dean Stanley's
Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church (London :
Murray) extends from the captivity to the Christian era.
The purpose of the volume is popular and didactic. The
author makes no claim to independent research. Resting
on the works of previous writers, whose labours are
regarded as " exempting any later author from the duty
of undertaking afresh a labour which they have accom
plished once for all not to be repeated," and following in
the main the guidance of Ewald, to whom an eloquent and
touching tribute is paid in the preface, Dr. Stanley seeks
" to disentangle the main thread of the story from
unmeaning episodes, to give the most important con
clusions without repeating the arguments " of larger
works, and above all, " to draw out the permanent
lessons " of the story. That this task has been accom
plished with much literary tact and grace, and with a
singular felicity of graphic detail and pictorial touches
that give living colour to the narrative, is what we knew
to expect from a hand that has not forgotten its cunning.
Yet it cannot but be matter of regret that merits of
exposition so conspicuous, applied to a period of history
so thorny and tangled that skilful exposition is peculiarly
helpful to the reader, were not combined with a deeper
study of the available materials than seems to have lain
in the plan of the author. In spite of the confidence with
which Dr. Stanley accepts the guidance of his predecessors,
the study hitherto devoted to this part of the history has
been more prolific of controversies than of conclusions ;

i877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 383

and the habit of thought which has led our author habitu
ally to elude these controversies instead of subjecting
them to critical discussion, makes no small part of the
volume more readable than instructive, and leads to
frequent sacrifices of precision and accuracy to picturesque
effect. One is compelled to add that in not a few cases
a more thorough knowledge of recent literature and a
juster estimate of the relative value of the authorities
followed would have led to important modifications of
view, even without new personal research. The valuable
manual of Schiirer (Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Zeit-
geschichte) ,even without the fuller essay by the same author
in Hilgenf eld's Zeitschrift (1875) would, for example, have
afforded a correction of the old error, that the Alabarch
was the ruler of the Jews in Alexandria ; and the mono
graph of Wellhausen (Pharisder und Sadducaer, 1874)
could not have failed to set the position of the Pharisees
and Sadducees in a fresh light. That the Psalter of
Solomon is referred to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes,
and the Book of Jubilees to about B.C. 100, can only be
ascribed to neglect of the many recent researches into these
compositions. In truth, it is evident from p. 348 that
Dr. Stanley has not even used Roensch's indispensable
edition of the latter work. Or once more, the exploded
opinion that the Jews gave up Hebrew for Chaldee in the
time of the captivity is reproduced without the least
reference to the existence of a different view. Such slips
in detail — and I have taken them almost at random —
diminish one's confidence in the treatment of the broader
aspects of the narrative. Into these it is impossible to
enter in the present rapid survey. But I may ask in
passing whether the prominence given in the volume to
the Platonic doctrine of immortality as a powerful
influence on Jewish, and not merely on Hellenistic,
thought, does not rest in part on the lack of a sharp
appreciation of the distinction between the notion of
immortality and that of the resurrection.

384 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

The first part of the period covered by Dean Stanley's
lectures is also taken up by the Jewish scholar, H. Graetz,
in the last - published part of his Geschichte der Juden
(vol. ii. part ii. B.C. 586-160. Leipzig). Like all the
writings of this author the book is full of acute observation
and of startling combinations, which in many cases are
plainly untenable, but in others invite examination on
the basis of a fuller statement of the argument than Dr.
Graetz is accustomed to give. I do not venture to express
any opinion as to how much of what is new in the book
will bear the test of such examination. Apart from this,
the volume has a real value from the great rabbinical
learning of the author, who, in spite of his radical views
on critical questions, and his large, though irregular, use
of the results of Christian scholarship, is still essentially
a rabbi in all habits of thought. A truly rabbinical whim
is that which identifies Nehemiah with the messenger
of the covenant in Mai. iii.

An admirable historical monograph is Professor
Kuenen's tract, Over de Mannen der groote Synagoge
(Amsterdam, 1876), the argument of which may be briefly
stated for those to whom the Dutch is not accessible.
The men of the great synagogue are once mentioned in
the Mishna, where they appear as filling the gap in Jewish
oral tradition between the prophets and Antigonus of
Socho. In Midrash and Gemara they are often named,
and divers ordinances are ascribed to them. The later
Jews went still further ; and Elias Levita ascribed to
Ezra and the Great Synagogue the task of closing the
canon — a view which has influenced many Christian
writers. The whole tradition on the subject was, however,
discredited in last century by the objections raised by
several Christian scholars, especially by Rau of Herborn.
Of late there has been a reaction, and recent writers are
pretty unanimous in admitting the existence of an
official body called the Great Ken6seth, though there is
no tolerable agreement as to its functions. Now, Pro-

i877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 385

fessor Kuenen points out that whatever we may think
of the thing, the name is probably late, as it is not found
in the Apocrypha, the New Testament, or Josephus. As
KenSseth, like o-waywy?), came to be ever more and more
confined to a meeting for worship, the inventor of the
name presumably thought of some great assembly for a
religious purpose. The only such assembly that occurs as
suitable to the name is that described in Neh. viii.-x.
And, as a matter of fact, a number of the things related
of the great synagogue find their explanation in these
chapters, and show that such was really the original sense
of the expression to which later tradition attached so
many fables. Of course, it follows that the whole
Talmudic idea that the great synagogue was a law-
giving body is unhistorical. The Keneseth, as hitherto
understood, disappears from history. Finally, Professor
Kuenen indicates how the Talmudic ideas on this head
form an integral part of a radically false view of the
history of Israel characteristic of the whole Talmud,
which ascribes to the scribes, before the fall of the Jewish
state, the position which they actually attained only
after the dissolution of the nation. Professor Kuenen's
argument is closely knit and convincing at every point,
and displays his critical powers at their best.

For the parts of the Biblical history prior to the
captivity there is little to record, except translations of
Assyrian texts and discussions of their bearing on biblical
problems. New texts continue to appear in versions of
unequal merit in Messrs. Bagster's series, Records of the
Past. The seventh volume (1876) contains several of
the documents most interesting to biblical students — the
annals of Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria ; the inscrip
tion of Sennacherib, in which he speaks of Hezekiah ;
and some of the legends parallel or analogous to the
narrative of Genesis, which are collected in the last great
work of the lamented George Smith, The Chaldean Account
of Genesis (London: Low, 1876). Of Smith's work

25

386 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

a German translation has appeared, with valuable
" elucidations and continued researches," by the German
Assyriologist, Friederich Delitzsch (Leipzig : Hinrichs,
1876). It appears premature to attempt to estimate the
value of the Chaldean legends for the biblical student.
The fragments are so mutilated and so difficult that the
translation is highly insecure. Thus in the fragment
which is supposed to give the Chaldean account of the
tower of Babel, the idea of " confusion of speech " is
introduced, as Smith himself admits, by " translating the
word speech with a prejudice," the word not being known
to have this meaning elsewhere. And the reference to a
tower, as we learn from a note by Delitzsch in the German
edition, is not less questionable. Again, in the so-called
story of the fall, we learn from Delitzsch that " scarcely
a line of Smith's version can claim to be correct " ; and
though the German scholar is unwilling to surrender the
belief that we really have in the passage a parallel to the
story of the fall, he rests this belief on arguments so
unsatisfactory that we must conclude with Baudissin and
v. Gutschmid that there is as yet really no evidence of
a Babylonian account of man's first sin. Or again, we
gather from Delitzsch that the grounds on which Smith
identifies the name Izdubar with Nimrod are certainly
erroneous. If so, the parallel between what is related of
the two personages is far from being so exact as to justify
the confidence with which Smith and Delitzsch alike
insist on identifying them. The most important, and
it would seem the least doubtful, parallels to biblical
narratives lie in the Chaldean accounts of the creation
and the flood, of which it must be remembered something
was already known from Damascius and the fragments
of Berossus. What is notable in the texts given by Smith
is that, in spite of the fundamental difference of religious
conception from the Bible, in spite of the fact that the
Chaldean legends are essentially polytheistic and mytho
logical, and without ethical value, we find minute agree-

is/;] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 387

ments with Genesis in detail and expression, as well as in
such broader features as were already known to us from
Berossus. It is impossible, when one looks into the
matter, to avoid the conviction that some of these co
incidences would not have appeared if the cuneiform texts
had been translated by a person who had never seen the
Bible ; and as it is just these points which are most
important for a really critical examination of the subject,
one cannot but wish that Assyriologists would try to free
their minds more than they have hitherto done from the
desire to hunt out, above all things, parallels with the
Bible. And when we have got a trustworthy reading
of the texts, it will next be necessary to inquire much
more critically than has been done by Smith into the age
of these legends. The texts come from the library of
Assurbanipal (seventh century B.C.), but are copied from
originals to which Smith ascribes an enormous age, on
grounds which are anything but convincing. We have no
real certainty that the legends as we possess them are
much older than the time of Assurbanipal ; and v. Gut-
schmid has pointed out, in the series of legends which
contain the Babylonian story of the flood, an apparently
clear trace of Egyptian influence which cannot well be
very ancient. Thus, if further research confirms the
singular coincidences in expression between Genesis and
the inscriptions, some of which, if Smith's versions are
right, can only be due to direct imitation by the writers
of one or the other nation, it will still be a question
on which side the priority lies ; and in discussing this
question it will be necessary to remember that in literary
culture and power, as well as in their religion, the Israelites
were immeasurably in advance of Assyria.

When we pass to the other part of the biblical records,
which are illustrated by the inscriptions, viz. the history
of the kings of Israel and Judah, we find that the past
year has been one of fierce and tangled controversy. The
old quaestio vexata of the chronology of the kings, for which

388 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

the Assyrian Eponym Canon affords new data, has been
afresh discussed by Oppert in a series of papers in the
Annales de Philosophic Chretienne, to which he gives the
somewhat pretentious title, " Salomon et ses Successeurs ;
solution d'un probleme chronologique " (since published
in a separate form by Maisonneuve et Cie, 1877). The
supposed solution is not so convincing as this title would
lead one to suppose. M. Oppert appears greatly to under
rate the difficulties of the problem ; and he has not given
due weight to the arguments of previous writers, ignoring,
for example, the important paper of Wellhausen, of which
an account was given in vol. xxv. p. 380 of this journal.
Discrepancies between the Northern and Southern
chronology are reconciled by hypotheses so arbitrary
that they can hardly find a supporter, a second Menahem,
whose reign divides Pekah's rule into two parts, and a
temporary displacement of Jeroboam II., which is de
fended by a gross mistranslation of a passage of Isaiah.
In discussing the Assyrian evidence, M. Oppert renews
his old theory of a break of forty -seven years in the
Eponym Canon to be filled up by the reign of the Chaldean
Pul. Pul is the great crux of Assyriologists, and the
difficulties which lie in the way of identifying him with
Tiglathpileser, as is done by Rawlinson, Schrader, &c.,
have been set in a strong light, not only by Oppert, but
by v. Gutschmid in a book presently to be named. But
the tone of Oppert' s argument, and the unpardonable
brut ah ty with which he treats George Smith, whose essay
on the Eponym Canon opposes the views of the French
scholar, compel one to feel that till the controversy is
conducted with more modesty and appreciation of the
fact that historical conclusions from the monuments are
still very precarious, those who are not Assyriologists had
better stand aside. As usual, part of the quarrel turns
on the reading of proper names, on which score another
lively controversy has been going on for some time
between Schrader on one side, and Oppert, Wellhausen,

i877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 389

and v. Gutschmid on the other. The point here is a
supposed mention of King Azariah of Judah, for which
Schrader has completely lost his temper (Jahrbb. fiir prot.
TheoL, 1876, II.). Amidst all this it is not strange that
the Jena historian, A. v. Gutschmid, has raised a strong
protest against the premature introduction of Assyrio-
logical discoveries into the history of the ancient East.
His book, Neue Beitrage zur Geschichte des alien Orients
(Leipzig : Triibner, 1876), is essentially polemical, and
has probably overstated the case in attacking Schrader,
who is the author's main foe. Gutschmid makes no
attempt to deny to Assyriology the character of a real
science ; but he places in a strong light the faults which
have been committed through haste to get from the new
science results immediately applicable to the Bible and
other history. Both on this account, and from numerous
incidental contributions to questions of Bible history,
the book is of real value. I select for notice only two
points, the remarks at p. 18 on the early currency of
Aramaic in Mesopotamia, and the interesting excursus
on the existence of the kingdom of Samaria after the fall
of Hoshea, which is one of the indisputable results of
Assyriologists, and serves to explain Isa. vii. 8, where the
sixty-five years just carry us down to Assurbanipal, who
is presumably the Osnapper of Ezra vi. 10.

Under the head of translations of historical works falls
to be noticed the English version of Ewald's valuable
Antiquities of Israel (London : Longmans). The study
of biblical geography continues to make progress, especi
ally through the researches of the " Palestine Exploration
Fund/' The Quarterly Statements for 1876 are mainly
composed of papers by Lieutenant Conder, embracing a
series of proposed identifications of Biblical and Tal-
mudical sites, together with comparisons of the survey
work with ancient Egyptian records bearing on Palestine,
and with the topography of Samaritan literature. There
are also valuable notes on the climate and natural history

390 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

of Canaan. In many cases Lieutenant Conder has pro
vided rather materials for discussion than results to be at
once incorporated in biblical geography. This is specially
clear with regard to the identifications proposed for the
life of David (pp. 39 seq.), which rest in part upon question
able readings and more than questionable translations of
the Hebrew. The remarks in the paper on " Samaritan
Topography," in which " the wonderful consistency and
perfection of the topography of Judaea and Galilee con
tained in the book of Joshua " is contrasted with the
defective nature of what is said about the Samaritan
district, are well worthy of the attention of critics.
Lieutenant Conder would infer that this part of the book
has been mutilated ; but it is much more likely that we
have in the facts indicated a hint as to the date of the
book. A very valuable contribution to the topography
of Jerusalem is Zimmermann's Karten und Plane zur
Topographic des alien Jerusalem (Basel, 1876). These
maps are based on the observations of a German architect
in Jerusalem, Hr. Conrad Schick, who for thirty years
has been collecting observations of the depth of that huge
mass of rubbish which overlies the original site of the city.
From these observations a map of the original contours
has been formed, while comparison with the present con
tours is facilitated by additional maps and sections. A
sheet displaying the various theoretical restorations of the
old topography, and a modest and serviceable explanatory
pamphlet, are added. In this connection I may also
mention the English translation of Socin's excellent
traveller's hand-book of Palestine, in Baedeker's series,
and the final exposure of the forged Moabitic pottery
by Kautzsch and Socin (Die Achtheit der moabitischen
Alterthiimer gepriift, Strassburg, 1876).

Passing on to the subject of Old Testament Theology,
we are met by the last published work of Ewald— his
posthumous essay, Das Leben des Menschen und das Reich
Gottes (" The Life of Man and the Kingdom of God,"

i87;] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 391

Leipzig, 1876). This is properly the fourth volume of the
author's Theology of the Old and New Covenant, and is not
so much a biblical study as a statement of Ewald's ethical
system on a biblical basis. In the hands of the latest
writers on the subject, Old Testament theology is passing
almost entirely into researches into the history of the
religion of Israel. The method of the usual manuals
(Oehler, Schultz) is to discuss first Mosaism, and then the
teaching of the prophets. But so long as the date of
important parts of the Pentateuch is so much disputed,
this way of presenting the subject offered no security for
a really genetical development of the growth of the Old
Testament religion. Since Kuenen in his Religion of
Israel delineated this development in accordance with
the view that the Levitical ordinances of the Pentateuch
are later than the prophetic period, friends and opponents
alike have felt the necessity of renewed research into the
history of the Old Testament ideas, and, instead of start
ing with fixed views as to the age of the different parts of
the Pentateuch derived in the old way from merely literary
criticism, have recognised the propriety of beginning with
documents of undisputed age — mainly, that is, with the
prophets — and then working backwards and forwards
from such a picture of the religion of Israel as these
documents afford. At the same time, the influence of
the new science of comparative religion has laid upon
biblical scholars the duty of examining more precisely
the relation of the Hebrew faith to Semitic polytheism,
and, in particular, of testing the theory so ably upheld
by the Dutch school, that there is no specific difference
between the development of the Old Testament religion
and that of other faiths. Thus the burning questions of
the moment are such as these : — What is the origin and
history of the spiritual monotheism of the prophets ?
How does it stand related to the conception of Jehovah
current among the mass ? What is the relation of
Jehovah to heathen gods, and of the worship of Jehovah

392 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

in Israel to other worships ? Among works bearing on
this subject, I shall first notice in a single word Tiele's
Geschiedenis van den Godsdienst, etc. ("History of Religion
to the Sovereignty of the Universal Religions/' Amster
dam, 1876.) This little manual is written from the usual
standpoint of the Leiden school, and treats the religion
of Israel simply as one branch of the Semitic religions.
There is no new research or even argument on disputed
points ; but the work will be found convenient, both as
a brief exposition of the views of an influential school,
and from the references supplied to the latest literature.

Coming now to real contributions to the history of Old
Testament religion, I have to name especially Professor
Baudissinof Strassburg's Studien zur semitischen Religions-
geschichte (" Studies in the History of Semitic Religion,"
Leipzig : Grunow), and Dr. E. Nestle's Haarlem prize
essay on the significance of the Hebrew proper names for
the history of religion — Die israelitischen Eigennamen
nach ihrer religionsgeschichtlichen Bedeutung (Haarlem,
1876) . To these must be added several valuable essays —
Kuenen's paper on " Yahveh and the other gods " (Theol.
Review, July 1876), and Smend's essay in the Stud. u.
Krit., 1876, iv. " On the stage in the development of the
religion of Israel presupposed by the prophets of the eighth
century." Baudissin's volume is made up of a series of
essays, some of which have only a secondary bearing on
biblical theology. The essay on the value of Sanchuni-
athon's Phoenician history decides, with Movers, against
the opinion which has received currency through Ewald
and Renan, refusing to accept the work of Philo as the
translation of an old source, though admitting that it
contains remains of old tradition modified by the author's
euhemerism. The points in the cosmogonies of San-
chuniathon which remind us of the Old Testament — the
chaos or Baav (ini), and the Trvev/za in the creation — are
not borrowed from the Bible, but rest on notions which
the Israelites since their origin had shared with kindred

is;;] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 393

tribes. " But while among the latter the naive notions
of a child-like age resolved themselves into the materialistic
form presented by Philo, in Israel, through the agency of
the spirit of prophecy, the notion of a physical breath of
God was transformed into that of a spiritual God " and
Creator. " This confirms what appears in all comparison
of Old Testament religion with the views of kindred
nations. The elements of a natural religion once common
to all Semitics have passed into the religion of revelation,
but in this fusion have undergone an inner purification."
While natural religion ends in self - dissolution, the Old
Testament shows us " the sway of a new principle, the
Spirit of God raising men above the mythological process,
the spirit of revelation." These sentences serve to indi
cate the religious standpoint of the volume. A very
learned and thorough investigation of the origin of 'law
as the name of a deity, demonstrates conclusively that
'law is a mere reproduction of the tetragrammaton, not
the name of a Canaanite or other heathen god, thus wholly
demolishing the argument maintained by Lenormant,
and in this country by Colenso, to show that the Israelites
borrowed the name Jahve from heathenism. Other
arguments for a non-Hebrew origin of the name are also
discussed and found wanting.

The essay on the symbolism of the serpent among the
Semites, especially in the Old Testament, has for its main
object to prove that it is needless to assume any influence
of Parsism, in which the serpent is connected with
Ahriman, in order to explain the story of the fall. The
character of cunning or intelligence, it is argued, is ascribed
to the serpent in the religious symbolism of all the Semites,
so far as our present knowledge extends. That know
ledge, however, as appears from the examination to
which our author successively subjects the Assyrian, the
Phoenician, and the Arabian data, is very imperfect, and
a good deal that has been put forward by Movers and
others must be rejected. That the Kadmos of Greek

394 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

legend is a Phoenician serpent god seems to be one of the
best established facts bearing on the subject. It is con
jectured that the Hebrews connected the serpent with
sorcery, and that this may have had a share in establishing
the idea of its cunning or wisdom. The etymological
arguments for such a conjecture are not very strong, and
are hardly confirmed by the suggestion that the tree of
knowledge is also connected with the well-known habit of
taking oracles from trees, more than once alluded to in
the Old Testament, and familiar to classical antiquity.
Professor Baudissin has not been able to throw any new
light on the worship of the brazen serpent abolished by
Hezekiah.

In the essay on Hadad-Rimmon (Zech. xii. n), Hitzig's
interpretation, which suggests that Hadad-Rimmon is a
name of Tammuz or Adonis, is controverted, and the old
view defended which sees in the word the name of a place
where the fall of Josiah was mourned. The argument,
in its most important part, resolves itself into an examina
tion of the two names of deities which form the elements
of the word Hadad-Rimmon, or, as Baudissin would read,
Hadar-Rimmon. For Rimmon, who appears in the Bible
as a Damascene deity, our author accepts Schrader's
identification with the Assyrian Ramanu, who, according
to Schrader, is the thunder god. But as Delitzsch, in his
additions to Smith's " Genesis," appears to have refuted
Schrader's interpretation of the Assyrian name, and as
Wellhausen, in a review of Baudissin's " Studies " (Gbtt.
Gel. Anz., 1877, St. 6), has disposed of the arguments from
Greek glosses by which our author endeavours to prove
the existence of a Syrian Raman who was also a god of
thunder, this part of the essay must be viewed as un
successful. It appears, too, that in reading Hadar for
Hadad, Baudissin has followed a false light of the Assyrio-
logists ; for v. Gutschmid, in the work noticed above, has
brought the clearest proof that Hadad is a title of the
Syrian Baal or Sun-god, and that it is quite illegitimate

i87;] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 395

in Schrader to transform Benhadad into Benhadar, in
order to find him mentioned on the Assyrian monuments.
As Wellhausen has also made it very improbable that any
weight is to be attached to Hieronymus's evidence to the
existence of a place called Hadad-Rimmon, it remains
likely that Hitzig's interpretation is right. Hadad is the
Sun -god. Adonis is also the Sun -god under a special
form, which may very well be the same as the specialised
Hadad-Rimmon, though we have as yet no absolute proof
that it is so.

The part of Baudissin's book most important for
biblical theology is the very long essay on " The view
taken in the Old Testament of the gods of Heathenism."
The collection of the relevant biblical material is very
full and good, and the general argument includes interest
ing investigations of points of detail. The final result is
this : — Baudissin (like Kuenen in the essay named above)
thinks that the pure monotheism of Deuteronomy,
Jeremiah, and later books developed itself out of an
earlier monolatry. But while Kuenen includes under
the name monolatry the faith of the prophets of the
eighth century B.C., who use expressions that seem to
ascribe a certain reality to the heathen gods, Baudissin
more cautiously attempts a middle way, and will have it
that since the time of Hosea it was admitted that for
Israel the other gods were mere dead images, but that it
does not appear that the monotheistic faith implied in
this position had as yet consciously formulated the pro
position that the other gods were absolute nothings even
for their own worshippers. Thus the standpoint of the
eighth century is, according to Baudissin, an unconscious
monotheism. This theory certainly relieves the author of
some of the objections that may be taken against Kuenen's
more radical view. But apart from the internal difficulty
that besets the conception of an unconscious monotheism,
Baudissin's view seems to break down before a single
expression of Hosea. The prophet who chooses for the

396 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

restored nation the epithet " sons of the living God "
(chap. i. 10), surely does so in the conviction that the other
nations, who in Semitic phrase are sons of their national
deities, have no living God. And this is absolute and
conscious monotheism of the clearest kind.

Smend's essay, which deals with the same period, the
eighth century B.C., belongs to a different school, and is
mainly directed to prove the organic connection between
the teaching of the prophets and the earlier faith of the
nation. It brings forward many important considera
tions that are apt to be overlooked in the present dis
position of critics to find the whole history of Israel's
spiritual faith within the period of the prophetic litera
ture. Whether the writer has also succeeded in showing
that there is no reason why the Levitic legislation may
not be older than Amos and Hosea is another question.
The essay takes the form of a criticism on Duhm's able
but too subtle construction of the prophetic development,
and it is thus hardly possible to reproduce its argument
here ; but, like the author's previous work, Moses apud
Prophetas, it gives the promise of very valuable service
in the field of biblical study.

Dr. Nestle's book, confining itself to a single line of
evidence, touches many of the questions which have just
occupied our attention. Here, too, as in Baudissin's essay,
we find a refutation of the attempts that have been
hitherto made to trace back the origin of the name Jahve
beyond the limits of Hebraism, and here, too, as in Smend's
paper, but with other arguments, recent attempts to take
away the place of Moses in the history of revelation are
combated. After a brief history of Hebrew onomatology,
the author proposes to himself two questions — i. Which
names of God occur in proper names in the various periods
of Hebrew history ? 2. What conception of the deity
is expressed in the proper names, by the combination of
the names of God with significant words ?

The results of the discussion of the first question are

i877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 397

mainly these : — The proper names of the Mosaic period
confirm the Pentateuchal tradition, that before Moses
God was worshipped as El Shaddai, in which name (in
terpreted as mighty God) the author recognises the con
ception of the deity suited to a nomad tribe, which has
little temptation to identify the godhead with the pheno
mena of nature, and, demanding of its deity guidance in
wanderings and protection against foes, requires a religion
that gives faith in a personal and revealing god. In
discussing the next period of Israel's religion, which is
marked by the work of Moses and the name Jahve, Dr.
Nestle rightly rejects the interpretations which find in
Jahve the notion of him who is, and leans to Lagarde's
view, though half inclined to prefer the interpretation
advanced by the present reviewer in this journal.1 It is
then shown that, in the formation of proper names, El
and Jahve came to be used indifferently, and that the use
of names pointing to the worship of other gods is very
rare. The names compounded with Baal are referred to
the introduction, in the time of the judges, of Canaanite
ideas, and are viewed as evidence that the worship of
other gods besides Jahve was not impossible even in the
families of Saul and David. The final victory over this
imperfect state of religious development is traced to the
age of Elijah. It must, however, be questioned whether
our author has rightly explained the use of Baal in the
names to which he refers. That Baal or Lord was a title
applicable to Jahve, until the use was dropped to prevent
confusion with the heathen Baalim, is a far more probable
opinion, and finds in Hosea ii. a confirmation which
Dr. Nestle has hardly weighed aright. Had this opinion
been adopted, the arguments which our author directs
against those who practically obliterate the work of Moses
from the history of revealed religion would have gained
weight, and it would have been still more apparent that
the polytheism, which, according to Kuenen, was held to

1 British and Foreign Evangelical Review, January 1876.

398 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

by the majority of the nation as late as the Exile, was
always viewed in Israel as an irregularity, so that even
those who worshipped false gods did not venture to name
their children after them.

In discussing his second question, Dr. Nestle traces in
a very interesting way the character of the pious depend
ence on God expressed in the proper names. Many of
these refer to the child as the gift of God to the parents,
and it is a quaint, but no doubt just observation, that
as female children were less valued, this class of names
is exclusively masculine. Other names perpetuate the
religious significance of the birth of a son into the family
in various manners. God hath helped, God hath heard,
God hath remembered, and so forth. In other names
again the religious view of national concerns is expressed.
Such are many names of kings, for from Jehoshaphat the
kings of Judah always bore a name compounded with
Jahve so that Eliakim on his succession becomes Jeho-
jakim. The exceptions are the godless kings, Ahaz,
Manasseh, Amon ; and we have some reason to think
that these names may have been changed, as the monu
ments give to Ahaz the name of Jehoahaz. Special
attention is paid to the forms that combine the Divine
name with the notion of king and father, and it is shown
how many of the expressions of Old Testament piety in
psalms, the priestly blessing, and elsewhere, are reflected
in proper names. These observations, which do not
apply only to the later names, and which are supported
by the absence of names that present a naturalistic con
ception of deity, make it manifest that from the earliest
times the ethical truths of revealed religion had taken a
deep hold of the mass of the Israelites. However much
may remain uncertain in the details of Dr. Nestle's in
vestigation, this result can hardly be shaken ; and the
evidence which it bears against those who refuse to view
the corrupt nature worship of the eighth century as a
declension from an admitted standard of national religion

1877] OLD TESTAMENT STUDY IN 1876 399

is of the strongest kind, though, in order to estimate its
precise force, it would be necessary to examine at some
length the parallelisms in point of idea between the
proper names of Israel and those of other Semites.
That these parallelisms are in part very striking is ob
served by Dr. Nestle at the close of his inquiry, but the
subject is not followed up. In this sketch I have mainly
sought to show how much matter of general theological
interest the writer has drawn from an apparently technical
subject. The volume also contains much scholarly re
search in the investigation of details, and is altogether
very welcome, both as an addition to biblical literature
and as a token of what we may still expect from the
author.

As Goldziher's Mythos bei den Hebraern, and the
English translations of Kuenen's and Riehm's recent
books on prophecy, have been noticed in these pages in
another connection, they must be excluded from our
present survey.

IV
THE POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT1

THE poetical books of the Old Testament have always
possessed special attractions for scholars as well as for
simple readers of the Bible, and have gathered round them
a copious literature in which no period of Christian
theology is unrepresented. But the study of Hebrew
poetry, as poetry, is a comparatively recent thing, and
even in recent times the number of really important books
that deal with the subject is by no means large. It cannot
indeed be supposed that there ever was a time when
readers of the Old Testament were altogether insensible
to the poetic genius and beauty of the Psalms and of the
Prophets ; but the idea that these qualities, or indeed that
any of the literary and human characteristics of Scripture
demand and richly reward special study, is one which,
however obvious it appears in the present day, lay quite
beyond the horizon of older theologians.

The purely magical conception of Scripture which pre
vailed in the old Catholic Church — the one-sided theory
that regarded the Word of God solely as a supernatural
communication of " intelligible " truths — was only con
sistent in laying down a canon for the study of the Bible
which has nothing in common with the rules that guide

1 From the British Quarterly Review, July 1877. The books men
tioned at the head of the article were: Lowth's Praelectiones (1753),
Herder's Geist der ebrdischen Poesie (1782-83), Ewald's Dichter des
alien Bundes (1839,2 1866), and E. Meier's Geschichte der poetischen
Nationalliteratur der Hebrder (1856).

400

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 401

us in criticising and appreciating human writings. The
Reformation, with its profounder apprehension of the
idea of the Word, opened a new era in biblical study.
The Word of God, as conceived by Luther, is no longer
the abstract imparting of intellectual truth, but the
personal message of God's love in Christ, to which the
saints of all ages return the equally personal answer of
faith. Thus the whole truths of revelation are at once
brought down from the unreal world of intelligibilia into
the sphere of true and personal human life. The Word
descends into history, comes near to man in his daily needs,
and opens up to him the very heart of God in utterances
that speak straight home to every one who is taught of
the Spirit. This implies that the Word of God is given
to us in the natural language of mankind, and is to be
studied by the same methods of exegesis as we apply to
any other ancient book. Thus in the hands of the earlier
Reformers the science of biblical interpretation assumed
a new aspect. The allegorical sense — that great incubus
of mediaeval exegesis — was cast aside, and the Bible
history was laid hold of with a new and vivid interest,
which bore remarkable fruit in the social and political, as
well as in the purely religious development of the Protest
ant nations. Nor was the recognition of the genuine
human character of the sacred history all that was gained.
The beginnings at least of an historical interpretation of
prophecy are to be found in Luther's prefaces to the
German Bible. And, above all, a decisive step towards
a right appreciation of the human aspects of the Old
Testament poetry is taken by the great Reformer in the
preface to the Psalter of 1531, where the Psalms are mainly
considered, not as supernatural doctrine, but as the truly
human utterance of the inmost heart of the Old Testa
ment saints. But in this point, as in many others, the
first promise of the Reformation was not fulfilled in the
sequel. The spiritual insight that supplied a just point
of view required to be supported by a scientific construc-

26

402 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

tion, for which means were then unattainable. The
whole realm of exegesis and criticism could not be re
volutionised in a day. Methods of interpretation really
inconsistent with Protestant principles crept back in
detail. And very soon the original living conception of
God's Word began to grow stiff and cold. Men's chief
interest lay in doctrinal polemic, and that interest seemed
to be best served when Scripture was viewed mainly as a
Divine body of doctrine. Even in the system of Calvin,
whose commentaries are distinguished by an attempt far
beyond his age to take a broad philosophical view of the
history of revelation, the growing tendency towards a
one-sided exaltation of what is doctrinal appears in
marked contrast to the spirit of Luther's earliest Reforma
tion writings. And the days of the Epigoni saw the
growth of a Protestant scholasticism, which left room for
advance in the details of exegesis, but effectually checked
a just appreciation of the human characteristics of the
Bible. Theologians arose to whom the boldness of Luther
appeared audacity, and who gave up the justest results
of Calvin's exegesis as verging towards Rationalism.
The immediate perception of God's voice speaking in
Scripture had grown dull, and a generation which required
to have the divineness of the Bible proved to it by in
tellectual arguments had lost the firm ground which alone
could give freedom to do justice to the truly human
characters of the record of revelation. Thus one side
of the original Reformation impulse was more or less
absolutely divorced from the theology of the Church.
The desire for a more truly historical treatment of Biblical
theology expressed itself in the school of Cocceius in forms
not unsuspected by the stricter orthodoxy, and often not
free from extravagance ; while the literary and aesthetic
qualities of the Bible became an object of study to men
who shared in that revulsion against dogma which waxed
so strong towards the close of the seventeenth century.
Thus arose the breach between the theological and the

i87;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 403

literary methods of approaching Scripture, which on both
sides has been so fruitful of false science, and which cannot
be healed until those who receive the Bible as the record
of Divine revelation gain a faith strong enough to enable
them to see that the right conception of God's Word
permits, nay, demands, the freest study of the sacred
record by all the methods of historical and literary
criticism.

The nature and limits of the interest in the Old Testa
ment poetry which was felt by the last champions of the
period of Protestant orthodoxy, may be judged from the
treatment of the subject in the learned Introductio of
J. G. Carpzov, Of the chapter which discusses biblical
poetry in general, by far the largest part is occupied with
the purely formal question of the existence and nature of
Hebrew metres. And it is thoroughly characteristic that
the only other question that is raised is why the Divine
wisdom was pleased to insert in the sacred volume several
books composed in metre and tied down to rhythmic
numbers. From such a state of things a reaction was
inevitable ; and in the first instance, as we have said,
the problem of aesthetically appreciating the Old Testa
ment fell into the hands of men who had a keener interest
in the beauty of the Hebrew poetry than in the deep
religious life with which that poetry is instinct. By such
hands the problem could not be solved, for in a work of
art true appreciation of the form is inseparable from
sympathy with the thought which the form embodies.
But much was gained by the very statement of the
problem. It was no small merit to make men feel that,
as poetry, the writings of David and Isaiah are as worthy
of study as the poems of Homer or of Virgil.

The idea of looking at the poetry of the Old Testament
in this light was one that could not fail to grow up in
many minds, almost contemporaneously, under the same
historical influences. But the work which first brought
the subject of Hebrew poetry, as such, distinctly before

404 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

the eyes of the world, was Lowth's Prcelectiones. These
lectures were delivered from a chair of poetry, not of
theology, and their starting-point was the principle that
the artistic qualities of the inspired writings are not
excluded from the domain of criticism (Prczl. ii.).1 The
work is mainly occupied with discussion of the peculiarities,
figures, etc., of the Hebrew poetical style, and with an
investigation into the various species of Hebrew poetry.
There is not much in these inquiries that can now be read
with great pleasure or profit. The taste of the eighteenth
century was formed upon principles with which our age
has little sympathy. Lowth was far too much guided
by the analogies of Western poetry to do full justice to
the peculiarities of an Oriental literature ; and as has
been already hinted, the divorce of the poetic form from
the religious contents of the Old Testament necessarily
obscured the true features of the problem. The most
lasting result of Lowth's researches lies in the doctrine of
Parallelism, and it may fairly be questioned whether
subsequent investigators have done wisely in following
him so closely on this topic. But with all its faults the
book produced, and deserved to produce, a great effect :
it struck a keynote to which the whole scholarship of
Europe gave a ready response.

In almost every branch of learning and science it has
been the fatality of England to indicate fresh subjects
or strike out fresh methods of investigation, and then to
look on with apathy while foreign scholars eagerly press
forward on the newly opened path. Since the days of
Lowth our countrymen have scarcely made one contribu
tion to the scientific criticism of Hebrew poetry, and it

1 That this principle was then by no means obvious, may appear
from a single example which we select from Carpzov. Vossius had said
that the ancient Hebrew poetry was rude and unpolished. Id, replies
the Leipzig professor, in Spiritum 5. Biblica Poeseos autorem injurium
videtur, quasi fons ille sapientia, . . . e Gratia demum lepores accevseve
ac ab infidelium hominum artificio et labore veneres consectari, versuumgue
expectare debuerit venustatem.

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 405

may be doubted whether the Prcelectiones themselves have
not been more read in Germany than in England. Herder,
when he gave to the world his Geist der ebraischen Poesie—
the book which marks the next decided step in the progress
of our subject — could assume that the prelections of the
English bishop were familiar to all his readers.1

The very title of Herder's book indicates a vast advance
on his predecessor. While Lowth busies himself with the
art of Hebrew poetry, the theologian of Weimar expressly
treats of its spirit. If the former professed only to com
mend a choice poetry to students of polite letters (p. 22),
the latter seeks to introduce his readers, through the
aesthetic form, into the inmost spirit of the Old Testament.
His pages glow with an enthusiasm which is not the cold
admiration of an indifferent critic, but the warmth of a
man to whose heart the religious meaning of the Bible
comes home with personal force. Thus Herder displays
much more fully than Lowth the power to enter into the
soul of the Old Testament writers which is essential to
thorough criticism, and he recognises with wonderful
keenness many of the unique features that separate the
poetry of the Hebrews from that of the western nations.
Lowth proposed to survey the streams of sacred poetry,
without ascending to the mysterious source. Herder's
great strength lies in his demonstration of the way in
which the noble poetry of Israel gushes forth with natural
unconstrained force from the depths of a spirit touched
with divinely inspired emotion. Lowth finds in the Bible
a certain mass of poetical material, and says :— " I desire
to estimate the sublimity and other virtues of this litera
ture — i.e. its power to affect men's minds, a power that will
be proportional to its conformity to the true rules of
poetic art." 2 Nay, says Herder, the true power of
poetry is that it speaks from the heart and to the heart.
True criticism is not the classification of poetic effects
according to the principles of rhetoric, but the unfolding of

1 Vol. i. p. 3. z Pral. ii. p. 19.

406 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [iS74-

the living forces which moved the poet's soul. To enjoy
a poem is to share the emotion that inspired its author.

" If the rules of art are true they flow from the nature
of the feeling with which the subject of the song is em
braced by the poet's heart ; but characteristics of the
singer, the situation, the language, always combine to
wards the effect. The application of the rules then must
always be a living application, and so always partial ; in
brief, where they are true, who will not rather feel and
develop them afresh for himself in each song, than borrow
them from foreign models ? . . . Let the lays of the
Hebrews be examined in their primitive nature and
beauty ; let the teacher show the scholar what subject is
sung, and with what interest, what emotion dominates
the song, how it moves, into what veins of feeling it
expands, how it begins, proceeds, and ends."

Herder was deeply impressed with the conviction that
this method of looking at the Old Testament was nothing
less than the rediscovery of a lost literature, which all the
commentators had only buried deeper in the dust of ages.
Away with all practical application to modern times !
Let us see this primeval age, and in it the heart and mind
of David and his poets.1

The historico-psychological criticism which Herder so
warmly advocated no longer needs to be recommended in
opposition to the old method of dinning the poet's beauties
into the reader's ears ; but there are still many who are but
half convinced that its application to the sacred record can
be otherwise than profane. Yet it is obvious that he who
represents Scripture as speaking from the heart and to the
heart, has returned in a cardinal point to the genuine
Reformation conception which Protestant theology had
almost forgotten ; and that the theologian who is not
prepared to assert that the Bible has no human side .at all,
can exempt no element of the Psalmist's productivity
from the laws of psychology and history, unless on the
condition that in return another element shall be with
drawn from the sphere of inspiration.

1 II. 2, ix. Vol. ii. p. 237.

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 407

In demanding that the poetry of the Hebrews be studied
according to the laws of historical psychology, Herder
laid down a principle of permanent importance, but his
application of the principle is marred by many defects.
The plan of his work was gigantic. An introduction,
which forms nearly half of all that the author actually put
on paper, discusses the basis on which the Hebrew poets
built — the poetic structure of the language, the primitive
ideas of the race, and its earliest fortunes to the time of
Moses. With Moses commences a full and elaborate
history of all that influenced the poetry and poetic con
ceptions of Israel ; and this task is so widely conceived
that, had the book been completed, almost the whole
material of the Old Testament would have been worked
up in its pages. So large an undertaking had for the
first condition of success an accurate conception of the
total historical development of Israel. That Herder was
not in possession of such a conception cannot be imputed
to him as a fault, for a century of further study has still
left much that is obscure even in vital points of the
Hebrew history. But under such circumstances the work
was premature. The continuity of development which
is traced has often no objective truth, and its apparent
consistency means only that where it was impossible to
read the poetry in the light of history, the history itself
has been read by the light of poetical ideas, and the lack
of precise conceptions has been concealed in a mist of
genial subjectivity. In this mist the objective features
of Hebrew culture, intellect, religion, melt away into
indistinctness. The specific peculiarities that distinguish
the religion of revelation from other primitive faiths are
so little emphasised, that a product so intensely Hebrew
as the Book of Job is supposed to have been the work of
an Idumean poet. The whole history tends to disappear
in poetry, while the objective peculiarities of the poetry
itself lose their sharpness from an exaggerated endeavour
to resolve everything into a purely untutored flow of

408 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

natural feeling, unaided by art and uncoloured by reflec
tion. These faults are in some measure due to the far too
early date to which the criticism of the age referred many
parts of the Old Testament ; but it is singular that any
critical prepossession should make it possible for so acute
an observer to read off the simple prose of Genesis as
verse, or to ignore the very high degree of conscious art
that runs through so much of the poetry which Herder
assigns to the remotest and most primitive antiquity.1

With all these defects, the labours of the poet and
philosopher of Weimar made an epoch in the study of
Hebrew poetry, for they vindicated for that study its
proper place as an integral portion of the larger historical
problem of reconstructing in its totality the life, growth,
and vital activity of the Hebrew nation. Thenceforth
progress in this department of criticism was bound up
with the general progress of historical research into the
Old Testament development, and no great advance on
Herder was possible except in connection with enlarged
and more accurate views of the history of Israel as a
whole. Such views grew but slowly. During the first
decennia of our century speculation on Old Testament
problems was little more than a chaos of acute but dis
jointed and arbitrary conjecture. It is not therefore
surprising that nearly forty years elapsed between Herder's
death and the appearance of the next really important
contribution to our subject ; and it was fitting that this
contribution should come from the pen of the scholar who
more than any other man has succeeded in gathering up
the many-sided material of the Hebrew records into the
oneness of a living, organic structure. The characteristic
power of Ewald is the intuition by which, without conscious
induction or articulate proof, he comprehends within his
gaze the whole heterogeneous data of a complicated
historical or critical problem, and divines the unity in

1 On this last point compare the instructive remarks of Ewald in his
Eighth y ear-Book, p. 599.

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 409

which all these fragments find their harmony. Concen
trating this peculiar instinct on the historical monuments
of the religion of revelation, Ewald has enriched all parts
of Old Testament science with a multitude of fresh and
original views, and has everywhere struck out paths in
which even those scholars are compelled to walk who have
least sympathy with the peculiar character of his genius.
With these rare powers, Ewald it must be admitted unites
corresponding defects, which have greatly limited his
influence and often imperil the accuracy of his conclusions.
As his historical inductions are intuitive rather than
reasoned out, he lacks the power of verifying his results.
His arguments are always constructive, and he is seldom
able to acquiesce in a negative result, or to admit a doubt
as to the objective truth of a theory that satisfies his
subjective sense of harmony. But as a constructive critic
he has no equal, and many scholars who ungenerously
depreciate his services to biblical science are themselves
doing little more than laboriously check off, and verify
or reject by the usual apparatus of historical induction,
the wealth of results, theories, and suggestions which
Ewald has lavished upon the world of science.

Since Herder's unfinished essay, only one considerable
attempt has been made to construct a comprehensive
history of Hebrew poetry. And though the late Professor
Meier was a man of unquestionable aesthetic capacity, and
though in Germany his work has drawn forth the interest
of many who are not theologians by profession, its merits
are not such as to forbid the expression of the opinion
that even now many essential points of Hebrew history,
and many questions as to the date of the Hebrew records
remain so obscure that any such work, however interesting
and instructive, must either fall in great measure into the
shape of detached essays, or must assert the form of
historical continuity by bold guesses and large assumptions.
The character of the different epochs of Hebrew literature
is gradually growing clear to us, and some of the greatest

4io LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

figures in that literature stand before us in sharply defined
outline. But much remains obscure, and, even those
results of recent criticism which seem most certain are
far from being universally admitted. While it is still
denied by influential critics that a single Psalm can safely
be ascribed to David,1 while competent judges dispute
whether the Song of Solomon is a drama or a collection of
lyric fragments, and while the dates assigned to the Book
of Job in the critical school itself differ by many centuries,
it is obvious that if there is not much room for new
theories there is at least a call for much new proof. Such
proof must for the most part consist of an examination of
minutise, in which only theologians can be expected to
take much interest. Instead, therefore, of wearying our
readers by introducing them to the conflicts of detail
which at present occupy the arena of criticism, we shall
endeavour to set before them some of those results in which
all are agreed, and from which every one may find assist
ance towards an intelligent study even of the English

Bible.

There are two marks which characterise every real work
of fine art. The first of these marks is that it must embody
a creative thought, that it must exhibit the power of the
human spirit to seize, shape, vivify, and subdue under its
own dominion the dead matter of unformed impression
presented to the mind in the two universes of external
nature and internal feeling. And then, in addition to this
character of creativeness, a second mark is required to
distinguish aesthetic from scientific production. While
science values each new thought only as a fresh step
towards the intellectual comprehension of the whole

i This position was maintained by Hupfeld, mainly, one is compelled
to judge from the general bluntness of his historic sense, which made
him partly indifferent and partly sceptical in questions of authorship.
When the same thing is maintained by Kuenen, the explanation must
be sought not in indifference to the chronology of the Psalms, b
rather in the partiality of this critic for a peculiar historical (or un-
historical) theory of the religion of Israel.

1877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 411

universe, the artist confines himself to thoughts which
possess for him a value quite independent of the inferences
that may be drawn from them for a more general body
of truth — thoughts to which he can give a self-contained
expression, without caring to use them as means to a
remoter end. In a word, every work of art is a product
of creative thought, having its end within itself. In
science the joy of each new attainment is absorbed in the
fresh impulse to further pursuit of truth ; the search for
knowledge knows no rest till the whole universe has been
subdued. A work of fine art points to no end beyond
itself, and urges directly to no activity save that of enjoying
to the full the satisfaction that accompanies every exertion
of completed mastery of thought over matter.

It is obvious that the earliest efforts of human thought
could not possibly go out in the direction of scientific
construction. The notion of an organic system of truth
advancing from generation to generation, till it grasp the
whole universe, can begin to be entertained only with the
beginning of a scientific diadoche, of a regular organisation
of thinkers and workers, each of whom takes up and
carries forward in fresh developments the truth received
from his predecessor or his neighbour. And this again
involves an amount of mental discipline, a power of
continuous self-denying effort, and a devotion to an
abstract aim lying far beyond the lifetime of the individual
worker, which are wholly unknown in the childhood of
society. But we are not therefore to conceive of the early
races of mankind as savages, acting only under the
pressure of material needs or the incitement of animal
instinct. If history and psychology have a voice at all,
they declare to us that man was not developed by chance
from the lower creation, but came complete from the hands
of God Himself, with an eye to behold the harmony of
creation, a heart sensitive to emotion and sympathy, a
spirit not passive and perplexed under the myriad impres
sions that pour in upon it from the universe without, but

4i2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

able and eager to give form and grace to these im
pressions by thought reproductive of the Divine idea,
in which alone the beauty and order of the universe
repose.

The earliest exercise of these inalienable faculties of the
human spirit is childlike, but not therefore weak and
childish. All primitive nations are too childlike to act
except under the stimulus of imagination or emotion.
Intellectual effort therefore is not calm and disciplined,
but passionate and absorbing. All thought stands in
immediate contact with living impressions and feelings,
and so, if incapable of rising to the abstract, is prevented
from sinking to the unreal. This indeed is a quality of
primitive thought which we moderns are very apt to
ignore or to deny. We so uniformly speak of nature in
the language of abstraction, inference, scientific theory,
that we can hardly conceive that the earliest human
speech offers only the direct, and therefore infallible
reflection of what is felt. If a Hebrew poet accosts the
morning star as " bright-rayed son of the dawn/' we are
far likelier to fall into conjectures as to Semitic mythology
than simply to accept the perfect image of newborn
splendour floating in the lap of the early twilight. The
tendency of the modern mind which this instance
exemplifies is one that must continually be guarded
against in dealing with early Eastern literature, and
especially in dealing with the Old Testament. It is
this misconstruction which on the one hand produces
the Biblical Cosmologies, Biblical Psychologies, Mosaic
Astronomies and Geologies that still perplex the unwary ;
while on the other hand it has given rise to the funda
mental fallacy of the negative criticism, the extraordinary
delusion that the Hebrew race is indifferent to objective
reality and historic truth.

