Philistia

“ Well, he is gone now; he will never blame Askelon again, or run down Gath. He died in Philistia. Perhaps he served his purpose there, but I am sure he would have done more if he had been a little less Quixotic in his notions.
But let us not grow tristful again. How many a happy escape, as we said, has been made from Philistia; how many a clear spirit has made its way out of the darkness to a true honor. If many who have had the higher endowments have perished in the shadow, princes dying behind the iron mask, yet not all have failed; some have broken away to a career. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII. EVEN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS DOESN’T MATTER MUCH.
“I did not intend to stay for lunch,” said Phyllis, “but your overpowering will swept me along with it, Ella. But I hope you will let me say that I don’t think you should jest about what is—what some people at any rate think very serious.”
“Phyllis is of Philistia,” said Ella, “and Philistia was always given to ordeal by champions. She thinks the attack made upon you by two missionaries in their newspaper organ quite disgraceful. It doesn’t seem so disgraceful after all.” ”

“ Yet, ignorance prevails, for is not “Retired Clergyman” living proof? And so I will say: There lived in the Far East about three thousand years ago a tribe of people known as Philistines. It is a hotly mooted question among the theologians whether they were so-called because they lived in Philistia or whether Philistia took its name on account of being peopled by Philistines. I will not take sides in this issue, but hedge closely and simply stand firm on the fact that a tribe called the Philistines existed. ”

“ The prophecy concludes without a glance at the Messianic future. The threatened destruction of the Philistines has actually begun with the conquest of Philistia by Nebuchadnezzar, but has not yet culminated in the extermination of the people. ”

“ But I have heard the howling wane into the distance and get lost in the outer darkness when the old Church roused herself and went forth to face the snarling teeth—the eager talons. There is life in this mighty old mother of ours still. New life comes to her, not as it did to the fabled hero of old, by contact with the earth, but by communing with heaven. The bark of the wolf, the snarl of the hyena, may be heard in the debate which the Government have encouraged in the House of Commons on the Church. Philistia rejoices. ”

“ "But in Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself are synonyms," the tumblebug explained. "I know, for already we of Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature. Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. ”

“ Whether or not it treats of eating, its implication is clearly that the Philistia which has developed Bradford and six other appellations perfectly adapted to produce murmurings and inflowings in properly constituted persons,—and which Philistia, as I have elsewhere asserted, is to-day as always a revolting country whenever it condemns,—has had no civilised cultural atmosphere worth mentioning. ”

“ SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SUNDRY BITS OF WISDOM WHICH HAVE BEEN HERETOFORE SECRETED, AND ARE NOW SET FORTH IN PRINT.
It is a land of free speech, Philistia, and if one of us chooses to make remarks concerning the work of the others no sense of modesty keeps us quiet. It is because we cannot say what we would in the periodicals which are now issued in a dignified, manner in various places, that we have made this book. In the afore-mentioned periodicals divers men chatter with great fluency, startling regularity and “damnable complacency,” each through his individual bonnet. ”

“ And one of their Poets sang a song, which runs thus: “Moab is my washpot; over Philistia will I cast my shoe.” This only made the Philistines laugh, and although the Israelites outnumbered them, they went at it and scattered them. Finally, after long years of warfare, the fight was called a draw, and the Jews settled down and following the good example of the Philistines made themselves homes. ¶ Of course, as sane men and women, we of today do not suppose that the great Universal Intelligence that holds the world in the hollow of His hand had much interest in the fight. ”

“ In fact the question arises whether the history of the Philistines is not that of a territorial designation, rather than that of the lineal descendants of the Purasati, who, if one of the peoples who took part in the events of the XXth Dynasty, may well have bequeathed their name. The Mediterranean coast-land was always exposed to incursions of aliens, and when Carians appear as royal and temple guards at Jerusalem (2 Kings xi. 4) , it is sufficient to recall old Greek traditions of a Carian sea-power and relations between Philistia and Greek lands. ”

“ Cudahy’s book, I wish to place on file a modest word of protest concerning the modern sex novel.
Just now the stage and story-book seem to vie with one another in putting on parade the Men and Women who Did for the delectation of those who Have or May. The motif in all these books and plays is to depict the torturing emotions that wring and tear the hearts of these unhappy mortals. The Camp of Philistia does not boast that there are in it no People who Did, neither do we deny the reality of the heartaches and tears that come from unrequited love and affection placed not wisely. ”

“ And shall not we covet to approve ourselves to our Lord Jesus by a ready compliance with every intimation of his will given us by his word, Spirit and providence? Secondly, How little they feared the Philistines. They were glad of an occasion to defy them. Whether they broke through the host clandestinely, and with such art that the Philistines did not discover them, or openly, and with such terror in their looks that the Philistines durst not oppose them, is not certain; it should seem, they forced their way, sword in hand. ”

“ I told you long ago that I was a Philistine of the Philistines, deliberately and avowedly. The true artistic soul which you delight to call Pagan is only the servant of Philistinism, and I own that I prefer to stand with the ruling party. As, indeed," she added, with a mischievous gleam in her eye, "do many who will not confess it."
Rangely flushed. The thrust too closely resembled reproaches which in his more sensitive moments he received at the hand of his own inner consciousness, so to speak, not to make him wince. He felt himself, besides, becoming involved in a painful position. ”

