imm 
 
 mmm 
 
 iliiil 
 
 
 'm^ 
 
 m<:' 
 
 
 
 mi 
 
P'Vl'sioQ LS / / 9^ 
 
 Section •^•W^i 
 
>t--^>;^ 
 
EGOISM: A STUDY IN 
 
 THE SOCIAL PREMISES 
 
 OF RELIGION 
 
 BY. 
 
 LOUIS WALLIS 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 
 1905 
 
Copyright, 1905 
 By Louis Wallis 
 
 Published, December, 1905 
 
 Composed and Printed By 
 
 The University of Chicago Press 
 
 Chicago. Illinois, U. S. A. 
 
TO 
 
 G. H. T. 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This essay falls naturally into three parts, tak- 
 ing its main title from the first. 
 
 The thesis of the first division is not in any 
 sense original, although the treatment possibly has 
 points of novelty. The idea that all human 
 activity is either directly or indirectly egoistic, or 
 selfish, is not new. We lay this down as a uni- 
 versal fact of history in the proposition : " Ego- 
 ism is the only ' force ' propelling the social 
 machine." 
 
 The second and largest part of the essay illus- 
 trates this proposition from a quarter which, we 
 maintain, offers the most dramatic evidence in its 
 favor — biblical history. We hold that the Bible, 
 interpreted from the standpoint of so-called higher 
 criticism, brings us more directly and vividly into 
 relation with the fundamental facts of personality 
 (i. e., the struggle of the ego for life) than any- 
 thing else. The egoistic proposition is within the 
 domain of sociology; and if we would grasp the 
 significance of the Bible, we must approach it, first 
 of all, as a social phenomenon. The logical ulti- 
 mate of higher criticism is, that the total body of 
 religious conception in the Bible arose out of, and 
 in dependence upon, the so-called secular experi- 
 ence of Israel. The critical movement has been 
 approaching this position for some time, although 
 deficient sociological insight has impeded its 
 progress. There is nothing anomalous about the 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 sociological deficiency of biblical scholarship, for 
 the biblical higher criticism itself is but a part of 
 that wider historico-critical movement which is a 
 necessary antecedent of sociology. The order is 
 not : sociology ; then, criticism. It is the reverse. 
 The critical movement at large clears the way for 
 true historical insight, and thus (among other 
 factors) helps to make possible a science of soci- 
 ology. There is then a halt while certain men are 
 deployed in order to become familiarized with the 
 social process per se. Then the sociologists return 
 to modify the critical movement, whereupon the 
 entire intellectual process is ready to advance 
 another stage. 
 
 And this is the point that we of today have 
 reached. The higher criticism of the Bible seems 
 to have taught us all it can. Of late years there 
 has been a period of waiting, with no apparent 
 progress. We are in a peculiar situation. Not 
 only has the older view of the Bible lost ground; 
 but the new view, despite the exertions of its 
 defenders, does not associate itself with a quicken- 
 ing of the popular faith. What is called " reverent 
 modern scholarship " thinks that all we need is 
 to recover the standpoint of ancient creative 
 prophecy, in the Old and New Testament alike, 
 and then apply its ethical messages to the present. 
 But the church, the official embodiment of religion, 
 meets progressive loss of influence and enthu- 
 siasm. Do present conditions mean that there is, 
 then, no ground for enthusiasm, and no object 
 for faith? We think not. The critics charge the 
 situation to the conservatives; while the con- 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 servatives, on the other hand, are quite sure that 
 the critics are responsible for the whole business. 
 
 It is certain that the biblical higher criticism 
 has come to stay. It will be a presupposition of 
 future thinking. As Dr. C. F. Kent, Yale pro- 
 fessor of biblical literature, well says : " The 
 conclusions [of criticism] are not those of an 
 individual, nor of a school, nor even of one 
 generation of scholars. They are based not on 
 theories, nor on the often fanciful traditions of 
 Jewish rabbis or early church fathers, but on the 
 solid basis of facts presented by the Old Testa- 
 ment books themselves. They are in turn sub- 
 stantiated by the independent testimony of history 
 and compara':ive literature. It is safe, therefore, 
 to regard them as no longer on trial or under 
 suspicion, but rather as the foundations — as sure 
 as enlightened human insight and scientific method 
 can discover — upon which Old Testament inter- 
 pretation and doctrine are in the future to rest." ^ 
 
 But, in the face of the triumph of criticism, 
 the strictures upon the reigning school on behalf 
 of conservatism by Professor James Robertson, of 
 the University of Glasgow, remain profoundly 
 true. " The modern theory," says this writer, " is 
 strong in minute analysis, but weak in face of 
 
 great controlling facts Nabiism, or the 
 
 prophetic activity, even Yahwism itself, are bor- 
 rowed from the Canaanites or Kenites ; and when 
 it is asked why the Canaanites or Kenites did not 
 reach the same truth that Israel attained, we get 
 no answer. And when we ask what then had 
 
 ^ Kent, The Beginnings of Hebrew History (New 
 York, 1904), p. 29. 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 Israel to distinguish it, the feeble answer is 
 returned that when Israel (for no reason stated) 
 assumed Yahweh as their national deity, they also 
 resolved and were told that He (for no rea- 
 son assigned) was to be their only God. And 
 when the undoubtedly pure and high conceptions 
 entertained by the prophets are pointed out, and 
 an explanation demanded of their origin, we are 
 told that a ' conception ' was ' absorbed ' by the 
 prophets and came out in this purified form. 
 .... The theory itself is clear and thorough 
 enough, and of course it hangs together as a 
 whole. But it does not hold the parts together, 
 because it does not supply the proper nexus that 
 unites them in an orderly historical development. 
 There must be a bond of a more vital fibre, a 
 force more deeply inherent, which the modern 
 theory has not penetrated to nor unfolded, to 
 account for a religious and spiritual movement 
 which, looking to the broad field on which it is 
 displayed and the diversified circumstances under 
 which it took place, is nothing short of majestic. 
 The self-styled ' higher ' criticism is indeed not 
 high enough, or, we should perhaps more appro- 
 priately say, not deep enough for the problem 
 before it." ^ These points are well taken, and 
 have not been answered. And because modem 
 criticism has not met them, Robertson denies its 
 validity. Although a trifle shaky from the stand- 
 point of ultra-conservatism, treating the first 
 eleven chapters of Genesis a little more freely than 
 was allowed a century ago, he becomes safely 
 
 ^ Robertson, The Early Religion of Israel (New 
 York), Vol. II, pp. 230 f. 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 orthodox with Abraham, and concludes that 
 " from the 12th chapter of Genesis onwards, we 
 have a credible and trustworthy account." ^ 
 
 To the same effect is the criticism of Henry- 
 Preserved Smith's recent work on Old Testament 
 history,* by E. E. Nourse, of the Department of 
 Biblical History and Theology in Hartford Theo- 
 logical Seminary. While making generous 
 acknowledgment of the scholarly quality of the 
 book, the author's full acquaintance with the vast 
 and varied literature of the subject, and his mas- 
 tery of the critical problems involved in the 
 sources, the reviewer well says of this history : 
 " Its fatal defect is that it leaves Israel's religion 
 wholly unaccounted for. On the basis of Dr. 
 Smith's presentation, Amos and Hosea and Isaiah 
 are enigmas. Israel's religious conceptions, up to 
 the age of Amos, having been but little removed 
 from ordinary Semitic polytheism, the subsequent 
 remarkable teachings of prophecy demand a far 
 more complete explanation than they get at Dr. 
 Smith's hand." ' 
 
 Not until the higher criticism is modified by 
 sociology shall we reach finally valid results in 
 biblical interpretation. This book attempts to 
 exhibit our sacred literature as an involution of 
 the social process. The writer has already treated 
 the same subject, from a different standpoint, in 
 the course of his " Examination of Society," part 
 
 ^ Ibid., pp. 247 f. 
 
 *H. P. Smith, Old Testament History (New 
 York, 1903)- 
 
 ^Hartford Seminary Record, February, 1904, p. 
 140. 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 of which book was published in the American 
 Journal of Sociology (May, 1902). The present 
 essay is not a rewriting of the section of the 
 earlier work dealing with Israel. It is a fresh 
 study of the field, and stands independent of the 
 other book.*' 
 
 The third and final part of this essay attempts 
 to show its practical bearing on the present social 
 problem. 
 
 It is both a pleasure and a duty to acknowledge 
 the kindness of Dr. Albion W. Small, Head of 
 the Department of Sociology in the University of 
 Chicago, who has opened the American Journal of 
 Sociology to the writer, and has also assisted him 
 to find publication at the University Press. While 
 Dr. Small agrees with the general position here 
 taken in reference to historical criticism and 
 sociology, the writer has no desire even to appear 
 to commit him to any of the special ideas in 
 exegesis and social technology held by the author 
 of this treatise. 
 
 The larger part of the book has been read in 
 manuscript by Dr. J. M. P. Smith, of the Semitic 
 Department in the University of Chicago; and 
 
 •* The following may be quoted from the late Dr. 
 A. B. Bruce, of the Free Church College, Glasgow, 
 as a straw indicating the present direction of the 
 wind : " The creation of Israel, like the creation of 
 the world, may have been a much more complicated 
 process than it appears in the sacred page ; and 
 the secular history of the process [italics mine], if it 
 could be written, might assume a very different ap- 
 pearance in many respects to the biblical, just as the 
 scientific history of the physical creation differs 
 widely from that given in the first chapter of Gene- 
 sis." — Bruce, Apologetics (New York, 1899), p. 197. 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 the chapter entitled " The Revolution (con- 
 tinued)" has been added in response to his much- 
 appreciated criticism. A number of important 
 changes in details of expression have been kindly 
 suggested by Dr. A. E. Davies, of the Department 
 of Philosophy in the Ohio State University. My 
 attention was first called to egoism as a universal 
 informing principle of human action by my friend, 
 Herbert B. Harrop. 
 
 The new treatise, General Sociology, by Dr. 
 Small, was published too late for reference in our 
 text. It has large bearing on all the propositions 
 advanced in this book; and will at once take its 
 place as a standard sociological work. 
 
 L. W. 
 
 Columbus, Ohio, 
 October i, 1905. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Introduction 
 
 II. The Egoistic Proposition 
 
 III. The Bible and Egoism . 
 
 IV. Israel's Religion before the Exile 
 V. The Covenant with Yahweh 
 
 VI. The Invasion of Canaan 
 
 VII. Yahweh and the Baalim 
 
 VIII. Union and Monarchy . . 
 
 IX. The Increase of Yahweh 
 
 X. The Decline of Israel . 
 
 XL The Revolution .... 
 
 XII. The Revolution (continued) 
 
 XIII. The Writing Prophets . 
 
 XIV. The Exile and After . . 
 XV. Jesus of Nazareth . . . 
 
 XVI. The Practical Issue . . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 3 
 13 
 16 
 22 
 29 
 32 
 37 
 44 
 49 
 56 
 
 71 
 
 88 
 
 100 
 
 103 
 
 112 
 
" To do the best for others is finally to do the 
 best for ourselves ; but it will not do to have our 
 eyes fixed on that issue." — Ruskin, The Crozvn of 
 Wild Olive. 
 
 " Under social conditions, personal welfare de- 
 pends on due regard for the welfare of others 
 
 Each higher species, using its improved faculties 
 primarily for egoistic benefit, has spread in propor- 
 tion as it has used them for altruistic benefit." — 
 Spencer, Data of Ethics. 
 
 " Those communities which contain the greatest 
 number of most sympathetic members flourish best." 
 — Darwin, The Descent of Man. 
 
 " The egoistic basis of altruism is the great moral 
 paradox." — Ward, Dynamic Sociology. 
 
 " The thoughts and feelings and purposes that 
 make possible the best life of mankind are rarely 
 traced to their true source. Genuine egoism is per- 
 fected through genuine altruism. Selfhood comes 
 to its best in love." — Gordon, Ultimate Concep- 
 tions of Faith. 
 
 " Normal egoism is not abstract individual self- 
 assertion, but the self-realizing pulse of a con- 
 sciousness that includes its other ; nor on the other 
 hand is altruism pure abstract otherness, but a pulse 
 of other-realization in which self is included. 
 The form of egoism which we call selfishness or 
 self-seeking arises only when some subject-self 
 attempts to ignore the objective side of the dialectic 
 in its feelings or life-aims." — Ormond, Foundations 
 of Knozvledge. 
 
 " This problem [of ethics] is the realization of 
 the Self, in social relations with other selves, and 
 in accordance with a consciously accepted ideal." — 
 Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct. 
 
I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 This essay attempts to show that ex- 
 ploration of the field of sociology dis- 
 covers the terms of the religious and 
 philosophical problem. In other words, it 
 claims that philosophy and religion meet 
 on sociological ground. It is a study 
 along lines familiar and out of the com- 
 mon. In the first place, it points out, as 
 previous writers have shown, that all hu- 
 man conduct is rooted in egoism ; and that 
 altruism is a disguis^ or indirect form of 
 egoism. From this it goes on to show 
 that the sacred literature of our western 
 society has obtained its pre-eminence be- 
 cause it gives the best historical expression 
 to egoism in general. In connection with 
 the last proposition, it shows (or tries to 
 show) that the religious life and doctrine 
 of the Bible developed in a purely " na- 
 tural " way, in strict relation to the soci- 
 ology of the Old and New Testaments — 
 
2 EGOISM 
 
 i. e., without the aid of an objective reve- 
 lation in the old, mythologic sense. 
 
 In an earlier work the writer undertook 
 an inquiry into the structural and func- 
 tional aspects of society.^ That work 
 approached the subject from the stand- 
 point of conceptions which threw men into 
 the background of institutions. The pres- 
 ent essay attempts the reverse. The indi- 
 vidual is put into the foreground ; and the 
 forces are examined which move below 
 the social surface. The study of institu- 
 tions, as such, exhausts only one phase of 
 sociology. Analysis of society carries us 
 away from the individual into a great in- 
 stitutional plexus where people seem but 
 the insignificant pawns of some vast, im- 
 personal game; but every analysis of 
 structure throws us back on the personal 
 units composing the aggregate. The goal 
 of effort is continually turning out to be 
 the point of departure. We begin, and 
 we end — with the individual. 
 
 ^ An Examination of Society (1903), preceded 
 by " The Capitalization of Social Development " 
 in the American Journal of Sociology, May, 1902. 
 
II 
 
 THE EGOISTIC PROPOSITION 
 
 We lay down at the outset a proposition 
 variously phrased as follows : That form 
 of conduct which is commonly termed 
 *' egoism," or ''selfishness," is accurately 
 described as direct selfishness or egoism; 
 while that which, in contrast, is commonly 
 called ''unselfishness," or "altruism," is 
 accurately described as indirect egoism or 
 selfishness. According to this usage, ego- 
 ism is generic in society, appearing con- 
 cretely in one or the other form, imme- 
 diate or mediate. Egoism is the only 
 " force " propelling the social machine. 
 Every human being, from birth to death, 
 is animated by one or both forms of the 
 fundamental egoistic impulse, and by this 
 alone. It is impossible that conduct be 
 anything else than egoistic. Conventional 
 morality is right in affirming a contrast 
 here; but it mistakes the nature of the 
 contrast. 
 
4 EGOISM 
 
 If the study of conduct is directed 
 merely upon the motives acknowledged 
 by the actor, then it would be difficult to 
 establish the proposition laid down above. 
 But it needs to be emphasized at the out- 
 set that no thoroughgoing study of con- 
 duct can proceed upon a mere probing 
 of the individual's mental states. 
 
 Not only is egoism the fundamental 
 human trait; but it is most commonly 
 seen in the direct form. At the beginning 
 of our existence we are all direct, or im- 
 mediate, egoists. All the acts of a child 
 of six months are on the lines of a direct 
 outreach for satisfaction, regardless of 
 the good of others. This being so, it fol- 
 lows that altruism is a later fact in life. 
 
 We have now to note how altruism 
 (i. e., indirect egoism) becomes a fact in 
 a world primarily ruled by egoism in the 
 direct form. Although the first impulse 
 of all living beings, animal and human, is 
 toward action for the pleasure or good of 
 self, without reference to the pleasure or 
 good of others, yet there is ever present a 
 force which, all-pervading and irresistible 
 
THE EGOISTIC PROPOSITION 5 
 
 as the pressure of the atmosphere, con- 
 strains each self to act for the good of 
 others. This force is the pressure of the 
 others themselves. We need but to look 
 at the laws and customs of all races at all 
 periods in order to realize how powerfully 
 the self has been coerced by the others. It 
 is a mere plain fact that a large part of the 
 world's law, as well as of that vast body 
 of custom having the force of law, is con- 
 cerned with making the self either do 
 things for the benefit of others, or abstain 
 from acts hurtful to others. 
 
 We see, then, that if the world is full 
 of selves, it is also full of others. We need 
 to go outside the ego for the explanation 
 of a large part of his conduct. Every ego 
 has a double character : from his own im- 
 mediate standpoint, he is merely self ; but 
 from the standpoint of his fellows, he is 
 other. 
 
