Arched as a bow it grew, or curving wheel
That on the lathe sweeps out its circle's round :
So bowed the stranger's hands that mountain branch,
And bent to earth — a deed past mortal might !
That on the lathe sweeps out its circle's round :
So bowed the stranger's hands that mountain branch,
And bent to earth — a deed past mortal might !
Universal Anthology - v04
"
There is nothing which, in the light of history and criticism, we have learnt respecting the Bible which is not involved in the principle that in inspired utterances there is still a human element. At any rate, knowledge is knowledge. The light which comes from heaven — the light which is derived from earnest and truthful study —cannot lead us astray. The grandeur of that which is uttered to us by the voice of God has not been in the smallest degree impaired by any of the certain conclusions which study has revealed. We feel none the less the thrill and splendour of Isaiah's magnificent utterances, if we are convinced that there are two Isaiahs, of whom the second may have lived a century later than the first ; nor do we lose the large lessons of toleration, of pity, of the impossibility of flying from God, of God's abounding tenderness, of the shaming into fatuity of man's little hatreds, if advancing knowledge compels us to recognise that the book of Jonah as whole, Jewish Haggadah.
Let us turn to the New Testament. It may now be regarded as indisputable that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by St. PauL No critic worth the name would any longer maintain that is. It may also be regarded as certain that St. Peter had any hand at all in the Second Epistle which goes by his name, yet other hands have been at work upon it. There are still unsettled problems about the Apocalypse. But on the whole the assaults of criticism on the stronghold of the New Testament have been defeated all along the line. There are arguments of overwhelming strength to prove that the thirteen Epistles which are attributed to St. Paul are the genuine expressions of his teeming intellect. The authenticity and credibility of the three
Synoptists have been fiercely attacked, but have never been shaken. Book after book has been written to prove that the Fourth Gospel was not the work of the Apostle St. John but those books have not brought conviction to the most learned and open-minded critics. If any one will read the introduction to this Gospel by Bishop Westcott in the Speaker's Commentary, he will see how
;
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THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM XXV
marvellously strong, how varied, how minute, and in many particulars how unexpected, is the mass of cogent evidence to convince us that in the Gospel we are reading the very words of the "Disciple whom Jesus loved"; —and, in any case, we can say with Herder, " That little book is a still, deep sea in which the heavens, with the sun and stars, are mirrored ; and if there are eternal truths — and such there are — for the human race, they are to be found in the Gospel of St. John. "
It is no longer disputable that the last sixteen verses of St. Mark are a later and dubious appendix to that Gospel ; that the narrative of the woman taken in adultery, in John viii. 1-11, — though bearing evidence of its own truth — was no part of the original Gospel : that the text about the three heavenly witnesses (1 John v. 7, 8) is spurious; that the verse about the angel troubling the water of the Pool of Bethesda (John v. 4) should have no place in the genuine text of the Fourth Gospel ; that the Eunuch's confession is an interpolation into the text of Acts viii. 37 ; and that the word " fasting " has been introduced by ascetic scribes into Matt, xvii 21, Mark ix. 29, 1 Cor. vii. 5, Acts x. 30. But although criticism has, in hundreds of instances, amended the text and elucidated the meaning of almost every page of the New Testament, it has done nothing to shake, but rather much to enhance, our conviction that throughout its treatises the witness of God standeth sure. And, as a general result, we may affirm that the Jewish race possessed an insight respecting the nature of God and His relations to men, which was a special gift to them, for the dissemination of which they were set apart ; and that by this inspired mission they have rendered higher and deeper services to mankind than it gained from the aesthetic suscepti bilities of Greece, or the strong imperialism of Bome. When we read their sacred books, we are listening to the Prophets of a prophetic race. Nor are these the mere assertions of believers; they have been stated quite as strongly by advanced sceptics. If Cardinal Newman said of the Bible that " its light is like the body of heaven in its clearness, its vastness like the bosom of the sea, its variety like scenes of nature," Eenan said with no less strength of con
xxvi THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM
viction, " C'est apres tout le grand livre consolateur de l'HumaniteV' Heinrich Heine, after a day spent in the unwonted task of reading it, exclaimed with a burst of enthusiasm, " What a book ! vast and wide as the world, rooted in the abysses of creation, and towering up beyond the blue secrets of heaven ! Sunrise and sun set, promise and fulfilment, birth and death, the whole drama of humanity are all in this book ! Its eclipse would be the return of chaos ; its extinction the epitaph of history. " And to quote but one more testimony,Professor Huxley, one of the most candid-minded of men, in a speech, delivered, if I remember rightly, before the London School Board, said, " I have been seriously perplexed to know how the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of
conduct, can be kept up without the use of the Bible. For three centuries this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history. It forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other civilisations, and of a great past stretching back to the farthest limits of the oldest nations of the world. By the study of what other book could children be so much humanised, and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills like themselves but a momentary interspace between the two eternities, and earns the blessings or the curses of all time according to its efforts to do good and hate evil, even as they are also earning the payment for their work ? "
Let all humble and earnest believers rest assured that biblical criticism, so far as it is reverent, earnest, and well founded, may remove many errors, but cannot rob them of one precious and eternal truth. As Bishop Butler so wisely said a century ago, "the only question concerning the authority of Scripture is whether it be what it claims to be, not whether it be a book of such sort and so promulged as weak men are apt to fancy. " 1 He also quotes with approval the remark which Origen deduced from analogical reasoning, that " He who believes the Scripture to have proceeded from Him who is the Author of Nature may well expect to find the same sort of difficulties in it as are found in the
1 Analogy, ii. 3.
THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM xxvii
constitution of Nature. " And he adds, " He who denies the Scripture to have been from God, upon account of these difficulties, may for the very same reason deny the world to have been formed by Him. "1
IV
We now approach the central subject of our religion —our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. With the belief in Him, the belief in Christianity must stand or fall. It is but a few months since we committed to the grave, amid a nation's tears, the fore most statesman of our century —Mr. W. E. Gladstone. He was a man of splendid intellectual power, as well as of the loftiest eloquence ; and it is one sign of the unshaken dominance of the faith in Christ that he—familiar as he was with the literature of almost every nation —could yet say from his heart, " All I write, and all I think, and all I hope, is based upon the Divinity of our Lord, the one central hope of our poor wayward race. " It is not long since we lost in Eobert Browning one of the deepest and greatest of our poets ; and Mr. Browning wrote that —
The acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All problems in the world, and out of it.
Now the Divinity of Christ has been the subject of vehement attack in all ages. The Jews from the first represented Him as a meztth or " deceiver " ; and besides the angry and disdainful allusions to Him in Talmudic writings, which spoke of Him as a Mamzer, and as "that man," Jewish hatred in the Middle Ages concentrated itself into an amazing mixture of nonsense and blasphemy in the Toldoth Jeshu. Among Gentiles, Celsus, the Epicurean Philosopher, wrote his famous "True Discourse," to destroy all His claims for ever ; and he was effectually answered by
In the thirteenth century appeared the book now only known by its name, " De tribus imjoostoribus," which was attributed to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa II. , and ranked Christ with Moses and Mahomet. All these attacks have fallen absolutely
1 Id. Jntrod.
Origen.
xxviii THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM
flat and dead, and have ceased to have a particle of significance. But in the eighteenth century in England — through the writings of Hobbes, Bolingbroke, and Hume ; in France, by those of Voltaire, Von Holbach and the Encyclopaedists ; in Germany as the gradual outcome of systems of philosophy which culminated in Hegel, and of which the sceptical elements were brought to a head by the Wolfenbiittel Fragments and the Leben Jesu of Strauss, — the belief of thousands was for a time impaired, if not finally destroyed. Out of a mass of sceptical literature two books may be selected as representing the culmination of disbelief in the Divinity of Christ, and as having been specially influential in the spread of that disbelief —the Leben Jesu of Strauss, and the Vie de Jisus of
Strauss was a pupil of Hegel, and the main position of his once famous, but already half forgotten, Life of Jesus, was that it was not history but " a myth " : in other words, that it was nothing but a series of symbols dressed up in an historic form,—con victions thrown into the form of poetry and legend. He went much farther than Hegel, or De Wette, or Schleiermacher, and instead of urging that Jesus had created round him an atmosphere of imagination and excitement, tried to show " that Christ had not founded the Church, but that the Church had invented Christ, and formed him out of the predictions of the Old Testament, and the hopes and expectations of the days founded on them. " 1 He admitted little or nothing which was truly historical in the Gospel miracles. The attempt to establish this opinion broke down under its own baselessness. It was seen in its naked absurdity when Bruno Bauer attributed Christianity to the direct invention of an individual, and Feuerbach treated all human religion as self-deception. Herder truly said that " If the fisher men of Galilee invented such a history, God be praised that they
1 See Hagenbach's German Rationalism, p. 371.
I will not add the anonymous work on
Ernest Kenan. To these
Supernatural Religion, for it was full of the grossest inaccuracies, and it ceased to have any influence when its many instances of sciolism were exposed by the learning and power of Bishop Lightfoot.
THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM xxix
invented it " ; and further, we may say that if they did invent the inventors would be as great as the hero. Strauss himself tore to shreds the old attempts of Dr. Paulus to represent the miracles as mere natural events; but how impossible was to support anything like religion on views such as his, he himself showed in his subsequent Glaubenslehre (1840), in which he expressed his belief that no reconciliation was possible between science and Christianity. Strauss's whole method vitiated by his two pre- assumptions —(1) that all miracles are impossible; and (2) that the Gospels have no pretence to historical authority. The readers of the Gospels have felt that " It the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit truth " and ordinary reasoners realise at once that the trivial and fantastic hypotheses of rationalising scepticism are shattered on the two vast facts of Christianity and Christendom. And, like all who have attacked the Divinity of our Lord, even Strauss seems almost compelled to fall down on his knees before Him. He says that "Jesus stands foremost among those who have given higher ideal to Humanity " that " It impossible to refrain from admiring and loving Him and that never at any time will be possible to rise above Him, nor to imagine any one who shall be even equal with Him. "
Eenan's Vie de Jims appeared in 1865. In many respects, its scepticism be subtracted from it, was beautiful book. The author was learned and brilliant man of genius, and was the master of an eminently fascinating style, through which breathes charming personality. Yet how utterly inefficient were the deplorable methods by which he tried to set at naught the faith of Christians! Let two instances suffice. For nearly nineteen centuries the religion, the history, and the moral progress of man kind have been profoundly affected by the Besurrection. And yet Eenan thinks sufficient to account for the Resurrection by saying, "Divine power of love! sacred moments in which the passion of an hallucinie gives to the world resuscitated God! " Such mode of treating the convictions of centuries of Christians, who have numbered in their ranks some of the keenest and most brilliant thinkers in the race of man, can only be regarded as
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ixx THE LITERATURE OP RELIGIOUS CRITICISM
utterly frivolous. For the sake of a subjective prejudice it seta aside all the records of the New Testament, and the nineteen centuries of splendid progress which have had their origin in the faith which those records founded. So far was " la passion d'une hallucinee," from having founded the belief in the Eesurrection that the Apostles, who had found it impossible to realise the prophecies of Eesurrection which they had heard from the lips of their Lord, were most reluctant, and most slow of heart to believe the most positive evidence. So far from being prepared beforehand to accept or to invent a Eesurrection, " they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a Spirit," when Christ Himself stood before them. When Mary of Magdala and the other women told them that they had seen Jesus, so far from being credulous enough to be carried away by hallucinations, they regarded their words as " idle talk " (krjpos " babble," a word of entire contempt) — and they disbelieved them : nay, they even rejected the witness of the two disciples to whom He had appeared on the way to Emmaus, and Thomas was dissatisfied with the affirmation of the whole Apostolic band. So far from "regarding it as the height of absurdity to suppose that Jesus could be held by death," their despairing conviction that the bridegroom had indeed been taken from them, was so all but insuperable that it required the most decisive personal eye-witness to overcome it. Again, consider the way in which Eenan treats the Resurrection of Lazarus! Although Eleazar was one of the commonest of Jewish names, he assumes that the story of the resuscitation of Lazarus rose from some confusion about the Lazarus of the Parable who was carried into Abraham's bosom ; and in some very confused sentences he more than hints that the story of his death and resurrection was the result of a collusion between Jesus, Mary, and Martha, and that Jesus in some way or other gave way to the suggestion of the sisters, because, in the impure city of Jerusalem he had lost " some thing of his original transparent clearness," 1 " Peut-etre l'ardent d^sir de fermer la bouche a ceux qui niaient outrageusement la mission divine le leur ami, entraina-t-elle ces personnes passionn^es
1 Fie de Jisut, 872.
THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM xxxi
au dela de toutea lea bornes. II faut se rappeler que, dans cette ville impure et pesante de Jerusalem, Jims n'itait pas lui-rrdme. Sa conscience, par la faute des hommes, et non par la sienne, avait perdu quelque chose de la limpiditi primordiale. " Strange that a man of even ordinary intelligence could expect any one to get rid of a miracle by the hypothesis that the Lord of truth,—He whose life and teaching have created in the world the conviction that " it is better to die than lie," —lent Himself to a coarse and vulgar make- believe! Christianity surely has nothing to fear from such reconstructions of the Gospel History as these !
Most of the books written to disprove the Divinity of the Saviour suggest some brand-new hypothesis ; one after another they have their brief vogue, are trumpeted by unbelievers as a refutation of Christianity, and then pass into oblivion, if not into contempt. They have not shaken the belief reigning in millions of hearts in every region of the habitable globe ; and the Christian world, with out the smallest misgiving, will still exclaim, in the words of the inscription on the obelisk reared by the Pope Sixtus in front of St. Peter's at Eome, on soil once wet with the blood of martyrs :—
"CHPJSTUS VINCIT, CHEISTUS EEGNAT, CHRISTUS IMPEEAT, CHEISTUS AB OMNI MALO PLEBEM SUAM DEFENDAT. "
The Christian world continues, and will for long ages hence continue, to offer up the prayer —
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove ;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; Thou madest Life in man and brute ; Thou madest Death ; and lo, Thy foot
Is on the skull which Thou hast made !
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS. By EURIPIDES.
(From the " Bacchae " : translated by Arthur S. Way. )
[Ecbipidbs : The last of the three Greek tragic poets ; born on the island of Salamis in b. c. 480, according to popular tradition, on the day of the famous naval battle. He received instruction in physics from Anaxagoras, in rhetoric from Prodicus, and was on terms of intimate friendship with Socrates. He early devoted his attention to dramatic composition, and at the age of twenty-five obtained a prize for his first tragedy. After a successful career at Athens, he retired for unknown reasons to Magnesia in Thessaly, and thence proceeded to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, where he died in B. C. 405. Cf over seventy-five tragedies there have come down to us only eighteen, the best known being "Alcestis," "Medea," " Hippolytus," "Hecuba," "Andromache," "Iphigenia at Aulis," "Iphigenia among the Tauri," "Electra," "Orestes,"
" Bacchae. "]
[Aboumknt. — SemelS the daughter of Kadmua, a mortal bride of Zeus, was per suaded by Hera to pray the God to promise her with an oath to grant her what soever she would. And when he had consented, she asked that he would appear to her in all the splendor of his godhead, even as he visited Hera. Then Zeus, not of his will, but constrained by his oath, appeared to her amidst intolerable light and flashings of heaven's lightning, whereby her mortal body was con sumed. But the God snatched her unborn babe from the flames, and hid him in a cleft of his thigh, till the days were accomplished wherein he should be born. And so the child Dionysus sprang from the thigh of Zeus, and was hidden from the jealous malice of Hera till he was grown. Then did he set forth in victorious march through all the earth, bestowing upon men the gift of the vine, and planting his worship everywhere. But the sisters of SemelS scoffed at the story of the heavenly bridegroom, and mocked at the worship of Dionysus. And when Kadmus was now old, Pentheus his grandson reigned in his stead, and he too defied the Wine giver, saying that he was no god, and that none in Thebes should ever worship him. And herein is told how Dionysus came in human guise to Thebes, and filled her women with the Bacchanal possession, and how Pentheus, essaying to withstand him, was punished by strange and awful doom. — Wat. ]
Pentheus —
We must not overcome by force
The women. I will hide me midst the pines.
Dionysus —
Such hiding shall be thine as fate ordains, Who com'st with guile, a spy on Bacchanals.
vol. it. —3 33
34
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
Pentheus —
Methinks I see them mid the copses caught, Like birds, in toils of their sweet dalliance.
Dionysus —
To this end then art thou appointed watchman : Perchance shalt catch them — if they catch not thee.
Pentheus —
On through the midst of Thebes' town usher me, For I, I only of them, dare such deed.
Dionysus —
Alone for Thebes thou travailest, thou alone ; Wherefore for thee wait tug and strain foredoomed. Follow : all safely will I usher thee.
Another thence shall bring thee, —
Pentheus — Dionysus —
Ay, my mother. come.
0 silken ease !
Thou wouldst thrust pomp on me !
To all men manifest — Pentheus —
For this I
Dionysus —
High borne shalt thou return —
Pentheus — Dionysus —
On a mother's hands. Pentheus —
Dionysus —
Nay, 'tis but such pomp
—
Strange, strange man !
So shalt thou win renown that soars to heaven.
[Exit Pentheus. AgavS, stretch forth hands ; ye sisters, stretch,
Daughters of Kadmus ! To a mighty strife
I bring this prince. The victor I shall be And Bromius. All else shall the issue show.
Pentheus— Dionysus —
As is my desert.
Strange shall thine experience be.
Chorus—
Up, ye swift hell hounds of Madness ! Away to the mountain glens
where
Kadmus's daughters hold revel, and sting them to fury, to tear
Him who hath come woman-vestured to spy on the Bacchanals there,
Frenzy-struck fool that he is ! — for his mother shall foremost descry Him, as from waterworn scaur or from storm-riven tree he would spy That which they do, and her shout to the Maenads shall peal from
on high : —
[^etf Diohybus.
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS. 35
"Who hath come hither, hath trodden the paths to the mountain that lead,
Spying on Kadmus's daughters, the maids o'er the mountains that
speed, — Bacchanal sisters ?
seed?
what mother hath brought to the birth such a
Who was it ? — who ? — for I ween he was born not of womankind's blood :
Kather he sprang from the womb of a lioness, scourge of the wood;
Haply is spawn of the Gorgons of Libya, the demon brood. "
Justice, draw nigh us, draw nigh, with the sword of avenging appear :
Slay the unrighteous, the seed of Echion the earth born, and shear Clean through his throat, for he feareth not God, neither law doth
he fear.
Lo, how in impious mood, and with lawless intent, and with spite Madness distraught, with thy rites and thy mother's he cometh to
fight,
Bacchus — to bear the invincible down by his impotent might !
Thus shall one gain him a sorrowless life, if he keepeth his soul Sober in spirit, and swift in obedience to heaven's control, Murmuring not, neither pressing beyond his mortality's goal.
No such presumptuous wisdom I covet : I seek for mine own —
Yea, in the quest is mine happiness — things that not so may be
known,
Glorious wisdom and great, from the days everlasting forth shown,
Even to fashion in pureness my life and in holiness aye, Following ends that are noble from dawn to the death of the day, Honoring Gods, and refusing to walk in injustice's way.
