The reader cannot but experience a jar when he comes to this couplet. The "from their mouth" does not fit, it does not make sense. Something is the matter. From the analogy of the following line we may correct with comparative assurance. Following the suggestion of Professor Toy, the verse will read :—

"So from the sword of the oppressor,

And from the hand of the strong, he rescueth the needy."

The notes appended to the translation are just enough to delight the busy. They elucidate the meaning, and explain forgotten customs. They let the author of Job do most of the talking, which is an elegant idea. And the book will, I predict, do much to extend, in the circles of the rich and the learned, the influence of the marvellous Hebrew Epic.

1

VIII. RENAN: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK.

66

I. "The two greatest intellectual forces in France at this moment," says some one, are M. Renan and M. Taine." And the author of a careful study of Renan in a recent number of the Quarterly Review continues: "Probably that is so: certainly of these two eminent writers, M. Renan is just now incomparably the more influential." As for myself, I like Renan. I am by no means able to estimate him, and give him his place among his contemporaries. I do know, however, that many able preachers are stimulated by Renan.

Some of these follow him closely, others read him just as carefully for his inimitable style, and his mas

1 Renan and Taine have both died since this was written.

tery of modern culture, and his inerrancy in the interpretation of certain phases of the "Zeitgeist." Renan is not a superficial scholar, as some have supposed. He has done some of the most careful and laborious work in the interpretation of Semitic inscriptions, life, and religion. His "Life of Jesus" is ideal, yes, far enough from the truth in many ways, no doubt. Yet I question whether Renan has not approached nearer to the real Jesus than Strauss or Geikie. Certainly much of Renan's exegesis agrees with "Gospel Criticism and Historical Christianity" against traditional views. Renan has been called "the theological dude." The epithet is a happy one. There are perhaps two reasons why it should fit Renan. His ancestry and his religious experience have both contributed to make him what he is. I believe he himself says that there are two Renans; one is a scholar, the other a poet; one is a sceptic, the other is an ardent spiritualist; one is a Breton, the other a Gascon. Renan is a man of letters, and one of the greatest, but he is primarily a philologist and a theologian. When scholar and poet meet in a Cousin, a Caird, or a Schopenhauer, no one is amazed. But when these meet in a theologian, because the union is more rare, the critics will be more adverse. But it is not Renan's literary style that makes him most liable to the title "dude." At any rate, it would seem that his religious experience must here be taken into account. Renan was intended for the Church, and his early ideas were orthodox enough. But his mind was too broad for the creed that was given him. He outgrew the Christianity that France offered him.

And it is a hard matter

to grow liberal without losing one's equilibrium. The

majority, perhaps, take refuge in absolute denial or in ecclesiastical symbolism. Renan was too much of a man to adopt either of these alternatives. A sincere priest he could not be; yet he loved religion the more now that he had ceased to view the world with the eyes of religion, and began to view religion with the eyes of the world. "He parted with all that his heart loved, and turned his face towards a strange land. He went with the doubt whether he should have bread to eat or raiment to put on." He himself says, "Mon cœur a besoin du Christianisme; l'Évangile sera toujours ma morale, l'Église a fait mon Éducation, je l'aime." And

It is no

the world loves a man who talks like that. wonder that the "Life of Jesus" "took the world by storm." Here is a heart that has bled for every word of it. And the great, sad world knows the heart that sympathizes with it. We must not be misled by what at times seems a flippant and joking mood in our author. It was this very gaieté in him that saved him. to the world. Can't we believe that he has wrestled seriously with his doubts unless he whine? May we not take him at his word when he says, "I am double, sometimes one part of me laughs while the other weeps. That is the explanation of my gaieté"? I can pardon Renan when he says harsh things of my favorites as readily as I pardon others for dragging me mercilessly over scraps of litany and prayer-book to the fresher treasures of their thought. Neither do I fear his scepticism. Indeed, he strengthens my faith, just as a reading of Schopenhauer confirms my optimism. Renan's gaieté overdoes the thing, and this always brings the weight of him around to the positive side.

He regards the world as an "immense practical joke," he tells us as much, and that in his scepticism he finds the happiness of his life. The life of the "theological dude" was above reproach. His doubts are not the outgrowth of animal passions or epicurean tastes. The late Professor Elmslie, in an excellent sermon on the Seventy-third Psalm, says: "It does seem just possible that the good Christian Church we belong to in our time is not in quite the right way of thinking about religious doubt. I am not talking about the doubt of the head, the intellectual and the schools-intellectual fencing, that sort of triviality; let it alone, it is not worth taking notice of. But the real doubt of any age, the doubt of any man's heart and head- what are we to think of that? Are we to stamp it as devilish? Are we to denounce it and excommunicate it? Why, we might be fighting against God. If I read my Bible aright, real, genuine, patient struggle for faith means just the birth-throes of God's revelation of himself in men's hearts." Renan is emphatically the child of his age. His power lies in his ability to "reveal in people's minds ideas or sentiments which are tending to the birth." I believe he is in the birth-throes of God's new revelation. The medieval creeds we have outgrown, but the feelings which were wedded to them are more tenacious. "" Though feeling is before thought;" yet "thought is for feeling," and the feelings for which our modern thoughts exist are yet to be born in us. The poet and the prophet of this new poetry and new religion are, perhaps, not very far away. To my notion, Renan has saved most that is good in Christianity and Judaism. He has done

much to unite ethics and religion "in the beauty of holiness." If he has been rash at times, if he has made too little of his opportunities to enlarge and fortify the borders of theism and morality, if he has thrown away too much of the Bible because it was supernatural, it is because he was carried away with the deeper poetry of the Old Testament, the deeper piety of the New. In the reaction against supernaturalism several of the greatest of modern scholars have seemingly gone too far. And it is they who must answer for the absurdities of the spiritualists, theosophists, and Christian scientists. Kant said a sensible thing when he said, "Sensible people willingly admit in theory that miracles are possible; but in the business of life they count upon none."

2. Some of Renan's critics think that the weaknesses of the spirit of the age to which he has yielded will render his work transient. I doubt if this is so. The "Life of Jesus" is a work of art, and deserves a place alongside the best writings of Montaigne and Hugo. But I set out to speak of Renan's "History of the People of Israel." Three volumes are out there is to be another — the set covering the whole period of Hebrew history from the earliest times till the dawn of Christianity. Here, too, we have a work of art. The author has given to the subject the study of a lifetime. He writes of what he loves, and he writes with the skill of France's greatest man of letters. It is a compliment to Hebrew history to be adorned and interpreted by such a man. Little as may be one's interest in the subject, Renan's History will command the attention of the reader. His comments upon the proph