Chapter XXXIX: Section VII: The Old Testament (2)

More elaborately than in any of these systems is the fall of man described in the mythology of Buddhism. In this religion, as in that of the Jews, man is of divine origin, though after a somewhat different fashion. A spiritual being, or god, fell from one of the upper spheres, to be born in the world of man. Through the progressive increase of this being arose "the six species of living creatures in the three worlds." The most eminent of these species, Man, enjoyed an untold duration of life (another point in which Buddhistic legends resemble those of the Hebrews). Locomotion was carried on through the air; they did not consume impure terrestrial food, but lived on celestial victuals; and propagation, since there was no distinction of sex, was carried on by means of emanation. They did not require sun or moon, for they saw by their own light. Alas! one of these pure beings was tempted by a fool called earth-butter and ate it. The rest followed its example. Hereupon the heavenly food vanished; the race lost their power of going about the sky, and ceased to shine by their own light. This was the origin of the evil of the darkening of the mind. As a consequence of these deeds, sun, moon, and stars appeared. Still greater calamities were in store for men. Another, at another time, ate a different kind of food, an example again followed by the rest. In consequence of this, the distinctions of sex were established in them; passion arose; they began to beget children. This was the origin of the evil of sensual love. On a further occasion, one of them ate wild rice, and all lived for a time on wild rice, gathered as it was needed for immediate consumption. But when some foolish fellow took it into his head to collect enough for the following day, the rice ceased to grow without cultivation. This was the origin of the evil of idle carelessness. It being now necessary to cultivate rice, persons began to appropriate and quarrel about land, and even to kill one another. This was the origin of the evil of anger. Again, some who were better off hid their stores from those who were not so well off. This was the origin of the evil of covetousness. In course of time the age of men began to decline so as to be expressible in numbers. It continues gradually to decline until a turning-point arrives, at which it again increases (G. O. M., p. 5-9).

Several points of similarity between the Hebrew myth and that just narrated will doubtless occur to the reader. The fall of man is due, in this, as in Genesis, to the eating of a peculiar food by a single person; and this example is followed, in the one case, by the only other inhabitant; in the other, by all. The calamity thus entailed does not terminate in the loss of former pleasures, but extends to the introduction of crime and sexual relations. Eve is cursed by having to bear children; the same misfortune happened to the Buddhist women. Cain quarreled with Abel and killed him; so did the landed proprietors in the Indian legend quarrel with and kill one another.

The fourth question which appeared to have engaged the attention of the authors of Genesis was that of the variety of languages. How was it, if all mankind were descended from a single pair, and if again all but the Noachian family had been drowned, that they did not all speak the pure language in which Adam and Eve had conversed with their Creator in Paradise? Embarrassed by their own theories, the writers attempted to account for the phenomenon of the diverse modes of speech in use among men by an awkward myth. Men had determined to build a town, with a tower which should reach to heaven. Jehovah, however, came down one day to see what they were about, and was filled with apprehension that, if they succeeded in this undertaking, he might find it impossible to prevent them from carrying out their wishes in other ways also, whatever those wishes might be. So he determined to confound their language, that they might not understand one another, and by this happy contrivance put an end to the construction of the dangerous tower (Gen. xi. 1-9).

We have anticipated the course of the narrative in order to consider the solutions offered in Genesis of the four principal problems with which it attempts to deal. We must now return to the point at which we left the parents of the race, namely, immediately after their expulsion from Eden. They now began to beget children rapidly; and Adam's eldest son, Cain, afterwards killed his second son, Abel, for which Jehovah cursed him as he had previously cursed his parents. Adam and Eve had several other children, and (though this is nowhere expressly stated, but only implied) the brothers and sisters united in marriage to carry out the propagation of the species. In course of time, however, the "sons of God" began to admire the beauty of the "daughters of men," and to take wives from among them. Jehovah, indignant at such a scandal, fixed the limits of man's life—which had hitherto been measured by centuries—at 120 years. At the same time there were giants on earth. Now Jehovah saw that the human race was extremely wicked, so much so, that he began to wish he had never created it. To remedy this blunder, however, he determined to destroy it; and in order that the improvement should be thorough, to destroy along with it all cattle, creeping things, and birds, who had not (so far as we are aware,) entered into the same kind of irregular alliances with other species as men. Nevertheless, he had still a lingering fondness for his handiwork, badly as it had turned out; and therefore determined to preserve enough of each kind of animal, man included, to carry on the breed without the necessity of resorting a second time to creation. Acting upon this resolve, he ordered an individual named Noah to build an ark of gopher-wood, announcing that he would shortly destroy all flesh, but wished to save Noah and his three sons, with their several wives. He also desired him to take two members of each species of beasts and birds, or, according to another account, seven of each clean beast and bird, and two of each unclean beast; but in any case taking care that each sex should be represented in the ark. When Noah had done all this, the waters came up from below and down from above, and there was an increasing flood for forty days. All terrestrial life but that which floated in the ark was destroyed. At last the waters began to ebb, and finally the ark rested on the 17th day of the 7th month on Mount Ararat. After forty more days Noah sent out a raven and a dove, of which only the dove returned. In seven days he sent the dove again, and it returned, bringing an olive-leaf; and after another week, when he again sent it out, it returned no more. It was not, however, till the 27th of the 2d month of the ensuing year (these chroniclers being very exact about dates) that the earth was dried, and that Noah and his party were able to quit the ark. To commemorate the goodness of God in drowning all the world except himself and his family, Noah erected an altar and offered burnt-offerings of every clean beast and every clean fowl. The effect was instantaneous. So pleased was Jehovah with the "pleasant smell," that he resolved never to destroy all living beings again, though still of opinion that "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. vi. 7, 8).

