Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

HER RIGHTS.—In Homeric days we find the old barbarous custom still surviving of buying a girl from her father for a wife, and this was commonly done, unless the father himself offered her as a compliment. The father, however, usually gave her an outfit from the price he received for her. In case of a separation this outfit came back to the father, but he was also obliged to restore the price he had received for his daughter. She does not appear to have had any legal rights whatever. In later days the custom of paying money was reversed, and the husband received with his wife a dowry, which was regarded as common property with his own, so long as she lived with him. In case of separation or divorce, this dowry had to be repaid to her father, and at Athens 18 per cent. was charged upon it in case of delay in repayment. In many states to marry a second wife during the life of the first was against the practice, and probably the law, of the Greeks, but concubinage was tolerated and even recognized by them, though a married woman had at Athens a right to bring an action for general ill-treatment against her husband, in which she was obliged to appear and give evidence in person. The dowry seems to have been partly intended as a useful obstacle to divorce, which required its repayment, but we find that heiresses made themselves troublesome by their airs of importance, and this is referred to in Greek literature, in which men are frequently advised not to marry above them in wealth or connections. As all citizens were considered equal in birth, and as marriages with aliens were illegal and void, we do not hear of advice to young men not to marry beneath them. To marry a poor citizen girl was always considered a good deed, and is commended as such.

WEDDING CUSTOMS.—Though marriage among the Greeks was recognized thoroughly as a civil contract, for the purpose of maintaining the household, and raising citizens for the state, yet a religious solemnity was considered by them not less essential to its dignity than by us, and though this ceremony was not performed by an official priest, it consisted in prayers and offerings to the gods who presided over marriage. These were generally Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and Artemis, but many local fashions existed. So also the full moon and the winter season were generally but not everywhere preferred. A bath in the most sacred water of the district was thought necessary before the union, by way of purification. Omens were carefully observed, and votive offerings dedicated to the gods. The preliminaries closed with a solemn sacrifice and feast combined, at which the bride was present, closely veiled, with her female friends. This was often a large dinner party, for we find laws restricting the number to thirty, and complaints of the bad taste of much display. She was then brought in solemn procession late in the evening to her husband’s house, generally on a carriage, with the bridegroom and his best man sitting on either side of her. Both were covered with garlands and perfumed, while the Hymenæus or marriage song was sung by the company to the sound of harps and flutes. The bride’s mother had the special duty of carrying a torch behind the carriage, while the bridegroom’s mother received them torch in hand at his door. The bride brought with her some household utensils, and was presented with others, and with sweetmeats, on her arrival. The next morning the married pair separated for a day (_apaulia_), and the bridegroom slept at the house of his father-in-law, when the bride sent him a present of a garment. Then only the young couple were to receive their friends, who offered congratulations and wedding-presents, which were called _anakalupteria_, because the bride unveiled herself to her friends on that day. Such were the general customs of a Greek marriage, but many old and rude habits survived in various places. Of these the most primitive was that of Sparta, where the bridegroom pretended to carry off his bride by violence, and visited her secretly for some time even after his marriage. This marriage by capture is still common among savages, and points to a ruder state of life than the marriage by purchase, which was common in Homer’s time.

OF THE BIRTH AND TREATMENT OF INFANTS.—When a child was born in the house, it was usual in Attica, and probably elsewhere also, to hang a wreath of olive in case of a boy, a fillet of wool in case of a girl, over the door. This served as an announcement to friends and neighbors. Greek law permitted the parents absolutely to dispose of it as their property, and there was no provision against exposing it, which was often done in case of girls, in order to avoid expense. These exposed children if found and brought up, became the slaves of the finder. But on the other hand, the laws showed special favor to the parents of large families. If a child was not exposed, there followed on the fifth day a solemn purification of all the people in the house, and on the seventh a sacrifice, when the relations assembled and the child was named, generally after parents and grand-parents, sometimes by reason of special wants or fancies—in fact on the same principles which we follow in christening our children. There is no evidence until the later Macedonian times that birthday feasts were held yearly; and Epicurus’ direction that his should be kept after his death was thought very peculiar. Children of rich people were often nursed by hired nurses—an employment to which respectable Athenian citizens were reduced in the hard times at the end of the Peloponnesian war. But a Lacedæmonian nurse was specially valued, and often bought at a great price among prisoners, as they were famed for bringing up the child without swaddling-clothes, and making him hardy and courageous. The Greeks used cradles for children as we do, and gave them honey as we do sugar, and the nurses represented on the vases are distinguished by a peculiar kerchief on the head, as they often are in our day by a cap or national costume.

