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, it became doubly dear.  The Jews were placed in the midst of an ancient and highly organized priestly system in Babylonia, whose benefits to culture and religion they must have noted and pondered.  In the national humiliation and the personal sorrows of such a wholesale carrying away of a people from their native land, a wide-spread awakening of the inner life was experienced, a genuine revival of religion.  A new wave of prophetic enthusiasm rose in the strange land, lifting the soul of the nation to heights of spiritual and ethical religion never reached before.

This revival was stamped with the impress of the intellectual influences which were working upon the Jews in Babylonia.  Some of the extant writings of this period, alike in literary style, in moral tone and in religious thought, mark a new era.  Israel’s genius flowered in this dark night—­true to the mystic character of the race.  This highest effort of prophetic thought and feeling appears to have quickly