one agreeable to the sense of the text, not one based on the
words therein contained.")
136 LECTURE VI.
and proverbs, which, under the name of Agada, con-
tributed to the diffusion of worldly prudence and moral
wisdom, and to their circulation as current coin among
the people. In the first of these divisions, the Law, it
was indispensable that perfect consistency with its
letter should exist in the interpretation. . Certain rules
were therefore adopted, and according to them, the cases
were determined, in which, if expedient, the explanation
might be limited, and the others in which, if the rela-
tive circumstances demanded it, it might be extended.
By these rules it was also permitted to reach the
desired conclusion by a long series of deductions and
inferences. This set of rules, in their collective form,
was called the Halacha.
This system was productive of two direct results, of
which the one, affecting the material life .of the Jews,
may be thus defined. The development of this intel-
lectual phase must have been free, as the tendency
must have been natural to the people. It induced the
formation of an independent body of literati from
among the people, who gradually forced the old orders
of the priest and the Levite into the back ground.
This intellectual movement produced more mental
equality among the mass, or, to use a recent phrase,
the preponderating power of intelligence. The field of
inquiry embraced by the second division referred to the
inner life. Its first condition was the fulfilment of the
Mosaic life, in so far as its practice was possible, and
the amalgamation of all that had grown out of the
popular habits and manners with ^material existence.
The smaller the portion of the Mosaic life of which the
then circumstances allowed the observance, according
to its true spirit and extent, the more rigid was the
THE SECOND TEMPLE THE ORIGIN OF TALMUDISM. 137
adherence to the remnant of ordinances still observed.
This gave rise to the three following consequences :
1st. All that could be obeyed in the ceremonial
law was held to be religion, its infringement to be
sin against God. Sndly. The law, as presented to the
Jew in the code of Moses, was no longer considered
binding ; but it was binding according to its subsequent
interpretation by the commentators. 3rdly. In order
to ensure the observance of the Mosaic law, it was
superincumbered with restrictions : the fulfilment of
these restrictions was held to be the fulfilment of the
Mosaic code :* a hedge, it was said, was planted around
the law. It will be at once perceived, that the laws
were thus multipled a hundredfold, and a direction was
imparted to them foreign to Mosaism. 4thly. The
popular mind received and adopted the impression,
that everything in human existence, from the most
insignificant trifle in material life to the most important
action involving a first moral principle, was equally to
be determined by the law, was to be found specifically
provided for in the law. This gave birth to casuistry,
or the regulation by the law of every possible indivi-
dual contingency.
I have thus attempted to place before you the origin
and tendencies of Talmudism. Its commencement
dates from the last century before the fall of Jerusalem
its development and consolidation from the third its
close from the sixth, century of the vulgar era. I shall
therefore consider its contents and purport in a future
lecture.
If we would view the subject from a higher point,
* Instead, I repeat, of an imperative command being thus
broken, "Thou shall not add," etc. A. M. G.
138 LECTURE VI.
however, we must enquire what was the real influence of
this second phase of Jewish existence, and of the ten-
dency of the Talmud, on the development of the Reli-
gious Idea.
The solution of this question is not difficult; for it
has been shown that the Religious Idea had overcome its
antagonism, the Heathen idea, within the Hebrew race ;
and further, that' when the internal principle of decay
within Heathenism had prepared its dissolution in the
then civilized world, the Religious Idea was destined to
step forth into the general world of man. The Divine
Idea, as will be presently seen, could in the first ages
of its promulgation, take but partial hold of the mental
soil of the human race. It was necessary therefore
that it should be preserved in its integrity within
Judaism, until such time as mankind, prepared by in-
creased civilization for its reception, should be fitted to
accept it, and be imbued with it, entirely and universally.
The two-fold mission was thus imparted to the Religious
Idea ; first, to be partially disseminated among mankind
generally secondly, to be preserved inviolate in the
very heart of Judaism. Its preparation for both these
conditions formed the second phase of the popular exist-
ence of the Jewish race. During this second phase
antiquity witnessed the final extinction of Heathenism.
