§ 4. David; or, Judaism as the personal Worship of a Father and friend.
Many disasters befell the Jews after their settlement in Palestine, which we should allude to were we writing the heads of their history rather than giving an account of their religion. Among these were their long conflict with the Philistines, and their subjection by that people during twenty years. The Philistines, it has been recently discovered, were not a Semitic nation, and were not in the land in the time of Moses. They are not mentioned as a powerful people in the Pentateuch or the Book of Joshua, but suddenly appear as invaders in the time of the Judges, completely defeating and subduing the Canaanites along the shore. In fact, the Philistines were probably an Indo-European or Aryan people, and their name is now believed to be the same as that of the Pelasgi. They were probably a body of Pelasgi from the island of Crete, who, by successive invasions, overran Palestine, and gave their name to it.357 They were finally reduced by David; and as his reign is the culminating period of Judaism, we will devote some space to his character and influence.
The life of David makes an epoch in Jewish history and human history. Nations, like plants, have their period of flowers and of fruit. They have their springtime, their summer, autumn, and winter. The age of David among the Jews was like the age of Pericles among the Greeks, of Augustus among the Romans, of Louis XIV. in France, of Charles V. in Spain. Such periods separate themselves from those which went before and from those which follow. The period of David seems a thousand years removed from that of the Judges, and yet it follows it almost immediately. As a few weeks in spring turn the brown earth to a glad green, load the trees with foliage, and fill the air with the perfume of blossoms and the song of birds, so a few years in the life of a nation will change barbarism into civilization, and pour the light of literature and knowledge over a sleeping land. Arts flourish, external enemies are conquered, inward discontents are pacified, wealth pours in, luxury increases, genius accomplishes its triumphs. Summer, with its flowers and fruits, has arrived.
When a nation is ripe for such a change, the advent of a man of genius will accomplish it. Around him the particles crystallize and take form and beauty. Such a man was David,—a brave soldier, a great captain, a sagacious adventurer, an artist, musician, and poet, a man of profound religious experience; he was, more than all these, a statesman. By his great organizing ability he made a powerful nation out of that which, when he came to the throne, consisted of a few discordant and half-conquered tribes. In the time of Saul the Israelites were invaded by all the surrounding nations; by the Syrians on the north, the Ammonites and Moabites on the east, the Amalekites and Edomites on the south, and the Philistines on the west. In the time of David all these nations were completely subdued, their cities garrisoned, and the power of the Israelites submitted to from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean.
Most great men are contented to be distinguished in one thing, and to lead a single life; but David led three lives, each distinct from the other,—the life of a soldier and statesman, the life of a poet and artist, the life of deep religious experience. We will look at his character in each of these three directions.
We have already said that David found the Israelites divided and half conquered, and left them united and conquerors. By means of his personal qualities he had made himself popular among the tribes. He was known as a brave and cautious guerilla chief. His native generosity and open-heartedness won him the love of the people. His religious tendencies gained for him the friendship of the priests, and the great influence of Samuel was always exerted in his favor. He was thus enabled to unite the people, and gain their confidence till he could make use of them in larger enterprises. The Jews were not naturally a military nation, and were never meant to be such. Yet when their strength was united they were capable, by their determination and tenacity of purpose, of extraordinary military exploits. Everything depended on their morale. Demoralized and weakened by doubts and scruples, or when conscious that they were disobeying the laws of Moses, they were easily defeated by any invader. The first duty of their general was to bring them back from their idolatries and backslidings to the service of God. Under Joshua it only needed two great battles to conquer the whole land of Palestine. So, reunited under David, a few campaigns made them victorious over the surrounding nations.
The early part of David's life was a perpetual discipline in prudence. He was continually beset with dangers. He had to fly from the presence and ferocious jealousy of Saul again and again, and even to take refuge with the Philistines, who had reason enough to be his enemies. He fled from Saul to Samuel, and took shelter under his protection. Pursued to this retreat by the king, he had no resource but to throw himself on the mercy of the Philistines, and he went to Gath. When he saw himself in danger there, he pretended to be insane; insanity being throughout the East a protection from injury. His next step was to go to the cave Adullam, and to collect around him a body of partisans, with whom to protect himself. Saul watched his opportunity, and when David had left the fastnesses of the mountain, and came into the city Keilah to defend it from the Philistines, Saul went down with a detachment of troops to besiege him, so that he had to fly again to the mountains. Betrayed by the Ziphites, as he had been before betrayed by the men of Keilah, he went to another wilderness and escaped. The king continued to pursue him whenever he could get any tidings of his position, and again David was obliged to take refuge among the Philistines. But throughout this whole period he never permitted himself any hostile measures against Saul, his implacable enemy. In this he showed great wisdom, for the result of such a course would have been a civil war, in which part of the nation would have taken sides with one and part with the other, and David never could have ascended the throne with the consent of the whole people. But the consequence of his forbearance was, that when by the death of Saul the throne became vacant, David succeeded to it with scarcely any opposition. His subsequent course showed always the same prudence. He disarmed his enemies by kindness and clemency. He understood the policy of making a bridge of gold for a flying enemy. When Abner, the most influential man of his opponents, offered to submit to him, David received him with kindness and made him a friend. And when Abner was treacherously killed by Joab, David publicly mourned for him, following the bier, and weeping at the grave. The historian says concerning this: "And all the people took notice of it and it pleased them: as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people. For all the people understood that day that it was not of the king to slay Abner the son of Ner." His policy was to conciliate and unite. When Saul's son was slain by his own servants, who thought to please David by that act, he immediately put them to death. Equally cautious and judicious was his course in transferring the Ark and its worship to Jerusalem. He did this only gradually, and as he saw that the people were prepared for it.
