MELLO.
I complained that the translators and revisors left out this word, apparently for the reason that it conflicts with their theology. It makes certain things to be near at hand, which they regarded as far in the future. My critic says, “The Greek mellō frequently has the meaning assigned to it by Dr. Manley, but it is not shut up to that meaning,” p. 106. It probably has that meaning twenty times, where it has any other meaning once. In the passages from which it is excluded, if it has any other meaning, why did they not retain it, and render it according to its true import, and not throw it out? Mr. Kidder does not meet the case, when he shows that the word does sometimes have another meaning. His business is to show that it has no meaning, in the passages from which it is excluded. It will then be in order to show why the writers put such a word in these passages. When the translators recognize the word, they seldom fail to give it a meaning corresponding to the sense I assign to it.
It is conceded that the wrath to come (Matt. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7.), should probably be the wrath about to come, meaning the destruction soon to fall on the Jewish State. This word mellō (about) takes the passage out of the hands of those who would apply it to a far-off eternal punishment. The word in other passages would have been alike opposed to the common construction; and, therefore, it was left out. This is the plain common-sense view of the case; and I shall hold the translators and revisers guilty of a base fraud, till some good reason can be given for their conduct. This probably cannot be done.
Aiōn, aiōnios. That the expression, “end of the world,” where the original for world is aiōn, ever has the meaning of end of this material universe cannot be proved. Where Jesus promises to be with his disciples to the end of the world (aiōn) is the most favorable instance. But in the sense here intended, namely, enabling them to perform miracles, he was with them, only to the end of the Jewish age. By that time the Gospel was so well established, as no longer to need miraculous interposition. In what sense Jesus was with the disciples, is explained by the closing words of Mark’s Gospel. “And they went forth, preaching everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word, by the signs that followed. Amen.”
My critic says of aiōn, p. 107: “It may at times refer to the Jewish dispensation, with its limit fixed at the judgment executed upon the holy city, and the destruction of the temple.” Then it may mean this, in Matt. xiii. 38, 39, 49, and xxiv. 3. “It does not always mean age; for this meaning is inadequate for the worlds, aiōnos, of Heb. i. 2, xi. 3.” It does not seem so; for God created the ages and dispensations of time, as much as he did the material worlds. Constituted may be better than created. God is the author of both creations. Aion is a term that always implies time, or duration, and not material substance. De Quincey says that everything has its aion. The aiōn of an individual man is about seventy years. The aion of the human race would probably be some millions of years. It would follow from this reasoning that the aiōn of God would be eternal, past, and to come. De Quincey does not, I believe, carry his reasoning to this result; and I had never seen the argument stated before, as it is in the passages produced by Mr. K., from Aristotle and Plato. But the same reasoning that makes the aiōn of God eternal, makes every other limited. It would be illogical, and appear so at once, if one should argue, God is eternal; and, therefore, punishment is eternal.
The rule generally accepted for understanding aiōnios, is to modify the meaning according to the nature of the noun which it qualifies. If it denote duration, the amount of duration will depend on the noun qualified. This rule forbids that eternal punishment should be of as long duration as eternal life. Punishment is a means to an end, and in itself is undesirable. Life or happiness is an end; the longer continued the better; for it is desirable in itself. It is that which we seek by means of punishment. The less we have of punishment, the better. The more we have of life, the better.
My critic ought to have pondered the words of Dr. Taylor Lewis, before he entered on this discussion. His words are, “The preacher, in contending with the Universalist and the Restorationist, would commit an error, and it may be, suffer a failure in his argument, should he lay the whole stress of it on the etymological or historical significance of the words, aiōn, aiōnios, and attempt to prove that of themselves they necessarily carry the meaning of endless duration.” Lange’s Eccl. p. 48. Beecher’s “Retribution,” p. 154. Prof. Lewis says that aiōnios means pertaining to the age or world to come. The only fault this definition has, is the addition of the words to come. Jesus says, “These shall go away into the punishment of the age, and the righteous into the life of the age.” The age referred to, is the Christian age or dispensation, that has already come. It is the same as has all along been called, “the age to come,” or about to come. It was to follow the Jewish age, which was soon to end. Both together are referred to as “this age and that which is about to come.” But when the parable of the sheep and goats begins, the age is already come.
