form. They differed from the priests in preferring the moral part of the law to the ceremonial. They were great reformers in bringing back the people from external formalism to vital obedience. They constantly made the ceremonial part of the law subservient to the moral part of the law. Thus Samuel said to Saul: "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." And so afterward Isaiah declared in the name of the Lord, that the sacrifices of a wicked people were vain, and their incense an abomination.

We read of the schools of the Prophets, where they studied the law of Moses, and were taught the duties of their office. In these schools music was made use of as a medium of inspiration.

But the office of a prophet was not limited by culture, sex, age, or condition. Women, like Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah, and Noadiah; inexperienced youths, like Jeremiah; men of high standing in society, like Isaiah and Daniel; humble men, like the ploughman Elisha and the herdsman Amos; men married and unmarried, are numbered among the Prophets. Living poorly, wearing sackcloth, feeding on vegetables, imprisoned or assassinated by kings, stoned by the people, the most unpopular of men, sometimes so possessed by the spirit as to rave like madmen, obliged to denounce judgments and woes against kings and people, it is no wonder that they often shrank from their terrible office. Jonah ran to hide in a ship of Tarshish. They have called their message a burden, like Isaiah; they have cried out like Jeremiah, "Ah, Lord God, I cannot speak, for I am a child"; like Ezekiel, they have been obliged to make their faces harder than flints in order to deliver their message.

Dean Stanley, in speaking of the Prophets of the Old Testament, says that their theology consisted in proclaiming the unity of God against all polytheism, and the spirituality of God against all idolatry, in declaring the superiority of moral to ceremonial duties, and in announcing the supremacy of goodness above the letter, ceremony, or

dogma. This makes the contrast between the Prophets. and all other sacred persons who have existed in pagan and, he adds, even in Christian times. Dean Stanley says the Prophets were religious teachers, without the usual faults of religious teachers, and he proposes them as an example to the Christian clergy. He says: "O, if the spirit of our profession, of our order, of our body, were the spirit, or anything like the spirit, of the ancient Prophets! If with us truth, charity, justice, fairness to opponents, were a passion, a doctrine, a point of honor, to be upheld with the same energy as that with which we uphold our own position and our own opinions!"

The spirit of the world asks first, Is it safe? secondly, Is it true? The spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it true? secondly, Is it safe? The spirit of the world asks first, Is it prudent? secondly, Is it right? The spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it right? secondly, Is it prudent? Taken as a whole, the prophetic order of the Jewish Church remains alone. It stands like one of those vast monuments of ancient days, with ramparts broken, with inscriptions defaced, but stretching from hill to hill, conveying in its long line of arches the pure rill of living water over deep valley and thirsty plain, far above all the puny modern buildings which have grown up at its feet, and into the midst of which it strides with its massive substructions, its gigantic height, its majestic proportions, unrivalled by any erection of modern time.

The predictions of the future by the Prophets of Judæa were far higher in their character than those which come occasionally to mankind through dreams and presentiments. Yet no doubt they proceeded from the same essentially human faculty. This also is asserted by the Dean of Westminster, who says that there is a power of divination granted in some inexplicable manner to ordinary men, and he refers to such instances as the prediction of the discovery of America by Seneca, that of the Reformation by Dante, and the prediction of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the apparition of twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood four hundred years before its actual accomplishment. If such presentiments

are not always verified, neither were the predictions of the Prophets always fulfilled. Jonah announced, in the most distinct and absolute terms, that in forty days Nineveh should be destroyed. But the people repented, and it was not destroyed. Their predictions of the Messiah are remarkable, especially because in speaking of him and his time they went out of the law and the spirit of the law, and became partakers of the spirit of the Gospel. The Prophets of the Jews, whatever else we deny to their predictions, certainly foresaw Christianity. They describe the coming of a time in which the law should be written in the heart, of a king who should reign in righteousness, of a prince of peace, of one who should rule by the power of truth, not by force, whose kingdom should be universal and everlasting, and into which all nations of the earth should flow. What the Prophets foresaw was not times nor seasons, not dates nor names, not any minute particulars. But they saw a future age, they lived out of their own time in another time, which had not yet arrived. They left behind them Jewish ceremonialism, and entered into a moral and spiritual religion. They dropped Jewish narrowness and called all mankind brethren. In this they reach the highest form of foresight, which is not simply to predict a coming event, but to live in the spirit of a future time.

