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No Israelite's land must be bought away from him, still less must he remain a slave for ever. Even * Acta vii. 21 : Joaephus, Jeunsh AntiquUlet, Spenser, De Legibua Jlehraorum, •f- ExodoB xxiii. 1 — la: Leviticus xii. la; xix. 9, 10: Deuteronomy xv. i — 15 ; xxii. I — 7. 310 SPIRIT, LETTER, PRIESTHOOD. the stranger must have no injustice done him. The land of the enemy is not to have its fruit-trees wantonly injured. The bird, sitting over its young, must be spared for its affection and for its offspring's sake. Nor is any fear of man to make faint the feeling of that Divine presence which mirrors itself to our conscience as the Right, and which ever pervades with a kind of awe any congregation of true men. "You can readily understand how men who apprehended vividly the principles involved in such regulations, would be trained by them to a righteous life: whereas, if men neither loved the thing intended, nor felt it strongly, they would take refuge from it in a formal observance of the letter; and by degrees might think there was no reason for the letter beyond the mere will of an imposing power. Thus the true spirit of the thing might fade away from among them. The law would become an external restraint, dreaded for its penalties, or for the power which imposed it, but no longer an expression of blessed truths, nor an instrument of awakening the soul of man to a true sight of things Divine. Especially this evil would grow, if the priests or teachers of the law, who ought to have known themselves its instruments, should become its masters, and lay stress chiefly on whatever nourished their wealth or power, while they neglected the weightier matters of justice and mercy. Something of this kind happened among the ancient Hebrews ; but you should read it described in the Bible. The people yielded to all those temptations which surround men from flesh and sense and ignorance; and the priests, whose lip should have kept knowledge for them, turned their eyes only to ritual expiations, and taught a fierce zeal for the name*, or the temple*, or the bookf of Jehovah, or even for the nominal sanctity of the people of Israel t, while they did not awaken them to do justly, and to love mercy. * Jeremiah v. 30, 31 ; vii. 4 — 10: Hoeea vi, 6 — 9. t Jeremiah viii. 8: Psahn L 16: St John vii. 49: St Luke iv. 17, 28: Acts xxit 11, 22. HEBREW PROPUECT. 311 ** But as in other nations we have already noticed that it is the mission of conscientious reason to prevent worship from losing morality, so especially in Israel we find great teachers of righteousness raised up, whose work was kindred, but more direct than that of such sages elsewhere. These are the Hebrew prophets and sweet singers of the temple, who might be com- pared roughly to your Rishis, or partly to the authors of the Vedic hymns, and partly to your religious reformers. It was the mission of these men to rouse in their coimtrymen a deeper sense of the eternal meaning of the law, or of that spirit which the letter was intended to realise. Thus on the one hand, they ciy aloud against the sins of king and people, and on the other, they bring deeper remedies than the selfish policy or stupid formalism of the priests could devise. For these prophets are themselves fiill of that eternal Spirit of God, which breathes in some measure through every well-meant effort to realise right- eousness on earth. Tlius while they refer men to a study of the law, they express also its life in fresh forms of their own. They lay less stress on its external ceremonies, but they cry out for that which it expresses, even a conformity of mind, and by consequence, of life, to the unwritten Word which stands fast in the counsel of God. Thus temporary accidents fade from their thought ; customs become changeable ; outward ceremonies have their value only from the feeling which they embody, though in this feeling may be comprehended obedience as well as love ; and in short, the sacrifices of God become the contrite spirit, the trustful heart, or the love going forth in righteousness to man. Only, as all things durable must be by method and order, so to the prophets the solemn services of the temple are dear, and the ancient words of the law retain sacredness: but the living mind of man is ever turned by them from resting in such things to the unseen harmony which lies behind them, to the shaping Will of God, and to the willing obedience of the entire man as dwelling in that presence apprehended by the mind. 312 PKEDICATION AND PREDICTION. "Certainly as events come not without Divine Providena^, so neither do utterances like those of the Hebrew prophets come without the moving of the Divine Spirit, although its movement may be grandly general, and througli links of order in the world of spirit, even as His visible works are regulated by law throughout the world. You would not be able to read such books as that of Isaiah, and of the Psalms, and then to consider calmly over what a number of generations this solemn utterance of prophecy extends, without concluding for yourselves that an eternal Providence has thus given the world an evolution of Truth. You would catch, as it were, a contagion of like spirit from studying such words, and enter into an unity of fellowship with the holy breathing which animates them. " But, if lessons of the Judge of the whole earth are given in vain, there comes thus an imdesigned disorder into His scheme of governing, and with disorder through human fault comes suffering, such as we call pmiishment. For man being once free to choose, if he chooses wrongly, must take suffering. Thus, as the prophets spoke mostly in vain, the predications ot Truth became predictions of evil to men who rejected them. From time to time therefore the earnest command, *Do justly, and love mercy,' becomes joined with cries of mourning and woe. Already in the law of Moses*, though I know not whether in the earliest part of it, there had been a promise to the people, that God would raise up prophets of truth among them ; and it had been threatened, that, if they followed sensuous diviners, or juggling teachers of evil, instead of the teacher of spiritual truth, they should perish from off the good land given them. There had also been solemn wamingf, that if the iniquity of the people became extreme, God would raise up conquerors against them ; even * nations from the end of the earth, swifl as the eagle flieth, and nations of fierce countenance, who should besiege their cities, and make an end' of their realm. These sort of warnings reappear in the books of the prophets, and • Deuteronomy xriii. 15^18—22. t Ibid, xxviii. 48 -59. ANTICIPATION OF BETTER KINGDOM. 313 become deeper from time to time. So that, on the whole, the burthen of Hebrew prophecy is an utterance of profoimd spiritual truth, a condemnation of the people to whom it is spoken, and a prediction of their being scattered over the face of the earth. " But this is not all. For, by the side of warnings of evil, we find a clear foresight that the cause of good, which is that of Grod, must triumph in the end. Though man is perverse, yet his shortsightedness must not defeat an eternal predestination of the good of his race. Although tlierefore individuals may cut themselves out of the kingdom by imfitness for it, the Divine kingdom of truth and holiness and right must go on fulfilling itself in the earth. Even therefore if the Israelites by blood should fall away, God will work out for himself an Israel* of the mind, in whose heart the old sayings of His righteousness shall find an echo, and bear fruit in tlieir lives. It is true the prophets speak mostly as Hebrews, and they naturally rejoice in hoping the Divine kingdom may come out chiefly in con- nexion with their own race. Their tone is national as well as religious. But they foresee clearly that no accidents of blood or place will interfere with a perfect fulfilment of the thought which the Divine Governor is bringing to pass in mankind. Thus they foresee that many things will pass away. Their kings then rejoiced in war : but the prophets look forward to a triumph of peace. Their temple was, according to the Scrip- ture, a place of sacrificing beasts ; but they foresee a time when the consecration of man's heart (which the other only sym- bolised) will be held far better.