'***'^*;'T'W 
 
 ■\tr':-'-;' 
 
 f\K-;W'-'',V^:yiii)^?(^-U'< 
 
 
 .^i^^rn 
 
 ■^EWISWLITERA WRE 
 
 AND 
 
 MODERN nn UCA TION
 
 E 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ye wish Liter at^Lre and 
 Modern Education.
 
 JEWISH LITERATURE 
 
 AND 
 
 MODERN EDUCATION: 
 
 OK, 
 
 THE USE AND MISUSE OF THE BIBLE IN 
 THE SCHOOLROOM. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOK OF " THE PILGKIM AM) THE SUKINE," ETC. 
 
 {PREVIOUSLY PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION). 
 
 LONDON : 
 TRUBNEE & CO., 8 & 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1872.
 
 " These wei-e more noljle than those in Thessalonica, in that they 
 . , . searched the Scriptures daily, whetlier those things were so." — • 
 Acts xvii. 11^ 
 
 (Delivered originally before the Sunday Lecture Society of London).
 
 
 6 
 
 PEE FACE. 
 
 Whether or not the Solution, given in these Lectures, 
 of the " Religious Difficulty " in our National Education, 
 be acceptable for practical application, is a question other 
 than that of the intrinsic soundness of that Solution. 
 It is to this only that my responsibility extends. The 
 responsibility of declining to accept a j^rofFered remedy 
 must rest with those to whom the oifer is made. 
 
 I had intended to keep these Lectures in manuscript, 
 and repeat them wherever an audience might be found 
 desirous of hearing facts stated without respect to aught 
 but the facts. It is in compliance with very many 
 and pressing solicitations that I have, by printing them, 
 withdrawn them from further delivery as Public Lectures. 
 My hope now is that the readers will not be less nume- 
 rous than the hearers would have been, had I adhered 
 to my original intention. 
 
 The Lectures are printed with the changes made on 
 their second delivery, in Edinburgh. I cannot let them 
 
 G6ii?03
 
 IV Preface. 
 
 go from me without acknowledging my obligations to 
 the series of small publications issued periodically by 
 Mr Thomas Scott of Kamsgate, to whose indefatigable 
 self-devotion to the cause of " Free Inquiry and Free 
 Expression," the present rapid spread of information, 
 and consequent movement of thought on religious 
 matters, especially among the clergy of the Establish- 
 ment, — {a movement far greater than the public is aware 
 of) — is in no small degree attributable. The tracts 
 entitled. The Defective Morality of the Neio Testament, by 
 Professor F. W. Newman ; The Gospel of the Kingdom, 
 and The Influence of Sacred History on the Intellect and 
 Conscience, — especially deserve mention for the use I 
 have made of them. A few brief passages given as 
 quotations, but without reference, are for the most part 
 taken, with more or less exactness, from The Pilgrim and 
 the Shrine. E. M. 
 
 London, September 1871.
 
 SYNOPSIS. 
 
 LECTURE THE FIRST. 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 1. INTRODUCTION, ..... 1 
 
 2. DEFINITION AND FUNCTION OF EDUCATION, . . 3 
 
 3. THE SCHOOL BOARDS AND THE " RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY," 6 
 
 4. THE GENESIS AND HABITAT OF THE " DIFFICULTY," . 11 
 6. THE BIBLE AS A MORAL TEACHER, . . .12 
 
 6. THE BIBLE AS AN INTELLECTUAL TEACHER, . . 24 
 
 7. THE BIBLE "WITHOUT NOTE OR COMMENT," . . 27 
 
 8. THE GOSPELS AND THE CHARACTER OF JESUS, . . 35 
 
 9. THE "KINGDOM OF HEAVEN," . . . .37 
 
 LECTURE THE SECOND. 
 
 10. THE NEW TESTAMENT AS A RULE OF LIFE AND FAITH, , 41 
 
 11. THE " CONTINUITY OF SCRIPTURE," DOCTRINAL AND 
 
 OTHER, ...... 48 
 
 12. WHY THE BIBLE SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS, . 57 
 
 13. HOW IT SHOULD BE DEALT WITH, . . .65 
 
 14. "notes AND COMMENTS;" THE PRINCIPLE OF THEIR 
 
 CONSTRUCTION, ..... 69 
 
 15. BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY, . . , .74 
 
 16. BIBLICAL INSPIRATION, . . . .78 
 
 17. THE BIBLE AND MODERN COMMENTATORS, . . 86 
 
 18. THE BIBLE AND MODERN PRACTICE, . . .88 
 
 19. THE SCHOOL AND TEACHER OF THE FUTURE, . . 94
 
 CORRECTIONS. 
 
 Page 14, line 1, for xxxvii. read xxxviii. 
 
 „ Hue 3, for ix. read xi. 
 
 Page 31, line 5 from bottom, for Gen. read Jer. 
 
 Page 36, add as footnote, See also Luke ix. 60-62, and Mark vii. 
 27, for harsh utterances ascribed to Jesus. 
 
 Page 61, line 14, put " after intelligence. 
 
 Page 63, line 13, jmt are before book. 
 
 Page 92, add as footnote, See also Luke xxiv. 39. Acts x'i. 15. ' 
 
 Page 97, line 3, omit " after all.
 
 LEOTUEE THE FIEST. 
 
 "Why is it witli us in England, that with all our achieve- 
 ments in Science, Literature, and Art ; in Government, 
 Industry, and Warfare; in Honour, Religion, and Virtue ; 
 with conquests ranging over the whole threefold domain 
 of Humanity, the Physical, the Intellectual, and the 
 Moral, — why is it that the moment we attempt to ex- 
 tend the manifold blessings of our civilisation to the 
 entire mass of our countrymen, we find ourselves at fault 
 and utterly baffled 1 
 
 Long has the condition of myriads among us been 
 known to be terrible in its degradation. Long have we 
 acknowledged an earnest desire to raise them out of that 
 condition. Measure after measure have we devised and 
 enacted ; but none of them, not even the vast Church- 
 establishment of the realm, has proved in any degree 
 commensurate with the evil. At length our efforts have 
 culminated in the elaboration and enactment of one 
 comprehensive scheme ; and we have proceeded so fixr as 
 to have elected as our representatives to carry it into 
 effect, those of us whom, for superior intelligence and 
 energy, we deem best qualified for the task. 
 
 Shortlived, however, do our exultant hopes promise to 
 
 A
 
 2 "Jewish Literature 
 
 be. The very agents of our beneficent intentions, the 
 Schoolboards, in whose hands are borne the germs of our 
 redemption and future civilisation, are altogether at such 
 odds within themselves upon some of the leading and 
 most essential principles, that the scheme threatens 
 wholly to collapse in disheartening failure, or to become 
 a perennial source of bitterness and dissension. 
 
 Is it not passing strange ? Based though our culture 
 has for centuries been, upon one and the self-same book, 
 so far from our having attained any degree of unity 
 thereby, we are divided and rent into sects and factions 
 innumerable and irreconcilable, until it would appear as 
 if the very spirit of that proverbially perverse and stiff- 
 necked people whose sacred literature we have adopted 
 as the rule of our faith and practice, had passed into 
 ourselves and become a constituent part of our very 
 nature. 
 
 The greatness of the emergency, — for it is the redemp- 
 tion of our masses from pauperism, ignorance, and bar- 
 barism that is at stake, — not justifies merely, but impe- 
 ratively demands the strenuous collaboration of all who, 
 having the good of their kind at heart, have made this 
 question one of special investigation. It is in no spirit 
 of hasty presumption, — scarcely is it with much hope of 
 wide acceptance, — at least in the present, — that I have 
 responded to the invitation to recite here to-day the con- 
 clusions to wliich my study of the points at issue has 
 brought me. Ilather is it that it will be a relief to my- 
 self to have thrown off the reflections and results which, 
 in a somewhat varied experience at home and abroad, 
 have accumulated upon me, and to feel that I have done 
 this at the time when there is most chance of their being 
 useful. It is thus that I have prepared my contribution
 
 and Modern Education. 3 
 
 towards the solution of " the Religious Difficulty " which 
 lies " a lion in the path " of our National Education and 
 all our national improvement, showing as yet not the 
 smallest symptom of discomposure through any " Reso- 
 lution " of Metropolitan or other School-board. 
 
 II. 
 
 In all emergencies, whether of conduct or of opinion, 
 where there is doubt and space for deliberation, it is 
 best to go back to the very beginning of the matter, and 
 there, in its initial principles, seek the clue which is to 
 conduct us safely out of our dilemma. It is wonderful 
 sometimes how readily a skein is disentangled when 
 once the right end of the thread has been found. Our 
 friends across the Atlantic, the Americans, were for a long 
 time disastrously hampered in their attempts at legisla- 
 tion. It is not surprising that it should have been so, 
 when we consider that the principal object of legislation 
 is Man, and that the two great sections of the American 
 community differed altogether in their definition of Man ; 
 the one holding that persons who had dark complexions 
 and a peculiar kind of rough curly hair, several millions 
 of whom lived in the country, were not men ; and the 
 other holding that they were just as much entitled to be 
 treated as human beings as people with light complexions 
 and smooth hair. At length, after many years of bitter 
 quarrelling, ending with one of the most fearful inter- 
 necine conflicts ever known, it was agreed to regard all 
 people as human, and to legislate alike for them with per- 
 fect equality ; whereupon the difficulty entirely vanished, 
 and the course of the nation became smooth and easy. 
 
 In like manner our difficulties, in regard to popular
 
 4 Jewish Literature 
 
 instruction, have all arisen through our neglect of a de- 
 finition. We have not defined to ourselves the precise 
 object of the system of National Education, which, after 
 generations of anxious endeavour, we have at length 
 succeeded in obtaining, and which we are now seeking 
 to bring into operation throughout the length and 
 breadth of the land. 
 
 The first step towards obtaining what we want, ever 
 is to know what we want ; and since in this case we 
 cannot purchase the article ready-made, but have to 
 fabricate it for ourselves, it is not sufficient to have a 
 bare name for it, or a vague apprehension about it, but 
 we must be conversant with its nature, characteristics, 
 and uses. 
 
 Let us further simplify and enlarge the scope of the 
 question, and ask what is the object of all the education, 
 public or private, which we give, or seek to give, to our 
 children *? What, in short, is the purpose of education 1 
 
 Using the term education in its broad sense, and 
 without reference to technical instruction in special 
 subjects, we can only answer, that its purpose is to 
 make children into good and capable men and women by 
 cultivating their intelligence and their moral sense, or 
 conscience. 
 
 It follows, if we agree to this definition, that we are 
 bound to reject as worse than useless, any instruction 
 which is calculated to repress or pervert either of those 
 faculties from their proper healthy development. 
 
 Those who at first hesitate to acquiesce in this defini- 
 tion, in the belief that education should have a more 
 special object, such as to make good Christians, good 
 Catholics, good Protestants, good Churchmen, or good 
 Nonconformists, must on a little reflection perceive that
 
 and Modern Education. 5 
 
 they cannot really mean to rank the intelligence and 
 moral sense as secondary and subordinate to such ends, 
 but that they only desire people to be good Christians, 
 good Churchmen, and so on, because the fact of being so 
 Avould, in their view, involve the best culture of the 
 faculties in question. So that if they believed it did not 
 involve this end, they would abandon their preference 
 for such denominations. That is, they would rather 
 have people to be good men and bad (say) Noncon- 
 formists, than good Nonconformists and bad men. 
 
 Agreeing, then, that the object of education is the 
 development of the intellect and moral sense, we shall, 
 no doubt, further agree that the best chance of success- 
 fully cultivating those desirable qualities which we 
 designate virtues, lies in impressing the mind while 
 young with the most elevated and winning examples of 
 them, and guarding it from any familiarity with their 
 opposites ; and that it is because we deem such qualities 
 to be best, that we regard the Deity as possessing them 
 in the Infinite, and hold up as a pattern of life the most 
 perfect example of them in the finite. 
 
 Yet, though agreeing both in the object and method 
 of education when thus plainly put before us, so ingeni- 
 ously perverse and inconsistent are we that we first 
 refuse to agree upon any common system of instruction 
 whatever, and then we insist upon neutralising or 
 vitiating such instruction as we do agree upon, by 
 mingling it with teaching which is at once repressive of 
 the Intellect, and injurious to the Moral Sense. 
 
 The sole impediment to the success of our efforts, the 
 rock upon which all our hopes of rescuing the mass of our 
 countrymen from ignorance and barbarism are in danger 
 of being dashed, consists in the unreasoning and indis-
 
 6 ^Jewish Literature 
 
 criminate veneration in which the Bible is popularly- 
 held among us. Impelled by that veneration, we hesi- 
 tate not to degrade our children's view of Deity by 
 familiarising them with a literature in which He is 
 represented as feeble, treacherous, implacable, and 
 unjust ; and confound at once their Intelligence and 
 Moral Sense, by compelling them to regard that litera- 
 ture as altogether divine and infallible. 
 
 Sti'ange infatuation and inconsistency, if, after toiling 
 for years to obtain an effective system of national edu- 
 cation, we either abandon the task as hopeless, or insist 
 upon accompanying it by teaching which involves a fatal 
 outrage upon the very intellect and conscience which it 
 is the express purpose of that education to foster and 
 develop ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Before considering the action of the School-boards, I 
 must advert for a moment to the principle of their con« 
 stitution. 
 
 There is this difference between Government by Re- 
 presentation and Government by Delegation. It is the 
 duty of the mere delegate to vote on any given question 
 precisely as a majority of his constituents may instruct 
 him. The deliberative function rests Avith them. He is 
 their faithful, but unintelligent instrument. The repre- 
 sentative, on the contrary, is selected on account of his 
 superior faculties or attainments, to go on behalf of his 
 constituents to the headquarters of information, and 
 there, in conference with other selected intellects, form 
 the best judgment in his power ; his constituents deter- 
 mining only the general principles and direction of his 
 policy.
 
 and Modern Education. 7 
 
 The School-boards which are charged with the deter- 
 mination of our new educational system, having been 
 selected on this principle of representation, we are 
 entitled to look to their suj)erior intelligence to sup- 
 plement popular deficiencies ; to be superior to popular 
 prejudices ; to be teachers, and, if need be, rebukers, 
 rather than followers and flatterers of the less instructed 
 masses : and it is due to such bodies that we carefully 
 examine the methods by which they propose to deal with 
 existing difficulties. 
 
 Those difficulties turning exclusively upon Religion, 
 one great step towards their solution has been gained by 
 the agreement to exclude from the common schools such 
 minor subjects of diff"erence as the creeds and catechisms 
 of particular denominations. The Bible remains, the sole 
 stumbling-block and rock of offence. 
 
 The London Board may be taken as representative 
 not only of the largest and most intelligent body of 
 constituents, but also of all the other School-boards. I 
 propose, therefore, to deal with the propositions by 
 which the members of that Board have sought to meet 
 the "religious difficulty." They are six in number : 
 
 1. That the Bible be excluded altogether, on the 
 ground that its admission is inconsistent with religious 
 equality. 
 
 2. That the Bible be admitted and read, but without 
 note or comment. 
 
 3. That the Bible be read for the purpose of religious 
 culture, at the discretion of the teacher. 
 
 4. That the teacher's discretion in the use of the Bible 
 be so restricted as to exclude the distinctive doctrines of 
 any sect. 
 
 5. That no principle respecting the use of the Bible
 
 8 Jewish Literature 
 
 be laid down, but that each separate school be dealt with 
 by itself. 
 
 6. That the Bible be read with such explanations in 
 matters of language, history, customs, &c., as may be 
 needed to make its meaning plain ; and that there be 
 given such instruction in its teaching, on the first prin- 
 ciples of morality and religion, as is suitable to the 
 capacities of children ; always excluding denominational 
 teaching. 
 
 The Fifth Eesolution, " that no principle be laid down," 
 aptly describes the condition of the question up to that 
 point. In the absence of a definition of its object, it 
 was impossible for the Board to lay down any principle 
 for its guidance. In the absence of any controlling 
 definition, it could only look back to its constituents to 
 see what they would bear from it. And looking to the 
 confused mass of public opinion and prejudice in the 
 absence of any light of one's own, is like shutting one's 
 eyes to avoid seeing the dark. 
 
 Travelling one day by a railway on which there are 
 several tunnels, I observed that whenever the train 
 entered a tunnel, a little boy who sat next to me, im- 
 mediately pressed his hands over his eyes, and buried his 
 face in the cushions. To my inquiry why he did this, 
 he answered that it was because he was afraid of the 
 dark. I asked him whether it Avas not just as dark to 
 him when his face was buried in the cushions. He said 
 yes ; but he had not thought of that, and he would not 
 know now what to do. I could not bear to deprive him 
 of his faith, however unenlightened, without giving him 
 another. A lamp Avas burning in the roof of the car- 
 riage, too dim in the broad daylight to have attracted 
 his attention, yet bright enough to dispel the gloom of
 
 and Modern Education. 9 
 
 the tunnel. I suggested that, instead of covering his 
 face, he would do better to keep his eyes fixed on the 
 lamp. The little fellow brightened with joy at the 
 thought ; and during the rest of the journey, the in- 
 stant we entered a tunnel, there he was, no longer fear- 
 ful and burying himself in deeper darkness, but steadfastly 
 looking to the light that shone above him. 
 
 " Look to the light ! " is no bad maxim even for those 
 who have to determine grave questions for the benefit 
 of others. We have but to " look to the light" of the 
 definition we have already agreed upon, and difficulties 
 fly like darkness before the approaching dawn. Even 
 the difficulties themselves, like Daphne before the Sun- 
 god, are apt to turn into flowers for our delectation. 
 
 The Sixth Resolution, that proposed by Dr Angus, and 
 supported by Professor Huxley, is the first that shows 
 any consciousness that there is a light to which we may 
 look for encouragement and guidance. " That instruc- 
 tion should be given in the Bible on the first principles of 
 morality and religion." According to our definition. Edu- 
 cation consists in the cultivation of the Intelligence and 
 the Moral Sense. This is the light on which the gaze 
 must be so steadily fixed, that no conflicting influences 
 shall be capable of diverting our attention. Interpreted 
 by it, the Bible itself bears witness to the way in which 
 it should be used. Here, in full accordance with it, is 
 one of its utterances, " God is no respecter of persons ; 
 but in every nation, he that feareth Him and worketh 
 righteousness, is accepted with Him." (Acts x. 34-5.) 
 Acting in this spirit, our School-boards will be no re- 
 specters of authors or books, but in every writing that, 
 and that only, " which feareth God and worketh righte- 
 ousness," shall be accepted by them. Here is another,
 
 lo 'Jewish Literature 
 
 also on the positive side : "Whatsoever things are true, 
 whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
 whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
 whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any 
 virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." 
 (Phil. iv. 8.) And another seems to define that Scrip- 
 ture or writing, as alone given by a holy inspiration, 
 which " is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for cor- 
 rection, for instruction in righteousness." (2 Tim. iii. 16.) 
 And on the negative side we have " Refuse profane and 
 old wives' fables;" (1 Tim. iv. 7.) "not giving heed to 
 Jewish fables." (Titus i. 14.) "But all uncleanness let 
 it not be once named among you ;" " for it is a shame 
 even to speak of those things which are done of them in 
 secret." (Eph. v. 3, 12.) And one more on the posi- 
 tive side. " Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glonj of 
 God." (1 Cor. X. 31.) 
 
 Yet with these plain rules for our guidance, not one 
 of the resolutions proposes to place any restriction upon 
 the use of the Bible by the children. One, indeed, pro- 
 poses to exclude it bodily from the schools, the good and 
 the evil together, but upon grounds in no way connected 
 with its fitness for the perusal of youth. And even the 
 resolution finally accepted by the Board, while ambigu- 
 ously proposing " to give from the Bible such instruction 
 in the principles of religion and morality as is suitable 
 to the capacities of children," ventures on no protest 
 against the Bible as it now stands being put into the 
 hands of children at all. 
 
 The fact is, that the members have allowed themselves 
 to be so exclusively guided by the " winds" of popular 
 " doctrine," that they " have omitted the weightier mat- 
 ters of the law" of morality, and " passed over judgment 
 and the love of God."
 
 and Modern Education. 1 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 The reason is not far to seek. A representative body- 
 would not be representative were any wide interval to 
 intervene between its own intelligence and attainments 
 and those of its constituents. The latter can be guided 
 in their selection only by the light they possess ; not by 
 that which they do not possess. Wherefore, for the 
 School-board to have passed any more radical Resolution 
 than that which it did pass, would have been for it to 
 have made itself, not the representative, but the inde- 
 pendent superior of the body which elected it. The 
 primary defect, therefore, lies with the people at large. 
 It is the vast amount of bigoted ignorance and supersti- 
 tion still remaining among us that constitutes the real 
 obstacle to any sound system of national education. It 
 is the elders who require to be instructed, before we can 
 begin to teach the children. It is true that a transition 
 has begun. But every step of the progress from the old 
 to the new, from darkness to light, is so vehemently 
 opposed by the vested interests of the dead past, that 
 the patience of those who believe in the possibility of 
 progress may well be exhausted, and their faith quenched 
 in despair. 
 
 To be effectual, therefore, remonstrance must be ad- 
 dressed to the people at large, rather than to their 
 representatives on the School-boards. The transition of 
 which I spoke as having already begun, is the transition 
 from a morality affecting to be based upon theology, to 
 a religion really based upon morality, and, consequently, 
 to a sound system of morality. This transition must 
 attain a far more advanced stage in its progress before 
 the School-board can even begin to carry out the Ke-
 
 1 2 'Jewish Literature 
 
 solution it has passed. It is absolutely impossible to 
 " give from the Bible, instruction in the principles of 
 morality and religion suitable to children," until the 
 popular theory respecting the Bible, and the theology 
 based upon it, is so vastly modified as to amount to 
 an almost total renunciation of that theory. The ab- 
 solute and irreconcilable antagonism between what is 
 called Biblical Theology and the modern principles of 
 " Eeligion and Morality," cannot be too distinctly 
 asserted or loudly proclaimed, if we sincerely desire 
 our children to have an education really consisting in 
 the development of their intelligence and moral sense. 
 
