52 EEV. CHANCELLOR LIAS^ M.A., ON 



not now permitted to cite the so-called "Five Books of 

 Moses " as embodying Mosaic teaching. But the so-called 

 " Book of the Covenant "* is generally allowed to be almost 

 if not quite, Mosaic in its date. And it distinctly tells us 

 that God, as represented by Moses, was a Being who 

 presented Himself in a moral aspect, and did not require 

 obedience only, but righteousness from His votaries. If we 

 may accept the first chapter of Genesis as the work of the 

 founder of Judaism, the idea of creation was inseparably 

 united Avith the conception of this Eternal Being. And it 

 appears to me, I must confess, that the grand originality of 

 this and the following chapters fits in better with the idea of 

 their being the work of the founder of a religion than the 

 afterthought of an unknown writer or editor some ten 

 centuries after him.f The elementary conception of God as 

 Bighteousness as well as Power Avas gradually filled in by the 

 prophets. The severer attributes involved in the title 

 Shaddai were incorporated into the national ideas of Jahveh 

 and Elohim by their Avi-itings, and they did not fail to point 

 to disasters in Israelite history as a consequence of their 

 neglect of Him and His laws. It must be confessed that, on 

 the whole, the idea of God contained in the Hebrew 

 Scriptures, though sterner than that which is presented in 

 the JMew Testament, is nevertheless a truly high and noble 

 one, involving qualities of exquisite gentleness and tender- 

 ness side by side with its unbending righteousness and its 

 rigid inflexibihty towards those who fail to fulfil its 

 requirements. 



Upon such a foundation as this the Christian idea of God 

 was based. We proceed to ask what special modifications of 

 previous conceptions were introduced by the Christian 

 revelation. We may first remark that it aims not at the 

 negation but at the fulfilment, or rather the filling in, of the 

 conceptions entertained by the Jews. God is still the Force 

 which brought the universe into being ; He is still the 

 Eternal, the Unchangeable, the Ever-existing ; He is still the 



* Exod. xx-xxiii. 



t I do not wish to deny that this unique religious teacher ma}' have 

 made use of traditions handed down from remote ages among his people. 

 But he would naturall}' cast them into the form which seemed best 

 adajjted to his purpose. The idea that portions of inconsistent nai-ratives 

 were unintelligently pieced together seems to me hardly reconcileable with 

 the high position of Mosaism among the religions of the earth for 

 thousands of years. 



