Hebrew religion

“ The Messianic ideal involves the whole conception of the religious future of Israel. The Hebrew religion receives much inspiration from its tradition of the past, but infinitely more from its hopes for the future: the golden age is not thought to lie far back in history, but in a time yet to come. ”

“ Hebrew thought, in its inception, its ethics, its morals, is the pure wine of religion; in America, they have thinned it with the water of reform, and put it into fine-looking bottles with gold labels. ”

“ The relationship of father has its highest sanction and embodiment in that of God towards Israel; the tenderness and care of a mother in that of the watchfulness and pity of the Lord over his people."
Religion was the breath of Jewish life. It is absolutely impossible to touch on Hebrew history, customs, or ideals, in any period or to any extent, and not to come into contact with Hebrew religion. ”

“ The Hebrew genius was not intellectual but ethical and emotional. The typical Hebrew guide was not a philosopher but a prophet. Through a development of many centuries the popular religion from polytheistic became monotheistic, and from worshiping the sun and fire came to worship an embodiment of righteousness and of supreme power. An ideal of character grew up—in close association with religious worship and ceremonial—in which the central virtues were justice, benevolence, and chastity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The picture of Israel's history that yielded them their vision is dissolving before our eyes, at the touch of the new criticism, and men are fearing that the secret of the Bible is escaping from our age. I desire to-day to draw for you, in outline, the story of Israel's development, as traced by our new masters; that you may see the old vision re-emergent in truer, nobler forms. The re-construction of Hebrew history makes real and certain an organic, natural development of the religion of the Christ; a travail of the nation with the Son it bore to God. ”

“ Last of all and perhaps most characteristic of the Hebrew people is the great lesson that this Eternal God, who created the universe and cares for his people, demands righteousness of his people. To the nations round about religion was not a matter of righteousness. ”

“ Because their political existence and their social system was founded on truth, and controlled by religion. The Hebrew nation was the one holy and only true church of those days. And for the same reasons which gave the Jews that supernatural vitality, Christianity is at this day in the van of civilization. Everything we have said of the one applies to the other; the signs which we noticed as such prominent features of Jewish polity—division of orders, fixed occupations, care for agriculture, good faith, property and family laws, individual and federal government—whence have they come to us? ”

“ Doubtless such a reform met with strong resistance from the disestablished and vested interests, but it was firmly supported by royal influence and by the Jerusalem priesthood as well as by the true prophets of Yahweh who had protested against the idolatrous usages and corruptions of the high places.
The strong impress of Hebrew prophecy is to be found in the deeply marked ethical spirit of the Deuteronomic legislation. Love to God and love to man is stamped on a large number of its provisions. Love to God is emphasized in Deut. ”

“ The importance of this indication in the study of Hebrew law and faith is very plain. Nor should we fail to notice the interesting connection between the Divine lawgiving of Moses and the practical invention of a worldly race. There is no exclusiveness in the providence of God. The art of a people, acute and eager indeed, but without spirituality, is not rejected as profane by the inspired leader of Israel. Egyptians and Phœnicians have their share in originating that culture which mingles its stream with sacred revelation and religion. ”

“ Paul condensed the philosophy of Hebrew history into a metaphor. Israel travailed in birth with Christianity. In the mind of the nation was begotten, of the Most High, a conception of ethical religion, whose gestation was a process of centuries. The period of parturition came, and a universal religion was born into the world; bodied, as religion needs must be, in a man, Jesus, the Christ. ”

“ Every one should, as far as he was able, observe the religious precepts of Judaism, and turn himself in prayer to his God, and whoever was prevented from praying in the prescribed form should, at least, say a short prayer in Hebrew three times a day. Like the Jews who had been forced to baptism under the Spanish Visigothic kings, those who had been converted under compulsion453 to Islam now exhorted one another to remain faithful to their ancient religion. ”

“ Our contention is better proved by Rabbis reputed orthodox, who devoted themselves with enthusiasm to the cultivation of Hebrew literature. Without renouncing religion, they found a way of effecting the harmonization of religion and life. In point of fact, humanism of a conservative stripe reached its zenith at the precise moment when the realists, deceived by superficial appearances, were predicting the complete breaking up of traditional Judaism. ”

