part of our nation. He laboured under the apprehension that he would come to poverty, and that he was eternally lost." The whole middle class have a conception of things,-a conception which makes us call them Philistines,-just like that of this poor man ; 5 though we are seldom, of course, shocked by seeing it take the distressing, violently morbid, and fatal turn, which it took with him. But how generally, with how many of us, are the main concerns of life limited to these two the concern for making money, and the 10 concern for saving our souls! And how entirely does the narrow and mechanical conception of our secular business proceed from a narrow and mechanical conception of our religious business! What havoc do the united conceptions make of our lives! It is because 15 the second-named of these two master-concerns presents to us the one thing needful in so fixed, narrow, and mechanical a way, that so ignoble a fellow master-concern to it as the first-named becomes possible; and, having been once admitted, takes the same 20 rigid and absolute character as the other.

Poor Mr. Smith had sincerely the nobler masterconcern as well as the meaner,-the concern for saving his soul (according to the narrow and mechanical conception which Puritanism has of what the salvation 25 of the soul is), as well as the concern for making money. But let us remark how many people there are, especially outside the limits of the serious and conscientious middle class to which Mr. Smith belonged, who take up with a meaner master-concern,- 30 whether it be pleasure, or field-sports, or bodily exercises, or business, or popular agitation,-who

take up with one of these exclusively, and neglect Mr. Smith's nobler master-concern, because of the mechanical form which Hebraism has given to this noble master-concern. Hebraism makes it stand, as 5 we have said, as something talismanic, isolated, and all-sufficient, justifying our giving our ordinary selves free play in bodily exercises, or business, or popular agitation, if we have made our accounts square with this master-concern; and, if we have not, rendering Io other things indifferent, and our ordinary self all we have to follow, and to follow with all the energy that is in us, till we do. Whereas the idea of perfection at all points, the encouraging in ourselves spontaneity of consciousness, and letting a free play of thought 15 live and flow around all our activity, the indisposition to allow one side of our activity to stand as so allimportant and all-sufficing that it makes other sides indifferent, this bent of mind in us may not only check us in following unreservedly a mean master20 concern of any kind, but may even, also, bring new life and movement into that side of us with which alone Hebraism concerns itself, and awaken a healthier and less mechanical activity there. Hellenism may thus actually serve to further the designs of Hebra 25 ism.-Culture and Anarchy, ed. 1896, pp. 134-145.

cern.

The Not Ourselves.

THE Old Testament, nobody will ever deny, is filled with the word and thought of righteousness. "In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof is no death;" "Righteousness tendeth to life; He that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own 5 death;" "The way of transgressors is hard; "nobody will deny that those texts may stand for the fundamental and ever-recurring idea of the Old Testament. No people ever felt so strongly as the people of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people, that con- 10 duct is three-fourths of our life and its largest conNo people ever felt so strongly that succeeding, going right, hitting the mark in this great concern, was the way of peace, the highest possible satisfaction. He that keepeth the law, happy is he; its ways are 15 ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace; if thou hadst walked in its ways, thou shouldst have dwelt in peace for ever!" Jeshurun, one of the ideal names of their race, is the upright; Israel, the other and greater, is the wrestler with God, he who has 20 known the contention and strain it costs to stand upright. That mysterious personage by whom their history first touches the hill of Sion, is Melchisedek, the righteous king. Their holy city, Jerusalem, is the 1 Prov. xii. 28; xi. 19; xiii. 15.

Prov. xxix. 18; iii. 17. Baruch iii. 13.

foundation, or vision, or inheritance, of that which righteousness achieves,-peace. The law of righteousness was such an object of attention to them, that its words were to "be in their heart, and thou shalt teach 5 them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." That they might keep them ever in mind, they wore them, went about with them, Io made talismans of them. Bind them upon thy fingers, bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart!" 4 "Take fast hold of her," they said of the doctrine of conduct, or righteousness, "let her not go! keep her, for she is thy life!" "

15

3

People who thus spoke of righteousness could not but have had their minds long and deeply engaged with it; much more than the generality of mankind, who have nevertheless, as we saw, got as far as the notion of morals or conduct. And, if they were so 20 deeply attentive to it, one thing could not fail to strike them. It is this: the very great part in righteousness which belongs, we may say, to not ourselves. In the first place, we did not make ourselves and our nature, or conduct as the object of three25 fourths of that nature; we did not provide that happiness should follow conduct, as it undeniably does; that the sense of succeeding, going right, hitting the mark, in conduct, should give satisfaction, and a very high satisfaction, just as really as the sense of doing 30 well in his work gives pleasure to a poet or painter, or Deuteronomy vi. 6, 7. 4 Prov. vii. 3; iii. 3.

5 Prov. iv. 13.

accomplishing what he tries gives pleasure to a man who is learning to ride or to shoot; or as satisfying his hunger, also, gives pleasure to a man who is hungry.

All this we did not make; and, in the next place, 5 our dealing with it at all, when it is made, is not wholly, or even nearly wholly, in our own power. Our conduct is capable, irrespective of what we can ourselves certainly answer for, of almost infinitely different degrees of force and energy in the performance of 10 it, of lucidity and vividness in the perception of it, of fulness in the satisfaction from it; and these degrees may vary from day to day, and quite incalculably. Facilities and felicities,-whence do they come? suggestions and stimulations,—where do they tend? 15 hardly a day passes but we have some experience of them. And so Henry More was led to say, that "there was something about us that knew better, often, what we would be at than we ourselves." For instance every one can understand how health and 20 freedom from pain may give energy for conduct, and how a neuralgia, suppose, may diminish it. It does not depend on ourselves, indeed, whether we have the neuralgia or not, but we can understand its impairing our spirit. But the strange thing is, that with the same 25 neuralgia we may find ourselves one day without spirit and energy for conduct, and another day with them. So that we may most truly say: Left to ourselves, we sink and perish; visited, we lift up our heads and live." And we may well give ourselves, in 30

"Relicti mergimur et perimus, visitati vero erigimur et vivimus."