Behold My servant whom I uphold; Mine elect in whom My soul delighteth; I have put My spirit upon him, He shall make the right to go forth to the nations: He shall not fail or be crushed Till he have set the right on the earth, And the isles shall wait for his teaching. Thus saith God the LORD, He that created the heavens, and stretched them forth, He that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it, He that giveth bread unto the people upon it, And spirit to them that walk therein: I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, And have taken hold of thy hand, And kept thee, and set thee for a covenant of the people, For a light of the nations; To open the blind eyes, To bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, And them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. Never was ideal less tribal: it is still the dynamic impulse of all civilization. "Let justice well up as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream." "Nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall there be war any more." Nor does this mission march always with the pageantry of external triumph. "Despised and forsaken of men," Isaiah paints Israel. "Yet he bore the sin of many. And made intercession for the transgressors ... with his stripes we were healed." Happily all that is best in Christendom recognizes, with Kuenen or Matthew Arnold, the grandeur of the Old Testament ideal. But that this ideal penetrated equally to our everyday liturgy is less understood of the world. "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who hast chosen Israel from all peoples and given him the Law." Here is no choice of a favourite but of a servant, and when it is added that "from Zion shall the Law go forth" it is obvious what that servant's task is to be. "What everlasting love hast Thou loved the house of Israel," says the Evening Prayer. But in what does this love consist? Is it that we have been pampered, cosseted? The contrary. "A Law, and commandments, statutes and judgments hast Thou taught us." Before these were thundered from Sinai, the historian of the Exodus records, Israel was explicitly informed that only by obedience to them could he enjoy peculiar favour. "Now therefore, if ye will hearken unto My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be Mine own treasure from among all peoples; for all the earth is Mine; and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation." A chosen people is really a choosing people. Not idly does Talmudical legend assert that the Law was offered first to all other nations and only Israel accepted the yoke.