Subdivision 3.—Yaçna, Chapter XII. (continued 2)

Let us pause a moment here before passing on to the next branch of the subject: the creation of animals and man. The author had two questions before him; how the materials of the universe came into being, and how, when in being, they assumed their present forms and relative positions. Of the first he says nothing, unless the first verse be taken to refer to it. But this can scarcely be; for the expression, "God made the heavens and the earth," cannot easily be supposed to refer to the original production of the matter out of which the heavens and the earth were subsequently made. Rather must we take it as a short heading, referring to the creation which is about to be described. And in any case, the manner in which there came to be anything at all out of which heavens and earth could be constructed is not considered. We are left apparently to suppose that matter is coeval with the Deity; for the author never faces the question of its origin, which is the real difficulty in all such cosmogonies as his, but hastens at once to the easier task of describing the separation and classification of materials already in existence.

Somewhat similar to the Hebrew legend, both in what it records and in what it omits, is the story of creation as told by the Quichés in America:—

"This is the first word and the first speech. There were neither men nor brutes, neither birds, fish, nor crabs, stick nor stone, valley nor mountain, stubble nor forest, nothing but the sky; the face of the land was hidden. There was naught but the silent sea and the sky. There was nothing joined, nor any sound, nor thing that stirred; neither any to do evil, nor to rumble in the heavens, nor a walker on foot; only the silent waters, only the pacified ocean, only it in its calm. Nothing was but stillness, and rest, and darkness, and the night; nothing but the Maker and Moulder, the Hurler, the Bird-Serpent" (M. N. W., p. 196.—Popol Vuh, p. 7).

Another cosmogony is derived from the Mixtecs, also aborigines of America:—

"In the year and in the day of clouds, before ever were either years or days, the world lay in darkness; all things were orderless, and a water covered the slime and the ooze that the earth then was" (M. N. W., p. 196).

Two winds are in this myth the agents employed to effect the subsidence of the waters, and the appearance of dry land. In another account, related by some other tribes, the muskrat is the instrument which divides the land from the waters. These myths, as Mr. Brinton, who has collected them, truly remarks, are "not of a construction, but a reconstruction only, and are in that respect altogether similar to the creative myth of the first chapter of Genesis."

In the Buddhistic history of the East Mongols, the creation of the world is made, as in Genesis, the starting point of the relation. But the creative forces in this mythology are apparently supposed to be inherent in primeval matter. Hence we have a Lucretian account of the movements of the several parts of the component mass without any consideration of the question how the impulse to these movements was originally given. "In the beginning there arose the external reservoir from three different masses of matter; namely, from the creative air, from the waving water, and from the firm, plastic earth. A strong wind from ten-quarters now brought about the blue atmosphere. A large cloud, pouring down continuous rain, formed the sea. Dry land arose by means of grains of dust collecting on the surface of the ocean, like cream on milk."[91]

Although the sacred writings of the Parsees contain no connected account of the creation, yet this void is fully supplied by traditions which have acquired a religious sanction, and have entered into the popular belief. Those traditions are found in the Bundehesh and the Shahnahmeh, works of high authority in the Parsee system. According to them, Ahura-Mazda, the good principle, induced his rival, Agra-Mainyus, the evil principle, to enter into a truce of nine thousand years, foreseeing that by means of this interval he would be able to subdue him in the end. Agra-Mainyus, having discovered his blunder, went to the darkest hell, and remained there three thousand years. Ahura-Mazda took advantage of this repose to create the material world. He produced the sky in forty-five days, the water in sixty, the earth in seventy-five, the trees in thirty, the cattle in eighty, and human beings in seventy-five; three hundred and sixty-five days were thus occupied with the business of creation. It will be observed that, though the time taken is longer, the order of production is the same in the Parsee as in the Hebrew legend. This fact tends to confirm the supposition, which will hereafter appear still more probable, of an intimate relation between the two.

Always prone to speculation, the Hindus were certain to find in the dark subject of creation abundant materials for their mystic theories. Various explanations are accordingly given in the Rig-Veda. Thus, the following account is found in the tenth Book:—

"Let us, in chanted hymns, with praise, declare the births of the gods,—any of us who in this latter age may behold them. Brâhmanaspati blew forth these births like a blacksmith. In the earliest age of the gods, the existent sprang from the non-existent: thereafter the regions sprang from Uttānapad. The earth sprang from Uttānapad, from the earth sprang the regions: Daksha sprang from Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha. Then the gods were born, and drew forth the sun, which was hidden in the ocean" (O. S. T., vol. v. p. 48.—Rig-Veda, x. 72).

With higher wisdom, another Vaidik Rishi declares it impossible to know the origin of the universe:—

"There was then neither nonentity nor entity: there was no atmosphere, nor sky above. What enveloped [all]? Where, in the receptacle of what, [was it contained]? Was it water, the profound abyss? Death was not then, nor immortality; there was no distinction of day or night. That One breathed calmly, self-supported; there was nothing different from, or above, it. In the beginning darkness existed, enveloped in darkness. All this was undistinguishable water. That One which lay void, and wrapped in nothingness, was developed by the power of fervor. Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind; [and which] sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered in their heart to be the bond which connects entity with nonentity. The ray [or cord] which stretched across these [worlds], was it below or was it above? There were there impregnating powers and mighty forces, a self-supporting principle beneath, and energy aloft. Who knows, who here can declare, whence has sprung, whence, this creation? The gods are subsequent to the development of this [universe]; who then knows whence it arose? From what this creation arose, and whether [any one] made it or not, he who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he verily knows, or even he does not know" (O. S. T., vol. v. p. 356.—Rig-Veda, x. 129).

A later narrative ascribes creation to the god Prajapati, who, it is said, having the desire to multiply himself, underwent the requisite austerities, and then produced earth, air, and heaven (A. B., vol. ii. p. 372).

We now return to Genesis, which proceeds to its second problem: the creation of living creatures and of man. This is solved in two distinct fashions by two different writers. The first relates that on the fifth day God said, "Let the waters swarm with the swarming of animals having life, and let birds fly to and fro on the earth, on the face of the vault of the heavens." Having thus produced the inhabitants of the ocean and air on the fifth day, he produced those of earth on the sixth. On this day too he made man in his own image, and created them male and female. The whole of his work was now finished, and on the seventh day he enjoyed repose from his creative exertions, for which reason he blessed the seventh day (Gen. 1-ii. 3).

Here the first account of creation ends; the second begins with a descriptive title at the fourth verse of the second chapter. The writer of this version, unlike his predecessor, instead of ascribing the creation of man to the immediate fiat of Elohim, describes the process as resembling one of manufacture. God formed the human figure out of the dust of the earth, and then blew life into it, a conception drawn from the wide-spread notion of the identity of breath with life. Again the narrator of the second story varies from the narrator of the first about the creation of the sexes. In the first, the male and female are made together. In the second, a deep sleep falls upon the man, during which God takes out a rib from his side and makes the woman out of it. Generally speaking, it may be remarked that the former writer moves in a more transcendental sphere than the latter. He likes to conceive the origin of the world, with all its flora and all its fauna, as arising from the simple power of the word of God. How they arise he never troubles himself to say. The latter is more terrestrial. God with him is like a powerful artist; extremely skilled indeed in dealing with his materials, but nevertheless obliged to adapt his proceedings to their nature and capabilities. This author delights in the concrete and particular; and not only does he aim at relating the order of the creation, but also at making the modus operandi more or less intelligible to his hearers.

A somewhat different account of the origin of man is given in the traditions of Samoa, one of the Fiji islands. These traditions also describe an epoch when the earth was covered with water. "Tangaloa, the great Polynesian Jupiter," sent his daughter to find a dry place. After a long time she found a rock. In subsequent visits she reported that the dry land was extending. "He then sent her down with some earth and a creeping plant, as all was barren rock. She continued to visit the earth and return to the skies. Next visit, the plant was spreading. Next time, it was withered and decomposing. Next visit, it swarmed with worms. And the next time, the worms had become men and women! A strange account of man's origin!" On which it may be remarked, as a curious psychological phenomenon, tending to illustrate the effects of habit, that the missionary considers it "a strange account of man's origin" which represents God as making him from worms, but readily accepts another in which he is made out of dust.

