the divine hand; not a relapse, but a progress, not an apostasy but an
evolution. Israel takes its place in the general order of humanity's
movement. With it religion sweeps at once into the pathway of progress
which science has shown to be the order of nature; and the historic
revelation is seen to be, like the revelation in nature, a gradual,
progressive manifestation of Him "whose goings forth are as the
morning"--its orbit the sweep of the ascending sun.

With such mighty secrets does this little book grow luminous when placed
in the light of its real belongings.

The Book of Ezekiel, whose historic position was never disputed, becomes
of new value in the light of a fuller knowledge of its period. It presents
to the science of Biblical criticism the missing link in its theory of
Israel's development. It shows the process of transformation, out of which
issued during the exile the elaborate, hierarchical system known to us as
Mosaism. The new criticism seems to me to have reasonably established the
theorem, that the priestly cultus embodied in the legislation of the
Pentateuch was first systematized into the form it there presents during
the exile, and was first set up as the national system on the return to
Judea. It is not claimed that it was a new manufacture of that period. As
such it would be inconceivable.[35] It is simply claimed that it was a
thorough codification, for the first time, of the scattered and
conflicting codes of conduct and systems of worship of the various local
priesthoods of Israel, as handed down by tradition and in records from
ancient times; a codification animated by the centralizing and
hierarchical tendencies working in the nation; which tendencies were
themselves the result largely of the prophetic spirit, and its
aspirations for a nobler religion.[36] It is not difficult to account for
this remarkable priestly movement.

The institutional organization of religion that began under Josiah had
continued, with various fortunes, the aim of the higher spirits of the
nation down to the exile. The movement of life was in the direction of
uniformity and order. There was much in the circumstances of the exile to
stimulate this movement. The priests were left without their temple
worship, and, in the absence of outward interests, must have turned their
thought in upon their system itself, studying it as they had not done in
the midst of its actual operation. Like all wrongly lost possessions,