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 THE RELIGION OF MOSES
 
 THE 
 
 RELIGION OF MOSES 
 
 ADOLPH MOSES 
 
 LOUISVILLK 
 
 FLKXXKR BROTHERS 
 
 lS 9!
 
 COPYRIGHTKD, lS)4, BY ADOLI'H MOSKS.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 Q$ 
 
 DEDICATED 
 TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 NATHAN BLOOM
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE little book which I offer to the public 
 lays no claim to originality. It is rather 
 hoped that the reader will find in it nothing 
 that will seem new and startling to him. It 
 is simply an attempt, made with much diffi- 
 dence, to bring the basal moral and relig- 
 ious ideas of Yahvism or Jehovism into 
 clear view, and to trace their origin back 
 to their true source to the inspired genius 
 of Moses. For I hold, with the biblical tra- 
 dition, that Moses was in the deepest and 
 widest sense the founder of the religion of 
 Israel. The prophets who came after him did 
 not originate, but only developed and propa- 
 gated the religion of ethical monotheism 
 first promulgated by the son of Amram. 
 My contention is that Mosaism never was 
 a tribal religion. From the very day of its 
 appearance it was universal in essence and 
 scope. Time was, when such views needed 
 no defense; but nowadays it is by many 
 considered unscientific, unworthy of a criti-
 
 Vlll % PREFACE. 
 
 cal student of history, to follow the lines of 
 the biblical tradition with regard to the part 
 played by Moses in the religious life of man- 
 kind. The rise of true monotheism and of 
 its lofty doctrines is ascribed to the prophets 
 of the eighth and seventh centuries before 
 Christ. The creative work of Moses is re- 
 duced to a minimum. The grandest actor 
 in the drama of humanity 'son ward spiritual 
 struggle appears a shadow}' or mythical 
 figure to the distorted vision of hyper-criti- 
 cism. The greatest religious and moral 
 revolution known to history is by an influ- 
 ential school of modern writers referred 
 back to the mysterious agency of slow im- 
 personal development. The Shibboleth of 
 evolution is indiscriminately applied to all 
 phenomena, and is believed to explain read- 
 ily even the most extraordinary manifesta- 
 tions and the greatest works of the human 
 mind. Our age refuses to credit great men 
 with great things. There is blind faith in 
 the progressive forces and the wonderful 
 achievements of the masses. The teeming 
 multitudes of average men are personified
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 as nations, and each people is represented 
 as the unconscious producer of all the 
 results of its civilization. The influence 
 of individual genius on the intellectual, 
 moral, religious and political growth of 
 mankind, is belittled or eliminated as much 
 as possible. 
 
 This tendency is easily accounted for. 
 It was after a long and bitter struggle 
 against the baneful rule of one man and 
 against the selfish sway of aristocracy that 
 the reign of democracy has been established. 
 The political equality of all men has been 
 fought and won on the just theory that all 
 men are born equal as to all human rights. 
 In the stress of this great spiritual battle 
 the old disposition of the race to hero-wor- 
 ship necessarily suffered shock. The belief 
 of the supreme influence of great men on 
 the destinies of nations was well-nigh de- 
 stroyed, and the opposite belief was engen- 
 dered, that the masses are the true creators 
 of civilization, that the} T have by a slow 
 process evolved all that constitutes the 
 wealth and glory of mankind. In a word,
 
 X PRKFACE. 
 
 the spontaneous evolution of the masses 
 toward the higher life became a sort of 
 dogma with leading historians and social 
 philosophers. 
 
 Yet a health)^ reaction has already set in. 
 Thinking men have commenced to realize 
 that the drama of human history minus the 
 parts played therein by the world's great 
 men would be like the play of Hamlet with 
 Hamlet left out. It is always the indomi- 
 table energy of a small minority of superior 
 men that gives birth to new ideas and ideals, 
 originates and sustains new movements, and 
 pushes the masses forward along the path 
 of progress. In matters of science, art, in- 
 vention and government the facts are too 
 patent to require proof. The evidence is no 
 less obvious with regard to the history of re- 
 ligion. Without the genius of Mohammed 
 Islamism would certainly never have sprung 
 into existence. Without him the Arabs 
 might have for thousands of years longer 
 continued to be steeped in idolatry and 
 its degrading practices. Without Jesus and 
 Paul there would assuredly be no Christi-
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 anity. It is undeniable that Prince Gautama 
 Sakya-muni was the founder of Buddhism. 
 These three great religions have spread far 
 and wide, and have been adopted and as- 
 similated by nations which had no share in 
 the formation of their new faith. And yet 
 we are told to believe that Yahvism came 
 into being without the originating genius of 
 a founder, and that the unique phenomenon 
 of moral monotheism simply rose by spon- 
 taneous generation and self-development 
 from the religious consciousness of an idol- 
 atrous and semi-barbarous people. All 
 analogies of history compel us to assume, 
 that some one man of the rarest spiritual 
 powers must have originated those glorious 
 religious ideas and moral ideals which even 
 the wonderful people of Hellas and its 
 wisest man did not attain to. If it was not 
 Moses, then some other man of towering 
 genius must have been the author of what 
 we call Yahvism or Mosaism. Now, all the 
 memories, traditions and records of the 
 Hebrew people agree in regarding Moses 
 ben Amram as the founder of Israel's re-
 
 Xll PREFACE. 
 
 ligion. The prophets of the eighth century 
 nowhere give the faintest hint that they are 
 teaching new religious ideas and moral prin- 
 ciples. All their writings presuppose the 
 religion of Yahvism as well known and uni - 
 versally accepted as the national religion of 
 Israel. All speak of it as a faith established 
 from of old by Moses. 
 
 Many a reader will doubtless ask, "Since 
 you still hold fast to the biblical tradition 
 with regard to Moses, why do you not go a 
 step further in the same direction, and in 
 accordance with the story of the Bible trace 
 the origin of Yahvism back to Abraham, 
 Isaac and Jacob?" To this objection, I 
 reply : The Bible itself makes a clear dis- 
 tinction between the idea of God as revealed 
 by Moses and that known to the patriarchs. 
 "I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 
 as El Shaddai, but by my name Yahve or 
 Jehovah I was not known to them." In 
 the opinion of the sacred writer the Yahvism 
 of Moses manifestly represents a higher re- 
 ligion than was known to the pious ances- 
 tors. Moreover, it will never do to begin
 
 PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 the history of Yahvism with the patriarchs. 
 Moses is beyond any doubt an historical 
 person. Even the most iconoclastic criticism 
 has never impugned the reality of his exist- 
 ence and mission. Had we no record at all 
 of his life, we should be constrained to postu- 
 late that some such man was the founder of 
 Yahvism. But the patriarchs clearly belong 
 to the world of legend. The belief in the 
 actual existence of the father of a whole 
 nation and even of several nations, will not 
 stand the test of rational inquiry. The 
 patriarchs are types of piety, the represen- 
 tatives of the religious and moral ideals of 
 Israel. As ideals they are immortal beings, 
 and in this sense all Israelites and Christians 
 who walk by the light of the religion of 
 Moses are in very deed the spiritual children 
 of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 
 
 Louisville, Sept. 6, 1894.
 
 THE 
 
 RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT IN 
 PAGAN ANTIQUITY. 
 
 AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
 
 OF all the nations of the earth, an- 
 cient, medieval and modern, the American 
 people was the first to form a purely po- 
 litical commonwealth, to establish a state 
 without an established church. If it had 
 done nothing else than to start the move- 
 ment toward a free church in a free state, 
 toward the total divorce of religion from 
 politics, it would for this achievement 
 alone deserve to rank among the master- 
 builders of civilization. Ck>se and in- 
 timate relations between the church and 
 the state the maintenance of religious 
 institutions, the support of a priesthood, 
 the supervision and regulation of the re- 
 ligious beliefs by the state authorities
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 have till the rise of the American repub- 
 lic been the universal rule throughout 
 the world. The result of this union 
 between church and state has, in most 
 respects, proven disastrous to both the 
 religious and the political life of society. 
 By yoking together earthly powers and 
 spiritual powers it materialized and de- 
 graded religion, and made the state the 
 handmaid of fanaticism. 
 
 The marriage between religion and 
 government, which only America has had 
 the moral courage and wisdom to dis- 
 solve, was contracted in the early days of 
 society, in the days of paganism. Prim- 
 itive society was in a sense the offspring 
 of religion. Both in its foundation and 
 in every part of its structure it was made 
 up, if not entirely, at least in a large 
 measure, of religious elements. 
 
 The primary unit of ancient society, 
 the family, had its vital principle in re- 
 ligious beliefs and practices. It consisted 
 not only of living human members, but 
 also of the household gods that were re- 
 garded and worshiped as the divine fore- 
 fathers of the family. The latter were
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 usually represented by rude images of 
 wood or stone. They were believed to 
 take an active and helpful interest in the 
 daily life of their descendants. Of every 
 meal a portion of the food and drink was 
 offered to them. They were consulted 
 on every important matter. The answers 
 returned through lots and other means 
 were scrupulously obeyed. The family 
 was ever anxious to keep their divine 
 and powerful relations, dwelling with 
 them under the same soof, in the best 
 possible humor, in order to secure their 
 aid in all undertakings. Most mishaps 
 that befell the house were ascribed to the 
 anger of the household gods, who were 
 quick to resent neglect. The living made 
 haste to appease their wrath by rich 
 offerings and humble apologies. 
 
 Wrongs committed by one member of 
 the family against another, especially dis- 
 obedience to parents, cowardice in defend- 
 ing the life and avenging the death of 
 kindred, were seen by the ever-watchful 
 eyes of the divine inmates of the house, 
 and visited by them with punishment, 
 with sickness or other plagues. For the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 gods and the human members of the 
 family were believed, in the literal and 
 physical sense of the word, to be of the 
 same blood. The latter stood to the 
 former in the relation of children to 
 their fathers. The well-being and per- 
 sonal standing of these gods were in- 
 volved in the prosperity and right con- 
 duct of the family. With the extinction 
 of the family, the gods thereof also per- 
 ished. The glory and power of the family 
 exalted and magnified them also. It was 
 in the strictest meaning of the word their 
 own flesh and blood that they watched 
 over and helped in good and evil times, 
 and from whom they exacted obedience 
 and service. They loved and cared only 
 for their immediate family, were indif- 
 ferent to outsiders and hostile to the en- 
 emies of their house. The government 
 of the household was carried on by its 
 head under the authority of and with 
 constant reference to the wishes and com- 
 mands of the family gods. Every part 
 of conduct had, therefore, what we may 
 call a religious aspect. Primitive man 
 was not, of course, aware of the fact that
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 he lived, moved and had his being in a 
 religious atmosphere. He had not as yet 
 learned to differentiate between acts and 
 institutions of a purely worldly nature 
 and acts and institutions of a sacred 
 character, nor was he able to draw a line 
 of absolute separation between gods and 
 men. Parental authority and divine au- 
 thority were synonymous terms, paternal 
 government and divine government were 
 interchangeable ideas. For the household 
 gods were worshiped and obeyed, because 
 they were the disembodied fathers or the 
 familiar spirits, taking this word in its 
 literal original signification. The actual 
 head of the family wielded power and 
 commanded respect, because he was the 
 living fountain-head of the blood common 
 to the divine and the human members of 
 the group. He stood between the gods 
 and their earthly children. He was in 
 very truth the mediator between the 
 mortals and their divinities, since it was 
 through him that the latter transmitted 
 to the former their own blood, which was 
 regarded as the fountain and principle of 
 both the physical and the mental life: The
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 head of the family represented in his per- 
 son the powers and rights of the family 
 gods. In their name and in virtue of 
 their authority vested in him he ruled, 
 and held in possession all the individuals 
 composing the family. He alone made 
 offerings, prayed to and consulted the 
 gods. The head and ruler of the family 
 was the priest of the family. He dis- 
 pensed a sort of rude justice in the name 
 of and in accordance with certain tra- 
 ditional rules, believed to have emanated 
 from the ancestral gods. He was priest, 
 judge and ruler of the family group. 
 
 The simplest and most primitive 
 kind of government, government in its 
 initial stage, is thus seen to have been 
 priestly or religious in its nature and 
 functions, to have been vested with divine 
 authority. We are using no metaphor 
 and expressing no metaphysical idea, 
 but are stating a plain historical fact 
 when we say that human society had a 
 divine origin ; in other words, had its 
 origin in religious beliefs. But for the 
 universal belief that gods and men were 
 physically of the same kith and kin, the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 formation of the permanent family, which 
 was the first and most important act in 
 the creation of society, would perhaps 
 not have taken place at all. The child- 
 ren of every family, once able to shift 
 for themselves, would probably have 
 broken off all closer connection with 
 their parents, submitting to no authority 
 and acknowledging no ties whatever. 
 The family would at any rate not have 
 attained the marvelous vitality, the ten- 
 acious structural coherence, which caused 
 it to become the mother of society, the 
 progenitor of nations, the parent of all 
 social virtues, the prototype of humanity. 
 The firm belief that the superior beings 
 upon whom they relied for aid and pro- 
 tection, were their own forefathers, sup- 
 plied men with a principle of social 
 unity. All persons of the same blood 
 must stay together, work for one another 
 and defend one another. For they are 
 in a sense one being. Have they not the 
 blood and life of the same divinities in 
 them ? Would not the gods be angry 
 and punish their children, if they were to 
 forsake or to destroy one another ? The
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 father, from whom they all receive their 
 blood, must be obeyed, because he is 
 the medium through which the gods 
 poured their stream of life into the liv- 
 ing generation ! 
 
 The fact that community of blood, 
 derived from kindred gods, constituted a 
 bond of union between kindred men, 
 first led to a partial though exceedingly 
 imperfect recognition of the sacredness 
 of human life and the wickedness of 
 murder. " Thou shalt not kill thy blood 
 relation, but thou mayest kill the stran- 
 ger " was good law amongst all primitive 
 races, as it still is among modern savages. 
 " Thou shalt not shed the blood of thy 
 relative, because it is the blood of thy 
 own gods and they will require his blood 
 at thy hand." We are inclined to assume 
 that man came by sheer moral intuition 
 to look upon the murder of any human 
 being as a heinous crime. But in 
 reality primitive man, the savage of all 
 times and lands, took special pride and 
 pleasure in killing as many people as 
 possible, provided they were not his kins- 
 men. The only check to his man-slaying
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 ambition was the fear of retaliation. 
 The slaughter of strangers gained for 
 him the renown of a valiant warrior 
 among his clansmen. He was looked up 
 to as the noblest of his tribe, and the 
 more human heads a man could show as 
 trophies of his prowess, the higher did 
 he stand in his own estimation. Do not 
 the most highly civilized nations of to- 
 day in times of war, slaughter one 
 another on the so-called field of glory ? 
 and are not those who succeed in destroy- 
 ing the greatest number of their fellow- 
 men, praised as the flower of the nation 
 and glorified as immortal heroes ? While 
 the war lasts these standard-bearers of 
 civilization cast aside the ethics of uni- 
 versal humanity and feel and act accord- 
 ing to the moral code of their savage 
 ancestors. 
 
 The first and most important step 
 toward regarding and punishing murder 
 as a crime was made, when men came to 
 hold the lives of their kinsmen sacred 
 and inviolable because of their kinship 
 with the same gods. Murder in the 
 early days of the race meant only the
 
 IO THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 killing of a brother, of a blood relation. 
 But in course of time ever larger classes 
 of men came to be included within the 
 category of brother ; thus the conception 
 of an impartial criminal law, the execu- 
 tion of which forms an important func- 
 tion of the civilized state, manifestly 
 originated in religious beliefs, however 
 crude and materialistic. 
 
 In like manner robbery and theft, if 
 committed against strangers, are not con- 
 sidered wrongful acts by races still in a 
 state of savagery or lower barbarism. 
 They are regarded as legitimate and even 
 praiseworthy means of enriching one's 
 self. Originally only theft and robbery 
 between the members of the same family 
 and of the same clan were viewed as evil 
 deeds. Whatever property the family in 
 primitive times stood possessed of, was 
 not owned by its individual members, 
 but belonged to the whole body in its 
 collective capacity, including the family 
 gods. Whoever robbed or stole from the 
 family, robbed and stole from the gods, 
 and committed what we call sacrilege. 
 Condign punishment was meted out to
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. II 
 
 the robber and thief either by the angry 
 deity himself, or by his living represent- 
 ative, the head of the family. Conse- 
 quently this branch of justice, too, which 
 has come to be one of the chief offices 
 of the state, was religious in origin and 
 nature, and continued through countless 
 ages to be administered under the au- 
 thority and in the name of the gods. 
 
