did must prosper,[1] would naturally come the sense that in their wars with an enemy the enemy should be put to confusion and they should triumph. But how, out of the mere sense that their enemy should be put to confusion and they should triumph, could the desire for goodness come?
It is objected, again, that their 'law of the Lord' was a positive traditionary code to the Hebrews, standing as a mechanical rule which held them in awe; that their 'fear of the Lord' was superstitious dread of an assumed magnified and non-natural man. But why, then, are they always saying: 'Teach me thy statutes, Teach me thy way, Show thou me the way that I shall walk in, Open mine eyes, Make me to understand wisdom secretly!'[2] if all the law they were thinking of stood, stark and written, before their eyes already? And what could they mean by: 'I will love thee, O Eternal, my strength!'[3] if the fear they meant was not the awe-filled observance from deep attachment, but a servile terror? It is objected, that their conception of righteousness was a narrow and rigid one, centring mainly in what they called judgment: 'Hate the evil and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate!'[4] so that evil, for them, did not take in all faults whatever of heart and conduct, but meant chiefly oppression, graspingness, a violent, mendacious tongue, insolent and riotous excess. True; their conception of righteousness was much of this kind, and it was narrow. But whoever sincerely attends to conduct, along however limited a line, is on his way to bring under the eye of conscience all conduct whatever; and already, in the Old Testament, the somewhat monotonous inculcation of the social virtues of judgment and justice is continually broken through by deeper movements of personal religion. Every
