VI.
The period of the Restoration, from B.C. 536.
The common notion is that this period of Israel's history was practically a vacuum, and that through five centuries the nation experienced no further development. In reality, it was an exceedingly active period, characterized by most important developments. Politically it was a period of constantly changing influences. Israel was scarcely ever really independent during these centuries. Her changes were the changes from one master to another. But this very subjection aided her intellectual development, as she was thus brought under the direct action of foreign ideas. Her rapid growth of population forced upon her a system of emigration, that drew off her youth to the great centres of the world and established large colonies in every leading city. Israel was never left to settle down again into provincialism, but was stirred by the currents of the great world of thought that poured in upon her from Greece and Egypt, from Rome and the far East. "A cross-fertilization of ideas" was thus carried on by Providence. The result of grafting the richest varieties of thought upon such a sturdy stock could not fail of proving something rare and rich. As was natural from such conditions, the thought of the nation took on new forms. Calm study of nature and man, and rational speculation on the great problems of life displaced impassioned and imaginative thought. Prophecy gave way to philosophy. The sages became the teachers of men. The third class of books in the Old Testament Canon, known by the Jews as the Writings, belong to this period; Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Jonah, Daniel, etc. To this period also belongs the Apocrypha, which contains some noble books. These varied writings show, when critically studied, a direct bearing on the problems that we know were occupying the mind of the nation during this period, and illustrate the tendencies working among the people. We thus see, plainly, the growth of the seeds of noble thought which were sown in the national consciousness during the exile, and the growth of the rich germs wafted into Judea from Greece and Egypt.
We can trace the development of the circle of ideas which, later on, crystallized, under the ethical and spiritual force of Jesus into the theology of Christianity. We watch the embryonic stages of this thought-body, which at length awaited only the breathing within it of an informing spirit to issue in a new and noble religion.
Nor was this period of the Restoration merely one of intellectual development, else there would have been no such issue as came at length. It was a period of quiet ethical and spiritual development. No prophet arose, indeed, to quicken Israel, but the ancient prophets still spake from the institutions into which they had breathed somewhat of their spirit, and from the holy books which were read in every synagogue, and learned in every home. The temple worship of this period retained the old forms of sacrifice; but charged them with spiritual significances which are difficult for us to associate with such bloody rites, did we not know how easily the religious spirit adapts itself to any outward ceremonies, and transforms them into its own life. The soul spurns the symbols to which it yet will cling, and soars beyond the poor height to which the laboring wings of ordinance and ritual can carry it. The profound spiritual life which was awakened in the exile flooded these low forms with supernal light. They spoke to men of better sacrifices than the blood of bulls and lambs—of sins slaughtered and fleshly powers consumed, of lives of men offered up in purity to God. They whispered to the soul of the holiness of God, and of His forgiveness as well; and, in their powerlessness to satisfy the spiritual needs suggested by them, they kept men's eyes upon the future, looking for the Prophet greater than Moses, who would surely come from behind the veil with a new word from God. Out of such thoughts and feelings the temple worship drew upon itself a noble service of song, of whose ethical and spiritual beauty we can judge from the temple hymnal. You and I to-day have sung some of the very hymns which those Jews chanted around their brazen altar. Through these psalms of many ages, gathered into a hymnal of unrivalled nobleness, the worship of Israel ascended in the aspirations of the people after purity and righteousness. If the choirs sang of the Shepherd of Israel, it was not merely in the praises of the providential care felt over the chosen people, but in the thankfulness of souls, because of the assurance of His spiritual guidance:
He shall convert my soul,
And bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
If they chanted the glories of the House of God, it was because thither the tribes came up, with this desire in the hearts of the worshippers:
Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks,
So longeth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul is athirst for God. Yea, even for the living God:
When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?
O send out thy light and thy truth:
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.
Then will I go up unto the altar of God,
Unto God, the gladness of my joy:
Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee,
O God, my God.
The temple, however, was but a part, and practically a small part, of the institutionalism of religion in this period. This was the era of the scribe rather than of the priest. Ezra came back to Jerusalem with a new treasure, "The Law." Around this sacred book, which soon added to itself the writings of the Prophets, the religious life of the nation really crystallized. To read and expound it, now that "no vision came to the prophets from The Eternal," became the highest office of religion, an office purely ethical and spiritual. In every town of the land the Meeting-house arose, opening its doors upon the Sabbath and on market days, to the villagers, who gathered for a simple service of instruction and devotion. The service began with a short prayer, which was followed by the recitation of some portions of "The Law," setting forth the great beliefs and duties of the Jewish religion—a confession of faith, in other words. After this came the long prayer, which, in later times, became liturgical; and then the reading of the lesson for the day from "The Law," with its interpretation, when Hebrew had become a dead language. Then followed a reading from the Prophecies, and a homily or sermon based upon the passage read. In their synagogues the Jews worshipped much as we are doing in this church to-day.
