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The Fundamentals that you find in the middle of the Books of the Pentateuch those laws and institutions about priests and Levites and sac rifices and all that-had really no existence, had no authori tative form, and to a large extent had not existence of any kind until after the Jews returned from Babylon, and then they were given out as a code of laws which the Jews ac cept,ed. That is the theory which is stated once and again. But let the reader put himself in the position of that returned community, and see what the thing means. These exiles had returned from Babylon. They had been organized into a new community. They had rebuilt their Temple, and then long years after that, when things had got into confusion, those two great men, Ezra and Nehemiah, came among them, llnd by and by Ezra produced and publicly proclaimed this law of Moses-what he called the law of Moses, the law oi God by the hand of Moses-which he had brought from Babylon. A full description of what happened is given in the eighth chapter of the Book of Nehemiah. Ezra reads that law from his pulpit of wood day after day to the people, and the in terpreter gives the sense. Now, mind you, most of the things in this law, in this book that he is reading to the people, had never been heard of before-never had existed, in fact ; priests and Levites such as are there described had never existed. The law itself was long and complicated and burdensome, but the marvelous thing is that the people meekly accept it all as true-meekly accept it as law, at any rate-and submit to it, and take upon themselves its burdens without a murmur of dissent, That is a very remarkable thing to start with. But re member, further, what that community was. It was not a community with oneness of mind, but it was a community keenly divided in itself. If you read the narrative you will find that there were strong opposing factions in that com munity ; there were parties strongly opposed to Ezra and
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