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THE 
 
 HEBEEW LAW. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 LECTURES ON EARLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Price 5s. 
 
 London : LONGMANS & CO. 
 
ON 
 
 THE GIVING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HEBREW LAW. 
 
 BY 
 
 T. F. CROSSE, D.C.L. 
 
 MEMBER OP THE HON. SOCIETY OF THE INNER TEMPLE, 
 
 INCUMBENT OF HOLY TRINITY AND RURAL DEAN OF HASTINGS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, 
 
 1875. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
LOSDOX : PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOOOE AND CO., XEW-STRKET SQIWRE 
 
 ASD PARLIAMENT STREET 
 
PBEEACE. 
 
 This book upon the giving of the Hebrew 
 Law is the continuation of another called 
 ' Lectures on Early Scripture,' and is intended, 
 like that, to point out the unity of design 
 which pervades the plan and incidents of the 
 Bible, and so to suggest and assist towards a 
 way of looking at the System of the Holy 
 Scriptures which may, by the Divine Blessing, 
 be of service to enquirers. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE PAG £ ! 
 
 I. On tlie Probabilities that a Miraculous Revela- 
 tion of Law would be given .... 1 
 
 II. On the Necessity for such a Revelation to us, and 
 
 on the Bible as supplying it . . .24 
 
 III. On the Course of Ancient Law and Society, and 
 
 on the Need and Fitness of the Law of Moses 
 
 in relation to it . . . . . .43 
 
 IV. On the Course of Ancient Religion, and on the 
 
 Need and Fitness of the Law of Moses in rela- 
 tion to it .73 
 
 V. On Patriarchal Preparations for the Mosaic Sys- 
 tem ......... 93 
 
 VI. On Moses as the Instrument of Reformation . 113 
 
 VII. On the Method and Preparatory Incidents of the 
 
 Deliverance from Egypt . . . . .141 
 
 VIII. On the actual Exodus and its accompanying 
 
 Events 170 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 IX. On the Covenant and Moral Law of Sinai . . 195 
 
 X. On the Ritual Law of Sinai, and on its Meanings 
 
 in the Inner Sanctuary ..... 212 
 
 XL On the Ritual and its Meanings in the Outer 
 
 Sanctuary 244 
 
 XII. On the Fall of Israel, on the Mediation of Moses, 
 and on the first Completion of the Work by the 
 Holy Tabernacle being set up and filled with 
 the Glory of the Lord 266 
 
 Appendix 297 
 
HEBREW LAW. 
 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 rPHE original beginnings of legal order, and 
 ■*■ their relation to religion, have been often 
 inquired about and in different ways. It might 
 naturally be supposed that, in such matters, 
 considerations on the divine Author of religion 
 and society must count for much, and that 
 starting with a fixed impression as to His 
 unity and His character, drawn from what 
 we can observe within us and around us, we 
 should use that as a great foundation of reserve 
 through which both to deduce and test our 
 conclusions, since it appears evident enough 
 that if there be a Divinity at all with such 
 wide -reaching qualities and functions as we 
 attribute to Him, He must necessarily be at 
 the head and source of law. So fully does 
 
2 Hebrew Law. 
 
 this seem the case that the effort to investi- 
 gate moral foundations, apart from God, 
 appears to common believers as arbitrary and 
 artificial as would be an attempt to examine 
 nature apart from light and heat, or an attempt 
 to explain the British constitution without re- 
 ference to the office of king. 
 
 Such an errant course, however, as regards 
 law has not unfrequently been engaged in. 
 Indeed so closely inherent is the instinct of 
 liberty in the human mind that the tendency, 
 even among some inquirers of justice and 
 integrity, has rather been to aim at shutting 
 out prepossessions, however reverent, and let- 
 ting the mind collect, weigh, and decide for 
 itself without any bias of authority. In fol- 
 lowing out this tendency, however, two defec- 
 tive methods have come into use. The first 
 of these is an avoidance of metaphysical and 
 moral grounds of argument as if they were 
 something untrustworthy, although it is evi- 
 dent that law, which is so mixed up with these 
 ingredients, cannot be fully considered without 
 reference to them. The second is that when 
 pursuing the method they have preferred — 
 
Hebrew Law. 3 
 
 that of examining phenomena — these inquirers 
 have only partially applied their own tests ; 
 that is, they have neglected Hebrew antiquities, 
 and drawn their inferences chiefly from Hindoo, 
 classic, and northern remains. Now, it seems 
 hardly just, when one has started upon a 
 purely independent scientific investigation, and 
 has professed to be prepared to follow wher- 
 ever scientific research may lead, ar d when one 
 has selected a certain set of witnesses as those 
 whom science requires to have examined, that 
 then he should refuse to call the chief of these 
 — that while the East, the North, and the West 
 are successively ransacked, and all sorts of 
 minute fragments collected together from them 
 and dovetailed into an expressive shape, the 
 most venerable centre should alone remain 
 unvisited, and that Hebrew antiquities, which 
 so many and various races have been impressed 
 by, should alone be shut out from speaking. 
 It is evident that no generalisation of such sort 
 can be held complete, but that every true 
 representation of the testimony of antiquity 
 must give as full effect to the inferences result- 
 ins; from Hebrew remains ;is to others j f>r, 
 
4 Hebrew Law. 
 
 even independent of their peculiar pretensions, 
 these remains are certainly of great antiquarian 
 value. 
 
 But passing this, it may be questioned how 
 far the investigations of a supposed scientific 
 character, which now find such favour with 
 some, are, after all, of value in religion. The 
 supply of facts is at present small. The appli- 
 cations are unfamiliar and partial. The posi- 
 tion is constrained in consequence of the forced 
 rejection from examination of those very docu- 
 ments of revelation the world has long looked 
 to as throwing the most important light on the 
 matter. The temptation is greater than usual 
 to anticipate conclusions. There is a disadvan- 
 tage in judging results from not being able to 
 have recourse to those tests which in physical 
 science so quickly reduce back vagrant specu- 
 lations within safe bounds. When we consider 
 all these difficulties with which such a method 
 is hampered, we may well feel that those who 
 profess not merely to shed rays of new light 
 from such sources upon questions of the most 
 vital and practical interest to mankind, but to 
 introduce altogether strange views about them, 
 
Hebrew Law. 5 
 
 should be very careful — more careful, indeed, 
 than some of them have been — how they un- 
 settle opinion and sow doubt, when their own 
 theories must be open to such grave question. 
 It is quite open to inquiry, we repeat^whether 
 there is not a considerable amount of self- 
 deception as to the value of such researches, 
 and whether it may not be very doubtful if those 
 who come after us will endorse, with the same 
 readiness as some of ourselves, the speculations 
 which rest on such frail foundations. Sir 
 William Jones long ago complained of the 
 attempt of the students of words to prove 
 everything by the structure of language, and 
 the same may be objected to the sociologist, 
 legist, and even to the theologian, when their 
 efforts are but one-sided and exclusive. 
 
 There may be additional reason, too, for 
 our hesitating to give rapid and implicit ad- 
 herence to philosophers of the above class 
 in the fact that they are met and encountered 
 by yet another body of philosophers, equally 
 high in pretensions, and equally unprejudiced 
 as regards orthodox beliefs, who declare loudly 
 that all such researches are illusory ; that the 
 
6 Hebrew Law. 
 
 method of investigation is vain ; the conclu- 
 sions derived from it utterly incorrect ; and 
 that even if it were possible thus to draw up 
 and piece together again the old fragments, so 
 as to reproduce something like the portraiture 
 of the most ancient life really taken from those 
 who lived it themselves, yet that those ages 
 were so completely unable to conceive things 
 in their actual relations, and so totally without 
 the historical sense, that their impressions of 
 themselves would be worth next to nothing at 
 all. And this criticism has, perhaps, rather 
 the more force from its being used by those 
 who are usually in favour of experimental 
 inductions, and who do not so much object 
 here to the method itself as to its application 
 in the case of archaic religion and law. 
 
 While whole schools of thought are thus at 
 variance, it may be permitted to ordinary 
 people to go on reasoning as thsy have 
 always hitherto reasoned, making use, to some 
 extent, indifferently of the above ways of 
 thinking, and also of other ways besides, and 
 yet bringing them all into contact with those 
 primary convictions about God and man, and 
 
Hebrew Law. 7 
 
 the world, which, if they be in any degree 
 prejudices, as some would persuade us, are yet, 
 in a very great degree and in the best sense, 
 philosophical truths. For surely the general 
 convictions of all ages, the widest observations 
 of the natural world, the impressions and 
 expressions of universal feeling, are not to be 
 treated as on the outside of philosophy. They 
 are rather the very materials philosophers are 
 in search of — the very voice they are desiring 
 to listen to ; and the observation of them is 
 the very process they are actually applying in 
 another and less valuable series of materials. 
 The direct historical statements, the current 
 opinions, the general social attitude of remote 
 ages, should be taken together as one wide 
 declaration of belief. So interpreted, they are 
 relics of a direct, tangible, and most valuable 
 character. Inferences from mental states and 
 movements, when thus of a comprehensive 
 character, are distinct and realistic results. 
 They are far superior in evidential weight to 
 mere chippings and fragments, the real place 
 of which in the scale is doubtful, but which 
 are made sometimes the unstable fulcrum of 
 
8 Hebrew Law. 
 
 movement not so much scientific as merely 
 unfriendly to established beliefs. 
 
 On the other hand, when we see pressed 
 together the many little morsels which mere 
 secular observation can supply, and when we 
 see the effort made to shut out additions from 
 all other quarters, we know that from such 
 sources alone no complete system can be 
 obtained, no theory can be built up which 
 will at all account for, or correspond to, what 
 has been, is, and should be in the world within 
 us and in the world around us. Minute re- 
 searches of this sort are often very ingenious 
 in themselves, and have the sort of value in 
 pointing and hinting which the little signs 
 known to woodcraft have in a forest labyrinth, 
 but they are not, and never can be, the map 
 on which the whole area of the vast subject is 
 to be found set out, and by which it can be 
 comprehended, subdued, and utilised. Such 
 researches, therefore, are but ancillary and of 
 secondary value, nor is there any real reason 
 to suppose they do or will yield the results by 
 some persons attributed to them. Materials 
 for induction in theology, whether in its general 
 
Hebrew Law. 9 
 
 or dispensational aspects, must be collected 
 from a wider field, and must range not only- 
 over matter, but over mind as well. To take 
 a bit of flint, and yet reject an institution ; to 
 analyse a word, and, at the same time, to 
 ignore a manuscript ; to construct a past of our 
 own, while repudiating the past as understood 
 by ages much nearer to it than ourselves — 
 these are processes which will never hold. 
 Novelty for a time may make them the mode, 
 but they will hardly in the end realise either 
 the hopes or fears they have awakened. They 
 may dispel some clouds from religion and col- 
 lect others, but the loftiest truths 01 theology 
 which are not subjects of induction, will, like 
 the heights of snow mountains, still be found 
 rising steadfastly above them. 
 
 In our attempts, then, to examine the super- 
 structure of law, we shall take account also of 
 its foundations. We shall aim at keeping open 
 before us the final source of legislation, and at 
 using it for a guide to the particular legal 
 system. Through that we shall hope to estimate 
 its value, interpret its meaning, calculate its 
 effects, and trace its relations to some wider 
 
io Hebrew Law. 
 
 and more universal scheme of government, sup- 
 posing such to exist. This we shall do chiefly 
 in the Hebrew, and incidentally in other 
 theories of law. 
 
 If there is a God with qualities such as we 
 imagine in Him, the final law must be His 
 will ; and it is assumed here, as we have said, 
 that such a Divine Being does exist ; that there 
 is a God, and that He created and constantly 
 governs the world and all things therein. 
 Observations supporting this assumption occur 
 further on in our pages. At present it may 
 be enough to suggest that, in taking thus much 
 for granted, we assume nothing unreasonable, 
 for that reason possessed by men which has 
 everywhere formed them into societies, and 
 arranged and carried on the government of 
 these by reasonable laws which it has invented 
 or adapted, has yet nowhere been satisfied to 
 consider such laws as merely of its own 
 authority, but has always tried to have it 
 believed that they rest on some higher sanc- 
 tion, descending to us from the divine sphere. 
 Since, then, the wisest and most experienced 
 among men have not been content with their 
 
Hebrew Law. 1 1 
 
 own power, but have always insisted on defer- 
 ring to some higher authority on which they 
 have based their own, we may well take their 
 admission, and suppose, with them, that there 
 really is this divine legislative source which 
 they have felt the need of and believed in. 
 No doubt, had it been merely a few clever 
 empirics who had acted in this way, they 
 might have been suspected of ingeniously 
 abusing popular prejudice. That, however, is 
 no longer a conspiracy, but a genuine move- 
 ment, which is found everywhere and always, 
 and among those who are without mutual 
 knowledge or communication. 
 
 And, indeed, were this the moment to pass 
 from experience to theory on the point, we 
 might ask, what is the meaning of right and 
 wrong — those pillars of all law — if there be no 
 supreme divine authority from which to draw 
 it. Are we to suppose right and wrong as 
 resting merely upon what is convenient or the 
 reverse, and therefore not immutable but vary- 
 ing. Or are we to suppose it is not general 
 convenience, but the universal conscience of 
 men (a more truly descriptive expression than 
 
12 Hebrew Law. 
 
 that of " popular prejudice " just used), which 
 has everywhere accepted some wide principles 
 of right and wrong ? If so, how can we account 
 for such wide agreement, or for such faculty 
 for uniform moral result, unless we suppose 
 some power behind from which man derives 
 his impulse — a power which, however named 
 by us, will really be God ? 
 
 But this question of the existence of the 
 Divinity need not be made a point at this 
 moment. A certain number of persons have 
 been found opposed to it, just as there are 
 some who have seriously questioned the real 
 existence of the outer world around them, or 
 even of themselves ; but the immense majority 
 of men have instinctively allowed it, and it is 
 to persons of the usual mould that religious 
 considerations appeal. In all reasoning some- 
 thing must be taken for granted, and nothing 
 is here more fit to be than this. So completely, 
 indeed, are most men convinced of the existence 
 of God, and such elevated and abstract notions 
 of His qualities have they formed, that it is 
 even found one of their difficulties in coming 
 to Revelation that the Scriptural accounts of 
 
Hebrew Law. 13 
 
 God there given do not seem to them suffi- 
 ciently exalted and superior to human affairs. 
 Not only, too, do they allow an outer nature- 
 world, but they fancy it so inflexibly fixed that 
 their difficulty is to see how such things as 
 miracles could come into the midst of its 
 seemingly steadfast order. 
 
 Were proof of God's existence required, we 
 believe an immense and overwhelming body of 
 it has been provided for us, drawn from the 
 most varied sources, and all tending to make 
 an irresistible impression on just and unpreju- 
 diced minds. On this evidence it will not be 
 necessary to enter now : it will be permissible 
 here to accept as established fact that the 
 Almighty Being exists ; that He made and 
 sustains His whole creation ; that " of Him 
 and through Him and to Him are all things " 
 (Rom. xi. 35) ; and that in Him "we live and 
 move and have our being " (Act xvii. 28). 
 
 And when we go on to meditate about the 
 dealings and character of God thus imagined, 
 we begin to perceive that we have, through the 
 very force of terms, to regard His action as 
 extended and comprehensive in the widest 
 
14 Hebrew Law. 
 
 possible degree, so that every existing thing 
 has to be conceived as absolutely within His 
 immediate domain ; that we cannot allow any- 
 thing whatever to be independent of His rule 
 and management ; that He holds, as it were, 
 the whole world in the hollow of His hand, 
 and that therefore the final root and source of 
 all law, of which source we were in search, 
 must of necessity be His will, and that if any 
 other will is to be supposed as coming in to 
 modify it in any degree, however slight, that 
 can only occur by His special arrangement or 
 allowance. Thus, then, we have one World- 
 Governor, and His will the one final law. 
 
 But is it not the case when we come to draw 
 our inferences about God's dealings with nature 
 that His attributes, as above conceived, seem 
 to forbid us to suppose of Him that He first 
 legislated and then left His domain? Do we 
 not seem to find that we are not to look on 
 Him as an absent, but as a present God ; that 
 He did not make the world, launch it on its 
 course, and then leave it, as one winds up a 
 watch and goes away, but that He is always 
 with it every moment, guiding it and super- 
 
Hebrew Law. 15 
 
 vising it with incessant indefatigable care, so 
 that the Psalmist (Ps. civ.) was completely 
 laying out the truth when, after describing 
 God's provision for His creatures, he did not 
 write of it as a mere sumptuary system started 
 and then trusted to work by itself alone, but, 
 on the contrary, described all this as being 
 always doing by incessant applications of pro- 
 vident power, saying (vv. 26-30), " all these " 
 — "innumerable things" — "wait all upon 
 Thee that Thou mayest give them their meat in 
 due season ; that Thougivest them, they gather ; 
 Thou openest Thy hand, they are filled with 
 good ; Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled ; 
 Thou takest away their breath, they die and 
 return to their dust ; Thou sendest forth Thy 
 spirit, they are created; and Thou renewest 
 the face of the earth." 
 
 Now, if God's rule be thus an incessant pre- 
 sence and personal action, and if He is never 
 "sleeping," or "absent on a journey," or 
 occupied with some matters to the partial 
 exclusion of the rest, does there not seem to 
 follow this consequence important for us here 
 — viz., that all the supposed system commonly 
 
1 6 Hebrew Law. 
 
 talked of as " natural laws," has not such fully 
 real existence as commonly supposed, but that 
 it is, to a great extent, a notion of ours bor- 
 rowed from our own affairs, and expressed in 
 our common parlance. In carrying on these 
 affairs, our limited powers and opportunities 
 oblige us to begin by settling certain rules 
 through some concentration of general wisdom, 
 and these once settled we call law. This law 
 is thenceforth to us something permanent and 
 fixed, and towards which our practice has to 
 work. May it not be that our notions, there- 
 fore, run at once, when we come to speak of 
 world-government, towards something of the 
 same sort ; that we in imagination lend to per- 
 fection, our own infirmity, and talk of God's 
 acting on a plan and by a law, because we 
 ourselves usually do so. Indeed, we are 
 fatigued by the idea of an universal pre- 
 sence omnipotently willing, and working in 
 an incessant now. So when we find regu. 
 larity in the outer world, it better suits our 
 habits to account for this by supposing a set 
 of rules made in the past, and continued on 
 in action by ulterior agencies. For our own 
 
Hebrew Law. 
 
 17 
 
 convenience in thinking this artificial method 
 of ours may be well enough ; but to invest it, as 
 some have done, with such authority as even to 
 compete with God Himself seems surely some- 
 thing like the conduct of that old Greek who 
 began by carving out the statue of his ideal in 
 stone, and ended by falling in love with it. For, 
 in reality, as we say, the idea we get of God's 
 attributes when it is formed strictly, and is 
 consistently applied by us, seems to require 
 quite a different conclusion — viz., that it is 
 nothing less than His personal and immediate 
 will which is constantly being exercised in each 
 particular of the immense series of cases His 
 system developes ; that the exercise of it is 
 uniform, because His mind and purpose remain 
 uniform and unchanged. The resulting work, 
 therefore, presents that fixity of aspect to which 
 we are accustomed as a feature of law, but, as 
 observed, it is because we do not habitually 
 realise His omnipresence, and yet constantly 
 note this regular working, that it appears to us 
 a sufficient account of the matter to spc;ik <»{ 
 it all as law in nature. 
 
1 8 Hebrew Law. 
 
 This idea, then, of the incessant presence of 
 the Divine Being among all His works may 
 really be the only one which is consistent with 
 His attributes. It is at this point that the 
 sacred poetry of the Scripture (as Ps. xxix.) 
 and the common thinking of philosophy seem 
 to unite, and we have to realise that it is not 
 a law, but a voice, " the voice of the Lord," 
 which " commandeth the waters," "maketh 
 the thunder," "ruleth the sea," " breaketh the 
 cedar trees," " divideth the flames of fire," 
 "shaketh the wilderness," and "maketh the 
 hinds to bring forth " ; and that it is in thus 
 believing and thus regarding nature that we 
 " give the Lord the honour due unto His 
 name." Now, if we accept this view, then, 
 our idea of the highest and most final law will 
 be that of a personal will of God continuously 
 exerted by Him, personally present — a method 
 of government not, after all, strange and un- 
 known to human affairs, but which was, in 
 fact, reflected among men in early stages of 
 society by the personal government of patri- 
 archal chiefs, and by the old "paternal" 
 
Hebrew Law. 19 
 
 monarchies, and which was only changed by 
 degrees for our artificial plans, as it became 
 necessary to meet the pressing difficulties and 
 the wants of more complicated civilisation. 
 
 Nor is there, perhaps, any essential reason 
 to disincline us from such a view of nature as 
 the above, for nature may have some more 
 close relations to God than is commonly 
 imagined. It certainly is not something 
 foreign to Him with which He is dealing 
 only as a workman deals with materials 
 independent of him, and supplied from some 
 distinct source. Nature may, perhaps, rather 
 be as close to God as the breath to the mouth, 
 or the garment to the body. It may be as a 
 glory-cloud surrounding Him, and reflecting 
 the light of His presence ; a cloud, in the midst 
 of which He, though unseen, is ever resting 
 and working — a holy vapour from the central 
 altar fire, coloured and fed with the brightness 
 which gives it incessant birth and increase. 
 
 Let it, then, be supposed that nature, or the 
 laws of nature, are not inflexible and neces- 
 sarily invariable, as sometimes imagined, but 
 liable to change on any fitting occasion, because 
 
20 Hebrew Law. 
 
 they are so many individual actions of Him 
 whose conduct is always fitted to the occasion. 
 Let it further be remembered that the physical 
 records of the ancient earth supply much evi- 
 dence of orders of nature very different from 
 the present ; methods which seem to have long 
 existed, and then to have been gradually or 
 suddenly changed and broken in upon. Let 
 it also be borne in mind that the hand of God 
 is ever upon the springs of the whole machinery, 
 and that what we only observe as fixity is in 
 realitv His indefatigableness. And then let it 
 be supposed that for us, His moral creatures, 
 He has a moral purpose to work out ; that He 
 is carrying on an inner moral plan here not 
 less important than His outer world-plan. Why, 
 we ask, with all these conditions before us, is 
 it to be thought unlikely that, m furtherance of 
 such a plan, He should make Himself seen and 
 heard among men ? The moral and intel- 
 lectual creature, man, has no inaptitude for 
 such a manifestation to him. On the contrary, 
 if it has not really been made, then man has 
 imagined higher and more beautiful things — 
 nay, more morally ordered things — than have 
 
Hebrew Law. 2 1 
 
 yet been done for him. The course of nature 
 properly understood furnishes no reason, we 
 find, against such manifestation, for God has 
 constantly changed His methods in nature, and 
 God is always personally present in nature. 
 According to our view, there can, in reality, 
 be no such thing as Divine interference in 
 nature ; for the idea of interference pre-sup- 
 poses a fixed incessant law which is broken in 
 upon. There may, however, be, as we believe, 
 no abstract law in nature at all, but an omni- 
 present Person, and that a Person who has 
 repeatedly changed His natural processes. The 
 only restriction we can really apply to His 
 action is that it should be fit conduct under 
 the circumstances. And we believe that the 
 circumstances set out in Scripture are such as 
 to make it fit for this present God to show 
 Himself as present, and for Him who, while 
 His purposes are unchanging, is yet ever so 
 immensely fertile in changing method, to change 
 His method here. 
 
 Indeed, the real question about God's show- 
 ing Himself, as described in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and giving laws or working miracles, 
 
22 Hebrew Law. 
 
 must ever be not a question whether it is 
 possible, but whether it is likely. And the 
 more the matter is examined, the more it will 
 be found that there is not that strong prior 
 probability against such revelations which some 
 persons at first suppose. It will be our business 
 to show in the course of these pages that there 
 was, on the other hand, a very fit occasion 
 and strong call for such a course of conduct 
 being pursued ; that the divine action in the 
 matter, as described in the Old Testament, is 
 not impulsive or fragmentary, but arranged 
 into harmonious and most appropriate com- 
 binations ; that the same sort of orderly and 
 progressive advance is found there as in nature 
 itself; that there is a certain resemblance 
 between the revolutions in the one and in the 
 other ; that there is the same incisive boldness 
 mixed with the same restrained economy of 
 resource in the general design ; that the means 
 taken are justly fitted to the results professedly 
 aimed at ; and that those results are in accord- 
 ance with man's position and his prospects — 
 in short, that the Bible is a completion and 
 amplification of our best ideas of God ; that it 
 
Hebrew Law. 23 
 
 accords with a comprehensive view of nature, 
 with a knowledge of man's history, man's con- 
 duct, man's inner life, and not least that it 
 applies itself fully to those fears and hopes in 
 man which cannot otherwise be dispelled or 
 satisfied. 
 
24 Hebrew Law. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 While feeling bound to hold God to be the 
 universal and absolute ruler in His whole 
 creation, always and everywhere present, sus- 
 taining all things by the word of His power, 
 and while looking on His ever-acting will as 
 the incessant law in accordance with which all 
 things live and move, we are compelled, at the 
 same time, to make one exception to all this, 
 and to hold that there is some degree of 
 independence in the nature and conduct of 
 men. 
 
 We must do this because we all feel and are 
 convinced, without the necessity of any argu- 
 ment whatever, that we do possess some 
 freedom of will and power of deciding for 
 ourselves, and of either doing or leaving un- 
 done, in a vast variety of cases, as we may 
 think fit. So that when we know, or believe 
 we have ascertained, what is God's fixed will 
 
Hebrew Law. 25 
 
 upon any subject, and what is right to be done, 
 we may either conform our wills to it, or we 
 may resist, and proceed in some opposite way 
 of our own choice. It is perfectly clear to us, 
 therefore, that we are not mere creatures of 
 necessity, but that we do, in a certain sense, 
 possess the liberty of choice in conduct com- 
 monly known as free-will. 
 
 And yet it is, at the same time, no doubt the 
 case that, even though we cannot now be com- 
 pelled to keep in the course of sound sense, 
 prudence, justice, and piety, that this course 
 is not the less good for us on that account. 
 We may be able to act against the will of God 
 now, but it is still good for us to keep the will 
 of God now. For, since the whole world is 
 sustained by His plan or present action, the 
 only full and final meaning of good in it is 
 agreement with Him or His plan, and the only 
 full and final meaning of evil in it is disagree- 
 ment with Him. That freedom, therefore, 
 which enables us either to accept His ways 
 or to reject them, while it is on one side a 
 privilege, is t at the same time, on the other 
 side, a responsibility also. 
 
26 Hebrew Law. 
 
 Nor is this responsibility a slight one. In- 
 deed, the position of such frail and limited 
 creatures as we certainly are, would be one of 
 great risk were we endowed with this perilous 
 sort of liberty, but left without any directions 
 by which to keep ourselves straight in accord- 
 ance with the course of the Divine government. 
 It is not with us as with some other creatures. 
 If we observe animals, we see that they are 
 protected in this respect ; for we find them by 
 invariable processes, or by some invariable law 
 inscribed in their nature, providing for their 
 food, shelter, safety, rest, reproduction, and 
 nurture of young ; and those of them which 
 live in communities we find always in steady 
 allegiance to an unchanging sort of govern- 
 ment and discipline. But we do not find any 
 such equal constancy in the minds of men. On 
 the contrary, so confused are our faculties, or 
 so wayward is our will, that new movements 
 of change may at any moment arise, and per- 
 sons are to be met with, even in the most culti- 
 vated societies, who deny that there should exist 
 such institutions as the home, or family, or 
 property, or central government, and who refuse 
 
Hebrew Law. 27 
 
 to accept any religion, or to believe in any 
 God — in short, who, while they insist that 
 man is nothing more himself than an animal, 
 yet reject those natural methods or laws which 
 animals are found partially observing. 
 
 It seems, then, that if we, who are thus 
 unconstrained, were to be left to ourselves to 
 discover by mere theory and experiments what 
 might be the principles of God's will as to our 
 affairs, our position would be worse than that 
 of the lower animals, since, while our conduct 
 ranges beyond instinct, our perceptions are not 
 sufficiently clear and constant to enable us to 
 keep with certainty to a course producing 
 safety and happiness. Thus, then, there is a 
 great and undoubted need for assistances and 
 directions from the Divine Being, who has 
 placed us here, if we are to know and abide in 
 His way, and if our powers of moral choice, 
 instead of becoming a snare, are to prove a 
 blessing to us. 
 
 But now, if there are such wants as these, 
 we may feel quite sure some provision is made 
 in the Divine government to meet them. God's 
 careful supplies for all other wants of II is 
 
28 Hebrew Law. 
 
 creatures make us feel confident He will not 
 neglect us in this great one, if we really need 
 help. And the reality of our need may be 
 abundantly shown by such considerations of 
 reason as have just been referred to. 
 
 And, indeed, is there not also in our general 
 wide-spread belief that Divine communications 
 are to be expected, and have been from time 
 to time given, a very strong presumption on 
 the matter ? Do not these notions, even when 
 rather visionary in form, yet all lead us towards 
 one substantial and reasonable prospect ? If 
 it has always appeared to the mass of men 
 likely and desirable that God should make 
 known His will to us, and direct us in His 
 ways, who can suppose that these impressions 
 have been all unmeaning? If the children of 
 men are so made and placed that they thus 
 long to hear the Divine Father's voice, shall 
 we undertake to say that He who has thus 
 made and placed them has never spoken to 
 them or intended to do so — that the affec- 
 tionate desires of the creature can thus exceed 
 the affectionate conduct of the Creator, and 
 that we, usually so heavy in regard to spiritual 
 
Hebrew Law. 29 
 
 things, have here the power of desiring more 
 communion with Him than he has the intention 
 or inclination of bestowing ? 
 
 This would, indeed, be strange in so holy 
 and beneficent a Being that He should place 
 us in a position of want ; that He should give 
 or permit us a strong impression that our want 
 would be supplied by Him ; and yet that, after 
 all, here in that which seems best and nearest 
 to His full mind and purpose, there should be 
 a sudden break in His usual way of dealing ; 
 that requirements should now first no longer 
 be balanced with supplies for them ; that diffi- 
 culties should now first remain without remedy ; 
 that there should at length be a cry from earth 
 without an answering echo from Heaven. All 
 this we cannot believe, for it would be con- 
 trary to the whole analogy of Providential 
 dealings, which are constantly being enforced 
 in the natural management of the world, that 
 we should have a mission without instructions 
 for its fulfilment, faculties without a field 
 marked out for them, risks and responsibilities 
 without provisions, so that they may be pro- 
 perly encountered. We must think it, then, 
 
30 Hebrew Law. 
 
 on the whole, to be in the highest degree 
 probable that, since we are furnished with 
 these strong impressions about the Divine will, 
 we are to expect, from some quarter or other, 
 and in some way or other, a corresponding 
 publication to us of that will. 
 
 But where, then, are we to look for this 
 revelation ? In what way has God directed 
 us ? Has He planted His law within us, or 
 has He revealed it outwardly among us. 
 
 If it be only within us, as some affirm, what 
 will be our position? Will it not, then, be the case 
 that those universal impressions of the human 
 heart which point to a distinctive and clear 
 revelation have been really deceived? We shall 
 have had a revelation, but so little expressive 
 will it have been that we shall have all been 
 going out at all times in search of another, uncon- 
 scious that our want was already supplied, and, 
 notwithstanding the supply, feeling the want still. 
 
 If an inner revelation leave us in such a state 
 as this — if we can have it without so much as 
 being aware of its existence, or being able to 
 separate it from the movements of our natural 
 faculties — the gift must, indeed, be in some 
 
Hebrew Law. 31 
 
 degree illusory, and neither a fulfilment of our 
 wishes in the matter, nor a complete supply for 
 our wants. Supposing this all that had been 
 done for us, it would be no wonder we should 
 still be looking for something more, and be 
 ready to regard with interest any external 
 system seeming likely to give us more. 
 
 Take man even at his best — that is to say, 
 under what we believe to be the dispensation 
 of the Holy Spirit. Observe him when even 
 thus highly endowed, and you will see into 
 what excesses and aberrations he may still fall, 
 unless the movements within are compared 
 and harmonised with the law of religion out- 
 side. You will find that some of the saddest 
 pages of Christian history are those which show 
 how men who have believed themselves under 
 so very full an inner light that they might 
 venture to emancipate themselves from the 
 outer legislation, have fallen into irregular 
 and sometimes scandalous ways. The whole 
 testimony of such experience is to the effect 
 that the inner impressions of individuals are too 
 liable to change, too dependent on various 
 frames and circumstances, and too conflicting 
 
32 Hebrew Law. 
 
 with one another to allow us to suppose them 
 either to be the tablets on which the full law 
 is written, or complete utterances of the law 
 itself. Whatever may be done for us within, 
 the results evidently require to be brought into 
 contact with some external standard, if they 
 are really to produce for us benefit or safety. 
 
 Once again, if we go to places where what 
 we consider the right rule of conduct — that is, 
 the rule founded on external law — has been 
 shut out, and where evil habits — that is, an 
 opposite rule — have long prevailed, there we 
 shall find whole classes perfectly indifferent to 
 our code of morality as to right and wrong, 
 regarding us with hostility on account of it, 
 and glorying themselves in what we consider 
 their shame. 
 
 Again, take the case of children. We find 
 in them that, though they have the power of 
 responding readily to a rule of right and wrong, 
 they yet invariably require to have it laid down 
 for them from outside. 
 
 And, indeed, we must remember this, that 
 if the law of right and wrong, instead of being 
 in a measure external, were altogether let into 
 
Hebrew Law. 33 
 
 our very nature it might then become a question 
 whether we could ever do anything which 
 should not be in accordance with it — some- 
 what as it was said of old, that if it were part 
 of our nature to be virtuous, we could never 
 become vicious, as the stone, which naturally 
 falls downwards, can never be made to fall 
 upwards.* It might be a question too, whether, 
 even when men might differ extremely in their 
 notions of conduct, the notions of one side 
 might not have to be considered quite as valid 
 as those of the other, and whether we should 
 not have to suppose, not that there is one 
 inflexible moral will, but many various plans 
 for life, and that upon different natures the 
 Divine hand had written differences, something 
 like those we see in different sorts of animals, 
 giving to some the part of destroying, and to 
 others the part of being peaceable victims. 
 But such suppositions as these would come 
 near to be the end either of our moral freedom 
 or of God's moral order. 
 
 If, then, we allow that there are such qualities 
 in conduct as right and wrong, that these menu 
 * Aristot, Ethic 
 
34 Hebrew Law. 
 
 what is in accordance or what is opposed to 
 God's will, that we have within us some faculty 
 which is capable of appreciating these differ- 
 ences and of being impressed by them, is it at 
 all likely, we ask, that God in making us thus 
 sensitive about them, and being Himself all 
 the time so interested for the sake of us and 
 all His creatures, the destinies of many of 
 whom are in our hands, that we should choose 
 right and avoid wrong, would yet leave it un- 
 certain among us what right and wrong may 
 be. Is it at all likely that He would, for 
 instance, make a conscience to approve and 
 condemn, and yet leave it to accident whether 
 it should approve or condemn in accordance 
 with His will or in opposition to it, — that He 
 would let it wander up and down to discover 
 or guess for itself, because He who has certainly 
 given us the faculty for advance, and certainly 
 seems to wish our advance, had yet neglected 
 to make known in any unmistakable way how 
 we ought to go forward. 
 
 We seem, then, by many considerations com- 
 pelled to look for a law outside ourselves, and 
 we are reasonably impressed by the conviction 
 
Hebrew Law. 35 
 
 that God will not leave us unenlightened, but 
 that He will supply us with the clear direction 
 we need. We have seen that the mere move- 
 ments of men together in society are far too 
 uncertain and fluctuating to be the means of 
 affording such aid as we are in search of, 
 and so we are brought to the conclusion that 
 it is very probable, and, indeed, we may say, 
 morally certain, that an outer revelation of 
 law has been given by God, and that the fact 
 which the Scriptures declare is in full accord- 
 ance with what we are brought by reason 
 confidently to expect. 
 
 We accept it, then, to be commended as 
 essential that God has given us this outer 
 revelation of law, and now at this point a 
 very powerful concurrence of testimony unites 
 to show, with the strongest probability, that 
 this needed revelation is the one which is con- 
 tained in the Bible. 
 
 For the law of the Bible has such qualities 
 as these. It so arranges its fundamental plan 
 as to fit in completely with the inner constitu- 
 tion of our nature. It applies itself fully to 
 deal with those social and religious discords 
 
36 Hebrew Law. 
 
 which we find from other sources were the 
 most serious difficulties of the ancient world. 
 It comes into the field attended by circum- 
 stances which, upon inspection, are found full 
 of significance and propriety in themselves, 
 and which are in full relation with the antece- 
 dent history. Its institutions, when professing 
 to be moral, promulgate a morality which has 
 never been superseded, and when arranging 
 worship essentially accord with that which is 
 still regarded as the highest religion. Even 
 its civil and social regulations, though from 
 their very nature charged with something 
 which is but temporary, yet teem with 
 principles and suggestions of continuing im- 
 portance. The whole system is, further, not 
 only complete in itself as an admirable and 
 worthy method, but is associated in entire 
 appropriateness with those long trains of 
 development, extending over many centuries, 
 brought in by various men under differing 
 circumstances and in different places, which 
 all together go to make up the Bible. And, 
 finally, this ancient law, at last, joins in and 
 mingles its stream with the living waters of 
 
Hebrew Law. 37 
 
 the Gospel by which all modern society is 
 fertilised, thus retaining the perpetual value 
 which our Lord attributed to it, when He said 
 that not one jot or tittle of it should pass 
 away until all had been fulfilled, and which is 
 a fitting quality of whatever has been solemnly 
 revealed by God.* 
 
 These pretensions, wide though they may 
 seem, are in reality but an imperfect statement 
 of the claims of this admirable legal system, 
 which the more one acquaints himself with its 
 scope and details, will, we believe, the more 
 commend itself to him as an essential basis of 
 that general outer revelation of God to man, 
 of which we are in search. 
 
 Indeed, if the study of Hebrew Law shows 
 it really to possess these particular features of 
 cohesion and fitness in any such degree as we 
 attribute to it, then since an outer revelation 
 has to be looked for, and can nowhere else 
 be with any sufficiency supplied to us, it would 
 be more strange that this one which was wanted, 
 and which so exactly meets the want, should 
 
 * Aquinas, Sumni. Theol. II. i. quaes. 91, and Augustiu. de 
 Lib. Arbit. 6. 
 
38 Hebrew Law. 
 
 not be divine than that it should be. If we 
 find a locked door in the house, and, after 
 trying all the other keys in vain, at length 
 come to one which just fits and opens it, and 
 which has no use anywhere else, we shall 
 hardly be persuaded either that this one is 
 not its key or that the door has no key at all. 
 
 These proprieties of the law, of which we 
 have spoken, it will be our business successively 
 to present, and to endeavour to show that to 
 a fair and candid judgment they commend 
 themselves as being not fictitious or forced, 
 but as so substantial and real as to be worthy 
 of the utmost consideration. 
 
 There may be points, as every one will be 
 prepared to find, at which old familiar diffi- 
 culties will rise on the surface, and to these 
 their full weight should be given. At the 
 same time we may fairly press this — that 
 theology should be dealt with as all other 
 subjects are by those who profess to regard 
 theology as only on the same level with all other 
 subjects — that is to say, that its evidences 
 should be assorted and weighed as all other 
 evidence is, and that we should not toss over 
 
Hebrew Law. 39 
 
 the balance by any movement of prejudice, 
 but keep steadily before our eyes the two 
 scales to see after we have put in all we have 
 to say for it on one side, and all we have to 
 say against it on the other, which weighs the 
 most. 
 
 If there are doctrines of Scripture which 
 demand our faith they are attended by arrange- 
 ments which address our reason. God, in 
 claiming from us the submission of children, 
 has offered us proof that such allegiance is 
 worthy of our manhood, and it is a deplorable 
 reply to the great appeals of the Bible to our 
 intellect, when we form our conclusions about 
 it with the quick partiality of the young, and 
 only show the qualities of maturity in tena- 
 ciously clinging to our prejudices. 
 
 This very quickness with which some of us 
 oppose and resent the details and idea of reve- 
 lation is in itself a sign how much revelation 
 is wanted, for if our inner state were really 
 sound, what announcement would be hailed 
 by us with such delight as this, that we are 
 thus brought into a direct communication with 
 the Author of all things, and that God Himself 
 
40 Hebrew Law. 
 
 has not thought it unfit to visit personally the 
 sons of men. And if our reasoning faculties 
 were really well pointed, on what subject 
 should we exercise them more persistently and 
 more lovingly than on this one? How difficult 
 it would be to take from us our convictions 
 about it. How ingeniously we should exercise 
 ourselves in exploring it. What immense 
 stores of proof we should accumulate. With 
 what ardour should we resist aggressions. 
 How despondent we should be when our 
 prospect seemed to be overcast, and how 
 happy it would make us when the clouds 
 seemed to be moving off. 
 
 A world whose general experience is the 
 reverse of this — which is ardent and in- 
 genious on many subjects, but indifferent and 
 dull on the greatest one of all, which asserts 
 its importance, while it turns away from that 
 which would really show it important — which 
 is credulous enough in other matters, but 
 sceptical in the one where it should most 
 incline to belief — which refuses to accept on 
 trust, and will not take the trouble to convince 
 itself by examination — such a world, we must. 
 
Hebrew Law. 41 
 
 think, whatever may be said of it in other 
 respects, is certainly one which by wisdom 
 knows not God, and which, therefore, requires 
 that God should in mercy make Himself 
 known to it. 
 
 Our conclusion, then, upon the whole 
 subject of an outer revelation of law is this: 
 taking into account the disinclination of our 
 tastes and the ingenuity of our mental powers, 
 our responsible position as the highest crea- 
 tures on earth, a sort of vicegerents over 
 other beings for God, the needfulness of 
 direction in it, and our tendency and aptitude 
 for receiving directions by the way of law, 
 and also our general desire and expectation 
 that some such communication would be 
 given, — taking all these things into account, 
 we cannot suppose that nothing of the sort 
 has been done, and that all this darkness, 
 thundering, smoke, and trumpet-sound in the 
 moral sphere is accompanied by no speaking 
 voice whatever. 
 
 Further, we cannot suppose it likely that 
 the revelation of law would be given merely 
 in an internal way, in which it would interfere 
 
42 Hebrew Law. 
 
 with our independence and with our respon- 
 sibilities, and be complicated with our natural 
 faculties, and be undiscernible with certainty 
 as the Divine voice, bringing up constantly 
 such questions as what utterances are human 
 and optional, what Divine and compulsory, 
 and which one of the many conflicting systems 
 might be from God, and which of the parts 
 in that one, conflicting among themselves, 
 might be from Him. 
 
 We are further unable to suppose this from 
 noting the uncertainty of our judgments, 
 which often make wrong decisions, and still 
 more of our affections, which often fix on 
 unworthy objects and run in unworthy 
 courses, all which seems to show that no 
 such distinctly-revealed internal law does, in 
 fact, reside in us. So, too, does the observa- 
 tion of children, who have at first to receive 
 rules from outside, though then very readily 
 applying them, and of vicious societies, which 
 have some rules quite contrary to the laws of 
 right elsewhere — as, for instance, the rule of 
 hereditary revenge. 
 
