And if this be so, then the utterances, the insights, the new visions with which the spiritual nature is pregnant, cannot be supposed to be restricted to members of the Jewish people. If the teaching function is to be maintained it must be exercised by all who have the gift. If there is to be an elect body (a dangerous conception, the meaning of which is to be carefully defined), it must consist of gentiles and Jews, of men of every race and condition in whom the spiritual nature is more awakened than in others, peculiarly vivid, pressing towards utterance. 2. Aside from the spiritual interpretation of morality, the mission of the Jewish people has been said to consist in holding aloft the standard of pure monotheism as against trinitarianism. But pure monotheism is a philosophy rather than a religion. Taken by itself it is too pure, too empty of content to serve the purposes of a living faith. The attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, etc., ascribed to Deity are highly abstract, too abstruse to be even thinkable, save indirectly, and they certainly fail to touch the heart. As a matter of fact it was the image of the Father projected upon the background of these abstractions, that made the object of Jewish piety. Jahweh is the heavenly spouse; Israel is to be his faithful earthly spouse. The Children of Israel are pre-eminently his children. Other nations likewise are his children,—some children of wrath to be cast out and destroyed like the rebellious son in Deuteronomy, others to be eventually gathered into the patriarchal household. But this view comes back to the same general conception of the relations of Israel to other nations which has just been discussed. Moreover, the Father image, as representing the divine life in the world, even when extended so as to include all mankind on equal terms, is open to a serious objection.[9]