The legislator is evidently under the empire of ideas and sentiments infinitely superior to those of the people, to whom, nevertheless, his strong sympathies attach him. When we consider the Mosaic Legislation, we find that in everything which concerns the external forms and practices of worship, the ideas of Egypt have made great impression upon the mind of the Lawgiver, and the frequent use that he has made of Egyptian customs and ceremonies is not less visible. But far above these institutions and these traditions, which seem not seldom out of place and incoherent, soars and predominates constantly the Idea of the God of Abraham and of Jacob, of the God One and Eternal, of the True God. The Laws of Moses omit no occasion of inculcating the belief in that God, and of recalling Him to the recollection of the Hebrews. And this, not as if they were recalling a principle, an institution, a system; but as if they propose to place a sovereign, a lawful and living sovereign, in the presence of those whom he governs, and to whom they owe obedience and fidelity.
Moses never speaks in his own name, or in the name of any human power, or of any portion of the Hebrew nation. God alone speaks and commands. God's word and his commands Moses repeats to the people. At his first ascending Mount Sinai, when he had received the first inspiration from the Eternal, "Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." [Footnote 49]
[Footnote 49: Exodus xix. 7, 8.]
When Moses, again ascending Mount Sinai, had received from God the Decalogue, he returned, "And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient." [Footnote 50]
[Footnote 50: Exodus xxiv. 7.]
As the events develop themselves, the Hebrews are found far from rendering a constant obedience: they forget, they infringe—and that frequently—these laws of God which they have accepted; and God sometimes punishes, sometimes pardons them; still it is always God alone that is acting; it is from Him alone that all emanates; neither the priests who preside over the ceremonies of his worship, nor the elders of Israel whom He summons to prostrate themselves from afar before Him, nor Moses himself—his sole and constant interpreter—do anything by themselves, demand anything for themselves. The Pentateuch is the history and the picture of the personal government by God of the Israelites. "Our legislator," says the historian Josephus, "had in his thoughts not monarchies, nor oligarchies, nor democracies, nor any one of those political institutions: he commanded that our government should be (if it is permitted to make use of an expression somewhat exaggerated) what may be styled a Theocracy." [Footnote 51]
[Footnote 51: Joseph. contra Apionem, ii. c. 17.]
The eminent writers who have recently studied most profoundly the Mosaic system—M. Ewald in Germany,[Footnote 52] Mr. Milman and Mr. Arthur Stanley in England, M. Nicolas in France—have adopted the expression of Josephus, attaching to it its real and complete sense. "The term Theocracy," says Mr. Stanley, "has been often employed since the time of Moses, but in the sense of a sacerdotal government: a sense the very contrary to that in which its first author conceived it. The theocracy of Moses was not at all a government by priests, or opposed to kings; it was the government by God himself, as opposed to a government by priests or by kings." [Footnote 53]
[Footnote 52: Geschichte des Volkes Israel, bis Christus, ii. 188. Göttingen, 1853.][Footnote 53: Lectures on the Jewish Church, p. 157]
"Mosaism," says M. Nicolas, "is a theocracy in the proper sense of the word. It would be a complete error to understand this word in the sense which usage has given to it in our language. There is no question here in effect of a government exercised by a sacerdotal caste in the name and under the inspiration, real or pretended, of God. In the Mosaic legislation the priests are not the ministers and instruments of the Divine Will; God reigns and governs by himself. It is He who has given his laws to the Hebrews. Moses has been, it is true, the medium between the Eternal and the people, but the people has taken part in the grand spectacle of the Revelation of the Law; of this the people, in the exercise of its freedom, has evinced its acceptance; and in the covenant set on foot between the Eternal and the family of Jacob, Moses has been, if I may be allowed the expression, only the public officer who has propounded the contract. He was himself, besides, not within the pale of the sacerdotal caste; and the charge of keeping, amending, and seeing to the carrying out of the body of laws was not confided to the priests." [Footnote 54 ]
[Footnote 54: Études Critiques sur la Bible—Ancien Testament, p. 172.]