The third question dealt with in Genesis is that of the origin of evil. This is a problem which has engaged the attention and perplexed the minds of many inquirers besides these ancient Hebrews, and for which most religions provide some kind of solution. The manner in which it is treated here is as follows:—

When God made Adam, he placed him in a garden full of delights, and especially distinguished by the excellence of its fruit-trees. There was one of these trees, however, the fruit of which he did not wish Adam to eat. He accordingly gave him strict orders on the subject in these words: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayst eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, of that thou mayst not eat, for on what day thou eatest thereof, thou diest the death" (Gen. ii. 16, 17). This order we must suppose to have been imparted by Adam to Eve, who was not produced until after it had been given. At any rate, we find her fully cognizant of it in the ensuing chapter, where the serpent appears upon the scene and endeavors, only too successfully, to induce her to eat the fruit. After yielding to the temptation herself, she induced her husband to do the like; whereupon both recognized the hitherto unnoticed fact of their nudity, and made themselves aprons of fig-leaves. Shortly after this crisis in their lives God came down to enjoy the cool of the evening in the garden; and Adam and Eve, feeling their guilt, ran to hide themselves among the trees. God called Adam, and the latter replied that he had hidden himself because he was naked. But God at once asked who had told him he was naked. Had he eaten of the forbidden tree? Of course Adam and Eve had to confess, and God then cursed the serpent for his gross misconduct, and punished the man by imposing labor upon him, and the woman by rendering her liable to the pains of childbirth. He also condescended so far as to become the first tailor, making garments of skins for Adam and Eve. But though he had thus far got the better of them by his superior strength, he was not without apprehension that they might outwit him still. "And God, the Everlasting, spoke: See, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he should stretch out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever! Therefore God, the Everlasting, sent him out of the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken" (Gen. iii. 22, 23). And in order to make quite sure that the man should not get hold of the tree of life, a calamity which would have defeated his intention to make him mortal, he guarded the approach to it by means of Cherubim, posted as sentinels with the flame of a sword that turned about. In this way he conceived that he had secured himself against any invasion of his privilege of immortality on the part of the human race.

Like the myth of creation, the myth of a happier and brighter age, when men did not suffer from any of the evils that oppress them now, is common, if not universal. Common too, if not equally common, is the notion that they fell from that superior state by contracting the stain of sin. I need scarcely refer to the classical story of a golden age, embodied by Hesiod in his "Works and Days," nor to the fable of Pandora allowing the ills enclosed in the box to escape into the world. But it may be of interest to remark, that the conception of a Paradise was no less familiar to the natives of America than to those of Europe. "When Christopher Columbus," observes Brinton, "fired by the hope of discovering this terrestrial paradise, broke the enchantment of the cloudy sea and found a new world, it was but to light upon the same race of men, deluding themselves with the same hope of earthly joys, the same fiction of a long-lost garden of their youth" (M. N. W., p. 87). Elsewhere he says: "Once again, in the legends of the Mixtecas, we hear the old story repeated of the garden where the first two brothers dwelt.... 'Many trees were there, such as yield flowers and roses, very luscious fruits, divers herbs, and aromatic spices'" (M. N. W., p. 90). Corresponding to the golden age among the Greeks was the Parsee conception of the reign of Yima, a mythological monarch who was in immediate and friendly intercourse with Ahura-Mazda. Yima's kingdom is thus described in the Vendidad: "There was there neither quarreling nor disputing; neither stupidity nor violence; neither begging nor imposture; neither poverty nor illness. No unduly large teeth; no form that passes the measure of the body; none of the other marks, which are marks of Agra-Mainyus, that he has made on men" (Av., vol. i. p. 76.—Vendidad, Fargard ii. 116 ff.). In another passage, found in the Khorda-Avesta, not only is the happiness of Yima's time depicted, but it is also distinctly asserted that he fell through sin. "During his rule there was no cold, no heat, no old age, no death, no envy created by the Devas, on account of the absence of lying, previously, before he (himself) began to love lying, untrue speeches. Then, when he began to love lying, untrue speeches, Majesty fled from him visibly with the body of a bird" (Av., vol. iii. p. 175.—Khorda-Avesta, xxxv. 32, 34).

More elaborately than in any of these systems is the fall of man described in the mythology of Buddhism. In this religion, as in that of the Jews, man is of divine origin, though after a somewhat different fashion. A spiritual being, or god, fell from one of the upper spheres, to be born in the world of man. Through the progressive increase of this being arose "the six species of living creatures in the three worlds." The most eminent of these species, Man, enjoyed an untold duration of life (another point in which Buddhistic legends resemble those of the Hebrews). Locomotion was carried on through the air; they did not consume impure terrestrial food, but lived on celestial victuals; and propagation, since there was no distinction of sex, was carried on by means of emanation. They did not require sun or moon, for they saw by their own light. Alas! one of these pure beings was tempted by a fool called earth-butter and ate it. The rest followed its example. Hereupon the heavenly food vanished; the race lost their power of going about the sky, and ceased to shine by their own light. This was the origin of the evil of the darkening of the mind. As a consequence of these deeds, sun, moon, and stars appeared. Still greater calamities were in store for men. Another, at another time, ate a different kind of food, an example again followed by the rest. In consequence of this, the distinctions of sex were established in them; passion arose; they began to beget children. This was the origin of the evil of sensual love. On a further occasion, one of them ate wild rice, and all lived for a time on wild rice, gathered as it was needed for immediate consumption. But when some foolish fellow took it into his head to collect enough for the following day, the rice ceased to grow without cultivation. This was the origin of the evil of idle carelessness. It being now necessary to cultivate rice, persons began to appropriate and quarrel about land, and even to kill one another. This was the origin of the evil of anger. Again, some who were better off hid their stores from those who were not so well off. This was the origin of the evil of covetousness. In course of time the age of men began to decline so as to be expressible in numbers. It continues gradually to decline until a turning-point arrives, at which it again increases (G. O. M., p. 5-9).

Several points of similarity between the Hebrew myth and that just narrated will doubtless occur to the reader. The fall of man is due, in this, as in Genesis, to the eating of a peculiar food by a single person; and this example is followed, in the one case, by the only other inhabitant; in the other, by all. The calamity thus entailed does not terminate in the loss of former pleasures, but extends to the introduction of crime and sexual relations. Eve is cursed by having to bear children; the same misfortune happened to the Buddhist women. Cain quarreled with Abel and killed him; so did the landed proprietors in the Indian legend quarrel with and kill one another.

The fourth question which appeared to have engaged the attention of the authors of Genesis was that of the variety of languages. How was it, if all mankind were descended from a single pair, and if again all but the Noachian family had been drowned, that they did not all speak the pure language in which Adam and Eve had conversed with their Creator in Paradise? Embarrassed by their own theories, the writers attempted to account for the phenomenon of the diverse modes of speech in use among men by an awkward myth. Men had determined to build a town, with a tower which should reach to heaven. Jehovah, however, came down one day to see what they were about, and was filled with apprehension that, if they succeeded in this undertaking, he might find it impossible to prevent them from carrying out their wishes in other ways also, whatever those wishes might be. So he determined to confound their language, that they might not understand one another, and by this happy contrivance put an end to the construction of the dangerous tower (Gen. xi. 1-9).

We have anticipated the course of the narrative in order to consider the solutions offered in Genesis of the four principal problems with which it attempts to deal. We must now return to the point at which we left the parents of the race, namely, immediately after their expulsion from Eden. They now began to beget children rapidly; and Adam's eldest son, Cain, afterwards killed his second son, Abel, for which Jehovah cursed him as he had previously cursed his parents. Adam and Eve had several other children, and (though this is nowhere expressly stated, but only implied) the brothers and sisters united in marriage to carry out the propagation of the species. In course of time, however, the "sons of God" began to admire the beauty of the "daughters of men," and to take wives from among them. Jehovah, indignant at such a scandal, fixed the limits of man's life—which had hitherto been measured by centuries—at 120 years. At the same time there were giants on earth. Now Jehovah saw that the human race was extremely wicked, so much so, that he began to wish he had never created it. To remedy this blunder, however, he determined to destroy it; and in order that the improvement should be thorough, to destroy along with it all cattle, creeping things, and birds, who had not (so far as we are aware,) entered into the same kind of irregular alliances with other species as men. Nevertheless, he had still a lingering fondness for his handiwork, badly as it had turned out; and therefore determined to preserve enough of each kind of animal, man included, to carry on the breed without the necessity of resorting a second time to creation. Acting upon this resolve, he ordered an individual named Noah to build an ark of gopher-wood, announcing that he would shortly destroy all flesh, but wished to save Noah and his three sons, with their several wives. He also desired him to take two members of each species of beasts and birds, or, according to another account, seven of each clean beast and bird, and two of each unclean beast; but in any case taking care that each sex should be represented in the ark. When Noah had done all this, the waters came up from below and down from above, and there was an increasing flood for forty days. All terrestrial life but that which floated in the ark was destroyed. At last the waters began to ebb, and finally the ark rested on the 17th day of the 7th month on Mount Ararat. After forty more days Noah sent out a raven and a dove, of which only the dove returned. In seven days he sent the dove again, and it returned, bringing an olive-leaf; and after another week, when he again sent it out, it returned no more. It was not, however, till the 27th of the 2d month of the ensuing year (these chroniclers being very exact about dates) that the earth was dried, and that Noah and his party were able to quit the ark. To commemorate the goodness of God in drowning all the world except himself and his family, Noah erected an altar and offered burnt-offerings of every clean beast and every clean fowl. The effect was instantaneous. So pleased was Jehovah with the "pleasant smell," that he resolved never to destroy all living beings again, though still of opinion that "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. vi. 7, 8).