The form here given by Taylor Lewis is the same as Jesus himself used, if he spoke the Aramaic, as my critic says he did, and I agree with him. He did not say, “These shall go away into aiōnion punishment,” etc., which is the unwarranted Greek form. But his words are, “These shall go away into the punishment of the age (or pertaining to the age), and the righteous into the life of the age (or pertaining to the age).” It is the same form in the Peshito-Syriac version, made in the days of the Apostles. It is the same in the Hebrew New Testament, translated by the Bible society, to circulate among the modern Jews.
I have in my possession over a hundred passages, from classic Greek authors, in which aiōn is used in a limited sense, generally denoting human life, or the age of man. It is used, in a few instances, to denote an endless age, by attaching to it another word for endless. The adjective aiōnios is used very little by these authors, and not at all, I think, by the more ancient ones. No lexicon gives it the definition of eternal, till long after the time of Christ; and the remark is added, when thus defined, that it is so understood by the theologians.
But the principal help for understanding the Greek of the New Testament, is the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. The words we are discussing are found in that version not far from four hundred times, three fourths of them probably in a limited sense. The Hebrew form, “the statutes of the age,” are rendered into Greek, everlasting or aiōnion statutes; “the covenant of the age,” the aiōnion covenant, etc. These terms have sixteen different renderings. They are, everlasting, forever, forevermore, perpetual, ever, never (when joined with a negative particle), old, ancient, long, always, world, lasting, eternal, continuance, at any time, Elam. The last word stands for the Hebrew olam, the word answering to aiōn in the Greek. With these definitions in view (a number of them being limited terms), it would be folly to claim that this word has an unlimited meaning when applied to punishment. The punishment which God inflicts is limited. Heb. 12.
Great stress is placed on the circumstance, that in Matt. xxv. 46, the punishment and the life are spoken of near together, even in the same verse. Tertullian, and later Augustine, urged this fact as proof that both must be of the same duration. The late Albert Barns thought the argument sound. Of course, no large man ever rode a large horse, without being of the same size. Perhaps an illustration from Scripture will be more satisfactory. “And the eternal mountains were scattered; the everlasting hills did bow; his ways are everlasting.” Hab. iii. 6. For the last sentence, see the margin, Revised Edition. Are there to be no ways of God, after the mountains and hills are gone? Besides, this whole parable has its fulfilment, not in eternity, but in the Christian dispensation. It began to be fulfilled at the coming of Christ, when some were living, who had heard him, during his ministry, nearly forty years before. Matt. xvi. 27, 28. No fixed rewards and punishments are possible under the circumstances, for men are changing. The rendering “pertaining to the age,” has no objection of this kind. If it be claimed that a man, “once a Christian, always a Christian,” no one can doubt, that a man, not a Christian, may become one, and so change his condition—a proof that his condition is not eternal.
I will close this article by a few words on the apocalypse. The dramatic representation of Eichhorn is correct, save the added clause, “the eternal felicity of the future life described.” The holy city is not heaven; it came down from God out of heaven. It does not denote a final and fixed condition. It is four-square, and has three gates on each side; and all of them open continually, to admit those who wish to enter; and the invitation is sounded without ceasing, to the outsiders from within, to “come and partake of the waters of life freely.” Neither in the New Jerusalem, nor the lake of fire, is there any allusion to the eternal world of fixed and changeless conditions.
In those days, when books were not printed, but transcribed by the hand, it was customary for the author to make a strong appeal to the copyist or transcriber, not to make any alteration in the book, with certain penalties, fictitious or otherwise. Hence the Revelation closes with this admonition,—not to add to, nor take from, the book (xxii. 18, 19.), the penalty being sufficiently severe, to which I would commend the late revisers of the New Testament.
