Now, this is a large question. But, in the first place, the place of æsthetic in religion is undoubtedly ancient. It pervades antiquity, and is seen very early in Israel. The priest who gave the holy bread to David and his followers insisted on knowing whether the young men were. clean. Among all ancient peoples the sexual relations, the offices of nature, the giving birth to children, inferred uncleanness, and in Israel, at least, contact with death. There was something in all these things which to decency or refinement or taste was repulsive. Further, human feeling recoils in many instances from some of the lower creatures, such as the reptiles, and those designated in the wider sense vermin, such as the smaller quadrupeds. Men shrink from contact with all these creatures, and they have a feeling of defilement in regard to the actions just referred to. Undoubtedly this feeling, which men shared, was attributed by them also to God.

Again, this æsthetic or ceremonial side of holiness was greatly promoted by the other conception that Jehovah was located in a certain place-His Temple. This created the possibility and the danger that some of these things should be brought near Him, or that men being in that state which the above mentioned acts brought them into, should come into His presence. This æsthetic or ceremonial element in holiness was thus undoubtedly an ancient element, as ancient as the notion of the existence of a place where Jehovah abode. It was essentially connected with the idea of worship rendered to Jehovah in a place of His abode.

Once more, undoubtedly, this idea of Jehovah's being connected with a particular place was strengthened by the destruction of all the local shrines, and the confining of ritual to Jerusalem. There He was present in person. The destruction also of the local shrines destroyed all private sacrifice, and made ritual officially religious; and the idea pervaded the minds of men more and more of being a congregation, a body of worshippers, and the question was raised as to their condition and fitness to appear before the

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presence of Jehovah. By all these things probably the æsthetic or ceremonial was drawn more and more into the idea of holiness. The conception of ceremonial cleanness was old, as old as that of the existence of a place of worship; and the class of conceptions would be cherished among the priestly order, and developed by them; and as the idea of Israel's being a State was lost, and it appeared merely a worshipping community, the conceptions would gain greater ground. Thus probably the multiplication of ceremonies, defilements on the one hand and purifications on the other, may have gradually increased, until it reached the dimensions which it has attained in the ritual law.1

But one may perceive from all this that there was no distinction in the Law between moral and what we have been accustomed to call ceremonial. The idea of ceremonial, ie. rites, such as washings, etc., which have no meaning in themselves, but are performed in order to express or suggest moral ideas, has strictly no existence in the Old Testament. The offences which we call ceremonial were not symbolical, they were real offences to Jehovah, against which His nature reacted; and the purifications from them were real purifications, and not merely symbolical. That is, what might be called æsthetic or physical unholiness was held offensive to the nature of God in the real sense, in a sense as real as moral offences were offensive to Him; and the purifications were true removals of these real causes of offence. This æsthetic or physical holiness is an ancient idea. But the prophets made little of it, insisting on moral holiness. On the other hand, the idea receives a great extension in the Law. And hence at the return from Captivity, when the people were no more a nation but a worshipping community, serving God who abode in a house in the midst of them, this idea of 'holiwas the fundamental idea, both of God who was worshipped and of men who worshipped Him, and the con

ness

1 Did not purifications take place before sacrifice, even at the high places? No doubt.

ception lies at the basis of the new constitution after the Restoration.

In this connection we may advert also to the point of view from which the people are regarded. In the extraritual books atonement is very much equivalent to forgiveness of sin,-after Jehovah's exhibition of His righteousness. by the chastisements inflicted on the people who sin, and on their acknowledging their sin and repenting. The conception of God is that of a moral Mind who regards sin as morally wrong, deserving of punishment, and who as a moral Ruler inflicts punishment; though His long-suffering and mercy are ever ready to forgive.

The same conception of Jehovah appears in Isa. liii.; but there the chastisement of sin falls upon another than those whose sin is forgiven. He bears the chastisement of the sins of the people, and they are forgiven and restored. But though this be the case, God continues to be considered the author of salvation. This laying of the sins of the people upon another was His act: "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him," with the view that if He made an offering for sin, the work of the Lord should prosper by Him. This is the view in the Law and Ezekiel. It reappears in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Perhaps this view of God and of atonement is that expressed in St. Paul's Epistles.

