all, it would still have been Torah, because it was taught. In this sense, Israel had never been without Torah; and the prophet no less than the priest owned that in it God had continually taught His people. Prophecy itself was only a form of Torah, for the prophet spoke the word of the Lord. Now, whatever else Ezra introduced that was new, it was not Torah. If he had religious teaching to give, as of course he had, he only followed in the train of the prophets and priests from Moses downwards. And when he offered Torah to the people, they knew what he was referring to. Nor did the novelty consist in the fact that Ezra made known to them a larger body of Torah than they had previously been acquainted with. It does not greatly matter, for the present purpose, whether the book which Ezra read to the people was the Priestly Code, or the whole Pentateuch substantially, though not finally, complete. For even if the earlier documents had not been as yet welded into one whole with the Priestly Code, they were nevertheless in existence, and were already owned as Torah of Moses. What Ezra did was to lay a much greater emphasis upon the need of obedience to what was contained in the book of Torah (or the books) as being the duty of every Israelite. What was in fact the collected accretions of centuries, was regarded by Ezra, and by all Israel, as Torah from God communicated by Moses, and therefore entitled to precedence over any Torah imparted to anyone else. The book, or books, in which it was recorded contained all that God had chosen to reveal for the instruction of His people. The five books of Moses were the written form of the Torah. They were not the Torah itself. It is only for convenience that the Pentateuch is often called the Torah. The two are not identical. The Pentateuch differs from the Torah as the vessel differs from its contents, even though there be but one unique vessel in which those contents are preserved. Ezra, then, offered for the acceptance of Israel, in the book that he read to them, what he believed to be the full revelation which God had made. But he went beyond those who had preceded him, beyond even those who had carried through the reform of which the book of Deuteronomy is the manifesto, by reason of the stress which he laid upon personal and individual acceptance of it. Deuteronomy, no doubt, contained over and over again the demand, "Thou shalt observe to do" according to all these commandments, and it enforced the demand by the appalling catalogue of curses upon the disobedient which may be read in the 28th chapter. But Deuteronomy was written before the Exile, and Ezra lived after it. The priests had given Torah, and the prophets had proclaimed God's revelation of His nature and of man's relation to Him and consequent duty. They had been pre-eminently preachers of righteousness. But yet, in spite of the zeal of the prophets and the teaching of the priests, the bitter lesson of