Chapter IX: Part 9

It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the affinity of this idea with that of sacrifices in general, as in both cases it is the innocent being which has to suffer for the sins of another creature. But there is one vital point which makes all the difference. It is that in our case the suffering is not enforced, but is a voluntary act on the part of the sacrifice, and is even desired by him. Without entering here on the often‐ discussed theme of the suffering of the Messiah, I need only mention the words of R. Ishmael who, on a very slight provocation, exclaimed, “I am the atonement for the Jews,” which means that he took upon him all their sins to suffer for them.(176) This desire seems to have its origin in nothing else than a deep sympathy and compassion with Israel. To suffer _for_, or, at least _with_ Israel was, according to the Rabbis, already the ideal of Moses. He is said, indeed, to have broken the Two Tables with the purpose of committing some sin, so that he would have either to be condemned together with Israel (for the sin of the golden calf), or to be pardoned together with them.(177) And this conduct was expected not only from the leaders of Israel, but almost from every Jew. “When Israel is in a state of affliction (as, for instance, famine) one must not say, I will rather live by myself, and eat and drink, and peace be unto thee, my soul. To those who do so the words of the Scriptures are to be applied: And in that day did the Lord God of Hosts call to weeping and to mourning, ... and behold joy and gladness.... Surely this iniquity shall not be purged out from you till ye die” (Is. xxii. 12‐14). Another passage is to the effect that, when a man shows himself indifferent to the suffering of the community, there come the two angels (who accompany every Jew), put their hands on his head, and say, “This man who has separated himself shall be excluded from their consolations.”(178)

We might now characterise this sort of suffering as the chastisement of love (of the righteous) to mankind, or rather to Israel. But we must not confuse it with the Chastisement of Love often mentioned in the Talmud, though this idea also seems calculated to account for the suffering of the righteous. Here the love is not on the side of the sufferer, but proceeds from him who inflicts this suffering. “Him,” says R. Huna, “in whom God delights he crushes with suffering.” As a proof of this theory the words of Is. liii. 10 are given, which are interpreted to mean: him whom the Lord delights in He puts to grief. Another passage, by the same authority, is to the effect that where there is no sufficient cause for punishment (the man being entirely free from sin), we have to regard his suffering as a chastisement of love, for it is said: “Whom the Lord loveth He correcteth” (Proverbs iii. 11).(179) To what purpose He corrects him may, perhaps, be seen from the following passage: “R. Eleazar ben Jacob says: If a man is visited by affliction he has to be thankful to God for it: for suffering draws man to, and reconciles him with God, as it is said: For whom God loveth he correcteth.”(180)

It is in conformity with such a high conception that affliction, far from being dreaded, becomes almost a desirable end, and we hear many Rabbis exclaim, “Beloved is suffering,” for by it fatherly love is shown to man by God; by it man obtains purification and atonement, by it Israel came in possession of the best gifts, such as the Torah, the Holy Land, and eternal life.(181) And so also the sufferer, far from being considered as a man with a suspected past, becomes an object of veneration, on whom the glory of God rests, and he brings salvation to the world if he bears his affliction with joyful submission to the will of God.(182) Continuous prosperity is by no means to be longed after, for, as R. Ishmael taught, “He who has passed forty days without meeting adversity has already received his (share of the) world (to come) in this life.”(183) Nay, the standing rule is that the really righteous suffer, whilst the wicked are supposed to be in a prosperous state. Thus, R. Jannai said, “We (average people) enjoy neither the prosperity of the wicked nor the afflictions of the righteous,”(184) whilst his contemporary, Rab, declared that he who experiences no affliction and persecution does not belong to them (the Jews).(185)

2. The second main view on Retribution is that recorded by the Rabbis as in direct opposition to that of R. Ammi. It is that there is suffering as well as death without sin and transgression. We may now just as well infer that there is prosperity and happiness without preceding merits. And this is, indeed, the view held by R. Meir. For in contradiction to the view cited above, R. Meir declares that the request of Moses to have explained to him the mysterious ways of Providence was _not_ granted, and the answer he received was, “And I will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy” (Exod. xxxiii. 19), which means to say, even though he to whom the mercy is shown be unworthy of it. The old question arises how such a procedure is to be reconciled with the justice and omnipotence of God. The commentaries try to evade the difficulty by suggesting some of the views given above, as that the real reward and punishment are only in the world to come, or that the affliction of the righteous is only chastisement of love, and so on. From the passages I am about to quote, however, one gains the impression that some Rabbis rather thought that this great problem will indeed not bear discussion or solution at all. Thus we have the legend: “The angels said to God, why have you punished Adam with death? He answered, On account of his having transgressed my commandment (with regard to the eating of the tree of knowledge). But why had Moses and Aaron to die? The reply given to them is the words, Eccl. ix. 2: ‘All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked, to the good and to the clean and to the unclean.’ ”(186) Another legend records, “When Moses ascended to heaven, God showed him also the great men of futurity. R. Akiba was sitting and interpreting the law in a most wonderful way. Moses said to God: Thou hast shown me his worth, show me also his reward; on which he is bidden to look back. There he perceives him dying the most cruel of deaths, and his flesh being sold by weight. Moses now asks: Is this the reward of such a life? whereupon God answers him: Be silent; this I have determined.”(187)

It is impossible not to think of the fine lines of the German poet:—

Warum schleppt sich blutend, elend,
Unter Kreuzlast der Gerechte,
Während glücklich als ein Sieger
Trabt auf hohem Ross der Schlechte?

