The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2

"Whan the dragon that foule isHad a sight of Sir Bevis,He cast yo a loud cryAs it had thondered in the sky,He turned his belly toward the sunIt was greater than any tonne;His scales was brighter than the glas,And harder they were than any brasBetwene his sholder and his tayleWas 40 fote without fayle,He woltered out of his denne,And Bevis pricked his stede then,And to him a spere he thrasteThat all to shivers he it braste.The dragon then gan Bevis assayleAnd smote Syr Bevis with his tayleThen down went horse and manAnd two rybbes of Bevis brused than."

Suffice it to say the knight at last conquered and the monster was slain. The same story is repeated in the ballad of "St. George and the Dragon," with variations. There a fair lady is rescued:

"For, with his lance that was so strong,As he came gaping in his face,In at his mouth, he thrust along,For he could pierce no other place;And thus within the lady's viewThis mighty dragon straight he slew."

The martial achievements of this patron saint of the "Knights of the Garter" are considered apocryphal, and, in 1792, it required an octavo volume by Rev. J. Milner to prove his existence at all. Emerson says he was a notorious thief and procured his prelatic honors by fraud.

The English history is to a considerable extent embodied in the national songs. Opinions, prejudices, and superstitions, however, are oftener embodied in them than facts. This species of literature has been very potent for good or ill in revolutionary times. Kings and parties have been both marred and made by them. The martial spirit, in all ages, has been kindled by lyrics; national victories have been celebrated by them; and by them individual prowess has been immortalized.

The English people were famous for their convivialty and periodical festivals such as May Day, New Years, sowing-time, sheep-shearing, harvest home, corresponding to our Thanksgiving and Christmas. All these occasions were enlivened with songs and tales. The Christmas carol and story are famous in England's annals. Scott says:

"All hail'd with uncontroll'd delightAnd general voice the happy night,That to the cottage as the crown,Brought tidings of salvation down.'Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;A Christmas gambol oft could cheerThe poor man's heart through half the year."

BOOK REVIEWS

ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND THEIR RELATION TO UNIVERSAL RELIGION. By Samuel Johnson, with an introduction by O.B. Frothingham. Persia, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1885.

This is the third volume of the series, and was not quite completed at the time of Mr. Johnson's death in 1882. The other volumes, on India and China, created much interest in the world of religious and ethnical study, a prominent London publisher and literateur saying to a friend of the present writer that nothing more would need to be written of China for the next quarter of a century. Max Muller testified to the high value of Mr. Johnson's work.

In the study of the various religions, the author finds in each some peculiar manifestation of the universal religious sentiment. In Southern Asia he clearly sees nature almost absorbing the individual and hence a pantheistic vagueness and vastness in which man does not realize a complete sense of personality. But in the North and West the same Tudo-European race comes to a self-conscious individuality and there is the "evolution and worship of personal will." Mr. Johnson's first chapter on "Symbolism" brings out this epoch of will development as illustrated by the Persians,—the human soul impressing itself upon the material world—and finding outside itself natural emblems to express its religious life. "Symbolism is mediation between inward and outward, person and performance, man and his environment." "Work is the image man makes of himself on the world in and through nature." Mr. Johnson finds the personal element becoming supreme in these people of Northern and Western Asia.

Perhaps there has never been so philosophical and satisfactory a treatment of the Fire-Symbol, which, however, our author says is not peculiar to the religion of Persian Zoroaster, as we find in Mr. Johnson's chapter under that head. As light, heat, cosmic vital energy, astronomical centre, as all producing and all sustaining force, the sun and the other burning and brilliant objects lighted therefrom, furnish very much of the symbolism of all religions. "The Sun of Rightousness" is a favorite figure with Jew and Christian. It is doubtless as incorrect to characterize the Persians as "fire worshipers" as it would be to say that Christians, who use the same symbol, give their worship to the symbol rather than the Being symbolized. Still our author finds this emblem a very important one in the religion of the followers of Zoroaster and thinks he detects a progress in thought and civilization marked by the coming of the people to give religious regard to the sun and heavenly bodies, instead of fire kindled by human hands—a new stability of being corresponding with the passage of early people's art of nomadic or shepherd life into agriculture with its fixed abodes and domestic associations.

