III.—THE FIGHTING TROUBADOUR’S RETURN FROM THE WAR.
Concerning the “good old days” of chivalry and the crusades, the London Quarterly Review once said: “Life was earnest in its beliefs, stormy in its ambition, hearty in its sports.” There is a funny story going the rounds in these “degenerate days” of a disciple of Peter Cartwright, who resisted a western rough’s invitation to drink and to fight. The concluding remark of the bully, as he picked himself out of the elder bushes, was, in the tones of a deeply-deceived man: “What do you come around here for, with a long face on, saying you ‘never have fun with the boys,’ when you are chock full of fun? You’ve nearly broke my back.” In this contest the champions of religion and of “fun” were arrayed against each other, but it was the advantage of the old crusaders that both religion and “fun” lay in the same direction.
The chief of those romantic bruisers, King Richard Cœur de Lion, is thus practically described by Charles Dickens: “He was a strong, restless, burly man, with one idea always in his head, and that the very troublesome idea of breaking the heads of other men.” Anyway, the crusades were the great safety-valve of Europe for surplus religious zeal and pugnacity, and a great relief they proved to the people who stayed at home, as Motley and Prof. Fiske have splendidly argued. Richard sought this outlet for his “idea.”
His career in the Holy Land was romantically ferocious. He was, indeed, so impatient to get to business that he fought two or three battles with Christians on the way. He showed but one redeeming trait, brute courage; and a historian declares that the Saracen Saladin shows as the Christian statesman, and Richard as the fighting barbarian in these crusades. He was far more considerate of his Saracen prisoners than of his own soldiers, and treated the Mohammedan leaders with more chivalry than he did the allied kings and dukes. His hot temper and overbearing manner really defeated the crusade, for it drove every other prince and general home in anger. The Duke of Austria, for instance: The walls of Ascalon had to be hastily repaired to repel an assault, but the Duke held back from manual labor, saying he “was no stone mason.” Whereupon King Richard incontinently kicked his Grace till he went to work.
The crusade collapsed. Richard heard that his amiable brother John, encouraged by the angry King of France, was plotting his deposition, and he started for home, undismayed by the fact that he had not a friend left on the continent, and must needs cross hostile territory to reach England. His accustomed luck and pluck seem to have deserted him, for he was cast ashore in Austria, and he tried to skulk through the booted Duke’s dominions in disguise. And so this proud, grand hero of a hundred fights was captured in an inn kitchen, attired like a scullion, wrestling with pots and pans—was Richard of the Lion Heart. He was buried in a rocky dungeon, high above the Rhine, and for months no one in England knew what had become of him.
Curiously enough, Richard owed his discovery and consequent deliverance, not to his own courage, wit, or influence, but to his ability to write songs and sing them. One of his ballads he had taught to a friend named Blondel and Blondel now went troubadouring through Europe, singing a verse of the song under the windows of every dungeon and castle. He was at length relieved to hear the second stanza of the verse trolled, or, perhaps, roared through the bars. The secret was out, but Richard was not. The Duke of Austria and the Emperor of Germany now went into partnership, trading on the expected ransom of the royal prisoner—offering him to the highest bidder. Avarice proved a worse obstacle than hatred to his release. His brother John and Philip of France promised his captors more money to keep him, or to deliver him to them, than they might get from England for his release, and so he lingered in jail for fourteen months, while friends and enemies were competitively striving to get together the price of his release or his destruction. During this time Richard busied himself composing verses lamenting his lot, and sighing for freedom and “fun,”—the most profitable and least discreditable portion of his career, for the verses were very good.
For all this time we have the following picture of affairs in England:
“The condition of the English nation was at this time sufficiently miserable. John was strengthening his own faction in the kingdom, of which he proposed to dispute the succession. His own character being light, profligate, and perfidious, John easily attached to his person and faction not only all who had reason to dread the resentment of Richard for criminal proceedings during his absence, but also the numerous class of ‘lawless resolutes,’ whom the crusades had turned back on their country, accomplished in the vices of the East, impoverished in substance, hardened in character, and who placed their hopes of harvest in civil commotion.
“To these causes of public distress and apprehension, must be added the multitude of outlaws who, driven to despair by the oppression of the feudal nobility and the severe exercise of the forest laws, banded together in large gangs, and, keeping possession of the forests and wastes, set at defiance the justice and magistracy of the country. The nobles themselves, each fortified within his own castle, and playing the petty sovereign over his own dominions, were the leaders of bands scarce less lawless and oppressive than those of the avowed depredators. Under the various burdens imposed by this unhappy state of affairs, the people of England suffered deeply for the present, and had yet more dreadful cause to fear for the future.
“Yet amid these accumulated distresses, the poor as well as the rich, the vulgar as well as the noble, in the event of a tournament, which was the grand spectacle of the age, felt as much interested as the half-starved citizen of Madrid, who has not a real left to buy provisions for his family, feels in the issue of a bull-feast. Neither duty nor infirmity could keep youth or age from such exhibitions.”[A]
One of these exhibitions, the Tournament of Ashby, is famous historically, and has been made the subject of one of the finest word-pictures of the “Wizard of the North.” In a natural amphitheater near the village of Ashby the lists were enclosed with strong palisades, forming an oblong space about a quarter of a mile in length, and half as broad. At either end were strong wooden gates wide enough to admit but two horsemen abreast; each of these gates guarded by two heralds, attended by six trumpeters, six pursuivants (messengers), and a strong body of horsemen. Around the entrances the magnificent tents of knights, each of its owner’s chosen color, surmounted by his pennon, his shield and coat of arms hanging in front, his guards, retainers and jester in gay livery contributing to the moving scene. Back of these, refreshment tents and the quarters of farriers and
“The armourers, accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation.”
Around the circle were galleries, spread with tapestry for the ladies and nobles, while extending up the slopes, and even to the tops of the trees set thick about were the great multitude of common people. On one side the royal seat and canopy, occupied by Prince John and his brilliant retinue; on the opposite a gayer gallery, and the throne of the Queen of Beauty and of Love, monarch of the hour and rewarder of the victorious knights. This stand was brilliant with the rich attire of the ladies and their pages—the prevailing colors of the habits of the latter, as of the throne, being green and pink. The traditional insignia of Cupid shone all about on banner and shield—wounded hearts, bleeding hearts, burning hearts, bows, quivers, etc.
As the procession of contestants enters the arena, the sound of wild, barbaric music rends the air—a mixture of trumpets, cymbals, bells, and other instruments brought back from the East by the crusaders. It is a goodly and at the same time an anxious sight to behold so many gallant champions, mounted bravely and armed richly, awaiting the signal of encounter with the same ardor as their generous steeds, neighing and pawing the ground. The knights hold their long lances upright, their bright points glancing in the sun, and the streamers with which they are decorated fluttering over the plumage of their helmets. All is ready; the heralds make proclamation of the conditions of the tourney; the marshals of the field proclaim; the trumpets sound; the signal words, Laissez aller! [French for “Go!”] are shouted; spears drop to a horizontal, spurs are sunk in the steeds, and fifty knights crash together in full gallop. Anon the dust rises and the fight becomes visible; we see half the knights dismounted, some not to rise, others already on their feet fighting hand to hand with mace or ax amid a struggling pile of disabled horses, wounded men, broken spears and armor, the still mounted knights trampling and fighting with swords, the crash of which on iron helmets and shields makes an infernal din, over which roar the shouts of the champions, and the more excited shouts of the crazed spectators, the shriller encouragement of ladies and the clang of trumpets. The splendid armor is now defaced with dust and blood; the gay plumage, shorn from the crests, drifts upon the breeze like snowflakes; all the beautiful and graceful has disappeared, and what remains ought only to awaken terror or compassion. But all, including delicate and high bred ladies, cheer on the combatants; while the heralds spur back and forth on the borders of the melee, crying, “Fight on, brave knights! man dies, but glory lives—death is better than defeat! Fight on! for bright eyes behold your deeds!”
Now, at length, the combatants have thinned out until only one knight is left on one side to meet three powerful antagonists. It is fighting in earnest now, and Prince John incites the three to the destruction of the one whom he hates as a friend of the absent Richard. “The Disinherited Knight” is sure to be overpowered. Suddenly a voice like a trumpet-call sounds, “To the rescue!” and a horseman in black armor, not yet seen in the fray, spurs like a thunderbolt on the three. One is unhorsed in the shock; another is cut down by the sword, the last falls under his horse helpless, and the tournament is ended.
Eight knights were killed, upwards of thirty wounded, several disabled for life. This is known in history as the “Gentle and joyous Passage-at-Arms of Ashby.” “Hearty in their sports,” were those old knights. They were “chock full of fun.”
In the tumult of relieving the wounded, the knight of the black armor disappeared, and could not be found to receive the chaplet of honor. But a few minutes later there was a commotion in Prince John’s pavilion. An unknown messenger had placed a letter in his hands; it bears the signet of the arms of France; it is from his confederate, Philip, and it reads: “Take heed to yourself! the devil is loose!”
“What does it mean?” asked the courtiers.
“It means Richard is free and in England! We have seen him. Let us away!”
It was so. The ransom, partly raised from English loyalty and partly pledged by Richard’s faithful friends, had been delivered to the captors, and the plot of John and King Philip had failed. John fled to Normandy, and was subsequently forgiven by his brother. “I will try to forget my injuries as soon as John will forget my pardon,” said Richard, sarcastically. This is the only case on record where Cœur de Lion made the mistake of being too merciful. If he had disposed of John, England would have been saved from its worst king, but possibly might have missed the advantage of the great charter of rights at that time. But Richard took swift vengeance on King Philip.
