OLD TESTAMENT SCIENCE 545 



the vividness and naturalness of every picture of life and manners, 

 in the constant use of concrete facts and images as the vehicle of 

 instruction, in the absence of abstractions in all appeals and argu- 

 ments, in discussions even of matters metaphysical, and in the 

 profoundest reflections upon the nature of God or man. The Old 

 Testament is a type by itself in the literature of the world, and forms 

 a special training-school for the imagination and the critical judg- 

 ment. Having obtained among non-Semitic Western nations a wider 

 currency than any literature of their own, it has become among all 

 civilized peoples a fountain of the purest literary inspiration, promot- 

 ing simplicity and naturalness in speaking and writing and a love 

 of the real and the concrete in practical thinking. At the same 

 time, having survived nearly all of the writings that have misin- 

 terpreted it, and having outworn and displaced the creeds which 

 misrepresented it, it is becoming more and more the world's chief 

 religious classic and hand-book of practical morals, while retaining 

 unimpaired its character as literature, as a mirror and criticism of 

 human life. 



(3) Expression of the religious life. It is the singularly uniform 

 tendency of the Old Testament to regard things from the religious 

 point of view, no matter which of the various aspects of human life 

 may be dealt with. This prevailing religious character formerly 

 excited little surprise, since the whole . literature was regarded as 

 a direct divine revelation. An explanation might be given that the 

 religion of the .ancient Hebrews embraced the whole of their life in 

 all its motives and activities. Properly understood this explanation 

 is just. The real state of the case would, however, be better set forth 

 by two considerations. In the first place, religion and morality (the 

 more primitive as well as the prophetic morality) and common life 

 were to the old Hebrews one and the same in their nature, and 

 therefore one and the same in their expression. The fundamental fact 

 is that they recognized no duality in human nature; they believed 

 that the whole man in all his functions and faculties, such as we 

 term body, soul and spirit, mind and heart, went together both in 

 the offices of religion and in the habits and activities of daily life. 

 Hence to them a separation between belief and conduct, between 

 piety and duty, between religion and morals, would have been 

 unthinkable even if the modern analysis and phraseology could have 

 been made intelligible to them. Again, that they judged human 

 life and action mainly from the point of view of religion, and not 

 with reference to any other tendency or impulse of our race, is due 

 to the fact that the divine was ever in their thoughts, for their God 

 was their Father, whose fatherhood was sure even if Abraham were 

 to disown them and Israel were not to acknowledge them, who 

 was the constant sustainer of their individual being and of their 



