A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth

by Isaac Samuel Reggio

LVI. Although so many pre-eminent merits indisputably assigned to him the distinction we have pointed out, yet the Divine wisdom decided to subject his constancy to various trials, with the view of making manifest to the world the excellence of that virtuous character, and the justice which dictated the choice. In the continual antagonism between the material and spiritual interests involved in the events of his agitated life, he had opportunities to display the noblest firmness in causing the latter to prevail. Involuntary peregrinations, conflicts with foreign potentates, domestic discords, dangers, hazards, hopes deferred, and promises well nigh forgotten, became to him so many occasions for the exercise of the highest virtues: and last, the holy resignation with which he prepared to immolate his beloved son, thinking thereby to respond to a Divine bidding, raised his glory to an unapproachable summit. If the other deeds of his edifying piety caused him to be appointed a herald of the true religion, this last heroic act brought down upon him the greatest blessing, in the shape of a promise, that even to his remotest posterity would be extended the mission of jealously preserving the revealed truths, and effectually cooperating in their propagation, so that through that posterity would be blessed all the families of the earth.

LVII. Abraham's vocation marks a luminous and highly interesting epoch in the history of humanity. It was the commencement of the execution of that plan of education of mankind, which, conceived since the beginning in the Increate Mind, came by means extraordinary, yet consistent with the natural course of earthly events, to diffuse itself gradually and to acquire a progressive force among the various ramifications of the human family. In that vocation we perceive the first threads of a wonderful tissue of events, as well in the physical as in the moral world, which went on preparing a slow but always progressive development of the human intelligence, and will go on to produce ultimately the full final accomplishment of the same primitive plan, so grandly conceived. In fact, in the very act of electing this patriarch, God revealed the ultimate object of the election by saying, that He chose him, in order that he might transmit to his latest posterity the obligation—which was to become characteristic of it—of exercising and promoting charity and justice, the two chief columns on which rests the edifice of human perfectibility, two conditions indispensable to the fulfilment of the Divine idea, and therefore called ways of the Eternal.

LVIII. Abraham and his race having been called upon to perpetuate the idea of the relation existing between God and man, it was obviously necessary that such a relation should be fixed and established in a more precise mode in the individuals of that race than it was in any others; in other words, it was necessary to show clearly that the idea, which was to be promoted among others, was firmly seated, under permanent and concrete forms, in those who were called upon to propagate it. This permanency of the relation exhibited itself, then, to Abraham and his posterity under the form of a covenant between God and that family, whereby the contracting parties, as it were, promised and undertook to maintain certain conditions, upon which depended the subsistence of that relation. The mutual conditions established were, in substance, nothing else than the universal relations subsisting between God and every rational being, but expressed, with respect to Abraham's, family, in more special and characteristic terms, viz., under a form in which God promised Abraham that He would be particularly his God, his Protector, Guardian, and Benefactor; and the Abrahamites, on their part, bound themselves to recognise Him alone as the Deity, to whom adoration and loyal obedience were due. Thus the covenant, which had been formerly established in general terms with Noah, as the representative of all mankind, was afterwards confirmed in more specific terms to the Abrahamites, as those who were appointed to keep and to promote among mankind the fulfilment of the conditions of the said relation.

Considering the Abrahamitic covenant in this point of view, all objections of unreasonable exclusiveness and unjust predilection, which have been sometimes urged, must disappear. The God of Abraham is the God of the universe; and the descendants of Abraham propose to themselves nothing more than the attainment of that same happiness to which every mortal can aspire.

LIX. In order that the idea of the contracted covenant might remain firmly impressed on all Abraham's progeny, it was necessary to institute some external mark, which should continually recall it to the mind; for an idea being but an abstraction, it could not be very long retained in men's minds, without some symbol or visible sign capable of keeping its remembrance alive. It was also necessary that the adhesion of that progeny to the covenant should not begin to take effect in individuals in the adult age only, and as a result of one's own spontaneous reflexions, as had been the case with the first stock of that family, but that it should present itself as an accomplished fact, and, therefore, irrevocable and obligatory; so that every future offspring should bear from his birth an external indelible mark, characterising him as a follower of that principle, and qualifying him to enter into the pale of that association. By such means the preservation of the covenant was insured, and a beginning was made in the system of those external, symbolical, and commemorative acts, which were to be thereafter prescribed to all that race, when sufficiently increased to form an entire people distinct from others. This external mark, instituted before the birth of the elect progeny of the patriarch, is the circumcision.