The two deities of the Zend Avesta, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the evil in perpetual conflict, could not have been conceived of in Southern Asia where the human will is kept under, and where self-consciousness is so moderately developed. This battle is in the Avestan faith and morals largely in the human breast, and is the same that Paul is conscious of in the combat he describes between himself and sin that was in him. The Avestan Morals are brought out by Mr. Johnson in their original and exceeding purity.

But the larger sweep of Mr. Johnson's purpose carries him into an exhaustive and most interesting consideration of Persian influence upon the Hebrew faith and thought—through the conquests of Cyrus and Alexander—and through Maurchæism and Gnosticism—down to Christendom.

Mahometanism is, in our author's mind, the culmination of the religion of personal will, and he devotes many glowing and instructive pages to bringing out the meaning and heart of the religion of Islam, especially in its later and in its more spiritual developments. The final object of the volume is to show the relation of the religion of personal will to universal religion.

Of course our author has not been foolish and unfair enough to portray the perversions and lapses of this particular type of Oriental faith and ethics; but his aim has been to set forth its essential principles and to show how they spring from the universal root.

The study of comparative religions, and hence of the universal religion, is one of the characteristics and glories of our time. Once every people despised, as a religious duty, every nation and every religion but its own, and sword and fagot were employed, as under divine command, to exterminate all strange manifestations of religious sentiment. Now the advance guard of civilization is giving itself to devout and thankful study of all the religions under the sure impression that they will prove to be one in origin and essence: and so a sweeter human sympathy and a more complete unity are beginning to be realized among men.

No man has in most respects been better fitted for this study than was the lamented author of these books. Mr. Johnson was almost or quite "a religious genius," with an enthusiasm of faith in the invisible and the idea, which few men have ever shown; and his devoutness was equalled by his catholicity. His religious lyrics enrich our Christian psalmody, while his published discourses, mingling philosophical light with fervor of a transcendent faith in God and man, rank among the grandest utterances from the American pulpit and platform. No American can afford to miss the power and influence of such a mind; and no student of religion should fail to have in his possession Johnson's Persia.

S.C. Beane

"THE OVERSHADOWING POWER OF GOD. A synopsis of a new philosophy concerning the nature of the soul of man, its union with the animal soul, and its gradual creation through successive acts of overshadowing and the insertion of shoots, to its perfection in Jesus the Christ; with illustrations of the inner meaning of the Bible, from the Hebrew roots; offering to the afflicted soul the way of freedom from inharmony and disease. By Horace Bowen, M.D.; transcribed in verse by Sheridan Wait, with chart and illustrations by M.W. Fairchild. Vineland, N.J. New Life Publishing Co., 1883."

This book of Dr. Bowen's opens into a field of thought that has heretofore mostly escaped the survey of theologians and philosophers: classes that are supposed to be in pursuit of essential truth concerning both God and man. Its leading aim seems to be to present a reliable clew to those truths by an unusual interpretation of the Scriptures as a revelation of creative order. The author stands with a comparatively small class of ardent explorers who have come to see "the light of the world" under a new radiance; a radiance that actually gives it the breadth and power of its claim.

Dr. Bowen's personal career in coming to this light, as related in the preface, is full of interest; and this preface is impressively wrought with the system of creative law that he aims to outline, and that the verse of Mr. Wait labors to elaborate. This author is firmly loyal to the sacred Scriptures as divine revelation, and, as such, he aims to show that, in their inmost sense, they systematically unfold the creative process, which consists of divine operations in the human soul by which, through varied series of growth, it becomes fully conjoined to, and illuminated with creative life—the light and life of Jesus, the Christ. The process from Adamic to Christ states of soul, Dr. Bowen finds was effected through successive births by "the overshadowing power of God;" so the immaculate conception of the virgin, that gave "the highest" full embodiment in Jesus Christ was simply a revelation of the ultimation of creative power in outward realms; as such, "was the completion of the plan for the creation of man, through a serial gradation of over-shadowings, or the sowing of seed and the insertion of shoots"—this "individual case being but the universal method of God in creation."

Dr. Bowen goes on to show the relation and bearing of this ultimate order of creative life in the human form to the mental and physical conditions of man, and holds it to be the saving term to our human nature, in all respects.

