Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

The three other conceivable reasons we at first examined, and rejected as being inadequate to account for all the phenomena, might have had, and perhaps had, some weight in influencing his decision; but that decision was, I believe, arrived at mainly on the ground of the reasons I have just now been pointing out. No legislator could have overlooked them; and they must have presented themselves with peculiar force to the mind of Moses. They were reasons, too, the force of which was never at all abated as long as the Dispensation continued in existence: just as they had affected the teaching of Moses, so did they the teaching of the Prophets.

So was it at the origin of, and so was it throughout, the old Dispensation. It is the object and the character of the Dispensation which explain to us the omission. If, then, we were to conclude our inquiry at this point, we might feel pretty well satisfied that we had discovered what we were in search of. But we will proceed farther, because by so doing we shall find what will confirm our discovery.

At last the time came when the old Dispensation, though still apparently maintained, and in force, had, in reality, through the progress of events, been completely worked out, both in respect of its moral effects and of its sanction. It had been intended for a certain condition of things; the world had advanced into a totally different condition; and the spontaneous teaching of the new condition of the world brought conviction to every enlightened mind, that the old state of things could never be reverted to any more than manhood can revert to childhood.

The old Dispensation had been worked out morally, because it had issued in a narrow and dead formalism. Another reason was, that the human heart had begun to repudiate exclusiveness, which had been one of the requirements of the old Dispensation, and to catch glimpses of, and to yearn for, universal fraternity. A higher form of religion and of morality could now be imagined, indeed was suggested by the condition and the circumstances of the world, and was seen to be within men’s reach—a morality, and a religion, which would take their start from the idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind. And in morality and religion, as soon as anything better begins to appear, that which is not so good, ex rerum naturâ, and ex vi terminorum, begins to lose its hold, to decay, and to cumber the ground.

And as respected its sanction, as well as its morality, had the old Dispensation been worked out. Centuries of foreign domination, and that of Rome was now the apparently immovable order of the world, had rendered impossible the supposition that the law was being executed, here and now, by God. For that supposition national independence was the primary, and one absolutely indispensable, condition. But God was no longer supreme, administratively and executively, among His own people. That position was now occupied by the Roman Governor. Under these circumstances, a new religion, in the old form of statute law, and supported by the old sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, the execution of which was superintended by God, might conceivably have been at that time promulgated, though with certainty of failure, from Imperial Rome, but not from subject and provincial Jerusalem. That was inconceivable. For these reasons, then, it was that the new Dispensation could not be cast, as the old had been, in the mould of, and be made dependent on, statute and municipal law. The same conclusion resulted also from the fact that it was foreseen that it must be of its very nature and essence that it should embrace all people, whatever their statute and municipal law might be. That this feeling was springing up, coupled with the fact that the old Dispensation was evidently worked out, both morally and in respect of its sanction, is the meaning of the statement that the fulness of time had come. It was evident, therefore, that no further use could be made, either at the present, or, as far as could then be seen, for the future, of the sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, which fall entirely within the sphere of statute and municipal law. The only rewards and punishments the new doctrine could resort to, as sanctions, must be those of a future life.

It was to this state of things that the teaching of the Saviour was addressed. And as His teaching grew out of, was founded upon, and was logically deducible from, the existing state of things, to see this will also be to see why what He taught had not been taught fifteen hundred years earlier.

The old Dispensation could not be revivified. It was indeed the very reverse of desirable to revivify it. It could not even be maintained. If it was not dying, it was because it was dead. It had been good for its own day; but it was now an anachronism that was both undesirable and impossible.

The new doctrine, then, not being able to cast itself into the form of municipal law, must appeal to the enlightened consciousness of man. Neither could it have any municipal sanctions. The only sanction at that time, and thenceforth, imaginable was that of future rewards and punishments.

Still the old Dispensation stood in the way. It was, without being at all adapted to existing requirements, occupying the ground, and hindering the erection of the structure that was to take its place. It must, therefore, be got rid of.

Under the conditions of the case, that could be done only argumentatively. But what process of reasoning would serve the purpose? We cannot see any way in which it could have been done, except the one in which it was done. The Author of the new Dispensation addressed Himself to the establishment of the proposition, that God is not, here and now, the Executor either of the municipal law, or even of that which would be the law of the new Dispensation. The end is not yet. It was a corollary to this, which did not escape observation, that the municipal law is Cæsar’s concern, that is to say, that it falls within the sphere of the State.