Let the learned men who thus characterise the Mosaic theocracy pause here and measure the whole bearing of the fact which they comprehend so well. It is a fact unique in the history of the world. The idea of God is, amongst all nations, the source of religions; but in every case, except that of the Hebrews, scarcely has the source appeared before it deviates and becomes troubled; men take the place of God; God's name is made to cover every kind of usurpation and falsehood; sometimes sacerdotal corporations take possession of all government, civil and religious; sometimes secular power overrules and enslaves Religious Faith and Religious Life. In the Mosaic Dispensation we have nothing of the kind; its very origin and its fundamental principles condemn and prohibit even the attempt at any such deviations. No paramount priesthood here; no secular power playing the part of the oppressor. God is constantly present, and sole Master. All passes between God and the people; all, I say, so passes through the agency of a single man whom God inspires, and in whom the people have faith, asking no other authority than that of the revelation which he receives.No sign here of a fact of human origin: just as the God of the Bible is the true God, the religion that descended, by Moses, from Sinai upon the elect people of God is the true Religion destined to become, when Jesus Christ ascends Calvary, the Religion of the Human Race.
Moses having brought out of Egypt the people of Israel, and having conducted it through the Desert as far as the eastern bank of the Jordan, in sight of Canaan, the Promised Land, his mission terminates. "Get thee up," says the Eternal to him; "get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold it with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him: for he shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land which thou shalt see." [Footnote 55]
[Footnote 55: Deuteronomy iii. 27, 28.]
Moses has been, in the name of Jehovah, the liberator and the legislator; Joshua is the conqueror, the rough warrior, of yet signal piety and modesty, the ardent servant of Jehovah, the faithful disciple of Moses. After passing the Jordan, traversing the land of Canaan in every direction, and giving battle in succession to the greater part of the tribes that inhabit it, he destroys, or expels, or negotiates with them, and divides their lands among the twelve tribes of Israel. These exchange their wandering life for that settled agricultural life of which Moses has given them the law. The descendants of Abraham settle as masters in the soil in which Abraham had demanded as a favour the privilege of purchasing a tomb.
The consequences of this new situation are not long in showing themselves. The conquest is protracted and difficult: the violence and rapine that characterise a state of war—one of dispossession and of extermination—replace amongst the Hebrews the adventures and the pious emotions of the Desert. In spite of their successes, the conquest nevertheless remains incomplete: several of the Canaanitish tribes defend themselves efficaciously, and cling, side by side with the new comers, to their territory, their laws, their gods. The twelve tribes of Israel disperse and settle, each on its own account, upon different and distant points, some being even separated by the Jordan. The unity of the Hebrew nation, of its faith, of its law, of its government, and of its destiny weakens rapidly; the tendency to idolatry, which the Hebrews had so often evinced when wandering in the Desert, reappears and developes itself, fomented by the vicinity of the Polytheistic tribes of Canaan. Not, however, that we can precisely say that Polytheism prevails against the One God; but rather that material images of Jehovah become, in the midst of particular tribes, the object of the idolatrous worship so strongly prohibited by the Decalogue. "And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves." [Footnote 56]
[Footnote 56: Judges iii. 7.]
Under such influences the moral and social state of the people of Israel undergoes profound changes; the barbarism, which had been formerly amongst them fanatical and austere, becomes unruly and licentious; their chiefs, their Judges, during the epoch which bears their name, no longer possess, sometimes no longer merit, their confidence; even the heroic acts of some amongst them—of Gideon, of Deborah, of Samson,—present rather a strange than an august character. The Mosaic Theocracy veils itself; the Hebrew nation becomes disorganized; day by day, the religious and political anarchy in Israel extends and becomes aggravated.
But where the Divine Light has once shone, it is never completely extinguished; and when the voice of God has once spoken, the sound is never entirely lost, even to ears that no longer listen. It has been affirmed that after Joshua, in the lapse of time that took place between the government of the Judges and the end of the reign of Solomon, the recollection of Moses, of his actions and his laws, had almost entirely disappeared—had lost all authority in Israel. Some passages from the biblical narrative will suffice to remove this error. I read in the Book of Judges, with respect to the Canaanitish tribes who resisted and survived in their countries the conquest and settlement of the Hebrew tribes:—These nations "were to prove Israel, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses." [Footnote 57]
[Footnote 57: Judges iii. 4.]
