Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

PERSIAN DRINKING SONG.

BY HAFIZ.

Boy, bring me quick a cup of wine,
In wine I hasten love to smother;
And, as I quaff those draughts divine,
Straight bring another-and another.

For wine is Love's sole remedy,

And, boy, I am a suffering brother; From love I live in agony

I've drained my goblet-fetch another !

Like liquid fire throughout my frame
It courses than the lightning quicker;
Another goblet of the same:

Another of the fiery liquor!

The roses fade, bright cheeks grow pale,
Existence is becoming prosy ;

Since all around us seems to fail-
Boy, bring once more the liquor rosy.

The nightingale-poetic bird,

Her song suspended in a twinkling; What matter, so by us are heard,

The winedrops in the beaker tinkling?

Sleep makes me blind to Time's sad lapse,
And wine is Sleep's prolific mother;

I fain would slumber; so, perhaps,
Dear boy, you'd better fetch another.
Inebriated should I be

(Or drunk would say a plainer speaker), Then quickly fetch, to sober me—

Best antidote-another beaker.

Another, and another still;

Thus, Hafiz, I, your poet, sing it.

It may be good, it may be ill,
I know not all I say is, Bring it.

CHARLES DAVIES.

FACT AND FAITH.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON THEIR RELATION.

Ir is often said that we are living in an age of transition. There is, between the times of our fathers and the times in which we live, a distance which cannot be bridged over by years alone. The events which have happened during those years form the most momentous chapter in the yet unfolded history of the world. They separate us entirely from our fathers. There is scarcely a link left by which we can directly bring ourselves face to face with the days of mail-coaches. Discovery has opened up vast mines of knowledge which has been scattered far and wide. Curiosity has been excited, a new interest in life has been awakened. Ideas have become more comprehensive and more varied; and when men and women of to-day look back upon their youth it is generally in surprise at the wonderful effect which their experience with life has had upon them.

It is far easier to survey the past and complacently to contemplate our progress than it is to speculate upon the future. No person could possibly doubt the progress of human knowledge. But there are many that will doubt whether knowledge means happiness. Buddha, after years of deep thought, came to the conclusion that the origin of all evil was ignorance; that when perfect wisdom could be realised, misery and all human ill would vanish. The world is generally supposed to be older in knowledge and thought than it was when the illustrious founder of Buddhism sat beneath Bodhidruma, the tree of intelligence, but probably none would undertake to say that it is happier or better.

When people impatiently ask for the beneficial results of the spread of knowledge, they should gauge the extent of that knowledge and not expect too much. If we compare what we already know with what we have yet to learn, our acquired knowledge appears not great. Besides, there are very few who come up to a high standard of knowledge. It is true that there is among Englishmen of our time great mental activity. But that activity is directed mainly to the ordinary business of daily life. There is, indeed, much is to be learnt. People may see, if they will only observe, the working of the vast machinery of a complex social system; they may see "that the world is governed by the combination of interests ;" and that each individual has responsibilities to discharge as well as duties to perform. But it too frequently happens that individuals do not observe the inevitable laws which

govern their daily lives. That and all other observation and thought seems to be reserved for those whose business it is to think-for scholars, poets, and philosophers. And among these leaders of thought opinion is so various and conflicting that those who would fain be followers are often left in hopeless bewilderment, while the mass pay no regard to the conflict of theories, and contentedly maintain their mental repose.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom," sang the Psalmist. This is the germ from which all true knowledge springs. From this point the world takes a different aspect, chaos becomes order, uncertainty vanishes. It is from wilfully ignoring this vantage-ground that so many thoughtful men of the present day lose themselves in the ocean of speculation. Buddha knew not of the Living God. When, led on by the raging thirst for light which racked his soul, he forsook the world to dwell in caves, to roam over mountains and rocks and through lonely forests-for ever pondering over the unfathomable mysteries of being-how gladly would he have hailed these words. It is not too much to say that the founder of the religion of more than a third of mankind would have accepted with joy the solution of human doubts and fears offered by our Holy Scriptures.

But the leaders of the philosophy of this waning nineteenth century do not base their theories of things upon this postulate of wisdom. They care not to rest in the security of God's Word. On the contrary, they turn round on that which has been their friend and guide, and seek to disown it. The every-day philosopher will doubtless have noticed that the man who may have been the means of saving his friend, of guiding him through dark and troublesome times, is generally discarded when the danger is past. Then the saved man emerges into the world of success; and he likes not, in the time of fortune, to be reminded of the time of misfortune by the presence of the man who brought him to his present date of security. He wishes to protect his feeling of selfsufficiency, and he would be sorry that others should think, or that he should be reminded that he is indebted to another for the enjoyment of his present position.

