_EDUCATION--MOSAIC VIEW_
DEUT. vi. 6-25
Those great verses, Deut. vi. 4, 5, form the central truth of the
book. Everything else in it proceeds from and is informed by them,
and they are dwelt upon and enforced with a clear perception of
their radical importance. There is something of the joy of discovery
in the way in which the unity of Yahweh and exclusive love to Him
are insisted upon, not only in verses 6-25 of this chapter, but in
xi. 13-20. The same strongly worded demand to lay to heart Yahweh's
command to love Him and Him only, and to teach it strenuously to
their children--to make it "a sign upon their hand," and "as a
frontlet between their eyes"--is found in both passages. It is
worthy of remark also that nearly the same words are found in Exod.
xiii. 9, 16. Presumably on account of this, some have ascribed that
section of Exodus to the author of Deuteronomy. But both Dillmann
and Driver ascribe these passages to J and E, and with good reason.
Indeed, apart from the purely literary grounds for thinking that
these formulas were first used by the earlier writers and were
copied by the author of Deuteronomy, another line of argument points
in the same direction. In Exodus the thing to be remembered and
taught to the children was the meaning and origin of the Passover
and the consecration of the firstborn, _i.e._ the meaning and origin
of some of their ritual institutions. Here in Deuteronomy, on the
contrary, that which is to be written on the heart and taught to
the children is moral and spiritual truth about God, and love to
God. Now the probable explanation of this likeness and difference
is, not that the author of Deuteronomy, after using this insistive
phrase only of high spiritual truths in his own book, inserted it in
Exodus with regard to mere institutions of the cultus; rather, the
writers of Exodus had used it of that which was important in their
day, and the Deuteronomist borrowed it from them to emphasise his
own most cherished revelation. In the earlier stages of a religious
movement, the establishment of institutions which shall embody and
perpetuate religious truth, is one of the first necessities. It has
become a commonplace of Christian defence, for example, that Baptism
and the Lord's Supper were made the most successful vehicles for
conveying fundamental Christian truth, and that the celebration of
these two rites from the first days even until now is one of the
most convincing proofs of the continuity of Christianity. Naturally,
therefore, the establishment of the Passover was specially marked
out as the _palladium_ of Israelite religion in the earlier days.
But in the time after Isaiah, when Deuteronomy was written, the
institutions needed no longer such insistence. They had indeed
become so important to the people that the mere observance of them
threatened to become a substitute for religious and even moral
feeling. The Deuteronomist's great message was, consequently, a
reiteration of the prophetic truths as to the supremacy of the
spiritual; and for the object of the warm exhortation of the earlier
writings he substituted the proclamation of Yahweh's oneness, and
of His demand for His people's love. This seems a reasonable and
probable explanation of the facts as we find them. If true, it is a
proof that the need of ritual institutions, and the danger of unduly
exalting them, was not peculiar to post-exilic times. In principle
the temptation was always present; and as living faith rose and
fell it came into operation, or was held in abeyance, throughout
the whole of Israel's history. Hence the mention of this kind of
formalism or the denunciation of it must be very cautiously used as
a criterion by which to date any Scriptural writings.
It is therefore with a full consciousness of its fundamental
importance that the author of Deuteronomy follows the great passage
chapter vi. 4, 5, with this solemn and inspiring exhortation. It
is from no mere itch for religious improvement of the occasion
that he presses home his message thus. Nor is it love for the mere
repetition of an ancient formula of exhortation that dictates its
use. He knew and understood the work of Moses, and felt that the
moulding power in Israel's life as a nation, the unifying element
in it, had been the religion of Yahweh. Whatever else may have
been called in question, it has never been doubted that the salt
which kept the political and social life of the people from rotting
through many centuries was the always advancing knowledge of God.
At each great crisis of Israel's history the religion of Yahweh
had met the demands for direction, for inspiration, for uplifting
which were made upon it. With Protean versatility it had adapted
itself to every new condition. In all circumstances it had provided
a lamp for the feet and a light for the path of the faithful; and
in meeting the needs of generation after generation it had revealed
elements of strength and consolation which, without the commentary
of experience, could never have been brought out. Now the author
of Deuteronomy felt that in these short sentences the high-water
mark of Israelite religion so far had been reached, and that in
renewing the work of Moses, and adapting it to his own time, the
principles here enunciated must be the main burden of his message.
