The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible Part 14

III.

_The period of the monarchy, down to the epoch of the great prophets:_ B.

C. 1100-800.

The story of the making of England may interpret to us the development that ensued in this third period of Israel's history. We know how the petty realms of the Angles-land, under pressure from a common foe, learned to act momentarily together, came for a summer under some commanding leader, drew thus into closer affiliations grouped gradually around the more powerful realms, and at length crystallized into England. In some such way the Hebrew tribes were slowly knit together by the necessity of war, until to organize a lasting victory they were forced into consolidation and out of the loose confederation of tribes arose a nation, Israel. Social tendencies generally throw a leader to the front. The man is not wanting for the hour. The king-maker of Israel was Samuel. A man combining in that simple state of society several functions--priest and judge and leader--he had the prescience to divine the need of the age, and the wisdom to point out the man to meet it. Saul was chosen King, in free gathering of the hardy yeomanry, and proved his human election a divine selection by rousing the nation to new efforts, which his genius led to victory. Saul was followed by a brief period of national unity under David and Solomon, in which the rapid and brilliant progress made in the spread of the kingdom, in wealth and civilization, revealed the latent powers of this gifted race.

The progress of political and commercial greatness was stayed by the rending of the kingdom after Solomon. No great advances were possible amid the chronic jealousies and frequent strife of the sister kingdoms, which were unable to come together again in a unity that would have restored their prestige, and were unable, apart, to achieve any signal success in diplomacy or war.

The social state of the people underwent the changes usual in this stage of a people's history. With peace came wealth, with wealth came luxury, with luxury new social vices, fed from the court which grew around the monarchy. But that the heart of the people continued sound amid these organic changes we may see from several hints preserved by tradition.

The inst.i.tution, or revival, of the Order of the Nazarites was a religio-moral movement. It was a protest against the vice of drunkenness that was increasing in the land, as, relieved from war's alarms and waxing fat upon their fertile fields, the people gave themselves to pleasure. The first Prohibition Society, of which we have record, was this Order of the Nazarites. This Order appears also to have had a still deeper moral aim, little noticed of old. It was a reaction from the social changes that were going on in Israel, a protest against the new-fashioned ways of wealth, an earnest effort to hold to the simplicities of earlier days, to the good old plain living and high thinking. It was a counter-movement of Old Israel, essaying to stem the mad rush for riches. A still more convincing token of the healthy moral tone of the nation is to be found in the earliest considerable work of literature preserved to us, the Song of Songs. It holds up to scorn the licentiousness that Solomon had made fashionable, and of which, in a just retribution, he had become the abhorred type. The great king fails to corrupt the virtue of a simple country maiden, despite of all his blandishments. Ewald a.s.signs this poem to the northern kingdom, which had separated itself from Judah chiefly in reaction from the Solomonic innovations. It leads us into the homes of the st.u.r.dy peasantry of the hill country, where burned the fires on the altars of pure wedded love.

From a people thus sound at heart, amid the mellowing richness of civilization, we may well expect great things in religion. Whatever the outward forms of religion, its roots ran deep down into the moral law, and must needs have borne in due time a n.o.ble fruitage. There was in fact a striking development of religion in this period. It was coincident with the secular development of the nation. This indeed is the general rule of religious revival. Religion advances with the advancing life of man, each new and true step forward opening a higher possibility of thought and feeling concerning G.o.d. As Moses the Emanc.i.p.ator was the father of true religion in Israel, so Samuel the king-maker was its early master. We cannot now trace clearly his work, but we can see that he was a fresh ethical and spiritual force, shaping religious life anew.

Prophets there had doubtless been before him, in Israel as out of it, but they were unethical and unspiritual influences in religion; the frenzied dervishes, the oracular seers, the wizards and necromancers who long afterward claimed this name, and were denounced by the higher prophets.