 Marriage, in the proper sense of the 
 word, was in the early days of society 
 everywhere a most important religious 
 act. The bride, being by descent unre- 
 lated to the husband, and therefore at- 
 tached by no bond of union to the human 
 and divine members of the family, was 
 first of all solemnly released from alleg- 
 iance to her own family gods. Then she 
 was introduced to the household gods of 
 her husband, and with prayers and ex- 
 pressive symbolic rites adopted into the 
 body, of which they were the presiding 
 and guardian powers. Every slave bought 
 or captured by the family was brought to 
 the seat of the domestic gods, and by a 
 ceremonial act delivered over to them or 
 given into their power or possession. No
 
 12 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 slave could be given his liberty without 
 the will and consent of the tutelary god 
 of the house. It was by an elaborate 
 symbolism that the bondman was released 
 from the power of his divine master. We 
 thus see that religion and government 
 were, in the primary social unit or the 
 family, indissolubly bound up together. 
 What has been said on this subject 
 with regard to the family, applies also 
 with some modifications and amplifica- 
 tions to the clan and the tribe. Every 
 clan consisted of a number of families, 
 held together by the ties of blood rela- 
 tionship, and every tribe was made up of 
 a number of clans believing themselves 
 descended from the same ancestors. Every 
 clan had its clan god, who was worshiped 
 as the father of all the families and all 
 the family gods. Every tribe had its 
 tribal god, who was adored and obeyed 
 as the ancestor and ruler of all the clans 
 comprised in the tribe. There was an 
 hierarchy of gods. The family gods ruled 
 within their own domestic sphere. The 
 clan gods bore sway within their own 
 restricted domain, extending over the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 13 
 
 affairs of their respective clans. There 
 was an altar dedicated to the clan god. 
 The chief was his priest, the interpreter 
 of his will and the representative of his 
 power and his interests. But high above 
 them all in might, honor and wisdom 
 towered the tribal divinity. He was the 
 father and lord of all the men and all the 
 gods belonging to the tribe. Men and 
 gods were his lineal descendants. He 
 loved and cherished them as his children. 
 He watched over them with the solicitude 
 and foresight of a parent. Whatever 
 power he possessed over the forces of na- 
 ture, was assiduously used by him in 
 furthering their prosperity. He it was 
 who increased their flocks, who made 
 their fields fruitful and multiplied the 
 number of their children. He lent vigor 
 to the men and beauty to the women of 
 the tribe. He rejoiced to see his child- 
 ren prosperous, and grieved in his heart 
 to behold their misery. He was lord over 
 all the territory occupied by the tribe, of 
 their fields and forests, their rivers and 
 lakes, of their hills and valleys and the 
 fullness thereof. Their land belonged
 
 14 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 to him, and he gave it to them as a pos- 
 session, as an inheritance forever. The 
 chief divinity of the tribe was the war- 
 god of all the associated clans. War was 
 declared and peace concluded in his name 
 and under his supreme authority. He 
 was the leader of his people in war. At 
 times alone, but most frequently accom- 
 panied by the clan divinities and the 
 family gods, he marched under some ma- 
 terial representation at the head of his 
 hosts against his and their enemies. He 
 terrified them, smote them with his 
 might}- ann, and confounded the counsel 
 and power of their gods, while his pres- 
 ence inspired his own warriors with death- 
 defying courage, and impelled them to 
 perform deeds of valor in his honor. 
 His was the victor}-, his the triumph and 
 the glory. All the territory that was con- 
 quered became his domain, all the foes 
 that were subdued were either offered to 
 him as a sacrifice or made his servants or 
 slaves. The tribal chief held supreme 
 command in the field, in virtue of the 
 authority of the tribal divinity with which 
 he was invested. Disobedience to the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 15 
 
 orders of the war-chief was punished as 
 rebellion against the divine war-lord. 
 
 To fight against all nnallied tribes 
 was not simply a matter of self-preserva- 
 tion and self-aggrandizement, but a sacred 
 duty, a religious obligation. All strangers 
 and their divinities were the natural 
 enemies of the tribal divinities. To as- 
 sail and crush them meant to overthrow 
 the adversaries of the tribal deity, to 
 extend his dominion, and magnify his 
 power. Thus war and conquest, which 
 were the chief occupations of primitive 
 societies and the main business of their 
 government, were carried on under the 
 directing influence of religious motives. 
 Every war was a sacred war. Every war 
 was waged by the tribal god and his 
 children against alien tribes, commanded 
 by hostile divinities. The religious char- 
 acter of ancient warfare largely explains 
 its ruthless cruelty. Men already fero- 
 cious by nature were excited to a pitch 
 of frenzied hatred, in the belief that they 
 were tormenting and destroying the per- 
 sonal and abhorred adversaries of their 
 2fod.
 
 1 6 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 They hoped to be rewarded by their 
 god for wreaking merciless vengeance on 
 his foes and annihilating the worshipers 
 and warriors of his divine antagonists. 
 Long after advancing civilization had 
 begun to refine the manners and soften 
 the hearts of men, the tra'ditional relig- 
 ious ideas continued to enforce the rules 
 of savage warfare. Down to a very late 
 date in history, down to the baneful 
 Thirty Years' War, all so-called sacred 
 wars, all wars waged in the name of God 
 and religion, were marked by horrible 
 inhumanity. Whenever men imagine 
 themselves to be fighting for the interest 
 of Deity, the mere human interests must 
 in their eyes dwindle into insignificance, 
 and the voice of compassion be hushed 
 before the stern command of their divine 
 master. The idea of doing battle for 
 one's God and helping him against his 
 enemies, is under every theological dis- 
 guise essentially a pagan belief, and like 
 all heathenish notions, thoroughly mis- 
 chievous. 
 
 Yet it cannot be denied, that in the 
 early days of mankind, this belief
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 17 
 
 greatly helped to organize society, and 
 induce men, in spite of their intense love 
 for personal independence, to submit to 
 some sort of governmental authority. In 
 times of war and early society lived in 
 an almost perpetual state of war the 
 fear and love of the tribal god and father 
 determined men to combine their forces 
 and yield implicit obedience to the tribal 
 chief, who acts in accordance with com- 
 mands which he is believed to receive 
 from the divine war-lord. The spirit of 
 discipline and subordination was fostered 
 by the belief that in obeying the orders 
 of the chief they were carrying out the 
 behests of their god and master. Savage 
 natures, ordinarily swayed by fierce ego- 
 tistical instincts, were led by religious 
 influences to serve with all their might 
 the general good and to sacrifice their 
 own lives for their tribe. Religion was the 
 mother of heroism. Before any other 
 humanizing and organizing power came 
 into play, religious ideas nursed all the 
 stalwart civic virtues into vigorous life. 
 Whenever and wherever several tribes 
 coalesced to form a people, powerful
 
 1 8 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 religious motives were present, among 
 other causes, to bring about the union, 
 and continued to be active in preserving 
 and cementing that union. To the 
 ancient mind a commonwealth without 
 common gods and a common cult was 
 unthinkable. For what constituted in 
 the eyes of the ancients a people or a 
 nation? First of all it was a real or 
 imaginary community of descent. Com- 
 munity of language was falsely taken, as 
 it still is to-day, as proof of close relation- 
 ship. Blood relationship was the only 
 source of sympathy and the only bond 
 of union among men. For this reason 
 all the tribes that composed a nation 
 traced their pedigree back to a common 
 ancestor. Thus, mythical forefathers 
 supplied the necessary tie to bind all the 
 clans and tribes together, and make of 
 them all one large family. But every 
 kind of family, be it a simple household, 
 a clan, a tribe or a people, formed a fam- 
 ily only by virtue of the belief, that all 
 its members were children and worship- 
 ers of the same divinity. Without a 
 national god, who was the father of gods
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 19 
 
 and of men and their supreme ruler, a 
 society lacked the unifying principle. 
 It simply had no reason for existence. 
 Without a national divinity a people felt 
 itself absolutely powerless to cope with 
 its enemies. 
 
 The divine over-lord was the sole 
 owner of the land which a nation oc- 
 cupied or conquered. Without him a 
 people had no title to the territory which 
 it possessed. From him the king derived 
 his authority to command the national 
 forces in the field, to act as supreme judge 
 and officiate as high priest. The king was 
 the living representative and vicegerent 
 of the national god. He was the medi- 
 ator between the people and their god, 
 ruler and father. He sat in the seat of 
 judgment and dispensed justice in the 
 name and by the reflected majesty of the 
 nation's supreme judge. He was ex- 
 pected to vindicate the right of the poor 
 against the powerful and to protect the 
 weak against the strong, because he rep- 
 resented the protector and judge of the 
 whole people. The laws by which he 
 and his delegates judged were sacred laws.
 
 2O THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 All the nations of the earth regarded 
 their traditional customs and laws as 
 divinely communicated. By dint of their 
 belief in the divine origin of their laws 
 men came by the all-important idea that 
 certain fixed rules for the guidance of 
 life were absolutely binding on all the 
 members of the community. This soul- 
 conquering belief imparted to the laws 
 their inviolable authority, and prevented 
 the wills, passions and personal interests 
 of untutored natures from brushing aside 
 and casting to the winds all the estab- 
 lished ordinances of justice and equity. 
 The chief prerogative of the king's 
 office consisted in being the high priest 
 of the whole nation. All the temples, 
 which were dedicated to the national god, 
 were the king's sanctuaries. The cult or 
 the offering of sacrifices at stated times 
 and the chanting of hymns were regarded 
 as the chief business of the whole people. 
 For on them depended the nation's pros- 
 perity, which was won or lost with the 
 favor or disfavor of the national divinity. 
 The cult was the visible bond of union 
 between the people and their god and the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 21 
 
 perpetual manifestation of their allegiance 
 and gratitude. States which abolished the 
 kingly office, such as Athens and Rome, 
 continued to elect a sacrificial king, in 
 order not to arouse the anger of the deity 
 by depriving him of his wonted royal 
 minister. 
 
 There was not an element in the life 
 of the state which was not saturated with 
 religion. Nothing great or new was un- 
 dertaken in peace or war without first 
 inquiring of the gods and ascertaining 
 their will by means of auguries or oracles. 
 The state rested on the broad basis of 
 religion, and every part of it, from foun- 
 dation to copestone, was made up of ma- 
 terials furnished or shaped by religion. 
 Every ancient state was a church, if we 
 may use the term church in regard to 
 times when such a conception as a church 
 distinct from the state was still incon- 
 ceivable. There was in one respect a 
 wonderful and wholesome oneness in life 
 in those ancient states. Affairs divine 
 and human, things spiritual and worldly 
 were inextricably interwoven. Public in- 
 terests were synonymous with divine in-
 
 22 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 terests, and he who served his country 
 and his people best, knew himself to be 
 literally serving his god. 
 
 But there was also another and evil 
 side to the all-embracing, all-sustaining 
 and all-determining religious character of 
 the ancient commonwealths. Any great 
 change, brought on by the conquest and 
 accretion of alien tribes or by loss of 
 independence, hopelessly disturbed the 
 equilibrium between religious and polit- 
 ical life, and destroyed the vital principle 
 of the national existence. A people that 
 was subjugated and lost its independence, 
 virtually ceased to have a religion, be- 
 cause it ceased to believe in its own na- 
 tional god. A god who proved himself 
 unable to protect his own people, a god 
 who showed himself too powerless or too 
 cowardly to overcome his own and his 
 nation's enemies, lost all claims to the 
 allegiance of his worshipers. Who was 
 he, that they should further serve him ? 
 What good would it do them to worship 
 him? He was a vanquished potentate, 
 to offer prayers and sacrifices to whom 
 would be a waste of substance and breath.
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 23 
 
 Nor could the conquered turn to the gods 
 of the conqueror. For these were strange 
 gods, who in their hatred had crushed 
 them with a mighty arm. The con- 
 quests of the great conquering nations 
 were victories not only over the bodies, 
 but also over the souls of the vanquished. 
 Frightful spiritual havoc was wrought in 
 the souls of the nations overcome by 
 Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and 
 Romans. Their religion sank to the 
 level of a mere superstition. But the 
 essence of their religion, sincere and in- 
 tense faith in a presiding and guiding 
 national divinity, was destroyed forever. 
 What demoralization the downfall of the 
 national faith brought with it, it is im- 
 possible to describe. The primeval foun- 
 dations of morality were shaken or re- 
 moved. For how should people who were 
 accustomed to obey the laws, moral and 
 civil, solely because they were com- 
 manded by their national god, continue 
 to regard them as binding, after they had 
 ceased to believe in and pay homage to 
 their god ? What remained of morality 
 was either a matter of mere blind habit, or
 
 24 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 was enforced by the political authori- 
 ties. Nor did the conquering nations fare 
 much better. Their empires lacked the 
 principle of vital unity. Their common- 
 wealth being identified with kinship, 
 alien peoples were attached to it by mere 
 brute force but by no organic ties. There 
 was no unifying and integrating power to 
 bind them ; they were mere agglomera- 
 tions of discordant elements. Antiochus 
 Epiphanes tried to give his empire that 
 organic unity by compelling all the sub- 
 ject nations to worship the Olympian Jove 
 v as their supreme deity. The heroism of 
 the Jews caused that madman's attempt 
 to fail ignoniiniously. The Roman em- 
 pire was a graveyard of nations and na- 
 tional divinities, though the Romans 
 partly succeeded in making the worship 
 of the living emperor a sort of state re- 
 ligion. In every province, city and town 
 temples were erected to the genius of the 
 deified emperor, and a numerous priest- 
 hood offered daily incense and sacrifices 
 on his altars. Students of history are 
 amazed at what seems a blasphemous 
 mockery of religion. Yet, for several
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 25 
 
 centuries the worship of the emperors 
 was the most widespread and the most 
 genuine religion extant in the Roman 
 empire. To such a pass of moral degra- 
 dation and religious perversion was the 
 pagan world brought, that two hundred 
 million beings worshiped monsters like 
 Caligula, Nero and Domitian as the high- 
 est incarnation of the divine powers. 
 Only the death-defying courage of the 
 Israelites, the worshipers of Yahve, the 
 Father and God of all men, offered an 
 uncompromising and deadly resistance to 
 this travesty of religion to which bank- 
 rupt paganism had been reduced. At 
 last the spirit of Israel, modified as 
 Christianity, appeared upon the scene 
 and opened a new epoch in the relations 
 between religion and government, state 
 and church.
 
 I. 
 
 YAHVISM NOT A NATURE 
 RELIGION. 
 
 THE appearance of Yahvism in the 
 world marks the beginning of a new and 
 brighter era in the religious and moral 
 life of humanity. It introduces hitherto 
 unknown ideal forces into the relations 
 between religion and government. From 
 the very day of its birth Yahvism was 
 in origin, nature and tendency different 
 from all other tribal and national relig- 
 ions. The religious systems of all other 
 peoples grew and developed by a spon- 
 taneous or purely natural process. The 
 nature religions were, one and all, the 
 natural products of the popular mind as 
 much as language, manners, customs, the 
 simple arts of life and the rudimentary 
 forms of social order and political organ- 
 ization. They were the all but neces- 
 sary results of man's intercourse with the 
 universe, the outcome of his helpless con- 
 dition in the midst of nature, yet unde- 
 veloped and unconquered, the offspring
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 27 
 
 of his desire to understand and propitiate 
 the beings and powers surrounding him. 
 But Yahvism never was a nature re- 
 ligion, however imperfect we may imag- 
 ine its beginnings to have been. It did 
 not spontaneously spring from the heart 
 and mind of a tribe or people. The re- 
 ligion of Israel had its birthplace in the 
 soul of one man of supreme genius. Its 
 cardinal religious ideas and leading moral 
 principles were conceived by Moses ben 
 Amram after years of profound medita- 
 tion and mysterious communion with the 
 Eternal and Infinite, and by him com- 
 municated to the Israeli tish and non- 
 Israelitish tribes, which he had delivered 
 from the bondage of Egypt. Too much 
 stress cannot be laid on this fact. It 
 alone furnishes the key to at least a 
 partial understanding of the rise of moral 
 monotheism in Israel, a phenomenon to 
 which the religious history of no other 
 ancient people offers a parallel. The 
 truth of the matter is there was no 
 people of Israel and no religion of Israel 
 before Moses. The creative genius of the 
 greatest of prophets and legislators fash-
 
 28 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 ioned a new people out of a number of 
 enslaved Semitic and non-Semitic clans 
 by giving them a new, elevating re- 
 ligion. 
 
 He converted them from their grovel- 
 ling idolatry and debasing superstitions 
 to his own faith in Yahve, the just, right- 
 eous and holy God. He taught them to 
 believe in Yahve, who hates and crushes 
 the wicked, but pities and protects the 
 poor and downtrodden. Yahvistn is a 
 revealed religion, while all forms of pagan- 
 ism are natural religions. This belief, 
 held alike by the Israelites, Christians 
 and Mohammedans, is true in a far deeper 
 sense than uncritical minds, believers in 
 mechanical inspiration, imagine. It was 
 revealed by the individual mind that 
 towered above the intelligence of average 
 humanity, as Pike's Peak rises above the 
 dead level of the neighboring desert. As 
 the pictures of Rafael and Murillo are 
 superior to the daubs of village painters ; 
 as the statues of Phidias and Michael 
 Angelo surpass the hideous figures carved 
 or sculptured by Aztecs or Africans ; as 
 the divine music of Beethoven and Mo-
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 29 
 
 zart excels the simple tunes of the people ; 
 as the mind of a Newton exceeds in power 
 the mathematical faculty of the average 
 man ; as the epics of Homer and the 
 tragedies of Shakspere overtop the pro- 
 ductions of mediocre poets ; even so do 
 the moral teachings and the religious 
 ideas of Moses transcend in originality 
 and sublimity of conception the fantastic 
 cosmogonies, theogonies and ethics of the 
 heathen nations. 
 
 Men of the highest genius form, as it 
 were, a genus of humanity by themselves. 
 We look up to them with awe and wor- 
 shipful reverence. We rejoice in their 
 greatness, and glory in their marvelous 
 achievements. We derive inspiration and 
 guidance from their immortal words and 
 deeds. But we know ourselves to be mere 
 dwarfs, that reach barely up to the knees 
 of those intellectual and moral giants. 
 These superior intelligences rise above 
 the limitations and weaknesses of their 
 time, above the traditional beliefs and an- 
 cestral superstitions, above the inherited 
 loves and hates of their kindred and land, 
 and soar on the wings of original power
 
 30 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 into unknown and undreamed of regions 
 of thought. They cast aside the dim 
 glass of tradition, and with clear and 
 illumined eyes look into the heart of 
 things. Mouth to mouth the Infinite 
 speaks to them, even manifestly and not 
 in dark speeches. They behold the form 
 of the Eternal incarnate in nature and in 
 the life of mortal man. One or two such 
 men appear in a thousand or two thou- 
 sand years as new-born suns in the skies 
 of humanity. Their shining lives, their 
 creative thoughts and deeds are sown as 
 healing and redeeming light to their own 
 time and generation. Their richest bless- 
 ings, however, ripen late, to be reaped by 
 far off ages. 
 
