THE KEYS OF ST. PETER.*
Tins heavy volume is really, though not nominally, a continua- tion of Mr. de Bunsen's previous work upon the Hidden Wisdom. In that work Mr. de Bunsen employed great learning to prove that a secret doctrine, revealed to primeval man or discovered by him, was handed down through ages, was known to but not taught by Christ, was revealed to St. Paul, and was in part given to the world by the Apostle John. The substance of this Hidden Wisdom is that man, by the complete surrender of his will to God, can become what Christ alone has yet been, the Son of God, the earthly depositary of perfect spiritual knowledge and power. The final objection to that theory, which, be it remarked, runs through all Hindooism and Buddhism, is, as it seems to us, the moral one, —that if Jesus knowingly taught falsities or concealed truth He cannot be in any sense whatever, orthodox or otherwise, the Son of God,—that in fact esotericism in theology is bad, and not good. Nevertheless, Mr. de Bunsen's work was worth reading, and found admiring readers, particularly among Orientalists. We question if this one will. It is badly arranged, so badly that it is almost impossible to follow the argument, or to avoid resenting its frag- ' • The %goof St Peter. By E. de Bunsen. London: Longman:"
mentary and confusing chronology. It is hard reading, almost unondurably hard, gritty with nodules of learning, lumpy with bits of knowledge, heavy with names and ethnological illustra- tions. We have studied its main and most original portion with great interest, but we cannot honestly assert that we are sure we have accurately comprehended it.
Every intelligent reader of Genesis and Exodus must have been struck with the easy intercommunication of the early world, and the relation borne by the Scriptural pedigrees and descriptions to great ethnological and geographical facts. Studying these records by the light of others as old, Mr. de Bunsen comes to the conclu- sion that the key-note of all this history is to be found in the antipathy of colour, and the system of castes which it evolved. He thinks that in primeval times the region between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean was filled with a dark, or even black, African race. This was conquered first by the Aryan clan, called Kenites, or descendants of Cain, who set up in Palestine or Canaan a system analogous with that still prevailing in India, a unity subdivided by castes based upon colour. Egypt was conquered by another clan, who, however, mixed their blood more, and then reconquered by another branch, the Shepherds of modern commen- tators. The Abrahamic tribe was a white one, ruling a dark race, which on one occasion it expelled, the fact covered or concealed under the quarrel between Sarah and Hagar. Jacob was white, while Esau was of mixed race ; Joseph and Benjamin were white, while their ten brethren were half-castes. Joseph was clearly of the same race as the " Shepherd " Pharoah who made him premier, and the Israelites who dwelt in Goshen were white men ruling mixed and dark subordinate races. When at last the yellow or mixed race achieved supreme power in Egypt, the white Kings were expelled, and the white race of Goshen with their dependents followed, and settled in Canaan, where they found and joined the Kenites, the previously settled descendants of Cain, the Western Aryan clan. The higher castes of both uniting, waged that remorseless war against the lower which was so horrible that the victors invented for it a divine command, a war of extirpation, a war such as breaks out only between rival colours. Thenceforward the Hebrews and the Kenites lived side by side, the Kenites being in the main the subordinate race, but each supporting its own priesthood, the two divisions of the Aaronic caste, called the children of Ithamar and Eliezer. The Kenites were in possession of the great monotheistic tradition, and their priests handed down the Hidden Wisdom, much of which was revealed in the Psalms by David, the Kenite King, the descendant of Caleb the Kenite, and Asaph the Kenite seer. David, for example, utterly condemned all sacrifices, a Kenite and not a Hebrew theory. The quarrel between the rival priesthoods was taken up by the nation, Judah being Kenite, and Israel for the most part Hebrew ; it was the effort to number the people of Israel, to ascertain the comparative fighting strength of the two opinions, which called down the wrath of God on David, and the difference was one cause of the split into two kingdoms. During the Captivity, the Kenite priesthood was admitted to the High Priesthood, and therefore to absolute equality ; but the schism lasted down to the destruction of Jerusalem, the Pharisees representing the Kenites, and the Sadducees the Hebrews pure, who never recognized the Hidden Wisdom, or the doctrine of the Resurrection. All this statement, which in the bare form looks so extraordinary, is supported with Mr. de Bunsen's usual wealth of philological and critical know- ledge, and sometimes by bursts of remarkable eloquence, as in the following eulogium on David, the Kenite King :—
