_ISRAEL'S ELECTION, AND MOTIVES FOR FAITHFULNESS_
DEUT. ix-xi.
The remaining chapters of this special introduction to the statement
of the actual laws beginning with chapter xii., contain also an
earnest insistence upon other motives why Israel should remain true
to the covenant of Yahweh. They are urged to this, not only because
life both spiritual and physical depended upon it, as was shown
in the trials of the wilderness, but they are also to lay it to
heart that in the conquests which assuredly await them, it will be
Yahweh alone to whom they will owe them. The spies had declared, and
the people had accepted their report, that these peoples were far
mightier than they, and that no one could stand before the children
of Anak. But the victory over them would show that Yahweh had been
among them like a consuming fire, before which the Canaanite power
would wither as brushwood in the flame.
Under these circumstances the thought would obviously lie near that,
as they had been defeated and driven back in their first attempt
upon Canaan because of their unrighteousness and unbelief, so they
would conquer now because of their righteousness and obedience.
But this thought is sternly repressed. The fundamental doctrine
which is here insisted on is that Israel's consciousness of being
the people of God must at the same time be a consciousness of
complete dependence upon Him. If His gifts were ultimately to be
the reward of human righteousness, then obviously that feeling of
complete dependence could not be established. They are to move
so completely in the shadow of God that they are to see in their
successes only the carrying out of the Divine purposes. Instead
of feeling fiercely contemptuous of the Canaanites they destroy,
because they stand on a moral and spiritual height which gives them
a right to triumph, the Israelites are to feel that, while it is
for wickedness that the Canaanite people are to be punished, they
themselves had not been free from wickedness of an aggravated kind.
Their different treatment, therefore, rests upon the fact that
they are to be Yahweh's chosen instruments. In the patriarchs he
chose them to become the means, the vehicle, by which salvation and
blessing were to be brought to all nations. While, therefore, the
evil that comes upon the peoples they are to conquer is deserved,
the good they themselves are to receive is equally undeserved. That
which alone accounts for the difference is the faithfulness of God
to the promises He made for the sake of His purposes. He needs an
instrument through which to bless mankind. He has chosen Israel
for this purpose, partly doubtless because of some qualities, not
necessarily spiritual or moral, which they have come to have, and
partly because of their historical position in the world. These
taken together make them at this precise moment in the history of
the world's development the fittest instruments to carry out the
Divine purpose of love to mankind. And they are elected, made to
enter into more constant and intimate communion with God than other
nations, on that account. In the words of Rothe, "God chooses or
elects at each historical moment from the totality of the sinful
race of mankind that nation by whose enrolment among the positive
forces which are to develop the kingdom of God the greatest possible
advance towards the complete realisation of it may be attained,
under the historical circumstances of that moment." Whether that
completely covers the individual election of St. Paul, as Rothe
thinks, or not, it certainly precisely expresses the national
election of the Old Testament, and exhausts the meaning of our
passage. Israelite particularism had universality of the highest
kind as its background, and here the latter comes most insistently
to its rights.
It was not only the election of Israel to be a peculiar people
which depended upon the wise and loving purpose of God; the
providences which befell them also had that as their source. To
fit them for their mission, and to give them a place wherein they
could develop the germs of higher faith and nobler morality which
they had received, Yahweh gave them victory over those greater
nations, and planted them in their place. This, and this only,
was the reason of their success; and with scathing irony the
author of Deuteronomy stamps under his feet (ix. 7 ff.) any claim
to superior righteousness on their part. He points back to their
continuous rebellions during the forty years in the wilderness.
From the beginning to the end of their journey towards the promised
land, they are told, they have been rebellious and stiff-necked
and unprofitable. They have broken their covenant with their God.
They have caused Moses to break the tables of stone containing the
fundamental conditions of the covenant, because their conduct had
made it plain that they had not seriously bound themselves to it.
But the mercy of God had been with them. Notwithstanding their sin,
Yahweh had been turned to mercy by the prayer of Moses (vv. 25 ff.),
and had repented of His design to destroy them. A new covenant was
entered into with them (chap. x.) by means of the second tables,
which contained the same commands as were engraven on the first. The
renewal, moreover, was ratified by the separation of the tribe of
Levi (x. 8 ff.) to be the specially priestly tribe, "to bear the Ark
of the Covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister
unto Him and to bless in His name." From beginning to end it was
always Yahweh, and again Yahweh, who had chosen and loved and cared
for them. It was He who had forgiven and strengthened them; but
always for reasons which reached far beyond, or even excluded, any
merit on their part.
