The threefold nature educated
The education, however, was not only moral and intellectual, but physical as well; for every Jewish boy was taught some trade which rendered him self-supporting. Nor did wealth or position remove the need of this. Paul, who sat at the feet of Gamaliel while studying the law, was able to gain a livelihood as a tentmaker when preaching the gospel.
True teaching exemplified
There was, however, in it all this one thought: all instruction was intended to develop the spiritual nature. It was considered the highest honor to become a priest (every Jew might have been both priest and teacher), and in this office man stood next to God. This was wholly a spiritual position, and prefigured the work of the Messiah. True, Israel as a nation never reached the standard set for her, never mounted, as it were, that ladder reaching from earth to heaven; and it was left for the One Man, the Master of Israel, to bind together the two realms of the physical and the spiritual. But from time to time men arose in the Jewish nation who grasped in a far broader sense than the majority, the meaning of true education as delivered to the Jews, and who, by submitting to the educating influence of the Spirit of God, were enabled to become leaders of the people and representatives of God on earth. Such were Moses, Daniel, Job, and Ezekiel, and, to a certain extent, all the prophets of Israel. In each of these the soul rose above the physical man, until it met its parent force in the heart of God. This made it possible for Moses to talk face to face with the Father, and for Ezekiel to follow the angel of revelation to the border land of God’s home.
These men were but enjoying what every man in Israel might have experienced had the nation remained upon the plane to which they were called, receiving their education by faith. One is tempted to ask why they fell. The answer is the same as to that other question, Why do not we arise? They ceased to look upward; faith failed, and reason took its place, and instead of leading they sought to be like the nations about them.
Worldly systems of education
There lay Egypt, with its mighty men, and the carnal heart longed for some of the Egyptian display. To understand it, we must again consider the difference in life and education. Life on the spiritual plane means whole self-forgetfulness; but when carnal desires are heeded, a fall is inevitable. Egyptian education was largely on the physical basis. It is true that mental heights were reached, but only by the few, and those few, bound by earth’s fetters, were unable to break entirely away. The masses, not only in education but in religion, were physical, and basely physical. The sacred bull was a personification of deity. Why?—Because God, to an Egyptian, was an embodiment of lust. All their gods, all their rites and ceremonies, every temple wall and religious service, breathed the dreadful odor of licentiousness. Historians state that the priestly class knew better. And so they did; but their grasp was not that of truth, else they could never have been the priests and teachers of such a religion or of such a system of education.
These words, put in the mouth of an ancient Egyptian priest, speak truly the spirit of Egyptian education. He says: “I that have seen nigh four-score years of misery; ... I that have mastered all the arts, sciences, and religion of ancient Egypt—a land that was wrinkled with age centuries before the era of Moses; I that know both all that the priests of Kem ever taught the people, and also the higher and more recondite forms of ignorance in which the priests themselves believed—I verily know nothing! I can scarcely believe in anything save universal darkness, for which no day-spring cometh, and universal wretchedness for which there is no cure. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this death?”
And yet the Jews would leave that education which offered eternal life, for this which the best-educated Egyptian might acknowledge to be darkness and only darkness. It was from this that God delivered Israel; but many to-day, claiming to be Israel in Spirit, seek still the wisdom and philosophy of Egypt for themselves and their children. Israel could not come in touch with this form of life without contamination. Nay, more, she fell from her exalted state, and never reached it again. “Jerusalem was destroyed because the education of her children was neglected.”
The ceremonial law given after leaving Sinai, at the beginning of that memorable march of forty years, was necessary because the nation had lost all appreciation of the spiritual in the abstract, and could gain no idea whatever of God as a Spirit except through some appeal to the physical senses. This condition was due to the fact that four generations had been subject to Egyptian education.