 One such man of surpassing intel- 
 lectual and moral genius was Moses, the 
 founder of Yahvism, and the creator of 
 the people of Israel. The mainspring 
 and impelling motive of his epoch-mak- 
 ing prophetic, legislative and political 
 activity was infinite pity for the op- 
 pressed clans of various races, whose 
 brutalizing misery he had for years wit- 
 nessed in Egypt. His great heart bled
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 31 
 
 for the innocent victims of a ruthless 
 tyranny. His compassionate soul burned 
 with righteous indignation against the 
 inhuman despots and their minions, who 
 degraded human beings to the level of 
 beasts of burden. The sight of helpless 
 people trodden under foot as aliens in the 
 name of religion, kindled in his breast 
 unquenchable wrath against the religious 
 and political system of Egypt and its 
 merciless representatives. It was in the 
 land . of Egypt that he ' knew so well, 
 which he had for years observed from the 
 high eminence of his princely station, 
 that the pagan theory basing all social- 
 rights exclusively on kinship was carried 
 to its utmost baleful consequences. The 
 nation was broken up into a number of 
 castes. Each caste traced its pedigree 
 back to a different ancestry, and derived 
 its descent from a different god. The 
 castes were separated from one another 
 by an impassable legal, religious and social 
 gulf. The toiling masses, the tillers of the 
 soil, the mechanics and day laborers \vere 
 ground to dust by crushing taxes on their 
 personal labor and income. Divine hon-
 
 32 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 ors were paid to many species of animals, 
 because they were believed to be incar- 
 nations or the offspring of the great gods. 
 But the common people were held in 
 utmost contempt, for the reason that they 
 could not claim kinship with the divine 
 ancestors of the higher castes. 
 
 The upper castes were regarded as the 
 offspring of the greater gods. By virtue 
 of that belief they held the lower classes 
 in subjection, remorselessly abusing and 
 maltreating them. The king was be- 
 lieved to be not only a lineal descendant, 
 but also a living incarnation of the sun- 
 god Osiris. By that title he had absolute 
 power over the life and property of all 
 his subjects. In theory, and largely also 
 in practice, all Egyptians were slaves of 
 the god-king. The Pharaoh was the sole 
 rightful owner of Upper and Lower Egypt 
 and of all they contained. But infinitely 
 beneath the very lowest and most despised 
 native caste there ranked in Egypt the 
 strangers who had voluntarily or as 
 prisoners of war taken up their abode 
 within the confines of the empire. They 
 were abhorred far more than unclean
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 33 
 
 animals. They were looked upon and 
 detested >as the children and servants of 
 Seth, the Egyptian devil. Their touch 
 was believed to pollute, their breath to 
 defile the native. 
 
 In the long course of Egyptian history 
 it came to pass that the land was for 
 several hundred years under the dominion 
 of an alien race of invaders. During that 
 period some foreigners rose to dignity and 
 power by sheer force of character and ex- 
 traordinary wisdom. At such times na- 
 tives and foreigners even intermarried 
 and gave birth to a mixed population. 
 It was at such an epoch of foreign dom- 
 ination, while Egyptian exclusiveness, 
 while national and religious fanaticism 
 were exposed to dissolving influences that 
 the Hebrews settled in the land of the 
 Nile; more especially the Josephide tribes 
 of Ephraim and Manasseh grew and mul- 
 tiplied exceedingly by absorbing large 
 indigenous elements through intermar- 
 riage. But as soon as the natives had 
 succeeded in regaining the supremacy, 
 the old Egyptian spirit of racial pride 
 and hatred reasserted itself with a thou-
 
 34 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 sandfold intensified force. All the alien 
 tribes, though they had lived for centuries 
 in the land and had by their useful labor 
 and loyal activity contributed much to- 
 ward the wealth and greatness of the 
 kingdom, were placed outside the pale of 
 human rights and subjected to the most 
 outrageous treatment. It was especially 
 against the Hebrews, who seem to have 
 once played an important part in Egyp- 
 tian history, that their brutal national 
 and religious reaction was turned. They 
 were literally outlawed and by a decree 
 of the king declared to be the slaves of 
 the state. Their lives were made bitter 
 with hard service in mortar and in brick 
 and in all manner of service in the field. 
 The taskmasters set over them afflicted 
 them with burdens beyond human endur- 
 ance. Ever new inhuman devices were 
 invented in order to crush their spirit and 
 to stifle every desire to regain their free- 
 dom. When the ruthless despots saw 
 that the oppressed continued to multiply 
 and to spread abroad in spite of their 
 afflictions, they conceived the horrible
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 35 
 
 plan of exterminating them by killing 
 all new-born males. 
 
 The religion of Egypt did not raise 
 her voice against these deeds of horror. 
 The priests of the greater and lesser gods 
 looked on unmoved, while infants were 
 being torn from the arms of their shriek- 
 ing mothers and drowned before the eyes 
 of their miserable fathers. They felt no 
 compassion for the hapless aliens driven 
 in chain gangs to the quarries, where they 
 died by thousands of hunger and thirst, 
 of heat and overwork and cruel floggings. 
 Why should they ? The victims were 
 not the children of any Egyptian tribal 
 or national god, nor did they live under 
 their protection. Being unrelated to the 
 gods of the land and to their human 
 descendants, they were, in the most literal 
 sense, outcasts and outlaws. They had 
 no basis of right to stand on. They had 
 no title to their bodies, their souls and 
 their labor. They possessed fewer rights 
 than animals. 
 
 On the contrary, most animals were 
 held sacred and inviolable. The death
 
 36 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 penalty was ineted out to whoever killed 
 a cat or certain other beasts. The reason 
 is not far to seek. Those beasts were be- 
 lieved to be the offspring or the living 
 incarnations of diverse divinities. The 
 gods themselves, even the greatest and 
 mightiest, were conceived of by their wor- 
 shipers in the forms of beasts and birds. 
 They were largely endowed with the 
 qualities and passions of the animals 
 which were their emblems. They but 
 represented the powers and phenomena 
 of unmoral nature. Nature's mode of 
 action, her ways of self-manifestation, 
 her utter indifference to good and evil, 
 seemed to them to resemble far more the 
 instinctive behavior of animals than the 
 rational conduct of human beings. In 
 the rumbling or roaring thunder, in the 
 terrific noises of the raging sea, in the 
 howling of the furious tempest they 
 seemed to hear the bellowing of heavenly 
 bulls, the roar of celestial lions, the bark 
 of jackal gods, and the hissing of divine 
 serpents. Thus, according to the Egyp- 
 tian theology, the earth was governed by 
 beast-like divinities. The priests on the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 37 
 
 banks of the Nile carried the pagan the- 
 ory of divine government to its last log- 
 ical conclusions. The worship of external 
 nature, of her powers and material phe- 
 nomena must needs lead men to the ador- 
 ation of gods, that after the manner of 
 the beasts of the fields and the fowls of 
 the air, act in obedience to natural im- 
 pulses and desires, having no regard to 
 moral good and evil. In later ages phil- 
 osophers tried to humanize the gods, to 
 represent them as types of humanity. 
 Yet they succeeded but poorly in their 
 effort. 
 
 On the whole, the religion of Moses' 
 contemporaries in Egypt tended to make 
 men sensual, selfish, base and inhumanly 
 cruel toward alien races. As are a people's 
 gods, such will their worshipers be. The 
 adoration of beast-like divinities could 
 not but render bestial the men who served 
 and venerated them. It was not a relig- 
 ion whose chief aim was to teach justice, 
 to inculcate mercy and enforce the equi- 
 ties of humanity. It did not quicken 
 and develop the highest moral capabili- 
 ties of man by placing before him the
 
 38 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 inspiring ideal of divine perfection. Like 
 all other heathen religions, it was a crude 
 and fantastic theory of nature, a vain and 
 wearisome attempt to explain the mystery 
 of universal life and the existence of the 
 soul here and hereafter by means of cer- 
 tain pantheistic ideas, through the belief 
 in divine incarnations and the migration 
 of souls. The priests brooded over the 
 insoluble problems of nature, and tried 
 to penetrate, by means of mythological 
 conceptions, to the hidden causes of her 
 phenomena. They endeavored to piece 
 together all the various Egyptian trin- 
 ities, all the beast-gods, the bird-gods and 
 fish-gods into one coherent system. They 
 built stupendous temples, organized a 
 costly and imposing sacrificial service on 
 a grand scale, elaborated endless litanies 
 and rituals, while living without care or 
 labor on the fat of the land. But they 
 did not concern themselves with the un- 
 speakable misery and moral degradation 
 of the lower classes. They had no word 
 of protest against the grinding and brut- 
 alizing despotism of the kings, as long 
 as they were left undisturbed in the en-
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 39 
 
 joyment of their privileges and vast in- 
 comes. They had no bowels of compas- 
 sion for the myriads of tortured wretches, 
 who, like the Hebrews and other enslaved 
 strangers, were driven by the lash of over- 
 seers to perform impossible tasks, and 
 were daily outraged in the sanctities of 
 their homes, and trodden underfoot like 
 worms. 
 
 Even the intense belief of the Egyp- 
 tians in the immortality of the soul helped 
 to make them the more selfish and the 
 more indifferent to the welfare of the 
 poor and stranger. The Egyptian knew 
 that he had an eternity to live beyond the 
 grave, that even his body, if properly 
 embalmed and inhumed, would be one 
 day re-entered by his returning soul, 
 and rise to live again on earth. 
 
 Thus the individual was above all 
 things anxious to secure for himself a 
 safe passage to the underworld, and to 
 procure a pleasant abode among the 
 happy ones in Amenti, in Deadman's 
 Land. This consummation so devoutly 
 wished for by all high-caste Egyptians, 
 was brought about by mystic formulas,
 
 40 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 and magical rites and incantations, by 
 funeral sacrifices and pomps, by rich gifts 
 to the temples, by large fees to the priests, 
 who chanted demon-compelling hymns 
 and recited potent charms, in order to 
 insure bliss and salvation to the departed 
 rich and mighty. The prospect of per- 
 sonal immortality and everlasting bliss, 
 which was mainly attained by virtue of 
 priestly intercession and sorcery, strength- 
 ened in the individual the instincts of 
 self-love, and weakened the altruistic feel- 
 ings of sympathy and compassion for his 
 suffering fellowmen. True, in the later 
 and higher stages of social development 
 the ethical ideas entered largely into the 
 Egyptian conception of retribution be- 
 yond the tomb. The dead was believed 
 to appear before Osiris and the forty-two 
 judges in Amenti, and to declare that he 
 had done no wrong whatever on earth. 
 But the rich and mighty knew also that 
 they could buy from the priests absolu- 
 tion from their sins, and through their 
 mighty influence with the gods gain an 
 entrance to the bright heaven in the sun. 
 The upper classes were pretty sure of
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 41 
 
 their own salvation, as long as they stood 
 well with the priests. This belief gave 
 to the crafty priesthood a most powerful 
 hold on the minds of men. Even the 
 wisest shrank in terror from the thought 
 of disobeying their commands and depart- 
 ing from their savage superstitions. The 
 belief in immortality was used unscrupu- 
 lously by the priesthood for their profes- 
 sional ends, to gain wealth and power for 
 their own caste, to stop intellectual and 
 social progress beyond the barriers of 
 their consecrated system. On the banks 
 of the river of death the Egyptian priests 
 stood for ages, to bar the passage to all 
 poor souls who could not satisfy their 
 demands for ceremonies, formulas and 
 fees.
 
 II. 
 
 I AM THAT I AM. 
 
 IT was in the inidst of such sur- 
 roundings that the great deliverer ap- 
 peared, whose providential mission it 
 was to start mankind on a new career of 
 religious, moral and social development. 
 He inaugurated a spiritual revolution 
 which in the course of ages was to 
 wrench the best part of mankind from its 
 pagan moorings, to transform the inner- 
 most thoughts of men, and recast all relig- 
 ious and social institutions in a new ideal 
 mold. The religion of righteousness and 
 mercy originated in Moses' death-defying 
 compassion for the weak and oppressed, 
 in his unquenchable hatred of wrong, in 
 his boundless love of justice. All the 
 love and mercy of which the soul of hu- 
 manity is capable, stirred in the tender 
 yet mighty soul of Israel's redeemer. 
 The heart of infinite existence mani- 
 fested all its hidden wealth and power of 
 loving-kindness through the heart of the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 43 
 
 prophet of righteousness. In him the 
 aspiring genius of humanity, reaching out 
 for higher and better things, revolted with 
 horror and indignation from the relig- 
 ious, social and political system of Egypt. 
 For it was in the name of pitiless and par- 
 tial gods that the ruling castes of Egypt 
 enslaved and degraded the toiling masses. 
 In a moment of righteous and irre- 
 pressible anger Moses avenged with his 
 own strong arm the cruel wrong done to 
 one of the outcast strangers. The die 
 was cast! The man of destiny had to 
 flee for his life and seek a refuge in the 
 neighboring desert among the poor but 
 hospitable and free nomads. For many 
 years the future shepherd of men led the 
 life of a shepherd in the solemn solitude 
 of the wilderness. During all those 
 years he could not turn his mind's eye 
 from the unhappy creatures that were 
 being crushed body and soul in the 
 iron furnace of Egypt. By night and 
 by day he seemed to hear the groaning 
 and weeping, the accents of woe and 
 despair of those held in cruel bondage. 
 Sleepless grief brooded over his great
 
 44 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 soul. His heart was full of bitterness 
 against the oppressors and their divinities. 
 The gods were deaf to the cries and 
 lamentations of the weak and oppressed. 
 They had hearts of stone. They were 
 cruel like their ruthless worshipers. 
 The)' were bribed by sacrifices, temples 
 and flattering hymns, to aid the wicked 
 tyrant. Whence should help come ? 
 Surely not from the merciless and un- 
 just gods of the sun, of the moon, of the 
 stars, of the earth, of the rivers and 
 mountains ! Through the long night of 
 spiritual despair he went on wrestling 
 with black care and with the demon-gods, 
 who were but the terrifying shadows of 
 nature's soulless phenomena. 
 
 At last, in an hour of over-flowing 
 grace, which was the birth-hour of moral 
 monotheism, of the religion of humanity, 
 light began to dawn on his struggling 
 soul. In the awful stillness round about 
 him he saw the world-mystery lit up by 
 the far-spreading flames of divine love, 
 and he heard the still voice of the world- 
 soul speaking within his breast :
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 45 
 
 " Seek not God in sun, moon or star. 
 Search not after him in fire and water, in 
 clouds and winds, in storms and earth- 
 quakes. Thou wilt not find him in earth, 
 rivers and seas. They are not gods. 
 There is no will nor reason in them nor 
 goodness and justice. They come and go, 
 they change and pass away, obeying a 
 power and a will that is unsearchable. 
 He whom thy soul yearns after is Yahve, 
 the eternal spirit. He is, he was and he 
 will be forever. I am that I am, the same 
 from eternity to eternity, the cause of all 
 being, the hidden source and power and 
 rule of all creation. I am, that is my 
 name. No phantom appearance I, no 
 delusive and vanishing form, no incarna- 
 tion of anything that is in the heavens 
 above, in the. earth beneath and in the 
 waters under the earth, but the living 
 and almighty Lord of the spirits of all 
 men. Worship him not as the likeness 
 of anything visible and material in all 
 creation. Adore him as likest that which 
 is the highest, holiest, divinest in man ; 
 like reason shining in darkness, like jus-
 
 46 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 tice crushing the head of oppression, like 
 love going forth to all flesh. 
 
 " For Yahve is a just and righteous 
 God, slow to anger and rich in mercy. 
 Yahve is a gracious and merciful God, 
 long-suffering and abundant in goodness 
 and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, 
 forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, 
 but who will by no means clear the 
 guilty. He executes the judgment of 
 the fatherless and the widow, and loves 
 the stranger. His mercy extends over all 
 the children of men ; for he has created 
 them all. He is the father of all the 
 families of the earth. He sees the afflic- 
 tion of those who cry by reason of their 
 taskmasters. He knows their sorrows. 
 He will redeem his children from the 
 hand of their oppressors. . They that do 
 justice with all their might and love 
 mercy with all their heart and all their 
 N soul, are Yahve's chosen messengers. In 
 them does his spirit abide, through 
 them he makes manifest his way of 
 righteousness, through their saving 
 deeds does he act out his redeeming will. 
 The fierce anger which burns in thy
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 47 
 
 breast against the inhuman despots is 
 the consuming wrath of Yahve, the just 
 and righteous. Thy compassion, which 
 weeps for the downtrodden and afflicted, 
 is the love of the Holy One throbbing 
 in thy heart. By the power divine, that 
 possesses and thrills thy soul, thou shalt 
 go and deliver the children of Israel 
 from the bondage of Egypt. Upon this 
 mountain thou shalt teach the redeemed 
 ones to know Yahve, to worship him as 
 their lawgiver, their judge and saviour, 
 and adore him in the spirit of truth 
 and justice, of loving-kindness and holi- 
 ness." 
 
 The soul of Moses, though distrustful 
 of its own powers, yielded obedience to 
 the command of the world-soul commun- 
 ing with him in the holy of holies of his 
 being. Firmly trusting in the might, 
 the wisdom and faithfulness of Yahve, 
 the prophet started on his mission to de- 
 liver the enslaved tribes, to remove them 
 from the seat of their idolatry, and lead 
 them to a new land, and there to fashion 
 them into a new people. The people he 
 intended to form was not to be held
 
 48 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 together by the ties of blood. It was 
 not to be presided over by a local an- 
 cestral deity. "It should be bound to- 
 gether by the bonds of their common 
 humanity. The relation of the new na- 
 tion to the overruling Divinity should 
 consist in a perpetual covenant of right- 
 eousness with Yahve, the Father of jus- 
 tice and mercy, the Lord of all spirits, 
 the Maker of heaven and earth. 
 