The grounds of Moses' successful intercession for them (ix. 25 ff.)
are notable in this connection. They have no reference at all to
the needs, or hopes, or expectations of the people. These are all
brushed aside, as being of no moment after such unfaithfulness as
theirs had been. The great object before his mind is represented
to be Yahweh's glory. If this stiff-necked people perish, then
the greatness of God will be obscured and His purposes will be
misunderstood. Men will certainly think, either that Yahweh,
Israel's God, attempted to do what He was not able to do, or that
He was wroth with His people, and drew them out into the wilderness
to slay them there. It is God's purpose with them, God's purpose
for the world through them, which alone gives them importance.
Were it not for that, they would be as little worth saving as they
have deserved to be saved. For his people, and, we may be sure,
for himself, Moses recognises no true worth save in so far as he
or they were useful in carrying out Divine purposes of good to the
world. Nor is the absence of any plea on Israel's behalf, that it is
miserable or unhappy, due merely to a desire to keep the rebellious
people in the background for the moment, and to appeal only to the
Divine self-love for a pardon which would, on the merits of the
case, be refused. It is the God of the whole earth, before whom "the
inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers," who is appealed to;
a God removed far above the petty motives of self-interested men,
and set upon the one great purpose of establishing a kingdom of God
upon the earth into which all nations might come. If His glory is
appealed to, that is only because it is the glory of the highest
good both for the individual and for the world. If fear lest doubt
should be cast upon His power is put forward as a reason for His
having mercy, that is because to doubt His power is to doubt the
supremacy of goodness. If the Divine promise to the patriarchs is
set forth here, it is because that promise was the assurance of the
Divine interest in and Divine love of the world.
Under such circumstances it would need a very narrow-hearted
literalism, such as only very "liberal" theologians and critics
could favour, to reduce this appeal to a mere attempt to flatter
Yahweh into good-humour. It really embodies all that can be said
in justification of our looking for answers to prayer at all; and
rightly understood it limits the field of the answer as strictly as
the expressed or implied limitations of the New Testament, viz. that
effectual prayer can only be for things according to the will of
God. Moreover it expresses an entirely natural attitude towards God.
Before Him, the sum of all perfections, the loving and omniscient
and omnipresent God, what is man that he should assert himself in
any wise? When the height and the depth, the sublimity and the
comprehensiveness of the Divine purpose is considered, how can a
man do aught save fall upon his face in utter self-forgetfulness,
immeasurably better even than self-contempt? The best and holiest
of mankind have always felt this most; and the habit of measuring
their attainments by the faithfulness and knowledge, the virtue and
power which is in God, has impressed some of the greatest minds and
purest souls with such humility, that to men without insight it
has seemed mere affectation. But the pity, the condescension, the
love of Christ has so brought God down into our human life, that
we are apt at times to lose our awe of God as seen in Him. Were we
children of the spirit we should not fall into that sin. We cannot,
consequently, be too frequently or too sharply recalled to the more
austere and remote standpoint of the Old Testament. For many even
of the most pious it would be well if they could receive and keep a
more just impression of their own worthlessness and nullity before
God.
In the section from the twelfth verse of chapter x. to the end of
chapter xi. the hortatory introduction is summed up in a final
review of all the motives to and the results of obedience and love
to God. The fundamental exhortation as to love to God is once more
repeated; only here fear is joined with love and precedes it; but
the necessity of love to God is expanded and dwelt upon, as at
the beginning, with a zeal that never wearies. The Deuteronomist
illustrates and enforces it with old reasons and new, always
speaking with the same pleading and heartfelt earnestness. He does
not fear the tedium of repetition, nor the accusation of moving
in a narrow round of ideas. Evidently in the evil time when he
wrote this love towards God had come to be his own support and his
consolation; and it had been revealed to him as the source of a
power, a sweetness, and a righteousness which could alone bring the
nation into communion with God. In affecting words resembling very
closely the noble exhortation in Micah vi., "He hath showed thee,
O man, what is good; and what doth Yahweh require of thee, but to
do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
he teaches much the same doctrine as his contemporary: "And now,
Israel, what doth Yahweh thy God require of thee, but to fear Yahweh
thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve
Yahweh thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the
commandments of Yahweh and His statutes which I command thee this
day for thy good?"[67]
[67] Chap. x. 12.