“ But follow whichever path he may, let fortune smile on him or not--let him crown himself with laurels, or strive for the wreath of glory in vain--never will he who has been a genuine Bursch, become a Philistine; that is, in that sense in which the student understands it. The words of the celebrated Arndt express most lucidly this meaning of the word Philistine. "A Philistine is a lazy, much-speaking, more-asking, nothing-daring man; such a one who makes the small great, and the great small, because in the great he feels his littleness and his insignificance. ”

“ I am Goliath the Philistine of Gath, who killed the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas the priests; and led into captivity the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and placed it in the temple of Dagon my god; and it remained in the cities of the Philistines seven months. Also, in all our battles I have gone at the head of the army, and we conquered and cut down men, and laid them as low as the dust of the earth; and to this day the Philistines have not granted me the honor of being chief of a thousand men. ”

“ If The Philistine disturbs placid self-complacency anywhere, as one or two of its critics intimate, it is sorry, for there is no such happiness attainable anywhere this side of Nirvana as its serene contemplation of the charms of self which Narcissus and some more modern fakirs exemplify; and the magazine of to-day is its gospel. But so good a Philistine as Horace Greeley is my authority for believing that the still pool in which self-love sees the reflection it feeds upon is a breeder of death, not life, and effervescence is the sworn foe of the morbid. ”

“ The realism of the Philistines is manifested in the recognition of healthy life that we find in some of the new literature—in the heroic romance of Anthony Hope, in the charming tenderness and sweetness of Maartens’s Hollandais and in the fresh-witted islanders, full of arterial blood, of Hall Caine and the wizard who lies buried on the mountain top of his own beloved island—that second one to the left after you leave San Francisco. ”

“ I would respectfully call the attention of the editors of the Post to the fate which befell the Assyrians. It is written in Isaiah XXXVII—36: Then the angel of the Lord went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and four score and five thousand; and when they arose in the morning: behold, they were all dead corpses.
The Philistine’s plea is for the widest liberty to individual genius. Perhaps no living man has presented this plea so strongly in his life and work as William Morris. The poem herein printed is a taste of this strong man’s quality. ”

“ It is very beautiful to note that the point at which the irrepressible welling up of sweet waters breaks the current of his prophecy is the prediction against Israel's bitterest, because nearest, foe, 'these uncircumcised Philistines.' He beholds the sea of wrath drowning the great Philistine plain, its rich harvests trampled under foot by 'stamping of hoofs of his strong ones,' and that desolation wrings from his heart the words of our text. I take them to be spoken by the prophet. ”

“ And so, too, when a Philistine wants to be sent to Parliament by his brother Philistines, and extols the earnest good sense which characterises Manchester and supplies the mind, the will, and the power, as the Daily News eloquently says, requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done, he intoxicates and deludes himself as well as his brother Philistines who hear him. ”

“ If so, it will be seen that the Flowery Kingdom is divided on much the same lines as Tammany Hall, and Li may have good reasons for feeling much at home in New York.
From the Philistine view-point it is very funny to note the panic among our friends of the cloth at the inroads that bicycles are making on the attendance at the churches. Some of the reverend gentlemen seem to overlook the well-established philosophic fact that religion is innate and fundamental in human nature and is bound to assert itself somehow. ”

“ Arnold, however, has done most to establish the word in English usage. He applies it especially to members of the middle class who are swayed chiefly by material interests and are blind to the force of ideas and the value of culture. Leslie Stephen, who is always ready to plead the cause of the Philistine, remarks: "As a clergyman always calls every one from whom he differs an atheist, and a bargee has one or two favorite but unmentionable expressions for the same purpose, so a prig always calls his adversary a Philistine." ”

“ Padre Filippo was walking one day through the streets of Rome when he saw a great crowd very much excited. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked ‘good Philip.’
‘There’s a man in that house up there beating his wife fit to kill her, and for nothing at all, for she’s an angel of goodness. Nothing at all, but because she’s so ugly.’
Padre Filippo waited till the husband was tired of beating her and had gone out, and all the crowd had dispersed. Then he went up to the room where the poor woman lived, and knocked at the door. ”

“ Then said I, “Methinks, many of our Scribes in Galilee would not please thee; for they seek after righteousness by other ways, observing the smallest matters of the Law, and afflicting the flesh.” “Tell such an one from me,” said Philo, “when thou shalt see him perchance abstaining from food or drink at the times of eating, or disdaining the bath and the use of oil, or tormenting himself with a hard couch or with night-watchings, deceiving himself with this show of abstinence, that he is not in the true way to continence, and that all his labour is in vain.” ”

“ There is in England a flourishing sect that believes we are now being punished for sins committed in a former life: the chief tenet of the creed being that this earth is Hell. The London Echo seriously explains that the Philistine is the organ of this peculiar religious denomination; but the Echo is mistaken—the Philistine is strictly non-sectarian. It believes there are hells which exist on earth, but fortunately only in isolated places—and further that the head devils in most of them are managing editors of daily alleged newspapers. ”

“ For all beauty or glory is but the presence of law; and the universe to him has ceased to be a scene of law, and has become an infinite litter of detail, a rubbish-heap of confused particulars, a mere worry and weariness to the imagination. I have been describing the Philistine, the miserable slave of details, who worships a humiliated, dissected and abject deity, a mere Dagon, "fallen flat upon the grundsel-edge, and shaming his worshipers."
There is a particular form of conventionalism which all men who see it instinctively call by the name of atheism. ”