MOSAISM
671
MOSAISM
protest (Matt, xv, 3-14) and bitter invective (Matt, xxiii). The tender-hearted Eevelator, too, found no language to describe the central seat of its worship but as "the city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt" (Rev. xi, 8), and branded its expatriated sanct- uary as "the synagogue of Satan" (Rev. ii, 9; iii, 9). No man knew better by sad experience the hollowness of its pretensions than the apostle who had been " a Hebrew of the Hebrews;" for amid the glare which its Sinaitic flashes threw upon his natural conscience he cried out in an agony of despair, " O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?" and he ever afterwards characterized it as " a yoke of bondage," and applied to it not only severe refutation, but likewise caustic irony (e.g. "the concision," Phil, iii, 2). Once more we are compelled to repeat the la- ment that a nominal Christianity should have repro- duced the same spurious sainthood and the same blind truckling to an assumed oral law. The 19th century of our Lord has witnessed the insane blasphemy of a pseudo-infallibility as a culmination of abominations that have emanated from the "mother of harlots." Drunk with the blood of the saints, she is the melan- choly and shocking successor of the adulterous apostasy (Matt, xvii, 39) which was not content till it had en- tailed upon itself (Matt, xxvii, 25) the guilt of the mur- der of its greatest Benefactor. Such is the outcome of all " Holiness" not grounded in a radical renewal of the moral nature by the Spirit of Christ which first breathed the conscious soul into man.
in. In Contrast with Heathenism. — In this aspect, which is the really just point of view, Mosaism shines with its true lustre. We name under this head like- wise a few only of the most prominent particulai's.
1. iMonotheism. — The whole Judaic system was a standing protest against polytheism, as the most strin- gent of its precepts were against the idolatry constantly associated with the heathen multiplication of divinities. It may safely be averred that the doctrine of the unity of God was original with the Abrahamic, and specially the Jewish race. Mohammedanism, the only form of false faith that holds it, borrowed it directly from the Jews. We have not space to develop the multiform influences growing out of this cardinal tenet of all true religion; some of them are specified below, and for oth- ers we refer to Polytheism. See also Monotheism.
2. Scrujndous7ies,i. — The vast moral superiority of Mosaism over heathenism is seen most conspicuously, perhaps, in the stern sense of right which it cultivated. The Greeks and Romans, with all their philosophical acumen, can hardly be said to have possessed or been actuated by a conscience, as we understand the term. There was a frivolity, a deep-seated scepticism, which led them to look upon sin as a venial affair, and to hold in contempt that tenderness of moral sensibility upon which conscientiousness depends. Among Oriental na- tions, with all their veneration for various deities, the case was, if possible, still worse; for the perception of right and wrong was so blunted by the grossness of their religions as to preclude any consistent probity or even virtue. The picture which Paul draws (Rom. i, 21 sq.) of the degraded immorality of the heathen world in its ripest day reveals a reeking rottenness revolting to com- mon decency ; but shocking as are the disclosures, his pen blushed to tell even half the abominations. The licentiousness, debauchery, drunkenness, violence, cruel- ty, and treachery of the age were absolutely beyond de- scription in any page fit lor the public eye. The word utterly abandoned is the only one that at all approaclies the depth of depravity into which the whole Gentile world was sunk. The Jews, it is true, were not univer- sally pure. Many sad rebukes by our Saviour, as ear- lier many severe castigations from the prophets, attest the prevalence of but too much corruption in every age. Yet a high sense of loyalty to God, of personal ac- countability to him, of public and private honor, of ob- ligation to truthfulness and integrity generally pre-
vailed as a distinguishing trait of the Hebrew nation. Above all they prized and clung to their creed and in- stitutions with a tenacious conviction that nerved them to brave all obloquy and opposition. Few if any hea- then thought enough of their religion to die for it, or cared enough for its sanctions to forego any considera- ble gratification in order to meet its prohibitions. The Jew, on the contrary, gloried in martyrdom for his faith, and submitted to the most onerous privations in the observance of its requirements. The very stiffness of its unresthetic simplicity, the coldness and sternness of its behests, the multiplicity and minuteness of its enact- ments, and the rigidity of its penalties, schooled its vo- taries into a Puritanic conscientiousness, which, indeed, often degenerated into morbid punctilio and puling cas- uistry, but in more robust and generous spirits has never been excelled in moral heroism, at least in the line of fortitude (Heb. xi, 33-38). Even amid the convulsive throes of their expiring commonwealth, sublime exam- ples of daring and devotion, actuated by a mistaken but intense zeal for their imperilled polity, are recorded by Josephus. This esprit du corjis, if we may so style it, for which the adherents of Mosaism have ever been proverbial, differs from the mere bravery of heathen- dom in being sustained by a religious fervor based upon the most earnest conviction that it was heaven's cause for which they were contending. The paradox of a misguided but superlatively dominant conscience (Rom. x, 2) was exhibited in the case of Saul of Tarsus, who thought he was doing God service (Acts xxvi, 9) while he was perpetrating acts for which, when enlightened by the halo from the skies, which taught him that love is the highest duty (1 Cor. xiii), he ceased not to his dying day to feel the keenest remorse (1 Cor. xv, 9; 1 Tim. i, 15).