16 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniathe cultured few.
But there is still another error into which we may fall. It is that
of attaching too literal a meaning to the language of theology.
The error is the natural result of the reaction from the older
methods of interpretation, which found allegories in the simplest
of texts, and mystical significations in the plainest words. The
application of the scientific method to the records of the past
brought with it a recognition that an ancient writer meant what
he said quite as much as a writer of to-day, and that to read into
his language the arbitrary ideas of a modern hierophant might
be an attractive pastime, but not a serious occupation. Before
we can hope to understand the literature of the past, we must try
to discover what is its literal and natural meaning, unbiassed by
prejudices or prepossessions, or even by the authority of great
names. Theologians have been too fond of availing themselves
of the ambiguities of language, and of seeing in a text more than
its author either knew or dreamt of. Unless we have express
testimony to the contrary, it is no more permissible to find
[015] parables and metaphorical expressions in an old Egyptian book
than it is in the productions of the modern press.
But, on the other hand, it is possible to press this literalism
too far. Language, it has been said, is a storehouse of faded
metaphors; and if this is true of language in general, it is still
more true of theological language. We can understand the
spiritual and the abstract only through the help of the material;
the words by which we denote them must be drawn, in the first
instance, from the world of the senses. Just as in the world
of sense itself the picture that we see or the music that we
hear comes to us through the nerves of sight and hearing, so
all that we know or believe of the moral and spiritual world is
conveyed to us through sensuous and material channels. Thought
is impossible without the brain through which it can act, and we
cannot convey to others or even to ourselves our conceptions
of right and wrong, of beauty and goodness, without having