 Valuing the Bible highly as I do, for very much 
 that is very valuable in it, it is no grateful task to have 
 to search out and expose the characteristics which 
 render it an unsuitable basis for the instruction of 
 children, whether in morality or in religion. Such ex- 
 posure, however, being indispensable to the solution of 
 the problem of our national education, to shrink from 
 it would be to abandon that problem as insoluble, that 
 education as impossible. 
 
 V. 
 
 Bearing always in mind our definition of the purpose 
 and method of education, namely the development of 
 the intelligence and moral sense by the inculcation of 
 " the true, the pure, and the honest," — bearing in mind 
 also the fundamental fact in human nature, that man's 
 view of Deity inevitably reacts upon himself, tending 
 to form him in the image of his own ideal, — it is self- 
 evident that to familiarise children with the imperfect 
 morality, the coarse manners and expressions, the rude
 
 and Modern Education. 1 3 
 
 fables, and the degrading ideas of Deity, appertaining to 
 a people low in culture — such as were the Israelites — 
 and to confound their minds and consciences at the most 
 impressible period of life by telling them that such 
 narratives and representations are all divinely inspired 
 and infallibly true,— is to utterly stultify ourselves and 
 the whole of the principles by which we jorofess to be 
 actuated in giving them an education at all. Did we 
 find any others than ourselves, say South Sea savages, 
 putting into the hands of their children, books containing 
 coarse and impure stories, detailing the morbid anatomy 
 of the most execrable vices, extolling deeds prompted by 
 a spirit of the lowest selfishness, exulting in fraud, 
 rapine, and murder, and justifying whatever is most 
 disgraceful to humanity by representing it as prompted 
 or approved by their Deity, and so making Him alto- 
 gether such an one as themselves, — surely we should say 
 that they must indeed be savages of the lowest and most 
 degraded type, and sad proofs of the utter depravity of 
 human nature. 
 
 In investigating from our present point of view the 
 contents of this most read, yet most misread, of books, 
 we must dismiss from our minds any idea that its most 
 objectionable features are amenable to revision or re- 
 translation. The faults thus removable are but as 
 freckles upon the skin compared with a constitutional 
 taint. For it is the spirit as well as the letter of a large 
 portion of it, that whether " for reproof, for correction, 
 or for instruction in righteousness," is hopelessly in 
 fault : and the spirit of a book is of infinitely greater 
 importance than its superficial details. 
 
 Palpable to the eyes of all are the hideous talcs of Lot 
 and his daughters ; (Gen. xix.) Judah and Tamar ;
 
 14 ^Jewish Literature 
 
 (xxxvii.) the massacre of the Shechemites ; (xxxiv.) 
 the Levite of Ephraim ; ( Jud. xix. ) David and Bathsheba ; 
 (2 Sam. ix.) Amnon and his sister ; (xiii.) and whole 
 cliapters in Leviticus and the Prophets. That such 
 things should be in a book given freely to children to 
 read, and that they should be expected notwithstanding 
 to grow up pure and uncontaminated in mind and habit, 
 is one of those anomalies in the British character which 
 makes it a hoj^eless puzzle to the world. Who can say 
 that much of the viciousness at present prevalent among 
 us, is not attributable to early curiosity being aroused 
 and stimulated by the obscenities of the Old Testament ? 
 To put the Bible as it is into the hands of our children, 
 is not only totally to bewilder their sense of right and 
 wrong, — it is to invite familiarity with the idea of the 
 worst Oriental vices. 
 
 Even in the case of those vices being mentioned only 
 to be denounced, the suggestion is apt to remain, and 
 the denunciation to be disregarded. It notoriously is 
 injudicious to put into the minds of children faults of 
 which they might never have thought themselves, for 
 the sake of admonishing them against them. It is 
 related somewhere that a catalogue of offences punish- 
 able by law was once posted in the Eoman forum ais a 
 warning to the citizens ; but that this was followed by 
 such a vast increase in the number and variety of the 
 crimes committed, that it was found advisable to remove 
 it. I myself know an instance of a pious mother sending 
 her daughter to a boarding-school, having first written 
 in her Bible a list of the chapters and passages which she 
 was not to read. It is remarkable how popular in the 
 school that particular Bible became. The other girls 
 were always borrowing it. There is no reason to suppose 
 that boys would have acted differently.
 
 and Modern Education. 15 
 
 It is true that the particular instances I have adduced 
 may not be immoral as they stand in the Bible, but they 
 are assuredly provocative of immorality in children who 
 read them. A far mors serious indictment against the 
 Bible as a handbook of moral instruction must be founded 
 on its habit of representing the Deity as a consenting 
 party to some of the worst actions of its characters : 
 nay, so unreliable is it as a basis of anything what- 
 ever, that after thus characterising the Deity, it deals in 
 strong denunciations against those " who not only com- 
 mit such things themselves, but have pleasure in them 
 that do them ;" (Eom. i. 32.) thus, by direct implication 
 condemning the Deity Himself If it be desirable to 
 impress upon children the belief that only those " who 
 fear God and work righteousness are acceptable to him," 
 it is to stultify the whole principle of their education to 
 represent Him to them as an eastern monarch, selecting 
 his favourites by caprice, and independently of any merit 
 or demerit on their part. Yet the entire Bible rests 
 upon the idea that so far from being an equal Father of 
 all, " Avhose tender mercies are over all His works," 
 (Ps. cxlv. 9.) tli£ Almighty selected out of all mankind 
 one race to be " His ow)i peculiar people," (Deut. xiv. 9.) 
 and out of that race certain individuals to be His own 
 peculiar favourites, and this in spite of the most glaring 
 defects in their characters and conduct ; and sustained 
 those whom He had thus chosen through the whole 
 coui'se of their misdeeds. 
 
 Thus, Abraham is said to have had " faith," and this 
 faith is said to have been " imputed to him for righteous- 
 ness ;" (Rom. iv. 22.) but how far was his actual conduct 
 righteous, and how much faith did it imply ? Assured 
 by repeated promises of the divine favour and protection,
 
 1 6 yewhh Literature 
 
 as well as of a great posterity through his then childless 
 wife Sarai, he twice voluntarily prostituted her to Pagan 
 chieftains, pretending that she was only his sister. And 
 we read that " the Lord plagued,"- — not the liar and 
 poltroon who thus degraded his wife, and entrapped the 
 kings, whose hospitality he was enjoying ; — not the wife 
 SO extraordinarily ready to " obey her husband in all 
 things;" (it appears that her age was about sixty-five on 
 one occasion, and ninety on the other) ;— but " the Lord 
 plagued Pharaoh and Abimelech Avith great plagues be- 
 cause of Sarai, Abraham's wife," and in the case of the 
 latter, would only grant forgiveness upon the intercession 
 of Abraham, saying, " for he is a prophet." (Gen. xii. 20.) 
 Isaac, we read, copied the twice committed fault of his 
 father, in passing off his wife Rebekah as his sister upon 
 another king, and was divinely blessed notwithstanding. 
 In short, in all three transactions, out of the whole of the 
 parties to them, Abraham, Isaac, Sarai, Rebekah, the 
 three kings, and the Deity, those only who indicate the 
 possession of any moral sense whatever are the Pagan 
 kings, who show it in no small degree, and these alone 
 are punished ; while Abi'aham and Isaac retain the divine 
 favour throughout, the former being honoured by the 
 distinctive title of " Friend of God." (James ii. 23.) 
 
 The selfishness and cowardice of Abraham are still 
 farther illustrated by his treatment of Hagar and Ish- 
 mael. There is no reason to doubt the perfect truthful- 
 ness of the Bible narrative in respect to him. But when 
 it goes on to represent the Deity as encouraging him in 
 his cruel and unfatherly conduct to his son, and bid- 
 ding him follow the lead of a frivolous and heartless 
 wife ; — " In aU that Sarai hath said unto thee, hearken 
 unto her voice;" (Gen. xxi. 12.) then our moral sense is
 
 and Modern Education. 1 7 
 
 offended, and we refuse to identify the God of Abraham 
 with the God of our own clearer perceptions. 
 
 The utter indifference of " the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob" to any moral law whatever, reaches its climax 
 in the history of Jacob. A liar and a trickster from 
 early youth, yet constantly enjoying the presence and 
 approbation of God, who finds no word or sign of re- 
 proach wherewith to touch his conscience or arouse his 
 fears, — such is the patriarch whom the Bible sets forth 
 as one of God's especial favourites, because, forsooth, he 
 had " faith." In presence of this mystic quality, right 
 and wrong sink into absolute nothingness ; and that 
 most fatal of all impieties, a total divorce between the 
 will of God and the moral law, finds its plea and justi- 
 fication. It is little that I would give for the moral 
 sensibility of the child who could read without a pang of 
 indignation and a tear of pity the tale of this ingrained 
 blackleg's atrocities ; his taking advantage of his rough, 
 honest-hearted brother's extremity of exhaustion through 
 hunger to extort from him his birthright; (Gen. 
 XXV.) his heartless deception of his poor, blind old 
 father; (xxvii.) his repeated cheats, thefts, and false- 
 hoods against his father-in-law; (xxx., &c.) and the 
 divine confirmation to him of the blessings thus fraudu- 
 lently acquired ; " yea, and he shall be blessed," and con- 
 stant assurance of the divine presence and approbation. 
 
 It is without a word of repudiation that the Bible ac- 
 quiesces in Jacob's degradation of the Deity to a huck- 
 stering or bargaining God ; a God, too, who can be got 
 the better of in a business transaction. For, " Jacob 
 vowed a vow, saying. If God will be with me in this 
 way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment 
 to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in 
 
 B
 
 1 8 "Jewish Literature 
 
 peace ; tlicn shall the Lord be my God ; and this stone 
 which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house ; and 
 of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the imth 
 unto thee." (xxviii. 20, &c.) 
 
 When the Israelites reach the Promised Land, their 
 "sacred history" consists of little beside perpetual but- 
 cheries. The more directly they are represented as being 
 under divine guidance, the more sanguinary is their 
 career. Slaughter of men, women, children, infants at 
 the breast. None spared, none, except, sometimes — 
 and mark the exception made by the followers, not of 
 Mahomet, but of Jehovah — the unmarried girls. Every 
 sentiment of humanity and mercy is accounted an un- 
 pardonable weakness. Jehovah appears as a savage 
 patriot-God, approving impurity, treachery, murder, and 
 whatever else was perpetrated on the side of his " chosen 
 people." A Bushman of South Africa being once asked 
 to define the difference between good and evil, replied, 
 " It is good when I steal another man's wives ; evil when 
 another man steals mine." Such is precisely the standard 
 of right and wrong laid down by the Bible in respect to 
 the Israelites and their neighbours. Can we wonder that 
 recent moralists have written to vindicate the Almighty 
 from the aspersions cast upon his character in the Bible.* 
 
 In all the events of the late dreadful war upon the 
 Continent, probably no single incident caused such a 
 thrill of horror as that of the wounded German soldier 
 who staggered from the field of battle into a peasant's 
 cottage, and fell fainting upon the bed, and only lived 
 long enough to tell his comrades how that the Avoman of 
 the cottage had taken advantage of his helpless condition 
 to pick out his eyes with a fork. Possibly the French 
 * E.fj. Theodore Parker in America, and Dr Perfitt in England.
 
 and Modern Education. 1 9 
 
 woman had heard of the blessing pronounced upon Jael 
 for a similar act. Possibly she had learned from " Sacred 
 History" that the most revolting perfidy and cruelty be- 
 come heroic virtues when exercised upon one's own side. 
 And were not we Europeans of to-day, with all our faults, 
 infinitely in advance of those bad times, we too might 
 find a patriot-poet rivalling the utterances of the 
 "divinely-inspired" Deborah, to laud the French tigress 
 as the Jewish one was lauded, detail with rapturous 
 glee every particular of the fiendish deed, and mock the 
 wretched victim's mother watching and longing in vain 
 for her murdered son's return. 
 
 Nay, the conduct of her whom the Bible pronounces 
 as " blessed above women," was even more flagrant in 
 its utter heinousness than that of the French woman. 
 For the husband of Jael had severed himself from the 
 hostile peoples; "there was peace between Jabin, the 
 King of Hazor, and the house of Heber, the Kenite ;" 
 and he dwelt, a friendly neutral, in a region apart. The 
 general Sisera, moreover, utterly beaten and discomfited, 
 had fled expressly to Jael's tent for safety, knowing the 
 family to be friendly, and she had invited him in with 
 assurances of protection. " Turn in, my lord, fear not." 
 (Jud. iv.) 
 
 Wliile Abraham is described as "the friend of God," 
 to David is awarded the honour of being styled " a man 
 after God's own heart;" (1 Sam. xiii. 14; Acts xiii. 22.) 
 "who turned not away from anything that he com- 
 manded him all the days of his life, save only " in one 
 particular instance. (1 Kings xv. 5.) In order to see how 
 little the Bible is fitted for the instruction of children in 
 respect of a moral sense, let us brush aside for a moment 
 the halo with which the name of David is surrounded,
 
 20 yewish Literature 
 
 and read his history for ourselves. It is through want 
 of doing this, that a popular writer has recently described 
 his life as uniformly "bright and beautiful up to the 
 time of his one great sin."* Yet, his career, soon after 
 the intrepid act which first brought him into notice, was 
 one of rebellion and brigandage. Collecting all that were 
 in debt, distress, and discontent, (1 Sam. xxii. 2.) he or- 
 ganised them into bands of freebooters to levy blackmail 
 upon the farmers. One of these, named Nabal, when 
 applied to on account of David, boldly and naturally 
 answered, " Who is David % and who is this son of Jesse? 
 there be many servants now-a-days that break away 
 every man from his master. Shall I then take my 
 bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed 
 for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not 
 whence they be 1" 
 
 However, Abigail, the wife of Nabal, touched by her 
 servant's account of the gallantry of the band, took of 
 her husband's stores and gave liberally to them. Upon 
 this David assured her that, but for her conduct, he 
 would not have left even a dog of Nabal's household 
 alive by next morning. A few days afterwards Nabal 
 died ; the Bible, as if to remove any suspicion of foul 
 play, stating that " the Lord smote him;" when David im- 
 mediately took Abigail to be his own wife. (1 Sam. xxv.) 
 
 When the great contest took place between the Philis- 
 tines and the Israelites, in which the latter were utterly 
 routed, and Saul and Jonathan, David's bosom friend, 
 were slain, David with his forces stood aloof, unheeding 
 the peril of his countrymen. (1 Sam. xxx.) The crown 
 thus devolved upon Ishbosheth the son of Saul, who was 
 supported by eleven out of the twelve tribes. David, 
 * Miss Yonge, in " Musings on tlie Christian Year,"
 
 and Modern Education. 2 1 
 
 however, would not accept their choice, even though the 
 whole strength of Israel was needed at that critical mo- 
 ment to withstand the Philistines. (2 Sam. ii.) Exciting 
 a civil war, he got himself acknowledged as king by the 
 dissentient tribe of Judah. Treachery and murder came 
 freely to his aid, and he at length found the crown of 
 Israel in his hands. But he felt his tenure of it insecure 
 so long as any descendant of Saul remained to dispute it 
 with him. He therefore concerted with the priests, who, 
 since Saul had slighted their authority, had sided with 
 David, a plot to get rid of the seven sons and grandsons 
 of Saul. The country having been for three years dis- 
 tressed by famine, David consulted the Oracles. In 
 Bible phraseology, he " inquired of the Lord." Of what 
 kind of a Lord he inquired, may be judged by the re- 
 sponse. "It is for Saul and his bloody house, because 
 he slew the Gibeonites " many years before. Upon this 
 the Gibeonites, duly instructed, besought of David that, 
 as an " atonement," seven males of Saul's family should 
 be " hanged up unto the Lord." And David took the 
 seven and delivered them into the hands of the Gibe- 
 onites, five of them being sons of his own former wife 
 Michal, " and they hanged them in the hill before the 
 Lord. . . ., And after that, God was intreated for the 
 land." (2 Sam. xxi. 1-14.) Revolt, treason, murder, 
 human sacrifices, all in the name of " the Lord " ! 
 
 On one occasion, after defeating the Moabites, David, 
 we read, assembled all the people of that nation on a 
 plain, made them lie down, and divided them into three 
 groups with a line. Two of these groups he put to death, 
 and the other he reduced to slavery. (2 Sam. viii. 2.) The 
 conquered Ammonites he treated with even greater fero- 
 city, tearing and hewing some of them in pieces with
 
 22 yewish Literature 
 
 harrows, axes, and saws, and roasting others in brick- 
 kihas. (xii. 31.) His luxury and vohiptuousness equalled 
 his cruelty. Having had seven wives while he ruled 
 over Judah alone, he added to the number all those who 
 had belonged to Saul, (8.) and took yet more wives and 
 concubines after he had come from Hebron, (v. 13.) But 
 these, and his vast pomp, were insufficient to satiate him. 
 Having caught sight of Bathsheba, the wife of one of his 
 captains named Uriah, he took her to himself, and sent 
 Uriah to join the army in the field, giving express orders 
 to his commanding officer to place him in the fore front 
 of the fight to insure his being killed. 
 
 It appears that there was then in Israel an honest pro- 
 phet named Natlian, who had the courage to remonstrate 
 with the king, and who did so Avith such effect, that 
 David was made, for once, to see the enormity of his 
 conduct. We read, however, that the Lord put away 
 David's sin, so that he did not die. But his child did. 
 And no sooner was the innocent thus punished for the 
 guilty, than " David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and 
 she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon ; and 
 the Lord loved him. And he sent by the hand of 
 Nathan the prophet,' noAv subsided into the obsequious 
 court chaplain, " and he called his name Jedidiah," or 
 "Beloved of the Lord." (2 Sam. xii.) 
 
 Old age and infirmity wrought no amendment in the 
 truculent spirit of David ; a spirit so truculent as to make 
 it morally impossible that he could really have been the 
 author of any of those psalms Avhich in after ages it 
 pleased his countrymen to ascribe to him ; excepting 
 only, perhaps, the more ferocious of them. He has been 
 called, " the Byron of the Bible," which, after Avhat has 
 just been stated, seems exceedingly unfair to Byron.
 
 and Modern Education. 23 
 
 Early in David's career of blood, one Shimei had, in 
 generous indignation, cursed him for his murder of the 
 sons of Saul. (2 Sam. xvi.) He had afterwards begged 
 forgiveness and received it. (xix. 16-23.) Y"et David's 
 last instructions to Solomon were in this wise — " Behold 
 thou liast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, which cursed 
 me with a grievous curse in the day when I came to 
 Mahanaim : but he came down to meet me at Jordan, 
 and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put 
 thee to death with the sword. Now, therefore, hold 
 him not guiltless . . . but his hoar head bring thou 
 down to the grave with blood. So David slept with his 
 fathers." (1 Kings ii. 8-10, &c.) And Solomon "com- 
 manded Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, which went out and 
 fell upon Shimei, that he died." (46.) "And Solomon 
 loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David, his 
 father." And " the Lord appeared to Solomon in a 
 dream by night ; and God said, ask what I shall give 
 thee. And Solomon said, Thou hast shown unto thy 
 servant David, my father, great mercy, according as he 
 walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in 
 uprightness of heart with thee : and tliou hast kept for 
 him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son 
 to sit on his throne. . . . Aiid God said unto him . . . 
 if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and 
 my commandments, as thy father David did walk, then 
 will I lengthen thy days." (1 Kings iii.) 
 
 The mystery of these astounding utterances is not far 
 to seek. History in those days was the work of the 
 sacerdotal class. To support and subserve that class was 
 then, as it has been, for the most part, ever since, to be 
 pronounced, " beloved of the Lord," no matter how evil 
 the individual really was, or hoAV derogatory to the di-
 
 24 yewish Literature 
 
 vine honour it might be to have such a preference ascribed 
 to it. To liave " faith " in the priests counterbaUuiced 
 and condoned any quantity of wicked " Avorks." Their 
 standard of right and wrong, good and evil, was that of 
 the Bushman. AVhatever was for them was good ; what- 
 ever was against them was evil. It is, then, for us seri- 
 ously to ask ourselves whether, when we set before our 
 children as a fit object of worship such a being as the 
 Bible represents the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 of Samuel, David, and Solomon, to have been, we are 
 ministering towards the end we have in view in giving 
 to them an education ; or whether, in place of raising 
 them in the scale of being, we are not rather ministering 
 to the total degradation in them of the human soul. 
 
 VI. 
 
 These are but a few of the instances in which the 
 Bible is antagonistic to one of the main objects of educa- 
 tion, the development of the moral sense. We will now 
 examine how far its teaching is adapted to promote the 
 cultivation of the intellect, still confining ourselves to 
 the Old Testament. 
 
 What are the " glorious gains " of the modern mind, 
 of which we are justly proud, and what are the ideas re- 
 specting the constitution of the universe, the recognition 
 of which we regard as necessary to entitle any one to 
 the appellation of an intelligent and educated person % 
 
 Surely they are that the order of nature is invariable, 
 the whole imiverse being governed by laws so perfectly 
 appointed as to need no rectification, and fixed so inher- 
 ently in it as to constitute its nature. That, though in- 
 capable of interference from without, inasmuch as there
 
 and Modern Education. 25 
 
 can be no without, all things proceeding from within 
 from its divine immanent character, ^ — its parts are en- 
 dowed with a capacity of advancing by a process of con- 
 tinual evolution to a degree ever higher of complexity 
 and organisation, as within the physical structure rises 
 the mental, with all its capabilities of moral, intellectual, 
 and spiritual, in grandeur surpassing the majesty of the 
 whole external Cosmos. That it is a low and degrading 
 superstition to regard deity as other than One, ever liv- 
 ing and operating equally and impartially throughout the 
 whole domain of existence ; or as dwelling apart from 
 the world, and only occasionally giving proof of his being 
 by disturbance of the general order. And that, — while it 
 is impossible truly to ascribe to him aught of feeling cor- 
 responding to the love, hate, fear, passion, caprice, appe- 
 tite, or other affection of men, — when for purposes of 
 instruction or devotion we seek to utilise the anthropo- 
 morphic tendency of our nature. He is to be represented 
 as the absolute impersonation of all that we recognise as 
 best in Humanity. 
 