The Religious Idea had meantime gathered up the
strength and the means by which to endure, in the midst
of Judaism, for thousands of coming years. The disse-
mination of the Religious Idea throughout the world
has been effected by means of Christianity, at a later
period by Mahomedanism, and by the dispersion of the
Israelites over the whole earth. The preservation of the
Religious Idea within Judaism, was secured by Talmud-
THE SECOND TEMPLE THE ORIGIN OF TALMUDISM. 139
ism ; for Talmudism is but its transformation into the
chrysalis, the enveloping it in the cocoon, formed of a
web of enactments for material life. Within that web the
Religious Idea lay pure and unscathed,* distinct alike
from the semi-divine ideas comprised in Christianity and
Mahomedanism, and from the remains of Heathenism,
then still lingering among mankind.
Whoever recognises in the history of man,f not an
entangled skein of accidental circumstances, but in
truth a series of cause and effect yet in actual opera-
tion, according to the pre-ordained plan of an allwise
and divine Providence, must at once perceive that the
simultaneous occurrence of the two great events, the
rise of Christianity, and the dispersion of the Jews, was
not a fortuitous coincidence. He must, on the contrary,
be impressed with the marked unity of purpose evident
in both these occurrences, a unity, not in their origin
and their action, (for Jerusalem was not destroyed by
Christianity, nor Christianity diffused by Judaism) but
in their aim and result. If, according to the clear and
unequivocal declaration of the Prophets, it is ordained
that the whole human race is to be subdued by the
Religious Idea, it is manifestly necessary that the deve-
lopment of mankind should ever be left free and un-
shackled, in order that the universal dissemination of the
Religious Idea may be the ultimate fruit of that free
development. This result could not at once be achieved.
The acceptance of the religious idea must be gradual, as the
* And like a graceful mythological emblem, destined one day
to emerge into light and life, and bear all spirits aloft on its
pinions, to the realms of eternal day. A.M. G.
t Or, who is not, in the words of the poet, ' The dark idolator
of chance.' A. M. G.
140 LECTURE VI.
development of man is progressive ; the ultimate stage
of that progress being its universal acceptance, in the
eiitireness and purity in which it has been preserved for
mankind. The first condition necessitated its partial
introduction, under the forms of Christianity and Ma-
homedanism ; the second, the preservation of Judaism
and of the Jewish race. This destined preservation of
the Jewish race and the Religious Idea, not on one spot
of earth only, but throughout the world, equally de-
manded the dispersion of the Israelites over the habit-
able globe. By the eye of Christianity, this dispersion
was long viewed as a curse ; and verily a curse it
was for the individual outcasts of the Jewish race,
who by its means suffered unutterable torments,
a martyrdom both of body and spirit. Yet for the
Hebrew race, as its children have long known, this very
dispersion was a blessing. Abarbanel, even he, who in
his troubled pilgrimage, had to fly from Spain to Por-
tugal, from Portugal to Italy, from Italy to Corfu,
himself observes, 'By means of the dispersion only
were we saved ; for when oppressed by the rulers of one
country, we have raised our heads, and have been
preserved in another.' Nay more ! this dispersion has
been fraught with blessing for all humanity. As depo-
sitaries of the Religious Idea, the Jews were and are
everywhere its irrefutable visible witnesses.* In respect
and on behalf of the Religious Idea, (and this our fur-
ther investigation into the existing conditions of man
will prove to demonstration) they will evermore exercise
fresh and ever -increasing influence over mankind, until
that idea shall have acquired universal and undisputed
sway over tne mental being of the human race. Amid
* Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord. Isaiah 44. 3.
THE SECOND TEMPLE THE ORIGIN OF TALMUDISM. 141
the vast revolutions and transmutations that were im-
pending over the whole civilized world, when the migra-
tions of the various peoples and races changed the
entire face of the known habitable globe, when the
senile and expiring nations of antiquity were fast sink-
ing into their long-prepared grave, and when a youthful
and vigorous race were destined to subdue the earth, it
would have been impossible for the Israelites to have
maintained and defended their independent national
existence in Palestine. The Jewish people, as a people,
had also passed away. But they did not disappear, as
other races have disappeared, from among men. The
Almighty had provided for them a wholly new and
peculiar phase of being. His providence decreed that
the race of Israel should arise in the midst of all nations
to new life, endowed with inexhaustible strength and
unconquerable perseverance. For this new life, the
second phase of the national existence had been, both in
its internal and external relations, an indispensable
preparation. The wider the difference between the
Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, (in which the Jews
were transported collectively to one fixed place of exile)
and their second and final removal and dispersion, the
clearer is it made, that during the second national
period the preservation of the Religious Idea was pre-
pared and ensured; within, by means of a concrete
system of material enactments derived from the Mosaic
law without, by the dispersion of the Jews before the
destruction of Jerusalem.