Thus the Prophets developed the Jewish religion to its highest point. The simple, childlike faith of Abraham became, in their higher vision, the sight of a universal Father, and of an age in which all men and nations should be united into one great moral kingdom. Further than this, it was not possible to go in vision. The difference between the Prophets and Jesus was, that he accomplished what they foresaw. His life, full of faith in God and man, became the new seed of a higher kingdom than that of David. He was the son of David, as inheriting the loving trust of David in a heavenly Father; he was also the Lord of David, by fulfilling David's love to God with his own love to man; making piety and charity one, faith and freedom one, reason and religion one, this life and the life to come one. He died to accomplish this union and to make this atoning sacrifice.

§ 7. Judaism as a Preparation for Christianity.

After the return from the captivity the Jewish nation remained loyal to Jehovah. The dangers of polytheism and idolatry had passed. We no more hear of either of these tendencies, but, on the contrary, a rigid and almost bigoted monotheism was firmly established. Their sufferings, the teaching of their Prophets, perhaps the influence of the Persian worship, had confirmed them in the belief that Jehovah was one and alone, and that the gods of the nations were idols. They had lost forever the sacred ark of the covenant and the mysterious ornaments of the high-priest. Their kings had disappeared, and a new form of theocracy took the place of a royal government. The high-priest, with the great council, became the supreme authority. The government was hierarchal.

Hellenic influences began to act on the Jewish mind, and a peculiar dialect of Hebrew-Greek, called the Hellenistic, was formed. The Septuagint, or Greek version of the Old Testament, was made in Alexandria about B. C. 260. In Egypt, Greek philosophy began to affect the Jewish mind, the final result of which was the system of Philo. Greek influences spread to such an extent that a great religious revolution took place in Palestine (B. c. 170), and the Temple at Jerusalem was turned into a temple of Olympic Jupiter. Many of the priests and leading citizens accepted this change, though the heart of the people rejected it with horror. Under Antiochus the Temple was profaned, the sacrifices ceased, the keeping of the Sabbath and use of the Scriptures were forbidden by a royal edict. Then arose the Maccabees, and after a long and bitter struggle re-established the worship of Jehovah, B. C. 141.

After this the mass of the people, in their zeal for the law and their old institutions, fell into the narrow bigotry of the Pharisees. The Sadducees were Jewish Epicureans, but though wealthy were few, and had little influence. The Essenes were Jewish monks, living in communities, and as little influential as are the Shakers in Massachusetts to-day. They were not only few, but their

whole system was contrary to the tone of Jewish thought, and was probably derived from Orphic Pythagoreanism.*

The Talmud, that mighty maze of Jewish thought, commencing after the return from the captivity, contains the history of the gradual progress and development of the national mind. The study of the Talmud is necessary to the full understanding of the rise of Christianity. Many of the parables and precepts of Jesus may have had their origin in these traditions and teachings. For the Talmud contains much that is excellent, and the originality of Jesus was not in saying what never had been thought before, but in vitalizing all old truth out of a central spiritual life. His originality was not novelty, but vitality. We have room here but for a single extract.†

"Six hundred and thirteen injunctions,' says the Talmud, was Moses instructed to give to the people. David reduced them all to eleven, in the fifteenth Psalm: Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle who shall dwell on thy holy hill ? He that walketh uprightly,' &c.

"The Prophet Isaiah reduced them to six (xxxiii. 15): He that walketh righteously,' &c.

"The Prophet Micah reduced them to three (vi. 8): What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

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

ye

"Amos (v. 4) reduced them all to one: Seek ye me and shall live.

"But lest it might be supposed from this that God could be found in the fulfilment of his whole law only, Habakkuk said (ii. 4): The just shall live by his faith.'"

Thus we have seen the Jewish religion gradually developed out of the family worship of Abraham, through the national worship of the law to the personal and filial trust of David, and the spiritual monotheism of Job and the Prophets. Through all these changes there ran the one golden thread of faith in a Supreme Being who was not hidden and apart from the world, but who came to man as to his child.

* Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew.

+ See article on the Talmud, Quarterly Review, 1867.