We next will look at David in his character as man of genius, musician, artist, poet. It is not often that an eminent statesman and soldier is, at the same time, a distinguished poet and writer. Sometimes they can write history or annals, like Cæsar and Frederick the Great; but the imaginative and poetic element is rarely found connected with the determined will and practical intellect of a great commander. Alexander the Great had a taste for good poetry, for he carried Homer with him through his campaigns; but the taste of Napoleon went no higher than a liking for Ossian.
But David was a poet, in whom the tender, lyrical, personal element rose to the highest point. The daring soldier, when he took his harp, became another man. He consoled himself and sought comfort in trial, and sang his thankfulness in his hours of joy. The Book of Psalms, so far as it is the work of David, is the record of his life. As Horace says of Lucilius and his book of Odes, that the whole of the old man's life hangs suspended therein in votive pictures; and as Goethe says that his Lyrics are a book of confessions, in which joy and sorrow turn to song; so the Book of Psalms can only be understood when we consider it as David's poetical autobiography. In this he anticipates the Koran, which was the private journal of Mohammed.
"The harp of David," says Herder, "was his comforter and friend. In his youth he sang to its music while tending his flocks as a shepherd on the mountains of Judæa. By its means he had access to Saul, and could sooth with it the dark mood of the king. In his days of exile he confided to it his sorrows. When he triumphed over his enemies the harp became in his royal hands a thank-offering to the deity. Afterward he organized on a magnificent scale music and poetry in the worship of God. Four thousand Levites, distinguished by a peculiar dress, were arranged in classes and choirs under master-singers, of whom the three most distinguished, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, are known to us by specimens of their art. In his Psalms his whole kingdom lives."
We speak of the inspiration of genius, and distinguish it from the inspiration of the religious teacher. But in ancient times the prophet and poet were often the same, and one word (as, in Latin, "vates") was used for both. In the case of David the two inspirations were perfectly at one. His religion was poetry, and his poetry was religion. The genius of his poetry is not grandeur, but beauty. Sometimes it expresses a single thought or sentiment, as that (Psalm cxxxiii.) describing the beauty of brotherly union, or as that (Psalm xxiii.) which paints trust in God like that of a sheep in his shepherd. Of the same sort is the fifteenth Psalm, "Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?" the twenty-ninth, a description of a thunderstorm; the sixty-seventh, "O God, be merciful to us and bless us"; the eighty-fourth, "How lovely are thy tabernacles"; and the last Psalm, calling on mankind to praise God in all ways.
It is a striking fact that these Hebrew lyrics, written long before the foundation of Rome, and before the time of Homer, should be used to-day in Christian worship and for private devotion all over the world.
In speaking of the Vedas and the Avesta we said that in such hymns and liturgies the truest belief of a nation can be found. What men say to God in their prayers may be assumed to express their practical convictions. The Jewish religion is not to be found so surely in its Levitical code as in these national lyrics, which were the liturgy of the people.358
What then do they say concerning God? They teach his universal dominion. They declare that none in the heaven can be compared to him (Psalm lxxxix.); that he is to be feared above all gods (Psalm xcvi.). They teach his eternity; declaring that he is God from everlasting to everlasting; that a thousand years in his sight are as yesterday; that he laid the foundations of the earth and made the heavens, and that when these perish he will endure; that at some period they shall be changed like a garment, but that God will always be the same (Psalm xc., cii.). They teach in numerous places that God is the Creator of all things. They adore and bless his fatherly love and kindness, which heals all our diseases and redeems our life, crowning us with loving-kindness, pitying us, and forgiving our sins (Psalm ciii.). They teach that he is in all nature (Psalm civ.), that he searches and knows all our thoughts, and that we can go nowhere from his presence (Psalm cxxxix.). They declare that he protects all who trust in him (Psalm xci., cxxi.), and that he purifies the heart and life (Psalm cxix.), creating in us a clean heart, and not asking for sacrifice, but for a broken spirit (Psalm li.).
