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little developed in such an extraordinary manner until it had attained to the very highest summit of power. None knew better than he the many crises through which it had passed, and the terrible blows which the Greek schism, the Lutheran schism, and the French revolution of '89 had dealt it. But he must go further back than that. It was not the development of that Church which tempted him, but the origin of its faith and the origin of Christianity-the origin of a faith with which, like Leibnitz and Malebranche, he still struggled, and which offers such a vast field to critical curiosity and erudition. To a historian and philosopher like Renan the great question of Nature's object proved an irresistible attraction. The Why of the world, and the world has it a Why To us the term "the world" has but one signification: mankind and mankind's responsibility. As Scherer says: "Let the Trinity, life to come, heaven, hell, cease to be dogmas and spiritual realities; let the letter and the forms disappear, the human question must still remain. How is man led to be truly a man? When we contemplate this material existence, the ideas which irresistibly rise in our minds must inevitably be: What is the end and the aim of all this?" To obtain a reply it is not necessary to indulge in any speculative theories, for the conscience of every man gives him the solution; and when you ask whence comes that law of conscience which none are able to ignore, whence comes that judge enthroned within a man who is never tired of sitting in judgment on his most insignificant action and thought, one's mind is carried irresistibly onward beyond the power of conception, until at last we are glad to find a resting-place behind a Power so much greater and so much more wonderful than ourselves that we are unable to realize it in material form.

"Life," says the Cardinal to John Inglesant, "is the sole study worthy of man ;" and John Inglesant found it in finitely more interesting than opinions and theories. Since 1863, when the Vie de Jésus first appeared, Renan has been trying to solve the great problems of life. Like the Cardinal in John Inglesant, his interest is all with humanity and its hopes, endeavoring to fathom it rather than to reform it! Treating it in a totally different manner to Lamartine, who saw every

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where only evil where good could easily be, but at the same time finding nowhere any more heroic notions of life than that supplied by Christianity, and never getting any nearer that ideal of which he is always in search than Jesus of Nazareth. Full of enthusiasm for the purity of the Jewish Messiah and the heroism of the Martyrs, and finding no more glorious names on the roll of mankind than those of St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi (whom Dean Milman describes as the most gentle and blameless of the saints), and St. Augustin, it is not surprising that in that vast field of thought and conjecture Renan should have found sufficient material to occupy another fifteen years of his life. In his works on this subject, he more than ever proves himself a writer. History is supplemented by his vivacity of imagination, and nothing could be finer than the exquisite simplicity of his style, his felicity of expression, and the clearness and profusion of his ideas. "He charms,' as Scherer says, "because he thinks and makes you think." Here and there one may come across an affectation of frivolity, but it is forgotten in the many noble lessons, the fruit of his wide experience, which fall from his lips. For though he has produced a prodigious variety of works, such as the History of the Semitic Languages and the translations from the original Hebrew of the Books of Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Psalms, it is by the seven volumes composing the History of the Origins of Christianity-The Life of Jesus, The Apostles, St. Paul, Antichrist, The Evangelists and the Second Christian Generation, The Christian Church, and Marcus Aurelius and the End of the Ancient World-that he is best known to fame. The general title of this series of works is, however, somewhat misleading, for "History" conveys the idea of a series of sufficiently numerous and reliable facts leading us on, like the links of a chain, from one point to another. In the History of Christianity, however, this connectedness is entirely wanting, and this it is more than anything else which gives to Christianity its extraordinary character. Could anything be more marvellous in the usual course of events than that the religion of an obscure and despised people, inhabiting a small portion of Asia Minor, should have given birth to beliefs which constitute to-day the foundations of the moral life of

