Gospel of the Hebrews

“ Nature to him is ever a thing created and ordained, the living utterance of God's Omnipresence in the works of the world of matter. Therefore, the lyrical poetry of the Hebrews, by reason of its subject, is grand and grave in its solemnity. ”

“ But if we look through the history of some nation which has passed off from the stage of action, we find certain prevailing traits which continually reappear in the language and laws thereof; in its arts, literature, manners, modes of religion—in short, in the whole life of the people. The most prominent thing in the history of the Hebrews is their continual trust in God, and this marks them from their first appearance to the present day. They have accordingly done little for art, science, philosophy, little for commerce and the useful arts of life, but much for religion ”

“ The very introduction to the Hebrew literature in the Old Testament, must have produced a deep and delightful change in human feeling. The contrast between the sentiment and the very language of nature, as addressed to man in the literature of the Greeks and that of the Hebrews, was startling, warming and wonderful beyond measure. The beauty of natural objects was no longer a thing apart;—a thing to be admired on its own account; it was allied to a deep sentiment, it became linked to the life of our inner nature. ”

“ The Israelites among us talk of their own kingdom, and I wonder if the Hebrew means to set up a nation within us, or assail the throne of the Pharaohs, or go forth and settle in another country."
The lady shrugged her shoulders. "The Hebrews talk in similitudes. The prospect of freedom so uplifts them that they chant their purposes to you, and bewilder you with quaint words and hidden meanings. But these three facts, my Lord, are apparent and most potent in results when combined; they are oppressed beyond endurance; they are many; they are captained by a mystic. ”

“ Then let the Hebrew believer, "receiving that inestimable benefit," be ready also to follow his Redeemer's steps in rejection and in shame. Let him also be prepared for casting out by priest and scribe. Let his yearning heart, with whatever anguish, inure itself to the thought that the beloved "city of his solemnities" is not the final and enduring Jerusalem. Let his "thoughts to heaven the steadier rise," as he looks, like Abraham before him, to "God's great town in the unknown land," where sits on high the Mediator of the New Covenant, the "Priest upon His throne." ”

“ The intense and convinced energy with which the Hebrew, both of the Old and of the New Testament, threw himself upon his ideal of righteousness, and which inspired the incomparable definition of the great Christian virtue, faith,—the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,—this energy of devotion to its ideal has belonged to Hebraism alone. ”

“ The nations that are left, the great nations of the modern world, are but the moral passengers of the Hebrews, hangers-on to the race that can say “I”—I to the nth power,—the race that has dared to identify itself with God. The fact that the Hebrew, instead of saying God and I, has turned it around sometimes and said I and God is neither here nor there in the end. It is because the Hebrew has kept to the main point, has felt related to God (the main point a God cares about) , that he has been the most heroic and athletic figure in human history—comes nearer to the God-size. ”

“ It allowed every people to see the course which the children of Israel had pursued at various periods of their existence and to profit by such observation. The Hebrews were a terrible example to all the world. ”

“ Those who in the reading of the Old Testament thus fail to gain at the outset some understanding of the world in which the early Hebrews lived and of the conceptions which they held, understand but imperfectly and, of necessity, fail very largely in estimating justly the value of the books. For, assuredly, it is only as We perceive the, constant" growth, the consistent evolution, in the Bible and recognize in it the progressive unfolding of the divine—the spiritual and divine in the Hebrew-race that it has its highest meaning for us and can teach and stimulate us. ”

“ Millions have known the names of David or Isaiah, who never so much as heard of Sesostris or of Plato. The influence of the Hebrew race upon mankind has been a moral and a religious influence. Leaving Christianity out of sight—though Christianity itself was nursed in the cradle of Judaism, and was the fulfilment of the Messianic idea which was the most characteristic element in the ancient religion of the Hebrews—the history of Israel is more widely known a million-fold than any history of any people. ”

“ Never before the incarnation was there another people so highly favored as the Hebrews. God chose them for his own, and established his covenant with them, and talked with them from heaven, and dwelt in their midst upon the mercy-seat, and led them forty years with a pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness, and smote every enemy that rose up against them, and exterminated mighty nations to make room for them in Canaan, and brought them into the goodly land which he had promised to their fathers—a land flowing with milk and honey, which he gave them for a perpetual inheritance. ”

“ Biblical writings are far above any individual praise. But I may with propriety say the reading of the Hebrew writings in English has meant much to me personally. As a boy I read fewer books than do youngsters of the present day, and among them the Bible was one of [46] extraordinary interest. I read the Psalms and Isaiah as wonderful poetry, and turned to the Bible as to a storehouse of historical literature.
Hebrew history has been of great importance in the early history of our country. The early settlement in America was due to the same causes as the settlement of Canaan by the Hebrews. ”

“ The Hebrews are men, not angels; men of the old world, not Christians—true! Who could have received this history if it had represented them as Christians, and shown us God giving them commands fit for the Church of to-day? They are called to a higher morality than that of Egypt, for theirs is to be spiritual; higher than that of Chaldea or of Canaan, for Chaldea is shrouded in superstition, Canaan in obscene idolatry. They can do something; and what they can do Jehovah commands them to do. ”

“ For from both sides you have drawn what is by no means their best but their inferior teaching, and so have made for yourselves a border [90] of wickedness. For the Hebrews have precise laws concerning religious worship, and countless sacred things and observances which demand the priestly life and profession. But though their lawgiver forbade them to serve all the gods save only that one, whose "portion is Jacob, and Israel an allotment of his inheritance " ”

