Othniel

“ And it is quite possible that the civil war of the Israelites might have been regarded by king Chushan-rishathaim as a favourable opportunity for carrying out his design of making Israel tributary to himself, and that he took advantage of it accordingly. The very fact that Othniel delivered Israel from this oppression, after it had continued for eight years, precludes us from postponing the invasion itself to a longer period after the death of Joshua. ”

“ When these tribes broke up, left the steppes country, and migrated to other parts of the world some to the eastward, some to the westward, and others to the southward—their civilization became modified. The group-characteristics of tongue and culture became intensified through isolation from the others and by the pressure of a new environment. These were the ancestors of the Persians and the Hindoos, the Greeks and the Celts, the Teutons and the Slavs, the Romans and the Gauls. ”

“ An event, which in a few hours destroyed, amid horrible convulsions, an entire country, with all its vast population—that population the ancestors of the great races of both continents, and they themselves the custodians of the civilization of their age—could not fail to impress with terrible force the minds of men, and to project its gloomy shadow over all human history. And hence, whether we turn to the Hebrews, the Aryans, the Phœnicians, the Greeks, the Cushites, or the inhabitants of America, we find everywhere traditions of the Deluge ”

“ Now a contemporary of Antoninus declares that in his time, that is, about the year 150, there was no race of men, either barbarians or Greeks, none even of Scythian nomads roaming in waggons, or of pastoral tribes dwelling in tents, among whom prayers and thanksgivings were not offered to the Father and Creator of the universe in the name of the crucified Jesus.150 Thus, in a hundred and twenty years the Church had outstripped the limits of the empire. ”

“ But, as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three races—Aryan, or Indo-European, Semitic, or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic, or Cushite—that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity—before the ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia they together inhabited. ”

“ And though it fires the imagination to think of Greek customs, Greek philosophy, Greek valour and intellect making its home for hundreds of years among the young green wheat-fields by the bed of the Indus, we must not blind our eyes to the fact that the broad yellow flood of the river seems to have been an impassable barrier to the whole theory of life which was the root-stuff of such custom, such philosophy, such valour, such intellect. ”

“ This appellation, which could suit the Greeks and Romans in the fifth century who refused to submit to the dominating religion in the Empire, is false and ridiculous when one extends it to other times, and to other peoples. It cannot be said without at once offending chronology and common sense, that the Romans or Greeks of the time of Cæsar, of Alexander, or of Pericles; the Persians, Arabs, Egyptians, Indians, the Chinese, ancient or modern, were Pagans; that is to say, peasants disobedient to the laws of Theodosius. ”

“ But these tribes, too, are human, and what they now or lately were, the remote ancestors of the Greeks must once have been. All races have sought explanations of their own ritual in the adventures of the Dream Time, the Alcheringa, when beings of a more potent race, Gods or Heroes, were on earth, and achieved and endured such things as the rites commemorate. ”

“ The age of the great Fathers, with its essentially Oriental controversies on the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, is by far the most important epoch in the whole history of Eastern Christendom. ”

“ Athens and Jerusalem, taking their origin alike in those miniature social groups which we have preferred to call by the general name of clan, passed out upon two ideal worlds of spiritual influence—the world of individual self-culture and the world of social brotherhood. ”

“ The conversion of the countries of Europe to Christianity united them in their ways of thinking and believing, and they all honoured the saints. The names of the early saints, whether they were from the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, or Slavonic, were soon spread throughout all the countries of Europe, so that now French, German, English, Italian, Spanish names, and those of the other European countries, are for the most part the same, only spelt and pronounced a little differently in the different countries. ”

“ Did the early tribes, who, according to the story, came to the North with Odin, find a different people, who themselves or whose ancestors had made these illustrations of their history, or a people 126belonging to the same race and tribes of which we have spoken before, who gradually advanced in civilisation? These are queries which it is to be feared no one will ever be able to answer with satisfaction. ”

“ An adequate and independent history of the Greek and Eastern Churches would begin with the origin of Christianity, and trace from its commencement the development of the faith, which arose in the East and flourished for a considerable time most conspicuously in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Egypt. ”

“ The very externals of Orientalism are making their exit from the world’s scene; soon there will not exist even the illusion of characteristic and [210] graceful forms. Ere long we shall realize, that, divested of form and coloring, of tinsel and decoration, the descendants of the great common ancestor of the human race, are all alike in feature, nature, and spirit. ”

“ That the first race of Persians and Indians, to whom we may add the Romans and Greeks, the Goths, and the old Egyptians or Ethiops, originally spoke the same language and professed the same popular faith, is capable, in my humble opinion, of incontestible proof ”

“ And suppose the Old Men themselves fail us, what must we needs do? Here we come to a famous and peculiar Greek custom, for which I have never seen quoted any exact parallel or any satisfactory explanation. If the Old Men fail us, we must go to those older still, go to our great ancestors, the ἥρωες, the Chthonian people, lying in their sacred tombs, and ask them to help. The word χρᾶν means both 'to lend money' and 'to give an oracle', two ways of helping people in an emergency. Sometimes a tribe might happen to have a real ancestor buried in the neighbourhood ”

“ Externally regarded, in its origin and primitive development, Christianity must be reckoned an Eastern religion. In fulfilling its amazing destiny it quickly turned to the West for its richest missionary harvests, for there it found its most fertile soil, and its efforts at extension in the Farther East were long comparatively infructuous. ”

