THE HEBREW MORAL DEVELOPMENT
Sec. 1. GENERAL CHARACTER AND DETERMINING PRINCIPLES
=1. The Hebrew and the Greek.=--The general character of the Hebrew
moral development may be brought out by a contrast with that of the
Greeks.[48] While many phases are common, there is yet a difference in
emphasis and focus. There were political and economic forces at work in
Israel, and religious forces in Greece. Nevertheless, the moral life in
one people kept close to the religious, and in the other found
independent channels. Conscientious conduct for the Hebrew centered in
doing the will of God; for the Greek, in finding rational standards of
good. For the Hebrew, righteousness was the typical theme; for the
Greek, the ideal lay rather in measure and harmony. For the Greek,
wisdom or insight was the chief virtue; for the Hebrew, the fear of the
Lord was the beginning of wisdom. The social ideal of the Hebrews was
the kingdom of God; of the Greeks, a political State. If we distinguish
in conscience two aspects, thoughtfulness in discovering what to do and
hearty desire to do the right when found, then the Greeks emphasize the
former, the Hebrews the latter. Intellect plays a larger part with the
Greek; emotion and the voluntary aspect of will with the Hebrew. Feeling
plays its part with the Greeks largely as an aesthetic demand for measure
and harmony; with the Hebrews it is chiefly prominent in motivation,
where it is an element in what is called "the heart," or it functions
in appreciation of acts performed, as the joy or sorrow felt when God
approves or condemns. Both peoples are interesting for our study, not
only as illustrating different kinds of moral development, but also as
contributing largely to the moral consciousness of western peoples
to-day.
=2. The Early Morality.=--The accounts of the tribal life and customs in
the early period after the settlement in Canaan, show the main features
of group life which are already familiar to us. Clan or kinship loyalty
was strong on both its good and its defective sides. There were
fidelity, a jeoparding of lives unto death, honor for group heroes,
joint responsibility, and blood revenge. There were respect for
hospitality and regulation of marriage, though not according to later
standards. A rough measure of justice was recognized in "as I have done,
so God hath requited me." But there was no public authority to restrain
the wrongdoer, except when a particularly revolting brutality shocked
public sentiment. Festivals and sacrificial meals united the members of
the family or clan more closely to each other and to their god. Vows
must be kept inviolable even if they involved human sacrifice. The
interests and ends of life were simple. The satisfaction of bodily
wants, the love of kin and above all of children, the desire to be in
right relation of favor and harmony with the unseen deity who protected
from enemies and sent fruitful seasons,--these made their chief good.
The line of their progress from these rude beginnings to a lofty moral
ideal lay through religion. But the religious conceptions were directly
related to political, social, and economic conditions; hence, both
aspects must be briefly characterized.
=3. Political Development.=--The political development (a) built up a
national unity which worked to break down old group units, (b)
strengthened military ambition and race pride, (c) stimulated the
prophets to their highest conceptions of the divine majesty and
universality, but, finally when the national power and hope were
shattered, (d) compelled the most thoroughgoing reconstruction of all
the values, ideals, and meaning of life. It is not possible or necessary
to trace this process in detail, but we may point out here the general
effect of the political development in bringing into clearer
consciousness the conceptions of authority and law which were important
factors in Hebrew morality. The earlier patriarchal head of the clan or
family exercised certain political power, but there was no explicit
recognition of this. Government by the "elders" or by the heads of the
household makes no clear distinction between the common kinship and the
political and legal authority of the sovereign. The "judges," whose rule
preceded the kingdom, were military deliverers who owed their authority
to personal powers rather than to a definite provision. To establish an
organized political community, a kingdom, was then to bring into clearer
recognition this element of authority which was merely implicit in the
tribal organization. It allowed a more distinctly voluntary relationship
to be differentiated from the involuntary relationship of kinship, or
the personal relationship of the hero. While, therefore, in the
formation of the kingdom the earlier prophets saw only a rejection of
God, the later prophets saw in it the symbol of a higher type of
relation between God and people. It was given religious sanction and the
king was regarded as the son of Jehovah. It was thus ready to serve as
the scheme or setting for the moral unity and order of a people.
