m- b= o Z^-5 Exodus, Moses and the Decalogue Legislation. The Central Doctrine and Regulative Organum of Mosaism. Substantiating the Biblical Legislation, civil, political, agra- rian; and its Humanity, Benevolence and Charity Laws ; Universal Import and Analysis of the Ten Commandments in parallel with other Codes ; demonstrating prophetic Monotheism and its Ethics as the unique basis for civilized society. By MAURICE FLUEGEL. Baltimore, U. S. A. Author of: Religious Rites and Aspects; Biblical Legislation; Humanity, Benevolence and Charity Laws (of the Pentateuch and Talmud) ; Messiah Ideals, Vol. I, Jesus of Nazareth; Vol. II, Paul and New Testament; Mohammed and Qoran; Zend-Avesta and Parseeism, Brahmanism and Buddhism; Israel the Biblical People; Philosophy, Qabbala and Vedanta; etc; works published. Copyright secured by the Author, Maurice Fluegel, 1910. Publishers : M. Fluegel Co., Baltimore, Md., U. S. A. The Author's Works to be Published: The Biblical Holidays and their import for civilization ; The Mosaic Genesis, paralleled with other cosmogonies; The Biblical Patriarchs, as a historical aera; The Mosaic State and Church, Leznticus; Religious Rites and Aspects; Credo, Principles, Sanitary Laws. II. Edition, largely increased. The IV. Book of Mosis. The V. Book of Mosis. These seven Manuscript-Volumes and the three already pub- lished, exhaustively treat of the Pentateuch, Bible, Talmud, and Religion generally, in their world-historic bearings. Philosophy Vol. II; Zohar, Thora and Science; The Second Judaean Commonzvealth and Maccabean War. Each of these volumes of about 300 octavo pages. "Essays and Lectures," historical, political, theological and liter- ary ; as also : Israel's Battles for Freedom and Renaissance, "Milhamoth-Ihvh," are unfinished. Table of Contents The leading themes of the volume are : I. Moses, the Liberator from Egyptian bondage ; II. The Ten Commandments, in their all-sided bearings, com- pared with other codes ; III. The Mosaic Sanctuary and worship. Study I. Page "■' Moses the Liberator — Moses and Pharoah 5 Prophecy and Revelation 7 ^•Advent of the Liberator 9 Mosis' Environments and Education 12 Mosis' Flight, the crisis 16 Horeb, Sinai, Arabian Desert 18" The Burning Bush ^ .._... 21 Israel's Labors — Great Thoughts Never Die 22 • Medrashim on Moses 25-30 Study II. Moses, the Prophets and their mission — Israel's career 31 Reply and Refutation — Religious, Social and Political outlook 35 Is Israel true to his task ? 41 JMission of Christianity ,\ , 43 Mission of Mohammedanism 47 The Biblical Teachings ] 49 The Hague Peace Arbitration and the Prophets 51 Charles Voysey on the Mission of the Jews 56 .J'ractical Results of the Exodus, Survey of Egypt 59 -History Corroborating .' 67 Moses faithful to the living and the dead 69 Moses and the Two Arks — American Israel — Bright Sides 71 iWoman to assist 82 ^ Study III. • The Ten Commandments — Introduction — Kingdom of priests 86 Sinai's Civilization— Wherefore Israel? Pre- and Post-Sinai 89 The Coronation formula 94 Recapitulation and summary 96 • Genesis of the Decalogue 100 Arabia and Sinai 101' • Decalogue Text and Sense. I— V Commandments 104 • Commandments VI — X. Manifold Stealings — Agadas on that 107 4 Considerations, Once and Now 118 Study IV. The One God of the Decalogue 12i Divine Existence — Common-Sense Proof — Design in Nature 123 Science and the God-conception. Biblical divine names 126 God and Creation 129 Cause of Evil. R. Aqiba and Vedanta 130 Nebular Theory and Napoleon Bonaparte 132 Psalmist, Job, Kant, Herbert Spencer on that 134 TABLE OF CONTENTS— Continued. Page Summing up 135 Mosaic God-idea contrasted with ottier systems 136 Dualism — Unity and Trinity — Pantheism — Spinoza 137 ——"Moses, Fichte, Spinoza, Hegel, Skepticism — God and Nature 144 Polytheism and its polity contrasted with Pentateuch 147 The Law of hcreidity and entail 153 Biblical optimism — the Rabbis on that 156 V History shows free-will 160 ///. Commandment — The Oath 162 Study V. fhe Sabbath of the Decalogue 165 Sabbath and its humanitarian influences 168 Thoughts on the Sabbath 171 Sabbath in America 174 Sabbath or any other day? Sunday and practical men 177 Sunday the Symbol of Trinity — Sabbath and Sunday contrasted 182 American Jews consider! The practical side 185 Theoretical men and Sunday. Talmudical aspects 188 Reverse sides of the problem 194 Appeal for the Sabbath 196 Stiidy VI. Filial Piety and Reverence 20W The Jewish Family — Jules Simon on Americanism 202 Reverence for Country — Reverence for Judaism 206 Reverence for Synagogue — Reverence for Education 210 Reverence for God and Virtue. The several Reverences 213 Study VII. Decalogue, Judaism and Christianity 217 Harmony and Universality of the Decalogue 218 The Banner-Bearer and Oriflamme — Israel's future 222 Judaism and Christianity, their differences 227 The Vatican Syllabus of 1870 228 Study VIII. Israel, Champion of the Decalogue ,. 231 Battles of Ihvh— Jerusalem and Rome— Tacitus on it 234 Decalogue and Polytheism 239 Islam and the Jews — The Crusades, Spain 242 West Europe — Poland — Marranos — The Ghetto 246 Nineteenth and Twentieth Century 251 America and New Judaea — Closing Remarks 254 United States and the Decalogue 261 Study IX. The Mosaic Sanctuary or Tabernacle 264 Need of such 266 Import of Tabernacle and Temple 271 Once and Now. Temple and Synagogue ^'6 The holy vessels of the Tabernacle 278 Worship and Sacrifical Cult ^8^5 Table of Shrewbread. The Candelabrum. The Altars 284 The Holy Ark — Kapporeth, Cherubim form — Outfit 291 Exodus Trilogy. Survey of the volume. The Code 296 V Personal freedom. Free soil. Equality. Fraternity. End 300-308 ^ Errata 309 Exodus, Moses and the Decalogue study /.—MOSES THE LIBERATOR. Generally this second Book of Moses is termed: Ve-ala- Shemoth, the Hebrew opening words of the Book. In the vul- gate it is termed: Exodus, the going forth, the issue of the Israelites from Egypt. ^ Into that land they had immigrated under Jacob and Joseph and remained, according to the Bible, 430 years; but according to the rabbinical computation, those 430 years of migrations began with Abraham, whilst the sojourn proper in Egypt, was only of 215 years, encompassing four generations.^ The book is devoted to the narrative of the Benai-Israel, their issue from the Egyptian country and bondage, their start as a nation, the reception of the Law, their sojourn in the wilderness and erection of a portative Temple, the Tabernacle, a unique sanctuary, repre- senting their oneness in nationality, cult and monotheism. The first chapters of Exodus narrate the history of the redemption of Israel and the mission of Moses. As Abraham began a new aera of civilization, establishing his own family as its nucleus and basis, as with Jacob this family grew into a tribe propagating that civilization, even so with Moses, the tribe expanded into a nation, with the task of developing that civilization of monotheism, freedom and labor to its full growth. PHARAOH AND xMOSES, CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS. The first chapters of this book produce before our eyes two leading characters, Moses and Pharaoh. They represent the two great forces of human society, the two phases of our human nature. Two powers are ever in contention in our social world, in eternal antagonism, yet ever working in harmony for the preservation of the race and for its unfolding, its stability on one hand, and its gradual, cautious advance, on the other hand. These two forces are the principles of Conservatism and of Pro- gress, They are the two pillars, the "Joachim and Boas," the anchor and the sails of the social ship; the two faces of the 2 IV M., xvl., 1. Four generations, Qorah, son Izhar, son Kehath, son Levi. 6 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Janus-statue, one turned backward, one forwards, one pointing to the past and the other to the future; the two poles of time, the present and stabiHty, the future and advance. Both are urgently and indispensably necessary; they are each other's complement; without either, human society would soon collapse; they are the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the social body. The one insures stability, safety, solidity; the other secures life, move- ment, advance, improvement. Without Conservatism the state is ever threatened with unrest, precipitate change, revolution, shattering and sudden destruction ; without Progress, the State is menaced with stagnation, rottenness and collapse. Every age has its representation of these two supreme social forces, this alluded-to double-faced Janus-statue looking forwards and back- wards. They are incarnated in two such leading personal expo- nents. No doubt, they are social forces, but personified and concrete in these leaders. Four centuries before the Exodus, they were by Nimrod and Abraham, later by Esau and Israel. They are now in Exodus, by Pharaoh and Moses. Moses is the model of those grand men of advance, of movement, of the future ; of those extraordinary men whom history produces but at great intervals, as marking stones and mile-posts of new aeras, of great political and ethical evolutions. Pharaoh is the pattern of the opposite principle, stability. He represents the old and trite, the vulgar and past, the safe side. Moses appears to be the weaker party, but his is, surely, the future. To Pharaoh the world seems to belong; he is legitimate, apparently, his is the present and the past, but his is not the future. Moses is moved by the diviner spirit, by man's nobler nature, by the eternal instinct of amelioration, the inherent right of the masses against the classes, their betterment against the historical right or privi- lege, by universal improvement against the aristocratic minority, by the genius of revolution against class pretensions ; he is the aggrandized Mirabeau, the Lasker, the Virchow of his time, if comparison limps not. Pharaoh, on the contrary, is the Metternich, Bourbon or Ignatieff of his. He represents the guild, the philis- tinism, the legitimacy, the cast-iron class-legality of his epoch. He knows no inherent justice, no inborn equity, no common sense fairness; he knows the reigning statute. He represents Law, not right, reason—prophecy. PHARAOH AND MOSES. 7 A recent thinker states (Nietzsche, in "Menschliches") : There is no right in nature, nothing but force. The forces clash and contend for mastery, so war is the necessary result. Then the belligerents compromise and stipulate terms of peace. These are the elements of right. Without war and treaty there exists no right. In the abstract it is a mere conventional notion, coined by the hungry masses. This sad view underlies all ancient polythe- ism. Prophetism, the Bible is its very opposite pole, and modern civilization is deeply moored in that principle : Right and reason, not force and selfishness. Ancient Babylon, Athens, Rome stood on force and egoism. Jerusalem, Prophetism, Bible with Chris- tianity and Mohammedanism are based on God, Right and Rea- son. Israel's heroic battles for this higher platform saved it for mankind. And this is his great merit for civilization. PROPHECY AND REVELATION. The leading sentence of our Book is again and again^ : "God spake to Moses." This is the motto. God spake to Moses, in deed and in fact. Such a grand, holy Moses-nature is ever the resounding oracle of the Deity. The noble, ethical, social, spiritual truths are revealed to him face to face^, as naturally and plainly as are to us, usual people, the bright sky and its constellations. Is this a miraculous power, lost to us moderns? Was there prophecy? Was there genius? Or patriotism? Was there a vision, or ecstacy, or a symbol? Who can determine, assert? May they not be all identified in one? Who has measured the relation, the heights and depths of human mind and of divine mind? Surely God has no tongue and no lips. He inspires man intellectually — how He inspires? is diversely answered by re- ligious philosophy. Who can tell where is the focus, their point of contact ? The divine rays ever fill the universe, but how shall man make ready to receive them ? Maimonides says : "The human species has some extraordinary exemplars best fitted for the rational soul, and such an extraordinary human intellect, ad- hering fixedly to the divine Intellectus Activus, obtains an addi- tional large emanation which constitutes prophecy."^ In such a II Moses Etc.nK>D ^x n'^ los'i ,n3*T'i ^ 3 This is approximately liis modest opinion, frequently uttered as teacher and thinker, in Yad and Guide. 8 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Moses-mind the divine word is ever audible, vehemently sound- ing- forth its behests and admonitions. To such a nature it ordains, in a whisper or a shout: Arise,i early in the morning, Moses, rise from the soft pillow of the past and the vulgar, rise and go to meet Pharaoh, (the old time genius and repre- sentative), and tell him: "Thus speaketh Ihvh: Send forth My people that they may worship Me." — God, the Allgood, the active, driving Mind behind nature, the life principle, the propelling Power of history, calls : Let My people go free that they may serve Me, for they are My servants, not the servants of servants.^ — "God spake to Moses." In such noble natures the divine voice is ever resounding. They are the live-temple of the Divine, its living oracle. They are so sympa- thetic, so public spirited, their soul is so clear, mirroring so accurately the events of history, their ear is so delicately catching up the sounds of suffering humanity that they necessarily be- come their interpreters, in them Deity continually speaks. They are an eternal vehicle of revelation, so sensitive that every world- event strikes them and produces its powerful echo. Mosis' sympathetic nature was a sort of aeols' harp. Every historical air-current passed through its delicate strings, moved and thrilled them and produced harmonious tones, jubilant or mourn- ful, corresponding to the surrounding events. Such was that Moses-nature, ever alert to the woe and weal of his brethren. Hence the refrain: "God spake to Moses." 1 II M., viii. Rise early in the morning. 2 They are my servants, not serfs to serfs. Rashi and Rabbis, ad locum. Maimonides' Yad and Guide, commenting to Mishnayoth, Sanhedrin, on the dogmas, says, page 127 b: cbsK'n miv niSspD }nB> ny ...did^^K'I ni:5iyo nn»o n^yat: ^byn nxujn N^n in .1222 niTvx Literally and fully translated: The sixth principle is: Prophecy, viz.: We must know that the human species contains a few individuals naturally endowed with great virtues and perfections, and their minds are so well constituted that they do the more perfectly obtain the intellectual impress and influence. When, thereupon, this human in- telligence fixes itself adheringly to the (divine) Intellectus Activus it obtains a most important emanation (of inspiration).. .These are the prophets and this is prophecy and its substance. To enlarge upon this principle and prove it is not our intention here, and would lead us away from our theme... The Torah testifies to it clearly." PROPHECY AND REVELATION. 9 The opposite pole is Pharaoh. He too remained true to his nature, the eternal type of vulgarity, of historical views and habits, blind prejudice for the old, ever against the new. To him the divine behest goes forth : "Let My people go that they may serve Me." But he is slow to realize the new time. Hence : "His heart holds on," he refuses to listen; "he did not let the people go," we read again and again. See the stupid tough- ness, the holding on to the past, the blind adherence, obstinately clinging to the old ways. That is political conservatism. It is called legitimacy, love of order. One rules by divine grace — not in the interest of the people. There is an aristocracy — his- torical, not natural, not of the really best. There reigns the Law — not identical with real justice. There is an accumulation of customs and privileges piled up, high and huge as the tower of Babel — "but there is never the question of the rights born with us." There is a love of order — without love and without order, yea, upholding disorder; Laws accumulating as the cancer, from generation to generation ; in the interests of the dynasts and the classes, against the masses of the people. Pharaoh is its represen- tative. Such a stupid conservatism we meet in all the social phases and strata, in private and in public, at home, church and State ; in eating and drinking, in wakefulness or asleep ; in the market and the caucus. People do what they have been doing, not because it is good and wise, but because it is a habit. An old proverb says : "Having acted wrongly and repeated the wrong, it appears an established right."i All that is personified in Pharaoh, the em- bodiment of blind conservatism and stability. Moses calls : Thus speaks Ihvh, "Let My people go, that they may serve Me !" In vain, Pharaoh insists and refuses : "I know not that hypothesis !" ADVENT OF THE LIBERATOR. Wonderful and inspiring, tragic and yet cheering, is the his- tory of the birth and the rise of providential men. It is sublime and extraordinary, but it is in every way natural. Surprising and edifying are the methods of Supreme Intelligence about the destiny of mankind, in mysterious meanderings, winding and tortuous. As an impetuous mountain torrent rushes its stormy waves, through deep ravines, rocks and clefts, straits and sub- terraneous beds until at last it reappears a grand, majestic, vast 10 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. stream, sudden as by enchantment, nevertheless, natural, going from cause to effect, every water-drop it carries is well accounted for, the outcome of the manifold sources; even so are the ways and means of Providence in the mysterious concatenations and meanderings of world history. They are wonderful and myste- rious, but ever rigidly natural, never infringing upon the im- mutable, eternal, divine laws, primordially laid down by the Great Architect of the universe. Even so is the history of the birth, the rise, the life and the mission of Moses to Israel. Read the sagas about the founders, not only of antique India, Assyria, Akkad or Babylon, but even of later Rome, Athens or Carthage, and see what crude and rude myths and marvels are there brought forward to illustrate their heroes ! The more miracle, the greater the hero ! the more the natural laws are set aside, the greater appeared the leader. Nothing of the kind you find around the birth, rise and mission of Moses. They are extra- ordinary, but not encroaching upon the eternal laws of God, deeply laid down in the workings of the universe. This is one of the salient points of the Hebraic sacred Scriptures. Their heroes are men, historic beings, acting within the bounds of our known natural laws. They are extraordinary, fit causes of extraordinary effects. Now let us consider : What is the background to the Book of Exodus and the Mosaic mission? Long before the advent of Moses and the Benai-Israel in Mizraim, that country had been invaded and gradually conquered by the Semitic Hyksos.i shepherd tribes from neighboring Arabia and Khanaan. Lower Egypt, around the several branches of the Nile, was occupied and personally ruled by their kings, whilst upper-Egypt, was left as yet to the native lords, recognizing the suzerainty of the foreign-born Hyksos princes. Most naturally these were ever apprehensive of the native populations and their yet reigning sub-kings ; cunningly divided and abetted against each other by the crafty polity of the Hyksos sovereign, they were, neverthe- less, ever ready to unite against the foreign invaders. It was ever the Hyksos' policy to call from Arabia and Khanaan as many countrymen as possible, in order to strengthen their own ranks against any possible rising of the natives. Under such a iSee Messiah Ideal, Vol. I, page 124. Hyksos. ADVENT OF THE LIBERATOR. n Hyksos-Pharaoh, Joseph had arrived in Egypt, as a slave, and sold to Potiphar, the head of the shepherd king's bodyguard. Under such circumstances Joseph had, most naturally, suc- ceeded in gaining the favor of the courtiers, Hyksos, too, as well as of the king himself. Under such, he had become one of the provincial governors, had occasion to provide for the country during a famine, and thus succeeded to serve well his foreign Hyksos master, and at the same time the native people. During that famine he continued to acquire the entire territory for the Pharaoh, while he saved the population from starvation. He then acquired the consent of the king to settle his own tribe, the Benai-Israel, on the confines of Egypt and Arabia, in "Goshen," the king finding in him a useful and politic minister, and in his tribe faithful allies, countrymen and fellow-shepherds, holding the same position and interests as himself, towards the aboriginal population. But a new situation arrived; the native princes and the native people gradually made common cause and the Hyksos conquerers were driven out of the country. This was a long and wearisome undertaking. Now as the Benai- Israel were not really identical with the Hyksos, as they had not come as conqurers into the land, as their chieftain, Joseph, had saved the land during a famine, and generally had left a patriotic and good record of his government, so his tribe was allowed to stay in the country, after the Hyksos had been ex- pelled. But some time after this expulsion, a change of feeling came on. We read (Exodus i : 8) : And there arose a new King (viz. : a new, native dynasty) who did not know Joseph, and he addressed his fellow-native counsellors : "Behold the foreign Benai- Israel are becoming more numerous and powerful than we. Take care, we must be politic, for they will go on ever increasing, and should war (with the close-by hovering Hyksos) break out, then they may side with our enemies, join in the war against us and leave the land." (II M. I. 10). So a policy of repression, op- pression and systematic destruction was inaugurated, culminat- ing in conspiring against the unborn generations, and drowning every male-child of the doomed foreign race — the policy of the Anti-Semites of today, as of the Pharaohs of the 3,500 years ago. Under such pressing, ominous circumstances, the advent of Moses took place: Two peoples, close-by, are here in array against each other: The one is a formidable majority, under its 12 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. own leaders, with all the resources of centralized power, au- thority, government, armies, statescraft, proud of its indigenous nationality and its recent victory over the Shepherd invaders. It conspires against the other alien clan, apprehensive of the growing remnant of these "foreigners." Eager to keep them as bondsmen and exploit them, yet afraid of their growing numbers, it determined to check that strength, even by secret or open murder, by destroying the births and growths of the males and retaining but the female half of the dreaded race.^ The Jew-baiting methods of today, 3,500 years after the Pharaohs, in Russia, Roumania, elsewhere, in our boastful civilization, in Christendom, etc., proves that the Pharaonic policy of drown- ing is history, and not myth. Under such circumstances, Moses made his appearance, in this dismal, sublunar world, as the bridge between the contending parties, a child of the enslaved race, brought up at the court of the dominant one. The Pharaoh, thus, unconsciously, educating and equipping a leader of the oppressed against the oppressors. MOSIS' ENVIRONMENTS AND EDUCATION. I said, extraordinary men are the result of extraordinary epochs and new, surprising constellations and environments. Great men are not great by mere chance, not by blind acci- dent or the caprice of fate, or by miraculous grace. History is grounded in law. This is a rabinnical view, too. Abraham became great by efforts and trials, by education and gradual developing. "With Ten Trials he was tried and these made him great," say our sages.^ Such is also the sense of the Greek myths of Heracles, Theseus, Perseus. Circumstances, efforts, developments create epoch-making men. Hence it is of great interest to know the beginnings, the genesis of great men. The people often surround them with posthumous miracles and prod- igies, thinking that only marvels create marvels. The wise know that only great causes bring forth great effects. Marvels do not explain; while reasonable, though extraordinary causes do. Hence it is not true what some advance, that such causes are later invented, myths explaining myths. No, the birth, rearing I M., 12. Agada Dmnsa nM^v^ nnx ^o' ...Dmas no: nuroj ni)i^]}2 MOSIS' ENVIRONMENTS AND EDUCATION. 13 and rise of great men are remarkable, and hence they produce remarkable results. There are certain historical critics that aim at flattening all great men and all great events, declaring that everything great is a myth, an exaggeration, that Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, etc., are but myths, they and their deeds, that they either never existed, or never such as depicted in history. This view of vulgarizing great epochs, lowering them to mere commonplace, and their human agents also to commonplace, this view, too, is vulgar. It is not at all criticism, not solving the riddles of history. No, great events and aeras are, no doubt, the result of the surrounding great cir- cumstances, first, and next of great human agents, their repre- sentatives, and both are great and extraordinary, the natural and logical outcome of a vast and incalculable concatenation of things, of which the last ring is an all-wise Providence, governing all by eternal laws. Pseudo-critics tell us that Abraham, Moses, Jesus, etc., are but fictions. Whence come then the deeds, yea, the aeras attributed to them, since every effect must have its adequate cause? If monotheism, with its correlative ideas of right, pan-humanity, sympathy, solidarity, has not been advanced by them, somebody else must have done it, and if somebody has, why not those testified to by history ? It is but envy that belittles mankind and its heroes. Smallness begets smallness. Moses is thus a fact, a historical, real person ; Israel's leader in his Exodus from Egypt, his liberator, the starter of his legisla- tion, the founder of the nation. And these extraordinary facts must have an extraordinary cause; Moses must have been a creative genius, acting in favorable extraordinary environments. What were these? Our chapters tell us this: From the very start his circumstances were strange and peculiar, calling for a great genius. His people oppressed, full of energy, yet held under the iron thumbscrew of the new Pharaohs and the native Egyptians, suspicious of the foreign race. Its growth was impeded, its members doomed, its births curtailed. He, Moses, himself, is exposed to the mercy of the Nile waves. His mother and sister contrive — what does not love and iron necessity con- trive? — to place him in a casket into the Nile where a court lady frequently takes her baths. She passes by and hears the cries of the baby from the casket in the waves. She guesses that it is a Hebrew one, doomed to perish, and she feels sympathetically. 14 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE, more as a woman than as an Egyptian. She saves the child, and calHng for a nurse, the sister, and soon the mother, close by, wait- ing for the opportunity, most naturally offer their services. So, most naturally and without any miracles, the baby, doomed to destruction, is saved by the very tyrants, by a Pharaonic princess, in a simple, still extraordinary way. She, a daughter of tyranny, takes it upon herself to rear a liberator to, and an avenger of, the oppressed people. And mark, this is not a myth, no! it is history, you see, it is perfectly logical, it is necessarily true, for how else would the enslaved race find a leader, stored with the faculties, the knowledge, the learning, the experience, the energy, the statesmanship, all the resources and equipments re- quired for such a gigantic undertaking — if the Court itself had not undertaken to furnish the first, great requisite, a pariah edu- cated as a leader? Here is one of those extraordinary strokes of divine policy which decide of great events. Here was the occasion, the need for a great liberator, and the Court furnished the liberator! And not only is this a fact, not a myth, but the fact is cogent, indispensably necessary, the pivot, the turn-point of the catastrophe. It is the cue to and the beginning of the entire world-drama. Moses was born a Hebrew slave and edu- cated as a commander, the Numa and the Servius Tullius of the Jewish people, enabled to conceive the plan, lead, prepare and liberate his own pariah-race and make it a historic nation. As Sacred Scripture shows us Egypt, and as we know it by history now extant, it was then at the height of power and civili- zation. At that court was gathered the flower of oriental wisdom, the sciences, arts and crafts of peace and war, of government and statesmanship. There Moses learned all the ancient world knew, so indispensable for his providential undertaking, -to rescue and liberate, create and rule a nation.^ There are plenty of legends about his early ambitions and activities, his successes and achievements. We are told that he had been a soldier, a general, a conqueror of provinces, of Ethiopia, that he even had married there a royal princess. No doubt, a gifted young man, patronized by the court, the most brilliant future was open to his genius. Scripture passes all that in silence. Our chapter introduces him modestly and simply: "Moses was tending to the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law." 1 So Maimonides contends, after the Rabbis, that only such extraor- dinary men can perform such deeds; that a prophet must be strong, rich and energetic. MOSIS' ENVIRONMENTS AND EDUCATION. is Another proof of its veracity and historical calibre ; it keeps strictly to facts, when depicting the characters of its hero. Now consider : Any other, usual man would have prudently forgotten his affiliation with the enslaved race, would have denied it and rather vaunted and bragged of his princely standing, of his Egyp- tian education, of office, state-sword and preferments. We well know this petty vanity and this prudent meanness, which repu- diate and deny the minority, the losing party and ever hasten into the ranks of the majority, of the winning, reigning class or party. We know of those turn-coats who feel flattered when mis- taken for one of the dominant race. Many a fool says : "I am no- Irishman, no Dutchman, no Jew : I am a man ! I am not clannish, I am a citizen of the vast world !" That is mere cant and sub- terfuge. That is the mask of cold selfishness. Such people are no good religionists, no good men, no true patriots and no real humanists. They are cunning, petty egoists. To be a good man, begin to be a good Teuton, Jew or Irishman. To be a citizen of the world you must start as a good patriot of your country. Begin within that small sphere Providence has indicated by your station,, your birth. Doing there your duty you will benefit all humanity and the entire world. "Whosoever desires to perform something great, must concentrate his greatest energy upon the smallest point."^ So acted Moses, the Hebraic pariah, the world- leader. He who bore an Egyptian pallium, a grandee's sword and uniform, who had enjoyed an Egyptian education and was permeated with cosmopolitan ways of thinking, he had not lost his Hebraic consciousness. He remembered his birth, his parents,, and kindred, his pariah-home and his race, their sad history^ and their wrongs. He forgot not his duty towards them and was not dazzled by the lustre of his adoption. Here is the siga of true greatness, of moral worth, yea, of genius, of a great destiny. (Let us illustrate this by a quotation from Roman litera- ture: Cicero, speaking of such a man (De Amicitia dialogus) says : "This is an example to be imitated : Has one acquired any kind of superiority, virtue, spirit, fortune, let him divide it with his friends and his kindred. Is one born in an obscure family, of poor parents, modestly endowed, he must be their fortune, honor, iGoethe. Willst Du was Grosses leisten, so richte die grosste Kraft auf den kleinsten Punkt. i6 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. glory."! Here are combined a solid head, a feeling heart, and an energetic hand; here are vast thoughts and deep sympathies. Where head, heart and hand work in harmony, there is a great man born into the world. A good heart without the solid head, is of little avail. A solid head without a sympathetic heart, often turns dangerous to the world. Such were Sulla, Caesar, Napoleon. Head and heart in harmony, what sympathy erst craves and muses, then plans and contrives with a firm head, and executes with an energetic hand, that makes a leader, a genuine humanist, a historical epoch, a providential instrument of liberation and initiative, an aera in man's annals. Such were Moses and his achievements. THE CRISIS, MOSIS' FLIGHT What is the crisis? When does Moses, the born Hebrew slave, the adopted Egyptian prince, take sides and declare him- self a Hebrew patriot? Bloomed up into manhood, adorned with youth, health, spirit and knowledge, an Egyptian purple-cloak hanging from his shoulders, and an Egyptian sword dangling at his firm side_, imbibed with the fumes of court favor and prefer- ment, he nevertheless remembers the wrinkles of his mother, the woes of his kindred and brethren ! His heart prompts him to see them in their villanage. He repairs for the first time to the Hebrew camp. What a sight of woe and brutality, of tears, pros- tration, hard labor ! What a sight of human wretchedness and remorseless cruelty ! He feels revolted, horrified ! His blood boils and rises ! What a sight of tyranny, cruelty, and over- bearing on one side, of submission and long suffering, of meek resignation and abject misery on the other! This is Mosis' crisis. His feelings get the mastery over his worldly prudence. The Egyptian grandee yields and recedes in his bosom, and the Israelite predominates. — When he beheld a poor Hebraic laborer writhing under an Egyptian lash, sick with age and ill treatment, the laborer is succumbing under his exhausting work and the blows of his cruel Egyptian task-master, shouting : Work or die, slave ! And Moses hesitates no longer, he draws his good sword, a stroke — and the cruel task-master lies dead at his feet. iCicero. Si propinquis habeant imbeciliores vel animo vel fortuna, corum augeant opes, eisque honori sint et dignitati. THE CRISIS, MOSIS' FLIGHT. 17 Quickly a fellow-Hebrew denounces the patriot: "Wilt thou kill me as thou recently didst the Egyptian ?" Slavery brutalizes even to ingratitude. The deed is soon reported to the authori- ties and Moses must flee for his life. He goes into exile. He fore- goes his proud hopes and expectations at the court of the king. He counts himself out from the ranks of the oppressors, and nobly enters those of the oppressed. Clearly he sees and recognizes in his conscience, his task, his providential mission : The liberation of his oppressed race! He goes into exile, into the Arabian desert, settles in one of its rare oasis, for shelter and meditation, abiding his time, meditating upon his work of enfranchisement, his mission to the Israelitish pariahs. Many are the legendary reminiscences of his forty years' sojourn in Arabia, as reported in Medrashim, Josephus and rare Gentile sources. Here I shall adduce but one, it is characteristic: The Egyptian courtier-exile, the future liberator earns his daily bread as the shepherd of the flocks of a tent-dwelling Sheikh, a Be- douin, Jethro the Lord of Midyan, an Oasis, there. Once upon a time he misses a young lamb from his numerous flock. The sun glows high on the horizon, with its burning rays perpendicu- larly darting upon the earth; the shading shrubs, the cooling rocks are rare. The heated desert-sands inflame the air, all is a glowing furnace. But the little lamb is missing. Its anxious mother is distressfully bleating. So Moses goes on its search, for hours ; at last he discovers it. It is lame, fainting and starved ; it cannot move on and utters its last laments, in the deadly sun- rays. Moses raises it in his arms, up to his bosom, pats and con- soles it ; himself exhausted with heat and thirst, he carries it to the mother. And Almighty looking down from His heavenly window, wiped off a pearly tear from his big Providential eye, saying : Mos- es, thou art so sympathetic with a poor, dumb, lame lamb ; Moses, thou wilt sympathize with My poor sheep, the flock of Israel, and, in that instant He intrusts him with the mission to the Hebrew enslaved ones. People looking for and choosing their leaders, should take this legend to heart and see whether such leaders rescue the poor lambs, or rather devour them. i8 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. HOREB, SINAI, THE ARABIAN DESERT. During his forty years' sojourn in the desert, he was continu- ally meditating and brooding over the possibilities of redeeming his enslaved brethren. The lofty, inspiring vista of that sunny, boundless Arabian peninsula, a continent, a world for itself, set apart by nature, a grandiose empire of freedom, where man ever lives in his pristine conditions, in unlimited independence, original force and stern simplicity, so strikingly contrasting with the dazzling, boastful, artificial, over-refined, rotten Pharaonic civilization of ancient Egypt, that matured in his mind the feasi- bility of his hazardous undertaking of liberation. Often he pastured his flocks there in the neighborhood of Horeb, a bar- ren promontory, a high plateau stretching above Sinai, a hoary ridge of mountains, revered and deemed holy already in those antique times. It is a region of mountains, mount on 'top of other mounts, "Ossa piled on Pelion.''