Next after this impulsive or spontaneous period, which is the period
of childhood, comes the legal or judicial—a second stage in the
history of the religious consciousness. Moses, the law-giver, is its
representative. From this crisis, the chief significance of the world’s
religious experience is concentrated, for some sixteen hundred years,
in Judea, and human progress runs on through the channel of Hebrew
nationality. Other families have wandered off into hopeless idolatries.
The religion of instinct has found its appropriate termination in
a degraded Egyptian priesthood, mixing civil despotism with the
incantations of an impure mythology.
And now, God calls up Moses _out_ of his miserable oppression into
the summit of Sinai, and appoints him the head of the second august
human epoch. A period of laws, after instinct, begins. Instinct must
be curbed, for it has done mischief enough. Impulse must be subjected
to principle, for it has proved itself insufficient alone. There must
be positive command, controlling wayward inclinations. “Thou shalt,”
and “Thou shalt not,” are the watchwords. It is an age of obedience.
Ceremonies and ordinances are set up to bring the wild will under
discipline. And the better to secure exact obedience, a visible system
of formal observances is announced—so many sacrifices every day, and
so many meat-offerings, drink-offerings, cattle, doves, fruits, cakes,
for every sacrifice. To withstand the surrounding seductions of nations
still steeped in the vices of their natural propensities, a scheme
of coercive restraints comes in. The people must have multiplied
festivals, jubilees, national gatherings, regularly kept, and by divine
appointment. To draw them, there is a gorgeous temple with an imposing
altar, a tabernacle, a covenant, a shekinah lighted from heaven, a
priesthood clad in the splendid garments, and all the superb apparatus
of a magnificent ritual. Even the daily habits, materials of common
dress, qualities of food and kinds of flesh, are all to be regulated
in detail by specific statutes. Law reaches down to determine the most
minute particulars—the cleansing of houses, the shape of the beard,
the sowing of the field—all having reference to neighboring idolatrous
usages, of which these twelve tribes must, by all means, be kept clear.
And for the breach of every law, from greatest to least, there must be
penalty. That part of human nature, that terror and dread appeal to, is
addressed. On the transgressor woe is denounced. There is a Mount Ebal,
full of menacing curses, as well as a Gerizim pledged to blessings.
Smoke, earthquakes, thunders and lightnings, marshaling their awful
pageant about Sinai when the law was given, only prefigured punishments
that should always torment the disobedient. And, accordingly, down
through all the Hebrew fortunes, while prophets were set to admonish
and call back the rebellious, the great staple of Israelitish history
was, the divine chastisement that followed violations of law, and
the prosperity that rewarded its observance. Sieges and campaigns,
conquests and captivities, judges and kings, Joshua, Gideon, and Ezra,
David, Saul, and Rehoboam—all were of less consequence, as events, or
as individuals, than as instruments of that mighty, organized power
_lying behind them—Moses and the law_.
So with all of us; there comes a time when we feel that we cannot act
by inclination, but must follow law. The principle of duty is that law.
Babyhood is past, and its instincts suffice us no longer. To do as we
like, would still be pleasant; but it is dangerous and false. We become
stewards and _must_ give account of our stewardship. Life has put its
harness upon us, and we must work in it. Passions have sprung up, and
conflicts have commenced within us, that make impulse an unsafe guide.
We find a meaning in that hard word _must_. We are free to do as we
will, and yet we feel somehow bound under God’s necessity. It begins to
be evident that as sure as a stone falls or fire burns, sin will bring
trouble; indulgence, pain; impiety, remorse; dissipation, disease;
dishonesty, infamy. The spendthrift _must_ be pinched, the fraudulent
bargainer lose his soul though he gain the world, and the false
professor be spiritually damned. Here are laws—laws of the Almighty’s
ordaining—laws that bring retribution. If we would live peaceably, we
must come under them and obey.
Very often it happens that by obeying a law, we acquire superiority to
it. Voluntarily submitting to certain rules for a time, our virtue is
strengthened and finally becomes independent of them, so that it can go
alone. The inebriate binds himself by a pledge, and thus regains his
freedom. The disciple appoints specific hours for praying, and by that
means gains the devout spirit which breathes a perpetual aspiration,
at last inaugurating a silent converse of the soul with heaven, as
natural as the pulse in the veins. The methodical division of time for
business is only a form of law, coercing industry and efficiency. Many
a man has to spur his sluggishness, by definite tasks; and many more
would bring nothing to pass, but for fixed methods and seasons. Without
a morning and evening sacrifice, forgetful worldliness would render
poor service to God; and memories, like Martha, so careful and troubled
about many things, would fail of Mary’s one thing needful. The laying
apart of exact sums for charity has been all that stood between some
men and the doom of avarice; benevolence had to be put out to school,
and philanthropy be drilled into promptitude like a cadet. Let us not
despise law, for every day practical proofs are scattered before us,
that it is a school-master to lead us to Christ.