 From that day dates the new history 
 of mankind. In that hour moral mono- 
 theism, the religion of humanity and the 
 germ of a new and higher social and 
 political order came to birth in the fruit- 
 ful genius of Moses. In that mind of 
 marvelous originality the race of man for 
 the first time turned away from the wor- 
 ship of the material and external world, 
 from the adoration of the irrational and 
 unmoral powers of nature. In him man 
 first bent his gaze inwardly upon the life 
 of the soul, upon consciousness and moral 
 willing, and conceived the supreme and 
 all-creative power in the image of highest 
 reason, in the likeness of perfect good- 
 ness, in the similitude of mercy. The
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 49 
 
 Spirit just and righteous is the central 
 sun, around which the universe and man- 
 kind revolve. From him they receive 
 their illumination, their meaning, pur- 
 pose and worth. The supreme power is 
 supreme reason. The Creator of heaven 
 and earth is infinite justice. The Maker 
 of man and the Ruler of his destinies is 
 a Spirit, all-wise, all-merciful. Man is 
 the chief of God's creatures, because he 
 is made in the spiritual likeness of his 
 Maker, and is potentially endowed with 
 the ethical qualities of the Most High. 
 The physical life, both of the universe 
 and of man, comes to occupy the second- 
 ary rank, is regarded as infinitely inferior 
 in dignity and power to the spiritual and 
 moral life. Material nature has been de- 
 throned, the spirit is declared lord and 
 king over all. All the instinctive and 
 sensual forces, all the unconscious and 
 unmoral elements in man and in the 
 world without are pushed into the back- 
 groiind. Mind, manifesting itself as rea- 
 son, freewill, righteousness and love, is 
 crowned with majesty and honor, and is 
 given dominion over all things.
 
 50 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 The immediate and still more the re- 
 mote consequences of the new spiritual 
 conception of the universe and mankind, 
 of God and the soul, were tremendous in 
 their transforming and humanizing in- 
 fluences on religion and government, on 
 private and public morality, on the ideas 
 and institutions of society. The world- 
 theory originated by Moses regards spirit 
 as the essence, as the creative cause and 
 sovereign power of the universe and of 
 human life. The ultimate effect of the 
 Mosaic world-conception must needs be 
 the overthrow of the pagan theory which 
 considers common descent according to 
 the flesh the only tie of kinship and 
 brotherhood, the sole bond of social and 
 legal affinity, of religious and national 
 unity. As in process of time the rich 
 contents of the sublime Mosaic ideas un- 
 folded themselves, the spiritual bonds of 
 a common humanity came to be substi- 
 tuted for the carnal ties of physical de- 
 scent, and the unity of an ethical broth- 
 erhood supplanted the animal claims of 
 blood-relationship. Men may greatly dif- 
 fer in their physical characteristics. They
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 51 
 
 may show in every lineament of their 
 bodily constitution that they belong to 
 different races. They may not be con- 
 nected by any links of a real or fancied 
 ancestral chain. But all men have a soul, 
 a spirit akin to that which is highest, 
 holiest and most perfect in existence. 
 All have a capacity for goodness, which 
 elevates them above all inanimate nature 
 and above all animals, and brings them 
 into close relation with the God of 
 righteousness. 
 
 The perfect glory of the idea that 
 humanity is the spiritual reflection of 
 God flashed out upon Moses' mind in the 
 hour when he recognized that Yahve, the 
 creator and cause of all being, was the 
 all-just, all-merciful and all-wise Spirit of 
 spirits. It was borne in upon his soul 
 that Yahve, who dwells on high, looks 
 down with pity upon the poor and 
 afflicted, that he will redeem the despised 
 outcasts and bring them nigh unto him- 
 self, to serve him and become a blessing 
 to all the families of the earth. 
 
 With his soul full of the light of a 
 new heaven, a new earth and a new hu-
 
 52 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 inanity, the man of destiny went down 
 to Egypt to perform the work of redemp- 
 tion, which was to be the seed of all 
 future redemptions and moral blessings. 
 The magic of his genius and the irresist- 
 ible power of his awe-inspiring person- 
 ality succeeded in rescuing not only the 
 tribes called Benai Israel, but numerous 
 alien people that had shared with the 
 Hebrews the cruel lot of Egyptian bond- 
 age. The prophet of the God of universal 
 righteousness, the champion of human 
 rights, had for these poor strangers, who 
 took refuge under the wings of his sav- 
 ing greatness, the same pity and love 
 which he felt for his own kinsmen. 
 
 Providence put at the disposal of this 
 creative genius a mixed multitude of un- 
 allied races. It was the fittest material 
 to form a people on the lines of the new 
 ideals, to establish a nation on the spirit- 
 ual foundation of man's moral dignity. 
 What came to be known in history as the 
 people of Israel was from its beginning 
 made up of several heterogeneous racial 
 elements. A number of clans doubtless 
 belonged to what may be called, for want
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 53 
 
 of a better name, the original Hebrew 
 stock, which had several centuries be- 
 fore settled in Goshen. The two most 
 powerful tribes, which formed the bone 
 and sinew of the new people and whose 
 prowess and love of independence seem 
 to have greatly aided Moses in his work 
 of deliverance, namely, the tribes of Eph- 
 raim and Manasseh, were, as the Bible 
 informs us, of a mixed race, due to inter- 
 marriage between Hebrews and Egypt- 
 ians. According to the Biblical tradition, 
 the great tribe of Judah owed its origin 
 to the blending of Hebrew and Canaan- 
 itish blood. If we assume that the 
 Canaanitish elements were absorbed after 
 the occupation of Palestine, then the tribe 
 of Judah had no distinct existence before 
 the Exodus. Moses married into a Mid- 
 ianitish clan. His descendants, who were 
 the guardians of the Ark and the chief 
 priesthood of Israel till the time of David, 
 were thus of mixed Hebrew and Midian- 
 itish descent. The tribes traced in the 
 Bible to the so-called maidservants of 
 Jacob, are clearly designated as half- 
 breeds, having a large admixture of foreign
 
 54 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 blood in their veins. Besides these di- 
 verse racial groups that entered as parts 
 into the making of Israel, the Biblical 
 record distinctly states that a numerous 
 mixed multitude went up from Egypt 
 with the Hebrews proper, and blended 
 with them. 
 
 The people whom Moses delivered and 
 led into the desert were at first an un- 
 formed and incoherent mass. They were 
 the raw but plastic material into which 
 the creative genius of Moses breathed the 
 breath of his own spiritual life, so that 
 they became a living people, having a 
 new spiritual principle for its animated 
 soul. The various clans and nondescript 
 groups were not welded together into a 
 people by a belief in their common de- 
 scent from the same human ancestors and 
 the same ancestral gods. People that had 
 never before claimed kinship with one 
 another and had been united by no ties 
 of common worship, suddenly found them- 
 selves brought together by an astounding 
 revolutionary event, and placed into the 
 closest relation with one another. They 
 had left behind them their clan and tribal
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 55 
 
 gods in the locality which they had in- 
 habited for ages. For the pagan gods 
 were chained to the soil of their original 
 home, and could not quit the region over 
 which their empire extended. They 
 were identified with certain mountains or 
 groves or fields, being merely personifica- 
 tions, animal or human, of the particular 
 locality. Thus the emigrants saw them- 
 selves all at once deprived of their clan 
 divinities. The only bond of union be- 
 tween them for the time being was the 
 overpowering personality of Moses, and 
 the overmastering influence of his mind. 
 Thus the great master-builder found the 
 human material at his disposal well pre- 
 pared to be cast into the mold of his relig- 
 ious ideas and moral ideals, to be fash- 
 ioned into a people consecrated by free 
 choice to the service of Yahve. 
 
 The cardinal ideas of the religion of 
 Moses were as follows : Yahve is not the 
 ancestor, is not the father of the people 
 of Israel. Yahve and Israel are not con- 
 nected by the ties of physical kinship. 
 For Yahve is not a material being, but 
 an omnipotent spirit, and none of the
 
 56 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 relations of sensual and natural life can 
 be ascribed to him. In absolute distinc- 
 tion from all heathen gods he has neither 
 father nor mother, neither brothers nor 
 sisters, neither wife nor children. The 
 generative processes of nature in which all 
 the heathen divinities are so deeply and 
 inextricably involved do not apply to him. 
 He is not identical with nature ; he is no 
 personification of the whole or of a part 
 thereof. He is the Lord and Maker of na- 
 ture. He commanded, and the heavens 
 and earth came into being. He is a pure 
 intelligence. The relations established 
 between him and the people of Israel 
 are therefore of a purely ethical and 
 spiritual kind. He chose Israel to do his 
 service, to obey his commandments, to 
 observe his just laws, his wise statutes 
 and merciful ordinances. And the clans 
 delivered from Egypt of their own free 
 will and accord chose Yahve, the God 
 proclaimed by Moses, to be their -God 
 and their children's God, even through- 
 out all generations. It was a perpetual 
 covenant, voluntarily entered into be- 
 tween the redeemed ones and their Re-
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 57 
 
 deemer. The assembled tribes took it 
 upon themselves and their descendants 
 after them to serve Yahve, the God of 
 righteousness, alone and no other God 
 beside him. By this covenant of right- 
 eousness there was established a spiritual 
 bond of national union between the hith- 
 erto incoherent clans or groups and be- 
 tween the people thus formed and their 
 Lord and God. 
 
 In theory at least though the practice 
 has been lagging behind thousands of 
 years the primitive belief in blood as 
 the sole tie of social, national and politi- 
 cal fellowships, the belief in kinship as 
 the only ground of moral obligation, as 
 the only binding relation between the 
 worshiping mortal and his divinity, was 
 destroyed by the ever memorable event 
 described in the Bible as the revelation 
 on Mount Sinai. In place of brute ani- 
 mal bonds there came into force the spir- 
 itual bond of union between men, the 
 kinship of souls, the sublime unity of the 
 moral nature, embracing all rational be- 
 ings without regard to race differences, 
 binding together the Infinite Mind and
 
 58 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 all finite minds. This idea of the spir- 
 itual unity of mankind in Yahve, the 
 eternal and all-creative spirit, issued forth 
 in the fullness of its glory from the soul 
 of Moses. But not even now, after thirty- 
 five centuries of battle and progress, has 
 it been able fully to overcome and sup- 
 plant the ancient pagan idea and practice 
 of separation and of mutual hostility ac- 
 cording to race and blood. Old heathen- 
 ism is still deep-seated in unregenerate 
 hearts. People that feel, live and act in 
 obedience to the animal instincts and 
 selfish passions of irrational nature, are 
 prone to regard themselves as mere crea- 
 tures and tools of nature, and to classify 
 men like sheep and horses according to 
 their pedigree. He reads the annals 
 of mankind to little purpose who fails 
 to grasp the momentous fact that the 
 religious and ethical revolution started 
 by Moses aimed to wean men from slav- 
 ish subservience to sub-human irrational 
 forces, to transfer the world's center of 
 gravity from the life of natiire below man 
 to the human life in history, to see 
 the revelations of the Infinite chiefly in
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 59 
 
 the growth and progress of reason. The 
 movement of humanity in the new direc- 
 tion, the return of humanity upon itself, 
 set in on the day when Moses proclaimed 
 the Ten Commandments as the religion 
 and the code of ethics of mankind.
 
 III. 
 
 THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 a. UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 b. HIS SERVICE. 
 
 " I AM Yahve, thy God, who brought 
 thee forth from Egypt, out of the house 
 of bondage," etc. 
 
 The starting-point of the new faith 
 and new morality is not the external 
 world, is not the work of creation, but a 
 purely historical event, a divine act of 
 justice and merciful deliverance. The 
 ways of Yahve are henceforth to be 
 sought in the dealings of his righteous- 
 ness with man. His laws reveal them- 
 selves in the unfolding of the highest 
 moral powers. His will manifests itself 
 in the godward development of the 
 human race which for the time being is 
 represented by the people redeemed by 
 him and consecrated to his service. The 
 worship of any other god is forbidden. 
 For such worship can mean only the 
 adoration of some soulless part of nature, 
 of some brute force, of beastlike powers.
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 6l 
 
 It is a crime to worship the Divinity 
 under the form of anything that is in the 
 heavens above, on the earth beneath or 
 in the waters under the earth. Such 
 worship is a degradation of the soul of 
 man and a denial of the spirituality and 
 unity of God. Yahve is the sole and ab- 
 solute Lord and Ruler of the people he 
 had saved from bondage and taken unto 
 himself. Out of gratitude for having 
 been redeemed by him from the degrad- 
 ing service of Egypt, the tribes cove- 
 nanted to serve him, to obey his voice, to 
 observe his commandments and statutes. 
 In what does Yahve's service consist ? 
 Is it in principle and practice like that 
 enjoined by the pagan gods ? As far as 
 the east is from the west, as far as brutal 
 savagery is from enlightened humanity, 
 so different is the service to be rendered 
 to Yahve from that which the gods of the 
 heathen were believed to require at the 
 hands of their worshipers. The pagan 
 divinities were one and all the owners or 
 fathers of their respective communities. 
 They did their best to secure the pros- 
 perity and power of their own children.
 
 62 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 Their own personal interests, their very 
 existence was involved in the welfare of 
 their nation. They approved of moral 
 conduct only in so far as it helped to make 
 their people prosperous. Their motives 
 were selfish and not ethical. The obedience 
 they exacted of their worshipers was that 
 due to despotic fathers. They demanded 
 sacrifices and incense, the fat of bulls and 
 rams. Many of them delighted in heca- 
 tombs of human victims. To many male 
 and female divinities worship was paid in 
 the form of unbridled licentiousness. But 
 the service of Yahve was in principle and 
 practice of an absolutely ethical nature. 
 Yahve is just, righteous, merciful, and 
 holy. He is synonymous with goodness 
 and perfection. His ways are righteous 
 altogether. He is gracious and full of 
 compassion, abundant in kindness and 
 truth. He hates evil and loves good. 
 All the works of iniquity are an abomi- 
 nation to him. The evildoers are his 
 adversaries, those that practice injustice 
 are his haters. There can be, therefore, 
 but one kind of service that is acceptable 
 to him the service of righteousness.
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 63 
 
 The worshipers of Yahve can serve him 
 only by walking in his ways, by fulfilling 
 his righteous commandments, by observ- 
 ing his just statutes and merciful judg- 
 ments. The will of their God and Lord 
 is a law inviolable and eternal unto his 
 servants. But it is not the selfish will of 
 a divine despot, imposing his arbitrary 
 authority on the people of his possession 
 and prescribing to it rules of conduct by 
 which he himself is not bound. The laws 
 of life enjoined by Yahve on his servants 
 flow from his own all-good being. They 
 are the immutable qualities of his perfec- 
 tion, the perennial modes of his self- 
 manifestation. The laws of goodness are 
 the immanent attributes of the universal 
 reason and will. The human soul is akin 
 to the world-soul. Therefore, the divine 
 laws of goodness are not foreign and re- 
 pugnant to it, but are in harmony with 
 its own higher life. They are not com- 
 mands laid upon it by a tyrannical ex- 
 ternal power, but are the expression of 
 man's spiritual nature striving to realize 
 its own godlike powers. The relation of 
 man to God is that of an imperfect spirit-
 
 64 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 ual being, that is to grow into harmony 
 and likeness with the perfect spirit by 
 learning to know and walk in his ways. 
 These ways are not mysterious and in- 
 comprehensible to human intelligence. 
 They are not beyond the reach of aspir- 
 ing human nature. They are not in 
 heaven, that one should say, " Who will 
 go up to heaven and bring them down to 
 us ?" They are in man's heart and mouth 
 to know and observe them. They are 
 the ways of humanity, the ways of life 
 and blessedness. The Ten Command- 
 ments are divine because they tend to 
 make human life perfect. But they are 
 no mere ordinances of human reason, be- 
 cause they derive their sanctity from the 
 will and essence of the Eternal, being the 
 revelations of the Infinite Reason through 
 the finite reason of man. 
 
 C. YAHVE IS A GOD OF TRUTH. 
 
 " Thou shalt not take the name of 
 Yahve, thy God, in falsehood " anchors 
 the duty of truthfulness to the Rock of 
 Ages. Yahve is a God of truth. He keeps 
 faith forever. When he says, is it not
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 65 
 
 done ? When he promises, is it not 
 fulfilled? His throne is established on 
 truth. He that takes Yahve's name in 
 falsehood rebels against the majesty of 
 the God of truth and faithfulness. He 
 violates the bond of union between God 
 and man, between man and his fellow- 
 men. Truthfulness in word and deed is 
 no mere matter of prudence and social 
 usefulness, but is invested with the awful 
 dignity of a divine attribute, in which 
 the worshiper must share with his God. 
 
 d. DUTY OF LABOR AND REST. 
 
 " Six days shalt thou labor and do all 
 thy work, but the seventh is a day of 
 rest unto Yahve thy God." 
 
 This commandment gives to human 
 labor a divine sanction and moral dignity 
 unknown to the pagan world. It frees 
 labor from the contempt in which it was 
 held by the heathen nations. Their 
 whole social system rested on slave 
 labor, on the oppression of the weak by 
 the strong. The masterful oppressors 
 were regarded as the children of the 
 conquering gods, who gave the poor and
 
 66 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 stranger into the power of their favor- 
 ites, in order to enable them to live in 
 idleness by the toil of other men. Labor 
 was despised ; it was considered a badge 
 of slavery. No free man would degrade 
 himself by eating his bread in the sweat 
 of his brow. But Yahve loves the poor 
 and stranger. He delivered the enslaved 
 tribes from the hand of the tyrant, and 
 brought them nigh unto himself to be 
 the people of his covenant. 
 
 He who lives by the labor of his op- 
 pressed fellow-men is an abomination to 
 God. Every man is a spiritual being ; 
 every human being is made in the like- 
 ness of the Eternal. For this reason 
 every man is entitled to the fruits of his 
 labor. 
 
