mising; it does not readily admit other
points of view. Hebrew history, for example, is wholly one-sided, seen
wholly in the colour of a Hebrew's feelings. The peoples with whom
Israel comes in contact are either so many impious men made to be slain,
or they are wicked tyrants, allowed by Heaven to chastise the chosen for
some allotted period. This was the necessary outcome of the theocratic
principle. How different from history as written by the Greek
Thucydides! To that historian facts are so many facts, to be seen as
they are, and to be told without undue enthusiasm, without obtrusive
expression of moral approval or disapproval. Never since those Hellenic
days has a historian been able so perfectly to contemplate the triumphs
and disasters of his own country as if himself quite aloof from personal
interest or stake in the result. Unclouded vision, purely intellectual
observation, could no further go.

With such temperaments and mental habits, what view of life did the
Hebrews entertain, and what the Hellenes? Our view of life is in the
greatest measure a matter of religion or non-religion, and the Hebrews
possessed a highly spiritualised and devotional religion, while the
Greeks, if not easy-going polytheists, had at best some rationalistic
system of philosophy. The difference is immense. The Hebrew creed, a
real and absorbing belief, involved a certain code of laws for the
guidance of conduct, certain definite sentiments, certain definite hopes
and fears, certain definite axioms as to the aim and end of existence.
The highest good and the worst evil had for the Hebrews unmistakable
senses. It was not so with the Greeks. They too--when they thought at
all--sought for a systematic conception of life, but not for one in
which they should be subordinated to some authority outside themselves.
They desired to see life steadily and see it whole, but they must do so
by the light of their intellect. Their conduct, aims, sentiments, hopes,
fears, must depend upon axioms to which their reasoning brought them.
What the Hebrews called sin in the sight of Heaven, the Greeks called an
error or an offence to society. It was wrong socially, or it was wrong
intellectually. Greece therefore had no place for religious fervour. It
was tolerant almost to indifference. Athens might arraign Anaxagoras for
impiety or Socrates for heresy, but these charges were either mere
pretexts or were viewed simply in their social bearing. When a Hebrew