The body of the book, consisting of nearly five hundred pages of "verse" by Mr. Wait, is an ingenious elaboration of the principles and forms of this order, especially as it is found held in the Hebraic Roots, throughout the incomparable system of divine revelation. But, indisputably, the treatise would have been far more forcible and impressive if it had been dressed with the direct and vigorous style shown by the author in his preface. Not the least in significance in this remarkable publication is a pocketed chart by Miss Fairchild. But the whole must be perused and pondered in order to give proper impressions of its real value. To the mind of the writer of this brief notice, the book will greatly aid the struggling thought of this manifestly transitional era, in that it points so distinctly to the oncoming theological science that is to effect a complete revolution in prevailing conceptions of creative order.

W.H.K

PHILOSOPHIÆ QUESTOR: or Days in Concord. By Julia R. Anagnos. Boston: D. Lothrop and Company.

This is a little book—only sixty pages—but it is entirely unique in its plan and style. Its purpose is to give an outline sketch of two seasons of the School of Philosophy. To secure this purpose, the author has taken as "a sort of half heroine the shadowy figure of a young girl;" and, as seen to her, the proceedings of the school are sketched. Most of the persons and places have fictitious names; Mr. Alcott is called "Venerablis;" Concord, "Harmony;" the school, "the Acadame." Mr. Emerson retains his real name; the girl, who observes and writes, is "Eudoxia."

One who opens the book will be apt to read it through, not as much for its real value as for its quaint style and sometimes beautiful expressions.

EDITOR'S TABLE

Of all the nearly two-score states together forming the American Union, no one surpasses the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the extent and variety of her historical resources. Two hundred and sixty-five years ago the Mayflower and her companion craft sighted the rock-bound coast of New England as they sailed into Massachusetts Bay. That event marks the beginning of a history which, to us of the present generation, stands unequalled in the richness of its coloring. While the history of the Colonial period is cold and unpoetic in many of its aspects, it also contains an element of romance not to be overlooked. Truly, it is not the romance of ancient Rome, nor of the castle-bordered Rhine, nor of Merrie Old England; it is a romance growing out of a life in a new world; a life attended—almost made up, even, of conflicts with a strange race of savage people, and conflicts with hunger, cold, and sometimes famine. The events of this early Colonial life, tragic as they often are, carry with them an interest which is almost enchanting.

When, as children, we read those tales from the old school reading book, or heard them recited as we sat at grandfather's knee, what pictures impressed themselves on our eager minds! The log meeting-house, and before it the stacked muskets and pacing sentinel; the dusky savage faces hiding behind every tree; the midnight assault: the lurid fire, and the brandished tomahawk—these are pictures that have sometimes come with startling vividness to our youthful imaginations. And then our fancies have seen the so-called witches of Salem, the sudden arrest, the hurrying to the jail and perhaps to the gallows.

To the older mind, these realities of the past have a deep and ever-growing interest. The later periods of the Colony, the period of the Revolution and the period immediately following, are increasingly fertile in materials for the historian, the essayist, and the novelist. To bring out into clearer light, to present in forms adapted to the mass of readers, and to arouse a more lively interest in this history, especially the romantic element of it, is one leading aim and intent of this magazine. There are in existence various magazines devoted to New England history, and which are of great value to the student and the antiquary. The Bay State Monthly is not only this, it is a magazine for the people; and throughout this State, and no less in many others,—offsprings of this old Commonwealth,—it has received and awaits a still more generous reception.

The custom of observing the anniversaries of the incorporation of towns and cities in New England has become well established. In Massachusetts there are a very few towns which have reached so important an epoch in their history, as the quarter millennial of their corporate existence. Several have celebrated their bi-centennials, while hardly a year passes without the observance of one or more centennial anniversaries.

The custom is strongly to be commended, for it serves an important historical purpose. It is especially true in New England that every town, no matter how small, has an important place in the general history, and the perpetuity of this history, it hardly needs to be said, is a matter of great importance to this and succeeding generations. This is being done most effectually by means of these publicly-observed anniversaries. An event of this kind draws together the residents of the town, and many others who are connected with its history by their early life or ancestry. The occasion calls forth an historical address prepared by some native of the town, who has attained distinction in professional or public life—and what New England town cannot boast of its distinguished son—and, at the same time, arrangements are made for a published history of the town. These historical sketches are of great value and, collectively, they contain the true history of the people. The humble historian of the little town down on the Cape or up among the hills of Berkshire, may not be a Prescott, a Motley or a Bancroft, but, in his smaller sphere, he is performing a service no less valuable than that of the historian of nations. In many of these local histories are to be found events of highly-romantic interest, while some of them have been the starting point of real romances stronger than fiction. But their chief value is in their faithful portrayal of the lives of those earlier generations whose relations with our lives are so well worthy of study. That there is at present a much more general interest in this kind of history than there was fifty, or even twenty years ago, is evident; and as the towns of this State successively arrive at their important anniversaries, the written history of Massachusetts will grow more and more complete.