Also fragen wir beständig,
Bis man uns mit einer Handvoll
Erde endlich stopft die Mäuler—
Aber ist das eine Antwort?

Still, one might perhaps suggest that these passages when examined a little closer, not only contain a rebuke to man’s importunity in wanting to intrude into the secrets of God, but also hint at the possibility that even God’s omnipotence is submitted to a certain law—though designed by His own holy will—which He could not alter without detriment to the whole creation. Indeed, in one of the mystical accounts of the martyrdom of R. Akiba and other great Rabbis, God is represented as asking the sufferers to accept His hard decree without protest, unless they wish Him to destroy the whole world. In another place again, we read of a certain renowned Rabbi, who lived in great poverty, that once in a dream he asked the divine Shechinah how long he would have still to endure this bitter privation? The answer given to him was: “My son, will it please you that I destroy the world for your sake?”(188) It is only in this light that we shall be able to understand such passages in the Rabbinic literature as that God almost suffers Himself when He has to inflict punishment either on the individual or on whole communities. Thus God is represented as mourning for seven days (as in the case when one loses a child) before He brought the deluge on the world; He bemoans the fall of Israel and the destruction of the Temple, and the Shechinah laments even when the criminal suffers his just punishment. And it is not by rebelling against these laws that He tries to redeem His suffering. He himself has recourse to prayer, and says: “May it be my will that my mercy conquer my wrath, that my love over‐rule my strict justice, so that I may treat my children with love.”(189) If now man is equal to God, he has nevertheless, or rather on that account, to submit to the law of God without any outlook for reward or punishment; or, as Antigonos expressed it, “Be not as slaves that minister to the Lord with a view to receive recompense.”(190) Certainly it would be hazardous to maintain that Antigonos’s saying was a consequence of this doctrine; but, at any rate, we see a clear tendency to keep the thought of reward (in spite of the prominent part it holds in the Bible) out of view. Still more clearly is it seen when, with reference to Ps. cxii., “Blessed is the man ... that delighteth greatly in his commandments,” Rabbi Eleazar remarks that the meaning is that the man desires only to do His commandments, but he does not want the rewards connected with them.(191) This is the more remarkable, as the whole contents of this psalm are nothing else than a long series of promises of various rewards, so that the explanation of Rabbi Eleazar is in almost direct contradiction to the simple meaning of the words. On the other hand, also, every complaint about suffering must cease. Not only is affliction no direct chastisement by God in the way of revenge; but even when it would seem to us that we suffer innocently, we have no right to murmur, as God himself is also suffering, and, as the Talmud expresses it, “It is enough for the slave to be in the position of his master.”(192)

This thought of the compassion—in its strictest sense of fellow‐ suffering—of God with His creatures becomes a new motive for avoiding sin. “Woe to the wicked,” exclaims a Rabbi, “who by their bad actions turn the mercy of God into strict justice.”(193) And the later mystics explain distinctly that the great crime of sin consists in causing pain, so to speak, to the Shechinah. One of them compared it with the slave who abuses the goodness of his master so far as to buy with his money arms to wound him. But, on the other hand, it becomes, rather inconsistently, also a new source of comfort; for, in the end, God will have to redeem Himself from this suffering, which cannot be accomplished so long as Israel is still under punishment.(194) Most interesting is the noble prayer by a Rabbi of a very late mystical school: “O God, speedily bring about the redemption. I am not in the least thinking of what I may gain by it. I am willing to be condemned to all tortures in hell, if only the Shechinah will cease to suffer.”(195)

If we were now to ask for the attitude of the Synagogue towards these two main views, we should have to answer that—as already hinted at the opening of this paper—it never decided for the one or the other. R. David Rocca Martino dared even to write a whole book in Defence of Adam proving that he committed no sin in eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge against the literal sense of the Scriptures, which were also taken by the Rabbis literally.(196) By this he destroyed the prospects of many a theodicy, but it is not known to me that he was severely rebuked for it. It has been said by a great writer that the best theology is that which is not consistent, and this advantage the theology of the Synagogue possesses to its utmost extent. It accepted with R. Ammi the stern principle of divine retribution, in as far as it makes man feel the responsibility of his actions, and makes suffering a discipline. But it never allowed this principle to be carried so far as to deny the sufferer our sympathy, and by a series of conscious and unconscious modifications, he passed from the state of a sinner into the zenith of the saint and the perfectly righteous man. But, on the other hand, the Synagogue also gave entrance to the very opposite view which, abandoning every attempt to account for suffering, bids man do his duty without any hope of reward, even as God also does His. Hence the remarkable phenomenon in the works of later Jewish moralists, that, whilst they never weary of the most detailed accounts of the punishments awaiting the sinner and the rewards in store for the righteous, they warn us most emphatically that our actions must not be guided by these unworthy considerations, and that our only motive should be the love of God and submission to His holy will.