Richard had landed in England March 12, 1194. He remained only two months, the rest of his reign, five years, being spent on the continent “in his proper line of business”—fighting. The two months were distinguished by two things: his extortion from his subjects, and his famous visit in the disguise of an abbott to Robin Hood, the merry outlaw of Sherwood Forest. Popular ballads have it that Richard indulged in a little “fun” with the doughty outlaw, and was badly worsted; while sober history has it that the lion-hearted king’s method of raising money “combined the attributes of the tyrant and the swindler.[B]” England had already been impoverished by the enormous taxes to raise the king’s ransom, and his return was the signal for fresh exactions. He ordered the great seal to be broken, declared the title to all property void, and required everybody to take out new deeds and pay the price over again for the affixing of the new seal. Ah, yes; “life was earnest in those days, stormy in its ambition, hearty in its sports,” and we ought to add, rascally in its administration. Government is gentler and more refined now—is it more honest?
The manner of Richard’s death was in as marked contrast to the heroic character which poetry and romance have given him, as were his capture, captivity and deliverance. He was killed in Normandy in a sordid quarrel for the possession of a pot of money which one of his knights had found concealed in his castle—very much as if Alexander the Great had met his death in a gambling-house row over the stakes.
The vulgar and repulsive features of Richard Cœur de Lion’s career did not detract at all from his character as a hero in the days of chivalry. Indeed, the minstrels sang admiringly of Richard’s atrocities: of how he supped gayly on a fat Saracen baby when he could not get roast pig; and caused a Saracen’s head to be roasted and served up to the courtly ambassadors of Saladin; and butchered his prisoners by the thousands. If the troubadours do not truly set forth Richard’s achievements, they truly mirror the spirit of chivalry in the imputed attributes of its most perfect champion. Comparing the character of this lion-hearted Plantagenet, as thus reflected, with that of Robin Hood, the Saxon hero, as pictured in the popular ballads, we must feel that the common people’s idea of manliness and virtue, though personified in a bandit, was higher than that of the Norman chivalry, and we justify Knight in saying:
“The outlaw had the same attributes of bravery and generosity with which the character of Richard the Lion Hearted has been invested, without exhibiting those ferocious traits which belong to the chivalric worship of mere brute courage and blind fanaticism. The popular notion of a hero is the more refined one, although Robin be merely ‘a good yeoman.’”
“So curtyous an outlawe as he was one
Was never none yfounde.”
[To be continued.]
[STUDIES IN ANCIENT GREEK LIFE.]
By J. P. MAHAFFY, A.M.
General Features of the Greek Household.—While the citizen prized above all things his liberty and his rights as a member of the state—a feeling which produced in many cases a citizen democracy—this principle was unknown within the household, in which he was a despot, ruling absolutely the inferior members, who had no legal grades except as distinguished into free and slaves. The laws were very cautious about interfering with his rights, and he was permitted to exercise much injustice and cruelty without being punished. If in such a case he was murdered by his dependants, the whole household of slaves was put to death, unless the culprit was detected. Nor could a household exist (except perhaps in Sparta) without the master. If he died, his widow became again the ward of her father or eldest brother, or son; and so strongly was this sometimes felt that men on their death-beds betrothed their wives to friends, who were likely to treat them and their orphan children with kindness. Of course clever women and servants often practically had their own way, and ruled their lord or master; but the theory of the Greek home was nevertheless always that of an absolute monarchy, if not a despotism.
The Lady of the House—Her Dress.—There were two distinct styles of female dress prevalent. The first was the Dorian, which was noted for its simplicity. Unmarried girls at Sparta often wore but a single light garment (chitonion) fastened with clasps down the sides—a dress much criticized by their neighbors. Over this was the Doric peplos, fastened on the shoulders with clasps and leaving the arms bare. The Ionians wore a long linen chiton with sleeves, which reached down to the ground, and over it a large flowing wrapper, fastened with a girdle, worn high or low according to fashion; whereas the other band called strophion was worn under the chiton, and took the place of modern stays. As a general rule, unmarried women confined their hairdressing to mere artistic arrangement of the hair itself, while married women wore bands, fillets, nets, and coronets. Dyeing the hair was not uncommon, and the fashionable color was auburn, or reddish fair hair. Women’s shoes were very carefully made, and they carried fans and parasols, as may be seen in the terra-cotta figures so common in our museums. Both sexes wore rings, but in addition the women wore earrings, armlets, and ankle-rings, generally of gold. These were the ornaments against which lawgivers made enactments, and which were forbidden or discouraged in days of trouble or poverty. The ornaments of one rich lady are spoken of as worth 50 minæ (about £195), a very large sum in those days. The ordinary color of women’s dress was white, but saffron cloaks, and even flowered patterns, are mentioned.
Her Duties.—The constant outdoor life of the Greek gentleman, his many occupations in politics, and campaigns in war, must have made a sensible wife even more necessary than she is to modern men, and yet we do not find that any Greeks valued her high qualities for these important duties rightly except the Spartans. For among them alone we find the mistress of the house a person of real importance, appearing when she chooses in public, and even offering an opinion which is respected on public affairs. In cultivated Athens, on the contrary, she was only taught spinning and cooking, and what rude medicine might be wanting for the treatment of her household in trifling illness. One of her main duties was always the weighing out of wool to her women slaves, and her own working at the loom. If a lady of the higher classes, she was not supposed to appear to male visitors, but only saw her lady friends and her nearest male relatives in her own house. She seldom went out, except either to the funeral of a near relation or to some religious procession and sacrifice. Thus the liberty of women varied from a freedom as great as need be in Sparta to a life of seclusion and neglect at Athens. Other states may have held an intermediate position. As for the vaunted dignity and liberty of ladies in Homer, it is to be remarked that he speaks of the wives and daughters of reigning princes, who probably retained the same importance in historical Greece, wherever they were to be found. For example, aristocratic ladies, such as Cimon’s sister, Elpinice, were unrestrained, even at Athens, and went where they chose. This was also the case everywhere with the poor people, who could not afford to keep their wives and daughters in the idleness and the restraint unfortunately so fashionable in higher life.
Her Rights.—In Homeric days we find the old barbarous custom still surviving of buying a girl from her father for a wife, and this was commonly done, unless the father himself offered her as a compliment. The father, however, usually gave her an outfit from the price he received for her. In case of a separation this outfit came back to the father, but he was also obliged to restore the price he had received for his daughter. She does not appear to have had any legal rights whatever. In later days the custom of paying money was reversed, and the husband received with his wife a dowry, which was regarded as common property with his own, so long as she lived with him. In case of separation or divorce, this dowry had to be repaid to her father, and at Athens 18 per cent. was charged upon it in case of delay in repayment. In many states to marry a second wife during the life of the first was against the practice, and probably the law, of the Greeks, but concubinage was tolerated and even recognized by them, though a married woman had at Athens a right to bring an action for general ill-treatment against her husband, in which she was obliged to appear and give evidence in person. The dowry seems to have been partly intended as a useful obstacle to divorce, which required its repayment, but we find that heiresses made themselves troublesome by their airs of importance, and this is referred to in Greek literature, in which men are frequently advised not to marry above them in wealth or connections. As all citizens were considered equal in birth, and as marriages with aliens were illegal and void, we do not hear of advice to young men not to marry beneath them. To marry a poor citizen girl was always considered a good deed, and is commended as such.
Wedding Customs.—Though marriage among the Greeks was recognized thoroughly as a civil contract, for the purpose of maintaining the household, and raising citizens for the state, yet a religious solemnity was considered by them not less essential to its dignity than by us, and though this ceremony was not performed by an official priest, it consisted in prayers and offerings to the gods who presided over marriage. These were generally Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and Artemis, but many local fashions existed. So also the full moon and the winter season were generally but not everywhere preferred. A bath in the most sacred water of the district was thought necessary before the union, by way of purification. Omens were carefully observed, and votive offerings dedicated to the gods. The preliminaries closed with a solemn sacrifice and feast combined, at which the bride was present, closely veiled, with her female friends. This was often a large dinner party, for we find laws restricting the number to thirty, and complaints of the bad taste of much display. She was then brought in solemn procession late in the evening to her husband’s house, generally on a carriage, with the bridegroom and his best man sitting on either side of her. Both were covered with garlands and perfumed, while the Hymenæus or marriage song was sung by the company to the sound of harps and flutes. The bride’s mother had the special duty of carrying a torch behind the carriage, while the bridegroom’s mother received them torch in hand at his door. The bride brought with her some household utensils, and was presented with others, and with sweetmeats, on her arrival. The next morning the married pair separated for a day (apaulia), and the bridegroom slept at the house of his father-in-law, when the bride sent him a present of a garment. Then only the young couple were to receive their friends, who offered congratulations and wedding-presents, which were called anakalupteria, because the bride unveiled herself to her friends on that day. Such were the general customs of a Greek marriage, but many old and rude habits survived in various places. Of these the most primitive was that of Sparta, where the bridegroom pretended to carry off his bride by violence, and visited her secretly for some time even after his marriage. This marriage by capture is still common among savages, and points to a ruder state of life than the marriage by purchase, which was common in Homer’s time.
