“At the hour in which Israel take their horns, and sound before the Holy One, blessed be He, He rises from the throne of judgment and sits on the throne of mercy, as it is written, ‘The Lord, with the sound of the trumpet’ (Ps. xlvii. 5); and he is filled with mercy towards them, and has pity upon them, and changes the attribute of judgment which was against them into mercy. When does this happen? In the seventh month.” (Vaijikra Rabbah, sect. 29.) This then is one of the means whereby the rabbies try to quiet a guilty conscience. If true, it would no doubt be very convenient for a man who has spent the year in iniquity, and who has not repented, and does not intend to repent, to get rid of all his sins by blowing a horn on the new year, and thus turning God’s wrath into mercy. But it is a statement altogether opposed to the Word of God, and derogatory to his character for mercy and for justice. No mere ceremonial act can atone for sin, neither does God need the blowing of a horn to remind him of mercy. To suppose, that such a miserable ceremony can stop God in his course of justice, and make him reverse his determinations, is to deprive him of all the attributes of Deity, and to represent him as exceeding in imbecility the weakest of all the sons of men that ever occupied the judgment-seat. And yet this most absurd and unscriptural hope is not merely a rabbinic legend, or an allegory, but is in the prayers of the synagogue gravely inserted as a devout petition:—
תחנה לתוקע לפני התקיעה , יהי רצון מלפניך יי אלהי ואלהי אבותי אלהי השמים ואלהי הארץ אלהי אברהם אלהי יצחק ואלהי יעקב האל הגדול הגבור והנורא שתשלח לי המלאכים הקדושים והטהורים נאמנים משרתים ונאמנים בשליחותם חפצים ורוצים לזכות את ישראל ואת המלאך הגדול פצפציה הממונה להוציא זכיותיהן של ישראל בעת שהם תוקעין בשופר ואת המלאך הגדול תשבש הממונה להשמיע זכיותיהן של ישראל ולהבעית השטן בתקיעתם ואת השרים הגדולים הממונים על השופר אנקתם פסתם ומלאכים הגדולים הדרניאל וסנדלפון הממונים על תקיעתנו המעלים תקיעתנו לפני כסא כבודך ואת המלאך שמשיאל הממונה על התרועה ואת המלאך פרסטא הממונה על קשר׳׳ק להיותם מזומנים בשליחותם להעלות תקיעתנו לפני הפרוכת ולפני כסא כבודך והמלא על עמך ישראל ברחמים ותכנס להם לפנים משורת הדין ותתנהג עם בניך במדת רחמים ותעלה תקיעתנּו לפני כסא כבודך וכו׳ ׃
The following prayer is said by the person who sounds the cornet, before he begins:—“May it be acceptable in thy presence, O Lord, my God, and the God of my fathers, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; the great God, mighty and tremendous; to send me the holy and pure angels, who are faithful ministers, and faithful in their message; and who are desirous and willing to justify Israel; and also the great angel Patzpatziah, who is appointed to present the merits of Israel, when they sound the cornet this day; and likewise the great angel Tashbach, who is appointed to declare the merits of Israel, and confound Satan with their sound of the cornet; and the great princes, who are appointed over the cornet, Enkatham and Pastam, and the great angels, Hadarniel and Sandalphon, who are appointed over our sounding, who introduce our sounding before the throne of thy glory; and also the angel Shamshiel, who is appointed over the joyful sound; and the angel Prasta, who is appointed to superintend קש׳׳רק that they may all be expeditious in their errand; to introduce our soundings before the veil, and before the throne of thy glory; and mayest thou be filed with mercy over thy people Israel; and lead us within the temperate line of strict justice; and conduct thyself towards thy children, with the attribute of mercy, and suffer our soundings to ascend before the throne of thy glory.” (Prayers for the New Year, p. 81.) Here, then, we have, in the language of solemn prayer, the very same monstrous doctrine, that the sounding of the cornet on the new year can change God’s determinations; and we have it in even a more objectionable form, for it is connected with other most unscriptural superstitions. This prayer asserts what is nowhere found in Holy Scripture, that there is a certain number of angels whose express office it is to superintend the blowing of the horn, and to bear the soundings thereof before the throne of God, and at the same time to advocate their merits. In the first place, this is a pure invention, and a fond superstition. In the Word of God, not one word is mentioned of anything of the kind. We should be sorry to treat any religious tenet of any people, but especially of the Jews, with ridicule, but we cannot help asking the good sense of every reader, whether the representation here given is not in the highest degree ridiculous? The angels are to be sent down from heaven. For what purpose? Is it to warn men of the impending wrath of God, or to announce the coming redemption of Israel, or to execute God’s judgments? No, but to attend to the blowing of a ram’s horn, and to carry up the sounds before the throne of God, that they may turn his attribute of judgment into that of mercy. Is it necessary, then, for the angels to interfere in this matter? cannot God hear the sounding of the cornet, unless it be conveyed to him by angels? or do the movings of his compassion depend upon the blowing of a cornet? What would Elijah have said to such doctrine as this? When the priests of Baal only cried aloud, he mocked them, and said, “Cry aloud, for he is a God; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.” (1 Kings xviii. 