The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-04 00:00:00

DIE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 4, 1865.

ligion took its stand upon the idea which insepar-
ably incorporated deity in the matchless human
form. This, and much besides, obscured in the later
and more mixed traditions, stands out clearly in the
earliest records of the Greeks. The " Theogony"
of Hesiod, which must be regarded as a work of
very great antiquity, exhibits to us the elemental
and Olympian gods in groups clearly enough dis-
tinguished. The poems of Homer, far more Helle-
nic in their spirit, may be said to exclude and repel
from the sacred precinct alike the heavenly bodies
and the elemental powers. The plague in the first
" Iliad " bears evident marks of solar agency ; but,
without the least allusion to that luminary, it is
ascribed to Apollo in one of the noblest anthropo-
morphic passages of the poems. The Sun only once
appears as a person iu the " Iliad," where he re-
luctantly obeys the command of Here that by set-
ting he shall end the day, which was the last day of
Trojan success ; thus indicating the side to which,
as an elemental deity, he inclined. Again, Xan-
thos, a river god, appears in the " Theomachy," but
he appears on the side of Troy; and he seems also
to have had one name as a deity with the Trojans,
another with the Greeks or Achains as a stream.
When Agamemnon offers solemn service for his
army only, he invokes Zeus alone, and invokes him
as dwelling in the sky. But when he offers the joint
sacrifice of the two parties in the Third Book, then
he invokes Zeus as governing from the hill of Ida,
which was in hisview, and invokes with him the sun,
the earth, and the rivers. The rivers are summoned
to the Olympian assembly of the Twentieth Book;
but it is an assembly in which the gods are to take
their several sides. It is a mistake to suppose
that Poseidon was an elemental god ; he was the
patron of the sea, as he was of the horse, but he was
more the god of navigation than of water. The sea
had its elemental god, the hoary Nereus, with Am-
phitrite seemingly for his wife; but Amphitrite is
always the moaning Amphitrite, and Nereus never
emerges from the depths ; nor, though he is fre-
quently referred to, is he ever named on the Hellenic
page of Homer. I turn to another head. Loth on
the one side to admit the imposing elements of Na-
ture-worship on the grand scale, the Olympian
system is yet more alien to the other favourite form
of religious illusion, the worship offered to animals,
and particularly to the ox, of which Egypt seems to
have been the headquarters. In the full exhibition
which the poems of Homer afford us of the religion
in its earlier forms, there is not a trace of animal
worship. In the " Odyssey," indeed, an awful and
mystic sacredness attaches to the sun. In the island
of Thrinakie, detained by adverse winds, the com
panions of Odysseus are warned that under no ex-
tremity should they supply their wants by the de-
struction of these animals. Accordingly they resort
to birds and fish, unusual food with the Homeric
Greeks ; they finally put some of the animals to
death, only to avoid dying themselves by famine ;
and for this offence the entire crew, except Odysseus,
who had not shared in it, are drowned when next
they take to sea. Now although there is no animal
worship here, there is what may be called animal
sanctity ; but it is in connection with a deity not
even recognized at the time in the Hellenic system ;
and introduced as it is during the voyage in remote
parts—which must have been based upon the tales
of the Phcenician mariners—it appears certainly to
belong to the Phcenician circle of mythology. And
here we find an example of the manner in whichthe
immense plastic power of the Hellenic mind dealt
with foreign ideas of all kinds, so as to make them
its own. What their sculptors did with the rude
and formless art of Egypt—what their philosophers
did with the shreds of Eastern knowledge picked
up on their travels, their theology did with
the many and crude varieties of superstition
which flowed in upon them from the numerous
quarters that furnished by sea and land immigrants
for the Hellenic peninsula. The old Pelasgian gods,
not rudely overthrown, but gently taken from their
pedestals, were set down harmless in the shade of a
mellow distance ; and the animals before which
lower types of men were content to bown down the
godlike head, were not, when the traditions that
defied them set foot on Grecian soil, thrust wholly
out of view ; but they were put into appropriate
and alwayssecondary places. The eagle of Zeus, the
falcon of Apollo, the peacock of Here, the owl of
Pallas, stood no higher in Greece than as accessories
to the figures on which they attend. And now I will
endeavour to point out, in rude and rapid outline,
some of the remarkable results of this idee mere of the
Greek religion, the annexation of manhood to deity,
and the recriprocal incorporation of deity into man-
hood ; which made the human form the link between
the visible and the invisible worlds, the meeting-
point of earth and heaven. And here my object will
be only to give you a sample of the redundant ma-
terials which seem to rise up around me thickly
piled on every side ; most of all, perhaps in the
Homeric or Achaian period. First, I will remark a
profound reverence for human life and human na-
ture, which even the fiercest passions of war would
but rarely, and only for a moment violate. Hence
we find the highest refinements of the manners of
the gentleman existing at a time when, among the
Greeks, the material appliances of civilisation were
in their infancy, and when writing andthe alphabet
were practically unknown. The sentiment of honour
is indicated, at this epoch, by a word (al8cos) too
delicate for our rendering by a single term in the
English, perhaps in any modern tongue. A cata-
logue of horrors that have stained the life of man
elsewhere, sometimes even ih the midst of the
triumphs of culture and refinement, were unknown
in the Achaian period. I will dwell for a moment
on one of,: these, the practice of human sacrifice.
You will find from a charming volume,
the " Miscellanies of Lord Stanhope," that a few
years ago, some of the most famous men of our
day wore brought by him into correspondence on tho in-
teresting, but to many startling, question whether human
sacrifices were in use among the Romans ; not the unlet-
tered semi-barbarians of Romulus or Tarquin, but the
Romans of Rome in its highest political power and its
palmiest civilisation. Naturally enough, a considerable re-
pugnance wils manifested to entertaining this supposition;
but as tho inquiry proceeded, a younger yet profoundly
learned scholar, Sir John Acton, was brought into the field.
