ONE HUNDRED QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “COLLEGE GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH,” AND “THE CHARACTER OF JESUS.”
BY A. M. MARTIN,
General Secretary C. L. S. C.
I.—FIFTY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “COLLEGE GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH,” FROM COMMENCEMENT OF BOOK TO PAGE 82, INCLUSIVE.
1. Q. What is the object of the volume, “College Greek in English?” A. To furnish readers not versed in any tongue but the English, with the means of obtaining, at their leisure, and without change of residence on their part, approximately the same knowledge of Greek letters as is imparted to students during a four years’ stay in the average American college.
2. Q. What is said of the courses of Greek reading in colleges? A. Various colleges have various courses of Greek reading prescribed for their students, and some colleges from time to time vary their courses.
3. Q. What is the Greek course considered in the present volume? A. A kind of eclectic and average Greek course.
4. Q. In Europe how does the university student accomplish his prescribed course of study? A. In any way he may choose to adopt, aiming simply at being able to pass the tests of examination that await him only at long intervals of his progress.
5. Q. How are the examinations of college students conducted in this country? A. The student is examined, not only at certain widely separated stations in his course, but every day.
6. Q. What is said of the standard of performance in recitation? A. It varies greatly under different teachers, at different colleges, in different classes. It is never anywhere too high.
7. Q. What is the average maximum accomplished in colleges in any one Greek author? A. About one hundred pages of text.
8. Q. What is probably a fair estimate for the average number of terms in which Greek is studied by the Greek student? A. Five or six terms, and it is rarely the case that to any one Greek author more than a single term is devoted.
9. Q. On an average how many Greek authors are introduced into a college Greek course? A. Six are as many as are perhaps introduced on an average.
10. Q. What is the plan in the present book? A. To give the readers a taste of some ten or twelve Greek authors, representing four departments of Greek literature.
11. Q. What are the four departments of Greek literature represented? A. History, philosophy, poetry, and eloquence.
12. Q. Who are the historians represented? A. Herodotus and Thucydides.
13. Q. What title has been bestowed upon Herodotus? A. The father of history.
14. Q. How many years may have elapsed after Homer wrote the world’s first great epic, before Herodotus wrote the world’s first great history? A. Five hundred years.
15. Q. When did Thucydides write his historical masterpiece? A. Promptly after Herodotus—perhaps while Herodotus was still among the living.
16. Q. What makes Herodotus differ so much in seeming antiquity from his younger contemporary, Thucydides? A. It is largely the striking contrast in tone and manner between the two historians.
17. Q. What has gained for Herodotus a traditional and popular repute of untrustworthiness, that he is far from deserving? A. His credulity, together with his plan of reporting reports, to a great extent irrespective of their probable truth.
18. Q. What is said of Herodotus’s efforts to gain information? A. He was very painstaking in his efforts to gain information, and traveled extensively.
19. Q. What does the word history in its present universal usage mean? A. A supposedly trustworthy account, written with a degree of philosophical insight into cause and effect, of transactions rising to a certain height of importance and dignity.
20. Q. In the use of Herodotus what did the word history mean? A. Merely a report of investigations, researches, inquiries undertaken by the author.
21. Q. What is there to the conception of Herodotus’s work? A. A kind of epic majesty and sweep.
22. Q. Where and when was Herodotus born? A. In Halicarnassus, a Dorian Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor, about 484 B. C.
23. Q. When and where did Herodotus die? A. When and where he died is not certainly known.
24. Q. What made up to Herodotus the whole world of mankind? A. The Greeks and the Barbarians.
25. Q. What are the ultimate objective points at which he aims? A. First, Marathon, and then Thermopylæ and Salamis, with Platæa and Mycale.
26. Q. To reach these points what start does the history take? A. From the origin of those empires older than the Persian, which in due time the Persian received and swallowed up.
27. Q. Of what countries does it fall within the comprehensive design of the history to treat? A. Of Lydia, Egypt, Babylon, Scythia, Libya, as well as of Persia and Greece.
28. Q. From what fact does the book on Egypt have a peculiar interest? A. From the fact of its being the only literature to furnish information concerning that country parallel with the information contained in the Bible.
29. Q. To what parts of the history does the present author chiefly limit himself? A. To the story of Crœsus and the invasion of Xerxes.
30. Q. What do these two parts together best illustrate? A. The peculiar theory of human life upon which Herodotus conceived and composed his history.
31. Q. How does Crœsus come in our historian’s way? A. As having, according to Herodotus, been the first Asiatic to commence hostilities against the Greeks.