There is, however, another view of God in the Old Testament. He is not regarded so much in the character of a righteous ruler as in that of a sensitive being or nature which reacts against sin. Sin, however, is conceived as uncleanness. In this view Jehovah is called holy, and atonement is removal from men of all uncleanness disturbing to Jehovah's nature.

3. The Natural Attributes.

When the prophets speak of Jehovah as God alone, they also state in many ways what His attributes are. Not that they ever speak of the attributes of Jehovah

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abstractly or as separated from Himself. They speak of a great, living person who shows all the attributes of moral Being. Jehovah, who is God alone, is a transcendent moral person. He is such a person as we are ourselves; His characteristics do not differ from ours, except that they exceed ours. To say that Jehovah is a transcendent moral person, is to express the whole doctrine of God; for that which is moral includes mercy and love and compassion and goodness, with all that these lead to, not less than rectitude and justice.

What needs to be said on this subject may be best said. by looking specially at the representations given in Second Isaiah. In the first nine chapters of the prophecy, in which the prophet, in order to sustain the faith of Israel and the hope of deliverance, enlarges upon the antithesis between Jehovah and the idols, it is mainly what have been called the natural attributes of Jehovah that he dwells upon, such as His power, His foresight and omniscience, the unsearchableness of His understanding or mind, and the like. But in the succeeding chapters, where not the opposition between Jehovah and the idols and idol-worshipping nations is dwelt upon, but the relations of Jehovah to His people Israel, it is naturally chiefly the redemptive attributes of Jehovah that become prominent, His love, as in calling the people and redeeming them of old; His memories of Abraham His friend; His compassion when He beholds the miseries of the people, and remembers former times before they were cast off, as a wife of youth, who had been rejected, is remembered; or His mercy in restraining His anger in pity of their frailty: "He will not be always wroth; for the spirits would fail before Him, and the souls which He has made"; or the freedom of His grace in blotting out their sins for His name's sake: "I am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and I will not remember thy sins" (xliii. 25).

In these chapters, especially from the forty-ninth onwards, the prophet descends to a depth of feeling, in two

directions, to which no other prophet reaches-first, in his feeling of the love of Jehovah for His people. He becomes, as we might say, immersed in this love, placing himself in the very Divine mind itself, and expressing all its emotions, its tender memories of former union, its regrets over the too great severity of the chastisement to which the people had been subjected. She has "received of the Lord's hand double for all her sin" (xl. 2); "In an overflow of anger I hid My face from thee" (liv. 8). He tells of returning love, and the importunity with which it desires to retrieve the past: "Comfort ye, comfort ye My people: speak to the heart of Jerusalem" (xl. 1, 2); and makes the announcement of the unchangeableness of His love for the time to come: "This is the waters of Noah unto Me: as I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall no more overwhelm the earth, so have I sworn that I will no more be angry with thee" (liv. 9).

And in another direction the depth of the prophet's feeling is without parallel-his sense of the people's sin. It is no doubt the unexampled sufferings of the people, especially the godly among them, that mainly suggested to him the depth of their sin. It is usually held that it was the Law that gave Israel its deep sense of sin. The Law was, no doubt, fitted to suggest to men the exceeding breadth of God's commandments, and the inability of man to fulfil them, and thus to lead them to feel that they must cast themselves upon the grace of God. Yet, historically, it is probable that this educational influence of the Law began later than the prophetic age. At whatever time the Law, as we understand it, was actually given, it certainly did not draw the people's life as a whole under its control till after the restoration from the Exile. So that as a matter of history the sense of sin was impressed upon the people by their experiences. Their sufferings were Jehovah's chastisement of them, they were due to His anger. And they measured His anger by the terribleness of their calamities; and their sin they estimated according to the terribleness of His anger. It is in the sections where the sufferings of