Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/130

 silent voucher for whatever shall be its consummation in a higher sphere—even for "the Rest that remaineth." It contradicts, and refuses to be consorted with, the ambition, the discontent, the adventure, the turmoil, the changeful fortunes, the pressure, and the progress, of that lower life which knows nothing of the past, and is mindless of the remote future.

The first man had lived—for whatever term—in the fruition of the happiness which springs from the spontaneous development of every faculty—bodily and mental. The man—wise and good in his degree—under the patriarchal scheme, enjoyed as much of the things of life as were allowed to him—individually—under the conditions of a providential scheme, divinely established and administered, in a manner which rendered the Providential Hand and Eye all but visible: the Patriarch—religious in mood and habit, and thus cared for by Him whose Name was a promise—the Patriarch eschewed ambition, he dreaded change in the modes of life—he contented himself with those simple conditions of common life which, in a warm and equable climate, are more agreeable—more sufficing, than are the far more elaborate provisions of a higher civilization in a more austere climate. Especially did this patriarchal nomad life—this following of pasturage where it might be found—greatly favour that meditative mood in which piety delights itself—entertaining the idea of terrestrial life as a pilgrimage, under tents, always onward bound towards a future, where