Page:Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology.djvu/21



earliest records He is represented as standing in such a relation only to a Few, never anywhere as being the common Father of all men equally. In the Law of Moses His characteristic Revelation of Himself is as a Lawgiver: in the earliest Historical Books the prominent Idea of is that of the Lord of Hosts—the  of the Jews only, and not of the Gentiles. In the Psalms we find the earlier representations frequently superseded by more adequate ones, though in some of these the most limited would seem to reappear: while in the Prophets the more nearly they approach to the times of the Messiah, there is a growing approximation to that Idea which was first and fully revealed only by Him. But in no part of the older Scriptures have we any Revelation of under that form which holds such prominence in the Creed of Christendom, or any which has not always led the Jew to believe that such an Idea was inconsistent with the fundamental teaching of his Scriptures.

And so too with regard to the great doctrine of Individual Immortality. Glimpses of this doctrine were, it may be, granted to special persons—to Abraham and Moses and David, to Isaiah and Ezekiel and Daniel, for instances: but in whatsoever measure such knowledge was vouchsafed to such as these, and as extending to themselves and some small portion of mankind, it never seems to have been prominently revealed or impressively inculcated, so far as the great body of the subjects of Revelation are concerned, It had no sanction in Jewish Law, and it had no symbol in Jewish worship. It never was appealed to as any motive to exertion, nor upheld as any comfort in trouble. It never anywhere is recognised as a fundamental article of faith, or has any of that prominence given to it which we find in the Christian Scriptures. Indeed in the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures there is less said about a Future Life than there is in the small volume of the Apocrypha, and less even than there is in the records of many heathen nations, and in the remains of several heathen writers.