Nor must it be thought that the views of the Rabbis are so widely divergent from those enunciated in the Bible. The germ of almost all the later ideas is already to be found in the Scriptures. It only needed the process of time to bring into prominence those features which proved at a later period most acceptable. Indeed, it would seem that there is also a sort of domestication of religious ideas. On their first association with man there is a certain rude violence about them which, when left to the management of untutored minds, would certainly do great harm. But, let only this association last for centuries, during which these ideas have to be subdued by practical use, and they will, in due time, lose their former roughness, will become theologically workable, and turn out the greatest blessing to inconsistent humanity.

IX. THE LAW AND RECENT CRITICISM(197)

Professor Toy’s work, _Judaism and Christianity_, gives an admirable conspectus of the results of the modern critical school in their bearing on the genesis of Christianity. The author takes various important doctrines of Christianity, traces them back to their origin in Israelitism, pursues their course through their various phases in Judaism, until they reach their final development in the teaching of Jesus and His disciples, which, in the author’s judgment, is the consummation of that which the prophets and their successors had to give to the world. Laying so much stress as Professor Toy does on the saying, “By their fruits shall ye know them,” he ought also, perhaps, to have told us what, in the course of time, has become of these several doctrines. For when, for instance, with regard to the doctrine of original sin, he remarks that “in certain systems of Christian theology the human race is involved in the condemnation of the first man” (p. 185, n. 1); or that, in the New Testament, “the demand for a mediating power between God and humanity is pushed to the farthest point which thought can occupy consistently with the maintenance of the absoluteness of the one Supreme Deity” (p. 121), he is rather evading a difficulty than answering it. Such elaboration would, however, have been outside the scope of Professor Toy’s book, which claims only to be a sketch of the progress of thought from the Old Testament to the New. For his own solution of the indicated difficulty, Toy, to judge from his liberal standpoint, would probably refer us to Dr. Hatch’s Hibbert lectures; the issue of such an appeal must, I imagine, remain for long doubtful and disputed.

A delightful characteristic of Toy’s book is its transparent clearness and sobriety, which will make it interesting reading, even to those who are acquainted with the writer’s authorities in their original sources. Almost entirely new, as well as most suggestive, is the justice which Toy does to the law in recognising it as a factor for good in the history of religion. In this point Toy is not only up to his date, but beyond it. It is true that even the Pharisees have made some advance in the estimation of the liberal school. They are no longer condemned _en masse_ as so many hypocrites. It is even admitted that there were a few honest men among them, such as Rabban Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul, or R. Akiba, the patriot of Bethar. We are now too polite to be personal. But with regard to the law, on the other hand, there is at present a markedly opposite tendency. The general idea seems to be that, as the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ must be loosely interpreted in a spiritual sense, it must logically have been preceded by a universal spiritual death, and the germs of the disease which brought this death about are to be sought for in the law. Hence the strained efforts to discover in the law the source of all religious evil,—cant, hypocrisy, formalism, externalism, transcendentalism, and as many “isms” more, of bad reputation.

It was probably with this current representation of the law in view that Toy, when speaking of the Levitical legislation, and of its fixing “men’s minds on ceremonial details which, in some cases, it put into the same category and on the same level with moral duties,” asks the question: “Would there not thence result a dimming of the moral sense and a confusion of moral distinctions? The ethical attitude of a man who could regard a failure in the routine of sacrifice as not less blameworthy than an act of theft cannot be called a lofty one” (p. 186). The answer which he gives is more favourable than such a leading question would induce us to expect. He tells us that, “in point of fact, the result was different” (_ibid_). “The Levitical law is not to be looked on as a mere extension and organisation of the ritual.... Its ritual was, in great part, the organised expression of the consciousness of sin” (p. 226). Of the law in general Toy says that it had “larger consequences than its mere details would suggest,” for it “cultivated the moral sense of the people into results above its mechanical prescriptions,” and “it developed the sense of sin, as Paul points out” (Gal. iii. 19), “and therewith a freer feeling, which brought the soul into more immediate contact with God” (p. 227); whilst in another place he reminds us “that much of the law is moral, and that no one could fail to see a spiritual significance beneath its letter” (p. 245), and he even admits that “the great legal schools which grew up in the second century, if we may judge by the sayings of the teachers which have come down to us, did not fail to discriminate between the outward and the inward, the ceremonial and the moral” (p. 186).

These and similar passages will suffice to show that Toy’s estimate of the law is a very different one from that of Smend and his school. However, it must not be supposed that he is not on the look‐out for the germs of the disease. He must find these germs somewhere, or else the progress, which his book is intended to illustrate, would be difficult to detect. And thus he repeats the old accusations, though not without modification.

Professor Toy’s objections may, perhaps, be summed up in the passage in which he represents the Jewish law as “an attempt to define all the beliefs and acts of life” (p. 239), or as “the embodiment of devotion to a fixed rule of belief and conduct” (p. 237). Toy does not entirely condemn this system, and even speaks of it as a “lofty attempt” (p. 239); but, on the whole, he considers that it must have resulted in bad theology, as well as in doubtful conduct. Without following Professor Toy over the whole area of his investigations, which would require a volume for itself, I will only take the opportunity of making a few general remarks upon the nature and character of this legal system, which seems to hold the key to the spiritual history of Judaism.

