The Chautauquan, January 1883

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[The Chautauquan.]

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF
THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. III. JANUARY, 1883. No. 4.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.

Superintendent of Instruction, J. H. Vincent, D. D., Plainfield, N. J.

General Secretary, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Office Secretary, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.

Counselors, Lyman Abbott, D. D.; J. M. Gibson, D. D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D. D.; W. C. Wilkinson, D. D.

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Contents

[REQUIRED READING]
FOR THE
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1882-83.

JANUARY.

[HISTORY OF RUSSIA.]

By Mrs. MARY S. ROBINSON.

CHAPTER V.
THE GRAND PRINCIPALITY—VLADIMIR MONOMAKH.

One of the illustrious successors of Iaroslaf the Great upon the throne of Kief, was his grandson Vladimir, grandson also of the Greek emperor Constantine Monomachus, whose surname he bore;[A] a man of wisdom, of valor, and of integrity—a singular instance of elevation of character in an age and among a people but partly emerged from barbarism. He waited long for his right to rule, having respect to the national law that gave precedence to the oldest member of the deceased sovereign’s family. “His father was older than mine, and reigned first in Kief,” he said, deferring to his cousin Sviatopolk Isiaslavitch.[B] Certain of Monomakh’s kinsmen had been wrongfully deprived of their lands by Vsevolod and Isiaslaf, respectively father and uncle of Monomakh. The latter accepted Tchernigof as his share of the spoil; for beyond the right of the strongest, no right was seriously considered in the Russia of that age. Oleg, one of the injured princes, called the Polovtsui barbarians to his aid, and harried the lands of those who had robbed him. Monomakh, moved by the distress of the people, offered to restore the wrested lands that had fallen to his share. To his efforts was due the assembling of the more powerful princes in Congress at Lübetch (1090), on the Dnieper, to effect means for the suppression of the civil wars that afflicted the realm. Seated on a carpet, the princes drew up a treaty, each prince taking oath and kissing the cross, as he declared that thereafter “the Russian land shall be held sacred and dear, as the country of us all. Whoso shall dare to arm himself against his brother, becomes our common enemy.” As nearly as is known, this treaty is the first written assertion of the unity that was incipient in the administration of Ruric, that took form and strength from the administrations of Vladimir and Iaroslaf, and that has been steadily developing through a thousand years of national existence: a unity that holds in an apparently inviolable bond a hundred tribes and nationalities.

The good faith of the members of the congress was soon put to the test by David, Prince of Volhynia, who made war upon his nephews, Vasilko and Volodar, to whom the assembled princes had apportioned certain lands, coveted by their uncle. The latter went to Sviatapolk, Grand Prince of Kief—for Vladimir Monomakh had not yet come to his throne—and represented that Vasilko had designs upon Sviatapolk’s lands and life. The latter lent an ear to David’s calumnies, and joined with him in a plot to seize the person of Vasilko. The youth in fetters was brought before an assembly of Kievan boyars (nobles) and citizens, to be sentenced as the enemy of their prince. To this arrangement the boyars replied with embarrassment: “Prince, thy tranquillity is ours, and it is dear to us. If Vasilko is thine enemy, he merits death; but if David has calumniated him, God will avenge upon David the blood of the innocent.” Sviatapolk hesitating to do violence to the youth, delivered him to his uncle, who wickedly burned out his eyes. The crime aroused the wrath of Monomakh, and of the other kinsmen of the victim. These formed an alliance, in which Sviatapolk was compelled to join, for the punishment of David, who fled first to the Poles, and later to the Hungarians, but was ultimately deprived of his principality.

Monomakh conducted successful wars against the Polovtsui, the Petchenegs, the Torki, the Tcherkessi, and other pagan nomads. In one engagement with the Polovtsui, seventeen of their chiefs were among the captured or the slain. One of the khans offered enormous ransom, but the prince refused the gold, and cut the khan in pieces. These khans were brigands, who subsisted on the booty obtained from the Russian merchants and travelers. Monomakh deeply felt these injuries to his Christian subjects, nor would he treat with princes who kindled civil wars. To the end of his days he remained “the guardian of the Russian lands.” In his reign, the Slavs were established in Suzdal, and founded there a city called in his honor, Vladimir; a city of renown in the subsequent history of the empire. The magnanimity of this prince was shown in his giving refuge to the remnant of the Kazarui.[C] In the construction of fortifications and other buildings, and in other industrial arts, these people were more skilled than their conquerors. They had also numbers of flourishing schools. In the seventh century their empire included the regions of the lower Dnieper, the Don, the lower Volga, the shores of the Caspian and Azof seas; an area of 765,000 square miles.

The commercial importance of this empire gave it high rank in Byzantium, Arabia, and other Mohammedan countries, these being the only civilized states of the world in that era.

The paper of instructions left by Monomakh, for his sons, indicates the moral superiority of this half-barbaric prince. As early as his day, monasticism had become a recognized element of the national life. But he wrote: “Neither solitude nor fasting, nor the monastic vocation will procure for you the life eternal. Well doing alone will help you in this world, and be put to your credit for the next. Do not bury your riches in the earth”—a custom still practiced in Russia—“for that is contrary to the precepts of Christianity. Judge yourselves the cause of widows, and extend a fatherly protection to orphans. Put to death no one, not even the guilty; for the most sacred thing our God has made is a Christian soul. . . . Strive continually to get knowledge; and when you have learned aught that is useful, put it away carefully in your memory. Without ever leaving his palace, my father Vsevolod spoke five languages. This ability to learn foreign tongues, foreigners admire in us. . . . I have made altogether twenty-three campaigns, without counting some lesser ones. With the Polovtsui I have concluded nineteen treaties of peace, have taken at least a hundred of their princes prisoners, and have restored them their liberty; besides more than two hundred whom I threw into the rivers. No one has traveled more rapidly than I. If I left Tchernigof early in the morning, I arrived at Kief before vespers.” The distance between the two cities is eighty miles. The Russians are rapid travelers to this day. “Sometimes amidst sombre forests I caught wild horses, tied them together, and subdued them. How often have I been thrown from the saddle by buffalos, thrust at by deer, trampled upon by elands! A furious boar once tore my sword from its belt. A bear threw my horse, and rent my saddle. In my youth how often did I narrowly escape death, when, thrown from my horse, I received many wounds! But the Lord watched over me.” Such was the Russian hero-prince of the eleventh century,—valiant, hardy, magnanimous, pious; a sovereign whose duty did not permit him to repose on rose leaves.

The regalia that, according to a tradition circulated by the tsars of Moscow, belonged to their illustrious Kievan ancestor, is still preserved in the museum of the former city. It consists of a “bonnet” or crown, and collar of Byzantine elegance; with them is a throne and a cornelian cup, the latter said to have belonged to the Roman emperor Augustus. According to the tradition, the whole were gifts from the Greek emperor to his Russian kinsman, sent by the Bishop of Ephesus, who, in solemn state, crowned Monomakh sovereign of all Russia. The legend is an invention for the interest of the Muscovite tsars, but the crown and collar are still used at the ceremony of coronation: the collar representing the burden imposed upon him whose “shoulders” receive the weight of government. The first manifesto of the present tsar alludes to this painful “perilous burden.”

CHAPTER VI.
IURI DOLGORUKI, AND ANDREI BOGOLIUBSKI, FOUNDERS OF SUZDAL.

Chief among the sons of Monomakh were Iuri Dolgoruki, father of the princes of Suzdal and of Moscow, and Mtsislaf, father of the princes of Galitsch and Kief. The dissensions between kinsmen, that had been allayed by the firmness of Monomakh, and by the congress of Lübetch, broke forth anew upon the death of this guardian of Russian unity. Uncles, nephews, brothers, after the fashion of royal families in past times, fell upon one another with tooth and talon. Iuri, bent on obtaining Kief, disturbed the repose of the hoary Viatcheslaf, his elder brother, the grand prince. “I had a beard when thou was brought forth,” remonstrated the old man, citing the national law. The intractable Iuri obtained an ally in Vladimirko, prince of Galitsch, a renegade member of the congress of Lübetch. When reproached for his perfidy, this Vladimirko attested the light faith of his race, by his retort: “It was such a little cross—the one we kissed when we took oath.” After many years of contention, Iuri made his entrance into the capital, and had the short-lived honor of being grand prince, but died while a league was forming for his expulsion from the principality. (1157.) Upon hearing of his death, one of the conspirators exclaimed, “Great God, we thank thee for having spared us the obligation of shedding the blood of an enemy, a kinsman!” The lineage and name of Iuri have been preserved through eight centuries. The paramour of the late Alexander II, and an official attached to the Russian embassy in England are Dolgorukis, of the blood of Rurik. But the character of their ancestor Iuri, is not one to be adduced with pride by his descendants. In it lay the germs of that tenacious baseness, that persistent, unscrupulous rapacity, that are still further developed in the succeeding princes of his line.

The rivalry of the princes, together with the increasing power of Suzdal, the remote northeastern division of Russia, were destined to bring ruin to the ancient, magnificent capital of the realm. Andrei Bogoliubski, son of Iuri Dolgoruki, and prince of Suzdal, assembled an army composed of the men of his three cities, Rostof, Vladimir, Suzdal, and descended upon Kief. The Russia of the Forests, remote from Byzantine and from western civilization, had been silently developing resources of strength and of wealth from within; and was ready, at this time, to measure lances with the Russia of the Steppes, a region ever exposed to the invasions of barbarians, and of rival princes who were willing to take the barbarians into military service against Russian kinsmen. In this state of affairs, the peaceful advance of industrial civilization, or a firm system of government could no longer be hoped for upon its soil. The northern Russians took the city by assault. “Many times had she been besieged and brought to extremity,” writes Karamsin. “She had opened her Golden Gate to her foes; but till that day, none had ever forced it. To their shame, the victors forgot that they, too, were Russians. For three days the grandson of Vladimir Monomakh pillaged the mother of his own cities. The houses, monasteries, churches, the Temple of the Tithe, the sacred Saint Sophia were demolished. The precious images, the priestly vestments, the books and the bells”—the latter especially dear to the Russian heart—“all were despoiled or borne away by the ruthless soldiery of Suzdal.”

Thus dishonored (1169) fell the capital of Oleg, Iaroslaf, and Vladimir the Baptist; and with her was obscured the prestige, the power and glory of Southern Russia. The metropolis of the realm, in the course of subsequent events, was transferred from the Dnieper to the Moskova. The Russia of the Steppes, gorgeous with Byzantine art, illustrious with the learning, the wisdom of the Orient, the fertile, beautiful realm whose fame had reached the ends of the earth, was left a prey to the hordes that swarmed along its river banks, and to the Olgovitchi of Tchernigof, unrelenting foemen, though kinsmen of her princes. Her ancient glory was departed. Nothing was left save the “warm soil,” the genial airs and golden sun that in the former days had allured the mighty Variags from the borean forests of the north.

Russia Slavonia was without a center. The old Slavic love of liberty predominated again over the Variag compactness, the cohesion necessary for the organization of a state, Tchernigof, Galitsch, Suzdal on the frontier, and other principalities, maintained an independent existence, and their civil contentions waiting apparently for the coming of another Rurik, another Iaroslaf, another Monomakh who should bind together the divided sections of the country, and reëstablish its unity. Reëstablished it was in time, but with marked modifications; nor were those who restored it the simple, strong-hearted men, the fathers and heroes of the opening era of the national history.