Samuel's masterful work was to turn this semi-religious force into a higher channel, and to direct it toward a moral aim. He was the creator of the type which drew after him "the goodly fellowship of the prophets." The traditions of Israel present him in the _role_ of fearless censor and truthful mentor to the infant State; the _role_ which the great prophets later on a.s.sumed toward the maturer nation. He criticized the King, guided the people, and held the nation loyal to Jehovah. However little perception the ma.s.s of the people had of the spiritual significance of the State religion, however many gross forms of popular religion existed around and within the tolerant inst.i.tutions of Jehovahism, it was a vital matter to preserve that State religion, and keep it well ahead of the people's growth. Thus we can perceive the historic significance of the work of the next great prophet after Samuel, Elijah; through the legendary nimbus that gathered round his striking personality and dramatic action In a critical hour, when the Jehovah-worship had well nigh disappeared, he stood alone against the powers of the realm, and rallied the people once more beneath the name of the G.o.d of their father. He plucked a victory from defeat which decided the course of history. What if Jehovah was but a name to the ma.s.s of the people? What if they continued to worship much as before, only no longer at the altars of Baal? There are long periods in the history of man when the future depends upon allegiance to an inst.i.tution little understood by those who shout most l.u.s.tily for it. The future may lie seeded down in a name which stores within it the forces of a new and higher unfolding when the times come ripe. Thus it proved through the crawling centuries in which Israel held hard by a name of G.o.d which then meant little to it, but which ultimately evolved its ethical significance and manifested unto men, The Eternal who loveth righteousness. Thus may it prove with the child of Judaism. Liberals, who are in such haste to drop the name of Christ, should pause long enough to ask themselves the question whether, since it roots religion in a life of such perfect goodness that it became to men the manifestation of G.o.d, this sacred name may not in its turn hold the secret of our progress; whether, from the treasured forces of the past that it gathers into itself, when the spring time now setting in shall have fully come, it may not blossom into the religion of the future? A civilization should not be cut off from the historic seed which lies at the roots of its religion, if it is to grow unto the harvest.

That in this fidelity to the tradition of their race the religion of the people of Israel was in the vital processes of growth, through this long period, we know a.s.suredly from one conclusive fact. Out of this tedious winter came, suddenly as it seems to us, a rich and beautiful spring. The epoch of the great prophets, with a new life of thought and aspiration, breaks in abruptly on this commingling of all sorts of religion within the precincts of Jehovahism. Even in February the sap is softening and warming in the veins which show no greening on the tips of the patient trees.

Israel was swelling toward the day that was sure to come, when, lo! the spring!

IV.

_The era of the great prophets, before the exile:_ B.C. 800-586.

In the southern Pacific, where coral islands are slowly forming beneath the surface of the sea, he who is curious to study the process of the making of an island must send the divers down to bring up broken bits of coral, s.n.a.t.c.hed from the dark depths in a painful labor. After the ocean mountain thrusts its top above the surface of the sea the work of exploration is easy enough, and we may walk over hard ground as we study the new formation in the sunlight. Hitherto, in our desire to learn the secrets of the growth of Israel, we have been like men peering over the sides of their tiny boats into the depths of a sea that covers fascinating mysteries; watching the labors of the adepts who ever and anon bring up to the light some fresh fragments of a buried world. In the epoch that we have now reached Israel's growing life lifts itself above the level of tradition, and stands forth as solid history, on whose firm ground we can study for ourselves the making of a nation's religion.

Israel's literary period opens for us with the prophets. Literary fragments float up to us from earlier days, but now, for the first time, we have whole books about whose date and authorship we are reasonably certain. The prophets introduced the literary craft. They wrote out, in their later years, the substance of the messages which they had borne the people. These brilliant pages teem with graphic descriptions of the actual usages, social and religious, of their age, so that there is no difficulty in reproducing with fair accuracy the salient features of the period.

The popular religion was that composite of heathenisms already sketched in considering the previous period. The people continued to worship the Power which all felt and owned, under the manifold forms which this Power a.s.sumes in nature's processes. Sun and moon and stars still arrested the awe which through them groped after G.o.d, and drew upon themselves the worship of the imagination. The worship of Jehovah had a special honor as the State religion, but it stood contentedly amid other forms of religion.

In the service of Jehovah local shrines developed special usages. The "Uses" of Israel were as varied as the "Uses" of England before the Reformation. No act of Uniformity was in operation in the realm. Idolatry was not the exception but the rule. The most popular symbol of Jehovah was an image of a bull. To the higher minds this bull was doubtless merely a symbol, expressive of a striking phase of the sun's force, but to the ma.s.s of men it was probably the actual object of their adorations. The symbolism of the Jerusalem Temple was thoroughly idolatrous; as, for example, the twelve oxen upholding the laver, and the horns of the altar, symbols drawn from the prevalent bull-worship; the two columns in the court, and the cherubs, or cloud-dragons in the most holy place; the _chamanim_, or sun-images representing the rays of the sun in the shape of a cone, and the chariots and horses of the sun, a very ancient symbol familiar to us in Guido's Aurora.[43]

