now to discuss, Mr. Fairbairn wholly re- | proper name of one God" had come into pudiates the idea of a primitive revelation use, and this name in its different forms, (p. 13). I accept his dictum under protest for the purpose of the present argument, since the aim of that argument is to deal with the evidence and the probabilities of the case on grounds entirely apart from either the proof or the assumption of such a revelation. If the upshot of this process shall be to bring out the primitive idea of God in a form accordant with that form which certain records purporting to embody such a revelation exhibit, that is a fit matter for consideration in its own place at present we have nothing to do with it. Mr. Fairbairn seeks to follow up to its very cradle the idea of God among our Indo-European or Iranian ancestors, and to trace its lineaments as he finds them there exhibited. He recognizes the tendency of the Semitic races to monotheism (p. 16), and considers that Indo-European man not only has been tolerant of the different gods of different nations, but has conceived the divine unity as abstract, while the Semite holds it as personal. The " Indo-European tendency was to religious multiplicities, but to philosophic unities" (p. 17). The god of a religion is an object of worship; the deity of a philosophy is a product of speculation. Dyaus, Zeus, and the rest, pervades the branches of the Aryan family (p. 24). There was also a term expressive of the idea of deity similarly pervasive; subject however, to a doubt whether the Greek eòs has a radical affinity with deus and the other unquestioned members of the family (p. 25). The co-existence of the two is an indication of polytheism; for us, there is no distinction between deity and God. The general or abstract name seems to have been the older, and to have been at first individual, so that individuality is the starting-point (p. 28). Dyaus was Deva, Zeus ó feos (p. 29); it is in conformity with this representation that amidst the strongly marked polytheism of the Homeric poems we find their Zeus holding a relation to their theos, which is held by none other of the gods. Admitting the sense of Dyaus, and of Deva, to be related to light, Mr. Fairbairn refuses to admit that the distinction of sex in deities, and the marriage of heaven and earth, belongs to a primitive stage of religion. Earth is not so old a goddess, as heaven is a god (p. 30). The German Zio has no consort. "The separation of the sexes implies an anthropomorphism, rudimentary indeed but real" (p. 31). This, I apprehend, is a proposition alike As an historical basis, Mr. Fairbairn true and pregnant. It leads, of course, assumes (1) the original unity of the Indo-to this among other modes of application European nations; (2) the existence of the rudimentary form of their civilization before they separated; (3) the connection of their several mythologies with the faith of the still united family, as of branches with their parent stem (p. 18). These propositions will probably, in their general form of expression, be admitted. He considers it undeniable that these mythologies resolve themselves into simpler and fewer elements, the farther they are traced back. The Greek polytheism is formed by a confluence of several streams, which can be traced to their respective Indo-European, Pelasgic, Hellenic, Oriental, and Egyptian fountainheads (p. 20). So likewise, "centuries behind the Vedas," we can trace the point of severance between two streams, which parted to form the Indian and Iranian peoples, with their respective religions. Subsequently to this parting, philology shows us that there were fewer gods than in the Vedic age, but more than before the separation (p. 22). With these new gods a priesthood had arisen; during the time of the unity of the Aryan race, "the — that whenever we find in a mythology facts which belong to an order not based on separation of the sexes, we have an indication of a primitive or very ancient tradition. Such, in the Homeric poems, is the remarkable case of Athenè. Arès, after he has been wounded by Diomed, sharply expostulates with his father Zeus for the partiality which induces him to allow to this goddess unbridled freedom of action. She was a pet, and a privileged disturber of the peace of the Olympian halls, because he was her sole parent. ἀλλ ̓ ἀνιεῖς, ἐπεὶ αὐτὸς ἐγείναο παῖδ ̓ ἀΐδηλον.* Hence arises a presumption that the mythological origin of Athenè from the brain of Zeus was the mythical form of a tradition older than the anthropomorphic constitution of the Olympian court; and this presumption is sustained by a great deal of independent evidence. And the worship of Dyaus, says Mr. | forms in which the Indian conceptions Fairbairn, may be termed a nature-wor- of deity were, as time flowed on, more ship, because one word was the name and more thickly clothed; having disboth of heaven and of God; but nature is here only a synonym for God (pp. 33, 38). Nature personified was only nature conceived as living (p. 34); but IndoEuropean religion founded itself on divine fatherhood, Semitic on divine sovereignty (p. 37). Imagination supplied the physical, conscience the moral part of the conception. missed the motley tribe, the bunt Gewimmel of the European mythologies, and reached that inner sanctuary, in which God is conceived as one God, ruler of the world and man; having come within an easy stage of the Semitic conception as it is defined by historical and philological inquirers, is there any reason why we should halt at such a point, or why that Terror, distempered dreams, fear of the un-stage also should not be traversed, and known causes of the accidents and destructive why we should not examine whether there phenomena of nature, the desire to propitiate be or be not an original identity between the angry ghosts of ancestors deceased-none the Indo-European and the Semitic conof these could have produced the simple, sub- ceptions of the deity respectively? lime faith of our