RIVAL INVITATIONS

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ministers to govern justly, which is the source of righteousness, and gives fruit better and more durable than gold,-this wisdom of man is akin to, as it is bestowed by, the universal or divine wisdom, which has no beginning and no end, and is scarcely separable, except in a figure of poetry, from the very function, and even from the very essence of God.

Doth not Wisdom cry?

And understanding put forth her voice?

In the top of high places by the way,

In the place where the paths meet she taketh her stand. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city,

At the coming in at the doors:

Unto you, O men, I call;

And my voice is to the sons of man.

O ye simple, understand wisdom:

And, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. Hear; for I will speak of excellent things;

And the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth speaketh truth;

And wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; There is nothing froward or perverse in them. They are all clear to him that understandeth, And plain to them that find knowledge.

'Receive my instruction, and not silver; And knowledge rather than choice gold. For Wisdom is better than rubies;

And all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.

I Wisdom am possessed of sagacity,

And the knowledge of wise purposes is ready to my hand. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil:

Pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way,

And the froward mouth, do I hate.

Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom:

I am understanding; I have strength.

'By me kings reign,

And princes decree justice.

By me princes rule,

And nobles, even all the judges of the earth.

I love them that love me;

And those that seek me earnestly shall find me. Riches and honour are with me;

Yea, durable riches and righteousness.

My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold;
And my revenue than choice silver.

I walk in the way of righteousness,

In the midst of the paths of judgement;

That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance;
And that I may fill their treasuries.

"The Lord produced me as the beginning of his way,
As the first of his works of old.

I was established from everlasting.

From the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no floods, I was brought forth;

When there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled,

Before the hills was I brought forth:

While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields,

Nor all the dust clods of the world.

When he prepared the heavens, I was there:

When he marked off the firmament over the face of the flood:

When he made firm the clouds above:

When he strengthened the fountains of the deep:

When he gave to the sea his decree,

That the waters should not pass his commandment:
When he fixed the foundations of the earth:

Then I was by him, as a master workman,

And I was daily all delight,

Playing always before him;

Playing on his habitable earth;

And my delight was in the sons of men.

'Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children :
For happy are they that keep my ways.
Hear instruction, and be wise,

And refuse it not.

Blessed is the man that heareth me,

Watching daily at my gates,

Waiting at the posts of my doors.

THE SUPREMACY OF WISDOM

For whoso findeth me findeth life,

And hath obtained favour of the Lord.

But he that misseth me wrongeth his own soul:
All they that hate me love death."

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" The Lord produced me.' Wisdom is God's firstborn. But the poetical figure is not meant to be taken literally. Wisdom, an attribute or aspect of God, is coeternal with himself, nor can thought imagine a time antecedent to creation.

'As a master workman.' A somewhat doubtful translation. Wisdom is represented as God's builder. Emphasis is laid on the joy felt by wisdom in her creative capacity. Her work is accomplished easily as if in play. Her delight culminates in creation's crown. For man alone, amid all the wonders of earth, was created in the image of God: man alone through wisdom, God's gift, can appreciate and praise the wisdom of his Maker. In this sense, as man's highest self, as the divine element within him, which manifests itself as knowledge and as goodness, and is the source of science and of love, wisdom is in very deed that by which man truly lives, so that the absence of wisdom is the advent of death. Without wisdom no true life; with her no true death. Not quite so much as this did our great sage yet mean, but no less than this was before long to come.

CHAPTER II

THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTICUS

§ 1. Joshua ben Sira.-The Book of Proverbs, as we have it now, was probably in existence soon after the death of Alexander the Great. The general tone of thought and point of view which prevail in it continued for long. Jewish sages spoke and taught for many years on the same lines as the wise men of 'Proverbs.' About the year 180 B. C. a sage or scribe of Jerusalem composed or compiled a new book of proverbial philosophy' closely parallel to the Biblical book of adages and exhortations from which selections were made in the last chapter. His book was naturally written in Hebrew, but up till the other day no manuscript of the Hebrew, and no fragment of the manuscript, were believed to exist. The book was only known to us in an early Greek translation. (Later translations into other languages, such as Syriac and Ethiopic, exist also.) It was not placed by its author into the mouth of Solomon. He spoke in his own person. His name was Joshua ben Sira, or, as he is now called (from the Greek translation), Jesus the son of Sirach.

The collection of writings which we know as the Hebrew Bible was almost complete in the year 180 B. C., although at least one component part, the Book of Daniel, was still unwritten. A proverb book existed already; the erroneous notion that the bulk of it was written by Solomon had probably won by that time a general and unsuspecting acceptance. There was therefore no opportunity for this fresh compilation to come within the charmed circle of authorized and 'canonical' writings. It had to stand on its own merits outside. And for many ages it still continued to exist in its original Hebrew, but gradually the Jews (very foolishly, for there is much in it that is good and valuable) neglected it more and more; old copies were not recopied, but suffered to crumble and wear away; and so at last, after a somewhat feeble and shadowy existence of a thousand years and

A NOTABLE DISCOVERY

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more, it vanished wholly out of sight. But in the year 1896 a strange discovery was made. Two ladies brought back from their travels in the East a bundle of Hebrew manuscripts which they had obtained in Egypt. They gave these manuscripts to Dr. Schechter. who is the Reader in Rabbinic Literature at the University of Cambridge. In this bundle there were many fragments of this thing and of that, but among them the eagle eye of Dr. Schechter soon detected the most precious fragment of all—a fragment of the long-lost Hebrew original of the Book of Joshua ben Sira! This fragment extended from the fifteenth verse of the thirty-ninth chapter to the sixth verse of the fortieth chapter. It was at once printed by Dr. Schechter, with a literal English translation, in the magazine called the Expositor for July, 1896. Scholars could easily compare the Hebrew original with the existing Greek and Syriac translations. Even as I write these lines, I hear that Dr. Neubauer, the learned sub-librarian of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, fired by Dr. Schechter's example and discovery, made a fresh search among certain bundles of Hebrew manuscripts which had already been acquired from Egypt for the library; and lo! he did not seek in vain. For among them too were discovered fragments of Ben Sira's book, and these fragments will doubtless. before long be also given to the world. Perhaps new discoveries may at last enable scholars to resuscitate the whole of Ben Sira's book in the language in which he wrote it.

[It is interesting to leave these lines as they were originally written. The hope expressed in them has already been partially fulfilled. Dr. Neubauer's fragments have been printed, and extend from the seventh verse of the fortieth chapter to the eleventh verse of the forty-ninth. Thus eleven chapters out of fifty-one are already before the world in their original form, and many more will shortly be published. For Dr. Schechter brought back a vast quantity of manuscripts from the Genizah or store-room of the synagogue at Cairo, and among these manuscripts he has discovered yet further portions of the Hebrew original of Ben Sira, which in the course of the present year (1898) will, let us hope, be printed and published.]

§ 2. The Apocrypha.-Some fifty years after Ben Sira's book had been written in Hebrew it was translated into Greek. It now forms, as I have already mentioned, one of that collection of Greek books called the Apocrypha. The word is the neuter plural of the Greek adjective apokruphos, hidden or concealed, and it means literally the hidden or concealed writings. Only a cursory explanation of the term can here be given. When the Greek trans