II.

CHAP. institutions was distinctive, separative, incapable of compromise, impatient of amalgamation; so distinctive, so peculiar, that the wonderful vitality of Hebraism in after-times can only be explained on the hypothesis that men's devotion to it had been supernaturally produced, and ever since the childhood of the nation had been growing upward with their growth. Or if advancing from these general probabilities we study some of the first chapters in the national records of the Israelites, we shall again perceive at every turn the traces of antagonism between their own and the Egyptian system. In the Exodus itself, which led the way to the formation of the legal institute, we have to witness no mere secular emancipation from the yoke of a new line of Pharaohs, but the mightiest of religious victories which the ancient world had seen. Designed to vindicate the personality and holiness of God, as well as the distinctness of His chosen people, it was ushered in by a succession of stupendous acts which tended to rebuke and stultify the nature-worship of Mizraim: it was consummated in that moment, when the Hebrews, flushed with hope and exultation, were all forward in responding to the grateful anthem of their leader: 'I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously

. The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation' (Ex. xv. 1, 2). As, therefore, in the parallel case where Christianity is struggling hand to hand with some bewitching or besotting form of heathenism, it is most needful to protect her neophyte against all risk of fresh contamination by decrying or discountenancing customs which may serve, remotely even, to perpetuate

II.

modes of thought and feeling adverse to the right- CHAP. ful exercise of her transforming influence; so the Pentateuch evinces a continual jealousy lest peradventure the old thirst for heathenish vices should be stimulated through the medium of unhallowed associations. Intermarriage, for example, with the neighbouring heathen is most sternly interdicted both by Moses and by Joshua whenever it is likely to involve among its fruits the imitation or adoption of heathen customs. The redeemed community have ample warrant for believing that they are no more a friendless band of foreign shepherds, mingled and well-nigh confounded with the meanest subjects of the Pharaohs, but 'a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a peculiar treasure unto God above all people' (Ex. xix. 5, 6); and because the ground of such election, owing to the nature of God Himself, is ultimately and entirely moral, the elected race is under a proportionate obligation to exhibit in the sight of the surrounding world its moral superiority: After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their ordinances. Ye shall do My judgments, and keep Mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the Lord your God.' (Lev. xviii. 3, 4).

The question, therefore, as to the transmission Mode of investigaof religious thoughts and usages from the Egyption here tian to the Hebrew is discovered to be far more followed. complicated than at first sight may appear. It is a question, little likely to be solved, as many writers have of late attempted, by adducing an array of bare presumptions on the one side or the other.

II.

CHAP. To discuss it we must enter on a rigorous examination of the facts themselves; and with a view to such investigation, I shall here arrange all possible affinities in two separate classes1: (1) the minor points of ritualism which may have been inherited in common, or externally derived from one system to the other, without implying any true internal sympathy; and (2) the cardinal points of doctrine which must ever have determined the character of those systems, and have proved the real secret of their weakness or their strength.

General

nature of

§ I. Ritual Resemblances.

Before entering on the criticism of any particuancient lar instances, it is important to recal attention to symbolism. remarks already made in reference to the offices discharged by symbolism in the religions of antiquity. The lack of any clear ideas on this point has tended more than other causes to becloud the whole of the discussions opened in the present chapter. I have urged that since the ancient Hebrew was in temperament, as also in the measure of his intellectual training, not unlike the native of surrounding countries, symbolism of some kind or other was most needful in that early period to the planting of religious truth and its development within him. He was far less capable than his remote descendants of all abstract and unearthly contemplation; he was living more than they in the impressions made upon the eyesight; and ac

1 All inquiries into merely civil and political arrangements are passed over as not directly bearing on the

present subject.

2 Part I. pp. 100 sq.

II.

Mosaic in

cordingly it was the part of wisdom in obtaining CHAP. from him the acceptance of a supersensuous truth to represent, or, one might say, embody it in concrete shapes, to clothe it in more visible and sensuous drapery, and enforce it by suggestive actions and symbolical institutions. Here, as in the case of teaching by parable or allegory, a pure thought has been invested in expressive forms which bring it more directly under the cognisance of every human mind endowed with the most elementary of religious intuitions. Symbol was, in other words, Character a species of primeval language: the symbolic institutions were the illustrated and illuminated books, stitute. in which the early generations of the human family might learn the rudiments of true religion: and, aided as it was among the Hebrews by a series of collateral expositions ever guarding it from misconstruction and reverting to the spiritual principles on which it had been framed, the ritual law was one of God's chief agents in the education of the elder Church. It deepened in man's heart the consciousness of his dependence and degeneracy; it taught the need of a redemption and foreshadowed the Redeemer; while by it the grand conception of one holy God had been associated with the homeliest of man's actions, and diffused 'into the very midst of the popular life.' Compared with Christianity, indeed, that ritual system of the Hebrew was unripe and rudimentary; it was made up of 'weak and beggarly elements;' it proved itself a Pædagogue and not the Teacher; the result to which it ever pointed the aspirations of its worthier subjects was not actually achieved until the fulness of the times had come,' until the Incarna

II.

CHAP. tion of the Son of God and the effusion of the quickening Spirit: yet in reference to the stage of progress then attainable by man, it offered an effectual apparatus for evoking and conserving the religious principle; and when at last the sentence of abrogation was pronounced, the law of ordinances fell, as scaffolding falls off, because the edifice it served to rear had reached the full proportions, and because a system not inglorious in itself has 'no glory in this respect by reason of the glory that excelleth.'

Under what conditions

the sym

If, then, sacred emblems of the ancient world were thus peculiarly significant; if symbolic institutions were a species of necessity arising out of and hea the capacities and condition of the human mind, tems might and so were common to the rituals both of Jew

bolism of

Hebrew

then sys

correspond. and heathen, all objections to the Bible which

depend upon the mere existence of resemblances between these rituals, irrespectively, that is, of the ideas therein embodied, fall entirely to the ground. It would be equally presumptuous to disparage or reject the doctrines of the Gospel, prior to all scrutiny of its contents, because these doctrines are transmitted to us in the ordinary characters made use of in the printing of the other writings of antiquity, or else because particular forms of speech are found to be employed alike by the Apostle of the Gentiles, and the orators, the poets or the moralists of ancient Greece. The same outward act or emblem might continue to embody the same primitive truth and so be equally innocuous in both systems, which are made the subjects of comparison. Or, upon the other hand, it might be gradually connected in the lapse of ages with