moral condition of the Chinese. Polished, polite, gentlemanly, graceful, with a taste for the beautiful in nature and in literature, they are without love for truth and moral beauty. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

The study of those systems which have influenced so large a portion of our race, should lead us to rejoice that we have a sure guide in the inspired Word of God, and to study and love it more than ever. Another effect of this study should be to lead us to pity our brother man, busy in pursuing these ignes fatui, and hasten to send him the true light, "the glorious gospel of the blessed God," which alone can satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit, created to "serve God and enjoy him forever."

CANTON, CHINA.

R. H. GRAVES.

THE design of this paper is to call attention to the striking resem

blances that exist between Homer and the Old Testament, in the expression of the religious and moral thought by which each is pervaded. We do not attach any special importance to the fact itself; yet we hope, by the presentation of it, to interest deeply the thoughtful reader. If we shall succeed in so doing, we shall feel abundantly rewarded for any labor which the preparation of this article may have

cost us.

While, as to the objects of worship, Homer is intensely polytheistic, and the Old Testament even more intensely monotheistic; still, their views of right and wrong, their views of what we express by the word providence, their belief in a moral order of the universe, their ideas of worship, both as to mode and as a duty, their proverbial philosophy, their conceptions and descriptions of the invisible world and of the future state, their usages in regard to social life and obligations; all these are expressed in terms singularly like to each other, and strongly suggestive of a literature and of traditions in which both classes of writers participated. Nor will it be thought strange, upon due reflection, that they should differ so much as to the objects of their worship, and should agree so well as to their religious and ethical and social ideas. We propose to state very briefly what appear to us to be the true reasons for the remarkable agreement to which we have adverted.

We

1. The terms Protestantism and Catholicism, as used among us, represent systems which are in certain respects the very antipodes to each other, while yet they have much of religious and ethical thought in common. Their conceptions and modes of expression are, with reference to many subjects, almost identical; but the one, in its worship of angels and saints and relics, and of the virgin Mary, has in itself a polytheistic element against which the other strongly protests. Yet these two systems, as we well know, claim a common origin, and possess to a certain extent a common history. The Protestant, or, as we shall call it, the monotheistic, we believe to be the true and the older worship. The other it is not difficult to trace along the path of history, as it departed from the earlier and simpler faith, and introduced into itself those polytheistic elements and usages which render it what it is to-day. Consider, too, that no two principles can be more antagonistic to each other than the right of private judgment as declared by the Protestant, and the denial of that right as made and yielded by the Catholic. Yet the two systems stand side by side, hold much of religious thought, as well as the science and literature of the day in common, and run up to the same historical source. present this as serving to explain what we suppose to have taken place in the history of the older monotheism and polytheism. May not they have had a common origin? May not the polytheism of Assyria, and of Egypt and of Homer, have been a departure from a true and older monotheistic worship? We believe that the religious history of the ages before Christ has in this matter repeated itself in the ages after Christ. We take the apostle's brief account to be simple and rational and credible,-that there was a time when men "knew God," but cast off this knowledge in the exercise of a vain imagination. In a word, polytheism came after monotheism. There is, unquestionably, much difficulty in arranging the chronology of the book of Genesis. But with all its difficulties, one thing seems to stand plainly out upon the sacred record,—that monotheism has always been represented in the religious history of the world. There have always been men who, like Abraham, and long before his day, stood up amid the splendid polytheism of their time, and worshipped the only true God, -the protestant monotheists and the religious heroes of the far past. When Moses wrote the first commandment, it was a monotheist flinging out his thesis in the face of the gorgeous worship of Egypt and Assyria and Phenicia, and protesting against idolatry as a falsehood. When and how the polytheistic departure originated, we cannot tell. On no historic page is this recorded for us. But we may see the two systems standing side by side in that

old world, and we can easily understand how the younger, while it introduced new objects of worship which threw it into strong conflict with the other, would at the same time retain many of the rites and forms and traditions, and religious ideas and modes of expression belonging to the older. It must not be forgotten that sacrificial rites are found in a very remote past,-far anterior to the Mosaic law or even to the time of Abraham; a past, so far as the record goes, quite up to the family of the first of men. We are thus prepared to believe that the two systems must, of necessity, have possessed much in common in the way of religious form.