The annual meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society took place in the society's room, April 9, the Honorable Robert C. Winthrop in the chair.

It was greatly regretted that Mr. Winthrop felt compelled to decline serving as President for a longer term, and a tribute to his distinguished services in this office was offered in the remarks of Mr. Saltonstall. Mr. Winthrop's reply was most appropriate; and in it he spoke of the distinguished men who had honored the membership of the society within the term of his presidency extending over the last forty-five years.

The following officers were elected for the ensuing year: President, Rev. G.E. Ellis, D.D.; Vice Presidents, Charles Deane, LL.D., Francis Parkman, LL.D.; Recording Secretary, Rev. Edward J. Young, A.M.; Corresponding Secretary, Justin Winsor, A.B.; Treasurer, Charles E. Smith, Esq.; Librarian, Honorable Samuel A. Green, M.D.; Cabinet-keeper, Fitch Edward Oliver, M.D.; Executive Committee of the Council, William W. Greenough, A.B., Honorable Samuel C. Cobb, Abbott Lawrence, A.M., Abner C. Goodell, A.M., Honorable Mellen Chamberlain, I.L.B.

The one hundred and tenth anniversary of the battle of Lexington was fittingly observed in that town on the 19th of April. The citizens, with many visitors, united in celebrating that memorable event, the very thought of which must ever stir the soul of every patriotic American. At the exercises in the evening at the Lexington Town Hall, Governor Robinson delivered a brief oration. The closing words are as follows:

"The story of eloquence is breathed in the associations of the spot. You feel the inspirations that come out of the place and you know full well in your heart the depth of the lesson it teaches. Now, has it failed in these recent years? When the call came again to the men of Lexington to stand for the welfare of the Union there were no laggards. So shall it be that the people reading the story of the past will bring up all to that standard which was set so high. Slavery of the human form may not now be tolerated. Despotism may not triumph. The shackles may have fallen from men's bodies. But still, forms of bondage control the actions of thinking men, and so the battle is before the men who love their liberty and appreciate it. And so, as of old, they shall find the God above leading them on, and when the great victory of all is accomplished, when man treats his brother man in perfect equality—not in theory, but in truth—it will certainly be in recognition of God's leadership of his people, and then the grand Te Deum should be chanted that should make the welkin ring with rejoicing."

Among the few towns in Massachusetts which were founded so long as two hundred and fifty years ago, the town of Newbury is one. On the tenth day of June next, its quarter-millennial anniversary will be celebrated. The occasion will be one of great interest. The address will be given by President Bartlett of Dartmouth College. John G. Whittier, who is descended from the old Greenleaf family of Newbury, is expected to furnish a poem, and George Lunt, who read the ode at the celebration fifty years ago, will provide one for this occasion. It is regretted that James Russell Lowell, who is a lineal descendant from a noted Newbury family, cannot take part in the exercises. But the gathering will be a notable one, and there will be no lack of historical reminiscences.

The one-hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Heath, Franklin. County, Massachusetts, is to be observed on the nineteenth of August next. Previous to 1785, Heath was a part of Charlemont. The town is rich in historic events and is the birthplace of many men and women of note.

At the centennial celebration, addresses will be delivered by Rev. C.E. Dickinson of Marietta, Ohio, and John H. Thompson, Esq., of Chicago, Illinois; and a poem will be given by Mrs. C.W. McCoy of Columbus, Georgia.

The town has chosen the following committee to have charge of the arrangements: O. Maxwell, Chairman; William S. Gleason, William M. Maxwell, Charles D. Benson; Charles B. Cutler, Corresponding Secretary.

1

Rev. Phillips Brooks.

2

Copyright, 1884, by Frances C. Sparhawk.

3

Ritson and Bishop Percy speak of different ages: one describing the rise and the other the decline of minstrelsy.

4

The song makes Arthur record his own death.

5

7th vol. Child's British Poets.

6

Childs British Poets, I: 139 and 149.