Introduction

In a previous work I attempted a study of the Portrait of Christ, as delineated by the Four Evangelists. I propose to stand once more in the Great Gallery of the Jewish nation and to study for a while those other figures which have made the history of ancient Israel more familiar to the average man than the history of modern England. I would come to the new study as I came to the old. I would leave historical questions in the backsround. I would not ask what is proved, but what is painted. It matters not to me when the artist lived; it matters not whether the Portrait has been attributed to the real hand; it matters not even, to my present purpose, whether the events delineated on the canvas were reproduced from the actual life. The Ad point is that the Portraits are there, that they speak to us from a far past, and that their voice, which originally was local and national, has in the course of the years become cosmopolitan and universal. I want to ask, what do they say? When you hear a stir around you, caused by certain words that have escaped your ear, is not that the question you first ask? You do not inquire, who is the speaker? how is he dressed? where does he come from? You inquire, what has he sazd to raise such a commotion? So is it here. We ‘seekerne reason for a universal interest. That reason cannot lie in anything historical. It must lie in something which belongs to no special date, no particular town, no single land. To localise it is to weaken it. To associate it with a definite place and time is to lessen its interest for the race. The Biblical critic may insist on knowing the name of Jacob’s wrestling angel; but the man in the Gallery is content with the message to the eye, content to see the picture and to receive the blessing.

I intend, then, to study these Portraits, not as historical figures, but as art figures. We will enter into the Gallery and shut the door. We will allow no voices from the outside to distract us. We will bring with us no catalogue containing information regarding the artists. To us there will be but one artist — God Almighty. It is the pencil of ¢#zs Artist that we will try to trace. We will endeavour to detect, not the evidence of local colouring, not the vestiges of a special culture, not the indications of a life that has passed away, but the element in them which is abiding, permanent, the same yesterday and to-day and for ever. It is precisely where these Portraits desert the sphere of history that they are great. It is precisely where the environment of the man is dimly seen that the universal element in the Picture shines out most clearly and most resplendently. It is where I lose sight of the manner in which Enoch was translated, in other words, it is where his case ceases to be special, that his figure becomes to me a revelation; for it is then I appropriate his story as something possible for me. It is where I lose sight of

Elijah’s chariot that Elijah’s chariot brings a message to my soul, for it is then that I read in #zs experience a thing which can be reproduced in my own. A revelation from God is not a statement of what men once did; it is a statement of what men may always do. There lies the power of the Bible! It is not the revelation of something which was once revealed to a little band of worshippers; it is a revelation of how God always reveals. It is the special announcement of that which is not special — of the wuzversal order of God’s word and ways to man. It tells not how He spoke ozce, but how He speaks always. It is the proclamation that there is spiritual law in the natural world, and the enumeration of those eternal principles by which that law is enforced and maintained. The men of the Bible Gallery are photographed because they are universal men.

But now a questicn arises. Was Judah the best field for the selection of universal types? Conceding that the selection has been a

success, would it not have been more successful still if it had been made from some other sphere? I have often been struck with the observation attributed to the outside world by the writer of the Acts, ‘ Are not these men Galileans!’ It was the early expression of a feeling which has survived to this day — the contempt for provincialism. Galilee was not the metropolis; it was a mere province. Being but a province, it seemed an unlikely sphere for the founding of a universal language. Christianity was attempting to initiate a common speech — a cosmopolitan medium of intercourse. Why try to inaugurate it in the provinces, where men proverbially resist a uniformity of standard; why not begin with Jerusalem, where people were more likely to think in companies! And what was said of the New Testament had been also said of the Old. What Galilee was to Judah, Judah was to the world — a province. It was outside the fashion of the great capitals. It was regarded as the abode of a peculiar people — a people who had not learned the conventions of society. Other empires moved in masses; Judah was always a divided land. Other empires were subject to a single human will; Judah had ever her individual opinions, and wavered between her prophet, her priest, and her king. Other empires had extinguished private judgment, had enjoined conformity toa common standard; Judah had proclaimed to each separate. man that he was personally responsible to the King of kings. Was not Judah, then, less favourable to permanence? Were not her types of mind likely to be more transitory, more evanescent, more perishable? Was not humanity more likely to be permanently revealed in stereotyped forms of fashion, than in the spontaneous outbursts of individual independence?

