thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?" (John xiv. 8, 9.) In Christ we have that real, true, saving knowledge of God which we can never acquire outside the Christian Church. So far as Agnosticism denies the possibility of God being known by any revelation whatever, it is the absolute heresy; but in so far as it declares the impossibility of realising God in the sphere of nature and logic we regard it as an ally of orthodoxy. The superficial, flippant Deism with which our fathers contended, declared that Deity was fully glassed in creation, and we needed no bookrevelation to make Him known, but the deeper philosophy of our day unreservedly affirms what the Scriptures declare, that so long as we continue in the sphere of nature, we feel after God in the dark, and cannot find Him. The philosophy of Agnosticism fully bears out the noble words of Luther, with which we will conclude this section: "Although God is omnipresent, He is nowhere; I cannot lay hold of Him by my own thoughts without the Word. But where He Himself has ordained to be present, there He is certainly to be found. God cannot be found in His majesty-that is, outside of His revelation of Himself in His Word. The majesty of God is too exalted and grand for us to be able to grasp it; He therefore shows us the right way, to wit, Christ, and says, 'Believe in Him, and you will find out who I am, and what are My nature and will.' The world, meanwhile, seeks in innumerable ways, with great industry, cost, trouble, and labour, to find the invisible and incomprehensible God in His majesty. But God is and remains to them unknown, although they have many thoughts about Him, and discourse and dispute much; for God has decreed that He will be unknowable and inapprehensible apart from CHRIST."* INDIAN LITERATURE.t THE work named at the foot of this page supplies, in a most effective way, a long-felt want,-an account, within the compass of a single volume, of the whole field of Hindu literature. Works for professed students exist in abundance in the shape of grammars, texts, and translations, but they are fragmentary, dear, and not easily accessible. A conspectus of the whole subject, within moderate limits, did not exist in * Quoted in Martensen's "Christian Dogmatics," p. 87. Clark. +"Indian Wisdom. By Monier Williams, M.A., Boden Sanskrit Professor at Oxford." W. H. Allen and Co. 1875. Mrs. Manning's " Ancient and Medieval India," in two volumes, an excellent work, should not be forgotten. English before the appearance of this volume. Professor Williams' work hits the happy mean between the meagreness of a compendium and the prolixity of an exhaustive treatise, giving the general reader adequate and trustworthy information and the student an outline which will serve as a guide in further research. The principal charm of the volume consists in its wealth of illustration. The specimens translated leave no department of Hindu authorship unrepresented. Yet a caution is necessary. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the entire mass is equal to the samples here spread before us. That is not to be expected. The best side, of course, is put outside. The gems are carefully selected and polished for exhibition. The defects of Indian literature-its verboseness, extravagant imagery, and defiance of all restraint of reason and fact-are acknowledged; but they are not represented, as indeed how could they be? But this qualification needs to be borne in mind in reading a work like the present one, in order to prevent grievous misconception and disappointment. Yet enough remains to excite curiosity and wonder to the highest point. To many the fact of the existence of anything in India worthy to be called a literature will come as a revelation. Of the sacred books, legal codes, and elaborate philosophies of the East, they have never heard. Yet here are the works themselves; comparing with the literature of the West much as the pyramids and gigantic temples of antiquity compare with buildings of today. One remarkable feature of Indian literature is its almost perfect state of preservation. Doubtless much has perished; but this bears far less proportion to the works extant than is the case in the Western classics. Take the Maha Bharata and the Rāmāyana, the first containing fully two hundred thousand lines, the second twenty-four thousand, both probably as old as the Christian era, yet both existing in a perfect state. The same is the ease with Indian works in general. Probably this feature is to be explained by the fact that India has been remarkably free from the national convulsions which have strewn the West with precious ruins. Another feature is that nearly all Indian literature is in poetry, or at least in metre. This is the case even with law-books and dictionaries. It would be wrong to say that there is no prose; but certainly no prose style was ever formed. Poetry always precedes prose in composition; first the bard, then the historian. But in India the historian never came. India has no historical literature at all, or none that we should accept as such. To the Hindu the poetical creations and mythology of the Epics and Purānas are historical; but even he allows that the period of this history was long anterior to our earliest antiquity. Of the events of his national history he never thought it worth while to preserve an account: and thus the history of India, back to the Christian era and the age of Moses, the period during which Indian literature grew up, is a blank. Another fact to be mentioned is the impersonal character of Indian works. Their writers are to us nothing more than names,-Vyāsa, Jaimuni, Kapila, and a host besides. The works remain, but all trace of the authors has disappeared. Indian literature is thus destitute of the life and interest which personal associations never fail to impart. The only exception is Sakhyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, of whom we have, what professes to be, a full detailed life; but here the credible and incredible are so mixed as to make the task of separation difficult, if not impossible. We propose now to sketch the outlines of Indian literature in its different departments,-religion, philosophy, law, and poetry proper. At the foundation of the religious literature of India lie the four VEDAS, (Veda knowledge,) viz., the Rik, Sāma, Yajur, and