would neither endure idolatrous Gentiles nor suffer idolaters in Israel. Moses is enraged by the sight of the people dancing before the golden calf; and Isaiah's scorn hisses over those daughters of Israel who have turned from Jehovah's ways of decorum: "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks, and wanton eyes, mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet; therefore Jehovah will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and Jehovah will lay bare their secret parts."
Did a like scorn and anger find harbourage in Him who likened the Pharisees to whitened sepulchres, and with a scourge of small cords drove the money-changers from His Father's house? At all events a kindred hate found an enduring home in the religion of Tertullian and Athanasius, and in the great Church that persecuted the Montanists at Augustine's entreaty, and thereafter poured its fury upon Jew and Saracen and heretic for a thousand years.
Jehovah was also a great heart of love, loving His people along the ways of every sweet relationship understood by man. "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt called my son hither." "Can a woman forget her sucking child, so as not to yearn upon the son of her womb? Yea, these may forget, yet will I not forget thee." Again, Jehovah is the husband, and Israel the sinning wife whom He will not put away.[1] Israel's responding love answers: "My soul waits on God—My heart and flesh cry aloud to the living God—Like as the hart panteth for the water-brooks"! Such passages throb obedience to Deuteronomy's great command, which Jesus said was the sum of the Law and the Prophets. No need to say that the Christian's love of God had its emotional antecedent in Psalmist and Prophet. Jehovah's purifying wrath of love also passed over to the Christian words, "As many as I love, I reprove and chasten." And "the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom," found its climax in the Christian terror of the Judgment Day.
The Old Testament has its instances of human love: Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel. There is Jacob's
- ↑ Hosea i.–iii.
