two. "For all," he says, "that relates in the Old Testament to that antithesis, Luther has opened the understanding as none other has done. And whosoever desires to apprehend what the Old Testament has to testify, in doctrine and history, of the severity of the law and judgment of God, of the curse of sin and the comfortlessness of a life without God, but also, at the same time, of the longing for the forgiveness of sins and the purging of the heart, and of the faith in the promises of God, has the best help for that object in Luther's writings, and especially in his exposition of the Psalms, which surpasses many more recent interpretations and expositions that partly misapprehend and partly reduce to the commonplace what is essential in Old Testament piety." And if it is true that the Old Testament, as a whole, exhibits this wondrous correspondence with the soul's wants and experiences, it is true pre-eminently of the Psalms, which have been taken up as the book of devotion for all ages, in which each man in his own day reads out the language most applicable to his own position, and in which there are notes attuned to harmonise with all the varied music of the deep heart of man, whether it sounds to hope or to fear, to the sense of sin or the joy of remission, to the terror of the law or the comforts of grace, to gladness or sorrow, to unrest or peace. And in all this is there not something which is left unaccounted for by the theory that these Old Testament writings are in nothing distinguished essentially from the religious books of other nations? In this peculiar relation borne to the man and to the Christian, in this inner and profound connection with the life that stirs most deeply within us, in this power of spiritual suggestiveness, in this capacity of appeal to the soul's most proper wants and experiences, should we not recognise considerations pointing us on to the conclusion that this, at least, was no common people, and that these are no common records?

In a similar way, the appreciation even of the more outward characteristics of these writings leads us to the same issue. We see this, for example, in various peculiarities that shew themselves in the history which is recorded. For if one reads these books with due care, and gathers up thoughtfully the outstanding features of the history there given of the people, and their beliefs, life, and institutes, he can scarce fail to acknowledge a complete difference between these and any other national literature with which he may be familiar. He will see that, whatever may be the ultimate explanation given of the fact, this cannot fairly be called a secular literature in the same sense as others. It is indeed a history, and it is therefore, in so far the product of the life and genius of the people, as it consists of a variety of writings composed by authors belonging to the nation, who lived at different periods, and wrote at the

The Spirit of the History not National but Religious. 31

call of different necessities or impulses. But if these histories of the Hebrews be compared with those, e.g., of Greece and Rome, this broad distinction becomes apparent, that while the latter are completely permeated by a simply national spirit, by the glorification of their own people, and the magnifying of their own achievements, the former breathe a purely religious spirit which assigns the honour of even their grandest national triumphs, not to their own genius or prowess, but at once to the wisdom and hand of God. "The Israelite annals," it has been well remarked,* "unlike the records of any other nation, in ancient or modern times, which has thrown off the yoke of slavery, claim no merit, no victory of their own. There is no Marathon, no Regillus, no Tours, no Morgarten. All is from above, nothing from themselves." Even the accounts of their most splendid successes in arms contain no note of a merely military triumph. In the capture of Jericho, the battle of Beth-horon, the victories of Gideon, and Barak, and David, it is the right hand of the Lord that doeth valiantly. Even on that day when the waters of the Red Sea were divided before them, that day which Dean Stanley fitly designates as the birthday of the religion, of the liberty, of the nation, of Israel," it is Jehovah that triumphed gloriously, and cast the horses and the riders of Egypt into the sea. And in the songs of Miriam and Deborah, it is Jehovah that is praised as conqueror and deliverer, and through all the dangers and conflicts of the wilderness, it is the Lord "that led His people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron." Everything is looked at here in its immediate relation to God. The very land takes its name from the promise of God, its mountains are the hills of God, its streams are the rivers of God. This is a feature of their history which stands out so boldly as to arrest the attention of students of very different tendencies. Even Herdert recognises it, and acknowledges its unique nature thus: "In the history of other nations there are indications that they designated here and there a small piece of their soil as made sacred by the presence of their God; but I know no people whose poetry, like their's, has made the poverty of their country exhibit the fulness of God, and consecrated its narrow limits as a theatre for displaying the majesty of Jehovah." And so, again, side by side with this sinking of the merely national spirit in the religious, we observe also a similar overpassing of the local into the universal. For as the achievements and events recorded in this history differ from those of other nations in being all carried up directly to God's will and God's glory, so the religion

* Stanley's "Lectures on the Jewish Church," First Series, p. 117. "Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry," by Marsh, I. p. 236.

