Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/143

 language,—and they had the free use and habit of a written language.

If, then, we go on to inquire concerning the intellectual and moral and social condition of the thousands of the people, the warrantable method, available for the purposes of such an inquiry, is that of seeking the indications of this condition, inferentially, in the remains of the literature of the people;—not, it may be, in treatises on abstruse subjects, composed by the learned for the learned: but in writings of whatever sort which were adapted to popular use, and in which—for this is their mark, as so intended—the mass of the people is challenged to listen and to respond, and is invited and provoked to contradict—if in any instance there be room for a contrary averment. Such was the Israelitish people at the moment which ended their tent-life in the wilderness, and which immediately preceded their entrance upon the land assigned them, as that they, in full Ecclesia, might properly be taught, advised, upbraided, promised, threatened, in the manner of which the closing book of the Pentateuch is the record and summary.

The Israelite of that time was such that to him might be propounded, intelligently, the sublime theology and the rightful and truthful ethics of the book of Deuteronomy; which have held their place, unrivalled, as Institutes of Religion from that age to this. What is our alternative on this ground? This book is either "from Heaven," in its own