In far off Suzdal appears a new type of prince. Unlike his gallant, light-hearted ancestor of the happy south, swayed by conflicting passions, frank, impulsive—the men of the new dynasty were ambitious, subtle, intriguing. Mephistophelian in the power of their intellect, the coldness of their affections, the inhuman absence of moral qualities. Pitiless, unscrupulous, cruel, they attained their ends at whatever frightful cost, at whatever sacrifice of justice. The same type in Spain became its grand inquisitors. “Gloomy and terrible of mien, they bore on their brows the stamp of destiny.” Patient under ill-fortune, alert to profit by good, they could wait many years for their opportunity, but they never abandoned a purpose once formed. Such were the princes of Suzdal, founders of the dynasty of the Tzars of Moscow.

Iuri Dolgoruki gave form and name to this dominion of the frontier forests, but he spent most of his time and energy upon the conquest of Kief. To his son, Andrei Bogoliubski, was left the care of developing the incipient state, and of indicating in his own character and temper the type of the future rulers of the Russias. Andrei, ill at ease in the cities of the Dnieper, where the freedom of the citizens sometimes conflicted with the will of the princes, withdrew from his palace at Virishegorod and established himself upon the Kliasma, at Vladimir, which he enlarged by a suburb, named from its princely builder, Bogoliuboro. A successful campaign against the Russian Bulgarians, a compulsory alliance of several of the minor princes under his standards, and his destruction of Kief, caused him rightfully to be regarded as the strongest, the foremost of all the princes. After the violation of the mother of Russian cities, he turned his arms against Novgorod the Great, capital of the glorious principality of that name, the state that had chosen and called Rurik, the mighty republic of the north. But the subjugation of this powerful city was another affair from that of Kief. “The Kievans, accustomed to a change of masters, fought only for the honor of their princes,” writes Karamsin, “while the Novgorodians were to shed their blood in defense of the laws, the institutions, the liberties founded for them by their ancestors.” When Mstislaf Andreivitch, captain of the army that had pillaged “the holy city” of Kief, appeared at the gates of the free city of Novgorod, the inhabitants took oath to die for Saint Sophia, the citadel of their faith and their freedom. Their Archbishop, Ivan, bearing aloft an image of the Mother of God, moved at the head of a solemn procession around the ramparts. Tradition tells us that the beloved Ikon, struck by a Suzdalian arrow, turned her face toward her city, and moistened the episcopal vestments with her tears. An ecstasy of rage seized the freemen. A panic smote the besiegers. “Novgorod! Saint Sophia!” a sharp cry rushed as in a whirlwind around the ramparts. The Suzdalians fell as falls the flock of small birds beneath the swoop of the eagle. After the victory, the markets of Novgorod were so crowded with Suzdalian slaves that any number could be bought for a marten’s skin.

Yet in time, even the Novgorodians made terms with their powerful subtle neighbor. Suzdal controlled the Volga, by whose waters came the corn supplies for the great, free city. Its citizens, “of their own free will,” according to the invariable phrasing of their documents, agreed to accept for their prince one of Andrei’s choosing.

The princes of Smolensk had been forced into an alliance with the autocratic Andrei, but chafed under his despotic rigors. The brother princes, Rurik, David, and Mstislaf, disregarding his menaces, possessed themselves of Kief, whither soon came a herald of Andrei, with the message: “You are rebels. The principality of Kief is mine. I order Rurik to return to his patrimony: David shall go to Berlad; and as for Mstislaf, the guiltiest of you all, I will no longer endure his presence in Russia.” Now the chronicles aver that Mstislaf the Brave “had fear of no mortal being: he feared none but God.” He cropped the hair and beard of the herald—a mark of ignominy—and bade him take to Andrei this response: “Up to this time we have respected you as a father; but since you do not blush to treat us shamefully, since you forget that you have to deal with princes, we will pay no heed to your menaces. Execute them if you can. We appeal to the judgment of God.” Twenty vassals of Andrei were sent “to demonstrate the judgment of God” under the walls of Virishegorod. Mstislaf ingeniously succeeded in dividing the assailants, and by a sudden sortie put them to flight.

Andrei so far cast off the Slavic customs of his ancestors as to decline sharing his domains with any of the members of his family, although the testamentary provisions of his father, Iuri, had included these. Iuri’s widow, a Greek princess, with her three remaining sons, was compelled to leave Russia, and take refuge at the court of her kinsmen, the Emperor Manuel. Nor did this first of Russian autocrats adhere to the Variag custom of fellowship with his drujïna. Properly speaking, he had none. His boyars were his subjects, bound to accomplish his will, but never consulted. If they chafed under their servitude, they were banished from the country. Nor did he regard with greater favor the ancient municipal liberties of the great cities; liberties time-honored, and dating back to the original occupancy of the Slav race. The Vetché, or assembly of citizens, he would in no way recognize. His violation of Kief, and his attack upon Novgorod the Great, sufficiently indicated his hostility to their liberal institutions. In like manner Rostof and Suzdal, the two chief cities of his State, were obnoxious to him on account of their Vetché. At the risk of alienating the more powerful of his boyars, he held his residence in the suburb or town of his own founding, alleging a divinely inspired dream and a miraculous interposition as directing him to this spot. He essayed to develop a new Kief out of his city, Vladimir on the Kliasma, by crowding it with monasteries, erecting a golden gate, and a Church of the Tithe, decorated by Byzantine and western artists. Recognizing the priesthood as a strong force in the civilization of a nation, he conferred wealth and honors upon it, and propitiated its favor. He made assumptions of unusual piety; practiced ostentatious vigils, and gave large alms in public. Commemorative feasts were established on the days of his more signal victories; and strenuous efforts were made to procure the religious supremacy of Suzdal, by instituting a Metropolitan at Vladimir. The Patriarch of Constantinople would not consent to this act, but later the Metropolitan for the Russia of the Forests was secured. The designs of Andrei were vast and premature. Ten generations of princes, ruling through four successive centuries, were required for their ultimate accomplishment. He outlined in the twelfth century what was executed in the sixteenth by Ivan the Fourth, the Terrible. Like the despots who were to spring from his loins, he had implacable enemies; and he was overtaken by the fate ever impending over the autocrats of the Orient and of Russia. His boyars, exasperated beyond measure by his iron tyranny, assassinated him in his favorite residence of Bogoliuboro (1174).

[To be continued.]

When a thought presents itself to our minds as a profound discovery, and when we take the trouble to examine it, we often find it to be a truth that all the world knows.—Vauvenargues.

[A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SCANDINAVIA.]

By L. A. SHERMAN, Ph. D.

III.—THE EASTERN VIKINGS—THE BEGINNINGS OF LITERATURE.

We have watched, in the dim twilight preceding the dawn of history, the coming of the first Norsemen to the sea. They are a spirited and fearless people, and they have chanced, if chance it is, to come to that sea on which navigation is most hazardous and difficult. We marvel they so quickly learn the arts of seamanship, and make the fierce new element their dwelling place. They seem now to have reached the country of their choice: its natural beauties kindle in their breasts an immediate and romantic response of affection. They are enamored of its wild haunts, its fjords and mountains, and they are inspired by the surging fury of the storm. But we witness, after a few centuries of comparative inaction, a strange transformation. The whole Norse people, without concert, without occasion, becomes a nation of wandering pirates. They urge forth their dragon ships, no matter whither, if only they shall find new foemen or new coasts. With the outbreak of this passion for booty and adventure we mark the beginning of the viking-age. We then count two weary centuries of violence and bloodshed, of plunder and conquest. A new continent is discovered and colonized, a Danish dynasty is set up in England, a Norwegian duchy is endowed in France. Thus we witness the decline—not in defeat, but in triumph, not by overthrow from without, but by suppression from within—of viking-supremacy in the West. It remains to speak of another chapter of viking-history, enacted during this same period in the East, and by vikings of the land.

In the ancient sagas frequent mention is made of Ostrogardia or Garderike. This was the modern Russia, then a barbarous wilderness, and inhabited by shifting tribes of Finns. Just at the beginning of the historical era a new people appears—the Slavs. It is another member of the Aryan family of nations, which has sent out already into Europe the Celtic, the Greek, the Roman, the Gothic, and the Scandinavian; and it is probably the last remnant of the race. These Slavs, already divided into various tribes, move westward, take possession of the country, and lay the foundation of the two cities of Novgorod and Kiev, destined later to become the capitals of two Slavonic empires. Three centuries pass. The Slavs have become attached to the home of their choice, and are beginning to develop a civilization. But it is the day of viking restlessness in the North, and Scandinavian rovers are moving eastward as well as south and west. In the early Russian chronicles we are told that in 859 A. D. a band of Varangians or Northmen, under the leadership of Rurik, invaded the country and began to spoil the native tribes. In due time they attack and capture Novgorod itself; but after a brief triumph the invaders, who were but a handful, were expelled by an uprising of the Slavs. Rurik and his followers made haste, not to return to Sweden, but to push their way southward through the wilderness, as many Northmen had done before. They reach Constantinople, and are welcomed as recruits for the imperial army. The vikings who had come before them had already won the praise and esteem of the imperial court; and so much do the Northmen grow in favor, that we soon find the emperor will entrust himself to no other guard of honor than a regiment of Varangian foot.

The Slavs and Finns in Novgorod meanwhile find the blessings of freedom harder to bear than the authority of their late conquerors. After two years of anarchy and internal dissension they send messengers to Constantinople, inviting the Norsemen, whom they had thrust out, to return and resume the government. “We have a goodly country,” say they, “and large. All we need is the strong arm to keep it orderly. Come, then, be our princes, and rule our state.” In response to this petition Rurik and his two brothers, Sindf and Truvor, with a large following of Varangian families, returned to Novgorod. Here Rurik established himself as supreme ruler; and to prevent the success of a fresh uprising of the Slavs, invited into the country a large accession of Varangian population. To his brothers he gave the principalities of Bielozero and Izborsk; but they soon dying, Rurik assumed again authority. So strong did this new Scandinavian kingdom become that we find ere long an army raised for the storming of Constantinople. The project was, however, abandoned, and the vikings who had planned it contented themselves with seizing the little province of Kiev. This also in a few years was brought under the dominion of Novgorod. Thus was laid the foundation of the great “Empire of All the Russias.” The bulk of the population was composed of Slavs and Finns: the nobles were Varangians, and Rurik was the first Czar.

It was but just that the superior race thus installed in the government of this vast region should give its name to the new nation. The first Varangians or Swedes who traversed Russia on their way to Constantinople had been called by the Finnish natives “Ruotsalaiset,” or Russians, from the name of the district (Roden or Rosen) whence they had come.[D] This name adhered to Rurik and his followers, and so the whole empire came finally to be called Russia. The line of Rurik continued to furnish Czars to the Russian throne until the death of Feodor, in 1598.

The work of the vikings is now finished: what is its sum? Three-fourths of the European continent has become Scandinavian, or has submitted to Scandinavian rule: thousands of lives have been sacrificed, and perhaps half the wealth of Europe has been plundered or destroyed. What is the compensation? We can only look to history for the answer. Here has been a great revolution; but revolutions are steps in human progress. Progress always demands as its price the best the age or generation has to give. The installation of the Goths and Teutons in Europe cost five centuries of woe and strife,—we can now see why; for it was destined to give the world a better civilization and a better leadership. But this leadership could not come from the Teuton alone: he is never prompted to enterprise in the world at large; he is never aggressive, he is strong only at home. Why then those six generations of viking conquest and mingling with the conquered, if not to supply this lack through the evolution of the British nation?