THE NEGRO QUESTION FROM THE NEGRO’S POINT OF VIEW.
BY PROF. W. S. SCARBOROUGH.
In the discussion of the so-called “Negro Problem,” there is, as a rule, a great deal of the sentimental and still more of the sensational. By a series of non sequitur arguments the average disputant succeeds admirably in proving what is foreign to the subject. This is true of writers of both sections of our country—North as well as South—but especially true of those of the South.
The recent symposium of Southern writers in the Independent on the Negro Question, as interesting as it was for novelty and variety of view, is no exception to the rule. If the negro could be induced to believe for a moment that he was thus actually destitute of all the elements that go to make up a rational creature, his life would be miserable beyond endurance. But he has not reached that point nor does he care to reach it. Others may exclaim:—
“O wad some power the giftie gi’e us
To see oursel’s as ithers see us;”
but not the negro, if the vision must always be so distorted. The black man is naturally of a sanguine temperament, as has so often been said; and the facts in the case bear him out in entertaining a hopeful view of his own future and his ability to carve it out. I am sure that they do not warrant even our Southern friends in taking such a pessimistic view of the situation, so far as the negro himself is concerned. But facts are of little account nowadays. There is a tendency to ignore them and appeal to the prejudices and passions of men, and that, too, when it is well known that such methods of procedure prolong rather than settle the question at issue. This is the work of the alarmist—to keep things stirred up and always in an unsettled state.
I think it may be justly inferred that the average white man does not understand the black man, and that he is still an unknown quantity to many of the white people of the country, even to those who profess to know him best. Admitting this, then, it is but natural that much of their deliberation and many of their conclusions should be wide of the mark. The negro does not censure the white man for his conclusions as they are the logical consequence of his premises, but he does object to his premises. Our white friends make their mistake in seeming by all their movements to insist that there is but one standpoint from which to view this question, the white man’s; but there is another and the negro is viewing it from that side, not selfishly but in a friendly and brotherly spirit.
Senator George was right when he said that the solution of this question should be left to time, but wrong when he further added, “and to the sound judgment of the Southern people.” The recent disfranchisement of the negroes of his native State shows very plainly to the thoughtful citizen that the South is not yet capable of justly handling this question, notwithstanding that they are the people “who have the trouble before them every day.” This is Mississippi’s fatal mistake and one that places the State in the rear of her Southern sisters, and for the present, at least, lessens the value of any suggestion from that quarter.
It is well understood that the sentiment of the American people is that enough has been done for the negro; that the country is under no obligations to look further after his interest, and that he must act for himself. Survival of the fittest is now the watchword. There is no objection to this provided the blacks are allowed to do for themselves,—to survive as the fittest, if it be possible,—but this they are not allowed to do. They are certainly anxious to work out their own destiny. They are tired of sentiment and are therefore impatient. They desire to show to the world that they are not only misunderstood but misjudged. They are willing to unite with either North or South in the adjustment of present difficulties.
Unlike the Indians they are sincere—neither treacherous nor deceitful. They are simple, frank, and open-hearted, and are as desirous of good government as are the most honored citizens of the land. Let alone, they will give neither the State nor the nation any trouble. They feel themselves a part and parcel of the nation and as such have an interest in its prosperity as deep as those who are allowed to exercise, untrammelled, the rights of citizenship.
To keep the blacks submissive there is need of neither army nor navy. Though at the foot of the ladder they are contented to remain there, until by virtue of their own efforts they may rise to higher planes. The negro has never sought, does not now, nor will he seek to step beyond his limit. “Social equality,” “Negro domination,” and “Negro supremacy,” are meaningless terms to him so far as his own aspirations are concerned. The social side of this question will regulate itself. It has always done so, in all ages and all climes, despite coercion, despite law. This is the least of the negro’s cares. His demand for civil rights is no demand for “social equality.” This is a mistaken view of the subject. It is this dread of social equality, this fear of social contact with the negro that precludes many well-meaning people from securing accurate information in regard to the aims, and purposes, and capabilities of those whom they desire to help. But there is light ahead, dark as at times it now may seem, and erroneous as are the views in regard to the negro’s relation to the American body-politic.