 So that, on the whole, when an outer law 
 
Hebrew Law. 43 
 
 so well fits our faculties, and tends to so much 
 benefit, and obviates so many objections, and 
 answers to so strong a presentiment, we may 
 very fully believe that it is in this way we 
 have indeed been legislated for by God, who, 
 having placed us in a world of natural law 
 which is outwardly apparent to us, and of 
 social law, which is also outwardly enacted 
 for us, and who, having permitted desires 
 within us for something of the like sort from 
 Him, and given us such a sense of happiness 
 and security in feeling that He has bestowed 
 it, has evidently no necessary disapproval of 
 the application of such a method in our case. 
 
 And, lastly, when the Bible law professing 
 to be from God has so many qualities which 
 commend it to our sense of fitness and right, 
 and has been so useful both in religion and 
 indirectly, but widely, in society also ; while it 
 still shows itself full of vitality and meaning, 
 and yet promises to have even more extensive 
 fields of usefulness and more complete practical 
 successes in the future ; when it is guaranteed 
 to us by such a vast cloud of witnesses and by 
 such varied methods of testimony, it is not 
 
44 . Hebrew Law. 
 
 unreasonable but the reverse to conclude this 
 to be the revelation we are in search of, and 
 the required legislative machine for carrying 
 out the divine government of mankind. 
 
Hebrew Law. 45 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Oneness of origin in the human race is a 
 theory now commonly accepted. An op- 
 ponent of religion would gain little by denying 
 it. There are such essential points of resem- 
 blance between nations the most remote that 
 if we supposed these distinct in origin we 
 should only have new difficulties to account 
 for. 
 
 Those who go back step by step through 
 different methods of government, and note 
 their relationship and rise one out of another, 
 are at last, as by a sort of necessity, brought 
 to a single tribe as the original social unit, 
 and from that to a single family as the root of 
 the tribe. Supposing ourselves in presence of 
 such an original primeval family, however 
 rude, we should surely find that a natural 
 order, known even among animals, would 
 make the parent its chief. He it would be 
 
46 Hebrew Law. 
 
 who would provide and protect, and his 
 power and affection would impress those 
 under him. This is no assumption. It is 
 observable everywhere in nature, even in dens 
 and nests. 
 
 Among beings of long minority, and capable 
 of retaining and recording impressions, we 
 may be sure corresponding ideas of reverence 
 and allegiance would be attracted, and accu- 
 mulate round this natural chief. As regards 
 religion, even supposing it only earth-born, 
 the parent, we might safely presume, would 
 be its first mover and representative. But if 
 it be allowed that God has at any time com- 
 municated with our race in a direct and imme- 
 diate way, then that communication, we may 
 be sure, would begin with the parent. The 
 great Parent would, we may be sure, respect 
 and accredit the human parent's position. 
 The offspring, on the other hand, would 
 readily respect the human parent's announce- 
 ments. In any case, then, religion would be 
 cast in the paternal form. But though the 
 children might be prone to adopt this, why, 
 unless it were true, should the parent be 
 
Hebrew Law. 47 
 
 inclined to put such a religion forth ? What 
 interest has one practically supreme to transfer 
 his supremacy to another? What suggestions 
 could move one really isolated to feign himself 
 in close dependence ? If he was a coward 
 through inexperience, the strange sights 
 around might teach him many things, but 
 why this — that he had a father- god? How 
 could the first parent have understood and 
 felt a parent never speaking, never coming? 
 If it be said vividness of imagination filled the 
 void, then how came a true want asking for 
 supply to be satisfied with an untruth, and 
 why, in a real nature, was this flagrant un- 
 reality written ? However ingeniously the 
 notion may be laboured, a really probable 
 theory against revelation can hardly be 
 framed; and we may reasonably hold it as 
 fact that a primeval revelation was made to 
 men. 
 
 There is, further, nothing improbable in the 
 circumstance of revelation having paternal 
 features. The first dealings Avith children in 
 every home are far more immediate and con- 
 descending than at later periods of their life. 
 
48 Hebrew Law. 
 
 It is still necessary that the first lessons should 
 be learnt from mouth and hand. Why, then, 
 when there were no documents, no traditions, 
 no society, and yet a first man to be taught 
 and a machinery to be set going — why should 
 we say, " No, it is fitter that God should keep 
 back and not speak at all than that he should 
 so speak. The universal credulity which be- 
 lieved it otherwise was an universal mistake 
 of men as to what they wanted. The uni- 
 versal tradition which recorded it as fact was 
 an universal deception as to what had taken 
 place?" 
 
 Those, indeed, seem but inconsistent advo- 
 cates of humanity who, while on one side they 
 deny our fall, on the other thus deny our 
 aspirations. Far more reasonable is that 
 position which asserts a gradual development 
 of man, retarded but progressive, opposed yet 
 rising through defeats, and the whole move- 
 ment divisible at last by a three -fold crisis of 
 demarcation, supported at each point by its 
 special appropriate guarantee of miraculous 
 manifestation, viz., moral individualism under 
 the Messiah ; social constitutionalism by means 
 
Hebrew Law. 49 
 
 of Moses ; domesticity from God to the 
 patriarchal parent. 
 
 We suppose then the primeval home to be 
 the original bed from which religion, law, 
 sociology first grew. We suppose each of 
 these to represent human thought, feeling, and 
 circumstance, springing, changing, fading, and 
 springing again over ever-increasing areas of 
 growth under the influences of the world and 
 of heaven. The family, society, law, as well 
 as religion itself, are in this sense connected 
 with the divine, and will all proceed by prin- 
 ciples and methods having some analogy and 
 relation. Further, if such a view be correct, 
 no institutions of law, society, or religion, in- 
 consistent with the original family frame will 
 be likely to win permanent success. This 
 seems strongly corroborated by experience. 
 It is also strongly insisted on in the religion of 
 Jesus. The family idea is at the very root of 
 all our Saviours teaching. That idea in its 
 widest applications was antagonistic to the 
 sentiment of his hearers. To them it dis- 
 paraged his claims ; to a truer philosophy it 
 most highly commends them. 
 
50 Hebrew Law. 
 
 But now if there was thus oneness of origin 
 in man ; if the family was the first social unit 
 and the parent the first social power, and the 
 first depository and propagator of divine 
 communications — if, in accordance with the 
 documentary teachings of religion, the home 
 was the centre from which first came law, 
 society, and religion, let us see if we can trace 
 in any probable way the advancing move- 
 ment. 
 
 First, it would seem clear that as by the 
 side of the original chief and father there grew 
 up his sons, themselves the centres of families 
 of their own, so by the side of the will and 
 interests of the first tent there would stand 
 out the will and interests of the other tents 
 which surrounded it. The body of questions 
 rising, and moved in this way, would by 
 degrees arrange themselves into the uncon- 
 scious beginnings of system. This would 
 supply one side of rudimentary law, which 
 would come into form through the counterplay 
 of interest and affection, independence and 
 allegiance. The other side of it, if other side 
 we allow, would pass by means of the parent 
 
Hebrew Law. 51 
 
 from the divine Providence ruling over man 
 and over man's institutional and personal 
 movements. 
 
 We suppose then human society as origi- 
 nally a family, and afterwards as a tribe with 
 interests gradually forming, experience gradu- 
 ally accumulating, questions gradually arising 
 and all receiving settlements which gradually 
 took force as customs. But we imagine as 
 engaged in this work not only the will, reason, 
 and impulses of the offspring, but also those of 
 the parent; and further, and besides both, 
 acting over all through the parent for the 
 benefit of the general body, in some way appro- 
 priate to the time, we imagine, the divine 
 Author and Parent of this infant society. 
 
 We suppose, for instance, that the Altar 
 was a real meeting point between earth and 
 heaven, and not a mere arrangement of stones ; 
 a place where the conscience went to speak, that 
 it might listen and hear echoes of itself. And 
 we suppose, too, that there was thus from the 
 first a divine element in human affairs twisted 
 in among the conclusions of policy as a gift 
 from heaven itself, a vantage point for further 
 
52 Hebrew Law. 
 
 combinations in after times as further messages 
 might descend from heaven. 
 
 We suppose, also, that to some extent, in 
 consequence of the position of the early chiefs 
 between the human and divine, these came to 
 be regarded not only with filial allegiance but 
 also with religious reverence, and that the one 
 man thus highly designated and set apart 
 began to originate that idea and mental frame 
 •which gradually produced world governors, 
 and which sometimes, when light was lost sight 
 of, ended in depravation by attributing to these 
 divine honours. 
 
 Patriarchal longevity must have tended to 
 concentrate and economise the divine action 
 in revelation, and to accumulate rapidly and 
 effectually the experiences of the race, but if 
 we advance our stand to a period when life 
 was shortened, population extended, and mi- 
 grations constant, then the patriarchal system 
 would be on the wane. Its outer appearance 
 might be retained as a social theory, as was 
 the case, for instance, at Rome at a much 
 later period, but its old beneficent character 
 would, as there, have left it j and its methods, 
 
Hebrew Law. 53 
 
 deprived of their early meaning, would lean 
 to oppression. 
 
 At such a period as this there would com- 
 mence, and gradually advance, the unconscious 
 struggle to disentangle the idea of individual 
 rights from the patriarchal custom. Simple as 
 this work appears to us who look back, still it 
 was no doubt attended with great difficulties 
 at the time ; the very idea of social indivi- 
 dualism seems to have been in some sense 
 strange to the early world. Property and even 
 life itself were regarded as belonging to the 
 tribal community. Injuries to either one or the 
 other were looked on mainly as losses to the 
 tribe, and theirs it was to claim retribution or 
 recompense. 
 
 The rights of persons, as elaborated by our 
 own law, almost self-evident as they may in 
 many points now seem, in fact, represent a long 
 train of legal triumphs, and are the joint result 
 of several contributing causes. Among these 
 the law of Moses has fulfilled an important 
 function. Hardly any other system bound 
 together its community with so much stringency 
 us his into an organic whole. In none othei 
 
54 Hebrew Law. 
 
 does the entire plan recognise and bring 
 out each individual in such emphatic manner. 
 The liberality of its general privilege embraces 
 the community, but within that wide machinery 
 there is again an active lesser wheel of personal 
 responsibility and communion. The covenant 
 is with Israel at large, but the " thou " of the 
 commandment and the offerer's hand on the 
 victim intimate that the law was already taking 
 up the ground requisite for the great achieve- 
 ments of the gospel. 
 
 The " natural system " of society as we may 
 name it would, of course, have to pass through 
 many modifications of arrangement and many 
 phases of development in proportion as refine- 
 ments in relationship grew up in advancing 
 communities. We cannot suppose, however, 
 that the original ground-idea of that first 
 system could ever be well modified or departed 
 from, and for this reason — it embodies the truths 
 that a common origin and tie of natural con- 
 nexion bind us all together; that there are 
 primary interests common to us all ; that there 
 are certain benefits and losses which, while only 
 partial, perhaps, in incidence, are yet universal 
 
Hebrew Law. 55 
 
 in result, and that though men and communi- 
 ties absorbed in the particular parts assigned 
 to them may fail to observe the fact, yet that 
 there is one drama of history which has been 
 continuously playing out, that its whole cast is 
 based upon the domestic idea, and that our 
 common phrase " the human family " is by no 
 means a figure of speech, but has a substantial 
 and very meaning truth in it. 
 
 Indeed, if we regard society as presided over 
 by the one heavenly Author, we cannot sup- 
 pose it likely that the original sentiment of its 
 order would ever be abandoned by Him. That 
 sentiment was not arbitrary but natural, that is, 
 it was essentially connected with his continuous 
 world-plan, and consisted in this principle, that 
 men should be combined by the impulse and 
 tie of the affections which flourish in family 
 relationship. As societies have increased in 
 size the affections have retreated into the private 
 home, and concentrated themselves there, but 
 we cannot think that God, having once im- 
 pressed on the whole order of our affairs this 
 highest moral method and principle, would ever 
 abandon it, and consent to have the compul- 
 
56 Hebrew Law. 
 
 sions of mere rule substituted in its stead. 
 We may feel reasonably confident, as a matter 
 of probability, that the first donation expressed 
 the permanent design ; that the family idea has 
 still existence and meaning for society, and 
 that it will gradually be worked out in public 
 affairs so as to conform our present organisa- 
 tions of expediency and partial benevolence 
 to the original sentiments of our nature, by 
 this means solving many of the great social 
 problems of modern life and promoting to the 
 utmost the general good. 
 
 But observe, if this be so, what a testimony 
 is already supplied in favour of Hebrew law, 
 for that which consideration leads us to expect 
 is just what this system has already set to work 
 to bring about. It collects together a nation 
 under the express theory of its being a family, 
 legislating for it as for children of a common 
 father, and bringing its enactments constantly 
 to the test of fraternal duty and regard. This 
 idea is never abandoned throughout the whole 
 law or the whole Scripture. It is enforced 
 with even increased urgency in the prophetic 
 writings, and forms one of the main features 
 
Hebrew Law. 57 
 
 in the Gospel, where indeed it is expanded to 
 vast proportions, the affections being regarded 
 as the substantive power of the law, the whole 
 world-wide society of Christians being looked 
 on as one great brotherhood, God Himself dis- 
 tinctly taking the title of " Father," and the 
 Son of God that of " Brother," and the dimen- 
 sions of the plan extending themselves so as to 
 incorporate by adoption the human society into 
 a for larger family organisation and " general 
 assembly " of other beings besides us who are 
 on earth ; a glimpse being thus afforded us of 
 the probability that the whole government and 
 dealing with this world is an harmonious part 
 of a much wider and perhaps universal plan. 
 
 But now if we return and think again of 
 many elements of difficulty and disturbance 
 which may probably have surrounded early 
 society, we may well imagine that on the re- 
 laxation of the patriarchal idea the new indi- 
 vidualised life, before achieving rights, would 
 in most communities have to pass through a 
 long series of restraints. There is abundant 
 evidence that such was indeed the case, and 
 that the early modifications of the patriarchal 
 
58 Hebrew Law. 
 
 system were not immediately productive of 
 individual happiness or liberty. 
 
 Indeed it is clear that the breaking up of so 
 beautiful a central idea as that of the family 
 system, unless it could have been at once sup- 
 plemented by some other system equally com- 
 pulsory on the affections, could hardly prove for 
 the immediate common good. No such other 
 system, however, was ready. The methods 
 which came on repeated the incidents of what 
 had gone before. There was the one ruler whose 
 word was still law. The people, however 
 graduated in rank among themselves, were in 
 relation to him regarded as all equal in de- 
 pendence. "Patriarchal economy" still fur- 
 nished the type. One predominant character 
 still formed a centre, and all the rest were in 
 equal subordination around. This method was, 
 according to Aristotle,* reflected in all the 
 oldest governments, which copied the features 
 of the family plan. Republics and other free 
 forms were the result of later art and refine- 
 ment. 
 
 Such empires spread themselves as their 
 
 * I. Polit. 
 
Hebrew Law. 59 
 
 armies advanced, and often contracted again 
 as they retreated. Their parts were cemented 
 together by no moral principle touching the 
 affections. Homage and tribute was what they 
 required, for these brought provinces within 
 their circle. As a result they were narrowed 
 or overturned with a rapidity equal to their 
 rise. Their foundations were not deeper than 
 those of an old tribal encampment. It needed 
 but a revolt, defeat, death, or palace intrigue, 
 and it was as if the tents had been struck in a 
 single night. 
 
 Such false patriarchalism was merely mime- 
 tic. Without customary rights founded on the 
 idea of brotherhood, it was deprived of the 
 spirit of the old law, and thus, though it was 
 the birth of nationalism, it was a birth among 
 terrible throes, in which family, property, and 
 life all suffered. It was antithetical, indeed, to 
 the older parental sentiment. It was the 
 adumbration of an inner world-power tyran- 
 nical and injurious. The old oriental empires, 
 though a political advance and a step in orga- 
 nisation, were a moral decline as weakening 
 the highest motive principle for mankind, viz., 
 
60 Hebrew Law. 
 
 that of a common tie in feeling, and weaken- 
 ing, together with that, the vigour of domestic 
 relations and social law. 
 
 The tenacious methods of thought of the 
 older time would, on the arrival at this stage, 
 be in some respects even disadvantageous. 
 The strong feeling of relationship, for instance, 
 would become the strong feeling of nationalism, 
 and would retard advance by rendering the 
 incorporation of new elements on equal terms 
 more difficult, setting up feudatory arrange- 
 ments, and depressing the populations most 
 recently added. 
 
 The same family impulses tending to con- 
 strain men within hereditary callings would 
 bring out the features, and by degrees the en- 
 tire system, of caste. Among these social sub- 
 divisions the bodies conversant with religion 
 and war would, from the prominence of their 
 professions, soon stand out and take the lead. 
 But what would be the result? War, once 
 made the interest of a class, would become 
 systematic. Religion committed to a sect would 
 be overlaid with accumulations of legend, and 
 symbolised into excess. It is at this point that 
 
Hebrew Law. 61 
 
 the political chief would be in danger of gra- 
 dually developing into a power at once hostile 
 to the authority of God and to the progress of 
 society. 
 
 Let loose from the restraint of a moral rule 
 enforced by sacred sanctions of religion, tradi- 
 tions of affection, and deep tribal sympathies, 
 it is evident that the strong would begin to 
 assert themselves more unrestrainedly, and 
 that the weak would begin to suffer in pro- 
 portion. Adventurous and gifted men would 
 substitute personal merit for rank in the 
 family as the ground of chieftainship, and the 
 society, passing beyond the limits of the gens 
 or clan, would be extended as far as the 
 capacities and achievements of the ruler would 
 permit. 
 
 Such a condition may have been an ap- 
 proach to social advance, but would be one 
 attended with drawbacks, for after the original 
 patriarchal tie had once been broken through, 
 it might take long to reconstruct the delicate 
 machinery of a fresh moral claim on behalf of 
 the weak against the strong, of a fresh public 
 opinion for its support, of a fresh positive law 
 
62 Hebrew Law. 
 
 to define its shape, and a fresh central autho- 
 rity to sustain its activity. 
 
 In the absence of all this, or prior to it, we 
 should have to expect social disorder, such as 
 uprisings of the oppressed, inroads upon per- 
 sonal security, and upon morals and property, 
 and also a gradual exaggeration of patriarchal 
 phenomena : the subjugation of the weak, chil- 
 dren kept severely under power, women re- 
 strained into seclusion, and the mass of men 
 brought into servitude. And such, in fact, is 
 usually found as the condition of the ancient 
 post-patriarchal world, and of those modern 
 societies which may still be seen in something 
 like that state of transition. Here, in short, 
 would be patriarchal methods, but without 
 the patriarchal spirit. Family subjection un- 
 tempered by family affection. Absolutism of 
 position with no limitations from feeling ; the 
 husks of the past preparing the soil of the 
 future. 
 
 On reviewing the whole ground of the ques- 
 tion, then, it may appear very natural that a 
 difficulty should have presented itself to writers 
 like Aristotle, while observing the vast influence 
 
Hebrew Law. 63 
 
 of individual chiefs, in understanding how this 
 could have arisen and been sustained. Such 
 a writer could not easily suppose personal pre- 
 eminence universal enough to account for it. 
 The idea of supernatural sanctions as its sup- 
 port had come down to his days enfolded in 
 such distorted legends that it was not often 
 seriously dealt with by philosophy. 
 
 The question which embarrassed him still 
 remains to be met. If the chief of the later or 
 poetic age were merely an heroic " Basileus," 
 chief by his merit in war and in council, his 
 position would be simple and easy to be un- 
 derstood; but mixed in with these qualities 
 there are found numerous traces both of family 
 headship and allegiance, and also of religious 
 functions and prerogatives, all attached to his 
 office or person. This throws us back at once 
 upon the remoter patriarchal system, and we 
 have to suppose its prior existence as described 
 in Scripture as the foundation and cause of 
 these peculiarities in later society. 
 
 Some persons, perhaps unwilling to allow 
 this explanation, have recently attempted to 
 account for these phenomena by affirming as 
 
64 Hebrew Law. 
 
 something certain that in the infancy of man- 
 kin d there was no conception at all of law as a 
 system or set of rules endued with a continuing 
 force, but that every law was conceived of as 
 a separate inspiration from above given to the 
 tribe through the chief; that there was no 
 power in men's minds of dividing religion, 
 morals, and legislation into distinct topics, ac- 
 cording to our present ways of regarding them, 
 but that these subjects were all mixed up to- 
 gether in the mind ; that there were hardly 
 even customs existing in connection with them, 
 but that when emergency called them out they 
 were regarded as emanations for the occasion 
 which descended from above, and that in this 
 way the special dignity and pre-eminence of 
 chiefs first came to be believed in. 
 
 But assuming these statements (though dif- 
 ficult perhaps of exact proof) to have been 
 quite accurately made, we are at once struck 
 with the following inference : how completely 
 this theory brings us — where its authors 
 may not intend — within the range of the 
 books of the Pentateuch, and how far more 
 naturally and probably the narrative of that 
 
Hebrew Law. 65 
 
 part of Scripture accounts for the ancient con- 
 dition of the social world than do the surmises 
 intended to supplant it. If the mind of man 
 in its earlier stages was thus weak in power ; 
 unable by itself to frame rules of action in such 
 a way as to be impressive ; what more likely 
 than that the Divine Author should give it the 
 needed help ; that He should come to it again 
 and again with a command in great matters 
 delivered to its venerated leaders, and so im- 
 press them and enable them to impress others, 
 and that then afterwards, when habits of 
 thought were formed, and accumulations of 
 experience made, He should gradually with^- 
 draw from this immediate action, and out of 
 respect for our freedom veil Himself, as we 
 find He does at present. Such a supposition 
 would afford at once a sufficient ground for ex- 
 pecting just such Divine dealings as Scripture 
 describes to us as having actually taken place. 
 And further, suppose it the case that in 
 those earliest times religion, social govern- 
 ment, and morals were mixed in with law, is 
 that an infirmity or defect ? Is it not rather 
 just the high character and tone which law 
 
 K 
 
66 Hebrew Law. 
 
 would take while a Divine Power was moving 
 immediately among its arrangements ; a pre- 
 monition of that which we hope for as the 
 future ideal when the Will of God immediately 
 present and unreservedly accepted shall intro- 
 duce a personal divine rule and a direct wor- 
 ship, which together shall bind up in a perfect 
 polity both the social, mental, and religious 
 man. 
 
 Nor indeed are we to take it too readily for 
 granted that the sharp distinctions supposed 
 between modern law, religion, and morals 
 exist always in more than a technical way, or 
 that where they are really admitted they 
 represent an improvement and advance in- 
 stead of a decline in man's position. Surely it 
 is not anything to boast of that a community 
 can regulate its action in one of such points 
 without reference to the rest of them; and 
 surely any mental conception and treatment of 
 one of these subjects without regard to the 
 bearings of the rest can hardly be regarded 
 as comprehensive and complete. 
 
 We conclude, then, generally that the an- 
 cient patriarch as an original mover of law 
 
Hebrew Law. 67 
 
 presents to us the mental point of departure of 
 the whole system of society — reverence for an 
 authority based upon affection, and supported 
 by divine communications ; regard for life, 
 domestic ties, property, and good name, as all 
 within the circle of which the one revered 
 family head was the centre, and over which 
 the unseen Divinity was wielding his sanctions. 
 The succeeding depravations show us the heart 
 and life withdrawn from this old system, and 
 its external forms consequently aggravated by 
 the corruption of their very beauty, and forced 
 into all the more unsightly and harder methods 
 of tyranny. 
 
 At this point the Law of Moses came in to 
 accept and appropriate all the ground made 
 good by advancing civilisation, but to reject 
 its errors, and to plant again all those early 
 principles which were fading or dying out ; to 
 emphasise with the authority of Jehovah the 
 duties and affections which spring from the 
 family source, and, by grouping all together 
 round the idea of home, to ingrain into the 
 very soil of society the foundation thought of 
 love. 
 
68 Hebrew Law. 
 
 The commandments of Sinai are thus not 
 mere abrupt and fragmentary utterances. They 
 are the complement of the earliest good estate 
 of the world, the recipe for its later corruptions, 
 the line upon which its advancing course is to 
 run, and the significant forecast of its com- 
 pletest future. The fatherhood once more 
 brought into the ascendant does not indeed 
 recover its political position, but it gives us 
 glimpses of its still more splendid expansion in 
 the coming fatherhood of the future, while 
 from this there depend the graces of fraternal 
 society represented in the rules of the law as 
 to love, purity, justice, truth, and absence of 
 self-seeking ; graces, whose notes, examplars, 
 exercise, and abandonments are illustrated in 
 the earliest Mosaic record ; then distinctly 
 thrown into the form of command ; then, again, 
 seen gradually vindicating themselves in his- 
 tory, until they find their full ratification in the 
 teaching and conduct of Jesus, and after him 
 their ever widening sphere in the Church of 
 the Spirit, which he founded, so that these 
 principles are now the safeguards of society, 
 the constant antagonists of all forces which 
 
Hebrew Law. 69 
 
 would fetter its energies, disturb its progress, 
 and corrupt its tone, and thus the gradual pre- 
 parers of the final condition when the matured 
 life shall have at length realised in the highest 
 degree those relationships which it at first 
 knew of but in shadows and lesser forms. 
 
 Lastly, then, we may emphasise this obser- 
 vation that in the theory of society which 
 revelation puts forward, we find progress 
 secured by just the same sort of counterplay 
 between contending principles of good and 
 evil which are found at work in the actual 
 world. We have, that is, depressions of the 
 great patriarchal idea so morally dignified and 
 so fit to be the first gift brought out of Para- 
 dise. We have those depressions as effects 
 partly of social, but mainly of moral changes, 
 and we have in them by the side of certain 
 advantages, such as a more organised and duc- 
 tile polity, proportionate difficulties, a paling 
 and a falling away, for instance, of the filial 
 brotherly and paternal sentiments which were 
 and always must be among the most cogent 
 which can exist among us. We find the whole 
 series of family ideas and incidents prevailing in 
 
70 Hebrew Law. 
 
 appearance in the oriental despotism, but 
 lowered in tone and value ; and then we have 
 in the crisis of the Hebrew commonwealth an 
 appropriation of all the best results of this 
 strong civil rule, but a new reinvigoration of 
 the whole with the family spirit. 
 
 We venture to think that the foundation of 
 this Hebrew state thus presents a central point 
 in sociology. The fusion of the family of 
 Abraham with a selection of Egyptian methods 
 was the junction of the highest phase of patri- 
 archal life with the best parts of monarchism. 
 The Hebrews had shown the extent of their 
 development by the tenacity of their isolation. 
 The vigour of the principles which animated 
 them may best be estimated by their long- 
 continued resistance and power of rebound. 
 They had that immense vitality which is still 
 found in a degree among tribes kept together 
 by the patriarchal feeling. 
 
 The Hebrew, even independent of his spiri- 
 tual uses, was perhaps the best conceivable 
 vehicle for restoring or continuing this great 
 principle of society. In the Hebrew State the 
 family spirit budded once more. Through the 
 
Hebrew Law. j\ 
 
 vicissitudes of that State in connection with 
 Egypt, Babylon, the Greeks, and Home, the 
 whole mass of civilisation became gradually 
 prepared to receive this principle in the strong 
 way in which Christianity was at length to 
 endorse it. What was at first a family nation had 
 already under the Hebrew kings become a family 
 of the religious within a nation. This had been 
 the work of the prophets. In the Gospel the 
 religious were finally advanced to be a family 
 within all nations. All the world was to be a 
 brotherhood, but with individual rights and 
 responsibilities fully recognised, for each nation 
 also was to be in a certain sense a fatherhood. 
 
 The influence of Christianity wherever it has 
 prevailed has restored to governments, no 
 matter what their outer form, something of the 
 spirit which breathed in the original tent life. 
 Though the main leader is no longer the 
 human ruler, but the divine, the human chief is 
 respected as the vicegerent of heaven, and 
 social relationships are impressed again with 
 the beginnings of family regard. 
 
 Wherever, on the other hand, Christianity 
 has been comparatively unsuccessful through 
 defective methods of presentment, or through 
 
72 Hebrew Law. 
 
 an express rejection by the influences of society, 
 there have been again exhibited those turbu- 
 lences, revolutions, and class animosities which 
 were so frequent in the ancient imperial world. 
 Kevelation, then, we have to regard not 
 merely as religious, but as governmental ; as 
 the union of man with the moral Governor not 
 merely for the future, but for the present as 
 well ; not merely to secure us for the coming 
 life, but also for that which now is. The 
 system of Moses we regard not as something 
 which may be accepted or let alone, but as an 
 essential constituent of the original whole, 
 necessary not only for the development of reli- 
 gion, but for the advance of society as well, 
 and precious in our civil liberties and happi- 
 ness as it is in our spiritual condition and 
 prosperity. We are constrained, therefore, to 
 think, without now speaking of the soul, those 
 persons sadly infatuated who, having any of 
 this world's benefits to lose either for them- 
 selves or their families, conspire to weaken by 
 indifference or opposition orthodox religious 
 convictions which there is so much reason to 
 believe to be the preserving salt of society, as 
 well as the seeds for heaven. 
 
Hebrew Law. 73 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Theke has been, both in the order of society 
 itself and also of its two guides, law and 
 religion, a course of development some- 
 what similar in kind. Society beginning 
 in the home passes through the period of 
 tyranny, and advances to responsible govern- 
 ment ; law beginning at expressions of pater- 
 nal will, hardens into custom, from which it 
 by degrees emerges into adapted legislation ; 
 religion first bowing to revelations at the 
 patriarchal altar, afterwards prostrates itself, 
 as we shall presently find, before the departed 
 patriarch himself, but at last rises to direct 
 communications with the Divine. In each of 
 these spheres we seem to have the preliminary 
 position of an infant community, the aberra- 
 tion of its early advance, and then its final 
 settlement in the higher station. 
 
 The history of civilisation is thus an outward 
 
 L 
 
74 Hebrew Law. 
 
 epitomised expression of the complete destiny 
 of the race; that is, of a childhood infantile 
 under God, a youth slavish under sin, and 
 a maturity manly in the Church of the first- 
 born. The Mosaic history again expresses in 
 a still more condensed form the same pro- 
 gression: the family state under Jacob, the 
 servile under Pharaoh, the free under Moses — 
 a serial arrangement which is appropriate, 
 since that history has been a special agency 
 by means of which the advance of mankind 
 has been carried forward. Thus, then, revealed 
 religion, truly understood, is not a some- 
 thing rigid and archaic, reared up by the side 
 of civil life and social advance, distinct from 
 and indifferent to them, but it is the seed, and 
 soul, and spring — the very life-blood, nerve, 
 and muscle of all that is vital and valuable in 
 our affairs, from which there surely comes, 
 and to which there may probably be traced, 
 what is really true and good in them. 
 
 But before showing the workings of the 
 Law of Moses in this respect, we should go 
 on from the decline of the patriarchal state 
 into tyrannies, to note the decline of the 
 
Hebrew Law. 75 
 
 patriarchal religion into idolatries ; that is to 
 say, before describing the return, we should 
 complete our account of the wandering away. 
 
 Though increase and movement of popula- 
 tion would be one cause of the break up of 
 the patriarchal system, the severe and sudden 
 convulsions attending the change seem to show 
 wide-spread moral corruption as a further 
 cause. There may have been pressure on the 
 part of tribe-leaders, but before this there 
 must have been some solicitation of pressure 
 by the tribes. When peoples are enslaved, 
 they are themselves usually forgers of the 
 chain. The tyrannies which desolate their 
 life are but the recoil of their own follies and 
 offending. 
 
 The one primeval altar may probably have 
 been designed as the basis to support the 
 one parental centre of social unity in the 
 early world, even as the tabernacle or temple 
 afterwards became the central institution to 
 keep up the national integrity of the descend- 
 ants of Abraham. The disruption from the 
 primeval family would tend to cause schism 
 from the patriarchal altar, as it did afterwards 
 
76 Hebrew Law. 
 
 in the divided kingdoms of Judah and Israel, 
 In the new societies, involved often in attacks 
 on the life and property of their neighbours, 
 religion, already separated from its centre, 
 would soon further decline. The faith of a 
 community will not remain far in advance of 
 its morals, and a national career essentially 
 untrue would by degrees tinge early religion 
 with its falsehoods. The lowest point of 
 worship reached by them, in which imaginary 
 deities, themselves reputed criminal, were pro- 
 pitiated by criminal acts of their votaries, 
 expressed the extremest departure not only 
 from the ancient patriarchal faith, but also 
 from its morality. 
 
 We may now go on to observe how, human 
 passions having usurped the place of divine 
 law, human personality substituted itself for 
 divine fatherhood, underneath which, since 
 the passions dominating society were evil, the 
 author of evil came to be the " prince of this 
 world ; " the tyrannies which were rampant in 
 it being his tyranny ; the worship which was 
 offered in it becoming a sacrifice to devils. 
 
 There was, doubtless, much in the ancient 
 
Hebrew Law. 77 
 
 chief to impress the imagination of early 
 society. Even apart from Scripture, we have 
 evidence that his authority was final, and that 
 his position was considered almost sacred. His 
 judgments were respected as in some measure 
 divine, and his person regarded with a reverence 
 approaching to worship. Traces of this ancient 
 idea are found extending even far on in 
 history. Thus Strabo comments on the almost 
 divine honour (<r£/3a(T/i6s OeoTrpzTrijs) with which 
 the Persian kings were regarded by their 
 subjects, a habit which he holds to have been 
 derived by them from the more ancient Aryan 
 Medes.* By some mysterious link these sacred 
 leaders, heads of religion and of law, appeared 
 to their people to unite them to the unseen. 
 
 Now, imagine the decline and death of a 
 great chief of immense age ; long eminent for 
 courage, endurance, wisdom, and piety; long 
 regarded with the utmost reverence and affec- 
 tion ; the depositary of ancient traditions ; 
 associated with the forefathers of the world ; 
 himself a central agency in religion and law ; 
 
 * Strabo, 'Geog.' 525. 
 
78 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the medium of intercourse with the spiritual 
 sphere ; the offerer of sacrifice ; the dispenser 
 and, as it might seem, the procurer of blessings ; 
 the great guide and guardian ; the authority 
 as to the relationships of life and business. 
 When such a personage might be at length 
 taken away after a very long career, nothing 
 would be more easy than for the minds of his 
 followers, feeble and leaning towards supports, 
 to imagine him still watching over them, and 
 hovering around ; to remember him in stated 
 festivals, and to carry on rites of reminiscence 
 in his honour. By degrees, as the memory of 
 this chief's earthly residence became dim, these 
 impressions as to his superior life, his con- 
 tinued interest, patronage, and mediation in 
 their behalf, might well grow in intensity, and, 
 if true religious faith were weak, from com- 
 memoration there would inevitably come the 
 risk of passing to a species of cultus. There 
 is a widely-spread impression that such a 
 cultus of ancestors was, if not the only, at any 
 rate one of the chief doors by which idolatry 
 entered the world. The degree of tendency 
 in the ancient mind towards such an attitude 
 
Hebrew Law. 79 
 
 may be gathered from observing the immense 
 importance attached to funeral rites. To have 
 died without them was regarded as a greater 
 calamity than death; to have failed to per- 
 form them as only a lesser misfortune. 
 
 When once the matter had got so far, the 
 remaining steps could be taken only too easily. 
 The association of the ancestor to be honoured 
 with some natural object commensurate with 
 his dignity, or connected with his life or 
 person, is but the symbolism of an almost 
 instinctive heraldry. From this to the con- 
 struction of figures, either directly or typically 
 representative, is again only one further, and 
 not less natural, movement. 
 
 But to dwell on this transition a little more 
 in detail. We have the following complication 
 of motives moving around this matter, of such 
 vital importance to the condition of the ancient 
 world : — a rapid growth of society to propor- 
 tions beyond the reach of patriarchal arrange- 
 ments; movement of locality resulting, which 
 would still further increase the inadequacy of 
 those arrangements ; conflict among unsettled 
 marauders_as a consequence ; these in their 
 
80 Hebrew Law. 
 
 turn leading to aggregations round gifted 
 leaders ; the raising of such leaders by degrees 
 into the position of Oriental despots, invested 
 in the popular esteem with the patriarchal 
 prestige, that is, with authority of the most 
 sacred compulsion; yet leaders too recent in 
 elevation, too near at hand in administration, 
 too precarious in position, too unfit in them- 
 selves, and also for the most part too much 
 checked in religion by a hierarchy developing 
 itself by the side of their own power to 
 be able to minister to spiritual wants and 
 aspirations of a people accustomed to lean 
 upon the venerable and pacific majesty of 
 the primeval fathers, and to regard them 
 as the intermediary channels with the Divine. 
 Indeed, however much we suppose revela- 
 tion weakened in its influence over the ancient 
 populations, or however little we allow as a 
 probability that it was in fact a donation 
 to them from heaven, we may still see that 
 the ancient despot, owing to something essen- 
 tially untrue in his position, could not really 
 supply the place of the patriarch in religion. 
 That interrelation of interests which in the 
 
Hebrew Law. 81 
 
 patriarchal polity had flourished among the 
 traditions of parents and descendants was in 
 the tyranny no longer fostered. Another 
 theory of lord and subject was now suggested, 
 or rather impressed upon the new communities, 
 through the exigency of the military events to 
 which they owed their origin and mainten- 
 ance. The absolute authority and unquestion- 
 ing subjection generated in camps were features 
 of these States, in some respects little more 
 than encampments themselves. 
 
 Under such a condition of things the old 
 ideas and methods of thought, too deeply 
 rooted to be at once removed, would be 
 pressed into a new form. In popular esteem 
 the paternal attributes would still in a measure 
 cling to the person of the despot, and, to some 
 extent, the supernatural relations of the Patri- 
 arch would also be attributed to him. This 
 treatment lingered so long that, even where 
 a priestly caste had been developed, the despot 
 was, on ascending the throne, admitted 
 into it. But his position was in reality without 
 the family sanction. The rights of the home 
 and of property, the rights of life and death, 
 
 M 
 
82 Hebrew Law. 
 
 of personal liberty and equitable decision, were 
 during his presidency all in a transition state. 
 A new diploma and authority was now wanted 
 to give, on the one hand, moral force to the 
 Governor, and on the other hand to restrain 
 his individual will which without this would 
 be entirely absolute, or only limited on certain 
 sides by custom, or by sectional restraints 
 distinct from the general interest. 
 
 This inadequacy was still greater in religion. 
 In the simple circle of the patriarchal tents 
 had been a real temple, or sacred enclosure, 
 more distinct than if marked by Druid stones, 
 and within which moral principles, family 
 affections, social rights and duties, had found 
 their first nidus and nursing place, and had 
 come, through the instrumentality of the Patri- 
 arch, into direct contact with the spiritual, and 
 with that great unseen Power, the Father of 
 the fathers. 
 
 Here, by the side of social progress, had 
 expanded the religious elementary principles 
 of faith, the religious affection of love and 
 reverence, and the religious duties of obedi- 
 ence. Here the first outline of the future, as 
 
Hebrew Law. 83 
 
 fulfilled for us by the Holy Spirit and the 
 Son of God, had been mysteriously traced in 
 Divine whispers, and mysteriously embodied 
 for use in the religion of sacrifice. The earliest 
 supply for the essential wants of man had thus 
 been provided. A rule had developed itself 
 for right conduct, a remedy for errors. But 
 the despot could no longer fulfil these func- 
 tions ; a line of separation therefore began to 
 be traced, and the popular mind sought to 
 retain its religious treasures by clinging to the 
 past. It was at this point the Patriarch would 
 become idealised. The veneration for ancestors 
 who had been long known as the medium with 
 the Divine, and as the traditional heroes of 
 the race, now served as the stepping-stone to 
 a new religious cycle, destined gradually to 
 obscure the simple traditional worship and 
 revealed hopes and realities which had been 
 handed down from the beginning; leading to 
 many and extreme exaggerations of worship 
 and belief in corrupted communities, but 
 after a time gradually to decline before a 
 higher development of the first patriarchal 
 faith, towards whose spread these very 
 
84 Hebrew Law. 
 
 defects may in some inscrutable way have 
 tended. 
 
 The track of this transition from the patri- 
 archal to the idolatrous is traceable in a 
 sufficiently probable way in some mythologies 
 of the early world. It is usually found in 
 these that they have one feature or repre- 
 sentative of divinity rising above the rest. 
 This divinity commonly appears in the dual 
 form, as male and female, a great father and a 
 great mother. At times, however, the concep- 
 tion is condensed into a quasi-unity ; at other 
 times it is still further simplified into a com- 
 plete unity. In this divinity, in whatever way 
 conceived, there is further observed a tendency 
 to a twofold manifestation. He appears bearing 
 the traces of two distinct pairs or personages 
 in two succeeding avatars. Below the first 
 group of the great father and the great mother 
 there again ranges a high though subordinate 
 series in the form of a triad of gods and asso- 
 ciated goddesses. 
 
 In connection with this whole system there 
 often occurs the idea of a creative germ floating 
 on an abyss, and of an ark resting upon waters. 
 
Hebrew Law. 85 
 
 These sometimes have only a cosmical value, at 
 other times they rise until they become equi- 
 valent to the great mother. A mountain is 
 also a very usual feature in these systems, as 
 a home of the gods and seat of the blessed. 
 
 All the above features in the mythological 
 systems are so generally reproduced, and 
 attended at times with such striking similarities 
 in detail, that if we are permitted to start 
 from the theory already referred to, that the 
 idolatries of the old world were based on the 
 reverence of ancestors, the outlines of patri- 
 archal history at once offer themselves, giving 
 us in a very natural way the key to the whole 
 development. The great father and the great 
 mother in their repeated forms will under 
 such a treatment be the first parents Adam 
 and Eve, and will afterwards be more distinctly 
 the second parents, Noah and his wife. The 
 triads connected with them will be the three 
 sons of Adam and their wives, and then the 
 three sons of Noah and their wives. 
 
 Besides the great persons, the great events, 
 creation and deluge, paradise, the first dona- 
 tion of land, and the restoration of the land 
 
86 Hebrew Law. 
 
 after the deluge, will be pointed at ; while 
 interwoven with these will be traces of 
 heavenly manifestation and a divine unity and 
 fatherhood, remnants of a higher truth, blend- 
 ing with allegories of the birthplace of Eden 
 and the exit from the ark, imagined some- 
 times as the first mother. 
 
 We find in the mythologies a mountain, 
 especially a three-peaked mountain, suggestive 
 of Ararat, selected as the sacred spot. And 
 in low countries we have artificial elevations, 
 as mounds, pyramids, or towers, raised for 
 religious rites. We also have an ark, some- 
 times as a cist, sometimes as a boat, the con- 
 stant and prominent feature of such worships. 
 
