PART FIRST. SOME FEATURES OF JEWISH CULTURE. No one is prepared to study the history of Jewish Christianity who has not a knowledge of some features of Jewish culture. This will be readily admitted. Nor can he be prepared to study that history, especially to understand the effect produced upon the Gospel by its Jewish environment, unless he has paid some attention to the effect of conditions in general. This fact is my excuse for devoting a few pages to that subject. I.-CONDITIONS OF GROWTH. There has been much dispute over the question, What is a cause? It answers my purpose to say that a cause is "operating power;" or, more strictly, "power which in operating originates new forms of being." Happily the definition of a condition is less in dispute. It is defined to be "That which is attendant on the cause, or co-operates with it for the accomplishment of the result, or that which limits the cause in its operation." A condition proper is never a cause, but the cause of any phenomenon is also one of its conditions, as we shall soon see. The conditions of an evolution are various; some of them internal, others external. The most important is the germ from which the evolution is produced. By no process of fish-culture can you produce a fish from the egg of a frog; nor by any process of tree-culture, a maple from the seed of an oak. Why this is so-why the germ is the important factor in all growth-is one of the mysteries of life not yet explained. It is quite true that the germ is the cause, or one cause, of the growth; it is also a condition, since it serves to determine the character of the growth. But the germ is not the only condition of life. External facts, while they do not, so far as has been shown, change the essential character of any form of life, do change many of its properties. Food, shelter, and selection in breeding are potent factors in the growth of an animal; and soil, temperature, the rain-supply, etc., tell powerfully on the growth of a plant. The history of animals and plants under domestication contains a vast body of the most curious and instructive facts, showing how man, by the selection of breeding animals and the choice of seeds, as well as by changing external conditions, modifies animal and plant-life. The London correspondent of an American journal a few years ago described a novel exhibition which he attended in the Crystal Palace, viz: of birds. It was a prize exhibition, and was the means of bringing together some thousands of rare and curious specimens, many of which were the work of the British bird-fancier's art. In his own words: "The majority are canaries, and it is wonderful what variety has been secured in the culture of this little bird. From little brown things hardly bigger than a large-sized moth, to burly yellow creatures, large as a swallow, we have every dimension and every variation of color and plumage. A prize having been offered for the most eccentrically colored canary, we have the drollest arrangement of dyes—some all yellow on one side and dark on the other, others striped like little zebras, others spotted." One canary has a "note just like the sound of the finest string of a violin; others are as mellow-toned as a German flute."* A still more striking illustration of the same sort is furnished by the natural history of pigeons. It is the common opinion of naturalists that the different breeds of the pigeon are descended from the Columba livia, or rock pigeon; yet the diversity of the existing varieties is justly said to be something extraordinary. The carrier, especially the male bird, is remarkable for the development of corniculated skin about the head, accompanied by elongated eyelids, large external nostrils, and a wide gaping mouth; the short-faced tumbler has a face almost like that of a finch; the runt is of great size, with long, massive beak and feet, some of the sub-breeds having very long necks, others very long wings and tails; the barb, though like the carrier in some respects, differs from him in having a short, broad beak; the pouter has an enormously developed crop, which it is very fond of inflating; the turbit, a line of reversed feathers down the breast; the jacobin wears a hood of feathers on the back of the neck; the trumpeter and laugher differ from all other pigeons in their coo; the fantail has thirty or forty tail feathers instead of twelve or fourteen, the normal number in the pigeon family, and these are kept so expanded that the head and tail touch.* Hence a great fancier of pigeons, Sir John Sebright, was accustomed to say "he would produce any given feather in three years, but it would take him six years to obtain head and beak." A great authority, speaking of what breeders have done for sheep, says: "It would seem that they had chalked upon a wall a form perfect in itself and then given it existence." Still another authority, Youatt, describes the principle of selection as "the magician's wand" by means of which the breeder " may summon into life whatever form or mould he pleases." It is true that these facts relate to organic life in an artificial state, but nature abounds in similar facts showing the power of external conditions over all forms of life. *See The Origin of Species, by Chas. Darwin, New York, 1871, pp. 33-4. + Herbert Spencer, Biology, New York, 1866, Vol. I. p. 242. The examples given above find their analogues in human life, in its physical, intellectual, and moral aspects. Confining my remarks to the two latter, each individual brings into the world a certain amount of positive character; but he is more or less modified by the various forces that play upon him from without. "Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to change places!" says the Autocrat of the Breakfast - Table.* To what extent man's will makes him superior to circumstances, and therefore a centerstance, is an interesting philosophical question; but it cannot be here discussed. Nor need we inquire how far the analogies of nature hold in the realm of history; it is enough to know that general conditions do profoundly influence individual and collective humanity. We can never understand a man unless we take him in relation to his home, his history, and the age in which he lives; nor can we understand the genesis and character of the science, philosophy, literature, and religion of a people, if we divorce these aspects of its life from physical and historical facts. The different Christian theologies are their authors' apprehensions of Christianity, cast in the forms of philosophy. The principal factor in the history of Christian doctrine has been, emphatically, Christianity itself. No one can carefully study the subject without being impressed by that fact. For myself, I have sometimes found Christianity corrupted by classic heathenism, as in the Roman Catholic Church; sometimes interpenetrated by Oriental theosophy, as in the Gnostic heresies; sometimes crusted over with barbaric superstition, as in the Coptic and Abyssinian Churches: but I have never met a form of Historical Christianity that did not bear plain trace of its Author's hand. |