In spirit these passages seem identical; but it is held by many
writers on the Old Testament that they are not so, that they
represent, in fact, opposite poles of the faith and life of Israel.
Micah is supposed by Duhm, for instance, to mean by his threefold
demand that justice between man and man, love and kindliness
and mercy towards others, and humble intercourse with God are,
in _distinction from sacrifice_, true religion and undefiled.
Robertson Smith also considers that these verses in Micah contain
a repudiation of sacrifice. In Deuteronomy, on the contrary, fear
and love of God and walking in His ways are placed first, but they
are joined with a demand for the heartfelt service of God and
the keeping of His statutes as about to be set forth. Now these
certainly include ritual and sacrifice. The one passage, written
by a prophet, excludes sacrifice as binding and acceptable service
of God; the other, written perhaps by a priest, certainly by a
man upon whom no prophetic lessons of the past had been lost,
includes it. To use the words of Robertson Smith in discussing
the requisites of forgiveness in the Old Testament, "According
to the prophets Yahweh asks only a penitent heart and desires no
sacrifice; according to the ritual law, He desires a penitent heart
approaching Him in certain sacrificial sacraments."[68] The author
of Deuteronomy teaches the second view; the author of Micah chap.
vi., who is probably his contemporary, teaches the former. How is
such divergence accounted for? The answer generally made is that
Deuteronomy was the product of a close alliance between priests
and prophets. A common hatred of Manasseh's idolatry and a common
oppression had brought them together as never perhaps before. With
one heart and mind they wrought in secret for the better day which
they saw approaching, and Deuteronomy was a reissue of the ancient
Mosaic law adapted to the prophetic teaching. It represented a
compromise between, or an amalgamation of, two entirely distinct
positions.
[68] _Old Testament in Jewish Church_, 2nd edition, p. 308.
But even on this view it would follow that from the time of Josiah,
when Deuteronomy was accepted as the completest expression of
the will of God, the doctrine that ritual and sacrifice as well
as penitence were essential things in true religion was known,
and not only known but accepted as the orthodox opinion. Putting
aside, then, the question whether sacrifice was acknowledged by the
prophets before this or not, they must have accepted it from this
point onward, unless they denied to Deuteronomy the authority which
it claimed and which the nation conceded to it. Jeremiah clearly
must have assented to it, for his style and his thought have been so
closely moulded on this book that some have thought he may have been
its author. In any case he did not repudiate its authority; and all
the prophets who followed him must have known of this view, and also
that it had been sanctioned by that book which was made the first
Jewish Bible.
We have here, at all events, the keynote of the supremacy of moral
duty over Divine commands concerning ritual which distinguishes
the prophetic teaching in Micah and elsewhere, joined with the
enforcement of ritual observances. But there are few purely
prophetic passages which raise the higher demand so high as it is
raised here.
To love and fear God are anew declared to be man's supreme duties,
and the author presses these home by arguments of various kinds.
Again he returns to the election of Israel by Yahweh, without
merit of theirs; and to bring home to them how much this means, the
Deuteronomist exhibits the greatness of their God, His might, His
justice, and His mercy, which, great as it is to His chosen people,
is not confined to them, but extends to the stranger also. This most
gracious One they are to serve by deeds, to Him they are to cleave,
and they are to swear by Him only, that is, they are solemnly to
acknowledge Him to be their God in return for His undeserved favour.
For their very existence as a nation is a wonder of His power, since
they were only a handful when they went down to Egypt, and now were
"as the stars of heaven for multitude."
Then once more, in chapter xi., he repeats his one haunting thought
that love is to be the source of all worthy fulfilment of the law;
and he endeavours to shed abroad this love to God in their hearts
by reminding them once more of all the marvels of their deliverance
from Egypt, and of their wilderness journey. Their God had delivered
them first, then chastised them for their sins, and had trained them
for the new life that awaited them in the land promised to their
fathers.