=4. The Economic Factors.=--The organization and growing prosperity of
the political power were attended by economic and social changes. The
simple agricultural life of the early period had not caused entire loss
of clan organization and customs. But the growth of trade and commerce
under Solomon and later kings brought in wealth and shifted the center
of power and influence from country to city. Wealth and luxury had their
usual results. Clashing interests asserted their strength. Economic and
social individualism destroyed the old group solidarity. At the times of
the prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, there were classes of rich and poor.
Greed had asserted itself in rulers, judges, priests, and "regular"
prophets. Oppression, land monopoly, bribery, extortion, stirred moral
indignation. The fact that these were practiced by the most zealous
observers of ritual and guardians of religion roused in the great
reformers a demand for a change in religion itself. Not sacrifices but
justice is the need of the hour and the demand of God.
Sec. 2. RELIGIOUS AGENCIES
The interaction between the religious and the moral education of the
Hebrews was so intimate that it is difficult to distinguish the two, but
we may abstract certain conceptions or motives in Israel's religion
which were especially significant. The general conception was that of
the close personal relation between god and people. Israel should have
no other god; Jehovah--at least this was the earlier thought--would have
no other people. He had loved and chosen Israel; Israel in gratitude, as
well as in hope and fear, must love and obey Jehovah. Priests maintained
his cultus; prophets brought new commands according to the requirements
of the hour; the king represented his sovereignty and justice; the
course of events exhibited his purpose. Each of these elements served to
provoke or elicit moral reflection or moral conduct.
=1. The "Covenant" Relation was a Moral Conception.=--The usual
religious conception is that of some blood or kin relation between
people and deity. This has the same potential meaning and value as that
of the other relations of group life outlined in Chapter II. But it is
rather a natural than a "moral"--i.e., conscious and voluntary--tie. To
conceive of the relation between god and people as due to voluntary
choice, is to introduce a powerful agency toward making morality
conscious. Whatever the origin of the idea, the significant fact is that
the religious and moral leaders present the relation of Israel to
Jehovah as based on a covenant. On the one hand, Jehovah protects,
preserves, and prospers; on the other, Israel is to obey his laws and
serve no other gods. This conception of mutual obligation is presented
at the opening of the "Ten Commandments," and to this covenant relation
the prophets again and again make appeal. The obligation to obey the law
is not "This is the custom," or "Our fathers did so"; it is placed on
the ground that the people has voluntarily accepted Jehovah as its god
and lawgiver.
The meaning of this covenant and the symbols by which it was conceived,
changed with the advance of the social relationships of the people. At
first Jehovah was "Lord of Hosts," protector in war, and giver of
prosperity, and the early conceptions of the duty of the people seemed
to include human sacrifice, at least in extreme cases. But with later
prophets we find the social and family relationship of husband and
father brought increasingly into use. Whether by personal experience or
by more general reflection, we find Hosea interpreting the relationship
between God and his people in both of these family conceptions. The
disloyalty of the people takes on the more intimate taint of a wife's
unfaithfulness, and, conversely, in contrast to the concepts of other
religions, the people may call Jehovah "my husband" and no longer "my
master" (Baal). The change from status to contract is thus, in Israel's
religion, fruitful with many moral results.
=2. The Conception of a Personal Lawgiver.=--The conception of a
personal lawgiver raises conduct from the level of custom to the level
of conscious morality. So long as a child follows certain ways by
imitation or suggestion, he does not necessarily attach any moral
meaning to them. But if the parent expressly commands or prohibits, it
becomes a matter of obedience or disobedience. Choice becomes necessary.