The myth of the deluge is very general. The Hebrews have no exclusive property in it. Many different races relate it in different ways. We may easily suppose that the partial deluges to which they must often have been witnesses suggested the notion of a universal deluge, in which not only a few tribes or villages perished, but all the inhabited earth was laid under water; or the memory of some actual flood of unusual dimensions may have survived in the popular mind, and been handed down with traits of exaggeration and distortion such as are commonly found in the narratives of events preserved by oral tradition. Let us examine a few instances of the flood-myth.

The Fijians relate that the god "Degei was roused every morning by the cooing of a monstrous bird," but that two young men, his grandsons, one day accidentally killed and buried it. Degei having, after some trouble, found the dead body, determined to be avenged. The youths "took refuge with a powerful tribe of carpenters," who built a fence to keep out the god. Unable to take the fence by storm, Degei brought on heavy floods, which rose so high that his grandsons and their friends had to escape in "large bowls that happened to be at hand." They landed at various places; but it is said that the two tribes became extinct (Viti, p. 394).

The Greenlanders have "a tolerably distinct tradition" of a flood. They say that all men were drowned excepting one. This one beat with his stick upon the ground and thereby produced a woman (Grönland, p. 246).

Kamtschatka has a somewhat similar legend, except that it admits a larger number of survivors. Very many, according to this version, were drowned, and the waves had sunk those who had got into boats; but others took refuge in rafts, binding the trees together to make them. On these they saved themselves with their provisions and all their property. When the waters subsided, the rafts remained on the high mountains (Kamtschatka, p. 273).

Among the North Americans "the notion of a universal deluge" was, in the time of the Jesuit De Charlevoix, "rather wide-spread." In one of their stories, told by the Iroquois, all human beings were drowned; and it was necessary, in order to re-populate the earth, to change animals into men (N. F., vol. iii. p. 345).

The Tupis of Brazil are supposed to be named after Tupa, the first of men, "who alone survived the flood" (M. N. W., p. 185). Again, "the Peruvians imagined that _two_ destructions had taken place, the first by a famine, the second by a flood; according to some a few only escaping, but, after the more widely accepted opinion, accompanied by the absolute extirpation of the race." The present race came from eggs dropped out of heaven (Ibid., p. 213). Several other tribes relate in diverse forms this world-wide story. In one of the versions, found in an old Mexican work, a man and his wife are saved, by the directions of their god, in a hollow cypress. In another, the earth is destroyed by water, because men "did not think nor speak of the Creator who had created them, and who had caused their birth." "Because they had not thought of their Mother and Father, the Heart of Heaven, whose name is Hurakan, therefore the face of the earth grew dark, and a pouring rain commenced, raining by day, raining by night" (Ibid., p. 206 ff.).

The diluvian legend appears in a very singular form in India in the Satapatha Brâhmana. There it is stated, that in the basin which was brought to Manu to wash his hands in, there was one morning a small fish. The fish said to him, "Preserve me, I shall save thee." Manu inquired from what it would save him. The fish replied that it would be from a flood which would destroy all creatures. It informed Manu that fishes, while small, were exposed to the risk of being eaten by other fishes; he was therefore to put it first into a jar; then when it grew too large for that, to dig a trench and keep it in that; that when it grew too large for the trench, to carry it to the ocean. Straightway it became a large fish, and said: "Now in such and such a year, then the flood will come; thou shalt therefore construct a ship, and resort to me; thou shalt embark in the ship when the flood rises, and I shall deliver thee from it." Manu took the fish to the sea, and in the year that had been named, "he constructed a ship and resorted to him. When the flood rose, Manu embarked in the ship. The fish swam towards him. He fastened the cable of the ship to the fish's horn. By this means he passed over this northern mountain. The fish said, 'I have delivered thee; fasten the ship to a tree. But lest the water should cut thee off whilst thou art on the mountain, as much as the water subsides, so much shalt thou descend after it.' He accordingly descended after it as much (as it subsided).... Now the flood had swept away all these creatures; so Manu alone was left here" (O. S. T., vol. i. p. 183). The story goes on to relate that Manu, being quite alone, produced a woman by "arduous religious rites," and that with this woman, who called herself his daughter, "he begot this offspring, which is this offspring of Manu," that is, the existing human race.

