THE SCRIPTURES

From The Republic of God'

HE Bible is a book written in literal forms, subject to the

Tordinary rules of construction, as defined in the science of

grammar.

The Bible is a book written in languages, as the Hebraic, the Chaldaic, the Greek, or Græco-Hebraic; subject to the ordinary rules of derivation and distinction, as defined in the science of comparative philology.

The Bible is a book written in manuscripts; which require in their transcription and authentication the critical study which belongs to the science which-in comparing, for instance, the uncial with other styles-is the science which deals with scriptory forms.

The Bible is a book which has been subject to the mutations of literature. It is written in manuscripts of unequal value, no one of which is entirely perfect in itself, so as to displace all others, and none are free from obscure or various readings. It has suffered simply the mutations of literature, and has had no exemptions from them.

It embraces the most varied forms of literature; as genealogies, laws, histories, records of legislative and judicial procedure, methods of sanitary, civil, and military administration. There is legend and myth. There are various forms of poetry: the ode, as in the antiphone of Moses and Miriam; the drama, as in the Book of Job; the idyl, as in the Song of Solomon; the lyric, as in the Book of the Psalms, and the opening pages of the Gospel of St. Luke; and in the writings of St. Paul, citations from the Greek comedy, as from Menander.

These Scriptures embraced, in substance, all the literature that the ancient Hebrew people possessed. Their productions in art and music always remained rude and simple, and in architecture they were the common adaptations of a primitive mode of life, or often the reproduction of forms copied from Egypt, or imported from Phoenicia.

There are traces in these writings of the races, countries, and ages in which they appeared, and of climatic conditions with. respect to languages, customs, and laws. There is a popular element, as in the stories of Samson and Ruth; and there is also a priestly and a kingly element, as in the Books of the

Chronicles and Kings. In some books there are the traces of reflective phases of thought, as in the Book of Ecclesiastes; and in some there are traces of Asiatic forms and Asiatic institutions.

These Scriptures were written by various writers in various. ages, and bear the note and accent of the individuality of these writers in their modes of expression. If it needs to be said, the literary forms of the older parts rise often to great dignity of expression, as the later chapters of Isaiah and the books of Hosea and Job; and they have, in this quality, a comparative. excellence in the literature of the world. There is in the New Testament not an indifference to literary form, but no distinction of literary form. These writings are simply narrative; in a biographical arrangement, or in the style of letters that are few and direct and very unequal in their expression. There is a historical narrative of a discursive character, apparently embracing the work of various writers. The Epistle to the Hebrews has a singular finish, with an antithetic expression, and an elaborate detail of historical portraiture, that indicates the culture of the writer in the schools of rhetoric in his age. The evangel of St. Luke is commended for the diligence and thoroughness of its research. The writings of St. Paul, in the Epistles, which may be distinctively called catholic, indicate more plainly the modifications to which the Greek language was subject when it became the instrument for the expression of Hebrew forms of thought; and they indicate also, in their illustrative expression, the influence of a knowledge of Roman law in an age of great Roman lawyers. But the writings of St. Paul have no literary form to commend them,-to bring them into comparison, in Greek with the consummate beauty of phrase in Eschylus, or the repose in the style of Plato, or the sustained strength of the masterful style of Aristotle. There is often, from language of great elevation, a lapse to some digressive phrase; as, for an extreme instance, in the thirty-third verse of the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, which drops and moves on with a quotation from the Greek comedy. They lack the form which belongs to the great hymns of the Vedas, and the constructive unity and consonance with a formal system which belongs to the Koran. The Koran is also better preserved, and has suffered less in transcription, with proportionately fewer obscure or various readings. The style has no distinctive quality: but they who, in

common parlance with religious society, speak of their beautiful liturgy, suggest a comparison with the hymns of the Vedas; and they who write of the poetry of the Bible must draw their parallel with Eschylus and Shakespeare, and the masters of the literary art to which they invite attention.