 To what depths do we fall when, abandoning these 
 hard-won gains of the Intellect's long warfare against 
 ignorance, barbarism, and superstition, instead of placing 
 our children upon the vantage ground we have acquired, 
 and handing to them our lights at the point which we 
 ourselves have attained, that they may carry them on 
 yet further, we abuse their understandings at the most 
 impressible age, by compelling them to regard the 
 Almighty as no equal God and Father of the whole 
 human race, but the exclusive patron of a small Semitic 
 tribe dwelling in Palestine, Avhom he supported by 
 prodigies and miracles in their aggressions upon their 
 neighbours, revealing to them alone the light of his
 
 lb yeivish Literature 
 
 word, and condemning all others to enforced darkness. 
 By teaching them to believe in magic and witchcraft, 
 in talismans, charms, and vows ; in beasts speaking 
 with human voices and sentiments ; (Gen. iii. 1-4 ; 
 Num. xxii. 28-30.) in a deity writing with a finger; (Ex. 
 xxxi. 18.) speaking with a voice; (xix. 19.) enjoying 
 the smell of roast meat ; (Gen. viii. 21.) standing face to 
 face ; (xxxii. 30.) walking in a garden ; (iii. 8.) revealing 
 his hinder parts ; (Ex. xxxiii. 23.) coming down to obtain 
 information as to what men were doing, and to devise 
 measures in accordance therewith ; (Gen. xi. 5-7 ; xviii. 
 20, 21.) impressing men, not through their consciences, 
 but by signs and wonders, miracles and dreams ; recog- 
 nising and confirming advantages gained by fraud, to the 
 irreparable disadvantage of their rightful owner ; (Gen. 
 xxvii. 33-37.) in the case of one deliverer of his chosen 
 people, making his strength depend upon the length of 
 his hair; (Jud. xvi. 17.) allowing another, in virtue of 
 a hasty voav, to offer up his daughter in human sacrifice 
 as a burnt-off'ering ; (xi. 30-39 ; Num. xxx.) and, lastly, 
 teaching them to believe in man created perfect, and 
 yet unable to resist the first and smallest temptation ; 
 and, for such a peccadillo as the eating of the fruit of a 
 magical tree, being with his whole unborn progeny so 
 ferociously damned as to be redeemable only by another 
 human sacrifice, even the stupendous sacrifice of God's 
 only Son. 
 
 How utterly bewildering to the expanding intelligence 
 of youth to be told that the God whom they are to 
 worship is revealed in the Bible, and to find him such a 
 being as this ! Terrible indeed is their responsibility 
 who proclaim as divinely infallible every absurd or 
 monstrous narrative to be found in the fragmentary
 
 and Modern Education. iy 
 
 legends of a barbarous and imaginative people. When 
 we consider how great is the difficulty of detaching the 
 mind from pernicious ideas when imprinted on it in 
 childhood, and fitting it to receive the later revelations 
 of reason and morality, we can but shudder at the sum 
 of misery undergone in the conflict between the Intellect 
 and the Conscience, through the former having com- 
 menced its onAvard march, while the latter still continues 
 bound to the beliefs of childhood. A very Nessus-shirt 
 of burning poison and agony to all generations of 
 Christendom, has been the garb of ancient faith which we 
 have adopted and worn, in spite of its being totally 
 unfitted to us. 
 
 VIL 
 
 It is a practice with many savage tribes to invest some 
 object with certain magical properties, altogether inde- 
 pendent of its real qualities, and to Avorship this with a 
 blind adoration, the whole process being known by the 
 name of Fetich- worship. 
 
 Now what else than precisely such Fetich-worship is 
 theirs who would put up a book to be venerated, but 
 refuse to allow it to be made comprehensible by any 
 kind of interpretation 1 Yet, of all the Eesolutions 
 considered by the School-board, that for Avliich the 
 country at large manifested the strongest preference at 
 the elections was the proposition " that the Bible be 
 read in the schools, but without note or comment." 
 
 It can only be the absence of any precise notion as to 
 what education consists in that has prompted a sugges- 
 tion so utterly opposed to any sort of wholesome de- 
 velopment. To suggest difficulties—such difficulties—
 
 2 8 yewish Literature 
 
 and forbid their explanation ! Better far that the 
 children read the Bible in the original tongues at once, 
 than in the " authorised version." They might not get 
 much good from the process, but they would assuredly 
 get less harm. 
 
 But Are will test the working of this suggestion by a 
 few out of the numerous instances of apparent contra- 
 diction Avhich, " Avithout note or comment," cannot fail 
 to plunge youthful readers in hopeless perplexity. 
 
 And first, concerning the Deity, Ave read that " God 
 saAv eveiything that he had made, and behold it Avas 
 very good." (Gen. i. 31.) This Avas said after the 
 creation of man, Avhen the character and liabilities of 
 that creation must have been fully knoAvn to God. 
 Yet we are told soon after that " it repented the Lord 
 that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him 
 at his heart ; (iv. 6.) implying that he was surprised and 
 disappointed at the Avay man had turned out, • having 
 expected better things of him : implying, too, that the 
 diAdne prescience Avas at fault, the divine Avork a failure. 
 And in many other passages we read of the Deity as 
 repenting and changing his mind ; being weary and 
 resting. Yet elscAvhere in the same book it is declared 
 that " God is not a man that he should repent;" (Num. 
 xxxiii. 19.) being one " Avith Avhom is no variable- 
 ness, neither shadoAV of turning ;" (Jam. i. 17.) "who 
 fainteth not, neither is Aveary." (Is. xl. 28 ; also 1 Sam. 
 XV, 35 ; Jonah iii. 10 ; Ex. xxxiii. 1 ; &c.) 
 
 Even the all-important questions of God's justice and 
 power remain in suspense Avith such passages as these 
 unreconciled : " A God of truth and Avithout iniquity, 
 just and right is he." (Deut. xxxii. 4.) " Hear noAv, 
 house of Israel ; are not my Avays equal 1 are not your
 
 and Modern Education. 29 
 
 ways unequal ? Therefore I will judge you 
 
 every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God." 
 " The son shall not bear the iniquity of the fiither." 
 (Ez. xviii. 20, 25-30.) And, " I .... am a jealous 
 God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
 children." (Ex. xx. 5.) Also, " For the children being 
 not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that 
 the purpose of God according to election might stand, 
 not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto 
 her (by God), the elder shall serve the younger. As it 
 is written, Jacob have I loved (Jacob !) but Esau have I 
 hated." (Rom. ix. 11-13 ; Gen. ix. 25 ; Matt. xiii. 11-17.) 
 How, moreover, are children to reconcile this with the 
 declaration that "God is no respecter of persons 1" 
 And while, notwithstanding that " with God all things 
 are possible," (Matt. xix. 25.) we are told that " the 
 Lord was with Judah, and he drave out the inhabitants 
 of the mountain ; but could not drive out the inhabi- 
 tants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." 
 (Jud. i. 19 ; Josh. xvii. 18.) Also that the inhabitants 
 of Meroz were bitterly cursed " because they came not 
 to the help of the Lord against the mighty." (Jud. v. 23.) 
 
 Notwithstanding that we read in several places that 
 God was seen face to face, and his voice heard, (Gen. iii. 
 9, 10 ; xxxii. 30; Ex. xxiv. 9-11 ; xxxiii. 11 ; Is. vi. 1.) 
 we are yet assured that " no man hath seen God at any 
 time ;" (John i. 18.) hath " neither heard his voice at any 
 time, nor seen his face." (v. 37.) And God himself said 
 unto Moses, " Thou canst not see my face ; for there shall 
 no man see me and live." (Ex. xxiii. 20.) And Paul 
 speaks of him as one " whom no man hath seen, nor can 
 see." (1 Tim. vi. 16.) 
 
 It is little that children will learn from the Bible con-
 
 30 'Jewish Literature 
 
 cerning the origin of evil, when, against " I make peace 
 , and create evil. I the Lord do all these things;" (Is. 
 xlv. 7.) " out of the mouth of the Most High proceed- 
 eth not evil and good ?" (Lam. iii. 38.) — they set, " with- 
 out note or comment," " God is not the author of con- 
 fusion;" (1 Cor. xiv. 33.) " a God of truth, and without 
 iniquity, just and right is he." (Deut. xxxii. 4.) "God 
 cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any 
 man." (Jas. i. 13.) 
 
 Concerning the divine dwelling-place, we read that 
 " the Lord appeared to Solomon, and said ... I have 
 chosen and sanctified this house . . . and mine eyes and 
 heart shall be there perpetually." (2 Chron. vii. 12-16.) 
 Yet we also read, "Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not 
 in temples made with hands." (Acts vii. 48.) Li one 
 place he is described as " dwelling in light which no man 
 can approach;" (1 Tim. iv. 16.) and in another it is 
 said, " clouds and darkness are round about him." (Ps. 
 xcvii. 2.) 
 
 Similarly contrast these also : " The Lord is a man of 
 war :" (Ex. xv. 3.) " The Lord mighty in battle :" (Ps. 
 xxiv. 8.) " The Lord of hosts is his name." (Is. li. 15.) 
 And, " God is not the author of confusion, but of peace." (1 
 Cor. xiv. 33.) " Bloody men shall not live out half their 
 days." (Ps. Iv. 23.) " The God of peace be with you all." 
 (Rom. XV. 33.) 
 
 In reference to the making and worshij^ping of images, 
 we have the positive command, " Thou shalt not make 
 unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything 
 that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath. Thou 
 shalt not bow down to them, nor serve (or worship) 
 them," (Ex. xxii. 4.) and many repeated denunciations 
 of idolatry. Yet Moses was commanded to " make two
 
 and Modern Education. 3 1 
 
 cherubim of gold." (xxv. 18.) Also, " the Lord said 
 unto Moses, make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a 
 pole, and it shall come to pass that every one that is 
 bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live." (Num. xxi. 8.) 
 A direct act of idolatry commanded by God himself ! 
 
 The books of Exodus and Leviticus abound in direc- 
 tions instituting and regulating sacrifice, in terms such 
 as " Thou shalt offer every day a bullock for a sin-offering 
 for atonement;" (Ex. xxix. 36; also xviii. ; Lev. i. 9; 
 xxiii. 27, &c.) and the most complex and gorgeous 
 system of ceremonial worship was based upon it, ex- 
 pressly by divine command. Yet in the Psalms we find 
 the Almighty exclaiming, " Will I eat the flesh of bulls, 
 or drink the blood of goats % Offer unto God thanks- 
 giving, and pay thy vows unto the Most High." (Ps. 1. 
 13, 14.) And in Isaiah, " To what purpose is the mul- 
 titude of your sacrifices unto me 1 "saith the Lord . . . 
 I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of 
 he-goats . . . When ye come to appear before me, who 
 hath required this at your hand % Bring no more vain 
 oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me ; the new 
 moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot 
 away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting." 
 (Is. i. 11-13.) And Jeremiah represents the Almighty 
 as positively repudiating any connection with the Levi- 
 tical code. " I spake not unto your fathers, nor com- 
 manded them in the day that I brought them out of the 
 land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices." 
 (Gen. vii. 22.) 
 
 " Without note or comment," children would assuredly 
 fail to comprehend the significance of the antagonism 
 necessarily existing between the whole sacerdotal 
 class, with its " trivial round" of ritual and observance,
 
 32 'Jewish hit er at lire 
 
 and immoral doctrine of compensation for moral de- 
 ficiencies by material payments, and the honest, out- 
 spoken prophet or teacher of practical religion. And to 
 fail to comprehend this, is to fail to learn one of the 
 most valuable lessons to be derived from the Bible. 
 
 Even the horrible practice of human sacrifice finds 
 justification with the sacerdotal followers of the Jewish 
 divinity. We have already seen how, backed by the 
 priests, David delivered up the seven sons and grandsons 
 of Saul, " and they hanged them in the hill before the 
 Lord . . . and after that God was entreated for the 
 land." (2 Sam. xxi.) Moreover, "God said unto Abra- 
 ham, take now thy son, thine only son Isaac . . . and 
 ©O'er him for a burnt-off"ering." (Gen. xxii. 2.) Jephthah, 
 too, " vowed a vow unto the liOrd" that he would " off"er 
 up for a burnt-offering" whatever he met first on his re- 
 turn home, provided the Lord would give him a victory. 
 The victory was given, and the bargain Avas kept ; " the 
 Lord," of course, being in his omniprescience, well aware 
 what it involved ; and, to judge by his antecedent and 
 subsequent conduct, by no means incapable of being in- 
 duced thereto by the magnitude of the bribe. Jephthah's 
 own daughter was the first to come to congi-atulate her 
 father ; " and he did with her according to his vow." 
 (Jud. xi.) The sacerdotal law gave him no choice, for it 
 ]3ositively enacted that vows, however iniquitous, were 
 not to be broken, except when taken under certain cir- 
 cumstances by a maid, a wife, or a widow. (Num. xxx.) 
 
 The liberality and mercifulness of God find expression 
 in many touching declarations in the Scriptures. We 
 read that " every one that asketh, receiveth, and he that 
 seeketh, findeth." (Matt. vii. 8.) " Those that seek me 
 early shall find me." (Prov. viii. 17.) Yet on the other
 
 and Modern Education. ^i 
 
 side we have, " Then shall they call upon me, but I will 
 not answer ; they shall seek me early, but they shall not 
 find me." (i. 28.) And notwithstanding such assertions 
 as : "The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." (James 
 V. 11.) "He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the 
 children of men." (Lam. iii. 33.) " The Lord is good to 
 all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." (Ps. 
 cxlv. 9.) "I have no plea.sure in the death of him that 
 dieth, saith the Lord God." (Ezek. xviii. 32.) " God is 
 love;" (1 John iv. 16.) "Who will have all men to be 
 saved;" (1 Tim. ii. 4.) "For his mercy endureth for 
 ever ;" (1 Chron. xvi. 34, &c.) — we find also the following 
 ferocious utterances : " The Lord thy God is a consuming 
 fire." (Deut. iv. 34.) " I will dash them one against 
 another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the 
 the Lord. I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, 
 but destroy them." (Jer. xiii. 14.) "And thou shalt 
 consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall 
 deliver thee : thine eye shall have no pity upon them." 
 (Deut. vii. 16, and 2.) " Thus saith the Lord of hosts . . 
 slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and 
 sheep, camel and ass." (1 Sam. xv. 2, 3.) " Because they 
 had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of 
 the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men. 
 And the people lamented because the Lord had smitten 
 many of the people with great slaughter." (1 Sam. vi. 19.) 
 " I also will deal in fury ; mine eye shall not spare, 
 neither will I have pity. And though they cry in mine 
 ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them." (Ezek. 
 viii. 18.) "And the Lord said, Go through the city and 
 smite ; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity : slay 
 utterly old and young, both maids and little children, 
 and women. . , . and begin at my sanctuary." (ix. 4-6.) 
 
 C
 
 34 'Jewish Literature 
 
 It is no less impossible to derive from the Bible alone 
 any certainty of God's unfailing truthfulness than of his 
 mercy. It is true that we are told, " It is impossible for 
 God to lie." (Heb. vi. 18.) " Lying lips are an abomina- 
 tion to the Lord." (Prov. xii. 22.) "Thou shalt not 
 bear false witness against thy neighbour." (Ex. xx. 16.) 
 " These things doth the Lord hate ... a lying tongue 
 . . . a false witness that speaketh lies." (Prov. iv. 17-19.) 
 And, " all liars shall have their part in the lake which 
 burnetii with fire and brimstone." (Rev. xxi. 8.) Yet, 
 on the other hand, we find the lies of the Israelitish 
 women in Egypt, and of Rahab in Jericho, justified ; — 
 " that admirable falsehood," as St. Chrysostom called 
 the latter. (Ex. i. 18-20; Josh. ii. 4-6.) We find the 
 atrocious deceit of Jael more than justified. (Jud. iv. v.) 
 And we have also tliis astounding revelation from behind 
 the scenes in heaven : — " And the Lord said, who shall 
 persuade Aliab % . . . And there came forth a spirit and 
 stood before the Lord, and said, I will persiiade him. 
 And the Lord said, wherewith % And he said, I will go 
 forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy 
 proj)hets. And he said, thou shalt persuade him, and 
 prevail also ; go forth and do so. Now, therefore, be- 
 hold the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all 
 these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil con- 
 cerning thee." (1 Kings xxii. 21-23.) And in confirma- 
 tion of this otherwise incredible narrative, we read later, 
 " If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a 
 thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will 
 stretch out mine hand upon him, and will destroy him 
 from the midst of my people." (Ezek. xiv. 9.) The New 
 Testament adopts a similar Aaew of God's dealings ; for, 
 mingled with its " glad tidings of salvation," we read, —
 
 and Modern Education. 
 
 ZS 
 
 " God shall send them strong delusion, that they should 
 believe a lie, that they all might be damned." (2 Thess. 
 ii. 11, 12.) 
 
 Once more it must be asked. Can we wonder that 
 earnest and pious men of our own times have, in their 
 zeal for the honour of God, endeavoured to rescue his 
 character from the treatment it receives in the Scriptures % 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The character of Jesus is as variously drawn in the 
 New Testament as that of the Deity in the Old ; and 
 those who desire the children in our schools to recoirnise 
 in him the perfect man and infallible Teacher, should, to 
 be consistent, be the very last to wish them to read the 
 New Testament "Avithout note or comment." Too often 
 it happens that the explanatory lessons with which the 
 Scriptures are accompanied, are utterly pernicious, and 
 even blasphemous. This very year, a youth who has 
 been for some years a student in one of the wealthiest of 
 our public foundation-schools, was required to give some 
 instances of human feeling on the part of Jesus. Of 
 the value, whether intellectually or religiously, of the 
 education given at that school, we may judge by 
 his answer. Of the tender sympathy shown l)y Jesus 
 towards all who were suffering ; of his unselfish devotion 
 to the cause of the poor and the depraved ; of his noble 
 indignation against injustice and oppression ; of his in- 
 tense sense of a personal Father in God, and instinctive 
 detestation of all sacerdotal interference ; — of all these so 
 eminently human characteristics, our scholar said nothing. 
 The result of his compulsory attendance at the school 
 chapel every morning, and at two full services every
 
 36 yewish Literature 
 
 Sunday, beside much other Scripture instruction, was to 
 impress upon him the belief that whatever is liuman is 
 bad, and whatever is bad is human. He concluded, 
 therefore, that by human feeling on the part of Jesus, 
 an instance of something bad was intended. And he 
 actually sent up for answer, as a solitary instance of 
 human feeling on the j^art of Jesus, the story of his losing 
 his temper, and cursing a fig-tree for being barren when 
 it was not the season for figs ! (Mark xi. 13, 14, 21.) 
 
 As any explanations which accompany the reading of 
 the Old Testament should be contrived to disabuse chil- 
 dren of the notion that the Deity could ever have been 
 such a being as is there described, so in reading of Jesus 
 in the New Testament they should be told that there are 
 indications of a better man than the Gospels make him, 
 peeping out through the corrupted text. " It is impos- 
 sible that such love and devotion as followed him through- 
 out his life could ever have been won by a hard, unjust, 
 or intolerant character." Yet he is represented as more 
 than once addressing his admirable and devoted mother 
 in a rough, unfilial tone; (John ii. 4; Luke ii. 4.) and 
 launching most uncalled for reproaches at a gentleman of 
 whose hospitality he was paitaking, on the occasion of a 
 woman coming in and washing liis feet with her tears, 
 and wiping them with her hair. (Luke vii. 32-50.) 
 
 Nor can there be any doubt as to what must be their 
 natural judgment of the spirit of one Avho could describe 
 his own mission in these terms : " Whosoever shall con- 
 fess me before men, him will I also confess before my 
 Father which is in heaven. But whosoever will deny 
 me before men, him will I also deny before my Father 
 which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to 
 send peace on eaith : I come not to send peace, but a
 
 and Modern Education. 37 
 
 sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against 
 his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the 
 daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's 
 foes shall he they of his own household." (Matt. x. 32-36.) 
 Hardly will they reconcile this with the promise of his 
 birth-song, "On earth peace, good-will toward men;" 
 (Luke ii. 14.) hut will hastily conclude that the angels 
 were sadly misinformed. And when they read that one 
 who is elsewhere described as " going about teaching and 
 healing" among a people who were " perishing for lack 
 of knowledge," uttered to his discii:)les such words as 
 these, " Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of God : but unto others in parables ; that 
 seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not 
 understand ;'" (Luke viii. 8.) and read further, " Therefore 
 they could not believe, because he hath blinded their eyes 
 and hardened their heart ; that they should not see with 
 their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be con- 
 verted, and I should heal them ; " (John xii. 39, 40.) — and 
 from these fearful utterances, turn to the declaration, that 
 this same Jesus had received " all power in heaven and 
 earth;" (Matt, xxviii. 18.) and that he " came not to judge 
 but to save the world; ' (John xii. 27.) came especially 
 " to seek and to save that which was lost;" (Luke xix. 10.) 
 it will be no wonder if their souls finally succumb to 
 despair, and they cry to their teachers, " Be merciful : 
 take away from us this book, if you dare not explain to 
 
 us its meaninc;. 
 
 IX. 
 
 I shall conclude the present lecture by pointing out 
 the notable contradiction apparent between the Bible
 
 38 Jewish Literature 
 
 and the fact of the world's present existence. The New 
 Testament contains scarcely a passage of any length that 
 does not make some allusion to the near approach of the 
 end of the world. 
 
 We may conceive the perj^lexity of children when, 
 after reading in ordinary history the events of the last 
 eighteen hvmdred years, with their piteous tale of cruelty 
 and oppression, disease and death, they open their 
 Bibles and read that, all those centuries ago, men were 
 summoned to repent because " the kingdom of heaven " 
 was then "at hand;" (Matt. iv. 17.) and find that by 
 " the kingdom of heaven " was meant, not merely a social 
 or moral regeneration, though the phrase is sometimes 
 used in this sense, but the personal second coming of 
 Christ, and end of all things. That both the Baptist and 
 Jesus preached thus : that the twelve apostles were sent 
 forth to preach thus ; (x. 7.) that the seventy were 
 charged with injunctions to announce to the inhabitants 
 of any city on their entry, " the kingdom of God is 
 come nigh unto you ;" (Luke x. 8-11.) that Jesus repre- 
 sented himself as a nobleman who had gone into a far 
 country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return ; 
 and instructed his disciples in these terms, " Occupy till 
 I come 3" (xix. 13.) that this was the kingdom for which 
 Joseph of Arimathea " waited ;" (xxiii. 51.) unto which 
 Paul prayed that he might be preserved ; (2 Tim. iv. 18.) 
 
 charging Timothy to " keep the commandment 
 
 until the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Tim. 
 vi. U.) 
 