^ From its highest peak you see the three continents of the ancient world spreading out at your feet. The great seas of the ancient map, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian or Red Sea, and the Medi- terranean roll their waves around that mountain-ridge. It is the proud, connecting link between Arabia, Asia, Africa and Europe. The Horeb region appears as the root, the base, the nucleus of the ancient world; from its top there spreads a marvelous illimitable vista of beauty and boundless grandeur, awe-inspiring ■and delighting, expanding the mind of the beholder, lifting up his soul, scattering despondency, creating cheer, energy and hope, displaying the boundless magnitude of the universe and of its Creator, laughing at and frowning upon the pettiness of human lordship, tyranny and overbearing. From the height of Sinai, as his pedestal, dawned and flashed upon Moses, the divine impulse of redemption. There was revealed to him the God of right, of liberty, of justice to the oppressed. There he was inspired with his mission to Israel. Many positivists, now, disclaim all that and say : There was no Horeb and no Sinai, no Moses and no revelation. "All these chapters are but a popular construction, post factum, an intro- duction after the work was completed." But we appeal to the 1 Now termed Gebel Musa, In Arabia Petraea, 8,000 feet high, with a promontory, a 1,000 feet higher still, now assumed as the Scriptural Horeb, both piously ascertained by old, uninterrupted traditions and the pen of poets, dear to the human heart, but unimportant to criticism. HOREB, SINAI, THE ARABIAN DESERT. 19 experience of men of thought and of deed, to men who are not satisfied with traveHng on the highways of custom ; to men who strike a path for themselves, the rugged path of initiative, genius and invention; to men who have left some trace of their earthly pilgrimage — where did they take their bold resolve, their peril- ous courage, their noble inspirations to leave the broad road of habit, comfort and commonplace, and turn to the steep and abrupt by-paths of new ideas, bold achievements and long sus- tained efforts? Not surely in the narrow shop or busy mart, not on the noisy exchange, not even in the elegant chair at Church or theater. No, they took it in free nature, in the vast wild forest, on some high mountain peak, on the Chimborazo, or the burning Mount Pelee,^ or the Mount Blanc, at the Niagara Falls, or the ocean shore, on the Kickelhahn of Thuringia, the Harz, the Allegheny, or the Rocky Mountains. There, far from the deafening noise and turmoil of petty interests, far from small ambitions and strife, there the human mind grows, recovers its dignity and rises to the height of its own grand possibilities; and there it finds inspiration, elasticity, energy, enthusiasm ; there it finds revelation, there it conceives the divine behest, to under- take and execute great things, advancing the human race. There is the pristine holy of holies, where the human mind comes in close touch with the Divine Mind and hears the call : Go, Moses, and redeem the oppressed ! And such calls are not few. The Deity ever calls, but rare are those intently listening to the call ! Whence hail these grand char- acters? Wherever you see noble, chaste enthusiasm, warm sym- pathy for the oppressed and lowly, sincere yearning to help, be it even at one's own peril, there is the germ of the liberator, the savior and prophet. A few of such germs grow, mature and realize. Many more decay, wither and die, lured away by petty interests, politics and schemers; wrecked by too great difficulties, or by too great temptations ; not having enough of the prophetic energy. A few great genii remain, the chosen of the chosen 1 I think of the rugged, laborious, noble career of both the Heil- prins, Michael and Angelo, the father and the son, both living and dying, for the advance of their fellowmen, of their race and of science, both inspired of the holy spirit — a wreath to each of them. 20 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. ones, a rare select band of God-kissed souls, mighty, spiritual men, with sympathizing hearts and impulsive hands, the flower of the race. They insist, in spite of difficulties, poverty, derision, abandonment, and misconstruction. These are the mile-posts in history, the standard bearers of progress. They hear the divine voice calling: "Go, rescue, liberate My people, to the end that they may worship Me, the Divine, not the Pharaohs." Now do not quibble about supernaturalism, inspiration, proph- ecy and miraculous visions, or about enthusiasm, patriotism, genius, generosity, duty, sympathy, conscious initiative, genuine yearning to do good. Call it what you please, natural or supernat- ural, prophecy or divine genius, or humane holiness. It is the grand- est, sublimest, it is mind-power, it is divine. Consider it rationally or mystically. It is identical, it is inspiration, it comes from on high, from the Source of all Mind and Goodness. In its sublimest stages it creates prophets, initiators, liberators, hearing the admo- nition : Go and liberate ! I say : It comes from the Sacred self- evident though hidden and mysterious Source of Mind and Good- ness. Or does it come from elsewhere ? from petty ambition, from selfishness, from cunning scheming? Not Machiavell would soberly affirm that ! Contemplate and consider : Moses, a pariah adopted by the court, raised and educated as a lord, surrenders the allurements of power, favor and preferment, throws all that to the winds, gives up all those advantages, declares himself a fel- low-pariah, retires to the wilderness, lives upon roots and water and, there, determines upon the even more hazardous and thank- less task, of becoming the mouthpiece of a horde of slaves against their powerful masters ! Can such a resolve come from any other source than that of All-Goodness and All-Power? Again let us appeal to history and fact. Inquire and scruti- nize every great epoch and its human agents, yea, any superior man of your personal acquaintance, and you will find out, he had his Horeb, his Sinai, his sacred mount, where was the crisis of his life, where his resolve upon this or that generous career was determined upon. Even so had Kapila and Buddha, Zoroaster and Jesus and Mohammed, each, had his holy mount. Yea, even minor minds, as Alexander, Cyrus, Plato, Paul, Huss, Bruno, Luther, all, had their sacred mounts, where they had taken their inspiration, their resolution for their tasks. Commonplace men, take their final stand in common, everyday places. Supe- THE BURNING BUSH. 21 rior men rise to the grand vistas of nature, wherever hovers the Shekhina of the God of nature, there their vocation is deter- mined upon. Even so we read in II M, 3. "And Moses led his flock to the Mount of God at Horeb. And he beheld the angel of Ihvh in the flame from the thornbush. . .He saw the bush burning but never consumed. . .So he stepped nearer. . .when the divine voice called out : I am the God of thy fathers ... I have seen the tribulations of my people, in Egypt, I have heard their cry and know their woes ... I will rescue them from the hand of Egypt and bring them unto a land flowing with milk and honey. . .Now, go, I send thee to Pharaoh and redeem Israel from Egypt... And Moses said: "Who am I to call on Pharaoh to free Israel?" What a grand tragic! The struggle of genius with human weakness and inimical circumstances ! He hesitates at the stupendous un- dertaking and his slender means. He thinks of his wife, chil- dren and sweet home, of parents and kindred in Egypt, of the power and tyranny of the Pharaohs. His courage faints, his human helplessness overpowers him : "Who am I to undertake such a gigantic task?" And God said : "I shall be with thee. ..And this be thy test : on this very mount you shall worship... I am the God of Eter- nity, the Everlasting, I send thee to Israel, go and assemble the Elders . . . Call on the king and tell him : Ihvh, bids us to go and worship him ... I know he will refuse, but I shall compel him and he will let you go.." Mosis' great and sympathetic soul felt enkindled ; his powerful brain was lit up with the flaming thornbush ; mighty Sinai burnt in his mightier heart. The vibrating and flashing thunders voiced forth redemption. It burned and singed and flamed in his sympa- thetic bosom. The thought of liberation lit up and transfigured him ; the immortal thought to free and avenge his brethren, stood clear and illumined before him, and that thought never more vanished. "Behold, the bush was burning, but was never con- sumed." Material fire destroys its own combustible matter ; spirit- ual fire ever burns and never consumes.. It ever burns, and is never quenched. It ever burns, cheers, illumines and fires on, but never destroys its bearer. The tenacity, the elasticity of initiators' 22 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. is astonishing, visibly upheld by their inherent divine force: "the burning bush, burning, never consumed." Again the burn- ing bush "is the grandest symbol of the redemption-thought of the great liberator. Feels one his warm heart sincerely inspired with, and pulsing for, human weal and improvement ; has one the head to conceive and the plan, with the hand to execute it, to help and rescue his fellows, then that thought, that holy passion, that energy will never die out. His heart will burn and bleed and ache as if to burst into a thousand splinters. His brain will teem and brood and hammer out the plan, until the work will be accomplished. The world is indifferent and coldly looks on the dreamer, the enthusiast." But the enthusiast feels inspired. This very enthusiasm ever burns and shines and cheers him until the work is accomplished. Reader, doubt not! Great thoughts ever are divine inspirations, God's messengers, holy revelations coming from the Supreme Source of Goodness and Wisdom, revealed from Mind to mind, rays from God to man. They never die. Never ! Their human vehicle, the mortal agent, may perish, they never! Have such thoughts once invaded a human breast, have they once lit up a human brain, then they will ever burn and kindle ever more, and never be put down until realized in fact and in history. They are the utterance, Verb, of the divine angel, whispering, speaking, roaring, thundering: I have seen the afflictions of My people . . . Go, Moses, and rescue them ! The great Moses-heart was itself that burning bush, in his soul the flaming angel called : Moses go and rescue ! Pharaoh shrugged his shoulders: That is none of thy business, Moses, thou senti- mentalist or demagogue ! But Moses was not dismayed, he felt the inspiration: "Go, and make free!" ISRAEL'S LABORS. And to this day the wonderful thornbush is burning. It burnt at Horeb ; it burnt in Mosis' heart; it burns now in Israel's and mankind's history. Israel represents in history that ever burning thornbush. Lowly, diminutive, dry, despised — yet "the Bush burns and is never consumed." A thousand times beaten, broken, scattered; yet he is erect, entire, undismayed, hopeful, reckoning upon the future.^ From the center of that Ac«da piin 'J3 JMi^n njtj'^jKnay Knytj'n ...D'bt^n•1^3 nxan n:iyb ^ ISRAEL'S LABORS 23 humble flame the divine angel still and ever calls: I have seen the tribulations and have heard the cry of the people. "Go and rescue theni !" Moses and Israel have ever represented the masses, the laboring people, liberalism, the party of enfranchise- ment. Israel, as once Moses, ever kept up the revelation of every man's rights. The Hebrew is the historical mouthpiece of the divine spirit of advance and of emancipation, ever calling : "Pha- raoh, let My people go, let them serve God : they are God's ser- vants, not the slaves of slaves." Israel is the champion and emancipator from the social, economical and political yoke, of guilds, classes, priests, dynasts. He is also the protest and the shield against lurking sensuality and materialism. "Let go My people, that they may serve God." The divine, the spiritual, the moral, the ideal, is the task of Israel, he is calling mankind to the service of the Divine. Israel never made war for conquest and spoils. His entire history is one great lesson that, not war and conquest, not acquisition and money, not the exchange and the market, but spirituality, ideality, mentality are man's goal. Not pleasure and splendor, but correct thinking, feeling, educating and acting are the grand objects of human civilization.^ GREAT THOUGHTS NEVER DIE. " , '- ' As the Thornbush of Horeb, great thoughts burn and never die out. When in the sixteenth century the idea flamed up that con- science and religion must be free, that man should think and believe according to his own free, honest convictions, then arose Wyclif and Huss, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, etc., and con- ceived the scheme of the Reformation. And that new principle never more receded. Europe was involved in one common, civil and interstate conflagration, countries were devastated and my- riads perished in battle, by the hangman, or in the vaults of the Inquisition, but free thought and Religious toleration were upheld. When, in the eighteenth century, the principle of political free- dom and equality before the law, human dignity, no born rulers and no born slaves, dawned upon Europe and America, the world was lifted out of its hinges. Streams of blood flowed, mountains of wrecks were heaped over the old world, the third, yea, the' fourth Estate, the people, arose on the debris of dynasts and iNot with armies, not by force, but by my Spirit. (Sashana.) 24 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. nobles. Right, bread, freedom and pursuit of happiness for all triumphed. Coalitions and holy alliances yielded to right and common sense. When, after Moses Mendelssohn and with the French Revolu- tion, the idea dawned, that the Jews are part of humanity, that Israel did his share in history, in the labor of civilization, that Jews are not Kammerknechte, not the serfs of the Crown, should pay no LeihzoU, not be slandered by the Pfaffen, not maltreated by baron and mob, that idea had its struggle, is not yet fully admitted by some. But it is ever gaining ground, never receding, it is bound to triumph, it has the co-operation of every honest and fair-minded man of all races and creeds. When the thirteen North American colonies awakened to the idea of total independence from England, of self-government by the people and for the people , no foreign taxation and no taking advantage, no metropolis, no colonies and no exploitation, Ameri- ca for the Americans, for the oppressed of all nations and noc for the oppressors, no disqualification on account of creed, race and class, classes and masses to be merged into the people, rights, duties, schools, chances, bread and aspirations alike for all — there was an immense conflict, clash of arms, waste of property, bloodshed. But the thirteen colonies came out triumphant. They form now the United States of America; 85 millions of free people, the beaconlight of humanity, the pattern of freedom, social equality and peace. "Behold the thornbush burned, yet was never consumed?" ... The Angel of Ihvh called from that flame: "I have seen the miseries of the people, I shall redeem them. Go, Moses, I send thee to Pharaoh, to rescue My people from Egypt." Not king and baron, not force and over-reaching, not egoism and sensuality, but God and freedom, right and civi- lization shall rule. ' Such is constituted the flame of the Burning Bush, the divine voice of sympathy with suffering humanity, and such are the providential men, the liberators sent out to rescue man from the Pharaohs. Such was Moses: A heart warmly feeling for the people, a head conceiving the idea and the means of liberation, a hand of energy, unshaken and undismayed, to realize the designs of Providence, for the advance of mankind, such are con- stituted the liberators, the leaders, the aera-makers, the prophets ; their thoughts are revelations, their deeds are providential, they MEDRASHIM ON MOSES. 25 are divine messengers, they receive and carry to mankind the mandates of God : Go, help, Hberate, improve ! Let us quote here some of the tales and legends, on that memorable epoch, found in Talmud, Commentaries and Med- rashim, all stories claimed to be hinted at by our Sacred text of Exodus, popular tales helping to supplement history : When Pharaoh determined upon cruel oppression, he called together the doomed race and said to them sweetly^ : I pray you, only today help me make some bricks and finish up these necessary fortifications. He set personally an example, took up the basket, shovel and trowel and began busily toiling. Of course every Hebrew laborer zealously followed the royal example, took up the work and made as many bricks as he possibly could in the shortest time. When the night set in, Pharaoh said : Well done, my brave lads : please count accurately how many bricks did you make, each ? Informed of the goodly number, he said : Take care now you fellows ; As many must you make, day by day, or the lash will drop on your lazy shoulders, for every brick you miss (Yalkut, 163). Our modern Pharaohs may learn from that how to ring out taxes and imposts from simple-minded people. (Sota ii b.) R. Aquiba taught: "In reward of the pious women of that generation, was Israel redeemed from Egypt : for when they went to fetch their water from the Nile, God made them fill their pitchers half with water and half with little fishes. They went home, made that to soup with fish and quickly brought both to their husbands in the field, caressed and encouraged them to eat and drink, be of good cheer and have patience in the hard times : "Fear not, not forever will this toil last, soon our God will redeem you from this bondage," giving them the utmost token of their tenderness, hopefulness and love. (Ibid. 163:4.) Once upon a time Pharaoh dreamt .^ He was sitting upon his throne and lo ! an old man stepped before him with a pair of scales in his hand. Then he took all the grandees of the court, tied them up as a bundle of hay and placed them upon one scale, and a young lamb he put into the other scale, and the tiny lamb outweighed all the lords. Awakening and wondering, Pharaoh assembled his Sweetly. Yalkut, Exodus, Tanhuma, Abkhir. '^riSji =1T nD3 ^ Ibid. Biography of Moses. ntJ'IDT ,D'D^^ nm ^ 26 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. ministers and expressed to them his perplexity at this strange dream. A Senator explained to him: This means that a child will be born to the Hebrew race who, when grown up, will beat all thy ministers, generals and armies, and destroy thy kingdom. In order to prevent this to happen, the king should ordain that every new-born Hebraic male shall at once be killed. The king followed the advice. The two midwives, refusing their assistance to the king to murder the unborn infants, were Jochabed and Miryam, themselves.^ The latter had foretold the birth of Moses as the liberator of his race, hence her inventiveness and extra- painstaking for his safety. From an ancient Biography of Moses the Medrash quotes that, the Pharaonic princess who had adopted the child, named him, Moshe;^ his father called him Heher; his mother, Jequthial; his sister, Jered; his brothers, Ahi Sanuch; his grandfather, Ahi Socho; and the Israelites called him Shamayah. "God has listened to our cries." Each of these names has its ominous meaning, of course, in Hebrew, assumed to have been their idiom. When Moses was in his third year, Pharaoh was once sitting on his throne, his queen at his right hand, his daughter, Bathia, at his left, the child, Moses, in her lap, and the governors of the empire standing around; when Moses stretched forth his little hand, snatched the crown from the king's brow, and placed it upon his own. The king and his grandees were astonished and dismayed at that, when Bileam, the royal astrologer, arose and said: I still remember, O great king, the dream that thou once didst dream, and my interpretation thereof. Here, this boy, is a Hebrew one, well inspired by fate; he acted that day by cunning, and wittingly, he is an aspirant to the crown of Egypt! Then wicked Bileam began slandering the entire ancestry of little Moses and concluded with : If it pleases thy Highness, the ambitious boy shall be put to death, at once, before he succeeds in despoiling thee of thy dominion and ruin all our prosperity. Whereupon God sent his angel, Gabriel, in the guise of one of the Egyptian dignitaries, who said : If it please thy Highness, let a sparkling gem and a burning coal be placed before the child ; now if it stretches forth the hand and takes the gem, tlien it acted advisedly and you shall order to kill it ; but if it snatches 1 Identical with the Shiphra and Puah, of the Hebrew text, accord- ing to the Medrash. 2 I saved him (from the Nile waters). MEDRASHIM ON MOSES. 27 and grasps after the fiery coal, we shall know it acted unwittingly and may be spared. The king was satisfied with the test. The gem and the fire coal were brought and placed there at once, and the angel, unseen to all, took up the coal, approached it to the mouth of the infant, which burnt its lips and made it stammer for- ever. Mosis' life was thus spared and he remained yet for 15 years at the court. At the age of 18 years, the blooming youth wished to see his parents and his brethren at their slave-labors. When he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew. The latter ran to him for help, beseeching him : "Behold this man came to my home last night, bound me with ropes, criminally assaulted my wife, in my very presence, and now he wants yet to murder me." Whereupon Moses killed the Egyptian, buried him in the ground and returned to the palace (Ibid 166). Curious ! A version of this we find in the story of William Tell, the liberator of Switzerland: A satellite of the governor, Gessler, was about doing violence to the wife of a farmer, who rescues her and kills the rufiian. He is pursued by the governor's soldiers, and about being captured, when William Tell boldly boards and rows him over the stormy lake and lands him safely where he cannot be reached. It is probably an old much used tale, borrowed by the Tell legend. Each poet shaped the story accord- ing to his own taste and his circumstances. The Medrash, wishing to cleanse Moses of the guilt of murder, represents the aggressor as guilty of rape and adultery, and about to commit murder. For this he forfeits his life, and Moses but executed justice upon him. The Swiss folk-lorist spurned the idea of suffering the assailant to dishonor one's wife; hence her husband kills him even before the crime is accomplished. According to Talmudical law, too, the husband is justified in taking justice into his own hands. It is the natural right of self-defense, too often wrongly appealed to in criminal pleading. The Medrashic legend (Ibid. 167) tells us that Moses was de- nounced by Dathan and Abiram. They were quarreling together, when Moses said to the first : Wicked man, why doest thou smite thy brother? Then Dathan, in revenge, denounced him to Pha- raoh ; who said : I had enough indulgence with that foundling, now he must die for his murder. Thereupon the executioner smote Moses with his sword, but his neck became of marble and the sword splintered and broke to pieces, whereupon Moses fled 28 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. out of the country. The king's bodyguard, being close by, was bHndfolded by an angel, and Moses escaped their vigilance. He was then twenty years of age. According to the legend, at the hour when Moses was born, the entire world was filled with light.^ The same is said of many historical and many more mythical heroes of old. It is claimed of Apollo, Horus, and Bacchus, of Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Mo- hammed, etc. Each aera-making man is born in a dark cave, in gloomy and oppressive environments, the masses sighing for a liberator from political, partisan or racial tyranny, and at his ad- vent the world becomes filled with light and jubilation. No reas- onable critic will begrudge that innocent apotheosis of liberators, after a life of sacrifice and toil. Another legend, still more curious, tells this (Ibid 168), follow- ing the mentioned biography of Moses: Qiqnus, king of Ethi- opia, went to make war upon Syria. When he left, a rebellion broke out in his own country. He returned home and besieged his capital, risen against him. In vain did he attack and storm it from different points, and many of the besiegers fell in the assault. Just then, Moses, fleeing from Egypt, came into the camp of Qiqnus. He was 20 years of age, tall, beautiful, strong and popular, and became the pet of the court and the army. The king soon died and the army chose him as their general, giving him the wife of the dead king. Moses was a heroic leader and contrived, by stratagem, to conquer the rebellious capital. He was then accepted as king, governed Ethiopia for the space of forty years, and beat all his enemies. But then his queen and her nobles made a conspiracy against him, with the object of setting upon the throne her son, by Qiqnus, the rightful heir. Moses was induced to peaceably leave the throne to his wife's son, Munham. At 67 years Moses left Ethiopia and retired to Mid- yan, in the Arabian desert. There he met Jethro-Reuel and confidentially told him about his adventures in Egypt and Ethi- opia. Jethro thought to ingratiate himself with the enemies of Moses by imprisoning him for many years. But Ziporah, Jethro's daughter, clandestinely took care of him and had him fed and clothed, comfortable enough, during all the time of his incarce- ration. Jethro had forgotten him, thinking he was long ago dead. iibid. 166. n-iiN n^iyn ^3 N^ona nc^o n^ur ni?e'3 ^ MEDRASHIM ON MOSES. 29. when Ziporah called his attention to him, after ten years. At her advice and intercession, he was released from prison and set at liberty. He then inaugurated his freedom by offering his thanks- givings to the God of his fathers, in the garden of Jethro's mansion, when he beheld there sprightly growing a sapphire shrub, in shape of a staff, into which was engraven the divine name.i He plucked it off, as if a usual branch upon a tree, and it became a regular staff in his hand. Now that staff is the identical one created contemporaneously with the world and had its history. When Adam was expelled from Paradise, he took that staff with himself and passed it to his successors. That staff^ came then to Noah, to Shem and to his successors ; to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob and to Joseph.^ When Joseph died and the Egyptians became inimical to his house, his palace was pillaged and the staff fell into the hands of Jethro-Reuel, of Midyan, then a courtier in Egypt. He planted it in his park, to become once the dower of Ziporah, his daughter. All the valiant knights of Midyan tried their strength to pull out that sacred plant and win the hand of the fair Ziporah, but could not succeed, until the rightful owner and successor to Joseph appeared, Moses. He at once took hold of the sacred heirloom, which easily yielded to his grasp. Reuel beholding that in his hand, at once yielded Ziporah,. too, to the legitimate owner of the sacred primordial staff. Zip- orah became thus his dutiful wife, adopting all the pious ways- of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. She bore him two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. (Biography of Moses in Yalkut.) (Pirke R. Eliezer) R. Aquiba says: The satellites of Pharaoh used the children of the Hebrews as bricks for their strongholds alternately with the clay bricks and mortar. "God heard their shrieks^ — refers to that. They offered them also as burnt sacri- fices on the altars of their gods," is again deduced from Scrip- tural terms.^ To n M. 3 :1. "Moses kept the flocks of Jethro," remarks R.. Isaac: God chooses his messengers among the humblest, the {^nison DC' 1 2See Messiah Ideal, Vol. I, p. 122. riDDn ^y iPt^lB'^ inntJ'M ^ "Israel bowed on the coach," others read: "Israel bowed on the staff.. Instead of hamita, is read by the Septuagint hamate. (II M., ii, 24)— nnpK: riK n^nbii yot^'M ^ ':>^'\iin ni30 nanx s^vi'i ^ 30 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. pastors of sheep, to lead his human flock. Even so Moses and David — So Cincinnatus of Rome, so the American Washington, the farmer; Lincoln, the rail-splitter; such are the leaders of democracy. — "And he saw his vision and heard the divine voice from the Thornbush (remarks the Medrash Abkhir) : "Why not rather from some noble tall tree ? For God said : I am in sym- pathy with Israel. He is the humblest among the nations, the thorn among the tall trees, yet ever burning. So is the burning Thornbush my symbol." — The Thornbush burned, but was never consumed — is a fit emblem, too, of Israel enslaved during thou- sands of years, oppressed and maltreated, yet never destroyed, ever burning, enlightening, cheering mankind on in its battles for improvement, ethical, political, economical. Its leaders and emancipators are taken from Israel's ranks or from those who got their inspiration from his prophets. 31 Study II. EXODUS IV-VIIL MOSES, THE PROPHETS, AND THEIR MISSION. "God spake to Moses : Pharaoh's mind is obdurate, he refuses to let My people depart. Go and tell him : Let My people go, that they may worship Me in the desert."^ (II M. VII: 15). Here Mosaism states it to be its mission to liberate the people, that they may devote themselves to God's service. Providence selected the descendants of the Patriarchs, to become the race specially de- voted to the service of the Eternal, to the higher, the religious, mental and ethical interests, the spiritual concerns of man. We say the spiritual interests of humanity, especially and particularly ; for indeed, the total result of all human development, termed civilization, is a compound of many different elements, among which the spiritual is only one, though a leading one.- Every race, every nation, yea, every outstanding historical personality has a mission to fulfill, has a task imposed upon him. Just as in the harmoniously constituted community, one is an agriculturist, another is a mechanic, a third, a merchant, an artist, a scholar, etc., even so among the great, predominant nations, each has a special mission to realize, for which she lives and labors, suffers and triumphs. And if she neglects her task, she dies, ignomini- ously, is eliminated and her place is taken up by another one, bet- ter fitted for the work. If she fulfills her duty, if her allotted task is gradually being accomplished, she lives for and with it. Even when fully accomplished, she dies not, but is honorably dis- charged, emerited and lives, absorbed in the eternal existence of mankind. She fuses with humanity, leaving there an ineffaceable trace, the imprint of her honorable activity. Such tasks were imposed upon all the leading historic nations. Assyria, Persia, Egypt, Babylonia had the consolidation of tribes into peoples, by war and subjugation. They inaugurated, thou- sands of years ago, Bismarck's policy of kneading and cementing men together by lead and blood. Greece added to war the culti- vation of science and art. Rome organized a world-state and 'jnan 'f^]} na n.->Er 32 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. framed laws as its cement. Phoenicia and Carthage, as modern Holland and England, developed navigation, commerce and in- dustries. Germany is, originally, devoted to science, arts, music and domestic virtues. Amerca is to freedom of conscience, social equality and liberty. And Israel, our text says, and history corroborates, has been consecrated to ethical, mental and spiritual interests ; he is the devotee of spiritual development : "Send My people to serve Me." Let us not exaggerate; no infatuation and no chauvinism, no claiming the whole of the work. I do not in the least pretend that the Hebrew race has done everything. No, other historic nations, too, have largely contributed towards our civilization. Nor is our civilization the ultima Thule, without any strong reliques of barbarism. Still, without infatuation, we may positively affirm that Israel's part in the great concert of human culture and de- velopment is a very prominent one, yea, it is the groundwork of all true civilization. He represents its moral base and founda- tion. Without the culture of man's spiritual interests, to what great use are our arts and commerce? Upon what pillars will your State, your Laws, your family, your freedom, your justice rest? Without the postulate of the one, all-pervading, eternal, all-holy God of justice, truth and reason, the very law of society, the Ten Commandments, lose their authority, drift in the air and lack effectiveness. And without the Ten Commandments human society is an impossibility; society would be one of wolves and bears. Now the God-belief, the Decalogue, the teaching and examplifying thereof, is the historic task and problem of Israel. Therefore I claim and justly insist that he represents the first part in civilization. Therefore it may be taken literally: Israel is My first-born son. (II M. 4 :21 and 19 :6. . . ) "Ye shall be unto Me a dominion of priests and a holy nation." He is priest, leader and messiah of mankind. The acute, spirited, paradoxical philosopher, Nietzsche, the most outspoken antagonist, the very opposite pole of the Hebraic doctrine, nevertheless, frankly admits that the Jews have well deserved of mankind, for having produced men as Moses, Jesus, Spinoza; books and ethics as Bible and Psalms, and for having suffered a fifteen centuries' martyrdom just on their account. (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, by Nietzsche.) And this honor of the messiahship, so onerous and so glorious, so cheering and so sad, this epopee of the Exodus narrates how it MOSES, THE PROPHETS AND THEIR MISSION. 