As the Jews are reputedly "the chosen people of God,"—chosen by him out of all the nations of the earth to be the special recipients of his favors,—the chosen instruments through which to communicate his will and his laws to the whole human race, and chosen to be a moral example for all mankind, for that age, and for all future generations,—it becomes a matter of great importance to know their real character for morality, for intelligence, for honesty, and for reliability. And that we may, in the effort to present a brief sketch of their character, furnish no ground for suspecting any misrepresentation, we will present it in the language of Jewish and Christian writers of established reputation. It may reasonably be presumed that their own writers would be more likely to overrate than underrate their virtues. Hear, then, what one of their leading prophets says of them. Isaiah thus describes them (Isa. lix.): "Their hands are defiled with blood, and their fingers with iniquity; and their lips speak lies; their tongues mutter perverseness. None of them call for justice; none of them plead for truth. They trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hand. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths." Such is a description of God's holy people by one of their number. And David completes the picture by declaring, "There is none righteous; no, not one."
And Christ calls them "a generation of vipers." Rather a shocking picture of God's peculiar people! "Peculiar" they were, if Isaiah's description of them was true,—peculiar for defective character. It is rather strange that Jehovah should have selected such moral outlaws as lawgivers and moral examples for the whole human race. There were, at the time, several nations superior to the Jews in morals and intelligence, and much farther advanced in civilization. The Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, and a portion of the Hindoos were in advance of the Jews.
The Rev. Mr. Hilliard, in a sermon preached in New York in 1861, says of the Jews, "They were by nature, perhaps, the most cruel and blood-thirsty, as well as idolatrous, people in the world." And yet he says in the same sermon, "that the Lord chose the Israelites because of their adaptedness of character to the carrying out of his divine ends of mercy to the race." What cogent reasoning! Why not select the Devil at once, if beings the most cruel and blood-thirsty were best calculated for "carrying out his divine ends of mercy to the race"? Here is more proof of the evil effects of preaching, or adhering to, a religion which is so full of errors, absurdities, and immoral elements, that it blinds the moral vision, and weakens the reasoning faculties to give it a place in the mind, and leads to a system of false reasoning, and often corrupts the natural judgment. We have more orthodox testimony to show the defective morals of the Lord's chosen people. Dr. Burnet (a Christian writer), in his "Archæologia Philosophie," says, "They were of a gross and sluggish nature, not qualified for the contemplation of natural things, nor the perception of divine ones. And consequently," he tells us, "Moses provided nothing for them of an intellectual nature, and promised them nothing beyond this life,—did not teach a future state of existence." Lactantius says, "They were never visited by the learned men of other countries, because they were never famous for literature." St. Cyril says,
"Moses never attempted to philosophize with the Jews, because they were 'grossly ignorant,' and addicted to idolatry." Dr. Burnet further says, "They were depraved in their manners and discipline, and almost bereaved of humanity. If I may speak the truth,... they were a vile company of men,—an assembly of slaves brought out of Egyptian prisons, who understood no art but that of making bricks." Josephus, being a Jew, was their friend and defender; and yet he says, "They were so illiterate, that they never wrote any thing, or held intercourse with the learned." St. Cyril says, "Some of them adored the sun as a deity; others, the moon and stars; and others, beasts, and birds." One writer says, "They hated all nations, and were hated by all nations," and they seemed determined to exterminate all nations but their own. They might also have used the language of an ancient Christian sect, who declared, "We are the friends of God, and the enemies of all mankind." Lot it be borne in mind that the testimonies here cited are not from infidel writers, but all from Jews and Christians, who, we should presume, could have no motive for exaggerating their moral defects, but rather inducements for concealing them. Other similar testimony might be presented. Some of the laws which Moses adopted for the government of the Jews corroborates still further the statement that they occupied a very low position in the scale of morals as well as intellect; for the laws of a nation are a true standard of their character. Hence the law of Moses prohibiting uncleanness (Lev. xv.), the law against Incest (Lev. xviii.). Laws against bestiality, to prohibit both sexes from carnal familiarity with beasts, and various other laws of a similar character, furnish a clear implication that they were addicted to all these vile habits; and a law to compel them to wash their hands leads to the conclusion that they were inclined to be filthy in their habits. And the following law shows that they were not very particular about their food: "Ye may eat the locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind" (Lev. xi. 22). Here were three kinds of rather repulsive insects which the Jews were expected to eat, at least licensed to use as food. Can such a nation be considered to be civilized? If so, where is a nation now existing that can not, with equal propriety, be said to be civilized? This portraiture of the Jewish character is not here presented in any caviling spirit, or to show that they are justly objects of either censure or ridicule. Far from it. They most probably acted up to the highest light they were in possession of. The primary motive of this exhibition of their character is to show that they possessed no qualifications and no traits of character calculated to fit them for moral lawgivers and moral exemplars for us, and for the whole human race; and we can not assume, without really dishonoring ourselves, that such a morally and intellectually inferior nation of people were the chosen instruments in the hands of God to communicate the revelation of his will to the human family. We are under no moral obligation to believe it. A revelation from a pure, perfect, and holy God must (if we assume a revelation necessary) come through a pure and holy channel: otherwise it would be contaminated and corrupted before it reached us. If God could consent to communicate a revelation to the human race through such a channel as the Jewish nation furnished, we see not how he could escape a stigma upon his character for stooping to such ignoble means. And would not the act of familiarizing himself with such a people show that he kept bad company, and furnish a bad ex-ample to us who are enjoined to be "perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect"?