The myth of the deluge is very general. The Hebrews have no exclusive property in it. Many different races relate it in different ways. We may easily suppose that the partial deluges to which they must often have been witnesses suggested the notion of a universal deluge, in which not only a few tribes or villages perished, but all the inhabited earth was laid under water; or the memory of some actual flood of unusual dimensions may have survived in the popular mind, and been handed down with traits of exaggeration and distortion such as are commonly found in the narratives of events preserved by oral tradition. Let us examine a few instances of the flood-myth.

The Fijians relate that the god "Degei was roused every morning by the cooing of a monstrous bird," but that two young men, his grandsons, one day accidentally killed and buried it. Degei having, after some trouble, found the dead body, determined to be avenged. The youths "took refuge with a powerful tribe of carpenters," who built a fence to keep out the god. Unable to take the fence by storm, Degei brought on heavy floods, which rose so high that his grandsons and their friends had to escape in "large bowls that happened to be at hand." They landed at various places; but it is said that the two tribes became extinct (Viti, p. 394).

The Greenlanders have "a tolerably distinct tradition" of a flood. They say that all men were drowned excepting one. This one beat with his stick upon the ground and thereby produced a woman (Grönland, p. 246).

Kamtschatka has a somewhat similar legend, except that it admits a larger number of survivors. Very many, according to this version, were drowned, and the waves had sunk those who had got into boats; but others took refuge in rafts, binding the trees together to make them. On these they saved themselves with their provisions and all their property. When the waters subsided, the rafts remained on the high mountains (Kamtschatka, p. 273).

Among the North Americans "the notion of a universal deluge" was, in the time of the Jesuit De Charlevoix, "rather wide-spread." In one of their stories, told by the Iroquois, all human beings were drowned; and it was necessary, in order to re-populate the earth, to change animals into men (N. F., vol. iii. p. 345).

The Tupis of Brazil are supposed to be named after Tupa, the first of men, "who alone survived the flood" (M. N. W., p. 185). Again, "the Peruvians imagined that two destructions had taken place, the first by a famine, the second by a flood; according to some a few only escaping, but, after the more widely accepted opinion, accompanied by the absolute extirpation of the race." The present race came from eggs dropped out of heaven (Ibid., p. 213). Several other tribes relate in diverse forms this world-wide story. In one of the versions, found in an old Mexican work, a man and his wife are saved, by the directions of their god, in a hollow cypress. In another, the earth is destroyed by water, because men "did not think nor speak of the Creator who had created them, and who had caused their birth." "Because they had not thought of their Mother and Father, the Heart of Heaven, whose name is Hurakan, therefore the face of the earth grew dark, and a pouring rain commenced, raining by day, raining by night" (Ibid., p. 206 ff.).

The diluvian legend appears in a very singular form in India in the Satapatha Brâhmana. There it is stated, that in the basin which was brought to Manu to wash his hands in, there was one morning a small fish. The fish said to him, "Preserve me, I shall save thee." Manu inquired from what it would save him. The fish replied that it would be from a flood which would destroy all creatures. It informed Manu that fishes, while small, were exposed to the risk of being eaten by other fishes; he was therefore to put it first into a jar; then when it grew too large for that, to dig a trench and keep it in that; that when it grew too large for the trench, to carry it to the ocean. Straightway it became a large fish, and said: "Now in such and such a year, then the flood will come; thou shalt therefore construct a ship, and resort to me; thou shalt embark in the ship when the flood rises, and I shall deliver thee from it." Manu took the fish to the sea, and in the year that had been named, "he constructed a ship and resorted to him. When the flood rose, Manu embarked in the ship. The fish swam towards him. He fastened the cable of the ship to the fish's horn. By this means he passed over this northern mountain. The fish said, 'I have delivered thee; fasten the ship to a tree. But lest the water should cut thee off whilst thou art on the mountain, as much as the water subsides, so much shalt thou descend after it.' He accordingly descended after it as much (as it subsided).... Now the flood had swept away all these creatures; so Manu alone was left here" (O. S. T., vol. i. p. 183). The story goes on to relate that Manu, being quite alone, produced a woman by "arduous religious rites," and that with this woman, who called herself his daughter, "he begot this offspring, which is this offspring of Manu," that is, the existing human race.

After the flood, the history proceeds for some time to narrate the lives of a series of patriarchs, the mythological ancestors of the Hebrew race. Of these the first is Abram, afterwards called Abraham; to whom a solemn promise was made that he was to be the progenitor of a great nation; that Jehovah would bless those who blessed him, and curse those who cursed him; and that in him all generations of the earth should be blessed (Gen. xii. 1-3). When Abraham visited Egypt, he desired his wife Sarah to call herself his sister, fearing lest the Egyptians should kill him for her sake. She did so, and was taken into Pharaoh's harem in consequence of her false statement; but Jehovah plagued Pharaoh, and his house so severely that the truth was discovered, and Sarah was restored to her lawful husband. It is remarkable that Abraham is stated to have subsequently repeated the same contemptible trick, this time alleging by way of excuse that Sarah really was his step-sister; and that Abraham's son, Isaac, is said to have done the same thing in reference to Rebekah (Gen. xii. 10-20, xx., xxvi. 6-11). Abimelech, king of Gerar, who was twice imposed upon by these patriarchs, must have thought it a singular custom of the family thus to pass off their wives as sisters. Apparently, too, both of them were quite prepared to surrender their consorts to the harems of foreign monarchs rather than run the smallest risk in their defense.

Abraham, at ninety-nine years of age, was fortunate in all things but one: he had no legitimate heir. But this too was to be given him. Jehovah appeared to him, announced himself as Almighty God, and established with Abraham a solemn covenant. He promised to make him fruitful, to give his posterity the land of Canaan, in which he then was, and to cause Sarah to have a son. At the same time he desired that all males should be circumcized, an operation which was forthwith performed on Abraham, his illegitimate son Ishmael, and all the men in his house (Gen. xvii). In due time Sarah had a son whom Abraham named Isaac. But when Isaac was a lad, and all Abraham's hopes of posterity were centered in him as the only child of Sarah, God one day commanded him to sacrifice him as a burnt-offering on a mountain in Moriah. Without a murmur, without a word of inquiry, Abraham prepared to obey this extraordinary injunction, and was only withheld from plunging the sacrificial knife into the bosom of his son by the positive interposition of an angel. Looking about, he perceived a ram caught in a thicket, and offered him as a burnt offering instead of Isaac. For this servile and unintelligent submission, he was rewarded by Jehovah with further promises as to the amazing numbers of his posterity in future times (Gen. xxi. 1-8; xxii. 1-19).

The tradition of human sacrifice, thus preserved in the story of Abraham and Isaac, is found also in a curious narrative of the Aitareya Brâhmana. That sacred book also commemorates an important personage, in this instance a king, who had no son. Although he had a hundred wives, yet none of them bore him a male heir. He inquired of his priest, Narada, what were the advantages of having a son, and learned that they were very great. "The father pays a debt in his son, and gains immortality," such was one of the privileges to be obtained by means of a son. The Rishi Narada therefore advised King Harischandra to pray to Varuna for a son, promising at the same time to sacrifice him as soon as he was born. The king did so. "Then a son, Rohita by name, was born to him. Varuna said to him, 'A son is born to thee, sacrifice him to me.' Harischandra said, 'An animal is fit for being sacrificed, when it is more than ten days old. Let him reach this age, then I will sacrifice him to thee. At ten days Varuna again demanded him, but now his father had a fresh excuse, and so postponed the sacrifice from age to age until Rohita had received his full armor." Varuna having again claimed him, Harischandra now said, "Well, my dear, to him who gave thee unto me, I will sacrifice thee now." But Rohita, come to man's estate, had no mind to be sacrificed, and ran away to the wilderness. Varuna now caused Harischandra to suffer from dropsy. Rohita, hearing of it, left the forest, and went to a village, where Indra, in disguise, met him and desired him to wander. The advice was repeated every year until Rohita had wandered six years in the forest. This last year he met a poor Rishi, named Ajigarta, who was starving, to whom he offered one hundred cows for one of his three sons as a ransom for himself in the sacrifice to be offered to Varuna. The father having objected to the eldest, and the mother to the youngest, the middle one Sunahsepa, was agreed upon as the ransom, and the hundred cows were paid for him. Rohita presented to his father the boy Sunahsepa, who was accepted by the god with the remark that a Brahman was worth more than a Kshattriya. "Varuna then explained to the king the rites of the Rajasuya sacrifice, at which on the day appointed for the inauguration he replaced the (sacrificial animal) by a man."

