Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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Stanley[349] expresses his satisfaction that the time has past in which
the most fastidious believer can object to hearing Abraham called a
Bedouin sheik. The type has remained unchanged through all the centuries,
and the picture in the Bible of Abraham in his tent, of his hospitality,
his self-respect, his courage, and also of his less noble traits,
occasional cunning and falsehood, and cruelty toward Hagar and
Ishmael,--these qualities, good and bad, are still those of the desert.
Only in Abraham something higher and exceptional was joined with them.

In the Book of Genesis Abraham enters quite abruptly upon the scene. His
genealogy is given in Genesis (chap, xi.), he being the ninth in descent
from Shem, each generation occupying a little more than thirty years. The
birth of Abraham is usually placed somewhere about two thousand years
before Christ. His father's name was Terah, whom the Jewish and Mohammedan
traditions describe as an idolater and maker of idols. He had two
brothers, Nahor and Haran; the latter being the father of Lot, and the
other, Nahor, being the grandfather of Rebecca, wife of Isaac. Abraham's
father, Terah, lived in Ur of the Chaldees (called in Scripture Casdim).
The Chaldees, who subsequently inhabited the region about the Persian
Gulf, seemed at first to have lived among the mountains of Armenia, at the
source of the Tigris; and this was the region where Abraham was born, a
region now occupied by the people called Curds, who are perhaps
descendants of the old Chaldees, the inhabitants of Ur. The Curds are
Mohammedans and robbers, and quite independent, never paying taxes to the
Porte. The Chaldees are frequently mentioned in Scripture and in ancient
writers. Xenophon speaks of the Carduchi as inhabitants of the mountains
of Armenia, and as making incursions thence to plunder the country, just
as the Curds do now. He says they were found there by the younger Cyrus,
and by the ten thousand Greeks. The Greeks, in their retreat, were obliged
to fight their way through them, and found them very skilful archers. So
did the Romans under Crassus and Mark Antony. And so are they described by
the Prophet Habakkuk (chap, i. 6-9):--

"For lo, I raise up the Chaldeans,
A bitter and hasty nation,
Which marches far and wide in the earth,
To possess the dwellings that are not theirs.
They are terrible and dreadful,
Their decrees and their judgments proceed only from themselves.
Swifter than leopards are their horses,
And fiercer than the evening wolves.
Their horsemen prance proudly around;
And their horsemen shall come from afar and fly,
Like the eagle when he pounces on his prey.
They all shall come for violence,
In troops,--their glance is ever forward!
They gather captives like the sand!"

As they were in the time of Habakkuk, so are they to-day. Shut up on every
side in the Persian Empire, their ancestors, the Carduchi, refused
obedience to the great king and his satraps, just as the Curds refuse to
obey the grand seignior and his pashas. They can raise a hundred and forty
thousand armed men. They are capable of any undertaking. Mohammed himself
said, "They would yet revolutionize the world."

The ancient Chaldees seem to have been fire-worshippers, like the
Persians. They were renowned for the study of the heavens and the worship
of the stars, and some remains of Persian dualism still linger among their
descendants, who are accused of Devil-worship by their neighbors.

That Abraham was a real person, and that his story is historically
reliable, can hardly be doubted by those who have the historic sense. Such
pictures, painted in detail with a Pre-Raphaelite minuteness, are not of
the nature of legends. Stories which are discreditable to his character,
and which place him in a humiliating position towards Pharaoh and
Abimelech, would not have appeared in a fictitious narrative. The mythical
accounts of Abraham, as found among the Mohammedans and in the
Talmud,[350] show, by their contrast, the difference between fable and
history.

The events in the life of Abraham are so well known that it is not
necessary even to allude to them. We will only refer to one, as showing
that others among the tribes in Palestine, besides Abraham, had a faith in
God similar to his. This is the account of his meeting with Melchisedek.
This mysterious person has been so treated by typologists that all human
meaning has gone out of him, and he has become, to most minds, a very
vapory character.[351] But this is doing him great injustice.