 Six days shall every man labor and 
 do his work. Work is the duty and 
 glory of man. For Yahve himself man- 
 ifests his wisdom and majesty in the 
 work of creation. The dignity of labor, 
 resting on the moral dignity of man, is 
 the ideal basis upon which the society of 
 the future, the society of God and hu- 
 manity, is to build itself.
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 67 
 
 The seventh day rest was instituted 
 by Moses to remind the Israelites that, 
 as they were not the bondmen of any 
 man, they should not degrade themselves 
 to the position of slaves toiling incess- 
 antly without ever enjoying sweet repose. 
 They must remember that they are free 
 men, by virtue of their knowing and 
 serving the God of liberty, who had de- 
 livered them from the bondage of Egypt. 
 The Sabbath is an everlasting memorial 
 of the fact that redemption from slavery 
 was the starting-point of the history and 
 the motive power of the mission of Israel, 
 that it is the end and aim of religion to 
 make men morally and socially free 
 through their life in God. One day in 
 the week should be consecrated to the 
 spiritual relations between man and God. 
 Moreover, the love of God extends, 
 through the compassion of man, to all 
 his creatures, and a day of rest is given 
 to the menservants and maidservants, and 
 even to the beasts of burden, so that the 
 peace and joy of God should reign on the 
 Sabbath day in every household.
 
 68 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 6 THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF FILIAL PIETY. 
 
 " Honor thy father and mother, that 
 thy days may be prolonged in the land 
 which Yahve giveth thee." 
 
 By this commandment filial piety was 
 detached from its roots in the primitive 
 pagan theory of the family, and was trans- 
 planted into the new fruitful soil of moral 
 monotheism. Honor is due to parents,, 
 but not because the blood of the family 
 gods is transmitted to the children by 
 their father and mother. The' commands 
 of father and mother are to be obeyed, 
 but not because they are the living repre- 
 sentatives of the divinities, from whom 
 the family derives its physical descent. 
 The piirely animal ties of blood relation- 
 ship are unworthy the spiritual nature of 
 man. 
 
 With all save a few most advanced 
 pagan societies the relation believed to 
 subsist between the gods and their wor- 
 shipers was of an unmistakably animal 
 nature. For the divinities adored as the 
 fathers of families, of clans, of tribes and 
 of nations, were conceived of as beasts
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 69 
 
 and not as manlike beings. Every kin- 
 ship, from the smallest and simplest to 
 the largest and most complex, traced its 
 pedigree to a divine animal. 
 
 One of the consequences of this purely 
 physical or animal connection between 
 divine ancestors, human parents and chil- 
 dren, was that either the mother or the 
 father alone was honored and obeyed ac- 
 cording to the theory and law of descent 
 prevalent in a society. Where descent 
 followed the maternal line, the mother 
 alone had authority over her children, 
 while the father was not regarded as of 
 kin to his own sons and daughters, and 
 could lay no claim to their respect. 
 Where descent was exclusively in the 
 paternal line, the father alone was looked 
 upon as the true parent. He alone 
 wielded absolute authority over the mem- 
 bers of the family. Filial piety meant 
 honor and obedience paid solely to him. 
 The mother had no share, as far as the 
 law went, in the reverence and devotion 
 of her children. Thus the vital princi- 
 ple underlying the pagan family confined 
 the duties of filial piety to one parent, and
 
 70 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 in an overwhelming majority of societies 
 degraded the mother, deprived her of all 
 legitimate authority over her children, 
 and withheld from her the meed of filial 
 reverence. 
 
 Moreover, parental authority rested 
 exclusively on the' assumed bonds of 
 blood relationship between the divine 
 ancestor and the human members of his 
 family. As long as the child-like belief 
 in the actual physical descent of the 
 family from the family god was held in 
 all sincerity, filial piety stood on firm 
 ground. But with growing civilization, 
 sooner or later a time arrived when 
 better knowledge destroyed the belief 
 in the descent of human beings from a 
 god. With the destruction of that be- 
 lief, filial piety had no longer a religious 
 basis to rest on. The family ties broke 
 down for want of an organic welding 
 principle. Why should children rever- 
 ence their father after the once all-pow- 
 erful religious reason had lost its hold on 
 the minds of men? This explains the 
 frightful demoralization of family life, and 
 the almost total dissolution of the bonds of
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 filial piety in every pagan society, which 
 had reached a certain advanced stage of 
 intellectual development 
 
 In the Decalogue filial piety is forever 
 liberated from the base heathen concep- 
 tion which we have described. Like other 
 duties, it is revealed and commanded by 
 the infinite Reason and Perfect Will as 
 an absolute ethical obligation which the 
 finite reason and imperfect will of man 
 must strive to fulfill, in order to live and 
 act in harmony with the laws of the su- 
 preme Intelligence and Goodness. Man 
 becomes himself, develops his true self, 
 realizes his spiritual nature, the more his 
 will is at one with the all-just and all- 
 good will of God. 
 
 God is not the father of man in a 
 physical sense. He is his spiritual guide 
 and law-giver. Obedience to the right- 
 eous will of Yahve constitutes the bond 
 of living unity, the covenant of right- 
 eousness between man and God. Honor 
 and obedience are not to be paid to par- 
 ents because they are more closely than 
 any other beings connected with their 
 children bv the ties of flesh and blood.
 
 72 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 Above the mere physical unity there rises 
 the holy unity of spiritual kinship, of 
 ethical communion, the divine unity of 
 sympathy and love, of gratitude and rev- 
 erence. The life of God in humanity and 
 nature concentrates and sums itself up in 
 the relation of god-fearing parents to their 
 offspring. The faithfulness and mercy 
 of Providence reveal themselves to the 
 children through the loving-kindness and 
 moral discipline of father and mother. 
 Honor and gratitude shown to them is 
 honor and gratitude displayed toward the 
 Author of all life. In the parents the 
 children obey and reverence the spiritual 
 messengers of the divine lawgiver and 
 benefactor. The}- are the fountain-head 
 and chief representatives of the social life 
 of mankind, without which man ceases to 
 be man and sinks to the level of a brute. 
 Without obedience to the divine laws 
 aiming at the general good, society must 
 dissolve into its component parts. With- 
 out early training in moral discipline and 
 obedience to the behests of duty, the in- 
 dividual will grow up fiercely selfish and 
 brutal, rebellious to the commands of the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 73 
 
 social good, indifferent to the welfare of 
 others, caring only for his own interests 
 and the satisfaction of his own passionate 
 desires. 
 
 The family is the ethical training 
 school of humanity. From its heart are 
 all the issues of life, of national health 
 and disease, of virtue and corruption, of 
 the fear of God and of self-destructive 
 disobedience to the voice of the Most 
 High. The parents are the prophets of 
 God, through whom he teaches the gen- 
 erations of man how to walk in his ways. 
 They are the instruments of his holy 
 will, the executors of his laws through 
 the power of love and divinely constituted 
 authority. 
 
 Yet the authority of father and mother 
 according to Mosaic law is quite different 
 from that exercised by the father in pagan 
 societies. The latter was the absolute 
 owner of his children and of their mother. 
 He could sell them or slay them. They 
 belonged to him by virtue of the physi- 
 cal life which they derived from him. 
 But according to the higher, spiritual law 
 of the Decalogue, the father was by no
 
 74 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 means the possessor and master of his 
 children. The voice of Yahve addresses 
 itself directly to the children, and makes 
 filial piety an ethical obligation and not 
 a matter of blind submission to a natural 
 power. The children stand in an imme- 
 diate and direct relation to Yahve. The 
 father is not the priest and mediator be- 
 tween God and his children. With the 
 breaking down of the pagan principle of 
 worship, the wall of separation between 
 the Deity and the individual disappeared 
 and every man stood face to face with his 
 Maker. 
 
 This spiritual and ethical principle of 
 filial piety, according to the new dispen- 
 sation, could not but give the mother equal 
 dignity with the father. It culminated 
 in the commandment, " Honor thy father 
 and thy mother." The wife was not the 
 property of her husband, but his help- 
 mate, with whom he was to become one 
 being through the covenant of love. 
 Thus the new religion of Yahvism, or 
 moral monotheism, created the new fam- 
 ily which was welded together by spirit- 
 ual forces, and rested on the immovable
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 75 
 
 foundation of divinely sanctioned ethical 
 relations. This new creation has en- 
 dowed every society, animated by and 
 organized according to the spirit of Yahv- 
 ism, with inexhaustible and indestructi- 
 ble vitality. 
 
 f SACREDNESS OF LIFE. 
 
 "Thou shalt not kill." With this 
 commandment the ethics of justice broke 
 entirely away from the savage conception 
 of human life, from the narrow and un- 
 ethical view of murder. For this injunc- 
 tion invests the life of every human being 
 with inviolable sanctity. It is not said, 
 u Thou shalt not kill thy brother, thou 
 shalt not kill a blood relation, a member 
 of thy clan or tribe, or a son of thy peo- 
 ple." In the most general and universal 
 way it is said, "Thou shalt not kill," 
 embracing in the prohibition all human 
 beings, without any reference to the bonds 
 of kinship. The fatal spell of the past 
 is broken. 
 
 The savage, murderous yell of man 
 springing upon man to slay him as his 
 born enemy, as the natural foe of his 
 tribe and his god, shall no longer be
 
 76 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 heard within a world which is sanctified 
 and ruled by the God of humanity. 
 Across the river of blood, separating man 
 from man, a spiritual bridge is thrown, 
 uniting all men, the bridge of human 
 brotherhood. The natural man, fettered 
 and cribbed in his sympathies by the ties 
 of blood, confined within the narrow 
 prison of kinship, shall be changed into 
 the spiritual man, and become brother to 
 all the children of Adam. All men are 
 made in the spiritual image of God. He 
 that kills any human being commits a 
 crime against the majesty of Yahve which 
 resides in man. He destroys the likeness 
 of the Maker. "Thou shalt not kill" is 
 the solemn declaration of Yahvism, that 
 human life is sacred, that the moral dig- 
 nity of man invests him with godlike 
 character and value. "Thou shalt not 
 kill " ; the injunction is absolute, and ad- 
 mits no exception. This commandment 
 is the divine law, which shall in the last 
 days unfold and open into the full-blown 
 flower of universal peace. Then the 
 righteousness of Yahve shall be the judge 
 of all nations and the umpire of all king-
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 77 
 
 doms, and "they shall beat their swords 
 into plowshares, and their spears into 
 priming-hooks. Nation shall not lift 
 np the sword against nation, neither shall 
 they learn war any more." 
 
 g PURITY OF LIFE. 
 
 The commandment forbidding mur- 
 der is immediately followed in the Deca- 
 logue by the commandment against un- 
 chastity. There is an intimate and 
 organic connection between these two 
 commandments in the ethical scheme of 
 Yahvism, as opposed to the polytheistic 
 theory of morality and society. The root 
 idea of pagan religion, laws, and social 
 bonds was as follows : Every clan, tribe, 
 and people has a parent god or goddess, 
 who gave birth to their community. 
 From him or her the successive genera- 
 tions derive their life. Every society is 
 in the absolute possession of its own an- 
 cestral deity. It exists mainly for the 
 service and pleasure of the communal 
 divinity. The will of the. tribal or na- 
 tional god is absolutely binding on all 
 his children. His commands are laws to 
 all the members of the kinship, no mat-
 
 78 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 ter whether they appear moral or im- 
 moral to human judgment. For they 
 owe their physical life and being to him. 
 They are his children and servants. The 
 members of every other kinship or com- 
 munity are regarded as born enemies, and 
 their gods are hated and dreaded as evil 
 demons. Strangers possess no rights 
 whatever ; they may be killed as if they 
 were animals. Community of blood alone 
 secures common rights. Where the tie 
 of blood is lacking there exists no bond 
 of moral obligation. 
 
 We can but faintly realize what an 
 all-absorbing part physical descent, the 
 mystery of fatherhood, motherhood, and 
 brotherhood, played in the unfolding so- 
 cial life, in the religious yearnings and 
 guesses and child-like stammerings of the 
 remote ancestors of the race. The gen- 
 erative processes in nature and mankind, 
 the mystery of birth, of growth and 
 death, the coming forth of living beings 
 out of non-existence, the disappearance 
 of all beings and vanishing into noth- 
 ingness, filled the primitive mind with 
 speechless awe and wonder. The past
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 79 
 
 generations are linked to the present and 
 future generations by the mystic chain of 
 birth. The generative process was ap- 
 plied as a key and explanation to all that 
 is, to all the phenomena of nature, to all 
 things animate and inanimate, to animals, 
 men, and gods. How did anything that is 
 come into being ? And answer was given, 
 " By the process of birth." The gods 
 themselves were born and gave birth to 
 other gods and to men. They are wor- 
 shiped, obeyed, and served, because they 
 are the parent causes of life in brute and 
 man, they are adored because they are 
 the fathers and mothers, the procreators 
 of families, clans, tribes, and nations. 
 
 This fact explains the terrible aber- 
 ration of the pagan mind, which culmi- 
 nated in the shameful service of licen- 
 tiousness instituted at the temples in 
 honor of the great gods, the fathers of 
 tribes and nations. Frightful orgies were 
 celebrated for the glory of the mother- 
 goddesses, in order to imitate their ex- 
 ample, believed to be given in the phe- 
 nomena and processes of nature's procre- 
 ative life. Up to the rise of Yahvism
 
 8O THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 the mind of man was wholly absorbed in 
 the contemplation and worship of object- 
 ive or external nature. For good and for 
 evil man tried to walk in her ways. In 
 order to satisfy the assumed wishes of 
 his gods and goddesses, he endeavored to 
 copy their sensual characteristics. He 
 often put his humanity to the blush, he 
 often degraded himself to the level of 
 brutes, in order to obey the divine powers 
 that confronted him. It is one of the 
 most painful and humiliating facts in 
 history that the nature-religions fostered 
 immorality to an incredible degree. They 
 consecrated the most abominable vices, 
 and recommended to men shameful prac- 
 tices as acts of worship. They stifled 
 the still voice of conscience with the ve- 
 hement command to do the pleasure of 
 the gods at all hazards, and to walk in 
 their ways in spite of the protests of 
 every-day morality. 
 
 Yahvism came into the world to lib- 
 erate the soul of man from the demoral- 
 izing bondage of nature and nature-gods, 
 to give free scope to the growing moral 
 sentiments and the unfolding conscience.
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 8 1 
 
 Moses proclaimed a spiritual God, con- 
 ceived in the likeness of the perfect eth- 
 ical ideal. Yahve is not the father of gods 
 and men. He does not participate in the 
 sensuous life of nature. He is a God of 
 holiness and purity. Vice of every kind 
 is an abomination unto him. He loathes 
 the licentious practices and shameful 
 usages of heathen worship. His servants 
 are required to lead chaste lives. They 
 are forbidden to walk after their eyes and 
 the desires of their heart. They are com- 
 manded to subdue their passions in obe- 
 dience to the Holy One, whose ways 
 should be their ways. 
 
 From the very hour of its birth to this 
 late day it has been the chief aim of 
 Yahvism to emancipate the spirit from 
 the flesh, to liberate the mind from the 
 greedy, blindly urging passions, and to 
 make reason the sole guide of conduct, the 
 measurer and determiner of all thoughts 
 and actions. Deep down to the very last 
 elements of human conduct, through all 
 the strata of public and private life, there 
 runs a line of cleavage between spiritual 
 Yahvism and nature-born paganism. The
 
 82 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 latter is essentially immoral ; the former 
 is nothing if not ethical. 
 
 In its main tendencies and religions 
 speculations, in its social forms and family 
 institutions, the polytheistic world was 
 in the leading-strings of sub-human na- 
 ture, in the mighty grasp and under the 
 direction of the instinctive forces common 
 to brute and man. Worse still, these in- 
 stinctive forces were regarded with mys- 
 tic awe, were worshiped as the parent 
 powers, and their manifestation and move- 
 ments were obeyed as laws and imitated 
 as divine examples. For this reason the 
 practice of horrible vices was commanded 
 by primitive custom and sanctioned by 
 priestly codes. Indeed, men brought up 
 under the influence of the Mosaic law can 
 form no adequate conception of the pri- 
 vate and institutional immorality which 
 was the rule among the heathen nations. 
 Where, as among the early Romans, 
 purity of family life happened to prevail, 
 it lasted only as long as the child-like be- 
 liefs held their own. But as soon as they 
 broke down before the march of advanc- 
 ing knowledge and culture, there opened
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 83 
 
 a moral chasm, which no imperial decrees 
 and punishments were able to close. And 
 again, whenever the moral forces of 
 nobler natures turned with horror from 
 the witches' sabbath of licentious worship 
 and unbridled passions, there appeared in 
 contrast a gloomy and unnatural asceti- 
 cism ; there was a turning away from all 
 the legitimate joys of life, a fanatical 
 contempt for the body and all its vital 
 functions. 
 
 But Yahvism rooted the duty of 
 chastity and purity in the will and being 
 of a spiritual and holy God, to whom all 
 forms of licentious service were an abom- 
 ination. The purifying and spiritualizing 
 effects of the moral discipline of Yahvism 
 on the family life of its adherents, the 
 habits of virtue and temperance it bred 
 in them, are among the most inspiring 
 facts in the history of man's ethical edu- 
 cation. Whatever else may be said in 
 praise of genuine Israelites or true Yah- 
 vists of all races, of all times and lands, 
 they are surely distinguished by the 
 purity of their family relations, by the 
 chaste and temperate use they make of
 
 84 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 the material pleasures of life, being 
 equally removed from ascetic mortifica- 
 tion of the flesh and from self-indulgent 
 sensualism. The civilized nations of to- 
 day owe their moral superiority to the 
 fact that their habits of thought and 
 feeling, through a long line of gener- 
 ations, have been formed by the rigorous 
 ethical ideas of Moses and his spiritual 
 successors. Their family life and all 
 other social institutions have been shaped 
 by the Yahvistic ideals of virtue. 
 
 h SACRED RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 
 
 " Thou shalt not steal." In the main 
 the ideas at the root of this command- 
 ment are those underlying the command- 
 ment regarding the inviolability and 
 sanctity of every human life. The sa- 
 cred rights of private property are pro- 
 claimed in a universal way. It is not 
 said, " Thou shalt not steal from thy 
 brother, thou shalt not rob any of thy 
 tribesmen, thou shalt not deprive any of 
 thy people of whatever belongs to him." 
 The qualifying and limiting element of 
 family, tribe and people has entirely dis-
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 85 
 
 appeared. Ever}- human being, be he a 
 native or a stranger, has an inalienable 
 right to his possession. To violate this 
 cardinal and universal right amounts to 
 a subversion of the everlasting founda- 
 tions of justice, on which government is 
 established among the children of men. 
 In societies based on polytheistic princi- 
 ples of religion and government, theft, 
 robber}- and fraud are regarded as crimes 
 only if committed within the commun- 
 ity. To take away from a stranger his 
 property, his wife and his children, is not 
 considered reprehensible but rather mer- 
 itorious, and is often praised as patriotic. 
 Whoever stands outside the pale of kin- 
 ship, whoever is not a member of the 
 community by the natural laws of blood 
 relationship, has no right to his own per- 
 son and to his own property. In theory 
 and in practice all pagan societies lived 
 in a perpetual state of active or passive 
 mutual hostility. To inflict all possible 
 injury on the life and property of all 
 outsiders, to appropriate their labor and 
 accumulated wealth by means of open 
 violence or by stratagem, was a self-evi-
 
 86 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 dent duty incumbent on the state in its 
 collective capacity and on all its mem- 
 bers, as far as lay in their individual 
 power. To make raids into the territory 
 of unrelated families and clans, and carry 
 off their cattle, their women and chil- 
 dren, was and still is a legitimate practice 
 among people who in their notions and 
 actions are swayed by the primitive con- 
 ceptions of the social bond. Stealing 
 from strangers, robbing foreigners, is ap- 
 proved by conscience whether the acts of 
 spoliation are done on a large scale by 
 the whole people or by individuals pilfer- 
 ing, cheating and defrauding in a small 
 way for their own private benefit. 
 