27.) And yet the priests of Baal were not sounding a cornet, that they might rouse their pretended Deity to compassion. If we had not read this prayer with our own eyes, we could scarcely have believed that even Rabbinism itself could have fallen into such manifest absurdity. But the subject is far too grave to be treated with levity. Upon this absurdity, the rabbies teach Israel to rest their hope of salvation. Conscious that the hope of justification by merit is fallacious, and yet unwilling to give up what is so palatable to the pride of man, they seek about to find something that will compensate for the deficiency, and in the eagerness of desperation grasp at any thing. The trivial ceremony of blowing the cornet was therefore turned into a mystery, and a suitable apparatus of angels invented to meet the apprehensions of the superstitious and unenlightened, and in some degree to take off the apparent irrationality of believing that an act so insignificant should effect a change so great in the purposes of the Almighty. But whatever was the motive or the origin of this fable, there it now stands in the prayers of the synagogue, to lead the ignorant away from the true means of justification, and the true ideas of God’s justice and God’s judgment. Let no man say it is an innocent error. No error is innocent. Error in every form is pernicious; in religion it is deadly. And the most mischievous of all religious errors are those which confirm men in the idea, that external ceremonies will atone for moral delinquencies; and this is precisely the tendency of the fable here noticed. An ignorant and superstitious man, and there are many such in every religion, finds in his Prayer-book that the blowing of the cornet can change the attribute of judgment into the attribute of mercy: he believes it to be true, not only because of the book where he finds it, but because every man is glad to hear of a way of acceptance, which will save the trouble of repentance and thorough change of heart and life. He therefore perseveres through the year in the practice of those things which his heart condemns, trusting that the blowing of the cornet will set all straight, and thus he goes on from year to year until death overtakes him hardened and impenitent, and he finds too late at the bar of God, that he has been in fatal error. Upon whom then will the guilt of such person’s destruction be charged? Not only upon those who invented the falsehood, but on those also who sanction it, who leave it in the Prayer-book, and thus practically teach the people superstition. Every Jew who attends the worship of the synagogue is responsible in his station and calling, for the error and falsehood which its prayers propagate amongst the people. But at all events every person who disbelieves this story of the angels carrying up the sounding of the cornet, must grant that a system teaching such a method of salvation is very unsafe; and that, as it grossly errs in this one article it is suspicious in all. But besides the absurdity of this doctrine, we must notice its inconsistency. The Prayer-book states that the blowing of the cornet is necessary to the procuring of pardon; it therefore implies that pardon is necessary, and therefore that Israel is guilty; what, then, becomes of merits? If Israel can be justified by merits, the blowing of the cornet is superfluous; for, in that case, all they want is justice. Where a man can claim salvation because of all his good deeds, he need not fear the attribute of righteousness, מדת הדין, and does not want the attribute of mercy. But the moment that he acknowledges his need of forgiveness, he confesses that he has no merits. If, therefore, the Prayer-book be right in acknowledging sin and praying for pardon, the oral law is wrong in teaching justification by merits. One contradicts the other, and therefore they cannot both be from God; and the man who believes both is guilty of renouncing his reason. But the man who trusts his salvation to a system so inconsistent with itself, is utterly devoid of wisdom. He is hazarding his eternal welfare on the testimony of a witness who contradicts himself; who says at one time, that a man can be saved by his merits, and at another time that he has no merits that can stand the scrutiny of God’s righteous judgment.
