The true idea of God, and the faith in his effectual and
continued providence, are the two great religious principles
which the name of Abraham suggests. This is the beginning of the
history of the Hebrews, and the origin of that ancient Covenant
which, in passing from the Pentateuch to the Gospel, has become
the new Covenant, the Christian Religion.
About five centuries later, we find the Hebrews settled in Egypt,
in the land of Goshen, between the lower Nile, the Red Sea, and
the Desert, in a condition very different from that in which they
had first been when attracted to the court of Pharaoh by the
prosperity of Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham. The new
Pharaoh oppresses them cruelly; they are a prey to the miseries
of slavery, the contagion of idolatry, to all the evils, all the
perils, physical and moral, which can afflict a nation
numerically weak, fallen under the yoke of one powerful and
civilized.
{175}
The Hebrews nevertheless persist in their religious faith, cling
to their national reminiscences; they do not suffer their
nationality to be lost in and confounded with that of their
masters; they endure without offering any active resistance; they
will not deliver themselves, but they have never ceased to
believe in their God, and they await their Deliverer.
Moses has been saved from the waters of the Nile by Pharaoh's own
daughter. He has been brought up at Heliopolis, in the midst of
the pomp of the court, and instructed in the sciences of the
Egyptian priests. He has served the sovereign of Egypt; he has
commanded his troops and made war for him against the Æthiopians.
He has received an Egyptian name, Osarsiph, or Tisithen.
Everything seems to concur to make him an Egyptian. But he
remains a faithful Israelite: true to the faith and to the
fortunes of his brethren. Their oppression rouses his
indignation; he avenges one of them by killing his oppressor.
{176}
The victims of oppression, alarmed, disavow Moses, instead of
supporting him. Moses flees from Egypt and takes refuge in the
Desert, amongst a tribe of wandering Arabs, the Midianites,
sprung, like himself, from Abraham. Their chief, the sheick of
the tribe, Jethro, called also Hobab, receives him as a son, and
gives him his daughter Zipporah in marriage. The proud Israelite,
who has declined to remain an Egyptian, becomes an Arab, and
leads, several years, the nomadic life of the hospitable tribe.
It is now in the peninsula of Sinai that Moses wanders with the
servants and flocks of his father-in-law. In the centre of that
peninsula, of yore a province in the empire of the Pharaohs, but
which had fallen into the possession of the pastoral Arabs, rises
Sinai, a mount with which from time immemorial, among the
neighbouring tribes, have been connected as many sacred
traditions as have ever been assigned to Mount Ararat in Armenia,
or the Himalayas in India. In this venerable spot, before a
burning bush, Moses, with a heart full of faith, hears God
calling him and commanding him to lead his people, the children
of Israel, out of Egypt.
{177}
Moses is humble, distrustful of himself, just as Abraham before
him had been. "Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that
I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? ...
When I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them,
The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say
to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said
unto Moses I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto
the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." [Footnote
44]
[Footnote 44: Exodus iii. 11, 13, 14.]
Moses receives his mission from Jehovah, and feels no other
disquietude than arises from the desire to accomplish it.
In presence of such facts, with this association of God and man
in the same work, the opponents of the Supernatural still
clamour: "Why," ask they, "this confusion of divine action and of
human action? Has God need of man's concurrence?
{178}
Can He not, if He will, accomplish all his designs by himself,
and through the fulness of his omnipotence?" In my turn, I would
ask them if they know why God created man, and if God has put
them into the secret of his intentions towards the instrument
whom He employs for his designs? There precisely lies the
privilege of humanity: man is God's associate, subject to Him,
yet a free agent independent of Him; he intervenes by his proper
action in plans of which only an infinitely small part is
revealed to his intelligence and reserved for his execution.
Western Asia and its history are full of the name of Moses: Jews,
Christians, and Mahometans style him the First Prophet, the Great
Lawgiver, the Great Theologian; everywhere, in the scene of the
events themselves, the places retain a memory of him: the
traveller meets there the Well of Moses, the Ravine of Moses, the
Mountain of Moses, the Valley of Moses.