Further progress depended, he obviously felt, upon the absorption
and assimilation of these truths by his people, and he felt he must
provide for the perpetuation of them in that better time he was
preparing for. This he did by providing for the religious education
of the young. Whatever else Israel had gained it had been careful
to hand on from generation to generation. The land flowing with
milk and honey was still in the possession of the descendants of
the first conquerors. The literature, the science, the wisdom that
the fathers had gathered, had been carefully passed down to the
children; and a precious deposit of enriching experience in the form
of history had reached to the elect even among the common people,
as the example of Amos shows. But the most valuable heritage of
Israel was that continually growing deposit of religious truth which
had been the life-blood of its master spirits. From generation to
generation the noblest men in the nation, those most sensitive to
the touch of the Divine, had been casting soundings into the great
deep of the hidden purposes of God. With sore travail of both mind
and spirit, they had found solutions of the great problems which no
living soul can escape. These were no doubt more or less partial,
but they were sufficient for their day, and were always in the line
of the final answer. As the sum of experience widened, the scope of
the solutions widened also, and in the course of Providence these
issued in a conception of God which elsewhere was never approached.
This of all national treasures was the most priceless, and to
preserve and hand on this was simply to keep the national soul
alive. Compared with this, every other heritage from the past was
as nothing; and so, with a simple directness which must amaze the
legislators of modern states, the inspired lawgiver arranged for a
religious education.
To him, as to all ancient lawgivers, a commonwealth without religion
was simply inconceivable, and the hampering, confusing, and confused
difficulties of to-day lay far beyond his horizon. Parents must
take over this great heritage and lay it deeply to heart. They must
then make it the subject of their common talk. They must write
the profound words which summed it up upon the doorposts of their
houses. They must let it fill their minds at their down-sitting
and their uprising, and while they walked by the way. Further, as
the crown of their work, they were to teach it diligently to their
children, already accustomed by their parents' continual interest to
regard this as the worthiest object of human thought. But though the
parents were to be the chief instructors of children in religion,
the State or the community was also to do its part. As the private
citizen was to write, "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God is one Yahweh;
and thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thine heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy might," on the posts of his door, so
the representatives of the community were to write them upon the
town or village gates. In those early days schools were unknown,
as State-regulated schools are still unknown in all purely Eastern
countries. Consequently there was no sphere for the State in the
direct religious teaching of the young. But so far as it could act,
the State was to act. It was to commit itself to the religious
principles that underlay the life of the people, and to proclaim
them with the utmost publicity. It was to secure that none should
be ignorant of them, so far as proclamation by writing in the most
public place could secure knowledge, for on this the very existence
of the State depended.
But the religious instruction was not to be limited to the
reiteration of these great sentences; in that case they would have
become a mere form of words. In the last verses of the chapter, vv.
20-25, we find a model of the kind of explanatory comment which
was to be given in addition: "When thy son asketh thee in time to
come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and
the judgments, which Yahweh our God hath commanded you? then thou
shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen in the land of
Egypt; and Yahweh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand,"
and so on. That means that the _history_ of Yahweh's dealings
with His people was to be taught, to show the reasonableness of
the Divine commands, to exhibit the love-compelling character of
God. And this was entirely in accord with the Biblical conception
of God. Neither here nor elsewhere in the Old Testament are there
any abstract definitions of His character, His spirituality, His
omnipresence, or His omnipotence. Nor is there anywhere any argument
to prove His existence. All that is postulated, presupposed, as that
which all men believe, except those who have wilfully perverted
themselves. But the existence of God with all these great and
necessary attributes is undoubtedly implied in what is narrated of
Yahweh's dealings with His people. As we have seen, too, the very
name of Yahweh implies that His nature should not be limited by any
definition. He was what He would prove Himself to be, and throughout
the Old Testament the _gesta Dei_ through and for the Israelites,
and the prophetic promises made in Yahweh's name, represented all
that was known of God. This gave a peculiarly healthy and robust
tone to Old Testament piety. The subjective, introspective element
which in modern times is so apt to take the upper hand, was kept
in due subordination by making history the main nourishment of
religious thought. In constant contact with external fact, Israelite
piety was simple, sincere, and practical; and men's thoughts being
turned away from themselves to the Divine action in the world, they
were less touched by the disease of self-consciousness than modern
believers in God. In every sphere of human life, too, they looked
for God, and traced the working of His hand. The later distinction
between the sacred and secular parts of life, which has been often
pushed to disastrous extremes, was to them unknown. For these among
many other reasons, the Old Testament must always remain of vital
importance to the Church of God. It can fall into neglect only when
the religious life is becoming unhealthy and one-sided.
