Sermons on Faith and Doctrine Author:Benjamin Jowett 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: IV THE HEBREW CONCEPTION OF GOD1. HEAR, O ISRAEL : THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD. Deut. vi. 4. FOLLOWING the plan which was indicated in a former serm... more »on, I shall proceed now to consider the revelation of the divine nature which is made to us in the Old Testament. This we may hereafter compare briefly— first, with Greek and Roman ideas of religion; secondly, with that wider and more universal conception of God which is given us in history, in science, in our own experience, and in the Gospel of Christ. I am sensible of the difficulty of doing justice to a great subject in the short compass of a sermon. Such a treatment must necessarily appear superficial, inadequate, fragmentary. I would wish you to consider what I am going to say as hints and suggestions only, which you may carry back with you to the study of the Old Testament and make the beginning of thoughts and studies of your own. 1 Preached at Balliol, April 23, 1876. The Israelites themselves seem to have been conscious that the revelation of the divine nature had been gradually imparted to them. There may, perhaps, have been a time in their early history when their conception of God did not differ much from those of the surrounding nations, when they may have even given ' the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul.' But such a practice, which seems to be authoritatively repudiated in the narrative of Abraham and Isaac, certainly had not survived in the times when the Jews had become a nation. The truth probably is that, as other nations, for example the Egyptians, had much more of spiritual religion than we used to suppose in the days when their ancient records were unknown to us, so the Jews, if we examine the Old Testament critically, had much more of superstition and idolatry than it was once ...« less