After the flood, the history proceeds for some time to narrate the lives of a series of patriarchs, the mythological ancestors of the Hebrew race. Of these the first is Abram, afterwards called Abraham; to whom a solemn promise was made that he was to be the progenitor of a great nation; that Jehovah would bless those who blessed him, and curse those who cursed him; and that in him all generations of the earth should be blessed (Gen. xii. 1-3). When Abraham visited Egypt, he desired his wife Sarah to call herself his sister, fearing lest the Egyptians should kill him for her sake. She did so, and was taken into Pharaoh's harem in consequence of her false statement; but Jehovah plagued Pharaoh, and his house so severely that the truth was discovered, and Sarah was restored to her lawful husband. It is remarkable that Abraham is stated to have subsequently repeated the same contemptible trick, this time alleging by way of excuse that Sarah really was his step-sister; and that Abraham's son, Isaac, is said to have done the same thing in reference to Rebekah (Gen. xii. 10-20, xx., xxvi. 6-11). Abimelech, king of Gerar, who was twice imposed upon by these patriarchs, must have thought it a singular custom of the family thus to pass off their wives as sisters. Apparently, too, both of them were quite prepared to surrender their consorts to the harems of foreign monarchs rather than run the smallest risk in their defense.

Abraham, at ninety-nine years of age, was fortunate in all things but one: he had no legitimate heir. But this too was to be given him. Jehovah appeared to him, announced himself as Almighty God, and established with Abraham a solemn covenant. He promised to make him fruitful, to give his posterity the land of Canaan, in which he then was, and to cause Sarah to have a son. At the same time he desired that all males should be circumcized, an operation which was forthwith performed on Abraham, his illegitimate son Ishmael, and all the men in his house (Gen. xvii). In due time Sarah had a son whom Abraham named Isaac. But when Isaac was a lad, and all Abraham's hopes of posterity were centered in him as the only child of Sarah, God one day commanded him to sacrifice him as a burnt-offering on a mountain in Moriah. Without a murmur, without a word of inquiry, Abraham prepared to obey this extraordinary injunction, and was only withheld from plunging the sacrificial knife into the bosom of his son by the positive interposition of an angel. Looking about, he perceived a ram caught in a thicket, and offered him as a burnt offering instead of Isaac. For this servile and unintelligent submission, he was rewarded by Jehovah with further promises as to the amazing numbers of his posterity in future times (Gen. xxi. 1-8; xxii. 1-19).

The tradition of human sacrifice, thus preserved in the story of Abraham and Isaac, is found also in a curious narrative of the Aitareya Brâhmana. That sacred book also commemorates an important personage, in this instance a king, who had no son. Although he had a hundred wives, yet none of them bore him a male heir. He inquired of his priest, Narada, what were the advantages of having a son, and learned that they were very great. "The father pays a debt in his son, and gains immortality," such was one of the privileges to be obtained by means of a son. The Rishi Narada therefore advised King Harischandra to pray to Varuna for a son, promising at the same time to sacrifice him as soon as he was born. The king did so. "Then a son, Rohita by name, was born to him. Varuna said to him, 'A son is born to thee, sacrifice him to me.' Harischandra said, 'An animal is fit for being sacrificed, when it is more than ten days old. Let him reach this age, then I will sacrifice him to thee. At ten days Varuna again demanded him, but now his father had a fresh excuse, and so postponed the sacrifice from age to age until Rohita had received his full armor." Varuna having again claimed him, Harischandra now said, "Well, my dear, to him who gave thee unto me, I will sacrifice thee now." But Rohita, come to man's estate, had no mind to be sacrificed, and ran away to the wilderness. Varuna now caused Harischandra to suffer from dropsy. Rohita, hearing of it, left the forest, and went to a village, where Indra, in disguise, met him and desired him to wander. The advice was repeated every year until Rohita had wandered six years in the forest. This last year he met a poor Rishi, named Ajigarta, who was starving, to whom he offered one hundred cows for one of his three sons as a ransom for himself in the sacrifice to be offered to Varuna. The father having objected to the eldest, and the mother to the youngest, the middle one Sunahsepa, was agreed upon as the ransom, and the hundred cows were paid for him. Rohita presented to his father the boy Sunahsepa, who was accepted by the god with the remark that a Brahman was worth more than a Kshattriya. "Varuna then explained to the king the rites of the Rajasuya sacrifice, at which on the day appointed for the inauguration he replaced the (sacrificial animal) by a man."

