V.] Filthy Worship of Istar. 243 engines of war, but was such a moral cancer in humanity that for the benefit of mankind it was best to cut it out, root and branch. The Phoenicians were innoculated with the same virus; worshipped the same god under slightly different names, with rites similar or more hideous. Marriage was desecrated by the nameless unchastity of religion, and Phallus worship became the curse of the people. The pestilence touched Egypt and Greece, and everywhere that the ships of the Phoenicians went. Oxen and pigs were consecrate to Moloch, human offerings, living virgins and lads were cast into a heated brazen statue of the idol. The higher the rank of the victim, the more desirable for the god. Hannibal, the Carthaginian, offered at one time 3,000 young men, prisoners of war, in honour of Moloch. Maidens who had not worshipped at the shrine of Baaltis the unchaste, were burned in the service of Astarte, and men served her by a nameless mutilation. Thousands of these in woman's clothing would wander through the land with hideous instruments of noise, with wild gesticulations, cutting themselves with swords, biting their flesh till the blood streamed down, and uttering horrid incantations. Just such scenes as are described in Kings, where Elijah tested the worshippers of Baal on Mount Carmel, are made plain to us by other history, as the natural course of this religion; and even to-day in the far-off islands of the Mexican gulf, we find a brazen image of Moloch with charred human remains in its hollow body, and tradition tells of the worship of Astarte by similar rites in Mexico. Whence this horrid cult of Shem? It is no gradual sinking away from purer monotheism as in other nations; nor is it by a thousand degrees more of negation, a stage of development up towards a pure monotheism, as Mr. Spencer's theory would require, or as Rénan and many another admirer of Shem would have us believe. The only solution is that deliberate 244 Biblical Accounts [LECT. rejection of the God of Ham, when the Elamites conquered the original kingdom; a legitimate outcome of a deliberate choice, whose monument forever was to be that tower of Babel in the plains of Shinar, in which was to be an image of God come down, a step which the Bible represents as having drawn down on man the avenging anger of God. At all events, that was the religion of Shem, that the hole of the pit out of which men would have us believe that the Israelite religion and Christianity were digged. By what law but a supernatural could such results from such ancestry be produced? II. SUPERNATURAL. Is the God of the Bible a natural product of Shemite tendency, or is the religion of the Bible a supernatural gift to man? This is really the question before us, and I do not ask you to decide the question yet, for I have scarcely touched the mountain of proof. I wish you to study the development of this religion and to tell then, if you can, whence it came. There are great moral problems connected with the Old Testament history on which I will but touch to-day; but I would ask you to look at the biblical story-the history of the development of this biblical religion, as corroborated by all other history that touches the subject. If the Bible is not a true history of the Jews, it certainly seems wonderful that they should guard for thousands of years as dearer than life itself, a mass of documents which, if untrue, are full of most libellous charges against them as a people. Now, to be brief, what do we find? 1. We find first of all in the Bible, preserved by the Jews, a connected account of a mass of primitive thought held in fragments by all nations whose traditions we can trace to their source, viz., an account of creation by a one holy living God; the creation of man pure; his fall into sin; the consequent ruin of the race, and punish V.] Agree with other History 245 ment by means of a flood, destroying all mankind excepting one family; the division of men into three great branches; the confusing of languages; and the wide distribution of the human race. Then, out of the Shem family, when the people had on the whole become corrupt in their worship, out of a remnant who still retained a knowledge of the primitive God, Abraham was led 2000 B.C. to leave his home and people in Ur of the Chaldees; he came to the land of Canaan, untainted of the awful idolatry of his people. His grand-child Jacob, with children and grand-children, removed to Egypt, where Joseph, one of Jacob's sons, had become Prime Minister. In a time of famine this Joseph, with true Shemite-Shylock tact, buys all the land, cattle, and persons of the Egyptians as the property of the king, in return for food which the Government had laid up in store. Egyptian documents tell how this slavery became galling to the Egyptians; they rose in rebellion, swept away the ruling dynasty, and a king arose "who knew not Joseph," that is, looked upon him and his people as enemies of the Egyptian people. This dynasty enslaved them in bitter bondage for centuries. At length one of their number, Moses, who was taught in all the learning of Egypt, managed to lead the slaves out of the country in a mass of several millions. For forty years they wandered about before settling down in Canaan. Moses elaborates a code of laws and a ritual. He borrows one or two expressive forms of worship from the Egyptian cult, but strange to say, not a religious idea, not one of the idols; nothing of the Egyptian religious development is found in the teachings of the Pentateuch, or in the laws bearing the name of Moses. But the people are prone to idolatry, and when Moses is absent for a little, they make a golden calf-an Egyptian godand worship it, and are punished when Moses returns. Again, as they come to the land of Canaan, they find their relatives, Moab and Ammon, already worshipping the Chaldean Baal of 246 Decay and Punishment. [LECT. filth. Forthwith the people are caught in the same snare, and again are punished by the death of thousands. They enter the land of Canaan about 1400 B.C.; for about 400 years they are ruled by Judges. Between the worshippers of Baal on east and west, and with the remnants left within, they are constantly falling into the same idolatry and immorality, and are as often punished by some neighbouring nation oppressing them. They repent and turn from their idolatry, and again have prosperity. About 1000 B.C. they choose a king who unites their strength; and the third, Solomon, raises the nation to its height of glory and strength. But even he imports into Jerusalem, with heathen wives, also the vile worship of Ashtaroth (Istar), the unchaste god of Chaldea, as well as the gods of Egypt. In a little while a part of the nation becomes so utterly rotten with the sinful worship of Baal, that ten tribes out of the twelve are swept away, and vanish forever from history. The other part, with Jerusalem for its centre, was only a very little better, and was constantly warned by prophets of coming danger. Eventually, in about 600 B.C., they too are overthrown by the king of the Chaldeans, the home of the gods they had turned to worship. The princes were slain, the best of the people were carried captive to Assyria, and a remnant fled to Egypt. Palestine was desolate. The temple of magnificent fame was burnt and Jerusalem in heaps of ruins. For fifty years they have their fill of the sights of a land given to idolatry and lust. Then the Zoroastrian, Cyrus, comes from the East, overthrows Assyria, and Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, is slain. The gods of the Chaldeans fall before the monotheist Aryan conquerors; and the Medo-Persian rulers find in the Jews a people worshipping God essentially as they themselves did. They befriend the captive Jews, who, by the rivers of Babylon, wept for the home and the worship of their fathers. At last, after seventy years of captivity, Cyrus allows them to return, and fits out V.] Biblical Theology Supernatural. 247 an expedition of those willing to go. And now the Jews come back to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple, cured forever of idolatry, and looking with clearer hopes for a coming great Deliverer. All this time the Bible was being formed by Chronicles of Kings, by an Epic of Job from elsewhere, by songs from David and others, by proverbs from Solomon, by terrible denunciations of prophets, by men foretelling things to come. But amid it all, during the 1,000 years of growth of the Bible, with no human control over its development, we find, amid all the vagaries of the people, a constant, true development of the first idea of a holy God, helping a repentant people, denouncing and punishing sin, providing an atonement for guilt, preparing a way of salvation for all the world. This is all clearly developed in the Bible, without a single stain of idolatrous thought, without a trace of the usual human development in the religious teachings of all other lands. But the people themselves were unconscious of the development going on, blind to the real end in view. They were looking ever for a Saviour to bring them salvation, but they thought of a political salvation; and when the Peerless Man appeared among them, born among Shemites, but with no Shemite narrow coarseness about him; when he showed himself a true "son of man," a Saviour for the race, and not for the Jews only, Shemite blood once more showed itself, and as they had killed the prophets who taught them to worship God in olden times, so now they reject and crucify the Christ. In a short time they are scattered to the four winds, become extinct as a nation, but linger on to-day in scattered remnants in every land, a bye-word among all people, a living unanswerable argument for the truth of the Bible story. Is it not clear that the Jews in themselves were no better than other Shemites, with a constant tendency to idolatry; that this doctrinal development down to Christ was no natural one, |