mandments";--[436] that is the Hebrew
notion of felicity; and, pursued with passion and tenacity, this notion
would not let the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had at last got
out of the law a network of prescriptions to enwrap his whole life, to
govern every moment of it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion
of felicity, on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in these words of
a great French moralist: "_C'est le bonheur des hommes_,"--when? when
they abhor that which is evil?--no; when they exercise themselves in the
law of the Lord day and night?--no; when they die daily?--no; when they
walk about the New Jerusalem with palms in their hands?--no; but when
they think aright, when their thought hits: "_quand ils pensent juste_."
At the bottom of both the Greek and the Hebrew notion is the desire,
native in man, for reason and the will of God, the feeling after the
universal order,--in a word, the love of God. But, while Hebraism seizes
upon certain plain, capital intimations of, the universal order, and
rivets itself, one may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness and
intensity on the study and observance of them, the bent of Hellenism is
to follow, with flexible activity, the whole play of the universal
order, to be apprehensive of missing any part of it, of sacrificing one
part to another, to slip away from resting in this or that intimation of
it, however capital. An unclouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded play
of thought, is what this bent drives at. The governing idea of Hellenism
is _spontaneity of consciousness_; that of Hebraism, _strictness of
conscience_.

Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of Hebraism to set
doing above knowing. Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following not our
own individual will, but the will of God, _obedience_, is the
fundamental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we have
attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, as the old law and the
network of prescriptions with which it enveloped human life were
evidently a motive-power not driving and searching enough to produce the
result aimed at,--patient continuance in well-doing, self-conquest,--
Christianity substituted for them boundless devotion to that inspiring
and affecting pattern of self-conquest offered by Jesus Christ; and by
the new motive-power, of which the essence was this, though the love and
admiration of Christian churches have for centuries been employed in
varyin