I answer, No; and in that answer, I have touched the secret of the Bible’s appeal to all ages. The things which persist throughout the history of Man are not the characteristics of the race, but the traits of the individual. The element distinctive of any one race, however long and however extensively it is propagated, can never furnish a type of universal humanity. The men in that race who are representative of the world will be precisely those who have broken over the traces, who have ventured to diverge from the spirit of their time. The men who represent humanity are just those who have stepped over their boundary line and dared to revert to the primitive type of Nature. Search the galleries of the world for an assemblage of representative men, you will find it, not in conformity of individuals to races, but at the point where the man diverges from his race — at the spot where he steps out from the environment of his birth and reveals himself in the attitude of climbing the wall.

The scene for such a selection, then, is always a Galilee — a place where conventionalism is broken. It is a mistake to think that Jesus chose the men of Galilee to show that the weak things of the world could confound the strong. That is not the principle of God’s election to amy work. When a Saul of Tarsus is chosen to represent humanity, it is not because he is weak, but because he is

-strong — because he has already within him the promise and the potency of life. Even so were the men of Galilee elected. Their distance from the capital of the world was acceptable, not as a disadvantage, but as a qualification. Jesus was in search of wld flowers. He was seeking specimens of zmrestrained humanity — of humanity uncurbed by conventionalism and unmutilated by artificiality. He was in quest of the spirit of childhood. Why does He place a child in the midst of the disciples? Why does He proclaim that such as ¢hkese were to represent His kingdom? On account of their humility? No, but the opposite — on account of their greatness. It was because childhood reproduces from age to age that which is distinctive of Man — that which is neither Greek nor Egyptian nor Roman, but simply human. To the eye of Jesus the essential attributes of Man were the spontaneous instincts of the soul; and He found them in the child. That is why His eye rested first on Galilee. It was the home of luxuriant human nature.

Its men and women were overgrown children, displaying the primitive types of the heart, and therefore revealing that which is eternal in Man. To Him Galilee was the real capital, and all beside were only provinces; for the centre of humanity was to Him the heart of a child, and the key to all success was the spontaneous joy of youth.

In this sense also what Galilee was to Judah, Judah was to the world; it was a land of children. It was this that made it a land of promise. Childhood is distinctively the age that sees the promised land. It never looks back, even to an Eden; its watchword is ‘to-morrow.’ But childhood has another characteristic, and it is one more pertinent to the present study. It is the age of variety. I do not think there is any period of human life in which the attributes of Man are revealed in so many different forms. Old age exhibits a general uniformity; the shades of difference are tempered down as we reach the valley of life. Manhood exhibits a general uniformity; we

strive to adopt the fash7on of the day when

Io THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

the day of life is in its meridian, and nothing would so distress us as to be told that we did not live as Rome lives. But childhood sings the Song of Existence to many variations. Childhood reveals human nature in its varieties. In other periods of existence the tune is played on a single instrument. But here it rings in a hundred different forms — from harp, violin, lute, clarion, trumpet, lyre. Here it is shown how unity can exist in diversity — how Man can be changeless amid the mutable, constant amid the flow. Here alone can we look for a representative gallery of universal men — a gallery that shall be more than local, more than national, more than the product of an age and clime — a gallery which shall enfold the one in the many, and include the many in the life of the one.

Now, in the ancient world, in the pre-Christian world, I know of only one such gallery — that which contains the Portraits of the Jewish nation. Nowhere else do we find

a gallery representative of man as man. I can find galleries representative of man as Greek, man as Roman, man as philosopher, man as soldier, man as slave — but not elsewhere man as man. And the reason is that no other gallery reaches the varzeties of human nature. Variety belongs to the life of childhood, and that is precisely what the secular nations of the world have not thought worth painting. They have confined themselves to the age of manhood, and therefore they have entrammelled their pencil. They have been limited to one phase of humanity — often a temporary phase. Let us look into one or two of these galleries of the world popularly called heathen. They are all much larger than that of the Jew; but they are far more easy to scan. When you have seen one form, you have seen all; when you have studied one, you have studied all. You see in each collection but single attitudes of Man — the attitude of the nation which has framed it. Not any group standing alone, not all the groups joined together, would suffice to make the universal type of one human soul.

