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The attainment of this spirit of amity and concord ought to be a distinct object of effort, and especially in times like ours, when there is no hostile pressure driving Christian people together, but when our great social differences are free to produce a certain inevitable divergence and to check the flow of our sympathy, and when there are deep clefts of opinion, growing deeper every day, and seeming to part off Christians into camps which have little understanding of, and less sympathy with, one another.
And then with immense interest, "Are these Chichester sausages you've got here, Rachel, or some new kind?" Rachel roused herself to respond with an equal affectation, and we made an eager conversation about bacon and sausages for after that startling gleam of divergence we were both anxious to get back to the superficialities of life again. I did not answer Mary's letter for seven or eight days.
For, while the Intelligence that Socrates preached differed as much from the volage and voluptuous Zeus as the God of Christendom differs from the Jahveh of Job, yet, in a divergence so wide, an idealist, very poor except in ideas; a teacher killed by those who knew not what they did; a philosopher that drained the cup without even asking that it pass from him; a mere reformer, though dangerous perhaps as every reformer worth the name must be; but, otherwise, a mere man like any other, only a little better, could obviously have had no share.
The whole subject, however, treated as it necessarily here is with much brevity, is rather perplexing, and allusions cannot be avoided to the "struggle for existence," "divergence of character," and other questions, hereafter to be discussed.
What one had, another had not. Such differences involve of course divergence of interests, with consequent contentions and jealousies, the influence of which was felt most painfully prior to the better Union of 1789, and never can wholly cease to act; but, on the other hand, it tends also to promote exchange of offices, where need and facility of transport combine to make such exchange beneficial to both.
The idea of the social solidarity of all peoples is still new. Ever since the original divergence of population from its home nest, when groups became strange and hostile to one another because of mountain and forest barriers, changing languages, and occasionally clashing interests, the tendency of the peoples was to grow apart.
There were two motions. The ring revolved about Saturn, and the particles vibrated among themselves, evidently kept apart by a mutual repulsion, which seemed both to increase and decrease faster than gravitation; for on approaching one another they were more strongly repelled than attracted, but when they separated the repulsion decreased faster than the attraction, so that after a time divergence ceased, and they remained at fixed distances.
The chemist or physicist who discovers a new law seldom succeeds in doing more than testing its general accuracy by experiments; it is reserved for his successors to note the divergence between his broad and sweeping generalization and particular instances which do not quite accord with it.
Here we notice a most remarkable divergence: the Synoptics tell us that he was going up to Jerusalem from Galilee, and, arriving on his way at Bethphage, he sent for an ass and rode thereon into Jerusalem: the fourth Gospel relates that he was dwelling at Jerusalem, and leaving it, for fear of the Jews, he retired, not into Galilee, but 'beyond Jordan, into a place where John at first baptised, i.e., Bethabara, 'and there he abode. From thence he went to Bethany and raised to life a putrefying corpse: this stupendous miracle is never appealed to by the earlier historians in proof of their master's greatness, though 'much people of the Jews' are said to have seen Lazarus after his resurrection; this miracle is also given as the reason for the active hostility of the priests, 'from that day forward. Jesus then retires to Ephraim near the wilderness, from which town he goes to Bethany, and thence in triumph to Jerusalem, being met by the people 'for that they heard that he had done this miracle. The two accounts have absolutely nothing in common except the entry into Jerusalem, and the preceding events of the Synoptics exclude those of the fourth Gospel, as does the latter theirs.
"The South can never grow rich and strong by sulking," he had often assured himself, "and since the old dream is impossible, and we are to be one people, why shouldn't we accept the fact and unite in mutual helpfulness?" Reason, ambition, and policy prompted him to the divergence of view and action which was alienating Mara.
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