No. XXXV.
JUSTIFICATION.
The doctrine of justification by merits is agreeable, and seems very reasonable, so long as a man can theorize, that is, so long as he is not in earnest. But so soon as the prospect of death, or any other similar circumstance, compels him to realize the act of Divine judgment upon himself, it loses all its beauty and plausibility; the conscience is unsatisfied by its consolations, and reason pronounces that the hope built on merits is insecure. A solemn and earnest review of our past years soon convinces, that our good deeds are but few, that our best deeds are defiled by mixed motives; and, above all, that the love of God has not been the heart’s dominant principle, and that, therefore, some other mode of justification is absolutely necessary. The truth of this statement is confirmed by the inconsistency of the oral law with itself. The great principle of the oral law is, that the observance of any one of its commands, purchases a certain quantity of merit, and that an accumulation of these merits will, at last, constitute a sufficiency; but when the solemn season of the New Year and the Day of Atonement arrives, this sufficiency is found to be insufficient, and the alarmed conscience eagerly looks round to find something, that may compensate for the deficiency of merit. We have already noticed some of the rabbinic inventions for this purpose, and now proceed to consider another, and that is, the merit of their progenitors. One of the main props of rabbinic hope is the righteousness of their forefathers, as may be seen almost on every page of the Jewish Prayer-book, and as is apparent in the following extracts:—
קשת רוח אשר הועקרה , רופאה לקץ תשעים כנתבקרה , שלחה פאורות ולא שקרה , תפן בנצרים אשר חוללו כהיום , ושלש עקרות שהפקדו בזה יום , תצדיק בצדקתם מיחליך איום ׃
“She who was sorrowful when barren, was made to rejoice with good tidings when ninety years of age; she then sent forth shoots that failed not. Regard the merit of your ancestors who were born on this day, and the three barren ones, who were visited on this day: justify, through their righteousness, those who hope in thee, O Thou, who art tremendous.” (Levi’s Prayer for the New Year, p. 61.)
And again—
את חיל יום פקודה , באימיו כל לחום לשקדה , גשים בו ברך ליקודה , דעם לישר כעל מוקדה , היוצר יחד כסל נשפט , ושוע ודל בפלוס יושפט , זכר לא יעשה משפט , חין ערכו יזכר במשפט , טרם כל מפעל חצב , יזם במחשבת צור חוצב , כאחור וקדם בתוך נחצב , ליהב עליו כל המחצב , מנתו כהיום כח דושנה , נצר להחניט לתשעים שנה , סוימה אות היות לשושנה , עבור לפניו בזה ראש השנה , פולצו פרחיה בזה יום , צגתם פני כס איום , קול דבובם ירחישו כהיום , רוגשים להריע למצוא פדיום , שעונים עליה בה להפקדה , שואגים בלהק דלתות לשקדה , תמוכים בדשן שה עקידה , תשר אשר בו נפקדה ׃
“The fearful day of visitation is come, its dread goads all flesh; they present themselves with bended knees; O may their repentance be accounted as a burnt-offering. Thou who hast formed them judgest all their thoughts: the rich and poor are all weighed in the balance; remember the merit of him who said, ‘Shall he not do justice?’ O, remember the tenor of his prayer in judgment. Ere ought was created didst thou purpose to ordain him the rock from whence the nation was to spring; he was as the centre, the support of all creatures. His wife was on this day endued with youth, to cause the branch to put forth at ninety years of age; she was appointed as a sign to those who are likened to the rose, who are to pass before thee in judgment on this New Year’s-day. Her posterity tremble this day; when they stand before thy terrible throne; they utter the voice of prayer this day; they assemble to sound the cornet, that they may obtain redemption. They depend on her merit to be visited like her; their assemblies cry aloud and hasten to enter into thy doors. They depend on the ashes of him who was bound as a lamb,[[30]] with whom she was visited in the month Tishri.” (Ibid., p. 57.) The offering of Isaac is regarded as particularly meritorious, and constantly urged as a plea for merit. Thus—