The
Hebrew prophet will appeal to the teaching of the Law, will repeat the
old revelation with its old unshaken and unshakeable precepts, but he
will not stop there: he will also give signs from the Lord to prove that
he has a right to the title of prophet which he claims. Armed with this
title, he will go on to predict the coming of the Great Restorer, the
Messiah; he will insist on the judgment of all things, sure to be passed
in its appointed day; he will hint at the immortality of the soul, and
the execution of the Almighty justice on every man that lives.
It is probable enough that many of the inferior religions have grown up
with no such claim at all. The worship of ancestors, where it has
prevailed, has very likely, as has been suggested, grown out of dreams,
in which loving memory has brought back in sleep vivid images of the
dead who were reverenced while they lived, and cannot be readily
forgotten after death. Such worship barely attains to what may be called
in strictness a religion. Its connexion with the spiritual faculty, the
true seat of religion, is weak and vague. It is like the honour paid to
a sovereign residing in a distant capital, with only the difference
that those who receive this worship are supposed to reside not in a
distant capital, but in another world.
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