CHAPTER VII DAVID AND MOSES

The Greek translation of the Scriptures shewn me by Sosia was in several volumes of various sizes and in various conditions. Unrolling the one that shewed most signs of use, I found that, although it was in prose, it was a translation of Hebrew poems, mostly very short, and of a lyrical character. One of them had in its title the name of “David,” which I had met with in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Sosia told me that he was the greatest of the ancient kings of the Jews. Ordering the other volumes to be sent to my rooms, I took this back with me, and began to read it immediately, beginning with the poem on which I had chanced in the shop.

It was a prayer for purification from sin: “Pity me, O God, according to thy great pity, and according to the multitude of thy compassions blot out my transgression. Cleanse me still more from my crime, and purify me from my sin.” So far, the poem was intelligible to me. I was familiar with the religious rites of cleansing from blood-guiltiness—mentioned in connexion with Orestes and many others by the Greek poets and recognised in various forms all over the world. So I said, “This king has committed homicide. He has been purified with lustral rites and sacrifices. But he needs some further rites: ‘Cleanse me still more,’ he says. The poem will tell me, I suppose, what more he needs.”

After adding some words to the effect that the transgression was against God, against God alone, the king continued, “For behold, in transgressions was I created at birth, and in sins did my mother conceive me. For behold, thou hast ever loved[78] truth; thou hast shewn unto me the hidden secrets of thy wisdom. Thou wilt sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be purified; thou wilt wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” Here I was at a stand. It seemed to me a great and sudden descent to a depth of superstition, to suppose that this particular additional rite of “cleansing with hyssop” could satisfy the king’s conscience. Moreover I thought that “wisdom” must mean the wisdom of the Greeks. It was not till afterwards that I discovered how great a gulf separates our syllogistic or rhetorical or logical “wisdom” from that of the Jews—which means “knowledge of the righteousness of the Creator based upon reverence.” Thence comes their saying, “Reverence for God is the beginning of wisdom.”

These two misunderstandings almost led me to put down the book in disgust. But the passionateness of the king’s prayer made me read its opening words once again. Then I felt sure I must have done him injustice. So I read on. Presently I came to the words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy countenance, and take not thy holy spirit from me.” These made me ashamed of having taken “hyssop” literally. I saw now that it was just as much metaphorical as “whiter than snow,” and that it meant a deep and inward purification—of the heart, not of the body. Still more was I ashamed when I came to the words, “If thou hadst delight in sacrifice I would have given it to thee, but thou wilt take no pleasure in whole burnt-offerings. The sacrifice for God is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart God will not despise.”

This was all new and strange doctrine to me. The graceful lines of Horace about the efficacy of the simplest sacrifice—of meal and salt—from the hand of an innocent country girl, and about its superiority to the proffered bribe of a hecatomb from a man of guilt, these I knew by heart; but they did not touch the present question, which was as to how the man of guilt could receive purification, without a hecatomb, without the blood of bulls and goats. And the question went even beyond that. For the king said that he had been “in sins” even from the beginning, even before birth. Did he speak of himself[79] alone, or of himself as the type of erring mankind? I thought the latter. He seemed to me to say, “Man is from the first an animal, born to follow appetite. In part (no doubt) he is a divine being, born to follow the divine will; but in part he is an animal, born to follow animal propensity.” So far this agreed with Epictetus’s doctrine about the Beast. The Beast, at the beginning, tyrannizes over the divine Man, so that the human being may be said to be in sin—and indeed is in sin, as soon as he becomes conscious of the tyranny within him. “No lustral rites, no blood of bulls and goats,” the king seemed to say, “can purify this human heart of mine now that it has been tainted and corrupted by submitting to the Beast within me. A moment ago, my prayer was ‘Purge me with hyssop,’ but now it is ‘Destroy me and create me anew,’ ‘Take away my old heart and give me a new heart.’”