Even fear, though fastidious nerves are apt to discredit it as a lower
sentiment, has its office in disciplining thoughtless and stubborn
wills, breaking down pride and prompting insensibility, till it is
ready to hand us over to motives of a nobler order. There is a meaning
in a tradition of an ancient German prince, who, in early life, was
bidden by an oracle to search out an inscription on a ruined wall which
should prefigure his mortal fate. He found the Latin words, signifying
_after six_. Supposing they revealed the number of days he was to live,
he gave himself for the six days following to his hitherto neglected
soul, preparing himself to die. But finding death did not come, he was
still held to his sober resolutions by supposing six weeks were the
interpretation; and then he prolonged his holy life to six months,
and six years. On the first day of the seventh year, by reason of the
excellent manhood into which he had thus formed his character, he had
gained the confidence of the people, and he found the fulfillment
of the ambiguous prophecy, by being chosen Emperor of Germany. Here
is a figure of common experience. We may conceive it to have been
a mere “spiritual” process, that the prince should have been drawn
to piety, by loving goodness for its own sake. But it was the timid
dread of dying that drew him, and the royal benefactions of a truly
Christian monarch justified the agent. Have you never known a fever,
or an accident, or the incipient symptoms of a consumption to be the
determining cause that bent the whole current of a life from earthward
to heavenward? Have you never known that a mere dread of punishment
or pain, of hell or disgrace, has stopped the erring feet of lust,
silenced profanity, driven back the Sabbath-breaker? God is not ashamed
to take into the sublime economy of his purposes these stimulants to
virtue; and let not us, in our puerile conceit, venture to pronounce
them unworthy. Outgrow them if you will, and can; but take care that
you are not found, after all, _below_, instead of _above_ the plane of
their influence.
For be assured, though we have read the New Testament, named the name
of Jesus, and quite looked down on the Jews, some of us have not yet
climbed up so far as to Moses and his Jewish law. In the Bible’s older
Testament there are needed examples for us yet. Not all of us have
learned that majestic, unchangeable fact, that God is Sovereign; nor
those related facts that, if we _will_ perpetrate _the wrong_, we must
suffer the penalty; that we can not dodge the consequences of what we
do; that indolence must sap our strength; that selfishness must end in
wretchedness; that falsehood is a mint, coining counterfeits that must
return upon our hands; that hypocrisy to-day is disgrace to-morrow.
This is law, everlasting, unrepealable law; and our poor attempts to
resist, or nullify it, avail not so much as a puff of mortal breath
against the gulf stream in the Atlantic. Blessed will it be for our
peace, when we accept it, and bow to it, turning it into a law of
liberty.
Remember that the grandest examples of sainthood, or spiritual life,
that the ages have seen, have been souls that recognized this truth—the
firm, Puritanical element, in all valiant piety; and without it mere
amiable religious feeling will be quite sure to degenerate into
sentimentality. We need to stand compassed about with the terrible
splendors of the mount, and with something of the somber apparatus of
Hebrew commandments, to keep us from falling off into some impious,
Gentile idolatries of the senses. Holy places, and holy days, and
solemn assemblies, still dispense sanctity. Our appetites have to be
hedged about with almost as many scruples of regimen for Christian
moderation’s sake, as the Jew’s for his monotheism. “We wish,” says
some one, “that it was not so difficult to be good. We wish that we
could be self-indulgent, and yet be good for all that; that we could
idle off our time, and yet be wise for all that.” The worldling wishes
that he could combine his worldliness now with a heaven hereafter; the
voluptuary, that he could have “the clear eye and the steady hand of
the temperate;” the vain, ambitious, capricious woman, that she could
exhibit the serenity that comes of prayer. But Sinai stands unmoved,
at the outset of every life-journey through the wilderness; and at the
further end, beyond the river, Ebal with his curses, and Gerizim with
its blessings. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
[_March 25._]