444 LECTURES AND ESSAYS , [1874- 



with all fervour into the present impulse ; but, just 

 because the current at each moment flows so strong, it is 

 not easily turned aside. It binds circumstances to itself, 

 and sweeps away hindrances in the whirl of its own 

 passion. And this claim to rule over outward things that 

 belongs to every deep impetuous personality, this assertion 

 of man s -kingship over nature which the Old Testament 

 so often makes, brings with it the power to command, the 

 gift of grasping and cunningly using all that can be made 

 subservient to the ruling purpose. If it fail, it will do 

 so rather by stubbornness and stiffness of neck than by 

 infirmity of purpose. When the nation decayed in the 

 time of the Judges, or before the Captivity, or again before 

 its last fall, it did so because individuality stiffened into 

 individualism : because each man s feeling of personal 

 worth asserted itself in refusal to acknowledge the rights 

 of others and the supreme sovereignty of Jehovah. It 

 required strong family affections, national enthusiasm, 

 and above all religious faith, to bind natures so strong and 

 fierce ; and where these bonds were lacking, the Hebrews 

 fell asunder into wild and reckless self-will, into a life that 

 spurned all weaker constraint. 



A race which, however little it estimated intellectual 

 supremacy over nature, was so eager for practical sov 

 ereignty, must necessarily have a keen sense for all the 

 precepts of practical wisdom. A wisdom to walk by, an 

 insight into all the secrets of human life, and of nature 

 so far as it can be made to serve man ; such was the only 

 philosophy of the Hebrews. Precepts of wisdom for the 

 ruling of daily life, guided by a sense of the supreme 

 reality of Israel s relation to Jehovah, and expressed not 

 in scientific system, but in that sententious, often epi 

 grammatic form in which such truth suggests itself to the 

 tact and experience of a practical nature, and with a 

 breath of poetic fervour that points to an origin in the 

 heart as much as in the head this is the peculiar wisdom 

 of the Hebrews, the Chokma of the Old Testament. 