 Here we have the conditions of an un- 
 remitting struggle. Each ego, tending to 
 pursue his own, direct interest, regardless 
 of others, demands that the others turn 
 aside from a similar course, and have re- 
 
6 EGOISM 
 
 gard for him; and, at the same time, the 
 others, Hkewise engrossed in their own 
 ends, call upon him loudly to turn aside 
 and have regard for them. Society is 
 composed of selves who are quick to de- 
 mand altruism, but slow to be altruistic. 
 
 Every phase of experience illustrates 
 the tension between selves. The univer- 
 sal, and most popular, terms connected 
 therewith are "good" and ''bad." We 
 call those people good who do as we de- 
 sire ; and those who disregard our wishes, 
 and work against our interests, we call 
 bad. We are not asking just here whether 
 these terms are correctly applied ; we are 
 not trying to determine whether they are 
 always used wisely and truly. We are 
 simply remarking that, in the world-wide 
 tension between self and other, the words 
 "good" and "bad," "right" and 
 "wrong," etc., are actually applied to the 
 matters at issue.^ 
 
 We have observed that goodness is 
 primarily objective. It is called out, in 
 
 ^ We frequently overlook the fact that these 
 terms, instead of solving social problems, merely 
 raise new problems. 
 
THE EGOISTIC PROPOSITION 7 
 
 the first instance, by forces external to 
 the self — namely, by the pressure of the 
 others. But altruism, thus originating, 
 develops at length, in the course of his- 
 tory, into an element of character whose 
 impulses are obeyed unreflectively by not 
 a few. These people are good to others 
 without pausing to consider the signifi- 
 cance of their own conduct. They are, as 
 we say, "good-hearted," or "naturally 
 good." They practice goodness " for its 
 own sake," without reference to the final 
 ends involved. Their inner nature — their 
 heart — becomes good. Instead of re- 
 sponding to the pressure from without, 
 they act according to a pressure from 
 within. Goodness, primarily objective, 
 becomes subjective. 
 
 Altruism, colored by emotion, is termed 
 "love." It is the overlaying of emotion 
 upon altruism that results in love. We 
 can be altruistic without an accompanying 
 emotional reaction; but if emotion be- 
 comes a factor in altruism, then we are in 
 love. 
 
 We have already observed that altru- 
 
8 EGOISM 
 
 ism, although of beneficent intention, is 
 not always wise and good. In the same 
 way, love, the ultimate form of altruism, 
 is not necessarily wise in all its inspira- 
 tions. The religious teacher is correct in 
 declaring love to be a desirable thing; but 
 he is mistaken if he identify it with a con- 
 crete social program. Love is the form 
 in which altruism advances most effi- 
 ciently to its end — the balancing of the 
 tension between selves in that which we 
 call justice. Of course, we may have jus- 
 tice, partial or complete, without love ; but 
 love sharpens perceptions of the rights of 
 others. 
 
 The egoistic nature of altruism is per- 
 ceived gradually. Long after the general 
 egoistic proposition has been accepted, 
 there is difficulty with special points ; but 
 the whole situation at last becomes clear. 
 
 The significance of altruism as making 
 for the greatest good of the greatest num- 
 ber of selves in a given aggregate has 
 been treated by modern writers.^ Darwin 
 emphasized it as a great fact among ani- 
 
 * See quotations above. 
 
THE EGOISTIC PROPOSITION 9 
 
 mals and men.^ Those groups in which 
 there is the most of sympathy and mutual 
 aid are better fitted to survive in the 
 struggle for life than those in which there 
 is less altruistic co-operation.^ Herein 
 lies the only justification of altruism. 
 Other things being equal — i. e., if altru- 
 ism is not carried to absurdity — the self 
 has more chances in an altruistic society 
 than in a community where the direct 
 form of egoism prevails. 
 
 If you are glad to receive the benefits 
 of an altruistic society (and who is 
 not?), you must show a reciprocal altru- 
 ism yourself — if need be, even to the 
 point of absolute sacrifice of your physical 
 life. Nothing less than this extreme is 
 logical. Examples of absolute physical 
 self-sacrifice are cited in disproof of the 
 view that all conduct is rooted in egoism. 
 But there is no great difficulty about this 
 point. If the complete physical sacrifice 
 of one or more lives is necessary to social 
 integrity, that sacrifice will be accomp- 
 
 ^ Darwin, Descent of Man, chap. 6. 
 
 * Cf. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chaps. 1 1 f. 
 
10 EGOISM 
 
 lished in one or the other of two ways : 
 either the self will offer himself willingly, 
 or he will be made to do it by the pressure 
 of the others. If he do it through outside 
 pressure, he illustrates what we have 
 called objective goodness. On the other 
 hand, if he do it willingly, he is acting in 
 response to an altruistic impulse (inborn 
 or acquired) which forces him to obey it. 
 Most altruism falls short of complete 
 sacrifice, and furnishes a kind of social 
 momentum which spurs the hero on to 
 the limit. 
 
 Whether the altruist knows it or not, 
 he is all the time demanding an equivalent 
 from the others. By his own example, 
 and by word of mouth, he exhorts you to 
 do good to others; and he himself is 
 among the others. Perhaps he does not 
 consciously include himself among the 
 others ; but he cannot detach himself from 
 them. He cannot exclude himself from 
 the others in whose cause he seeks to en- 
 list you. No altruist who declares that he 
 is not selfish can escape this reduction to 
 
THE EGOISTIC PROPOSITION ii 
 
 absurdity. He can only say that he is not 
 directly selfish or egoistic. 
 
 If these things are true, why should we 
 not be honest about it, and admit that we 
 are all selfish, directly or indirectly, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously? When we do 
 an altruistic thing, we rather like to have 
 the others declare that we are not selfish, 
 do we not? And when we are told that 
 our altruism is an indirect form of the 
 fundamental selfishness, or egoism, com- 
 mon to us all, it irritates us, and threatens 
 our secret sense of pleasure. Perhaps 
 we frown on this view, and call it "base 
 and ignoble," when it is nothing of the 
 kind. 
 
 The first stages in perception of this 
 truth involve, as a rule, a callow sort of 
 disgust. The world seems to be reduced 
 to a dead level of monotony. Interest and 
 color appear to be taken out of life. 
 Those noble souls who practice and preach 
 what is called wn-selfishness look like 
 hypocrites; and humanity seems to be 
 transformed into a race of materialists. 
 
 But persistence in study along this line, 
 
12 EGOISM 
 
 with absolute honesty in facing the facts, 
 be the facts what they may, results in a 
 different attitude. It is slowly realized 
 that the egoistic proposition is a report of 
 real life in the simplest possible terms, 
 and that it takes us directly into the heart 
 of the great human problem. It exhibits 
 men everywhere seeking the most abun- 
 dant life, struggling for the utmost good. 
 Perhaps the search is unwise ; perhaps the 
 struggle is foolish. Nevertheless, the uni- 
 versal object is to get what is thought to 
 be good. In this world-wide struggle the 
 paradox of altruism (or "indirect selfish- 
 ness") plays an important part. The ego- 
 istic proposition emphasizes that person- 
 ality and personal relations are the deepest 
 and most serious things in the universe. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE BIBLE AND EGOISM 
 
 As observed above, the egoistic propo- 
 sition brings us face to face with the 
 deepest and most serious matter — the 
 problem of personaHty. It reveals a mul- 
 titude of selves trying, wisely or unwisely, 
 to live the most abundant life. When, 
 therefore, we claim that the Bible gives 
 better expression to the egoistic struggle 
 for life than any other writings in the 
 world, we are virtually saying that it 
 brings us by the most direct and practical 
 route into relation with the fact and the 
 problem of personality. This is, of course, 
 a purely sociological way of stating the 
 significance of the Bible; but even the 
 most literal *' orthodox" cannot take ex- 
 ception, on sociological grounds, to this 
 appraisal without also denying that per- 
 sonality is the foremost fact in the uni- 
 verse. In terms of religion, we might say 
 that the Bible stands for the approach and 
 
14 EGOISM 
 
 fellowship of God and man. But this is 
 a study in sociology, confined (like all 
 scientific inquiry) to phenomena, or things 
 as they appeal to us through the senses; 
 and from this standpoint we may speak 
 of the Bible only in the terms used above. 
 
 Let it be clearly understood, then, that 
 the treatment of the Bible here under- 
 taken cannot inquire into the ultimate 
 validity of its doctrine without leaving the 
 ground appropriate to sociology. x\s we 
 have elsewhere observed, "a. work on 
 sociology can have nothing to do with the 
 validity of religious [theological] doc- 
 trine, for a discussion of the absolute con- 
 tent of the realities with which sociology 
 deals carries us at once out of the domain 
 of sociology."^ 
 
 In taking the Bible as the egoistic super- 
 lative, we are claiming it primarily for 
 sociology. Unless the sacred literature of 
 our western civilization is approached 
 from the sociological standpoint, it will be 
 largely misunderstood. We stand upon 
 the proposition of the so-called "higher 
 
 ^ An Examination of Society (1903), Preface, p. 7. 
 
THE BIBLE AND EGOISM 15 
 
 criticism," which, when logically applied, 
 affirms that the conceptions of the Bible 
 spring from the natural, secular experi- 
 ence of certain oriental people. This is 
 another way of saying that nothing oc- 
 curred in the history of ancient Israel 
 which does not take place in principle, and 
 under modern forms, in contemporary life. 
 
IV 
 
 ISRAEL'S RELIGION BEFORE 
 THE EXILE 
 
 It is one of the most interesting dis- 
 coveries of modern times that the reUgion 
 of the Bible is a growth on the basis of 
 reHgious conceptions common to all the 
 ancient world. The facts about Israel's 
 early religion must be cited in relation to 
 these common ideas. 
 
 In primitive religion the gods were al- 
 ways members of society; and there was 
 no essential distinction set up, as there has 
 been in later times, between divinity and 
 humanity. According to the belief and 
 practice of their worshipers, the gods had 
 as real a place in the social fabric as the 
 worshipers themselves. "The social 
 body," says Robertson Smith, "was not 
 made up of men only, but of gods and 
 men. The circle into which a man w^as 
 lx)rn was not simply a group of kinsfolk 
 and fellow-citizens, but embraced also cer- 
 
 i6 
 
ISRAEL'S RELIGION 17 
 
 tain divine beings, the gods of the family 
 and the state, which to the ancient mind 
 were as much a part of the particular 
 community with which they stood con- 
 nected as the human members of the so- 
 cial circle. The relation between the gods 
 of antiquity and their worshipers was ex- 
 pressed in the language of human rela- 
 tionship, and this language was not taken 
 in a figurative sense, but with strict liter- 
 ality. If a god was spoken of as father 
 and his worshipers as his offspring, the 
 meaning was that the worshipers were 
 literally of his stock, and that he and they 
 made up one natural family with recip- 
 rocal family duties to one another." ^ 
 
 It is not so important to know how and 
 where primitive men got their ideas about 
 the gods, as it is to know that they actu- 
 ally believed in the gods. Yet some refer- 
 ence to religious origins will be helpful to 
 the present study. The most widespread 
 form of early religion is worship of the 
 
 ^ W. R. Smith, The Religion of the Semites (Lon- 
 don, 1894), pp. 29, 30. Cf. Barton, Semitic Origins 
 (New York, 1902), chap. 3. 
 
i8 EGOISM 
 
 family ancestors.^ Good examples of this 
 are found in the Romans, with their lares 
 and penates, or gods of the household ; 
 and the Chinese, with their ancestral tab- 
 lets. In view of this fact, there is nothing 
 strange about the widespread belief in the 
 actual, physical fatherhood of the gods. 
 It has been shown by Rev. Duff Mc- 
 Donald, a Presbyterian missionary in cen- 
 tral Africa, that all the prayers and offer- 
 ings of the natives are presented to the 
 spirits of important dead men. '' It is 
 here," he says, "that we find the great 
 center of the native religion. The spirits 
 of the dead are the gods of the living." 
 Primitive people, in common with us all, 
 dream that the dead are alive ; and to the 
 
 ^ We do not mean to say that worship of the dead 
 is the basis of religion. The basis of religion is in 
 the human mind ; while the origin of religion is a 
 historical matter. The tendency of mind leading to 
 personalization of objective nature is given specific 
 direction by the experiences which, in all races at a 
 certain level of culture, lead to worship of the dead 
 — especially the heroic dead. " Religion is, in fact, 
 a growth springing from the soil of human nature, 
 but taking its shape and hue from the social 
 medium. The science of religion is for this reason 
 under a dual dependence, owing allegiance to psy- 
 chology no less than to sociology." — Ross, Founda- 
 tions of Sociology (New York, 1905), p. 17. 
 
ISRAEL'S RELIGION 19 
 
 primitive mind the dream-world is an 
 objective fact. Only those dead persons 
 are worshiped who have been specially 
 important and helpful in the flesh; and 
 they are served in order to secure the 
 good, or to avert the evil, which they are 
 supposed to be able to send. Idols are at 
 first part or all of the dead man's body. 
 Egyptian gods, for instance, are often 
 represented by a mummy. At a later stage 
 in the development of religion, the idols 
 are simply images. These manufactured 
 idols acquire sanctity with age, becoming 
 objects of increasing awe to later genera- 
 tions, who are frequently ignorant or con- 
 fused about their real meaning.^ 
 
 As already observed, the most wide- 
 spread form of religion is worship of the 
 family ancestors. But above these private 
 worships there grew in ancient times a 
 superstructure of public religion. Certain 
 gods came to be recognized in common by 
 whole clans, tribes, nations, or empires. 
 The genesis of these more widespread 
 
 ^ Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God 
 (New York, 1897), pp. 24 f. and 79 f. 
 
20 EGOISM 
 
 cults is easily understood, for we can often 
 see them in process on the field of ancient 
 history. A strong tribe subjugates a 
 number of weaker ones; and the god of 
 this dominant tribe is thereupon acknowl- 
 edged by all the tribes in common. Or, a 
 number of tribes unite against their ene- 
 mies ; and the deity of the leading tribe is 
 taken as the general, or national, god of 
 all the tribes concerned. These wider 
 worships do not in any way interfere with 
 the narrower cults of the families, clans, 
 and tribes embraced within the union. 
 
 The religion of Israel before the exile 
 is not to be regarded as essentially unlike 
 the religions of other primitive peoples. 
 This position has been accepted by the 
 large majority of professional scholars 
 who have studied the subject; and it is 
 here taken as an established fact. Dis- 
 senting readers can at least assume it with 
 us for the time being. 
 
 It was not until after the Babylonian 
 exile that ethical monotheism was offi- 
 cially established as the religion of Israel. 
 Critical study of the literature which has 
 
i 
 
 ISRAEL'S RELIGION 21 
 
 been collected into our Old Testament 
 shows that the official religion of Israel 
 was polytheistic before the exile. They 
 had many gods, which were regarded as 
 real persons. There were family gods, or 
 Teraphim; district gods, or Baalim; and 
 above all the smaller cults was the cult of 
 Yahweh, "the god of Israel" — the deity 
 whom all the tribes acknowledged in their 
 national, or collective, character.^ 
 
 * The first syllable of the holy name " Yahweh " 
 is given in Ps. 68 : 4, and many other places, as 
 " JAH." It is pronounced " Yah," as in the word 
 " hallelujah," which means " praise Yah." The 
 form " Jehovah " was introduced by a sixteenth- 
 century monk, and was unknown to the Israelites. 
 All that we have in the Hebrew text is the conson- 
 ants YHWH (mn"!). 
 
THE COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 
 
 Not only was Yahweh thought of be- 
 fore the exile as one god among many real 
 gods; but careful investigation makes it 
 clear that he was not originally worshiped 
 by Israel, his cult being derived from an- 
 other people. So far as Israel was con- 
 cerned, Yahweh was not a nature-god, 
 whose blood flowed in the veins of his 
 worshipers. He was a covenant god, 
 whose connection with his people was not 
 physical. It is indeed upon an actual, his- 
 torical covenant, or testament (the tenns 
 are synonymous), that the Bible revolves. 
 
 Primitive tribes often adopt outsiders. 
 When this is done, the incomer not only 
 covenants with the people of the tribe; he 
 enters, at the same time, into covenant 
 with their god. In the very nature of 
 primitive religion, an outsider could not 
 relate himself to a people without also 
 coming into relation with their deity. 
 
COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 23 
 
 since people and god formed a single so- 
 ciety. The covenant relation was not 
 limited as to numbers, for a whole tribe 
 might in this way become connected with 
 a hitherto foreign god. Thus we see that 
 primitive religious ideas provided for 
 something more than a natural, or blood- 
 relation, between the gods and their wor- 
 shipers. 
 