First, as to its theology, Toy’s description of the law as an attempt to define all the _beliefs_ of life—an assertion which is also made by Schürer—is not wholly accurate. For such an attempt was never made by Judaism. The few dogmas which Judaism possesses, such as the Existence of God, Providence, Reward, and Punishment—without which no revealed religion is conceivable—can hardly be called a creed in the modern sense of the term, which implies something external and foreign to man’s own knowledge, and received only in deference to the weight of authority. To the Jew of the Christian era, these simpler dogmas were so self‐evident that it would have cost him the greatest effort _not_ to believe them. Hence the fact that, whilst there have come down to us so many controverted points between the Sadducees and Pharisees with regard to certain juristic and ritual questions, we know of only one of an essentially dogmatic character, viz. the dispute concerning the Resurrection.

It is thus difficult to imagine to what Professor Toy can be alluding when he speaks of the “interest they (the Jews) threw into the discussion and determination of minutiæ of faith” (p. 241). Discussions upon _minutiæ_ of faith are only to be read in the works of the later schoolmen (as Saadiah, Maimonides and their followers), in which such subtle problems as _Creatio ex nihilo_, the origin of evil, predestination, free will and similar subjects are examined; but this period is very distant from that with which Toy is concerned. The older schools and the so‐called houses of Shammai and Hillel, most of whose members were the contemporaries of the Apostles, show very little predilection for such _minutiæ_. Their discussions and differences of opinion about ritual matters are very numerous, scattered as they are over the whole of the ancient Rabbinic literature, but I can only remember two of a metaphysical character, or touching upon the _minutiæ_ of faith. The one, dealing with the efficacy of certain sacrifices, discusses whether it only extends to the remission of the pending punishment for sins, or also includes their purification and washing away; the other considers the question whether it would not have been better for man not to have been created.(198) But this latter controversy, which is said to have lasted for two years and a half, by no means led to any big metaphysical or theological system, but only to the practical advice that, as we have been created, we ought to be watchful over our conduct. It is, indeed, a noteworthy feature of Judaism that theological speculations have never resulted in the formulation of any imposing or universal doctrine, but usually in divers ceremonial practices. To give one illustration: according to Professor Toy (p. 210) the conclusion which the author of 1 Tim. ii. 11‐14 draws from the fact that woman was the immediate agent of the introduction of sin was the subordination of her sex. The Rabbis also noticed the same fact, and in their less abstract language speak of woman as having brought death and grief into the world; but the conclusion which they drew was that since woman had extinguished the “light of the world,” she ought to atone for it by lighting the candles for the Sabbath.(199) Nor is Toy quite correct when he maintains that the conception of the Memra as Creator and Lord, etc., and as “representative of the immediate divine activity,” did not keep its hold on Jewish thought, having been discarded in the later literature (p. 104). For the Shechinah of the Talmud, the _Metatron_(200) of the Gaonic‐mystical literature, the Active Intelligence of the philosophical schools, as well as the Ten Sephiroth(201) (Emanations) of the Cabbalists, all owe their existence to the same theosophic scruples and subtleties in which the Logos of Philo and the Memra(202) of the Targums originated. Thus, they always kept—though under various forms—their hold on the Jewish mind. Judaism was always broad enough to accommodate itself to these formulæ, which for the one may mean the most holy mysteries, and for the other empty and meaningless catchwords. The objection—in fact, the active opposition—of the Synagogue began when these possible or impossible explanations of the universe tended to transgress the bounds of abstract speculation, and, passing over into real concrete beings, to be worshipped as such. An instance from comparatively modern times might be found in one of the vagaries of the followers of the Pseudo‐Messiah, Shabbethai Tsebi. For many generations the controversy had raged among the Cabbalists, whether the first of the above‐mentioned Ten Emanations (called by some _Original Adam_, by others, _Crown_(203)) is to be considered as a part of the Deity or as something separate, and so to speak, having a reality in itself. The danger of establishing a Being near the Deity, having an existence of its own and invested with divine attributes, could not have escaped the thoughtful, and there are indeed some indications to this effect. The Synagogue as such, however, remained during the whole controversy strictly neutral, and allowed these theosophists to fight in the air as much as they liked. But the moment that the sect of Shabbethai Tsebi identified the incarnate Original Adam with their leader, and worshipped him as a sort of God‐Messiah, the Synagogue at once took up a hostile attitude against those who separated God from His world, and, declaring Shabbethai Tsebi and his followers to be apostates, excluded them from Judaism for ever.