Indeed, the Bible has already shared, in some degree, the usual fate of books. It has inspired all the scientific philosophy of the western world; it has presented to man a picture of the origin of things which he was able to comprehend with more or less facility. But when the mind of man had grown with increasing knowledge that picture was found to be inconsistent in parts with possibility. And then learned men of science, all flushed with their discovery, hastened "with full-blown pride" to lay bare the errors of the Bible, forgetting the law of the progressiveness of the human mind,

and that the Word of God was given to man as he was capable of receiving it. The same with books on science. Treatises were written twenty years ago, which excited wonder and stimulated inquiry as much as those of the present day. But if these volumes are re-perused at the present time the case is quite different. Instead of firing the intellect and arousing the spirit they probably call forth only a languid smile of contempt. On each page the reader conceives that he finds inaccurracies, and in passing his ani. madversions upon these blemishes he forgets that the books were the means of putting him into possession of his present intellectual treasures.

Modern schools of philosophy have diverged in different degrees from the doctrines of their fathers. But the domain of religion is not regarded by any of them as holy ground. Indeed, Max-Müller's description of their attitude towards religion is only too generally true: "with others it stands on a level with alchemy and astrology, a mere tissue of errors or hallucinations, far beneath the notice of the man of science." Everything which cannot be demonstrably proved as fact is unworthy of credence. A belief in the supernatural is childish; the idea of a father watching over and guiding the lives of his children on earth is rejected by all of them as growing out of the want of self-dependence in man; the fit and proper guide of our lives is our reason.

What has been chiefly instrumental in bringing about the great inventions and the great discoveries which are so much the boast of these profound reasoners? Was it all reason? Was it not the imagination which led men on, and the reason which followed, classifying and arranging? Did not the conception spring from the imagination, and not from the reason? When it is said that our wisdom has increased, and that our minds have widened, let it not be thought to be all due to the reasoning faculty. Without imagination ideas could not exist. Reason brings ideas within the compass of the human understanding. But the human mind without imagination is like the steam engine without the steam.

When it is urged as a reason for discarding the Bible that it is nothing better than a beautiful poem, that what are given as facts are often merely metaphors, that imagery and fact are so intermingled as to be undistinguishable; when this plea is put forward by men who professedly dear with nothing but scientifically-proved fact, they should remember that it is the imagination which soars away from the poor capacity of human comprehension, and enables man to an. ticipate the discoveries of succeeding generations. And what does the word imagination denote when used in this sense? Does it not mean faith in the existenc of facts not yet known-the dark gropings of the finite in its struggle to approach the infinite?

see.

[ocr errors]

Let men of science say what they please, they have faith in the Infinite-the Divine. They have within them, in common with all mankind, a faith given them by their Father in heaven, to enable them to seek Him and to realise His presence in everything they Max. Muller calls it the faculty of faith' and gives good reason for doing so :-" As there is a faculty of speech, indepen dent of all historical forms of language, so we may speak of a faculty of faith in man, independent of all historical religions. If we say that it is religion that distinguishes man from the animal, we do not mean the Christian or Jewish religion only, we do not mean any special religion; but we mean a mental faculty, that faculty which, independent of-nay, in spite of, sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under different names, and under varying disguises."*

And this view has received the confirmation of one of the foremost champions of modern science:-" There must ever remain therefore two antithetical modes of mental action. Throughout all future time, as now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained phenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained something which phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge cannot monopolise consciousness, if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge, then there can never cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since Religion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else in this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of experience.”+

Mr. Spencer, in that rational and catholic spirit which characterises his entire work, endeavours to show that it is possible for theologians and scientists to quit their several battlements, and to meet in the neutral ground which lay between them: for each side possesses part of the truth, and it only requires that each side should recognise and appropriate the part of the opposite side to establish the truth in its entirety. This is a consummation to make the mind burn with desire to witness. Both religion and science declare as their object the well-being of mankind. Their antagonism weakens the bands of both; their union wonld make a wondrous power. Müller has shown that religion may really and truly be considered and studied as a science. Spencer has shown that science must ever contain an element of religion. Then why should they not combine? From having so long considered them antagonistic, this may appear impossible. And yet there are good reasons for believing that such a combination will ultimately take place.

* Science of Religion," Lecture I., Max Müller. Want of space alone prevents us from giving at length the reasoning upon this point.

"First Principles," part i., cap. i., 4.

« AnteriorContinuar »