This conception of God marks a turning point in the moral evolution of humanity. It lifted a new ethical standard. It effected a union of religion and morality. This, it is true, was not a wholly new thing in history. In the worship of the good Osiris in Egypt these elements had been united; in the Zoroastrian worship of Ahura Mazda they had also been brought together; and at this very time in Greece there was an effort being made to unite them in the worship of the Delphian Apollo. But the union effected by the prophets of Israel was the only one destined to have large and permanent historical consequences. Because of the ethical content given the god idea by them, their conception of deity constituted the most precious part of the spiritual heritage bequeathed by Judaism to Christianity. [Sidenote: Repudiation of the doctrine of collective responsibility] The progressive clarification of the moral consciousness in Israel disclosed by this truer conception of the divine character is further shown by the definite and emphatic repudiation by the prophets of the Exile of the doctrine of collective responsibility.[400] There was an ironical proverb current in Israel, which, expressing bitter protest against the unequal ways of Yahweh in visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children,[401] ran thus: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”[402] The prophet Ezekiel says to the people that they shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb.[403] With clear moral vision he sees how impossible it is that the moral government of Yahweh should rest upon the principle of collective responsibility, and that the innocent should be punished for the guilty. Declaring that the ways of God are just and equal, he annuls all earlier provisions of the law by boldly proclaiming that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.[404] It marks a great moral advance when guilt comes thus to be viewed as a personal and not a communal thing. But unfortunately the ground here gained for morality was lost when the theologians of the early Christian Church, reviving the outgrown conception of collective responsibility, formulated the dogma that all the generations of men--such being the solidarity of the human race--are partakers in the sin of the first parents and under condemnation therefor.[405] [Sidenote: The doctrine of the sufferings of the righteous as vicarious and expiatory]