[386] De Execrat. ed. Frcf. pp. 936, 937.
[387] Acts xxvi. 7.
[388] 2 Pet. i. 19. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER VII. IN PALESTINE - JEWS AND GENTILES IN THE LAND' - THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS AND FEELINGS - THE WALL OF SEPARATION.'
THE pilgrim who, leaving other countries, entered Palestine, must have felt as if he had crossed the threshold of another world. Manners, customs, institutions, law, life, nay, the very intercourse between man and man, were quite different. All was dominated by the one all-absorbing idea of religion. It penetrated every relation of life. Moreover, it was inseparably connected with the soil, as well as the people of Palestine, at least so long as the Temple stood. Nowhere else could the Shekhinah dwell or manifest itself; nor could, unless under exceptional circumstances, and for the merit of the fathers,' the spirit of prophecy be granted outside its bounds. To the orthodox Jew the mental and spiritual horizon was bounded by Palestine. It was the land'; all the rest of the world, except Babylonia, was outside the land.' No need to designate it specially as holy;' for all here bore the impress of sanctity, as he understood it. Not that the soil itself, irrespective of the people, was holy; it was Israel that made it such. For, had not God given so many commandments and ordinances, some of them apparently needless, simply to call forth the righteousness of Israel; [389] did not Israel possess the merits of the fathers,' [390] and specially that of Abraham, itself so valuable that, even if his descendants had, morally speaking, been as a dead body, his merit would have been imputed to them? [391] More than that, God had created the world on account of Israel, [392] and for their merit, making preparation for them long before their appearance on the scene, just as a king who foresees the birth of his son; nay, Israel had been in God's thoughts not only before anything had actually been created, but even before every other creative thought. [393] If these distinctions seem excessive, they were, at least, not out of proportion to the estimate formed of Israel's merits. In theory, the latter might be supposed to flow from good works,' of course, including the strict practice of legal piety, and from study of the law.' But in reality it was study' alone to which such supreme merit attached. Practice required knowledge for its direction; such as the Am-ha-arets (country people,' plebeians, in the Jewish sense of being unlearned) could not possess, [394] who had bartered away the highest crown for a spade with which to dig. And the school of Arum' - the sages - the great ones of the world' had long settled it, that study was before works. [395] And how could it well be otherwise, since the studies, which engaged His chosen children on earth, equally occupied their Almighty Father in heaven? [396] Could anything, then, be higher than the peculiar calling of Israel, or better qualify them for being the sons of God?
It is necessary to transport oneself into this atmosphere to understand the views entertained at the time of Jesus, or to form any conception of their infinite contrast in spirit to the new doctrine. The abhorrence, not unmingled with contempt, of all Gentile ways, thoughts and associations; the worship of the letter of the Law; the self-righteousness, and pride of descent, and still more of knowledge, become thus intelligible to us, and, equally so, the absolute antagonism to the claims of a Messiah, so unlike themselves and their own ideal. His first announcement might, indeed, excite hope, soon felt to have been vain; and His miracles might startle for a time. But the boundary lines of the Kingdom which He traced were essentially different from those which they had fixed, and within which they had arranged everything, alike for the present and the future. Had He been content to step within them, to complete and realise what they had indicated, it might have been different. Nay, once admit their fundamental ideas, and there was much that was beautiful, true, and even grand in the details. But it was exactly in the former that the divergence lay. Nor was there any possibility of reform or progress here. The past, the present, and the future, alike as regarded the Gentile world and Israel, were irrevocably fixed; or rather, it might almost be said, there were not such - all continuing as they had been from the creation of the world, nay, long before it. The Torah had really existed 2,000 years before Creation; [397] the patriarchs had had their Academies of study, and they had known and observed all the ordinances; and traditionalism had the same origin, both as to time and authority, as the Law itself. As for the heathen nations, the Law had been offered by God to them, but refused, and even their after repentance would prove hypocritical, as all their excuses would be shown to be futile. But as for Israel, even though their good deeds should be few, yet, by cumulating them from among all the people, they would appear great in the end, and God would exact payment for their sins as a man does from his friends, taking little sums at a time. It was in this sense, that the Rabbis employed that sublime figure, representing the Church as one body, of which all the members suffered and joyed together, which St. Paul adopted and applied in a vastly different and spiritual sense. [398]