 In the popular and religious theories and 
 also in the mysteries there may further be 
 traced two succeeding phases of idea, analogous 
 to the periods before and after the deluge, the 
 one of depression and disturbance preceding a 
 religious crisis, the other of joy and prosperity 
 following on it. With the former set of ideas 
 we find associated the terrors and cruelties 
 of heathen worship ; with the latter, its sensual 
 licence and riotous indulgence. This crisis, 
 
Hebrew Law. 87 
 
 too, was frequently marked in the rites by a 
 passage through water. All these features 
 tend to show how probable it is that the 
 ancient Scriptural fathers of the human race, 
 and the great events among which they moved, 
 were impressed with intense force on the 
 minds of the populations, and that as true piety 
 declined, and the patriarchal verities faded, 
 these rose gradually into the place of more 
 august truths, and furnished the traditional 
 ingredients out of which idolatry was moulded. 
 Such a system once in motion would be sure 
 to complicate itself by degrees, both with 
 metaphysics and with naturalism, and by 
 giving and taking from them would come to 
 present constantly shifting combinations of out- 
 line. The stars, the moon, or, above all, the 
 sun, would be sometimes imagined as the 
 residence, sometimes as the personality, some- 
 times as the emblematic value, of the fancied 
 god. To this he would be supposed to retire ; 
 from it he would then be fabled to have 
 originally come, through it he would be re- 
 garded as habitually acting and manifesting 
 himself by the agency of priests, saints, kings, 
 
88 Hebrew Law. 
 
 and heroes. Sometimes he would be identified 
 with it as a person, while at other times his 
 personality would be explained away into its 
 natural phenomena. 
 
 Here, in all these ideas, would be a basis upon 
 which different minds, schools, and ages might 
 rear systems either of materialism or idolatry, 
 planet-worship or rationalism, a religious basis 
 which would invite and co-operate with the 
 ambition of chiefs and of castes, lowering 
 as it would the whole tone of the population, 
 and preparing them, by servility of worship, 
 for imperiousness in law. For here, by these 
 means, the people would be deprived of the 
 practical influence of that old faith (ennobling, 
 however simply conceived) of the one divine 
 Father, Creator, Protector, and only supreme 
 Master of His creatures, the one great Name 
 to be reverenced ; the one fit Object of devout 
 contemplation, and of a friendly and family 
 worship ; the One alone capable of uniting all 
 ranks into a single religious brotherhood. The 
 parental relation thus struck out from its 
 position as the associating link between love 
 in heaven and love on earth would give place 
 
Hebrew Law. 
 
 69 
 
 to the idea of the father-king, who again 
 would pass down into the despot. Traces of 
 this transition of idea seem preserved in the 
 Abimelech, or father-king of Scripture ; the 
 Padishah, or father-king of the Persians ; the 
 Atalik, " father " of the Khans of Bokahra, and 
 other similar titles.* 
 
 The two real powers of the human sphere, 
 the patriarch on earth and the Father in heaven, 
 beino- thus removed from the foreground of 
 society, and the want of them supplied by 
 such reducing substitutes, we may be sure 
 religion would soon cease, as we say, to speak 
 its full language, and law soon cease to have 
 its true force. But here, as in so many other 
 cases, divine benevolence, through these inter- 
 mediate evils, was working on towards ulterior 
 good. The paternal conceptions of govern- 
 ment, which had been realised in the earliest 
 societies, though afterwards degraded in 
 oriental despotism, had not been lost ; they 
 formed the basis for Mosaic legislation and for 
 those ideas of individualism, of social right and 
 responsibility which could hardly perhaps have 
 
 * Gesenius. 
 
90 Hebrew Law. 
 
 been developed without such a starting point, 
 and perhaps not even without such an inter- 
 mediate stage. They have, also, after the 
 passage through idolatries, possibly even by 
 some untraced movement in relation to them, 
 come to be the foundation on which have 
 rested the most affectionate and comprehensive 
 beliefs in divine superintendence and grace. 
 The individual can now return once more into 
 the family sphere. For the tribe is substituted 
 " the whole family of heaven and earth named 
 in Christ Jesus." For the patriarch we have 
 the great Father of heaven, the object of 
 obedience, reverence,- and love, the fountain 
 of right and law. The difficulties inherent in 
 earthly relationship come to be regarded as 
 temporary and less material. We can live in 
 patience through them and above them, while 
 here we are " seeking a country." We are in 
 anticipation " citizens of heaven " of " the 
 household of the saints," and "heirs of 
 covenanted promise." 
 
 If the above observations contain any 
 approach to the correct idea of the progres- 
 sions of society and religion, then it is evident 
 
Hebrew Law. 91 
 
 not only that civil life and spiritual life might 
 have something to gain from such a system as 
 that of Moses, but, further, that his legislation 
 supplied, with wonderful fitness, a want for 
 which there was no other provision, and that 
 the whole of Hebrew Law has a distinct place 
 and mission of the highest kind, and not in an 
 accidental, but essential, way in the develop- 
 ment of these two great spheres. 
 
 Those who are aware of the slow growth 
 and inveterate tenacity of customs, who have 
 an adequate impression as to the lingering 
 parturition by which new ideas are produced, 
 and as to the gradual and complex arrange- 
 ments by which alone they can become fixed 
 in the general mind, will not regard these pro- 
 gressions of religion and society as unlikely, 
 and will possibly see reason to think that, 
 among all the disintegrating forces of human 
 self-will in the past and the countless social 
 disorders which have so distressingly expressed 
 it, there has been at work an orderly hand 
 collecting and re-arranging the broken frag- 
 ments of the first frame into a new edifice, 
 similar in design but far grander in proportion 
 and far more perfect in execution, than that 
 
92 Hebrew Law. 
 
 elementary method which went before ; a 
 temple which shall take the place of a taber- 
 nacle, a spiritual fulfilment which will work 
 out into grand completions the outline of a 
 type, and realise in a perfected humanity the 
 truths foreshadowed in the commencements of 
 patriarchal life. 
 
 The original and essentially true grade of the 
 patriarch was subdivided as society advanced 
 into those of father, king, and priest, moving 
 in the three spheres of the home, the State, 
 and the Church. The problems of history 
 have been the phenomena of these areas ; — 
 efforts both to carry on the work of each and 
 to harmonise their relations with one another. 
 The solution of these problems advances as 
 the great Author moves among His works, and 
 Heaven itself supplies both a Father, a King, 
 and a High-Priest. By principles, sanctions, 
 and motive power it is incessantly gathering 
 up and arranging the materials of an innumer- 
 able family, a chosen nation, a royal priest- 
 hood, in preparation for the splendid comple- 
 tion of the whole vast experiment of redeemed 
 humanity at the appointed time — the "day of 
 the Lord.'' 
 
Hebrew Law. 93 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 We have described as the original idea of 
 society a parent's tent, with children, and this 
 transformed gradually into a patriarchal tent 
 within a circle of tents of descendants. The 
 known incidents of primitive life support this 
 view ; our human origin, as God's children, 
 seems to favour it, for a paternal commence- 
 ment of society would surely lead to a paternal 
 continuance of it. 
 
 We have supposed the patriarch's position 
 one of great and increasing influence — great 
 from his being the natural father, the dispenser 
 of law, the recipient at times of divine com- 
 munications, and the offerer generally in 
 worship : increasing because the vast duration 
 of patriarchal life would make this tribal chief 
 a depository of far-reaching stores of tradition, 
 and would place around him numerous genera- 
 tions of descendants. If one imagines for a 
 moment a patriarch five hundred years old in 
 communication with nearly twenty generations 
 
94 Hebrew Law. 
 
 of his blood descendants, each more numerous 
 than the preceding, it can well be understood 
 that the latest of them would, when arriving 
 at manhood, come to regard this venerable 
 being, so reverenced, too, by their own imme- 
 diate ancestors, as an object of almost super- 
 stitious awe, and worthy of worship. 
 
 We have further supposed that, as move- 
 ments of society occurred, and the natural 
 chief by relationship gradually gave place 
 among adventurers to the chieftain of military 
 command, there began to arise fresh com- 
 munities which were the germs of the most 
 ancient empires. These communities having 
 the domestic incidents of the earlier patriarchal 
 life (and domestic life is always something of a 
 despotism tempered by the affections), and yet 
 not having a real paternal tie between sub- 
 ject and chief to moderate them, would, by 
 degrees, let in and even lead to great oppres- 
 sions — oppressions further increased by the 
 intermixture of conquered populations, the 
 patriarchal thus degenerating into the tyranny. 
 
 The check and counterpoise to this danger, 
 threatening human happiness, should have been 
 
Hebrew Law. 95 
 
 found in religion, but religion itself would 
 have been undergoing a concurrent decline, 
 since the august figures of the primaeval tribe 
 leaders and founders of nations had, after their 
 death, grown to be objects of reverence in 
 religion. The cultus of ancestors had thus 
 interfered with the worship of the God of 
 ancestors. The two ideas had become inter- 
 mixed, and the simple beauty and truth of 
 man's relations to the unseen world were being 
 gradually lost. 
 
 A further cause of the decline of religion 
 would be that populations, conscious of the 
 fact of divine manifestations in the past, and 
 from spiritual decay, receiving them only in a 
 very modified degree, if at all, themselves, 
 would be eager listeners to every sound 
 seeming likely to be a voice of God speaking 
 in nature, and their minds unskilled to arrest 
 themselves at physical explanations of things 
 striking in the world around would pass up 
 easily to the moral sphere, and seem to see and 
 hear in such things desired communications 
 from the unseen world. The votary, who 
 already supposed himself to behold the home 
 
96 Hebrew Law. 
 
 of the translated patriarch in the distant star, 
 would naturally enough listen to the thunder 
 and catch the whisperings of the wind in the 
 dark groves as expected voices from the spirit- 
 land. 
 
 Religion, thus reduced, could hardly be any 
 more an altogether protecting or moderating 
 power among the rising discords of society. 
 It was, indeed, itself on the quick decline to 
 depravations more injurious than the worst 
 things in civil life ; and, instead of being the 
 guide of man, was about to become his 
 corrupter. The imagination of worshippers 
 directed to natural objects soon came to 
 picture some of them as special expressions, 
 residences, or modes of communication with 
 supernatural beings. Animals, trees, and a 
 vast variety of things became mixed up in this 
 fancy ; and representations of them, or parts 
 of their bulk set up in shrines, were considered 
 as having like value and meaning. There is 
 ever a relationship between the worshipper 
 and the object of his worship. Cultus of 
 the material soon brought in sensualism and 
 cruelty into the rites, so that, according to the 
 
Hebrew Law. 97 
 
 declaration of Scripture what they offered 
 was in reality offered to evil spirits, what they 
 got was an increasing vanity of the imagina- 
 tion and darkening of the heart. A proper 
 band of acolytes soon swarmed up ; fanatics, 
 impostors, and evil men became the guardians 
 and propagators of a system congenial to their 
 progress. Thus, by a transition, gradual and 
 easily followed, the beneficent influences of 
 religion passed into heathen idolatry, which, 
 as observed, far from being a palliative of 
 social evils, was, on the contrary, itself the 
 systematic perpetrator of the darkest enormi- 
 ties, and the direct corrupter of its votaries. 
 The two lights of man were now eclipsed ; 
 religion was hidden in idolatry, social law in 
 tyranny. The father in heaven and the father 
 on earth were no longer heeded ; and, while 
 life here was made wretched, no real hope or 
 consolation was brought from above. 
 
 Such were the two great growing evils, 
 wound in together and complicated with the 
 same cause, against which, if man was to be 
 saved at all, even for this world, a persistent 
 resistance must be made. This resistance and 
 
98 Hebrew Law. 
 
 remedy would evidently have to be sought in 
 the following directions — in a modified restora- 
 tion of the patriarchal incidents and spirit, that 
 is, in the recovery of those social liberties, 
 allegiances, securities, and fidelities which 
 would naturally prevail in a family, whose 
 members should be organised under a father, 
 and influenced from above. The other part of 
 the remedy would be the restoration of the 
 original belief in the one God as the arch- 
 parent and protector, and reconstitution of 
 worship in accordance with this faith. It will 
 be found that these are exactly the ends which 
 the Mosaic system sets before itself, and that 
 the whole of its machinery, legislation, and 
 circumstance are incessantly pressing, with 
 successful strokes, towards these two results ; 
 so completely so that, if we bear in mind this 
 scope of the Scriptural plan, its working out 
 will arrange itself before us in clear and har- 
 monious order. 
 
 One other point, however, remains to be 
 observed on. The two difficulties to be met — 
 viz., tyrannies in social life and superstitions 
 in religious life — that is, the non-paternal in 
 
Hebrew Law. 99 
 
 both the natural and spiritual spheres are, after 
 all, only difficulties of a phenomenal sort. 
 They do not go down to the very root of the 
 matter, but they allow, and, indeed, presuppose 
 something beyond themselves. That deeper 
 difficulty is the fundamental one, the condition 
 of the heart and will in man ; and it is in the 
 depravation of these that we are to look for 
 the complete and final cause of his incessant 
 tendency to break away from the true and 
 happy in religion and in life. As a final and 
 fundamental object, then, of the Mosaic 
 revival we have to add, besides and beneath 
 the two already-named works, this further one 
 — a restoration and rebuilding of the inner 
 life of humanity. Such, if the mission of 
 Moses be really divine, must be its object and 
 scope ; and such we clearly see it is. It both 
 professes as much, and also provides an 
 adequate way for forwarding it. More than 
 this, the way is one which dovetails in with a 
 wider plan of world-order, commenced before 
 in simpler beginnings, and continued long 
 afterwards in deeper developments. 
 
 The whole problem, then, is as follows — to 
 
ioo Hebrew Law. 
 
 restore religious and social life by restoring 
 the heart of man. Neither part of the scheme 
 is entirely to precede the other, but its three- 
 fold elaboration is to advance simultaneously. 
 Its methodical formula will be — "regeneration 
 of the individual within a divinely framed 
 order, and social life improved as a connected 
 result." The society thus to be acted upon 
 having been originally organised round the 
 tent and altar of a father, who was also a 
 chief, would move sometimes from a personal, 
 sometimes from an institutional, basis. Its 
 polity, imbued with affection, would now 
 regard each as its sole object, and now again 
 regard all as represented in the one. It would 
 thus, when truly portrayed, exhibit to us a 
 continuous interchange and transition between 
 the personal and systematic ; the nation, at 
 one time, appearing as a family, at another, 
 receiving the most comprehensive laws as an 
 individual, and then, again, spreading into the 
 widest organisation of a commonwealth. 
 Therefore the Hebrew is spoken of as follows : 
 " Israel is my son," and yet " this nation is 
 my people j" and yet, again, " Ye shall be 
 
Hebrew Law. 101 
 
 gathered one by one, ye children of Israel." 
 So, also, we have the blending of the thoughts 
 in such a term as " The kingdom of the house 
 of Israel," or as "He shall reign over the 
 house of Jacob for ever ;" phrases combining 
 the three ideas of individual, family and nation, 
 and applied, in Luke i., to the unending 
 kingdom of Jesus, in whom the social mystery 
 is to find completion ; so that He who has 
 stood in and fulfilled every attitude of rela- 
 tionship shall be both father and brother and 
 fellow-subject and king in the perfected Israel, 
 where all social and religious discords shall be 
 done away; where neither "the idolater, and 
 he that loveth and maketh a lie," nor the 
 unjust, cruel, and licentious shall be found; 
 where " there shall be no more curse, but the 
 throne of God and of the Lamb " shall be, 
 " and his servants shall serve him and shall 
 see his face, and reign for ever." 
 
 When we remember how incessantly the 
 relation of parent and offspring is reproduced 
 in life, the very universality of its application 
 and its productiveness of benefit express to us 
 God a parent, and God our parent. It is from 
 
102 Hebrew Law. 
 
 this point we may be sure that law would 
 inevitably germinate ; corruptions of law 
 would be departures from this, restorations of 
 law would be returns to it. Were one to 
 require how to be released from the idol and 
 the tyrant, the reply would be, " As the first 
 and preliminary step you must find for us 
 some eminent expression of fatherhood, and 
 place him in emphatic relation to the divine 
 Father. Thus alone shall we stand at the 
 starting-point of religion and morals. 
 
 It is with such discovery that the Scripture 
 revival commences. Its place is in the east, 
 at the spot where population, descending the 
 great river from the central mountains of Asia, 
 had paused at the sea. From there action 
 begins. A refluent movement takes back the 
 father of Abraham to the garden plain, at the 
 foot of the hills, and from this, again, separates 
 Abraham himself by a second journey to 
 another sea of the extreme west. The 
 struggle of ancient affairs as going on in the 
 Shemite tribes between the new life-methods 
 and the old simplicity, between the " strange 
 gods " of the town, and the one ancestral God 
 
Hebrew Law. 103 
 
 of the tent circle, finds fitting expression 
 among these emigrants. Lot, bom at a quasi- 
 religious centre, the town Ur, and a dweller 
 at the town Haran, afterwards falls back in 
 the new country into the town life under the 
 King of Sodom. He is at once surrounded, 
 and a sufferer by its corruptions. He ends, in 
 his descendants, at the complete fall into its 
 idolatries. 
 
 Abraham, the leader of the reformation, is 
 kept upon the hills. The one " Lord, the 
 God of heaven and God of earth," is there, 
 his belief, worship, and policy. By this Name 
 he swears the eldest servant of his house that 
 his son shall not (like Lot's daughters) inter- 
 marry with the idolaters around — a course 
 apart under one father and one God, separate 
 from false living and false beliefs, is the funda- 
 mental plan passed on by him to his descend- 
 ants. In accordance with this comes the vow 
 from Jacob in youth that, if God wilt protect 
 him, so that he prosper and return in peace to 
 the loved father-tent of his oath, then Jehovah 
 shall^be his God, and the place God's house. 
 From Jacob in manhood is divinely claimed 
 
104 Hebrew Law. 
 
 this vow's fulfilment, " Arise, go up to Bethel 
 (thy house of God), and dwell there, and 
 make there (apart from contamination) an 
 altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when 
 thou fleddest from the face of Esau, thy 
 brother." At once comes the revival, "Put 
 away the strange gods that are among you," 
 said Jacob to his household, " and be clean." 
 "And they gave unto Jacob all the strange 
 gods which were in their hand, and Jacob hid 
 them under the oak which was by Shechem." 
 
 Following on such commencements there is 
 a continuous growth of the revelation, while 
 the tribe remains encamped in Canaan. There 
 is a strengthening, also, of the patriarchal and 
 tribal spirit in the presence of distinct and 
 often hostile populations. The minute par- 
 ticularity, with which several hundred years 
 afterwards the history was written down by 
 Moses, is a proof, on the human side, how 
 deeply the spirit of the earlier epoch had 
 impressed itself on the character of the clans ; 
 a proof, on the divine side, how material to 
 the whole system the incidents of that epoch 
 were deemed by the wisdom of God. Its 
 
Hebrew Law. 105 
 
 value is evident to ourselves. The long-drawn 
 detail of patriarchal lives, which a careless 
 reader, over-impressed by later civilisations, 
 might suppose disproportionately expanded in 
 documents of an universal religion, has had, 
 in reality, invaluable effects. It has so stamped 
 the humanity of the patriarchs as to prevent 
 them ever becoming objects to superstition for 
 a cult. There they stand, deeply venerated 
 and most influential, at the threshold of the 
 national career, but still strictly historical, 
 distinctly human in their form, and too clearly 
 outlined in domestic feature to lend themselves 
 to be abused into ancestral gods. They thus 
 serve to retain the national mind constantly at 
 the historical level, with its origin clearly 
 before it, its founders merely ancestors of race, 
 and towering far above them all, totally 
 separate and beyond them, and yet intimately 
 related as benefactor, preserver, and covenant 
 promiser, the one unseen God of their fathers. 
 In an almost incidental way a very effectual 
 blow is thus dealt at polytheism, with its 
 mixings up of the human and divine. When- 
 ever it gains a footing in the community it 
 
 p 
 
106 Hebrew Law. 
 
 can thenceforth be perceived to be a departure 
 from the national attitude in religion, a wall 
 of partition between the backsliding genera- 
 tion and the loved ancestors of the race. 
 
 This fulness of the patriarchal biography 
 serves again a corresponding purpose in civil 
 life. Its incidents illustrate and engage the 
 sympathies in favour of the domestic tone to 
 be taken in the Mosaic legislation, as to which, 
 indeed, they are apologetic and a comment. 
 The idea of family is placed by the narrative 
 in so central a position that no future deprava- 
 tions of tyranny would avail to dislodge it. 
 On the contrary, it has ever remained a con- 
 stant witness and rallying point against them. 
 
 While the Scripture detail of patriarchal 
 lives was thus throwing up a strong position 
 against the dangers of idolatry on the one 
 side, and of abuses of power, whether domestic 
 or social, on the other, it should be added 
 further that the third and most essential work 
 of revelation was, at the same time, being 
 concurrently advanced. The believer's course 
 is, by means of these patriarchal incidents, set 
 forth before the consciousness of God's people. 
 
Hebrew Law. 107 
 
 They see him making his ventures and struggles 
 of faith, living and dying in trust, " not having 
 received the promises." They see the full 
 covenant ratified, its seals affixed, the typical 
 Saviour persecuted by brethren, sold for silver, 
 placed on the altar, lowered into the pit, sent 
 on before into the distant land to be a pre- 
 server of life. At this point, which is essen- 
 tially a crisis in the theory, we find occurring 
 in the narrative that dramatic pause which 
 indicates, in old writing, the close of a series 
 and the approaching commencement of a new 
 one. In this a further unfolding of the his- 
 torical roll will show a fresh and progressive 
 phase of the counsels of God. 
 
 Here we may observe that the concrete or 
 historical, which is the Bible method, is, even 
 on mere technical grounds, a fit basis of law. 
 Legislation, though it is, in form, abstract, 
 must, if it is to be applicable to affairs, arise 
 naturally out of circumstances surrounding it. 
 And, wherever such legislation has to com- 
 mend itself to the approving judgment of a 
 public, far removed from its scene in time and 
 place, a recital of the circumstances is ex- 
 
108 Hebrew Law. 
 
 tremely appropriate and almost essential. This 
 is so completely the case that, had the Scrip- 
 ture Law been less interwoven with narrative, 
 its real bearings would hardly have been 
 generally understood or appreciated. 
 
 The same sort of remark, indeed, might be 
 extended further. In all revelations, if true, 
 must be expected these qualities — that they 
 will both follow man's history from the very 
 first, and also, while retaining their own essen- 
 tial principles, that they will progressively 
 change their aspects in accordance with man's 
 stability and man's growth. For evidently 
 revelation, if given at all, implies that man 
 really requires it, and that God is really ready 
 to meet his need ; and, since these needs of 
 men and this disposition of God, if ever 
 existing, will be continuous, the supply of 
 revelation will continue likewise, nor will 
 there be any time altogether without its in- 
 fluence. We shall have revelation attaching 
 itself to history from the very first, and fol- 
 lowing it in epochs through its whole course. 
 
 A real revelation, therefore, will begin at 
 man's beginning, will take on an historical 
 
Hebrew Law. 109 
 
 form, will preserve its own ground-plan, and 
 yet develope its teaching. It will follow us 
 through our stages of civilisation, adapting 
 itself to each, and yet will be all the time as 
 wholly complete in itself as the manhood it 
 accompanies and helps to mould. Totally 
 different from this are such pretended revela- 
 tions as that of the Koran. We come upon 
 them suddenly, like the broken torse of a 
 statue, to which pedestal, members, and head 
 are wanting. They have no real consistency 
 or further value than this, that they express 
 the something wanting which they do not 
 themselves supply. If the Bible truths rise 
 at times into sudden prominence, they are 
 like the abrupt coming forth of rocks, the 
 result of real movements of a deeper power ; 
 and, if ever themselves isolated in appearance 
 to the casual eye, they are yet, to the under- 
 standing mind, connected beneath the surface 
 in consistent unity. 
 
 Such points of method may well be gone 
 into for confirmation of faith in a day when 
 Scripture is closely looked at. It may be part 
 of God's dealing to hold in each generation 
 
i io Hebrew Law. 
 
 the balance of probability so poised that faith 
 alone may turn the scale. Such a course 
 would be both consistent with His general 
 proceedings and with our own make of mind. 
 If minute examination of Scripture detail 
 should ever raise any apparently unfavourable 
 presumption, no more fit counterpoise than 
 observations drawn from its general structure. 
 Tertullian noted at the first that heresy, which 
 explains away Scripture in general, is a worse 
 foe than that which aims at taking away its 
 particular parts. The same estimate will hold 
 good in answers to heresy. Proofs of the 
 Bible's systematic completeness will be more 
 widely conclusive than proofs addressed to its 
 detail; evident bond and cohesion in the 
 whole fabric more satisfying than completeness 
 observed in some particular part of it. He, 
 indeed, who rests content to attack a par- 
 ticular, unless it be one of a very central 
 character indeed, is confessing either his own 
 weakness or his adversaries' strength — for the 
 importance of the part is dependent on, and, 
 therefore, outweighed by, the whole. To be 
 unable to calculate this, or to avoid doing so, 
 
Hebrew Law. 1 1 1 
 
 are disqualifications for the office of deciding 
 in so serious a matter. 
 
 We add, in general conclusion with regard 
 to this period, that, had the tribe of Jacob 
 remained in Canaan, their special character 
 might probably have disappeared, and with it 
 their fitness for their special mission. Already 
 intercourse with the nations had begun. 
 Canaan would have brought them in contact 
 with errors of Egyptian origin without the 
 restraints of Egyptian government. Mixed in 
 with numbers greater than their own, they 
 might have been led into the depraved 
 manners and worship of the land. Kemoval 
 to Goshen was once more refuge in an ark — 
 for, while thus saved from the Canaanites, 
 they were unharmed by Egypt. In a favour- 
 able isolation they could develope strength 
 while retaining identity. Their work at that 
 period being but a natural process — the growth 
 of a tribe into a nation — a pause had accord- 
 ingly to take place in the supernatural narra- 
 tive to give them time to multiply up to the 
 requisite size. Any detailed account of their 
 history during that interval would have been 
 
ii2 Hebrew Law. 
 
 as inappropriate as the apocryphal narratives 
 of our Lord's childhood. A true biblical 
 method requires they should be left in seclu- 
 sion until the time of the next step would be 
 at hand. The silence, therefore, with which 
 Scripture passes over several hundred years at 
 this point is an admirable indirect proof of 
 the divine wisdom, guiding the great writer 
 to a reserve which a mere national scribe 
 would, under patriotic stimulus, hardly have 
 observed. 
 
Hebrew Law. 1 13 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Worldly changes often express movement by 
 the many ; the crises of Scripture are usually 
 brought on by the one. It is, indeed, fit, 
 where the mainspring of action is a single 
 divine Person, that the agent, for the time 
 being, should thus appear as standing apart ; 
 and that his mission, while not neglectful of 
 human qualifications, should be clearly seen 
 not to result from them ; that there should be 
 in him a balanced composite power, springing 
 partly from natural tendency, long training, 
 and outer circumstance, but chiefly from a 
 divine message entrusted, and divine aids 
 given to deliver and get it attended to. A 
 minute examination of Scripture characters 
 might show them the exact products of such 
 joint causes. If so, this would be one of the 
 most scientific and complete answers to 
 mythical theories that could possibly be given. 
 Moses was clearly not one of those men 
 whom the times which require also mould 
 
 Q 
 
ii4 Hebrew Law. 
 
 and furnish with occasion. Such persons, 
 while they are put forward, find a circle drawn 
 around them beyond which they cannot pass. 
 They move in front, but in step with their 
 contemporaries. Without this they could 
 neither lead nor be followed. Moses is not 
 thus limited; not merely is he in harmony 
 with the good of his age and in antagonism 
 with its evils, his teachings rise into a dis- 
 tinctly higher sphere. So much so that the 
 most civilised nations, even in the present day, 
 believe him to declare the essential, absolute 
 root of theology and morals; while his own 
 countrymen, in their unparalleled vitality, 
 though unable fully to follow him, still hold to 
 him as the bond of their special life. To 
 produce such results there is surely wanted 
 not only a most happy combination of circum- 
 stance, but a further cause as well, so that the 
 most difficult way of accounting for him must 
 still be to suppose that Moses was not aided 
 by heavenly revelation and support. For, even 
 if it be imagined, for a moment, that parts of 
 his action are hard to understand in connection 
 with the divine ; on the other hand, the whole 
 
Hebrew Law. 115 
 
 of it becomes much harder to understand 
 apart from the divine. 
 
 It was felt very early to be fit both that the 
 Creator of the world should lay down laws 
 for its government, and also should confer upon 
 the words of His law a power to subdue men 
 to conviction in all parts of the earth.* We 
 have already partly shown reasons for believing 
 God would thus legislate ; we shall further go 
 on to show this, and also that there is good 
 ground for thinking the legislation of Moses 
 is this divine work. For such a task, Moses is 
 a wonderfully appropriate instrument. Fol- 
 lowing Abraham and Joseph, he appears, in 
 his turn, a single figure on the scene ; for, as 
 the final completed salvation was to be by one, 
 so, as observed, the typical and initial deliver- 
 ance should be by one also. Each succeeding 
 actor takes on the thread of the transaction ; 
 each, also, expresses a phase of the great 
 future manifestation. The proportionate rela- 
 tions of a Bible character may be sometimes 
 gathered from his entry. The infancy of 
 Moses finds mention in Scripture, which is 
 
 * Origeu contra Celsum I., xviii. 
 
1 1 6 Hebrew Law. 
 
 usually a sign of importance. Like that of 
 Jesus himself, it was surrounded with dangers. 
 Devoted to death, he is first found in an ark 
 at the sacred river of Egypt. The assailant 
 who is to overwhelm a superstition is thus, as 
 in our Lord's case, placed apparently helpless 
 in its very stronghold. 
 
 " The world," says one, "as if dimly fore- 
 seeing that Moses would destroy its work, 
 strove from the very beginning to annihilate 
 him ; but, by his preservation in infancy, the 
 child, the predestined instrument of higher 
 designs, gives an earnest of his all-subduing 
 energy; and we are thus aroused to eager 
 attention respecting the further development 
 of such a life." * This passage from a leading 
 opponent of orthodoxy is observable. It 
 would, perhaps, be hardly fair to press it too 
 strictly, as it is rather rhetorical than argu- 
 mentative. Its method of dealing with the 
 subject is, however, an illustration of the 
 remark made above, that rationalism, in its 
 effort to remove wonders, frequently increases 
 them ; and, by denying reasonable powers to 
 
 * Ewald Hist. Israel. 
 
Hebrew Law. 117 
 
 God, is obliged to heap inordinate distinctions 
 on man: for here, in a single sentence, we 
 have the world aggregated and acting in a 
 corporate way ; this entity is then supposed to 
 foresee a world- enemy in a helpless infant, and 
 to design and try systematically to destroy 
 him. The child, again, is supposed predes- 
 tined for a great work, and its preservation is 
 looked on as a proof given by it already of an 
 all-subduing force. Here are marvels, gra- 
 tuitously offered, to which Scripture itself lays 
 no claim ; no such power is there arrogated 
 to the infant Moses, or even to our Lord 
 himself, though the apocryphal narratives of 
 our Lord's childhood are, indeed, charged 
 with them. It is with such accounts that 
 rationalism competes, credulity and incredulity 
 thus, once more, finding themselves in their 
 perpetually renewed contact. 
 
 Already the " goodly " infant Moses must 
 have been richly endowed, for he inherited in 
 germ the ardent genius of Levi, the physical 
 vigour of his parents, and that capacity of 
 interest in the unseen protector of life which 
 must have filled his mother when she put 
 
u8 Hebrew Law. 
 
 him down by the waters. Success, propor- 
 tioned to his starting-point, might at once 
 have been predicted for him. That starting- 
 point became the most advantageous possible. 
 Adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh, he had 
 a complete training, during forty years, in the 
 religion, politics, social science, and activity of 
 the first country of the then world. Con- 
 sidering both the pupil, the teachers, and the 
 school, we may regard Moses at the end of 
 that period, as by nature, position, and 
 acquirements, a man most fit to influence the 
 events of his day. It is by no means sur- 
 prising that tradition describes him as leading 
 great expeditions for the Egyptians ; it is very 
 satisfactory as evidence that Scripture passes 
 over such traditions in silence. The Jew, 
 after many centuries, when the fame of the 
 great legislator had become a national trea- 
 sure and his precepts the object of fanatical 
 allegiance, still aimed at enhancing his dignity 
 and advancing his claims by rumours of his 
 early Egyptian fame ; * nor would a mere 
 adventurer, with his way to make, have pro- 
 
 Josephus Ant. II. 
 
Hebrew Law. 1 19 
 
 bably been more reticent himself. The pen, 
 however, guided from above, indulges us with 
 no such recommendations. It draws no heroic 
 features. It brings forward, without a touch 
 in excess, a man called to a work of God. 
 One quality it shows us in him which gave 
 fresh value to the rest — Moses, in his Egyptian 
 elevation, remained a Hebrew at heart. This 
 it was which began his personal ruin and his 
 long repute. 
 
 On his visit among his countrymen a circum- 
 stance occurred which separated him from 
 Egyptian sympathy, and changed the early 
 publicity of Moses for seclusion. At the 
 hands of a human historian the crisis would, 
 at this period, have arrived. The death of the 
 Egyptian would have struck the spark, and the 
 tribes, under their skilled and compromised 
 leader, would have blazed into revolt. The 
 Scripture narrative, on the contrary, dismisses 
 Moses to a long retirement. True to its final 
 moralities, it will not be implicated in the 
 impatience of its agent. The future legislator 
 records his own breach of his own future law 
 and the penal sentence of his own transporta- 
 
120 Hebrew Law. 
 
 tion, and the movement — inconsistent with the 
 impatient proprieties of fiction, but in accord- 
 ance with the long-suffering ways of Heaven — 
 waits for forty years. 
 
 A circumstance fixes the place of his banish- 
 ment. He who is to become so great a helper 
 of the shepherds of the world assists the 
 shepherd daughters of the patriarch priest. 
 The same vigorous qualities now benefit which 
 before lost him, because this time they act 
 within allowed limits. Content to abide there, 
 Moses would find himself at the ancient 
 standing-point, in contact with the old patri- 
 archal life and worship, and also with old 
 traditions of the Abraham stock ; the dust of 
 former activity settling down would enable 
 him now also to discern, in his retirement, 
 what truths lay in his Egyptian past. Thus, 
 in the great cities of the world and in the 
 quiet dwellings of Eeuel, " the friend of God," 
 he would be made ready for his work as the 
 iron, through fire and water, is brought up to 
 its temper. 
 
 In such training the life had moved back 
 on its axis to the end of a second forty vears, 
 
Hebrew Law. 121 
 
 and then it had become as apparently unim- 
 portant as when, in infancy, it lay in the ark. 
 But, at this point, when a mere historian would 
 hardly have taken it up, God finds it fitted for 
 His work, and we discover the period of seclu- 
 sion to have been the complement of activities 
 in the past, and the preparation for them in 
 the future. Regard its authorship as we may, 
 such an arrangement shows a profound and 
 true insight into the inner growth of life, and 
 by its very opposition to ordinary methods 
 lays claim to our consideration. 
 
 We have now, then, the man doubly disci- 
 plined, as the patriarchs Abraham, Jacob, and 
 Joseph had also been. We have him living 
 a patriarchal life among patriarchal traditions 
 and sacrifices, and moving his flocks among 
 sites held sacred. In him — so soon to be the 
 leader — the nation itself almost seems once 
 more moving in its free, ancient life, and 
 expecting once more, by its prepared recipient, 
 a manifestation of Heaven. He, too, is un- 
 consciously ready for a revelation he has been 
 fitted to receive and prepared to obey. What 
 form, we ask, should that revelation be required 
 
 R 
 
122 Hebrew Law. 
 
 to take ? What would reasonable expectation 
 ask for as probable, and accept as fit ? Cer- 
 tainly there must be a revelation of some sort, 
 for without it no movement could be brought 
 on ; the man, in whom disinclination had 
 become the crowning fitness, would not have 
 stirred ; the Hebrews, who had been crying 
 for direct help from their God, would not have 
 stirred ; the Egyptians, a party very expectant 
 of divine interventions, very much alive in 
 testing them, very much interested in scruti- 
 nising this particular case, would not have 
 stirred. 
 
 Unless it be pretended God is unable to 
 reveal Himself, these expectations ask solicit- 
 ously His intervention. The long line of 
 testimonies that He has answered seem really 
 to need little corroboration. They are them- 
 selves, indeed, proofs that He would be likely 
 to do so. We, in our time, have been gradually 
 educated up to a point at which such things 
 seem unlikely. That is an excellent reason 
 for their not occurring among us, but hardly a 
 less good reason for a different course under 
 different circumstances. Every traveller ex- 
 
Hebrew Law. 123 
 
 presses himself as he can ; nor should we 
 regard it as incredible that a reserved English- 
 man had, among Turcomans, explained his 
 meaning by gestures, or addressed them through 
 an interpreter of their own. 
 
 As to the detail of the revelation, we, at 
 this point, say little, since its fitness will con- 
 tinuously appear. It would certainly have to 
 arrange itself in accord with the traditions of 
 the past, the emergency and agents of the 
 present, and the progressive development and 
 final scope of the future. This, though a wide 
 requirement, will, we believe, be found ful- 
 filled by the Bible in a most eminent way. 
 
 We may, however, here pause to make 
 several observations with regard to the inner 
 substance of the undertaking. Scripture, in 
 producing a successful Moses, had a most 
 difficult task, which a mere Jewish writing, 
 not divine, could not have accomplished ; for 
 the legislative work of Moses had to be done 
 in accordance with principles not then accepted, 
 by methods not then fully approved, and in 
 relation to a theory only developed by degrees 
 in after ages. It had to be feasible at the 
 
124 Hebrew Law. 
 
 time, and yet consistent with after times. It 
 had to be Hebrew on the surface, and Christian 
 within. It had to connect the extremes of 
 divine policy and human capacity. It had to 
 fit itself at once to an infant community in a 
 dark age, and to the eternal counsels of the 
 God of all light. A Scripture to be in the 
 epoch of Moses a real link in the great cohe- 
 rent chain of advancing truth, would have to 
 do what no accidental arrangement could 
 possibly achieve ; and the success of Scripture 
 in the matter is itself a high proof it is from 
 God. 
 
 Suppose it suggested against us that Scrip- 
 ture — and especially such parts of it as the 
 Mosaic action — is but an accommodation of 
 more modern to more ancient ways of looking 
 at things ; an accommodation unconsciously 
 adopted on the part of the people, and in part 
 consciously by the writers dealing with facts 
 for the people's use, and throwing them for 
 the people into the older'and acceptable forms. 
 That process, we reply, might produce a certain 
 smoothness of surface in the writing, but it 
 could never produce the internal harmonies 
 
Hebrew Law. 1 25 
 
 found in Scripture. It would not account for 
 its essential ground-plan and organic develop- 
 ment. It would still leave us this heavy diffi- 
 culty to deal with, that the history should 
 have been cast in a form, of which its early 
 writers could not possibly have foreseen the 
 future significance ; and yet that a later set of 
 actors, themselves neither free to mould their 
 conduct, nor conscious of how much they were 
 about, should so move in concert with what 
 had gone before, that a relation should result, 
 obvious to neither one nor the other at the 
 time, and yet so minutely connected and har- 
 moniously complete as to lead the large 
 majority of us, who are at the right point of 
 view, to feel that assuredly we are looking on 
 no accidental combination or human arrange- 
 ment, but that we are in the presence of a 
 higher divine Power. 
 
 But let us look at the matter a little more 
 closely. It is thus put by the respectful 
 mythologist : — "The true and imperishable in 
 Scripture," he says, "is not the event, but 
 'the spirit of the event,' and this, 'through 
 countless variations in its reproductions, always 
 
126 Hebrew Law. 
 
 beams forth like a bright ray gaining greater 
 purity and freedom ' as the ' more evanescent 
 parts ' drop away under the purifying influence 
 of time." This is meant to say, in graceful 
 and dignified form, we have not, in this Scrip- 
 ture, a statement of circumstance before us, 
 but a parable, founded on some circumstance 
 or other ; and this parable expresses from the 
 time, and for it, an inner truth of its life; 
 something it felt, and passed through ; its mental 
 attitude then and continuously ; and parable 
 follows parable in a whole series, each always 
 basing itself on some outer circumstance, real 
 or imagined, but arranging it so as to express by 
 it its own same inner truth and idea essential 
 to its life ; and, though each generation has a 
 real history, and knows something of it, yet, 
 partly in its own hands, and more still in the 
 hands of its successors, this history disappears, 
 and assumes an heroic, unreal form ; that form, 
 however, expressing an inner, higher reality, 
 inshrined in the feeling and mental state of the 
 people. 
 
 Now, if we look at this a moment, we find 
 we have here a remarkable state of things, a 
 
Hebrew Law. 127 
 
 truth in an untruth ; a perpetual evaporation of 
 circumstance and notion deposited in its stead. 
 We have in man an eternal want, arising and 
 repeating its request ; the mind incessantly 
 looking out to find its answer, and, even in its 
 emergency, seizing and making shift with the 
 hard form of outer event, and for ever con- 
 verting this from its actual state into a changed 
 state, in which it can express an answer the 
 mind wants to hear; and the mind, thus 
 finding in echo a reply to its own speech, and 
 in reflection of itself a personality with which 
 to hold communion, and so, from time to time, 
 throwing away the husk of old incident and 
 taking up fresh, and again making belief, like 
 a child- play, and still finding nothing outside 
 to lay hold on, but moving still among shadows, 
 echoes, and reflections of self. This is to 
 portray a world reduced to strange shifts. 
 
 Surely it seems a roundabout sort of philo- 
 sophy which, while it allows nature to be an 
 universe, governed on the principle of real 
 supplies in answer to real demands, yet intro- 
 duces a humanity always demanding what is 
 essential (since its universality proves the 
 
128 Hebrew Law. 
 
 demand this), and never getting any real 
 answer at all, but brought down to the expe- 
 dient of a sort of perpetual chamber-idolatry, 
 making a Maker for itself. 
 
 It is, indeed, only a subterfuge after all to 
 tell us that, if Moses never did a miracle, or 
 made a law, or even lived at all, the Bible 
 account of him is still an essential verity. It 
 would be no more so than if his picture, painted 
 on a wall, had written under it "a prophet," 
 and were insisted on as a substantial realisa- 
 tion, because expressing an idea present in the 
 painter's mind. Revelation professes to be 
 God answering ; but, if it only turn out to be 
 man questioning, what does it reveal ? 
 
 The fact is, neither Moses, the man, nor his 
 history, nor his system, can be got rid of. 
 Modern probabilities against the narrative will 
 not do it, for the basis of probability shifts. 
 It is improbable that a man should be whipped 
 like a school-boy, or dandled like an infant ; 
 but it is not improbable he was whipped when 
 a school-boy, or dandled when an infant. 
 
 Neither can doubts be successfully brought 
 against the historic personality of the Mosaic. 
 
Hebrew Law. 129 
 
 The theory of the mythus, its assumption of a 
 personage as a hero of poetry, and its further 
 transfer of the result to the historical attitude, 
 are clearly marked by theorists on these 
 matters.* But the Moses of the Bible does 
 not lend himself to such transitions, nor does 
 the Bible generally show traces of the process. 
 For we have notably in it a series of primaeval 
 characters, such as Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, 
 who would have been the very materials for 
 mythus, and who would, by that process, have 
 been amplified out into the proportions of 
 Olympus or the Mahawanso, and who yet 
 show in the Scripture no trace of either eastern 
 or western mythus having touched them. On 
 the contrary, they occupy their positions there 
 with remarkable reserve, and are only unveiled 
 at all at points of their necessary connexion 
 with the essential framework of the system — a 
 system, the real outline of which was only partly 
 known even in the whole Hebrew time. There 
 is not, then, in the early Scripture generally, 
 nor is there in the person of Moses himself, this 
 imagined tendency to the mythus. The man, 
 
 * Heyne's ' Apollodorus,' Part III. 
 