Character takes the place of innocence. So Jehovah's law compelled
obedience or rebellion. Customs were either forbidden or enjoined. In
either case they ceased to be merely customs. In the law of Israel the
whole body of observances in private life, in ceremonial, and in legal
forms, is introduced with a "Thus saith the Lord." We know that other
Semitic people observed the Sabbath, practiced circumcision,
distinguished clean from unclean beasts, and respected the taboos of
birth and death. Whether in Israel all these observances were old
customs given new authority by statute, or were customs taken from other
peoples under the authority of the laws of Jehovah, is immaterial. The
ethical significance of the law is that these various observances,
instead of being treated merely as customs, are regarded as personal
commands of a personal deity.
This makes a vital difference in the view taken of the violation of
these observances. When a man violates a custom he fails to do the
correct thing. He misses the mark.[49] But when the observance is a
personal command, its violation is a personal disobedience; it is
rebellion; it is an act of will. The evil which follows is no longer bad
luck; it is punishment. Now punishment must be either right or wrong,
moral or immoral. It can never be merely non-moral. Hence the very
conception of sin as a personal offense, and of ill as a personal
punishment, forces a moral standard. In its crudest form this may take
the god's commands as right simply because he utters them, and assume
that the sufferer is guilty merely because he suffers. We find this in
the penitential psalms of the Babylonians. These express the deepest
conviction of sin and the utmost desire to please the god, but when we
try to discover what the penitent has done that wakens such remorse
within him, we find that he seems merely to feel that in some way he has
failed to please God, no matter how. He experiences misfortune, whether
of disease, or ill-luck, or defeat, and is sure that this must be due to
some offense. He does not know what this may be. It may have been that
he has failed to repeat a formula in the right manner; it is all one. He
feels guilty and even exaggerates his own guilt in view of the
punishment which has befallen him. Job's three friends apply the same
logic to his case.[50]
But side by side with the conception that the laws of Jehovah must be
obeyed because they were his commands, there was another doctrine which
was but an extension of the theory that the people had freely accepted
their ruler. This was that Jehovah's commands were not arbitrary. They
were right; they could be placed before the people for their approval;
they were "life"; "the judge of all the earth" would "do right." We have
here a striking illustration of the principle that moral standards, at
first embodied in persons, slowly work free, so that persons are judged
by them.
=3. The Cultus as Morally Symbolical.=--The elaborate cultus carried on
by the priests, symbolized, however imperfectly, certain moral ideas.
The solicitous care for ceremonial "purity" might have no direct moral
value; the contamination from contact with birth or death or certain
animals might be a very external sort of "uncleanness." Nevertheless,
they emphasized in the most forcible manner a constant control over
conduct by a standard which was set by a divine law. The "holiness" of
the priests, as set apart to special service of Jehovah, emphasized the
seriousness of their work; and further, it contributed to that
distinction between spiritual and material, between higher and lower,
which is a part of moral life. Moreover, while part of this value
inheres in all ritual, the contrast between Jehovah's worship and that
of other deities challenged moral attention. The gods of the land, the
various Baals, were worshipped "upon every high hill and under every
green tree." As gods of fertility, they were symbolized by the emblems
of sex, and great freedom prevailed at their festivals. At certain
shrines men and women gave themselves for the service of the god. The
first born children were not infrequently sacrificed.[51] These
festivals and shrines seem to have been adopted more or less fully by
Israel from the Canaanites, but the prophets have an utterly different
idea of Jehovah's worship. The god of Sinai rejects utterly such
practices. License and drunkenness are not, as the cultus of Baal and
Astarte implied, the proper symbols of life and deity. The sensual
cannot fitly symbolize the spiritual.
Moreover, one part of the cultus, the "sin offering," directly implied
transgression and the need of forgiveness. The "sins" might themselves
be ceremonial rather than moral, and the method of removing them might
be external--especially the process of putting the sins upon a scapegoat
which should "bear upon him all their iniquities into a solitary
land,"--nevertheless, the solemn confession, and the shedding of the
blood which was the "life," could not but remind of responsibility and
deepen reflection. The need of atonement and reconciliation, thus
impressed, symbolized the moral process of reconstructing, of putting
away a lower past, and readjusting life to meet an ideal.