 All the Old Testament sources unite on 
 the proposition that Israel and Yahweh 
 became specially connected as people and 
 god at a particular time and place. '' I am 
 Yahweh thy god from the land of Egypt," 
 says Hosea.^ And we are told over and 
 over again that Yahweh chose Israel at 
 the time of the exodus, delivered them 
 from the land of Egypt, and entered into 
 definite relations with them at Horeb- 
 Sinai and Kadesh. 
 
 At the period of the exodus we find that 
 the Israelites came into close and lasting 
 relations with a pastoral people known as 
 the Kenites, who, in turn, belonged to a 
 larger social group called the Midianites. 
 
 ^ Hos. 12 : 9. 
 
24 EGOISM 
 
 The Israelite leader Moses married into 
 the Kenites, and became son-in-law of 
 Jethro, their priest and leader.^ Later, 
 we find that the Kenites, or some of them, 
 accompanied the Israelites into the wilder- 
 ness of Judah.^ Later still, we see the 
 wife of Heber the Kenite enlisted in the 
 cause of Israel.^ There were Kenites in 
 the south of Judah during the days of 
 Saul and David. ^ At a still later period, 
 when the foreign Baal party was wiped 
 out by the Yahweh party, we find Jeho- 
 nadab, the son of Rechab the Kenite, on 
 the side of Israel and Yahweh.^ Still 
 further along in the history, in the time of 
 Jeremiah, we see the Kenite descendants 
 of Jehonadab pouring into Jerusalem 
 from the country for fear of the Chaldean 
 army/ Thus it is plain that the Israelites 
 were associated with the Kenites for many 
 centuries. 
 
 Looking further, we find that the Old 
 
 * Exod., chaps. 2 and 3. * Judg., chaps. 4, 5. 
 'Judg. 1:16. " I Sam. 15:6; 30:30. 
 
 '2 Kings 10: 15 f. For Jehonadab's Kenite de- 
 scent through Rechab see i Chron. 2: 55. 
 ^Jer., chap. 35. 
 
COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 25 
 
 Testament shows persistent traces of the 
 association of Yahweh with the Sinai re- 
 gion, where the Kenites Hved. In one 
 place we read : " Yahweh came from 
 Sinai, and rose from Seir unto them. He 
 shined forth from Mount Paran."*^ The 
 terms " Paran " and '' Seir " are connected 
 with the Sinai region. Elsewhere we 
 read : '' Yahweh, thou wentest forth out 
 of Seir." ^ In another place : '' The Holy 
 One came from Mount Paran." ^^ Tradi- 
 tion sends the prophet Elijah, in a season 
 of discouragement, to find Yahweh at the 
 old mountain Horeb-Sinai.^^ Thus we 
 see, not only that Israel and the Kenites 
 were intimately associated, but that Yah- 
 weh, the covenant god of Israel, was per- 
 sistently connected with the home country 
 of the Kenites. 
 
 As to the significance of these facts, it 
 is becoming clear to scholars that Israel 
 derived the worship of Yahweh from the 
 Kenites. Not that the religion of Yah- 
 weh, as we have it in its final Old 
 
 « Deut. 33 ■■ 2. '" Habak. 3 : 3. 
 
 *Judg, 5:4. "i Kings, chap. 19. 
 
26 EGOISM 
 
 Testament form, came from such a source. 
 Far from that. The later, developed reli- 
 gion of the Old Testament is the work of 
 the prophets of Israel on the basis of his- 
 tory. But in the early religion of Israel, 
 Yahweh was one among many real gods. 
 He was a local deity, who became asso- 
 ciated with Israel by covenant; and the 
 only point from which he could have been 
 derived seems to be the Kenites. 
 
 A very simple and natural account of 
 the covenant is preserved in the eighteenth 
 chapter of Exodus. Here we read that 
 Jethro, the Kenite priest, Moses' father- 
 in-law, brings a burnt-offering and sacri- 
 fices for the Divine Majesty (i. e., Yah- 
 weh). ''And Aaron and all the elders of 
 Israel came to eat bread with Moses' 
 father-in-law before Elohim (Divine 
 Majesty)." This was a sacrificial meal. 
 It represents nothing less than the cove- 
 nant between Israel and the Kenites, 
 which included the induction of Israel into 
 the worship of Yahweh. The leading 
 character in this transaction is Jethro, the 
 Kenite priest. Jethro it is who, in his 
 
COVENANT WITH YAHWEH 27 
 
 priestly character, brings the burnt- 
 offerings and the sacrifices. And it is 
 with Jethro that Aaron and the elders of 
 Israel come to eat bread. True to the 
 facts of primitive religion, this ancient 
 tradition puts the Kenite priest into the 
 foreground ; and, in speaking of Israel, it 
 specifies Aaron and the elders to the exclu- 
 sion of Moses. The omission of Moses 
 from this ceremony is significant, for, hav- 
 ing previously married into the tribe, he 
 was already in covenant with the Kenites 
 and their god. 
 
 This is the form under which, on the 
 basis of the Old Testament itself, we are 
 compelled to envisage the facts. " The re- 
 sults with which we have to content our- 
 selves in the Mosaic period are meagre," 
 says Professor H. P. Smith. " There may 
 have been an Israelite clan that sojourned 
 in Egypt. Its exodus was not improbably 
 due to a religious leader. Under this reli- 
 gious leader the people entered into cove- 
 nant with other desert-dwelling clans at 
 Kadesh. The god who sanctioned the 
 
28 EGOISM 
 
 alliance and who became a party to it was 
 Yahweh, the Storm-god of Sinai." ^^ 
 
 ^* H. P. Smith, Old Testament History (New 
 York, 1903), p. 72. The Kenite derivation of the 
 primitive Yahweh cult is accepted by Tiele, Stade, 
 Budde, Guthe, Wildeboer, Cheyne, H. P. Smith, 
 W. R. Harper, G. A. Barton, G. F. Moore, and many 
 others. It represents an encouraging approach to the 
 sociological standpoint from the ground of theology. 
 It is this particular covenant (fT^in) involving the 
 Kenites, that is in the minds of the great formative 
 prophets. " The covenant of the prophets is the 
 covenant of Sinai, in which Yahweh became god of 
 the nation " ( Davidson, Theology of the Old Testa- 
 ment [New York, 1904], p. 246). The word trans- 
 lated " covenant," berith, occurs over 250 times in 
 the Old Testament. Its later significance varies con- 
 siderably from its earlier meaning. 
 
 Our indebtedness to the excellent work by Pro- 
 fessor Budde, of Strassburg, is acknowledged in an- 
 other connection. 
 
VI 
 
 THE INVASION OF CANAAN 
 
 After the covenant with the Kenites 
 and their god Yahweh, the next important 
 step in the early history of Israel was the 
 invasion of Canaan. 
 
 For many centuries before this time the 
 land of Canaan had been, not only settled, 
 but civilized. In the preceding five hun- 
 dred years the country had been ruled and 
 fought over by three great oriental 
 powers. The Babylonians held sway 
 there so long that their language had been 
 adopted as a medium of written communi- 
 cation among the upper classes. But in 
 the fifteenth century before Christ, Baby- 
 lonia was troubled at home by the rising 
 military power of her northern offshoot, 
 Assyria; while in Canaan itself she was 
 replaced by the northeastward advance of 
 Egypt. Governors from Egypt were 
 placed in the Canaanite cities. Before a 
 29 
 
30 EGOISM 
 
 century has passed, however, we find 
 Egyptian governors writing home for 
 help, saying that they are unable to hold 
 the territory. These letters, coming from 
 such cities as Jerusalem, Tyre, Gezer, and 
 Ashkelon, have been recently discovered 
 in Egypt. As the Egyptians were unable 
 to retain the country, it was relinquished, 
 in part to local Canaanite princes, and in 
 part to the Hittites, w^hose seat was in 
 Asia Minor in the north. It was at this 
 interesting juncture that the barbarian 
 Israelites broke from the desert into " the 
 land flowing with milk and honey." 
 
 According to the first chapter of Judges, 
 the invaders merely succeeded in obtain- 
 ing a foothold in the rural districts, leav- 
 ing the Canaanites in control of the walled 
 cities and many of the dependent agri- 
 cultural villages. The emphasis here is to 
 be placed on the distribution of the social 
 elements at the basis of the Bible history : 
 the Israelites, rural; the Canaanites, 
 urban. This fact must be held firmly in 
 mind. Its importance comes clearly into 
 view as we proceed. The claim here is 
 
INVASION OF CANAAN 31 
 
 not that the IsraeHtes were in complete 
 control of the country districts; nor that 
 the Canaanites were uniformly confined to 
 the cities. We are merely trying to state 
 the situation as a whole. 
 
VII 
 YAHWEH AND THE BAALIM 
 
 The Canaanites, in their city strong- 
 holds, were at first full of hostility against 
 the . Israelites who had intruded into the 
 land. But there was no reason for per- 
 manent feud between them; and history 
 shows that the two elements were slowly 
 adjusted, melting at length into a new 
 social grouping. Ethnically, they were 
 well prepared for this. Both belonged to 
 the great Semitic race. Both spoke varia- 
 tions of the same tongue. 
 
 The social aggregate resulting from 
 their union was essentially identical with 
 all human aggregates. But the outward 
 forms in which the life of Israel in Canaan 
 finally reached expression were so unique 
 that they have struck in upon the con- 
 sciousness of all succeeding ages. 
 
 The book of Judges gives a brief and 
 fragmentary account of conditions in 
 Canaan from the period of the Israelite 
 32 
 
YAHWEH AND THE BAALIM 33 
 
 invasion clown to the period of the mon- 
 archy. At the beginning of the book, the 
 two elements are at sword's points ; at the 
 end, union is in sight. 
 
 After the people of Yahweh had entered 
 Canaan, attacks were made upon the land 
 by still other outsiders. As the Israelites 
 gradually settled down in the country dis- 
 tricts, leaving the Canaanites mainly in 
 the towns and their vicinity, these further 
 attacks proved to be troublesome, not only 
 to the Israelites, but to the Canaanites as 
 well. Enemies from without the land had 
 no occasion for making a permanent dis- 
 tinction between Canaan and Israel, for 
 outsiders were enemies of all the people in 
 the territory they coveted. Not only this ; 
 but since the Israelites were gradually 
 identifying themselves with the rural eco- 
 nomic life of Canaan, foreign attacks 
 naturally disturbed the food-supply of the 
 Canaanite cities. All this at length had 
 the effect of creating a community of in- 
 terest and feeling between the older and 
 newer inhabitants of the land. 
 
 In the third chapter of Judges we read 
 
34 EGOISM 
 
 that "the children of Israel dwelt among 
 the Canaanites, and took their daughters 
 to be their wives, and gave their own 
 daughters to their sons, and served their 
 gods." The worship of the Canaan ite 
 gods by the Israelites was perfectly- 
 natural. We need to hold steadily in 
 mind the fact that all ancient religions 
 contemplated the gods, equally with men, 
 as part of the social aggregate. The di- 
 vine and the human members of the social 
 circle were thought to be essentially the 
 same, differing only as the heroic man 
 differs from the mean man. According 
 to these ideas, refusal to recognize the 
 gods of people with whom one associates 
 is like entering a home and ignoring the 
 head of the family. It is not merely rude ; 
 it draws down the displeasure and ill-will 
 of the ignored one. 
 
 There was nothing else, then, for the 
 Israelites to do. As they gradually settled 
 down, they came into more and more 
 intimate association with the earlier in- 
 habitants of the land. As we are told in 
 the passage just quoted, the Israelites and 
 
YAHWEH AND THE BAALIM 35 
 
 Canaanites intermarried. In the face of 
 this growing fellowship, what could the 
 Israelites do' but associate also with the 
 Canaanite gods? They did not thereby 
 cease to acknowledge the godship of Yah- 
 weh. They were still the people of Yah- 
 weh ; and he was still the general god of 
 all the tribes of Israel. 
 
 Worship of the local gods was neces- 
 sary not only in the general view of 
 primitive religion; it was demanded by 
 the special situation. The nomadic, pas- 
 toral Israelites, fresh from the desert, 
 were eager to learn the arts of agriculture 
 and settled life, and to do anything con- 
 tributory to success in those pursuits. 
 The gods of Canaan w^re thought to pre- 
 side over the peaceful arts, bless the soil, 
 and supply the dew and rain without 
 which the crops could not grow. There- 
 fore, on these grounds also, Israel must 
 court their favor. Yahweh was not at 
 first regarded as a god of Canaan, since 
 his people had obtained a foothold only in 
 the country districts. Nor was he an 
 agricultural god. He was a divinity of 
 
Z6 EGOISM 
 
 the desert, the mountain, and the storm. 
 He was a god that ''dwelt in the bush."^ 
 Over and over again the Old Testament 
 declares that he was a god of hosts, or 
 armies, mighty in battle; and the careful 
 student can see that this was his earliest 
 character. He was powerful in his own 
 sphere ; but that sphere was distinct from 
 the world presided over by the Baalim, 
 the local gods of Canaan. 
 
 ^Deut. 33 : i6. Cf. Driver, Deuteronomy (" In- 
 ternational Critical Commentary," New York, 1895), 
 p 406. 
 
VIII 
 UNION AND MONARCHY 
 
 Israelites and Canaanites were at length 
 welded into a single political mass by 
 pressure of the Philistines and Ammon- 
 ites. Consideration of this fact raises 
 points of basic importance. 
 
 In the first place, the Israelites and 
 Canaanites, in combining against their 
 enemies, were not rallied to war in the 
 name of any of the local Baalim, whose 
 worship centered in the cities. None of 
 these gods were gods of war; they were 
 the deities of an essentially peaceful 
 people. Besides this, none of them had a 
 general jurisdiction in the land. None of 
 them had been acknowledged at the same 
 time by all the Canaanite cities. But, in 
 contrast with the Baalim, a certain god 
 was generally recognized and worshiped 
 by people scattered all through the rural 
 parts of Canaan. He was not merely a 
 district god, like the Canaanite divinities; 
 37 
 
38 EGOISM 
 
 nor was he a god of peace, whose wor- 
 shipers had been settled in their posses- 
 sions time out of mind. He was god of all 
 the tribes ; and the Israelites loved to think 
 of him as a god of hosts, or armies, 
 mighty in battle. ''Yahweh is a man of 
 war," they said proudly.^ Later genera- 
 tions even had a book entitled " The Book 
 of the Wars of Yahweh."2 To what 
 other god in the land could the allied 
 Israelites and Canaanites look with as 
 much hope of success against their ene- 
 mies? The local Baalim had not been 
 able to keep Yahweh and Israel out of 
 Canaan. It was Yahweh, therefore, who 
 led the allies against their common ene- 
 mies; and it was by his power that the 
 invading hosts were rolled back. At 
 length city and country alike were united 
 into a single political territory under a 
 king. All its people became Yahweh's 
 people, for he had given them all success 
 against their enemies; and since he was 
 "god of Israel," the Canaanites became 
 Israelites in name. " The land of Ca- 
 
 ^ Exod. 15:3. -Numb. 21:14 f. 
 
UNION AND MONARCHY 39 
 
 naan" became ''the land of Israel." 
 Thus, the Israelites never became Canaan- 
 ites. On the contrary, the latter took the 
 name of Israel.^ "The old population," 
 writes Wellhausen, " slowly became amal- 
 gamated with the new. In this way the 
 Israelites received a very important ac- 
 cession to their numbers. In Deborah's 
 time the fighting men of Israel numbered 
 forty thousand ; the tribe of Dan, when it 
 migrated to Laish, counted six hundred 
 warriors; Gideon pursued the Midian- 
 ites with three hundred. But in the 
 reigns of Saul and David we find a popu- 
 lation reckoned by millions. The rapid 
 increase is to be accounted for by the in- 
 corporation of the Canaanites." ^ 
 
 ^ Cornill, History of the People of Israel (Chi- 
 cago, 1899), p. 48; Wellhausen, History of Israel, 
 etc. (London, 1891), p. 8; Davidson, Old Testa- 
 ment Prophecy (Edinburgh, 1903), pp. 39, 6;^. 
 
 * Wellhausen, op. cit., p. 35. This has now be- 
 come a commonplace of biblical scholarship. " The 
 history of the times of the Judges and of the early 
 kingdom," says Professor G. F. Moore, " proves that 
 many generations elapsed after the invasion before 
 Israel was in full possession of the land ; and that, 
 far from being extirpated at one stroke, the Canaan- 
 ites remained for centuries by the side of the 
 Israelites, and disappeared at last by gradual absorp- 
 
40 EGOISM 
 
 The resulting mixed race of Canaan- 
 itish Israelites naturally emphasized its 
 descent from the conquering Israelite 
 stock, and rapidly forgot its Canaanite 
 ancestry. In coming centuries the inva- 
 sion of the land by the tribes of Israel 
 projected itself into bold relief against 
 the historical background; while the sub- 
 sequent intermingling of the races made 
 no impression on the popular mind. 
 Everybody wanted, of course, to be known 
 as descended from the conquerors. As a 
 result, later generations cherished the tra- 
 dition that their ancestors came into the 
 country, and swept away the alien Ca- 
 naanites. This is, indeed, one of the stock 
 ideas of the un-critical Bible reader; and 
 unless we take the trouble to look below 
 the surface, and hold the real facts of the 
 situation steadily in mind, we shall miss 
 the historical truth. 
 
