that which is crude, extravagant, superstitious, hard, one-sided. This is especially true in the realm of theological thought.

The theology of the West with the western passion for clearness and immediate effectiveness, is mechanical and prosaic; it pleases the ordinary mind and therefore a democratic age insists on it; it is a good tool for priestcraft; it is easily defended by formal logic; but it does not satisfy the thinker, and it is abhorrent to the poet. Hence, thoroughly as it has swayed the Occidental world, it has never commanded the assent of the choicest Occidental minds. Hence the long line of mystics, through whom lies the true continuity of Christian theology, always verging upon poetry and often reaching it. A theology that insists on a transcendent God, who sits above the world and spins the thread of its affairs as a spinner at a wheel; that holds to such a conception of God because it involves the simplest of several perplexing propositions; that resents immanence as involving pantheism; that makes two catalogues the natural and the the supernatural — and puts everything it can understand into one list, and everything it cannot understand into the other, and then makes faith turn upon accepting this division; such a theology does not command the assent of those minds who express themselves in literature; the poet, the man of genius, the broad universal thinker pass it by; they stand too near God to be deceived by such renderings of his truth. All the while, in every age, these children of light have made their protest; and it is through them that the chief gains in theological thought have been secured.

For the most part the greater names in literature have been true to Christ, and it is the Christ in them that has corrected theology; redeeming it from dogmatism and making it capable of belief —not clear, perhaps, but profound.

It may not be amiss to add to this paper a word of benediction. Let it be drawn not from the Christian Scriptures, but from a page of modern literature that combines their inmost thought with the truest form of literary art, each lending itself to the other in such a way as to show their ordained relation:

"'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead

Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And the pale weaver, through his window seen
In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited;

"I met a preacher there I knew, and said:

'Ill and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?'

'Bravely!' said he; for I of late have been

Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.'

"O human soul, as long as thou canst so

Set up a mark of everlasting light,

Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam,

Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night!

Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home."

PROF. MILTON S. TERRY, D.D., NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY..

"IS IT PROBABLE THAT MEN WHO CAN DEVOTE STUDIOUS YEARS TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE WILL CARE NOTHING ABOUT THE DOCTRINES OF BUDDHA AND THE MAXIMS OF CONFUCIUS? I AM A CHRISTIAN: THEREFORE THERE IS NOTHING HUMAN OR DIVINE IN ANY LITERATURE OF THE WORLD THAT I CAN AFFORD TO IGNORE."

THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE WORLD AS

LITERATURE.

BY PROF. MILTON S. TERRY.

There have been, and probably yet exist, some isolated tribes of men who imagine that the sun rises and sets for their sole benefit. They occupy, perchance, a lonely island far from the routes of ocean travel, and have no thought that the sounding waters about their island home are at the same time washing beautiful corals and precious pearls on other shores. We say, "How circumscribed their vision; how narrow their world!" But the same may be said of anyone who is so circumscribed by the conditions of race and language in which he has been reared that he has no knowledge or appreciation of lands, nations, religions and literatures which differ from his own. I am a Christian, and must needs look at things from a Christian point of view. But that fact should not hinder the broadest observation. Christian scholars have for centuries admired the poems of Homer and will never lose interest in the story of Odysseus, the myriad-minded Greek, who traversed the roaring seas, touched many a foreign shore, and observed the habitations and customs of many men. Will they be likely to discard the recently deciphered Akkadian hymns and Assyrian penitential psalms ? Is it probable that men who can devote studious years to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle will care nothing about the invocations of the old Persian Avesta, the Vedic hymns, the doctrines of Buddha and the maxims of Confucius? Nay; I repeat it, I am a Christian, therefore I think there is nothing ✔ human or divine in any literature of the world that I can afford to ignore. My own New Testament Scriptures enjoin the following words as a solemn commandment; "Whatever things are true, whatever things are worthy of honor, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, exercise reason upon these things" (Phil.

iv. 8).

My task is to speak of the "sacred books of the world," as so much various literature. And I must at the very outset acknowledge my inability to treat such a broad subject with anything like comprehensive thoroughness. And had I the requisite knowledge and ability, the time at my disposal would forbid. I can only glance at some notable characteristics of this varied literature, and call attention to some few things which are worthy of protracted study.

