# On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt/Chapter 10

Contents
CHAPTER X.
THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH FOUNDED ON RELIGION.
After we had made the ascent of Mount Sinai, we settled down for a few days to a quiet life in the Convent, dividing our time between excursions without and reading and writing within. One needs a little time to set his thoughts in order after such an experience. The ascent of Mount Sinai is an event in one's life, and the reflections it suggests do not pass away with the place and the hour. Standing on that height, one is at the very beginnings of history: there a religion was promulgated; there a state was born; and there a code of laws was given which has influenced the legislation of all after times. As we linger at the foot of the Mount, our thoughts run on along the line of that history which had its beginning here. Of course one great name fills our minds, as it fills all the spaces of these mountains. Believing that the world owes more to Moses than to any other character that appeared in history before the time of Christ, it seems the part of loyalty to recognize his influence in the work of human progress and civilization, and thus to vindicate his claim to the homage and the gratitude of mankind. To this we are the more inclined, as it is a fashion of the day to sneer at Moses. Those who would destroy the authority of the Bible, make it almost a first point to direct their attacks against one whose name stands in front of the Old Testament, as the name of One greater than Moses stands in front of the New. Even writers upon Law, who concede ​to Moses a place with Solon and Lycurgus among the lawgivers of antiquity, yet sometimes qualify their praise by implying that Moses was great, and that his Law was great, by comparison with ancient barbarism rather than with modern civilization. It may therefore serve a useful purpose to devote a few pages to considering the character of his legislation, that we may judge whether it lies in the line of barbarism or of civilization. Is the Hebrew Law composed merely of the arbitrary decrees of one who ruled, like any Oriental monarch, with absolute authority, and whose decrees merely registered the impulses of his capricious will? or is it founded in principles of justice, which fit it, not for one age alone, but for all ages; not for the Hebrews only, but for mankind?
There is a very common reflection upon the Hebrew Lawgiver, which, though it does not call in question any particular law, is yet designed to vitiate and weaken the impression of the whole — that he was a stern and relentless ruler, who may indeed have understood the principles of justice, but whose justice was seldom tempered with mercy. This impression is derived partly at least from the summary way in which in several instances he dealt with rebellion. To this kind of argument there is one brief and sufficient answer: all bodies of men are acknowledged to have the right to resort to severe penalties when encompassed by extraordinary dangers. The children of Israel were in a position of great peril, and their safety depended on the wisdom and firmness of one man. Never had a ruler a more difficult task. Moses did not legislate for the ideal republic of Plato, a community of perfect beings, but for a people born in slavery, from which they had but just broken away, and that were in danger of becoming ungovernable. Here were two millions and a half, who had not even a settled place of abode. Had they been dwelling in towns and ​cities, or scattered over the hillsides of Judea, the task of ruling them would have been easy. But they were a people without a country, and not yet even organized into a nation, but mustered in one vast camp, through which rebellion might spread in a day. Moses had to govern them by his single will. He had to do everything: to direct their marches, to order their battles, and even to provide for their subsistence; while all the time rose up around him, like the roaring of the sea, the factions and jealousies of the different tribes.
To preserve order among themselves, and to guard against hostile attacks, all the men capable of bearing arms were organized as a military body. They marched in armed array, and pitched their tents around the standards of their tribes. For the safety of this mighty host, Moses had to issue strict orders, such as all commanders publish to their armies. In every military code, the first requirement is subordination to the chief. Rebellion threatens the very existence of an army. Whoever, therefore, attempts to stir a whole camp to rage and mutiny, must expect to be given up to instant death. In this Moses only enforced the ordinary laws of war. In an age when we have seen men blown away from guns — as in the Indian Mutiny, for acts of mutiny and massacre, or by Wellington for the lesser offence of pillage — we need not be troubled to answer for undue severity in Moses in dealing with what threatened anarchy, and if unchecked, would bring inevitable destruction. He suppressed rebellion as Cromwell would have suppressed it: he not only put it down, but stamped it out, and such prompt severity was the truest humanity.
