of resource. It is the soul rising above the pressure of necessity into free, spontaneous activity. Our first glimpse of this activity is—and most naturally-in the rhythmic movement of the dance and the rhythm of both time and tone in the utterance of the song. Hence came, in historic days, the drama and the poem. The useful arts, to a creature that enters the world unshod, unclad, and unarmed, who must devise his own appliances for food and shelter, demand the first attention. He must learn from digestion-" cooking within the body "to supply the deficiencies of nature by previous cooking outside. His shortness of arm, his slowness of foot, his weakness of muscle must be supplemented by such devices as his brain suggests. But, in Hellas, the useful arts, when their products-as utensils, furniture, and the like-first appear, are already assuming the beautiful. Cups, cloths, and armor show that ornament has become decoration. The fine ideal is now ages before Plato becoming dominant in the Hellenic mind, and with sovereign touch it begins to beautify things of common utility. Of all arts architecture alone remains disregarded. Nothing is traceable that shows promise or potency of its coming splendor. The house, the temple, was a shelter, and hardly more. But where did that millennial sun look down on any architecture made with hands? History shows art to be, like the century plant, slow of growth and then swiftly bursting into bloom, as in the fifth century before our era, or the fifteenth after it. In prehistoric Greece the growth was slow and the verdure simple, but beneath its shade the people gained the sure taste, the sense of proportion, the keen relish, the longing, and the aspiration that made possible the glory of their later achievements. The artistic character was assured. Close akin to art is literature; for poetry is a fine art, and a Greek oration was no less so, "vital in every part" like the human body, and complete in symmetry and perspective. If by literature we mean intellectual products, formal, published, and permanent, our period has nothing to show. If by it we mean all intellectual products of a given people, we must pause and consider. The intellectual products of a generation, as the producing generation itself, are like the leaves of trees, mostly of swift decay. In our own day-this just gone year, this soon gone century-books, like the leaves in Vallombrosa, 15-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XIII. have been strewn upon the sod, wind-drifting to decay, or stored in stately uselessness in vast libraries, to be lost in the atmospheric dust. They might cheerfully be given to the man of the bottomless, if only their flavor and essence might unembodied pass on to cheer and strengthen the next generation. This last was the fate of the pre-Homeric literature, and not an unhappy fate. Some exult over the cartouch of Menotoph and the unspeakable mummy of Rameses. Forma mentis eterna. If that survive we can spare the rest. There is reasonable presumption that Homer, like Chaucer, felt himself to be at the close, rather than at the beginning, of an era of literary productiveness. The lively Grecian, in a land of "song, dust, and sunshine," had not been of idle mind. Certain forms of intellectual activity now familiar and valuable our race had not yet reached, but the poet and the minstrel were already the teachers of the youth. The intellect was clearly and fearlessly devoted to the solving of life's problems; and the free discussion of affairs, of which one detects many a trace, led, as time went on, to that marvelous power, "the applause of listening senates to command." "To discern the deathless and ageless order of nature, whence it arose, the how, the why," never came into the range of their childlike aspirations; but, as surely as the boy is the father of the man, the later rule for the entrance upon philosophic attainment, "Know thyself," and the formula for its prosecution, "Let us follow the argument whithersoever it leads," are already felt, though not yet by long ages stated. Forma mentis eterna. Life's chief product, after all, whether in the nation or the individual, is character. For this to each are given his seventy years, more or less, of changeful experience, of struggles in the stream of mortal tendency with or against the divine order of the world. For this communities and kingdoms rise, develop, clash, and fall. The individual withers, his works crumble, but his character endures and enters upon the world that is to come. At the close of our heavy mantled period the Greek character has assumed its defining features. "When should the education of a child begin?" asked a mother, addressing Oliver Wendell Holmes. "A hundred years before it is born," was the answer. A time still longer is needed to educate a nation. Mark how long and varied was the training of the Hebrew people; and as a result, how is their character, like their features, permanent. The typical Englishman comes from a thousand stirring years of strife and change, of trade and conquest, of law and government. The American, after three centuries, is still "on the make;" and, though a Lincoln has already been achieved, we watch the formative process and wonder what the coming man will be. Of how many generations "hasting stormfully across the earth" was the product Odysseus, that complex man whose traits reappear in Solon and Themistocles and Tricoupis? He tells of the unrecorded life in preexistent Hellas, as a mountain park tells of geological vicissitudes. "O earth, what changes hast thou seen!" With restless desire for the widest knowledge he saw the manners and cities of many