The World's Greatest Books - Volume 13 Part 27

Make not more business necessary than is so; and rather lessen than augment work for thyself.

Upon the whole matter employ thy thoughts as thy business requires, and let that have place according to merit and urgency, giving everything a review and due digestion, and thou wilt prevent many errors and vexations, as well as save much time to thyself in the course of thy life.

_FRIENDs.h.i.+P_

Friends.h.i.+p is an union of spirits, a marriage of hearts, and the bond thereof virtue.

There can be no friends.h.i.+p where there is no freedom. Friends.h.i.+p loves a free air, and will not be penned up in strait and narrow enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is 'twill easily forgive, and forget, too, upon small acknowledgements.

Friends are true twins in soul; they sympathise in everything, and have the same love and aversion.

One is not happy without the other, nor can either be miserable alone.

As if they could change bodies, they take their turns in pain as well as in pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse conditions.

What one enjoys the other cannot want. Like the primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no property but in one another.

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.

Death cannot kill what never dies.

Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friends.h.i.+p.

If absence be not death, neither is theirs.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

For they must needs be present that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine gla.s.s they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die yet their friends.h.i.+p and society are in the best sense ever present, because immortal.

_OF CHARITY_

Charity has various senses, but is excellent in all of them.

It imports, first, the commiseration of the poor and unhappy of mankind, and extends an helping hand to mend their condition.

Next, charity makes the best construction of things and persons; it makes the best of everything, forgives everybody, serves all, and hopes to the end.

It is an universal remedy against discord, an holy cement for mankind.

And, lastly, 'tis love to G.o.d and the brethren which raises the soul above all earthly considerations; and as it gives a taste of heaven upon earth, so 'tis heaven in the fulness of it hereafter to the truly charitable here.

This is the n.o.blest sense charity has, after which all should press as being the more excellent way.

Would G.o.d this divine virtue were more implanted and diffused among mankind, the pretenders to Christianity especially; and then we should certainly mind piety more than controversy, and exercise love and compa.s.sion instead of censuring and persecuting one another in any manner whatsoever.

ERNEST RENAN

LIFE OF JESUS

Ernest Renan, the most widely read writer of religious history in his day, was forty years old when the "Vie de Jesus," his most popular book, appeared as the first volume of a "History of the Origins of Christianity." He was born at Treguier in Brittany, France, Feb. 27, 1823, a Breton through his father and a Gascon through his mother. Educated for the Church, under priestly tutelage, he specialised in the study of Oriental languages, with the result that he found it impossible to accept the traditional view of Christian and Jewish history. After holding an appointment in the Department of Ma.n.u.scripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale, he became Professor of Hebrew in the College de France. At the age of 55 he was elected a member of the French Academy. His works include "A History of Semitic Languages," a "History of the Origins of Christianity," and a "History of the People of Israel," besides many volumes of essays and criticism, and several autobiographical books of great charm. Everybody read Renan, and disagreed with him. The orthodox rejected his opinions, and the unorthodox his sentiment. But his books marked an epoch in religious criticism. "The Life of Jesus"

was the outcome of a visit to Palestine in pursuance of research studies of Phoenician civilisation. A feature is the importance given to scenic surroundings which he could so happily describe. Renan died on October 2, 1892, widely admired, honoured, and also condemned, and was buried in the Pantheon.

_THE HOUR AND THE MAN_

The princ.i.p.al event in the history of the world is the revolution by which the n.o.blest portions of humanity have forsaken the ancient religions of Paganism for a religion founded on the Divine Unity, the Trinity, and the Incarnation of the Son of G.o.d. Nearly a thousand years were required to achieve this conversion. The new religion itself took at least three hundred years in its formation. But the origin of the revolution is a historical event which happened in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. At that time there lived a man of supreme personality, who, by his bold originality, and by the love which he was able to inspire, became the object, and settled the direction, of the future faith of mankind.

The great empires which succeeded each other in Western Asia annihilated all the hopes of the Jewish race for a terrestial kingdom, and cast it back on religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre pa.s.sion. The establishment of the Roman empire exalted men's imaginations, and the great era of peace on which the world was entering gave birth to illimitable hopes. This confused medley of dreams found at length an interpretation in the peerless man to whom the universal conscience has decreed the t.i.tle of the Son of G.o.d, and that with justice, since he gave religion an impetus greater than that which any other man has been capable of giving--an impetus with which, in all probability, no further advance will be comparable.

_YOUTH AND EDUCATION_

Jesus was born at Nazareth, a small town in Galilee, which before his time was not known to fame. The precise date of his birth is unknown. It took place in the reign of Augustus, probably some years before the year one of the era which all civilised peoples date from the day of his birth. Jesus came from the ranks of the common folk. His father, Joseph, and his mother, Mary, were people in humble circ.u.mstances, artisans living by their handiwork in the state, so usual in the East, which is neither ease nor poverty. The family was somewhat large. Jesus had brothers and sisters who seem to have been younger than he. They all remained obscure. The four men who were called his brothers, and among whom one at least, James, became of great importance in the early years of the development of Christianity, were his cousins-german. The sisters of Jesus were married at Nazareth, and there he spent the early years of his youth.