Even in the security of the land they were to find themselves not
less dependent upon God than before. Rather their dependence would
be more striking and more impressive than in Egypt. As we have
seen repeatedly, this inspired writer belonged in many respects
to the childhood of the world, and the people he addressed were
primitive in their ideas. Yet his thoughts of God in their highest
flight were so essentially true and deep, that even to-day we
can go back upon them for edification and inspiration. But here
we have an appeal based upon a distinction which to-day should
have almost entirely lost its meaning. The Deuteronomist yields
quite simply and unreservedly to the feeling that the regular,
unvarying processes of nature are less Divine, or at least are less
immediately significant of the Divine presence, than those which
cannot be foreseen, which vary, and which defy human analysis. For
he here contrasts Egypt and Canaan, in both of which he represents
Israel as having been engaged in agricultural pursuits, and speaks
as if in the former all depended upon human industry and ingenuity,
and might be counted upon irrespective of moral conduct, while in
the latter all would depend upon Divine favour and a right attitude
towards God. It is quite true that in preceding chapters he has been
teaching that, even for worldly material success, the higher life is
necessary, that man nowhere lives by bread alone; and that we may
assuredly assume is his deepest, his ultimate thought. But he has
a practical end in view at this moment. He wishes to persuade his
people, and he appeals to what both he and they felt, though in the
last resort it might hardly perhaps be justified. In Egypt, he says,
your agricultural success was certain if only you were industrious.
The great river, of which the land itself is the gift, came down in
flood year after year, and you had only to store and to guide its
waters to ensure you a certain return for your labour. You had not
to look to uncertain rains, but could by diligence always secure
a sufficiency of the life-giving element. In Canaan it will not
be so. It "drinketh water only of the rain of heaven." God's eye
has to be upon it continually to keep it fertile, and the sense of
dependence upon Him will force itself upon you more constantly and
powerfully in consequence. They could hope to prosper only if they
never forgot, never put away His exhortations out of their sight.
Otherwise, he says, the life-giving showers will not fall in their
due season. Your land will not yield its fruits, and "ye shall
perish quickly off the good land which Yahweh giveth you."
Now what are we to say of this appeal? There can be no doubt
that the Divine omnipotence was really, in the Deuteronomist's
view as well as in ours, as irresistible in Egypt as in Canaan.
Fundamentally, no doubt, life or death, prosperity or adversity,
were as much in the hand of God in the one case as in the other; and
the Deuteronomist, at least, had no doubt that rebellion against
God could and would destroy Egypt's prosperity as much as Canaan's.
But he felt that somehow there was a tenderer and more intimate
communion of love between Yahweh and His people under the one set
of circumstances than under the other. We are not entitled to
impute to him a questionable distinction which modern minds are apt
to make, viz. that where long experience has taught men to regard
the course of providence as fixed, there the sphere of prayer for
material benefit ends, and that only in the region where the Divine
action in nature seems to us more spontaneous, and less capable of
being foreseen, can prayer be heartily, because hopefully, made.
But the feeling that suggests that was certainly in his mind. He
felt the difference between the fixed conditions of life in Egypt
and the more variable conditions in Canaan, to be much the same as
the difference between the circumstances of a son receiving a fixed
yearly allowance from his father, in an independent and perhaps
distant home, and those of a son in his father's house, who receives
his portion day by day as the result and evidence of an ever-present
affection. Both are equally dependent upon the father's love, and
both should theoretically be equally filled with loving gratitude.
But as a fact, the latter would be more likely to be so, and would
be held more guilty if he were not so. Upon that actual fact the
Deuteronomist takes his stand. As they were now to enter into
Yahweh's land, His chosen dwelling-place, he sees in the different
material conditions of the new country that which should make the
union between Yahweh and His people more intimate and more secure,
and He presses home upon them the greater shame of ingratitude, if
under such circumstances they should forget God and His laws.
Finally (xi. 22-25) he promises them the victorious extension of
their dominion if they will love Yahweh and keep His laws. From
Lebanon to the southern wilderness, from the Euphrates to the
western sea, they should rule, if they would cleave unto their God.
At no time was this promise fulfilled save in the days of David
and Solomon. For only then had Lebanon and the wilderness, the
Euphrates and the sea, been the boundaries of Israel. This must,
then, be regarded as the time of Israel's greatest faithfulness.
But it is striking that it is in Josiah's day, after the adoption
of Deuteronomy as the national law, that we meet with a conscious
effort to realise this condition of things once more. There would
seem to be little doubt that the good king took an equally literal
view of what the book commanded and of what it promised. He
inaugurated a period of complete external compliance with the law,
and like the young and inexperienced man he was, he regarded that
as the fulfilment of its requirements, and looked for a similar
instantaneous fulfilment of the promises. Bit by bit he had absorbed
the ancient territory of the Northern Kingdom; and in the decay of
the Assyrian power he saw the opportunity for the enlargement of his
dominion to the limit here defined. He consequently went out against
Pharaoh Necho in the full confidence that he would be victorious.