OF TOYS AND GAMES FOR CHILDREN.—As might be expected, the inventive genius of the Greeks showed itself in the constructing of all manner of toys, and children devised for themselves perhaps all the games now known and many more besides. Aristotle says you must provide them with toys, or they will break things in the house, and the older philosopher Archytas was celebrated for inventing the child’s rattle. Plato also complains of the perpetual roaring of younger, and the mischievousness of older, children. We may infer from these things that the Greek boys were fully as troublesome as our own. They had balls, hoops, swings, hobbyhorses, and dice, with dolls for the girls, and various animals of wood and earthenware, like the contents of our Noah’s arks. They played hide and seek, blind man’s buff, French and English, hunt the slipper, the Italian _morra_, and many other games which the scholiasts and Germans have in vain endeavored to explain. But for grown people, we do not find many games, properly speaking, played for the game’s sake, like our cricket. There was very simple ball-playing, and, of course, gambling with dice. Of gymnastic exercises I will speak separately.

GREEK EDUCATION GENERALLY.—As for the girls of the house, they were brought up to see and hear as little as possible. They only went out upon a few state occasions, and knew how to work wool and weave, as well as to cook. We may fairly infer that the great majority of them could not read or write. The boys, on the contrary, were subjected to the most careful education, and on no point did the Greek law-givers and philosophers spend more care than in the proper training, both physical and mental, of their citizens. The modern system, however, of public school training was not practiced anywhere save at Sparta, where a state schoolmaster (_paidonomos_) was appointed, and all the Spartan boys taken out of the control of their parents. They lived together under the care of elder boys, as well as masters, so that the system of monitors, and even that of fagging, was in ordinary practice. They were encouraged to fight out their disputes, and were much given to sports and athletic amusements, just like our schoolboys. But the public school training and discipline lasted much longer at Sparta than among us, and embraced the university period, as well as the school period, of life.

In the other states of Greece, which were chiefly towns, or suburbs of towns, the system of day schools was universal, and the boys went to and from home under the charge of a special slave, chosen because he was no longer fit for hard work. He was called the boy’s leader, or pedagogue (_paidagogos_), a word which never meant schoolmaster among the Greeks, though it is so rendered in our English Bible (Gal. iii. 24). The discipline of boys was severe, and they were constantly watched and repressed, nor were they allowed to frequent the crowded market place. Corporal punishment was commonly applied to them, and the quality most esteemed in boys was a blushing shyness and modesty, hardly equalled by the girls of our time. Nevertheless Plato speaks of the younger boys as the most sharp-witted, insubordinate, and unmanageable of animals.

OF SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS.—It does not seem that the office of schoolmaster was thought very honorable, except of course in Sparta, where he was a sort of Minister of Education. It was, as with us, a matter of private speculation, but controlled by police regulations that the school should open and close with sunrise and sunset and that no grown men should be allowed to go in and loiter there. The infant-school teachers, who merely taught children their letters (_grammatodidaskolos_), were of a low class in society, sometimes even teaching in open air, like the old hedge schoolmasters in Ireland. The more advanced teaching of reading and writing was done by the _grammatikos_, whose house was called, like that of philosophers and rhetoricians, _schole_, a place of leisure. For the physical and the æsthetic side we have still to mention the trainer (_paidotribes_) and the teacher of music (_kitharistes_), the former of whom taught in the palæstra the exercises and sports afterward carried on by the full-grown citizens in the gymnasia, which were a feature in all Greek towns. The teachers of riper youth stood in social position above the mere teachers of letters, but beneath the professors of rhetoric and philosophy (sophists). These latter performed the functions of college tutors at our universities, and completed the literary side of Greek education. The fees paid to the various teachers were in proportion to their social importance. Some of the sophists made great fortunes, and exacted very high fees; the mere schoolmasters are spoken of as receiving a miserable pittance.

OF WHAT THEY TAUGHT.—The Greeks never thought of making foreign languages a matter of study, and contented themselves with learning to read and write their own. In so doing the schoolmasters used as text-books the works of celebrated epic or elegiac poets, above all Homer, and then the proverbial philosophy of Hesiod, Solon, Phocylides, and others, so that the Greek boy read the great classics of his language at an early age. He was required to learn much of them by heart, especially when books were scarce; and his teacher pointed out the moral lessons either professedly or accidentally contained in these poets. Thus they stood in the place of our Bible and hymns in education. All this was _grammatike_, which with music and gymnastics, made up the general education of the Greeks. It excluded the elementary arithmetic of our “three R’s,” and included what they do not, a gentlemanly cultivation in music and field sports. It is very doubtful whether swimming was included, though Herodotus speaks of the Greeks generally as being able to swim. There is, however, evidence that from the fourth century B. C. onwards both elementary geometry and arithmetic, and also drawing, were ordinarily taught.