the civilized world, and that the ignominious execution which seemed to consuminate its defeat should have become the gauge of its victory? The information we possess of the life of the Founder of Christianity is of the very scantiest description. His very name is ignored by the Roman historians of his time, while of the Apostles we know even less. Our knowledge of how and where they lived and of how and where they died is founded solely on the vaguest tradition. The only one of them whose character and actions have been preserved to us by authentic records is St. Paul, who, in the strictest sense of the word, was not an Apostle at all. From his time to the end of the second or the beginning of the third century, we have no historic data of the progress of Christianity, of how and by what means the new religion was spread from end to end of the known world, of whom for over a hundred years carried it there, of how a few poor Jews were able to overthrow the philosophies and mythologies of the Pagan world. When one comes to face these questions, he finds himself reduced to very vague indications and uncertain conjectures. The visible results are there, but the causes which brought them about remain in impenetrable obscurity. It was this most important feature which the history of civilization presents to us that Renan undertook to recount, but we cannot help seeing to what an extent his history must, at the most critical period, have depended on his own poetic and vivacious imagination, and taking Jesus Christ, as he does, as a type simply of the greatest human excellence, he only succeeds in making us feel what an unsolvable enigma Christianity and its effects upon the world remains with his theory. For my own part, I cannot even agree with his picture of the Messiah, for I cannot imagine gayety and wit and joyousness in connection with that prophet carrying on his shoulders the heavy burden of the destinies of his people and of mankind.

To me, Renan, with his wonderful powers of delineation, is continually being thus led away by his strong feelings and poetic images. Everywhere dominated by his ideal as Hegel is with his Idea, Schopenhauer with his Will, and Hartmann with his Instinct, he appears to ignore the fact that we cannot conceive God as personal

or impersonal any more than we can conceive the universe as finite or infinite, or space as either void or full, and that we have difficulty in allowing a first cause which may not itself be an effect, or anything which shall not itself have been created. In questions where analogies are absent comparisons fail, and the consequent contradictions into which the mind must inevitably fall in dealing with such matters are apparent. We cannot call anything a certainty, and outside the Supreme Being we have only philosophical speculations of the most varied kind, and the tendency of mankind to judge everything by his own inward perceptions. If the universe is explained by the Creator, then where, asks the analytical philosopher exultingly, is the explanation of the Creator, or why is he inexplicable? But what does he offer you in exchange? A theory of spontaneous creation and automatic development a thousand times more wonderful than that of a Supreme Being. In the words of Dr. Blowitz: "A substitution of gravitation for the laws of God, and an explanation of the everlasting harmony of Nature by successive aggregations arising out of chaos, in fulfilment of an unconscious and sublime ordonnance." "Beyond the universe," says Scherer, "neither the philosopher nor the naturalist can go without passing from the domain of pure science to that of theological hypothesis. We talk of the Universe, Humanity, the Ideal, the Absolute; but can we endow with reality these figures of speech? The Infinite is simply the Indefinable, the Absolute the absence of all limits which constitute the Relative."

From this point of view we cannot consider Renan's works to possess much scientific value, but I do think an enormous signification is to be attached to them in the history of Ideas, for a solitary education appears to open eyes which in the midst of companions and engagements are too apt to remain closed. His portrait of St. Paul in The Apostles is both original and realistic, while few things could be finer than his picture of the Emperor Nero in Antichrist. But of all the products of his fecund pen that which appears to me to possess pre-eminently the greatest interest and charm is his Souvenirs. It abounds in those original colorings, those peculiarities of mental refraction, those varieties of style, and that beauty, majesty and sim

plicity of phraseology which render the perfections of Renan's works no merely negative qualities. Here we see the man as he really is, and, despite the prevalent pessimism of the present day, we find that there still exist magnificent ideals and noble thoughts, pure souls and heroic hearts. There are times in life when one looks back into the past more willingly than into the future, and when, like the pedestrian wearied with the distance travelled, one finds a melancholy joy in turning to look once more at the road over which he has passed; so there is a softer touch in this philosopher's Souvenirs as he lifts the veil of the past than in any of his other works. Behind him he sees a tangible reality, before him nothing but an infinitude of time and an infinitude of space. Starting in life he was governed at the outset by immutable dogmas, inflexible rules, universal truths; then comes the contact with life, the study of history, the habit of analyzing, until he ends up like Benjamin Constant by imagining no proposition is true and doubting everything. Finding in all dogmas and in all theories something which attracts himself, he is now as a spiritualist against the materialist, and anon a materialist fighting the spiritualist.

Such is the story of Ernest Renan's life, and even this hasty and superficial glimpse at the nature of the trials through which he has passed should at least help us to ap preciate the vast difference existing between him and the Rousseau school. His works have at least not been written simply to satisfy his pride in defying the judgment of God and man. No; rather let us think of him as Thales, who looked so long upward to the stars, heedless of the earth on which he walked, that he at last fell into the water. It was afterward said that had he looked into the water he might have seen the stars, but looking to the stars he could not see the water.

