THE REASONABLENESS OF TRUE
RELIGION
Mic 6:1-8
WE have now reached a passage from which all
obscurities of date and authorship disappear before the transparence
and splendor of its contents. "These few verses," says a great
critic, "in which Micah sets forth the true essence of religion, may
raise a well-founded title to be counted as the most important in
the prophetic literature. Like almost no others, they afford us an
insight into the innermost nature of the religion of Israel, as
delivered by the prophets."
Usually it is only the last of the verses upon which the admiration
of the reader is bestowed: "What doth the Lord require of thee, O
man, but to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with thy God?"
But in truth the rest of the passage differeth not in glory; the
wonder of it lies no more in its peroration than in its argument as
a whole.
The passage is cast in the same form as the opening chapter of the
book-that of the Argument or Debate between the God of Israel and
His people, upon the great theatre of Nature. The heart must be dull
that does not leap to the Presences before which the trial is
enacted.
The prophet speaks:-
"Hear ye now that which Jehovah is saying; Arise, contend before the
mountains, And let the hills hear thy voice! Hear, O mountains, the
Lord’s Argument, And ye, the everlasting foundations of earth!"
This is not mere scenery. In all the moral questions between God and
man, the prophets feel that Nature is involved. Either she is called
as a witness to the long history of their relations to each other,
or as sharing God’s feeling off the intolerableness of the evil
which men have heaped upon her, or by her droughts and floods and
earthquakes as the executioner of their doom. It is in the first of
these capacities that the prophet in this passage appeals to the
mountains and eternal foundations of earth. They are called, not
because they are the biggest of existences, but because they are the
most full of memories and associations with both parties to the
Trial.
The main idea of the passage, however, is the trial itself. We have
seen more than once that the forms of religion which the prophets
had to combat were those which expressed it mechanically in the form
of ritual and sacrifice, and those which expressed it in mere
enthusiasm and ecstasy. Between such extremes the prophets insisted
that religion was knowledge and that it was conduct rational
intercourse and loving duty between God and man. This is what they
figure in their favorite scene of a Debate which is now before us.
"Jehovah hath a Quarrel with His People, And with Israel He cometh
to argue."
To us, accustomed to communion with the Godhead, as with a Father,
this may seem formal and legal. But if we so regard it we do it an
injustice. The form sprang by revolt against mechanical and
sensational ideas of religion. It emphasized religion as rational
and moral, and at once preserved the reasonableness of God and the
freedom of man. God spoke with the people whom He had educated: He
plead with them, listened to their statements and questions, and
produced His own evidences and reasons. Religion-such a passage as
this asserts-religion is not a thing of authority nor of ceremonial
nor of mere feeling, but of argument, reasonable presentation and
debate. Reason is not put out of court: man’s freedom is respected;
and he is not taken by surprise through his fears or his feelings.
This sublime and generous conception of religion, which we owe first
of all to the prophets in their contest with superstitious and
slothful theories off religion that unhappily survive among us, was
carried to its climax in the Old Testament by another class of
writers. We find it elaborated with great power and beauty in the
Books of Wisdom. In these the Divine Reason has emerged from the
legal forms now before us, and has become the Associate and Friend
off Man. The Prologue to the Book of Proverbs tells how Wisdom,
fellow of God from the foundation of the world, descends to dwell
among men. She comes forth into their streets and markets, she
argues and pleads there with an urgency which is equal to the
urgency of temptation itself. But it ‘is not all the earthly
ministry of the Son of God, His arguments with the doctors, His
parables to the common people, His gentle and prolonged education of
His disciples, that we see the reasonableness of religion in all its
strength and beauty.
In that free court of reason in which the prophets saw God and man
plead together, the subjects were such as became them both. For God
unfolds no mysteries, and pleads no power, but the debate proceeds
upon the facts and evidences of life: the appearance of character in
history; whether the past be not full of the efforts of love;
whether God had not, as human willfulness permitted Him, achieved
the liberation and progress of His people.
God speaks:-
"My people, what have I done unto thee? And how have I wearied
thee-answer Me! For I brought thee up from the land of Misraim, And
from the house of slavery I redeemed thee. I sent before thee Moses,
Aharon and Miriam. My people, remember now what Balak king of Moab
counseled, And how he was answered by Bala’am, Beors son-So that
thou mayest know the righteous deeds of Jehovah."
Always do the prophets go back to Egypt or the wilderness. There God
made the people, there He redeemed them. In law book as in prophecy,
it is the fact of redemption which forms the main ground of His
appeal. Redeemed by Him, the people are not their own, but His.
Treated with that wonderful love and patience, like patience and
love they are called to bestow upon the weak and miserable beneath
them. One of the greatest interpreters of the prophets to our own
age, Frederick Denison Maurice, has said upon this passage:
"We do not know God till we recognize Him as a Deliverer; we do not
understand our own work in the world till we believe we are sent
into it to carry out His designs for the deliverance of ourselves
and the race. The bondage I groan under is a bondage of the will.
God is emphatically the Redeemer of the Will. It is in Chat
character He reveals Himself to us. We could not think of God at all
as the God, the living God, if we did not regard Him as such a
Redeemer. But if of my will, then of all wills: sooner or later I am
convinced He Will be manifested as the Restorer, Regenerator-not of
something else, but of this roof the fallen spirit that is within
us."
In most of the controversies which the prophets open between God and
man, the subject on the side of the latter is his sin. But that is
not so here. In the controversy which opens the Book of Micah the
argument falls upon the transgressions of the people, but here upon
their sincere though mistaken methods of approaching God. There God
deals with dull consciences, but here with darkened and imploring
hearts. In that case we had rebels forsaking the true God for idols,
but here are earnest seekers after God, who have lost their way and
are weary. Accordingly, as indignation prevailed there, here
prevails pity; and though formally this be a controversy under the
same legal form as before, the passage breathes tenderness and
gentleness from first to last. By this as well as by the
recollections of the ancient history of Israel we are reminded of
the style of Hosea. But there is no expostulation, as in his book,
with the people’s continued devotion to ritual. All that is past,
and a new temper prevails. Israel have at last come to feel the
vanity of the exaggerated zeal with which Amos pictures them
exceeding the legal requirements of sacrifice; and with a despair,
sufficiently evident in the superlatives which they use, they
confess the futility and weariness of the whole system, even in the
most lavish and impossible forms of sacrifice. What then remains for
them to do? The prophet answers with the beautiful words that
express an ideal of religion to which no subsequent century has ever
been able to add either grandeur or tenderness.
The people speak:-
"Wherewithal shall I come before Jehovah, Shall I bow myself to God
the Most High? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, With
calves of one year? Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams,
With myriads of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for a
guilt-offering The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
The prophet answers:-
"He hath shown thee, O man, what is good; And what is the Lord
seeking from thee, But to do justice and love mercy, And humbly to
walk with thy God?"
This is the greatest saying of the Old Testament; and there is only
one other in the New which excels it:-
"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest."
"Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in
heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls."
"For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."
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