Through such a quiet deepening of the life of the people was the nation preparing for its final development of religion.
True it is that in the latter part of this period the nation showed unmistakable signs of being overtrained. The hedge made about the Law had fenced men off from one thing after another until, to men who were anxious not to offend, life became a weary burden. There was scarcely an action that might not involve sin. The natural effect of externalizing the commands of conscience followed; and the ethical aims which had been sought were well nigh lost in the routine of form and ceremony, and in the fine-spun distinctions of belief and conduct. A great-souled Jew found, later on, as hosts of his fellow-countrymen had found before him, that by the works of the Thorah (law or teaching) could no flesh be justified. The very Book which had fed so deep a life had come to stand between the soul and God, a barrier to the fresh, free inspirations from on high. Religion had run out upon the surface, and was dying. But it was as the tassels wither and whiten when the corn is ripe within the husk and ready to seed down a new season.
Plainly, by every sign, Israel's long gestation of Religion was nearing its appointed term. All the elements had been developed, one after another, for a Universal Religion, and there was nothing more to be done but to await the coming to the birth. As plainly, by every sign, the world-conditions were at length found for a safe issue of the "holy thing" which Israel so long had carried within her bosom. There was needed a man to body these scattered elements, to fuse the forces of the nation into a personality, to live the dreams which a race had visioned. Religion is never a code nor a theory, it is always a life. The ideal religion awaited the ideal man. He came! As the nation held the holy child Jesus in her arms, joying that a MAN was born into the world, she might have been overheard singing:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
According to thy word:
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles,
And the glory of thy people Israel.
The historical reality of Jesus is unquestionable. The essential features of his life and thought are distinctly outlined through the mist of time, and above the clouds of legend that hang low upon the horizon where he disappeared. The threefold tradition preserves a clear-cut image of the Son of Man. We see One in whom the ideals of Israel found a perfect realization. He brought to the flower the conception of religion whose germ lay seeded down in the Ten Words of Moses. In him worship and aspiration were one. He lived the ethical and spiritual religion after which the nation had patiently striven, through prophet and priest and sage, through psalmist and through scribe. He lived the vision of human goodness which holy men of old had never succeeded in bringing down into the flesh, beyond a blurred blocking in of the heavenly ideal. He lived man's dream of goodness so gloriously that he became a more than man, in whom was felt the coming nigh of the Eternal Holy One. The human form divine, to which mankind aspired, took on its true and awful splendor, as the image of the God whom the conscience worshipped. Every passing "I would be," of the saints of old looked forth, transfigured from the face of One who said "I AM."
True to Israel's ancient dream, around this righteous suffering servant of the Eternal, the nations gathered, to be taught of God. The souls to whom He gave power to become the sons of God became the family of the Heavenly Father, in which there was "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ was all and in all." In this holy brotherhood of the children of the All-Father, we moderns take our places round our elder brother; feeling sure that we have found the spiritual band or religion wherein society is to be held together, through each man's holding hard by the God who is the perfection of His own highest dreams.
Such then being the fact of Israel's historic travail and such her issue, our fathers' sense of the supreme significance of Christ in human history takes on a new light in our new knowledge.
The problem of religion is to find such a knowledge of the Being in whom we live and move and have our being, as shall lead men's awe before this mysterious Power up into an awe of a Power whom we may rightly worship, trust and love. To find the key to this problem is to hold the secret of all the puzzles of our weary world. Before the Power "manifest in the flesh" in Jesus Christ, our souls hush, in an awe which breathes within us worship, trust and love. And if this Power be the very Power felt in history and in nature, whose ways therein are so often baffling to the moral sense, then all is well. But, if this be so, the holy Power who is shrined in Christ must show the features of the Mind which tabernacles in nature. There can be no contradiction. Unquestionably an essential characteristic of the Mind in nature is the method of its action. There is a reign of Law. The highest generalization of the methods of this law which man has reached reveals this Power as acting, through every sphere, in continuous progressive development. One word embodies this supreme generalization—evolution. Christianity must fit into this universal order. Otherwise it either denies that order, which denial cannot be received; or it is denied by that order, which denial is very certain to be increasingly received. God "cannot deny Himself!" "I change not."
