ISRAEL 
npHE history of the Jews is the most characteristic, the most important, and the 
most sublime, in the world. For, to this people alone were given the primitive 
knowledge of the Almighty; the trust of preserving it unstained while the earth was 
bowed down in idolatry; and finally, the magnificent privilege of dispensing it, in the 
appointed time, through all the families of mankind. 
For the declared purpose, at once of enabling the nation to fulfil this high office, 
and of distinguishing the divine commission, the whole existence of the people affords 
the most total contrast to that of all other nations. It differs from them all in its 
origin, its religion, its civil construction, and its historical career. 
The origin of the chief nations of pagan antiquity is proverbially lost in fable, acts 
of impossible heroism, transformations of imaginary deities, and dynasties of imaginary 
kings. At the point to which history ascends, they were simply gatherings of rude 
wanderers, formed into tribes by force or famine, and seizing upon territory by emigration 
or the hand of the stronger. 
But, the Jews, like the first dwellers in the earth, were the descendants of one pair; 
their descent registered by the clearest and most authentic of all records; their ancestors 
leaving their original place of birth, neither urged by necessity nor tempted by the desire 
of possession; those ancestors wholly alien in their habits to war, and in their persons 
wholly excluded from earthly sovereignty; living and dying in the acknowledgment that 
they were “ strangers and pilgrims upon the earth,” though looking forward to mysterious 
promises mightier than the world could fulfil; and the people, when at last they came 
into possession, openly acknowledging that the triumph was gained not by tlieir own 
prowess, but by the hand of Heaven. 
In the pagan world, religion was a tissue of traditions, without authority and without 
effect; important to the priest as a matter of maintenance, and interesting to the people 
as a source of festivity or display; but secretly despised by the philosopher, practically 
disregarded by the government, and performing altogether an obscure and secondary 
part among the general impulses of society. 
But, in the Jewish system, Religion was the grand object of the national existence, 
the prime mover of the whole machine of state; its ministers holding the highest rank, its 
