Whatever Jehovah may have been conceived to be
in His essential nature-God of the thunderstorm or the like--this
fell more and more into the background as mysterious and
transcendental; the subject was not one for inquiry. All stress
was laid upon His activity within the world of mankind, whose ends
He made one with His own. Religion thus did not make men partakers
in a divine life, but contrariwise it made God a partaker in the
life of men; life in this way was not straitened by it, but enlarged.
The so-called "particularism" of Israel's idea of God was in fact
the real strength of Israel's religion; it thus escaped from barren
mythologisings, and became free to apply itself to the moral
tasks which are always given, and admit of being discharged, only
in definite spheres. As God of the nation, Jehovah became the God
of justice and of right; as God of justice and right, He came to
be thought of as the highest, and at last as the only, power in
heaven and earth.
*****
In the preceding sketch the attempt has been made to exhibit
Mosaism as it must be supposed to have existed on the assumption
that the history of Israel commenced with it, and that for
centuries it continued to be the ideal root out of which that
history continued to grow.
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