And again, in the Book of Samuel, it is the Eternal "that advanced Moses and Aaron …. which brought forth your fathers out of the land of Egypt, and made them dwell in this place." [Footnote 58]And in the Book of Kings,[Footnote 59] David, on the point of expiring, says to his son Solomon, "Keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses."
[Footnote 58: 1 Samuel xii. 6, 8.][Footnote 59: 1 Kings ii. 3.]
And when Solomon, after the solemn dedication of his Temple, had addressed to God his prayer of thanksgiving, "he stood, and blessed all the congregation of Israel with a loud voice, saying, Blessed be the Lord, that hath given rest unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant." [Footnote 60]
[Footnote 60: 1 Kings viii. 55, 56.]
In the customs and lives of the Israelites these "good promises" had not practically, it is true, preserved all their efficacy: the worship of Jehovah and the legislation of Moses had fallen into sad oblivion, and undergone serious changes. But, in the national sentiment, Jehovah the Eternal was ever the One God, the True God; and Moses his interpreter.Moral and social disorder had invaded the Hebrew Confederation; the Divine Law and Tradition were incessantly violated, still not ignored: they ever continued the Divine Law and Tradition, the objects of the faith and veneration of Israel.
When the evil of anarchy had brought with it great national reverses,—when the Philistines on the south, the Ammonites on the east, and the Mesopotamians on the north, had placed in jeopardy the Hebrew settlement in Canaan,—a general cry arose; on all sides, the tribes demanded a strong government, a single chief, one capable of maintaining order within, and supporting abroad the position and the honour of Israel. A great and faithful servant of Jehovah, the last of the judges, and the greatest of the prophets since Moses,—Samuel,—had recently governed Israel, and strenuously struggled to arrest the progress of popular vice and misfortune; but he had become old, and his sons whom he had made "judges over Israel … walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations." [Footnote 61 ]
[Footnote 61: 1 Samuel viii. 1-5.]
The demand had in it nothing singular; even at the epoch when God, by his servant Moses, was personally governing Israel, the chance of the establishment of a human kingdom had been foreseen and provided for beforehand by the Divine Law: "When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother." [Footnote 62]
[Footnote 62: Deuteronomy xvii. 14, 15.]
Although thus provided for by the Divine Law, the demand of a king was extremely displeasing to Samuel; "for the kingly rule was odious to him," says the historian Josephus; "he had an innate love of justice, and was ardently attached to the aristocratical form of government, as to the form of polity which rendered men happy and worthy of God." [Footnote 63]
[Footnote 63: Josephus, Ant. Jud. vol. vi. ch. iii. 3.]
But the Eternal "said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them … Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them." [Footnote 64]
[Footnote 64: 1 Samuel viii. 7-9.]
Samuel predicted to the Hebrews how much the kingly form of government would cost them, all that they would have to suffer in their families, their property, and their liberties: "Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king." [Footnote 65]
[Footnote 65: 1 Samuel viii. 19-22.]
The world's history offers no example where the merits and defects of absolute monarchy were so rapidly developed, where they were displayed so strikingly, as in this little Hebrew monarchy, instituted with the view of escaping from anarchy by the express desire of the people itself. Three kings succeed to the throne, in origin, character, conduct, and reign absolutely dissimilar. Saul is a warrior, chosen by Samuel for his strength, bodily beauty, and courage; ever ready for the combat, but without foresight, without perseverance in his military operations; easily intoxicated with good fortune; hurried away by brutal, capricious, or jealous passions; now engaged in furious struggles, now appearing in a dependent position, with his patron Samuel, his son Jonathan, his son-in-law David; a genuine barbarian king, arrogant, changeable of humour, impatient of control, prone to superstition, a moment serving Israel against her enemies, but incapable of governing Israel in the name of its God.
