English
All nations must be happier in proportion as a dominion of the highest right and goodness extends itself over their thoughts, thereby fulfilling on earth the kingdom of God. All men must become wiser in proportion as a clear mental sight of the Divine laws takes the place of anxiety about external events, and as a speaker of truth in meekness awakening the answer of conscience, and urging the heart to action, is allowed to be emphatically a prophet or forth-teller of the mind of the Heavenly Spirit. So in proportion as we come, with a feeling of the sanctity of life, to do the Divine will in ourselves and to others, we become a spiritual priesthood. These three fulfil- ments of the king, the prophet, and the priest, whom the old prophets described as having an unction of office, are far better than falling back upon force, or curiosity, or ritual. These also are being fulfilled in event daily, and were therefore the things essentially intended by the Divine author of the drama, however imperfectly the human players understood it. "What then is the substance of this Christian religion, which we contend to be the natural fulfilment to which the religion of the Jews had a tendency of old? Or, to speak differently, what were the thoughts with which Judaism was pregnant, and which have come to birth in Christianity? We • Hebrewv x. 9 ; xiii. i^. M. P. 21 322 CHBI8TIAN PfiATER. HEBREW LAW. cannot answer this better, than by taking the prayer which all Christians ereiywhere use, and which expresses the thoughts of the Founder of their faith in His own words. This prayer Jesus Christ taught His followers : — Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name ; Thy kingdom come ; Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heayen : Give us this day our daily bread ; And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us firom evil : For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the gloiy, for ever and ever. Amen. " The meaning of this prayer will come out more fiiUy, if we look at the principal commandments in which the will of Jehovah was expressed by Moses. They are these : — 1. Thou shalt have none other Qods but me. 2. Thou shalt not make images to worship. 3. Thou shalt not lift God's name over falsehood. 4; Keep holy the day of rest. 5. Honour thy father and thy mother. 6. Thou shalt not kill. 7. Thou shalt not commit adulter}'. 8. Thou shalt not steal. 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness. 10. Thou shalt not desire what is thy neighbour's. " Like the wise Hindti, who told the Athenians that it was not possible to know human duties without knowing Divine things, you see, Moses begins with the fear of God. His God is the Eternal Being, by whose will all things stand. And as there is no greater sign or cause, than idolatry is, of men's losing the conception of pure Spirit, so this is the first thing jealously forbidden. For this entails a blindness from fathers to children, which degrades nations both in worship and right- eousness. But where there is a pure mental conception of our HEBREW LAW. 323 Divine Ruler, it begets a sense of responsibility fruitful in virtaes. So out of sanctity will come truthfulness ; and thus the legislator goes on to forbid false-swearing as not only deceiv- ing man, but as mocking our invisible Judge. Again, a part of religion is humanity ; and so a convenient day is appointed for the labourer to rest, and for all men to reflect, and for earthly anxiety to have intermission of though tfulness and prayer. Then, as God has made our parents both the first ministers of His gifts to us, and our first teachers in things wholesome, so that the life of men, and consequently of nations, will take a tinge from them at its commencement, so human duty is made to begin with honouring them. Then come the great sanctities of our social state ; the life which God gives us, the marriage which He blesses, the property which He sanctions, the character which He bids us respect both in ourselves and others, being all hedged round with prohibitions of wrong. Certainly these simple command- ments are more striking to tlie general mind of a nation than any wise speculations about morals; and yet, though a little child understands them, they imply principles which a philo- sopher might draw out, and acknowledge to be deep in the nature of things. These principles were indeed the cement of Hebrew society ; and in their strength the nation maintained its imity, with partial interruption, for about fifteen centuries ; while even now its descendants have a bond of coherence, and a capacity of personal (or even of national) revival, in the re- membrance of these things, and in the moral strength which comes of them. Nor is it a slight consideration, into how many lands these precepts have been carried, and how many realms have adopted them, not only into their laws, but among the first principles to which the rest of the code must conform itself. So that, though the Hebrew polity has passed away, that which its framers felt of the eternal breathing of God lives on, and passes into the intellectual being of nations yet to be. Now it is not easy to suppose that words of such power did not come out of something deeper ; or that the feelings which they tend to 21—2 824 HEBREW LAW. awaken were not apprehended by whoever originally spoke them. But yet, so long as you look at the words themselves, they have something negative in their tone. They prohibit evil, rather than express good. Thus they dwell in the sphere of external law, which limits with threats, but does not implant life by goodness. Even of the Eternal God, there is little written, beyond His name, which should draw us to Him. Only there is a warning not to stray from Him. The second and third precepts have each a sanction of penalty, appealing to fear; and though fear may be a necessary step among our motives, yet it is a low one. The fourth precept speaks merely of keeping the day holy, instead of pointing out the good uses it may be turned to. We need not wonder, therefore, that to the old Jews, who were worshippers of the letter, one day seemed holier than another, though to Christians, whose law is the Holy Spirit, it never can appear so. Even the fifth precept, though expressing one of the deepest natural truths, has yet a mere temporal reason attached to it. The four next are merely pro- hibitive, and it is only in the last that there is a dim prophecy of the truth, how all our actions have root in thought, and how out of an evil or good heart proceed the issues of death or life. " Look now at the more hearty rendering of the above things into prayer, which appears in the great devotional symbol of the Church of Christ everywhere. Our Father y which art in heaven. Who does not love his own father, of whom he comes, and of whom he has everything, and by whom he is loved beyond expression ? But we have in the pure world of thought, One, of whose counsel all earthly fathers come, and in whose un- searchable depth all the fountains of human compassion have their rise. Nothing is greater than its only Source; nor can the love or wisdom of Man be more loving or wise than Qod. How then can we have any other gods but this One, who in- vites us by such a name ? Thus He persuades us more strongly to abide by Him, than any penalty for leaving Him. There could be no greater loss than to lose Him. We want no other CUBISTIAN PBAYEB TO ONE OOD. 325 Qoi than one who both fills onr affections, and enables us to feel them. Thus the faith of Christ fulfils the spirit of the commandment, and abolishes its letter. Again, no Christian can well say, Mj Father, for He is to all of us Ours. Thus we are assured, that He loves not only each of us, but all. So long then as we remain His children in the cast of our minds, we cannot wilfuUj injure those whom He joins with us in a brotherhood, as sajing alike. Our Father. Hence alone might come every duty and love to man. This the Hebrew prophets began to feel, when they said, ' Have we not all one Lord and Father? why deal we treacherously every man against his neighbour*?' But this doctrine of love was in the Divine thought before the enactment of law, and goes beyond the sphere of written law in development.