His full and varied researches do not appear in the pages of
Lord Stanhope. But they range well nigh over all space
and time. His conclusions are, that "wo find traces of
it, that is of human sacrifice, throughout almost the
whole Hellenic world, in the cuftus of almost every
god, and in all periods of their independent his-
tory." That among the Romans it was still more rife
and that, though attempts were made to restrain or
put down the practice, even the famous edict of Adrian,
to which Eusebius allows the honour of its extinction,
failed to effect it; nay, more, that "in every genera-
tion of the four centuries, from the fall of the Repub-
lic to the establishment of Christianity, human victims were
sacrificed by the Emperors" themselves. The conclusions
of Sir John Acton are Lot admitted in their full breadth
by other great authorities ; but it seems impossible to doubt
tho wide-spread and long-continued, or often-recurring
prevalence of the practice, in contact, more or less, with
civilised times and nations, and sustained in various de-
grees by perverse but accepted ideas of religion. Notwith-
standing this terrible and too well sustained indictment
against the unenlightened and the enlightened world, it is
pleasing to observe that this horrible rite did not originally
belong to the usages of Greece. It seems to have come in
by a late contagion from abroad ; and human sacrifice is not
found in Homer. The slaughter of some Trojan youths by
Achilles, in his nnsated vengeance, has none of the marks
of a religious Tito, and no relation to a deity. Of the tradi-
tions of Iphigenia, sacrificed in Aulis for the welfare of the
Achaian host, Homer is wholly ignorant ; and Agamemnon
in the Iliad speaks of his daughters as open to the option of
Achilles, as many fathers may since have done who had
two or three of them ready to marry, but so as almost to
supply sufficient evidence that no such blood-stained gap
had been made in the circle of his family. It is many cen-
turies later, when the tradition reaches us in the works of
the tragedians. In that grandest of all Greek dramas, the
"Agamemnon" of .7Eschylus, his murderous wife Clytem-
nestra seeks an apology for her act partly in the immola-
tion of Iphigonia by her father's hand; and the tone of the
play is so condemnatory as to suggest that an Athenian
audience of the middle of the fifth century, before Christ,
did not allow religion to be an adequate apology for the
deed. At a somewhat later period, the " Iphigenia in
Tauris" of Euripides supplies us with more direct evidence
that the practice while not indigenous in Greece, was foully
rife among other races. The scene is laid abroad in hon-
or boric territory ; and the chorus of Greek attendants on the
A in doomed princess addressing the Deity, says, "Receive, 0
.-- venerable one, this sacrifice, if it be a sacrifice agreeable
atm' to thee, which the law of us Greeks declares to be un-
Greece holy.e that the
anhetd theradit in
ioonriogftahle
freedomforeign
rded first origin ofT thehusg
showabominablen rite,
iy the wo'' of the Hellenic system from it, was cherished in the
.4rly IT'. memory of the people. I have already had to observe
a'
that the Achaians eschewed both incest and polygamy. I
-

may add that even the unconcious incest of Edipus and
Jocasta drew down the heaviest calamities ; and further,
that we have no trace, among the Homeric records, not
only of canibalisin but of violence to nature in any form.
The crimes of abortion and the exposure of infants autho-
rised and commended by Plato in his ideal State have no
place in the Homeric poems ; nor do they afford the
slightest indication of those shameless lusts, which formed
the incredible and indelible disgrace of Greece in the time
of its consummate Supremacy in art, and at the climax of its
boasted civilisation. If I am right in my estimate of the,
place which the human form hold in its relation to the
Hellenic religion, we may naturally expect to find it at-
tested, among ether ways, by the following signs : —An
intense admiration of personal beauty ; a resentment against
and avoidance of deformity, as a kind of sin against thollaw
of nature ; and a marked disposition to associate ignorance
with vice. I cannot now undertake to exhibit the remark-
able manner in which these anticipations are realised in
Homer : whose appreciation of the beauty of the human
form appears from unequivocal signs to exceed that of any
author in any age or country : while upon the other side,
introducing but ono vicious character, Thersites, among
the Greeks of the Iliad, ho describes his personal appear-
ance with a degree of detail foreign to his habit, in order,
seemingly, that, even as we read, we may see him before
us in his hideous deformity. The same topics might be
illustrated in detail from the later history of Greece, in
modes inconsistent or questionable enough, yet abundantly
significant. Courtesans of extraordinary beauty were
sometimes chosen to march in the processions of the gods.
By the side of the evil tradition of Aphrodite the promis-
cuous, there lingered long the rival tradition of an Aphro-
dite the heavenly. On the other hand, with respect to
deformity, I do not remember that Aristophanes, in his
campaign against Socrates, makes the use which we might
have expected of the ugliness of the philosopher. And
though jests were freely passed upon actual eccentricity of
feature, I have not seen it proved, in such partial exami-
nation of the subject as has lain within my power, that
the Greeks were wont to make use of that which we call
caricature ; which I understand to bo, the founding upon
some known or peculiar feature a representation of defor-
mity that does not exist, for the purpose of exciting ridicule
or hatred. Among the moderns this practice appears to
have boon employedeven to stimulate religious animosity
or fury : and the rarity or absence of it, among a people
possessed of such high sarcastic power as the Greeks, sug-
gests that it may have been excluded by the predominating
force of a traditional reverence, grown into instinct, for
the beauty of the human form ; having its origin nowhere
with greater likelihood than in the early and continued
association of that form with the highest object of religion.
I will now-refer to the feeling of the Homeric period con-
cerning the sacredness of the human body against both
violation and exposure. The horror of Priam in anticipat-
ing his own death at the coming sack of Troy rises to its
climax when he brings into the picture the tearing and
defilenient by dogs of his own exposed and naked figure.
