In the preceding pages we have indicated the more important phases of that conflict which ended in the establishment of monotheism, a conflict whose traces, though sometimes barely legible, are still preserved in our records. We saw in the first instance that the Mosaic age is shrouded in uncertainty. We pointed out that pure monotheism was unknown in the time of the early kings. We briefly referred to the rise of monotheism. Finally, we endeavored to show how the prophetic idea had been successively expressed in various codes, each corresponding to a certain stage in the great process of evolution. From what we have said, it follows that the prophetic ideal of religion is the root and core of all that is valuable in the Hebrew Bible. The laws, rites, and observances, in which it found a temporary and changeful expression, may lose their vitality; it will always continue to exert its high influence. It was not the work of one man, nor of a single age, but was reached in the long course of generations on generations, evolved amid error and vice, slowly, and against all the odds of time. It has been said that the Bible is opposed to the theory of evolution. The Bible itself is a prominent example of evolution in history. It is not homogeneous in all its parts. There are portions filled with tales of human error and fallibility. These are the incipient stages of an early age—the dark and dread beginnings. There are others thrilling with noblest emotion, freighted with eternal truths, breathing celestial music. These are the triumph and the fruition of a later day. It is thus by discriminating between what is essentially excellent and what is comparatively valueless that we shall best reconcile the discordant claims of reason and of faith. The Bible was never designed to convey scientific information, nor was it intended to serve as a text-book of history. In its ethical teachings lies its true significance. On them it may fairly rest its claims to the immortal reverence of mankind.
There was a time in the olden days of Greece when it was demanded that the poems of Homer should be removed from the schools, lest the minds of the young might be poisoned by the weeds of superstitious belief. Plato, the poet-philosopher, it was who urged this demand. That time is past. The tales of the gods and heroes have long since ceased to entice our credulity. The story of Achilles's wrath and the wanderings of the sage Ulysses are not believed as history, but the beauty and freshness and the golden poetry of the Homeric epic have a reality all their own, and are a delight and a glory now, as they have ever been before. The Bible also is a classical book. It is the classical book of noble ethical sentiment. In it the mortal fear, the overflowing hope, the quivering longings of the human soul toward the better and the best, have found their first, their freshest, their fittest utterance. In this respect it can never be superseded.
To Greek philosophy we owe the evolution of the logical categories; to Hebrew prophecy, the pure canon of moral principle and action. That this result was the outcome of a long process of suffering and struggle cannot diminish its value in our estimation. When we compare the degrading offices of the Hebrew religion in the days of the judges with the lofty aspirations of the second Isaiah, when we remember the utter abyss of moral abasement from which the nobler spirits of the Hebrews rose to the free heights of prophecy, our confidence in the divine possibilities of the human soul is reinvigorated, our emulation is kindled, and from the great things already accomplished we gather the cheering promise of the greater things that are yet to come. It is in this moral incentive that the practical value of the evolutionary theory chiefly lies.*
* Most aptly has this thought been expressed in the lines
with which Goethe welcomed the appearance of F. A. Wolfs
"Prolegomena."
"Erst die Gesundheit des Mannes, der, endhch vom Namen
Homeros Kuhn uns befreiend, uns auch flihrt in die vollere
Bahn. Denn wer wagte mit Gettern den Kampf? und wer mit dem
Einen?—Doch Homeride zu seyn, auch nur als letzter, ist
schon."
The Elegy of Hermann und Dorothea
II. REFORMED JUDAISM.
The Jews are justly called a peculiar people. During the past three thousand years they have lived apart from their fellow-men, in a state of voluntary or enforced isolation. The laws of the Pentateuch directed them to avoid contact with heathens. Christianity in turn shunned and execrated them. Proud and sensitive by nature, subjected to every species of humiliation and contempt, they retired upon themselves, and continued to be what the seer from Aram had described them in the olden time, "A people that dwells in solitude."* It followed that, in the progress of time, idiosyncrasies of character were developed, and habits of thinking and feeling grew up amongst them, which could not but contribute to alienate them still more from the surrounding world. They felt that they were not understood. They were too shy to open their confidence to their oppressors. They remained an enigma. At wide intervals books appeared purporting to give an account of the Jews and their sacred customs. But these attempts were, in the main, dictated by no just or generous motive. Their authors, narrow bigots or renegades from Judaism, ransacked the vast literature of the Hebrew people for such scattered fragments as might be used to their discredit, and exhibited these as samples of Jewish manners and Jewish religion. The image thus presented, it is needless to say, was extremely untrustworthy. And yet the writings of these partial judges have remained almost the only sources from which even many modern writers are accustomed to draw their information. The historian is yet to come who will dispel the dense mists of prejudice that have gathered about Jewish history, and reveal the inward life of this wonderful people, whose perennial freshness has been preserved through so many centuries of the most severe trials and persecution. In one respect, indeed, let us hasten to add, the popular judgment concerning the Jews has never been deceived.
* Numbers xxiii. 9.
The intense conservatism in religion for which they have become proverbial is fully confirmed by facts. There exists no other race of men that has approved its fidelity to religious conviction for an equal period, under equal difficulties, and amid equal temptations. Antiochus, Titus, Firuz, Reccared, Edward I. of England, Philip Augustus of France, Ferdinand of Spain, exhausted the resources of tyranny in vain to shake their constancy. Their power of resistance rose with the occasion that called it forth; and their fervid loyalty to the faith transmitted to them by the fathers never appeared to greater, advantage than when it cost them their peace, their happiness, and their life to maintain it. Since the close of the last century, however, a great change has apparently come over the Jewish people. Not only have they abandoned their former attitude of reserve and mingled freely with their fellow-citizens of whatever creed, not only have they taken a leading part in the great political revolutions that swept over Europe, but the passion for change, so characteristic of the age in which we live, has extended even to their time-honored religion; and a movement aiming at nothing less than the complete reformation of Judaism has arisen, and rapidly acquired the largest dimensions. The very fact that such a movement should exist among such a people is rightly interpreted as a sign of the times deserving of careful and candid consideration; and great interest has accordingly been manifested of late on the subject of Jewish Reform. In a series of articles we shall undertake to give a brief sketch of the origin and bearings of the movement. But before addressing ourselves to this task it will be necessary to review a few of the main causes that have enabled the Jews to perdure in history, and to consider the motives that impelled them to resist change so long, if we would properly appreciate the process of transformation that is even now taking place among them. Among the efficient forces that conduced to the preservation of the Jewish people we rank highest: