Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/905

Rh O R G R I 839 The treatment thus indicated is very different from that to which the suitability of English swell reeds for solo purposes has given rise. The&quot; effects commonly obtained by means of these reeds could hardly be more expressly described than in the final warn ing sentence above quoted. However, these reed effects possess great clearness, and, with the improved character of modern reeds and the toning down of the swell box, they are probably not so objectionable as what Mendelssohn had in his mind. Indeed the deficiency of good balances between Hue stops answering the re quirements above described is usually such that there is hardly any option but to employ swell reeds in such cases. Consider particularly the pianissimo balances necessary for carry ing out the above directions. In the first place it is clear that the soft 8-foot stops alluded to are not stops of extreme softness, such as the dulciana or salicional, as the attempt to produce a melody on such stops would everywhere be a failure. We must recognize for such purposes a further degree of softness, which may be denoted by ppp. Ve may take the average great organ stopped diapason as the measure of loudness of the soft stops pp ; then it is requisite that on the choir or elsewhere there should be stops that will, especially in the tenor, combine and balance singly with the great stopped diapason in two-manual work. Choir stops would have to be decidedly stronger than usual for this purpose. Such a stop might be a small open diapason, or perhaps a gamba or keraulophon. Other balances of various kinds might be suggested. Some such must be present if the smooth and liquid character, which the soft parts of Mendelssohn s works at least were undoubtedly intended to possess, is to be preserved at all. As a ppp is needed for extreme softness, so an fff is needed to express the exceptional degree of force attainable in modern instru ments by adding the solo reed (tromba) to the ordinary full organ. Modern music generally indicates in detail the treatment in tended by the author. We may mention one matter which has come forward lately ; this is the use of one hand on two manuals. This has become possible in consequence of the modern arrange ment by which the manuals overhang. For further details as to the history and construction of the organ, with numerous specifications, we must refer to the work of Hopkins and Rimbault on the organ. (R. H. M. B.) ORGIES is a name given to certain rites in the worship of Dionysus-Bacchus. The rites, which were restricted to women, were celebrated in the winter among the hills in spots remote from city life. The women met in such places clad in fawn-skins (i-e/fyis), with hair dishevelled, swinging the thyrsus and beating the cymbal ; they danced and worked themselves up to a state of mad excitement. The holiest rites took place at night by the light of torches. A bull, the representative of the god, was torn in pieces by them as Dionysus-Zagreus had been torn ; his bellowing reproduced the cries of the suffering god. The women tore the bull with their teeth, and the eating of the raw flesh was a necessary part of the ritual. Then the dead god was sought for. Some further rites, which varied in different districts, represented the resurrection of the god in the spring. On Mount Parnassus the women carried back Dionysus -Liknites, the child in the cradle. The most famous festival of the kind was the r/Die-n/pis, cele brated every second winter on Parnassus by the women of Attica and Phocis. The celebrants were called Mienads or Bacchae. The ecstatic enthusiasm of the Thracian women, KAwoWes or Mt/mAAoves, was especially distinguished. There is no doubt that in earlier times the murdered god was represented by a man, and the myths of Pentheus and Orpheus refer to the original form of the ritual. ORJBASIUS. See MEDICINE, vol. xv. p. 804. ORIFLAMME. See FLAG, vol. ix. p. 279. ORIGEN (c. 185-c. 254). Of all the theologians of the ancient church, with the possible exception of Augustine, Origen is the most distinguished and the most influential. He is the father of the church s science ; he is the founder of a theology which was brought to perfection in the 4th and 5th centuries, and which still retained the stamp of his genius when in the 6th century it disowned its author. It was Origen who created the dogmatic of the church and laid the foundations of the scientific criticism of the Old and New Testaments. He could not have been what he was unless two generations before him had laboured at the problem of finding an intellectual expression and a philo sophic basis for Christianity (Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Pantaenus, Clement). But their attempts, in comparison with his, are like a schoolboy s essays beside the finished work of a master. Like all great epoch-making personali ties, he was favoured by the circumstances of his life, notwithstanding the relentless persecution to which he was exposed. He lived in a time when the Christian communities enjoyed almost uninterrupted peace and held an acknowledged position in the world. By proclaiming the reconciliation of science Avith the Christian faith, of the highest culture with the gospel, Origen did more than any other man to win the Old World to the Christian religion. But he entered into no diplomatic compromises; it was his deepest and most solemn conviction that the sacred oracles of Christendom embraced all the ideals of antiquity. His character was as transparent as his life was blameless ; there are few church fathers whose biography leaves so pure an impression on the reader. The atmosphere around him was a dangerous one for a philosopher and theologian to breathe, but he kept his spiritual health unimpaired, and even his sense of truth suffered less injury than was the case with most of his contemporaries. To us, indeed, his conception of the universe, like that of Philo, seems a strange medley, and one may be at a loss to conceive how he could bring together such heterogeneous elements; but there is no reason to doubt that the harmony of all the essential parts of his system was obvious enough to himself. It is true that in addressing the Christian people he used differ ent language from that which he employed to the cultured ; but there was no dissimulation in that, on the contrary, it was a requirement of his system. Orthodox theology has never, in any of the confessions, ventured beyond the circle which the mind of Origen first measured out. It has suspected and amended its author, it has expunged his heresies ; but whether it has put anything better or more tenable in their place may be gravely questioned. Origen was born, perhaps at Alexandria, of Christian parents in the year 185 or 186. As a boy he showed evidence of remarkable talents, and his father Leonidas gave him an excellent education. At a very, early age, about the year 200, he listened to the lectures of Pantenus and Clement in the catechetical school. This school, of which the origin is unknown, was the first and for a long time the only institution where Christians were instructed simultaneously in the Greek sciences and the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures. Alexandria had been, since the days of the Ptolemies, a centre for the interchange of ideas between East and West between Egypt, Syria, Greece, and Italy; and, as it had furnished Judaism with an Hellenic philosophy, so it also brought about the alliance of Chris tianity with Greek philosophy. Asia Minor and the West developed the strict ecclesiastical forms by means of which the church closed her lines against heathenism, and especially against heresy ; in Alexandria Christian ideas were handled in a free and speculative fashion and worked out with the help of Greek philosophy. Till near the end of the 2d century the line between heresy and orthodoxy was less rigidly drawn there than at Ephesus, Lyons, Rome, or Carthage. In the year 202 a persecution arose, in which the father of Origen became a martyr, and the family lost their livelihood. Origen, who had distinguished himself by his intrepid zeal, was supported for a time by a lady of rank, but began about the same time to earn his bread by teaching ; and in 203 he was placed, with the sanction of the bishop Demetrius, at the head of the cate chetical school. Even then his attainments in the whole circle of the sciences were extraordinary. But the spirit of investigation impelled him to devote himself to the highest studies, philosophy and the exegesis of the Sacred Scriptures. With indomitable perseverance he applied