{179}
In other countries and other ages, this name has been given as
the most glorious that the saints could receive: St. Peter has
been styled the Moses of the Christian Church; St. Benedict, the
Moses of the Monastic Orders; Ulphilas, the Moses of the Goths.
What did Moses do to obtain a renown so great and so enduring? He
gained no battles; he conquered no territory; he founded no
cities; he governed no state; he was not even a man in whom
eloquence replaced other sources of influence and power: "And
Moses said unto the Lord, my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither
heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am
slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." [Footnote 45]
[Footnote 45: Exodus iv. 10.]
There is not in this whole history a single grand human action, a
single grand event, proceeding from human agency; all, all is the
work of God; and Moses is nothing on any occasion but the
interpreter and instrument of God: to this mission he has
consecrated soul and life; it is only by virtue of this title
that he is powerful, and that he shares, as far as his capacity
as a man permits, a work infinitely grander and more enduring
than that accomplished by all the heroes and all the masters that
the world ever acknowledged.
{180}
I know no more striking spectacle than that of the unshakeable
faith and inexhaustible energy of Moses in the pursuit of a work
not his own, in which he executes what he has not conceived, in
which he obeys rather than commands. Obstacles and
disappointments meet him at each turn; he has to struggle with
weaknesses, infidelity, caprices, jealousies, and seditions, and
these not merely in his own nation, but in his own family. He has
himself his moments of sadness, of disquietude: "And Moses cried
unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be
almost ready to stone me.... [Footnote 46] I beseech thee, shew
me thy glory."
[Footnote 46: Exodus xvii. 4; xxxiii. 18-20.]
And God answers him, "I will make all my goodness pass before
thee. ... Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see
me, and live." And Moses trusts in God, and continues to triumph
whilst he obeys Him.
{181}
The work of deliverance is consummated; Moses has led the people
of Israel out of Egypt, has surmounted the first perils and the
first sufferings of the Desert. They advance through the group of
mountains in the peninsula of Sinai Passing from valley to
valley, they arrive "at the entrance of a large basin surrounded
by lofty peaks. Of these the one which commands the most
extensive view is covered with enormous blocks, as if the
mountain had been overthrown by an earthquake. A deep cleft
divides the peak into two.
"No one who has approached the Râs Sufsâfeh through that noble
plain, or who has looked down upon the plain from that majestic
height, will willingly part with the belief that these are the
two essential features of the view of the Israelitish camp. That
such a plain should exist at all in front of such a cliff is so
remarkable a coincidence with the sacred narrative, as to furnish
a strong internal argument, not merely of its identity with the
scene, but of the scene itself having been described by an
eyewitness.
{182}
The awful and lengthened approach, as to some natural sanctuary,
would have been the fittest preparation for the coming scene. The
low line of alluvial mounds at the foot of the cliff exactly
answers to the 'bounds' which were to keep the people off from
'touching the Mount.' [Footnote 47]
[Footnote 47: Exodus xix. 12.]
The plain itself is not broken and uneven, and narrowly shut in,
like almost all others in the range, but presenting a long
retiring sweep, against which the people could remove and stand
afar off.' The cliff, rising like a huge altar in front of the
whole congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely
grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is the very image of
the 'mount that might not be touched,' and from which 'the voice'
of God might be heard far and wide over the stillness of the
plain below, widened at that point to its utmost extent by the
confluence of all the contiguous valleys.
{183}
Here, beyond all other parts of the peninsula, is the adytum,
withdrawn, as if in the end of the world,' from all the stir and
confusion of earthly things." [Footnote 48] Such was three
thousand five hundred years ago, and such is still, the place
where Moses received from God and gave to the people of Israel
that law of the Ten Commandments which resound still through all
the Christian Churches as the first foundation of their faith and
the first moral rule of Christian nations.
[Footnote 48: Sinai and Palestine in connection with their
History. By Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, pp. 42, 43.
London, 1862.]
The Hebrews, at the moment when the Decalogue became their
fundamental law, were in a crisis of social transformation; they
were upon the point of passing from the pastoral nomadic
condition to that of farmers and settlers. It seems that, at such
an epoch, the political institutions of a people would, as the
basis of their government, be its most natural and most urgent
business.