These Psalms express the highest and best moments of Jewish life, and rise in certain points to the level of Christianity. They do not contain the Christian spirit of forgiveness, nor that of love to one's enemy. They are still narrowed to the range of the Jewish land and nation, and do not embrace humanity. They are mountain summits of faith, rising into the pure air and light of day from hidden depths, and appearing as islands in the ocean. They reach, here and there, the level of the vast continent, though not broad enough themselves to become the home of all races and nations.
There is nothing in the Vedas, nothing in the Avesta, nothing in the sacred books of Egypt, or the philosophy of Greece and Rome, which so unites the grandeur of omnipotence with the tenderness of a father toward his child.
§ 5. Solomon; or, the Religious Relapse.
We have seen how the religion of Abraham, as the family worship of the Supreme Being, was developed into that of Moses, as the national worship of a just and holy King. We have seen it going onward from that, ascending in the inspirations of David into trust in an infinite God as a friend, and love to him as a father. We now come to a period of relapse. Under Solomon and his successors, this religion became corrupted and degraded. Its faith was changed into doubt, its lofty courage into the fear of kings and tyrants, its worship of the Most High into adoration of the idols of its neighbors. The great increase of power and wealth in the hands of Solomon corrupted his own heart and that of his people. Luxury came in; and, as in Rome the old puritanic virtues were dissolved by the desire for wealth and pleasure, so it happened among the Jews. Then came the retribution, in the long captivity in Babylon, and the beginning of a new and better life under this hard discipline. And then comes the age of the Prophets, who gradually became the teachers of a higher and broader faith. So, when the Jews returned to Jerusalem, they came back purified, and prepared to become once more loyal subjects of Jehovah.
The principle of hereditary succession, but not of primogeniture, had been established by an agreement between David and the people when he proposed erecting a Temple at Jerusalem. He had appointed his son Solomon as his successor before his own death. With the entrance of Solomon we have an entirely different personality from any whom we have thus far met. With him also is inaugurated a new period and a different age. The age of Moses was distinguished as that of law,—on the side of God absolute authority, commanding and forbidding; on the side of man the only question was between obedience and disobedience. Moses was the Law-giver, and his age was the age of law. In the time of the Judges the question concerned national existence and national independence. The age of the Judges was the heroic age of the Jewish nation. The Judges were men combining religious faith with patriotism; they were religious heroes. Then came the time of David, in which the nation, having become independent, became also powerful and wealthy. After his time the religion, instead of being a law to be obeyed or an impulse to action, became ceremony and pageant. Going one step further, it passed into reflection and meditation. In the age of Solomon the inspiration of the national religion had already gone. A great intellectual development had taken the place of inspiration. So that the Jewish nation seems to have passed through a fourfold religious experience. Religion was first law, then action, next inspiration and sentiment, afterward ceremony, and lastly opinion and intellectual culture.
It is the belief of Herder and other scholars that the age of Solomon gave birth to a copious literature, born of peace, tranquillity, and prosperity, which has all passed away except a few Psalms, the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon.
Solomon is personally a much less interesting character than David; for policy is never so interesting as impulse, and the crimes of policy seem worse than those of passion. The first act of Solomon was of this sort. He put his brother Adonijah to death for his attempt to seize the throne. Joab, who supported Adonijah against Solomon, was also put to death, for which we do not grieve, when we remember his assassination of Abner and Amasa, shedding the blood of war in peace. But the cold, unscrupulous character of Solomon is seen in his ordering Joab to be slain in the tabernacle while holding the horns of the altar, and causing Adonijah to be taken by force from the same place of refuge. No religious consideration or superstitious fear could prevent Solomon from doing what he thought necessary for his own security. He had given Adonijah a conditional pardon, limited to good behavior on his part. But after his establishment on the throne Adonijah requested the mother of Solomon, Bathsheba, to ask her son to give him for a wife the beautiful Abishag, the last wife of David. Solomon understood this to mean, what his mother did not understand, that his brother was still intriguing to supplant him on the throne, and with cool policy he ordered him to immediate execution. Solomon could pardon a criminal, but not a dangerous rival. He deposed the high-priest for the same reason, considering him to be also dangerous. Shimei, who seems to have been wealthy and influential as well as a determined character, was ordered not to leave Jerusalem under penalty of death. He did so, and Solomon put him to death. David, before his death, had warned Solomon to keep an eye both on Joab and on Shimei, for David could forgive his own enemies, but not those of his cause; he was not afraid on his own account, but was afraid for the safety of his son.