 How bewildering to the youthful intelligence, to per- 
 ceive the world still going on much in its old track, 
 slowly elaborating its own destiny, and to find in the 
 records of its history no trace of the dread phenomena
 
 and Modern Education. 39 
 
 which they read in their Testaments were to portend 
 and accompany the return of the Son of Man and of God, 
 — the darkened sun, the falling stars, the bloodshot 
 moon, the roaring sea, the myriad hosts of heaven, the 
 voice of the archangel, and the trump of God ; the 
 judgment of the quick and dead, the wailing of the lost, 
 and the gathering of the elect from the four winds of 
 heaven, the resurrection of those who slept, the ecstasy 
 of "we who remain," as Paul said, (1 Thess. iv. 15-17.) 
 when " caught up to meet the Lord in the air," on his 
 " coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great 
 glory;" (Matt. xxiv. 29-35.) for which all the disciples 
 were bid to watch ; (Mark xiii. 37.) and which some of 
 them were still to be alive on earth to see. For Jesus 
 had said, " Verily I say unto you, that there be some of 
 them that stand here now which shall not taste of death 
 till they have seen the kingdom of God come with 
 power." (Matt. xvi. 28 ; Mark xi. 1 ; Luke xix. 27.) 
 "■ Imrnediatdij after the tribulation of those days :" and, 
 " Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away, 
 until all these things shall be fulfilled." (Matt. xxiv. 29, 
 35.) Add, too, the assurance of the angels to the disci- 
 ples as they stood watching the Ascension, that he should 
 return " in like manner ;" (Acts i. 11.) add the declara- 
 tion of Peter that " the end of all things is at hand ; " 
 (1 Pet. iv. 7.) add the admonition of Paul to the 
 Romans, " Now it is high time to awake out of sleep, 
 for now is our salvation nearer than when Ave believed. 
 The night is far spent, the day is at hand ;" (Rom. xiii. 
 11, 12.) " these last days ;" (Heb. i. 2.) even the days of 
 us " upon whom the ends of the world are come ; " (1 Cor. 
 X. 11.) add, lastly, the final book of "The Revelation," 
 opening with the announcement that these things " must
 
 40 "Jewish Literature 
 
 shortly come to pass ;" and concluding with the declara- 
 tion, " Surely 1 come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, 
 Lord Jesus," — a book which, claiming to be the final 
 utterance of divine truth, is charged with dire curses 
 against any who should add to it ; instead of saying, 
 rather, ■" to be continued, so long as God continues to 
 work in man," — add, I say, to all that has been set forth, 
 these and the yet other numerous similar intimations of 
 the then expected rapidly approaching end ; set children 
 to read them " without note or comment," but with the 
 belief which they will inevitably acquire, from the fact 
 of the Bible being put into their hands without informa- 
 tion to the contrary, — the belief that it must therefore 
 be all infallibly true, that God did speak, the Lord did 
 say, all the things therein ascribed to him ; and then, 
 if they retain any particle of intelligence whatever, most 
 surely they will have but a confused idea of God, a con- 
 fused idea of man, and a confused idea of the relations 
 between them ; a confused idea of right and wrong, a 
 confused idea of faith and fact ; or rather, we may con- 
 fidently declare, a false and pernicious idea of all things 
 whatsoever, in heaven and earth, from beginning to end.
 
 and Modern Education. 41 
 
 LECTUEE THE SECOIsTD. 
 
 It is not unusual for people, when pressed upon the 
 subject, to say, " We do not lay much store by the Old 
 Testament. We concede much of what you say against 
 it as a teacher of morality and even of religion. We 
 value it chiefly as the basis and introduction of the New. 
 It is upon the New Testament that we take our stand. 
 The sufficient, and only sufficient, rule of life, its prac- 
 tical religion and morality, are distinct and unimpeach- 
 able." I propose, therefore, to conclude my examination 
 of the effects of the popular proposition, " that the Bible 
 be read without note or comment," by showing that in 
 respect of its teaching, both religious and moi-al, even 
 the New Testament requires elucidation and correction 
 to prevent it from being productive of much that would 
 be immoral, irreligious, and grossly superstitious. 
 
 Passing over the innumerable discrepancies in the 
 gospel narratives, to reconcile which so many " Har- 
 monies " have been constructed in vain, let us compare 
 first those utterances of the New Testament which have 
 regard to life — civil, political, and social. Are our chil- 
 dren to learn from its pages to grow up to be intelligent 
 and independent citizens, respecting the laws, and re-
 
 42 "JewUh Literature 
 
 specting themselves % It is clear that, " without note or 
 comment," they will hardly escape great perplexity of 
 conscience when on one side they read, " Be subject to 
 principalities and powers, obey magistrates." (Tit. iii. 1.) 
 " Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit 
 yourselves." (Heb. xiii. 17.) "The powers that be are 
 ordained of God. AMioso therefore resisteth the power, 
 resisteth the ordinance of God:" (Rom. xiii. 1, 2.) and 
 on the other side, find, that no sooner did a dilemma 
 arise, than " Peter and the other apostles answered and 
 said. We ought to obey God rather than man." (Acts 
 V. 29.) 
 
 Concerning the institution of Slavery, we find in the 
 Old Testament the most conflicting utterances, of which 
 one is, " Of the chikben of the strangers that do sojourn 
 among you, of them shall ye buy . . . and they shall be 
 your possession. . . . They shall be your bondmen for 
 ever:" (Lev. xxv. 45, 4G.) and another, "Thou shalt 
 neither vex a sti'anger nor oppress him ;" (Ex. xxxii. 21.) 
 both of which are in the books ascribed to Moses. While 
 the New Testament contains no direct rej^robation of 
 Slavery, but rather the reverse. It must be remembered 
 that, wherever in our translation the word servant occurs, 
 the original means slave. And while masters are enjoined 
 to " give unto their slaves that which is just and equal " 
 for their labour, and to " forbear threatening " them ; 
 (Col. iv. 1 ; Eph. vi. 9.) it says nothing in repudiation 
 of the institution itself as being unjust and unequal ; 
 but repeatedly admonishes slaves to be content with 
 their condition ; to " count their masters worthy of all 
 honour ;" (1 Tim. vi. 1.) and be " obedient to them with 
 fear and trembling." (Eph. vi. 5.) We read, moreover, 
 that Paul himself sent back to his master the slave Ones- 
 imus, after converting him to Christianity. (Philemon.)
 
 and Modern Education. 43 
 
 There are, indeed, ample grounds for fearing lest all 
 respect for Rights vanish in the prominence given exclu- 
 sively to Duties. And even in the important matter of 
 respect and affection for parents and relatives, children 
 may fail to find a sufficient rule to exclude hesitation. 
 It is true that they read, " Honour thy father and 
 mother," for the low and unsatisfactory motive, " that 
 thy days may be long." (Ex. xx. 12.) " Husbands love 
 your wives." (Eph. v. 25.) And "whoso hateth his 
 brother is a murderer." (1 John iii. 15.) But there is to 
 be set on the other side this of Jesus himself, " If any 
 man hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and chil- 
 dren, and brethren, and sisters ... he cannot be my 
 disciple." (Luke xiv. 26.) 
 
 Great will be their perplexity, too, when, after the 
 ordinary lessons of the schoolroom, inculcating respect 
 for property, the duty of industry, forethought, and thrift, 
 the disgrace of beggary, and evil of pauperism, they read 
 " without note or comment," " Take therefore no thought 
 for the morrow ;" "Lay not up for yourselves treasures 
 upon earth." (Matt. vi. 34,19.) " Sell Avhatsoever thou hast 
 and give to the poor;" (Mai'k x. 21.) and see how Jesus 
 backed up his communistic precepts by his practice, in 
 instituting the order of Mendicant Friars, by sending 
 forth the Twelve and the Seventy with injunctions to 
 " carry neither purse nor scrip." (Luke x. 3-7, &c.) 
 
 Neither can we consistently endeavour to cherish in 
 children a love of science, literature, and art, and all the 
 glorious uses of which man's high faculties are capable ; 
 a love, in short, of that mental culture to obtain which 
 we expressly send them to school ; if we ply them with 
 such contemptuous allusions to it as " Beware lest any 
 man spoil you with philosophy and vain deceit ; " (Col.
 
 44 yewish Literature 
 
 ii. 8.) "Tlie Greeks seek after wisdom ;" (1 Cor. i. 22.) 
 " Vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so 
 called;" (1 Tim. vi. 20.) "Knowledge puffetli up ;" (1 
 Cor. viii. 1.) — without telling them at the same time, 
 that ignorance ever " puffeth up " far more than know- 
 ledge; that "science," now-a-days stands on a very dif- 
 ferent basis to that on which it stood in those days, 
 namely, on a basis of positive fact as ascertained by 
 actual investigation into the phenomena of the universe, 
 instead of on the imaginations and foregone conclusions 
 of men Avho believed in the infallibility of their mental 
 impressions, and pretended to knowledge independently 
 of experience ; and that it is our highest duty and pri- 
 vilege to cultivate " every good gift and every perfect 
 gift," intellectual and other, " which cometh down from 
 the Father of lights." (Jam. i. 17.) 
 
 Even in so simple a matter as the advantage of bear- 
 ing a good character, they Avill be at a loss to determine 
 between "a good name is better than precious oint- 
 ment;" (Eccl. vii. 1.) "it is rather to be chosen than 
 great riches;" (Pro v. xxii. 1.) and, "Woe unto you 
 when all men shall speak well of you." (Luke vi. 25.) 
 
 The Bible makes it a reproach to King Asa that " in 
 his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physi- 
 cians," and significantly adds, " Asa slept with his 
 fathers." (2 Chron. xvi. 12.) Of another patient it is 
 said that she had " for twelve years suffered many things 
 of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and 
 was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse," but straight- 
 way was healed through faith, (Mark v. 25-29.) And 
 there is this express injunction, " Is any sick among you? 
 let him call for the elders of the Church, and let them 
 pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the
 
 and Modern Education. 45 
 
 Lord : and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the 
 Lord shall raise him up." (Jam. v. 14.) "Without note 
 or comment," but influenced, unconsciously perhaps, 
 within school or without it, to regard the plain teaching 
 of the Bible as intended to be followed unshrinkingly, 
 the children in our National Schools will be apt to grow 
 up with the belief that it is unchristian and wicked to 
 call in a doctor, or to take medicine, when they are ill. 
 
 Lawyers are scarcely named but to be censured in 
 such terms as these : " Woe unto you lawyers ! for ye 
 lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye your- 
 selves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. 
 Woe unto you lawyers !" (Luke xi. 45, 52.) For " with- 
 out note or comment," the term rendered "lawyers," will 
 inevitably be held to signify, not the expounders of Rab- 
 binical doctrine, but the members of that eminent profes- 
 sion which is so indispensable to the maintenance of our 
 rights and privileges. While the despised "publicans" 
 of Jewish times, instead of being recognised as mere 
 collectors of taxes, are sure to be confounded with our 
 own respectable company of "licensed victuallers." 
 
 We have seen how summarily two of the learned pro- 
 fessions may be disposed of. Following the Bible with- 
 out guidance by " note or comment," the clergy will be 
 in danger of faring little better than the lawyers or doc- 
 tors. And this brings us to the subject of religious 
 duties as laid down in the New Testament. 
 
 It is, whether rightly or wrongly I do not venture to 
 decide, a subject of peculiar pride with us, that we are a 
 prayerful and churchgoing people. But what is really 
 curious is, that the practice of assembling together for pub- 
 lic worship, we regard as essential to our character as Chris- 
 tians. Now, how can children be expected to undei'stand
 
 46 Jewish Literature 
 
 "without note or comment" that it is their duty to 
 attend " divine service," Avhen they find that Jesus, who is 
 held up to them as the infaUible pattern and guide of life, 
 never joined in public prayer himself, but always when 
 he wished to pray or meditate went apart, either " up 
 into a mountain," (Matt. xiv. 23.) or some other " solitary 
 place," (Mark i. 35.) or " withdrew about a stone's cast ;" 
 (Luke xxii. 24.) that he only went into the synagogue or 
 the temple to read or to teach ; (Luke iv. 1 G : Matt. xxi. 
 23.) or to indulge in what to children and unexplained 
 must appear to be riotous conduct in church, namely to 
 drive out Avith blows and threats a number of persons 
 who were exercising a lawful industry in its precincts ; 
 (Matt. xxi. 12.) that the persons he mentioned in one of 
 his parables as " going up to the temple to pray," (Luke 
 xviii. 10.) belonged to the classes he most persistently de- 
 nounced, being a pharisee and a publican ; and even these 
 he distinctly exonerates from the reproach of having 
 joined in common prayer ; that moreover, in addition to 
 his example, he delivered precepts absolutely prohibitory 
 of all public praying in these emphatic terms : " When 
 thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are ; for 
 they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and in the 
 corners of the streets to be seen of men. Verily, I say 
 unto you. They have their reward. But thou, when thou 
 prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut 
 thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy 
 Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly;" 
 (Matt. vi. 5, G.) — a rule Avhich he relaxed only on the 
 condition that two, or at most three, should agree upon 
 a subject for petition, in which case they might gather 
 together in his name. (Matt, xviii. 19, 20.) It is indeed 
 a painful perplexity in which the minds of the more sen-
 
 and Modern Education. 47 
 
 sitive children will be plunged when they ask themselves 
 how, in the face of Christ's most positive precepts and 
 example, they can continue to pray in church or chapel, 
 and at the same time deserve to be called by his name. 
 
 The propriety of continuing to observe the Sabbath, if 
 rested on the Bible alone, will remain, to say the least, 
 doubtful. The difference in the reasons assigned for its 
 institution can hardly fail to create wonder as to the 
 authority upon which the command said to be " written 
 with the finger of God" himself, basing the appointment 
 upon the creation of the universe in six days, (Ex. xxxi. 
 17, &c.) was changed to one representing it as a memo- 
 rial of the deliverance out of Egypt. (Deut. v. 15.) 
 While the institution itself is, on account of the abuses 
 to which it led, referred to variously by the later pro- 
 phets ; and, in the New Testament, seems to have been 
 repudiated in a great measure, if not altogether, by Jesus 
 and the apostles ; Paul distinctly admonishing the Colos- 
 sians in these terms : " You hath Christ quickened. . . 
 blotting out the handwriting of ordinances. . . Let 
 no man therefore judge you . . in respect of an holi- 
 day, . . or of the Sabbath." (Col. ii. 13-16.) So that 
 something at any rate has to be added to the New Tes- 
 tament to justify our present usage in this respect. 
 
 In the absence of explanatory comment, the statements 
 of scripture respecting the resurrection of the body appear 
 in direct conflict with each other ; as also do those re- 
 specting the after-life of the soul. In the Old Testament 
 we are told, "He that goeth down to the grave shall 
 come up no more." (Job vii. 9.) "The dead know not 
 anything, neither have they any more reward." (Eccl. ix. 
 5, 10.) And in the New Testament, " The trumpet shall 
 sound, and the dead shall be raised ;" (1 Cor. xv. 52.)
 
 48 'Jewish Literature 
 
 " Then shall he reward every man according to his 
 works." (Matt. xvi. 27.) While the narratives of the 
 ascent of Enoch and Elijah seem to find a positive con- 
 tradiction in the declaration of Jesus, " No man hath 
 ascended up to heaven but he that came down from 
 heaven, even the son of man;" and the narrative makes 
 him add, " which is in heaven," putting what appears to 
 be an absurd contradiction into the mouth of Jesus. 
 (John iii. 12.) 
 
 And even concerning the status of Jesus himself, expla- 
 nations are needed to reconcile the various contradictory- 
 declarations ; "I and my Father are one." (John x. 30.) 
 " He thought it not robbery to be equal with God." 
 (Phil. ii. 6.) " Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, 
 and in favour with God and man." (Luke ii. 52.) " My 
 Father is greater than I." (John xiv. 28.) " Of that day 
 and that hour knoweth no man. . . Neither the Son, 
 but the Father." (Mark xiii. 32.) And his agonised ex- 
 clamation when dying, which we can easily believe to 
 have been held up by the clergy of those days as uttered 
 in remorse of soul for a life spent in opposition to the 
 church orthodoxy of his country, — '' My God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken mel" (Matt, xxvii. 46.) 
 
 XI. 
 
 Much stress has been laid by orthodox writers on the 
 " Continuity," or uninterrupted connection, of Scripture. 
 The inference which they have drawn from the con- 
 sistency existing between its various parts, is that it 
 must all be alike the result of one divine harmonious 
 scheme. That such Continuity exists it is impossible to 
 help seeing, but the extent to which it exists, and its
 
 and Modern Education. 49 
 
 significance in relation to what is called doctrinal 
 religion, are likely, " without note or comment," wholly 
 to escape the observation of youthful scholars. 
 
 The whole religious system of the Old Testament rests 
 ujion the theory that the object of Eeligion is, not the 
 exaltation of mail, but the delectation of the Deity ; and 
 the stimulants offered in it to the practice of religion are 
 of the most material and seductive kind, wealth, honour, 
 long life, numerous posterity. In the New Testament 
 the same idea is continued, with this difference, that 
 experience having demonstrated the theory to be unsound 
 as regards this life, inasmuch as prosperity does not by 
 any means always accompany virtue, nor adversity vice, 
 rewards and punishments are there reserved for a future 
 state of existence, in a region inaccessible to verification 
 by experience. 
 
 Two other instances of Continuity between the two 
 divisions of Scripture may be classed together as being 
 intimately connected with each other. These are, the 
 institution of Sacrifice, and the character of the Jewish 
 Deity. To the instances already given of the amazing 
 ferocity of this Being, as represented in the Sacred Books 
 of the Jews, may be added the tremendous tlii-eats and 
 penalties denounced for the smallest transgressions, the 
 readiness to dart forth from the mountain and deal 
 destruction upon any who might but touch it ; and the 
 perpetual demand for blood. This propensity for blood 
 constitutes a notable instance of Continuity in the 
 character of the God of the Bible. Blood of animals; 
 blood of peoples hostile to the Israelites ; blood of 
 transgressors among the Israelites ; and in numerous 
 instances, blood of unoffending men, women, and 
 children, even from among his o^vn chosen people. 
 
 D
 
 50 yewish Literature 
 
 (1 Sam. vi. 19 ; 2 Sam. xxiv. 15 ; Ezek. ix. 6 ; &c.) We 
 have already dealt with David's sacrifice of the seven 
 sons of Saul : " They hanged them in the hill before 
 
 the Lord and after that God was entreated for 
 
 the land;" (2 Sam. xxi.) Jephthah's sacrifice of his 
 daughter; (Jud. xi.) and Abraham's attempt to sacri- 
 fice his son. (Gen. xxii.) Of this last I must speak 
 more fully, because there are, holding high positions 
 both in the church and in popular estimation, as thinkers 
 and scholars, men who insist on drawing from it a moral 
 which they deem favourable to the character of the deity 
 as represented in the Jewish Scriptures. But at present 
 they have failed to do more than read back into the 
 Bible the civilisation of their age and their own personal 
 amiability. So far from their being justified in regard- 
 ing the arrest of Abraham as a i:)rotest on the part of 
 the Deity against the prevailing custom of human sacri- 
 fices, the narrative distinctly asserts that " God tempted 
 Abraham " to commit the horrid deed : that Im consent 
 to commit it was accepted at the time as an " act of faith," 
 and rewarded by a renewal of the promise of a numerous 
 posterity ; and not only is there in the Scriptures no 
 expression whatever commending him for refraining 
 from completing the sacrifice, but the New Testament 
 treats it approvingly as being as good as completed, 
 saying in one place, " By fjiith Abraham, when he was 
 tried, offered up Isaac ; and he that had received the 
 promises offered up his only-begotten son ;" (Heb. xi. 17.) 
 and in another place, " Was not Abraham our father 
 justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son 
 upon the altar 1 Seest thou how faith wrought with his 
 works, and by works faith was made perfect ?" (Jam. ii. 
 21, 22.)
 
 and Modern Education. 5 1 
 
 So far from the principle of human sacrifices, or the 
 belief in a deity who required to be propitiated by blood, 
 being repudiated in the New Testament, " the Continuity 
 of Scripture " is in these respects plain and indisputable, 
 and the principle is carried to a height undreamt of in 
 Old Testament times. The God of the Jewish priests 
 requires at length the blood of his own " only-begotten," 
 " beloved " son ! Tt is only when this tremendous climax 
 has been reached that the dread thirst is appeased. This 
 is the fundamental argument of the eminently sacerdotal 
 epistle to the Hebrews, (of unknown authorship). In it 
 we are assured that " mthout shedding of blood there is 
 no remission of sins." (Heb. ix. 22.) A human parent, not 
 in this respect " made in the image of God," can forgive 
 a repenting errant child. The divine parent, made by 
 priests, and at once vmhuman and inhuman, must have 
 his "pound of flesh" from somebody. This epistle tells 
 us concerning Christ that " neither by the blood of goats 
 and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into 
 the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for 
 
 us So Christ was once off"ered to bear the sins of 
 
 many;" (ix. 12, 28.) thus adopting and justifying the 
 view of the high-priest Caiaphas, Avho, by virtue of his 
 sacerdotal office, counselled and " prophesied that Jesus 
 should die for the people;" (John xi. 50, 51.) — a 
 view shared even by John himself, who in one of his 
 epistles declares that " God sent his only begotten Son 
 to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John iv. 9, 10.) 
 Thus early were the attempts of Jesus to abolish sacer- 
 dotalism, and promulgate purer notions of the Deity, 
 defeated by his own disciples, or by those who wrote in 
 their names ; and the reformation which constituted the 
 real Christianity, overlaid and stifled by " the Church."
 