Nor can it be proved that legalism or nomism has ever tended to suppress the spiritual side of religion, either in respect of consciousness of sin, or of individual love and devotion. With an equal logic quite the opposite might be argued. Professor Toy tells us himself that it is no “accident that along with this more definite expression of ethical‐religious law we find the first traces of a more spiritual conception of righteousness in the ‘new heart’ of Jeremiah and Ezekiel” (p. 235), whilst in another passage we read that “a turning point is marked by the Deuteronomist Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who announce the principles of individual responsibility and inwardness of obedience” (p. 184). Now, two things are certain; first, that Ezekiel urges the necessity of the new heart as well as of individual responsibility more keenly than any of his predecessors; secondly, that in Ezekiel the legalistic tendency is more evident than in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. The logical conclusion would thus be that the higher ideals of religion are not only not inconsistent with legalism, but are the very outcome of it, and the so‐called Priestly Code, by the very fact of its markedly legalistic tendency, should be considered as a step in the right direction. The latter assertion sounds like a paradox, but it will seem less so when the prevailing characteristic of this portion of the Pentateuch, as given even by Kuenen, who is by no means a champion of the Law, is borne in mind. “The centre of gravity,” according to the great Dutch critic, “lies for the priestly author elsewhere than for the prophet; it lies in man’s attitude, not towards his fellow‐men, but towards God; not in his social, but in his personal life” (_Hibbert Lectures_, p. 161). It is here that we seem to strike the keynote of the _Weltanschauung_ of the Priestly Legislation. In it man is more than a social being. He has also an individual life of his own, his joys and sorrows, his historical claims, his traditions of the past, and his hopes for the future—and all these have to be brought under the influence of religion, and to become sanctified through their relation to God. Hence, the work of the Priestly narrator and legislator opens with a cosmogony of his own, in which we find the grand theological idea of man being created in the Divine image; hence, too, his religious conception of the history of the nation and the control claimed by him over all the details of human life, which became with him so many opportunities for the worship of God. To him, God is not a mere figurehead; He not only reigns, but governs. Everywhere,—in the temple, in the judge’s seat, in the family, in the farm, and in the market‐place,—His presence is felt in enforcing the laws bearing His _imprimatur_, “I am the Lord thy God.” By thus diffusing religion over the whole domain of human life—not confining it to the social institutions which are represented only by a few personages, such as the king, the princes, the priests, the judges or elders—they made it the common good of the whole people, and the feeling of personal responsibility for this good became much deeper than before. Thus it came to pass that whilst, during the first temple, the apostasy of kings and aristocracy involved the entire people, so that the words “And he (the king) did evil in the sight of the Lord,” embrace the whole nation, during the second temple it was no longer of much consequence which side the political leaders took. Both during the Hellenistic persecutions, as well as afterwards in the struggles of some Maccabean kings with the Pharisees, the bulk of the people showed that they considered religion as their own personal affair, not to be regulated by the conscience of either priest or prince. It is true that this success may be largely ascribed to such contemporary religious factors as the Synagogue with its minimum of form, the Scribes with their activity as teachers, and the Psalmists with their divine enthusiasm; but the very circumstance that these factors arose and flourished under the influence of the Priestly Code would suffice to prove that its tendency was not so sacerdotal as some writers would have us believe. Jewish tradition indeed attributes the composition of the daily public prayers, as well as of others for private worship, to the very men whom modern biblical criticism holds responsible for the introduction of the Priestly Code. Now this fact may perhaps be disputed, but there is little doubt that the age in which these prayers were composed was one of flourishing legalism. Nor is there any proof that the synagogues and their ritual were in opposition to the temple. From the few documents belonging to this period, it is clear that there was no opposition to the legalistic spirit by which the Priestly Code was actuated. This would prove that legalism meant something more than tithes and sacrifices for the benefit of the priests.

Nor is it true that the legal tendency aimed at narrowing the mind of the nation, turning all its thoughts into the one direction of the law. Apart from the fact that the Torah contained other elements besides its legalism, the prophets were not forgotten, but were read and interpreted from a very early age. It was under the predominance of the Law that the Wisdom literature was composed, which is by no means narrow or one‐sided, but is even supposed by some critics to contain many foreign elements. In the book of Job, the great problems of man’s existence are treated with a depth and grandeur never equalled before or since. This book alone ought partly to compensate the modern school for the disappearance of prophecy, which is usually brought as a charge against the Law. Then, too, the Psalms, placed by the same school in the post‐exilic period, are nothing but another aspect of prophecy, with this difference, perhaps, that in the Prophets God speaks to man, while in the Psalms it is man who establishes the same communion by speaking to God. There is no reason why the critical school, with its broad conception of inspiration, and with its insistence that prophecy does _not_ mean prediction, should so strongly emphasise this difference. If “it is no longer as in the days of Amos, when the Lord Yahveh did nothing without revealing his counsel to his servants the prophets,” there is in the days of the Psalmists nothing in man’s heart, no element in his longings and meditations and aspirations, which was not revealed to God. Nay, it would seem that at times the Psalmist hardly ever desires the revelation of God’s secrets. Let future events be what they may, he is content, for he is with God. After all his trials, he exclaims, “And yet I am continually with thee; thou hast taken hold of my right hand. According to thy purpose wilt thou lead me, and afterwards receive me with glory. Whom have I (to care for) in heaven? and possessing thee, I have pleasure in nothing upon earth. Though my flesh and my heart should have wasted away, God would for ever be the rock of my heart and my portion” (Ps. lxxiii. 23‐26). How an age producing a literature containing passages like these—of which Wellhausen in his _Abriss_ (p. 95) justly remarks, that we are not worthy even to repeat them—can be considered by the modern school as wanting in intimate relation to God and inferior to that of the prophets is indeed a puzzle.