To follow out these remarks would carry us too far
from our present argument. What we are now to observe
is the contrast between the later habit of thought which

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 413

inclines to look at everything in its logical and causal
relations, and the primitive, childlike habit of thought
which is completely absorbed in the one thing that is
immediately before the mind. The first kind of thought
makes science, the second makes poetry. For, as we have
seen, the characteristic mark of poetry as a fine art is that
it has its end within itself. A poetic theme, therefore, is
a theme in which the mind finds such interest as to have
no impulse to pass away from it, such delight as to strive
by every effort to attain full sympathy with its beauty,
full mastery over its details. To the primitive and
childlike mind every emotion that rises above sensuality,
every aspect of nature that is not directly interwoven with
bodily needs, possesses these qualities and invites poetic
treatment. Each new thought is a lyric unity answering
to a unity of feeling. The thinker is of necessity a poet,
whose task is not to display his idea in its relation to other
thoughts, but to grasp it as it is in itself, to put upon it the
impress of his own mastery, and give it enduring shape
and comeliness by clothing it in articulate form. For it
is not as mere inarticulate impression or emotion that the
new thing which confronts the poet with vivid concreteness
and force of absorbing passion can be rightly felt and
understood. Only when bound down in fit utterance, and
so made subject to the sovereignty of thought, do the
subtle and many-sided phases of nature reveal themselves
in their true significance and beauty. The simplest
impression of inner or outer nature bears within it some
thing of infinitude which only the artist can grasp aright
and reduce to finite expression. Nowhere is the task of
the nature-poet more pregnantly set forth than in the
myth of the binding of Proteus. The simplest manifesta
tion of nature has countless shapes and changeful aspects,
which by their glamour deceive the eyes and delude the
grasp of men. The true artist is he who, casting over
Proteus the chain of artistic expression, sets forth in a
single and adequate form the mobile many-sidedness of

4i4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

one idea, and receives as his reward a revelation of truth
where other men find only illusion.

From the conception that the earliest creative thought
is to be regarded as a lyrical reflection of the impressions
of internal and external nature, the inference is obvious
that the growth of language, so far as it rose above the
crude expression^ daily needs, was at first wholly shaped
by poetic necessities, and urged forward by poetic motives.
This remark is not only true of language in general, but
finds a just application to the characters that distinguish
one language from another. The beginnings of prose
composition, in any higher sense than that in which
M. Jourdain spoke prose — in any sense therefore which
can influence the subtler qualities of language— are long
posterior to the differentiation of national tongues ; and,
in fact, prose composition is possible only after the
individuality of the language has been clearly stamped
by a rich national poetry. Thus the quality of the poetic
thought of each people is imprinted on its speech, while re
ciprocally the psychological and artistic peculiarities of the
speech permanently control the national poetry, and form
perhaps the strongest influence towards the preservation
of a fixed character in the nation itself. If we desire, then,
to grasp the peculiar qualities of Hebrew poetry, we can
not begin better than by following Herder in his admirable
remarks on the poetical character of the language of Israel.

" Since action and delineation are of the essence of
poetry, and since the verb is the part of speech that depicts
action, or rather sets action directly before us, the language
that is rich in expressive pictorial verbs is a poetical
language, and is more poetical the more fully it can turn
nouns to verbs. What a noun sets forth is dead, the verb
sets all in motion. . . . Now in Hebrew almost every
thing is verb — that is, everything lives and acts. . . . The
language is a very abyss of verbs, a sea of waves, where
action rolls surging into ever new action.1 . . . Nor does

1 This acute observation receives fresh force from the exacter
doctrine of the Hebrew verb forms which we owe to that scientific school

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 415

the speech lack such nouns and adjectives as it requires.
... It is poor in abstractions, but rich in sensuous repre
sentation, and has such a wealth of synonyms for the same
thing, because it desires always to name, and as it were to
paint the object in its full relation to all accompanying
circumstances that impress themselves on the senses.
The lion, the sword, the snake, the camel, have so many
names in Oriental (Semitic) languages because each man
originally depicted the thing as it appeared to himself,
and all these rivulets afterwards flowed into one. Even
in the small relics of Hebrew that we possess the profusion
of sensuous epithets is very notable. More than 250
botanical names in a collection so short and so little varied
in subject as is the Old Testament. How rich would the
language appear had we still its poetry of common life.1
. . . The pronouns stand forth in bold relief, as in all
language of the passions. The scarcity of adjectives is so
supplied by combinations of other words that the attribute
appears as a thing, nay, even as an active being. With
all this, I conceive the language is as poetic as any upon
earth."

of Semitic grammarians of which De Sacy was the pioneer. Our
abstract division of past, present, and future time has no existence in
the Semitic verb forms. The Semitic, but most fully the Hebrew,
distinguishes only perfect and imperfect action. A notion that appears
in the mind of the speaker as still growing is put in the imperfect,
whether the objective scene of its growth is the past, the present, or the
future. Inversely, actions conceived as complete are put in the perfect.
Thus, if the Hebrew wishes to say, / went and saw him, went, as the
completed presupposition of the seeing, stands in the perfect ; but saw,
which grows out of the went, is put in the imperfect, with only a slight
modification to show that the action is imperfect only relatively to the
went, not relatively to the speaker's present position. Conversely, in
the sentence / will go and see him, the Hebrew feels that the means grow
out of the end, which, in idea, is the fixed and completed pritt-s. There
fore / will go stands in the imperfect, but see in the perfect. Nothing
can show more clearly how the action and reaction of living ideas is the
dominating principle of the language.

1 On this topic compare the remarks of Isaac Taylor in his Spirit of
Hebrew Poetry, p. 94. This ingenious treatise, though purely the work
of an amateur, and therefore quite deficient in scientific sharpness of
conception, is written in a spirit of glowing poetic sympathy, and
contains some good things. Taylor shows that the Old Testament
contains as many words about sea and water as the English language
can muster even when technicalities and colloquialisms are reckoned.

2 Vol. i. pp. 15-18.

416 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

Passing to the Hebrew roots, Herder remarks how they
unite picturesqueness with feeling, repose with passion,
strength with softness of tone.

" The northern speeches imitate the sound of nature
but rudely, and as it were from without : they creak, jar,
and rustle like the objects themselves. In the south the
imitation of nature is more delicate. The words have
passed through the finer medium of emotion, they are
framed as it were in the region of the heart, and so give not
coarse reproductions of sound, but images which feeling
has modified by impressing upon them its softer seal. Of
this union in the tones of the roots between internal
feeling and external image, the Semitic languages are
a model. ' What ! ' cries the interlocutor of Herder's
dialogue, ' these barbarous, gurgling, gutturals ? ' ' Yes/
replies Herder. ' We who live in smoke and fog speak
between tongue and lip, and open our mouths but little.
The Italian and the Greek again speak ore rotundo, and
do not bite their lips together. The East draws its tones
still deeper from the breast, from the heart itself, and
speaks as Elihu begins.

' I am full of words,
The spirit within me constrains me :
It ferments in my breast like must corked up.
It bursts like new bottles.
I must speak, that I may be refreshed :
Open my lips, and answer.'

" When these lips opened it was doubtless a living
sound, image breathed forth in the stream of emotion, and
this, I think, is the spirit of the Hebrew tongue." l

Our space precludes fuller reproduction of Herder's
admirable demonstration that the Hebrew language marks
out the nation that spoke it as a race through whose whole
life ran a deep vein of intense but very subjective poetry.
Let us, however, concentrate our attention on the quality

1 Page 20. To appreciate the description of the gutturals as tones
drawn from the depths of the breast, the reader must remember that
the Hebrew gutturals do not, like the Scotch and German ch, strike the
palate, but are purely breathed up from the throat like the English h.
But while our alphabet has but one such letter, the Hebrew writes four
gutturals, and in pronunciation distinguished five or six.

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 417

of subjectivity, which is the main key to the psychological
criticism of the Old Testament literature. The Hebrew
language, as Herder has shown us, is fitted to express
nature, not realistically, as it presents itself to the outer
unsympathetic eye, nor simply sensuously idealised as in
the art of Greece, but as it appears when seen through the
medium of passionate human interest and transmuted in
the alembic of internal feeling. The perfection of the
Hebrew language as a vehicle of emotion is in truth most
strikingly seen in points of grammatical structure to
which Herder does not allude. Every nicety of form and
construction has for its end the expression of varying
relations of feeling between the thinker and his thought.
In the hands of David or Isaiah every word, every suffix,
every modification of order or of tone, expresses some
delicate shade of emotion hardly reproducible in another
language. Such a tongue is the fit organ of a fervid and
imperious personality which refuses to be the mere
interpreter of nature, and esteems nothing which cannot
be brought into concrete relation to itself. The un-
impassioned, intellectual admiration of the ideal of
sensuous beauty, which is the ruling principle of Greek art,
is unknown to the Semite. He values nature only in so
far as it moves and affects him, or is capable of being
moved and affected by him. He has no sense therefore
for that objective harmony of a beautiful scene which is
independent of the varying emotions with which men may
look upon it. To him nature is what he feels as he beholds
it : the universe is a complex of living powers with which
he enters into a fellowship of joy and woe, of love and
dread, of confidence and fear ; which awe him with the
utterance of infinite might, or furnish him with matter of
victorious boasting if he is able to bend them to his own
service.

The art which corresponds to such a view of nature is
necessarily unplastic. The Hebrews never attained excel
lence in the reproduction of natural things by the pencil

27

4i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

or in sculpture, and their poetry contains no example of
that elaborate word-painting which calls up a scene in its
objective harmony and full sensuous beauty. It would
be wrong to conjecture as the reason of this deficiency the
want of a quick eye for outward things. On the contrary,
the very richness of the Hebrew tongue in appropriate
names for sensible objects is sufficient proof that every
thing in nature that has a human interest, everything that
touches directly on the life of man, and addresses itself to
his emotions and his heart, is laid hold of with the keenest
appreciation and the subtlest sympathy. But in truth
nature is too full of meaning, and speaks too strongly to
the heart of the Israelite, to suffer him calmly to analyse
and reproduce its individual traits. To him the unity
and harmony of an outer scene or a train of thought is
always a unity of passion and feeling. He does not there
fore depict nature in the just balance and organic relation
of its parts, but seizes one and another isolated feature
and absorbs them into the stream of an all-transmuting
emotion. Hence the few instances of plastic art which are
recounted in the Old Testament are all symbolic. It is
most characteristic that we have no description of the
cherubim which would enable an artist to reconstruct
them. The symbolic parts of which they were composed
are enumerated with care ; but we have no hint of an
attempt to give to the figure built up from these hetero
geneous symbols anything of objective symmetry and
beauty. Beyond doubt no such attempt was made.1

The same want of plastic power characterises the de
lineations of Hebrew poetry. The descriptions of Homer
or of Sophocles at once suggest pictorial treatment ;

1 If the reader desires to realise this more fully, let him turn to the
description of the heavenly procession in Canto 29 of the " Purgatorio,"
and contrast the thoroughly plastic character of the picture with the
corresponding passages of Ezekiel and of the Apocalypse. But it is
obvious that the figures of the cherubim had defeated Dante's power of
constructive imagination. He is compelled to refer his reader to
Ezekiel. " E quai li troverai nelle sue carte, Tali eran quivi."

i87;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 419

but no pencil could reproduce the war-horse or the
leviathan of Job, where the unity of the picture lies wholly
in the emotion of admiration and awe into which the
sensuous elements of the description are absorbed. Or
for an example of a different kind take the Book of Ruth.
Could a Western writer have related a story so idyllic with
a harmony so poetically perfect, and yet with so complete
an elimination of the plastic pictorial element ? The book
is full of vivid lifelike detail. But everywhere that detail
is directly subservient to the human interest of the action.
There is not one touch of colouring or description that
would help a painter in depicting the scene.

It must not be imagined that for this reason Hebrew
poetry is remote from nature. The whole Old Testament
literature is rich in small fragments of the most delicate
observation embodied in a sentence, sometimes in a word ;
but these fragments are strung upon a thread of feeling
instead of being set forth by artistic composition and
grouping of parts. A typical example is the first chapter
of the prophecy of Joel. Every verse sparkles with gems.
Each little picture, suggested rather than drawn, is in the
most exquisite harmony with the feeling of the prophet.
The fig tree stripped of its bark, standing white against
the arid landscape ; the sackcloth-girt bride wailing for
her husband ; the night watch of the supplicating priests ;
the empty and ruinous garners ; the perplexed rush of the
herds maddened with heat and thirst ; or the unconscious
supplication in which they raise their heads to heaven
with piteous lowing, are indicated with a concrete preg
nancy of language which the translator vainly strives to
reproduce. But the composition is a crystallisation, not
an organism, a series of boldly etched vignettes, not a
single picture.

It is obvious that a poetry of this type refuses to be
judged by our usual canons of criticism. We are not to
ask for unity of composition where the poet himself
designs only unity of feeling ; nor may we, in criticising

420 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

so subjective a poetry, condemn anything as grotesque
and inharmonious that is not disproportionate to the
dominant emotion. This remark is peculiarly applicable
to the gigantic images and metaphors of the Old Testa
ment. In Western poetry an image is always liable to
criticism in itself, and nothing is admitted for purposes of
illustration that would be quite fantastic as the description
of a reality. But to the Hebrew no image is too bold to
give utterance to the emotion by which he is stirred. It
would be absurd to class the daring figures of the Psalms
and Prophets as examples of hyperbole. Hyperbole is the
licence that our poets take to impress their hearers more
deeply by representing objects as grander than they really
are, without absolutely distorting them from their true
form. But when the Psalmist represents hills as skipping
and clapping hands, when Joel ascribes to his locusts the
irresistible teeth of a lion, when the Assyrian king as
pictured by Isaiah boasts that he has dried up rivers with
the soles of his feet, or when Ezekiel figures the king of
Tyre as a cherub walking within the fiery bulwarks of
the mount of God, these gigantic metaphors refuse to be
judged by the limited licence accorded to Western poets.
Thus commentators are found who gravely argue that
language so strong must have a hidden allegoric meaning,
that the Prince of Tyre, for example, is Satan. To the
poets themselves such criticism would have seemed
ridiculous. They were accustomed to read nature wholly
in the light of subjective emotion or spiritual truth. The
boldness of the fancy with which they gave sensuous form
to their feelings was hampered by no habits of scientific
study of the laws of phenomena. Regardless of external
probability they sought only a just expression for sub
jective experience. What we are apt to call exaggeration
is really idealisation — the elevation of the whole scene into
a symbol of the invisible. We have no right to caU that
fantastic which truly expresses internal intuitions moulded
by the fire of a subjectivity stronger than ours.

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 421

Often the boldness of the Hebrew images lies in the
combination of parts taken from several quite dissimilar
figures. Mixed metaphor is not only natural, but appro
priate when the world of sense offers no one phenomenon
in which the fulness of the poet's emotion can be mirrored.
Not only is image piled on image, but the weaker figure
seems often to dissolve into one of grander force. Thus
when Isaiah pictures the onset of Assyria on Judah, he
hears the roar of the lion as it springs on its victim,
followed by the low and awful moan which shows that the
prey is secured. But presently this moan waxes more and
more intense, till it passes into the grim murmur of a
storm-lashed sea, while the hot breath and overshadowing
terror of the lion bending over his captive are transmuted
into a dark and murky storm-cloud which enwraps the
land of Judah in the gloom of hopeless night.

His roar is like the lioness,

He roars like the young lions ;

And moans and clutches his prey, and bears it off and none can save.

And he moans over Judah like the moan of the sea.

When they look to the land, lo ! stifling gloom

And day grown black in lowering clouds.1

It is not only in the absence of plastic composition and
in the shape of individual images and metaphors that the
poetry of the Old Testament bears the stamp of the
peculiar subjectivity of the Semite. We have seen that
this subjectivity dominates for the Hebrew his whole view
of the universe ; that all nature appears to him instinct
with a life which vibrates responsive to each change in his
personal feelings and spiritual relations. This way of
looking at outward things makes itself felt in the matter
as well as in the manner of Hebrew literature. That the
poetry of such a race is certain to be rich in the expression
of every human passion is too obvious to need further
illustration than every Bible reader can supply for himself.
But it is instructive to observe how the poets of Israel
enter into human relations with impersonal things, and

1 Isa. v. 29, 30.

422 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

see in them also the movings of a life not wholly incapable
of fellow feeling with man. Herder has drawn attention
to the sympathy which Hebrew poetry always manifests
towards the brute creation l — a sympathy not confined
to the domestic animals, which the Israelites treated with
a consideration well brought out in the story of Balaam's
ass and in the law of Sabbatic rest, but extending to every
living thing. Nay, even inanimate objects appear as the
friends of man. Take for example the exquisite song in
which the Hebrew women as they stand round the
fountain, waiting their turn to draw, coax forth the water
which wells up all too slowly for their impatience :

Spring up, O well ! (sing ye to it !)

Well that the princes digged,

The nobles of the people bored,

With the sceptre and with their staves ! 2

The simplicity of personal interest, the tenderness of
affectionate regard, with which the Hebrew maidens salute
the " living waters " that well forth, murmuring in answer
to their song, belongs to quite another sphere of fancy
from that which peopled the mountains and glades of
Hellas with the fair sisterhood,

CU T &\<T€0. K0\(t

/cat iryycLs iroTa^Cjv KCU iriaea

When the Greek ascribes life to the powers of nature he
gives to his personification a shapely human body as well
as a living soul, and in the same measure as his creation
gains in plastic grace it becomes less near to the daily
life of man. The nymph is no longer the fountain or the
tree, which man knows and loves, but a new being that
hides herself behind them. But to the Semite the rippling
water is itself alive, the oaks of Bashan wail when the fire
wastes their tangled forests,3 the cedars and cypresses of
Lebanon rejoice in mocking songs over the fall of the

1 Dial. iii. vol. i. p. 66.

2 Num. xxi. 17, 18. To dig with the staff, which is the symbol of
authority, means to command the well to be dug. 3 Zech. xi. i, s.

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 423

king of Babel who so mercilessly hewed down their
glory.1

No relation of man to nature has a stronger fascination
for the Semitic mind than that of practical lordship over
powers so much mightier than his own. Every one knows
how this fascination finds its expression in the wondrous
Oriental tales of enslaved genii and the like. The same
thing is to be seen in the magic of Eastern nations.
An Arab servant accompanying a European naturalist,
would regard his master as a madman, were he not per
suaded that his scientific collections are to be used in some
mysterious way to enthral the powers of creation. This
tendency finds a loftier and truer, but not less character
istic, expression in the Old Testament. If the Israelite
abjured magic arts, it was not because he was indifferent
to the world-sovereignty of man, but because he knew
that that sovereignty is more surely rooted in the creation
gift of God, which is so nobly sung in the eighth Psalm.

1 Isa. xiv. 8. " Living water " is the standing name in the Old
Testament for spring water. The personification of trees is constant,
and it is remarkable that, while the animal fable of Aesop is not, as has
sometimes been wrongly imagined, a Semitic product, we find in the
Old Testament two parables of trees (Jud. ix. 8 seq. ; 2 Kings xiv. 9).
The nearest Western analogon to this play of fancy is to be found in
certain features of the Teutonic Mdrchen, which have been well
explained by Heine, whose Jewish birth gave him a hereditary right to
understand and delight in this subjective vein of imagination. See a
passage in the Harzreise, where he describes an aged trembling grand
mother who has sat for a quarter of a century behind the stove opposite
the cupboard, till her thoughts and feelings have grown into union with
all the corners of the stove and all the carvings on the cupboard. " And
cupboard and stove live, for a human being has breathed into them
a portion of her life." Heine proceeds to explain how, to thoughtful,
quiet folk, living a life of deep " immediate " contemplation, the inner
life of inanimate objects revealed itself, and these acquired a necessary
consistent character, a sweet mixture of fanciful whimsicality and true
human dispositions. Amidst all difference of detail between the
imagination that shaped the Mdrchen, and that which dominates
Hebrew poetry, the great point of agreement is what Heine rightly calls
the " immediacy," Unmittelbarkeit, of both — the way in which the
Teuton or the Semite stands in direct contact and personal fellowship
with the life of the objects that surround him. Something of the same
feeling pervades the works of a great Jewish painter, Josef Israels.

424 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

But let us choose a less familiar example of the spirit in
which the Hebrew glories in the power of man's cunning
and labour to subdue all nature. Such an example we shall
find in Job's description of the art of mining, the Old Testa
ment counterpart of the famous chorus of the Antigone :

For there is a lode for silver : a place for gold which is fined.

Iron is brought from dust : and stones are smelted into brass.

Man sets an end to darkness and searches out to its farthest veins :

the stone that lies in night and gloom.
The shaft is opened far from all sojourners : and there forgotten of

human foot,

They hang far from mortals : they flit to and fro.
The earth — out of her groweth bread : and beneath they pierce

resistless as fire.

The place of her brightest jewels : the dust of her gold are theirs.
The path that the eagle hath not seen : the eye of the vulture hath

not scanned :
Which the proud beasts have not trod : which the lion hath never

walked.
On the flint he layeth his hand : overturneth mountains from their

roots.
Through the rock he cleaveth passages : and his eye beholds all

precious things ;

He binds up the shafts from weeping : and brings forth secret trea
sure to light. ]

In lays like the Song of the Well created things appear
as man's friends : in the picture that we have taken from
Job they are represented as his captives and his slaves.
We have still to consider the more awful aspect of the
powers of nature in which they present themselves as
the utterances of a mysterious might, before which the
strength and wisdom of man are as naught. This is
the point of view from which the nature-worship of
the heathen Semites appears in its proper contrast to
the polytheism of Greece. In the Hellenic religion the
plastic element, the sensuous ideal, predominates. " The

1 Job xxviii. i seq. The allusion in the last line is to the greatest
difficulty with which the miner has to contend — the breaking in of
water through his shafts. The contrast with the Chorus of Sophocles
(Antig. 362 seq.} is instructive, but cannot be drawn out here. I
remark only the counterfoil to man's power and cunning in each case.
Job continues : " But where shall wisdom be found ? " Sophocles adds :
Ai5a IJLOVOV <f>€v£i.v OVK

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 425

gods that live at ease," the Olympians of Homer, are very
different beings from the El or Eloah, the " mighty and
dreadful one " of the Semite. The heathenism of the
Canaanites and the Phoenicians is never aesthetically
beautiful, but vibrates between the opposite yet allied
poles of sombre horror and wildest sensuality, between the
terrors of Moloch- worship and the orgies of Ashera.
Always we find a religion of passionate emotion, not a
worship of the outer powers and phenomena of nature in
their sensuous beauty and majesty, but of those inner
powers, awful because unseen, of which outer things are
only the symbol.1

Corniptio optimi fit pessima. The very tone of mind
which makes Semitic heathenism the most hideous of
false worships, enabled the Hebrew nation to grasp with
unparalleled tenacity and force the spiritual idea of
Jehovah. It is indeed a vain notion of Renan and other
theorists that the Semitic races have a peculiar capacity
for monotheism.2 But at least Semitic monotheism could
scarcely degenerate into deism or pantheism. Not into
deism ; for to view nature as an independent and yet
impersonal organism is quite impossible to a habit of
thought that everywhere in nature sees life, and life
bearing directly upon man : not into pantheism, for even
Semitic polytheism looked on material things as symbols
rather than as realities, and reverenced only the mysterious
and the unseen. To the Hebrew, force is life, and life is
personality. The one true God whom man has learned

1 Hence the simplicity of the material objects which these nations
worshipped — the sacred stone, the Ashera or sacred pole, the consecrated
tree. In the English Version the characteristic features of Canaanite
idolatry are disguised by more than one mistranslation. The sacred
stone, macfeba, appears as an " image," the Ashera as a " grove."
Actual images seem to have been repulsively coarse in conception.
(Cf. i Kings xv. 13, Heb.)

2 This notion has been sufficiently refuted by several writers. See
especially Dillmann's tract, Uber den Ursprung der ATlichen Religion ,
p. 1 6 seq. The English reader may compare a paper on Semitic mono
theism in the first vol. of Mr. Max Muller's Chips from a German Work
shop.

426 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

to know in His historical revelation is a living, loving
God, ever working and ever present to His people. Now
the whole universe is seen to be not instinct with dark
and cruel forces, but full of the spiritual harmony of a
gracious personal plan of righteousness and love. From
such a contemplation of the world in its relation to God,
a rich religious poetry could not fail to spring. Nature
itself in that harmony in which it is revealed to the eye
of faith is one grand poem, an embodied thought of God
set forth to be read by man, and not only to be read with
distant admiration, but to be grasped with personal
sympathy and trust. So conceived, no part of the universe
was indifferent to the believing Israelite. His was no
religion of asceticism, that should turn him away from the
contemplation and enjoyment of outer nature, and shut
up his spiritual life within himself. His keen zest for the
beauties and pleasures of the outer life was only quickened,
though it was purified and solemnised by the thought that
it is God's hand that crowns the year with goodness, and
His majesty and grace that all nature proclaims. Or
again, when nature frowns, the Hebrew, raised above
slavish fear of a malignant, destructive power, could hear
the voice of Jehovah thundering forth the declaration
that the merciful and gracious God is also the God of
judgment, whose holy justice will by no means clear the
guilty. To comprehend the full influence of the spiritual
religion on the development of the poetry of Israel, we
must remember that the idea of the universe as a natural
unity, of which our noblest nature-poetry is so full, was
entirely foreign to the Hebrew mind. The keen observa
tion and subtle sympathy with individual sides of natural
things which distinguishes Semitic poetry, is, as we have
already learned, altogether dissociated from the faculty
of artistic grouping and plastic composition of an organic
whole. The only unity which the poet can realise is a
unity of feeling and purpose. Thus a really grand and
catholic poetry of nature could be achieved by the Hebrews

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 427

only under the influence of a comprehensive and all-
absorbing personal interest to which no part of nature
should be alien, and which should bind up the whole
universe in the oneness of a transcendental purpose.
And this was an influence which only the religion of
Jehovah could supply. To realise the scope of these
remarks we have only to compare the Song of Solomon
with the Book of Job. No Old Testament writer has a
richer sensuous fancy or a truer eye for the features of
nature than the poet who, nurtured amidst the northern
mountains, where all that is beautiful or majestic in
Canaan is gathered up, lavishes the whole wealth of his
imagery in singing the love and constancy of the Shula-
mite. But perfect as is the poem in its kind, few Western
readers can peruse it without a feeling of monotony.
The infinite succession of similes, all just and even brilliant,
all showing the true poet, but strung together like a
necklace of pearls, only by the common theme of emotion
that runs through them, at length wearies us by the very
prodigality of fancy. We are perplexed by the total
absence of objective grouping, the want of light and shade,
which is carried so far that even the beauty of the Shula-
mite is praised only by the choice of a comparison for each
separate feature of her person. The poem is full of nature,
but it is too one-sided, and strikes too exclusively only
such notes as are in unison with the dominant passion, to
be a great nature-poem. But while not even the noblest
of merely human affections is broad enough to sustain an
all-sided poetry of nature, it is otherwise with such a
theme as occupies the Book of Job. To the relations of
man to his Creator and Redeemer the whole universe
vibrates responsive. Here there is no room for monotony,
for the theme itself is infinitely varied. Nor could any
pictorial grouping of images equal the sublime grandeur
of the closing chapters of the book, in which all creation is
marshalled in glorious wealth of disorder to do homage to
the wisdom and power of the Most High. Thus it is that

428 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

in the Old Testament the noblest poetry of nature and the
loftiest spiritual conceptions are linked together in an
indissoluble bond, and that universality of poetic sym
pathy from which nothing in nature is estranged is
realised only when creation in all its plenitude and in all
its changefulness appears as the direct expression of the
will of the ever-present King and Saviour of Israel.

We find in the Old Testament a series of Psalms in
which natural scenes are so depicted that they yield up
their spiritual meaning, and appear as witnesses to the
existence and attributes of Jehovah.1 A comparison of
these hymns with the treatment of similar themes by
Western writers is sufficiently characteristic of the Hebrew
genius. The Western poet, or even a W7estern prose
writer on natural theology, will not fail to begin by setting
before him the scene in its objectivity, reproducing the
natural features of his subject by pictorial description
before proceeding to draw a religious inference or lesson.
But the Hebrew needs no process of inference to set
Jehovah before him as the prime mover in all he sees. He
needs no argument a fortiori to rise from the glory of the
creature to the supreme majesty of the Creator. The
spiritual meaning of the scene so fills his soul, so inter
penetrates all that he beholds, that he is never able to
linger on the production of a finished picture, or to rest on
the natural scene as in itself the adequate object of poetic
contemplation. His first word is praise to Jehovah, with
which his soul is overflowing, and every feature of his
description, instinct with the same emotion, looms through
a mist of religious awe, love, and fervour, and attains
harmony only in this subjective and unplastic medium.
Let the reader take up Psalm civ., and observe how no
part of nature is able to detain the poet. He hurries from
point to point, with the restless eagerness of a man who
only seeks in the objects around him food for an engrossing

1 Among the more notable of these are Psa. viii., the first part of
xix., xxix., Ixv., civ.

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 429

emotion. Once and again, at ver. 24, 31, this emotion
breaks out in pure song ; and at length the point of rest
in which every poem must end, and which could not be
found in the contemplation of nature, is reached in the
concluding strain of praise, ver. 33-35. l

All this is but a special application to the sphere of
religious life of the more general law that the Semitic
imagination assimilates objective phenomena only in so
far as they are held in solution by personal interest or
strong emotion. The world of nature is orderly and
beautiful only as the reflex of the world of moral and
spiritual relations. But the principle obviously works
in two directions. If the Hebrew instinctively views
nature in the light of its spiritual meaning, he as instinc
tively gives to every spiritual perception a symbolical and
sensuous expression. And since, as we have already seen,
the idea of natural possibility or probability does not
exist for the Semite, the expression is subject to no
condition save that of appropriateness to the thought set
forth. Thus the whole realm of visible phenomena stands
free to the poet to be dealt with as he will. The multi
plicity of the universe becomes one vast chorus of living
things moving responsive to the action of the spiritual
stage, without restraint of natural law. Especially is this
the case in the description of the being and work of

1 No better illustration can be found of the difference between the
Hebrew and Occidental treatment of the same ideas than is supplied by
a comparison of Buchanan's paraphrases of the nature-Psalms. A
good instance is the treatment of the sun in Ps. xix., or, to confine our
selves to Ps. civ., take the following passage, in which every variation
from the Hebrew tends to an increase of plastic pictorial delineation,
with a corresponding diminution in the directness with which the
religious emotion dominates each line of the original :

Turn liquidi fontes imis de collibus augent
Flumina, per virides undas volventia campos :
Unde sitim sedent pecudes, quae pinguia tondent
Pascua, quique feris onager saxa invia silvis
Incolit : hie levibus quae tranant aera pennis
Per virides passim ramos sua tecta volucres
Concelebrant, mulcentque vagis loca sola querelis.

430 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

Jehovah. The poet's heart is full of gratitude to God :
straightway sun and moon, stars and heavens, fire and
hail, storm, winds, mountains, beasts and creeping things,
must join in sounding forth His praise.1 David celebrates
in Psalm xviii. the deliverances that God has wrought for
him in every crisis of his life. At once the earth shakes
and trembles, the thundering voice of Jehovah rolls across
the heavens, His arrowy lightnings scatter the foemen, the
blast of His storm-wind lays bare the channels of the seas,
and the Most High Himself, descending in smoke and
flame, stretches forth His hand and rescues His servant
from the waters that surge around him. Or once more,
when Jehovah appears to judge the earth and deliver His
people, the seas roar, the rivers clap hands, the mountains
exult together.2 Or if His coming is viewed rather as a
day of terror and anguish for the guilty and rebellious,
then the earth reels like a drunkard, and sways like a
hammock, the moon is lurid and the sun pales.3

It must not be supposed that this imperious subjectivity
of the Hebrew, which demands that the whole universe
shall blend to the conviction that burns within the poet's
soul, asserts its sovereignty only in the sphere of religion.
No poetry can ignore the principle of sympathy between
the aspects of external nature and the changing views of
the poetic observer. But there are two ways in which
this principle can receive expression. The modern poet
is impressed with the conviction that nature has an
individuality, and a fixed character of her own. She is
capable of infinite sympathy, but her favour must be
wooed and won by subtle appreciation of her faintest
smile, by patient submission to her opposite, as well as her
approving moods. Of such study of nature the Semite is
wholly incapable. The pathos of contrast between his
own mental state and the expression of natural things,
which plays so great a part in modern poetry, has for him
no sweetness, or rather no existence. His eyes refuse to

Ps. cxlviii. 2 Ibid, cxviii. 3 Isa. xxiv.

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 431

see what his heart cannot assimilate. The desert blossoms
with his joy, and the orchards and gardens of Carmel
wither in his despair. The fairest things are spurned
with impatient hate, or blighted with bitter curses, if their
beauty stands in contrast to his woe.

Ye mountains of Gilboa,

No dew, no rain be upon you,

Ye fields rich in oblations !

For there the shield of the mighty lies rusting,

The shield of Saul — not anointed with oil.1

We have already observed that the subjective intensity
of such a poetry can appear extravagant or untruthful
only when judged by too narrow a canon of taste. In the
nature of the case artistic truth is always more or less
partial, for the artist isolates and treats as a perfect whole
what in reality is only one factor of a larger unity of
nature or of thought. And so, if the unity to be realised
is one of supreme emotion, it is not only legitimate, but
imperative that all opposing elements be sacrificed to the
ruling idea. But, on the other hand, an art which proceeds
on such principles must often be obscure and unattractive
to those whose less intense subjectivity is unable to share
the resistless sweep of the poet's passion. A Semitic
poetry of the ordinary themes of life can hardly attain to
the perfect catholicity that appeals to all minds in all
ages ; for at least we of the Western races require a special
effort of cultivated literary appreciativeness to throw
ourselves into the vein of uncontrolled immediate feeling
in which the Oriental naturally moves. But the very
characters that constitute a certain particularism of
interest in the treatment of secular themes mark out the
Hebrew poetry as the most perfect and catholic vehicle
for the aesthetic expression of religious faith. In every
other case the artistic propriety of making all nature bend

1 2 Sam. i. 21. The unction by which the shield of the warrior is
kept bright is alluded to in Is. xxi. 5. The " fields of offerings " (A.V.)
are, as Ewald rightly explains, fields so fertile that many offerings of
first-fruits are sent from them to the sanctuary.

432 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

to the personal emotion of the singer can receive only a
subjective justification. The art of the Hebrew is true
art to those who can rise to the level of his passion. But
religious conviction is supreme where it exists at all. And
the aesthetic necessity that all things in heaven and earth
shall bend to the Divine purpose of salvation revealed to
the poet's faith, is also the ethical necessity on which the
whole religious life depends. That the things which are
impossible with men are possible with God is the first
axiom of a religion that shall rise with triumphant assur
ance over all the powers of evil and all the woes of life.
To assert with unwavering confidence the victory of
spiritual certainties over all empirical contradiction, to
vanquish earthly fears in the assurance of transcendental
fellowship with God, to lay down for all ages the pattern
of a faith which endures as seeing Him who is invisible
— such is the great work for which the poetic genius of the
Hebrews was consecrated by the providence and inspira
tion of the Most High. How nobly this work was served
by that Hebrew intensity which carries one supreme
conviction with irresistible poetic fire through all things
in heaven or earth that rise up against it, may be read
alike in the personal utterances of the Psalter and in the
Messianic hopes of the prophets. Thus it was that the
Psalmist, surrounded on all sides by the contradiction of
sinners, bowed with sickness and grief, oppressed by the
consciousness of guilt, was yet able so to cling to the
unfailing certainty of his living fellowship with a redeem
ing God, that danger, and sickness, and sin itself were left
behind, and he pressed forward beyond the fear of death
to the assurance of immortality at God's right hand.
Thus it was that the prophets gazing on the certainties of
Jehovah's righteousness and grace saw the creation, now
stained with sin and blasted by the strokes of Divine
indignation, transformed in new perfection and holy
loveliness, and instinct in all its parts with a sweet intellig
ence, so that from voice to voice of things now deemed

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 433

inanimate the prayer of man goes up to God and the
answer of God descends on man :

In that day, saith Jehovah, I will answer,

I will answer the heavens,

And they shall answer the earth ;

And the earth shall answer the corn, and the wine, and the oil,

And they shall answer Jezreel.1

From the consideration of the characteristic material
of feeling and fancy in which the richness of the Old
Testament poetry lies, we must proceed to look at the not
less characteristic form which the Hebrew poets impress
upon their thoughts. The most general law of poetic
form is embodied in the principle of rhythm. But while
all poetry is necessarily rhythmical, rhythm is of very
various kinds. Amidst all variety of metres, the rhythm
to which we Occidentals are accustomed is always more
or less purely syllabic. And of syllabic rhythm we are
familiar with two types, the rhythm of accent which pre
vails in our northern tongues, and the rhythm of quantity
(partially modified by accent) which regulates the classical
poetry. Neither type is unknown to the Semitic races.
The prosody of the Arabs is based on quantity, while in
Syriac, where the original distinction of long and short
syllables has disappeared almost as completely as in the
modern languages of Western Europe, each verse consists
of a measured number of syllables, with a rise and fall of
tone. But innumerable attempts to apply to the ancient
Hebrew poetry one or other of these analogies have
proved vain, and scholars are now agreed that there is no
syllabic rhythm in the Old Testament. But the Hebrew
poetry is not therefore unrhythmical. The absence of
metre is compensated for by a rhythm of sense.

To understand this we must go back to the" first prin
ciples of aesthetic expression. Alternate rise and fall of
energy is a fundamental law of human life, which in all its
forms is regulated by the necessity for repose after excite-

1 Hos. ii. 21, 22.

28

434 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

ment, and by the development of new impulse to action
during the period of repose. The application of this
principle to speech, and especially to impassioned speech,
is sufficiently obvious. The wave of emotion rising in the
soul sympathetically stirs the physical system and lends
strength to the voice. In this swell of impassioned
utterance the emotion itself is momentarily exhausted,
and an interval of rest or lowered utterance supervenes
till the tide of passion again rises and produces a fresh
wave of physical utterance. Such unregulated alterna
tion of excitement and depression does not in itself possess
any aesthetic and rhythmical character. The agony of
Philoctetes, the passion of an angry woman, the violent
weeping of a child, are all illustrations of the rise and fall
of utterance under strong emotion ; yet they are the very
opposite of poetical, for they are not harmonious, but
spasmodic. Poetic expression, as we have seen, implies
indeed that the whole soul of the poet is full of some
absorbing feeling or impression, but it implies also that he
so controls and shapes his passion by utterance that he
shall appear master over his matter, not mastered by it ;
not sullenly and silently curbing his emotion, but mould
ing it and giving to it a harmonious completeness in which
he and others can take delight. " In the very torrent,
tempest, and (as we may say) whirlwind of his passion, he
must acquire a temperance that may give it smoothness."
And so while the poetic enthusiasm must find its expres
sion in elevated utterance, that elevation is not allowed to
sweep on till checked by sheer exhaustion, but is regulated
by the intellect. For just as an emotion can be momen
tarily checked by the mere passionate effort of physical
utterance, so an effort of will concentrated on the work of
giving intelligent expression to poetic feeling produces a
similar effect. But so soon as this intelligent utterance is
reached, the emotional element again rises and calls for
new expression, and thus originates a harmonious pulsa
tion of emotion and thought, feeling and utterance, which

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 435

is not spasmodic, but rhythmical. And as a fit of un
controlled passion ends when physical exhaustion is
absolute, so the poetic enthusiasm gradually subsides
when the successive waves of utterance have completely
transmuted the poet's feeling into an intelligible form in
which he can rest and find his inspiration fully embodied.

Rhythm, then, in the sense in which it is an essential
quality of poetry, is the measured rise and fall of feeling
and utterance, in which the poet's effort to become fully
master of his poetic inspiration finds harmonious expres
sion, and the external rhythm of sound is properly sub
ordinate to the rhythmic pulsation of thought. Where
the rhythm of thought is perfect, no prosodic rules are
necessary to produce a corresponding harmony of sound,
for the words employed naturally group themselves in
balanced members, in which the undulations of the
thought are represented to the ear. But as poetry be
comes more artificial there arises a tendency not to trust
wholly to the rhythm of thought, but to make the rhythm
of sound and words a special study. The balance of two
lines or metrical members is artificially marked by allitera
tion or by rhyme ; or, again, an exact balance of time
is introduced by counting the syllables or the morce of
the lines ; or, finally, a complete prosodic system carries
equilibrium of parts through all the details of the rise and
fall of the voice within each line. By these refinements
in artistic execution the external rhythm of sound has
become so independent, that we are apt to forget its
essential subordination to rhythmic flow of thought.
But it is still the latter kind of rhythm which distinguishes
the true poet from the mere versifier.

We are able from these considerations to understand
what was so great a puzzle to Lowth and other early
writers — that Hebrew poetry is truly rhythmic without
possessing any laws of metre. The whole form of a
Hebrew poem is directly dependent on the harmonious
undulation of the thought, line answering to line, not in a

436 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

mere equilibrium of sound, but in a balance or parallelism
of sense. As rhythm necessarily implies the correspond
ence of at least two parallel parts, the ultimate unit of
Hebrew poetry is a verse consisting of two members
embodying two answering thoughts. And as correspond
ence of thought brings with it similarity of expression, the
two members of the verse will be similar in length and
possess a certain irregular harmony of accent, which can
be felt though not subjected to rule, and which, having
its source altogether in the intrinsic structure of the
thought, can be reproduced with tolerable accuracy, even
in a good prose translation.

The simplest form of Hebrew rhythm shaped on these
principles is that which from the time of Lowth has been
called the " synonymous parallelism " of a distich :

There the wicked cease from troubling |

And the weary be at rest. ||

There the prisoners are at rest together, |

They hear not the taskmaster's voice. ||

Small and great are there the same ; |

And the servant is free from his master. || :

In this simplest form the rhythm is so clearly cut that it
can hardly be lost even by translators who, like those of
our English Version, were not conscious of the principle
involved. Effects of this kind therefore are almost
always well rendered, and are quite familiar to the English
reader. A more complicated figure, however, which has
not always been so successfully reproduced, arises where
each member of the verse becomes so long that it again
falls by a ccesura into two subdivisions ^

How sitteth she lonely | the populous city |

Is she become a widow | who was great among the nations |

A princess among provinces | is become a vassal.2

It is not, of course, necessary that the balance of parts
should take the form of the repetition of similar thoughts.
A relation of antithesis is equally rhythmical, and gives
what Lowth calls " antithetic parallelism " :

1 Jobiii. 17-19. 2 Lam- i- I-

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 437

Mighty bowmen are cast down, |

And the stumbling gird on strength ; |

The full hire themselves for bread, |

And the hungry keep holiday. ||

Yea, the barren hath born seven, |

And she that hath many sons is withered. || l

To the two classes of rhythm which we have hitherto
exemplified the names devised by Lowth are not in
appropriate ; but it is unfortunate that so narrow a word
as parallelism has been so universally adopted to express
all possible varieties of effect that arise under the general
law, that wave after wave of feeling gives rise to wave
answering wave in utterance. Lowth' s third species of
parallelism, which he calls synthetic, is not parallelism
at all, and very inadequately groups together a great
variety of rhythmical effects which have very little in
common with one another, beyond the general principle
that the verse falls into two or more members, each of
which represents a unity of thought, feeling, or fancy,
while the transition from member to member takes place
in harmonious pulsation of movement and rest. One or
two examples will sufficiently illustrate the various ways
in which this is realised :

My voice 1 cry unto Jehovah, |

And he hath heard me from his holy mountain ; ||

I laid me down and slept, |

I awoke, for Jehovah sustains me. || 2

We are apt to overlook the truly rhythmic character of
such passages, because to our habits of abstract thought
the logical union of protasis and apodosis in a complete
sentence is predominant. But to the concrete way of
thinking of the Semite, a conditional proposition consists
of two distinct mental pictures, one of which flows over
into the other. Where we would say, " If he pulls down,
it cannot be rebuilt," Job says, " Lo ! he pulls down, and
it cannot be rebuilt " (xii. 14). Remembering this habit
of thought, we shall recognise an impressive rhythm in

1 i Sam. ii. 5. 2 Ps. iii.

438 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

many passages which at first sight seem pure prose.
Thus—

The Lord on thy right hand j

Smites down kings in the day of his wrath, |j l

is not one picture, but two distinct images, with a rapid
movement from the rest of the first to the activity of the
second.

An extremely effective example is the tristich, Ps. xlv. 6,
which is entirely lost in our version :

Thine arrows are sharp —

People fall under thee —

In the heart of the enemies of the king.

In the first line the warrior bends his bow, in the second his
chariot sweeps over the fallen, and then when he has
passed by it is seen that his shafts are truly planted in the
heart of the slain.

The rhythmic figures of Hebrew are not confined to the
distich and tristich. Verses occur which have four, five,
or even six members, and in these again the variety of
form got by choosing which pairs of members shall corre
spond is as great as the variety of rhyme possible in a
modern stanza of four or six lines. But to exemplify the
rich multiplicity of such effects would fill pages, and would
necessarily lead on to a not less intricate and much
disputed theme — the arrangement of groups of verses in
larger unities or strophes. Instead of entering on these
details, let us take simply one stanza from Ps. xlviii., which
will illustrate the majestic effect that can be produced
by the Hebrew rhythm of sense, even when recast in a very
inadequate translation :

God in her palaces | hath proved himself a stronghold.

For lo the kings assembled | they sprang forth together : —

When they saw, straightway they marvelled | were panic-stricken, and

fled;
Tremor seized them there | pangs like a woman in travail.

1 Ps. ex. 5.

1877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 439

With storm wind from the east | thou breakest ships of Tarshish.

As we heard | so have we seen,

In the city of Jehovah of hosts | in the city of our God.

God upholds her for ever.1

Among the various species of composition in which the
genius of Hebrew poetry finds expression, the first place is
unquestionably due to the lyric. As poetry is the earliest
form of literature, so the lyric is the earliest species of
poetry, and must long retain its pre-eminence in a nation
endued with the mental characteristics that we have
found in the Hebrews. For to define lyric poetry, it is
not enough to say that it is intended to be sung to the
accompaniment of instrumental music. In true art the
music is ruled by the thought, and the lyric is sung because
its contents naturally demand such an expression. It is
noteworthy that in primitive times lyric recitation was
accompanied not only by music but by dancing.2 In
truth, musical utterance is to ordinary language just what
the dance is to that bodily action which is the natural
accompaniment of all speech in nations that have not
been schooled to suppress such demonstrations. Both
are forms of the eager rhythmical expression which is
the appropriate vehicle for absorbing personal thought.
Speech rises into song, and gesture becomes a dance in
giving utterance to an idea which springs fresh from the
fountain of the soul with a force that bends every faculty
of body as well as mind to do service in setting it forth.

1 Very interesting analogies to the characteristic sense-rhythm of the
Old Testament are presented by recently discovered specimens of
ancient Assyrian poetry, of which English translations by Mr. Talbot
appeared in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology, vol. ii.,
and which have been again examined by Schrader, ' Die Hollenfahrt
der Istar,' etc. (Giessen, 1874). Professor Schrader goes so far as to
build on these analogies the theory that the parallelismus membrorum
is not an original product of the Semitic races, but a form of rhythm
adopted from Accadian poetry by those branches of the Semitic stem
which came in contact with the early Turanian culture of Babylonia.
See his paper, " Semitismus und Babylonismus," in the Jahrbb. fur Prot.
Theologie, 1875, p. 121, ff.

2 Exod. xv. 20 ; i Sam. xviii. 6 ; Ps. cxlix. 3. Comp. Iliad, xviii.
494. 572 ; Odyssey, i. 152.

440 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [iS74-

Thus Ewald seems right in contrasting the lyric as the
poetry of nature with those later forms of composition in
which the poet, instead of simply expressing what he sees
or feels at the moment, sets before him a definite end, and
enlists his fancy and poetic enthusiasm in its service. It
is probable that in all nations the later forms of poetry
were gradually developed from a lyrical germ, and in the
poetry of Israel this process can still be distinctly traced.
The Hebrew was so eminently a man of strong emotion
and impulse, always deeply stirred by what was present
and personal, that every interest of life was a ready source
of song. The extraordinary opinion of Keil, that in
Israel secular poetry was never able to thrive beside the
sacred muse, finds its refutation on almost every page of
the prophets and the historical books. Of the strains in
which national victories were extolled or national calamity
bewailed, we still possess examples in the song of Deborah,1
in the ironical Mashal of Num. xxi. 27 seq., and in the elegy
of David over Saul and Jonathan.2 The sacred record
could not, of course, present us with examples of the
riotous " song of the drunkard," 3 or of the lays in which
the prosperous wicked expressed their careless happiness ; 4
but the darkest side of primitive life is still pictured in the
savage " sword song " in which Lamech exults in the
prowess of his irresistible weapon :

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ;

Ye wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech.

I slay a man if he wound me,

A young man for a stroke !

For Cain's vengeance is sevenfold,

But Lamech's seventy and seven.5

The gleeful carols of the vintage,6 and the bridal songs
that celebrated the virgins of Israel,7 have sunk into
oblivion ; but the lay of the well, already quoted, still

1 Judges v. 2 2 Sam. i. 3 Ps. bcix. 12. 4 Job xxi. n, 12.

5 The point of the conclusion lies in the contrast between Cain, the
club-bearing man, and Lamech, whose family had reached the secret of
forging weapons in metal.