 52 'Jewish Literature 
 
 Let the churches called Christian, demonstrate, if they 
 will, their " Continuity " with the most hideous of 
 Jewish superstitions ; and cherish the recollection of the 
 worst side of the Jewish Divinity, by perpetual repetitious 
 of the rite which, while declining to practice it simply 
 " in remembrance " of a loved and lost benefactor, they 
 yet profanely style "the Ao/?/ Eucharist. " Say they, it 
 requires a miracle to keep the church up % Well, jDerhaps 
 it does. But if we who " have not so learned Christ " 
 are to act consistently with our more advanced ideas of 
 religion and morality, the "notes and comments" by which 
 the reading of these passages in our schools is accom- 
 panied, must direct attention rather to the higher and 
 better teaching of prophetical lips ; " the sacrifices of 
 God ai'e a contrite heart ; " (Ps. li. 17.) " he saveth such 
 as be of a contrite spirit;" (xxxiv. 18.) and " dwelleth 
 with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit;" (Is. Ivii. 
 15.) as well as that of Jesus himself, "If a man love 
 me he will keep my words ; and my Father Avill love 
 him, and we Avill come unto him, and make our abode with 
 him." (John xiv. 23.) There is no savour of blood here. 
 If an education is to be imparted that is consistent 
 with " the development of the intellect and moral sense," 
 the doctrine that justice can be satisfied by the substitu- 
 tion of the innocent for the guilty, must be rigidly ex- 
 cluded from our schools. It is true that this doctrine is 
 not without a certain significance ; that there is a way by 
 which the position of the wicked may be bettered through 
 the condemnation of the righteous. For the punishment 
 of the innocent involves the divine law of justice being, 
 not fulfilled, but so utterly shattered and destroyed, as to 
 be thenceforth absolutely non-existent. The sinner's gain, 
 therefore, would consist in there being no law of justice 
 by which he could be arraigned.
 
 ' and Modern Education. z^^t 
 
 But so invincibly implacable is the deity of at least a 
 great portion of the New Testament, that even such stu- 
 pendous atonement fails to gain him over. Its benefits 
 are confined to a fortunate few, and his fury towards the 
 rest is redoubled. As Burns says, he 
 
 " Sends ane to heaven, and ten to hell 
 A' for his glory." 
 
 The penalties of evil-doing are infinitely enhanced, and 
 they are applied to a fresh class of offences. Here, too, 
 Continuity is combined with progression ; but it is, 
 morally, a progression backwards. The Old Testament 
 consigns no one to eternal punishment, neither does it 
 make penal the conclusions of the intellect. The New 
 Testament abounds in menaces of the most fearful cha- 
 racter, not only against malefactors, but also against un- 
 believers. It represents the Almighty, when punishing 
 the reprobate, as uninfluenced by anything analogous to 
 the human motive of promoting the security of society or 
 the reformation of the criminal, but inflicting torture in 
 the spirit of a fiend, out of pure malignity, because with 
 no advantage to any. " The unbelieving and the abomi- 
 nable" are classed together, and, we read, "shall have their 
 part in the lake which burnetii with fire and brimstone;" 
 (Rev. xxi. 8.) "where their worm dieth not, and the 
 fire is not quenched;" (Mark ix. 44.) "there shall be 
 weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matt. viii. 12.) "Depart 
 ye cursed," is the final doom of those who had failed to 
 recognise Christ on earth, " depart ye cursed into ever- 
 lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matt. 
 XXV. 41.) 
 
 Nay, more than this. The gospels, as we have them, 
 actually represent Jesus himself as pronouncing sentence
 
 54 'Jewish Literature 
 
 of damnation upon all who cannot work miracles. His 
 last Avords to liis disciples are thus reported: "Go ye 
 into all the world, and preach the gospel to every crea- 
 ture. . , He that believeth not shall be damned. 
 And these signs shall follow them that believe : in my 
 name they shall cast out devils ; they shall speak with 
 new tongues ; they shall take up serpents ; and if they 
 drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them ; they shall 
 lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." (Mark 
 xiv. 16.) Xot to work miracles is not to believe, and 
 not to believe is to be damned. Is it not certain that if 
 the young are allowed to read the New Testament with- 
 out explanation or correction by "note or comment," 
 they will, as have millions of tender souls to their in- 
 expressible terror and anguish, find the gospel of Jesus to 
 be to them but a gospel of damnation % 
 
 Let us return to this world and the practical concerns 
 of life. In its manner of dealing with the crucial act of 
 life, marriage, and its treatment of the relations of the 
 sexes generally, the New Testament takes, in regard to 
 the Old, a great step backwards. A demonstration of its 
 vacillation and utter inadequacy to provide rules for the 
 conduct of civilised life on this most important of all 
 points connected with morals, will fitly conclude this 
 division of the subject. To the commendation of impo- 
 tency uttered by Jesus, the stress laid by him upon mere 
 physical fidelity, (Matt. xix. 9, 12.) and his disregard of 
 all incongruity or incompatibility of character or affec- 
 tion, as a plea for separation, (a peculiarity which we 
 have in our institutions but too faithfully followed), must 
 be added these sentences of Paul : " Art thou bound to a 
 wife % Seek not to be loosed. Ai-t thou loosed fi-om a 
 wife % Seek not to be bound. . . It is better to marry
 
 and Modern Education. 
 
 55 
 
 than to burn," and, " good for the present distress." (1 Cor. 
 vii. 27, 9, 29.) Hardly from this will our youth learn to 
 recognise love as capable of being a pure and an elevating 
 influence, or to give to Christianity the credit, so often 
 claimed for it, of having raised woman from the depressed 
 position in which that age found her. It will be in vain 
 that they read "Marriage is honourable in all," (Heb. 
 xiii. 4.) when they find the prevailing spirit of the 
 gospel to be ascetic, exalting absolute chastity as one of 
 the loftiest of virtues, and denouncing all natural desire 
 as sinful in itself. (1 Cor. vii. 1, 38; Eev. xiv. 4.) Will 
 not the later teaching of Scripture appear to them to 
 have receded sadly in its fitness for humanity, from the 
 earlier which commanded men to " increase and multi- 
 ply;" (Gen. i. 28.) commended a virtuous woman as "a 
 crown to her husband;" (Pro v. xiL 4.) and pronounced a 
 blessing on "children and the fruit of the womb;" (Ps. 
 cxxvii. 3, &c.) and, in so far as the relations of the 
 sexes are concerned, excite in them a preference for the 
 Jewish regime over the Christian 1 
 
 The number is beyond all reckoning, of women, the 
 best and noblest of their sex, the most fitted to be the 
 mothers and early trainers of mankind, who through a 
 superstitious regard to this characteristic of the New 
 Testament, have renounced their natural " high calling," 
 leaving to inferior types the fulfilment of the functions 
 upon the right exercise of which the progress, elevation, 
 and hap})iness of mankind depend ; who have withdrawn 
 themselves from the duties of real life into artificial 
 isolation, through a conscientious but mistaken belief, 
 that in practising the selfishness of the devotee, they are 
 seeking a virtue which is possible only through the exer- 
 cise of the affections. It is in vain that Paul in his
 
 ^6 'Jewish Literature 
 
 riper experience wrote, " I will that the younger women 
 marry, bear children, guide the house," (1 Tim. v. 14.) 
 when Churches persist in making so much of his earlier 
 utterance delivered, as he himself acknowledges, with 
 hesitation and doubt. " The unmarried woman careth 
 for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both 
 in body and spirit : but she that is married careth for 
 the things of the world, how she may please her hus- 
 band," and . . . " I think that I have the spirit of God," 
 (1 Cor. vii. 34, 40.) — as if the best, the only Avay of serv- 
 ing God was not by serving man. This is but an 
 expression and echo of that same Manichsean principle 
 of Asceticism, which has led alike Pagans and Christians 
 innumerable to despise the material world. Blasphem- 
 ously divorcing the Creator from his work, it teaches 
 that nature is so utterly corrupt and wrong, that the 
 more we go against and mortify it, the more likely we 
 are to be pure and right. 
 
 ' And so it comes that woman, while promoted theo- 
 logically to be "Queen of Heaven" and "Mother of 
 God," ecclesiastically is regarded as a mistake of nature, 
 a thing to be snubbed and repressed, and condemned to 
 the living death of an enforced celibacy.' 
 
 One whom I dare to call the greatest of our philo- 
 sophers, Herbert Spencer, has epitomised in a single 
 sentence all that can be said on this subject : — " Morality 
 is essentially one with physical truth. It is a kind of 
 transcendental physiology." (" Social Statics.") It is 
 through ignorance of this, the real basis and nature of 
 morality, that myriads of the best women in Christendom 
 have, in every generation, to the incalculable loss of the 
 whole species, made the saddest shipwreck both of their 
 own lives and of the lives which by their sweet and holy 
 influence they might have rendered supremely blest.
 
 and Modern Education. $y 
 
 There is a " Higher Law" of morality which impels 
 us to suppress our own affections and desires, not through 
 hope of reward here or hereafter ; not through deference 
 to conventional standards, but solely through an un- 
 selfish regard to the feelings of those to Avhom it is our 
 lot to be allied. But that such a law is to be the law of 
 our lives, and sole standard of virtue, we find no intima- 
 tion in the Testament, Old or New. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the failure of the Bible to pro- 
 vide an authoritative or satisfactory rule either of morals 
 or of religion, I hold that, both for its own intrinsic 
 merits, and for the place which it occupies in the litera- 
 ture and history of ourselves and of mankind, it ought 
 not to be excluded from the educational course of our 
 children. 
 
 It was proposed in the London School-board to exclude 
 it on the ground that its use as a religious text-book 
 outside the schools, makes its admission into the schools 
 inconsistent with religious equality. It certainly would 
 be, as is generally allowed, an act of gross unfairness to 
 admit partisan theology into a common school. But, 
 happily, as is also very generally allowed, speculative 
 dogma and practical religion are very far indeed from 
 being one and the same thing ; and even those who 
 object most strongly to dogma in itself, desire to see 
 children brought up religiously, that is with reverential 
 regard for divine truth and law. 
 
 If fairness and impartiality forbid the Bible to be in- 
 troduced and used as the text-book of any party or sect, 
 they equally forbid it to be excluded for happening to be
 
 58 "Jewish Literature 
 
 such a text-book. For this would equally constitute 
 dogmatic teaching, though of a negative kind. Perfect 
 fairness requires that the question of the introduction 
 and use of a book within the schools, should not be in 
 any way dependent upon dogmatic opinions entertained 
 resjDecting it by parties outside the schools. Perfect 
 fairness forbids that anything which is good and instruc- 
 tive in itself, be excluded merely on account of the source 
 from which it is derived; be it from Turk, Infidel, Heretic, 
 Pagan, Jew, or Christian. It is here that the limitation 
 imposed by our definition of education, comes to our aid, 
 " The cultivation of the intelligence and moral sense" by 
 means of " whatsoever things are true, pure, and honest;" 
 " that fear God, and work righteousness ;" and are "pro- 
 fitable for doctrine (or teaching), for reproof, for correc- 
 tion, for instruction in righteousness." 
 
 Thus, in the common schools, nothing must be taught 
 as being the " Word of God," or as not being the " Word 
 of God :" either assertion being equally dogmatic. But 
 everything must be allowed to derive its force from its 
 own intrinsic character. And those who hold that the 
 children ought to be taught to regard the Bible as being, 
 or containing, exclusively the " Word of God," wiU only 
 betray their o^^ii Avant of faith if they express misgivings 
 lest tliat word fail to assert its own efficacy and speak its 
 own divine message to the sovd, without special enforce- 
 ment as such by the schoolmaster. 
 
 Perhaps, too, upon the idea being put before them, 
 they will even acquiesce in the suggestion, that for any 
 man, be he schoolmaster or priest, or any body of men, 
 lay or cleric, ancient or modern, even though dignified 
 by the title of " General Council," to take upon them- 
 selves the responsibility of determining or declaring what
 
 and Modern Education. 59 
 
 is, or what is not, " the Word of God," is to lay them- 
 selves open to the charge of the most stupendous pre- 
 sumption of which finite being can possibly be guilty : 
 a presumption which is no other than that of declaring 
 themselves to be infallible, and entitled to sit in the 
 temple of God as if they were God. (2 Thess. ii. 4.) 
 
 And further, to declare that the Bible is or contains 
 exclusively " the Word of God," is to forbid the souls of 
 men to find a divine message elsewhere than in the 
 Bible. It is to dictate to God as Avell as to man. For 
 it is to forbid God to make of others " ministers to do 
 his will." (Ps. ciii. 21 ; Heb. i. 24.) It is to extract all 
 meaning from the saying of Jesus, " Lo, I am with you 
 alway, even unto the end of the world." (Matt, xxviii. 20.) 
 It is to reject that " Sj)irit of truth" who was promised 
 to "guide us into all truth." (John xvi. 13.) It is to 
 " quench the Spirit that giveth life," in " the letter that 
 killeth." (1 Thess. v. 1, 9 ; 2 Cor. iii. G.) It is to insist 
 that the Almighty speak to men, like a clergyman of the 
 Establishment, only from a text in the Bible. .Let us, if 
 we will, define as " the Word of God" that which "feareth 
 him and worketh righteousness ;" but let us not dog- 
 matise as to what particular author or composition comes 
 under that category. For " the Word of God" can only 
 be the word or thought of which God makes use to im- 
 press the heart of any. If we " search the Scriptures," 
 we find that neither by the writers of the Psalms, by the 
 prophets, nor by Jesus, scarcely, if ever, is the phrase 
 used to denote that which was already wi'itten, but only 
 the deeper impression then present in the mind of the 
 speaker or writer. If not used by God to impress the 
 heart, it is then not "his word." The same utterance 
 maybe "his word" on one occasion, and not on another.
 
 6o yewish Literature 
 
 Varying for each person, it is not always the same for 
 any person, inasmuch as that which impresses us in 
 one mood, does not necessarily affect us in another. A 
 "word of God" cannot fail, anymore than a "law of 
 God" can be broken. Any definition of Deity that does 
 not exclude such a possibility, is an utterly inadequate 
 definition, and one dishonouring to God. 
 
 But in the matter of the education of the young, we 
 have to use our best judgment in apportioning the means 
 to the end we have in view. And therefore we must 
 put into their hands such reading only as is plainly 
 adapted for their edification, whether we take it from 
 the Bible or from any other book. It is for children to 
 to be in statu pujnilari to men. It is for men to be in 
 statu pupillari to God. 
 
 I hold, then, that the Bible should be used in our com- 
 mon schools. First, for its intrinsic merits. In its pages 
 we find the most complete revelation of humanity to be 
 found in any written book, showing the gradual growth 
 of the moral and spiritual faculties from the most rudi- 
 mentary ages to the Christian era. We find this mainly 
 in the exhibition of the rise and development, however 
 irregular, of the idea of God, until, from a Being so 
 limited in his nature and operations as to be able to 
 sympathise and side with only a few individuals or a 
 particular race, partaking all the deficiencies of their own 
 gross, rude natures, bribed by gifts, appeased by sacri- 
 fices, partial, cruel, jealous, capricious, the patron and in- 
 stigator of blood-thirsty and fraudulent men and actions, 
 the resort and associate of " lying spirits," and sharing 
 his sovereignty with the devil, — he is at length pre- 
 sented to us as " the high and holy one that inhabiteth 
 eternity^" (Is. Iviii. 15.) " the righteous judge;" (Rev.
 
 and Modern Education. 6\ 
 
 xix. 11.) "creator of all things;" (Gen. i. 1, &c.) 
 " Saviour of all men;" (1 Tim. iv. 10.) " whose kingdom 
 ruleth over all." (Ps. ciii. 19). 
 
 Here we find first recorded the existence of a sense of 
 responsibility for our actions to a law and a power which 
 are above us. " Here human nature is drawn in all its 
 extent, from its lowest depths to its loftiest reach; for the 
 Bible is a gallery in which all the paintings are life-like, 
 but the subjects so varied, that none are too gross for 
 admission. Being a revelation of God according to the 
 characters and imaginations of the men in whose con- 
 sciousness his idea was conceived, it is emphatically a 
 revelation of man, inasmuch as man's ideal is the index 
 to his own character and degree of intelligence. 
 
 This, however, is no speciality of the Bible. It is the 
 characteristic of all art and literature which speaks out 
 the genuine deeper feelings of men's hearts ; and in this 
 respect, as containing the truest art, the Bible ranks as 
 the highest classics. 
 
 In selecting from the world's literature, reading lessons 
 inculcating "the true, the pure, and the lovely," who 
 could have the heart to exclude the remarkable hymn of 
 the creation ; the significant allegory of Eden ; the charm- 
 ing pastoral of Isaac and Eebekah in their first love ; the 
 touching idyl of Joseph and his brethren and their aged 
 father ; the wondrous romance of the Exodus ; the story 
 of Moses, that king of men ; the noble recitations of law 
 and legend in Deuteronomy ; the interesting narratives ot 
 Samson, Samuel, David, and Solomon ; the simple tales 
 of Euth and of Esther, so illustrative of the manners of 
 the ancient east ; the sublime poetry of Job and the 
 Psalms ; the shrewd wisdom of the Proverbs ; the genial 
 cynicism of Ecclesiastes ; the magnificent outpouiiugs of
 
 62 'Jewish Literature 
 
 Isaiali, denouncing the degradation and despair of his 
 countrpnen, and encouraging them anew to hope and to 
 restoration through the moral regeneration of their 
 nature % (Which of us even now could not point out 
 some nation that has sore need of an Isaiah %) Then the 
 noble lesson of Jonah, wherein children are oftener 
 taught to see a tale of a cross-grained prophet, a whale, 
 and a gourd, than to recognise the jioet's jirotest against 
 the popular notion, shared by Jonah, that the Lord was 
 a mere district-god who could be avoided by change of 
 place, and to see the moral of the fable in the representa- 
 tion of deity as everywhere present alike, even in the 
 depths of the sea. 
 
 And, added to these, the exquisite purity and simpli- 
 city of the gospels, Avith their central figure of Jesus and 
 his enthusiastic life-devotion to the cause of man's re- 
 demption from sin and suffering, and deliverance from 
 the blighting effects of religious formalism, and the 
 crushing weight of sacerdotalism; producing from the 
 harmonious depths of his OAvn great soul a sublime ideal 
 of God as a Father, and a rule of life for man most noble 
 in conception even when most impracticable of applica- 
 tion. (Of all the characters of history, I know of none 
 who would have s}Tnpathised more intensely with the 
 object and the views I am seeking to advance, than the 
 Christ whom I find in the gospels. Of course to the or- 
 thodox and the vested interests of his day, he was only a 
 sad blasphemer and dangerous revolutionist. ) Then, the 
 varied and genuine humanity of the Epistles ; and, no- 
 tably, the magnificent monologue on charity, (in the tliir- 
 teeuth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians,) 
 wherein Paul, dropping his too favourite character of 
 Rabbinical lawyer and quibbling controversialist, soars to
 
 and Modern Education. 6t^ 
 
 an altitude wliitlier the cliurclies have never yet been 
 able to follow him. And, lastly, the lofty rhapsody of 
 the Apocaly]^)se, wherein fervid imagination, escaping 
 from the woes beneath which mankind was being crushed 
 by a Domitian and a Nero, took refuge in an ideal 
 " state of God," where all wrongs should be redressed, 
 all tears wiped away, the tormentors relegated to ever- 
 lasting punishment, and sorrow and pain be no more for 
 their victims. 
 
 And not for its intrinsic merits only, but for its in- 
 fluence on the hearts of mankind, should our children not 
 be strangers to the volume in which, to borrow words 
 from one of our most highly inspired writers, "book after 
 book, law and truth and example, oracle and lovely hymn, 
 and choral song of ten thousand thousand, and accepted 
 prayers of saints and prophets, sent back as it were from 
 heaven, like doves to be let loose again with a new 
 freight of spiritual joys and griefs and necessities ; where 
 the hungry have found food, the thirsty a living spring, 
 the feeble a staff, and the victorious warfarer songs of 
 welcome and strains of music : which for more than a 
 thousand years has gone hand in hand with civilisation, 
 . . often leading the way. . . a book which good 
 and holy men, the best and wisest of mankind, the kingly 
 spirits of history enthroned in the hearts of mighty 
 nations, have borne witness to its influences, and declared 
 to be beyond compare the most perfect instrument, the 
 only adequate organ of humanity ; the organ and instru- 
 ment of all the gifts, powers, and tendencies, by which 
 the individual is privileged to rise above himself."* 
 
 To exclude all knowledge of the Bible from our youth, 
 would be to make a greater gap in the education of a 
 * S.T. Coleridge's "Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit."
 
 64 yewish Literature 
 
 Briton than to omit nlmost any calculable number of 
 other books, including the bulk of the world's history. 
 Indeed it would be to exclude almost all history Avhat- 
 soever; not ancient history merely, with knowledge of 
 Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Eome in its decline and fall ; 
 but the history of all Christendom itself, with that of the 
 Papacy and the Reformation, and the whole of our own 
 struggles for and against liberty ; (for even we have not 
 always been consistently on the side of freedom :) almost 
 all of which struggles have been associated more or less 
 with the Bible ; the rise and origin, too, of the United 
 States of America. All these in the past, together with 
 our OAvn condition in the present and hopes in the future, 
 and the signification of the vast bulk of our literature, 
 would, without some knowledge of the book that has 
 filled a leading part in them all, be absolutely dark and 
 meaningless. 
 
