should not be." It is true that the "New Woman" in Italy is relatively prudent and abstains from vapouring against the marriage bond. It is also true that there are among the leaders of the movement some able individuals. But new ideas inevitably attract to themselves the discontented, the eccentric, the anarchic, those seeking an outlet. One of the apostles of French femininism, M. Jules Bois, asserts that this violence and impatience is salutary-that there is no growth without change and shock. Nevertheless, if a new element would unite itself to these revolutionary forces, composed of women of high character, having a recognised position in the world and a large sphere of influence, Italian femininism would take a step in advance and would change its character.

Unfortunately for the cause of women, it is among women themselves that it meets with the least sympathy and the greatest hostility. The men laugh, scoff, are sceptical; but in general, as we have seen, they are not indisposed to do anything that comes in their way to ameliorate the lot of the other sex. The two humorists of journalism, Gandolin and Vamba, are actually convinced femininists. When an Italian woman writes a clever book or paints a good picture she will be praised, encouraged, and upheld by men, but rarely by women, who are, besides, absolutely careless of the good opinion of their own sex. Now, as long as women have not learned to consider other women they will never be able to do any satisfactory work in their cause. The Italian women are not yet advanced enough to start any strong organisation among themselves: before they can do so their minds must develop they must acquire that internal personal freedom which results from constant effort, intellectual and moral. Emerson speaks somewhere of those obscure men who meditate in the country, read no newspapers, and are the backbone of the land. "We must have women like that," writes M. Jules Bois, "but more thoughtful: that the restless and irreconcilable may draw, without realising how, perpetual renovation from these deep wells of energy."

The women of the Latin races will never resemble the indomitable Scandinavians or the patient and independent Anglo-Saxons; but they may become in the future, through education and reflection, those wells of energy from which spring the calm and measured resolution which alone is capable of improving the economic condition of woman, and raising her moral standard without troubling her social functions.

DORA MELEGARI.

PRIEST AND PROPHET.

N the Jewish Church priest and prophet represented two independent forces, working only occasionally together, usually in opposite directions.

The prophet represented and expressed the impulsive, monotheistic, progressive force in the nation, whereas the priest was the exponent of the formal conservative spirit that animated the great bulk of the people. The prophet was the mouthpiece of Jehovah to the Jews, the priest was the medium through whom the Jews approached and addressed God. The former roused to a recognition of the divine laws and to the need for repentance, the latter enunciated the laws and regulated the methods whereby offences might be expiated.

At times the prophets, as was natural, showed no relish for the systems of the priesthood, and did not spare it in their denunciations; on the other hand, the priests cannot have looked with favourable eyes on those who professed themselves to be inspired and who were under no control, no restraint.

In such a fundamental matter as holiness their views were divergent. In the mind of the prophet it consisted in spiritual elevation, love, and mercy. But the priest regarded it as an acquisition to be obtained by ritual purification.

We shall understand best the conflicting nature of their ideas and methods when we have briefly reviewed the history of the development of the sacerdotal system among the Jews.

It is difficult to discriminate in the record in the last four books of the Pentateuch what belongs to Moses and what to the revisers and expanders of these books.

Apparently, the law as given from Sinai was simple, and much of

the minute direction which is found in the later books was of slow subsequent accretion.

The Ark was under the tent during the wanderings, and probably the ritual of sacrifice was not nicely regulated.

But during the long period between the occupation of the Promised Land and the building of the Temple by Solomon, or rather by imported Phoenician architects and artificers, a good deal of elaboration of ceremonial must have taken place; and when that magnificent house of Jehovah was dedicated, then certainly there accompanied the introduction of the Ark into it an immense impulse to elaborate and enrich the service of the Most High.

If any ritual codes existed at that time they were not published, but were used in the Temple as manuals of direction to the priests; and if the laity were in any doubt as to ceremonial cleanness or impurity, they had recourse to the priests, from whose mouths they received the Thorah, oral direction.

In process of time these decisions on open questions and rules for imposition were collected and codified; and this went on for a long time-to that of Ezra, when the text was stereotyped.

To understand the growth of ritual legislation among the Jews, let us take an analogous case. The early Christian liturgies consist of prayers and collects, and of these only, without any ritual directions. These latter were not committed to writing, some were traditional from the Apostolic age, others were added as time went on. Usages differed in different Churches. Their sacramentaries were composedsimple books of direction to celebrants as to what they were to do; whereas the liturgies directed them what they were to say.

These sacramentaries consisted of the traditional customs, here and there improved and developed. They had no canonical authority. Every priest at first, for his own convenience, drew one up; then every bishop issued one for his diocese, to ensure uniformity. Lastly, the ritual directions were incorporated in the liturgies, but to this day are included in a different type, often in a different-coloured ink (red), indicating their independent origin.

Now, the Pentateuch was treated much in this manner. The original laws given by Moses were handed down in writing, and were gradually expanded and added to; but these additions were not made in a different character and with different-coloured ink, as in the case of the rubrics.