=4. The Prophets as a Moral Force.=--The prophets were by far the most
significant moral agency in Israel's religion. In the first place, they
came to the people bearing a message from a living source of authority,
intended for the immediate situation. They brought a present command for
a present duty. "Thou art the man," of Nathan to David, "Hast thou
killed, and also taken possession?" of Elijah to Ahab, had personal
occasions. But the great sermons of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, were no less
for the hour. A licentious festival, an Assyrian invasion, an Egyptian
embassy, a plague of locusts, an impending captivity--these inspire
demand for repentance, warnings of destruction, promises of salvation.
The prophet was thus the "living fountain." The divine will as coming
through him "was still, so to speak, fluid, and not congealed into
institutions."
In the second place, the prophets seized upon the inward purpose and
social conduct of man as the all-important issues; cultus, sacrifice,
are unimportant. "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no
delight in your solemn assemblies," cries Amos in Jehovah's name, "But
let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream."
"I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed
beasts," proclaims Isaiah, "new moons, and sabbaths, the calling of
assemblies,--I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting." You
need not ceremonial, but moral, purity. "Wash you, make you clean; put
away the evil of your doings;--seek justice, relieve the oppressed,
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Micah's "Shall I give my
first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul?" seized upon the difference once for all between the physical and
the moral; a completely ethical standpoint is gained in his summary of
religious duty: "What doth God require of thee, but to do justly, and
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And the New Testament
analogue marks the true ethical valuation of all the external religious
manifestations, even of the cruder forms of prophecy itself. Gifts,
mysteries, knowledge, or the "body to be burned"--there is a more
excellent way than these. For all these are "in part." Their value is
but temporary and relative. The values that abide, that stand criticism,
are that staking of oneself upon the truth and worth of one's ideal
which is faith; that aspiration and forward look which is hope; that sum
of all social charity, sympathy, justice, and active helpfulness, which
is love. "But the greatest of these is love."
=5. The Religious View of the Kingdom Gave the Setting for a Social
Ideal.=--Jehovah was the king of his people. The human ruler in
Jerusalem was his representative. The kingdom of Israel was under divine
care and had on the other hand a serious purpose. The expansion and
glory of the kingdom under Solomon showed the divine favor. Division and
calamity were not mere misfortunes, or the victory of greater armies;
they were divine rebukes. Only in righteousness and justice could the
nation survive. On the other hand, the confidence in Jehovah's love for
Israel guaranteed that he would never forsake his people. He would
purify them and redeem them even from the grave. He would establish a
kingdom of law and peace, "an everlasting kingdom that should not be
destroyed." Politics in Israel had a moral goal.
=6. Religion Gave the Problem of Evil a Moral Significance.=--The Greek
treatment of the problem of evil is found in the great tragedies. An
ancestral curse follows down successive generations, dealing woe to all
the unhappy house. For the victims there seems to be nothing but to
suffer. The necessity of destiny makes the catastrophe sublime, but also
hopeless. Ibsen's _Ghosts_ is conceived in a similar spirit. There is a
tremendous moral lesson in it for the fathers, but for the children
only horror. The Greek and the Scandinavian are doubtless interpreting
one phase of human life--its continuity and dependence upon cosmical
nature. But the Hebrew was not content with this. His confidence in a
divine government of the world forced him to seek some moral value, some
purpose in the event. The search led along one path to a readjustment of
values; it led by another path to a new view of social interdependence.
The book of Job gives the deepest study of the first of these problems.
The old view had been that virtue and happiness always went together.
Prosperity meant divine favor, and therefore it must be the good.
