ous
factor his past and present have been and are, in the development and
progress of our highest civilisation. Historically, we first meet him
coming forth from the Arabian desert, a rude unlettered herdsman, in
intelligence, cultivation, and morality far below the tribes among whom
he is thrown. A terrible weapon arms him--a theism stern, hard, and
pitiless, beyond, perhaps, all the world has ever seen. To the bravest
and best of his race--a Moses and a Joshua, a Deborah and a Jephtha--this
presents ruthless massacre, the vilest treachery, offering up a sacrifice
the dearest and most loved, not as mere permissible acts, but as deeds of
religious homage solemnly enjoined by his Most High. This theism has one
central thought in which it practically stands alone, and which it was
the aim of all its supposed heads and legislators to keep inviolate amid
all surrounding antagonisms--the intense assertion of the Divine unity.
"Hear, O Israel! the Lord thy God is _one_ Lord." In these brief words
lies the very core of Judaism. So long as he holds fast by this central
truth, the Jew is exhibited to us as practically omnipotent. Seas and
floods divide before him; hosts numberless as the sands are scattered at
his appearance; cyclopean walls fall prone at his trumpet-blast.

And this thought of the Divine unity, thus intensely pervading the
national life, upfolds within capacity of indefinite development. No
long time in the life of a nation elapses ere "The Lord thy God is a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children,"
became "As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that
fear Him." "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not
have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, she _may_ forget; yet will
not _I_ forget thee."

In no sense of the word was the Jew a creature of imagination. The stern
and hard realities of his life would seem to have crushed out every trace
of the aesthetic element within him. Yet from among these people arose a
literature, especially a hymnology, which has never been approached
elsewhere; and it arose emphatically and distinctly out of the great
central and animating thought of the Divine unity. To the Psalms
so-called of David, the glorious outbursts of sacred song in their
mythico-historical books, as in Isaiah {103} and some of the minor
prophets, the finest of the Vedic or Orphic hymns or the Homeric ballads
are cold and spiritle