Indo-European manchild (p. 38). Let it not for a moment be supposed that I seek to beg this question. I have only pleaded, thus far, that there is no legitimate bar to an examination into the evidence. Here subsisted a faith, in which naturalism and spiritualism existed together harmoniously as form and matter, letter and spirit (p. 42); when they part, the The great authority for the Semitic higher element predominates in the Ira- conception of God is acknowledged to be nian, the lower in the Indian branch. In found in the Scriptures of the Old Testalater developments we find not the moralment, and especially, I apprehend, in the emerging slowly from the physical, but the physical eclipsing the moral. We require, therefore, a faculty generative of these primary religious acts and ideas, and we have it in conscience. Consciousness and conscience rose together (p. 43). The idea of God was thus given in the very same act as the idea of self: neither could be said to precede the other (p. 43). A priesthood was developed in course of time, the result of more toilsome and occupied life, and of a sense of faults and sins (p. 47). And Mr. Fairbairn traces in some detail the probable forms of theogonic and anthropomorphic evolution; as likewise the formation of amalgamated religions, formed from confluences of a diversity of ethnical elements (p. 53). traditions which the book of Genesis records. Around these records there gathered among the Jews a group of illustrative oral traditions, only committed, or only known to have been committed, to writing at periods comparatively so late, that their claim to authority must principally depend upon their accordance, their inner sympathy, so to speak, with the more authentic forms of the written books. Now the idea of deity is revealed, or let me say exhibited, in these ancient records not alone but with accompaniments. It is (1) exhibited not absolutely and exclusively under the idea of a unity, but also under the idea of a tri-unity. Man, the vassal and creature of this deity, is also subjected to the action (2) of a tempting spirit, that solicits and misThe general result then is that Mr. leads him into disobedience, sorely perFairbairn traces upwards Indo-European verting and enfeebling, without wholly religion from its more complete to its destroying, his true relation to his legitisimpler forms, until he finds it in that mate ruler. This tempting and misleading condition which is generally understood spirit, which brings no compensation for by the word monotheism, but which, it the injury it inflicts, is exhibited (3) under must be admitted, is more accurately the figure of the serpent. (4) The tree, designated as henotheism, the affirma- as well as the serpent, forms a prominent tive belief in one God without the sharply figure in the imagery which describes the defined exclusive line, which makes it a great moral catastrophe of our race. (5) belief in him as the only God. This lat-There is a deliverer who, in the future, ter form of monotheism proper may be not without suffering to himself, shall rather the Semitic than the Aryan conception. But having mounted up so far towards the fountain-head, is there anything to prevent us from proceeding further? Having got behind the elemental . effectually quell the serpent-tempter, working the divine will against him, and re-establishing the harmony, of which he had brought about the breach. (6) In this deliverer, the purpose of whose life and R being is so identified with the will of the | It is found in other tracts of literature and Supreme, the character of humanity is tradition, but as having probably come in strongly marked by his description as the through later contact with the East, and seed of the woman, and to the woman, not presenting the presumptions of direct who thus forms the link between him and derivation from an archaic source, which our common humanity, a certain glory I contend may reasonably attach to the cannot but attach in respect of this most poems. And the analogues of these Hesolemn and mysterious relationship. (7) brew traditions, which the verse of HoOne and only one physical phenomenon mer supplies, are not mere copies or is, in Genesis, associated with the estab- mechanical reproductions, but bear the lishment and assurance of peace in the marks of transmission through the mind natural world between God and man. It of a race with a different tendency and a is the rainbow, which is appointed, says genius original to itself, and appear in R the book, to tell from God to man, as often forms attempered to that genius and that as it appears, that the covenant of order is tendency. Those marks are principally still in force. (8) The sublime conception as follows. of the wisdom of God appears only in the later Scriptures in connection with a personality; but it is claimed by the Hebrews as a part of their tradition, and when it thus appears, it appears as annexed to the character of the deliverer, and as forming one side or manifestation of that character. (9) We are also from nearly the earliest date introduced to the practice of animal sacrifice, which is offered, after man has developed at least into nomad communities, without the medium of a priestly caste. (10) These later Scriptures also describe to us a "war in heaven," with the defeat and ejectment of the spirits rebellious against the Most High. So far all I may say is undisputed. Nor is any question thus raised as to a primitive revelation. These traditions are placed before us only as being, like other traditions, matter of fact; and this, whether they truly report facts, or whether they do not. 1. In the Hebrew Scriptures not only is the idea of sin, which had been manifested at the first, carefully preserved, but it is educated, enlarged, and developed, so that in the historic ages it becomes a strong and sharp mark of mental and moral severance between the Jew and the Gentile. In the Hellenic race, which is cut off from the searching discipline and training accorded to the Semitic Hebrews, this idea becomes by degrees more and more faint. 