ARTICLE IV.

LITERATURE AND THE RELIGIOUS FEELING.

BY THE REV. a. a. bERLE, BOSTON, MASS.

NEAR the close of his introductory lecture on the "Nature and Elements of Poetry," Mr. E. C. Stedman, after contrasting the material spirit of an age of discovery and mechanical invention with the spirit and the feeling of the poet, applying the principle which he finds in the contrast, has this to say about Immortality and Poetry: "Theology teaching immortality now finds science deducing the progressive existence of the soul as an inference from the law of evolution. Poetry finds science offering it fresh discovery as the terrace from which to essay new flights. While realizing this aid a temporary disenchantment is observed. The public imagination is so intent upon the marvels of force, life, psychology, that it concerns itself less with the poet's ideals. Who cares for the ode pronounced at the entrance of this Exposition while impatient to reach the exhibits within the grounds? Besides, fields of industrial achievement are opened by each investigation, enhancing human welfare and absorbing our energies. The soldiers of this noble war do not meditate and idealize; their prayer and song are an impulse, not an occupation."

These words, together with the argument and plea of which they form a part, contain the essence of a contrast which is one of the most significant in the history and development of literature. They point out what is the exact nature of the Zeit-geist, and also what the idealizing arts and professions have to expect so long as it prevails. They are

a simple and truthful presentation of the eternal opposition of two abiding principles in life and civilization.

It is the function of literature to be perpetually the medium through which the ruling motives and impulses of mankind find their expression. It may take the highest or the lowest form, from the daily record of current events to the profoundest exposition of the most philosophic themes, it still derives its being from the intimacy of its matter with the facts and experiences of the common life. It is the attempt of the human mind and heart to perpetuate itself in visible symbols, and ally itself with the great world movements which make the sum of the human hope in all ages and places. How truly this function stands out as the real inner motive and power of literature can be seen in some of its broader relations as these have unfolded themselves in the development of both literature and history.

Literatures have always found their bloom periods when the tides of national feeling have been the highest. This rule is exactly the same, whether the literature be ancient, mediæval, or modern. Take, for example, the literature of the Hebrews. Note the so-called Mosaic books, which have been the spring of the legal line of human culture from time immemorial, and their production is found to spring from a period when the national feeling was at one of the high tides, and the productive capacity found aid in its work by the reaction of an impassioned and highly wrought feeling of national greatness and destiny. The prophecies of Isaiah and of Jeremiah, the Psalms and the book of Job, and also the prophecy of Ezekiel, are all similar evidences of the productive force of a national life moved upon by consciousness of crucial times.

The literature of Greece is equally illustrative; so also is that of Rome, of Germany, of England, and of America. The reason for the fact thus everywhere most manifest lies in the one already stated, that the impulse which makes

a literature is the one that makes a nation. It is the alliance of the highest and holiest aims of a communal life wrought into the expression of that life by means of language. Life and literature are thus seen really to be but different names for the same thing, with only this difference, that, while in the actual living beings the transitory elements must be taken into account and reckoned with, literature as a rule preserves only the high-water marks and gives the startingpoint for the next advance. But this is not all. The national life thus seeking to be expressed is almost invariably represented in certain great and overshadowing figures who in themselves very often embody the elements to be preserved. Thus, again, in the earliest Hebrew period of history Moses stands forth with a distinctness that forces his contemporaries into well-nigh absolute obscurity; the later period has its Isaiah or its Jeremiah or its Ezekiel or its David. Lessing in his period, Goethe in his, and Shakespeare in his are also examples. This introduces the biographical element as an almost constant factor in literature. It may be in the form of narrative, or the figure himself may appear only through the mighty works which he produces; but there, behind the movement and within the work, is the man himself, and around him must the literary development in no inconsiderable measure revolve. Literature, then, is not only national feeling, but personal, individual feeling as well; and since the lesser minds of the generations but echo the feeling of the great few, there is thus established the personal bond which makes a truly national literature also a personal history.

One other point must here be made clear.

Antagonis

tic to this expression of the higher life and impulses of the race or nation is the motive of material future or possession. There is no great production marking the advancing lines of human hope and appealing to the loftier sentiments that does not stand out against the dull, unappreciative environment

of contemporary thought always mistaken and usually unappreciated. The thinker-but, as Carlyle has it, how few think-and the poet, the one by exposition, and the other by imagination, leading out into the larger life and hope, have ever stood hermits among the dullards whom they sought to bestir with their own sublime aims. Here is the eternal contrast appearing in the battle of the material with the ideal, and the warfare which once begun has never found its end. 'Tis true, and pity 'tis, that none will read the ode, and those who do will hardly comprehend.

It is interesting, then, to find this fact given such clear and unmistakable statement by the writer of the "Nature and Elements of Poetry." Had we heard it from a theologian, we might have felt that he was wailing because he was left behind in the fallen ranks of discarded leaders. But such is not the case; and the principle which stands out first in the Master's teaching of the battle of the standpoints of life and its use is thus finally recognized and expressed in the teeth of a materializing century, which will have odes indeed, but will not read them, and cannot understand them anyway. This is the truth which theologians have for ages been battling to have recognized. They have been the messengers of the ideal, and have been ranked with the poets as impracticable dreamers, but they have won the struggle. The issue is at least clearly made.

The uses of the principle which is now set forth for the science of biblical literary criticism is one of commanding importance. It designates a difference between critics and critics. It clearly differentiates the idealistic from the materialistic critic, and thus creates the wide gulf between them in their relative influence and authority. Throughout the Scriptures there seems to be tacitly made precisely the plea which Mr. Stedman makes for poetry. Their purpose is larger than the present tense of the writer. material and temporary. It is ideal and eternal. It is not

The aim is not

linked to interests which are rooted in the then existing conditions, but grounded in eternal principles of righteousness. It is, in a word, not Ptolemaic, but Copernican. It requires to be transcended, to be interpreted, and in the largest hope and the most expanded thought and imagination only will be discerned and comprehended. Criticism has from the Bible, thus, a perpetual challenge to nobility of purpose and moral purity as to method and spirit. If science comes to the aid of immortality as an inference from the law of evolution —a weak sort of aid in this case it must be confessednevertheless the doctrine will remain as it is, one without the narrow bounds of scientific certainty in the large realm of a truly divine and limitless obscurity. Immortality scientifically demonstrated, were such a thing possible, would be in the highest degree repugnant both to cultivated feeling and the religious sense. But there need be no fear; it never will be thus demonstrated. The ideal, so far as it is represented in the doctrine of immortality, must remain in the domain of the undemonstrable, and there give in the faith and refined imagination of the disciple its various content.

There is just one possible form of an objection that should be considered here. Has the realism of modern literature no modification for this conclusion? Absolutely none. As record, it is descriptive and real; as influence, if it be fortunate enough to have influence, it must assimilate itself to the ideal; in a power that is a dominant one in human life it cannot be realism to lose that power in the magnification of petty details. If it pass the bounds of the passing moment, and live in the memory, to be incorporated into the body of the substance and permanent thought of mankind, the realism is soon lost sight of in the rise of the principles involved. Literature to be enduring is ideal, and must represent the forms by which the mind and heart recognize the permanent types of their kind in all times. The Hebrew writers were realists to a degree almost unsurpassed