But at the sacrifice a strange incident occurred. No one could be found willing to bind the victim to the sacrificial post. At last his father offered to do it for another hundred cows. Bound to the stake, no one could be found to kill him. This act also his father undertook to do for a third hundred. "He then whetted his knife and went to kill his son. Sunahsepa then got aware that they were going to butcher him just as if he were no man (but a beast). 'Well,' said he, 'I will seek shelter with the gods.' He applied to Prajapati, who referred him to another god, who did the same; and thus he was driven from god to god through the pantheon, until he came to Ushas, the dawn. However, as he was praising Ushas, his fetters fell off, and Harischandra's belly became smaller; until at the last verse he was free, and Harischandra well." Sunahsepa was now received among the priests as one of themselves, and he sat down by Visvamitra, an eminent Rishi. Ajigarta, his father, requested that he might be returned to him, but Visvamitra refused, "for," he said, "the gods have presented him to me." From that time forward he became Visvamitra's son. At this point, however, Ajigarta himself entreated his son to return to his home, and the answer of the latter is remarkable. "Sunahsepa answered, 'What is not found even in the hands of a Shudra, one has seen in thy hand, the knife (to kill thy son); three hundred cows thou hast preferred to me, O Angiras.' Ajigarta then answered, 'O my dear son! I repent of the bad deed I have committed; I blot out this stain! one hundred of the cows shall be thine!' Sunahsepa answered, 'Who once might commit such a sin, may commit the same another time. Thou art still not free from the brutality of a Shudra, for thou hast committed a crime for which no reconciliation exists.' 'Yes, irreconcilable (is this act),' interrupted Visvamitra!" (A. B., p. 460-469.)

On the likeness of this story to the Hebrew legend of the intended sacrifice of Isaac, and on the difference between the two, I shall comment elsewhere. From the days of Abraham the history proceeds through a series of patriarchal biographies—those of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Rachel, of Joseph and his brothers—to the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt under the successor of the monarch whose prime minister Joseph had been. It is at this point that the history of the Hebrews as a distinct nation may be said to begin. The patriarchs belong to universal history. But from the days of the Egyptian captivity it is the fortunes of a peculiar tribe, and afterwards of an independent people that are followed. We have their deliverance from slavery, their progress through the wilderness, their triumphant establishment in their destined home, the rise, decline, and fall of their national greatness, depicted with much graphic power, and intermingled with episodes of the deepest interest. It would not be consistent with the plan or limits of this work to follow the history through its varied details; all we can do is to touch upon it here and there, where the adventures, institutions, or imaginations of the Hebrews present points of contact with those of other nations as recorded in their authorized writings.

It was only by the especial favor of Jehovah that the Hebrew slaves were enabled to escape from Egypt at all. That deity appointed a man named Moses as their leader; and, employing him as his mouthpiece, desired Pharaoh to let them go. On Pharaoh's refusal, he visited Egypt with a series of calamities; all of them inadequate to the object in view, until at length Pharaoh and all his army were overwhelmed in the Red Sea, which had opened to allow the Israelites to pass. These last now escaped into the wilderness, where, under the guidance of Moses, they wandered for forty years, undergoing all sorts of hardships, before they reached the promised land. During the course of their travels, Jehovah gave Moses ten commandments, which stand out from a mass of other injunctions and enactments, by the solemnity with which they were delivered, and by the extreme importance of their subject-matter. They are reported to have been given to Moses by Jehovah in person on Mount Sinai, in the midst of a very considerable amount of noise and smoke, apparently intended to be impressive. By these laws the Israelites were ordered—

1. To have no other God but Jehovah.
2. To make no image for purposes of worship.
3. Not to take Jehovah's name in vain.
4. Not to work on the Sabbath day.
5. To honor their parents.
6. Not to kill.
7. Not to commit adultery.
8. Not to steal.
9. Not to bear false witness against a neighbor.
10. Not to covet.

Concerning these commandments, it may be observed that the acts enjoined or forbidden are of very different characters. Some of the obligations thus imposed are universally binding, and the precepts relating to them form a portion of universal ethics. Others again are of a purely special theological character, and have no application at all except to those who hold certain theological doctrines. Lastly, others command states of mind only, which have no proper place in positive laws enforced under penalties. To illustrate these remarks in detail: the four commandments against killing, stealing, adultery, and calumny are of universal obligation, and though they are far from exhausting the list of actions which a moral code should prohibit, yet properly belong to it and are among its most important constituents. But the first, second, third, and fourth commandments presuppose a nation believing in Jehovah as their God; and even with that proviso the fourth, requiring the observance of a day of rest, is purely arbitrary; belonging only to ritual, not to morals. To place it along with prohibitions of murder and theft, is simply to confuse in the minds of hearers the all-important distinction between special observances and universal duties. Again, the fifth and tenth commandments require mere emotional conditions; respect for parents in the one case, absence of covetousness in the other. No doubt both these mental conditions have actions and abstinences from action as their correlatives; but it is with these last that law should deal, and not with the mere states of feeling over which no commandment can exercise the smallest control. Law may forbid us to annoy our neighbor, or do him an injury on account of his wife whom we love, or his estate which we desire to possess; but it is idle to forbid us to wish that the wife or the estate were ours.

