And when in the sixteenth century of the Christian Church the intellectual and spiritual element of Religion was once again brought to the front, with the appeal to its original documents - the English Martyr at the stake could find no fitter words to express the permanent triumph of his cause than those which in the Apocryphal Book of Esdras are spoken in reference to the ideal Scribe, the ideal Reformer of Israel: "I shall light a candle of understanding in thine "heart, which shall not be put out."1

But to this great office there was and is a darker side. There was, indeed, nothing of itself Priestly in the functions of the Scribe; the idea of their office was as distinct, almost as alien, from the mechanical, bullock-slaying, fumigating ministrations of the Priesthood as had been the office of the Prophets. But, unlike the Prophets, this distinction was in their case often more of form than of spirit. Ezra, though a Scribe first and foremost, was yet a Priest; and his chief associates, until the arrival of the Governor, Nehemiah, were Levites. The Scribes and the Priests hung together; and at some of the most critical moments of their history the interests, the passions, and the prejudices of the two were fatally indissoluble. And in like manner, although from the more spiritual nature of the religion in a less degree, the Pastors of the Christian Church have again and again been tempted to formalize and materialize their spiritual functions by associating them once more with the name and the substance of the ancient Jewish 2 or Pagan Priesthood.

And yet further, the peculiar ministrations of the

1 2 Esdras xiv. 25. Compare Froude's History of England, vi. 387.

2 See Professor Lightfoot on the Philippians, 243-266.

Scribes became more and more divorced from that homely yet elevated aspect imparted to his office by Ezra. There was, as we have seen, the fable which ascribed to him the formation of a body of Scribes called the Great Synagogue,' by which the Canon of Scripture was arranged, the first Liturgy of the Jewish Church composed, and of which the succession continued till its last survivor died two centuries afterward. Some such circle doubtless may have grown up round the first great Scribe-a circle of "men of understanding," such as Johanan and Eliasib, who are described 2 by that name as having accompanied him from Babylon-though of the existence or the doings of any such regular body no vestige appears in any single historical or authentic work before the Christian era. But there is one traditional saying ascribed to the Great Synagogue which must surely have come down from an early stage in the history of the Scribes, and which well illustrates the disease, to which, as to a parasitical plant, the order itself, and all the branches into which it has grown, has been subject. It resembles in form the famous mediæval motto for the guidance of conventual ambition, although it is more serious in spirit: "Be circumspect in judging - make many disciples — make a hedge round the law." Nothing could be less like the impetuosity, the simplicity, or the openness of Ezra than any of these three precepts. But the one which

1 All that can be said on this subject is well summed up by Derenbourg, c. 3, and by Ginsburg in Kitto's Cyclopædia ("Great Syna"gogue"), where it is conjectured that the 120 members were made up

out of the list in Nehemiah. Comp. Herzfeld, iii. 380–387.

2 Mebinim." Ezra viii. 16. * Derenbourg, 34. The mediæval saying is, "Parere superiori, legere breviarium taliter qualiter, et sinere res vadere ut vadunt."

in each succeeding generation predominated more and more was the last: "Make a hedge about the Law." To build up elaborate explanations, thorny obstructions, subtle evasions, enormous developments, was the labor of the later Jewish Scribes, till the Pentateuch was buried beneath the Mishna, and the Mishna beneath the Gemara. To make hedges round the Koran has been, though not perhaps in equally disproportioned manner, the aim of the schools of El-Azar and Cordova, and of the successive Fetvahs of the Sheykhs-el-Islam. To erect hedges round the Gospel has been the effort, happily not continuous or uniform, but of large and dominant sections of the Scribes of Christianity, until the words of its Founder have wellnigh disappeared, behind the successive intrenchments, and fences, and outposts, and counter-works, of Councils, and Synods, and Popes, and anti-Popes, and Sums of Theology and of Saving Doctrine, of Confessions of Faith and Schemes of Salvation; and the world has again and again sighed for one who would once more speak with the authority of self-evidencing Truth, and "not1 as the Scribes." A distinguished Jewish Rabbi of this century, in a striking and pathetic passage on this crisis in the history of his nation, contrasts the prospect of the course which Ezekiel and Isaiah had indicated with that which was adopted by Ezra, and sums up his reflections with the remark that: "Had the spirit been preserved instead "of the letter, the substance instead of the form, "then Judaism might have been spared the necessity of "Christianity." But we in like manner may say that, had the Scribes of the Christian Church retained more of the genius of the Hebrew Prophets, Christianity in 2 Herzfeld, ii. 32-36.

