these matters, whether important or trivial. The fact is, that however trivial they might be in relation to the authority which they invoked, they were not trivial in relation to the people who were to be governed and taught.

The teaching of the Law was followed by the comments of the Prophets. It is impossible to mistake the complete change of tone and spirit. The ordinances indeed remain, and the obligation to observe them is always assumed. But they have sunk to the second place. The national attention is distinctly fixed on the higher precepts. Disregard of the ordinances is, in fact, rarely noticed, in comparison with breaches of the great human laws of love and brotherly kindness, of truth and justice. There are but two sins against the ceremonial law which receive marked attention idolatry and sabbathbreaking: and these do not occupy a third of the space devoted to the denunciation of cruelty and oppression, of maladministration of justice, of impurity and intemperance. Nor is the change confined to the precepts enforced; it extends to the sanction which enforces them. Throughout the Prophets there is an evident reference to the decision of individual conscience, which can rarely be found in the Books of Moses. Sometimes, as in Ezekiel's comment on the Second Commandment, a distinct appeal is made from the letter of the law to the voice of natural equity. Sometimes, as in the opening of Isaiah, the ceremonial sacrifices are condemned for the sins of those who offered them. Or, again, fasting is spiritualized into self-denial. And the tone taken in this teaching is such as to imply a previous breach, not so much of positive commands, as of natural morality. It is assumed that the hearer will find within himself a sufficient sanction for the precepts. It is no longer, as in the law, "I am the Lord;" but, "Hath not He showed thee, O man, what is good?” And hence the style becomes argumentative instead of peremptory, and the teacher pleads instead of dogmatizing. In the meanwhile, however, no hint is ever given of a permission to dispense with the ordinances even in the least degree. The child is old enough to understand, but not old enough to be left to himself.

He is not yet a man.

He must still conform to the rules of his father's house, whether or not those rules suit his temper or approve themselves to his judgment.

The comments of the Prophets were followed in their turn by the great Lesson of the Captivity. Then for the first time the Jews learned, what that Law and the Prophets had been for centuries vainly endeavouring to teach them, namely, to abandon for ever polytheism and idolatry. But though this change in their national habits and character is unmistakeable, it might seem at first sight as if it were no more than an external and superficial amendment, and that their growth in moral and spiritual clearness, though traceable with certainty up to this date, at any rate received a check afterwards. For it is undeniable that, in the time of our Lord, the Sadducees had lost all depth of spiritual feeling, while the Pharisees had succeeded in converting the Mosaic system into so mischievous an idolatry of forms, that St. Paul does not hesitate to call the law the strength of sin. But in spite of this it is nevertheless clear that even the Pharisaic teaching contained elements of a more spiritual religion than the original Mosaic system. Thus, for instance, the importance attached by the Pharisees to prayer is not to be found in the law. The worship under the law consisted almost entirely of sacrifices. With the sacrifices we may presume that prayer was always offered, but it was not positively commanded; and as a regular and necessary part of worship, it first appears in the later books of the Old Testament, and is never even there so earnestly insisted upon as afterwards by the Pharisees. It was in fact in the captivity, far from the temple and the sacrifices of the temple, that the Jewish people first learned that the spiritual part of worship could be separated from the ceremonial, and that of the two the spiritual was far the higher. The first introduction of preaching and the reading of the Bible in the synagogues belong to the same date. The careful study of the law, though it degenerated into formality, was yet in itself a more intellectual service than the earlier records exhibit. And this study also, though commencing

earlier, attains its maximum after the captivity; the Psalmists who delight in the study of the law are all, or nearly all, much later than David; and the enthusiasm with which the study is praised increases as we come down. In short, the Jewish nation had lost very much when John the Baptist came to prepare the way for his Master; but time had not stood still, nor had that course of education whereby the Jew was to be fitted to give the last revelation to the world.

The results of this discipline of the Jewish nation may be summed up in two points a settled national belief in the unity and spirituality of God, and an acknowledgment of the paramount importance of chastity as a point of morals.