These errors are avoided in the five fundamental commandments of Buddhism, which relate wholly to matters that, if binding upon any, are binding upon all. They are these:—

1. Not to kill.
2. Not to steal.
3. Not to indulge in illicit pleasures of sex.
4. Not to lie.
5. Not to drink intoxicating liquors.[92]

No doubt the fifth is not of equal importance with the rest; yet its intention is simply to put a stop to drunkenness, and this it accomplishes, like teetotal societies, by requiring entire abstinence. Probably in hot climates, and with populations not capable of much self-control, this was the wisest way. The third commandment, as I have presented it, is somewhat vague, but this is because the form in which it is given by the authorities is not always the same. Sometimes it appears as a mere prohibition of all unchastity; but the more probable view appears to be that of Burnouf, who interprets it as directed against adultery, in substantial accordance with Alabaster, who renders it as an injunction "not to indulge the passions, so as to invade the legal or natural rights of other men."

In the eight principal commandments of the Parsees, the breach of which was to be punished with death, there is the the same confusion of theological and natural duties as in the Hebrew Bible. The Parsees were forbidden—

1. To kill a pure man (_i. e._, a Parsee).
2. To put out the fire Behram.
3. To throw the impurity from dead bodies into fire or water.
4. To commit adultery.
5. To practice magic or contribute to its being practiced.
6. To throw the impurity of menstruating women into fire or water.
7. To commit sodomy with boys.
8. To commit highway-robbery or suicide (Av., vol. ii. p. lx).

Besides these commandments, Jehovah gave his people a vast mass of laws, amounting in fact to a complete criminal code, through his mouthpiece Moses. Among these laws were those which were written on the two tables of stone, commonly though erroneously supposed to have been the ten commandments of the twentieth chapter. The express statement of Exodus forbids such a supposition. It is there stated that when God had finished communing with Moses he gave him "two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God." This most valuable autograph Moses had the folly to break in his anger at finding that the Israelites, led by his brother Aaron, had taken to worshiping a golden calf in his absence (Ex., xxxi. 18, and xxxii. 19). God, however, desired him to prepare other tables like those he had destroyed, and kindly undertook to write upon them the very words that had been on the first. Apparently, however, he only dictated them to Moses, who is said to have written upon the tables "the words of the covenant, the ten commandments." What these words were there can be no doubt, for he had begun his address to Moses by saying, "Behold, I make a covenant;" and had concluded it by the expression, "Write thou _these_ words: for after the tenor of these words have I made a covenant with thee and with Israel" (Ex. xxxiv. 1-28). Now the commandments thus asserted to have been written on the tables of stone were very different from the ten given before on Mount Sinai, and resemble more closely still the style of those quoted from the Parsee books. Yet they were evidently deemed by the writers of great importance, from the honor ascribed to them of having been originally written in God's own handwriting on stone. Their purport is:—1. To forbid any covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which the Israelites were going, and to enjoin them to "destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves;"—2. To require the observance of the feast of unleavened bread;—3. To lay claim to firstlings for Jehovah, and demand their redemption;—4. To command the Sabbatical rest;—5. To enjoin the observance of the feast of weeks;—6. To desire that all males should appear thrice yearly before the Lord;—7. To forbid the sacrifice of blood with leaven;—8. To forbid leaving the sacrifice of the feast of the passover till morning;—9. To demand the first-fruits for Jehovah;—10. To forbid seething a kid in its mother's milk.[93]

Eminent as Moses was, and high as he stood in the favor of his God, he was not permitted to lead his people to Canaan. Jehovah punished him for a momentary weakness by depriving him of that privilege, which was reserved for Joshua. Just as the waters of the Red Sea were cleft in two to allow the Israelites to quit Egypt, so were those of the Jordan cleft in two to allow them to enter Canaan. No sooner did the feet of the priests bearing the ark touch the water, than the portion of the river below was cut off from that above, the upper waters rising into a heap (Josh. iii). Striking as this miracle is, it is not more so than that performed by Visvamitra, an Indian sage. When he arrived at a river which he desired to cross, that holy man said: "Listen, O sisters, to the bard who has come to you from afar with wagon and chariot. Sink down; become fordable; reach not up to our chariot-axles with your streams. (The rivers answer): We shall listen to thy words, O bard; thou hast come from far with wagon and chariot. I will bow down to thee like a woman with full breast (suckling her child), as a maid to a man will I throw myself open to thee. (Visvamitra says): When the Bharatas, that war-loving tribe, sent forward, impelled by Indra, have crossed thee, then thy headlong current shall hold on its course. I seek the favor of you the adorable. The war-loving Bharatas have crossed; the Sage has obtained the favor of the rivers. Swell on, impetuous and fertilizing; fill your channels; roll rapidly" (O. S. T., vol. i. p. 340).