One mistake often made about him is, to assume that "Melchisedek, King of
Salem," gives us the name and residence of the man, whereas both are his
official titles. His name we do not know; his office and title had
swallowed it up. "King of Justice and King of Peace,"--this is his
designation. His office, as we believe, was to be umpire among the chiefs
of neighboring tribes. By deciding the questions which arose among them,
according to equity, he received his title of "King of Justice." By thus
preventing the bloody arbitrament of war, he gained the other name, "King
of Peace." All questions, therefore, as to where "Salem" was, fall to the
ground. Salem means "peace"; it does not mean the place of his abode.

But in order to settle such intertribal disputes, two things were
necessary: first, that the surrounding Bedouin chiefs should agree to take
him as their arbiter; and, secondly, that some sacredness should attach to
his character, and give authority to his decisions. Like others in those
days, he was both king and priest; but he was priest "of the Most High
God,"--not of the local gods of the separate tribes, but of the highest
God, above all the rest. That he was the acknowledged arbiter of
surrounding tribes appears from the fact that Abraham paid to him tithes
out of the spoils. It is not likely that Abraham did this if there were no
precedent for it; for he regarded the spoils as belonging, not to himself,
but to the confederates in whose cause he fought. No doubt it was the
custom, as in the case of Delphi, to pay tithes to this supreme arbiter;
and in doing so Abraham was simply following the custom. The Jewish
traveller, Wolff, states that in Mesopotamia a similar custom prevails at
the present time. One sheik is selected from the rest, on account of his
superior probity and piety, and becomes their "King of Peace and
Righteousness." A similar custom, I am told, prevails among some American
tribes. Indeed, where society is organized by clans, subject to local
chiefs, some such arrangement seems necessary to prevent perpetual feuds.

This "King of Justice and Peace" gave refreshments to Abraham and his
followers after the battle, blessing him in the name of the Most High God.
As he came from no one knows where, and has no official status or descent,
the fact that Abraham recognized him as a true priest is used in the Book
of Psalms and the Epistle to the Hebrews to prove there is a true
priesthood beside that of the house of Levi. A priest after the order of
Melchisedek is one who becomes so by having in him the true faith, though
he has "no father nor mother, beginning of days nor end of life," that is,
no genealogical position in an hereditary priesthood.

The God of Abraham was "The Most High." He was the family God of Abraham's
tribe and of Abraham's descendants. Those who should worship other gods
would be disloyal to their tribe, false to their ancestors, and must be
regarded as outlaws. Thus the faith in a Supreme Being was first
established in the minds of the descendants of Abraham by family pride,
reverence for ancestors, and patriotic feeling. The faith of Abraham, that
his God would give to his descendants the land of Palestine, and multiply
them till they should be as numerous as the stars or the sand, was that
which made him the Father of the Faithful.

The faith of Abraham, as we gather it from Genesis, was in God as a
Supreme Being. Though almighty, God was willing to be Abraham's personal
protector and friend. He talks with Abraham face to face. He comes to him,
and agrees to give to him and to his posterity the land of Canaan, and in
this promise Abraham has entire faith. His monotheism was indeed of an
imperfect kind. It did not exclude a belief in other gods, though they
were regarded as inferior to his own. His family God, though almighty, was
not omnipresent. He came down to learn whether the rumors concerning the
sinfulness of Sodom were correct or not. He was not quite sure of
Abraham's faith, and so he tested it by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac,
in whom alone the promise to Abraham's descendants could be fulfilled. But
though the monotheism of Abraham was of so imperfect a kind, it had in it
the root of the better kind which was to come. It was imperfect, but not
false. It was entire faith in the supreme power of Jehovah to do what he
would, and in his disposition to be a friend to the patriarch and his
posterity. It was, therefore, trust in the divine power, wisdom, and
goodness. The difference between the religion of Abraham and that of the
polytheistic nations was, that while they descended from the idea of a
Supreme Being into that of subordinate ones, he went back to that of the
Supreme, and clung to this with his whole soul.

Sec. 3. Moses; or, Judaism as the national Worship of a just and holy King.

In speaking of Moses and of his law, it may be thought necessary to begin
by showing that such a man as Moses really existed; for modern criticism
has greatly employed itself in questioning the existence of great men. As
the telescope resolves stars into double, triple, and quadruple stars, and
finally into star-dust, so the critics, turning their optical tubes toward
that mighty orb which men call Homer, have declared that they have
resolved him into a great number of little Homers. The same process has
been attempted in regard to Shakespeare. Some have tried to show that
there never was any Shakespeare, but only many Shakespeare writers. In
like manner, the critics have sought to dissolve Moses with their powerful
analysis, and, instead of Moses, to give us a number of fragmentary
writings from different times and hands, skilfully joined together; in
fact, instead of Moses, to give us a mosaic. Criticism substitutes human
tendencies in the place of great men, does not love to believe in genius,
and often appears to think that a number of mediocrities added together
can accomplish more than one man of genius.

