To attach blame elsewhere,
Do we at will invent
Stern powers who make their care
To embitter human life, malignant deities.“But next, we would reverse
The scheme ourselves have spun,
And what we made to curse
We now would lean upon,
And feign kind gods who perfect what man vainly tries....“We pause, we hush our heart,
And then address the gods:
‘The world hath failed to impart
The joy our youth forebodes,
Failed to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear!’”Their principles of thought were pure, but they felt that there existed a purity
which was beyond their reach; their standard of conduct was high, but they were
inwardly conscious that it ought to be higher. On that golden “ladder of
sunbeams” which rises from earth to the angel-guarded battlements of heaven,
they had ascended a few timid steps, but above and beyond they could see a
glory to which it was not given them to rise. Hence it has often been said, and
justly, that the men were greater than their system; and such, so far as
Magianism was concerned, may well have been the case with the loftier minds
of Bactria and Persia. But it can never be pretended that the Christian is greater
than Christianity. Let him be ever so holy in his living, ever so exalted in his
aspirations, he will not seek for something beyond and out of Christianity,
because he feels and knows that he cannot exhaust all its capabilities; that it
soars far higher than he can ever soar. It has truths which the profoundest
psychologist cannot fathom; it opens up visions which the boldest imagination
cannot comprehend; it contains a wealth of emotion and sympathy which the
most passionate soul can never exhaust. After we have said and done all we can,
after we have mastered all that has been said and done by other men, we still
find in the life and character of CHRIST that which may well engage, and yet
never weary our attention. And here we touch upon a feature which no human
system of religion or morality has ever matched. Strip the Zendavesta, if you
will, of all its later and less worthy adjuncts, and yet it cannot, any more than the
Rig-Veda, present us with the divine beauty of the Man of Sorrows. But this it is