s attempts to re-express the primitive faith, would have to be
condemned as absolutely heretical and spurious. But the prophets were
not interpreting documents or traditions; they were publishing their own
political experience. They were themselves inspired. They saw the
identity of virtue and happiness, the dependence of success upon
conduct. This new truth they announced in traditional language by saying
that Jehovah's favour was to be won only by righteousness and that vice
and folly alienated his goodwill. Their moral insight was genuine; yet
by virtue of the mythical expression they could not well avoid and in
respect to the old orthodoxy, their doctrine was a subterfuge, the first
of those after-thoughts and ingenious reinterpretations by which faith
is continually forced to cover up its initial blunders. For the Jews had
believed that with such a God they were safe in any case; but now they
were told that, to retain his protection, they must practice just those
virtues by which the heathen also might have been made prosperous and
great. It was a true doctrine, and highly salutary, but we need not
wonder that before being venerated the prophets were stoned.

The ideal of this new prophetic religion was still wholly material and
political. The virtues, emphasised and made the chief mark of a
religious life, were recommended merely as magic means to propitiate the
deity, and consequently to insure public prosperity. The thought that
virtue is a natural excellence, the ideal expression of human life,
could not be expected to impress those vehement barbarians any more than
it has impressed their myriad descendants and disciples, Jewish,
Christian, or Moslem. Yet superstitious as the new faith still remained,
and magical as was the efficacy it attributed to virtue, the fact that
virtue rather than burnt offerings was now endowed with miraculous
influence and declared to win the favour of heaven, proved two things
most creditable to the prophets: in the first place, they themselves
loved virtue, else they would hardly have imagined that Jehovah loved
it, or have believed it to be the only path to happiness; and in the
second place, they saw that public events depend on men's character and
conduct, not on omens, sacrifices, or intercessions. There was
accordingly a sense for both moral and political philosophy in these
inspired orators. By assigning a magic value to morality they gave a
moral value to religion. The immedi