and emphasis with which the command is repeated, the violence of the denunciations against offenders, the terrible punishments threatened and often actually inflicted, sufficiently show how imperfectly and unwillingly it was obeyed. Indeed the entire Old Testament is one continuous illustration of the unslackening zeal with which the wise and enlightened men of Israel--its lawgivers, leaders, priests and prophets--pursued their arduous and often almost hopeless task, of keeping their people pure from worships and practices which to them, who had realized the fallacy of a belief in many gods, were the most pernicious abominations. In this spirit and to this end they preached, they fought, they promised, threatened, punished, and in this spirit, in later ages, they wrote. 12. It is not until a nation is well established and enjoys a certain measure of prosperity, security and the leisure which accompanies them, that it begins to collect its own traditions and memories and set them down in order, into a continuous narrative. So it was with the Hebrews. The small tribe became a nation, which ceased from its wanderings and conquered for itself a permanent place on the face of the earth. But to do this took many hundred years, years of memorable adventures and vicissitudes, so that the materials which accumulated for the future historians, in stories, traditions, songs, were ample and varied. Much, too, must have been written down at a comparatively early period. _How_ early must remain uncertain, since there is unfortunately nothing to show at what time the Hebrews learned the art of writing and their characters thought, like other alphabets, to be borrowed from those of the Phoenicians. However that may be, one thing is sure: that the different books which compose the body of the Hebrew Sacred Scriptures, which we call "the Old Testament," were collected from several and different sources, and put into the shape in which they have descended to us at a very late period, some almost as late as the birth of Christ. The first book of all, that of Genesis, describing the beginnings of the Jewish people,--("_Genesis_" is a Greek word, which means "Origin")--belongs at all events to a somewhat earlier date. It is put together mainly of two narratives, distinct and often different in point of spirit and even fact. The later compiler who had both sources before him to work into a final form, looked on both with too much respect to alter either, and generally contented himself with giving them side by side, (as in the story of Hagar, which is told twice and differently, in Chap. XVI. and Chap. XXI.), or intermixing them throughout, so that it takes much attention and pains to separate them, (as in the story of the Flood, Chap. VI.-VIII.). This latter story is almost identical with the Chaldean Deluge-legend included in the great Izdubar epic, of which it forms the eleventh tablet. (See Chap. VII.) Indeed, every child can see,