“ He goes on to make the shrewd remark, true to-day of all Eastern countries where the Oriental assumes a veneer of Western civilisation, that “each race takes the worst features of the others,” the Greeks assimilating the turbulence of the Franks, and the Franks the cunning of the Greeks. ”

“ You see the wild, eastern landscape, upon which the sun has set. There are the Hellenes, safe for the moment on their long march, and there the mountain tribesman, the serviceable barbarian, going away, alone, with his tempting guerdon, into the hazards of the darkness. ”

“ Morning and night all the greater tribes of the elder world offered their supplications on high: and Plato has touchingly insisted on this sacred uniformity of custom, when he tells us that at the rising of the moon and at the dawning of the sun, you may behold Greeks and barbarians—all the nations of the earth—bowing in homage to the gods. ”

“ Now then an opportunity is come. What is it? why this which the Olynthians have of their own accord offered to this city; nor is it inferior to any of those we have formerly lost. To me, O Athenians! it appears, that if we settle a just account with the gods, notwithstanding all things are not as they ought to be, they are entitled to our liberal thanksgivings. ”

“ Who will venture to affirm that, by the alliance of Christianity with the virtue and intelligence of men like the Antonines,—of the best product of Greek and Roman civilization, while Greek and Roman civilization had yet life and power,—Christianity and the world, as well as the Antonines themselves, would not have been gainers? ”

“ The gentile organization, originating in the period of savagery, enduring through the three subperiods of barbarism, finally gave way, among the more advanced tribes, when they attained civilization—the requirements of which it was unable to meet. Among the Greeks and Romans political society supervened upon gentile society, but not until civilization had commenced. ”

“ III. We are living to-day in that separation; our art, science, education, poetic forms, our secular life largely come from ancient Greece. Oriental art, customs, domestic life, government, we do not as a rule fraternize with; the Greek diremption is in us still; only in one way, in our religious life, do we keep a connection with an Oriental people. But is this separation never to be overcome? ”

“ Even the spiritual rebellion of an Oriental does not go beyond sombre questioning, while with the Occidental questioning is the beginning, then follow research, methodical arrangement of materials, and the building up of a system. The Oriental, in stopping short at questioning, never arrives at the necessity of research and method. The boldest Hebrew, Job, exhausts himself in woebegone questionings and succumbs abruptly to a vision, while the Greek rebel, Prometheus, wrests the light from Heaven and teaches man to reason and to act. ”

“ Inspired by this interest I took advantage of ever-continuing opportunities to talk exhaustively with Arabs, Berbers, Kabyles and other natives and drew out from these contacts not only the superficial and everyday thoughts, but those that were ordinarily hidden, passionate and deep, like the interiors of their sacred temples, guarded from the entrance of an unbeliever by the law of horm. Often one word, one unfinished phrase, was enough to make a dark matter clear and to clothe an apparently clear one in a shroud of mystery. ”

“ The story of Odoric is a forcible reminder of how much the missionaries accomplished for geography, ethnology, and ethnography in the Thirteenth Century, as they did in succeeding centuries. If what the missionaries have added to these sciences were to have been lost, there would have been enormous gaps in the knowledge with which modern scholars began their scientific labors in philology. It may be a surprise to most people, moreover, to be thus forcibly reminded of the wonderful evangelizing spirit which characterized the later middle age. ”

“ Their rites are secret; none but a member can be admitted. These divines, as of old the priest of Isis and Osiris, are deeply learned; and truly their knowledge of natural history is astonishing. They are well acquainted with astronomy and botany, and keep the records and great transactions of the tribes, employing certain hieroglyphics, which they paint in the sacred lodges, and which none but their caste or order can decipher. ”

“ But the great peoples of our Western civilisation are those who have struggled free from this obsession into the light of progressive secular life. Such also—we have the right to believe—was the early Greek. ”

“ I have endeavored to define clearly the different periods in the history of paleontology. If I may venture, in conclusion, to characterize the present period in all departments of science, its main feature would be a belief in universal laws. The reign of Law, first recognized in the physical world, has now been extended to Life as well. In return, Life has given to inanimate Nature the key to her profounder mysteries—Evolution, which embraces the universe. ”

“ Furthermore his religious life was constantly fed and nourished by membership in a brotherhood which was consecrated and set apart from the rest of the world, as well as by regular services within the shrine of his divinity. Again the gods of Greece and Rome required only occasional and rare service; the Orientals claimed the whole of a man’s life: not only at the great festivals but apparently at daily matins and vespers they received the praise and worship of their followers. ”

“ That certain deities occur in India, Greece, and Germany, having the same names and the same character, is a fact that can no longer be denied. That certain heroes, too, known to Indians, Greeks, and Romans, point to one and the same origin, both by their name and by their 146 history, is a fact by this time admitted by all whose admission is of real value. ”

“ I know not what disposition we all entertain; but my own opinion is, that we vote a supply of men to the Olynthians, and that we send them immediately; and thus by lending them our assistance now, we shall prevent the accidents which we have formerly felt, from falling again on us. ”

“ Every false religion preserves in some form or other the perception of a Divine Trinity, and the Teutonic Triad consisted of Odin, Frey, and Thor, whose images always occupied the place of honour in the temples, and who owned the three midmost days of the week. ”