 The idea of an indestructible right to 
 life and property, to all joys and gifts 
 earned by labor, the idea of a divine right 
 inherent in all human beings by virtue 
 of their being ethical personalities, was 
 unknown to the pagans of the dead past. 
 Such an idea is inconceivable also to the 
 pagans of our own day, who may call 
 themselves Christians, or Israelites, or 
 Mohammedans, but whose modes of feel-
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 87 
 
 ing, habits of thought and ways of action 
 are those of idolatrous barbarians. 
 
 But this very idea lives and proclaims 
 itself with no uncertain sound in the Ten 
 Commandments. Thou shalt not steal 
 from, thou shalt not rob, nor defraud any 
 human being. Sacred, hedged around 
 by the adamantine will and law of the 
 Eternal, is the life and possession of every 
 man. Ask not, like the savage and bar- 
 barian, " Who was thy father and who thy 
 mother? From what kinship art thou 
 sprung? What people has given thee 
 birth? The face and features and color 
 of what race dost thou bear? What 
 community claims thy allegiance? " Ask 
 not, u ln what God believest thou? By 
 what name dost thou invoke the power 
 divine, that is high and exalted above 
 man's comprehension?" Mete not out 
 justice and right to man according to such 
 distinctions. Let every man be a full 
 man and brother to thee. Reverence the 
 divine rights of humanity in every hu- 
 man being. Touch not with a plunder- 
 ing hand, with the itching palm of fraud,
 
 88 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 aught that belongs to thy fellow-man. 
 Let not the strong despoil the weak. Let 
 not the cunning steal the wages of the 
 hireling. Let not the powerful contrive 
 t live on the fruits of other men's labor. 
 All manner of dishonest dealing, diverse 
 weights, and false measures, overreaching 
 the unwary, tricking the ignorant out of 
 his earnings and savings, are rebellions 
 against the Judge and Lord of mankind ; 
 they are crimes against the majesty of 
 justice which dwells in every human soul. 
 He misses the true meaning and purpose 
 of the religion of Moses who fails to 
 understand the new ideal of justice brought 
 into the world by Yahvism. It throws 
 the shield of the Supreme Being, of the 
 highest moral authority, around the indi- 
 vidual rights and interests of the hum- 
 blest and meanest of mortals. Doing 
 wrong to the least of the children of men 
 is making war upon the kingdom of God. 
 If there is in a community but one 
 man, be he a native or a stranger, who is 
 despoiled of his substance, and cannot 
 obtain redress before the tribunal and
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 89 
 
 conscience of the society, that community 
 harbors what is the abomination of abom- 
 inations to Yahve. It is already breaking 
 the covenant of righteousness and is in a 
 state of apostasy from him. Since every 
 human soul is a reflection of the Infinite 
 Spirit, and stands in direct ethical rela- 
 tions to him, every infraction of the 
 rights of any individual, be it to his per- 
 son or to his possession, is sin and rebel- 
 lion against God. Justice is the bond of 
 union between man and man, justice is 
 the spiritual life-principle of the common- 
 wealth, by which all its members are 
 merged into a higher unity, and by which 
 human government manifests itself as di- 
 vine government. Woe to him to whose 
 hands cling unlawful gain ! Woe to him 
 who builds his house with ill-gotten gold! 
 While he is erecting for himself edifices 
 full of violence and is gathering treasures 
 of iniquity, he is tearing down the temple 
 of divine justice, and loosening the bands 
 which hold society together. Though 
 he establish himself on a rock, the hand 
 of omnipotent justice will drag him
 
 90 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 down; though he hide himself in secret 
 places, inexorable retribution will find 
 him and make his shame and wickedness 
 manifest to all. 
 
 i THE SACRED RIGHTS OF CHARACTER. 
 
 "Thou shalt not bear false witness 
 against thy neighbor." This command- 
 ment is intimately connected with the 
 preceding ones, and forms an ascending 
 part in the progressive unfolding of the 
 ethics and religion of Moses. Justice is 
 far more than mere refraining from acts 
 of theft and robbery. Merely to abstain 
 from shedding the blood of human be- 
 ings does not satisfy the larger demands 
 of righteousness. There is in man far 
 more than his blood,- than his physical 
 life. He has possessions far more precious 
 than material goods. He is an ethical 
 personality. He is a spiritual being akin 
 to the Infinite Spirit. He stands in di- 
 rect and indissoluble relations to the holy 
 and perfect God. Every individual con- 
 tains within himself and represents more 
 or less the infinite moral dignity of God 
 and humanity. The character of every
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 91 
 
 fellow-man of thine is invested with 
 sacred and inviolable rights. The divine 
 majesty of reason, celestial and human, 
 dwells within him. The powers of moral 
 freedom make him god-like. Breathe 
 not, therefore, a lying word against thy 
 fellow-man. If thou bear false witness 
 against thy neighbor thou committest a 
 crime against his moral dignity and 
 against thine own, thou killest the spirit 
 of justice, thou robbest him of the very 
 breath of life, of his honor. In bearing 
 false witness against thy neighbor thou 
 grievously offendest the Almighty and 
 Perfect God, who is truth incorruptible, 
 who has established all human relations, 
 universal and personal, on the foundation 
 of truth. Falsehood uttered against any 
 human being is an insult to the divinity 
 which hedges him about. The moral 
 essence of man is truth unswerving to- 
 ward all men, sympathy strong as death 
 with all that is good and true in the past 
 and in the present. The highest knowl- 
 edge is the knowledge of man ; the holi- 
 est and most valuable truth is that which 
 concerns the character, the goodness, and
 
 9 2 
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 rights of our fellow-men. To distort and 
 falsify the doings, intentions, and moral 
 qualities of any person or group of per- 
 sons, to calumniate with' lying lips indi- 
 viduals, peoples, races, or churches, is 
 rebellion against God, is spiritual murder 
 against man, is self-abasement the most 
 heinous, is apostasy from the soul of 
 humanity. 
 
 Yet bearing false witness against their 
 fellow-men is the besetting sin of man- 
 kind, is the immoral habit of feeling and 
 thought inherited from pagan ancestors. 
 From the silly gossip, backbiting his 
 neighbor, to the solemn historian and om- 
 nicient philosopher, writing with an air 
 of infallibility and passing absolute judg- 
 ments on whole nations and epochs, false 
 witness is habitually borne against the 
 living and the dead, against peoples and 
 against whole races, in a most reckless 
 and blasphemous way. Only a few noble 
 minds show a strong desire to penetrate 
 to the core of truth regarding the life, the 
 acts and motives of their fellow-men. 
 Small indeed is the number of those who 
 brush aside all prejudices, traditional mis-
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 93 
 
 conceptions and calumnies, and try to do 
 ample justice to the character and the 
 merits of people of different lineage and 
 faith. A bitter and relentless war of 
 inisjndgments is waged by all against all. 
 The state of perpetual warfare of kinship 
 against kinship, of tribe against tribe, of 
 people against people, of religion against 
 religion, has but shifted its ground and 
 assumed a different name. 
 
 But it has not changed its nature nor 
 is it less baneful in its effects. Instead of 
 using javelins, swords and bows to pierce 
 the flesh, the poisoned arrows of malice 
 and the daggers of calumny are brought 
 into play, to inflict incurable wounds on 
 the hearts of fellow-men. 
 
 The parent causes of both kinds of 
 hostility and warfare are essentially the 
 same. The savage, the pagan, regarded 
 every man not bound to him by the ties 
 of kinship and religion, as standing out- 
 side the pale of law and right outside 
 the sacred precincts of social and personal 
 fellowship. All sympathy, all love, all 
 the forces of unselfishness, all the ele- 
 ments of truth and justice were exclu-
 
 94 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 sively enlisted in behalf of the society 
 circumscribed by the limits of common 
 descent and worship. Whoever lived out- 
 side that narrow circle was viewed with 
 hostility and suspicion ; was met with 
 hatred, and pursued with all weapons, 
 material and mental with cunning, 
 lying, calumny and malice. The more 
 the outsider is injured the better for those 
 who are inside ; the lower the outsider 
 can be degraded the higher the level of 
 those who are inside the community. 
 The same brutal, heathenish spirit still 
 holds sway over the minds of most mod- 
 ern men. Truth, justice, and love for 
 those within the pale of your family, 
 your state, your race and church, but ju- 
 dicial blindness, misrepresentation, falsi- 
 fication of facts, calumnies and sneers for 
 those who do not dwell within the sacred 
 circle of that special community. 
 
 A blush of shame mantles the cheek 
 when one recalls the innumerable false- 
 hoods, wilful, malicious, envenomed, 
 which man has these many thousands of 
 years been uttering against man. The 
 genius of mankind bows his head in
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 95 
 
 shame on remembering the countless cal- 
 umnies and lies, loveless, inhuman, which 
 nation has forged against nation, race 
 against race, religion against religion ! 
 Oh, perverse man ! Art thou not thyself 
 degraded if thy remotest fellow-man is 
 degraded ? Canst thou, by the power of 
 slander and lying, break up the eternal 
 spiritual unity, which binds thee to all 
 men, to all races, and times ? Canst thou 
 put a sea of enmity, hatred and untruth 
 between thee and thy neighbor who is 
 not of thy blood and sect ? Canst thou 
 baffle and defeat the omnipotent God, 
 who abides in thee and in him, and who 
 has chained thee to all men with the un- 
 breakable chain of spiritual brotherhood ? 
 Canst thou drag down thy brother, whom 
 thou callest a stranger ? Canst thou pull 
 him down with cords of falsehood from 
 the high pedestal of his moral dignity 
 without dragging thyself down at the 
 same time? If thou bearest false wit- 
 ness against thy neighbor, thou bearest 
 false witness against thyself. Every stain 
 thou hast wrought with malice prepense 
 upon the character of a fellow-man is an
 
 96 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 ineffaceable stain upon thy own soul. 
 Thou risest with his rise, thou fallest 
 with his fall. His corruption is also thy 
 own corruption ; his glory is also thy 
 triumph. Thou sharest in his guilt ; thou 
 hast part in his merits. Thou art re- 
 sponsible for his sins ; thou art glorified 
 through his virtues. For every base and 
 false word uttered against any man, any 
 people, race, sect, thou shalt be called to 
 account by all generations and times, by 
 all powers divine and human. For all men 
 are members of one great and immortal 
 being, of spiritual humanity, which lives,, 
 moves and has its growing life in Yahve, 
 the infinite and holy God, the perfect, 
 just and holy Spirit. 
 
 k INWARD MORALITY. 
 
 The Tenth Commandment, "Thou 
 shalt not covet anything that is thy 
 neighbor's," rounds off and completes 
 the ethics of Yahvisrn. It is in a sense 
 the highest and most perfect expression 
 of its moral ideas. It marks a step of 
 immeasurable significance beyond the 
 ethics of paganism. " Thou shalt not
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 97 
 
 desire anything that belongs to thy neigh- 
 bor." For the first time in the history 
 of mankind inward morality is required, 
 righteousness in thought and feeling is 
 enjoined as much as justice in words and 
 deeds. There shall be no covetousness 
 lurking in the secret folds of the heart. 
 Glory not in the cleanness of thy hands 
 if thy heart be full of dishonest desires. 
 Boast not to thyself saying : " I am just, 
 I am upright, no unlawful gain clings to 
 my hands ; in getting my wealth I have 
 violated none of the laws of the land." 
 If thy honesty is not born of thy own 
 incorruptible soul, if thou art not guided 
 in thy dealings with all thy fellow-men 
 by eternal laws engraved upon the tablets 
 of thy own heart, thy honesty and integ- 
 rity go for naught ; they are mere husks, 
 and contain not the living essence of jus- 
 tice. The outward man, his visible acts 
 and utterances, may bear the semblance 
 of probity, yet the inward man may be a 
 thief and robber. A man may regret- 
 fully bow his head before the pitiless 
 majesty of the law ; he may dread the 
 anger and scorn of society ; the threat-
 
 98 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 ening eye and uplifted hand of retribu- 
 tion may cow him into reluctant submis- 
 sion. Shrewdly, selfishly computing his 
 own interests, he yields obedience to the 
 mandates of justice. Yet he is but a 
 calculating usurer of honesty. For his 
 heart is lawless, greedy, grasping. The 
 inner man is a primeval savage, with all 
 the untamed instincts of brute selfish- 
 ness. In his heart of hearts he recog- 
 nizes his own interests as the supreme 
 law. Were the external coercive social 
 forces and punishments withdrawn, he 
 would steal the substance of the widow 
 and the orphan, he would defraud the 
 hireling of his wages, and rob his very 
 brother and the friend of his bosom of 
 his possessions. Vast numbers of such 
 men are found in every land under the 
 sun. They may call themselves worship- 
 ers of the God of justice ; they may pro- 
 claim themselves followers of the proph- 
 ets of righteousness, but their heart is 
 like unto a den of thieves. Daily and 
 hourly they commit acts of robbery and 
 spoliation in thought and desire. If livid 
 envy sits brooding in the inner chambers
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 99 
 
 of a man's soul, he is a brother to the 
 thief, he is as truly a robber as the high- 
 wayman. For the latter there may be 
 some palliation. He may be one of the 
 children of ignorance, poverty and neg- 
 lect. But the envious and covetous man 
 is agitated by his own vicious and ava- 
 ricious impulses. Though he dwell in a 
 house of plenty, he consumes himself 
 with grief on beholding the costlier 
 dwelling-place of his neighbor. Though 
 all things prosper in his hands, his in- 
 satiable eyes would fain devour all the 
 wealth that belongs to his fellow-men. 
 
 Are not base feelings and malignant 
 thoughts as wicked as evil deeds ? Nay, 
 vile feelings are the roots of all wicked- 
 ness. Envious thoughts are .the fatal 
 tree which brings forth the deadly fruit 
 of inhumanity, of cruel violence, of per- 
 secution, of man's demon-fury against his 
 brother, of envenomed social strife, of 
 pernicious wars pitting nation against 
 nation. Covetousness and envy are the 
 mothers of the furies that array class 
 against class, incite nations, boastful of 
 their advanced civilization, to compass
 
 IOO THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 one another's political and economic 
 ruin. They inflame race against race 
 with savage hatred, and fill the adherents 
 of one creed with merciless aversion to 
 the adherents of other religions. It is 
 covetousness and envy that cause the 
 lives of so many men to be glaring con- 
 tradictions and blasphemous lies. With 
 hypocritical lips they profess the religion 
 of love and the ethics of universal hu- 
 manity. But their heart is a stranger to 
 their lip-deep professions ; their soul is 
 full of inhuman antipathies. The pros- 
 perity of those who are not of their own 
 race and faith arouses in them the ma- 
 lignant emotions which their pagan fore- 
 fathers entertained for all strangers. The 
 sight of wealth possessed by people who 
 are not of their blood excites their cupid- 
 ity and envy to a pitch of frenzy. The 
 covetousness of their heart quickens all 
 the immoral forces of their unregenerate 
 nature into baleful activity. They would 
 fain strip those whom their soul hates as 
 aliens of all their possessions, of their 
 last garments, drive them as beggars 
 from their homes and make them wan-
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. IOI 
 
 dering outlaws and outcasts. Envy makes 
 them inhuman, indifferent to the cries 
 and sufferings of those they malign and 
 persecute, renders them more brutal and 
 callous than brutes. The spirit of the 
 Ten Commandments has not spiritualized 
 their inner life, has not transformed and 
 regenerated their heart. They know not 
 what inward morality, what soul-born 
 righteousness means. 
 
 There is but one principle which, if 
 fully realized and translated into feelings, 
 will redeem man from the covetous 
 promptings and the greedy passions of 
 egotism. It is the central and all-domi- 
 nating idea of Yahvism, that all men 
 have their common and highest life in 
 the unfolding life of God, that all human 
 beings form a spiritual and indestructible 
 unity in the holy will and love of the 
 Supreme Being. 
 