David, on the contrary, is the faithful and consistent representative of religious faith and religious life in Israel; the fervent and submissive adorer of the Eternal; he is so at all the epochs and in the most varying aspects of his career, whether of humility or of grandeur; at once warrior, king, prophet, poet; as ardent to celebrate his God in his character of poet, as to serve Him in the capacity of warrior, or to obey Him in that of king; equally sublime in his thanksgiving to the Eternal for his triumphs as in his invocation to Him in his distresses; accessible to the most culpable human weaknesses, but prompt to repent the offence once committed; and giving always to impulses of joy or pious sadness the first place in his soul; very king of the nation that adores the very God.David accomplishes the work of his time: he obtains the object for which the monarchy had been demanded and instituted: he leaves behind him the tribes of Israel reunited at home, and reassured against foreign enemies, proceeding too in the path of good order and confidence. Heir to his father's work, his father's success, Solomon comes next, and reigns forty years—years of almost as much repose as splendour: "God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore." [Footnote 66] "And he had peace on all sides round about him. 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." [Footnote 67]
[Footnote 66: 1 Kings iv. 29.][USCCB: Footnote 66 should be: 1 Kings iv. 9.][Footnote 67: Ibid. 24, 25.][USCCB: Footnote 67 should be: 1 Kings iv. 4, 5.]
The kingdom and the kingly authority rose under the government of Solomon, and throughout all Western Asia, to a degree of power and splendour before unknown to the Hebrews. A prosperity out of all proportion with the position of a new king and a small state, and which reminds us of the rapid histories and the political comets of the East.Solomon at this point lost sight of both wisdom and virtue: the first hereditary prince of the Hebrew monarchy terminated his life like a voluptuous sovereign of Ecbatana or of Nineveh; the son of the pious King David became a sceptical moralist; although a profound observer of the nature and destiny of man, such observation had led but to feelings of disgust. Nor did the monarchy survive the monarch: the nation became effeminate and corrupt, in the effeminacy and corruption of its sovereign. Scarcely was Solomon dead, when his monarchy was divided into two kingdoms, which, at first rivals, became soon openly hostile to each other; sometimes a prey to tyranny, sometimes to anarchy, and almost always to war. It was not, as formerly, merely a bad phase of transition in the history of the Hebrew nation; it was the commencement of national decline—decline irremediable, hopeless.
But what, in this decline, will become of the law revealed on Sinai to Moses? Is it destined to fall with the monarchy of Solomon, or to languish and die out in the midst of the struggles and disasters of Judah and of Israel? Quite the contrary: the religious faith and law of the Hebrews will not only perpetuate themselves, but will again shine forth at this epoch of political ruin.
Above the fortune of states are the designs of God, to which instruments are never wanting; the kings continue to perpetrate acts of violence, and the people to show marks of weakness; but amidst all, the prophets of Israel will maintain the ancient Covenant, and prepare the coming of that new Covenant which is to make of the God of Israel the God of mankind.
A celebrated political writer—a freethinker belonging to the Radical school, somewhat also to the school of Positivism—Mr. John Stuart Mill, has recently said, in his work on Government, "The Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism of China, were very fit instruments for carrying those nations up to the point of civilisation which they attained.But, having reached that point, they were brought to a permanent halt, for want of mental liberty and individuality; requisites of improvement which the institutions that had carried them thus far, entirely incapacitated them from acquiring; and, as the institutions did not break down and give place to others, further improvement stopped. In contrast with these nations, let us consider the example of an opposite character afforded by another and a comparatively insignificant Oriental people—the Jews. They, too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy, and their organised institutions were as obviously of sacerdotal origin as those of the Hindoos. These did for them what was done for other Oriental races by their institutions—subdued them to industry and order, and gave them a national life. But neither their kings nor their priests ever obtained, as in those other countries, the exclusive moulding of their character.Their religion, which enabled persons of genius and a high religious tone to be regarded and to regard themselves as inspired from Heaven, gave existence to an inestimably precious unorganized institution—the Order (if it may be so termed) of Prophets. Generally under the protection—it was not always effectual—of their sacred character, the prophets were a power in the nation, often more than a match for kings and priests, and kept up in that little corner of the earth the antagonism of influence, which is the only real security for continued progress. Religion consequently was not there—what it has been in so many other places—a consecration of all that was once established, and a barrier against further improvement. The remark of a distinguished Hebrew, M. Salvador, that the prophets were, in Church and State, the equivalent to the modern liberty of the press, gives a just but not an adequate conception of the part fulfilled in national and universal histories by this great element of Jewish life; by means of which, the canon of inspiration never being complete, the persons most eminent in genius and moral feeling could not only denounce and reprobate, with the direct authority of the Almighty, whatever appeared to them deserving of such treatment, but could give forth better and higher interpretations of the national religion.Conditions more favourable to progress could not easily exist; accordingly the Jews, instead of being stationary like other Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the starting-point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation." [Footnote 68]
[Footnote 68: Considerations on Representative Government. By John Stuart Mill, pp. 41-43. London.]