And the extremest point of punishment threatened to the
degraded Thersites appears to be the stripping of his person
for the disgust and derision of the camp, and the seaming it
with "indecorous" wounds. Nor was this respect for decency
a shallow or shortlived tradition. It was indeed rudely tried,
since it came into conflict with the eagerness of the race for
high physical activity and athletic development, stimulated
to the uttermost by the great national institution of the
Games, in which, as Horace said with little exaggeration,
the palm of the victor uplifted even the lords of earth to
the honours of the gods. Yet, important as it was for per-
fection in those unparalleled contests to free the person
from the restraints of clothing, Thucydides in his preface
tells us that the athletes wore formerly covered ; that the
Lacedromonians were the first to strip in the arena, and
that it was not many years before his time when the fashion
reached its height. But when we are seeking to ascertain
the measure of that conception which any given raco has
formed of our nature, there is perhaps no single test so ef-
fective as the position which it assigns to woman. For as
the law of force is the law of the brute creation, so, in pro-
portion as he is under the yoke of that law, does man ap-
proximate to the brute ; and in proportion, on the other
hand, as he has escaped from its dominions, is he ascend-
ing into the highensphore of being, and claiming relation-
ship with deity. But the emancipation and due ascendancy
of woman are not a mere fact ; they are the emphatic asser-
tion of a principle ; and that principle is the dethronement of
the law of force, and the enthronement of other and higher
laws in its place, and in its despite. Outside the pale of Chris-
tianity it would be difficult to find a parallel, in point of ele-
vation, to the Greek woman of the heroic age. Mr. Buckle
candidly acknowledges that her position was then much
higher than it had come to be in the most civilised historic
period of Greece ; and yet he was a writer whose bias, and
the general cast of whose opinions would have disposed him
to an opposite conclusion. Again, if the pictures presented
by the historical books of the Old Testament and by
Homer respectively be compared, candour will claim from
us a verdict in favour of the position of the Greeks as com-
pared with that of the Hebrew woman. Among the Jews
polygamy was permitted; to the Greeks, as has been said,
it was unknown. Tales like that of Amn on and Tamar, or
like that of the Levite and his concubine, are not found
even among the deeds of the dissolute Suitorsof the Odys-
sey. Among tho Jews the testimony of our Lord is that be-
cause of the hardness of their hearts Moses suffered them
to put away their wives, but that "from the beginning it
was not so." Apart from the violent contingencies of war,
manners seem to have been, in the momentous point of
divorce, not very different among the 'Greeks of the heroic
age from what they had been in the beginning. The picture
of Penelope waiting for her husband through the creeping
course of 20 years, and of Odysseus yearning in like manner
for his wife, is one of the most remarkable in the whole
history of human manners ; and it would lose little, if any-
thing, of its deeper significance and force, even if we be-
lieved that the persons whom the poet names Odysseus and
Penelope have never lived. It must be observed, too, what,
in the mind of Homer, constitutes the extraordinary virtue
of the royal matron. It is not the refusal to marry another
while her husband is alive, but her stubborn determination
not to accept the apparently certain conclusion that he must
have ceased to live. Not even the Suitors suggest that, if ho
be indeed alive, any power can sot her free. Scarcely less
noteworthy, for the purpose of the present argument, are
the immunities which she enjoys even in her painful posi-
tion. She is importuned, but she is not insulted. She feels
horror and aversion, but she has no cause for fear. Such, in
the morning of Greek life, was the reverence that hedged a
woman, as she sat alone and undefended hi the midst of a
body of powerful and abandoned men. Again: the famous
scene of Hector and Andr Dina ciao is not more touching by
its immeasurable tender ness than it is important for the
proof which it affords, with reference to the contemporary
manners, of what may be called the moral equality of man
and wife. And the general effect of the poems is to give
an idea of social purity, and of a share borne by women in
the practical and responsible duties of life, such as we seek
iu vain, notwithstanding some charming specimens of cha-
racter, among the Jews. Still less can it be found among
the Greeks of the more polished ages. In their annals wo
scarce ever hear of a wife or mother, though the na mes of
mistresses and courtesans are entered
-on the roll of fame,
and PhryneNedicated in a Phocian temple a gilded statue of
herself, which was wrought by the hand of Praxiteles. In-
deed, not to speak of the poetry of Euripides, even the most
solid and impartial judgments, such as those of Thucydides
and Aristotle, were-unfavourably warped in their estimate
of women. It would, I have no doubt, be possible to illus-
trate in great detail from ancient rocorcls the high value set
by the Greeks upon man, in his mind, life, and person. I
will mention two instances from Pausanias. An Arcadian,
named Skedasos, living at Leuctra, had two daughters,
who were violated by Lacedamnonian youths. Unable to
bear the shame, they put an end to their lives. Their fa-
ther, also, having in vain sought justice from the- Spartan
lauthorities, sternly recoiled from the disgrace,and destroyed
himself. In after times Epriminondiis, abOut to join battle
with the Spartans at the place, made offerings and prayers
to the insulted maidens and to their parent ; and then won
the victory which laid low the power of Spirta,- The:other
is of a different, and a yet more singular character. The
statue of Theagenes, the Thasian athlete, after his death,
fell upon an enemy of his, and killed him. The sons of the
man who thus lost his life brought an action against the
statue ; and it was thrown into tho sea, under a law of Draco,
which made inanimate objects punishable for destroying
human life. Nor was this law peculiar to Athens, where it
was maintained in the legislation of Solon. For, as we see,
it was recognised in Theses. Now there is an apparent re-
semblance between this law and the English law of deo-
dand, which involved the forfeiture, says Blackstone, of
" whatever personal chattel is the immediate cause of the
ndieuacthh
seofeaminynrgesahnsonilaabrile tyc, rtehaeticairose.'s'.
arßeuet I
ssetnhtik
ianllythdia, ffterweintth.
Deodand was originally a payment to the sovereign to be
applied to pious uses, and seems to have passed into a ma-
norial right, or in the Gothic codes, into a compensation
for homicide, payable to the surviving relatives. But it
proceeded upon the principle of making the owners pay ;
though they paid in respect of homicide effected through a
material instrument. The Greek law inflicted punishment
upon the inanimate matter itself for having violated the
sanctity of human life. In this essential point it exactly
corresponded with the remarkable law of Moses, which
said " If an ox gore a man that he die, the ox shall be
stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten." But even this
provision falls greatly short of the full spirit of the Greek
law, since even the animal that kills is conscious, and gores
from excited passion. I pass, however, to a subject of
larger scope, and I venture to suggest that the anthropo-
morphic spirit of the Greek religion was the source of that
excellence in art, which has become to after ages a model
for imitation, and a tribunal without appeal. All aro aware
that the Greek religion was eminently poetical ; for it ful-
filled in the most striking manner that condition which
Poetry above all requires, harmony in tbo relation between
the worlds of soul and sense. Every river, fountain, grove,
and hill was associated with the heart and imagination of
the Greek ; subject, however, always to tho condition that
they should appear as ruled by a presiding spirit, and that
that spirit should bo impersonated in the human shape. A
poetical religion must, it seems, be favourable to art. The
beauty of form which so much abounded in the country
was
vas
neglected,
o ffavourablebeautyy
le toaurtt. The Athenians, however, are
stated not to have been beautiful ; and at Sparta, where
art y
was immensely prized. • And,
indeed, the personal beauty of a race is by no means
usually found zufficient to produce the development of the

fine arts ; and as to the poetry of religion, and its bearing
upon art, while a general connection may bo admitted,
it is very difficult to define the manner and degree.