2. There is a religious element in the nature of man. Its manifestations are universal. It leads to reverence, to prayer, to worship, to the performance of religious rites and ceremonies. Every pagan temple, every Mohammedan mosque, every Jewish synagogue, and every Christian church, stands as an expression of this sentiment. It is not difficult then to conceive, that people who differ widely as to what they worship, would yet agree that reverence and gratitude, and humility and the spirit of obedience should characterize our religious exercises. In short, they would agree generally, in abstract statement, as to the religious spirit which we ought to possess. Any accordance therefore in such a thing, between Homer and the Old Testament, will not surprise us. Reverence and prayer, and trust in the divine power, would be urged as strongly in the one as in the other, and accordingly we shall find this to be so.

3. The same remark will apply to what we are accustomed to call the moral sense. Men agree generally that there is a right and a wrong, however much they may differ as to what shall deserve either. appellation. In every age, and in every nation, civilized and cultured. to any extent, there have always been men of deep and sensitive moral natures, strong for the right and against the wrong, as these moral qualities have appeared to them to attach to any particular course of action. It is not, therefore, a strange thing that such men, in the various peoples of the world, should agree in their statements of abstract ethical principles,-that their ethical philosophy and proverbs should read very much alike. Homer (assuming the theory of a single authorship) seems to have been of such a nature, and we shall not be surprised when, on moral subjects, we find him speaking much after the manner of a Hebrew prophet.

4. The term "Oriental," as applied to the dwellers of the East, is understood to express certain modes of thought and speech and practice running through their social and religious life and usages. We shall find the writings of the Ionian poet, as well as those of the

Israelitish prophets, tinged deeply and alike with this oriental hue, running quite through their conceptions and descriptions of social life, of external nature, and of the divine influence in human affairs.

5. We must bear in mind that, in the age of Solomon and Homer, there were science and art and literature, possessing an antiquity, embracing an extent of country and of nations, and commanding facilities for intercommunication, far greater than has been generally supposed. To such a conclusion the results of the best modern investigation would lead us. There was written language more than a thousand years before Homer was born. There were the "current money" and the "merchant" (attendants on civilization and progress only), farther back than the days of Abraham. Egypt and Assyria even then had their "learning." Sidon was an old and "great" city in the time of Moses. The land of Homer and of the Hebrew were not far asunder, and easily accessible to each other, both by land and by sea. The armies of Assyria could march over the one, and the ships of Phenicia could traverse the other. With all the modern appliances at his command, the traveller could run the distance in some thirty hours. Tyre, "strong" in the days of Joshua, was in all her grandeur, and her commerce extended itself to every coast of the Mediterranean. Phenicia had long given her letters to Greece, and Solomon and Homer may have written, though in different languages, yet in the same character. Jerusalem was scarcely farther from ancient Troy than is New York from Chicago, and the dweller on the eastern shore of the Aegean, need to have made no greater nor more difficult journey than did the "Queen of the South," in order to stand in the presence of Solomon in all his glory. It is not assuming too much, to say that Ionia and the land of Israel were participants in the science and literature of more than a thousand years,—a literature which could have come down to both only from Assyria and Egypt, and the Phenicia of Abraham's day. What wonder then that there should have been much in thought and expression common to the writings of both, especially when we consider that even in that age, there was "no end to the making of many books."

6. It must not be forgotten that the writers of the Bible accepted science and literature and art as they found them, and left these as they were found. Had they attempted to set men right in such matters, it must have seriously interfered with their higher divine mission, which was to instruct mankind in the great truths of religion and morality. They said nothing, therefore, in relation to the science and literature of their day. On the other hand, they used these whenever they had occasion to do so, falling in with the scientific