Atharvana; the first being the most, the last the least important. Their reputed compiler is Vyasa, who is also said to have compiled the Maha-Bhārata, the eighteen Purānas, as well as the Vēdānta; any one of the first three of which we may safely affirm to be a task far exceeding the powers of any single writer. The date generally assigned to the Vedas is the age of Moses. The reasons for this opinion may be seen in Müller's Lecture on the Veda in the "Chips from a German Workshop." The two main arguments are, the archaic form of Vedic Sanskrit, so different from classical Sanskrit, both in the words used and their forms; and the absence of all mention of Hindu beliefs and customs, themselves undoubtedly ancient, such as the divine Triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, transmigration and caste. The last indeed is barely alluded to, but nothing more. The simple primitive life and faith of the Vedas are altogether different from the elaborate forms of later Hinduism. Professor Max Müller has devoted his life, it is understood, to the editing and translating of the complete text of the Vedas, and should he succeed in his task, will fairly be entitled to be called the modern Vyasa. It may seem strange to say that the Hindu sacred books are better known in Europe than in India; but such is the fact. Brahmans may be able to repeat, and perhaps sometimes to understand solitary texts, but anything like connected knowledge of the Vedas is limited in India even more than in Europe to scholars. Very few of the millions of that country have ever seen any portions of the Vēdas. The name is surrounded with awful reverence, and is used as a spell to support Brahmanical authority: but the real Scriptures of modern Hinduism-the source of its mythology and fantastic rites-are the Puranas, not the Vēdas; and the Purānas are to the Vēdas very much as the Christian Fathers are to the Bible. No doubt the Vedas inculcate idolatry, but it is idolatry in its most primitive form, the worship of external nature,— Fire and Wind and Water, the Sun, the Clouds, the Earth personified. Substantially the Greek is identical with the Indian mythology. Not that we suppose any historical connection between the two, or any derivation of one from the other. The discrepancies are enough to indicate that the resemblance is simply that of two independent systems growing up under like circumstances with modifications due to local differences. Perhaps direct filiation may be asserted of the Greek Jupiter and the Indian Dhyaupitru; but this seems to be almost the only instance of etymological resemblance. Indra, the god of the sky, of rain and thunder, is the chief deity. Other deities are-Agni, Fire; Vayu, Wind; Varuna, the Waters; Surya, the Sun; Soma, the Moon; Prithivi, the Earth; Yama, the God of the Dead; Usha, the Dawn. Each Vēda consists of three parts,-Mantras, Hymns, the most sacred and ancient portion,-Brahmanas, consisting of ritual instruction,—and Upanishads, spiritual interpretation and the source of later pantheistic developments. From the examples of the Mantra portion we select first some lines addressed to the Sun : "Behold the rays of dawn, like heralds, lead on high The Sun, that men may see the great all-knowing god. Thou dost create the light, and with it dost illume Beyond this lower gloom and upward to the light Here is a beautiful ode to Dawn: “Hail, ruddy Usha, golden goddess, borne Upon thy shining car, thou comest like Seem fresher, fairer each succeeding morn. Through years on years thou hast lived on, and yet And rousing men to ply with busy feet Their daily duties and appointed tasks, Toiling for wealth, or pleasure, or renown." The address to Fire is interesting, but too long for quotation. We give the hymn to Night : "The goddess Night arrives in all her glory, Lo! men and cattle, flocks and winged creatures, My hymn of praise, which I present to thee, Professor Williams affords us some interesting specimens of the Brāhmanas, the second part of the Vēdas, particularly the Indian tradition of the Deluge; but we must pass on to the Upanishads, the third part. These profess to give the real, hidden meaning of the Vēdas, and are the germ of Vēdāntism and Pantheism in all the forms in which in India it is expressed. Here are illustrations (the favourite Hindu mode of argument) from one of the Upanishads:-"As the spider casts out and draws in (its web), as from a living man the hairs of the head and body spring forth, so is produced the universe from the indestructible Spirit. As from a blazing fire consubstantial sparks proceed in a thousand ways, so from the imperishable (Spirit) various living souls are produced, and they also return to him. As flowing rivers are resolved into the sea, losing their names and forms, so the wise, freed from name and form, pass into the Divine Spirit, which is greater than the great. He who knows that supreme Spirit becomes spirit." (Page 43.) The following is part of Yama's reply to the inquiries of Nachiketa respecting the future world : "The slayer thinks he slays, the slain Believes himself destroyed, the thoughts of both "Tis subtler than the subtlest, greater than Think not to grasp it by the reasoning mind ; The wicked ne'er can know it; soul alone Knows soul, to none but soul is soul revealed." Any doubt as to the Pantheism of these works is set at rest by a single extract: "I am Brahma. all. Even the gods are (P. 40.) Whoever knows this, I am Brahma,' knows unable to prevent his becoming Brahma.” The real Scriptures, as we have said, of modern Hinduism are the eighteen Purānas, (purāna ancient) which are sometimes popularly called " a fifth Veda." The oldest of them probably did not exist before the sixth century, A.D. Some idea of their bulk may be formed from the statement that they contain four hundred thousand verses, or eight hundred thousand lines of sixteen syllables each. They are sometimes divided into three classes, and assigned to the three members of the Triad respectively. Thus to Brahma are allotted the Brahma, Brahmanda, Brahma-vaivarta, Mārkandeya, Bhavishya, Vāmana Puranas: to Vishnu the Vishnu, Bhāgavata, Nāradīya, Garuda, Padma, and Varaha; to Shiva the Shiva, Linga, Skanda, Agni, Matsya, and Karma. As if these were not enough, there are eighteen supplementary (Upa) Purānas, the names of which we will spare our readers. There is a |