We enter the Chznese Gallery, and survey the portraits. What do we find? An enormous collection of figures — a collection representing a vast empire, but, for that very reason, of representing humanity. The empire which these pictures mirror has all through the ages maintained a single attitude — looking Jdack. We often speak of the Chinese Empire as in a state of stagnancy; and no doubt the description is true. But it would be a great mistake to imagine that the stagnancy of the empire has resulted from its want of aspiration. It has never been without aspiration. It would not be too much to say that its unprogressiveness has come from its aspiration. There is an aspiration which retards progress. If a man is bent upon the worshipping of his ancestors, that is a state of aspiration; it is a longing to look back. And just for that reason it is a state of unprogressiveness; if our treasure is in the past, all the instincts of our nature bid us linger near it. Our impulse is, if possible, to retreat; if that is impossible, to stand still. That is the position of the Chinese Empire.

Her resistance to progress does not come from the adsence of an ideal, but from the presence of an ideal. Her heart is in the past, and so her treasure is in the past. She has noimpulse to press forward, because she has no motive to press forward. All her flowers have been left behind her. Her Paradise is a Garden of Eden — a garden at the degznning of things. The spectacle at which her eye kindles is not one of prospect but one of retrospect. She worships her ancestral dead. The Nebo on which she stands is not a spot from which she beholds a land of promise, but a spot from which she sees a land of memory. She does stand on a Neboas firmly as ever Moses stood; but unfortunately she stands /ongerthan Moses would have stood; she is standing there up to this day. And the reason is that she has no motive for descending. Canaan is not before her; it is behind her. Her vision bids her stay — stay near the primitive fountain, stay on the confines of a past world. The men in ¢zs gallery are all looking back; their eye is on the morning hills.

Let us pass to the Gallery of India, and here we find a new phase of Man. It is a phase equally one-sided, yet entirely different. Here again we see figures in a single attitude; but the attitude of India is not the attitude of China. If I might be allowed to describe the difference epigrammatically, I should say that, while the men of China are looking back, the men of India are looking upward. The Hindu figures have their faces turned toward the sun. Their eye rests neither on the past nor on the future. It cannot be said to rest even on the present. To the men of this gallery all time is a delusion. Everything which we call the real world is to them wzmwzreal; everything which we call unreal is to them reality. Those objects which engross the Western mind are disregarded by the eye of India. If this were a mere difference of ¢aste there would be nothing strange init. But it is not a difference of taste; it is a difference of judgment. The Englishman and the Hindu are doth in search of a real world. They are both opposed to the sway of the imagination; they both seek

INTRODUCTION Is

a world of prose as distinguished from a world of poetry. But the strange thing is that what the Englishman calls prose the Hindu calls poetry, what the Englishman calls poetry the Hindu calls prose. To the man of modern London, the prose of life, the reality of life, lies in the streets of the great city with their buying and selling and chaffering. To the man of ancient India, all such spectacles are scenes of fancy, of imagination, of poetic dreaming. To him the only prose realities are the things zoz¢ seen, the things transcendental, the things above. Such a gallery could never enfold the world’s representative men. It expresses only one attitude — an attitude elsewhere rarely found — the face upturned to the height, and the hand outstretched to grasp the mist upon the mountains.

Look next at the Gallery of Greece. It depicts a phase of humanity distinct from either China or India. Yet equally with them it depicts but one phase. If the Chinaman looks back, if the Indian looks upward, I should describe the Greek as looking on-a-level. He aspires in everything to the wzdd/e course. He is ‘moderate in all things.” The virtues he follows are the sober virtues — prudence, temperance, fortitude. He aims at the qualities that hold an even balance between extremes. He prefers friendship to love; it is the middle term between the heat and the coldness of the heart. He would rather be a citizen than the member of a nation, for the city is the middle point between the unit and the multitude. He neither creeps nor flies; he walks; his ideal is ‘the golden mean.’ But by this very fact the possibility of a universal gallery is excluded. Variety belongs to the spirit of the child just because the spirit of the child is opposed to the golden mean. Childhood has no half-measures; it is either on the hill or in the vale. The mind which has always moved on the plain will never represent united Man, even though it be the mind of a national hero. Plato was a greater man than David; but David is a more representative man than Plato. Take away Plato’s

works, and his figure is a shadow; take away

David’s Psalms, as the critics do, and his form remains undimmed. Whence this difference? It is because the figure of Plato moves on the plain — that plain which favours philosophy but impairs biography, while the form of David passes from valley to height and so connects the extremes of universal Man.