Of the Birth and Treatment of Infants.—When a child was born in the house, it was usual in Attica, and probably elsewhere also, to hang a wreath of olive in case of a boy, a fillet of wool in case of a girl, over the door. This served as an announcement to friends and neighbors. Greek law permitted the parents absolutely to dispose of it as their property, and there was no provision against exposing it, which was often done in case of girls, in order to avoid expense. These exposed children if found and brought up, became the slaves of the finder. But on the other hand, the laws showed special favor to the parents of large families. If a child was not exposed, there followed on the fifth day a solemn purification of all the people in the house, and on the seventh a sacrifice, when the relations assembled and the child was named, generally after parents and grand-parents, sometimes by reason of special wants or fancies—in fact on the same principles which we follow in christening our children. There is no evidence until the later Macedonian times that birthday feasts were held yearly; and Epicurus’ direction that his should be kept after his death was thought very peculiar. Children of rich people were often nursed by hired nurses—an employment to which respectable Athenian citizens were reduced in the hard times at the end of the Peloponnesian war. But a Lacedæmonian nurse was specially valued, and often bought at a great price among prisoners, as they were famed for bringing up the child without swaddling-clothes, and making him hardy and courageous. The Greeks used cradles for children as we do, and gave them honey as we do sugar, and the nurses represented on the vases are distinguished by a peculiar kerchief on the head, as they often are in our day by a cap or national costume.
Of Toys and Games for Children.—As might be expected, the inventive genius of the Greeks showed itself in the constructing of all manner of toys, and children devised for themselves perhaps all the games now known and many more besides. Aristotle says you must provide them with toys, or they will break things in the house, and the older philosopher Archytas was celebrated for inventing the child’s rattle. Plato also complains of the perpetual roaring of younger, and the mischievousness of older, children. We may infer from these things that the Greek boys were fully as troublesome as our own. They had balls, hoops, swings, hobbyhorses, and dice, with dolls for the girls, and various animals of wood and earthenware, like the contents of our Noah’s arks. They played hide and seek, blind man’s buff, French and English, hunt the slipper, the Italian morra, and many other games which the scholiasts and Germans have in vain endeavored to explain. But for grown people, we do not find many games, properly speaking, played for the game’s sake, like our cricket. There was very simple ball-playing, and, of course, gambling with dice. Of gymnastic exercises I will speak separately.
Greek Education Generally.—As for the girls of the house, they were brought up to see and hear as little as possible. They only went out upon a few state occasions, and knew how to work wool and weave, as well as to cook. We may fairly infer that the great majority of them could not read or write. The boys, on the contrary, were subjected to the most careful education, and on no point did the Greek law-givers and philosophers spend more care than in the proper training, both physical and mental, of their citizens. The modern system, however, of public school training was not practiced anywhere save at Sparta, where a state schoolmaster (paidonomos) was appointed, and all the Spartan boys taken out of the control of their parents. They lived together under the care of elder boys, as well as masters, so that the system of monitors, and even that of fagging, was in ordinary practice. They were encouraged to fight out their disputes, and were much given to sports and athletic amusements, just like our schoolboys. But the public school training and discipline lasted much longer at Sparta than among us, and embraced the university period, as well as the school period, of life.
In the other states of Greece, which were chiefly towns, or suburbs of towns, the system of day schools was universal, and the boys went to and from home under the charge of a special slave, chosen because he was no longer fit for hard work. He was called the boy’s leader, or pedagogue (paidagogos), a word which never meant schoolmaster among the Greeks, though it is so rendered in our English Bible (Gal. iii. 24). The discipline of boys was severe, and they were constantly watched and repressed, nor were they allowed to frequent the crowded market place. Corporal punishment was commonly applied to them, and the quality most esteemed in boys was a blushing shyness and modesty, hardly equalled by the girls of our time. Nevertheless Plato speaks of the younger boys as the most sharp-witted, insubordinate, and unmanageable of animals.
Of Schools and Schoolmasters.—It does not seem that the office of schoolmaster was thought very honorable, except of course in Sparta, where he was a sort of Minister of Education. It was, as with us, a matter of private speculation, but controlled by police regulations that the school should open and close with sunrise and sunset and that no grown men should be allowed to go in and loiter there. The infant-school teachers, who merely taught children their letters (grammatodidaskolos), were of a low class in society, sometimes even teaching in open air, like the old hedge schoolmasters in Ireland. The more advanced teaching of reading and writing was done by the grammatikos, whose house was called, like that of philosophers and rhetoricians, schole, a place of leisure. For the physical and the æsthetic side we have still to mention the trainer (paidotribes) and the teacher of music (kitharistes), the former of whom taught in the palæstra the exercises and sports afterward carried on by the full-grown citizens in the gymnasia, which were a feature in all Greek towns. The teachers of riper youth stood in social position above the mere teachers of letters, but beneath the professors of rhetoric and philosophy (sophists). These latter performed the functions of college tutors at our universities, and completed the literary side of Greek education. The fees paid to the various teachers were in proportion to their social importance. Some of the sophists made great fortunes, and exacted very high fees; the mere schoolmasters are spoken of as receiving a miserable pittance.
Of what they Taught.—The Greeks never thought of making foreign languages a matter of study, and contented themselves with learning to read and write their own. In so doing the schoolmasters used as text-books the works of celebrated epic or elegiac poets, above all Homer, and then the proverbial philosophy of Hesiod, Solon, Phocylides, and others, so that the Greek boy read the great classics of his language at an early age. He was required to learn much of them by heart, especially when books were scarce; and his teacher pointed out the moral lessons either professedly or accidentally contained in these poets. Thus they stood in the place of our Bible and hymns in education. All this was grammatike, which with music and gymnastics, made up the general education of the Greeks. It excluded the elementary arithmetic of our “three R’s,” and included what they do not, a gentlemanly cultivation in music and field sports. It is very doubtful whether swimming was included, though Herodotus speaks of the Greeks generally as being able to swim. There is, however, evidence that from the fourth century B. C. onwards both elementary geometry and arithmetic, and also drawing, were ordinarily taught.
As regards music every Greek boy (like modern young ladies) either had or was supposed to have a musical ear, and he was accordingly taught either the harp or the flute, and with it singing. Here again the lyric poems of the greatest poets were taught him, and the Greek music always laid the greatest stress on the words. Aristotle and others complain that amateurs were spending too much time on the practising of difficult music, and we know from the musical treatises preserved to us that the Greeks thought and taught a great deal more about musical theory and the laws of sound than we do. The Greek tunes preserved are not pleasing, but we know that they used the strictest and most subtle principles in tuning instruments, and understood harmony and discord as well as we do. Great Athenians, like Cimon, were often able to sing and accompany themselves on the harp, or lyre as we should rather call it. The Greeks laid great stress on the moral effects of music, especially as regards the performer, and were very severe in their censure of certain styles of music. They distinguished their scales as modes, and are said to have put far greater stress on keys than we do, calling some manly and warlike (Dorian), others weak and effeminate, or even immoral (Mixo-Lydian). The modern Chinese have the same beliefs about the moral effects of music. The Greeks had their keynote in the middle of the scale, and used chiefly the minor scale of our music. They had different names and signs for the notes of the various octaves which they used, and also different signs for vocal and for instrumental music.
Gymnastics.—Among the various exercises taught were those in fashion in the public contests in the games—throwing the discus, running, and wrestling, and those of use in war—throwing the dart, managing the sword and shield, and riding. Boxing was not highly esteemed, and seems not to have been properly understood by the Greeks, who would have had no chance against an English prize-fighter. The severest contest was the pancration, where the combatants, who were naked and unarmed, were allowed to use any violence they liked to overcome their adversary. It was therefore a combination of boxing, wrestling, and kicking, with occasional biting and gouging by way of additional resource. We hear of a wonderful jumping feat by Phayllus of Croton, who leaped forty-four feet; but as he probably jumped down-hill, and used artificial aids, we can not be sure that it was more than can be done now-a-days. The Spartans specially forbad boxing and the pancration, because the vanquished was obliged to confess his defeat and feel ashamed; and they did not tolerate professional trainers. All the special exercises for developing muscle practised in our gymnasia seem to have been known, and they were all practised naked, as being sunburnt was highly valued. The Greeks smeared themselves first with oil and then with sand before their exercises, and cleaned themselves with a scraper or strigil, or in later days by taking a bath.
Customs on Coming of Age.—Most Greek states seem to have wished to free young men as soon as possible from the control of their parents. Hence, having passed the age of boyhood, when they were called children (paides), they were made epheboi, or “men of age,” at the age of sixteen or eighteen, when they were enrolled solemnly in the list of citizens. This was done at Athens with a religious service, and with a solemn oath on the part of the youth, who declared his allegiance to the laws and to the religion of his city, and promised to defend it against all enemies and seditions. He was then enrolled on the list of his deme or parish, and this roll was called the lexiarchikon grammateion. He was then competent to join in debate at the assembly, to plead in court, to marry, and perform all the duties of citizenship. It is not clear how he stood as regards his father, except that, if the latter became unable to manage his affairs, the son could have him so declared by an action in court, and so become the owner during his father’s life. Before the young men settled down, they were employed for two years in outlying garrison duty and in patrolling the frontiers of the land, during which time they were called peripoloi. This gave them the necessary training for war, and made them acquainted with the bounds of their country. Many remains of these frontier forts which were once garrisoned by the youth of Athens still survive in Attica.
The Servants of the House.—These were of course slaves, with the exception of some field laborers, and of nurses in times of depression and distress, when some free women went out for hire. To these cases we may add the cook, who was not an inmate of the house before the Macedonian time, but was hired for the day when wanted for a dinner party. All the rest were slaves, and were very numerous in every respectable household. The principal sorts of servants were as follows: There was a general steward, a butler who had charge of the store-room and cellar, a marketing slave, a porter, baking and cooking slaves for preparing the daily meals, an attendant upon the master in his walks, and this was an indispensable servant, a nurse, an escort for the children, and a lady’s maid. In richer houses there was also a groom or mule-boy. This list shows a sub-division of labor more like the habits of our East-Indian families than those of ordinary households in England. I have spoken above of the purchasing and value of these slaves. If faithful, they were often made free, especially by the will of their master on his death-bed, but they did not become citizens. They remained in the position of resident aliens under the patronage of their former master or his representatives.