CHAPTER XXVIII.—CHARACTER OF MOSES; MORAL DEFECTS OF.
The history of Moses is so intimately and thoroughly inter-blended with that of the Jews, that, to present the character of one, is to present the character of the other. We shall therefore devote but a brief chapter to a special exposition of his character, as it will be found fully set forth in the history of the Jews, and the practical illustration of their moral character.
No religious chieftain ever claimed to be on more intimate terms with God, and no writer ever presented a more dishonorable exhibition of his character. He made God the author of nearly every thing he said and did, no matter how wicked, how cruel, how demoralizing, or how shocking to decency or refined moral sensibilities. If some of his characteristics of God are not blasphemous, we can have but little use for the word. Some of his laws serve as an illustration of this statement. He says, "The Lord spake unto Moses," and told him that no person with a flat nose or crooked back or broken hand, a crooked eye, or who was lame or possessing any kind of a physical blemish, should be admitted into the congregation of the Lord (Lev. xxi.) This was punishing the unfortunate for defects they could not help, thus aggravating the misfortunes of a class who, above all others, had special claims upon his kindness on account of the very defects for which they were excluded. These laws, and many others no better, sufficiently illustrate the character of the man. His penal code, which inflicted death for two hundred acts, many of them no crime at all (such as picking up sticks on the sabbath to make a fire to cook their food with), furnishes conclusive evidence that he was a cruel and unmerciful lawgiver. And the fact that he was almost constantly engaged in a bloody warfare with neighboring nations, with the avowed determination to exterminate them, and "leave nothing alive that breathes," simply because they preferred to worship some other God than the cruel Jehovah, leads to the conclusion that he was a bloody-minded warrior. Had Christ lived under the Hebrew monarchy, Moses' laws would have put him to death; and yet they both claimed to derive their moral code from the same God, the Jewish Jehovah. A circumstance is related of Moses killing an Egyptian, and hiding him in the sand. And it is stated, "He looked this way and that way" before committing the deed, and then concealed the dead body. This implies that he felt guilty, and that it was an act of murder in the first degree. Although every chapter of Moses' history proves him to have been a cruel and bloody-minded barbarian, with a moral code possessing but a slight exhibition of the elements of mercy, humanity, and justice, yet Dr. Gaussel, in his "Theopneustia," calls him "a holy and divine man," and says, "He was such a prophet, that his holy books were placed above all the rest of the Old Testament." The doctor furnishes us one of the many cases of the blinding and biasing effect of a perverted religious education, and an argument in favor of laboring to supersede Bible religion with something better. Here we will notice it as a curious circumstance, that, after Jehovah had occupied but six days in creating eighty-five millions of worlds, and made most of them in a few hours, it should have taken him and Moses both forty days to write a law, and a very imperfect one at that. And then it would seem it took Jehovah three thousand years to make a devil, as his Satanic Majesty does not figure in the Jewish hierarchy till after the lapse of that period.
One of the most conspicuous traits in Moses' mental composition was an unbounded self-esteem. Although he claimed to be in constant consultation with Jehovah, he seldom yielded to his advice when it conflicted with his own judgment. On the contrary, he several times detected his God in error, and admonished him, and entered into an argument to convince him that he was wrong; and, of course, he always came out first best in the logical contest. Take, for example, the case of Aaron making the golden calf. It occurred while he and Jehovah were engaged in writing "the holy law" on Mount Sinai. When the case became known to Jehovah, it so disturbed and aggravated him, that he at once declared he would not only punish the guilty sinner,—the apostate Aaron,—but would exterminate the whole race. But the better tempered and more considerate Moses began to reason and remonstrate against such a rash act. He appealed to his honor and love of approbation, and told him the Egyptians would report that he was not able to get his "holy people" to the promised land, and hence killed them to conceal the failure. "Oh, yes, Moses, you are right! I never thought of that," was the seeming reply of Jehovah. And thus Moses proved to be smarter than his God, and enlightened his ignorance.