Let the mistakes of those who think that "man was made for the Sabbath," rather
than "the Sabbath was made for man," be what they may; that there
is one day in the week that the working people may call their own, one day
in the week on which hammer is silent and loom stands idle, is due, through
Christianity, to Judaism – to the code promulgated in the Sinaitic
wilderness.
It is in these characteristics of the Mosaic institutions that, as in the
fragments of a Colossus, we may read the greatness of the mind whose impress
they bear – of a mind in advance of its surroundings, in advance
of its age; of one of those star souls that dwindle not with distance,
but, glowing
with the radiance of essential truth, hold their light while institutions
and languages and creeds change and pass.
That the thought was greater than the permanent expression it found, who can
doubt?
Yet from that day to this that expression has been in the world a living power.
From the free spirit of the Mosaic law sprang that intensity of family life
that amid all dispersions and persecutions has preserved the individuality
of the Hebrew race; that love of independence that under the most adverse circumstances
has characterised the Jew; the burning patriotism that flamed in the Maccabees
and bared the breasts of Jewish peasants to the serried steel of Grecian phalanx
and the resistless onset of Roman legion; that stubborn courage that in exile
and in torture held the Jew to his faith. It kindled that fire that has made
the strains of Hebrew seers and poets phrase for us the highest exaltations
of thought; that intellectual vigour that has over and over again made the
dry staff bud and blossom. And passing onward from one narrow race it has exerted
its power wherever the influence of the Hebrew scriptures has been felt, It
has toppled thrones and cast dawn hierarchies. It strengthened the Scottish
covenanter in the hour of trial, and the Puritan amid the snows of a strange
land. It charged with the Ironsides at Naseby; it stood behind the low redoubt
on Bunker Hill.
But it is in example as in deed that such lives are helpful. It is thus that
they dignify human nature and glorify human effort, and, to those who struggle,
bring hope and trust. The life of Moses, like the institutions of Moses,
is a protest against that blasphemous doctrine current now as it was three
thousand
years ago, preached oft times even from Christian pulpits – that the
want and suffering of the masses of humankind flow from a mysterious dispensation
of providence, which we may lament, but can neither quarrel with nor alter. Let
those who hug that doctrine themselves, those to whom it seems that the
squalor and brutishness with which the very centres of our civilisation
abound are not their affair, turn to the example of that life. For to them
who will
look, yet burns the bush; and to them who will hear, again comes the voice: "The
people suffer: who will lead them forth?"
Adopted into the immediate family of the supreme monarch and earthly god;
standing almost at the apex of the social pyramid which had for its base
those toiling millions; priest and prince in a land where prince and priest
might
revel in all delights – everything that life could offer to gratify
the senses or engage the intellect was open to him. ... Read the whole speech