Culture; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the [156] one, on clear
intelligence, the other, on firm obedience; the one, on
comprehensively knowing the grounds of one's duty, the other, on
diligently practising it; the one on taking all possible care (to use
Bishop Wilson's words again) that the light we have be not darkness,
the other, that according to the best light we have we diligently
walk,--the priority naturally belongs to that discipline which braces
man's moral powers, and founds for him an indispensable basis of
character. And, therefore, it is justly said of the Jewish people,
who were charged with setting powerfully forth that side of the
divine order to which the words conscience and self-conquest point,
that they were "entrusted with the oracles of God;"+ as it is justly
said of Christianity, which followed Judaism and which set forth this
side with a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider influence,
that the wisdom of the old Pagan world was foolishness compared to
it. No words of devotion and admiration can be too strong to render
thanks to these beneficent forces which have so borne forward
humanity in its appointed work of coming to the knowledge and
possession of itself; above all, in those great [157] moments when
their action was the wholesomest and the most necessary.
But the evolution of these forces, separately and in themselves, is
not the whole evolution of humanity,--their single history is not the
whole history of man; whereas their admirers are always apt to make
it stand for the whole history. Hebraism and Hellenism are, neither
of them, the law of human development, as their admirers are prone to
make them; they are, each of them, contributions to human
development,--august contributions, invaluable contributions; and
each showing itself to us more august, more invaluable, more
preponderant over the other, according to the moment in which we take
them, and the relation in which we stand to them. The nations of our
modern world, children of that immense and salutary movement which
broke up the Pagan world, inevitably stand to Hellenism in a relation
which dwarfs it, and to Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it.
They are inevitably prone to take Hebraism as the law of human
development, and not as simply a contribution to it, however
precious. And yet the lesson must perforce be [158] learned, that
the human spirit is wider than the most priceless of the forces which
bear it onward, and that to the whole development of man Hebraism
itself is, like Hellenism, but a contribution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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