other will surely consist in the endeavour to put the special Christian thoughts and materials into connection with the universal thoughts and conceptions of religion, and to bring them to bear on actual human life about us and at our doors. "For most of us," she says, "Christianity still claims us, because, in its best forms, it is the most moving and beautiful, the most striking and concrete testimony that history affords to the power of a Divine and Eternal Life; a life which is perpetually revealed in conscience, law, and knowledge, and which so presses on and appeals to the human spirit that, while its action leaves the half of existence a mystery, it can yet generate within the sphere of contact between it and man a faith which can transfigure these passing years and take even the terror from the face of death. For those who ask teaching from us, let us, if we can, make the life of Jesus of Nazareth the perpetually attractive symbol of this contact between God and man; let us connect with it the picture of the growth of conscience and the many-chaptered story of the human struggle for good, and we need have no fear, as it seems to me, that it will ever fail to meet religious need or strike out spiritual response. As to its practical bearings, they cannot be too closely or too familiarly insisted upon. As we draw the picture of the Master moving among the sins and needs, the sufferings and affections, of Galilee and Jerusalem, and as communion with Him quickens in us, and in those we teach, reverence for the life of duty and of pity, let us be constantly ready to pass from old to new, from the mothers and children, the husbandmen, carpenters, weavers, the teachers and missionaries of Palestine, to the daily relations and tasks, the familiar figures of our own world. Each of those relations and duties may, if we will, be connected with the beloved and sacred name of Him who stands, both by inherent genius and by the irrevocable choice of men, at the head of the spiritual life of Europe, and still bequeaths, even to our far-off generation, the maintenance and spread of His work. All things may be done to God in Christ; and that our children should learn from us so to do them is the task of Christian education. Only in the patient struggle to fulfil it week by week, and day by day, till the education of childhood merges in the sterner education of maturity, can we hope, parent and child, teacher and taught, for the growth which alone is true life -growth in that temper of seriousness, sympathy, and noble passion for undying aims whereof the chief representative in history is Jesus Christ." THE CHURCH INVISIBLE, VISIBLE, CATHOLIC, NATIONAL.-In a charge to the clergy and churchwardens of the archdeaconry of London, Dr. Sinclair, the venerable Archdeacon, treats in a very exhaustive manner the growth and development of the Church as a society of believers in Christ. He lays great stress upon the Invisible and Visible Church, as stated by Hooker: the one is a mystical body, which cannot be discerned by man, but is known only to God, who sees the hearts; the other includes all who are Christians by external profession, however corrupt in belief and practice they may sometimes be. And he very pertinently observes, "If heretics and men of evil life can belong to the Visible Church, much more those who are neither heretics nor unrighteous, but who are altogether orthodox in the main essentials of the faith, and chiefly differ from us (the Church of England) through the unhappy legacy of the past in divergent schemes of Church government." He endorses with great cordiality the utterances of the Lambeth Conference of 1888 on the matter of the reunion of the various Christian communions of the English-speaking world, and makes many concessions, which, if they had been made at an earlier date, might have prevented some of the divisions in Christendom which he deplores. Thus, what he has to say upon the essential notes of the Church, as consisting only in the true preaching of the Word of God and the right administration of the Sacraments, upon the parity of presbyter and bishop, and of the episcopate as a condition of the well-being, but not of the being of the Church, harmonizes with the views of multitudes who are outside the Church of England, but we are afraid would be repudiated by many within it. Perhaps it is too late in the day to look for external unity among all who profess the Christian faith, just as it may be hopeless to expect that any one language will supersede all others, and come to be spoken in every country on the face of the globe. It may be that a unity of spirit-of loyalty to the one great Master, and of love to all His brethren-among those who differ from each other in outward organizations and customs, is all that we can anticipate for the Church on earth. If the calm, temperate, and truly Christian spirit which underlies Archdeacon Sinclair's utterances prevailed among churchmen of all denominations, the day would not be far off when the highest form of unity which God designs for us would be manifest to all. BIBLICAL THOUGHT. IMMORTALITY IN THE GÂTHAS. BY