ntre
which, dipped in the inherited solution of ideal and social
materials furnished by the Church, has gathered around it the
accretion of faith and dogma composing the theoretic Christianity
of the present day. To follow this process with reference to the
particular tenet before us, analyze it, discriminate the
appropriate in it from the inappropriate, the true from the false,
maybe difficult; but it is necessary for a satisfactory
conclusion. To this task let us therefore now address ourselves,
putting away all bias and prejudice, invoking in equal degree
candor, fearlessness and charity.

The Jews believed themselves to be a people chosen out of all the
world as the exclusive favorites of God. By the covenant of
Abraham, and the code of Moses, Jehovah had entered, as they
thought, into a special contract with them to be their peculiar
God, Guardian, and Ruler. In contrast with the depraved habits and
idolatrous rites of the heathen nations, the Israelites were
strictly to keep the moral law, and, at the same time, to pay a
pure worship to Jehovah through the scrupulous observance of their
ceremonial law. The bond of race and family descent from Abraham,
the practice of circumcision, and the ceremonies of the Mosaic
ritual, sealed them as accepted members of this divine covenant.
So long as they were true to the duties involved in this relation,
Jehovah would watch over them, defend them from their enemies, set
them proudly above the alien Gentiles, and crown them with every
spiritual and temporal blessing. The noblest representatives of
the people believed this with unparalleled thoroughness and
intensity. They looked down on the uncircumcised nations as wicked
idolaters, destined to be their servants until they should be
adopted into the same covenant by becoming proselytes to their
faith. Jehovah was literally their direct, though invisible, King,
Law giver, and Judge, palpably rewarding their fidelity by overt
temporal blessings, punishing their dereliction by awful temporal
calamities and sufferings.

Every signal instance of his providential intervention in their
affairs they called a Day of the Lord, a Coming of Jehovah, a
Judgment from heaven. Thus the prophet Joel foretells the
vengeance which God would take on Tyre and Sidon and Philistia,
because they had assailed and scattered his people. "Behold the
day of Jehovah cometh, the great and terrible day. And I will show
wonders in the heavens and in the