Power, which is more important than righteousness to a judicatory,
was what the government was wanting in In the simpler social
conditions of the earlier time a state which was adapted merely
for purposes of war might easily be found to work satisfactorily
enough, but a more complex order of things had now arisen. Social
problems had begun to crop up; for the poor and the proletariat
the protection of a thoughtful government had come to be required,
but was not forthcoming.
But these defects did not check all progress. The weakness of the
government, the want of political consolidation, were insufficient
to arrest intellectual advance or to corrupt the prevailing moral
tone and feeling for justice; in fact it was precisely in this
period (the period in which the main part of the Jehovistic
history must have been written) that the intellectual and moral
culture of the people stood at its highest. Even when the
machinery of the monarchy had got out of order, the organisation
of the families and communes continued to subsist; the smaller
circles of social life remained comparatively untouched by the
catastrophes that shook the greater.
Pages:
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035