“ He is a modern: he is a man.
We have been speaking of Greek thought and Greek life; yet between that life and ourselves there have intervened some centuries of Christianity, including the Middle Ages, during which Jewish influence pervaded and absorbed other thought. The Hebrew ruled and subdued in philosophy, poetry, and religion. The Hebrew influence is the most powerful influence ever let loose upon the167 world. Every book written since this Hebrew domination is saturated with Hebrew. It has thus become impossible to see the classics as they were. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Good results from sorrowful causes showed themselves often in unexpected ways and in unforeseen directions; for instance, the frequent theological disputations between Jews and Jews, and Christians and Christians, the very charges now and again brought against Jews and Jewish literature, turned the attention of Christian scholars to the study of Hebrew. ”

“ Connected with Christianity, indeed, the history of the Hebrews rises before the reflecting mind in a very singular point of view; for, in opposition to their own wishes they laid the foundations of a religion which has not only superseded their peculiar rites, but is rapidly advancing towards that universal acceptation which they were wont to anticipate in favour of their own ancient law. ”

“ Hence they who deny the Divine origin of the Hebrew Polity, bear the highest testimony to the splendor of that intellect which created it. If all was the product of one mind, it is the most illustrious instance in history of the power of a great spirit to impress itself on the race. The name of Moses stands alone, as the greatest of antiquity, and the Hebrew law remains as its most wonderful monument. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Hebrew, on the other hand, begins from the belief of an objective external God, but One who cares for more than his individual soul; as One who is the ever-present guide, and teacher, and ruler of his whole nation; who regards that nation as a whole, a one person, and that not merely one present generation, but all, past or future, as a one “Israel”—lawgivers, prophets, priests, warriors. All classes are His ministers. He is essentially a political deity, who cares infinitely for the polity of a nation, and therefore bestows one upon them—“a law of Jehovah.” ”

“ It nourished the Jews in their amazing obstinacy, and led to the annihilation of their State which, to the very end, they saw in their dreams bruising all other nations with a rod of iron, and breaking them in pieces like a potter's vessel. But, as any idealism is better than none, the Hebrew race has won remarkable triumphs, though of a kind which it never desired. ”

“ To the Hebrew, as the original custodians of the Old Testament, we are indebted for keeping the faith pure when all other nations either forgot or abandoned it, or else mixed it up with errors and idolatry. What Moses records of the creation of the world and the first ten Fathers, is embodied by the Persians, Indians and Chinese in whole volumes of mythology, and surrounded by a host of fanciful traditions. Thus we see in the Hebrew as the chosen people of God, a nation able to preserve its literature intact through captivity, dispersion and persecution, for a period of four thousand years. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The history of Israel was the history of Judaism. Its choicest literature formed its sacred writings. Religion was never narrowed to a theory, an institution, an "ism," a sect, a school. It was as generous and as rich as the broad, free life of the nation. Every factor essential to a noble religion was thus supplied from the sound and healthy life of the people. ”

“ The assertion of the Hebrew nation to an individuality which has ever been believed to be an especial object of Divine Providence, and the fact that this faith, developed in the patriarchs of the nation, and guarded by the system of religious rites which has rendered the name of Moses immortal, have resulted in accomplishing what it predicted,—rises immediately before every one's mind. ”

“ There is naturally a certain accommodation of the divine law to the various stages of the moral apprehension of the Jewish people. Gradually the nation is being carried forward by the promise of material benefits to the deeper and more inward appreciation of spiritual blessings.
(2) It is lacking in Scope. In regard to universality the Hebrew ideal, it must be acknowledged, is deficient. God is usually represented as the God of Israel alone, and not as the God of all men, and the obligations of veracity, honesty, and mercy are confined within the limits of the nation. ”

“ The history of the development of modern Hebrew literature, its character, the extraordinary conditions fostering it, its very existence, are of a sort to surprise one who has not kept in touch with the internal struggles, the intellectual currents that have agitated the Judaism of Eastern Europe in the course of the past century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”