murderer, who gave birth to a race of murderers. These men were ingenious; they discovered the process of working iron and bronze; they found out the art of producing the harmonious strains of music; but, though wise above their simpler brethren of the steppe in both the sterner and the more esthetic sides of life, they were still a race of murderers. Their superior knowledge and added skill only gave them greater power to gratify the spirit of revenge, and to pander to all that was unworthy and degrading.

In the thought of this writer, the innocent man is the ignorant man, and the happy life, the uncultured life. In this view he does not stand alone. Many noble spirits in many different ages have looked upon life with the eyes of this old nomad, and have believed that purity could not exist apart from asceticism, and that misery is the thermometer of holiness."

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This point of view finds a certain degree of justification in the fact that new power is almost universally first used by men for selfish or base ends. Wherever intellectual

advancement outstrips the growth of the moral sensibilities the result is to make man the meanest of animals; he has intellectual ability to be more diabolically cunning and revengeful than any other living thing. It always happens, too, that each newly acquired power or bit of knowledge is used by man for selfish and hurtful ends, until, led by experience of the harmful effects of such a course, and by the growth of his moral sense, he turns his new abilities to unselfish or elevating pursuits. This is sure to come. in time, if not to the individual, at all events to the race; and thus in this fact the hope of progress in things material or spiritual lies.

The Biblical writer was looking upon the earlier stages of this process, and like many others in similar situations, he was disheartened. Lamech and the descendants of Cain, like Cain, their ancestor, surpassed their more rustic brethren in the knowledge of many things but gloating selfishly in their superior power, they gratified by it the appetites of their dark hatred and bloody vengeance.

This point of view is, however, too narrow. An increase in intellectual power will ultimately produce an increase in moral sense, and lead to higher ideals and better aims than would be possible without it. Sometimes, it is true, there are individuals in whom this does not happen; they harden in their selfishness before the new moral sense can burst the shell of self. This need not happen, if education is properly conducted; and the only hope that the race will ever slough off the animal in it completely, and become sons of God indeed, lies in the promise that we shall

"Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell;

That mind and heart according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster."

We need not, then, take the gloomy view of the old nomadic writer, even though we can see enough of the reasons which influenced him to sympathize with his mood. The Lamech of his narrative, like some individuals we may have known, serves as a sad warning of the ruinous consequences

of a one-sided development. Salvation from such a fate is to be found not in ignorance, but in a symmetrical growth, in which the intellect is satisfied with truth, the sensibilities with beauty and affection, and the moral nature with goodness. Man is still imperfect and selfish; too often still he makes knowledge the handmaid of brutal desire; but the attitude of a believing heart is well described by Whittier:

"I have not seen, I may not see,

My hopes for man take form in fact,

But God will give the victory

In due time; in that faith I act. And he who feels the future sure, The baffling present may endure,

And bless meanwhile the unseen Hand that leads

The heart's desires beyond the halting steps of deeds."

CHAPTER XVIII.

ENOCH.

"And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." Gen. v, 24.

"Cold in the dust this perish'd heart shall lie,

But that which warm'd it once shall never die."

-Campbell.

"He said, 'What's time?' Leave Now for dogs and

apes!

Man has Forever."-Browning.

AMONG the ancient Semites as among the ancient Greeks, there was no clear conception of a happy immortal life.1 It was thought that the dead went down to the underworld where they lived a colorless and unhappy existence, longing continually for the life of the world which they had left. Among both Greeks and Semites, however, it was thought that here and there a remarkable individual who had been able in some unusual way to obtain the favor of the gods might escape the abode of the dead in the world below the earth, and go directly to

For the Greek view see Homer's Odyssey, Bk, xi; for the Semitic, Jastrow's Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Ch. xxv.