468 JUDAIC SINS OF THE LETTER. the reformer. It had been a promise in the law of Moses*, that God would raise up prophets, reviving the sound of His word in men's hearts. When then He had raised up prophet after prophet, and they had stoned one, and slain another with the sword, and sawn another asundert, they had outraged the better voice of their consciences, and so forfeited the blessing of the spirit, however zealous they might be for the letter of their covenant. The whole argument of St Stephen with his countrymen (in Acts vii.) is, that they had always resisted the Holy Ghost, or stifled the better voice within them. Thus they had not understood Moses, when God raised him up as a deliverer out of Egypt, and it was only characteristic of their old dulness of spirit, that they understood not Christ, when God gave Him as a Deliverer of the soul from evil of stain and fear, and from the bondage of written ordinances. Thus, in rejecting Christ, the Jews only brought to its fatal culmination that habit of rejecting spiritual teachers, which is natural to ‘animal men‡,' and which their history had often shewn. They had accustomed themselves to revile the servants when living, though they garnished their tombs when dead; and at last they rejected the very Son. I do not say that many of us might not have done the same: and in many Christian literalists, especially in those who are most jealous for the historical Christ,' I observe the same stamp of mind which was in the Jews, and which would have turned as deaf an ear to Christ as they did. For such men ever disparage that spiritual power of the Truth, to which our blessed Lord came into the world to bear witness; and they make everything depend on the external authority of the book or the temple, not knowing that God can raise in three days out of the Truth a temple not made with hands. Such men undo the work of Christ, while most zealous for His name. For they make war on that witness in man, to which Christ perpetually appealed, * Deut. xviii. 10—18; xiii. 1-3. Hebrews xi. 37. Such a tradition has been of Isaiah. 1 Corinthians ii. 14, where the unhappy mistranslation of natural, for "the animal man," ," has been a source of confusion to many. JUDAIC SINS OF THE LETTER. 469 and break down that freedom of the soul, which Christ established before God. This they do from having a veil of pride and mistrust upon their hearts. For the worst part in us cannot see the good way of persuasion and love, by which our heavenly Father leads us, and puts instead a worse way, with fear, and bondage to precepts, or to names. Hence, in the name of Him who is true, men sometimes rage against the very Truth. Still it is a fact, that such a sinful tendency of our nature was exemplified by the Jews in an eminent instance. They had suffered their sympathies to contract, and their love of truth to fade, before that of their religious system. Thus they put their own nation before humanity, and the letter of the law before the Spirit of God. The temper thus engendered became a fierce bigotry, and brought on them, by natural causation, the last penalties of a fanatical and obstinate pride. Such tendencies would hardly have gone so far, if the men had kept before the eyes of their mind the living God of the spirits of all flesh. They would then have been more sensible of the lessons He taught them from time to time. They would have learnt of the prophets a wider consciousness of humanity, and have seen with the Psalmists, that 'the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ;' nay even with Solomon, though more clearly with Isaiah, that 'the Lord dwelleth not in temples built with hands.' They would not then have been so shocked at hearing the same sentiment from St Stephen, as to rise up and stone him for sacrilege. Nor would they have entertained so fierce a jealousy of St Paul, for teaching doctrines essentially the same as the most spiritual part of their ancient books. Nor again would they have been hurried into crimes, such as Josephus, their historian, mentions as shortly preceding the fall of their city. For instance, there were the murders of Zacharias, and of others, especially that of Ananus the high priest; and if Josephus, with some lingering fondness for the country which he had deserted, makes the national guilt consist chiefly in the murder of a high-priest, we may as Christians find the same temper shewn in putting to death the Apostle James *, and above all in the crucifixion of James's Master, the Holy and the Just, already spoken of. By such a succession of tragedies, the Jews shewed that zeal without knowledge, which runs upon judgments. In fact, their attachment to the Mosaic system became more passionate, as their understanding of it was less perceptive; and so a zeal for it betrayed them into crimes, of which yet the predisposing causes were certain tempers in themselves. So that, on the whole, I do not indeed justify any persecutions of the Jews by deed or word; but rather think all such proceedings hateful to our common God, and likely to bring on whoever is guilty of them His ancient curse on whoever cursed His people, and His wrath† against those who afflicted them beyond His will; but still I think your difficulty sufficiently answered; for we have seen that, if the Jews were not infidels to the letter of their system, they did not suffer for fidelity to what was best in its spirit. They had so far a veil upon their