During this pre-Buddhistic era, much longer, perhaps, than is generally supposed, another process of development was going on among one section of the Semitic stock, in a small handbreadth of a land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. The several stages of that development have also been unconsciously recorded in a literature so peculiar in its motive, and method, and character, as to separate it from the national literatures of all the world. It is not that it claims to be inspired, for the same claim is advanced by the Indian, and indeed by or for every collection of religious writings extant; but while in the literature of India we see represented the struggles of man to reach the Deity, that of Palestine professes to represent the endeavour of Deity to reach and to communicate with men. Intensely patriotic as a people, the sacred literature of the Hebrews is essentially religious. Their historians are not permitted to record, and the poets are not allowed to sing their own national achievements, but only the mighty works and the praises of Jehovah their God. The shame of their many defeats, and of their final destruction, is ascribed always to their own sin, but any national success or prosperity is due to the Divine favour. Alike through all their victories and disasters, an Almighty Hand is acknowledged to be shaping their destiny, and to be working out a purpose which, often entirely hidden, and at best only very imperfectly understood by them, is seen toward the close of their sad and eventful history, to comprehend the larger destinies of mankind in a salvation of God which “all the ends of the earth” were to see.