 S 
 
130 Hebrew Law. 
 
 as presented to us, is plainly historical and 
 unheroic. Though grand in the highest sense, 
 he is without the dramatic proprieties of gran- 
 deur with which imagination, and especially 
 oriental imagination, always seeks to drape its 
 favourites. Though he rises to heights, and 
 achieves results to which patriotic fiction would 
 hardly aspire, his career, at the same time, 
 throws shadows such fiction would not consent 
 to put in. The first failure in Egypt, the long 
 banishment ensuing on it, the idolatry of 
 Aaron, the leprosy of Miriam, the exclusion of 
 the people, and, still more, of the prophet 
 from the land, are not the acceptable form in 
 which the mythic would come to life or survive. 
 Or, again, let the opposite alternative be 
 put. Let the assertion be that some one of 
 the times of Ezra pieced together ancient 
 legends and documents, so arranging them as 
 to get credit and authority for a system of law 
 and government to be introduced among the 
 exiles returned from the East, and that all this 
 dignity and wonder was piled up to commend 
 that system for acceptance by spicing it with 
 ingredients palatable to the vanity of the nation. 
 
Hebrew Law. 131 
 
 In reply to this, consider the facts as they 
 stand. Moses is not claimed in Hebrew Scrip- 
 ture as exclusively national. He is described 
 as long a frequenter of the Egyptian court, 
 and learned in the policies and beliefs of the 
 land. He is again admitted to have long 
 dwelt among the shepherd chiefs of Midian, 
 and to have married, and had his children 
 born there. It is allowed in the Bible that 
 during a long life there had been only one 
 point at which he had come in contact with 
 his people, and that in this they had rejected 
 and ruined him. The mere comprehensive 
 vanity, which is a shadow of patriotism, would 
 here have been picturing in such a career a 
 tribute to the Egyptian system, or to desert 
 habits, rather than to the Israel which had 
 done so little for the great prophet. It was 
 at those two contrasted centres he had moved, 
 and there his powerful nature had assimilated 
 whatever was valuable and true, both in the 
 experiment and civilisation of the active Nile 
 valley, and in the long custom, the grand 
 primeval rites and traditions which lingered at 
 the Persian Gulf. 
 
132 Hebrew Law. 
 
 Moses was, by actuality, a compound of 
 Egypt and Arabia, and it was only in his 
 veins and in his sentiment that Goshen lived. 
 As he stood among his flocks at the solitudes 
 of Sinai, already awful in ancient report, the 
 staff on which he leaned might have been 
 looked at as the double emblem of an Egyp- 
 tian ruler and a Midianitish chief; nor even 
 if he himself, untaught by past experience, or 
 unclaimed by present ties, had been likely to 
 aspire to the work, could it have been at all 
 likely that the Hebrews would have accepted 
 in this double stranger, whom they had long 
 ago, when much more powerful, indignantly 
 rejected, a mover to rouse them to attempt 
 so great an enterprise as the Exodus, or a 
 leader to carry them through in it. And if 
 the jealously exclusive tribalism of those re- 
 turned from the' Babylon captivity had, as is 
 pretended, handled and recast these docu- 
 ments according to their own frame, we may 
 be sure that those who then refused all assist- 
 ance from their neighbours, though worship- 
 pers of the same God, who excommunicated 
 their priests and chief men for contracting 
 
Hebrew Law. 133 
 
 marriages with them, and who insisted on 
 divorces as a condition of continued associa- 
 tion, would never have drawn, or left without 
 repainting, a Moses, leader out of another 
 bondage, reformer and lawgiver, whom they 
 were building on, with these uncongenial fea- 
 tures about him of an experience altogether 
 foreign, and a marriage and family outside 
 of the tribes ; but that when they did leave 
 him so it was because they were not creating 
 antiquities for themselves — a process most 
 discordant with their tone — but because they 
 felt themselves compelled, by facts well before 
 them, to accept with veneration a claim, the 
 credentials of which they knew were not 
 patriotic, but divine. 
 
 Such a composite individuality as that of 
 Moses, though foreign to Hebrew taste, is 
 obviously valuable, and is found as a general 
 characteristic in divine transactions, both in 
 Scripture and in the world. Abraham, Jacob, 
 Ezra, and Nehemiah, and many more, were 
 personages of very diversified experience. 
 Among communities, too, the intermingling 
 of diverse elements is the most frequent con- 
 dition of progressive change. 
 
134 Hebrew Law. 
 
 When the moment of his call had come 
 the sign to Moses in the solitudes of Sinai 
 was the wild thorn-bush of the desert, with 
 a fire glowing in its midst, and yet uncon- 
 sumed ; emblem of the people cast down, but 
 not destroyed; emblem of frail humanity 
 safely pervaded by the Spirit ; a picture of 
 the present and promise of the future, and 
 related in its form to the connected event in 
 Gen. xv. 13. Moses, unlike Pharaoh, " sets 
 his heart to the matter," and turns to see 
 " this great sight." God, therefore, makes more 
 known to him. He tells him he is at a holy 
 spot and proclaims Himself the ancestral God ; 
 the Being of whom he has long been hearing 
 and meditating. To him the affliction of Israel 
 is known and their cry has penetrated, and 
 He, in answer, has come down to take them 
 to the good and large land, and Moses is to go 
 to Pharaoh to bring them out. 
 
 His objections follow in so natural an order 
 that they strike us as coming from the very 
 mind of the living man. With the instinctive 
 impulse of one knowing Egypt well, he is 
 described as recoiling at once from the dispro- 
 
Hebrew Law. 135 
 
 portionate idea of collision between a private 
 person and the great Pharaoh. This is met by 
 a grand reminder that he will not be alone, but 
 that God will certainly be with him, and so 
 effectually that, on the very spot where he is 
 then standing, he and the people shall serve 
 God. But this " I will " of the heavenly pro- 
 mise brings to the hesitating hearer the question, 
 " Who, after all, is this Being who promises ? 
 What his name and attributes ? " This question 
 must have existed in his own mind, for he feels 
 it will be asked of him in the place where he is 
 told to go. Thereupon the divine name is given. 
 It is a claim to supremacy over all Pantheons, 
 the expansion of patriarchal truth, and the 
 realisation of the final fact which is concealed 
 under the mythologies. God, who speaks, is 
 the One self-existent, eternal "now," the "I 
 Am ;" Jehovah (ft ftN), on whose life reposes the 
 life of departed Abraham (Luke xx. 37), the 
 God still of His removed saints. This is His 
 world-wide witnessing ; this His name for ever. 
 But next Moses objects, " they will not believe 
 me ;" they will say " Jehovah hath not ap- 
 peared unto thee." To meet this three signs are 
 
136 Hebrew Law. 
 
 given to him to be worked in order. 1. The 
 sign of power, pastoral and royal ; the staff and 
 serpent. 2. The sign of power in afflicting 
 and healing ; the leprosy caused and cured. 
 3. The sign of power by water and blood ; a 
 power over the heathen Gods. Still there is 
 doubt. Inadequacy of position, insufficiency 
 of information, suspicion of distrust are an- 
 swered ; the prophet is nearly at the end of 
 his resources. He conies again at the fifth, as 
 at the second point of the manifestation, to 
 his personal unfitness. 
 
 He has not eloquence to persuade, and here 
 as there he is assured God will be with him. 
 And now having exhausted all excuse he 
 plainly begs another may be sent. The anger 
 of Jehovah is kindled, and the insufficiency of 
 this first instrument brings in an added agency 
 in Aaron. But the checks of God are ever 
 advances ; and here a fresh type is shadowed 
 forth, and the foundation for a vast ministry 
 prepared. 
 
 The refinements of this narration seem hardly 
 from a human hand. No Jewish writer would 
 have detailed an experience at once so spiri- 
 
Hebrew Law. 137 
 
 tually exact and so derogatory to the fame of 
 his great countryman. 
 
 Moses returned to his father-in-law, who 
 knew not the undertaking, and then, with his 
 wife and children, in obedience to a divine call, 
 departed on the way to Egypt. Another incident 
 here claims attention. He is going there an 
 express agent to magnify the covenant, and to 
 carry it out. The essential, invariable seal of 
 that covenant was circumcision ; " My covenant 
 will I stablish in Isaac;" and "he that is born 
 in thy house must needs be circumcised," and 
 he that is not, " that soul shall be cut off from 
 his people ; he hath broken my covenant " 
 (Gen. xvii. 12). And yet the son of this 
 Moses whom he was taking with him was not 
 circumcised. Whatever differences there may 
 be in interpreting the transaction, several 
 points remain clear. Jehovah met the mis- 
 sionary party on the road, and sought to inflict 
 a death. The rite of circumcision was there- 
 upon performed, and the death was averted. 
 
 These facts are not immaterial. By this 
 transaction, placed in the very introduction of 
 the mission, there is advertised to all the 
 
 T 
 
138 Hebrew Law. 
 
 information proper for a peculiar people, that 
 the equity of God is absolute. It is even a 
 warning, given on the forefront of Hebrew 
 history, that the Lord will expect special 
 exactitude of allegiance from those who are 
 brought specially close to Him, that He will 
 be honoured in those who draw nigh to Him. 
 Though the circumstances are so incidental in 
 form, they yet contain at starting a principle 
 sufficient to explain the whole Hebrew history. 
 They account to us for the severe judgment 
 which fell upon the sons of Aaron, which 
 swept, at intervals, over parts of the people, 
 which condemned the whole of them to the 
 wilderness, and which, at last, prevented both 
 the high priest and the prophet from entering 
 the land. They also ■ forewarn in figure con- 
 cerning the fortunes of the Church. This first 
 passage of the ministry of death at the 
 beginning of the series has a remarkable rela- 
 tion to the similar one at the end of it ; for in 
 each there is danger, not only to those against, 
 but also to those described as on the side of 
 Jehovah ; and in each the danger is done away 
 by a special act, circumcision in one, the blood 
 
Hebrew Law. 139 
 
 of the passover in the other ; and these two 
 rites, thus distinguished as life-preserving, stand 
 at each end of the Hebrew system as charac- 
 teristic, and then pass on from that into the 
 Christian Church as the two special sacraments 
 of Grace, bearing close relation, baptism to 
 circumcision, and the Lord's Supper to the 
 Paschal rite, and themselves expressive of 
 redemption in its highest realisations. 
 
 The covenant was now in manifested activity, 
 and had begun to assume in shadow the out- 
 line of the Christian scheme. The people 
 who had cried in their misery had been heard 
 by God ; and this, as He professed, for the 
 sake of one after His own heart. He had 
 remembered His promise, and provided them 
 a deliverer; had gifted him in type with 
 endowments of the gospel to overcome evil 
 and to heal disease and sin, and had already 
 arranged at the sacred spot, where He had 
 revealed and was soon to glorify His name, to 
 receive the national foreshadowing sacrifice of 
 His people. His ambassador, commissioned 
 and warned, was now to go down into the 
 field of a conflict supremely momentous to the 
 
140 Hebrew Law. 
 
 Hebrew race in its outer incidents, and also to 
 the whole human race in its inner meanings. 
 
 As the representative of the future Saviour 
 approaches, the representative of the future 
 Church comes forth to meet him ; and then, 
 coalescing into one typical agency, the pair go 
 on, first to the people, and then to Pharaoh. 
 The monarch refuses to let Israel go, ignores 
 Jehovah, speaks of his summons as " vain 
 words," and weights the people more, lest 
 through idleness they should be led away. 
 The first movings of the divine work here as 
 usually are disturbing to the oppressor, the 
 oppressed, and the agent of rescue alike. 
 Pharaoh fears disorders, the Hebrews destruc- 
 tion, and Moses failure. God again announces 
 His name, Jehovah, the power of which, as 
 expressing His sole and eternal existence, He 
 will now begin to show forth; redeeming 
 Israel, planting them in His land, and taking 
 them to Him for a people. In their misery 
 they give no heed, and Moses, disheartened, 
 shrinks from the mission. The Lord now gives 
 to him and Aaron a solemn commission for the 
 Exodus. Their genealogies are recited, and, 
 going in to Pharaoh, they do their first miracle. 
 
Hebrew Law. 141 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Without here entering at length on the 
 question of miracles already considered else- 
 where,* we may yet observe in passing that, 
 apart from them, no immediate outer manifes- 
 tation of God to us is possible, such manifesta- 
 tion being itself a miracle. Neither without 
 them could God manifest himself mediately 
 through an agent ; for, without the credential 
 of miracles, men could not distinguish the 
 ambassador from one acting by mere natural 
 activity and boldness, and impelled either by 
 policy, deceit, or madness. If we give up 
 miracles, we must give up revelation ; we 
 cannot any longer keep Moses or Jesus on the 
 scene without violence to consistency, and we 
 then shall have to consider that the Author of 
 the world is satisfied to govern us by law, 
 rising altogether in the ordinary mind. But 
 here a new difficulty would come in. By our 
 effort to escape a prophet we should surround 
 
 * Lectures on Early Scripture, VII. 
 
142 Hebrew Law. 
 
 ourselves with a host of them, and the pre- 
 rogatives we withdrew from God we should 
 be obliged to confer upon men. Such an 
 extreme imputation of almost divine power 
 will be found actually laid upon Moses, as on 
 others, by those ver}^ writers who would cancel 
 the supernatural element in the Bible account 
 of Him. 
 
 There is no course, we may be sure, so 
 economical of marvels as that which the Scrip- 
 ture has actually taken, and any attempt to 
 reduce the sum of them will only aggravate 
 the difficulty it is intended to remove. After 
 all, the miracle, in some form, is a necessity, 
 and the naturalistic substitutes for it show this, 
 since they are only miracles in disguise. If 
 the Scripture demands faith, rationalism makes 
 equally extensive claims. The writer who 
 endeavours to account for Moses in the mere 
 natural method asks us to picture his period as 
 one of " exceptional grandeur ;" to regard the 
 man himself as of " surpassing greatness ;" as 
 " an unparalleled hero, sustaining the grandeur 
 of two perfectly distinct, yet equally exalted 
 epochs ;" " as a power, which produces the 
 
Hebrew Law. 143 
 
 mightiest and most lasting effects, and yet 
 works in a mysterious privacy;" "hard to 
 apprehend in itself; especially difficult for us, 
 in our time, to penetrate." He is asserted to 
 have given the first currency to truths which 
 are still sustaining and protecting us, and in 
 the hourly enjoyment of whose blessed fruits 
 we still live.* 
 
 Why, when there is placed before us a 
 personage like this, described to us as so exces- 
 sively great, and as having produced such incal- 
 culable results, is not the very man himself a 
 miracle ? He transcends altogether the natural 
 scale, and has become a problem quite as 
 difficult as the Moses of the Scripture he is 
 intended to supplant. Let but the power be 
 allowed to God which the rationalist claims 
 for himself — the power, that is, of putting on 
 the scene an adequate agent, and the whole 
 narrative runs smoothly enough — strangely, 
 mysteriously, no doubt ; but not more so than 
 becomes the passage of a God in the crisis of 
 a world. 
 
 The matter appears, then, to stand thus. 
 
 * Ewald's ' History of Israel.' 
 
144 Hebrew Law. 
 
 There is confessedly a stupendous fabric of 
 consistent result to be accounted for. Three 
 methods of explanation may be adopted. It 
 may be denied that Moses ever existed at all, 
 which, as Ewald truly says, is but an effort of 
 despair. Again, it may be attempted to 
 describe him as a mere natural hero, which, 
 as we have just seen, really raises as great or 
 greater difficulties than those it seeks to evade. 
 Or, as a third alternative, we may simply 
 accept the Bible account as it stands. And 
 why should we leave it, when such feeble 
 substitutes are offered in its stead ? 
 
 Let it be assumed, then, there was a divine 
 intervention at the time of Moses, and, we 
 ask, who will deny that the results, in their 
 dignity, in their immensity and lasting import- 
 ance, have been worthy of such intervention ? 
 Who, again, will deny that the crisis was one 
 which, if God can be possibly supposed to 
 intervene, would be fit for His arrival ? And 
 who, we venture to add, will be unable to feel, 
 on reflection, that the method of action is 
 coherent and organised in itself, and har- 
 monious both with what is described as pre- 
 
Hebrew Law. 145 
 
 ceding and following it ; harmonious, that is, 
 not merely in its outer structure but in its 
 whole organisation and motive idea ? 
 
 We must remember that it was not so much 
 the Hebrews who made the law as the law 
 which made the Hebrews. Their struggle for 
 independence, their settlement in their land, 
 their power of resistance and rebound, and their 
 wonderful tenacity of national life, are all 
 activities twined round the central spring of 
 the law, for the purpose of receiving which 
 they were selected and brought out. Their 
 inner and more spiritual mission is equally 
 connected with it. Out of the law gradually 
 arises by growth the moral system, the pro- 
 phetic and the gospel itself. Nor does the 
 law, which has these connections and powers 
 in the future, come itself abruptly into being. 
 It has close organic relations with the ante- 
 cedents of the tribes, with their sojourn in 
 Egypt, and with the patriarchal past. On this 
 side it goes back to the beginning, as on the 
 other it goes forward to the end. 
 
 As regards the circumstances surrounding 
 the law's promulgation the Mosaic cycle of 
 
146 Hebrew Law. 
 
 miracles is confessedly wonderful, but they 
 have a strong foundation of probability in 
 argument. The crisis required them. Suppose 
 Israel kept in Egypt there would have been 
 no social legislation ; no religious revival. 
 There would have been no organisation of 
 Church or State, within which judges, pro- 
 phets, kings, and statesmen could rise and 
 move. There would have been no Bible 
 influence on other nations, no Bible school of 
 morals, no cradle or Calvary of Jesus, or 
 stepping-stones for His Church. The divine 
 system, instead of unfolding itself in gradual 
 progression, would have been arrested. There 
 would have been a triumph of evil and of 
 man's enemy, and the much-needed promise 
 would have remained unfulfilled. In such a 
 great crisis we feel it likely great expedients 
 would be used, and we believe God does not 
 shrink from great expedients. The whole 
 plan of religion and our Saviour himself fully 
 show this. So, too, does all nature which is 
 not merely an inflexible order, but recurrent 
 periods of order portioned off and originating 
 in crises, so that the world's system is made up 
 of debris of storms. 
 
Hebrew Law. 147 
 
 Further, there was every prospect the good 
 cause would fail. All human probability was 
 against Israel corning out from Egypt. There 
 was not the smallest ordinary chance in their 
 favour. Withdraw the Bible account and no 
 one can explain how they got away. That 
 they were in Egypt is certain. The whole 
 Law is tinged with convincing indirect proof 
 of it. So is the narrative. Keject their own 
 account of their deliverance because it contains 
 theological miracle, and once again it will be 
 necessary to give us historical miracle instead. 
 In place of the wonder supported by long con- 
 sistent analogies and relations of religion there 
 will have to be put before us a wonder merely 
 at variance with all experience of ordinary 
 events. Why should we question the ancient 
 account of the matter? If they had been 
 inventing or re-casting their past they might 
 easily have put together a more popular narra- 
 tive. An inspired warrior like the judges, 
 conquering against overwhelming forces, would 
 have suited the times, the people, and the 
 superficial symmetry of the case. If they 
 abstain from this, give an account little 
 flattering; to themselves, and accredit God 
 
148 Hebrew Law. 
 
 with all the success, is not that itself already 
 in their favour ? And if it appear that this 
 account of theirs, though less likely on 
 the surface, has yet under the surface many 
 minute threads and attachments to the rest of 
 Scripture, which could not have been observed 
 or guessed at in their early time, but which 
 greatly enhance its meanings, is not that still 
 more in their favour ? 
 
 Let us now go on to the texture of the 
 narrative of the Exodus, and we shall find 
 that as there is an observable gradation in the 
 training and call of Moses, and in the delivery 
 of his message to Israel, so there is, also, a 
 gradation in the incidence of the visitations 
 through which the people were rescued — 
 the plagues in Egypt. Two powers are 
 seen standing over against one another. In 
 Pharaoh is collected the whole resisting 
 force of that system, false in religion and 
 despotic in rule, which is the organised 
 strength of the secret world-tyranny, at once 
 attractive and inimical to man. Moses is 
 the apparently feeble instrument of attack 
 on it ; strong, however, in a divine truth, 
 
Hebrew Law. 149 
 
 a just principle, and an unseen heavenly 
 support. 
 
 And here we may observe that the whole 
 series of events is to the Christian an expres- 
 sion, extraordinarily vivid, of the fundamental 
 contest, still believed by us to be waging 
 among men, lying at the roots of life and 
 essentially affecting our prosperity ; a contest 
 engaging, as we also believe, the interests and 
 energies of the whole invisible world. Scrip- 
 ture we look on as both the record of the war 
 and a great engine for carrying it out. The 
 characters and events recorded there are, as it 
 seems to us, incessantly reflecting in visible 
 colours the mysteries of the inner conflict. 
 May it not be possible that a large part, or 
 even the whole, of what is put down in Scrip-' 
 ture has also further relations and resemblance, 
 not only to subsequent events here but also to 
 transactions beyond the present scene. Some- 
 times there are hints scattered, and hardly 
 discernible, which seem to point to this ; at 
 other times when a crisis of the narrative is at 
 hand these suggestions seem to group them- 
 selves together, as if to express distinctly the 
 
150 Hebrew Law. 
 
 terms of the hidden transaction. Thus we 
 have Elijah set in contrast with Ahab, Daniel 
 with Nebuchadnezzar, Mordecai with Haman, 
 and the like. Still more have we Moses and 
 Pharaoh, David and Saul, picturing to us 
 beforehand the great mystery of time and 
 beyond time of Jesus conflicting with Satan. 
 
 Without attempting to define or systematise 
 this we may believe it to exist. There is 
 every antecedent probability that it would 
 exist, and there are most suggestive traces of 
 it throughout the Bible. If so, a Pharaoh 
 who has such meanings, a Moses who has such 
 a mission, rise at once in our minds to the 
 most vast importance. They become the 
 representative advocates and champions for 
 the widest interests, and by their means the 
 conflict of immense forces is being brought to 
 an issue. This the narrative partly professes, 
 but partly withholds. It is only when the 
 divine is actually present on the scene in the 
 person of our Lord, that a personal opponent 
 from the spirit world is clearly defined in the 
 field. But if we believe Scripture thus ex- 
 pressive it should not in the slightest degree 
 
Hebrew Law. 151 
 
 surprise us that at such all-important moments 
 as the giving of the law, and of the gospel, we 
 find attendant series of most pregnant wonders, 
 serving as credentials for the systems they 
 accompany ; typically expressive of their 
 course ; but also, may be, projecting their 
 meanings beyond us into an untraced sphere, 
 and there, too, addressing combatants and 
 spectators we know not of. 
 
 To a person who adopts this not unreason- 
 able view it would be futile to object that 
 experience of common history does not show 
 events like the Exodus, for to him the Exodus 
 has risen to proportions far in advance of mere 
 national affairs, and therefore permits, and 
 even requires, unusual phenomena to give 
 expression to its meanings, and to be adequate 
 to its importance. 
 
 But to return : the miraculous visitations of 
 the plagues have, we said, an observable order 
 pervading them. They arrange themselves 
 into three consecutive groups of threes. In 
 each triad a similar preparation is made. The 
 first plague is preceded by an early and im- 
 pressive warning ; the second by a warning 
 
152 Hebrew Law. 
 
 less marked and emphatic ; the third occurs 
 suddenly, without warning at all. The scale 
 of the infliction, like that which Satan had 
 himself chosen for Job, is also an ascending 
 one, through property to person. The last 
 sudden visitation in each triad is a pressure on 
 the bodily life. 
 
 This increasing severity of treatment is a 
 renewed preparatory warning for the .final 
 crisis of death. It is also in correspondence 
 with the way in which chastisement has been 
 received. In the first plague of each triad 
 Pharaoh makes concession, but after relief 
 relapses and hardens his heart. In the last 
 plague of the later triads it is God who hardens 
 him.* At the end of the first triad even the 
 magicians witness to the genuineness of the 
 Mosaic wonder. At the end of the second 
 triad Pharaoh is found resisting the magi- 
 cians, who apparently counsel surrender. Each 
 series thus culminates in an inner crisis of 
 resistance. The policy of God is proclaimed 
 and enlarged at the beginning of each triad. 
 It is that by the wonders now working it may 
 
 * See Appendix. 
 
Hebrew Law. 153 
 
 be known that He is first the self-existent God, 
 secondly the self-existent God in the midst of 
 all the earth, and thirdly that for this very 
 cause Pharaoh has been allowed to rise, that 
 in him Jehovah's power may be declared 
 through all the earth. These declarations, 
 throwing a momentary flash of far wider 
 suggestion, advance a stage in each triad. 
 
 There may also be noted a gradual rise in 
 the demands on behalf of Israel, proportioned 
 and related to the resistance met with, and to 
 the gradual admissions and concessions made 
 and withdrawn by the king. Beneath these 
 seeming surrenders lies the final frame of 
 Pharaoh. Neither the prophet, nor the divine 
 Lord, nor the Egyptians, nor his court and 
 magicians can affect the nether millstone of his 
 inner life, and his last word to Moses — 
 " Depart, see my face no more, for in the day 
 that thou seest my face thou shalt die" — 
 strikes the fatal chord, moving on the action 
 to the last affliction. The tenth plague, com- 
 pleting the circle, returns back upon Egypt, 
 though in a much mitigated form, the policy 
 of death they had formerly planned against 
 
 x 
 
154 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the infants of Israel,* and which began the 
 movement by causing the oppressed to cry to 
 the Lord. 
 
 It is well known, and has been carefully 
 pointed out by recent writers, that the triad 
 plagues are to a certain extent aggravations of 
 natural phenomena, some of them still occa- 
 sional and others still almost periodical in 
 Egypt ; a circumstance which enhances their 
 historical and moral weight. Thus, it seems, 
 the change of colour in the Nile water still 
 happens annually after the end of June, when 
 it becomes a dark red, though in this state it 
 does not usually kill the fish or become un- 
 drinkable. The visitation of frogs still follows 
 some time after the change of the waters, 
 and creates occasionally great inconvenience. 
 Travellers also describe the vermin at present 
 as extremely distressing. Thus Sir S. Baker 
 mentions a sort of tick not larger than a grain 
 of sand, but which, when filled with blood, 
 increase to the size of a small nut. The plague 
 of flies is calculated as inflicted at about the 
 end of October, a time at which the dog-fly is 
 
 * Exodus, iv. 22, 23. 
 
Hebrew Law. 155 
 
 now very troublesome. These flies come in 
 immense swarms, and their painful bite causes 
 local inflammation. In Egypt the cattle are 
 in the fields from December to the end of 
 April, and the disease would have come on 
 them about the former period, at the time of 
 their removal from the stall, when change of 
 habit and diet would render them particularly 
 susceptible. In recent years the murrain has 
 several times fallen on Egypt, and so greatly 
 ravaged the herds as almost to destroy them. 
 Again, cutaneous eruptions of extreme severity, 
 and accompanied with the symptoms described 
 in Exodus, are still very prevalent in the 
 valley of the Nile. Flights of locusts, too, 
 still at times pass over and devastate it, and 
 the south-west wind in spring brings immense 
 clouds of fine sand from the desert, darkening 
 the air far more than our worst winter fogs, 
 obliging the people to take refuge in their 
 inmost apartments, and occasioning that op- 
 pression to the lungs which leads us to class 
 this plague at the Exodus as a bodily inflic- 
 tion. 
 
 A most important connection has also been 
 
156 Hebrew Law. 
 
 partially traced between the plagues and the 
 Egyptian religion, going to show that each 
 succeeding infliction was not only a fresh blow 
 on their affairs, but also a fresh confutation of 
 their theology, and that the whole was a pro- 
 gressive exposure of the impotence and nullity 
 of their nature-gods, imagined by them to 
 preside in those spheres of life in which 
 Jehovah now showed Himself supreme. Thus 
 the Nile was sacred and an object of cult ; the 
 frog was connected with their most ancient 
 nature-worship ; symbolically the earth smitten 
 in the third plague was regarded as the 
 lather of the Gods; their insects and cattle 
 had symbolical meanings ; and to them 
 Pharaoh was representive of man and God, 
 on whose forehead the serpent expressed 
 the royal and divine, and who was the 
 protege of Ea, the sun-god, chief object of 
 their worship. 
 
 It is not unlikely that the advancing know- 
 ledge of Egyptian antiquities may cause this 
 meaning of the plagues to be drawn out with 
 convincing accuracy, and show how valuable 
 and perhaps essential an introduction they 
 
Hebrew Law. 157 
 
 must have been to commend the legislation of 
 Sinai to the Hebrews, and by degrees to the 
 world, and to secure obedience to that rule so 
 difficult it seems to ignorant and learned alike, 
 that one personal Jehovah governs in heaven 
 and earth, and that he is to be worshipped 
 without similitudes in spirit and in truth. 
 How great an impression that way the whole 
 transaction had made may be inferred from 
 the song of Moses at the moment of their 
 escape, "Who is like unto thee, O Lord 
 among the Gods ? Who is like thee, glorious 
 in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders ?" 
 In estimating the documents we should con- 
 stantly remember that the time of Moses is a 
 crisis in the Bible. The transition from the 
 patriarchal to the national, it is next in im- 
 portance to the epoch of our Lord, which 
 is the transition from the national to the 
 universal. Like the giving of the gospel, 
 therefore, the giving of the law has to be 
 attended by the credential and exposition of 
 miracles, and first among these are naturally 
 the miracles of release, freedom of the will 
 going before obedience to the rule. Pharaoh 
 
158 Hebrew Law. 
 
 being the apt representative of the hostile world- 
 power, his conflict with Jehovah is found leading 
 to destruction. Moses being the represen- 
 tative of heaven, his mission, therefore, leads 
 on salvation. We are thus brought to the 
 last plague and the first sacrifice ; the death of 
 the first-born, and the offering of the paschal 
 lamb. The two occur in relation, judgment 
 and mercy here, as elsewhere, being linked 
 together. 
 
 The boundary of Goshen had been a barrier 
 against other plagues, but at the coming forth 
 of the last death-causing attribute or agent, it 
 seems a special protection was needed by the 
 Hebrews. And this, on reflection, we shall 
 feel was to be expected ; for deaths the con- 
 sequence of sin, holds a judgment against all 
 men, and when once moving can only, in the 
 Scripture theory, be stopped and done away 
 by one remedy. In the wonderfully complete 
 plan, then, that remedy is now to be brought 
 forward in representation that the typical 
 history may work on towards its final propor- 
 tions. A lamb is appointed and is set apart 
 four days before the great judgment. Here, 
 
Hebrew Law. 159 
 
 in connection with previous numbers,* the 
 four-fold interval of time may possibly have 
 reference to the deliberate patience of God. 
 
 There are senses in which the passover may 
 be looked on as the chief of sacrifices and key 
 of the system. It is first in time ; it is critical 
 in emergency ; it is efficient not for ceremonial 
 remote, or unseen consequences, but it saves 
 from immediate bodily destruction ; it is offered 
 without priests and without an altar ; each 
 head of a family himself applies it in his own 
 home, and for all his house — for all, we say, 
 since, though a terrible, the death of the first- 
 born is still a restrained and representative 
 expression of completer judgment ; the first- 
 born stand vicariously, and are representatives 
 of the saved something as the lambs are of the 
 Saviour. And, further, the first-born being 
 saved, when due to death, by a substitution 
 Jehovah has allowed, are for ever after regarded 
 not as independent but as belonging to Him, 
 and they always have to admit this by being 
 redeemed for a price. Thus the whole trans- 
 action of salvation is at the very beginning 
 
 * Genesis, xv. 16. 
 
160 Hebrew Law. 
 
 expressed as vicarious; the lamb is clearly shown 
 as the substitute for the sinner who belonged 
 before to death, and who, on being saved, 
 belongs to the Lord — "The people whom 
 Thou hast purchased." If the lamb and the 
 Lord be identified as one and the same, the 
 plan of the Gospel is here before us. The 
 blood upon the top and upon the two sides of 
 the door might almost in this connection seem 
 the mark a Saviour already fixed there, with 
 outstretched arms barring the passage against 
 death. When the angel charged with the 
 ministry arrives, he sees that judgment is 
 already satisfied ; death already there ; he 
 reverences the mystery and passes. 
 
 No Israelite had neglected the rite, for at 
 that particular moment Israel was to express 
 as against the enemy the completeness of 
 salvation through the blood of the lamb. But 
 had a single house omitted it, there we should 
 have expected to find ensuing those conse- 
 quences which, in Leviticus, befell the one who 
 broke the Sabbath. 
 
 The lamb having represented and, indeed, 
 effected preservation out of death was further 
 
Hebrew Law. 161 
 
 to mean building up in the unity of life. It 
 now had to stand for the strengthening and 
 refreshing of the soul by the body and blood of 
 Christ. The Israelites, with loins girded for 
 their journey, in the strength of that meat, go 
 forth like Elijah towards the mount of the 
 Lord. It is a meal of pilgrims and strangers 
 who seek a country, and it is eaten with bitter 
 herbs by those who, through much tribulation, 
 are to advance towards the kingdom of God. 
 Again, it is a meal of union for those who being 
 many are thus made one bread and one body. 
 It is once more a meal of separation 
 also, since the old leaven is purged out, and 
 the feast is kept with the unleavened bread of 
 sincere service to a true God. Thus the 
 patriarchal epoch draws to a close in full 
 consistency with the truths which have per- 
 vaded its course, and which in a higher form 
 are yet to follow it, and, as at the beginning 
 when the whole nation was shut in the loins of 
 Isaac, the son was placed on the altar by the 
 father, instead of animals usual at the time, 
 so here, at the end, as the crowning idea of 
 the preliminary system, the animal again takes 
 
 Y 
 
1 62 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the sacrificial place and stands alone, instead 
 of the many sons of Israel. No intermediate 
 machinery of ritual, altar or priesthood arrest 
 the thought, but we are carried straight on to 
 the atoning blood itself, pleaded by each 
 father in his own home, and effectual there to 
 save and to sustain. A more beautiful epitaph 
 on the dynasty of the patriarchs cannot be 
 imagined, speaking like other epitaphs of that 
 which has departed, and which is to be found 
 again. 
 
 The Hebrews, thus sanctified, now begin 
 their march. The glory of the Lord is risen 
 upon them, and they go forth as His host in 
 orderly array and in a festal attire, which is 
 not, as sometimes thought, the unduly gained 
 property of their oppressors, but a voluntary 
 ransom from the Egyptians to be freed from 
 the danger of their presence. They pass on, 
 attended by a multitude who cling around 
 them — a first wave-sheaf of the earlier harvest 
 of the Gentiles, already dimly perceiving the 
 truth of Abimelech ; "We saw certainly that 
 the Lord was with thee."* 
 
 * Genesis, xxvi. 28. 
 
Hebrew Law. 163 
 
 A great layman, to whom physical science is 
 indebted, wrote his confession of religious 
 faith. He believed that in the person of the 
 Mediator, the Lamb of God slain before all 
 worlds, the true ladder was fixed, whereby 
 God might descend to His creatures, and His 
 creatures might ascend to God; and that 
 transactions with respect to the Mediator make 
 the great mystery and perfect centre of all 
 God's ways with His creatures. That " among 
 the generations of men He elected a small flock 
 (i.e., the Hebrews), in whom, by the parti- 
 cipation of Himself, He purposed to express 
 all the riches of His glory — all the ministration 
 of angels, damnation of devils and reprobates, 
 universal government of all creatures, and 
 dispensation of all times ; having no other end, 
 but as the ways and ambages of God, to be 
 further glorified in His saints, who are one 
 with their head the Mediator, who is one with 
 God."* 
 
 Thus, the man who led on a revolution in 
 science saw in religion a system already com- 
 plete. He believed that the law of God and 
 
 * Bacon. 
 
164 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the word of His promise endure the same for 
 ever, and were, from this time of Moses, 
 expressed partly in the written code, partly by 
 a double series of figures ; the one, the rites 
 and ceremonies of the law ; the other, the 
 continual history of the old world and the 
 Church of the Jews; which, though it is 
 literally true, yet is also " pregnant' of a 
 perpetual allegory and shadow of the work of 
 redemption to follow." 
 
 In which opinion this great mover of thought 
 was content to remain quietly fixed, together 
 with the whole of the prophets and teachers of 
 the old and new Scriptures, and with the 
 general consent of the whole ancient and 
 modern Church, as far back as record goes ; 
 all of whom have accepted this fulness of 
 meaning in the purpose and plan of the Bible, 
 and seen in every part of it, as he saw " the 
 one Jesus, the Lord, become in the flesh a sacri- 
 ficer and sacrifice ; a satisfaction and price to 
 the justice of God ; a meriter of glory and the 
 kingdom ; a pattern of all righteousness ; a 
 preacher of the word which himself was ; a 
 finisher of the ceremony ; a corner-stone to 
 
Hebrew Law. 165 
 
 remove the separation ; an intercessor for the 
 Church ; a Lord of nature in his miracles ; a 
 conqueror of death and the power of darkness 
 in his resurrection ; fulfilling the whole counsel 
 of God ; performing all his sacred offices and 
 anointing on earth ; accomplishing the whole 
 work of redemption and restitution of man to 
 a state superior to the angels ; and reconciling 
 and establishing all things according to the 
 eternal will of the Father." 
 
 Or, to use for expression that eloquent form 
 ascribed to Irenaeus, "in all Christ was all; 
 Patriarch among the patriarchs ; Law in 
 the law ; the Priest among priests ; among 
 kings Prime Leader ; the Prophet among the 
 prophets ; the Angel among angels ; the Man 
 among men ; Son in the Father ; God in God ; 
 King to all eternity. He was sold with 
 Joseph ; Lie guided Abraham ; was bound 
 along with Isaac ; and wandered with Jacob ; 
 with Moses he was leader and respecting the 
 people Legislator." 
 
 Whoever may hesitate to join himself in 
 consent to this testimony and reasonable plan, 
 will have three things to reconcile ; first, that 
 
1 66 Hebrew Law. 
 
 in so feeble a people as the Jews such a design 
 should have sprung up of joining the world 
 under one religion ; secondly, that this design 
 of theirs should, through many generations 
 and ages, have been consistently pursued and 
 expressed harmoniously by so many nearly 
 unconscious instruments ; and thirdly, that the 
 project should have come to the measure of 
 success we see in our day. Beforehand it 
 might have seemed wonderful to persons who 
 had little considered the subject that such 
 things should be truly from God, but now, 
 afterwards, when they have gone so far, it 
 would be a great deal more wonderful that 
 they should be mere false inventions of men. 
 
 As the people are leaving Egypt a candid 
 observation of the course of the narrative will 
 show that thus far the purposes of Scripture 
 have been completely answered. The one 
 self-existent God has been revealed, and the 
 common pantheon brought into discredit and 
 disgrace. A people has been formed and has 
 set out to preserve and spread the new 
 manifestation. Their very first design is to 
 establish a worship to represent it. No sooner 
 
Hebrew Law. 167 
 
 are they free than this is proclaimed, — " The 
 Lord is my strength and song, and he is 
 become my salvation; he is my God and I will 
 prepare him an habitation." A permanent 
 outer expression of religion was a popular 
 sentiment and need. But a dwelling for God 
 was a plan which brought risks as well as oppor- 
 tunities. It has been the admirable wisdom 
 of the Hebrew system so to build the ritual as 
 at once to guard and advance the truths 
 entrusted to it. 
 
 The same is the case on the social side — 
 while the new vigour is added the old deposit 
 is retained unimpaired. The unity of the 
 system is so cared for that, though much is 
 gained, nothing is lost. Though Jehovah is 
 my God " still he is my fathers' God, and I 
 will exalt him." Again, the defeat of Pharaoh 
 is a moral shock to tyranny. Internal liberties 
 of nations have begun to live, and are about to 
 be organised under the law of Sinai. In the 
 meantime the very first provision after the 
 passover expresses the spirit which underlies 
 the movement. It is for the admission of 
 slaves to the privilege of the covenant reli- 
 
1 68 Hebrew Law. 
 
 gion* — a religion already stamped indelibly 
 with family features by the rights of that first 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Thus we have man's relations both for the 
 world and for heaven advanced ; sacrifice 
 already arranged in periodic recurrence ; 
 patriarchal incidents grouping themselves in 
 counterpoise to the hierarchical in the coming 
 law ; the attributes of the Divine revealed and 
 partially embraced ; the decline of a false faith 
 commenced and approaches laid for a pure and 
 true system ; a breaking away begun from 
 Egyptian chains — mental, spiritual, and social ; 
 and so a preparation of the people for the 
 mission of their twofold, obedience to earthly 
 and heavenly duties; in other words, the 
 ground is laid for the two tables of the law 
 and for the ritual of worship, and this " king- 
 dom of priests," fresh from its first experience 
 of the values of the blood of the lamb, goes 
 forth from bondage harnessed (or in battle 
 array), the Lord going before them with signals 
 of smoke and fire like the generals of ancient 
 time. 
 
 * Exodus, xii. 44. 
 
Hebrew Law. 169 
 
 They have, too, in their midst a singular 
 and significant relic — the mummy of the long- 
 dead Joseph. They thus fulfil the oath he 
 took of their fathers, and the two great types, 
 Joseph and Moses, the bringer in and the 
 bringer out, are thus, also, in actual contact of 
 fact as well as idea, and as they carry the long- 
 dead man down into " the depths of the sea," 
 which " the Lord hath made a way for his 
 ransomed to pass through," the whole transac- 
 tion projects a most vivid outline of an all- 
 important truth of later theology — the passage 
 through the grave under the anti-typical leader, 
 to a safe resting-place, where remote genera- 
 tions shall lie together; where there shall be 
 no more tyranny of Satan ; where they u shall 
 not see the Egyptians again any more for 
 ever" (Exodus xiv. 13); where " the tabernacle 
 of God shall be with men, and He will dwell 
 with them and they shall be His people" 
 (Rev. xxi. 3), and where they shall " sing the 
 song of Moses and of the Lamb." 
 
170 Hebrew Law. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 While the history of the Hebrews, viewed from 
 one point, advances in a continuous outer order T 
 it yet appears, when regarded from another 
 point, to express varied relations of the same 
 one spiritual enterprise. Israel in Egypt ex- 
 plains the process of conflict between the 
 Church and Satan, in which the divine Leader 
 is seen treading the wine-press alone ; vindi- 
 cating His sole supremacy, and getting Himself 
 glory over the world-power, by the release of 
 a people saved from death either through 
 His own or the enemy's wrath. 
 
 Israel in Canaan no longer describes the 
 great primary movers and very springs of 
 action, but dwells on the immediate agencies, 
 and paints the struggling Church in conflict 
 with the organisations of time. 
 
 Israel in the wilderness is to put before us 
 the intimate dealings between God Himself 
 and His Church. The Scripture here shows us 
 the Church led, fed, championed, covenanted, 
 
Hebrew Law. 171 
 
 ruled, taught, officered, and organised in all 
 things. It further shows us the conduct of the 
 Church ; its joys, fears, complaints, promises, 
 backslidings, repentances, rebellions, move- 
 ments towards and away from its goal ; and 
 then how God, in and by all transactions of 
 forbearance, judgment, and remission, advances 
 His purpose in ever-growing ripeness of fulfil- 
 ment. 
 
