LII. Such a provision consists in God having chosen a small portion of mankind to be a medium for, and co-operator in, the grand work, and having entrusted to it the special important mission of perpetually preserving within its pale, the principal dogmas of revealed religion; of keeping always alive on earth the remembrance of that relation which was established from the beginning of creation between the Creator and the human family; and, in short, of contributing with all its might to the practical realization of the Divine idea. The chosen few had consequently to propose to themselves, as the goal of their career, the defence of the sacred deposit entrusted to them from all attacks that might be directed by malice, ignorance or superstition; they had to promote the propagation of the notions of monotheism; of the divine origin of man, and of the duties incumbent upon him to practice justice, charity, rectitude, and piety; they had to protest incessantly against polytheism, and against all and every idolatrous and superstitious creed, as adverse and injurious to the development of the principles of revealed religion; they had to confirm these theories by making themselves the exemplars of a religious life, and by bearing witness to them, when necessary, by their own martyrdom; they had thus to become the effectual instruments to the gradual diffusion throughout the world of those elements of truth, of virtue and happiness, calculated to bring forth the ultimate and universal perfection of mankind. LIII. In order that the individuals charged with such a grand mission should be competent effectually to fulfil it, it was necessary that they should themselves have been always free from the pernicious influence of the errors and corruption, which had already spread almost throughout the world; it was necessary that their minds should have remained unpolluted by the notions of the extravagant and degrading idolatries, which were in practice among almost all the ancient nations; and that their hearts should have remained untouched by the contagion of universal depravity. The soil to which any seed, however good, is to be committed, would never respond to the expectations of the husbandman, if it were not cleared from weeds and thistles. Those individuals had, therefore, to be drawn aside from the general society of men; and from their infancy educated and prepared, so as to receive within their virgin souls the seeds that were afterwards to produce in them, and through them, the spiritual regeneration of all mankind. But here another difficulty presented itself; who would have undertaken the charge of watching over those individuals from their infancy, and keeping them in such an isolation, as to make them inaccessible to the general depravity? It was, then, necessary to begin by a single individual, whose descendants should receive from that stock the education capable of fitting them for their future mission.