By the death of Joab and Shimei, Solomon's kingdom was established, and the glory and power of David was carried to a still higher point of magnificence. Supported by the prophets on the one hand and by the priests on the other, his authority was almost unlimited. We are told that "Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry. And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt; they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life. And Solomon's provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and fallow deer, and fatted fowl." The wars of David were ended. Solomon's was a reign of peace. "And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen." "And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea-shore. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all nations round about." "And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom." The great power and wealth of the Jewish court at this period are historically verified by the traditions still extant among the Arabs of Solomon's superhuman splendor.
The story (1 Kings iii. 5) of Solomon's dream, in which he chose an understanding heart and wisdom, rather than riches and honor, reminds us of the choice of Hercules. It is not unlikely that he had such a dream, it is quite probable that he always preferred wisdom to anything else, and it is certain that his wisdom came from God. This is the only connection we can trace between the dream and its fulfilment.
Solomon inaugurated a new policy by entering into alliances and making treaties with his powerful neighbors. He formed an alliance with the king of Egypt, and married his daughter. He also made a treaty of commerce and friendship with the king of Tyre on the north, and procured from him cedar with which to build the Temple and his own palace. He received an embassy also from the queen of Sheba, who resided in the south of Arabia. By means of the Tyrian ships he traded to the west as far as the coasts of Spain and Africa, and his own vessels made a coasting voyage of three years' duration to Tarshish, from which they brought ivory, gold, silver, apes, and peacocks. This voyage seems to have been through the Red Sea to India.359 He also traded in Asia, overland, with caravans. And for their accommodation and defence he built Tadmor in the desert (afterward called Palmyra), as a great stopping-place. This city in later days became famous as the capital of Zenobia, and the remains of the Temple of the Sun, standing by itself in the midst of the Great Desert, are among the most interesting ruins in the world.360
The great work of Solomon was building the Temple at Jerusalem in the year B.C. 1005. This Temple was destroyed, and rebuilt by Nehemiah B.C. 445. It was rebuilt by Herod B.C. 17. Little remains from the time of Solomon, except some stones in the walls of the substructions; and the mosque of Omar now stands on the old foundation. No building of antiquity so much resembles the Temple of Solomon as the palace of Darius at Persepolis. In both buildings the porch opened into the large hall, both had small chambers on the side, square masses on both sides of the porch, and the same form of pillars. The parts of Solomon's Temple were, first, a porch thirty feet wide and fifteen feet deep; second a large hall sixty by thirty; and then the holy of holies, which was thirty feet cube. The whole external dimensions of the building were only sixty feet by one hundred and twenty, or less than many an ordinary parish church. The explanation is that it was copied from the Tabernacle, which was a small building, and was necessarily somewhat related to it in size. The walls were of stone, on extensive stone foundations. Inside it was lined with cedar, with floors of cypress, highly ornamented with carvings and gold. The brass work consisted of two ornamented pillars called Jachin and Boaz, a brazen tank supported by twelve brass oxen, and ten baths of brass, ornamented with figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim.
The Book of Kings says of Solomon (1 Kings iv. 32) that "he spake three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl and of creeping things, and of fishes." He was, according to this account, a voluminous writer on natural history, as well as an eminent poet and moralist. Of all his compositions there remains but one, the Book of Proverbs, which was probably in great part composed by him. It is true that three books in the Old Testament bear his name,—Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. But of these Ecclesiastes was probably written afterward, and though the Song of Songs may have been written by Solomon, it was probably the work of another, living at or near his time.
But of the Book of Proverbs there cannot be much doubt. It contains some of the three thousand of which Solomon was the reputed author. It shows his style of mind very clearly,—the cool understanding, the calculating prudence, the continual reference to results, knowledge of the world as distinguished from knowledge of human nature, or of individual character. The Book of Proverbs contains little heroism or poetry, few large ideas, not much enthusiasm or sentiment. It is emphatically a book of wisdom. It has good, hard, practical sense. It is the "Poor Richard's Almanac" of Hebrew literature. We can conceive of King Solomon and Benjamin Franklin consulting together, and comparing notes of their observations on human life, with much mutual satisfaction. It is curious to meet with such a thoroughly Western intellect, a thousand years before Christ, on the throne of the heroic David.
Among these proverbs there are many of a kindly character. Some are semi-Christian in their wise benevolence. Many show great shrewdness of observation, and have an epigrammatic wit. We will give examples of each kind:—
Proverbs Having a Semi-christian Character.
Proverbs Showing Shrewdness of Observation.
Proverbs Wittily Expressed.
But what are human wisdom and glory? It seems that Solomon was to illustrate its emptiness. See the king, in his old age, sinking into idolatry and empty luxury, falling away from his God, and pointing the moral of his own proverbs. He himself was the drunkard, into whose hand the thorn of the proverb penetrated, without his heeding it. This prudent and wise king, who understood so well all the snares of temptation and all the arts of virtue, fell like the puppet of any Asiatic court. What a contrast between the wise and great king as described in I Kings iv. 20-34 and the same king in his degenerate old age!
