Degrees of Greatness.--There are degrees of greatness in heaven as upon earth, choice spirits and choicer. But all God's servants are noble. No position in the Church of Christ is insignificant. David was right in saying: "I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness." It is greater, infinitely greater, to hold the humblest office in the priesthood, than to reign, an alien from God, over all the kingdoms of the world. Israel's Pre-existence.--In view of what the prophets have spoken, are we not justified in believing that the house of Israel was chosen in the heavens for the mission it had to perform, and is still performing, upon the earth? What other inference can be drawn from these words of Moses: "Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: * * * "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel."--(Deut. 32:7-8.) The period here mentioned, when the sons of Adam were separated, and the nations received their inheritance, evidently antedated by many generations the times of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Those events were probably much earlier, and certainly no later, than the days of Japheth, Shem, and Ham, by whose families the nations were "divided in the earth after the flood" (Gen. 10:32). It looks very much as if Moses, when he wrote those words, had in mind, not a temporal Israel, unborn at the early period indicated, but a spiritual Israel, according to whose numbers, known in the heavens before they had taken bodies upon the earth, the boundaries of "the people" were determined. CHAPTER II. Israel's Mission. Privileges and Requirements.--It was intended that the children of Israel should have "room to dwell;" and it was of the utmost consequence that they should have. They were to be the oracles of God, the custodians and dispensers of heavenly wisdom. Upon them devolved the high duty of keeping alive on faith's altar the fire of divine truth. They were not to worship idols, as did the heathen nations around them, but were to worship the true God, the invisible Jehovah, "walking by faith," where others, less worthy, "walked by sight," believing only when they could see. The children of Israel were not to intermarry with other nations, lest they might worship their gods, practice their vices, and pollute the noble lineage through which was to come, in due time, the Savior of the world. The Lamb of God, when he came, was "without spot or blemish," physically as well as spiritually; a condition partly due, no doubt, to the choice parentage and ancestry that had been provided for him.