{184}
The Decalogue leaves the subject entirely untouched; makes to it
not the remotest, the most indirect allusion. It is a law
exclusively religious and moral, which only busies itself about
the duties of man to God and to his fellow-creatures, and admits
by its very silence all the varying forms of government that the
external or internal state of society may seem to require.
Characteristic, grand, and original, not to be met with in the
primitive laws of any other nascent state, and an admirable and
remarkable manifestation of the Divine origin of this one! It is
to man's natural and his moral destiny that the Decalogue
addresses itself; it is to guide man's soul and his inmost will
that it lays down rules; whereas it surrenders his external, his
civil condition to all the varying chances of place and of time.
{185}
Another characteristic of this law is not less original or less
urgent: it places God, and man's duties towards God, at the head
and front of man's life and man's duties; it unites intimately
religion and morality, and regards them as inseparable. If
philosophers, in studying, discriminate between them; if they
seek in human nature the special principle or principles of
morality; if they consider the latter by itself and apart from
religion, it is the right of science to do so. But still the
result is but a scientific work--only a partial dissection of
man's soul, addressed to only one part of its faculties, and
holding no account of the entirety and the reality of the soul's
life. The Human Body, taken as one whole, is by nature at once
moral and religious; the moral law that he finds in himself needs
an author and a judge; and God is to him the source and
guarantee, the Alpha and Omega of morality.
A metaphysician may, from time to time, affirm the moral law, and
yet forget its Divine Author. A man may, now and then, admit, may
respect the principles of morality, and yet remain estranged from
religion; all this is possible, for all this we see.
{186}
So small a portion of Truth sometimes satisfies the human mind!
Man is so ready and so prone to misconceive and to mutilate
himself! His ideas are by nature so incomplete and inconsequent,
so easily dimmed or perverted by his Passions or the action of
his free will! These are but the exceptional conditions of the
human mind, mere scientific abstractions; if men admit them,
their influence is neither general nor durable. In the natural
and actual life of the human race, Morality and Religion are
necessarily united; and it is one of the divine characteristics
of the Decalogue, as it is also one of the causes of that
authority which has remained to it after the lapse of so many
centuries, that it has proclaimed and taken as its foundation
their intimate union.
This is not the place to consider the laws of Moses in civil and
penal matters, nor to refer to his ordinances respecting the
worship, or to those that regard the organization of the
priesthood of the Hebrews. In the former of these two branches of
the Mosaic code, numerous dispositions, singularly moral,
equitable, and humane, are found in connection with circumstances
indicating a state of manners gross and cruel even to barbarism.
{187}
The legislator is evidently under the empire of ideas and
sentiments infinitely superior to those of the people, to whom,
nevertheless, his strong sympathies attach him. When we consider
the Mosaic Legislation, we find that in everything which concerns
the external forms and practices of worship, the ideas of Egypt
have made great impression upon the mind of the Lawgiver, and the
frequent use that he has made of Egyptian customs and ceremonies
is not less visible. But far above these institutions and these
traditions, which seem not seldom out of place and incoherent,
soars and predominates constantly the Idea of the God of Abraham
and of Jacob, of the God One and Eternal, of the True God. The
Laws of Moses omit no occasion of inculcating the belief in that
God, and of recalling Him to the recollection of the Hebrews. And
this, not as if they were recalling a principle, an institution,
a system; but as if they propose to place a sovereign, a lawful
and living sovereign, in the presence of those whom he governs,
and to whom they owe obedience and fidelity.
{188}
Moses never speaks in his own name, or in the name of any human
power, or of any portion of the Hebrew nation. God alone speaks
and commands. God's word and his commands Moses repeats to the
people. At his first ascending Mount Sinai, when he had received
the first inspiration from the Eternal, "Moses came and called
for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all
these words which the Lord commanded him. And all the people
answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we
will do." [Footnote 49]
[Footnote 49: Exodus xix. 7, 8.]
When Moses, again ascending Mount Sinai, had received from God
the Decalogue, he returned, "And he took the book of the
covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said,
All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient."