Further, its qualities especially fit it for use in the education
of children. In many respects a child's mind resembles the mind of
a primitive people. It has the same love of concrete examples, the
same incapacity to appreciate abstract ideas, and it has the same
susceptibility to such reasoning as this: God has been very loving
and gracious to men, especially to our forefathers, and we are
therefore bound to love Him and to obey Him with reverence and fear.
To the children of a primitive people such teaching would therefore
be doubly suitable; but the Deuteronomist's anxiety in regard to
it has been justified by its results in times no longer primitive.
Through ages of persecution and oppression, often amid a social
environment of the worst sort, there has been little or no wavering
in the fundamental points of Jewish faith. Scattered and peeled,
slaughtered and decimated, as they have been through blood-stained
centuries, this nation have held fast to their religion. Not even
the fact that, through their refusal to accept their Messiah when
He came, the most tender, the most expansive, the most highly
spiritual elements of the Old Testament religion have escaped them,
has been able to neutralise the benefit of the truth they have so
tenaciously held. Of non-Christian nations they stand by far the
highest; and among the orthodox Jews who still keep firm to the
national traditions, and teach the ancient Scriptures diligently to
their children, there is often seen a piety and a confidence in God,
a submission and a hopefulness which put to shame many who profess
to have hope in Christ. Even in our day, when agnosticism and denial
of the supernatural is eating into Judaism more than into almost any
other creed,[50] a book like Friedländer's _The Jewish Religion_
gives us a very favourable idea of the spirit and teachings of
orthodox Judaism. And its main stay is, and always has been, the
religious training of the young. "In obedience to the precept 'Thou
shalt speak of them,' _i.e._ of 'the words which I command thee this
day,'"says Friedländer, "'when thou liest down and when thou risest
up,' three sections of the law are read daily, in the morning and
in the evening, viz. (1) Deut. vi. 4-9, beginning 'Hear'; (2) Deut.
xi. 13-21, beginning 'And it shall be if ye diligently hearken'; (3)
Numb. xv. 37-41, beginning 'And the Lord said.' The first section
teaches the unity of God, and our duty to love this one God with all
our heart, to make His word the subject of our constant meditation
and to instil it into the heart of the young. The second section
contains the lesson of reward and punishment, that our success
depends on our obedience to the will of God. This important truth
must constantly be kept before our eyes, and before the eyes of our
children. The third section contains the commandments of Tsitsith,
the object of which is to remind us of God's precepts." To-day,
therefore, as so many centuries ago, these great words are uttered
daily in the ears of all pious Jews, and they are as potent to keep
them steady to their faith now as they were then. For in most cases
where a drift towards the fashionable agnosticism of the day or to
atheistic materialism is observable among Jews, it will be found to
have been preceded either by neglect or formalism in regard to this
fundamental matter. Briefly, without this teaching they cease to
be Jews; with it they remain steadfast as a rock. Uprooted as they
are from their country, their national coherence endures and seems
likely to endure till their set time has come. So triumphantly has
the enforcement of religious education vindicated itself in the case
of God's ancient people.
[50] _Jewish Quarterly Review_, October 1888, p. 55, where Professor
Schechter finds himself compelled to discuss the question whether a
man may be a good Jew and yet deny the existence of God.