In proportion as the free population of Greece diminished the freeing of slaves became more and more common, until it actually appears to have been the leading feature in the life of the small towns. Thousands of inscriptions recording this setting free of individual slaves are still found, and on so many various stones, even tombstones, that it almost appears as if material for recording had failed them by reason of the quantity of these documents. The same increase of liberation was a leading feature in the Roman empire, but there the freedman obtained the right and position of a citizen, which was not the case in Greece. The most enlightened moralists of both countries exhorted benevolence toward slaves, and the frequent freeing of them as the duty of humane masters, but none of these writers ever dreamt of the total abolishing of slavery, which they all held to be an institution ordained by nature. This seems also the view of the early Christian writers, who nowhere condemn the principle of slavery as such.
The Domestic Animals.—These were first the horses and mules, which do not seem to have been treated with any great familiarity, but were carefully groomed, and after exercise were allowed to roll in sand before being brought in—a treatment still common in southern Italy, where the old Greek fashion of driving four-in-hand abreast also prevails. The two center horses were yoked to the pole, the others were fastened by loose traces, and called paraseiroi (outriggers). The commonest and most valued domestic animal was the dog, which maintains a very important place in Greek society up to the present day. There were various kinds of breeds for hunting, chosen both for nose and for speed; there were watch-dogs; and also ornamental kinds, such as little lap-dogs, which are represented in the sad scenes of leave-taking on the tombs. Many anecdotes are told of their faithfulness, and we hear of at least one case where a handsome dog, which belonged to Alcibiades cost about 70l. Cats were also common, so common as to be charged with the breaking of household ware by guilty servants, and they are often described as wandering along the roofs of houses. Sundry birds were kept in cages, and for ornament, such as pheasants and peacocks; the quail was used for combats corresponding to English cock fights.
Customs of Burial.—I will conclude our consideration of the Greek household by describing the customs when death laid its hand upon one of the inmates.
At the moment of the death struggle the face was veiled, that no man might see it; then it was uncovered for a moment to close his eyes and mouth. The body was then washed by female relatives, scented with unguents, dressed in white and with a garland, and placed upon a couch adorned with branches, and with an unguent bottle beside it. This laying out was done in the entrance hall of the house and the feet were turned to the door. Outside was a cypress branch and water for sprinkling those who came out, as the dead defiled the house and its inmates. The laying out was limited to one day, during which both male and female relatives, together with hired mourners, stood round the bier, and uttered laments in refrain very like the Irish cry of our day. This almost universal custom in Asia was discountenanced and restricted by Greek law-givers, especially the tearing of the hair and laceration of the face which accompanied it. Burial took place in the morning dawn, before the sun could shine upon the corpse; in later days a small coin was placed in his mouth to pay his passage in the nether world—a custom which still survives in some parts of Greece. In the funeral procession the male relatives went before, the female followed after, and in Athens and other places where women lived secluded, only aged women and near relatives were allowed to attend, as young men took this opportunity of seeing the ladies, who were at other times invisible. When the dead was laid in the tomb, he was called by name aloud, and farewell was bidden him. There was afterward a funeral feast, and offerings at the tomb, but the time of mourning and of wearing black or gray garments was short; in Sparta twelve days, at Athens a month; at Ceos, exceptionally, a mother mourned her growing son for a whole year. Praising speeches were not delivered over private persons as at Rome, but only in the case of a public funeral, such as that of the bones of the dead who had fallen in battle, and were burned on the battle field. These ashes were brought home in urns, and treated as the corpses of the dead would have been at home. The burning of the dead, though known early, and often practiced in war and travel, was decidedly the exception. To cast earth upon the dead was of the last importance, and even when the body could not be found an empty grave received the due honors.
Sepulchral Monuments.—In the oldest times the dead were buried in their own ground, and close beside the house they had occupied. Afterward the burying of the dead within the walls of cities was forbidden except in the case of great public benefactors, who were worshipped as heroes and had a shrine set over them. The rest were buried in the fairest and most populous suburb, generally along both sides of the high road, as at Athens and at Syracuse, where their tombs and the inscriptions occupied the attention of everyone that passed by. The oldest and rudest monuments placed over the tomb were great mounds of earth, then these mounds came to be surrounded by a circle of great stones; afterward chambers were cut underground in the earth or rock, and family vaults established. Handsome monuments in marble, richly painted and covered with sculpture, were set up over the spot. These monuments sometimes attained a size almost as great as a temple. The scenes sculptured on the marble were from the life and occupation of the deceased, more often parting scenes, where they were represented taking leave of their family and friends, nor do we possess any more beautiful and touching remains of Greek life than some of these tombs. In the chamber of the dead many little presents, terra-cotta figures, trinkets and vases were placed, nay, in early times favorite animals, and even slaves or captives were sacrificed in order to be with him; for the Greeks believed that though the parting with the dead was for ever, he still continued to exist, and to interest himself in human affairs and in pursuits like those of living men. The crowded suburbs where the tombs were placed were generally ornamented with trees and flowers, and were a favorite resort of the citizens. The dead bodies of executed criminals were either given back to their relatives or, in extreme cases, cast into a special place, generally some natural ravine or valley hidden from view and ordinary thoroughfare. Here the executioner dwelt, who was generally a public slave. This place was called barathrum at Athens, and Ceadas at Sparta.
[A GLINT OF MOONLIGHT.]
By I. L. COSHAM.
It was the time when Lenten lilies bloom,
And buds are new upon the blackthorn tree;
And I, alone in weariness and gloom,
Gazed far across the sea.
Alone I watched the cheerless daylight wane,
And heard the ocean-murmurs swell and rise;
Sharp on the window smote the gusty rain,
And darker grew the skies.
Old love-tones mocked me in the moaning tide,
And phantom faces rose upon the dark;
The ocean rolled beneath me, black and wide,
Without one beacon-spark.
I had no hope—I had no comfort left,
My soul went out in wailing to the night;
When lo, that sable sky was swiftly cleft
By one pure shaft of light!
A glint of moonlight, silver-bright and clear,
Shone on a tossing bark amid the foam;
And struggling sailors, worn with toil and fear,
Beheld the shores of home.
The summer brought me back the love of old,
My autumn days were rich with corn and wine;
Ah me, what joy the moonlight beam foretold,
In that dark hour of mine!
But when the golden lilies are in bloom
My heart looks backward, and I pause to pray
That others, watching lonely in the gloom,
May see that silver ray.
[SUNDAY READINGS.]
SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D. D.
[December 3.]
HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.
By JAMES MARTINEAU.
Some men are eminent for what they possess; some for what they achieve; others for what they are. Having, doing, and being, constitute the three great distinctions of mankind, and the three great functions of their life. And though they are necessarily all blended, more or less, in each individual, it is seldom difficult to say which of them is prominent in the impression left upon us by our fellow man.
In every society, and especially in a country like our own, there are those who derive their chief characteristic from what they have; who are always spoken of in terms of revenue; and of whom you would not be likely to think much, but for the large account that stands on the world’s ledger in their name. In themselves, detached from their favorite sphere, you would notice nothing wise or winning. At home, possibly, a dry and withered heart; among associates a selfish and mistrustful talk; in the council, a style of low ignoble sentiments; at church, a formal, perhaps an irreverent, dullness betray a barren nature, and offer you only points of repulsion, so far as humanities are concerned; and you are amazed to think that you are looking on the idols of the exchange. Their greatness comes out in the affairs of bargain and sale, to which their faculties seem fairly apprenticed for life. If they speak of the past, it is in memory of its losses and its gains; if of the future, it is to anticipate its incomings and investments. The whole chronology of their life is divided according to the stages of their fortunes, and the progress of their dignities. Their children are interesting to them principally as their heirs; and the making of their will fulfils their main conception of being ready for their death. And so completely do they paint the grand idea of their life on the imagination of all who know them, that when they die, the mammon-image can not be removed, and it is the fate of the money, not of the man, of which we are most apt to think. Having put vast prizes in the funds, but only unprofitable blanks in the admiration and the hearts of us, they leave behind nothing but their property; or, as is expressively termed, their “effects,”—the thing which they caused, the main result of their having been alive. How plain is it that we regard them merely as instruments of acquisition; centers of attraction for the drifting of capital; that they are important only as indications of commodities; and that their human personality hangs as a mere label upon a mass of treasure! Every one must have met with a few instances in which this character is realized, and with many in which, notwithstanding the relief of some redeeming and delightful features, it is at least approached. In proportion as this aim, of possession, is taken to be paramount in life, length of days must, no doubt, be deemed indispensable to the human destination. The longer a man lies out at interest, the greater must be the accumulation. If he is unexpectedly recalled, every end which he suggested is disappointed; the only thing he seemed fit for can not go on; he is a power lost from this sphere, and incapacity thrust upon the other; missed from the markets here, thrown away among sainted spirits there. For himself, and for both worlds, the event seems deplorable enough; and it is difficult to make anything but confusion out of it. An imagination tacitly filled with this conception of life as a stage prepared for enjoyment and possession, must look on a term that is unfulfilled, as on a broken tool, dropping in failure to the earth.