Now a few words as to the actual life under the Law. Here, again, there is a fresh puzzle. On the one side, we hear the opinions of so many learned professors, proclaiming _ex cathedrâ_, that the Law was a most terrible burden, and the life under it the most unbearable slavery, deadening body and soul. On the other side we have the testimony of a literature extending over about twenty‐five centuries, and including all sorts and conditions of men, scholars, poets, mystics, lawyers, casuists, schoolmen, tradesmen, workmen, women, simpletons, who all, from the author of the 119th Psalm to the last pre‐Mendelssohnian writer—with a small exception which does not even deserve the name of a vanishing minority—give unanimous evidence in favour of this Law, and of the bliss and happiness of living and dying under it,—and this, the testimony of people who were actually living under the Law, not merely theorising upon it, and who experienced it in all its difficulties and inconveniences. The Sabbath will give a fair example. The law of the Sabbath is one of those institutions the strict observance of which was already the object of attack in early New Testament times. Nevertheless, the doctrine proclaimed in one of the Gospels—that the son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath—was also current among the Rabbis. They, too, taught that the Sabbath had been delivered into the hand of man (to break, if necessary), and not man delivered over to the Sabbath.(204) And they even laid down the axiom that a scholar who lived in a town, where among the Jewish population there could be the least possibility of doubt as to whether the Sabbath might be broken for the benefit of a dangerously sick person, was to be despised as a man neglecting his duty; for, as Maimonides points out, the laws of the Torah are not meant as an infliction upon mankind, “but as mercy, loving‐ kindness, and peace.”(205)

The attacks upon the Jewish Sabbath have not abated with the lapse of time. The day is still described by almost every Christian writer on the subject in the most gloomy colours, and long lists are given of minute and easily transgressed observances connected with it, which, instead of a day of rest, would make it to be a day of sorrow and anxiety, almost worse than the Scotch Sunday as depicted by continental writers. But it so happens that we have the prayer of R. Zadok, a younger contemporary of the Apostles, which runs thus: “Through the love with which Thou, O Lord our God, lovest Thy people Israel, and the mercy which Thou hast shown to the children of Thy covenant, Thou hast given unto us in love this great and holy Seventh Day.”(206) And another Rabbi, who probably flourished in the first half of the second century, expresses himself (with allusion to Exod. xxxi. 13: Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep ... that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you)—“The Holy One, blessed be He, said unto Moses, I have a good gift in my treasures, and Sabbath is its name, which I wish to present to Israel. Go and bring to them the good tidings.”(207) The form again of the Blessing over the Sanctification‐ cup(208)—a ceremony known long before the destruction of the Second Temple—runs: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments, and hast taken pleasure in us, and in love and grace hast given us Thy holy Sabbath as an inheritance.” All these Rabbis evidently regarded the Sabbath as a gift from heaven, an expression of the infinite mercy and grace of God which He manifested to His beloved children.

And the gift was, as already said, a _good_ gift. Thus the Rabbis paraphrase the words in the Scripture “See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath” (Exod. xvi. 29): God said unto Israel behold the gem I gave you, My children I gave you the Sabbath for your good. Sanctify or honour the Sabbath by choice meals, beautiful garments; delight your soul with pleasure and I will reward you (for this very pleasure); as it is said: “And if thou wilt call the Sabbath a delight and the holy of the Lord honourable (that is honouring the Sabbath in this way) ... then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord” (Is. lviii. 13, 14).(209)

The delight of the Sabbath was keenly felt. Israel fell in love with the Sabbath, and in the hyperbolic language of the Agadah the Sabbath is personified as the “Bride of Israel,” whilst others called it “Queen Sabbath,”(210) and they are actually jealous of a certain class of semi‐ proselytes who, as it seems, were willing to observe the Sabbath, but declined to submit to the covenant of Abraham. The Gentile Sabbath‐ keepers—who, like all the nations of the world, envy Israel their Sabbath—the Rabbis considered as shameless intruders deserving punishment.(211) No, it was Israel’s own Queen or Bride Sabbath whose appearance in all her heavenly glory they were impatiently awaiting. Thus we are told of R. Judah b. Ilai that when the eve of the Sabbath came “he made his ablutions, wrapped himself up in his white linen with fringed borders looking like an angel of the Lord of Hosts,” thus prepared for the solemn reception of Queen Sabbath. Another Rabbi used to put on his best clothes, and arise and invite the Sabbath with the words: “Come in Bride, come in.”(212) What the Bride brought was peace and bliss. Nay, man is provided with a super soul for the Sabbath, enabling him to bear both the spiritual and the material delights of the day with dignity and solemnity.(213) The very light (or expression) of man’s face is different on Sabbath, testifying to his inward peace and rest. And when man has recited his prayers (on the eve of the Sabbath) and thus borne testimony to God’s creation of the world and to the glory of the Sabbath, there appear the two angels who accompany him, lay their hands on his head and impart to him their blessing with the words: “And thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged” (Is. vi. 7).(214) For nothing is allowed to disturb the peace of the Sabbath; not even “the sorrows of sin,” though the Sabbath had such a solemn effect on people that even the worldly man would not utter an untruth on the Day of the Lord. Hence it was not only forbidden to pray on Sabbath for one’s own (material) needs, but everything in the liturgy of a mournful character (as for instance the confession of sin, supplication for pardon) was carefully avoided. It was with difficulty, as the Rabbis say, that they made an exception in the case of condoling with people who had suffered loss through the death of near relatives. There is no room for morbid sentiment on Sabbath, for the blessing of the Lord maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it (Prov. x. 22).(215) The burden of the Sabbath prayers is for peace, rest, sanctification, and joy (through salvation) and praise of God for this ineffable bliss of the Sabbath.