In the remaining verses of the chapter, vv. 10-19, we have a warning
against neglect and forgetfulness of their God, and an indication of
the circumstances under which it would be most difficult to remain
true to Him. These are uttered entirely from the Mosaic standpoint,
and are among the passages which it is most difficult to reconcile
with the later authorship; for there would appear to be no motive
for the later writer to go back upon the exceptional circumstances
of the early days in Canaan. His object must have been to warn and
guide and instruct the people of _his_ time in the face of their
difficulties and temptations, to adapt Mosaic legislation and Mosaic
teaching to the needs of his own day. Now on any supposition he must
have written when all conquest on Israel's part had long ceased. It
is most probable too that in his day the prosperity of his people
was on the wane. They were not looking forward to a time of special
temptation from riches; rather they were dreading expatriation and
decay. Consequently this reference to the ease with which they
became rich by occupying the cities and villages and farms of those
they had conquered is quite out of place, unless we are to regard
the author as a skilled and artistic writer who deliberately set
himself to reproduce in all respects the mind and thoughts of a man
of an earlier day, as Thackeray, for instance, does in his _Henry
Esmond_. But that is not credible; and the explanation is that given
in Chapter I., that the addresses here attributed to Moses are free
reproductions of earlier traditions or narratives concerning what
Moses actually said. If we know anything about Moses at all, it is
in the highest degree probable that he left his people some parting
charge. He longed to pass the Jordan with them. He could not fail
to see that an immense revolution in their habits and manner of
life was certain to occur when they entered the promised land. That
must have appeared to him fraught with varied dangers, and words of
warning and instructions would rush even unbidden to his lips.
There can be no doubt, at any rate, that this passage is true to
human nature in regarding the sudden acquirement of great and
goodly cities which they did not build, and houses full of good
things which they filled not, and cisterns hewn out which they did
not hew, vineyards and olive trees which they did not plant, as a
great temptation to forgetfulness of God. At all times prosperity,
especially if it come suddenly, and without being won by previous
toil and self-denial, has tended to deteriorate character. When
men have no changes or vicissitudes, then they fear not God. It
is for help in trouble when the help of man is vain, or for a
deliverance in danger, that average men most readily turn to God.
But when they feel fairly safe, when they have raised themselves,
as they think, "beyond all storms of chance," when they have built
up between themselves and poverty or failure a wall of wealth and
power, then the impulse that drives them upward ceases to act. It
becomes strangely pleasant, and it seems safe, to get rid of the
strain of living at the highest attainable level, and with a sigh
of relief men stretch themselves out to rest and to enjoy. These
are the average men; but there are some in every age, the elect, who
have had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts, who have had
such real and intimate communion with God that separation from Him
would turn all other joys into mockery. They cannot yield to this
temptation as most do, and in the midst of wealth and comfort keep
alive their aspirations. In Israel these two classes existed; and to
the former, _i.e._ to the great bulk of both rulers and people, the
stimulus administered by the conquest to the material side of their
nature must have been potent indeed.
It is here implied that the Israelite people when they entered
Canaan had some moral education to lose. Whether that could be so is
the question asked by many critics, and their answer is an emphatic
No. They were, say they, a rude, desert people, without settled
habits of life, without knowledge of agriculture, and possessed
of a religion which in all outward respects was scarcely, if at
all, higher than that of the surrounding nations. What happened
to them in Canaan, therefore, was not a lapse, but a rise. They
advanced from being a wandering pastoral people to become settled
agriculturists. They gained knowledge of the arts of life by their
contact with the Canaanites, and they lost little or nothing in
religion; for they were themselves only image-worshippers and
looked upon Yahweh as on a level with the Canaanite Baals. But if
the Decalogue belongs, in any form, to that early time, and if the
character of Moses be in any degree historical, then, of course,
this mode of view is false. Then Israel worshipped a spiritual
God, who was the guardian of morals; and there was in the mind
of their leader and legislator a light which illuminated every
sphere of life, both private and national. Consequently there
could be a falling away from a higher level of religious life, as
the Scriptures consistently say there was. Without perhaps having
understood and made their own the fundamental truths of Yahwism,
the people had had their whole social and political life remodelled
in accordance with its principles. They had, moreover, had time to
learn something of its inner meaning, and in forty years we may
well believe that the more spiritually minded among them had become
imbued with the higher religious spirit. Add to that the union,
the movement, the excitement of a successful advance, crowned by
conquest, and we have all the elements of a revived religious and
national life among Eastern people.
