singers and divines of present culture. As instruments of thought the ancient Greeks and their language were almost perfect. All greatness contains depth and height -not mechanically explainable; the genesis is unseen, and when devout always spiritual; thought and emotion modifying, enlarging, beautifying, the outward and material. Such a man-the hero, is warrior, legislator, reformer, scourge of tyrants, universal benefactor, who brings as facts into the region of reality the wants, ideas, emotions, of ordinary humanity. He is a man of faith, lays to heart his duty in our mysterious world, the manner in which he is, or feels himself to be, spiritually related to the invisible universe, and he uses life, in all its faculties, as a contribution towards making some highway to that unseen. He is no sceptic: for, whatever be the intellectual doubts, moral doubts and insincerity, the black malady and life-foe of every age, have no place in him. Kant, an intellectual doubter, was no sceptic in morality. Faith makes the great man brave in the battle-field, sustains him at the stake, and bears him up, though the martyrdom be long and weary as the whole of a saddened life. Those who see nothing but dead mechanism in the universe checks, balances, cranks, levers; whose "Doctrine of Motives," however much disguised, gives wretched love of pleasure, or fear of pain, hunger for applause, money, earthly advantage, as the great factors of human life; are never great. Bacon ("Essay on Atheism") says, "Atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty." All an atheist manages to believe in is what he can measure and weigh, eat and digest, or clothe himself withal; lower can no man go, yet remain rational-possess no God, not even a devil! So he accomplishes what the devil would have him do-"Le chef-d'œuvre des mauvais esprits c'est de s'être fait nier par ce siècle." It is the mournfulest and meanest of all conditions; it renders life a base creeping towards a hopeless future; it makes all talk about virtue and high motive a poor sentimental vapouring — plausible quackery. No such scantily furnished, spiritually paralytic man, is a hero. To the hero the world is instinct with Godhead, and life is the seed-time of eternity. The hero, by spiritual instinct, knows that capacity for greatness-greatness to be won by all mankind, is the fact which renders elevation and advance actual and possibly universal. Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, felt that the impulse which emulates and reverences greatness is the divinely laid substratum on which rests Redemption by Christ, is the principle to which Revelation appeals, is that which makes the Christian Mystery reasonable. The best of sceptics is incomplete. A man of mere intellect, however great and powerful that intellect, is inharmoniously developed:* the gentler and tenderer affections are starved and chilled. Though a kind father, * Bossuet (sermon sur l'honneur): "Ceux là pensent être les plus raisonnables qui sont vains des dons de l'intelligence... ils font un des plus beaux ornements du monde ; mais qui pourrait les supporter, lorsque aussitôt qu'ils se sentent un peu de talent, ils fatiguent tontes les oreilles, et pensent avoir droit de se faire écouter sans fin, et de décider de tout souverainement? O justesse de la vie! O égalité dans les mœurs! O mesure dans les passions! riches et véritables ornements de la nature raisonnable, quand est-ce que nous apprendrons à vous estimer!" 4 professed or even real philanthropist, he is as a bird without power of flight; for he neglects, starves, the highest, the best, the religious aspirations of his nature. He is as a man who keeps his spirit, as was said of Humboldt, "within an iron safe." He seems to adopt as maxim-"Il faut penser, il ne faut pas croire ”—“ The greater the knowledge the greater the doubt." It is questionable whether any such man would count any opinion certain enough, any truth sure and good enough, to be worth dying for. Find a man of intellect who does not assert that the noble army of martyrs greatly blundered-he has already added pure emotion to his intellect, and begins to be spiritually minded. As for God, unto whom the thoughts of all spiritually minded men soar and find content, we must conclude that He possesses, as Leibnitz says, “The qualities of a good governor, as of a great architect;" and the point of connection at which Divine Power comes into contact and government with the chain of natural causation may be the first link, running thence, as a fine electrical influence, through every link and every part of a link. In any case, all natural phenomena are sustained by the unseen Power. This Power, establishing ordinary agency-"God cannot leave His creation a moment" (E. Thring, “Life Science "), is still more the source of extraordinary; a great man is extraordinary, and eminently God's man. He will give up his whole life for the welfare and improvement of other men: even as God, who spent ages in fitting the earth to be a dwelling for men, will spend ages more in fitting men for a renovated earth. The great and good man represents in nature some thing that has no inherent limit by nature: for he greatly rules nature, and has a more intimate relation with the unseen world than other men possess. To the simpleminded he was, of old, as a god: they believed that he was near to, if not a part of, Divinity. “ Θεός δ ̓ ὥς τίετο δήμῳ.” HOMER. “ τὴν ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς ἀρετὴν ἡρωικήν τινα καὶ θείαν.” ARISTOTLE, Ethics, vii. 1. "I might call him a thing divine." SHAKESPEARE. "To these wild Norse men he was a work of miraculous unexpected blessing, a god" (Carlyle). To the scientific mind of our day, he is a genius; and in the unfolding of his mind towards Divinity, a prophet; sacredly using the gift, he may be statesman, poet, artist; or world-mover by means of eloquence or arms. There is a sort of universal conviction, that as every ray of light is a child of the sun, every dew-drop a model of the ocean; so the smile of human intelligence is a gleam, which in the mind and countenance of a great man shines as Divine illumination. Of holy Stephen it is said, "They saw his face as it had been the face of an angel." Highest and purest greatness displays self-sacrifice -not degradation of the higher for elimination of imperfection from the lower, but a multiplying of graces and virtues by subtracting selfishness; free and noble exercise of love to rescue the perishing. Amongst the heathen it arose chiefly from a sense of moral and physical evil, of injustice-its misery and wrong 66 “ ἥδε γὰρ ψυχὴ πάρα ἑκοῦσα κ ̓ οὐκ ἄκουσα· κἀξαγγέλλομαι EURIPIDES, Heraclide of Macaria. “ πῶς δ ̓ ἂν μᾶλλον ἐνδέιξαιτό τις πόσιν προτιμῶσ ̓ ἤ θέλουσ ̓ ὑπερθανεῖν.” Alcestis. Making their gods in human form, though they had no sense of God emptying Himself of glory, was by a premonition of Incarnation and Immortality. Their heroes are great men lifted up, but Christ is God brought down. Thus Christianity, confirming human hope, is an original unexpected method, not a human fabrication. Their sense of the necessity of self-sacrifice arose also from the conviction of sin and dread of punishment. The dread itself being regarded as a premonition; the desire of pardon, the yearning for holiness, is already a partial possession of immortality in a sort, the return of the finite consciousness into union with the Infinite. Moreover, the true idea of self-sacrifice that most honouring to God and ennobling to man-elevates the whole spiritual nature into conscious intelligent sympathy with all suffering. These natural emotions, natural because so common, are the basis of all true religion; are promptings that lead to faith in some Redemption; they establish the intellectual and moral conviction of a Divine Kingdom and King. This King became personal and incarnate in the Divine Humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The law of the Cross, formulated purest goodness and noblest self-sacrifice, received highest embodiment |