Here then it becomes necessary to consider Chris-
tianity in its relation to Judaism. But as Christianity
is the ground on which the Jewish and the Heathen
world first came into spiritual contact, it is desirable
142 LECTURE VI.
that we should inform ourselves somewhat more pre-
cisely as to the state of the Heathen world at that mo-
ment. With a few brief remarks on this subject, I
will, with your permission, close this day's lecture.
In what direction soever we turn our inquiry, we shall
at once clearly discern that at this juncture all hitherto
existing forms were in a state of decay or of entire decom-
position, and that no means of resuscitation or reformation
were at hand. The political existence of all nations that
had once played an important and independent part in
the world's drama, had been annihilated by the arms of
Borne. Egypt, Asia-Minor, Northern Africa, Spain, Gaul,
and Britain had been reduced to the insignificant con-
dition of Roman provinces ; only there, where a youthful
and vigorous race the Parthians and Germans poured
down from the north and east, had the arms of Rome
received a check. The power of Rome, the mistress of
the world, began to decline. The republic had been
transformed into an empire. To the despotism of the
Caesars, had again succeeded the uncurbed personal
authority of the procurator. Justice had been displaced
by arbitrary rule, in which dwelt combined the insatia-
ble avarice of individuals, and the senseless and profane
deification of the emperor.
Heathenism had known but two classes rulers and
slaves ; even the much vaunted freedom of the Athen-
ians and Spartans was but the freedom of the dominant
families ; and of these, the masses of the population
were the bond-men. The propitious moment at which
the Roman plebeian succeeded in curbing the absolute
rule of the patricians, laid a subject world prostrate at
the feet of the citizen of Rome. This degeneracy
reached its extreme point during the imperial rule of
THE SECOND TEMPLE THE ORIGIN OF TALMUDISM. 143
the Caesars. Save emperors and slaves, nought re-
mained.
The political world was transformed into a multitude
of disconnected particles, an assemblage of men devoid
of freedom, of organization, and wholly governed (as
may be seen from the elections and depositions of the
Emperors by the Praetorian Guard) by unbridled passion
and brute force. Such was the ultimate result of the
social experiment, in that antiquity which had so
variously operated on man in his political relations.
That a boundless immorality would, in such a condition
of things, gain entire ascendancy over society, is evident.
The pleasures of the senses, and the possession of the
means by which to ensure their enjoyment, were the
sole incentives to action. Sensual excess, an indulgence
of the appetites bordering on insanity, and such as the
world has never since beheld, covetousuess, extortion,
legacy-hunting denunciations ; these comprised the
whole range of social activity. The moral sense of man
was dead.
There stood Heathenism sunken and depraved, an
object of ridicule and contempt in the sight of its own
sons, a senseless drama, played by soulless actors. Who-
ever reads the coarse but biting satires of Lucian, and
at the same time calls to mind the worship offered to
the degenerate, yet deified emperors, as though they
had indeed become Gods, will at once discern in such
things the decomposed elements of a decayed organism.
Philosophy had a like fate; for the philosophic con-
sciousness of mankind must truly have fallen to the
lowest ebb, when so-called philosophers were the most
cringing, the most fawning and abject flatterers, who
144 LECTURE VI.
clothed in flowery and figurative phrases their advocacy
of the most shameless scepticism, the lowest morality.
What, save utter despair, could result from such a
state of being ? When sensual indulgence has reached
the point of exhaustion and satiety, a higher yearning
makes itself felt ; the more keenly and bitterly, the
smaller the power left in the burnt-out embers of the
soul, to satisfy her own aspirations after light and life.