 The last echo of the holy song had hardly 
 died away when the first discord of the 
 Church's weakness striking on the prophet's 
 ear showed at once that the time for fully 
 accordant harmonies was yet far distant^ 
 Moses, it now appeared, would have to be the 
 motive agent on the human side as well as on 
 the divine. Eepresentative of Christ, his faith, 
 supplementing humanity, " against hope could 
 believe in hope," like Abraham. Like him, 
 he " staggered not at the promises of God ; 
 being fully persuaded that what He had pro- 
 mised He was also able to perform." With the 
 people it was not so. " What shall we drink ?" 
 was their question at Marah ; for they saw 
 risk but no relief, though the pillar of cloud 
 
172 Hebrew Law. 
 
 was there before their eyes, and the wonders 
 of Egypt so fresh in their memory. Their 
 hearts did not rest on the Lord whom their 
 lips had sung as triumphing gloriously, and 
 because a well opposed them they forgot a 
 sea had just surrendered. 
 
 The work of intercession now proceeds in 
 the new field. " Moses cried unto the Lord," 
 and " the Lord showed him a tree, which when 
 he had cast into the waters, the waters were 
 made sweet." The ancients, who saw Christ 
 in all, believed they here saw a type of the 
 cross. If it was so, the type was significant, 
 for here, at the very outset, the performance of 
 duty was made man's work, while the process 
 of cleansing was shown as Christ's work : what- 
 ever might be the future elaborations, it was 
 upon this, interpretation at once based its rule. 
 Not only at the time but in long subsequent 
 ages this was insisted on ; "I spake not unto 
 your fathers, nor commanded them, in the day 
 that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, 
 concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices ; but 
 this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey 
 my voice, and I will be your God and ye shall 
 be my people " (Jer. vii. 22). 
 
Hebrew Law. 173 
 
 The people had been forced to serve Egypt 
 to their harm. God having purchased them, 
 they were now bound to serve Him for their 
 good. Pharaoh had been ruined, as Origen 
 fully shows,* because he resisted warnings, 
 providences, and his own convictions. The 
 same idea of probation now begins to rise in 
 the narrative for Israel. Already at Marah 
 God gives a statute and an ordinance. A 
 suggestion of uncertainty comes into the pro- 
 spect. Blessing will depend on a faith which 
 shall listen and obey. It is on such con- 
 ditions they will escape the plagues of the 
 Egyptians. 
 
 The water had, by the wood, been healed 
 for them, and having been taught that it is 
 Jehovah that healeth His people, they now, 
 from the one bitter source, journey on to the 
 wells and palm-trees of Elim (twelve and 
 seventy — the numbers of both the old and 
 new Church), and encamp there by the waters 
 in peace. 
 
 The wilderness of Sin next advances the 
 journey and probation. There is now a want 
 
 * Origen, De Principiis, iii. 1. 
 
174 Hebrew Law. 
 
 of bread. This time it is not a multitude but 
 the organised people who murmur. Their 
 complaint extends against Aaron as well as 
 against Moses. Although the promise that 
 they should escape the plagues of Egypt, if 
 faithful, is fresh, and their late deliverance 
 only one march behind, they now openly 
 declare death in Egypt with the first-born 
 better than death in the desert. The Lord's 
 presence is not in their consciousness ; their 
 faith does not calculate on His help ; their 
 disobedience repines at His service ; they see 
 not salvation but destruction before them. 
 Aaron, therefore, has to summon them before 
 the Lord, and now they all behold His glory 
 appearing in the cloud towards the wilderness, 
 as if in front of them on their way. Manna is 
 rained from the sky for them ; and this food is 
 thenceforth given from day to day for many 
 years — the means to wean to spirituality their 
 carnal preferences, and to make them know 
 the truth, repromulgated by Him " who for 
 our sakes did fast forty days and forty nights," 
 viz., " that man doth not live by bread only, 
 but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
 
Hebrew Law. 175 
 
 mouth of the Lord doth man live " (Deut. viii. 
 3, and Mattli. iv. 4). 
 
 The victories of the Lord are never barren. 
 With the six days for the bread of the body is 
 given the one day for the word to the soul. 
 The preparations for Sinai are in all this being 
 rapidly brought on. Already (ver. 6) the truth 
 of the second commandment is established. 
 The declaration of the first commandment is 
 anticipated (ver. 12), and the fourth command- 
 ment is set in action. The beneficent institution 
 of the Sabbath, so essential and yet imme- 
 diately found so difficult, is from that time 
 perpetually being expressed and enforced by 
 the withholding of manna on the seventh day. 
 
 The narrative now passes without detail 
 several stages, thus showing truths and not cir- 
 cumstances to be its purpose, and then it pauses 
 at the next place of trial and teaching, Rephi- 
 dim ("supports"). Here there is no water. 
 They demand it of Moses in anger, asking why 
 he has brought them out of Egypt to kill them, 
 their children and cattle with thirst. "We 
 should not complain," says Bishop Hall, "if it 
 were not good for us to want." How much 
 
176 Hebrew Law. 
 
 they had to learn is shown by this, that it is 
 still Moses and not the Lord they treat with. 
 " If they had gone to God without Moses I 
 should have praised their faith," continues the 
 same writer, "but now they go to Moses with- 
 out God I hate their stubborn faithlessness." 
 We disapprove, and yet Israel is the picture of 
 ourselves (tvttol 'rju&v) as the wilderness is of 
 the world's pilgrimage and the dealings there 
 are of God's present providence and grace. 
 
 The Israelites were no strangers to suffering ; 
 they had groaned under it in Egypt. They 
 had cried there to God for help and He had 
 answered. They had seen His enemies severely 
 afflicted, but now they seem to ask why are 
 His own people thus suffering. There was the 
 cloud before them, but what availed it to be 
 led if they could not live. Manna secured 
 daily bread, but water was an equal need. 
 Moses, the mediator, is there, but can the 
 Lord Himself really be among them ? 
 
 The Lord answers thus. Moses is ordered to 
 go on before, accompanied by the heads of the 
 people and to take his rod — " The rod where- 
 with thou smotest the river." As though he 
 
Hebrew Law. 177 
 
 would say, He who in that case could stop the 
 supply to deliver them would now, they might 
 be sure, bestow it to preserve them. The 
 appointed witnesses advance, and the presence 
 of the Lord is seen there on the rock in Horeb. 
 Moses smites the rock once, and the waters 
 flow forth. This water it has been sometimes 
 considered from that time followed Israel, 
 either constantly or generally, as a river of 
 supply, according to 1 Cor. x. 4. Thus in 
 anticipation of Isaiah (xxxiii. 16), itself antici- 
 pative of greater blessings, " bread was given 
 them and their waters were sure." 
 
 They were about to tarry " on high among 
 the munitions of rocks ;" to "see with their 
 eyes the king in his glory;" to have "the 
 Lord for their judge ; the Lord for their law- 
 giver ; the Lord for their king." But first 
 there must be a conflict with an outer enemy. 
 
 In Pharaoh, as we believe, was summed up 
 and expressed the organised hostility of the 
 spiritual foe of mankind to the Church of God. 
 The passage of the Eed Sea, and the final 
 destruction of that power in those depths 
 which were a way to life for the saved, who 
 
 AA 
 
178 Hebrew Law. 
 
 were "to see the Egyptians no more for ever," 
 removes this method of expression from the 
 field, of the narrative ; but as even the inter- 
 relations of God and the Church, which appear 
 the chief idea of the desert stations, are not free 
 from the external intrusion of this adverse spirit- 
 power, it was fit there should be found another 
 instrument of expression for its hostility. When 
 the thought had been mankind prostrate under 
 the tyranny of the prince of this world, and 
 many successive blows struck in history to 
 loosen his hold, and his final defeat by the 
 blood of the lamb, and his end in utter 
 destruction, then a great Egyptian king was an 
 adequate representative ; but in the wilderness 
 this would no longer have been appropriate. 
 Jehovah is no longer, as it were, outside 
 seeking to release and take away his people. 
 He is now the victor present by a visible 
 manifestation as the leader of a settled Church. 
 That Church is the germ of an eternal 
 organisation which will itself be mystically 
 incorporated with the Divine. By the side of 
 these transcendent powers the Satanic chief 
 can no longer be properly represented as a 
 
Hebrew Law. 179 
 
 monarch on a throne. The state of things 
 requires malignity to be shown under a dif- 
 ferent aspect ; still watchful, pitiless, crafty, 
 and relentlessly cruel, yet with but the hostility 
 of the wild beast on the outside of the fold, 
 "seeking whom he may devour;" prowling 
 round ; springing on at unguarded moments ; 
 driven off; returning again, and only to be 
 escaped from by being destroyed. 
 
 The former series of events had represented 
 God rescuing His captives ; but this series is 
 to represent God reigning in His Church. The 
 enemy who was great in his own house of 
 bondage cannot now be great in the free 
 mount of the Lord. It is he this time who is 
 in another's territory. A type under these 
 circumstances, exactly appropriate for him, is 
 found in Amalek, who now " came and fought 
 with Israel ;" " smiting the hindmost of them ; 
 even all that were feeble behind them (and 
 had fallen into the rear), when Israel was 
 faint and weary" (Deut. xxv. 18). Just as 
 afterwards Amalek came up into Canaan in 
 company with the children of the East, " and 
 destroyed the increase of the earth and left no 
 
180 Hebrew Law. 
 
 sustenance for Israel; and they entered into 
 the land to destroy it " (Judges vi. 4). Just 
 as they also in David's time invaded the south, 
 burned Ziklag with fire, in the absence of its 
 male defenders, and took away the whole of 
 their wives, sons, and daughters, and went 
 their way ; and when tracked by means of one 
 of their own slaves, who had been cruelly 
 abandoned by them in sickness, were surprised 
 in a brutal orgy of rejoicing at their great 
 spoil (1 Sam. xxx.). 
 
 We have this savage power now in the 
 wilderness treacherously hanging on the rear 
 of Israel, and we have Moses giving an order 
 to a new character, Joshua, at this time most 
 fitly introduced, commanding him to choose 
 out men and fight with the enemy. A double 
 type here connects the outer history with its 
 inner values. Joshua in the field below, whose 
 name means Jesus, is representative of the 
 Saviour as the warrior Chief of the Church 
 " going forth conquering and to conquer ; " 
 Moses above in the mount, representing the 
 Saviour in heavenly places, is at the same time 
 carrying on that sustained intercession which 
 
Hebrew Law. 181 
 
 secures to his militant people their triumph in 
 the Lord. The raised and falling hands express 
 the necessity of this continuous intercession as 
 a condition of conquest, while the attendant 
 ministrations of Aaron and Hur admonish us of 
 the weakness of the typical agency in itself, 
 and suggest the twofold ancillary machinery of 
 civil rule and religious rite, by which the 
 Lord's battle is carried on in the world. The 
 altar of Jehovah-nissi is expressive of the 
 Church's conflict and victory in the later 
 Joshua. The final issue of the strife and 
 doom of the great spiritual enemy is seen 
 under the words, " The Lord will have war 
 with Amalek from generation to generation," 
 and " the Lord said, I will utterly put out the 
 remembrance of Amalek from under heaven ; " 
 while the mission of the Church as the divine 
 instrument of beneficence is set forth in those 
 often mistaken words of far-reaching prophecy, 
 "When the Lord thy God hath given thee 
 rest from all thine enemies round about, 
 in the land which the Lord thy God 
 giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, 
 thou slialt blot out the remembrance of 
 
1 82 Hebrew Law. 
 
 Amalek from under heaven ; thou shalt not 
 forget it." 
 
 We use the term beneficence advisedly. 
 The Old Testament, it must be remembered, 
 represents transactions which though upon a 
 small stage are vast and universal in meaning. 
 The Church described there is not a branch, 
 but in fact the whole visible Church on earth 
 in its organisation and early contraction, and, 
 further, it is the type of that whole Church 
 in its later expansion. It was less than any 
 Church now in the value of its privileges, yet 
 it was more than any now in the area of its 
 meanings. Being a representation of the entire 
 plan, God is properly present with it, and His 
 dealings in it properly take the full and final 
 character, which is to attend the ultimate 
 consummation of His work. If that final crisis 
 is to be a retributive application not only of 
 mercy but also of strict judgments, then such 
 unflinching judgments ought to be found in 
 some way described among the incidents of 
 the Old Testament, and were they omitted 
 there the narrative would be inconsistent and 
 incomplete. 
 
Hebrew Law. 183 
 
 In the New Testament the case is different. 
 The Church there is no longer a defined outer 
 system, with geographical boundaries and 
 strict historical incidents ; it is internally spread 
 through many political systems of various form. 
 Its work is much wider and deeper, but it has 
 not the same condensed significance. The 
 final issues now are more remote; the scale 
 of the plan has become too vast to admit of 
 their appearing on the narrow platform of 
 time. Decision and retribution are not, how- 
 ever, on that account done away. They are 
 still as strict, as just, as overwhelming in the 
 forewarnings of the New Testament as they 
 are in the actual occurrences of the Old. It 
 might even be said they are more so. 
 
 There is thus a perfect harmony in the 
 fundamental method of the two revelations. 
 The difference is that the sanctions in the 
 smaller Church are properly carried out at 
 once in the present, while in the larger Church 
 they are with the same propriety held back 
 until the " fulness of time " in the future. In 
 both God is sovereign. In both He says, 
 "judgment is mine, I will repay," but the 
 
184 Hebrew Law. 
 
 smallness of the field in the first case soon 
 brings us to the issue ; the wider extent in the 
 second requires of us patience until the end 
 shall be. It is not because the result at last 
 will be different under the two Testaments 
 that we are told not to avenge ourselves, and 
 not to desire to do so, for the result in both 
 cases will be similar. But it is because in the 
 present advanced system it cannot be so fully- 
 said who is on the Lord's side as it could in 
 the past one, since circumcision is now in the 
 spirit and not in the flesh, and sonship is not 
 tribal but mystical. We have neither the capa- 
 city nor commission for judgment as they then 
 had ; not because there will be no judgment, 
 but because wheat and tares are mixed, and 
 are to be now let grow together until the 
 harvest. 
 
 It is probable that some persons who have 
 reflected against the Old Testament on the 
 ground of its severities may not have con- 
 sidered this point, but may have compared its 
 books either with the temporary aspect of the 
 New Testament instead of with its full and 
 complete proposals, as should have been done. 
 
Hebrew Law. 185 
 
 Or else they may possibly have compared the 
 Old Testament proceedings with floating senti- 
 ments drawn partly from beautiful maxims 
 of the Gospel ; partly from easy notions of 
 society ; and partly from benevolences of the 
 natural world, and they may have considered 
 the Book as failing in the comparison. 
 
 But even if we bring the matter with them 
 to the common ground of affairs the Old 
 Testament judgments seem unavoidable. The 
 narrative we may note does not describe them 
 as the willing act of the people. On the con- 
 trary, these take the side of the objector ; and 
 are adverse and remiss in carrying out severities 
 pressed by God Himself. It was from this 
 very circumstance that the whole nation was 
 perpetually coming into misfortune, and that 
 their leaders, as notably Said, for sparing the 
 Amalekite tribe, incurred the divine dis- 
 pleasure. It is not therefore the crude public 
 sentiment of a barbarous age, which is by an 
 unconscious dereliction of some true principles 
 expressing itself in severities. Rulers and 
 subjects are alike observed inclining to com- 
 promise, tolerance and lenity, and yielding 
 
 BB 
 
1 86 Hebrew Law. 
 
 themselves, but unwilling instruments, to a 
 higher policy of severities they dislike. 
 
 These severities themselves, if we pass from 
 the first impulse of sentiment to a consideration 
 of reason, are evidently so useful that a truly 
 benevolent sentiment must itself at last approve 
 and agree with Scripture in requiring them. 
 It has been clearly and many times shown 
 that the people of Israel, and the system 
 entrusted to them, could not possibly without 
 such methods have been preserved in sufficient 
 integrity for the later work of the Holy Spirit 
 to rise on. Without such periodical weedings 
 there could no more have grown up the 
 harvest of the Gospel than there could spring 
 crops of corn without clearings of the soil. 
 
 In accordance with the tenour of the Scripture 
 narrative we find that the teachings of secular 
 history, the experiences both of civil rule and 
 even also of the domestic circle, oblige us to 
 recognise that severities, prunings, and exci- 
 sions are at times necessary though austere 
 benevolences. Analogies of natural life, as 
 regards its preservations, restorations, and 
 cures, run the same way. In short, the whole 
 
Hebrew Law. 187 
 
 judicial consensus of mankind requires that 
 which their whole affectionate sentiment 
 shrinks from. Nor is this conflict at variance 
 with the tone of Scripture, but in the most 
 direct agreement with it ; so much so that the 
 whole intricate mechanism of its plan may be 
 seen working together, from first to last, to 
 bring about by means of the Saviour, both in 
 heavenly places and in the human estate, 
 precisely that sort of compromise, compact, or 
 balance, between the competing frames of 
 justice and mercy, which we know to be in 
 fact the practical question for ourselves to 
 solve in our human affairs, and which we 
 instinctively require to find reconciled in a 
 truly divine plan. 
 
 While one great family of the desert was 
 thus showing its hostility to the house of Jacob, 
 another was approaching in friendship. Jethro, 
 the chief of Midian, father-in-law to Moses, 
 now came to him, together with Moses' wife 
 and with her two sons. The narrative explains 
 now a second time the meaning of the first 
 son's name : " I have been an alien in a strange 
 land," and adds the meaning of the second 
 
1 88 Hebrew Law. 
 
 son's name, " the God of my father was my 
 help, and delivered me from the sword of 
 Pharaoh." These names had been given by 
 Moses in his banishment. They were intended 
 by him to commemorate his early trouble and 
 deliverance. They equally express, it is now 
 found, the wider transactions of his later 
 fortunes. The training of the believer, and of 
 all believers, run on the same line. The 
 Church and the leader of the Church are one 
 in probation and in triumph. This is still so 
 from the beginning to the end. 
 
 After the circumcision in the flesh Moses' 
 wife, with the children, had left him; now, 
 after the baptism in the sea she returns and 
 brings them with her, and the place of reunion 
 is at the mount of God. There, at the beginning, 
 God had foretold his people should come on 
 their deliverance, and there was to be the 
 point of contact between the departed. 
 
 Jethro sends to announce his arrival ; Moses 
 goes out to meet him ; does him obeisance in 
 reverence, and salutes him in love. He relates 
 all that has happened. Then the priest of 
 Midian glorifies the Lord, and makes this great 
 
Hebrew Law. 189 
 
 confession of faith, " now I know that the Lord 
 (the Jehovah, who is revealed to you, and who 
 is leading you) is greater than all Elohim." The 
 patriarchal priest then takes a burnt offering 
 and sacrifices peace offerings for God; and 
 after the sacrifice the elders of Israel came and, 
 as the narrative expressly informs us, Aaron at 
 their head, to partake of the sacrificial meal, at 
 which Jethro, the sacrificer, would be president. 
 On the morrow Jethro examines the arrange- 
 ments of government ; disapproves them ; 
 offers his own advice and a patriarchal plan in 
 their stead, assuring Moses that if it is adopted 
 God shall be with him. Nor is he mistaken 
 in this ; at a later period (see Deut. i.) it seems 
 with the divine approval to have been brought 
 before the people, and accepted as the national 
 system. After these circumstances, Moses lets 
 his father-in-law go, and Jethro returns to his 
 own land. 
 
 This whole transaction has been regarded 
 as an episode apart from the main stream of 
 the narrative. Whether the existence of such 
 i'|)isodes at all be consistent with the theory of 
 the Bible is not now the inquiry, but it can 
 
190 Hebrew Law. 
 
 hardly be considered in any case that this is 
 one. Rather does this narrative of Jethro 
 seem an important link in the organic system 
 of Scripture. The fact, very prominent in his 
 visit, is the superiority fully and willingly 
 conceded to him. Though extraordinary con- 
 descensions of the Lord had raised Moses to 
 the highest importance under a new dispen- 
 sation just about to open, he yet at the 
 commencement of it reverently owns allegiance 
 to the patriarch of Midian, possessor and 
 depository of the primitive faith. Nor is this 
 owing merely to the ties of relationship 
 between them, for in the next scene, where 
 the name of Moses is kept back, and the 
 action is placed in Aaron the future high- 
 priest of Israel, and the elders who are at the 
 time the religious representatives of the tribes, 
 we have them all acting in subordination to 
 the shepherd-prince of Midian, and after he 
 has given in his allegiance to the Jehovah of 
 the revelation, as identical with the Elohim of 
 his own ancestral worship, we have him, and 
 not either Aaron or the elders, taking the 
 lead, offering sacrifices to God, and they all 
 
Hebrew Law. 191 
 
 subordinately joining him in the sacramental 
 feast. 
 
 This, in fact, amounts to the celebration of 
 an alliance, and the outward recognition and 
 cementing of a pact between two phases of the 
 grand world-long religion, which is essentially 
 one in the purposes of God. The patriarchal 
 and the national thus visibly attach themselves 
 together; and as at the beginning of the 
 older system Abraham, in the hour of his 
 greatest outer distinction, is brought for a 
 moment into contact with a dimly seen repre- 
 sentative of a still elder Church, so here 
 Moses, after his victories, is also visited by an 
 analogous character, one of whom little is 
 known, except that he too, like Melchisidek, 
 is a prince and a priest of the most high God. 
 Like the more ancient the later visitant blesses 
 God and blesses Israel, and while conferring a 
 lasting benefit on the infant people by his 
 advice he implants among them one of the 
 great civil institutions of the patriarchs, tending 
 more, perhaps, than anything else which 
 could have been devised to perpetuate popular 
 liberty, and to secure the future commonwealth. 
 
192 Hebrew Law. 
 
 Thus his visit is even on this side a demon- 
 stration in favour of the two general principles 
 to be handed on — the recognition of the one 
 Jehovah-God, and the reaction from the 
 tyrannies of misrule. It occurs at the very- 
 spot and moment of time that the dispensation 
 of the law is going to commence. It is as if a 
 very ambassador from the patriarchal epoch of 
 the past had been deputed to attend at the holy 
 mount to testify, to initiate, to unite with them 
 there in praise and sacrifice, and to hand over 
 to the charge of the new agency the sacred 
 deposit of their ancestors, the beginnings of 
 religion now about to be expanded ; the 
 beginnings of government now about to be 
 advanced. 
 
 Nor does the matter stop at that point. 
 Though we may regard it as an act of adhesion 
 it is not to be considered an act of surrender 
 on the part of the patriarchal. On the con- 
 trary, at the very moment the Hebrew was 
 going to be raised to such a height of religious 
 distinction it was impressed on the first 
 page of his very credentials of covenant that 
 God had other subjects besides the tribes, and 
 
Hebrew Law. 193 
 
 a wider domain than Canaan ; that the 
 pleadings of sacrifice were not to be confined 
 to the priesthood alone, but that outside the 
 courses of Levi there might still be the 
 blood of the lamb upon altars of acceptance. 
 
 Moses let his father-in-law depart to his 
 own country. The system he was to in- 
 augurate had not sufficiently wide invitations 
 to retain him, but his very coming had been 
 an indication that there were attractive powers 
 hid away in it, and was already a suggestion 
 of the final incorporation of the patriarchal 
 and Mosaic in the future Messiah, At that 
 present time an alliance of affinity between the 
 two was all that could be effected. Each had 
 to go its own way and carry forward its own 
 mission ; the patriarchal struggling to maintain 
 the primitive outlines among the corruptions 
 of the wide world ; the Mosaic retracing and 
 deepening those outlines within its distinctive 
 fortress, and yet each, though working alone, 
 working still in relation ; the Hebrew sending 
 out missions ; the patriarchal sending in 
 converts ; the Hebrew providing the motive 
 impulse ; the patriarchal preparing the ground 
 
 cc 
 
194 Hebrew Law. 
 
 for reception and response. An incident was 
 wanted at such a critical moment to express 
 these essential characteristics of the plan. The 
 (so-called) episode of Jethro has supplied it 
 with admirable propriety. 
 
Hebrew Law. 195 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The country from the sea up to Sinai has been 
 happily described as rising level above level, 
 like steps leading to a natural sanctuary. A 
 traditional reverence is said to have already 
 attached to the mountain and to the district, 
 which the Egyptians regarded as in a measure 
 sacred. The declaration of God Himself 
 had now made it "holy ground." At this 
 special spot, at a special crisis of time, Israel 
 arrived and camped before the mount. Moses 
 had known from the first that the people were 
 there to do service to Jehovah, and had 
 understood it to be a service of sacrificial 
 worship (Exod. v. 3). He now goes forward 
 in advance of his people; ascends into this 
 natural temple, and the Lord speaks in it. 
 
 The prospect of the nation is in the very 
 first words widely extended. The missionary 
 thought, with which Abraham's career com- 
 menced, is now in an advanced form placed 
 at once before his descendants at the beginning 
 
196 Hebrew Law. 
 
 of their national existence. In Abraham, the 
 prophet, all the nations of the earth were to be 
 blessed. The " house of Jacob " now is to be 
 a dynasty of priests, consecrated for "the other 
 sheep not of their fold," the flock of the whole 
 world. The entire nation is to be holy and 
 ministerial. By obedience to the divine voice 
 as it should speak from time to time, and by 
 keeping the divine covenant, now once for all 
 to be entered into, Abraham's descendants, 
 his seed, are to begin to be a blessing to all 
 Jehovah's earth. The master idea of the 
 work, which no nation would then have con- 
 ceived or cared to carry out, is thus once 
 again provided for. The people are officially 
 assembled; they have the matter fully laid 
 before them ; they all accept the prerogative 
 and duty. Moses returns their words to the 
 Lord. 
 
 The divine terms and conditions of covenant 
 having now to be made known in rules, their 
 God will give these in such a direct way that 
 it shall never be doubted in Israel they are 
 from Him. For this purpose they must come 
 up to the sanctuary mount. Before approaching 
 
Hebrew Law. 197 
 
 a place hallowed by the divine presence pre- 
 paration is necessary. They are accordingly 
 purified for a marked time, and on the third 
 day, being regarded as clean, they are led 
 forward. But as they are to go to what is in 
 reality a most sacred temple, here, as in other 
 temples, a limit is fixed, beyond which 
 encroachment would be sacrilege. On the 
 third day the Lord descends in emblematic fire 
 on the mount, suddenly visiting His temple, 
 and Moses, the mediator of the time, with the 
 future high-priest Aaron, is summoned up to 
 the higher and more intimate sanctuary. 
 
 The covenant conditions, by keeping which 
 Israel is to carry on its priestly nationality for 
 the world, are now announced by God, and 
 under a candid examination they are seen to be 
 admirably fitted to advance the great purpose. 
 They are in ten clauses (or " words ") cardinal 
 principles absolutely complete, yet capable 
 under one aspect of being still further con- 
 densed ; capable under another of widest 
 expansion. The first quality is implied 
 in their being given in two tables ; the 
 second is seen by their re-appearance in 
 
198 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the more copious "judgments" immediately 
 following. 
 
 At the first division of the words the thought 
 is turned up to the mount, where Jehovah is ; 
 where, though He is. He is unseen ; where He is 
 in His reverend majesty. With the mind thus 
 fixed on the mount, the mandates to worship 
 none but Him ; to worship Him by no visible 
 images ; to reverence His name, commend 
 themselves at once to the Hebrew as self- 
 evidently right, and from them flows out a 
 further moral propriety and need, introducing 
 the systematic devotion of the fourth com- 
 mand. 
 
 At the second division of the " words " the 
 thought returns from the mount to the camp. 
 It begins inside the tent with the law of the 
 home ; respect for the authority whose neces- 
 sary charge and care is the happiness, security, 
 and well-doing of the paternal tent. This is the 
 fifth word. The thought passes out from this 
 paternal tent to the tents of neighbours 
 around; the domestic happiness, the safety, 
 the possessions, the good repute of those 
 surrounding dwellings are to be respected and 
 
Hebrew Law. 199 
 
 cared for as well. They also are homes, and 
 home being now sanctified all homes are 
 sacred. He, who as a priestly man, has just 
 been looking up to the mount of God, and who 
 now is looking below upon the tent which is his 
 own dwelling, and on the tents of the priestly 
 nation, pitched beside his own, will feel the 
 commands which secure these, viz., the sixth, 
 seventh, eighth, and ninth binding at once ; he 
 will feel it instinctively and without moral 
 strain ; and, further, he will pass on from them 
 naturally to that final principle which guards the 
 " words " at this end, even as the first command 
 guarded them at the other, and he will not desire 
 in heart that which is forbidden in action. 
 
 Thus the covenant is not even in appearance 
 arbitrary, and the Hebrews would not be able 
 to help observing that it is righteous in fullest 
 and most practical equity, as their God 
 intended they should do. It is a characteristic 
 of true religion that it grows out of circum- 
 stance in its revelation, even as in its application 
 to individuals it adapts itself gradually in the 
 gradual growth of the life. There is a 
 wonderful cohesion and completeness in the 
 
200 Hebrew Law. 
 
 " words," which the more they are examined 
 will the more appear. Yet while the rales 
 themselves rise out in lasting and complete 
 equality, a systematic whole which cannot be 
 altered or improved, still, for the time, an 
 emphasis is laid on points where temporary 
 danger would be greatest, and this is introduced 
 by an appeal to their own experience, " ye 
 have seen that I have talked with you from 
 heaven," therefore " ye shall not make with 
 me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto 
 you gods of gold." 
 
 The qualities of the commandments have 
 appeared admirable, even to those who reject 
 their divine origin, and attribute them only to 
 a very wonderful man. One of these writers 
 piles up marvels on the point. They have, he 
 says, " an incomparable value," " a remark- 
 able influence." " They restrict themselves to 
 eternal truths, as if they had descended from 
 heaven." They are " the most indispensable 
 and comprehensive propositions;" "as judi- 
 ciously selected as skilfully arranged ; " they 
 show in this arrangement " the same master- 
 mind which had before it the profound truths 
 
Hebrew Law. 201 
 
 of the whole law." " There is a skilful 
 grouping," "a natural sequence," "a wise 
 ordaining," so that " nothing can be more 
 excellent and more unique than these com- 
 mandments of the tables of stone, both in their 
 contents and their arrangement." They, and 
 indeed the whole idea of the law, furnish " the 
 few and mighty impulses which from that time 
 forward incessantly acted in ever-widening 
 circles, and with ever-increasing result." In 
 short, " they constitute in themselves such a 
 distinct and well-connected whole, that we 
 cannot but confess" — what? — "that in their 
 original unity they must have proceeded from 
 one great creative spirit " — and then we are 
 dropped to the most limping anti-climax ; the 
 great creative spirit turns out to be only some 
 remarkable man, " springing, like Pallas, at 
 once fully armed from the head of Zeus." 
 
 Here, again, are difficulties gratuitously 
 brought in quite equal at least to those they are 
 intended to do away, and to escape a wonder 
 consistently accredited, benevolent in aspect, 
 and of proved benefit, we are asked to accept 
 another wonder, embarrassed with circumsta.11- 
 
 DD 
 
202 Hebrew Law. 
 
 tial difficulties, of limited and constrained 
 intentions, and which when believed in has 
 always done its supporters far more harm than 
 good. More than this, in the name of philo- 
 sophy we are asked to discard the most 
 sublime organisation of ethics, and for the sake 
 of supplanting it by a pedestrian theory, with- 
 out due balance, association, or sanctions, 
 enthusiastic, if not deceptive, in its origin — an 
 origin commendable only on assumptions which 
 shake the very bases of right and wrong. 
 
 Taking worship of the one Jehovah as the 
 motive thought of the first table and reverence 
 of parents as the point of departure for the 
 second, and regarding each of them as the 
 original idea from which the other commands 
 of the two tables, respectively, arise and take 
 occasion, we thus have in this fundamental 
 compact a distinct promulgation of the two 
 great primary principles and projects, running 
 through the plan ; one, the restoration of 
 mankind from idolatry, and their progressive 
 advance to a full service and knowledge of 
 God, progressively made known to them in 
 His paternal attributes and requirements; the 
 
Hebrew Law. 203 
 
 other, their recovery from the ancient tyrannies 
 and the gradual reconstitution of society 
 upon the equitable and kindly basis of the 
 paternal or family method, so that, however 
 vast and complex civil organisations might in 
 the future become, there should still be within 
 them the prevailing principle of fraternal 
 regard and affection with which society com- 
 menced, and in which it is at last to find its 
 complete prosperity and happiness under the 
 headship of our one God and Father, and the 
 brotherhood of the one Lord and Saviour, 
 Jesus Christ, in whom the Law will at last find 
 its complete fulfilments, and who Himself 
 declared and showed how it might all be 
 resolved back to these two heads. 
 
 Nor was this all that was done at the great 
 crisis of Moses. Not only, as we have seen, 
 was there wanted, then and always, a true 
 constructive plan and process for religion and 
 society, but further there was also a want no 
 less imperative — more urgent, indeed, than 
 any other — the want of that ministration of 
 pardoning and healing, which should render 
 the soul capable of taking its place by 
 
204 Hebrew Law. 
 
 true citizenship in renovated religion and 
 society. Not only, therefore, ought we to 
 have, in a law really promulgated from 
 heaven, announcements of duty to God and 
 man, announcements which however com- 
 prehensive and beautifully fit would not be all 
 the soul would be yearning to receive, but we 
 should also have that merciful medicative 
 process, which a really divine sympathy would 
 know to be our deepest and first want, even 
 before we ourselves could identify, so as to 
 frame it in expression. 
 
 Surrounding the law, therefore, as the 
 bounds environed Sinai, bringing up in contact 
 with its truths while preserving from its risks, 
 we want to have everywhere expressions of 
 the redemption which alone places a ransomed 
 people in a position to listen and obey. It 
 was then a magnificent stroke of the narration, 
 far beyond the previsions of an ancient scribe, 
 which brought together the whole world in 
 representation at the threshold of Sinai, to 
 offer there together that worship which had 
 already been introduced by its patriarchal 
 correlative, the accepted Jethro sacrifice. It 
 
Hebrew Law. 205 
 
 may be with a fitness of suggestion, less striking 
 because only a suggestion, but not less really 
 wonderful, that we find placed between the 
 "words" and the "judgments" — between the 
 principles of law and the applications of law — 
 instructions for the altar, and which teach that 
 as there is to be one Jehovah God unseen, to 
 whom in heaven worship is to go up unimpeded 
 by earthly symbols, so there is to be one altar 
 on which sacrifice to Him is to be offered, and 
 that this altar is still, in their new splendid 
 worship, to be kept the same plain construction 
 of earth or rough rock which their fathers had 
 always used ; at which Abraham had offered 
 and Isaac had been bound ; thus, . in this 
 essential of worship, preserving in the most 
 palpable way the unity of the old and the 
 new ; showing that the rite was to have the 
 same meaning now as then, and also that 
 though it was to have fresh elaborations it was 
 not yet susceptible of increased value ; still 
 preserving it as a central requisite ; still 
 retaining it as the spot and method of accept- 
 ance and of entrance to duty and peace ; still 
 keeping ready, if we may so say, in its 
 
206 Hebrew Law. 
 
 unimpaired simplicity of grandeur, the plat- 
 form of Calvary itself. 
 
 From the "words," the living fountains of 
 law, the revelation passes after the dividing 
 mark of the sacrificial to the "judgments," the 
 applied principles of law, and as (in Exod. xii. 
 44) the first thought, after providing the 
 paschal lamb, was to provide for the slave's 
 partaking of it, thus striking the home note of 
 spiritual and temporal freedom ; so here, after 
 the rule of the altar and the attendant promise 
 of divine presence and blessing, the first pro- 
 vision of the judgments is for the recovery of 
 liberty by the slave ; a fact, like the other, full 
 of significance, and in strict accordance with 
 the underlying meaning of the Scripture work, 
 which is essentially to deliver from bondage, 
 and to secure in the "glorious liberty" of 
 children under the covenant. 
 
 The two tables of the " words " are to lie in 
 the ark, as the two rules of Jesus are to rest 
 in the heart, but the applications or "judg- 
 ments " being for outer use take here a public 
 form, and follow the outline usual in municipal 
 law — protection of person, property, morality, 
 
Hebrew Law. 207 
 
 and repute. But there are mixed in with them 
 distinctive features, peculiar in themselves, 
 yet explicable by reference to the purposes of 
 the system, with which they are in complete 
 harmony. A blow to the parent as the root 
 of violence, and breach of the root-law of 
 the second table is a capital offence. A sacri- 
 fice to idols as a breach of the root-law of the 
 first table, the beginning of immorality, and 
 the first of thefts is also a capital offence. 
 
 On the other hand, exceptions of mercy in 
 favour of the weak, and generosities of self- 
 denial, unusual in the strict generalisation and 
 lower morality of other legislations, find an 
 appropriate place in this paternal code, and are 
 guarded and invigorated by the exercises of 
 unselfishness enjoined in the devotion of first 
 fruits, and those surrenders implied in the 
 graduated Sabbatical rests. The three feasts 
 provide for the periodical assembly of the 
 national family, with their tribute to their 
 God, round the central altar ; and, again 
 (Exod. xxiii. 18), the thought of the blood of 
 the sacrifice, and the acceptable way of pre- 
 senting it, bring on the close of the series. A 
 
208 Hebrew Law. 
 
 final warning to obedience and allegiance, 
 together with a final promise of success and 
 blessing, conditional on them, follow, and the 
 "judgments" close. 
 
 The Lord having now declared generally, 
 in the " words " for perpetual adherence, and 
 specially in the "judgments," as the applica- 
 tion and conditioning of the general, what are 
 His terms of entering into covenant, invites 
 Moses to bring representatives of the whole 
 nation up into His sanctuary, that, on their 
 acceptance, they may there enjoy the privilege 
 of closer worship, to which, as the covenant 
 people, they will be entitled. Moses ac- 
 cordingly comes down to the Hebrews, tells 
 them all the "words," and all the "judg- 
 ments," and they proclaim with one voice 
 their acceptance of the terms. Moses now 
 puts these terms in writing, builds an altar, 
 and causes burnt-offerings and peace-offerings 
 to be sacrificed to the Lord on behalf of the 
 whole people, who are expressed as being 
 fully present by twelve piles or pillars, raised 
 up by or round the altar. 
 
 The occasion of the sacrifice is peculiar. It 
 
Hebrew Law. 209 
 
 is an admission of all into a closer holier 
 union with God, described for the under- 
 standing of the time as admission into a 
 priestly caste. It therefore fitly has resem- 
 blances to the subsequent admission of the 
 official priests into their office, and to the 
 re-admission of the excluded leper into the 
 holy community, and there will be found 
 analogies running generally through the nar- 
 rative between the duty, the offendings, and 
 the punishments of the national and the official 
 priesthoods. In this sacrifice half of the blood 
 was sprinkled on the altar, and half of it on 
 the people, after the writing of the Law had 
 been read aloud to them, and they had given 
 their promise and consent to it. 
 
 In sacrifice there ever resided, i.e., in the 
 acceptance of God, the meaning of atonement. 
 Here the inner thought seems that as com- 
 pletely as the blood of atonement was offered 
 and presented before God, so also, in propor- 
 tionate completeness, was that blood's value 
 applied to His people. It shows forth those 
 correlations of human and divine action which 
 have their meeting-place in sacrament. It is 
 
 EE 
 
210 Hebrew Law. 
 
 an intermediate expression of the blessed 
 truth of salvation, never departed from, which 
 appears at one end of the scheme, on the door- 
 posts in Egypt, as deliverance from death, and 
 at the other, in the apocalypse, as eternal life, 
 on the robes "washed and made white in the 
 blood of the Lamb." It is a special modifica- 
 tion of Hebrew sacrament, but one conveying, 
 as all sacrament, the complement of all sacri- 
 fice — answering grace from Him who accepts 
 and therefore blesses. 
 
 The transaction being complete, the repre- 
 sentatives of the tribes go up into the sanctuary 
 mount ; an apparition of Him who is now the 
 covenant God of Israel, who is prince of God, 
 is vouchsafed to them, and they eat, unharmed, 
 the sacrificial meal of their covenant. 
 
 But from this point, to which the Church 
 has been allowed to penetrate, the typical 
 mediator is specially summoned into a still 
 higher place — holy of holies — even as the divine 
 antitype, after the renewed law and the new 
 covenant, sealed in His blood, left His people 
 awhile. Moses, like Him, in departing gave 
 the charge to occupy till he came, and, 
 
Hebrew Law. 211 
 
 ascending up, a cloud received him out of 
 their sight. He left behind authority in Aaron 
 and Hur, representing the civil power and 
 the priestly, and for forty days (the time 
 expressing a completed epoch), he was with- 
 drawn from his people. It was good it should 
 be so soon expressed in figure to man's im- 
 patience that such absences are part of the 
 economy of grace.* In the meantime his 
 absence was fruitful. He had, in a sense, gone 
 to prepare a place for them. He was receiving 
 in heavenly places instructions for a tabernacle, 
 which would be on earth a type of heavenly 
 things themselves. 
 
 * Cyprian, Do Bono Patientige. 
 
212 Hebrew Law. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Mosaic revelation has consistent methods 
 running through its whole course. It ever 
 regards person, place, and time. The abstract 
 form in which philosophies are cast show them 
 dependent on mind, but a divine system will 
 naturally move among events, for action itself 
 is a divine word and a method of expression 
 which, though inaccessible to philosophies, is 
 far more complete. The free play of incident 
 in the system of Moses is itself therefore a 
 badge of authority, and the constant transitions 
 by which verbal and active expressions carry 
 forward its progress speak of its divine origin. 
 The movement of the plan, again, is not 
 merely regulative; it is incessantly action in 
 advance. There is a place to go to, a time to 
 go in, and a man to lead. A Canaan paradise 
 land, tasted, lost, and to be possessed once 
 more, and this according to a promise from 
 the first. There is a single leader ; a man of 
 sorrows ; alone in conflict ; alone in the burden 
 
Hebrew Law. 213 
 
 of the people ; rejected yet successful ; priest 
 before the priests, prophet, lawgiver and king. 
 There is further a time, meted out in parcels ; 
 four hundred years, then forty years three 
 times repeated, and generally a course of slow 
 progressions, leading up to crises according 
 with what may be seen in nature itself. The 
 same sort of sympathy through trial, which 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews declares to exist 
 between Christ and his people, was here to be 
 seen in Christ's forerunner. In his fortieth 
 year Moses, by a quick movement, was com- 
 mitted to the cause of Israel. After the trials 
 of another forty years he was really trained for 
 success in their cause. An experience, similar 
 to their chief's, was about to befall the com- 
 munity, and events were to show that, after 
 their first pledge of allegiance, forty years 
 among solemn associations would still be 
 necessary before Israel could enter into the 
 land which was to be at once rest from the 
 past and also the beginning of wider activities 
 in the future. The long passage of trial had 
 fitted Moses for his work with Israel, and the 
 corresponding probation would enable Israel 
 
214 Hebrew Law. 
 
 to leave its lesson for the world. Such 
 waitings and movements, and among such 
 circumstances, may have been valuable condi- 
 tions by which the human mind could lay hold 
 firmly of the truths of divine unity and govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Sinai itself was at once a sacred and a 
 central site ; indeed the two terms are in a 
 degree identical, for whatever is sacred must be 
 central. The one head of the people, Moses, 
 had first stood there alone, and there had held 
 converse with God. Now the whole people 
 were before it. To them, and to the world 
 through them, the doings at Sinai were to be a 
 sort of re-entry to Paradise, and that in a 
 substantial sense, and the place itself a " very 
 gate of heaven." 
 