33 has been conferred upon the patriarchal house. Here is the genesis of his primogeniture, the sacred record of his spiritual investiture. The promise to Abraham: "In thy seed shall all the generations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 10), begins here to be realized. These chapters depict in quick strokes and suc- cinct sketches, the great difficulties under which that world-his- torical appointment took place. "Let My people go, that they may serve Me in the wilderness," in this wild struggle for ex- istence; that by their cultivating man's ethical and spiritual elements, they became the pioneers of a higher civilization than that handed down by Phoenicia, Babylonia or Egypt. This means our text. Juda had the task of clearing the wild forests of bar- barism, of removing the rubbish of paganism, of popular igno- rance and superstitions, of implanting the seeds of truth, rea- son, fraternity and justice unto all, of teaching the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men, inculcating human dignity and spirituality. "Send forth My people that they shall serve Me in the wilderness," is the motto of the Hebrew's mission, the formula of his Investi- ture. Let them go forth and civilize the world. Let them scat- ter and spread over the earth and teach the pure God belief, the Ten Words, the one human race, sympathy and justice to fellow- men. This Israel taught and acted upon, he alone was sincere, others were politic. ISRAEL'S MESSIANIC CAREER. Over 3,500 years ago the patriarchal people was entrusted with the arduous role of the messiahship. It was crowned and sceptered and enthroned, alas ! with a crown of thorns, sparkling with the gems of his tears, his scepter was the staff of emigration and exile, of the homeless wanderer ; his throne was, century after century, the pillory and the funeral pile, in the regal robes pur- pled with his own blood ; running the career of self-sacrifice, tribulation and obloquy. Thus he was proclaimed messiah-king and pariah, teacher and first born son of civilization ; to him was given over the kingdom, not of this bodily world, but that of the spirit, of mind. "Go unto Pharaoh and tell him, the Eternal God of the Patri- archs has sent me to thee, saying: Let go My people, that they 34 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. serve Me in the wilderness. But behold, thou hast until now re- fused to obey." Pharaoh, the type of paganism, materialism, con- servatism, the proudest flower of the antique world, answered (II M., 5:2) : Who is Ihvh, the Eternal, whom I should obeypi So the pagan world has been since answering Israel: What do you speak to us of eternal, spiritual matters, of culture, virtue and civilization; of humanity and holiness, we know nothing about that! We care for conquests and armies, finances and pleasures, for good cheer and luxury, for warfare, additional provinces and power. Let us alone with your spiritual con- cerns ! So spoke the world three thousand years ago. And the world would to this day, as three thousands of years ago speak the same : "Who is Ihvh — Adonay — that we should listen unto his voice?" What do we care for all your spiritual interests and concerns ? Civilization means to us power and good cheer and an independent fortune. So they would speak, if it were not for Israel's call, "Send My people to serve Me in the wilderness ;" if not for the heavy mission, the efforts, the great services the Hebrew has rendered to civilization, to human advance and en- lightenment ; if it were not for the Ten Words taught by him. Nay, I will affirm even more. The world is even now, 3,500 years after the Exodus, clamoring for the same: "Who is your Eternal?" What are, indeed, your spiritual interests? We care for power and good cheer — all other things are either subservient, useless or hypocritical ! That is the cant and the trend of popular philosophems. And what is the outcome of the recent labors of Schopenhauer, Hartman, Nietzsche? Not much more! Woe to the people, woe to present civilization, should such views prevail ! Look around, let us muster history. Who is the champion and support of the present civilization, of spirituality, pro- gress, humane education, freedom, work and bread for all? Who is the backbone, the Swiss-guard thereof? It is the minori- ty, the chosen few among the nations, the spiritual and mental aristocracy among the peoples ; not the men of the robe, privilege or sword. And this true, mental aristocracy, simply, are the iln the nomenclature of Egyptian mythology, apparently, that august name was missing, but it was included in the Babylonian calendar, god Ea, the just, good and wise, the builder and friend of man. See on that; my Humanity and Charity Laws of Pentateuch and Talmud. Se« Sayce: Babylonian Religion. ISRAEL'S MESSIANIC CAREER. 35 extended Israel, the Israel lapping and gaining over into his ranks the best and noblest of mankind. "The Sons of Japheth resting in the tents of Shem.i In these Shemitic tents they have learned the true objects of human existence, viz : Not power and good cheer, but, "Let the people go free, that they serve Me." Clear away the impediments of education, growth, mentality, bread-winning, physical and ethical well-being. Thus Israel's problem is not yet solved and accomplished. He and his Gentile allies are still a small minority. Only then will his mission be fulfilled when mankind, the masses, will accept and realize his platform. Let us expound this ; it is well worth while. THE REPLY AND ITS REFUTATION. The Gentile world has been replying to this for these many centuries : "True, the Hebraic people has been the depository of the Sinaic Revelation. True, they have brought great sacri- fices to this their mission, and we readily acknowledge that they have 2,000 years ago well deserved of humanity. But since that time a new doctrine, a higher revelation has dawned upon the world. The entire genius of the Semitic race has been concen- trated, focalized in Jesus of Nazareth, a Hebrew according to the flesh, and God himself according to the spirit; he brought down the last revelation, the higher teaching, the salvation, Chris- tianity, not Judaism, is the Law. The Jews, not recognizing this fact, nor himself as God, Redeemer, Christ, have forfeited all their claims, rights and privileges as the chosen people, their law is abolished, their role of the messiahship has passed away to New Judaism, to Christianity, which has since taken up their part ; Christianity, not Judaism, has become the true expounder of the Bible, old and new, has made triumphant the Decalogue, and has taken up the work of civilization. We have conquered for it three hundred millions of pagans, we have made it the relig- ion of the world, the salvation of mankind. You, Jews, have suffered, cruelly suffered; we are sorry, but we are not respon- sible for it; you suffered for having rejected the Lord Jesus, the Christ. The Bible is triumphant without you, and you can now go and disappear; you belong to the past. So Schleiermacher ta Harnack. I M., ix, 26. DtJ* ^^nK3 pSK'"") nSi'-? Cn^XHS'l 36 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. The refutation of the trinitarian argument may be formulated thus: True, the Gentiles have propagated the Bible all over the world in the West, but they have added to it a most cumbersome and doubtful appendage : The New Testament. What is the New Testament, critically examined? It is : A number of small homiletic treatises, the remnants of a larger number lost since; containing many good things, many mediocre and many danger- ous, hard, out of the way, entirely foreign to the original scheme, yea, in part, in flagrant contradiction with it ; coming from many diverse hands, ages and vastly different systems, all super-and interfused with miracles and impossibilities, not as corollaries and mere paraphernalia, but as its backbone and substance ; with hard- ly any new, rational, substantial idea; what is good is not new and what is new is not good ; the offspring of an ill-suited inter- marriage of Hebrew spirit with Alexandrian Neo-Platonism, Egyptian and Greek mythology, lastly hailing from Hinduism and Parseeism ; with economics, ethics, a state, a community, a church, half Judaic and half East-Asiatic ;i with no work, no property, no family, no marriage; relying on a God of love and of — wrath, on faith in miracles, rejecting nature as the creature of the devil, with despair for all, original sin and hell for most, the earth a dale of sorrow, and salvation reserved but for the exceptional few, for whom a Man-God died on the Cross; a God of love and also of — hell and original sin ; a system come out by a hap-hazard compromise between Bible, Neoplatonism, My- thology and Hindu-Persian philosophems. This is the New Testa- ment, the "Bible," propagated by Christianity, the New Judaism. True, Gentiles made triumphant the Decalogue with 300 millions of pagans, but they have stricken out the most prominent feature thereof, the very base with which it stands and falls : "I am the Eternal, thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods besides Me." Instead thereof, they teach trinity, incarnation, atonement, ascen- sion and hell unquenchable. True, they have conquered part of the globe to that doctrine — but not by reason and conviction, but by violence and bribery, by missionaries followed by cannon and political supremacy. 1 Among others, Nietzsche reproaches Christianity with having ■brought over Asiatic ideas to the West. He exaggerates. The Judaic part of the New Testament is sober, rational, Biblic. It is Paul and his late Alexandrian successors who introduced oriental views and dogmas into the Occident, the Hellenic Christianity. THE REPLY AND ITS REFUTATION. 37 Constantine, called the Great, lived a heathen and died a nominal Christian, for political reasons. Chlodowig, the Frank, lived and died in the same way ; so Theodorus, the Visigoth king ; and even so Charlemagne. He converted all the Saxons — who would not be drowned in the river ! Such a convert was Wittikind himself, the prince of the Saxons, the baptismal fount or the river was the choice. The missionary societies carry the Bible in one hand, and in the other, powder and shot. When, forty years ago. Rev. Stern did not succeed in Abyssinia, the English fleet and guns were sent to assist him. The son of her King Theodorus, a war- prisoner in London, has been thus converted ! The missionaries penetrate the steppes of Tartary, Thibet and China, invade the Sahara of Africa and explore the wilds of America — reading from the Bible to their novices and pagans, glancing with one eye to their salaries, squinting with the other at the armies behind them, and paving, in the name of God, the way for dominion, con- quest, rapine, gunpowder, opium and fire-water. This for the trinitarian conversions abroad. Kind reader ! you will remember, we are here discussing facts, history, truths, so we must be frank, not palliate, but call things by their names. Now the christologist will object ; These are mysteries, supernatural dogmas and views, and human reason is no criterion here. To this we remember Nachmanides, a Span- ish erudite, in controversy with a monk, on the same subject, the monk pleading that even the angels cannot understand the mys- teries of trinity. Coolly Nachmanides replied : Well, if the angels cannot understand it, how should we mortals- do?" We there- fore abide by the verse, iv Moses 29 : 25 : Mysteries belong to God, plain common sense to us and our children. RELIGIOUS, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL OUTLOOK. As to the trinitarian civilization at home, during the one thou- sand years intervening between the ancient and the modern times, Christendom was rather inferior to the Mohammedan Orient. King, baron and bishop equally debauched and crushed the mass of the people. Few schools, no roads, no safety, little industry and commerce, plenty of monasteries, with idleness, cant,, tithes and privileges, but no rights for the people ; wars among the princes and mad crusades against the infidels ; fierce competi- tion between the spiritual and the secular heads, between Pope and 38 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. king ever distracted the Church and the State, But even modern times did not fare much better. Let us mention a striking- sample thereof in Europe, the flower of that civilization. Only a generation ago some 600 princes of the Roman Church assembled in council, at the Vatican, and promulgated the syllabus of their Church, as formulated by them. They anathematized everything truly great and humane. All the noblest acquisitions of the mod- ern spirit were proscribed and held up at the index. They de- clared man's liberty, civil and social equality, free conscience, re- ligious toleration, a free State, universal education, separation of Church from State, freedom of the press, of speech and of thought, all that was declared impious and sacriligious ; heresy, error and damnation. Blind faith and obedience, alone, were affirmed as leading to salvation. They wanted a world under the happy rule of the Jesuits and the inquisiton, under the guardian- ship of an infallible chief — a man who never fails ! Where is such a man to be had? Such a man, the Assembly declared, is the Pope — as long as the bayonets of Napoleon III. protected him against his own people ! What is now the political aspect of that trinitarian civiliza- tion? A generation ago the two most advanced countries of Europe were set at deadly feud with one another. Two ambi- tious men, each working for his own aggrandizement and for dynastic or private interests, each trying to eclipse the other, had abetted two generous nations against each other; for mere ambition they placed the arms of destruction into the hands of two sister-nations. They have converted France, the vainglorious, but generous, impulsive France, the garden of Europe, into a human slaughterhouse, soon a social volcano, ever ready to explode. They have spread mourning and desolation over half the globe with myriads of orphans, lonely mothers and widows, all for mere personal ambition. And what is our social aspect now, in 1909? Social upheavals, universal unrest, camps, navies, dreadnaughts, crushing imposts for, and abject poverty of the masses ; affrontery and overbearing, gloomy misgivings and threats of the classes ; all the wealth on one side, all the wretchedness on the other; zvith trusts, monster companies, on one side, and the defying unions of workingmen on the other, both menacing society ; the plutocrat and the popu- Maurice Fluegel's Exodus, Moses and the Decalogue. RELIGIOUS, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL OUTLOOK. 39 lar leader, at each other's throat; pauperization, death and an- archy staring into our faces. Really it is the age of dynamite and bombshells, a silent civil war, each trying to overreach and take advantage; yearly plentiful harvests, still daily raising the price of bread, meat, all the necessaries ; no consideration for the next ; hammer or anvil ! It looks as if on the eve of a social revolution by the fourth Estate; the mass of the people, the work- men, the laborers, the disinherited lowly masses ask for their share. They will no longer be pariahs, but gentlemen ! Thus war, paper-money, fluctuation in the street, the market, in commerce and industries, at the Exchange and the royal cabinets, fierce compe- tition, remorseless, pitiless, legalized war, not with the sword, but with crime, poison, cunning and stratagem. This is our civiliza- tion! This you call Christian ascendancy! This is the boastful civilization in Church, society and State. This is the vaunted doctrine and these its effects, the seed and its fruit. This is the way that the New Covenant has outstripped the old one ; in that manner have they made the Bible triumphant, have they conquered three hundred millions of men for the Decalogue and the true faith. In that sense did they do the work of human improvement. In that sense did they appropri- ate to themselves the mission of Israel, did they realize the call of "Send forth My people to serve Me !" O, a Decalogue, with- out its base: "I am the Eternal, thy God?" Monotheism and Trinity? A spiritual God and Incarnation? A God of love and — everlasting hell? An Eternal God — who died and was resur- rected? O, Gentiles, the Hebrew Bible teaches : "God made the World." He saw and all was well done; "Man is created in God's image," viz : man is rational, free and responsible ; vice and virtue, moral happiness and misfortune depend upon himself; the world is made for the glory of the Creator,^ and the well-being of the creatures. There is no devil and no hell in God's creation. Man creates with sin his own hell. The trinitarian theology teaches : Man and the world are radically corrupt, and cannot be saved except by miraculous grace. Man is the victim of metaphysical, external agents, which make him vicious and unhappy in spite of himself; happiness is but a rare chance! Nevertheless man's 1 Psalm xix., 2. The heavens proclaim the glory of the All-Power. 40 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. compulsory, native viciousness is punished with eternal hell-fire — except if God chooses to redeem him by his own blood ! That is diabolical ! That is rank pessimism, old heathen, Hindu fatal- ism. That is a doctrine of despair. That is old cruel Baal and Moloch mythology ! What crude conception of divine wisdom and justice! What. poverty of doctrine, what confusion and what logic? The starting point, Trinity, is untenable and hence all its sequels : original sin, vicarious atonement, miraculous redemp- tion, etc. Not Nazareth taught that, but Paul ; that is old, Asiatic fatalism. Eternal hell-fires, universal damnation, pessimism and infallibility, are the train of trinitarianism. Thus it must be admitted that the New Testament has not out- stripped the Old Testament, the New-Jews have not well respond- ed to the call of "Let My people go forth and serve Me." Israel cannot yet fuse with the majority. Israel belongs not yet to the past. He has yet to struggle, teach and exemplify, he cannot yet depose his armor. His missionary work is not at an end, the wil- derness is yet barren. Half of the Gospel is Biblic, the other half is Alexandrian, both stand in flagrant contradiction to each other. As Nietzsche says : "Jesus tried to rationalize the West, Paul and the Nicaean Council rendered it Asiatic, mystic." The Gentile world has learned Biblical lessons, but it is far from practicing them. The best, the select ones, have learned them, but not yet the masses. The best have learned them, but they do not govern our society. Society is ruled as yet by brutality, cun- ning and over-reaching: England wants India. Russia and Ja- pan covet China. France desires North Africa. Germany squints at Austria. England looks after the Dardanelles ; Egypt, the Soudan. The United States of North America, built up upon the new principle of industry and work, not intrigue, war and conquest — the United States plunged into war with Spain and, annexed on its way, the out-of-the-way Philippines — a very millstone upon its own free neck, to become its dangerous Achilles' heel, exposing itself to entangling risks, alliances and complications, foreign wars and standing armies, the very oppo- site of the wise polity of Washington, Franklin, Monroe, all. As an ofifset, England exterminated the heroic Boers and annexed their territory, the future United States of South Africa. Capital enslaves the workingmen, the department store swallows up the retailer and the crafts ; the unscrupulous supplant the honest ones. The industries are oscillating, for so is the paper-money IS ISRAEL TRUE TO HIS TASK? 41 — a dangerous social dilemma! Thus the world has learned the lessons of prophetism, but it does not practice them. Hence is Israel's part not yet accomplished. He cannot retire without en- dangering his mission, the practical, real improvement and frater- nization of mankind : the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man. He retiring, the liberal party among the world's nations will collapse, he being their nursery and nucleus. Hence he must stay and insist upon his task. But you smile. Gentile reader, asking: Is Israel really so ideal? Is he insisting upon his task ? Does he execute it, in fact and in theory, in the Decalogue, the prophetic ethics, their broad un- clouded humanitarianism, reverence to God, justice and love to fellowmen? Is the Jew a whit better than the Gentile? Does he not look to his worldly interests, even more than to his spirit- ual mission ? . . . Dear brother Gentile reader, I am not infatuated with all the peculiarities of my monotheistic brethren, I am no chauvinist. I know their many faults and shortcomings and deeply deplore them. But listen, these salient, ugly features, these abnormal faults and vices are not native to the Jew ; they are the sediment of two thousand years of exile. The Jew's virtues are his own ; his vices are the world's. These harsh excrescences are the direct outgrowth, the necessary and logical consequences of the world's treatment of the Jew. Such treatment exercised upon any other people, would have produced by far more dire results. The Decalogue, the prophetic ethics ever uplifted him; the cruel, inhuman ostracism degraded and corrupted him; the result is the clear, historical outcome! The nations have by far better Jews than they deserve. Can you. Gentile nations, justly and reasonably complain of your own work, and hold the victim responsible for your perpetrations? Do you ever respect him for his virtues — or for his vices? for his self-sacrifice, talent, learning — or for his gold? The maligned, belittled, traduced patriarchal community meekly replies to its critics with a known, pregnant verse from Solomon's song (I, 6) : "Look not disdain- fully on me that I am so blackened ; the sun has burnt me. My brother-nations were angry with me; they made me the watch- man of others' vineyards, my own I could not watch." — An exile of nearly two thousand years, an antagonism of three thou- sand, and a Ghetto of five hundred; the inquisiton, the torture, 43 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE, the dunghill as his table, the Yellow Patch and the discriminating Draconian laws — such dragon's teeth you have sewed — and you expect now that every individual of this martyr people should be immaculate ! Is not that ridiculous, monstrous, diabolic ! Anti-Semites, you claim : The Jew is not better. "Did you suffer him to be better?" Did you grant him free development? If you plant on barren soil, allow no water, sun, air, space and proper cultivation, are you justified in expecting a cedar of Leba- non? But more ! In spite of the long, cruel exile, Israel is yet, by far, better than one could presume. Muster human annals and show me a single example of a people maltreated as he, and for such a lapse of time, and I will prove to you the great superiority of the prophetic people, even the victims of the Ghetto : Here are colossal Russia and puny Roumania that treat their Jews as Pharaoh did of old. The nations around, claiming the Bible and Nazareth as their guides — shrug their shoulders and keep quiet! And the Jews — a few drops of water could end all their millennial miseries — the Jews meekly bear and refuse to sacrifice their con- science. They submit to pogroms, starvation, pillage, rape, mur- der — or to exile and poverty in strange lands ; they sacrifice all worldly human happiness to ideal goods, conscientious scruples! Say, you Anti-Semites, can you do the same? Look at that poor, long-bearded uncultured Polander, who, during a lifetime, sat on the Russian dunghill, bargaining, haggling his rags for a crust of bread for wife and children, daily exposed to the kicks and the robberies of the Russian police — he leaves his Egypt and Pharaoh, leaves his hut and pittance, and with wife and children begs his way into exile.. . Are they not heroes ? Heroes in the noblest sense of the term ? For conviction, conscience, freedom? Is that not the very spirit of prophetism? Can you sneer at them, taunt them for their worldliness, their mercenary propensities? Are they not true de- scendants of Micha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, of the nation of martyrs? Do you not revere your Jesus, Peter, John, for the very same traits? Why, then, do you not respect these same traits in their brethren, the very present, exiled, maligned Jews? But, you say, not every Jew is a Jesus, Peter, or Paul? Surely not, but neither is every Gentile of such a calibre! Least of all are you such ideals, O ye anti-Semitic hypocrites ! "Ye seek for the splinter in your neighbor's eye and overlook the beam in your own," MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 43 Thus we have seen that Israel's mission is not yet accomplished, the Decalogue is still a mere theory. What then is Christianity ? What is its task ? Has it failed ? Is it a historical anomaly ? No ! What is, is relatively, rational and good. It has its full raison (T etre. Christianity is a powerful and necessary link in mankind's development. It is an indispensable link in the chain, but not its final scope. Christianity is the providential bridge over which the Gentile world is passing, visibly, clearly, to the pure doctrine of the Biblical prophets, of prophetic Judaism. The Christian world is surely not yet the New Jerusalem, but it is to become so^ gradually. Prophetic Judaism is too lofty, too pure, too rational, too ideal for the uneducated crowd. Both, its doctrines and its methods, are above the horizon of the masses, even of the Jewish, rabbinical masses. Hence the innumerable forms and observances of the Talmud. Old Israel himself needed the schooling of ten centuries before the religion of Isaiah, Micha, Psalms, became intelligible to him. Even since that, he needed the hedges and crutches and handles of the rabbinical ceremonialism to reach it. What a bitter strug- gle had not Maimonides and his successors against Jewish, crude misconceptions of Mosaism ? Even so the Gentile world, it needed and needs such a long and wearisome apprenticeship, a prepara- tory school, teaching the plain doctrines of the Prophets with a strong alloy of inherited notions, remnants of ancient paganism, before it will become ripe for pure prophetic monotheism. That intermediate school of apprenticeship, between the present and the ancient mythic times, is Christianity. The ancient world could not pass at once to Judaism. Jesus and the Apostles could not bring about this sudden transition. Paul and more so, his suc- cessors under Constantine, and the Council of Nicaea (325) created trinitarian Christianity, a compromise between Egypto- Greek mythology and Mosaism. That the Gentile masses accepted and that is trinitarian Christianity. Judaism converts by reason, logic, knowledge. The masses need more drastic, palpable means, even coercion, even drowning, powder and lead. The Christian leaders used that freely : "The aim excuses the means." Thanks to the Biblical spirit and the pagan iron, Christianity has greatly extended the limits of civilization, has called the barbarous Teuton tribes into the pale of humane culture, has abrogated pa- (Adoration Prayer). nnx 1D::'1 THX "T n\"!^ Ninn DVa i 44 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. gan, sacrificial worship, has pulled down some of the Chinese walls between the diverse races and creeds, has opened and ex- tended the view towards catholicity in doctrine, towards a greater humanity, equality, right. So Romanism in its time has well served mankind and contributed to human progress. For centuries of the reign of the brute sword, the Pope, alone, commanding by the right of mind, must have become a real savior. Even the monasteries had their purpose! They were the only place of refuge for innocence and for learning during dark centuries. During that time the Jews propagated the ancient sciences from the Orient, into the Occident. The monasteries and the monks kindly received them and made them indigenate in Europe. But every institution has its time. Popes, romanism, monas- ticism, Trinitarian Christianity had theirs. Each is a ring in the chain of human advance. Each has rendered in turn its good services. They bear, at any rate, some of the noblest traits of Hebraic prophetism. The Church, as the Synagogue, has had her worthy representatives. Her Chrisostoms, Fenelons, St. Bernards, Bourdaloux, rivaled in true eloquence, enthusiasm and piety the Biblical Samuels, Nathans, Jeremiahs, Aliahus and Michas. When "the scourge of God," the Hun-King Attila, invaded Italy, the bishop of Miland, alone, knew how to oppose and tame the de- stroyer with purely spiritual arms. The fierce vandals in Spain and Africa were softened and civilized by Christian bishops. All the other Asiatic hordes, Franks, Goths, Lombards, Anglo- Saxons, Normans, who overran the efifeminated Byzantine, the Roman and the western empires, were civilized and softened by her conversion, her spiritual weapons and led towards a higher civilization than theirs had been. When Chlodowig proudly con- sented to become a Christian, in order to extend his dominions, and sullenly entered the church to receive baptism, the bishop exclaimed: "Bow down thy head, before the Supreme God, proud Sycambrian !" During the long and dreary centuries from the down-fall of Rome to the advent of the Turks and the fall of Constantinople, the barons were lawless and brutal, uncon- trollable and unblushing in their mad ambitions and passions, their pride and avarice, respecting neither law, prince or em- peror, club law was supreme. The Pope alone was respected ; the Church was feared, papal Rome was the only shield of innocence. Many a proud magnate, nay even kings, had to disgorge their MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 ill-gotten wealth, spare virtue, let in peace the weak. During many centuries the Church alone was the asylum, and the Pope the only protector of the oppressed. They were the shield of justice, the sanctuary of peace, the refuge of learning. Thus Christianity, for a time, and by virtue of her contents, the Hebraic spirit, the force of the prophetic doctrines underlying her insti- tutions, has vanquished barbarism and civilized the world. It is she who has subdued the Asiatic barbarous immigrations and expunged paganism, because she offered a comparatively higher religion and morality. Not her trinitarian theology, but the prophetic doctrine was her nerve. Thus Christianity, undoubt- edly, has done a great deal of good to the human race. It has paved the way to the Decalogue, the Psalms, the entire Bible. But it has paid a big price for its conquests : It has compro- mised with paganism. "I am the Eternal, thy God, Thou shalt have no other gods besides Me," has been lost sight of. A "con- cordat" has been made with the old world. That concordat is trinity. That concordat must be abolished and make room for monotheism. The Unitarian doctrine, with its ethics and polity, now already visibly dominant among the thinking portion of mankind, must also penetrate the lower strata of the nations, and pervade the masses as well as the educated ones. The world has now outgrown that compromise, the hanging-bridge, official trinity; the educational transition period from paganism to prophetic monotheism must come to an end and yield its place to pure, unalloyed, uncompromising monotheism. The child dwells in its cradle, man inhabits the spacious, solid house. The swad- dling clothes of the infant fit no longer the adult. They become an incumbrance, rather than a comfort or protection. Trinity was formerly a stepping stone to a higher doctrine, it is now a stumbling block in the way of true religion and science : Jesus was no trinitarian. Does not the New Testament quote his words : I am not come to abolish, but to fulfill the Law . . . "Not a tittle thereof shall be dropped." Again He said : "The first Commandment is : Hear, O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One, and the second Commandment is : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." — Could he have taught trinity? Three Gods, and himself one of the three! No; it is his later Gentile followers who taught that. They broke the very back- bone of the Mosaic Law. And that backbone must be restored. Paul and especially the Nicaean Council eliminated this most 46 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. exalted unitarian principle of Judaism, and introduced God the Father, the Son and Trinity. They are to be considered as the founders of official Christianity. Jesus, surely, was a pure monotheist; he had no share in Paulinian and especially in Alexandrian doctrines. The Council of Nicaea, with its Graeco- Egyptian theology, ethics and philosophy has had its time. Their work of transition belongs to the past. The future must yield to pure mosaism, to prophetic monotheism, without any alloy of politics, country, race, nationality or previous superstitions. Mod- ern Judaism contains all the solid elements of the Mosaico- prophetic religion! it is mankind's faith; it is a world-religion. The Gentile world now has once more to receive the Bible and the Decalogue, but to receive them genuine and unadulterated, from the uncompromising hands of Israel. There they will learn to mind the call : "Let My people go forth and serve Me." There they will read the Decalogue with its entire, grand opening, un- sophisticated :i I am thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.— Thou shalt know this day and take it into thine heart that the Eternal is God in heaven above and on earth be- neath and none besides Him^. Thus speaketh the Eternal, the King of Israel and his Redeemer: I am the first and I am the last and besides Me there are none.^ Behold all God has made is very good'* — i. e., is perfect, for the happiness of the creatures and the glory of the Creator ; the world is of God's making ; not the devil's; not for hell, not a dale of woe, no pessimism. He created man and woman in his own image,^ viz : with a divine soul rational, free, responsible ; made for wisdom, goodness and hap- piness. — No eternal punishment, no original sin," * "Be witness that I have placed before thee life and death, choose."^ Hence man has his own free will, is responsible; by his own efforts capable of virtue ; not needing miraculous grace, vicarious atone- ment, hell-fire. Thus we see here : One God : pure Mind ; the best creation; one human race: brotherhood; one right: justice to all ; marriage, family, parenthood, work and enjoyment for all ; HI M., XX, 2. 2V M., iv, 39. And thou shalt know and meditate in thy heart, that the Eternal is God in the heavens above... and none else. « Isaiah xliv, 6. I am the first and the last, besides me there exists no God. * Genesis, i, 31. All that He has made, behold, it was very good. 3 Genesis, i, 27. In His divine image He made them male and female. 6 V M., XXX, 19. Life and death I placed before you. . .choose life. MISSION OF MOHAMMEDANISM. 47 no trinity, or incarnation ; no devil, hell or original sin ; no mon- astery, no impure matter ; no king or priest by divine grace ; but a happy world, freedom, duty, work, dignity, justice and bread for all; with monogamy, brother-men and sister-races. All that is taught and repeated, over and over, in the Mosaic Genesis and in the entire Bible, and was in letter and spirit, accepted by the Nazarean founder of Christianity. Let us now say a word concerning the Orient and the Moham- medan peoples. As the Occidental nations claim that Israel and his Law has been abrogated by Nazareth, the New Testament and New Judaism, even so the Orient affirms that the Hebrew Scriptures and people have been superseded by Mohammed and the Qoran ; that Mohammed is the last and greatest of the prophets. He has, indeed, accepted the One God in spirit, the Bible and its morals, the Decalogue, the Sabbath, for a while even the Atonement-day ; also Jerusalem as his Kebla, etc. And all this was propagated among four hundred millions of Orientals. Hence is he greater than Moses, and his followers are the true faithful Jews. This claim the Mohammedan peoples. To this the Jews reply : True that Mohammed at first was, or claimed to be, simply a disciple of Abraham and Moses. His teach- ers and his spiritual atmosphere were no doubt Jewish or unita- rian-Christian. He had probably even some Jewish blood cir- culating in his veins. A legend makes his mother a Jewess. He no doubt taught the God of Abraham, the EI-Elyon, the Universal Spirit; with the deeds, duties and virtues as learned from Abra- ham ; his theology and his morality : truth, justice, kindness and hospitality, peacefulness and urbanity, purity and forbearance, as come down from Abraham and remembered in Arabia and Israel. But later on came a second phase, a new period in his teachings, and especially in his real practice. With success, with conquest and victory came strife, war, bloodshed and pride, on one side; with the ridicule and scoffing, the belittling and antagonism by his opponents, other features came out and got the mastery in his mind. There came the evil passions of ambition, dominion, revenge and overbearing: he had to satisfy his followers who thirsted for carnage, booty and slaves, rapine, lust and conquest. So during this second period other principles, non-Abrahamic, unfortunately, unfolded and became preponderant. Hence des- 48 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. potism, slavery, polygamy, small learning, war and conquest in the Orient to this day. Could then Israel accept such a practice, such a Prophet, such a Messiah, with his Qoran and his revelation? True, he taught one spiritual God and the Bible. But the Deca- logue was strangely crippled by that, practically curtailed, if not annulled. "Thou shalt not steal, not murder, not commit lewd- ness, not covet thy neighbor's wife, house," etc., was lost of sight. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" — was entirely over- looked in Mohammed's and his successors' polity. He accepted the heading of the Decalogue, but left out the body of its teach- ings. He taught the theology, but not its paramount outcome, the morals. Christianity accepted the body, in theory, but cut off the heading, the unity of God. Both treated the Decalogue to a Procrustus' bed, lopping off the head or the entrails. You see, Mohammedanism kept on the head and crippled the body. Christianity adopted the ethics without the doctrine. Moham- medanism adopted the doctrine without the ethics of the Decalogue. The practical, baneful results soon became ap- parent in either camp. The Mohammedan exhibits to this day the features of selfishness, carelessness, restlessness, war- fare, lust, polygamy, slavery, small advance in civilization, economical and industrial backwardness, racial and sectarian intolerance — the old barbarous military regimen. Let us hope that the Young Turk party will begin a new aera. As to the State, Church and social conditions in Christendom, we have above surveyed them. Now, the reason of such flagrant anomalies is, because the first teaches the theology of the Bible and Israel, without the morals; the other theoretically inculcates the morals, without the doctrine, the divine unity. While monotheism alone is the ground and safeguard of the unity of the human race, of justice and right to each and all. The fatherhood of the One God is the dome to the temple of the brotherhood of man. In both, the Mohammedan and the Trinitarian camps, that grave momentum was not sufficiently grasped and accentu- ated, and was since entirely neglected : either religion became a dry, formal creed without deed, a dead root, without fruit ; either became a cold theology, not an ethical standard for right-living. Hence could Israel not side with the one or with the other. Thus Mohammedanism as Christianity are not final, both are MISSION OF MOHAMMEDANISM. 49 but preparatory, paving the way for the higher revelation of prophetic Judaism. They did not abrogate it, they are but pre- paring it. The creed of the Orient and the creed of the Occi- dent are the sharp iron ploughs tearing up the hard ground of ancient barbarism and fertilizing it with the seed of their mother Religion. They have extirpated the Baal, Moloch and Astaroth worship; they have mitigated former brutality and sensuality; they have prepared the peoples for the full Ten- Words, for the Biblical God-belief and a purer morality, for the call: "Let my people go and serve Me in the desert." "For from Zion comes the Law and the word of God from Jerusalem." This grand preparatory task they have fulfilled. Mankind now is ripe for a step farther. Now let them both come forth, ad- vance and merge into the full doctrine and full ethics of their mother religion, to the entire and unabridged Ten- Words, to the standard of full prophetism : One God, one human race, one right, one Law ; freedom, bread and education for all ; not gold, power, war ; not original sin, devil, hell and despotism. Our Church, State and society must take their stand upon a Biblical basis and Israel must hold on until this basis is established. THE BIBLICAL TEACHINGS. Studying the unadulterated Bible, the Occident and the Orient will learn that this world is not the work of the Devil, of the Evil-principle, fatalism, Ahriman or Satan: for it is written : "And God saw everything he had made, and behold, it is very good." No dale of tears, or hell! Shall man pas- sively enjoy or suffer, in laziness and oriental resignation? No ! It is written : God said : Increase and fill the earth, conquer and rule the earth, sea and sky, i. e., make efforts, work and enjoy! — "Male and female God created man." Hence is woman man's complement, assistant and companion ; no poly- gamy, or slavery. "Sin lieth at thy door, but thou art master thereof," is man's patent of independence; responsibility, no original depravity, no vicarious atonement and no hell fire; effort and work bring salvation. All existing races are the offspring of one parental pair; thus brotherhood and equality. 50 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE, justice, bread, liberty and fellow-feeling for all the Adamites.^ Thus no aristocratic and no priestly privileges, no discrimina- tion of race, sex, caste. They will nowhere find in the Bible a trace of Trinity, or incarnation; of vicariate expiation or of human infallibility, of hell and eternal torments. There they will breathe the pure, monotheistic air of the first Command- ment; the one, eternal, spiritual God, caUing: "Send forth My people to serve Me." Service to God is to do justice to man; love of God is kindness for man: to propagate peace and good will among men. Leading verses in the Thora are : "And thou shalt love the Eternal, thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy might." (V. M. 6:4.), next: "And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." (Ill M., 19:18.) Here Moses, Hillel, Aqiba, Buddha, Confucius and Nazareth coin- cide. Thus veneration to God and sympathy for man — not political or religious warfare, not shiboleth of birth or privi- lege, are the true tests and objects of society. When the Gentile world will have accepted Thora and Decalogue, in deed and fact, plain, pure and genuine, the task of Israel will be fulfilled; then Israelite and Gentile will both be absorbed in the one great stream of Humanity. Both will rest at the bosom of their Common Father, the God of the Uni- verse, as they come from and finally rest together in the lap of their common, all-absorbing mother, earth ; as the prophetic ideal, "Then will God be One and His name be One." Look around, there is progress in history, mankind does improve, however slowly and hesitatingly. And this even is the sense and the contents of our motto : "Send forth My people to serve Me in the wilderness." Bible in hands, Israel was and is as yet the Providential messenger to call on the savage in the wilderness to become a civilized man, or, as repeated by a later seer (Is. 40:3), standing on the shoulders of Moses: "A voice calls in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Eternal God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain be lowered and leveled that the glory of Ihvh shall be visible to all the flesh." Let us now quote the new leaders. iGen., V, 1, reads: "This is the boolt of Geneology of Adam. When Elohim created him, in the Divine image He made him (rational and responsible), male and female He made them and blessed them." Finely emphasize the Rabbis: This passage is man's patent of nobility and equality; that nobody shall cavil his neighbor on account of sex, birth, race and social station: All are descendants of one couple. THE BIBLICAL TEACHINGS. 51 After the disastrous war between France and Germany, a generation ago, induced by two unscrupulous men for selfish purposes, the French democracy addressed the German democracy, as brothers do brothers, as fellowmen, beseech- ing them, exhorting them, calling on them to stop war and withdraw the invading army in the name of justice and humanity. "Let us proclaim— they say— the liberty, equality and fraternity of the peoples, long live the Universal Republic, the equal rights of man. Let us form a union of the States of Europe." What great thrilling words, shaking ofif the old, worn-out prejudices of sect and race and country, and sub- stituting instead, one humanity and one right ! The same proclaimed Castellar and the Spanish liberals : "All the continent shall form one people, and all the nations one family... We salute in you the advent of right and liberty." Such are the footsteps, the vestiges of the messengers of peace and good-will to all. The same tendency we see in the several churches. The summits of the sects and races begin to feel more kindred. The points of consent are more important than those of dissent. A Jewish minister, a Jewish writer, an advocate of Jewish rights, in these Biblical pages above, enumerates the great historical achievements of the Roman and of the Protestant Churches. Some time ago the Evangelical Alliance paid a warm tribute of recognition to the part and the merits of the Jews in mankind's vast history. The em- peror of the Russians started the Peace or Hague Conference, moving for an international High Court of Arbitration be- tween contending parties and peoples. Already conflicts have been averted by such a dawning international Court. In time it is bound to become supreme and discard war. The great inter-social problems, just as the international difficulties^ the old and the modern feuds between wealth and poverty, between capital and labor, between classes and masses, can and must be adjusted only by such future Courts of Arbitration, Thus reason and right are gradually and hesitatingly, yet surely, gaining ground over selfishness, force and over-reaching. On this important theme and its bearing on Israel, we recently gave our opinion as follows : THE HAGUE ARBITRATION AND THE PROPHETS. "And it will be in the days of the far off future, when the mount of the house of God will be firmly established on top 52 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. of all the mounts, whereto all the nations will stream, saying: Let us go and pilgrimage to the Ihvh Mount and learn of His methods. . .for from Zion comes the divine word.. .And He shall judge between nations. . . and they shall change their swords unto pruning hooks, and their spears to harvest tools and they shall no longer learn warfare. (Isaiah U). And a sprout will rise from Jesses' stem... on whom will rest the divine spirit, the spirit of wisdom and intelligence, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and fear of God... Who shall not judge according to mere appearance or hearsay. Right- eousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness his strength.. .The wolf shall dw^ell in peace with the lamb, and the lion eat straw as the cow.. ." (Is. XL) Such we find the peace-ideal in Prophets and moralists. "Here we find outlined the Hague Arbitration, the Peace Commission, attempted now by our philanthropists, and our wise statesmen^ who recently gathered in New York as preliminary to the coming Hague assemblage, to banish the sword and, instead, put into man's hands the plough and the tools of agriculture and industry: "That the entire globe may become the Holy Divine Mount, full of God's knowledge and good will to man, as the sea is covered with water." — That great idea of a permanent Peace Court, peace with honor and justice, is a Jewish idea, a prophetic idea, of now nearly 3,000 years ago. It is just and proper that Jews, descendants from the Prophets, should gather around it, foster and nurture it. Israel is a right and spirit-nation, and shall be strongly represented at the Hague Arbitration Commission. "Let me emphasize this with particular fervor. The Jews of America and Europe should earnestly see to it that they are well and solidly represented at the permanent Hague Arbitration Court. They have a right to it, but they also have the duty of it. Their right is a historical, millennial one: Be- cause their leaders, prophets and moralists have first pointed it out as the goal, the idea and the final aspiration of mankind. But it is their duty and racial interest. The Jews suffer as a nationality, a confession and a race. They are persecuted with iron and blood by barbarous nations. They are mortified and maligned even among so-called civilized nations. They are such as Jews ; and as Jews they are entitled to be represented 1 Hon. Jacob II. Schiff and other Jews were not missing there. THE BIBLICAL TEACHINGS. 53 at the World's Peace and Justice Commission. There they shall bring to the knowledge of the great International Coun- cil their grievances, and demand justice as a right for the des- cendants of those who gave the world the idea of universal peace and justice. They, first, said that as long as nations fight there is barbarism, and that, alone, with peace and justice civiliza- tion begins. The papers of April 16, 1907, published the United States Presi- dent's letter on peace arbitration, offering many vistas and points very well presented, while others are questionable. The presiden- tial letter says : "Though it is our bounden duty to work for peace, yet it is even more our duty to work for righteousness and justice. If they are ever at odds, it is right- eousness whose cause we must espouse." This paragraph hits the nail on the head. To insure peace without justice, fails the mark. All the great despots of history made the same plea for their wars, conquests and usurpations, claiming that men envy and rob each other, the prince compelling them by superior force to live at peace. So reasoned Alexander, Cae- sar, Tamerlane, Charlemagne, Napoleon. The laws of Hammu- rabi, the Twelve Tables, the Code Justinianus, the several feudal codes, all aimed at peace, but at peace without justice and equity. They simply developed injustice and inequality. The legislator sanctioned and rendered permanent the injus- tice or unrighteousness, conditions which had been created. The statutes perfected and consummated what war and ambi- tion had begun. President Roosevelt deserves well in having called attention to the stern fact that arbitration and peace are only meritorious when they are gained and firmly estab- lished on solid justice and fairness. Peace without justice is worse than war: it is death, slavery without redemption, bru- talizing men by the whip of fear and hope. The letter continues : "But harm and not good would result if the most advanced nations, those in which most freedom for the individual is combined with efficiency, security and justice, should, by agreement, disarm and place themselves at the mercy of other peoples less advanced and in a state of military barbarism and despotism ; if civilized and peace-loving peo- ples, with the highest standards of international obligations and duty, would by disarmament be unable to check other nations with no such standards of obligation." Against this paragraph a closer examination of facts must demur. If The Hague Arbitration Commission would ordain and insist that 54 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. justice-loving peoples should disarm and permit the barbarous ones to remain armed, such dire consequences might well re- sult. But states now advocating peace arbitration are not children and not imbeciles. Their great object and aim will and shall be the universal and total disarmament of all peoples and nations, civilized or not, and making it a standing rule that all international differences shall be settled by arbitration and never by resort to war. And next: "Since 'ultima ratio vis est,' the arbitration board will decree and prescribe for every nation, to entertain a stipulated military force under command of a general of their choice, which all such military contingents together shall be ready to forcibly compel any refractory people to do justice, to resign war and submit any and every disagreement, claim or cause, to the same, one, supreme arbitration commission for final settlement, that will secure peace with justice, which our Chief Magistrate so well emphasizes. "Interrogating history we find this ever to have been a method of discarding strife and bringing about peace with justice. France was a monarchy composed of a large number of duchies and kingdoms ever at war with each other. Louis XL, Henry IV. and Louis XIV. compelled the dukes to forego war and resort to arbitration or peace with justice. England had its turbulent barons and earls; Germany had its princi- palities, grand dukes and princely courts, each independent, measuring their rights by their power to make war against each other and even against the sovereign. They yielded at last to the necessity of law and order, recognizing an authority to settle their mutual claims on the basis of peace with justice. "The United States of North America, the expanded united colonies, as soon as they disrupted from England and acquired their independence, did just the same. Each state is governed by law, not by force, and all the states settle their differences by the courts, peace with justice. "Should we hesitate to disarm the civilized nations because the barbarous ones are aroused and resort to war? That would be postponing peace for war; that would be sacrificing civilization to barbarism. As long as we have war between nations we cannot claim to be civilized. And as long as we tolerate international war we must connive, and are conniving, at private wrong. But one would object: The barbarous countries may not submit to disarm and rely on arbitration, but ever prefer to rely upon their force? I doubt that. Let the United States, England, France, Germany, Italy, etc., indorse arbitration and THE BIBLICAL TEACHINGS. 55 total disarmament, with the proviso of one, single public force to compel all refractory parties, and I deny that Russia or Turkey, or Morocco will dare contradict the reasonable will of the combined civilized powers, and stand up single-handed against the will of civilization, reason and force united in such an arbitration court. Such civilized countries, united under the flag of peace with justice, will be irresistible, war will disap- pear, the sword will make room for arbitration, the plow, the tool, and the barbarous peoples will have no other choice than to submit with good grace to the higher civilization, to peace with justice. Behold, what disgraceful, horrifying things went on in Russia, Armenia, Roumania, no less than in Morocco or Persia ! And the civilized peoples stand aghast, ashamed, looking on ! Adopt that policy of disarmament, arbitration and a single international military force, and such crimes against humanity — such shameful perpetrations — will disap- pear. "Passing over the discussion of other points in Roosevelt's let- ter, we shall close with the remark that it is perfectly true that the problem is vast and difficult, and that "it is better to ac- complish something, but in the right direction, than to ask much and obtain nothing." But, we emphasize, let enlightened arbi- trators and friends of humanity not block their way by lack of courage. Let them not despair before they begin action. Western mankind is ripe for a treaty of general disarmament and a supreme court of arbitration. They have only to say: We will, because it is our duty, because it is just, reasonable and timely that nations as individuals bring their cases before an arbitration court and that only beasts and savages repair to war. Let them proceed on this road as slowly and cautiously as necessary, but ever uphold this principle and this convic- tion, viz: That in the world as it is, in our present environ- ments, it is possible, desirable and even for any and every civilized nation, correctly understanding her own interests in harmony with those of civilized fellow-mankind, to manfully agree to submit to arbitration all and every difference, which may arise between nations and countries, by an international high court of peace and justice, according to law and equity, and thus gradually form all civilized countries and peoples into one vast United States of the world.^ iPublished in Baltimore American, April 20, 1907. I add that, having written that to our revered friend. Professor A. H. Sayce of Oxford-Cairo, he replied: "I am afraid that as long aa man is what he is, war will go on." 56 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Thus this great work of human unification, pacification, and fra- ternization, on the platform of prophetic monotheism and the Ten Words, is slowly and gradually, hesitatingly, yet surely being accomplished. The bright day of the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, of the Orient and the Occident may be discerned on the horizon. It has dawned upon the best of all the nations and creeds. In the first centuries of the present aera, as yet, the world was pagan, worshipping Baal and Astaroth, Assur and Merodach, with human sacrifices, unchastity and despotic all- power. From the fourth to the sixteenth century it became Catho- lic, with trinity and infallibility, with the Pope claiming precedence over Czesar, mind over force, right over the sword — an advance to be sure. In the sixteenth it became Protestant, strongly lean- ing towards the Hebrew Sacred Writ, with some faint recognition of the right of reason and conviction. In the eighteenth century Frederick II, Catherine II, Voltaire, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Mendels- sohn, Kant, and the Encyclopaedists advocated free thought. In the nineteenth the elite, the flower of Christanity was Unitarian, pleading for a free conscience, a free man and woman, a free citizen in a free country: Church, school, press and speech free. One step more, one effort more , some positive science more, a little more frankness, and the masses will be educated, enlighten- ed and gained over to reason, to one God, and one right for all ; the world will stand upon Biblical grounds, Jew and Gentile, Arian, Turanian, and Semite will fuse into one humanity. That epoch is yet far away, but the dawn of it, ** the footsteps on the mounts of the peace-messenger are discernible." CHARLES VOYSEY ON "JEWS AND THEIR MISSION."i "What is the mission or destiny of the Hebrew race? The answer to it is, I think, to be inferred from their past history. What have they been, what have they done hitherto; and where do they now stand? Eliminating for the present all reference to miraculous reve- lation, and looking with a cold, calm, and mundane eye on the stream of Jewish history, nothing can be more obvious than the fact that, as a nation, the Jews have been the guardians of a truth which they consider above all things sacred. They had no raison d'etre except as preservers and defenders of this sacred iln the London Jewish World (1870?). CHARLES VOYSEY ON "JEWS AND THEIR MISSION." 57 trust. It is nothing to the purpose how it arose, by whom con- veyed to the people, under whose authority it was enshrined. Whether given by the very mouth of God, or merely by the natural agency of the mind of some great law-giver, the fact re- mains the same, that the Jew believed something which he and his whole race were to guard as the most priceless treasure, and to defend with their life's blood. Not only is this proved by the endurance through, perhaps, four thousand years of that simple belief in all its original purity, in spite of every form of corruption and persecution, but it is also proved by the history of the various apostasies which are re- corded in the Scriptures. It cannot be denied that in the period of the kings of Israel and Judah, masses of the people fell away into idolatry. But never was the nation left without witness for God and His truth. It survived the corrupting influence of the favor of kings no less than the threatening hostility of open perse- cution. The Hebrew Scriptures are a record of the preservation of the sacred trust amidst the degradation and apostasy of nearly the whole people, and amidst the contaminating influences of captivity in idolatrous lands. The fact that it is preserved alive unto this day — not merely in the words of a book, but in the hearts of Jewish men and women all over the world, in spite of contact with every form of religious beliefs more or less idolatrous — furnishes, in my opinion, the strongest possible indication that in the course of Divine Providence the Jews have been perpetuated to this day on purpose to preserve this sacred truth, and that they have been scattered into all lands, among all creeds, on purpose to proclaim it, and to teach it to their less enlightened fellow men. Nothing, to my mind, is more remarkable than that while the Jewish race, since its first Levitical organization, have modified considerably some — if not the most important — of the ceremonies believed to be of divine origin; and while Jews of this present age in various lands show a distinct and de- cided variety in consequence of the inevitable influence of sur- rounding customs, their belief in the one Lord God remains ever unchanged ; identical in every land, untouched by the subtle attractions of a very sensuous and anthropomorphic re- ligion. It is not then for the rites and ceremonies, nor even 58 EXODUS. MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. for every detail of Mosaic legislation, that the Jewish people have been so marvellously preserved, but for the maintenance and transmission and, as I hope, universal spread of their one fundamental and imperishable thought, "The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." No boasted unity of Christendom in its palmiest days could ever show the unity of Judaism in their one cardinal belief. From the days of Abraham — in whom God promised that all the families of the earth should be blessed, and of Moses, who uttered forth the glorious and immortal song, "The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, plenteous in goodness and truth" — down to this very hour, the conception of God has retained its purity, with all the constancy and brilliancy of the sun in the firmament. Only what was once the religion of the few, and impressed by slow degrees and under a stern dis- cipline upon the whole Jewish people, after centuries of back- sliding and apostasy, has now become the universal faith of the Jewish people — the one point upon which there can be no divergence. Circumcision does not make a Jew, for there are races which practice circumcision who are not children of Abraham. Rites and ceremonies do not make a Jew, for these alter with altered circumstances, and are wisely modified by experience and common sense. The "blood of bulls and goats" no longer stains the floors of the temples; the fumes of the burnt sacrifice no longer ascend to the skies. But the love of the One True God still warms the hearts of devout worship- pers ; and instead of our smoke going up to heaven, heaven sends down to us the kindling flame of brotherly love. Isolation, exclusion, rigidity of forms and ceremonies — all these may have been needful, and may still be needful, as scaf- folding is to the building; but surely the devout Hebrew mind must perceive that these are not the building itself— not the true temple which the Lord hath built, and not man. The sacred trust, then, kept— the Lord be praised !— unto this hour, never before in all time more cherished, more pre- cious than it is now in the dawn of brighter days for the chosen race, is the object for which the race was called out of bondage, drilled by centuries of painful discipline, sheltered and kept faithful through the most cruel persecution. CHARLES VOYSEY ON "JEWS AND THEIR MISSION." 59 To me, once a Christian, but now animated, strengthened and refreshed by the same trust in the Hving God which in- spired and nourished the souls of Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and the Psalmists — a very Jew in my religious belief, though not in externals — to me, I say, it seems as if the time were come when you Hebrews may, with perfect safety and success, make some efforts to lead the Gentile world into the marvelous light which has cheered you through your many weary pilgrimages. God gives no gift unto men to hide in their bosoms, and not to share it with those who have it not. Not even His best and noblest gifts of faith and love are ours only to keep selfishly for the warmth and comfort of our family and race. The poor Christians, whose attempts at your conversion are so truly ridiculous, are yet moved, let us trust, by a sort of generosity; and though it may be repugnant to your feelings and taste to adopt their tactics, you may take a lesson from their zeal. Christianity and all polytheistic or idolatrous religions are dying. Atheism is gathering its unhappy victims. Anthro- pomorphism is still further degenerating into a shameless worship of the creature instead of the Creator. Judaism still lives — the salt of the earth. Free from idolatry and every subtle form of creature worship, inspiring an imperturbable serenity and a glowing hope, it is alone fitted to come forth once more as the leader of religious thought, the deliverer of souls out of bond- age, and the herald of divine peace to those who are without hope and without God in the world. Would that you could dare to throw open your synagogues — if only once a week — to worshippers of all creeds, to hear an English service and an English sermon ; retaining on your Sabbaths and festivals all your traditional ceremonies as be- fore. You would lose nothing yourselves. You would give a priceless boon to many who, like myself, have hungered and thirsted for words of faith and hope in this wilderness of un- belief and superstition. PRACTICAL RESULTS OF THE EXODUS. Theme: II M. 12 :12.— "On all the gods of Egypt I shall exercise judgment." What is the practical result of the Exodus? What has man- kind really gained by it? What impulse has it given? Wha^ 6o EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. are Israel's contributions to mankind's ideas and achieve- ments since 3,500 years? We speak of the new aera of Israel's mission and messiahship: Is that pretense or truth? What has he achieved and what may he yet achieve? The answer is, summarized, given in II M., 12 .2 : "Over all the gods of Egypt I shall pass judgment!" All the gods, all the powers and principles, all vital institutions have been changed and reno- vated since Moses and the Exodus. Not two stones have been left together of the old religions. The entire ancient polity, in palace and temple, land and government, has been changed and reconstructed, and all was so upon the basis of the Exodus and its new principle : "I am Ihvh," and its logical sequels. Let us survey history and we shall find our motto literally and grandly verified. Egypt of the Pharaohs v/as the pattern of the ancient pre- Sinaic polity. The civilization of Hindustan, Phoenicia, Baby- lonia, Chaldea, Assyria in its highest form and noblest type, was in Egypt. The best of the ancient Church and State, of mon- archy and priesthood, classes and people, habits and laws, agri- culture, crafts, commerce and industry, all was there — and since that all was declared deficient and incompetent, mene, mene tekal!^ Limb by limb and principle by principle, all and each was removed, an absolute break-down took place and reconstruc- tion was achieved. New laws were laid down for State, society, religion, family, education, human practice and theory, life and as- pirations. And this was effected by Sinai's polity since the Exodus, 3,500 years ago; really and literally realizing the motto: "On all the gods of Egypt I shall execute judgment, I, Ihvh." Let us have a careful survey of history, without any bias or preconcep- tion, any made-up opinion, and we shall be agreeably surprised at the amount of improvement mankind has realized since and by the principles of the Exodus and Sinai. EGYPT'S POLITY SURVEYED. I. The base of the State and society of Egypt was religion. What was that religion? It was polytheism! As many races and provinces, so many gods, so many capitals and temples; each deity had its own city, represented in a triad.^ Such were iDaniel. ...^pn SJO ,X30 1 2The pattern of the later christological one. EGYPT SURVEYED. 6i Osiris, Isis and Horus, Amon-Rha, Serapis, etc.; twelve to fif- teen supreme gods with a host of inferior deities, foreign cults, later introduced, representing aspects or forces of nature or heroes; with hierarchs and priestcraft; all the gods pictured bodily, whimsically, sensationally to catch the fancy, the awe, the stupid admiration of the vulgar; in shape of men, women, animals, monsters, reptiles, crocodiles, snakes, flowers, vege- tables, trees, mountains, stars; Serapis, viz.: Osiris-Apis, being the leading deity; all were emblems of abstruse ideas, pictured and symbolized, grotesque images which the people took literally and became grossly idolatrous. The leading priests alone knew something about their true meaning and emblematical sense, they being initiated into their "mysteries." All that stupid and blasphemous symbolism, made to hide priestly cunning and ignorance and popular superstition, was swept away and gave room to the clear, salient Mosaic God- belief of the Exodus: Ihvh, viz.: Being, Essence, Eternity, All-Presence, Supreme Cause, Providence, Creator, the One God- doctrine with its physical, mental and ethical laws, spiritual and all-holy. Egyptian wisdom was mostly mythology and superstition, symbolic forms for the ignorant masses, and mys- teries for the initiated. The educated and the leaders had an- other religion, other morality and standard. The Church was the handmaid of the rulers, lay or priestly. Whilst Mosaism had one God, one law and one practice for all, the priests were the ministers, not the masters ; the teachers, not the corrup- ters, of the people. EGYPT AND INDIA. II. Egypt, as India, had several races and different castes. The people was divided into separate social classes, with an impassable gap between them. A caste of priests with the King heading them, as son of the god ; a caste of warriors with the grand-vizier, deputy of the King; a caste of traders, agriculturists, craftsmen and semi-free laborers. And finally came an immense crowd of menials and slaves, by war or purchase, or inherited, or kidnapped, considered and used as chattels and beasts of burden. This system of castes was based upon the swampy soil of their theology. Polytheism teaches many gods and countries and races, with conflicts, war, conquests, privileges and artificial social discriminations. 62 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. In India castes are a principle of religion, Brahmanism: From Brahma's head came the priests, the leading Brahman caste ; from Brahma's arms sprang the warriors, Kshatria; from Brah- ma's abdomen derived the Vaisya, the traders, agriculturists, etc., from Brahma's feet, the Sondra, next all the conquered, the now Gypsies, the slaves, pariahs, etc. That system had in Egypt some mitigation, yet it remained the leading principle. Mo- saism radically abolished castes: One God, All-Father, created one human parent couple, hence all men are brothers and free ; one man to one woman ; there is no room for slavery, poly- gamy, ruling classes, serving masses, castes, aristocracies, pa- riahs. Ihvh, One God, hence social, political and civil equality of races, individuals, sexes and stations. III. Ancient Egypt, as everywhere else, had classes and masses, freemen, slaves, and subjugated tribes, the weak and poor, women and children ever were somebody's property and ever obeyed. The many gods ever were at war with each other; so were the many races at war. War was legitimate, and power the test of right and truth. The vanquished party, presumed to be condemned by the gods, it was impiety to rebel against the victor. The One-God doctrine of Mosaism and the Exodus taught as its necessary, logical result : One human race, brotherhood, one right for all, God "who loves the stranger, the orphan and the widow,"i who ordains : "As a fellow citizen among you be unto you the stranger, thou shalt love him as thyself." (Levit., 19.) At no time is this in- culcation of the Mosaic Law so necessary as just now, wdien the grand, luminous idea of pan-humanity is obscured, nay, nearly supplanted, by a narrow nativism or nationalism, racial prejudice, which really is but crudity, vanity and selfishness. The son says to the father and the daughter to the mother: Step back, you are not my equal, you are socially my inferior, you are a foreigner, I a native; you are a Dutchman, a Pole, Irish. Your mere foreign accent is your pariah-stamp, my na- tive speech and manner are my patent of nobility ! "Proud is the youth towards the old and the inferior towards the vener- able. "^ Mosaism teaches respect and justice to all and sym- pathy with the weak and prostrate, with woman and child, EGYPT AND INDIA. 63 poor and slave. Privilege is usurpation ; equal, free citizens, no classes and no masses. IV. In Egypt and everywhere else v^as the priesthood pow^erful, learned, politically predominant, proprietors of the soil. The mass of the people w^as prostrate, ignorant, priest- ridden and superstitious; poor, excluded from the higher pro- fessions and the government; drudges looking up to that sa- cred caste as the mediators and oracles of the gods. Led by Israel, mankind's ideal became: "A kingdom of priests and a holy nation;"! all educated and pure, thinking and workings with public schools and free instruction for all; trades and professions free; learning and bread, the soil, a farm and work for all. It allows not one doctrine for the thinking ones and another for the common people ; all are to be educated — all realizing the law, all holding the same theories. The priesthood was simply one of the many social professions, elders, pro- phets, teachers, judges, officials. Thus was democracy evolved from Exodus and Bible. That Lincoln, Gambetta, Clemenceau, Disraeli, Garfield rose to the top of the social scale, from the low- est to the highest — that was achieved by reason of the Exodus. The French and American presidents are the historical de- scendants of Jephta, Gideon and David. V. In Egypt, as everywhere else, the king had the all- power, he was pontifex maximus, imperator, legislator, yea, owner of all. Son of the god, ruling by divine grace, he was the fountain of the law. Conscience, religion, State, people, soil, all was his, and rebellion was blasphemy. Israel's Exo- dus revolutionized these notions : God is king, reason and law are God's emanations. The mortal king is but chief, leader, judge, executive of the law. The law is his guide and norm; he is but a brother, the first citizen. Three thousand and five hundred years ago God promulgated a constitution for people and king.2 The king was deposed when disobedient to it or un- worthy; he was appointed according to law, confirmed by the people, deposed when unfit or mischievous, and rebellion was legitimate.