Adversity meant divine punishment; it showed wrongdoing and was itself
an evil. When calamity comes upon Job, his friends assume it to be a
sure proof of his wickedness. He had himself held the same view, and
since he refuses to admit his wickedness and "holds fast to his
integrity," it confounds all his philosophy of life and of God. It
compels a "reversal and revaluation of all values." If he could only
meet God face to face and have it out with him he believes there would
be some solution. But come what may, he will not sell his soul for
happiness. To "repent," as his friends urge, in order that he may be
again on good terms with God, would mean for him to call sin what he
believes to be righteousness. And he will not lie in this way. God is
doubtless stronger, and if he pursues his victim relentlessly, may
convict him. But be this as it may, Job will not let go his fundamental
consciousness of right and wrong. His "moral self" is the one anchor
that holds, is the supreme value of life.
"As God liveth, who hath taken away my right,
And the Almighty who hath vexed my soul;
Surely my lips shall not speak unrighteousness.
Till I die, I will not put away my integrity from me,
My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go."[52]
Another suggestion of the book is that evil comes to prove man's
sincerity: "Does Job serve God for naught?" and from that standpoint the
answer is, Yes; he does. "There is a disinterested love of God."[53] In
this setting, also, the experience of suffering produces a shifting of
values from the extrinsic to the internal.
The other treatment of the problem of suffering is found in the latter
half of Isaiah. It finds an interpretation of the problem by a deeper
view of social interdependence, in which the old tribal solidarity is
given, as it were, a transfigured meaning. The individualistic
interpretation of suffering was that it meant personal guilt. "We did
esteem him stricken of God." This breaks down. The suffering servant is
not wicked. He is suffering for others--in some sense. "He hath borne
our griefs and carried our sorrows." The conception here reached of an
interrelation which involves that the suffering of the good may be due
to the sin or the suffering of others, and that the assumption of this
burden marks the higher type of ethical relation, is one of the finest
products of Israel's religion. As made central in the Christian
conception of the Cross, it has furnished one of the great elements in
the modern social consciousness.
Sec. 3. THE MORAL CONCEPTIONS ATTAINED
The moral conceptions which were thus worked out may now be brought
together for convenient summary under the two heads of the "How" and the
"What" indicated in our introductory chapter. Under the first we specify
the conceptions resulting (1) from recognition of a standard of right,
and an ideal of good, (2) from free choice of this ideal. Under the What
we indicate the content of the ideal on both its personal and its social
sides.
=1. Righteousness and Sin.=--Righteousness and sin were not exact or
contradictory opposites. The righteous man was not necessarily sinless.
Nevertheless, the consciousness of sin, like a dark background, brought
out more emphatically the conception of righteousness. This conception
had its two aspects, derived from the civil and the religious spheres of
life--spheres which were not separate for the Hebrew. On the one hand,
the just or righteous respected the moral order in human society. The
unrighteous was unjust, extortionate, cruel. He did not respect the
rights of others. On the other hand, the righteous man was in "right"
relation to God. This right relation might be tested by the divine law;
but as God was conceived as a living person, loving his people,
"forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin," it might also be measured
by an essential harmony of spirit with the divine will. There was the
"righteousness of the law," and the "righteousness of faith." The first
implies complete obedience; the second implies that in spite of
transgressions there is room for atonement[54] or reconciliation. As the
first means ethically the testing of conduct by a moral standard, a
"moral law," so the second stands for the thought that character is
rather a matter of spirit and of constant reconstruction than of exact
conformity once for all to a hard and fast rule. Specific acts may fail
to conform, but the life is more than a series of specific acts. The
measurement of conduct by the law has its value to quicken a sense of
shortcoming, but alone it may also lead either to self-righteous
complacency or to despair. The possibility of new adjustment, of
renewal, of "a new birth," means liberation and life. As such it may be
contrasted with the Buddhist doctrine of Karma, the causality from which
there is no escape but by the extinction of desire.