Doubt fills the spirit with deepest sadness, with bitter-
est anguish at the sense of its own nothingness. Then
the slave desires enlargement. If earthly freedom be
denied him, he stretches forth his hand to Heaven, and
seeks an imagined spiritual liberty on High. Even the
most shameless parasite despises him before whom he
bends, gnashing his teeth and muttering to himself,
f Had I but your possessions, thus should you render
obeisance unto me/ For all these longings, all these
aspirations, antiquity could offer nought, no nought;
could yield no satisfaction. For under the dominion of
Rome, and the degeneracy of the other nations, Art
even she that had been the peculiar creation and attri-
bute of antiquity, had wholly declined.
One only nation still existed, in whom there yet lay
a vigorous germ, a strong element of life and being
the Jews, with the Religious Idea. This idea passed
from Judaism into Christianity ; and, arrayed in this
garb, entered the general world of man. She thus
received the worn-out old world in her maternal em-
brace, mitigated the death-struggle for antiquity ; and
though doubtless no longer wearing her previous aspect,
arose with the fresh morning dawn, in the midst of the
new races of the earth.
145
LECTURE VII.
THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO JUDAISM.
IT is not without some hesitation that I have undertaken
to investigate the subject of which it is this day my
duty to treat, viz., the relation of Christianity to Ju-
daism. By every earnest thinker, the passing judgment
on that held by the professors of creeds different from
his own to be the holiest and the highest, must ever
be a matter involving seriousness and deliberation,
amounting almost to reluctance. That Christianity
cannot be viewed by a Jew in the light in which it is
viewed by a Christian, is self-evident. That he should
so view it will not, I am sure, be expected; since if
he could, he would not be a Jew. To omit this
branch of our enquiry is impossible. The method we
have adopted in tracing the course of development
taken by the religious idea, renders it indispensable that
its entrance into the wide arena of the world of man
under the form of Christianity should be clearly eluci-
dated; or this very matter, the development of the re-
ligious idea, would be but imperfectly understood.
Every candid seeker after the truth within the range
of our present enquiry, cannot abstain, if a Jew, from
closely examining into Christianity; and cannot fail, if
a Christian, to desire acquaintance with the estimate
L
146 LECTURE VII.
formed of the Christian system by the Jewish mind
according to the Jewish standard. While therefore
strictly adhering to the plan hitherto pursued in these
Lectures, and examining Christianity according to the
premises I have laid down, I can rest in the confident
assurance that my respected hearers must have already
become convinced of the earnest desire by which I have
been actuated, to judge impartially, and according to
the historical and objective standard only. The en-
lightened members of all religious denominations have
assuredly in this era gone so far as to have attained to
the conviction, that by free and general enquiry only
can a knowledge of truth be acquired ; and that to
suppress utterances and enforce silence, in order to
uphold any system, can have but the effect of precipi-
tating its ruin.
Much however depends on the mode in which
judgment is pronounced. Whenever opinions are
formed in a spirit of animosity, malignity, exclusion,
and depreciation, they should be received with distrust,
or rejected with firmness. Such defects are in them-
selves evidences of immature judgment; for truth,
invested with her highest attributes, cannot hate and
condemn, she can but correct and instruct. Christi-
anity could never be hated by a true Jew, who knows
it to be a great off-shoot of his own stem.
You must now permit me in the first place cursorily
to review the ground already traversed ; to re-examine
the foundations already laid, on which the superstruc-
ture is to be reared. It has been seen, that ever since
the promulgation of Mosaism up to the period at which
we have arrived, the religious idea and the human idea
had been continuously and mutually antagonistic. The
THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO JUDAISM. 147
human idea, starting from the ego, or principle of self,
had thence proceeded to nature and her operations, in
order to ascertain their action on man. Thus a dual-
istic principle was soon declared to prevail in her, by
the human idea; existence and non-existence, growth
and decay. Then a third and modifying power was sought,
and the conception formed of the Godhead was that of
powers held by three or more divinities. Such are the
Sanzai of the Chinese ; the Brama, Vischnu, and Siwen
of the Indians ; the Ormuzd, Ahriman, and Zeruane-
Akrene of the Persians. Finally, the human idea came
itself to detect the utter nothingness of these concep-
tions, and thus prepared its own dissolution. Such
was the process all antiquity passed through, from the
Indians down to the Romans.