Similar causes have produced precisely similar effects since. In
important respects the origin of Mohammedanism repeats the same
story. A semi-nomadic people, divided into clans and tribes, related
by blood but never united, were unified by a great religious idea
vastly in advance of any they had hitherto known. The religious
reformer who proclaimed this truth, and those who belonged to the
inner circle of his friends and counsellors, were turned from many
evils, and exhibited a moral force and enthusiasm corresponding, in
some degree at least, to the sublimity of the religious doctrine
they had embraced. The masses, on their part, received and submitted
to a revised and improved scheme of social life. Then they moved
forward to conquest, and in their first days not only trampled down
opposition, but deserved to do so, for in most respects they were
superior to the ignorant and degraded Christians they overthrew.
They came out of the desert, and were at first soldiers only. But
in a generation or two they largely settled to purely agricultural
life, as landowners for whom the native population laboured; and
they gained in knowledge of the arts of life from the more civilised
peoples they conquered. But in religious and moral character
imitations of the conquered peoples involved, for the conquerors, a
loss. And soon they did lose. The violence accompanying successful
war produced arrogance and injustice; the immense wealth thrown
into their hands so suddenly gave rise to luxury and greed. Within
twenty-five years from the flight of Mohammed from Mecca, relaxation
of manners manifested itself. Sensuality and drunkenness were rife;
with Ali's death the Caliphate passed into the hands of Muawia,
the leader of the still half-heathen part of the Koreish; and
the secular indifferent portion of Mohammed's followers ruled in
Islam.[51]
[51] For an illustration of the way in which land-hunger and the
rush to satisfy it operates on men, see the account of "The Invasion
of Oklahoma" (a territory lately thrown open to occupation in the
United States), _Spectator_, April 27th, 1889.
Allowing all that can be allowed for exceptional influences in
Israel, we may well believe that the circumstances of the first
invaders were such as would strain the influence of the higher
religion upon the nation. And after the conquest and settlement
the strain would necessarily be greater still. Whatever drawbacks
warfare may have, it at least keeps men active and hardy, but the
rest of a conqueror after warfare is a temptation to luxury and
corruption which has been very rarely resisted. Even to-day, when
men enter upon new and vacant lands, and that without war and under
Christian influences, the plenty which the first immigrants soon
gather about them proves adverse to higher thought. In America in
its earlier days, and in new American territories and Australia now,
our civilisation at that stage always takes a materialistic turn.
Every man may hope to become rich, the resources of the country
are so great and those who are to share them are so few. In order
to develop them, all concerned must give their time and thoughts
to the work, and must become absorbed in it. The result is that,
though the religious instinct asserts itself in sufficient strength
to lead to the building of churches and schools, and men are too
busy to be much influenced by theoretical unbelief, yet the pulse
of religion beats feebly and low. The feeling spreads, under many
disguises it is true, but still it spreads, that a man's life does
"consist in the abundance of the things which he possesseth"; and
the heroic element of Christianity, the impulse to self-sacrifice,
falls into the background. The result is a social life respectable
enough, save that the social blots due to self-indulgence are a good
deal more conspicuous than they should be; a very high average of
general comfort, with its necessary drawback of a self-satisfied
and somewhat ignoble contentment; and a religious life that prides
itself mainly in avoiding the falsehood of extremes. In such
an atmosphere true and living religion has great difficulty in
asserting itself. Each individual is drawn away from the region
of higher thought more powerfully than in the older lands where
ambitions are for most men less plausible; and so the struggle to
keep the soul sensitive to spiritual influences is more hard. As
for the national life, public affairs in those circumstances tend
to be ruled simply by the standard of immediate expediency, and
strenuousness of principle or practice tends to be regarded as an
impossible ideal.
