and system the ghosts of the past, must construct by anticipation the religion of the future. In fact, so absorbed are many of us in the contemplation either of what has not yet come, or of what will never come again, that the right of what is actually with us—whatever it may be to analysis and explanation is too readily forgotten. But in this sphere, too, we must protest against invidious distinctions. Of Buddhism, of late years, we have had abundance in all its varieties and from all quarters-so much so that the tide of fashion, turned by the force of an inevitable reaction, has begun to ebb away. With the Norse gods, moreover, we are tolerably familiar, for, in spite of their rough exterior and their savage ways, they have invaded the polite regions of contemporary verse; while their close relations and near neighbours the gods of the Celts, have hitherto suffered from a dishonouring neglect. It is therefore with all the more gratitude that we welcome the learned attempts of Professor Rhys to divest, as it were, of their "purple shrouds" these gods so long buried and forgotten.

THE SECOND VOLUME

OF RENAN'S

"HISTOIRE DU PEUPLE D'ISRAËL."1

[1889: AET. 25]

N this his second volume M. Renan traverses the period between the definite establishment and consolidation of the kingdom of David and the commencement of the activity of Isaiah. Before calling attention to particular passages, such as may serve to exhibit what is peculiar in M. Renan's general treatment, we may reproduce in barest outline the political events of the period as they are depicted by M. Renan.

The closing years of the reign of David were troubled by the question of the succession to the throne-a question which to Eastern potentates, with whom polygamy is the rule, has seldom failed to present itself in a specially acute and complicated form. The king looked upon Solomon as his successor; but in the hearts of the people Adonijah, the eldest now that Absalom was dead, was a powerful rival. The latter had actually contrived a sort of informal proclamation of himself, when Bathsheba, whose influence preponderated in the harem, joining at this critical moment her solicitations to those of Nathan the prophet, roused the failing David to proclaim Solomon his successor in orthodox form. Immediately upon his assumption of supreme power Solomon took the necessary precaution of ridding himself of rivals possible as well as actual. The last dying instructions of his father were of great service to him as a guide in the selection of his victims, though he displayed on his own account a quite peculiar combination of political sagacity and sacred sophistry, which well deserves to have become proverbially associated with his name as "wisdom." Having thus strengthened the basis of his authority, Solomon devoted himself to the task of organizing his kingdom. His taste for pomp and

1 "Athenæum," February 2nd, 1889.

luxury was gratified without stint; and under his influence Israel commenced that movement in the path of secular progress which the conservatism of the puritan party soon succeeded in arresting. For the peculiar historical significance of the reign of Solomon lies in the fact that Israel was then, for the first and last time, drawn by deliberate policy into the wider and deeper current of national life around her. Solomon was the friendly ally of the King of Tanis, whose daughter held a place of special privilege in his crowded harem. With Tyre his relations were close and constant; the Temple itself was a monument of Tyrian art in its most sumptuous form; while from the same intercourse came the impulse to equip the famous fleet, the memory of whose distant voyages and costly cargoes lived long in popular tradition. But the reverse of this royal medallion bears a far less imposing and symmetrical device, and the surface is already marred, as it were, by lines of future cleavage. The men of God, who still cherished fond memories of a golden age of pastoral life, looked askance at the pomp and circumstance of profane civilization. Neither did the Temple please them better, strange as it may appear to many of us, who are accustomed to look back upon it only through the orthodox medium of the later ecclesiastical writings. The pietist of the age of Solomon preferred to worship on the high places, in the open air, as the patriarchs had done before him. Moreover, the burdens and exactions necessarily involved in the maintenance of government and the support of public works were deeply resented by a proud people, who were, on the one hand, firmly persuaded of the dignity of idleness, and, on the other, saw in such an obvious institution as taxes nothing but the king's irresponsible method of gratifying his tastes and paying for his caprices. Accordingly, upon the death of Solomon the discontent which had long been smouldering burst out fiercely into open revolt. The conduct and bearing of the legitimate successor only served to fan the flame. Of the twelve tribes Judah and Benjamin alone remained faithful to the house of David, while the rest proclaimed Jeroboam king, and the ancient line of division between Israel and Judah broadened and deepened into an impassable gulf. The political decadence of the two divisions, separated by mutual jealousy and antipathy, was henceforth swift and sure. Five years after the death of Solomon, Sheshonq, founder of the twenty-second dynasty, passed through Palestine on