But if the Divine promise and its conditions were taken up too
superficially by him, Divine providence soon and terribly corrected
the error. The defeat and death of Josiah revealed that the
reformation had not been real and deep enough, and that the nation
was not faithful enough to make such triumph possible. Indeed, so
far as we can see, the time for any true fulfilment of Israel's
calling in that fashion had then passed by. The harvest was past,
and Israel was not saved, and could not now be saved, for it was in
its deepest heart unfaithful.
It may be questioned by some, of course, whether an Israel faithful
even in the highest degree could at any time have kept possession
of so wide a dominion in the face of the great empires of Assyria
and Egypt. These were rich, and had a far larger command both
of territory and men: how then could the Israelites ever have
maintained themselves in face of them? But the question is how to
measure the power of the higher ideas they held. It is not force
but truth that rules the world; and absolutely no limit can be set
to the possibilities which open out to a free, morally robust, and
faithful people, who have become possessed of higher spiritual ideas
than the peoples that surround them. Even in this sceptical modern
day the transformation as regards physical strength which takes
place when certain classes of Hindus become either Mohammedans or
Christians is so startling and so rapid that it appears almost a
miracle. As regards courage, too, it is even more rapid and equally
remarkable. The great majority of the struggles of nations are
fought out on the level of mere physical force and for material
ends, and the strongest and richest wins: but whenever a people
possessed of higher ideas and absolutely faithful to them does
appear, the opposing power, however great it may be in wealth
and numbers, is whirled away in fragments as by a tornado, or it
dissolves like ice before the sun. What Israel might have been,
therefore, had it been penetrated by the principles of the higher
religion, and been passionately true to it, can in no way be judged
by that which it actually was. Among the untried possibilities
which it was too unfaithful to realise, the possession of such an
empire as Deuteronomy promises would seem to be one of the least.
Our chapter sums up what precedes with the declaration on the part
of Yahweh, "See, I am setting before you this day a blessing and a
curse," according as they might obey or disobey the Divine command.
It is stated, in short, that the whole future of the people is to
be determined by their attitude to Yahweh and the commands He has
given them. In these two words "blessing" and "curse," as Dillmann
observes, He sets before them the greatness of the decision they are
called upon to make. Just as at the end of chapter iii. the vision
of Yahweh's stretched-out hand, which has strewn the world with the
wrecks and fragments of destroyed nations, is relied on to prepare
the people for contemplating their own calling, so here the gain or
loss which would follow their decision is solemnly set before them.
By Dillmann and others it is supposed that vv. 29 and 31, which
instruct the people to "lay the blessing upon Mount Gerizim and the
curse upon Mount Ebal," have been transferred by the later editor
from chapter xxvii., where they would come in very fittingly after
ver. 3. But whether that be so or not, they are evidently so far in
place here that they add to the solemnity with which the fate of the
nation in the future is insisted upon. Their "choice is brief and
yet endless"; it can be made in a moment, but in its consequence it
will endure.
But here a difficulty arises. Dr. Driver in his _Introduction_ says
of this hortatory section of our book that its teaching is that
"duties are not to be performed from secondary motives, such as fear
or dread of consequences; they are to be the spontaneous outcome of
a heart from which every taint of worldliness has been removed, and
which is penetrated by an all-absorbing sense of personal devotion
to God." Yet in these later chapters we have had little else but
appeals to the gratitude and hopes and fears of Israel. Chapters
viii. to xi. are wholly taken up with incitements to love and obey
God, because He has been immeasurably good to them, never letting
their ingratitude overcome His lovingkindness; because they are
wholly dependent upon Him for prosperity and the fertility of their
land; and because evil will come upon them if they do not. That
would seem to be the opposite of what Driver has declared to be the
informing spirit and the fundamental teaching of Deuteronomy.
