After the restoration had taken place, fulfilling the predictions of the prophets under circumstances very different from those which they had expected, the Messianic ideal had, of course, to be disconnected from it. Sufficient ground still existed for looking forward to the coming of the Messiah. Israel was only semi-independent, a small state at the mercy of Gentile masters. But the disappointment of the Messianic expectations which had been connected with the restoration must have given a blow to the spirit of prediction. During the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the voices of the prophets grew faint and feeble; and after the restoration was complete, only one broke the silence. The Jews had to fall back on faith in the ultimate fulfilment of earlier prophecies, regarding the establishment of Judaism as the religion of all Israel, as the beginning of the reconciliation of Jahveh and his people which should finally secure their prosperity.
So far as the Messianic ideal of the prophets took this national form, it greatly helped to effect their union with the people. All the people were thoroughly at one with them in wishing for the national glory of Israel. If, by proclaiming Jahveh’s anger and predicting misfortunes, they excited popular displeasure and dislike, equally, by promising his favour and predicting prosperity, they excited popular feelings of pleasure and good-will. In fact, this part of their preaching sugared the pill of their denunciations, and probably had a large share in giving them their final success. As the condition of Israel grew more desperate, their confidence in an ultimate revival of good fortune must have seemed a tower of strength to desponding minds. During the captivity, when their store of malediction had become exhausted, and only that of blessing remained, they promised nothing but happiness. This, of course, would render the prophetic religion agreeable to the people, and so must have contributed to make it the religion of Israel.
Though most of the prophets included in their Messianic dreams the material greatness of Israel, they were far too highly developed to look for this alone. The noble morality, the noble conception of God, which formed the essence of their religion, made social and political prosperity seem to them of only secondary value. In their ideas, the chief result of the Messiah’s coming was to be the reconciliation of Jahveh and his people through their abandonment of sin. They expected the establishment of a new covenant, that could not be broken like the old, when the law of Jahveh should be written in the hearts of Israel.[37] The grandest religious language the world has ever known is the expression of this dream of a people wholly free from sin; the heavenly new Jerusalem of Christianity is only a vague copy of the ideal Jerusalem which the prophets imagined for earth.
This vision of a sinless age was present to all the prophets, and is the chief feature of their prophecies. It was preserved in the sacred literature of the Jews; and, after forming for centuries a perpetual incentive to religious purity, it finally produced all that is best in Christianity. Back to it are traceable the forces which moulded the personal character of Christ, and stamped upon Christianity its noble morality. The first Christians not only believed in the coming of this ideal age, but struggled actually to realize it, and made the nearest possible approach to success. In the hopes of most of the prophets it was closely connected with the national Messianic ideal, the vision of Israel as a prosperous and powerful state. But it was also connected, in the minds of the noblest prophets, with another Messianic ideal, which I will call the spiritual Messianic ideal—the vision of the whole world reconciled to God, which produced Christianity itself.
As pure monotheists, the prophets believed that Jahveh was not merely god of Israel, but God, the creator and ruler of the world. Naturally, this belief that the God of the universe was their national god was to them a source of intense spiritual pride. Amos makes Jahveh say to Israel, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth,”[38] and give this fact as a reason for his severity, as Israel, being so highly favoured, had sinned doubly in disobedience to him. Such intense spiritual pride, of course, tended to diminish their purely political pride. Their race, so greatly distinguished in religion, could afford to dispense with material glory. While, viewed thus from a patriotic standpoint, the belief that the God of the world was Israel’s Jahveh was a source of national pride, it also suggested a means of gratifying national vanity. The homage of subject peoples constituted the chief attraction of material empire. Here, however, was a chance of receiving the homage, not merely of a few nations around them, but of all mankind. Knowing the universal God, the Israelites might become a nation of priests by leading all men to a knowledge of him their maker, and so have a glory and authority far greater than any that could be given by political power.
It would not be fair to say that the prophets, in the formation of this ideal, were influenced only by patriotism. Spiritually they were too great not to feel the need of a reconciliation between the world and its God. In the mind of the noblest of them, Israel was the servant of the Gentiles, a messenger of God bringing glad tidings of peace to men. Still, on the whole, the glory of Israel was the object of their zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles. They dreamed of all the world coming to take the truth meekly from Israel’s hands.[39] Jerusalem was to be the sacred city of the earth, and Judæa, as afterwards during the Crusades, the Holy Land. The second Isaiah gives the highest expression to this dream. “Nations shall come to thy light,” Jahveh promises Jerusalem, “and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee. Thy gates also shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the riches of the nations. The sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and they shall call thee the city of Jahveh, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.”[40] As spiritual guides and teachers, the Israelites thus would be the Levites of mankind, a sacred people intermediate between the world and God.[41]
The spiritual Messianic ideal of the second Isaiah was both nobler and more vividly conceived than that of any other of the prophets. But nearly all of them have given some expression to it. Even the fiercely national Jeremiah, who hated the Gentiles so bitterly that, though he believed them to be Jahveh’s instruments for the chastisement of Israel, he prayed that they might be punished for their assaults on the sacred city, had a vision of their coming to Jahveh.[42] And, indeed, there was an inevitable pressure on the prophets which forced them in this direction. In proportion as the spiritual greatness of their religion was understood by them, they were driven to adopt the spiritual Messianic ideal. The experiences of the prophetic period, besides, must have shown them how impossible it was that the small people of Israel should ever equal or surpass in material power the mighty Gentile empires which then first came in contact with them. So everything tended to make them seek the satisfaction of their patriotism in the extension of their religion.
So far as this ideal entered into it, an inversion in the relations of political and religious feeling now occurred in Judaism. Previously, as pointed out in the last chapter, Jahveh being the national god of Israel, religious feeling flowed in a patriotic channel. In the prophetic age, on the other hand, patriotic feeling began to flow in a religious channel. Jahveh before had been subordinate to Israel; then Israel became subordinate to Jahveh. It is obvious that there was nothing exceptional in this change, and that the circumstances of Jewish history amply explain its occurrence.
Here, accordingly, we have the historical explanation of the production of Christianity. From the beginning Jahvism was bound to develop into a noble monotheism. Also from the beginning it was a national religion. Being a national religion, in it patriotic was blended with religious feeling. Under these circumstances, if, after its full development, a permanent decay took hold of the state with which it was connected, it had, as an exceptionally pure religion, to become the basis of national pride, to make proselytism its end. But the history of the world during this central period of Judaism is the history of the great empires of western Asia. The small people of Israel could offer no effective resistance to their power, and so, under pressure from them, the magnificent national religion of Israel was compelled to become the expression of patriotism, and to aim at the conversion of the world. So far, then, as Christianity was a movement towards the establishment of the Jewish religion as the religion of the world—and at first it was nothing else—it was inevitable. The conditions of Israel’s history made an expansion of Judaism—or rather, an attempt to expand Judaism, its success depending on external circumstances—a necessary occurrence.