These last words were quite contrary to the doctrine of Epictetus, who taught us that we are to receive strength and righteousness from that which is within our own hearts. And, thought I, is not the king’s prayer superstitious? The witches in Rome suppose they can draw down the moon by incantations. This king David in Jud?a supposes he can draw down “a clean heart” and “a right spirit” by passionate invocation to the God of the Jews! Are not the two superstitions parallel? Would not Epictetus say so? Would not all the Cynics say so? I thought they would: and, as I was rolling up the little book, I said, “It is a fine and passionate poem, but the prayer is not one for a philosopher.” Then, however, it occurred to me that there was a true and a deep philosophy—though I knew not of what school—in the doctrine that the true and purifying sacrifice for guilt is a penitent heart. That set me pondering the whole matter again and reflecting on some of the things in my own life of which I was most ashamed, things that I would have given much to forget, and a great deal more to undo. In the end, I found myself thinking—not saying, but thinking of it as a possible prayer—“In me, in me, too, create a clean heart, O thou God of forgiveness!” It might not be a prayer for philosophers, but I could not help feeling that it might be a good prayer for me.

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While I was placing my new volume by the side of Paul’s epistles it occurred to me that the words I had just been reading might throw some light on a passage in the epistle to the Romans at which I had glanced last night. Then I could make nothing of it. Now I read it again: “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. To will [that which is good] is present with me, but to do is not present. I will to do good and I do it not. I will not to do evil, and I do it.” This now seemed to me a truer description of the state of things (within me at all events) than the view mostly presented to us in our lecture-room. Epictetus often talked as though we had merely to will, and then what we willed—at least so far as concerns the mind and the things in the mind’s province—would at once come to pass. True, he did not always say this. Sometimes he insisted on the need of training or practice, and then he likened the Cynic to an athlete preparing for the Olympian games. But it seemed to me that he habitually underrated the difficulty of conforming the human to the divine will: and he never—never even once, as far as I know—recognised the need or efficacy of repentant sorrow.

My immediate conclusion was that, although it was not for me to decide between the “feeling” of the Jews and the “reason” of the Greeks in general, yet one thing was certain—I had a good deal to learn from the former. So I welcomed the arrival of Sosia’s servant bringing the rest of my new books. A good many of them I unrolled and cursorily inspected at once. Both from their number, and from the variety of their subjects, it was clear that I should only be able to study a few. I resolved to confine myself to such parts as bore on Paul’s epistles, and to dispense with lectures for a day or two. Then it occurred to me that Arrian, who had proposed to resume to-day our conversation on the Jews and Galil?ans, might come in at any moment. I put away the Jewish books and went to his lodging, thinking that I could perhaps tell my friend of my new studies in order to explain to him my non-attendance at lecture. Instead of Arrian, however, I found a note informing me that he had been obliged to go suddenly to[81] Corinth (in connexion with some business of his father’s) but hoped to return before long.

This saved explanation; and I spent several days (during his prolonged absence) in studying my new volumes. They led me into a maze—or rather, maze after maze—of bewildering novelties. Sosia had told me that my first volume, containing five books, was called by the Jews “the Law.” But it included pedigrees, poems, prophecies, histories of nations, and stories of private persons. The legal portion of it was largely devoted to details about feasts and purificatory sacrifices—the very things that David appeared to call needless. However, when I came to look into the Law more closely, I found that its fundamental enactments were humane and gentle—so much so as to give me the impression of being unpractical. It enjoined on the Jews kindness to strangers as well as to citizens. While retaining capital punishment, it prohibited torture. At least I took that to be a fair inference from the fact that it even forbade the infliction of more than forty blows with the scourge, on the ground that a “brother”—that was the word—must not be so far degraded as to become “vile” in the eyes of his fellow-citizens. It also placed some limitations on the right of masters to punish slaves, even when the latter were foreigners.

Having been accustomed to regard the Jews as unique for their moroseness and unneighbourliness I was all the more astonished at these things. It occurred to me then, as it does sometimes now, that the Law was almost too humane to have been ever fully obeyed by the greater part of the people. For example, even the slaves, even the beasts of burden, were to have one day in seven as a holiday, on which all labour was forbidden. Periodic remission of debts was enacted by law! This surprised me most of all. To think that the revolutionary measure—so our Roman historians called it—for which our tribunes of the people had contended in vain under the Republic, should here be found legalised by the Law of Moses—and this, too, not as an exceptional and isolated condonation, but as a regular remission after a fixed number of years!