After a while this enlarged edition became inadequate, and it was supplemented by Hilkiah, and the whole was finally remodelled and given its definite form by Ezra.

As the situation of the people changed, as their minds expanded and their moral sense ripened, as they altered from being a nomad to an agricultural people in settled habitations, they necessarily required

fresh legislation. The Apostle speaks of the fathers drinking of a rock that followed them in their forty years' wandering. So may So may divine guidance and inspiration have attended the nation in all its movements, and prompted these supplementary laws as they required them. And there had been a very real and important movement going on among the Sons of Israel from the time of their occupation of Canaan. The Tabernacle at Shiloh and the Temple at Jerusalem were not the sole places where Jehovah was worshipped.

On every high hill and under every green tree altars were set up and priests ministered. The names of the gods of the "nations "Baal (the Lord) and Moloch (the King)-were applicable to Jehovah, and imperceptibly, here and there, symbols belonging to the Canaanites were introduced in these country oratories, and the rites performed there surely degenerated into mere idolatry.

We know that the Jews set up maccebas (standing stones), and asheras (posts of wood, rudely shaped), and even teraphim (images in clay and stone).

The country curates and hedge priests were under no control, there was no central disciplinary authority, consequently the condition of affairs in places became very bad. A large body of the people was mentally, morally and spiritually incapable of understanding and observing a lofty religion such as that given to them in the Desert, and the majority, during their wanderings and afterwards in Canaan, hankered after the forms of worship observed by the natives of the land and of the country round about.

In the friction between the purists and the superstitious a certain amount of compromise became advisable. The worship of Jehovah was surrounded with much that appealed to the imagination, and some symbols common to the pagan nations were adopted and purified. Thus the Ark of the Covenant was a symbol general in the land, but with the Canaanites it was stuffed with the charred bones of the children burned to Moloch, and the Phoenicians enclosed within theirs the conical stone of Baal.

But from the Ark of Jehovah everything that savoured of human sacrifice was removed, and instead of the rude cone the tables of Commandment were placed, the moral law or Thorah, which was to be the spring of strength and bond of union to the children of Israel.

Much in the same way have Christian missionaries acted. St. Patrick did not destroy the idol of Cenn Cruaich, but he made a hole in it with his staff, and let it remain to show how powerless was the idol against him. When he found that the people worshipped a well in which soaked the bones of an old Druid, he turned out the bones, and converted the well into a baptistery.

To counteract the downgrade movement two things were necessary: the bringing of the hedge priests and country curates under authority;

and secondly, the exercise of the prophetic voice in denunciation of this degradation of the worship of Jehovah, and the rousing of the religious sense of the people to accept monotheism pur et simple.

Hezekiah was the first king to make a vigorous attempt to destroy the base forms of the cult of Jehovah, but his reformatory efforts met with momentary success only; his son fell back into the vulgar religion, re-erected images and asheras in the Temple, and passed his child through the fire to Moloch.

The only real and comparatively effective reformation was achieved B.C. 621 by Josiah; and this was due to Hilkiah the scribe, who produced a code of laws-probably one of the compendiums already spoken of as in use among the priests—and presented it to the king. Josiah consulted Hulda the prophetess, and as she approved, he carried out the reform in accordance with the code, which is supposed by some to be the Book of Deuteronomy.

After the death of Josiah came another relapse, but it was of short duration, and then the people were carried away into Babylon-not indeed the entire nation, but the princes, scribes, and Levites. poor cultivators of the land were left behind.

The

The priests and scribes had carried away with them all their ritual and legal books, and during the Captivity occupied themselves with digesting them into a systematic shape. They also at the time probably committed to writing much that was traditional.

At length, in B.C. 538, an opportunity was afforded for a return, and Joshua and Zerubbabel led up a party, full of glad anticipations, to Jerusalem. It was not till eighty years after, B.C. 458, that Ezra went up out of Babylonia, "with the law of his God in his hand," to introduce it at Jerusalem, where it was not then observed. The returned exiles under the leadership of Ezra at once set to work to rebuild the Temple. He, "a ready scribe of the law of Moses," who had "prepared his heart to study and keep the law of Jehovah, and to teach in Israel statutes and right," was able to induce the Jews, the earlier colony, to put away their wives, taken from the nations around. Only a few resisted, but among these was a son of Joiada, grandson of the High Priest, who had married a daughter of Sanballat the Horonite. He was too much attached to his wife, or too impatient of Ezra's dictation, to submit, and he was expelled the country.

This was Ezra's first success, and he did not venture on another for thirteen years. But on the appointment of Nehemiah as governor B.C. 444, he found in him a man after his own heart to carry out uncompromisingly the reform he desired to effect; this was to make the observance of the letter of the law imperative, and the text, as revised and edited during the Captivity, the final and irrevocable appeal in all matters legal, moral, and religious.