Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/386

 She is inside my door; She treads in my footsteps, and hastens away."

This simple poem is supposed by the Preface to be "directed against the decay [of the times]." Observe the theory that anything appearing in a sacred book must have a moral purpose. "The relation of ruler and minister was neglected. Men and women sought each other in lewd fashion; and there was no ability to alter the customs by the rules of propriety" (C. C., vol. iv. Proleg., p. 52). A commentator, studious to discover the hidden moral, urges that the incongruous fact of the young woman's coming at sunrise and going at moonrise "should satisfy us that, under the figuration of these lovers, is intended a representation of Ts'e, with bright or with gloomy relations between its ruler and officers" (C. C., vol. iv. p. 153, note). In another Ode a lady laments her husband's absence, pathetically saying that while she does not see him, her heart cannot forget its grief:

"How is it, how is it, That he forgets me so very much?"

is the burden of every stanza. This piece, according to the Preface, was directed against a duke, "who slighted the men of worth whom his father had collected around him, leaving the State without those who were its ornament and strength" (C. C., vol. iv. p. 200, and the note.—She King, pt. i. b. 11, ode 7).

With such methods as these there is no marvel which may not be accomplished. And when, by the lapse of many centuries, the very language of the sacred records has been forgotten—as the Sanscrit of the Vedas was forgotten by the Hindus, the Zend by the Parsees, and the Hebrew by the Jews—the process of perversion is still further favored. The original works are then accessible but to a few; and when these few undertake to explain them in the ordinary tongue, they will do so with a gloss suggested by their own imperfect comprehension of the thoughts and language of the past.

These, then, may be accepted as the external marks of Sacred Books: 1. The unusual veneration accorded to them by the ad-*