T. K. Cheyne

“ Let us fully live the life thou hast given us, let us bravely take and bravely give. This is our prayer to thee. Let us once for all dislodge from our minds the feeble fancy that would make out thy joy to be a thing apart from action, thin, formless and unsustained. Wherever the peasant tills the hard earth, there does thy joy gush out in the green of the corn; wherever man displaces the entangled forest, smooths the stony ground, and clears for himself a homestead, there does thy joy enfold it in orderliness and peace.
O worker of the universe! ”

“ We shall have an opportunity of reconstructing European culture upon the only possible permanent foundation—mutual trust and good-will. Such a reconstruction would not only secure the future of European civilization, but would save the world from the threatened catastrophe of seeing the great nations of the East building their new social order also upon the sand, and thus turning the thought and wealth needed for their education and development into that which could only be a fetter to themselves and a menace to the West. ”

“ Why, indeed, should there not be a providence even in the phases of Old Testament criticism, so that where some can see merely the shiftings of arbitrary opinion more enlightened eyes may discern a veritable progress, leading at once to fresh views of history, and to necessary reforms in our theology, making this theology simpler and stronger, deeper and more truly Catholic, by making it more Biblical? ”

“ And what as to 'Ali Muḥammad of Shiraz? From a heavenly point of view, did he play a great rôle in the Persian Reformation? Let us listen to Baha-'ullah in the passage quoted above from the Tablet of Ishrakat.
PRAYER TO THE PERPETUAL CREATOR O giver of thyself! at the vision of thee as joy let our souls flame up to thee as the fire, flow on to thee as the river, permeate thy being as the fragrance of the flower. Give us strength to love, to love fully, our life in its joys and sorrows, in its gains and losses, in its rise and fall. ”

“ Better, he continues, is a momentary experience of real happiness than to let the desire wander after unattainable ends. ‘There are many things that increase vanity;’ with the reserve of good taste, he understates his meaning, for what human object, according to Koheleth, is not futile? That gift which to the Christian is so wondrously fair—the gift of life—to him becomes ‘the numbered days of his life of vanity;’ and ‘who knows what is good for man in life, which he spends as a shadow? ”

“ I discovered that the devotees of these various religions do nothing else but hate and anathematize each other, that all these religions have become the instruments of tyranny and oppression in the hands of rulers and governors, and that they are the causes of the destruction of the world of humanity.
'Considering these evil results, every person is forced by necessity to enlist himself on the side of Your Excellency and accept with joy the prospect of a fundamental basis for a universal religion of God being laid through your efforts. ”

“ May we banish thoughts of bitterness, harsh judgments, the revengeful spirit. To do this is in no sense unpatriotic. We may find ourselves the subjects of misunderstanding. But our duty is clear—to be courageous in the cause of love and in the hate of hate. May we prepare ourselves even now for the day when once more we shall stand shoulder to shoulder with those with whom we are now at war, in seeking to bring in the Kingdom of God. ”

“ True, indolence is self-destruction: but on the other hand a little true rest is better than the labour of windy effort, urged on by rivalry yielding no rest (Delitzsch) . Such at least is the most probable connection, supposing that vv. 5 and 6 are not rather interpolated or misplaced. If however it be objected (here Koheleth passes to a second great evil—that of isolation) that a man may labour for his child or his brother, yet who, pray, is benefited by the money-getting toils of one who has no near relative, and stands alone in the world? A pitiable sight is such unprofitable toil! ”

“ Job is an altogether exceptional figure: he is imperfect, no doubt, if viewed as a symbol of the Christ, but this does not diminish the reality and the grandeur of the presentiment which he embodies. To a religious mind, this remarkable creation will always appear stamped by the hand of Providence. Job is not indeed a Saviour, but the imagination of such a figure prepares the way for a Saviour. ”

“ Into the ideal of man, as conceived by our Muslim brothers, there must therefore enter the feature of mercifulness. We cannot help sympathizing with this, even though we think Abdul Baha's ideal richer and nobler than any as yet conceived by any Muslim saint.
There is also the idea—the realized idea—of brotherhood, a brotherhood which is simply an extension of the equality of Arabian tribesmen. There is no caste in Islam; each believer stands in the same relation to the Divine Sovereign. There may be poor, but it is the rich man's merit to relieve them. ”

