THE REJOICING HEART.

WHETHER Paul did or did not write the Epistle to the Philippians is one of the questions of New Testament criticism that are not easy to decide. That great critic, Ferdinand Christian Baur, who allowed to Paul only four of the fourteen epistles that are commonly ascribed to him,Romans, the two Corinthians, and Galatians,—was certain that Philippians was not his; but even his most loyal followers of the Tübingen school have been much less so. Baur found in the epistle hints of the Gnostic speculations of the second century, and ascribed the epistle to that time. But Paul's mind was always on the move. The nature of Christ was to him a matter of free speculation; and, assuming that Philippians and Colossians are from his hand, they do not exhibit a greater advance upon his Christology in Romans than Romans does upon First Thessalonians, the first epistle that he wrote, or rather that has been preserved. I find it easier to believe that we have in his latest epistles the dawn of Gnostic speculation than that they present to us a reflection of that speculation when it had climbed to its meridian height. I do not find it easy to believe that his personality could be reproduced so vividly by an imitator of his style. In Philippians I find the very man who wrote Galatians, which is unquestionably Paul's,- the same impetuous and fiery soul.

Taking the epistle at its face value, it was Paul's last epistle, written in Rome, in prison, only a little while before his death. It was not a cheerful situation. You have visited, perhaps, the little subterranean church in Rome,

just at the corner of the Forum (San Pietro in Carcere), which they give out was the prison in which Paul and Peter were confined. But Peter never was in Rome, and the only reason for supposing that Paul was imprisoned here is that no other prison of his time has been identified. This was a prison of his time and earlier; and here Jugurtha, the Numidian royal captive, was confined (106 A.D.), and later Vercingetorix, of whom Cæsar's Commentaries tell. That Paul's prison was any better we have no reason to believe. It was probably much worse. Dark as it was, it was made darker by the shadow of impending death,- such death, perhaps, as theirs whom Nero swathed in pitch to light the streets of Rome. And then, besides, the "perils of false brethren," their jealousies and machinations, were present with him always, daring him to think one cheerful, happy thought. So circumstanced, what kind of a letter did he write to the Philippian Christians whom he loved? A letter that was a psalm of joy! Like a composer's theme, the joyfulness continually appears. It is in the opening sentences; and, when he thinks that he is near the end, it rings out, "Finally, brethren, rejoice in the Lord!” But he has more to say, much more; and in a little while, as he goes on, he breaks out again," Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say unto you, Rejoice!" Could the most protected and secure and pampered citizen of Rome have written a more radiantly cheerful letter in that year of God, eighteen hundred and twentyseven years ago?

Now, it were an easy thing to account for Paul's rejoicing in the Lord by saying he had supernatural support, that he was an inspired apostle, and that beyond the darkness and the danger of the immediate present he could see, with awestruck face, the glory of Christ's second coming, and his heart could sing, as our own Lowell's did in a most miserable and monstrous time,—

"Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong";

but my own persuasion is that the apostle's happy heart, his radiant cheerfulness at a time when there was so much in the circumstances that environed him to cast him down and break his spirit, was not peculiar to himself nor the result of any special grace that he enjoyed. Not because he was different from other men, but because he was like them, in the midst of sorrow and anxiety and the gravest possible anticipations his heart brimmed over with contagious joy. The lives of men and women continually present this paradox,that it is not the most favored and most fortunate, those who have everything they want, every comfort, every luxury, who are the most joyous and serene: it is quite as often those who have been wounded grievously by the slings and arrows. of outrageous fortune. The impatient and dissatisfied are often those who have the most. The farmer-folk I meet in Chesterfield, and round about, work hard, and have very little money,― not a hundred dollars a year in cash, upon the average, I am credibly assured. But, somehow, their faces and their talk brighten the sunshine for me every summer day. They have no envy of my idleness; would not exchange for it their strenuous toil. When their crops fail, as frequently they do, they shame me by their cheerful acquiescence. When my mind's acres are unfruitful, yield nothing to my drudgery, I show, I fear, a less untroubled mien. Would the same number of millionaires, taken as they might chance to come, show a more cheerful spirit than my farmer-folk? I doubt it very much.

But you will say, and rightly, too, that I am looking at this matter in a very narrow way. I have no right to make a purely local situation, and my own casual impression, even of so much, a standard of things wide and general. No, I have not. So I will take the widest aspect that I know, the total aspect of modern civilization, of the intellectual and social world. There never was before a time of so much wealth, of so much comfort, of so much luxury, as this time of ours. The increase of wealth has been greater in the last century than in a dozen centuries before.

But with increase

of wealth there may be such unequal distribution that, while Dives has abundance, Lazarus is starving at his gate. Yes; and this is something that should be carefully considered. An enormous aggregate of wealth cannot console us for the ruinous poverty of many, while the few have piled their fortunes mountains high. At the same time, the formula, "The rich are growing richer and the poor are growing poorer," is a misleading one. The only general truth in it is that the poor are growing relatively poorer. Absolutely, the poor man of to-day has comforts and advantages that the kings and queens of Europe could not boast three or four centuries ago. And, taking the social order as a whole, never before at any time was the average of wealth, of comfort, of luxury, so high as it is now. Never before were the advantages and opportunities of life so great. But, if literature is at all to be relied upon as an exponent of our social life, for all its wealth and comfort, for all its luxury, for all its advantages and opportunities, it is not happy. It is very far from being so. Pessimism is the characteristic note. Says Mr. Howells, in his introduction to Signor Verga's wonderfully sad and beautiful story, "The House by the Medlartree," "Life was mainly sad at Trezza because life is mainly sad everywhere." That is the opinion of all the greater novelists, that life is mainly sad everywhere; and the lesser ones, of course, take up their dolorous strain. As if it were not sad enough, they write novels that make it sadder still,- novels that are infinitely depressing. The artists, too, must be forever painting pictures that suggest or baldly represent the misery of human life,- pictures of brutality and vice and crime that brutalize the men and women who hang them on their walls. Reading such novels and seeing such pictures, one would think that they were written and painted by men on whom the bludgeonings of fate have rained incessantly, or men who have satiated themselves with every grosser pleasure and are suffering from the reaction which always follows hard on such satiety. But they are not such. They are successful men,- men who have