That England is the leader of this Teutonic age, that she alone has extended and is extending the borders of Teutonic influence, that it was she who enabled Protestantism to triumph and freedom to prevail, that it was she only who could lay the phantom of mediæval despotism which Napoleon raised—all this is undoubted. But is her leadership after all due to admixture of viking blood? Has she not become mistress of the seas simply because she is encompassed by them?

But island states do not grow strong by privileges of the sea; else would Ireland and Scotland have rivalled the power of England. Then there is a much larger Scandinavian element in the English people than is commonly supposed. We forget that Sweyn and Canute won England more through the Danes who were living there already than by the aid of new invaders from Scandinavia. We can also trace clearly in later England the Norse disposition and character. We can find it depicted in Chaucer’s Shipman (prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 388-410), who, after the lapse of four centuries, is still a viking of the old sort.

We find also the old quality of defiance well perpetuated. In his work on monarchy (written about the middle of the fifteenth century), Sir John Fortescue thus compares the Frenchman and the Englishman: “It is cowardice and lack of heart and courage that keepeth the Frenchman from rising, and not poverty; which courage no Frenchman hath like to the Englishman. It hath been often seen in England that three or four thieves, for poverty, have set upon seven or eight true men, and robbed them all. But it hath not been seen in France that seven or eight thieves have been hardy to rob three or four true men. Wherefore it is right said that no Frenchman be hanged for robbery, for that they have no hearts to do so terrible an act. There be therefore more men hanged in England, in a year, for robbery and manslaughter, than there be hanged in France for such cause of crime in seven years.”

We pass now to inquire what literary monuments or record the Northmen of the viking era have left behind them.

They wrote, as is well known, by means of an alphabet of runes. These were sixteen in number, corresponding in value to our F, U, Th, O, R, K, H, N, I, A, S, T, B, L, M, and Y. Their origin is unknown. From the Scandinavians they were borrowed by the Germans and Anglo-Saxons, and though never a common means of communication, were nevertheless at one time written and understood from Constantinople to Iceland. They are found preserved especially in monumental inscriptions, of which we take the following specimens from Stephens’s Runic Monuments, and Wimmer’s Runeskriftens Oprindelse:

1.—INSCRIPTION ON STONE AT SYLLING, DRAUNNEN, NORWAY.

Roman equivalents.
s a i l g æ r (th) r-h u i l i r-h e r-k u (th) g a t i e (th) i n a
a s l a k r-m a r k a (th) i m i k
Translation.
Salgarth rests here. God keep thee!
Aslak marked me.
2.—INSCRIPTION ON THE SO-CALLED SNOLDELEV STONE, FOUND 1768, NOT FAR FROM ROSKILDE, DENMARK.

Roman equivalents.
kun-ualtstain-sunar-ruhalts-(th)ular-osalhaukum
Translation.
Gunvald’s stone, son of hoald, speaks (or speaker—priest) at Salhowe.

Of the literature proper of the early Northmen, we will consider first the Sagas. These record the exploits of great chieftains, and are sometimes of historical value. They were never written out in runes, but owe their preservation to the Norwegian colonists who settled in Iceland. Some of them were composed there, but the greater part seem to have been brought over from the continent; and all were kept alive by tradition, like the Odyssey and the Iliad, until the age of writing.

In our last chapter we alluded to the attempts made by the vikings who discovered Vinland, to establish a colony there. For our first specimen we will translate from the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne that part which describes the voyage of a band of these colonists, and their landing, as some believe, on the shores of Cape Cod.

“Now is to be told of Karlsefne, that he, together with Snorre and Bjarne, with their men, sailed southward along the coast. They sailed for a long time, until they came to a river which flowed down from the land above and into a bay and so into the sea; there was a broad beach and shoals there, so that it was impracticable to go up the stream except at high water. Karlsefne with his people sailed into the mouth of the stream, and called the place ‘Hóp’ (haven). They found there self-sown wheat-fields where there were lowlands, and grapevines wherever hills showed themselves. Every brook was full of fish. They dug ditches where land met water when the tide was highest, and when the tide went out there were halibut (holy fishes) in the ditches. There was a great plenty of game of all kinds in the woods. They stayed there half a month, for pleasure, and noticed nothing [of importance]; they had their cattle with them. But early one morning, as they were looking around, they saw a great number of skin boats; and poles were swinging in the air on board the boats. It seemed as though they were swinging a wisp of straw, and they swung them with the sun. Then said Karlsefne: ‘What does this mean?’ Snorre Thorbrandson answered him: ‘It may be that this is a token of peace; let us take a white shield and carry toward them;’ and so they did. Then the men in the boats rowed toward them, and looked with wonder at those that were there, and went ashore. They were dark men and ill-favored, and had ill-looking hair. They were large-eyed, and with high (broad) cheeks. They tarried awhile, and wondered at those they met there, and afterward rowed away southward past the cape.”

We will add also something from the celebrated Saga of Njál. This is the story: Gunnar, a friend and neighbor of Njál, had been sentenced to exile for murder. Njál had prophesied, in case Gunnar should not keep his word and leave the country, that it would lead to his death. Gunnar did not go, and becoming thus an outlaw, was not long after attacked by his enemies, and after a fierce resistance, killed. The prophecy of Njál was in this way fulfilled.

“When all of Gunnar’s goods were put on board, and the ship about ready for sea, then Gunnar rode to Bergthorshvál, and to other neighboring farms to speak to the men, and thanked them for standing by him—all those who had given him succor. The second day after, he got ready early to go to the ship, and told all his retinue that he was about to ride away never to return. It seemed heavy tidings to the men—though they looked for his coming back some day. Gunnar bids farewell to all his friends, when he is ready to go, and the men all went out with him. He thrust his halberd down against the ground and swung himself into the saddle, and Kolskeg and he rode away. They rode forward as far as the Markarfljot. There his horse stumbled, and Gunnar was thrown from the saddle. He chanced to glance up at the slope, and the farm at Hlidarenda. Then he said: ‘Fair is the sloping homestead, so that it has never seemed so fair to me,—the whitening acres and the smooth-mown lawn,—and I shall ride back home and not go at all.’ ‘Do no such favor to your enemies,’ said Kolskeg, ‘as to break your agreement; for no man would look for that from you. And you may believe that so will it all come to pass as Njál has said.’ ‘I will not go at all,’ said Gunnar, ‘and I would that you did likewise.’ ‘That shall not happen,’ said Kolskeg; ‘I shall not play the dastard in this, nor in anything else in which my word is honored; and there is but this alternative left: that we part here. And tell my mother and my kinsmen that I do not expect to see Iceland again; for I shall hear tidings of your death, my brother, and then I shall have no desire to sail out hither again.’ Therewith they part. Gunnar rides home to Hlidarenda, and Kolskeg rides to the ship and sails away.”—Njála: Chapter lxxv, line 20.

[To be continued.]

[PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.]

By C. E. BISHOP.

IV.—THE MEADOW-PARLIAMENT.

Old historians generally gave kings bad characters, but in the reaction from this indiscriminate censure we get a school of writers who praise too much. Treacle has taken the place of vinegar in writing history. Thus, Green makes heroes of the coarse Saxon savages and heathen; Froude has painted the picture of Henry VIII so his own mother—much more his multitudinous wives—would not recognize it; even Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot have their eulogists. Nevertheless, no one, so far as I have read, has had a good word to say of King John. Green vouchsafes “the sober judgment of history” in ratification of the Billingsgatish opinion: “Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John.” I have no kalsomine to mix for him who seems by all accounts to have been worse than his Satanic Majesty, in that John is “as black as he is painted.” Yet it is to this royal monster that England owes her Great Charter of Rights and Freedom, and one of her red letter days.

The boy whose impudence and mean spirit made everybody detest him; the youth who so embittered the last hours of his fond father, Henry II, that he died cursing him; the prince who plotted the dethronement and death of his brother, King Richard, absent on a crusade, and murdered the rightful heir, the boy Arthur; the husband who deserted his own wife and abducted the wife of his friend; the soldier who was always provoking quarrels and always running away from fighting, and abandoned all his continental possessions to his enemy without striking a blow; the churchman so abjectly superstitious that he dared not go hunting without a string of relics around his neck, yet quarrelled with the Pope about the right to rob the Church revenues, and ended by basely resigning his crown into the Pope’s hands and kissing the toe of his legate; the lawgiver of his realm who reduced bribery to a department of the royal exchequer, and opened book accounts with the subjects whose hush-money and blood-money bought justice and the perversion of justice, wherein it was recorded that one man paid to have the king’s anger appeased, another “that the king should hold his tongue about Henry Pinel’s wife,” and that a poor woman paid two hundred livres for the privilege of visiting her husband in prison; the father of his people who hired foreign plunderers to rob and murder his children, who starved women and children to death in dungeons, crushed old men under loads of lead, extorted rich men’s money by pulling their teeth, one each day; who was so licentious that noble ladies had to flee the realm to be safe from his approach or his violence—this “awful example” of the race of kings was the chosen instrument for inciting England to demand a charter as complete in its guarantees as his encroachments, as beneficent as he was pestilent, as monumental grandly as he was meanly. And so at last it came about that King John had not a friend left at home or abroad.

He had one opponent whom both interest and principle moved to lead the national demand for justice, which now took shape. That was Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose appointment by the Pope had been resisted by John. This worthy Saxon successor of Anselm and Becket had hunted out in the garret of a monastery a copy of the charter which Henry I, in the days of his honeymoon with his Saxon wife, had granted to his people; he had called together the barons and bishops, and proposed that John be made to renew that bill of rights, and they had all laid their hands on the high altar of St. Edmondsbury and sworn to make him do so, by arms if need be. Christmas Day, 1214, was grandly celebrated, for then the burly knights in armor came to John in London Temple and made their demand. The crafty king asked time to consider of it, and to study the document. “How long?” demanded Langton. “By Easter you shall have my answer,” promised the king.

He employed the interval in begging the Pope to order Langton to cease his opposition, which the Pope did, and the archbishop did not. On the contrary, Langton gave to the barons’ movement religious sanction and the title “The Army of God and Holy Church,” thus neutralizing the moral and spiritual influence of John’s only supporter, Rome. John tried to buy off the opposition with promises, but no one would trust the champion prevaricator of the age. He sent out proclamations to all bailiffs to put down his enemies, but everybody took pride in being his enemy, so there was no one to execute the writs. He made a great pretense of going on a crusade and took the cross, but even that all-compelling appeal was laughed at. John a crusader! See how necessary it was that this king should have been so bad that no one would trust or believe him, even with the Pope at his back and the cross in his hands.

We of this country and time—all mankind, in fact, have to thank John for all this resistance, for the more he struggled and plotted and lied, the more they advanced their demands, so that by Easter “the Army of God and Holy Church” had a far different charter to offer from that they had sworn to before the last Christmas; like all nature at that spring-dawn, the charter had put out new shoots. Freedom, too, had come forth from the tomb.