Of those who have thus lived to accumulate and enjoy, history is for the most part silent, having in truth nothing to say. Not doing the work, or joining in the worship of life, but only feasting at its table, they break up and drive off into oblivion as soon as the lights are out and the wine is spilt. Belonging entirely to the present, they never appear in the past; but sink with the weight of wealth in the dark gulf;—unless perchance some Crœsus the rich is fortunate enough to fall into association with Solon the wise. There are no historical materials in simple animal existence, nor is the mere sentient being of a man, considered as the successful study of comfort, and receptacle of happiness.
History is constructed by a second or nobler class, those who prove themselves to be here, not that they may have, but that they may do; to whom life is a glorious hour; and who are so seen not to work that they may rest, but only to rest that they may work. No sooner do they look around them with the open eye of reason and faith, upon the great field of the world, than they perceive that it must be for them a battle-field; and they break up the tents of ease, and advance to the dangers of lonely enterprise and the conflict with splendid wrong. Strong in the persuasion that this is a God’s world, and that his will must rule it by royal right, they serve in the severe campaign of justice; asking only for the wages of life, and scorning the prizes of spoil and praise. Wherever you find such, whether in the field, in the senate, or in private life, you see the genuine type of the heroic character,—the clear mind, the noble heart, indomitable will, pledged all to some arduous and unselfish task; and whether it be the achievement, with Cobden, of freedom of pacific commerce between land and land; or, with Clarkson, of freedom of person between man and man; or, with Cromwell, of freedom of worship between earth and heaven; the essential feature is in all instances the same; the man holds himself as the mere instrument of some social work; commits himself in full allegiance to it; and spends himself wholly in it. They “have a baptism to be baptized with; and how are they straitened, till it be accomplished!” During the glorious conflict of such lives it is impossible not to look on with breathless interest. Once possessed of their great design, we watch its development with eager eye and beating heart. And if, early in the day, they are struck down, we clasp our hands in sudden anguish, and a cry goes up that the field is lost. And though this despair is a momentary loss of the true faith; though God never fails to rally the forces of every good cause that has mustered for battle on the earth; yet, no doubt, the victory in such a case is deferred; the plan is broken off; the painful sense of a suspended work, that might have been finished, remains upon survivors’ hearts. On behalf of the noble actors themselves, indeed, we have no embarrassment of faith; there is that within them which may well find a home in more worlds than one, and meet a welcome wherever Almighty Justice reigns. We are not ashamed, as with the man of mere possession, to follow them into the higher transitions of their being, and knock for them at the gate of better spheres. But there appears something untimely and deplorable in the providence of the world they quit. The fruit has not been permitted to ripen ere it dropped. The great function of their life required time for its fulfilment; and time has been denied. Their beneficent action was wholly through the energies of their living will; and these energies are laid for us in unseasonable sleep. And thus, while we are ashamed at the grave of the epicurean, we weep over the departure of the hero.
But there is a life higher than either of these. The saintly is beyond the heroic mind. To get good, is animal; to do good, is human; to be good is divine. The true use of a man’s possessions is to help his work; and the best end of all his work, is to show us what he is. The noblest workers of our world bequeath us nothing so great as the image of themselves. Their task, be it ever so glorious, is historical and transient; the majesty of their spirit is essential and eternal. When the external conditions which supplied the matter of their work have wholly decayed from the surface of the earth, and become absorbed in its substance, the perennial root of their life remains, bearing a blossom ever fair, and a foliage ever green. And while to some, God gives it to show themselves through their work, to others he assigns it to show themselves without even the opportunity of work. He sends them transparent into this world; and leaves us nothing to gather and infer. Goodness, beauty, truth, acquired by others, are original to them, hiding behind the eye, thinking on the brow, and making music in the voice. The angels appointed to guard the issues of the pure life seem rather to have taken their station at its fountains, and to pour into it a sanctity at first. Such beings live imply to express themselves; stand between heaven and earth, and meditate for our dull hearts. With fewer outward objects than others, or at least with a less limited practical mission devoting them to a fixed task, their life is a soliloquy of love and aspiration; the soul not being with them, the servant of action, but action rather the needful articulation of the soul. Not, of course, that they are, in the slightest degree, exempt from the stern and positive obligations of duty, or licensed, any more than others, to dream existence away. If once they fall into this snare, and cease to work, the lineaments of beauty and goodness are exchanged for those of shame and grief. Usually they do not less, but rather more, than others; only under somewhat sorrowful conditions, having spirits prepared for what is more than human, and being obliged to move within limits that are only human. The worth of such a life depends little on its quantity; it is an affair of quality alone. These highest ends of existence have but slight relation to time. Years can not mellow the love already ripe, or purify the perceptions already clear, or lift the aspiration that already enters heaven.
[GROWING.]
By F. R. HAVERGAL.
Unto him that hath, thou givest
Ever “more abundantly.”
Lord, I live because thou livest,
Therefore give more life to me;
Therefore speed me in the race;
Therefore let me grow in grace.
Deepen all thy work, O Master,
Strengthen every downward root,
Only do thou ripen faster,
More and more, thy pleasant fruit.
Purge me, prune me, self abase,
Only let me grow in grace.
Jesus, grace for grace outpouring,
Show me ever greater things;
Raise me higher, sunward soaring,
Mounting as on eagle wings.
By the brightness of thy face,
Jesus, let me grow in grace.
Let me grow by sun and shower,
Every moment water me;
Make me really hour by hour
More and more conformed to thee,
That thy loving eye may trace,
Day by day, my growth in grace.
Let me, then, be always growing,
Never, never standing still;
Listening, learning, better knowing
Thee and thy most bless’d will.
Till I reach thy holy place,
Daily let me grow in grace.
[December 10.]
THE GOODNESS OF A GOOD MAN.
By ALEXANDER McLAREN, D. D.
“He was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.”—Acts xi: 24.
You remember how once a young man came to Jesus, with much beautiful youthful purity in his life and youthful enthusiasm in his heart, and in his eager way, prefaced his question with a lightly-uttered “Good Master.” Christ answered by trying to make him feel how much more the word meant than he had ever seen. “Why callest thou me good?” said he, not thereby rejecting the term for himself, but setting the youth to ponder its deep meaning. And whenever we have learned to feel “how awful goodness is,” we shall be ready to listen to Jesus saying further: “None is good but one, that is God.” By that saying he neither means to deny his own goodness nor that of men who will take up their cross and follow him, but only to remind the light-hearted inquirer, who was so ready with his conventional bestowment of the epithet, and so eager to know what he was to do for eternal life, that there was one source—and only one—-of goodness, and, therefore, that the only way to be good was to have our emptiness replenished by his fullness.
A good man, then, is a man who draws his goodness from God, the source of all goodness. He himself is the type of all perfection, the home of all things fair. Whatsoever things are lovely and whatsoever things are venerable—all that we call virtue, all to which hearts and consciences ascribe praise—dwell in God as in their native home. In the abyss of his being the streams of goodness, which part into many heads to fertilize the wilderness and sweeten the salt marshes of human nature, rest undivided. He is the reality of which all our conceptions of goodness are but the fragmentary representations, the substance of which they are but shadows. Not only so, but as all life is an effluence from him with whom alone is the fountain of life, and as it is his light in which we see light, so all the goodness which is in men is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Light. All light and heat are from the sun, and all goodness is of God. All virtues are radiations from him. “They are but broken lights of thee.” He alone is good of himself and by himself. Drawing his being from none, he owes his character to none, to no outward helps or occasions his actions, to no importation his beauty. Receiving from none, he gives to all, and every deed of fair goodness that man has ever done, at the last analysis, has been to the doer no less than to the beholders or the hearers the gift of God.
He would not be good unless he delighted in bestowing himself. Goodness is communicative, and all love has its chiefest delight in giving away itself. As the sun “rejoices to run his race,” and as it is the very nature and property of light to radiate, and of gases to diffuse themselves, so he can not be stayed nor sealed up, but rejoices to impart. And, certainly, there can be nothing in God which he so much delights to bestow as his goodness, since it is that in which most chiefly do we bear his image, and by which we are most closely knit to him. His highest purpose concerning us all is “that we should be partakers of his holiness.” Happiness, wisdom, life itself, all in some measure and fashion, offshoots from his own, he delights to give; but these are but means to an end, and thus moral likeness to himself is his aim in all his other gifts. God had rather have us good than great, and makes us sometimes glad and sometimes heavy that by both we may be made to desire, and so be able to receive, more resemblance to himself in holiness. This is the meaning of life. This is the dearest desire of our Father for us. This is the gift which he—the infinite love—is ever longing to bestow on us.
This goodness, then, affords a presumption that he will make us good. That is a profound word of the Psalmist’s “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore will he teach sinners in the way.” The more clearly we see the perfect purity and goodness of God, the more conscious shall we certainly be of our own unlikeness to him. But in that discernment of his lustrous perfectness, and penitent recognition of our own sinfulness, there lies hope, not despair. We may be sure that he loves us too well to keep such sovereign completeness to himself and leave his poor children stumbling here in the mud and mire. What he is, he assuredly will desire to make us, so far as it may be. He is the “giving God” and the poorest and most impure of men may be sure that God does desire to give him purity of heart and life, and may lift up the hopeful and bold prayer, “Thy spirit is good, lead me into the land of uprightness.”
Surely, too, it needs but little experience of life to feel that, if we are ever to be made good, a divine power is needed to do it. A very small amount of honest attempt to mend our own characters might teach each of us that the viper has got far too tight a hold on us for us to shake it into the fire, and that its poison is in our blood. If you have ever tried to cure a bad habit, you know how hard it is; and some of us could tell how the sins that we loathe most hold us in a grip none the looser because of our disgust at them and ourselves, and, like a reefer’s knot, their cords are tied the tighter by the pressure of our resistance against them. It is as impossible for a man to make himself good, in the deepest sense of the word, as it is for him to lift himself by his own hand laid on his own collar. There must be some power outside him to raise. God only can strengthen us to cast out sin. God only can enlighten our eyes to see lurking evil; he only can give energy to our wills to root it up, though we drag bleeding fragments of our hearts with it; he only can give the positive goodness which is more than mere freedom from evil, and fill the empty chamber with a guest strong enough to keep out the returning demon and all his crew.