So that the very same prodigy which, according to the Book of Joshua, was wrought for the benefit of the Hebrew people in Palestine, was, according to the Rig-Veda, wrought for the benefit of a warlike tribe in India.

After their arrival and settlement in Palestine the Israelites passed through a period of great trouble and disturbance. The government was a direct theocracy; men appointed by God, that is, self-appointed, put themselves at the head of affairs and governed with more or less success under the inspiration, and in the name of Jehovah. During this time the people were exposed to great annoyance from their enemies the Philistines, by whom they were for a certain space held in subjugation. The legend of the national hero and deliverer, Samson, falls within this period of depression under a foreign yoke. Samson is the Jewish Herakles, and his exploits are altogether as fabulous as those of his Hellenic counterpart; though it is not impossible that such a personage as Samson may have lived and may have led the people with some glory against their hereditary enemies. Many internal disturbances contributed to render the condition of the Israelites under their theocracy far from enviable; and at length, under the government of Samuel, the last representative of this state of things, the people could bear their distress no longer and united to demand a king. The request was undoubtedly a wise one; for the authority of a monarch was eminently needed to give internal peace and protection against external attacks to the distracted nation. Samuel, however, was naturally opposed to such a change. His feelings and his interests were alike concerned in the maintenance of the direct government of Jehovah, whose plenipotentiary he was. But all his representations that the proposal to elect a king was a crime in the eyes of God, were unavailing. He was compelled to yield, and selected, as the monarch appointed by Jehovah himself, a young man named Saul. Before long, however, Jehovah discovered that he had made a mistake, and that Saul was not the kind of man he had hoped to find him. Samuel was therefore desired to anoint David to supplant him. In other words, Saul did not prove the obedient instrument which Samuel had hoped to make of him, and he therefore entered into a secret conspiracy to procure his deposition. The conduct of Saul, and his relations to David, have probably been misrepresented by the ecclesiastical historians, who persistently favor David. Nevertheless, they cannot wholly disguise the lawless and savage career of this monarch before his accession to the throne, of which at length he obtained possession. Nor was his conduct during his occupation of it altogether exemplary. He, however, promoted the views of the priestly party, and this was enough to cover a multitude of sins.

His son Solomon who succeeded him was the most magnificent of the monarchs of Israel and the last who ruled over the undivided kingdom. He was especially renowned for his wisdom, which is exemplified by a famous decision. Two women came before him to dispute the ownership of an infant. One of them stated that the other, who was alone in the same house with her, had killed her own child by lying upon it during the night, and taken the living child from its mother while that mother was asleep. The other asserted that the living child was hers. Having heard the two statements, the king ordered the living child to be cut in two and half given to each woman. Hereupon the one declared that she would prefer to resign it altogether; but the other professed her acquiescence in the judgment. The king at once awarded it to her who had been willing to resign it rather than see it divided (1 Kings, iii. 16-28). Equal, or perhaps even greater wisdom, was displayed by a monarch whose history is recorded in one of the sacred books of Buddhism. Two women were contending before him about their right to a boy. He desired each of them to take hold of it by one of its hands and to pull at it; the one who succeeded in getting it to keep it. She who was not the mother pulled unmercifully; whereas the true mother, though stronger than her rival, only pulled gently in order to avoid hurting it. The king perceived the truth, and adjudged it to the one who had pulled it gently (G. O. M., p. 344).

Rehoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, failing to conciliate the people at his accession, brought about the schism between Sâmaria and Judea, between the ten tribes and the two, which was never afterwards healed. After this the government in each kingdom may be described as absolute monarchy tempered by prophetical admonition. The prophets, who formed a kind of professional body of advisers in the interest of Jehovah, made it their business to reprove the crimes, and especially the idolatries of the kings. They exercised the kind of influence which a _corps diplomatique_ may sometimes exercise on a feeble court. The monarchs sometimes attended to their advice; sometimes rejected it; and they receive commendation or reproof at the hands of the historians according to their conduct in this respect. Two of these prophets, Elijah and Elisha, were men of great eminence, and their actions are recorded at length. Such was the power of Elisha that when, on one occasion, he cursed some children who had called him bald head, she-bears came out of the wood and ate forty-two of them (2 Kings, ii. 23-25). Respect for ecclesiastics or prophets is sometimes inculcated by such decided measures as these. A young Buddhist monk once laughed at another for the alacrity with which he leapt over a grave, saying he was as active as a monkey. The man whom he had ridiculed told him that he belonged to the highest rank in the Church; that is, that he was an Arhat. Upon hearing this the young monk was so alarmed that all his hair stood on end, and he begged for forgiveness. His repentance saved him from being born in hell; but because he had laughed at an Arhat he was condemned to be born 500 times as a monkey (G. O. M., p. 351).