It was this last period in the life of Solomon which the writer of Ecclesiastes took as the scene and subject of his story. With marvellous penetration and consummate power he penetrates the mind of Solomon and paints the blackness of desolation, the misery of satiety, the dreadful darkness of a soul which has given itself to this world as its only sphere.
Never was such a picture painted of utter scepticism, of a mind wholly darkened, and without any remaining faith in God or truth.
These three books mark the three periods of the life of Solomon.
The Song of Songs shows us his abounding youth, full of poetry, fire, and charm.
The Proverbs give his ripened manhood, wise and full of all earthly knowledge,—Aristotle, Bacon, Socrates, and Franklin, all in one.
And Ecclesiastes represents the darkened and gloomy scepticism of his old age, when he sank as low down as he had before gone up. But though so sad and dark, yet it is not without gleams of a higher and nobler joy to come. Better than anything in Proverbs are some of the noble sentiments breaking out in Ecclesiastes, especially at the end of the book.
The Book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful description of a doubt so deep, a despair so black, that nothing in all literature can be compared to it. It describes, in the person of Solomon, utter scepticism born of unlimited worldly enjoyment, knowledge, and power.
The book begins by declaring that all is vanity, that there is nothing new under the sun, no progress in any direction, but all things revolving in an endless circle, so that there is neither meaning nor use in the world.363 It declares that work amounts to nothing, for one cannot do any really good thing; that knowledge is of no use, but only produces sorrow; that pleasure satiates.364 Knowledge has only this advantage over ignorance, that it enables us to see things as they are, but it does not make them better, and the end of all is despair.365 Sensual pleasure is the only good.366 Fate and necessity rule all things. Good and evil both come at their appointed time. Men are cheated and do not see the nullity of things, because they have the world in their heart, and are absorbed in the present moment.367
Men are only a higher class of beasts. They die like beasts, and have no hereafter.368
In the fourth chapter the writer goes more deeply into this pessimism. He says that to die is better than to live, and better still never to have been born. A fool is better than a wise man, because he does nothing and cares for nothing.369
Success is bad, progress is an evil; for these take us away from others, and leave us lonely, because above them and hated by them.370
Worship is idle. Do not offer the sacrifice of fools, but stop when you are going to the Temple, and return. Do not pray. It is of no use. God does not hear you. Dreams do not come from God, but from what you were doing before you went to sleep. Eat and drink, that is the best.371 All men go as they come.
So the dreary statement proceeds. Men are born for no end, and go no one can tell where. Live a thousand years, it all comes to the same thing. Who can tell what is good for a man in this shadowy, empty life?372
It is better to look on death than on life, wiser to be sad than to be cheerful. If you say, "There have been good times in the past," do not be too sure of that. If you say, "We can be good, at least, if we cannot be happy," there is such a thing as being too good, and cheating yourself out of pleasure.373
Women are worse than men. You may find one good man among a thousand, but not one good woman.374
It is best to be on the right side of the powers that be, for they can do what they please. Speedy and certain punishment alone can keep men from doing evil. The same thing happens to the good and to the wicked. All things come alike to all. This life is, in short, an inexplicable puzzle. The perpetual refrain is, eat, drink, and be merry.375
It is best to do what you can, and think nothing about it. Cast your bread on the waters, very likely you will get it again. Sow your seed either in the morning or at night; it makes no difference.376
Death is coming to all. All is vanity. I continue to preach, because I see the truth, and may as well say it, though there is no end to talking and writing. You may sum up all wisdom in six words: "Fear God and keep his commandments."377
The Book of Ecclesiastes teaches a great truth in an unexampled strain of pathetic eloquence. It teaches what a black scepticism descends on the wisest, most fortunate, most favored of mankind, when he looks only to this world and its joys. It could, however, only have been written by one who had gone through this dreadful experience. The intellect alone never sounded such depths as these. Moreover, it could hardly have been written unless in a time when such scepticism prevailed, nor by one who, having lived it all, had not also lived through it all, and found the cure for this misery in pure unselfish obedience to truth and right. It seems, therefore, like a Book of Confessions, or the Record of an Experience, and as such well deserves its place in the Bible and Jewish literature.
The Book of Job is a still more wonderful production, but in a wholly different tone. It is full of manly faith in truth and right. It has no jot of scepticism in it. It is a noble protest against all hypocrisies and all shams. Job does not know why he is afflicted, but he will never confess that he is a sinner till he sees it. The Pharisaic friends tell him his sufferings are judgments for his sins, and advise him to admit it to be so. But Job refuses, and declares he will utter no "words of wind" to the Almighty. The grandest thought is here expressed in the noblest language which the human tongue has ever uttered.
§ 6. The Prophets; or, Judaism as the Hope of a spiritual and universal Kingdom of God.
