THE ODES OF SOLOMON.
THE Christian books produced in the age which imme- diately succeeded that of the first Disciples are few in number, and, for the most part, poor in quality. Dr. Light- foot's English version of the collected writings of the "Apostolic Fathers" does not contain (in printers' reckon- ing) more than one hundred thousand words. That is to say, if we exclude the Canonical writings of the New Testament, the extant remains of Christian literature before 150 A.D. might easily be printed in a single volume of modest size. These relics of primitive piety are mostly letters with a homi- letical flavour, while they include a manual of Christian instruction and a curious allegorical treatise entitled " The Shepherd." But they are interesting only to the student of Christian origins, their literary quality being poor indeed.
Within the last six months a notable addition has been made to our scanty collection of early Christian books by Dr. Rendel Harris, who has discovered in a Syriac version an ancient collection of hymns or poems, of which heretofore we had known little more than the fact that they were at one time current in Christian circles. The " Odes of Solomon" are mentioned in some of the extant lists of Church books, and they were quoted both in East and West in the third and fourth centuries of our era. But of their contents we knew practically nothing, and it is a delightful surprise to find, now that they have come to light, that they are poems of striking beauty as well as of spiritual dignity. Why they were given the name of Solomon no one knows, and it does not matter much. Nor have scholars yet come to an agreement as to their date or as to the source of their inspiration. Dr. Harris believes them to be early Christian hymns, produced about 100 A.D., but Dr. Harnack of Berlin would put them further back. He believes the Grundschrift to be Jewish rather than Christian ; they are, for him, Jewish poems worked over by a Christian editor, and are of the highest historical importance as witnessing to a phase of Jewish mysticism which found its culmination in the Fourth Gospel. The questions of the date and theological standpoint of the author of the Odes are not yet settled, and they may be left to theologians to determine. But whether they were originally Jewish or Christian, whether they are the utterances of a mystic or of a sacramentalist, and whether their date is 70 A.D. or 150 A.D., the Odes of Solomon are undoubtedly the most remarkable relic, outside the New Testament, of the devotional literature of the sub-Apostolic period that has survived the chances of time.
The allusions to the Old Testament which the Odes contain are recondite and curious ; but, while there is no direct quota- tion from the New Testament, the illustrations of New Testament thoughts, and especially of the Johannine writings, are bold and striking. "I should not have known bow to love the Lord if He had not loved me," and " Ask and abound and abide in the love of the Lord, ye beloved ones in the Beloved," recall the characteristic teaching of the Fourth Gospel about the divine love. Even more remarkable is the doctrine of the Word of which the Odes are fulL "The mouth of the
Lord is the true Word and the door of His Light for the swiftness of the Word is inexpressible. It is
light and the dawning of thought for the dwelling place of the Word is man, and its truth is love." " The Word of the Lord searcheth out all things, both the invisible and that which reveals His thought." And the doctrine of Creation by the Word of God, indicated in the profound prologue to the Fourth Gospel, is thus clothed with poetry : " There is nothing that is without the Lord, for He was before anything came into being ; and the worlds were made by His Word and by the thought of His heart." The singer, whoever he be, is moving in the same high regions of thought
as the Fo irth Evangelist. He returns again and again to the Johannine thoughts of light, life, love, knowledge, faith, grace, truth, immortality. If Dr. Harnack be right in thinking that the Odes are the product of Je wish rather than of Christian mysticism, their discovery is, as he says, " epoch- making "; for they would provide the connecting link between Judaism and St. John, and suggest the kind of man the author of the Fourth Gospel may have been before he became a Christian. This is, perhaps, to go too fast ; but in any case the Odes provide us with a welcome example of that mystical side of Christian teaching which some have supposed to be a quite singular phenomenon as it appears in the Fourth GospeL It is very curious, on any hypothesis, that from first to last there is no hint, throughout the whole collection, of sin, of repentance, or forgiveness. The singer exults in the freedom and the joy of the spiritual life, and is not oppressed by any sense of its difficulties. His meditations would be comparable to Keble's " Christian Year " were it not for the continuous exaltation of his spirit, which will not stoop to contemplate the failures of human endeavour. "As the sun is the joy to them that seek for its daybreak, so is my joy the Lord ; because He is my Sun and His rays have lifted me up ; and His light bath dispelled all darkness from my face. In Him I have acquired eyes and have seen His holy day; ears have become mine, and I have heard His truth. The thought of knowledge hath been mine, and I have been delighted by means of it. The way of error I have left, and have walked towards Him and have received salvation from Him without grudging."
Here is another similitude :—" As the wings of doves over their nestlings, and the mouths of their nestlings towards their mouths, so also are the wings of the Spirit over my heart ; my heart is delighted and exults, like the babe who exults in the womb of his mother. I believed and therefore I was at rest ; for faithful is He in whom I have believed : He has richly blessed me, and my head is with Him: and the sword shall not divide me from Him, nor the scimitar; for I am ready before destruction comes, and I have been set on His immortal pinions."
The trustfulness of the soul as it contemplates the love of God is expressed here with an unmeasured confidence which presupposes deep spiritual experiences. Indeed, we shall search the literature of Christianity long and curiously before we come upon spiritual songs of greater intensity than the
Odes of Solomon. The imagery is of the simplest:—" As the honey distils from the comb of the bees, and the milk flows from the woman that loves her children : so also is my hope on Thee, my God. As the fountain gushes out its water, so my heart gushes out the praise of the Lord." There is a directness in this which is eloquent of sincerity of feeling, and which forbids all vulgar ornament or rhetoric.
Here is a final quotation, in praise of Truth:—" I went up to the light of Truth as if into a chariot: and the Truth took me and led me : and carried me across pits and galleys ; and from the rocks and waves it preserved me : and it became to me an instrument of Salvation : and set me on the arms of immortal life : and it went with me and made me rest and suffered me not to wander, because it was the Truth; and I ran no risk, because I walked with Him ; and I did not make an error in anything because I obeyed the Truth." Praevalet vertices. The singer is as sure of this as he is of his own delight in heavenly meditations : " My joy is the Lord, and my running is towards Him : this is my excellent path."
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