The Bible has a unity which is deeper than any structural form, however various and complete. This prevails with a continuous and continually increasing manifestation through the whole. It is not merely the unity which appears in the literature of a people, as the Latin or the English literature: it is that, but it is more and other than that. It is not merely the unity which attaches to the continuous history, the institutions, laws, customs, wars of a people: it is that, but it is more and other than that. The Bible is the record of the revelation of God. It is the record of a revelation of God in man and to the world. It is testamentary to the revelation of God to and through the world. This revelation, and not a literature nor a body of traditions, is the ground of the unity which it discovers. It is the record of the revelation of God, in his revelation with humanity; in the fulfillment of his eternal purpose, which was before the foundation of the world; in the righteousness in which he manifests his own. being, and in the life which he has given for the world. It is of the coming of his kingdom, in which the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of Christ. It is of a revelation in an order in the world, of the family and the nation. It is of a revelation of and in the Christ.

FREDERICK MAX MÜLLER

(1823-)

BY HENRY A. STIMSON

ROFESSOR MAX MÜLLER has told an incident that occurred early in his Oxford life, which not only fixes his parentage but introduces us to the rare literary circle that opened to him

in England, and which did so much for his future career.

He was invited to meet Thackeray at a little dinner. Müller had as yet mastered English but imperfectly, and was moreover somewhat awed by the great man. A fine fish,

a John Dory, was brought on; when Thackeray turned his large spectacled eyes upon the stranger, and said, "Are you going to eat your own ancestor ?" Everybody stared in silence; looking very grave and learned, Thackeray said, "Surely you are the son of the Dorian Müller-the Müller who wrote that awfully learned book on the Dorians: and was not John Dory the ancestor of all the Dorians?" In the laugh that followed, Müller replied that he was not the son of Ottfried Müller, who wrote on the Dorians, but of Wilhelm Müller the poet, who wrote 'Die Homerische Vorschule'; and as to John Dory being his ancestor, that was impossible, as the original John Dory was il Janitore,- that is, St. Peter,-and he had no wife. After which quick repartee the young scholar was well launched.

F. MAX MÜLLER

He was then but twenty-five years of age. He was born at Dessau, December 6th, 1823. After studying in Leipzig and Berlin, taking his degree in 1843, and publishing his first Sanskrit work in 1844, he went to Paris to study with the great Orientalist, Burnouf. Recognizing his abilities, Burnouf helped him to decide upon a career, and directed him to England; whither he went in 1846 to collate manuscripts for an edition of the Rig-Veda, the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmins.

In London he introduced himself to the Prussian Minister, Baron Bunsen, who became his lifelong friend, and by whose good offices

the East India Company was induced to bear the expense of the first edition of the Rig-Veda.' The troubled state of affairs on the Continent made it more easy for the student, whose life work was to be so largely among cumbersome and illegible manuscripts, to take advantage of the quiet seclusion of England. He went at once to Oxford, and that became his future home.

It is no strange thing for foreign scholars to visit London and the English universities, but it is not easy for them to become domesticated there. Erasmus tried it for a year; Taine, with all his admiration for things English, was never more than a visitor; and such Orientalists as Renan, Darmesteter, and Burnouf did not make the attempt. In "the don city," where, as Bunsen warned him, "every English idiosyncrasy strengthens itself, and buries itself in coteries," Müller settled with such success that ten years later, in 1858, Bunsen wrote to him: "Without ceasing to be a German, you have appropriated all that is excellent and superior in English life; and of that there is much."

Oxford was very hospitable to him. He was invited to lecture before the University in 1850, made honorary M. A. of Christ Church in 1851, elected Taylorian professor in 1854, curator of the Bodleian Library in 1856, fellow of All Souls in 1858; and in 1868 was named in the act of convocation for the chair of comparative philology, the first professorship ever created by the University itself. He resigned this in 1875, but has since remained in Oxford, engaged by the University to edit a series of translations of the Sacred Books of the East.' He has been a prolific author on a large variety of subjects, and a frequent and welcomed lecturer.

His life work has been editing the text and furnishing translations of the Rig-Veda; and by this he would probably prefer to be remembered. But he is better known to the public, and has exerted a wide and powerful influence by his writings on 'The Science of Language,' 'The Science of Religion,' and collateral topics. His lectures on the Science of Language, delivered in 1861 and 1862 in the Royal Institution, London, attracted wide attention, passed through many editions when published, and are asserted to have made good for the first time the claims of philology to be ranked among the sciences. He carried out his theories in the realm of religion in the Gifford Lectures before the University of Glasgow in 1889, 1891, 1892, and 1893; and in the Hibbert Lectures, of which he was chosen to deliver the first series on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions of India, in the chapter house of Westminster in 1878.

His theories of the origin and growth of language have been strenuously combated, and his accuracy as an observer and collater