 How can I be only for myself, if I 
 realize that all men, near and far, are 
 part and parcel of my own being ? How 
 can I cherish a desire to lay a grasping 
 hand upon the wealth of others, how can 
 I feel pained by the blessings accruing
 
 IO2 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 to others, if I feel and know that I am 
 bound to all generations by the ties of 
 our spiritual kinship, by the identity of 
 our soul's deathless essence in the eternal 
 and all-embracing life of the universal 
 spirit ? If I believe with all my heart in 
 the absolute unity, spirituality and per- 
 fection of God, and as a necessary conse- 
 quence, believe also in the spiritual one- 
 ness of humanity, in the ethical brother- 
 hood of all men, in the covenant of right- 
 eousness between mankind and the Eter- 
 nal, my self-love must needs develop and 
 expand into universal love, the happiness 
 of myself must seek satisfaction in the 
 happiness of all my fellow-men, and the 
 rights of every person must be realized 
 by me as my own inviolable divine right. 
 The cardinal principle of morality, " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," flows 
 of necessity from the cardinal doctrine 
 of Yahvism. " Yahve, our God, is one." 
 The great seers and teachers of Yahvism r 
 have in their own soul, aspiring after a 
 godlike life, realized the vital connection 
 between those two universal truths. They 
 proclaimed their own heart's experience,
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 103 
 
 that the love of mankind is the perfect 
 fruit of the love of God. The fear of 
 God is indeed the beginning of wisdom, 
 of that wisdom which abides in the holy of 
 holies of the heart as a humanizing power 
 making for inward morality, of the wis- 
 dom which walks abreast with truth, 
 justice and love, which declines to sepa- 
 rate any man from the fellowship of the 
 soul, and divides not man from man ac- 
 cording to race and creed. 
 
 "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
 wife." Unholy desires are defilement 
 and corruption, even though, cowed by 
 fear of social condemnation and public 
 contempt, they are not given free scope 
 to translate themselves into base deeds. 
 L,et not lustful wishes and thoughts revel 
 in the hiding-places of thy soul. The 
 fountain of all utterances and activities, 
 the heart from which are all the issues of 
 life, must be kept pure, or all else will be 
 impure, will be tainted to its core and 
 contaminated before it ripens into visible 
 acts and facts. The seat of good and 
 evil, of moral worth and worthlessness, 
 is in the soul. Though thy outward
 
 104 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 conduct, thy palpable life, be as white as 
 snow, yet if thy heart is black with sin- 
 ful cravings thou art accursed within thy 
 innermost being, thou hast fallen away 
 from thy spiritual self, thou art a sac- 
 rilegious traitor to thy own moral dig- 
 nity. Thou hast broken the covenant of 
 holiness, which is to make man but a 
 little less than a god. Thy conscience, 
 incorruptible despite thy inward hypoc- 
 risy, tears from thy brow the crown of 
 humanity and banishes thee from the 
 presence of Yahve, the perfect and holy 
 one. The moral life is not something 
 mechanical; it does not consist in craven 
 submission to a will and an authority 
 which resides in fearful majesty outside 
 the soul of man, and is not akin to nor 
 communes with his spiritual nature. If 
 thy virtue is but the offspring of coward- 
 ice, if it is wholly dictated by fear of 
 heavenly or human punishments, if the 
 motive of thy goodness is social honor 
 and the praise of men, thou shalt have no 
 reward for thy righteous doings. Thy 
 virtuous deeds may go forth and work 
 good in the world, but they are not the
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 105 
 
 children of thy soul. Thou hast no share 
 in their merit. They shall not be counted 
 to thee for righteousness. The value of 
 all good works consists in the moral mo- 
 tive, in the good-will, in the love which 
 has given them birth. For man is a 
 spiritual, an ethical personality. Herein 
 consists his glory, his eternal kinship 
 with the Most High. His spiritual life, 
 his inward morality, is therefore of infi- 
 nite importance. Hence the gentlest 
 stirrings of the heart, the most fleeting 
 thoughts should be under the control of 
 the divine laws of justice, purity and 
 mercy.
 
 IV. 
 
 PAGAN AND MOSAIC ETHICS 
 CONTRASTED. 
 
 Pagan Morality Exclusively Social Morality. 
 
 THE transformation of morality from 
 mere outward conformity to social laws 
 into an inward spiritual condition, from 
 mechanical obedience to an external au- 
 thority into a spontaneous self-manifes- 
 tation of the soul, is the crowning glory 
 of Yahvism. It gave to ethics a new 
 and indestructible vital principle. It 
 created the new and ideal morality which 
 has its source of life in the consciousness 
 and conscience of the individual soul. 
 Pre-Yahvistic morality was exclusively 
 social morality. The individual as such 
 was not recognized by ancient society, 
 and played no part in it. The life, the 
 growth and prosperity of the community 
 was everything ; the individual man, not 
 to speak of the individual woman, dwin- 
 dled into insignificance. The very con- 
 ception of individuality, of inviolable
 
 THE REUGION OF MOSES. 107 
 
 individual rights and duties, the very 
 idea of a moral personality, had as yet 
 no existence. The individual was wholly 
 merged into and lost in the kinship ; or 
 rather, he had not yet emerged and be- 
 come differentiated from the community. 
 The family was the smallest and most 
 compact unit. It was the primal individ- 
 ual. All its living and all its dead mem- 
 bers were part of it, subordinate parts 
 subserving the ends of the whole organ- 
 ism. Throughout the whole chain of its 
 generations the family had but one blood, 
 one life, one being, one body, of which 
 the individuals were mere cells, which 
 grew, decayed and died, to make room 
 for other new-born human cells. The 
 family had its fountain-head in the family 
 god. In him it lived, moved and had its 
 being. All its successive generations 
 flowed from him, and returned to him to 
 emerge again from him in new births. 
 The clan, the tribe, the people, only re- 
 produced on an ever larger scale and in 
 an increasingly complex manner the type 
 of the family, and were determined by
 
 108 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 the same principles of organization and 
 conduct. The social organism, large or 
 small, invariably absorbed the lives, the 
 interests and the conduct of the individ- 
 uals forming its component parts. The 
 personal welfare of the human units 
 making up the social body was not con- 
 sidered. Their desires and preferences 
 were not consulted. It was not asked, 
 what is most conducive to the happiness 
 of the individual. The nature of virtue 
 was not denned in accordance with the 
 spiritual nature, nor derived from the 
 moral wants of the individual citizen. 
 The aim of virtue was not the good of 
 the individual, not the unfolding of his 
 varied powers, not his attainment of per- 
 fection, not his material well-being, his 
 enjoyment of the largest possible amount 
 of pleasure, and his greatest possible 
 freedom from pain. The good of the 
 corporate body was the sole motive and 
 purpose of all actions regarded as moral 
 and praiseworthy. Deeds, endeavors and 
 aspirations which make for the self-pres- 
 ervation, the growth and power of the 
 community, were alone considered moral,
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 109 
 
 virtuous, divinely willed and commanded. 
 Morality and commonweal were identical 
 ideas. 
 
 Woe to the individual who was be-' 
 lieved to be an obstacle to the common 
 good. He was ruthlessly cut down, he ' 
 was remorselessly trampled under foot, 
 though there was no guilt on his hands 
 and no intention to do injury to society. 
 Weak, decrepit or crippled children were 
 strangled at birth or exposed in forests 
 or on mountain tops, to die of hunger or 
 cold or to be- devoured by wild beasts. 
 They could not prove useful to the state 
 as warriors or mothers. Hence, they had 
 no right to encumber the earth as use- 
 less drones. The part that was unable 
 to serve the whole was broken to pieces 
 and cast away as rubbish. The inhuman 
 practice of killing old people who had 
 become a burden on the active part of 
 the community, a practice still in vogue 
 among numerous savage tribes, prevailed 
 among many of the ruder ancient socie- 
 ties. The children themselves were re- 
 quired to put their aged parents to death, 
 or to carry them into the woods with
 
 HO THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 only a pitcher of water and a scanty 
 amount of food for provision, and leave 
 them there to die of starvation or fall a 
 prey to prowling beasts. Only the recog- 
 nition that old people, though useless as 
 fighters and laborers, may render invalu- 
 able service by their experience and coun- 
 sel, gradually led to the abolition of this 
 dreadful custom, which was but one of 
 the consequences flowing from the rigor- 
 ous and pitiless pagan principle of social 
 good and social morality. The individ- 
 ual had to obey without questioning, 
 without doubting, the laws which were 
 believed to have emanated from the pre- 
 siding and ruling parent gods of the 
 social body. If he refused to fulfill all 
 these statutes, ordinances and laws, he 
 was crushed by the community without 
 mercy. He was either executed as a traitor 
 and a rebel against the gods, or a punish- 
 ment no less terrible was meted out to 
 him ; he was banished from the commun- 
 ity and driven forth to be a wanderer and 
 a fugitive, an outcast and outlaw upon the 
 face of the earth, so that whoever found 
 him could slay him with impunity.
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. Ill 
 
 Thus morality in primitive societies 
 consisted exclusively in unquestioning 
 compliance on the part of the individual 
 with all the laws of his community. All 
 duties were mere outward obligations, 
 enforced with irresistible power by society 
 in the name of the divine lords of the 
 community. Religion, tradition, customs 
 and public opinion held the individual 
 as in a vise, from which he could not 
 break away. He submitted to authority, 
 but not through spontaneous resolve. He 
 did not voluntarily curb his passions and 
 sacrifice his personal pleasure and inter- 
 ests to the general good. He was not 
 even aware that he possessed individual 
 rights which he might forego for the sake 
 of the public welfare. He did not know 
 that he was a self-centered ethical per- 
 sonality. He felt himself absolutely iden- 
 tified with the life, wants and demands of 
 the community. He could no more think 
 of calling into question the binding force 
 of the social laws and customs surround- 
 ing him and pressing in upon him on all 
 sides, than one of us can dream of jump- 
 ing away from the earth and leaping
 
 112 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 into space. There existed no individual 
 personalities, but social bodies. There 
 was no private morality, but public moral- 
 ity. There were no universal laws, but 
 social laws of conduct. There were as 
 many codes of ethics as there were com- 
 munities and ruling divinities. Every 
 member of society yielded ready obedience 
 to its statutes, but not willingly, because 
 he had no will of his own. There was no 
 private conscience, but only a public con- 
 science. The feelings and thoughts, the 
 inner life, the spiritual processes going on 
 in the individual soul were matters of no 
 moment. They were not appealed to as 
 the ultimate authority in moral judg- 
 ments, nor were they consciously allowed 
 to have the least voice and influence in 
 the activities and movements of the cor- 
 porate life of the commonwealth. Such 
 a morality was exceedingly defective. 
 While it powerfully tended to foster so- 
 cial unity and coherence, it was, after all, 
 but a sort of mechanical and external 
 morality, and was far from being soul- 
 born virtue and self-denial. " There can 
 be no altruism in any high sense, where
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 113 
 
 there is no little room left for egoism, and 
 to be truly unselfish man must know in 
 all the fullness of its meaning what it is 
 to be a self." 
 
 Whenever, in the course of intellect- 
 ual development, the individual awoke 
 from the slumber of ages to a recognition 
 of his dignity and importance, whenever 
 he came to realize himself as the center, 
 measure and purpose of all things and all 
 activities, such an awakening was fear- 
 ful in its consequences, and brought on 
 most destructive moral and social up- 
 heavals. The growing and expanding 
 individualities burst the social frame 
 apart. The social bonds, rooted in kin- 
 ship, and the public laws deriving their 
 authority from ancestral gods, melted 
 away under the fiery stream of orirushing 
 passionate egoisms, breaking down in the- 
 ory and practice all moral restraints. The 
 brutal forces of despotism had then to 
 step in, and by sheer mechanical coercion 
 prevent the disintegrating body politic 
 from being resolved into its centrifugal 
 units. Sooner or. later, the pagan or 
 primitive theory of man, of kinship, of
 
 114 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 society, of religion and government, was 
 bound to break down completely, and 
 carry with it the whole social fabric rest- 
 ing upon it. 
 
 The Ethics of Moses Primarily Individualistic. 
 
 It was only with the moral emanci- 
 pation of the individual, first conceived 
 and promulgated by Moses, that genuine 
 morality and genuine religion made their 
 appearance in the world, to be the ani- 
 mating and upbuilding principles of a 
 monotheistic humanity and civilization, 
 which will endure as long as mankind 
 will have life on earth. 
 
 It is not to societies but to individu- 
 als that the law divine of justice, due 
 to all men as their inalienable birthright, 
 addresses itself. Thou shalt not steal, 
 thou shalt not rob nor defraud thy fel- 
 low-men, appeals directly to every indi- 
 vidual soul and conscience on behalf of 
 every individual, whatever his descent 
 and social affiliation. The religion of 
 ethical Yahvism, the religion of Moses, 
 did not, in its germs and beginnings, grow 
 out of the life of a nation. It was not
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 115 
 
 primarily intended to prescribe rules of 
 conduct to a whole people and regulate 
 its collective life. It did not leave the 
 individual in the background as an insig- 
 nificant being, that was but to serve the 
 power and growth and well-being of the 
 body politic. It teaches above all an 
 individualistic morality. It enjoins as 
 first and foremost the rights and duties 
 of the individual man in his relations to 
 individual men. Every commandment 
 addresses itself, with its " Thou shalt," 
 and "Thou shalt not," to the individ- 
 ual moral consciousness and conscience. 
 Yahvism gave birth to an individualistic 
 morality, which in its turn became the 
 parent of a national morality. The eth- 
 ics of Yahvism blossomed forth from the 
 soul of a great and inspired individual, 
 from the genius of the teacher of right- 
 eousness. In the desert, communing for 
 forty long years with the Father and 
 Spirit of all, Moses, the solitary thinker 
 and lover of man, stood face to face with 
 eternal justice and love. All alone he 
 wandered and mused, without a clan or 
 tribe around him. Nations, states, em-
 
 Il6 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 pires, vanished from his sight. The 
 lonely prophet, all alone with his flam- 
 ing thoughts, questioned the World-soul. 
 Alone he wrestled with the problems of 
 righteousness and mercy. The light 
 streamed into his soul from the heart of 
 existence. In himself he experienced the 
 power and glory and blessedness of an 
 individual spirit living in touch and har- 
 mony with the Infinite Spirit. He 
 learned to know by original insight and 
 by his own expanding self the infinite 
 dignity of a human soul. The truth of 
 truths flashed upon him that Yahve was 
 not the God of a tribe and a nation, but 
 that he stands in direct relation to every 
 individual man, loving him and vindica- 
 ting his rights and dignity and requiring 
 justice and mercy at his hand.
 
 V. 
 
 YAHVISM WAS FROM ITS VERY 
 
 BEGINNING A CONVERTING 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 WITH this gospel of a spiritual mo- 
 rality and a spiritual religion, the hero of 
 humanity, the saviour of the oppressed, 
 appeared before those he had redeemed 
 from degrading bondage, and preached 
 to them the glad tidings of the infinite 
 moral dignity of man, the universal 
 ethical brotherhood of all human beings, 
 the oneness, perfection and holiness of 
 Yahve, in whose unity all souls, all races 
 and all generations are united. The 
 original ties of kinship and race were 
 torn to shreds, the belief in physical 
 paternal gods was destroyed by him, and 
 eternal war was declared against the as- 
 sumed right of the strong to rule and spoli- 
 ate the weak. The unifying, cohesive and 
 vitalizing powers of the commonwealth, 
 of the whole people, must be the fear 
 and love of Yahve ; willing, lawful obe- 
 dience to his wise and good laws and
 
 Il8 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 statutes, the spirituality and the moral 
 attributes common to all, the justice and 
 mercy of all souls toward all. In a word, 
 the covenant of righteousness was sub- 
 stituted for the bonds of kinship and 
 descent as the all-sustaining, all-embrac- 
 ing, all-dignifying principle of social and 
 national unity. 
 
 For the first time in the life of man- 
 kind a prophet went forth to convert a 
 multitude of men, belonging to different 
 kinships, tribes, and races, from their own 
 low, superstitious and polytheistic beliefs, 
 to a new religion ; to change a motley 
 crowd of despised fugitives and wander- 
 ers into a missionary people. As some 
 fourteen hundred years later a small band 
 of Jewish apostles started from the land 
 of Israel, to bring all the heathen nations 
 of the known world into the fold of new- 
 born Christianity, to teach them the faith 
 and ethics of Jesus, their Teacher and 
 Master ; as some six hundred years still 
 later the prophet Mohammed converted 
 all the idolatrous tribes of Arabia to his 
 own religion, to the monotheistic faith 
 of Islam ; so did Moses, their prototype
 
 THE RELIGION OK MOSES. 119 
 
 and spiritual father, the fountain-head of 
 their universal ideas and ideals, originate 
 a proselytizing propagandist religion, so 
 did he undertake to convert to Yahvism, 
 the religion of his own mighty soul, the 
 heterogeneous mass of people whom he 
 had succeeded in delivering from Egyp- 
 tian slavery. 
 
 ENVIRONMENTS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 What a tremendous task it was ! How 
 beset with innumerable difficulties, which 
 might well have appeared insurmount- 
 able ! The tribes with whom he was 
 dealing, whom he was leading, educating 
 and elevating, had no fixed abode, had no 
 land which they could call their home. 
 Under the impulse given to them by the 
 over-powering genius of Moses, they had 
 quit the fruitful country in which their 
 forefathers had settled several hundred 
 years before, and were looking forward to 
 occupy an unknown rich country, held 
 out to them by their leader as the Land 
 of Promise. In the meanwhile, they 
 were wandering through desolate regions, 
 which afforded them but the scantiest
 
 I2O THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 means of subsistence. Such unstable 
 and precarious conditions of life are not 
 favorable to the growth of steady habits 
 of thought and conduct ; they do not 
 tend to develop permanent currents of 
 noble feelings, such as were required for 
 forming a community after the highest 
 principles of individual and social moral- 
 ity. Living amid the joyless uncertain- 
 ties of the present, and feeding on great 
 hopes, the emigrants were necessarily 
 swayed by a spirit of restlessness and ad- 
 venture, and could not help oscillating 
 between the extremes of unreasonable 
 despair and over-wrought enthusiasm. 
 The very ground seemed to be shifting 
 and changing underneath their feet. 
 There was nothing firm, nothing estab- 
 lished from of old upon which to stand. 
 All the past they had left behind. They 
 were marching toward a new world, pro- 
 claimed by their prophet to be a better 
 and diviner world. 
 
