it privately to a select few." (Amer. Ency., vol. vi. p. 463.) The Jews took up this great truth where the Egyptians dropped it, and over the heads and over the ruins of Egypt, Chaldea, Phœnicia, Greece, Rome, and India this handful of poor shepherds,—ignorant, debased, and despised,—have carried down to our times a conception which could only have originated in the highest possible state of human society.
And even scepticism must pause before the miracle of the continued existence of this strange people, wading through the ages, bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust, and pressing forward under the force of a perpetual and irresistible impulse. The speech that may be heard to-day in the synagogues of Chicago and Melbourne, resounded two thousand years ago in the streets of Rome; and at a still earlier period, it could be heard in the palaces of Babylon and the shops of Thebes—in Tyre, in Sidon, in Gades, in Palmyra, in Nineveh. How many nations have perished, how many languages have ceased to exist, how many splendid civilizations have crumbled into ruin, how many temples and towers and towns have gone down into dust since the sublime frenzy of monotheism first seized this extraordinary people? All their kindred nomadic tribes have gone; their land of promise is in the hands of strangers; but Judaism, with its offspring, Christianity, is taking possession of the habitable world; and the continuous life of one people—one poor, obscure, and wretched people—spans the tremendous gulf between "Ptah-hotep" and this nineteenth century.
If the Spirit of which the universe is but an expression—of whose frame the stars are the infinite molecules—
