^ ^ % \V <^ ' 'V -J _» s ?/ £ ^. '*' \5v * e v* s - • V ^ CAMBRIDGE FREE THOUGHTS AND LETTERS ON BIBLIOLATRY; TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF G. E. LESS1NG, BY H. H. BERNARD, Ph. Dr. AUTHOR OF THE "CREED AND ETHICS OP THE JEWS EXHIBITED IN SELECTIONS FROM THE YAD HACHAZAKAH OP MAIMONIDES." "bn^^n THE GUIDE OP THE HEBREW STUDENT." AND THE "Mn^ft ^ A PRACTICAL GRAMMAR OP THE HEBREW LANGUAGE, &C, &C. Stat nominis umbra. EDITED BY ISAAC BERNARD, COMMANDER, P. AND O. COMPANY'S SERVICE. TRUBNER AND CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1862. A/)- A^lW X< irt t %^ aa~&- -^~ &e - ^ < s ~-<6 K*' » EDITOR'S PREFACE. On my return to England, after a long absence in the Indian and China Seas, my first object was to rescue, if possible, from oblivion, for a short space at least, the name of my learned Father. Cambridge has done him indeed abundant honour as to his Hebraistic and Pedagogic ac- complishments. But of his views upon far more important matters — to which Philology is but the handmaid — Cambridge knows next to nothing. My Father shrunk "from the strife of tongues." Mother Church (much as we respect that "time- honoured" Lady) has not always "that excellent thing in woman, a voice soft, gentle, and low." But the Church is not an unprotected Female. She is built on a rock, not lightly "carried about with every wind of doctrine," namely, her vested interests. iv editor's preface. She will therefore permit a filial tribute to a Father's memory, made, like the sacrifice of the ancient Persians, after sunset " Nihil ultra mihi cum Luthero" said Charles V. when the Spanish soldiery wished to scatter the bones of the Great Reformer. Lass die Todten ruhen! ISAAC BERNARD. 4, Camden Place, Cambridge, 23 June, 1862. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. He hated to excess, With an unquiet and intolerant scorn. The hollow puppets of a hollow age. Bibliolatry, — what a word! Why disturb our minds by letters of a German, when we have "Essays and Keviews," in abundance, for those, who like such reading. I will explain by two samples. I. — In re-Deuteronomy v. Exodus, or Sunday v. Sabbath. The first step from the worship of the letter to the sound and truthful Bible-Spirit worship, should be to take down, from the walls of our cathedrals, parish churches and college chapels, and erase, from our Communion Service and Catechism, the XXth chapter of Exodus. Hold ! Gentlemen of the society for the sup- pression of vice,— stop your messenger, and hear me. I would humbly suggest to convocation, or rather to parliament, as a more constitutional, and b VI INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. a somewhat more rational assembly, if they value truth, and would gain the hearts of the people, to substitute, in place thereof, that other form of the Decalogue, written in the fifth chapter of Deute- ronomy, — " written" alike, gentlemen, " with the "finger of God," — which finger points no more to Sabbatarianism , a lesson which addressed the Child; but to humanity, which is to be our lesson, till time shall be no more. Our Reformers, great and good men, had not time for every thing ; their vocation was not Biblical scholarship, but to be burnt, and thus light a candle, of whose light, we, their descendants, have not yet sufficiently availed ourselves. Others have laboured, and we have not yet entered into their labours. And the Sabbath, the poor man's grievance, — " a yoke " which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear;"*— may be a specimen of the sort of rational reformation to be petitioned for, at the hands of our rulers. Let us compare then Exodus with Deuteronomy, placing them side by side.f .* See the recorded vote of censure, by the Scotch clergy, on parties who had saved a shipwrecked vessel on Sabbath!— v. Buckle's Hist, of Civ. vol. 2. f But I must explain myself. We have a work written by a master of a college, wherein he commends Deuteronomy, as more spiritual than Exodus ; because the former says : " thou shalt not desire thy neighbour's "wife"; and the latter, only: "thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's " wife." Now here the Hebrew word being, in the original, precisely the same ("rfonn)» this same learned Theban, should have reserved his criticism, for an exercise in his own college chapel. This is not exactly the method we adopt. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. Vll Exodus, Ch. xx., v. 11. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it. Deuteronomy, Ch. v., v. 14, 15. That thy man servant and thy maid servant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day. Two distinct reasons being here asserted for keeping the Sabbath, which, we ask, ought to be constantly held up to the eyes of our people*? Exodus is the stronghold of the ancient and modern Pharisee. I appeal, from the present conventional preference of Exodus, to our Lord himself, — to his precept and to his example ; " The Sabbath was " made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."* Here he putteth away the first reason, that he may establish the better. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I " understood as a child, I thought as a child : but * " Thou thoughtest me such as thyself." Our notion of heaven is often the reflection of our earth upon its clouds. So of the attributes of heaven. To the over-tasked slave, in sultry Egypt, rest appeared supreme feli- city ; and " God rested from his work." To the lively, free Greek, in his lovely climate, energy and full de- velopement of mind and limb was bliss. Hence Aristotle's idea of the Supreme bliss was energy ; Jesus sanctioned the Greek rather than the Hebrew view : " my Father worketh hitherto." 