But at the sacrifice a strange incident occurred. No one could be found willing to bind the victim to the sacrificial post. At last his father offered to do it for another hundred cows. Bound to the stake, no one could be found to kill him. This act also his father undertook to do for a third hundred. "He then whetted his knife and went to kill his son. Sunahsepa then got aware that they were going to butcher him just as if he were no man (but a beast). 'Well,' said he, 'I will seek shelter with the gods.' He applied to Prajapati, who referred him to another god, who did the same; and thus he was driven from god to god through the pantheon, until he came to Ushas, the dawn. However, as he was praising Ushas, his fetters fell off, and Harischandra's belly became smaller; until at the last verse he was free, and Harischandra well." Sunahsepa was now received among the priests as one of themselves, and he sat down by Visvamitra, an eminent Rishi. Ajigarta, his father, requested that he might be returned to him, but Visvamitra refused, "for," he said, "the gods have presented him to me." From that time forward he became Visvamitra's son. At this point, however, Ajigarta himself entreated his son to return to his home, and the answer of the latter is remarkable. "Sunahsepa answered, 'What is not found even in the hands of a Shudra, one has seen in thy hand, the knife (to kill thy son); three hundred cows thou hast preferred to me, O Angiras.' Ajigarta then answered, 'O my dear son! I repent of the bad deed I have committed; I blot out this stain! one hundred of the cows shall be thine!' Sunahsepa answered, 'Who once might commit such a sin, may commit the same another time. Thou art still not free from the brutality of a Shudra, for thou hast committed a crime for which no reconciliation exists.' 'Yes, irreconcilable (is this act),' interrupted Visvamitra!" (A. B., p. 460-469.)

On the likeness of this story to the Hebrew legend of the intended sacrifice of Isaac, and on the difference between the two, I shall comment elsewhere. From the days of Abraham the history proceeds through a series of patriarchal biographies—those of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Rachel, of Joseph and his brothers—to the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt under the successor of the monarch whose prime minister Joseph had been. It is at this point that the history of the Hebrews as a distinct nation may be said to begin. The patriarchs belong to universal history. But from the days of the Egyptian captivity it is the fortunes of a peculiar tribe, and afterwards of an independent people that are followed. We have their deliverance from slavery, their progress through the wilderness, their triumphant establishment in their destined home, the rise, decline, and fall of their national greatness, depicted with much graphic power, and intermingled with episodes of the deepest interest. It would not be consistent with the plan or limits of this work to follow the history through its varied details; all we can do is to touch upon it here and there, where the adventures, institutions, or imaginations of the Hebrews present points of contact with those of other nations as recorded in their authorized writings.

It was only by the especial favor of Jehovah that the Hebrew slaves were enabled to escape from Egypt at all. That deity appointed a man named Moses as their leader; and, employing him as his mouthpiece, desired Pharaoh to let them go. On Pharaoh's refusal, he visited Egypt with a series of calamities; all of them inadequate to the object in view, until at length Pharaoh and all his army were overwhelmed in the Red Sea, which had opened to allow the Israelites to pass. These last now escaped into the wilderness, where, under the guidance of Moses, they wandered for forty years, undergoing all sorts of hardships, before they reached the promised land. During the course of their travels, Jehovah gave Moses ten commandments, which stand out from a mass of other injunctions and enactments, by the solemnity with which they were delivered, and by the extreme importance of their subject-matter. They are reported to have been given to Moses by Jehovah in person on Mount Sinai, in the midst of a very considerable amount of noise and smoke, apparently intended to be impressive. By these laws the Israelites were ordered—

1. To have no other God but Jehovah.

2. To make no image for purposes of worship.

3. Not to take Jehovah's name in vain.

4. Not to work on the Sabbath day.

5. To honor their parents.

6. Not to kill.

7. Not to commit adultery.

8. Not to steal.

9. Not to bear false witness against a neighbor.

10. Not to covet.

Concerning these commandments, it may be observed that the acts enjoined or forbidden are of very different characters. Some of the obligations thus imposed are universally binding, and the precepts relating to them form a portion of universal ethics. Others again are of a purely special theological character, and have no application at all except to those who hold certain theological doctrines. Lastly, others command states of mind only, which have no proper place in positive laws enforced under penalties. To illustrate these remarks in detail: the four commandments against killing, stealing, adultery, and calumny are of universal obligation, and though they are far from exhausting the list of actions which a moral code should prohibit, yet properly belong to it and are among its most important constituents. But the first, second, third, and fourth commandments presuppose a nation believing in Jehovah as their God; and even with that proviso the fourth, requiring the observance of a day of rest, is purely arbitrary; belonging only to ritual, not to morals. To place it along with prohibitions of murder and theft, is simply to confuse in the minds of hearers the all-important distinction between special observances and universal duties. Again, the fifth and tenth commandments require mere emotional conditions; respect for parents in the one case, absence of covetousness in the other. No doubt both these mental conditions have actions and abstinences from action as their correlatives; but it is with these last that law should deal, and not with the mere states of feeling over which no commandment can exercise the smallest control. Law may forbid us to annoy our neighbor, or do him an injury on account of his wife whom we love, or his estate which we desire to possess; but it is idle to forbid us to wish that the wife or the estate were ours.

These errors are avoided in the five fundamental commandments of Buddhism, which relate wholly to matters that, if binding upon any, are binding upon all. They are these:—

1. Not to kill.

2. Not to steal.

3. Not to indulge in illicit pleasures of sex.

4. Not to lie.

5. Not to drink intoxicating liquors.[92]

No doubt the fifth is not of equal importance with the rest; yet its intention is simply to put a stop to drunkenness, and this it accomplishes, like teetotal societies, by requiring entire abstinence. Probably in hot climates, and with populations not capable of much self-control, this was the wisest way. The third commandment, as I have presented it, is somewhat vague, but this is because the form in which it is given by the authorities is not always the same. Sometimes it appears as a mere prohibition of all unchastity; but the more probable view appears to be that of Burnouf, who interprets it as directed against adultery, in substantial accordance with Alabaster, who renders it as an injunction "not to indulge the passions, so as to invade the legal or natural rights of other men."

In the eight principal commandments of the Parsees, the breach of which was to be punished with death, there is the the same confusion of theological and natural duties as in the Hebrew Bible. The Parsees were forbidden—

1. To kill a pure man (i. e., a Parsee).

2. To put out the fire Behram.

3. To throw the impurity from dead bodies into fire or water.

4. To commit adultery.

5. To practice magic or contribute to its being practiced.

6. To throw the impurity of menstruating women into fire or water.

7. To commit sodomy with boys.

8. To commit highway-robbery or suicide (Av., vol. ii. p. lx).

Besides these commandments, Jehovah gave his people a vast mass of laws, amounting in fact to a complete criminal code, through his mouthpiece Moses. Among these laws were those which were written on the two tables of stone, commonly though erroneously supposed to have been the ten commandments of the twentieth chapter. The express statement of Exodus forbids such a supposition. It is there stated that when God had finished communing with Moses he gave him "two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God." This most valuable autograph Moses had the folly to break in his anger at finding that the Israelites, led by his brother Aaron, had taken to worshiping a golden calf in his absence (Ex., xxxi. 18, and xxxii. 19). God, however, desired him to prepare other tables like those he had destroyed, and kindly undertook to write upon them the very words that had been on the first. Apparently, however, he only dictated them to Moses, who is said to have written upon the tables "the words of the covenant, the ten commandments." What these words were there can be no doubt, for he had begun his address to Moses by saying, "Behold, I make a covenant;" and had concluded it by the expression, "Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words have I made a covenant with thee and with Israel" (Ex. xxxiv. 1-28). Now the commandments thus asserted to have been written on the tables of stone were very different from the ten given before on Mount Sinai, and resemble more closely still the style of those quoted from the Parsee books. Yet they were evidently deemed by the writers of great importance, from the honor ascribed to them of having been originally written in God's own handwriting on stone. Their purport is:—1. To forbid any covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which the Israelites were going, and to enjoin them to "destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves;"—2. To require the observance of the feast of unleavened bread;—3. To lay claim to firstlings for Jehovah, and demand their redemption;—4. To command the Sabbatical rest;—5. To enjoin the observance of the feast of weeks;—6. To desire that all males should appear thrice yearly before the Lord;—7. To forbid the sacrifice of blood with leaven;—8. To forbid leaving the sacrifice of the feast of the passover till morning;—9. To demand the first-fruits for Jehovah;—10. To forbid seething a kid in its mother's milk.[93]

Eminent as Moses was, and high as he stood in the favor of his God, he was not permitted to lead his people to Canaan. Jehovah punished him for a momentary weakness by depriving him of that privilege, which was reserved for Joshua. Just as the waters of the Red Sea were cleft in two to allow the Israelites to quit Egypt, so were those of the Jordan cleft in two to allow them to enter Canaan. No sooner did the feet of the priests bearing the ark touch the water, than the portion of the river below was cut off from that above, the upper waters rising into a heap (Josh. iii). Striking as this miracle is, it is not more so than that performed by Visvamitra, an Indian sage. When he arrived at a river which he desired to cross, that holy man said: "Listen, O sisters, to the bard who has come to you from afar with wagon and chariot. Sink down; become fordable; reach not up to our chariot-axles with your streams. (The rivers answer): We shall listen to thy words, O bard; thou hast come from far with wagon and chariot. I will bow down to thee like a woman with full breast (suckling her child), as a maid to a man will I throw myself open to thee. (Visvamitra says): When the Bharatas, that war-loving tribe, sent forward, impelled by Indra, have crossed thee, then thy headlong current shall hold on its course. I seek the favor of you the adorable. The war-loving Bharatas have crossed; the Sage has obtained the favor of the rivers. Swell on, impetuous and fertilizing; fill your channels; roll rapidly" (O. S. T., vol. i. p. 340).

