(459) For various interdicts laid upon commerce by the Church, see Heyd,
Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, Leipsic, 1886, vol. ii,
passim. For the injury done to commerce by prohibition of intercourse
with the infidel, see Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping, London,
1874, vol. ii. For superstitions regarding the introduction of the
potato in Russia, and the name "devil's root" given it, see Hellwald,
Culturgeschichte, vol. ii, p. 476; also Haxthausen, La Russie. For
opposition to winnowing machines, see Burton, History of Scotland, vol.
viii, p. 511; also Lecky, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83; also Mause
Headrigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chap. vii. For the case of a
person debarred from the communion for "raising the devil's wind" with
a winnowing machine, see Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. Those
doubting the authority or motives of Simpson may be reminded that he
was to the day of his death one of the strictest adherants to Scotch
orthodoxy. As to the curate of Rotherhithe, see Journal of Sir I. Brunel
for May 20, 1827, in Life of I. K. Brunel, p. 30. As to the conclusions
drawn from the numbering of Israel, see Michaelis, Commentaries on the
Laws of Moses, 1874, vol. ii, p. 3. The author of this work himself
witnessed the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer the
questions of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse, New York;
and this reluctance was based upon the reasons assigned in II Samuel
xxiv, 1, and I Chronicles xxi,1, for the numbering of the children of
Israel.
Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor,—the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the warm atmosphere of medieval devotion into great systems for the pauperizing of the labouring classes. Here, too, scientific modes of thought in social science have given a new and nobler fruitage to the whole growth of Christian benevolence.(460)
(460) Among the vast number of authorities regarding the evolution of
better methods in dealing with pauperism, I would call attention to
a work which is especially suggestive—Behrends, Christianity and
Socialism, New York, 1886.
CHAPTER XX. FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.
I. THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.
The great sacred books of the world are the most precious of human possessions. They embody the deepest searchings into the most vital problems of humanity in all its stages: the naive guesses of the world's childhood, the opening conceptions of its youth, the more fully rounded beliefs of its maturity.
These books, no matter how unhistorical in parts and at times, are profoundly true. They mirror the evolution of man's loftiest aspirations, hopes, loves, consolations, and enthusiasms; his hates and fears; his views of his origin and destiny; his theories of his rights and duties; and these not merely in their lights but in their shadows. Therefore it is that they contain the germs of truths most necessary in the evolution of humanity, and give to these germs the environment and sustenance which best insure their growth and strength.
With wide differences in origin and character, this sacred literature has been developed and has exercised its influence in obedience to certain general laws. First of these in time, if not in importance, is that which governs its origin: in all civilizations we find that the Divine Spirit working in the mind of man shapes his sacred books first of all out of the chaos of myth and legend; and of these books, when life is thus breathed into them, the fittest survive.