the
theology which they had inherited; they created the first consistent,
remorseless, naked monotheism, which, so far as history records,
appeared in the world (for Zoroastrism is practically ditheism, and
Buddhism any-theism or no-theism); and they inseparably united therewith
an ethical code, which, for its purity and for its efficiency as a bond
of social life, was and is, unsurpassed. So I think we must not judge
Ezra and Nehemiah and their followers too hardly, if they exemplified
the usual doom of poor humanity to escape from one error only to fall
into another; if they failed to free themselves as completely from the
idolatry of ritual as they had from that of images and dogmas; if they
cherished the new fetters of the Levitical legislation which they had
fitted upon themselves and their nation, as though such bonds had the
sanctity of the obligations of morality; and if they led succeeding
generations to spend their best energies in building that "hedge round
the Torah" which was meant to preserve both ethics and theology, but
which too often had the effect of pampering the latter and starving the
former. The world being what it was, it is to be doubted whether Israel
would have preserved intact the pure ore of religion, which the prophets
had extracted for the use of mankind as well as for their nation, had
not the leaders of the nation been zealous, even to death, for the dross
of the law in which it was embedded. The struggle of the Jews, under the
Maccabean house, against the Seleucidae was as important for mankind as
that of the Greeks against the Persians. And, of all the strange ironies
of history, perhaps the strangest is that "Pharisee" is current, as
a term of reproach, among the theological descendants of that sect of
Nazarenes who, without the martyr spirit of those primitive Puritans,
would never have come into existence. They, like their historical
successors, our own Puritans, have shared the general fate of the poor
wise men who save cities.

A criticism of theology from the side of science is not thought of
by the prophets, and is at most indicated in the books of Job and
Ecclesiastes, in both of which the problem of vindicating the ways of
God to man is given up, though on different grounds, as a hopeless one.
But with the extensive introduction of Greek thought among the Jews,
which took place, not only during the domination of the Seleucidae in
Palestine, but in the great Judaic colony which