So that the very same prodigy which, according to the Book of Joshua, was wrought for the benefit of the Hebrew people in Palestine, was, according to the Rig-Veda, wrought for the benefit of a warlike tribe in India.

After their arrival and settlement in Palestine the Israelites passed through a period of great trouble and disturbance. The government was a direct theocracy; men appointed by God, that is, self-appointed, put themselves at the head of affairs and governed with more or less success under the inspiration, and in the name of Jehovah. During this time the people were exposed to great annoyance from their enemies the Philistines, by whom they were for a certain space held in subjugation. The legend of the national hero and deliverer, Samson, falls within this period of depression under a foreign yoke. Samson is the Jewish Herakles, and his exploits are altogether as fabulous as those of his Hellenic counterpart; though it is not impossible that such a personage as Samson may have lived and may have led the people with some glory against their hereditary enemies. Many internal disturbances contributed to render the condition of the Israelites under their theocracy far from enviable; and at length, under the government of Samuel, the last representative of this state of things, the people could bear their distress no longer and united to demand a king. The request was undoubtedly a wise one; for the authority of a monarch was eminently needed to give internal peace and protection against external attacks to the distracted nation. Samuel, however, was naturally opposed to such a change. His feelings and his interests were alike concerned in the maintenance of the direct government of Jehovah, whose plenipotentiary he was. But all his representations that the proposal to elect a king was a crime in the eyes of God, were unavailing. He was compelled to yield, and selected, as the monarch appointed by Jehovah himself, a young man named Saul. Before long, however, Jehovah discovered that he had made a mistake, and that Saul was not the kind of man he had hoped to find him. Samuel was therefore desired to anoint David to supplant him. In other words, Saul did not prove the obedient instrument which Samuel had hoped to make of him, and he therefore entered into a secret conspiracy to procure his deposition. The conduct of Saul, and his relations to David, have probably been misrepresented by the ecclesiastical historians, who persistently favor David. Nevertheless, they cannot wholly disguise the lawless and savage career of this monarch before his accession to the throne, of which at length he obtained possession. Nor was his conduct during his occupation of it altogether exemplary. He, however, promoted the views of the priestly party, and this was enough to cover a multitude of sins.

His son Solomon who succeeded him was the most magnificent of the monarchs of Israel and the last who ruled over the undivided kingdom. He was especially renowned for his wisdom, which is exemplified by a famous decision. Two women came before him to dispute the ownership of an infant. One of them stated that the other, who was alone in the same house with her, had killed her own child by lying upon it during the night, and taken the living child from its mother while that mother was asleep. The other asserted that the living child was hers. Having heard the two statements, the king ordered the living child to be cut in two and half given to each woman. Hereupon the one declared that she would prefer to resign it altogether; but the other professed her acquiescence in the judgment. The king at once awarded it to her who had been willing to resign it rather than see it divided (1 Kings, iii. 16-28). Equal, or perhaps even greater wisdom, was displayed by a monarch whose history is recorded in one of the sacred books of Buddhism. Two women were contending before him about their right to a boy. He desired each of them to take hold of it by one of its hands and to pull at it; the one who succeeded in getting it to keep it. She who was not the mother pulled unmercifully; whereas the true mother, though stronger than her rival, only pulled gently in order to avoid hurting it. The king perceived the truth, and adjudged it to the one who had pulled it gently (G. O. M., p. 344).

Rehoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, failing to conciliate the people at his accession, brought about the schism between Sâmaria and Judea, between the ten tribes and the two, which was never afterwards healed. After this the government in each kingdom may be described as absolute monarchy tempered by prophetical admonition. The prophets, who formed a kind of professional body of advisers in the interest of Jehovah, made it their business to reprove the crimes, and especially the idolatries of the kings. They exercised the kind of influence which a corps diplomatique may sometimes exercise on a feeble court. The monarchs sometimes attended to their advice; sometimes rejected it; and they receive commendation or reproof at the hands of the historians according to their conduct in this respect. Two of these prophets, Elijah and Elisha, were men of great eminence, and their actions are recorded at length. Such was the power of Elisha that when, on one occasion, he cursed some children who had called him bald head, she-bears came out of the wood and ate forty-two of them (2 Kings, ii. 23-25). Respect for ecclesiastics or prophets is sometimes inculcated by such decided measures as these. A young Buddhist monk once laughed at another for the alacrity with which he leapt over a grave, saying he was as active as a monkey. The man whom he had ridiculed told him that he belonged to the highest rank in the Church; that is, that he was an Arhat. Upon hearing this the young monk was so alarmed that all his hair stood on end, and he begged for forgiveness. His repentance saved him from being born in hell; but because he had laughed at an Arhat he was condemned to be born 500 times as a monkey (G. O. M., p. 351).

Elisha's powers in other respects were not less wonderful. He could cause iron to swim, could foretell the course of events in a war, could restore the dead to life, and could smite the king's enemies with blindness (2 Kings, vi. 7). In this last accomplishment he has rivals, as Canon Callaway has correctly noted, among the Amazulu priests. The Amazulus have a word in their language to describe the practice. "It is called an umlingo," they say, if, when a chief is about to fight with another chief, his doctors cause a darkness to spread among his enemies, so they are unable to see clearly (R. S. A., vol. iii. p. 338).

The kingdom of Israel, unfaithful to the worship of Jehovah, fell under the yoke of Shalmaneser, King of Assyria; while Judah, though attacked and summoned to submit, by his successor, Sennacherib (or more correctly Sanherib), remained independent some time longer. The King of Judah was at this time Hezekiah, a man thoroughly imbued with the principles of the Jehovistic party, and therefore much lauded by the historians. The prophet of the day was Isaiah, one of the most eminent of those who have filled the prophetic office. Isaiah warmly encouraged Hezekiah to resist the designs of conquest cherished by Sanherib, and promised a successful issue. The messengers of the Assyrian monarch had insultingly reproached Jehovah with his inability to deliver the land, alleging that none of the gods of the territories which he had conquered had availed them anything. But a signal confutation of this profane belief in large armies as against deities was about to be given, and that in a manner which gave an equally signal triumph to Jehovah, the god of the Jews, and Ptah, the god of the Egyptians. Sanherib was engaged in an expedition against Egypt, which was governed at this time by a priest-king, resembling Hezekiah in the piety of his character. This priest was in bad odor with his army, who refused to assist him against the invaders. During his trouble on this account, the god whom he served appeared to him in his sleep and promised that he should suffer nothing, for he would send him his divine assistance, just as Jehovah promised deliverance through the mouth of Isaiah. He therefore went with some followers to Pelusium, and when there, a number of field-mice, pouring in upon the Assyrians, devoured their quivers, their bows, and the handles of their shields, so that on the next day they fled defenseless, and many were killed. Herodotus tells us that in his day there was still to be seen the statue of the king in the temple of Ptah, a mouse in his hand, and this inscription: "Whoever looks on me, let him revere the gods" (Herod., ii. 141). In the Hebrew version of this catastrophe, the field-mice are converted into the angel of the Lord, and the destruction of the weapons into the slaughter by that angel of 185,000 men. Sanherib, it is added, returned to Nineveh, where he was assassinated by his two sons (2 Kings, xix. 35-37). But Sanherib himself, in a deciphered inscription, declares that he had beaten the Egyptians, subjected Judea, carried off many of its inhabitants, and only left Jerusalem to the king (R. I., p. 328). Certainly this statement is strongly confirmed, so far as Judea is concerned, by the admission of the historians themselves, that Sanherib had taken the fenced cities of the country; that Hezekiah had made an unreserved submission to him, and had even sent him, by way of tribute, not only all the treasures in his own palace and in the temple, but the very gold from the doors of the temple, and from the pillars which he himself had overlaid (2 Kings xviii. 13-16). So humiliating a position went far to justify the taunts of the Assyrian ambassadors, that the god of Judea was no more to be trusted as a defense against material weapons than the gods of the subjugated nations.