REV. DR. L. H. MILLS, HON. M.A. Oxon. SURELY among the doctrines taught by religion none save those of a moral nature can equal Immortality. And it was precisely this great expectation which the pre-Exile canon, if canon the pre-Exile Scriptures can be said to have possessed, failed distinctly to express, so that if later inspired writers deal with it, and if their faith was at all stimulated or created by the enthusiasm of any sympathising peoples with whom they were brought into contact, a service incalculably great was done. But this Immortality pervades the Gâthas as it does the middle and later Avesta, and no one who has studied the subject can fail to see it. In fact, though it has been little noticed, it has, so far as I am aware, never been denied; and just that group of scholars among whom we might expect to meet scepticism on the point are so fully committed to it that they appear to me to overdo the matter and to suggest to us romance. From beginning to the end of the Avestic lore "the two lives," one or both of them certainly conceived to be future, are expressed and implied factors among the motives which urged on the Gathic saint. Before presenting details, let me first dwell for a moment upon the word. Immortality occurs in the Gâthas some fourteen times. It is one of those abstracts so marvellously treated as poetical personifications, and which, as soon as they leave the Gâthas, sink to the lower level of theological personifications. Is there any doubt that the word refers to the spiritual and the future state? Not that the term is necessary to the idea, for it is conveyed perhaps better by several statements that imply it than by a name; but does the name Immortality alone convey the idea in the Old and New Avesta ? Not necessarily. The Vedic form of it certainly does, although it is but sparsely applied to man. In the bulk of the Hymns it applies to the life of the Gods, where, of course, it designates a supernatural eternity; and aside from the name we have a considerable amount of plain allusion to the future existence of men in the 10th book. There is little doubt but that the soul is meant in R.V. x. 14, 7, 8. (Free trl.) Pass on, pass on, by paths of old long trodden, Whereby primeval fathers passed from hence; Varuna, Yama, kings in bliss rejoicing, Thou'lt see alike both man* and God at once. Unite thee with the fathers and with Yama, And with thy virtue's prize in highest heaven; From blame now free again toward home be turning, Join with thy body now all-glorious and blest. And that the life of the departed was not to be unconscious, see R.V. x. 16, 2. And when he gains that spirit-life among them Will of the Gods shall he most just fulfil. We have also some reason to suppose that dirghayu, "long living," means immortal sometimes in the Rik, and not impossibly the cognate word may mean "eternal life" in the Gâthas; and yet Gâthic immortality might well mean "deathlessness" first dreamed of as an indefinitely prolonged life, and corresponding rather to the "hundred autumns" of the sister book than to the "long life" of Indra; and I have myself little doubt that such a conception was linked with the more developed one, and that this last, viz., the hope of living for ever in a future state, grew out of the desire and hope of a life on earth prolonged beyond ordinary limits. I hardly think that either the Gathic or the Avestic hope of immortality would have been fully satisfied by the prospects of the soul's continuance after an early or a tragic death, although, of course, great relief would have been afforded by the conviction that the soul of the righteous should live on; and, curiously enough, in the typical chapter on the subject, the soul of a youth is shown progressing toward heaven; but still it was life which the Gâthic saint was struggling. for, life filled with holiness indeed, so far as he could conceive of holiness. "in thought, in word, and in deed," but still "life." Death belonged to the Evil Spirit, so that the great, although the only, difference between the Old Vedic hundred years of life and the Gâthic immortality, aside from the peculiar sanctity of the latter, was that the duration of the Gâthic was not to be affected by death. I was even about to say that Gâthic immortality was in so far conceived of as begun here that its future may have been even at times lost sight of (yet see below). It was death-banishment, the driving of the hated idea altogether out of the mind, so that the believer could feel that its “absence" had come (sic) already. In the same way the millennial heaven was to "make this present life progressive," 1 till it merged not only into deathlessness, but into painlessness, "never ageing, never rotting, having power to fulfil all wishes." Immortality in the Gâthas may have been something so fully begun as almost to shut out its futurity (?), but such an application of the idea could not have been so frequent as some passages might lead us to suppose. But let us approach the inquiry sceptically: how far can we resist the conviction that immortality in the Gâthas means future deathlessness in another state of being? Take, for instance, first