^ 2Critical computation reduces it to 2,500, at any rate. 3 It is interesting that the first Roman kings were appointed by the- people and confirmed by the Senate; the formula was: "The people ordained." (Titi Levi, historia.) 64 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. We have surveyed the leading traits of ancient Egypt and found Hterally: "On all the gods of Egypt I shall pass condem- nation." All its gods, all its institutions, powers and principles have been vanquished since, in State, Church and Community. Osiris and Amon-Rha and all the other triads, the Pharaohs and the hierarchs, the ruling castes and pariah masses, the bar- barism in silk, cotton or rags, the entire rotten civilization went down into the abyss of time. Ihvh alone with Israel remained. Asking then, what has the Exodus and its platform achieved? What has Israel done for mankind? What gain of new ideas? The answer is : Not polytheism, mysteries and incarnations, but Supreme Mind, a nobler world-conception, right and reason have been elucidated since. Not many creations of worlds, races, interests and wars, but One God, with har- mony, justice and eternal fitness, sympathy, solidarity, peace and good will is the social ideal. Not kings, despotism, aris- tocracy, force and cunning, but democracy, freedom, equal duties, and rights ; not priesthood, mediators, oracles and myths ; not dynasts, heroes and privileges, with pariahs, ignorance and superstition, but free-born men and women, with work, bread, schools and education, hearty religiousness, sincerity and piety, in deed and in feeling, are since ever more emphasized and asked; not castes and slaves, but equality, citizenship, man- hood and deeds are cherished. Not woman as Pandora, a she- devil, mother of slaves, but as Eve, the Biblical woman, the tender, active helpmate, mother of free children, toiling and ruling, sympathizing and building up the family, the house, the corner-stone of the future; not dominant and subjugated races, castes and paupers, with almsgiving, over-reaching and wretchedness, but solidarity and sympathy, desiring to lift up the poor, the weak, the lazy and the vicious ; not brute force and craftiness, but right, truth, reason and goodness, are our ideals. The breaking down of the ancient Babylonia-Assyrian rule, of the military and, of the priestly regime, and the dawn of the aera of right, reason and fellow-feeling is marked by the Exodus event. Ihvh, whom Pharaoh pretended never to have heard of, saying: "Who is Ihvh, whose voice I am to obey?" and Israel, whom Pharaoh deemed his bondmen and socager, good for labor and the whip; Ihvh, Israel and the principles of the Ten-Words, inaugurated by the Exodus, have in the •course of 3,500 years changed the world's aspects. From the EXODUS IS THE AERA. 65 entire wrecked, ancient regime of the Pharaohs, Ihvli and Israel and the Decalogue alone have remained. Those Exodus principles extended and embodied in the Bible, are the basis of the present State, Society and Church. No kings, no military- regime, no aristocracy, no priesthood, no castes, no slaves; but free conscience, the heart's true religion, public schools, free work, right and duty for all alike, etc. ; that is the net result of the Exodus, the achievements since 3,500 years. All Egypt's glories and powers, all the pagan gods are broken down — Ihvh has remained. And that is what is designated as Israel's priesthood, his hu- manitarian mission, his messiahship, his office as teacher, his sacrifices and tribulations, his historic martyrdom and crown of thorns — such claims are not pretense and chauvinism, not poetry and phrase, they are historical facts, undeniable by every clear-sighted, right-minded, unbiased student of history. That advance in State and Church, society and civic life since 3,500 years, mankind has achieved under the leadership of the Bible and the aera of the Exodus ; of Israel as the exponent of the pure God-idea, humanity-idea, right-reason-and-state idea. Behold our American United States ! A hundred years ago it had a population of three millions, now eighty millions ! Once a colony, now an empire, a continent, the asylum of op- pressed mankind; without kings, barons, classes and Church despotism : "Every inhabitant under his own vine and his fig tree." No standing armies and no wars, but arbitration courts and a supreme court; new states ever arising in the wilderness; best public credit, grand industries, enormous ex- ports, schools for the young generation, for all life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This is achieved by virture of the Exodus, by the Biblical civilization. But is all this really, fully achieved ? Is Israel now superfluous ? Have the nations learned all? Even here, in this United States? How is it in Europe? How on this terrestrial globe? How is it, that even this United States had its recent bloody, costly, wasteful wars? How is it with the Philippines? Where- fore the sacrifice of the Boers? And the wars in the Balkans, Russia, China, Morocco, and the strikes and the pauperism, and the combinations of plutocracy, of the trusts cornering the bread of the poor and causing dearth in the midst of peace and 66 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. plentiful crops?— You see, Israel's task is not yet fulfilled. It is being done since the Exodus, but it is poorly done, only half-heartedly. Israel championing the Bible is not superfluous, no anachronism. He is needed still as long as he practices his theory. Mankind needs him yet a while. More education, more thinking, and his work for and with mankind will be achieved and it will be recognized then. When the last remnants of the despotism of classes and masses, of plutocracy and pauperism, etc., shall break down, then his mission will be done, fulfilled and closed, not before. Mankind's historical stages are many and various. Such stages are the Chaldean initiator, Abraham, the Exodus and Mt. Sinai, Mt. Karmel, the Babylonian captivity, Ezra, Judas Mac- cabeus, Nazareth, the Nicaean Council, the Hegira to Medi- nah, the Wartburg, the Protestant Reformation etc. But man- kind's great historical aera is to be counted — not from the Prench and the American Revolutions, a 100 years ago, not from Protestantism, 400 years ago, not from the Reformer of Me- dinah, 1,300 years ago, not from the moralist of Nazareth, 1,900 years ago, but from Moses and Exodus, 3,500 years ago. When that Exodus' programme will be fully realized, by all, the working masses and the thinking classes, when the principles of the Ihvh religion, of the Sinai civilization will be realized, in theory and in practice, then Israel will merge into mankind, his task being done and fully performed. That will be the universal spring, the human Passover, the world's Fourth of July, redemption from the despotism of king, priest, igno- rance, pauperism.! Then winter — war, hate and envy — will be over! The chilly, gloomy rain storm of guild and creed and race-prejudice and ill-will be gone; the buds, blossoms and flowers of helpfulness, sympathy and broad tolerant humani- tarianism, will appear all over the land. Then the time of song and rejoicing will have arrived and the voice of the dove of peace and good will, of love of next, of live and let live, of universal freedom and right for all, will be heard all over the globe. Then Israel's role will be closed. Then the pre-Sinaic, 1 Solomon's Songs, II, ii. Behold, winter has passed, the dismal rain- storms are gone and over, blossoms adorn the ground, the season of song has arrived, the voice of the dove Is heard in the land. HISTORY CORROBORATING. 67 the military regimen of Assyria and Egypt will yield to that of the Exodus, the civilization of right, industry and peace. About half a generation ago I read of a German-Jewish thinker w'ho, starting from his own contemporaneous environ- ments and events, said something excellent to this point, strongly corroborating our above remarks on the ideas promul- gated during the period of the Exodus and upheld by Israel to this day. His stand-point was contemporaneous history, but he arrived at the same conclusions as advanced in these pages contemplating universal history : Our present times are strikingly and saliently marked by country and race mania, by an exuberant and mad nationality feeling. May you call it pan- germanism, pan-slavism, pan-latinism, chauvinism pure and simple, or anti-Semitism, it is ever expressed in the same barbarous manner, as victorious in the conflict with our no- bler, human consciousness of the wiser and higher pan-human- ity. Sadly we see the European peoples daily ousting and dis- carding the most elementary duties of human, international justice, and enacting harsh laws against the members of other nationalities living among them, motifying such harshness by self-constituted "States'-reasons", by which thousands of inno- cent families are ruined and rendered homeless. The States'- reason thus vanquishes the innate feeling of humanity — on principle ! and that is pure, bare barbarism ! That places our century beneath the level of those long ago passed by. The spokesmen of such "patriotism and nationalism" well know it, still they insist, unblushingly, remorselessly. They say : "We care not to ride the high horse of cosmopolitanism and hu- manity. We care for ourselves and our own, for our race, our people and our country. Each and every one for himself." The appeal to the sense of humanity appears properly to belong to the Jew, the spokesman and trusty ally of liberal- ism. For the idea of humanity inculcated by his millennial Bible requires him to rise to that of cosmopolitanism, and that tallies with the real conditions of his own nationality, which has no special country as its own. Israel proclaims the fra- ternity and union of all the races and nations on earth. Whether their skin be white, yellow, daik or brown; whether inhabiting hot or cold climes, of whatever regimen, idiom and tongue, they ever are a branch of the same one, great, human stock and tree, members of the same, one, human family and 68 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE, are all to live together justly, peaceably, helpfully, fraternally. Now, searching the literatures and codes throughout entire antiquity, we find that no other people rose to that breadth and height, to such a vast world-horizon, a grand Welt-Anschau- ung. Indeed, how could they, the old Gentiles, with their infinity of country, city, sea and island gods? How could they retain any fellow-feeling for tribes and peoples beyond their own confines?.. .Otherwise it is with Israel. Saliently and plainly did he grasp with his higher God-and-world-con- ception, the unity of mankind. He saw clearly the separate and special vocation and mission of each branch thereof, each having its own task in the Providential plan, but all forming one grand harmony, all in concert with pan-humanity. Our sages said: "Each people has its own appointed angel or genius which it must never neglect. God created, in his wisdom, the diverse tribes and races, in order to unfold and mature all the varieties and capacities of human nature, and bring out all the influ- ences of their environments." ... In order to favor the reaction against liberalism, it has been tried to show the incompatibility of the national principle with the humanitarian one. As if the sense of family is incompatible with the State-idea! Humanity teaches us that each State and each people is a member of the one great human family, united by the ties of civilization, the reciprocal duties of international rights.. .These ties are now greatly relaxed and unstrung, since in every State special guilds, trades, classes and parts push into the foreground their respective, particular interests. The system of seclusion and isolation of state from state, and of race from race in each state, is an obtruding, regretable feature of both the hemi- spheres. . . . Shall we now, under such ominous, gloomy auspices say with certain wise-acres that Israel and his Bible have already accomplished their task of unification and have noth- ing more to do for human amelioration? Open the law books of the old and of the new, present, na- tions, with all their cunning states-craft, have they learned the Categoric Imperative of duty, a hundred times repeated and inculcated in the Sacred Books, the great lesson of pan-hu- manity, "Ye shall love your next," "Ye shall love the stranger"? As the sun rises from the gloom of dark clouds, even so stands out the benevolence of the Biblical, Jewish spirit which gathers and befriends lovingly, alike native and stranger; whose law HISTORY CORROBORATING. 69 proclaims justice and love to the stranger! and which pro- nounced "a curse against him who would bend the right of the stranger." R. Akiba, murdered by Roman hands, inculcated that "every man of whatever speech and race, is born in the image of God and we owe him our love." A Medrash says : God spoke to Moses: "Do not believe that I discriminate be- tween Jew and Gentile. Whoever performs a good deed, I reward him according to his merit.". . ."We have witnessed the brutal treatment of Poles and Jews in Germany. We see and are horrified, now, by the same misdeeds in Russia and Roumania, repeated even more ruthlessly and shamelessly. Can we say that Israel's doctrine is obsolete and supplanted by the advent of new agents and times? It needs but an honest and careful survey of present history, but an unbiased estimate of the trend of things to learn that, the mission of Israel, as the Biblical people, in history, is not yet closed and accomplished, and to-day less than ever. (From "Oestr Wochenschrift of, about the year 1888, in general outline.) MOSES, FAITHFUL TO THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. (EXODUS 13:19.) One of the most noble traits of the ancient Hebraic character, one of those features, salient, indelible and ever reappearing, making out a distinctive mark of a clan and people, was Israel's fidelity to the living and the dead, the adherence to the past and to the future, to the race and the family, in their customs, views and aspirations. Such has been the strong tie, the unshaken co- hesion of the members to the one body of united Juda. Though for long centuries dispersed all over the entire terrestrial globe, still they felt as the limbs of one social and ethical ethnos, as if breathing with one breath and beating with one pulse; acknowl- edging their mutual solidarity, their common task and faith, as being so many leaves of one tree ; they felt this to such a degree that when they heard of some triumph or some disaster of their bretheren in another part of the world, they ever sympathized as if personally concerned therein, without regard to speech, distance, country or condition. Such was old Israel, described in history. Such was his fidelity and adherence to the living and to the dead. And this leading national trait, historically again and again re- curring, is the import of Exodus, 13:19. Moses took up the 70 EXODUS. MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. bones of Joseph, who, before dying, had made the Children of Israel promise: "When God will remember you (and lead you back to your own country) then, pray, take up my bones hence with you." — When Moses had matured his great design of Israel's redemption, when availing himself of the means of salvation which Providence ever holds ready at the dis- posal of true liberators and initiators of genius, rare resources and modes of wonderful ways and means, which by their grand- eur and their extraordinary character, come down to later admir- ing and grateful generations as miraculous and supernatural; when after long efforts and trials and utilizing the providential circumstances, he had rung out the reluctant consent of the Pharaoh to the departure of the enslaved people; when the myriads of that discordant population hastening on all sides, were to be collected in rank and file and be placed according to order and plan; when that host of men, women and children, with the motely horde of the riff-raff (Ereb-rab) and the irrrmense crowds of flocks and heaps of chattels were to be orderly arranged and begin the difficult and dangerous issue from Egypt — at that critical, earnest hour, what occupied the pious attention of the great leader? The ashes of the last patriarch! He remembered and did not forget to take along with himself that casket con- taining the venerable remains of Joseph, the Egyptian vice-roy, the fellow Hebrew shepherd and sire. For that had been his wish and last request, as in Genesis 50 :24 : "Joseph said to his brethren, I am going to die and God will remember you and re- turn you to the land of your fathers , . . Then do promise me to take up my bones with you," So now Moses fulfilled this sacred promise to the illustrious dead. Ponder over that trait : Joseph, at the head of Egypt, the proudest country of those times ; he, second only to Pharaoh, the proudest monarch of antiquity, he the "father" and friend of a great country which he had saved from starvation during a famine; Joseph, at the height of glory and foremost at the Egyptian throne, before dying, besought his brethren to take up his relics with them, on returning home, forgetting his sad experiences at their hands, and, remembering but their family ties, that they were kindred, sprang from the same seed, the same blood. THE TWO ARKS. 71 Joseph preferred to the pomp of a royal monument by some obeUsk or in the famous Egyptian labyrinth, the far-famed death- city of the Pharaohs, a humble mound in his native country, in Sichem, whence he had been torn away and sold into slavery. To the superb mausoleum, amidst the scenes of his vice-royalty, he preferred a humble hillock among his brethren; they had sold him into slavery, but still they were his brethren. What a mag- nanimous adherence to family and country, to blood relationship and affinity ! Whose imagination is not vivacious enough, whose heart is not warm enough, as not to feel deeply touched by this noble trait of fidelity to his living- brethren and to his dead fathers ! This noble trait in the old Hebrew physiognomy, unshaken and eternal adherence to the living and to the dead, so prominent, so deep-seated, so all-pervading the ancient Jewish character, is first depicted in the noble narrative we have taken as our theme. Consider and ponder over it. It is a gem irradiating light from all its points : Joseph, the viceroy of Egypt, prays his brethren to take up with themselves his remains when returning to their native pasturing grounds. And Moses, occupied with the creation of a new nation, on the point of beginning that most difficult and memorable enterprise which history has ever recorded as the greatest feat of antiquity, Moses does take up with himself the venerable coffin containing the bones of the departed chieftain and thus redeems the promise given by the dead to the dead. In Greece, but more so in Rome, on extraordinary occasions and on great conquerors, a special national honor was conferred, viz. : When the victorious imperator returned home, laden v\^ith spoils, from a great and successful military expedition, he v/as given the rare, unique honor of a triumph ; he entered Rome as triumphator, attended with great pomp, a brilliant procession and cortege, gorgeously clad in a purple mantle, with a golden laurel on his brow, riding on a magnificent state chariot, bands of musi- cians preceding him, guards of honor surrounding him, the vic- torious army in gala dress following him, the names of the battles won, the provinces conquered and the cities taken exhibited to the public gaze ; half-starved, sorry looking, long lines of prisoners of war, with their captured chiefs and princes in chains followed. 72 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. sometimes even, each with a rope around his neck; the Roman people shouting wildly, an immense crowd of admiring, hilarious and vociferating mob closing this triumphal procession, ^ the great- est exhibition in ancient Rome. Such was the highest distinction a Roman could aspire at, in the most brilliant ancient empire, dating from the very dawn of history. Such was the triumphal march of the victorious imperators. Compare now this with the Exodus, the triumphal march of Moses and Israel over van- quished Egypt. When Moses started on his world renowned issue from Egypt, the only trophy he caused to be borne before his victorious ranks, was a sarcophagus enshrining the sacred ashes of a patriarch ! Here is in embryo a leading characteristic of Juda to this day. Pointedly and with pardonable national pride the Medrash here remarks (ad lociim^) repeately coming back to this interesting theme : "Come and see how much devoted Moses was to the sacred duty of fidelity to and veneration for the dead. Whilst all the other Hebrews were occupied with plundering their Egyptian plunderers and tyrants, he remembered the request of Joseph and made it his duty to fulfill it, to practice 'true love towards the dead' (Hessed shel Bmeth) to fulfill the promise his sires had made to a dying brother." Here is the criterion of a real leader ; whilst the people are preoccupied with the desires and passions of the hour, he fixes his earnest thoughts upon interests everlast- ing, teaching virtues by practicing them. Again, legend narrates : Joseph, when making his last recom- mendation to his friends, wished his body to rest with his fathers and to spiritually live with his posterity ; he thus showed his ten- der and high sense for the past and for the future. Even so Moses, he, too, was pious, tender and faithful towards the dead, and he was no less so towards the living. So a beautiful legend narrates, again: When Moses, at the head of the march of the hosts of Israel, left Egypt and began his memorable expedition towards the Land of Promise, he was preceded, not by one, but by 1 Tacitus Historia, lib. V., 50. Senatus duplicem triumphum principl et Caesarem decrevit. Wlien Titus held his triumphal march, the Jew- ish war leaders followed with a rope around their neck each. nnn ipovn: i^Niti" ^3 .ij-'^i nro bv niivon nwm hod nxii n3 2 THE TWO ARKS, HISTORICAL EMBLEMS. 73 two caskets, covering two arks. The one contained the ashes of the dead patriarch Joseph, and the other was destined to re- ceive the two tablets of stone, the Decalogue, the Law of the living God. And the wondering nations inquired^ (Ibidem) : "What mean these two arks, so diverse of contents and so close by each other? Why is this casket of the dead going along with the throne of Eternal Life?" And they were answered: "Because this dead man here had performed, when alive, the commandments there of the Ever Living." Why did Moses and Israel march on with the ark of Joseph and with the Ark of God i.n the van? Because Moses and Israel practiced fidelity to the dead and to the living, the past and the future, to the dead, dry bones and to the living eternal spirit; hence was the Exodus preceded by the Ark of the Covenant and the ark with Joseph's ashes. Indeed, when closely examining Jewish history since that very Exodus, we shall find that it may well be symbolized by these two arks, one representing veneration of the body and the other veneration of the spirit, representing the race and the doctrine, the fathers and the children, country and God, conservatism and advance, past and future. No other nation on earth was ever so conservative and yet so progressive, so tenacious of the past and still so eager of future innovations, so backwardly stiff-necked and so recklessly forward and onward. This is perhaps the most salient characteristic of the Jewish ethnical temperament. A "kingdom of priests" and a "stiff-necked people,"^ orthodox and radical, worshipping the dry bones and the Ever Living Spirit. That has been the puzzle of psychologists and the difficulty of Hebraic leaders; the living mummy of times gone-by, and the enigmatic sphinx of times to come ; championing conservatism with legitimacy, and ever ready, standing on the barricades of re- volution; cherishing the remnants of the past and inaugurating boldly new epochs. What a variety of genius, character and type. nn no btj* uns nr :DnrDix jni ?ib:'n m:r.K ':^ b^ itd .id :Dn»ix inx ny ^bn» no ^k^itd no -.u'?)]} moix nnoix ;D^o^iyn ^n b^ unx .nr jnxn nnsK' no D^^p nr pixn niion tonoix jni ?D"'Dpiyn ^n ^ej* (Yalkut, Beshalah) D^JHD nD!)Oo .ciiiy nc'p Dy = 74 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE, representing both conservatism and progress! Compare the m novator Abraham, with his modern descendants, Lasalle and Karl Marx, Jules Simon, Cremieux ; Moses son Amram, with Disraeli and Lasker; Judas Maccabeus and Moses Montefiore! That is the Janus head, the two-faced physiognomy of the Jewish race, for these 4,000 years, our two arks of the Exodus, the dry bones and the eternal spirit, the coffin with the dead ashes, and the Ark with the ever living Law. This is the enigma and secret, the cha- melion features of historic Israel. Npw it may be, however puz- zling, that just that double-sidedness, joining past and future, constitutes him as the bearer of progress, and these two arks symbolize conservatism and advance. True advance is the con- ciliation of the past with the future, the dead ashes and the living spirit. The past alone is petrifaction. The future alone is a will- of-the-wisp; it unhinges and shatters. Both in right proportion make for safe progress. History ever represents both these stages : Stagnation and revolution, making for evolution, action, reaction, and compromise; that makes history, developing the spirit of the future from the very ashes of the past. This may be the secret spring of mankind's history. Israel is its leaven. He is the nucleus of conservatism and the germ of human advance. The conservative Moses Montefiore, the liberal, genial Adolphe Cremieux, the going-ahead Lasker or Bamberger, are but phases of the same Hebrew character. Thus what is the puzzle of the psychologist, and the enigma of history, that many-sidedness of Hebraic idiosyncrasy, just that is the proper feature of the Patri- archal people. As the hardest marble is the fittest for lasting sculptures, even so is just the "stiff-necked people" the fittest for the "kingdom of priests," for the vanguard of advancing man- kind. This double fidelity, to the past and the future, to the living and to the dead, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph represented during their age; whilst Moses, prophets, Israel have since been practicing and exemplifying it. So Joseph was cruelly treated by his brethren, yet he remained true and forgiving to them. Jacob was twice driven from Khanaan, yet he longed for it. Moses was betrayed and spited by his brethren and denounced to Pharaoh, yet he lived and labored for them, attributing their spite to their ill-starred fatc.^ Every true, patriotic leader is ill treated by his II M., vi., 9. njj'p muyoi nn lyipD ^ AMERICAN ISRAEL. 75 brethren, yet he remains true and faithful to their cause. Historic Juda for long centuries has been maltreated by his brethren, the peoples of the globe, still he is true to their dead and to their liv- ing. He rescued for them everything grand and good entailed from antiquity ; and he is continually laboring for their future, for their moral, intellectual, economic and religious advancement. Preceded by these two arks, the symbols of adherence and faith- fulness to the dead and to the living, to man and to God, Israel and Moses began their millennial march from Egypt throughout the world. And since that epoch Juda has never lost sight of this, his twofold task. He is forming the hanging-bridge over the abyss stretching between time and eternity, between man and God, the connecting link between the past and the future ages and generations. We have seen that there is not another nation so tenacious of old ideas and forms, and so eager for innovations ; so much conserva- tive and stiff-necked, and at the same time so boldly and recklessly pushing forward and onward. We have seen that this headstrong conservatism is the identical feature, observed psychologically, long ago : "Thou art a stiff-necked people." This veneration of dead bones and ashes, and this adoration of the Ever-Living Spirit, this tenacity to his noble doctrines and also to the forms of the past, are the backbone of his continuity and the cross-bar to his re- generation. It is the enigma of history. It is the great puzzle of the psychologist. It is the difficulty in the way of the Hebrew patriot, the difficulty to reconcile the tenacious and persevering veneration of the Jew for the past and his eagerness for the new requirements of the present and future ; his carrying always along with himself, under one arm a coffin with dry bones, and under the other, the holy Ark of Eternal Life. This is an element of strength, but, if not reconciled, a drawback, a stumbling block in the way of improvement, reconstruction and regeneration. For in the wise conciliation of these two opposite principles consists real humane betterment. To start from the past and, without a break, march towards an improved future, to unfold and elicit the future from the very past, to distill the spirit from the very dry bones, this is healthy progress. Now, how is it with our cis-Atlantic American Brethren? This faithfulness to the ashes of the fathers, and also to the Spirit of the Eternal God, this adherence to, and this veneration of, their 76 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. mortal persons and of their living ideas — is it alive in American Israel ? Is it ? Hard to tell ! must be the candid answer of every honest observer. Considered en block and generally, the American Orthodoxy worship the ashes, but not the spirit, not the aspirations of the fathers ; and as often the American Reform neglects both, the dry bones and the spirit. That the young generation, as of olden times, shed sincere tears at the death-bed of a parent, bestow an honorable burial, devoutly observe the days of mourning, the anniversary, etc., that they recite the requiem Kadcsh, that they often remember the event by charitable deeds, that they becom- ingly dress in mourning; that we will cheerfully acknowledge. American Israel has done well, economically, civically, practi- cally, as we shall soon discuss. He even has greatly improved and gained over European forms in the Ghetto, ^ But, Oh, American Israel ! is that all we shour remember of our fathers and mothers ? Do you think to perform an act of filial piety by praying at the shrine of the venerable relics of your sires, and entirely neglecting every thing else which was dear to their souls and their hearts ? To worship at the coffin with the dry bones, and disregard the ark of the covenant of the Living Spirit ! Ortho- doxy means correct doctrines and correct forms, the inculcation of the first and the observation of the latter, the sanctification of both as soul and body. Unfortunately the reality does not tally with that. There is no use mincing. Economically the American Jew has done well enough. In practical charity he is second to none. But mentally, educationally, spiritually, he has fallen short of his historical standard. The Orthodoxy, we now behold, neglects the spirit of Judaism and clings solely to the observances, the dry bones of the past. And as to Reform, it appears to turn its back upon both, the spirit and the letter. There is a begin of disintegration. The ShulhanfAruch Code prescribes a thousand ceremonies, they are the handles to hold the Jewish spirit. They are the spiritualization of the matter, connecting the body and the soul of religion. Whilst Reform minds the spirit above the letter, it asks more care for the living doctrines, declar- ing the ancient observances as temporal and circumstantial. Still Orthodoxy and Reform agree and both equally cling to the spirit. But the actual American Orthodoxy seems to mind the dry bones and neglect the eternal, living teachings. Whilst the Reform exhibited in America seems to care neither for the bones nor for the soul, neither for matter nor for mind. Where is the old-time AMERICAN ISRAEL. ^y Jewish mentality, spirituality, morality, education? Discarding cant and looking to facts, we find that life, family, home and market all exhibit indifference ; indifference alike within both parties. In worship, the one retains all the Ghetto mummies, the other exhibits the elegances of modern life and empty show. In both is divine service cold, ineffectual, offering nothing to either heart or head, feeling or brain. They come to, and go from worship — as empty as before. American Orthodoxy walks around open-eyed, yet blind, as do somnambulists, ostensibly bearing the coffin of the past, but un- mindful of the future. American Reform walks around blind to the past and just as careless of the future, both parties never cal- culate: What will become of the young, neglected in their ethical education? Parents, do remember! Your economical savings are divided by your several children. Your racial acqui- sitions, if well preserved, would pass entirely to each of them. Unfortunately in mind and in body, your inherited virtues are wasted: Penny wise, pound foolish! Or do I exaggerate, over- draw, caricature the picture ? L n^^y ;fiiD-D' nynpa hdj-iq nt^p i n15^'y^ ny dik'D — "nmin ncn i"b n)^vh ny » Often quoted by the Talmud. 82 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. WOMAN TO ASSIST, frankness. I hope not to be misunderstood in giving the picture of the state of things. It is in order to show and convince that we must no longer hesitate, but begin to bring order and hght into our ethical, reHgious and educational chaos. We were not sparing the colors, but we had to appeal to the Brethren. We had to clearly point out, fraternally, but frankly, the extent of the dis- temper, in order to energize and induce them to apply the urgent remedy. To cure a disorder, the physician must honestly com- mence with making his diagnosis. He cannot afford to flatter and spare the feelings of the patient at the cost of his life. He must state correctly and distinctly what is the ailment, and that is the intent of the aforegoing delineation. Such a diagnosis is the preliminary to safe curing and an honest statement is the first and indispensable requirement to search for and find out the remedy. That remedy is at hand, if there is the will. American Jews, be not deceived by your commercial competency, your rights and your freedom. You need organization, renovation, eliminating the Ghetto to the last trace, and constituting occidental Judaism on a solid basis. A Medrashic legend narrates, when Moses desired to know the place, exactly, where Joseph's remains had been deposited, then there was but one person of that age alive to inform him thereof. It was a woman: Serach, daughter of Asher, the "wandering Jewess" of those times. She had lived on till the promise given to Joseph was redeemed, and it was she who showed to Moses the place where Joseph's metallic sarcophagus had been lowered down into the waves of the deep bed of the Nile, the rushing waters over his head lulling him to sleep. Then Moses, standing on the shore of the river, called out : "Joseph ! Joseph ! the time of the redemption of Israel has arrived. ^ Come, arise, ascend from the deep!" And the cold ashes began to glimmer, move and stir at this vivifying call of Moses, of liberty and posterity. The sarcophagus, attracted by the magnetic power of sympathy, coun- try and kindred began to budge and move and rise, and heavily floated up to the surface of the Nile, to join the redeemed." The legend of Joseph's ashes revivified by the sympathy of race, at the instance of a kindred patriot, has its significance. Israel has yet two anchors of salvation deeply moored in the 1 Yalkut ad locum. WOMAN TO ASSIST. 