Certainly this is a mistake. The easiest and most natural solution of
wonderful results is the supposition of genius, inspiration, heroism, as
their cause. Great men explain history. Napoleon explains the history of
Europe during a quarter of a century. Suppose a critic, a thousand years
hence, should resolve Napoleon into half a dozen Napoleons; would they
explain the history of Europe as well? Given a man like Napoleon, and we
can understand the French campaigns in Italy and Germany, the overthrow of
Austria, the annihilation of Prussia, the splendid host of field-marshals,
the Bonaparte circle of kings, the Codex, the Simplon Road, and the many
changes of states and governments on the map of Europe. One man of genius
explains it all. But take away the man of genius, and substitute a group
of small men in his place, and the thing is much more obscure and
unintelligible. So, given Moses, the man of genius and inspiration, and we
can understand the Exodus, understand the Jewish laws, understand the
Pentateuch, and understand the strange phenomenon of Judaism. But, instead
of Moses, given a mosaic, however skilfully put together, and the thing is
more difficult. Therefore, Moses is to be preferred to the mosaic, as the
more reasonable and probable of the two, just as Homer is preferable to
the Homerids, and Shakespeare to the Shakespeare Club.[352]

We find in Moses the three elements of genius, inspiration, and
knowledge. Perhaps it is not difficult to distinguish them. We see the
natural genius and temperament of Moses breaking out again and again
throughout his career, as the rocky strata underlying the soil crop out in
the midst of gardens, orchards, and fields of corn. The basis of his
nature was the hardest kind of rock, with a surging subterranean fire of
passion beneath it. An awful soul, stem and terrible as Michael Angelo
conceived him, the sublime genius carving the sublime lawgiver in
congenial marble. The statue is as stern as law itself. It sits in one of
the Roman churches, between two columns, the right hand grasping the
tables of the law, the symbolic horns of power protruding from the brow,
and the austere look of the judge bent upon those on the left hand. A
fiery nature, an iron will, a rooted sense of justice, were strangely
overflowed and softened by a tenderness toward his race, which was not so
much the feeling of a brother for brethren as of a parent for children.

Educated in the house of Pharaoh, and adopted by his daughter as her
child, taken by the powerful and learned priesthood of Egypt into their
ranks, and sharing for many years their honors and privileges, his heart
yearned toward his brethren in the land of Goshen, and he went out to see
them in their sufferings and slavery. His impetuous nature broke out in
sudden indignation at the sight of some act of cruelty, and he smote the
overseer who was torturing the Jewish slave. That act made him an exile,
and sent him to live in Arabia Petrea, as a shepherd. If he had thought
only of his own prospects and position, he would not have gone near the
Israelites at all, but lived quietly as an Egyptian priest in the palace
of Pharaoh. But, as the writer to the Hebrews says, he "refused, to be
called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction
with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a
season."[353] Another instance of his generous and tender feelings toward
his nation is seen in his behavior when the people made the golden calf.
First, his anger broke out against them, and all the sternness of the
lawgiver appeared in his command to the people to cut down their
idolatrous brethren; then the bitter tide of anger withdrew, and that of
tenderness took its place, and he returned into the mountain to the Lord
and said, "O, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods
of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I
pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." Moses did not make
much account of human life. He struck dead the Egyptian who was
ill-treating a Jew; he slew the Jews who turned to idolatry; he slew the
Midianites who tempted them; but then he was ready to give up his own life
too for the sake of his people and for the sake of the cause. This spirit
of Moses pervades his law, this same inconsistency went from his character
into his legislation; his relentless severity and his tender sympathy both
appear in it. He knows no mercy toward the transgressor, but toward the
unfortunate he is full of compassion. His law says, "Eye for eye, tooth
for tooth, hand for hand, burning for burning, stripe for stripe." But it
also says, "Ye shall neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him, for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow or
fatherless child." "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by
thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer." "If thou at all take thy
neighbor's raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the
sun goeth down, for that is his covering." "If thou meet thine enemy's ox
or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again."