Mr. Mill is right, only he does not go far enough. Modern civilization is in effect derived from the Jews and from the Greeks. To the latter it is indebted for its human and intellectual, to the former for its Divine and moral, element. Of these two sources, we owe to the Jews, if not the more brilliant, at all events the more sublime and dearly acquired one.After the development of power and grandeur which took place amongst the Jews in the reigns of David and Solomon, their history is but a long series of misfortunes and reverses,—an eventful, painful decline. The Hebrew state is divided into two kingdoms, almost constantly at war with each other. And whilst the kingdom of Israel is a prey to continual usurpations and revolutions, making it the scene of all the violence and all the vicissitudes of a tyranny, the kingdom of Judah has a line of princes, in turn good or bad, who keep it unceasingly in a state of trouble and of jeopardy. Religion falls beneath the yoke of secular government; idolatry appears in the kingdom of Israel, and braves audaciously the ancient national faith. The kingdom of Judah, however, remains more faithful to Jehovah and his law, to the traditions of Moses, and to the race of David; but its languishing faith is no longer strong enough to arrest its march in the path of decline.In the two kingdoms, internal disorders are aggravated by reverses abroad; in the meantime, around them mighty empires spring up and succeed to each other. First Israel and then Judah are invaded by strangers; they are subjugated in turn by the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Babylonians. The Hebrews are not only vanquished and reduced to subjection, but exiled, transported, led captive far from their country. A new conqueror, Cyrus, permits them to return to Jerusalem; but not to resume their independence; at first subjects of the Persian kings, they soon pass from their empire to that of the Greek generals, who have divided amongst one another the conquests of Alexander; then to the rule of the Greeks succeeds that of the Romans. During this succession of servitudes, scarcely are they allowed any moments of existence as a free nation, and even this freedom is more apparent than real. Judea, like Greece, is subjugated, but under circumstances of greater humiliation and distress.
And shall, then, the Hebrews oppose no efficacious resistance to these reverses? What is to become, in this absolute ruin of the nationality of the Jews, of their God, and their faith? Shall the miracles of Sinai have no more virtue than the mysteries of Eleusis, and Jehovah languish away and vanish in the routine of sacerdotal ceremonies, or in philosophical scepticism?
By no means: in the midst of his people's decay, the God of Israel maintains interpreters who struggle with indomitable fidelity against public calamities and popular errors. The first of the prophets, Moses, had spoken in the name and according to the commandment of Jehovah. After him there never were wanting to Israel men who inherited or pretended to the heritage of the same Divine mission. "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee," said the Eternal unto Moses, "and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. …But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die." [Footnote 69]
[Footnote 69: Deuteronomy xviii. 18, 20.]
From Moses to Samuel, the series of the prophets is continued; some of them are of renown, like Nathan in the reigns of David and Solomon; but the greater number, without name in history, and appearing scattered over a long course of years. They are called theSeers, [Footnote 70] or the Inspired. [Footnote 71]
[Footnote 70: Roêh or Chozeh, in Hebrew.][Footnote 71: Nabi.]
Their speech gushes forth like a well under the breath of God. When the government of the Judges gives place to that of the Kings, the great actor in this drama of transition, Samuel, opens for the prophets a new era; dedicated from his infancy to God's service, he feels beforehand and abides the divine inspiration: "Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth." [Footnote 72]
[Footnote 72: 1 Samuel iii. 9, 10.]