embodied in it differs from that of other nations in passing beyond the people and the country. The religions of other ancient nationalities are bound up with the soil, and neither they nor their records can be understood, in what is most peculiar to them, without some knowledge of those national and territorial circumstances in the midst of which they have had their growth. But the reverse is the case with the religion and religious records of the Hebrews. And this constitutes another marked difference between the two, that that very religion which is most exclusive in respect of the demands it makes for supremacy and in the hostile aspect it wears towards all other forms, is just the only one that is in the truest sense universal and independent of all mere local relations and peculiarities of soil or geographical position. And once more, with respect to the history, both national and religious, contained in these writings, we have to remember that the picture it gives of the people is the very opposite of what might naturally have been expected. On the supposition that these were either a series of myths, or a collection of the natural products of the literary genius and religious sentiments of the nation, what sort of history would we naturally look for in them? Would we not expect to find something resembling what is actually found in other nations,-a history flattering the national vanity, eulogistic of the national character, and encircling the founders and heroes of the race with a halo of dazzling marvels? And how different is the case with these Hebrew records! How simple and modest is the account given of the great progenitors of the people, Abraham and the patriarchs. The poetic aim which is seen glancing through the accounts of battles and victories, and travels and voyages, in other early literatures, is not seen here. Instead of that, we discover that the magnifying of God, and the reference of all the parts of their history to Him are the cords that run through and bind together the records of this nation. And how unfavourable, again, is the view given of the people themselves. It shews many things in which they might have gloried,-but it shews how in most their glory was turned to shame. It is a mirror of their shortcomings, their rebellions, their stiffness of neck, their blindness, and their sin. It is a book for their condemnation. It is a history, not flattering, but offending the national feelings, not grateful, but repugnant to mere national prejudices, and unlike the first literary products of other nations in the predominantly unfavourable representation it gives of the people to whom it belongs. And in all this again, do we not see something only very partially accounted for by that theory which we contest? And in such outlying characteristics as these, do we not find at least the presumption of a unique and divine purpose in these books and this history?

The Historic Continuity of the Revelation.

33

And this presumption that these writings must be something more than the product of the most religious genius among the nations of antiquity, will be strengthened by a minuter examination of their contents. For by this their distinctive character will be yet more impressively evinced. There are two things that chiefly merit our attention here. And they are those to which we have seen Ehler refer in the choice of the term historisch-genetisch, to express the nature of the religious revelation contained in the Old Testament books. These two things, its historical and its genetic or progressive character, are perhaps the notes which, in our present point of view, most distinctly and decisively individualise it and its records, and assert for them a standing exclusively their own. Of these, therefore, we shall also make some mention, though it must necessarily be in the way of cursory indication rather than of ample discussion. Now in the closer and more penetrating examination of these writings, taken as a whole, and considered as the memorials of Hebrew life and religion, the first thing, perhaps, that strikes the student as peculiar to them, is the circumstance that, in a method unseen in other antique literatures, the whole narrative of the fortunes of the people is carried up to great divine purposes, while all the purely moral and religious truth enunciated is in like manner bound up in the most intimate way with the events, deeds, and institutions of the history. The Old Testament gives neither a simple narrative of national arrangements and occurrences, nor a precise and clearly-cut system of doctrinal teaching. The religious consciousness of the Israelite, as we decipher it here, shews itself neither in a compact body of beliefs, nor in the shape of dogmatic teaching, nor in any system of pure, speculalative thought, but in and through a history, that is to say, in and through a series of dispensations befalling the nation, in a set of institutions peculiar to it, and in events, appointments, and deliverances, which met them from time to time in their national course, and in which they believed they could clearly trace the hand of God. We cannot separate here the history of the people, or the record of their outward career, from the facts of their religious faith, neither can we frame their religious beliefs into a didactic theology apart from the facts of their history. Indeed, so little does the Old Testament offer of the abstract doctrine of faith and morals, so little does it lay that before us in the form of direct and explicit enunciation, that on this very ground the philosophy of Kant denied altogether the applicability of the name of religion to the Mosaic system. The religious beliefs and sentiments here expressed are not presented as growing up outside, and independently of

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the national fortunes and institutions of Israel, but as determined, maintained, and developed in, and by means of, the numerous appointments of a theocratic constitution, and in and through a series of deeds and dispensations believed to bear the impress of the immediate hand of God. In perfect harmony with this are, for example, the whole contents of their poetry. Its spirit expresses itself always in terms of this fact. It is as statutes, and judgments, and testimonies, that the divine will presents itself to their spiritual perceptions; it is as the ways of God and his ordinances that they ever speak of holiness; it is as an objective law, given to Moses amid the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai, that they most habitually conceive of religious truth; it is for the peace of a historical Jerusalem and the turning again of the captivity of a Sion, that they offer their prayers and thanksgivings; it is in that great initial deliverance by which God brought them out of the house of bondage, and made the waters to stand as heaps until His people should pass to the land of liberty, that their most solemn vows, their holiest convictions, and their deepest piety are seen ever to centre; and the God of their salvation whom they worship and magnify in all, is no abstract divinity, no God of the mere fancy or speculation, no remote deity of philosophy, but the Shepherd of Israel," that "led Joseph like a flock," and "sent a plentiful rain to confirm his inheritance when it was weary." It is of course true that to a certain extent the religious consciousness of other nations also has a real connection with their history. We cannot say that its only medium in the case of all others is found in their mythologies. It does also stand to a certain measure in a real union with their histories, in so far as great crises in the history of nations usually produce some effect upon, and leave some memorial in, the articles and institutions of their faith. But the peculiarity that distinguishes the religious consciousness which expresses itself in the Old Testament from that which shews itself in the literary monuments of other peoples, is its exclusively and continuously historical character. Israel's faith is one bound up with, and realised in, the total sum of the events of their career and the institutions of their theocracy, and neither in mere broken sections of their history nor in myths. And further, their religion, as witnessed to in these books, is of a genetic as well as historic nature. Those facts in which their religious consciousness and faith express themselves, and with which they are so vitally connected, present an unexampled continuity. They constitute such an unbroken, progressive series, as can be traced through the whole compass of the Old Testament, all the parts of which exhibit such relations to each other, that each step may be seen to stand in a real unity with the past