2. The powerful imagination of the Greek, seeking for congenial pasture, lays hold upon the anthropomorphic element, which the Hebrew tradition of the deliverer manifestly introduces into religion, that is to say into the consideration of the relation between God and man. The idea thus supplied it freely enlarges and applies in the prevailing humanism of the entire Olympian system. 3. As in these two particulars the HelIt is at this point that the evidence lenic, and especially the Achaian, form of offered to us with remarkable abundance religion is broadly distinguished from and multiformity by the poems of Homer that of the Hebrew-Semite, so in a third puts in, as I conceive, its claim to a dis- point it is marked off from the systems tinctive function altogether its own. It is of other races, who had a less elevated true, indeed, that in various quarters we conception of human nature than the may find abundance of fragmentary coin- children of Hellas. Wherever, in the cidences, in the practice or religion of Hebrew tradition, there is an opening for Indo-European races, with the remarkable religious reverence or superstition to group of Hebrew traditions, of which I gather itself round an object inferior to have thus briefly reminded the reader. man, that opening is in the Homeric It may suffice for the present to refer to poems, and in the Olympian system, the worship of the serpent and the tree, effectually barred. The ox, habitually and the remarkable association between offered in sacrifice, grew into an object them. But it is only in the Homeric of worship, and to such worship, as we poems, so far as I know, that we find a know, the Hebrews themselves were cureproduction of every one of these ex- riously and fatally prone. In Homer traordinary characteristics of the Hebrew there is not so much as the idea of animalnarrative; an assemblage which nearly worship; but the ox, in the Eastern exhausts the distinctive features of the sphere of his outer geography, becomes most ancient Scriptures. For, among the consecrated animal and favorite of these features, there is only the deluge of the sun, whom he evidently regards as which the poems do not bear the trace. the prevailing divinity of the Eastern lands. The worship of the serpent, | also put her services in requisition. All again, spread quickly through the world, this looks like the poet's manner of telling and may even be found to throw some us that the region of ideas in which his light on the contested question as to the swift and gentle Iris had been born, was unity of the race. In the Hebrew history, the henotheistic region, and that it formed the animal has a place most singular and no part of the more promiscuous and significant. In Homer, there are indeed more recent formations. So we find, on legendary traces of serpent-worship not the one hand, that the poet, to work out Achaian, but the creature comes no nearer his idea, keeps the Iris of Olumpos all to the sphere of religion, than by appear- along most carefully separated from the ing as a portent for the augur to interpret, Iris of the sky; and that this Olympian and mostly fills the harmless though high agent, on the other hand, never had priest, character of an heraldic symbol. temple, or sacrifice, never entered into the operative religion of the race, but lived and died only in the theology of Homer. If the Achaian system refused to bow the lofty head of man before the inferior orders of animated nature, still less would it stoop before objects belonging to the It is surely no accident, but a law, and vegetable kingdom. We have not there- a law full of meaning, by which in each fore a sign of tree-worship in Homer; of these instances a subtle change is but, as in the other cases, we have the brought to bear, which does not efface the marks that the Hebrew tradition of the identity of the tradition, but modifies it tree, associating it with the subject-matter in accordance with a peculiar genius, and of religion, had passed into the mental upon a basis of essential uniformity, such stock of the ancestors of the Greeks. as may almost seem to carry an analogy Accordingly the tree appears connected with deity in more ways than one; as the lofty oak, out of which the oracles of Zeus were delivered at Dodona, and in the consecrated grove of poplars (aiyepo) which fringed the bank of the great river ocean on the way to the under-world. And yet once more. We have no evidence from the Scriptures of worship, or even reverence, offered to the rainbow. But the rainbow is placed in the book of Genesis in direct relations with religion; in such relations as to be within a proximate likelihood of attracting religious worship. Accordingly precaution is taken by the Achaian mind against this degradation. And as the ox, the serpent, and the tree were confined within safe precincts, wholly exterior to the Olympian court, so, in the case of the rainbow, there is evoked from the bosom of the natural phenomenon a beautiful anthropomorphic impersonation, under the name of Iris, who becomes an acknowledged member of the Olympian court, and there fulfils the office of messenger between God and man. And it is a striking though a subtle testimony to the purity and antiquity of the conception from which she took her origin, that she is never the messenger of the collective court, as if to show that she had no relations with the variegated family of gods belonging to the composite order. She is the personal messenger of Zeus, and of him only; except that Herè, by a certain derivation or reflection of his attributes, which practically marks this particular goddess, can with Grimm's law, which unveils to us the transmutation by an unvarying rule of consonants; the one following the structure of the vocal organs, the other obedient, in a loftier sphere, to the varieties of mind. Now do not let it be imagined that I profess to have exhibited