The message and the messengers Author:Fleming James Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. KABBINICAL PKEACHING. The rabbinical development follows the prophetic ; there could hardly be a greater contrast. Prophetic preaching was a bo... more »ld, free, original application of the great spiritual principles of righteousness; the rabbinical was a fearful, slavish, traditional interpretation of canonical Scriptures. The method of the prophet was exhortation, the method of the scribe was interpretation. The one had spiritual vision, the other had superstitious scrupulosity. The change came about gradually, and was due to a great change in the situation of God's people. When, the Jews of Babylon came back from exile they had but one possession left—their religion. No king, no freedom, no empire, no prestige of glory—only religion. Everything else was like the Jerusalem to which they returned, a heap of ruins. Their hope, their glory, their existence as a nation, was bound up in this one survival of the past. They valued it now as they had never valued it in the days oftheir prosperity. They could not be great with men ; with God they could be great—by their religion. Hence they clung to it with a zeal which combined in itself all the aspirations and yearnings of the national heart. This religion had two parts, worship and law ; and law itself was the handmaid of worship, deriving its principal value in their eyes from its service to the latter. Hence the first attempt of the settlers from Babylon was to rebuild the Temple. No Temple, no worship. It was a hard undertaking; but prophet, priest, and prince joined hands in pushing on the work. Old men who had seen the former Temple could not but weep at the comparison ; but the prophet made haste to promise : " The glory of the latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of Hosts." Temple buil...« less