6 Isa. xvi. 10. 7 Ps. Ixxviii. 63, A.V. margin.

i87;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 441

preserves the memory of a graceful poetry of everyday
life. Nor is the plaintive pathos of the funeral dirge
forgotten, when besides the great elegy on the slain of
Gilboa we can still read the simpler but not less touching
words in which David mourned at the grave of Abner :

Did Abner die a felon's death ?

Thy hands unbound, thy feet not set in fetters.

As falls a man before villains, thou didst fall.

An interesting but obscure indication of the varied
developments of the lyric genius of the Hebrews is pre
served in the titles of several of the Psalms. The longer
of these titles frequently designate the melody to which
the Psalm was sung by quoting two or three words of a
familiar song ; and our fancy is easily tempted to con
jecture by such broken hints as " Hind of the morning
glow," or, " Dumb dove from afar."

The first step from pure lyric to a more artificial poetry
is seen in those compositions which, while exceeding the
limits of a simple song, attain a larger compass, not by
any intricate organisation or plan, but by the simple
agglomeration of lyrical parts. The same deficiency in
power to overrule the emotion of the moment, which
deprives Hebrew art of plastic pictorial quality, prevents
all really objective groupings of the parts of a lengthy
poem. The longest of the Psalms has no plan whatever,
but simply a unity of sentiment. The Book of Lamenta
tions is a similar series of lyrical utterances all on one key ;
and alike in this book and in Ps. cxix. the absence of an
inner principle of structure is compensated by the adop
tion of the purely external scheme of an alphabetic
acrostic. The long historical Psalms have a less artificial
structure, but in these also the unity is generally to be
sought, not in any epical grouping of events, but in an
underlying current of sentiment or praise which often
bursts out in a periodical refrain. Of this tendency
Ps. cxxxvi. is an extreme but by no means an exceptional
instance.

442 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

From this kind of composition the transition is easy to
properly didactic poetry. All deep personal feeling, such
as a noble and earnest lyric expresses, stands in close
relation to some universal truth. What the poet experi
ences in his own heart must have a validity going beyond
himself ; and in particular the religious conviction that
animates the Hebrew hymns has as its necessary source
and counterpart a body of general religious truth.
The worthless modern subjectivity which separates the
religious sentiment from all persuasion of objective
realities is remote from the spirit of the Old Testament ;
but, conversely, the general truths of the religion of Israel
(except in so far as they are embodied in ritual, precept,
or historic narrative) are always spoken to the heart as
well as to the intellect. The Israelite never thought of
framing a system of theology. His interest in religious
truth was not scientific but personal. The deepest truths
of the dispensation were not reasoned out scientifically,
but felt as personal necessities. The doctrine of immor
tality, for example, to which Socrates attained by argument
on the constitution of man's nature, is grasped by the
Israelite in personal assurance that death itself cannot part
him from God his Redeemer. Truths reached by such a
process — by the reasoning of the heart, not of the head
— necessarily assume a poetic form, which insensibly
merges into pure lyric. If the hymns of the Old Testa
ment express a personal emotion embodying and resting
on a general truth, the corresponding didactic poetry ex
presses general truth in the tone of personal enthusiastic
conviction.

Of the truths so reached and set forth two things will
be plain.

i. They must be sententious or aphoristic, rather than
parts of a system. This follows with psychological
necessity from the self -con tainedness of personal emotion.
A truth grasped by feeling stands out as a unity free from
all merely rational connection. The mind of him who has

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 443

laid hold of it is ready to rest on it for its own sake. It has
come to him as the direct satisfaction of a personal need,
and so it is impossible that he should value it only as a
link in the chain of reasoned truth. Such an acquisition
has little to do with scientific system, but naturally
assumes a poetic form, which shall set it forth as a complete
thought, with a life and beauty of its own.

2. Again, such truths are sure to be practical. They
centre in human life and in real human interests. As they
were born of personal feeling, they continue to move in
the personal sphere. And being personal, they must bear
directly on the practical concerns of life. The passionate
subjectivity of the Hebrew has nothing in common with
dreamy, unpractical sentiment alism. The keen eye for
business, the shrewdness degenerating into cunning,
which is the most universally recognised characteristic
of the modern Jew, is not a new feature of the nation.
Exactly the same qualities appear in Jacob, whose
character is as typical on this side of it as in its deep
emotional and religious susceptibility. The practical
qualities which so many centuries of isolation and oppres
sion have forced into ignoble channels appear in the Old
Testament in more worthy activity. No people has so
toughly maintained national existence and prosperity in
a narrow country, preserved in fertility only by unceasing
industry, and exposed on all sides to the ambition of great
empires. Surely indubitable proof that the Hebrews
were endowed with a strong instinct of self-preservation,
with a tenacity of purpose and a power of practical insight
capable of coping with the most unfavourable circum
stances. It is in truth the preponderance of the emotional
rather than of the rational part of the nature that makes
a strong personality, able to conquer all difficulties.
Intellectual acuteness is often associated with a restless
ness of purpose that can attain nothing great. A really
deep subjectivity is not to be stirred by slight breezes of
sentiment. It moves swiftly and fiercely, casting itself

444 LECTURES AND ESSAYS , [1874-

with all fervour into the present impulse ; but, just
because the current at each moment flows so strong, it is
not easily turned aside. It binds circumstances to itself,
and sweeps away hindrances in the whirl of its own
passion. And this claim to rule over outward things that
belongs to every deep impetuous personality, this assertion
of man's -kingship over nature which the Old Testament
so often makes, brings with it the power to command, the
gift of grasping and cunningly using all that can be made
subservient to the ruling purpose. If it fail, it will do
so rather by stubbornness and stiffness of neck than by
infirmity of purpose. When the nation decayed in the
time of the Judges, or before the Captivity, or again before
its last fall, it did so because individuality stiffened into
individualism : because each man's feeling of personal
worth asserted itself in refusal to acknowledge the rights
of others and the supreme sovereignty of Jehovah. It
required strong family affections, national enthusiasm,
and above all religious faith, to bind natures so strong and
fierce ; and where these bonds were lacking, the Hebrews
fell asunder into wild and reckless self-will, into a life that
spurned all weaker constraint.

A race which, however little it estimated intellectual
supremacy over nature, was so eager for practical sov
ereignty, must necessarily have a keen sense for all the
precepts of practical wisdom. A wisdom to walk by, an
insight into all the secrets of human life, and of nature
so far as it can be made to serve man ; such was the only
philosophy of the Hebrews. Precepts of wisdom for the
ruling of daily life, guided by a sense of the supreme
reality of Israel's relation to Jehovah, and expressed not
in scientific system, but in that sententious, often epi
grammatic form in which such truth suggests itself to the
tact and experience of a practical nature, and with a
breath of poetic fervour that points to an origin in the
heart as much as in the head — this is the peculiar wisdom
of the Hebrews, the Chokma of the Old Testament.

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 445

The original germ of the Chokma is the individual
proverb so familiar to us in the rich collections which make
up the greater part of the Book of Proverbs.

In this kind of composition the poetic character of the
thought is asserted by strict rhythmic arrangement. The
proverb is almost invariably a single distich, but a distich
in which the sharp antithesis of opposing members or the
brilliant parallelism of moral truth and natural image gives
the complete effect of symmetrical artistic finish. How
perfectly, for example, is the right relation of the three
generations of which a happy Hebrew family is always
supposed to consist laid down in the simple distich—

The crown of the aged are children's children.
And the glory of children are their fathers.1

The antithetic rhythm of the proverbs is so sharp cut
that it loses little by translation, and our English Version
supplies every reader with abundant material for estimat
ing this side of the Hebrew Chokma. Not quite so
successful is the treatment of the proverbs which rest on a
similitude between the spheres of nature and of human
life. The most pointed of these similes simply give the
natural image in the first member of the distich, and add
the moral parallel without any such syntactical connection
as the "As . . . so is " of the English Version. This
form is peculiarly appropriate as a vehicle for the caustic
humour in which the Hebrews delight :

A ring of gold in a swine's snout — -
A fair woman without sense.3

From the simple isolated proverb the didactic poetry
of the Hebrews rises in several directions to more elaborate
efforts, but without showing any considerable disposition
to pass from the aphoristic form to theoretical and
systematic philosophy.

The brief simile is expanded into a parable like those

1 Prov. xvii. 6.

2 The nose-ring of the East corresponds to our earrings.
3 Prov. xi. 22.

446 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

of Jotham or of Nathan,1 and ceases to shape itself in
rhythmic form. But even the poetical Chokma in the
narrower sense of the word sometimes teaches by means
of a moral tale, as in the picture of the foolish young man
of Prov. vii. 6, ff .

In later times this kind of composition was greatly
developed, and the apocryphal books of Tobit and Judith
are full-blown moral romances. Nor is it so plain as many
suppose that something of the same kind is not to be found
within the canonical books. That the Book of Job stands
in the canon is scarcely a proof that the narrative is
historical ; and many modern critics are disposed to
regard the Book of Jonah as a didactic parable, written
partly to enforce the truth that God regards the lives and
accepts the repentance of Gentiles as well as Jews, and
partly to explain that the forgiving mercy of God does
not discredit the Divine commission of prophets of
judgment.

In another class of compositions the sarcastic humour
which we have seen to animate some of the Hebrew
proverbs finds more elaborate expression. The humour
of the Old Testament is always grim and caustic, as we
see in the life of Samson ; in the answer of the Danites to
Micah ; 2 in the parable of Jehoash ; 3 or in the merciless
ridicule with which the Book of Isaiah covers the idolaters.4
Hence arises a peculiar species of mocking satire, which is
so intimately connected with the proverb, that the same
name (Mashal) covers both. Of this Mashal the prophetic
books contain several examples, of which the most
powerful is the elegy on the king of Babylon in Isa. xiv.
But the most ancient and peculiar of these poems is the
mocking song in which the children of Israel invite the
Amorites to return and fortify the demolished fastness of
their king, Sihon, exalting that monarch's prowess against
Moab, in order to bring into stronger light the valour of

1 Judges ix. ; 2 Sam. xii. 2 Ibid, xviii. 22-26.

3 2 Kings xiv. 9. 4 Isa. xli. 6, 7 ; xliv. 12 seq.

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 447

Israel, beneath which the invincible Amorite and his
stronghold had for ever fallen :

Come into Heshbon,

Let Sihon's city be built and made fast !

For fire went out from Heshbon,

Flame from the fortress of Sihon.

It licked up the city of Moab,

The lords of the heights of the Arnon.

Woe unto thee, Moab ! thou art fallen, people of Chernosh.

He [Chemosh] gave up his sons to flight, his daughters into captivity

To the king of the Amorites, Sihon.

But we burned them out — fallen is Heshbon — to Dibon,

We wasted them even to Nophah,

With fire to Medeba. z

Apart from the special developments of the parable
and the satiric Mashal, the proverbial wisdom of Israel
readily passed from individual aphorisms to larger didactic
compositions, like that which occupies the first nine
chapters of the Book of Proverbs. We have here a long
exhortation or exhortations in praise of wisdom and virtue,
with no very strict plan or closely reasoned course of
argument, and with characteristics both of thought and
form which mark just such a relation to the single proverb
as that which, in Hebrew architecture, subsists between
the temple of Solomon and the simple cell. In both cases
the larger whole is formed by agglomeration of smaller
parts rather than by internal development ; and the
great chambers of the sanctuary, surrounded by rows of
smaller cells, are an apt type of almost all the longer
literary compositions of the Hebrews. Even the late
Book of Ecclesiastes does not present an essentially
different construction.

The fact that no trace of epic poetry appears in the
Hebrew literature has sometimes been explained simply
from the lack of objectivity and the deficiency in the gift

1 In one or two obscure or corrupt words the translation offered
above follows the conjectures of Ewald. But the general sense is quite
clear. Sihon had defeated Moab, but Israel overthrew Sihon. The
Moabites are the sons and daughters of their god Chemosh.

448 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

of organic composition which characterises the race. But
these qualities would have modified the form of the
Semitic epos, rather than have rendered such composition
altogether impossible.1 Nor is it just, with other critics,
to regard the Pentateuch as a Hebrew epic. For though
the epic poet selects a subject at least quasi-historical, his
method of treatment is the very opposite of history.
Elevating its heroes above the measure of common
humanity, and interweaving mythological with historical
characters, the epos seeks to separate the past from the
present by the widest possible gap, and so to gain an
isolated territory, in which it may freely use every creative
license. But even those critics who form a low estimate
of the accuracy of the earlier history of Israel will not deny
that the origin of the Hebrew race is told in such a way as
to emphasise the historical connection of the present with
the past. The religious pragmatism of the historical
books, so fully recognising the special providence which
gives unity to the whole story of Israel's fortunes from
the days of the Exodus, or even of the covenant with
Abraham, is directly opposed to the epical point of view.
The Israelite had no desire to isolate a part of past time,
adorning it with nobler motives and higher life than
subsequent ages could show. The God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob is the everlasting God of Israel, as near
to His people now as in former days. And so more
accurate criticism has proved that the Pentateuch is not
an isolated epos, but that in composition, as well as in
subject, all the leading historical books of the Old Testa
ment possess a certain unity, stamped upon them by

1 It is true that not only the Hebrews, but the Arameans and Arabs
are without an epic poetry. But this kind of composition was known
at least to the Semites of Babylonia and Assyria, who perhaps derived it,
along with the mythological lore so necessary to the epic poet, from
their mysterious Turanian predecessors. The epical legend of the
descent of Istar into Hades, discovered in the library of Sardanapalus,
may be read in English in the first volume of Records of the Past. The
exploits of Lubara and the epic of Izdubar, discovered by the late
George Smith, are given in his Chaldean Account of Genesis.

is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 449

repeated recensions, in which the works of various authors
were united into one whole. In a word, the whole principle
of the Old Testament religion, with its doctrine of the
covenant of Jehovah with His people, was equally un
favourable to the rise of epic poetry, and favourable to the
growth of continuous historic literature. It seems more
than probable, however, that the earliest efforts of the
Hebrews to provide a literary record of past deeds took
very much the form of collections of ballads and lyrics of
historic reference. The existing historical books quote at
least two such collections, The Book of the Wars of Jehovah,
and The Book of the Upright.1

In our rapid survey of the various species of Hebrew
poetry we have not yet found a fit place for the Song of
Solomon and the Book of Job. The latter book no doubt
is, in the largest sense of the word, a didactic poem, and
competent critics are still found who can see in the former
nothing but an anthology of erotic lyrics. But it seems
quite wrong to maintain that it is a mere play of subjective
fancy which finds in the Song of Solomon a unity of lyric
dialogue and action ; and the critics who propose to deny,
a priori, the capacity of the Hebrew muse for dramatic
arts, must yet admit that the grand construction of the
Book of" Job displays an objectivity of conception and
a developed artistic power which is much nearer to the
genius of the dramatist than to the ordinary type of the
Chokma. The history of the Greek stage teaches us
how readily the higher developments of lyric poetry lead
over to the drama ; and, indeed, wherever the lyric ceases
to be sung by the poet alone, and is given over to be
executed by a trained choir, it is inevitable that the first
step towards dramatic performance shall be taken by the
introduction of lyrical dialogue between two parts of the
singers. But the choral performance of trained musicians
was certainly familiar to the Israelites from the time of
Samuel downwards ; and in several Psalms, especially in

1 Num. xxi. 14 ; Jos. x. 13 ; 2 Sam. i. 18.

29

450 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874-

the twenty-fourth, which appears to have been sung as
the ark was led by David into Zion, it is impossible,
without undue scepticism, to ignore a peculiar adaptation
for performance by answering choirs. From the anti-
phonal psalms, or from rhetorical passages of so dramatic
a structure as the sixth chapter of Micah, there is but a
short step to such lyrical dialogue as the Song of Solomon
presents ; and though this dialogue falls far short of the
complexity of the Occidental drama, it seems reasonable
to acknowledge the dramatic complexion of a poem in
which the author does not simply give scope to his own
feelings, but represents two or more characters side by
side. Nor is it likely, in an age when all lyric was com
posed to be sung, not read, that the same singer took the
part both of Solomon and the Shulamite. If we may not
suppose a stage with all its accessories, it is yet probable
that the victory of pure affection over the seductions of a
corrupt court and the temptations of a king was sung in
the villages of the northern kingdom by several answering
voices. Or if we hesitate to accept the attractive theory
which sees in Solomon, not the hero, but the baffled
tempter of a drama of pure pastoral love, the demand for
more unambiguous proof of the power of the Hebrew
poets to discriminate and depict in action various types of
character is simply answered by the Book of Job, in which
every interlocutor not merely upholds a distinct argument,
but does so in consistent development of a distinct person
ality. If we have difficulty in classing this masterpiece
of the Hebrew muse under the category of dramatic
poetry, our difficulty has its source not in the absence
of dramatic motives in the book, but in the marvellous
many-sidedness with which this quintessence of the
religious poetry of Israel combines the varied excellences
of every species of Hebrew art. The study of the Book of
Job is the study of the whole spirit of the Old Testament,
so far as that spirit can be expressed in pure poetry without
introduction of the peculiar principles of prophecy. The

i877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 451

problem of God's providence, which is the theme of the
poem, is the central problem of the pre-Christian economy;
and in the discussion of this grand enigma are absorbed
all the treasures of wisdom and fancy, all the splendour of
language and conception, that adorn the culmination of
Hebrew art. It would be vain to attempt in a few lines,
at the close of a paper already too long, to give even the
most inadequate idea of so inexhaustible and withal so
difficult a book ; but our brief sketch of Hebrew poetry
may fitly close when we can point to this noble and
imperishable monument of the world-wide significance of
the inspired genius of Israel.

V

ARABIAN STUDIES

(1880-1881)

I. ANIMAL TRIBES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. (July 1880.)
II. A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ. (1881.)

I

ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES AMONG
THE ARABS AND IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

THE importance of animal and plant worship for the study
of primitive society has been put beyond doubt by the
researches of Mr. J. F. M'Lennan, of which only the first
outlines have been made public in his essay on " The
Worship of Plants and Animals " in the Fortnightly
Review for 1869, 1870. In his essay it is laid down as a
working hypothesis that the ancient nations came through
the Totem stage, or in other words that they came through
that peculiar kind of Fetichism which has its typical
representation among the aborigines of America and
Australia. The totem or kobong of these peoples is an
animal or plant or heavenly body appropriated as a fetich
to all persons of a certain stock. These persons believe
that they are descended from the totem, who is reverenced
as a protector and friend, and whose name they bear. The
line of descent is through the mother, who gives her totem
to her children. Persons of the same totem are not
allowed to marry. WThere the system exists in this typical
form every group necessarily contains persons of different
totems. But a change in the system of kinship along with
other circumstances may operate, as is seen in observed
instances, to produce homogeneous groups inheriting a
single totem and totem name from father to son. Again
the totem god of a dominant stock may come to command
the worship of all the tribes in a group, the other tribal

455

456 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

gods forming subordinate deities, as in Peru. Thus little
by little the features of the original system may be
obliterated till the connection between the animal gods
and tribes bearing an animal name is no longer apparent.
In adopting as a legitimate hypothesis the opinion that the
ancient nations have passed through the totem stage,
Mr. M'Lennan is partly guided by his previous and
independent conclusion as to the universal prevalence, at
one stage of society, of exogamy and kinship through
females ; but quite apart from this he has brought
evidence to prove that from the earliest times in very
many cases and in the most widely separated races
" animals were worshipped by tribes of men who were
named after them and believed to be of their breed."
This conclusion, taken along with the prevalence of the
totem system in modern savage races over a very large
part of the globe, opens up a line of inquiry of the first
importance, and suggests points of view for the study of
ancient religions which may not perhaps prove to be so
universally applicable as Mr. M'Lennan's hypothesis
assumes, but which at any rate claim to be taken into
account and put to the test whenever we have to deal with
a religion that acknowledges animal gods.

I am not aware that any recent writer on Semitic
religions has directed his attention to the questions
suggested by Mr. M'Lennan's speculations. There is a
controversy whether Semitic heathenism is purely astral
or whether it also includes telluric elements ; but the
latest advocate of the astral theory, Count Baudissin,
pursues his argument without any consciousness of the
important connection that subsists between plant or
animal worship and totem tribes. Nay, he puts the
animal worship of the Semites altogether aside, with the
remark that " nothing is yet known of a sacred character
being ascribed to living animals among the Semites, and
when the gods are figured in animal form or accompanied
by animals, the animal can be more or less clearly made

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 457

out to be a pictorial representation of the attributes of the
celestial gods" (Studien, ii. 146). Now it will of course
be admitted that among the Semites animal gods were
largely identified with astral powers. But this by no
means proves that from the first the animal was a mere
emblem of heavenly attributes. On the contrary the
religion of Peru affords an unambiguous example of the
elevation of totem gods to the skies, on the theory that
" there was not any beast or bird upon the earth whose
shape or image did not shine in the heavens." l Indeed
when we look at the matter closely we find no complete
proof that all Semitic animal gods were identified with
planets or constellations even in the later developments
of their worship. What is the astral equivalent of the
fly-god Beelzebub ? or of Dagon, whose character as a
fish-god Baudissin himself accepts as probable ? Or if we
turn to Arabia, what proof can be offered beyond vague
analogy that the god worshipped by the Dhu-'l-kala',
under the name and figure of an eagle (Nasr), was a form
of the sun-god, or that a planetary character belonged to
Yaghuth (the helper), whose image was that of a lion, or
Ya'uq (the hinderer), who was figured as a horse.2 It
would tax the ingenuity of the boldest symbolist to reduce
to its astral elements the Jewish worship of all manner of
creeping things and unclean beasts (Ezek. viii. 10, Deut. iv.
17, 18, contrasted with ver. 19). And it is strange that
Baudissin^ should deny that living animals had sanctity
among the Semites, when he has occasion in the very same

1 Fortnightly Review, 1870, p. 212.

2 These three appear in the Qor'an as idols of the antediluvians,
which no doubt expresses a consciousness that they are gods of the
earliest antiquity. Nasr is mentioned in the Talmud, Tr. 'Aboda Zara.
The other two antediluvian idols Wadd and Suwa' had the shape of a
man and woman respectively. The explanation of the latter name
by Osiander (Z.D.M.G. vii. 496) rests on an appellative sense given
to the word in the Qamus which is not acknowledged in the Lexicons
of Lane and Bistany. — I have not access to Wiistenfeld's genealogical
tables, but learn from Osiander that in one tribe (the Qoraysh) we find
as proper names " Servant of Yaghuth " and " Servant of the Lion,"
which presumably refer to the same cultus.

458 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

essay to speak of the sacred fish so common in Syrian
sanctuaries, and of the horses of the sun among the Jews
(2 Kings xxiii. n, comp. Micah i. 13).

Now if the astral character of Semitic animal gods is in
many cases no more than a theory, and a theory which at
best is not conclusive as to the original character of these
deities, it becomes a matter of great importance to ask if
we can find any traces of a belief that the animal gods
were progenitors of tribes which bore their name. In that
case the theory that the animal forms are mere pictures of
divine attributes must fall to the ground ; for a tribe
would not claim to be the offspring of an attribute, but of
the god himself under his proper name.

The probability that among the Semites as in other
parts of the ancient world, and notably in Egypt, animal
worship and animal tribes were associated in the way
which Mr. M'Lennan's theory would lead us to expect,
was suggested to me a considerable time ago by the exam
ination of data in the Old Testament, which contains our
earliest literary record of the forms of Semitic Polytheism.
The Old Testament facts seemed to point to Arabia as the
part of the Semitic field most likely to throw further light
on the matter. In Aberdeen unfortunately I have no
access to the Arabic texts most indispensable for complete
inquiry into the subject. But even the scanty helps
which I have at hand have yielded so many relevant facts,
and throw so much light on the data contained in the
Bible, that I venture to put forth a provisional argument,
which I hope will be found to possess sufficient consistency
to justify publication, and to invite the co-operation of
scholars in further research. My results are remarkably
confirmatory of Mr. M'Lennan's theory — a theory framed
almost absolutely without reference to the Semitic races,
but which nevertheless will be found to explain the true
connection of a great number of facts which have hitherto
remained unexplained and almost unobserved. It is not
often that an historical speculation receives such notable

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 459

experimental verification, and in this connection I hope
that the facts may receive the attention of students of
early society who are not Semitic scholars.

I start from Arabia, because the facts referring to that
country belong to a more primitive state of society than
existed in Israel at the time when the Old Testament was
written, and because in Arabia before Islam we find a
condition of pure polytheism, and not as in Israel the
struggle between spiritual religion and the relics of an
cestral heathenism (Josh. xxiv. 2).

Moreover, the first point is to show the existence of
animal tribes or families, and here it is convenient to begin
with the Arabs, among whom a very great number of such
tribes is found. The following examples are gathered
from the Lubbu-l-lubab (Suyuti's dictionary of gentile
names), and make no pretence to completeness.

A sad, lion ; "a number of tribes." Aws, wolf ; " a
tribe of the Ancar," or Defenders. Badan, ibex ; "a
tribe (^Lj) of the Kalb and others." Thalaba, she-fox ;
" name of tribes." Gardd, locusts ; "a sub-tribe of the
Tamim." Bent Ifamdma, sons of the dove ; "a sub-tribe
of the Azd." Thawr, bull ; "a sub-tribe of Hamdan
and of 'Abd Manah." Gahsh, colt of an ass ; "a sub-
tribe of the Arabs." Hida , kite ; "a sub- tribe of
Murad." Dhi'b, wolf ; " son of 'Amr, a sub-tribe of the
Azd." Dubey'a, little hyaena ; " son of Qays, a sub-tribe
of Bekr bin Wail, and Dubey'a bin Rabi'a bin Nizar bin
Ma'add." Dabba, lizard ; " son of Udd bin Tabicha bin
Ilyas bin Modar " (eponym of the Beni Dabba or sons
of the Lizard). Also the ancestral name of families in
Qoreysh and Hudheyl. Dibdb, lizards (pi.) ; " son of
'Amir bin £a'c,a'a." Dabdb, a subdivision of the Beni
Harith and of the Qoreysh, is perhaps the same thing.
'Oqdb, eagle ; "a sub-tribe of Hadramaut." 'Am,
she-goat ; "son of Wa'il, brother of Bekr." The tribe
of the 'Anaza, whose eponym is represented as the uncle
of Wa'il are probably not different in origin. Ghordb,

460 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

raven ; " a sub-tribe of the Fazara." Qonfudh, hedge
hog ; " a sub-tribe of Suleym." Kalb, dog ; " a sub-
tribe of Qoda'a and of the Beni Leyth and of Bagila."
Kuleyb, whelp ; " a sub-tribe of Tamim and of Choza'a
and of Nacha'." Kildb, dogs (pi.). Two eponyms of
this name are given. The Beni Kilab, who are Qaysites,
are quite distinct from the Kalb, who are Yemenites.
Leyth, lion. Two eponyms of this name. The Beni
Leyth have been mentioned under Kalb. Yarbti,
jerboa ; "a sub-tribe of the Beni Tamim and of the
Hawazin and of the Dhubyan." Namir, panther ; "a
sub-tribe of Rabi'a bin Nizar, and of the Azd and of
Qo<Ja'a." Anmdr, panthers ; " sub-tribes of the Arabs."
Anmar son of Nizar is the eponym of a Ma'addite tribe
that settled in Yemen. Anmar is also a son of Saba', the
eponym of the Sabaeans (Tabari, i. p. 225, 1. 9). To the
same source belong, no doubt, Numara, " a subdivision of
the Lachm and others," and Nomeyr (little panther)
among the Qaysites.

In these and numerous other cases the animal name is
undisguised. In some cases we find a termination an,
which is noteworthy, because the same thing occurs in
Hebrew gentilicia. Thus : —

Zabydn (from ( ^ gazelle), " a subdivision of the Azd" ;

Waldn (from Jc5 ibex), " a subdivision of Murad " ;
Labwdn (from s^J lioness), "a subdivision of Ma'afir."
Finally I add what seems to be the case of a mongrel.

S 0

The Arabs have many fables of the Sim' (^A**) , a beast

begotten by the hyaena on the wolf, and so we find

Sim', "a subdivision of the Defenders (the Medinites)."
Here we seem also to have the form in an, for Sam' an is a
subdivision of the Tamim. ^^ and ^Jl**^ are a similar

V"" T^ o

pair to ^i?ptp arid ^rhsotp. The identity of psoip and -**,
was suggested long ago by Hitzig.

The origin of all these names is referred in the genea-

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 461

logical system of the Arabs to an ancestor who bore the
tribal or gentile name. Thus the Kalb or dog- tribe
consists of the Beni Kalb — sons of Kalb (the dog), who is
in turn son of Wabra (the female rock-badger), son of
Thalaba (the she-fox), great-great-grandson of Qoda'a,
grandson of Saba', the Sheba of Scripture. A single
member of the tribe is Kalbi — a Kalbite — Caninus.

Such is the system. But can we assign to it historical
value ? Is the ancestral dog a real personage or a mere
personification of a dog ancestor, the eponym of a tribe
which at one time really thought, like the North American
Indians, that it was sprung of an animal stock ? That
the genealogies of the Arabs, which exhibit the relations
of the various tribes and trace them all back to Adam,
have been artificially systematised and completed by
borrowing from Hebrew and other sources, no one doubts.
The shortness of the historical memory of the Arabs has
been clearly proved by Noldeke (Uber die Amalekiter,
p. 25 seq.), who shows that in Mohammed's time they no
longer had any trustworthy traditions of great nations
who flourished after the time of Christ. That in many
cases gentile unity is ascribed to mere confederations is
shown by Sprenger in his Geographic Arabiens. And a
conclusive argument against the genealogical system is
that it is built on the patriarchal theory. Every nation
and every tribe must have an ancestor of the same name
from whom kinship is reckoned exclusively in the male
line. We know that this system of kinship is not primi
tive. According to Strabo (xvi. 4) the Arabs practised
Tibetan polyandry (the brothers having one wife in
common), of which the levirate customs alluded to in the
Qor'an (iv. 23) are a relic.1 The succession from brother
to brother, which Strabo mentions as part of the system
of marriage and kinship, has left traces even in the Arab

1 The connection of the levirate with polyandry of the Tibetan type
has been shown by Mr. M'Lennan, Primitive Marriage, chap. viii.
Some of the details of Strabo's account will be noticed below.

462 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

accounts of their ancestors. Such a law of marriage and
succession paves the way for transition to the patriarchal
system, but could not give a genealogical table of the form
which to the later Arabs seemed natural and necessary.
We may take it as certain, then, that in remoter times,
and these not so very remote after all, gentile groups were
not named from an historical ancestor.

Another very distinct proof to the same effect is
afforded by tribal names which have a plural form.
Anmar, Kilab, Pibab, Panthers, Dogs, Lizards are
originally the names of tribes, each member of which
would call himself a Panther, a Dog, a Lizard. The idea
of an ancestor bearing the plural name is plainly artificial,
invented in the interests of a system.

Additional light is thrown on the true meaning of these
tribal names, when we compare them with others in which
the name is identical with that of a deity. Here again, in
default of a better source, I turn to Suyuti.

Shams, sun ; "a sub- tribe of the Azd. The sun was a
great Arabian god." Hildl, crescent moon ; "a tribe
of Hawazin and of Namir." 1 Beni Bedr, sons of the
full moon ; " a sub-tribe of Hagr bin Dhu Ro'ayn."
Ghanm, " a sub-tribe of the Azd, of the Defenders, and of
the Beni Asad." It is also the name of a god, Osiander,
p. 500. 'Awf, " son of Sa'd, a sub-tribe Qays 'Aylan."
It is also the name of a god according to the 'Obab and the
Qamus (Lane, s.v. ^J^, Osiander, p. 501). Nihm, " a
sub-tribe of Hamdan." Nuhm, " a sub-tribe of Bagila."
Nuham, " a sub-tribe of 'Amir ben £a'ca'a." All these
plainly belong to the god Nuhm worshipped by the
Mozeyna (Bistany, s.v. ^>).

Such tribal names as these stand on exactly the same
footing with the animal names discussed above. The
sons of the Moon and the sons of the Panther doubtless
stood in similar relation to the beings from which they

1 On the moon as a god see Osiander, Z.D.M.G. vii. 466, 469, and
Dimishqi in Chwolsohn's Ssabier, ii. 404.

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 463

took their respective names. There is nothing surprising
in the conception that the worshippers are sons of their
god. We find the same thing in the Old Testament.
The Moabites are called sons and daughters of Kemosh in
the old lay, Num. xxi. 29, and even Malachi calls a
heathen woman the daughter of a strange god (ii. n).
In the later stages of thought this was no doubt a meta
phor. But in its origin, as we see it in these tribal names,
the idea must have been that the people were of the stock
of their god. When a man called himself Shamsi, "solar,"
he meant that he really was of the stock of the sun. The
existence of such a way of speaking, and even of cases
in which a man is directly named Sun, Moon, Venus,
Canopus, or the like (Osiander, p. 466), points to another
and presumably an earlier habit of religious thought than
that which gave rise to the names 'Abd esh-Shams, 'Abd
Nuhm, " servant of the Sun," " of Nuhm," and the like.
Thus it would seem that even in the worship of the
heavenly beings a way of thinking analogous to totemism
preceded the distant and awful veneration of a remote
and inaccessible heavenly splendour which Baudissin and
others take as the type of Semitic religion.

The analogies now brought forward make it tolerably
certain that the animal names of stocks have a religious
significance. I shall now produce an instance in which
the ideas god, animal, ancestor, are all brought into
connection. The great tribe or group of tribes which bore
the name of Qaysites or Beni Qays trace their genealogy
to Qays 'Aylan son of Modar. Now Qays is a god
(Osiander, p. 500), but what is 'Aylan ? According
to Abulfeda (Hist. Ante-Islam., ed. Fleischer, p. 194, n),
"it is said that Qays was son of 'Aylan son of Modar.
Others say that ' Aylan was his horse, others that he was his
dog. Others again say that 'Aylan was the brother of
Ilyas (and therefore son of Modar), and that his name
(^1 as distinct from surname) was En-nas bin Modar,
and that Qays was his son." Here plainly we have

464 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

confusion among the genealogists because of an animal
link in the ancestry at the very point where the ancestor
is a god. The twofold animal interpretation of 'Avian
must belong to two Qaysite tribes, one equine, the other
canine. Similar to this are the traditions which make the
goddess Naila daughter of the Wolf or the Cock (Dozy,
Israelieten te Mekka, p. 197) ; and the name Rabi'atu-'l-
faras, " Rabi'a of the horse," one of the four sons of Nizar.
I imagine that many other facts of a similar kind lie
behind the genealogies in their present form. Thus
Kinda, the ancestor of the great dynasty of the Kindites,
is said to have had as his real name (not his ^^) Thawr,
the Bull (Abulf. H.A.-I. p. 188 ; Ibn Chaldun, Bulaq
ed. ii. 257). Of the mythical character of this ancestor
of a line of seventy kings, ending in the time of the
prophet, there can be no question (Sprenger, Geog. Ar.
P. 225).

Now it is true that we have very little direct informa
tion connecting these facts with animal worship, and it is
also true that the greater part of the information which
we do possess about Arabic polytheism points rather to
the worship of stones, trees, and heavenly bodies. But in
estimating the significance of this circumstance we must
remember the nature of the records. It will be admitted
that no generalisation as to the true nature of Arabian
polytheism can be based on the scanty records of the
Greeks and Romans. Herodotus (iv. 7) thought that the
Arabs had but two gods, because as it appears he knew
the formula of an oath in which, as in the well-known
oath by al-Lat and al-'Uzza, or by 'Awol and Su'eyr, two
deities were mentioned. If we may believe Arrian, the
Greeks under Alexander had learned nothing more.
Theophrastus (Hist. PL ix. 4) and Pliny (xii. 14, 19,
Sabin, Assabin = ^^Jl) had heard of the sun, the great
god of the incense-bearing country, because his worship
was connected with the important traffic in incense.
Such is the character of the foreign records, and those

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 465

of the Arabs after Mohammed are little better. The
followers of Islam were anxious to forget all but the mere
surface facts of the old religion. Even of the great gods
who had important temples of their own, and were
worshipped by wide districts, we hardly know anything
beyond a few names. Yet in the temple of Mecca alone—
the great Pantheon of the heathen Arabs — there stood
no fewer than 360 idols, and every head of a house had
his own family gods (Pococke, Spec. ed. White, p. 112).
About these minor gods we are absolutely without
information. Yet it is among these and not among the
great gods which had more than a mere tribal character
that we could expect to find confirmation of our present
argument. It will have been observed that the animal
names in our list generally belong to sub-tribes. That
this is precisely what is to be expected on theoretical
considerations will be shown presently. But of the
deities corresponding to such divisions there is no record.
We cannot therefore expect to hear of animal gods except
in the cases where they have gained a circle of worshippers
wider than their own stock, and have therefore laid aside
the totem character. And in such a case a god is not
unlikely to lose his proper animal form and become a
man-god retaining, perhaps, some animal symbol or
connection as in the case of Qays 'Aylan. In the last
period of Arab heathenism most of the great gods seem
actually to have assumed human form, and even those
which retained an animal shape, like the lion Yaghuth,
and the horse Ya'uq, were no longer the property of a
single stock. They had acquired a larger importance
and wars were waged for the possession of their images
(Sprenger, p. 285). This is not inconsistent with totem
origin, but at such a stage of development we can no
longer expect to find direct evidence of the more primitive
totem worship. Yet of the few animal figures that are on
our records almost all actually appear as stock names.
Yaghuth corresponds to the Asad ; the eagle-god Nasr to

30

466 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

the 'Oqab, or more exactly to the race of Nasr, kings of
Hira. The dove in the Kaba (Pococke, p. 100) answers
to the Beni Hamama ; l the golden gazelles in the same
temple to the Zabyan. But that animal worship had an
extension far beyond these narrow limits is not ambigu
ously hinted in the Qor'an (vi. 38), where it is taught with
an obvious polemical intention that there is no manner
of beast or fowl but is a people subject to God's decree
and returning to Him. Conversely the doctrine of Genii
in animal form is clearly the relic of an old mythology, in
which, as we are told in Qor. vi. 100, the Genii were made
partners with God.2

There is still one important point to be noticed in
comparing the ancient Arabs with the races who possess
the totem system. A main characteristic of that system
in its earliest forms is that totem kinship is reckoned
through the mother. The connection between such a
system of kinship and the practice of polyandry and
exogamy has been worked out by Mr. M'Lennan. It is
now to be asked whether these practices and the conse
quent system of kinship originally prevailed among the
Arabs. We have seen that the animal names given in the
tribal genealogies generally belong to sub-tribes, and that
the same animal name often belongs to sub-tribes of
different groups. This is just what would come about on
a system of exogamy where the totem name was trans
mitted through the mother. In fact exactly the same

1 The totem character of the dove among the Semites is confirmed
by the fact that the Syrians would not eat it. Xen. Anab. i. 4, 9 ;
Lucian, Dea Syria, cap. 14; En-Nedim in Chwolsohn's Ssabier, ii. 10.
Compare the Hebrew name ruv.

2 Nothing perhaps can be gathered for our argument from the
sacred character acquired in certain circumstances by camels and other

animals ; Qor. v. 102 ; Lane, s.w. * .j^l, '^, *xjL, ; yet from the

' \* ' '

first of these words a stock name is formed. Of sacred animals another
trace is preserved (if the record can be trusted) in Arrian, vii. 20. But
Strabo, xvi. 3, has a somewhat different account and omits the sacred
animals.

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 467

thing is found in North America. There is a Bear tribe
among the Hurons and also among the Iroquois, and so
on. That these sub-tribes were originally reckoned in
the female line seems probable from the name applied
to them — ^J^u, batn, that is, venter. The Arabic lexico
graphers give an explanation of the term which is plainly
absurd (see Lane, s.v. v _ ^). It seems naturally to

denote the offspring of one mother. But apart from this
conjecture there is evidence to show that exogamy and
female kinship must at one time have prevailed among
the Arabs. Both exogamy and polyandry are the natural
outcome of an extensive practice of female infanticide.1
But among the ancient Arabs this practice was so approved
that an old proverb declares that the destruction of
female children is a virtuous action. Again there is every
reason to believe that the form of capture in marriage
ceremonies is a relic of exogamy and marriage by actual
capture. Of this form the marriage ceremony of the
Bedouins is one of the most familiar examples. The facts
as stated by Burckhardt have already been used by
Mr. M'Lennan (App. to Prim. Mar.}. Then as to poly
andry itself, the evidence of Strabo, who had excellent
information as to Arabia, has been already cited. He
speaks of polyandry, but in a form where kinship is not
through the mother only. Though the father is unknown,
the blood of the father is certain. Moixos 8' «rrtv 6 «£
It is clear, however, that this comparatively

1 M'Lennan, Prim. Mar. chap. viii.

2 This doctrine has curious connections. Strabo says /j-tyvwrai 5£
Kal wTpdai. This is to be connected with Qor'an, iv. 26, where marriage
with a father's wife is forbidden, " except what is passed." He who

married his father's wife was called dayzan ( . J_A^), Abulf. Hist. A. -I.
p. 180, and the verb in the sixth form means " to demand one's father's
wife, whom the pagan Arabs thought they should inherit along with
the property" (Zamachshari in the App. to Golius and Freyt. s.v.).
This custom explains several things in the Old Testament ; the conduct
of Reuben (Gen. xxxv. 22), the anger of Ishbosheth at Abner (2 Sam.
iii. 7), an act which seemed to encroach on his birthright. So Absalom

468 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

artificial system is not primitive. It must have been
preceded by polyandry of the cruder form which Mr.
M'Lennan names Nair polyandry, and which admits of
no kinship but through the mother. And of this there
are sufficient traces. Ammianus (xiv. 4) speaks of the
temporary marriages of the Saracens (in which, by the way,
we find the circumstance that the bride brings the tent).
Dozy (Musulmans d'Esp. i. 36) cites from Al-Bac.ri a case
under the Caliph Omar L, in which an old Arab gave
partnership in his wife to a younger man as hire for his
services as a shepherd. Both men swore their ignorance
that this was illegal. A curious passage from Yakut is
cited by Sprenger (Geog. p. 97) with reference to the
town of Mirbat. " Die Einwohner sind Araber von der
Art der alten Araber. Sie sind gute Leute aber haben
abstossende, unvertragliche Manieren und ein starkes
Nationalgefuhl. Merkwiirdig ist in ihnen die Abwesen-
heit der Eifersucht, eine Folge der Landessitte. Ihre
Frauen gehen namlich jede Nacht ausserhalb die Stadt,
setzen sich zu fremden Mannern, unterhalten sich und
spielen mit ihnen einen grossen Theil der Nacht. Der
Ehemann, Bruder, Sohn und Neffe geht voriiber, ohne
Notiz zu nehmen und unterhalt sich mit einer andern."
Quite similar is the account given by Ibn Batuta, in the
fourteenth century, of the custom of Nazwa, the capital
of 'Oman. " Their women multiply corruption without
causing jealousy or offence." " Under the formal pro-
served himself heir to David (2 Sam. xvi. 22) without exciting any
horror among the Israelites. And Adonijah on asking the hand of
Abishag claimed the elder brother's inheritance (i Kings ii. 22) or at
least one part of it (vv. 15, 16). Another point in Strabo's statement
may be readily misunderstood. " All are " — that is, are called —
" brothers of all." They were not brothers in our sense of the word,
and so in the anecdote that follows, the fact that the wife is called the
sister of her fifteen husbands only proves that she was of the same 7^05.
In other words, marriage was now endogamous. Yet marriage with a
half-sister (not uterine) occurs in the history of the Arab kings of Hira
(Noldeke's transl. of Tabari, p. 133) — a well-known consequence of the
system of female kinship.

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 469

tection of the Sultan, any woman who pleases may indulge
her corrupt desires, and neither her father nor her nearest
relative can interfere " (vol. ii. pp. 228, 230). Thus many
centuries after Mohammed the ancient polyandry was
still practically kept up, at least in Southern Arabia, in
a grosser form than that described by Strabo. Such a
custom necessarily produces a system of female kinship,
and we may therefore presume that in the modern
marriages between brother and sister in Mirbat, for which
Knobel on Lev. xviii. 6 cites the testimony of Seetzen, the
relationship was through the father as in the case cited
in last footnote. There is abundance of other evidence
for the system of female kinship in occasional hints in the
older Arabic histories and legends, and it is indifferent for
our purpose whether the record is in each case historically
accurate or not. The queen of Sheba is the oldest evidence
in point, for queens do not belong to the patriarchal system.
The famous queen Zabba is a similar case. There are
several instances in the old history where the succession
is said to have gone to a sister's son (Abulf. H.A.-I. p. 118,
1. 1, p. 122, 1. 6) . With this agrees the widespread practice
of distinguishing princes by their mother's names (Nold.
ut supra, p. 170). The same usage is found in tribal
names. The Beni Chindif are expressly said to bear the
name of their mother — " not mentioning their father
Ilyas " (Abulf. p. 196, 1. 4). In the same way the Beni
Mozeyna are named from their mother (ib. 1. 6) ; a custom
which necessarily implies that children belong to the
mother ; and her people were found in Zebid as late as the
time of Ibn Batuta (ii. p. 167 seq.). The women readily
consented to marry strangers, who might depart when
they pleased, but the children remained with the mother,
whom no inducement could draw from her native place.
These facts appear sufficient to prove that Arabia did pass
through a stage in which family relations and the marriage
law satisfied the conditions of the totem system, and in
which on that system the distribution of animal sub- tribes

470 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

(buturi) among different groups, as we find it in the tribal
genealogies, is perfectly natural.

At this point I must for the present close the argu
ment as regards Arabia. It could doubtless be greatly
strengthened by a full survey of the native literature, for
which I hope to find opportunity at another time. But
meantime we have found unambiguous parallels to every
leading feature of the totem system, and have been able
to reason back to a state of matters which the purely
astral theory as put by Baudissin is utterly incompetent
to explain. Of course I do not affirm that Arabic religion
is merely a development of totemism — least of all in the
South, where Babylonian and perhaps other foreign
influences may have operated to no small extent. Nor
does totemism exhaust the religious ideas even of the
typically totem nations. The North American Indians
had their Master of Life, a being who protected the totem
system, and whom they identified with a lofty rock in
Lake Superior (Fort. Rev., 1869, p. 416). Here too the
Arabic analogy is most striking : Fuls, the idol of the
Tayyites, was a naked rock on Mt. Aga' (Osiander, ut
supra, p. 501 ; comp. Dozy, p. 201). 1

I now pass on to the Biblical data. The southern and
eastern frontiers of Canaan were inhabited by tribes
which had affinities both to Israel and to the Arabs. The
Midianites and Amalekites were Arabs. So were the
Qenites and Rechabites notwithstanding their alliance
with Israel. And in the tribe of Judah large nomadic

1 In the further development of this subject it would be desirable
to keep in view the great division of the Arabs into Ma'addites and
Yemenites. The same animal tribes are found in both of these divisions,
but the evidence as to the law of kinship is mainly from the latter group.
I may here note that according to Agatharchides (Geog. Gv. Min. ed.
Miiller, i. 153) the totem system was also found on the other side of the
Erythrean among the Troglodytes, /xera r&v T£KVUV rd$ -yi/j/at/cas £%oi;cri
KOLVO.S ?rAV ,tuas rrjs rvpawov (this is confirmed by Strabo, xvi. 4, from
Artemidorus) . Further : " They give the name of parent to no human
being, but to the bull and the cow, the ram and the ewe, because from
them they have their daily nourishment."

ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 471

elements were incorporated, notably the Hezronites in
their two great branches of Caleb (Kalibbites) and
Jerahmeel. On this topic I simply refer to Wellhausen,
De Gentibus et Familiis Judaeis (Gottingen, 1870). In
this district, then, we may fairly expect analogies to what
we have found in Arabia. In fact the Kalibbites are at
once recognisable as a dog-tribe, and 'Oreb and Ze'eb, the
princes of Midian, are the Raven and the Wolf, heads, no
doubt, of tribes of the same name. In fact Caleb ( = kalib

o^- ^

= kalb, by the rule that J*j and J*j are interchangeable,

.X

Lumsden, AY. Gr. 348), 'Oreb, and Ze'eb are identical
with the Arabic tribal names Kalb, Ghorab, and Dhi'b.

The most interesting case, however, is that of the
Horites (Troglodytes), the aboriginal inhabitants of Seir,
who were subsequently incorporated with the Edomites
(Gen. xxxvi. ; comp. Deut. ii. 12). The tribal system
of the Horites is exhibited in the usual genealogical form,
and the names given seem to show that they were a
Semitic race. That the list in Gen. xxxvi. 20 seq. really
is an account of tribal or local divisions, and not a literal
genealogy, is obvious. rp^N is not a title of office
(E.V. duke), for the list of Edomite D^D^N in ver. 40 seq.
is " according to clans and places," and includes names
that are certainly local, Elah = Elath, Mibzar (fortress)
= Bozrah. And the Horite list also contains local names,
'Uz, 'Ebal, and perhaps others. A large proportion,
too, of the names ends in an or am, equivalent to the
Hebrew termination in on, which in many cases seems to
be a tribal or local rather than an individual name-form.1
But the Horite genealogy, like the Arabic lists, is full
of animal names. This fact has been already observed
by Dillmann, who had no theory to guide him ; and I
have only to repeat his etymologies, most of which are
indeed obvious.

1 On this form see Wellhausen, ut supra, p. 37. I cannot, however,
think that he is right in making the termination a mere nunation.

472 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

o

Shobal (Slim), young lion (diminutive from JA£, like
Win, hf\$, Ew. Lehrb. § 167).

Zibeon (ptfjs), hycena.

'Anah (rns), wild ass (&U).

Dishon and Dishan ()mn, pm^) a sort of antelope,
Deut. xiv. 5.