"Sin" had likewise its various aspects. It stood for missing the mark,
for violating the rules of clean and unclean; but it stood also for
personal disobedience to the divine will, for violation of the moral
order of Israel. In this latter sense, as identified by the prophets
with social unrighteousness, it is a significant ethical conception. It
brings out the point that evil and wrongdoing are not merely individual
matters, not merely failures; they offend against a law which is above
the private self, against a moral order which has its rightful demands
upon us.
=2. Personal Responsibility.=--The transition from group to individual
responsibility was thoroughly worked out by the prophets, even if they
were not able to carry full popular assent. In early days the whole kin
was treated as guilty for the offense of the kinsman. Achan's case has
already been cited; and in the case of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, "Their
wives and their sons and their little ones" were all treated alike.[55]
In like manner, the family of the righteous man shared in the divine
favor. The later prophets pronounced a radical change. The proverb, "The
fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on
edge," is no more to be used, declares Ezekiel, speaking for Jehovah.
"The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the son shall not bear the
iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of
the son;" and it is especially interesting to note that the Lord is
represented as pleading with the people that this is fair, while the
people say, "Wherefore doth not the son bear the iniquity of the
father?" The solidarity of the family resisted the individualism of the
prophetic conception, and five hundred years after Ezekiel the traces of
the older conception still lingered in the question, "Who did sin, this
man or his parents, that he was born blind?"[56] For another aspect of
responsibility, viz., intent, as distinct from accidental action,[57]
we have certain transitional steps shown in the interesting "cities of
refuge"[58] for the accidental homicide in which he might be safe from
the avenger of blood, provided he was swift enough of foot to reach a
city of refuge before he was caught. But the fullest development in the
ethics of responsibility along this line seemed to take the form
described under the next head.
=3. Sincerity, and Purity of Motive.=--The Hebrew had a philosophy of
conduct which made it chiefly a matter of "wisdom" and "folly," but the
favorite term of prophet and psalmist to symbolize the central principle
was rather "the heart." This term stood for the voluntary disposition,
especially in its inner springs of emotions and sentiments, affections
and passions. The Greek was inclined to look askance at this side of
life, to regard the emotions as perturbations of the soul, and to seek
their control by reason, or even their repression or elimination. The
Hebrew found a more positive value in the emotional side of conduct, and
at the same time worked out the conception of a sincere and
thoroughgoing interest as lying at the very root of all right life. The
religious influence was as elsewhere the important agency. "Man looketh
on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looketh on the heart,"
"If I regard iniquity in my heart, Jehovah will not hear me," are
characteristic expressions. A divine vision, which penetrates to the
deepest springs of purpose and feeling, will not tolerate pretense. Nor
will it be satisfied with anything less than entire devotion: the
Israelite must serve Jehovah with all his heart. Outer conformity is
not enough: "Rend your heart and not your garments." It is the "pure in
heart" who have the beatific vision. Not external contacts, or
ceremonial "uncleanness," on which earlier ritual had insisted, defile
the man, but rather what proceeds from the heart. For the heart is the
source of evil thoughts and evil deeds.[59] And conversely, the
interests, the emotions, and enthusiasms which make up the man's deepest
self do not spring forth in a vacuum; they go with the steadfast purpose
and bent, with the self of achievement. "Where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also."
Purity of motive in a full moral consciousness means not only (formal)
sincerity, but sincere love of good and right. This was not stated by
the Hebrew in abstract terms, but in the personal language of love to
God. In early days there had been more or less of external motives in
the appeals of the law and the prophets. Fear of punishment, hope of
reward, blessings in basket and store, curses in land and field, were
used to induce fidelity. But some of the prophets sought a deeper view,
which seems to have been reached in the bitterness of human experience.