 We have already seen that, after the 
 Israelites had settled among the Canaan- 
 
 tion in the dominant population. In all this, the sub- 
 se<|vient history confirms the general truthfulness oi 
 the representation in Judg. I." — Moore, Polychrome 
 Judges (New York, 1898), p. 47. 
 
UNION AND MONARCHY 41 
 
 ites, the two races intermarried. Alliances 
 were contracted between the families of 
 the Israelite chiefs and elders, who had 
 seized the undefended agricultural dis- 
 tricts, and the families of wealthy Ca- 
 naanites, who resided principally in the 
 towns. One of these mixed marriages 
 was that contracted between Gideon, an 
 Israelite rustic chief, and a woman of the 
 Canaanite city of Shechem.^ An issue of 
 this union was the ill-fated Abimelech. It 
 was Gideon's family, by the way, that 
 headed the first attempt to unite country 
 and city in a kingdom.^ The movement 
 failed at this time because it was too early. 
 At the outset the balance of power in 
 the new nation was in the country aris- 
 tocracy. Accordingly, it is the country, 
 with its agricultural interests, that con- 
 trols the earlier history of the kingdom. 
 We hear but little of the cities at first, not 
 because they were not yet in existence, hut 
 because the new nation was originally 
 dominated by the rural party. Gideon, as 
 already observed, was a clan chief in the 
 
 °Judg. 8:31, and chap. 9, "Judg., chap. 9. 
 
42 EGOISM 
 
 agricultural districts/ Saul, the first 
 king, was the son of Kish, a wealthy 
 farmer.^ David, the next king, also came 
 of a rural family, and began life as a 
 shepherd.^ In the earlier part of his 
 career he married the widow of Nabal, a 
 rich country landlord.^ ^ 
 
 But intermarriages between the rural 
 Israelites and the city Canaanites pro- 
 duced families which inherited l^oth city 
 and country property. This tended to 
 carry the balance of power into the cities, 
 where wealth had centered long before 
 the Israelite invasion. The shifting of 
 the balance of power toward the cities 
 probably became noticeable even in the 
 reign of David. At a later period in his 
 career he forsook the country; took for- 
 cible possession of Jerusalem, which had 
 remained Canaanite up to this time ; and 
 identified himself so closely with the place 
 that it became known as "the city of 
 David." ^^ The third king, Solomon, 
 
 ^ Judg. 6 : 1 1. 
 
 * I Sam, 9:1; 11:5. ^"^ I Sam. 25 : 2, 42. 
 
 "i Sam. 16:11. "2 Sam. 5:6, 7, 9. 
 
UNION AND MONARCHY 43 
 
 made his headquarters in the city. Under 
 him we may suppose that the process of 
 social amalgamation, begun in the judges 
 period, was practically completed.^ ^ 
 
 ^- In the editorial revision of i Kings, chap. 9, 
 Solomon is supposed to reduce to slavery the rem- 
 nant of the earlier inhabitants of the land. But the 
 fusion of Canaanites and Israelites was accom- 
 plished before this time ; and the only ground upon 
 which even a limited historical application can be 
 conceded to this passage is the possibility that small 
 groups of Canaanites had succeeded in maintaining 
 isolation. 
 
IX 
 
 THE INCREASE OF YAHWEH 
 
 We have seen that Yahweh was re- 
 garded at the outset as a god of local 
 jurisdiction. But the rise and progress 
 of Canaanitish Israel brought with it the 
 rise of Yahweh among the gods. 
 
 At his lowest estate, so far as we can 
 judge, Yahweh was the tribal deity of the 
 Kenites. But through the covenant be- 
 tween these desert wanderers and the 
 Israelites the latter acknowledged him as 
 their god. The situation is exactly stiaick 
 off by Jeremiah when he says : " Israel 
 was consecrated [ness]. unto Yahwxh — 
 the first fruits of his increase."^ The 
 setting apart, or consecrating, of Israel 
 unto Yahweh is rightly thought of by the 
 prophet quoted as marking the early steps 
 of Yahweh 's increase. He had chosen 
 Israel, delivered them from Egypt, de- 
 
 ^ Jer. 2:3: cf. 2 Sam. 7 : 23, where Yahweh is 
 said to choose Israel in order " to make him a 
 name." Cf. Neh. 9: 10. 
 
 44 
 
INCREASE OF YAHWEH 45 
 
 feated the gods of Egypt, and given his 
 new people a home in the land of Canaan. 
 This tradition, of course, did not mean so 
 much in the judges period, before the 
 founding of the monarchy, as it did after- 
 ward; for in the early period the term 
 '' Israel " meant only the country folk. 
 But after the union of city and country, 
 and the disappearance of the Canaanites 
 under the name of Israel, the tradition 
 acquired more weight; for the term 
 *' Israel '' now represented far more than 
 at first. To the later generations issuing 
 from the union of Israelites and Canaan- 
 ites the tradition that Yahweh had given 
 Israel a home in Canaan meant not merely 
 that he had given them the rural districts, 
 but that he had conquered for them the 
 entire land of Canaan. This is a proposi- 
 tion which the biblical writers never suc- 
 ceed in adjusting with the facts, one affirm- 
 ing that all the Canaanites were extermi- 
 nated;^ another, that Israel was able to 
 
 ^ Josh. 11: 16 f. This account cannot be forced 
 into agreement with the history. 
 
46 EGOISM 
 
 take only the country districts.^ How- 
 ever this may be, the increase of Israel 
 brought with it the increase of Yahweh. 
 He advanced from the position of a desert, 
 tribal god to that of a national god. 
 
 , But this was not all. Israel hardly be- 
 came a nation before it rose to an imperial 
 I)Osition. The Amalekites had been se- 
 verely chastised. The Philistines, on the 
 southwest, had been so completely de- 
 feated that they never again harassed the 
 land. The Moabites. Ammonites, Edom- 
 ites, and Arameans, on the east and north- 
 east, w^ere defeated and put to tribute by 
 Israel. According to primitive theology, 
 the gods of all these peoples therefore fell 
 below the level of the great deity of Israel, 
 who was plainly showing himself to be 
 *' a god of hosts, mighty in battle." 
 
 The people of Israel began to be proud. 
 Comparatively ignorant of geography and 
 history, they believed their country was 
 becoming the greatest in the world, and 
 
 ^Judg. 1:27 f. This is the narrative on which 
 all modern students of the Old Testament history 
 depend. 
 
INCREASE OF YAHWEH 47 
 
 their god the greatest of all gods.^ He 
 had shown himself superior to the divini- 
 ties of Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, 
 Edom, Aramea, and Amalek. Of the 
 other peoples in the eastern world at this 
 critical period there were none that could 
 have any positive influence on the reli- 
 gious consciousness of Israel. The Phoe- 
 nicians, on the northwest, were a com- 
 mercial race; and their gods made no 
 impression. The Babylonians, having 
 long ago deserted Canaan, were too far 
 away in their distant homeland to exercise 
 any influence upon the imagination of 
 Yahweh's people. And the equally re- 
 mote Assyrian kingdom had not at this 
 
 * The idea that Israel was the greatest nation 
 survived into the eighth century and beyond — a 
 period far later than that which we are here study- 
 ing. Cf. Amos 6: I, where Israel is called "the 
 chief of the nations;" and Jer. 31:7, where the 
 same term, " head," or " chief," of the nations, is 
 applied. The idea reappears in the post-exilic 
 Isa. 61:5 f., and becomes a stock element of the 
 Jewish messianic hope. The expansion of the 
 Yahweh conception had thus an ample basis in social 
 psychology. Cf. Kuenen, The Religion of Israel 
 (London, 1882), Vol. I, p. 342; Harper, Amos and 
 Hosea (New York, 1905), p. 143: G. A. Smith, 
 Book of the Tzvelve Prophets (New York), Vol. I, 
 p. 173; Duff, Theology and Ethics of the Hebrews 
 (New York, 1902), p. 32. 
 
48 EGOISM 
 
 time grown powerful enough to throw its 
 armies upon the Mediterranean seaboard. 
 Thus, in the thought of Israel, Yahweh 
 had risen superior to all gods with whom 
 he had come in contact; and it was a 
 natural inference, flattering to the pride 
 of Israel, that he was more powerful than 
 all the gods of earth and heaven. The 
 Assyrians thought likewise of their god. 
 " Assur was supreme over all other gods," 
 writes Professor Sayce, "as his repre- 
 sentative, the Assyrian king, was supreme 
 over the other kings of the earth." ^ In 
 this spirit of national aggrandizement, the 
 proud Israelite would say '' Oh, magnify 
 Yahweh with me; and let us exalt his 
 name together."^ Another would ask: 
 '' Who is like unto thee, Yahweh, among 
 the gods?"^ Another would declare: 
 ''Yahweh is god of gods!"« While still 
 another would affirm: "He judgeth 
 among the gods."^ 
 
 ' Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians (New York, 
 1900), p. 256. 
 
 ^ Ps. 34: 3. " Deut. 10 : 17. 
 
 ' Exod. 15 : II. 'Ps. 82: I. 
 
X 
 
 THE DECLINE OF ISRAEL 
 
 Israel was a united kingdom less than 
 a hundred years. Upon the death of 
 Solomon, about 931 B. C, a dispute arose 
 concerning the subject of taxation. As a 
 result, the kingdom was rent in twain. 
 The northern part — lying directly in the 
 oriental trade-routes, and containing most 
 of the wealthy cities — broke away from 
 the southern section, which was more 
 largely agricultural and had but few cities. 
 During the following century (931-831 
 B. C.) there went forward a concentration 
 of property which, under one form or 
 another, has been reproduced in everv 
 civilization of history. The great, out- 
 standing fact is that the country folk fell 
 more and more into the economic grasp of 
 the cities. 
 
 During the period of the united king- 
 dom the land outside the cities was held 
 by small farmers, whose Israelite ances- 
 49 
 
50 EGOISM 
 
 tors had wrested it from the Canaanites a 
 few generations before. These farmers, 
 together with their sons, and sometimes a 
 few slaves, worked the soil with their own 
 hands.^ 
 
 In time of war the wealthy city classes 
 could pay for substitutes, and meanwhile 
 attend to their own business. But the 
 small farmer, unable to produce ready 
 money, and spurred on by fear of devasta- 
 tion, was compelled to exchange the im- 
 plements of peace for the weapons of war. 
 A comparatively short campaign would 
 work large damage to agricultural pro- 
 prietors of this type. Even were there no 
 wars, other conditions made equal havoc. 
 A drouth, such as not infrequently afflicts 
 eastern countries; a pest of insects; a 
 crop failure from these or other causes — 
 such things were dreadful realities. 
 
 The rural proprietor, overtaken by one 
 or all of these evils, and finding his farm 
 depleted, would frequently borrow from 
 
 ^ Examples : Gideon, Judg., diap. 6 : Kish, the 
 father of Saul, i Sam., chap. 9 ; Jesse, the father of 
 David, I Sam., chap. 17; Shaphat, the father of 
 Elisha, I Kings, chap. 19. 
 
DECLINE OF ISRAEL 51 
 
 some wealthier person in the hope of Hft- 
 ing himself out of his troubles. There 
 were always richer men — mostly in the 
 cities — who were glad to advance money 
 or goods to needy farmers, provided their 
 loans wxre secured by mortgages upon 
 farm property. 
 
 Slowly but surely, as the years passed, 
 a condition arose which is illustrated by 
 developments after the return from the 
 Babylonian exile. As described in Nehe- 
 miah, the people of that later time say: 
 ** We are mortgaging our fields, our vine- 
 yards, and our houses. Let us get grain, 
 because of the dearth. We have borrowed 
 money for the king's tribute upon our 
 fields and our vineyards." ^ So, in the 
 earlier period that we are now consider- 
 ing, the farm lands of Canaanitish Israel 
 were gradually mortgaged to the 
 wealthier classes, which centered in the 
 cities. 
 
 Loans were gladly made, and gladly 
 taken ; but they were not so easily nor so 
 gladly repaid. A new war, a bad season, 
 
 ' Neh. 5 : 3, 4. 
 
52 EGOISM 
 
 the unequal pressure of taxation as be- 
 tween city and country, left the farming 
 class as badly situated as before. When 
 it became evident that there could be no 
 general redemption of mortgages, the 
 wealthy classes began to foreclose wher- 
 ever possible. The farmers were forced 
 into a position like that of their descend- 
 ants, already cited, who said : " We bring 
 into bondage our sons and our daughters 
 to be servants ; neither is it in our power 
 to help it, for other men have our fields 
 and our vineyards." ^ Thus the rift be- 
 tween rich and poor, between city and 
 country, widened slowly into a great 
 chasm. 
 
 To the backward economic sense and 
 
 ' Neh., loc. cit ; cf. 2 Kings., chap. 4. for specific 
 case : " The creditor is come to take unto him my 
 two children to be bondmen." " The people were 
 crushed by oppressive taxation, as well as by private 
 extortions. They were doubtless often forced to 
 borrow money to pay the taxes, and when unable to 
 pay the interest, lost their lands by foreclosure " 
 (Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets [London, 
 1901], p. 216). "The unhappy Syrian wars sapped 
 the strength of the country, and gradually destroyed 
 the old peasant proprietors " ( \V. R. Smith, Prophets 
 of Israel [London, 1897], p. 88). Cf. Paton, Early 
 History of Syria and Palestine (New York, 1901), 
 p. 227. 
 
DECLINE OF ISRAEL 53 
 
 primitive ideas of the Israelite rustics, 
 foreclosure of mortgages was a crowning 
 iniquity. Debtor and creditor alike wor- 
 shiped the same national god, and were 
 sons of that god, and therefore brothers 
 to each other. ^ Thus men were deprived 
 of their ancestral homes by their own 
 brothers. 
 
 On the other hand, the city plutocrats 
 took a different view. They lived in a 
 more commercial, modern atmosphere 
 They and their ancestors had made loans 
 to the rustic and his ancestors ; and these 
 loans were a just claim against the farm- 
 ers' property. While the city creditor 
 admitted the brotherhood of his rural con- 
 temporary, he denied the terms in which 
 the rustic debtor construed that brother- 
 hood. 
 
 After all, the outcome was the same 
 whether mortgages were foreclosed or 
 not. If they were not foreclosed, the 
 farmer had to pay unceasing interest on 
 
 * Although Yahweh was connected with Israel 
 only by covenant, he was thought of as taking the 
 place of a father, and was referred to in the paternal 
 character, like any foster-father. 
 
54 EGOISM 
 
 his loan, over and above his taxes and 
 Hving expenses. On the other hand, if a 
 mortgage were foreclosed, the farmer 
 who thus lost his home was thereby re- 
 lieved of interest and taxes ; but he must 
 now, in competition with poor men like 
 himself, either hire a farm at a rack-rent 
 from some wealthy landlord, or take his 
 place among poorly paid farm laborers. 
 In any event, the rural population as a 
 whole would be brought more and more 
 under the economic sway of the wealthy 
 classes, which centered in the cities of 
 Canaanitish Israel. 
 
 If it were unbrotherly and wicked for a 
 city creditor to foreclose on a rustic 
 debtor, then, by the same reasoning, it 
 w^as wrong for him to demand interest on 
 loans, or to charge rent for country prop- 
 erty that fell into his hands, or to do any 
 one of a dozen things that are accounted 
 right and honorable in a commercial so- 
 ciety. The case between country and city 
 was noL a case between persons, but be- 
 tween different social standpoints. The 
 country had one standpoint, which it 
 
DECLINE OF ISRAEL 55 
 
 identified with justice and righteousness. 
 The city had another point of view, which 
 it held to be equally right.^ 
 
 ^ The Old Testament laws against holding- the 
 lands of another family over a certain period ; 
 against interest (translated "usury" in A. V., but 
 "interest" in R. V.); and against Israelites hold- 
 ing persons of their own nation in perpetual servi- 
 tude — all this legislation was practically a dead 
 letter. It is, indeed, ex post facto, recording the 
 desire of the rural party, and standing as negative 
 evidence of conditions that actually prevailed. That 
 is to say, lands were not returned by creditors ; in- 
 terest was charged ; and slaves zcere held. 
 
XI 
 THE REVOLUTION 
 
 As this condition developed, there grew 
 up along with it an ever brighter tradi- 
 tion of a golden age under David and 
 Solomon. The glory and happiness of 
 that earlier time were made to stand out 
 in bold contrast with the shame and mis- 
 ery of the evil days upon which men were 
 now falling. Clear marks of this tradi- 
 tion are found in the work of a writer who 
 lived in the midst of the later age of 
 trouble. "Judah and Israel," he says, 
 " were many as the sand which is by the 
 sea in multitude, eating and drinking and 
 making merry. And Judah and Israel 
 dwelt safely, every man under his vine 
 and under his fig tree, from Dan even to 
 Beersheba." ^ This passage is valuable as 
 an item in the mass of evidence pointing 
 to concentration of landed property in 
 Israel. When it tells us that every man 
 
 ^ 1 Kings 4 : 20, 25. 
 