1 Matt. vii. 29.

its turn would have been spared what has too often been a return to Judaism, and it was in the perception of the superiority of the Prophet to the Scribe that its original force and unique excellence have consisted.

One further germ of spiritual life may, probably, be traced to the epoch of Ezra. If in the long The Synaunmarked period which follows, the worship of the Synagogue silently sprang up such as we shall see it at the latest stage of their history,' it must have originated in the independent, personal, universal study of the Law, irrespective of Temple or Priest, which Ezra had inaugurated. The great innovation of Prayer 2 as a substitute for Sacrifice thus took root in Jewish worship; the eighteen prayers which are still recited in Jewish synagogues, and of which some at least are, both by ancient tradition and modern criticism, ascribed to Ezra and his companions, are the first example of an articulate Liturgy. On the one hand, the personal devotion of the Psalms now found its place as the expression of the whole community; and on the other hand, the conviction which the Prophets entertained of the perpetual existence of the nation prepared the way for the conviction of the endless life of the single human being. "In a word, Judaism was now on the road towards the adoption of the hope of "personal immortality."

66

1 See Lecture L.

2 See Lecture XLI.

See note on p. 168; see Kuenen, Religion of Israel, iii. 19.

• Kuenen, iii. 30.

NOTE ON PAGE 167.

Of the "Eighteen Benedictions," as they are called, the 1st, 2d, and 3rd, the 17th, and 18th and 19th (Prideaux, i. 419-422) are believed to date from Ezra. They are as follows :—

1. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our God, the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the great God, powerful and tremendous, the high God, bountifully dispensing benefits, the Creator and Possessor of the Universe, who rememberest the good deeds of our fathers, and in Thy love sendest a Redeemer to those who are descended from them, for Thy name's sake, O King, our Helper, our Saviour, and our Shield. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who art the Shield of Abraham.

2. Thou, O Lord, art powerful for ever. Thou raisest the dead to life, and art mighty to save; Thou sendest down the dew, stillest the winds, and makest the rain to come down upon the earth, and sustainest with Thy beneficence all that live therein; and of Thine abundant mercy makest the dead again to live. Thou helpest up those that fall; Thou curest the sick; Thou loosest them that are bound, and makest good Thy Word of Truth to those that sleep in the dust.

Who is to be compared to Thee, O Thou Lord of might? and who is like unto Thee, O our King, who killest and makest alive, and makest salvation to spring up as the herb out of the field? Thou art faithful to make the dead to rise again to life. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who raisest the dead again to life.

3. Thou art holy, and Thy name is holy, and Thy Saints do praise Thee every day. For a great King and an holy art Thou, O God. Blessed art Thou, O Lord God most holy.

17. Be Thou well pleased, O Lord our God, with Thy people Israel, and have regard unto their prayers. Restore Thy worship to the inner part of Thy house, and make haste with favor and love to accept of the burnt sacrifices of Israel and their prayers; and let the worship of Israel Thy people be continually well pleasing unto Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest thy Divine presence to Zion.

For Thou art the Lord Thou art our Rock, and

18. We will give thanks unto Thee with praise. our God, the God of our fathers for ever and ever. the Rock of our life, the Shield of our salvation. To all generations will we give thanks unto Thee and declare Thy praise; because of our life, which is always in Thy hands; and because of our souls, which are ever depend