rs for self-elevation under the
uplifting power of a holy God. The term which Scripture uses for moral
conduct is, very significantly, "to walk in the ways of God." The rabbis
explain this as follows: "As God is merciful and gracious, so be thou
merciful and gracious. As God is called righteous, so be thou righteous.
As God is holy, so do thou strive to be holy."(1530) Another of their
maxims is: "How can mortal man walk after God, who is an all-consuming
fire? What Scripture means is that man should emulate God. As He clothes
the naked, nurses the sick, comforts the sorrowing, and buries the dead,
so should man."(1531) In other words, human life must take its pattern
from the divine goodness and holiness.

5. Obviously, Jewish ethics had to go through the same long process of
development as the Jewish religion itself. A very high stage is
represented by that disinterested goodness taught by Antigonus of Soko in
the second pre-Christian century and by ben Azzai in the second century of
the present era, which no longer anticipates reward or punishment, but
does good for its own sake and shuns evil because it is evil.(1532) As
long as the law tolerated slavery, polygamy, and blood vengeance, and
man's personality was not recognized on principle as being made in the
image of God, the practical morality of the Hebrews could not rise above
that of other nations, except in so far as the shepherd's compassion for
the beast occasioned sympathy also for the fellow-man. After all, Jewish
ethics became the ethics of humanity because of the God-conception of the
prophets,--the righteous, merciful, and holy God, the God "who executeth
the judgment of the fatherless and the widow, and loveth the stranger in
giving him food and raiment."(1533) The conception of Jewish ethics as
human ethics is voiced in the familiar verse: "It hath been told thee, O
man, what is good and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do
justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God."(1534) The
all-ruling and all-seeing God of the Psalmist made men feel that only such
a one can stand in His holy place "who hath clean hands and a pure heart,
who hath not lifted up his soul unto falsehood, nor sworn
deceitfully."(1535) After law-giver, prophet, and psalmist came the wise,
who gave ethics a more practical and popular character in the wisdom
literature, and then came the _Hasidim_ or Essenes, who, while seeking the
highest piety or saintliness as li