The practice of image-worship promotes the production
of works, first rude and coarse, then more or less vulgar and
tawdry. Over the whole centinent of Europe there is
scarcely at this moment an object of popular veneration,
which is worthy to be called a work of art. Of the finest
remaining works of Greek art, not very many, I imagine,
bear the mark of having been intended for worship. The
great size required for statues like the Atheno of the Par-
thenon and the Zeus of Olympia seems unfavourable to the
exhibition of fine art in the highest sense. In Pausanias
we find notices•of an immense number of statues in and
about the temples ; they aro not commonly, I think, praised
for excellence in this respect ; and the nature of material,
to which we find constant reference, could hardly have
been chosen by the artist for the sake of his own proper
purpose. I have heard Lord Macaulay give his opinion
that this mixture in the Zeus of Phidias at Olympia, made
of ivory and gold, simple as was that form of combination,
may probably have been duo to the necessity of condescen-
sion to the popular taste in connection with an object of
worship. Although, therefore, the highest artists were
employed, it does not appear probable that they derived
any part of their higher inspiration from the fervour of
the multitude of the worshippers in the temples. Neither
will it avail to urge the great esteem in which the profes-
sors of the arts wero held. High indeed it was; and the
successions of sculptors in the different schools seem to
have been recorded apparently with almost as much care
as the Archons of Athens, or the priestesses of Here at Argos
those landmarks of the history of states. But the question
recurs, was their estimation the cause of their excellence, or
was their excellence the cause of their estimation; and if the
estimation flowed from the excellence, whence came excel-
lence itself ? Both the one and the other were perhaps due to
another cause. That many accessories contributed to the
wonderful result Ido not doubt. But mainly and essenti-
ally, every art and method, every device and habit, in the
language of Aristotle, has an end ; and is modelled upon
the and at which it aims ; and by that end its greatness or
its littleness is measured. Now the climax of all art, it
seems to be agreed, is the rendering of the human form.
What, then, could be so calculated to raise this represen-
tation to the acme of its excellence, as the belief that the
human form was not only the tabernacle, but tho original
and shape, the inseparable attribute, of Deity itself ? In
the quaint language of George Herbert,

He that aims the moon
Shoots higher much than ho that means a tree.
And again, as Tennyson has sung:—

It was my duty to have loved the highest:
We needs must love the highest when wo see it,
Not Lancelot, nor another.
It was this perpetual presentation of the highest to the
mind of the Greek artist that cheered him and rewarded
him, and yet, while it cheered him and rewarded him, still
over spurred him on in his pursuit. Whatever he had done
more remained to do,
Nil actum reputans dum quid superesset agendum.
The desire of ambition was fulfilled : he had always more
worlds to conquer. The divine was made familiar to him,
by correspondence of shape : but on the other side, its ele-
ments, which it was his business to draw forth and indicate
to men, reached far away into the infinite. And Iknow not
what true definition there is for an age or people of the
highest excellence in any kind, unless it be perpetual effort
upwards in pursuit of an object higher than ourselves,
higher than our works, higher even than our hopes, yet
beckoning us on from hour to hour, and always permitting
us to apprehend in part. I venture then to propound for
consideration the opinion, that the fundamental cause of the
transcendent excellence of the Greek artist lay in his be-
ing, by his birth and the tradition of his people, as well
as with every favouring accessory, both in idea and in form,
and in such a sense as no other artist was, a worker upon
deity, conceived as residing in the human form. It is hardly
necessary to observe how the rich and many-sided compo-
sition of the Greek mythology favoured the artist in his
work, by answering to the many-sided development of tho
mind and life of man. Unconsciously then to himself, and
in a sphere of almost parochial narrowness, the Greek not
only earned himself an immortal fame, but was equipping
from age to age a great school of art, to furnish principles
and models made ready to the hand of that purer and
higher civilisation which was to be; and over the prerara-
tion of which, all the while, Divine Providence was brood-
ing, like the Spirit on the face of the waters, till the fulness
of time should come. But besides the art and the poetry
of the Greeks, there were other provinces in which their
achievements were no less remarkable; and, with reference
to the present argument, I must shortly touch upon their
philosophy. The first philosophers of the Greek race were
not for the most part natives and inhabitants of Greece,
nor subject exclusively to Greek influences. Their specu-
lations turned mainly on the nature of the first principle,
and partook of an eastern spirit. But when philosophy took
up her abode in the country where Hellenism was supremo
and without a rival, that human element, which lay so pro-
foundly embedded in the whole constitution of the Hellenic
mind, unfolded itself in the region of speculative thought ;
and the true meaning of the famous saying that Socrates
called down philosophy from heaven would seem to be, that
he gave expression to the genius of his country by propound-
. ing, as the prime subject for the study of man, the nature,
constitution, and destiny- of man himself. And the illustrious
series of disciples, some of them probably greater than their
master, who followed his example, were not therein aping
or adopting the mere peculiarity of an individual, but obey-
ing a congenial impulse that sprang from the depths of
their being. Whatever philosophy was to be indigenous
in Greece could not but be predominantly and profoundly
human ; and their power and fame, as analysts of our un-
fathomable constitution, are fresh and unabated at the pre-
sent hour. Fashion may wave her wand, but it is with
small result. Idolatrous veneration of course has at times
begotten temporary reaction and neglect ; but the power of
Greek culture seems again and again to assert itself by
virtue of the law which makes all things find their level,
and since it came into existence it has never ceased to be
in the most instructed periods the chief criterion and
means of the highest intellectual training ; not, of course,
necessarily for each individual, but for classes and for
countries. The point, however, to which I wish to draw
particular attention at this moment is the large and well-
balanced view, to which Greek philosophy attained, of the
compound nature of man. Never, probably, has there
appeared upon the stage of the world so remarkable an
union, as in the Greeks, of corporal with mental excellence.
