more profound
than was spoken in the covenant of their fathers, with their narrow
family interests and rivalries and their family traditions expanded into
national hopes, national aspirations, a national religion.

Perhaps there is another reason why Scripture has reminded us of the
vigorous and healthy stock whence came the race that multiplied
exceedingly. For no book attaches more weight to the truth, so miserably
perverted that it is discredited by multitudes, but amply vindicated by
modern science, that good breeding, in the strictest sense of the word,
is a powerful factor in the lives of men and nations. To be well born
does not of necessity require aristocratic parentage, nor does such
parentage involve it: but it implies a virtuous, temperate and pious
stock. In extreme cases the doctrine of race is palpable; for who can
doubt that the sins of dissolute parents are visited upon their puny and
short-lived children, and that the posterity of the just inherit not
only honour and a welcome in the world, "an open door," but also
immunity from many a physical blemish and many a perilous craving? If
the Hebrew race, after eighteen centuries of calamity, retains an
unrivalled vigour and tenacity, be it remembered how its iron sinew has
been twisted, from what a sire it sprang, through what ages of more than
"natural selection" the dross was throughly purged out, and (as Isaiah
loves to reiterate) a chosen remnant left. Already, in Egypt, in the
vigorous multiplication of the race, was visible the germ of that
amazing vitality which makes it, even in its overthrow, so powerful an
element in the best modern thought and action.

It is a well-known saying of Goethe that the quality for which God chose
Israel was probably toughness. Perhaps the saying would better be
inverted: it was among the most remarkable endowments, unto which Israel
was called, and called by virtue of qualities in which Goethe himself
was remarkably deficient.

Now, this principle is in full operation still, and ought to be solemnly
pondered by the young. Self-indulgence, the sowing of wild oats, the
seeing of life while one is young, the taking one's fling before one
settles down, the having one's day (like "every dog," for it is to be
observed that no person says, "every Christian"), these things seem
natural enough. And their unsuspected issues in the next generation,
dire and subtle and far-reaching, these also are more natural still,
being th