Nor did the allegiance to Jehovah bar private usages of an idolatrous nature. The home of the average Israelite had its _teraphim_ and other domestic divinities. The darker aspects of the popular religion still held their ground against the growing light. Beneath the shadow of the Jehovah of the Ten Words, stood, unmolested, the images fashioned by the appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions; and men and women surrendered themselves to drunken orgies and sensual debauches, in honor of the deities of desire. As late as the time of Jeremiah, after nearly two centuries of prophetic teaching, there were in the sacred precincts of the temple the _asheras_, or tree-poles, by which the priestesses of pa.s.sion, as part of their religious offices, sold themselves to the frequenters of Jehovah's house.[44] Below the holy city, King Mana.s.seh reared the image of Moloch, and human sacrifices were offered to placate the wrath of the Power which they ignorantly worshipped.

Where religion was so largely a worship of the physical powers of nature, the life of the people would of necessity show an undeveloped ethical state. Drunkenness and debauchery continued common, the marriage bond was very elastic in the polite society of the capital, and selfishness haughtily overrode all considerations of _meum_ and _tuum_ in the mad chase of wealth.

Unsatisfactory as the morals of the influential cla.s.ses of society were, there is, however, no indication of any such "ooze and thaw of wrong" as indicated a moribund condition in the nation.

We must not make the mistake, so common concerning reformers, and regard the evils that were justly lashed by the prophets as prevailing throughout society. Had this been the case, where would the ethical forces of a new and higher life have risen? Single preachers of social righteousness might have arisen, like Savonarola in Florence, under such conditions, but no general reform could have developed. The steady growth of the movement initiated by the great prophets shows that it sprang from no individuals, but from society; that they merely led the reserve forces of virtue in the nation. The heart of the nation was doubtless sound, and growing more vigorously virtuous. Professor Thorold Rogers reminds us that the period when a great outcry is heard against any social evil, is not that wherein the evil is at its height, for then there would probably be no power of protest, but rather that in which the recuperative forces of society are rallying to throw off the disorder from the body politic. Morality was in advance of religion at this time in Israel, and this interprets the movement which ensued to place religion in its proper position at the head of the march of progress.

It was amid such a state of affairs that the great prophets appeared upon the stage of action, calling the nation to a higher religion. They were not so much philosophers, reasoning out a lofty intellectual conception of G.o.d, as preachers of righteousness, vitalizing from the moral nature the sense of the purity and justice of the Power in whom men lived and moved and had their being They turned the light of the inward law upon G.o.d, and revealed Him as its author. They led Virtue into the Temple, touched her lips with a live coal from off the altar, and from a tongue of fire men heard, "Thus saith the Lord." They revived the true Mosaic priesthood, which set apart conscience as the mediator between G.o.d and man. The seed that Moses planted budded and swelled toward its bloom. The prophetic writings show us men a-hungered after righteousness breathing out the worship of Jehovah into the worship of the Eternal, who loveth righteousness.

Isaiah carries this message from G.o.d:

To what purpose is the mult.i.tude of your sacrifices unto me?

I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts.

And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.

When ye come to appear before me, Who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?

Bring no more vain oblations; Incense is an abomination unto me; The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of a.s.semblies, I cannot endure; It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; They are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: Your hands are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes: Cease to do evil; learn to do well: Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.[45]

Micah voices the questions that men raised in his day, answering them with the new thought:

Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, And bow myself before the high G.o.d?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, With calves of a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my first born for my transgression, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, And what doth the Lord require of thee, But to do justly, and to love mercy, And to walk humbly with thy G.o.d?[46]

Two features of the work of the prophets bring out clearly their ethical inspiration. Israel was at this period being drawn, for the first time, into the currents created by the strife of the mammoth empires of a.s.syria and Egypt, in whose maelstrom she at length went down. Public affairs were becoming matters of international relationship. The prophets threw themselves heartily into the national politics, standing between the party of a.s.syria and the party of Egypt, as independents concerned with the interests of neither faction, but seeking to lift both sides above the shifting sands of policy upon the firm ground of principle. They sought to lead the nation to turn aside from its dazzling dream of a brilliant foreign policy to the humbler tasks of internal reform; to induce the State to busy itself with the labor of redressing civic disorders and of building a community of sober, pure, and just citizens, cultivating peace and equity with other peoples, and fearing G.o.d. They were preachers to the corporate conscience of Israel, and dealt with subjects which the modern pulpit effeminately shuns. In strains of pure and pa.s.sionate patriotism, they delighted to vision before the people the ideal State and its ideal King; thus to lead the aspirations of the nation to a higher ambition than martial prowess and diplomatic craft.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and might, The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, Neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, And reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.