A remarkable instance of the favor of Heaven towards Hezekiah was subsequently evinced. The king fell dangerously ill, and was warned by Isaiah to make the necessary arrangements in view of his death, which was about to happen. Hezekiah did not bear the announcement with much dignity. He passionately implored Jehovah to remember his piety and good deeds, and then "wept sore." Moved by this pitiable supplication, Jehovah sent Isaiah back again to promise him fifteen years' more life. On Hezekiah's asking for a sign that he would be healed, Isaiah asked him whether he would prefer that the shadow on the dial should advance or go back ten degrees. Hezekiah, thinking that it was a mere trifle for a god to cause it to advance, desired that it might turn backwards (2 Kings, xx. 1-11).

A similar grace was shown towards King Woo in China, but in this case it was the prayer of others, not his own, that effected his recovery. His brother, the Duke of Chow, erected four altars, put certain symbols upon them, and addressed himself to three departed kings. "The grand historian by his order wrote on tablets his prayer to the following effect:—" A. B., your chief descendant, is suffering from a severe and dangerous sickness;—if you three kings have in heaven the charge of watching over him, Heaven's great son, let me, Tan, be a substitute for his person. "I have been lovingly obedient to my father; I am possessed of many abilities and arts which fit me to serve spiritual beings. Your chief descendant, on the other hand, has not so many abilities and arts as I, and is not so capable of serving spiritual beings. And, moreover, he was appointed in the hall of God to extend his aid to the four quarters of the empire, so that he might establish your descendants in this lower world. The people of the four quarters stand in reverent awe of him. Oh! do not let that precious heaven-conferred appointment fall to the ground, and all our former kings will also have a perpetual reliance and resort. I will now seek for your orders from the great tortoise" (C. C., vol. iii. p. 353.—Shoo King, part 5, book 6). After this prayer, the Duke divined with the tortoises, which gave favorable indications. "The oracular responses" were favorable too. Accordingly the king recovered, but the devoted brother, though he did not die, suffered for some time from unjust suspicions, and retired from court. This was after the decease of King Woo. The discovery of the tablets by Woo's successor led to his restoration to favor. The relation of the reign of Hezekiah, one of the most inglorious of Judah's rulers, is an example of the use made of a theory which pervades and colors the whole history of the kings from beginning to end. That theory is, that God favored and protected those monarchs who worshiped and obeyed his prophets, while he punished those who worshiped other gods and neglected his orders. The deposition of Saul, the glory of David, the destruction of the families of Jeroboam and Baasha, the miserable fate of Ahab and his seventy sons, the exaltation of Jehu and his milder punishment proportioned to his mitigated idolatry, are all examples of the prevalence of this theory. Some of the facts indeed were rather difficult to deal with; such, for instance, as the palpable decline of Judea under Hezekiah, and the continuance of its previous misfortunes under Josiah, the most praiseworthy of the kings, who, in spite of his unrivaled piety, was slain in a battle against a mere pagan. But inconsistencies like these might be glossed over or explained away. The best kings might meet with the greatest calamities, and the people of Jehovah might prove even more unfortunate than the heathen. It mattered not. They were still under his protection; and if they suffered, it was because they had not worshiped him enough, or not worshiped him exclusively. With this elastic hypothesis the key to all historical events was found.

Traces of a similar theory are to be found in the sacred books of China, though in one instance it is placed in the mouth of a successful sovereign desirous of vindicating his supersession of a former dynasty. It is, however, precisely in such cases, where some David or Jehu has deposed a former monarch and taken his throne, that this theory is useful, transferring, as it does, the responsibility of the issue to a higher power. Thus speaks the Chinese king:—"I have heard the saying—'God leads men to tranquil security,' but the sovereign of Hea would not move to such security, whereupon God sent down corrections, indicating his mind to him. Këe, however, would not be warned by God, but proceeded to greater dissoluteness and sloth and excuses for himself. Then Heaven no longer regarded nor heard him, but disallowed his great appointment, and inflicted extreme punishment. Hereupon it charged your founder, T'ang the Successful, to set Hea aside, and by means of able men to rule the empire. From T'ang the Successful down to the Emperor Yih, every sovereign sought to make his virtue illustrious, and duly attended to the sacrifices. And thus it was that while Heaven exerted a great establishing influence, preserving and regulating the house of Yin, but its sovereigns on their part were humbly careful not to lose the favor of God, and strove to manifest a good-doing corresponding to that of Heaven. But in these times, their successor showed himself greatly ignorant of the ways of Heaven, and much less could it be expected of him that he would be regardful of the earnest labors of his fathers for the country. Greatly abandoned to dissolute idleness, he paid no regard to the bright principles of heaven, nor the awfulness of the people. On this account God no longer protected him, but sent down the great ruin which we have witnessed. Heaven was not with him because he did not seek to illustrate his virtue. Indeed, with regard to all states, great and small, throughout the four quarters of the empire, in every case there are reasons to be alleged for their punishment.... The sovereigns of our Chow, from their great goodness, were charged with the work of God. There was the charge to them, Cut off Yin. They proceeded to perform it, and announced the correcting work of God.... The thing was from the decree of Heaven; do not resist me; I dare not have any further change for you" (C. C., vol. iii. p. 460.—Shoo King, part 5, b. 14, ii. 1-18).

But it was not only by interested parties that this doctrine was proclaimed in China. The She King, a sacred book corresponding in character to the Psalms, distinctly adopts it, and thus gives it the highest sanction. This is the language of one of the Odes:—

The Ode proceeds to relate how completely victorious this virtuous king was over his enemies, and how perfect was the security from invasion enjoyed by the country while he governed it (C. C., vol. iv. p. 448.—She King, part 3, b. 1, ode 7).

Feelings like those that inspired the Jewish chroniclers are still more clearly visible in the history of Thibet than in that of China. Here the orthodox compilers frequently inform us that the reign of a king who observed the law and honored the clergy was distinguished in a peculiarly high degree by the prosperity of the land and the happiness of its people. Of one, for instance, who "entered the portals of religion" at thirty-eight years of age, it is noted that "he founded the constitution of the whole great nation on order, and furthered its welfare and peace" (G. O. M., p. 201). His son made the whole great nation happy by promoting religion and the laws (Ibid., p. 203). Another monarch receives a still higher panegyric. "By the unbounded honor he showed towards the clergy, he exalted religion, so that by the religious care which he bestowed on the inhabitants of the snow-kingdom, the welfare of the people of Thibet equaled that of the Tegri" (gods or spirits). A painful contrast is presented by his successor on the throne, Lang-Dharma, who belonged to the heretical "black religion," who destroyed the temples of Buddhism, persecuted its adherents, burnt its books, and degraded its ministers. So impious was he, that the very names of the three gems and of the four orders of clergy ceased to be mentioned in the land. He met, however, with his well-deserved punishment at the hands of a faithful Buddhist, who assassinated him with a bow and arrow, at the same time using words to the effect that, as Buddha overcame the unbelievers, so he had killed the wicked king (Ibid., p. 49). Another king "showed respect to the hidden sanctuaries, whereby his power and the welfare of the land increased" (Ibid., p. 321). Comparable to Josiah in his piety and reverence for the true religion was a king whose reign is described in glowing language by his admiring historians. "This powerful ruler," they say, "who regarded the religion of Buddha as the most precious gem, gave great freedoms and privileges to the clergy." He honored temples and respected the pious endowments of his ancestors. Not only did he punish thieves, robbers, and similar criminals, but if any man, of high or low position, was inimical or ill-disposed towards the faith he was deprived of his property and reduced to the greatest distress. Some of those whose heresy was visited with this severe chastisement were so unreasonable as to grumble, and pointed out that it was only the clergy who were fattening on their misery and oppression. In saying this they pointed at the spiritual men who passed by; whereupon the faithful king issued a decree, saying, "It is strictly prohibited to look contemptuously at my clergy and to point at them with the finger;" whoever dared to do so was to have his eyes put out and his finger cut off. Unfortunately "these orders of the pious king" led to the formation of a party of malcontents, by two of whom he was strangled in his sleep. The lamentations of the historian at this untoward event are unmeasured. The power and strength of the Thibetan kingdom ran away like the stream of spring waters; the happiness and welfare of the people were extinguished like a lamp whose oil is exhausted; the royal power and majesty vanished like the colors of the rainbow; the black religion began to prevail like a destructive tempest; the inclination to good dispositions and good deeds was forgotten like a dream. Moreover, the translation of religious writings remained unfinished—for this king had also resembled Josiah in his interest in sacred books;—and those great men who adhered to the true religion could only weep over its decline and fall (G. O. M., p. 361).

Not less pitiable was the fate of Judea under the irreligious monarchs who followed upon Josiah. One was taken prisoner by the king of Egypt; two others were carried off to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar; under the fourth, the national independence was finally extinguished, and the people reduced to a condition of captivity in a foreign land. This calamity is distinctly ascribed to their neglect of the true religion, and their contempt for the messengers of God (2 Chron. xxxvi. 14-17).

Strictly speaking, the history of the Jewish nation ends with the Captivity. But there are still three books of a historical character in the Old Testament, Ezra and Nehemiah, relating the fortunes of a small number of Jews who returned to the land of their forefathers, when a change of policy in their rulers rendered this return possible; and Esther, containing the account of the reception of a Jewish woman into the harem of a heathen king, and showing how ably she contrived to use her influence in favor of the interests of her race.