Copyright, 1893, by J. H. B.

THE TAO-TEH-KING.

I commence with a quotation from the treatise of the old Chinese philosopher Laotsze, where he gives utterance to his conception of the Infinite. He seems to be struggling in thought with the great Power which is back of all phenomena, and seeking to set forth the idea which possesses him so that others may grasp it. His book is known as the Tao-teh-king, and is devoted to the praise of what the author calls his Tao. The twenty-fifth chapter, as translated by John Chalmers, reads thus:*

"There was something chaotic in nature which existed before heaven and earth. It was still. It was void. It stood alone and was not changed. It pervaded everywhere and was not endangered. It may be regarded as the mother of the universe. I know not its name, but give it the title of Tao. If I am forced to make a name for it, I say it is Great; being great, say that it passes away; passing away, I say that it is far off; being far off, I say that it returns. Now Tao is great; heaven is great; earth is great; a king is great. In the universe there are four greatnesses, and a king is one of them. Man takes his law from the earth; the earth takes its law from heaven; heaven takes its law from Tao; and Tao takes its law from what it is in itself."

I

Now it is not the theology of this passage, nor its cosmology, that we put forward; but rather its grand poetic concepts. Here is the production of an ancient sage, born six hundred years before the Christian era. He had no Pentateuch or Hexateuch to enlighten him; no Isaiah to prophesy to him; no Vedic songs addressed to the deities of earth and sea and air; no pilgrim from any other nation to tell him of the thoughts and things of other lands. But like a poet reared under other skies, he felt

"A presence that disturbed him with the joy
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things."

Students of Laotsze's book have tried to express his idea of Tao by other terms. It has been called the Supreme Reason, the Universal Soul, the Eternal Idea, the Nameless Void, Mother of Being and Essence of Things.

But the very mystery that attaches to the word becomes an element of power in the literary features of the book. That suggestiveness of something great and yet intangible, a something that awes and impresses, and yet eludes our grasp, is recognized by all great writers and critics as a conspicuous element in the masterpieces of literature.

I have purposely chosen this passage from the old Chinese book since it affords a subject for comparison in other sacred books. Most religions

have some theory or poem of Creation, and I select next the famous hymn of Creation from the Rigveda (Bk. 10, ch. 129). It is not by any means the most beautiful specimen of the Vedic hymns, but it shows how an ancient Indian poet thought and spoke of the mysterious origin of things. He looked out on a mist-wrapt ocean of being, and his soul was filled with a strong desire to know its secrets.

1. Then there was neither being nor not-being.

The atmosphere was not, nor sky above it.

What covered all? and where ? by what protected?
Was there the fathomless abyss of waters?

2. When neither death nor deathlessness existed;
Of day and night there was yet no distinction.
Alone that One breathed calmly, self-supported,
Other than It was none, nor aught above It.
3. Darkness there was at first in darkness hidden;
This universe was undistinguished water.
That which is void and emptiness lay hidden;
Alone by power of fervor was developed.
4. Then for the first time there arose desire,
Which was the primal germ of mind, within it.
And sages, searching in their heart, discovered
In nothing the connecting bond of being.

(Verse 5 omitted.)

6. Who is it knows? Who here can tell us surely
From what and how this universe has risen ?
And whether not till after it the gods lived?
Who then can know from what it has arisen ?

7. The source from which this universe has risen
And whether it was made, or uncreated,

He only knows, who from the highest heaven

Rules, the all-seeing Lord,- or does not he know ?

One naturally compares with these poetic speculations the beginning of Ovid's Metamorphoses, where we have a Roman poet's conception of the original Chaos, a rude and confused mass of water, earth and air, all void of light, out of which "God and kindly Nature" produced the visible order of beauty of the world. The old Scandinavians had also, in their sacred book, "the Elder Edda," a song of the prophetess, who told the story of Creation. "In that far age when Ymir lived, And there was neither land nor sea, Earth there was not nor lofty heaven; A yawning deep, but verdure none, Until Bor's sons the spheres upheaved, And formed the mighty midgard round; Then bright the sun shone on the cliffs,

And green the ground became with plants."

I need not quote, but only allude to the Chaldean account of Creation recently deciphered from the monuments, and the opening chapter of the book of Genesis, which contains what modern scholars are given to calling