But it is not acts of military discipline that provoke the criticism of modern humanitarians, so much as those religious laws which prescribed the God whom the ​Hebrews should worship, and punished idolatry and blasphemy as the greatest of crimes. This brings up the whole question of religious laws. With our notions of liberty, any laws whatever in regard to man's faith or worship seem a violation of the inalienable rights of conscience. But here a ruler prescribes to his nation the Being to be worshipped, and enforces conformity by the most rigorous statutes. "There is no God but God," said Mahomet, echoing what Moses had said so many centuries before; and not Mahomet himself was more intolerant of disobedience or contempt of the Divine authority. Idolatry was put down by force of arms. This, it is said, transcends the proper sphere of human law: it exalts ceremonies into duties, and denounces as crimes acts which have no moral wrong. Thus it rewards without merit, and punishes without guilt. Was not then the Hebrew Law wanting in the first principle of justice — freedom to all religions?
Now it is quite absurd to suppose that any Israelite had conscientious scruples against this worship, or seriously doubted whether Jehovah or Baal, whose bloody sacrifices had been offered on Mount Serbal, were the true God. They had been rescued from slavery by a direct interposition of the Almighty. The sea had opened its waves for their passage; they had been led by an Almighty Deliverer; and it was His voice which they heard from the cliffs of Sinai.
But it was not merely because their Religion was true, and the only true worship, that they were required to accept it; but because also of the peculiar relation which its Divine Author had assumed towards the Hebrew state as its Founder and Protector. That relation was declared, not in the cold and stately formula, "There is no God but God," but in words which are warm and living as with the ​breath of the Almighty, "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." In all their wanderings He was their Leader. The symbol of His presence went before them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
By keeping in mind this peculiar relation of the Divine Ruler to the state, we may understand the whole constitution of the Hebrew Commonwealth. The government was not a monarchy, but a theocracy. They had no King but God: He was the only Lord. As such, no act of disobedience or disrespect to His authority, could be light or small. The most extreme instance of a punishment disproportioned to the offence, is that in which a man was stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath day! This may be said to be the pet case of the critics who sit in judgment upon Moses, and they do not fail to make the most of it: "What an exaggerated importance is here given to a petty offence, and how inexorable must have been the law which punished such a trifle with death!" And yet, strange to say, the story is told in perfect frankness and simplicity, with no attempt at concealment or disguise, as if the act needed any explanation or apology. Turning to the narrative, we find that this is a solitary instance — that it stands alone; there is not another like it in all the Jewish history. Wherefore it was probably attended with unknown aggravations. Acts trivial in themselves sometimes derive importance from the circumstances in which they are committed. This may have been done publicly and purposely, as an affront to the Divine Majesty; as an open defiance of Him who had ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest, to be kept sacred and inviolable; and so it may have been punished as a wanton contempt of authority. Trifling as it seemed, it was a violation of an express command lately given, and a wilful offence which could not be passed over.
​Further, the unity of God was a centre of unity for the nation. The state was one because their God was one. The worship of Jehovah alone distinguished the Hebrews from all other people, and preserved their separate nationality. What bond of union could hold together millions of people pouring out of Egypt in wild and hurried flight, and scattering afar on the Arabian deserts? Not the ties of blood, nor even the instinct of self-preservation. Nothing but their common religion, which was one and indivisible. The maintenance of this was essential to their very existence. Once throw down their altars, and the whole nation would crumble to pieces. Admit other religions, and the bond which held together the Twelve Tribes was dissolved. How long could that union have lasted if the prophets of Baal had had the freedom of the camp, and been permitted to go from tribe to tribe, and from tent to tent, preaching the doctrine of human sacrifices? Hence Moses did not suffer them for an hour. False prophets were to be stoned to death.
