§ 8.1. =Judaism under special Training of God through the Law and Prophecy.=--Abraham was chosen as a single individual (Isa. li. 2), and, as the creator of something new, God called forth from an unfruitful womb the seed of promise. As saviour and redeemer from existing misery He delivered the people of promise from the oppression of Egyptian slavery. In the Holy Land the family must work out its own development, but in order that the family might be able unrestrainedly to expand into a great nation, it was necessary that it should first go down into Egypt. Moses led the people thus disciplined out of the foreign land, and gave them a theocratic constitution, law, and worship as means for the accomplishment of their calling, as a model and a schoolmaster leading on to future perfection (Gal. iii. 24; Heb. x. 1). The going out of Egypt was the birth of the nation, the giving of the law at Sinai was its consecration as a holy nation. Joshua set forth the last condition for an independent people, the possession of a country commensurate with the task of the nation, a land of their own that would awaken patriotic feelings. Now the theocracy under the form of a purely popular institution under the fostering care of the priesthood could and should have borne fruit, but the period of the Judges proves that those two factors of development were not sufficient, and so now two new agencies make their appearance; the Prophetic order as a distinct and regular office, constituted for the purpose of being a mouth to God and a conscience to the state, and the Kingly order for the protecting of the theocracy against hurt from without and for the establishment of peace within her borders. By David’s successes the theocracy attained unto a high degree of political significance, and by Solomon’s building of the temple the typical form of worship reached the highest point of its development. In spite, however, of prophecy and royalty, the people, ever withdrawing themselves more and more from their true vocation, were not able outwardly and inwardly to maintain the high level. The division of the kingdom, internal feuds and conflicts, their untheocratic entanglement in the affairs of the world, the growing tendency to fall away from the worship of Jehovah and to engage in the worship of high places, and calves, and nature, called down incessantly the divine judgments, in consequence of which they fell a prey to the heathen. Yet this discipline was not in vain. Cyrus decreed their return and their independent organization, and even prophecy was granted for a time to the restored community for its establishment and consolidation. Under these political developments has prophecy, in addition to its immediate concern with its own times in respect of teaching, discipline, and exhortation, given to the promise of future salvation its fullest expression, bringing a bright ray of