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the mental riches of these great men, now are able to unite together into one great constellation and call it God.

The religion of Israel was practical, not speculative; and while a practical Monotheism prevailed, and gave rise to all that profound religious life which we see in such men as Moses and Samuel and David and the prophets, it perhaps needed that internal conflict which arose through the slowness of the popular mind, and the degradation of the popular morals arising from absorbing the native Canaanite, to bring into speculative clearness the doctrines of Monotheism and Spirituality. The whole history of Israel is filled with this internal conflict between the strict worshippers of Jahweh and those who showed a leaning to other gods. And while all the leading minds held, and when they were writers expressed, conceptions of Jahweh which to our minds would have excluded the existence of all else named God, it is not perhaps till the age of Jeremiah that the speculative truth is clearly announced that there is no God but Jahweh. I exclude from consideration here the Book of Deuteronomy, the age of which is contested.

In estimating evidence on this question, however, we must always take the state of thought in those ages into account, and the condition of religion among the neighbouring peoples. Much is said in Scripture which reflects not the point of view of Israel, but that of the heathen peoples about, and the facts of religious practice in the world at the time. For example, in the hymn sung at the Red Sea it is said: "Who is like unto Thee, O Jahweh, among the gods? who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?" (Ex. xv. 11). There it is certainly said, as elsewhere, of Israel's God, that He is incomparable. But it seems admitted that though supreme, He is just one God among others. Yet this last inference might be very mistaken. The language reposes upon the fact that the heathen nations had gods whom they worshipped, and is based merely upon the general religious conditions of the time. In a late Psalm (Ps. xcvii.),

certainly written after the expression of a theoretical Monotheism by such prophets as Jeremiah and the Second Isaiah, we read: "Great is Jahweh;-He is to be feared above all gods." And had we no more we might suppose the author to admit the existence of other objects of worship along with Jahweh, although he might put them on a meaner level. But he immediately adds: "For all the gods of the nations are vanities," non-existences;

"but Jahweh made the heavens." And David, who was certainly a monotheist, uses similar phraseology when he identifies being banished from the land of Israel with serving other gods (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). Such language arises from the religious conditions of the age, and we cannot draw any conclusions from it as to the actual views of the persons in Israel using it. We ourselves still speak of the gods of the heathen, and our classical education makes us many times refer to them as actual entities. But this arises from identifying ourselves in thought with the ancients; we do not, when the matter is seriously before our minds, give any weight to the language we ourselves employ. A great deal too much. weight has been attached by writers like Kuenen and others, whose object is to demonstrate a progressive advance from a mere national particularism to a true Monotheism, to such expressions as those which we have been considering. Such formulas may mean much or little, according to the position of the persons in whose mouths they occur; and certainly much more discrimination needs to be practised in estimating their value than is done. by Kuenen.

This class of writers admit that from the age of Jeremiah a theoretical Monotheism prevailed in Israel. And this may be held as conceded on all hands. Two questions, however, arise in regard to this theoretical Monotheism. First, was it a view held by the older prophets, by the prophets from the beginning, or may we observe the rise of the view among the prophets whose writings we possess? And second, suppose we find that it was virtually

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the view of the prophets from the beginning, though they may not have occasion to express the view in a very general way, being only interested on insisting on a practical Monotheism in Israel, was it the view current in Israel from the foundation of the commonwealth, i.e. from the Exodus ?

In the age of Jeremiah such things are said of the heathen gods as leave us in no doubt that the prophets had reached the idea of a theoretical Monotheism; for, e.g., these gods are named 'nothing,' 2, Isa. xli. 24; 'chaos', Isa. xli. 29; 'falsehood,' P, Jer. x. 14; 'vanity,', Jer. xviii. 15; wind' or 'vapour,' an, Jer. ii. 5; 'nonentities,' ', Ezek. xxx. 13; 'no gods,'

, Jer. ii. 11; 'abomination,' nayin, Jer. xvi. 18; to · be loathed,' p, Jer. iv. 1; 'shame,' na, Jer. iii. 24.

