ration of sublime events of the past, and first finds satisfaction there; and in other books, also, elaborate discourses on the past, or long and minute references to it,3 present themselves naturally on every occasion. This tendency supplies further proof that the noblest elements of the spirit of the age were nurtured on the past alone. V. THE GERMS OF FURTHER DISSOLUTION AND WEAKNESS WITHIN AND WITHOUT. In other respects no doubt the ancient customs of the people remained on the whole but little changed during the Persian epoch, and the renewed strictness of the old religion of the fatherland was their protecting shield. During these centuries the nation had first of all to gather its powers together, and start afresh on a life of its own. For this end this scrupulous return to the usages of the past, and even to a more rigorous observance of them, was highly beneficial; while the disadvantages of this tendency towards an absolute hagiocracy, though they must soon have revealed themselves in the higher departments of life, exercised as yet but little influence over the lower, where the prescriptions of antiquity were firmly established. Nevertheless certain germs of the dissolution of this new order of the hagiocracy show themselves without delay. Nothing but absolutely pure conceptions and actions can supply a basis for a supremacy which shall from the first be indestructible; nothing else, from the moment of its coming into general view, can help giving unmistakable signs of its inevitable dissolution at some future period. At certain epochs the hagiocracy may perhaps have become a necessity; it is this cause which raises it to power and secures its temporary advantages; but since it only springs from temporary exigencies, it cannot avoid soon disclosing its deficiencies by clear indications of its internal and external weakness and its final dissolution. And if even the original pure Theocracy, in the form under which it had entered the world a thousand years before, had speedily given premonitions of its future dissolution, this was much more likely to be the case with the hagiocracy, which did not even attempt anything more than to maintain and renew the ancient type to the This may be seen in Hab. iii.; Ps. lxxvii. 14-21 [13-20]. 2 Neh. ix. 6-47. 8 Neh. xiii. 18, 26 sq. 4 Vol. ii. p. 101 sq. utmost possible extent. The defects inherent in the former would now reappear, so far as the altered circumstances of the age did not restrain them, and those peculiar to the latter would be added to them. It was this combination which rendered the dissolution of this new power inevitable, the preliminary indications of which could not long be concealed. Those which present themselves in the Persian period are at first only remote; but of their appearance there can be no doubt. 1. The hagiocracy is indeed capable of scrupulously preserving and protecting whatever sanctity comes into its hands; but to let this element have free scope for action without suffering it to evaporate, and to employ it to penetrate and reform the world without losing its own hold of it, is beyond its power. It has a burning desire to subject every element of humanity to its judgment and its law, and to control and guide the life of the individual, down to the minutest details, because it is obscurely conscious that the holy, in so far as it is the really divine, ought to pervade every department of human existence; but, since it possesses nothing but the reflexion of what was once divine, it is in fact destitute of the strength actually to attain that towards which it feels itself impelled. This is most immediately apparent in the sphere of philosophical inquiry and scepticism. The force and rapidity with which these tendencies gather strength are directly proportioned to the degree in which the hagiocracy supposes itself already to possess and to understand everything, whereas in reality it has not even desire and energy to look deep enough into its own immediate property, and consequently allows even the truths confided to it to become gradually obscured. Hence it is that philosophy, with its unwearied questionings and investigations, gradually rises up over against it, and readily assumes a hostile attitude towards the truths which the hagiocracy has failed to protect; and while the world learns in this contest to doubt the truths which it sees so badly defended, the whole strength of scepticism lies concealed in the hagiocracy itself, in the fact that it supposes itself to understand its own truths, but really comprehends them less and less. In this way doubt grew powerful around and even within it, developed itself in schools of philosophy, and embraced in its magic circle every one of an inquiring mind or from any other causes morally desponding; and freedom at last thought itself obliged to enter into an alliance with it to resist the claims and compulsions of the hagiocracy, and nothing was so powerful a solvent as the VOL. V. scepticism which came in contact with sacred things and was yet not really conquered. This is always one of the prime causes of the dissolution of a hagiocracy; and in the Persian age we already see the first movements of this philosophy, which gradually passed more and more decidedly into simple scepticism. How completely the spirit of questioning and inquiry had gained the upper hand, is shown by the whole tenor of the discourse of the last prophet, Malachi.' But the full power of scepticism is already seen developed in the book of Koheleth. Koheleth examines and searches through everything, all the vanity and all the blessings of the human lot, and even the vanity of philosophy and the spirit of inquiry themselves, and it is only with an effort that he at last hushes up his doubts as to the immortality of the soul and a last judgment of God upon it. It is true that he really does overcome even these doubts in so far as they might prove injurious, and thereby shows how much of the great treasure of the ancient faith was still retained by this age for its support in spite of the complete change which had gradually passed over it. But the sequel of this history will soon demonstrate with what irresistible strength this same power of scepticism might return under conditions favourable to its own genius, and how it might suddenly seethe over and commit the most dreadful devastations. The hagiocracy inevitably fosters weak faith and groundless doubt, and generates no desire to emerge out of this condition, as the Papal Hagiocracy of our own day is ever teaching us afresh. 