Justice, draw nigh us, draw nigh, with the sword of avenging appear :
Slay the unrighteous, the seed of Echion the earthborn, and shear Clean through his throat ; for he feareth not God, neither law doth
he fear.
0 Dionysus, reveal thee ! — appear as a bull to behold,
Or be thou seen as a dragon, a monster of heads manifold,
Or as a lion with splendors of flame round the limbs of him rolled.
36 THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
Gome to us, Bacchus, and smiling in mockery compass him round Now with the toils of destruction, and so shall the hunter be bound, Trapped mid the throng of the Maenads, the quarry his questing
hath found.
Enter Messenger.
Chorus —
What now ? — hast tidings of the Bacchanals ?
Messenger —
O house of old through Hellas prosperous
Of that Sidonian patriarch, who sowed
The earthborn serpent's dragon teeth in earth, How I bemoan thee ! What though thrall I be, Their lords' calamities touch loyal thralls.
Messenger —
Pentheus is dead : Echion's son is dead.
Chorus —
Bromius, my King ! thou hast made thy godhead plain !
Messenger —
How, what is this thou say'st ? Dost thou exult, Woman, upon my lord's calamities ?
Chorus —
An alien I, I chant glad outland strain, Who cower no more in terror of the chain.
Messenger —
Deemest thou Thebes so void of men [that ills Have left her powerless all to punish thee ? ]
Chorus —
Dionysus it 'tis the King of the Vine
That hath lordship o'er me, no Thebes of thine
Messenger
This might be pardoned, save that base Women, to joy o'er evils past recall.
Chorus —
Tell to me, tell, — by what doom died he, The villain devising villainy
Messenger —
When, from the homesteads of this Theban land Departing, we had crossed Asopus' streams,
Then we began to breast Kithairon's steep,
Pentheus and — for to my lord clave, —
And he who ushered us unto the scene.
First in grassy dell we sat us down
With footfall hushed and tongues refrained from speech. That so we might behold, all unbeheld.
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THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS. 87
There was a glen crag-walled, with rills o'erstreamed, Closed in with pine shade, where the Maenad girls Sat with hands busied with their blithesome toils. The faded thyrsus some with ivy sprays
Twined, till its tendril tresses waved again.
Others, like colts from carven wain yokes loosed,
Reechoed each to each the Bacchic chant.
But hapless Pentheus, seeing ill the throng
Of women, spake thus : " Stranger, where we stand,
Are these mock-maenad maids beyond my ken.
Some knoll or pine high-crested let me climb,
And I shall see the Maenads' lewdness well. "
A marvel then I saw the stranger do.
A soaring pine branch by the top he caught,
And dragged down — down — still down to the dark earth.
Arched as a bow it grew, or curving wheel
That on the lathe sweeps out its circle's round :
So bowed the stranger's hands that mountain branch,
And bent to earth — a deed past mortal might !
Then Pentheus on the pine boughs seated he,
And let the branch rise, sliding through his hands
Gently, with heedful care to unseat him not.
High up into the heights of air it soared,
Bearing my master throned upon its crest,
More by the Maenads seen than seeing them.
For scarce high-lifted was he manifest,
When lo, the stranger might no more be seen ;
And fell from heaven a voice — the voice, most like,
Of Dionysus, — crying : " O ye maids,
I bring him who would mock at you and me, "
And at my rites. Take vengeance on him ye !
Even as he cried, up heavenward, down to earth,
He flashed a pillar splendor of awful flame.
Hushed was the welkin : that fair grassy glen
Held hushed its leaves ; no wild thing's cry was heard. But they, whose ears not clearly caught the sound,
Sprang up, and shot keen glances right and left.
Again he cried his hest : then Kadmus' daughters
Knew certainly the Bacchic God's command,
And darted : and the swiftness of their feet
Was as of doves in onward-straining race —
His mother Agave' and her sisters twain,
And all the Bacchanals. Through torrent gorge,
O'er bowlders, leapt they, with the God's breath mad. When seated on the pine they saw my lord,
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
First torrent stones with might and main they hurled, Scaling a rock, their counter bastion,
And javelined him with branches of the pine :
And others shot their thyrsi through the air
At Pentheus — woeful mark ! — yet naught availed.
For, at a height above their fury's pitch,
Trapped in despair's gin, horror-struck he sat.
Last, oak limbs from their trunks they thundered down, And heaved at the roots with levers — not of iron.
But when they won no end of toil and strain,
Agav8 cried, "Ho, stand we round the trunk,
Maenads, and grasp, that we may catch the beast Crouched there, that he may"not proclaim abroad
Our God's mysterious rites ! Their countless hands Set they unto the pine, tore from the soil : —
And he, high-seated, crashed down from his height : And earthward fell with frenzy of shriek on shriek Pentheus, for now he knew his doom at hand.
His mother first, priestlike, began the slaughter, And fell on him : but from his hair the coif
He tore, that she might know and slay him not, — Hapless Agave' ! — and he touched her cheek, Crying, "'Tis I — 0 mother! — thine own son Pentheus — thou bar'st me in Echion's halls !
Have mercy, 0 my mother ! — for my sin
Murder not thou thy son — thy very son ! "
But she, with foaming lips and eyes that rolled Wildly, and reckless madness-clouded soul, Possessed of Bacchus, gave no heed to him ;
But his left arm she clutched in both her hands, And set against the wretch's ribs her foot,
And tore his shoulder out — not by her strength, But the God made it easy to her hands.
And Ino labored on the other side,
Rending his flesh: AutonoS pressed on — all
The Bacchanal throng. One awful blended cry
Rose — the king's screams while life was yet in him, And triumph yells from them. One bare an arm, One a foot sandal-shod. His ribs were stripped
In mangled shreds : with blood-bedabbled hands Each to and fro was tossing Pentheus' flesh.
Wide-sundered lies his corse : part 'neath rough rocks, Part mid the tangled depths of forest shades : —
Hard were the search. His miserable head
Which in her hands his mother chanced to seize,
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS. 39
Impaled upon her thyrsus point she bears,
Like mountain lion's, through Kithairon's mid Leaving her sisters in their Maenad dance ;
And, in her ghastly quarry exulting, comes Within these walls, to Bacchus crying aloud,
Her fellow-hunter, helper in the chase Triumphant — all its triumph-prize is tears! . . .
Enter Agave, carrying the head of Pentheus.
Agav6 —
Asian Bacchanals !
Chorus — Why dost thou challenge me ? — say. Agave —
Chorus —
Of Kadmus —
Lo, from the mountain side I bear A newly severed ivy spray
Unto our halls, a goodly prey.
Chorus —
I see — to our revels I welcome thee.
Agave —
I trapped him, I, with never a snare !
'Tis a lion — the whelp of a lion, plain to see.
Chorus —
Where in the wilderness, where ?
Kithairon —
Chorus — What hath Kithairon wrought ?
Him hath Kithairon to slaughter brought. Chorus —
Who was it smote him first ?
Agav6 — Mine, mine is the guerdon.
Their revel rout singeth me — " Happy Agave' ! " their
burden. Chorus —
Who then ? Agav6 —
Agav6 —
His daughter after me smote the monster fell — After me ! 0 fortunate hunting ! Is it not well ? Now share in the banquet ! —
Of Kadmus what wilt thou tell ?
Chorus — Alas ! wherein shall I share ?
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
Agave —
This whelp is yet but a tender thing,
And over its jaws yet sprouteth fair
The down 'neath the crest of its waving hair.
Chorus —
Yea, the hair of a beast of the wold might it be.
Agav6 —
Uproused was the Maenad gathering
To the chase, by a cunning hunter full cunningly.
Chorus —
Yea, a hunter is Bacchus our King.
Agav6 —
Dost thou praise me ?
Chorus — How can I choose but praise ?
Agav6 —
Ay, and full soon shall Kadmus' race
Chorus — — And Pentheus thy son
Agav6 —
Chorus — — Strange quarry !
And my son Pentheus where ? Let him upraise A ladder's stair against the palace wall,
That to the triglyphs he may nail this head, This lion's head that I from hunting bring.
Enter Kadmus, with Attendants carrying a bier.
Kadmus —
Follow me, henchmen, to the palace front ;
Follow me, bearing Pentheus' ghastly load,
Whose limbs by toilsome searchings manifold, About Kithairon's glens all rent apart
I found, and bring — no twain in one place found, But lying all about the trackless wood. . . .
Agavt —
My father, proudest boast is thine to make,
To have begotten daughters best by far
Of mortals — all thy daughters, chiefly me,
Me who left loom and shuttle, and pressed on
To high emprise, to hunt beasts with mine hands. And in mine arms I bring, thou seest, this
—
Agav6 —
Yea, I shall have praise of my scion For the prey that is taken, even this whelp of a lion.
And strangely taken. . . . Where is mine ancient sire ? Let him draw near.
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
The prize I took, against thy palace wall
To hang : receive father, in thine hands. And now, triumphant in mine hunting's spoil, Bid to feast thy friends for blest art thou, Blest verily, since we have achieved such deeds.
Kadmus —
anguish measureless that blasts the sight murder compassed by those wretched hands
Fair victim this to cast before the Gods,
And bid to such banquet Thebes and me
Woe for our sorrows — first for thine, then minel How hath the God, King Bromius, ruined us — Just stroke — yet ruthless — he not our kin
Agav6 —
How sour of mood graybeard eld in men,
How sullen-eyed Framed in his mother's mold A mighty hunter may my son become,
When with the Theban youths he speedeth forth Questing the quarry — But he can do naught Save war with Gods Father, our part
To warn him not to joy in baneful wisdom. Where he Who will call him hitherward
To see me, and behold mine happiness
Kadmus —
Alas when ye are ware what ye have done, With sore grief shall ye grieve If to life's end Ye should abide on aye in this your state,
Ye should not, though unblest, seem all accurst
AgavQ —
What not well here — what that calls for grief
Kadmus —
First cast thou up thine eye to yonder heaven.
