walk in God's law." They would keep all the commandments, they would not intermarry with foreigners, nor would they buy or sell upon the Sabbath.

In spite of oath and curse the people did not keep faith. Nehemiah found men treading winepresses on the Sabbath, and others bringing asses through the gates laden with sheaves, as well as with wine and grapes and figs. He called together the nobles of the people and reproached them for this sin of profanation, and tells them that as their fathers brought destruction once upon the city, so they in turn will meet the same doom that follows Sabbath breakers. The energetic puritan was not content with words, but on the even before the Sabbath he ordered the city gates to be closed, and to make sure he set his own servants to watch during the day. Then from the wall he denounced the Tyrian merchants who were waiting outside hoping to enter as usual, and he finally declared to them, that if they should appear again on the Sabbath Day he himself would lay hands on them. It is a realistic story and reveals the wisdom of the statesman as well as the zeal of the churchman. The sacred day was a necessity for the sacred service. Later teachers of Israel elaborated and codified the directions for the keeping of the Sabbath, and

made a calendar covering the prescribed feasts and services of the year. By this time names were given to the other days, and the seventh day of the week became the permanent Sabbath except for the intercalation required in keeping the solar year.

The Ark is gone, but not the holy law. The temple hill is occupied by the shrine of a bastard faith which has neither smoking altar nor gorgeous ritual, but the institution of the Sabbath remains as a legacy from the Hebrews to the nations of the world. It was supported by priest and prophet and ruler and seems to have been so central to the life of developed Israel that it survived every shock of disaster.

Beginning as a lunar mark of time around which grew Semitic sacrifices, perhaps long before the Hebrew people, with the sons of Israel it grew into definiteness and power. Lunar feasts have been known among peoples from all races, but the Sabbath with its triple authority of worship, rest, and good cheer, had its origin in Israel.

CHAPTER XII

HEBREW CONCEPTION OF SANCTITY

IN modern thought the conception of sanctity has an ethical element. We think of the term "holiness," whether applied to a person or to an act, as free from wrongdoing. All this is very different in the development of the religious history of the world. A truly ethical content in religion is never ancient. Moral law reveals itself in early times in the form of customs handed down from generation to generation, and these for the most part have to do with the preservation of human life and the restraint of human hate. Rules of conduct that were sacred within the social group had no application to foreigners or strangers. Even the Ten Commandments were for the use of Hebrews among Hebrews and did not govern their conduct with people outside of Israel. The history of the social order reveals great changes in the standards of conduct. These were different for different times and among different peoples. Even the most fundamental rights and wrongs vary among different peoples. It was quite general in primitive life

to hold that the preservation of sex purity was a duty wholly belonging to women, and the thought that only married women were under any obligation was very widespread. The most primary and universal moral laws relate to the rights of property, and of necessity these grow more and more impressive as property increases. The rights of property, however, grow out of the necessity of peace within the group. The property of the stranger was common plunder.

The idea of sanctity in Israel at the beginning had little or nothing to do with our modern notion of right and wrong. A surface reading of the history discloses that men held eminent for piety violated nearly every one of our modern standards. of conduct. The moral ideals which held rule in Israel differed from age to age. It will be found for the most part these differences run parallel with the development of the idea of God. We expect to find in the prophets a conception of holiness quite different from that recognized in the public and organized religion. The notion of sanctity in Israel consists fundamentally in the thought of a thing set apart from common use. The person or the deed either belongs to God, or, at least, is separated from the conduct of common life. It will be found that the moral life of Israel undergoes change from

what is essentially a ritual of life to that which becomes an experience of righteousness. The standards of Abraham and David are certainly not the same as those of Ezekiel and Nehemiah. It will not be possible to give any complete account of these ethical changes, but there are certain phases of them that are essential to the present study.

The religious history of the world does not show that one religion takes the place of another. There is no clearly marked line between fetich, nature. worship, polytheism, and monotheism. Later religions are always superimposed on earlier faiths. Any new faith to succeed must take unto itself a great many of the precious, primitive, and inherited traditions. The conqueror may make his gods rulers in the pantheon of a subject people, but he must leave some niches for the degraded deities. The pantheon of Rome was enlarged to include the chief divinities of the empire. The history of Babylonia and Assyria shows changes in divine authority which ran parallel to the changes in human government. The general tendency of civilization is to relieve itself of traditions no longer valuable, but the process is not rapid. The sanctions of custom are often greater than the sanctions of law. The student of society must study his problem in the light of the fact that survivals from earlier relig