Before we proceed to examine the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, it is desirable to make some remarks upon prophecy in general, and on the character of the Hebrew prophets.
Prophecy in general is a modification of inspiration. Inspiration is sight, or rather it is insight. All our knowledge comes to us through the intellectual power which may be called sight, which is of two kinds,—the sight of external things, or outsight; and the sight of internal things, which is insight, or intuition. The senses constitute the organization by which we see external things; consciousness is the organization by which we perceive internal things. Now the organs of sense are the same in kind, but differ in degree in all men. All human beings, as such, have the power of perceiving an external world, by means of the five senses. But though all have these five senses, all do not perceive the same external phenomena by means of them. For, in the first place, their senses differ in degrees of power. Some men's eyes are telescopic, some microscopic, and some are blind. Some men can but partially distinguish colors, others not at all. Some have acute hearing, others are deaf. And secondly, what men perceive through the senses differs according to what is about them. A man living in China cannot see Mont Blanc or the city of New York; a man on the other side of the moon can never see the earth. A man living in the year 1871 cannot see Alexander the Great or the Apostle Paul. And thirdly, two persons may be looking at the same thing, and with senses of the same degree of power, and yet one may be able to see what the other is not able to see. Three men, one a geologist, one a botanist, and one a painter, may look at the same landscape, and one will see the stratification, the second will see the flora, and the third the picturesque qualities of the scene. As regards outsight then, though men in general have the same senses to see with, what they see depends (1) on their quality of sense, (2) on their position in space and time, (3) and on their state of mental culture.
That which is true of the perception of external phenomena is also true of the perception of internal things.
Insight, or intuition, has the same limitations as outsight. These are (1) the quality of the faculty of intuition; (2) the inward circumstances or position of the soul; (3) the soul's culture or development. Those who deny the existence of an intuitive faculty, teaching that all knowledge comes from without through the senses, sometimes say that if there were such a faculty as intuition, men would all possess intuitively the same knowledge of moral and spiritual truth. They might as well say that, as all men have eyes, all must see the same external objects.
All men have more or less of the intuitive faculty, but some have much more than others. Those who have the most are called, by way of eminence, inspired men. But among these there is a difference as regards the objects which are presented by God, in the order of his providence, to their intuitive faculty. Some he places inwardly among visions of beauty, and they are inspired poets and artists. Others he places inwardly amid visions of temporal and human life, and they become inspired discoverers and inventors. And others he places amid visions of religious truth, and they are inspired prophets, lawgivers, and evangelists. But these again differ in their own spiritual culture and growth. Moses and the Apostle Paul were both inspired men, but the Apostle Paul saw truths which Moses did not see, because the Apostle Paul had reached a higher degree of spiritual culture. Christ alone possessed the fulness of spiritual inspiration, because he alone had attained the fulness of spiritual life.
Now the inspired man may look inwardly either at the past, the present, or the future. If he look at the past he is an inspired historian; if at the present, an inspired lawgiver, or religious teacher; if at the future, an inspired prophet. The inspired faculty may be the same, and the difference may be in the object inwardly present to its contemplation. The seer may look from things past to things present, from things present to things to come, and his inspiration be the same. He fixes his mind on the past, and it grows clear before him, and he sees how events were and what they mean. He looks at the present, and sees how things ought to be. He looks at the future, and sees how things shall be.
The Prophets of the Old Testament were not, as is commonly supposed, men who only uttered predictions of the future. They were men of action more than of contemplation. Strange as it may seem to us, who are accustomed to consider their office as confined to religious prediction, their chief duty was that of active politicians. They mixed religion and politics. They interfered with public measures, rebuked the despotism of the kings and the political errors of the people. Moreover, they were the constitutional lawyers and publicists of the Hebrews, inspired to look backward and explain the meaning of the Mosaic law as well as to look forward to its spiritual development in the reign of the Messiah. Prediction, therefore, of future events, was a very small part of the work of the Prophets. Their main duty was to warn, rebuke, teach, exhort, and encourage.
The Hebrew prophets were under the law. They were loyal to Moses and to his institutions. But it was to the spirit rather than to the letter, the idea rather than the form. They differed from the priests in preferring the moral part of the law to the ceremonial. They were great reformers in bringing back the people from external formalism to vital obedience. They constantly made the ceremonial part of the law subservient to the moral part of the law. Thus Samuel said to Saul: "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." And so afterward Isaiah declared in the name of the Lord, that the sacrifices of a wicked people were vain, and their incense an abomination.
We read of the schools of the Prophets, where they studied the law of Moses, and were taught the duties of their office. In these schools music was made use of as a medium of inspiration.