62 Vlll INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. " when I became a man, I put away childish things." Already in the days of Deuteronomy the sun was peeping above the mountains, to scatter the early morning mists. In the eye of reason, God resteth not, neither slumbereth, nor sleepeth ; out of his own mouth is the Sabbatarian condemned. Like Shylock he would turn to the bond, and lo! the finger of God writeth therein ; " more precious in "his eyes, than the letter of the bond, is one drop " of the poor man's blood." " Dear shall their blood " be in his sight." How will the poor man bless the legislator's boon, who rescinds Pharisaical, Judicial restrictions on the Sunday — " Touch not, taste not, handle " not," — who will thus turn the Sabbath into the genuine Sunday, a day of hope, and promise, and activity ; not like the stagnant pool, but as the living, running waters, sparkling in the sun, and fertilizing the earth ; gladdening, as well as purifying, the thoughts and feelings of the heart. To seek for Sunday in the Jewish Sabbath, is to seek the living among the dead. Already in Deuteronomy, the myth yields to reason ; the bond slave, with his wife and his children, in every age and clime, is the primary object of God's tenderness in the enact- ment. The law was to lead to the "adoption of " children,"—" the service of perfect freedom." " Henceforth I call you not servants ; for the "servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I " have called you friends ; for all things that I have P INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. IX " heard of my Father I have made known unto u you." The twilight should lead us on, unto the perfect day. To go back to the monks, or the Pharisees, is to prefer darkness to light. " The " law is good" only " if a man use it lawfully." Compulsory abridgement of the poor man's inno- cent enjoyments is directly opposed to the spirit of the Bible. Sunday is a day when those confined by in-door, sedentary, six-days work may change the scene, and stretch their limbs, with healthful exercise, in the fresh breeze, in the green fields, under the open sky. Crowded and prolonged as- semblies vitiate the air ; let him survey more God's temple, " not built with hands," the arch of heaven and its "majestical roof, fretted with golden fires." " God made the country," says Cowper, " man made " the town." Leave me alone, one day, with nature's beauty, to renovate my mind. Hear the words of one of the people, and pardon a dash of bitterness in one of a most noble nature, but who felt bereaved of his birthright, by the restraints of Sabbatarian ordinances. " Oh the miraculous influence of beautiful woodland, and " heather and moss ! They enable one to think of Whigs, Tories, " Priests and practical men, with all their jugglery, and the folly " on which they prey, without a feeling of acidity !" C. R. Pemberton's Remains, p. 258. II.— The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. To show the absurdity of such cant phrases, we have but to analyse each part of the sentence. X INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. The Bible. That is, an indivisible totality must be made of treatises, varying in languages and age, consisting of parts most heterogeneous, not to say incongruous, — the works of authors most unequal in style, in matter, in value and importance; and therefore in degree of inspiration : a self-contradictory position ! Accordingly these Bible-gentlemen already split upon the Apocrypha — is it, or is it not, to be bound up together, as part and parcel of the Bible % These absurdities may remind us of the Indian god with a hundred arms, intended as an emblem of unlimited strength, but forming only a grotesque idol. But perhaps the Bible itself contains the best similitude : Behold a great image, whose brightness was excellent, and the form thereof terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay * * * then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, &c. The forced union is fatal to each part, " mole " ruit sua." As a whole, few books are really less read. The whole Bible. There are parts of Leviticus, the Song of Songs,* Genesis, chap, xxxviii. and Ezekiel, chap. xxiii,-|* which as little merit a place • A beautiful love song is very well in its time and place. But " what " does the honest man do in my closet?" And then the headings of each chapter, meant to catch the precisian's eye, like Pharisaic fringe and phylactery — e.g. " The church having a taste of Christ's love, is sick of *' love," are revolting to common sense. f There are other passages, which, assuredly, would not have escaped animadversion, from a Levitical society for the suppression of vice. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. XI in a canon of books of " instruction in righteous- " ness," as Ser Ciappelletto deserved a place in the canon of saints ; while the rejected Apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus, as little deserves exclusion, as would St. Francis de Sales,* from the list of beatified worthies. Nothing but the Bible. That this collection of Jewish writings, — justly called the Book of Books, — ■ has been, and still is, of inestimable value to the human race, we admit. Though far from identical with the word of God, it may, in a qualified sense, be said to contain it. But is it to supersede all other books'? It is a help, not a substitute, for reason and science. It is one of many Bibles, vouchsafed to the family of man. The most ancient legislators ever referred their laws to law yet older, — more time-honoured, — infinitely more just, — namely, to the whisper of God, in man's conscience. It was this made Aristides just, and Socrates content to die. It is that unwritten, — that living law of nature, the same yesterday, to day and for ever, and of whose fullness all branches of the human family partake, and of whose earthly origin, who can tell the beginning ? " In the waves of the sea," says the Divine Wisdom, " and in all the earth, and " in every people and nation, I got a possession. "f * That charming, but very scarce book " L' esprit du B. Francois de " Sales," in 6 vols. 8vo. by Bishop Carnus, — a perfect Bos well,— shews that it is possible for a Romish saint to be both admirable as a man, and a perfect gentleman. ■j" zv iravri Xaco Kai zQvzi E/CTfjo-a/x^i/, — Eccl, xxiv. 6. XII INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. " Man is heir of all the ages." God speaks to mankind, at divers times and places, in divers manners. He, who giveth corn to the Caucasian, giveth rice to the Hindoo. Various books equally ancient with the Bible, contain alike truths of natural religion, most clear, most elevated, most deep. The ancient sacred books of the Brahmins display many worthy representations of the Deity. In all ages, and in all lands, have there been pri- vileged souls, who have soared in thought, far