And again

(viii. 6);

, i.e. not.

But long before Jeremiah, terms of a similar kind are employed. In Hos. xiii. 4 we read: "Thou knowest no God but Me; there is no saviour beside Me." he says of the idols, "They are no god," and he even calls them absolutely or Jehovah is the universal Governor. He brought the Syrians from Kir as well as Israel from Egypt (Amos ix. 7). In Mic. iv. 13 He is called "the Lord of the whole earth." In Amos His rule and judgment apply to all nations, whom He chastises for their infringements of the common laws of humanity. In Isaiah Jehovah moves on a swift cloud and flies to Egypt, and all the idols of Egypt are moved at His presence; and speedily Egypt shall be part of His Kingdom, and Israel shall be a third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying: "Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance" (xix. 25). The only difference between the earlier and the later in regard to this subject seems to be that while the same doctrine of the unity of God is professed and taught by all, in the earlier prophets it is presupposed and expressed more in concrete form; while in the later, on account of conflicts that had

arisen within the nation, and from the political relations into which the people had entered with idolatrous nations abroad, the subject had become more one of abstract thought, and the prophets had occasion to formulate the faith of the nation more sharply in opposition to tendencies of thought that came in upon Israel from without, and currents originated by these tendencies from within.

But even during all the prophetic period, no less after than before Jeremiah, that mode of speaking still prevailed which referred to the idols of the nations as having a real existence and as being real gods. This way of speaking was one natural to the ancient world. It less readily occurred to an ancient thinker, who observed nations around him devoutly attached to their gods, to imagine that these had no existence, or to present to his own mind the idea that such deities were mere impersonations of the religious notions of the human mind. But when the prophets have the question before their own mind they are at one in denying any reality to the gods of the nationsthere is one God, Jehovah, God of Israel. We observe, indeed, the same twofold method of speaking in the New Testament. At one time St. Paul says: "An idol is nothing in the world" (1 Cor. viii. 4), and hence meat sacrificed to idols is neither better nor worse than other meat, if a man have understanding and faith to perceive that this is the case. But as this is not the case with all men, the idol becomes to the apostle that which those who believed in it held it to be, something that had a real existence; "But I say, the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils" (1 Cor. x. 20, 21).

What is said of the prophets before Jeremiah is true of the writers who preceded these prophets. They profess not only faith in Jehovah as alone God of Israel, but faith in Him as the only God. Thus in the xviiith Psalm, the undoubted composition of David, we find it said: “Who is

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God save Jehovah? and who is a rock save our God? (ver. 31). Cf. also Ps. vii. 8 and Ex. xix. 5. In the former passage, part of an ancient Psalm, Jehovah judges the nations; in the latter-a passage belonging to the oldest literature-Jehovah has all the earth as His own.

God in giving His revelation to Israel was, first of all, intent that this people should worship Him alone, that they should be practically monotheists. It was religion. that was first necessary, a practical faith, in order to a pure life. Hence expression of the doctrines of this faith in a theoretical form was little attended to. With the practice, the life, there gradually rose to the surface of the mind the theoretical form of the truth. This explains the form in which the commandments are given; how for long the doctrines regarding God are expressed in the practical concrete form; and how only late in the history of Israel and as occasion occurred did these doctrines acquire a theoretical expression. But the doctrines were the same from the beginning.

6. The historical occasion of the application of the
Name Jehovah.

If we could realise to ourselves the circumstances in which the name Jehovah came into prominence in connection with Israel, it would undoubtedly help us. We have two narratives of these circumstances, one in Ex. vi. and another in Ex. iii. Modern scholars recognise different writers in these two passages, and it is not quite easy to reconcile the two statements made by them with one another. The account in Ex. vi. is brief, that in Ex. iii. circumstantial; and it is in the latter that we have what appears to be an explanation of the name. The former (Ex. vi. 2-4) is as follows: "And God's spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jahweh; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob as El Shaddai (N), but (as to) My name Jahweh I was not known to them" (or, "I did not let Myself be known by them "). The writer who uses