Development of Religion among the Jews
By Daniel Cary
In an argument presenting circumstantial evidences, the attempt is not to demonstrate the truth of Christianity, but to point out an array of facts which accord well with the view that the New Testament writers wrote the truth, and which do not accord so well with any other view. The remarks to be made in this chapter will partake of this character. They will present facts which, as it appears to me, accord well with the claim continually put forth in the Old Testament, that this scheme was of divine origin; and which do not accord so well with any other view. 1. The first of these remarks is suggested by the relation between the general enlightenment of the various nations and tribes of men and their religions, as pointed out by those who have made this subject a special study, and referred to by Colonel Ingersoll. In an address on the “Social and Religious Condition of the Lower Races of Man,” Sir John Lubbock says, “Every increase in science—that is, in positive and ascertained knowledge—brings with it an elevation of religion.” Colonel Ingersoll says, “The savage, as he emerges from a state of barbarism, gradually loses faith in his idols of wood and stone, and in their place puts a multitude of spirits. As he advances in knowledge he generally discards the petty spirits, and in their stead believes in one, whom he supposes to be infinite and supreme.” In the passage quoted in the previous chapter he says, “No god was ever in advance of the nation that created him.” It will not be questioned on the one hand that the Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans were greatly superior to the Jews in general advancement in knowledge, nor on the other that the Jews were greatly superior to the Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans in religion. It has been very properly said that “the Jews were men in religion, and children in everything else.” Here is a religion superior to the religions found among the most enlightened men of that period. Was it created by the men of that inferior nation? I do not insist on making the most exacting use of the premises furnished by these writers; but here is a state of things that accords well with the claim put forth in the Old Testament, that the origin of its religion was superhuman. 2. “History repeats itself.” This adage is well worn; and it is not more true in anything else than in religion. What has happened in one barbarous tribe, or semi-barbarous tribe, has happened, substantially, in another barbarous tribe, or semi-barbarous tribe, the differences being differences of form rather than of substance; but in the scheme for uprooting idolatry we meet something that has not repeated itself. Nothing like it has ever appeared at any other period of time, or in any other part of the world. 3. The view likely to be taken by those who do not admit the claim to divine origin is, that there was in the Jews a tendency to develop a more elevated conception of God than was gained by other nations. This view has been taken by some writers on Jewish history. There is advancement in the religious and moral ideas of the mass of the people to be found in the Old Testament; but the manner in which this advancement is made is in sharp contrast with the manner in which that advancement is made which results from an inherent tendency, or trait of character. The manner in which the Jews advanced to religious conceptions superior to the religious conceptions of the rest of mankind may be contrasted with the manner in which the Anglo-Saxon race, having an inherent love of liberty, have advanced to the freedom now enjoyed in England and the United States. Early English history displays the people not only in the fetters of ignorance, but with very insufficient defenses of their personal and political rights. Through various struggles and by various steps they secured one right after another, till in 1215 the Great Charter, considered the “basis of English liberty,” was obtained. The force of the sentiment which demanded the Great Charter, and the amount of the struggle to secure it, have been under-estimated, on account of the belief that it was wrenched from a feeble king. Green’s “History of the English People” says: “The closer study of John’s history clears away the charges of sloth and incapacity with which men tried to explain the greatness of his fall. The awful lesson of his life rests on the fact that it was no weak and indolent voluptuary, but the ablest and most ruthless of the Angevins, who lost Normandy, became the vassal of the pope, and perished in a struggle of despair against English freedom.” From this it appears that the Great Charter was secured because the aspirations for freedom were irrepressible. These aspirations were held in check by such barriers as a powerful and selfish king could erect; but the barriers gave way before them. Whatever declaration of rights, whatever security against encroachments upon those rights, appeared in the Great Charter and became part of the English Constitution, that declaration and those securities appeared in the midst of the struggle to obtain them, instead of being found in existence at some previous period. Each succeeding step has been taken in a similar way. Looking at the results at length reached in the Constitutions of England and the United States—the declarations of rights and the means provided to secure them—and at the same time looking at the statement of religious conceptions contained in the writings of Moses, and the provision of means which should at length make those religious conceptions the property of the mass of the people throughout the Jewish nation, we shall say that if the present Constitutions of England and the United States had been found in existence at the dawn of English history, and the reluctant people had only with the lapse of succeeding centuries been goaded forward to accept the freedom for which such explicit provision had been made at the beginning, then we could compare the advancement in freedom in the one case with the advancement in religion in the other, pointing out their resemblances; but as the case actually stands we can only contrast the advancement in freedom with the advancement in religion, pointing out their differences. The exalted conception of God to which the Jews were to be led, appears in the first sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;” and no feature of the scheme for the elimination of idolatry is wanting in the writings of Moses taken separately from the rest of the Old Testament. If prophecy was used by later writers, so also it was used by Moses. If miracles are claimed to have been performed by later prophets, so also they are claimed to have been performed by Moses. . . . It is certain that the scheme for the elimination of idolatry was not the gradual growth of centuries. If it is of merely human origin it sprang fully equipped from the brain of Moses, as Minerva was fabled to have sprung fully armed from the brain of Jupiter.—Circumstantial Evidences of Christianity, by Daniel Cary.