From the beginning of the race Homer shared the privi-
lege of his most gorgeous epithet between battle and de-
bate. The Odes of such a poet as Pinder, handing on-
wards the tradition of the twenty-third Iliad, commemo-
rate, so to speak, the marriage of athletic exorcise with the
gift of song. We do not trace among the Greeks that con-
trast, which is found so rude and sharp elsewhere, between
energy iu the body and energy in the brain. The Greek
was in this like Adam in the noble verso of Milton,

For contemplation and for valour born.
And the Greek philosophy was for nothing more remark-
able than the manner in which it not only asserted but
felt as an elementary law, the place of the body in human
education. This with no exclusive or peculiar view to what
we should call utilitarian purposes,:such as those of defence
or industry, or even art. It seems to have been rather an
ample recognition of the right of the body to be cared for,
and to be reared in its various organs up to the highest
excellence it is capable of attaining, as being, what indeed
it is, not a mere vesture, or tool, or appendage of the soul,
but, like the soul, an integral part of man himself. This
plenitude and accuracy of view on such a subject is the
more to be regarded on some special grounds. In general,
the philosophies of the world, outside of Christianity, have
shown a tendency to fluctuate between sensuality on the
one hand, and on the other a contempt and hatred of mat-
ter, and a disposition to identify it with the principle of
evil. The philosophy of Socrates, of Plato, and of Aristotle,
seems to have steered clear and safe between this Scylla
and this Charybdis. But again, the Greek saw, as all men
see, the body parted from the soul at death, and hastening
rapidly, as by the law of its nature, to corruption. To none
could this severance, and its mournful and painful incidents
be more repulsive than to him, with his delicate perceptions
and his lively emotions. Of a future existence in any shape
he usually knew or oven surmised little ; of the revival of
the body, or of the reunion hereafter of the two great fac-
tors of the human being, he had yet less conception. We
may say then that belay under, every temptation to a dis-
paraging view of the body and of its office. Yet, in spite of
his immense disadvantage, it fell to him to find a place for
the body in the philosophy of human nature, and to incor-
porate the principle thus conceived in laws, usages, and
institutions, with a clearness and general justness of view,
by which Christian learning has done and will yet do
well to profit. What with us is somewhat dubious and
fluctuating both in theory and in practice, with him was
familiar and elementary in both; but the teachers of mental
accomplishment taught also the science, if not the art, of
bodily excellence. Thus, for example, Plato in his Treatise
on the State, has to consider what men are fit to bo chosen
for rulers. They should if possible, he says, have the ad-
vantage of personal beauty. They must be energetic ; and
he therefore proceeds to treat of the character of the
96tX47roves, or diligent man. He must be ready and
keen in study; for human souls are much more cowardly
in strong studios than in exercises of corporal strength ;
as in the former they bear all the burden, instead of sharing
it with the body. But philosophy itself, lie admits, has
fallen into some dishonour from a tendency to partiality in
handling this question. The truly diligent man, then,
must not be halt or one-sided in his diligence. If be be fond
of athletic exercise and of sports, but not apt for learning
and inquiry, then he is but half-diligent. And no less
" lame " will he be, says the philosopher, if addicted to
mental pursuits, ho neglects the training of the body, and
of the organs with which it is endowed. This may servo
for a sample, but it is a sample only, of the largo and com-
plete grasp of the Greek philosophy upon the nature of man;
and I connect this largeness and completeness with the fact
that the Greek, from the nature of his religion, cherished in
a special degree the idea of the near association of human
existence, in soul and body, with that existence which we
necessarily regard as the largest and most complete,namely,
with the Divine. It may indeed be said that the Greek
lowered and contaminated tho Divine idea by weak and by
vile elements carried into it from the human. Yes, this
and much more may be said, and said with truth. Nothing
can be more humbling or more instructive than the total

failure of the Greek mind with all its powers either to at-
tain or even to make progress towards attaining the
greater ends of creation by rendering man either good or
happy. This is the negative but most important purpose
which the Greek of old may have been destined to fulfil;
the purpose of casting down the strongholds of our pride,
by first showing us how great ho is, and then leaving us to
see how little, when standing alone, is all his greatness, if
it be measured with reference to its results in accomplishing
those ends of life without which every other end is vain.
But I am not now engaged in endeavouring to ascertain
what Greek life or what tho Greek mind was in itself and for
itself; nor for what negative or secondary uses the study of
it may be available. I wish to point out in some degree
what it was for a purpose beyond itself, what materials it
was preparing for our use, how it was, if I may so express ,
myself, the secular counterpart of the Gospel, and how it
became, in ono word, the great intellectual factor of the
Christian civilization. Now it is not I think difficult to see
what materials and instruments, such as it furnished, were
required. I will not attempt by argument to show that all
the powers and capacities of man, being the work of God,
must have their proper place in His designs ; and that the
evil in•the world arises not from their use, but from their
misuse, not from their active working each according to its
place in the providential order, but from their having gone
astray, as the planets would if the centripetal force that con-
trols their action were withdrawn. We see, then, in the
Greeks, beyond all question, these two things—first, a pe-
culiar and powerful element of anthropomorphism pervad-
ing their religion, and giving it its distinctive character ;
secondly, a remarkable fullness, largeness, subtlety, eleva-
tion-, and precision in their conception of human nature ;
taking form in, or at least accompanying, an immense vigour
both of speculation and of action ; a language of marvellous
reach, elasticity, variety and power ; a scientific excellence
in art never elsewhere attained ; and an eminence in the
various branches of letters which has given to them, for
more than two thousand years, the place of first authority
in the cultivated world. The Latin literature, though it
has both a character and a purpose of its own, is,
in its most splendid elements, derivative from the
Greek., Now, if wo survey with care and candour the
present wealth of the world, I mean its wealth intel-
lectual, moral, and spiritual—we find that Christianity has
not only contributed to the patrimony of man its brightest
and most precious jewels, but has likewise been what our
Saviour pronounced it, the salt or preserving principle of
all the residue, and has maintained its health, so far as it
has been maintained at all, against corrupting agencies.