 Adam originally had a law, the germ of all 
 law ; " quasi matrix omnium praeceptorum 
 Dei." " In it," says Tertullian, " we recognise 
 all the precepts enclosed which afterwards 
 cropped up, given through Moses." * It was 
 already the ten words ; already the two tables ; 
 the love of God and man. The breaking of 
 
 * Tertullian. Adversus Judteos. II. 
 
Hebrew Law. 215 
 
 it threw our parents out of Paradise, not by- 
 arbitrary penalty, but by needed consequence 
 and evil worked on to destruction in the 
 deluge. Sacred history had hitherto been a 
 slow travelling back towards the lost centre- 
 Obedience regained a position in the perfect 
 offering of Noah, and in the accepted sacrifice 
 secured the promise of preservation. Around 
 the sacrifices of Abraham were again grouped 
 advancing prospects, and at his great surrender 
 of love in not withholding his only begotten son, 
 the point of Eve is touched, " Thy seed shall 
 possess the gate of his enemies," and advanced 
 in definition to — "In thy seed shall all the 
 nations of the earth be blessed." And now 
 the people, already themselves a fulfilment 
 in first-fruit — numerous, victorious over the 
 enemy, and to be victorious again — stand at 
 the door of Sinai, listen to the law of Para- 
 dise, and pledge themselves to obedience, not 
 simply but in the solemnities and safeguards of 
 the blood of sacrifice, answering with one 
 voice, " all the words which the Lord hath 
 said will we do." 
 
 The value and import of this answer is not 
 
216 Hebrew Law. 
 
 to be measured by the shortness of their 
 performance, but by the spiritual height of 
 Sinai and length from Egypt ; by the presence 
 of Jehovah ; by the donation of the rule ; by 
 the action of the mediator ; and by the blood- 
 sprinkling which had passed on to both the 
 divine and the human side. It was a pledge 
 to do what Adam failed in doing ; to reverse 
 his decision, and to take up again in an 
 extended form the work he had dropped. 
 This offering of allegiance indeed was but 
 little, yet it offered Israel's best in God's 
 appointed manner and accepted time, and it 
 therefore placed man once again, and more 
 fully than in any past period, at the re-en- 
 trance of Paradise. It in itself, in one sense, 
 constituted a sort of re-entry into lost privilege. 
 But that was not all ; as the law of God 
 was now to be distinctly over, so also the 
 presence of God was to be now discernably 
 with him, which was another quality of Para- 
 dise lost at the fall. Noah had been found 
 righteous, and Abraham an orderer of his 
 house in obedience, and God had spoken and 
 blessed ; but now the nation was in covenant, 
 
Hebrew Law. 217 
 
 and had surrendered to God the best in man, 
 in obedience to His gracious summons. The 
 whole Paradise law was set out for them, and 
 accepted in extensions of form and meaning. 
 Thus one great restoration of the past was 
 gained, and gained in the best form, by an 
 advance towards a future. But what would 
 such a law, so laid down, have been had it 
 remained alone ? Did not its very donation 
 mean Divine presence, commerce, and com- 
 munion? The love of its first table is the 
 love of a Being near and not far off. The 
 love of its second is a fraternity in relation 
 to Him ; the love of a family around its 
 head. Divine presence, therefore, now be- 
 comes a pressing requisite of the theory. 
 
 We have, then, various movements of 
 thought testifying the same way, and soliciting 
 a manifestation of Divine presence. If we 
 believe a law was given in Paradise, there 
 broken, and man in consequence expelled 
 from the presence of God, until then enjoyed, 
 and if we go on to believe that law now to 
 have been again restored, the expectation 
 necessarily follows that the presence of God 
 
 FF 
 
218 Hebrew Law. 
 
 would be restored as well ; restored in com- 
 plex fulness, since the law was both complex 
 and full ; by means of a mediator, since the 
 law was in the hands of a mediator, and 
 surrounded by confessions and cleansings of 
 sin, since in such vouchsafed presence sin 
 must be incessantly purged. 
 
 Again, if we accept as true that this Israel 
 came out of Egypt, where the fable gods were 
 considered to live among the people in shrines, 
 central and accessible, and there to speak and 
 reply ; if we further accept it that this Israel 
 believed themselves brought out by a God 
 shown a stronger and more present help in 
 trouble than the other divinities ; that Israel 
 considered itself led by Him, following Him in 
 action and clustering round Him in rest, can 
 we suppose they would have been satisfied, 
 safe, or powerful for good, without His mani- 
 fested presence among them — a presence they 
 must certainly have expected, desired, and felt 
 necessary ? Or, once more, if we allow this to 
 have been no narrow scheme, but a movement 
 intended to influence the world, was not a real 
 donation of what all men not unreasonably 
 
Hebrew Law. 219 
 
 desired, the very way to impress them most 
 widely ? 
 
 Nor should this be objected to as incom- 
 patible with God's proceedings, for whatever 
 ideas we may please to frame of the powers 
 and fit attributes of the Divine Being, we 
 ought at least to reserve for Him this special 
 prerogative — the right of progressively accom- 
 modating His conduct to the progressing 
 phases of man's inner history — a history in 
 some considerable measure influenced by Him- 
 self; and of speaking and acting in sundry 
 times in diverse manners as the wants of 
 His creatures might require. A man may 
 move alone, but a child needs a constant 
 presence. It is the means not only of 
 security but also of instruction and advance- 
 We do not wonder, then, but it com- 
 mends itself as an authentic utterance when 
 directly the covenant is complete we read — 
 "Let them make me a sanctuary, that I 
 may dwell among them ; " and when we find 
 the reason of it, "I will dwell among the 
 children of Israel, and they shall know that I 
 am the Lord their God ;" and when we find it 
 
220 Hebrew Law. 
 
 described as Jehovah's very purpose in the 
 Exodus, that He brought them forth out of 
 the land of Egypt, that He might dwell among 
 them. The special presence in restrained type 
 with the one nation, being a preliminary of 
 the special presence, in unreserved dona- 
 tion to all nations, by the Holy Spirit in the 
 Gospel, which is the fulfilment of the promise 
 first made to Abraham. 
 
 The hollow square then in the centre of the 
 tents required a chief tent for the presence of 
 the Lord, and He, whose voice in the first 
 Paradise, had been heard walking in the 
 garden in the cool of the day, and who was 
 then hidden from by the disobedient, was now 
 again with His children, and now again made 
 His promise to their beginnings of obedience — 
 " I will set my tabernacle among you, and 
 will walk among you, and will be your God, 
 and ye shall be my people." 
 
 It is very likely that a completer view of 
 psychology may show a revealed presence of 
 God necessary for the very construction of the 
 religious idea, and there are already strong 
 tendencies that way. As regards Judaism 
 
Hebrew Law. 221 
 
 in particular there is no reasonable method of 
 explaining the previous narrative, or the crisis 
 of Moses itself, if we ignore this fact of a 
 revealed presence. Most ingenious speculators 
 are driven to the greatest straits, and in ex- 
 plaining away the results which we believe to 
 come necessarily from this presence of God 
 they invite us to the belief of things much 
 more unlikely. Thus Ewald would have us 
 suppose that the "fundamental thought, the 
 corner-stone of every true religion," viz., "the 
 knowledge of the true deliverer," came to 
 these Israelites alone of all men, and to them 
 in consequence of their deep distress, and that 
 "they sprung up from their despair, and so 
 were the first to become conscious of the 
 might and eternity of man's spirit, and of the 
 true God its eternal refuge." He goes on to 
 say that this "real God, who created the 
 world and works in it, is truly kindred but 
 infinitely superior to us, and that he calls 
 to himself and seeks to deliver his image 
 and noblest creature — man ; " " but that man 
 only is delivered by the Divine grace, pre- 
 venting and calling him, who by his own spirit 
 
222 Hebrew Law. 
 
 enters into this eternal spirit." That when 
 once the whole of this fundamental thought 
 has arisen in one place it can never again 
 perish, but must go on, and in the end over- 
 throw every opposition in the world. That 
 " in all the nations there had not been as yet 
 a single individual who had grasped this idea, 
 or who was willing to take it for his guide." 
 That Moses was the one man who "had a 
 wonderful divine work to do," by laying hold of 
 this " astonishing new thought," and that " no 
 earthly power could frustrate the eternal 
 destiny of a spirit which had this work to do 
 on earth." 
 
 It is in one sense a comforting yet in another 
 a very chastening lesson for all, when we 
 witness the difficulty into which the brightest 
 intelligence is at once thrown in its efforts to 
 cast aside the plain revelation of Scripture, 
 and while rejecting God's way in it to retain 
 God's gifts by it. How totally inconsistent is 
 it, for instance, with the facts set out, to say 
 that Israel was by the very depth of their 
 distress, first illuminated with the idea of the 
 might of man's spirit and of God as its refuge. 
 
Hebrew Law. 223 
 
 We see all through the account that nothing 
 of the sort was the case, but that instead of 
 being a great people, leaping up to lay hold on 
 a high abstraction, they were a very depressed 
 community, constantly declining, craving, and 
 leaning to sense, and with difficulty led along 
 at all. 
 
 Why, too, are we to concede so arbitrary a 
 supposition as that in " that time under Moses 
 infinite truth first cast its bright beam upon 
 the earth ? " Had there not been before then 
 many deep and bitter distresses among men ? 
 Why, if the causation at work be only natural, 
 should sorrow never until then have had on 
 the heart the effect sorrow was appointed to 
 produce? Why, if the spirit, not of the 
 Hebrew only, but of all men, be as described, 
 thus " mighty " and " truly kindred to God " — 
 why should this supposed appointed means of 
 revelation, deep distress, have failed to move 
 the vast mass of sufferers, and yet have pro- 
 duced such an extraordinary effect on a 
 particular handful, "that they would never 
 allow the result to be taken from them?" 
 And why, if this handful were so superior as 
 
224 Hebrew Law. 
 
 assumed (though the assumption is against the 
 facts), and if, as affirmed, the Mosaic includes 
 within it the Christian, "realised through the 
 inherent germinating force of the fundamental 
 idea which then arose, and in its own time 
 necessarily led to it" — why is it that the Jews 
 have so steadily refused to advance and 
 embrace this Christianity, but remain still out- 
 side, misunderstanding both their own position 
 and where it should lead them to, thus being 
 both the only persons who could grasp the 
 grand idea, and also the only ones who could 
 not follow it out ? 
 
 Many such questions might be put, but we 
 will only add one more remark, viz., that it is 
 hardly a generous or dignified conception of 
 the Eternal, to describe Him in one sentence 
 as omnipotent, and as deeply interested in 
 man, and then to go on to describe Him in 
 the next as inflicting distresses, or permitting 
 them through many long generations, and yet 
 not able Himself to initiate relief, but obliged 
 to wait for truth and comfort to come to his 
 creatures, until the very pressure of afflictions 
 had enabled a few of them suddenly to leap 
 
Hebrew Law. 225 
 
 up and touch the idea of Him in their despair, 
 and by slow degrees pass this idea on to the 
 rest of mankind. Why should man with an 
 incessant real want never get a real supply ? 
 Why with a true nature should he be doomed 
 in his highest desires to gain but untruths? 
 For who will persuade us by subtle refinings 
 that a picture we paint is a real person really 
 answering and having more in it than we 
 ourselves put there? Law of nature is the 
 supposed obstacle to divine benevolence in 
 this. If so, nature would itself become the 
 divine, and a harsh divinity too, instead of the 
 clement benefactress we find her. But the first 
 law of nature is a ministration by God to His 
 creatures, adjusted to the character He has 
 given them, and a ready and real supply of 
 our reasonable want. And what want more 
 pressing, we ask, than the want of our souls ? 
 Infinitely grander, more advanced and, even 
 before evidence, nearer to the truth seem to 
 come the descriptions of the Bible, showing a 
 God revealing Himself at the very first sorrow 
 of the first sinner, never deserting His Church, 
 but incessantly with mankind in increasing 
 
 GG 
 
226 Hebrew Law. 
 
 revelation from the patriarchal altars, through 
 the tabernacle and temple, on to the upper 
 room of the Apostles, and giving Himself 
 incessantly in increasing brightness and fulness, 
 only restrained in His devotion by our failing 
 capacity to receive, and ever active and effec- 
 tual in making each truth told, and each 
 manifestation shown, a ground of further 
 advance; never stopping from any stint on 
 His side, but only waiting to bring us on; 
 ever widening His circle of impression ; from 
 the first aiming at and effecting improvements 
 outside the tribes, and seeking to draw man's 
 spirit on to a love and liberality to others, 
 wide in accordance with His own ; a God not 
 sought out but seeking ; " afflicted in all His 
 people's afflictions, the angel of His presence 
 saving them ; in His love and His pity 
 redeeming them ; and bearing and carrying 
 them all the days of old." 
 
 But to return; accepting the truth of the 
 manifested divine presence, so invaluable, and 
 perhaps so demonstrably essential, for any 
 approach to an actual theosophy, we now find 
 ourselves at this point ; where the first man had 
 
Hebrew Law. 227 
 
 stood alone there now the whole people were 
 standing together at the Sinai paradise ground. 
 The law to the one had been but a single 
 command, within which more lay hid ; to 
 them the law was now a code in extension ; a 
 code not only given but also accepted in the 
 covenant blood. Still, however, bounds kept 
 them out from the inner paradise, and their 
 privilege was but initial. Only the chiefs of 
 religion and civil life once in sacrament ; • only 
 the mediator of the present, Moses ; only the 
 mediator of the future, Joshua ; could enter 
 up within. But though man could not go up, 
 God would come down and dwell with men, 
 and be in their midst the centre, leader, and 
 inspirer of their life. Thus even the historical 
 cast of the transactions was itself a grand 
 expression of Gospel purposes, showing before- 
 hand the work of Jesus ; both His leading out 
 His people ; the covenant in His blood ; His 
 ascent into heaven, and the consequent in- 
 dwelling of God the Holy Ghost in the hearts 
 of His people. The whole bringing great 
 restorations in religion and life here, and 
 bringing to Canaan when the wilderness is over. 
 
228 Hebrew Law. 
 
 Nor was this all. We shall presently see 
 that the sanctuary itself, made after patterns 
 given in the mount, and so professedly ex- 
 pressive of divine purpose, was filled in all its 
 parts, and attendant particulars of rite, with 
 echoes and reflections of the same truths, and 
 that while for the times then present it served 
 wonderfully the wants of the people, both for 
 the policies of organisation round its centre 
 and for their training in knowledge of sin and 
 purity, it yet further, and beyond the Israel of 
 that day, had full Gospel meanings for the 
 Israel of Grace, and set out in beautiful 
 harmonies of figure precious realities already 
 moving in heavenly places, and gradually to 
 be revealed in time. 
 
 Such a method of proceeding, if it can be 
 substantiated, at once declares a divine hand, 
 and stamps the system as from above. If it 
 can be shown even probably to exist it claims 
 the most close and devout scrutiny of its 
 pretensions. The Scripture takes up grounds 
 of this anticipatory sort, and fairly rests much 
 on them. In Isaiah the argument is insisted 
 on in three successive chapters,* Jehovah 
 
 * xliv., 7 ; xlv., 21 ; xlvi., 10. 
 
Hebrew Law. 229 
 
 asserting Himself as on Sinai, and claiming to 
 be believed in as the only God, since He alone 
 can " appoint the ancient people," " set in 
 order the things that are coming," "declaring 
 the end from the beginning, and from ancient 
 times the things that are not } r et done." And 
 indeed, the prefigurements by type are even 
 more gratifying, if possible, in this respect, than 
 those by prophecy, for prophecy by its method of 
 expression, directs attention and tends in some 
 measure to attract conformity, but the type 
 contains the truth silently embedded, and till 
 events have come forth it is not seen how- 
 exact an impress of them was long before 
 hieroglyphed on the structures of ancient 
 polity and religion. 
 
 Moses now " gat him up into the mount ; 
 and Moses was in the mount forty days and 
 forty nights." The Lord spake unto him 
 there, giving exact directions, and showing the 
 pattern of the tabernacle and all its instru- 
 ments. From the offerings of the people he 
 was to take materials, and first to make an 
 ark, in which he was to place " the testi- 
 mony " (/.<?., the record on stone of the law of 
 
230 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the ten " words ") which the Lord would give 
 him. Then he was to make a mercy seat, with 
 cherubim, and place it upon the ark, the 
 testimony being inside. This was the first 
 essential. 
 
 After this Moses was to make a special 
 table, " to set upon it shew bread before the 
 Lord alway." Next he was to make a golden 
 candlestick, a shaft and six branches, seven 
 lamps in all, and " look thou make them after 
 their pattern, which was shewed thee in the 
 mount." The making of these three things 
 being provided for with exact and minute 
 care, next are given particular instructions for 
 every detail of the curtains and boarding of 
 the tent which was to contain them, and " thou 
 shalt rear up the tabernacle according to the 
 fashion thereof, which was shewed thee in the 
 mount." 
 
 Then he was to make a veil to divide 
 between " the holy place and the most holy," 
 and to place the mercy seat upon the ark in 
 the most holy place within the veil, and then 
 outside the veil he was to set the table on the 
 north side, and the candlestick over against it 
 
Hebrew Law. 231 
 
 on the south side. Then he was to make 
 hangings for the door of the tabernacle, to 
 enclose it and its contents within it. At this 
 point is completed the first idea of the taber- 
 nacle, and the subject passes on to matters 
 outside. It will be observed that the incense 
 altar had not yet been named, but occurs later 
 in another relationship. 
 
 Scripture indicates that both in the above 
 and in other incidents a whole system of typi- 
 cally figured truths lies embedded. Nor, indeed, 
 is this more than would be expected. As soon 
 as it is once allowed that the Almighty did, in 
 fact, reveal to the one community, on behalf 
 of the entire human race, with most minute 
 particularity of detail and pattern, and under 
 circumstances of impressive dignity, a series of 
 directions for the conduct and machinery of 
 worship, enjoining very strict adherence to 
 them, so soon the inference almost necessarily 
 arises that those directions must have wider 
 and deeper connections than appear on their 
 surface. 
 
 The question is how shall these connections 
 be put together? We have in the New 
 
232 Hebrew Law. 
 
 Testament sufficiently definite explanations of 
 the older types to lay open the beginnings of 
 a scale and system of interpretation. The 
 extent to which we may apply this has always 
 been a controversy. On the one hand it has 
 been attempted to confine the province of 
 typology to those Old Testament incidents, 
 which are interpreted in Scripture itself as 
 types ; on the other hand an effort has been 
 made to extend it over the whole surface of 
 the Bible, thus making every part of its 
 development in time a shadow or reflection 
 of the transactions of the eternal world. That 
 some such relation as this may exist is very 
 possible, and indeed to some of us will appear 
 very likely, but the more just choice for our- 
 selves would seem to be to accept the 
 Scripture -interpreted types as a key by which 
 to regulate the value of other related transac- 
 tions in scale with them ; not on the one hand 
 refusing to use them as fruitful of suggestions, 
 not on the other pressing their suggestiveness 
 outside the group and connections to which 
 they belong. 
 
 In applying this mixed method, since inter- 
 
Hebrew Law. 233 
 
 pretations of almost all writers more or less 
 vary, some liberty remains to each of us, and 
 it may be a more useful contribution, without 
 attempting dogmatism, to suggest our own im- 
 pressions rather than to aim at accommoda- 
 tion with a variety of theories more or less at 
 variance among themselves. 
 
 We should begin by remembering that the 
 patriarchal history shows the "ten words" not 
 to be new inventions but old rules, understood 
 and in action among the earlier beginnings of 
 society, and now, under Moses, promulgated 
 afresh with emphatic sanctions. This is so 
 surely true of most of them that it becomes 
 probably true of the remainder, and thus, for 
 instance, one of the strongest inferences for 
 a primeval Sabbath is, that the rule of the 
 Sabbath has place by the side of the other 
 laws in the tables. 
 
 As these rules are not new so again they 
 are not arbitrary. Far otherwise ; they are 
 on reflection seen to be conditions necessary 
 for restoring an interrupted communication 
 with the divine ; not accidentals but essentials 
 for a true religion and life. A " word " of God 
 
 HH 
 
234 Hebrew Law. 
 
 is, in a sense, then, a living power ; a sort of 
 presence of God; a preparation for the pre- 
 sence of " The Word ; " properly, therefore, 
 given immediately by God to man, from mouth 
 to mouth, and from hand to hand ; regarded 
 as the centre of the older revelation, and 
 placed in its ark and innermost shrine. .♦ And, 
 going forth from that sanctuary, this essential 
 gift was to spread itself out over the whole life 
 of the people, both secular and religious, by 
 means of the applied law, saturating that life 
 in all its incidents, and sanctifying it even as 
 Israel was baptised unto Moses in the cloud. 
 
 The divine law in its essence is the divine 
 will, and where the divine will is revealed there 
 the Divine is, and a perfect acceptance and 
 absorption of the law, and identification of self 
 with it, and life in absolute accordance and 
 submission to it would mean in other words 
 this — the presence of the Divine Spirit, in 
 continuing possession and power in and over 
 the inner life. Had it therefore been possible 
 to frame a law which should have been both 
 fully expressive of the Divine, and which also 
 could have been fully accepted and obeyed by 
 
Hebrew Law. 235 
 
 men, such might possibly have been the way 
 of salvation. But that, alas ! could never 
 happen among us, for " the law " which, being 
 in essence divine, cannot deflect from its truth, 
 "is spiritual, but we are carnal, sold under 
 sin," and so, though itself holy and just, and 
 good, it meets in the members another law 
 warring with it. And this depravation is 
 universally admitted in the very structure of 
 all human laws, which are aimed merely to be 
 preventive and remedial, leaving good to be 
 its own reward. Theorists, too, are clearly 
 convinced of this. Thus Locke, after picturing 
 what he calls a natural state of society, fancies 
 that we were quickly driven from it to laws and 
 government " by the corruption and degene- 
 racy of men."* 
 
 The commandment, therefore, though or- 
 dained to life, could not give " life and peace," 
 " in that it was weak through the flesh," and 
 the devout soul found it writing against him 
 sentences of death, and these pains and con- 
 victions of conscience brought in by means of 
 the Law, that is both by its deeper principles 
 
 * 'On Government,' II., 9. 
 
236 Hebrew Law. 
 
 and by its plain applications in their society, 
 shewed them disease, and called for and 
 caused them to cast about for its remedy; 
 which remedy sacrificial offerings provided in 
 a way for the time then being, and " therefore 
 almost all things are by the law purged by 
 blood, and without shedding of blood, is no 
 remission." That is to say, these " patterns of 
 things in the heavens," which were shown to 
 Moses in the mount, were purified with a 
 pattern of the actual sacrifice. They being 
 constantly offered in typical expiation of the 
 sins of the people, expressed beforehand the 
 eternal transaction by which " Christ was 
 offered to bear the sins of many." 
 
 The law, then, being thus in its essence 
 divine — being indeed in a sense a divine 
 presence, as well as power, among them — 
 should properly occupy the first and central 
 place in their system, assuming that system to 
 be really itself divine. The Hebrew arrange- 
 ments, therefore, at this point exactly fulfil the 
 needed requirements. 
 
 Again, the true and final dwelling place of 
 the divine in law being not in the book of 
 
Hebrew Law. 237 
 
 precise legislative enactment, which, while a 
 conduit, is a limitation and restraint of its 
 energies, but in the conscience and inner life, 
 cardinal principles, and not codified rules, 
 should be the essential primary expression of 
 it. This requirement, also, we find is met in 
 the Hebrew system. Further, it is con- 
 ceivable that there may be still more delicate 
 and deeper truths, requiring delineation and 
 finding it in the incidents of this transac- 
 tion. If law to be a vital saving power, 
 require to be impressed by God Himself, 
 and not merely upon the external but in 
 the very inner nature, then the circumstance 
 of the principles of the law of twofold duty 
 being written in the material tables by the 
 very personal contact of God may be deeply 
 significant, and it may even be possible that 
 the doubling of this circumstance by so giving 
 the tables twice, may reflect the facts of the 
 law first so given to Adam, and broken at the 
 very threshold of society, and then a second 
 time given again upon tables provided from 
 the humanity of Jesus, and written in and 
 filled by the Spirit. 
 
238 Hebrew Law. 
 
 And the same may be further shadowed, or 
 first expressed in a higher phase by this law 
 dwelling incessantly in an ark, which ark was 
 to be made the first thing of all, and to come 
 from man's side as the law did from God's, 
 and to be beautified with decorations of worth 
 and purity, and this material receptacle, and 
 the divine law ever resident within it, were to 
 be taken into the very holiest place of all, 
 even as Jesus Christ himself is gone into the 
 heavens, and in every typical march and 
 movement it was not the law nor the ark, but 
 the ark with the law in it, as one united 
 presentment, which was to head them, even as 
 in all progression of the Church, we believe 
 ourselves headed by the divine, contained in 
 the personality and incorporated with the 
 humanity of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The question next arises whether we are to 
 regard the mercy seat as distinct from, or as 
 completing the idea of the ark, and the Scrip- 
 ture leads us to adopt the latter view. In 
 Exodus xl. 3, Moses is only told to put in the 
 inner tabernacle " the ark of the testimony," 
 but in verse 20-21, we find that in obeying 
 
Hebrew Law. 239 
 
 this he " put the testimony into the ark, and 
 put the mercy seat above upon the ark, and he 
 brought the ark into the tabernacle." Again, 
 when the opposite process is going on in 
 Numbers iv. 5, we have, " they shall take 
 down the covering veil and cover the ark of 
 testimony with it." The mercy seat then 
 appears to be treated as part of the idea of the 
 ark. 
 
 In interpreting the mercy seat in accordance 
 with the above scale, it may possibly be 
 regarded as expressing the sacrificial aspects 
 of the work and person of Christ. The term 
 WaoTripiov, the LXX. equivalent of "mercy 
 seat," is in Romans iii. 25, applied to Christ, 
 " whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation 
 through faith in His blood." And this mercy 
 seat aspect of Christ is regarded there as the 
 very axis of reconciliation and harmony be- 
 
 « 
 
 tween those divine attributes expressed by the 
 enactments, and those other divine attributes 
 expressed by the offerings, viz., that God 
 might be "just, and the justifier of him that 
 believeth in Jesus." 
 
 Further, the mercy seat may, in accordance 
 
240 Hebrew Law. 
 
 with the above idea, be regarded as the 
 meeting point of the superhuman intelligences, 
 expressed by the Cherubim ; of the visible 
 creation, as summed up in the divine man- 
 hood ; and of the manifestation of the Supreme, 
 as mystically present on the Shechinah cloud 
 between the Cherubim. Thus, then, we 
 should have the idea of Christ's divine 
 humanity in the tables ; next the ad- 
 vancing idea of Christ's glorified humanity in 
 the tables within the ark ; and this, with its 
 " covering," enshrined within the veil of the 
 invisible world, and serving as a meeting point 
 and centre of union and communion between 
 God and His creatures, through the prelimi- 
 nary condition of sacrifice. 
 
 It is laid down for us that the act of the high 
 priest entering once a year with the blood, and 
 sprinkling it on, or rather, as the Jews hold, 
 in front of the ark, is in itself a distinct repre- 
 sentation of the one sacrifice, with the merits 
 of which the Saviour has entered into the 
 invisible heaven on our behalf. But it need 
 not be necessarily supposed that the mysteries 
 of the holy of holies stop short at expressing 
 
Hebrew Law. 241 
 
 how heaven is opened. They may further 
 typify the results of its being opened, and 
 figure the policy which in the New Testament 
 (Eph. i.) is described to be, "that in the 
 fulness of times He might gather together 
 in one all things in Christ, both which are in 
 heaven and which are on earth." Nor would 
 it detract from the typical propriety of this 
 that Christ should also, in another relation, be 
 described typically as once a year an oiferer 
 within the same place. Such combinations 
 are not uncommon ; indeed, it is generally 
 allowed that he is in some senses victim, priest, 
 and altar, and in the very transaction just 
 referred to he is both the victim offered, the 
 scape-goat released, and also the high priest 
 sprinkling the blood. It may then well be 
 that he is further figured as the eternal station 
 of placability, in which the whole transaction 
 completes itself, and is carried out to its fullest 
 end. 
 
 There is little or nothing, perhaps, in such a 
 view which we should regard with hesitation. 
 Lightfoot, in treating on the contents of the 
 inner sanctuary, well says: " Hanc partem 
 
 1 i 
 
242 Hebrew Law. 
 
 bene attende et plene videbis Christum."* 
 Indeed, if we admit the altar at the door to be 
 a direct type of Christ in part of his ministry, 
 an admission which is general, it would seem 
 unreasonable to deny that the ark, law, mercy 
 seat, and cherubim in the most sacred centre 
 of the shrine, have no corresponding direct 
 reference to Christ. In concluding, then, we 
 may adopt in part the sentiment of a writer of 
 the beginning of the last century.f Solomon 
 making all things new, made no new ark ; for 
 though ordinances and administrations may 
 change, there can be no new Christ. As there 
 is one God so there is one Christ, the same 
 yesterday, to-day, and for ever. As the ark 
 led Israel, so Christ leads us; as the ark 
 defeated Dagon, so Christ defeats Satan for 
 us; as Eli died of grief when the ark was 
 taken, and the Bethshemites rejoiced ex- 
 ceedingly when they saw it returned, so Christ 
 present is our joy — Christ absent our distress 
 and decline. Like Christ, and because like 
 Christ, the ark is the throne of grace (Heb. iv.), 
 the manifestation of glory (Ezek. i. 9, 10.) 
 
 * Lightfoot in Exod. xxxvii. f Mather. 
 
Hebrew Law. 243 
 
 and the speaking point of God. The mercy 
 seat expresses Christ's passive submission and 
 satisfaction (Rom. iii. 25 ; 1 John, 2-3). The 
 law his active obedience — " Thy law is within 
 my heart" (Ps. xl. 8). The Cherubim on 
 the ark minister to him (Ezek. i; Is. vi. 2), 
 and look towards the mysteries of the gospel 
 (1 Pet. i. 12) held forth by the Church (Eph. 
 iii. 10). See, then, the fulness of supply that 
 is in Christ Jesus. Two things an enlightened 
 conscience calls for — I cannot keep the law, 
 and yet I want a perfect legal righteousness to 
 appear before God in. Therefore Christ hath 
 done it. Here is the law kept in the ark — 
 " He hath fulfilled all righteousness." Again, 
 I want a propitiation for sins committed. 
 Therefore a mercy seat is upon the ark, for 
 Christ hath not only kept the law himself but 
 satisfied for our breakings of it. 
 
244 Hebrew Law. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The tabernacle was to be the dwelling place 
 of the Lord among His people. The divine 
 presence, so far as specially localised, was to 
 be within its veil, resting unseen in the most 
 holy place. In the second sanctuary alone, 
 outside this veil, worship was to be constantly 
 carried on by the priests of the dispensation. 
 The whole idea and manner of this arrange- 
 ment was to be invaluable to Israel. By its 
 donations and withholdings, its expressions 
 and suggestions alike, it would give to their 
 religion all the vivid impress of reality, which 
 heathenism had aimed at producing, while 
 it would at the same time depreciate, and with- 
 draw the false and dangerous imagery by which 
 heathenism had worked for its purpose. It 
 would thus gain for times previous to the out- 
 pouring of the Holy Spirit, distinct objective 
 expressions on these vital points of God's 
 presence and providence, unseen, intangible, 
 and yet fully real ; and in doing so. instead of 
 
Hebrew Law. 245 
 
 compromising the spirituality of later religion 
 it would actually prepare for it. 
 
 While the fact of a God so really, directly, 
 and continuously present, was a gift to believers 
 in advance even of the pretensions of idolatrous 
 systems, and while the very mystery of the 
 presence was a perpetual disparagement of 
 idolatrous methods, one thing alone would 
 be wanting to make the tabernacle eminently 
 missionary to communities beyond the tribes, 
 viz., that the claims of its God should be sub- 
 stantiated and emphasised by works of power, 
 so as to do away with any suspicion or charge 
 that the invisible was but the unreal by 
 another name, and so as to establish the 
 divinity presiding over this new system as an 
 actual force in affairs. This concession appears 
 so useful, nay, so essentially requisite, for the 
 purpose of setting and keeping the machinery 
 of the plan in motion, that at once we incline 
 to say, if allowable under any circumstances, 
 then, most certainly, at this special point a 
 series of marvels seems allowable and impera- 
 tively called for, as a necessary link in the 
 chain of providences, by which the world 
 
246 Hebrew Law. 
 
 would have to be won at once back and 
 onward ; and, instead of appearing gratuitous 
 or superfluous, such a series may well be 
 regarded as a fit and economical expenditure 
 of force. 
 
 All this, however, is a subject of proof else- 
 where. It is referred to here merely to solicit 
 tolerance in any questioning mind, on behalf 
 of the august and beneficial truth of a substan- 
 tial divine presence resident in the Hebrew 
 Shrine. Here it may be sufficient to say this : 
 if an outer revelation of God be, as we have 
 seen, a necessity for mankind, then such reve- 
 lation must at any rate have two qualities — 
 first, it must be suitable to the men who 
 receive it ; secondly, it must be suitable to the 
 God who gives it, that is, it must first be con- 
 sistent with the antecedents, actual condition, 
 and coming prospects of the people ; and, 
 secondly, it must accord with the principles of 
 the divine plan, promote the divine work, and 
 agree with the divine character. If we can 
 show this in the Hebrew system, we show 
 enough : for after all, when men object to the 
 marvellous among" that people, do they not in 
 
Hebrew Law. 247 
 
 fact, by their very objection, prove the mar- 
 vellous to be right ? For what is in reality 
 their meaning but this — that it appears fit to 
 them God should act in a way they expect and 
 are prepared to receive as appropriate. And 
 is not that just the very thing He in fact did 
 among the Hebrews whose expectations He 
 fulfilled, and so was received by them? In 
 the general principle there is no disagreement 
 between the parties. God has, indeed, done 
 just what the objector said should be done. 
 There is only a disagreement in the application 
 of the principle: the objector requiring that 
 all infant and early ages of the world should 
 be treated in the way quite appropriate to his 
 own most refined age, and quite inappropriate 
 to them, which would be unreasonable and 
 also inoperative. 
 
 God, we may venture to think, will have 
 sufficiently conciliated the mind of later times, 
 when He exhibits within His ancient plans, 
 fitted for the then present an admirable 
 internal order of premonitions fitted to exer- 
 cise the utmost ingenuity of ourselves, and to 
 satisfy any reasonable questionings of ours by 
 
248 Hebrew Law. 
 
 making it clearly seen, now, how He has been 
 " declaring the end from the beginning, and 
 from ancient times, the things that are not 
 done." For, indeed, proofs of this sort, when 
 multiplied and linked in together, to the 
 immense extent we find in Scripture, coming 
 up, joining and interlacing incessantly in all 
 sorts of ways, are quite as mentally wonderful 
 in our time as the physical wonder was in 
 theirs, and as fitted for our state as that was 
 for them. 
 
 In short the Bible is itself the master 
 miracle. As such, like other miracles, it has 
 been incessantly but in vain attacked ; as such 
 it is a conclusively evidencing witness on the 
 revelations of God. Whatever one may argue 
 of particular marvels there stands the whole 
 Book itself an undoubted reality, and in some 
 way or other to be accounted for by our age. 
 One may object, as has been done so often, 
 that miracles are not in accordance with what 
 one sees of natural order in the world around ; 
 but, assuming this the case, and assuming it 
 conclusive if it be the case, (neither of which 
 concessions, however, could in reality be 
 
Hebrew Law. 249 
 
 made), still we have before us the Bible itself. 
 Where can another work be shown con- 
 structed under the same difficult conditions ; 
 representing different ages ; flowing through 
 different minds, mouths, and pens ; taking- 
 different points of view ; treating different 
 affairs; recording different processes, and yet 
 in all its parts speaking by many expressions 
 the same things, and working always effectually 
 towards one result, and in accordance with 
 one set of principles, and these principles, too, 
 but very partially embraced by its actors, and 
 the full finalities of its plan in a great measure, 
 if not altogether, hid away from them ? 
 
 The Book itself, we say, is the first miracle 
 to be encountered by our time, because the 
 one especially addressed to it. Before dealing 
 with the fancied difficulties of others we must 
 dispose of our own : before coming to the 
 particular objection on the wonders for an 
 infant age, which wonders such an age we 
 know would insist on having, we must answer 
 this other wonder intended for ourselves, viz., 
 the general construction, continuance, and 
 pow r er of the Bible. Until that is reasonably, 
 
 KK 
 
250 Hebrew Law. 
 
 fully, and philosophically done, and with 
 allowance of the widest issues, it is premature 
 to cavil at special particulars. Until it is done 
 the orthodox believer may, on the fair habits 
 of controversy, claim that the narrative shall 
 be taken in its integrity as it stands, and serve, 
 as it has always hitherto done, with such 
 immense advantages as the basis of morals, 
 faith, and hope. 
 
 We come then, again, to the tabernacle of 
 the Hebrews, where the Lord unseen resides 
 in wonders and in regarding it, since the things 
 enacted among the tribes were not for them- 
 selves only, but for a future and wider Israel 
 as well, their sanctuary we may expect will 
 have meanings not only for them but also for 
 all the Church. 
 
 This general completeness and comprehen- 
 siveness of the design begins perhaps to find 
 expression in the very proportions of the 
 structure where we find multiples of three 
 repeatedly arranged in cubes ; the marked 
 figures, " three " and " four," bringing in the 
 " seven " expressive of mystical completeness. 
 The inner unseen sanctuary, it is allowed, ex- 
 
Hebrew Law. 251 
 
 presses the sacred realities of the invisible 
 heaven, where none ever enters save the 
 typical high priest alone, and that, in such 
 completed period, but once for all. 
 
 The outer sanctuary, where the priests 
 stand daily ministering, expresses therefore by 
 proportionate relation the Church visible and 
 conditioned in time. To this from the inner 
 sanctuary, where divine presence, processes, 
 and results reside in mystety, may it not well 
 be that there pass out, in figure as in fact, 
 through the veil two effluences. The first of 
 these, because repeatedly the first placed in 
 the lists, will be the "pure table," with its 
 twelve loaves, representing the nationality of 
 Israel in its twelve tribes, and, again, more 
 widely representing renewed society at large in 
 its civil aspects ; and these twelve arranged in 
 two groups of six, even as borne by the high- 
 priest by their very names on his shoulders, 
 and so the whole of this society, shown as 
 presented, by means of the religious work in 
 hand, before the Lord, and constantly sup- 
 ported and maintained by Him in that attitude 
 and state ; a renovation of the whole occurring 
 
252 Hebrew Law. 
 
 at each period of refreshment in the Sabbath 
 rest, and then a special incense of praise going 
 up and in, from earth to heaven, the whole an 
 offering "most holy," and rendered so through 
 the agency of the one high priest, by whom it 
 gains sanctification, and acceptance from within 
 the veil. 
 
 Secondly, and over against the shew bread on 
 the other or south side of the accessible taber- 
 nacle, stands the lamp with seven branches ; a 
 number, may be, representing, first, Israel in 
 its religious development, and then more fully 
 the Church at large, the light of the world by 
 the Spirit of Christ which is in it ; and these 
 branches lighted and trimmed, and supplied 
 with oil, accepted and sanctified, and all 
 this still carried on by the high priest, who 
 is typical of Christ, even as before the shew 
 bread was accepted and ordered, and offered 
 by him. The whole thus expressing Christ, 
 acting in the outer visible sphere, ordering 
 and sustaining and blessing incessantly from 
 the heaven unseen, both civil society and 
 religious life, and imparting to them the 
 gifts of the two tables ; that is, the realisa- 
 
Hebrew Law. 253 
 
 tions of religious and social duties, which are 
 both written and for ever kept within his 
 own self, and which from him are to pass out 
 by the Spirit into his two-fold organisation ; 
 so that by the keeping his sayings, his and his 
 Father's presence is attained, and men without 
 are drawn into the unity within, and religion 
 and life, even outside, the veil, are already 
 " most holy " unto the Lord. 
 
 As previously hinted, the incense altar docs 
 not occur next in order of thought, but at this 
 point the theory, after giving significant direc- 
 tions for the construction of the tabernacle 
 itself, passes outside to that which now 
 becomes pressingly important, the altar of 
 burnt-offerings placed before its door. 
 
 At the very door of the sanctuary stood 
 the one sufficient four-square altar of all Israel, 
 the only place of atonement ; the blood of 
 which was the means and occasion of entrance 
 within. It was stationed there by divine 
 appointment, and thus this great patriarchal 
 agency of worship, introducing and giving 
 occasion for the added developments of 
 Hebraism, expresses the continuous unity of 
 
254 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the general system, and shows that in its plan 
 the substantial meanings of the past had to be 
 gathered up as additions to the future, so that 
 while on the one hand typical anticipations 
 have prevented the evangelical from being 
 altogether new, evangelical elements have 
 prevented the old from becoming altogether 
 obsolete. 
 
 But this altar thus placed by divine com- 
 mand showed more than this. While the 
 ritual revealed from the mount at first left the 
 great periodical festivals, as of more national 
 significance, to their place in the "judgments," 
 the sacrifice ordered in the actual primary 
 revelation in the mount itself is the simplest, 
 most primeval, and yet fullest expression of 
 the rite — one lamb of the first year every 
 morning, and one lamb of the first year every 
 evening ; " this shall be a continual burnt- 
 offering throughout your generations, at the 
 door of the tabernacle of the congregation, 
 before the Lord," thus most emphatically 
 collecting the whole idea from the offering of 
 Abel to the copious imagery of the Book 
 of Revelation, and placing it as an essen- 
 
Hebrew Law. 255 
 
 tial condition at the threshold of the new- 
 system. 
 
 And now it is that passing inwards, along 
 the central line, the directions proceed from 
 the altar of burnt-offerings at the door to the 
 incense altar within the sanctuary, and placed 
 in the very front, before the veil where the 
 high priest was to offer, night and morning, 
 " a perpetual incense before the Lord through- 
 out your generations," thus expressing in 
 symbol the prayers of the visible church, made 
 acceptable after or in relation to the work of 
 atonement on the outer altar, and through it 
 become an eucharistic sacrifice, acceptable in 
 the holiest within ; a " glorifying and giving 
 thanks to the Lord God for his great glory ; " 
 an " offering and presenting of the soul and 
 body to be a reasonable, holy, and lively 
 sacrifice unto Him in Christ," and a prayer 
 that by the death of the lamb the believer and 
 the whole Church might obtain remission of 
 sin, and all other benefits of its typical death : 
 an altar " most holy unto the Lord," to which 
 answers flow back from within on to the 
 twelve-fold shew bread and the seven-fold lamp. 
 
256 Hebrew Law. 
 
 Some consider that from this the idea passes 
 in to the mercy seat, within the veil, to find in 
 that a third and final altar. It may be ques- 
 tioned, however, whether this be the real 
 method of the Scripture. Its utterances seem 
 to go the other way. Thus, in assigning their 
 duty to the Kohathites, in Numbers hi. 31, it 
 says, " And their charge shall be the ark, and 
 the table, and the candlestick, and the altars, 
 and the vessels of the sanctuary," &c, an 
 enumeration which does not include the mercy 
 seat among the altars. 
 