So his Holy Spirit is given to us, if we will, to make us holy. We may, if we will, have that divine guest in our inmost spirit, molding us anew, purging the fountains of our will, enlightening our blindness, fixing our love on all things pure and high, burning up all our evil, with which in our own strength we have vainly fought, and kindling in us a flame of self-forgetting love, in which, as in the central fire of the earth, all the elements of the new nature to be formed within us are molten together, ready to crystallize into beauty like precious gems, or to consolidate into strength like the granite mountains. Any man may, if he will, be “full of the Holy Ghost”—as a vessel is filled with precious elixir poured into it. Any man may, if he will, have his whole nature influenced and inhabited by that mighty spirit of whom we may all be the temples, and which dwells in us not as the image of the god abides in the shrine, but as our spirits animate our bodies, being diffused through all our nature, the eye of our seeing, the heart of our love, the will of our resolve, and in all of us the source of our goodness, and the life of our better life. “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Let us remember that this penetration of all our nature with a divine spirit dwelling within us is the promise of Christianity to every man. No mere love of God the Father, even if it were brought to us in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ would be enough without the communion of the Holy Ghost. Calvary and Olivet are not sufficient for our victory over sin without the upper room and the rushing mighty wind. And let us not forget that the spirit thus given to all Christians is the spirit of illumination indeed, the spirit of power, rich in his seven-fold energies, and the source of every endowment of mind and hand and tongue and heart that we possess, but that his highest and most universal office is to make us good, and his best name the Holy Spirit. Let us court earnestly the best gifts, but seek more earnestly still that gift which needs no special capacity to receive nor any special circumstances to exercise, but may be claimed by the poorest, and will ennoble the loftiest. Let others seek for gifts; do you pray for graces. Let who will be great, do you try to submit to the working of the good Spirit who makes you good.
Our text carries the analysis a step farther, and shows us how Barnabas came to be full of the Holy Ghost. It gives us the condition of goodness. He was good because he was full of the spirit, and he was full of the spirit because he was full of faith. That is the final explanation of his character.
The spirit of God dwells in a man through his faith. One text speaks of “the Holy Ghost which they that believe on him should receive,” and everywhere similar language is held as to the connection between faith and the dwelling of the spirit of goodness in our hearts. By the act of trust in Christ, the Lord of the Spirit, we open our natures for the entrance of the sanctifier, who ever waits to enter in. A man has to shut his door and pull down his blinds to keep the light out. If we open ever so minute a crevice, a beam will come in, and the wider we open, the broader the stream that pours in. So in our simple faith, we open the door and there pour into our hearts the quickening energies of that good spirit. The amount of our faith measures the amount of our possession of the Spirit who makes us good.
Thus faith becomes the condition of goodness, because it is the condition of the Spirit of God dwelling in us. It brings us into contact with the electric battery, completes the circuit, and as soon as the circuit is completed the spark comes. It is also the condition of goodness, because it implies self-oblivion and self-distrust, and is the opposite of that self-regard which, as we have seen, is the root of all evil. The germ of all holiness is in faith, not only because it brings us under the operation of the divine power which makes holy, but because it is itself the great antagonist of selfishness.
So Christian morality is the very opposite of the practical heathenism which lies at the bottom of so much of the teaching of to-day. Trust thyself, say many voices—it is the beginning of wisdom, strength, freedom. Distrust thyself and trust Christ, says the Gospel—thereby alone wilt thou be made pure and blessed. The Babel builders tried to get up to the heavens by their own building. The Titans tried to storm it by placing mountain on mountain, but “no man hath ascended up to heaven.” Better for us to rise thither by that ladder which now binds together heaven and earth, even Jesus Christ, our brother and our Lord, by whom all bright-winged angels of help and cleansing will come to minister to us purity and joy, and by whom we at last, perfected in goodness, shall pass into that presence, of which the radiant purity would blast all that had one taint of uncleanness.
Learn the conditions, then, on which you can be good. No goodness without God’s Spirit—no Spirit without faith. You can not make yourself better, can not hammer or pare your own nature into purity and loveliness. But you can put your confidence in Jesus Christ, who will take your nature into his hands and mold it into a fairest likeness to himself. You can trust him, who will breathe into you his spirit to make you holy. If my epitaph is ever to be, “He was a good man,” it must first be said, “He was full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.” Let us give up the weary, hopeless work of trying to make ourselves good, and yield ourselves to him that he may make us like himself, and that we may have a mightier power ever working in our natures till they are full of beauty and “holy as God is holy.”
[December 17.]
THE CONFLICTS OF LIFE.
By Bishop EDWARD THOMSON, D. D., LL. D.
1. We can not escape difficulty. The air is tainted, the soil churlish, the ocean tempest tossed. Whether we are in the field or in the wilderness, on Persian plains or Alpine heights, amid equatorial heats, or temperate climes, or polar solitudes, we are met by a thousand obstacles. Earth is cursed, and everywhere she puts forth her thorn in obedience to her Maker’s withering word. True, the curse is tempered with the mercy which yields unnumbered blessings to the hand of toil; nevertheless, it cleaves to all earth’s surface, and turns the key upon her hidden treasures. We read of cloudless skies, and sunny climes, and fields which need naught but the sickle; but who finds them? Paradise is always ahead of the emigrant.
Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward; that is, by a general law of nature. Hence we find it in want and abundance, in toil and indolence, in indulgence and restraint, in infancy, in manhood, and in age. It waits on every pleasure, and every path, and every pursuit—it dwells within. We can no more escape it than we can fly existence. Take a few illustrations. A young man resolves to be eminent. Entering the academy, he finds many difficulties in algebra, and becoming discouraged he gives it up; but has he liberated himself? No, he has plunged from great to greater difficulties. How can he unlock the vaults of mathematics without algebra, their only key? Does he abandon mathematics, another difficulty seizes him. How can he become educated without a knowledge of the exact sciences? Does he relinquish his aim at scholarship? How then, can he carry out his resolution to become eminent? Will he rescind his resolution? Then challenge him to tame the restless passions by which it was prompted. Like the fabled ships of the ancients, “Incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdim”—he who endeavors to avoid Charybdis is drawn into the jaws of Scylla. How many, because of difficulties in their pursuits, become idlers? But who on earth has more trouble than the idler? A man becomes religious, and enters the path of life; but he soon finds that the world opposes, that his passions demur, that his secular plans come in conflict with his religious efforts, that an invisible adversary stands in the path to contend every inch of ground with him. He retreats. But now his difficulties are ten thousand fold greater. He finds that an unseen footstep treads upon his wandering heels, that an All-seeing eye surveys his inmost soul, that an invisible hand writes his guilt in characters indelible on all the objects around him. He must encounter the stings of conscience, the upbraidings of reason, the admonitions of the altar, the prayers of Zion, the cross of his dying Christ, the intercession of his risen Jesus, the moving, mellowing, subduing influences of the divine Spirit, the ten thousand warnings of a merciful Providence, the unnumbered monitions of living, decaying, dying, reviving nature, the very sympathies of heaven, yea, even the moving entreaties of her compassionate king. The apostate deliberately contends with conscience, reason, Providence, truth, Zion, men, angels, God; and in addition to all these the enemies he had before, and without a single auxiliary in earth, hell, or heaven! Verily, he has gained.
2. Difficulties invigorate the soul. I do not mean the difficulties of indolence and disobedience, these are withering curses, but the difficulties of industry, of obedience.
They are conditions essential to strength. What gives power to the arm of the smith? The weight of his hammer. What gives swiftness to the Indian foot? The fleetness of the game. Thus it is with the senses. What confers exquisite sensibility upon the blind man’s ear? The curtain which, by hiding the visible universe from his sight, compels him to give intense regard to the most delicate vibrations that play upon his tympanum. Thus it is with the intellect. Who is the greatest reasoner? He who habitually struggles with the worst difficulties that can be mastered by reason. Some men have fruitless imaginations; but who are they? Those who have never led their fancies out. The genial oak planted in a dismal cellar, shut out from the light and air of heaven, would not grow up and lift its branches to the skies. Plant your imagination in the heavens, and let it be subject to the high and holy influences of its pure ether, and its silent lights, and it shall manifest vitality, and vigor, and upward aspirations.
The memory, too, is strong, if subjected to proper exercise. It will yield no revenue to the soul that does not tax it; and just in proportion as it is taxed, will it be found to have capacity of production. I will add that it is thus with the moral powers. Envy, jealousy, anger, those bitter fountains which so often tincture the streams of private and domestic joy, deepen in proportion to the obstacles through which they flow. Avarice and ambition, those demons that have desolated the globe with war, derive their overwhelming power from the difficulties which impede their progress. The daring lover testifies that love becomes more wild and resistless as great and romantic difficulties rise around him. What makes the good Christian? Perpetual trial. He who has experienced the severest storms, and has most frequently thrown out the Christian anchor, has the strongest hope. Where shall we expect the firmest faith? At the gate of St. Peter’s? or at the martyr’s stake? Who is compared to purified silver or gold? That Christian around whose soul God hath kindled the fires of his furnace, and kept them glowing till it reflected his own image.
