and continual changes which happen among them, both of religions and of
morals, whereas they themselves remain firm in their conduct; but that
God will not leave other nations in this darkness for ever; that there
will come a Saviour for all; that they are in the world to announce Him
to men; that they are expressly formed to be forerunners and heralds of
this great event, and to summon all nations to join with them in the
expectation of this Saviour.

To meet with this people is astonishing to me, and seems to me worthy of
attention. I look at the law which they boast of having obtained from
God, and I find it admirable. It is the first law of all, and is of such
a kind that, even before the term _law_ was in currency among the
Greeks, it had, for nearly a thousand years earlier, been
uninterruptedly accepted and observed by the Jews. I likewise think it
strange that the first law of the world happens to be the most perfect;
so that the greatest legislators have borrowed their laws from it, as is
apparent from the law of the Twelve Tables at Athens,[221] afterwards
taken by the Romans, and as it would be easy to prove, if Josephus[222]
and others had not sufficiently dealt with this subject.

619

_Advantages of the Jewish people._--In this search the Jewish people at
once attracts my attention by the number of wonderful and singular facts
which appear about them.

I first see that they are a people wholly composed of brethren, and
whereas all others are formed by the assemblage of an infinity of
families, this, though so wonderfully fruitful, has all sprung from one
man alone, and, being thus all one flesh, and members one of another,
they constitute a powerful state of one family. This is unique.

This family, or people, is the most ancient within human knowledge, a
fact which seems to me to inspire a peculiar veneration for it,
especially in view of our present inquiry; since if God had from all
time revealed Himself to men, it is to these we must turn for knowledge
of the tradition.

This people is not eminent solely by their antiquity, but is also
singular by their duration, which has always continued from their origin
till now. For whereas the nations of Greece and of Italy, of Lacedaemon,
of Athens and of Rome, and others who came long after, have long since
perished, these ever remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many
powerful kings who have a hundred times tried to destroy them, as their
histor