But the salt is one thing, the thing salted is another; and
as in the world of nature, so in the world of mind and of
human action, there is much that is outside of Christianity
that harmonises with it, that revolves, so to speak, around
it, but that did not and could not grow out of it. It seems
to have been for the filling up of this outline, for the occu-
pation of this broad sphere of exertion and enjoyment, that
the Greeks were, in the councils of Providence, ordained
to labour; that so the Gospel, produced in the fulness of
time, after the world's long gestation, might have its ac-
complished work in rearing mankind up to his perfection,
first in the spiritual life, but also, and through that spiritual
life, in every form of excellence, for which his varied
powers and capacities have been created. If this be so, it
is quite plain that the Greeks have their place in the pro-
vidential order—ay, and in the Evangelical preparation, as
truly and really as the children of Abraham themselves.
But indeed there is no need, in order to a due appreciation
of our debt to the ancient Grooks,',that we should either
forget or disparage the function which was assigned by the
Almighty Father to His most favoured people. Much pro-
fit, says St. Paul, had the Jew in every way. Ho had the
oracles of God ; ho had the custody of the promises ; he
was the steward of the great and fundamental conception
of the unity of God, the sole and absolute condition under
which the Divine idea could be upheld among men at its
just elevation. No poetry, no philosophy, no art of Greece
ever embraced, in its most soaring and widest conceptions,
that simple law of love towards God and towards our neigh-
bour, on which " two commandments hang all the law and
the prophets," and which supplied the moral basis of the
new dispensation. There is one history, and that the most
touching and most profund of all, for which we should
search in vain through all the pages of the classics—l mean
the history of the human soul in its relations with its Maker
the history of its sin, and grief, and death, and of the way
of its recovery to hope and life, and of enduring joy. For
the exercise of strength and skill, for tho achievements and
for the enchantments of wit, of eloquence, of art, of genius
for the imperial games, of politics and war, let us seek them
on the shores of Greece. But if the first among the pro-
blems of life be how to establish the peace and restore the
balance of our inward being; if the highest of all condi-
dims in the existence of the creature be his aspect towards
the God to whom he owes his being, and in whose great
hand he stands ; then let us make our search elsewhere.
All the wonders of the Greek civilisation heaped together
are less wonderful than is the single Book of Psalms. Pa-
lestine was weak and despised, always obscure, oftentimes
and long trodden down beneath the feet of imperious mas-
ters. Greece for a thousand years,
Confident from foreign purposes,
repelled every invader from her shores, and, fostering her
strength in the keen air of freedom, she defied, and at
length overthrew, the mightiest of empires; and when
finally she felt the resistless grasp of the masters of all the
world, them too, at the very moment of her subjugation,
she subdued to her literature, language, arts, and manners.
Palestine, in a word, had no share of the glories of our
race ; they blaze on every page of the history of Greece
with an overpowering splendour. Greece had valour,
policy, renown, genius, wisdom, wit sho had all, in a
word, that the world could give her; but the flowers of
Paradise, which blossom thinly, blossomed in Palestine
alone. And yet, as the lower parts of our bodily organisa-
tion are not less material than the higher to the safety and
well-being of the whole, or Christianity itself was not
ordained to a solitary existence in man, but to find helps
meet for it in the legitimate use of every faculty, and in the
gradually accumulated treasures of the genius, sagacity, and
industry of the human family. Besides the loftiest pert
of the work of Providence entrusted to the Hebrew race,
there was other work to do, and it was done elsewhere. It
was requisite to make ready the materials not only of a
divine renewal and of a moral harmony for the world, but
also for a thorough and searching culture of every power
and gift of man, in all his relations to the world and to his
kind ; so as to lift up his universal nature to the level upon
which his relation as a creature to his Creator, and as a
child to his father, was about to be established. And the
question arises whether, among the auxiliaries required to
complete the training process for our race, there were not
to be found some which were of a quality, I will not say to
act as a corrective to Christianity, but to act as a corrective
to the narrow views and the excesses which might follow
upon certain modes of conceiving and of applying it.
Doubtless the just idea of their general purpose is that they
wore a collection of implements and materials to assist in
the cultivation of the entire nature of man, and to conse-
crate all his being to the glory and the designs of his
Maker. Yet in part they might have a purpose more spe-
cial still—the purpose of assigning due bonds to the action
of impulses springing out of Christianity itself. Now, that
narrow conception which I have mentioned, of the Jews as
virtually the sole object of the providential designs of
God, while it began doubtless in a devout sentiment, passed
into superstition when it led men to assign to the Jewish
people every imaginable gift and accomplishment, and into
virtual impiety when it came to imply that the Almighty
had little care for the residue of His creatures. And cer-
tainly it was not toScripture itself that opinions like these
were due. In a dissertation " On the Prophecies of the
Messiah Dispersed among the Heathen," Bishop Horsley
has shown what a large amount of testimony is yielded by
the Sacred Books to the remaining knowledge of the true
God among the races in the neighbourhood of Judea.