beyond the sphere of their contemporaries, and drawn from the same great fountain of light, and communicated that light to others, as they were able to bear it. It was God, who spake in the Zend-Avesta,— the Koran, — by Confucius, — by Plato, — by Epic- tetus, — by Simplicius, — by Antoninus, — by " The Samian, Bactrian Sage, and all, who taught the right." cs Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things -" are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever "things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, " whatsoever things are of good report," are found, ever and anon, written in the rolls of these sages, no less by the finger of God, than was the Mosaic Decalogue, graven on the tablets of stone. " Every good gift and every perfect gift," we are told by the Apostle, " is from above, and cometh " down from the Father of lights ;" as surely there- fore, by his inspiration, did Homer rhapsodize, and INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. XU1 * c sweetest Shakespeare" preach from his pulpit, the stage, as did Jesus, in his sermon on the mount. It is only, as the Eabbins say, the measure of inspiration, which differs in each particular case. If in our Lord's case, it be " in measure without measure" can this be said of discordant Genealogies ? Our samples have been of unconscionable length, but we now proceed to give some account of the letters, and of their author. PREFACE. Introduction. The highest privilege, and the chiefest consola- tion of man, consists in communion with his Maker. The purest of pleasures in life, is to attend " the auld kirk" with Father and Mother, in childlike reverence, that knows not doubt. We all of us fain would die in the same faith, wherein our fathers died. But the age of reason succeeds to the age of innocence. What was the strength of the child may be the weakness of the man. That faith which was to be the guardian of our moral nature, may become a blind credulity, destructive of our high birthright — intellectual freedom of thought. Hence, in days of free enquiry tending to the disruption of established creeds, it is natural that the state of man " Like to a little kingdom, suffers then " The nature of an insurrection." There are the martyrs to reason, as well as martyrs to faith, and the sharpest trials of each probably consist, not in the outward endurance, — the dungeon, the scaffold, and the stake, — but in those inward struggles of the soul, of which the eye takes no PREFACE. XV heed, and " a stranger intermeddleth not there- " with." We live in such a crisis.* It is vain to conceal the fact; it is time we must awake out of sleep. We must awake to the realities of the broad day. In vain would we continue the sleep of reason. In our days, at least, the sun makes no compact with the dial, "to return ten degrees, by which "degrees it was gone down;" — in vain would we make the hand of the old church clock point again to Mediceval. The sun is risen upon the earth, and we must abide the toil and the heat of the day. It were vain for the mature Adam to dream of his infant paradise, — he must set to work, with his apron and his hoe. Such is the great drama of our day, — a drama fraught with high actions and high passions, in which the writer of the following letters supported no ignoble or undistinguished part. Lessing as a dramatist and a man of letters. It is hard to realise the false conceptions enter- tained about Lessing, till a recent period. In the beginning of this century Jean Paul writes : " With "regard to other countries we must consider, that " the constellation of our new literature, having * Meanwhile few except factious partisans will deny, that the ex- tremes of High and Low Church are equally betraying the cause of rational and pure Religion — which is the true strength of a people. " A plague o' both your houses !" XVI PREFACE. " risen only half a century ago, the rays of it are " still on the road thither." This was pre-eminently so with our Islanders, " — Toto divisos orbe Britannos." John Bull stands aloof, — is content with his own highly creditable idiosyncrasy, — virtute me involvo, — defends the fogs and mists which obscure the light within, as he does (in the Play) the atmosphere without, " replete with vapours :" " The air of " England goes ten times as far, — it must, you know, for it's ten times as thick." Johnson — that pompous vamper of common-places, often more trite than true, — that impersonation of Anglican prejudice, whose Cyclopian figure, photo- graphed by Boswell, as a Sampson Agonistes, making onslaught on the Philistines, was so long the delight of our boyhood and our riper years, — Johnson's star was in the ascendant. " Sir, I love a good "hater," " Eousseau to the gallies, — to the hulks " with Voltaire, — German books to the bottom of " the German Ocean." " Forgive my transports on a theme like this, " I cannot bear a French metropolis." Slowly through the fogs of Thames, and the mists of Edinburgh, calmly, silently rose to notice the bright star of Lessing — fairest among the " living saphirs" of German genius. Slowly — for while enshrined in the Walhalla among the greatest of his age, embalmed in the heart of his father-land, and preserved in the library PREFACE. XV11 of nations, Lessing's master-piece " Nathan" was thus criticised in an early number of the Edinburgh Review : " The work before us is as genuine sour krout as ever perfumed " a feast in Westphalia."* But the opening of the continent, peace, and steam conveyance have brought at length, that best of free trade, interchange and intercommunion of thought among the foremost spirits of the great European family, so essential to the progress of civilization and humanity. Slowly upon us also at last the planet of Lessing " rising in clouded majesty, unveil'd her peerless "light." Twenty years later the Edinburgh Review writes : " We confess, we should be entirely at a loss for the literary " creed of that man who reckoned Lessing other than a thoroughly " cultivated writer ; nay, entitled to rank in this particular with the " most distinguished writers of any existing nation. As a poet, as a " critic, philosopher or controversialist, his style will be found "precisely such as we of England are accustomed to admire " most. Brief, nervous, vivid ; yet quiet without glitter or anti- '* thesis ; idiomatic, pure without purism, transparent yet full of "character and reflex hues of meaning."f But alas ! what charms the British Critic, — as in unison with his own intolerance, — is Lessing's weakest point, his sweeping abuse of Voltaire. " The first foreigner who had the glory of proclaiming "Shakespeare to be the greatest dramatist, the world had ever * Ed. Bev., Ap., 1806, p. 149. The translation reviewed was the very respectable one by W. Taylor of Norwich, f Ed. Rev., Oct., 1827, p. 321. XV111 PREFACE. "seen, was Gottlob (Gotthold) Ephraim Lessing * * * He " attacked Voltaire with polemical dexterity, with rare acuteness, " with invincible logic, and at once dwarfed the conventional "elegancies of the Frenchman, by placing them beside the "majestic proportions of our giant."