THE ORIENTAL MANNER OF SPEECH
CHAPTER I
DAILY LANGUAGE
The Oriental I have in mind is the Semite, the dweller of the Near East, who, chiefly through the Bible, has exerted an immense influence on the life and literature of the West. The son of the Near East is more emotional, more intense, and more communicative than his Far-Eastern neighbors. Although very old in point of time, his temperament remains somewhat juvenile, and his manner of speech intimate and unreserved.
From the remote past, even to this day, the Oriental's manner of speech has been that of a worshipper, and not that of a business man or an industrial worker in the modern Western sense. To the Syrian of to-day, as to his ancient ancestors, life, with all its activities and cares, revolves around a religious center.
Of course this does not mean that his religion has not always been beset with clannish limitations and clouded by superstitions, or that the Oriental has always had a clear, active consciousness of the sanctity of human life. But it does mean that this man, serene or wrathful, at work or at play, praying or swearing, has never failed to believe that he is overshadowed by the All-seeing God. He has never ceased to cry: "O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it!"[[1]]
And it is one of the grandest, most significant facts in human history that, notwithstanding his intellectual limitations and superstitious fears, because he has maintained the altar of God as life's center of gravity, and never let die the consciousness that he was compassed about by the living God, the Oriental has been the channel of the sublimest spiritual revelation in the possession of man.
The histories of races are the records of their desires and rewards, of their seeking and finding. The law of compensation is all-embracing. In the long run "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."[[2]] "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully."[[3]] In the material world the Oriental has sown but sparingly, and his harvests here have also been very meager. He has not achieved much in the world of science, industry, and commerce. As an industrial worker he has remained throughout his long history a user of hand tools. Previous to his very recent contact with the West, he never knew what structural iron and machinery were. As a merchant he has always been a simple trader. He has never been a man of many inventions. His faithful repetition of the past has left no gulf between him and his remote ancestors. The implements and tools he uses to-day are like those his forefathers used in their day.
The supreme choice of the Oriental has been religion. To say that this choice has not been altogether a conscious one, that it has been the outcome of temperament, does by no means lessen its significance. From the beginning of his history on the earth to this day the Oriental has been conscious above all things of two supreme realities—God and the soul. What has always seemed to him to be his first and almost only duty was and is to form the most direct, most intimate connection between God and the soul. "The fear of the Lord," meaning most affectionate reverence, is to the son of the East not "the beginning of wisdom" as the English Bible has it, but the height or acme of wisdom. His first concern about his children is that they should know themselves as living souls, and God as their Creator and Father. An unbeliever in God has always been to the East a strange phenomenon. I never heard of atheism or of an atheist before I came in touch with Western culture in my native land.
My many years of intimate and sympathetic contact with the more varied, more intelligent life of the West has not tended in the least to lessen my reverence for religion nor to lower my regard for culture. Culture gives strength and symmetry to religious thought, and religion gives life and beauty to culture. And just as I believe that men should pray without ceasing, so also do I believe that they should strive to make their religious faith ever more free and more intelligent.