Elisha's powers in other respects were not less wonderful. He could cause iron to swim, could foretell the course of events in a war, could restore the dead to life, and could smite the king's enemies with blindness (2 Kings, vi. 7). In this last accomplishment he has rivals, as Canon Callaway has correctly noted, among the Amazulu priests. The Amazulus have a word in their language to describe the practice. "It is called an _umlingo_," they say, if, when a chief is about to fight with another chief, his doctors cause a darkness to spread among his enemies, so they are unable to see clearly (R. S. A., vol. iii. p. 338).

The kingdom of Israel, unfaithful to the worship of Jehovah, fell under the yoke of Shalmaneser, King of Assyria; while Judah, though attacked and summoned to submit, by his successor, Sennacherib (or more correctly Sanherib), remained independent some time longer. The King of Judah was at this time Hezekiah, a man thoroughly imbued with the principles of the Jehovistic party, and therefore much lauded by the historians. The prophet of the day was Isaiah, one of the most eminent of those who have filled the prophetic office. Isaiah warmly encouraged Hezekiah to resist the designs of conquest cherished by Sanherib, and promised a successful issue. The messengers of the Assyrian monarch had insultingly reproached Jehovah with his inability to deliver the land, alleging that none of the gods of the territories which he had conquered had availed them anything. But a signal confutation of this profane belief in large armies as against deities was about to be given, and that in a manner which gave an equally signal triumph to Jehovah, the god of the Jews, and Ptah, the god of the Egyptians. Sanherib was engaged in an expedition against Egypt, which was governed at this time by a priest-king, resembling Hezekiah in the piety of his character. This priest was in bad odor with his army, who refused to assist him against the invaders. During his trouble on this account, the god whom he served appeared to him in his sleep and promised that he should suffer nothing, for he would send him his divine assistance, just as Jehovah promised deliverance through the mouth of Isaiah. He therefore went with some followers to Pelusium, and when there, a number of field-mice, pouring in upon the Assyrians, devoured their quivers, their bows, and the handles of their shields, so that on the next day they fled defenseless, and many were killed. Herodotus tells us that in his day there was still to be seen the statue of the king in the temple of Ptah, a mouse in his hand, and this inscription: "Whoever looks on me, let him revere the gods" (Herod., ii. 141). In the Hebrew version of this catastrophe, the field-mice are converted into the angel of the Lord, and the destruction of the weapons into the slaughter by that angel of 185,000 men. Sanherib, it is added, returned to Nineveh, where he was assassinated by his two sons (2 Kings, xix. 35-37). But Sanherib himself, in a deciphered inscription, declares that he had beaten the Egyptians, subjected Judea, carried off many of its inhabitants, and only left Jerusalem to the king (R. I., p. 328). Certainly this statement is strongly confirmed, so far as Judea is concerned, by the admission of the historians themselves, that Sanherib had taken the fenced cities of the country; that Hezekiah had made an unreserved submission to him, and had even sent him, by way of tribute, not only all the treasures in his own palace and in the temple, but the very gold from the doors of the temple, and from the pillars which he himself had overlaid (2 Kings xviii. 13-16). So humiliating a position went far to justify the taunts of the Assyrian ambassadors, that the god of Judea was no more to be trusted as a defense against material weapons than the gods of the subjugated nations.

A remarkable instance of the favor of Heaven towards Hezekiah was subsequently evinced. The king fell dangerously ill, and was warned by Isaiah to make the necessary arrangements in view of his death, which was about to happen. Hezekiah did not bear the announcement with much dignity. He passionately implored Jehovah to remember his piety and good deeds, and then "wept sore." Moved by this pitiable supplication, Jehovah sent Isaiah back again to promise him fifteen years' more life. On Hezekiah's asking for a sign that he would be healed, Isaiah asked him whether he would prefer that the shadow on the dial should advance or go back ten degrees. Hezekiah, thinking that it was a mere trifle for a god to cause it to advance, desired that it might turn backwards (2 Kings, xx. 1-11).