Yet his view is the true one. Even if the Deuteronomist had added
these lower motives to attract and gain over those who were not
so open to the higher, that would not deprive him of the glory of
having set forth disinterested love as the really impelling power
in true religion. We are not required to lower our esteem of that
achievement, even if, like the reasonable and wise teacher he is, he
boldly uses every motive that actually influences men, whether it
should do so or not, to win them to the higher life. But it is not
necessary to suppose that he does so. His demand is that men shall
love Yahweh their God with all their heart and strength, and to
win them to that he sets forth what their God has revealed Himself
to be. Men cannot love one whom they do not know; they cannot
love one who has not proved himself lovable to them. As his whole
effort is to get men to love God, and show their love by obedience
to His expressed will, the Deuteronomist brings to mind all His
loving thoughts and acts towards them, and so continually keeps
his appeal at the highest level. He does not ask men to serve God
because it will be profitable to them, but because they love God;
and he endeavours to make them love God by reciting all His love and
friendliness and patience to His people, and by pointing out the
evil which His love is seeking to ward off. The plea is not the
ignoble one that they must serve Yahweh for what they can gain by
it, but that they should love Yahweh for His love and graciousness,
and that out of this love continual obedience should flow as a
necessary result. That is his central position; and if he points
out the necessary results of a refusal to turn to God in this way,
he does not thereby set forth slavish fear or calculating prudence
as in themselves religious motives. They are only natural and
reasonable means of turning men to view the other side. He uses them
to bring the people to a pause, during which he may win them by the
love of God. That is always the true appeal; and Christianity when
it is at its finest can do nothing but follow in this path. Having
before his mind the results of evil conduct, he does urge men to
escape from the wrath that may rest upon them. But the only means so
to escape is to yield to the love of God. No self-restraint dictated
by fear of consequences, no turning from evil because of the lions
that are seen in the path, satisfies the demand of either Old
Testament or New Testament religion. Both raise the truly religious
life above that into the region of self-devoting love; and they both
deny spiritual validity to all acts, however good they may be in
themselves, which do not follow love as its free and uncalculating
expression. Yet they both deal with men as rational beings who can
estimate the results of their acts, and warn them of the death which
must be the end of every other way of supposed salvation. In this
manner they keep the path between extremes, ignoring neither the
inner heart of religion nor winding themselves too high for sinful
men.
How hard it is to keep to this reasonable but spiritual view is seen
by popular aberrations both within and without the Church. At times
in the history of the Church Christian teachers have allowed their
minds to be so dominated by the terror of judgment that judgment
has seemed to the world to be the sole burden of their message. As a
reaction from that again, other teachers have arisen who put forward
the love of God in such a one-sided way as to empty it of all its
severe but glorious sublimity; as if, like Mohammed, they believed
God was minded mainly "to make religion easy" unto men. Outside the
Church the same discord prevails. Some secular writers praise those
religions which declare that a man's fate is decided at the judgment
by the balance of merit over demerit in his acts; while others mock
at any judgment, and commit themselves with a light heart to the
half-amused tolerance of the Divine good-nature. But the teaching
which combines both elements can alone sustain and bear up a worthy
spiritual life. To rely upon terror only, is to ignore the very
essence of true religion and the better elements in the nature of
man; for that _will_ not be dominated by fear alone. To think of
the Divine love as a lazy, self-indulgent laxity, is to degrade the
Divine nature, and to forget that the possibility of wrath is bound
up in all love that is worthy of the name.
One other point is worthy of remark. In these chapters, which
deal with the history of God's chosen people in their relations
with Him, there come out the very elements which distinguish the
personal religion of St. Paul. The beginning and end of it all is
the free grace of God. God elected His people that they might be
His instrument for blessing the world, not because of any goodness
in them, for they were perverse and rebellious, but because He had
so determined and had promised to the fathers. He had delivered
them from the bondage of Egypt by His mighty power, and dwelt among
them thenceforth as among no other people. He gave them a land to
dwell in, and there as in His own house He watched and tended them,
and strove to lead them upwards to the height of their calling
as the people of God by demanding of them faith and love. It is a
very enlightening remark of Robertson Smith's that the deliverance
out of Egypt was to Israel in the Old Testament what conversion is
to the individual Christian according to the New Testament. Taking
that as our starting-point, we see that the thought of Deuteronomy
is precisely the thought of Romans. It is said, and truly enough,
that the Pauline theology was a direct transcript of Paul's own
experience; but we see from this that he did not need to form the
moulds for his own fundamental thoughts. Long before him the author
of Deuteronomy had formed these, and they must have been familiar
to every instructed Jew. But the recognition of this is not a loss
but a gain. If St. Paul had founded a theory of the universal action
of God upon the soul only on the grounds of his own very peculiar
experience, it might be argued that the basis of his teaching had
been too personal to permit us to feel sure that his view was
really as exhaustive as he thought. We see, however, that what he
experienced the Deuteronomist had long before traced in the history
of his people; and most probably he would not have traced it with
so firm a hand had he not himself had experience of a similar kind
in his personal relations with God. This method of conceiving the
relation of God to the higher life of man, therefore, is stated
by the Scriptures as normal. The free grace of God is the source
and the sustainer of all spiritual life, whether in individuals or
communities. Ultimately, behind all the successful or unsuccessful
efforts of the human heart and will, we are taught to see the great
Giver, waiting to be gracious, willing that all men should be saved,
but acting with the strangest reserves and limitations, choosing
Israel among the nations, and even within Israel choosing _the_
Israel in whom alone the promises can be realised. Made to serve by
human sin, He waits upon the caprices of the wills He has created.