Subdivision 2.—Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.

The Book of Job, the Psalms attributed to David, and the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes attributed to Solomon, resemble one another in teaching religion and morality by the method of short sentences or maxims. They do not, like the books we have just examined, convey their moral by means of historical narrative; nor do they, like the prophets, impress it in flowing and continuous rhetoric. Between the sober and even course of the history, and the impassioned emotional torrents poured out by the prophets, they occupy a medium position. They are more introspective, more occupied with feelings and reflections, than the first; more heedful of external nature, more able to contemplate facts, apart from their peculiar construction of those facts, than the last.

Job is the story of a wealthy land-owner, concerning whom God and Satan enter into a sort of wager; God, in the first instance, challenging Satan to consider his piety and general good character, and Satan replying that, if only his prosperity were destroyed, he would curse God to his face. God then gives Satan leave to put his theory to the test by attacks directed against Job's property, desiring at the same time that his person may be spared. Job bears the loss of his wealth with resignation; but at a second colloquy Satan insinuates that his virtue would give way if his misfortunes extended to his person. Hereupon God gives Satan leave to attack him in every respect so long as he spares his life. Poor Job is accordingly covered with boils from head to foot, and his patience, proof against poverty, breaks down under this terrible infliction. He loudly curses the day of his birth, and wishes he had died from the womb. After this introduction, which, in its familiar conversations between Jehovah and the devil, resembles the grotesque legends of the middle ages, the bulk of the book is occupied with the complaints of Job, the discourses of his three friends who come to comfort him, the reproaches directed against his self-righteousness by a person named Elihu, and, finally, a long address—containing as it were the moral of the tale—from the Almighty himself. At the close of the book Job expresses his abhorrence of himself and his profound repentance, and his former prosperity is then not only restored but amplified to a high degree. He has seven sons and three beautiful daughters, and dies one hundred and forty years after the events narrated, having seen four generations of his descendants. What was the effect on the mind of Satan of this result, whether he considered himself defeated, or whether he was confirmed in his malicious opinion that Job did not "fear God for nought," is nowhere stated. But one of the most curious features of this book is the picture it gives of that person, as a being not altogether bad, though fond of mischief, taking a somewhat cynical view of the motives of human conduct, and anxious, in the interests of his theory, to try experiments upon a subject selected for him by his antagonist, and therefore peculiarly likely to disappoint his expectations. It does not appear that he had any desire to hurt Job further than was necessary for his purpose, nor is there a trace of the bad character he subsequently obtained as a mere devil, longing to involve men's souls in eternal destruction.

In the Psalms we have a series of religious songs of varying character—praising, blessing, supplicating, complaining, lamenting, invoking good or evil upon others, according to the mood of the several writers, or of the same writer at different seasons. Some of them are of considerable beauty, and express much depth of religious feeling. Others, again, are inspired by sentiments of malevolence, and merely appeal to God in support of national or private animosities. As examples of the latter class, take the 110th Psalm, supposed to have been addressed to David, where it is predicted that "the Lord at the right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath," and that "he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries." In the immediately preceding Psalm, the 109th, the writer is still more vindictive, and his enemy is more exclusively his own. He begins by calling him "wicked," and says he has spoken against him with a lying tongue. Premising that he is altogether in the act of prayer, he prays against the adversary in somewhat emphatic language:—

"Set thou a wicked man over him, and let the accuser stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be found guilty, and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children wander about and beg, and seek food far from their desolate places. Let the creditor catch all that he hath, and strangers rob the fruit of his industry. Let there be none to extend mercy to him, and let none be merciful to his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the following generation let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, and let him cut off the memory of them from the earth" (Psalms cix. 1-15).

In the following verse the enemy is declared to have persecuted the poor and needy, and this is put forward as the excuse for imprecations evidently inspired by personal ill-will. In another of these Psalms, Jehovah is entreated to persecute the enemies of Israel with storm and tempest, as fires burn up woods and flames set mountains on fire (Psalms lxxxiii. 14, 15). Elsewhere the king is said to trust in the Lord, and he therefore hopes that the Lord will find out his enemies, and will make them as a fiery oven in the time of his anger; that the fire will devour them; and that he will destroy their fruit from the earth and their seed from among the children of men (Ps. xxi. 8-10).

Parallels to these Psalms of cursing may be met with in the Veda, just as the Psalms in general are more nearly paralleled by the Vedic hymns than by those of any other sacred book. One poet writes as follows:—

"Blinded shall ye be, O enemies, like headless snakes, and thus plagued by Agni, may Indra always kill the best of you. Whatever relation troubles us, whatever stranger wishes to kill us, him may all the gods destroy; prayer is my powerful protection, my refuge and powerful protection" (S. V., p. 297.—Sâma Veda, 2. 9. 3. 8).

Remarkably close is the similarity between the assertion of the Hindu Rishi that prayer is his powerful protection, and that of the Hebrew Psalmist that he is, or gives himself to, prayer. In another hymn the aid of a goddess Apvā (said to mean "disease or fear") is invoked against the enemies of the singer:—

"Bewildering the hearts of our enemies, O Apvā, take possession of their limbs and pass onwards; come near, burn them with fires in their hearts; may our enemies fall into blind darkness (O. S. T., vol. v. p. 110).... Attack, ye heroes, and conquer; may Indra grant you protection; may our arm be productive of terror, that ye may be unconquerable. Arrow-goddess, sharpened by prayer; fly past as when shot off; reach the enemies; penetrate into them; let not even one escape thee" (S. V., p. 297.—Sâma Veda, 2. 9. 3. 5).

But these expressions of hostility, directed apparently against enemies who were engaged in actual war with the friends of the writer, make no approach in the bitterness of their curses to the language of the Psalmist when dealing with his personal foes. A parallel to this more private enmity may be found in the Atharva-Veda, where the god Kama is invoked to bring down the severest evils upon the objects of the imprecation:—

"With oblations of butter I worship Kama, the mighty slayer of enemies. Do thou, when lauded, beat down my foes by thy great might. The sleeplessness which is displeasing to my mind and eye, which harasses and does not delight me, that sleeplessness I let loose upon my enemy. Having praised Kama, may I rend him. Kama, do thou, a fierce lord, let loose sleeplessness, misfortune, childlessness, homelessness, and want upon him who designs us evil.... May breath, cattle, life, forsake them.... Indra, Agni, and Kama, mounted on the same chariot, hurl ye down my foes; when they have fallen into the nethermost darkness, do thou, Agni, burn up their dwellings. Kama, slay my enemies; cast them down into thick [literally, blind] darkness. Let them all become destitute of power and vigor, and not live a single day.... Let them (my enemies) float downwards like a boat severed from its moorings.... Do thou, Kama, drive my enemies from this world by that [same weapon or amulet] wherewith the gods repelled the Asuras, and Indra hurled the Dasyus into the nethermost darkness" (O. S. T., vol. v. p. 404).

As corresponding to the many expressions to be found in the Psalms of trust in God, of pious belief in his protection, and of sensibility to his all-embracing knowledge, we may quote the language of a Chinese monarch in one of the Odes of the She King. The first six lines are, it appears, held by the current interpretation in China to contain the admonition addressed by the ministers to the king, and the last six the king's reply. But we may more reasonably suppose, with Dr. Legge, that the whole Ode is spoken by the king himself:—

We may fairly place this simple expression of the author's desire to do his duty, and of his reverential consciousness that Heaven is ever about us and "inspects us wherever we are," beside the words attributed to David:—

"O Jehovah, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou winnowest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways" (Psalm cxxxix. 1-3).

We need not dwell upon the Proverbs, traditionally ascribed to Solomon, but scarcely worthy of the renowned wisdom of that monarch. Some of them are indeed shrewd and well expressed; others are commonplace; and others again display more worldly wisdom than religion or virtue. Such is the recommendation of bribery: "A gift in secret pacifieth anger, and a reward in the bosom strong wrath" (Prov. xxi. 14); which, if written by a king and dispenser of justice, would be a tolerably broad hint to his loving subjects. It is noteworthy that Christ had studied this book, and that it had sunk deep into his mind (e. g., Prov. xxv. 21, 22, and xxvii. 1). The two concluding chapters are not by the same author, at least if we may believe in their superscriptions. In the last of all, a king named Lemuel repeats for the benefit of posterity the advice given him by his mother, and no doubt by many mothers to many sons both before and after him, to be careful about women and not to drink wine or spirituous liquors.

Ecclesiastes, or Koheleth, composed (according to Ewald) in the latter end of the Persian dominion, is the work of a cynic who has had much experience of the world, and has found it hollow and unsatisfactory. He is not a man of very devout mind, and can find no comfort in the ordinary commonplaces about the goodness of God, or the manner in which misfortunes are sent as punishments for sin. There is much good sense mixed with his lamentations over the vanity of life. He has seen all the works done under the sun, and all are in his opinion "vanity and vexation of spirit."

