CHAPTER XVII.

THE HEBREWS IN HISTORY.

IN concluding the study of Paganism, it was seen that while Greece and Rome had made great contributions to progress, they failed to lay the foundation of an enduring civilisation. On the moral side Paganism proved a miserable failure. When the spiritual unity of Paganism was broken the evil influence of idolatry became manifest. Man is a worshipping animal, and as he becomes assimilated to the object worshipped it is easy to see how the worship of the Pagan deities tended to individual and social corruption. In an age when science was unknown and when moral philosophy was studied only by the few, a new and higher form of civilisation was only possible by the substitution of purer objects of worship than

those of Greece and Rome. It is a law of history that man's intellectual and moral position is determined by his conception of the Power behind the Universe. Knowledge naturally splits into three divisions-knowledge of God, of Man, and of the Universe. The determining factor in civilisation is the first-named-knowledge of God. The conceptions which men form of the mysterious Power upon which all things hang, of which man and nature are manifestations, determine the relations between man and man-determine, in a word, individual and social ethics.

Knowledge, however imperfect, is a unity; and when, as in prehistoric times, that unity is unbroken by scepticism, a remarkably high individual and social development may take place. When civilisation progresses men's beliefs in the gods undergo a change, under the influence of deeper thought, and the spiritual unity is broken. The moral energy of the people becomes weakened. The gods, instead of being identified with high ideals, become exaggerations of human weaknesses and vices. Scepticism gives birth to cynicism, and cynicism breeds immorality, the end of

which is social and national corruption. Where is the remedy to be found? How can civilisation get a fresh start? Only in one way-by the presentation to the mind of nobler objects of worship. Men are led in the path of progress not by abstract reason but by the emotions, not by the cold inductions of science but by hearty devotion to ideals. We live, as Wordsworth has it, by admiration. Find out what men and nations admire, discover what they worship, and you will find the key to their intellectual and moral status and development. Clearly, then, the first step in the salvation of civilisation lay in securing for mankind a pure form of worship; the immoral gods of Paganism must give place to moral gods. Moreover, belief in a plurality of gods, which had much to do with the immoral element in Paganism, must give place to the conception of unity. Progress was impossible unless a pure Monotheism could be substituted for an impure Polytheism.

Of course we shall be reminded of the fact, made apparent in our exposition of the views. of the great Greek thinkers and poets, that

the best minds of Paganism had reached Monotheism. That was not enough. What was needed was that the people as a whole should get saturated with Monotheism; that a new form of national life should spring up, the unity of which was belief in one holy God, whose face was sternly set against idolatry with all its impure accompaniments. From an obscure people, the Hebrews, came the impulse which raised civilisation out of the corruption into which it had fallen, and gave the world a new start on the road to moral progress. It is not necessary here to deal with the Higher Critical views of Hebrew literature. For our present purpose it matters not whether we view Hebrew literature, as represented by the Bible, as historically reliable or as containing legendary matter. Legends rest upon ideals; mythical heroes are the incarnation of the ideals which must have dominated the popular mind before they found their way into the national literature. The fact to be noted is that among the Hebrews the evolution of beliefs about the Power behind all things pursued a course very different from that of Greece and

Rome. We are told by critics of the Wellhausen school that the idea of God developed among the Hebrews in the same way as it did among other peoples, in being a development from Fetishism to Monotheism.

It is taken for granted that the evolution of ideas about the gods is always from primitive superstition in an ascending scale ever higher and truer, to the idea of a holy and righteous God. No such orderly evolution existed. Startling as it may seem, the truth is that men's ideas of the heavenly Powers are purer in the earlier than in the intermediate stage. We see this in the cases of Greece and Rome, where the hideous characters given to the gods in the days of civilisation contrast very badly with primitive beliefs. Suppose we grant with the Higher Critics that Israel's idea of God conformed to the law of evolution. Suppose we grant with Kuenen that to the prophets we owe the monotheistic idea, and that not till the Exile were the people purged of their Polytheism. Suppose all this, the crucial question still remains - How came the Hebrews to escape the law of degeneration