based upon the ancient principle of sacrificial worship. So elaborate is the ceremonial Law that the Deity is rendered inaccessible save through the priestly order. There is one tabernacle, one ark, one altar, one sanctuary; and one family is dedicated to the holy offices. "I will sanctify the tabernacle of the congregation and the altar: I will sanctify also both Aaron and his sons, to minister to me in the priests' office" (Exod. xxix. 44). Not the Levites even, who have charge of the tabernacle, are suffered to approach the altar: "They shall not come nigh to the vessels of the sanctuary and the altar, that neither they, nor ye also, die" (Num. xviii. 3). Then, the whole of Exod. xxix. prescribes the ceremonies of the burnt-offerings of rams and bullocks. In Num. vi. Jehovah gives minute instructions for the sacrifice of "he lambs" and "ewe lambs." In the next chapter eighty-nine verses are occupied with Jehovah's directions to Moses about sin-offerings and peace-offerings. Leviticus repeats the same lesson, and explains the virtue of sacrifice in the interdict against the eating of blood: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it unto you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Lev. xvii. 11).

Turn from this severely defined ceremonial Law to the actual history of the popular religion for the 800 years preceding Hilkiah's discovery. From the time of Joshua to that of Samuel, some 300 years, the most zealous of its righteous leaders strove earnestly to rescue the nation from the abominations of idolatry. Yet not one of these godly men seems to have had an inkling of the Pentateuchal system. Jephthah makes a burnt-offering of his own daughter, in genuine heathen fashion; and this immediately after "the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah." By the advice of "the angel of the Lord," Manoah "took a kid with a meat-offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the Lord." Local sanctuaries, extem

porary altars, the use of "high places" throughout the land, was the normal condition of things, not only condoned, but recognised as orthodox, and practised, by those who held immediate converse with Jehovah. Samuel offers a sucking lamb at Mizpeh, and orders Saul to "sacrifice sacrifices of peace-offerings" at Gilgal. Of the best of the kings the same story is repeated many times almost in the same words. Of Solomon it is written that he "loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father," &c." And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place; a thousand burnt-offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar" (1 Kings iii. 4). "And Jehoash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all his days, wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him. But the high places were not taken away: the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places" (2 Kings xii. 2, 3). Of Azariah, who reigned two and fifty years in Jerusalem, it is written, "And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done: save that the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burnt incense still in the high places " (chap. xv. 34). And so on, until the reign of Josiah, the popular religion is completely at variance with the Levitical system, and not a soul of them is conscious of transgression.

Considering the stress laid upon the sacrificial ritual, and the direct injunctions respecting it from Jehovah Himself, we read with astonishment of the seeming audacity with which Isaiah, Amos, Micah, and Jeremiah set it aside as ineffectual and even offensive to the Deity. "What are your many sacrifices to Me? saith Jehovah: I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats, &c. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me, &c., &c.; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease

to do evil; learn to do well," &c. (Isa. i.)

Jeremiah, writing in the same strain, goes so far as to make the Lord say: "For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices: but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey My voice," &c. And Amos: "I hate, I despise your feast days, &c.; though ye offer Me burnt-offerings and your meat-offerings I will not accept them."

Was the book of the Law known to the pious men who thus addressed the people? One of two assumptions we are constrained to make. Either the prophets here quoted knew nothing of the complicated Ritualism of our existing Torâh; or they were "advanced" thinkers, who sought to rescue the nation from its withering superstitions, and train it to a nobler life of righteousness.

'The result of this survey is that, through the whole period, from the Judges to Ezekiel, the Law in its finished system and fundamental theories was never the rule of Israel's worship; and its observance was never the condition of the experience of Jehovah's grace. Although many individual points of ritual resembled the ordinances of the Law, the Levitical tradition as a whole, had as little force in the central sanctuary as with the mass of the people. The contrast between true and false worship is not the contrast between the Levitical and the popular systems. The freedom of sacrifice, which is the basis of the popular worship, is equally the basis of the faith of Samuel, David, and Elijah. . . . In truth, the people of Jehovah never lived under the Law, and the dispensation of Divine grace never followed its pattern till Israel had ceased to be a nation." The only law known to the Judges, to the Kings, to the Prophets, was the traditional Torâh passed from generation to generation by word of

1 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 266,7. See Lectures IX.

and X., where the argument here abridged is fully treated.

mouth. As a written book of revealed doctrine the existing Pentateuch was not in being. Up to the time of Ezekiel, all alike seem to have been as ignorant of the Levitical ordinances, as they were of the promise of a Messiah, or of its subsequent fulfilment; and it was probably the ritual of Ezekiel, combined with the consuetudinary law, which formed the groundwork of the new Torâh. We are invited by the believing critic to view "the priestly and prophetic Torâh" as a development of the grand religious movement which Moses projected, and in part forestalled: and hence to accept it as in a sense Mosaic. In one sense I believe we may do so. But we must restrict this judgment to the simple point of Ritualism. The compilers of the Pentateuch had one distinct object before them in making a code of ceremonies the only passport to Divine favour. They desired to separate the Jewish people from all other peoples. Israelites were not to intermarry with foreigners; they were not to sacrifice at foreign altars; they were not to worship foreign gods. With the same purpose and by similar means, Moses cut off the Hebrews from the surrounding nations. In his time this was the first step towards the establishment of their autonomy. Their national life was at once aggressive and defensive. Isolation by "peculiarity" was the bond of union which consolidated their physical resources. Beyond this political aim, the spirit of the later law is straightly opposed to the scheme of Moses. Though not expressly hostile to the barbarous doctrine of atonement inherited from a remote and savage antiquity, still Moses struggled, exactly as the greater prophets did, to supplant idolatry by a purer system of Ethics. With the exception of the commandments respecting their tutelary God, "who brought them out of the land of Egypt," and of the injunction to keep the seventh day holy, all the commandments were directed to the observance of moral

rules.

The Jewish conception of the Pentateuch cannot be ours. And in proportion as we gauge the sacred character of the Pentateuch by its Mosaic authenticity, to that extent must belief in its Divine origin be impaired. Further grounds for doubt and dispute as to authorship will now be summarily touched upon.

From the times of the Fathers down to those of the Reformation, and from these again to our own, the integrity and genuineness of the Pentateuch has been a prolific source of disagreement. Amongst modern critics, suspicion of plurality of authorship was confirmed by the closer attention which had been called to the different names given to God. Sometimes God is spoken of as Elohim, sometimes as Jehovah, or Yahveh. The first is a much more ancient and more comprehensive term. It is the plural form of Eloah, and was applied to the heathen deities of the Semitic race generally. Jehovah, on the contrary, was not in use till Israel became a nation. God said unto Moses, "I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by My name Jehovah was I not known to them" (Ex. vi. 3). The Hebrew term, here translated Almighty, is El Shaddai; which, though not synonymous with Elohim, has none of the exclusiveness of the new name.1 Moses is now given to understand that the Deity henceforth constitutes Himself the tribal God of the Israelites; precisely as Chemosh was the god of Moab; and as surrounding gentes had their Ashtoreth, or their Molech, or other Baalim. Nor is it manifest that the theocratic government of the Hebrews which Moses here announces, and which is the dominant notion throughout the Old Testament, was in any way peculiar to them. The Elohim spoken of in the first verse of Genesis as the Creator of heaven and earth, is quite a different Being from the personal ally of the favoured descendants of Jacob. The 1 For the meaning of El Shaddai, see infra, p. 163.