" The sweet Psalmist of Israel,' the Kenito King, was the first who popularized the principles of Kenite tradition, by the composition of poems adapted to the purposes of devotion. Before his time the Sanc- tuary was the house of oracles, but David made it the house of prayer. Israel had been taught to do certain things, and to leave others undone ; but even Moses had not ventured to command, or even to invite, the ig- norant and Egyptianized Hebrews to pray, either in private or in public. David, the King after God's own heart, the first opposer of image wor- ship, as the cause of idolatry, proclaimed the necessity of direct indivi- dual communion between man and his God, and he taught the people how to pray. Prayer had been his soul's desire, his comfort in adver- sity, the hallowed means or obtaining the assurance of pardon for his sins, the invisible ladder of his father Jacob, which connected earth with heaven. Moved by the Spirit of God, he prayed in the Spirit, he wrote in the Spirit, and he saw in the Spirit things to come. His Kenite ancestors, though they had not ploughed the land, nor sown seed thereon, had been sowers of a spiritual seed, and plonghers of the hearts of men. The Kenites had not dwelt in houses, but they knew that their hearts were intended to be, what the Holy of Holies foreshadowed, dwelling- places of the Most High God. Thus the creature communed with the Creator. Men of high degree and men of low degree were equally privi- leged. But although, in a measure, every Kenite may have been taught that every man ought to be his own sanctuary, his own priest, all Israel was now to be brought together, a national sanctuary was to be built, and public services established, to meet the exigencies of the times." Now, we do not question for a moment the rightfulness or the utility of historical disquisition of this kind. The ethnological character of the Hebrew race—almost the only pure race which presents the phenomenon of xanthous and melanous tribes in such close juxtaposition—is a matter of very considerable scientific interest. Proof that a cross between a black and an Aryan race produced the Hebrew would be the most absolutely and directly beneficial addition ever made to ethnological knowledge. If, as seems exceedingly probable, Mr. de Bunsen can contribute import- ant suggestions and facts to that inquiry, we shall be among the first to acknowledge the value of his work. So, also, it is import- ant to understand that radical division of Jewish thought which culminated in the Sadducee and Pharisee, which has induced many thinkers in the teeth of evidence to doubt if the nation ever recog- nized a future state at all, and which no doubt has produced the singular double tendency of the Jewish mind towards the most exalted religious feeling and the lowest materialism. To probe into the causes and extent of that division is work which might well befit the most learned and laborious of Oriental scholars. But then ethnologist and theologian must each approach his subject with a mind clear of preconceived ideas, must prove every step and demonstrate every position. Mr. de Bunsen fulfils neither of these conditions. He studies both ethnology and historic evidence as to Jewish opinion with a view to demonstrate his own precon- ceived thought—that a stream of primeval tradition flowed down the ages through some section of the Jewish priesthood down to Christ, was comprehended by Him, was concealed by Him, and was revealed to the Apostle Paul. That theory would not induce him, we admit, to falsify facts, but it induces him to admit hypo- theses very readily, and to make very extravagant conjectures. Where is his proof that the subordinate castes, Hebrew or Kenite, were darkcoloured? It is not impossible, for colour, though it cannot be changed by climate, can be changed and has been changed often by admixture of blood, and the tendency is for the white gradually to dominate, from the natural selection of the f air, but the asser- tion needs full proof. To assume or even suppose Rachel and Leah to have been of different races is at first sight the very extravagance of hypothesis, as it assumes both excessive prejudice of colour and perfect readiness to overcome it. So, too, there is no proof that the cause of quarrel between the priestly sects, a quarrel which doubtless existed, was due to race or caste at all. It may just as well have been a fight between High and Low-Church opinions, stereotyped as all ideas in the East stereotype themselves, even teetotalism, in certain families. There are Brahmin families which for ages have eaten no fish on religions grounds, but the Brahmins who do eat fish are of the same race. The Aryan clan which conquered India certainly protected its blood, after some partial admixture, by setting up the Caste idea, and the Aryan clan which conquered Canaan may have done so too, but where is the evidence ? Intermarriage and caste are warring facts, and intermarriage was, as Mr. de Bunsen allows, very frequent, though unpopular. The policy of exterminating the " Canaanites," old and young, mother and child, suggests strongly a war of races, but it is almost inconceivable that if such occurred there should not be throughout the Old Testament one distinct reference to colour. After all, the Hebrew did not smite the Canaanite more heavily than the Catholics smote the Albigenses almost in our own time. Each of these subjects, the ethnology of Palestine and coexistence of two theologic systems among the Jews, wants a treatise to itself, and one wholly disconnected from any theory about the consecutiveness of tradition. Into Mr. de Bunsen's religious theories we really cannot consent to enter again, for we are entering into a cal de sac, at the end of which is an impassable barrier, the absolute impossibility that Jesus of Nazareth, if in any sense whatsoever the Man-God, should have been guilty of the suppressio very. The theory which makes Him God only we can discuss, though we repel it ; the theory which makes Him man only we have often discussed, though we reject it ; but the theory which makes him both, and a falsifier of moral truth, is to us out- side discussion. We will not waste time over a moral contradiction in terms, and till this is removed talk about St. Peter's primacy as guardian of the Hidden Wisdom is talk merely. If we under- stand Mr. de Bunsen, the Pope is at this moment the depositary of the grand tradition, the essence of divine wisdom, and may reveal it. Well, if he does we will discuss it without any prejudice against his office, but till then we take leave to assert that whether Jesus, as we believe, existed from eternity, or whether, as Mr. de Bunsen believes, He became God, it is equally impossible that He can have concealed, or rather denied, a cardinal, the cardinal, moral truth:
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