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also, not obscurely in the history of man's creation, in which God is said to have formed man's material part out of the dust of the ground, but to have drawn his spiritual part out of Himself; and again, perhaps in the name given to the angels as spirits, sons of God, i.e. altogether in His likeness, both as to essence and as to moral nature. Yet more perspicuously the spirituality of God is seen to be an idea underlying all Old Testament thought from a significant passage in Isa. xxxi. 3: "Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit." There the parallelism shows that man is to God as flesh to spirit; that as man is a corporeal being, so God is spiritual. It has indeed been maintained that the Old Testament, or the Israelites, at first at least contemplated God as possessed of a corporeal form, and that gradually the conception of Him clarified till He was recognised as formless spirit. It is difficult to see how such a theory can be fairly maintained in the face of the above passages. Some of the early Fathers, such as Tertullian, fancied that God possessed a form; yet they denied it to be material.

As to what is taught about this Being Himself, that may be found in Scripture in various forms-chiefly two, namely, statements or assumptions regarding God, and names applied to God. It will be found, I think, that all other designations of God, and all other assertions respecting Him, and all other attributes assigned to Him, may be embraced under one or other of the two names given to God in the opening chapters of Genesis. What is taught of God in these chapters is, first, that God is the absolute Cause and the absolute Lord of all things-heavens and earth; which terms embrace not only the upper and lower matter, but the superior and inferior spirits. And, second, that God is the absolute personality-over against finite personalities, not absorbing personalities in Himself, nor by His personality excluding personalities besides Himself.

This personality is self-conscious-it is not undetermined till it becomes what it is in the finite personality, but it is free before the finite comes into being, and

conscious of itself as over against the finite when it has called the latter into existence. Before the existence of the finite it deliberately purposes to make it :-"Let there be light"; "let us make man"; "let him have dominion." And when created, it conceives of itself in opposition to the finite-"Hast thou eaten of the tree of which 1 commanded thee not to eat? I will put enmity between thee and the woman."

This person is perfectly ethical, and is in an ethical relation of undisturbed love-communion with the innocent spiritual beings whom He has made.

To speak shortly, the truths contained in these names, the names by which God is known in the account of Creation, are these two-first, that God is the power to whom the world belongs; and, second, that He is at the same time the Eternal, the Person who stands in a fellowship of love with the spiritual beings in the world.1 The first truth is contained in the name Elohim and the cognate names; the second, in the name Jehovah and others allied to it; and all other assertions regarding God in Scripture may be reduced to one or other of these two. But of this more hereafter.

There is no reason to deny that some elements of truth, or many elements, may have been found in the primeval Shemitic religion held by the ancestors of Abraham, or by himself before his call-fragments of a primitive knowledge of God more or less pure, generalisations more or less profound regarding God and morality, hopes and aspirations more or less exalted, like those of Job. We cannot form a very complete idea of the condition. But these stages in the development of the knowledge of God in Israel may be detected: first, the primeval Shemitic religion, in which each family had its particular god, whom it worshipped, if not in images, at least in connection with sensuous forms, as groves, trees, pillars. Second, a very important development from this primitive Shemitic religion which took place at a far back period

1 See Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, p. 75 ff.

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towards a high morality and faith in a spiritual omnipotent God. This development we know as the call of Abraham and the foundation of the Patriarchal religion. Third, even a higher development which took place at the end of the Patriarchal time and the beginning of the national life. This we know as the legislation of Moses, in which the spirituality and unity of God are set forth in the fundamental laws of the constitution. Jacob is represented as having found God in a certain place, and as rearing a pillar, on which he poured oil, as a visible representation, if not of God, yet of the place of God. The idea of God as One everywhere present seems far from this. But all similitudes were forbidden by Moses. second and third of these stages are not to be regarded as natural developments of the primary religion, for the surrounding tribes did not share in the development, but sank deeper into idolatries of the most degrading kind. The Scriptures represent God as revealing Himself to Abraham and Moses, and there seems no way of accounting for their knowledge except by considering this statement of Scripture to mean that God revealed Himself to these men in another manner than to the Gentiles.