[Footnote 50]
[Footnote 50: Exodus xxiv. 7.]
{189}
As the events develop themselves, the Hebrews are found far from
rendering a constant obedience: they forget, they infringe--and
that frequently--these laws of God which they have accepted; and
God sometimes punishes, sometimes pardons them; still it is
always God alone that is acting; it is from Him alone that all
emanates; neither the priests who preside over the ceremonies of
his worship, nor the elders of Israel whom He summons to
prostrate themselves from afar before Him, nor Moses himself--his
sole and constant interpreter--do anything by themselves, demand
anything for themselves. The Pentateuch is the history and the
picture of the personal government by God of the Israelites. "Our
legislator," says the historian Josephus, "had in his thoughts
not monarchies, nor oligarchies, nor democracies, nor any one of
those political institutions: he commanded that our government
should be (if it is permitted to make use of an expression
somewhat exaggerated) what may be styled a Theocracy." [Footnote
51]
[Footnote 51: Joseph. contra Apionem, ii. c. 17.]
{190}
The eminent writers who have recently studied most profoundly the
Mosaic system--M. Ewald in Germany,[Footnote 52] Mr. Milman and
Mr. Arthur Stanley in England, M. Nicolas in France--have adopted
the expression of Josephus, attaching to it its real and complete
sense. "The term Theocracy," says Mr. Stanley, "has been often
employed since the time of Moses, but in the sense of a
sacerdotal government: a sense the very contrary to that in which
its first author conceived it. The theocracy of Moses was not at
all a government by priests, or opposed to kings; it was the
government by God himself, as opposed to a government by priests
or by kings." [Footnote 53]
[Footnote 52: Geschichte des Volkes Israel, bis Christus, ii.
188. Göttingen, 1853.]
[Footnote 53: Lectures on the Jewish Church, p. 157]
{191}
"Mosaism," says M. Nicolas, "is a theocracy in the proper sense
of the word. It would be a complete error to understand this word
in the sense which usage has given to it in our language. There
is no question here in effect of a government exercised by a
sacerdotal caste in the name and under the inspiration, real or
pretended, of God. In the Mosaic legislation the priests are not
the ministers and instruments of the Divine Will; God reigns and
governs by himself. It is He who has given his laws to the
Hebrews. Moses has been, it is true, the medium between the
Eternal and the people, but the people has taken part in the
grand spectacle of the Revelation of the Law; of this the people,
in the exercise of its freedom, has evinced its acceptance; and
in the covenant set on foot between the Eternal and the family of
Jacob, Moses has been, if I may be allowed the expression, only
the public officer who has propounded the contract. He was
himself, besides, not within the pale of the sacerdotal caste;
and the charge of keeping, amending, and seeing to the carrying
out of the body of laws was not confided to the priests."
[Footnote 54 ]
[Footnote 54: Études Critiques sur la Bible--Ancien
Testament, p. 172.]
{192}
Let the learned men who thus characterise the Mosaic theocracy
pause here and measure the whole bearing of the fact which they
comprehend so well. It is a fact unique in the history of the
world. The idea of God is, amongst all nations, the source of
religions; but in every case, except that of the Hebrews,
scarcely has the source appeared before it deviates and becomes
troubled; men take the place of God; God's name is made to cover
every kind of usurpation and falsehood; sometimes sacerdotal
corporations take possession of all government, civil and
religious; sometimes secular power overrules and enslaves
Religious Faith and Religious Life. In the Mosaic Dispensation we
have nothing of the kind; its very origin and its fundamental
principles condemn and prohibit even the attempt at any such
deviations. No paramount priesthood here; no secular power
playing the part of the oppressor. God is constantly present, and
sole Master. All passes between God and the people; all, I say,
so passes through the agency of a single man whom God inspires,
and in whom the people have faith, asking no other authority than
that of the revelation which he receives.
{193}
No sign here of a fact of human origin: just as the God of the
Bible is the true God, the religion that descended, by Moses,
from Sinai upon the elect people of God is the true Religion
destined to become, when Jesus Christ ascends Calvary, the
Religion of the Human Race.