Our surprise, already great, is carried to a still higher point on discovering that, for the six centuries which followed the time of Solomon, the Hebrew prophets, men of the profoundest moral insight, and whose very business it was to put before their countrymen’s minds every motive which could have power to induce them to eschew evil, and to do good, pass over in their teaching, just as Moses, David, and Solomon had done before them, this paramountly influential, and to us morally vital idea. If one had been called upon to give an _à priori_ opinion on the subject, it would have seemed, I think, utterly impossible that such an omission could have been made at the beginning, considering the nature of the work that had to be done; or, if for some exceptional, but decisive, reason it had been made at first, that it could have been maintained throughout. We must remember that the word throughout here applies to the whole course of a national literature, embracing history, legislation, philosophy, poetry, morals, and, above all, religion through a range of a thousand years. The idea was all that time all about the people, and those who contributed to their literature, in Persia, in Egypt, and in Asia Minor. In Europe every tribe of barbarians, and of semi-barbarians, and every civilized people, possessed it. It was the source of their respective religions. It made them all what they were. But in this all-embracing, vigorous, and long-sustained literature of the Hebrews it has no place. It might, for some special reason, have been excluded at one epoch, but why through all? It might, for some special reason, have been ill-adapted to some departments of Hebrew thought, but why to all? And the manner is as singular as the fact of the rejection. It is simply passed over in silence. No reference is made to it. It is not discussed. It is not denounced. It is not ridiculed. It is not insisted on: that is all. Here, then, is an historical problem than which few can be more curious and interesting. We may not yet be in a position to answer it completely, but it is evident that the first step towards doing this is to set down all the reasons that appear to us possible, and to weigh each with reference to the mind, and the circumstances, of the times. We may not be able to divine all the reasons, or, indeed, the right one, but still this is the course that must be pursued.