count of their costliness, often afford but little protection to persons in narrow circumstances. In lawsuits very much was left to the discretion of the judges, his posi- tion greatly resembling that of a permanent jury, who liad not merely to decide whether a person was guilty, but who frequently had also to award the amount of punishment to be inflicted.
In the Old Testament w^e do not hear of a learned profession of the law. Lawyers (rojuiicoi) are men- tioned only after the decline of tlie IMosaic institutions had considerably progressed. As, however, certain laws concerning contagion and purification were administered by the priests, these might be called lawyers. They, nevertheless, did not derive their maintenance from the administration of these laws, liut were supported by glebe-lands, tithes, and portions of the sacrificial offerings. It is, indeed, very remarkable that, in a nation so entirely governed by law, there were no lawyers forming a dis- tinct profession, and that the vojitiKoi of a later age were not so much remarkable for enforcing the spirit of the law as rather for ingeniously evading its injunctions, by leading the attention of the people from its spirit to a most minute literal fulfilment of its letter. See Lawyer.
IV. In considering f/ie i-elation of the law to thefnlitre, it is important to be guided by the general principle laid down in Heb. vii, 10, " The law made nothing perfect"' {ovCiv treXtiiiKTev u j'(5/(oc). This principle will be ap- pUed in different degrees to its bearing (a) on the after- history of the Jewish commonwealth before the coming of Christ,; (A) on the coming of our Lord himself; and (c) on the dispensation of the Gospel.
1. To that after-histor\' the law was, to a great ex- tent, the key ; for in ceremonial and criminal law it was complete and final; while, even in civil and constitu- tional law, it laid down clearly the general principles to be afterwards more fully developed. It was, indeed, often neglected, and even forgotten. Its fundamental assertion of the theocracy was violated by the constant lapses into idolatry, and its provisions for the good of man ovenvhelmed by the natural course of human self- ishness (Jer. xxxiv, 12-17); till at last, in the reign of Josiah, its very existence was unknown, and its discov- ery w'as to the king and the f)Oople as a second publica- tion: yet it still formed the standard from which they knowingly departed, and to which they constantly re- turned, and to it, therefore, all which was peculiar in their national and individual character was due. Its direct influence was probalily greatest in the periods be- fore the establishment of the kingdom and after the Babj'lonian captivity. The last act of Joshua was to bind the Israelites to it as the charter of their occupa- tion of the conquered land (Josh, xxiv, 24-27) ; and, in the semi-anarchical period of the Judges, the law and the tabernacle were the only centres of anything like national unity. The establishment of the kingdom was due to an impatience of this position, and a desire for a visible and personal centre of authority, much the same in nature as that which plunged them so often into idol- atry. The people were wanied (1 Sam. xii, G-25) that it involved great danger of their forgetting and reject- ing the main principle of the law — that " Jehovali their God was their king." The truth of the prediction was soon shown. Even undei- Solomon, as soon as the mon- archy became one of great splendor and power, it as- simed a heathenish and polytheistic character, breaking the law both by its (Ushonor towards God and its for- bidden tyranny over man. Indeed, if the law was looked iqwn as a collection of abstract rules, and not as a means of knowledge of a personal god, it was inevita- ble that it should be overborne by the presence of a vis- ible and personal authority.
Therefore it was that from the time of the establish- ment of the kingdom the prophetic office began. Its ol)ject was to enforce and to jierfect the law by bearing testimonj' to the great truths on which it was built, viz. the truth of God's government over all, kings, jiriests, and people alike, and the consequent certainty of a
LAW OF MOSES
292
LAW OF MOSES
righteous retribution. It is plain that at the same time this testimony went far beyond the law as a definite code of institutions. It dwelt rather on its great principles, which -were to transcend the special forms in which they v.-ere embodied. It frequently contrasted (as in Isa. i, etc.) the external observance of form with the spiritual homage of the heart. It tended therefore, at least in- directly, to the time when, according to the well-known contrast drawn by Jeremiah, the law written on the ta- bles of stone shoidd give place to a new covenant, de- pending on a law written on the heart, and therefore coercive no longer (Jer. xxxi, 31-3i). In this it did but carry out the prediction of the law itself (Deut, xviii, 9 -22), and prepare the way for '• the Prophet" who was to come.
Still the law remained as the distinctive standard of the people. In the kingdom of Israel, after the separa- tion, the deliberate rejection of its leadmg principles by Jeroboam and his successors was the beginning of a gradual declension into idolatry and heathenism. But in the kingdom of Judah, the very division of the mon- arch}^ and consequent diminution of its splendor, and the need of a principle to assert against the superior material power of Israel, brought out the law once more in increased honor and influence. In the days of Je- hoshaphat we find, for the first time, that it was taken by the Levites in their circuits through the land, and the people were taught by it (2 Chron. xvii, 9). We find it especially spoken of in the oath taken by the king " at his pillar" in the Temple, and made the standard of reference in the reformation of Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Kings xi, 1-1; xxiii, 3; 2 Chron. xxx; xxxiv, 14-31).