We need not stop to defend the abstract justice of these laws. It is enough that every state has a right to consult for its own safety, and to proscribe or banish any class of men that are found to be dangerous. On this principle, many European governments have driven out the Jesuits, whom they found plotting against the peace of their realms. By the same rule of acting for the public safety, Moses had the right to rid his people of pestilent prophets and diviners. No good ever came of them. Often they have led princes to embark in disastrous wars, by promising victories in the name of their gods. In the last century the Turkish Sultan, putting faith in certain Moslem prophecies, plunged into a war with Russia, which nearly proved the ruin of his empire.
​Besides, the people whom Moses led were advancing into great dangers. All round them were pagan nations. Egypt was behind them, and Canaan before them. They had just left the most powerful kingdom on earth, where men prostrated themselves before beasts. They still had a lingering fondness for that hideous worship. On one occasion, when Moses was absent from the camp for forty days, on his return he found them singing and shouting round a golden calf, an image of the god Apis. Often they showed a fanatical frenzy for idolatry. Against all this Moses stood alone, and combated the popular fury. If he had no Divine authority to sustain him, to impose such laws on hostile millions showed a moral daring of which there is no example in history.
As the unity of God was the fundamental law of the state, idolatry of course was the first of crimes. This, therefore, was placed under the ban of absolute prohibition. Any individual who sought to entice them away from their God, even though the nearest kindred, was to be stoned. If a whole city relapsed into idolatry, it was placed out of the pale of protection, and was to be utterly destroyed.
Not only the false worship itself, but everything which could lead to it was forbidden. All the arts by which it was upheld — divination, sorcery, magic, witchcraft — were torn up root and branch. Witches — those old sybils who decoyed men by their juggling arts — were not permitted to live.
Does this appear the extreme of harshness and intolerance? Perhaps it was rather a brave act of mercy. In every pagan country there are sorcerers and necromancers who claim to have power over the elements, or over life and death, and who impose on ignorant savages, often to ​perpetrate acts of fiendish cruelty. Travellers in the interior of Africa tell us that the curse of the Dark Continent, greater perhaps than the slave trade itself, is witchcraft. If a man is taken ill, he is supposed to be bewitched, and he cannot recover until the person who has bewitched him is found and put to death. Here come in a class of medicine-men, or fetish-men, who claim to have the power of detecting by secret signs those who have bewitched the sick, and this pretended power they use to gratify their own malignity or revenge. M. du Chaillu once described to me the horrible scenes which he had witnessed in an African village, particularly the fate of a beautiful girl who ran to him shrieking in despair, and whom he tried to save, but in vain.
These fetish-men are really professional murderers, as much as the Thugs of India. If an African king were to become so far civilized as to get his eyes open to the horrible cruelty of these demons in human form, could he make a better use of his knowledge or of his power than to seize them as the most conspicuous examples of crime and its punishment? Might he not rightfully do to them as they had caused to be done to so many others? The public execution of a score of those who had been most active and most brutal, might break the spell which they had exercised over the unhappy children of Africa.
It is vain here to make a comparison between the feeble Jewish Commonwealth and the majestic Roman Empire, which, when it ruled the earth, tolerated all religions, and received injury from none. That had other elements of unity — power, conquest, and dominion. It was in no danger of being mingled and lost in other nations, since it ruled over all.
Far different was the state of the children of Israel, not yet formed into a nation, wandering like a caravan ​across the desert, and ready to crumble into its sands. They had need to cast out every element of discord, the greatest of which was diversity of religion. Their only safety was in a perpetual guard against that demon-worship, which the more debasing it was, the more it exercised over them a horrible fascination.