83 ground of history, defying all the rage of indifference, distances and times. These anchors of American Judaism are: Firstly, The magnetic force of adherence of the scattered members to the race ; Secondly, The persevering, instinctive fidelity of the Hebrew woman, that irresistible power, that attraction which for thousands of years has held together our broken ranks, making them feel as limbs of one body, in spite of their many countries and idioms, their ritualistic misunderstandings, their untold misfortunes and unparalleled dispersion. That power of adherence may yet hold good, keep together and re-invigorate the relaxed ties and bonds of American and of universal Israel. Next, that magnetic force of national adhesion may be re-enlivened, those sacred ties of family, blood, history, achievements, faith and reminiscences may once more be resumed and indissolubly knit together by the pure and faithful hands of the Jewish woman, the Serach, daughter of Asher, of our days. The power of womanhood is comparatively a new social factor, well known and utilized in America. Asia knew it not, yea, denied it. The Bible made a great effort to uplift the sex, but the Asiactic society, resting upon brute force, kept it down. The Essenian- Christian revolution developed the Biblical woman's rights. It is American society that practically and finaly uplifted woman to the position of full humanhood. In America she is attaining, slowly, her natural station as a free-born, rational, moral and responsible human agent. Let Israel take hold and utilize that new social power, the next after that of race adherence. When both these factors, the racial Hebraic cohesion and the Hebrew woman prove true, then a new Moses would come and sound the trumpet of spiritual regeneration and of renewed national life; when the new circumstances will call for a new Moses, he will appear. Then will dawn the morn of a fresh, bright, sunny day of regeneration for our beloved brethren of universal and of American Israel. Then will the epoch of re- demption arrive, the Exodus from our modern Egypt, viz : the intellectual apathy, moral torpor and racial disintegration, with the all-absorbing, one-sided materialsm, and render Israel to his calling, as the historical people of culture, ethics and religion; the people of work and of knowledge, the vanguard of humanity, the providential agent of spiritualizing and sanctifying mankind. 84 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. As to the inherent, psychic power of adherence and mental at- traction of the members of Juda, it undoubtedly exists. But if it exists as yet to such an extent as to become a pivot for action, a base of new possibilities and national combinations, that cannot be categorically affirmed. It must be watched and carefully stimu- lated. As to our second factor, the American Jewish women, to you the Jewish patriot must look up for assistance in these days of baleful indifference and disintegration. Sisters, take the initia- tive, nurture and uphold the union of Israel, of the race, of the salient doctrines, the noble principles and the practical humane life taught by Judaism. To you we look up in this grave moment of hesitation. With your Jewish, warm and pure hearts, and with your busy, clean hands you shall keep up the sacred fire of relig- ion, education and refinement ; you shall nurture that bright flame of genuine Judaism in the breast of your husbands, brothers and children. You must entertain the sterling qualities of your race, fidelity to the living and to the dead, to the past and to the future, to wise conservatism and improving advance, to the millenial doc- trines and aspirations of your people. You will thus prepare the advent of the new Moses, who would surely come, without fail, when you and Jewish adherence prove true. Such a Moses will appear and redeem us from our one-sided life of money- making at any price, from our disgraceful indiflferentism and our abject materialism, and make us again, as once, "the kingdom of priests and holy nation," the people of ethics, of knowledge, of thinking and working; the vanguard of mankind, the locomotive of civilization. As such the liberal, original settlers here, the English and Scot- tish dissenters, the French Huguenots, the German farmers and the Irish laborers, etc., have received us on these hospitable, free shores of Columbus' land. They have received us with such favor- able preconceptions and presumptions, viz. : as the genuine Israel of the Bible, of the Decalogue, of "Love thy neighbor as thyself," of peace and good will to all, as the "kingdom of priests," devoted to the higher pursuits of humanity. It is our duty and our in- terest, yea, prudence dictates not to disappoint them, but to show them that Israel's object and mission is still, as of yore, to render mankind better and wiser. When our ancestors emigrated to the Roman world, to the west of Europe and to the east and south of Maurice Fluegel's Exodus, Moses and the Decalogue. WOAIAN TO ASSIST. 85 Europe, they came there accompanied, as Moses at the Exodus, by those two arks, with the ashes of the fathers, and the Hve doctrines of the prophets, and they arrived into their new homes with their higher faith and a higher civilization, they arrived there as teachers, as inaugurators of a higher culture. 1 So the Jews accompanying the Arabs to North-Africa, to the Spanish peninsula, and later when passing over to France, to Germany, to Poland, everywhere brought over and imparted to those semi-cultured countries a higher civilization. They created schools for popular education, for the sciences, arts, industries ; translated for them the masters of antiquity and connected them with the great ancient nations. Thus they brought to their western fellow citizens a higher civilization and more refined ethics. We are to do the same in our new America. We must reconquer our tzvo arks, neglected during this last emigration. We must continue to be here the people of culture, to foster here higher education and ethics, conscience, honor and enlightened God-be- lief. We must not always imitate and admire, but, where necessary, criticise, create, improve and bring out higher patterns of citizen- ship, scholarship, etc., relying upon the good American common sense of the people which will be grateful — and not be afraid of the jealousy of crafty politicians.^ Then the American people will not mistake us for mere dealers, for obscure, selfish, bigoted sec- tarians. No, they will recognize in us the true and genuine de- scendants of the prophetic polity, that our task and mission is to render the United States people : "a people of priests and holy na- tion," and gradually, by education, freedom and economic im- provements, create for mankind a United States of the world. iln my personal hearing, Professor Roscher admitted this, in a lec- ture at the Leipzig University, in the winter of 1885-6. 2Such a scholarly politician recently said to a foreign-born natural- ized scholar: "Forty years ago we used to give office to foreigners, now we do not. My pupil will be my successor." Yes, but whether the coming generation will be the gainers, that is doubtful. 86 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Study III. EXODUS. THE DECALOGUE, INTRODUCTION. Theme : "A kingdom of priests and a holy nation." We read in Exodus xix : 2-9 : "In the third month after the IsraeHtes had left Egypt, they arrived into the wilderness of Sinai . . .and rested opposite to the mount (Horeb). And Ihvh called out to Moses : Thus shalt thou speak to the house of Jacob and tell the house of Israel, Ye have seen w^hat I have done unto Egypt and how I bore you,up, as on eagle's wings, even to Me, Now, if you will listen unto My voice and observe My covenant, ye shall be a precious property unto Me, selected from among all the nations, for Mine is the entire earth — Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. "And all the people answer- ed, saying: Whatever the Lord has spoken, we shall do." Justly the sages remark here:^ This was addressed to the women and to the men, to all, to priest and to laymen, to the young and to the old. Not as with other nations, there is one religion for the learned, the initiated, and another for the uniniti- ated, the common people. No, Israel's doctrines are universal. They know no particularism ; and even so was the reply universal, all accepted the mission. Weighty and pregnant is this introduction to the Decalogue : "Ye have seen how I have dealt with Egypt — the pattern of ancient polytheism. Now, if you will inaugurate and adhere to my cove- nant, the civilization of monotheism, ye shall be my specially elected and consecrated people, among all the other nations, for all of them are mine. Ye shall be my kingdom of priests among the nations of the earth." Thus Israel is not a contradiction, not an opposition to, not antagonizing the other nations. No ! He is their complement, leading on to higher phases and developments, in church, state and society, in faith, knowledge and humane life. Thus here, at the very start, Mosaism constitutes Israel as the priestly leader, in full harmony and in perfect fraternity with his sister races of the human kind ; and that is of extreme importance. However much the Mosaic lawgiver abominated the idolatrous ways of the antique peoples, he never confounded the latter ones with their idolatry, he ever conceived them as forming but one Yalkut ad locum D'lajn n^N — D"'C'2n n?X 1 THE DECALOGUE INTRODUCTION. 87 with mankind, as part of the one human race, as kindred and brothers, as of the same parental stock, made by the same divine Creator, of the same social nature and the same ethical interests. He taught his own people another theology, other cosmic views, nobler morals and manners, but ever compatible with the other peoples, framed so as to gradually become the doctrine of all of them.i He never entertained race prejudice nor any native, local bias. "Mine is all the earth; Mine are all the nations." No pro- vincial god and no racial god ; the Deity is universal and humanity- is universal ! How sublime ! How far above the horizon of heathen lawgivers ! Whether the Decalogue be the germ and nucleus, or whether it be the epitome of the principles of the Mosaic Legislation, be it that the Sinaic Ten Words are the revelation of three thousand five hundred years ago, or as "higher criticism" gratuitously assumes, of but two thousand five hundred years ago, at any rate it is here offered us with all the solemnity of an Organic Law, as the Charter-Magna, the Great Charter of Israel's nationality, as his religious, moral, legal and social Constitution, as a summary and base of his entire legislation. Now here, at this solemn turn-point, it lays down as its corner- stone, the universal God-humanity-and-right-idea : Israel is one of the nations, but chosen and specially selected to uphold a new civilization, gradually to be introduced among all the races, with an outline of laws fit to become the rule of all the peoples and countries ; nothing is timely, local, or national. Here is a unique and sublime universalism, towering above all antiquity. A KINGDOM OF PRIESTS. Here is the gist and scope, the pith and marrow, the precious outcome of the preparatory eft'orts of the patriarchs and of the Exodus. What was the result of the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? What was the object of the Exodus? To create and establish the model ethical ethnos, "a kingdom of priests and holy, spiritual nation." The labors of the three Sires and those of Moses and Aaron were but the preliminary, the necessary steps towards calling forth a people devoted to the mental, moral and spiritual interests of mankind. The entire civilization, Egyptian, iLong before Kant, lie set up the rule of conduct as the fittest to become universal. 88 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Babylonian or Phoenician, previous to that aera, was one-sided, a national one. With the Exodus and Sinai spiritual interests en- tered largely into the combinations of the lawgivers and initiators of society, state and church. We have above examined what mankind has profited since the Exodus. The preliminary steps to that was the creation of a providential live instrument fit to bring about those achievemerits. This is "the people of priests and holy-spirit nation," a nation wholly devoted to mental and ethical concerns. The previous civilization had little of such features. Consider it carefully, it was noisy and brilliant, but not much moral and mental; it was lus- trous, not warm and cheering. It was cold and dreary, a narrow egoism was its root, and despotism, priestly and princely, its chief resources for shaping and molding the savages into cul- tured communities.^ With the Exodus new features came into play, that which became the spiritual leaven of the human species. Consider: Comfortable clothes, an elegant home, an orderly State, are invariably parts of civilization, but not yet the highest civilization. The material elements of human existence, of civil life, though by no means unworthy of our consideration, are not yet the objects of human life itself, not yet its highest aim. Bread feeds and sustains the body, it repairs the wear and tear of our daily waste ; but it has besides a higher import, it restores the integrity of the brain, the seat of the intellect. The best part of what we eat today is soon converted, not only into bone, fat and muscle, but also into nerve and brain, into thought and feeling. Even so our comfortable house, means materially a desirable place or retreat from the inclemency of the weather, rain and snow, cold and heat, but morally a home is a domestic temple of virtue, refinement and happiness. Marriage and family mean, first, the restoration of the passing generation, the conservation of the race, mutual helpfulness in the battle for existence; but in a higher sense they mean the harmonious and sympathetic co-existence, the efflorescent development of social, moral and intellectual beings, based upon identical natures, inter- ests, similarity of temperament and tastes, a union of hearts and feelings, where each party's happiness is enhanced by the happi- iLes nations les pltis eclairees, Chaldeens, Egyptians, Graeco-Ro- maines, etaient les plus avenglees sur la religion. . .Bossuet, Discours sur I'histoire Universelle 249. A KINGDOM OF PRIESTS. 89 ness of the other ; such are husband and wife, parent and children ; their self-sacrifice, not self-interest, becomes the criterion of real, genuine sympathy, the true corner-stone of the family connection. Even so aims the State, first and plainly, at securing the lives, Hmbs and property of its inhabitants. Security is the first task of the State, but in a higher sense, it aims at guaranteeing and facilitating our legitimate efforts, possibilities and chances in life, fair justice, education, a well-intentioned society and its amenities, bodily and ethical improvements. It insures to us all the oppor- tunities of becoming more refined and civilized beings; with as much physical, intellectual, moral happiness as man is capable of. So it is with the objects of home, food and State, and so every- thing else. SINAI'S CIVILIZATION. Thus we have seen everything has a relative and manifold sig- nificance. All private comforts and supplies and all public insti- tutions have many aspects and bearings. They are to answer to the needs of the body first, and next to those of the mind. Now the entire ancient world, having hardly a word for and an idea of mind, in our sense, all their civilization, even the most boasted one, even that of the famed Greek society, was mostly but material. To secure as much sensual pleasure as possible, to avoid pain and labor, worry and disappointment, to protect life and limb, to secure property and ambition, to render existence agreeable, that was all the object of ancient civilization, yea, of religion itself. Religion meant the performance of the rites and ceremonies by which man hoped to propitiate the envy and jealousy of the gods, so as to let him alone and not interfere with his safety, his schemes and his pleasures. So man sacrificed to them his best, even his eldest son, his loveliest daughter, in order to gain terrestrial favors. A distressed nation offered on the alter her leader, her crown-prince, or hero, that she may gain victory or freedom. Such acted King Codrus of Athens, Mesha of Moab, Judge Jephta, the Greek Agamemnon.^ Such was religion. Man bribed the gods for their favors ; the bribe and the favors were material. Mind was not yet known, all was yet sensuous, all the cares and toils were for material goods. 1 Judges xi. — (Homer) Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia to please the gods and obtain favorable winds for Troy, conforming to the augury of Kalhas, the priest. 90 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Man, as a spiritual and intellectual being, was yet in the back- ground. His aim was pleasure and power, not duty ; momentary needs and gratifications, not harmonious development of all his innate faculties. Such it was in hoary antiquity, before the aera of Sinai. With this aera begins the striving for a higher civilization one with moral purposes. Nor is it even today fully and substan- tantially victorious with the majority of the people. When one considers how many hours are passed in the arms of pleasure and sloth, in the solicitude for the body, exclusively, and in pernicious recreations, etc., one will find out that with many of the upper and the lower strata, scarcely one hour in a thousand is devoted to higher, nobler interests. So it is to this day, after more than three thousand years since the Sinaic epoch. Whilst before that period, man lived constantly in the material world. It was the time of idolatry, the worship of the senses, and the total neglect of the spiritual parts of human nature. Providence, therefore, stepped in on behalf of man's advance. God selected a living instrument for his revelations and improve- ments. God sent Moses, the liberator, with the world-redeeming message to the descendents of the Patriarchs, as the advance guard of mankind. "Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." Ye Israelites shall be set apart from among the peoples of the earth ; ye shall be devoted, body and soul, heart, head and hand, to the spiritual domain, to man's unfolding, morally and intellectually, to the adoration of the One God, instead of idolatry ; to the culture of virtue instead of pleasure, of mind in- stead of matter, of thought in place of form. You shall study and cultivate the duties of man above his momentary interests, the constant harmonious development of the human faculties,, not sole- ly the sensuous gratifications of the moment. Each and every one of you shall be a citizen of that "priestly kingdom," that "kingdom of heaven" to bring upon the earth; that kingdom of priests, administering to man's welfare, not alone of the privileged classes who increase his woes, not of men who lay claim to tithes and temporal dominion, who feed on the good things of the world and offer mythology to their neighbors ; who claim the right to loosen and to bind, to domineer, enjoy and enslave, and block all popular improvements. No ; but a priestly people whose mem- bers, all, are educated, know their duty, do it, teach it, who learn, think and work, each for himself and his fellowmen. PRE-SINAIC CIVILIZATION. 91 Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Tyre had a State, ^colonies, nations, armies, conquests, laws, arts, commerce, dynasts and warriors, clans, races and priestly castes. They had also institutions aiming at religion, worship, our "Church." But the Church was but the handmaid of and subservient to the prince, and the priest was his clerk, his tool. With Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, a glimpse of mind came into the consciousness of the philosophers. Yet that was out of reach of the positive Lawgiver, legislating for the masses, for the people knew nothing of it. The form, the external outline, or the beauty of the body was the nearest popu- lar approach to the conception of spirit, soul, or mind. Mind as essentially different from body is a Mosaic idea. Already in the Creation story we find it distinctly emphasized (Gen. I and III): "Elohim formed man in his own image... He breathed into his nostrils a breath of life." So ten centuries before Plato, with Mosaism, mind dawned upon the world. Then began a new onward movement. The material interests began to subordinate them.selves under the mental, moral and spiritual ones. Moses created a people to be its own priest, with no divine, sacredotal caste. A small class, without lands, with a precarious subsistence, was appointed to attend on worship, (More anciently such may have been the noble-born or the first-born sons).^ Moses insti- tuted the Levites ; whilst the entire people he set apart, among all the nations then existing, to cultivate and to stimulate the ethical interests of the human race. A further subdivision of functions took place and there was substituted the tribe of the Levites and the Ahronides, because the people had to look after their bodily and political interests. So, were the Ahronides especially entrusted v\'ith the Temple service. Nevertheless the salient Mosaic scope was, and remained, that the entire people is the people of God, of spirituality, the ethical nation, the priesthood of mankind, with a cosmopolitan, humanitarian tendency expressed in its Messiah ideal. Indeed the Jewish messianic Idea ever was cosmopolitan and humanitarian. That was to be a great and holy man who would gather all the tribes of Israel and all the nations of the earth, lead them to Zion as the world's spiritual capital, under the 1 (II M., xxiv., 11) The select ones. — Maimonldes Guide I, 15, throws out a hint that these may have had yet crude materialistic notions about Deity. Later the tribe of Levi and especially the Ahron- ides took their place who assisted in elaborating a nobler and more correct God-idea. 92 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. aegis of the One God of the universe, lead them all to the Mount of God, do away with strife, tears and war, make justice and knowledge arbitrate among men and exchange the sword for the plough and the tool (Is. II and XI; Micha IV). What a grand, noble, wakeful prophet's dream ! Three thousand years have passed over this vision, and now philanthropists and true statesmen begin to realize that dream as the Hague Court of Peace and Arbitra- tion. In as much and so far as a special country and people, Israel had his extra priestly tribe. But in so far as a people among the peoples, as a fraction of humanity, scattered, among all the races and lands, Israel was to be the kingdom of priests and holy na- tion, chosen for that purpose among the sister-nations, "the world belonging to God" and all mankind being God's worshippers. This idea, Israel's priesthood, revealed to Moses at Horeb, was both, the final end of, and the prelude to, the Ten Commandments. It could not at once be carried out. Hence the creation of the tribe of the Levites and Ahronides (Kohanin). The priest-people had to be educated, first, to that role. It took a thousand years; Ezra made earnest with it. Two centuries later, the idea clearly and saliently stood before the minds of the rabbis ; Israel is the priesthood, not alone the Ahronides, and mankind is to be edu- cated as the congregation of the one universal God . . . With the destruction of the II. Temple, the sacrificial service was dropped out of sight. Prayer, charity, and even more so, study and in- struction became the great task of the Jew, as the priestly teacher and holy Ethnos of mankind. And this very part of the priest of mankind, Israel has been performing since Horeb . . . Hence comes his exceptional position among the nations, literally realizing: "When you will listen unto My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be unto Me a precious property, among the nations. Mine being all the earth." He is to form the vanguard of the human race, the stimulus to mentality and purity. This is the extraordi- nary, providential part and position of Israel in history. WHEREFORE ISRAEL? PRE- AND POST-SINAI. Thus when people ask : Why is he so long a minority ? Subject to so many tribulations and misconstructions ? Is he better, supe- rior to others ? of blue blood ? Had not Egypt, India, China an older civilization? The answer is: Yes, they had a civilization. WHEREFORE ISRAEL? PRE- AND POST-SINAI. 93 but not a high one ; they had not "a kingdom of priests and holy nation." They had a nation, a country, kings, priests, warriors, craftsmen, a state, famihes ; but their nation was a forced con- glomeration of subjugated tribes; their country, conquered vil- lages and provinces ; their king, a despot owning all, their priests were his tools and clerks ; their warriors, his hirelings and condot- tcri; the State was the property of king and warriors ; the family was owned by the master, and the mass of the people was a herd of slaves, to furnish taxes and soldiers for the wars and whims of the king and his grandees. As to their religion, it was mostly the cunning contrivance of hypocrisy, to give a legal handle to tyranny, and their civilization was an artificial scheme for cover- ing up the wretchedness of the majority, by the splendors of the minority and the exorbitant luxuriousness of the court, all owned by the divinized despot. Our present chapter, with the creation of a spiritual ele- ment, a "holy nation," inaugurates a State with freedom, right and justice, a people of freeborn ones, spontaneously asso- ciated, all aspiring at mental and moral culture ; no kings but God and Law ; no war, but for defense ; with workers free and moral, with families by marriage, without enslaved women and unfree children, with mutual sympathies and duties ; the social basis was the worship of the One God of the universe; the Church represented right, v/isdom, education and purity; the friend of the people, not the handle of the king; with priests as ministers and teachers of the community, not feed- ing it with mythology and ignorance, not claiming infalli- bility, tithes and the land, over and above ; the king and the priests not masters, but magistrates ; the people, the family and the young generation, as the objects of the State, the Sanctifying God-belief as the top of the social pyramid, the State and the people represented the Temple with its worshippers of the universal God. This is the Mosaic scheme. This is the difference of the civilizations of the pre-Sinaic and the post-Sinaic period ; of that of Assyria, Phoenicia or Egypt, and that of Judaea. The pre- Sinaic one was based on country, force and nationalism, vio- lence and cunning, for the advantage of the few; without spirit and soul or any nobler scope but selfishness and pleas- 94 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. ure. Even so was their religion : Gods, priests and leaders aimed but at power and sensuality.^ Such were their gods, Zeus, Belus, Merodach, Assur. The Biblical scheme, "A kingdom of priests and holy nation," in- troduces new factors into human society; freedom, reason,, right, holiness. God as pure spirituality, the Ten Words as man's organic Law; the Sabbath as the vehicle of rest, freedom and culture ; the parental and filial relations sanctified ; virtue, justice, duty, truth to rule, not over-reaching and force ; mar- riage and purity Avith social solidarity, not exploitation. In Egypt the priest alone was educated, while the Hebraic priest, Kohen, was to improve and teach all men and women. Ruling was not king, or class, or priestly caste, over pariah people, but a democracy, with God and law supreme. This is pro- pounded in the present scheme of the period of Horeb and the kingdom of priests. If they ask: Wherefore Israel? The answer is : He stands for the moral element, he is to intro- duce those new ideas into the polity of the State and Church. Why is he ever a minority? Because only the best compre- hend the import of his mission. Because humian progress is exceedingly slow, the masses are moving but hesitatingly. THE CORONATION FORMULA. "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests" is the corona- tion formula conferring the crown of thorns and the pallium of nobility. It is the solemn investiture of the Sinaic people with "the insignia of the holy spirit," ever wafting from hoary Horeb. All that proud program, all those improvements we have above enumerated, as developments from Sinai, are sum- marized and resumed in the creation of the "priestly people and holy nation." "Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy peo- ple," is not simply an ideal, the motto of Israel's installation in his historical office; No! It also implies the severe duties imposed upon him, for: Nobility obliges. The eldest son of civilization, knighted now 3,500 years ago, bearing the rugged Messiah mantel and the crown of thorns, that imposes great 1 Homer Odysseius. 1,25: Antioon tauron te kai arneion ekatombas. I, 60; Ou ny t' Odysseus Argeion para neyssi charizeto iera regon. I, 66: Peri d' ira theoisin athanatoisin edoke... THE CORONATION FORMULA. 95, and heavy responsibilities. The history of these thirty-five cen- turies and especially of the last fifteen centuries, has suffi- ciently proven what cruel sacrifices that people had to bring for its mission. A few drops of water in the Occident, the donning of the turban in the Orient, a few grains of barley strewn before a marble statue in ancient times, would have relieved the Jew of all such hard burdens. But he remembered that at Horeb his ancestors had shouted : "Whatever the Eternal has bidden, we shall perform," and he did perform it. Thus when the people wonder: Why continue a minority? Why extra Sabbaths and holidays? Wherefore a special race and church? Why continue a small minority with such cruel sacrifices? Why circumcision, racial marriage and an oriental tongue Why that austere Jewish life and practice, dietary and hygienic purity and extra sexual discipline? Why must the Jewish youth be more frugal, reserved, studious, reverential, industrious? Why the Jewish maiden more womanly, domestic, pious, refined, industrious and retired? The ansv/er is : Because ye are Jews, because ye have been consecrated as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," because nobility obliges, because a minority, as a model people, must uphold higher ideals of human goodness, mentality, purity, wisdom. But is that not a crown of thorns? Shall we yield and throw ofif that cum- bersome Messiah mantel? Is that not martyrdom for vanity's sake, Groessenwahn, imaginary self-apotheosis? Why not give way and go with the majority? The answer is: If you have accepted the premises, you must abide by the conclusion. If you have assumed the advantages, you must consent to the burdens. With your patriarchal blood you have assumed the first, with Mosaism, the latter ones. If the civilization of Egypt, Greece, Assyria was by far not the highest, if our present one, built upon Sinarc models, with chastity, education, spir- ituality and freedom for all, is the higher civilization, then Israel was and is indispensably necessary. He was and is the providential means to bring that about. He must continue to exert his efforts and accomplish it. Hence he must not shirk his burden, not shrink from setting a noble example of self- sacrifice for his platform. At any price and cost he must set the example of sacrifice, austerity. To give up, stop half- way and yield to materialism, to the civilization of force and ^6 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE, pleasure, is tantamount to betrayal of his providential mission as priest-people, and that would be not only treachery to man- kind, but also moral suicide. Hence we cannot give up, but "Whatever God has bidden, we shall perform." Whosoever shirks his providential task loses his right to be. We are the heirs of history, of our fathers ; their rights and duties passed over to us. We are identified with our ancestors by blood, spirit and idiosyncrasy. We are the late generation of Horeb living thirty-five centuries after Horeb. Their duty is ours and their mission is ours. We have inherited their racial and psychical features, as also their providential task. We cannot repudiate them. Behold, scarcely half a century has elapsed since Israel's reluctant emancipation, yet how imposing he stands in all the honorable avenues of human exhibit, in State and Church, science, art, literature, industry. Our ene- mies complain of him as a would-be aristocracy ! Yes, but we are not an aristocracy of the sword, conquest, privilege, ex- ploiting club-law, powder and lead ! No. We are one of brain, spirituality, work, culture and idealism ; we are one of educating, liberating and elevating the masses ; we are every- where the liberals, the democrats, the enfranchisers. That lofty, proud ideal held up to us at Mt. Horeb , to be "a king- dom of priests and holy nation," we hold that up to all man- kind, we teach them the same one God and same Ten Words ; the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the equality before the Law ; no war of creed, races, peoples and countries ; no pan-Slavism, pan-Latinism, pan-Germanism, but pan- humanity ; not Jew against Gentile, Occident against Orient, but "Peace! peace to those far-off and those near by." Repre- senting those principles, sacrificing and battling for them dur- ing these last thirty-five centuries, we cannot give them up. Surrender would be betrayal of our providential, humanitarian trust and of our own ethnical existence, it would be self- elimination, suicide. RECAPITULATION AND SUMMARY. Let us now summarize: "Ye shall be a kingdom of priests and holy nation," is the investiture, the consecration formula of Israel, the turning point of his entire national history. When one asks: What is the task of that people? What makes out its right to be? What is the secret of its endur- RECAPITULATION AND SUMMARY. 97 ance? When the Gentile world wonders at the phenomenon of Judah's existence, then answer: We have been consecrated to the universal priesthood, to administer to man's spiritual needs, to the One-God belief and the one religion of civilized man ; our task is man's higher domain, the culture of the mind, the heart, the brain; thinking, learning and teaching, all resumed in the concept of religion, all deep at the base of truly humane, spiritual life. That consecration formula: "Be ye a kingdom of priests" expresses clearly and distinctly Israel's mission ; that solves the wondrous riddle of his, else, enigmatic history. Why had he outlived all antique, powerful nations? Because his basis is Spirit, mind, immortal interests ! Why has he remained numer- ically so weak? Because the mass of the people never rallies around spirit-concerns, because spirit is not tangible enough for it, because a minority only comprehends such ideas. Devoted to such affairs of the mind, Israel can never die, as mind never dies. As such he will ever conquer and forever remain a minority, as the intelligent and the good always are, as the divine spirit ever moves in the minority !^ That consecration formula is Juda's patent of nobility, it is the noblest blazon ev-er a people exhibited. The aristocracy of blood and of conquest is questionable, but the nobility of mind will ever stay. That consecration carries with itself the heaviest responsibility ever imposed upon a race of man. So avers the well known adage : ''Nobility obliges," rights impose duties. Appertaining to the oldest historic stock, the eldest son of civilization, distinguished and illustrious by untold misfortunes and undying glories, you must dearly pay the important honor of being Jews. Sure, a surrender of principle would gain for you all worldly advantages, but nobility obliges ! Your historical position, your honor, your claims on mankind would be lost. But is that not over-estimation? No, it is Consci- ence ! Why make greater sacrifices for duty, religion, educa- tion, for extra Sabbaths and holidays? Why continue a mi- nority, bear insolence, ostracism? Answer: Because we are Jews and nobility obliges. Since Sinai, 3,500 years ago our gens has been set apart as a priest-people, as a model to the nations ; this is Israel's right to be, and to this he clings and 1 Matthew Arnold. His lecture on the Remnants and the Minorities. 