 56 
 
THE REVOLUTION 57 
 
 dwelt under his own vine and fig tree, it 
 tells us, in a roundabout way, that in the 
 earlier time every man lived on his own 
 land, in contrast with the later age in 
 which fewer men occupied their own 
 farms. In testimony to the same fact, the 
 prophet Micah, instead of looking back- 
 ward, anticipates a better era when '' they 
 shall sit every man under his vine and 
 under his fig tree."^ Both writers give 
 indirect proof of the same condition. 
 Micah, indeed, states the case directly. 
 "Woe to them that devise iniquity!" he 
 exclaims. " They covet fields and seize 
 them, and houses and take them away; 
 and they oppress a man and his family, 
 even a man and his heritage." ^ 
 
 A dramatic and futile social movement 
 now comes gradually into view. 
 
 In ancient theology the troubles of a 
 people were always ascribed to the ill-will 
 of the gods. On the famous " Moabite 
 
 ^ Mic. 4 : 4. 
 
 ^ Mic. 2: I, 2; cf. Isa. 5:8. These passages are, 
 of course, later than the period here under view ; 
 but they may be usefully considered at this point in 
 connection with the other evidence. 
 
58 EGOISM 
 
 Stone '' King Mesha says : " Omri, king 
 of Israel, afflicted Moab for many days." 
 The reason for this affliction was '' because 
 Chemosh (the god of Moab) was angry 
 with his land." ^ The malice of the gods 
 was thought to be due either to some mis- 
 take in the ritual, or to some unwitting 
 error in the conduct of their worshipers. 
 Extraordinary sacrifices were offered up 
 in the hope of winning back their favor. 
 Thus, during a battle between Israel and 
 Moab which seemed to be going against 
 the latter, ''the king of Moab took his 
 eldest son that should have reigned in his 
 stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering 
 upon the wall." The biblical writer here 
 quoted evidently has the same theological 
 ideas as the Moabites, for he goes on to 
 say that '' there came great wrath upon 
 Israel: and they returned to their own 
 land."^ 
 
 In trying to cure their troubles, the 
 people of Israel divided into two parties 
 on the standing ground of these primitive 
 
 * Encyclopedia Biblica (New York, 1902), double 
 column 3045, 3046. 
 ° 2 Kings 3 : 27. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 59 
 
 theological ideas. The parties, although 
 at first separated only by slight differ- 
 ences, at length diverged sharply in their 
 essential positions. 
 
 The first party centered among the city 
 plutocrats, into whose hands the property 
 of Israel was gradually falling. They 
 admitted that Israel's condition was in 
 some respects worse than it had been 
 under David and Solomon. The king- 
 dom was divided; there had been drouth 
 and suffering; and their armies had met 
 with defeat. These troubles were evi- 
 dently due to the fact that Yahweh was 
 angry with his people for some cause that 
 they could not fathom. Perhaps they had 
 not been assiduous enough in the sacrifice. 
 There may have been some mistake in the 
 ancient ritual. Possibly their troubles 
 could be remedied by bringing more and 
 better sacrifices to the altars of Yahweh. 
 The attitude of this party is indicated in a 
 few words by Micah, the Morashtite, in 
 his book, written in the eighth century 
 before Christ. He brings before us an 
 adherent of the plutocratic, city party, who 
 
6o EGOISM 
 
 asks : " With what shall I come before 
 Yahweh? Shall I come before him with 
 burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? 
 Will Yahweh be pleased with thousands 
 of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of 
 oil? Shall I sacrifice my first-born child 
 for my mistakes?"^ Micah's man here 
 stands as a type of his class, which has 
 nothing to suggest but a purely ritualistic 
 program, culminating in precisely that 
 measure to which the Moabite king re- 
 sorted as a remedy for the troubles of his 
 people — human sacrifice. 
 
 While the party just described centered 
 in the cities, the other centered in the 
 rural districts. The earliest platform of 
 the rural party was as follows : Israel's 
 troubles are not the result of obscure mis- 
 takes in worship ; they are the issue of a 
 perfectly plain, unmistakable cause. Yah- 
 weh cJwse Israel out of all the peoples of 
 the earth, and raised his elect from 
 nothing to royal estate. Israel ought to 
 serve him in preference to other gods in 
 
 « Mic. 6 : 6, 7. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 6i 
 
 the same whole-hearted way that he has 
 served them in preference to other peoples. 
 But Israel has given only half-hearted 
 allegiance to Yahweh, and has mixed his 
 worship with the service of the Baalim, 
 the gods of the Canaanites, the former in- 
 habitants of the land ! Not only this ; but 
 Israel has raised altars and built temples 
 to the gods of foreign nations in the very 
 land that Yahweh so graciously con- 
 quered for his chosen people! Israel has 
 been tried in the balances by a good god, 
 and found wanting. Yahweh has shown, 
 by what he has actually done for Israel, 
 that he is both willing and able to be 
 faithful to his side of the covenant rela- 
 tion; and the troubles of the nation are 
 the just punishment, whereby Yahweh is 
 chastising them for serving other gods. 
 If Israel would once more have good 
 things and be happy, let them put away 
 all other gods from before the face of 
 Yahweh, for he is a jealous god; and let 
 them return and serve him only; and he 
 will abundantly pardon. The program of 
 
62 EGOISM 
 
 the rural districts, therefore, was : Down 
 with all gods but Yahweh ! ' 
 
 The country party made use of the 
 covenant idea; but the city party ignored 
 the covenant, and treated the god of Is- 
 rael as if he were a nature-god, who had 
 grown up with his people on the basis of 
 blood-relationship. To the latter the 
 program of their opponents was foolish- 
 ness. 
 
 The views of the rustic party were 
 crystallized out of the indefinite social fer- 
 ment of the time by the policy of King 
 Ahab, of the northern Israelite kingdom. 
 Ahab married Jezebel, daughter of Eth- 
 baal, king of the Phcenician city of Tyre ; 
 and brought his foreign wife to his capital, 
 
 ^ These propositions of the country party form 
 the backbone of the " Book of the Covenant," pro- 
 duced some time before the period of Josiah (2 
 Kings, chaps. 22, 23). This work was later expanded 
 into our present book of Deuteronomy, which is pre- 
 eminently the Book of the Covenant. The idea of 
 material good and evil, as resulting from service of 
 Yahweh and other gods respectively, is dwelt upon 
 at length in the later production. The good is there 
 symbolized by Mount Gerizim ; the evil, by Mount 
 Ebal (Deut. 11:26-29). A more primitive "Cove- 
 nant Book " along these lines is found in Exod., 
 chaps. 21-23, 34- 
 
THE REVOLUTION 63 
 
 the city of Samaria. In honor of his 
 wife's people, he erected a temple in 
 Samaria to the Baal of Tyre. In building 
 this temple, Ahab intended no disloyalty 
 to Yahweh. He was only doing what the 
 older theological ideas held tO' be the right 
 thing. Besides, he had a precedent in the 
 case of a great Yahweh-man, Solomon, 
 who had married many foreign wives, 
 and erected several temples in honor of 
 their gods. That Ahab recognized Yah- 
 weh as god of Israel is proved by the fact 
 that children born to him were given 
 names compounded with that of Yahweh,^ 
 and also by the fact that he consulted 
 many of the prophets, or spokesmen, of 
 the national god.^ 
 
 There now appeared the first great 
 champion of the rural party. He came, 
 not from the cities, but from the country. 
 The biblical narrative introduces him 
 abruptly as among the inhabitants, or so- 
 journers, of Gilead — an agricultural dis- 
 trict in the northeast of Israel. ^*^ Probably 
 
 ^ I Kings 22:51 ; 2 Kings 3:1. 
 
 ' I Kings 22 : 6 f. " i Kings 17:1. 
 
64 EGOISM 
 
 the world does not know the real narhe of 
 this man; but history knows him by a 
 theophoric name which describes his 
 work, and by which he will always be 
 remembered. He preached that the god 
 {El) whom Israel ought to worship was 
 Yahweh. Hence the name El-Yah, 
 Eliyah, or Elijah, by which this man is 
 known. 
 
 The most dramatic event in Elijah's 
 career centered about the very problem 
 which lay at the basis of the reaction of 
 country against city. Through false wit- 
 ness and murder, King Ahab came into 
 possession of land belonging to a certain 
 Israelite whose name was Naboth. The 
 incident gave Elijah an opportunity which 
 he was quick to improve. Boldly making 
 his way into the royal presence, he con- 
 fronted the king with an awful curse. 
 
 It is very important to point out that 
 the significance of this case lies, not in 
 the wicked manner by which Naboth was 
 dispossessed, but in the simple fact that he 
 Avas dispossessed. The Israelite farmers 
 were economically so backward that they 
 
THE REVOLUTION 65 
 
 made no distinction between treacherously 
 seizing an estate, as Ahab did, and fore- 
 closing a mortgage on landed property. 
 The one was just as bad as the other : the 
 two were morally the same — so the rus- 
 tic party held.^^ Not only was foreclosure 
 wicked, but it was wicked to charge inter- 
 est on the loans that were secured by 
 mortgage. The Ahab-Naboth case, in- 
 volving the passage of land from one of 
 the smaller to one of the wealthier Israel- 
 ites, throws out into bold relief, as by a 
 lightning flash, the silent process of eco- 
 nomic concentration which w^e have been 
 emphasizing. It is for this reason, and 
 not because Ahab connived in the murder, 
 that the incident is given such prominence 
 in the Bible. To the confused, ignorant, 
 and excited farmer folk this case typified 
 the entire contemporary process of land 
 concentration. 
 
 Some time before his death, Elijah 
 formally designated as his associate and 
 successor Elisha, the son of Shaphat. 
 
 " Cf. Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets (Lon- 
 don, 1901), pp. 225 f. 
 
66 EGOISM 
 
 Elisha, also, came from the rural districts. 
 When called by Elijah, he was plowing 
 behind twelve yoke of oxen.^^ His family 
 was located at Abelmeholah, an agricul- 
 tural village in Gilead.^^ 
 
 The movement of the country party did 
 not come to a practical issue until after 
 the death of Elijah. In the time of his 
 successor, Elisha, there occurred a start- 
 ling revolution. The organization of the 
 rustic party seems to have centered at this 
 time in Gilead. It was thence that Elijah 
 and Elisha came; and the last-named 
 prophet himself now sent to Ramoth of 
 Gilead for an Israelite of honorable an- 
 cestry, Jehu by name, to " rise up from 
 among his brethren," and become the 
 leader of the rural party in the field of 
 politics.^ ^ The object of the farmers was 
 big and bold. They aimed to capture the 
 government of Israel, which, lor over a 
 century, had been controlled by the cities. 
 And since there was no constitutional 
 channel through which party politics 
 
 " I Kings 19 : 19. 
 
 "i Kings, 19: 16, "2 Kings, chap. 9. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 67 
 
 could find expression, the leaders of the 
 farmers resolved on the murder of the 
 city leaders. Jehu killed the reigning 
 kings of Israel and Judah, wiped out the 
 entire family of Ahab in the city of 
 Samaria, brought his murders to a cli- 
 max by a wholesale slaughter of wor- 
 shipers in the temple of Tyrian Baal, and 
 then mounted the throne as an ardent 
 Yahweh-man. 
 
 This was the balm that flowed out upon 
 Israel from the land of Gilead — that 
 primitive, rustic land, where the goats lay 
 along the mountain side,^^ where people 
 and flock fed in the ancient days,^*^ and 
 where Yahweh would yet again bring 
 Israel to the sheep-fold and the hills. ^^ It 
 was this land, where the Israelites longest 
 retained their early simplicity, that sup- 
 plied the first agitators and leaders in the 
 movement of country against city. 
 
 At this interesting point in the history, 
 the Kenites, from whom Israel derived its 
 Yahweh-worship, come into momentary 
 
 ^^ Song of Solomon, 4:1. 
 
 ^^Mic. 7 : 14. " Jer. 50: 19. 
 
68 EGOISM 
 
 view. There is a striking passage in 
 Kings, whose meaning, Hke that of so 
 many Bible facts, is lost to those who read 
 our sacred literature from the conven- 
 tional standpoint. The passage referred 
 to seems to interrupt the connection of the 
 narrative. It is merely a notice to the 
 effect that Jehu, in the midst of his bloody 
 work, called upon a certain Jehonadab, 
 the son of Rechab, to w^itness his " zeal " 
 for Yahweh ; and we are further told that 
 this son of Rechab was present when Jehu 
 slaughtered the devotees in the temple of 
 Baal, and destroyed the worship of Baal 
 from Israel. ^^ 
 
 The context supplies no hint about the 
 identity of Jehonadab, nor why he should 
 be given this peculiar prominence in the 
 narrative. But in two other Old Testa- 
 ment passages we find material that solves 
 the problem and puts the incident in its 
 true relation to history. From a genea- 
 logical list in Chronicles we learn that 
 Rechab, the father of Jehonadab, was a 
 Kenite.^^ In the thirty-fifth chapter of 
 
 "2 Kings, 10: 15-28. ^^ I Chron. 2:55. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 69 
 
 Jeremiah we see the Rechabite descend- 
 ants of Jehonadab seeking temporary 
 safety in Jerusalem in time of war. Their 
 Hfe, they say, is that of tent-dwellers and 
 shepherds. The whole situation is now 
 clear: The son of Rechab has a name 
 compounded with that of the god of Is- 
 rael, " Yah-nadab." His enthusiasm for 
 Yahweh comes from two sources — his 
 afiinity with the rural districts, and his 
 Kenite blood. He was a rustic house- 
 father in Israel, and a strong man in the 
 anti-Baal, pro- Yahweh party. When 
 Jehu, the political head of the farmers' 
 movement, called upon this man to wit- 
 ness his "zeal" for Yahweh, he knew 
 that Jehonadab represented an important 
 area of discontent and revolution. The 
 handclasp of the two men, as Jehonadab 
 mounted into the chariot of Jehu, s^'gni- 
 fied, according to Israelite custom, that 
 they were partners in the extermination 
 of Baalism. 
 
 Thus we behold the political triumph 
 of the rural party over the city party. 
 Yahweh was now expected to smile upon 
 
70 EGOISM 
 
 his people, and bring in again the golden 
 age when every man should dwell safely 
 under his vine and fig tree. And there 
 can be no doubt that the country folk 
 wanted King Jehu to proclaim laws 
 against foreclosure of land mortgages at 
 the will of the creditor, and against col- 
 lection of interest on debts that were se- 
 cured by such mortgages. 
 
XII 
 THE REVOLUTION (continuedy 
 
 The fundamental fact calling for em- 
 phasis here is the concentration of landed 
 property, which took place in Israel as it 
 has in all nations. If it can be shown, 
 either that there was no concentration, or 
 that, in the event of its occurrence, the 
 rural classes did not lose to the urban 
 property-holders, our claim falls to the 
 ground. That the general fact of con- 
 centration is present in the history no one 
 can deny. And as the entire situation be- 
 comes clear, it will be seen to be a hopeless 
 undertaking to show that this economic 
 movement did not take the general direc- 
 tion here indicated. 
 
 From this point we move to the next 
 proposition : When the ownership of land 
 began to center in the cities, the resulting 
 
 ^This chapter was written after the book had been 
 provisionally completed; and it is inserted here in 
 reply to criticism, as a restatement of the thesis up 
 to this point. 
 
 71 
 
72 EGOISM 
 
 reaction of country against city found ex- 
 pression in the protest of Yahwism, the 
 cult whose tradition was strongest in the 
 rural parts, against Baalism, whose cults 
 were at that time strongest in the cities. 
 Let it be observed incidentally that we do 
 not posit the rural-urban reaction as ex- 
 hausting the Yahweh movement, but only 
 as initiating it. At a later stage, to be 
 treated in the following chapter, the 
 movement was emancipated from this, its 
 original, form; and the cult-rivalry, Yah- 
 weh versus Baal, came to symbolize, not 
 merely rustic right against city wrong, 
 but good in general against bad in general. 
 Had the movement failed to advance be- 
 yond the stage represented by Elijah and 
 Elisha, it w^ould not have been a fact of 
 universal significance. 
 
