Page:Literature and Dogma (1883).djvu/224

 because of the simple and austere life led by the Beni-Israel as nomads of the desert; or because they did not, like other Semitic people, put a feminine divinity alongside of their masculine divinity, and thus open the way to all sorts of immorality. But many other tribes have had the simple and austere life of nomads of the desert, without its bringing them to the religion of Israel. And, if the Hebrews did not put a feminine divinity alongside of their masculine divinity, while other Semitic people did, surely there must have been something to cause this difference! and what we want to know is this something.

And to this something, we say, the 'Zeit-Geist,' and a prolonged and large experience of men's expressions and how they employ them, leads us. It was because, while other people, in the operation of that mighty not ourselves which is in us and around us, saw this thing and that thing and many things, Israel saw in it one thing only:—that it made for conduct, for righteousness. And it does; and conduct is the main part of human life. And hence, therefore, the extraordinary reality and power of Israel's God and of Israel's religion. And the more we strictly limit ourselves, in attempting to give a scientific account of God, to Israel's authentic intuition of him, and say that he is 'the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness,' the more real and profound will Israel's words about God become to us, for we can then verify his words as we use them.

Eternal, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another! If we define the Eternal to ourselves, 'a Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe,' we can never verify that this has from age to age been a refuge to men. But if we define the Eternal, 'the enduring Power, not ourselves,