men, and learned their minds. He bore hardship with fortitude unshrinking, and devised relief with ingenuity unhesitating. He sees before other men the drift of an argument or the result of a policy, and "his words, like wintry snowflakes," copious and gentle, none can equal in persuasion. Complete in self-control, he can suffer and be strong. His courage rises with the occasion. He subjects every movement to the test of reason, and the response of reason he bends his whole energy to execute. He is no embodiment of goodness. The Greek character was human and had faults enough; its Odyssean versatility could adroitly turn to treachery and falsehood. Odysseus may be a fictitious personage, yet the hand of the master would not have framed him upon the wall but as a reality of his time, as real as John of Gaunt in Shakespeare. This Greek character, with its features good and ill, such as it emerged from "the days whereof no man knew," so remained through the well-known days thereafter. The Cephissus, already a full river, comes into the sunlight from the marble heart of Pentelicus, to flow through gardens, vineyards, and olive orchards. So the Greek "E0oç issues from the deep natal gloom, and goes forth to enliven the whole Hellenic life of later days. Nor has time brought serious change and decay. The character is still in the old home and identifiable. The selfsame mold produces the selfsame men, graceful, inquisitive, and eager, passionate and versatile, capable of the ancient glory and of the ancient shame. How easily we come to look upon the remoter past as uneventful, a flat surface, as in marine perspective the billows bounding and breaking near the horizon's verge look smooth. Those unseen Greeks lived as we live. Above them the sun shone out and the silent stars, and for them the seasons walked their splendid round. They ate, they drank, they planted, they builded, they married, they were given in marriage. They had hopes and fears and passions and pangs like ours. Carent vates sacros. Could we have of them a word, as the great Teacher's word of the antediluvians, or could one cut a section of their routine of life, as men have done at Pompeii, we might by the processes of comparative anatomy recover much. Omnes una nocte tenentur. We can but reason inductively upon a fascinating, an important, because a molding, period in which a people developed those traits that later gave them the lordship of the human mind. In Dante's words: "Here vision fails, but yet the will rolls onward like a wheel." If only, where our bark must stop, some cliff rose skyward from whose summit the far-away vision would satisfy! Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes A. B. Hyde ART. V. THE GROWTH OF JESUS-PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND SPIRITUAL. IN the Gospel according to St. Luke ii, 52, we read, Kai Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτε σοφίᾳ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ καὶ χάριτι παρὰ Θεῷ καὶ ἀνθρώ ποις. * I. In this passage there is clearly indicated the physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth of Jesus. Hence it may be inferred, without hesitation, that he was limited by the laws of time and space; and also that he was subject to the laws of human development, and that, therefore, he was in every respect a perfect man. II. In the second chapter of St. Luke's gospel there are described, (1) the birth of Jesus and the circumstances connected therewith (verses 1-20); (2) his circumcision and presentation in the temple, together with the circumstances connected therewith (verses 21-40); (3) his first conscious visit to Jerusalem at the age of twelve years as a "son of the law" (verses 41-52); (4) the consciousness of his duty to his heavenly Father (verse 49); (5) his subjection and obedience to his earthly parents (verse 51); and (6) his physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth and development, which is positively indicated as having begun to be recognized by himself and others at that period, and which continued from the time of his return from Jerusalem to Nazareth till the time of his first public appearance (chap. iii, 1–20). III. During these eighteen years, that is, from his twelfth to his thirtieth year, Jesus accomplished a part of the work which his heavenly Father had given him to do (John xvii, 4). But it was a work pertaining principally to himself, and involving * These are the words of the Textus Receptus, as, also, those of the text adopted by the revisers; but in Tischendorf's Editio Octava Critica Maior of the Greek New Testament, as well as in his edition of the Codex Sinaiticus, the words Ev Ty are inserted before σogía; while in Westcott and Hort's edition of the Greek New Testament the verb лрρоÉкожтε ends with the letter v, followed by the article r; in Tregelles's edition the verb ends with the letter v, followed by the words λikia kaì σopia; and in Tischendorf's edition of the Novum Testamentum Vaticanum the verb terminates with the letter v, and is followed by the article ; and in the Codex Alexandrinus the verb ends with the letter v. But all these various readings make no change in the meaning of verse 52. They were no doubt unintentionally made by copyists; and happily the differences between the various readings are for the most part so minute that they do not affect the substance of the teachings of our Lord and his Apostles and of the Evangelists. They are the results of the common risks of misapprehension and inadvertence to which all copyists were liable. ✦ Among the ancient Jews a boy at the age of twelve or thirteen years was called .Son of the Law בֶּן הָתּוֹרָה |