To all this Israel was exposed, and to more. There are doubts as to
the extent of their conquests when they settled down; but there are
none that when they did so they still had heathen Canaanites among
them. Throughout almost the whole country the population was mixed,
and constant intercourse with the conquered peoples was unavoidable.
At first these were either Israel's teachers in many of the arts of
settled life, or they must have carried on the work of agriculture
for their Israelite lords. Moreover many of the sacred places
of the land, the sanctuaries which from time immemorial had been
resorted to for worship, were either taken over by the Israelites or
were left in Canaanite hands. In either case they opened a way for
malign influences upon the purer faith. Gradually, too, the tribal
feeling asserted itself. The tribal heads regained the position they
had held before the domination of Moses and his successor, just as
the tribal heads of the Arabs asserted themselves after the death of
Mohammed and his immediate successors, and plunged into fratricidal
war with the companions of their prophet. The only difference was
that, while the circumstances of the Arabs compelled them to retain
a supreme head, the circumstances of the Israelites permitted them
to fall back into the tribal isolation from which they had emerged.
The national life was broken up, the religious life followed in
the same path, until, as the Book of Judges graphically says in
narrating how Micah set up an Ephod and Teraphim for himself and
made his son a priest, "every man did that which was right in his
own eyes." With a people so recently won for a higher faith, there
could not but follow a recrudescence of heathen or semi-heathen
beliefs and practices.
To sum up, given a great truth revealed to one man, which, though
accepted by a nation, is only half understood by the bulk of them,
and given also a great national deliverance and expansion brought
about by the same leader, you have there the elements of a great
enthusiasm with the seeds of its own decay within it. Such a nation,
especially if plied with external temptation, will fall back, not
into its first state certainly, but into a condition much below
its highest level, so soon as the leader and those who had really
comprehended the new truth are removed to a distance or are dead.
In the case of Mohammedanism this was instinctively felt. We find
the Governor of Bassorah writing thus to Omar, the third Khalif:
"Thou must strengthen my hands with a company of the Companions
of the Prophet, for verily they are as salt in the midst of the
people."[52] The same thing is expressly asserted of Israel also
by the later editor in Josh. xxiv. 31: "And Israel served the
Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that
outlived Joshua, and had known all the work of the Lord, that
He had wrought for Israel." It would almost seem as if Semitic
peoples were specially liable to such oscillations, if Palgrave's
account of the people of Nejed before the rise of the Wahabbis in
the middle of last century can be trusted. "Almost every trace of
Islam," he says,[53] "had long since vanished from Nejed, where the
worship of the Djann, under the spreading foliage of large trees,
or in the cavernous recesses of Djebel Toweyk, along with the
invocation of the dead and sacrifices at their tombs, was blended
with remnants of old Sabæan superstition. The Coran was unread, the
five daily prayers forgotten, and no one cared where Mecca lay,
east or west, north or south; tithes, ablutions, and pilgrimages
were things unheard of."[54] If that was the state of things in a
country exposed to no extraneous influences after a thousand years
of Islam, we may well believe that the state of Israel in the time
of the Judges was a fall from a better state religiously as well
as politically. Looking to the future, Moses might well foresee
the danger; and looking back the author of Deuteronomy would have
reasons, many of them now unknown, for knowing that what was feared
had occurred.
[52] _The Caliphate_, by Sir William Muir, p. 185.
[53] _Central and Eastern Arabia_, vol. i., p. 373.
[54] This shows how precarious the fundamental principle of much
new criticism is. The non-observance of rites laid down as Divine
commands, and the appearance of ancient superstitions such as the
worship of the dead at any period, are held sufficient in the
history of Israel to prove that monotheism did not then exist, and
that ancestor-worship was then the prevailing cult. If applied to
Islam that principle would lead to utterly false conclusions. Is
there any reason for thinking that it may not give similar results
when applied to the history of Israel?