 But the very state of mind, the very 
 circumstances, which to the dim sight of 
 common men must have appeared most 
 unpropitious, were discerned by the eye
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 121 
 
 of that sovereign genius to be the most 
 favorable conditions for sowing in human 
 hearts the seeds of his new universal 
 ideas, for laying in receptive souls the 
 foundation of the ideal society of the 
 future. The tremendous convulsions 
 through which they had passed, the rapid 
 succession of marvelous changes which 
 they had witnessed, and of which they 
 had themselves been an active part, 
 tended to dissolve the old and fixed 
 associations of ideas, to break up the 
 ancient, inherited forms of belief, to 
 loosen the hold of immemorial standards 
 of conduct and faith. Thus all the ele- 
 ments and forces of their soul were 
 brought into a state of restless flow and 
 seething motion. Their minds were, 
 therefore, well prepared to receive the 
 new religious ideas and the spiritual 
 ethics of Moses. 
 
 In times of intellectual stagnancy and 
 crystallized social conditions, only a few 
 superior minds could have adapted them- 
 selves to the revolutionary innovations 
 in matters of faith and morals promul- 
 gated by Moses. But among those who
 
 122 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 had traversed the wilderness with their 
 mighty leader and teacher, and had stood 
 at the foot of the mount of revelation, 
 even average natures were able to adopt 
 and assimilate to themselves the new 
 dispensation. 
 
 One of the most important results of 
 their homeless life was this, that the}' 
 could not well believe Yahve to be a 
 local god, confined to a certain circum- 
 scribed region inhabited by his people. 
 They were in a sense bound to conceive 
 him as an omnipresent God, attached to 
 no local habitation, since they, his wor- 
 shipers, had no fixed dwelling-place, but 
 were constantly shifting their ground 
 and pushing forward, to conquer another 
 people's territory which their eyes had 
 never seen. 
 
 Moreover, Yahvism was and is chiefly 
 a religion for the poor and weak, for the 
 persecuted and down-trodden. Certainly 
 no class of men was better fitted to un- 
 derstand and receive the gospel of deliv- 
 erance from injustice, the gospel of liberty 
 and human dignity, than the people who
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 123 
 
 had for ages tasted all the misery, bit- 
 terness and degradation of Egyptian 
 slavery. 
 
 The new wine had to be poured into 
 new bottles, and Moses found the most 
 receptive new bottles among those he 
 had saved from Egyptian bondage. The 
 extreme difficulty of obtaining a suffi- 
 ciency of food and water in the desert, the 
 numerous hardships and privations in- 
 separable from a sojourn in the wilder- 
 ness for those not to the manner born, 
 helped to deepen the sense of dependence 
 on and trust in a gracious and wise Provi- 
 dence. While toiling as slaves in the 
 fruitful land of the Nile they were amply 
 provided by their masters with the neces- 
 saries of life. The regularity and, one 
 might say, the certainty of abundant 
 crops, independent of the rain and dew 
 of heaven, had hidden from them the 
 divine miracle of daily sustenance and 
 maintenance. Bui during their long 
 migrations through the desert the}' lived 
 from hand to mouth. Daily the same 
 wants and the same uncertainty as to
 
 124 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 how to satisfy them caused them to turn 
 their eyes in prayer to Yahve, the giver 
 of all blessings. Daily their hearts 
 thrilled with gratitude toward the Lord 
 on rinding unforeseen means of subsist- 
 ence. The wonderful deliverance from 
 great dangers and difficulties frequently 
 wrought by Moses, the matchless powers 
 of foresight displayed by their prophet 
 leading them along paths never trodden 
 by them before, caused them to believe 
 in his superhuman wisdom, and accept 
 his teachings and declarations as divine 
 revelations and divine promises. 
 
 During their pilgrimage through the 
 desert their eyes were ever turned toward 
 the future, toward a glorious goal shin- 
 ing from afar, toward the land of hope 
 and promise. Their souls dwelt not in 
 the present, but in the dreamland of 
 the ideal. The ideal was ever moving 
 before them as a pillar of light, beckon- 
 ing, luring them onward and onward, 
 away from the dreary real toward a 
 brighter and better existence, that was to 
 be. In this state of eager expectancy 
 their imagination fondly played around
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 125 
 
 things yet to emerge, around blessings 
 yet to blossom forth. They were, there- 
 fore, in a proper frame of mind to receive 
 into their souls and to absorb Moses' 
 ideals of faith and conduct, the ideals of 
 spiritual humanity embracing all, fusing 
 and transforming all, the ideals of moral 
 growth and grandeur, ripening to fruits 
 of blessedness, tending to peace and sal- 
 vation universal. 
 
 There was another circumstance which 
 to short-sighted observers, judging the 
 enterprises of genius according to their 
 narrow analogies, must have appeared 
 fatal to the vast schemes of the Hebrew 
 master-builder. The masses which he 
 had delivered, which he was resolved, to 
 shape into a spiritual people, were inco- 
 herent, incongruous, heterogeneous. Be- 
 longing to various stocks they were held 
 together by no ties of racial affinities, 
 nor were they united by powerful mem- 
 ories of a long continued common history. 
 There seemed to be no more cohesive 
 force between them and no more organic 
 unity in them than in the sand-heaps 
 drifted together by the caprice of the
 
 126 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 desert winds. Yet these most unpromising 
 masses were recognized by Moses as the 
 providentially prepared material, fittest 
 to be cast in a new mold, to be formed 
 into a unity higher than known hereto- 
 fore, into a spiritual national unit}', able 
 to resist the corroding and disintegrating 
 influence of time, able to attract and as- 
 similate elements of the most varied kind. 
 No firmly organized people, with all its 
 private and public institutions fully de- 
 veloped, with innumerable memories 
 rooted in a rich and glorious past, would 
 have proved plastic enough to receive 
 the stamp of Moses' new doctrines and 
 to be remodeled in accordance with the 
 ethical principles of Yahvism. But the 
 raw material at the disposal of Moses, 
 being without hardened forms, without a 
 fixed mold, without resisting memories, 
 without an ancient rigid organization, 
 was of wonderful plasticity and pliancy. 
 It readily lent itself to his lofty pur- 
 pose. Just as a true republic, destined 
 to realize on the grandest scale the ideals 
 of Moses, could be founded only on the 
 virgin soil of America, and be established
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. I2/ 
 
 by men who had previously formed no peo- 
 ple, and had gathered from all the ends 
 and races of the Old World, so conld its 
 prototype, the people of Israel, be evolved 
 only from new elements, from unorgan- 
 ized parts, and welded by ideal forces into 
 a living union only on a new stage, and 
 started on its career only in the midst of 
 an entirely new environment. What the 
 war of independence is to the Americans, 
 the deliverance from Egypt was to the 
 Israelites, the starting-point of their 
 career, the inspiring memory and motive 
 power of their whole subsequent history. 
 Passionate love of liberty, hatred of tyr- 
 anny, universal justice, broad humanity, 
 the dignity of labor and the moral dig- 
 nity of sovereignty of the individual be- 
 came to both peoples, to the American 
 and to the Israelitish, the organizing and 
 propelling forces of their historic life 
 What the Constitution of the United 
 States is to the American nation, the Ten 
 Commandments and amplifying laws, 
 added thereto later, were to the people of 
 Moses.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE CONQUEST OF THE LAND 
 EAST OF THE JORDAN. 
 
 IN spite of the conditions favoring 
 the work of Moses, his task at times 
 seemed to surpass the powers of even 
 that heroic man. He had only a few 
 superior followers, who could fully enter 
 into the spirit of his religion. His own 
 sons, his immediate family and clan, who 
 formed the nucleus of what came to be 
 known as the priestly tribe of I/evi, made 
 up the spiritual elite of the people. He 
 could, however, entrust to them only 
 minor parts of his work. The chief 
 functions of his office devolved on him. 
 He was prophet, lawgiver, judge, polit- 
 ical niler and war chief in one person. 
 He elaborated his ideas and laws and per- 
 sonally carried them into execution. He 
 taught and enforced them. He was the 
 leader and purveyor of his people. When 
 he was absent chaos often ensued. The 
 old taint of idolatry, the taint especially 
 
 of Egyptian bull-worship, reasserted it- 
 
 128
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 129 
 
 self, while lie was away dwelling alone 
 on the mountain, meditating the great 
 thoughts of his quenchless faith. With 
 severe measures he succeeded for a time 
 in stamping out that pagan worship. 
 When there was dearth of food or lack of 
 water, the desperate people clamored 
 furiously against him and more than 
 once he was afraid of being stoned by 
 them. When he thought the time ripe 
 for advancing boldly into the coveted 
 land, they lagged behind in cowardice 
 and refused to follow. When he deemed 
 it best to halt, they rushed forward in 
 blind audacity. At one time a large part 
 of the people resolved to return to Egypt 
 and put their head once more under the 
 yoke of slavery, in order to eat their fill 
 from the fleshpots of that land. His 
 great soul was often full of grief and an- 
 guish. His heart was many a time sick 
 with despair even unto death. The black 
 ingratitude of the masses often made him 
 pray to God to take his life. Yet he bat- 
 tled on heroically, bearing in his bosom 
 the people of his love and sorrows, bear- 
 ing in his heart a new, a better and greater
 
 130 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 world. After years of infinite toil and 
 struggle, having about him the new gen- 
 eration brought up under his discipline, 
 his teachings and the transforming influ- 
 ence of his inspiring presence, he made 
 a dash into the land of the Amorites east 
 of the Jordan. A few great successfully- 
 fought battles put him in possession of 
 that very fruitful land. The invaders 
 rapidly spread over the conquered terri- 
 tory and settled in the midst of the 
 native population. In a comparatively 
 short time the latter blended with the 
 conquerors, increasing the power and 
 swelling the numbers of the worshipers 
 of Yahve. 
 
 There was soon manifest the difference 
 between the effects of pagan conquest 
 and the fruits of victories won by the 
 hosts of Yahve. Heathen conquerors, 
 who built up their political systems on 
 the basis of kinship and tribal gods, had 
 no choice but to destroy or to enslave 
 the defeated nations. But the Israelites 
 did not invade Canaan as a conquer- 
 ing nation, but as the host of a con- 
 quering and converting religion. Like
 
 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 131 
 
 the followers of Mohammed, the people 
 of Moses went forth sword in hand to 
 win new homes, and to proclaim a new 
 faith inviting, urging the conquered 
 population to embrace the religion of 
 Yahve, the almighty, just and righteous 
 God. The subdued people, who, with 
 the loss of their former power and inde- 
 pendence, necessarily lost faith in their 
 own ancestral gods, need not fall a prey 
 to spiritual despair. They could well 
 range themselves under the banners of 
 Yahve and join themselves to his victo- 
 rious people ; for he was* not a local and 
 tribal divinity, but a universal and al- 
 mighty God, the God of all men, the 
 Father of justice and mercy, the Maker of 
 heaven and earth. He misses the inner- 
 most meaning of the history of Israel, so 
 different from all purely national histo- 
 ries, who fails to realize the all-decisive, 
 all-determining fact, that Yahvism cre- 
 ated the people of Israel, and in all times 
 and climes went on with magnetic forces 
 to add new elements from various nation- 
 alities and races, incorporating them into 
 the living body of the church. Light is
 
 132 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 beginning to dawn on unprejudiced in- 
 vestigators of the past, whose keen intel- 
 lectual and moral sympathies make them 
 contemporaries of far-off events. The 
 truth is revealing itself to those who 
 strive to penetrate through inherited dis- 
 guises and fictions to the living heart of 
 spiritual realities. They have come to 
 recognize that like Buddhism, Christian- 
 ity and Islamism, Yahvism made its ap- 
 pearance in the world as a universal 
 religion, as a church, which in course of 
 time formed a sort of nation, a people 
 peculiar in a far deeper sense than is 
 superficially understood, inasmuch as it 
 was in most vital points and characteris- 
 tics distinguished from all nations and 
 states organized by polytheistic ideas or 
 purely natural forces. 
 
 In the land east of the Jordan, con- 
 quered by his own generalship and the 
 prowess of his followers, Moses lived to 
 see the first auspicious beginnings of 
 Israel's growth in power and number. 
 It gained through steady accretions from 
 the native population who w r ere won over
 
 THE RELIGION OK MOSES. 133 
 
 to his ideas of spiritual brotherhood and 
 universal justice. 
 
 THE DEATH OF MOSES. 
 
 Fain would the great prophet, law- 
 giver and statesman have wished to cross 
 the Jordan at the head of his hosts, and 
 occupy the western land, in order to es- 
 tablish the new commonwealth on the 
 principles of Yahvism. He was sore 
 afraid that his work, if entrusted to other 
 hands, would be marred by unwisdom, 
 and receive elements of heathen corrup- 
 tion at the critical time, when it required 
 all his experience, his sagacity, his men- 
 tal grasp, firmness and authority, to be 
 carried to a successful issue. But ex- 
 treme old age had overtaken him, telling 
 him that the end was nigh to come, that 
 the time had arrived for him to lay the 
 heavy burden of leadership on younger 
 shoulders. In vain the unconquerable 
 hero struggled to conquer also this foe. 
 His mind and heart were still as youthful 
 and vigorous as of old. His prophetic vis- 
 ion was still undimmed. His powerful
 
 134 THE > RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 imagination still soared to the dizziest 
 heights of heaven and hovered high in 
 the purer and diviner air of the ideal. 
 Flashes of world-illuming thoughts still 
 burst forth from his light-enwrapped 
 soul. The stream of immortal poetry 
 still flowed from his lips. But the mortal 
 body ached for rest, and refused to tenant 
 any longer the mighty spirit. In an hour 
 of agony the prophet of righteousness 
 and the lover of man implored the Master 
 of life to vouchsafe unto him but a few 
 more years, in order to bring his life-work 
 to a crowning end. In vain ! The di- 
 vine fiat had gone forth, inexorable, ir- 
 revocable. Nature, with whom the pro- 
 phet of spirituality had so long wrestled, 
 trying to wrench the scepter of power 
 from her hand and discrown her as man's 
 divinity nature was at last to overcome 
 what was material, corruptible and mor- 
 tal in him. He bowed his head in hu- 
 mility and yielded himself to the unal- 
 terable decree. 
 
 In the presence of a vast assemblage 
 he laid his hands on the head of his 
 "greatest disciple, Joshua ben Nun, and
 
 THE UEUGION OF MOSES. 135 
 
 consecrated him as his successor, to be 
 the judge and leader of Israel in war and 
 peace. For the last time they heard the 
 inspiring voice of their master. His 
 God-kissed lips chanted his farewell song, 
 a prophetic blessing to Israel, in a strain 
 so exalted and soul-bewitching that the 
 memory thereof has lived from genera- 
 tion to generation in the heart of Yahve's 
 worshipers. Then he went forth soli- 
 tary to meet the destiny of all mortals. 
 The prophet of prophets ascended to 
 the top of Mount Nebo, the Mount of 
 Prophecy. He surveyed the land of his 
 promise, which his feet were never to 
 tread. He looked northward as far as 
 snow-clad Lebanon. His eyes viewed 
 the rolling hills and plains of the west, 
 and caught the sheen of the Mediter- 
 ranean. He turned his gaze toward the 
 mountainous southland sloping down into 
 the desert. He cast a last glance upon 
 the country which his arm had conquered. 
 Then, in the presence of the silent heav- 
 ens and the breathing earth, the great 
 luminary set, unseen of man. And no 
 man knows his grave to this day.
 
 136 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 Only men of low degree, who in their 
 life-time dwell in the narrow house of 
 brutal selfishness, in the festering decay 
 of their moral, their diviner powers, 
 truly die and are buried, and their tomb- 
 stone tells the tale of their end-all, of 
 their total extinction and final death on 
 earth. But men like Moses never die, 
 and their grave can be seen nowhere. 
 His creative spirit was born again in all 
 the generations that came after him and 
 walked in his luminous footsteps. His 
 mighty spirit will be born again and 
 again, will live, think, inspire, and act 
 in all generations yet to be born, until 
 mankind will cease to have an abiding 
 place on this rolling globe. He came 
 into the world with the thousands of 
 great men who scattered darkness and 
 sowed light and truth and justice. His 
 genius dwelt in all the prophets and 
 masters of Israel, and worked through 
 them salvation unto many nations and 
 races. His spirit lived in the great 
 Teacher of Galilee and preached with 
 heart and tongue the gospel of love and 
 universal brotherhood. His spirit went
 
 THE RELIGION OK MOSES. 137 
 
 forth with the Jewish Apostles, to redeem 
 the nations from the curse and degrada- 
 tion of idolatry. His spirit lived again in 
 Mahomet, the prophet of Arabia. His 
 expanding spirit issued forth with Colum- 
 bus to discover this continent, to be the 
 home of liberty and broad humanity. 
 He was present in the great moral upris- 
 ing of Europe; in the reformation, urg- 
 ing, encouraging, teaching, enlightening. 
 His mighty spirit fought in the ranks of 
 those who waged the war of independ- 
 ence. His mind composed the greatest 
 modern poem of humanity, the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States. He was pres- 
 ent in the thick of the spiritual battles, 
 when the French people rose against 
 vicious tyranny and debasing priestcraft. 
 His creative powers have greatly helped 
 to bring into existence the better and 
 godlier modern world of enlightenment, 
 of universal humanity and freedom. He 
 is born and dwells in the central heart of 
 all men good and true, of all women holy 
 and merciful. We too, late-born wor- 
 shipers of Yahve, sit at the feet of the 
 immortal master, listening to his words,
 
 138 THE RELIGION OF MOSES. 
 
 receiving our life's mission from him. 
 His eyes, undimmed by time, look at us 
 with the love of a father and teacher. 
 His lips speak to us in imperishable 
 words, awakening our innermost self, 
 inspiring us to noble willing and doing. 
 We reverently kiss the hem of his gar- 
 ment. By that magic touch a spark of 
 his immortality and greatness interpen- 
 etrates itself with our own soul, and 
 makes it universal, deathless. 
 
 V. C. NUNBMACHRR PRESS. LOUISVILLE. KY.
 
 
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