Congressman Herbert, in his effort to show the negro’s incapacity for self-government by calling attention to the defalcations, embezzlements, and petty larcenies, etc., of reconstruction times, forgets that if this is to be taken as the gauge of capacity for self-government, the same rule will apply to bank and railroad wreckers of the present day,—to every defaulter and embezzler of State and private funds, and to every absconding clerk. Now we must remember that this class of citizens is enormously large, and that they are all white, as a rule. Every daily paper that one picks up devotes considerable space to this class of citizens who, according to Mr. Herbert, has shown its “incapacity for self-government,” as well as the incapacity of others “who alone have acquired such a capacity” as is claimed by Congressman Barnes. Queer logic is it not? The latter should say so, for it is he who claims that “the Anglo-Saxon is the only member of the human family who has yet shown evidence of a capacity for self-government.”
Again, it is said that the negro cannot attain high and rigid scholarship, and even those who have succeeded in becoming educated “if left to themselves would relapse into barbarism.” Now, I cannot believe that any such statement as this can be made with sincerity. In the light of the facts it is preposterous. Flipper, while at West Point, demonstrated beyond controversy the fallacy of such a position as the first; and there is hardly a college commencement in which some negro in some way does not continue to show its falsity by distinguishing himself by his extraordinary attainments. Even while I write, a letter lies before me from a young colored student, a graduate of Brown University, who is now taking a post-graduate course at the American School for Classical Studies, at Athens, Greece. From all reports, he is making an excellent record, and will present a thesis in March on “The Demes of Athens.” As to relapsing into barbarism, were the negro removed from white influence, the mere mention of the negro scholar, Dr. Edward Blyden, born on the island of St. Thomas, educated and reared in Africa away from the slightest social contact with people of Anglo-Saxon extraction, is sufficient proof that such a conclusion is not a correct one.
What a leading journal has said in regard to the Indians may be repeated here as applicable to the negro: “The most crying need in Indian [negro] affairs is its disentanglement from politics and political manipulations.”
Here is an opportunity for the Church, but the Church has shown itself wholly inadequate to meet the case, and because of its tendency to shirk its duty, may be said to be to blame for many of the troubles growing out of the presence of the negro on this continent. I have noted that there is more prejudice in the Church, as a rule, than there is in the State. If, as is asserted by some, neither Church nor State can settle this question, then there is nothing to be done but to leave it to time and the combined patience and forbearance of the American people,—black as well as white.
A PRAIRIE HEROINE.
BY HAMLIN GARLAND.
Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early girlhood, and now she was middle aged, distorted with work and child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white cow.
She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in the little yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies and mosquitoes swarming into their skins already wet with blood. The evening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seen thunder-heads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.
An observer seeing Lucretia Burns as she rose from the cow’s side, and taking her pails of foaming milk staggered toward the gate, would have been made weak with sympathetic pain. The two pails hung from her lean arms, her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico dress showed her tired, swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.
The children were quarrelling at the well and the sound of blows could be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little turkeys lost in the tangle of grass were piping plaintively.
The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift like a boy peeping beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia’s face as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked towards the west.
It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face,—long, thin, sallow, hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a breaking down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck and sharp shoulders showed painfully.
She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful, the setting sun, the noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe—all in some way called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes (her only interesting feature) grew round, deep, and wistful as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up, and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.
“Oh my soul!” she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and left with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:—
“My soul! can’t you—you young ‘uns give me a minute’s peace? Land knows, I’m almost gone up—washin’ an’ milkin’ six cows, and tendin’ you and cookin’ f’r him, ought’o be enough f’r one day! Sadie, you let him drink now’r I’ll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why can’t you behave, when you know I’m jest about dead.” She was weeping now, with nervous weakness. “Where’s y’r pa?” she asked after a moment, wiping her eyes with her apron.
One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffled out, in rage and grief:—
“He’s in the cornfield,—where’d ye s’pose he was?”