Not long after, his renown spreads amongst the people; he is not pontiff, he is not even priest. [Footnote 73]
[Footnote 73: Samuel propheta fuit, judex fuit, levita fuit, non pontifex, ne saoerdos quidem.—St. Jerom adv. Jovinianum.]
But he is pre-eminently the seer: "Is not the seer here?" Such is the question addressed to some young maidens by the men who are in search of Samuel. Saul meets him without knowing him, and says to him, "I pray thee tell me where the house of the seer is." "I am the seer," replied Samuel; and soon after, it is Samuel himself, who, in compliance with the popular vote, approved by God, proclaims Saul king. But at the moment when he thus changes the theocracy in Israel into a monarchy, he foresees the vices and perils attendant upon the new government, and opposes to them the element of resistance drawn from their national beliefs and traditions; he transforms the order of prophets into a permanent institution; he founds schools of prophets, independent servants of Jehovah, consecrated to the defence of his law and the enunciation of his will;constituting a sort of congregation independent of both Church and State; leading, in fixed and appointed places,—at Rama, Bethel, Jericho, Jerusalem,—a life in common, but with out exclusive privileges; the sons of the prophets are brought up near their fathers; but still the mission of prophecy is accessible to all who have the call from God: "Go, thou seer," said the priest Amaziah, in his anger, to the prophet Amos, "flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court. Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son: but I was a herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: and the Eternal took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel." [Footnote 74]
[Footnote 74: Amos vii. 12-15.]
The prophets are neither priests nor monks: sprung from all the classes of the Jewish nation, their vocation is essentially independent. They belong to God alone, and await divine inspiration to oppose, as it may happen, at one time the tyranny of the kings, at another the passions of the populace, at another the corruption of the priesthood: their only arms, the commands of God and the gift of prophecy. The functions assigned to them are as different as the places and circumstances of their life; but they are ready to take any part and to encounter any peril: some of them, like Elijah and Elisha, are men of action and of combat; the others, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, are narrators, moralists, prophets; some devote themselves to attacks upon the acts of violence and impiety committed by the kings, the others to the vices and corruption of the people; the same spirit, however, animates them all; they are all interpreters and labourers of Jehovah; they defend, all of them, the faith of God against idolatry, justice and right against tyranny, the national independence against foreign dominion.In the name of the God of Abraham and of Jacob, they labour and succeed in maintaining or in reanimating religious and moral life amidst the decay and servitude of Israel. "All the time," says St. Augustine, "from the epoch when the holy Samuel began to prophesy, to the day when the people of Israel was led captive into Babylonia, is the period of the prophets." [Footnote 75]
[Footnote 75: De Civitate Dei, l. xvii. ch. 1.]
To accomplish their mission, to ensure their hard-earned successes, they had other arms than lamentations and exhortations, arising out of what was past and inevitable; other expedients than pious reproaches and expressions of regret. These defenders of the ancient faith of Moses do not shut themselves up within the external forms and rites of their religion; they pursue the moral object that it proposes; they insist upon the spirit that vivifies it. "Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth" (said the Lord, according to Isaiah): "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." [Footnote 76]
[Footnote 76: Isaiah i. 14-17.]
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord" (said the prophet Micah), "and bow myself before the high God? 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 firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed 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 God?" [Footnote 77]
[Footnote 77: Micah vi. 6-8.]
Even whilst calling the people of Israel back to the faith of their fathers, the prophets open to them new perspectives: whilst reproaching them with the errors that have led to their decay and servitude, they permit them yet to see the future delivery and regeneration. It is their divine character to live at once in the past and in the future; to confide alike to the ordinances of the Eternal and to his promises: they move forward, but they change not; they believe, they hope; they are faithful to Moses whilst they announce the Messiah.
Controversy has the mischievous power of the Homeric Jupiter: it collects clouds amidst which the light that we seek for disappears.