 Besides, there is not so much A\dsdom and beauty in 
 the world that we can afford to throw any away. If we 
 exclude the Bible altogether as being a text-book of our 
 OA^m religious sects, there is no plea upon which we can 
 admit the admirable teaching that is to be found in the 
 sacred books of the Hindoos and Chinese, the Mohamme- 
 dans and Buddhists. Na}^ to exclude the good parts of 
 any book merely because it happens to be the text-book 
 of a sect, is to put it in the power of any small knot of 
 persons to secure the exclusion of any book whatsoever, 
 by claiming it as one of their sacred books. Fancy a sect 
 of Shakespeare worshippers getting by such means all 
 knowledge of Shakespeare excluded from our educational 
 course ! Or a new sect of Pythagoreans to revive the 
 worship of numbers, and, setting up Colenso as their high- 
 priest, forcing us to exclude arithmetic from our schools !
 
 and Modern Education. 6^ 
 
 Indeed, if only because of tlie very power and popular- 
 ity of the Bible, it should not be left to be dealt with 
 exclusively by a class of interpreters who acknowledge 
 other allegiance than to the developed intellect and con- 
 science of men. But, containing as it does, the whole 
 sacred literature of the most remarkable of all ancient 
 peoples, the Jews, and that of their most remarkable 
 sect of religious reformers, the Christians, who, together, 
 more than any other people, have influenced the develop- 
 ment of the human mind and the course of human his- 
 tory j to exclude all knowledge of it from our youth 
 would be to keep back from them the master-key to the 
 heart and facts of humanity. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 But the fact of the Bible being, not a single book, but 
 a whole literature ranging over many centuries, greatly 
 simplifies the question of dealing with it. We rarely use 
 the whole of any book in the schoolroom ; never an entire 
 literature. Imagine the whole, or samples of the whole, of 
 our own literature being put at once into the hands of a 
 child, with its rude early legends and ballads, its laws and 
 statutes, its medicine and science, its trials and police- 
 reports, and all the revolting details Avhicli even the least 
 respectable of our newspapers suppress as " unfit for pub- 
 lication !"' Yet this is what we have done with the 
 ancient literature of the Jews. Instead of exercising any 
 discrimination, we crowd our houses with it, we read it 
 aloud to our families, we put it entire into the hands of 
 our children ; and when we find impurity and supersti- 
 tion rife among us, instead of admitting that we have 
 done our best to promote them, we postulate the horrible 
 
 E
 
 66 Jeivish Literature 
 
 doctrines of " original sin " and " total depravity," and 
 shift the responsibility from our own shoulders to those 
 of " the devil !" It was remarked once by a Avell-known 
 Frenchman that " the English tolerate no indecencies 
 except in their Bibles." Fatal exception, when we print 
 Bibles in millions, in all the languages of the earth, and 
 thrust them into the hands of every babe and suckling 
 and growing youth. 
 
 The remedy which I propose is twofold : First, that a 
 new version, omitting the whole of- the parts which are 
 objectionable on the score of decency, omitting also the 
 headings by which ecclesiastical editors have sought to 
 palliate immorality or strain the meaning to the support 
 of particular doctrines, be made to take the place of the 
 existing " authorised version ;" and that this be done 
 so completely that the old version be no longer accessible 
 to the young, but continue to exist only as a curiosity 
 or book of reference upon the shelves of students. 
 
 This change is one which, Avhile it might be initiated 
 by the School-boards undertaking to produce such a 
 version for the use of their schools, would require both 
 general and individual action on the part of the people 
 themselves. It will be aided by the wise resolve of the 
 Bible-re\asion Committee to omit the headings from their 
 new and improved version. If the powers of this Com- 
 mittee were extended so as to enable it to make these 
 changes, a great step towards carrying out this part of 
 my proposed remedy would be gained. To further it 
 would be an admirable occupation for a society which 
 has existed for years among us imder the presidency of 
 Lord Shaftesbury, calling itself " The Pure Literature 
 Society." Strange to say that, with all its zeal for 
 purity in literature, it has never yet tried its hand on
 
 and Modern Education. Gy 
 
 the Bible. It will indeed prove itself worthy of its high 
 title and calling, when it joins in the chase of the 
 " authorised version " from our homes, and the pews of 
 our churches, so that children shall no longer be tempted 
 to beguile the tedium of a sermon by feeding their 
 curiosity on its improprieties. 
 
 It is related of Goethe that he was present at a meeting 
 of the Dutch clergy, when it was proposed to establish 
 a censorship to enforce the expurgation of any improper 
 books which might be brought forward for publication. 
 Goethe at once expressed his admiration of the plan, and 
 recommended that they commence with the Bible. 
 Whereupon the king of Holland said to him, " My dear 
 Goethe, pray hold your tongue. Of course you are quite 
 right : but it won't do to say so." 
 
 This, however, is not enough. There are, as we have 
 seen, very many portions of the Bible which, Avhile not 
 totally " unfit for publication," are yet shocking to the 
 intellect and moral sense if accepted literally as true, 
 inasmuch as they are libellous to the Deity. I propose, 
 therefore, Secondly, that teachers be required, alike by 
 School-boards and by parents, whenever such portions 
 of Scripture are read, — (and they ought to be read, if 
 only to show the advance we have made) — to make their 
 pupils clearly understand that they represent only the 
 imperfect notions of a barbarous age and people. That 
 just as the Greeks had their supreme ruling divinity in 
 Zeus, their divinity of song in Apollo, of war in Ares, of 
 gain in Hermes, of storms in .^olus, of wisdom in Pallas, 
 and of love in Aphrodite ; so the Jews, instead of dis- 
 tributing these functions among a number of distinct 
 divinities, ascribed them all in turn, no matter how
 
 68 yewisb Literature 
 
 incongruously, as occasion required, to their own Jehovah. 
 By turn he is a " man of war,'"' he is " love," he is "fire," 
 he " rides on the Avings of the wind," and so on. 
 
 We cannot even accord to the Jews the credit, often 
 claimed for them, of being, in a world of polytheists, the 
 only pure monotheists. It is true that their institutions 
 forbade the worship of more than one God ; but they 
 recognised the existence of many gods. They were 
 monotheists in worship, but not in faith. Their Jehovah 
 was a far too unsociable, exclusive, " jealous " God, to 
 share their homage Avith others. He thus was made 
 strictly in the image of the Jews themselves, the most 
 exclusive of human races. That Baal and Chemosh, 
 Ashtoreth and Molech, were all realities for them, is 
 shown in frequent utterances ascribed even to Jehovah 
 liimself. And Solomon, though " the wisest of men," 
 established their Avorship in Jerusalem. The Bible 
 shoAvs, too, by numerous instances, that the Jcavs Avere 
 by no means satisfied Avith their oaati deity. The minds 
 of their loftiest poets, indeed, occasionally, in their 
 loftiest moods, rose to the conception of a deity, one and 
 universal ; but they did this in common only Avith the 
 loftiest minds of all peoples, ages, and religions ; those 
 minds Avhose opinions have ever been regarded by the 
 conventional and superstitious as atheistic and blasphem- 
 ous, Avhether it be Socrates, Spinoza, Shelley, or Jesus. 
 
 But even if the Jews acknoAvledged but one God, they 
 called him by various names ; and it Avould be an addi- 
 tional safeguard against superstition if, in the ncAV 
 version, those names Avere preserA'ed. In translating 
 the Latin and Greek Avriters Ave never think of substitu- 
 ting God for Jupiter or Apollo. There is no valid 
 reason for dealing differently Avith Jehovah, Elohim, 
 Adonai, Shaddai.
 
 and Modern Education. 69 
 
 This, then, is the Avhole condusion : — 
 
 (1.) That the Bible should be admitted into the 
 schools ; but it must be a purified, an expurgated Bible ; 
 and (2.) That its reading must be accompanied by such 
 " notes and comments " as will make it really conducive 
 to the development of the Intelligence and Moral Sense 
 of the scholars. 
 
 But to minister to these ends, it must be read with no 
 adventitious solemnity that might specialise it as a 
 superior authority, and invest it with a preter-educational 
 character. For this would at once be to remove it from 
 the category of legitimate educational uses, by exempting 
 it from the operation of the normal digestive apparatus 
 of the intellect. In short, to make the Bible useful for 
 education, it must be taught comparatively. And as this 
 implies the possession of a certain amount of related 
 knowledge, it is clear that there is but very little of it 
 that is suited to the very young or very ignorant. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Now for the general principle on which these " notes 
 and comments " should be based. 
 
 It is universally acknowledged that the human mind 
 is endowed with a tendency to imagine the Deity as pos- 
 sessed in perfection of all the qualities which are recog- 
 nised by itself as best. The strength of this tendency is 
 ever in inverse proportion to the degree of the mind's 
 development, being greatest in the most rudimentary 
 stage of intelligence. 
 
 Investing the Deity Avith the attributes of personality, 
 the finite mind cannot do otherwise than make God in 
 its own image. The character of that image is the mea-
 
 70 Jewish lAterature 
 
 sure of our own moral and siiiritual capacity. For, when 
 by God we mean the ideal of our own imagination, it 
 follows that the character of our God indicates the de- 
 gree of our own development. Later on, when the mind 
 attains a certain advanced stage of intellectual progress, 
 we find our concei^tion of Deity so transcendently en- 
 larged, that no definition satisfies us, save one which re- 
 cognises Him as the sum of all the forces, physical, moral, 
 and sj)iritual, at work in the universe ; the divine Avork, 
 which we call Nature, being the sum of all phenomena. 
 God the sum of causes. Nature the sum of effects. This 
 is no dogma. It is only a definition of what we mean 
 by God, what by nature. 
 
 For the purposes of early education, however, we have 
 to deal with God in a moral aspect, as the Ideal of 
 Humanity ; the perfection towards which it is our high- 
 est function to strive. Wherefore, nothing can be more 
 fatal to our moral progress than to have that ideal de- 
 graded to a low type of character. If Ave are to call him 
 "Fool," who, denying cause and effect, says, "there is 
 no God," (Ps. xiv. 1.) what are we to say of him who 
 teaches that God is evil 1 What, again, are Ave to call 
 those Avho, holding that God is absolutely good, and that 
 a firm belief in that goodness is requisite to enable man 
 to be good also, and Avho, moreover, desire to cultivate 
 goodness in their children, yet hesitate not to put into 
 the hands of those children narratives of impurity, 
 cruelty, and deceit, and tell them that the iierjDetrators 
 and their deeds Avere acceptable to, and indeed prompted 
 by, the Deity ? If the purpose of right education be to 
 develop the moral sense, Avhat sort of education is this ? 
 If another purpose be to develop the intellect, hoAV is this 
 end to be served, when the only Avay of escape that such
 
 and Modern Education. 7 1 
 
 teachers have, on being questioned by their perplexed 
 pupils, lies in declaring it to be a " mystery," and so 
 closing the doors of their intelligence the moment it 
 begins to expand 1 
 
 Keeping in mind the remarks I have made respecting 
 the inevitable anthropomorphism of all imperfectly de- 
 veloped minds, you will perceive that it involves no 
 reproach to the Jews that, in those early stages of human 
 progress, they partook of the universal tendency, and 
 constructed their God in their own image ; that they 
 credited him with the qualities, moral and immoral, 
 which they found in themselves ; and, in their total 
 ignorance of natural law and phenomena, were more ready 
 to seek the divine hand in departures from the regular 
 order of nature, than to recognise it in its establishment 
 and maintenance. It is thus that all early literatures 
 necessarily contain prodigies and fables illustrative of the 
 imperfect notions of their period. And so far from these 
 things being true because they are in the Bible, or a re- 
 proach to the Jews in being untrue, the miracle really 
 would have been if there were no miracles, no anthro- 
 pomorphism, in the Scriptures. In this sense, therefore, 
 it may be said that the truth of the Bible is proved by 
 the untruths of the Bible. 
 
 Even if we give the Jews credit as having done their 
 best for the honour of their god in thus constructing him 
 in their own image, we assuredly cannot lay claim to 
 similar credit for ourselves. For we have fallen infinitely 
 below our own best, in the character Ave have assigned 
 to our God. Think for a moment how marvellous is the 
 anomaly we present. For six days of the week we avail 
 ourselves freely of the Avondrous results of the most ad- 
 vanced science and culture, philosophy and thought, of
 
 72 yewis/j Literature 
 
 this nineteenth century after Christ, in which the labours 
 of all former centuries have culminated, and we do this for 
 our own advantage and enjoyment ; and on the seventh 
 day, when the honour of our God is concerned, we are con- 
 tent to jump back to the nineteenth century before Christ, 
 and borrow for him both character and lineaments from 
 a semi-barbarous Syrian tribe, whose whole literature 
 proves their absolute incapacity to comprehend the 
 simplest of his works in nature. And in their image, 
 fitful and vengeful, vv^e make our God, refusing him the 
 benefits of the light we have gained. A wondrous feat 
 of moral and intellectual athletics is this our weekly 
 jump backward and then forward again. 
 
 The resolution finally passed by the London Board 
 l^rovides that " the Bible shall be read, and there shall 
 be given therefrom such instruction in the principles of 
 religion and morality, as is suitable to the cajiacities of 
 children, no attempt being made to attach the children 
 to any particular denomination." 
 
 Thus, the Bible is to be read ^' with notes and com- 
 ments." If, however, these notes and comments are not 
 to be of the kind I have just described, the Resolution 
 means absolutely nothing. If the teachers are not to 
 explain that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Samuel, David, 
 and Solomon, were, in respect of the acts which have been 
 enumerated, exceedingly bad men, and that the deity 
 who is said in the Bible to have approved of them, was 
 but the imaginary local divinity of the Hebrews as re- 
 presented by their priests, the Resolution is nothing but 
 an illusion and a blind. If the teacher is not to say that 
 Abraham was wrong to follow his impulse to sacrifice 
 his son ; Jacob "\vTong to cheat his nearest and dearest 
 relations ; Samuel wrong to revoke his sovereign's pledge
 
 and Modern Education. 
 
 n 
 
 of clemency, and rebelliously to set up a rival to liim ; 
 David wrong to sacrifice the sons of Saul, and to order 
 the execution of the man he had sworn to spare ; if 
 he is not to say that Jesvis and the apostles were mis- 
 taken in expecting the early end of the world and 
 re-appearance of Christ ; that the story of his birth 
 is a piece of mere paganism, and that many of the 
 injunctions in the New Testament are not fitting rules 
 for civilised life — the Eesolution is utterly devoid 
 of meaning. I am not saying that it may not be per- 
 fectly sound theology to praise Abraham and Jacob for 
 these things, and represent the deity as approving of 
 them, but only that it is neither good religion nor good 
 morality ; and it is not theology, but religion and mor- 
 ality, which, both by the Education Act and the Eesolu- 
 tion, the teacher is bound to inculcate. Even if it be 
 true that morality is based upon religion, the religion 
 containing such theology can certainly not claim to be in 
 any way connected with morality. And to teach it will 
 be to go directly in the face of the Resolution which 
 provides " that instruction be given from the Bible in 
 the principles," not of theology, but "of religion and 
 morality." Wherefore, when a question arises in the 
 schools, such as that of the propriety of Abraham's com- 
 pliance, of Jael's treachery, or of Caiaphas's counsel to 
 off"er up Jesus in human sacrifice as an atonement for the 
 people ;— the teacher acting in accordance with our 
 definition and the Board's Resolution, will have no 
 choice but to reply, " The justification of these actions 
 belongs to the domain of theology. Morality unequivo- 
 cally condemns them. And my duty here is to teach 
 you morality." 
 
 And this, I think, settles the question which has been
 
 74 yewish Literature 
 
 raised since tlie passing of the Eesolution, namely, the 
 question, Who is to give Biblical or religious instruction 
 in the schools, whether the ordinary teachers Avho are 
 responsible to the Board, or the clergy or other persons 
 specially appointed for that 'purpose by the various reli- 
 gious bodies themselves ? The resolution declares that 
 the children are to be taught, not theology, but Religion 
 and JMorality. To admit, therefore, independent teachers 
 of theology, would be, in so far as such theology is in 
 conflict with religion and morality, to admit teachers of 
 irreligion and immorality, and would thus neutralise the 
 Eesolution of the Board, and the whole object of educa- 
 tion, which, as cannot be repeated too often at this time, 
 consists in the development of the intellect and moral 
 sense. 
 
 Probably nothing could be put before the young more 
 pernicious than the teaching of the official theologian. 
 It Avas but the other day that a clergyman of the English 
 Establishment preached a sermon to the effect that Jacob 
 was quite right to cheat his father and brother because 
 he knew that he should make a better use of the property 
 than they Avould. No, however sound the theology of such 
 teaching may be, and this is no rare or extreme instance, 
 it certainly is not the teaching by which either the 
 intelligence or the moral sense of children is likely to be 
 developed. 
 
 XV. 
 
 So far from the simple and natural explanation which 
 I have given of the incongruities and contradictions con- 
 tained in the Bible, having been diligently promulgated 
 by those who have undertaken to be its interpreters, our 
 spiritual teachers have, on the contrary, during some
 
 and Modern Education. 75 
 
 three hundred years done their best to erect the Bible 
 into an ^infallible standard, not merely of theology, but 
 of religion and morality. Outvying the apostle who, in 
 the excess of his zeal, cut off one ear, they have done 
 their best to stop up both ears against the voice of reason 
 and conscience. They forget that Jesus restored the in- 
 jured organ. 
 
 It is true that an excuse for the existence of the popular 
 theory, and for the tenacity with which it has held its 
 ground, is not far to seek. It was natural that we should 
 feel a liigh degree of gratitude towards the book which 
 materially aided us in emancipating ourselves from the 
 yoke of mediaeval Papalism, and asserting our own indi- 
 viduality among the community of the nations. It was 
 natural that our enthusiasm for the agent of our deliver- 
 ance should lead us to' place it high, even too high, in our 
 regards. And so it came that we replaced an infallible, 
 but discomfited, Poj)e by an infallible book; not per- 
 ceiving that, if indeed it was a credit to the Bil^le to 
 have made us free, we do the reverse of honour to it by 
 allowing it to tyrannise over us in turn. 
 
 Again, in addition to being a grateful, we are an emi- 
 nently prudent, folk. We prefer to be on with a new 
 love before we are quit of the old. Hating anything 
 like an interregnum, we cry, " The king is dead. Long 
 live the king," without the interval of a moment. And 
 so we continue to cling to the old accustomed dwelling, 
 letting it crumble into ruin around us, rather than endure 
 a brief season of discomfort while waiting for the rear- 
 ing of a new habitation on its site. " If we give up the 
 Bible as an infallible guide," it is asked, " to what are 
 we to look in its place 1 " 
 
 Having at present to deal with facts, and not with 
 fancies, there is no need to enlarge on the popular dogma
 
 ^6 yewish Literature 
 
 further than to say that, not being contained in the Bible- 
 itself, but being unknown alike to the Fathers of the 
 primitive Church, to the Reformers of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, and to the articles and formularies of both the 
 Romish Church and the English, it must have its basis 
 in modern innovation rather than in ancient authority. 
 
 I ascribe, then, the popular theory respecting the 
 Bible in some degree to the causes I have named, but 
 mainly to that instinctive monarchical tendency which 
 leads the uneducated to distrust their own intelligence 
 and moral sense, and require some palpable ruler and 
 guide. " In their ignorance of the experimental cha- 
 racter of human nature, men will seek infallibility some- 
 where ; in an oracle, a priest, a church, or a book." This 
 tendency has been, as a rule, sedulously fostered by 
 governments and teachers. Once deprived of their 
 Fetich, and roused from indolent acquiescence in its 
 supposed commands, they cry out that their gods have 
 been stolen from them, and fancy that the universe 
 will collapse, because they are now forced to fulfil their 
 proper vocation, and use their own faculties. 
 
 It was in virtue of this characteristic that the Swiss 
 theologians of the seventeenth century maintained the 
 inspiration of the comparatively recent vowel-points of 
 the Hebrew text : that the early Christians ascribed a 
 supernatural origin to the Septuagint ; and the Council of 
 Trent gave an authority superior to that of the original 
 texts to the Vulgate, which attained such a height of 
 superstitious respect that, according to Erasmus, some 
 monks, on seeing it printed in parallel columns between 
 the Greek and the Hebrew, likened it to Christ crucified 
 between the two thieves. (Colloquies.) An.d it was even 
 seriously proposed by the theological faculty of IMayence,
 
 and Modern Education. 77 
 
 in the IStli century, to make a total " revision and cor- 
 rection of the Hebrew Bible, inasmuch as it differed 
 from the authorised Latin translation ! " 
 
 Perhaps the most singular fact in connection with the 
 popular doctrine is, that to doubt its accuracy has come 
 to be treated as a piece of heinous moral depravity, and 
 this even by some who ought to know better. When 
 the eminent author of the *' Christian Year" was con- 
 sulted respecting a difficulty in the Avay of receiving it, 
 felt by Dr Arnold, then a student, Keble's advice was 
 " work it down ! Throw yourself wholly into your 
 parish or your school, and work it down!"* This 
 simply meant, "ignore it;" as if faith consisted in the 
 suppression of doubt, and conscientious scruples were 
 demons to be exorcised. 
 
 Later in life, when pressed on the same point by Sir 
 John Coleridge, Avho urged the subject on him as one 
 that he was competent to deal with, adding that it pro- 
 mised shortly to become the great religious c|uestion of 
 the time, Mr Keble, after endeavouring to evade an- 
 swering, replied shortly that "most of the men who had 
 difficulties on this subject were too wicked to be reasoned 
 witli."t Such was the answer of one of the most vene- 
 rated of modern Sacerdotalists to a near relative of the 
 great Coleridge, who (in the book I have already quoted) 
 had pronounced the popular doctrine to be " superstitious 
 and unscriptural." 
 
 "■ Ignore a conscientous scruple, or you are too wicked 
 to be reasoned with !" Kespect a dogma because it is a 
 dogma, no matter how the reason and the conscience, nay, 
 the Almighty himself, be outraged thereby ! Submit 
 humbly to authority, no matter how immoral its require- 
 
 * Stanley's Life of Arnold. f Coleridge's Memoirs of Keble.
 