Thus of the " sons " of Seir, five have animal names
(Dishon and Dishan counting as two) . Again, the sons of
Zibeon are 'Anah (rm) and Aiyah (rn$). The former is
again the Wild ass, the latter the Kite. Dishon appears
again as a son of 'Anah. Of the sons of Dishan one is
the local name 'Uz ; the other is Aran (pj*), that is, the

Ibex (Syr. (Ljjj^). 'Anah, however, claims further notice.
'Anah is represented in three ways : (i) as daughter of
Zibeon, verses 2 and 14, Hivite in ver. 2 being admittedly
an old error of the text for Horite ; (2) as son of Se ir and
brother of Zibeon, ver. 20 ; (3) as son of Zibeon, ver. 24.
These various statements show that we have here no true
genealogy, but a systematisation of tribal facts. And one
form shows that the Horite animal tribes were conceived
as introduced among the Edomites in the female line, as
we should expect to be the case. The variations in the
position of Dishon or Dishan are similarly instructive.
They show that the Antelope stock was divided over the
nation in a way that puzzled the genealogist, whose tribal
divisions take a local shape.

I cannot, of course, prove the worship of the animals
who gave names to Horite tribes. But the following point
seems worth notice. We know that one Arabic god was
worshipped in Edom, namely Kofe, Joseph. Arch. xv. 7, 9,
whom Tuch and Lagarde have identified with the rainbow
god Quzafr. I think I detect two other Arabian gods
among the names in Gen. xxxvi. At ver. 14 we have a
supplementary list of descendants of 'Anah through union
with 'Esau. One is an animal, Jaalam (3^) that is,

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 473

stripping off the terminational am, nbir, the Ibex (comp.
the Kenite name Jael). Another is aw, Je'ush, which
is the phonetical equivalent of the Arabic lion-god Ya-
ghuth " the protector." Again, in ver. 27, 'Akan (]%$),
son of Ezer, is generally identified with the " sons of
Ja'akan," Deut. x. 6, and i Chron. i. 42 actually gives
]^s\ Here again, if we reject the termination, we seem
to have a form equivalent to Yauq.

These Horite or Edomite names form a bridge for us to
pass over to the Children of Israel, or at least to the tribe
of Judah. That many Midianite and Edomite tribal
names are found among the Hezronites (that is the
originally nomadic inhabitants of D^sri, nomad encamp
ments) is a point to which Wellhausen has called attention
(lit supra, p. 38 seq.). I will not reproduce his list, but
content myself with pointing out that some of these names

o

are animal. 'Epher, *IDI>, Fec£a/3= A£, fawn, or calf of

the wild cow, is Midianite, Judean, and Manassite (Gen. xxv.
4 ; i Chron. iv. 17 ; v. 24) ; and of the names already
noticed we have in Judah Shobal and |*i« which differs
from Aran only in pointing. The fact that thirteen
Edomite and two Midianite names appear identically or
with slight variations among the Hezronites can hardly
be explained except on the principles of totem kinship.

But indeed we find the same distribution of stock-
names over a wide surface in the various tribes and
districts of Israel itself. Here we must always bear in
mind that our records are drawn from a time of compara
tively high civilization and settled agricultural life. Thus
we shall often have to deal with names of towns rather
than of tribes or clans. But the townsmen formed a sort
of clan, as is plain from the way in which towns figure in
the genealogies. Thus we find 'Ophrah (rriDs), fawn,
as a town in Benjamin, a town in Manasseh, and again
in the Judean genealogies (i Chron. iv. 14) as a son of

474 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

Meonothai (a name identical with the Arabic Meunim,
2 Chron. xxvi. 7). These names are at bottom one with
the 'Epher series, and also with 'Ephron (fnpi? with the
now familiar termination), which is the name of a town
and mountain, and in Benjamin of the Hittite noble who
gave his name to the district of Machpelah. Again, from
IDJ, a species of antelope or wild goat, we have the Arabic
race of Zimran, Gen. xxv. 2 ; the kings of Zimri, Jer. xxv.
25 ; a Judean name Zimri, i Chron. ii. 6 ; a Benjamite
of the same name, i Chron. viii. 36 ; and a Simeonite
prince, the head of a clan, Num. xxv. 14 (also i Kings
xvi. 9). From Sis, calf, we have 'Eglon, a king of Moab,
and 'Eglon, a Judean town. There is, it may be observed,

c/

an Arabic tribal name identical with this . Now it

is generally supposed that animal names of places such as
these, to which may be added Aiyalon (pS^N stag-town),
Shaalbim (fox- town; compare the Arabic tribe Thalaba),
and so forth, are named " a cervorum vitulorum cet.
copia " (Gesenius). But such a theory is intrinsically
unnatural. It squares very ill with the fact that the
local names are constantly found also as tribal names or
names of kings and other individuals ; with the association
in which we find, for example, side by side, an Amorite
town of foxes and another of stags (Judges i. 35) ; and
with the continuous line of connection that binds these
names with the Arabic phenomena. A good instance is
that of localities with a panther name. We have in the
tribe of Gad, Nimrah, Beth-Nimrah or Beth-Nimrin,
and near it the waters of Nimrim. Now Noldeke,
Z.D.M.G. xxix. p. 437, cites four places with similar panther
names in the Hauran, and remarks that the numerous
names of places from the root IDD probably denote the
panther-like spotted or striped look of the ground. This
conjecture shows the inadequacy of the usual method of
explanation. When we find in Arabia a Namir (Sprenger,
Geog. p. 273) in the possession of the Beni Wabish, a

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 475

branch of the Qodaa, we at once connect the name with
Namir, a sub-tribe of the Qoda a. Is it not far more prob
able that the same thing applies to the panther localities
east of the Jordan, and that these two have their name
from the panther stock which, as we have seen, turns up
in so many forms in Arabia ? Perhaps we can even
identify the totem deity of the name ; for Jacob of
Sarug in the text published by Martin, Z.D.M.G. xxix. p.
no, 1. 52, speaks of )f <**f ^ " the son of panthers " as a
false deity of Harran.

To sum up all these scattered observations, we may say
that the Arabian analogies are not merely general, but
amount to the fact that the same names which appear as
totem tribes in Arabia reach through Edom, Midian, and
Moab into the land of Canaan. In Canaan they appear
with a local distribution which at once becomes an
intelligible unity if we can assume that at an early date
the totem system prevailed there also. But to make this
account of the names conform to the character of a
legitimate hypothesis we must have reason to believe that
Canaan, like Arabia, once acknowledged the system of
kinship which alone can produce the necessary distribution
of a totem name. Here we must distinguish between the
people of Israel and the earlier inhabitants. Many of the
animal names are no doubt of Canaanite origin, as we saw
from Judges i. 35. Now we have the express statement
of Lev. xviii. that the Egyptians and Canaanites did form
such marriages as by the Hebrew law are incestuous.1
In Egypt this was certainly connected with the totem
system. It can hardly have been otherwise in Canaan,
for variations from the Hebrew law could not well follow
any other principle than that of female kinship. For this
we have express evidence in the case of the Phoenicians,
among whom, according to Ach. Tatius cited by Selden,
De Jure Nat. et Gent. v. n, marriage with a sister not

1 The expression nny nW means to contract a marriage, as appears
froni the usage witnessed to by the Arabic proverb in Freyt. i. 234.

476 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

uterine was allowed. We are therefore justified in con
cluding that the conditions of the totem system did exist
in Canaan ; and if so, the animal names and their distribu
tion are sufficient indication that the system itself prevailed
there as in Arabia. In one case indeed the facts are
unmistakable. The Shechemites, or at least the aristo
cracy of the town (Judges ix. 28), called themselves sons
of Hamor, the he-ass, Gen. xxxiii. 19. But how was it
among the Israelites ? The laws of incest, as given in
Lev. xviii. xx., belong to a part of the Levitical legislation
which presents considerable difficulty to critics, but at
any rate they are probably later than the code of Deuter
onomy, where the only prohibition of the kind is directed
against marriage with one's father's wife, xxiii. i. The
precept in Deuteronomy abolishes the practice which we
found subsisting in heathen Arabia, by which the son
inherited his father's wife as well as his estate.1 To this
offence Ezekiel xxii. n adds two others, connection with
a daughter-in-law and with a half-sister the daughter of
one's father. All three forms of incest, which are put on
one line with adultery and connection with a menstruous
woman, were, according to the prophet, practised in
Jerusalem. And the history seems to show that all three
were once recognised customs. The taking of a father's
wife was not altogether obsolete in the time of David
(see above). Judah's children by Tamar became the
heads of his house, being clearly (as Hupfeld long ago
showed) the fruit of a legitimate extension of the levirate
law. Judah indeed admits that Tamar's conduct was
perfectly correct (Gen. xxxviii. 26) ; the rule is the
Arab rule in Strabo, yuoixos 6 l£ a\\ov ytvovs. Finally, a
marriage with a sister not uterine was contracted by
Abraham, and can hardly have been forbidden in the
time of David (2 Sam. xiii. 13; compare ver. 16 LXX.).

1 In the " framework " of the Deuteronomic code we have three
prohibitions: father's wife (xxvii. 20), sister uterine or germane (ver.
22), and wife's mother (ver. 23).

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 477

The last case points to female kinship, the other two are
relics of Tibetan or British polyandry. Of such polyandry
we have express testimony in the eighth century B.C.,
Amos ii. 7.1 The practices condemned by the higher
moral sense of the prophets were, it appears, remnants of
old usage. Along with these facts we find other evidences
of an ancient system of kinship through women. The
presents by which Rebekah was purchased for Isaac went
to her mother and her brother (Gen. xxiv. 53). Laban
claims his daughters' children as his own (Gen. xxxi. 43).
The duty of blood revenge appears to lie on the kin by the
mother's side (Judges viii. 19). 2 Even for exogamy and
marriage by capture there is a law in Deut. xxi. 10 seq.,
and a notable case in Judges xxi. The narrative in
Judges seems to be tolerably recent (see Wellhausen,
Gesch. i. 246). This trait therefore is presumably the
specialisation of an old custom illustrated by a narrative,
as in the book of Ruth. The usage itself is faintly re
flected in the custom described in Mishna Tdanith, cap.
viii., where we learn that on a festal occasion the daughters
of Jerusalem used to go out and in a dance invite the
young men to choose a spouse. With such facts before us,
and with the certainty that the early Hebrews had no
scruple in intermarrying with the surrounding nations,
it appears only natural that the totem tribes of their
neighbours should reappear in Israel, as we have seen to
be the case at all events in Judah.

In this connection a peculiar interest attaches to the
singular history of the tribe of Simeon. Already in the
blessing of Jacob Simeon is coupled with Levi as a tribe
scattered in Israel. There were Simeonites in the south

1 Tac. Hist. v. 5, projectissima ad libidinem gens, alienarum concubitu
abstinent ; inter se nihil illicitum. Was there historical basis for this
accusation, or does Tacitus perhaps confound the Jews with their
Phoenician or Arabian neighbours ?

2 As it is well known that the law of blood revenge is often extended
to the violation of women, Gen. xxxiv. and 2 Sam. xiii. are also cases in
point.

478 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [l88o-

of Judah, but they do not appear there as a complete and
independent local tribe, and according to Gen. xlix. there
must also have been branches of the tribe elsewhere.
Now in the name Simeon (p*D»), the on is a mere ter
mination, and the gentilicium may as well be Shimei
(^DE) as ^otp. This is clear from i Chron. iv. 27,
where Shimei is just the Judean Simeonites collectively.
But there is also a family Shimei in Levi, viz. Shimei ben
Gershon (Exod. vi. 17) . We find the same name in Reuben
i Chron. v. 4; and the Benjamite Shimei who plays so
important a figure in David's history was a great chieftain.
The connection of Simeon and Benjamin is also expressed
in the genealogy which makes Jamin and Saul sons of
Simeon (i Chron. iv. 24). This dispersion of the tribe
of Simeon is most easily understood on the principles of
exogamy and female kinship. While the men of other
stocks separated themselves out and formed a political
and local unity by conquest of territory, as strong totem
tribes sometimes have been known to do among the
Indians (Fort. Rev. 1869, p. 413), Simeon may be supposed
to have remained in the position of a divided stock, having
representatives through the female line in different local
groups. Hence as the old system of kinship was displaced,
Simeon lost all importance and ultimately dropped from
the list of tribes. In confirmation of this view we may
remember that the Danites in like manner did not estab
lish themselves as a local tribe till a comparatively late
date (Judges xviii. i ; cf. Gen. xlix. I6).1

I might add a number of minor confirmations to this
theory by comparing proper names of different tribes or
of Israel and foreign countries. For example, the Edomite
or rather Horite names Bilhan and Jeush reappear in
Benjamin (i Chron. vii. io).2 Achbor (the Mouse) is an

1 Hitzig's identification of Simeon and Sim', which we have found as
an Arabic tribe, has been noticed above.

2 The former name is perhaps equivalent to the Arabic Bahila
(Sprenger, p. 212). May we also compare Bilhah ?

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 479

Edomite name — apparently a stock-name (Gen. xxxvi. 38),
as the jerboa and another mouse-name j^ (Abulf.

H.A.-I. 196, 10) are among the Arabs. The same name
occurs in Judah. But such isolated facts do not really
carry us further. What we want to complete the argu
ment is twofold : (i) direct evidence to connect the animal
names with animal worship, and (2) proof that men with
a common animal stock-name in different tribes or nations
recognised their unity of stock. Our most definite in
formation as to animal worship in Israel is derived from
Ezek. viii. 10, n. There we find seventy of the elders of
Israel — that is, the heads of houses — worshipping in a
chamber which had on its walls the figures of all manner
of unclean creeping things and quadrupeds, even all the
idols of the house of Israel. In some sense, then, there was
a national worship, not a foreign innovation but appar
ently an old superstition, on which the people had fallen
back, because, as they said, Jehovah would not attend to
them. It appears also that, though the prophet in vision
saw the seventy elders together, the actual practice was
that each elder had his own chamber of imagery (ver. 12).
We have here in short an account of gentile or family
idolatry, in which the head of each house acted as priest.
And the family images which are the object of the cult
are those of unclean reptiles and quadrupeds (norm tool
j>p&). The last point is important. The word ppm is in
the Levitical law the technical term for a creature that
must not be used as food. That such prohibitions are
associated with the totem system of animal worship is
well known. The totem is not eaten by men of its stock,
or else is eaten sacramental] y on special occasions, while
conversely to eat the totem of an enemy is a laudable
exploit. Thus in the fact that the animals worshipped
were unclean in the Levitical sense we gain an additional
argument that the worship was of the totem type. And
finally, to clinch the whole matter, we find that among the

480 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

worshippers Ezekiel recognised Jaazaniah the son of
Shaphan — that is of the rock badger (E.V. coney), which
is one of the unclean quadrupeds (Deut. xiv. 7 ; Lev. xi. 5),
and must therefore have been figured on the wall as his
particular stock-god and animal ancestor. It so happens
that the totem character of the shaphan, or, as the Arabs
call him, the wabr, is certified by a quite independent piece
of testimony. The Arabs of the Sinai peninsula to this
day refuse to eat the flesh of the wabr, whom they call
"man's brother," and suppose to be a human being
transformed. Were a man to break this rule he could
never look on his father and mother again (Palmer,
Desert of the Exodus, i. p. 98). The close connection
which we have found to exist between Arab tribes and
southern Judah, and the identity of so many of the stock-
names among the two, give this fact a direct significance.1
The connection between animal worship and forbidden
foods is a point which calls for special investigation.
In the case of the Hebrews it is well known that no one
has yet given a satisfactory theory of the distinction
between clean and unclean animals. But it can hardly
be doubted that there is a conscious antithesis to heathen
ceremonies in which unclean animals were sacrificed and
eaten as a religious act, as indeed is expressly affirmed
for the swine, the mouse, and the }>£&> or unclean creatures
generally, in Isa. Ixvi. 17 ; Ixv. 4 ; Ixvi. 3. The mouse
has already come before us as a proper name both in Judah
and in Edom, and we have it as a stock-name in Arabia,

1 There can be little doubt that the wabr was once an Arabic totem ,
though the proverb " more contemptible than a wabr " (Fr. i. p. 493)
is not respectful. Wabra (the female rock-badger) occurs in the
mythical genealogies of the Qoda'ites (Abulf. p. 182) and also as the
name of a place (Sprenger, p. 39). The people of Wabar are in the
mythical history (Tabari, i. 214, Ibn Athir ed. Bulaq, i. 31) sons of
Amim son of Lud, who dwelt in sandy Arabia and were destroyed by
God or transformed into one-legged monsters. In spite of the a in the
first syllable, this seems to be the plural of wabr and to be a variation
of the Bedawi legend. It is curious that the Arabs call the wabr the
sheep of the children of Israel.

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 481

while its religious importance is also indicated in i Sam.
vi. 4. The swine, too, occurs in the Old Testament as a
proper name, I Chron. xxiv. 15 ; Neh. x. 21. Whether
the heathen sacrifices of such animals were sacramental in
stocks of the same name or triumphant in hostile stocks,
I do not pretend to decide. But the former is more likely,
because then the Mosaic prohibition would fit into the old
custom (which forbids the ordinary use of the totem as
food), while at the same time expressing protest against
the occasional sacramental use. And in the case of the
Syrian sacred fish we know that habitual abstinence from
this kind of food did go with its use in religious ritual.1

Our analysis of the testimony of Ezekiel appears to
prove that superstition of the totem kind had still a hold
on the Israelites in the last years of the independence
of the kingdom of Judah. I shall now attempt to show
that in the time of David the kinship of animal stocks was
still acknowledged between Israel and the surrounding
nations. For this purpose I observe that David seems
to have belonged to the serpent stock. Among his
ancestors the most prominent is Nahshon, who bears the
serpent-name with the usual termination. Again Abigail,
who in I Chron. ii. 16 appears as David's sister, was the
daughter of Nahash (2 Sam. xvii. 25). Hence it follows
either that Jesse was himself called by the stock-name
of Serpent, or, what is of equal force for our argument,
that the members of his stock were called children of the

1 Athenaeus, lib. viii. cap. 37; Lucian, De Syr. Dea, cap. 14; Xen.
Anab. i. 4. 9, and other references in Selden, De Diis Syris, ii. 3 ; Movers,
Phoenizier, i. 391. That the Syrians would not eat pigeons has been
noticed above. On the forbidden foods of the heathen of Harran, see
En-Nedim in Chwolsohn, ii. 9 seq. As I do not enlarge on Syrian animal
worship I may here cite also from the same author (Chwolsohn, p. 46)
the acknowledgment in the mysteries of the ^arranians that dogs,
ravens, and ants are " our brothers." — Of forbidden foods among the
heathen Arabs I can say almost nothing ; but some facts are certainly
to be found in the traditions of the prophet. There were apparently
discussions about the eating of locusts and birds (Hamaker's notes on
Ps. Wakidy, p. 15).

31

482 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

Serpent. With this it agrees that in the temple at
Jerusalem a brazen serpent was worshipped up to the
time of Hezekiah by burning incense before it, just as was
done according to Ezekiel in the gentile worship of his day
(2 Kings xviii. 4). The temple was the court chapel of
David's dynasty and was not likely to contain the animal
deity of another stock. David himself was beyond such
worship ; but there were teraphim in his house (i Sam.
xix. 13), and many of his descendants were gross idolaters.
Finally, Adonijah chose the serpent-stone as the place of
his coronation (i Kings i. 9). Now it has always been
a puzzle that David was on such friendly terms with
N al?ash, king of the Ammonites, who was a great enemy of
Israel, and especially of Israel beyond the Jordan, with
which district David from an early period cultivated
friendly relations. And the curious thing is that the
friendship between the two houses was not broken even
by the great and bitter war that destroyed Ammonite
independence, for a son of the Ammonite serpent was
among the foremost to help David in his flight from
Absalom (2 Sam. xvii. 27). It would seem that the true
solution lies in the common serpent-stock, which was a
stronger bond than all motives of national hostility. As
the Ammonites were presumably less advanced in culture
than Israel, it is quite possible that by their law Hanun
was not of his father's stock at all.

In closing this paper I shall advert in a single word to
the bearings of the subject on the great problem of the
Old Testament religion. It is a favourite speculation that
the Hebrews or the Semites in general have a natural
capacity for spiritual religion. They are either repre
sented as constitutionally monotheistic, or at least we are
told that their worship had in it from the first, and apart
from revelation, a lofty character from which spiritual
ideas were easily developed. That was not the opinion
of the prophets, who always deal with their nation as one
peculiarly inaccessible to spiritual truths and possessing

i88i] ANIMAL WORSHIP AND ANIMAL TRIBES 483

no natural merit which could form the ground of its choice
as the people of Jehovah. Our investigations appear to
confirm this judgment, and to show that the superstitions
with which the spiritual religion had to contend were not
one whit less degrading than those of the most savage
nations. And indeed the second commandment, the
cardinal precept of spiritual worship, is explicitly directed
against the very worship of the denizens of air, earth,
and water which we have been able to trace out. It
does not appear that Israel was, by its own wisdom, more
fit than any other nation to rise above the lowest level of
heathenism.1

1 The substitution of an image for the living animal god is well
illustrated by the golden and silver fish used in the worship of Atergatis
(Athenaeus, I.e.), which do not affect the fact, as stated by Xenophon,
that the living fish were themselves treated as divine. To the fish
stock may be referred the Hebrew Ben Nun and Syriac

II

A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ
I. INTRODUCTORY

JEDDAH, February n, 1880.

FOR more than one reason, few Europeans see anything
of the interior of the Hejaz. With the exception of the
holy places and their precincts, the country is not closed
to travellers. It is true that in the Hejaz foreigners in
a sense exist on sufferance. Even in Jeddah no European
can hold property, and an unfriendly High Shereef and
Waly might entirely bar entrance to the upper country,
or even bring back the days when the Mecca gate of
Jeddah opened only to Moslems. But for years back
there has been no serious attempt at a policy of exclusion.
European residents in Jeddah walk or ride without
molestation in the neighbourhood of the city, and the
High Shereef, the Prince of Mecca, has been always ready
to grant a safeguard and escort to the few travellers who
have desired to visit Hadda or Taif. Still, the necessity
of travelling with an expensive escort, and the restrictions
on free motion which such an arrangement implies, have
made it a comparatively rare thing even for residents in
Jeddah to enter the hilly chain that forms the eastern
boundary of the maritime plain of the Tehama. In the
nearer part of the hills there is little of interest. To the
curious traveller the upper country will repay a visit ;
but the journey is toilsome and costly, and hardly to be

484

[1880-1881] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 485

recommended to any one who has not some knowledge of
Arabic. There is little to attract the sportsman, and no
opening for commercial enterprise. It is not, therefore,
surprising that even the more accessible parts of the
Hejaz have been very little visited, and very imperfectly
described. I fancy, therefore, that some account of a
ten days' excursion to Taif, from which I have just
returned, may prove acceptable to your readers.

The town of Taif lies nearly due east — slightly south
ward — of Mecca, and the three towns of Jeddah, Mecca,
and Taif are nearly in a line. The distances are not very
great. Mecca is reckoned to be forty miles from Jeddah,
and Taif by the straight road is, I suppose, about the
same distance from Mecca. But the direct road is very
difficult, ascending the great mountain of Kara by paths
impracticable except for mules and a peculiar breed of
mountain camels. Thus the great highway from Mecca
to Taif makes a wide sweep to the north, winding round
the Kara range, and Franks who cannot pass through
Mecca have to make a still farther deviation, so as to
keep always outside the boundaries of the Haram, or
consecrated land. It took me four days and a half to
get to Taif by dromedary. I returned over the Kara
range in two days and a half, taking mules across the
mountains, and being met by the dromedaries in the
plain below. This was hurried travelling. The weather
had broken, and there were rumours of a war between
the 'Oteibe and the Harb, which might call for the return
of my escort to Mecca. On the other hand, our pace
going to Taif was not rapid, the weather being not so
warm as is desirable to bring a camel to his best paces.
A fair estimate would be that Taif can be reached by
moderately easy stages in four days by way of the Derb-
es-Seil, while the return by Kara should be spread over
three.

The Hejaz is, in theory, a province of the Turkish
Empire, and, to a certain extent, the theory is supported

486 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

by facts. There is a Waly, or Governor-General, who
resides mainly in Mecca, or in the summer season at Taif.
Under the Waly there are in the towns subordinate
magistrates, judges, and police of Turkish appointment.
Turkish garrisons are quartered at Jeddah, Mecca, Taif,
Medina, Yanbo, and Rabegh. There are also armed
ports at stations along the great pilgrimage roads to
Mecca and Medina, occupied by Turkish soldiers or by
irregular Arab troops in Turkish pay. Thus far the
authority of the Turks is a reality. Moreover, the Otto
man Empire raises taxes. There is a custom-house in
Jeddah, which might yield a large revenue but for its
corrupt administration on the one hand, and the pre
valence of smuggling on the other. Besides the customs,
the Sultan claims the zaka or tithes, which, in Moham
medan law, are the legal expression of the duty of alms
giving. But as this is a tax on agriculture and flocks,
it does not apply to the towns, and from the Bedouins
it is collected, not by Turkish officials, but through the
Emir of Mecca. The poll-tax does not apply to the Hejaz,
nor is compulsory military service exacted from the in
habitants. Thus, even in theory, this province does not
feel the full weight of Turkish sovereignty. In practice
its dependence on Constantinople is still less close. Even
in the towns far less respect is paid to the commands of
the Porte than to the word of the Arabian Prince of
Mecca, the High Shereef , head of that singular aristocracy
which traces its descent to the prophet, through his
daughter Fatima, wife of the Caliph 'Aly. There are
Shereefs throughout the Mussulman world claiming and
receiving a certain respect, however poor their circum
stances, but in Arabia the Shereefs are a hereditary aristo
cracy, to which many sovereign families, especially in
the south, claim to belong. In the Hejaz the descendants
of the Prophets are divided into Shereefs (Ashraf) and
Seyyids (Sada). The former, I believe, are descendants
of Hasan, son of 'Aly, the latter of the younger brother,

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 487

Hosein, who fell at Karbala. But this distinction of
origin is not generally dwelt upon or even known to the
people. One of the best informed men in Jeddah insists
that the Shereefs are of the blood of Hosein, whose house
claims the birthright because Hasan resigned the Caliphate
in favour of the Ommayad dynasty. I believe this to be
a mistake, but the existence of the mistake shows that
the distinction between the stock of Hasan and Hosein
is not practically important. The real point is that the
Shereefs are the members or kinsmen of the princely
house of Mecca, while the Seyyids claim respect as de
scendants of the prophet, and are generally saluted by
kissing the hand, but do not form a recognised aristocracy.
The Emir of Mecca, the head of the Ashraf, is the true
ruler of the Hejaz. He is nominated by the Porte, which
has sometimes departed from the strict laws of hereditary
succession. Indeed, the reigning Shereef Hosein is not
the head of the house according to Arabian law. He
regularly succeeded two years ago to his elder brother
Abdullah, who again followed their father, the celebrated
Mohammed Ibn 'Aun. But Ibn 'Aun was not the direct
representative of the old princes who ruled in Mecca before
the Wahhabites overran the holy places, and was opposed
throughout his life, and for a time displaced by ' Abd el
Mutaleb, who now lives under surveillance at Constanti
nople, and is not without partisans in the Hejaz. But
the Porte would not venture to nominate a High Shereef
except from one of these two rival families, and as the
Arabic theory of succession lays more stress on the kin
than on the individual, the office of Emir is recognised
by the Arabs as a native and legitimate hereditary
dignity in contrast to the hated rule of the Turks, which
is viewed as little better than organised robbery. In
the desert the Turks have never been able to hold their
own. They have again and again suppressed formal
rebellions, but they have never been able to set their
mark on the country or exact from the Bedouins sub-

488 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

stantial marks of allegiance. Even the pilgrimage roads,
which are specially guarded by patrols and military
stations, are kept open only by payment of pensions to
the adjacent tribes, and the interruption of these payments
invariably leads to disorders and insecurity. Nor do the
Bedouins acknowledge Turkish law and the Cadis sent
from Stamboul. To travel in the Hejaz with a Turkish
escort would almost mean to travel as an enemy. But
the Prince of Mecca enjoys as much respect as it is in
the nature of the Bedouins to pay to any authority, and
an escort of his personal followers secures the traveller
a good reception everywhere, except, perhaps, among
some of the wildest tribes, whose ideas of obedience to
any one are very little developed.

I have been forced into this somewhat long digression
to explain the way in which I arranged for my journey.
Instead of going to the Waly, I addressed the Shereef
through the acting British Consul (Mr. Kruyt, the Dutch
Consul in Jeddah), and asked of him leave to visit Taif,
and a small escort of his household to accompany me on
my journey. For several days I received no reply, and
I was then advised to call on the Shereef 's agent in Jeddah,
who likes to have a personal share in everything that
goes on, and frankly tell him my plans, which had special
reference to some ancient inscriptions of which I had
heard. As 'Omar Naseef Pasha, the gentleman in question,
is the most influential man in Jeddah, and also a some
what typical personage, I think I had better give you
some account of him. He is the son of a common water-
carrier in town, and began life in the same business.
Although very deficient in education, he is an extremely
shrewd man, and his ability, combined with a total want
of conscience, soon brought him forward. He pushed
his way in the world, till he became agent for the late
High Shereef, a post which requires address and readiness
to do what is wanted, without scrupling at the means
employed. In theory, the agent of the Shereef is not a

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 489

public functionary, and it is only within the last few
weeks that 'Omar Effendi has received from the Porte
the dignity of Pasha. But in practice he is the great man
of the town, and uses his opportunities with a cynical
candour to serve his master and himself. For example,
the Mecca post is first delivered at his house, and it is no
secret that it is his custom to open any letter containing
information he desires to be master of. But the Wakeel
of the Shereef has at his disposal much more formidable
engines than this. The Hejaz roads are never safe unless
it be the pleasure of the Shereef that the Bedouins be
quiet, so that the confidential agent of the Shereef has
the whole inland communications of the country practi
cally in his hand. It is not very long ago that an Indian
Nawab, who proposed to go up from Yanbo to Medina
with an escort of his own people, and escape paying
bakshish, was ignominiously defeated by 'Omar Naseef .
Day after day the roads were reported closed, but as soon
as the Nawab came to terms and disbursed a handsome
sum, it was discovered that the way to Medina was perfectly
safe. A position of such influence offers many oppor
tunities of gain to a man who does not even affect to have
scruples. Traders think it wise to give him a share in
all manner of enterprises, especially in the lucrative
pilgrim trade. He draws his share of profits, and forgets
to pay upon losses. If he wants money for a speculation,
he asks a temporary loan, and keeps the money without
interest as long as is convenient for him. Such practices
as these are the perquisites of his office, and have enabled
him to erect the finest house in Jeddah, in which he lives
in great style, surrounded by the private provisions for
sensual enjoyment, on which rather than on social enter
tainments and open amusements the wealthy Arab loves
to spend his riches. He has, of course, many enemies,
and his position is far from secure. It is maintained by
constant intrigue, which makes it necessary for him to
know everything, and have his hand in everything. It

490 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

was, therefore, a decided mistake on my part not to speak
to him at once of my proposed excursion. As soon as
he was consulted, delay was at an end, and without further
loss of time an escort was granted, and 'Omar himself
gave me every assistance. The reader must not suppose
that in describing' Omar Effendi I am tracing an unusually
dark picture of the influential Arab. It is men of this
type who make their way in the East, and if 'Omar were
to fall to-morrow before his rival, Moses of Bagdad, who
took his place during the short interregnum on the death
of the Emir 'Abdullah, Jeddah would certainly not have
reason to congratulate itself on the change. That a man
without some elements of the scoundrel should hold such
a post is not to be expected for a moment. Unprincipled
intrigue is the very life-blood of government here, and
the morale of the whole upper classes of Jeddah is so
thoroughly sapped that nothing short of a revolution
could put things on a sound basis. If 'Omar Effendi
makes no pretence to honesty or morality, he is at least
a shrewd and sensible man, good-natured when his personal
interests are not at stake, and perfectly free from the
fanaticism and prejudice against infidels which has done
so much to ruin the Ottoman Empire. The prejudices
and superstitions of Mohammedanism are much less
strong in the true Arab than in the Turk, and to men of
position Islam is generally a mere affair of society and
politics. They care for the slave trade much more than
for the Koran. It is in many respects convenient to en
courage certain prejudices against the intrusive foreigner,
and the reputation of the holy places is the most profitable
stock-in-trade which the Hejaz possesses. Every one,
therefore, is a good Mohammedan, observes the hours of
prayer with creditable regularity, adorns his conversation
with pious phrases, and abstains from drinking brandy
in too open a way. But all this is merely on the surface,
and the conduct of a shrewd Arab like our Effendi towards
Europeans is not in the least regulated by superstitious

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ 491

prejudices, but purely by a very keen sense of self-interest.
Thus I found no difficulty raised against my copying
ancient inscriptions in the Upper Hejaz, although in
other parts — for example, in Hadramaut — such an act
would give rise to great suspicion and angry feeling. There,
if I recollect aright, an inscription copied by Wellsted
was supposed to have enabled the English to take Aden.
Here it was merely thought ridiculous that one should take
an interest in half-obliterated legends which no one could
read, or should care to undergo the fatigues of a journey
to Taif in the cold of winter when people were going about
with chapped hands, and the vineyards and orchards
showed none of their summer glory.

I am afraid that this letter is to prove very discursive,
but while I am on the subject I may as well say a little
more on the extreme bigotry with which the inhabitants
of the Hejaz are generally credited, and of which the
notorious massacre of Christians at Jeddah in 1858 is
naturally regarded as sufficient evidence. In the first
place, it ought to be remembered that that massacre
had very little to do with religion. Its real causes were
the anger of the people at threatened interference with
the slave trade, jealousy of the growing competition of
European traders and steamships, and alarm at recent
events in India. It is characteristic of Mohammedanism
that all national feeling assumes a religious aspect, inas
much as the whole polity and social forms of a Moslem
country are clothed in a religious dress. But it would be
a mistake to suppose that genuine religious feeling is at
the bottom of everything that justifies itself by taking
a religious shape. The prejudices of the Arab have their
roots in a conservatism which lies deeper than his belief
in Islam. It is, indeed, a great fault of the religion of
the Prophet that it lends itself so readily to the prejudices
of the race among whom it was first promulgated, and
that it has taken under its protection so many barbarous
and obsolete ideas, which even Mohammed must have

492 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

seen to have no religious worth, but which he carried
over into his system in order to facilitate the propagation
of his reformed doctrines. Yet many of the prejudices
which seem to us most distinctively Mohammedan have
no basis in the Koran. Even the practice of circumcision
is not a proper part of Islamism, and in some parts of
the Hejaz and of Yemen (among the Koreish, the Hodheil,
and the 'Aseer), where this ceremony takes the severer
form described by Captain Burton, all other Mohammedans
are despised and uncircumcised. In Yemen the moustache
and shaven chin of the Turk is thought to put him in one
class with the Christian — the epithets of religious bigotry
are employed to express an antagonism which has nothing
to do with Islam. Moslem bigotry in the proper sense
of the word, and indeed almost all earnest feeling in con
nection with the religion of the Prophet, belongs, as
Dozy has so forcibly pointed out, not to the Arabs, but
to the races who received the Koran from their hands. So
within Arabia the mixed populations of the towns and
the coast, with their large element of negro blood, are
far more fanatical than the true unmixed Bedouin stems.
But even in the towns the jejune, practical, and, if I may
venture to say so, constitutionally irreligious habit of the
Arabic mind maintains its ascendancy, and fanaticism
is well under the control of self-interest. It is no secret
that the myriads of pilgrims who yearly stream to the
shrines of Mecca and Medina return disenchanted from
the supposed Holy Land, where they find the most sacred
solemnities of their religion to be thought of only as means
of pocketing an annual harvest of gold — return protesting
that true Mohammedanism is not to be found in the
Hejaz, and that the Moslem receives more justice from
Christian Powers than from his co-religionists in the
central sanctuaries of Islam. In short, the religious con
victions of the Hejaz are a good deal like those of the
silversmiths of Ephesus, and owe their strength to what
can be made out of the concern. Speaking broadly, I

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 493

have no hesitation in saying that the religion of the Hejaz
is now, and probably has been from the days of Mohammed,
no better than an organised hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is
necessarily suspicious, and can readily assume the form
of fanaticism, but it has not that strength to resist new
currents of influence which belongs to genuine conviction.
Of late years a great many influences have tended to
break up the antipathies expressed in the massacre of
1858. It has been seen that there is no ground for jealousy
of European trade and European steamers, that the
Franks have opened to Arabia the doors of international
commerce, while native merchants have nothing to fear
from foreign competition in their own style of business.
Native and European merchants work side by side in
Jeddah with mutual advantage. Even the pilgrim traffic
is mainly conducted by co-operation between European
firms and the leading Seyyids and Mohammedan notables
of Jeddah. Now the whole life of an Arabian town lies
in its trade. There are no rentiers, no landed proprietors.
When the foreign merchant becomes an integral part of
the commercial community he has established himself
in the very heart of society, and exerts an influence on
every section of the population. This influence is partly
material and partly moral. The Arabs are immensely
impressed by the kind of power embodied in our industries
and trade, by the power of English knowledge to control
the forces of nature for the service of man. " There is
nothing stronger than the English except God." It is
not our ships of war in the Red Sea that draw out this
acknowledgment. The Arabs, at least in the uplands,
are not greatly afraid of any military Power — partly from
ignorance and partly from a just sense of the impossibility
of a substantial conquest of the desert. It is steamers,
the telegraph, the diving-bell, and things like these that
raise our name, or rather the possession of these inventions
in connection with the faculty of organisation on a great
scale, in which the Arabs are altogether lacking. The

494 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

regular visits of such a line of steamers as the British
India are a more forcible lesson than any display of
martial strength. Respect thus obtained contains no
germs of hatred, if those whose power is admired use it
in justice, honour, and kindliness. In this respect it
cannot be said that Europeans always act up to their
responsibilities. But England, one is proud to say, has
a good name in Arabia, a far better name than some other
Christian countries. Our national reputation has been
greatly raised by the prosperity of Aden, and by the
admitted excellence of the government there. In Jeddah,
where many of the influential merchants and other in
habitants are Indian Mohammedans, the advantage of
being a British subject is thoroughly understood. These,
indeed, are considerations which appeal mainly to the more
intelligent classes. The prejudices of the ignorant masses
are only to be conquered by actual experience in contact
with the foreigner, and thus every Englishman in a place
like this bears on his shoulders something of national
responsibility. In Jeddah this responsibility has, on the
whole, been well discharged. The labouring man knows
the advantage of being employed by Englishmen.
Personal relations, too, are gradually formed, especially
in times of sickness, when all manner of people have
learned to come for advice and treatment to the " English
House" of Messrs. Wylde, Beyts, and Co., who formerly
held the Consulate of Great Britain, and are still the real
representatives of our country in the eyes of the people.

Such relations break down much of the old jealousy,
especially when backed up by the really liberal spirit in
which the Government of the Shereef— far more than
that of the Turks — meets the advances of foreigners. A
little incident that took place last Christmas may not
seem important at first sight, but is really a sign of the
times. There were two English gunboats in the harbour,
and a Christmas dinner in the English house, after which
the whole company marched down in order to the quay,

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 495

preceded by the band of the Philomel, playing marches
and the English national air. The British Consul, who
is of recent appointment, and does not know the Arabs,
was greatly alarmed, but throughout the town there was
not one murmur of disapproval at the act which a few
years ago would certainly have produced. a serious riot.
Of course there is a great deal of prejudice still to conquer,
and it is only little by little that the most unreasonable
suspicions give way. From time to time one foolish step
throws everything back, as, for example, when the English
Consul lately excited the derision of the whole community
by hoisting the Consular flag in honour of the arrival in
town of the wife of his dragoman, a woman of notoriously
spotted character. But there is no doubt that English
influence is gaining ground, and the best informed natives
themselves declare that with a wise and energetic Consul
it might soon become paramount, and engage the affections
of the whole people. In Yemen the influence emanating
from Aden is still stronger, and my native informants
tell me that if England chose to follow the ancient path
familiar to the Arabic mind, by which strong and just
States have always attracted the voluntary homage of
adjacent tribes, acting as arbitrators, and maintaining
justice in causes referred to them, all Yemen in a few years
would be English without one blow struck.

The Arabs are at this moment deeply interested in
the impending fall of the Turkish Empire, of which no
intelligent man entertains a doubt. They hate a foreign
yoke, but they know that their tribes cannot be saved
from anarchy and constant strife without the presence of
some arbitrator. The idea is certainly gaining ground
that England is the country whose protectorate would be
most acceptable and most fruitful in good results. You
must remember that I am not writing as a politician. I
express no opinion as to the duties which the course of
the next few years may lay upon us in the Red Sea. I
have simply tried to explain to you as accurately as I can

496 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

the present position of the question, and the influence
that is inevitably exercised by the extension of our com
mercial relations with Arabia.

All this has not very much to do with my journey to
Taif, to which I shall return in another letter, in which I
promise to be less digressive.

II. OUR COMPANY

I started for Taif a little before noon on Wednesday,
January 28. The High Shereef, in the old spirit of
Eastern hospitality, had not only sent me a guard, but
furnished the dromedaries for our journey and made pro
vision for my reception as his guest at Taif. In Arabia
the entertainment of strangers is still the duty, and in
some sense the prerogative, of princes. A young friend
from'Oneize, in the Nejd, asked me the other day whether,
if he visited England, the Queen would receive him as
her guest. In 'Oneize, he said, the king (so they call
their ruler) would not permit a stranger to seek hospitality
with any one else. Our cavalcade consisted of five
dromedaries. The animal which I rode was a very hand
some and well -trained beast, gaily caparisoned with
silken bridle and a mountain of gorgeous saddle trappings,
with silk tassels, and green and yellow embroideries, the
whole crowned by a crimson sheepskin laid between two
pillars of chased silver. There is no doubt a great sense
of dignity in sitting on such a throne as this, high above
the heads of the walking multitude ; but I confess that,
when I first mounted my dromedary, my chief concern
was how to keep the hinder pillar out of the small of my
back as I swayed to and fro with the undulations of the
camel's body. A well- broken dromedary, which differs
from a common camel as a racer does from a cart horse
in breeding and fineness of points, has some paces which
are far from uncomfortable, when one has got well settled
down on a pile of soft rugs, with one leg hooked round the

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 497

front pillar of the saddle reposing on a little cushion, and
the calf of the other leg supported on the instep of the
first. But it takes a novice some time to find his seat,
and meantime every jolt, especially if the animal is walk
ing, brings the sharp capital of the other pillar against
one's back. I was a little uneasy, too, as to the proper
management of the Oriental dress which I had been
advised to wear, as likely to make communication less
constrained in places up the country, where Europeans
are never seen. A long white caftan reaching to the heels,
and covered by an equally long mishlakh or cloak of fine
camel's hair, do not at first sight seem to form a good
dress to ride in. But I found by experience that the
Eastern dress is far the most comfortable for such a
journey, both upon the camel and in camping out at night.
The only disadvantage was that it gave my native com
panions the opportunity to tell a great many lies about
me. They were really a little nervous about travelling
with a Frank in out-of-the-way places, and while I
adopted the Eastern dress mainly to avoid intrusive
curiosity, they occasionally made a serious effort to pass
me off as a Mohammedan. I know that 'Abdullah Effendi,
as they chose to call me, figured in one village as a doctor
whom the Shereef had sent to inquire into the plague
which has been raging among the horses in the towns of
the Hejaz ; but as I did not appear to approve of this
fiction, I was afterwards kept in the dark as to my sup
posed personality. When I say that my attendants were
nervous about travelling with a Frank, I do not of course
mean that they anticipated any danger to me while under
the protection of the Shereef. They took good care never
to let me out of their sight, and with the Emir's men
at hand, I was perfectly safe, even in a place like Zeima,
where Mr. Doughty was exposed to insult and some
hazard as a Christian, after crossing the remotest deserts
without hindrance or danger. The Moslem who accom
panies a Christian is rather nervous about his own reputa-

32

498 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

tion. I don't believe that any Arab has the slightest
personal objection to a Christian, at least if he can get a
baksheesh from him ; but something is due to public
opinion, which has decreed that to serve a Christian is
not respectable. Moreover, it is the inalienable privilege
of Moslem children to call names at an unbeliever, and
set the dogs to bark at him, and it was just as well to be
exempt from the duty of resenting such conduct. In
short, my men felt much easier in travelling with an
Effendi in semada (head shawl), mishlakh, and caftan,
than they would have done with a Khawdja in coat and
trousers.

The second member of the party was Ismail, the con
fidential servant of my friend Mr. Wylde. Born in the
Hejaz of Egyptian parents, Ismail began life as a sad
truant, who was always running away from school from
Mecca to Jeddah, and from Jeddah to Mecca. His roving
habits clung to him as he grew up. He wandered to
Egypt, and thence in various employments to India,
the Straits, and even to China, picking up as he went a
useful knowledge of a great many Asian and African
languages. Returning to Egypt, he was long in French
service, and visited Paris. Since he settled in Jeddah he
has accompanied Mr. Wylde in several long and difficult
journeys through Abyssinia and the Soudan, and has
also visited London. With a very observant habit and
a tenacious memory, Ismail is a good type of the Arabic
traveller, in whom the constitutional Eastern love of ease
is crossed by a restless curiosity. With better education
and more favourable circumstances, he might have been
a modern Ibn Batuta, of whose story Ismail's traveller's
tales have often reminded me. The Arabian traveller is
quite different from ourselves. The labour of moving
from place to place is a mere nuisance to him, he has no
enjoyment in effort, and grumbles at hunger or fatigue
with all his might. You will never persuade the Oriental
that, when you get off your camel, you can have any other

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 499

wish than immediately to squat on a rug and " take your
rest (isterih)," smoking and drinking coffee. Moreover,
the Arab is little impressed by scenery. He describes
a country by the mountains, which are his landmarks,
the fountains or waterholes at which he fills his leathern
water sack, and the vegetation by the wayside. His one
enthusiasm in scenery is for orchards and gardens. A
city embowered in orchards is his ideal of a beautiful
landscape. Damascus is an image of paradise, and Taif
the fairest scene in the Hejaz. I think it was the same
among the ancients, at least among the practical Romans.
The idea of beauty and interest in scenery was not
developed, except in connection with cultivation and
subserviency to man's uses. I suppose that all nations
have passed through a stage of the same kind, and that
the pure love of landscape, apart from associations of
utility and comfort, is a late growth. With the Arab
it is certainly a general law that his interest and curiosity
is reserved for the affairs of man, and that nature is
attractive in proportion as man has laid his hand on it.
But for anything that has human interest, the Arab's
curiosity is insatiable. He is an inexhaustible story
teller, and never weary of listening to the most trivial
anecdote of another's adventures. Story-telling and such
books of history and travel as fall under the category of
story-telling form the one kind of literature in which
the Arabs have really excelled ; and in personal inter
course with Arabs one's chief amusement and instruction
are to be found in the same direction. I could not have
had a better attendant than Ismail for drawing out our
escort and the people with whom we met. He had seen
enough of our countrymen to enter readily into the
spirit of my inquiries, and he got the people to talk with
a freedom that would have been impossible to me by my
self. Moreover, I could always get him to explain what
I did not understand, which very few Arabs have patience
to do. His own knowledge of the Bedouins was con-

500 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

siderable, and he was always ready to supplement it by
fresh inquiry. In other respects than these Ismail was
a most useful companion, identifying himself wholly
with my interests in a way that is quite extraordinary
in an Arab. He has, indeed, taken England as his ideal,
and is much more disposed to cleave to his English master
than to his own countrymen in the Hejaz. Up the
country, where people know little of the outer world, he
achieved an immense social success by his anecdotes of
the marvels of London, to which I listened with great
amusement from the curious effect which they produced
when translated into a form intelligible to his audience.
There was one favourite passage — a description of the
great telegraph-room at St. Martin's-le-Grand. It was like
a scene from the Arabian Nights. Hundreds of maidens,
each fairer than the other, peopled this marvellous room.
Ismail moved through the enchanted scene in a sort of
transport, till at length his eyes fell on one more beautiful
than all the others — the most perfect being he had ever
seen. Then his heart failed him, he refused to see more,
and hurried from the room. But Ismail's observations
of Western life had gone deeper than this, and taught
him the essential superiority of our institutions, which,
without understanding their details, he knew to secure
liberty and justice. To me, indeed, he is accustomed
to defend Arabic habits as fitter for the different con
ditions of the country, but at heart he is a bit of a philo
sopher, which in Islam is the same thing as a religious
and social free-thinker. He separates the essence of
religion from the forms of Mohammedanism, and has no
objections to worship with Christians. He longs, like
all thinking Moslems, for justice in the State, honesty
between man and man, and an end to the ceaseless
oppression of the poor by the rich. To the hatred of
the Turks which all Arabs feel, he adds a hearty contempt
for the class of Arabs who now hold the reins of power
in the Hejaz. I have almost been tempted to think him

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 501

no Oriental at all when I found that he was capable of
refusing baksheesh. But this would be a superficial
judgment. His temperament, his ambitions, his enjoy
ments, his vanity, are thoroughly Eastern. And I am
afraid that I shall somewhat mar his character in the
eyes of the reader when I add that, like a true Arab, he
is married, at the age of thirty, to his fifth wife — a young
beauty with a mind of her own, who tyrannises over him,
and plays the part of a severe stepmother to his son — a
young pickle who is always fishing and bird -catching
when he ought to be at school. But it would be rude to
dwell on the secrets of his domestic life which Ismail
imparted to me in the confidence of friendship. Let us
keep our attention for the man himself, as he sits some
what uneasily on a very rough dromedary, above two
huge saddle bags piled with the appurtenances of our
journey. His long sallow face peeps out from a plain
white semada, a corner of which is brought round to
cover the chin and lower part of the face. His dress is
a black tob or smock frock covered by a handsome grey
'abaye, which he has borrowed from his master to cut a
good figure in travelling ; and his superiority in civilisa
tion to the ordinary Arab appears in the European shoes
and stockings that dangle over the earners neck, instead
of the bare feet and sandals with gold-spangled straps
that are usually worn even by Arab gentlemen.