2. But the hagiocracy could not really satisfy even those who desired to remain absolutely faithful to the holy, because it had thrust itself in between the intrinsically holy and the individual mind, and erected a kind of partition wall between the two. It is possible, however, for the individual, whether a member of one of the spiritual orders or not, to force his way behind the growing density of this partition to the inner sanctuary itself; and what fruits of purest religion have we not already seen ripening in this period? But the wall was becoming more and more difficult to break through. The rule of life was more and more exclusively laid down by the priests for the laity, and by the sacred book and sacred letter for priest and layman alike, and behind this protecting wall the purely divine element, even in the very light in which it had once shone forth so clearly, retreated further and further into obscurity.' The result was that the prescriptions of the ancient religion assumed the aspect of mere laws of outer life, which had to be obeyed simply because they had once been enjoined, because the priest or the sacred book so determined, and because divine salvation was not to be expected on any other conditions. Thus the individual might well submit to them in their strictest form, and even prefer to do too much rather than too little ; nor could he ever carry far enough to satisfy himself the scrupulous observance of the host of minute injunctions which he conceived to be founded on the letter of scripture. In this direction, too, he was inevitably confronted by that defect which we have seen to be inherent in the original limits imposed upon the whole ancient Covenant; and we have already observed in a conspicuous instance to what an extent this might be carried even in Ezra's time. , 3 The only leading tenets and mottoes of the Great Assembly already described which have been preserved, are the three following: 'be circumspect in judgment;' 'train up many scholars; and make a hedge around the law!' But what an amount of torturing scrupulousness and useless law-making is already implied in this third dictum, which treats all mankind as infants! The effort to provide against the possibility of the smallest letter of an old or new law being transgressed, and so to heap law upon law, and, instead of steadily accustoming man to the faithful observance of the few great laws of God, to surround him with an endless network of the minutest injunctions, and always keep him in leading-strings, though only to be seen in the fulness of all its separate results in the Mishnah and the Talmud, nevertheless essentially dates its existence from this period, and only developes itself more and more irresistibly in the succeeding centuries. It is not to be supposed that this tendency had only then sprung up in the world, and that otherwise it could have been neither possible nor actual. The fact is forced strongly upon our observation, that Ezra, whose spirit so powerfully stimulated and controlled it all, was in the first instance only a judge, and could only regard and direct affairs from a lawyer's point of view; so that the spirit which now became predominant by the side of the hagiocracy may rightly be designated in brief as the legal, or more exactly, The holy books which we have in our hands' are already treated in 1 Macc. xii. 9 as exactly equivalent to God, ver. 15; so that at last the removal or dishonouring of the sacred books was considered a sin against God himself (sacri legium), Jos. Ant. xvi. 6, 2, xx. 5, 4. a P. 139 sqq. that of instruction in the law (the juristic). But when a supreme law of life has been already given, and, without seriously troubling themselves about its ultimate foundations, men are only desirous to work it out into detail, and, if necessary, to bring it into actual life by means of a countless multitude of new regulations, and to keep it alive and valid by all the compulsory power of ever new penal laws, similar conditions everywhere produce similar results. The scholastic labours of the Middle Ages, and those of the papal jurists, or of the majority of their fellow-workers in Germany, are essentially the same. The difference between the legal movement over which Ezra presided and its modern parallels lies chiefly in this simple fact, that the former found in every ancient law which it worked up the immediate presence of the holy itself, and therefore treated it with the utmost awe and the most scrupulous care, and with admirable patience made the most strenuous efforts possible to secure the legal obedience, and, by that path, the outward sanctity of man. What the learned of to-day would so hypocritically worship and appropriate as the Positive,' that, at least, if not more, was then furnished by the Holy,' and, in the eyes of believers, flowed from the purest conceivable source. 6 In fact, it seemed both useful and suitable to the nature of man that he should have before him all his duties toward God (i.e. those that were indispensable) accurately defined and arranged in a perfectly authentic code, so that he might be able to order his whole life in accordance with them, in the tranquillising hope that in doing this he did all that was possible, and satisfied every claim of virtue. It all looks so comprehensible, so easy and convenient. The learned elaboration of the letter of the law seldom leads, it is true, to a mitigation of its requirements; yet, in the case of the forty stripes permitted by the law as the limit of that kind of punishment, the Rabbinical regulation, to prevent one extra stroke being given by an oversight, permanently reduced the number to thirty-nine. On the other hand, the prevailing tendency to narrow and rigid interpretations led to further extensions and increase of the power of the law in many ways. The tithes,2 the purifications which were enforced with special rigour as See the Alterth. p. 141. 2 Tob. i. 7; Matt. xxiii. 23; Jos. Ant. iv. 8, 22, Mish. Abôth v. 9, and the elaborate discussions of the Mishnah; comp. with Alterth. p. 345 sq. According to a favourite interpretation, a second tithe should be bestowed on the sanctuary, and a third be given to the poor, but, certainly neither of these can have fallen under the penal laws. |