This situation had its bad side as well as its good. While it helped to enforce the tribal laws by means of the awe of the divine witness who could not be escaped, it tended to merge valuable with trivial things. Society was quite irrational as yet, and was as likely to punish the violation of accidental taboos as really serious attacks upon society. It is a commonplace of history that religions have stressed ritual observances more than vital phases of conduct. The greater Hebrew prophets stand out just because of their emphasis upon human morality, upon justice and righteousness and love. Amos and Hosea are social reformers who conceive their national god as a god of righteousness who will turn his face away from the doers of evil. They threaten their compatriots with his wrath if they continue in their evil ways. "Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye say. Hate the evil and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate." Thus the setting of religion was used as the leverage for an attempted ethical reformation, the exalted reformer conceiving himself as the mouthpiece of his god. But the prophets were exceptions. The priestly class, the class that has always held closely to traditional ways of thinking, brought the usual multitude of non-moral acts under this impressive sanction.
The struggle between priest and prophet, { 172} traditionalist and ethical reformer, took place within the religious view of the world, but the conflict was, after all, a purely human process. The prophets loved righteousness because they knew that it was good, because they fell repelled by unmerited poverty and by careless wealth, because they admired the decencies of life. They could not have given the justification of their sentiments as well as a theorist of to-day, but they had these sentiments as keenly as to-day's prophet has them. When we read their wonderful discourses, we are thrilled by the depth and intensity of their ethical life. But we are too apt to forget that the social situation in Palestine was the stimulus to their denunciations. They were noble enough to feel that conditions were intolerable, and it was not a far step to believe that Yahweh would not tolerate them. A noble man has always a noble god. That is the reason why the god of Amos is noble. The theological view reverses the true causal relation. Morality is always human morality, expressive of human nature and human conditions. Man may assign his ideals to some superhuman source because he is convinced that this source has selected him as its interpreter; but the fact that he has thought and judged in this moral way is indubitable, while his theory that Yahweh is speaking through him is merely an expression of the religious view of the world common to the time. When we stop a moment to think, we realize that Amos and Hosea were certain to put their views under the sanction of their national god. Not to have done so would have been far stranger psychologically than the ideals which they championed.