Such was the Sabbath of the old Rabbis and the same spirit continued through all ages. The Sabbath was and is still celebrated by the people who did and do observe it, in hundreds of hymns, which would fill volumes, as a day of rest and joy, of pleasure and delight, a day in which man enjoys some foretaste of the pure bliss and happiness which are stored up for the righteous in the world to come. Somebody, either the learned professors, or the millions of the Jewish people, must be under an illusion. Which it is I leave to the reader to decide.

It is also an illusion to speak of the burden which a scrupulous care to observe six hundred and thirteen commandments must have laid upon the Jew. Even a superficial analysis will discover that in the time of Christ many of these commandments were already obsolete (as for instance those relating to the tabernacle and to the conquest of Palestine), while others concerned only certain classes, as the priests, the judges, the soldiers, the Nazirites, or the representatives of the community, or even only one or two individuals among the whole population, as the King and the High‐ Priest. Others, again, provided for contingencies which could occur only to a few, as for instance the laws concerning divorce or levirate marriages, whilst many—such as those concerning idolatry, and incest, and the sacrifice of children to Moloch—could scarcely have been considered as a practical prohibition by the pre‐Christian Jew; just as little as we can speak of Englishmen as lying under the burden of a law preventing them from burning widows or marrying their grandmothers, though such acts would certainly be considered as crimes. Thus it will be found by a careful enumeration that barely a hundred laws remain which really concerned the life of the bulk of the people. If we remember that even these include such laws as belief in the unity of God, the necessity of loving and fearing Him, and of sanctifying His name, of loving one’s neighbour and the stranger, of providing for the poor, exhorting the sinner, honouring one’s parents and many more of a similar character, it will hardly be said that the ceremonial side of the people’s religion was not well balanced by a fair amount of spiritual and social elements. Besides, it would seem that the line between the ceremonial and the spiritual is too often only arbitrarily drawn. With many commandments it is rather a matter of opinion whether they should be relegated to the one category or the other.

Thus, the wearing of Tephillin(216) or phylacteries has, on the one hand, been continually condemned as a meaningless superstition, and a pretext for formalism and hypocrisy. But, on the other hand, Maimonides, who can in no way be suspected of superstition or mysticism, described their importance in the following words: “Great is the holiness of the Tephillin; for as long as they are on the arm and head of man he is humble and God‐fearing, and feels no attraction for frivolity or idle things, nor has he any evil thoughts, but will turn his heart to the words of truth and righteousness.” The view which R. Johanan, a Palestinian teacher of the third century, took of the fulfilment of the Law, will probably be found more rational than that of many a rationalist of to‐day. Upon the basis of the last verse in Hosea, “The ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein,” he explains that while one man, for instance, eats his paschal lamb with the purpose of doing the will of God who commanded it, and thereby does an act of righteousness, another thinks only of satisfying his appetite by the lamb, so that his eating it (by the very fact that he professes at the same time to perform a religious rite) becomes a stumbling‐block for him.(217) Thus all the laws by virtue of their divine authority—and in this there was in the first century no difference of opinion between Jews and Christians—have their spiritual side, and to neglect them implies, at least from the individual’s own point of view, a moral offence.

The legalistic attitude may be summarily described as an attempt to live in accordance with the will of God, caring less for what God is than for what He wants us to be. But, nevertheless, on the whole this life never degenerated into religious formalism. Apart from the fact that during the second temple there grew up laws, and even beliefs, which show a decided tendency towards progress and development, there were also ceremonies which were popular with the masses, and others which were neglected. Men were not, therefore, the mere soulless slaves of the Law; personal sympathies and dislikes also played a part in their religion. Nor were all the laws actually put upon the same level. With a happy inconsistency men always spoke of heavier and slighter sins, and by the latter—excepting, perhaps, the profanation of the Sabbath—they mostly understood ceremonial transgressions. The statement made by Professor Toy (p. 243), on the authority of James (ii. 10), that “the principle was established that he who offended in one point was guilty of all,” is hardly correct; for the passage seems rather to be laying down a principle, or arguing that logically the law ought to be looked upon as a whole, than stating a fact. The fact was that people did not consider the whole law as of equal importance, but made a difference between laws and laws, and even spoke of certain commandments, such as those of charity and kindness, as outweighing all the rest of the Torah. It was in conformity with this spirit that in times of great persecution the leaders of the people had no compunction in reducing the whole Law to the three prohibitions of idolatry, of incest, and of bloodshed. Only these three were considered of sufficient importance that men should rather become martyrs than transgress them.

These, then, are some of the illusions and misrepresentations which exist with regard to the Law. There are many others, of which the complete exposure would require a book by itself. Meanwhile, in the absence of such a book to balance and correct the innumerable volumes upon the other side, Professor Toy has done the best he could with existing materials, and produced a meritorious work deserving of wide recognition and approval.

