Literature.— Artt. 'Incense,' 'Frankincense' in Ha.stings' DB \ • Incense ' in Smith's DCA ; Godet and Plunnner on Lk 19-11 ; Speaker'i Cwn. on Rev 58 83 IS".
W. H. Griffith Tiioma.s. INDEPENDENCE.— See Origixalitv.
INDIGNATION.— See ANGER, and Fikrceness.
INDIVIDUAL.— It has almo.st become a comnion- l)lace of Apologetics that the significance of the individual is first recognized in Christianity. In Antiquity the idea that the individual might stand over against the State, either through the sense of duty or the sense of trutli, was not entertained.
Most ancient ci\'ilizations were "based on slaverj-, which at once refused to recognize a large section of the members of the State as individuals, and placed the individuality of the others not on an equal moral basis, but on a basis of social in-
equality. Yet th
'et the Christian conception of the individual did not descend upon the earth without any indica- tion of its coming. Socrates had instructed men to know themselves, and, though his greatest dis- ciple did not consider this teaching inconsistent with a Republic in which the family and the most sacred rights of the individual are sacrificed to the interests of the State, the real significance of the Greek Philosophy was the gromng clearness with which it went on to bring out the importance of man to himself. Stoicism insisted that a man's dignity should not be at the mercy of events, and even Epicureanism taught that m.an's surest gi'oimd of happiness is within. Baur's conten- tion, that the chief preparation for Christianity was a growing need for a universal, a moral reli- gion, is only another way of sayin" that the individual, not as a free man, or a cultured man, or a member of a Greek State, but as an individual, was slowly coming to his rights.
This progress in the Gentile world, however, was not in any strict sense a preparation for our Lord's teaching, but, at most, of the world for receiving it. His true foundations are in the OT, and more particularly in the prophets. Here again it is a commonplace of theological thinking that the reli- gion of the OT does not concern itself about the individual at all in the same sense as the reli^on of the NT. Worship is a social and even a civil act. The God men worship is the God of their fathers, i.e. the God of their race. The great body of the ritual exalts not the coven.ant person, "but the covenant people. Even the prophets have Aery little to say about individual piety, but concern themselves with the rulers and the conduct of society and the destiny of the nation. We cannot be sure, even in what seem the most personal Psalms, that it is not the voice of a nation rather than of an individual that confesses sin and implores help. This uncertainty regarding the place of the individual is made greater by the indistinctness, at least in the earlier books, ofthe hope of individual immortality, which, however we may try to get round it, is essential to any higli estimate of the worth of the individual.
No book, nevertheless, compares with the OT for the boldness with which the individual stands out in contrast and, if need be, in opposition to, the community, and that on spiritual, not social con- siderations. The standard of its teaching is per- sonal responsibility, and that ultimately sets a man alone as an indi\-idual with his God. If it is a national and not an individual hope the prophets contend for, they place it on an individual not a communistic foundation. They are not concerned to reform institutions or demand new laws. Tlie reform they seek is of personal action and manners, and the law they wish to sec nlnyi ,1 is God's. For thislawit is the individual iIkiI ijnili.- -the pres- sure of his personal call Ix-iir^ -o.ji'.ii ili^it Ilis duty tofollowitisneverquestiDiii'l.ivcii ilnnmli it sliould bring him into conflict with linth tin' St.ite and the people. Ezekiel may have been tlic lirst to recog- nize the full significance of tliis .-ittituae. but he was by no means the first to take it up. Of every prophet it could be said, ' Behold, I have nuide thy face hard against their faces, and thy forelu'.a<l .against their foreheads ' (Ezk 3*). To eadi of tliem the Spirit of God was a power to help him to be true to himself. It set each of them on his feet before speaking to him (Ezk T-). The very mark of a true prophet was to hear God's voice only, and
INDIVIDUAL
INDIVIDUAL
815
not man's, and to be true to the individuality God had given him, and not to be an echo of the party cries around. To have that most selfish kind of individualism which consists in agreeing with tlie majority of the powers that be, was the mark of the false prophet (Jer 20).
Such an attitude of independence could not be taken up witliout a very strong sense of the signi- ficance of the individual for God. The significance of the solitary figure of Jeremiah could not be less because he lived for the welfare of his people, and their ingratitude left him in isolation. Kzekiel naturally followed with the application. Were Noah, Daniel, and Job in a wicked land, they could but deliver their own souls by their righteous- ness (14"). God deals equally with all, and every act is weighed, without prejudice either from a man's own past or from the doings of his fathers