As regards music every Greek boy (like modern young ladies) either had or was supposed to have a musical ear, and he was accordingly taught either the harp or the flute, and with it singing. Here again the lyric poems of the greatest poets were taught him, and the Greek music always laid the greatest stress on the words. Aristotle and others complain that amateurs were spending too much time on the practising of difficult music, and we know from the musical treatises preserved to us that the Greeks thought and taught a great deal more about musical theory and the laws of sound than we do. The Greek tunes preserved are not pleasing, but we know that they used the strictest and most subtle principles in tuning instruments, and understood harmony and discord as well as we do. Great Athenians, like Cimon, were often able to sing and accompany themselves on the harp, or lyre as we should rather call it. The Greeks laid great stress on the moral effects of music, especially as regards the performer, and were very severe in their censure of certain styles of music. They distinguished their scales as _modes_, and are said to have put far greater stress on keys than we do, calling some manly and warlike (Dorian), others weak and effeminate, or even immoral (Mixo-Lydian). The modern Chinese have the same beliefs about the moral effects of music. The Greeks had their keynote in the middle of the scale, and used chiefly the minor scale of our music. They had different names and signs for the notes of the various octaves which they used, and also different signs for vocal and for instrumental music.

GYMNASTICS.—Among the various exercises taught were those in fashion in the public contests in the games—throwing the discus, running, and wrestling, and those of use in war—throwing the dart, managing the sword and shield, and riding. Boxing was not highly esteemed, and seems not to have been properly understood by the Greeks, who would have had no chance against an English prize-fighter. The severest contest was the _pancration_, where the combatants, who were naked and unarmed, were allowed to use any violence they liked to overcome their adversary. It was therefore a combination of boxing, wrestling, and kicking, with occasional biting and gouging by way of additional resource. We hear of a wonderful jumping feat by Phayllus of Croton, who leaped forty-four feet; but as he probably jumped down-hill, and used artificial aids, we can not be sure that it was more than can be done now-a-days. The Spartans specially forbad boxing and the pancration, because the vanquished was obliged to confess his defeat and feel ashamed; and they did not tolerate professional trainers. All the special exercises for developing muscle practised in our gymnasia seem to have been known, and they were all practised naked, as being sunburnt was highly valued. The Greeks smeared themselves first with oil and then with sand before their exercises, and cleaned themselves with a scraper or _strigil_, or in later days by taking a bath.

CUSTOMS ON COMING OF AGE.—Most Greek states seem to have wished to free young men as soon as possible from the control of their parents. Hence, having passed the age of boyhood, when they were called children (_paides_), they were made _epheboi_, or “men of age,” at the age of sixteen or eighteen, when they were enrolled solemnly in the list of citizens. This was done at Athens with a religious service, and with a solemn oath on the part of the youth, who declared his allegiance to the laws and to the religion of his city, and promised to defend it against all enemies and seditions. He was then enrolled on the list of his deme or parish, and this roll was called _the lexiarchikon grammateion_. He was then competent to join in debate at the assembly, to plead in court, to marry, and perform all the duties of citizenship. It is not clear how he stood as regards his father, except that, if the latter became unable to manage his affairs, the son could have him so declared by an action in court, and so become the owner during his father’s life. Before the young men settled down, they were employed for two years in outlying garrison duty and in patrolling the frontiers of the land, during which time they were called _peripoloi_. This gave them the necessary training for war, and made them acquainted with the bounds of their country. Many remains of these frontier forts which were once garrisoned by the youth of Athens still survive in Attica.

THE SERVANTS OF THE HOUSE.—These were of course slaves, with the exception of some field laborers, and of nurses in times of depression and distress, when some free women went out for hire. To these cases we may add the cook, who was not an inmate of the house before the Macedonian time, but was hired for the day when wanted for a dinner party. All the rest were slaves, and were very numerous in every respectable household. The principal sorts of servants were as follows: There was a general steward, a butler who had charge of the store-room and cellar, a marketing slave, a porter, baking and cooking slaves for preparing the daily meals, an attendant upon the master in his walks, and this was an indispensable servant, a nurse, an escort for the children, and a lady’s maid. In richer houses there was also a groom or mule-boy. This list shows a sub-division of labor more like the habits of our East-Indian families than those of ordinary households in England. I have spoken above of the purchasing and value of these slaves. If faithful, they were often made free, especially by the will of their master on his death-bed, but they did not become citizens. They remained in the position of resident aliens under the patronage of their former master or his representatives.

In proportion as the free population of Greece diminished the freeing of slaves became more and more common, until it actually appears to have been the leading feature in the life of the small towns. Thousands of inscriptions recording this setting free of individual slaves are still found, and on so many various stones, even tombstones, that it almost appears as if material for recording had failed them by reason of the quantity of these documents. The same increase of liberation was a leading feature in the Roman empire, but there the freedman obtained the right and position of a citizen, which was not the case in Greece. The most enlightened moralists of both countries exhorted benevolence toward slaves, and the frequent freeing of them as the duty of humane masters, but none of these writers ever dreamt of the total abolishing of slavery, which they all held to be an institution ordained by nature. This seems also the view of the early Christian writers, who nowhere condemn the principle of slavery as such.