98 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE adheres. Why are your habits and your diet to be more choicy, more in accordance to the best principles of hygiene, physiology and psychology ? Answer : Because we are Jews ; we are to be healthy in body and in soul ; health, cleanliness, public and private hygiene are prescribed to us as part of religion, for only healthy souls in healthy bodies make up a "holy nation." Cleanliness in body is preparing for holiness in soul, both make out the true priesthood. Do you aim by that at dominion, at aristocracy? No, we set thereby merely an ex- am.ple of a higher, private and public hygiene, of purity in diet, frugality, chastity in habits, showing to the people how to realize sound souls in sound bodies, how to bring about a nobler type, with m.ore health and more spirit, and gradually make all humanity a "kingdom of priests and a holy nation." If we aspire at an aristocracy, it is one to embrace all mankind, an uplifting of all races, an improvement of all classes, the sanctification of all human beings, the masses. When you are asked : Why must your women be more do- mestic, retired, plain and frugal, less ostentatious in manners and speech, dress and ornamentation, more choicy in their company, more modest and more reserved, less brilliant and more solid, more handy, hearty, brainy ? To this answer : Because we are Jews, instituted as the priestly people, the pattern nation for man- kind. Answer that question by a counter-question, appealing to facts, to well known history : Why has the old-time Jewish woman ever maintained such a high standing in history? Be- cause of her good sense, her modesty, her virtue, her simplicity, her industry, her self-sacrificing devotedness to her husband, fam- ily and people. And why was to her conceded such excellence, to be the pattern of womanhood, at a time when her race and religion were generally despised and hooted by the silken and by the cotton mob?. . .This was just the outcome of the "kingdom of priests." This, too, is the example set by Israel's women : Mankind and womankind have wisely and greatly profited by that example. The present Gentile marriage, family, womanly dignity, position and refined social relations are according to the pattern of the Biblical Eve, not the Greek Pandora. Compare the status of the present Christian woman with that of her ancestor in the times of Rome, Greece, Persia, Scandinavia, India? Has not the Biblical example powerfully contributed to the elevation of all womanhood? RECAPITULATION AND SUMMARY. 99 Man and woman at large have improved their status, since the last two thousand years — and this, thanks to the pattern set by the "priestly people and holy nation," brought over to them by Judeo-Christian missionaries and apostles. To all such queries and many more such historical questions and puzzles, answer : Because we are Jews, nobility obliges ! Because thousands of years ago the Eternal God told our fathers : "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and holy nation." Ye shall devote, not to pleasure, power, wealth or military glory, but to the spiritual domain, educating, thinking, working, improving, setting the example of higher development, of a more perfect man and woman. And your fathers accepted that mission, narrates our text. They answered : "Whatever the Eternal has ordained, we shall perform." And they have performed that ; indeed, amidst har- rowing obstacles and cruel persecutions. And history shows that you are the heirs to your sires ; that upon you has descended their task, their rights, their duties ; you are to continue and real- ize their promise given at Sinai. The heavy burden of an illus- trious mission, as a priestly people, a nation of mind, rests upon your shoulders and you must adhere to it. You must bear your crown, however heavy and thorny; you are wedded to it in eter- nal marriage; you cannot unmake history. Every one must ful- fill his task or perish. Therefore, what you must do, do it with a good grace, do it cheerfully. Act in a way that you should be worthy of your motto, a motto which, when raised to a universal rule, would realize the highest human civilization. Act in a way as not to be misunderstood. In your assent and your dissent, in your unity with or isolation from fellow-mankind, see to it that you be not misinterpreted, that they see and cheerfully recognize that your partial dissent is not dictated by fanaticism and bigotry, not by vain-glory and race pride, but by your mature convic- tions, by your sincerely believing it to be your providential Sinaic mission, by the desire to set up a nobler example for human endeavors, imposed upon you by your 4,000 years history and doctrines.^ During our 2,500 years' diaspora, our sages may have enacted a great many observances and ceremonies, in our habits, dress, dwelling, diet, manners, social intercourse, wor- ship and education, aiming, decidedly and solely at differentiat- 1 Beginning with Abraham. 100 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECAi^OGUE. ing and dissimilating Jew from Gentile, at building up Chinese walls around every single Israelite, at rendering each a nucleus and germ for future Judaism. The harsh, barbarous surround- ings induced them to such measures. God thanks, times are better. Chinese walls we need not any longer. In this we differ from the past centuries. We are no zealots and no bigots. Wherever we differ, we aim simply at setting up a rule and model of pure, healthy, bodily and intellectual life, good for all civilized men. GENESIS OF THE DECALOGUE. (EXODUS 19-20, THEME.) What is the import of the Ten Commandments of Sinai ? Why have they so wonderfully spread and become the patrimony of mankind? Why have the three hundred millions of Christians, the four hundred millions of Mohammedans, the hundreds of millions of Hindoos and Buddhists and Chinese, indeed, all the peoples, more or less civilized, recognized the Decalogue as of paramount importance to any human society? Yea, as the very backbone and organic law of civilization? Let us look to it closely and intently, and see what it purports and teaches , under what circumstances and for what aim and purpose it was pro- mulgated. Let us examine : First, Its genesis, the circumistances under which it was revealed ; Second, Its doctrines and teachings, metaphysical, moral, social, civil; Third, Its practical workings in history, if and how it was realized in the development of Israel, and next, in the development of mankind ; its bearing upon the Judaean people, originally and specially intended for, and next, upon the human race, as its climax and great final object; has it brought about the "kingdom of priests and holy nation?" How far has it succeeded in the first, and how far in the latter one? We shall begin now with examining the genesis of the Decalogue. A horde of enslaved Shemitic nomads and laborers, led by the first of the Hebraic prophets, the greatest legislative genius of antiquity, about 3,500 years ago,^ left under the most arduous difficulties, the country of their bondage, the then most advanced 1 Between 1650 to 1300 before the Christian aera. GENESIS OF THE DECALOGUE. wi and powerful Egypt, Mizraim, on the borders of the Nile, on the confines of Asia and Africa. That horde of Shemitic laborers was to be made a nation, a civilized and religious people, to throw off any remnants of foreign idolatry, to become law- abiding, settled in permanent dwellings and lands in Khanaan, the pasture grounds of their sires, the patriarchs. The mass of the people was to devote to agriculture, to become peaceful and do- mestic, to cattle raising, to settled civic occupations and habits; whilst its scant classes were to devote to ethical pursuits ; all were to give up their former Arabian, roving dispositions, with a grand object in view, viz : that of becoming a monotheistic, spiritual, peace and right-representing people, "a kingdom of priests and holy nation," a pattern for the surrounding war-split nations, a teacher of those doctrines about to receive at Horeb. The sur- rounding nations, Khanaanites, Phoenicians, etc., then possessed a high civilization, industrial, commercial, maritime. But they were exceedingly sensuous, coarsely material, meanly idolatrous, superstitious and polytheistic; with base licentiousness, impure worship, human sacrifices and priestcraft; catering to the very lowest instincts of human nature and mostly neglecting its higher aspirations and needs, the very opposite to the contemplated "kingdom of priests and holy nation." ARABIA AND SINAI. That nascent people needed before everything laws, laws based upon rational, moral, authoritative, divine, self-evident princi- ples. It needed laws, moralization, orderliness, the idea of property, justice and sympathy, the feeling of nationality, patriot- ism, reciprocity, solidarity, to supplant the nomadic, semi-barbar- ous instincts of force, cunning and selfishness, to change it into a truly civilized, spirituaHzed nation, a "kingdom of priests." The horde was therefore led, at once after its issue and liberation from Egypt, into grand Arabia, the consecrated country of lib- erty, wherein never yet despotism succeeded permanently to establish its domain, where since the old Pharaohs to the present Othmanli, the chains of slavery never could be permanently forged and riveted, where man ever was privileged to assume and hold his native rights and independence. 102 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. The enfranchised Hebrew people were led into that vast and majestic Arabian desert, to the then already well-known and venerable Mount Horeb, on one of the summits of the peninsula and wilderness of Sinai. The Arabian peninsula is almost a continent by itself. Its surface is about as vast as half of the United States country, an almost uninterrupted solitude, inter- spersed with but rare, small veins of green, watered and cultured spots, oases, where some Bedouin sheikhs with their herds take up their temporary abode. Except such green spots, there stretch but uninterrupted solitudes of dust and sand, in solemn monotony. The Sinai region is a ridge of mounts, one on top of the other. Of the prominent points, especially, the Horeb, presents one of the grandest sights of earth; from the summit you may discern and hear the roar, and see at its base roll the waves of the great lakes and seas of the then known world ; the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean ; looking down from whose heights you find displayed the various countries of Asia, Europe and Africa, with the Sinai- Horeb as the center, the throne of the Deity. The entire region abounds in hills, mounts and peaks, varying with picturesque dales and valleys, with abrupt clefts, ravines and precipices, nar- row and frightful ; straight, steep, rocky walls and deep abysses. Such sudden, multiform configurations of the soil naturally produce in quick succession, various and wonderful echoes and re-echoes, produced and reproduced and reverberated to great distances and in various sounds in that frequent alternation of mount, rock, dale and precipice, rendering back the voices sent up and down, to and from the numerous neighboring heights, thrown back by the rocks and reechoing in the precipices below. It is claimed that a strong shrill shout coming from some of those hills, will be re-echoed and repeated over and over, even as much as twenty-six times, and hence that myriads of people be- low could hear simultaneously a voice sent down from Horeb or any of the neighboring heights. ^ In the I and II Decalogue (II M. 20 and V M. 5), this pecuHar trait, the ''voices," or echoes, is emphasized as "voice," "voices," and once even as "a great voice that never ceased. "^ The voices iSee on these echoes, Edwin Robinson: Description of Sinai. The villa Simmonetta, near Milan, presents, too, such frequent echoes, 24 to 56 in number. ^^n lib) bMi b)p ,n)b)p ,bip » HOREB AND ITS IMPRESSIONS. 103 there, repeated so many times, may allude to these numerous echoes of the Horeb region. Exodus Rabba, Jethro, allude also to these multiple reverberations from the Sinai and Horeb ridges. This is the grand scene of the organic law to be delivered, and the impressions upon the people could but correspond to the great occasion and the marvelous scenery. Here the people of the Exodus is described as witnessing the solemn and divine act of revelation, memorable for all times; under the most strange, av/ful, and tremendous phenomena of that gigantic nature ever exhibited in those tropic latitudes ; the dark clouds hiding the mount, as in a nebulae, emitting thunder and flashes of light; volcanoes breaking out and scattering their lurid flames and lava streams, with clouds of smoke; the lightning rending and wonderfully illumining the atmosphere in all directions ; the crush and roar of tropic thunderstorms, pealing to the dome of heaven and majestically reverberating in the numerous dales, rocks and hollows of the mountainous and craggy Sinaic penin- sula. All that re-echoes in the hearts of the myriads of people standing at the foot of Horeb, the divine mount. They stand around in holy trembling and awe, awaiting their own salvation and that of their children, for long generations to be born, from that eventful hour. The deep waters of the Red Sea recoil in awe. The vast solitudes of Arabia, the Sahara, and Lybia suspend their monotony. The imposing cataracts at the sources of the Nile interrupt their dashing and roaring falls. The busy, great, western nations and the innumerable tribes of Africa, Arabia and Aetheopia forget for a moment their eternal warfares. They all gaze at the spectacle on Horeb. Nature is in high excitement. Nature travails. She begets the nation of mind. Israel is com- ing into the world. The skies are rent asunder, the heavenly hosts stand m m.ajestic array. They shout in eternal chorus; Holy! holy! holy! is Ihvh-Zebaoth,i the Lord of the heavenly hosts. And down from on high alights the Shekhina.. The veiled majesty of the invisible Supreme descends on the summit of high Horeb. There stands waiting, rapt in deep meditation, the grand prophet, Moshe. He waits in silence for the inspira- iThat the Hebraic Zebaoth's etymology is akin to the Greek Zees and Zevs is not decided. 104 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. DECALOGUE TEXT AND SENSE. I_V. COMMANDMENT. tion of the Universal Spirit. Kneel down, O ye nations of earth, veil your faces and fall prostrate, ye mortals. Lo ! Mind is mar- rying matter, God is in communion with man. "I am Ihvh, thy God, who has brought thee out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods in My presence" (II M., xx, 2-3). Anochi, I am: God is one. There are not two gods, as claimed by the doctrine of Zoroaster; not three gods, as the triads and trinities of Brahmanism, Egyptology, Christianity, etc.; not four gods, the so-called four elements ; not the all-substance of ancient philosophers. Chaos ; not the m.any gods or forces of nature ; not the gods of mythology, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian, Baby- lonian ; not dualism, trinitarianism, polytheism, pantheism, or atheism. Anochi, I am, God is the Absolute Existence, the Being, alone absolutely, eternally and necessarily existing. All other beings are accidental, creatures voluntarily called forth by His free divine volition. He alone is, absolutely and necessarily and from all eternity, existing. All other beings are and could not be, they are and may soon alter, change and disappear. He alone is, was and will be ; necessarily be, without change, and in all eternity. Anochi, I am, God is, He is the Being, the Essence, the Life, the First and Supreme Cause, the Cause of all causes, the Origin, Creator, and Providence of the universe. Anochi, I am, God is the reality of all beings existing. Every- thing else is but temporal, changeable, ephemeral ; God alone is immutable and everlasting. He is Supreme Consciousness, In- telligence, volition, power, goodness, all-holiness ; He is con- sciousness personified and extra mundane. He is not a physical person, not embodied and incarnated, not with human passions, attributes and needs. No ! He is Mind, Spirit, in contradistinc- tion to matter; He is the soul and life of the universe, to be dis- tinguished from matter, the existing bodies, the endless physical creatures of the universe. He is its Creator and Conservator, the Soul of all existence.^ Nature is His creature, the universe is His iGabirol calls him in Keser-IMalchuth: The Soul of the universal souL DECALOGUE TEXT AND SENSE. 105 revelation, His manifestation, His only embodiment. His living robe and pallium. ^ He is its ever active principle, first cause, energy, All-Power, its support, lever, and innermost sap. The universe rests in His Creative bosom. His thought is creation.^ Anochi, He is not limited by the totality of existing bodies; matter is His free creation, not His part and not necessarily cre- ated. Such is the Mosaic conception of God, Ihvh, the Being, the only One. It rejects materialism, pantheism, Spinozism, Par- seeism, Hegelianism. God is the free Creator, Soul, and conscious Providence of nature. This God-conception may be challenged by the philosopher; that He is personal and free, that the universe is His free creation ; that the creatures are not the products of iron necessity; that they could be, or not be, or otherwise be ; that God can change them at will, etc., this is not scientific, but it is Mosaic, Biblic, and fits best the exalted God-belief underlying our society. Here is practical good sense superior to the abstract reasonings of Plato and Aristotle, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, or Herbert Spencer. Anochi, Ihvh, I am Ihvh, the Being, I am He who ever is, in the past, the present, and future, ever and everywhere, omnis- cient, omnipresent, and eternal, pervading endless time and bound- less space ; He alone is uncreated, uncomposed of attributes, atoms or elements, a strict, rigorous. Unique, Supreme, One God, Mono- theos, Ihvh, Achad. Elohacha, God alone is Elohim, he resumes and centers in his own unique Being all the powers and attributes of the ancient polytheistic gods ; he is the sum of all the forces of nature, he vivifies and upholds all ; as the sun-heat energizes the vegetation. There are no other gods, Elohim, besides him, he is the only One. The once popular gods and genii were fictions or scattered divine attributes, or the agents and forces of nature. He the only One God, resumes them all in his own indivisible supreme Being. Elohacha, that Only One God of the universe, is the God of Israel ; no polytheism, no local, tribal, ancestral, or national gods. The God of Israel, of Zion is the God of mankind and of the universe, all. "Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage," viz. : The God of all mankind and of all countries is iDer Gottheit lebendi_ges Kleid. Goethe. 2Vedanta, Artistotle, Maimonides. io6 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. the God of freedom and justice for all. He did not make some the masters and others the slaves. He is a God of universal freedom, justice and equity. He breaks the chains of serfs and the scepters of would-be masters. He created and patented none to rule and none to slave. "Thou shalt have no other gods in my presence" (Besides Me), because there are none whatever. The heathen gods, national, tribal and local, are fictions, or divinized parents, or apotheosized heroes, or poeticized natural forces. They are no gods, their substance is ever absorbed by the only one God. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or figure (emblematic of divinity). Thou shalt not bow down to and worship them." God, being spirit, can never be adequately represented by any material emblem. Being the essence of all, he cannot be symbolized by a part, statue, picture, mount, sun or star; being eternal, he can not be represented by anything finite. In order to avoid misunderstanding, all idol-worship must be discarded. God is infinite Mind and may be grasped, though never fully comprehended, only by man's mind, a ray from the divine mind, never by the senses of men. "Thou shalt not bear (or utter) the name of God in vain." God, the Supreme Cause, the Essence, the life of all existence is man's most exalted and holy conception. Therefore, no profanation, no frivolity, no levity in presence of Him. The God-idea is the talisman and palladium of the highest in man. The divine name frivolously used and profaned, the man-idea, manhood is wrecked and brutalized. Having thus established a firm base for the universe and for its conscious citizen, man, the Decalogue proceeds to establish and elucidate the prin- ciples of the individual, the family, the State, and society. "Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it. During six days thou shalt work and the seventh day is a rest, consecrated to thy God; neither thou nor thy son and daughter, nor thy ser- vant nor thy cattle, nor the stranger in thy precincts, shall work on it." During six days man shall work, the seventh day is for rest and sanctification; to pause and recreate the body, to refresh and energize the mind ; it is consecrated to mental, moral, spiritual culture; the patrimony of the better half of human needs ; to reconquer one's noble birth right, man's rehabilitation and restoration. The Rest-day paves the way to the higher human aspirations. DECALOGUE TEXT AND SENSE. 107 "Honor thy father and thy mother that thou mayest live long." Honor and cherish thy parents, who represent to you, O young ones, God on earth. You owe to them your being, your education, support, name, start in life, and future. They have cared and toiled, loved and cheered you, lived and sacri- ficed for you. You are their bodily immortality, their hope and joy. Honor and cherish them as you do God on high. Without filial piety the family fades and withers, and without it decay State and society also. Family piety was for thou- sands of years a notable trait in the Jewish household, mutual tenderness of its members, self-sacrifice of the parents, obedi- ence and reverence of the children. May that feature never be lost to the human race. SIXTH TO TENTH COMMANDMENTS. "Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not commit inchas- tity." "Thou shalt not steal." Respect the life, the purity and the property of thy fellow-man. Let their life, honor and well-being be sacred unto thee; spare the dignity and char- acter of womanhood, the labor and the produce of thy fellow- workers. These make up the first elements and the basis of a community, the possibility of society. Without these the State is a gathering of wolves and bears. The sacredness of human life, chastity, property and justice is a paramount re- quisite of human happiness. Do not commit murder, lewdness, theft and robbery, they are universal, absolute categories and prohibitions, not limited to country, race or sect. Spare, by all means, human life, honor and ov/nership, of friend or foe, fellow-citizen or for- eigner. Here is the noble universalism of the Decalogue stand- ing alone in all antiquity. Everywhere else the murder of an enemy, even treacherously done, was lawful, yea, encour- aged as glorious. The Teuton, the Spartan, the Scitian and Mon- golian, inaugurated his manhood by murder and robbery, a citizen must be a manslayer. The same was theft, deceit and robbery, honorable when committed upon a stranger; toil and saving were ever despised. Barbarian, Greek, German, Persian, Roman, all, thought them beneath their dignity. War and depre- dation, spoils were alone accounted worthy of a man. The slave worked and saved, while the freeman idled, warred, pillaged and w^asted. That was the polity of the military regime. io8 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Even so chastity was no universal duty. Many peoples took unchastity, lubricity into the very service of the gods. Wo- man was a slave, ever she was to be and remain somebody's belonging. She, personally, had no rights and no dignity, and was to yield to some master. Such was the model Pandora. Mosaism alone declared her a citizen, with rights, often even over and above those of men. When sold as a child, by a poor father, she was to be wedded by her master, or his son, or go out freei, as soon as coming of age. Mosaism prohibited free love as impure and heathen and bid marriage as civilized man's natural condition. The rabbis declare the conjugal union as the very first scriptural Commandment (I M., i., 28). The ancient world ever oscillated between the extremes. They indulged in either ; first lubricity, then monachal abstinence ; whilst both are unnatural, both destructive of society. Chastity, monogamy are the safeguard of the body and of the soul, of the individual, the family and the state. Otherwise the gangrene v/ill seize upon and destroy either and all. Civilized mankind has adopted Mosaic matrimony (I, M., ii. 24), with the entire Decalogue, not the oriental free love and monasticism. The noblest ideal of our present wedlock, of conjugal love and of filial piety, the model, modern family is Biblical ; not Pan- dora, but Eve, or Sara, or Hannah is the pattern wife. The Mosaic woman and marriage is characterized in Eve's story (Gen. II., 24). "Therefore shall man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and form one person." Contrast v/ith this the very pattern of ancient Greek ideality, Ulysses' wife, Penelopeia, the Hellenic conception of woman- hood, her position and her moral worth. (Homer Odysseias^) : iSee on that, Biblical Legislation, page 13. sodysseias, Homer. I, 330: Klimaka d' upselen katebeseto oio domoio, — ouk oie, ama tege kai ampliipoloi du' eponto. e d' ote de mnesteras afiketo dia gunai- kon, ste ra para stathmon. . .anta pareiaon schomene lipasa kredemna. I, 341: Ete moi aiei eni stetliessi filon ker teirei. I, 356: Air eis oikon iousa ta s' autes erga komize, — iston t' elakaten te, kai amfipoloisi keleue — ergon epoichesthai. — muthos d' andressi mel- esei pasi, malista d'emoi. tou gar kratos est' eni oiko...H' men thambesasa palin oikonde bebekei. . . 11,87: Soi d' outi mnesteres Achaion aitioi eisin, alia file meter, 6 toi peri kerdea oiden. Ede gar triton estin etos...ex ou atembei thumon eni stethessin Achaion. pantas men r' elpei, kai upischetai andri ekasto, aggelias proietsa. noos de oi alia menoina. II, 222. "Sema te oi cheuo kai epi kterea ktereixo polla mal', ossa eoike, kai aneri metera doso." SIXTH TO TENTH COMMANDMENTS. 109 Ulysses not returning- home, after a long absence, his wife, Penelopeia, is besieged by a crowd of impudent suitors, her substance daily being eaten up by them, in order to compel her to choose one of them as her spouse She is alluded to by them as insincere, and double-tongued, tempting them and keeping them in suspense, at once mourning for Ulysses and preparing for a future husband, claiming that she tarried to remarry only until she had finished weaving a pallium for her old father-in-law, Laertes, but really temporizing to make the best of the opportunity, w^aiting for her old husband and keep- ing in suspense eventual reserve-suitors. Even her son, scarcely beyond boyhood, presumes to chide and scold her, give her orders, claims the right of giving her away to a new husband ! Now, remember that Ulysses, Penelopeia and Tele- machus belong to the most exalted personages of the Greek heroic age and history. Nevertheless, how low is here the standard of womanhood and of wedlock! She is ever owned by somebody, by her father, her husband or her son ; and her sincerity is ever doubted. She is but another Pandora, a charming witch ; not Eve, the helpmeet and worthy consort of man. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy fellow-man." Do not belie in public court or in private. Do not deny or affirm against thy conviction. Let truth, sincerity and fair- ness prevail in all thy dealings. To be a man is to keep one's word. Without his word, a man is but a thing. That prohi- bition implies all manner of lying. It is not limited to creed, country and race. Leviticus, XIX, enlarges upon this : "Ye shall not deny to, or belie one another, not do violence, not slander, not secretly hate anybody, but ever be outspoken and sincere" : "Love thy neighbor as thyself." "Do not covet thy neighbor's house, or his wife or anything his." Permit no craving to take hold of thee for things not thine. Chasten thy passions, bridle thy desires and thoughts, never long for objects out of thy reach, so that thy hands may remain pure and clean from wrong-doing, for the desire is ever father to the deed. The wrong feeling is the root and germ; the bad thought, the flower, and the deed is the fruit. The state can punish only bad deeds. Society needs purity of will as well as of hands ; so God forbids not only evil deeds, but even evil thoughts. no EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Why is there so much heart-burning and disappointment, jealousy and invidiousness, dishonor and failure, poorhouses, prisons and lunatic asylums? Because "Thou shalt not covet" was not heeded. Here is a fine husband; a pretty, rich heiress, a sparkling necklace, a good position ! Impure cravings lead to criminal actions. Beware! Stem the evil just at the start; that is the easiest. This second half of the Decalogue is, from an ethical stand- point, reviewed, enlarged upon and elaborated in Leviticus XIX : "Speak to the entire Congregation of Israel and tell them, ye shall be holy, for holy am I, your God." The belief that God exists and is holy and perfect, holds up to man an exalted pattern of goodness and wisdom. It contributes, as far as possible, to man's aspirations at perfection and godlikeness. What are the contents of such a godlikeness? Let every per- son reverence his mother and his father, and keep my Sabbath, (his motive to be) ; I, Ihvh, am your God. Turn not to images and idols; give to the poor part of your annual produce; do not steal, or deny the truth, or tell lies; do not swear frivolously by my name ; use no violence ; do not rob, or even withhold the timely payment of thy hired man. Do not curse the deaf, or put a stumbling-block in the blind man's way, but fear God. Commit no wrong when rendering public justice. Spare not the poor and respect not the mighty (in judgment), with strict justice judge thy fellow-citizen. Do not go tale-bearing among thy people, and do not stand by, conspiring against the life of thy fellow-man. I am Ihvh (to avenge him). Do not bear any secret hate toward thy fellow-men. Expostulate openly with him, but bear no secret grudge against him. Be not revengeful, but love thy fellow as thyself, "I am Ihvh." Carefully examined, Leviticus, XIX, is simply an enlarging and ethical expounding of our Ten Words analyzed ; adding as motive and stimulus to such acts : I am the Lord, the friend of truth and justice, the avenger of innocence. Again, ponder- ing over these latter five Commandments, we shall find them to be a nucleus of the practical part of prohibitive legislation, pointing to the root of all crime : "Thou shalt not murder, not be lascivious, not steal, not offer false testimony, not covet thy fellow-man's house, his wife or anything his." The fifth to the ninth Word enumerate the leading kinds of criminality; the tenth and last Word gives the cue to the four preceding SIXTH TO TENTH COMMANDMENTS. iir ones : Why does one commit murder, lewdness, theft, bear false witness? Because he could not control his wayward desires, his dangerous broodings, because he hankered for things not his. Here, the brooding, the impure heart, the un- controlled appetites are shown as the source of the evil, the handle to the criminal acts. The State can punish but com- mitted deeds, God forbids the motives just as well. As seen : wrong desires are the root, the crimes are the fatal off-shoot. Criminal deeds are but the condensation of criminal inclina- tions. We give them, practically, different names, but they are all stealing in disguise. They grow all on one stem, are nur- tured by one venomous juice and sap, and that is : uncontrolled covetousness. To satisfy it, one steals the life of his neighbor: murder ; one steals his wife or daughter's honor : lewdness ; one steals his property: theft; one steals the neighbor's right and truth : false testimony ! one steals, because one craves the other's goods. Thus Covetousness is the fatal root, and stealing is the baneful fruit. Thus root and fruit give the cue to most of crime and misery : The desire of and the attempt at getting hold of property not ours. Here is the everlasting Social Problem^ touched upon, economically, ethically and psycho- logically, and the entire Mosaic agrarian legislation is its ex- pounding. It proves a fine insight in human character, psy- chology and practical affairs, retracing all deeds to one motive, apparently intangible and innocent enough : Do not covet, for wrong wishes and thoughts lead to wrong deeds ! The Mosaic family-acre, the laws against land grabbing, money-grabbing or usury, the poor and charity-laws, the Sabbath and holidays, etc., all grapple with the Social Problem, greed and stealing.^ As to the question: What is property? The Biblical legis- lator is ever clear and positive ; leaving no room for Proudhon and Communism^. According to Moses, property is what you create and produce by your work or receive by entail. The land is created by God and ever belongs to God alone, and he lends it to the nation, to the present and future generations. It is fairly to be parceled out in equal, inalienable family acres and homesteads and be given to each adult male, by lot, to stay with his descendants, from father to son, forever and aye. It is never to be alienated or sold away from the family. iSee Bible Legislation, 80-165. 