Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

Chapter II.
BIBLICAL SABBATHISM.
§8. The spiritual power of Hebraism.—There is
a tendency, even among biblical scholars, to overlook
the profound spiritual element in the Old Testament.
With reverent historical criticism we have
no quarrel; nor have we any with reverent spiritual
criticism, so far as it follows Christ, the supreme
spiritual critic. But for a certain type of scholarship,
that which can find only the primitive in the
Old Testament, we have only indignation. The
Old Testament rises above every other ancient book,
not excepting the Avesta and the Vedas, as the
Alps rise above the pyramids. We have quoted the
biologist Huxley several times, because he was a
fair-minded modern thinker, however agnostic in his
conclusions. "All that is best," says Huxley, "in
the ethics of the modern world, in so far as it has
not grown out of Greek thought or barbarian manhood,
is
the direct development of the ethics of old
Israel. There is no code of legislation, ancient or
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