Also, we should have heard how, as soon as the Israelites came into
the land of Canaan, they began forthwith to serve the Lord with all
their heart and soul, as they never did afterwards, and to keep
Moses' law, while it was yet fresh in their minds, more exactly than
ever they did afterwards; and in short, we should have had one of
those stories of a 'golden age,' a 'good old time,' a pattern-time
of early purity and devotion, of which nations and Churches, of all
tongues and all creeds, have been so ready to dream in their own
case; and which they have used, not altogether ill, to rebuke vice
in their own day, by saying, 'Look how perfect your forefathers
were. Look how you, their unworthy children, have fallen from their
faith and their virtue.'
This, I think, is what we should have been told if the Pentateuch
had been the invention of man. This is exactly what we are NOT
told; but, on the contrary, the very opposite.
What we are told is disappointing, sad, gloomy, full of dark fears
and warnings about what the Jews will be and what they will have to
endure. But it is far more true to human nature, and to the facts
which we see in the world about us, than any story of a good old
time would have been.
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