 78 yewish Literature 
 
 ments ! Ignore your scruples, and instead of manfully 
 "facing your doubts" and "beating your music out," let 
 your doubt remain, an unresolved discord, to jar ever- 
 more witliin your soul ! To such straits are they driven 
 who remain in bondage to " the weak and beggarly ele- 
 ments" of the popular orthodoxy. Surely it is time for 
 us to say positively that we will not commit the minds 
 and consciences of our children to teachers who will bring 
 them up to regard sincerity as a vice, and crush at once 
 both intellect and moral sense by superstition, poj)ular or 
 ecclesiastical. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 But though our immediate teachers in nursery, school 
 and pulpit, have laboured assiduously to inculcate this 
 dof'ma, it may safely be affirmed that, in addition to the 
 vast range of authorities already named who reject it, 
 there is not at this day a single scholar, (I do not say 
 "learned divine," but scholar of acknowledged critical 
 ability,) lay or cleric, orthodox or heretic, in Christendom, 
 who holds it for himself. One and all, they recognise the 
 existence in the Bible of, at the very least, a largely per- 
 vading element of human imperfection. It is true that 
 Dr Hook in his " Church Dictionary" defines " Inspira- 
 tion" as being "the extraordinary or supernatural in- 
 fluence of the Spirit of God on the human mind, by 
 which the prophets and sacred writers were qualified to 
 receive and set forth divine communications without any 
 mixture of error," and asserts upon his o^vn sole autho- 
 rity that in this sense the term occurs in the passage, 
 " all scripture (is) given by inspiration of God." (2 Tim. 
 iii. IG.) It is true that in this he is followed by Dr
 
 and Modern Education. 79 
 
 Wordsworth and other prominent churchmen. But no 
 critical scholar ventures to affirm that " Inspiration " is 
 identical with, or implies, " Infallibility." On the con- 
 trary, their profoundest investigations only serve to de- 
 monstrate the truth of the conclusion patent to common 
 sense, that humanity is so constructed as to be incapable 
 of infallibility in the absence of means of verification ; 
 and that the being prompted by a *' holy spirit," or dis- 
 position, by no means guarantees a man against error, 
 however wide his spiritual range, or deep his spiritual 
 insight. 
 
 But farther, even if the original text could be regarded 
 as infallible, there is the fact that we do not jjossess that 
 original text, and that the documents which claim to be 
 derived from it, have passed through the hands of many 
 copyists, each more or less accurate, more or less honest. 
 And were the text certainly perfect as it is certainly most 
 defective, there are still the difficulties of translation, diffi- 
 culties ivhich are, as every scholar knows, often absolutely 
 insurmountable. For the language of difi'erent nations 
 varies with their ideas, and their ideas vary with their 
 institutions, associations, and habits ; so that different 
 languages frequently have no terms whatever in which to 
 express the ideas contained in other languages. Many 
 tropical tribes, for instance, have no words to express 
 such things as ice and snow, because those things are alto- 
 gether unknown to them. A translation, therefore, of 
 the Bible into their language is, so far as ice and snow 
 are concerned, impossible. " In the islands of the SoutJi 
 Seas there were no cpiadrupeds until the first navigators 
 took some pigs there, when the name given by the natives 
 to the pigs, became the generic term for all four-legged 
 animals. The horse was the big pig that runs over the
 
 8o yewisb Literature 
 
 ground. The cow was the great milky pig. The sheep 
 the curly pig. We may imagine the feelings with which 
 the pious translators of the Bible for the islanders found 
 themselves compelled to use a corresponding designation 
 for tlie phrase "Lamb of God." The Zulus of South 
 Africa had no idea of God or a future state, and prized 
 above all things flesh in an advanced stage of decomposi- 
 tion. Wherefore the missionaries in translating the Bible 
 for them, and rendering the supreme good in their lan- 
 guage, were obliged to identify God and heaven with 
 rotten meat. 
 
 The same lack of corresponding terms exists more or 
 less between all languages, as is shown by the fact that 
 words and phrases are often transported whole from one 
 language into another. Moreover, words used to express 
 actions, principles, or qualities, in one language, often be- 
 come concreted into persons and things by the genius of 
 another. And in all languages, or nearly all, the same 
 Avord frequently has many diflfcrent significations. (As 
 in English the words box, hand, &c., have each half-a-dozen 
 meanings.) It sometimes happens, therefore, that a trans- 
 lator has to be guided by what he is led by the context 
 or some other criterion to think the passage is likely to 
 mean. 
 
 Thus, in the passage, " Whosoever will save his life 
 shall lose it : and whosoever will lose his life for my sake 
 shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain 
 the whole world, and lose his own soul 1 or what shall a 
 man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt. xvi. 25, 26.) 
 — the word rendered soul is precisely the same, article 
 and all, with the word rendered life. 
 
 Again, for the word spirit, which is used by us in nearly 
 a score of different senses, personal and impersonal, the
 
 and Modern Education. 8 1 
 
 Greek equivalent, pneuma, generally, if not always, signi- 
 fies the air, breath, or life. In the well-known passage 
 in John, (iii. 8.) " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and 
 thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence 
 it Cometh and whither it goeth ; so is every one that is 
 born of the spirit," — the word rendered wind, and the 
 word spirit, are identical, article and all, with each other. 
 Yet the translators have given to the same word, occur- 
 ring in the same sentence, two entirely different mean- 
 ings. And, as if to justify this, the modern printers of 
 the Greek text sometimes give a capital initial to the 
 word which is translated sjnrit ; thus in a measure alter- 
 ing the text to suit the authorised version. 
 
 Such was the imperfection of the ancient Hebrew for 
 the purposes of expression in writing, that it was not 
 until long after the Bible had been written that the dis- 
 tinction between the tenses of past and futui-e was pro- 
 perly developed. It was in their confusion between these 
 tenses that our translators, in the magnificent ode of 
 Isaiah beginning, " Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people," 
 produced the absurd and impious phrase, " She hath re- 
 ceived at the Lord's hand double for all her sins," in- 
 stead of the joyous assurance, " She shall receive . . . 
 double for all her sufferings." (xl. 2.) It is easy to im- 
 agine the difficulty attending prophetic expression in a 
 language which had no distinct future tense ! 
 
 A very little reflection on the modus operandi of what 
 theologically is called " Inspiration," will at once exhibit 
 to us the fallacy of the popular notion. It can only con- 
 sist of an impulse or impression on the mind, so strong 
 as to make the individual receiving it, ascribe it to a 
 preternatural source. But, however irresistible for him, 
 the authority and character of the impression must still 
 
 F
 
 82 yewish Literature 
 
 be determined, not by its strengtli in relation to his 
 mind, but by its own intrinsic nature. A bad impres- 
 sion cannot proceed from a healthy source ; neither does 
 a strong impression imply accuracy of doctrine. It is 
 under an irresistible impulse that the maniac mother 
 flings her child down a well. It is under an impression 
 so strong as to be for him an inspiration or divine reve- 
 lation that the celibate takes his unnatural vow, the 
 devotee starves himself into bad health, the Russian 
 fanatic mutilates his body, and the Revivalist goes into 
 convulsions of madness. Thus, whatever is claimed to 
 be a divine revelation, must be referred ultimately to the 
 test of the Intellect and Moral Sense, as the sole canon 
 of criticism. Even the common notion that infallibility 
 may be attested by the power to work miracles, must be 
 disclaimed in presence of the instances ascribed in 
 Scripture to magical or diabolical agency. 
 
 " Wherefore, although a man may have an overwhelm- 
 ing sense that something claiming to be God has spoken 
 to him, it is clear, that unless he has a prior, personal and 
 infallible knowledge of God, — a knowledge prior, that is, 
 to his * inspiration,' — he knows not but that it may be 
 a demon assuming the garb of light, pei'haps even one of 
 those ' lying spirits ' who are represented in the Bible as 
 infesting even heaven itself, or a fantastic creation of his 
 own excited fancy. It behoves him, therefore, still to 
 judge the communication in his calmer moments by its 
 own intrinsic character, and to deliberate upon the actions 
 to which it impels him." The wider the range we learn 
 to assign to Nature and the human faculties, the less be- 
 comes our necessity for seeking a preternatural origin for 
 our ideas and impulses, and the more honour we pay to 
 the divine worker and his work.
 
 and Modern Education. 83 
 
 The prevalent readiness to distrust our own ability to 
 perceive the higher moral facts of the universe, and our 
 consequent liability to refer all revelation to the con- 
 sciousness of men who lived ages ago, is, no doubt, attri- 
 butable partly to our possession of so many ancient books 
 which claim our attention, and draw our minds away 
 from the contemplation of the direct action of the uni- 
 verse upon our own individual consciousness ; and partly 
 to the repressing influence of those sacerdotal interests 
 which naturally repose upon traditional authority rather 
 than upon living insight and reason. 
 
 The habit is one to be firmly checked if we Avould 
 avoid the practical Atheism of banishing God and Truth 
 from the living present to the dead past. '^ The creed or 
 belief of any age is, at best, but the index to the height 
 of the divine presence of Truth in that age." To adopt 
 its limitations as our own, is to turn a deaf ear to the 
 voice of that " Spirit of Truth" or Truthfulness, of whom 
 it Avas said by one who himself drew all his inspiration from 
 within, that " when he is come he will guide you into all 
 truth." (John xvi. 13.) It is but a limited sway that this 
 Spirit of Truthfulness has as yet obtained. Wherefore 
 the effect of all dogmas, — Avhether formulated in creeds, 
 catechisms, or articles of faith, — and their maintenance by 
 oaths and emoluments, independently of intrinsic pro- 
 bability or any possibility of verification, is to arrest 
 the natural development of Humanity and to disturb and 
 retard the whole process of the evolution of the species, 
 in regard to its highest functions. It is to give the 
 world a base money-bribe to retain in its maturity the 
 form, the garb, the dimensions, the w/unaturity of its 
 childhood. Hear a recent utterance of one Avho, with 
 whatever drawbacks, seeks still to combine the prophet
 
 84 Jewish Literature 
 
 and the poet, and thus, with " Songs before Sunrise," 
 heralds the dawn of better times : 
 
 A creed is a rod, 
 
 And weapon of night : 
 
 But this thing is God, 
 To be man with thy might, 
 To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, 
 And live out thy life as the light.* 
 
 The very word Inspiration, in its primary meaning, 
 relates to the atmosphere. It is an ancient supposition 
 that ideas are inhaled with the breath. A man found 
 himself possessed of an idea or thought which the 
 moment before he had not. AVhence could it have 
 come, if not in-breathed, or inspired, with the air ? It 
 was Pythagoras who conceived the idea that the vital 
 process of the world is a process of breathing, the 
 infinite breath or atmosphere of the Universe being the 
 source of all life. An imaginative Oriental people 
 readily, in their expressions, personified such supposed 
 source of life and thought. We matter-of-fact Westerns 
 go on to make such personification absolute and dog- 
 matic. Pneicma, the air, becomes a personal spirit, or 
 assemblage of spirits, and divinely " inspir&s" us : as in 
 the old days of philosophy in Persia, under the influence 
 of which, during, or after the Babylonish captivity, 
 many of the Jewish sacred books evidently were com- 
 posed, — the breath, or Biv, formed a linguistic basis for 
 a personal Devil. f 
 
 Ideas in the air ! Those who know what it is to 
 
 * Swinburne, very slightly altered. 
 
 t Cons. Donaldson's " Chiistian Orthodoxy : " Art.' " Interme- 
 diate Intelligences."
 
 a?id Modern Education. 85 
 
 crouch in the unhealthy confinement of close study, ever, 
 as the Poet says, 
 
 " With blinded eyesight poring over miserable books," 
 till heart and head become heavy and dull ; and then to 
 betake themselves to seaside or mountain, where the 
 fresh winds of heaven blow freely upon them, inflating 
 their lungs, aerating their blood, and " sweeping the 
 cobwebs from their brains," until the renovated organism 
 becomes re-charged with creative energy, and ideas 
 begin anew to spring up in the mind, revealing to it 
 
 " Tongnes in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything, " 
 
 — such as these can well appreciate the charming old 
 fancy that peopled the air with ideas, and regarded 
 every new thought as a separate spirit. It is only under 
 theologic manijjulation that such gentle poetry becomes 
 steam-hammered into hard dogma, that existence is rob- 
 bed of its charm, and millions of manldnd are doomed 
 to pass through life, and to leave it, without ever having 
 been allowed to know how good the world really is. 
 
 But above and beside the questions of Inspiration, of 
 Language, of Transcription, and Translation, there is 
 ^the question of Interpretation. And, supposing all other 
 difficulties surmounted, we are here met by an impass- 
 ible barrier. For the proposition is nothing less than 
 axiomatic, that '•' an infallible revelation requires an 
 infallible interpreter : and that both are useless without 
 an infallible understanding wherewith to comprehend 
 the interpretation." 
 
 By such demonstration of , the utter impossibility of 
 infallibility, (in the theologic sense,) the ground is 
 entirely cut away from beneath, not only all past, but all
 
 86 Jewish Literature 
 
 future sujierstitions. For, by annihilating " authority," 
 it compels us to refer everything whatsoever to the- 
 criterion of the intellect and moral sense of man. There 
 is now, therefore, no longer any space for " dogma." 
 
 XVII. 
 
 To the list of authorities already given, I propose to 
 add a few representative names from the various schools 
 of theologic thought Avithin the Established Church. 
 
 The first is that of the Rev. Dr Irons, who, in his 
 remarkable little volume, " The Bible and its Inter- 
 preters," declares that '' any reasonable being who 
 would accej)t the Scriptures at all, miid take them on 
 some other ground than that which identifies the written 
 AVord A^dth God's Revelation. A more hopeless, carnal, 
 and, eventually sceptical position, it is impossible to 
 conceive." (p. 39.) Dr Irons, in this, follows the learned 
 Bishop of St David's, Dr Thirlwall, whose recent noble 
 protest against the dishonesty of sacerdotal bigotry in 
 high places, in relation to the work of Biblical revision, 
 may Avell raise our respect for him to veneration, as one 
 Avho, in spite of his j^osition, has dared practically to 
 point the distinction between Morality and the prevalent 
 Theology. In one of his Episcopal charges, Dr Thirlwall 
 points out the fact that " Among the numerous passages 
 of the New Testament in Avhich the plirase The, Word 
 of God" occvu's, there is not one in which it signifies the 
 Bible, or in Avhich that word could be substituted for it 
 without manifest absurdity. 
 
 It is notorious that the popular imagination is wont 
 to regard the same phrase, when used in the Psalms, as re- 
 ferring, if not to the whole of the Old and New Testaments, 
 at least to the books ascribed to Moses and Samuel.
 
 and Modern Education. 87 
 
 The late Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Alford, in his 
 "New Testament for English readers," (p. 3.) says, 
 ''Each man reported and each man selected according 
 to his own personal characteristics of thought and 
 feeling." 
 
 Yet one other name, that of Bishop Colenso, whose 
 critical analysis of the Hebrew text is allowed by 
 scholars to constitute one of the most remarka1)le monu- 
 ments of patient labour and sober judgment to be 
 found in literature. Tliese scholars, approaching the 
 subject from opposite dii-ections, agree in their main 
 conclusions. Their immediate motives, however, differ 
 considerably. The object of Dr. Irons is to force us 
 back, in the search for Infallibility, to rely altogether 
 upon " the Church." " Hear the Church," is his maxim. 
 (Matt, xviii. 17.) But which Church? we must ask, 
 and ask in vain. What saith the Church of England 
 in her articles'? "As the Churches of Jerusalem, 
 Antioch, and Alexandria, have erred, so also hath the 
 Church of Rome erred." (Art. xix.) Moreover, "General 
 
 Councils sometimes have erred." (xxi.) (It was 
 
 a general Council that determined what books should 
 form the canon of Scripture, and Avhat should be 
 rejected.) Can we wonder if the other Churches rejoin, 
 as at least one of them has done, with anathemas, 
 " So also hath the Church of England erred V 
 
 The object of Dean Alford was to mediate between 
 the two extremes of popular orthodoxy and the results 
 of critical knowledge. 
 
 That of Bishop Colenso is simply to find out and state 
 what is the fact, believing that such purpose alone is 
 consistent with the deference due to the intellect and 
 moral sense of man, to truth, and to God Himself In
 
 88 'JewUh Literature 
 
 one of his " Natal Sermons," he sums up the results of 
 his labours by describing the Bible as containing the 
 " Early attempts at History," the writers of -which 
 record, with the simplicity of childhood, the first ima- 
 ginings of thoughtful men about the Earth's formation 
 and history, and mingle with traditionary lore and 
 actual fact, the legends and mythical stories of a hoar 
 antiquity, yet tell us how men were " moved by the 
 Holy Ghost," in those days, how they were " feeling 
 after God," and finding Him, how the light shone 
 clearer and clearer upon their minds, as the day-star 
 of Eternal truth rose higher and higher upon them. . . . 
 A human book, in short, though a book full of divine 
 
 life written, as Paul says, for our learning, but 
 
 not all infallibly true." (i. p. 62, &c.) 
 
 But Dr. Irons and Bishop Colenso, while differing 
 apparently so widely in their motives, yet have in reality 
 the same object. The Bishop would force us back 
 directly upon the Intellect and the Moral Sense. And 
 Dr Irons woidd force us back upon them tlu'ough the 
 intermedium of *' the Church," whatever that may be. 
 For we need not entertain the uncharitable supposition, 
 that he would have us substitute the authority of the 
 Chui'ch for that of the Mind and the Conscience. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 There is yet another authority to which it is necessary 
 to refer, inasmuch as it is the highest present expression 
 of the intellect and moral sense of the country applied 
 to the regulation of human life in its secular relations. 
 
 We have seen that, so far as following Christ and his 
 precepts are concerned, there are many respects in
 
 and Modern Education. 89 
 
 which both the Church and the world are palpably 
 anti-Christian, The world rejects communism, celibacy, 
 and contempt of knowledge ; and both Church and 
 world set at nought the most positive injunctions of 
 Christ and of the Bible, as in taking medicine and in 
 praying in Church. The practice of our Courts of 
 Law is equally in opposition to the popular doctrine of 
 an infallible Bible. Yet, with curious confusion, the 
 popular mind still endeavours to concur with both ; 
 and judges still have the audacity to assert that the law 
 of the land is founded on the Bible. 
 
 I will give an example or two. 
 
 You will remember the passages I quoted (p. 44.) in 
 reprobation of the medical profession, and of those who, 
 in illness, " Seek not to the Lord, but to the physicians." 
 Well, we have among us a small sect calling itself after 
 a Bible-phrase, " The Peculiar People." These hold 
 that prayer is the only allowable resource for Christians 
 in time of sickness. They do not refuse to cure them- 
 selves of hunger by food, of fatigue by rest, or to pick 
 themselves up when they fall. They have no consistent 
 theory or uniform practice respecting the relation of 
 means to ends. But because a verse in one of the 
 Epistles enjoins the calling in of the elders to pray over 
 the sick, and declares that "the prayer of faith shall 
 save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up;" (Jam. 
 V. 14.) they prefer to die sooner than call in a doctor, or 
 take any medicine. Had the Apocrypha been thought 
 fit by our Church to be included in the Canon, this sect 
 would have had no existence, for the Book of Ecclesias- 
 ticus contains several warm commendations of medicine 
 and medical men : saying, "Honour the physician. . . . 
 for the Lord hath created him the Lord hath
 
 90 yewish Literature 
 
 created medicines out of the earth ; and he that is wise 
 will not abhor them." (xxxviii. i. 1-15, &c.) 
 
 A short time ago, however, the neighbours of the 
 people who are so very. "peculiar" as to show their faith 
 in the Ncav Testament by their works, and to risk their 
 lives on the strength of a vote in an ecclesiastical council, 
 (that rejecting the Apocryj>ha,) were scandalised by 
 observing tliat they had allowed a child to die Avithout 
 taking any human means to save it. An appearance in 
 the police-court followed, when the leaders of the sect 
 attempted to justify their conduct by an appeal to the 
 Scriptures. But so diametrically opposed is the Spirit of 
 our Law to that of the Sacred Books upon which our 
 Law-Established Church is founded, that the magistrate, 
 though he made allowance for the offenders on the ground 
 of gross ignorance, flatly refused to receive their plea, and 
 warned them that on a repetition of the offence, nothing 
 would save them from being committed for trial on a 
 charge of manslaughter. And his conduct received the 
 approbation of a country calling itself Christian ! 
 
 The other instance is that of the late case of " Lyon 
 versus Home." This was an action for restitution of 
 money obtained under false pretences ; and of course in 
 an action of this nature the one thing to be proved is 
 that the pretences under which the money was obtained, 
 were false. 
 
 The defendant Home is one of a sect of persons who 
 claim to hold intercourse with the spirits of the dead. 
 The prosecutor Lyon is, (or was,) a believer in the 
 doctrines of that sect, and in the defendant Home as one 
 of its chief apostles. She is, (or was,) also a wealthy 
 widow; and under the supposed injunctions of her 
 departed husband, as made known to her through the
 
 and Modern Education. 9 1 
 
 medinmship of Home, she made over to Home a large 
 portion of her property, I believe some £60,000, but 
 the amount, however material elsewhere, is not material 
 to our argument. 
 
 You will bear in mind that what I am about to relate 
 occurred in a country whose laws maintain, at an enormous 
 expense to its people, a Church called Christian, whose 
 Sacred Books, — which are accepted by the whole nation 
 officially as divinely inspired, and by the bulk of the 
 nation individually as infallibly true, — repeatedly and 
 unmistakeably affirm the leading doctrines of the sect to 
 which the parties in this case belonged ; namely, that 
 intercourse is possible raid frequent between the living 
 and the spiritual world. 
 
 To quote some of the numerous passages involving this 
 belief, there is the well-known story of the Avitch of 
 Endor, in which the spirit of Samuel is represented as 
 appearing to the witch, and delivering a discourse for the 
 benefit of king Saul. (1. Sam. xxxvii.) There is the 
 statement that at the crucifixion of Jesus, many of " the 
 Saints which slept arose. . . . and appeared unto many." 
 (Matt, xxvii. 52-53.) There is the story of the "Trans- 
 figuration," in which Moses and Elias, dead for hundreds 
 of years, appeared to the disciples; (xvii. &c.) the con- 
 version of Paul, in Avhich Jesus himself, sometime dead, 
 addressed Paul in an audible voice from heaven, (in the 
 words of a Greek Play ;*) (Acts ix. 4-6.) and the 
 summoning back of the spirit of Lazarus to his body. 
 (John xi. 25-43, &c.) There is the parable of the rich 
 man in torment conversing with the spirit of Abraham 
 in bliss, begging, with curious confusion between spirit 
 and matter, that the spirit of Lazarus might be permitted 
 * The Bacchse of Euripides.
 