THE DOMESTIC ANIMALS.—These were first the horses and mules, which do not seem to have been treated with any great familiarity, but were carefully groomed, and after exercise were allowed to roll in sand before being brought in—a treatment still common in southern Italy, where the old Greek fashion of driving four-in-hand abreast also prevails. The two center horses were yoked to the pole, the others were fastened by loose traces, and called _paraseiroi_ (outriggers). The commonest and most valued domestic animal was the dog, which maintains a very important place in Greek society up to the present day. There were various kinds of breeds for hunting, chosen both for nose and for speed; there were watch-dogs; and also ornamental kinds, such as little lap-dogs, which are represented in the sad scenes of leave-taking on the tombs. Many anecdotes are told of their faithfulness, and we hear of at least one case where a handsome dog, which belonged to Alcibiades cost about 70_l._ Cats were also common, so common as to be charged with the breaking of household ware by guilty servants, and they are often described as wandering along the roofs of houses. Sundry birds were kept in cages, and for ornament, such as pheasants and peacocks; the quail was used for combats corresponding to English cock fights.

CUSTOMS OF BURIAL.—I will conclude our consideration of the Greek household by describing the customs when death laid its hand upon one of the inmates.

At the moment of the death struggle the face was veiled, that no man might see it; then it was uncovered for a moment to close his eyes and mouth. The body was then washed by female relatives, scented with unguents, dressed in white and with a garland, and placed upon a couch adorned with branches, and with an unguent bottle beside it. This laying out was done in the entrance hall of the house and the feet were turned to the door. Outside was a cypress branch and water for sprinkling those who came out, as the dead defiled the house and its inmates. The laying out was limited to one day, during which both male and female relatives, together with hired mourners, stood round the bier, and uttered laments in refrain very like the _Irish cry_ of our day. This almost universal custom in Asia was discountenanced and restricted by Greek law-givers, especially the tearing of the hair and laceration of the face which accompanied it. Burial took place in the morning dawn, before the sun could shine upon the corpse; in later days a small coin was placed in his mouth to pay his passage in the nether world—a custom which still survives in some parts of Greece. In the funeral procession the male relatives went before, the female followed after, and in Athens and other places where women lived secluded, only aged women and near relatives were allowed to attend, as young men took this opportunity of seeing the ladies, who were at other times invisible. When the dead was laid in the tomb, he was called by name aloud, and farewell was bidden him. There was afterward a funeral feast, and offerings at the tomb, but the time of mourning and of wearing black or gray garments was short; in Sparta twelve days, at Athens a month; at Ceos, exceptionally, a mother mourned her growing son for a whole year. Praising speeches were not delivered over private persons as at Rome, but only in the case of a public funeral, such as that of the bones of the dead who had fallen in battle, and were burned on the battle field. These ashes were brought home in urns, and treated as the corpses of the dead would have been at home. The burning of the dead, though known early, and often practiced in war and travel, was decidedly the exception. To cast earth upon the dead was of the last importance, and even when the body could not be found an empty grave received the due honors.

SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS.—In the oldest times the dead were buried in their own ground, and close beside the house they had occupied. Afterward the burying of the dead within the walls of cities was forbidden except in the case of great public benefactors, who were worshipped as heroes and had a shrine set over them. The rest were buried in the fairest and most populous suburb, generally along both sides of the high road, as at Athens and at Syracuse, where their tombs and the inscriptions occupied the attention of everyone that passed by. The oldest and rudest monuments placed over the tomb were great mounds of earth, then these mounds came to be surrounded by a circle of great stones; afterward chambers were cut underground in the earth or rock, and family vaults established. Handsome monuments in marble, richly painted and covered with sculpture, were set up over the spot. These monuments sometimes attained a size almost as great as a temple. The scenes sculptured on the marble were from the life and occupation of the deceased, more often parting scenes, where they were represented taking leave of their family and friends, nor do we possess any more beautiful and touching remains of Greek life than some of these tombs. In the chamber of the dead many little presents, terra-cotta figures, trinkets and vases were placed, nay, in early times favorite animals, and even slaves or captives were sacrificed in order to be with him; for the Greeks believed that though the parting with the dead was for ever, he still continued to exist, and to interest himself in human affairs and in pursuits like those of living men. The crowded suburbs where the tombs were placed were generally ornamented with trees and flowers, and were a favorite resort of the citizens. The dead bodies of executed criminals were either given back to their relatives or, in extreme cases, cast into a special place, generally some natural ravine or valley hidden from view and ordinary thoroughfare. Here the executioner dwelt, who was generally a public slave. This place was called _barathrum_ at Athens, and _Ceadas_ at Sparta.

A GLINT OF MOONLIGHT.

By I. L. COSHAM.

It was the time when Lenten lilies bloom,
And buds are new upon the blackthorn tree;
And I, alone in weariness and gloom,
Gazed far across the sea.