 In order to demonstrate the initial de- 
 pendence of Yahwism upon the rural- 
 urban reaction, we conceive it to be neces- 
 sary to establish the following positions : 
 (i) After the settlement of Israel in 
 Canaan, the Baal cults, although ac- 
 knowledged in the rural districts among 
 
THE REVOLUTION y^ 
 
 Canaanites and Israelites, came to a cen- 
 ter in the Canaanite cities that survived 
 the invasion. (2) At the same time- 
 Yahwism was, for a long period, almost 
 exclusively a rural cult. It flourished 
 more in the country than in the cities. 
 That there was a Yahweh-Baal conflict 
 everybody knows. That it was originally 
 involved in the rural-urban reaction is 
 here claimed. In order to break this 
 claim, it will be necessary to show that the 
 positions just indicated cannot be estab- 
 lished. Our business now is to sketch the 
 situation pointing to them as facts. 
 
 We cannot too strongly impress upon 
 ourselves that long before the Israelite 
 invasion city life was well developed in 
 Canaan. Agriculture, of course, occupied 
 a large part — perhaps the larger part — 
 of society; but superimposed upon the 
 simpler industry of the open country were 
 the manufacturing and commercial pur- 
 suits of the cities. In the famous Tell-el- 
 Amarna letters we have documents writ- 
 ten from Canaanite cities to Egypt in the 
 Babylonian tongue. These letters reflect 
 
74 EGOISM 
 
 the general situation. Canaan lay at the 
 focal point of the ancient oriental world. 
 Here met the civilizations of surrounding 
 countries, connected by the trade-routes 
 that ran through the land as great inter- 
 national highways. The important Ca- 
 naanite cities lay on these trade-routes, 
 and were largely developed upon the com- 
 merce whose tides flowed through them. 
 That is to say, they represented more than 
 the local trading life, and occupied a cos- 
 mopolitan position. 
 
 Now, previous to the Israelite invasion, 
 this important area of the ancient world 
 was not united under a single native gov- 
 ernment. It was ruled by local '' kings " ; 
 and its religions were local cults. Canaan 
 was divided into many districts, each one 
 having its own god, or divine proprietor, 
 known as ''the Baal." The Baals — or 
 Baalim, as they are called in the Hebrew 
 plural — were supposed to preside over 
 all aspects and activities of life. Although 
 the Baalim were worshiped in city and 
 country, their cults naturally centered in 
 the cities, because here the life of the 
 
THE REVOLUTION 75 
 
 people came to a center. Here were the 
 great markets, frequented alike by traders 
 from other lands and by native buyers and 
 sellers. Here were the seats of the local 
 rulers. Here, therefore, were the most 
 famous Baal shrines. '' The proper site 
 for an ancient shrine," observes Dr. G. A. 
 Smith, ''was nearly always a market."^ 
 And cities grew around markets. In 
 maintaining that Canaanite Baalism cen- 
 tered in the cities, we are not claiming 
 that Canaan was exceptional. It was in 
 the cities of all the ancient nations, and 
 not in the country districts, that their cults 
 came to a focus; and the religious life of 
 Canaan conformed in this respect to the 
 practice of all history, including Chris- 
 tianity, whose great temples have always 
 been in the cities. 
 
 Bearing these points in mind, we turn 
 again to the Israelite invasion. The ac- 
 count in the first chapter of Judges recog- 
 nizes that the Canaanite cities about 
 which we have been speaking were al- 
 
 ^ G. A. Smith, Book of the Twelve Prophets 
 (New York), Vol. I, p. 36; cf. H. P. Smith, Old 
 Testament History (New York, 1903), pp. 172, 173. 
 
76 EGOISM 
 
 ready in existence, and that they were of 
 sufficient size and importance to have 
 strong walls. The first chapter of Judges 
 gives a list of twenty widely distributed 
 cities which the Israelites were unable to 
 reduce. And that this list, extensive as it 
 is, does not exhaust the situation is shown 
 by the fact that the cities of Gibeon and 
 Shechem, not here mentioned, were in- 
 habited by thriving Canaanite populations 
 many years later. These widely spread 
 centers of Baal-worship, then, lay in the 
 midst of the Israelites, who held only 
 parts of the open country. 
 
 The inroads of Israel upon the agri- 
 cultural districts had thus two marked 
 effects at the very outset of their occupa- 
 tion of Canaan : Baalism, already cen- 
 tering in the cities, was identified there- 
 w^ith rather more, if anything, than less; 
 while Yahwism, representing the Israelite 
 invaders, was for a long time (down to 
 the middle of the ninth century B. C.) 
 predominantly identified with a rural 
 population. In other words, the social 
 situation itself, on the basis of the hostility 
 
THE REVOLUTION 77 
 
 engendered by the invasion, set up at the 
 start an antithesis between the older Baal 
 cults and the newer cult of Yahweh. 
 
 To study the Old Testament with care 
 is to see that the narrative is at first con- 
 trolled by the rural interest. It is rustic 
 life, either in its pastoral or its agricul- 
 tural form, that marks the main stream 
 of the history all through the judges 
 period, and well onward into the time of 
 the kingdom. The reason for this is not 
 that there are no great cities. It is that 
 city life is as yet mainly controlled by the 
 alien Canaanites, who are but slowly ad- 
 justed to the newcomers, and who, there- 
 fore, get scanty recognition in the narra- 
 tive. 
 
 Let us look at these facts more closely. 
 All the great outstanding characters of 
 the judges period are people of the open 
 country. Whenever the narrative drops 
 into detail, it is rustic life that we see 
 before us. Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, 
 Barak, Heber the Kenite, Gideon, Jeph- 
 thah, Samson, Micah the Ephraimite, 
 the two Levites of Ephraim — these are 
 
78 EGOISM 
 
 all rustic folk; and it is about these people 
 that the history of the time revolves. In 
 connection with them we hear about live 
 stock, and agriculture, and vineyards, and 
 threshing-floors, and wine-presses. Over 
 and over again we hear of " the hill coun- 
 try of Ephraim." The region thus indi- 
 cated was an agricultural district in which 
 lay the homes of many of the famous 
 characters. There were, as already noted, 
 a few Israelite cities in these earlier times, 
 like Bethel and Shiloh, Succoth and 
 Penuel; but the existence of these cities, 
 which lay in the agricultural districts of 
 Ephraim and Gilead, is not contrar}^ to 
 the present thesis. They were peopled by 
 Israelites, and probably removed, for the 
 time being, from extensive Canaanite in- 
 fluence. 
 
 In the book of Samuel, w^hich continues 
 the narrative begun in Judges, we come 
 again into the hill country of Ephraim, 
 the homeland of the famous prophet- 
 judge. The father of Samuel makes a 
 yearly visit to Shiloh, going up, as we are 
 told, '' from his city." Like many places 
 
THE REVOLUTION 79 
 
 to which the term rendered *'city" is ap- 
 pHed, Ramah, the home of Samuel's 
 family, was evidently an agricultural vil- 
 lage.^ The offerings which Elkanah and 
 Hannah bring up to the house of Yahweh 
 at Shiloh are flour, wine, and a bullock. 
 Saul, the next notable character in the 
 narrative, was born of an agricultural 
 family in Benjamin, to the south of 
 Ephraim. He is introduced as he goes in 
 search of the lost asses of Kish, his father. 
 At the time of the Ammonite attack on 
 the Israelites in Gilead, Saul comes fol- 
 lowing the oxen from the field. He hears 
 the news, cuts a yoke of the animals in 
 pieces, and sends the bloody fragments 
 broadcast ''throughout all the borders of 
 Israel." The extent of Saul's legal au- 
 thority is a matter of no interest here 
 beside the fact that he is a rustic dealing 
 with a rustic population; for he declares 
 that ''whosoever comes not forth after 
 Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done 
 
 ' The term rendered " city " does not always 
 denote a large, walled center. It is often applied to 
 rustic villages, as in i Sam. 6: 18, which speaks of 
 " the cities of the Philistines, both of fortified cities 
 and of country villages." 
 
8o EGOISM 
 
 to his oxen/' And as with Saul, so with 
 David, the next important character in the 
 narrative. David's family seat was in or 
 near the "city" of Bethlehem in Judah. 
 This place, like Ramah, was evidently 
 another country village. David is intro- 
 duced as a boy, tending the sheep of his 
 father Jesse. Jesse's gifts to King Saul 
 are those of a rustic : an ass laden with 
 bread, a skin of wine, and a kid. David 
 marries not only the daughter of the agri- 
 culturist Saul, but, at a later time, the 
 widow of Nabal, a very wealthy sheep- 
 master and goatherd. 
 
 But now a change comes over the his- 
 tory. David is elected king of Judah, and 
 occupies the city of Hebron as his capital. 
 Later chosen king of all Israel, he under- 
 takes to remove his headquarters to 
 another city. The place in question had 
 been attacked by Israel at the time of their 
 invasion of the land over two hundred 
 years before ; and it had remained Canaan- 
 ite down to this period. Its name was 
 Yerushalim (Jerusalem) ; and it is several 
 times called lebus, from the Canaanitish 
 
THE REVOLUTION 8i 
 
 Tebusites who dwelt in and around it. 
 The fort of Jerusalem was captured and 
 occupied by the king, who called it "the 
 city of David." We have no reason to 
 suppose that the capture of the fort was 
 attended by extermination of the Canaan- 
 ites of Jerusalem. On the contrary, we 
 have every ground for assuming that the 
 loss of life was merely that contingent 
 upon the siege and capture of the place. 
 At a later time we find David purchasing 
 from Araunah the Jebusite the land 
 whereon was raised the famous temple of 
 Solomon. The family of Araunah the 
 Jebusite, then, had remained in possession 
 of their property. Probably the situation 
 here suggested, of Israelites and Canaan- 
 ites living peacefully together, is reflected 
 by the passage which states that "as for 
 the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jeru- 
 salem, the children of Judah could not 
 drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell 
 with the children of Judah at Jerusa- 
 lem." ^ 
 
 With David the rustic tradition passes 
 
 *Josh. 15 : 63. 
 
82 EGOISM 
 
 away. Solomon, the next king, was a city 
 man, as were all the following rulers. 
 Both he and his father came into friendly 
 relations with Hiram, king of the great 
 and famous Canaanite city of Tyre. Thus 
 we see that, with the rise of the royal 
 house of David, Israel is coming into 
 closer association with the original city 
 life of Canaan. Before the time of David 
 the prominent characters in Israelite his- 
 tory come from the country; but after 
 that time the absence of great rustic men 
 from the history is as noticeable as their 
 earlier prominence. It is true that in the 
 period after David we have to reckon with 
 such rural men as Elijah, and Elisha, and 
 Amos; but these form a notable excep- 
 tion which proves the rule, for they arise 
 in the country to protest against the city. 
 We have now reached a point where it 
 is possible effectively to show the condi- 
 tions under which Canaanite Baalism be- 
 came a factor of increasing prominence in 
 Israel's religious life. The cities of the 
 land, as already pointed out, were great 
 centers of Baal-worship long before the 
 
THE REVOLUTION 83 
 
 invasion; and it was precisely these Baal 
 centers which the Israelites were unable 
 to reduce. The first chapter of Judges 
 mentions about twenty such places, not 
 merely in one locality, but widely dis- 
 tributed from north to south. The largest 
 and most important were Ibleam, Taa- 
 nach, Bethshean, Megiddo, Nahalol, Re- 
 hob, Beth-horon, Gezer, Shaalbim, Dor, 
 Aijalon, Gibeon, Shechem, and Jerusalem. 
 Surviving the invasion, most of them re- 
 appear at later points in the narrative. 
 The Canaanite populations which lived in 
 and near these places, and which were 
 slowly amalgamated with Israel, were the 
 main force perpetuating the Baal cults; 
 while after the union of country and city 
 under the house of David the old Canaan- 
 ite centers, now Israelite in name, and 
 partly so in blood through intermarriage, 
 naturally acted as points of diffusion 
 whence Baalism spread to the newer 
 Israelite cities, like Ophrah, Bethel, etc. 
 
 Adoption of the Baal-cult of another 
 city is seen in the case of Solomon, who 
 married foreign wives and built temples 
 
84 EGOISM 
 
 in Jerusalem for their gods; and in the 
 case of Ahab, who married Jezebel, 
 daughter of the king of Tyre, and built a 
 temple to the Tyrian Baal in the city of 
 Samaria. The common liberal attitude in 
 this regard is also illustrated by Amaziah, 
 who sent from Samaria to inquire before 
 Baal-Zebub, the god of the city of Ekron.^ 
 In view of such instances, it is easy to see 
 how the surviving cities of old Canaan 
 acted as points from which the Baal-cults 
 were spread throughout all the cities of 
 Israel. 
 
 There is, of course, no reason to sup- 
 pose that, after the rise of David, Baalism 
 was rigidly confined to the cities. All that 
 our proposition contemplates is that Baal- 
 ism centered for a long time in the cities, 
 while, in contrast, the Yahweh-cult had 
 its great stronghold in the rural districts. 
 This condition must have obtained until 
 the accession of Jehu, the candidate of the 
 rustics, in the middle of the ninth century 
 B. C. The rise of this vulgar cavalry 
 officer on the floodtide of rustic reaction 
 
 ' 2 Kings I : 2. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 85 
 
 against the cities marked a turning-point 
 in the social history. From this time the 
 Yahweh-cult became as important in the 
 cities as in the rural districts. At the 
 same time, the political significance of the 
 free peasantry in the country declined 
 more and more with the further concen- 
 tration of landed property, which was 
 hastened by the Syrian wars. The revo- 
 lution of Jehu made Israel as a whole, city 
 and country, more thoroughly than before 
 ''the land of Yahweh." But this was 
 only a ritual fact. The social problem 
 steadily developed in the direction already 
 taken.^ 
 
 This further combination of circum- 
 stances at length brought into bold relief 
 the forces crudely expressed by the move- 
 ment of country against city. That move- 
 ment was the vital fact in the first stage 
 of Yahwism. It largely succeeded in the 
 realm of ritual; but it failed of its real 
 purpose. With the breakdown of the 
 
 ^ Dr. G. A. Smith, referring to the century after 
 Jehu, speaks of " city life developing at the expense 
 of country life " (Book of the Twelve Prophets [New 
 York], Vol. I, p. 42). 
 
86 EGOISM 
 
 farmers' campaign, the religion of Israel 
 passed into a higher and more spiritual 
 stage. Yahwism versus Baalism came to 
 signify, not merely rustic right against 
 city wrong, but good in general against 
 evil in general. And it was to give ex- 
 pression to this wider and mightier 
 struggle within the social body that the 
 literary prophets arose. 
 
 We are, then, to regard the farmers' 
 movement as one stage in the evolution of 
 Yahwism. Although it involved a nar- 
 row moral protest, its ritual character is 
 suggested by the deuteronomic proposi- 
 tion that if Israel worshiped Yahweh, all 
 kinds of material good would be showered 
 upon the people; wiiereas, if they served 
 other gods, corresponding evil would be 
 sent upon them. This materialistic way 
 of looking at the situation was a necessary 
 historical step. The deuteronomic propo- 
 sition found sufficient proof in the now 
 full-fledged tradition that Yahweh had 
 given Israel the entire Holy Land at a 
 single stroke. It is illustrated in the case 
 of those who, in the time of Jeremiah, said 
 
THE REVOLUTION 87 
 
 in substance : " We burned incense to the 
 queen of heaven, and had good things; 
 but since we ceased burning incense to 
 her, we have had evil."^ That the rus- 
 tic reaction partook mostly of this com- 
 mon materiahstic character there can be 
 httle doubt. In no other way could there 
 have been developed that ritual '' zeal " 
 (whereof Jehu boasted) which was a 
 necessary condition of the further build- 
 ing up of Israel's religion. The rural- 
 urban struggle furnished the symbols — 
 Yahwism versus Baalism — under which, 
 with a different emphasis, the succeeding 
 phase of the religious process found ex- 
 pression. Into these symbols, as we shall 
 now see, the prophets who worked be- 
 tween the revolution and the exile read a 
 pro founder moral meaning than Elijah 
 possibly could have conceived. 
 
 ^Jer. 44: 17, 18. 
 
XIII 
 THE WRITING PROPHETS 
 
 The revolution of Jehu brought no re- 
 Hef to the farmers, and spent itself in the 
 realm of Israel's religious conceptions. 
 For further development of doctrine we 
 are thrown upon later history. The ear- 
 lier parts of the books of Amos, Hosea, 
 Micah, and Isaiah date from the century 
 after Jehu. In these writings we find that 
 the problem already outlined is taking on 
 the chronic form which has been charac- 
 teristic of the Orient for many centuries. 
 
 The fact that the Yahweh movement is 
 originally based on the reaction of country 
 against city comes out over and over again 
 in the works of the literary prophets. We 
 have seen that Elijah, the first great man 
 connected with this movement, came from 
 the Gilead region, where life remained 
 primitive down to a late period ; and that 
 his successor Elisha was called to the 
 prophetic office from the plow-handles. 
 
THE WRITING PROPHETS 89 
 
 The earlier of the literary prophets were 
 likewise men from outside the cities. 
 
