Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/303

 the universe, and they who are on his side find it."

If the web of this remarkable passage is Hebrew, the woof is Greek. The Hebrew pessimism of Qôheleth meets the Greek horror of old age; the old Hebrew conceptions of social justice and respect for old age are found in the company of action from self-interest, supported by the iron rule of Force, and that contempt of old age which students of Alexandrian literature have frequently observed. But, above all, the Greek realisation of personality and the Platonic sanction for personal morality in a future state meet and correct the despairing nihilism of Qôheleth. In this juncture consists the abiding interest of Alexandrian Judæism; the personal ideas of the Greek are now united with the social ideas of the Hebrew. For neither the old clan morality, nor the ideal brotherhood of social life which had started within the narrow circle of the clan, could disappear even among educated Hebrews writing in the flush of Hellenic inspiration. Side by side with the Greek conceptions of individual punishment or reward in a future state, we have survivals from the old mundane morality of punishment or reward within the present life. "The ends of the unjust race," says even the Platonic author of the Sophia, "are hard; the children of the wicked shall vanish; for, though they be long-lived, they shall be counted for nothing, and, at the end, their old age shall be dishonoured."

§ 75. If communal sentiments thus survived in the Hellenised culture of the educated Hebrew, how much deeper must the sentiments of early Hebrew social life have been cherished in the hearts of the Hebrew poor? From the pages of Ezra and Nehemiah we may gather