Alone I watched the cheerless daylight wane,
And heard the ocean-murmurs swell and rise;
Sharp on the window smote the gusty rain,
And darker grew the skies.

Old love-tones mocked me in the moaning tide,
And phantom faces rose upon the dark;
The ocean rolled beneath me, black and wide,
Without one beacon-spark.

I had no hope—I had no comfort left,
My soul went out in wailing to the night;
When lo, that sable sky was swiftly cleft
By one pure shaft of light!

A glint of moonlight, silver-bright and clear,
Shone on a tossing bark amid the foam;
And struggling sailors, worn with toil and fear,
Beheld the shores of home.

The summer brought me back the love of old,
My autumn days were rich with corn and wine;
Ah me, what joy the moonlight beam foretold,
In that dark hour of mine!

But when the golden lilies are in bloom
My heart looks backward, and I pause to pray
That others, watching lonely in the gloom,
May see that silver ray.

SUNDAY READINGS.

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

[_December 3._]

HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.

By JAMES MARTINEAU.

Some men are eminent for what they _possess_; some for what they _achieve_; others for what they _are_. _Having, doing, and being_, constitute the three great distinctions of mankind, and the three great functions of their life. And though they are necessarily all blended, more or less, in each individual, it is seldom difficult to say which of them is prominent in the impression left upon us by our fellow man.

In every society, and especially in a country like our own, there are those who derive their chief characteristic from what they _have_; who are always spoken of in terms of revenue; and of whom you would not be likely to think much, but for the large account that stands on the world’s ledger in their name. In themselves, detached from their favorite sphere, you would notice nothing wise or winning. At home, possibly, a dry and withered heart; among associates a selfish and mistrustful talk; in the council, a style of low ignoble sentiments; at church, a formal, perhaps an irreverent, dullness betray a barren nature, and offer you only points of repulsion, so far as humanities are concerned; and you are amazed to think that you are looking on the idols of the exchange. Their greatness comes out in the affairs of bargain and sale, to which their faculties seem fairly apprenticed for life. If they speak of the past, it is in memory of its losses and its gains; if of the future, it is to anticipate its incomings and investments. The whole chronology of their life is divided according to the stages of their fortunes, and the progress of their dignities. Their children are interesting to them principally as their heirs; and the making of their will fulfils their main conception of being ready for their death. And so completely do they paint the grand idea of their life on the imagination of all who know them, that when they die, the mammon-image can not be removed, and it is the fate of the money, not of the man, of which we are most apt to think. Having put vast prizes in the funds, but only unprofitable blanks in the admiration and the hearts of us, they leave behind nothing but their _property_; or, as is expressively termed, their “_effects_,”—the thing which they caused, the main result of their having been alive. How plain is it that we regard them merely as _instruments of acquisition_; centers of attraction for the drifting of capital; that they are important only as indications of commodities; and that their human personality hangs as a mere label upon a mass of treasure! Every one must have met with a few instances in which this character is realized, and with many in which, notwithstanding the relief of some redeeming and delightful features, it is at least approached. In proportion as this aim, of possession, is taken to be paramount in life, length of days must, no doubt, be deemed indispensable to the human destination. The longer a man lies out at interest, the greater must be the accumulation. If he is unexpectedly recalled, every end which he suggested is disappointed; the only thing he seemed fit for can not go on; he is a power lost from this sphere, and incapacity thrust upon the other; missed from the markets here, thrown away among sainted spirits there. For himself, and for both worlds, the event seems deplorable enough; and it is difficult to make anything but confusion out of it. An imagination tacitly filled with this conception of life as a stage prepared for enjoyment and possession, must look on a term that is unfulfilled, as on a broken tool, dropping in failure to the earth.

Of those who have thus lived to accumulate and enjoy, _history_ is for the most part silent, having in truth nothing to say. Not doing the work, or joining in the worship of life, but only feasting at its table, they break up and drive off into oblivion as soon as the lights are out and the wine is spilt. Belonging entirely to the present, they never appear in the past; but sink with the weight of wealth in the dark gulf;—unless perchance some Crœsus the rich is fortunate enough to fall into association with Solon the wise. There are no historical materials in simple animal existence, nor is the mere sentient being of a man, considered as the successful study of comfort, and receptacle of happiness.

