Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/331

 congregation existing without a priest a son of Levi, quietly layeth down the law for doing without them. When prescribing the order in which persons are to be called up to the reading of the law, it says—

"If there be no priest there, then an Israelite is to go up, but no Levite is to follow him." (Ibid., c. xii. 19.) And again,

"But if the congregation has no priest at all, when the reader comes to that part of the prayers he is to say," &c. (Ibid., c. xv. 10.) Now if the oral law were anxious to maintain the institution of Moses it could make no such supposition. On the contrary it would urge upon every congregation the indispensable necessity of having a priest or the family of Levi. The supposition shows that its authors cared but little about the commands of Moses, for where there is no priest it is plainly impossible for the people to obey that often-repeated precept to learn the law from the sons of Levi. And yet the authors of the oral law, who care so little for this commandment of Moses about the priests, command the appointment of Melamm'dim, or schoolmasters, wider pain of utter destruction—

"Teachers of children are to be established in every province and district and city. And every city in which there are not school children the men of that city are to be visited with the Cherem, and if they still neglect, the city itself is to be devoted." (Hilch. Talm. Torah, c. ii.) When we see them enforce this commandment of their own with such zeal and severity, and yet appear so careless and negligent about the commandment of Moses, we justly infer that this neglect was intentional, and that the object was to exalt themselves, and to depress that office which God himself had ordained, And this inference is abundantly confirmed by, the numerous and minute laws respecting the honour due to a rabbi, whilst the respect due to the family of Levi is almost entirely disregarded, and his office evidently depreciated below that of the former. As, for instance, in establishing the order in which captives are