HYflc^ ^UIBRARY ^ ^ s 1 ir^ i S o StacR Annex 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. I ^OMAUPUftfc, <l\\t UNIVtKi/A. Id UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. REC't