* After all, it was as a being of understanding and reason — not as a Poet — Lessing best under- stood Shakspere. In doing justice to Lessing let us also not be unjust to Voltaire. "What is true "in him, is not new," said Lessing. Yes, but Voltaire gave new life to what lay bedridden in the dormitory of men's souls. " Voltaire's humor " is mere persiflage" says Jean Paul. True, but persiflage was natural to Voltaire, and style is no more to be censured, Lessing himself has said, than a man's nose on his face. Besides it suited his age and country, and with this keen weapon alone, of ridicule, was he to discomfit the bigots, and " Drive those holy Vandals off the stage." Hence — hinc illce lacrimce — whatever he said or did was, and still is, of course, grossly mis- represented. " Ecrasez Vinfame" applied by him to the Jesuit, is still repeatedly quoted as though meant for the Lord Jesus. As to Shakespere, Voltaire had no childish jealousy, like Byron. He did him all justice possible — for a Frenchman. His mind, Goethe truly observes, was not Teutonic, but the highest conceivable intellectual power, that • Ed. Rev., July, 1849, p. 61. PREFACE. XIX France and Frenchmen could produce. Why should not great men, of most varied mould, stand, side by side, in our libraries % Why "so devote to Aristotle's ethicks " That Ovid be an outcast quite abjur'd" ? There are moods when each gives each a double charm. " From serious Antonine," says Dr. Armstrong,* "to Eabelais' ravings." Man is heir of all the ages ; the world of intellect is wide enough to embrace both, and to these two great European instructors, Shakespere and Voltaire, is mainly due the kindliness of modern philosophy. Lessi7ig as a Theologian. But leaving Lessing's general merits to his able biographer Stahr,-j* we proceed to his character as an amateur in theology, with which we are now more immediately concerned. According to his own testimony^ Lessing was no Eationalist, he disliked the inconsistency of the semi-supra-semi-naturalists, from Origen down to Socinus, Locke and Bishop Thirl wall's " Schleier- " macher." It is vain after swallowing the camel, to affect being choked by the tail. If Saint Denis * In his "Art of preserving Health." f G. E. Lessing, sein Leben und seine Werke von Adolf Stahr. Berlin, 1859. X "I have especially defended the Orthodox Lutheran Christian "Religion against Roman Catholics, Socinians, and Neologians." " The Reverend Gentleman has expressed his approbation by word of "month, and in print." XX PREFACE. really walked with his head under his arm, " Ce " n'est que le premier pas qui coute." When once quietly installed in the Ark, " the lion," Bishop Home judiciously observes, " would eat straw like "the ox." When the prophet Jonah sits hymning and harping in the whale's belly, it is a work of supererogation in the Rev. Thos. Hart well Home, in his inimitable farrago,* to lessen our wonder by quoting the naturalists, that living bodies are not digestible. Far more logically consistent, he thought with Dr. Arnold,f were the English Deists. Them he regarded with an admiration, not unmixed with terror. Those stout English hearts reminded him of the Pilgrim Fathers, first crossing the wide Atlantic. " Thus sung they in an English boat " An holy and a cheerful note ; "And all the way to guide their chime, " With falling oars they kept the time. " What shall we do but sing His praise, " Who led us thro' the wat'ry maze, " Unto an isle so long unknown "And yet far kindlier than our own. " And 'mid these rocks for us did frame "A temple where to sound His name." * Introduction to the Bible. f " Unitarianism, acknowledging the authority of Scripture, and assert- " ing its own peculiar interpretation of it, appears to me to lose in strength " intellectually exactly as much as I hope it gains by so doing morally." Dr. Arnold's Serm. 1845, p. 218. Surely the more logically consistent we are in forming our religious opinions, the more truthful and therefore the more moral we are. Rejecting the stronger evidence is the greatest immorality which the case can admit. PREFACE. XXI These daring men had acted in strict accordance with the counsels of the great Athenian sage;* when the more safe, more firm, and more convenient vessel, traditional revelation, appeared to them no longer sea-worthy, they had perilled their souls along the voyage of life in long-boat, or self- constructed raft, of the best and most irrefragable reasoning, which the case afforded, and thus in humble reliance in the common Father of mankind, had been wafted down the stream of Time into the Ocean of Eternity. But was the dear old Biblical ship indeed proved by them to be thus crazy? Was not the raft too hastily constructed ? " Bound on a voyage of awful length, "And dangers little known, "A stranger to superior strength, "Man vainly trusts his own." The English deists,f as Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Tindal, Collins, Woolston, Chubb, Toland, Mande- ville, and Shaftsbury, though full of genius, fire, vivacity, and life, seemed to Lessing deficient in ancient Greek, or at least Oriental Literature, The inimitable Bolingbroke indeed must be ex- * Plato's Phsedo, p. 85, C. D. f It is refreshing to have at last a somewhat philosophical account of these men, in the " Gesehichte des Englischen Deismus von Gr. V. "Lechler, Stuttgart, 1841," instead of the innately vulgar works of Leland and Van Mildert, where they are strung together as heterogeneous vermin, nailed on a