ate aim of this morality--to
propitiate Jehovah--was indeed imaginary, and its ultimate aim--to
restore the kingdom of Israel--was worldly; yet that imaginary aim
covered, in the form of a myth, a sincere consecration to the ideal,
while the worldly purpose led to an almost scientific conception of the
principles and movement of earthly things.

[Sidenote: Inspiration and authority.]

To this transformation in the spirit of the law, another almost as
important corresponded in the letter. Scripture was codified,
proclaimed, and given out formally to be inspired by Jehovah and written
by Moses. That all traditions, legends, and rites were inspired and
sacred was a matter of course in antiquity. Nature was full of gods, and
the mind, with its unaccountable dreams and powers, could not be without
them. Its inventions could not be less oracular than the thunder or the
flight of birds. Israel, like every other nation, thought its traditions
divine. These traditions, however, had always been living and elastic;
the prophets themselves gave proof that inspiration was still a vital
and human thing. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that while
the prophets were preparing their campaign, under pressure of the same
threatened annihilation, the same puritanical party should have edited a
new code of laws and attributed it retroactively to Moses. While the
prophet's lips were being touched by the coal of fire, the priests and
king in their conclave were establishing the Bible and the Church. It is
easy to suspect, from the accounts we have, that a pious fraud was
perpetrated on this occasion; but perhaps the finding of a forgotten
book of the Law and its proclamation by Josiah, after consulting a
certain prophetess, were not so remote in essence from prophetic
sincerity. In an age when every prophet, seeing what was needful
politically, could cry, "So saith the Lord," it could hardly be
illegitimate for the priests, seeing what was expedient legally, to
declare, "So said Moses." Conscience, in a primitive and impetuous
people, may express itself in an apocryphal manner which in a critical
age conscience would altogether exclude. It would have been hardly
conceivable that what was obviously right and necessary should not be
the will of Jehovah, manifested of old to the fathers in the desert and
now again whispered in their children's hearts. To contrive a stricter
observance was an act at once of experimental prudence--a mean