History is constructed by a second or nobler class, those who prove themselves to be here, not that they may have, but that they may _do_; to whom life is a glorious hour; and who are so seen not to work that they may rest, but only to rest that they may work. No sooner do they look around them with the open eye of reason and faith, upon the great field of the world, than they perceive that it must be for them a battle-field; and they break up the tents of ease, and advance to the dangers of lonely enterprise and the conflict with splendid wrong. Strong in the persuasion that this is a God’s world, and that his will must rule it by royal right, they serve in the severe campaign of justice; asking only for the wages of life, and scorning the prizes of spoil and praise. Wherever you find such, whether in the field, in the senate, or in private life, you see the genuine type of the heroic character,—the clear mind, the noble heart, indomitable will, pledged all to some arduous and unselfish task; and whether it be the achievement, with Cobden, of freedom of pacific commerce between land and land; or, with Clarkson, of freedom of person between man and man; or, with Cromwell, of freedom of worship between earth and heaven; the essential feature is in all instances the same; the man holds himself as the mere instrument of some social work; commits himself in full allegiance to it; and spends himself wholly in it. They “have a baptism to be baptized with; and how are they straitened, till it be accomplished!” During the glorious conflict of such lives it is impossible not to look on with breathless interest. Once possessed of their great design, we watch its development with eager eye and beating heart. And if, early in the day, they are struck down, we clasp our hands in sudden anguish, and a cry goes up that the field is lost. And though this despair is a momentary loss of the true faith; though God never fails to rally the forces of every good cause that has mustered for battle on the earth; yet, no doubt, the victory in such a case is deferred; the plan is broken off; the painful sense of a suspended work, that might have been finished, remains upon survivors’ hearts. On behalf of the noble actors themselves, indeed, we have no embarrassment of faith; there is that within them which may well find a home in more worlds than one, and meet a welcome wherever Almighty Justice reigns. We are not ashamed, as with the man of mere possession, to follow them into the higher transitions of their being, and knock for them at the gate of better spheres. But there appears something untimely and deplorable in the providence of the world they quit. The fruit has not been permitted to ripen ere it dropped. The great function of their life required time for its fulfilment; and time has been denied. Their beneficent action was wholly through the energies of their living will; and these energies are laid for us in unseasonable sleep. And thus, while we are ashamed at the grave of the epicurean, we weep over the departure of the hero.

But there is a life higher than either of these. The _saintly_ is beyond the heroic mind. To _get_ good, is animal; to _do_ good, is human; to _be_ good is divine. The true use of a man’s possessions is to help his work; and the best end of all his work, is to show us what he is. The noblest workers of our world bequeath us nothing so great as the image of themselves. Their task, be it ever so glorious, is historical and transient; the majesty of their spirit is essential and eternal. When the external conditions which supplied the matter of their work have wholly decayed from the surface of the earth, and become absorbed in its substance, the perennial root of their life remains, bearing a blossom ever fair, and a foliage ever green. And while to some, God gives it to show themselves through their work, to others he assigns it to show themselves without even the opportunity of work. He sends them transparent into this world; and leaves us nothing to gather and infer. Goodness, beauty, truth, acquired by others, are original to them, hiding behind the eye, thinking on the brow, and making music in the voice. The angels appointed to guard the issues of the pure life seem rather to have taken their station at its fountains, and to pour into it a sanctity at first. Such beings live imply _to express themselves_; stand between heaven and earth, and meditate for our dull hearts. With fewer outward objects than others, or at least with a less limited practical mission devoting them to a fixed task, their life is a soliloquy of love and aspiration; the soul not being with them, the servant of action, but action rather the needful articulation of the soul. Not, of course, that they are, in the slightest degree, exempt from the stern and positive obligations of duty, or licensed, any more than others, to dream existence away. If once they fall into this snare, and cease to work, the lineaments of beauty and goodness are exchanged for those of shame and grief. Usually they do not _less_, but rather _more_, than others; only under somewhat sorrowful conditions, having spirits prepared for what is more than human, and being obliged to move within limits that are only human. The worth of such a life depends little on its _quantity_; it is an affair of _quality_ alone. These highest ends of existence have but slight relation to time. Years can not mellow the love already ripe, or purify the perceptions already clear, or lift the aspiration that already enters heaven.

GROWING.

By F. R. HAVERGAL.

Unto him that hath, thou givest
Ever “more abundantly.”
Lord, I live because thou livest,
Therefore give more life to me;
Therefore speed me in the race;
Therefore let me grow in grace.

Deepen all thy work, O Master,
Strengthen every downward root,
Only do thou ripen faster,
More and more, thy pleasant fruit.
Purge me, prune me, self abase,
Only let me grow in grace.

Jesus, grace for grace outpouring,
Show me ever greater things;
Raise me higher, sunward soaring,
Mounting as on eagle wings.
By the brightness of thy face,
Jesus, let me grow in grace.

Let me grow by sun and shower,
Every moment water me;
Make me really hour by hour
More and more conformed to thee,
That thy loving eye may trace,
Day by day, my growth in grace.

Let me, then, be always growing,
Never, never standing still;
Listening, learning, better knowing
Thee and thy most bless’d will.
Till I reach thy holy place,
Daily let me grow in grace.

[_December 10._]

THE GOODNESS OF A GOOD MAN.

By ALEXANDER McLAREN, D. D.

“He was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of
faith.”—Acts xi: 24.