My other companions are four of the Shereef s armed
followers and a Bedouin camelman, who " eats the Emir's
bread/' but is not inscribed among his regular retinue.
The leader, who is an old and favourite servant, is a very
great man in his own eyes. By birth an Abyssinian, he
was originally, as his name shows, a slave in the family
of one of the Shereef s in the neighbourhood of 'Okatz.
He is called the Diamond — Al Mas, or, more specifically,
Al Mas al kebeer, the Big Diamond, to distinguish him
from a fellow-servant of the same name. His dark blue
head shawl, for which in the town he substitutes a hand-

502 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

some semada of Baghdad silk, embroidered with gold
thread, shades a complexion a trifle browner than that
of the Arabs, a pair of small deep -set eyes, one of them
sightless and white, a snub nose, and short upper lip
covered with a thick black moustache. His broad
shoulders are draped in a handsome military - looking
'abaye, in stripes of white and crimson. He carries a
revolver in his belt, and a long straight sabre, with silver-
gilt hilt and scabbard, hangs in a sort of net behind his
saddle. Al Mas has travelled with Europeans before ;
he knows that they give a good baksheesh, and he is
determined to be very civil and get as much out of me as
he can, but to make the journey as little troublesome to
himself as may be. He made himself very agreeable at
first, for he is one of those good-natured fellows who are
always pleasant when they have things their own way ;
but I soon found him to be a very bad companion to
any one who really wanted to see the country. He
was terribly bored by my searching for inscriptions,
which he declared were all the scratchings of Arab boys.
He had a theory of his own about the right way to travel
— namely, that one should get up in the morning before
sunrise, ride till breakfast time, have a comfortable meal
and a long smoke, ride on again till there is another
opportunity for food and tobacco, and finally turn in an
hour after sunset and prepare a substantial supper. He
grudged every minute of delay that he was not allowed
to spend in eating, sleeping, or smoking the great brazen
waterpipe which accompanies him even on the war-path.
As he acted as guide through an unknown country, where
halting - places necessarily depended on the presence of
water, and other points unknown to me, I was often
entirely in his hands, and he possessed in perfection the
most provoking of Oriental arts, which enables a man,
by a combination of lies and passive resistance, to get
his own way without formally disobeying orders. More
over, Al Mas, with all his apparent good nature, was too

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 503

selfish and overbearing to get on well with the men under
him, though they were afraid to complain of an old and
favourite servant of the princely family. With Ismail
he had an open rupture at Taif, which threw a certain
shade over the rest of our journey. After his love for
smoking, eating, and giving himself the airs of a great
man, Al Mas's chief characteristic was an extraordinary
talkativeness. As he has really seen a great deal of
service among the unruly Bedouins of the Hejaz, I found
his interminable stories very tolerable by night over our
camp fire. He was quite willing to be interrogated, but
his answers were always confused and useless unless they
took the shape of a narrative, when he sailed on with
great fluency and copiousness of irrelevant detail, care
fully punctuating his sentences with good Moslem oaths
at the larger stops, and the words, " O, my uncle," in
the place of commas. At the close of a paragraph his
formula, whether he spoke to me or to the Arabs, was,
" Hast thou understood or not ? " His stories of personal
adventure were strongly dashed with a superstition more
African than Arabic. He was urgent that I should get
him a book of charms; and the very first story he told
me was the wonderful history of a holy man from the far
north who had spent his whole life in travelling, and
finally came to the Hajj with no possessions but a single
garment, a wallet, a sword, and a precious Khdtme or
copy of the Koran. The last two properties were stolen
from him at Mozdalifa, and recovered in a marvellous
way by the directions of a dream and the help of the
Shereef and Al Mas. In return he gave Al Mas a wonder
ful talisman, or rather Hejab — the whole Koran written
in a minute character, and enclosed in a leather case.
" Wear this," he said, " either on the arm or round your
neck, but at night hang it on a staff, and on no account
let it touch the ground." Al Mas wore it for two years,
during which he was free from all accidents, quarrels, and
inconveniences of every sort. At length the string broke

504 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

one day while he was walking, and for fear that the
treasure might fall on the ground he went on carrying
it in his mouth, and when he was forced to lay it down,
carefully spread his cloak under it. After a short time
he returned to find it gone, without trace, and his excep
tional luck gone with it. So much for Al Mas and his
superstitions, on which I need not enlarge just now, as
it will be impossible for us to get to Taif without hearing
more of them.

The second in command was a pure Arab, by blood
of the Qoreish, the tribe of the Prophet, and by more
immediate descent a Wahhabite. His grandfather, 'Oth-
man, and granduncle, 'Aly, were famous leaders of their
party in the days when the Wahhabite power over
ran the Hejaz, and threatened to extend their Puritan
empire over all Arabia. Mohsin — the fair dealer, a
common name among the Bedouins who have no great
partiality for the current religious names of Islam — is a
tall muscular fellow, who wears his moustache with a
military swagger, and of a cold morning appears wrapped
up in a Turkish military cape. Beneath the cape is a
scarlet jacket turned up with green — the favourite Arab
colours. The rest of his dress is that of the Bedouin—
a short t6b of rough brown cotton, a crooked dagger of
Persian steel in the girdle with his pistols, a yellow semada
on the head with a mass of tassels dancing behind, his
brown legs and feet bare, and a long stick with a hooked
knob in his hand, with which he steers his dromedary,
tapping it on the head or neck as he encourages it with
a deep guttural grunt ikh, ikhkh, ikhkhkh. Mohsin proved
a very good, manly fellow, not very talkative, but capable
of being drawn out, and with a good knowledge of the
country and its traditions. Wahhabite as he was, he
was extremely fond of tobacco, and we cemented our
friendship over many a cigarette— a great decline from
the first principles of his sect, when smoking was the
second great sin after idolatry. Behind Mohsin's saddle

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 505

sits his radeef, or after-rider, the camelman Marzook.
It is an awkward perch, for the hind-quarters of a camel
slope away at a considerable angle, and the second rider
has to hold fast by the pommel, while his legs dangle on
either side, or more often are gathered up and twisted
together in one of the innumerable Oriental forms of
squatting. Now I understand why that pommel takes
the shape of a pillar, which, to one's first experience,
seems specially contrived to dig into the rider's back.
Without it the second rider would infallibly slide off.
And the radeef is an ancient and established institution
in Arabia, so much so that in the old Pagan kingdoms
the mayor of the palace, who wielded the actual power,
as in the Merovingian kingdom in France, was regularly
known by this name. Marzook is of the great 'Oteibe
tribe, from the Nejd, a true son of the desert, speaking
a far purer Arabic than even Mohsin, very fond of his
camels, whose heads he fondles and kisses as they lie
ruminating at the halt ing -place, but a little shy at first
towards strangers. We got very good friends soon, for
I liked his honest, weather-beaten face, with something
of a hawk-like keenness of expression in spite of the loss
of one eye, and he took very kindly to me after a dis
cussion about the true Arabic name of a woman's camel
litter, in which I sided with him and gained the point
with a quotation from old Imrulqais. The word in
question (ghabeet) was known to none of the other men,
but among the 'Oteibe it is still the term for the litter
used by a Sheikh's daughter, just as it was twelve hundred
years ago. In his dress Marzook had nothing of the style
affected by the regular members of the Shereef's retinue.
A short dirty tob bound by a girdle, and leaving his bare
legs uncovered from the knee, a coarse red head shawl,
and in cold weather, a rough brown cloak, did not distin
guish him from an ordinary wanderer of the desert. But he
had adopted one innovation of the civilised cities — he wore
a pair of drawers, which the common Bedouin never does.

506 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

Our other two men were the gayest figures of the
group, Hamid and 'Abderrabbu, usually called Adrubbu,
pure Africans by blood, but born in Mecca, as Mawaleed
of the Shereef. It is the custom of Arabian princes to
form a body of dependents from their emancipated
slaves and their children. In a good house a slave
seldom remains long in bondage. The master frees him,
finds him a wife — generally an emancipated negress—
and sets him up in the world. The children of such a
union are called Mawaleed, and form a kind of clientship
ready at any moment to serve under their master's
banner, and bound to him by a strong tie of dependence.
Many of these families have attained to wealth and posi
tion, but the tie is never broken, and when a Muwalled
dies without natural heirs, the representative of the
emancipator takes the inheritance. There are chiefs
in Yemen — Sheikh Barakat was mentioned to me as one
—who can call up as many as four hundred of these
clients to ride with them on a foray. Such men often
buy negroes and girls in large numbers simply for the
purpose of liberating and marrying them, to swell the
numbers of their clients. Our two negroes were very
pleasant, handy fellows, with a smattering of education,
and very good gentle manners. Their dress was a
white tob, with gold buttons at the throat. A white
semada, whose heavy fringes and tassels were prettily
interwoven with cords of purple and blue, was secured
to the head by the double twist of a great rope, called
the ogal, of earners hair, bound with gold and silver
thread. Their military equipments were in pure Bedouin
style. The janbeeya or crooked dirk, which is the in
separable companion of the Bedouin, and the favourite
instrument of his bloody revenge, was silver hilted, and
cased in a heavy silver sheath, enriched with bosses and
chasing. The leather belt, in front of which the dirk is
stuck, lying obliquely across the person, was gay with
tassels of crimson and yellow silk. On one side was a

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ 507

silver case, with a row of seven little powder-flasks,
each holding two or three charges, behind it a silver
powder-horn of quaint form, and on the other side a
silver - mounted pocket for bullets. A smaller horn for
the priming was hung from the shoulder by a belt enriched
with silver bosses. These gorgeous accoutrements, from
the hereditary armoury of the Shereef, were, however,
for show rather than use. The real weapon was an
American breech - loading carbine slung to the saddle,
the cartridges for which were carried in a plain leather
bag. The obsolete accoutrements served the purpose
of a uniform, the silver dirk, when worn by any
but a great man, immediately declaring its bearer a
follower of the Emir. A prettier uniform can hardly
be conceived than these brilliant white garments, over
laid with great masses of open silver work and
bright dashes of colour in the silken embroideries and
tassels, in contrast to the black skins of the wearers.
Hamid, however, used to produce an effective variation
by wearing a soft orange and yellow head shawl, and a
very short scarlet jacket over his tob. In virtue of
these splendours and a certain experience of the world,
gained by a voyage to Marseilles in the incongruous
function of a stoker, he took slight precedence of Adrubbu,
and filled the responsible office of cook for the company,
while his comrade pounded the coffee beans and rolled
cigarettes. Our fifth camel was shared between them,
and they took their turns in walking or riding as radeef .

I have now introduced the reader to our whole company,
and as the ceremony has been somewhat tedious, their
further acquaintance must be reserved for another letter.

III. THE MECCA ROAD

The city of Jeddah has three landward gates — the
Medina gate to the north, the Yemen gate to the south,
and the Mecca gate, facing the east ; but all caravans

508 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

pass through the last gate, where a tax is levied on every
camel issuing from the town. Just outside the wall is
a sort of market-place for the Bedouin camel drivers, a
short street of shops and coffee-houses, and an open
space under the walls, where the camels lie ruminating
or munching wisps of coarse hay while their masters are
smoking, gossiping, or chaffering with the hucksters,
who sit cross-legged by the wayside, each with a tray
or basket of wares, like Alnaschar in the Arabian Nights.
To the left is the spacious courtyard in which all Jeddah
assembles for prayer on the great annual feast, and beyond
this, to the north - east of the town, rises the cupola of
our mother Eve, the great holy place from which Jeddah
is said to take its name of " The Ancestress." Winding
our way through the turmoil of the bazaar, we emerge
on the open desert — a long, flat expanse of sand some
what lower than the town, which stands on a raised coral
reef. To the right and left of our path, in the neighbour
hood of the town, are one or two country houses and
several wretched hamlets of half-settled Arabs — the huts
constructed much like those on the opposite coast, of
matting and the twigs of desert bushes. The face of the
desert is almost absolutely bare of vegetation for the
stretch of a full hour between Jeddah and the foot of
the hills. There are two trees by the roadside in the
whole of this way, and the coarse herbage on which a
few miserable sheep are trying to feed is so scanty after
the long-continued drought that it hardly gives a tinge
of colour to the grey sand. Yet the Tehama, as this
plain is named, is not unfertile. Its basis is a coral
reef, in which water can always be found by sinking pits,
and the sand which covers the coral is mixed with a fine
earth forming a very good soil for cultivation. Such a
soil is called in old Arabic raghdm, and a coffee-house and
police-station at the foot of the hills takes from it the
name of Reghdme. From Reghame to Jeddah, after
copious rains, the whole plain is planted with water

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 509

melons, and even with patches of the coarse millet called
dokhn. This dokhn, named from its dark or smoky
appearance, is a favourite food of the poorer classes,
and, unlike its rival, the white or red millet (dura), is
an ancient Semitic grain, being mentioned under the
same name in the Old Testament. It is interesting to
note that the names of the principal kinds of cereals,
wheat, barley, millet, lentils, are older than the differentia
tion of the Hebrew and Arabic languages. They are
the same in both languages, and in a form which shows
that they are not loan words. But in early times the
nomadic Arabs must have consumed far less cereal food
than the agricultural peoples of Canaan. And so the
word which in Hebrew means bread, but which radically
denotes the solid or consistent part of food in contrast to
the fluid water, has in Arabic the sense of flesh. Even
now the wilder Bedouin seldom tastes bread ; but in
many Arabic - speaking countries, not merely in Egypt,
as is usually stated, but equally in the Hejaz, the in
creased importance of cereal food has stamped its mark
on the language, and bread is called ee"sh — that is, life.

After Reghame the face of the country changes. Low
but rugged hills of basalt and other igneous rocks rise
before us, and the road winds between ranges of crumbling
rock in a sandy glen, without any considerable rise of
level. Vegetation now increases, and the path is bordered
with the broom-like markh, used by the Arabs for making
cordage. Before the days of flint and steel the markh
had another use, which is registered in the native Arabic
lexicons, but now, as far as I have been able to hear, is
remembered only in the Soudan, where Ismail, as a little
boy, saw a very old man produce fire by rubbing two
pieces of this wood together. The mountains increase
in height, and to the left opens the dreaded Robbers'
Gate, through which the northern predatory tribes are
wont to descend on the Mecca road. In something over
another hour we cross a slight eminence, and enter a

510 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

wider valley dotted with acacias of the kind called salam.
This valley is infested with wolves, and we passed the
hiding-place of a hunter, a small lair built up with
branches, near which a piece of a dead camel had been
laid as a bait. In the middle of the valley is the coffee
house of Far eye (the upper place), at which we stopped
to rest till the heat of the day should decline. The
Mecca road is lined with these coffee-houses at short
intervals. The Far eye is the third from Jeddah. The
soldiers charged with protecting the roads have their
post beside these stations, where there is commonly a
well. The coffee-house consists merely of a hut of straw
or branches, with a stone dais in front, shaded by a
veranda, and sometimes an open covered court. The
furniture is a row of earthen jars for cooling water, a
hearth and apparatus for boiling coffee, hubble-bubbles,
and a few mats of plaited straw, which here are generally
circular. A mat is spread in the shade for the traveller,
and he is served with coffee and a pipe. If any one
chooses to stay overnight, he is accommodated with fire
wood, and a pot in which to prepare supper. Every
thing else he must generally find for himself. At Far eye
some of our men took the opportunity to say their prayers,
which, in travelling, are put in at convenient seasons,
or more frequently omitted altogether. Praying, like
the incessant counting of the rosary of divine names
with which the Arab fills up intervals of conversation,
is viewed as a convenient distraction when one has
nothing better to do, and in Taif especially Al Mas
improved his leisure by making up considerable arrears
of devotion. In a company when talk is lagging, it is
quite common for some one to ask the time of day, and
on finding that an hour of prayer has arrived, to step out
of the circle, spread his upper garment on the floor, and
go through the prayers of such a number of rek'as. But
when business is on hand, the prayers have to give way ;
and according to my observation, it is only the prayers

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 511

of the daybreak that are performed with precise regularity.
These two are generally uttered in audible murmur, or
even with a clear voice, whose cadences are not devoid of
impressiveness, as the words, " God is most Great," " I
testify that there is no God but God, and I testify that
Mohammed is his servant and apostle," rise through the
silence of the desert, and spread over the hills with the
first rays of the morning light. But the more one sees
of it, the less is it possible to feel any sincere respect for
Moslem devotion, in which formalism and vain repetition
are reduced to a system. The God of the Mohammedan
is too remote from his worshipper to be addressed in the
language of true prayer ; and the daily liturgy is little
more than an abstract glorification of the divine qualities.
Special petitions are indeed permitted though not pre
scribed, but the opening of the worshipper's heart to his
Heavenly Father is not known to the faith of Islam, and
help in individual need is sought rather from patron
saints, or in the use of charms, among which, to be sure,
the recitation of certain formulae from the Koran has a
place. There is, of course, a certain belief in the efficacy
of special prayer. Some weeks ago a great procession,
headed by the Waly, went out from Jeddah in the morn
ing to pray for rain. I was not fortunate enough to be
able to observe this ceremony.

From Far eye the road rises through a broken country,
where for the first time the granite which predominates
in the upland districts is seen breaking through the basalt.
In this part of the road there are two cairns by the way
side, called respectively the Zalabany and Kunafany—
that is the baker of zalabiye and the maker of kunafe.
Zalabiye is the name of a kind of bread, fried in clarified
butter, and eaten with honey. Here it is always baked
in great round cakes ; in Syria it has an oblong form,
and is eaten with grape syrup. Kunafe is a favourite
dish, especially in Ramadan. It is something like ver
micelli, but sweet. The legend goes that the artists who

512 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

have given their names to these cairns lived in Jeddah
and Mecca respectively. Each started to carry a burden of
his wares to the other town, and on meeting they boasted,
without adding the ordinary " If God will," that their
wares would still be hot when they reached their destina
tion. They had scarcely parted when they were struck
dead for their impiety, and the stone heaps mark their
graves. Not far from this, beside a deserted coffee-house,
lay the scene of an adventure which befell Ismail a
fortnight before. Returning from Mecca, and travelling,
as is customary, by night, without any other attendant
than his donkey boy, he was attacked with stones by a
party of robbers. The robbers had guns, but did not
dare to use them from fear of alarming the patrol, and they
finally made off when Ismail succeeded in giving one of
them a severe blow. He was very indignant, however,
and had now brought his gun, in the hope of having a
chance of revenge. The police, inefficient as usual, had
got no trace of the robbers, and the story having got
abroad, few people cared to travel at night, except in
strong companies.

Beyond Far eye, the first inhabited place is the negro's
coffee-house, from which the road descends into an open
plain, running down to the coast in a course a little
S. of W. We have pierced the first hilly barrier that
separates Jeddah from the interior, and join the natural
road leading up to the Nejd, along the great valley of
Wady Marr, which drains this part of the Hejaz. In
Kiepert's map you will find the valley marked as Wady
Bahra. This is not a name, but merely means the Wady
in which the village of Bahra lies— a considerable hamlet,
situated at the point where the road from Jeddah, des
cending obliquely in a line southward of E., reaches the
axis of the valley and bends somewhat to the northward.
Bahra is the half-way house between Mecca and Jeddah,
twenty miles distant from either city, and a favourite
halting-place for camel trains. Though the village is

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 513

but a group of wretched huts, with the usual coffee
house and military post, its position is one of some im
portance from the roads which converge upon it, the
natural highway along the Wady, which is the gate of
the upper country, being here intersected by the Jeddah
road, through the hills on the west, and by another road
across Jebel Shemeisi, which leads into Wady Magra,
and so to Wady Naaman and the high road from Mecca
to Yemen. The strategical importance of the point was
at one time recognised, for close by the village, on one of
the many isolated rocky eminences that stud the plain,
rise the ruins of a well-built square fortress, with round
corner towers — the usual type of an Arabic stronghold.
Our men could tell me nothing about this castle except
its name, Qasr el Gazia. Unlike the other fortresses in
the upper parts of the Wady, which were strongholds
of the Wahhabites, it appears to be of considerable age,
for I have since learned that it is an object of superstitious
terror to the Arabs. It contains hidden treasures, guarded
by a supernatural power which inflicts terrible punish
ment on those who venture to explore the secrets of the
ruin.

The name of Wady Marr, or the valley of passage, is
explained by the natives from the fact that this valley is
the great watercourse through which the floods descend
ing from the uplands sweep in a tremendous torrent. I
fancy that the name is old, for Sprenger gives Marr-
Tzahran as the ancient name of the pilgrim station on
the road from Mecca to Medina, which lies in this valley,
and is now called Wady Fatima. The upper reaches of
the Wady above Hadda are well watered with copious
springs. Below Hadda, the water is ordinarily below
ground, but can be got by sinking wells, which were once
numerous. At present I think there is but one well
between Bahra and Hadda used for irrigation, cultivation
having gone back, as is the case in so many parts of the
Hejaz. The comparative luxuriance of the vegetation

33

5i4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

shows that the water is not very far from the surface.
The path is fringed with shrubs and herbaceous plants—
the r£n, with its kidney-shaped, downy leaves, and yellow
and orange blossoms ; and in greater abundance the
white flowered harmel, used by the Arabs for fumi
gating their houses. A little way off, to the right of
our path, was quite a coppice of the dark -leaved shrub
called khamt, which is plentiful in several parts of this
valley, and is burned by the natives to produce a coarse
salt, which they call black alum (shabb aswad), and in use
for washing. The chief seat of this manufacture is
Hodeida, in Yemen.

As we passed Bahra the sun was already sinking, and
the caravans which had been resting through the heat of
the day at Bahra or Hadda, were again in motion. The
road, almost deserted between Jeddah and Bahra, was
crowded with long trains of baggage camels laden with
piece goods and grain for Mecca and the interior, and
the caravans of East Indian and Javanese pilgrims
descending to the coast. The pilgrims travel in covered
litters named snugduf[?], hung like a balance upon the
camel's back, so that a passenger can recline at full
length on either side, and a third, if desired, can sit
between them. Beside the camels walked the Bedouin
drivers, their heads swathed in a dirty brown cotton
wrapper, and the great dirk or janbeeya, in its brazen
sheath, projecting from the leathern belt which confines
a shirt or waist cloth of the same colour and material as
the head cloth. Travelling all night, the pilgrims would
reach Jeddah in the early morning.

An hour after sunset we reached Hadda, where
the Mecca road breaks off from the main valley, and
the fertile region of water springs begins. Here there
is a fountain bursting forth under the hill-side, and
wells with gardens and a few palm trees. The village
has several hundred inhabitants, but the only tolerable
building is a large mosque, the dwellings being mainly

A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 515

round huts of palm branches woven over a frame of
poles. The pilgrims regularly halt here on their way to
and from Mecca, and the huts are let out to them at an
exorbitant figure. We, however, as the night was warm
preferred to take up our quarters under the veranda of
the coffee-house. Our baggage was piled up on the ground
and the camels lay round it. The veranda was laid
with mats, to which our men added a mattress and rugs
for my bed, while they formed a circle on the ground
beneath. Al Mas got out his favourite sheeshe (water-
pipe), coffee was called for, and all settled down for supper
and a long talk. Of an evening the Arabs are excessively
garrulous, and when several parties meet at such a way
side station as Hadda the talk goes on almost all night
the interlocutors falling out one by one as sleep over
powers them. New arrivals continued to come in till
long after midnight, but as the custom is to travel by
night and rest by day, the larger caravans which felt
strong enough to brave robbers only halted to drink
coffee and get the latest gossip. The news was all about
the robber bands. We had scarcely settled down when
an almost naked muleteer came. in. His party of six
had been attacked by five men quite near the village and
stripped of everything. Ismail, full of his own quarrel
seized his rifle, and was off at once to join the police of
the station, but they took the matter much more coollv
and disappointed his hopes of revenge by insisting that
it was better to wait till morning, though the full moon
would have served them almost as well as daylight In
fact, there is no very strong feeling in the Hejaz against
highway robbery. It is the duty of the Government to
keep the Bedouins quiet by allowances of money and
gram, and when the roads become very insecure it is
generally the case, or, at least, it is generally asserted
that these payments are in arrears. The bandits who
the roads are sometimes regular outlaws— wild
men who have their retreat in the mountains. But at

516 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

other times they are wandering parties of such powerful
tribes as the Harb and the 'Oteibe, whose depredations
are separated by a very indefinite line from the recognised
forms of Arabic warfare, and whose family connections
do not permit a weak Government to deal very severely
with them. Even the outlaws are treated with a certain
amount of consideration. It should not be difficult to
penetrate to their mountain lairs and arrest their wives
and children ; but, according to Arabic ways of thought,
this would be " a great shame," an elastic expression
which comprises every form of impropriety, from a
trifling breach of etiquette to the most serious moral
turpitude. It is the law of Arabic warfare that the
women of the enemy must not be harmed, and this
privilege is extended to the robber bands, which are,
therefore, in some measure recognised as having the
status of belligerents. Before we returned, the roads
had become still more insecure, and people were all
travelling through the heat of the day rather than risk
the perils of the night. The patrols along the road were
increased, and by each station the horses were standing
ready saddled for pursuit. But by this time the thing
had developed into a regular Bedouin warfare. A Medina
caravan of 300 camels, under the protection of the Harb,
was attacked by the 'Oteibe, near Wady Fatima, and
several men were killed on either side. These disturbances,
it now appeared, were connected with the severe drought
in the uplands. Finding no pasture for their flocks in
their own district of the Nejd, the 'Oteibe had scattered
far and wide in quest of grass, and a party had descended
on the lands of the Harb, on which, as old friends, they
thought themselves entitled to graze in time of need.
The Harb objected, and the attack on the caravan
followed. At the present moment a number of 'Oteibe
are lying in prison in Jeddah, but I am told by 'Omar
Naseef that as they include influential chiefs, they will
not be severely punished. They will probably be held

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 517

to ransom ; and if it appears that more of the Harb than
of the 'Oteibe fell in the fight, the latter tribe will have
to pay blood money for the balance. Whether all the
recent robberies are the work of the 'Oteibe is not yet
known, and perhaps will never appear. Meantime there
has been good rain in the upper country, and the dis
persed 'Oteibe were beginning to return homewards before
I got back to Jeddah. A good season, which may now be
looked for, will allay the turbulence of the tribes ; and
whether or no, people are too well accustomed to the
insecurity of the desert to make more than a nine days'
wonder of any act of Bedouin rapine.

The state of the roads is a good measure of the weak
ness of the Turkish power in the Hejaz, which, practically
speaking, exists for no other public purpose than to keep
the roads to Mecca and Medina open. Other provinces
are held for profit, and remit an annual revenue to Con
stantinople, after providing for the maintenance of local
government. But the Hejaz is said to cost the Sultan
£200,000 a year more than it produces, and absorbs a
great part of the surplus revenues of Syria and Yemen.
The Turks are much more devout than the Arabs, and
have a high veneration for the Holy Places, and the
Ottoman Sultans are ready to pay this price for the honour
of figuring as protectors of the Caaba and patrons of the
pilgrimage. The money goes less for the maintenance
of troops and public officers than in payment of pensions
and innumerable allowances of grain, partly to descendants
of the Prophet and others who can in some way claim
connection with the service of Caaba, and partly to the
Bedouins who might obstruct the progress of the pilgrim
age caravans. With this vast outlay, with garrisons at
Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah, and armed forts along the
road, it might fairly be expected that the roads would be
absolutely safe. Yet the short route of forty miles
between Mecca and Jeddah is in the state which I have
described. Even the Waly does not pass over it without

5i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

an escort from the Shereef. And this is the great road
of the country, not merely the pilgrim route, but the
main commercial highway, over which perhaps a third
part of the imports of Jeddah (which are variously
estimated at from two to three millions sterling per
annum) is conveyed by camel transport, to the great
profit of the Bedouins themselves.

The Medina road, which is hardly less important, is
in a far more insecure state. Within the last year there
has been more than one serious collision upon it between
the Arabs and the authorities, and on one occasion a
Shereef, a near relation of the Prince of Mecca, was
seized and insulted. On this route merchants do not
venture to remit specie, but, contrary to the usual
practice of Arabian commerce, effect their payments by
bills. And the characteristic thing is, that the people
do not expect the Turks to mend matters, but hope that
the Arabs will be better kept in hand when the High
Shereef Hosein, who has been but two years in power,
has established his prestige among the Bedouins, who are
not yet disposed to pay him the same respect that was
accorded to the " iron hand " of his predecessor, Abdullah.
If the Turks fail so completely in the discharge of the one
public service which they seriously attempt, what, it
will be asked, do they really have from the Hejaz ? The
answer is very simple. A certain number of officials
have their own private opportunities of pillage ; and as
all officers are very often changed, the great men in Con
stantinople who have nominations in their hands receive
a good deal of baksheesh.

A man coming out here, say as Nazir of the Jeddah
custom-house, has paid a good many thousand pounds
for his post, and is perfectly aware that at any moment
some other scoundrel who has money to spend on bribes
may arrive from Constantinople with an appointment
to displace him, and turn him out of his bureau without
a moment's warning. He is, therefore, bound to pillage

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 519

with all his might — to pillage not only enough for himself,
but enough to bribe the travelling inspector, and, if need
be, to outbid a rival at Constantinople. This system of
pillage is the one thing in which the Turks are successful,
and therefore it is not strange that, in the eyes of the
Arabs, the Turkish Government means simply an organised
robbery.

IV. WADY FATIMA

On January 29 we started from Hadda a little before
sunrise, and in a few minutes left the Mecca road on our
right, and held right up Wady Marr, passing through a
belt of Khamt and acacias under which were the tents
of a small encampment of the Harb Arabs. From this
point the valley is fertile — that is, there are springs
breaking out at short intervals, each of which fertilises
a plot of garden ground, and is usually surrounded by a
palm grove. Between the plantations the valley is still
a sandy desert. I procured a list of all the wells with
their names from the old Shereef at Wady Fatima. They
are thirty-three in number, the lowest being the fountain
in Hadda and the highest those of Zeima and Wady
Leimoon. From Hadda to Zeima was a journey of two
days, as we travelled ; but we made considerable halts,
and did not keep along the valley the whole way. So
it will be seen that for Arabia this is a district remarkably
rich in water. Some of the springs are very strong, com
parable with the famous fountains of Palestine, and
sending forth a stream sufficient to irrigate many acres of
soil. The fountain-head is sometimes a large pond thirty
or forty feet across, and swarming with tiny fish. Yet
I saw the springs at their weakest, for it is three years
since a flood has come down the valley. All the springs
are private property, and most of them belong to members
of the princely house of Mecca.

That water is treated as property lies in the nature of

520 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

the country, in which land without the means of irrigation
has no value, and the principle goes back to the oldest
times, as appears from the Old Testament (Genesis xxvi.,
Judges i. 15). Even in Jeddah the cisterns and wells
from which the town is supplied belong to private citizens,
and the water is sold from house to house by their slaves.
Among the nomads, however, springs and wells are the
property of the tribe, not of the individual, and neighbour
ing tribes are allowed to drink in time of drought on
principles of mutual accommodation. In time of war, the
water and the palm groves are the possessions through
which the most vital blow can be struck at an enemy.
Thus in the ferocious struggle between Mesha, King of
Moab, and the Israelites, the order was given to stop the
wells, cut down the good trees, and mar the cultivated
patches of land with stones (2 Kings iii. 19). Similar
tactics would still be used 'in Arabia in a desperate con
test, and the destruction of palm groves has turned many
a fruitful valley into a wilderness. But in the Hejaz,
I am informed, the palms are spared except in extreme
cases — that is, the forces of the Shereef would not usually
cut down the palm groves of a rebellious tribe, but would
content themselves with driving off cattle and seizing
captives to be held to ransom. This is a modification
of the old ferocity of Semitic warfare in the same line as
the law of war in Deuteronomy.

The great abundance of spring water in the Wady
Marr, or, as it is also called, the Torrent way (Derb es
Seil) is said by the Arabs themselves to be due to subter
ranean currents descending from Jebel Barada, a lofty
mountain above Taif. The upper springs are hot. The
great fountain of Zeima, which issues from a cleft in the
rocky side of the mountain overhanging the village, is
about as hot water as one can comfortably put one's
hand in. I had, unfortunately, no thermometer to test
it with. It is a very sweet, pure water, extremely pleasant
to drink, and quite devoid of mineral taste. The other

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 521

upper spring in Wady Leimoon, under Jebel Mudheeq,
lay off our route, so I speak of it only from report. I
understand that some of the lower springs are also slightly
warm, particularly that of Sola, which is but an hour
and a quarter below Zeima. But I was not told of this
till we had passed, and though I had tasted the water
I did so from a pitcher in which it had stood for some time.
I was also told that the fountain of Queen Zobeide, from
which Mecca is supplied with water, is a warm spring. It
belongs to another series of springs under Mount Kara, but
the natives make Mount Barada the ultimate source of all.
I shall describe the fountain of Zeima more fully when I
come to speak of that village, when I shall also speak of its
failure and reappearance some years ago. Meantime, I
may mention a curious well near Mecca, of which I was
told by Ismail. The water has no mineral taste, but is
valued as a cure for flatulency and indigestion, to which
it is said to give instant relief. Its water is sold in Mecca
at double the price of that from Zobeide 's aqueduct, but
is chiefly drunk by women, being thought to have a
weakening effect on the other sex. We were but a little
way from Hadda when the sun rose over a sea of wild
peaks far away to the right, the mountain land of the
Qoreish, above Mecca. The Mountain of Light, famous
as the place where Mohammed first attained the con
viction that he was the recipient of special revelation,
was faintly seen through the morning mists. On the
other side of the valley, above the palm groves of Rikkane,
ran the long bulwark of Jebel Dhaf. To the north were
the rocky faces of Mukasser and the Sidr, noted haunts
of robbers. All these mountains are of igneous formation,
and trap or basalt seem to be their chief components.

After three hours' journey we halted under a sand
bank for breakfast. When their waterskins were full,
my men generally made the morning halt in a desert
spot, and even when water was at hand preferred a
draught from the skin, well cooled by evaporation, to

522 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

water drawn fresh from the spring. The first business
at every halt is to gather firewood and prepare coffee.
To do this properly an elaborate apparatus is thought
necessary— a long ladle to roast the beans, with a spoon
chained to it for stirring and turning them, a brass
mortar and pestle, and three coffee pots. When the
beans are roasted and ground, a few sharp strokes with
the pestle on the side of the mortar warn the company
that coffee will be ready immediately. The powder is
placed in one pot, the water, already boiling in the second,
is poured over it, and the liquid is allowed to simmer
gently by the fire, while two or three cloves of cardamom
and a small piece of dry ginger are pounded up and put
into the third pot. The coffee is decanted into this, and
is then ready for drinking. The small cups of thick
earthenware are produced from a canister, in which they
lie, along with the cloth used for wiping them. As there
is no saucer and no handle to the cup, it is never more
than a third filled, and every one is expected to have at
least three helpings. It is a point of strict etiquette not
to fill the cup, which would be regarded as a " shame."
The Bedouins are agreed upon this, but the exact amount
which may be poured into the cup is different in different
tribes. The Beni Malik, who have other idiosyncrasies,
such as permitting their women to go unveiled, barely
cover the bottom of the cup. By the time that the coffee
has been drunk, a good mass of hot embers has accumu
lated, and Hamid proceeds to bake a cake of unleavened
bread, which is mixed in a metal basin and kneaded on
a skin. However large the company, there must be but
one cake (qurs or mella). The embers are scraped aside,
and the mella placed on the hot sand is covered with
them. In a few minutes it is baked, the ashes are scraped
from the hard crust, and the bread is pounded up into
rough fragments in the baking basin. Clarified butter is
poured over it from a small skin, sugar or honey is added,
and while still hot the whole is worked up with hands

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 523

into a uniform mass. This is fAreeka[?], the favourite
travellers' food, and by no means a bad mess when skil
fully prepared. The company sit round the basin, each
man with his right hand supported on the right knee,
while the left hand is kept aside. A small morsel is seized
with the points of the fingers, rolled into a ball and con
veyed to the mouth. According to a law of politeness,
which is prescribed in the traditions of the Prophet along
with the duty of saying Bismillah and passing with the
right hand, every one must stick to his own corner of
the dish. But when one has a dainty morsel it is a polite
attention to hand it over to a neighbour. In the towns
it is a graceful act to put the morsel in your friend's
mouth ; but Marzook, as a true Bedouin, regards this
as a " shame," and will not accept what is so offered. Am
I a girl, the Bedouin argues, that I require you to feed me ?

Nothing amuses one more in the desert than the extra
ordinary ramifications of the notion expressed by the
word "shame" (eyb). We have just had two instances
of a purely conventional kind. The same expression of
condemnation is applied to the gravest moral offence, or,
on the other hand, to an error in prosody. The usage
corresponds to a peculiar development of the moral
judgment, characteristic of a state of society in which
almost unlimited personal freedom is restrained only by
the force of a public opinion based on traditional forms
and conventional prescription. The Arab knows no law
but the public opinion and usage of his people, and every
conflict with this opinion is classified as an 'eyb. But
while I have detained you with this long digression our
Arabs, who eat well but very fast, have emptied the dish
of 'Areeka. Coffee goes round once more. Al Mas has
another pipe, and the others smoke a cigarette. The
camels are reloaded, and we move off again for Wady
Fatima.

At Wady Fatima the Torrent Path is crossed by the
highway from Mecca to Medina which passes behind

524 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

Jebel Sidr. There is a small village, with the ruins of a
very considerable castle of the Wahhabites. On a little
eminence, commanding a fine view of the valley and the
northern and western hills, is the cottage of an old Shereef
who had been warned to expect us, and came out to
receive us with very gracious hospitality. Rugs were
brought out, and while the house was cleaned out for
our reception, I sat in the shade under a wall, ex
changed the usual compliments, and enjoyed the play
of the sunlight on the mountain sides, which strongly
recalled some of the barer hills of Skye. Beneath the
house was a fine acacia, and finding me interested in the
names of the different trees in the Hejaz, the old gentle
man began to recount with considerable pride the great
variety of species. When an Arab speaks of trees, he
includes bushes which would hardly pass for trees even
in Caithness. Even on this principle, the list is not a
long one, but the people make the most of what they
possess, and there is scarcely a plant which has not some
industrial use. Of trees proper, by far the largest class
are the acacias, the different species of which are not easily
distinguished by a stranger, and are often confounded
even in Arabic lexicons and commentaries on the poets.
The commonest species are the salum, the samur, the
talh, and the killat. The talh is the tree of the uplands,
the killat is distinguished by its hooked thorns, which
inflict a smarting wound, and by its whitish bark. The
samur has a dark bark, and is more gnarled than the
salam, which is the prevailing tree of the lowlands, and
also the most useful. It is one of the so-called khabt,
or trees whose leaves are beaten off to be eaten by camels,
and its wood in addition to those uses yields a brown dye.
Throughout my journey I found various trees and shrubs
to have a very well defined local distribution, so that my
men would often identify a place by specifying what
grew at it. I shall, therefore, note from time to time the
various plants and their uses, as pointed out to me,

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 525

though I fear that my lack of botanical knowledge will
make these indications somewhat hazy.

The old Shereef Al Baz (the falcon) was one of the most
patriarchal figures I have seen in Arabia. He is of the
'Abdely family — that is, of the kin of 'Abd el Muntaleb,
the rival of Ibn 'Aun. He is not one of the greater
Shereefs, but having land at Wady Fatima, and possessing
a thorough knowledge of the Bedouins in the district, he
is much employed in local affairs by the Grand Shereef,
and is greatly respected in the neighbourhood. At the age
of sixty-five he is still hale and vigorous, with a clear
eye and erect figure. He was very plainly dressed in a
linen skull cap, and simple cotton tob, a little soiled ;
but his white beard, which was very carefully trimmed,
gave him an air of dignity, and his manner was that of
a gentleman of position, even while he was bustling about,
serving us with his own hands, and directing the whole
hospitalities in person like a modern Abraham. These
cares occupied him so much that I could not get nearly
so much talk from him as I should have wished, for he
knew the country better than any other man I met on
my journey, and was very willing to give information.
Arab etiquette demanded that he should kill a sheep for
us, and that we should stay to dine, so after a short
interval we were invited into the house to repose while
everything was got ready. The house was a plain
cottage of stone and clay, with a clay roof. Entering
from a little courtyard, through a doorway facing
eastward, we found ourselves in a sitting-room about 20
feet long by 12 broad. The walls were whitewashed,
the ceiling of mats, laid above beams of palm wood. The
floor, and the divan which ran along two sides of the room,
were well carpeted. The other appointments were very
simple. Two large trunks, secured by padlocks, occupied
the greater part of one end wall. In the walls were
several recesses with shelves, on which some pottery
was displayed. Above the divan hung a mirror, a small

526 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [iSSo-

white flag, pistols, and a handsome silver-mounted belt,
with appointments similar to those of our escort. A
lantern was suspended from the roof, and in a recess
behind the door stood the water cooler and a wooden
bowl handsomely studded with silver, from which every
one drank. The room was lighted from the open door
way. House door there was none, but a closet which
opened off the main apartment had both door and lock.
This is the usual type of dwelling in the upper part of
Wady Marr, where stone houses take the place of the
mere booths found near the coast. Though the house
stands absolutely open, the privacy of the inmates is
secured by a rigid etiquette, which forbids any one, even
a son of the house, to enter or approach the door without
the permission of the householder. I asked whether
there was no risk from robbers ; but the people scouted
such an idea. Even a robber would not venture to violate
domestic privacy. Of course our Shereef had another
cottage for his harem, the house we were in being the
public sitting-room.

The preparation of a whole sheep is a somewhat tedious
business, and while it was getting ready the hospitable
old gentleman brought me in a plate with a couple of
roast fowls, expressing his fears that I was already hungry.
He left me to eat alone, and bustled away again directly.
When I had made my meal, the dish was finished by
Ismail and Al Mas. By and by the servants brought
in the sheep in a great metal tray, covered with a conical
lid of plaited straw. The sheep is always presented entire,
but several portions were set aside for us to take away.
The rest was laid upon a large dish of stewed rice. Our
whole company sat round, along with our host, and what
was left was passed on to his servants. This is the usual
form of a country entertainment in the Hejaz ; but the
Bedouins, if they have no rice, will dine on flesh alone,
not even using bread. It is not customary to eat salt
with one's food, but for my sake it was called for. Boiled

:88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 527

meat is the rule, but two other methods of cooking are
known in the desert. One is to cut the meat in slices
and broil them on hot stones, the other to improvise an
oven by digging a hole, in which, when it has been raised
to a glowing heat, the meat is laid and covered with stones
and embers. I have seen it argued that boiling is the
most ancient form of Semitic cookery, but the other
methods which I have mentioned seem at least equally
primitive, though from a very early date boiling seems
to have been the commoner process among the Hebrews
as well as the Arabs. When I am on the subject, I shall
add one or two other notes about the meals of the Arabs.
Beef is almost never eaten, and is thought unwholesome.
Among the Bedouins the slaughter of a sheep takes place
only on festival occasions, or on the arrival of a guest.
Ordinarily the staple of diet is milk, with dates or such
cereal food as can be obtained, and the only meat eaten
is game, especially the flesh of the gazelle. Our men
could have gone on for a long time on their diet of ' Areeka,
but I was expected to give them a sheep when occasion
offered, and a cauldron to boil it in could be procured. In
a village there is generally at least one professional butcher
who is ready to kill and cut up a sheep, receiving as his
hire the head, skin, and offal. To save themselves trouble
our men used to call in this functionary, but they could
have done the work equally well themselves. In the
towns, there is, of course, a much greater variety of
food than is known in the desert, and the Bedouins,
when forced by famine to betake themselves to the cities,
are very loath to accommodate themselves to the strange
diet. They have a peculiar contempt for vegetables,
and members of a tribe who have settled down to agri
cultural life are stigmatised by their nomad brethren as
Khodhar — eaters of green things. I may notice two
points in which our dinner at Wady Fatima differed from
the usage of the towns. The great dish was set, not on
a stool, but directly on the ground, and the ewer and basin

528 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

were not passed round before the meal. After eating,
we stepped outside and washed. These are country
manners, but even in Taif there was no washing before
meals. As for the desert, the Arab theory is that it is a
perfectly clean place where it is not necessary to wash
at all — or at any rate not necessary to use soap, as is
always done in the towns.

After dinner and coffee we prepared to start, as the
camels always go best towards evening. In ordinary
cases in this district a guest can offer to his host without
hesitation a sum of money, and indeed he is expected
to do so, if his means permit. But as our host was a
Shereef, we had to observe a more formal etiquette, and
found that the proper thing was to leave four or five
dollars with his son, and give a trifle to the servant who
had cooked for us and filled our water skins. Europeans
often complain of the mockery of hospitality which lies
in the custom of paying considerably beyond its value
for an entertainment at which one is nominally a guest.
But when there are many passers to and fro, the exercise
of gratuitous hospitality would be an intolerable burden
to a man of moderate means, and as the poor must be
entertained for nothing, it is not unreasonable that a
European, who always passes for a rich man, should pay
pretty well. The present practice of the Hejaz is no
doubt anomalous, and the fiction of hospitality is cumber
some both to the entertainer and the entertained. But
it has its good side also, and in favourable cases the cordial
welcome and assiduous attention of the host are still in
the spirit of the ancient generosity of the Arab towards
his guest. Our Shereef certainly did all he could for us,
and when we left we carried with us a store of fowls and
mutton, sufficient to provide for our wants till we reached
another habitable spot. Instead of continuing our way
along the main valley, our plan was to seek a shorter
road through a desert mountain valley called Wady
Jirana. We therefore struck into the great pilgrim

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 529

road, and followed it in the direction of Mecca, till we
were close to the mosque and shrine of Meymoon, and
not very far from the pillars that mark the border of the
Haram or sacred land. In passing along this road we
attained a lofty point, from which there was an excellent
view of the Mountain of Light and the neighbouring
range, but I think that Al Mas had planned our hours
so that we should not come too near the Holy Land by
full daylight, and the white cupola of Al Meymoon was
only just discernible in the thickening twilight. Just as
it opened before us on a turn of the road we struck off
to the left and ascended a very bare but striking mountain
glen, enclosed in walls of granite and floored with a beauti
ful white gravel. This was Wady Jir ana, a path which
none of our party had travelled before, and which would
not have been our road had a Christian been allowed to
set foot within the boundaries of the Haram. It soon
appeared that Al Mas was not sure of his way, and an
hour and a half after sunset we came to a halt, and pre
pared our bivouac under the shelter of a rock.

V. SOLA ZEIMA AND THE BEHEITA

We had a very pleasant bivouac in Wady Jir ana under
the bright moonlight. Having eaten a tremendous meal
three hours before, my men had no supper to prepare,
so we drank innumerable cups of coffee and enjoyed a
long chat round the fire. Al Mas, as usual, was full of
superstitions, and showed me Bedouin methods of divina
tion. One of these is used to decide whether or not a
tribe shall ride out on a foray. A circle is drawn in the
sand with an arbitrary number of rays, which must not
be counted, diverging from its circumference. The first
and second rays are then joined by a cross stroke, so are
the third and fourth, and so on. If there is an odd number
of rays, one, of course, remains unconnected, and is held
to symbolise an open road for war. If all the rays are

34

530 LECTURES AND ESSAYS

closed, the tribe refuses to ride out. A more complicated
test of the probability of success in anything a man has
set his heart on is to measure out three span's-lengths on
the sand. The space between must then be divided off
into finger-breadths, which is done by successive applica
tions of the third and fourth fingers, pressing the back
of the fingers down upon the sand. The row of scores
thus obtained is roughly bisected by the eye, and each
half is counted off in threes from the middle point. The
remainders give the measure of one's luck, the best result
being three at one end and two at the other. I remember
to have heard from a resident in Baghdad, that a very
similar mode of divination is practised there by counting
off in fives an arbitrarily chosen number of beads in a
rosary. This is called striking a choice (dharab kheera).
The Bedouins also take auguries from birds. A single
raven in one's path is a very bad token, but two are
extremely lucky. They say Akhdhareyn falan zein —
" Two green (i.e. black) ones " — a fair omen.