“ For descriptive power the first speech of Jehovah, at any rate, is without a parallel. The author, as Prof. Davidson remarks, ‘knew the great law that sublimity is necessarily also simplicity.’ It is true he does but give us isolated features of the natural world: no single scene is represented in its totality. But this is in accordance with the Hebrew genius, to which nature appears, not in her own simple beauty, but bathed in an atmosphere of emotion. The emotion which here animates the poet is mainly a religious one; it is the love of God, and of God’s works for the sake of their Maker. ”

“ The Spirit's work is, in fact, nothing short of re-creation; His creative functions are called into exercise on the appearance of a new cosmic cycle, which includes the regeneration of souls.
I greatly fear that not enough homage has been rendered to the Spirit in this important aspect. And yet the doctrine is uniquely precious because of the great results which have already, in the ethical and intellectual spheres, proceeded from it, and of the still greater ones which faith descries in the future. We have, I fear, not yet done justice to the spiritual capacities with which we are endowed. ”

“ Exegesis and criticism are equally necessary for the full enjoyment of the treasures of the Old Testament, and just as no commentary is complete which does not explain the actual position of critical controversies, so no introduction to the criticism of a book is trustworthy which does not repose, and show the reader that it reposes, on the basis of a thorough exegesis. ”

“ And yet the subject has to be faced, and if Paul 'learned' a purely ideal Christ, deeply tinged with the colours of mythology, why should not we follow Paul's example, imitating a Christ who put on human form, and lived and died for men as their Saviour and Redeemer? Why should we not go even beyond Paul, and honour God by assuming a number of Christs, among whom—if we approach the subject impartially—would be Socrates, Zarathustra, Gautama the Buddha, as well as Jesus the Christ? ”

“ We must not, in our reaction from the exclusively theological estimate of the Old Testament, shut our eyes to the significance of each of its parts in the history of the higher religion. The Book of Job is theological, though the theology of its writer, being that of a poet, is less logical than that of an apostle, less definite even than that of a prophet, in so far as the prophet obtained (or seemed to obtain) his convictions by a message or revelation from without. ”

“ As an Indian writer says: 'The sweep of the New Dispensation is broader than the Brahmo Samaj. The whole religious world is in the grasp of a great purpose which, in its fresh unfolding of the new age, we call the New Dispensation. The New Dispensation is not a local phenomenon; it is not confined to Calcutta or to India; our Brotherhood is but one body whose thought it functions to-day; it is not topographical, it is operative in all the world-religions.' [Footnote: Cp. Auguste Sabatier on the Religion of the Spirit, and Mozoomdar's work on the same subject.] ”

“ The day of negative criticism is past, and the day of a cheap ridicule of all critical analysis of ancient texts is, we may hope, nearly past also. In faith and love the critics whose lot I would fain share are at one with many of those who suspect and perhaps ridicule them: in the aspirations of hope their aim is higher. ”

“ Ṣufism, for instance, is, in the opinion of most, 'a Muḥammadan sect.' It must, at any rate, be admitted to have passed through several stages, but there is, I think, little to add to fully developed Ṣufism to make it an ideal synthesis of Islam and Hinduism. That little, however, is important. How can the Hindu accept the claim either of Christ or of Muḥammad to be the sole gate to the mansions of knowledge? ”

“ Observe, first, the complete want of sympathy with positive religion—with the religion from which Faust wanders—on the part of the modern poet. Next, a striking difference in the characteristics of Job and Faust respectively. Faust succumbs to his boundless love of knowledge, alternating with an unbridled sensual lust; Job is on the verge of spiritual ruin through his demand for such an absolute correspondence of circumstances to character as can only be realised in another world. ”

“ It appears to me that the essence of Bahaism is not dogma, but the unification of peoples and religions in a certain high-minded and far from unpractical mysticism. I think that Abdul Baha is just as much devoted to mystic and yet practical religion as his father. In one of the reports of his talks or monologues he is introduced as saying:
'A moth loves the light though his wings are burnt. Though his wings are singed, he throws himself against the flame. He does not love the light because it has conferred some benefits upon him. ”