On Easter day, 1215, the barons were assembled in large force at Stamford; a committee headed by Langton went to the king with the articles drawn up on parchment; the document made a big bundle; you can see it yet in the British Museum. If the king was astonished at the growth the document had made, he was more so at the growth of the demands put forth in it, and he swore up and down he never would sign it and grant liberties to his subjects which would make him a slave. The barons seemed to think he would sign, nevertheless. May was nearly gone before they brought the king to book. He tried to raise an army at home, but no one came to his banner. He sent abroad to hire soldiers, but they did not come. May 22, 1215, “the Army of God” marched triumphant into London, and the kingdom was in its hands. Scotland and Wales offered aid, and the northern barons came marching with their retainers to the common cause. For two weeks John skulked about London with seven horsemen only, and all England in arms against him. Thanks to John again for this resistance! The barons improved the time adding new and stricter conditions. But there was an end to it at last, and the king sent to know when and where the papers should be executed.

“Let it be at Runnymede, and on the fifteenth day of June,” was the answer. All circumstances conspire to make this appointment ideally, even romantically, appropriate. Rune-mede was the Meadow of Council, a grassy strip between the Thames and the foot-hills of Surrey, where since old times earls and kings and the wise men had used to deliberate and treat, in the open air as they lived. It spoke of a time when men dared not trust each other in enclosures; of a people in thought and temper as free and large as “all out-doors.” On that historical spot the powers of England who could not trust her king met the king who would trust no one.

It is the middle day of “the leafy month of June,” 1215. [How green and beautiful England is in June!] “The Army of God and Holy Church” has marched out from London with a great crowd of citizens, and sat down along the Council Meadow. A rude table is set, and on it are spread out the fairly-engrossed parchment and writing implements. The king rides thither from Windsor Castle. Only three or four are with him, and they belong to the barons’ party. John stands absolutely deserted, a picture of regal isolation such as has been never seen before or since. Distinguished monarch! He is smiling, courtly and complaisant, as he well knows how to be. Yes, it affords him great pleasure to do this for his beloved subjects.

“Hold,” says Langton, as the too-eager king grasps the pen, “there is more to be considered. Your signature is to be affixed only of your free will and desire, and you are to here swear not to renounce this instrument on account of anything that has taken place up to this moment, and to keep this covenant faithfully inviolate forever.”

Yes, the smiling John would so swear.

“Then for the better fulfillment of all these conditions, you will consent to the appointment of five-and-twenty knights, who shall have power to enforce this contract; you hereby give them power, in case any article is infringed by you or your officers, to punish the offender by fine, or, if necessary, to destrain your goods, and, in case of resistance, to levy war against you and your castles, saving only the safety of your person and your family; and all your subjects shall be like yourself sworn to obedience to the twenty-five barons, executors of this contract. In further security of all which, the Tower and city of London are to remain in possession of the Archbishop until this act shall be duly and faithfully so put in execution by you.”

Ah, the smile has faded from the king’s face, and pale and trembling he abruptly leaves the council and returns to the castle. Once there he raves and stamps like a caged madman. He froths at the mouth, rolls on the floor and bites at every object near him. “They have given me five-and-twenty over-lords,” roars the king repeatedly.

A week passed before all the formalities were complied with, the barons remaining obstinately in camp, yielding not one jot of their demands, and at last tiring out the king and securing his assent to everything.

What is Magna Charta? What are its provisions, what reforms did it work, what good has it done? Everybody has heard of it, not one in a thousand probably can answer these questions. It undertook two things—reform of existing abuses and provisions for further justice; remedy for the past, security for the future. Its great mission in the cause of civilization has been as a rallying-point for popular rights against royal encroachments. Kings and ministers in succeeding centuries were again and again patiently brought back to that ground and made to swear obedience to the principle of limitation of authority. On this one point British obstinacy stuck and never budged, and it is due to that resistance and persistance for Magna Charta that limited monarchy, and constitutional, representative government stand where they do on the earth to-day.

A remarkable thing about the instrument itself is the lawyer-like accuracy of its language and the minuteness and fullness of its provisions, showing care in its preparation and affording evidence of the state of the jurisprudence and scholarship of the time, and of the extent of the ramifications of the executive wrongs it sought to remedy.

But this is not a constitution, not a statement of rights; it is a statute-law of the sort then possible, viz: in the form of a royal edict. In each section the king ordains so and so. Nor is it a charter in the interest of the rights of man. The bondsmen, who made the bulk of the population of England at that time, are not included in its benefits, and not mentioned save once, and that exception was doubtless inserted for the benefit of the masters, for it exempts from execution the tools of the slave, which of course belonged to his owner. So much for what the charter is not and does not.

A large share of its articles are devoted to defining and regulating the feudal tenure, duties and rights of the barons, and were quite selfish in their scope, although they mark progress as reducing ill-understood relations of king and feudatories for the first time to a written form. But they went further, and stipulated that all these privileges and immunities should apply to all classes of freemen—an important point, as it made Normans and Englishmen equal before the law. Much space is devoted to regulating business and commercial matters; as leasehold rights, treatment of the estates of wards and widows, fixing the widow’s right of dower, freeing of trade, home and foreign, from restrictions and imposts, regulating fisheries, bridge-building, highways, weights and measures.

Advancing into the domain of property and personal rights, it fixed the terms and places of courts and opened them freely to all; no man could be tried without witnesses, or detained in prison without trial; borough franchises were declared inviolable. Then came three sections which struck at the heart of the tyrannical practices of John’s reign:

Foreign officers, temporal or spiritual, were to be removed and their holdings filled by Englishmen; and mercenary troops were to be removed from the realm.

“Justice or right shall not be sold, delayed or denied to any man.”

And then came the declaration of civil rights, which has never ceased to echo wherever free institutions aspired to live:

“No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of rights and property, or be outlawed or exiled, or otherwise destroyed but by lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land.”

This grand declaration was five hundred years ahead of the times, and was not made a fact sooner than that; but all the same, it made the condition of “freeman” in England a great prize for the slave to struggle for, and under all the stormy vicissitudes of royal, baronial and clerical oppression of succeeding ages; made the condition of men in England infinitely superior to that of subjects of other realms—in fact, and in the end, made England what she is, America what she is as to free institutions.

So, on the whole, those iron-fisted old barons did their work well, according to their light and the condition of their times; and Runnymede has become, by their great act, a shrine of freedom.

But here our thanks to John must cease. His phenomenal wickedness had done the world all the good it could. He did not mean it, of course. When he had signed the charter, and as soon as the Army of God had dispersed, he sent to the Pope for absolution from his oath, and to the continent for an army of murderers and marauders. He hurled upon his realm the excommunications of the Church and the torch and sword of his mercenaries. He went through England from end to end, as if determined to annihilate all life and property in his wild, insatiable revenge. His career of ruin was short. We regret that it could not have been terminated by the sword of justice, instead of by nature, and so have rounded up the measure of retribution. But every writer and every reader of English history, from that day to this, has in thought and wish constituted himself John’s executioner, and, setting off against the glory of Runnymede his detestable career, has learned to loathe injustice, treachery, cowardice, and sin in high places.

[To be continued.]

We can not be just if we are not kind.—Vauvenargues.

[SUNDAY READINGS.]

SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D. D.

[January 7.]

[HISTORY OF GOD’S BOOK.]

By Rev. FRANK RUSSELL, A. M.

The word of God began to be spoken to the first of the race in Eden, and such is the beginning of the Bible. It was only a spoken word, doubtless, for nearly twenty-five hundred years. From generation to generation through all the patriarchal ages it was preserved by fathers carefully teaching it to their children. Many fragments may have been lost, but it is no taxation of our belief that for many centuries much of the early Word may have been carefully treasured through the exercise of memory. We know of marvelous instances of the power of memory. It is supposed that the works of Homer, an elaborate poem with careful divisions, were preserved for centuries in critical form, by one generation repeating it to the next while it was unwritten. It does not bear the marks of change during these generations of its history, but is unique, precise, and giving every evidence of being the original work of one author, Homer. Sir Robert Peel is stated to have been able to listen to a speech in Parliament one and a half or two hours long, and then repeat it all verbatim, and it is also said at the present time that Gladstone has learned Homer so thoroughly that on hearing any line of it repeated he is able at once to repeat the following and the preceding line. Now Shem lived upon the earth after he came out of the ark five hundred years, and could have thoroughly taught the new race in Asia the story. Snatches of song and old tales which he related might have been verbally composed in the antediluvian period, and many think that specimens of the same still hold their place, set like pearls in the earliest Scripture writings. There is little doubt that Job is the first writer whose productions are preserved. That he wrote before Moses seems quite evident from statements easily understood; viz., his descriptions are only of the manners and customs of the ancient patriarchs, his religion is purely patriarchal, the only idolatry he mentions is the worship of the sun and moon, thus seeming to antedate the time of their idol worship, and lastly, he makes no mention of Sodom, Gomorrah, or Abraham, which would scarcely have been the case had he written after Moses. Moses may likely have read Job and have received added inspiration from it, if, indeed, he should need more than to have received the tables writ with God’s own finger. There are, thus far, six pamphlets bound with sixty of later date that make up our book. Look at the antiquity of these six venerable fragments, written one thousand years before Homer sang, one thousand years before either Herodotus or Confucius was born.

Following these earlier Scripture writings there came to be mentioned the rolls of the prophets, songs and sketches of genealogies and history, so that gradually fragments, here and there, came forth by divine direction, which, preserved by divine care, were to enter the canon which we have of sixty-six pamphlets, by about forty writers, the entire authorship spanning a period of about sixteen centuries, geographically ranging over the cities of Chaldea, the plains of Arabia, and the mountains of Palestine. The range of mind is equally varied; written by men who sat on thrones, by some who lived as hermits in the mountains, and by some who were shepherds and fishermen.

About 600 B. C., it is recorded in Jeremiah xxxvi that Jehoiachim, while listening to the reading of the roll, became so enraged at its contents that he took his penknife and defaced it, and then cast it into the fire-place and saw it consumed. He has had many descendants of the same temper, and his race is not yet extinguished.

In about 450 B. C.—I am careful to give approximate dates in round numbers—the sacred rolls were so mutilated that when Ezra and Nehemiah returned from the eastern captivity and reorganized the old worship in the city of Jerusalem, they added to their other improvements the establishment of a district library, Ezra collected and translated all the copies of the Bible, writing in a kind of Chaldaic Hebrew, the old language modified by the eastern dialect, with which the Hebrews in their captivity had grown familiar, so that now there were two languages of Scripture, the Samaritans clinging tenaciously to the old Hebrew of Job, and Moses, and the prophets after them.

About 280 B. C., marks another epoch in the development of the book. Ptolemy Philadelphus, the ruler of Egypt, desired to enrich the great imperial library of Alexandria with a complete and careful translation of the sacred writings into Greek, which was the popular language of his time. He organized a college of seventy or seventy-two eminent scholars, and classified the work among them; and the result was the Septuagint translation, the foundation of all our translations of the Old Testament since. It is said that the last transcript of this work was made by the hand of a woman named Techla. This was the edition which the Savior and the apostles used, the very language which they quoted and mostly spake. Between 130 and 140 B. C., Antiochus distinguished himself by attempting to burn all the Bibles in the world, thus acting the part of Jehoiachim No. 2.