Nor did these dangers fade away with the memories of Egypt. As they receded from Africa, they approached the hills of Canaan, which smoked with the altars of idolatry. Over all that land reigned a disgusting and cruel worship; not that purer form of idolatry, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars, which anciently looked up to the skies of Arabia and Chaldea, but a worship of wood and stone, by rites earthly, sensual, and devilish. Some writers give the impression that the native inhabitants of Palestine were an innocent, pastoral people — a simple, primitive race, that were hunted from their pasture-grounds by the Hebrew invaders. But history speaks another language. It describes their religion as a compound of lust and cruelty. They offered human sacrifices to their hideous idols, and even burned their sons and daughters in fire unto their gods. Centuries later, the Carthaginians, a people of the same Phœnician origin, were found offering human victims upon their altars, on the shores of Africa; and the fact is beyond question, that among the Canaanites such sacrifices prevailed to a frightful extent. The Valley of Hinnom resounded with their drums, and with the shrieks of their burning children. Indeed they seemed to have a strange thirst for blood. Their favorite god, Moloch, fitly represented the cruelty and ferocity of the national character. So enormous had their crimes become that the land itself was ready to "vomit out its inhabitants."
Against all participation in these dark idolatries, Moses ​denounced the severest punishment; against prostration before their images, or offering sacrifices on their altars; against even attending their festivals, or in any way countenancing their superstitions. Every monument of the old religion was to be thrown down: "Ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves."
But this work of destruction was only clearing the way for the great work of construction. After all this wreck and ruin of cruel rites and degrading superstitions had been swept from the minds of the Hebrews, as they had often seen a vast plain swept by the winds of the desert, Moses began to construct the fabric of a pure religion — the worship of One Living and True God; and out of this central principle, as the root of a mighty banyan-tree, there sprang a hundred trunks and arms, spreading far and wide, so that a whole nation could dwell under its shade. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." That was the first principle imbedded in the Hebrew Law, the acknowledgment of which in itself contained a whole government, and out of the most incoherent elements formed a nation and created a state.
Such was the Hebrew Commonwealth — a state founded in Religion. Was it therefore founded in fanaticism and folly? or in profound wisdom and far-seeing sagacity? Religion may seem an unsubstantial foundation on which to erect any human structure. It is indeed intangible, but only as gravitation is intangible, which yet holds the solar system in its place. So is Religion the most powerful influence which can bind human societies together. Says Coleridge in his Manual for Statesmen — and the great English thinker seldom uttered a profounder truth, or one more worthy of the consideration of statesmen — "Religion, true or false, is, and ever has been, the ​centre of gravity in a realm, to which all other things must and will accommodate themselves." Would it not be well if some of our modern pretenders to statesmanship did not so completely ignore its existence and its power?
The Religion which Moses gave to the Hebrews was not one merely of abstract ideas: it was incarnated in an outward and visible worship, by which it addressed the senses. On the desert there could not be the imposing and majestic service of the Temple. Yet even here was the Tabernacle set up and the altar, and was offered the daily sacrifice: the smoke and the incense below ascending towards the pillar of cloud above, and the fire on the altar answering to the pillar of fire in the midnight sky. This daily and nightly worship made religion a real, because a visible, thing; it appealed to the senses and touched the imagination of the people, and held their spirits in awe. And how did that feeling of a God dwelling in the midst of them, inspire them with courage for great efforts and great sacrifices! Weak as they were, they were made strong because they had a Divine Helper, and went forth to battle with confidence, as they sang the stirring psalm, "Rise up, Lord, and let Thine enemies be scattered!"
If further proof were needed to show the wisdom of Moses in the constitution of the Hebrew state, and of those laws which he set round it as its perpetual defence, it is furnished by its subsequent history, which we have but to follow to see how necessary, after all, were those restrictions, and how wise was the great Lawgiver in guarding his people against idolatry. The influence of his mighty name remained for a whole generation after he was in his sepulchre. "The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and of the elders that ​outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord, that he did for Israel. Those were the days of peace and prosperity, when judges judged justly, and rulers ruled righteously. But then began a decline. In spite of every precaution, the nation fell back. They relapsed into idolatry, and even slaughtered human beings on their altars: "They sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood." Then they reaped the bitter fruits of disregarded wisdom. Moses had foretold the greatest calamities from such apostacy, and his predictions were literally fulfilled. The decline of the nation into idolatry introduced an element of discord which tore them to pieces by civil wars, and left them a prey to their powerful neighbors. Weakened by divisions, they were subjected to a foreign yoke, and at last were transported to Babylon as a nation of slaves. The same alternate rise and fall are repeated at many successive periods of their history.