Such severities joined with such humanities we find in the character of
Moses, and such we find to have passed from his character into his laws.
But perhaps the deepest spring of character, and its most essential trait,
was his sense of justice as embodied in law. The great idea of a just law,
freely chosen, under its various aspects of Divine command, ceremonial
regulations, political order, and moral duty, distinguished his policy and
legislation from that of other founders of states. His laws rested on no
basis of mere temporal expediency, but on the two pivots of an absolute
Divine will and a deliberate national choice. It had the double sanction
of religion and justice; it was at once a revelation and a contract. There
was a third idea which it was the object of his whole system, and
especially of his ceremonial system, to teach and to cultivate,--that of
holiness. God is a holy God, his law is a holy law, the place of his
worship is a holy place, and the Jewish nation as his worshippers are a
holy people. This belief appears in the first revelation which he received
at the burning bush in the land of Midian. It explains many things in the
Levitical law, which without this would seem trivial and unmeaning. The
ceremonial purifications, clean and unclean meats, the arrangements of the
tabernacle, with its holy place, and its Holy of Holies, the Sabbath, the
dresses of the priests, the ointment with which the altar was anointed,
are all intended to develop in the minds of the people the idea of
holiness.[354] And there never was a people on whose souls this notion was
so fully impressed as it was upon the Jews. Examined, it means the eternal
distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, and the
essential hostility which exists between them. Applied to God, it shows
him to have a nature essentially moral, and a true moral character. He
loves good and hates evil. He does not regard them with exactly the same
feeling. He cannot treat the good man and the bad man in exactly the same
way. More than monotheism, this perhaps is the characteristic of the
theology of Moses.

The character of Moses had very marked deficiencies, it had its weakness
as well as its strength. He was impetuous, impatient, wanting in
self-possession and self-control. There is a verse in the Book of Numbers
(believed by Eichhorn and Eosenmuller to be an interpolation) which calls
him the meekest of men. Such a view of his character is not confirmed by
such actions as his killing the Egyptian, his breaking the stone tables,
and the like. He declares of himself that he had no power as a speaker,
being deficient probably in the organ of language. His military skill
seems small, since he appointed Joshua for the military commander, when
the people were attacked by the Amalekites. Nor did he have, what seems
more important in a legislator, the practical tact of organizing the
administration of affairs. His father-in-law, Jethro, showed him how to
delegate the details of government to subordinates, and to reserve for
himself the general superintendence. Up to that time he had tried to do
everything by himself. That great art, in administration, of selecting
proper tools to work with, Moses did not seem to have.

Having thus briefly sketched some of the qualities of his natural genius
and character, let us see what were the essential elements of his
legislation; and first, of his theology, or teachings concerning God.

Monotheism, as we all know, lay at the foundation of the law of Moses. But
there are different kinds of monotheism. In one sense we have seen almost
all ancient religions to have been monotheisms. All taught the existence
of a Supreme Being. But usually this Supreme Being was not the object of
worship, but had receded into the background, while subordinate gods were
those really reverenced. Moses taught that the Supreme Being who made
heaven and earth, the Most High God, was also the only object of worship.
It does not appear that Moses denied the existence of the gods who were
adored by the other nations; but he maintained that they were all inferior
and subordinate, and far beneath Jehovah, and also that Jehovah alone was
to be worshipped by the Jews. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
(Exod. xx. 3; Deut. v. 7). "Ye shall not go after other gods" (Deut. vi.
14). "Ye shall make no mention of the name of other gods" (Exod. xxiii.
13). "For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords" (Deut. x.
17). The first great peculiarity of the theology of Moses was therefore
this, that it taught that the Infinite and Supreme Being, who in most
religions was the hidden God, was to the Jews the revealed and
ever-present God, the object of worship, obedience, trust, and love. His
name was Jahveh, the "I am," the Being of beings.[355]

In a certain sense Moses taught the strict unity of God. "Hear, O Israel;
the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut. vi. 4), is a statement which Jesus
calls the chief of the commandments (Mark xii. 29, 30). For when God is
conceived of as the Supreme Being he becomes at once separated by an
infinite distance from all other deities, and they cease to be gods in the
sense in which he is God. Now as Moses gave to Jehovah infinite
attributes, and taught that he was the maker and Lord of heaven and earth,
eternal (Deut. xxxiii. 27), a living God, it followed that there was no
God with him (Deut. xxxii. 39), which the prophets afterwards wrought out
into a simple monotheism. "I am God, and there is no other God beside me"
(Isaiah xliv. 8). Therefore, though Moses did not assert in terms a simple
monotheism, he taught what contained the essential germ of that idea.