Agave —
Lo, so do. Why bid me look thereon
Kadmus — Seems
Agav6 — Brighter
the same Or hath changed to thee
—
Kadmus —
Is this delirium tossing yet thy soul
more clear than heretofore.
Agav6 —
This comprehend not: yet — yet — passes, My late mood — am coming to myself.
Kadmus —
Canst hearken aught then Clearly canst reply
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42
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
Agave —
Our words late-spoken — father, I forget them.
Kadmus —
To what house earnest thou with bridal hymns ?
Agave — Echion's
—
of the Dragon seed, men say.
— — in thine halls, to thy lord
born of my union with his sire.
Kadmus —
Thou barest
whom ?
Agave — — Pentheus
Kadmus — Whose
—
—
art thou bearing in thine
head arms?
whose?
Agave — — A lion's
Agave —
Ah-h! what do Isee? Whatbear Iinminehands?
Kadmus —
Gaze, gaze on and be thou certified.
so said they which hunted it.
Kadmus —
Look well thereon : small trouble this, to look.
Agave — — see
mine uttermost anguish Woe me! to thee now like lion's head
Kadmus — Seems
Agave — — No —
wretched
—
wretched
—
Pentheus'
head hold
Kadmus
Of me bewailed ere recognized of thee.
Agave —
Who murdered him How came he to mine hands
Kadmus —
piteous truth that so untimely dawns
Agave — Speak
Agave —
How to Kithairon went this hapless one
Kadmus — — Thou!
Hard my heart beats, waiting for its doom. thou, and those thy sisters murdered him.
Agave —
Where perished he
—
at home, or in what place
Kadmus —
There, where Aktaion erst by hounds was torn.
Kadmus —
To mock the God and thy wild rites he went.
?
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I !
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it,
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THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
43
Agavi —
But we — for what cause thither journeyed we ?
Kadmus —
Ye were distraught : all Thebes went Bacchant-wild.
Agav6 —
Dionysus ruined us !
I
see it now.
Kadmus —
Ye flouted him, would not believe him God.
Agav6 —
Where, father, is my son's beloved corse ?
Kadmus —
Here do I bear by hard searching found.
Agave —
Is —all meetly fitted limb to limb
Kadmus —now add thereto this dear-loved [Yea
head. ]
AgavG —
But — in my folly what was Pentheus' part
Kadmus —
He was as ye, revering not the God,
Who therefore in one mischief whelmed you all, You, and this prince, so ruining all our house
And me, who had no man child of mine own,
Who see now, wretched daughter, this the fruit Of thy womb horribly and foully slain.
To thee our house looked up, son, the stay
Of mine old halls my daughter's offspring thou, Thou wast the city's dread was none dared mock The old man, none that turned his eyes on thee,
gallant head — thou hadst well requited him. Now from mine halls shall in shame be cast — Kadmus the great, who sowed the seed of Thebes, And reaped the goodliest harvest of the world.
best beloved — for, though thou be no more,
Thou shalt be counted best beloved, child,
Thou who shalt fondle never more my head,
Nor clasp and call me " Mother's father," child,
Crying, "Who wrongs thee, ancient? — flouts thee who? Who vexeth thee to trouble thine heart's peace
Speak, that may chastise the wrong, my sire. " Now am anguish-stricken, wretched thou, Woeful thy mother, and her sisters wretched
If any man there be that scorns the Gods,
This man's death let him note, and so believe.
II
! !
I
it,
!
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00
I O
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it
?
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES.
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES. Women.
the " Thesmophoriazusae " : translated by W. Lucas Collins. )
They're always abusing the women, As a terrible plague to men ;
They say we're the root of all evil, And repeat it again and again ;
Of war and quarrel and bloodshed, All mischief, be what it may :
And pray then why do you marry us, If we're all the plagues you say ?
And why do you take such care of us, And keep us safe at home,
And are never easy a moment If ever we chance to roam ?
When you ought to be thanking heaven That your Plague is out of the way,
You all keep fussing and fretting — Where is my Plague to-day ?
If a Plague peeps out of the window, Up go the eyes of the men ;
If she hides, then they all keep staring Until she looks out again.
of the Clouds.
(From "The Clouds" : translated by Andrew Lang. )
Immortal Clouds from the echoing shore
Of the father of streams from the sounding sea,
Dewy and fleet, let us rise and soar ; Dewy and gleaming and fleet are we !
Let us look on the tree-clad mountain crest,
On the sacred earth where the fruits rejoice,
On the waters that murmur east and west,
On the tumbling sea with his moaning voice,
For unwearied glitters the Eye of the Air, And the bright rays gleam;
Then cast we our shadows of mist, and fare
In our deathless shapes to glance everywhere
From the height of the heaven, on the land and air,
And the Ocean Stream.
Song
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES. 46
Let us on, ye Maidens that bring the Bain, Let us gaze on Pallas' citadel,
In the country of Cecrops fair and dear, The mystic land of the holy cell,
Where the Rites unspoken securely dwell,
And the gift of the gods that know not stain, And a people of mortals that know not fear.
For the temples tall and the statues fair,
And the feasts of the gods are holiest there ;
The feasts of Immortals, the chaplets of flowers,
And the Bromian mirth at the coming of spring, And the musical voices that fill the hours,
And the dancing feet of the maids that sing !
The Birds' Cosmology.
(From "The Birds " : translated by John Hookham Frere. )
Ye Children of Man ! whose life is a span, Protracted with sorrow from day to day, Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, Sickly calamitous creatures of clay !
Attend to the words of the Sovereign Birds (Immortal, illustrious, lords of the air),
Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye, Your struggles of misery, labor, and care. Whence you may learn and clearly discern Such truths as attract your inquisitive turn; Which is busied of late with a mighty debate, A profound speculation about the creation,
And organical life, and chaotical strife,
With various notions of heavenly motions,
And rivers and oceans, and valleys and mountains, And sources of fountains, and meteors on high,
And stars in the sky. . . . We propose by and by
(If you'll listen and hear) to make it all clear.
And Prodicus henceforth shall pass for a dunce,
When his doubts are explained and expounded at once.
Before the creation of Ether and Light, Chaos and Night together were plight,
In the dungeon of Erebus foully bedight, Nor Ocean, or Air, or substance was there, Or solid or rare, or figure or form,
But horrible Tartarus ruled in the storm :
At length, in the dreary chaotical closet Of Erebus old, was a privy deposit,
--
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES.
By Night the primeval in secrecy laid —
A mystical egg, that in silence and shade
Was brooded and hatched, till time came about, And Love, the delightful, in glory flew out,
In rapture and light, exulting and bright, Sparkling and florid, with stars in his forehead, His forehead and hair, and a flutter and flare,
As he rose in the air, triumphantly furnished
To range his dominions on glittering pinions,
All golden and azure, and blooming and burnished:
He soon, in the murky Tartarean recesses, With a hurricane's might, in his fiery caresses Impregnated Chaos ; and hastily snatched
To being and life, begotten and hatched
The primitive Birds : but the Deities all,
The celestial Lights, the terrestrial Ball,
Were later of birth, with the dwellers on earth More tamely combined, of a temperate kind ; When chaotical mixture approached to a fixture.
Our antiquity proved ; it remains to be shown That Love is our author and master alone,
Like him we can ramble, and gambol and fly
O'er ocean and earth, and aloft to the sky ;
And all the world over, we're friends to the lover, And when other means fail, we are found to prevail, When a Peacock or Pheasant is sent as a present.
All lessons of primary daily concern
You have learned from the Birds, and continue to learn, Your best benefactors and early instructors ;
We give you the warning of seasons returning.
When the Cranes are arranged, and muster afloat
In the middle air, with a creaking note,
Steering away to the Libyan sands,
Then careful farmers sow their lands ;
The crazy vessel is hauled ashore,
The sail, the ropes, the rudder, and oar
Are all unshipped, and housed in store.
The shepherd is warned, by the Kite reappearing,
To muster his flock, and be ready for shearing,
You quit your old cloak at the Swallow's behest,
In assurance of summer, and purchase a vest.
For Delphi, for Ammon, Dodona, in fine
For every oracular temple and shrine,
The Birds are a substitute equal and fair,
For on us you depend, and to us you repair
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES. 47
For counsel and aid when a marriage is made, A purchase, a bargain, a venture in trade : Unlucky or lucky, whatever has struck ye, An ox or an ass that may happen to pass,
A voice in the street, or a slave that you meet,
A name or a word by chance overheard,
If you deem it an omen, you call it a Bird ;
And if birds are your omens, it clearly will follow, That birds are a proper prophetic Apollo.
Then take us as gods, and you'll soon find the odds, We'll serve for all uses, as prophets and muses ;
We'll give ye fine weather, we'll live here together ; We'll not keep away, scornful and proud, atop of a cloud (In Jupiter's way) ; but attend every day
To prosper and bless all you possess,
And all your affairs, for yourselves and your heirs. And as long as you live, we shall give
You wealth and health, and pleasure and treasure, In ample measure ;
And never bilk you of pigeon's milk
Or potable gold ; you shall live to grow old,
In laughter and mirth, on the face of the earth, Laughing, quaffing, carousing, boozing,
Your only distress shall be the excess
Of ease and abundance and happiness.