“ Evidently the speaker is a ‘wise man,’ who, according to some critics, inculcates a reverent humility by reporting the fruitlessness of his own theological speculations. After long brooding over the problems of the divine nature (so they explain) , the Hebrew sage was compelled to desist with the feeling of his utter incapacity. Like Israel the patriarch he strove with God, but unlike Israel he did not prevail. He knows indeed what God has done and is continually doing; He is the Omnipresent One, the Lord of wind and flood, the Author of the boundaries of the earth. ”

“ In time of peace all the nations have been preparing for war. In the time of war let all men of good-will prepare for peace. The Christian conscience must be awakened to the magnitude of the issues. The great friendly democracies in each country must be ready to make their influence felt. Now is the time to speak of this thing, to work for it, to pray for it.
5. If this is to happen, it seems to us of vital importance that the war should not be carried on in any vindictive spirit, and that it should be brought to a close at the earliest possible moment. ”

“ The Book of Job is in fact much more than a didactic treatise like Ecclesiastes or a collection of pointed moral sayings like the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. Its authors were more than thinkers, they were poets, ‘makers,’ great imaginative artists. But we must not be unjust to those who were primarily thinkers, and only in the second degree poets. The phase of Hebrew thought called ‘wisdom’ (khokma) can be studied even better in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes than in the poetry of Job. ”

“ To his extended consciousness, as first to that of Jesus, this Reality was more actual than anything else—"God is all in all."'
It is true, this view of the Universe as God-filled is probably not Paul's, for the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians are hardly that great teacher's work. But it is none the less authentic, 'God is all and in all'; the whole Universe is temporarily a symbol by which God is at once manifested and veiled. ”

“ It is hardly a sufficient answer that a concession was necessary to the prejudices of the unspiritual multitude; for what was the object of the poem, if not to subvert the dominion of a one-sided retribution theory? The solution probably is that Job in the epilogue is a type of suffering, believing, and glorified Israel. Not only the individual believer, not only all the elect spirits of suffering humanity, but the beloved nation of the poet.—Israel, the ‘Servant of Jehovah’—must receive a special message of comfort from the great poem. ”

“ INCARNATIONS There are some traces both in the Synoptics and in the Fourth Gospel of a Docetic view of the Lord's Person, in other words that His humanity was illusory, just as, in the Old Testament, the humanity of celestial beings is illusory. The Hindus, however, are much more sure of this. The reality of an incarnation would be unworthy of a God. And, strange as it may appear to us, this Docetic theory involves no pain or disappointment for the believer, who does but amuse himself with the sports [Footnote: See quotation from the poet Tulsi Das in Farquhar, The Crown of Hinduism, p. 431.] ”

“ But why should Eliphaz imagine that because Job had not had a revelation of this kind he is therefore ignorant of the truth? He actually confounds the complaints wrung from Job by his unparalleled mental and bodily sufferings with the ‘impatience’ of the ‘foolish man’ and the ‘passion’ of the ‘silly’ one, and warns him against the fate which within his own experience befell one such rebellious murmurer against God—an irrelevant remark, unless he has already begun to suspect Job of impiety. ”

“ This portrait too is in its way impressive, and capable of lifting men above their baser selves, but it would obviously be impossible to take this great Teacher and Reformer for the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind.
We have further a pearl of great price in the mysticism of Paul, which presupposes, not the Jesus of modern critics, nor yet the Jesus of the Synoptics, but a splendid heart-uplifting Jesus in the colours of mythology. In this Jesus Paul lived, and had a constant ecstatic joy in the everlasting divine work of creation. ”

“ Himself only in a comparatively low sense inspired—for we should not hastily reject his claim to a ‘tongue’ from above—he did nothing, on the ethical side, but repeat the old truths in their old forms, though one gladly admits that he shows a genuine and unassumed interest in the varieties of human character. But on the religious side he is really in a certain sense original, in so far as he combines the traditional ‘wisdom’ with a heartfelt regard for the established forms of religion, such as the older ‘wise men’ scarcely possessed. ”