hearts, that they saw not the original motive, or ultimate tendency of their religion. Thus they have fallen short in a way of the predestinating counsel of God, which yet, we hope, will complete itself in them; and we look forward to a building of them with ourselves into one temple of mankind, in which the spirit of the God of Jacob, and of the living God‡, will dwell. "If now from the ancient unveilings of the Almighty, we turn to the books which record them, the sort of question we have been discussing will reappear. Just as some might doubt, whether the world at large is governed by general law or by special interferences, and others might hesitate whether the knowledge of God has been given to man by development according to fitness, or by jumps of positive imposition and revocation; so the * Compare St James v. 6; Josephus, Bell. Jud. iv. 5, 2, 3, 4; and Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. II. 23. + Genesis xxvii. 29; Ezekiel xxv. xxvi. I take this opportunity of expressing my own conviction, that there neither can nor ought to be any general conversion of the Jews, without a full confession on our part of the wrong we have done their race, in argument and in act. INSPIRATION-HEBREW. 471 Sacred and most Blessed Volume will be interpreted by some largely, as a record of spiritual experiences, and by others narrowly, as a communication of literal words. The more frankly we look at the books collected in what is called the Old Testament, the more clearly we see them to comprehend the literature of the Hebrew priesthood and people. They are an expression of the national mind, or a reflexion of its consciousness. Whatever Almighty God had taught the Hebrews is therein written; whether His lessons had the form of historical facts, or whether they came through a stir of the religious feelings, or whether they took a glow from the colouring of the imagination. No man can truly believe that God governs the world, and each nation in it, without expecting that any true expression of a national consciousness, especially if trained by a devout priesthood, and expounded with constant reference to the God of truth, will be pregnant with lessons significant to all men. For it will at the least be eloquent of that design which we believe to be fulfilling itself, as the will of God, in mankind. For there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding*. It seemed indeed to the old Hebrews, that no guidance less than Divine could originate any art. Hence the arts of ploughing and sowing corn are said in the Bible to come forth from the Lord of hosts t.' The artificers who do cunning work for the tabernacle‡ are said to be filled with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding.' The Psalmist, when successful in battle, says, that the Lord teacheth his fingers to fight§.' When king Saul|| is filled with patriotic fervour, the Spirit of the Lord' is said to come upon him, 'and his anger was kindled greatly.' Even those darker passions and delusions, such as a fit of melancholy or any temptation, which the refined distinctions of later times ascribed to evil spirits, are, in the older books of the Old Testament, said to Job xxxii. 8. § Psalm cxliv. 1. + Isaiah xxviii. 24—29. 1 Samuel xi. 6. Exodus xxv. 30-31. 472 INSPIRATION WITHIN PROVIDENCE. 'come from the Lord*.' Now writers whose perception of the Divine agency was so vivid that they thus ascribed to it every earthly process, would not exclude from its operation the pen of the ready writer, and the chronicle of the recorder. We ourselves have noticed so many steps of law and instrumentality in the order of the world, that we can only accept such sayings by giving them a larger range. We interpret them as meaning, that even the results of human agency are ultimately gifts of a Divine Providence. It is hardly certain how far such interpretation would have agreed with the conception of the original writers. But perhaps it might; for if the question had been stated to them, they would have been found not so much to have denied human agency as to have overleapt it in thought, or made it merely instrumental. One thing is quite clear, that in giving us knowledge of the past or of their own times, the sacred writers never profess to have derived it from other sources than such as were humanly open to them. 'Is it not written?' they say of each memorable fact, in such a book, or chronicle. And when they give genealogies, they do so with a form of quotation, saying, 'these are the generations,' or this is the pedigree. This we read in the Old Testament; and so in the New it was thought important that the first doctors of the Church should have been eye witnesses of the life of Christ; and if any Gospel has seemed written by any who had not been witnesses, the traditions of the early Church are careful to describe such writers as companions of the Apostles. Thereby is implied a consciousness that earthly facts were not to be described even in the most sacred books without earthly means of knowledge. It is quite in harmony with this reasonable view of our Sacred Volume, that every portion of it corresponds, in the range of its knowledge of facts, with the circumstances of each of its writers. There is no account of China or of America, nor any trace of language or science beyond those indigenous to Palestine, or accessible in I Samuel xvi. 14-23; 2 Samuel xxiv. 1; 1 Kings xxii. 19-23 [and less certainly, Ezekiel xiv. 9]. |