Thus Judaism comes to be a religion full of contradictions, and could not as a whole pass to other nations. The temple and the synagogue represent opposite principles of worship. The Jew feels himself to be entrusted with a world-religion, and yet shuts himself up in such exclusiveness as to draw upon himself the hatred of all peoples, and to be charged in turn with hatred of the human race. A religion of faith and love consorts with a religion of rules and limitations. If the faith of Israel was to fulfil its mission to the world it was necessary that some one should come who could purge this threshing-floor, burning the chaff and gathering up the wheat to be the seed of the progress of mankind. BOOKS RECOMMENDED The Books of the Old Testament, including the Apocrypha, in the Revised Version. The Histories of Israel; Ewald, Kuenen, Wellhausen, Stade. Robertson Smith's _The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_, and articles in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. Smend's _Alttestamentliche Religionsgeschichte_. Stade, _Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments_, 1905. For a criticism of the critical historians the reader may consult _The Early Religion of Israel_, by Prof. James Robertson. Prof. Valeton, _Die Israeliten_, in De la Saussaye. Schuerer, _History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ_, 1885-90. Kantzsch, "Religion of Israel," in _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. v. E. J. Foakes-Jackson, _The Biblical History of the Hebrews_, Second Edition. CHAPTER XIII ISLAM In chronological order Islam stands last of all the great religions; it appeared six centuries after Christianity, and Christian ideas enter into it. It is, however, so essentially Semitic that it can only be understood aright if studied in connection with the group now occupying our attention. In Islam Semitic religion opens its arms to embrace mankind, and accomplishes, in a fashion, the destiny to which Judaism was invited, but which Judaism failed to realise till it was transformed in Christianity. In Islam Semitic religion is not transformed, but enters in its own stern and uncompromising character into the position of a universal faith. This religion sprang up and entered on its career of conquest with startling suddenness and even, some scholars hold, without any natural preparation for its coming in the country of its birth. The Arabs called the period before Islam the "time of ignorance"; in that period they considered their race had no history; the new religion, when it arose, had made a clean sweep of all that had gone before, and had caused a new world to begin. The labours of Arabic scholars have, however, done something to dispel the mists which hung over early Arabia, and it is possible both to give a much more satisfactory sketch than formerly of the earlier religion of the Arabs, and to discern to some extent the processes which had unconsciously been preparing for the advent of a higher and stronger faith.