' Great God ! I'd rather be A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn. So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glinapses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathfed horn."
Wordsworth, Miscellaneous Sonnets.
The age of Jesus was divided between the Greek and the Hebrew view of Nature, and both of these must have been faniili.ar in Syria. The Greek view was devoid of landscape properly so called. It .saw brilliant and ^ell-defined masses of detail — the temple white on its hill, reeds in the river-bed, the numberless laughter of waves. Greece not only saw but felt these, as charged Avith a spiritual significance which could be apprehended only ir fragmentary hints and glimpses, with more wi ness than understanding. She .sought to c;^ and retain that spiritual significance quisite imagery of her mythological nymph and faun, the drj^ad of the ^ goddess of the fountain. Yet thc^ nations did not suffice for her e^ Behind them lay those delight and misgivin"; v ' soul. The unsolv the terror of the the misgiving, r the Greeks. ' spirit, and .see Nature stro' steersman 'Great V
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ever, to the Greeks -vvho came to Him in Passion Week, seems to be an answer to the spirit of their nation (Jn 12-^). It is to Nature that He leads them in His reference to tlie corn of wheat, and to tlie element of death in Nature. But He reveals in Nature Avhat they had not strength to iind, the promise of resurrection, and the assurance of life enriclied and fructified by death.
The Hebrew view of Nature differs from the Greek somewhat as Browniajf's differs from Wordswortli's. To the Greek, Nature has a spirituality- which is no doubt reflected, in part, from the soul of her observer, yet is conceived as residing in herself in one or other of many fashions of personification. To the Hebrew, Nature in herself is dead, and has no soul of her own. She is the tool of Jehovah or His weapon, according as He is working or warring against His enemies ; or she is visible as a background over against human life, or at least as accessory to man and his needs or works in some way. In either case the point is that Nature for the Hebrew has no independent life or spirituality of her own. She shines ever in the borrowed light of human or Divine interest.
The Hebrew view of Nature, in its three main aspects, has been admirably described in the three expressions — (1) A stage for God, the ' place of His feet ' ; (2) a home for man ; (3) the assessor at the controversy between God and man (Is 1^, Mic C2), a view in which the solemnity and austerity of Nature found a fitting metaphor to exjiress them. Of each of these three aspects many instances might be quoted ; but at present it con- cerns us only to remark that in none of them is Nature seen in herself, but always dependent on an inhabitant, Divine or human, who gives her soul. The third view indeed, seems to conceive of Nature as independent, her mountains judging be- tween God and man. But the personification does not go deep, nor is the consciousness of its figurativeness lost. The moun- tains, the heavens and the earth, are witnesses in much the same sense as a pillar set up b3' one who has made a vow. Thej- are called upon to listen, to rejoice, to break forth into singing, not because they are conceived as living an independent life, but because the human or Divine event is conceived as of such vast import that even dumb Nature must feel its thrill, and for once awake from her inertness to do homage to the higher forms of being.
There is, properly speaking, no landscape in the Bible. Ob- jects are seen in detail, or groups of objects, in connexion with the events or circumstances narrated. Through a cleft fissure in a mountain range a glimpse is caught of a 'land that is very far off ' ; but it is as a destination rather than as a picture that it is seen. The language spends its strength on those sharp and clear-cut names for natural phenomena which express so much — Jordan, the down-rusher ; Ghor, the scooped-out ; Gil- (jal, the circular, and so on. The Song of Solomon is full of exquisite detail, with the aromatic scents of the East lingering about its voluptuous gardens and glades. But that is pre- Raphaelite art, of the same sort as those descriptions which are so common in the OT of a single tree or plant, a vine, an olive, or a gourd. It is characteristic of the Hebrew view of Nature that the Feast of Tabernacles, with its booths and illuminations, seemed to the Hebrew mind satisfactory as a piece of genuine rural life.
The life of Jesus was much spent in the open air, and His tltought was full of the breezy fresli- ness of the hills and fields ; but they were Syrian and not European hills and fields, and their effect is that of Eastern nature, not Western. Samaria and Lebanon strike the traveller from England as most familiar. But there is no word of Lebanon in the Gospels, and Samaria was seen but casually in passing through. It was in one of Samaria's richest and broadest valleys tliat He told His dis- ciples to lift up their eyes and look upon the fields 'lite already to the harvest (Jn 4^^). The regions which He was most familiar wei'e tlie hills Galilee, and the rocky heights of Judoea. ^the very regions where the scenery is Oriental. The main difference be- and an English landscape is that ■ |one of that ' atmosphere ' Avhich tones down a wide stretch of kof vision. The colouring is ^of gi-ey and brown and gently brilliant splashes spring flings a patch ^he pale mountain thin flame of th of a washed- gion of wide of a land the hills itensi-