The Bedouins have many other superstitions about
animals, some of which it may be convenient to mention
here. I inquired specially as to their usage in eating or
refusing the flesh of certain beasts. The superstition as
to the flesh of the rock badger which Palmer noted in the
Peninsula of Sinai is unknown here ; but there is a
similar idea about the monkeys which frequent Mount
Kara. These, it is said, were once men who came to pay
a visit to the Prophet. He set before them milk and
water, directing them to drink the former and perform
their ablutions with the latter. The perverse visitors
drank the water and washed with the milk, and were
transformed into monkeys for their disobedience. As
they were once men, their flesh is not eaten. This legend
is closely akin to what one reads in the fabulous history
of early Arabia about the Nasnas and the Wabar in the
great sandy desert. Both these words are monkey names,
quite current in the present day, though not recognised by

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 531

the Lexicons. The latter is an ape, the former a monkey
with a tail. The story of the Adites, who were changed
to nasnas for disobeying the prophet Hud, and the tradi
tion of the destruction of the Wabar, whose seats were
occupied by Jinn, are therefore monkey tales of inverted
Darwinianism. Except in this monkey story, I could
find no trace of the superstitious rejection of the flesh
of any animal. But some kinds of flesh have a magical
virtue attached to them. A very curious practice is to
eat the flesh of the hyaena. A man who suffers in any
member of his body seeks a cure by eating the correspond
ing part of a hyaena. The hyaena is also eaten in the
neighbourhood of Suez, for a friend of mine who shot one
near the wells of Moses was requested by the Bedouins
to give them a leg. A similar virtue attaches to the flesh
of the gemsbok (Wudheyhy), a rare species of antelope
found far in the interior. When eaten, it draws an obstin
ate bullet from a wound. The man in our company who
knew most about wild animals and their supposed
qualities was Mohsin, who was acquainted with the regions
east of the Hejaz, and these, I imagine, would yield an
interesting field for the naturalist. Besides the gemsbok,
two other large antelopes are known there — the leucoryx
or reem, which is undoubtedly the unicorn of Scripture,
and a red species called Idmy.

January 30. — We broke up at six, and moved up the
Wady, passing one empty well and a little patch of ground
which in better seasons had been cultivated. The morn
ing was delightfully fresh, with a strong cool breeze from
the Eastern mountains, which continued for two days.
This wind is the saba or zephyr of the Arabic poets. It
is extremely dry, parching the lips, and chapping the
skin of the face. The Arabs, therefore, never expose
themselves to it, but swathe the mouth and lower part
of the face by bringing round a corner of the head-shawl,
and catching up the end in the ogal or fillet. In cold and
windy weather the face of a Bedouin is almost as com-

532 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

pletely concealed as that of his wife with her face veil ;
and one is tempted to ask whether the latter fashion was
adopted purely to maintain the principle of female
seclusion, or partly from reasons of comfort. The fully
developed face veil, with nothing but holes for the eyes,
is no doubt part of the Hareem principle. But it is not
used everywhere. Among the 'Oteibe, for example, the
burko' only covers the mouth and lower part of the face.
At all events, the inconvenience which we suppose to
lie in the use of the veil is very much imaginary. The
heavy semada, or the great dingy wrapper which takes
its place among the poorer classes, is equally cumbrous
at first sight. But the Arabs, like other simple peoples,
use the same dress in all seasons, and have, therefore,
chosen a covering for the head which, with a slight change
in the way of wearing it, protects from the sun in summer
and the cold in winter. After an hour's journey we
found ourselves at the opening of a real mountain pass,
rough, steep, and stony. The camels were very indignant,
and protested with loud grunts, which were renewed
more emphatically when they reached the top and found
that they were expected to go down on the other side.
We had indeed lost our way northward into Wady Marr
by a long and rough bypath. The rocky road was very
trying to our dromedaries, and they gave vent to their
feelings on the subject by roaring, occasionally halting,
and generally expressing their contempt for our ignorance
of the right path. The camel always walks with his nose
in the air — to express his disgust at the human race,
which he consents to serve only under protest. Like
the true Briton — who, if there is anything in Darwinian-
ism, is certainly of the camel stock — he does his duty
regularly and well, but can neither begin nor stop work
without a grumble. He is equally unwilling to get on
his legs at starting and to kneel when asked to stop, and
the least interruption in the routine of his duties is received
with a grunt which intimates that this sort of thing is

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 533

quite intolerable, that he is a camel and not a mule, and
will stand none of your confounded nonsense. Having
relieved his feelings he usually does what you bid him ;
but he is always uncertain in his temper, and when really
roused has an ugly trick of turning round and snapping
at the foot of the rider, which his jaws are quite strong
enough to bite through.

In the most deserted part of the road near the top of a
rocky pass, we came upon a stone with a tolerably level
side, on which was scored a rough inscription, one or two
names in Arabic, and a few hieroglyphics, which appeared
to be imitations of the tribal marks used in branding
animals, with a rough figure of the camel. The inscription
was so far interesting that it had a certain kinship to the
much more ancient inscriptions of Taif , which are executed
in the same way by chipping the natural surface of a
brownish stone, so that the writing appears in a lighter
colour. My men were a little surprised at the stone, and
said that the Bedouins never make such scratchings now.
It cannot, however, have been very old. Beyond this
pass we entered a glade full of acacia trees, and met
a party of 'Oteibe taking camels to Mecca, who looked
at us rather suspiciously, but fraternised with Marzook.
Presently, at the wayside, we came on the shrine of a
Salih or saint. It was merely a circular wall of loose
stones, open on the eastern side, and three or four feet
high. It was hung with rags, the offerings of devotees,
and Marzook told me that the Bedouins were accustomed
to sacrifice a lamb before it. Farther down the glen we
met several solitary women. One seldom comes on a
man alone in the desert, but women go everywhere alone,
tending the flocks or gathering firewood. Among the
more primitive tribes the women and children have the
whole charge of the flocks, with which it would be humili
ating for a man to concern himself. Among the 'Oteibe
the women also help with the camels, which they ride
barebacked as boldly as the men ; but this was related

534 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [isso-

to me as an exceptional thing, dependent on the habits
of a tribe in which the men care chiefly for war and pillage.
To leave the flocks to the women and children is, on the
other hand, the general custom, and appears to be a very
ancient one, for it goes back to the times of Rachel,
Zipporah, and David. I remember that this usage is
noted for the Qoreish in the history of the Prophet, who
tended the sheep, as a boy, in their mountains, and I
was, therefore, interested to find the Qoreish specially
named as a tribe in which a man would think it beneath
him to be charged with the flocks. The men of the
Qoreish are wood-cutters— Qarrashin ; and their name
was explained to me, with great plausibility, as coming
from this occupation.

As we descended into the main valley our view was
bounded by the long level ridge of Mount Harra, which
I ought to have mentioned when we first saw it, behind
the Sidr at Wady Fatima, bounding the northern
horizon, save where the twin cones of Jebel el Kohl
rose above it. Harra is defined by the lexicographers
as a region composed of black rocks, looking as if they
had been burned ; and the Hejaz is said to be enclosed
between five districts of this character. The Harra
which rises above Wady Marr answers to the description.
The millstones of Jeddah are brought from it, and consist
of a kind of black basalt, which the natives call granite
(sawwdri), full of little cavities like a cinder, and of a
volcanic aspect.

After spending three hours in the mountains, we
struck the main valley near the fountain Er-Riyan, and
half an hour later halted to let the camels drink at the
pool of Embarek. The whole plain is fertilised by these
copious springs, and the view over rich wheat fields,
gardens, and date groves, towards the great blue mountain
of Mudheeq at the head of the valley, was most striking.
The spot is the fairest and most fertile which I have seen
in Arabia, and the scene embraces every element of

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ 535

landscape beauty, the towering wildness of the desolate
mountains forming an exquisite contrast to the soft
green of the irrigated plain and the darker masses of the
palm trees. Above Embarek the desert begins again.
There are wells and considerable patches of land dammed
in so as to be cultivated when rain comes. But after the
long drought the plots of garden ground were deserted,
and the houses once occupied by their cultivators falling
to ruin. Between Embarek and Jedeedah, a distance of
two and a half hours, we saw only a few girls tending
sheep, and a group of Bedouin women filling their water-
skins at a well. The first part of the route was interesting,
as we had the noble mountains of Mudheeq straight
ahead. After half an hour we turned sharply to the right,
and the scenery became monotonous. The broad torrent
bed in which we rode was cut through great banks of dust
and sand, and had little vegetation till we again neared
a region of water, when the 'Oshr (Asclepias gigantea),
with its broad smooth leaves, became common. This is
the tree from which the Bedouins burn charcoal for their
coarse gunpowder. Its milky juice is in repute as a cure
for barrenness, and the pilgrims are accustomed to carry
away flasks of it. At the fountain and palm grove of
Jedeedah the valley divides into two branches, the
northern one leading to Wady Leimoon. Following up
the southern branch, a journey of half an hour took us
to Sola, where there is a strong spring with fields and
famous orchards, well stocked with plantains, sweet and
bitter lemons, bitter oranges (leem), apricots, and other
fruits. The finest of these orchards belong to the Shereef,
who has begun to practise acclimatisation on a great scale,
and introduced mangoes and many other fruit-trees from
Java. The experiment seems likely to prove successful.
At Sola the hills change their character, and the valley is
overhung by great walls of white granite, full of enormous
amygdaloidal openings. Under these we rode on for an
hour and a quarter, and crossing to the opposite side of

536 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

the Wady, reached the village of Zeima, where the great
highway from Mecca strikes our route. Zeima, lies
on the right or southern side of the Wady, under a
low hill crowned with a large fortress of the Wahhabites,
now in ruins. From the rocks under the fortress bursts
forth the hot spring which I have already mentioned. It
issues from a natural fissure, but is conducted for a little
way in a channel artificially hewn in the rock, and then
spreads into a pool, from which it is led in a conduit
under the Mecca road to fertilise the gardens. There was
formerly a great palm grove here, but nine years ago
the spring failed suddenly — held back, as the natives
supposed, by the power of the Jinn — and all the trees
perished save one or two. After three years there was a
great flood, which seems to have cleared the subterranean
channels, for the water returned and now flows in a strong
stream like a small mill-rush.

Zeima was our halting-place for the night. We got a
small hut as our quarters, and purchased a sheep for
supper. I strolled out to examine the place, but my
escort were very nervous, and insisted on accompanying
me everywhere. Zeima, in fact, has a very bad name.
It is occupied by a branch of the Hodheil, who farm the
gardens from the proprietor, a member of the princely
family, and are reputed very bigoted and unruly. It
was here that Mr. Doughty was stopped and challenged
for not saying his prayers, after he had passed without
danger through some of the least- visited parts of Arabia.
Here, too, about twenty years ago — for the Arabs can
never give dates except by saying that such a thing
happened in the year of the cholera, the year of the great
flood, or the like — there was a great fight between the
Turks and the Arabs of Taif . The Turks, 500 in number,
defended themselves in the ruined fortress and behind the
loopholed walls of the gardens, but were ultimately forced
back towards Mecca, with the loss of their baggage and
horses, till they were joined by a reinforcement of the

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 537

Shereef s men. I did not see any tokens of their unruli-
ness in the village, but I believe I was not known to be
a Christian. At supper, several poor folk gathered round
our door and shared our meal, especially a privileged
deaf and dumb man, who talked very cleverly by signs
which his neighbours understood. He was saving up
money in order to marry. Deaf and dumb men are
often met with both in Arabia and Egypt, and I have
observed that they are always treated with great kindness.
We were joined at supper by a boy from Scinde, whose
mother is a small trader in the village. Many Scindians
come to the Hejaz as pedlars, chiefly in iron goods. The
father having died, his child was taken under the protec
tion of the Hodheil, becoming, as the expression is, their
Dakheel. Every man in the village is bound to resent
injury done to the boy as if he were his father. Indeed,
the little fellow seemed to have been spoiled, for he was
very pert and garrulous. He had quite forgotten his
mother tongue. The evening salutation in this village
was Allah yebayyitkum — May God give you your night-
quarters.

January 31. — Starting an hour before sunrise, we
rode up the Wady for more than five hours and then
emerged on the open upland plain of the Beheita. From
Zeima upwards the whole country had been scourged
with severe drought. The flocks which pasture in the
hills were perishing with hunger, and beside Zeima, and
on the road inland, lay many carcasses of sheep which had
dropped while they were being driven down the country
in search of herbage. We passed several objects to which
legends are attached — first, a great stone by the roadside,
which is said to have been lifted by a girl, a story which
educed the information that the trial of strength by
lifting stones which Jerome describes as practised in
Palestine is still known among the Arabs. Then on the
mountain top to our right a natural obelisk was pointed
out as a girl who had been turned into rock for casting a

538 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

stone at one of the ancient prophets. The metamorphoses
of the Arabs have all to do with prophets, just as their
local holy places are all tombs of saints. But the very
fact that the prophet in such legends is quite indefinite
seems to show that in the one case as in the other the
original story belongs to the period of heathenism. By
and by Jebel Suman (?) rises on the right, and Mohsin
has a story of a great liar who said that he was once
driving a flock down a glen here, and one sheep was so
large that it stuck between the mountains. His hearer
retorted that he had seen seven smiths making a cauldron
so large that none of them could hear his neighbour.
"For what purpose ? " "To boil your sheep." The type
of this story is familiar, and it seems that an anecdote need
not be a solar myth to appear as the common property
of remote races. Not far from the top of the pass a rocky
slope on our left was all covered with the sickly green
stems of a shrub called the dihn. It is, I think, a
Euphorbia, and though sheep eat it with impunity, its
white milky juice is used as a poison for wolves. I got
this fact from the old Sheikh at Wady Fatima, and I
have since observed that it is registered by the old lexico
graphers. The formation of the ground at the top of the
Wady is very curious. The mountains on each side are
steep and rocky, and the valley is simply a river of sand.
Suddenly the river expands into a lake, the hills sweep
round to the right and left, and one enters a great plain
of sand dotted with isolated hills or broken masses of
granite, and rolling away to the north-east as far as the
eye can reach without any considerable mountain range
to break it. In this direction, which is the line of the
Nejd road leading to 'Oneize, I am told that the ground
rises slightly for less than a day's journey as far as Rohba,
after which it again falls slowly. In the direction of the
coast the plateau appears walled in by mountains, except
where the great Wady, from which we emerged, pierces
the barrier. Looking back from the Beheita — so the

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 539

first part of the plateau is named — our Wady appears
as a great gorge, with huge hills towering over it in the
distance. Northward, in the mountain line, another
opening was pointed out to me, where the road from
Wady Leimoon and from Medina comes in. So far as I
can learn, both the branches of Wady Marr (the Zeima
Valley and Wady Leimoon) are, so to speak, outlets of
this sandy lake, enclosing between their courses an island
of mountain. The formation of the plateau is easily
understood, and follows a type constantly repeated in
the granite of the Upper Hejaz. Near the coast the
hills are trap and basalt, with an occasional patch of
granite or quartzose rock breaking through in the valleys.
But from Sola the granite begins to preponderate, and
the plateau of the Beheita is wholly composed of dis
integrated granite in the form of gravel. The isolated
hills which rise from it are granite peaks. The rock has
the same character as at Sola ; it is full of cavities, and
easily broken up by fierce atmospheric agencies. The
tops of the hills are entirely resolved into loose blocks
of fantastic form and great size, some rising like lofty
obelisks, others overthrown and piled in confused masses
one above the other. Disintegration has gone so far
that the accumulated debris has covered all but the
summits of the granite eruption, and the original contours
have been levelled by the spreading sand. The highest
points are still hills ; the lower ones are mere piles of
detached rocks. The plains of the Upper Hejaz, through
which I passed, are all of this type — groups of granite
hill -tops, levelled and connected by the accumulation
of gravelly debris. The original aspect of such a tract,
before the hollows were filled up, can still be seen in the
region south of Mount Kara, which is simply a forest of
granitic aiguilles. As the granite contains the elements
of a fertile soil, these plains afford good pasture after rain,
and they are generally pretty thickly dotted with acacias
— samur and talk. Indeed, the finest trees I have seen in

540 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

the Hejaz, were specimens of the talk growing by the lowest
beds by which the plateaus are intersected. Between
Wady Marr and Taif there are three such plateaus,
the Beheita, 'Okah, 'Okatz, and the great plain called
Hazm el Jemef a, which is known as the Navel, or highest
part of the Nejd. For by our Arabs this v/hole district,
as far as Taif, was counted to the Nejd, not to the Hejaz,
and the two plateaus first mentioned are pasture grounds
of the 'Oteibe, the great tribe of the western Nejd,
corresponding to the ancient Hawazin, whose lands run
inland almost to 'Oneize, and whose fighting men are
reckoned at 60,000. The'Oteibe Nejd, and Hejaz, how
ever, are very variously defined. An old gentleman of
r Oneize gave me what seems to be the most ancient
definition, according to which the lower whole country,
including Mecca, and running inland as far as the Beheita
and 'Okatz, is Tehama. The Hejaz is the zone of highest
elevation, Rohba, Taif, Kara, and the great mountain
land south of Taif. The Nejd is the country beyond
Rohba falling away with a gentle slope as you move
inland. This seems to agree so far with the usage of the
Taif people, who, when they speak of the Hejaz road,
do not mean the road to Mecca, but that into the hill
country of the Beni Sofyan south of the town.

VI. FROM THE BEHEITA TO TAIF

My last letter closed with a general description of the
Beheita, to which I have still to add some particulars.
Crossing the plateau in an easterly direction we passed
under the southern flank of Mount Demah, the loftiest
point of the granite eruption. It appears that monkeys
are found here, for Al Mas related how he had once been
compelled by tempestuous rains to bivouac for two
days under the mountain, and ascending it in quest of
game, saw a red-haired Jinny, which from his description
was plainly a monkey. He was afraid to fire at it, but

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 541

his less scrupulous companion discharged his gun and
grazed its shoulder. On returning to Mecca, the pre
sumptuous hunter was seized with disease in all his joints,
and died within two months — obviously of rheumatism
fever, caught by lying out in the wet. Al Mas, however,
feels sure that the occurrence was supernatural, and
was anxious to know whether there is a specimen of a
Jinny preserved in any of the museums of Europe. I
answered him very seriously that I believed there was
not, and that it was not probable that beings who have
the power to change their form could be captured by men,
or that it would be prudent to attempt any such thing.
I then told him the story of the fisherman and the pot
with Solomon's seal, from the Arabian Nights, which he
accepted as tolerably conclusive in favour of my argument.
This talk brought us — in about an hour -from the top of
Wady-ez-Zeima — to a depression in the plateau, where
every traveller fills his skins from water -holes in the
torrent bed. Close by were the ruins of a small hamlet,
and some rocks with Cufic inscriptions. The torrent is
known simply as the Seil — the Torrent par excellence. It
is the point at which pilgrims descending to Mecca don
the ihram, or holy attire. Beyond the torrent, which
is the limit of the Beheita, we diverged from the Nejd
road and again turned into the hills by a sandy pass
winding through granite walls, on which were many
Cufic inscriptions, praying for the mercy of God on such
a one, the son of such a one. Characteristically, there
were no dates, so that the writing was valueless. This
pass is naturally the roughest bit of road on the whole
highway to Taif ; but as it is a great route, some attempt
had been made to improve it by art. The steepest places
were paved, and at one very bad place the road was
partly built and partly cut by blasting through a thick
bed of granite and whins tone. Works of this kind are
not undertaken at public expense, but by private in
dividuals, and are reckoned acts of piety. The bene-

542 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

f actor in the present case was not an Arab, but an Indian.
The pass, which bears the name of Ree ez Zelale, is about
two hours long, and has the reputation of a haunt of
robbers. It must always have been a very important
route, connecting the system of roads which converge
on the Beheita with Taif and the southern Hejaz. Its
eastern debouchment is the market-place of 'Okatz,
which in the times before Islam was the seat of an im
portant sanctuary and of the greatest fair of Central
Arabia. No place, therefore, could afford a fitter site for
a monument, and long before the period of the Cufic
scrawls already mentioned, a great face of brownish
granite near the middle of the pass, overhanging the road
and facing towards the north, was chosen by some ancient
king to record his name. The centre of the rock bears
the image of the king seated, with one arm akimbo, and
the other extended, and grasping a sceptre, in a pose
which at once recalls Egyptian art. The squaring of the
shoulders, the set of the head, the bearing of the arms and
body, and the dress, of which nothing is indicated except
a shovel-like apron, exactly resemble Egyptian drawing.
But the workmanship is altogether different, and of a
purely Arabic character. In all the sculptured stones of
the Hejaz the natural face of the rock is left unpolished,
and the hammer- work which marks out the figures merely
breaks the surface, producing its effect mainly by the
difference of colour where the stone is chipped. To ensure
distinctness, the stone operated on is almost always a
brownish red piece of granite, on which the inscription or
drawing stands out whitish. One cannot take a squeeze
of such sculpture, for the natural roughness of the granite
would leave a much deeper impress than the superficial
work of the engraver. The figure of the king is a sil
houette, light on a dark ground, and whether from the
natural imperfection of the process, or from the injuries
of time and of the Arabs, who take the figure for a Sheitan,
the outline of the face and the details of the hands and

:88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 543

feet are altogether lost. The arms, however, are drawn
with considerable vigour ; and in general one is led to
conclude that a well-skilled draughtsman was followed by
a clumsy stone-cutter. The characters which accompany
the figure are written — like all the other inscriptions of
the same class which I have seen — in vertical columns :
two columns in front of the sceptre to the right of the
stone, and a single word, probably the name of the king,
obliquely over the head. Some of the letters are similar
to known South Semitic writing, and I hope that all may
be made out by skilled paleographists, but I am not able
to interpret them, or even guess at their origin. There is
some tradition preserved by Arabic authors of a peculiar
writing proper to the Gorhom in Mecca, and Fakihy in
his History of Mecca gives a facsimile of an inscription
distantly analogous to that of Reee ez Zelale, which stood
at the Maqam Ibrahim. It is, however, to be observed
that all the inscriptions which I found were in the upper
granite country — four at Taif, and one on the lofty
plateau of Kara. Below Mount Kara, in the vicinity of
Mecca, there is little granite, and I saw no writing other
than Cufic, and comparatively little of that. Except
that of Zelale, all my inscriptions are from the country
of the Thageef . But the Zelale inscription is by far the
most striking, because accompanied by an attempt at
sculpture which displays a certain amount of artistic skill.
At Numoora, on Mount Kara, the inscription is associated
with the figure of a beast of prey, but the drawing is a
mere child's scrawl, and the work is in outline ; whereas
in Zelale the whole surface of the figure is hammered out
so as to be clearly visible from the road below. As the
letters at Numoora are at least as well formed and cut as
those at Zelale, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
seated figure in the latter place must have been designed
by a foreign draughtsman. This would account for the
markedly Egyptian type of the design ; but if the draughts
man was an Egyptian, working in the style of old Egyptian

544 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

art, we gain a very early date for the monument, which,
on this hypothesis, can hardly be much later than the
Christian era.

As the afternoon was already declining, my escort
hurried me away from the monument, that we might
clear the pass before dark. An hour before sunset we
emerged on an opener country, and crossing a torrent
bed where water is always to be found in the holes,
ascended the famous plateau of 'Okatz (the Hejaz pro
nunciation is 'Okath, with a palatal " th " instead of the
palatal " z " or " d " used by Syrians and Arabians ;
but I adopt " tz " as a conventional spelling to distinguish
from the ordinary " th," which is also sounded in Hejaz
and the Nejd, and not changed to " s " or " t," as is
done in Jeddah, Cairo, and many parts of Syria).

'Okatz, as I mentioned in my last letter, is a plateau
of the characteristic Hejaz type, a lofty plain of gravel
studded with granite bosses, the summits of hills whose
bases are buried in the debris of long centuries of dis
integration. In the south-east corner of the small plain,
which is barely two miles across, rises a hill of loose
granite rocks, crowned by an enormous pillar standing
quite erect, and flanked by lower masses. I do not think
this pillar can be less than 50 or 60 feet in height, and its
extraordinary aspect, standing between two lesser guards
on either side, is the first thing that strikes the eye on
nearing the plain. Now, we know that the sanctuary of
'Okatz was no temple, but consisted of rocks, round which
the pilgrims made procession. The worship of remark
able rocks is a well-known feature in the religion of the
ancient Arabs, and it is natural to suppose that the group
selected for worship at 'Okatz was the most striking that
rose from the plain. I could not learn that there is any
tradition by which one could make quite sure of the
points, and the name of the sanctuary — Al Otheyda —
was not recognised by Al Mas, who had lived for years in
the immediate vicinity ; but the isolated hill suits the

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 545

conditions of a sanctuary round which solemn processions
circled, and the other groups of rock that stud the plain
are all much less remarkable. Some of them contain
individual stones hardly inferior in size. I saw one
prostrate column which I estimate as quite 50 feet in
length, and about 5 feet in breadth and depth. But a
pillar standing erect on a lofty eminence was more likely
to be made a god of. Apart from the enormous size of
the blocks, the granite masses which strew the plain are
noteworthy for the singular cavities they contain — bubble-
like openings in which a man could hide, and which are
not infrequently crossed by a twisted pillar of stone. The
effect of weathering on these singular hollows is to produce
most fantastic forms which might readily affect a super
stitious imagination, and add to the sanctity of the spot.
I have never seen the seething and surging of a boiling
fluid with all the effects of capillary attraction so perfectly
rendered in stone.

Sprenger, in his book on Arabic Geography, has a
very instructive discussion of the way in which religion
and commerce went hand in hand in ancient Arabia.
Religion was the affair of merchants much more than of
the nomads, and the sacred feasts, to which men gathered
from far and wide under the security of a religious sanction,
afforded the opportunity of holding great fairs without
danger from the marauding tribes. 'Okatz, which in its
natural features is so well adapted to appeal to the super
stitious imagination, is also an excellent position for a
great fair. It is traversed by a great highway, while
another road leads off directly to the Nejd. It has on
one side a great pastoral country, while on the other it
is adjacent to a region of fountains and cultivated land.
There are springs and orchards in the valleys, to the right
of the road, almost all the way to Taif. The fair was
thus a fit meeting place for the agricultural and pastoral
population. The trade was largely in leather, which was
purchased for export by the capitalists of Mecca and Taif,

35

546 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

and carried overland to Gaza. Skins are still the chief
article of export from the Hejaz, and, indeed, the only
important staple of Jeddah. But in these days the trade
seems to have been in manufactured leather ; tanned,
I suppose, with the leaves of upland trees, according to
the still prevalent practice of the country.

The fair of 'Okatz was not the affair of a day or two.
It is said to have lasted twenty days, or even a month.
The several tribes met to settle their old differences and
commence new disputes, and business was enlivened by
poetical contests, so celebrated that a verb was coined
from the name of the place, meaning to contend for glory
in poetical recitations. The old poet Abu Dhueib speaks
of the time —

When the booths were built on 'Okatz, and the fair
was busy, and the thousands were assembled.

For such a meeting an ample supply of good water was
necessary, and this was to be found in the wady which we
crossed just before ascending to the plain. The rise of
Islam destroyed the ancient mart, which had essentially
the character of a heathenish feast. But the association
of religion and commerce still survives in the Mecca
pilgrimage, which is the lineal descendant of the old
heathen spring feast. Then, as now, Mina was the seat
of a pilgrimage fair, and then, as now, a religious sanction
was pleaded to protect the travellers. Even the modern
distribution of grain to the Bedouins as the price of their
good behaviour has its ancient analogue. There were
certain families in Mecca whose charge it was to provide
the Bedouins during the feast with meat and drink. The
observation that for the inhabitants of Mecca the religious
feasts were essentially great commercial occasions, is
very instructive in connection with the present state
of the pilgrimage question. The great feast is no longer
the centre of an important international commerce,
though a large proportion of the pilgrims have still some-

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 547

thing to buy and sell. The development of Islam has
given the pecuniary interest of Mecca another turn ;
the pilgrims themselves, drawn from far lands in tens
of thousands, are the great source of profit to the Hejaz ;
and before the pilgrim trade the ancient traffic in skins
sinks into insignificance. Almost every one in Jeddah
and Mecca lives more or less off the Hajjy, and a good
Hajj is spoken of in the Hejaz as a good harvest would
be among us. With Mohammedanism as a religion — a
monotheistic, and, in so far, a spiritual faith — the pilgrim
age and the great feast have nothing to do. They were
retained and glorified under the new religion from the
particularistic standpoint of Mecca, which is the centre
not of the spiritual elements of Moslem faith, but of the
superstitions by which that faith is disfigured. It is not,
therefore, strange that in the Hejaz Mohammedanism
appears at its worst, that religion is prostituted to the
pursuit of gain, and that the holy city and its port of
Jeddah are notorious for the corruption of morals and
the practice of the grossest vices.

We bivouacked in 'Okatz, under the lee of one of the
great rock masses. The night was bitterly cold, but the
air delightfully clear and dry. Starting in the morning
at half - past seven, we crossed the plain, and traversed
for about an hour a more broken country, with the small
hamlet of Embr. To our right lay a complicated region
of hills and wadies, in which are many fountains and
orchards. From one of these springs, named Rayyiha,
the Shereef , when resident at Taif, has his drinking water,
sending a train of camels weekly, a distance of three
hours' journey, to fetch a supply. The Taif water is
itself very excellent, but that of the region of Rayyiha
is esteemed the best in the Hejaz. In water, as is well
known, the Arabs are great connoisseurs, and one is
constantly asked, in travelling, for one's opinion of the
relative sweetness of different sources. An hour from
'Okatz the road takes a sharp rise, and presently crosses

548 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

the torrent bed of Wady Nebi'at, and emerges on the
lofty plateau named Hazm el Jemeia. The Hazm,
which we traversed for an hour and a half in a south
easterly direction, is reckoned the highest part of the Nejd
(Surrat el Nejd). It has the same general aspect as the
Beheita, but is less broken with rocky knobs and bosses.
In passing over it our horizon was bounded to the right
by a continuous line of hills. To the left the country
was open, with only isolated points or hogbacks of
higher ground. We crossed three torrent beds descending
from the east, and clothed with fine acacia trees. Of the
eastern hills the most striking was a large sugar cone
which I believe is called El Qurr. It lay due east from
the village of Qedeira, just beyond which we again left
the Hazm. In consequence of the long drought, the
Hazm, as we saw it, was very bare and desolate. It is,
nevertheless, a great pasture-ground, on which five or
six thousand sheep are kept. The proprietor is the
Shereef, and his shepherds have the right to kill sheep
or camels which trespass upon the ground. The shepherds
are Bedouins living in tents, or, as they are called, houses
of hair.

At Qedeira a little patch of irrigated land marks the
beginning of a more fertile country. We descend into
the broad bed of a wady above the considerable village
of Umm el Khamt, and rest for a few moments under the
shade of a row of tamarisks. Besides this village the
Bedouins of the district are accustomed to gather their
flocks for Ramadan and celebrate the feast.

From Umm el Khamt to Taif we rode for an hour and
a half up the great Wady Elqem, so pronounced for
Luqem, which descends from Mount Barad and the
southern hills. In this wady there is plenty of water
to be reached by sinking wells, and from the Hazm on
to Taif the desert is studded with patches of irrigated
land, corn fields, orchard ground, and vineyards. These
patches are sunk below the natural level of the ground,

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 549

and walled in with dams of earth and stone. The water
is raised from the well by an apparatus called the Sawany
— a plural form — two or three leathern buckets, suspended
from the same well, being always employed together.
The bucket is a skin open at the neck, and also at the
opposite end, where the aperture is the whole diameter
of the skin, and kept from closing by two cross-sticks.
The skin is slung over the well by two ropes, or rather
twisted thongs of hide, attached before and behind, and
loaded with stones. The posterior thong is made to
pass over a wooden block raised considerably above the
well. The other rope passes over a roller on a lower level.
An ox is attached to both thongs, and walks up and down
an inclined plane sloping downwards from the well mouth.
As he walks up, the skin descends into the well and fills.
The driver then turns his beast. As the skin is pulled
up its weight hangs down between the mouths, and the
water cannot escape. But when it reaches the top, the
aperture dependent on the lower pulley is no longer
drawn upwards, and the skin discharges itself into a
runlet. The use of this apparatus is universal in the
Taif district. Only in one garden, the property of an
Egyptian, a water-wheel with buckets, drawn by a man
climbing up the wheel, was pointed out as a curiosity.
The usual Egyptian Saqia with toothed wheels, to be
drawn by animals, seems to be quite unknown. The
Sawany, like all other appliances of Arabian agriculture,
appear to be an ancient invention ; but in the classical
lexicons the name is referred to camels that draw water,
not to a machine. The march of the Sawany is a pro
verbial figure for uninterrupted toil, as we speak of being
in the treadmill.

At Umm el Khamt and onwards to Taif, one is struck
by a change in the appearance of the buildings. In the
Wady Marr, people live in open cottages without so
much as a door. Here the villagers' houses look like little
castles, each larger farmhouse and its courtyard being con-

550 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

structed for defence. The walls of the yard are high, the
dwelling-houses provided with loopholes, and placed so as
to serve as flanking towers. Most of the cultivated patches
have also regular towers of refuge not very strongly built
— often, indeed, mainly composed of mud — but barred
and loopholed, and provided with a barbican. I was
told that these provisions for defence extend all through
the Hejaz — that is, from Taif upwards. The villagers
of Wady Luqem are not proprietors, but farmers, and
of the 'Oteibe tribe. In appearance they are still Bedouins,
and even in Taif the townsmen are almost as prone to
war as the nomads. Continuing to ascend the Wady
we approached Taif from the north. The Wady opens
into a small plain, with a background of noble mountains
dominated by the great mass of Barad in the south-west.
In the midst of the plain lies Taif, surrounded by villages
and gardens, with the handsome summer-houses of the
grandees of Mecca. In the foreground is the great white
palace of Shubra, the residence of the Shereef 'Aly Pasha,
encircled by the most famous orchards of the Hejaz, and
almost dwarfing the little town behind. From Shubra
a straight avenue of tamarisks leads between orchards
and wheat fields to the northern gate of Taif. Above
the dusky line of crumbling mud-built walls rise a few
tall houses similar in style to those of Mecca and Jeddah,
and in the upper part of the city a lofty square citadel
with round corner towers. A Turkish sentinel, his hands
and feet all chapped with frost, received us at the gate,
and directed us across a desolate-looking square to the
house which, by directions of the Shereef, had been fitted
up for my reception. But the further account of what
I saw at Taif must be left for another letter.

VII. TAIF

Taif, says old Edrisi, is a small city, populous, irrigated
by sweet waters, with a salubrious climate, abounding

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 551

in crops, with ample fields especially rich in grapes, and
famed for its raisins. Most of the fruit for Mecca is brought
from it. It stands on the ridge of Mount Ghazwan,
than which no mountain of the Hejaz has a colder summit,
ice being sometimes found on it even in summer. There
are some things in this description which are not very
intelligible. I found no one in Taif who knew the name
of Mount Ghazwan, and the city, though it lies very high,
is not placed on a mountain ridge, but in the centre of an
upland plain. It is still celebrated for its climate, its
waters, its fields, and its fruits. Its grapes are sold in
Mecca and Jeddah for six or seven months of the year ;
but the fame of its raisins seems to have been transferred
to the dates, of which it produces a unique species as
long as one's finger. Of other fruits, the most famous
is a peculiar pomegranate, weighing two pounds, with
small seeds ; but all the fruits of Syria are grown — apricots,
peaches, quinces, pears, plums, plantains, the cactus fig,
and so forth. The sweet waters are less copious than of
old times, for some of the ancient springs have failed ;
but, besides many wells, there are still four fountains,
Shubra, Jal, El Mithna, and El Waht. The well of
Shubra is that from which the inhabitants drink. It is
conducted along the eastern wall of the town in a sub
terranean conduit, with two pits for drawing water, and
then flows northward to irrigate the great Shubra orchard.
El Jal is also to the east of the town ; the other two lie
above the city, El Mithna about a mile from its gates at
a point called Ethna el Taif, and El Waht farther up.
The fountains and wells, which never fail, secure consider
able cultivation in all seasons ; but there are large tracts
of good land which can only be cultivated after rain.
Two good rains are sufficient for the wheat crop, but of
late years the rain has often failed, and prices have risen
greatly. At the date of our arrival, the long-continued
drought was causing great anxiety. There had been
rain in the beginning of the Hajj — that is, in the end of

552 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

November — but since then the weather had been dry
and inclement, and great anxiety was felt as to the pro
spects of the season. Wheat had reached almost a famine
price. The Mohtesib, or officer in charge of the market,
could remember the day when the bushel (Ardebb) was
sold for about 75. — two Maria Theresa dollars. It had
gradually risen from a succession of bad seasons, and was
now worth thirteen dollars. An oqqa — 2j lb. — of clarified
butter used to be worth 2\ piastres. It had risen to 25
—say three shillings — but with a good season might fall to
10. It seems to follow from these figures that the rise
of prices is not so wholly dependent on bad seasons as
the inhabitants suppose. The failure of the rain, which
if it did not come soon could not be looked for at all, was
the general theme of conversation, and when I went out
to walk in the town the children in the streets kept cry
ing, " The Christians are come to us, and the rain is sure
not to come." To our great delight the clouds gathered
next day, and a thunderstorm, accompanied by showers,
passed over the town. The rain was not sufficient to
do much good, but the weather had broken, and abundant
rains followed in a few days. It is a curious fact that
almost the same thing happened last time that a party of
Europeans visited Taif after a severe drought of three
years.

I return to Edrisi's description of the climate of Taif.
It is difficult to say which of the surrounding mountains
is meant when he speaks of the formation of ice in summer
—probably Mount Barad, the Mountain of Hail, which
is the loftiest of the surrounding peaks. In Taif itself
ice is common in winter, and almost all the inhabitants
had their hands and feet chapped with frost. The
salubrity of the climate is, I imagine, overrated: the winter
climate is certainly good, though cold : but in summer
fever is not unknown. The place, however, is pleasantly
cool in the great heats, and is the favourite summer
residence of the Hejaz. The Waly, the Shereef, and the

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 553

wealthy of Mecca always spend some months of the
year in Taif, and it is also visited from Jeddah and
Medina. A large proportion of the houses belong to
Mecca people or are used only as summer lodgings, and
in February the town was half deserted. In Taif, as
also in Mecca and Jeddah, any one taking a house for a
single week has to pay the rent of a whole year.

The natural advantages of the site leave little doubt
that Taif is a very ancient town. An absurd Arabic
tradition asserts that it was supernaturally conveyed
from Damascus to the Hejaz at the prayer of Abraham
— a story which means nothing more than that Taif,
with its orchards, is the Damascus of the Hejaz, and a
city of unknown antiquity. A still wilder etymological
legend carries back the history of Taif to the Flood,
when it is said to have drifted (Taf) on the water. Perhaps
a beginning of true tradition lies in the story that the
walls of the city were built by a wealthy man of the
Sadaf who had shed blood in Hadhramaut, and took
refuge in the Wejj, as the valley of Taif was once named.
In the time of the Prophet, Taif was the capital of the
Thageef, who still hold the neighbouring mountains, and
are largely represented in the town. The story of the
conquest and conversion of the Taifites is a prominent
episode in the life of Mohammed, which I shall not
attempt to repeat from memory ; but the point of the
story lies in their reluctance to give up their tutelary
goddess Al-Lat. With the leading men of Taif this re
luctance had its root in policy, not in superstition. They
were afraid of the common people, and we have already
seen how the dominant merchant class of Mecca and Taif
made religion work hand in hand with politics and trade.
This system had gained them a great influence extending
to remote Bedouin tribes, so that their objection to inno
vation is easily conceived. Of the old religion of Taif
before Islam there is still a lively tradition among the
inhabitants. The highest of the three quarters of Taif

554 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

contains two rocky eminences between which runs the
street connecting the bazaar with the western gate, or
hence called Bab el Ree. On the northern eminence
stands the citadel ; on the southern is a great rough
block of granite, with rounded forms and many cavities,
which is traditionally named Al-Lat. The mass is now
half-buried in rubbish, from which it stands about twelve
feet high ; but it can never have been very remarkable
for size in this country of enormous boulders. The
etymology of the word Lat proposed by some Arabic
writers assumes that it was the custom to move in pro
cession round this deity — just as was done round the
rock at 'Okatz. If this is historically correct it confirms
the Taif tradition. Another granite block of a white
colour, with small black grains and finer texture than is
common in the district, lies beyond the walls S.W. of
the great mosque, and is traditionally named " Uzza."
Uzza, according to Arabic accounts, was worshipped
under the form of a Samur tree, and her sanctuary stood
at Nakhla, remote from the Thagif country. One might,
therefore, be tempted to conjecture that the association
of Al-Lat and Uzza in the local tradition of Taif is merely
borrowed from the Koran, where the two names occur
together. But the common people of Taif still swear
by Uzza, without thinking of the meaning of the oath.
We had a muleteer with us in crossing Mount Kara who
did so, and was very much ashamed when rallied on the
subject. It can hardly be questioned, therefore, that
the tradition is genuine, and that the same goddess
worshipped in one place as a tree was adored in another
as a stone. Not many years ago one of the Taif Shereefs
proposed to break up Uzza for building purposes, and
actually split the rock with a blast of gunpowder, but
the High Shereef interfered, and the fragments still lie
side by side. A Wady under the eastern walls of Taif,
descending from the north, and traversed for a short
distance by the Hejaz road, is traditionally associated

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 555

with the history of the Prophet. It is called W. Majiro el
Shash because the Prophet is said to have passed though
it dragging his sash along the ground. In this valley, a
mile above the town, are also shown the prints of his
lance — small natural holes in the rock, and on an eminence
the Sidr, or Spina Christ i tree, under which he rested.
These relics are visited by pilgrims, who have set up many
small stones in the valley as their memorials. A little
to the east of the Wady, in the road to the Leeya, are
the " martyrs " — the place where some of the followers
of Mohammed fell in battle against Taif.

At present the town of Taif presents no appearance of
antiquity. The mud-built walls date only from the time
of the Wahhabites, who are said to have completed them
in twelve days. It is a tradition that the town originally
stood close to the foot of Mount Sakkara, a granitic mass
covered with loose blocks, the nearest point of which now
stands about ten minutes' walk from the south-east
corner of the town. The people of Taif, says the tradition,
suffered much at the hands of the 'Aseer, and thought
it a precaution against surprise to move back a little
way from the mountain. I observed no ruins to bear
out this view, but at the base of Mount Sakkara on the
south side, near the road leading to the upper fountains
and orchards, I found two considerable inscriptions in
the ancient character already mentioned. The whole
sides of Sakkara, and, indeed, of most hills in the vicinity,
are covered with Curie inscriptions in several styles of
writing, and some very neatly executed. There are no
dates, and the inscriptions are mainly sepulchral, or
verses of the Koran.

Taif is divided into three quarters — the upper being
the citadel (Fog), the lower (Asfal), on the north, and on
the east the Indian quarter (Ijlaret el Suleimaneeye) .
Many of the houses are small and mean ; but there is a
fair proportion of good dwellings in the same style as the
houses of Jeddah. They are partly built of stone, but

556 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

large use is made of a sort of tenacious clay which is said
to stand better than stone, and is preferred to cement
(nora) for the roofs. The Mohtesib, who acted as our
host under orders from the Shereef , told us that his house
had not been repaired for a hundred years. As a fair
type of a small house of the better class, I may describe
that which was furnished for our reception- — the house
of the Scingianas [?], it is called. It is a narrow building
of four storeys, opening into a sort of square, near the
northern gate. Before the door is a stone platform, on
which servants lounge, and which is also used as a mount
ing-block. Entering through a straight narrow passage,
one has in front the staircase, dark and narrow. To the
right, a small court opens off the passage, having on the
street side a small office (maqad), and opposite to this
the Divan or qaa, a raised platform with a lofty roof,
connected with the court by an open Moorish archway.
In the Divan, visits are received and business transacted.
It is a characteristic feature of the Arabian house, but
not quite an invariable one. The indispensable thing
is to have a room on the ground floor where visitors can
be received without disturbing the privacy of the house.
As the Divan is loftier than the other parts of the ground
floor, the upper rooms are at various levels. The stair
is a winding one in short flights, accommodated to this
peculiarity. The private rooms of the house are on the
intermediate floors, and the chief sitting-room, or mejlis,
with its appurtenances, occupies the upper storey, the
kitchen being only half-a-flight of stairs off. The mejlis
is entered through an ante -chamber called the suffe,
which is generally slightly different in level. In the
house provided for me the suffe was a step lower. It
was laid with sand, and at one side was a sink with con
veniences for washing. Off the other end was a small
bath-room. In the suffe stood a brazier with charcoal,
to supply the continued demand for coffee and hot coals
for the water-pipe, which goes on at all hours of the day.

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 557

Below the step which led into the mejlis a rough carpet
of home -spun wool and linen (shamla) was laid, and on
this the servants sat who were in attendance on the
gentlemen within. Every one left his shoes in the ante
chamber before stepping on the carpet. The mejlis
itself was a plain room, whitewashed, with a few shelves
and cupboards. As the house was an empty one furnished
for the occasion, it looked barer than is usual with an
Arabian sitting-room. But it had been very nicely
carpeted. A line of cushions covered with bright chintz
ran round three sides of the room, and pillows for the
elbow were placed on the cushions at short intervals.
The mejlis has always several lattice windows, of which
one or two are oriels, and the deep seats under these were
also furnished with rugs and cushions, so that one could
curl up comfortably and smoke a pipe while looking out
on the street. A few cane-bottomed chairs and a small
table had also been introduced. These are getting
common, and in Jeddah many of the better class always
dine seated on chairs. In Taif I observed that people were
still more at their ease when eating from a tray placed on
a low kursy or stool round which they could sit squatted
on their hams. Above the mejlis were some store places
and a stair leading to the terrace of the roof. The latter
is enclosed by a parapet sufficiently deep to secure semi-
privacy to persons sitting on it. Houses built on this
plan are extremely well adapted to a tropical climate.
The sitting-room is so high above the ground that it
catches every breath of air. In Jeddah great care is
taken to secure a through draught, and the court is so
arranged that all principal rooms shall have windows
on two or even three sides. In Taif this is less necessary,
and the system of architecture, but especially the absence
of window glass, which ensures that one cannot have
light without draught, is not quite suitable for the winter,
in which frosts are not infrequent. A larger house would
differ from that I have described mainly in having two

558 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

stairs — one reserved for the Hareem, so that the mejlis
might be freely accessible at all hours without risk of
disturbing the women of the house. In Taif, as in Mecca
and Jeddah, there is no system of drainage. The closets,
which are placed inconveniently near to the doors of
the chief suites of rooms, are connected with cesspools.
Much is left to the absorptive power of the sandy soil,
and when the cesspool becomes a serious nuisance,
the custom is simply to dig a trench in the unpaved
street and bury the sewage in it. Fortunately, the water
of the town is not exposed to contamination, as the con
duit of Shubra flows outside the town, and skins of water
are sold from house to house by negro water-carriers,
who are slaves. Such rubbish as cannot be discharged
into the cesspool is generally accumulated on the house
tops ; and there is a periodical clearing out, which was
going on briskly at the time of my visit, in preparation
for the summer season. The Arabs of the towns are
much more cleanly than the Egyptians. Their houses
are generally tidily kept, and fleas and bugs, which are
such a plague in Cairo and Syria, are seldom met with.

An Arab town has three distinct aspects, and should
be seen from a distance, from the streets and from the
housetops. From a distance the lofty tower-like houses,
irregularly grouped, and presenting the most varied sky
line, always offer a picturesque appearance. There is a
lack of colour, the walls and roofs being either dust-
coloured or white ; but the deep shadows and strong
play of sunshine on the white surfaces partly compensate
for this defect. The minarets hardly add a feature to
the views, for they have no architectural pretensions,
and are mere slim candlesticks of stone crowned by an
extinguisher. When one enters the town the first im
pression is of universal shapelessness — of a total absence
of the sense of proportion. The houses are like great
packing-cases, set down by chance in irregular groups,
intersected by narrow lanes. There is no attempt to

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 559

give character to the wall surfaces, nothing but uniform
flat spaces of rough stonework, with string courses of
wooden beams, in the fashion which goes back to the
days of Solomon's Temple. If the house is a fine one,
the wall is stuccoed and whitewashed, and, perhaps, some
colour is introduced in. the battlements, but that is all.
There are none of the admirable stone-cut mouldings of
the Egyptian Arabs, no trace of the faculty for effective
treatment of great wall spaces which appears, for example,
in the mosque of Sultan Hassan at Cairo. The upper
part of the house always looks unfinished, if not actually
ruinous, and the battlements seem to have run to seed.
In the better houses of Jeddah these defects are largely
balanced by the free use of tasteful woodwork, chiefly
executed in Java teak. The doors and oriel windows are
handsomely carved, and the latter are shaded with
canopies of fantastic fretwork. A handsome sitting-
room on the top floor often has a kiosk entirely of wood
work at one or even at both ends, and the large masses
of dark teak thus introduced give relief to the insipidity
of the flat white masonwork. But I have great doubts
whether this style is original to the Arabs. The extensive
use of foreign timber which is seen in all the coast towns
becomes limited up the country, and in Taif even the
better houses have smaller and less numerous oriels.
The ordinary window is a plain lattice set flat in the wall,
which has no picturesque effect. The public buildings
are even less interesting than the private houses. Taif
has one great mosque and many small ones. But even
the great mosque of Ibn 'Abbas, beside the gate of that
name, to the south of the city, is altogether commonplace.
The type of the Arabian mosque is a courtyard with
covered piazzas, to which are added a minaret and prob
ably a domed building covering the tomb of a saint.
This plan admits of excellent architectural effect, as is
seen in the oldest mosques of Cairo and the great mosque
of Damascus, which follow the same type. But in these

560 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

the fair pillars and arches speak of foreign influences.
In Jeddah and in Taif all is shapeless and unadorned
whitewash. The piazzas are sheds and the domes mere
camels' humps. After the mosque and the citadel, the
chief public building of Taif is the Bath. The use of
the public bath is not common in this country. There
is none in Jeddah, and that of Taif is the recent specula
tion, I think, of a Turk. The inhabitants refuse to use
it. It is employed by visitors in summer, but the natives
reckon it a " shame " to frequent a public bath. Private
baths, however, are numerous. The housetop view of
an Arab town is always curious ; but our house being
small, I did not see Taif to advantage from this point.
The terrace of his roof is the Arab's garden, and his out
houses are little chambers erected on it. In Jeddah,
for example, the goats all live on the housetops. In
warm weather, part of the terrace, screened off with
boards and mats from the gaze of neighbours in loftier
dwellings, is the favourite place of the women. Dinners
are given on the housetop, and here the servants of ad
jacent houses meet to gossip. In short, the roofs are a
great centre of life, and their structure is as complicated
as their functions. You must not think of the roof of
a large house as a uniform plain. It is rather a minia
ture village, with half-a-dozen levels, and quite a variety
of terraces and chambers and porticos, the highest parts
being always reserved for the broken pottery and general
rubbish of the house below. There is nothing so comical
as a bird's-eye view of an Arabian town.