“ There can be no stronger proof of the pure and sublime nature of Hebrew poetry than is supplied by the remarkable fact, that it has been introduced into the service of the Christian church, and found suitable for expressing those lofty sentiments with which the gospel inspires the heart of every true worshipper. No other nation of the ancient world has produced a single poem which could be used by an enlightened people in these days for the purposes of devotion. ”

“ Thus one of the chief elements in the providential training of the Hebrews as the heralds and exponents of the most exalted religious and ethical truths revealed before the advent of the Prophet of Nazareth was the fact that they were the heirs and interpreters of the best that had been hitherto attained. Babylonia, Egypt, and later, Persia and Greece, each contributed their noblest beliefs and ideals. In the Israelites the diverse streams of divine revelation converged. ”

“ When even modern Biblical criticism, coming into the inheritance of a conception which obtained acceptance from religious animosity, still continues to insist on the ‘National God of the Hebrews,’ it commits a decided error, at least in reference to the age of which we are now speaking, and especially with regard to the Elôhîm. ”

“ Much, says the Epistle (v. 11, etc.) , is to be said about Him; the theme is deep, it is inexhaustible, for He is God and Man, one Christ. And the Hebrew believers (and is it not the [Pg 18] same with us?) are not quick to learn the great lesson of His glory, and so to grow into the adult manhood of grace. But let us try; let us address ourselves to "bear onwards (φερώμεθα) to perfection" (vi. 1) , in our thought, our faith, and so in our experience. The great foundation factors must be for ever there, the initial acts or attitudes of repentance, and of "faith towards God" ”

“ This the most venerable, and perhaps the most ancient, of Grecian 'myth', is a philosopheme, the very same in subject matter with the earliest record of the Hebrews, but most characteristically different in tone and conception;—for the patriarchal religion, as the antithesis of pantheism, was necessarily personal; and the doctrines of a faith, the first ground of which and the primary enunciation, is the eternal I AM, must be in part historic and must assume the historic form. Hence the Hebrew record is a narrative, and the first instance of the fact is given as the origin of the fact. ”

“ The Lord said of Israel, “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.” Hosea, ii, 11. No man is threatened, by Christ or any of his apostles, on account of Sabbath-breaking, or any of those things which are peculiar to the Jews. But men are threatened for disobedience to the [pg 174] Gospel of Christ. The New Testament is of Christ. Its religion is not “the Jews' religion,” but Christ's. There was much in the Old Testament that is in the New, but it is there by the authority of Christ. ”

“ The chapter on the Literature and Religion of the Ancient Hebrews cannot boast of a great variety of materials, because what of the subject is not known to the youngest reader of the Bible must be sought for, in the writings of Rabbinical authors, who have unfortunately directed the largest share of their attention to the minutest parts of their Law, and expended the labour of elucidation on those points which are least interesting to the rest of the world. ”

“ The Hebrew prophet stands alone among divinely appointed and inspired men of any religion, though analogies in other religions present themselves. Ethical and religious teachers arose among other nations of antiquity whose precepts may well be compared with those of Hebrew prophecy. ”

“ The writings of the Old Testament are the only books remaining in the Hebrew language. There are no Hebrew books to throw light on dark passages, or to settle the meaning of doubtful words and phrases. ”

“ No people ever felt so strongly as the people of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people, that conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern. ”

“ The inner history of the Old Testament is, in fact, in large measure a history of the gradual widening of the religious consciousness of Israel in regard to them and their suppression by a higher and more spiritual form of faith. ”

“ If we contrast the Hebrew God described in primitive tradition, manlike in appearance, appetites and emotions, with the Hebrew Gods as characterised by the prophets, there is shown a widening range of power along with a nature increasingly remote from that of man. ”

“ The Apostle does not bluntly assure them of their equality, but gently addresses them as partakers of a heavenly call. His words are the reverse of St. Paul’s language to the Ephesians, who are reminded that the Gentiles are partakers in the privileges of Israel. Those who sometimes were far off have been made nigh; the strangers and sojourners are henceforth fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God. Here, on the contrary, Hebrew Christians are encouraged with the assurance that they partake in the privileges of all believers. ”

“ Prophecy of the Hebrew type has not been limited to Israel; it is indeed a phenomenon of almost world-wide occurrence; in many lands and in many ages the wild, whirling words of frenzied men and women have been accepted as the utterances of an in-dwelling deity. What does distinguish Hebrew prophecy from all others is that the genius of a few members of the profession wrested this vulgar but powerful instrument from baser uses, and by wielding it in the interest of a high morality rendered a service of incalculable value to humanity. ”

“ But for them you and I could not be standing where we are in religion to-day. As the eleventh of Hebrews reminds us, we are the spiritual heir of such believers. It is to their struggles and their faith and their victories that we greatly owe it that we have been born into an atmosphere in which no religious belief is possible to us save in one God who is Spirit and Righteousness and all Truth. ”

“ Notwithstanding the differences and discrepancies noticeable in the two accounts of the origin of, mankind, the narratives are nevertheless in substantial agreement, and in the esteem of the majority of scholars they are easiest explained and reconciled if considered as representing two varying traditions among the Hebrews—traditions which in different form and setting embodied the selfsame central historic facts, together with a presentation more or less symbolical of certain moral and religious truths. ”

“ Of the modern Hebrews a most complete Hebrew; but a man of purpose, who never did things by halves, who could count upon good courage within, and who never allowed himself to be foiled by misadventure. ”

“ Was not this identically Israel's experience with that other creed to which its religion had given birth—Christianity? Its adherents likewise said to the Jews, "We accept your Scriptures, ethics and divinity. Accept only from us this individual Jesus, greatest of all prophets, the Messiah, in whom all your prophesies have been fulfilled, who represents God's new covenant with man." ”