other books of the Law, we come into an atmosphere
less exalted, and with a multiplicity of ceremonial details. There is
endless regulation as to varieties of sacrifice, cleansing from technical
uncleanness, and the like. Interwoven with these, as if on an equal
footing, are special applications of morality--inculcations of chastity,
justice, and good neighborhood. The principles of the Ten
Words--themselves an inheritance from a very early day--are applied in
many particulars. Occasionally is a lofty sentiment, a clear advance.
Thus we find in Leviticus the "second commandment" of Jesus, "Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself."

The general increase in rigidity of ceremonial in these books is to be
read along with the stern decrees of Ezra as to separation from family
and friendly relations with non-Jewish neighbors. It was, in a word, a
Puritan reformation. There was just the same combination of heightened
moral conviction with urgency upon matters of form and detail, and
hostility to all outside of one special church, which belonged to the
Puritan. But the Jewish reformer, unlike the English, enlarged instead
of simplifying his ritual. It is this interblending of outward
observance with moral and spiritual quality which stumbles the modern
reader at every page. It was a confusion which needed the spiritual
genius of Jesus to dissolve, and the leadership of Paul to definitely
renounce.

By the side of the ceremonial element in the Law there ripened gradually
an expansion of its moral precepts. The sacred books were expounded by
the Scribes. The preacher in the synagogue came to touch the people's
heart often more closely and delicately than the priest with his bloody
sacrifices and his imposing liturgies. Spontaneity, inspiration,
prophetic power, was no longer present, but in the guise of comment and
interpretation there grew up a gentler, humaner morality. The moral
value of labor and industry came into recognition. There were teachers
like Hillel and Gamaliel in whom devout piety and homely practice went
hand in hand. In the ethics of Judaism--under all these various forms of
"the Law and the Prophets"--the distinctive note, compared with the
ethics of Greece and Rome, was chastity. The ideal Greece represented
wisdom and beauty; the ideal Rome was valor and self-control; the ideal
Israel was the subjugation of sense to spirit, the approach of man to God
by purity of life.

The twofold service