X. THE HEBREW COLLECTION OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

The Hebrew collection in the British Museum forms one of the greatest centres of Jewish thought. It is only surpassed by the treasures which are contained in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The fame of these magnificent collections has spread far and wide. It has penetrated into the remotest countries, and even the Bachurim (_alumni_) of some obscure place in Poland, who otherwise neither care nor know anything about British civilisation, have a dim notion of the nature of these mines of Jewish learning.

All sorts of legends circulate amongst them about the “millions” of books which belong to the “Queen of England.” They speak mysteriously of an autograph copy of the Book of Proverbs, presented to the Queen of Sheba on the occasion of her visit to Jerusalem, and brought by the English troops as a trophy from their visit to Abyssinia, which is still ruled by the descendants of that famous lady. They also talk of a copy of the Talmud of Jerusalem which once belonged to Titus, afterwards to a Pope, was presented by the latter to a Russian Czar, and taken away from him by the English in the Crimean war; of a manuscript of the book _Light is Sown_,(218) which is so large that no shelf can hold it, and which therefore hangs on iron chains. How they long to have a glance at these precious things! Would not a man get wiser only by looking at the autograph of the wisest of men?

But even the students of Germany and Austria, who are inaccessible to such fables, and by the aid of Zedner’s, Steinschneider’s, and Neubauer’s catalogues have a fair notion of our libraries, cherish the belief that they would gain in scholarship and wisdom by examining these grand collections. How often have I been asked by Jewish students abroad: “Have you really been to the British Museum? Have you really seen this or that rare book or manuscript? Had you not great difficulties in seeing them? Is not the place where these heaps of jewels are treasured up always crowded by students and visitors?”

Yet how little does our English public know of these wonderful things! We are fairly interested in Græco‐Roman art. We betray much curiosity about the different Egyptian dynasties. We look with admiration at the cuneiform inscriptions in the Nimrod room. We do not even grudge a glance at the abominable idols of the savage tribes. But as to the productions of Jewish genius,—well, it is best to quote here the words of Heine, who ridiculed this indifference to everything that is Jewish, in the following lines:—

Alte Mumien, ausgestopfte,
Pharaonen von Ægypten,
Merowinger Schattenkön’ge,
Ungepuderte Perticken,

Auch die Zopfmonarchen China’s
Porzellanpagodenkaiser—
Alle lernen sie answendig,
Kluge Mädchen, aber, Himmel!

Fragt man sie nach grossen Namen,
Aus dem grossen Goldzeitalter
Der arabisch‐althispanisch
Jüdischen Poetenschule,

Fragt man nach dem Dreigestirn
Nach Jehuda ben Halevy,
Nach dem Salomon Gabirol
Und dem Moses Iben Esra.

Fragt man nach dergleichen Namen,
Dann mit grossen Augen schaun
Uns die Kleinen an—alsdann
Stehn am Berge die Ochsinnen.

Now Heine goes on to advise his beloved one to study the Hebrew language. It would be indeed the best remedy against this indifference. But this is so radical a cure that one cannot hope that it will be made use of by many. A few remarks in English, trying to give some notion of the Hebrew collection in the British Museum, may, therefore, not be considered altogether superfluous.

The Hebrew collection in the Museum may be divided into two sections: Printed Books, and Manuscripts. The number of the printed books amounted in the year 1867, in which Zedner concluded his catalogue, to 10,100 volumes. Within the last twenty‐eight years about 5000 more have been added.

This enormous collection has grown out of very small beginnings. The British Museum was first opened to the public in the year 1759. Amongst the 500,000 volumes which it possessed at that time only a single Jewish work, the _editio princeps_ of the Talmud (Bomberg, Venice, 1520‐1523) was to be found on its shelves. According to an article by Zedner in the _Hebräische Bibliographie_ (ii. p. 88), this copy of the Talmud once belonged to Henry VIII. But very soon the Museum was enriched by a small collection of Hebrew books, presented to it by Mr. Solomon da Costa, surnamed Athias, who had emigrated to England from Holland. The translation of the Hebrew letter with which the donor accompanied his present to the Trustees of the Museum was first published in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, February 1760, and was afterwards republished by the Rev. A. L. Green, in an article in the _Jewish Chronicle_, 1859. I shall only reproduce here the passage relating to the history of this collection. After expressing his gratitude to the “crowning city, the city of London, in which he dwelt for fifty‐four years in ease and quietness and safety,” and telling us that he bequeaths these books to the British nation as a token of his gratitude, Da Costa proceeds to say that they are 180 books, which had been gathered and bound for Charles II., with valuable bindings and marked with the king’s own cipher. These books were intended as a present from the London Jewish community to Charles for certain privileges which he had bestowed on them. The sudden death of the king seems to have frustrated the intention of the first donors. The books were scattered, and Da Costa had to collect them again.

Small as this collection is, it is most valuable on account of its including many early editions of Venice, Constantinople, Naples, etc. The original letter of Da Costa, with a full list of the 180 books, is preserved in a MS. in the British Museum (Additional, 4710‐11).