INTRODUCTION
7
words, both the Legalism of Ezra, and the Rabbinism
of which Hillel was the first representative, are the
outward form of the Torah, the divine teaching given
to Moses ; and in every detail, every minutest pre-
cept which Rabbinical ingenuity developed, there is
assumed as the ground of all the primal religious
duty,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and soul and might."
Whether the form of definite precept and precise
rule is the best adapted to promote the living of a
righteous
life is not here the question. Right or
wrong, better or worse, it is the form which the
Rabbis chose for the expression of their conception
of the religious life. And the whole system of
Rabbinism is misjudged, unless it be carefully and
constantly borne in mind that it is all an expansion of
the idea of human service of God, under the form of
precept. What is usually called ' empty formalism,'
solemn trifling' and the like, deserves a nobler name ;
for it is-whether mistaken or not-an honest effort
to apply the principle of service of God to the smallest
details and acts of life. That, in practice, such a con-
ception of religious life might lead to hypocrisy and
formalism is undeniable, and the Talmud itself is
perfectly well aware of the fact. But that it
necessarily leads to hypocrisy, that it is impossible on
such lines to develop a true religious life, the whole
history of Judaism from the time of Hillel down-
wards is the emphatic denial. The great Rabbis
whose work is preserved in the Talmud were not
hypocrites or mere formalists, but men who fully
realised the religious meaning of what was expressed
in the form of legal precept and apparently trivial
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