TWO FUNDAMENTAL HOPES

'And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright.' The second poem is Tennyson's 'Wages':

'Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,

-

Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless seaGlory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrongNay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she: Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.

The wages

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of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and

the fly?

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just,

To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.'

CHAPTER V

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

§ 1. The last book of the Wisdom Literature.-In this chapter we have to speak about and to read portions from the last of those five wisdom books which have found a resting-place in the Bible or the 'Apocrypha.' Of those five books, three are Biblical Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes; two form part of the Apocrypha-Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon. Selections from Ben Sira have occupied us already; selections from the so-called 'Wisdom of Solomon' we are now to hear. The subject of the book may be said to be a description and panegyric of Divine Wisdom. It has two well-marked divisions. The first part of the first division deals with the effects of wisdom and of its opposite in human life. The second part contains the real panegyric. The second division essays to prove how in certain special events of Jewish history (notably in the life of Abraham and the Exodus from Egypt) Divine Wisdom, or the Spirit of God, displayed its power and manifested its supremacy. This second division is discursive and ill arranged, and of less spiritual and religious value than the first. I shall not give many extracts from it here. By the kindness of the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge I have been allowed to use the Revised Version in my selections from the Wisdom of Solomon, as in my extracts from Ecclesiasticus and the Maccabees.

§ 2. The fusion of Greek and Hebrew thought.-Once more we have the usual uncertainty as to date. The author probably lived somewhere about 100 B. C. His book, like Ben Sira's and all the other writings of the Apocrypha, is in Greek; but unlike Ben Sira and some other portions of the Apocrypha, of which the Greek is a translation from the Hebrew, the Greek is in this case the original tongue. Nor is the Hellenism of the book confined to language. Its Greek words express, it is true, predominantly Hebrew thought, but they also express Greek thought as well.

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I have already mentioned how, after the foundation of Alexandria by Alexander the Great, the number of Jewish settlers in that city gradually increased until by the middle of the first century of the Christian era there were said to be not less than a million Jewish inhabitants. To these Egyptian Jews Greek became their mother tongue. They therefore set about translating the Pentateuch and other portions of the Hebrew Bible into their vernacular. Moreover, in the synagogues of Alexandria the service was conducted in Greek, in order that the prayers might be entirely intelligible to the worshippers. And together with the knowledge of the Greek language, there came also to the more educated and cultivated section of the Jewish settlers a gradual knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy. I cannot here attempt to give even the barest outline of the immensely important issues produced by this strange fusion of Greek and Hebrew thought. Let me only say that the two systems or modes of Greek philosophy which appealed most to the Hebrew mind were the Platonic and the Stoic. No one who has read the Dialogues of Plato, even in the most superficial way in an English translation, can fail to appreciate the grand ethical and religious teaching which they contain. The same may be said of the two great Stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, both of whom are easily accessible to English readers. Though these two are later in time than the Wisdom of Solomon, much of their teaching goes back to the founders of the school in the third century, to Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus. The writings of these three philosophers, with the exception of a few fragments, are now unfortunately lost, but they were all available to the Jews of Alexandria in the first century B.C. The author of the Wisdom of Solomon may possibly have read them. Yet the most important effect of Greek philosophy upon his religious position and teaching was due not to the Stoics, but to Plato. It is the doctrine of the soul's immortality.

§3. Idolatry and sin.-It might be supposed that one of the best results of the infusion of Greek thought into the Hebrew religion would have been to strengthen its elements of universalism and to free it from national limitations. Jewish 'wisdom' was, as we have seen, very broadly human in its tone and contents, while the Stoics freely recognized and taught the universal brotherhood of man. One would therefore have supposed a priori that a coalescence of the two tendencies would have caused an emphatic teaching not only that God was the Creator and Ruler of all, but that he was the equal Father of all, governing the Gentiles upon the same principles and methods as the Jews. If the Gentiles

knew him not as the Jews knew him, this would be an argument not for their punishment but for their conversion. In that conversion would lie the true office and mission of the Servant of God. Unfortunately what actually happened corresponded only partially and inadequately to this a priori presupposition. In the first place, the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria and elsewhere, just because they stood aloof from the religious observances of their fellow-subjects, were disliked and despised. Dislike breeds dislike, contempt fosters contempt. Thus while, through the influence of Greek philosophy, the writings of the Alexandrian Jews are wider and more universal in language than the purely Palestinian literature, they are often no less bitterly national. Both these tendencies we find illustrated in the Wisdom of Solomon. In the second place, much of this Graeco-Jewish or Hellenistic literature falls after the Maccabean persecutions and revolt, when national feelings had been fiercely and justifiably aroused. In the third place the Jews outside Judaea, and the Jews of Alexandria more especially, became eye-witnesses of the follies of heathen worship as well of the frequently cruel and immoral rites which were associated with it. Hence the conviction that even the idolater who knows no better is guilty of sin was strengthened and deepened in their minds. Idolatry is sin and the mother of sin. Heathen life often seemed to their eyes a seething mass of corruption and crime. They wanted to show that the heathen deserved the disfavour of God; they wanted to show that God might justly punish the heathen in one way, and discipline the Jews in another; they wanted to show that it was just for the Jews to have a life of happiness after death and for the heathen to have a life of misery, and their religious feelings played as it were into the hands of their national antipathies. We who live in another age can see more clearly and judge more calmly.

§ 4. An imperfect universalism.—The lofty universalist language of our Alexandrian sage, together with his passionate hatred of idolaters and idolatry, may be now illustrated by one or two quotations from the second division of his book.

To be greatly strong is thine at all times; and the might of thine arm who shall withstand? Because the whole world before thee is as a grain in a balance, and as a drop of dew that at morning cometh down upon the earth. But thou hast mercy on all men, because thou hast power to do all things, and thou overlookest

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For thou

the sins of men to the end they may repent. lovest all things that are, and abhorrest none of the things which thou didst make; for never wouldest thou have formed anything if thou didst hate it. And how would anything have endured, except thou hadst willed it? Or that which was not called by thee, how would it have been preserved? But thou sparest all things, because they are thine, O Sovereign Lord, thou lover of men's lives; for thine incorruptible spirit is in all things. Wherefore thou convictest by little and little them that fall from the right way, and, putting them in remembrance by the very things wherein they sin, dost thou admonish them, that escaping from their wickedness they may believe on thee, O Lord.

Yet in mournful contrast to this universalist language, we are told that while God admonished and tried the Jews as a father, he condemned and punished the heathen as a severe king. 'While thou dost chasten us, thou scourgest our enemies ten thousand times more, to the extent that we may ponder thy goodness when we judge, and when we are judged may look for mercy.' If God did indeed rule the world on these lines, could his goodness and mercy be said to exist at all? Does our author's language here betray the fact that the actual state of things was terribly unlike that which he describes ? The scourging was as a rule the lot of the Jews. Certainly the sad history of the Jews would seem to show that the divine policy announced by Amos has been far more closely followed than that indicated in the Wisdom of Solomon. 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities.' Yes, and not only their iniquities, but also their virtues. For these too, by the inscrutable wisdom of God, the Jews have suffered in the past, and in Russia, Roumania and elsewhere they are still suffering to-day.

§ 5. The origin and progress of idolatry.-In the course of a long digression upon idolatry our author offers some interesting speculations and remarks upon its origin, progress and results.

A first stage of idolatry, far less reprehensible than the later developments, but still not wholly excusable, was the confusion of the Creator with his works.

For verily all men by nature were but vain who had no perception of God, and from the good things that are seen they gained not power to know him that is, neither by giving heed to the works did they recognize the artificer;