But the office of a prophet was not limited by culture, sex, age, or condition. Women, like Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah, and Noadiah; inexperienced youths, like Jeremiah; men of high standing in society, like Isaiah and Daniel; humble men, like the ploughman Elisha and the herdsman Amos; men married and unmarried, are numbered among the Prophets. Living poorly, wearing sackcloth, feeding on vegetables, imprisoned or assassinated by kings, stoned by the people, the most unpopular of men, sometimes so possessed by the spirit as to rave like madmen, obliged to denounce judgments and woes against kings and people, it is no wonder that they often shrank from their terrible office. Jonah ran to hide in a ship of Tarshish. They have called their message a burden, like Isaiah; they have cried out like Jeremiah, "Ah, Lord God, I cannot speak, for I am a child"; like Ezekiel, they have been obliged to make their faces harder than flints in order to deliver their message.
Dean Stanley, in speaking of the Prophets of the Old Testament, says that their theology consisted in proclaiming the unity of God against all polytheism, and the spirituality of God against all idolatry, in declaring the superiority of moral to ceremonial duties, and in announcing the supremacy of goodness above the letter, ceremony, or dogma. This makes the contrast between the Prophets and all other sacred persons who have existed in pagan and, he adds, even in Christian times. Dean Stanley says the Prophets were religious teachers, without the usual faults of religious teachers, and he proposes them as an example to the Christian clergy. He says: "O, if the spirit of our profession, of our order, of our body, were the spirit, or anything like the spirit, of the ancient Prophets! If with us truth, charity, justice, fairness to opponents, were a passion, a doctrine, a point of honor, to be upheld with the same energy as that with which we uphold our own position and our own opinions!"
The spirit of the world asks first, Is it safe? secondly, Is it true? The spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it true? secondly, Is it safe? The spirit of the world asks first, Is it prudent? secondly, Is it right? The spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it right? secondly, Is it prudent? Taken as a whole, the prophetic order of the Jewish Church remains alone. It stands like one of those vast monuments of ancient days, with ramparts broken, with inscriptions defaced, but stretching from hill to hill, conveying in its long line of arches the pure rill of living water over deep valley and thirsty plain, far above all the puny modern buildings which have grown up at its feet, and into the midst of which it strides with its massive substructions, its gigantic height, its majestic proportions, unrivalled by any erection of modern time.
The predictions of the future by the Prophets of Judæa were far higher in their character than those which come occasionally to mankind through dreams and presentiments. Yet no doubt they proceeded from the same essentially Iranian faculty. This also is asserted by the Dean of Westminster, who says that there is a power of divination granted in some inexplicable manner to ordinary men, and he refers to such instances as the prediction of the discovery of America by Seneca, that of the Reformation by Dante, and the prediction of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the apparition of twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood four hundred years before its actual accomplishment. If such presentiments are not always verified, neither were the predictions of the Prophets always fulfilled. Jonah announced, in the most distinct and absolute terms, that in forty days Nineveh should be destroyed. But the people repented, and it was not destroyed. Their predictions of the Messiah are remarkable, especially because in speaking of him and his time they went out of the law and the spirit of the law, and became partakers of the spirit of the Gospel. The Prophets of the Jews, whatever else we deny to their predictions, certainly foresaw Christianity. They describe the coming of a time in which the law should be written in the heart, of a king who should reign in righteousness, of a prince of peace, of one who should rule by the power of truth, not by force, whose kingdom should be universal and everlasting, and into which all nations of the earth should flow. What the Prophets foresaw was not times nor seasons, not dates nor names, not any minute particulars. But they saw a future age, they lived out of their own time in another time, which had not yet arrived. They left behind them Jewish ceremonialism, and entered into a moral and spiritual religion. They dropped Jewish narrowness and called all mankind brethren. In this they reach the highest form of foresight, which is not simply to predict a coming event, but to live in the spirit of a future time.
Thus the Prophets developed the Jewish religion to its highest point. The simple, childlike faith of Abraham became, in their higher vision, the sight of a universal Father, and of an age in which all men and nations should be united into one great moral kingdom. Further than this, it was not possible to go in vision. The difference between the Prophets and Jesus was, that he accomplished what they foresaw. His life, full of faith in God and man, became the new seed of a higher kingdom than that of David. He was the son of David, as inheriting the loving trust of David in a heavenly Father; he was also the Lord of David, by fulfilling David's love to God with his own love to man; making piety and charity one, faith and freedom one, reason and religion one, this life and the life to come one. He died to accomplish this union and to make this atoning sacrifice.
§ 7. Judaism as a Preparation for Christianity.
After the return from the captivity the Jewish nation remained loyal to Jehovah. The dangers of polytheism and idolatry had passed. We no more hear of either of these tendencies, but, on the contrary, a rigid and almost bigoted monotheism was firmly established. Their sufferings, the teaching of their Prophets, perhaps the influence of the Persian worship, had confirmed them in the belief that Jehovah was one and alone, and that the gods of the nations were idols. They had lost forever the sacred ark of the covenant and the mysterious ornaments of the high-priest. Their kings had disappeared, and a new form of theocracy took the place of a royal government. The high-priest, with the great council, became the supreme authority. The government was hierarchal.