This one God, supreme and infinite, was also so spiritual that no idol, no
statue, was to be made as his symbol. He was a God of truth and stern
justice, visiting the sins of parents on the children to the third and
fourth generation of those who hated him, but showing mercy to thousands
of those who loved and obeyed him. He was a God who was merciful,
long-suffering, gracious, repenting him of the evil, and seeking still to
pardon and to bless his people. No doubt there is anthropomorphism in
Moses. But if man is made in God's image, then God is in man's image too,
and we _must_, if we think of him as a living and real God, think of him
as possessing emotions like our human emotions of love, pity, sorrow,
anger, only purified from their grossness and narrowness.

Human actions and human passions are no doubt ascribed by Moses to God. A
good deal of criticism has been expended upon the Jewish Scriptures by
those who think that philosophy consists in making God as different and
distant from man as possible, and so prefer to speak of him as Deity,
Providence, and Nature. But it is only because man is made in the image of
God that he can revere God at all. Jacobi says that, "God, in creating,
_theo_morphizes man; man, therefore, necessarily _anthropo_morphizes God."
And Swedenborg teaches that God is a man, since man was made in the image
of God. Whenever we think of God as present and living, when we ascribe to
him pleasure and displeasure, liking and disliking, thinking, feeling, and
willing, we make him like a man. And _not_ to do this may be speculative
theism, but is practical atheism. Moses forbade the Jews to make any image
or likeness of God, yet the Pentateuch speaks of his jealousy, wrath,
repentance; he hardens Pharaoh's heart, changes his mind about Balaam, and
comes down from heaven in order to see if the people of Sodom were as
wicked as they were represented to be. These views are limitations to the
perfections of the Deity, and so far the views of Moses were limited. But
this is also the strong language of poetry, which expresses in a striking
and practical way the personality, holiness, and constant providence of
God.

But Moses was not merely a man of genius, he was also a man of knowledge
and learning. During forty years he lived in Egypt, where all the learning
of the world was collected; and, being brought up by the daughter of
Pharaoh as her son, was in the closest relations with the priesthood. The
Egyptian priests were those to whom Pythagoras, Herodotus, and Plato went
for instruction. Their sacred books, as we have seen, taught the doctrine
of the unity and spirituality of God, of the immortality of the soul, and
its judgment in the future world, beside teaching the arts and sciences.
Moses probably knew all that these books could teach, and there is no
doubt that he made use of this knowledge afterward in writing his law.
Like the Egyptian priests he believed in one God; but, unlike them, he
taught that doctrine openly. Like them he established a priesthood,
sacrifices, festivals, and a temple service; but, unlike them, he allowed
no images or idols, no visible representations of the Unseen Being, and
instead of mystery and a hidden deity gave them revelation and a present,
open Deity. Concerning the future life, about which the Egyptians had so
much to say, Moses taught nothing. His rewards and punishments were
inflicted in this world. Retribution, individual and national, took place
here. As this could not have been from ignorance or accident, it must have
had a purpose, it must have been intentional. The silence of the
Pentateuch respecting immortality is one of the most remarkable features
in the Jewish religion. It has been often objected to. It has been
asserted that a religion without the doctrine of immortality and future
retribution is no religion. But in our time philosophy takes a different
view, declaring that there is nothing necessarily religious in the belief
of immortality, and that to do right from fear of future punishment or
hope of future reward is selfish, and therefore irreligious and immoral.
Moreover it asserts that belief in immortality is a matter of instinct,
and something to be assumed, not to be proved; and that we believe in
immortality just in proportion as the soul is full of life. Therefore,
though Moses did not teach the doctrine of immortality, he yet made it
necessary that the Jews should believe in it by the awakening influence of
his law, which roused the soul into the fullest activity.