Hosea's wife had forsaken him, and should not the love of people to
Jehovah be as personal and sincere as that of wife to husband? She had
said, "I will go after my lovers _that give me my bread and my water, my
wood and my flax, my oil and my drink_."[60] Is not serving God for hire
a form of prostitution?[61] The calamities of the nation tested the
disinterestedness of its fidelity. They were the challenge of the
Adversary, "Doth Job fear God for naught?" And a remnant at least
attested that fidelity did not depend on rewards. The moral maxim that
virtue is its own reward is put in personal terms by the prophet after
the exile:
"For though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be
in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields
shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and
there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the
Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."[62]
=4. The Conception of "Life" as an Ideal.=--The content of Israel's
moral ideal on its individual side was expressed by the term "Life." All
the blessings that the leader of Israel could offer his people were
summarized in the phrase, "I have set before you life and death;
wherefore choose life." The same final standard of value appears in the
question of Jesus, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world
and lose his own life?" When we inquire what life meant, so far as the
early sources give us data for judgment, we must infer it to have been
measured largely in terms of material comfort and prosperity,
accompanied by the satisfaction of standing in right relations to the
god and ruler. This latter element was so closely united with the first
that it was practically identical with it. If the people were prosperous
they might assume that they were right; if they suffered they were
surely wrong. Good and evil were, therefore, in this stage, measured
largely in terms of pleasure and pain. The end to be sought and the
ideal to be kept in mind was that of long and prosperous life--"in her
right hand length of days, in her left hand riches and honor."
Intellectual and aesthetic interests were not prized as such. The
knowledge which was valued was the wisdom for the conduct of life, of
which the beginning and crown was "the fear of the Lord." The art which
was valued was sacred song or poetry. But the ideal values which came to
bulk most in the expanding conception of "life" were those of personal
relation. Family ties, always strong among Oriental peoples, gained in
purity. Love between the sexes was refined and idealized.[63] National
feeling took on added dignity, because of the consciousness of a divine
mission. Above all, personal union with God, as voiced in the psalms and
prophets, became the desire. He, and not his gifts, was the supreme
good. He was the "fountain of life." His likeness would satisfy. In his
light the faithful would see light.
But even more significant than any specific content put into the term
"life," was _what was involved in the idea itself_. The legalists had
attempted to define conduct by a code, but there was an inherent
vitality in the ideal of life, which refused to be measured or bounded.
The "words of eternal life," which began the new moral movement of
Christianity, had perhaps little definite content to the fishermen, and
it is not easy to say just what they meant in moral terms to the writer
of the Fourth Gospel who uses the phrase so often. With Paul, life as
the realm of the spirit gets definition as it stands over against the
"death" of sin and lust. But with all writers of Old or New Testament,
whatever content it had, life meant above all the suggestion of
something beyond, the gleam and dynamic power of a future not yet
understood. It meant to Paul a progress which was governed not by law or
"rudiments," but by freedom. Such a life would set itself new and higher
standards; the laws and customs that had obtained were felt to be
outgrown. The significance of early Christianity as a moral movement,
aside from its elements of personal devotion and social unity to be
noticed below, was the spirit of movement, the sense of newly forming
horizons beyond the old, the conviction that as sons of God its
followers had boundless possibilities, that they were not the children
of the bond woman, but of the free.
=5. The Social Ideal of Justice, Love, and Peace.=--We have seen how
this ideal was framed in the setting of a kingdom of God. At first
national, it became universal, and with a fraternity which the world is
far from having realized, it was to know "neither Jew nor Greek, bond
nor free." At first military, it took on with seer and psalmist the form
of a reign of peace and justice. After the fierce and crude powers
typified by the lion and the bear and the leopard had passed, the seer
saw a kingdom represented by a human form. Such a kingdom it was that
should not pass away. Such was the kingdom "not of this world" which
Jesus presented as his message. Membership in this moral kingdom was for
the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the merciful, the peace-makers,
the hungerers after righteousness. Greatness in this moral community was
to depend on service, not on power. The king should not fail till he had
"set justice in the earth." He should "deliver the needy, and the poor."
