heaven the kind of people who were found in its streets at Pentecost,—Parthians and Medes, and dwellers in Pontus and Arabia, and the eunuch of far distant Ethiopia.[114] As we have noticed the highest outcome of Vedic thought in pursuit of Atman, let us also notice the highest development of Hebrew belief in their hope of Messiah, whose germs are traceable in their faith from the first. For example, one of the earliest and most lasting effects of their conception of Deity was the conviction of their own unworthiness and inability to live in the presence of the holy God. Though they were to be a kingdom of priests for other nations, they dared not enter into the relationship which priest implied. They required a mediator like Moses, who could speak to the Holy One for them, and receive for them His message. Their whole worship was based on this feeling, and the purer and higher rose their conceptions of God, the more intense became their self-abasement. Between Him and the noblest of His creatures there was an impassable gulf. Though He was far, far off from them, He was far too near—so near that they could not go anywhither from His presence, and yet in their dread there was a yearning to come near to Him and to see Him face to face. The Brahman aspired to lose himself in the Absolute, in the pure light of characterless knowledge; the Hebrew, mastered by the personality of God, longed to see Him as He is. And never more earnest was this longing in the Hebrew to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to be satisfied with His likeness, than in the times of his deepest self-humiliation and keenest contrition. “I pray Thee, pardon the _iniquity_ of Thy people;” “I beseech Thee, show us Thy _glory_;” “and these two pangs so counter and so keen,” shame and reverence akin to dread, aspiring love, were to prove not only the purification of their own faith, but the birth-throe of a better hope for the world.