Part 11

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. {207} 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. {208} 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. {209} 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. {210} 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. {211} 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.

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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. ... {213} 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 the _Seers_, [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.]

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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; {215} 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.]

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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. {217} 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. {218} 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.]

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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.

V. Expectation Of 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? {220} 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?

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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. {222} 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.

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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.]

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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.]

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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. ...

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"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.

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"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.]

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