A similar grace was shown towards King Woo in China, but in this case it was the prayer of others, not his own, that effected his recovery. His brother, the Duke of Chow, erected four altars, put certain symbols upon them, and addressed himself to three departed kings. "The _grand_ historian _by his order wrote_ on tablets his prayer to the following effect:—" A. B., your chief descendant, is suffering from a severe and dangerous sickness;—if you three kings have in heaven the charge of _watching over_ him, _Heaven's_ great son, let me, Tan, be a substitute for his person. "I have been lovingly obedient to my father; I am possessed of many abilities and arts which fit me to serve spiritual beings. Your chief descendant, on the other hand, has not so many abilities and arts as I, and is not so capable of serving spiritual beings. And, moreover, he was appointed in the hall of God to extend his aid to the four quarters _of the empire_, so that he might establish your descendants in this lower world. The people of the four quarters stand in reverent awe of him. Oh! do not let that precious heaven-conferred appointment fall to the ground, and all our former kings will also have a perpetual reliance and resort. I will now seek for your orders from the great tortoise" (C. C., vol. iii. p. 353.—Shoo King, part 5, book 6). After this prayer, the Duke divined with the tortoises, which gave favorable indications. "The oracular responses" were favorable too. Accordingly the king recovered, but the devoted brother, though he did not die, suffered for some time from unjust suspicions, and retired from court. This was after the decease of King Woo. The discovery of the tablets by Woo's successor led to his restoration to favor. The relation of the reign of Hezekiah, one of the most inglorious of Judah's rulers, is an example of the use made of a theory which pervades and colors the whole history of the kings from beginning to end. That theory is, that God favored and protected those monarchs who worshiped and obeyed his prophets, while he punished those who worshiped other gods and neglected his orders. The deposition of Saul, the glory of David, the destruction of the families of Jeroboam and Baasha, the miserable fate of Ahab and his seventy sons, the exaltation of Jehu and his milder punishment proportioned to his mitigated idolatry, are all examples of the prevalence of this theory. Some of the facts indeed were rather difficult to deal with; such, for instance, as the palpable decline of Judea under Hezekiah, and the continuance of its previous misfortunes under Josiah, the most praiseworthy of the kings, who, in spite of his unrivaled piety, was slain in a battle against a mere pagan. But inconsistencies like these might be glossed over or explained away. The best kings might meet with the greatest calamities, and the people of Jehovah might prove even more unfortunate than the heathen. It mattered not. They were still under his protection; and if they suffered, it was because they had not worshiped him enough, or not worshiped him exclusively. With this elastic hypothesis the key to all historical events was found.

Traces of a similar theory are to be found in the sacred books of China, though in one instance it is placed in the mouth of a successful sovereign desirous of vindicating his supersession of a former dynasty. It is, however, precisely in such cases, where some David or Jehu has deposed a former monarch and taken his throne, that this theory is useful, transferring, as it does, the responsibility of the issue to a higher power. Thus speaks the Chinese king:—"I have heard the saying—'God leads men to tranquil security,' but the sovereign of Hea would not move to such security, whereupon God sent down _corrections_, indicating his mind to him. Këe, however, would not be warned by God, but proceeded to greater dissoluteness and sloth and excuses for himself. Then Heaven no longer regarded nor heard him, but disallowed his great appointment, and inflicted extreme punishment. Hereupon it charged your founder, T'ang the Successful, to set Hea aside, and by means of able men to rule the empire. From T'ang the Successful down to the Emperor Yih, every sovereign sought to make his virtue illustrious, and duly attended to the sacrifices. And thus it was that while Heaven exerted a great establishing influence, preserving and regulating the house of Yin, but its sovereigns on their part were humbly careful not to lose the favor of God, and strove to manifest a good-doing corresponding to that of Heaven. But in these times, their successor showed himself greatly ignorant of _the ways of_ Heaven, and much less could it be expected of him that he would be regardful of the earnest labors of his fathers for the country. Greatly abandoned to dissolute idleness, he paid no regard to the bright principles of heaven, nor the awfulness of the people. On this account God no longer protected him, but sent down the great ruin which we have witnessed. Heaven was not with him because he did not seek to illustrate his virtue. _Indeed_, with regard to all states, great and small, throughout the four quarters of the empire, in every case there are reasons to be alleged for their punishment.... The sovereigns of our Chow, from their great goodness, were charged with the work of God. There was the charge to them, Cut off Yin. _They proceeded to perform it_, and announced the correcting work of God.... The thing was from the decree of Heaven; do not resist me; I dare not have any further change for you" (C. C., vol. iii. p. 460.—Shoo King, part 5, b. 14, ii. 1-18).

But it was not only by interested parties that this doctrine was proclaimed in China. The She King, a sacred book corresponding in character to the Psalms, distinctly adopts it, and thus gives it the highest sanction. This is the language of one of the Odes:—

"Great is God,

Beholding this lower world in majesty.
He surveyed the four quarters [of the kingdom],
Seeking for some one to give settlement to the people.
Those two [earlier] dynasties
Had failed to satisfy him with their government;
So throughout the various States
He sought and considered
For one on which he might confer the rule.
Hating all the great [States],
He turned his kind regards on the west,
And there gave a settlement [to king T'æ]....
God having brought about the removal thither of this Intelligent
ruler,
The Kwan hordes fled away; ...
God, who had raised the State, raised up a proper ruler for it....
This King Ke
Was gifted by God with the power of judgment,
So that the fame of his virtue silently grew.
His virtue was highly intelligent,
Highly intelligent and of rare discrimination;
Able to lead; able to rule,—
To rule over this great country;
Rendering a cordial submission, effecting a cordial union.
When the sway came to King Wăn,
His virtue left nothing to be dissatisfied with.
He received the blessing of God,
And it was extended to his descendants."

The Ode proceeds to relate how completely victorious this virtuous king was over his enemies, and how perfect was the security from invasion enjoyed by the country while he governed it (C. C., vol. iv. p. 448.—She King, part 3, b. 1, ode 7).