 Amos was a herdsman and a dresser of 
 sycamore trees. ^ Going to the city of 
 Bethel, he preached against the sins of the 
 people.^ It is the rich women of the city 
 of Samaria — "the kine of Bashan," as 
 he calls them — who uphold their hus- 
 bands in crushing the poor and oppressing 
 the needy.^ It is in the cities Bethel and 
 Gilgal that Israel transgresses and multi- 
 plies transgressions.'* It is from these 
 and other cities that Israel is warned.^ 
 Yahweh will deliver up the city and all 
 that is therein.^ It is no wonder that 
 Amaziah the priest cried to Amos, and 
 said, "Preach not any more at Bethel."^ 
 
 A contemporary prophet, Hosea, plainly 
 shows aversion to the city and love for 
 the country : He applies the word " Ca- 
 naanite" to the city merchants, or 
 traffickers. This contracted usage is all 
 that remains to a word which once indi- 
 
 ^ Amos 1:1; 7:14. 
 
 ^ Amos 7:10. ' Amos 5 : 4 f . 
 
 * Amos 4:1. ^ Amos 6 : 8. 
 
 * Amos 4:4. ' Amos 7:12. 
 
90 EGOISM 
 
 cated the entire land. The cities of Ca- 
 naan, we remember, were not conquered 
 by the tribes of Israel ; and after city and 
 country had fused into a single state, the 
 word remained in popular speech in the 
 sense just noted. "As for the Canaanite," 
 says Hosea, " the balances of deceit are in 
 his hand. He loveth to defraud. And 
 Ephraim [northern Israel] said, Surely I 
 am become rich. I have found me 
 wealth." The antithesis of this reproach- 
 ful reference to the wealth of the cities 
 brings out clearly the sympathies of 
 Hosea, for, continuing, he puts these 
 words in the mouth of Yahweh : '' I will 
 yet again make thee to dwell in tents." ^ 
 The prophet Micah hailed from an 
 agricultural village in the Shephelah, 
 w^here, as Professor G. A. Smith observes, 
 '* there are none of the conditions or of 
 the occasions of a large town." ^ " The 
 voice of Yahweh," says Micah, *'crieth 
 
 ' Hos. 12:7, 8, 9; cf. Harper, Amos and Hosea 
 (New York, 1905), pp. 384-88. 
 
 " G. A. Smith, Book of the Twelve Prophets 
 (New York), Vol. I, p. 377- 
 
THE WRITING PROPHETS 91 
 
 unto the city."^^ ''I will cut off the 
 cities of thy land."^^ According to this 
 prophet, the sins of the people are sym- 
 bolized by Samaria and Jerusalem, the 
 capital cities of north and south.^^ Micah 
 looks forward to a golden age of rustic 
 happiness, when " they shall sit every man 
 under his vine and under his fig tree."^^ 
 The message of the prophets, then, was 
 formulated in the rural districts. But at 
 last, in the person of Isaiah, the Yahweh 
 party entered the cities. As he appears 
 in his writings, Isaiah belongs tO' the city. 
 His great successor, Jeremiah, the last of 
 the pre-exilic prophets, was likewise an 
 inhabitant of Jerusalem during his public 
 career; but it is interesting to note that 
 he was born in the country village of 
 Anathoth, where lay the lands of his 
 family.i^ 
 
 ^° Mic. 6:9. " Mic. 5:11. ^^ Mic. i : 5. 
 
 " Mic. 4 :4 ; cf. Zeph. 3:1; 1:16," Woe to the 
 oppressing city ! The Day of Yahweh is a day of 
 alarm against the fortified cities and high battle- 
 ments." 
 
 " Jer. 1:1; 32: 6 f. Like Amos of rustic Tekoa, 
 going to Bethel to preach against the sins of the 
 city, so Jeremiah from rural Anathoth feels im- 
 pelled to preach against the sins of the city of 
 Jerusalem: Jer. 2: i. 
 
92 EGOISM 
 
 The works of the hterary prophets of 
 this period are of immense interest and 
 importance. In them we trace, practically 
 at first hand, many of the great formative 
 influences that contributed to the develoi> 
 ment of the Old Testament religion in its 
 final form. It is true that these writings 
 bear the marks of jx)st-exilic editing; but 
 they are not so extensively done over and 
 systematized as the pentateuchal books 
 and the historical narrative in Judges- 
 Kings. When we read the works going 
 under the names of Amos, Hosea, ]\Iicah, 
 Isaiah, and Jeremiah, we are in contact 
 with material that took form before the 
 Pentateuch in its present shape was heard 
 of, and before the narrative in Judges- 
 Kings had become a part of sacred litera- 
 ture. There was no Bible in the days of 
 these prophets. The only "word of 
 Elohim " which they knew was the " tora 
 of Yahweh," the living word, which was 
 uttered by themselves and other holy men 
 who were thought to be in some sense 
 mouthpieces, or preachers, for the Divine 
 
THE WRITING PROPHETS 93 
 
 Majesty.^ ^ In their day there was no 
 Pentateuch, with its detailed laws, minute 
 directions, and striking predictions. The 
 prophets were always looking for strong 
 points of appeal in their preaching to Is- 
 rael ; and if such a work had existed, it is 
 inconceivable that these preachers, the 
 spokesmen of that Yahweh who did 
 nothing "without revealing his secret unto 
 his servants the prophets," ^^ should not 
 have known of it and constantly appealed 
 to it. We refer to this cardinal position 
 of modern biblical criticism, not to argue 
 for it, but in order to bring into the pres- 
 ent study something of the atmosphere in 
 which men like Amos and Isaiah lived 
 and worked.^ ^ 
 
 ^^Cf. W. R. Smith, The Old Testament in the 
 Jewish Church (New York, 1891), pp. 292 f, 
 
 ^® Amos 3 : 7. 
 
 " We do not deny that many, perhaps most, of 
 the laws, customs, and traditions now in the Penta- 
 teuch were already in the life of Israel, Nor do we 
 deny that the historical materials lying- at the basis 
 of the Judges-Kings narrative were in existence in 
 some form before the exile. In fact, these histories 
 profess to be based on earlier written sources, which 
 are often specified. We simply stand on the critical 
 proposition which affirms that these laws, customs, 
 
94 EGOISM 
 
 The writings of the prophets are not 
 systematic productions. They seem at 
 first glance to be mere waste-basket col- 
 lections. But careful study shows that, in 
 spite of their superficial disorder, they are 
 bound into organic unity by certain gen- 
 eral ideas to which they give nervous and 
 oftentimes broken utterance. 
 
 Like Elijah, the literary prophets were 
 united in demanding faithfulness to Yah- 
 weh. But in the times of these men the 
 preaching of Elijah and the resulting 
 revolution of Jehu lay far enough in the 
 past for them to see that mere physical 
 faithfulness to Yahweh was of no avail as 
 a remedy for Israel's troubles. Although 
 the bloody revolution of Jehu counted 
 thus for nothing practical, it was of un- 
 speakable importance in the development 
 of religion. It drove the Yahweh people 
 into clearer expression of their views. It 
 made them "show their hand," so to 
 speak. The real purpose of the country 
 party in the campaign of Elijah and Eli- 
 traditions, myths, and histories were not worked up 
 into an authoritative sacred literature until after the 
 exile. 
 
THE WRITING PROPHETS 95 
 
 sha, and the revolution of Jehu, was not 
 disinterested " zeal " for Yahweh, but ex- 
 tremely interested zeal for themselves. 
 We have already pointed out that there is 
 not, and cannot be, such a thing as dis- 
 interestedness in the popular understand- 
 ing of the term. There must be a funda- 
 mental element of egoism within or behind 
 that which we call by other names. Our 
 historical study thus far is enough to 
 show the egoistic purpose lying behind 
 the reaction of the country against the city 
 in Canaanitish-Israel ; and the literary 
 prophets bring that purpose into bold re- 
 lief. 
 
 As a result of the movement culminat- 
 ing in the revolution of the ninth century, 
 Israel now paid more attentive service to 
 Yahweh than at any earlier period. So 
 far as mere physical faithfulness to the 
 national god was concerned, the rustic 
 party was thus in a large degree success- 
 ful. So much was this true that the 
 prophets of the eighth and subsequent 
 centuries found it necessary to bear less 
 and less on the issue between Yahweh and 
 
96 EGOISM 
 
 other gods, and to emphasize more and 
 more the issue between right and wrong 
 ways of serving Yahweh himself. It w^as 
 not ritual faithfulness to him that was 
 alone demanded, however important that 
 might be in itself. To the prophets it be- 
 comes foolishness that Israel should look 
 to ritual measures for help in trouble. 
 Jeremiah tells the people that it avails 
 nothing if they have the temple of Yah- 
 weh, and do not execute justice between 
 man and man.^^ Amos declares Yah- 
 weh's hatred of their feasts, their solemn 
 assemblies, and their sacrifices, coupling 
 this with a demand for justice and right- 
 eousness.^^ Physical faithfulness to Yah- 
 weh, and casting out of other gods was 
 useless if men continued to do evil to each 
 other. Men themselves must be righteous. 
 The work of the prophets, in brief, was to 
 unite the ideas of Yahweh-worship and 
 personal righteousness. They practically 
 identified ethics and religion. In their 
 teaching, conduct overshadowed cult. 
 There is no dark mystery about the 
 
 '" Jer. 7:4, 5. '" Amos 5:21 f. 
 
THE WRITING PROPHETS 97 
 
 prophetic association of righteousness with 
 the Yahweh-cult. The god of Israel was 
 a covenant god, who, unHke the nature- 
 gods, had chosen his people, and done 
 them good, raising them up from nothing 
 to royal estate under David and Solomon. 
 Whoever, therefore, did evil to Israel was 
 plainly working in flat opposition to the 
 national god. The bad man, according to 
 the prophets, was destroying ** the inheri- 
 tance of Yahweh." He was tearing down 
 what the good Yahweh had built up. The 
 covenant Elohim of Israel was good in the 
 very depths of his nature; and his prim- 
 ary demand upon his people was that they 
 be good also.^*^ 
 
 We have seen that the moral impera- 
 tive — the demand for goodness on the 
 part of others — is a universal fact. We 
 find it in all societies at all periods of his- 
 tory. We are, therefore, assured at the 
 outset that the prophets of Israel had no 
 patent on the cry for righteousness. It 
 surrounded them like the atmosphere. 
 
 ^'^ The Hebrew term rendered " lovingkindness " 
 {hcsed, "Cn) comes within this general concep- 
 tion ; but we have not space to enlarge upon it here. 
 
98 EGOISM 
 
 The simple fact is that Israel was in a 
 situation that lent itself historically to this 
 universal demand upon the others for 
 good. Every man, at one time or another, 
 has a case against somebody ; most people 
 have chronic cases against the world ; and 
 here, for the first time in history, a large 
 number of men were able to make a plaus- 
 ible claim that God (Elohim) was on their 
 side in their case against the others. The 
 prophetic movement gave expression to 
 this demand. In Israel we must recognize 
 the universal as taking on a particular 
 form which has commended itself to 
 future ages. 
 
 The monotheism of the prophets, 
 equally with their ethics, is based on 
 conditions plain enough when once per- 
 ceived. From Amos onward, Yahweh is 
 presented, not as the only existing god, 
 but as the Supreme One, the Lord of 
 lords and God of gods. We have already 
 observed the social and political circum- 
 stances, in the earlier history of Israel, 
 which lay behind the " increase of Yah- 
 weh." The literary prophets put further 
 
THE WRITING PROPHETS 99 
 
 touches upon the conception. Their the- 
 ology, however, was plainly incidental, 
 and subordinate, to their social preaching. 
 They made use of Yahweh as a magnet 
 wherewith to draw the people into con- 
 duct which they thought would solve the 
 social problem; and it was but natural, 
 under such conditions, that they should 
 present the god of Israel in the most allur- 
 ing and powerful character possible. In 
 so doing, they unconsciously strained to 
 the uttermost the conception of Yahweh 
 as god of heaven and earth. 
 
 The hope of Israel, as developed in the 
 later prophets, anticipated a final Utopia. 
 The glories of the united kingdom of 
 David and Solomon were to return with 
 added glory; and the people were to live 
 under a king who was the Anointed of 
 Yahweh — the Messiah. The so-called 
 "messianic hope" looked forward to a 
 political king reigning over a kingdom of 
 rightness. 
 
XIV 
 THE EXILE AND AFTER 
 
 The prophets had been preaching more 
 than a century when the principal inhabi- 
 tants of the northern kingdom were car- 
 ried away into a captivity from which 
 they never returned (722 B. C). Judah, 
 the southern kingdom, was now left as 
 the sole representative of Israel. But in 
 the early part of the sixth century the 
 principal inhabitants of Judah were car- 
 ried into the famous Babylonian exile. 
 The troubles of Israel had now culmin- 
 ated in utter loss of national existence. 
 Thus the prophets were finally justified in 
 their claim that worship of other gods be- 
 side Yahweh brought evil. 
 
 After an enforced absence of about fifty 
 years, many of the exiled Judeans and 
 their children were permitted to return. 
 In dependence upon the sovereignty of 
 Persia, Israel was reconstituted under the 
 
THE EXILE AND AFTER loi 
 
 form of the Jewish state, with its capital 
 at Jerusalem. 
 
 From the standpoint of cult, the net 
 effect of the exile was to fasten Yahwism 
 upon Israel more firmly than ever. If we 
 look at the facts from the cult standpoint 
 alone, the prophetic movement was a 
 great success; for in all the world there 
 have never been more fanatical devotees 
 than the post-exilic Judeans. A beginning 
 in this direction was made by the revolu- 
 tion of Jehu, wherein foreign gods were 
 cast out. Other pre-exilic spasms of re- 
 form carried the purification further. 
 Finally the exile itself completed the pro- 
 cess : Israel flung all other worships " to 
 the moles and to the bats." A faithful- 
 ness to Yahweh which included abhor- 
 rence of all other gods became the sign of 
 Jewish integrity. This was not senti- 
 ment. It was a practical proposition. 
 
 But although the prophetic movement 
 was at length successful in the realm of 
 cult, it failed of any large issue in reform- 
 ing the Hfe of the people; for the social 
 problem after the exile was the same as 
 
102 EGOISM 
 
 before. Landed property concentrated in 
 the hands of a small wealthy class, under 
 which the masses lived in economic de- 
 pendence. 
 
 The religious conceptions of Israel after 
 the exile were undoubtedly an advance 
 upon religious conceptions before that 
 period. Pre-exilic religion was a practical 
 polytheism. But the official religion of 
 post-exilic Israel was a practical mono- 
 theism. 
 
 The religion of Israel, as finally estab- 
 lished after the exile, while in advance of 
 pre-exilic ideas and practices, was incom- 
 plete. A few mountain-top souls, like 
 Jeremiah, transcended its limitations; but 
 at the most it offered only the raw- 
 material of a universal faith. On the 
 whole, the religion of the Old Covenant, 
 in spite of its implicit outreach to some- 
 thing nobler, was a religion of direct ego- 
 ism. A New Covenant, or Testament, in- 
 volving the general principle of altruism, 
 was necessary to complete the process be- 
 gun under the older system. 
 
XV 
 JESUS OF NAZARETH 
 
 The expansion of Israel's faith into a 
 form fit for the world at large was ac- 
 complished in the experience of Jesus, the 
 prophet of Nazareth. The central fact in 
 the experience of Jesus was his new con- 
 sciousness of the Divine Majesty. He 
 boldly declares that before his time the 
 world has not known God. " Father, the 
 world knew thee not; but I knew thee. 
 No one knoweth the Father but the Son. 
 No one knoweth who the Father is save 
 the Son." ^ This is the vastest and most 
 daring proposition ever laid down by a 
 religious teacher. Jesus was plainly 
 aware that his consciousness of the Divine 
 w^as new to men. Yet to him it was an 
 expression of an ancient fact. 
 
 The solution of this paradox of a new- 
 old God is to be found in the domain of 
 
 ^John 17:25; Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22; cf. 
 John 7 : 28, 29 ; 15:21. 
 
 103 
 
104 EGOISM 
 
 sociology. The great historical period ly- 
 ing between the Old and New Testaments 
 was required to produce the psychology 
 of Jesus. 
 
 In the early stages of social evolution it 
 is the heads of families, the leaders of the 
 '^ fathers' houses," who alone constitute 
 the legal element of the community. The 
 supremacy of fatherhood is a universal 
 fact in primitive society. It was the 
 fathers in the early days that were the 
 chief warriors and defenders of the 
 people. Since the gods were developed, 
 along the lines of ancestor-worship, from 
 dead chiefs and leaders, it is not remark- 
 able that they should be represented as 
 partaking of the general character of 
 early chiefs. The ancient gods were thus 
 primarily war-gods. Yahweh was a god 
 of barbarian tribes which attacked and 
 occupied the lands of other people, and 
 which were in turn compelled to defend 
 themselves against repeated invasion. It 
 was Yahweh who led the people in these 
 wars. Their battles are called ''the 
 battles of Yahweh." And Yahweh him- 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH 105 
 
 self is called " a man of war." A common 
 title given to him is that of " god of hosts, 
 mighty in battle." As a general proposi- 
 tion, Old Testament theology was a re- 
 flection of Old Testament sociology. 
 