Here is where Christianity's hold of the human mind hinges in our age. The old reading of the history of the preparation for Christ separated "those whom God hath joined together." The new reading of that preparation restores the needful unity.
Christianity is no exception amid the general order of nature. It follows that providential plan. It grows from seed to flower. Its beginnings were in a simple conception of ethical religion begotten in a heathen people through Moses. In the womb of the nation it lay dormant till the time for quickening came. Thenceforward it slowly assimilated the vital forces and nutritive elements of the organic life within which it grew, until the hour arrived when it burst the maternal womb, a perfect birth. Christianity is a genuine historic evolution.
When we have said this, have we accounted for it? To none save those who, in mastering the methods of a process of evolution, fancy that they have mastered its sources. To none save those who, familiarizing themselves with the order of life, think that they have resolved its nature. The wiser portion of mankind do not find in How a synonym for Whence. We still ask whence? When we see the issue of a long and complicated plan, we postulate a planning mind. When we trace, through the sketches and studies in a studio, the gradual embodiment of a vision of loveliness, which at length looks down upon us in its perfect grace from the canvas on the wall, we cannot be persuaded out of our conviction that some artist has lived and labored in this studio, patiently evolving his great dream. When we see a new-born child we do not think that we have learned its parentage in being told about its mother. We want to know who fathered it into being.
What mind planned this process of a nation's growth into a universal religion? What artist dreamed this ethical and spiritual ideal? Who begat this "holy thing" conceived in Israel and born of her at length in glorious beauty? If Moses was the human parent of this marvellous child, who fathered the "essential Christ" in Moses? Who is the real father of Jesus Christ?
Our only answer must be that given of old:
When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His son.... The true Light, which lighteth every man, was coming on into the world.... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.
If this then be the true interpretation of the evolution of the Christ, we hold, in the doctrine of the Incarnation, the secret of all evolution. We must read the story of every development in the light of the highest life of man, himself the highest life of nature. Nature is in travail with an ideal which rose not in the molten suns, though perchance it did rise through them.
The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Man is in travail with an ideal which rose not in the anthropoid apes, though it may have risen through them. A finer, larger, nobler man is growing within the man that is.
The Universal Man is now coming to be a real being in the individual mind.
Mankind, which is one physically and mentally, is one morally and spiritually. All varieties of man are built upon one ethical type. The virtues are cosmopolitan. One human ideal looms above and before all races, though refracted differently in the changing atmospheres of earth. Within the saints one dream of goodness forms.
Over the seers and sages one vision of the source of human goodness rises. Through the clouds of earth one Infinite and Eternal Form shapes itself to the wise. As men rise they meet. The race-souls are strangely alike. Socrates and Buddha are brothers. Humanity is in travail with one Human Ideal and one Divine Image, and these twain are one. The great Mother sings to herself:
But he, the man-child glorious,
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.My boreal lights leap upward,
Forth right my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the Whole.I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.
Will Humanity come to the birth with her beloved son? Who that reads the story of the coming of the Hebrew Christ can doubt it? What miscarriage can befall her who is nursed by Nature and tended by Providence? What will the Coming Man be like? We have seen his face break through the flesh for a moment. On the shoulders of the race will rest the head of Christ. What shall be said when the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy that MAN is born upon the earth?
The Holy Ghost hath come upon thee, Humanity, and the power of the Highest hath overshadowed thee; therefore also, that holy thing which is born of thee, shall be called the Son of God.
This, at least, is my reading of nature and of history in the light of the completed evolution of the Christ. The normal growth through history of the Ideal Man, is the incarnation of the Divine Man. The mischievous antithesis between the realms of the natural and the supernatural, that kept the world's thought from crystallizing around the world's soul, disappears in an Order which is at once natural in all its processes, and supernatural in its source and plan and energy.
We hold the key to all earth's problems in the vision of God which, gleaming through nature and through man, dawns in the face of Jesus Christ. Over Him—in whom the Human Ideal becomes the Divine Image, and the most perfect dream of human goodness is the revelation of earth's God—the Eternal One breaks silence, whispering to our souls:
This is my Beloved Son: Hear Him!