Woe unto them that join house to house,
That lay field to field
Till there be no place,
That they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

* * * * *

The Lord will enter into judgment
With the ancients of his people and the princes thereof: 
For ye have eaten up the vineyard;
The spoil of the poor is in your houses. 
What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces,
And grind the faces of the poor? 
Saith the Lord God of hosts.[48]

One word, constantly recurring through the prophets, reveals the secret of their enthusiasm.  They lifted above the people the august and holy form of Justice, and called on men to follow her.  They appealed to a force in men mightier than selfishness.  They kindled the passion which had been always latent in Israel, since the day when Moses led forth the slaves of Egypt to found a nation of freemen.  A new and lofty ideal mastered the minds of the better natures among the people.  Over against the darkness of their age there rose a vision of a good time coming, when Justice should be throned on law, and selfishness be exorcised from the hearts of men who had learned the secret

    Of joy in widest commonalty spread.

And this they did in the name of Jehovah.  From Him they came with these messages concerning social obligations.  The Eternal One who loved righteousness could be served in no other way than in furthering justice.  Religion became social reform, aflame with the enthusiasm of holy ideals; of ideals seen to be eternal realities, as the shadows cast by The Living God, moving on to accomplish the good pleasure of His will.

To conserve the new spirit of brotherhood which they awakened, they embodied in the book of the Law, that constituted the Magna Charta of the Reformation, a development of a gracious usage of the people.  From immemorial antiquity there had been a recognized right of the populace to the natural yield of the soil in every seventh year.  This common law they formally re-enacted, in the name of Jehovah, and added to it a provision for the release of debtors in the sabbatical year.[49]

We shall see in the nest period the fruitage of this new religion of social righteousness, in the remarkable legislation of the Restoration.

In these serious, strenuous secularities—­so often neglected by the religious, or even opposed as irreligious—­which now were consecrated to the service of Jehovah, religion found its true sphere, and developed its latent forces.  A new era opened.  The abominations of religion in former times became the exceptions rather than the rule, and gradually disappeared from society.  After Jeremiah we hear no more of impurities hiding under the altar, or of savage superstition seeking to please Jehovah by outraging the holiest instincts of human nature.  Jehovah became the name for a conception of Deity so spiritual, so holy, that henceforth the student of Israel’s history should substitute—­God.