their own interpretations of these celestial programmes, or in the attack upon those of others. The responsibility for this estimate of the character of the work of these seers rests in large part upon the artificial and mechanical form in which they have expressed themselves.

Valuable

4. Yet they contributed valuable and permanent The More impulses and thoughts to the Hebrew ideal of the Contribufuture. They kept alive in a degenerate age the tions. hope in God and the courage of faith which inspired God's people to persevere and struggle. That they met the need of the time, that they roused responses in pious hearts and cheered the downcast and despairing, the popularity of their writings proves. They did this by calling the faithful to look forward to the divine deliverance, the promise of heavenly reward, and the coming of the Messiah. They were the prophets of the time.

ness.

Their teachings are permeated with the ideals of Righteousrighteousness. The future belongs to the upright; without righteousness one cannot inherit the heavenly blessedness. The ungodly and sinners are to be destroyed. The Messiah is the "Righteous One," his judgment is according to truth, and the renewed earth is cleansed "from all oppression, and from all unrighteousness, and from all sin, and from all godlessness, and from all uncleanness (Enoch x. 20). It is true that this ethical attitude is tinged with the artificiality common to all this

Spiritual
Ideals.

literature, and that everywhere the "righteous are synonymous with the writer's sect or sympathizers, yet mechanical ethics are characteristic of the age, and it was precisely in the ranks of those to whom these writings appealed that existed the seeds of the moral renewal of the future.

In the individualizing and spiritualizing process through which these writers put the Hebrew messianic ideals lies their chief service. In an age when the world beheld the ideals of Roman life in the great men who fought with one another in the forum and on eastern battle fields, in a Sulla, a Pompey, and a Cæsar, they pictured their hero, the Righteous One, the Son of Man. They lifted him and all that he represented into a higher world. They saw an eternity of personal immortality for the upright, an eternal kingdom of peace and righteousness for the devout and faithful, and a Messiah its eternal king, seated as righteous judge upon the divine throne. In this ideal they builded, as had all the prophets before them, better than they knew. They did not see all that the future kingdom was to be, nor discern all the traits in the coming Messiah. The Sufferer, the Sin-bearer of the earlier years of the post-exilic period, was hidden from them. The supernatural, the spiritual which they looked for, was beyond the grave in a heavenly world. But the way was prepared for that finer conception of a spiritual kingdom, here and now, in the hearts

of God's people, and for the recognition of him who royally conquered death and the grave, and who was and is and ever shall be the true spiritual King of humanity because he is the true "Son of Man."

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. THE APOCRYPHA: (a) meaning and history of the term and application to particular collection; (b) grouping of books; (c) light thrown by them on literary activity and currents of thought; (d) the messianic element in them. Art. "Apocrypha in Hastings' Bible Dict.; Toy, Judaism and Christianity, Ch. I; Edersheim, Proph. and Hist., pp. 301-315; Schürer, Hist. of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, II, Div. II, p. 138 f. 2. APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE: (a) meaning of term "apocalyptic"; (b) illustrations of it in the Old Testament, Apocrypha, and New Testament; (c) other Jewish apocalypses; (d) its characteristics — literary, historical, and religious as compared with Prophecy; (e) its value as a medium for messianic ideas. Art. "Apocalyptic Literature" in Hastings' and Cheyne's Bible Dicts.; Schultz, O. T. Theol., I, p. 421 f.; Toy, Judaism and Christianity, Ch. I; J. E. H. Thomson, Books which influenced our Lord and His Apostles; Deane, Pseudepigrapha; Drummond, The Jewish Messiah; Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah, Pt. I, Chs. II, III; Edersheim, Proph. and Hist., Lect. X, XI; Schürer, Hist. of the Jewish People, etc., III, Div. II, p. 44 ff.; Porter, "Prophecy and Apocalypse," Bib. World, July, 1899.

3. THE BOOK OF ENOCH: (a) its origin, date, and analysis; (b) its form, content, and purpose; (c) messianic elements in the book; (d) the book in the New Testament. Art. "Enoch," in Hastings' Bible Dict.; literature cited in the above, e.g. Charles, Book of Enoch, pp. 9–21. The latest and most thoroughgoing treatment of Hebrew and Jewish conceptions of the Future Life is given in the Jowett Lectures, just issued, of Rev. R. H. Charles, D.D., entitled A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, in Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity. The book appeared too late to be referred to in detail on the topics treated in this volume.

CHAPTER X

THE MESSIANIC IDEAL AS A WHOLE

Ar the conclusion of these chapters some more general points may be considered which concern no one period and its ideas, but need for their background the entire body of ancient Hebrew messianic teachings.

recalled.

I. The task which was set forth at the beginning may be recalled. It was the study of the messianic ideals in Israel's literature from a particular point of view, the selection of one out of several methods of studying the subject. The The Method method selected was the historical one, that is, the study of these teachings as they were connected with, and sprang out of, historical events in which the seers took part or in view of which they spoke. This choice necessarily involved limitation of the field. If disappointment is felt that some considerations which were legitimate and germane to the study of messianic prophecy have not appeared, and that emphasis has been laid too strongly upon certain other aspects of the subject, it is not unexpected in view of the definite lines which our study has laid down for itself. From