Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

equally acknowledged by Pagans. It represents to us the joyful, cheerful side of Christianity. Look at that beautiful, graceful figure, bounding down as if from his native hills, with the happy sheep nestling on his shoulder, with the pastoral pipes in his hand, blooming in immortal youth. It is the exact representation of the Italian shepherd as we constantly encounter him on the Sabine hills at this day, holding the stray lamb on his shoulders, with a strong hand grasping the twisted legs as they hang on his breast. Just such a one appears on a fresco in the so-called house of Livia on the Palatine. That is the primitive conception of the Founder of Christianity. . . . The popular conception of Him in the early Church was of the strong, the joyous youth, of eternal growth, of immortal grace." (From the chapter on "The Roman Catacombs," in Dean Stanley's "Christian Institutions," p. 256.)

In some of the early frescoes of the Good Shepherd this joyous conception of the Christ is emphasised by representing the foundling on His shoulder not as a lamb of the sheep, but as a kid of the goats. It was this representation which provoked that indignant un-Christian protest of Tertullian, which Matthew Arnold has enshrined in one of his most touching sonnets.

rang

"He saves the sheep, the goats He doth not save.'
So Tertullian's sentence, on the side
Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried :
Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,
Who sins, once wash'd by the baptismal wave.'
So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sigh'd-
The infant Church! of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave.
And then she smiled and in the Catacombs,
With eye suffused, but heart inspired true,
On those walls subterranean, where she hid
Her head, 'mid ignominy, death, and tombs,
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew—
And on His shoulder, not a lamb, a kid.”

Cf. also on this aspect of the Christ, Keim, "Geschichte Jesu von Nazara," i. 458, and Zangwill's "Dreamers of the Ghetto," p. 480: "I give the Jews a Christ they can now accept, the Christians a Christ they have forgotten. Christ, not the tortured God, but the joyous comrade, the friend of all simple souls. . . . Not the theologian spinning barren subtleties, but the man of genius protesting against all forms and dogmas that would replace the divine vision and the living ecstasy the lover of warm life and warm sunlight, and all that is fresh and simple, and pure and beautiful." But this Hellenic quality, so to say, in the character of Jesus must not of course be emphasised out of due proportion. Even Harnack ("What is Christianity?" edn. Saunders, 1901, p. 33) warns us that "the picture of Jesus' life and His discourses stand in no relation with the Greek spirit; . . . that He was even in touch with the thoughts of Plato or the Porch . . . it is absolutely impossible to maintain." The balance, however, between the Hellenic quality of joy in life and the Hebrew quality of asceticism, as exhibited in the character of Jesus, is well kept in a remarkable article by Professor Peabody of Harvard in the Hibbert Journal, July 1903. "The asceticism of Jesus, however un-Hellenic it may be, and His delight in life, however un-Messianic it may be, are obviously not ends in His teaching, but incidents along the way. They are by-products thrown off in the development of His career... The ethics of Jesus are not those of a medieval saint or of a Galilean peasant, but of a teacher whose pains and pleasures are but the scenery and environment of the soul. . . . His ministry was first of all dynamic, commanding, authoritative. When He announced the principles of His teaching, the impression first made upon its hearers was, we are told, not so much of the message itself as of the messenger. . . The preacher did not demonstrate, or plead, or threaten like the scribes: He swayed the multitude by personal power. It was the same throughout His ministry. He called men from their boats, their tax-booths, their homes, and they looked up into His face and

[ocr errors]

obeyed. He commands the instinct of the soldier who gives orders to those below him because he has received orders from above. What is the note of character which is touched in such incidents as these? It is the note of strength. This is no ascetic, abandoning the world; no dreamer; no joyous comrade, delighting in the world: here is the quiet consciousness of mastery, the authority of the leader: a confidence which makes Him able to declare that a life built on His sayings is built on a rock. Jesus is no gentle visionary, no Lamb of God except in the experience of suffering: He is a Person whose dominating trait is force the scourger of the traders, the defier of the Pharisees, the commanding Personality whose words are with the authority of power."