Certain features of this ideal order have since found embodiment in
social and political structures; certain features remain for the future.
Certain periods in history have transferred the ideal entirely to
another world, regarding human society as hopelessly given over to evil.
Such theories find a morality possible only by renouncing society. The
Hebrews presented rather the ideal of a moral order on earth, of a
control of all life by right, of a realization of good, and of a
completeness of life. It was an ideal not dreamed out in ecstatic
visions of pure fancy, but worked out in struggle and suffering, in
confidence that moral efforts are not hopeless or destined to defeat.
The ideal order is to be made real. The divine kingdom is to come, the
divine will to be done "_on earth_ as it is in heaven."
LITERATURE
The works of W. R. Smith (_Religion of the Semites_) and Barton (_A
Sketch of Semitic Origins_) already mentioned. Schultz, _Old Testament
Theology_, tr. _1892_; Marti, _Religion of the Old Testament_, tr.
1907; Budde, _Religion of the Old Testament to the Exile_, 1899; H. P.
Smith, _Old Testament History_, 1903; W. R. Smith, _The Prophets of
Israel_, 1895; Bruce, _Ethics of the Old Testament_, 1895; Peake,
_Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament_, 1904; Royce, _The Problem
of Job_ in Studies of Good and Evil, 1898; Pratt, _The Psychology of
Religious Belief_, 1907, ch. v.; Harnack, _What is Christianity?_ tr.
1901; Cone, _Rich and Poor in the New Testament_, 1902; Pfleiderer,
_Primitive Christianity_, tr. 1906; Matthews, _The Social Teaching of
Jesus_, 1897; Wendt, _The Teaching of Jesus_, 1899; Pfleiderer,
_Paulinism_, 1891; Cone, _Paul, The Man, the Missionary, and the
Teacher_, 1898; Beyschlag, _New Testament Theology_, tr. 1895; The
_Encyclopedia Biblica_, _The Jewish Encyclopedia_, and Hastings'
_Dictionary_, have numerous valuable articles.
FOOTNOTES:
[48] M. Arnold, "Hebraism and Hellenism," in _Culture and Anarchy_, ch.
iv.
[49] The Hebrew and Greek words for sin both mean "to miss."
[50] The general function of punishment as bringing home to the
individual the consciousness of guilt and thus awakening the action of
conscience, has an illustration in Shakespere's conception of the prayer
of Henry Vth before the battle of Agincourt. In ordinary life the bluff
King Harry devotes little time to meditation upon his own sin or that of
his father, but on the eve of possible calamity the old crime rises
fresh before him. Stimulated by the thought of an actual penalty to be
imposed by a recognized authority, he cried: "Not to-day, O Lord! Oh,
not to-day! Think not upon the fault my father made in compassing the
crown."
[51] Recent excavations are held to confirm the prophets on this (Marti,
_Religion of the Old Testament_, pp. 78 ff.).
[52] Job 27:1-6.
[53] Genung, _Job, The Epic of the Inner Life_.
[54] See _Atonement in Literature and in Life_, by Charles A. Dinsmore.
Boston, 1906.
[55] Numbers 16, Joshua 7.
[56] John 9:2.
[57] Hammurabi's code showed a disregard of intent which would make
surgery a dangerous profession: "If a physician operate on a man for a
severe wound with a bronze lancet and cause the man's death; or open an
abscess [in the eye] of a man with a bronze lancet and destroy the man's
eye, they shall cut off his fingers." Early German and English law is
just as naive. If a weapon was left to be repaired at a smith's and was
then caught up or stolen and used to do harm, the original owner was
held responsible.
[58] Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 19, Joshua 20.
[59] Mark 7:1-23.
[60] Hosea 2:5.
[61] H. P. Smith, _Old Testament History_, p. 222.
[62] Habakkuk 3:17, 18.
[63] The Song of Songs.