The Old and the New Testament, the history of the Jews and the history of Jesus Christ, lie before us. Do these two monuments form but one single edifice? That second history, is it comprised and written beforehand in the first?Such is the question which has for the last eighteen centuries occupied and divided the learned. Some affirm that Jesus Christ was foreseen and predicted among the Jews, and that the series of prophecies continued from the very time of Moses until the advent of Christ. Others lay stress upon the hiatus—the want of connection and cohesion—the contradictions to be detected here between the Old and New Testament; and thence they conclude that the text of the Old Testament by no means contains the facts that appear in the New Testament, and that the miraculous history of Jesus Christ was, in the bosom of Israel, neither miraculously foreseen nor predicted.
Why was it, and how was it possible, that two assertions so contradictory came to be both adopted and maintained by men most of them as sincere as learned?
They have all committed the fault of plunging into the petty details of facts and texts, searching in all places, without exception, for the complete demonstration of their particular theses, and losing sight of the great fact, the general and dominant fact to which we should refer as alone capable of solving the question. They descend into the mazy paths which perplex the plain below, instead of grasping from the summit of the mountains, the whole comprehensive view, and the grand road leading to the goal itself. Believers have insisted upon discovering, fact by fact, in the biblical prophecies the whole mission and all the life of Jesus. The incredulous, on the other hand, have minutely adverted to all the discrepancies, all the difficulties, suggested by a comparison of the texts of the Old Testament and of the Gospel narrative; they have contrasted the glories of the Messiah, the powerful King of Israel, so often announced by the prophets, with the humble life, the cruel death of Jesus, and with the ruin of Jerusalem.In my opinion, they have on both sides lost sight of the inward and essential characteristic of this sublime history; the special action of God is revealed therein, but without suppressing the action of men; miracles take their place in the midst of the natural course of events; the ambitious aspirations of the Jews connect themselves with the religious perspective opened to them by the prophets; the divine and the human, the inspiration from on high and the impulse of the national imagination, appear together. These two elements should be disentangled: the mind should be raised above the perplexing influences which they exercise, and the attention directed to that heavenly beam which pierces the vapours of this earthly atmosphere. Thus, all the embarrassment that controversy occasioned vanishing, the history yields to us its profound meanings, and, in spite of complications having their origin in the wordy explanations of man, the design of God makes itself manifest in all its majestic simplicity.
Discarding all discussion and commentary, let us merely collect, from epoch to epoch, the principal texts which speak of the advent of the future Messiah. I might here multiply citations, but I limit myself to those where the allusion is evident. It is the Bible, and the Bible alone, that is speaking.
The first act of disobedience to God, the act of original sin, has just been committed. The Eternal God says to the serpent that has seduced Eve: "Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. … And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." [Footnote 78]
[Footnote 78: Genesis iii. 14, 15.]
He that shall bruise the head of the serpent shall belong, says the Book of Genesis, to the race of Shem, to the posterity of Abraham and Jacob, to the kingdom of Judah. "But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in Israel." [Footnote 79]
[Footnote 79: Genesis ix. 26; xii. 3; xlix. 10; Micah v. 2.]
Israel is at its apogee of splendour: David prophesies alike the sufferings and the glory of that Saviour of the world who is to be not merely the King of Zion, but "the Son and the Anointed of the Eternal:" "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is the expression attributed to him by the prophet king. … "All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head. … They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. … They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. … He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. … Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. … All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee." [Footnote 80]
[Footnote 80: Psalms ii. 2, 6, 7; xxii. 1, 7; lxix. 21; xxii. 18, 8, 23, 27.]
The kingdom of David and of Solomon has begun to decay; Judah and Israel are separating; both kingdoms have their prophets, who at one time struggle against the crimes and evils of their respective ages, and, at another, occupy themselves in disclosing prospects of the future.
"Hear ye now, O house of David. …"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. …"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. …"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. …"And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:"And 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 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. …"Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. …"And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified."Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God."And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength."And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth. …"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."… For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him."He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."But he was wounded for our trangressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. …"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand."He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities."Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." [Footnote 81]
[Footnote 81: Isaiah vii. 13-14; ix. 26; xi. 14; xlix. 1-6; Zechariah ix. 9; Isaiah liii.]