There is nothing which, in the light of history and criticism, we have learnt respecting the Bible which is not involved in the principle that in inspired utterances there is still a human element. At any rate, knowledge is knowledge. The light which comes from heaven — the light which is derived from earnest and truthful study —cannot lead us astray. The grandeur of that which is uttered to us by the voice of God has not been in the smallest degree impaired by any of the certain conclusions which study has revealed. We feel none the less the thrill and splendour of Isaiah's magnificent utterances, if we are convinced that there are two Isaiahs, of whom the second may have lived a century later than the first ; nor do we lose the large lessons of toleration, of pity, of the impossibility of flying from God, of God's abounding tenderness, of the shaming into fatuity of man's little hatreds, if advancing knowledge compels us to recognise that the book of Jonah as whole, Jewish Haggadah.
Let us turn to the New Testament. It may now be regarded as indisputable that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by St. PauL No critic worth the name would any longer maintain that is. It may also be regarded as certain that St. Peter had any hand at all in the Second Epistle which goes by his name, yet other hands have been at work upon it. There are still unsettled problems about the Apocalypse. But on the whole the assaults of criticism on the stronghold of the New Testament have been defeated all along the line. There are arguments of overwhelming strength to prove that the thirteen Epistles which are attributed to St. Paul are the genuine expressions of his teeming intellect. The authenticity and credibility of the three
Synoptists have been fiercely attacked, but have never been shaken. Book after book has been written to prove that the Fourth Gospel was not the work of the Apostle St. John but those books have not brought conviction to the most learned and open-minded critics. If any one will read the introduction to this Gospel by Bishop Westcott in the Speaker's Commentary, he will see how
;
a it
if
2.
is,
a
THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM XXV
marvellously strong, how varied, how minute, and in many particulars how unexpected, is the mass of cogent evidence to convince us that in the Gospel we are reading the very words of the "Disciple whom Jesus loved"; —and, in any case, we can say with Herder, " That little book is a still, deep sea in which the heavens, with the sun and stars, are mirrored ; and if there are eternal truths — and such there are — for the human race, they are to be found in the Gospel of St. John. "
It is no longer disputable that the last sixteen verses of St. Mark are a later and dubious appendix to that Gospel ; that the narrative of the woman taken in adultery, in John viii. 1-11, — though bearing evidence of its own truth — was no part of the original Gospel : that the text about the three heavenly witnesses (1 John v. 7, 8) is spurious; that the verse about the angel troubling the water of the Pool of Bethesda (John v. 4) should have no place in the genuine text of the Fourth Gospel ; that the Eunuch's confession is an interpolation into the text of Acts viii. 37 ; and that the word " fasting " has been introduced by ascetic scribes into Matt, xvii 21, Mark ix. 29, 1 Cor. vii. 5, Acts x. 30. But although criticism has, in hundreds of instances, amended the text and elucidated the meaning of almost every page of the New Testament, it has done nothing to shake, but rather much to enhance, our conviction that throughout its treatises the witness of God standeth sure. And, as a general result, we may affirm that the Jewish race possessed an insight respecting the nature of God and His relations to men, which was a special gift to them, for the dissemination of which they were set apart ; and that by this inspired mission they have rendered higher and deeper services to mankind than it gained from the aesthetic suscepti bilities of Greece, or the strong imperialism of Bome. When we read their sacred books, we are listening to the Prophets of a prophetic race. Nor are these the mere assertions of believers; they have been stated quite as strongly by advanced sceptics. If Cardinal Newman said of the Bible that " its light is like the body of heaven in its clearness, its vastness like the bosom of the sea, its variety like scenes of nature," Eenan said with no less strength of con
xxvi THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM
viction, " C'est apres tout le grand livre consolateur de l'HumaniteV' Heinrich Heine, after a day spent in the unwonted task of reading it, exclaimed with a burst of enthusiasm, " What a book ! vast and wide as the world, rooted in the abysses of creation, and towering up beyond the blue secrets of heaven ! Sunrise and sun set, promise and fulfilment, birth and death, the whole drama of humanity are all in this book ! Its eclipse would be the return of chaos ; its extinction the epitaph of history. " And to quote but one more testimony,Professor Huxley, one of the most candid-minded of men, in a speech, delivered, if I remember rightly, before the London School Board, said, " I have been seriously perplexed to know how the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of
conduct, can be kept up without the use of the Bible. For three centuries this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history. It forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other civilisations, and of a great past stretching back to the farthest limits of the oldest nations of the world. By the study of what other book could children be so much humanised, and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills like themselves but a momentary interspace between the two eternities, and earns the blessings or the curses of all time according to its efforts to do good and hate evil, even as they are also earning the payment for their work ? "
Let all humble and earnest believers rest assured that biblical criticism, so far as it is reverent, earnest, and well founded, may remove many errors, but cannot rob them of one precious and eternal truth. As Bishop Butler so wisely said a century ago, "the only question concerning the authority of Scripture is whether it be what it claims to be, not whether it be a book of such sort and so promulged as weak men are apt to fancy. " 1 He also quotes with approval the remark which Origen deduced from analogical reasoning, that " He who believes the Scripture to have proceeded from Him who is the Author of Nature may well expect to find the same sort of difficulties in it as are found in the
1 Analogy, ii. 3.
THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM xxvii
constitution of Nature. " And he adds, " He who denies the Scripture to have been from God, upon account of these difficulties, may for the very same reason deny the world to have been formed by Him. "1
IV
We now approach the central subject of our religion —our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. With the belief in Him, the belief in Christianity must stand or fall. It is but a few months since we committed to the grave, amid a nation's tears, the fore most statesman of our century —Mr. W. E. Gladstone. He was a man of splendid intellectual power, as well as of the loftiest eloquence ; and it is one sign of the unshaken dominance of the faith in Christ that he—familiar as he was with the literature of almost every nation —could yet say from his heart, " All I write, and all I think, and all I hope, is based upon the Divinity of our Lord, the one central hope of our poor wayward race. " It is not long since we lost in Eobert Browning one of the deepest and greatest of our poets ; and Mr. Browning wrote that —
The acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All problems in the world, and out of it.
Now the Divinity of Christ has been the subject of vehement attack in all ages. The Jews from the first represented Him as a meztth or " deceiver " ; and besides the angry and disdainful allusions to Him in Talmudic writings, which spoke of Him as a Mamzer, and as "that man," Jewish hatred in the Middle Ages concentrated itself into an amazing mixture of nonsense and blasphemy in the Toldoth Jeshu. Among Gentiles, Celsus, the Epicurean Philosopher, wrote his famous "True Discourse," to destroy all His claims for ever ; and he was effectually answered by
In the thirteenth century appeared the book now only known by its name, " De tribus imjoostoribus," which was attributed to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa II. , and ranked Christ with Moses and Mahomet. All these attacks have fallen absolutely
1 Id. Jntrod.
Origen.
xxviii THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM
flat and dead, and have ceased to have a particle of significance. But in the eighteenth century in England — through the writings of Hobbes, Bolingbroke, and Hume ; in France, by those of Voltaire, Von Holbach and the Encyclopaedists ; in Germany as the gradual outcome of systems of philosophy which culminated in Hegel, and of which the sceptical elements were brought to a head by the Wolfenbiittel Fragments and the Leben Jesu of Strauss, — the belief of thousands was for a time impaired, if not finally destroyed. Out of a mass of sceptical literature two books may be selected as representing the culmination of disbelief in the Divinity of Christ, and as having been specially influential in the spread of that disbelief —the Leben Jesu of Strauss, and the Vie de Jisus of
Strauss was a pupil of Hegel, and the main position of his once famous, but already half forgotten, Life of Jesus, was that it was not history but " a myth " : in other words, that it was nothing but a series of symbols dressed up in an historic form,—con victions thrown into the form of poetry and legend. He went much farther than Hegel, or De Wette, or Schleiermacher, and instead of urging that Jesus had created round him an atmosphere of imagination and excitement, tried to show " that Christ had not founded the Church, but that the Church had invented Christ, and formed him out of the predictions of the Old Testament, and the hopes and expectations of the days founded on them. " 1 He admitted little or nothing which was truly historical in the Gospel miracles. The attempt to establish this opinion broke down under its own baselessness. It was seen in its naked absurdity when Bruno Bauer attributed Christianity to the direct invention of an individual, and Feuerbach treated all human religion as self-deception. Herder truly said that " If the fisher men of Galilee invented such a history, God be praised that they
1 See Hagenbach's German Rationalism, p. 371.
I will not add the anonymous work on
Ernest Kenan. To these
Supernatural Religion, for it was full of the grossest inaccuracies, and it ceased to have any influence when its many instances of sciolism were exposed by the learning and power of Bishop Lightfoot.
THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM xxix
invented it " ; and further, we may say that if they did invent the inventors would be as great as the hero. Strauss himself tore to shreds the old attempts of Dr. Paulus to represent the miracles as mere natural events; but how impossible was to support anything like religion on views such as his, he himself showed in his subsequent Glaubenslehre (1840), in which he expressed his belief that no reconciliation was possible between science and Christianity. Strauss's whole method vitiated by his two pre- assumptions —(1) that all miracles are impossible; and (2) that the Gospels have no pretence to historical authority. The readers of the Gospels have felt that " It the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit truth " and ordinary reasoners realise at once that the trivial and fantastic hypotheses of rationalising scepticism are shattered on the two vast facts of Christianity and Christendom. And, like all who have attacked the Divinity of our Lord, even Strauss seems almost compelled to fall down on his knees before Him. He says that "Jesus stands foremost among those who have given higher ideal to Humanity " that " It impossible to refrain from admiring and loving Him and that never at any time will be possible to rise above Him, nor to imagine any one who shall be even equal with Him. "
Eenan's Vie de Jims appeared in 1865. In many respects, its scepticism be subtracted from it, was beautiful book. The author was learned and brilliant man of genius, and was the master of an eminently fascinating style, through which breathes charming personality. Yet how utterly inefficient were the deplorable methods by which he tried to set at naught the faith of Christians! Let two instances suffice. For nearly nineteen centuries the religion, the history, and the moral progress of man kind have been profoundly affected by the Besurrection. And yet Eenan thinks sufficient to account for the Resurrection by saying, "Divine power of love! sacred moments in which the passion of an hallucinie gives to the world resuscitated God! " Such mode of treating the convictions of centuries of Christians, who have numbered in their ranks some of the keenest and most brilliant thinkers in the race of man, can only be regarded as
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ixx THE LITERATURE OP RELIGIOUS CRITICISM
utterly frivolous. For the sake of a subjective prejudice it seta aside all the records of the New Testament, and the nineteen centuries of splendid progress which have had their origin in the faith which those records founded. So far was " la passion d'une hallucinee," from having founded the belief in the Eesurrection that the Apostles, who had found it impossible to realise the prophecies of Eesurrection which they had heard from the lips of their Lord, were most reluctant, and most slow of heart to believe the most positive evidence. So far from being prepared beforehand to accept or to invent a Eesurrection, " they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a Spirit," when Christ Himself stood before them. When Mary of Magdala and the other women told them that they had seen Jesus, so far from being credulous enough to be carried away by hallucinations, they regarded their words as " idle talk " (krjpos " babble," a word of entire contempt) — and they disbelieved them : nay, they even rejected the witness of the two disciples to whom He had appeared on the way to Emmaus, and Thomas was dissatisfied with the affirmation of the whole Apostolic band. So far from "regarding it as the height of absurdity to suppose that Jesus could be held by death," their despairing conviction that the bridegroom had indeed been taken from them, was so all but insuperable that it required the most decisive personal eye-witness to overcome it. Again, consider the way in which Eenan treats the Resurrection of Lazarus! Although Eleazar was one of the commonest of Jewish names, he assumes that the story of the resuscitation of Lazarus rose from some confusion about the Lazarus of the Parable who was carried into Abraham's bosom ; and in some very confused sentences he more than hints that the story of his death and resurrection was the result of a collusion between Jesus, Mary, and Martha, and that Jesus in some way or other gave way to the suggestion of the sisters, because, in the impure city of Jerusalem he had lost " some thing of his original transparent clearness," 1 " Peut-etre l'ardent d^sir de fermer la bouche a ceux qui niaient outrageusement la mission divine le leur ami, entraina-t-elle ces personnes passionn^es
1 Fie de Jisut, 872.
THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM xxxi
au dela de toutea lea bornes. II faut se rappeler que, dans cette ville impure et pesante de Jerusalem, Jims n'itait pas lui-rrdme. Sa conscience, par la faute des hommes, et non par la sienne, avait perdu quelque chose de la limpiditi primordiale. " Strange that a man of even ordinary intelligence could expect any one to get rid of a miracle by the hypothesis that the Lord of truth,—He whose life and teaching have created in the world the conviction that " it is better to die than lie," —lent Himself to a coarse and vulgar make- believe! Christianity surely has nothing to fear from such reconstructions of the Gospel History as these !
Most of the books written to disprove the Divinity of the Saviour suggest some brand-new hypothesis ; one after another they have their brief vogue, are trumpeted by unbelievers as a refutation of Christianity, and then pass into oblivion, if not into contempt. They have not shaken the belief reigning in millions of hearts in every region of the habitable globe ; and the Christian world, with out the smallest misgiving, will still exclaim, in the words of the inscription on the obelisk reared by the Pope Sixtus in front of St. Peter's at Eome, on soil once wet with the blood of martyrs :—
"CHPJSTUS VINCIT, CHEISTUS EEGNAT, CHRISTUS IMPEEAT, CHEISTUS AB OMNI MALO PLEBEM SUAM DEFENDAT. "
The Christian world continues, and will for long ages hence continue, to offer up the prayer —
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove ;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; Thou madest Life in man and brute ; Thou madest Death ; and lo, Thy foot
Is on the skull which Thou hast made !
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS. By EURIPIDES.
(From the " Bacchae " : translated by Arthur S. Way. )
[Ecbipidbs : The last of the three Greek tragic poets ; born on the island of Salamis in b. c. 480, according to popular tradition, on the day of the famous naval battle. He received instruction in physics from Anaxagoras, in rhetoric from Prodicus, and was on terms of intimate friendship with Socrates. He early devoted his attention to dramatic composition, and at the age of twenty-five obtained a prize for his first tragedy. After a successful career at Athens, he retired for unknown reasons to Magnesia in Thessaly, and thence proceeded to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, where he died in B. C. 405. Cf over seventy-five tragedies there have come down to us only eighteen, the best known being "Alcestis," "Medea," " Hippolytus," "Hecuba," "Andromache," "Iphigenia at Aulis," "Iphigenia among the Tauri," "Electra," "Orestes,"
" Bacchae. "]
[Aboumknt. — SemelS the daughter of Kadmua, a mortal bride of Zeus, was per suaded by Hera to pray the God to promise her with an oath to grant her what soever she would. And when he had consented, she asked that he would appear to her in all the splendor of his godhead, even as he visited Hera. Then Zeus, not of his will, but constrained by his oath, appeared to her amidst intolerable light and flashings of heaven's lightning, whereby her mortal body was con sumed. But the God snatched her unborn babe from the flames, and hid him in a cleft of his thigh, till the days were accomplished wherein he should be born. And so the child Dionysus sprang from the thigh of Zeus, and was hidden from the jealous malice of Hera till he was grown. Then did he set forth in victorious march through all the earth, bestowing upon men the gift of the vine, and planting his worship everywhere. But the sisters of SemelS scoffed at the story of the heavenly bridegroom, and mocked at the worship of Dionysus. And when Kadmus was now old, Pentheus his grandson reigned in his stead, and he too defied the Wine giver, saying that he was no god, and that none in Thebes should ever worship him. And herein is told how Dionysus came in human guise to Thebes, and filled her women with the Bacchanal possession, and how Pentheus, essaying to withstand him, was punished by strange and awful doom. — Wat. ]
Pentheus —
We must not overcome by force
The women. I will hide me midst the pines.
Dionysus —
Such hiding shall be thine as fate ordains, Who com'st with guile, a spy on Bacchanals.
vol. it. —3 33
34
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
Pentheus —
Methinks I see them mid the copses caught, Like birds, in toils of their sweet dalliance.
Dionysus —
To this end then art thou appointed watchman : Perchance shalt catch them — if they catch not thee.
Pentheus —
On through the midst of Thebes' town usher me, For I, I only of them, dare such deed.
Dionysus —
Alone for Thebes thou travailest, thou alone ; Wherefore for thee wait tug and strain foredoomed. Follow : all safely will I usher thee.
Another thence shall bring thee, —
Pentheus — Dionysus —
Ay, my mother. come.
0 silken ease !
Thou wouldst thrust pomp on me !
To all men manifest — Pentheus —
For this I
Dionysus —
High borne shalt thou return —
Pentheus — Dionysus —
On a mother's hands. Pentheus —
Dionysus —
Nay, 'tis but such pomp
—
Strange, strange man !
So shalt thou win renown that soars to heaven.
[Exit Pentheus. AgavS, stretch forth hands ; ye sisters, stretch,
Daughters of Kadmus ! To a mighty strife
I bring this prince. The victor I shall be And Bromius. All else shall the issue show.
Pentheus— Dionysus —
As is my desert.
Strange shall thine experience be.
Chorus—
Up, ye swift hell hounds of Madness ! Away to the mountain glens
where
Kadmus's daughters hold revel, and sting them to fury, to tear
Him who hath come woman-vestured to spy on the Bacchanals there,
Frenzy-struck fool that he is ! — for his mother shall foremost descry Him, as from waterworn scaur or from storm-riven tree he would spy That which they do, and her shout to the Maenads shall peal from
on high : —
[^etf Diohybus.
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS. 35
"Who hath come hither, hath trodden the paths to the mountain that lead,
Spying on Kadmus's daughters, the maids o'er the mountains that
speed, — Bacchanal sisters ?
seed?
what mother hath brought to the birth such a
Who was it ? — who ? — for I ween he was born not of womankind's blood :
Kather he sprang from the womb of a lioness, scourge of the wood;
Haply is spawn of the Gorgons of Libya, the demon brood. "
Justice, draw nigh us, draw nigh, with the sword of avenging appear :
Slay the unrighteous, the seed of Echion the earth born, and shear Clean through his throat, for he feareth not God, neither law doth
he fear.
Lo, how in impious mood, and with lawless intent, and with spite Madness distraught, with thy rites and thy mother's he cometh to
fight,
Bacchus — to bear the invincible down by his impotent might !
Thus shall one gain him a sorrowless life, if he keepeth his soul Sober in spirit, and swift in obedience to heaven's control, Murmuring not, neither pressing beyond his mortality's goal.
No such presumptuous wisdom I covet : I seek for mine own —
Yea, in the quest is mine happiness — things that not so may be
known,
Glorious wisdom and great, from the days everlasting forth shown,
Even to fashion in pureness my life and in holiness aye, Following ends that are noble from dawn to the death of the day, Honoring Gods, and refusing to walk in injustice's way.
Justice, draw nigh us, draw nigh, with the sword of avenging appear :
Slay the unrighteous, the seed of Echion the earthborn, and shear Clean through his throat ; for he feareth not God, neither law doth
he fear.