Hellenic influences began to act on the Jewish mind, and a peculiar dialect of Hebrew-Greek, called the Hellenistic, was formed. The Septuagint, or Greek version of the Old Testament, was made in Alexandria about B.C. 260. In Egypt, Greek philosophy began to affect the Jewish mind, the final result of which was the system of Philo. Greek influences spread to such an extent that a great religious revolution took place in Palestine (B.C. 170), and the Temple at Jerusalem was turned into a temple of Olympic Jupiter. Many of the priests and leading citizens accepted this change, though the heart of the people rejected it with horror. Under Antiochus the Temple was profaned, the sacrifices ceased, the keeping of the Sabbath and use of the Scriptures were forbidden by a royal edict. Then arose the Maccabees, and after a long and bitter struggle re-established the worship of Jehovah, B.C. 141.
After this the mass of the people, in their zeal for the law and their old institutions, fell in to the narrow bigotry of the Pharisees. The Sadducees were Jewish Epicureans, but though wealthy were few, and had little influence. The Essenes were Jewish monks, living in communities, and as little influential as are the Shakers in Massachusetts to-day. They were not only few, but their whole system was contrary to the tone of Jewish thought, and was probably derived from Orphic Pythagoreanism.378
The Talmud, that mighty maze of Jewish thought, commencing after the return from the captivity, contains the history of the gradual progress and development of the national mind. The study of the Talmud is necessary to the full understanding of the rise of Christianity. Many of the parables and precepts of Jesus may have had their origin in these traditions and teachings. For the Talmud contains much that is excellent, and the originality of Jesus was not in saying what never had been thought before, but in vitalizing all old truth out of a central spiritual life. His originality was not novelty, but vitality. We have room here but for a single extract.379
"'Six hundred and thirteen injunctions,' says the Talmud, 'was Moses instructed to give to the people. David reduced them all to eleven, in the fifteenth Psalm: Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle who shall dwell on thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly,' &c.
"'The Prophet Isaiah reduced them to six (xxxiii. 15): He that walketh righteously,' &c.
"'The Prophet Micah reduced them to three (vi. 8): What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
"'Isaiah once more reduced them to two (lvi. 1): Keep ye judgment and do justice.
"'Amos (v. 4) reduced them all to one: Seek ye me and ye shall live.
"'But lest it might be supposed from this that God could be found in the fulfilment of his whole law only, Habakkuk said (ii. 4): The just shall live by his faith.'"
Thus we have seen the Jewish religion gradually developed out of the family worship of Abraham, through the national worship of the law to the personal and filial trust of David, and the spiritual monotheism of Job and the Prophets. Through all these changes there ran the one golden thread of faith in a Supreme Being who was not hidden and apart from the world, but who came to man as to his child.
At first this belief was narrow and like that of a child380 We read that when Noah went into the ark, "the Lord shut him in"; that when Babel was built, "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had built"; that when Noah offered burnt-sacrifices, "the Lord smelled a sweet savor"; that he told Moses to make him a sanctuary, that he might dwell among the Israelites. We have seen, in our chapter on Greece, that Homer makes Jupiter send a pernicious dream to Agamemnon, to deceive him; in other words, makes Jupiter tell a lie to Agamemnon. But how is the account in I Kings xxii. 20-23, any better?381
But how all this ignorance was enlightened, and this narrowness enlarged, let the magnificent theism of the Psalms, of Job, and of Isaiah testify. Solomon declares "The heaven of heavens cannot contain him, how much less this house that I have builded." Job and the Psalms and Isaiah describe the omniscience, omnipresence, and inscrutable perfections of the Deity in language to which twenty centuries have been able to add nothing.382
Thus Judaism was monotheism, first as a seed, then as a blade, and then as the ear which the sun of Christianity was to ripen into the full corn. The highest truth was present, implicitly, in Judaism, and became explicit in Christianity. The law was the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. It taught, however imperfectly, a supreme and living God; a Providence ruling all things; a Judge rewarding good and punishing evil; a holy Being, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. It announced a moral law to be obeyed, the substance of which was to love God with all the heart, and one's neighbor as one's self.
Wherever the Apostles of Christ went they found that Judaism had prepared the way. Usually, in every place, they first preached to the Jews, and made converts of them. For Judaism, though so narrow and so alien to the Greek and Latin thought, had nevertheless pervaded all parts of the Roman Empire. Despised and satirized by philosophers and poets, it had yet won its way by its strength of conviction. It offered to men, not a philosophy, but a religion; not thought, but life. Too intolerant of differences to convert the world to monotheism, it yet made a preparation for its conversion. This was its power, and thus it went before the face of the Master, to prepare his way.