You remember how once a young man came to Jesus, with much beautiful youthful purity in his life and youthful enthusiasm in his heart, and in his eager way, prefaced his question with a lightly-uttered “Good Master.” Christ answered by trying to make him feel how much more the word meant than he had ever seen. “Why callest thou me good?” said he, not thereby rejecting the term for himself, but setting the youth to ponder its deep meaning. And whenever we have learned to feel “how awful goodness is,” we shall be ready to listen to Jesus saying further: “None is good but one, that is God.” By that saying he neither means to deny his own goodness nor that of men who will take up their cross and follow him, but only to remind the light-hearted inquirer, who was so ready with his conventional bestowment of the epithet, and so eager to know what he was to do for eternal life, that there was one source—and only one—-of goodness, and, therefore, that the only way to be good was to have our emptiness replenished by his fullness.

A good man, then, is a man who draws his goodness from God, the source of all goodness. He himself is the type of all perfection, the home of all things fair. Whatsoever things are lovely and whatsoever things are venerable—all that we call virtue, all to which hearts and consciences ascribe praise—dwell in God as in their native home. In the abyss of his being the streams of goodness, which part into many heads to fertilize the wilderness and sweeten the salt marshes of human nature, rest undivided. He is the reality of which all our conceptions of goodness are but the fragmentary representations, the substance of which they are but shadows. Not only so, but as all life is an effluence from him with whom alone is the fountain of life, and as it is his light in which we see light, so all the goodness which is in men is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Light. All light and heat are from the sun, and all goodness is of God. All virtues are radiations from him. “They are but broken lights of thee.” He alone is good of himself and by himself. Drawing his being from none, he owes his character to none, to no outward helps or occasions his actions, to no importation his beauty. Receiving from none, he gives to all, and every deed of fair goodness that man has ever done, at the last analysis, has been to the doer no less than to the beholders or the hearers the gift of God.

He would not be good unless he delighted in bestowing himself. Goodness is communicative, and all love has its chiefest delight in giving away itself. As the sun “rejoices to run his race,” and as it is the very nature and property of light to radiate, and of gases to diffuse themselves, so he can not be stayed nor sealed up, but rejoices to impart. And, certainly, there can be nothing in God which he so much delights to bestow as his goodness, since it is that in which most chiefly do we bear his image, and by which we are most closely knit to him. His highest purpose concerning us all is “that we should be partakers of his holiness.” Happiness, wisdom, life itself, all in some measure and fashion, offshoots from his own, he delights to give; but these are but means to an end, and thus moral likeness to himself is his aim in all his other gifts. God had rather have us good than great, and makes us sometimes glad and sometimes heavy that by both we may be made to desire, and so be able to receive, more resemblance to himself in holiness. This is the meaning of life. This is the dearest desire of our Father for us. This is the gift which he—the infinite love—is ever longing to bestow on us.

This goodness, then, affords a presumption that he will make us good. That is a profound word of the Psalmist’s “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore will he teach sinners in the way.” The more clearly we see the perfect purity and goodness of God, the more conscious shall we certainly be of our own unlikeness to him. But in that discernment of his lustrous perfectness, and penitent recognition of our own sinfulness, there lies hope, not despair. We may be sure that he loves us too well to keep such sovereign completeness to himself and leave his poor children stumbling here in the mud and mire. What he is, he assuredly will desire to make us, so far as it may be. He is the “giving God” and the poorest and most impure of men may be sure that God does desire to give him purity of heart and life, and may lift up the hopeful and bold prayer, “Thy spirit is good, lead me into the land of uprightness.”

Surely, too, it needs but little experience of life to feel that, if we are ever to be made good, a divine power is needed to do it. A very small amount of honest attempt to mend our own characters might teach each of us that the viper has got far too tight a hold on us for us to shake it into the fire, and that its poison is in our blood. If you have ever tried to cure a bad habit, you know how hard it is; and some of us could tell how the sins that we loathe most hold us in a grip none the looser because of our disgust at them and ourselves, and, like a reefer’s knot, their cords are tied the tighter by the pressure of our resistance against them. It is as impossible for a man to make himself good, in the deepest sense of the word, as it is for him to lift himself by his own hand laid on his own collar. There must be some power outside him to raise. God only can strengthen us to cast out sin. God only can enlighten our eyes to see lurking evil; he only can give energy to our wills to root it up, though we drag bleeding fragments of our hearts with it; he only can give the positive goodness which is more than mere freedom from evil, and fill the empty chamber with a guest strong enough to keep out the returning demon and all his crew.

