A cultus of character through ritual and discipline was elaborated by the priesthood in that wonderful system which, rebaptized, does duty still in the Catholic Church. The true outer sphere for personal religion, trained, if need be, by an ecclesiastical cultus, was fashioned by the great prophets, the men of the people; who poured their passion for righteousness into aspirations for a true commonwealth, in which Justice should be throned on law, and international relations be ruled, not by Policy, but by Principle. Natural religion was nobly set forth by the sages in Proverbs, The Wisdom of Jesus, and the other "Writings;" all of which were characterized by a calm and rational philosophy, that recognized the laws of life and fed the wisdom which obeys them. Even Agnosticism, in so far as it is the confession of the inadequacy of every interpretation of the universe, finds despondent yet still earnest expression in Ecclesiastes, and humble, hopeful expression in Job; and the silence of many of the noblest natures of our age, which the churches brand as irreligious, finds place among the phases of religion in their Sacred Book.[21]
Almost every form of strenuous ethical life, almost every answer that earnest souls have found to the problem of life, is to be drawn from the writings of this many-sided people. Thus their literature feeds a rich, and rounded life of religion.
4. Israel's literature presents us with the record of a continuous growth of religion upward through its normal stages.
Religion grows like every form of human life with the growth of man himself. It is coarse, crude and cruel while man is a savage, and as he becomes civilized—by which I mean something more than wealthy—it becomes intelligent, reasonable ethical and spiritual. The growth of Israel from barbarism carried with this progress the growth of Israel's religion. In the earliest times which we can historically reach the Israelites were semi-nomadic tribes, slightly distinguishable from their kindred Semites. The religion of the people appears to have been then a commingling of fetichism, the worship of things that impressed the imagination, great trees and huge boulders, with the worship of the various powers of nature, the orbs of heaven, the reproductive force of the earth, etc., under the usual savage and sensual symbolisms.
From such unpromising beginnings, through the successive stages of polytheistic idolatries, religion was gradually led up, in the advance of the general life of the people and through the inspirations of a series of great men, to the recognition of One Eternal and infinite Being; the Lord of nature and of man, the Father of all mankind, Holy, Just and Gracious; whose truest worship is the aspirations of his children after goodness.
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord," writes the Deuteronomist; "and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might."
Malachi, looking round upon the manifold forms of worship of the various nations, and discerning that through them all the soul of man was feeling after one and the same Divine Being, makes God say:
"From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered unto me and a pure offering; for my name is great among the heathen, saith the Lord of Hosts."
Micah asks,
"What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?"