Our fathers required no volumes on the Humanism of the Bible. They felt themselves close-linked with its heroes; Patriarchs, Judges, Warriors, Kings, and Prophets were their kith and kin, not in blood, but in the nearer relationship of human experience. Saul, in his pride, his jealousy and desolate death, stood in warning beside them; David, pattern of faith and fortitude in adversity, was at their right hand, so that in their distresses men would take courage, remembering that David also had cried unto the Lord and been delivered. But the perspective of the years has ceased to be foreshortened, and between our generation and the old world of the Bible a great gulf now seems fixed. Nevertheless our fathers were right, and we are wrong. Saul and David and the men of the Bible are not separated from us by 3,000 years, nor yet by one year, for difference of race and custom are trivialities compared with the fundamental conditions of life and the unalterable principles of character. Our predecessors may have made too light of the differences, but that is a small fault compared with the modern tendency to ignore the resemblances: not to ask “What do these men and these events say to us concerning the eternal things we share with them?” is to miss the one thing needful. To illustrate the argument, recollect that skeleton of dates, William the Conqueror 1066 ... which not so long ago did duty in our schools for the record of the glory of England. What could have been more ineffective{215} for revealing the soul of history? Now-a-days, the tale is better told but, even so, be the events narrated never so graphically, unless they are conceived in relation to ourselves we are little benefited. To use the famous simile of the prophet, bone may come to its bone, and sinews be upon them, and flesh come up and skin cover them above, until the very semblance of men rises before our eyes; but there will be no breath in them. Only when it is realised how out of the living past has grown the living present, only then enters the breath of God into the men of old and they live and stand up upon their feet, an exceeding great army—to our aid in the shaping of what is to be. History is profitable in so far as its significance for the present is understood.[100] Thus, with fine insight, the Jews perceived that even their majestic Law would be of no avail if it were heard only as the recital of words delivered long ago at Sinai, and accordingly the exhortation ascribed to Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy comes to its climax in this deep saying: The commandment is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say “Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it down unto us, and make us hear it, that we may do it?”... But the Word is very nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.[101]
And so also in like manner this account of the history behind the Jewish proverbs has not been told in order to evoke for a brief moment nerveless phantoms of the Wise in ancient Israel, but with the hope that a voice would be heard saying even of this Word “It is very nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.” What is the significance for us of these men and their experiences?
Consider some of the features of this Movement, if so precise a term may for convenience be applied to the easy,{216} natural, teaching of Wisdom. In the first place observe the thorough and effective contact established by the teachers of Wisdom with the people they sought to reach. One of the main problems confronting Christianity is the severance of the potential influence of its Churches from the life of the people; verily Mahomet sits waiting for the mountain. What then? Ought the Churches to be abandoned, and men go a-worshipping in the market-place? “Impractical—at the best it would soon lose its effect—the experiment has been made, with sadly limited results”: a thousand valid objections! But the problem must not be dismissed so lightly with a bare consideration of its obvious difficulties, for the issues at stake are too serious; the bulk of the population live perilously free from the stimulus of any Ideal, whether self-sought or impressed from without by the teaching of others. Seeing then that the Wise succeeded where we have missed the mark, their ways must at least deserve a scrutiny; here is a method by which the poor were preached to, and religion stood daily in the streets and morals in the market-place; here is idealism put in language the unlearned could both comprehend and recollect. Indeed the proverb was wonderfully suited to their needs, for even its riddles were easily solved, not darkening counsel but devised only to awaken curiosity and so assist the slow and simple mind. Of course a slavish imitation of the Wise-men’s procedure is out of the question in modern circumstances, but slavish imitation is not suggested. Said Sir Joshua Reynolds when urging the students of the Royal Academy to the study of the Old Masters, “The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention.” There is a force of idealism latent in almost all men, but it requires to be brought to the surface, examined, criticised and judiciously directed to the attainment of practical objects; otherwise the greater{217} part of its potential energy will never be brought into action; and in this easy-going land of ours there is more than normal scope for increased discipline of the mind. We can afford to think much harder than we have ever yet done without losing the virtue of humorous, tolerant good-nature. As Mr. Clutton Brock has said recently, “The fact that some thinking is bad is not a reason why we should not think at all. The Germans have been encouraged by their bad thinking to exercise certain virtues perversely and to bad ends, but still to exercise them in a manner which has astonished the world; while we have been little encouraged by thinking, good or bad, to exercise any virtues.”[102] There is ample room for more outspoken interest in the ends and principles of human life, more earnest and stringent consideration of the problems of social organisation—provided our discussions be undertaken, not in the spirit of silly contention, mere bolstering up of unconsidered prejudice, but in a sincerity that will be both more critical and yet more humbly eager, for truth’s sake, to learn one from another. For it is not division of opinion, or even real conflict of interest that prevents and retards reform, so much as the dead weight of ignorance, of indifference and of paltry pride in argument—the very sins which in the past were the prime cause of the evils that call for remedy.