and for safety, some passages already mentioned, where the actual word does not occur, but where the whole colouring might point us to the other world, for as we find the strongest delineations of the future life of the soul without the word amritatvú, in the Rig Veda, so there are very interesting passages to the same effect in the Avesta, where the general statements alone convey the idea. Compare again Y. 28, 5-"O Righteousness" (better "O Holiness," for Asha meant universal sanctity as inherent in the Deity, expressed in His law, and incarnate in His faithful), "O Holiness, when shall I see thee" (or "shall I ever see thee?" the interrogative of time, as in all languages, pointing an indefinite hope), "and the Good Mind, I discovering the way to Ahura (or "His throne"); this need not mean, "O Asha (thou Sanctity of God), shall I see thee in a future state?" It was Vohu Manah who was seen by the soul seated on the throne in the later Avesta. The passage looks indeed more eschatological if we read gairim in verse 4 with my former text, "I who give up my soul to Heaven," but the words may well have reference to the scene present before the sage: O Sanctity, when shall I see thee as the Holy Law realized in the virtuous energy (the Good Mind) of the thrifty saints, obeying an enthroned Ahura in a perfected Kingdom of Righteousness, for which I am teaching (verse 4) the people to pray, I knowing the rewards for ceremonial and moral deeds which Ahura gives?" I don't think that we are forced to refer this to the future world, certainly not exclusively, hardly 3 1 It is not our present business to say what we should prefer, as we must now simply expound the lore; but I cannot help adding that this recognized identity of this life with the other seems to me a far healthier conception than an emasculate longing to escape what is here and to seize prematurely what may come hereafter. See the THINKER for June 1, pp. 511, 512. Cp. Vendidad, xix. 31. even in view of Y. 28, 2: "Give me, O Mazda Ahura, the prizes of the two worlds, that of the body and that of the mind, by which through sanctity (he?) may place their recipients in shining-weal*." Here "the prizes of the bodily world" are distinctly referred to in close connection with those of the spirit.” If, then, "the path" of verse 5 is that over the Chinvat toward the Golden Throne of the Good Mind, we may still hold that the actual sanctity of the saints on earth was not forgotten as an integral part of one continuous experience. Then in verse 8 (of Y. 28) it is quite probable that we have the origin of the Parsi name for Heaven, Bahisht, the repeated word Vahishta, together with the characteristic vispái yavé, having led the traditionalists astray. (Free trl.) That best I ask, thou best one, one in mind with Holiness best (Asha Vahishta), Of Thee, Ahura, I ask it, for Frashaoshtra and for me beseeching, And freely to us may'st Thou grant it for the Good Mind's lasting age.1 The expression "for all the duration," the "lasting age" of the Good Mind, while in other connections stamping a passage as for futurity, may well and far more impressively refer here to future temporal ages, or even to immediate future years, during which the holy Word of Reason (the Manthra) might be powerful in teaching the people, and through them mankind (cp. Y. 31, 2, where the prophet prays that "he (I) may teach all the living faith"), and so in Y. 28, 11, he actually uses yavaétâitê (= “in the extended future," or "for ever") of his own teaching: - (Free trl.) I who to guard Thine Order (Thy Holy Law) and the Good Mind am set for ever, Teach Thou me forth from Thyself to proclaim from Thy mouth of spirit The laws. So in Y. 32, 5, where the word Immortality is used: (Free trl.) Man therefore will ye beguile (ye faithless sinners) of Weal and the Life Immortal, Since you with his Evil Mind the foul Spirit rules as his servants, By speech unto deeds thus false as his ruler rallies the faithless." Here plain reference is made to the bad language used by the Evil Spirit in Hell, but this need not be an exclusive reference; the Evil Spirit was active upon earth, or in some spiritual scene prior to the earthly and corresponding to that in which Satan may be supposed to have fallen-see Y. 30, 6, where the "worst mind" tempts and leads astray those who were "questioning together;" and in immediate connection with Y. 32, 5, the composer adds:(Free tri.) Much to do harm has he striven by his famèd helps if it be so, But essential truths hast thou held in Thy memory, Lord, through Thy Good Mind, 1Cp. for discussion my study of the Gáthas (pp. 410 out of 650), to be had of Brockhaus, through booksellers; see also the Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi., p. 22, which I would now modify somewhat in the present sense. 2 See my Gâthas pp. 18, 19, and Commentary p. 409. 3 As to these last words there is a difference of opinion, but the view opposed to mine is even more eschatological; I give it as alternative. See my Gâthas pp. 92 and 474. + The hostile chief. So freely; literally, a voc. is used. See my Latin verbatim, Gathas pp. 92, 93, and Comm. 474, 475. |