In 128 A. D., Aquila made another translation, it is thought in favor of the more zealous Jews and to the prejudice of Christians, and not as fair a work as the Septuagint, and in 300 A. D., Diocletian added to the infamies of the tenth great persecution an attempt to destroy the Bible by seizing and burning all copies that could be found. He is Jehoiachim No. 3. Such attempts in fulfillment of the declarations of the text are like the effort to exterminate a ripened head of wheat by stamping it beneath your feet; the next year many thrifty growths will laugh at the result.

In the early part of the fifth century good Saint Jerome, one of the most distinguished of the Latin fathers, profound in learning and devout of heart, collected all the important translations that preceded him, took up his residence in Palestine and made a very thorough version, called the Latin Vulgate, and used by our Catholic friends ever since, an important aid in all subsequent Bible work.

In 500 the Emperor Justinian decreed, to quell some discussion about the preferences of versions, that either might be used with entire liberty in any part of the realm. It is supposed that the Jewish sentiment, vacillating for some time between liberal views and their characteristic conservatism, rebounded at this decree and led to a tenacity for their own ancient language, to which they have since scrupulously adhered, reading mostly throughout their wide dispersion the ancient characters of Job and Moses, but some, as at Frankfort in Germany, using the Chaldaic shading of Ezra’s version. From a little before 600 we are able very definitely to trace the way of the book in England. There was dense ignorance among the masses of common people throughout the middle ages, but the convents and the great monasteries were some of them nevertheless centers of great learning. The Jews of England from the first kept a clear knowledge of their old writings, and furnished men in every century eminent in scholarship. Monks, so inclined, had little else to do but to eat and study, and God perpetuated through their work the knowledge of his word. I was shown in the British Museum a copy of the Gospels in Latin, of exquisite beauty, done by Eadfrid in the seventh century. It is on excellent paper, in red and black characters, executed almost with the precision of type. Near the close of that century Cædmon, the father of English poetry, translated portions of the Scripture into the Saxon or early English.

A fragment of manuscript written by Aldhelm, a bishop, in 706, praises the nuns for their fidelity in the daily reading of the holy Scriptures, a circumstance that indicates both that there was something of education among the convents, and also that they doubtless had many copies of Scripture manuscripts. Aldhelm himself is known to have translated fifty of the Psalms into the early English.

A bright picture comes to us by the pen of Saint Cuthbert in 735. On the 26th of May—Ascension Day—cloudless and beautiful toward its closing, there were silent tread and hushed voices among the monks of a great monastery in the county of Durham, in England. All attention along the cloisters was directed toward the passageway of one cell, and eager inquiries of all who came thence if the dying one were still alive.

Within the cell, on a low white bed, was the feeble form of an old man, bolstered up that his eye might rest upon either of the manuscripts supported in position on and about his bed. At a table near him was seated a scribe writing every word which the pale lips spake. One listening heard the scribe say, “There is only one chapter left, master, but you are too weary now, and you must sleep.” “No, go on, it is very easy, write rapidly,” was the reply; and so the writing proceeded according to the faint dictation of the exhausted old man, until he seemed to fall asleep. The scribe awoke him again, and the glassy eyes brightened as the old man heard, “Master, there is but one verse now,” and with an effort to fix the drooping eyes upon the adjusted scrolls, there came slowly forth, one by one, the words of the last verse of John’s gospel, and when the “Amen” was pronounced, the whitened head sank among the pillows lightened with the last rays of the setting sun, as it streamed through the grated window, and the bloodless lips murmured forth, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” when the form of the Venerable Bede was still, and the awful silence of death followed immediately the ending of his translation.

Portions of the Word were also translated in the ninth century, and were authorized by King Alfred. He himself did something at translating, and was careful to have nicely executed, as a preface to every published code, the manuscript of the Decalogue. It might exercise a salutary effect if our statesmen, every law they read, might also have the ten commandments before them. King Alfred made the declaration more than once that he desired to see the day when all men in his kingdom would be able to read God’s word.

Elfrac also, after Alfred, from 1004 to 1030, translated portions of the Scriptures into English.

But the last manuscript translation of the English Scriptures is greater than any which preceeded it, and the only one which can be called a popular edition. The quaint old stone church of Saint Mary is still standing in Leicestershire, where John Wycliffe preached when in 1830 he completed his translation. He had long been the fiery lecturer at Oxford, and had come into sore conflict with ignorant priests of the papacy for his enunciations of religious liberty and his schemes for the better education of the masses of the people. So that when his translation was finished a strong hatred sought his life. He was cited to Rome, but being too feeble to go, he was buried in his own parish. Forty years afterward, however, the same council which burned John Huss exhumed the bones of Wycliffe, and having burned them, they gathered the ashes and scattered them into the river which had the significant name of “Swift,” down which they found their way through other rivers into the ocean, and were washed, it would seem, with the strength of Wycliffe’s spirit, upon every shore of the world. There were as many as one hundred and seventy copies of the Wycliffe version made with busy pens, and circulated secretly, but widely read, thus preparing the way for greater works thereafter, and confirming the propriety of calling their author “The Morning Star of the Reformation.”

A few years since I stood long before the great bronze statue of Gutenberg in Mayence on the Rhine, a place now of over fifty thousand population. All citizens are eager to show any American that can make out to ask it, the site of the building where the invention of printing with movable type was made about 1450. The house still stands where Gutenberg lived, and another in which he did his first work with his press. Twenty-five years later printing began in England, and in another twenty-five years there were in the world over two hundred and twenty places where printing was done. I took a walk on the heights back of Bristol, in England, and was asked if I was seeking Sudbury, the old manor, which I was not, but accidentally had it pointed out to me where Sir John Walsh lived, when he employed for the instruction of his children a young priest, a fine scholar and a great reader. The fact that he devoted so much of his time and thought to the Scriptures, and even taught children to read it, produced some sensation in the community. In June, 1523, at a dining, the young priest suffered some rebuke for his liberal handling of the Scriptures by the pompous parish priest, who was present, and who, among other things, declared that it was better even to disobey a law of God than a law of the Pope. At this the opposition in the heart of the young priest became very decided, and his reply was almost in these words: “I hope to live to see even the ploughboys of England knowing more of the Word of God than either yourself or the Pope.” That young priest’s name was William Tyndale. When it was noised about that his pen was busy preparing a translation of the Bible for print, he was obliged to fly abroad on the continent, where at Cologne on the Rhine he printed a few sheets, then fled again to Worms, where he printed all of his translation, and was soon thereafter imprisoned in Antwerp for six months, during which time he converted the jailor and his family. He was then strangled and burned at the stake, his last words being, “May the Lord open the King of England’s eyes.”

It was Henry the VIII who was then King of England, and who assisted the bishops to buy up Tyndale’s edition and burn the books in a heap before St. Paul’s in London.

I saw a fragment of one of the books, mostly burned, rescued from the flames, and now in the British Museum. This is Jehoiachim No. 4.

It is said that a young man named Coverdale had been greatly interested in Tyndale’s edition; that he was a fine scholar, and that he, with several others, finding that the edition would be destroyed, succeeded in selling many copies for the flames, thus erecting a fund with which they proposed another edition. The prayer of Tyndale in less than two years was answered. Henry the VIII, with increasing disgust at the ignorance and corruption of the religious teachers in every community, determined that, after all, the Bible should be printed and extensively circulated. So Coverdale, with strong patronage, was employed to issue it, which he did, under the care of Archbishop Cramer, in 1527, in Zurich. Two thousand five hundred copies of Coverdale’s edition were seized and burned by the Inquisition in France. This is Jehoiachim No. 5.

Following Henry VIII, Edward VI ordered that every parish priest should own a copy and read therefrom a chapter at each service.

In 1558 John Calvin, with able associates, published an edition called the Genevan edition.

In 1614 King James commissioned forty-seven scholars to make a careful and complete edition, which was authorized as standard. This is our own edition or translation in common use since. As Tyndale commenced his work in 1511, you will see that it took just a century and more than fifty years after the time of printing to produce a complete and authorized version of God’s word. The race of Jehoiachims in many parts have attempted to destroy it, especially in Spain, for the last few years.

During the time of the preparation of King James’s version, our Catholic friends completed an edition more to their liking, which was published in 1609 in Douay, France, and which they have in whatever common use it is proper to say, called the Douay version.

In 1604, the same year that King James moved for his version, John Eliot was born. In 1631 he joined the church in Boston, and became a learned and pious missionary among our American Indians. In 1661 he published his translation, and lived to see over twenty Indians educated and using his edition in their own tongue, in the pulpit. Eliot died when he was eighty-six years old. There are now about thirty copies of his translation remaining, about equally divided between England and America. There is a copy in the Astor Library in New York, and one in Yale College library. A copy was sold at auction in New York a few years since for $1,130, the highest known price ever paid for one book. There is no man now living who can read Eliot’s Bible.

In 1870 a movement was started, appropriately by the Church of England, for a thorough revision of our Scriptures. The New Testament has been in our hands for some time, and we now eagerly look forward to the appearance of the Old Testament in the new version.

“Within this simple volume lies

The mystery of mysteries;

Happiest story of human race,

To whom that God has given grace

To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,

To lift the latch, to force the way;

And better had they ne’er been born

Than read to doubt or read to scorn.”

—Sir Walter Scott.

[January 14.]

[FROM THE BEGINNING TO ABRAHAM.]

By W. F. COLLIER, LL. D.

The Creation of Man involved the necessity of preparing a dwelling-place for him. The Bible informs us that the world passed through successive changes, which transformed an unshapely mass to its present condition of beauty and fitness. God said, “Let there be light,” and the rays of the sun burst upon the surface of the earth. Then the land appeared from under the waters, and was clothed with vegetation. The fishes, reptiles, and birds were called into existence. Next, quadrupeds appeared. Finally, as a crowning act, man was created in the image of God, his Maker. “Then the woman was formed from the rib of the man, in token of the closeness of their relation, and the duty of man to love his wife as his own flesh.”

Man having been created, means were employed for his occupation. In order to develop his mind and body activity was necessary. He was to dress and keep the garden, to subdue the lower animals, study them, and subject them to his control and use.

Distinguished from all other created beings around him by the gift of speech, he was enabled to classify and name the animals, hold converse with his wife, and engage in oral acts of praise and worship of his Heavenly Father.

The locality of the Garden of Eden is believed to be in the highlands of Asia Minor, near the sources of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. The whole district drained by these rivers is represented by travelers as one of surpassing beauty. Mountains rise, by easy slopes, to the height of five thousand feet; their sides are clothed with gigantic forest trees, underneath which the box, bay, and rhododendron flourish. The valleys and lowlands are studded with villages, and checkered by orchards, vineyards, and gardens, yielding both the cereals of the temperate zones and the fruit of the tropics. Somewhere in the eastern part of this charming district the garden was located, on the shore of Lake Van. This lake is described by travelers as follows:

“The shores of Lake Van (a noble sheet of water, two hundred and forty miles round), are singularly fine. They are bright with poplar, tamarisk, myrtles, and oleanders, whilst numerous verdant islands, scattered over its placid bosom, lend to it the enchantment of fairy land. In one direction the gardens cover a space of seven or eight miles long, and four miles broad. The climate is temperate, and sky almost always bright and clear. To the southeast of the lake extends the plain of Solduz, presenting in one part an unbroken surface of groves, orchards, vineyards, gardens, and villages. The same description is applicable to the tract extending along the Araxes, which, for striking mountain scenery, interspersed with rich valleys, can scarcely be equalled. This district accords, in every respect, with the best notions we can form of the cradle of the human race.”