“Good land! why don’t the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper in that milk agin, an’ I’ll whack you till your head’ll swim! Sadie, le’ go Pet, an’ go ‘n get them turkeys out of the grass ‘fore it gits dark! Bob, you go tell y’r dad if he wants the rest o’ them cows milked, he’s got ‘o do it himself. I jest can’t, and what’s more I won’t,” she ended rebelliously.
Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmed milk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuously behind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to get into the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of the milk on the ground. This was the last trial,—the woman fell down on the damp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children stood around like little partridges, looking at her in silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then the mother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back towards the house.
She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths. He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to care. His poor, overworked team did not move quick enough for him, and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes gleamed from his dust-laid face.
“Supper ready?” he growled.
“Yes, two hours ago.”
“Well, I can’t help it! That devilish corn is getting too tall to plow again, and I’ve got ‘o go through it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?”
“Part of ‘em.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Hell! Which three?”
“Spot, and Brin, and Cherry.”
“Of course! kept the three worst ones. I’ll be damned if I milk ‘m to-night. I don’t see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most—” here he kicked a child out of the way. “Git out ‘o that! Haint ye got no sense? I’ll learn ye—”
“Stop that, Sim Burns!” cried the woman, snatching up the child. “You’re a reg’lar ol’ hyeny,—that’s what you are—” she added defiantly, roused at last from her lethargy.
“You’re a—beauty, that’s what you are,” he said, pitilessly. “Keep your brats out f’um under my feet;” and he strode off to the barn after his team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard him yelling at his team in their stalls.
The children had had their supper so she took them to bed. She was unusually tender to them for she wanted to make up in some way for her harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her own petulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a long time beside the cradle where the little Pet slept.
She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about,—the supper was on the table, he could wait on himself. There was an awful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet. She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children in her arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never more be troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.
Then she thought of the little turkeys wandering in the grass, of the children sleeping at last, of the quiet, wonderful stars. Then she thought of the cows left unmilked, and listened to them stirring uneasily in the yard. She rose, at last, and stole forth. She could not rid herself of the thought that they would suffer. She knew what the dull ache in the full breasts of a mother was, and she could not let them stand at the bars all night moaning for relief.
The mosquitoes had gone, but the frogs and katy-dids still sang, while over in the west Venus shone. She was a long time milking the cows; her hands were so tired she had often to stop and rest them, while the tears fell unheeded into the pail. She saw and felt little of the external as she sat there. She thought of how sweet it seemed the first time Sim came to see her, of the many rides to town with him when he was an accepted lover, of the few things he had given her, a coral breastpin and a ring.
She felt no shame at her present miserable appearance, she was past that; she hardly felt as if the tall, strong girl, attractive with health and hope, could be the same soul as the woman who now sat in utter despair listening to the heavy breathing of the happy cows, grateful for the relief from their burden of milk.
She contrasted her lot with that of two or three women that she knew, not a very high standard, who “kept hired help,” and who had “fine houses of four or five rooms.” Even the neighbors were better off than she, for they didn’t have such quarrels. But she wasn’t to blame—Sim didn’t—then her mind changed to a vague resentment against “things;” everything seemed against her.
She rose at last and carried her second load of milk to the well, strained it, washed out the pails, and after bathing her tired feet in a tub that stood there, she put on a pair of horrible shoes without stockings, and crept stealthily into the house. Sim did not hear her as she slipped up the stairs to the little low, unfinished chamber beside her oldest children,—she could not bear to sleep near him that night,—she wanted a chance to sob herself to quiet.
As for Sim, he was a little disturbed but would as soon have cut off his head as acknowledge himself in the wrong, but he yelled as he went to bed, and found her still away:—
“Say, ol’ woman, aint ye comin’ to bed?” and upon receiving no answer he rolled his aching body into the creaking bed. “Do as ye damn please about it. If ye wan’ to sulk y’ can.” And in such wise the family grew quiet in sleep, while the moist, warm air pulsed with the ceaseless chime of the crickets.