26 QUAKER ASPECTS OF TRUTH 



offered to the gods ; it was quite unconcerned with 

 morality* And what was true of Greek religion, was 

 still more true of Semitic Baal- worship. It was a form 

 of nature-worship, and its rites were always associated 

 with gross immorality. But the Hebrews, by a miracle 

 of spiritual insight, realised that God is the Author and 

 Being of the Moral law, which we have seen unfolding 

 itself in the process of Evolution, However crude the 

 early Hebrew ideas of God may have been — and they were 

 very crude indeed — they seem to have realised, almost 

 from the first, that God is righteous, and that He demands 

 righteousness from those who seek to serve Him, For 

 this great conception of the righteousness of God, and 

 for the closely allied conception of Monotheism, the 

 world owes an incalculable debt of gratitude to the 

 Hebrew race. Now we all know that the Jews believed 

 their laws to have been received direct from God, and 

 originally written by Him on tables of stone. And 

 of a truth, the Hebrews had good reason to be proud of 

 their legislation. Our legislation is nothing to be proud 

 of. At best it is but the record of the lowest standard 

 of morality which public opinion will tolerate. But the 

 enthusiasm of the Hebrew prophets for righteousness 

 was so intense, that it actually succeeded in impressing 

 itself indehbly upon Hebrew legislation. Great and 

 noble as the achievement proved to be however, it did 

 not suffice to keep the people from falling into sin. By 

 all the prophets Israel is condemned for her failure to 

 live up to the high standards of her legal code ; until 

 Jeremiah, despairing of his fellow-countrymen, ever 

 living up to any outward code of laws, proclaimed the 

 New CovenanU ** A New Covenant will I make with 

 the House of Israel, and the house of Judah, Not 

 according to the Covenant which I made with their 

 fathers — which Covenant they brake. But this is the 

 Covenant which I will make — after those days saith the 



