THE EVOLUTION OF HEBREW RELIGION. 597 



suited the modesty of woman. The nobler spirits among the Hebrews 

 rebelled against both these demands. And, as they were put forth 

 in the name of the dominant religion, the inevitable conclusion fol- 

 lowed that that religion itself must be radically wrong. The spirit of 

 opposition thus awakened was aroused Into powerful activity when*, 

 in the days of Ahab, the queen, supported by an influential priest- 

 hood, determined to introduce the forms of Phoenician religion in 

 Israel by measures of force. The royal edicts were resisted, but for a 

 while the rule of the stronger prevailed. The leaders of the oppo- 

 sition were compelled to flee, and, avoiding the habitations of men, to 

 take refuge in wild and solitary places. Thus the rupture was widened 

 into schism, and persecution inflamed the zeal and kindled the ener- 

 gies of that new order of men of whom Elijah is the well-known type. 



Through their agency the emotional nature of the Semitic race 

 now found expression in a form of religious worship loftier by far 

 than any that had ever arisen among men. If Baal was the embodi- 

 ment of Semitic asceticism and Baaltis the type of sensual orgiastic 

 passion, the national God of Israel now became the type of a nobler 

 emotion, the guardian of domestic purity, the source of sanctity, the 

 ideal Father. It is, indeed, the image 'of a just patriarch that fills the 

 mind and wings the fancy of the eldest prophets, when they describe 

 the nature of Jehovah, their God. Jehovah is the husband of the 

 people. Israel shall be his true and loyal spouse. The children of 

 Israel are his children. Unchastity and irreligion are synonymous 

 terms. And thus, if we err not, the peculiar feature of Hebrew char- 

 acter, their faithful attachment to kith and kin, the strength and 

 purity of their domestic affections, serves to explain the peculiar char- 

 acter, the origin and development of the Hebrew religion. And be- 

 cause the essential elements of the new religion were moral elements 

 it could not tolerate the Nature-worship of the heathens ; and the 

 way was prepared for the gradual ascendency of the purely spiritual 

 in religion, which after ages of gradual progress constituted the last, 

 the lasting triumph of prophecy. 



After ages of development ! For we are not to suppose that, in 

 the centuries succeeding Hosea, the doctrines of the prophetic schools 

 had become in any sense the property of the people at large. " The 

 powers that be" were arrayed against them, and the annals of the 

 kings are replete with evidence of their sufferings. It was in the late 

 reign of Josiah that they at last received not only the countenance 

 of the reigning monarch, but also a decisive influence upon the direc- 

 tion of affairs. In that reign a scroll was found in the temple imbued 

 with the doctrine of the unity of God, and breathing the vigorous 

 spirit of the prophets. In it was emphasized the heart's religion in 

 preference to the empty ceremonial of priestly worship. The alle- 

 giance of the people was directed toward the God who had elected 

 them from among the nations of the earth, and dire disaster was pre- 