Such is the story of the Hebrew Commonwealth — a story that has its counterpart in every age, and under all forms of government — always teaching the same lesson, that the decay of religion is the decadence of the state.
Is there nothing in all this worthy the notice of the political economists of our day? Are we grown so wise and great that we can despise the wisdom of antiquity and the experience of ages? History repeats itself nowhere more unerringly than in the rise and fall of nations. Human nature is the same in all ages and all countries, and the same causes produce the same effects. Nations seem to revolve in cycles as fixed as those of the planets in their ​orbits, as they rise to glory and sink into decay. They begin in a low estate, with industry and ail the virtues that are born of weakness and poverty, till growing strength turns their humility to pride, and wealth and power induce the luxury and its attendant vices which are the sure precursors of ruin. These are only different forms of one disease — an universal selfishness, which eats out the manhood of a people, as concealed rottenness eats out the heart of the oak, and causes at last even the giant of the forest to come thundering to the ground. By these things nations die. It was this internal decay and rottenness which destroyed the Roman empire, and may destroy the most powerful of modern states.
To meet such dangers, how weak and puny are the pretentious devices of political economists! In these last days, when men boast as if they had attained all wisdom and all knowledge, the economists claim to have reduced government to a science, which they have mastered as completely as the students of natural science have mastered chemistry; and yet, to judge from the frequent failures in the most civilized countries, from the rebellions and revolutions, this science of government is still but imperfectly understood. Does science furnish any antidote for selfishness? Does a knowledge of chemistry change the internal composition of a man's nature? Alas! that we must confess that these things do not alter human character; that men may be learned and scientific, and yet be as supremely selfish as before. It is a sad commentary on the moral power, or rather the moral weakness, of science and civilization, that the nation which claims to be the most highly civilized, and which is the most devoted to science, is the one which has had the most revolutions, and which has more than once been petrified and set aghast by a Reign of Terror.
​Against all these perils, which in our day threaten not only government, but society itself, there is but one safeguard, Religion reënforced, not by civil enactments, but by every moral and educational influence. For a nation, as for an individual, the only security is inspiration from above. That alone ennobles human character or human life:
"Unless above himself he can erect himself, How mean a thing is man!"
Unless he can reach up to something higher than himself, and take hold of a power stronger than himself, he is but a helpless unit floating in the great universe, like a mote in the sunbeam. To give any dignity to his life on earth, he must find an attraction out of himself — a central orb around which his little existence can revolve.
The same law holds in things great and small, with nations as with individuals. In the moral and in the material world there is one Divine order:
"One God, one law, one element, And one far-off Divine intent, To which the whole creation moves."
Religion is the source of all man's highest inspirations — of all things great and noble; of all things pure and good; of all things sweet and gracious in human intercourse; of endless kindnesses and charities. It makes men honest and brave; it habituates them to self-control, and to obedience to law, and thus makes good citizens; while it inspires the higher virtues of self-sacrifice and devotion.
Are not these great elements on which to lay the foundations of a state? Such was the political economy of Moses when he founded the Hebrew Commonwealth on Religion. Was it wisdom or folly? Was it barbarism or civilization?
* ↑ Michaelis, Vol. IV., p. 75.
* ↑ Deut. xiii.6-11.
* ↑ Deut. xiii. 12-16.
* ↑ Deut. xviii. 9-12.
* ↑ Deut. xii. 31.
* ↑ Lev. xviii. 25.
* ↑ Exodus xxxiv. 15.
* ↑ Exodus xxxiv. 13; Deut. xii. 2, 3.
* ↑ Judges ii. 7
* ↑ Psalm cvi. 37, 33.
* ↑ Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxvii., xxviii., and xxxii.