But surely the words which immediately follow the above Biblical text would suffice to disprove the charge. "For the whole earth is mine." The words spoken by the Lord when he called Abraham, "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed,"[1] equally proclaim the divine concern in the welfare of the entire human family, and indicate the relation intended to subsist between the chosen race and the rest of the world. And in that same spirit of catholicity does Moses, the representative man of this exclusive race, address his "tribal God" as "the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh,"[2] the God alike of Jew and Gentile. All human beings form part of his universal family, all are alike created in his image, all are alike sustained, loved, and redeemed by him, the eternal, merciful Father of the human race.[3]
Nor do the teachings of the prophets disprove the professor's assertion less distinctly. "Adonai," in whose name the inspired seers speak, is not the tutelary Deity of the Israelites, is not the God of one people only, whose territory is bounded by the Lebanon and the Jordan. We hear their glowing admonitions addressed to all the great empires of the East—to Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia no less than to the kingdom of Judæa. Obadiah and Jonah, indeed, were sent exclusively to preach repentance to pagan Edom and pagan Nineveh. Nor do the interpreters of the divine will announce their messages with cold insensibility. Their hearts overflow with pity while they declare Heaven's stern decree. "My compassion yearneth for Moab as a harp,"[4] Isaiah exclaims. "Raise the lamentation over the king of Tyre, over Pharaoh," are the words of Ezekiel.[5] Nor are these kingdoms any the less objects of divine mercy than is Israel himself. "Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of mine hands, and Israel, mine inheritance."[6]
Whilst the ancient classical poets taught that the golden age of the world was a thing of the past, the prophets of Israel announce that it must be looked for in future time. And what is the picture they unroll before us? Not Israel, the triumphant, enthroned in majesty on Zion as the conqueror of the earth, but all the nations of the globe beatified by the possession of truth and the acknowledgment of the divine unity. "For then will I turn to the nations a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve him with one consent."[7] And Malachi, the last of the prophets acknowledged by Judaism, sums up these teachings in the touching words: "Have we not all one father, hath not one God created us?"[8]—a quotation heard many a time and oft from Christian as well as Jewish pulpits. How can the learned professor assert in the face of it, that the Jews regarded God as the Deity of his chosen race, and not as the Father of all?
Mr. Goldwin Smith next states that the morality embodied in the Mosaic law was in its day a nearer approach to humanity than any other known law. But he adds the damaging qualification that both the morality and the law were distinctly "tribal." It "sanctioned a difference of principle between the rule of dealing with a Hebrew and that of dealing with a stranger, which the civilized conscience now condemns." A strange misconception! Amid the great divergence of opinions in the theological world, there is one point on which unanimity prevails—that the decalogue taught on Sinai contains the germs of all the duties which man owes his Creator and his fellow-creatures. The professor may look upon the opinion of a Jewish rabbi as warped by partiality. Will he reject with like disdain the authoritative teaching of the Dean of Westminster?
The Ten Commandments delivered on Mount Sinai have become embedded in the heart of the religion which has succeeded.—They represent to us both in fact and in idea the granite foundation, the immovable mountain, on which the world is built up, without which all theories of religion are but as shifting and fleeting clouds; they give us the two homely fundamental laws, which all subsequent religion has but confirmed and sanctioned—the law of our duty towards God and the law of our duty towards our neighbor.[9]
When Israel was about to be redeemed from Egypt, when the first precept was given him, the divine order was issued, "One law shall be to him that is homeborn and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you."[10] Again in Leviticus,[11] where
- ↑ Gen. Xii. 3.
- ↑ Numb. xxvii. 16.
- ↑ Cf. Pirke Aboth, ch. iii., p 14. "Man" (not the Israelite) "is the object of divine love, inasmuch as he has been created in the image of the Lord."
- ↑ Isa. xvi. 11.
- ↑ Ezek. xxviii. 12, xxxii. 2.
- ↑ Isa; xix. 25.
- ↑ Zeph. iii. 9.
- ↑ Mal. ii. 10.
- ↑ Dean Stanley's "Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church," vol. i., p. 150.
- ↑ Exod. xii. 49.
- ↑ xxiv. 22.