It is striking to see that both know but one security against such
lapses in the life of a nation, and that is education. Nowadays we
are inclined to ask if this was not a delusion on their part. The
boundless faith in education as a moral, religious, and national
restorative which filled men's minds in the early part of this
century, has given place to disquieting questions as to whether
it can do anything so high. Many begin to doubt whether it does
more than restrain men from the worst crimes, by pointing out
their consequences. And in the case of ordinary secular education
that doubt is only too well founded. But it was not mere secular
education the Old Testament relied on. Reading, writing, and
arithmetic, valuable as these are as gateways to knowledge, were
not in its view at all. What it was felt necessary to do was to
keep alive an ideal view of life; and that was done by pouring
into the young the history of their people, with the best that
their highest minds had learned and thought of God. The demand
is that parents shall first of all give themselves up to the
love of God, without any reserve, and then that they shall teach
this diligently to their children as the substance of the Divine
demand upon _them_. Evidently by the words, "Thou shalt talk of
them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by
the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up," it is
meant that the truth about God and the thought of God should be a
subject on which conversation naturally turned, and to which it
gladly returned continually. Words about these things were to
flow from a genuine delighted interest in them, which made speech
a necessity and a joy. Further, parents were to meet the _naïve_
and questioning curiosity of their children as to the meaning of
religious and moral ordinances of their people, with grave and
extended teaching as to the work of God among them in the past.
They were to point out, vv. 21-25, all the grace of God, and to
show them that the statutes, which to young and undisciplined minds
might seem a heavy burden, were really God's crowning mercy: they
marked out the lines upon which alone good could come to man: they
were the directions of a loving guide anxious to keep their feet
from paths of destruction, "for their good always." Such education
as this might prove adequate to overcome even stronger temptations
than those to which Israel was exposed. For see what it means. It
means that all the garnered religious thought and emotion of past
generations, which the experiences of life and the felt presence
of God in them had borne in upon the deepest minds of Israel, was
to be made the bounding horizon for the opening mind of every
Israelite child. When the child looked beyond the desires of its
physical nature, it was to see this great sight, this panorama of
the grace of Yahweh. To compensate for the restrictions which the
Decalogue puts upon the natural impulses, Yahweh was to be held up
to every child as an object of love, no desire after which could be
excessive. Love to Yahweh, drawn out by what He had shown Himself to
be, was to turn the energies of the young soul outward, away from
self, and direct them to God, who works and is the sum of all good.
Obviously those upon whom such education had its perfect work would
never be fettered by the material aspects of things. Their horizon
could never be so darkened that the twilight gods worshipped by the
Canaanites should seem to them more than dim and vanishing shadows.
Every evil, incident to their circumstances as conquerors, would
fall innocuous at their feet.
The instrument put into the hands of Israel was, viewed ideally,
quite adequate for the work it had to do. But the history of Israel
shows that the effort to keep Yahweh continually present to the mind
of the people failed; and the question arises, why did it fail? If,
as we have every reason to believe, the main tendencies of human
nature then were what they are now, the first cause of failure
would be with the parents. Many, probably the most of them, would
observe to do all that Moses commanded, but they would do it without
themselves keeping alive their spiritual life. Wherever that was the
case, though the prayers should be scrupulously rehearsed, though
the religious talk should be increasing, though the instruction
about the past should be exact and regular, the highest results of
it all would cease to appear. The best that would be done would be
to keep alive knowledge of what the fathers had told them. The worst
would be to render the child's mind so familiar with all aspects
of the truth, and with all the phases of religious emotion, that
throughout life this would always seem a region already explored,
and in which no water for the thirsty soul had been found.
But in the children, too, there would be fatal hindrances. One
would almost expect, _a priori_, that when one generation had won
in trial and hardship and conquest a fund of moral and spiritual
wisdom, their children would be able to take it to themselves,
and would start from the point their fathers had attained. But in
experience that is not found to be so. The fathers may have gained
a sane and strong manhood through the training and teaching of
Divine Providence, but their children do not start from the level
their fathers have gained. They begin with the same passions, and
evil tendencies, and illusions, as their fathers began with, and
against these they have to wage continual war. Above all, each soul
for itself must take the great step by which it turns from evil to
good. No rise in the general level of life will ever enable men to
dispense with that. The will must determine itself morally by a free
choice, and the Divine grace must play its part, before that union
with God which is the heart of all religion can be brought about.
No mechanical keeping up of good habits or fairer forms of social
life can do much at this crucial point; and so each generation finds
that there is no discharge in the war to which it is committed. As
in all wars, many fall; sometimes the battle goes sorely against
the kingdom of God, and the majority fall. The strength and beauty
of a whole generation turns to the world and away from God, and the
labours and prayers of faithful men and women who have taught them
seem to be in vain.
The method of warding off evil by even high religious education
is consequently very imperfect and uncertain in its action.
Nevertheless this relative uncertainty is bound up with the very
nature of moral influence and moral agency. Professor Huxley, in
a famous passage of one of his addresses, says that if any being
would offer to wind him up like a clock, so that he should always
do what is right, and think what is true, he would close with the
offer, and make no mourning about his moral freedom. Probably this
was only a vehement way of expressing a desire for righteousness in
deed, and truth in thought, somewhat pathetic in such a man. But if
we are to take it literally, it is a singularly unwise declaration.
The longing which gives pathos to the professor's words would on
his hypothesis be a lunacy; for in the realm of morals mechanical
compulsion has no meaning. Even God must give room to His creature,
that he may exercise the spiritual freedom with which he is
endowed. Even God, we may say without irreverence, must sometimes
fail in that which He seeks to accomplish, in the field of moral
life. Philosophically speaking, perhaps, this statement cannot be
defended. But it is not the Absolute of Philosophy which can touch
the hearts and draw the love of men. It is the living, personal God,
of whom we gain our best working conception by boldly transferring
to Him the highest categories predicable of our humanity. He is,
doubtless, much more than we; but we can only ascribe to Him our
own best and highest. When we have done that we have approached Him
as near as we can ever do. The Scriptural writers, therefore, have
no pedantic scruples in their speech about God. They constantly
represent Him as pleading with men, desiring to influence them, and
yet sometimes as being driven back defeated by the obstinate sin of
man. The Bible is full of the failures of God in this sense; and
God's greatest failure, that which forms the burden and inspires
the pathos of the bulk of the Old Testament, is His failure with
His chosen people. They _would_ not be saved, they _would_ not be
faithful; and God had to accomplish His work of planting the true
and spiritual religion in the world by means of a mere remnant of
faithful men chosen from a faithless multitude.
But though this plan failed miserably in one way, in the way of
gaining the bulk of the people, it succeeded in another. As has
just been said, _the_ purpose of God was in any case accomplished.
But even apart from that, the religious education that was given
was of immense importance. It raised the level of life for all;
like the Nile mud in the inundation, it fertilised the whole field
of this people's life. It kept an ideal, too, before men, without
which they would have fallen even lower than they did. And it lay
in the minds of even the worst, ready to be changed into something
higher; for without previous intellectual acquaintance with the
facts, the deeper knowledge was impossible. Moreover the ordinary
civil morality of the people rested upon it. Without their religion
and the facts on which it was based, the moral code had no hold
upon them, and could have none. That had grown up in one complex
tangle with religion; it had received its highest inspiration from
the conception of God handed down from the fathers; and apart from
that it would have fallen into an incoherent mass of customs unable
to justify or account for their existence. In every community the
same principle holds. Hence whatever the theory of the relation
of the State to religion which may prevail, no State can, without
much harm, ignore the religion of the people. It may sometimes even
be wise and right for a government to introduce or to encourage
a higher religion at the expense of a lower. But it can never be
either wise or right to be inadvertent of religion altogether. In
accordance with this precept, the rulers of Israel never were so.
They not only encouraged parents to be strenuous, as this passage
demands of them, but on more than one occasion they made definite
provision for the religious instruction of the people. In a formal
sense that grew into a habit which even yet has not lost its hold;
and hence, as we have seen, the Jews have been kept true in an
unexampled manner to their racial and religious characteristics.