Literature. — Comm. on Ex. and Deut, including long note in Kalisch's Exodus ; Maimonides, Yad Hachazakah, Hilcoth Tephillin ; Wagenseil, Sota ; artt. in Hastings' DB, the EBi ('Frontlets'), Smith's DB ('Frontlets'), Kitto's Ci/clop., the JE, Hamburger's RE, Riehm's HWB; Schiirer, UJP ii. ii. 113 ; Buxtorf, Lex. Chald. and Syn. Jud. (which contains much curious information) ; Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life ; Margoliouth, Fundamental Principles of Judaism (much information as to modern use). J. T. L. MaGGS.
PHYSICAL (4>WLKbs, ' natural, '_ 'inborn').— To this word a distinctive and conspicuous place has
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been given in the teriiiinology of modern science, and that very appropriately : for the object of science in everj' one of its branches is to acquire such a knowledge of the Universe as shall corre- spond exactly to the constituted and established nature of things. Neither the word ' physical " nor the word ' nature ' (^iffts) occurs in any of the four Gospels. But nevertheless man^- .-things M'hich fall under the description of both term-, as scientifically used, occupy a large place in all the Gospels ; and there high im}X)rtance is neces- sarily and designedly attached to them. It is true that "one has only to run one's eye reflectively over the pages of the Gosjiels to discover that in them the moral order of things is the matter of supreme and controlling interest. But while tliat is so, it becomes also apparent that this moral interest is not only involved in the physical order of things, liut is inevitably and to a vast extent dependent upon it. Thus. c.(i.. it is everywhere manifest in these narratives of our Lords earthly life and work that He appeared among men as an individual Being. This implies that the jihysical order of existence was epitomized in Him in the same way and to the same extent as it is in everj- individual luiman being. It implies that His Ixxly was the organ of the moral order of the world as the latter existed in the spiritual constitution of His being, and as it came to manifestation in the moral or spiritual activities of His life within the sphere of His moral relations to Goil and to men. It implies, also, that His botlily constitution and life placed Him in direct relations with, and in constant dependence upon, the whole order of the physical environment in which He lived and moved and had His being as ' God manifest in the jfc^h ' (1 Ti 3'*). And so it becomes obvious that if He had not entered into these incarnate relations with the physical order of things. He never could have be- come tiie Son of Man, and if He had never become the Son of Man He never could have revealed Him- self to humanity as the Son of God ( Jn 1, 2 Co 4*). For these reasons, then, and others that sprang out of them or were otherwise related to them, our Lord was neces-sitated to make the pliysical order of the world a subject of reflexion, and to emboily in His teacliing such ideas of it as He considered to be tit for communication as a part of His general mes- sage to mankind. That He did make it a subject of extensive and profound, careful and sympathetic study, is as evident as any other fact in tiie Gos- pels. It is equally evident, too, that as the result of this study He formed some very definite and highly important conceptions regarding the order of things in question, more than one of which were entirely original. It may be affinued, moreover, that none of the ideas of this order, to whic;i as a Teacher of humanity He attached momentous im- portance and value, can ever be superseded by the teaching of eitlier Science or Philosophy. \Vliat, then, were the leading constructions that He as a religious Teacher put uiX)n the physical order of the world?
1. For one thing, this order of things presented itself to His mind as a medium of Divine revelation (e.g. Mt 5**"-^ G-^^M. The question as to tlie order of things physical, and its significance, must have shaped itself in His mind at an early stage in His life of observation and reflexion. What the result of His inquirj- was appears in His teaching. The most general and imjx)rtant item in that result was tlie discovery of the presence and activity of God in the established order of organic and in- organic existence. To His mind God was im- manent and operative in nature ; and it is in the same view of the relation of God to the physical order of the L'niverse that modem Theism and Philosophy have begun to rest. That such was
indeed His view appears from His own utterances on the relation of God to the order of things physical ; which show that nothing was further fiom His mind than the reckless idea in which God is conceived as existing only in a relation of externality to this order and as acting u^xin it from without. Wiien, for instance. He saw the sun rise and rain fall, and pondered on the exten- sive and complicated orderly system of physical means and ends to wliich sunri.-e and rainfall belon<_'. He perceived in these occurrences mani- festations of the immediate activity of God (Mt 5"^). and He was too unemng a thinker not to know that God's will and therefore Cn>d Himself must be immanent in the estaldished system of things in w hich He conceived the Divine activity as displayed. ^*or is there any real collision here between Christ and modern science in regard to the system of activity to wliich sunrise and rainfall are due. When He said, ' Your Father which is in heaven maketh his sun to rise . . . and sendeth rain," He nsed words which are absolutely con- sistent with the strictest scientific ideas of the natural forces and laws by which tiie same events in the pliysical order of things are now explained. For if the scientist is able to explain, and right, from his own point of view, in explaining these events by the action of pliysical forces and the laws of their operation, this explanation does not account for the existence of these forces themselves, for their i>ersistence, for the perfectly and constantly regulated mode in which their respecti%e forms of activity are manifested, or for the originating cause of the complicated and exquisite adjustment of these forces and their activities to the ends they serve. For these things there is only one satisfac- toiy explanation, and that is the immanent and immediate activity of GckI. And Science and Philosophy have been rapidly becoming '.ware that no better explanation is likely ever to be found.