LX. Before Abraham's descendants attained that degree of maturity which would fit them to receive a revealed legislation, they had to pass through various stages of progressive material increment and intellectual development, and also to undergo several sad vicissitudes produced by the inevitable relations of contact with other nations. Throughout all this period, which we may call preparatory, the Divine Wisdom was pleased to take that race by the hand, guiding its first steps, and watching in an extraordinary manner over its destinies, so as gradually to prepare it for the high mission for which it was designed. We, therefore, perceive, during that epoch, a continual intervention of the Divinity in regulating the particular concerns of the patriarchs and their successors, and an incessant care to draw their attention to the future destiny of their grandchildren, and to their duty of preparing worthily for it. Such a care manifested itself, particularly, in various providential measures, the objects of which evidently were to remove from them everything that might exercise over them a sinister influence; to enlighten them on the importance of their election, and to make them acquainted beforehand with the severe trials in store for them for several centuries, before they could deservedly reap the intended benefits.

LXI. To this category of providential measures belongs the state of isolation and of precarious subsistence, in which, by the Divine will, the first fathers had to live, in respect to their neighbours, in that same land which was yet promised to them as a perpetual inheritance; whereby they were brought to learn from the beginning that the great work, which their children were called upon to accomplish, was not absolutely dependent on the possession of a land under their own sovereignty, but rather on the religious doctrines to which they were to remain faithfully attached. To it belongs, also, the severance or removal of the elder branch of the first two families, which was too much inclined to material interests, to teach thereby that physical superiority is not at all requisite to the preservation of a covenant based entirely on spirituality. And, lastly, to the same category of measures belongs the decreed long servitude of the Abrahamites in a strange land, in which, not only the door to social enjoyments would be shut against them, but a barbarous tyranny would also deprive them of the free exercise of acts which are an imprescriptible right of all mortals. Through the instrumentality of such an oppression, the profound counsels of the Eternal Wisdom designed so to regulate the first education of that growing people, that, refined in the crucible of adversity, it should early learn to renounce the subjection of the senses, and turn its heart and soul to God, from whom alone it could hope salvation. It was only by depriving that people of all human support, and of all extraneous influences on its culture, that it could acquire a character, firm, independent, tenacious in the principles adopted, adverse to foreign notions, faithful to its vocation, and that its mind could be deeply impressed with the sentiment of a constant adoration of the Supreme Being, as its only Deliverer, Legislator, Father, and Sovereign.

[CHAPTER IX.]

LXII. the descendants of the patriarchs, grown into a numerous people, were, then, obliged to undergo the severe trial of a long servitude in Egypt, from which they could expect no rescue otherwise than by a recourse to the God of their fathers. If the privations of earthly enjoyments tended to strengthen their spirits and courage against adversity, and to direct their desires towards gratifications of a more elevated nature; if the repulsive conduct of their oppressors (by character hostile to all strangers, and by system constituted in different castes, each of which jealous of its own privileges) favoured in a great measure their isolation, and kept them from a pernicious contact and association, it was the prayer which they offered up from the bottom of their hearts to the Supreme Ruler of their destinies, whose covenant with their progenitors they remembered; it was that prayer that hastened the termination of so severe a discipline, and drew near the epoch of their glorification. A fit instrument only was wanted, through which the deliverance should be effected, an organ to communicate to the people the Divine laws, a medium for the new solemn covenant which was to be proclaimed between God and Israel. This elect from among all mortals—whose noble character, resplendent with all human virtues, was heightened by the true grandeur of an unexampled humility—was the holy legislator Moses, the divine man, the faithful expounder of the will of God, the first link of the glorious chain connecting the human family with its Maker. He was appointed to deliver miraculously the Israelitish mass from the yoke of Egypt, and to lead it to the skirts of a mountain, where the grand act of the revelation was to be accomplished.

LXIII. Before imparting that revelation, the Divine wisdom vouchsafed to declare to the people at large, in brief but clear words, the ultimate object intended to be attained by such an institution, and the principal condition conducive to its realisation. Therefore it was, that God began his communications by saying to Israel, through Moses, "I have brought you unto me" a concise and sublime sentence, which comprehends in itself the whole system of revealed religion, for the recognition of the intimate relation which brings the rational creature near to its Creator, is the true goal of man's destination. He added that, to facilitate the attainment of that object, He had adopted the means of electing a small portion of mankind to be His missionaries ("although" said He, "all the earth is mine"); that He wished, therefore, to form of them a sacerdotal kingdom, that is, a class of persons, who, as priests of God, should watch over, conserve, and promote spiritual interests upon the earth; and that in consequence of the gravity of such a task, He required of them that they should become a holy people, that is, a people peculiarly devoted to self-sanctification—which substantially consists in imitating, in as far as human nature permits, the Divine perfections, or virtues.