He does not force them; but with compassionate patience He builds
up His Holy Temple of such living stones as offer themselves, and
"without haste as without rest" prepares for the consummation of His
work in the redemption of a people that shall be all prophets, a
kingdom of priests, a holy nation unto whom all nations shall join
themselves when they see that God is in them of a truth. That is
the Old Testament conception of the source, and guarantee, and goal
of all spiritual life in the world, and St. Paul's view is merely
a more mature and definite form of the same thing. And wherever
spiritual life has manifested itself with unusual power, the same
consciousness of utter unworthiness on the part of man, and entire
dependence upon the grace and favour of God, has also manifested
itself. The intellectual difficulties connected with this view,
great as they are, have never suppressed it; the pride of man and
his faith in himself have not been able permanently to obscure it.
The greater men are, the more entirely do they dread any approach to
that self-exaltation which puts away as unnecessary the Divine hand
stretched out to them. As Dean Church points out,[69] "not Hebrew
prophets only, but the heathen poets of Greece looked with peculiar
and profound alarm upon the haughty self-sufficiency of men."
Nothing can, they think, ward off evil from the man who makes the
mistake of supposing, even when carrying out the Divine will, that
he needs only his own strength of brain and will and arm to succeed,
that he is accountable to no one for the character which he permits
success to build up within him.
[69] _Cathedral Sermons_, p. 26.
Even the agnostic of to-day, as represented by Professor Huxley,
cannot do without some modicum of "grace" in his conception of
man's relation to the powers of nature, though to admit this is to
run a rift of inconsistency through his whole system of thought.
"Suppose," he says in his _Lay Sermons_, "it were perfectly certain
that the life and future of every one of us would, one day or other,
depend on his winning or losing a game at chess.... The chessboard
is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the
rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on
the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always
fair, just, patient. But we know to our cost that he never overlooks
a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man
who plays well the highest stakes are paid with that overflowing
generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength, and one
who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but without remorse. My
metaphor will remind you of the famous picture in which the Evil
One is depicted playing a game of chess with man for his soul.
Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong
angel, playing, as we say, for love, and who would rather lose than
win, and I should accept it as the image of human life." Even in a
world without God, therefore, the facts of life suggest "justice,"
"patience," "generosity," and a pity which "would rather lose than
win." With all the inexorable rigour and hardness of man's lot there
is mingled something that suggests "grace" in the power that rules
the world; and from the Deuteronomist to St. Paul, from Augustine
to Calvin and Professor Huxley, the resolutely thorough thinkers
have found, in the last analysis, these two elements, the rigour of
law and the election of grace, working together in the moulding of
mankind.
The statement of these facts in Deuteronomy is as thorough as any
that succeeded it. The rigour of law could not be more precisely
and pathetically declared than in this insistence on the blessing
or the curse which must inevitably follow right choice or wrong.
But the tenderness of grace could not be more attractively displayed
than in this picture of Yahweh's dealings with Israel. Love never
faileth here, no more than elsewhere. It persists, notwithstanding
stiff-necked rebellion, and in spite of coarse materialism of
nature. Even a childish fickleness, more utterly trying than any
other weakness or defect, cannot wear it out. But inexorable
blessing or curse is blended with it, and helps to work out the
final result for Israel and mankind. That is the manner of the
government of God, according to the Scriptures. History in its long
course as known to us now confirms the view; and the author of
Deuteronomy, in thus blending love and law together in the end of
this great exhortation, has rested the obligation to obedience on a
foundation which cannot be moved.