In the opposite principle, the religious idea as set
forth in Mosaism predicates a God before known by
revelation. This God is an absolute existence, a holy,
perfect, eternal and supermundane being, the Creator of
the world, as the unity of all specialities. This one and
only God formed man, as the chief of those specialities,
to be a unity composed of body and spirit, endowed
with a soul created in the image of God. God sustains
the universe ; indirectly, by means of the great laws of
nature, on which He has set it forth ; directly, in His
relation to the God-like human spirit, as man's Provi-
dence, Judge, Pardoner, and Revealer. The highest
principle of morals is declared by Mosaism to be, ' Man
shall be holy, as the Lord his God is holy.' This holi-
ness is to be manifested in love to God, love to his
neighbour, and in the control exercised by man's
moral consciousness over his physical and temporal
desires. Mosaism makes imperative on man the
L2
148 LECTURE VII.
practice of justice and charity, and renders the claim to
the latter the inalienable right of the poor. Human
society was established by Mosaisrn on the basis of
personal freedom, equality of right, and all possible
equality of possession. The unity of the life and of the
idea was set forth by Mosaism, which determined the
conditions of a life imbued with the religious idea, of a
truly religious ' here' below, complete and entire. Yet
that in the Jewish people, as in all peoples, the human
and natural should become active, was inevitable.
Prophetism was therefore compelled by stern reality, to
sever the life from the Idea, in order, from out the
midst of the heathen life of the Jewish race, to conduct
the Idea to safety and victory. By this severance, Pro-
phetism further prepared the religious idea for its
destined dissemination throughout mankind. After the
religious idea had overcome the heathenism within the
Jewish race, it was necessary, in order to its obtaining
a like victory over the heathenism prevailing among
mankind generally, that it should introduce itself into
that general world of man. This introduction could
be effected only according to the measure and degree
of free development attained by the human race.
Though antiquity had been prepared by its previous
process of dissolution, for the acceptance of the religious
idea, since its vitality was wholly exhausted, yet that
Acceptance could be but partial. For the develop-
ment of man's being was yet too imperfect, to fit him
to be the recipient of the religious idea, whole, pure,
and entire. Christianity is virtually the entrance of
this semi-religious idea into the Western, as Moslemism
is its introduction into the Eastern, world. To
good this assertion is our present task.
THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO JUDAISM. 149
In its execution, we shall have especially to direct our
attention to the two first, yet distinct stages of Christi-
anity: the first, its birth within Judaism itself; the
second, its introduction into the disorganised world of
Heathenism. The first point to be considered is How
and in what manner did Christianity take its rise in
Judaism? For the mode of its origin must have
mainly determined its whole subsequent character. It
has been shown, that at the period at which Christi-
anity took its rise, the mental activity of Judaism had
assumed a direction contrary to that previously imparted
to it by prophetisrn. The development of the re-.
ligious idea had been the achievement of prophetism.
The course now pursued was the elaboration of a
vast code of material laws, in which was to be em-
bedded the religious idea, in order to preserve it
unscathed for a distant future, and to protect it from
the vicissitudes attendant on the impending dispersions
of Jewdom.* All important as we at once admit this
material code to have been, for the historical progress
and preservation of the religious idea, it is nevertheless
evident, that a life so replete with the observance of
rites and ordinances, when deriving no aliment from
the inward and natural piety of its followers, must have
degenerated into a course of forms and ceremonies, of
assumed sanctity and hypocritical fanaticism.
Such a course do the prophets indicate, in their
denunciations against the empty, soulless and degraded
sacrificial worship. Amid the depravity that prevailed
among the Jewish people at the fall of Jerusalem,
* No one can here, it appears to me, form a post-factum
judgment of what would have been the result of adherence to.
the Mosaic code. A. M. G.
150 LECTUKE VII.
amid a moral degeneracy to which the Talmudic writers
allude, this fact must have become doubly manifest.
The Pharisees of that period, a body openly condemned