feet high, and
was broad enough to allow a chariot with four horses to turn easily upon
it. The streets were wide and straight, crossing each other at right
angles, and were lined with houses several stories in height, painted in
all the colors of the rainbow. Trees and gardens were so plentiful as to
give the whole city the appearance of a park. The grounds of the imperial
palace covered an area of seven miles round, in the centre of the city.
The largest temple the world has ever seen rose in pyramidal form six
hundred feet in air. The broad and shaded streets were resplendent with
the pomp and pageantry of the court of a mighty empire, and were alive
with the bustle of the traffic of the known world.

Libraries and museums garnered the treasures of art and literature, of
science and philosophy, accumulated through centuries. On every hand were
the tokens of a refined and cultivated civilization, venerable with age.
In the temples a rich ritual celebrated an elaborate worship, while
learned priests waited to explain the profound philosophic and poetic
truths of the sacred symbols.

Transported to such surroundings, Israel received the mental shock which
an American of a generation past experienced on first visiting Europe. The
influence of this surprise was very marked. Israel's genius flowered in
this strange soil. Her literary life centres in Babylonia. The second
Isaiah wrote there his immortal pages. The unknown authors of the noble
histories, whose charm never stales, fashioned there the traditions and
records of the past into their present shape. There the great legal
codification was carried out, and the institutional system of Israel
perfected. A new circle of ideas show themselves at work in the mind of
the people while in exile. From Chaldean scholars the Israelites probably
learned the ancient legends of the Beginnings, which they worked over in
their profounder religious consciousness into the simple and spiritual
forms in which they stand in Genesis. From Persia they either received
bodily the system of angelology that thenceforth appears in their
writings, or they received the quickening influence of a kindred religion
upon the thoughts latent in their beliefs.[50]

These intellectual influences wrought directly upon the development of
Israel's religion. In the revelation of the prosperous life of these alien
peoples the chosen race saw herself but one member of the great world
family. Persia's ethica