 92 "Jewish Literature 
 
 to " dip the tip of his finger in water " and cool the rich 
 man's tongue : or, in case the alle\aation of suffering 
 Avere not among the functions of the blessed, that the 
 spirit of Lazarus might be sent back to earth to convert 
 the five living brethren of the rich man; which last 
 request was refused, not as the first was on the ground of 
 its impossibility, but as superfluous and useless. (Luke 
 xvi. 22, &c.). We read, too, of guardian angels, (Matt, 
 iv. 4.) and "ministering spirits;" (Heb. L 14.) and of 
 a whole apparatus of intermediate intelligences existing 
 between God and man. In the Acts we find certain 
 pious Pharisees exclaiming of Paul, "if an angel or 
 spirit hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God." 
 (xxiii. 9.) John tells us to " believe not every spirit, but 
 try the spirits whether they be of God." (1 John iv. 1.) 
 Job, in tlirilling language, describes a spirit as passing 
 before his face and pausing to speak to him. (iv. 15, &c.) 
 The practice of necromancy is forbidden in Deuteronomy, 
 (xviii. 2.) its reality not being called in question; (though 
 how the Jews reconciled it with their denial of the after- 
 life, does not appear.) The Gospels repeatedly refer to 
 cases of possession by spirits, without specifying their 
 nature or origin ; and in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 
 the fact of apparitions of the dead is regarded as being, 
 for the Bible, past a doubt. 
 
 Such, on this point, are the tenets of the book which 
 it is an article of faith with the very people whose law 
 was invoked in the case of " Lyon versus Home," im- 
 plicitly to believe. And yet, so far from any proof 
 being required of the falsity of the defendant's pretences, 
 they were at once assumed to be an utter and monstrous 
 imposition ; and the defence was laughed out of court, 
 in face of the contents of the very book upon which the
 
 and Modern Education. 93 
 
 witnesses in it had been sworn : the book upon which 
 our Eehgion is " by law established ;" and for the sake 
 of inculcating which as infallible, we insist upon vitiating 
 or crippling our whole system of National Education ! 
 
 To these illustrations of the growing divorce between 
 ancient credulity and modern Belief must be added that 
 of Witchcraft ; concerning the belief in which John 
 Wesley said that "The Bible and Witchcraft must stand 
 or fall together." While the anger excited among us by 
 the devout utterances of the Prussian king over his late 
 successes, may be ascribed in some degi^ee to the fact 
 that we are learning to repudiate the old notions which, 
 recognising success as the test of merit, make Divine 
 Providence the arbiter in human quarrels ; and in some 
 degree to the consciousness of having ourselves been 
 such eminent practisers in the same pietistic line as to 
 make king William's conduct look very much as if meant 
 for a caricature of our own. 
 
 Having paid some attention to the recent sittings of 
 the Church Assemblies in Edinburgh, I have been pleased 
 to observe symptoms of a growing respect for the authority 
 of the Intellect and the Conscience in regard to matters of 
 Faith, north of the Tweed. I have read that one clergy- 
 man declared his belief that the sacrifice of Christ was 
 an atonement of sufficient value to counterbalance the 
 misdeeds of Satan himself, and justify the Almighty in 
 pardoning the Arch-fiend ; and that another " elder " 
 valued the character of the Deity so highly "that his hair 
 stood on end at the notion that God could ever be re- 
 conciled to the devil." I take it as a hopeful sign that 
 these two theologians should thus renounce all claim to 
 judge such questions by the old dogmatic standards, and 
 appeal instead to their own moral sense. They have only
 
 94 yewisb Literature 
 
 to carry the process somewhat further to perceive that the 
 God who could create such a being as the devil at all, or 
 who could require to be propitiated towards his own off- 
 spring by such a sacrifice as that of Christ at all, is no 
 God worthy of being acknowledged or revered by any 
 being possessed of a spark of intelligence or independence 
 of spirit. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield once Avrote to a friend, "■ Both 
 Shaftesbury and I have been dead for several years ; but 
 we don't Avish the fact to be generally known." In the 
 same way very much of the Bible has been dead for 
 some time. It still exists, but is outliving its influence 
 for evil ; and there are many who fancy themselves in- 
 terested in keeping the fact from being generally known. 
 
 Yet that it is no chimera Avhich I am encounterinsr, 
 has just been powerfully illustrated by a discussion in 
 the House of Lords * in relation to University Tests ; 
 wherein it was declared, both by Lord Houghton and by 
 the Marquis of Salisbury, that " the immense majority 
 of the people of this country adhere to the authority and 
 teaching of the Bible ; their reverence for it being so 
 absolute that any person who avows hostility to its 
 doctrines is disabled, not only from holding any ofiice 
 connected with moral and religious teaching, but almost 
 from any political office. And that no one can appear at 
 the hustings with any chance of success, and announce 
 that he does not accept the Bible." 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Sir John Coleridge was right when he said that tliis 
 Bible question promised shortly to become the great 
 * (Debate of May 11th 1871.)
 
 and Modern Education. 95 
 
 religious question of the time. It is so ; not for the 
 reason he then anticipated, but because the Bible, or 
 rather the popular theory about the Bible, stops the way 
 to our advance in all that favours the redemption, or 
 constitutes the highest good, of a people. 
 
 By reason of this one impediment our whole system 
 of national education " hangs fire ; " while our systems 
 of private education are neutralised or vitiated. It is 
 therefore for those who are under no obligation to refrain 
 from using their reasoning faculties ; those who decline 
 allegiance to any dispensation which imposes a penalty 
 for putting forth a hand to sustain and forward that 
 which they regard as the Ark of their country's redemp- 
 tion ; (1 Chron. xiii. 9, &c.) those who believe that it is 
 only through man working together freely and intelli- 
 gently with man towards the highest moral ends, that 
 real good is to be done ] — it is for these, I say, to grapple 
 with the difficulty, and if need be, to take the place of 
 those who have hitherto been our teachers. If we are 
 no longer to regard the Bible as a Fetich, to be adored, 
 but not comprehended ; if we are not to adopt as an 
 article of Faith the suggestion of the flippant Frenchman, 
 that the God of the Jewish Scriptures and of our own 
 advanced intelligence and moral sense, is in reality one 
 and the self -same Being ; — that he was once as bad as 
 the Jews made him out to be, but has improved Avith 
 age and experience, (a suggestion I have lately heard 
 seriously propounded by a clergyman in despair at the diffi- 
 culties he found in the Bible) — then the solution which 
 has now been proposed must be accepted by us : other- 
 wise the intellect and the conscience must be rejected 
 altogether as illusory and inventions of tlie devil ; and 
 some other criterion, and one which discards both
 
 g6 yewish Literature 
 
 intellect and conscience, must be sought for to regulate 
 our judgment. 
 
 For my part, I think better of my countrymen than 
 to believe that when once the truth is put plainly before 
 them, they will long halt between the two opinions. I 
 believe that when once the alternative is shown to them 
 to lie between gross superstition and a rational religious- 
 ness, — they will no longer endure that their faith be only 
 definable as believing tvhat they know to he untrue; but will 
 insist on their children being trained to subject all 
 things to the test of a cultivated intelligence and moral 
 sense. Thus trained, they will peruse the Bible, no 
 longer as slaves, but in a spirit of intelligent appreciation, 
 sifting out the germs of truth for themselves, and not 
 scoffing at or rejecting the whole on account of the husks. 
 
 From henceforth the teacher in the schools of the 
 nation must never forget that it is the purpose of his 
 schoolroom to be the training-ground, not of any party or 
 sect, but whereon to develop the faculties which later in 
 life are to determine the nature of individual belief To 
 impart a bias, or to anticipate or prevent the formation 
 of genuine, honest opinion, by the early instilment of 
 dogma, is at once to stultify every principle of sound 
 education, inasmuch as it is to repress the intellect and 
 contravene the moral sense. Whatever the views which 
 may be adopted in mature age by those who have been 
 educated under the system I am advocating, there will 
 be no cause to fear that they will be the worse for being 
 founded in an intelligence and moral sense which have 
 been thus rigidly trained in youth. 
 
 Shall it be said of our solution as was said by one 
 upon first beholding the sea, " Is this the mighty ocean.
 
 and Modern Education. 97 
 
 is this all 1 " " Yes," we may confidently reply, in 
 respect to our reliance upon the intellect and the con- 
 science developed by rational education, "these are all." 
 At first, indeed, you see from the margin but a small part 
 of them. But only trust yourself to them : launch boldly 
 out upon them : sail where you will with them, and they 
 will bear you safely tlirough the whole universe of 
 being." 
 
 At present, for us in England, the issue lies with our 
 School-boards. If their members are themselves ignorant 
 of the simple law of human development in religious 
 ideas, or are unworthily complacent to the ignorance and 
 superstition of their constituents, generations may pass 
 before the standard of education and religion is brought 
 up to the standard of modern thought and knowledge. 
 Generations may pass and the Bible will still be found 
 the subject of hopeless contention, and source of fatal 
 disunion and weakness. And generations long here- 
 after will find the country sunk deeper and deeper in 
 ignorance and barbarism ; while the nations which have 
 sprung from our race, and speak our language, will have 
 passed so far ahead of us that they can only look back 
 upon " poor England" with pity and contempt as an eff'ete 
 and imbecile land, " whose prophets prophesied falsely, 
 whose priests bore rule by their means, and whose people 
 loved to have it so." 
 
 TUBKBULL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
 
 In Two Volumes^ uniform, price 7s. 6d. each. 
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THE SHRINE, 
 
 AND 
 
 HIGHER LAW. 
 
 TINSLEYS, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 " In the Pilgrim and the Shrine is represented a youth escaping- 
 from the trammels of traditional belief, and laying himself wholly 
 open to the influences of the living Universe, so as to allow his 
 entire system of religious faith to evolve itself freely from the 
 contact of external nature with his own soul. 
 
 " In Higher Law a similar method is applied to Morals." — 
 Preface to Higher Law. 
 
 NOW READY, THE THIRD EDITION OF 
 
 THE PILGEIM AND THE SHRINE. 
 
 IN ONE VOLUME. Price 7s. 6d. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 " It is seldom the critic has the pleasure of reviewing a 
 work so original, thoughtful, and entertaining. Whether 
 we regard it as a book of travels, or the true history of a 
 romantic life, or a thoughtful and philosophical essay, it is 
 equally remarkable and attractive : and not the least charm 
 of the work is the elegant and scholar -like style in which 
 it is written. The reader is compelled to sympathize with 
 and love the man, however much the opinions expressed in 
 the work may hurt the feelings. There is no disguising the 
 fact that ' Herbert Ainslie's ' ideas on Christianity, or some 
 very similar, are held by a vast number of the most able 
 men of the day, and certainly by a number of the best 
 degree-men both at Oxford and Cambridge." — Athmsmm.
 
 " With an author who recognizes in the novelist the 
 artist of our day, the praise or blame of sects is of little 
 moment. ' AU 1 have to do,' he says, ' is to create the 
 truest, highest, and most needed work I can imagine, and 
 leave it to find its own audience and speak its own message, 
 without troubling myself about possible results. Such is 
 the course dictated by the highest faith.' — We have dwelt 
 so long on the story, simple as it is, that we cannot treat 
 with anything like justice the really important part of the 
 book — the mental pilgrimage that runs parallel with 
 Herbert's actual wanderings. All throughout is this 
 dualism, this subtle connexion between the physical and 
 mental parts of his nature. It is as if he had declared for 
 the extreme physiological school of philosophy. — There is a 
 current of subdued Pantheism which sometimes breaks aU 
 bounds. He glories in the Californian pine-woods, and 
 tlieir message is in harmony with his faith. ' AYe foUow 
 the impulse of our nature. The deeper we strike our roots 
 into earth, the higher we rise towards heaven.' — We need 
 not say more to show that in the case before us we are 
 abundantly satisfied, and that we recognize in the author 
 of ' The Pilgrim and the Shrine ' an artist who approaches 
 very near to the ideal that his brilliant pages disclose." — 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 " We welcome the graceful and temperate expression 
 of the new tendencies which we find in these ' passages.' 
 The merit consists in the sincere statement and attempted 
 solution of the cardinal problem, how to reconcile the 
 claims of individual conviction with the claims of social 
 duty ; how, in the surrender of the old traditional belief, 
 to retain a devout faith, to regard the world as the true 
 sphere of action, yet to live above the world in its worldlier 
 aspects : to be at once the practical man that works and 
 enjoys ; the contemplative man that knows the order and 
 the uses of the world ; and the religious man in whom 
 knowledge and work have not extinguished the sentiment 
 of a holy ideal. ' Herbert Ainslie ' argues calmly, analyses 
 with a logical composure, and is playful, witty, and 
 humorous when occasion permits. He is rich in experi- 
 ences gathered from converse with outward life, or har- 
 vested iDy quiet meditation. In addition to the attraction 
 that many will find in this tale of intellectual adventure, 
 more entertaining matter will also be found, pictures of
 
 
 scenery, sketches of wild life, graphic descriptions. In its 
 pages we meet with sagacious comment, bold conjecture, 
 pleasant anecdote, or witty remark. The repose of the 
 book is that of the ' noble grandeur ' of the trees which our 
 traveller invokes. The style is transparently clear, the 
 language pure, natural, and of Greek-like beauty. The 
 author has tried to reaUse his ideal of the novelist's mission. 
 "We hope to meet him again, and to see him approximate 
 still more closely to his high standard, in the delineation of 
 more complex scenes of life, and wider diversities of 
 thought, feeling, and action." — Westminster Review. 
 
 "This is a powerful and original book, and no one can 
 rise from its perusal without having obtaijied valuable food 
 for reflection. It indicates with merciless accuracy those 
 ' spots in our feasts of charity ' which too often render such 
 
 feasts formal, meaningless, and hfeless It is not 
 
 given to every youth who hesitates, from scruples of con- 
 science, to enter the ministry of the Church, to taste the 
 delightful perils of semi-savage life, and then to find con- 
 solation and repose in the arms of such a lovely and 
 sympathetic woman as Mary Travers is depicted." — Times. 
 
 " ' The Pilgrim and the Shrine,' one of the wisest and 
 most charming of books, has reached a second edition. It 
 contains some additions, a few admirable pages on bringing 
 up children. It is very interesting to observe that most of 
 the wisdom of the book comes from its simple candour. 
 Following this like a religion, and constantly keeping his 
 eye fixed on the exhaustless significance of the facts of oiu' 
 daily life, the author has produced a thoroughly good and 
 edifying book. The native freshness and bright clearness 
 of his style strike everybody." — Westminster Reviciv. 
 
 " Sincere autobiography has always a profound interest 
 of its own, and this book has that interest to its fullest 
 extent, — and everywhere perfect purity and naturahiess of 
 feeling." — Spectator. 
 
 '_' The hero's adventures are all told with a great deal of 
 artistic skill. "We could easily select passages of rare 
 brilliancy and beauty,— painted with a master's hand. But 
 these form only secondary and incidental features of a book, 
 the main object of which is to describe the passage of a 
 soul, out of what the writer regards as a land of Egyptian
 
 darkness and bondage, into one of liberty and light. — The 
 book may do good if it lead the Churches more earnestly to 
 consider the best way of dealing with Sceptical inquirers." 
 — Nonconformist. 
 
 " This clever and interesting book is a forcible expression, 
 not, indeed, of what any human being ought, in our 
 opinion, to feel, but unquestionably of what a great many 
 human beings are at this moment feeling. It faithfully 
 represents the state of bitter and rebellious indignation 
 into which many minds, naturally neither irrational nor 
 irreUgious, have laeen driven by the theology of the Letter." 
 — Fraser's Magazine. 
 
 " The most intelligible theory of such a book is that it 
 aspires to do for English materialism what ' Sartor Re- 
 sartus ' did for German transcendentalism ; that is, present 
 a fair picture of it as revealed to a young and susceptive 
 mind. If is a very interesting book as a book." — St James's 
 Magazine. 
 
 " Accepting the Editor's disclaimer (of its autobio- 
 graphical character) as made in all good faith, we can only 
 suppose that the papers of a singularly gifted and daring 
 mind have been put into his hands ; unless, indeed we give 
 him credit for a power of imaginative realization which, in 
 respect of its descriptions of travel, surpasses the marvel- 
 lous pictiu-es of Mr Kingsley in ' Westward Ho,' and, in 
 respect of his hero's processes of thought on theological, 
 moral, and social matters, far transcends any psychological 
 romance that we are acquainted with. Whatever the 
 genesis of the book, it is a production of singular power 
 and beauty, full of fascination to all who have thought at 
 all concerning the great problems of our moral and religious 
 life, or pondered the manner in which Christianity professes 
 
 to solve them As an exhibition of the processes of 
 
 rationalistic thought, the book, to those really competent to 
 sit in judgment upon it, is very instructive. Regarded as 
 a mere book of travels, it has great charms." — British 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 " It were the greatest folly in the world to ignore the 
 influence of such a work as the one before us. Be it for 
 good or evil, the publishing of this book must have
 
 tremendous results on the thought and belief of all 
 
 educated men. Wonderfully attractive as a book of travel 
 
 and adventure, it is still more attractive and engrossing, 
 
 philosophically, as the history of a soul struggling through 
 
 all the narrowness of mere theology, into free thought 
 
 and high aspiration. While we cannot agree with this 
 
 most clever author, we feel a true and earnest sympathy 
 
 with him. His life is a ' resiu-rection ' life, ever rising 
 
 from the past to the present and the future. There is 
 
 much to help a true man in this book, much to trouble, 
 
 but much that will advance him. If the ' Pilgrim and the 
 
 Shrine ' falls into the hands of some, it will lead them to 
 
 be sceptical, and possibly make them think it is grand to 
 
 be so. If it falls into the hands of many, even where they 
 
 cannot entirely follow it, they will see a wider, grander, 
 
 nobler ideal, than they had hitherto placed before them. 
 
 The book is talismanic, and as Carlyle says of such books, 
 
 will pertiuade men. We trust the effect of such persuasion 
 
 will be a larger and broader belief in the love of God, 
 
 and more firm faith in the divinity of humanity." — 
 
 Gloucester Mercury. 
 
 "A clever, earnest novel, which some of its admirers 
 regard as a sort of nineteenth centuiy Pilgrim's Progress." 
 — Examiner. 
 
 "It is a very reaiiarkable Pilgrim's Progress." — Eclectic 
 Review. 
 
 " An honest, earnest, true-hearted book." — Echoes from 
 the Clubs. 
 
 " It would do hundreds of thousands of people good to 
 peruse it." — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " The work of a brilliant, clever, and ready writer." — 
 Standard. 
 
 " But hardly likely to penetrate to those whose cruel 
 creeds and chilly, dismal lives, he, with a fine enthusiasm, 
 desires to change.'' — Fortidghlly Ilevieiv. 
 
 " Its aspects are so varied, and the whole so fascinating, 
 from whatever point of view it is seen, that we are forced to 
 pronounce it a very masterpiece." — Brooklyn (U.S.) Uition.
 
 By the same Author, 
 
 HIGHER LAW: A ROMANCE. 
 
 A NEW EDITION, 
 IN ONE VOL, UNIFORM WITH " ThE PiLGRIM AND THE 
 
 Shrine." Price 7s. 6d, 
 
 " As to tlae literary characteristics of Higher Law, 
 readers of The Pilgrim and the Shrine will not need to be 
 informed that it is a work of more than mere cleverness. 
 Something like genius inspires it. The originality of its 
 conceptions, the penetration of its criticisms, the beauty 
 and enthusiasm of its style, its careful study of character, 
 and the ingenuity and independence of its speculations, 
 wiU commend it to the admiration even of those who 
 differ from its conclusions the most gravely." — British 
 Quarterhj Review. 
 
 " Those who have read The Pilgrim and the Shrine will 
 need no words of praise from a reviewer to recommend 
 to them a new novel by the same author. . . The 
 method of Higher Laiv differs from that of the Elective 
 Affinities. Goethe breaks out into a great deal of gross- 
 ness. In Higher Law the absolute purity of the characters 
 is the great charm of the story. There is a subtle vein 
 of Pantheism — the physical Pantheism of Goethe rather 
 than the spiritual Pantheism of Shelley — running through 
 the whole story, and along with it are touches of a mys- 
 ticism which reminds us at times of the fancies of Novalis. 
 Considered as a work of art the unity which pervades the 
 story is beyond aU praise." — Echo. 
 
 " "WTi ether we agree or dissent we can still give the 
 author the same praise for this as we gave him for his 
 former work ; that is to say, we can credit him with 
 originality, boldness, and a capacity for philosophical 
 reflection of no mean order. . . Bravery of this par- 
 ticular kind is so very rare that when we do meet with it 
 it should be handsomely acknowledged." — Athcnxum.
 
 " Unless the reader is thoroughly acquainted with the 
 great questions of the day, unless he thoroughly, too, 
 perceives the tendencies of modern thought, unless he is 
 at home with the last Biblical criticisms, appreciates the 
 lessons of Darwin and Huxley in science, and has laid to 
 heart the doctrines of the more advanced school of physi- 
 ologists, much in this very remarkable book will be 
 perfectly unintelligible. Yet the book will find a large 
 number of readers, who, as time goes on, are sure to 
 increase. . . But the most superficial reader need not 
 be frightened away from it. If he is capable of admiring 
 wit and humour, he will find both in some of the minor 
 sketches ; if he has any love for description, he will find 
 charming pictures of scenery in Mexico ; if, too, he is 
 capable of appreciating what true love means, he will 
 find himself in a spiritual atmosphere such as we know 
 of in only one novel of the present day. The whole of the 
 love scenes are painted with an exquisite sense of poetry 
 and delicacy of feeling. . . That same purity of style 
 and earnestness of tone, that same depth of philosophic 
 reflection which marked The Pilgrim and the Shrine^ may 
 all be found, rendered still more attractive by the beauty 
 of the story, in the present work. There is no novel, in 
 short, which can be compared to it for its width of view, 
 its cultivation, its poetry, and its deep human interest . . 
 'except llumola.''^ — Westminster Review. 
 
 By the same Author, 
 
 JEWISH LITERATURE AND MODERN EDUCATION 
 
 being two lectures 
 
 On the Use and Misuse of the Bible in the Schoolroom. 
 Price 2s. 6d. Thos. Scott, Eamsgate. 
 
 " Excellent in substance and spirit, they indicate the 
 right Use of the Bible in Schools. The author solves what 
 is called 'the religious difficulty' fairly and rationally." — 
 Westminster Review.
 
 135 i... ait land - 
 
 602 Jewish literaturt 
 
 education 
 
 IMinn/nlflimii'^^^'Q'^'^'- LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 621 521 
 
 BS 
 602 
 
 M280