_The period of the Restoration, from_ B.C. 536.
The common notion is that this period of Israel's history was practically
a vacuum, and that through five centuries the nation experienced no
further development. In reality, it was an exceedingly active period,
characterized by most important developments. Politically it was a period
of constantly changing influences. Israel was scarcely ever really
independent during these centuries. Her changes were the changes from one
master to another. But this very subjection aided her intellectual
development, as she was thus brought under the direct action of foreign
ideas. Her rapid growth of population forced upon her a system of
emigration, that drew off her youth to the great centres of the world and
established large colonies in every leading city. Israel was never left to
settle down again into provincialism, but was stirred by the currents of
the great world of thought that poured in upon her from Greece and Egypt,
from Rome and the far East. "A cross-fertilization of ideas" was thus
carried on by Providence. The result of grafting the richest varieties of
thought upon such a sturdy stock could not fail of proving something rare
and rich. As was natural from such conditions, the thought of the nation
took on new forms. Calm study of nature and man, and rational speculation
on the great problems of life displaced impassioned and imaginative
thought. Prophecy gave way to philosophy. The sages became the teachers of
men. The third class of books in the Old Testament Canon, known by the
Jews as the Writings, belong to this period; Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
Esther, Jonah, Daniel, etc. To this period also belongs the Apocrypha,
which contains some noble books. These varied writings show, when
critically studied, a direct bearing on the problems that we know were
occupying the mind of the nation during this period, and illustrate the
tendencies working among the people. We thus see, plainly, the growth of
the seeds of noble thought which were sown in the national consciousness
during the exile, and the growth of the rich germs wafted into Judea from
Greece and Egypt.
We can trace the development of the circle of ideas which, later on,
crystallized, under the ethical and spiritual force of Jesus into the
theology of Christianity. We watch the embryonic stages of this
thought-body, which at length awaited only the breathing within it of an
informing spirit to issue in a new and noble religion.
Nor was this period of the Restoration merely one of intellectual
development, else there would have been no such issue as came at length.
It was a period of quiet ethical and spiritual development. No prophet
arose, indeed, to quicken Israel, but the ancient prophets still spake
from the institutions into which they had breathed somewhat of their
spirit, and from the holy books which were read in every synagogue, and
learned in every home. The temple worship of this period retained the old
forms of sacrifice; but charged them with spiritual significances which
are difficult for us to associate with such bloody rites, did we not know
how easily the religious spirit adapts itself to any outward ceremonies,
and transforms them into its own life. The soul spurns the symbols to
which it yet will cling, and soars beyond the poor height to which the
laboring wings of ordinance and ritual can carry it. The profound
spiritual life which was awakened in the exile flooded these low forms
with supernal light. They spoke to men of better sacrifices than the
blood of bulls and lambs--of sins slaughtered and fleshly powers consumed,
of lives of men offered up in purity to God. They whispered to the soul of
the holiness of God, and of His forgiveness as well; and, in their
powerlessness to satisfy the spiritual needs suggested by them, they kept
men's eyes upon the future, looking for the Prophet greater than Moses,
who would surely come from behind the veil with a new word from God. Out
of such thoughts and feelings the temple worship drew upon itself a noble
service of song, of whose ethical and spiritual beauty we can judge from
the temple hymnal. You and I to-day have sung some of the very hymns which
those Jews chanted around their brazen altar. Through these psalms of many
ages, gathered into a hymnal of unrivalled nobleness, the worship of
Israel ascended in the aspirations of the people after purity and
righteousness. If the choirs sang of the Shepherd of Israel, it was not
merely in the praises of the providential care felt over the chosen
people, but in the thankfulness of souls, because of the assurance of His
spiritual guidance:
He shall convert my soul,
And bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
If they chanted the glories of the House of God, it was because thither
the tribes came up, with this desire in the hearts of the worshippers:
Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks,
So longeth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul is athirst for God. Yea, even for the living God:
When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?
* * * * *
O send out thy light and thy truth:
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.
Then will I go up unto the altar of God,
Unto God, the gladness of my joy:
Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee,
O God, my God.
The temple, however, was but a part, and practically a small part, of the
institutionalism of religion in this period. This was the era of the
scribe rather than of the priest. Ezra came back to Jerusalem with a new
treasure, "The Law." Around this sacred book, which soon added to itself
the writings of the Prophets, the religious life of the nation really
crystallized. To read and expound it, now that "no vision came to the
prophets from The Eternal," became the highest office of religion, an
office purely ethical and spiritual. In every town of the land the
Meeting-house arose, opening its doors upon the Sabbath and on market
days, to the villagers, who gathered for a simple service of instruction
and devotion. The service began with a short prayer, which was followed by
the recitation of some portions of "The Law," setting forth the great
beliefs and duties of the Jewish religion--a confession of faith, in
other words. After this came the long prayer, which, in later times,
became liturgical; and then the reading of the lesson for the day from
"The Law," with its interpretation, when Hebrew had become a dead
language. Then followed a reading from the Prophecies, and a homily or
sermon based upon the passage read. In their synagogues the Jews
worshipped much as we are doing in this church to-day.