There is one part of the town of which I have not yet
spoken. I mean the bazaar. The bazaar is the centre
of all public life, and the little pigeon-holes of shops,
with just room for the tradesman, his son, and a customer
upon the carpet, are the great centres of gossip. The
bazaar of Taif is interesting because it is crowded with
Bedouins. The great day is Thursday, which is the
weekly market. Here you see Thageef, 'Oteibe, Qoreish,

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 561

Hodheil, and I know not how many other tribes, each
distinguishable to the practised eye, not only by dress,
but by the " blood " which appears in their faces. They
bring their arms with them — the inseparable janbeeya
and the lance — seldom the long matchlock, which is
useless in a melee, and fatal only when deliberately fired
from an ambush. The bazaar is stocked with sample
wares, English and American cottons, the home-made
shamla and head shawls from Baghdad, breadstuffs and
rice, the dates and wild honey of Taif, the hard mineral
salt of Jebel Marran, the coarse hot tobacco called hummy
smoked in the water pipe, clarified butter, leather and
iron wares, and weapons.

The stir is constant, for the simplest purchase may
occupy an hour, and a very small number of transactions
produces the appearance of immense activity. The other
streets are silent enough save for the boys and little girls
playing in them. And singularly enough it is a rule of
the town that no woman or girl above eight or ten must
ever be seen in the streets or precincts of the town. Tis
no great loss to the aspect of the streets, for the out
door dress of an Arabian woman of Jeddah or Mecca
—the dingy blue wrapper, the narrow cotton trousers,
and the yellow Morocco stockings and slippers in which
she shuffles along with an ungainly swing, so unlike the
erect elastic gait of the Egyptian females — is a hideous
contrast to the picturesque dress of the men, which is
generally bright in colour, and always shows off to ad
vantage the well-knit forms of the young and the grave
dignity of the seniors.

VIII. THE MOHTESIB AND His FAMILY

In my last letter I gave some description of the town
of Taif. I must now say something of its inhabitants.
The family which I can best describe is that of the Mohtesib
Hosein, to whom the Shereef entrusted the charge of

36

562 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

entertaining me. Hosein is a man of five-and-fifty, with a
comfortable figure, a grey beard, an easy, good-humoured,
but somewhat selfish expression on his regular features,
and a sly look about the corners of his eyes. He was
dressed in a white caftan and orange brown jubbeh,
and under his white turban, which, as usual in Arabia,
was wound about a parti -coloured skull-cap, he wore,
as a protection from the cold, a handsome yellow semada.
His feet were bare, except for the sandals, with their
gold embroidered straps, which he left at the door before
entering the mejlis, and it struck one as curious that while
the head was so carefully swathed, and the trunk pro
tected by an under caftan of red flannel, the ankles were
left bare to the frost, and all chapped with cold. The
business of the Mohtesib is the charge of the market.
It is his work to regulate the prices of articles of food,
and, if necessary, to compel merchants to throw their
stores on the market. It is not a very important office,
and Hosein is not one of the great men of Taif — in other
words, he is not very rich ; but his work requires a good
knowledge of the town and people and a certain local
standing which he possesses as the representative of a
good old Taif stock of the Beni Sufyan branch of the
tribe of Thageef . Hosein owns land in the neighbourhood
— good wheat and orchard ground, with running water,
which he lets out to a farmer, receiving in return one-half
the produce in fruit and one -third of the grain crop.
The farmer finds all the capital, seed, and labour — slave-
labour, of course, for there are very few free labourers
in Taif, except for garden work requiring special skill.
A skilled gardener is well paid ; he may receive as much
as £i per month, with food, clothing, and perquisites
in kind. An ordinary labourer would have food, clothing,
and four or five shillings a month. Besides his land in
the Leeya, five or six miles out of town, Hosein inherits
a good house within the city. His wife has also a small
house which is her own property, and will descend to

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 563

her children ; and as the old gentleman recently purchased

an Abyssinian slave girl — she cost him a hundred dollars

and made her his wife according to usage when she bore
him a son, his first wife has withdrawn to her own cottage
with her daughter and two sons. There is no separation
or formal quarrel. Hosein visits his wife, but she will
not come to the house where her rival is installed. The
children naturally take their mother's side, and 'Aly, a
handsome lad of nineteen, who, with the assistance of
a slave -boy, waited on us while we were in Taif, told
me in quite a touching way how good his mother was
and how unhappy. But the boy did not say a word
that could be construed as disrespectful to his father.
An Arab father expects of his son an almost servile
deference, which is paid cheerfully, and as a matter of
course. The son of the house, even when he is grown
up, is called on to do menial service to his father and his
father's guests, and does not feel humiliated by so doing.
' Aly was ready to wait, not only on me, but on my attend
ants, though they, with the exception of the conceited
Al Mas, thought it civil to deprecate his services. Nor
would he, without the express request of his father and
myself, come and sit down in the mejlis, much less join
us at meals, although after the first day, during which
a stiffer etiquette was observed, every one, down to the
camel man Marzook, dined at my table. Of an evening,
when the old Mohtesib was tired, he would lie down
and call 'Aly to shampoo his feet, which was done by
gently treading on them. Salim, the eldest son, who
was twenty-three years old, was allowed a little more
independence. He went out with me into the neighbour
hood, but did no menial service in the house, and came
and sat freely in the room with his father and myself.
But the old gentleman was pretty strict even with him.
Salim was very anxious to marry, and confided to me his
plans. Most fathers would certainly demand a dowry
of 100 dollars, probably also a negro slave girl, worth

564 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

60 to 70 dollars, to wait in the house. But he might
have the daughter of his paternal uncle for 50 dollars,
which was cheap. It must be understood that the pre
ference for marriage between cousins which exists also
in Egypt has here the character of a binding custom. A
father cannot refuse his daughter to his brother's son,
although another suitor offer a much higher dowry,
unless the cousin is of weak intellect or notoriously of
bad character. The cousin, if rejected for a richer
suitor, can step in even at the last moment and stop
the wedding. In return for this moderate dowry, Salim 's
uncle would have to furnish the house of the young
couple — the furniture being then the property of the
wife. But the old Mohtesib, who could spend 100
dollars on a concubine for himself, will not find 50 dollars
for his son, and bids him go and make money, and save
up enough to pay the dowry himself. In this Salim has
not been very successful. A year ago he had a small
post as Mukharrij — that is, he had charge of the local
Government transport service. At present he is employed
by his father, and earns nothing. I was somewhat
struck with the great difference in dress between father
and sons. The former appeared as a substantial citizen.
Salim, in a coarse white tob, an old waistcoat, and rough
'abaye, looked almost like a peasant. 'Aly served us
in a white tob, a waistcoat, and a great red handkerchief
for turban. The tob in each case was scrupulously clean,
and this was the only sign that the wearers were not of
the poorest class.

The Mohtesib had seen a good deal of public service.
Previous to his appointment at Taif, which was but of
two years' date, he had spent seven years in Yemen
with the Turkish Pasha in a post connected with the supply
service. He had lost money at this work, but he was
very unwilling to return to Taif, where he had left his
wife and family, and after the failure of urgent messages,
Salim had gone in person to Kanfuda and fetched him

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 565

home. Hosein is said to know Turkish better than any
one in Taif, and is very proud of the accomplishment.
Yet he can hardly read and write, and his sons are in
the same case. It is, indeed, extraordinary how few of
the Arabs of the interior possess the elements of education.
People in a very respectable position write and spell
about as well as a ploughman in Scotland, and are equally
unhappy when compelled to attempt a letter. Hosein,
who is a shrewd fellow, and full of curiosity, was anxious
to see the New Testament, and to hear how it had been
revealed. I had furnished myself with a small copy of
the excellent Beyroot version, and with some small
prints of single gospels, so I was able to gratify his wish.
I turned up the story of the Prodigal Son, but he could
not spell it out with any comfort, and I had to read it
for him. He followed it with great interest, and told me
next morning that he had it firmly in his head. He is,
indeed, somewhat of Plato's opinion that reading and
writing are of little use to a man of retentive memory,
and rather despised my intellect when he saw me always
taking notes.

I shall take this opportunity to say a word or two as
to the attitude of the Hejaz Arabs towards Christian books.
When I came here only one inhabitant of Jeddah, so far
as I am aware, possessed a copy of the Bible in Arabic.
This was Sheikh 'Aly Qasim, a liberal-minded man who
has seen the world, and was long in the service of
Mohammed 'All in Egypt. He is quite aware that the
old Arabs, for whose literature he has a great love, were
much opener to foreign influences than their descendants.
He regards it as necessary to the regeneration of Arabia
that people should be willing to learn what is useful from
any source, and he finds the root of all present mischief
in fanaticism, especially the fanaticism of the Turks.
From this point of view he thinks it right to possess the
Christian Scriptures. The possession is a protest against
bigotry, but I don't think he has read very much of the

566 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

Bible. He has, indeed, the regular Arabic taste for
affected rhetoric and plays on words, to which Hareery
appears the model writer, and the simple style of the
gospels devoid of literary merit. It is the curse of Arabic
literature that form — and how artificial a form ! — is
preferred to substance, and so long as this is the standard
by which books are judged, the affected rhetoric of the
Koran will secure it the preference over the Bible.

Most of the Hejaz Arabs, even of those who are fond
of books, have never seen the Bible. An Indian Moham
medan, clerk to Messrs. Wylde & Co., told me that he
had long looked for an Arabic Bible, but could not find
a copy. I presented him with one, and he accepted it
very gladly. In one or two other cases I first tried how
an Arabic psalter would be received. It excited interest ;
the Arabs all know by name the Psalms of David, which,
as one man told me, he expects to hear sung in Paradise.
But when the book was shown by its possessor to some
of the leading Mohammedans, they pronounced it bad.
It was not a genuine copy, but corrupted by the Christians.
It was useless to ask the authority for this statement,
or to inquire whether the hostile judges had true copies—
the reputation of the little book was irretrievably injured.
There would be no difficulty in circulating the Scriptures
in the Hejaz, were it not that the literary authorities are
bigots, and have been taught that our Bible is blasphem
ously corrupted from its original verity. People are quite
willing to take a book, but they are pretty sure to go and
show it to the nearest scholar, and he, either from genuine
fanaticism or simply from the native arrogance of Arabian
scholarship, is likely to condemn the Christian print. I
left a New Testament at Taif, and gave Al Mas another
to take to Mecca, but I greatly fear that they are not
likely to be read. These columns are not the place
to deal with this matter from a missionary point of
view ; but simply in the interests of civilisation and of
that progress which is seriously retarded by the current

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ 567

Moslem notion that their dry and barren literature is
the most perfect that can be conceived, it is heartily to
be desired that a door should be opened to the circulation
of Christian literature. The good to be effected by a
study of the Bible is not to be measured by the number
of possible converts to Christianity. It would be an
enormous advance if the reading and thinking part of
the Arabs knew enough of our religion and its documents
to conquer their present absurd idea that the only reason
why we are not Moslems is crass and stupid ignorance
of Arabic and the Koran. At present, if one shows
any interest in Arabic, the people fancy that one is well
on the way to be a Mohammedan. Most of them know
almost nothing of their own faith except a few formulas
and prayers ; but they take it for granted that the
stupendous miracle of the Koran, a book which no human
intellect could have produced, must convince every
one who is able to read it. You testify to the unity
of God — so I have often been told — what is easier
than to add that Mohammed is his apostle, and secure
your entrance to heaven ? For though that is not the
teaching of the Prophet, all Mohammedans feel sure
of heaven, and the moral obligations of their religion
cost them little thought. If you reply that you are not
satisfied that the Koran makes any necessary addition
to the previous revelations which Mohammed himself
accepted as divine, you are exhorted only to accept
Islam, and then God will help you to see the perfections
of his book. If you attempt to contrast the Christian
laws of morality with those of Islam, the most liberal
answer you can expect is that the ordinances of Islam
suit the conditions of the Arabian people. And that,
no doubt, is true, in the sense that Mohammed himself
largely accommodated his precepts to the natural pre
judices of the Arabian mind. But, on the other hand,
the Koran is largely responsible for the present slowness
of the Arab to accept even the most needful reformations.

568 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

Arabian ways of thought in Mohammed's day were not
nearly so stereotyped as they have since become under
the sanction of a religion whose material successes gave
it an enormous prestige. Before Islam, Arabia was in
a state of transition. It was largely accessible to new
and foreign influences, and conservative traditions being
rather tribal than national, had not the strength which
they acquired by the religious unification of the race.
The Koran is the bulwark of all prejudices and social
backwardness in the East. I am far from saying that
no progress can be made by a Mohammedan people,
but it is indispensable to progress that a freer attitude
be taken up towards the Koran, and the best means
towards this is a better knowledge of the ethics and
religion of the Western nations.

And now to go back to Taif. The hospitalities of
Hosein and his sons were unsparing and a little burden
some. My host and Al Mas between them fairly took
possession of me. I had the greatest difficulty in being
alone long enough to wash or change my clothes, and
even at night, when a bed was laid for me in the mejlis,
Al Mas, and sometimes Salim, slept in the room. During
the day one or more of the family was constantly with me.
It must have been rather trying to the poor Mohtesib,
but Oriental patience, fortified by the unfailing water-
pipe, can endure much in the cause of hospitality. I,
of course, made the most of my opportunities, and col
lected a good deal of information about tribes' customs
and the like, of which I shall give some of the more interest
ing particulars in another letter. As the weather broke
the day after my arrival, I had to spend more time within
doors than I should otherwise have cared to do. But,
indeed, it required a good deal of pressure to get out into
the surrounding country. After I had seen the orchards,
which to the Arabs are the great sight of Taif, and had
also conscientiously visited a garden in which an enter
prising Egyptian raises European vegetables from seed

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ 569

brought from France, I was held to have " done " the
place, and my host's only further care was to give me
plenty to eat. I had, at all events, full opportunity to
make acquaintance with a characteristic local cuisine.
The Taif people have three meals a day, but I struck off
the midday repast, as otherwise the whole day would have
been lost. For, whenever one wished to go out, the
answer was, " Wait a little while, you must have some
thing to eat first." I cannot tell you the programme
of a Taif dinner. Sweets, vegetables, and joints are
mingled in an extraordinary confusion, for which it is
impossible to find a law. But a few general principles
were discernible. The meal should end with a dish of
stewed rice, which may or may not be accompanied by
sweet pastry or vermicelli. A great dinner has for its
pi&ce de resistance an entire sheep stewed or baked with
samn (clarified butter), and stuffed with rice, eggs, and
almonds. On lesser occasions one eats roast fowls and
a variety of stews. Several large bowls of sour milk
are always on the table, and of this the natives eat a
great deal. At breakfast one begins with 'Areeka, or
with a sort of porridge prepared with milk and samn
and made very rich. Eggs fried with vegetables are
another favourite dish. Besides these, there is probably
a plate of muffins soaked in honey and samn, or a bowl
of samn and honey mixed, in which the bread is dipped —
the butter and honey of the Old Testament. The most
characteristic and also the most trying dish to a stranger
is called Hareesa. This is a local food eaten in the Hejaz,
Yemen, and Hadhramaut, and prepared by boiling grits
along with meat, and beating up the compound with a
wooden spatula till it becomes a uniform paste. It is
eaten with samn, sometimes with sugar, and has a very
strong greasy taste. The great feature of Taif cookery
is the superabundance of samn. The people even drink
it by the bowl. I ought perhaps to tell how it is made.
The milk stands overnight, with the addition of a little

570 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

sour milk as a ferment. In the morning it is skimmed,
and the cream is shaken in a skin. It is then boiled for
a long time, and strained several times. When well pre
pared, it will last at least a year without spoiling. The
best products of Taif are the preserved fruits in syrup.
The Arabs are very fond of conserves, and various districts
have their specialities. In the Nejd, for example, there
is an excellent conserve of dates, in which the stones are
replaced by almonds.

My daily life in Taif did not admit of much variety.
I was not allowed to move out without my escort, and
it was with great difficulty that I could carry my search
after inscriptions more than a mile or two from the town
walls. I made one expedition about three miles south,
but Al Mas was most unwilling to accompany me, sulked
the whole way, and contrived to pick a quarrel with
Ismail. Had I not been hampered by him, I believe I
could have gone far into the interior with perfect safety,
for I met nothing but civility from the Bedouins abroad,
who, to be sure, did not know me for a Christian. But
I had no formal leave to go beyond Taif, and could not
insist on going where Al Mas and the Mohtesib said
there was danger. I, therefore, was obliged to confine
myself to the vicinity of the town, where I found four
inscriptions in the old character I sought for, and acquired
the conviction that there is a great deal still to find. I
am now certain that Al Mas and the Mohtesib contrived
to keep back from me information which they possessed,
and I have since learned to my great disappointment
that only three hours from Taif there are important
ruins at a place called Thimala. Had I been able to name
a definite goal, I might, perhaps, have got leave to make
an excursion in this direction, but I could not go to the
Sheeref Fawwaz, who is the representative of the Emeer,
without a definite plan. My short trip was, indeed,
essentially a mere reconnaissance, in which I have at least
satisfied myself that there is much to see and describe,

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 571

and that the obstacles in the way of a real exploration of
the Hejaz are not insuperable. It would probably be
necessary to settle for some time at Taif , and hire a house,
making this the centre of exploration. It might be safer
to go when the Shereef and Waly are themselves at Taif —
at least, Hosein declared that then there would not be
the same danger from the Bedouins as he avers to exist
now. The Shereef, who is a liberal-minded man, like
his brother and predecessor, has no dislike to Europeans,
whom he probably prefers to the Turks. But he has
sometimes to affect prejudices which he does not feel,
in deference to the tyranny of public opinion. When
the late Shereef received the captain of a French ship
of war at Taif, he did not venture to entertain him until
after the evening prayers, lest the people should say
he was casting away religion. Certain scruples, then,
would certainly have to be respected, and certain pre
cautions employed, but, with ordinary prudence and
tact, one might make friends everywhere, and visit almost
any part of the country. It would, of course, be essential
to conform to the habits and manner of the people, for,
as the Arabic proverb says, " When you come to their
dwelling conform to their ways, or if not go and leave
them."

IX. THE ARABS OF THE HEJAZ

The town of Taif is the farthest point at which the
Turks hold any real authority in the Hejaz. Here they
have nominally a complete official system. The Waly
visits the place in the summer, and brings his bodyguard.
There is a Turkish police, commanded by a very intelligent
officer whose acquaintance I made. There is also a
Mohafiz or governor of the town, and a Cady who is
nominated by the Turkish Cady at Mecca, and changed
with him every two years. The Cady is interpreter
of the law based on the Koran and traditions. He is

572 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

paid by fees, of which one half are remitted to the superior
at Mecca. The Mohafiz is the supreme executive officer ;
but the real power lies in the hand of the Grand Shereef,
and his representative, the Shereef Fawwaz, is the strong
man of the place. Fawwaz is now an elderly man, with
a fine tall person, a keen commanding eye, and a dignified
manner. He is greatly respected and feared by the Arabs
for his severe justice. Fawwaz is a pure Arab in his
habits and ways of thought. He has never been abroad,
and is as ignorant as a child of the progress of European
ways and inventions in the East. When I called on him,
the conversation turned chiefly on railways, telegraphs,
telephones, and the like, and Ismail the Anglophile got
so eloquent on the wonders of England that the old
gentleman was perfectly confounded. But he knows
the Arabs, and keeps a firm hand over them ; and as
most people would rather be judged in Arabic fashion
than by Turkish law, he is far the most important judge
in the place. His jurisdiction, however anomalous it
may appear in a district nominally Turkish, is undis
puted, and includes the power of life and death. Hosein
and Al Mas gave me a very favourable picture of the
wide jurisdiction which Fawwaz, as representative of the
Emeer, exerts even over remote tribes far away through
the Nejd. But from other and less partial sources I
gather that this picture was considerably exaggerated.
Over the settled populations of the Hejaz — the Khadhror
agricultural Arabs — the Shereef has practically a complete
hold. The Bedouins cannot altogether dispute his
authority, for they must from time to time visit the
towns to buy and sell, and thus come within the sphere
where he has effective jurisdiction. His warrant, too,
can generally be executed even in remote places when
he desires to arrest an offender. But justice among
the Arabs is properly a private matter, and parties in
a dispute may either betake themselves to self-help, or
if they appeal to a judge regard him rather in the light

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 573

of an arbitrator. In such tribes as the 'Oteibe, who
live far from the towns, the ordinary appeal is to local
sheikhs, their own hereditary judges, and in these Courts
the reference is not to law, but to ancient precedent.
Precedents, says a rhyming adage, remove uncertainties
— Al-Sawdlif tamdd el-Mohdlif. For an 'Oteibe to
appeal from these judges to the Shereef would be held
a " shame." Nevertheless, these tribes do in some
sense acknowledge the authority of the Shereef. They
pay him the tithes, for were they to refuse, he could
close their markets to them ; on summons they follow
him to war against another tribe — drawn mainly by the
prospect of booty. And the Ashraf in general, who are
scattered over the country, and form a sort of tribal
connection, enjoy a certain religious respect, and a
much more practical security, arising from the principle
that the blood-money of a Shereef is fourfold. Every
Bedouin war has to be squared up by an adjustment of
blood-money for the slain, so it is a serious matter to
be embroiled with men each of whose heads is worth
four. The Shereef, then, is a real prince, with actual
privileges and a palpable, though ill-defined, authority.
The exact limits of his influence depend on his personal
qualities, on his energy in suppressing rebels, and his
skill in balancing tribe against tribe. Rebellion, as
far as I can gather, generally means the plundering of
caravans or a raid on a neighbour's territory. In the
case which occurred while I was at Taif, and to which I
have already referred, the 'Oteibe, quarrelling with the
Harb, attack a caravan under the protection of the latter.
In such quarrels the towns have a direct interest, and
the Shereef is compelled to interfere. He recovers the
booty, imposes fines and regulates the blood-money
between the tribes. Another case was mentioned to me,
when a body of 'Oteibe seized the Beheita. They brought
down their families and camels, and while pasturing
their herds in the district, plundered all travellers. Here

574 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

again the Shereef interposed, broke up the force, and
recovered the booty.

Of late the turbulent tribe which has made most noise
in the outer world are the Harb, on the Medina road,
who, under their leader, Sad, have of recent years so
often disturbed the security of the pilgrims. But the
most formidable tribe of Central Arabia is certainly the
'Oteibe, the representatives of the ancient Hawazin.
Strictly speaking, the 'Oteibe are not a tribe, but a con
federation of tribes, of whom I can name fourteen. All
these tribes acknowledge one supreme judge. They
extend from the limits of Taif and the Beheita right
through the Nejd to the district of 'Oneize. They are
great robbers, and much feared, but have a better char
acter for honour and hospitality than the Harb. Their
strength was estimated to me by some informants at
60,000 fighting men. But Sheikh 'Aly Qasim, who was
long employed among the tribes round Taif as collector
of tithes, assures me that 20,000 would be a fairer estimate.
To the south-east of the 'Oteibe are the Qahtan, a tribe
nearly as strong, and hereditary enemies of the 'Oteibe.
All accounts agree that the Qahtan are very savage, but
the practice of drinking the blood of their enemies in
time of war, with which they are generally credited,
is perhaps now obsolete. Mohsin, who knows the East,
says that the practice still obtains in a tribe beyond
the Qahtan named, if I am not mistaken, the Yam, and
he gave me a picture of the single combats of these
tribesmen, in which each grasps his adversary, and
plunges his dirk into his side, which formed an exact
parallel to the scene at the pool of Gibeon in the war
between David and Ishbosheth. The Qahtan are not
subject to the Shereef, but go with the 'Aseer, and are
reckoned to the race of Yemen. Not much inferior in
strength to the Qahtan are the Beeshe, from whose
numerous negro slaves a force of irregular horse has long
been drawn for the protection of Mecca. Between

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 575

Qahtan, 'Oteibe, and Beeshe, in a fertile district of palm
trees, two days' journey in length, is a small but very
pugnacious tribe called, appropriately enough, the Sibe
(lion's whelp). They have two towns or villages—
Ghanye and Hurme — and are constantly engaged in
war with their neighbours. Al Mas had been more than
once in campaigns against them, for he assures me that
they are never quiet except when hungry. They ride
out to battle four or five men on one dromedary, each
brandishing several spears. These are the most important
and formidable tribes on the eastern side of the Shereefs
country. Of the tribes of the Hejaz proper, those which
I came in contact with are the Thageef, the Qoreish, and
the Hodheil. Of other tribes of the high mountain land
I heard little but the names. I may mention in particular
the Beni Fahm, who live at no great distance from Taif,
on beyond Thimala, and have the reputation of speaking
the best Arabic of any Hejaz tribe. To the south the
Shereefs dominions border on the powerful and warlike
country of the 'Aseer, with whom the Hejaz Arabs are
in frequent conflict.

The reader is already familiar with the division of
this part of Arabia — the Turkish province of Hejaz —
into three parts — the Tehama or low land, the central
mountainous country or true Hejaz, and the inland
plateau or Nejd. The Nejd is a land of pure nomads.
Far inland there are settled and fertile lands, but for
many days' journey it is a country which can be inhabited
only by nomad tribes moving in their houses of hair from
place to place. The 'Oteibe in time of drought wander
far and wide. On our road home we met a band of them
within an hour's journey of Mount Arafa, travelling
homeward on the news that rain had fallen in their
own country. They had been away beyond Summar
in Yemenite territory. In the Hejaz proper, on the
other hand, the mountain plains and valleys are rich in
water, and villages with cultured land are numerous.

576 LECTURES AND ESSAYS

Tribes such as the Thageef, the Qoreish, and the Hodheil
are divided into villagers (Khadhr) in the cultivable
Wadies, and wandering mountaineers who are shepherds
and woodsmen. The Thageef occupy the mountains and
fertile valleys all round Taif, the Leeya and the hills
beyond it, the great southern mountain of the Ourneit,
the seat of the Beni Sufyan, and the tangled region of
the Tuweriq, north-west of Taif as far as the plateau of
Hadda on the summit of Mount Kara, where they join
the Qoreish. The Qoreish and the Hodheil, who are
similar in customs and closely allied, are mainly wild
mountaineers. The Qoreish are found on the plateau
of Hadda and in the mountains of Arafa — not the lowly
Mount Arafa of religious celebrity, but the wild hilly
region that rises above the valleys of Mecca and Mina.
The Hodheil lie on both sides of the Qoreish. We were
among the settled Hodheil at Sola, and in returning
we passed through their country as we descended from
Mount Kara down Wady Na aman. They hold the upper
part of this valley, with the hills of Kabkab, which
dominate it on the right. Unlike the nomads of the
central plateau, these mountaineers fight on foot. Though
they are so near the centres of civilisation, the wild
seclusion of their mountains has preserved them from
change, and the blood feuds which make exogamy
almost an impossibility have maintained among them a
distinctly marked tribal type. My eye did not become
sufficiently practised to catch all the minute signs by
which a tribesman can be identified — the cut of his sandals,
the way in which the long black locks hang behind the
ear — in one tribe plaited, in another free — the length
of the dirk, and so forth. But some marks are not difficult
to grasp. The lance is one of these. That of the Qoreish
and also of the Hodheil, who are not readily to be dis
tinguished from the Qoreish, and share their most striking
peculiarities, is a rumh or javelin of a man's height, with
a long narrow blade, inlaid with brass, and an equally

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 577

long four-sided point at the other end. The 'Oteibe use
a broad-bladed lance, with which they can cut as well as
thrust. A similar weapon used in Yemen is the shilfe.
Other tribes use a pike (harb), with four-sided head.
In the Nejd the cavalry are armed with a huge spear,
tufted with ostrich feathers (qana), and this is the spear
borne by the Shereefs of Mecca when they ride out in
solemn religious procession. The Qoreish warrior adorns
his lance with a little tassel of silk called kuthle. Another
tassel of beaded work hangs on his breast. His fillet is
a leathern hoop, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His gar
ments are dyed with native wood, salm or bashdm, and
are either a tawny yellow or a dark reddish brown. The
features are very dark, but sharply cut, and with a keen
aquiline aspect quite unlike the mixed bloods near the
coast. The women are veiled with the burko'. Their
blue tunics, shawls, and drawers are coloured with foreign
dye. They are belted like the men, and their favourite
ornament is a golden plate hanging down on the breast.
The most extraordinary custom of the Qoreish and Hod-
heil in the mountains is their form of circumcision, a
fearful ordeal through which every lad must pass before
he can be married. It is performed in the presence of
the whole neighbourhood and of the bride, who would
reject her bridegroom if he uttered a single cry. The same
rite prevails among the 'Aseer, a singular circumstance,
since in other matters the 'Aseer are very unlike the
tribes of Hejaz. The most notable contrast is in the
place of the women, on which I shall make a few remarks,
though I ought to premise that this is a topic on which
it is not easy to get trustworthy information, as customs
that appear irregular or contrary to the Koran are not
willingly reported.

Arabia generally passes for a typical example of the
patriarchal system of society. The Arabs themselves
have accommodated their genealogies and early history
to this theory ; and it is expressed in the laws of

37

578 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

inheritance and blood revenge, which do not recognise
relationship on the female side. The extreme develop
ment of this principle is naturally associated with poly
gamy and the inferiority of woman. But it is certain
that this system is not primitive. We have express
evidence that polyandria once prevailed in Arabia, and
traces of this practice and of female kinship are to be
found to a comparatively late date. The social system
of Islam had to fight against many remains of the earlier
polyandria. Among the Bedouins, travellers of quite
recent date have observed usages which point to exo
gamy, marriage by capture, female kinship, and other
practices, all of which are now known, mainly through
the researches of Mr. M'Lennan, to hang together and
belong to the gradual development, of which polyandria
is one stage. So far as I can learn, usages of this kind
are not known to the Hejaz tribes. I cannot find any
trace of such a form of capture as is still practised in
the Peninsula of Sinai, and Yemenite customs, point
ing distinctly to female kinship, were related to me
as a contrast to Hejaz usage. Thus, it is considered a
peculiarity of Yemen that the Dokhla, or consummation
of marriage, takes place in the bride's house, and that
the bridegroom stays for some nights with the bride's
people if he be inborn, but if from abroad must settle
with them. In the Hejaz the dokhla takes place in the
house of the bride's family only if the bridegroom has
no house of his own. This statement agrees very well
with all that one reads in mediaeval accounts. It was in
southern Arabia that relics of polyandria and female
kinship survived. And with this difference, it goes
naturally enough that, while the Hejaz women are
carefully veiled, and in Taif the principle of female
seclusion is carried farther than in any other part of
Arabia, the women of the 'Aseer and of Hadhramaut
appear unveiled in the street, and before guests whom
they serve, though they do not eat with them. More-

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 579

over, as one passes eastward from the Hejaz into the
Nejd, one again finds a less strict law of female seclusion.
The burko' was worn by the 'Oteibe women whom I have
seen ; but I believe that in many parts of this confedera
tion only the lower part of the face is slightly disguised
by bringing round a corner of the head shawl, in the
style very common even with men. The ' Oteibe women
ride camels like the men ; nay, even more than they.
In the Nejd, according to the account of Mohsin, the
man of the tribe who brings home a horse seized on a
foray brings it to the Sheikh's daughter and receives a
kiss. All these traits, slight as they may seem, appear
singular to the men of the Hejaz, and indicate a certain
difference in the position of women ; and they suggest
the question whether the social system of Islam is not
really the social system of the Hejaz, whether in his
social legislation Mohammed did not impress on all
Arabia a family system which properly belonged to the
central commercial cities of the country and the tribes
in their immediate vicinity. If this is so, there is another
reason why the Arabs were so reluctant to accept Islam
till they found their profit in following its victorious
arms. Another question arises in connection with the
seclusion of women. May it not be the case that the
origin of this seclusion lay in immediate contact with
polyandrous traditions and polyandrous neighbours,
producing a necessary reaction against the licence of
that system ? I ought to add that one of the tribes
named to me as allowing the women to appear with
uncovered faces is the Beni Malik. According to
Sprenger, the Qoreish are really a branch of this tribe,
which makes the divergence of their usage as to the
veiling of women somewhat singular. The Beni Malik
are now found settled in a cultivated land on the road
inland from Taif passing Leeya, Bissl, the salt mines
of Marran (ten hours from Taif), Nasera, and the Beni
Sad. They were once much more widely spread, and

58o LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

a village of the Harb, only three miles from Jeddali,
bears their name.

Of the Arabs in the Tehama and between Mecca and
Medina I have little to tell. Those in the low country
near Jeddah are greatly mixed. Being slave-holders
and slave-traders, they are largely tinged with negro
blood. The Zobeid and the Hutem, who are pearl
fishers, use negroes to dive for them, and treat them in
this avocation with great cruelty. The villagers near
Jeddah are little accessible to Europeans, and naturally
dislike the English for their action against the slave trade.
I have met on friendly terms with the people of one
village only, whose Sheikh, Abdulla Wasl of the Harb,
has an employment under the Shereef, in charge of the
Bedouin market at the Mecca gate.

X. ARABIAN CUSTOMS

I had occasion in my last letter to allude to the
customary law established on precedents which prevails
among the Bedouins. I am now to say a little more on
the subject, especially as it is connected with blood
revenge and war.

The Arabs, says Sheikh ' Aly Qasim, have three great
principles, which they call the three white rules. White
has here a figurative sense, which is best understood
from the common phrase, that a man's face becomes
black when he disgraces himself by a breach of custom.

The first of these principles is, "Tent rope by tent rope."
A man whose tent rope touches yours is your Jar, your
neighbour, with a claim on your protection. If you
can contrive to pitch thus beside a man, you have estab
lished your claim on him.

The second rule is, sacred obligation to him who
journeys with you by day and sleeps by you at night. The
third imposes on a host the duty of protecting the guest
who has eaten with him until he has eaten with another.

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 581

But the most important of all Arabic principles is
the law of retaliation, which has received the sanction
of religion under Islam ; but as practised by the Bedouins,
is simply an affair of ancient usage. The law of retalia
tion goes along with the principle of self-help. If a man
strikes another, the injured person makes it his aim to
inflict in retaliation a stroke as similar as possible — eye
for eye, tooth for tooth, blood for blood. The duty of
avenging insult descends from father to son. A child
will cherish in his mind from earliest infancy the recollec
tion of a blow inflicted on his father, and when old enough
and strong enough, will repay it. Great subtlety is
shown as to the exact balance of offence and retaliation.
The most important application of the law of retaliation
is naturally in the case of slaughter. The blood of a
tribesman is the concern of the tribe. The revenge may
fall on a distant kinsman of the slayer quite innocent of
a share in the offence, and if the slaughter is compounded
by a payment of blood-money, the payment is made and
received by the tribe, not by the individual. But a
strong and proud tribe will not generally accept money
from another unless for accidental blood. The honour
of the tribe demands blood for blood, and the nearest
relations of the deceased are those whose special business
it is to exact it. The opportunity of revenge may offer
itself in the streets of a town. Even in Jeddah a Bedouin
will strike his foe with the dirk, or, if he be of the Harb,
shoot him with his pistol and flee. In Medina he will
not even flee, but boldly stand up and say, I am such a
one, son of such a one, and have killed this man in such
an affair of blood. The constant uncertainty and terror
in which a man stands who has shed blood, or otherwise
exposed himself to retaliation for a minor injury, make
it necessary that the principle should have some limita
tion, and a method has been devised by which an offender
can place himself under the protection of a kinsman
of the slain or injured party. He must not choose a

582 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

very near kinsman, who has the right to refuse and say
" Go to another for protection." Having selected a suit
able person, the offender approaches him and says "Ana
fy wajhak " —literally, " I am in thy face." Doing
this he may touch the beard of his protector, or more
ordinarily he lays hold of the fringe of one of his garments
and ties a knot on it which is called taking 'any [?] with
him. A fragment of the fringe is given as a sign to the
man, who in this way becomes the Ddkhil of the other.
The protector then simply announces to the kin that
such a one is in his protection or " face," and all revenge
is suspended for a year and two months. Before the
close of that time the offender, if he has not been able
to arrange for a peaceful solution of the difficulty, must
seek another protector. Except by a very near relation,
the protection of the 'any cannot be refused. It is,
however, indispensable that there should be a small
money payment, and that the refugee should make a
feast at his own expense in the house of his protector.
The customary sum demanded is seven dollars. A man
who cannot pay this loses his privilege of the 'any.
There is one way by which the 'any can be evaded. Sup
pose that the first year of protection has almost expired,
and it is anticipated that a second protection will be
sought, A member of the injured tribe, determined
that the revenge shall not be frustrated, may now travel
away into some remote district. When the new pro
tector is chosen and comes to announce the fact, the kin
will refuse to be answerable for the man who has left
them, though they are bound to tell him that his right of
revenge is foreclosed as soon as he reappears among them.
Avoiding his own people, moving stealthily from place
to place with covered face that none may recognise him
the determined avenger of blood tracks out his victim
and slays him. At once there is a tumult. This man
was in our protection. No, says the slayer ; I am in my
right, for the thing was never reported to me.

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 583

A very curious mode of expiation called the Naga is
practised by those who cannot afford the 'any. It does
not apply to murder, but only to injuries of a lesser kind.
With bare and shaven head the offender appears as a
penitent at the door of the injured person, holding a
knife in each hand, and says —

En-naga naggana wan-naga nagga-er rijal

illadhy kamana.

That is, the naga purges us ; yea, it purges the man
who is like us — viz. not a wicked and unrepentant
offender. Saying this, he repeatedly gashes his head
with both knives ; or, if he has not nerve enough, may
get another to do so for him. Then drawing his hands
over his bloody scalp, he wipes them on the door-post.
Then the injured man must come out, cover the wounded
head with a semada, kill a sheep, and make a feast.
The common meal ends the feud, and the offender's face
is again white. The naga is practised even in the towns,
in Mecca, and in Taif. In the ceremony of entering a
man's protection I have mentioned that one form is to
lay hold of the beard. This symbolical action has many
applications. For example, if an Arab has to pass through
a hostile encampment, he will lurk at the outskirts till
he sees a little child. Calling the boy, he gives him a
small present to accompany him, lifts him on his camel,
and rides safely through the camp, the child grasping
his chin. The Bedouins have a curious way of expressing
their feelings of goodwill or reluctance by touching the
beard or the back of the neck respectively. The former
is a good sign, but if a Bedouin, in approaching you or
in answering a request, puts his hand behind his neck,
you may be sure he bears you no goodwill, however
fairly he may say Marhabdn.

The law of blood revenge applies to the practice of
war, and certainly tends to diminish bloodshed in the
constant forays of the restless and turbulent tribes. In
Arabic warfare, a pitched battle is comparatively rare.

584 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

Al Mas, who has seen a great deal of service, told me
that he had been present at a pitched battle only once.
This was in the great war against the 'Aseer. Generally
speaking, an Arab invasion is a mere foray. The in
vaders scatter, attack the villages, drive off booty, and
engage in skirmishes. The fire-arms of the Bedouins are
fit only for irregular warfare — huge matchlocks, longer
than their bearers, which can be fired with effect only
from an ambush. In this way of fighting few lives
are lost. It is more profitable to capture an enemy and
hold him to ransom. To kill more of the enemy than is
requisite to square accounts is very unwise, for when
peace is made the balance of blood must be accounted
for either in lives or money. The humanest side of
Bedouin war is the respect paid to women and children,
who are never harmed ; yet the women are very bold,
and are the first to stir on the men to battle. In the
campaign, and even in the heat of a fight, the women
follow their husbands or brothers, carrying water to
the combatants, urging on laggards, and striking their
cymbals over a victory.

The blood revenge which tends to check fatalities in
warfare makes it more difficult to effect a lasting peace.
The Shereef in his sphere may often compel combatants
to adjust their differences and accept blood-money, but
often also scores remain open and give rise to constantly
renewed acts of violence. One of the most remarkable
consequences of the standing feuds which divide so many
tribes is the restriction of exogamy, for a man will not
readily marry into a tribe if there is blood between it
and his own.

I mentioned above that in Medina the blood revenge
is practised openly, and that the slayer does not need to
flee. In this city the Turkish law has even less force
than in Jeddah and Mecca, and it is generally reputed
that justice is all the better administered in consequence.
I was told a characteristic story about the Turkish

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 585

administrators there which may be repeated here. A
new Cady and Muhafiz with their company had arrived
from Constantinople. The great men of the town laid
their heads together and resolved that, as the Turks
came only to feed on them, it would be wise to show them
the cold shoulder, settle all disputes by arbitration
among themselves, and abstain from calling regularly,
as is the custom, on the new dignitaries. The Turks soon
found themselves isolated. Day by day they took their
seats and expected visitors, but no one came. At length
they took counsel, and a shrewd man among their followers
said — " Make a great feast and invite all the notables of
the town, but first let me go to the bazaar and buy some
spoons to cost a dollar each." " How absurd," they
replied, " you can have very good spoons for two or three
piastres." " Ah, yes," was the reply, " but I want long
spoons with great handles, and I wish the guests to sit
so close that with these long spoons they cannot possibly
feed themselves." The plan was carried out, the notables
arrived and were set down round the dinner tray. " But
how can we reach our mouths with long ladles like
these ? " " Oh no," replied the hosts, " you are not to
feed yourself. Do you," pointing to a man on the
other side, " feed me, and I will feed you." The hint
was taken, cases again flowed into the Turkish court,
and in the division of the spoils the native notables
were not forgotten.

I spoke in rny last letter of differences that are observ
able in marriage customs, and generally in the place of
women, between the Hejaz and Yemen. In travelling
between Jeddah and Suez, I obtained some additional
particulars on this head from the Waly of Yemen, who
was my fellow -passenger. Mustafa Pasha is a very
superior type of the official Turk — a man of good educa
tion and observant habits, who has served in Syria as
well as in Yemen, and appears to have made a careful
study of the habits of the people over whom he rules.

586 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

I learned from him that the Bedouins of Yemen have
various traditional usages which they know to be in
consistent with Mohammedan orthodoxy, and are there
fore careful to conceal from the Turks. But there is
one custom among the ' Aseer which, shocking as it appears
to outsiders, is openly avowed and defended from the
Koran. The 'Aseer Arabs are accustomed to contract
marriages of a temporary character by verbal agreement.
The so-called marriage may endure but a day. It is, in
fact, no more than a nominal contract to avoid the name
of immorality. With this it naturally goes that no
weight is laid on the chastity of unmarried women. A
man who contracts such a temporary marriage as I have
described may already have a regular wife. In that
case, he visits the new wife in her own home instead of
bringing her to the house where a mistress is already
installed. The Waly tells me further that not only in
Yemen, but among some of the tribes of the Syrian
desert, the wife claims the right to leave her husband
at will and take another spouse, and also that it is a
recognised practice for husbands among some of the
latter tribes — he specially named the 'Aneze — for hus
bands to make an exchange of wives. All these are
obvious remains of early polyandria, and confirm the
observation that the introduction of Islam was marked
by great social reforms, of which we know but little, but
which, in all probability, were at least as momentous as
the innovations in religion which are generally regarded
as forming the essence of Mohammedanism. I find,
on turning up the traditions of the Prophet in Bokhary
and Mowatta, that the system of temporary marriages
which still lingers among the 'Aseer was well known in
Mohammed's time, and abolished by him after consider
able hesitation. There seems to have been a good deal
of discussion on the subject even after the Prophet's
death, as at one time he had conceded the practice to
his followers.

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 587

Among the more savage tribes, as we now see, the
reform on which Mohammed ultimately decided has
never been carried through. It is, indeed, impossible
to say how many relics of an earlier social system still
linger in remote parts of the country. I have even
been told by a Swiss resident in Baghdad, who has the
reputation of a singular knowledge of that district, that
marriages with a stepmother, according to the old Arabic
levirate system, abolished by the Koran, have not un-
frequently come under his notice.

I take this opportunity to modify a statement in
my third letter. The annual deficit in the revenue of
the Hejaz was estimated to me in Jeddah by an Arab
official, in a position to have accurate information, at
£200,000 per annum. But the Waly of Yemen, who
is more likely to give an unvarnished statement, puts
the sum at fifteen million piastres, or barely £100,000,
a year, two-thirds of which are defrayed from the surplus
revenue of Yemen. I may also add that Mustafa Pasha
gives a favourable account of the Yam, who received
such a character for ferocity from Mohsin. They lie
between Yemen and the 'Aseer, and though only four or
five thousand strong, are formidable from their organisa
tion and discipline, in which they much excel their
neighbours. They have also a very just government.
At present they are at peace with the Turks, having
sustained defeats, which were followed by a treaty
exempting them from Turkish taxes and interference.
The Bedouins, indeed, can never face the Turks in regular
war ; but the latter are in like manner unable to maintain
permanent control over the vanquished.

XL SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE HEJAZ

I shall occupy this letter with some remarks on slavery
in the Hejaz. There are two points to be distinguished
in speaking on this topic — the question of the slave trade

588 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

and the question of slavery as an element in the constitu
tion of Arabian society. Of slavery in the East, if it
could be separated from the evils connected with the
importation of negroes and Abyssinians, one might say
a good deal that is favourable. From a material point
of view, the slave in an Arab's house has seldom much
to complain of. A domestic slave is not overworked,
and in general he is well fed, and stands on wonderfully
easy terms with the family. If his master has no children,
he is often regarded almost as a son of the house ; and
the people say that even a father will let his son hunger
rather than his slave. Certainly, I have observed that
an Arab father is quite as exacting towards his own
children as towards his mamlooks. Moreover, the habits
of the country do not attach to slavery any brand of
humiliating inferiority. No one despises the slave because
he is not free, and he does not feel his own position to
be degrading. At Taif, the slave boy used to sit down
in the ante-room every evening and play dominoes on
terms of perfect equality with 'Aly and my guards. A
slave in a good family is generally liberated after no very
prolonged bondage, or, at any rate, upon his master's
death. When freed, he expects some little help to
establish himself in life, for an unskilled labourer hardly
is a gainer by becoming his own master. Freedmen
generally continue on terms of affectionate dependence
on the family they have served, and I have mentioned
in a former letter how the Mawaleed, or descendants of
freedmen, form a sort of clientele round the houses of
the great. Freedman and Mawaleed are often able to
establish a good position. Many wealthy merchants in
Jeddah are of such descent, and the favourite freedman
of a great man is always a person of consideration. Al
Mas, for example, who was a slave, with many of the
faults of a servile origin, received much more respect
wherever he went than Mohsin, the pure Arab of good
stock. I observed, too, that the Mawaleed who were

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 589

with me, Hamid and 'Abderrabbu, were fond of calling
themselves slaves of the Shereef. The title was one of
honour, not of contempt. These conditions neutralise,
or at least modify, some of the most serious moral
objections to slavery. The slave is not without self-
respect, and he is not without prospects of bettering
himself in life sufficient to stimulate him to exertion
and good conduct. But, of course, there are many
exceptions to the favourable conditions I have described.
Slaves employed in field work or as boatmen — and these
form a large class — are less favourably situated. Though
a slave is generally well treated, he is not always so, and
the means of redress which exist in theory are not always
effectual in practice. The worst masters are the Bedouins.
I have seen a slave boy starving in the streets of Jeddah,
who had been brought into town by his Bedouin master
and deserted. He was brought in by the police to 'omar
Naseef Pasha, and an order was given to feed him at the
charge of his master. The most notoriously cruel masters
are the pearl fishers, who keep slaves to dive for them,
and treat them with great harshness. However, apart
from the question of direct maltreatment, more serious
objections to the slave system remain behind. The best
that can be said for the system is that, under favourable
conditions, the slave is treated very much as a child,
and that the temperament of the Arabs, habitually easy
and humane, except when fired by cupidity or revenge,
renders favourable conditions frequent. But when one
looks upon the slave in the relations of a full-grown man,
and especially when female slavery is taken into account,
the position appears much less satisfactory. A slave
can marry, or rather his master can make a match for
him, and cannot dissolve the tie. But as a matter of
fact, slaves seldom are married, though it is not uncommon
for a master to free his mamlook and find him a wife.
The great blot of the system lies in female slavery, with
its accompaniment of concubinage, which in the towns

590 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

is carried to a great extent, but is much less common up
the country. When the master acknowledges the infant
of a female slave, he can no longer sell her out of his
house, and it is a becoming thing in him to liberate her
and make her his wife. But the law does not force him
to acknowledge his offspring, and cases have occurred
in Jeddah of late years where a man has exposed both
woman and child for sale. Some of the Bedouin tribes
regularly breed slaves, but in justice it must be said that
this is not a common custom. It is needless to trace all
the social disorders, all the disturbances of family re
lations, which flow from this system. They have been
often pointed out, and I simply say with every emphasis
that current apologies for polygamy are inconsistent
with fact, and that in the towns, where female slavery,
concubinage, and the hareem system are fully developed,
the results on the moral and physical condition of the
people are deplorable. Of the wastefulness of the slave
system, which necessarily encourages indolence both in
the master and his mamlook, I need not speak at large ;
but it is perhaps worth noting that persons who have
been wont to be served by slaves generally get on very
badly with hired servants. A master and his slave
have a quarrel, but unless the latter runs off, and claims
the protection of a British gunboat, the quarrel is soon
got over, and things settle down in their old course.
But a hired servant is off at once when he has a difficulty
with his employer, and the constant changes of servants
which take place under masters who do not understand
how to manage a free servant form a chief reason why
Arabs and Egyptians are so unwilling to see the abolition
of domestic slavery.

