CHAPTER XXXII[ToC]
A THOUSAND YEARS OF A NATION'S QUEST
In this course of study we have been tracing the progress of a great enterprise. A race of people set out in the days of Abraham to seek the best in life. Did they win or lose, succeed or fail? What did they achieve, during a thousand years of striving?
Summary of Results
Looking back over the whole period which we have studied, there are four short epochs which stand out in bright contrast to long stretches of darkness as times when the common people had a chance to enjoy some of the good things of life, or at least had reason to hope that they might some time gain them for themselves or their children. These were the times of David, of Josiah, of Nehemiah, and of Simon the Maccabee. These four men were all able and just leaders. They were all inspired, to a greater or less extent, by the ideals of Abraham, Moses, and the great reformer-prophets.
The long centuries of failure.—The lives of all four of these men together, however, do not cover much more than a century. During the rest of the time, the common people were ground down under oppressors, either of their own race or foreign conquerors. Generation after generation of fathers and mothers patiently toiled and struggled and suffered, in the hope that they might climb just a little higher toward the sunlight of health and comfort and the higher blessings of life. Most of them struggled in vain. It is true that a few of the more fortunate, in each generation, saw some little advance over earlier generations in the good things of civilization. Such men as Nicodemus and Zacchæus, in the time of Jesus, lived in better houses, wore more comfortable clothes, and ate better food than did King David himself in an earlier, ruder age. But the common people of Jesus' day were not so well off as even in the days of Abraham. For as wandering shepherds they were free. Life might be a bitter struggle against wild beasts and drought and famine. But no haughty masters looked down on them with contempt, or robbed them of their last farthing in unjust taxation. Shall we say, then, that as a whole, the great enterprise was a failure?
The Great Achievement—A True Religion
No, the great quest was not a failure, even though it was so far from a complete success. Out of the long years of struggle and prayer had come a new religion, not, indeed, understood by many but partly grasped at least by some, and written down in books so that it could never be wholly lost. This was a religion of the brotherhood of man and of a universal Father-God. The four eras of their history when the common people had been happy were eras when the principles of this religion had partly prevailed. And these eras still shine out for us as examples of what that kind of religion means in the life of a people. And the lives and words of the great prophets, and, greatest of all, the life of Jesus Christ, are a priceless legacy to us, who are still continuing the quest which Abraham began.