Whatever critics may think and say of Renan and his conclusions, his works have at least been produced in sincerity of purpose and faithfulness of heart. No doubt they will find in them much to condemn on the ground of erring judgment, but they must allow that he has by his labors well earned his position in the front rank of that galaxy of elegant essayists, brilliant critics, and profound thinkers who have helped to make the century renowned. One of those intellectual giants of earth who still live to excite our wonder and arouse our admiration. Others there are

lesser lights, famous in their degreeby whom the world has been enlightened and refined; but Ernest Renan stands forth conspicuous among them as one of the loftier spirits of our time, one of those who must leave indelible traces on the page of history, and a distinctive mark on the age in which we live. And if he has unfortunately devoted a great portion of his life and his consummate intellect to endeavoring to pierce the shadows and darkness which overwhelm that unbounded prospect of eternity lying before usto trying to solve in his own way some of the great mysteries which surround us, forgetful that science demonstrates that the progress of the world has not been achieved by men refusing to believe or submit to that which they did not understand, but the reverse-let us try to remember that many weaknesses, even many errors and faults, have their own peculiar beauty, and that matters human inspire but two thoughts in well-balanced hearts: admiration and pity. Renan-that St. Thomas of to-day-deserves both!

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ON THE ANCIENT BELIEFS IN A FUTURE STATE.

BY RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.

Ir is a circumstance of real literary interest that there should be published in Calcutta a periodical devoted to the promotion of Christian learning, under the auspices of the Oxford Mission to India,

and depending upon the contributions of Native as well as of British writers; and further, that it should attract the support of so distinguished a Hebraist and Biblical scholar as Professor Cheyne. An article

by this Professor* furnishes the point of departure for the following remarks upon a subject of interest alike in itself and in its relation to other and yet wider subjects. It is the opinion of Professor Cheyne that there is a doctrine of immortality in the Old Testament. He finds it in Psalms xvi., xvii., xxxvi., xlix., lxiii., lxxiii. He thinks he has proved that these Psalms were composed during the latter part of the Persian rule over Palestine." In the Review, however, he does not enter upon the date of these Psalms: but states a principle which serves as a convenient text for a discussion of the subject touched by it. The principle is thist :

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It involves a much greater strain upon faith

to hold that the wonderful intuition of immortality was granted so early as the times of David and Solomon, than to bring the Psalms in question down to the late Persian age.

The general doctrine which appears to be here conveyed is to something like the following effect that the human race advances through experience, heredity, and tradition, from infancy towards maturity; that the mind, subjected to these educative agencies, undergoes a process of expansion, and becomes capable in a later age of accepting intelligently what in an earlier age it could not have been fit to receive. In my opinion such a doctrine requires an important qualification; because moral elements, as well as those which are intellectual, go to form our capability of profitable reception, and because it depends upon the due proportion and combination of the two whether an advance in the understanding shall or shall not bring us nearer to the truth. But, for the sake of argument, let the doctrine stand. If it stands, it sustains a presumption that knowledge with respect to a future life, after once being imparted, improved in the early stages of human history with the lapse of time. But, as yet, the doctrine rests only on the footing of an argument a priori. From this there actually lies an appeal to the argument derivable from positive testimony. Does our information with regard to the religions of the ancients lead us to believe that the sense of a

future world advanced, or that it receded,

* Indian Church Quarterly Review, April, 1891, No. 2, p. 127. (Calcutta: Oxford Mission Press; London: Masters, 78 New Bond Street.)

† Ibid., p. 128.

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as the years rolled into the centuries," and as civilization assumed more positive and consolidated forms? Be it remembered all along that the question before us is not whether the knowledge of a future state was evolved by man subjectively from his own thoughts, or was divinely imparted. The present question is only whether, when once received, this particular article of religious knowledge progressively advanced along with the general growth of intelligence, or whether, on the contrary, it declined.

I am not willing, however, to quit altogether this question of presumption a priori without drawing an inference in parallel subject matter, which appears to me relevant, and rather strong.

If the advance of civilization imported the growth of intelligence, and if the advance of intelligence quickened the mental eye for the perception of things beyond the material range, this quickening, it is obvious, would be available, not for the future only, but for the unseen world at large, both as to a standing consciousness of its existence, and as to a readiness to acknowledge and accept the presence on earth, and in human affairs, of any beings by whom it is supposed to be peopled.

It is intelligible, indeed, that a distinction may be drawn between a belief in Providence, and a belief in Theophany, or in the marvellous under any of its many forms. Let us accept this distinction. It will still, I apprehend, remain undeniable that the onward movement of ancient civilization did not in practice enliven, but rather, on the contrary, tended to weaken or efface the belief in the doctrine of Providence; in an unseen but constant superintendence and direction of human affairs by the Divine power. I take Homer and Herodotos as two men who, while separated in time by a number of centuries even greater than the four which the historian allows, were both of them, according to the lights and opportunities of their day, pious men. But how far stronger, more familiar, and more vivid, is the sense of a Providence truly divine, of the theos and theoi quite apart from polytheistic limitations, in Homer than in Herodotos. Take another step, say of half a century, from Herodotos to Thucydides; and you encounter a work of history generally as perfect in its manipulation as the highest productions

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of Phidias; but a work, also, the author of which had lost all touch of the religious idea, and could hardly be said to see, what even Agnosticism thinks it sees, the fact of a mighty or an almighty power working behind an impenetrable curtain. Well during the interval of time between Homer and Thucydides the progress of Greece in civilization had been immense; but she had lost her grasp of the doctrine of Providence, of the nearness of deity to man, of its living care for human affairs and interests. And whatever may be said of the speculations of Plato, an intellect more muscular, more comprehensive, and more entirely Greek-the intel. lect of Aristotle-places the element of deity at a distance from human life as wide as that of the Lucretian heaven. This was not, evidently, because of a decline in intellectual capacity. But the aggregate of the influences operative upon human perception had enfeebled the sense of the unseen present. The presumption, though (thus far) no more than a presumption, herewith arises that it would also enfeeble the sense of the unknown future.

Now let us pass on to the direct evidence available upon the subject before us and I will recite at once the conclusions which the facts, as far as we know them, seem to me to recommend. They are as follows:

1. That the movement of ideas between

the time of civilization in its cradle, and the time of civilization in its full-grown stature, on the subject of future retribution, if not of a future existence generally, was a retrograde, and not a forward, movement.

2. That there is reason, outside the Psalter, to think that the Old Testament implies the belief in a future state, as a belief accepted among the Hebrews; although it in no way formed an element of the Mosaic usages, and cannot be said to be prominent even in the Psalms.

3. That the conservation of the truth concerning a future state does not appear to have constituted a specific element in the divine commission intrusted to the Hebrew race, and that it is open to consideration, whether more was done for the maintenance of this truth in certain of the Gentile religions.

As regards the first of these propositions, which is one of fact only, we seem

to labor under this great difficulty, that the Greek or Olympian religion is the only religion of antiquity which we can trace at all minutely in its different phases through the literature and records of the country; whereas it is by no means a religion which distinctively enshrines the doctrine of a future state. In the case of Assyria, while we might hope for testimony extending over a lengthened period, the destiny of mankind after death did not, according to Canon Rawlinson, occupy a prominent place in the beliefs of the people.* And if we turn turn to the Egyptian, and the Iranian or Persian religions, the means of comparing their earlier with their later states seem to be very incomplete though not wholly insignificant. The Persian religion in its earlier condition was one of a dualism of abstract, conceptions, and it progressively developed them into rival personalities. In the course of time, the country came under the influence of Magianism. Το the early Zoroastrianism, there had been attached a strong belief in a future state of a retributive character. But when Herodotos wrote his account of the Persian religion he described the Magian system and its elemental worship, and seems to have known little or nothing of the older Persian scheme, unless on the negative side, where it rejected temples, images, and altars. The older form had now apparently come to be the religion of the Court, rather than of the people. The religion of abstract ideas had lost ground; that which was sacerdotal and pantheistic had gained it. I see thus far no sign of progress in the doctrine of a future state. The inference rather is that it was passing into the shade.

The historical relations, however, between Greece and the Persian empire were so important that, probably on this account, a large number of the Greek writers, Aristotle himself included, gave attention to the religion of the great antagonist whom Alexander finally overthrew. It was, most probably, the later condition of that religion, to which their accounts relate. The most important of them, from Herodotos to Plutarch, are textually cited or described in Dr. Haug's

* Ancient Religions, p. 77.

Herod. i. 131, 138; iii. 16.

Rawlinson's essay, in his Herod. i. 426-31.

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