Here, say the Armenians, was the Vale of Eden. On the summit of Mount Ararat, at no great distance from this, the ark rested; and here, also, the vine was first cultivated by Noah. It is impossible to say whether further investigation in this comparatively unknown district will ever guide us nearer to the spot where the Lord planted the garden; but there can be no doubt that these plains, lakes, and islands must have given birth to the images of Elysian fields and Fortunate islands that continued, age after age, to gild the traditions of the world.[E]

The Fall of Man.—This expression signifies the loss of the innocence and perfection with which he was endowed at his creation. The Fall was the consequence of disobedience.

Milton thus describes the momentous event:

“Of man’s disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe.”

Eve’s act—

“. . . her rash hand, in evil hour,

Forth reaching to the fruit. She plucked, she eat.

Earth felt the wound, and Nature, from her seat,

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,

That all was lost.”

Adam’s act—

“Earth trembled from her entrails, as again

In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;

Sky lowered, and muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal sin

Original. . . .”

At what period of the existence of our first parents their fall occurred the inspired writer does not inform us. The fact is only stated. There is reason to infer that it occurred soon after their creation.

Before the fall they lived in the garden, whose enchanting beauty has already been described. Their employment was to dress, admire, and enjoy the lovely spot, and to praise and glorify their Maker.

Having disobeyed, they were driven forth from the garden, and the ground, which before brought forth, spontaneously, an abundant supply of fruits to satisfy all their desires, became changed, and needed cultivation to produce the food their desecrated bodies needed.

“Adam and Eve went forth into the wide world, carrying with them the fallen nature and corrupt tendencies which were the present fruit of their sin, but with faith in the promise of redemption.”

The chief object of their life was yet to be accomplished, the earth was to be peopled and subdued. The curse was accompanied by a promise. The toils of the man were to be rewarded by the fruits the earth would yield to cultivation; and the woman, in her suffering, was consoled by the hope of a Redeemer.[F]

The Flood.—Sin and wickedness had become so wonderful that God determined to destroy the whole race, except Noah and his family.

Noah was directed to construct a vessel sufficiently large to accommodate his family and such animals as he should need. In this vessel, called in the Bible the Ark, he embarked with his wife, three sons, and their wives, making in all eight souls. He took, according to Divine direction, clean beasts and birds by sevens, and of such as were not to used for food or for sacrifice by pairs, with a supply of food for all. The age of Noah at the time he entered the ark was six hundred years. When all had embarked, the ark was shut by the hand of God, and immediately the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the clouds sent forth torrents of water, which increased and bore up the ark. The Bible does not describe the terrific character of the consequences of such a storm. We are left to imagine the scenes that followed. The mountain streams must have swollen so suddenly as to forsake their channels and find new outlets, sweeping away, in their angry force, hamlets, villages, and even cities, washing down hills, and undermining mountains. But, most prominent, there rises before the fancy a scene of terrible conflict—brawny men fighting with the tempest, carrying their families from height to height, but still pursued by the remorseless, unwearying foe.

The next scene is one of defeat and death.

Bleached and bloodless corpses float everywhere, like pieces of a wreck over the shoreless sea; the poor babe, locked in the arms of the mother, having found even nature’s refuge fail.

Last of all, there is a scene of awful stillness and desolation, not one object being seen but the dull expanse of the ocean, nor one sound of life heard but the low moan of its surging waters.

On the seventh month the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. But nearly a year elapsed, after the mighty vessel grounded, before Noah emerged from this temporary prison. Immediately upon landing he erected an altar, and offered sacrifice to God for preserving him from the watery grave which had engulfed all mankind except his family, with which act, God being well pleased, he made a covenant with him never again to destroy the world by flood, and to seal the promise, he set his bow in the cloud.

Noah, as has been stated, on going out of the ark, celebrated his deliverance by a burnt offering of all the kinds of clean beasts which he had preserved in the ark with him.[G]

Babel.—The next great event in man’s history was the confusion of tongues, and the consequent dispersion of mankind into three great lingual families.

On leaving the ark new privileges were granted, new laws imposed, and a new covenant made. In addition to the plants, all animals were allowed for food. They were forbidden to eat blood, and murder was made a capital offence. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” We may infer that the sons of Noah, and their descendants, moved naturally toward the south, until, after many years, they reached and settled the plains south of Ararat; until Assyria, the plains of Mesopotamia, and Chaldæa swarmed with busy multitudes, pursuing the various avocations of life.

It was on the plains of Chaldæa, south of Mesopotamia, that the mighty city of Babylon arose on the banks of the river Euphrates, where the inhabitants, in their pride, attempted to erect a tower that should reach to the heavens. This tower was, no doubt, intended to serve as a place from which to expose signals to call the people together, hence it was to be high enough to be seen from all parts of the plain.

To humble their pride, and to people other sections by distribution, God arrested the work by confounding of tongues, so that when the workmen asked for brick the laborers brought mortar. It is not certain to how great an extent the confusion of tongues was brought; but it is not believed that each person spoke a different dialect from every other. But, on the other hand, there is reason to believe that the whole was divided into three great lingual divisions or families.

Men now grouped together, from necessity, into tribes or families, composed of those who understood each other, sought new regions and neighborhoods where they might settle, and engage in the various departments of human industry then practiced.

In that mild climate and generous soil men were greatly tempted to become shepherds and herdsmen, a mode of life at once simple and healthful, and one highly calculated to extend the borders of occupation, and increase the population.

The government was patriarchal—a mode of government which seemed to have been especially acceptable to God, and well calculated to prevent centralization.

Social Life of the Ancients—Job.—It would be utterly impossible, in any single picture, to present a view of the state of society during a period of so great extent, and embracing such a variety of nations and countries. We can but follow the example of the Bible itself, and make choice of a single spot, and a single family, to convey some idea of the life and manners of the age. It is probable that it was during this period that the patriarch Job lived, suffered, and triumphed. Job was probably a descendant of Shem; his residence is said to have been “in the east” (Job i. 3)—the term usually applied to the district where the first settlement of men took place. (Gen. ii. 8; iii. 24; xi. 2). The Sabeans and Chaldæans were his neighbors; and at the time when he lived the knowledge of the True God seems to have been preserved, without material corruption. The adoration of the heavenly bodies had begun to be practiced (Job xxxi. 26, 27), but there seems still to have been a general belief in one Almighty God.

The picture of social life in the book of Job is in many respects extremely beautiful. We dare not regard it as a sample of what was usual over the world, but rather as exhibiting the highest condition of social life that had been attained. There were even then cases of oppression, robbery, and murder; but, for the most part, a fine patriarchal purity and simplicity prevailed. The rich and the poor met together, and to the distressed and helpless the rich man’s heart and hand were ever open: “When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street, the young men saw me, and hid themselves: and the aged arose and stood up. . . . When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me; because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.” The sweet bonds of family affection retained all their power in the household of Job; his children feasted by turns in each other’s houses; while the affectionate and pious father rose early in the morning to offer sacrifices for them all, lest any of them should have sinned. The simple burnt-offering retained its place as the appointed ordinance of heaven, and was the sacrifice that Job, as the high-priest of his house, presented on behalf of his children.

In the book of Job mention is made of kings, princes, nobles, judges, merchants, warriors, travelers, and slaves. The pen of iron had begun to engrave inscriptions upon rocks; the mining shaft was sunk for gold and silver; and palaces that had been built for kings and nobles had fallen into ruin. Astronomy had begun to acquaint men with the heavenly bodies, and many of the stars and constellations had received well-known names. Altogether, the state of civilization was highly advanced. The more closely we study those early times, the more erroneous appears the opinion that man began his career as a savage, and gradually worked his way up to refinement and civilization. The reverse of this is nearer the truth. “God made man upright”—civilized and refined, as well as intelligent and holy; but as man departed from God, he lost these early blessings. Sometimes a considerable degree of refinement has been reached by other paths; but by far the richest and best civilization is that which has come with true religion—with the pure knowledge and simple worship of the one True God.

[January 21.]

[FROM ABRAHAM TO THE OCCUPATION OF CANAAN.]

By W. F. COLLIER, LL. D.

Call of Abraham.—The next important step chronicled in the Mosaic history of man is the call of Abraham, ten generations after Noah. Abram was born 1996 B. C. Ur, a Chaldæan city, was his birthplace. Terah, Abram’s father, removed from Ur to Haran, in Mesopotamia.

The Lord spake to Abram while residing in Haran, when he was seventy-five years old, and commanded him to leave his father’s house, to separate himself from his kindred, to depart from his country, and to go to a land that should be shown him.

The Lord said to him, “I will make thee a great nation, and will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee. And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Abram, in obedience to this command, set out with his wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot, taking with him his flocks and herds, and journeyed into the land of Canaan. Having arrived, his first act was to erect an altar, and sacrifice to the Lord. From this place he moved to the east of Bethel, and again built an altar and worshipped. A famine drove him from his new home into Egypt, where was an abundance of food. Having spent some time in the land of the Pharaohs, he returned to Canaan, greatly enriched by his sojourn in Egypt. Soon after the return from Egypt Lot separated himself from Abram, and settled in the valley of the Jordan, while Abram sought the hill country, and finally sat down in the neighborhood of the ancient city of Hebron. The king of Chaldæa made a raid on the cities of Canaan, and carried off Lot, with other prisoners. This fact coming to the knowledge of Abram, he immediately set out to rescue his relation. Having over three hundred servants, he attacked the camp of the invaders at night, set them to flight, and rescued his nephew.

This is the first battle recorded in history.

When Abram was one hundred years old the Lord’s promise was renewed to him. His name was changed to Abraham, the name of his wife to Sarah; and Isaac, through whom the promise of a great progeny was to be fulfilled, was born. When Isaac was forty years old, Abraham sent his servant to Mesopotamia to obtain a wife for him. His second cousin, the grand-daughter of his father’s brother, was selected, and she consented to go back with the servant and marry her kinsman. From this marriage two sons were born, Esau and Jacob. By the right of birth Esau possessed certain advantages, which Jacob purchased of him by dressing him some food when returning faint and hungry from the chase, thereby supplanting him. He afterwards, by deceiving his father, who was nearly blind, obtained from him the parental blessing conferred only upon the first born. This so enraged his brother, that Jacob sought safety in flight, and went to his mother’s brother in Mesopotamia. There he was kindly received, and after a short time had elapsed he entered into the service of his uncle, and agreed to labor for him seven years for his youngest daughter. Having fulfilled his part of the contract, Laban, his uncle, gave him his eldest daughter. When Jacob discovered the deception his father-in-law had practiced upon him, he demanded Rachel. Laban, however, required him to serve another seven years, which he did. After the second marriage he continued still to live with Laban, and received as pay a share of his flocks. In securing this share, he was thought by his brothers-in-law to have practiced unfair means, hence they became hostile to him. His father-in-law also having become unfriendly, he fled, and returned to his native land with his family and his flocks. Laban pursued and overtook him, and though their meeting was far from being friendly, they entered into an agreement, and gave pledges that they would not annoy each other in future. Jacob then pursued his journey. As he approached his native country he sent presents to his brother Esau, who came out to meet him, and they became reconciled.