Through such a quiet deepening of the life of the people was the nation
preparing for its final development of religion.
True it is that in the latter part of this period the nation showed
unmistakable signs of being overtrained. The hedge made about the Law had
fenced men off from one thing after another until, to men who were anxious
not to offend, life became a weary burden. There was scarcely an action
that might not involve sin. The natural effect of externalizing the
commands of conscience followed; and the ethical aims which had been
sought were well nigh lost in the routine of form and ceremony, and in the
fine-spun distinctions of belief and conduct. A great-souled Jew found,
later on, as hosts of his fellow-countrymen had found before him, that by
the works of the Thorah (law or teaching) could no flesh be justified. The
very Book which had fed so deep a life had come to stand between the soul
and God, a barrier to the fresh, free inspirations from on high. Religion
had run out upon the surface, and was dying. But it was as the tassels
wither and whiten when the corn is ripe within the husk and ready to seed
down a new season.
Plainly, by every sign, Israel's long gestation of Religion was nearing
its appointed term. All the elements had been developed, one after
another, for a Universal Religion, and there was nothing more to be done
but to await the coming to the birth. As plainly, by every sign, the
world-conditions were at length found for a safe issue of the "holy thing"
which Israel so long had carried within her bosom. There was needed a man
to body these scattered elements, to fuse the forces of the nation into a
personality, to live the dreams which a race had visioned. Religion is
never a code nor a theory, it is always a life. The ideal religion awaited
the ideal man. He came! As the nation held the holy child Jesus in her
arms, joying that a MAN was born into the world, she might have been
overheard singing:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
According to thy word:
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles,
And the glory of thy people Israel.
The historical reality of Jesus is unquestionable. The essential features
of his life and thought are distinctly outlined through the mist of time,
and above the clouds of legend that hang low upon the horizon where he
disappeared. The threefold tradition preserves a clear-cut image of the
Son of Man. We see One in whom the ideals of Israel found a perfect
realization. He brought to the flower the conception of religion whose
germ lay seeded down in the Ten Words of Moses. In him worship and
aspiration were one. He lived the ethical and spiritual religion after
which the nation had patiently striven, through prophet and priest and
sage, through psalmist and through scribe. He _lived_ the vision of human
goodness which holy men of old had never succeeded in bringing down into
the flesh, beyond a blurred blocking in of the heavenly ideal. He _lived_
man's dream of goodness so gloriously that he became a more than man, in
whom was felt the coming nigh of the Eternal Holy One. The human form
divine, to which mankind aspired, took on its true and awful splendor, as
the image of the God whom the conscience worshipped. Every passing "I
would be," of the saints of old looked forth, transfigured from the face
of One who said "I AM."
True to Israel's ancient dream, around this righteous suffering servant of
the Eternal, the nations gathered, to be taught of God. The souls to whom
He gave power to become the sons of God became the family of the Heavenly
Father, in which there was "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor
uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ was all
and in all." In this holy brotherhood of the children of the All-Father,
we moderns take our places round our elder brother; feeling sure that we
have found the spiritual band or religion wherein society is to be held
together, through each man's holding hard by the God who is the perfection
of His own highest dreams.
* * * * *
Such then being the fact of Israel's historic travail and such her issue,
our fathers' sense of the supreme significance of Christ in human history
takes on a new light in our new knowledge.
The problem of religion is to find such a knowledge of the Being in whom
we live and move and have our being, as shall lead men's awe before this
mysterious Power up into an awe of a Power whom we may rightly worship,
trust and love. To find the key to this problem is to hold the secret of
all the puzzles of our weary world. Before the Power "manifest in the
flesh" in Jesus Christ, our souls hush, in an awe which breathes within us
worship, trust and love. And if this Power be the very Power felt in
history and in nature, whose ways therein are so often baffling to the
moral sense, then all is well. But, if this be so, the holy Power who is
shrined in Christ must show the features of the Mind which tabernacles in
nature. There can be no contradiction. Unquestionably an essential
characteristic of the Mind in nature is the method of its action. There
is a reign of Law. The highest generalization of the methods of this law
which man has reached reveals this Power as acting, through every sphere,
in continuous progressive development. One word embodies this supreme
generalization--evolution. Christianity must fit into this universal
order. Otherwise it either denies that order, which denial cannot be
received; or it is denied by that order, which denial is very certain to
be increasingly received. God "cannot deny Himself!" "I change not."