“ What is to be the attitude of Christian men and women and of all who believe in the brotherhood of humanity? In the distress and perplexity of this new situation, many are so stunned as scarcely to be able to discern the path of duty. In the sight of God we should seek to get back to first principles, and to determine on a course of action which shall prove us to be worthy citizens of His Kingdom. ”

“ Let me add that by ‘sympathetic,’ I mean in sympathy with the conception of God formed by the author of Job. Nothing is more out of sympathy with this conception than the saying of the Jewish scholar, S. D. Luzzatto, ‘The God of Job is not the God of Israel, the Gracious One; He is the Almighty and the Righteous, but not the Kind and Faithful One.’ No; the God of Job would be less than infinitely righteous if He were not also kind (comp. Ps. lxii. 12) . And of this enlarged conception of God, faith in the continuance of the human spirit is a consequence. ”

“ We believe in God. Human free will gives us power to hinder the fulfilment of His loving purposes. It also means that we may actively co-operate with Him. If it is given to us to see something of a glorious possible future, after all the desolation and sorrow that lie before us, let us be sure that sight has been given us by Him. No day should close without our putting up our prayer to Him that He will lead His family into a new and better day. ”

“ It is at any rate a contribution towards the negative criticism with which such an apology must begin, just as the Book of Job is a contribution, or a series of contributions, towards a more perfect and evangelical theodicy.
There is at least one point, then, which the moral and religious critic of Ecclesiastes can adopt out of all the strangely distorted views of patristic writers, so ably summed up by Dr. Ginsburg in his Introduction, viz. that the gloomy sentence, Vanitas vanitatum, is perfectly accurate when applied to the life of Koheleth, but only to a life like his. ”

“ So it is with God, whose creation is the production of tranquillity and utter joy, and so it is with godlike men—men such as St. Francis of Assisi in the West and the poet-seers of the Upanishads in the East. All these are at once joyous and serene. As Tagore says, 'Joy without the play of joy is no joy; play without activity is no play.' [Footnote: Tagore, Sadhana (1913) , p. 131.] And how can he act to advantage who is perturbed in mind? In the coming religion all our actions will be joyous and tranquil. ”

“ Some amount of trouble even a good man may fairly expect; though far from ‘ploughing iniquity,’ he is too weak not to fall into sins of error, and all sin involves suffering; or, as Eliphaz puts it concisely—
Man is born to trouble,
as the sparks fly upward (v. 7) . Assuming without any reason that Job would question this, Eliphaz enforces the moral imperfection of human nature by an appeal to revelation—not, of course, to Moses and the prophets, but to a vision like those of the patriarchs in Genesis. Of the circumstances of the revelation a most graphic account is given. ”

“ But the greatest utterances of human morality are to be found in the Buddhist Scriptures, and it is a shame to the European peoples that the Buddhist Indian king Asoka should be more Christian than the leaders of 'German culture.' I for my part love the old Germany far better than the new, and its high ideals would I hand on, filling up its omissions and correcting its errors. ”

“ The Book of Job is not the earliest monument of Hebrew ‘wisdom,’ but for various reasons will be treated first in order. The perusal of some of the pages introductory to Proverbs will enable the student to fill out what is here given. The Hebrew ‘wisdom’ is a product as peculiar as the dialectic of Plato, and not less worthy of admiration; and the author of Job is its greatest master. To him are due those great thoughts on a perennial problem, which may be supplemented but can never be superseded, and which, as M. Renan truly says, cause so profound an emotion in their first naïve expression. ”

“ For Evil Ones there are; so at least Islam holds. Their efforts are foredoomed to failure, because their kingdom has no unity or cohesion. But strange mystic potencies they have, as all pious Muslims think, and we must remember that 'Ali Muḥammad (the Bāb) was bred up in the faith of Islam.
Well, then, we can now proceed further and say that our Parsi friends can offer us gifts worth the having. When they rise in the morning they know that they have a great warfare to wage, and that they are not alone, but have heavenly helpers. ”