NOTE 3, p. 11.

The manuscript of the "Exeter Codex" is 5 inches in height and 7 inches in breadth. It is written on vellum, apparently by a single hand of the early eleventh century. Scholars were first indebted for their knowledge of the existence of the MS. to Wanley, who gave an imperfect account of it in his Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon MSS. It was not, however, until the year 1826 that the fact of its existence became gradually known, through the analysis given of it by the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, in the "Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry" compiled in 1826 by his brother, Rev. J. J. Conybeare. A copy of the MS. made by Robert Chambers in 1831 now constitutes Additional MS. 9067 of the British Museum. A complete edition of the MS. with a translation was published in 1842 by Benjamin Thorpe. A new edition of Thorpe's work is announced as shortly to appear (in the Early English Text Society publications) by Mr. I. Gollancz, who had already in 1892 published an excellent translation with notes. The most complete edition known of "The Christ" is that by Professor Cook of Yale, published by the Boston Athenæum Press in 1900. In that work we have

an old English classic edited with all the care and ability which is given by the best scholars to an edition of a Greek or Roman masterpiece. Professor Cook, in speaking of the date ascribed to the MS., considers that "it is not unlikely that it may have been executed and carefully revised under Leofric's own directions, in which case we are tempted to assume that the selection and compilation of the poems was also due to the good bishop. It is clear that he was a man of taste as well as of judgment, a lover of art as well as an excellent administrator. At present The Christ' is the longest and most important poem in the collection, being at least one-fifth longer than the 'Guthlac,' and nearly two and a half times as long as the 'Phoenix' or the 'Juliana.' If the book were put together by a man as judicious, learned, and artistic as Leofric, it would seem fitting that he should begin it with a poem of such great beauty and significance." Of the dialect in which the "Exeter Codex" is written, Mr. Gollancz says (p. xxi., "The Christ"): "It is West Saxon, but one is able to detect in a number of poems the fossil remains of another and an older dialect. Minute philological criteria lead to the conclusion, supported strongly by other evidence, that the first of the poems preserved in the Codex, and many more besides, are Saxon (i.e. Southern) transcriptions of Anglian (i.e. Northern) originals. Wessex merely preserves the poems, Northumbria produces them. Indeed, at no time in its history has Wessex been productive of poetical work from the days of Alfred onwards its special strength lay in prose literature. Did not Chaucer recognise the fact when he made his parson exclaim

"Trusteth wel, I am a Sotherne man,

I cannot geste, rom, ram, ruf, by my letter,
And God wote, rime holde I but litel better,
And therefore if you list I wol not glose,
I wol you tell a litel tale in prose.'

It seems almost certain, then, that 'The Christ' is an Anglian poem written before Northumbria ceased to be the great centre

of poetical activity, i.e. before the beginning of the ninth century."

NOTE 4, p. 12.

In 1840 J. M. Kemble in England (Archæologia, xxviii. 360-62) and Jacob Grimm in Germany (Andreas und Elene, ed. Grimm, Cassel) independently discovered that the runic letters interwoven with the text of "Christ" and "Juliana," two of the Exeter pieces, and "Elene," one of the Vercelli, formed in each case the name of the author CYNEWULF. For a full discussion of this runic device cf. Professor Cook's ed. of "The Christ," pp. 151-63, and Gollancz, "Christ," excursus on the Cynewulf runes, pp. 173-84. The following is the runic passage from "The Christ," lines 796-806 in the original, with the runes printed in Roman capitals, with the English translation :

C.

-

[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Then the keen shall quake: he shall hear the Lord,
The Heaven's ruler, utter words of wrath

To those who in the world obeyed Him ill,
While they might solace find more easily

Y.N. for their Tearning and their Need; Many afeard

« ÎnapoiContinuă »