0 Dionysus, reveal thee ! — appear as a bull to behold,
Or be thou seen as a dragon, a monster of heads manifold,
Or as a lion with splendors of flame round the limbs of him rolled.
36 THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
Gome to us, Bacchus, and smiling in mockery compass him round Now with the toils of destruction, and so shall the hunter be bound, Trapped mid the throng of the Maenads, the quarry his questing
hath found.
Enter Messenger.
Chorus —
What now ? — hast tidings of the Bacchanals ?
Messenger —
O house of old through Hellas prosperous
Of that Sidonian patriarch, who sowed
The earthborn serpent's dragon teeth in earth, How I bemoan thee ! What though thrall I be, Their lords' calamities touch loyal thralls.
Messenger —
Pentheus is dead : Echion's son is dead.
Chorus —
Bromius, my King ! thou hast made thy godhead plain !
Messenger —
How, what is this thou say'st ? Dost thou exult, Woman, upon my lord's calamities ?
Chorus —
An alien I, I chant glad outland strain, Who cower no more in terror of the chain.
Messenger —
Deemest thou Thebes so void of men [that ills Have left her powerless all to punish thee ? ]
Chorus —
Dionysus it 'tis the King of the Vine
That hath lordship o'er me, no Thebes of thine
Messenger
This might be pardoned, save that base Women, to joy o'er evils past recall.
Chorus —
Tell to me, tell, — by what doom died he, The villain devising villainy
Messenger —
When, from the homesteads of this Theban land Departing, we had crossed Asopus' streams,
Then we began to breast Kithairon's steep,
Pentheus and — for to my lord clave, —
And he who ushered us unto the scene.
First in grassy dell we sat us down
With footfall hushed and tongues refrained from speech. That so we might behold, all unbeheld.
a
I,
is,
? I
it is,
!
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS. 87
There was a glen crag-walled, with rills o'erstreamed, Closed in with pine shade, where the Maenad girls Sat with hands busied with their blithesome toils. The faded thyrsus some with ivy sprays
Twined, till its tendril tresses waved again.
Others, like colts from carven wain yokes loosed,
Reechoed each to each the Bacchic chant.
But hapless Pentheus, seeing ill the throng
Of women, spake thus : " Stranger, where we stand,
Are these mock-maenad maids beyond my ken.
Some knoll or pine high-crested let me climb,
And I shall see the Maenads' lewdness well. "
A marvel then I saw the stranger do.
A soaring pine branch by the top he caught,
And dragged down — down — still down to the dark earth.
Arched as a bow it grew, or curving wheel
That on the lathe sweeps out its circle's round :
So bowed the stranger's hands that mountain branch,
And bent to earth — a deed past mortal might !
Then Pentheus on the pine boughs seated he,
And let the branch rise, sliding through his hands
Gently, with heedful care to unseat him not.
High up into the heights of air it soared,
Bearing my master throned upon its crest,
More by the Maenads seen than seeing them.
For scarce high-lifted was he manifest,
When lo, the stranger might no more be seen ;
And fell from heaven a voice — the voice, most like,
Of Dionysus, — crying : " O ye maids,
I bring him who would mock at you and me, "
And at my rites. Take vengeance on him ye !
Even as he cried, up heavenward, down to earth,
He flashed a pillar splendor of awful flame.
Hushed was the welkin : that fair grassy glen
Held hushed its leaves ; no wild thing's cry was heard. But they, whose ears not clearly caught the sound,
Sprang up, and shot keen glances right and left.
Again he cried his hest : then Kadmus' daughters
Knew certainly the Bacchic God's command,
And darted : and the swiftness of their feet
Was as of doves in onward-straining race —
His mother Agave' and her sisters twain,
And all the Bacchanals. Through torrent gorge,
O'er bowlders, leapt they, with the God's breath mad. When seated on the pine they saw my lord,
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
First torrent stones with might and main they hurled, Scaling a rock, their counter bastion,
And javelined him with branches of the pine :
And others shot their thyrsi through the air
At Pentheus — woeful mark ! — yet naught availed.
For, at a height above their fury's pitch,
Trapped in despair's gin, horror-struck he sat.
Last, oak limbs from their trunks they thundered down, And heaved at the roots with levers — not of iron.
But when they won no end of toil and strain,
Agav8 cried, "Ho, stand we round the trunk,
Maenads, and grasp, that we may catch the beast Crouched there, that he may"not proclaim abroad
Our God's mysterious rites ! Their countless hands Set they unto the pine, tore from the soil : —
And he, high-seated, crashed down from his height : And earthward fell with frenzy of shriek on shriek Pentheus, for now he knew his doom at hand.
His mother first, priestlike, began the slaughter, And fell on him : but from his hair the coif
He tore, that she might know and slay him not, — Hapless Agave' ! — and he touched her cheek, Crying, "'Tis I — 0 mother! — thine own son Pentheus — thou bar'st me in Echion's halls !
Have mercy, 0 my mother ! — for my sin
Murder not thou thy son — thy very son ! "
But she, with foaming lips and eyes that rolled Wildly, and reckless madness-clouded soul, Possessed of Bacchus, gave no heed to him ;
But his left arm she clutched in both her hands, And set against the wretch's ribs her foot,
And tore his shoulder out — not by her strength, But the God made it easy to her hands.
And Ino labored on the other side,
Rending his flesh: AutonoS pressed on — all
The Bacchanal throng. One awful blended cry
Rose — the king's screams while life was yet in him, And triumph yells from them. One bare an arm, One a foot sandal-shod. His ribs were stripped
In mangled shreds : with blood-bedabbled hands Each to and fro was tossing Pentheus' flesh.
Wide-sundered lies his corse : part 'neath rough rocks, Part mid the tangled depths of forest shades : —
Hard were the search. His miserable head
Which in her hands his mother chanced to seize,
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS. 39
Impaled upon her thyrsus point she bears,
Like mountain lion's, through Kithairon's mid Leaving her sisters in their Maenad dance ;
And, in her ghastly quarry exulting, comes Within these walls, to Bacchus crying aloud,
Her fellow-hunter, helper in the chase Triumphant — all its triumph-prize is tears! . . .
Enter Agave, carrying the head of Pentheus.
Agav6 —
Asian Bacchanals !
Chorus — Why dost thou challenge me ? — say. Agave —
Chorus —
Of Kadmus —
Lo, from the mountain side I bear A newly severed ivy spray
Unto our halls, a goodly prey.
Chorus —
I see — to our revels I welcome thee.
Agave —
I trapped him, I, with never a snare !
'Tis a lion — the whelp of a lion, plain to see.
Chorus —
Where in the wilderness, where ?
Kithairon —
Chorus — What hath Kithairon wrought ?
Him hath Kithairon to slaughter brought. Chorus —
Who was it smote him first ?
Agav6 — Mine, mine is the guerdon.
Their revel rout singeth me — " Happy Agave' ! " their
burden. Chorus —
Who then ? Agav6 —
Agav6 —
His daughter after me smote the monster fell — After me ! 0 fortunate hunting ! Is it not well ? Now share in the banquet ! —
Of Kadmus what wilt thou tell ?
Chorus — Alas ! wherein shall I share ?
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
Agave —
This whelp is yet but a tender thing,
And over its jaws yet sprouteth fair
The down 'neath the crest of its waving hair.
Chorus —
Yea, the hair of a beast of the wold might it be.
Agav6 —
Uproused was the Maenad gathering
To the chase, by a cunning hunter full cunningly.
Chorus —
Yea, a hunter is Bacchus our King.
Agav6 —
Dost thou praise me ?
Chorus — How can I choose but praise ?
Agav6 —
Ay, and full soon shall Kadmus' race
Chorus — — And Pentheus thy son
Agav6 —
Chorus — — Strange quarry !
And my son Pentheus where ? Let him upraise A ladder's stair against the palace wall,
That to the triglyphs he may nail this head, This lion's head that I from hunting bring.
Enter Kadmus, with Attendants carrying a bier.
Kadmus —
Follow me, henchmen, to the palace front ;
Follow me, bearing Pentheus' ghastly load,
Whose limbs by toilsome searchings manifold, About Kithairon's glens all rent apart
I found, and bring — no twain in one place found, But lying all about the trackless wood. . . .
Agavt —
My father, proudest boast is thine to make,
To have begotten daughters best by far
Of mortals — all thy daughters, chiefly me,
Me who left loom and shuttle, and pressed on
To high emprise, to hunt beasts with mine hands. And in mine arms I bring, thou seest, this
—
Agav6 —
Yea, I shall have praise of my scion For the prey that is taken, even this whelp of a lion.
And strangely taken. . . . Where is mine ancient sire ? Let him draw near.
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
The prize I took, against thy palace wall
To hang : receive father, in thine hands. And now, triumphant in mine hunting's spoil, Bid to feast thy friends for blest art thou, Blest verily, since we have achieved such deeds.
Kadmus —
anguish measureless that blasts the sight murder compassed by those wretched hands
Fair victim this to cast before the Gods,
And bid to such banquet Thebes and me
Woe for our sorrows — first for thine, then minel How hath the God, King Bromius, ruined us — Just stroke — yet ruthless — he not our kin
Agav6 —
How sour of mood graybeard eld in men,
How sullen-eyed Framed in his mother's mold A mighty hunter may my son become,
When with the Theban youths he speedeth forth Questing the quarry — But he can do naught Save war with Gods Father, our part
To warn him not to joy in baneful wisdom. Where he Who will call him hitherward
To see me, and behold mine happiness
Kadmus —
Alas when ye are ware what ye have done, With sore grief shall ye grieve If to life's end Ye should abide on aye in this your state,
Ye should not, though unblest, seem all accurst
AgavQ —
What not well here — what that calls for grief
Kadmus —
First cast thou up thine eye to yonder heaven.