Of the local slave trade as distinguished from contra
band importation, I have little to say. In Jeddah,
where the eyes of European Consuls are open to what
goes on, there is no public slave mart, though there was
one some four years ago. There are, however, various

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 591

houses in town where it is known that slaves can be
purchased, and many shopkeepers, especially those
from Hadhramaut, have a black boy sitting by them
on the mastaba of the shop, who is apparently an assistant,
but really is there to be sold. In Mecca of course, the
slave mart is much opener ; and in Medina, I am told
that one often sees a boy led by the hand through the
street by one of those peripatetic auctioneers who are
always to be found in Arabian bazaars.

A great question has been raised as to the ultimate
effect on the old Arab stock of constant intermixture
with African blood, and observers who have noted this
intermixture in the Tehama and the cities have gone so
far as to maintain that the Arabian race must ultimately
be absorbed in the inexhaustible population of Africa.
I am disposed to think that this is a false prediction.
The negro importation has gone on for so many centuries
that the limits of its influence ought to be already pretty
well denned. In the towns the blood is very mixed.
Of the natives of Jeddah comparatively few are of pure
blood. In the villages of the Tehama, in like manner,
there are many half-castes, and the population of the
coast north and south of Jeddah has lost all claim to
rank as genuinely Arabian. But the Qabail or tribesmen,
the true Bedouins up the country, do not intermarry
with Africans, and their stock is still so pure that, as the
people say, the tribal blood is seen in their countenances.
Now, in spite of immigration and importation, there is
no reason to think that the population of the Hejaz is
increasing. If a town like Jeddah grows, it does so only
by foreign merchants — Syrians, Indians, and so forth —
settling for purposes of trade. I apprehend that in
Arabia, as in Egypt, the town population, apart from
immigration from the inland tribes or from abroad,
would rather diminish than increase. It can hardly be
otherwise from the unhealthy conditions in which women
live, from the careless and unhealthy way in which children

592 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

are brought up, and from the prevalence of immorality
and other effects of polygamy that tend to sap the strength
of a race. Now, what follows from this ? That those
parts of the country where intermarriage with Africans
prevails are not in a position to expand in population,
and swamp the true Arabs of the uplands. Among the
debased populations of the coast, and also in the blood
of great families, and generally among the wealthy and
luxurious, the African element is considerable, and one
is startled at first sight by such a fact as that the High
Shereef of Mecca is as black as a pure negro. But it is
precisely the wealthy and luxurious stocks that are
checked in their natural increase by unhealthy physical
and moral conditions of life, while the Bedouins multiply
at least fast enough to maintain their own place, and send
off a certain number of emigrants to the towns to balance
the negro immigration. The suppression of the slave
trade, whenever that is effected, must cause serious
changes in the constitution of the urban populations of
Arabia, and the problems of redistribution which must
then arise will be of the greatest interest to students of
human society. I venture to predict that one result
will be the very rapid disappearance of many of the
corrupt and exhausted stocks which at present hold wealth
and influence in Jeddah and Mecca. On the other hand,
if Arabian society has sufficient elasticity to adapt itself
to new conditions the ultimate consequences cannot be
otherwise than most advantageous, for without slavery
polygamy, and the evils that flow from polygamy, can
hardly exist. Yet the abolition of polygamy, without a
change in the law of divorce, will not suffice to place
family relations on a sound basis ; for at present many
of those who are not able to indulge in a plurality of
wives — which often involves the maintenance of separate
establishments — at least gratify their changing passions by
divorces as frequent as those of Rome under the Empire,
with fatal effects on the education of their children.

issi] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 593

I pass now to speak of the slave trade. It appears
clear that the destruction of the trade would soon put
an end to slavery. For, partly from frequent manu
missions, which are favoured by custom and religion,
partly from the small number of slave marriages, home-
born slaves are few. But for this very reason, as long
as slavery is a prevalent institution, the means of import
ing boys and girls will be sought and probably found.
The Red Sea is narrow, and many parts of the coasts
are very dangerous to cruisers, which can hardly thread
their way through the reefs, behind which the swift
native boats engaged in the trade know many convenient
points at which to collect or land slaves. The British
cruisers certainly inspire some terror, and occasionally,
though very rarely, effect a capture ; but up to the present
time, not having enjoyed the right of search in boats
bearing the Turkish flag in Turkish waters, they have
had to contend with difficulties which in such seas are
almost insuperable. Under the new treaty it is to be
hoped that the action of our cruisers will be much more
efficacious, especially in checking the present system by
which slaves are landed in Yemen — at Hodeida, for
example, where there is no Consul to keep an eye on the
trade — and sent up in small numbers by coasting boats
to the Hejaz market. Still it can hardly be hoped that
foreign cruisers will succeed in putting down the trade
until the Egyptian and Turkish Governments are in
earnest to make an end of the traffic. Are they so now ?
In Egypt, there has until now been one man who was in
earnest — Colonel Gordon. To his efforts, much more
than to any other cause or all other causes put together,
must mainly be ascribed the decline which has recently
taken place in the exportation of slaves from the African
coast. But Colonel Gordon is no longer ruler of the
Soudan, and it would be sanguine to hope for much from
his native successor, though it is so far well that the
coasting police is to be re-established. That Egyptian

38

594 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

officials in general are disposed to wink at the trade is
beyond doubt. Even on the Nile slaves have never
ceased to be sent down from the upper country, and
the existence of a slave mart at Cairo is an open secret.
What, then, can be looked for in the Red Sea, where
every Turkish and Arabian official is interested in the
maintenance of the trade ? I believe that only last week
slaves were brought over to Jeddah in the Egyptian
steamer from Sawakin. The risk of conveyance by
native bagala is now so appreciable that five dollars a
head is the charge for carrying slaves. The steamer
takes passengers for three dollars, and the difference
allows a handsome baksheesh to be paid to some Egyptian
official for a passport declaring boys and girls to be
passengers who are really slaves. This is one way in
which the traffic is kept up, but the bagalas still run.
The English Consul at Jeddah gives it as his belief that
no slaves have been landed at Jeddah for a good many
months. But this only means that the people do not
choose that he should know what is going on ; and, in
fact, the affair of the Ready was settled in a way that has
done mischief, encouraged the slave-trading Arabs, and
disheartened the officers of Her Majesty's cruisers. A
boat from the Ready in the early part of December 1878
pursued a suspicious native vessel which, apparently
from ignorance of the rights of men-of-war, refused to
stop when summoned. The British boat fired, and a
slave was killed. There was a great uproar, and the
town of Jeddah was threatened by the Arabs. Ultimately
our Government arranged the matter by a payment of
£550 as blood-money. The affair was an unfortunate
one, and it may have been prudent to make some pay
ment, but certainly the sum was exorbitant ; for between
Arabs and Arabs the full blood-money for a freeman
does not exceed $800, or £150. And no advantage was
taken of the incident to explain that the money was paid
ex gratia, and acquaint the natives with the unquestioned

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ

right under international law which the Ready's boat
exercised in calling on the native boat to stop. As to
the matter of fact that slaves are still landed in Jeddah,
I may mention that within the last few days several
bills of sale were brought to the Dutch Consul. And it
is only the other day that the head of the Jeddah boat
men was summoned to Mecca to answer a charge of
slave-trading. Some time ago a boat belonging to this
man was seized as a slaver by the authorities of Sawakin,
and confiscated. He asserted that it was not a slaver,
and put in before the Turkish authorities of Jeddah a
claim to have it back, and also to receive blood-money
for one of his men whom he declared to have been killed
in the affray when the boat was captured. The Oaim
Maqarn at first refused to interfere, but having received
a bribe of fifty dollars, he consented to take up the case
and put in a claim on the Egyptian authorities. Unluckily
for his client, the latter had another boat lying near
Sawakin, and the captain and another man got drunk
in the town. The captain let out the secret that he was
engaged in the slave traffic, and the other admitted that
he was the person supposed to have been shot, for whom
blood-money was claimed. This was too much. The
Egyptians made a formal complaint to the Hejaz
authorities, who must now take the matter up. But I
fancy that it will not end very seriously for the culprit ;
indeed, if he is a clever man, he ought to be able, after
the fashion of the country, to make the affair turn to
his advantage. In this case, it will be observed that
the Turkish Governor of Jeddah is compromised. That
he received a bribe is certain. An English gentleman
of my acquaintance learned the fact from the lips of the
man who paid the money. Nor is it at all surprising
that Turkish officials should be interested, directly or
indirectly, in the slave trade. A case in point occurred
the other day at Hodeida, where the quarantine doctor
vainly reported a slave-boat, the chief of the police being

596 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880-

himself owner, or part owner. The higher officials some
times make a show of zeal. The recently appointed
Waly of the Hejaz, among several minor improvements
with which he thought proper to signalise his arrival,
directed one or two guard-houses to be built along the
coast to prevent slave traffic, but, as a matter of course,
no practical result has flowed from this step. The Waly's
zeal could not in the course of nature last more than a
month or two ; and the new functionary is now entirely
absorbed in schemes to fill his pocket, especially by mani
pulation of the grain supplies sent from the Persian Gulf
to feed the Bedouins. But it is no use to grumble at the
Turks. So long as slavery is legal, the slave trade must
be winked at. The radical cure is to abolish slavery
itself. Meantime, it is worthy of notice that the illegal
traffic is said to be gravitating towards Hodeida, where
there is less risk of European interference, and from
which, as I have already observed, small parties of slaves
are forwarded by coasters without suspicion.

There is yet another secret in the slave traffic which
ought to stir our nation to the promptest and most decided
action. A regular business is done by scoundrels who
kidnap little boys and girls from our Indian possessions,
and bring them to Mecca — generally under cover of
business connected with pilgrimage — where they are
sold as slaves. Cases of this sort have repeatedly been
brought to light by boys who have escaped to Jeddah.
One such discovery took place this winter (1881). A boy
from Hyderabad escaped and reported to the Consul at
Jeddah that his sister was still in bondage. The Consular
dragoman, a Jew, who has adopted Islam, and can there
fore visit Mecca, was sent up ; but he reported that the
girl had been married and was content. The case was
accordingly dropped, but the fact that one victim is
reported content with her fate does not make the traffic
less infamous. The energetic and able Dutch Consul
has followed out the line of inquiry suggested by these

i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ 597

circumstances, and assures me that Singapore is the
point through which the kidnappers work. Both Indians
and Malays are kidnapped. They are brought off on
various pretexts, and find themselves slaves only when
they reach Mecca. Mr. Kruyt argues very justly that
such doings afford a strong argument for allowing no
emissary from the Hejaz to appear in English and Dutch
ports without a Consular passport. It is well to respect
the religious freedom of Moslems ; but it is too much
to suffer this freedom to be used as a cloak for crime.

VI
REVIEWS OF BOOKS

I. WELLHAUSEN'S GESCHICHTE ISRAELS. (May 17, 1879.)
II. KENAN'S HISTOIRI: DU PEUPLE tf ISRAEL. (1887.)

WELLHAUSEN'S Geschichte Israels, vol. i., from The Academy,
May 17, 1879.

THOSE who have followed the course of Prof. Wellhausen
will be prepared to recognise this important work as the
fitting sequel of his earlier labours. Even when they
have taken the shape of studies in textual or higher
criticism all his writings have been contributions to the
study of the history of Israel, and the vigour and origin
ality of his critical analysis are mainly due to a keen
perception of historical reality. Hence his work is
marked by a largeness of view and firmness of grasp
unhappily not very common in recent German criticism.
In these qualities, as well as in the essentially constructive
habit of thought which appears even in his most ruthless
attacks or traditional views and current speculation,
Wellhausen may be called the truest living disciple of
Ewald (to whose memory the volume before us is appro
priately dedicated), in spite of the enormous divergence
between master and scholar in their conception of the
course of the Old Testament development.

This divergence turns mainly on a question which
Wellhausen formulates in the first paragraph of his
work : — " 7s the Mosaic law the starting-point for the
history of ancient Israel, or for the history of Judaism —
i.e. of the sect which survived the annihilation of the nation
by the Assyrians and Chaldeans ? "

The discussion of this fundamental problem, which is

60 1

602 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1879

decided in favour of the second alternative, occupies the
volume now before us, filling as large a space as the author
proposes to devote in his second volume to the whole
narrative of Israel's history. And this is not unreason
able ; for the solution of the problem in the compre
hensive form in which Wellhausen presents it to his
readers involves inquiries which practically exhaust two
of the most important topics of Old Testament history.
The key to the problem of the Mosaic law lies (i) in the
history of religious observances ; (2) in the history of
the spoken or written tradition current in Israel as to
the past ages of the nation. The investigation of these
topics fills the two largest sections of the volume. The
results are resumed, and outlying objections are met in
a third section on " Israel and Judaism," which closes
with some general considerations preparing the way for
the second volume, and indicating the bearing of our
author's historical criticism on Biblical theology.

I suppose that one must adopt the current expression,
and say that Wellhausen is a follower of the Grafian
hypothesis. But his argument owes very little to Graf,
more to Kuenen, — whom he happily names " Graf's
Goel " — most of all to Vatke, whose book is, in Well-
hausen's judgment, " the most important contribution
ever made to the history of ancient Israel," and who
appears to be almost the only scholar except Ewald. who
has given our author ideas as well as information. But
Wellhausen's argument is much more telling than Vatke's,
because it rests on a thorough critical analysis of the
sources of the Pentateuch and historical books of the
Old Testament. From this point of view the present
volume may be regarded as the historical and synthetic
complement of the analyses of the Hexateuch in the
Jahrbucher fur deutsche Theologie of 1876 and 1877, and
the not less important analysis of the prophetae priores in
the fourth edition of Bleek's Einleitung.

The first section of the work investigates the history

i879] WELLHAUSEN'S GESCHICHTE ISRAELS 603

of the sanctuary, the sacrifices, the feasts, the priesthood,
and the provision for the support of the clergy. Under
each head an historical development is traced, beginning
with observances of spontaneous and natural character,
and advancing by stages corresponding to the develop
ment of the law from the Jehovistic ordinances of the
Book of the Covenant through Deuteronomy to the priestly
code. That this is the historical order of progress appears
to be indisputable, and the main lines of evidence are not
new. But Wellhausen has strengthened them by many
subtle and original observations, and has greatly in
creased the cumulative force of the argument by showing
that it is possible to work the scattered data into a con
sistent and intelligible historical picture more complete
than anything that has been hitherto attempted. Of
course such a picture must contain problematic elements.
Among these must be placed what is, nevertheless, one
of the most interesting things in the volume — the account
of the tribe of Levi. According to our author the ancient
tribe of Levi wholly disappeared during the period of the
Judges under circumstances to which Gen. xlix. compared
with Gen. xxxiv. supplies our only key. The later sacred
tribe of Levi is an entirely new formation, which may have
derived its name from the family of Moses, but cannot be
regarded as connected with him by blood, inasmuch as
the notion of a properly hereditary priesthood was only
developed in the period of the later kings of Judah.
It is impossible to reproduce the whole argument, but
it involves among other points the following positions :
(i) That Zadok had no hereditary title to priesthood —
or, in other words, was not a Levite by birth ; (2) that
Jonathan (Judges xvii. 7) was of Judean extraction ; (3)
that, according to Deut. xxxiii. 8, 9, the Levites of the
northern kingdom appear as a guild based on the denial
of all ties of blood, who honour Moses, not as their an
cestor, but only as the founder of their profession. The
first and second of these assumptions involve doubtful

604 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1879

questions of textual criticism. Is it certain that 2 Sam.
xv. 24 is so corrupt that no value can be put on the
association of Zadok with the Levites ? And, on the
other hand, does not Judges xvii. 7 show marks of a later
hand in the words " of the family of Judah," which, if
taken as indicating the descent of Jonathan, are incon
sistent with the statement that he was a mere Ger in
Bethlehem ? The tendency to conceal the true Levitic
descent of a schismatical priest, which appears in the
Massoretic text of xviii. 30, was also at work in xvii. 7.
The Peshita, which has not the words rrnrr nnQ&DD,
effects the same end by changing " he was a Levite "
into " his name was Levi." The exegesis proposed for
Deut. xxxiii. 9 is very striking in comparison with
i Kings xii. 31 ; but Wellhausen himself indicates its
weak point when he says that it could only be in extreme
cases that a man left his wife and children to become a
priest. A guild of priests in which the son did not, as
a rule, follow his father's profession is incredible under
the social conditions of ancient Israel, and we know that
the priesthood at Dan was hereditary in a Levitic family.
The problem of the Levites cannot be solved without
going back to the time of Moses. Wellhausen admits it
to be possible that the priesthood was hereditary in the
descendants of Moses. Now, the priesthood of Moses,
if it is admitted in any sense at all, must be regarded
as of national significance, and implies the existence of
some sacred ordinance or sanctuary of more than tribal
importance. The ark answers to this condition ; and,
as a matter of fact, the sanctuary of the ark has a more
than local importance in the oldest records of the history
of the Judges. Why, then, should it be doubted that
in connection with the ark the priestly prerogative of Levi
goes back to Mosaic times? Wellhausen objects that
there was no considerable number of priestly places open
to Levites in the time of the Judges. But that is not
so clear. The chief function of the priests was to give

i879] WELLHAUSEN'S GESCHICHTE ISRAELS 605

oracles ; and oracles in such a state of society must have
been in great demand. The technical knowledge re
quired for this function could only be propagated in a
guild which, though it might adopt outsiders like Samuel,
would for obvious motives be mainly hereditary. And of
course the best priests would be those who had their
skill by direct succession from Moses. When Micah had
a Levite to work his oracle, he was confident that Jahve
would give a favourable response.

One of the most effective arguments in the book is

directed against the peculiar theory of Noldeke that a

priestly movement for unity of the sanctuary preceded

the prophetic movement which culminated in the law of

Deuteronomy. But is not the argument unnecessarily

encumbered by the thesis that Isaiah shows no hostility

to the high places, provided they are purified of images

(Isa. xxx. 22), and that Hezekiah's abolition of the high

places is presumably unhistorical ? Can it be supposed

that in the case of the local sanctuaries there would be

any practical difference between purification and total

abolition ? Isaiah condemns the whole worship of his

contemporaries in Jerusalem and out of it ; it is all

loathsome to Jahve. But Jerusalem has a permanent

significance in Isaiah's eyes as the local seat of God's

kingship. It is true, as Wellhausen observes, that this

distinction does not belong to the temple so much as to

the city. But Isaiah himself recognises in the clearest

way that the presence of Jahve makes Jerusalem a seat

of worship, the hearth of God, the place of solemn and

festal assembly (iv. 5 ; xxxiii. 20) . In these respects it

is an absolute contrast to the Bamoth whose significance

is merely superstitious and based on will- worship (i. 29 ;

xvii. 8 ; cf. Micah v. 13), and which in virtue of the

idols are not sanctuaries of Jahve at all (xxxi. 6, 7).

Certainly there is nothing in this teaching to cast doubt

on the record that Hezekiah, who purified the temple,

sought to put down the high places. And without such

606 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1879

action by Hezekiah the book of Deuteronomy would
be unintelligible. The task of remodelling the whole
religious life of the nation to fit in with the abolition of
local altars could hardly be undertaken in such detail
until the problem to which Deuteronomy is addressed
had emerged in a practical form.

Space forbids me to dwell on other topics in the history
of cultus. I may direct special notice to the discussions
on the use of incense, on the offering of the first-born,
and on the notion of atonement, and to several excellent
incidental contributions to exegesis and text criticism.
But why is Wellhausen so sceptical as to the sense
obliterare for kapper (Isa. xxviii. 18) ? In the Harklean
Syriac kapper = e/cpuroreiv, John xi. 2, xii. 3, xiii. 5. See also
Syro-hex. Ep. Jer. 13, 24 ; and Hoffman's Bar Ali, 5924.

The second part of the volume is a critical history
of the Pentateuch and historical books directed to show
that the successive phases of historical tradition in Israel
run parallel to the successive developments of the sacred
ordinances. The latest phase is found in the Chronicles,
and is thoroughly saturated with the unhistorical spirit
of the priestly legislation. The main source used by the
author was a Midrash (in the ordinary Jewish sense of
the word) based on the canonical book of Kings. The
older books are complex in structure. The final redaction
is akin to Deuteronomy, is prior to the priestly law and
based on the teaching of the great prophets. Behind
the redaction are older elements prior to the recognition of
any written Torah. Nay, as we go down to the earliest
strata of the narrative, we get beyond the influence even
of the prophetic ideas, and find ourselves in contact with
a na'ive habit of thought such as the earliest religious
ordinances of Israel presuppose. The only part of the
narrative of the earlier prophets which shows any in
fluence of the priestly law is i Kings vi.-viii., where
interpolations and corrections can be traced.

Perhaps Wellhausen has exaggerated the extent of

i879] WELLHAUSEN'S GESCHICHTE ISRAELS 607

these. At any rate the absence of any description of
Solomon's altar may be explained by the circumstance
that at the close of the period of the kings that altar had
disappeared. (Compare 2 Kings xvi. and xxv.) Finally,
our author comes to the Pentateuch, and addresses himself
to the proof that the narrative of the priestly code is not
such as to raise objections against the late date assigned
to the document. It will be difficult to meet his argu
ment on this head, though Wellhausen himself does not
expect that many will join him in the view that the
priestly narrative is wholly based on the Jehovistic
story — that is, on the works of the Jehovist and the
Elohist as combined together by a later editor. From
our author's point of view the separation between the
Jehovist and the Elohist acquires a special interest. He
regards the Elohist as the younger author, but does not
go into full detail on the subject.

The section on Israel and Judaism, which embraces
discussions on the language of the priestly laws, the final
redaction of the Hexateuch, the oral and written law,
the decalogue, and the idea and institution of the theo
cracy, must be passed over. In closing, I turn back for a
moment to suggest that the change of attitude towards
the Sabbath which Wellhausen observes in the priestly
code, where the day of rest becomes rather a sacrifice of
abstinence than a provision of humanity, may be con
nected with Babylonian influences. The Sabbath of
Assyria and Babylon is a day on which it is unlucky to
work — a conception entirely opposed to the original
Hebrew association of Sabbath and feast-day.

608 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887

II

Histoire du Peuple d' Israel. Par ERNEST RENAN. Tome I.
(Paris: Calmann Levy. 1887.)

THE first volume of M. Kenan's new work carries down the
history of Israel to the establishment of Jerusalem as the
capital of King David. Two more volumes are written,
though they still await the author's final touches ; these
will continue the narrative " to the epoch of Ezra, that is,
up to the definitive establishment of Judaism." To these
volumes, for the revision of which he allows himself two
years, M. Renan hopes to add a fourth, upon the period of
the Hasmoneans ; but to this part of his plan he attaches
less importance, believing that the fourth volume will be
comparatively easy to write, and that in case of necessity
a translation of one of the many German books on the
subject would suffice to stop the gap. It is somewhat
difficult to understand how M. Renan, who is fully possessed
by the idea that the whole significance of the history of
Israel lies in the sphere of religion, comes to hold that
the period subsequent to the work of Ezra has been already
so satisfactorily elucidated that (as he puts it) " one may
almost say that there are not two ways " of writing about
it. It would seem that he attaches little importance
to the obscure tract of two and a half centuries which
separates Ezra from the Maccabee revolt, and no doubt
as regards the political record that period is almost an
absolute blank. But for the history of religion these
centuries are of the highest importance. It was during
them that the religious and social life of Israel re-shaped
itself in accordance with the institutions of Ezra. The
legal establishment of Judaism was completed by Ezra
and Nehemiah ; but the establishment of the law in the
hearts of the people was another matter. No one who
passes from the memoirs of Nehemiah to the first book

i887] KENAN'S " HISTOIRE D'ISRAEL " 609

of Maccabees can fail to perceive that in the interval
enormous changes had taken place in the type of national
life and national religion. The problem which this obser
vation suggests has never been thoroughly worked out ;
but materials for its solution are not lacking, and the
Psalter in particular, of which a great part must be assigned
to the latter part of the Persian period and the first genera
tions of the Greek empire, supplies the basis for a research
not inferior in interest and importance to anything that
remains to be done for the earlier ages of the sacred history.
As regards this first volume, the author gives us fair
warning that we are to look not so much for a history as
for a half -imaginative reconstruction of the general
movement of society and religion in those dark ages that
preceded the historical period of Israel's life. In the
history of Israel there are, we are told, no certain material
facts before David ; the sources for everything prior to his
time resolve themselves into " epical tradition." In such
stories it is vain to ask what happened ; our business is
to picture to ourselves the various ways in which things
may have happened. En pareil cas touie phrase doit Ure
accompagnee d'un peut-£tre. Or, again : Comme pour la
' Vie de Jtsus," je reclame pour le present volume, consacrS
a des temps forts obscurs, un peu de I' indulgence qu'on a
coutume d'accorder aux voyants, et dont les voyants ont
besoin. MZme, quand j'aurais mal conjecture sur quelques
points, je suis sur d'avoir bien compris dans son ensemble
I'ceuvre unique que le Souffle de Dieu, c'est-h-dire I'dme du
monde, a realisee par Israel. These words sufficiently
characterise the difference between M. Kenan's method
and that of the critical historians of Germany and Holland.
It would be unfair to say that M. Kenan makes no
use of the critical analysis of Hebrew texts, or that a
writer like Wellhausen is devoid of historical imagination.
But in the German school the historical imagination is
held under control, and laborious analysis and evaluation
of the sources govern the whole construction of the history.

39

6io LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887

In the present volume the analytical process is not only
kept quite in the background, but has really very little
influence on the author's conclusions. The faculty of
imagination, or, as M. Renan prefers to say, of divination,
rules supreme, and controls the use made of critical results.
It would not be fair to pronounce a final judgment on
M. Renan's work from the fragment now before us, but
hitherto the auspices are far from favourable. He tells
us himself that nothing in the history of Israel is explicable
without the patriarchal age, and it is plain, even at this
stage, that his reconstruction of the patriarchal age is
altogether wrong, and must equally be wrong whether the
Pentateuchal narrative is historical or legendary. On the
former supposition cadit quaestio ; it would be idle to ask
whether M. Renan's view of the history can be reconciled
with a literal adhesion to tradition. His position is that
the patriarchs never existed, but that Genesis and the
book of Job depict with a certain amount of idealisation a
life which did exist in the patriarchal age. Abraham is
not an historical character, in truth he was borrowed by
the imagination of the Hebrew nomad from the figure of
an ancient king of Ur, which they had opportunities of
seeing on Babylonian cylinders.1 But the colour of the
stories of Genesis is true ; they represent the life of the
nomadic Semites as it really was, as it still is among the
Arabian Bedouins, or as it is described in the legends of
the Arabs before Mohammed, especially in the " Kitab
al-Aghani," to which M. Renan makes constant references,
but always — and very prudently — without descending to
particulars. A generation ago it was fashionable to call
Abraham an Arab sheikh : M. Renan is content to say
that he is the type of an Arab sheikh ; but in point of fact

1 By a prodigious feat of philological audacity, M. Renan conjectures
that Abraham means " father Orham," the letters he and heth being
confounded in the most ancient Semitic. But this act of prowess,
which few will venture to imitate, is unhappily thrown away. The
Babylonian word may be read Uruk, or Amilapsi, or Urbagas, or Lik-
bagas, or no one knows how,

i887] KENAN'S " HISTOIRE D'ISRAfiL " 611

it would be difficult to specify a single feature of resem
blance between the patriarchal life, as described in Genesis,
and the life of the modern Bedouin, which is not either
superficial or part of the general difference between
eastern and western society. And, on the other hand, the
points of difference between the life of the patriarchs and
the ordinary life of a nomad group are many and funda
mental. On this question an appeal may confidently be
taken to every one who either knows the modern Bedouin
or has made any serious study of the " Aghanl " and other
documents of Arabian life before Islam. But, indeed, it is
enough to appeal to the Bible itself. The Hebrews knew
the wild men of the desert, and the patriarchal history
draws their type in the person of Ishmael. The author
who drew this figure was certainly not of M. Kenan's
mind as to the identity of the patriarchal and the nomadic
life. The picture of the patriarchal age is an ideal picture,
but it is not idealised from the life of the Semitic nomads,
whose hand was against every man and every man's hand
against them. If we accept the picture presented in
Genesis literally, it displays a miraculous life. And the
miracles in the history of the patriarchs are not mere
garnishing which can be stripped off and still leave the
image of a real state of society. That Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob could roam at large through Palestine without
fear and without war, though they were aliens from their
own kin, and had not become the protected dependants
of another kin, is a standing miracle, and on this miracle
everything else in the history of Genesis depends. If the
supernatural explanation is given up, the whole notion of
a patriarchal age falls to the ground ; we must then assume
with the Dutch and German critics that the picture in
Genesis is idealised, in a way quite unhistorical, from
the conditions of Hebrew life in the ninth and tenth
centuries B.C., when the nomadic past of Israel already lay
hid in the mists of antiquity, and we must hold that the
actual condition of the Hebrews in the nomadic age was

612 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887

of the far ruder and wilder type to which all other evidence
points. In the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as
they are depicted in Genesis, the lack of a stable home
is a mere incident dependent on the supernatural call to
sojourn in a land not their own. In every other respect
their life is of a type inconceivable in the true nomad, but
precisely similar to that of a great householder in the time
of David and his successors. They are not chiefs of tribes
but heads of families, and their family life is indistinguish
able from that of the earlier ages of the Hebrew kingdom,
the only golden time which the prophets know. Accord
ing to M. Kenan's own chronology, the history of the
patriarchs was set down in writing in the same age in
which the prophets continually speak of the first days of
the kingdom as Israel's ideal past. Are we to believe that
in spite of this the ideal of the Pentateuch and the ideal of
the prophets are two entirely different types of life ?

But, again, with the fall of the theory of a non-super
natural " golden age " of Semitic antiquity (Preface, p. 10)
falls also the theory of a natural monotheistic tendency of
the Semitic race, which is the corner-stone of M. Kenan's
whole construction of the religious development of Israel.
The monotheism of the patriarchs in the Book of Genesis
is not natural monotheism, and it does not resemble any
thing which has existed in Semitic lands apart from the
influence of Judaism and Christianity. It is vain to appeal
to Islam or to the movements in Arabia which preceded
Islam, for these are demonstrably dependent on the
influence of the synagogue and the church. And every
thing of monotheistic tendency or of the nature of what is
called monolatry which M. Kenan adduces in support of
his thesis from the phenomena of the older Semitic religions
has it parallel among other races. To compare the Semitic
tribal religions with the Pan-Hellenic religion of Homer
or with the not less secondary religion of the Vedas is to
beg the question. When Semitic society ceased to be
purely tribal, Semitic religion showed as little tendency to

i887] KENAN'S " HISTOIRE D'lSRAfiL " 613
monotheism as the religions of Greece or of India. It was
in Israel alone, and solely through the work of the prophets,
that Semitic particularism in religion grew into a universal
monotheism, or even showed more tendency to grow in
that direction than can be observed among other races
under similar historical conditions. All this might be
illustrated in detail if space permitted, but here a single
example must suffice to show how boldly M. Renan bends
facts to suit his hypothesis. At p. 40 he maintains that
of all ancient peoples known to us the Semites were
certainly the least prone to gross practices of sorcery. A
very different impression is left by the Bible (e.g. Deut.
xviii.), by the monuments of Arabian antiquity, by what
we know of Harranian heathenism, and by the magical
superstitions that long lingered in Christian Syria,1 or still
survive in all parts of the Semitic east. Or if monotheism
is an affair of race, by what right is Babylon excluded from
the induction, which all antiquity looked on as the chosen
home of sorcery and magic arts ? To divide Babylon
from the nomadic Semites is to change the problem from
one of race to one of environment.

The hypothesis of a natural monotheism, even in the
attenuated form in which it appears in M. Renan's system,
is simply a relic of the unhistorical deism of last century,
the only form of liberal thought which appears to be
easily grafted on a strict Roman Catholic education. The
same influence appears in other parts of the volume, both
in small matters — as when M. Renan inclines to explain
the miracles of the wilderness wanderings as pious frauds,
or when he sneers at David for his habit of appealing to
the oracle of Jehovah — and in things of more moment,
particularly in his conception of the national element in
Jehovah-worship as a grievous falling away from the
simplicity of patriarchal faith. One is curious to know
how M. Renan will explain the work of the prophets on
the view that the national character of the religion of

1 See especially Lagarde, Rel. iuris eccles. ant. pp. 230 sqq.

614 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887

Israel contributed to the development no elements of
positive worth.

The limits of a notice like the present make it impossible
to follow M. Renan from page to page and judge every part
of his construction in its relation to the whole. As regards
the material facts of the early history, he is, as we have
seen, disposed to reduce to very small compass all that
can be certainly known for the time before David. He
holds, with most recent inquirers, that the Hebrews
originally issued from Arabia by the north-eastern route,
and traversed as nomads the pastures bordering on the
Euphrates, ascending as far as the region of Harran.
Here they came in contact with Babylonian ideas, through
the medium of the Aramaeans of Mesopotamia, and to this
early influence M. Renan ascribes the traditions embodied
in the first twelve chapters of Genesis. From Harran the
nomads moved southwards into Canaan, where they found
a race speaking the same language and of closely kindred
stock, but of very different character, so that no fusion
took place between the immigrants and the Canaanites.
In the district of Hebron, however, they lived in amity
with the Hittite population, whose near relatives were
the Hyksos of the Egyptian delta. These " Hittites of
Zoan " probably attracted to Egypt a portion of the
Hebrew nomads (the tribe of Joseph), and these were
afterwards joined by other bands. As regards the
residence in Goshen only one thing is certain — Israel
entered Egypt under a dynasty favourable to the Semites
and left it under a hostile dynasty. The exodus is assigned
to the period of decadence that followed the glorious reign
of Ramses II., the Louis XIV. of Egypt. All the details,
perhaps even the personality of Moses, are uncertain ; it
is not probable that the Egyptians sought to retain the
Hebrews by force. The Hebrews left Egypt with their
old religion changed not a little for the worse. Egypt gave
them the golden calf, the brazen serpent, the lying priestly
oracle, the Levite " who was the leper of Israel "• — all

i887] KENAN'S " HISTOIRE D'ISRAEL " 615

mischievous things which had to be eliminated in the
future progress of religion. Moreover, the gentle temper
of the primitive nomad was changed to harshness and
obstinacy by the yoke of oppression ; and the faith in the
special care of Jahve for Israel, which was developed (not
without the aid of pious fraud) by the experiences of the
wilderness, strengthened national feeling at the expense of
the sublime and true idea of primitive Elohism. " The
national idea desired a God who thought only of the
nation, and who in the interests of the nation was cruel,
unjust, an enemy of the human race." The " adoption
of Jahve seems to have been consummated at the Sinaitic
epoch," but what actually happened at Sinai is obscure.
Sinai is a mountain of terror, whose storms were conceived
as awful theophanies. In some such storm the Israelites
believed that Jahve appeared to them, and they left the
sacred mountain full of terror and persuaded that a very
powerful deity dwelt in its summits. It is scarcely
probable that the theophany gave occasion to Moses to
put forth any moral precepts. In truth the role of Moses
seems to have been " rather that of a chief like Abd-el-
Kader than of a prophet like Mahomet."

All the characteristic features in this outline of the
origins of Israel are more or less arbitrary. There is
absolutely no evidence that the Babylonian elements in
the traditions of Genesis reached the Hebrews through
the Aramaeans of Harran rather than through the Phoeni
cians ; it is certain that they show no sign of having been
the property of a nomadic race, and there is no probability
that they all date from the same period. M. Renan does
not regard the first twelve chapters of Genesis as a literary
unity : on this point he accepts the analysis of modern
criticism. But on purely subjective grounds he refuses to
believe that one of the two main documents is of the same
origin with the Levitical legislation, both forming part of
the document which is denoted by the symbol A. He
sees that the legislation of A must be postexilic, and he

616 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887

will not believe that the first chapter of Genesis is later
than the time of Hezekiah. It so happens that the unity
of the document A is the most absolutely fixed point in
criticism ; the date may still be disputed, but critics of
every school are agreed that the separation which M.
Renan desires is altogether impossible. But this does not
affect the serene confidence with which he maintains his
own view, not bringing any new arguments (though the
thing has been often discussed before in the same form),
but merely waving the Dutch and the Germans aside with
a polite sneer as worthy people who are trammelled by
their narrow Protestant education and have not got
enlarged views of ancient history.1 The appeal to the
judgment of personal self-confidence as the standard of
truth is made in the most engaging manner, but the fact
remains that, on a point of capital importance for the
problems of Hebrew history, we have no better evidence
than that M. Renan knows himself to be a great deal wiser
than the Germans, and that his impressions are more
valuable than their arguments. Accordingly we may be
sure that his view about the document A will satisfy no
body, and with its rejection all his ingenious speculations
about the Hebrews and the Hittites, and a great deal that
he has to say about Israel in the wilderness and about the
conquest of Canaan, simply fall to the ground.

Not better founded is the account of the influence of
Egypt on Hebrew religion as regards the Levites and the
oracle of Jahve. The oracle in its oldest form is merely
the sacred lot, an institution universal among the Semites
and one of the common possessions of all early faiths.
M. Renan regards the appeal to Jahve as a dark spot in
the record of Hebrew religion, a corruption of primitive
Elohism, and therefore he gives it a foreign origin. But
can he point to any nation in the stage of the Hebrews
under the judges which had no such way of appealing to
the decision of God ? Finally, the conception of Moses as

1 See his articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes, March 1886.

i887] KENAN'S " HISTOIRE D'lSRAfiL " 617

a sort of Abd-el-Kader is without all foundation in the
texts and is absolutely inconsistent with Semitic analogy.
It is brought in (along with an absurd idea that the
warlike successes of Israel may have been due to an
Egyptian contingent) to account for the military superi
ority of the Hebrews in their conflict with the Canaanites.
But the weakness of the nomadic Semites in military
enterprises has never been due to want of generalship
(witness the abundance of able soldiers that the first
generation of Islam produced), but wholly to the want of
cohesion between the tribes. And this again is due to
tribal pride or vanity, which refuses to acknowledge any
human authority except in a tribesman. It has been
well shown by Wellhausen that according to the most
ancient texts the main function of Moses was to judge
between the contending interests of tribes and families
by an authority not human but divine, and the same
scholar has pointed out that Mohammed was largely
indebted for his success to the very cause that gave
authority to Moses ; his judgments did not offend family
or tribal susceptibility because ihey were spoken in the
name of Allah and therefore involved no humiliation of one
kindred before another. This is the true historical use of
analogy, for it compares the operation of similar causes
in similar circumstances, whereas the analogy of Abd-el-
Kader is not only absolutely vague, but ignores that
fundamental difference between the Maghrib and the true
Semitic lands which forces itself upon the notice of every
student of the history of Islam.

In M. Kenan's account of the conquest of Canaan and
the settlement of the tribes there is little which calls for
notice except a certain confusedness of treatment due to a
combination of general distrust in the historical tradition
with a half-hearted adherence to the document A. One
detail, however, may be signalised as showing a somewhat
singular misapprehension of the use of historical analogy
on which our author piques himself. To illustrate the

6i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887

relations of the Israelites to their Canaanite neighbours in
the cities that were not conquered, he appeals to the
relations between the Metawila of Syria and their neigh
bours of other races. " One must see these mixed or
rather double villages, where two populations live side by
side, hating and yet tolerating one another. Almost all
Turkey presents the same spectacle." But surely every
one who knows Syria is aware that this state of things
could not be maintained except under the sovereignty
of the Turkish empire. Both parties fear the pasha.
Modern Syria is a good analogy to illustrate the condition
of Palestine under the Achaemenians, but it is no analogy
for the age of the judges, when there was no external power
pressing on Hebrews and Canaanites alike. At that time,
where Hebrews and Canaanites lived together, the relation
of the two races must have been much more similar to
the relation between Arabs and Jews in Medina before
the Hijra, and this is the conception which all the texts
bear out.

The period of the judges is treated in the volume before
us in a spirit of superficial eclecticism which is somewhat
surprising. On M. Kenan's own view that real definite
history begins with David, one is necessarily led to con
clude that the preceding period lies enveloped not in ab
solute darkness but in a semi-historical penumbra. Here,
therefore, if anywhere, exact historical criticism, the
laborious separation of primary and secondary sources,
is indispensable. It is impossible that fable should end
and history begin quite abruptly, and equally impossible
that the transition should take place in a narrative so
visibly composite as that of the Book of Judges, without
history and legend overlapping each other in a way which
can be detected by a careful analysis of the texts. In the
story of Deborah and Barak, where a contemporary
poetical document stands side by side with a later prose
narrative, or in the story of Gideon, where two parallel
records have been carefully distinguished by modern

i887] KENAN'S " HISTOIRE D'ISRAEL " 619

scholars, it seems inconceivable, on his own premisses, that
M. Renan should be able to dispense himself from the
task of critical analysis. Yet even in these cases we
find nothing but a rechauffe of the compound narrative,
affecting a spurious appearance of criticism by the
mechanical rejection of supernatural detail. Even more
disappointing is the treatment of the episode of Abimelech
—perhaps the most instructive portion of the whole Book
of Judges — where M. Renan misses every point, even the
obvious one that up to this date Shechem was a purely
Canaanite city, and that the short-lived sovereignty of
Abimelech was built not on Hebrew but on Canaanite
support.1

The last point in M. Renan's narrative on which some
remark may here be made, is his strong prejudice against
David, in whom he can see nothing more than a clever and
successful bandit. Until recently the true founder of the
Hebrew state has been judged less as a king than as a
Psalmist, and from this point of view it was natural that
two diametrically opposite views should be taken of his
character. The Church has consecrated him as a saint :
the deistic reaction, unjustly but from its own standpoint
not at all unnaturally, has stigmatised him as a hypocrite.
M. Renan, who does not believe that David wrote Psalms,
or that in him the king was sunk in the liturgical dilettante
of the Book of Chronicles, ought, one imagines, to have
been able to take an independent view of a character
which, religion apart, is one of the most remarkable in
Semitic history. But his love of startling antithesis
prevails, and he sacrifices all attempt at historic justice
to a brilliant page contrasting " the brigand of Adullam
and Ziklag " with the ideal type of the Messiah, the
imaginary author of " the sentiments full of resignation

1 The evidence for this fundamental point is quite independent of
certain acknowledged difficulties in the text of Judges ix., for which
various solutions have been proposed, and which the present reviewer
has attempted to remove by transposing verses 28, 29, and making them
follow on verse 22. (Theologisch Tijdschrift, March 1886.)

620 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887

and tender melancholy contained in the most beautiful
of liturgical books." This may be literature, but it is not
history. The historian has to judge David as a king, and
to judge him from his whole career. We know that his
reign dwelt in the affectionate memory of Israel long
before the nation had become a Church and before the
renown of the warrior and judge was overshadowed by
the fame of the Psalmist. The nation was grateful for
deliverance from the Philistines, but it also remembered
that David " did justice and judgment to all his people." '
These are substantial titles to an honourable place in
history, against which neither the weakness of an old age
exhausted by martial toil nor the ambiguous conduct of
some parts of an adventurous youth can fairly be set.
The inner life of David as a king is revealed to us in a way
unique in ancient history, through a document evidently
dependent on the accounts of a contemporary observer,
one who read faces and noted minute details with a subtlety
which to the western reader recalls the memoirs of Saint-
Simon, but which is not uncommon among the Arabs.
This observer may have had his prejudices, but it is clear
that his passion was the study of men, and that no
prejudice would have induced him to suppress a character
istic trait. He spares none of David's weaknesses, and
yet the king appears not only a far greater man, but a
larger, better, and more generous nature than any of those
about him. David's faults were those of his age, and the
things in him that most offend us were not those that gave
umbrage to his contemporaries. Even his great sin in the
matter of Uriah would have been buried in oblivion but
for his repentance. Now oriental sovereignty is not the
thing to make a bad man better ; nay, even in a man
whose general aims are high and beneficent, it is eminently
calculated to produce the frame of mind which Abd-al-
Malik described as wrought in himself — " that he had
come to do good without feeling pleasure, and to do evil

1 2 Sam. viii. 18.

i887] KENAN'S " HISTOIRE D'ISRAfiL " 621

without feeling pain/' It is fair to read David's earlier
life in the light reflected upon it by these considerations.
He passed through conditions of extraordinary difficulty
in which there was often no straight path, and in such
circumstances a certain amount of ruse is not only per
mitted but applauded by Semitic morality. But through
out a seemingly tortuous course he never failed to retain
his own self-respect and the passionate devotion of all his
followers, and he emerged from trials in which an ordinary
nature would have made shipwreck to do his country
services of the first order and to take a place in which he
has no rival among Hebrew sovereigns. To condemn
him because he was ambitious would be to condemn every
great man whose career is impelled by an inward con
sciousness of strength : what we are to consider is that his
ambition was noble and patriotic. That he played the
traitor to Saul and to his country there is not a particle
of evidence ; that he may have hoped to succeed Saul is
possible, but this was not treason in a kingdom where there
were as yet no fixed hereditary rights. The Philistines
he certainly deceived ; but here his conduct, however
contrary to our point of honour, was not such as to trouble
the most sensitive Semitic conscience. That he had any
responsibility for the death of Abner is a pure imagination.
M. Renan wonders that he did not punish Joab, but under
the law of blood-revenge Joab was strictly within his
right. Finally, when M. Renan says that few natures
seem to have been less religious than David's, and charges
him with an absolute lack of the sentiment of justice, he
seems to use a false standard both of religion and of
justice. David's religion was not cosmopolitan ; in his
faith as in all his life he was an Israelite, bound by that
strict national feeling — and even respect for national
prejudice — which was then the basis of the whole code of
right and honour. But it is a great mistake to suppose
that the social virtues are based on cosmopolitanism,
that a religion which does not look beyond the nation

622 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887

cannot be a true and powerful force in favour of right
conduct. If Jahvism had not been in its origin a national
religion, it could never have become a practical force ; its
ethical influence within the nation was the necessary basis
of its ethical influence on mankind. M. Renan seems to
think that David's devotion to Jahve was not true religion
because he consulted oracles and because he was sometimes
treacherous and cruel to the enemies of his country. But
this only means that a good man would not act now as
David did nearly three thousand years ago. The test of
individual piety is not whether a man strikes out a new
code of morals in advance of his age, but whether in the
fear of God he does his duty loyally and trustfully accord
ing to the standard of his times, and when he sins returns
to God in true and honest repentance. So much can
safely be said of David, and it can also be said of him that
in the most critical moments of his life he maintained that
calm and resolute submission to the Divine will which
makes the strength of a truly religious character and
raises the servant of God above the fear of man.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

A UNIFORM ISSUE OF THE WORKS OF THE LATE

PROFESSOR

W. ROBERTSON SMITH

In Four 'Volumes, Large Crown Svo, Cloth

EACH O/*- NET
(Post free : a Set, 24/7 ; a Volume, 6/4)

THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE
JEWISH CHURCH.

Second Edition. Revised and much enlarged.

THE RELIGION OF THE SEMITES.

Second Edition. Revised and enlarged by the Author.

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL AND
THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY.

Second Edition, with Introduction and Additional Notes,
by the Rev. T. K. CHEYNE, D.Litt., D.D.

KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE IN EARLY
ARABIA.

New and Enlarged Edition, with Additional Notes by the Author
and Prof. GOLDZIHER. Edited by STANLEY A. COOK, M.A.

PUBLISHED BY

ADAM & CHARLES BLACK

4, 5, AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

[P.T.O.

NOTE

^ I ^HESE four works, along with a series of important articles
1 in the last ten volumes of the Ninth Edition of the
l£HC£ClOpa&ia BtitanntCa, may be said to represent nearly
the whole of the literary activity of their gifted Author during
the twelve years when his remarkable intellectual powers were
at their greatest maturity and his scholarship at its ripest and
richest.

No serious student of the religious and ecclesiastical history of
English-speaking countries during the last twenty-five years can
afford to neglect any one of the four; if not all equally " epoch-
making," each of them at least marks a new stage in the discussion
of the subject to which it relates. Nor is their interest historical
merely ; it cannot be said that modern thought has even yet by
any means wholly absorbed or assimilated all in them that is
original and destined ultimately to become the common property
of those who think and know. Nor is the range of this influence
still exerted by them wholly confined to English-speaking
countries : two of them have been translated into German under
the sponsorship of Professors Kautzsch and Rothstein, both
scholars expressing themselves as at one in the desire that their
educated fellow-countrymen should have easy access to the works
of a writer so lucid and so vivid, so keen and candid, and at the
same time so sympathetic.

The earliest in the series, The Old Testament in the
Jewish Church, first published in 1881, had an unusually
large circulation, and passed into its second edition, revised and
greatly enlarged by the Author, in 1892.

The Prophets of Israel (1882) appeared in a new edition
in 1895 ; this was enriched with an Introduction and Additional
Notes by the Author's friend and fellow-worker, Professor Cheyne.
Of The Religion of the Semites, published in 1884, the
second edition, published in 1894, embodies the Author's
latest corrections. The second edition of Kinship (1903),
edited by the competent hands of Mr. Stanley Cook, incorporates
notes from the Author's interleaved copy, besides being annotated
by Prof. Goldziher. The work first appeared in 1885.

A. & C. BLACK, 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

85"
354

Snith, William Robertsox*
Lectiires & essays

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

fl

'• &

>.l