The town must have presented the poverty-stricken aspect still characteristic of villages in the East. We see to-day the streets where Jesus played as a child in the stony paths or little lanes which separate the dwellings from each other. No doubt the house of Joseph much resembled these poor domiciles, lighted only by the doorway, serving at once as workshop, kitchen, and bedroom, and having for furniture a mat, some cus.h.i.+ons on the ground, one or two clay pots, and a painted chest. But the surroundings are charming, and no place in the world could be so well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness. If we ascend to the plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, above the highest houses, the landscape is magnificent. An enchanted circle, cradle of the Kingdom of G.o.d, was for years the horizon of Jesus, and indeed during his whole life he went but little beyond these, the familiar bounds of his childhood.

No doubt he learnt to read and write according to the Eastern method; but it is doubtful if he understood the Hebrew writings in their original tongue. His biographers make him cite translations in the Aramean language. Nevertheless, it would be a great error to imagine that Jesus was what we should call an ignorant man. Refinement of manners and acuteness of intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education. In all probability Jesus did not know Greek. His mother tongue was the Syrian dialect, mingled with Hebrew. No element of secular teaching reached him. He was ignorant of all beyond Judaism; his mind kept that free innocence which an extended and varied culture always weakens. Happily, he was also ignorant of the grotesque scholasticism which was taught at Jerusalem, and which was soon to const.i.tute the Talmud. The reading of the books of the Old Testament made a deep impression on him, especially the book of Daniel, and the religious poetry of the Psalms was in marvellous accordance with his lyrical soul, and all his life was his sustenance and support. That he had no knowledge of the general state of the world is evident from every feature of his most authentic discourses, and he never conceived of aristocratic society, save as a young villager who sees the world through the prism of his simplicity. Although born at a time when the principles of positive science had already been proclaimed, he lived in entirely supernatural ideas. To him the marvellous was not the exceptional but the normal statf of things, since to him the whole course of things was the result of the free-will of the Deity. This led to a profound conception of the close relations of man with G.o.d.

_IDYLLIC SURROUNDINGS_

A mighty dream haunted the Jewish people for centuries, constantly renewing its youth. Judaea believed that she possessed divine promises of a boundless future. In combination with the belief in the Messiah and the doctrine of an approaching renewal of all things, the dogma of the resurrection had emerged and produced a great fermentation from one end of the Jewish world to the other. Jesus, as soon as he had any thought of his own, entered into the burning atmosphere created in Palestine by these ideas, and his soul was soon filled with them. A beautiful natural environment imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all the dreams of Galilee. During the months of March and April that green, shady, smiling land is a carpet of flowers of an incomparable variety of colours. The animals are small and extremely gentle--delicate and playful turtle-doves, blackbirds so light that they rest on a blade of gra.s.s without bending it, tufted larks which almost venture under the feet of the traveller, little river-tortoises with mild bright eyes, storks of gravely modest mien, which, casting aside all timidity, allow men to come quite near them, and indeed seem to invite his approach. In no country in the world do the mountains extend with more harmonious outlines, or inspire higher thought. Jesus seems to have had an especial love for them. The most important events of his divine career took place upon the mountains. This beautiful country in his time was filled with prosperity and gaiety. There Jesus lived and grew up. True, every year he knew the sweet solemnity of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and it is believed that early in life the wilderness had some influence on his development, but it was when he returned into his beloved Galilee that he once more found his Heavenly Father in the midst of green hills and clear fountains, and women and children who with joyous soul awaited the salvation of Israel.

_A CHARACTER TO LOVE_

Jesus followed the trade of his father, which was that of a carpenter.

In this there was nothing irksome or humiliating. The Jewish custom required that a man devoted to intellectual work should learn a handicraft. Jesus never married. His whole capacity for love was concentrated upon that which he felt was his heavenly vocation. He was no doubt more beloved than loving. Thus, as often happens in very lofty natures, tenderness of heart was in him transformed into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, a universal charm.

Through what stages did the ideas of Jesus progress during this obscure early period of his life? A high conception of the Divinity, the creation of his own great mind, was the guiding principle to which his power was due. G.o.d did not speak to him as to one outside of himself; G.o.d was in him; he felt himself with G.o.d, and from his own heart drew all he said of his Father. The highest consciousness of G.o.d which ever existed in the heart of man was that of Jesus; but he never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was G.o.d. From the first he looked upon his relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d as that of a son with his father.

Herein was his great originality; in this he had nothing in common with his race. Neither Jew nor Musselman has understood this sweet theology of love. The G.o.d of Jesus is our Father. He is the G.o.d of humanity. The Jesus who founded the true Kingdom of G.o.d, the kingdom of the humble and meek, was the Jesus of early life--of those chaste and simple days when the voice of his Father re-echoed within him in clearer tones. It was then, for some months, perhaps a year, that G.o.d truly dwelt on earth.