Difficulties give a healthy tone and tendency to the powers. As a body in a state of inaction becomes lethargic and diseased, so the intellect, if not kept in vigorous exercise, becomes enfeebled, and gradually sinks under the sway of the passions. Energetic action is indispensable to preserve both the body from disease, and the soul from the dominion of sense.
3. Difficulties develop resources. To prove this it is only necessary to cite the aphorism—necessity is the mother of invention. She levels forests, she rears cities, she builds bridges, she prostrates mountains, she lays her iron pathway from river to river, and from sea to sea, she baffles the raging elements, and extends her dominion from earth to air and ocean, she ascends the heavens, and with fearless foot treads round the zodiac.
4. There is scarce any difficulty that can not be overcome by perseverance. Trace any great mind to its culmination, and you will find that its ascent was slow, and by natural laws, and that its difficulties were such only as ordinary minds can surmount. Great results, whether physical or moral, are not often the offspring of giant powers. Genius is more frequently a curse than a blessing. Its possessor, relying upon his extraordinary gifts, generally falls into habits of indolence, and fails to collect the materials which are requisite to useful and magnificent effort. But there is a something which is sure of success; it is the determination which, having entered upon a career with full conviction that it is right, pursues it in calm defiance of all opposition. With such a feeling a man can not but be mighty. Toil does not weary, pain does not arrest him. Carrying a compass in his heart, which always points to one bright star, he allows no footstep to be taken which does not tend in that direction. Neither the heaving earthquake, nor the yawning gulf, nor the burning mountain can terrify him from his course; and if the heavens should fall, the shattered ruins would strike him on his way to his object. Show me the man who has this principle, and I care not to measure his blood, nor brains. I ask not his name nor his nation—I pronounce that his hand will be felt upon his generation, and his mind enstamped upon succeeding ages.
This attribute is God-like. It may be traced throughout the universe. It has descended from the skies—it is the great charm of angelic natures. It is hardly to be contemplated, even in the demon, without admiration. It is this which gives to the warrior his crown, and encircles his brow with a halo that, in the estimation of a misjudging world, neither darkness, nor lust, nor blasphemy, nor blood can obscure. The bard of Mantua, to whose tomb genius in all ages makes its willing pilgrimage, never presents his hero in a more attractive light, than when he represents him, “tot volvere casus,” rolling his misfortunes forward, as a river bearing all opposition before it.
I am well satisfied that it is a sure passport to mental excellence. Science has no summit too lofty for its ascent—literature has no gate too strong for its entrance. The graces collect around it, and the laurel comes at its bidding. Talk not of circumstances. Repudiate forever that doctrine so paralyzing, so degrading, and yet so general, “Man is the creature of circumstances.” Rather adopt that other sentiment, more inspiring to yourselves, more honorable to your nature, more consonant with truth, Man the architect of his own fortune. I grant that circumstances have their influence, and that often this is not small; but there are impulses within, to which things external are as lava to the volcano. Circumstances are as tools to the artist. Zeuxis would have been a painter without canvas; Michael Angelo would have been a sculptor without marble; Herschell would have been a philosopher without a telescope, and Newton would have ascended the skies though no apple had ever descended upon his head. One of the most distinguished surgeons of modern times performed nearly all the operations of surgery with a razor. West commenced painting in a garret, and plundered the family cat for bristles to make his brushes. When Paganini once rose to amuse a crowded auditory with his music, he found that his violin had been removed, and a coarse instrument substituted for it. Explaining the trick, he said to the audience, “Now I will show you that the music is not in my violin, but in me.” Then drawing his bow, he sent forth sounds sweet as ever entranced delighted mortals. Be assured, the world is a coarse instrument at best, and if you would send forth sweet sounds from its strings, there must be music in your fingers. Fortune may favor, but do not rely upon her—do not fear her. Act upon the doctrine of the Grecian poet,
“I seek what’s to be sought—
I learn what’s to be taught—
I beg the rest of heav’n.”
Talk not of genius. I grant there are differences in mind, originally, but there is mind enough in every ordinary human skull, if its energies are properly directed, to accomplish mighty results. Fear not obstacles. What are your difficulties? Poverty? ignorance? obscurity? Have they not all been overcome by a host well known to fame? But perchance you climb untrodden heights. Nevertheless, fear to set down any obstacle as insuperable. Look at the achievements of man in the natural and moral worlds, and then say whether you dare set down any difficulty as insurmountable, or whether you are ready to prescribe boundaries to the operations of human power.
Are you destined to maintain the worship of the true God amid the darkness of infidelity? Daniel in the den of lions, Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, in the flames of the furnace, and a long line of illustrious martyrs, shouting hosannas from the flames, put forth their hands from the stake to beckon you onward. Are you destined to plant the Gospel in heathen lands—an enterprise the most daring and glorious in which mortals can engage? Do you imagine you can meet a difficulty which the apostle Paul did not vanquish? But he was an apostle, yea, and the most successful of all the apostles. And what was the secret of his success? Was it his learning? The gift of tongues made the other apostles his equals in this respect. Was it his eloquence? Doubtless he was eloquent; but Apollos, too, was eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures. Was it his inspiration? But were not others inspired, also? It was his firmness and perseverance. When he preached Christ Jesus and him crucified, nothing could drive or divert, or daunt him: “This one thing I do,” etc.
Are you called to meet bigotry and superstition, armed with learning, power, and wealth? See Luther braving the thunders of the Vatican, and hear him say, “I would go to Worms were there as many devils there as there are tiles on the houses,” and then affirm, if you dare, that it is your duty to succumb to your difficulties. Are you destined, which heaven forbid, to lead an army to resist invaders, or advance to conquest? Ask Cæsar, Hannibal, Pyrrhus, Alexander, what kind of difficulties may be overcome by decision of character. Have you undertaken to ascend from poverty and obscurity to eminence and wealth? Ask the field or the cabinet, any profession whatever, or either house of Congress, whether there are any difficulties which will not yield to firmness and perseverance, and ten thousand voices shall respond, in animating accents, No.
[December 24.]
CHRISTMAS SONGS.
THE BEAUTIFUL SONG.
There’s a song in the air,
There’s a star in the sky,
There’s a mother’s deep prayer,
And a baby’s low cry,
And the star rains its fire while the beautiful sing,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King!
There’s a tumult of joy
O’er the wonderful birth,
For the Virgin’s sweet boy
Is the Lord of the earth.
Aye, the star rains its fire, and the beautiful sing,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King!
In the light of the star
Lie the ages impearl’d;
And that song from afar
Has swept over the world:
Every hearth is aflame, and the beautiful sing
In the homes of the nations that Jesus is King!
We rejoice in the light,
And we echo the song
That comes down through the night
From the heavenly throng.
Aye, we shout to the lovely evangel they bring,
And we greet in his cradle our Savior and King.
J. G. Holland.
THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST.
Night of wonder, night of glory,
Night all solemn and serene,
Night of old prophetic story,
Such as time has never seen:
Sweetest darkness, softest blue
That these fair skies ever knew.
Night of beauty, night of gladness,
Night of nights—of nights the best;
Not a cloud to speak of sadness,
Not a star but sings of rest:
Holy midnight, beaming peace,
Never shall thy radiance cease.
Happy city, dearest, fairest,
Blessed, blessed Bethlehem!
Least, yet greatest, noblest, rarest,
Judah’s ever-sparkling gem;
Out of thee there comes the Light
That dispelleth all our night.
Now thy King to thee descendeth,
Borne upon a woman’s knee;
To thy gates his steps he bendeth,
To the manger cometh he;
David’s Lord and David’s Son,
This his cradle and his throne.
He, the lowliest of the lowly,
To our sinful world has come;
He, the holiest of the holy,
Can not find a human home.
All for us he yonder lies,
All for us he lives and dies.
Babe of weakness, child of glory,
At thy cradle thus we bow;
Poor and sad thy earthly story,
Yet the King of glory thou:
By all heaven and earth adored,
David’s Son and David’s Lord.
Light of life, thou liest yonder,
Shining in thy heavenly love;
Naught from thee our souls shall sunder,
Naught from us shall thee remove:
Take these hearts and let them be
Throne and cradle both to thee!
Horatius Bonar.
CHRISTMAS HYMN.
O North, with all thy vales of green!
O South, with all thy palms!
From peopled towns, and fields between,
Uplift thy voice of psalms.
Raise, ancient East, the anthem high,
And let the youthful West reply.
Lo, in the clouds of heaven appears
God’s well-beloved Son;
He brings a train of brighter years,
His kingdom is begun.
He comes a guilty world to bless,
With mercy, truth, and righteousness.
Oh Father, haste the promised hour,
When at his feet shall lie
All rule, authority, and power,
Beneath the ample sky;
When he shall reign, from pole to pole,
The Lord of every human soul;
When all shall heed the words he said,
Amid their daily cares,
And by the loving life he led,
Shall strive to pattern theirs;
And he who conquer’d death shall win
The mightier conquest over sin.
ON CHRISTMAS EVE.
By the firelight’s quivering crimson,
While the winter sun sinks low,
Let us watch till the first vague star, wife,
Has dawned o’er the glooming snow;
For if ever our lost ones may wander from the realms of their rest, I believe
That they seek us as visiting angels in the dusk of the Christmas Eve.
And our lonelier anguish of longing,
Our thrills of in tenser despair,
Are born—who may tell?—of a viewless embrace
Or a shadowy hand on our hair!
O, the darlings are near us to-night, wife, as we watch the soft hearth-glimmer weave
Strange pictures on ceiling and curtain in the dusk of the Christmas Eve!