The conviction of the unity and spirituality of God was peculiar to the Jews among the pioneers of civilization. Greek philosophers had, no doubt, come to the same conclusion by dint of reason. Noble minds may often have been enabled to raise themselves to the same height in moments of generous emotion. But every one knows the difference between an opinion and a practical conviction between a scientific deduction or a momentary insight and that habit which has become second nature. Every one, also, knows the difference between a tenet maintained by a few intellectual men far in advance of their age, and a belief pervading a whole people, penetrating all their daily life, leavening all their occupations, incorporated into their very language. To the great mass of the Gentiles at the time of our Lord, polytheism was the natural posture of the thoughts into which their minds unconsciously settled when undisturbed by doubt or difficulties. To every Jew, without exception, monotheism was equally natural. To the Gentile, even when converted, it was, for some time, still an effort to abstain from idols; to the Jew it was no more an effort than it is to us. The bent of the Jewish mind was, in fact, so fixed by their previous training that it would have required a perpetual and difficult strain to enable a Jew to join in such folly. We do not readily realize how hard this was to acquire, because we have never had to acquire it; and in reading the Old Testa

ment we look on the repeated idolatries of the chosen people as wilful backslidings from an elementary truth within the reach of children, rather than as stumblings in learning a very difficult lesson difficult even for cultivated men. In reality, elementary truths are the hardest of all to learn, unless we pass our childhood in an atmosphere thoroughly impregnated with them; and then we imbibe them unconsciously, and find it difficult to perceive their difficulty.

It was the fact that this belief was not the tenet of the few, but the habit of the nation, which made the Jews the proper instruments for communicating the doctrine to the world. They supported it, not by arguments, which always provoke replies, and rarely, at the best, penetrate deeper than the intellect; but by the unconscious evidence of their lives. They supplied that spiritual atmosphere in which alone the faith of new converts could attain to vigorous life. They supplied forms of language and expressions fit for immediate and constant use. They supplied devotions to fill the void which departed idolatry left behind. The rapid spread of the Primitive Church, and the depth to which it struck its roots into the decaying society of the Roman Empire, are unquestionably due, to a great extent, to the body of Jewish proselytes already established in every important city, and to the existence of the Old Testament as a ready-made text-book of devotion and instruction.

Side by side with this freedom from idolatry there had grown up in the Jewish mind a chaster morality than was to be found elsewhere in the world. There were many points, undoubtedly, in which the early morality of the Greeks and Romans would well bear a comparison with that of the Hebrews. In simplicity of life, in gentleness of character, in warmth of sympathy, in kindness to the poor, in justice to all men, the Hebrews could not have rivalled the best days of Greece. In reverence for law, in reality of obedience, in calmness under trouble, in dignity of self-respect, they could not have rivalled the best days of Rome. But the sins of the flesh corrupted both these races, and the flower of their finest

virtues had withered before the time of our Lord. In chastity the Hebrews stood alone; and this virtue, which had grown up with them from their earliest days, was still in the vigour of fresh life when they were commissioned to give the Gospel to the nations. The Hebrew morality has passed into the Christian Church, and sins of impurity (which war against the soul) have ever since been looked on as the type of all evil; and our Litany selects them as the example of deadly sin. What sort of morality the Gentiles would have handed down to us, had they been left to themselves, is clear from the Epistles. The excesses of the Gentile party at Corinth (1 Cor. v. 2), the first warning given to the Thessalonians (1 Thes. iv. 3), the first warning given to the Galatians (Gal. v. 19), the description of the Gentile world in the Epistle to the Romans, are sufficient indications of the prevailing Gentile sin. But St. James, writing to the Hebrew Christians, says not a word upon the subject, and St. Peter barely alludes to it.

The idea of monotheism and the principle of purity might seem hardly enough to be the chief results of so systematic a discipline as that of the Hebrews. But, in reality, they are the cardinal points in education. The idea of monotheism outtops all other ideas in dignity and worth. The spirituality of God involves in it the supremacy of conscience, the immortality of the soul, the final judgment of the human race. For we know the other world, and can only know it, by analogy drawn from our own experience. With what, then, shall we compare God? With the spiritual or the fleshly part of our nature? On the answer depends the whole bent of our religion and of our morality. For that in ourselves which we choose as the nearest analogy of God, will, of course, be looked on as the ruling and lasting part of our being. If He be one and spiritual, then the spiritual power within us, which proclaims its own unity and independence of matter by the universality of its decrees, must be the rightful monarch of our lives: but if there be Gods many and Lords many, with bodily appetites and animal passions, then the voice of conscience is but one of those wide