32. Q. What Greek colonies did Crœsus bring under his dominion? A. The Greek colonies in Asia Minor.
33. Q. Of what empire was Crœsus the ruler? A. The Lydian empire.
34. Q. For whom did Sardis, the capital of the Lydian empire, become the resort? A. For the sages of Greece.
35. Q. Whom among the Greek celebrities to visit him did Crœsus make his own guest, and lodge him in his palace? A. Solon.
36. Q. With what is the first considerable extract from Herodotus made by our author occupied? A. With an account of a conversation between Solon and Crœsus.
37. Q. Against whom did Crœsus make war? A. Cyrus, king of Persia.
38. Q. What was the result of the war in which Crœsus engaged with Cyrus? A. Sardis was taken by Cyrus and Crœsus made a captive.
39. Q. How was Crœsus treated by Cyrus after he became his prisoner? A. He was made his companion and counselor.
40. Q. An account of the capture of what city by Cyrus is given in the extracts from Herodotus? A. The capture of Babylon.
41. Q. To what is nearly the entire second book of Herodotus’s history devoted? A. To an account of Egypt, the land and the people.
42. Q. What plan has our author followed in making extracts from Herodotus’s history of the invasion of Greece by Xerxes? A. A few salient anecdotes are selected from the full store supplied by Herodotus.
43. Q. What aim are the selections made to serve? A. Not only to show the matter and method of Herodotus, but to illustrate the characters of two men in particular, brought into the strong light of mutual contrast by the struggle—Xerxes and Themistocles.
44. Q. To what is the fact due that Thucydides is not so entertaining a historian as Herodotus? A. Partly to the nature of his subject; but partly to the nature of the man.
45. Q. What does Thucydides describe in his history? A. The so-called Peloponnesian war.
46. Q. To what conflict is this name given? A. To a conflict, continued with little interruption during twenty-seven years, between Sparta, with her allies, on the one side, and Athens, with her allies, on the other.
47. Q. What was the prize contended for in this war? A. The leadership in Hellenic affairs.
48. Q. How did Thucydides regard the Peloponnesian war? A. He thought that never in the world had there been a war so great as promised in its imminency to be the Peloponnesian war.
49. Q. In what particulars is the history of Thucydides important? A. Not as history, but, first, as literature, and secondly, as fund of illustration for the Greek national genius, it is of the very highest importance.
50. Q. In what form is it composed? A. In the form of annals, that is, the events and incidents are related chronologically by years.
II.—FIFTY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “THE CHARACTER OF JESUS.”
51. Q. What is the design of the author in the argument of the book under consideration? A. To show the self-evidencing, superhuman character of Christ, forbidding his possible classification with men.
52. Q. What is the grand peculiarity of the sacred writings? A. That they deal in supernatural events and transactions, and show the fact of a celestial institution finally erected on earth.
53. Q. Who is the central figure of Christianity? A. Jesus Christ, and with him the entire fabric either stands or falls.
54. Q. In the argument, what is, and what is not assumed, in regard to the narrative by which the manner and facts of the life of Jesus are reported to us? A. The truth of the narrative is not assumed, but only the representations themselves as being just what they are.
55. Q. On what is it proposed to rest a principal argument for Christianity as a supernatural institution? A. On the single question of the more than human character of Jesus.
56. Q. What is the first peculiarity at the root of his character? A. That he begins life with a perfect youth.
57. Q. What is the early character of Jesus in this respect? A. It is a picture that stands by itself.
58. Q. What element in the character of Jesus in his maturity do we discover at once which distinguishes it from all human characters? A. His innocence.
59. Q. How does human piety begin? A. With repentance.
60. Q. What does Christ, in the character given him, acknowledge as to sin? A. He never acknowledges sin.
61. Q. What elements of character was Christ able perfectly to unite? A. Elements of character that others find the greatest difficulty in uniting, however unevenly and partially.
62. Q. What attitude of Jesus is distinct from any that was ever taken by a sane man, and is yet triumphantly sustained? A. The attitude of supremacy toward the race, and inherent affinity or oneness with God.
63. Q. What is there peculiar in the passive side of the character of Jesus? A. In opposition to the impression of the world generally, Christ connects the non-resisting and gentle passivities with a character of the severest grandeur and majesty.
64. Q. What is it easy to distinguish in what is called preëminently the passion of Christ? A. A character which separates it from all mere human martyrdoms.
65. Q. In what way does Christ show himself to be a superhuman character even more sublimely than in the personal traits exhibited in his life? A. In the undertakings, works, and teachings, by which he proved his Messiahship.
66. Q. What was the grand idea in the mission of Christ? A. To new-create the human race and restore it to God, in the unity of a spiritual kingdom.
67. Q. How is the plan of Christ related to time? A. It is a plan as universal in time as it is in the scope of its objects.