No less than the ancient Hebrews we moderns stand in need of the exhortation to let Wisdom enter into our hearts and knowledge be pleasant unto our souls (cp. Pr. 210). Neither with all our heart, nor even with all our mind, far less with all our soul, have we yet sought her whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace (Pr. 317); nor have we understood sufficiently that she is a tree of life to all that lay hold on her, and happy is every one that retaineth her (Pr. 318). Says a later Jewish proverb,{218} Lackest thou Wisdom, what hast thou acquired? Hast acquired Wisdom, what lackest thou? (C. 93.)
Secondly, the constant intimate contact that the Wise maintained with the actualities of men’s ordinary experience was beneficial not only to the taught but to the teachers. It kept the Wise in touch with work-a-day problems (the most difficult of tasks for the idealistic thinker), and so helped to make their toil productive. It taught them how to bring Heavenly Wisdom down from the right hand of God that she might dwell with men, and make their homes pure and loving, and their business just, and their pleasures clean. And herein is a thought of no little encouragement for preachers and teachers in these days of not overcrowded Churches. Somehow it seems that personal contact is invaluable in the moral and spiritual education of man. That is why the leading article, with its scores of thousands of readers, may sometimes have less effect than a good sermon heard by a few hundred. The Press addresses us from an Olympian but distant Fleet Street, thundering at us—but in cold print; whereas the parson and the teacher, if he is a true man, somewhere and to some few is a neighbour and a friend. However excellent the Manual of Ethics, it will not serve to influence the lives of many. The Son of Man, it seems, must come eating and drinking and teaching in our streets.
In the next place, this Movement is an interesting and important example of independent as opposed to systematic instruction, illustrating both the weaknesses as well as the strength of pronounced individualism, and supporting the opinion that, if only one safeguard be present, the advantages of individualism outweigh its dangers. Teachers less restricted than the Wise it is difficult to imagine. Each was free to develop his own opinions on the nature of life and the principles of success and failure, even to the point of open agnosticism. What prevents{219} such licence from becoming chaos? The reply indicated by the Wisdom Movement is that freedom, even extreme freedom, of judgment in matters of conduct and faith will not result in chaos provided there is an underlying unity of aim. All the Wise were lovers of Wisdom. They conceived their theme in different fashions, but they had all the same intention—to teach and to practise Wisdom and not Folly; hence, despite the diversity in their proverbs, the shifting standpoints, the variety of ethical standards, even the contradictions of advice, their teaching was ultimately effective. If we had had space to consider their work in relation to other movements in the intellectual life of that period, both in Palestine and also in the wider world, it would have been easy to show that the immaturities in the Wise-men’s thoughts, the uncertainties of their faith and ethic (the very points on which the cynical would pounce as evidence of failure) on a wider and wiser survey of the facts were in reality co-operating influences, clearing the way for a deeper, fuller, faith. Truth is eternal, but men’s apprehension of it is progressive; and it should be insisted that, given the presence of one fundamental purpose so that an ultimate unity of spirit must necessarily exist, divergence of opinion, even on matters of high importance, does not indicate weakness or indecision or decay, but rather is a sign of vitality and hope. The reason for this is obvious. Final statements can be made only with regard to the conceptions of the abstract sciences, such as mathematics, or to the judgments we can sometimes pass on lost causes; and on the other hand power to perceive the imperfection of present attainment has ever been, and still is, the prime condition of human progress: “God,” said John Robinson, minister of the Pilgrim Fathers, “has yet more truth to break forth out of His Word.”
The bearing on modern Christianity is not far to seek. A doctor recently remarked to the present writer{220} that one had only to enter the several Churches of a certain town to discover that Christians were now in hopeless confusion, ignorant as to what they did or did not believe, and that if the professed followers of the faith could not state their doctrine coherently, others might well be excused from attempting the task of ascertaining what Christianity now meant. The argument is not unusual, but it is profoundly mistaken. It might have been retorted that divergencies of medical opinion (and many patients will bear witness that they are neither slight nor few) are no indication whatever of the essential unsoundness of the science of medicine, but rather the guarantee of its advance into more accurate knowledge. Moreover had the critic been in actual touch with the feeling and activities of the Churches in question, he would have recognised that the points of disagreement, though important, were not upon the vital question of faith in God and general attitude towards life; so that whilst he personally might still have been unable to accept Christian belief, he could not possibly have formulated such an indictment as appears above. The real peril of Christian theology has not been vagueness, but the Hellenic tendency to essay the definition of all things to the last iota. But from the perils inherent in that attitude Christianity has been delivered by the passionate instinct of mankind for truth, and by the reforming energy of great individuals; and will be delivered, so long as the Church has faith in the guiding Spirit of God.
There is value in the Wise-men’s witness to the intimate relation between faith and morality. The religion of Israel in its higher development is magnificent in its clear recognition that the claim of God upon man is absolute, complete and not partial—if there be one God, Creator of heaven and earth, then certainly He besets us behind and before and lays His hand upon us—and that the love of God and the love of our fellow-men must be indissolubly related, faith{221} being the inspiration of morality, and moral action the necessary outcome of faith. With these sublime beliefs, proclaimed by Prophets and Psalmists, the Wise were in accord: they also in their more homely fashion recognised the universality of the Divi............