And pitiful memory’s enchantment
Has mingled the gloom round us cast,
With a glow as from ashes of embers
That crumble on hearths of the past!
And a note of boy-laughter, long vanish’d, or the gold of a ringlet, each leaves
An echo—a gleam—that forever must haunt the dusk of our Christmas Eves!
And the children draw near once again, wife,
And, marveling, hark to the quaint
Immemorial holiday legend
Of the beautiful reindeer-drawn saint.
Let us murmur it now, till the shadows of the desolate chamber believe
That they fall, as of old, round the dear ones in the dusk of the Christmas Eve!
Let us murmur it softly; who knows, wife,
But a whisper will float, in reply,
Clear and sweet through the compassing dimness
As proof that our darlings are nigh?
For if ever their footsteps may wander from the heavenly home, I believe
They will seek us as visitant angels in the dusk of the Christmas Eve!
Edgar Fawcett.
[December 31.]
GOD MAGNIFIED IN HIS WORKS.[C]
By G. CHAPLIN CHILD, M. D.
In an outlying province of the Turkish empire, where sultan and firman are often superseded by the lawless will of sheik or pacha, two famous rivers—Tigris and Euphrates—gradually converge, and, after mingling their waters together, glide gently onward to the Persian Gulf. In the fork thus formed between them stretches a vast plain, made known to us in early Scripture history as Shinar, Chaldæa, and Babylon, as well as by other less familiar names, but to which the term Mesopotamia has been more usually applied, as it aptly designates a district “lying between rivers.” The general aspect of this plain is one of desolation. Fertile strips here and there border the Euphrates’ banks, and willows are still seen flourishing where the sorrowing Israelites once hung up their harps; but away from those green fringes the eye wanders over wild, dreary wastes from which the last traces of cultivation are slowly dying out. Vast tracts lie soaked in permanent swamps, while much of the remaining land is, at one period of the year, flooded by the unheeded inundations of the neighboring rivers, and, at another, baked into an arid desert by the burning rays of the sun. It need scarcely be said that population has almost disappeared from those melancholy plains; for the wandering Arab is little tempted to pitch his tent or to pasture his flocks on so sterile a soil. The doom that was so clearly foretold by the prophets has fallen upon it, and Babylon now “lies desolate in the sight of all that pass by.” It has become the “habitation of the beasts of the desert.” As the traveler plods onward over its unfrequented tracts, the startled wild-fowl rises with quick splash from the reedy pool, or a few scared gazelles may perhaps be descried bounding over the distant plain. The “owl” and the “bittern,” the jackal and the hyena add their testimony to the exactness with which the words of Scripture have been fulfilled. More rarely a solitary lion may be seen skulking among the strange, mysterious mounds and “heaps” of stones that loom here and there above the plain.
Mournful and dreary though this land now be, it is and ever will remain one of the most interesting spots on earth. It was not always “desolate.” No other place, perhaps, claims with a better title to be regarded as the scene where our first parents walked together in paradise. Such, at least, has been the common tradition; and in a well-known edition of the Bible, published in 1599, may be found a map of the Garden of Eden, of which the site of Babylon forms the center. But, be that as it may, there can be no doubt of its former greatness and fertility, for the record is plainly written all over the soil. Everywhere it is furrowed by ruined canals, of which some tell us of departed commerce and wealth, others of skillful irrigation and abundant crops. Heaps of rubbish are to be met with in which lie hidden fragments of pottery which bear witness to the former presence of a highly cultivated people; and uncouth mounds rise strangely above the plain, in which the last relics of palaces and cities are buried together. For centuries history appeared to have lost her hold upon the great places of the past, and it is only within the last few years that some of them have been rescued from the oblivion that was slowly creeping over them. Questioned by the light of modern knowledge those mysterious stones of the plains open up to us the first page in the history of nations—transport us back almost to the dawn where antiquity begins, and bring within our sight those to whom the deluge was a recent event. They impart a substance to scenes we have often tried in vain to realize. In imagination we see Nimrod the Mighty Hunter, busy with the foundations of the city of Babel on the neighboring Euphrates’ banks, and piling up the “tower that was to reach Heaven.” Then it was that the patriarchal dignity of early Bible records expanded into royalty, and Babylon became the starting point in the long pedigree of kingdoms.
Babylon touched the zenith of its grandeur two thousand four hundred and fifty years ago, when Nebuchadnezzar sat upon the throne. He was the great warrior of that age. After overrunning Egypt he had returned to his capital laden with its spoil; he had chastised his rebellious subjects and treacherous allies, and he had utterly crushed the power of the Kings of Judah. The wicked and faithless Jehoiakim, blind to the warnings he received, had brought a terrible doom upon his country; for Nebuchadnezzar, not content with plundering the treasuries of the temple at Jerusalem, carried the king himself a prisoner to Babylon. Among the captives on this occasion were included Daniel the Prophet and his three friends,—Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, who in the land of their exile received the Chaldæan names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Nebuchadnezzar was no less great in the arts of peace than in those of war. He, therefore, encouraged learned men to make his capital their resort, and he also promoted the national prosperity by favoring agriculture and commerce. He dug canals in all directions to fertilize the land by irrigation. His merchants traded along the rich shores of the Mediterranean, and penetrated even to remote China. He provided for the security of Babylon by building or strengthening its walls, and he made it beautiful by adorning it with palaces. Its “hanging-gardens” were acknowledged throughout ancient times to be one of the wonders of the world, and their fame has endured up to this very hour.
At the court of such a monarch, Daniel’s learning was sure to procure for him distinction, and he soon became a member of the college of Magi or wise men. His subsequent success in interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, after all others had failed, raised him to the first rank in the tyrant’s favor, and we are told that “he sat in the gate of the king.” Nor in his prosperity did he forget his three Jewish friends,—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,—who through his influence were promoted to be governors in the province of Babylon.
The history of Nebuchadnezzar and the burning, fiery furnace—so illustrative on the one hand of perfect trust in God, and, on the other, of God’s power to deliver his servants from the assaults of their enemies—is endeared to all as one of the interesting Scripture narratives by which those who watched over us in the days of childhood endeavored to attract us onward to the knowledge of our Bible. In the book of Daniel it is related how Nebuchadnezzar, after having been brought by the miraculous interpretation of his dream to acknowledge the “God of Gods and Lord of Kings,” subsequently relapsed into idolatry through the corrupting influence of worldly prosperity. In the full swell of his pride he set up a golden image, and commanded that all his subjects should fall down and worship it. The Babylonian nobles were jealous of the favor shown to the three captives; and they, therefore, encouraged this wicked fancy of the king, because it seemed to open out the means of effecting their ruin. They rightly calculated that the Hebrew Governors would never forsake the God of their Fathers, nor worship the image which the king had set up. And we know that when the hour of trial did come, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego remained true to their faith; and were forthwith bound and cast into the burning, fiery furnace, as a punishment for their disobedience to the tyrant’s will.
From the torments and dangers of this ordeal the three Hebrews were miraculously preserved. Daniel tells us that Nebuchadnezzar himself saw them “loose and walking in the midst of the fire.” “Not a hair of their heads was singed, neither were their coats changed, nor had the smell of fire passed on them.” Elsewhere, in the Song of the Three Children, we are told that “they walked in the midst of the fire, praising God, and blessing the Lord.” After so signal a deliverance, it is easy to conceive the fervor with which their hymn of gratitude was poured forth. The deepest consciousness of the merciful power of God welled up in their hearts and burst from their lips, and the whole universe was ransacked for illustrations to typify and express it. In whatever direction they turned, they beheld Nature crowded with emblems of his greatness and mercy, and they eagerly seized upon them as aids to bring their thoughts up to the fervor of their adoration. Shall not we also do wisely to profit by their example? Our daily obligations to God may not be so miraculous, in the ordinary meaning of the term, but they are, nevertheless, great and countless beyond our power to conceive. Let us then, in humble consciousness of the poverty and imperfection of our thanksgivings, gladly make this suggestive hymn our own; and let us on this, as on all occasions, accept with joy every aid that helps us to “bless, praise, and magnify the Lord.”
“BENEDICITE, OMNIA OPERA.”
O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Heavens, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever.
O ye Waters that be above the Firmament, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O all ye Powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Sun and Moon, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Stars of Heaven, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Fire and Heat, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Nights and Days, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Light and Darkness, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O let the Earth bless the Lord: yea, let it praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Mountains and Hills, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O all ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Wells, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever.
O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever.
O ye Whales, and all that move in the Waters, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O all ye Fowls of the Air, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Children of Men, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O let Israel bless the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever.
O ye Servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
[End of Required Reading for December.]
[ATHEISTIC SCIENTISTS.]
By JOHN STUART BLACKIE.
There is a sort of men whose faith is all
In their five fingers, and what fingering brings,
With all beyond of wondrous great and small,
Unnamed, uncounted in their tale of things;
A race of blinkards, who peruse the case
And shell of life, but feel no soul behind,
And in the marshaled world can find a place
For all things, only not the marshaling Mind.
’Tis strange, ’tis sad; and yet why blame the mole
For channelling earth?—such earthy things are they;
E’en let them muster forth in blank array,
Frames with no pictures, pictures with no soul.
I, while this dædal dome o’erspans the sod,
Will own the builder’s hand, and worship God.
“My friend, whoever has experienced misfortunes knows that when a mountain-wave of ills comes upon mortals, they are wont to fear all things; but when the gale of fortune blows smoothly, they are confident that the same deity will constantly propel their bark with a favorable breeze.”—Æschylus.
[POISON IN COMMON THINGS.]
By Prof. P. A. SIMPSON, M. A., M. D.