barn. XXU PREFACE. cepted. How it was possible for so young a man, a premier, immersed in politics, and unhappily in all the pleasures of the town, to take so masterly a precis of ancient Greek philosophy and Kabbinic lore, we are at a loss to conceive. His remains, — conversations with Pope and Swift, — are among the most amusing literature of England. And, as to "the life that now is," what was the deist's hope? Lessing's good sense saw the world everywhere close the gates of mercy upon the free-speaker. The tamely obedient horse* is pampered in the stall; — the wild horse, free as the winds of the wilderness, perishes of hunger and want. He did not choose to descend into the arena in the cause of Truth, not fully ascertained, — with a morituri te salutant, — to exhibit himself as the dying gladiator, before a reckless and unfeeling public. The defenders of the faith, indeed, both ancient and modern, he viewed with unutterable scorn, "mumbling with toothless rage," as Warburton describes Waterland's answer to Tindal. Such de- fences betray any cause. "It is not the mob I "fear," said an officer of the Guards during the riots, "it is the fire of the Volunteers, exposes us " to hourly danger." But there must be deep truth * The wild tenants of the wood and mountain are designated in Hebrew as "living" beasts, (nit#n"TV , n\ from the fire and vivacity — quick breath and stir of blood— which characterise their life of attack and defence, as contrasted with the sleepy existence of the sheep and cow, (servum pecus). PREFACE. XX111 in that book, thought Lessing, which outlives and outlasts such intensely ridiculous lines of defence. And so, in short, he pursued no further the paths of men of dangerous parts, and fatal learning — as deserts, whitened by the bones of many a too curious traveller, — and kept the broad track of " Mecca* "and the Caravan," — those primrose paths of dalliance which the world's favourites tread, and those soft cushioned stalls, where blockheads hear, —-and sleep! JReimarus. From this happy slumber Lessing was aroused, as by the sound of a trumpet. His residence at Hamburg had introduced him to the family of the great Hermann Samuel Eeimarus, lately dead. He was much interested in learning, from the son and daughter, various particulars of their illustrious parent. Eeimarus had for many years filled the chair of professor of Oriental literature. He was a prodigy of universal learning; with piety more than enough for a convent, and with the learning of a Pearson, " the dust of whose writings," Bentley tell us, "is gold." In the reason of man, in the instincts of animals, in every realm of Nature, he * But to avoid religious jars, The laws are my expositors, Which in my doubting mind create Conformity to Church and State. I go, pursuant to my plan, To Mecca with the Caravan. Green's Spleen. XXIV PREFACE. referred everything to the Immutable, and perceived the Godhead alike in all. The bright cheerfulness with which he had borne continual sickness revealed to his family that he lived above time and the world; the ever quick and open spirit, from which neither what is rarest, nor most ordinary escaped, showed with what unwearied ardour he sought for every trace of the Godhead, — with what eagerness he watched for its slightest manifestation. He in- herited the philological fame of his great father-in- law, Fabricius, and Poison attests the transcendant merits of his Dion Cassius. His " Principal truths of " Natural Religion,"* was long the text book through- * How different is the native eloquence of one who writes from the heart, from that of the hired Tertullus of the schools, — especially when the Professional Esprit de Corps whispers to the latter, not to go too far. "Plac'd at the door of learning, youth to guide, " We never suffer it to stand too wide." Arnica Veritas — sed magis arnica Ecclesia. What would Reimarus say to a writer who received a thousand pounds to write on "the Power, '•Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation," who begins by proclaiming all " utterly insufficient for the great ends of Religion" " which can, I well know," he says, "be achieved only by that Revealed "Religion, of which we are ministers,"* and so makes the very heavens to tell the glory of his own order, and the importance of the cloth ? Ye Gods ! the countless millions that have, and do, and are to tread this planet, are to drink no water, but through the Lambeth, Oxford, and Cambridge Water-works' Society. Was the counsel at the bar retained by Lord Bridgewater to plead for or against poor Natural Religion? It required a stalwart frame and unbashful forehead thus to disparage "Divinest Nature,"— the heavens that tell the glory of God, and the firmament that shOweth his handy work. Alas ! all unction,— the sweet wine and the feast of fat things must be reserved for the Christian Theo- logical pulpit, or " Othello's occupation's gone." But this gentleman's lukewarmness in the cause of Natural Religion, is pardonable compared with the violent attack of another defender of the Christian faith, who goes right near to promulgate Atheism under PREFACE. XXV out the Continent, on this most important of all branches of enquiry, and supplied Paley alike with plan and materials. His Job is a model comment. But the marvel of marvels was to follow, the defender of Venice was the u Bravo of Venice." The very accomplished Elise Reimarus revealed the secret to Lessing, that her father had entrusted to her hands " An apology for the rational wor- shippers of God." He had found reason points to Natural Religion, as surely as the magnetic needle to the north. This great work (still pub- lished but in part) had been the darling object of all his thoughts and studies, during the last thirty years of his life. And here every point of Church orthodoxy was demonstrated to be indefensible, wherever she departed from the voice of conscience, —the sanctity of reason. — the earliest teachings of the glorious heavens above, and the earth beneath,— the regular course of divine providence. the Oxford Protestant cowl. Here the heart is moved, but it is on the side of interest. "Little Cupid took his stand "Upon the widow' 's jointure land." To plead the uncertainties of metaphysics, in order to force the Athanasian Creed upon our consciences and reason, —to