68. Q. With whom does Christ take rank? A. He takes rank with the poor, and grounds all the immense expectations of his cause on a beginning made with the lowly and dejected classes of the world.
69. Q. Hitherto what opinion had prevailed among all the great statesmen and philosophers of the world, in regard to a great change or reform in society beginning with the poor? A. No philosopher who had conceived the notion of building up an ideal state or republic ever thought of beginning with the poor.
70. Q. Where was any hope of reaching the world by any scheme of social regeneration to begin? A. With the higher classes, and through them operate its results.
71. Q. How is the more than human character of Jesus further displayed in his thus identifying himself with the poor? A. In the fact that he was yet able to do it without eliciting any feeling of partisanship in them.
72. Q. What is noticed first of all in the teaching of Christ? A. The perfect originality and independence of his teaching.
73. Q. What is not to be detected by any sign in his teaching? A. That the human sphere in which he moved imparted anything to him.
74. Q. By what methods does he not teach? A. He does not teach by the human methods.
75. Q. In what particular does he never reveal the infirmity so commonly shown by human teachers? A. He never veers a little from the point, or turns his doctrine off by shades of variation to catch the assent of multitudes.
76. Q. What is one remarkable fact that distinguishes Christ from any other known teacher of the world? A. Words could never turn him to a one-sided view of anything.
77. Q. What was the relation of Christ to the superstitions of his times? A. He was perfectly clear of all the current superstitions.
78. Q. Of what did Christ never take the ground or boast the distinction? A. Of a liberal among his countrymen.
79. Q. What is a remarkable and even superhuman distinction of Jesus in regard to the simplicity of his teachings? A. While he is advancing doctrines so far transcending all deductions of philosophy, and opening mysteries that defy all human powers of explication, he is yet able to set his teachings in a form of simplicity that accommodates all classes of minds.
80. Q. What form for truth was Jesus first able to find? A. A form for truth adequate to all the world’s uses.
81. Q. What is the character of the God that Christ revealed? A. God whom the humblest artisan can teach, and all mankind embrace with a faith that unifies them all.
82. Q. In what has the morality of Jesus a potential superiority to that of all human teachers? A. In the fact that it is not an artistic or theoretically elaborated scheme, but one that is propounded in precepts that carry their own evidence.
83. Q. What is a high distinction of Christ’s character as seen in his teachings? A. That he is never anxious for the success of his doctrines.
84. Q. In what was the character of Jesus different from that of all the mere men of the race as shown by familiarity? A. Instead of being reduced in eminence, as human characters are, it was raised and made sacred by familiarity.
85. Q. What two questions now remain which the argument of the author requires to be answered? A. Did any such being as Jesus actually exist? and, if so, was he a sinless character?
86. Q. What can we believe more easily than that Christ was a man, and yet a perfect character, such as here given? A. We can believe any miracle more easily.
87. Q. If Jesus was a sinner, of what was he conscious? A. He was conscious of sin, as all sinners are, and, therefore, was a hypocrite in the whole fabric of his character.
88. Q. What would such an example of successful hypocrisy be of itself? A. The greatest miracle ever heard of in the world.
89. Q. What is Mr. Parker’s estimate of the doctrine of Christ? A. “He pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true as God.”
90. Q. What is the first conclusion reached by our author in his argument? A. That Christ actually lived and bore the real character ascribed to him in history.
91. Q. What is the second conclusion? A. That he was a sinless character.
92. Q. What is it incredible and contrary to reason to suppose of a being out of humanity? A. That he will be shut up within all the limitations of humanity.
93. Q. Jesus being a miracle himself, if he did not work miracles what would it be? A. It would be the greatest of all miracles.
94. Q. What is said of the mythical hypothesis to account for the Christian miracles advanced by the critics who deny them? A. It is itself impossible.
95. Q. What have the evangelists been able to give us concerning Christ? A. A doctrine upon which the world has never advanced, and a character so deep that the richest hearts have felt nothing deeper, and added nothing to the sentiment of it.
96. Q. Of what are these mighty works of Jesus, which have been done and duly certified, a fit expression to us? A. Of the fact that he can do for us all that we want.
97. Q. What does our author call the spirit of Jesus unabridged? A. The great miracle of Christianity.
98. Q. What only can draw the soul to faith, and open it to the power of a supernatural and new-creative mercy? A. Nothing but to say, “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God by miracles and signs which God did by him.”
99. Q. In what way are all the conditions of life raised by the advent of Jesus? A. By the meaning he has shown to be in them, and the grace he has put upon them.
100. Q. What does our author say it would be easier to do than to get the character of Jesus out of the world? A. It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky, separating and expunging one of the colors.