“How,” I asked, “could the Lawgiver expect people to lend money to borrowers if the creditor knew that in the course of a[82] few months the obligation to pay the debt would cease?” Was he blind to the most manifest tendencies of human nature? No, I found he was not blind to them. He simply said that they must be resisted: “Beware,” said he, “that there be not a base thought in thine heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand.”

This notion of forbidding an action, or abstinence from action, in a code of laws as being “base”—not as being “subject to a penalty of such a kind,” or “a fine of so much,” was quite new to me. I had given some time to the study of Roman law, and had always assumed that when the law says “Do this,” it adds a punishment in some form or other, “Do this, or you shall suffer this or that.” But here, embedded in the Law of Moses, was a law, or rather a recommendation, without penalty. And presently I found that the last of their Ten Greater Laws—if I may so call them—was of the same kind. It could not possibly be enforced—for it forbade “coveting”! Only a few days ago, before I had bought these books from Sosia, I had read in Paul’s epistle to the Romans “I should not have known covetousness if the law had not said, Thou shalt not covet”; and these words had puzzled me a good deal. I had thought that they must refer to some “law” of a spiritual kind, such as we might call “the law of the conscience” or “the law of our higher nature,” or the like. Yet I felt that this interpretation did not quite agree with the context. Now I found, to my utter astonishment, that this was the very letter of the first clause of the tenth of the Greater Laws, “Thou shalt not covet.”

To crown all, I found that elsewhere the whole of the code was based by the Lawgiver on two fundamental precepts. The first was, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” and this love was to call forth all the powers of mind and soul and body. The second was, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” How was either of these to be enforced? “Love,” say all the poets, “is free.” The Law neither prescribed nor suggested any means of enforcing these two Great Commandments of “loving.” And how could “love” be at once “free,” as poetry protests, and yet a part of the Law, as Moses testified? There[83] seemed no answer to this question, unless some God could make us willing and eager to enforce the two commandments on ourselves, constraining us (so to speak) by love to love both Him and one another. “Truly,” said I, “this Law of Moses is very ambitious.” It seemed to aim at more than Law could accomplish. It reminded me of a sentence I had found in one of my new volumes, entitled “Proverbs,” “The light of the Lord is as the breath of men; He searcheth the storehouses of the soul.”

Somewhat similar was a saying imputed to Epictetus—which I had not heard from Arrian but from a fellow-student—reproving one of his disciples in these words, “Man, where are you putting it? See whether the basin is dirty!” The disciple, though an industrious scholar, was of impure life; and Epictetus meant that, if the vessel of his soul was foul, all the knowledge put into that vessel would also become foul. The moral was, “First cleanse the vessel!” So the Jewish Proverb seemed to say, “The light of the Lord must first search the storehouse of the soul: then the food taken out from the storehouse will be pure and wholesome.” This brought me back to the words of David, who seemed to think that the searching and cleansing must come from God and not from man alone, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!”

Comparing these two fundamental or Greatest Laws of Moses with the fundamental law of Epictetus, “Keep the things that are thine own,” I thought at first that the Jew and the Greek were entirely opposed. On second thoughts, however, I perceived that in “the things that are thine own” Epictetus would include justice and kindness, and all social so-called virtues so far as they did not interfere with one’s own peace of mind—for he would perhaps exclude pity, and certainly sympathy in the full sense of the term. But Epictetus thought that people could be sufficiently kind and just and virtuous without other aid than that of the “logos” within them. David did not, in his own case, unless that which was within him had been cleansed or renewed by a Power regarded as outside him, to whom he prayed as God. There seemed to me, in this[84] difference of “within” and “outside,” more than a mere difference of metaphor. But I had no time to think over the matter. For, just as I was regretting that Arrian was not with me to talk over some of these subjects, Glaucus, coming in to borrow a book, informed me that he had met my friend late in the previous night coming from the quay. I had intended to stay at home that morning. But now, finding that Glaucus was on his way to the lecture, I resolved to accompany him, expecting to meet Arrian there.