Page:Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology.djvu/23



of its disciples? The selection of one people—a people of slaves—from among many others, and the educating them so as to be always a peculiar people—a people not intended ever to exhibit a normal condition for all peoples, but only a condition introductory to something more perfect which might belong to all others but could not belong to them—and all this for a period of fifteen centuries—what is this but an indisputable concession to human infirmity? And this people not being more influenced for good when they were influenced so much, what is this, too, but the same? And then if we consider the Law of Moses in detail, how can we but be impressed conclusively with this great fact of Accommodation? We then see that much of his characteristic Teaching was in accordance with his Egyptian Learning, and that many of the statutes and ordinances which he gave his people derive their chief significance from their reference to Egyptian rites and institutions. And surely this influence of heathen modes of religious thought and feeling on that Law which is called the Law of the as well as the Law of Moses, is a most remarkable and conclusive instance of that Accommodation which is elsewhere, almost everywhere, to be traced in the Revelations of the Bible. Doubtless this Egyptian influence in the Mosaic Economy has been largely overrated, and was most especially so when first noticed, but still the most scrupulously just estimate of that influence leaves an amount of it which only an unscrupulously unjust criticism can either ignore or contradict.

Indeed if man is to be dealt with in any communication from by any process which shall not subvert his essential humanity, it is difficult to conceive how a Revelation commencing at an early period of his history and extending over ages, should be otherwise than one of Progression and Accommodation. No assertion of analogy can be truer than that which is often said to exist between the Childhood of the Race and of the

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