Ten Great Religions Part 39

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 n.o.bler joy to come.

Better than anything in Proverbs are some of the n.o.ble 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 cla.s.s 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. G.o.d does not hear you. Dreams do not come from G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.blest language which the human tongue has ever uttered.

-- 6. The Prophets; or, Judaism as the Hope of a spiritual and universal Kingdom of G.o.d.

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 const.i.tute 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d, 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 const.i.tutional 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 inst.i.tutions. 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, s.e.x, 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d against all polytheism, and the spirituality of G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion, 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 ma.s.sive substructions, its gigantic height, its majestic proportions, unrivalled by any erection of modern time.

The predictions of the future by the Prophets of Judaea 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 a.s.serted 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed. 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 G.o.ds 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.

h.e.l.lenic influences began to act on the Jewish mind, and a peculiar dialect of Hebrew-Greek, called the h.e.l.lenistic, 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 ma.s.s of the people, in their zeal for the law and their old inst.i.tutions, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 (x.x.xiii. 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 G.o.d?

"'Isaiah once more reduced them to two (lvi. 1): Keep ye judgment and do justice.