Part 10

A metaphysician may, from time to time, affirm the moral law, and yet forget its Divine Author. A man may, now and then, admit, may respect the principles of morality, and yet remain estranged from religion; all this is possible, for all this we see. {186} So small a portion of Truth sometimes satisfies the human mind! Man is so ready and so prone to misconceive and to mutilate himself! His ideas are by nature so incomplete and inconsequent, so easily dimmed or perverted by his Passions or the action of his free will! These are but the exceptional conditions of the human mind, mere scientific abstractions; if men admit them, their influence is neither general nor durable. In the natural and actual life of the human race, Morality and Religion are necessarily united; and it is one of the divine characteristics of the Decalogue, as it is also one of the causes of that authority which has remained to it after the lapse of so many centuries, that it has proclaimed and taken as its foundation their intimate union.

This is not the place to consider the laws of Moses in civil and penal matters, nor to refer to his ordinances respecting the worship, or to those that regard the organization of the priesthood of the Hebrews. In the former of these two branches of the Mosaic code, numerous dispositions, singularly moral, equitable, and humane, are found in connection with circumstances indicating a state of manners gross and cruel even to barbarism.

{187}

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.

{188}

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.]

{189}

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.]

{190}

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]

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"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.]

{192}

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. {193} 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.

III. God And The Kings.

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.]

{194}

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.

{195}

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.]

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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.

{197}

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] {198} 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. {199} 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. {200} 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.]

{201}

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. {202} 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.

{203}

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. {204} 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. {205} 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.

{206}

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.

IV. God And The Prophets.