say that, without the present Church Establishment, mankind must "live without God in the world,'* and die without hope, like a dog in a ditch,— to scare us from defending our Christian liberties, by pointing to the dark mines and counter-mines of an uncertain controversial divinity, — what is all this but to betray the town to the enemy, and fire the citadel with our own hands in order to enhance the importance of some advanced, paltry block-house, on whose preservation forsooth depend our vested interests and shares ? * Astronomy, &c, Bridge-water Treatise. London, 1833, p. vi. and vu. XXVI PREFACE. Is it to be called a fault, a weakness, or a virtue, that Reimarus, like Pythagoras and so many others, kept back from the many, his esoteric doctrine] "He scanned our nature with a brother's eye," he regarded human errors in religion with tenderness and pity. Poor children of Adam! picking up pebbles on the shores of the vast ocean of truth, why imbrue your hands in a brother's blood, or dip the pen in gall, because each esteems his own the prettiest pebble] He venerated religious pre- judices, and, like the good Melancthon, would have besought his aged mother to continue her attendance at Mass, — it was her Eeligion.* What nights of prayer and tears had not his investigations caused himself. Such awful subjects seemed, again and again, to demand reverend and blind submission ! Only " Fools rush in where "angels fear to tread." At least it was the safe side that his discoveries should die with him. He shrunk, as Lessing says, from notoriety and coteries, from politics, and noisy adherents of a popular heresy. He detested factious tongues, and the * This has since been carried too far. "I wish my son, Marcus," says Niebuhr, "to believe all the letter of the Gospel narrative, though ft my criticism can so easily demolishlt." But what did son Marcus become, when, in manhood, he learnt the Paternal trick ? Alas ! a reactionist poltroon, with the motto " Populus vult decipi, decipiatur!" If this be theses Christiana of young Germany who will not sigh for the prisca fides of the antique world. "Who dares think one thing and another tell, f* My heart detests him as the gates of hell." PREFACE. XXV11 reputation of a popular orator, gained by a warm fancy, and able lungs, — vox et praterea nihil. He was a true scholar and recluse, who valued sound sleep by night, study and ease, far above all fame. Such a man "Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes." He would write anonymously, if at all, — take any name, — gladly steal from the world, and not a stone tell where he lies. It requires great moral courage to pass the fire of orthodoxy. "If to be honest as the world goes," says Mr. Justice Talfourd, "is to be one of ten "thousand, to be honest as the mind ivorks, is to " be one man of a million." Even the dauntless Wilkes was daunted here : " I remain, however, " sound in the faith, and will keep to my good " orthodox mother, the Church of England, to the "last moment of its--4egal establishment." And so Home Tooke, " Bosville and I have entered into "a strict engagement, to belong for ever to the "established church, the established government, "the established language. Do but establish, and "we are convinced of its propriety." Eeimarus was no man of bronze or of iron, to pass the fort- resses of superstition and intolerance, ably served by well-disciplined mercenaries, — to pass the fire also of those dreadful rifle-pits, — secret slanderers, — compared with which the charge at Balaklava was a trifle. In a word Eeimarus resembled the XXV111 PREFACE. English Bishops.* " Eich men furnished with ability, " living peaceably in their habitations, — honoured " in their generations," regarded as, " the glory of " their times." Peace and repose their dear delight, " Content to dwell in decencies for ever." Lessing publishes the Fragments. Lessing saw all the learning of the ancient world stood revealed to Reimarus; he saw, it was his timid nature, which had kept him silent. Why keep under a bushel, what might give light to all in the house 1 One seventh part of Eeimarus would outweigh seven " budge Doctors " of the Theologic "fur." The kindest, gentlest, noblest of the sons of Adam had said: "If it were not so, " I would have told you." Ought we then to conceal the truth ? He had a romantic love of truth, how- ever neglected and decried. With Middleton, he looked upon the discovery of any thing which is true as a valuable acquisition to society; which cannot possibly hurt or obstruct the good effect of * When such Bight Reverend Fathers forget themselves, they are sometimes roughly reminded,— they are but men ! See a very amusing scene, between an English Bishop and Goethe, in Eckermann ; (Gesprache mit Goethe, vol. in., p. 327), as the passage is accidentally omitted in Oxenford's masterly translation, we subjoin an extract: "Hold! when "your sermons on the terrors of hell-fire torments, harrow the weak "souls in your congregations, so that some have lost their senses, and V ended their days in a madhouse ! — when ye sow the pernicious seeds " of doubt, in the minds of your Christian hearers, by many orthodox M dogmas, quite untenable by reason,— involving the half strong, half *« weak, in a labyrinth from which death alone will extricate them, — &c." PREFACE. XXIX any other truth whatsoever : for they all partake of one common essence, and necessarily coincide with each other ; and like the drops of rain which fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the stream, and strengthen the general current. What though the highest classes in rank, wealth, and commerce were cold and indifferent to aught, but the most practical bearings of the subject, — the balance in their banker's book, he would brave the " world's dread laugh" and withering sneer.