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But again beyond the quickened sense of personal dignity and worth which resulted from conscious inspiration, the preciousness of the individual soul seemed to follow from the very thought of a God who was willing to communicate Himself to His creatures. The goodness of God, manifested in His readiness to bring man into a relationship of sacred intimacy with Himself, formed as it were an implicit premise whence the hopeful conclusion might be drawn that a creature so favoured was not destined to extinction, but rather to a life of fellowship with his Maker, not to be interrupted even by death. Thus the evolution of the sense of individuality depended upon the spiritual experience of elect souls. There arrived a stage in Israel's religion when good men found their only solace in the life of communion with God. In the troublous and dreary period of Israel's permanent subjection to a foreign yoke, personal religion became the strength and stay of the devout. To the psalmists, for example, the thought of God is a refuge in any trouble; He alone is the object of the soul's confident trust, its adoring joy, its sacred thirst, its supreme exultation, its limitless love. And the soul which was capable of such yearnings and aspirations, felt itself ennobled by the reflected majesty of Him to whom it clung. With strong confidence it rested in the assurance that what God had so highly favoured and blessed, He would not despise. Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell—such was the cry of the human heart. God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive

me.

My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever1. The man whose portion is this life clings to what is vain. and transitory; and he passes away with that to which he clings. But the soul which holds to God discovers in its very love the pledge of an undying life.

The hope which is fulfilled in Christianity is thus foreshadowed and anticipated in the Old Testament: 1 Pss. xvi. 10, xlix. 15, lxxiii. 26.

the hope, namely, of a kingdom of God which is also a kingdom of personality; a sphere in which, with the advancing development of the community, the individual also arrives at the plenitude of liberty, perfection, and blessedness 1.

There remains yet another factor which tended to develope the life of personal religion. Just as the dissolution of the Greek states gave a certain impulse to the spread of Stoicism with its characteristic doctrine of the avтáркeια of the individual, so the disasters which darkened the later stages of Judah's history inevitably suggested some fundamental moral problems, to the solution of which the wisdom of the time devoted its energies. At the same time the pressure of national calamity roused in individual men doubts and questionings respecting their personal relation to the God of their fathers. In fact in the sacred literature of the Hebrews we have an example of a phenomenon familiar in secular history. One consequence of political disorganization was that Hebrew sages devoted themselves to inquiries concerning the duties of life and the conditions of personal well-being, either by way of compensation for the loss of a sphere of public activity, or as a solace amid the troubles of a declining state. The prevalence of violent social anomalies and contrasts, combined with the corruption and decay of public religion, quickened the spirit of inquiry into the deeper mysteries of the divine dealings with mankind. Such fundamental religious ideas as those of personal responsibility, of the need of atonement for sin, and of the efficacy of repentance were the fruit of sorrowful meditation on the causes of Israel's national ruin. These ideas took their place as permanent elements in the religious character; they practically marked an advanced stage in the growth of the human mind. Ancient theories of human suffering and of divine retribution upon wrong-doing had become too strait to satisfy the needs of an enlarged

1 Cp. Martensen, Christian Ethics (General), § 63.

experience. They failed to provide a resting-place for thought, or an adequate explanation of indisputable facts. Man's perplexities, in short, drove him to find refuge in the inscrutable power and changeless character of God. Thus the Old Testament is a history of the education of faith; it ends with a presage of a divine self-manifestation which alone can solve the riddle of the universe and throw light on the destiny of man.

We have now reviewed in a summary fashion the main topics which will be severally considered in subsequent lectures. It is worth while to observe, in conclusion, how closely the general arrangement of the Hebrew Bible appears to correspond with those five aspects of Old Testament theology which have been briefly described.

In the Pentateuch and the historical books, the two most prominent ideas are those of redemption and revelation. The book of Exodus contains the account of a redemptive movement on God's part which forms a kind of creative period in the history of Israel and of mankind1. The deliverance of the chosen people laid the foundation of that view of history which is characteristic of the Bible: it gave birth to the conviction that God is in very truth a living God; that His hand is at work in the universe, controlling the destinies of nations and using the faculties of individual men; that He manifests Himself in the world in order to further moral purposes of His own, in ways that are relatively to us supernatural. But the deliverance of Israel from bondage was also the starting-point of a higher revelation. The character of Jehovah was displayed both in the fact of the deliverance, and in the manner of its accomplishment. The God of Israel's salvation revealed. Himself as a being of transcendent beneficence, longsuffering, and pity for the oppressed". And the evidence for the actual events of the exodus is parallel

1 Cp. Wellhausen, Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah, p. 7. 2 Cp. Bruce, Chief End of Revelation, pp. 193, 194.

to that which attests the resurrection of Christ. The testimony lies in Israel's national life and historical career, which cannot be satisfactorily explained apart from some great original impulse that can only be attributed to divine power. The deliverance itself called into existence a church or witnessing body, which cherished the recollection of its wonderful past in living hearts and memories. The testimony to the fact of the exodus was thus independent of any written record; such a record was quite possibly formed at a period contemporaneous with the events, but as it is impossible to say whether any portion of it survives in its original shape, so it is important not to overestimate our dependence on documentary evidence.

To resume, in the Pentateuch we find a history of redemption and a revelation of Jehovah, together with that which necessarily accompanies such revelation, namely the institution of a new relationship between God and man, which in the book of Exodus is conceived as a covenant based on moral conditions. The historical deliverance was the foundation of a higher religion, marked by a higher standard of morality. There can be no doubt that this new morality was an original element in Mosaic religion, whatever may have been its precise extent in the earliest legislation. The object of Israel's redemption was proclaimed from the first, though it was only very gradually and slowly brought to fulfilment. The original law of Israel, says Professor Robertson Smith, 'is pervaded by a constant sense that the righteous and gracious Jehovah is behind the law, and wields it in conformity with His own holy nature. The law, therefore, makes no pretence at ideality.... The ordinances are not abstractly perfect and fit to be a rule of life in every state of society, but they are fit to make Israel a righteous, humane, and God-fearing people, and to facilitate a healthy growth towards better things. In a word, the undoubted tendency of the first legislation was 10. T. in J. C. p. 343.

towards the development of a higher morality. The character of the divine kingdom was ethically determined even in the earliest stage of its history.

The next division of the Hebrew Bible-the book of the prophets, former and latter is mainly concerned with the actual history of the covenant relationship which Jehovah had established between Himself and Israel. In these books history is described or interpreted from the theocratic point of view; events are regarded as worthy of record in proportion as they illustrate the advance or the retrogression of the theocratic idea. The writers of the earlier books make it their chief aim to illustrate the blessings which follow faithful observance of the covenant conditions and the loss that follows unfaithfulness. The great prophets themselves have two main themes: judgment and redemption. Their mission is to denounce Israel's unfaithfulness, and to vindicate the spiritual conditions of the divine covenant; but their warnings and rebukes alternate with promises of a glorious future-promises which reach their climax in the prediction of a new covenant' unlike the ancient covenant of the exodusa covenant under which the spiritual blessings for which the heart of man waits and longs shall be effectually attained. From one point of view, at any rate, this passage may be regarded as the culminating point of Messianic prophecy; so at least it seems to be treated by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The characteristic blessings of the Messianic age are virtually summed up in three promised spiritual gifts: power to do God's will, knowledge of His character, remission of past sins.

Lastly, the writings classed as Hagiographa illustrate in various forms the subjective apprehension of the blessings of covenant fellowship. They are the product of religious emotion and religious reason. Accordingly in this group of books there is something that gives us the sense of a many-sided sympathy' in 1 Jer. xxxi. 31 foll.

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