The universality as well as the purity and spirituality of this fundamental article of the Hebrew faith separates it from and elevates it above the Indian beliefs. Nature-worship has always been local and ethnic in its range; the gods of the hills are not the gods of the valleys, and the deities of Assyria command no reverence in Egypt. To the Hebrew was first communicated the catholic faith that the one Lord over all is rich in mercy unto all. The treasure was received, it is true, in an earthen vessel, by a people who could only apprehend as children what we are expected to hold in the comprehensions of men.[110] In patriarchal times by the people generally the One Lord was conceived of too much as just the protector of the family. In Mosaic times the great and terrible God who avenged Himself on Egypt was thought of too much as the champion of the tribes. Under David and the kings He was too much the sovereign of the nation and of the Holy Land; and so it was down to the times of the Captivity. All throughout this period, however, there were perpetual protests against this attempt to ethnicise a faith essentially catholic. They were reminded that the Holy One was Lord over all the earth; that though they were a peculiar people, they were not His only people. The prophets of other nations were brought to testify to them; their own prophets were sent to warn the heathen that they should not die. All through their history they were admonished that their gift was too large for their little nation to contain; that it was theirs only in proportion as it was imparted or shared, and that as a nation they could only exist if all nations were blessed in them. Alas however for them, all this seemed in vain in its effect upon the nation at large; the treasure was forgotten in their estimate of the vessel; their own destiny loomed largest in their conceptions of Providence. It was not the holy Lord God who was to have universal dominion, but they His favourites, and therefore their king would reign over all lands and keep his feet on the neck of their foes. Out of this fatal error, and out of the childish superstition akin to it, that material prosperity was the sole or chief reward of devotion, came all their unbelief and apostasy, and so when the succession of prophets had in vain testified to them that the Lord alone was to be exalted—that before Him, not before them, must all peoples bow,—the threatenings long uttered were fulfilled: the nation was shattered, its palladium, the temple, was destroyed, and they were driven beyond the Euphrates.