* Nor did he dread the influence of truth upon the people. The poor people ! he thought, with Jean Paul, everywhere are they invited into the court of the palace, when the heaviest burdens of war or of peace are to be carried away ; everywhere are they driven out of it, when light, the greatest of treasures is to be communicated. With what right does any one class demand exclusive possession of light ] — unless indeed it means also to claim ex- clusive possession of the iniquitous power of ruling more absolutely from its own light over others' darkness. Can a state permit the development of the facul- ties of human nature only to certain individuals, as it grants titles and orders'? But upon this matter the old arguments, — the hoary satellites of despotism, still exist ; namely, * Lessing even defended the thrice- eccentric (Amory's) " JohnBuncle," Charles Lamb's favorite book, from the shafts of Wieland, Vol. 29, p. 495, Berlin, 1794. XXX FREFACE. that the people, like horses and birds in the mill or fowling floor, serve both their own interests and the interest of the state, much better when blinded. But these decrepit servants of tyranny knavishly assume that the same sunlight which is useful on the mountains, is mischievous in valleys ; and that want of education, though it will not protect the high against corruption, will the low : that truth misunderstood can never become truth misused, except among the people. Lessing thought the time was come; and do what we will, man's reason is at length awake, and aroused like a giant refreshed with wine. He resolved to publish the great work of Rei- marus in fragments, and to abide the consequence. Mendelsohn, Another circumstance, which attached Lessing to the liberal camp, was his friendship for the Jewish philosopher, Mendelsohn. " Blest with each talent and each art to please" Lessing saw this most amiable of men utterly disregarded by the world of rank and fashion, — he was of a class proscribed. * • Their friendship often admitted playful raillery. Lessing. " How did you rocognise my hand, in the pamphlet V Mend. «' My dear friend, I thought no one, but you, could display " such total ignorance of the Bible." At his first introduction to Madame Lessing, Mendelsohn brought in his hand a bouquet of the sweetest flowers, a present and peace-offering to soften the bad impression of his beard and gaberdine. Mendelsohn's son — " of virtuous father, virtuous son/' was also distinguished, as giving birth to the late amiable and eminently accomplished composer. PREFACE. XXXI The prejudice, which would exclude from our sympathies and communion of heart these " brethren " of the Lord, after the flesh" is in our day, fortu- nately, well-nigh obsolete. To learn the full power of prejudice we must transplant ourselves to the terrorist reign of intolerance. This will enable us also to test, by her genuine fruits, the true nature of Bibliolatry. Her votaries, among the civilized portion of the human family, are specially three, — the Hebrew, the Christian and the Moslem. These all " bow the knee to one alone," — all recognise one supreme common Father, with the slight difference of name Eloah* or Allah. But the rival claims to verbal inspiration of their traditional Scriptures, — Old Testament and Talmud,— New Testament and Tra- dition,— Koran and Sonnah, long rendered Hebrew, Christian and Moslem more mutually " hateful and " hating," if possible, than the united North and South American states, that is, with an enmity as implacable as that of the most imbruted Atheists, or the most benighted votaries of Fetichism and Devil-worship. Our friends under the Oxford cowl can scarcely realize the true horrors of the Crusades, • Or far more common 'Elohim' (Gods), a word like our Sunday, de- rived from Pagan ancestry If we abstract the consideration of revelation, Polytheism would precede by many ages Theism. Simplification and generalization is a gradual process. The plural name in Genesis seems an archaism derived from the older religion. Egypt probably first saw Theism exhibited as the esoteric doctrine.— Abram may have been initiated and adopted from the hierarchy much of the Theocracy, which was subsequently revived and systematized among the Hebrew race by Moses. XXX11 PREFACE. or they would hardly point to mediaeval times as one of the brightest seras in our humanity. The Christian, we fear, took the lead in bigotry and zeal. " In destruction of Maumetrie" " Increase of Christes law, was best shown, says Chaucer. " To chace these pagans, in those holy fields, " Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet, " Which fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed, " For our advantage, to the bitter cross." Mohammed's patience was, at last, quite ex- hausted : and he was in the end too apt a scholar in Dr. Johnson's school of " good haters." In the Koran we read, when "the trumpet calls together " the nations to judgment — all ' red whiskers and "grey eyes [j^j^ J^\ 3 ^] shall be gathered, " on the left, — as fuel for the fire.' " " These," says the Arab commentator Beidhawi, " are the people " of Rome (Franks), beyond idolaters in their deadly " hostility to us, and therefore most abominable to " Arabs." With the Saracen was included in one ban the other branch of the lineage of Abraham.* In spite • Christians attribute the degraded state of Israel to the accomplish- ment of a curse pronounced by their ancestors who put Jesus to death. " His blood be on us and on our children" ! But all we know of the Jews applies to those in Christendom or the Mahommedan empire. Now the insertion of these words in the sacred books of the Christians, naturally led to their accomplishment, and the Mahommedan, a sect of Christians, would naturally inherit the same abhorrence for the Jews. PREFACE. XXX111 of David and the Son of David, " burn the Jew" was long the heritage of the Christian, bequeathed religiously from father to son. The dramatists caught the tone of the monkish writers of mysteries, and basely pandered to this inhuman thirst for Jewish blood. Marlow's " Jew of Malta" presents such diabolical features of mind and body, as never existed, but in an imagination the most depraved. And so the stage, the natural antidote against too much priest-craft, became the auxiliary of prejudice. Poor human nature ! Shakespear's Jew of Venice, while it seemed to gratify the same base feelings, in reality detected and laid them bare. For what a home lesson did the art of our immortal bard convey, to those who had " ears to hear," from the lips of Shylock ! " If a Jew wrong a Christian what is his humility ? revenge : " if a Christian wrong a Jew what should be his sufferance by " Christian example ? why revenge. The villainy you teach me I " will execute." In the hate and vindictive malice of the Jew, Christian