Jacob journeyed on to Canaan, and sat down in the city Shalim. Soon after he removed to Hebron, the home of his childhood. He was rich in flocks and herds, and his neighbors respected and feared him. In accordance with the patriarchal mode of life, his twelve sons and one daughter remained with him, who, with their wives, children, and servants, made a large family or tribe.

Joseph.—Jacob treated the children of Rachel, his beloved wife, with greater tenderness than he did those of Leah, his first wife, and Joseph was his favorite. The partiality shown to this son so enraged his brothers that they determined to get rid of him. They found an opportunity to carry out their design under the following circumstances. The older brothers having been absent with their flocks so long that their father became anxious about their safety, and sent Joseph to search for them. As they beheld him afar off they plotted to murder him; but, taking the advice of Reuben, they imprisoned him in a pit in the wilderness. Soon after his confinement a caravan of traveling merchants passed, and to these they sold Joseph into slavery, telling their father that he had been destroyed by wild beasts. The merchants carried him into Egypt, and disposed of him to Potiphar, the commander of the king’s guards. In Potiphar’s house he rose to great eminence as a servant; but falling into disgrace through a false accusation, he was thrown into prison. While in prison his conduct was so exemplary and submissive, that he gained the favor of the jailor, and was allowed the freedom of the prison. Later on he was summoned to appear before the king to explain certain dreams which troubled Pharaoh. Appearing before the great monarch, Joseph disclaimed all power in himself to explain the meaning of what had appeared to the mind of the king, but modestly and reverently said the Lord of his fathers would show the signification. The king having told his dreams, Joseph predicted seven years of great plenty, to be succeeded by seven years of dearth, and advised Pharaoh to build vast granaries and fill them, during the years of abundance. The advice was immediately acted upon, and Joseph was elevated to the rank of governor of all Egypt, and the erection of storehouses, and the filling of them with grain, was entrusted to him. The years of plenty came and passed away, and were succeeded by tedious years of sore famine. While the Egyptians had stores of food laid up by the providence and foresight of Joseph, the neighboring nations, having exhausted their stock of provisions, were obliged to go to Egypt to buy. The dearth oppressing the inhabitants of Canaan, Joseph’s brothers came down to purchase also. While on a second visit to buy food, they were made aware that their despised and hated brother, whom they had sold into slavery, was the governor of Egypt.

Having made himself known to them, they were overwhelmed with surprise and fear; but he most magnanimously pardoned and comforted them by saying, “Be not grieved or angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life.” (Genesis xlv: 5, 7.) “God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save yourselves for a great deliverance.”

Joseph’s father and all his family were at once brought into Egypt, and established with their flocks and herds on the eastern bank of the lower Nile, where Joseph nourished them, and where they prospered for many generations, until a new king arose, who knew not Joseph.

The Exodus.—The part of Egypt in which Joseph had settled his family was one of the most fertile parts of the valley of the Nile. Skirted on the south by hills, it sloped off to the northwest toward the Mediterranean Sea, thus affording the most favorable exposure for the purpose of the pastoral life which the Israelites led. For more than a century they pursued their quiet employment, and were treated by the Egyptians with respect and consideration, in memory of Prince Joseph. The prosperity and increase of the Israelites, with their distinctness as a people, alarmed the Egyptian powers, who turned their attention to some means to cripple them and arrest their increase. Oppression was resorted to. Privileges were withheld, and severer tasks imposed, until one tremendous groan went up from the land of Goshen to the God of their fathers. In spite of all the oppression and injustice practiced upon this people, they throve and increased in numbers.

The Lord heard the cry of the outraged Hebrew slave, and permitted his enemies to afflict him, that he might find the country hateful, and feel that he was only a sojourner, who was to seek a promised land, the land promised to his father, Abraham. Their burdens became intolerable. Moses, their leader, applied to Pharaoh to allow them to depart from the country; but the king refused, and God afflicted the Egyptians with dreadful plagues, until they prayed the Israelites to depart. They set out with all their effects, moving toward Arabia, and on reaching the shores of the Red Sea they became aware of the fact that Pharaoh, with his army, was pursuing.

Hemmed in on either side by hills, the sea before them, and their enemies behind, they were overwhelmed with despair. But now the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, their fathers, delivered them with a great deliverance, for, at his command, the sea opened and allowed them to pass over in safety. Pharaoh, pursuing, led his chariots and horsemen into the bed of the sea, and the returning waters engulfed them. All were destroyed, not one escaped; a terrific exhibition of the wrath of the Almighty. The Israelites journeyed on toward Canaan, the land of promise, spending forty years in the desert of Arabia, living in tents, subsisting on manna, which they found on the ground in the morning, and on the flesh of birds, which came to them every evening, making their whole journey a series of miracles and special providences. They finally reached the Jordan, which, like the Red Sea, opened for them, and allowed them to pass over dry-shod. The inhabitants of the land were driven out, and the weary wanderers, who had crossed and recrossed their path in the rocky wilds and desert sands of Arabia, sat down in the land of their fathers, and became dwellers in permanent habitations.

[January 28.]

[THE ISRAELITES AFTER REACHING THE LAND OF PROMISE.]

By W. F. COLLIER, LL. D.

Between the time of the entry of the Israelites into Canaan and the birth of our Savior, a period of 1,451 years elapsed. It is not our object to follow out the history of this wonderful nation, yet it would seem necessary to state briefly their progress.

For several centuries they remained much in the same state as Joshua, their great captain, left them; contending with the surrounding tribes whenever their encroachments were disputed, at other times living friendly with them; not only intermarrying, but allowing themselves to be seduced into idolatry; for which sin the Lord permitted the neighboring nations, in more than one instance, to conquer them, to break up their government, and carry the principal inhabitants into captivity. In each case, however, after long and weary years of captivity, their country was restored to them, and the spoilers themselves were made instruments in the hands of God to reconstruct the nation.

Social and Religious Condition.—During the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, very little opportunity was afforded for the exercise of the arts of life. It is difficult to conjecture the employment of that vast multitude during all those years.

The construction of the tabernacle and its furniture called into use the skill and workmanship of the best artisans; but, aside from that, there was nothing to tax their talent. During the forty years they lost the arts they had learned in Egypt.

For many years after they entered the Holy Land their mode of living was rude and simple, depending mainly upon the produce of their flocks and herds for sustenance. We have reason to infer that they also drew upon the same source for many articles of clothing.

The forty years of pilgrimage in the wilderness swept into the grave nearly all the vast multitude that left Egypt with Moses. Those who entered the Holy Land had not witnessed the idolatry of Egypt. Moreover, their very existence had depended upon the fall of the manna. Witnessing this daily miracle, a spirit of dependence and submission must have engrafted itself upon this new generation.

The dreary chastisement of the forty years, the plagues that once and again made such havoc, the sad fact that the bones of their fathers were left to whiten in the wilderness, must have produced a terrible impression. The people who came out from Egypt were haughty, unbelieving, rebellious. Their descendants, humbled by chastisement, made dependent by their helplessness, became gentle, submissive, and obedient. We must hence infer that they remained for many years simple in habit and devotional in spirit.

For three hundred and thirty-two years after the death of Joshua, the successor of Moses, the Israelites were governed by judges. During this period the Jews were a nation of farmers, and each farmer was the proprietor of his own farm. The size of the farm allotted to each family may at first have averaged from twenty to fifty acres; and as there were very few servants or laborers, except such hewers of wood and drawers of water as the Gibeonites, each family had to cultivate its own estate. The houses were seldom built apart from each other, like the farm houses of our own country—that would have been too insecure; they were placed together in villages, towns, and cities; and when the place was very much exposed, and of great importance, it was surrounded by a wall.

The lands were adapted chiefly for three kinds of produce—grain, fruit, and pasture. Wheat, millet, barley, and beans were the principal kinds of grain; flax and cotton were also cultivated, and small garden herbs, such as anise, cummin, mint, and rue. (Mat. xxiii: 23.)

The orchards were exceedingly productive. The olive, fig, pomegranate, vine, almond, and apple were all common; and a great part of the time of the Hebrews, in days of peace, must have been spent in cultivating these fruit trees.

As beasts of burden they had the ox, the camel, and the ass; while sheep and goats constituted the staple of their flocks.

Their grain harvest began about the beginning of our April, and lasted for about two months. Summer followed, in June and July, and was the season for gathering the garden fruits. The next two months were still warmer, so that the sheep shearing would have to be overtaken before they set in. During all this time little or no rain falls in Palestine. The country becomes excessively parched, the brooks and springs dry up, and almost the only supply of water is from the pools and reservoirs that have been filled during the winter.

October and November are the seed time. “The former rain” falls now. It often falls with violence, fills the dry torrent-beds, and illustrates our Savior’s figure of the rains descending, and the floods coming and beating upon the houses. (Matt. vii: 25, 27.) December and January are the winter months, when frost and snow are not uncommon; February and March are also cold. “The latter rains” fall at this season. About the end of it, “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes have a good smell.” (Song of Sol., ii: 11, 13.)

Among the wild trees and vegetable products of the country were the cedar, stable and lofty, an emblem of usefulness and beauty (Ps. xcii: 12); the oak, both the smooth and the prickly sort, which grow in great luxuriance in Bashan; the terebinth, or turpentine tree (translated oak in our Bibles), a large evergreen, with spreading branches, often growing singly, and so striking as to mark a district—like the terebinth of Shechem, of Mamre (or Hebron), and of Ophrah; the fir, the cypress, the pine, the myrtle, and the mulberry. The oleander and the prickly pear flourished in most situations. The rose and the lily were the common flowers. Altogether, the number of vegetable products was large and varied; and, in such a country, Solomon’s memory and acquirements could not have been contemptible, when “he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.”

The ordinary employments of the Hebrew farmer were thus ample and varied, but not very toilsome; and often they were pleasantly interrupted. Thrice a year the males went up to Shiloh, to the three great festivals—Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Each seventh day was a holy Sabbath to the Lord, devoted to rest and worship. At each new moon there was also a holy day. Each seventh year was a year of rest, at least from the ordinary occupations of the field and the garden: it was probably turned to account in repairing houses, clothes, and implements, and particularly in the religious instruction of the people. The education of the children was chiefly in the hands of their parents, assisted by the Levites, who were scattered over the country, and paid from the tithes of the whole produce. On the whole, the Hebrews, in times of peace, led, during this period, a quiet, unambitious, country life.

Occasionally, as in the song of Deborah, we meet with proofs that music, and song, and literary culture were not neglected; and the “divers colors of needlework on both sides,” for which the mother of Sisera waited so anxiously at her window, showed that the Hebrew ladies had acquired no mean skill in the use of their needles. But, on the whole, neither learning, nor the mechanical arts, nor manufactures, nor commerce, nor the fine arts, were very vigorously cultivated, or made much progress during this period. Each man was content to sit under his vine and under his fig tree; and the children of a family were usually quite pleased to divide the possessions, and follow the occupations of their fathers.

The government of the country was carried on chiefly by local officers. It is not easy to ascertain the precise number and nature of the departments of the government, or of the officers by whom they were carried on. But each of the twelve tribes seems to have had a government of its own. Each city had its elders, and each tribe its rulers and princes. In ordinary cases, justice seems to have been administered, and local disputes settled by the tribal authorities. There seem also to have been certain central tribunals. In particular, there was “the whole congregation of Israel”—a sort of house of commons, or states-general, composed of delegates from the whole nation, by whom matters of vital importance to the whole country were considered.