a marauding expedition, taking Jerusalem on his way; and neither of the little kingdoms could make the least show of resistance. In the north, Samaria, under the house of Omri, reflected for a brief period the splendour of the Solomonic epoch at Jerusalem; but, as usual, the first signs of progress in the direction of profane civilization provoked indignant protest on the part of the prophets, whose influence is still visible in the sombre and lurid colouring of the story of Ahab. The danger which constantly threatened from the side of Damascus brought Ahab into temporary alliance with Jehosaphat, King of Judah. Though the issue of their joint enterprise was disastrous, Jehu and his successors were able to defend themselves against the same enemy, until, on the apparition of Assyria, local strife becomes merged in the common struggle for national existence. The curtain falls upon a tragic scene-upon the northern kingdom ravaged and ruined, and the flower of her people carried away into slavery, while Judah, not more than half animated, half consoled by the voice of Isaiah, trembles before the threatening of a similar fate.

Of the religious activity which fills this whole period of apparent decay and disaster, of the composition of that literature which has dominated for centuries the thoughts of men, we must allow M. Renan himself to speak in his own brilliant, if occasionally flippant

way.

Of the reign of David the religious significance was, according to M. Renan, immense, though the current idea of the tribal god was still in a large measure crude and material:

La profession de foi de David se résume en ce mot: "Iahvé qui a sauvé ma vie de tout danger . . ." Iahvé est une forteresse sûre, un rocher, d'où l'on peut défier ses ennemis, un bouclier, un sauveur. Le serviteur de Iahvé est en toute chose un être privilégié. Oh! combien il est sage d'être un serviteur exact de Iahvé. C'est surtout en ce sens que le règne de David eut une extrême importance religieuse.

The story of Solomon, in the familiar form in which it has reached us, is, M. Renan thinks, the outcome of an attempt to combine and exhibit in one picture two discordant impressions of the same scene. Much has been done in the way of toning and blending illmatched tints; but the general effect, though undeniably gorgeous and varied, is a proof that the difficulty was not overcome:

Le charmant épisode-probablement légendaire de la reine de Saba servit de cadre à cette première édition des "Mille et une Nuits." L'homme, devenu vieux, aime à se reporter vers un état d'imagination où nulle philosophie n'est encore venue troubler ses goûts d'adolescent. Un roi, en même temps sage et voluptueux, un mondain favorisé des révélations célestes, une reine qui vient des extrémités du monde pour voir sa sagesse et lui dire tout ce qu'elle a sur le cœur, un sérail hyperbolique à côté du premier temple élevé à l'Eternel, tel a été, avec le Cantique des cantiques, le divertissement et la part du sourire, dans ce grande opéra sombre qu'a créé le génie hébreu. Il y a des heures, dans la vie la plus religieuse, où l'on fait une halte au bord de la route, et où l'on oublie les devoirs austères, pour s'amuser un moment, comme les femmes du sérail de Salomon, avec les perles et les perroquets d'Ophir.

On the other hand:

La réalité historique qui se cache derrière ces récits merveilleux fut à peu près ceci: Un millier d'années avant Jésus-Christ, régna, dans une petite acropole de Syrie, un petit souverain, intelligent, dégage de préjugés nationaux, n'entendant rien à la vraie vocation de sa race, sage selon l'opinion du temps, sans qu'on puisse dire qu'il fût supérieur en moralité à la moyenne des monarques orientaux de tous les temps. L'intelligence, qui évidemment le caractérisa, lui valut de bonne heure un renom de science et de philosophie. Chaque âge comprit cette science et cette philosophie selon la mode qui dominait. Salomon fut ainsi tour à tour paraboliste, naturaliste, sceptique, magicien, astrologue, alchimiste, cabbaliste.

With regard to the place filled by the Temple in the religious history of Israel, M. Renan remarks:

Le temple fut une idée personnelle de Salomon, une idée toute politique, dont la conséquence devait être de mettre l'arche et son oracle dans la dépendance du palais royal. Au point de vue israélite pur, le temple devait sembler une déchéance. Cette localisation de la gloire de Iahvé était si peu dans le vrai développement d'Israël, que, le temple à peine achevé, nous verrons les parties les plus vivantes de la nation s'en séparer, et attester par leur schisme que cet édicule n'appartenait en rien à l'essence du iahvéisme .. Tous les abus du judaïsme viendront du temple et de son personnel. Pas un prophète, pas un grand homme ne sortira de la caste lévitique. Le dernier mot d'Israël sera une religion sans temple.

After the division into two kingdoms, the spirit of the Northern Tribes, vexed and confined under Solomon, found room to expand and develop in a freer air. It is to this activity that we must assign the reduction to literary form of the patriarchal and heroic legends,