With them religion seems to have been for long periods,
as was also to no small extent the religious practice
of the Jews, an inconsistent combination of lingering
and struggling truth with rampant error. Melchisedec,
the typo of Christ, Job, one of the chosen patrons
of faith and patience, were of blood foreign to the
patriarchal race; and the same agency of the prophetic
order, which was employed to correct and guide the Jew,
was not withheld from his neighbours ; Balaam, among the
Moabites, was a prophet inspired by the Most High. Of the
minor prophetical books of the Old Testament two are ex-
pressly devoted to setting forth tho burden of Nineveh and
the-dealings of God with its inhabitants; and Eastern Magi
were, in the words of Bishop Horsley, " the first worship-
pers of Mary's Holy Child." A system of religion, however
absolutely perfect for its purpose, however divine in its
conception and expression, yet of necessity becomes human
too, from the first moment of its contact with humanity
from the very time, that is to say, when it begins to do its
proper work by laying hold upon the hearts and minds of
men, mingling, as the leaven in the dough, with all that
they contain, and unfolding and applying itself in the life
'and conduct of the individual and in the laws, institutions,
and usages of society. In tho building up of the human
temple, the several portions of the work, while sustaining
and strengthening each other, confine each other also, like
the stones of a wall, to their proper place and office in the
fabric. Divine truth contained in the gospel, is addressed
to the wants and uses of a nature not simple but manifold,
and is manifold itself ; though dependent upon one princi-
ciple it consists of many parts, and in order to preserve re-
ciprocally the duo place and balance of those parts, means
that we call human aro available, as well as means more
obviously divine; and secular forms and social influences,
all adjusted by one and the same Governor of the world,
aro made to serve the purposes that have their highest ex-
pression in the kingdom of grace. The gospel aims not at
destroying this equilibrium, but at restoring it ; and in the
restoration it accepts, nay courts, and by natural law re-
quires, the aid of secondary means. It is manifest, indeed,
that there was in Christianity that which men might easily
and innocently carry into such an excess, as, though it
would have ceased to be Christian, would not have ceased
to seem so, and would under a sacred title have tended to
impair the healthful and complete development of his
being. Rousseau objects to the Christian system, that it is
opposed to social good order and prosperity, because it
teaches a man to regard himself as a citizen of another
world, and thus diverts him from the performance of his
duties as a member of civil society. "Far from attaching
the hearts of the citizens to the state, it detaches them from
it, as from all other earthly things. I know nothing more
opposed to the social spirit. . . A society of true

Christians would no longer be a society of men. • '
What matters it tobofree or a slave in this vale of misery 7'
The ono thing needful is to go to paradise, and submission
to calamity is an additional means of getting there." In
an age and in a country such as this, it is not required, it
is scarcely allowable, to seem to depreciate those various
forms of self-restraint and self-conquest which the spirit
of man, vexed in its sore conflict with the flesh and with
the world, has in other times employed to establish the
supremacy of the soul, by trampling upon sense and ap-
petite and all corporal existence. Even in tho time of the
apostles, it seems to have been manifest that a tendency t°
excess in this direction had begun to operate in the Chris-
tian church. As time passed on, and as the spirit of the
mirenewed world became more rampant within the sacred
,Iffeeinet, the reaction against it likewise grow more veil
ment and eager. The deserts of Egypt Were peopled with
thousands upon thousands of anchorites, who foreswel.e
.
every human relation, extinguished every appetite, and
absorbed every motive, every idea, every movement of our
complex nature in the groat but single fuuctiou of the re:-
lation to the unseen world. True and earnest in the!:
Christian warfare, they, notwithstanding, represent a spirt
of exaggeration, which it was necessary to check, uproot-
ing what they ought rather to have pruned, and destr°Y;
ing what they ought to have chastised, and mastered, °h
alm,_a
converted to purposes of good. That internecine war
sin, which is of the very essence of Christianity, seems t°
have been understood by them as a war against
th
whole visible and sensible world, against the intellectual
life, against a great portion of their own normal nature'
and though as :regarded themselves, even their evigge-
ration was pardonable, and in many respects a noble err''
yet its unrestricted sway and extension would have lel
man a maimed, a stunted, a distorted creature. Autissii
would have done more than this. By severing the Gor's
from all else that is beautiful and glorious in creation,
would have exposed the spiritual teacher to a resistance
not only vehoment but just, and would have placed di!
kingdom of grace in permanent and hopeless discord wit°
the kingdoms of nature, reason, truth, and beauty, Icing;
doms established by the very same Almighty hand. Tb°,7,
principles of repression, which wore indispensable as t"
medicine of man, was unfit for his food. What was requistt:ol
however, was not to expel them, and thereby to revert
the mental riot, and the moral uncleanness of heathenism'
but to check their usurpations, and to keep them seithia
their bounds ; and this was to be effected not by Pwitibsit
tion or disparagement, but by vindicating for every
and powor,and work, of human nature, and for eve*. °mc°
of life, its proper place in the Divine order and constitution
of the world. The seed of this comprehensive philosopil
supplied by the words of the Apostle :—" Whatsoever
was
things aro true, whatsoever things are honest, whatseeer_
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whats°aveill.