"Wisdom and knowledge do but bring more grief. Koheleth tried various kinds of pleasure and found them vain too. He built, he planted, he made pools of water. He procured men-servants and maid-servants, and (as a natural consequence) had servants born in his house. All was equally fruitless. But whatever a man does, he has nothing but sorrow and grief. Even wisdom is of little use, for a dolt may inherit the fruit of the wise man's labors. Men are no better than animals; they all die equally; all return to the dust. Who can say that man's spirit goes upwards, and the animal's downwards? Just men are often rewarded like wicked men, and wicked men like just ones; this is one of the many vanities on earth. So then the best thing a man can do is to eat, drink, and enjoy life with an agreeable wife; for this life is all he has. Once dead, there is no further consciousness, or participation in anything that is going on. Whatever a man's hand finds to do, let him do it with all his might; for there is neither action nor knowledge in the grave. It is well to remember God in youth before the evil days come. Words of the wise are as goads, but book-making and preaching are both of them a bore." Lastly, Koheleth concludes with the pious advice to the young man whom he is addressing, to fear God and keep his commandments, for that God will judge every action, be it good or be it bad.

Subdivision 3.—The Song of Solomon.[95]

It is a singularly fortunate circumstance that the Song of Songs, a little work of an altogether secular nature and wholly unlike any other portion of the Hebrew Scriptures, should have been admitted into the Canon. Whatever may have been the delusion, whether its reputed Solomonian authorship or some other theory about it, under which it obtained this privilege, we owe it to this mistake that the solitary example of the Jewish drama in existence should have been preserved for the instruction of modern readers. I say modern readers, because it is not until quite recently that the dramatic character of this piece has been ascertained and established beyond reasonable doubt. Thanks to the scholarship of Germany and France, we are now able to read the Song in the light of common sense. The stern theology of Judaism is for once laid aside, and we have before us a common love-story such as might happen among any Gentile and unbelieving race. A young girl, called a Sulamite, who is attached to a young man of her own rank in life, has been carried off to the harem of Solomon against her will. She is indifferent to the splendor of the royal palace, and resists the amorous advances of the king. Thus she succeeds in "keeping her vineyard;" and is rewarded by rejoining her shepherd lover in her native village. The play is not without beauty, although it evinces a somewhat primitive condition of the drama at the time of its composition.

Subdivision 4.—The Prophets.

We have in the prophetical books a class of writings altogether peculiar to the Hebrew Scriptures. The prophets were men who during the whole course of the Hebrew monarchy, and even long after its close, acted as the inspired organs of the Almighty; admonishing, reproving, warning, or counseling in his name. At first the method by which the revelations they received were made known by them, was oral communication. Writing was not employed by them as an instrument of prophetic discourse until after the earliest and most flourishing stage of the monarchy was past. Perhaps they were the most powerful of the prophets who addressed their exhortations directly to those for whom they were intended in eloquent discourse or timely parable. Such prophets were Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, and Elisha, at the courts of the several kings in whose days they lived. Prophecy had declined a little in its influence on the people when its representatives betook themselves to the calmer method of written composition. Nevertheless, some of the prophets who have left us their works in writing continued at the same time to employ the older instrument of spoken addresses. Isaiah and Jeremiah are conspicuous instances of this employment of the two organs of communication downwards. During this same period there were many prophets who trusted exclusively to writing; while in the latest stage of prophetical inspiration, oral instruction was altogether dropped, and literary means alone were employed to make known the mind of Jehovah to his chosen people.

The constant theme of all the prophets whose works have come down to us is the future greatness of the Hebrew race; their complete triumph over all their enemies; the glory of their ultimate condition, and the confusion or destruction of those who have opposed their march to this final victory. The human agent by whom this great revolution is to be effected is the Messiah. He is the destined weapon in the hand of God by whom Jewish religion, Jewish institutions, and Jewish rulers are to attain that supremacy over heathen religion, heathen institutions, and heathen rulers which is their natural birthright. Continual disappointment had no effect upon these sanguine expectations. The Messiah must come, Israel must be victorious over every other nation that came in the way: this was the word of God, and it could not fail to be fulfilled. Troubles of many kinds might beset the people in the meantime; but of the attainment of the goal at last there could be no doubt.

Of course this ever-recurring burden of the prophetic song is varied by many strains on subordinate or outlying topics. The prophets constantly refer to the events of the day, and use them for their own purposes. They reprove the sins of kings and people, endeavoring to show that these bring upon them the misfortunes from which they suffer and which postpone the day of their triumph over the Gentiles. They connect special calamities with special offenses. They indicate the conduct which under existing circumstances ought to be pursued. They draw eloquent and beautiful pictures of the state of their own and of foreign countries. And they endeavor to raise the popular conceptions of the majesty of God, of his character, and his requirements, to the level they have themselves attained.

Turning now to the individual books which have come down to us in the Canon, and which must by no means be taken as comprehending all the works of the prophets who wrote their prophecies, we find that the oldest of these is that of Joel, the son of Pethuel.[96] Joel is supposed by the highest authority to have lived in the time of King Jehoash, or Joash, who is praised for his devout obedience to Jehoiada, the priest (2 Kings, xii). His prophecy was occasioned by a devastation of locusts. Locusts had wasted the land for some years, and there had been drought at the same time. On the occasion of a long drought Joel feared a fresh invasion of locusts, and therefore summoned his people to a festival of repentance at the temple. This festival occurred, and rain soon followed (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 87 ff.). Here the old notion of a direct connection between the attention paid by the people to Jehovah and his care for them is almost grotesquely manifested. Locusts are to be averted by fasting; rain obtained by rather more than usual devotion to God. On the other hand, the more spiritual view of religion to which the prophets generally tend, is shown in the order to the people to rend their hearts and not their garments. After thus attending to immediate necessities, Joel in stirring language exhorts the people to war, hoping that they would thus get rid of the foreign oppressors who had broken into the sunken kingdom of David. He bids them beat their plough-shares into swords, and their pruning-hooks into spears, and desires the weak to say that they are strong. He promises his people revenge over their enemies, and holds out the cheering prospect of a time when, instead of their sons and daughters being sold as slaves to strangers, they will themselves make slaves of the sons and daughters of the heathen.

Some short passages subsequently embodied by Isaiah in his works are considered by Ewald to belong to the same early age as Joel. The next complete prophet, however, in order of time, was Amos, whose revelations applied to the northern kingdom and threatened it with invasion by the Assyrians. Amos in fact utters a series of threatening predictions against various peoples, and his tone is mainly that of reproof. While, however, he foretells the captivity of Israel, and holds out nothing but the most depressing prospects of ruin and misery throughout the bulk of his book, he falls at the end into the accustomed strain of hopeful exultation. "The tabernacle of David" is to be raised up; Israel is to be supreme over the heathen; and the Israelites are not to be disturbed again from the land which God has given them, where exuberant prosperity is to be their lot. Incidentally, Amos tells us a little of his personal history, which is not without interest. He attributes his consecration to the prophetic office to the direct intervention of Jehovah. He had originally no connection with other prophets, but was a simple herdsman, and was employed to gather sycamore fruit. But Jehovah took him while he was following the flock, and said, "Go, prophecy unto my people Israel." His is thus a typical case of the belief in immediate inspiration, and he is an example of the kind of character which led to the existence among the Israelites of the peculiar and powerful class who were holy, but not consecrated. Amos also tells us of a quarrel he had had with Amaziah, a priest at the court of Jeroboam. This priest had complained of his dismal predictions to the king, and had bidden him go to Judah and prophecy there. In return for this evidence of hostility Amos informs the priest that his wife is to become a prostitute in the town, that his sons and his daughters are to fall by the sword, that his land is to be divided by lot, and that he himself is to die on polluted soil (Amos vii. 10-17). Such were the courtesies that passed between rival teachers of religion at the court of Jeroboam.

Hosea also tells us something of his personal affairs, more especially of his matrimonial relations, in which he was far from fortunate. We feel, in his opening chapters, the soreness of a husband whose wife has contemned his company and sought the amusement of a troop of lovers. Gomer, in fact, was shockingly unfaithful, and Hosea uses her as a type of the infidelity of Israel to Jehovah. At length she deserted him altogether, and went to another house, but he brought her back as a slave and put her under strict conjugal discipline. In like manner is Israel to return to her God, whom she has deserted for a time, and under the influence of God's love, freely bestowed after his anger has passed away, is to enjoy a period of great prosperity. Hosea, it will be observed, belonged to the northern kingdom, and his book is preëminently the Ephraimitic book of prophecy. But he wrote it in Judah. He worked in the north at two distinct epochs, first towards the close of Jeroboam II.'s reign, afterwards in the time of Zachariah, Shallum, and Menahem (P. A. B., vol. i. p. 171 ff.).