They are inevitably prone to take Hebraism
as the law of human development, and not as simply a contribution to it,
however precious. And yet the lesson must perforce be learned, that the
human spirit is wider than the most priceless of the forces which bear
it onward, and that to the whole development of man Hebraism itself is,
like Hellenism, but a contribution.
Perhaps we may help ourselves to see this clearer by an illustration
drawn from the treatment of a single great idea which has profoundly
engaged the human spirit, and has given it eminent opportunities for
showing its nobleness and energy. It surely must be perceived that the
idea of immortality, as this idea rises in its generality before the
human spirit, is something grander, truer, and more satisfying, than it
is in the particular forms by which St. Paul, in the famous fifteenth
chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, and Plato, in the
_Phaedo_[457] endeavor to develop and establish it. Surely we cannot but
feel, that the argumentation with which the Hebrew apostle goes about to
expound this great idea is, after all, confused and inconclusive; and
that the reasoning, drawn from analogies of likeness and equality, which
is employed upon it by the Greek philosopher, is over-subtle and
sterile.
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