And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.

And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, And faithfulness the girdle of his reins.[47]

These Hebrew prophets made the right administration of public affairs the essentially religious service which their devout student Gladstone declares them now to be. Because of this inspiration of civic life with religiousness, their books have become, as Coleridge called them, the Statesman's Manual.

At this period in Israel's history the social revolution attending the progress of all peoples from a simple to a complex organization was entailing its usual excesses, and alarming symptoms were showing themselves in the commonwealth. In earlier days Israel's tenure of land had been, like that of all peoples, communistic. Proprietorship of the land was vested in the family, and then in the village community. There were no private fortunes and no private poverty. Life was simple and contented, and dull. Under the action of the usual social forces, this system had been gradually breaking up, through many generations. Property had mainly pa.s.sed into personal possession Society had recrystallized around the individual. Individualism had developed its customary tendencies to inequality. The ancient equality of the free farmers of Israel was already disappearing. Fortunes, undreamed of a couple of centuries earlier, were becoming common. Greed was pushing men beyond legitimate acquisition into respectable robbery. The old-time rights of commonalty were disappearing in pasture, and farming land, and forest. The village commons were being "enclosed" by local potentates. Monopolies of the natural resources of all wealth, the inalienable dower of the people at large, were working their inevitable consequences. Below the wealthy cla.s.s, which was rising to the top of society, there was forming at the bottom a new and unheard-of social stratum, the settlings of the struggle for existence; a deposit of the feebleness and ignorance and innocence of the people. In the loss of the old sense of a commonwealth, the nation was breaking up into cla.s.ses, alienated, unsympathetic, hostile. Selfishness was threatening ruin to the State.

In the midst of these dangerous social tendencies the prophets came forward as "men of the people." Like brave Latimer at Paul's Cross, these fearless preachers stood in the marketplaces to denounce monopoly and the tyranny of capital. They were not affrighted by the hue and cry that, if human nature was the same then as now, was raised against them, in the name of the sacred rights of property. They were not beguiled by the sophisms of those who doubtless proved conclusively that the best interests of the people were being furthered by the fullest freedom of the able and crafty to enrich themselves _ad libitum_. They could not have stood an examination in political economy, but they knew the heart of the whole matter, in a world whose core is the moral law. They saw, more or less clearly, that there could be no lasting wealth in a society which was not based upon a wide, deep common-wealth. They felt that the one clue to follow in every social problem was held by conscience. So they struck boldly at existing wrongs in the name of the Eternal Righteous One.

Woe unto them that join house to house, That lay field to field Till there be no place, That they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

The Lord will enter into judgment With the ancients of his people and the princes thereof: For ye have eaten up the vineyard; The spoil of the poor is in your houses.

What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, And grind the faces of the poor?

Saith the Lord G.o.d of hosts.[48]

One word, constantly recurring through the prophets, reveals the secret of their enthusiasm. They lifted above the people the august and holy form of Justice, and called on men to follow her. They appealed to a force in men mightier than selfishness. They kindled the pa.s.sion which had been always latent in Israel, since the day when Moses led forth the slaves of Egypt to found a nation of freemen. A new and lofty ideal mastered the minds of the better natures among the people. Over against the darkness of their age there rose a vision of a good time coming, when Justice should be throned on law, and selfishness be exorcised from the hearts of men who had learned the secret

Of joy in widest commonalty spread.

And this they did in the name of Jehovah. From Him they came with these messages concerning social obligations. The Eternal One who loved righteousness could be served in no other way than in furthering justice.

Religion became social reform, aflame with the enthusiasm of holy ideals; of ideals seen to be eternal realities, as the shadows cast by The Living G.o.d, moving on to accomplish the good pleasure of His will.

To conserve the new spirit of brotherhood which they awakened, they embodied in the book of the Law, that const.i.tuted the Magna Charta of the Reformation, a development of a gracious usage of the people. From immemorial antiquity there had been a recognized right of the populace to the natural yield of the soil in every seventh year. This common law they formally re-enacted, in the name of Jehovah, and added to it a provision for the release of debtors in the sabbatical year.[49]