Agave —
Lo, so do. Why bid me look thereon
Kadmus — Seems
Agav6 — Brighter
the same Or hath changed to thee
—
Kadmus —
Is this delirium tossing yet thy soul
more clear than heretofore.
Agav6 —
This comprehend not: yet — yet — passes, My late mood — am coming to myself.
Kadmus —
Canst hearken aught then Clearly canst reply
?
it
?
? ?
?
it it
I is
!
is
O0
a
is
?
II! a
? is ! ! !
it, ;
it ! ?
is
?
?
it
is ! !
! ?
!
42
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
Agave —
Our words late-spoken — father, I forget them.
Kadmus —
To what house earnest thou with bridal hymns ?
Agave — Echion's
—
of the Dragon seed, men say.
— — in thine halls, to thy lord
born of my union with his sire.
Kadmus —
Thou barest
whom ?
Agave — — Pentheus
Kadmus — Whose
—
—
art thou bearing in thine
head arms?
whose?
Agave — — A lion's
Agave —
Ah-h! what do Isee? Whatbear Iinminehands?
Kadmus —
Gaze, gaze on and be thou certified.
so said they which hunted it.
Kadmus —
Look well thereon : small trouble this, to look.
Agave — — see
mine uttermost anguish Woe me! to thee now like lion's head
Kadmus — Seems
Agave — — No —
wretched
—
wretched
—
Pentheus'
head hold
Kadmus
Of me bewailed ere recognized of thee.
Agave —
Who murdered him How came he to mine hands
Kadmus —
piteous truth that so untimely dawns
Agave — Speak
Agave —
How to Kithairon went this hapless one
Kadmus — — Thou!
Hard my heart beats, waiting for its doom. thou, and those thy sisters murdered him.
Agave —
Where perished he
—
at home, or in what place
Kadmus —
There, where Aktaion erst by hounds was torn.
Kadmus —
To mock the God and thy wild rites he went.
?
0 !
I !
? ! ? is
?
I ?
! ?
it
it,
a !
!
!
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS.
43
Agavi —
But we — for what cause thither journeyed we ?
Kadmus —
Ye were distraught : all Thebes went Bacchant-wild.
Agav6 —
Dionysus ruined us !
I
see it now.
Kadmus —
Ye flouted him, would not believe him God.
Agav6 —
Where, father, is my son's beloved corse ?
Kadmus —
Here do I bear by hard searching found.
Agave —
Is —all meetly fitted limb to limb
Kadmus —now add thereto this dear-loved [Yea
head. ]
AgavG —
But — in my folly what was Pentheus' part
Kadmus —
He was as ye, revering not the God,
Who therefore in one mischief whelmed you all, You, and this prince, so ruining all our house
And me, who had no man child of mine own,
Who see now, wretched daughter, this the fruit Of thy womb horribly and foully slain.
To thee our house looked up, son, the stay
Of mine old halls my daughter's offspring thou, Thou wast the city's dread was none dared mock The old man, none that turned his eyes on thee,
gallant head — thou hadst well requited him. Now from mine halls shall in shame be cast — Kadmus the great, who sowed the seed of Thebes, And reaped the goodliest harvest of the world.
best beloved — for, though thou be no more,
Thou shalt be counted best beloved, child,
Thou who shalt fondle never more my head,
Nor clasp and call me " Mother's father," child,
Crying, "Who wrongs thee, ancient? — flouts thee who? Who vexeth thee to trouble thine heart's peace
Speak, that may chastise the wrong, my sire. " Now am anguish-stricken, wretched thou, Woeful thy mother, and her sisters wretched
If any man there be that scorns the Gods,
This man's death let him note, and so believe.
II
! !
I
it,
!
?
?
00
I O
:
0
;
it
?
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES.
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES. Women.
the " Thesmophoriazusae " : translated by W. Lucas Collins. )
They're always abusing the women, As a terrible plague to men ;
They say we're the root of all evil, And repeat it again and again ;
Of war and quarrel and bloodshed, All mischief, be what it may :
And pray then why do you marry us, If we're all the plagues you say ?
And why do you take such care of us, And keep us safe at home,
And are never easy a moment If ever we chance to roam ?
When you ought to be thanking heaven That your Plague is out of the way,
You all keep fussing and fretting — Where is my Plague to-day ?
If a Plague peeps out of the window, Up go the eyes of the men ;
If she hides, then they all keep staring Until she looks out again.
of the Clouds.
(From "The Clouds" : translated by Andrew Lang. )
Immortal Clouds from the echoing shore
Of the father of streams from the sounding sea,
Dewy and fleet, let us rise and soar ; Dewy and gleaming and fleet are we !
Let us look on the tree-clad mountain crest,
On the sacred earth where the fruits rejoice,
On the waters that murmur east and west,
On the tumbling sea with his moaning voice,
For unwearied glitters the Eye of the Air, And the bright rays gleam;
Then cast we our shadows of mist, and fare
In our deathless shapes to glance everywhere
From the height of the heaven, on the land and air,
And the Ocean Stream.
Song
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES. 46
Let us on, ye Maidens that bring the Bain, Let us gaze on Pallas' citadel,
In the country of Cecrops fair and dear, The mystic land of the holy cell,
Where the Rites unspoken securely dwell,
And the gift of the gods that know not stain, And a people of mortals that know not fear.
For the temples tall and the statues fair,
And the feasts of the gods are holiest there ;
The feasts of Immortals, the chaplets of flowers,
And the Bromian mirth at the coming of spring, And the musical voices that fill the hours,
And the dancing feet of the maids that sing !
The Birds' Cosmology.
(From "The Birds " : translated by John Hookham Frere. )
Ye Children of Man ! whose life is a span, Protracted with sorrow from day to day, Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, Sickly calamitous creatures of clay !
Attend to the words of the Sovereign Birds (Immortal, illustrious, lords of the air),
Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye, Your struggles of misery, labor, and care. Whence you may learn and clearly discern Such truths as attract your inquisitive turn; Which is busied of late with a mighty debate, A profound speculation about the creation,
And organical life, and chaotical strife,
With various notions of heavenly motions,
And rivers and oceans, and valleys and mountains, And sources of fountains, and meteors on high,
And stars in the sky. . . . We propose by and by
(If you'll listen and hear) to make it all clear.
And Prodicus henceforth shall pass for a dunce,
When his doubts are explained and expounded at once.
Before the creation of Ether and Light, Chaos and Night together were plight,
In the dungeon of Erebus foully bedight, Nor Ocean, or Air, or substance was there, Or solid or rare, or figure or form,
But horrible Tartarus ruled in the storm :
At length, in the dreary chaotical closet Of Erebus old, was a privy deposit,
--
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES.
By Night the primeval in secrecy laid —
A mystical egg, that in silence and shade
Was brooded and hatched, till time came about, And Love, the delightful, in glory flew out,
In rapture and light, exulting and bright, Sparkling and florid, with stars in his forehead, His forehead and hair, and a flutter and flare,
As he rose in the air, triumphantly furnished
To range his dominions on glittering pinions,
All golden and azure, and blooming and burnished:
He soon, in the murky Tartarean recesses, With a hurricane's might, in his fiery caresses Impregnated Chaos ; and hastily snatched
To being and life, begotten and hatched
The primitive Birds : but the Deities all,
The celestial Lights, the terrestrial Ball,
Were later of birth, with the dwellers on earth More tamely combined, of a temperate kind ; When chaotical mixture approached to a fixture.
Our antiquity proved ; it remains to be shown That Love is our author and master alone,
Like him we can ramble, and gambol and fly
O'er ocean and earth, and aloft to the sky ;
And all the world over, we're friends to the lover, And when other means fail, we are found to prevail, When a Peacock or Pheasant is sent as a present.
All lessons of primary daily concern
You have learned from the Birds, and continue to learn, Your best benefactors and early instructors ;
We give you the warning of seasons returning.
When the Cranes are arranged, and muster afloat
In the middle air, with a creaking note,
Steering away to the Libyan sands,
Then careful farmers sow their lands ;
The crazy vessel is hauled ashore,
The sail, the ropes, the rudder, and oar
Are all unshipped, and housed in store.
The shepherd is warned, by the Kite reappearing,
To muster his flock, and be ready for shearing,
You quit your old cloak at the Swallow's behest,
In assurance of summer, and purchase a vest.
For Delphi, for Ammon, Dodona, in fine
For every oracular temple and shrine,
The Birds are a substitute equal and fair,
For on us you depend, and to us you repair
CHORUSES FROM ARISTOPHANES. 47
For counsel and aid when a marriage is made, A purchase, a bargain, a venture in trade : Unlucky or lucky, whatever has struck ye, An ox or an ass that may happen to pass,
A voice in the street, or a slave that you meet,
A name or a word by chance overheard,
If you deem it an omen, you call it a Bird ;
And if birds are your omens, it clearly will follow, That birds are a proper prophetic Apollo.
Then take us as gods, and you'll soon find the odds, We'll serve for all uses, as prophets and muses ;
We'll give ye fine weather, we'll live here together ; We'll not keep away, scornful and proud, atop of a cloud (In Jupiter's way) ; but attend every day
To prosper and bless all you possess,
And all your affairs, for yourselves and your heirs. And as long as you live, we shall give
You wealth and health, and pleasure and treasure, In ample measure ;
And never bilk you of pigeon's milk
Or potable gold ; you shall live to grow old,
In laughter and mirth, on the face of the earth, Laughing, quaffing, carousing, boozing,
Your only distress shall be the excess
Of ease and abundance and happiness.
