An examination of this question must be conducted with a careful regard to the hereditary feelings of orthodox Hebrews in matters of religion; with an attention to the conceptions they had formed of holiness, and consequently of blasphemy, its negation; with a desire to do justice if possible to the very prejudices that clouded their vision, and to realize the intensity of the sentiment that ruled their national life and bound them to uphold their law in all its severe integrity. We must remember that the Jews were above all things monotheists. Ever since, after the captivity, they had put away every remnant of idolatry, they had clung to the unity and majesty of Jehovah with a stern tenacity which no alluring temptations, no extremity of suffering, had been able to break. If they were now ready to persecute for this faith, they had at least shown themselves able—they soon showed themselves able again—to bear persecution for its sake. Their law, with its monotheistic dogmas and its practical injunctions, was to them supremely holy. Any attempt to infringe its precepts, or to question its authority, excited their utmost horror. To set up any other object of worship than that which it recognized, to teach any other faith than that which rested on this foundation, was blasphemy in their eyes. The happiness, nay, the very existence, of the nation was bound up with its strict observance. This may have been a delusion, but it was one for which the existing generation was not responsible. It had been handed down from their ancestors, and had reached them with all the sanctity of venerable age. If it were a delusion, it was one which the compilers of the Pentateuch; which Josiah, with his reforming measures; which Ezra, with his purifying zeal; which the prophets and priests of olden times who had fought and labored for the religion of Jehovah, had mainly fostered. They had succeeded but too well in impressing upon the mind of the nation the profound conviction that, in order to ensure the favor of God, they must maintain every iota of the revealed truth they had received, and that his anger would surely follow if they suffered it to be in the smallest degree corrupted or treated with neglect.