 In one sense it is true the ark and mercy 
 seat may be regarded as an altar : that is, 
 when regarded as representing the work, attri- 
 butes, and position of Christ. But Christ is 
 so far an altar as this, that in Him is complete 
 the fulness of sacrificial values ; he being, as 
 already said, the final realisation of both 
 offerer, priest, victim, and altar. If, then, ever 
 it seems the ark and mercy seat can only be 
 rightly regarded as an altar in the temporary 
 relation, when the high priest enters within 
 the veil, with the blood, on the one day of 
 atonement, for then we shall have together the 
 
Hebrew Law. 257 
 
 one sacrifice once offered, the one presenter of 
 its merits, and the one place, condition, or 
 station of acceptance, viz., that one typically- 
 perfect structure, within which alone dwells 
 for ever the full law, written by the very hand 
 of God, and on which rests for ever, while the 
 angel orders keep guard around, the mysterious 
 presence of the appeased and complacent 
 Divinity. 
 
 At this point let us pause to look back. 
 We have seen that happy law of Paradise, in 
 which duty was merged in love, broken for the 
 sake of self. From that time we have seen 
 self usurping power, until the earth was filled 
 with violence and bloodshed, and some mighty 
 individual self subdued all others around under 
 a tyranny. These others, selfish also, lost by 
 degrees the power of looking up in love to the 
 holy God, and fell into a state in which reflec- 
 tions of self's own passions and ideas served 
 self for deity. 
 
 To bring the world back from social miseries 
 thus aggravated by the miseries of false reli- 
 gion, God, moving on in His work, called forth 
 a man unselfish enough to leave country and 
 
 LL 
 
258 Hebrew Law. 
 
 kin, and all near prospects and ties, trusting 
 in an unseen Being, and in the promise 
 of an unknown future. Thus Abraham long 
 lived free, apart from the corrupted rulers 
 of this world, except when at intervals he 
 was shown as their superior. He lived con- 
 sciously in the presence of the one God, 
 and he pleaded before Him the sacrifice 
 of the ancient rite. His descendants of the 
 third generation were led down to face the 
 greatest tyranny and most elaborated idolatry 
 of the age, and after many and long vicissitudes 
 they were brought out in great strength, the 
 nucleus of a nation, illustrious by a brilliant 
 success over tyrant and idol, under a leader, 
 Moses, who proclaimed Abraham's God as 
 their ruler and their sole worship. 
 
 This extraordinary revival, thus launched in 
 the world was at the outset secured by a 
 written charter of freedom and faith, viz., one 
 God for unselfish worship ; one fraternity 
 of neighbours for unselfish offices of duty. 
 Capacities lying hid in the future, yet fit to be, 
 to some extent, set out at the time, were 
 expressed in it by such prophetic method as 
 
Hebrew Law. 259 
 
 was adapted for the day, and while the 
 arrangements of the commonwealth may have 
 hinted the prospects of society, the ritual of 
 the tabernacle clearly seems to have marked 
 the coming development of religion. In its 
 inmost shrine resided the embodied law of 
 unselfishness, forming the central point for 
 men and angels, and over which the divine 
 presence forfeited in paradise once more 
 smiled. The powers of this inner law, which 
 had come from heaven on the mount, and 
 returned to heaven in the tabernacle ark, 
 flowed forth from the shrine to sanctify the 
 nation as a community and as a Church, by 
 their virtue applied through divine grace, 
 while the sacrifice, ever one from the earliest 
 times, though increasing in expressiveness as 
 the system expanded, being offered as the 
 entrance of their worship, led the soul on 
 through connecting prayer to the very presence 
 of Jehovah. 
 
 In the midst of these mysteries was to move 
 a single figure of extraordinary dignity and 
 importance, the high priest ; a personage sanc- 
 tified and set apart in perpetuity ; consecrated 
 
260 Hebrew Law. 
 
 by elaborate rites ; the prime mover in every 
 ceremonial ; the recipient, preparer and dis- 
 penser of the grace given, given back, and given 
 again in constant reflux, as expressed by 
 sacred oil, ointment, and incense ; the sacrificer, 
 and the presenter in the holy and inmost places 
 of the merits of the sacrifice. The tenour of 
 the Scripture does not place him before us as 
 merely the head of a priestly caste or college, 
 but rather all priesthood is summed up in him, 
 and the work of his subordinates is but the 
 reduplication or detail of some of his functions. 
 It is as if the account were labouring to explain 
 to us that in the minutely cared for array of 
 varied mysteries, the movement of the whole 
 was entrusted to one, and to one alone, who 
 could pass from the altar of sacrifice, through 
 the altar of prayer, into the very secret recesses 
 hallowed by the divine presence. 
 
 Account for it as we may it is difficult to 
 conceive a more effective and admirable repre- 
 sentation of "the great high -priest that is 
 passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of 
 God," than is afforded by this preliminary 
 official. His very garments are elaborately 
 
Hebrew Law. 261 
 
 cared for, and all parts of them lend them- 
 selves to carry on the symbolism of his 
 office, expressing his sacrificial, prophetic, and 
 governing functions, and showing in figure, by 
 the ordering of their tribes in threes on the 
 breastplate, how, in the heart of the " great 
 high priest," are safely written the spiritual 
 interests of his people. Showing, also, by the 
 arrangement of their names, in two sixes, on 
 the shoulder-pieces of the ephod, (the same 
 order as in the shewbread,) how the govern- 
 ment of their temporal interests is borne 
 upon his shoulders. Besides this, still further 
 emphasis is given to his status, by the elaborate 
 and significant ritual of his consecration and 
 purifications, which both impress with the idea 
 of the inadequacy of the man himself, and of 
 the greatness of the mysteries among which he 
 is called to officiate. 
 
 To speak generally, this whole revelation of 
 ritual is an adaptation of the first table in 
 accordance with the religious wants of the time, 
 and as it concludes with a renewal of the com- 
 mand to keep the Sabbath, we thus seem to 
 have, in an incidental way, a corroboration of 
 
262 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the view that the fourth commandment is the 
 concluding one of the first table. On the 
 Sabbath, which is first marked as the expres- 
 sive period of repose, and most fitly so, as it 
 recurs with most beneficent frequency, there is 
 to be rest ; rest for all ; rest in relation to the 
 divine rest ; rest in the Lord, round his sanc- 
 tuary and in emphatic reduplication of his 
 sacrifice. The very idea of it is so associated 
 with the holiest aspects of life, that the very 
 command to keep it with strict observance- 
 sounds almost less like an injunction of duty 
 than a pledge of promise that the issue of the 
 plan should be a restoration from the world's 
 maladies, and a better return to the once 
 forfeited Eden. 
 
 It may be an assumption to say such a 
 system as this, braced up and compacted like 
 its own tabernacle, by an immense number of 
 minutely fitting parts, needed but to become 
 known to benefit the world, by competing 
 with its gross idolatries on the one hand, and 
 with its chimerical philosophies on the other. 
 But, at any rate, a most ingenious set of arrange- 
 ments, a most happy combination of circum- 
 
Hebrew Law. 263 
 
 stances, or some cause or other, has, as a matter 
 of fact, secured for this religious system the 
 widest publicity among the most enlightened 
 nations, and it has in reality had among them, 
 in an amazing degree, the effects of checking 
 men's selfishness, and promoting their social 
 prosperity and religious elevation. From them 
 it has spread into other affiliated nations, 
 until the state of affairs begins to show it 
 not improbable that some day the system of 
 the Hebrews, with the religion of Jesus based 
 on it, will predominate over the whole world, 
 and the ancient prospect be fulfilled that the 
 kingdoms of the earth shall become the king- 
 dom of the Lord and of his Christ. 
 
 Scepticism, no doubt, will always make 
 special efforts to discredit this part of Scrip- 
 ture, apparently so easy to attack, and yet 
 essential to the integrity of our system. But 
 this weakness is only apparent. The more we 
 walk round about it, and regard its bulwarks, 
 the more shall we find how, like the smooth 
 grass-grown slopes of a fortress, the Mosaic 
 covenant has strength within strength, and an 
 underlying system of complete defences. The 
 
264 Hebrew Law. 
 
 difficulties of doubt repeat themselves age after 
 age, as do also the replies of belief. And, 
 though both of them take forms of expression 
 from the quality of the time, both in substance 
 remain unchanged. The scepticism which 
 has never prevailed against us we may be 
 confident never will, and though always 
 advancing as to a final victory, it will still, as 
 of old, have to recede discomfited. 
 
 Such philosophy, indeed, can only offer us 
 its own heroes instead of ours. But what can 
 be said in comparison with our religion to 
 authority like theirs, so transient and so 
 soon discredited ? Only what Origen said to 
 Celsus, that while the teachers he would set 
 up had given no instruction or laws which had 
 proved useful to a single tribe, a whole nation 
 scattered through the world, still gave obe- 
 dience to Moses: that while the writings of 
 his proposed teachers soon passed into neglect, 
 the laws of Moses had stirred up many, even 
 aliens to the manners of the Jews, to believe 
 that, as the writings testify, the first who 
 enacted these laws, and delivered them to 
 Moses, was the Creator of the world. " For," 
 
Hebrew Law. 265 
 
 added he, " it became the Creator of the 
 Universe, after laying down laws for its 
 government, to confer upon his words a power 
 which might subdue all men in every part of 
 the earth." 
 
 MM 
 
266 Hebrew Law. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Faith not merely leads to, but likewise 
 results from, a changed estate. While it 
 extends the prospect, and redirects the foot- 
 steps, it does so because insight is cleared and 
 energy invigorated. It brings in a realisation 
 of freedom, through conceptions and move- 
 ments of freedom, but only because a germ of 
 freedom has preceded all. In this power of 
 faith the Hebrews, as Eusebius allows of them, 
 were inferior to their ancestors. Instead of 
 the open hills they had been in the straitness 
 of Egypt. Instead of the altar to Jehovah 
 they had been among the fanes, ritual and 
 images of legendary gods, while the predomi- 
 nant personality of Pharoah had been stationed 
 in front of all their outer activities. 
 
 The pure results of evangelical faith seem 
 less attainable by persons so conditioned, and 
 to secure reception by them of its deposits, it 
 would appear imperatively needful to bring 
 out a man for them into a prominence counter- 
 
Hebrew Law. 267 
 
 balancing the idea of Pharoah ; to bring out a 
 cultus for them, competing in expressiveness 
 with what they had long had before them, and 
 to reveal the realities of heaven in some sort of 
 proportion to the pretentions of the familiar 
 shrines. All this had now actually been done, 
 and both the fact and the manner of its doing 
 furnish admirable testimonials to the divine 
 origin of that wisdom which has presided over 
 the transactions of Scripture. 
 
 In the midst, however, of the series of 
 supports there is suddenly found occurring a 
 stone of stumbling, and not unfitly, for without 
 a moral test how can moral action advance ? 
 Without analogies of circumstance how can 
 the wider conditions of the future church be 
 foreshadowed? Prepared for, though it was, 
 by many assuring incidents, guarded by the 
 best arrangements possible, and presided over 
 by a divine apparition in the Mount, still, 
 notwithstanding all, the withdrawal and dis- 
 appearance of Moses for the complete periodic 
 space of forty days was no doubt in the nature 
 of a trial to Israel. It may have been neces- 
 sary for his own establishment ; it may have 
 
268 Hebrew Law. 
 
 been an indirect promotion through after 
 humiliations for the people themselves ; it 
 may have been the only way of passing the 
 divine mysteries into the human consciousness, 
 and it may have been typically requisite as an 
 expression of the larger dealings to come, but 
 still a sort of trial it undoubtedly was, and 
 under it the Hebrews failed. 
 
 Their transactions had been so far patently 
 in the hands of the mediator,* and when he 
 disappeared they probably thought him slain 
 among the thunders, and lost for ever. Nor 
 was such terror altogether unnatural in them, 
 since in relapses, especially in early ones, men 
 return all the way back to their old state. 
 Danger was in those days usually associated 
 with the divine, " Let us go to sacrifice to 
 Jehovah our God," pleaded Moses to Pharaoh, 
 " lest he fall upon us with pestilence or the 
 sword." " Speak thou with us and we will 
 hear," had said the people, " but let not God 
 speak with us lest we die." And among the 
 heathen this heiaihmfxotia carried to excesses of 
 superstition was in itself occasion of many 
 
 * Auguslin, ' Qusest. super Exoduni,' 149. 
 
Hebrew Law. 269 
 
 corruptions. What, then, should be done by 
 Israel in the new emergency ? If the mediator 
 himself was lost, who else could venture up to 
 God ? God, therefore, must be brought down 
 to them by the potent spell of the image, and 
 localised by this familiar expedient in their 
 midst. 
 
 The point at which any special appreciable 
 expression of the divine person, qualities, 
 or gifts occurs is the point of crisis in all 
 religion. That the divine should come down 
 to meet us at such a point seems essential, 
 but the resulting risk is that man, not 
 content to rise by godliness to the real 
 station of meeting, may endeavour to draw 
 down heavenly things still beyond this alto- 
 gether to earth, and while retaining them in 
 hostage for supposed spiritual benefits may 
 continue himself in worldliness. Such has 
 been the case, even in modern religion, and 
 still more so in ancient. The Hebrew is here., 
 as in so many other passages of his career, the 
 typical man, and the events moving around 
 him, the abiding admonition for all. The 
 idolatry, into which he fell back, was an 
 
270 Hebrew Law. 
 
 expression in the most poignant degree of this 
 complete reversal of the conditions of the 
 inner life. Its outer forms and corrupt cultus 
 symbolised and illustrated it, and the creed, 
 conduct, and society of its votaries carried it out. 
 
 Several subtle qualities in our nature and 
 position seem to make inevitable this result, 
 which experience has shown to be invariable, 
 viz., that when men have brought down the 
 idea and expression of God among them, by 
 such forcible expedients, they will have also 
 brought many evils and cares, and will fall 
 into a state charged with recurring and in- 
 creasing difficulties. It was in regard to these 
 difficulties the Hebrews were to be seen 
 labouring, subdued, and rescued, that through 
 them the warning and rescue might be extended 
 to all nations. And this was to be achieved 
 by a prolonged experiment of extraordinary 
 ingenuity. The plan was to preserve and 
 invigorate the central system of sacrifice, so as 
 to give advancing point, value and complexity 
 to its meanings, which were by and by to 
 culminate in the grandest crisis. 
 
 The plan was further to model life in such 
 
Hebrew Law. 271 
 
 a close organisation, and by such a strict rule, 
 that each one of the incidents of depressed 
 society, and idolatrous habit and superstition, 
 should be in turn assailed and outlawed. It 
 was to call forth a noble series of heroic inci- 
 dents, which should enlist national enthusiasm 
 and patriotic spirit on its side, and which 
 should also contain within them the arranged 
 resemblance to still higher personages and still 
 wider events. It was to appeal to the strong 
 impulses of interest on behalf of property and 
 family guaranteed by it; most extraordinary 
 of all, it was actually to take the very colours 
 off the idolator's palette ; to draw with them a 
 true portraiture of the divine, so that at last 
 this dangerous depravity was, like a drug in 
 the physician's hand, to be forced into salutary 
 combinations — we mean, that by a most saga- 
 cious arrangement of similarities and dis- 
 similarities the law generally, and especially 
 the legislation of the tabernacle and ritual, 
 was to cull in the very field of Zoan a 
 civilisation and worship which were to be 
 the most powerful antidote to tyranny and 
 idolatry, and the happiest introduction to 
 
272 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the expanding life and religion of the better 
 future.* 
 
 Such was to be the redemption, and like 
 the meter of the rising Nile, the method fitly- 
 first indicates the lower state of man. The 
 people in a mass come upon Aaron and 
 demand an idol. His authority it seems they 
 felt would be necessary to translate Jehovah 
 into this baser presence. If so, his responsi- 
 bility in yielding was increased. He gave 
 way to them, and laboured in the work. They 
 accepted the divinity of the image, identified 
 it with their wonder-working patron, hitherto 
 unseen, and Aaron proclaimed for it " a feast 
 to the Lord." Burnt-offerings and peace- 
 offerings were sacrificed, and then there was a 
 sacrificial meal and, as idolatry ever needs, a 
 passage of licence. 
 
 This was a quick turning aside out of the 
 commanded way, a voluntary corruption ; and 
 Aaron was its easy tool. Were his orders 
 doubtful? "Tarry for us until we come 
 again." Did he question for Moses' safety? 
 He had himself proofs on this, for he, his sons 
 
 * Maimonides' ' More Nevochim.' 
 
Hebrew Law. 273 
 
 and the elders of Israel had been in the mount ; 
 had seen there the God of Israel, " and upon 
 the nobles of the children of Israel He laid 
 not his hand." Aaron afterwards admitted 
 his motive. He had seen the people to be set 
 upon mischief, and fearing them, as Pilate 
 feared the Jews, though unconvinced, he 
 yielded. 
 
 How honest the Scripture narrative ! Jose- 
 phus omits the circumstance altogether. Philo 
 refers to it, but suppresses the complicity of 
 Aaron. The Bible (accused of priestcraft) 
 exposes the high-priest. By its very colloca- 
 tion of the incidents which it records, a most 
 pressing indictment is framed. It shows us 
 God in the unseen sphere, solicitously arranging 
 a worship for men ; beautifully reducing into 
 typical miniature the glorious counsels of 
 redemption, and placing over the whole one 
 presiding figure alone; consecrating him by 
 long ritual elaboration, and appointing him to 
 stand between Himself and Israel. This one 
 figure is the high-priest. He it is who is to be 
 the agent of sacrifice ; the presenter of its 
 merits; the pleader of it in prayer, and the 
 
 NN 
 
274 Hebrew Law. 
 
 sole enterer within the veil. He is to order 
 the " bread of faces," and the sacred lamp ; to 
 apply the blood in the sanctuary ; to burn the 
 incense ; to use the ointment. And now 
 Moses will have to go down and see how this 
 man, just nominated for such honours, is at 
 the time engaged. Lately eating bread before 
 God, he is now partaker at an idol feast. 
 Depository of already revealed truth, he is 
 lending himself to a lie. Present custodian of 
 the commandments, he is the chief in breaking 
 them ; future custodian of the tabernacle, he is 
 now over the ritual of an image. 
 
 How emphatically does the sacred narrative 
 here at once give it to be known that this 
 earthly high-priest, so deficient in himself, can 
 but be the shadow of a mightier Mover unseen, 
 since even as it is about to set him in action, 
 it recites his incapacities and reproach. In 
 doing so it has this great effect — it the more 
 distinctly reserves to our great High-priest of 
 the Gospel those realities which the other was 
 so weak to embrace, and which even at the best 
 he could only apprehend partly, and enact 
 in a pageant. This very fall of Aaron, too, 
 
Hebrew Law. 275 
 
 before his investiture, writing as it does 
 incompetency on the forehead of all earthly- 
 ministry, prepares us for declensions which, in 
 every seeming absence of the Divine Per- 
 sonality, have passed upon His Church, and 
 warns us to allow that whenever " holiness to 
 the Lord" can be truly inscribed upon a 
 priesthood, the whole and continuous gift 
 of sufficiency must be from Him. 
 
 But the narrative is still further pointed. 
 "While the coming Aaronic priesthood is thus a 
 failure below, a real mediation is conflicting suc- 
 cessfully above. The progress of this mysterious 
 struggle is set out with a wonderful refinement 
 in relation to later developments, affording at 
 once strong presumptions in its favour. The 
 Lord announces to the mediator the fall, " Thy 
 people have corrupted themselves." The word 
 " thy " seems to show the divine wrath con- 
 sciously in contact with the restraining power 
 of an opposing advocate. And such, indeed, 
 Moses was. On this very site he had been 
 pressed, though unwilling, into the work, and 
 had been told by Jehovah to go to Pharaoh, 
 to bring the people out into a good land and 
 
276 Hebrew Law. 
 
 a large. But now wrath would have itself let 
 loose to cancel this. " Let me alone," it says to 
 the mediator ; " Do not plead thy right gained 
 through my commission. Let me destroy them, 
 and in thee will I fulfil my promise, and thou, 
 in their stead, shalt become a great nation." 
 Wrath in this is seeking a return to the ground 
 of Noah — a clean recommencement, and so a 
 putting back for generations of the work. 
 
 But not so the mediator. He will see not 
 " my " but " thy " people. He will only see 
 in such an issue the failure of the Exodus and 
 the triumph of Egypt. He will not start as 
 himself father of a new nation, but will go on 
 the old line as a son of Abraham, and heir of 
 the promise ; so he calls on wrath to remember 
 and fulfil the sacred oath to the patriarchs of 
 a seed numerous as the stars and the land in 
 possession for ever. 
 
 The triumph of this mediation, which retains 
 in so severe a crisis a firm hold on the rock of 
 Christ, as yet in a great measure beneath the 
 historical surface, is complete, though its 
 success seems, for reasons we can divine, 
 not at the moment fully announced. This 
 
Hebrew Law. 277 
 
 prospective Christianity has cast anchor within 
 the veil. The only one free from complicity 
 in the guilt of the people — the one for them, 
 yet above them — has resisted the wrath, and 
 let in the love, " and the Lord repented of the 
 evil which he thought to do His people." 
 
 But a truly drawn mediator " is not a 
 mediator of one." He should be able to 
 reflect feeling, and take up action, for either 
 side in turn. Coming back to the camp, Moses 
 himself sees what God had before seen — the 
 idolatrous fall of Israel. And so now is the 
 turn for his anger also to wax hot. The 
 covenant law is broken; he casts down and 
 breaks the tables, its testimony. As far as in 
 him is, he in this would seem to cancel Israel's 
 covenant. As far as in him is, he next makes 
 the people swallow the retribution of their sin ; 
 nor in this does he spare his own brother. 
 Here wrath is moving in the mediator, as 
 before in the Lord. 
 
 How admirably drawn is this picture in all 
 its parts ! We have the strict severity, and 
 the yielding pity, in whose diversity the unity 
 of divine love still manifests itself. We have 
 
278 Hebrew Law. 
 
 the mediation in its turn reflecting and calling 
 forth these divine phases. We have, in short, 
 an exact anticipation of the attitude of Christ ; 
 an expression, even an explanation, of His 
 work; a transaction in the mimetic heaven 
 and earth, representing proportionately His 
 mediation and dealings in the real heaven and 
 earth. The whole an illustrious proof that the 
 documents which thus both expressed and 
 kept concealed this grand transaction until 
 the fulness of time, contain indeed the counsel 
 of God in a mystery. 
 
 In vain does the ingenuity of respectful 
 criticism seek to unwind integument after 
 integument, and to show us that the vitality it 
 affects to reverence is but a mummy of the 
 past. The incessant interlacing of the old 
 and the new in Scripture, the harmonious 
 attachments with which the Law and Gospel 
 perpetually fit in together, present to us men- 
 tally that conclusiveness of evidence which the 
 two parts of an indenture brought together 
 and found to fit in mechanism and in construc- 
 tion produce to us in common affairs. 
 
 But to return. The strong action of Moses 
 
Hebrew Law. 279 
 
 among a people set on mischief, now brings on 
 a threatening of revolt. The prophet calls for 
 aid. Standing in the gate of the camp he 
 invites to him all who are on Jehovah's side. 
 The Levi tribe comes out and ranges itself for 
 the Lord. Its consecration is at this its passing 
 over from the traditional to the distinctive 
 revelation. It arms ; and since every man in 
 the camp has sinned against his brethren by 
 idolatry, Levi, now representative agent against 
 sin, passing from gate to gate, is to smite in 
 judgment all who stand to oppose them ; thus, 
 at the first presenting an exact analogue of the 
 incidence of judgment in later revelation. In 
 the conflict three thousand rebels are slain, 
 and the idolatrous reaction is defeated. 
 
 On the next day deep dejection prevails, 
 and the prophet, still in accord with suc- 
 ceeding phases of his cause, after again 
 declaring to the people the greatness of their 
 sin, returning to the side of pity and love, goes 
 up to see if peradventure he may be able to 
 make atonement for them. 
 
 Their spiritual disorder was indeed great. 
 They had bent (prostrated themselves) before 
 
280 Hebrew Law. 
 
 an image, but they were stiffnecked before the 
 Lord. They preferred old habit to new rule ; 
 Egyptian licence to patriarchal purity ; feeble 
 superstition to fresh evidence of power ; self- 
 indulgence to gratitude, and expediency to 
 their solemn pledge. This showed their con- 
 stitution carnal, cold, and worn, and their 
 cure, difficult, if possible. Their advocate, 
 therefore, in his pleadings, had already at once 
 taken the case beyond them into another range. 
 God's honour among the nations was not to be 
 jeopardised, though His chosen were unworthy; 
 God's covenant with Abraham should still 
 hold, though Abraham's descendants had 
 broken theirs. Nothing could be more just 
 than this, the attributes of God being truly 
 regarded, and it prevailed. In doing so it 
 places before us in brief the whole problem of 
 Judaism, and the key to its subsequent phases, 
 viz., God working for His name's sake, and for 
 His covenant's sake, and so sparing and yet 
 visiting; exactly in short, by accepting the 
 plea, accepting the position which finds ex- 
 pression in chapters xx., 5-Q, and xxxiv., 6-7, 
 " merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and 
 
Hebrew Law. 281 
 
 abundant in goodness," and yet " that will by- 
 no means clear the guilty;" thus furnishing 
 one more among innumerable instances of the 
 full and intimate consistency essentially woven 
 into the texture of the whole narrative. 
 
 It would be good for the training of the 
 mediator himself that there should not be 
 an immediate declaration of the effect of his 
 great plea for mercy to the weak for the sake 
 of one stronger, prior, above and yet belonging 
 to them. It would be good he should not 
 surely know the mercy till he could well 
 measure the mercy, and so only after his sight 
 of sin, his own anger, punishing and forgive- 
 ness of it, was he to come up again, and see 
 and estimate the frame of the Divine counsel 
 so sublime in pity and pardon. It would be 
 good also, if the whole transaction was to have 
 its effect as expressing the general idea and 
 course of mediation, that the full results should 
 not be anticipated, but that the human agent 
 should pass uncertified through the various 
 stages, and thus be enabled to reflect more 
 fully the phases of the process. For thus 
 man's discoveries become God's promulgations, 
 
 00 
 
282 Hebrew Law. 
 
 and human justice and mercy are a comment 
 as well as a fulfilment of the Divine. They 
 are thus, also, a vindication of it ; for the 
 breaking of the tables, the accusation against 
 Aaron as tempter, the enforced drinking of 
 water with idol dust, show Moses himself of 
 the same mind as God. 
 
 The leader now returns, and once again before 
 the Lord pleads in the mount for Israel — now 
 " this " people instead of " thy " people. " For- 
 give, and if not let my hopes cease as well." Such 
 is his spirit, true in affection even as Paul's 
 "I could wish that myself were accursed from 
 Christ for my brethren," but ineffectual to 
 save as all mere human effort must be. Atone- 
 ment is reached towards, but not reached ; and, 
 indeed, the impossibility of its being so reached 
 is thus indirectly announced, and the way for 
 the future mediator of a better covenant kept 
 open. Whosoever hath sinned he it is, and he 
 alone, who shall be blotted out of God's book. 
 Moses is to go and lead the people to the 
 place spoken of, and "mine angel shall go 
 before thee." Thus there is long-suffering, 
 and yet in the day of visitation their sin shall 
 
Hebrew Law. 283 
 
 be visited on them. The Lord's providences 
 will move on in judgment and in mercy com- 
 bined. His punishment will be upon the 
 guilty persons, while the pardoned people 
 shall be saved.* The Church shall endure 
 though its members fail ; the body shall be 
 preserved though its particles waste out. 
 " Thus the Lord plagued the people because 
 they made the calf which Aaron made." 
 
 Further, God said they were to go to the 
 land promised by His oath to the fathers ; that 
 He would send an angel before them, and 
 drive out the sinful nations, whose iniquity 
 was full, and whose day of visitation had now 
 nearly come ; but that He would not go up in 
 the midst of them, lest, as they were so 
 obstinate against Him, His wrath breaking 
 forth, He should consume them in the way. 
 So then His very withdrawals are in mercy, 
 and the limit of His graciousness is not in Him 
 but in ourselves. 
 
 Further still ; as they had been prepared 
 by cleansings for hearing and accepting the 
 law, so now by stripping off their ornaments 
 
 * Ezek. xiv. 13. Cyprian, de Lupsis, 19. 
 
284 Hebrew Law. 
 
 of Egypt were they to prepare for hearing and 
 submitting to the sentence on breaking the 
 law. In their midst it was to be decided 
 whether in their midst the all-righteous 
 Jehovah could go up without causing their 
 destruction; whether by ready humiliation 
 and softening to penitence they could hope to 
 survive in that presence. The rest of their 
 jewels, not already gone in the calf, were 
 now discarded for good, and the spoilers of 
 Egypt seem here to abjure their spoil. 
 
 We may observe how the Law had already 
 achieved an immense result. It had succeeded 
 in placing Israel in its real position. It had 
 revealed to them the sinfulness of man's heart 
 before Jehovah, and had brought them in 
 penitent humiliation to His footstool, thus in 
 reality giving them " greater riches than the 
 treasures of Egypt." The whole work it was 
 to do throughout time for mankind we here see 
 it immediately setting in motion, leading them at 
 once by its since well-worn steps to the meeting 
 point with Christ. Moses, himself led along 
 in action to express this, now takes a special 
 tent, " and pitches it without the camp, afar 
 
Hebrew Law. 285 
 
 off from the camp," and "every one which 
 sought the Lord went out" unto this tent 
 without the camp (Hebrews xiii. 13). Thus, 
 in the hour of their deep prostration, Jehovah 
 was no longer before them as when a warrior 
 host, or above them as when a covenanting 
 body, but more graciously still among them as 
 His poor fallen tolerated people, and accessible 
 to all, even as each might will to seek, thus 
 occupying the gospel position in the gospel 
 hour. 
 
 But in these partial proceedings there was 
 evidently more to come. If the covenant 
 Moses pleaded was a power to save, it might 
 also be a power to restore. With such a 
 mediator a more intimate effort at mediation 
 was therefore sure to ensue. Moses goes out 
 to the tent of meeting ; the people in reverence 
 regard his approach to it ; the cloud of the 
 Divine presence descends on his entry into it ; 
 while the people, each in the door of his tent, 
 worship at this Divine recognition of their 
 leader and his work. 
 
 The circumstance is evidently one of central 
 meaning. On one side is Sinai, representing 
 
286 Hebrew Law. 
 
 heaven, on the other side the camp, repre- 
 senting the people of God. According to 
 later religious development, the action should 
 pass at this point into the hands of one man. 
 One man we here accordingly find at work. 
 A single tent is placed between the two 
 spheres, and there one advocate on behalf of 
 the people communicates with the Lord, who 
 descends especially to meet him. This one, 
 if we are led in our anticipations by New 
 Testament form, should be one especially dear, 
 and so we here find him. He is spoken to as 
 no other is, face to face, as a man would speak 
 to his friend. He is not regarded only as 
 included in the patriarchs ; he is looked on in 
 his individuality as well, and has himself 
 (n-apa irairas, LXX.) found grace in God's sight. 
 This is a peculiarity distinct from ordinary 
 course of Scripture, that one should be both 
 within the originally declared covenant, and 
 also above it, and yet so exact is the balance 
 of the New and Old Testaments that this very 
 peculiarity keeps up the resemblance of Moses 
 to Christ. For his sake things are done, and 
 to him revelations are made, not as to other 
 
Hebrew Law. 287 
 
 prophets, but in intimate way of confidence. 
 In accordance also with the mission of our 
 Lord he has a special charge — " Thou sayest 
 unto me, Bring up this people." They are to 
 be taken from the lower to the higher country ; 
 from Egypt to Canaan, as in the fuller work, 
 from earth to heaven. 
 
 But as our blessed Lord, having it for His 
 mission to bring up the people of God, and for 
 that end tabernacling among us, was to win 
 for us the perpetual presence of the Holy 
 Ghost, so here we are to see the typical 
 mediator, while engaging in his typical salva- 
 tion, full, of anxiety on this essential question 
 of the inner presence and help, which is to 
 preside in and advance the outer work. 
 Moses pleads the true mediatorial plea in the 
 true spirit. He has a charge to bring up the 
 people, but " Thou hast not let me know whom 
 Thou wilt send with me." He now pleads by 
 his past acceptance for a revelation on this, 
 that knowing Jehovah's way he may know 
 Him, and so gain further acceptance for the 
 tribes — for, adds he, " consider that this 
 nation is Thy people." Here we almost seem 
 
288 Hebrew Law. 
 
 to have old Israel again before us, wrestling 
 for His blessing. It is granted to the mediator. 
 " My presence shall go with thee, and I will 
 give thee rest ; " that is, " the land of rest." 
 But the concession thus conditioned to himself 
 with exact typical propriety, he, with the 
 same propriety, at once passes on to the 
 Church. " If thy presence go not, carry us not 
 up hence. For wherein shall it be known 
 here that I and Thy people have found grace 
 in Thy sight ? Is it not in that Thou goest 
 with us?" 
 
 Moses had seen more of God than any man ; 
 more, therefore, than any he would- see still 
 more of Him. He has just seen His grace. 
 u I beseech Thee," he therefore adds, " show 
 me Thy glory." He is answered, that man 
 cannot see this in its splendours, but shall in 
 the procession of its workings. So Moses is 
 to go up alone into the mount, bearing two 
 other tablets of stone. And here God again 
 descends in the cloud, stands with him and 
 proclaims the name and attributes of Jehovah. 
 In this mount, at the prophet's first call, had 
 been made known to him God's completeness 
 
Hebrew Law. 289 
 
 in Himself; now is revealed to him there 
 God's completeness for His people ; mercy, 
 grace, long- suffering, abundant goodness and 
 truth, riches of forgiveness, and equity of 
 retribution. 
 
 When they had been in straits of boudage, 
 the prospect set before them in Exodus iii. 8 
 was that the Lord would "bring them up out 
 of that land unto a good land and a large." 
 When they had stood before the holy mount 
 to receive a nationality and a religion, then 
 the promise was in Exodus xix. 6, that they 
 were to be a kingdom of priests and a holy 
 nation. Now that they had fallen, and the 
 Levi or priestly tribe had executed among 
 them the typical judgment of the Lord, who 
 "will by no means clear the guilty," — now it 
 was here made known that a terrible thing 
 was to be done also among the nations by 
 their agency as the priestly nation. 
 
 An order is given to make no treaties nor 
 alliances with the land they go to, but to 
 destroy its idols, to make none themselves, 
 and to keep their own safe and significant 
 solemnities strictly, 
 
 pp 
 
290 Hebrew Law. 
 
 These solemnities are now recited. First is 
 named the passover, with an emphasis on the 
 blood of its sacrificial lamb, without leaven ; 
 and with this rite is associated the consequent 
 rule of the first-born, who are by it the re- 
 deemed possession of the Lord. This great 
 primary rite, now that their sinfulness has 
 been revealed by the law, finds its full place, 
 and is eminently expressive as a representa- 
 tion of the gospel sacrifice by which the 
 Church of the first-born is redeemed. After 
 the turning mark of the Sabbath comes, 
 secondly, the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, so 
 generally believed a type of the descent of 
 the Holy Spirit on the Christian Church, and 
 associated with a characteristic offering of the 
 first fruits of the produce of the commenced 
 work and fruitfulness of the year. Thirdly 
 comes the complementary feast of Ingathering 
 or Tabernacles, when all the divine gifts of 
 the completed harvest are garnered. This 
 festival is accompanied by a rule supposed 
 to be aimed against opinions and customs 
 which attributed fertility and success to other 
 agencies and powers, and not to God's provi- 
 
Hebrew Law. 291 
 
 dential mercy and covenanted promise ; a pro- 
 mise which ascends in meanings from Noah to 
 Abraham, and thence on through Moses to 
 Him in whom all the promises of God are 
 yea and amen ; in whom the fulness of the 
 spiritual harvest shall at length find comple- 
 tion in the ingathering of the last day, when 
 " the Lord alone shall be exalted " and " the 
 idols utterly abolished." 
 
 A second forty days had now been passed 
 in the mount. Advancing developments of 
 gracious condescension and growth of the 
 revelation as regards the central personality 
 and work of the mediator have marked its 
 course. Moses now descends with the re- 
 covered Law — renewed because man's fall 
 required it afresh ; the same because the 
 divine word cannot change. As he came 
 down from this residence with God, which 
 had been emancipated from the common con- 
 ditions of human life, and which had endured 
 for a time representing in type a completed 
 cycle or perpetuity, there was seen reflected 
 in his face the glory of the presence in which 
 he had dwelt, even as in the fulfilments of the 
 
292 Hebrew Law. 
 
 appointed time men might behold "in the 
 face of Jesus Christ" "the glory as of the 
 only begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
 truth." 
 
 The people were now assembled by their 
 leader for the building of the tabernacle. 
 Though their labour was to be for the Lord, 
 their work was prefaced by a special injunction 
 not to break the Lord's Sabbath ; for obedience 
 is better not only than sacrifice, but than all 
 voluntary offerings, since God, in giving us a 
 rule, has given more than we can ever give 
 him. The " willing of heart " brought their 
 offerings, the "wise of heart" gave their 
 labour, until there was "more than enough 
 for the service of the work." 
 
 The tabernacle was at length finished and 
 the people blessed. It was reared and all 
 things placed therein, Moses himself first 
 arranging them. He it was who in person 
 " set the bread in order," " lighted the lamps 
 before the Lord," "burnt sweet incense on the 
 golden altar," " offered the burnt offering and 
 meat offering on the altar of burnt offering, 
 "washed his hands and his feet at the laver." 
 
Hebrew Law. 293 
 
 " So Moses finished the work." And his first 
 performance of so many ministerial acts prior 
 to the consecration of Aaron shows that while 
 the things of the Sanctuary are temporarily 
 committed to priestly agency, representative for 
 the time of the ultimate ministration within, 
 yet that the mediator of the covenant is the 
 essential priestly power and the full com- 
 municator with heaven. Thus the representa- 
 tive in the old dispensation in assigning over 
 still reserves the rights of his principle in the 
 new, and Moses is here, as ever, found pre- 
 paring for Christ. " Then a cloud covered 
 the tent of the congregation, and the glory of 
 the Lord filled the tabernacle" in proof of 
 divine acceptance, favour, and presence. 
 
 The wonders of the Scripture, like those of 
 Nature, may well be for us practically inex- 
 haustible. There are hardly any depths of 
 meaning to which reverent research, carefully 
 securing its steps, may not in either field be 
 led, and as it advances such research may still 
 ever be finding itself but at the brink of new 
 and deeper discoveries. Here, in the minutely 
 careful setting forth of the mediatorial plead- 
 
294 Hebrew Law. 
 
 ings of Moses, it is, as repeatedly put, highly- 
 possible that we may have before us a grand 
 suggestion of the movement of the Redeemer 
 along universal history. Thus the very first 
 inducements — God's honour and the triumph 
 of His plan — would be cogent motives from 
 the beginning of man's course. The covenant, 
 not with the parties concerned, but with 
 another, their mediator and chief, and the 
 patience asked for, not on their but on his 
 account — the pardon granted them for this 
 other's acceptance — take us back to the 
 beginning of all things, the eternal covenant 
 before the world began, and Adam saved 
 through Jesus. 
 
 In all these things mystery lies within 
 mystery, and each part, while in one aspect 
 a step in a series, seems in another a complete 
 germinal compendium of the whole work. But 
 in the whole, as in all parts of it, Jesus Christ 
 is still to be found. He is impressed on the 
 progressive action. He animates each detail 
 of the mechanism. He is at once the history 
 and its actors ; the ritual, the priest, and the 
 tabernacle. The whole machinery is a divine 
 
Hebrew Law. 295 
 
 apparatus ; the whole movement is a divine 
 advance ; through the crevices and textures of 
 the humanity of this selected people ; through 
 all done with them and by them there shines 
 out a divine compelling splendour of truth and 
 grace veiled and unveiled, shaded away and 
 yet refusing to be hid ; and in the midst of all 
 the Sittings, dimness, and shifting outlines of 
 the twilight time we get to apprehend that the 
 Almighty Lord is come forth to conquer the 
 world into peace and love, and to cause His 
 will to be done in it in pure life and pure 
 religion, even as it is done in heaven. As we 
 meditate on all this, we may well adopt as 
 our final expression the sentiment of the pious 
 Bishop Hall — "God grant that the veil re- 
 moved from the face of Moses may never be 
 drawn over our heads ! " 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Page 16. 
 
 Law of Nature. — While on the one hand Hebrew 
 Law was gradually expanding, under a vast variety of 
 influences, some ordinary and others of a special and su- 
 pernatural sort, towards the point at which its two tables 
 were suddenly to bloom forth into the Divine personality 
 of our Lord and the holy charities of His Gospel, on 
 the other hand the system, both civil and religious, in 
 the great Roman Empire which was becoming the ac- 
 credited power to give and withhold consents on behalf of 
 humanity was, by a corresponding proportion of advance, 
 gradually making ready to become the recipient of the 
 divine revelation. The stringencies of the ancient 
 Roman ideal, which represented with an almost Jewish 
 pertinacity methods of law from which the vitalising 
 spirit had long departed, were gradually toned down by 
 the praetors. The theory of equity had arisen as an ex- 
 pression of an independent general rule. Men had begun 
 to imagine that there existed something superior to all 
 municipal institutions. This they called the ' Law of 
 Nature.' Thus jurisconsults and philosophers were 
 moving in the same direction, or rather the principles of 
 
 Q Q 
 
298 Appendix. 
 
 philosophy were penetrating the methods of law. Cicero, 
 although he admits that certain unworthy conduct was, 
 through the depravation of their customary rule, not 
 deemed base as to morality, and was tolerated by law, 
 yet feels sure it was not sanctioned by the Law of Na- 
 ture. For there is, he holds, a most widespread social 
 relationship, an inner circle, which comprehends those 
 who are of the same nationality ; a closer still those who 
 are of the same community ; and he regrets that the law 
 they then had was by no means a solid and exact repre- 
 sentation of ' true right ' and ' genuine justice.' 
 
 Thus, together with this fertile thought of one gene- 
 ral law independent of and above civil arrangements, 
 there was also growing up within the Roman Empire the 
 idea of a corresponding moral association among men at 
 large. Though Plato had already put this forth, it had 
 been rather with a limitation to the Greek races. Here 
 again Cicero advanced. ' Among those,' he says, 'who 
 have a communion of law, there is also a communion of 
 right. Now those who have these things in common 
 are also to be held as being members of the same civitas, 
 so that the whole world is to be considered as ' una 
 civitas communis deorum atque hominum' (De Leg. i.7). 
 In Seneca Ave find this sort of conclusion still gathering 
 weight. He regards mankind as something which should 
 be sacred to men. The whole visible sphere appears to 
 him a vast moral unity. He looks upon all as members 
 of one comprehensive body, and he adds, ' Natura nos 
 cognatos edidit quum ex iisdem et in eadem gigneret. 
 Ha?c nobis amorem dedit mutuum et sociabiles fecit' 
 (Episf. 90). This whole method of thought was provi- 
 
Appendix. 299 
 
 sional, an effort to break through the narrow hardness and 
 deficiency of current systems, and to reflect and reach 
 towards the coming light. 
 