Here is where Christianity's hold of the human mind hinges in our age. The
old reading of the history of the preparation for Christ separated "those
whom God hath joined together." The new reading of that preparation
restores the needful unity.
Christianity is no exception amid the general order of nature. It follows
that providential plan. It grows from seed to flower. Its beginnings were
in a simple conception of ethical religion begotten in a heathen people
through Moses. In the womb of the nation it lay dormant till the time for
quickening came. Thenceforward it slowly assimilated the vital forces and
nutritive elements of the organic life within which it grew, until the
hour arrived when it burst the maternal womb, a perfect birth.
Christianity is a genuine historic evolution.
When we have said this, have we accounted for it? To none save those who,
in mastering the methods of a process of evolution, fancy that they have
mastered its sources. To none save those who, familiarizing themselves
with the order of life, think that they have resolved its nature. The
wiser portion of mankind do not find in How a synonym for Whence. We still
ask whence? When we see the issue of a long and complicated plan, we
postulate a planning mind. When we trace, through the sketches and studies
in a studio, the gradual embodiment of a vision of loveliness, which at
length looks down upon us in its perfect grace from the canvas on the
wall, we cannot be persuaded out of our conviction that some artist has
lived and labored in this studio, patiently evolving his great dream. When
we see a new-born child we do not think that we have learned its parentage
in being told about its mother. We want to know who fathered it into
being.
What mind planned this process of a nation's growth into a universal
religion? What artist dreamed this ethical and spiritual ideal? Who begat
this "holy thing" conceived in Israel and born of her at length in
glorious beauty? If Moses was the human parent of this marvellous child,
who fathered the "essential Christ" in Moses? Who is the real father of
Jesus Christ?
Our only answer must be that given of old:
When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His son.... The
true Light, which lighteth every man, was coming on into the world....
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father) full of grace and
truth.
If this then be the true interpretation of the evolution of the Christ, we
hold, in the doctrine of the Incarnation, the secret of all evolution. We
must read the story of every development in the light of the highest life
of man, himself the highest life of nature. Nature is in travail with an
ideal which rose not in the molten suns, though perchance it did rise
through them.
The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
manifestation of the sons of God.
Man is in travail with an ideal which rose not in the anthropoid apes,
though it may have risen through them. A finer, larger, nobler man is
growing within the man that is.
The Universal Man is now coming to be a real being in the individual
mind.
Mankind, which is one physically and mentally, is one morally and
spiritually. All varieties of man are built upon one ethical type. The
virtues are cosmopolitan. One human ideal looms above and before all
races, though refracted differently in the changing atmospheres of earth.
Within the saints one dream of goodness forms.
Over the seers and sages one vision of the source of human goodness
rises. Through the clouds of earth one Infinite and Eternal Form shapes
itself to the wise. As men rise they meet. The race-souls are strangely
alike. Socrates and Buddha are brothers. Humanity is in travail with one
Human Ideal and one Divine Image, and these twain are one. The great
Mother sings to herself:
But he, the man-child glorious,
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.
My boreal lights leap upward,
Forth right my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the Whole.
I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.
Will Humanity come to the birth with her beloved son? Who that reads the
story of the coming of the Hebrew Christ can doubt it? What miscarriage
can befall her who is nursed by Nature and tended by Providence? What will
the Coming Man be like? We have seen his face break through the flesh for
a moment. On the shoulders of the race will rest the head of Christ. What
shall be said when the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of
God shout for joy that MAN is born upon the earth?
The Holy Ghost hath come upon thee, Humanity, and the power of the
Highest hath overshadowed thee; therefore also, that holy thing which
is born of thee, shall be called the SON OF GOD.
This, at least, is my reading of nature and of history in the light of the
completed evolution of the Christ. The normal growth through history of
the Ideal Man, is the incarnation of the Divine Man. The mischievous
antithesis between the realms of the natural and the supernatural, that
kept the world's thought from crystallizing around the world's soul,
disappears in an Order which is at once natural in all its processes, and
supernatural in its source and plan and energy.
We hold the key to all earth's problems in the vision of God which,
gleaming through nature and through man, dawns in the face of Jesus
Christ. Over Him--in whom the Human Ideal becomes the Divine Image, and
the most perfect dream of human goodness is the revelation of earth's
God--the Eternal One breaks silence, whispering to our souls:
This is my Beloved Son: Hear Him!