intolerance is made to recognise its own ugly and mis-shapen offspring. Nor is the leaven of mediaeval bigotry quite extinct among us. Devout as we English may appear, there are devils, which go not forth at all by prayer and fasting, — and intolerance is one. Where do we find a more Christian gentle- man, in every good sense of the term, than Sir XXXIV PREFACE. Francis Goldsmid, and yet how tardily was the battle won, which allowed to sit in parliament, a chosen representative of our capital. Many a Hebrew of the present day, — as the candid and philosophic Salvador, Franck, Munk and Dukes, — differ far more from the mediaeval Jew, than many a present Christian, from those who burnt them. To drive superstition out of its den, to "drag the " struggling savage into day," were a thirteenth labour for Heracles. Nathan the Wise. "I will preach to them from my pulpit, the " stage," said Lessing; and my text shall be: " Sirs, " ye are brethren, why do ye wrong one to another," — and Nathan the wise was the result. Boccaccio's " Three Rings" supplied a nucleus for the plot, and the photograph of his unconscious friend Mendel- sohn supplied the angelic features of the Jewish sage in the piece, — the ideal of pure and perfect morality. "Nathan" was performed by Greek actors at Constantinople, in 1842. On the second perfor- mance the majority of the audience were Turks; their interest in the piece was intense, and though they seemed, at times, a little less tolerant than Saladin, at the plain speaking of the Jew, yet the story of 'the Three Rings' produced a manifest sensation. And at the close the "middle wall of PREFACE. XXXV "partition" gave way before the flood of gentler sentiments and more humane sympathies. " Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto." Moslems, with Greeks by their side, repeatedly cheered with enthusiasm the appeal from the stage, — the kindly recognition of the ties of brotherhood. The close of Lessing' s life. And what was the result ? Poor Lessing ! It is the old story, monkey's fare, — more kicks than halfpence. " I am not the first, and I shall not be "the last," said Socrates. And Plato playfully describes a public, hurt and angry, — kicking and biting those, who first turned them from shadows to the light of day. " I will kill thee and love thee, "after." The cross itself attests the fate of a re- former. Oxford, that stoned the prophets, now raises a stately cenotaph to her Marian martyrs. Lessing who now figures elsewhere, from the Walhalla to the Crystal Palace, was barely allowed to die in peace. The sting of the bee protects the hive, but the insect's life flows, with the wound which it inflicts. — Vitam impendere vero. Calumny pursued him with relentless rage ; even Semler, the liberal theologian, ("liberal with a vengeance," bishop Blomfield elegantly styles him,) satirized our author, as placed by the lord mayor of London in a lunatic asylum.* • << I am too well acquainted," Lessing answers, "with, the great XXXVI PREFACE. The Vienna gazette boldly taxed him with having received a Jewish bribe of a thousand ducats ; nor would it insert the refutation of his indignant friends. Baron Jacobi grieved over his friend as a pan- theist. Lessing, forsooth, had said in conversation : " Who knows, Baron, whether, hereafter, we shall " not be falling in that shower, or exhaling perfume " in yonder rose V And thus a jest was turned, by this proser, into an awful reality. The imputation broke the heart of the tender and affectionate Men- delsohn. Nor were there wanting fabricated death- bed scenes of recantation, — so consolatory to old women, of either sex. The plague-struck Pericles pointed, with a bitter smile, to the amulet, which the women had hung about his neck. Fear to give pain makes the hero " play the woman," at those moments. Lessing had said : " I perhaps shall '' tremble in my dying hour, but before my dying "hour I shall never tremble." Lessing knew well the tricks of pious fraud ; how the monks had foisted into the " Canterbury Tales," the " Parson's tale," of cant and recantation : — how a lying monument can change, like Lord Kenyon, Julian the apostate into Julian the apostle; and he vowed, in bitter- ness of spirit : "I will send for a public notary, " to testify, I do not die a Christian." '* Bedlam, in which we all live, to marvel if the Bedlamite majority, would " gladly shut me up in a little private madhouse of my own." PREFACE. XXXVll Sore is the trial, (Coleridge calls it duspathy, as the opposite to sympathy,) when false religion can turn the milk of human kindness, even in woman's breasts, to gall and wormwood. Lessing had to drink this bitter cup to the dregs. So strong was public feeling at one period, that the grandson of Eeimarus himself crossed the street, to avoid the heretic. Lessing's own words, when his boy, an infant a few days old, died: "I call him, without " a father's vanity, wise ; for he cast but one look on " this world, — and left it !" reveal to us, painfully, how himself longed for that " land of the leel," "where the wicked cease from troubling and the " weary are at rest." In a word, Lessing was the Phoenix of his own fable, "which appeared, at length, once in the " whole century.* The birds and beasts gaped, — " they stared at the prodigy, in a transport of admi- " ration. ' Unhappy bird', said the wisest of them, " c the only bird of his species ! he is doomed to a " ' life of solitude.' " " Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land ? " All fear, none aid you, and few understand. " Painful pre-eminence ! yourself to view " Above life's weakness, and its comforts too." Lessing's Nathan was the last song of the Swan, — most musical, most melancholy ; and he died singing * Campe, the lexicographer, applies to him. the words of Shakespeare : " He doth bestride the narrow world, " Like a colossus ; and we petty men " Walk under his huge legs." d XXXV111 PREFACE. it. u After that production," said his friend Men- delsohn, " he might well be content to die." Nature could not improve upon the work — and she broke the mould. " It breathes," says Miiller, " the air "of a pure, serene and happy climate, and a fra- " grance wafted from the blossoms on his grave." PKEFACE BY LESSING. ( Unfinished.) BXBLIOLATRY. KaXo'v ye tov ttuvov, w Xpiare, (tol irpo <$0f.i