 In the meantime, from the Jewish side, truths of stu- 
 pendous power were entering the Roman world. St. 
 Paul had declared 'in the midst of Mars Hill,' that 
 ' God that made the heavens dwelleth not in temples 
 made with hands,' 'neither is worshipped with men's 
 hands, as though He needed anything ;' that He 'hath 
 made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the 
 face of the earth,' that 'we are the offspring of God,' and 
 that therefore 'we ought not to think that the Godhead 
 is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by art and 
 man's device.' To Rome itself he had written, ' Owe no 
 man anything, but to love one another, for he that loveth 
 another hath fulfilled the law;' and again, 'Is He the 
 God of the Jews only ? Is He not also of the Gentiles? 
 Yes, of the Gentiles also : seeing it is one God which 
 shall justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcision 
 through faith ' (Rom. iii. 29). 
 
 This Law of Nature, imagined as resident among the 
 instincts of conscience, may well have derived its real 
 suggestions of origin from the Hebrew Law, for that 
 latter system was throwing out the very widest princi- 
 ples in its sacred documents, and professed them the an- 
 nouncements of a divine ruler of the widest power. 
 Clement Alex, affirms of it that Plato took even his 
 ground idea from Moses whom he describes as a ' living 
 law ' (i'6/j.oq tp\pv%<><:), and whose whole system he regards 
 as 'suited for the training of such as are capable of be- 
 coming good and noble men.' And he argues that those 
 ft Q 2 
 
300 Appendix 
 
 who really obeyed it had already some beginnings of the 
 knowledge of Christ, while those who disbelieved it or 
 disobeyed its precepts had no inclination for Him, since 
 He, the Word, was the 'wisdom and power of God.' 
 The Scripture teachers, however, do not enter into the 
 matter as into an abstract or inferential system. With 
 them it is the simple effective promulgation of binding 
 decrees accompanied by fitting sanctions. The defini- 
 tion of Ulpian makes Nature the teacher. Theory is 
 left for others ; among these Grotius bases Natural 
 Law on the dictate of right reason. Some following him 
 have it as the ' ratio summa insita in Natura.,' in which 
 they approach by implication nearer the view of the 
 text, since they at the same time regard all existence 
 to be one single moving comprehensive Nature. But, 
 as Bishop Atterbury observed, the difficulty of ' right 
 reason as the basis is, whose reason shall it be?' Others, 
 therefore, have fetched the basis of the Law of Nature 
 from the general consent of men : ' Jus commune omnium 
 nationum, eo quod ubique instinctu Natura?, non Con- 
 stitutione aliqua, habeatur.' But it is found that many 
 communities have points at variance with the common 
 decision of men, therefore Selden and Puffendorf reject 
 this test, and the appeal is next made to the common 
 sentiment of humanity (Puff. xii.). Vico, in concluding 
 his Philosophy of History, insists that all the early go- 
 vernments in the world were founded on the belief in a 
 Providence, and had religion for their entire form, and 
 for the sole basis of the State and family. He regards 
 religion as the rampart of peoples. If it be lost to them 
 there remain no longer means for them to live in society. 
 
i\ 
 
 ppcndix. 30 1 
 
 They lose the very formative potentiality without which 
 they cannot exist. Far from there being truth in the 
 notions of Bayle or the suggestion of Polybius in favour 
 of philosophy as the final motive power, religion alone, 
 he holds, can excite the people to do from sentiment vir- 
 tuous actions. The respect of the wise for antiquity is, 
 according to him, only an instinct leading on to respect 
 the infinite wisdom of God, and the philosophy of history 
 must necessarily bear with it the inclination for piety, 
 since 'sans la religion ii n'est point de veritable sagesse.' 
 We conclude then that the idea of a Law of Nature 
 was an abstraction gradually thrown up by advancing 
 society become conscious through various agencies of 
 the existence among men of a system higher and wider 
 than municipal law, and we regard the very existence of 
 the idea as a proof and admission of the necessity for 
 such higher law, and as a preparation for its reception 
 under Christ. The Mosaic germs may, as insisted by 
 the ancient apologists, have penetrated into Gentile soil, 
 and given its first vitality to the idea of Natural Law. 
 and this would be admirably illustrative of the con- 
 tinuous harmony of the Scripture work. But even if 
 the opposite conclusion be chosen, and it be held that the 
 idea of the Law of Nature was built up independently 
 and apart from Hebrew suggestions, then what a testi- 
 mony have we to the wonderful propriety of that system 
 which, in the infancy of a small and historically insigni- 
 ficant State, struck out for the Hebrews a plan wider 
 in its scope, nobler in its equities, more vigorous in its 
 sanctions, than the best efforts of the maturest heathen 
 philosophers, and which further, instead of losing like 
 
302 Appendix. 
 
 them the summit of its system among mists and clouds, 
 could place on its highest presiding throne the august 
 presence of a distinct and consistent Personal God. 
 
 Page 58. 
 
 On abuses of the Paternal Power. — In the ruder 
 states of society, when sentiments of liberty and right 
 were weak and easily suppressed, history shows there 
 was a constant risk of the power of the more authorita- 
 tive domestic relationships passing on into excess. It is 
 easy to understand that the best precaution against this 
 would be such a religion as, while it sanctioned and sup- 
 ported these authorities, would not, like so many heathen 
 cults, coalesce with them in attempts to step beyond 
 their right spheres. It was the special characteristic of 
 the Hebrew system to aim at this ; and not only by its 
 express enactments, but equally effectively by its very 
 construction, to bring them into constant contact with a 
 higher authority of the same sort as their own, and one 
 standing to them in the same degree as they stood to others 
 — a contact which would necessarily tend to keep them to 
 their true functions. Thus, while the Lord gave, in the 
 Pentateuch, the fullest sanction to the domestic power of 
 parents and others in authority, He yet claimed that all 
 Israel was His son, His first-born, and presided over it 
 as Parent-Chief. M. Renan has put forth a notion that 
 until Jesus the idea of God as a father was hardly, if at 
 all, conceived. This, however, is by no means in accord- 
 ance with general ancient literature, nor with the Old 
 
Appendix. 303 
 
 Testament, which is full of the thought, and which stu- 
 diously and successfully brought the Father-God of 
 Abraham into the closest paternal proximity with the 
 people. Indeed its method of re-knitting the ideas of 
 the regal, the paternal, and the divine into one operative 
 power, in the Hebrew consciousness, was both invalua- 
 ble to them and prolific for the future of the world, and 
 the effort to interpose a mere secular royalty as a new 
 headship over the tribes, which was attempted in the 
 days of Samuel, would both be a shock to conscience and 
 also an experiment obviously dangerous when liberal sen- 
 timent was undeveloped, and when royalty, unprotected 
 by later checks of limitation, would, in following the pa- 
 ternal outline, so easily decline into tyranny ; and the suc- 
 cess of this ill-omened scheme brought on, as we know, 
 the ruin of the country, by letting in all those evils 
 against which the original constitution had been framed. 
 At the commencement of modern society several mode- 
 rating causes happily prevented a similar result. The 
 feudal system was effective to give a strong stimulus to 
 some of the better incidents of tribalism, promoting as it 
 did generous and loyal feelings among the masses, and 
 securing at the early period, before popular institutions 
 could arise, a powerful class of chiefs as a barrier against 
 the encroachments of the crown. (See Hallam.) But 
 we must venture to add, notwithstanding the tone of that 
 writer, that nothing served so much to secure modern 
 societies from the ruin of ancient nations as the existence 
 among them of the Christian Church. This, even in its 
 most depressed states, helped to restrain the royal and do- 
 mestic authorities within limits, and secured society from 
 
304 Appendix. 
 
 the convulsions which had been so disastrous to the 
 ancient world, and from which not even the most politic 
 and advanced nations of them could without religion 
 secure themselves. 
 
 The Roman State may very properly serve for an il- 
 lustration of the condition of things to which we refer, 
 for as the material power of the world became collected 
 under Roman sway, so the whole spirit of the world grew 
 to be condensed and intensified in the Roman system. 
 The corrective force to meet this was in motion in the 
 legislation and polity of Moses, on its side also developed 
 and intensified into the Gospel. It is not meant that the 
 whole Roman polity was antichristian, for much of it 
 may have been the reverse. At any rate much of it has 
 been adopted into the jurisprudence of Christian com- 
 munities, and forms the ground-plan on which a vast 
 amount of European law and social organisation is raised. 
 What is meant is that within it there were certain per- 
 vading principles and tendencies which, even after all 
 the mitigations they had received as civilisation advanced, 
 still were opposed, and essentially so, to those interests of 
 moderate liberty and domesticity of affections which 
 Christianity so greatly favours, which had been the ori- 
 ginal thought in government, and which, there seems 
 reason to believe, will be its final issue. 
 
 The Roman family was not a natural but an artificial 
 creation. The fiction of power (potestas, manus) was the 
 idea which bound up its members into an unity. The na- 
 tural circumstance of being wife, son, or relative did not 
 make one a member of the family, but the legal fact of 
 being wife, son, or relative under power. A family was an 
 
Appendix. 305 
 
 aggregation of individuals bound together by their subjec- 
 tion to the authority of one head or chief, who, as Ortolan 
 puts it was alone ' sui juris,' and who was master of all the 
 persons and all the property, ' corps and biens,' of all the 
 rest. Every one who could be considered under this 
 authority was a member of the family. Everyone who 
 was removed from it by diminutio capitis even if a 
 child or grandchild, was no longer of the family. Into 
 this artificial association entrance was by artificial pro- 
 cesses. The higher sort of marriage, even (jusfce nup- 
 tice). did not pass a woman into it; she remained in 
 her own family asmatrona. It was the religious ceremony 
 of confarreation or the fictitious sale of coemptio which 
 introduced her into the new family ' under power,' and 
 she became materfamilias. But though she had this 
 title, nevertheless,with the object that the central 'power' 
 might not be encroached on, her position in the family 
 was but that of adopted daughter, under a ' dominus ' ; 
 she was in a sense only but as sister to her own children 
 (Gaius. Inst. I. iii. 3) ; and it was in this character, if at 
 all, that she succeeded to her husband's property {Ibid. 
 iii. 3). His death, however, did not return her to her 
 own family ; she remained in his, still dependent, under 
 a legal guardian chosen from among the agnates, or 
 under a testamentary guardian named byhim {Ibid. i. 148). 
 By the side of this aggravation of one part of family au- 
 thority we have in the Roman system another — that of 
 ' power ' over the children. This absorbed into the father 
 both the person of the son himself, of his wife, and of his 
 family, together with all the property acquired by them. 
 In the domestic forum the father was the sole judge, and 
 
306 Appendix. 
 
 without appeal or ceremonial by the un tempered law could 
 decide all things, even to the life or death of his children. 
 So Plutarch says of Brutus that he condemned his son, 
 not as consul but as father, without judicial forms. But 
 this right, it should be observed, was not considered by 
 the Romans as flowing out from natural relationship and 
 as an incident following on all marriage, but only as fol- 
 lowing on a civil incident — the 'justae nuptias ' of the 
 civil law or on adoption by the civil law process. All 
 these persons thus artificially chained together, however 
 ramified their offshoots, had among themselves the qua- 
 lity of civil relationship, which was regarded by the 
 Roman system as a higher tie than that of nature itself. 
 Thus bound by ' agnatio ' they alone were considered as 
 forming fractions of the compound social unit called 
 ' family,' an aggregation of which civil 'families ' united 
 by a common patronymic and common sacrifices and rites 
 made up the political unit of the 'gens.' Within this 
 civil family (or family as regards private relations as 
 distinguished from the gens or larger body of connected 
 families for the purpose of public relations) there was a 
 complete system of domestic life. Successions and 
 guardianships were arranged among its members alone. 
 It had special domestic religious rites and special public 
 sacrifices which were peculiar to it ; and yet the entrance 
 to and exclusion from its area depended on such artificial 
 conditions that the nearest natural relationships might 
 be estranged from it, and ignored. Indeed the natural 
 relationship of blood was in the Roman system treated 
 as a far lower idea, and even a son who by emancipation 
 passed from paternal power and became 'sui juris,' 
 
Appendix. 307 
 
 passed out of the family, and was reduced to the rank of 
 a cognate (Gaius i. 132). So that for natural affection 
 to get itself recognised it was necessary for it to put on 
 the civil mask, and to speak in official costume (Vico). 
 
 The same artificial spirit had extended among them to 
 property. The 'res mancipi,' that is, lands, houses, 
 slaves, and cattle, could only be acquired by a State pro- 
 cess, and only possessed by Roman citizens, though the 
 ' res nee mancipi,' comprising all the various objects un- 
 important at the time when legal ideas took their form, 
 but to which advancing civilisation had given enhanced 
 value, could change ownership merely by delivery. What- 
 ever price had been paid, whatever moral equity existed, 
 unless the forms had been complied with, property of the 
 higher class could not pass, and until prescriptive pos- 
 session (usucapio) had come in to cure the vice, they 
 might be resumed by the vendor in spite of all moral 
 claim. And even this prescription would only help a 
 Roman citizen ; all others must suffer without remedy. 
 
 This slavery to form and laxity of moral restraint 
 extended beyond the family and property into the region 
 of contract. Here, again, it was not feeling, conscience, 
 and the idea of just and unjust which bound men, but 
 the mere verbal form. The rule of the twelve tables 
 was ' uti lingua nuncupassit ita, jus esto,' and so what- 
 ever was outside the set words was held not to have 
 heen promised. Implied warranties were unrecognised, 
 and the materialism of the system was powerless before 
 combinations of fraud. This whole original plan of the 
 'Jus Quiritium,' as it was called by its older title, or 
 'jus civitatis' by its modern synonym, was essentially 
 
308 Appendix. 
 
 hard and tyrannical. The more so as it perpetuated ex- 
 ternally patriarchal ideas whose successful working had 
 been due to the cordial spirit which animated them — a 
 spirit banished or confined under the Romans, and de- 
 prived of those salutary impressions on religious duties 
 and on responsibility to a present personal Father- 
 God which had so long vitalised the early laws of the 
 Hebrews. 
 
 We repeat, then, that the Hebrew development, moving 
 parallel with the civilisations of antiquity, was their effec- 
 tual corrective. With God revealed as the head of its 
 society, the parental was by it restored and restrained to 
 its true functions, and this essential community was 
 bound together by an improved feudalism in permanent 
 cohesion. Though a rude shock had been received by 
 it on the foundation of a secular monarchy, the balance 
 of its action was in a measure restored through the de- 
 velopments of the prophetic under Samuel. And the 
 whole body of the Hebrew state gradually moulding 
 itself into shape, recovered from its aberration against 
 the idea of divine unity, by its contact with Persia; 
 gathered fuel for in tenser patriotism in its struggles with 
 the West, until, at last, permeated and fully vitalised by 
 the splendours of Christ, the chosen Israel took a further 
 flight, transforming the theocratic of Josephus into the 
 more purely paternal of the Gospel, and shaking off the 
 hedge of the Law, in favour of a full morality applied in 
 the forum of the conscience. Thus, by the chosen peo- 
 ple, the Divine Wisdom rescuing and giving the widest 
 expansion to the pure family system, secured principles 
 of perennial vigour, by which societies, renewing them- 
 
Appendix. 309 
 
 selves, escape the bondage of the ancient world, and, in 
 the individual, conscience is educated for Christ. 
 
 Page 114. 
 
 On the Historical Estimation of Moses. — A profound 
 consistency pervades the Scriptures in their reference 
 to this prominent figure. There is hardly a passage in 
 either Testament which, even in appearance, diverges 
 from strict historical keeping with the first central deli- 
 neation, and the few which seem to do so are, in reality, 
 deeper consistencies. It is extremely observable how the 
 New Testament shows Him very firmly seated in the pub- 
 lic reverence, and wound in with the fabric of national life, 
 and how, though the whole movement of nationality takes 
 him as its mainspring, in the Old Testament, yet a 
 strict forbearance of statement constantly surrounds 
 Moses in both cases. Notwithstanding temptations to 
 transgress, succeeding scribes never seem to lose the 
 sentiment of harmony with the original Bible theory, but 
 advance along with it unerringly, in mixed modesty and 
 boldness. In periods where Moses is made to stand out 
 as the essential factor, he is still never allowed to en- 
 croach beyond his ground, as, for instance, on to the po- 
 sition of the father, Abraham. Beneath the national or- 
 ganiser there is still ever seen lying the deep immove- 
 able foundation of that first patriarchal rock of faith and 
 covenant promise. Yet, on the other hand, when the in- 
 stitutional, the didactic, and, perhaps, the mediatorial are 
 in the field of vision, there a comparison is unhesitatingly 
 
310 Appendix. 
 
 permitted, even with the ' prophet like unto me,' the 
 sacred Messiah Himself. When, again, the question of lea- 
 dership is uppermost, then Moses comes down in the nar- 
 rative to group with Joshua, his minister, as in Josh, i., 5 
 and 17. A passage also occurs in which he is brought 
 into contact and parallelism with Samuel: ' Then said the 
 Lord unto me, though Moses and Samuel stood before me, 
 yet my mind could not be toward this people.' Jer. xv. 1 ; 
 and this grouping also is in full propriety, for the offence 
 of the people is there the point in issue, and this was, at 
 the time, a hardening of themselves in law-breaking, being 
 encouraged thereto by false prophecies of immunity from 
 the lips of lying prophets. Here, therefore, these two 
 would be thelitrepresentatives to speak andplead — Closes 
 the recognised organiser of the legislative and admin- 
 istrative ; Samuel the systematiser and trainer of the 
 prophetic. (Acts xiii. 29, ' until Samuel the prophet.') 
 So in Luke xvi. 29-31 — the parable of Dives and 
 Lazarus — this same natural and accepted method of 
 division comes out : ' They have Moses and the pro- 
 phets ; Let them hear them,' i.e., the law and the pro- 
 phets — Moses standing as representative for the Divine 
 Will in its original enactment, the prophets for the 
 same Will in its moral applications and extensions, as 
 distinguished from the technical administration of the 
 Scribes. So, again, in Luke xxiv. 27, our Lord ' begin- 
 ning at Moses and all the prophets, expounded unto 
 them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Him- 
 self,' i.e., going through the two fields, the law and the 
 prophets. And in the former of these two passages 
 it is observable that the words are put in the mouth 
 
Appendix. 311 
 
 of Abraham, whose position there is thus, by impli- 
 cation, the one of first eminence, far beyond all others. 
 The Old Testament canon ends in Mai. iv., 4 and 5, 
 by another arrangement bringing together Moses and 
 Elias : — 4 ' Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, 
 which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel 
 with the statutes and judgments.' 5 'Behold I will send 
 you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great 
 and dreadful day of the Lord.' Here law still contents 
 itself with the same representative, but prophecy passes 
 to a new figure to find expression, since it is going on 
 from the didactic to the more minatory phase. These 
 two great personages, here connected in the prospect of 
 the people, are grouped together in inner relationship by 
 the mystery which surrounds their passage out of life, by 
 the previous and, perhaps, preparatory mysteries of their 
 wonderful fasting, and by the vouchsafed vision of the 
 presence of God. 
 
 From these data it is therefore by a just transition that 
 we arrive at Matt. xvii. 3, where, at the transfiguration 
 of Jesus, ' behold there appeared unto them Moses and 
 Elias talking with Him.' The words of S. Luke, tXeyov 
 t))v 'i'iocov dv-ov (ch. ix. 31), suggest Moses ; as the ex- 
 pression in Acts i. 2, dytXi'ifiydr) corresponds with the 
 Septuagint of 2 Kings ii. 11. ical c'wt\)j(p6t] 'HAtov. 
 
 We are not required to suppose that the Scripture 
 contains all that was known of Moses. There is obvi- 
 ously in the early writings considerable reticence. While 
 the whole detail of his mission is copiously set out, a veil 
 is drawn over many of his personal antecedents, though 
 these could hardly have failed both to be interesting and, 
 
$12 Appendix. 
 
 to some extent, known to the nation. And it is this very 
 economy which, in its admirably proportioned disclosures 
 and concealments, will always, in itself, gratify and con- 
 vince the more judicious and devout. The people had 
 undoubtedly certain details treasured up among them, 
 concerning their great prophet. A few touches of these 
 we find accepted into the Scripture itself at a late period, 
 as those contributed by Stephen in his defence, in Acts 
 vii., and those in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as ch. xi., 
 but they leave the idea and position of the character un- 
 changed. In the apocryphal writings there are pas- 
 sages whose beautiful touching shows how just was the 
 appreciation the nation had of their great leader, of which 
 Eccl. xlv. may be taken as a chief instance. In the 
 legend in 2 Mace. ii. (see also Mischna, ' de die expi- 
 ationis.' Surenhusii), of the hiding of the tables of the 
 law by Jeremiah in a cave in Mount JSebo, we may 
 note with what historical sobriety and matter-of-fact 
 treatment the past of Moses was handled, and yet the be- 
 ginning of a vague expectation as to his future mission. 
 At the same time it bears witness — incidentally — to the 
 jealous caution with which memorials of him were re- 
 garded by the spiritual leaders. 
 
 When we come to Philo's life of Moses, we find an 
 evidently artificial fabric. Incidents are drawn out and 
 motives of action attributed with a precisiun which is, of 
 necessity, but imagined ; while at places the narration 
 suddenly drops from tlie supernatural level into philoso- 
 phic rationalising. The early life of Moses in the hands 
 of such merely patriotic writers contrasts most sugges- 
 tively with the pure Scripture. Philo, aiming at superi- 
 
Appendix. 313 
 
 ority over the Egyptians as well as the Greeks, would 
 make out that Moses was surreptitiously passed off by 
 the royal princess as her own child, and that as such he 
 came to be acknowledged heir to the Egyptian throne. 
 Josephus, again, whose narrative is conceived in the same 
 vein, regards the adoption as a.i open act, accepted by 
 the king, and goes on to describe the monarch as putting 
 his crown, in sport, on the child's head, and the child as 
 dashing it to the ground ; the sacred scribe as regarding 
 the omen unfavourably, and striving on the spot to kill 
 Moses. This author also gives a circumstantial account 
 of a war which he says Moses led for Egypt against 
 the Ethiopians, and of his completing it by a eudden 
 marriage with the king of Ethiopia's enamoured daughter; 
 and he attributes the fall of Moses to the jealousy of the 
 priests, who feared his too great power. Philo, on the 
 other hand, gives as its occasion, the death of the Egyp- 
 tian, spoken of in the Scripture, and the jealousy of the 
 king whom he describes as worked on by the courtiers 
 to apprehend Moses would depose him that he might 
 himself reign before his time. The elaborate view of 
 Moses' action in relation to the Hebrew Law, given by 
 these two writers is, however, of great value for exposi- 
 tion, and Fhilo's is especially important in connection 
 with St. Paul's writings ; but the hazardous tone of their 
 statements and conjectures in comparison with the pru- 
 d nt reserve of Scripture, and their constant substitution 
 of motives of policy for the higher springs and princi- 
 ples avowed in the Bible, commends to us, even at a 
 glance, the inspired narrative as much as would whole 
 volumes of pleadings. 
 
 R R 
 
314 Appendix. 
 
 In the early Christian apologists Moses retains the 
 lull eminence of his position, and is freely used by them 
 in comparisons with the Heathen sages. Justin Martyr 
 quotes to the Greeks Philo and Josephus as authorities 
 acceptable by them, and also their own Diodorus who 
 shows Moses a great and memorable man and lawgiver, 
 and who declares that it was he first persuaded the pub- 
 lic to use written laws and to live by them. He even 
 quotes a Greek oracle against the Greeks, admitting true 
 wisdom to be found among the Chaldeans and Hebrews 
 alone, since they alone are avroyivrjrov uvaKra (Te(3a£6fiEi>oi 
 Qedv ayi'wQ, and appropriates this admission for the 
 works of Moses. Clement Alex., in his 'Miscellanies,' 
 also relates the early history of Moses, though with 
 legends of dignity, as that Moses taught letters to the 
 Jews, from whom they passed to the Phoenicians and 
 Greeks ; that he was by some said to have slain the 
 Egyptian with the word of his mouth, as Peter did 
 Ananias ; that imprisoned, he stood before the king 
 oy night, and revealing the name of his God, the mo- 
 narch was struck senseless. All these he brings from 
 sources accredited by the Greeks, and then he goes on 
 to claim for Moses the tuition of the Greeks in politic 
 wisdom, and describes him as the model Plato followed 
 in legislation. 
 
 Origen made it his business to reply to Celsus who 
 appears to have been a hardy opponent of Christianity, 
 plainly asserting that the herdsmen and shepherds, 
 followers of Moses, had been deluded by vulgar impo- 
 sitions, and so become ensnared into the belief that 
 there is but one God, and hinting that Moses having 
 
Appendix. 31$ 
 
 picked up the doctrine from wise nations and superior 
 men, had got credit for being himself a sort of divinity. 
 Celsus went on, it seems, to name various nations as 
 originators of great doctrines, but said not a word in 
 the matter on the Jews. To this Origen, vindicating 
 the Hebrew system, strongly retorts Celsus' own 
 account of his own gods, and asks if it is a better 
 account than that of Moses, and claims for the great 
 legislator that his law was both a practical teaching 
 for the people he led, and also a grand subject of 
 speculation for the wise. He then contrasts the Egyp- 
 tian with the Hebrew, and asks if it is reasonable to 
 describe the latter as foolish for referring the world to 
 one creator, and the former as wise, who make countless 
 animals divine. He further presses the matter even 
 against the Jews themselves in his pleading for Christ, 
 and puts it 'two persons are credited with marvels 
 beyond human power, Moses and Jesus. Moses you be- 
 lieve in, notwithstanding that the Egyptians declared 
 him a sorcerer. Why are we to disbelieve Jesus, 
 merely because you are his accusers?' 
 
 At the root of all these ancient discussions we may 
 see the same impulse and effort to place the original 
 source of knowledge on the side of the advocate, and the 
 same common impression that to establish this would be 
 to gain victory in the controversy. This perpetual 
 yearning on all sides for an authoritative source of 
 truth is an interesting discovery of the habitual and 
 perhaps essential tendency of the human mind in such 
 matters, and shows us clearly that it must be useful, 
 and perhaps even necessary in any real communications 
 
3ifi Appendix. 
 
 from heaven to the human race, to approach men by the 
 process by which alone they seem fully accessible : that 
 is, by such distinct initiatives and primary communica- 
 tions as would enable all to feel ' here is the final spring 
 and fountain-head of knowledge, and here therefore we 
 may resr.' The whole attitude of antiquity makes it 
 clear that inference is not sufficient basis for the convic- 
 tions of men at large, in so great a concern as religion ; 
 but that they require and cannot dispense with full and 
 authoritative announcements of it, and that some such 
 work as the revelations and law of Moses is essential to 
 those active and permanent impressions which lead to 
 advancements of society and satisfy perpetually recurring 
 questions. Nor can we conclude without pointing out 
 how fairly the fact presses us, that the whole field of 
 evidence, from first to last, consistently and unaffectedly, 
 places Moses before us as a genuine historical personage. 
 One so distinctly historical, indeed, that the legendary 
 seems utterly unable to attacli itself to him, so that he is 
 found gaining none of those accretions and developments 
 in passing through succeeding ages, which we observe 
 collecting round the heroes of heathenism, but remains at 
 the last, after fulfilling the most exalted functions, in pre- 
 cisely the same biographical attitude as at the beginning 
 of Scripture. From this the inference is obvious that the 
 attempt to charge his surroundings with mythical ele- 
 ments must be regarded as a failure. 
 
 Page 152. 
 
 The Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart. — While the 
 inner workings of divine Providence are here described, 
 
Appendix. 317 
 
 they are yet in full accordance with its outer and ordi- 
 nary manifestations. Ewald, in his effort to explain 
 away the supernatural, clearly shows the naturalness of 
 the movement. He describes the king as 'driven by the 
 consequences of his former injustice against the people,' 
 as ' relying in the might of wrong, in its supposed 
 supports, and in some apparent successes,' as becoming 
 thus more and more hardened, and then, when these con- 
 sequences of his conduct return to him in ever-in- 
 creasing chastisement, as remaining undecided, hoping 
 yet to retain the imagined benefit of the slave popula- 
 tion; delaying, and yet at last obliged to yield — 'an eter- 
 nal, great type of the vain resistance to right and truth.' 
 We find in this typical case the ever-increasing inju- 
 riousness of sin persisted in, to the sinner. We see 
 by it also how such sin, while tolerated for mercy's 
 sake until full means of probation have been tried, is yet 
 all the time made to subserve counsels of goodness, so 
 that if God seem to work in vain with the one, He is 
 yet all the while working successfully with the many 
 through the one. We have in it very likely before us a 
 reflection of the inner mysteries of spiritual conflict. 
 We have also a declaration of the wide policy of tole- 
 rance in the outer sphere. 'And in very deed for this 
 cause have I raised thee up for to show in thee my 
 power, and that my name may be declared throughout 
 all the earth.' (T'PllOyn, I have enabled thee to endure, 
 i.e., to live on and persist until the divine plans shall 
 have been worked out). 
 
 Passing to antiquity we find the early Christian apo- 
 logists, in opposition to the heretics of their day who 
 
3 1 8 Appendix. 
 
 aimed at establishing a Demiurge, or world governor of 
 the Old Testament, distinct from and inferior to the God 
 of the New Testament, maintaining the essential identity 
 of all Scripture, and from their point of controversy vin- 
 dicating the justice and mercy of God in the Old Testa- 
 ment transaction. Irenaeus, Contra Herces. iv. 28, 29, 
 reminds them that the same facts repeat themselves as 
 part of the general dealing of God in both covenants 
 alike; and that as Israel was saved by the blindness 
 of Pharaoh, so the Christians are by the blindness of 
 the Jews. For the same divine counsels, he holds, are 
 ever to different persons diversely, ' a savour of death 
 unto death, or a savour of life unto life.' 2 Cor. ii. 15. 
 As God dealt with Pharaoh, so our Lord spoke to the 
 Jews in parables, though to His own Christian child- 
 ren plainly, that hearing, these former might not hear, 
 according to the word of Isaiah, ' make the heart of this 
 people gross,' Matt. xiii. 2. Isai. vi. 10 ; and this not 
 specially or of intent ; but even as the sun is painful to 
 those of weak eyes, while sweet and liijht-giving to 
 others. Where then, 'the god of this world has blinded 
 the eyes of them that believe not, lest the light of the 
 glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them,' 
 2 Cor. iv. 4 ; there it was because 'they did not think 
 fit to have God in their knowledge, that God gave them 
 up to a reprobate mind.' Rom. i. 28. The causing of 
 which state is not the work of Christ but of Antichrist ; 
 and then because they are found in this state God is 
 sending to them, the 'working of error in order that 
 they should believe the falsehood.' 2 Thess. ii. 11, which 
 means, God at last leaves men still in the darkness 
 
Appendix. 319 
 
 they have themselves finally chosen by the prompting of 
 Satan ; and so likewise it is only in accordance with 
 God's general dealing in all Scripture that He should 
 also leave Pharaoh, who never did or would have believed, 
 and this leaving is called ' hardening him.' 
 
 Tertullian, in confuting Marcion (ii. 14), leader in the 
 false teaching that the Demiurgus, or Creator, is not the 
 Supreme God, and that Matter, which he considered co 
 eternal with God, is essentially evil, also takes up the 
 case of Pharaoh. Tiie Marcionites insisted that the Old 
 Testament God acknowledged Himself the Author of 
 evil. 'It is I who create evil ; ' but, says Tertullian, 
 there are evils culpas and evils poena;, the former bad 
 morally, but the latter remedial. Those wilfully de- 
 spising good are not unjustly punished. Pharaoh earned 
 it, to be so dealt with as to lead to his destruction, 
 and when God's own people were persistently ungrate- 
 Ifulj neither did they escape, though in all severe dealings 
 it is to be remembered there is ever in the divine coun- 
 sels something remedial, and if we trace God's govern- 
 ment in history, we shall ever find it full of this goodness. 
 
 The case of Pharaoh is reasoned very fully by Origen 
 (de Princip. iii. 1), in connection with the question of 
 Free Will. He puts it thus. If there was, according to 
 their adverse contention, a fatalistic necessity in Pharaoh's 
 nature to act as he did, what was the meaning of his heart 
 being hardened, which it was several times. The very 
 expression that he hardened himself implies he might on 
 the other hand have yielded ; and he insists that by one 
 and the same act God has pity on one and hardens ano- 
 ther, not purposing that he who is hardened should be so, 
 
320 Appendix. 
 
 but bringing out by his very compassion, forbearance, 
 and delay, the impenitent' s contempt and insolent per- 
 severance in evil. Wherein his blessing is like the 
 rain, which is a calling forth of good fruit iu one 
 land, while it serves only to bring out thorns and 
 briars in another, 'whose end is to be burned.' Heb.vi.7. 
 The difference being that one land is dressed by the 
 husbandman, and the other neglected. From one point 
 of view it is the rain on which the good fruits and the 
 weeds are dependent, but from another it is, with equal 
 truth, the labour or neglect. So every one's will if 
 unsubdued, is hardened by the very dealings which, 
 when the will is subdued, will help obedience. Fur- 
 ther, it is evident the hardening of Pharaoh is not of 
 such a nature as some take it to be, for in that case 
 he would not have given way at all ; but there was 
 some impression, though it was resisted, and this re- 
 sistance was from his inner state ; so that grace here 
 was like the sun, which, while it softens wax, hardens 
 mud. To Pharaoh, then, are to be applied the words of 
 St. Paul, Rom. ii. 4. ' Despisest thou the riches of his 
 goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, not know- 
 ing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, 
 but after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest 
 up unto thyself wrath.' 
 
 Augustine in his 'Sermons for the Seasons' (Serm. 
 88), also goes into the case at length. He describes the 
 remaining in sin as bringing desperation, desperation as 
 bringing obduracy, and obduracy a contempt of the 
 long-suffering which gives time for repentance, thus 
 treasuring up wrath. In this way hardness comes from 
 
Appendix. 321 
 
 the very forbearance of God, not from His severity. So 
 when the Lord is said to harden Pharaoh's heart it is as 
 if it were said, ' I have suspended my plagues and so 
 allowed him to harden his heart.' Thus Isaiah i. 5, 
 ' Why should ye he stricken any more ? ye will revolt 
 more and more.' Pharaoh was bad through his past 
 sins, and therefore let alone. So we read concerning 
 God's own people (Isa. lxiii.), 'In His love and His pity 
 He redeemed them ; but they rebelled and vexed His 
 holy spirit, therefore He was turned to be their enemy:' 
 and then, ' O Lord, why hast Thou made us to err from 
 Thy ways, and hardened our heart from Thy fear.' 
 Indeed Pharaoh himself sees the case better than do the 
 ' immundissimi Manichasi,' for he owns that the Lord is 
 just, and he and his people sinners. See also Quasst. 
 super Exod. xxiv., and Ps. cxviii. 18, immediately 
 after the captivity of Babylon, where as the end of 
 the works and mighty doings of Jehovah and His 
 chastening, His real servants are 'not given over to 
 death.' 
 
 In Jerome, vol. ix. 70, the same general position is 
 found ; and also in his comment on Isaiah, c. vi., is 
 some consideration of those deeper aspects of the sub- 
 ject which have not here been entered on. Among many 
 of our own writers, Tillotson, speaking on such judg- 
 ments, says, ' the sin of Pharaoh was also the reproach 
 of Israel.' ' The people turneth not to Him that smiteth 
 them, neither do they seek the Lord of Hosts.' (Isa. ix. 
 13). This was the brand of Ahaz, that 'in the time of 
 his distress he trespassed yet more against the Lord ' (2 
 Chron. xxviii. 22), and he it was who was said to have 
 S S 
 
322 Appendix. 
 
 provoked the Lord, more than all the kings of Israel 
 ■which were before Him.' See ' Tillotson's Serm. xxxii.; 
 Hooker V., Appendix i. ; Hammond's Sermon, ' God's 
 complaint against revolters,' &c. 
 
 Page 242. 
 
 Ark of The Covenant a Type of Christ. — 'Area con- 
 structa erat in modum cistae, intrinsecus atque extrinse- 
 cus auro obducta : repraasentans Christi puritatem, in 
 cogitationibus internis simul et externis actionibus. 
 Pedibus, quibus niteretur, carebat, fundo suo insistens 
 solo, inque eo figura Christi humiliantis se super terram. 
 Extrinsecus super supremam oram factus erat aureus 
 Limbus circumquaque forma coronaria, repraesentans, in- 
 quiunt Judaai, coronam Legis, sed aptissime Christum 
 coronatum gloria. Singulis angulis inditi erant annuli 
 Aurei, in quos inducti erant duo vectes e lignis Cedro- 
 rum lectissimarum Auro obducti, quibus Area portare- 
 tur, mansuri istic perpetuo et nunquam amovendi; quo, 
 ut quidam exponunt, Sacerdotes monebantur. ut parati 
 semper et praasto adessent ad ministerium ; sed potius eo 
 adumbrata videtur Christi Deitas, humanitatem ejus 
 sustentans, nullo unquam tempore ab ipso recessura. 
 Operculum in veteri simul et Novo Testamento dicitur 
 Propitiatorium, Anglis vulgo Mercy- Seat ; atque ita 
 nuncupatur,quia,Deus indegratiosepopulo suoestlocutus. 
 Hanc partem bene attende, et plene videbis Christum.' 
 (Lightfoot, Spicilig. in Exod. xxxvii.) The above may, 
 perhaps, overstrain to some extent in the effort to se- 
 
Appendix. 323 
 
 cure resemblances, but it will serve to show, at any rate, 
 that this general idea with regard to the typical mean- 
 ing of the Ark was favoured by a writer familiar with 
 the details of Hebrew antiquity, and with their relations 
 to the Gospel. 
 
 Page 283. 
 
 Moses Interceding, a Type of Christ's Intercessory 
 Work. — ' Deus in ipsa etiam ferocia sua, ciim ob vituli 
 consecrationem efferatus in populum, de famulo suo pos- 
 tulat Moyse, " Sine me et in ira disperdam illos, et faciam 
 te in nationem magnam." Unde meliorem soletis affir- 
 mare Moysen Deo suo, deprecatorem, immo et prohibi- 
 torem irre. Non facies enim, inquit, istud, aut et me 
 una, cum eis impende. Miserandi vos quoque cum populo, 
 qui Christum non agnoscitis in persona Moysis figura- 
 tum, Patris deprecatorem, et oblatorem animre sure pro 
 populi salute. Sed sufficit, si et Moysi proprie donatus 
 est populus ad prassens ; quod ut famulus postulare pos- 
 set a, domino, id dominus a, se postulavit. Ad hoc enim 
 famulo dixit, " Sine me et disperdam illos, ut ille postulan- 
 do, et semetipsum offerendo non sineret ; atque ita dis- 
 ceres quantum liceat fideli et Prophetae apud Deum." 
 (Tertull. adv. Marcionem, ii. 26.) We may say then that, 
 while in leading out the people, in legislating for them, in 
 patiently bearing their burden, and in many details, 
 Moses was a type ; in few points, if any, did he more 
 eminently prefigure the ' prophet like unto himself than 
 in this central act of prevailing intercession for repen- 
 tant sinners. 
 
T.OXOOS : PRINTED BY 
 KPOTTISWOODR AXIJ CO., NEW-STREET 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 EAKLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 BY REV. DR CKOSSE. 
 
 Price 5s. 
 
 London : LONGMANS, GREEN, and CO. Paternoster Row. 
 May be had of all Booksellers. 
 
 LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW. 
 
 ' A wise and thoughtful book, which the reader of Scripture and the 
 student of science may both handle with advantage. Without attempt- 
 ing any formal solution of the difficulties arising out of the new relations 
 of science and the written revelation, Dr. Crosse shows that the position 
 held by the Bible in the controversy is as far as possible from being 
 the hopeless one. which some of its scientific opponents assume it to be ; 
 that, in point of fact, the great religious and historical affirmations of 
 early Scripture are still the only rational account which can be given of 
 the matters to which they refer ; and that there is a harmony, not to 
 say an identity, between the doctrines of the most ancient and of the 
 latest parts of the Bible which is not to be explained, except on the 
 principle that it is what the Christian Church believes it to be — the 
 supernaturally inspired Word of God. This argument runs through 
 Dr. Crosse's volume, and is managed with much moderation, tact, and 
 quiet force. At the same time the Author finds occasion to string upon 
 his main thread, always appropriately and gracefully, abundance of 
 acute and sensible observations on the special topics of his Lectures.' 
 
 CHURCHMAN. 
 
 ' The fact that these clear and well-written Lectures have already 
 reached a second edition almost precludes the necessity of saying a 
 great deal in their praise. They are emphatically sensible. Without 
 pretentiousness, they yet give in a straightforward and intelligible way 
 the results both of thought and reading.' 
 
 LITERARY CHURCHMAN. 
 
 ' The volume before us, though dealing with a hackneyed subject, is 
 as unhackneyed as it is possible to be; its whole tone and contents as 
 fresh and rigorous as if it were the first reply that had ever hi>en 
 
rendered. ... In the most delicately skilful and impartially convincing 
 way conceivable, and without a trace of that too often bitter war of 
 words which one is accustomed to in ordinary controversial treatises, 
 the strongholds of the sceptic are seen first to totter from very baseless- 
 ness, and then altogether to crumble away when tried with the touch- 
 stone of truth. . . . Dr. Crosse has brought to his subject a refinement 
 of taste, and delicacy of touch, which make his book as elegant and 
 pleasing as it is suggestive ; while there is a clear vein of common 
 sense and a dignified soberness pervading the whole which should make 
 it especially acceptable to those for whom it was intended — the en- 
 lightened and educated inquirers and students of this nineteenth 
 century. We commend it most heartily to the attention of all our 
 readers.' 
 
 GUARDIAN. 
 
 ' Dr. Crosse's Lectures on Early Scripture have deservedly reached a 
 second edition. The scope of the volume may be said generally to be 
 to claim for Scripture to be judged by the light of its own avowed pur- 
 poses, and to point out its wonderful aptness and truth when so judged. 
 There is sufficient both of originality and power in the execution of this 
 design to take the work out of the category of mere sermons, and to 
 give it a more lasting value.' 
 
 BRITISH AND FOREIGN EVANGELICAL REVIEW. 
 
 ' We have been arrested and charmed by the perusal of this volume. 
 It is replete with original thought, profound reflection, and striking 
 argument. The sentiments of the writer are sound and evangelical, but 
 what has specially delighted us in perusing these Lectures is to see a 
 mind so richly imbued with the spirit of genuine philosophy bowing 
 with such profound reverence before the shrine of Holy Scripture, and 
 bringing it out in harmony with the wisdom, power, and goodness of 
 God. In an age when our would-be philosophers seem to take a pride 
 and pleasure in finding out discrepancies between Scripture and science, 
 it is truly refreshing to see such a writer as Dr. Crosse, at once a 
 scholar, a lawyer, and a divine, devoting his energies to the noble task 
 not merely of vindicating Scripture, but by placing it in its true light, 
 commending it to the admiration and homage of mankind. We shall 
 await with much interest the promised sequel of these valuable Lectures.' 
 
 In the press. 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 LECTURES ON HEBREW LAW. 
 
 Spottiswoode <(• Co., Printers, New-street Spiare rind 30 Parliament Street. 
 

 DATE DUE 
 
 
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