highest moral purposes. Truth is one, and wherever we find it, whether in the spacious fields of pagan writing, or in the inspired oracles of God, we ought to use it and appreciate it with thankful spirit. "Truth," says Clement, "is an ever-flowing river into which streams flow from many sides."

The task of producing parallel passages from pagan and Biblical literature, and thereby showing the common grounds of the needs of our poor humanity in every part of the world, is easy enough. And the raison d'être of this similarity is natural enough. Man in the essential features of his nature

is now what he was two thousand years ago. We have escaped, as one has said, from the Egypt of barbarism into the Canaan of civilization, but we possess still the old instincts, the old yearnings, the old wants. Underneath the splendid robes of outward adornment the heart is the same as that which

or the Athenian legislator. We must never forget that "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." But in the midst of much that is unsatisfying and worthless in the literature outside the range of inspiration, we come not unfrequently upon grains of gold which can hardly be distinguished from those contained within the casket of the Bible. We are thankful for the discovery, and in the words of the laureate,

We yield all honor to the name

Of him who made them current coin. In the passages which we have culled than identity. Their parallelism is on for this paper we note rather similarity a lower plane, and has points of con

tact rather than lines of continuous comparison. They furnish striking and beautiful coincidences which utter vividly the longing that lies in every heart, deep and irrepressible. What comprehension, what insight, what power of vision they indicate! Solon's wisdom and varied experience give utterance to the thought which is but an echo of the Psalmist's sad verse :—

None of men ever can be blessed, but evil all,

Poor mortals upon whom the sun doth shine.

"To live in pain, such is the lot appointed by the gods to miserable mortals." How like to these words of Homer are the lines of the apostle, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."

throbbed and kindled under the coarser trappings of the olden time. Sin and sorrow, and need and death, touch us as they touched the old Greeks of Plato's day, or the older nomads of the desert who were contemporaneous with Job. We need not therefore be surprised to find an occasional resemblance between pagan and Jewish thought, or between pagan and Christian thought. All discovery of moral truth is due, as Archdeacon Farrar has remarked, to that revealing spirit which is called in Scripture "the candle of the Lord," and "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." We make no comparison between pagan teaching and inspired Scripture teaching, nor do we place them on the same level of author-wide observation of human life : ity. If we read the best of the heathen writings, the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius, for example, or the wise sayings of Solon, and then turn to the discourses of Jesus, or the Epistles of So fulness begetteth pride when wretchedSt. Paul, we must acknowledge that

Solon gave currency to a sentiment of Theognis of Megara, the truth of which he had no doubt verified by his

Pride, O Kyrnos! God first gave to that

poor wretch

Whom He would deprive of other's fair

esteem.

ness befalls

right.

moral and spiritual truth shines in the The evil man, or him whose soul is not upverses of the apostle and in the parables of our Lord, with a brilliancy and a Contrast the comparative diffuseness strength and a suasive force not to be of this thought with the compact phrase found in the words, wise and beautiful of the wiser king of Israel, "Pride though they are, of the imperial stoic, goeth before destruction, and a haughty

66

spirit before a fall." The same maxim | tian teaching when he says, under appears in many languages, and indi- like circumstances, "Being reviled we cates the delight with which men have bless," or rather, "we give good in all ages welcomed the statement of a words," catching and reflecting the fact of general experience, in which moral tone of his Master's high philosthey doubtless saw also a proof of a ophy as set forth in the Sermon on the divine government. Mount. Humanity was transformed by Philemon, the gentle rival of Me- Christ; it was changed," as one has nander (from whom St. Paul quotes the said, "from a restraint to a motive." proverb, "Evil companionships corrupt Love is the governing principle in honest characters "), whose cheerful the kingdom of God. Ancient poetry spirits and regular, temperate habits knows nothing of it. "It was a discovprolonged his life to the patriarchal ery like that of a new scientific princiage of ninety-seven years, has several ple when it was made, and Christianity singularly beautiful passages, almost made it." Christian in their tone. Here is one which reminds us of the warning of Balaam to the royal son of Zippor. It looks almost like a paraphrase of the words of the false prophet:

-

And how beautiful is the following passage from the same gentle poet ! It seems steeped in tears, a sob of human sorrow, a cry from the depths of the breaking heart, reminding us of

Though one should sacrifice, dear Pam- many a passage in Holy Writ :

philus,

If tears were the medicine of all our ills, Whole herds of bulls or rams, or other Ever would laments give surcease to toils,

choicer victims,

Or consecrate a costly tapestry, or robes in wrought

With gold and purple, or in ivory and
smaragd,

Deeming thus to make the god propitious,
He is self-deceived― is dull at heart!
For man should live in honest guise,
Nor spoiling maiden's honor, nor in lust,
Nor robbing, nor spilling blood for gold,
Nor coveting another's wealth.

For God knoweth what deeds are just,
And lets the toiler uplift his inner life.
Tilling his fields both night and day

We would give untold treasures for such

tears.

But no, the busy world nor heeds nor
glances

At them; but upon its way, good friend,
Whether weep'st thou or not, it holds.
What canst thou otherwise? Ah! nought,
For grief, as trees do fruit, bears but tears.

Antiphanes ridicules the meretriciousness of women in words that bring Isaiah's scathing rebukes to our minds. In reading his graphic lines we seem to see the artificial beauty walking along,

The righteous man offers rightly unto God," walking and mincing as she goes," Nor shines so much in robes as in his heart. seeking to catch the eyes of the fine What a touch of Pauline thought there gentlemen of the time: seems to be in the beautiful lines which She comes, close this passage!

How nearly Christian is this too: Nought is sweeter, nought is liker to gentle harmony

She goes back, she approaches, she goes back,

She has come, she is here, she washes herself, she advances,

She is soaped, she is combed, she goes out, is rubbed,

She washes herself, looks in the glass, be-
smears herself;

And if aught is wrong chokes (with vexa-
tion).
Pindar says,

Than to be able to endure reviling. For the reviler - if he who is reviled Reply not reviling, himself reviles. In that touch, "if he who is reviled reply not," we have what corresponds to the silence and self-restraint which an Old Testament saint imposed upon suit of love is something sweet." This himself when unjustly accused (Ps. is the thought which Solomon has xxxix. 1, 2). But St. Paul rises to a compressed into, "Stolen waters are higher level of Christian life and Chris- sweet."

"The clandestine pur

We need not go further with these The early Christian apolparallelisms. ogists, it will be seen, had much material at hand by which to prove to their pagan neighbors that their own poets were groping darkly after those truths Chiefly bid to thy feast the friend that which the Gospel proclaimed with the

Neighbors will come in haste, while kins- Athens, "seeking the Lord, if haply

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O GIN I were a sodger lad, a blithe lad I THE joy of babes who see the primrose

But he is auld, his heart's grown cauld, and. O lady mine! the birds have ceased to

I shun the thought that lurks in all de- Now when the day has quenched its linger

I must stop short of thee the whole day Its native gloom and flood it with delight.

But when sleep comes to close each difficult The woods stand tranced in stillness; one