 But in the time between the Old and 
 New Testaments the evolution of society 
 passed through important stages. A 
 great industrial and commercial class 
 arose. This class — the plebeians — 
 fought for political rights, and at length 
 secured a voice in the government along- 
 side the old family nobility. Rome led 
 the way in this ; but the development was 
 general. The earlier system of govern- 
 ment, founded on the fathers' houses, 
 gave way to a system founded on prop- 
 erty, regardless of descent. Govern- 
 mental activities and political rights, 
 although open to fathers, no longer per- 
 tained to them in their paternal character. 
 A citizen under the new order of things 
 did not necessarily belong to an ancient 
 noble family. Crowded out of the polit- 
 ical sphere, fatherhood, no longer asso- 
 ciated with war, grew more industrial. 
 
io6 EGOISM 
 
 peaceable, and lovable. This far-reaching 
 social change was first realized in the 
 civilizations of Greece and Rome; and 
 the influence and rule of these countries 
 at length extended all around the Mediter- 
 ranean. Israel was drawn into a new 
 world. The growth of commerce and in- 
 dustry found expression in the rise of new 
 cities and the growth of old ones. 
 " Nothing strikes the student more for- 
 cibly than the number of new cities 
 that now come to the front. The old 
 towns when conquered or surrendered are 
 rebuilt and reorganized. By their side 
 many new ones spring into existence. 
 The kings are pre-eminently patrons of 
 these cities. Alexander himself is said 
 to have founded more than sixty in his 
 brief career. The number founded by his 
 successors rises into the hundreds. In 
 Palestine, as elsewhere, old and new cities 
 received the Greek organization."^ 
 
 Jesus grew up in an artisan family in 
 the city of Nazareth, an important indus- 
 
 ='H. p. Smith, Old Testament History (New 
 York, 1903), p. 417. 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH 107 
 
 trial center. The father was a carpenter; 
 and the son followed the paternal business 
 until about the age of thirty. It is in- 
 structive to note that, while the Old 
 Testament religion was largely developed 
 in the country, the New Testament reli- 
 gion evolved in the city. Although in 
 Jesus the terms of religion were at length 
 liberated from dependence upon any one 
 element of society, the standpoint of early 
 Christianity was distinctly urban. Not 
 only was Jesus a city man, but the dis- 
 ciple through whose labors the new faith 
 was spread abroad in the world was Paul 
 of Tarsus, "no mean city."^ The dis- 
 ciples were first called Christians in the 
 city of Antioch.^ The epistles of Paul are 
 directed mostly to city churches in such 
 industrial and commercial centers as 
 Corinth and Rome. One of our principal 
 terms for non-Christian religions is de- 
 rived from the Latin noun pagtis, mean- 
 ing the country districts. The religions 
 in the Roman Empire which were opposed 
 to Christianity are known collectively as 
 
 ^ Acts 21 : 39. * Acts 1 1 : 26. 
 
io8 EGOISM 
 
 ''paganism," the religion of the rural 
 classes. The implication of this term is 
 that Christianity was early identified with 
 city rather than with country. 
 
 The religious consciousness of Jesus 
 was an outgrowth of social evolution 
 working upon the conceptions of the Old 
 Testament. Studying the sacred books of 
 his people, he found the God of Israel de- 
 scribed, on the one hand, as a father, and, 
 on the other, as ruler of heaven and earth. 
 Jesus read back into the word " father," 
 which had been applied to Yahweh in the 
 days of old, all the wealth of meaning 
 with which the subsequent evolution of 
 society had invested this term. If Yah- 
 weh were both Father and God of all, as 
 the prophets affirmed, then he must be 
 everything that was nozi' implied in the 
 ideal of fatherhood; he must be the Pa- 
 ternal Superlative, the loving Father of 
 every man, regardless of nationality or 
 station in life. This was a simple step to 
 take; yet nobody had really taken it be- 
 fore the time of Jesus in the whole- 
 hearted way that he took it. By giving 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH 109 
 
 himself to thoughts of God in this char- 
 acter, and by spending long hours alone in 
 fasting and prayer, he developed a new 
 standard of religious life. From the out- 
 look thus acquired, he calmly announced 
 that the world had not hitherto known 
 the Divine, and that his own experience 
 (i. e , an experience like his) must hence- 
 forth be the way in which God and man 
 should associate.^ 
 
 Jesus plainly realized that no one had 
 ever laid hold upon the Divine as he did ; 
 but, since there was no science of his- 
 torical sociology in his day, he was unable 
 to explain this fact, and probably he did 
 not even speculate about it. In both the 
 synoptic and the Johannine accounts, dif- 
 ferent as they are, Jesus appears as one in 
 
 ^ The affirmation, " No man cometh unto the 
 Father but by me," should be read in the light of the 
 symbolism which Jesus himself, or the writer of 
 John (it makes no difference which), employs in the 
 preceding sentence, i. e., " I am the Way," etc. 
 When Jesus declares, " I am the Way," he can only 
 be speaking in the figure," My life — my attitude — 
 is the Way." Therefore, when he goes on to say, 
 " No man cometh unto the Father but by me," he 
 means that we cannot fellowship with the Divine 
 (nor with each other, for that matter) save by the 
 way which his experience illustrates. 
 
no EGOISM 
 
 whom the sense of history is lost in a 
 deeper sense of the immediate reaHty 
 whereof historical phenomena are but a 
 passing manifestation. 
 
 The new doctrine of divinity involved 
 in its very essence a new doctrine of hu- 
 manity. Jesus could not have his con- 
 sciousness of God without having a corre- 
 lative consciousness of man. The uni- 
 versal divine fatherhood implied a uni- 
 versal human brotherhood. If God were 
 the loving Father of all, then all men were 
 neighbors and brothers, regardless of race 
 or nationality.^ 
 
 At a time when such conceptions had 
 never been seriously entertained, Jesus 
 both preached and practiced them in a 
 way that touched men more profoundly 
 than any other appeal in all history. He 
 
 ' We are not, of course, attempting in this limited 
 space a rounded philosophy of Jesus. Yet the pres- 
 ent interpretation is written in a spirit of protest 
 against any view which sets up an antithesis between 
 Jesus and the rest of humanity by postulating in 
 him an element of mystery which is not common to 
 us all. This matter is discussed a little more fully 
 in the writer's Examination of Society, pp. 206-20 ; 
 and it will be exclusively treated in the volume al- 
 ready announced under the title The Psychology of 
 the Prophets. 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH in 
 
 taught that men must Hud themselves by 
 losing themselves in the mutual service of 
 a society consisting of God and men. In 
 him the ethical protest of the older 
 prophets was wholly freed from its de- 
 pendence upon local conditions. In him 
 the moral imperative was expressed in 
 universal terms. 
 
 Jesus regarded himself as the true ful- 
 filment of the older prophecy, the Mes- 
 siah, the Anointed One; the king who 
 should rule in righteousness; the moral 
 and spiritual, rather than the material, 
 completion of his people's hope. 
 
XVI 
 THE PRACTICAL ISSUE 
 
 Granting these propositions, the ulti- 
 mate question is : What is the practical 
 issue? What good are they for us, here 
 and now? This is not an illegitimate in- 
 quiry. It is eminently proper. Coming 
 up, as it must, in the mind of everybody 
 who w^ill read this essay, it supplies inci- 
 dental proof of the egoistic proposition. 
 We formulate the practical issue of the 
 study as follows : 
 
 As we have already emphasized, the 
 reaction between self and other is pri- 
 marily individualistic. Whatever be the 
 evil encountered in society, it is thus 
 cavalierly ascribed to this or that other. 
 The bad situation is charged up to the bad 
 will of some individual or individuals. 
 And the remedy is lightly assumed to lie 
 always in the reformation of people as 
 individuals. The reaction between self 
 and other is largely conditioned by what 
 
THE PRACTICAL ISSUE 113 
 
 may be called "negative perception." 
 When this condition exists, we perceive 
 that a certain thing is done by the other, 
 but we fail to grasp the entire situation in 
 which the other stands. In such cases our 
 perceptions are virtually reports contain- 
 ing unanalyzed material. Hence the dia- 
 lectic of the reaction between self and 
 other is often invalid. There will always 
 be a place for individualism; but it does 
 not have the place widely assigned it on 
 the basis of common perceptions ; and the 
 progress of thought must readjust it 
 within a broader and truer perspective. 
 
 In view of these facts, the problem be- 
 fore society is primarily psychological. A 
 change of attitude with reference to the 
 whole social question, past and present, is 
 imperatively demanded. The solution of 
 social problems in the future — so far as 
 their settlement is possible — waits upon 
 enlarging insight into the total human 
 process. 
 
 The church has undoubtedly been the 
 most popular moral institution of all his- 
 tory; and for this reason discussion of 
 
114 EGOISM 
 
 the social problem can be made to center 
 more effectively ajjout the church than 
 around any other social fact. It is in the 
 world's predisposition to a purely indi- 
 vidual morality that we find the secret of 
 the popularity of the ethics of the church. 
 The ethical attitude of the church gathers 
 up the moral notions of men, and reflects 
 these notions back on the social mass. It 
 is not the church that has planted the ideas 
 of good and evil in society. It is society 
 that has produced the church. Religious 
 institutions manifest and express one 
 phase of the life of associated men. It 
 needs to be iterated and reiterated that 
 the ethics of the church are not peculiar 
 to it. The church, as a moral institution, 
 mostly takes up, and gives official stand- 
 ing to, the universal secular reaction of 
 the self against the others. 
 
 The historical assumption of the 
 church, tacit or avowed, has been that the 
 world's evil (aside from purely physical 
 evil) arises out of individual bad will. 
 The development of both the Jewish and 
 Christian churches has been attended, on 
 
THE PRACTICAL ISSUE 115 
 
 the moral side, with protest merely 
 against individual sins. The church has 
 never committed itself to any proposition 
 recognizing the organic nature of society. 
 It has proclaimed, in effect : " Society is 
 a mere crowd. If the crowd is to be set 
 right, its units must be set right indi- 
 vidually. Let every citizen become a 
 better citizen and a better man ; and then 
 the crowd, society, the world, will be all 
 right." In effect, the church occupies the 
 position of one who insists that for the 
 operating of a steam-engine all we need is 
 individual righteousness and brotherly 
 love. By concentrating attention upon 
 individualism, and emphasizing this to the 
 exclusion of other standpoints, the church 
 has practically thrown the weight of its 
 large official influence in denial of the 
 organic nature of society. It has been 
 innocent of a sociological outlook. No 
 counter-claim, however strenuous, can 
 break the tremendous force of this fact. 
 Even in the Christian church the idea of 
 brotherhood, and of membership in each 
 other, has had no effect on the search for 
 
ii6 EGOISM 
 
 the grounds of social problems. The 
 ethical protest of the church — Jewish 
 and Christian, Catholic and Protestant — 
 has in all ages ignored the organic nature 
 of society, and has thus helped to conceal 
 the fact that the world's problems are 
 partly based on defects of the social sys- 
 tem. 
 
 Of course, the philosophical student of 
 society cannot, with extreme radicals, find 
 here the evidence of some vast conspiracy 
 against human progress. It must be in- 
 sisted that the ethical attitude of the 
 church reflects the ethical attitude of so- 
 ciety. The church is what it is because 
 society is what it is; and the church- 
 problem is really the world-problem. 
 Radicals who imagine the church to be 
 cleverly interposing a bar to progress are 
 not radical enough. They give the 
 church too much credit for insight. The 
 point we are trying to make in this final 
 part of our essay is that present official 
 institutions of religion must be freed 
 from the conventional individualism in 
 ethics. 
 
THE PRACTICAL ISSUE 117 
 
 Let US not be understood as implying 
 the futility of the religious phase of social 
 evolution. The religious process itself 
 can be treated from several points of 
 view ; and our criticism refers only to one 
 aspect of the process. 
 
 Looking back over the course of reli- 
 gious development, a number of distinct 
 stages project themselves into view. Each 
 stage was ushered in by a revolution 
 which abolished an old evil and secured a 
 new good. The religious process has 
 worked out in logical order, and could not 
 have taken any other course than that 
 actually followed. 
 
 The rise of the heathen cults was an 
 important and useful movement ; for they 
 supplied centers of social coherence and 
 authority, as well as met real spiritual 
 needs in the domain of personality. But 
 the local cults of heathenism are not cap- 
 able of indefinite service; and in the fol- 
 lowing stage they embody positive social 
 abuses. The correction of these evils was 
 accomplished by the rise of the Old Testa- 
 ment religion on the wreck of the earlier 
 
ii8 EGOISM 
 
 heathenism. This was, in effect, a vicari- 
 ous achievement on behalf of the world. 
 The value of the Old Testament stage lies 
 in the triumph of the principle that human 
 problems are to be attacked, not by burn- 
 ing incense to Deity in the hope that Deity 
 will set things right, but by men trying to 
 right things themselves. It was inevit- 
 able that the principle of self-help should 
 come into the world in purely individual- 
 istic form, since there was no sociology in 
 the days of the prophets. In the follow- 
 ing stage, marked by the appearance of 
 the Christian church, the principle of hu- 
 man struggle for righteousness is empha- 
 sized anew from the standpoint of more 
 liberal conceptions of divinity and human- 
 ity. And in the next stage the Protestant 
 Reformation establishes the right of pri- 
 vate judgment. If we live in a universe 
 in which spiritual values preponderate 
 over all else, then this process (going on 
 within the total social process) has not 
 been futile. It must have an eternal sig- 
 nificance, not merely for present actors, 
 but for all personality. Not only must 
 
THE PRACTICAL ISSUE 119 
 
 earlier ages work for later generations; 
 but posterity must make achievement for 
 those that have long since left the tem- 
 poral stage, " that apart from us they 
 should not be made perfect." ^ 
 
 All these beneficent revolutions, how- 
 ever, lie in the past. The church now 
 faces a condition which, whatever it may 
 have in common with earlier conditions, 
 involves practically a new problem. It 
 needs to be emphasized that the world of 
 today is not the w^orld of the Old Testa- 
 ment prophets, nor of the New Testament 
 prophets, nor of the Protestant reformers. 
 We are not living in the days of Elijah, 
 nor Amos, nor Isaiah, nor Jesus, nor Paul, 
 nor Luther. And if we try to meet the 
 new problems by falling back on the old 
 formulas, we shall utter commonplaces 
 that have no practical application to pres- 
 ent difficulties. 
 
 Again, let us not be understood as 
 advocating enlistment of the church in 
 some concrete readjustment of the social 
 system. The claim here is that the mo- 
 
 ^ Heb, 1 1 : 40. 
 
120 EGOISM 
 
 mentum of the religious enterprise in 
 modern society goes against a scientific 
 interpretation of today's problems; and 
 that herein is involved a crisis equal in 
 importance to any of the earlier crises in 
 social history. Surprising as it may ap- 
 pear to some, the problem of today's 
 church is not primarily intellectual, but 
 moral. Settlement of the purely intel- 
 lectual questions of religious faith is im- 
 plicit in resolution of the moral crisis. 
 The present decline in the influence and 
 prestige of official religion issues from 
 this great moral fact. 
 
 It is useless to try to dodge this diffi- 
 culty by claiming that the church is con- 
 cerned with '^the relation between God 
 and man," and that it has no immediate 
 interest in social problems. If this be a 
 church theory, it certainly is not a church 
 practice. The official claim is that the 
 church is an agency for ushering in the 
 kingdom of God, and setting the world 
 right. Surely, this is a very ambitious 
 object. In fact, no movement of social 
 reform ever acknowledged a vaster pur- 
 
THE PRACTICAL ISSUE 121 
 
 pose. And yet^ on the whole (we do not 
 say there are no personal exceptions), the 
 church is not hospitable to reforms based 
 on radical analysis of society. Although 
 one of the professed objects of the church 
 is to set the world right, nobody is quicker 
 than the '' pillars " of the church to cast 
 slurs on ''world-menders." However 
 prompt the church may be to take refuge 
 in its transcendental functions when the 
 social problem is raised, it is never back- 
 ward about denunciation of individual sin 
 as the one root of the social problem. 
 
 Whether it is possible to modify the di- 
 rection of attention in the church is a 
 vital question. We have not given this 
 phase of the subject sufficient thought to 
 venture a final opinion. It would be too 
 much at present to take either a positive 
 or a negative attitude. What is needed is 
 full and frank discussion, academic and 
 popular, in the light of modern thought 
 and knowledge. 
 

 Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^u.. 
 
 
 
 
 rwjkmm 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Kirrfrm- 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 • ^^.^^^^,,.^>..«... 
 
 Uk^iHUM^^' 
 
 
 
 ,.m0fr'''^- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
BS1196.4.W21 
 
 Egoism : a study in the social premises 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1012 00033 7867