So his Holy Spirit is given to us, if we will, to make us holy. We may, if we will, have that divine guest in our inmost spirit, molding us anew, purging the fountains of our will, enlightening our blindness, fixing our love on all things pure and high, burning up all our evil, with which in our own strength we have vainly fought, and kindling in us a flame of self-forgetting love, in which, as in the central fire of the earth, all the elements of the new nature to be formed within us are molten together, ready to crystallize into beauty like precious gems, or to consolidate into strength like the granite mountains. Any man may, if he will, be “full of the Holy Ghost”—as a vessel is filled with precious elixir poured into it. Any man may, if he will, have his whole nature influenced and inhabited by that mighty spirit of whom we may all be the temples, and which dwells in us not as the image of the god abides in the shrine, but as our spirits animate our bodies, being diffused through all our nature, the eye of our seeing, the heart of our love, the will of our resolve, and in all of us the source of our goodness, and the life of our better life. “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Let us remember that this penetration of all our nature with a divine spirit dwelling within us is _the_ promise of Christianity to every man. No mere love of God the Father, even if it were brought to us in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ would be enough without the communion of the Holy Ghost. Calvary and Olivet are not sufficient for our victory over sin without the upper room and the rushing mighty wind. And let us not forget that the spirit thus given to all Christians is the spirit of illumination indeed, the spirit of power, rich in his seven-fold energies, and the source of every endowment of mind and hand and tongue and heart that we possess, but that his highest and most universal office is to make us good, and his best name the Holy Spirit. Let us court earnestly the best gifts, but seek more earnestly still that gift which needs no special capacity to receive nor any special circumstances to exercise, but may be claimed by the poorest, and will ennoble the loftiest. Let others seek for gifts; do you pray for graces. Let who will be great, do you try to submit to the working of the good Spirit who makes you good.

Our text carries the analysis a step farther, and shows us how Barnabas came to be full of the Holy Ghost. It gives us the _condition of goodness_. He was good because he was full of the spirit, and he was full of the spirit because he was full of faith. That is the final explanation of his character.

The spirit of God dwells in a man through his faith. One text speaks of “the Holy Ghost which they that believe on him should receive,” and everywhere similar language is held as to the connection between faith and the dwelling of the spirit of goodness in our hearts. By the act of trust in Christ, the Lord of the Spirit, we open our natures for the entrance of the sanctifier, who ever waits to enter in. A man has to shut his door and pull down his blinds to keep the light out. If we open ever so minute a crevice, a beam will come in, and the wider we open, the broader the stream that pours in. So in our simple faith, we open the door and there pour into our hearts the quickening energies of that good spirit. The amount of our faith measures the amount of our possession of the Spirit who makes us good.

Thus faith becomes the condition of goodness, because it is the condition of the Spirit of God dwelling in us. It brings us into contact with the electric battery, completes the circuit, and as soon as the circuit is completed the spark comes. It is also the condition of goodness, because it implies self-oblivion and self-distrust, and is the opposite of that self-regard which, as we have seen, is the root of all evil. The germ of all holiness is in faith, not only because it brings us under the operation of the divine power which makes holy, but because it is itself the great antagonist of selfishness.

So Christian morality is the very opposite of the practical heathenism which lies at the bottom of so much of the teaching of to-day. Trust thyself, say many voices—it is the beginning of wisdom, strength, freedom. Distrust thyself and trust Christ, says the Gospel—thereby alone wilt thou be made pure and blessed. The Babel builders tried to get up to the heavens by their own building. The Titans tried to storm it by placing mountain on mountain, but “no man hath ascended up to heaven.” Better for us to rise thither by that ladder which now binds together heaven and earth, even Jesus Christ, our brother and our Lord, by whom all bright-winged angels of help and cleansing will come to minister to us purity and joy, and by whom we at last, perfected in goodness, shall pass into that presence, of which the radiant purity would blast all that had one taint of uncleanness.

Learn the conditions, then, on which you can be good. No goodness without God’s Spirit—no Spirit without faith. You can not make yourself better, can not hammer or pare your own nature into purity and loveliness. But you can put your confidence in Jesus Christ, who will take your nature into his hands and mold it into a fairest likeness to himself. You can trust him, who will breathe into you his spirit to make you holy. If my epitaph is ever to be, “He was a good man,” it must first be said, “He was full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.” Let us give up the weary, hopeless work of trying to make ourselves good, and yield ourselves to him that he may make us like himself, and that we may have a mightier power ever working in our natures till they are full of beauty and “holy as God is holy.”

[_December 17._]

THE CONFLICTS OF LIFE.

By BISHOP EDWARD THOMSON, D. D., LL. D.

1. We can not escape difficulty. The air is tainted, the soil churlish, the ocean tempest tossed. Whether we are in the field or in the wilderness, on Persian plains or Alpine heights, amid equatorial heats, or temperate climes, or polar solitudes, we are met by a thousand obstacles. Earth is cursed, and everywhere she puts forth her thorn in obedience to her Maker’s withering word. True, the curse is tempered with the mercy which yields unnumbered blessings to the hand of toil; nevertheless, it cleaves to all earth’s surface, and turns the key upon her hidden treasures. We read of cloudless skies, and sunny climes, and fields which need naught but the sickle; but who finds them? Paradise is always ahead of the emigrant.