The

The distinctive title of God as known and worshipped by the patriarchs-El Shaddai, God Almighty; El Elyon, Most High God-shows that the omnipotence of God was the attribute to which most prominence was given. This was very natural, seeing that the primary idea of God in the Shemitic mind was power. But if the idea of the unity of God was not already in the worshipper's mind, these names were very well fitted to suggest it. And in like manner, if the first commandment of the Decaloguewhich beyond doubt is Mosaic-did not directly inculcate the unity, it immediately suggested it-"thou shalt have no other gods with Me."

Again, if the second commandment-" thou shalt not make unto thee any of anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, to fall down to them and worship them," did not directly inculcate the spirituality of God, it

immediately suggested it. And there can be no hesitation in saying that all the men of insight in Israel read these commandments as meaning that there was but one God, and that He was a spiritual being who could not be represented under any form.

But it is very evident that two lines were thus opened up, on which there might be divergence and conflict in Israel the unity of God and the spirituality of God. The denial of the one, or the failure to recognise it, led to the introduction of other gods along with Jehovah, particularly of Baal; and the denial of the other led to the worship of Jehovah through sensuous forms, particularly the calf. This was made the distinctive form of the worship of the Northern Kingdom. This officially sanctioned mode of worshipping Jehovah must not be confounded with pure idolatry, such as the Baal worship. The one not unnaturally led to the other; but the prophets of Jehovah drew a clear distinction between the two, and, though they denonnced the calf worship, they did not leave the kingdom, or hold that those who practised it cut themselves quite off from being the people of God. But with the Baal worship they would hold no terms. Against the prophets of Baal they waged a war of extermination. There is perhaps no more singular phenomenon in the history of Israel than the repeated outbreaks into idolatry. There was even the attempt, under the dynasty of Omri, to suppress the worship of Jehovah and extirpate His followers out of the country. These repeated falls into idol worship, exhibited throughout the whole history of Israel, especially in the Northern Kingdom, but even also in the Southern, and there in an aggravated form toward the close of the monarchy under Manasseh, require some explanation.

And, as might be expected, the explanation that many have given has been, that we have in the history of Israel as established in Caanan the spectacle of a people slowly emerging by natural means out of the darkness of idolatry into the clear light and freedom of a spiritual

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monotheism. The leaders of the people in this splendid march, in which Israel were the pioneers of mankind, were the prophets. There in Canaan, and in this people Israel, humanity achieved its most glorious triumph; it trod down under its feet those debasing embodiments of its own passions and vices called gods; and prostrated itself before that loftiest conception of one spiritual being, Lord of the universe, who is God. But the victory was not reached without many temporary defeats; and the progress of the conflict may be watched in that history which records the changes from Jehovah worship to idolatry, and from idolatry to Jehovah worship, till, finally, the refining process of the Exile purified the people's conceptions of God, so that idolatry utterly disappeared from among them.

Now these things are true in this representation, namely, that there was a conflict between the worship of Jehovah and idolatry; that the prophets were the leaders on the side of Jehovah; that the conflict lasted during the whole history of Israel; and that the victory was won only under the purifying sorrows of the Exile. This, too, is true, that in this splendid march Israel became the pioneer of humanity, or, as it may be put, humanity was in Israel making this triumphal march. For humanity is no doubt a unity, and no theory of revelation requires us to break up this unity or deny that what God was showing to one people and enabling it to perforin, He was achieving once for all in the race. So far is this theory from being contrary to revelation, that it is itself part of revelation, which teaches that God founded His Church once for all in Abraham; that He took the Jewish people into His covenant of salvation, not for themselves merely, but for the salvation of the world. All this is certainly true, and there may even be more truth still in the representation. For unquestionably such a conflict could never have been fought unless there had been many born idolaters among the mass of the people, unless large masses of the general surface of the nation had been continuously sunk in idolatrous doctrines, and the light of the true faith in its