In ordinary times, the high priest seems to have exercised considerable political influence over the nation; and in pressing dangers, the judges were invested with extraordinary powers. The whole of the twelve tribes were welded together, and had great unity of feeling and action imparted to them, through the yearly gatherings at the great religious festivals. When idolatry prevailed in any district of the country, these gatherings would be neglected, and the unity of the nation consequently impaired.

No important addition was made during this period to the religious knowledge of the people. There was no new revelation of the Messiah, except in so far as the several deliverers who were raised up foreshadowed the Great Deliverer. The ceremonial law of Moses was probably in full operation during the periods of religious faithfulness. The great lesson regarding sin—its hatefulness in God’s eyes, and the certainty of its punishment—was continually renewed by the events of providence.

Those who really felt the evil of sin would see in the sacrifices that were constantly offered up a proof that God can not accept the sinner unless his sin be atoned for through the shedding of blood. But even pious men had not very clear ideas of the way of acceptance with God. A humble sense of their own unworthiness, the spirit of trust in God’s undeserved mercy for pardon, and a steady, prayerful endeavor to do all that was right in God’s sight, were the great elements of true piety in those days. There was great occasion for the exercise of high trust in God, both in believing that prosperity would always follow the doing of his will, and in daring great achievements, like those of Barak and Gideon, under the firm conviction that he would crown them with success.

But in a religious point of view this period was a very checkered one; sometimes one state of things prevailed, sometimes another. The people showed a constant inclination to forsake the pure worship of the true God, and fall into the idolatry of their neighbors. The oppressions which those very neighbors inflicted on them, and the wars which ensued, generally produced an antipathy to their religious and other customs, which lasted for some years; but the old fondness for idolatry returned again and again.

It clearly appears that a pure, spiritual worship is distasteful to the natural heart. Men unconverted do not relish coming into heart-to-heart contact with the unseen God; they are much more partial to a worship conducted through images and symbols: for this reason the Israelites were always falling into idolatry; idolatry led to immorality; and both drew down on them the judgments of their offended God.

[End of Required Reading for January.]

[THREE AGES.]

By JOHN ALBEE.

’Twas morn, and o’er my little window ledge

Flew many a wild bird of plumage bright;

They sang sweet songs, and left the truest pledge

Of love, of love and truth, by day and night.

’Twas afternoon, and through my stately door,

In soberer dress, stepped the too tame birds,

Calling our former themes so vain and poor,

Twittering now in philosophic words.

It is night now; life, love, and thought are done;

What is it comes and sets my heart aglow?

Of all the wise and learned tongues not one—

Only the foolish songs of long ago.

—The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

[STAGES.]

By BENJAMIN R. BULKELEY.

I.

Once life was joy, not joyous service done—

Quick days of selfish rapture, broad, not deep;

The world was like a picture, and the sun

Rose for the gilding of a dreamy sleep.

II.

We woke; and life was labor; naught of glee

Was left, for deepest-rooted toil remained;

And as we delved no end was there to see,

And suns but glimmered on the dross we gained.

III.

But now, or in the perfect time, we know

The joy returns while labor yet abides;

Life’s round and fair, and, delving deep below,

We find the joy that early pleasure hides.

—The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

[DRIVING.]

There is now no branch of outdoor education of greater importance than that of an ability to “handle the ribbons.” Not a man or woman but would be ashamed to say that they were incompetent, if in fair health and strength, to pilot their own carriage. And yet, though so large a proportion of society can boast a smattering of the science, there is no pursuit in which perfection is proportionately so rarely attained.

The first requisite for a tyro is to learn to sit well, and so to acquire the proper scope for his own power over his horse.

The seat should be above, or at least on a level, with the horses’ heads, not below them; and it should, moreover, be so placed that the driver can use his legs and feet to restrain the pull of the horses if necessary, and that can not be done if the reins pull down over the splash-board into the driver’s lap.

Though most tyros begin their essay with a horse in a single harness, yet in a general way it is easier and safer to drive a pair than one. If the single horse is perfect in manners, all that has to be learned is to keep him straight, and to direct him without collision. But if a horse has faults he is safer with a companion; though if the two have coincident faults, or could confabulate mischief together, they would be more dangerous than a single animal, yet it is in practice long chances against the two both doing wrong simultaneously. Each is a check on his fellow: the one may not want to bolt when the other does, or if one falls the other will probably keep his legs.

The tyro should take his seat uprightly and squarely, plant his feet well in front of him, grasp his reins firmly, and let his left arm play lightly from the shoulder (not the elbow), his elbows both well squared. Nothing looks so slovenly, or entails such waste of necessary power, as a slouching back, and hands sunk in the lap.

The whip should not always be used because it is handy; it is wanted to make a horse take hold of his collar if he shirks, and to feel his bit if he hangs back when there is difficulty in navigation. Unless he runs up to his bit there is little or no communication between him and his driver. The whip should be used from the wrist, not from the arm; a lash delivered from the shoulder is far less effective and much more ugly than a stroke from the wrist. A good fly-fisher never makes a bad whip in this respect.

Let the beginner commence by casting an eye over his harness; at first, rather that he may learn by inspection the place for everything and that everything is in its place; but later, when he has passed his apprenticeship, he should still do the same, and this time with a master’s eye, to see that nothing is wanting before he mounts to his seat. Let him note that the breeching, if in single harness, is neither so loose as to be useless, nor so tight as to hamper the action of the horse and to rub the hair off. Let him see that the rein is on the proper bar of the bit; else, if the horse has been accustomed to be driven from one bar, and his bitting is suddenly altered, his manners will probably change at the same time. If he is driving double harness, let him note the length of his traces, and see that his horses are properly “poled up,” else the carriage will overrun them down hill.

Having cast a careful glance round his harness, the driver will then proceed to mount.

Let him take the reins in his hand before he mounts the box, then, when seated, let the “near” or left hand rein pass between the forefinger and thumb, the “off” or right-hand rein between the fore and middle fingers—palm of the hand uppermost. Then let the grasp of all the fingers close tightly on the loop of the rein, which should pass out under the remaining fingers. Though the grasp should be tight the touch should be light; let not the exercise of the muscles of grip confuse the driver into adding to this a tug from his shoulder upon his horse’s mouth. However light a horse’s mouth is, or supposing he is a slug, that does not take his collar and run up to his bit, still the driver should always feel the mouth, else he has no control over him in sudden emergency if the reins are hanging loosely. There is more danger in driving a sluggish or dead-mouthed horse in a crowd than a free goer. The latter runs up to his bit at once, and so feels your orders; the slug does not feel, and may interpret a touch of the reins to direct him into an order to stop in the teeth of a Pickford’s van, or on a level railway crossing in sight of an express. Whipcord must keep a slug to his collar, and so to his bit, or the absence of constant communication between his mouth and his driver’s hand may lead to collisions.

And now in the seat, and the grasp of the reins first secured, let the tyro make a start; not in a hurry, not with an instant dose of whipcord—a word of encouragement to his horse should suffice at first. Let him learn to allow free room for his own wheels in turning corners or passing obstacles: he has got two things to provide for, his vehicle as well as the horse. Better give a wide margin at first than collide; though before long his eye will guide him, and he need not then make himself conspicuous as a greenhorn by giving too wide berths at corners and rencontres. Go steadily round a corner; remember there is such a thing as centrifugal force; and a two-wheel vehicle, high hung, may easily be upset to the outside by a hasty whisk round a sharp corner, even without the help of a bank to lift the inner wheel.

Then, as to the rule of the road. If he meets anything coming the opposite way, he must take it on his right hand; if he overtakes it, on his left; if he is overtaken he must keep to the left, and be passed on the right.

“The role of the road is a paradox quite,

For if you go right you go wrong, and if you go left you go right.”

Down hill he should progress carefully, especially when on two wheels, for then the extra weight of the cart hangs on the pad or saddle on the horse’s back. A stumble and fall will probably break the shafts, certainly cut the horse’s knees, and may pitch the occupant over the splash-board. Let him hold well in, sit well back, play firmly and lightly with his hand, ready to hold up sharply in event of a stumble. Even a sure-footed horse may make a false step from the pain of a loose, sharp-pointed bit of stone cutting his frog. A judicious and timely support from the rein may save the horse and preserve his balance, by thus suddenly shifting part of the weight of his head and neck on to the carriage itself.

Next to a powerful seat, the mouth of the horse and the lightness of the hand upon it are the requisites. “Half the value of a horse is in his mouth” is an old maxim. Few owners are aware how much “manners” depend upon the bitting and handling of a horse. Shifting the rein from one bar to another makes all the difference in the going of the horse. The mouth is the link of communication between him and his driver; the bit must control him without fretting him, and the touch of the hand, unless light, deadens its own injunctions.

As the whip progresses in his craft, he will note many other minor details, apart from mere safety, which conduce to the welfare of his horse and carriage also. Though he is bound by rules of road at rencontre, he may choose his own path when all is clear; he need not take his share of rolling into shape newly-laid stones, if a smoother passage presents itself. Even if he can not altogether avoid stones, he may yet ease the draught if he can manœuvre only one wheel on to a smooth surface.—Cassell’s Sports and Pastimes.

[EDUCATION FOR AND AGAINST CASTE.]

By W. T. HARRIS.

We often hear in our time the fear expressed that there is a danger in too much education, and especially in a too great extension of free education at the expense of tax-payers. “Where shall society obtain its hewers of wood and its drawers of water?” is asked in an anxious tone. “Education renders people unwilling to earn their living by hand labor alone, and they resort to crime rather than work at an honest trade.” Investigation, however, does not confirm these fears. We find, upon studying social science, that those states of the world that enforce universal education are by far the greatest wealth producers and accumulators of wealth.

The statistics of the seventeen states in our nation (the seventeen that kept statistics of illiteracy in jails and prisons in 1870), show that out of a total of 110,538 prisoners, 27,581, or 25 per cent. could not write, while only 3½ per cent. of the adults of those seventeen states were illiterate—that 3½ per cent. of the population, if illiterate, furnish as many criminals as 32 per cent. of the people, if able to read and write—or that the one who can not read and write is nine times as liable to get to prison as the one who can read and write. Of course we must remember that the education of the school is powerfully reinforced by the education of the family, the community, the State, and the Church, and that the school is not the only educational influence, nor the most potent one. We must not place a too high estimate on the phase of civilization that merely keeps men out of prison. Chinese education does that, although it does not produce scientific thinkers, a literature of freedom, or a people that worship the true God, or any god that allows man to participate in his being.

We shall learn this lesson again in studying the caste education of India. The duties of each person to members of his own caste and then to the members of the other castes form the chief staple of Hindoo education. There the hewers of wood and the drawers of water are effectually provided for, first by birth and then by education.

If we desire to behold the effects of caste-education made supreme over all others, we must look carefully into East Indian life, and interpret it by its laws, religion, and philosophy. The division of labor is necessary in order that men may gain the requisite skill to conquer nature. Food, clothing, and shelter are rendered necessary by nature—that is to say, by our bodies—and can be supplied only by nature—the mineral, vegetable, and animal realms. Besides food, clothing, and shelter, there is the fourth want, that of culture or spiritual direction, and the fifth want, or that of protection,—the realm of religious and scientific education, and the realm of the political government.