2In his book: Qe 'est ce que la propriete? C'est le vol. 112 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. The temporary possessor is to work it, live on its produce, and leave it intact and improved to his own posterity. Land- grabbing and wastefulness become thus impossible. As to movable wealth, that belonged to him who produced it and his heirs. To take such away against his free consent, will and knowledge is forbidden, is theft, robbery, over-reaching and violence. As to the poor, the Law reserved for them a right on part of the annual crops : they can moreover appeal for free gifts from those who have.i Thus the Bible admits and sanctions property acquired by work and inheritance. Cardinal Manning, some years ago, brought out the paradox that a starving man may steal a loaf of bread without com- mitting the crime of theft. I believe, in theory^ that is an error, but practically the loaf-thief may be recommended for mercy : In theory he is a thief, but in practice such thieving is no moral crime, is excusable. Our Commandment thereon is justly peremptory, unexceptional; thieving, robbing, sneak- ing goods not ours, is a sin, wrong, a transgression of the law. Here is the application of the verse, III M., 19 :15 : "Thou shalt not save or spare (the feelings of) the poor." The poor may and shall be condoned, but stealing is ever wrong, under whatever circumstances. Of course, looked upon from a socio- logical, solidary standpoint, the community is to be blamed where an honest man has to choose between theft or starvation. Stealing is ever wrong, if even a loaf and hungry. Indeed, you claim, one loaf may be stolen without sin? How are tv/o loaves? or a ton of coals for winter? or a dress for one's wife? or five hundred dollars as a dower for our daughter? or a house to shelter one's five children? or an heiress for one's hopeful son? or a crown for a prince? Where is the sure limit render- ing stealing innocent and where a crime? No doubt, God is the first owner, but man is the next, and to rob him is sin. Thus Cardinal Manning is right as a philanthropist, wrong as a lawgiver ! An honest man returns the stipulated value of what he received as equivalent. A thief steals, or robs, or over-reaches, or gets goods without the consent of the owner, or without giving an equivalent in money or work. For sure, he tacitly avails himself of Cardinal Manning's argument : I Blackstone took from here his proposition to that effect. MANIFOLD STEALINGS, ETC. 113. am hungry and I must live ! A witty censor forbade the pub- lication of a bad book. "Why do you forbid it?" the author asked. "Because it is worthless," the censor replied, and the other said: "But, I must live." "I do not see the necessity thereof," the censor coolly closed. Even so the Mosaic law- giver : "Thou shalt not steal," whether thou livest or not. "Justice, justice pursue".. .Spare no one., .for justice is God's." Thus all wrong-doing is some sort of stealing, with intent of getting some one's property : The student who neglected to learn, and nevertheless insists upon his doctor's diploma ; the workman idling away his time and asking for a day's wages ; the bad lawyer or physician, practicing and killing his case; the ignoramus teaching; the artist bungling and botch- ing; the Congregation passing off a catering, unprincipled talker as its minister; the politic preacher flattering, fawning and dancing around the golden calves on the exchange or in the pew, never teaching the truth, nor improving his hearers — that is stealing, implied in the eighth Commandment. The newspaper hunting for sensations, praising to the sky for a consideration, belittling merit or passing it in silence from envy or lack of the awaited price — that is bearing false tes- timony and accessory to theft and robbery; publicly refusing praise where due and bestowing it where undue, is social stealing. Such is the speculator on a grand scale who uses hypocritical charity and ostentatious announcements as a means of self-advertising, simulation and veiling; the grandi- loquent "People's" or "Consumer's Company" adulterating- food and drink, watering the milk and drugging the flour; the magistrate selling the law for a bribe ; the state officer sacri- ficing his public duties to increase his chances for a re-election ; the legislature enacting laws for monopolies, frail beauty en- hancing her charms by artificial means ; tlie manufacturer, confecting shoddy for wool and silk, tallow for butter, sugar- mixed with clay ; the dealer using a bushel with a double bot- tom, short weight and short measure — all that is lying and stealing. So is unfairly running for popularity, sneaking out the people's good opinion ; plagiarizing others' facts and ideas and writing a new book ; trumpeting up fictitious schemes and becoming a great man, that is theft and lying. Scattering con- 114 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. trived war-reports in order to cause a panic with a haiisse or a baisse on the exchange; artificially raising or depressing the public stocks, or lowering the market price in order to buy up cheaply; or watering bonds to increase, fictitiously, their values, or gambling for margins and inventing fabulous schemes — that is theft, robbery and false testimony. Inflam- ing the popular passions, arousing a bloody war in order to annex provinces ; give out contracts to partisans, and open new speculations for hungry millionaires, that is murder, rob- bery, theft and false testimony combined. All that flagrantly transgresses half of the Decalogue. For all these receive values for services not rendered or goods never returned. All these lie, kill and bear false witness in order to steal and rob, trans- gressing half of all the commandments at one stroke. To dismiss honest employees, abruptly, in order to quietly lower the poor man's wages, is theft and murder. To arti- ficially increase or decrease competition, in order to lower or raise prices is murder in disguise. Lowering work and rais- ing prices is killing the poor. To waste away public money and public trust, under the claim of patriotism and glory, is stealing; to use office for nepotism, as a sine-curae, for one's good friends, is stealing. "Six days shalt thou labor and the seventh rest," hence, idling away the week is stealing. To dismiss a male employee for a female or for a child, at less than half pay for the same labor, is twice stealing. To monop- olize a necessary article and create an artificial scarcity on the market or the exchange; to utilize a popular scare, a vain rumor and realize un-earned fortunes — is stealing and false testimony. "A wheat-corner, a sugar and coflfee-corner, a beef- corner, a coal, oil and wood-corner, is no better than the common thief of the street corner." Here is a huge speculator, who chokes the law with his three hundred millions of shining gold pieces, a smart fellow who by monopoly contrived to sell goods costing a cent for ten cents. But he builds churches and subsidizes universities. He steals the entire Decalogue at one blow. Romulus, Tullius, both the Tarquinius, Herod the Great and their compeers committed cumulative parricide, fomented civil wars, swallowed up entire states by unjustifiable wars, but at last they erected munificent shrines and temples ! MANIFOLD STEALINGS, ETC. 115 The Muscovite grand dukes have swallowed and annexed whole peoples and countries, eliminated their languages, laws and nationalities; robbing and pillaging to the right and the left, they have agglomerated half of Europe and Asia. But they are orthodox! All that is a shade of stealing :i hypocrisy, murder, spoliation and parricide on the grandest scale. They are lurid illustrations of what the Ten Commandments depre- cate and anathematize. After we have discussed the import of the five latter prohibi- tory, or negative, practical tenets of the Decalogue, let us take a glance at the Agadic suggestions, with their considerations, and then again turn our attention to the first half of our theme, the affirmative Words, concerning the Deity, the Sabbath, and filial piety, the theological, ethical and sociological sides of the Mosaic Organic Law. Apparently the first five Commandments are of a moral, a theoretical, and the latter five are of a practical nature. Looked at from another standpoint, both halves are realistic, positive, bearing straight upon their object; whilst all the Ten Words aim at the improvement of man, man as he is, neither angel nor demon. The first great reality is God. God in Mosaism, is not simply an idea, a human abstract concept, or a vague ideal. No ; God in the Bible is the Reality, the all-absorbing personality in the world's tableau. World and man are fleeting shadows, ephemeral, ever changing; God alone is real, constant, permanent, the substance behind the form, the reality behind the appearance, the active principle behind passive matter, the Creator emanating, irradiat- ing, spinning creation out of himself. His legislation, too, is positive, personal and realistic. This is the leading characteristic of the Mosaic Decalogue, a spontaneous, personal act of the Deity. It was revealed to Israel, it is the future organic law of any human society, an abstract of the slowly prevailing code of civilized mankind... It starts with a higher God-idea; proceeds to the Sabbath, a higher man-idea; advances to filial piety, a higher family-idea ; touches upon the categories of a higher State and society idea; warning against the proclivities, the follies, vices and crimes human nature is capable of; showing their root to be : Greed and covetousness, our so-called Social Question, the strife between poor and rich, expressed so grandly, so deeply psychologically, in the Tenth Word; "thou shalt not covet." iThe dust of stealing. Abak geneiba. (Talmud.) ii6 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. The Ten Commandments form thus an outline of a complete legislation, which was gradually developed, first in the entire five Books of Moses and subsequently in the Talmud, there with many changes and variations, corresponding to the needs of each century and its environments. From a bird's-eye view, the same Ten Words, in scattered rays and traits, are to be detected at the bottom of the other world-Codices, those of India, Persia, Baby- lonia, Greece, Rome, Egypt ; and substantially in the New Testa- ment, the Qoran, the XII Tables and Hammurabi's Stela ; the Code of Justinian, of Charlemagne, the Gothic, the Teuton, and the modern legislations, down to the Code Napoleon, the English and the United States' Common Law. In general outline the Decalogue may be thus retraced in nearly each later Codex, each with an alteration bespeaking its plan, time and environments. Whilst in its original purity, we find it in the Hebraic text extant. There alone its enactments are universal, humanitarian, demo- cratic; without any bias of nationality, class, country, time or circumstances. It is distinguished from its previous, contempor- ary or succeeding Codices in salient points, viz : It starts from a fundamental ethical principle, the God-belief, and makes that the pivot of the entire political structure. It thus spiritualizes society, God is the author of all, of universe, country, man and law. He is the owner of the sunlight, the farm, the life, the daily bread. He is God, King, Chief of the State, dispenser of justice, protector of the innocent, avenger of wrong, all pervad- ing, omniscient, omnipresent, ordaining all. The State-law is God's law, and, if obeyed, will insure peace, life and well-being, a wise individual and a happy citizen. The observance of the Ten Words is sufficient for that, especially as broadened and spiritualized in Leviticus XIX, analyzed above. All the remaining enactments are but comments, illustrations, his- torical monuments, of symbolical value, timely and local. ^ They cover all man's social, ethical and practical needs. Hardly any important phase is left out, and all later legislation can easily find there its principle and be logically derived therefrom, viev/ecl in the light of successive, centuries and circumstances. That great, fundamental, doctrinal principle of the Decalogue, per- iHillel instructed a heathen: To worship God and love thy next, is the essence of the law, the rest is comment. Go and practice! So, too. taught Jesus, both following Moses and the prophets. MANIFOLD STEALINGS, ETC. 117 vades the entire later Mosaic and rabbinic^ legislation. It is its foundation-stone and its culmination point. It is the base and the final vertex of the socio-political pyramid: The man, the Israelite, the citizen, the parent, the child, the nation, the cult, right and duty. It is the powerful cement of the entire structure. As magnetism and electricity permeate the material world, so does the Supreme God-idea pervade and hold the Jewish socio- logical edifice, from cone to base. It thus spiritualizes, personi- fies and vivifies the whole. In fact, it is the Soul and Rule of the Israelitish State and Congregation. The "Ecclesia, Keneseth- Israel," is the matron and God is the husband. So they are aptly termed by Prophets and Agadites. This imparts an imposing aspect of strength and Unity to the Mosaic pact and structure. That, too, was entailed to the nations. It may be a trait deeply pervading the spiritual nature of man. We find that feature strongly reflected in most of the later Codes enumerated above. Though much weakened, there still we find the God-idea referred to by most of legislators, who felt its powerful hold upon man's best instincts, the secret spring of his better self. TEXT AND AGADAS ON IT. Well considered and pondered over, the Mosaic Decalogue, the Organic Law of Juda, is not Hebraic, nor Judaean. Just as the God of Israel is no national and no local God, but the Lord of the universe, of all spheres, regions and peoples, even so is the Ten Words Code, not the organic law of a certain people and country, but of mankind, of all peoples, regions, sects, times and climes. They contain nothing sectarian. The Talmud assumes that the two first commandments were uttered by the Deity, direct, to the people assembled at the foot of Horeb, and that the other eight commandments were delivered to Moses and repeated by him from the mount, and that by the numerous echoes, bath-qol^ they reached the ears of the listening myriads below. If we look to the holy text, we read (II. M.19.25), the plain words: "And Moses went down the Mount and said to the people. . .Then (II M. 20.1, etc.) : 'God spoke all these words.' " viz : the whole of iThe Rabbinic legislation answered, besides, to new problems and added their own enactments and ceremonies to the Mosaic one; mostly as "hedges and enclosures," to ward off the constant, fierce attacks of the surrounding idolatries. ii8 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. the Ten Words. At the close of them (verse 19), the text re- peats : "The whole people saw. . .and said to Moses : Speak thou with us and we shall listen, and not God . . . and the people stood from afar, and Moses came near the dark cloud wherein God was." This is plain. Another Agada assumes that there was a special divine Voice created for that occasion, to carry the Ten Words to the ears of the listeners below. ^ The popular senti- ment simply assumes that the voice of God brought the Deca- logue within the hearing of man and woman, young and old, with- out any further metaphysical quibbling. Alluding to the seven times repeated word (Qol and Qoloth), "voice and voices," in that revelation, one teacher finely expounds that the divine voice was split into seven voices or undertones,^ so as to reach all the myriads standing below ; whilst another gives the climax in say- ing that, the Voice heard from Mount Sinai, was heard in seven undertones and in seventy tongues ;^ viz : The proclamation of the Ten Commandments was and is ever heard in many ways, and in all the human languages. Every Israelite and every indi- vidual of all the (seventy) nations on earth, every one's con- science and every one's common sense received and ever will receive and tacitly agree to them. That means, the Decalogue is written on the tablets of the heart of every sane man and woman, as a general law and universal principle of eternal reason and ethical equity. It is the salient epitome of man's self-evident leg- islation; all social morality and wisdom is contained in this em- bryo of legislation, aiming at the formation of a "kingdom of priests and holy nation." CONSIDERATIONS, ONCE AND NOW. And to these Ten Words Israel answered: "We shall obey. Whatsoever God has bidden, we shall perform."'* And that was the motto, the war-cry of the Hebraic people on his long and 1 Maimonides' Guide, assumes here a divine Voice, expressly created, which delivered these words. The Creator's divine Voice is also men- tioned by Gentile mystics. 3R. Johanan said: The voice on Sinai was heard sevenfold and in seventy tongues. 411 M., 24, 7. The Book of the Covenant; including the Decalogue and the rudiments of civil and penal laws of Mosaism. CONSIDERATIONS, ONCE AND NOW. iig dreary march, throughout history, for these thirty-five hundred years since Sinai, on a thousand battlefields : "We shall do and obey!" Not success and interest, pleasure or power or conquest is that people's final aim; No; but "What God has spoken we shall perform." March on, Israel, no surrender ! There is a historic legend narrating, when in Anno 1815, at the decisive battle of Waterloo, the French Grand Army was defeated and summoned to surrender, the imperial guard shouted back : "The guard dies, but does not surrender."^ Israel the imperial guard of monotheism and the Decalogue, has had many Waterloos in his history, and whenever called upon to surrender and resign his mission, he shouted back : Israel dies, but does not surrender ! We shall, further on, examine the pages of history and there shall learn that the Hebraic people has kept the promise. They never surrendered. They had Waterloos, enough, but the guard of the Decalogue never gave up. In this, our present times of earnest and ominous signs of hesitation, backwardness and indifferentism, of danger lurking without and within, of defamation and obloquy on the part of anti-Semitism, fomented by priest, mob and university profess- ors, by great and petty nationalities refusing to Israel breathing space, the right to be, earn a piece of bread and rear a Jewish family; when these antagonists, worse than the whilom Span- ish Inquisition, aim at ejecting him from Europe, where he has contributed such a large share to its culture and its prosperity; when mob and scholar and scribbler have the effrontery of re- proaching him with — his very virtues : "That he is too successful in the battle for existence, too good a banker, a merchant, a scientist, an artist, publicist; that he holds back from the hum- bler walks of human activities ; that he obviously aspires at be- coming an aristocracy, keeping up a state in the state;" forget- ting that by their cruel ostracism, the immense majority of his peo- ple live in the utmost poverty, are treated as aliens in the land of their birth, mostly confined like hunted beasts, without room for development; in this our twentieth century, where the bitter struggle for existence has reached even the shores of rich Amer- ica, where indifferentism, materialism and the care of the daily i"La guarde meures et ne se rend pas!" This historical survey was first published in ISi'O, in the Jewish Messenger, New York. It has since been repeatedlj republished, with and without the writer's name. 120 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. subsistence absorb all the energies and efforts, and where man thinks so little of all religious, ethical and mental concerns ; at such an epoch of complicated and entangling racial, political, re- ligious, social and economical phenomena, it is highly opportune to bring before the mind of thinking people, the glorious epochs of the past, of great moral and mental upheavals, as that of the Exodus, Sinai, the Decalogue, Monotheism; the struggles and the triumphs of by-gone centuries; that the present generation may discern what other more formidable Pharaohs and Hamans, hates and prejudices their ancestors had to contend with, what "hard times" they had to confront, and that they passed all these ordeals and happily vanquished them by character, conviction, patience and perseverance, the indomitable will-power "to do what God has bidden." Further on we shall amply quote from history in support of this, showing that Israel is not an aristocracy by war, conquest, or finance, but one of mind, labor and sacrifice ; that he does represent the "kingdom of priests and holy nation," as the official teacher of Monotheism and the expounder of the Ten Command- ments, that this is his diploma of nobility; that his object is not self-aggrandizement, but the advance of mankind whose van- guard and champion he is ; that his efforts and labors are to make mankind the "kingdom of priests and holy nation," to have all mythology step back, give honor to the owner of heaven and earth; merge all aristocracies in that of civilized mankind, and all privileges in that of human rights and universal justice. American Israel, gather around your standard, look up to Sinai, to its great revelation, to the Decalogue, to this platform of an Israel-mankind, the prophetic ideal. Do not split upon the dangerous rock of orthodoxy or reform. Cling to the essence of Judaism, that will lead you safely to the land of promise. Cling with heart, brain and hand to that platform. Reason, science and plain, common sense coincide with it, and mankind will finally accept it. In the meantime, when called upon to merge with the majority, answer: We are happy, socially and politically to be part of the great western civiliza- tion, and of the American people ; both of which we have helped making; but as Israelites we cling to the doctrines of the One God in Spirit, to the Ten Words, and to the historical motto of our flag ; "Whatever the Eternal has spoken we shall perform." This our platform we shall surrender only to mankind when accepting it fully, entirely and plainly. Study /F.— THE ONE GOD OF THE DECALOGUE. Theme: I am Ihvh, thy God. Exod., xx, 1-2. Having had a succinct survey of the tenor of the Decalogue, let us now analyze its single leading features. The import of its opening verses, H M., xx, 2, is adequately set forth by the following pointed remark of the Rabbis: The Thora, the Mosaic Law, does not begin with (I M., i, 1) : In the begin- ning God created ; no, that is metaphysics ; nor with the his- tory of Abraham, that is tradition and genealogy; nor with Exodus, that, too, is tradition. The Thora, really commences with n M., XX, 2 : "I am Ihvh, thy God, who has brought thee out of the land of Egypt." That is Thora, Israel's great doc- trine ! Indeed, what is the Bible's historic message to Jew and Gentile : "I am the Eternal, thy God ;" God exists, God is Ihvh, the Supreme Being, the Absolute, the Reality of existence, the Spiritual Substance, the Supreme Cause, the Source of all In- telligence, the Creative Power, Mind. The universe is not the result of chance, brute force and inert matter ; and human history is not ruled by force, cunning and over-reaching. No, both man and the v/orld are guided and superintended by God, the Supreme Mind, all-wise, all-powerful, all-pervading, all- just, providing for all. But did not the heathens, too, teach that Deity exists and rules? Yes; the heathens taught the existence and the rule of — ten thousand genii, or gods, and ten thousand principles, genii, or gods are tantamount to none, that is chaos. That means mere chance and cannot be the lule of conduct, neither in the universe nor in man's world. Again, the heathen gods were simply forces, agents; now, ten thousand forces, ever in conflict, meant war, the eternal clashing of heterogenous volitions, interests. Just so the gods are depicted by Homer, Hesiod, the Hindu, Baby- lonian, Egyptian and Assyrian Cosmogonies, the Edda, the Niebelungen poems and mythologies. They all depict the ever warring forces of nature and of men. Hence there con- tinued in the human world, as in the universe, war, brute force, over-reaching, barbarism; no room for justice, sympa- thy, peace. Mosaism teaches: One God, all-holy,^ supreme nns* n-iin ,mn^ "jx t^np '2 - nnx mn^ 122 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. Law, harmony, intelligence and fitness, pervading the uni- verse, subordinating all to His all-guiding will, design and Providence everwhere. And that suggests harmony, justice, beneficence and peace among men; That makes room for civi- lization. So the solemn closing meditation of the daily prayer: "He who makes peace in the universal space — He will grant peace to us all.^ (Adoration prayer). Is God the reaHty of the universe, or the ideal of man? There are doubters and scoffers and downright atheists. When we inquire at materialism, at the mari-cet, the five senses, the surgeon's knife, we meet with no God or soul. But when we inquire of our conscience, our innermost con- sciousness, our common sense, of the moral sciences, and of the large majority of leading thinkers, they coincide with the Bible: 'T am the Eternal thy God." La Mettrie, and De Hol- bach assumed : Man is a machine,^ and the universe, too. But Voltaire remarked : 'Tf there were no God, we would have to invent him.^ J. J. Rousseau and Diderot decidedly believed in the Divine Existence. Frederick H of Prussia yet doubted. Schiller alludes "to the cunningly devised Savior of the sickly world scheme, which human wit contrived for human needs.'*" Herbert Spencer^ bows his head in reverence before the God- idea. He dares not say what God is, but he absolutely afiirms that God is. The Divine Existence is assumed as self-evident, as the unknowable Reality behind changeable, evanescent nature, as the spiritual Essence of the material universe, as the sacred Source of mind and energy, the universal Soul and the Supreme Cause. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Pythagoras and Plotin, fully believed in the existence of God. The Hindu Brah- manic thinkers, the Qabbalistic philosophers, Gabirol and Maimonides, far from orthodox in their rationalism, thor- aL'homme machine, a famous book, of the 18th century. 3S'il n'y avaict pas de Dieu, il faudrait I'inventer. 4Des kranken Weltplans schlau erdachte Retter den Menschenwitz der Menschen Notdurft leihet. 5His first principles, page 13. THE ONE GOD OF THE DECALOGUE. 123 oughly and fully accept and teach the faith in the divine Being as self-evident. And even so Spinoza, the much misunder- stood and decried Hebrao-Hollandish philosopher, believes in God as the only reality in the universe, the universe as ephe- meral, a wavelet on the ocean-surface. God alone is eternal and real. In our own times the bitter struggle for existence has made much havoc in that greatest conception of civilized man. Nevertheless, in their sober moods, the doubting masses instinctively shrink from atheistic assumptions. They feel, as Heine pointedly says : "Doubting the existence of God, makes me feel as if in a lunatic asylum, just having lost my guide." The large majority of the thinkers and of the sober, sane masses, assume, with the Bible, God to be self- evident, reflected from the outward facts into our mind, in the universe and in human history. We feel the accuracy of this (V M. iv:12, 19) pregnant passage concerning our theme: "Ye approached the Mount Horeb in a blaze of fire . . . whence God spake to you. . .A speaking voice you heard, but you saw no similitude. And He promulgated unto you His convenant. . . the Ten Words. . .Beware and take heed, ye saw no similitude when God spoke to you on Horeb... lest ye corrupt your- selves and shape unto you any image, figure or likeness, of anything in earth, air or water, or even the hosts of heaven worshipped by the nations.. . .The Lord has redeemed you from Egypt, that iron furnace, to be unto him his own people and inheritance." This passage sets fully forth the Mosaic God-idea, his Unity, incorporeality, spirituality. DIVINE EXISTENCE. COMMON SENSE PROOF OF. Of the many testimonies to the existence of God, let us first look at the common sense one ; that being the most undubit- able, salient, convincing, and easily accessible one to the aver- age Biblical reader: Here I hold a piece of paper, a tiny, hum- ble trifle, of small utility and no mercantile value; neverthe- less you will at once accede, that it has a cause, a maker, it did not come into existence by mere chance, or by self-crea- tion, but that somebody must have made it. Now here this house, this city, this country, this continent, this globe, this solar system in boundless space, with its fixed stars, each a world of its own — all that is the creation of hazard, says ma- 124 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. terialism ! Is that not unreasonable ? Again see : This same, small, humble leaf of paper, bears some black marks, charac- ters, symbols, letters, making out words and ideas, conveying to you and me, some logical thoughts, apparently entertain- ed by some one who wrote down these lines? . . Or would you rather assume that these characters, signifying solid ideas, are the effect of blind accident, mere chance? Would you assume that an inkstand v/as turned over this blank leaf and by mere hazard it produced — signs, letters, vv'ords, rational ideas? Would not such an assumption be most irrational? Seeing here lines of characters spread out in ink as symbols of logical sentences, you are logically constrained to assume, as self- evident, that here, being design, there must be here a de- signer ? being effect, there must be an adequate cause, viz : a being with reason and will, which intently made these con- ventional marks, in order to impart to you what he thought? Now look, materialism denies this plain argument. It as- sumes that ink turned over and by mere chance, turned into logical ideas ! Nay, more : Materialism claims that this uni- verse, with its millions of worlds, with their eternally fixed laws, their grandeur, beauty, fitness, and wonderful design, this infinity of means converging towards one object, one illimitable harmony, all that came into existence without a de- signer, by mere, blind accident ! Consider : this small written leaflet must have an intentional, rational maker, but this v/on- derful, boundless universe sprang into existence by accident? all these grand means for their sublime end — are chance? Everything has its maker, every effect presupposes its cor- responding cause, the universe alone has no maker and no Cause ? Here alone, this marvellous design has no designer? DESIGN IN NATURE. Wherever you look, you find design, from the blade of grass to the solar system ; and Science discovers daily more and more wonderful design, adaptation of means to ends. Must this not make the Great Designer self-evident? "Behold the lilies of the field more gorgeously dressed than Solomon in all his glory," Contemplate this blade of grass, this stalk of corn, with the tiny organs of nutrition, secretion, growth, develop- ment, propagation ; or examine the human hand : what a fine DESIGN IN NATURE. 125 tool for action and work, for defense and ofifense, to attract and repel, to hold, take and execute whatever your desire dictates, a house, a picture, a poem, a book, a hit, a caress. Consider the ear, its external and internal parts, to receive the finest shades of sound, to recognize among a hundred voices that of a friend, a foe, a stranger, if of joy or of distress. Look to the eye, a compound of mirrors, wonderfully reflecting the world in miniature pictures, with an exact estimate of their real dimensions and proportions. Guess at the brain, a mass of nerves producing sensations and thoughts, out of the rough material brought in by the senses, with the aid of some mysterious higher sense, reason or mind — just as the piano produces the music latently alive in the pianist. That mys- terious, wonderful function of the brain develops or distills rational ideas out of crude sensuous perceptions, constructs new ideas, concepts and conclusions, one on the top of the other. It v/eighs and measures and counts the globe, planets, sun and fixed stars, embraces the universe and fathoms the Creator's thoughts and objects. Analyze this water drop by the help of a microscope, and see its millionsi of infusoria struggling for existence, just as we, men on earth do, busily running and fighting, triumphing and failing — a world in a waterdrop ! Now leave the microscope, take up the telescope, and examine the vast expanse of heaven, or the boundless space of the Milky Way, with its myriads of stars, fixed stars, dependent planets, trabants, rings, trains, all converging in prescribed orbits, v/orld-wide apart, requiring aeons of years to reach one another, scattered as our flowers, in the boundless universal space; each fixed star a complete world, with its own solar system, its eternal fixed laws, each world a har- monious part of the totality of the universe ; the molecule, the planet, the sun, well fitting in the whole. As the microscope shows us a world in a drop of water, even so the telescope points to the infinity of Vv'orlds in the boundless firmament of the universe. See yonder shining speck in the blue sky; it is a fixed star, as vast as our own Sun-globe with all its planets and trabants. This ray of light you now meet, has been a million of years on its journey to reach your eye! Ponder over this universe with its myriads of worlds, all following up one plan, one grand scheme, one primordial design, cal- 126 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. culated to meet one, to us, unknowable object, ^ the order, the harmony, the collusion and the correspondence of all as one grand totality, making up together the Universe, nature, ex- istence, the final object of that one-world scheme. Contem- plate here what a plan, what a grand design, what divine harmony, what exact order, what sublime beauty ! Here is nowhere any friction, any break, wrangling, pulling, pinching, squeezing of star or planet or molecule; no struggle for exist- ence among these huge heavenly bodies ; no encroaching upon the neighbor, no grasping and hoarding for self and starving of others, as with men. No, all is peace, order, amity, har- mony. There is room, light, life, space and provision for all ; for this fly, that atom of dust, and yonder Solar System. Does this not prove design, divine Providence, Providential Wisdom? Can we doubt Supreme Intelligence? When such an infinity of means corresponds to such an infinite object, does that not prove design? Now, when there is design in the universe, in nature, must there not be a Designer? When we see such a mighty effect, nature ; must there not be its adequate Cause, God? Closely contemplate nature, open its folios and read: what is there ineffaceably engraved ? : "I am the Eternal, thy God." God is the All-Power, the All-Intelligence, the All- Benignity, the All-Holiness ; the Cause, Creator, Designer and Providence of nature. Nature is his visible embodiment ; its every page, all proclaim : God is ! SCIENCE ON THE GOD-CONCEPTION. Positive Science declares the God-idea as beyond and above its sphere. Exact Science deals with experiences and their con- clusions. It discusses the data of our five senses ; God is beyond and above the senses, hence is he not to be reached by science. Therefore it can neither prove nor disprove ; nor define, nor analyze the God-being; still we shall see, it bows its head in (Maimonides, Guide III, part 13.)— The object and final aim of the universe, Aristotle and Maimonides agree, is beyond the Icen of man, each part is a necessary link, but the workings of all is beyond human intellect. The Divine Will is the final Cause, the eternal fitness, and this may be the real sense of the hoary "fatum," anagnke, necessity. SCIENCE ON THE GOD-CONCEPTION. 127 reverence for that idea, that necessary and universal human as- sumption; since the universe exists, man believed that God, its Maker, must exist, and this he assumed as self evident. Only ignorance and presumption are atheistic. ^ Positive science deals with matter and force. Our experiences thereof come in by the avenues of the five senses. Hence is the God-existence out of their reach. But moral science justly guesses the first Cause and the final Cause, the Reality behind the oscillating, fluctuating appearance, the Eternal Essence of the ephemeral, changeable and decaying infinity of bodies. That Essence it cannot define, but calls it Spirit, Mind, Universal Soul. Thus physical science denies not, and moral science affirms that God is ! But when asked : What is God ? What is the plain definition ? Man cannot answer; and just so the Bible, *T am thy God;" still it is emphasized : "You saw no similitude on Horeb." — "No man saw Me and lives." — "Thou wilt see My back, but My face is not visible." We know that God is, we know not what God is. We cannot raise the veil of nature, nor look behind its abyssmal screen. How could we? Man, an atom, cannot embrace God, the All ; a body, he cannot define mind ; a creature, he cannot explore the Creator. Will you ask the watch to explain the watchmaker? or ask the water-drop to fathom the ocean? Nev- ertheless the watch proves the watchmaker, and the drop points to the ocean. Even so, since man is, God must be, too. Man knows little of matter and less of mind. The ancient sages forbade to speculate on metaphysics^ as barren and misleading. But Bible and Talmud, moraHsts and rational men, all coincide in the existence of the Supreme Mind-Power. Any trial at defi- nition leads to superstition and idolatry. The Jewish philoso- phers, from the Talmud and Qabbala to Maimonides, declined all attributes, all names, all descriptions and attempts at the definition of the Deity. Even so do Emanuel Kant, Herbert Spen- cer, Tindall, Alexander Von Humboldt, Darwin, decline any and all attributes of Deity, any vulgar definition, any official theology. Still they all acquiesce and coincide in this ; that behind the screen of nature there abides the mysterious, yea, unknowable Lord of nature. Kant as Herbert Spencer show at great 1 The fool thinks, there is no God. Psalms xiv, i. 2Speculate not in public on divinity and on creation. — Hagiga, 2b. 128 EXODUS, MOSES AND THE DECALOGUE. length that nothing metaphysical is in the sphere of exact knowl- edge; that atheism, pantheism and theism are equally transcen- dental, all being beyond our senses. (Herbert Spencer: Pure Reason, First Principles, p. 36). They assent to the logical category of a Supreme Cause; but how, and what? That is un- knowable.. .And just so the Bible: "I am thy God.. .Thou canst see My back, not My face. . .You can see nature, not the First Cause of nature, nor know its final aim, "for God's thoughts are not man's thoughts."^ THE BIBLICAL DIVINE NAMES. What is the meaning of Elohim, Ihvh, Shaddai, Adonai, lah, Hanun, El-Elyon, Ahad,^ etc., in the S. Script, and Talmud attributed to the Deity? The Bible, seemingly, offers them as names, appellatives, designations of the One Supreme Being. But they are expounded by the rabbis as not being names, nor even positive attributes, for that would be limitations or addi- tions to the Only One, but as mere negative attributes ; they show what God is not, thus discarding all misunderstandings; they teach that He alone is God, the All-Power, the Supreme Being, the Cause, the Providence and Protector, the Master, the Benign, the Highest, the Only One. They are all negative attri- butes, they mean that the God of the Bible admits of no plurality, that the heathen gods or forces are all absorbed in Him, He being the All-Power, He the Essence of Being, the Creator of all, with- out any differentiation or limitation. He is the universal Provi- dence, not as the national or local gods of heathendom; He is the Merciful, the Highest and the Only One, i. e., unequaled, immutable and incomparable. The rabbis again designate Him as the Place, Maqom, of the universe, as the Heavens, or as the Infinite Space, Zrvana Akarana.^ They are careful even with these negative attributes. They declare even these Biblical des- ignations to be but lower, emanated degrees of the Deity, so to say His manifestations, as He appears to Man's limited intelli- ris. 55,6) "n D{