Along a quite different line of thought, which may possibly have been stimulated from the Greek side, the humanists of later Israel endeavoured to bring nature and social life under one common conception of divine Wisdom. The earlier prophecy had regarded the physical world as plastic in Yahweh's hands, so that its events--such as drought or flood, the locust and the blight, could be made the immediate instruments of Israel's discipline. A wider culture brought new ideas. There were statutes and ordinances for the cosmic powers just as there were for communities of man. The universe was the product of the divine thought, and the same agency was seen in the structure and {224} organisation of human societies. The order of the visible scene was due to the presence and control of Wisdom, which from the first had sat as a kind of assessor by Yahweh's side. The moral order was no less her work; she gave the sanction to all authority and rule; "By me kings reign," cries the poet in her name, "and princes decree justice"; and the men of humble heart know that their piety, "the fear of the Lord," is her gift, and links them in joyous fellowship with the stars on high. That Mosaism started with a vigorous moral conception of the divine demands, however limited might be its early scope, is generally recognised. The gradual settlement of the immigrant tribes in the land of Canaan, the appropriation of Canaanite sanctuaries, and the adoption of their festivals and ritual, brought new influences which threatened the ancient simplicity. The voices of Hebrew prophecy rang out at Jerusalem ere Greek thought had begun to move. It was a singular result in Israel's history that the great truths of the unity and spirituality and holiness of God, which prophecy had won out of impassioned experience, were confided for their preservation to a code of Priestly Law which raised the elements of ritual and sacerdotal caste to their highest significance in the nation's life. But the law which declared sacrifice to be legitimate only on one altar, made room for a new development of Israel's religion. If {225} the ancient faith was to be maintained by a race that spread from Babylon to Rome, it must adapt its worship to new conditions. There could be but one temple; but a meeting-house could be built anywhere; and the Synagogue thus became the birthplace of the congregations of the Christian Church. {226} CHAPTER VIII PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DESTINY "If a man die, shall he live again?" The question is as old as the Book of Job, but the affirmative answer is much older. The earliest human remains in Europe imply some provision for the dead, and it did not occur to the peoples of the lower culture all over the world to doubt the reality of some kind of continued existence. Did not the living still see them in their dreams (p. 86)?