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report:
there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think °0
these things." And so the solid and fruitful materials of th
Greek civilisation came in aid, by a wise Providence, of ti;:as
humanising principles and precepts of the Gospel, to a.ss-of
in securing a well-balanced development of the powers
the Christian system, and to prevent the instrunlents,cisia;
signed for eradicating the seeds of disease from subvert(
the yet higher agencies appointed for the fostering nati"t;
velopment of life in every region of our being and our aci;
vity. Volumes might be written with profit to trace td,
application of the principles touched upon in this, a
dress to the whole history of the Church, °''A the
tllO
Christian civilisation, down to the present day ; an Tbot
'more we said, the more there would remain to sat. 5.0
which I have now attempted is no more, in effects
"
a suggestion which may open the way for others ls,
a wide and ever-widening field. And if that suggesti°ll
just it will be difficult to deny its importance. Let us gli/lif cais
in a few concluding words at some of its results. Virs,",bo
places on high and safe grounds that genial primacy
Greeks in letters and in human culture, to the acknovriel;
ment of which Christian Europe has been guided °Di
much by a logical process, or a definite forethought, as
a sure instinct with the after confirmation of a long Oilre
rience. Nor can this primacy be justly disturbed 11 tof
multiplication, and the energetic and growing Pllrsilheit
those branches of knowledge for which this age has :Ara
so remarkable. For Aristotle it was excusable to reni.;" s
the heavenly bodies as objects nobler than luau" tae
Christianity has sealed and stamped the title of our r 5. is
with theal
the crown and flower of the visible creation ;
irreversible sentence in their favour, the studies, ll eio9ll a
studies of humanity, shoudl not resent' nor fear,' but 6°lllw
favour and encourage all other noble research
its object the globe on which we live, the tribes with siici,
it is peopled in land, air, and sea, the powers drawn fcsi er
from nature or yet latent in her unexplored receaSe'
the spaces of that vast system—
' " Ultra flammantia ramie mundi," s re°
,„
to which our earth belongs. But more than this; Ws
in times when the whole nature of our relation to the "--:
seen world is widely, eagerly, and assiduously questions;
Sometimes we aro told of general laws, so conceived es 0
be practically independent either of a lawgiver oral ;
Sometimes of a necessity working all things to latifle
results, but seeming to crush and bury under theln;;,,
ruins of our will, our freedom, our personal responsibtfl
Sometimes of a private judgment, which we are to s"
upon thishard condition of taking nothing upon trust? i°
passing by, at the outset of our mental life, the wi_fr
preceding education of the world, of owning no cis"" t:f
those who have gone before without a regular process -
proof; in a word, of beginning anew each man for hit
self; a privilege which I had thought was restrictea -
the lower orders of creation,where the parent infuses u°
judices into its litter or its fry. Such are the clouds career w;
in heaven, and pass between us and the sun, and make
idly think that what they see not is not, and blot the Pr°-;
pects of what is in so many and such true respects a
and a hop3ful age. It is I think an observation of
Augustine, that those periods are critical and forreibbi"
when the power of putting questions runs greatly in 3,,
vance of the pains to answer them. Such appears tolleds'''
the period in which we live. And among us, who are s°),
in any manner to move in the world of thought, 1/7°,,,Tesst
ask who is sufficient for these things ? Who can sy"'"'
and
and firm hand sever the transitory from the durable, ilo
the accidental from the essential, in old opinions ?
can combine, in the measures which reason would : of
scribe, reverence and gratitude to the past with sell-rest?
the new claims, new means, new duties of the
pr
Who can bo stout and earnest to do battle for the ts‘ri,
and yet hold sacred, as he ought, the freedom of iMitillete
and cherish, as he ought, a chivalry of controversl t let
the ancient chivalry of arms ? Ono persuasion at lea! of
us embrace : one error let us avoid. Lot us be persiliwepa
this, that Christianity will, by her inherent resources all
for herself a philosophy equal to all the shifting atipstor
the growing wants of the time. Let us avoid thocil
l
of seeking to cherish a Chistianity of isolation. The vn-Ic4
tianity which is now and hereafter to flourish, and,tlll;:tie•
its power in the inner circles of human thought, t° olg
once ultimately, in some manner more adequate than -asel
the masses of mankind, must be such as of old the W16,1;D8
of God was described. "For in her is an undo-stall...de
spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtil, lively, clear, titis
filed, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing Itilisci
good, quick, which cannot be lotted, ready to do goc" 'forf
to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all P°f tlts
overseeing all things. .. . For she is the brightnoss of
everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the Os/Ts-Ted
God, and the imago of His goodness." It must bs' sof
full with human and genial warmth, in close sYMPtIO
with every true instinct and need of man, regardful of
otB
just titles of every faculty of his nature, apt to ass°eDic#
with and make its own all, under whatever name, litoti
goes to enrich and enlarge the patrimony of the race. e 0
therefore it is well that we should look out over the Plos
of history, and see if haply its records, the more the or
unfolded, do or do not yield us new materials for ti,° 6000,
port of faith. Me at least, for one, experience has
vinced that, just as fresh wonder and confirmed conk ficliflit
flow from examining the structure of the universe 1%0 ls
countless inhabitants, and their respective adaptatitl-ons
the purposes of their being and to the use of nulls, tte,
' results will flow in yet larger measure from tract ss'i
footmarks of the Most High in the seemingly bey!, bI
e'
paths of human history. Everywhere, beforeus, and -1
Or
us, and around us, and above us and beneath, w° silt'
the power which—
Lives through all life, extends through all extent'
Spreads undivided, operates unspent. doero
And, together with the power, we shall find the g°°bst
and the wisdom, of which that sublime power fs,,-ste
minister. Nor can that wisdom and that goodues",, lye
where shine forth with purer splendour than WI/es.- 03'1
Divine forethought, working from afar, in many Pl°,,ces- act!
through many generations, so adjusts beforehand ',se 71
and the affairs of men as to let them all converge' U 9
vh COY
single point, upon that redemption of the world, vnlsosa;
made Man, in which all the rays of His glory are , CI; sliti°
trated, and from which they pour forth a flood m
light even over the darkest and saddest places of cr-asorai
Mr. Vice-Chancellor, professors, and cuticula, Sjec;
mend to your notice and your impartial research th° °.130141/'s
of the foregoing remarks. It is at least a less It V
offering than the mere commonplaces of taking leave'greti'
claim ono remaining moment to convey to you 14,i oVst
I f
tudo for your confidence,`you to assure that I sh;ro s"
feel a lively interest in all that pertains to the vrej" e
n.
uil
your famous University, and to bid you roses
farewell.

EADVEItTISEMENT. 1-llolloWay's Ointment and hOtifijA
Sores which are daily extending, ulcers which are '-g5
deepening, may be arrested in their torturing Inlie:0111
induced to take healthy action by applying thw 006 st,
ointment and taking ing these purifying pills. It s°°f
distempers of and extracts all morbid humours Jr- a Pi
skin. Old ulcers of the legs, inflammations c4.5,4c5:0111
varicose veins and cramps of the lower limbs, G 55 ,:fsilis:
bene
eased and shortly cured by Holloway's,
which represses excessive and stiraulateobreitl:'
ointment
gish vascular and nervous action. In constitutions 001
ing down under piles, fistulas, and other 'llil
maladies, a few applications of this cooling tole'
give comfort, and persistence in its use will cifoct 5
Pjj
London : Printed and Published by WILLIAM So't! 0,
of No. 112, Strand, Ptinter, at Tit^ Sus eon`
Strand, in the Precinct of, the Savoy.i'
in. ae -9
Bliddlenex.—§aturday, November 4, 1865.