in this paper the full proof of kinship between the Achaian, or Hellenic, element of the Olympian religion, and those more remarkable traditions recorded or indicated in the Hebrew Scriptures, which form part of the base of the great scheme of faith still dominant over the civilized world, and the ruling development of mankind. To draw out this evidence requires much more than could be supplied by any paper in a review. We should (for example) have to examine the peculiar character and formation of the Homeric trinity, which are such as to require the supposition that it is not a thing indigenous to Greece, or a mere creation of the poet's mind, but has also an historical being, and is imported from an extraneous source. We should require to show the utterly shadowy, nay I must add futile, character of all attempts to explain the character, and the Olympian position, of the profoundly venerated Leto, which do not recognize her root in the great Hebrew tradition of Genesis. Above all we should have to pursue through, not a wilderness, but an order of almost countless details the two great characters of Athenè and Apollo as they stand in Homer, stamped at almost every point with the clearest evidence of sharp severances from the other members of the Olympian family who gather around the throne of Zeus, and with notes difficult or impossible of explanation except when we find the key in the Hebrew doctrines of the Deliverer and the Wisdom. HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY. CHAPTER XXIX. THE news of Sir William Markham's death made a great sensation in the neighborhood. It was as if a great house had What I seek now to point out is this fallen to the ground, a great tree been that it is a grave matter for the inquiry riven up by the roots. There are some and consideration of competent persons people whom no one expects ever to die, whether the Homeric poems, in their rep- and he was one of them. There seemed resentation of Achaian religion, do or do so much for him to do in the world. He not carry true marks of kindred with the was so full of occupation, so well qualiSemitic traditions recorded in the Scrip-fied to do it, so precise and orderly in all tures of the older Testament. If they do his ways, every moment of his time filled not, cadit quæstio. But I have even here up. He did not seem to have leisure for shown certain tokens of presumption that all the troublesome preliminaries of dying. they do. If they do, the concurrence is But as it happened, he had found the time one full of weight and meaning. For for them, as we all do, and everybody was then the religions of Semite and Indo- astonished. It was whispered in the European are shown to us as springing county that there had been "a very strange from a common source: as having once scene at his deathbed," and everybody presented under features of identity what concluded that this was somehow conwe now trace as features of resemblance. nected with the heir, it being well known This chapter of inquiry will then be one that Paul had only appeared the day becomplete in itself. It will only add to the fore his father's death. Some vague able investigation of Mr. Fairbairn that rumors on this score flew about in the one stage, in which, as it seems to me, he days which elapsed before the funeral, still stops short of the final and crowning but nobody could tell the rights of the truth. It will not be in conflict with the story, and it had already begun to fade evidence for the solar theory (so to call it) before the great pomp and ceremonial of at any point short of that at which the the funeral day. This was to be a very theory, grown as I think over-bold, claims great day at Markham Royal. In the to be, among Aryans at least, both abso- Markham Arms all the stables were getlutely original and absolutely universal, ting cleared out, in preparation for the and disclaims that region lying in the horses of the gentry who would collect dim distance, the true incunabula of its from far and near to pay honor to the last historic or legendary life, which all or scene in which the member for the county some of its most distinguished champions would ever play any part; and all the cannot refrain from acknowledging. But village was roused in expectation. No undoubtedly it will convert into solid doubt it was a very solemn and sad cerepractical roadway what is otherwise mo-monial, and Markham Royal knew that it rass or quicksand. From it we may had lost its best friend, but, notwithstandtravel on to ulterior investigations with ing, any kind of excitement is pleasant in increased advantage. And among them will obviously be the inquiry, whether those traditions, now called Semitic, so remarkable in themselves, and thus fortified with fresh evidence of their derivation from the very cradle of our race, were really, with all the touching, all the profound, all the noble elements they embody, the mere inventions of that race's infantine ingenuity, like the playthings of the child-artificer Hephaistos in his deep sea-cave; or whether the Almighty was pleased, by direct instruction from himself, to supply the creatures of his hand, whom he had made subject to special dangers and temptations, with a provision also of special guards and guarantees. W. E. GLADSTONE. the country, and they liked this too in default of better. The little gentleman too, who was living at the Markham Arms, was of great diversion to the village. He gave himself the air of superintending everything that was done at the Markham burying-place. He went about it solemnly as if it could by any possibility be his business and he put on all the semblance of one who has lost a relation. He put away his light clothes, and appeared in black, with a hat-band which almost covered his tall hat. The village people felt it very natural that the little gentleman should be proud of his relationship to the Markhams, and should take such a good opportunity of showing it, but those who knew about such mat |