There is one more gallery at which we may look; it is that of the Roman. Geographically speaking, it zs a universal gallery; Rome claimed to be mistress of the world. Yet this gallery proves how little geographical distribution has to do with representation. Physi-Pally.) home isy the! ycapital:/of (the earth; mentally, she is only one of the provinces. She is as provincial as either China or India or Greece. She too presents only one side of Man, a single human attitude. It is a different attitude from all the foregoing ones, Let me again express myself epigrammatically. If the men in the Chinese Gallery are looking back, if the men in the Indian Gallery are looking upward, if the men in the Greek Gallery are looking on-a-level, I would say

B that the men in the Roman Gallery are looking down. They are looking down at their own burden — not at the burden of others. They have not reached the stage which Goethe calls Man’s reverence for things beneath him; theirs is the gaze not of attraction but of repulsion. Lord Byron speaks of death as the doom Man ‘dreads yet dwells upon.’ Such is the Roman’s attitude to the burdens of life. He loathes them, but for that very reason he cannot take his eyes from them. His whole life is a preparation to meet them. His education, his training, his discipline, is deszgned to meet them. He is taught to keep his eyes on the ground where his burden lies, knowing that one day he will have to lift it and bear it. For that hour of lifting and bearing he schools himself. He hardens his heart to impressions. He suppresses feeling. He restrains emotion. He cultivates coldness. He lops from his tree of life the branches which luxuriate. He curbs enthusiasm; he moderates affection; he clothes his mind in the mantle of the Stoic; he practises the presence of calamity.

All these galleries reveal but the acczdental features of Man. They are not galleries of human nature itself. They are in want of variety; and they are in want of variety because they are in want of the spirit of childhood. But I am now coming into a gallery which, smaller than all the others in extent, has yet embraced within its compass every side of the human soul; I mean the Gallery of the Land of Judah. Gathered within a narrow space, exhibited to a tiny number, unappreciated by most of those around them, the Portraits of this Gallery are none the less a miniature of Man. They are a delineation of the desires and intents of the heart throughout the wide world. They are no local mirror, no reflection of a special place or time. They exhibit not the national but the universal. We forget that the men were Jews. We forget their vicinity to Mount Zion and the Jordan and the Temple. We forget even their environment by Asia. We find that they have kept pace with Europe. Our shifting western scenery has not made them an anachronism. They are abreast of our varieties. They reveal human nature not only in its eternal sameness but in its eternal variations. And why? Because they are all portraits of youth — the age of spontaneity. Is not this the very ground of national greatness assigned by one of Israel’s poets? Speaking of the Messiah’s glory he says, ‘ Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power; from the womb of the morning Thou hast the dew of Thy youth’ — the refreshing influence of Thy young men. What does he mean but this: ‘That which makes this people a representative people is its spontaneity — its willingness, and that which makes it spontaneous is the everlastingness of its spirit of youth. The men of Israel are as fresh as morning dew because they have a child’s heart in them. They are a nation of young men — men of the morning. Obedience has not made them slaves; service has not robbed them of their elastic spring; the burden and heat of life’s day has not caused them to wax old.’

EAD me through the Great Gallery, O Lord! On the threshold I wait for 7“%ee!

Who shall interpret the Gallery “ke Thee! Thou who hast the gift of Eternal Life canst explain to me how Youth could do so much for Man. I ask the powers of Nature why these men are still alive; they cannot tell. But Thou canst, for their secret is Thy secret. Thou Life Eternal, Thou Spirit of Immortal Youth, in Thy light would I tread this Gallery, by Thy light would I read these Portraits. Go Thou on before me, and I will follow Thee; in Thy light shall I see light. Lead me from face to face, lead me from form to form! Interpret Pomeiie che sicatures 7 .-Explain to, me the attitudes! Show me the shades of expression; reveal to me the colours of the soul! Inspire me to perceive the subtle beauties that are hid from the common eye! Help me to see why the universal man, the Man Christ Jesus, came not from China, not from India, not from Greece, not from Rome, but from Judah! Show me how He was indebted to no foreign soil! Teach me how He wreathed into one garland the dispersed flowers of Israel, and how all their blossoms are reproduced in Him! Then shall I know the artistic plan. Then shall I see whither the Portraits are tending; and the secret of their endurance will appear when I know them to be tints of the Life Eternal.