the Jews were always to be dispersed among strangers and subject to foreigners. Some of them were to return to reconstruct Jerusalem and its temple, but the country, invaded by the Scythians, tributary to the Persians, conquered by the Greeks, was after the last attempt of the Maccabeans finally given over to the hands of a dynasty of Arab barbarians, subject to the Romans. This race, which for so many years lived rich and free in the desert, and for a day was master of kingdoms and believed itself, under the protection of its God, the first people of the earth, was now reduced in numbers, spurned and commanded by foreigners, was the laughing-stock of the nations, the Job among peoples. After the death of Jesus, its fate was to be harder yet: Jerusalem destroyed for the second time: in the devastated province only Greeks and Romans holding sway, and the last fragments of Israel scattered over the earth like dust of the street driven before the sirocco. Never were people so loved nor so dreadfully chastised by their God. Chosen to be the first, they were the servants of the last. Aspiring to have a victorious country of their own, they were exiles and slaves in other men’s lands. Although more pastoral than warlike, they never were at peace either with themselves or with others. They fought with their neighbors, with their guests, with their leaders. They fought with their prophets and with their God Himself. Breeding-ground of corruption, governed by men guilty of homicide, treachery, adultery, incest, robbery, simony and idolatry, yet their women gave birth to the most perfect saints of the Orient, upright, admonishing, solitary prophets; and finally from this race was born the Father of the new saints, He who had been awaited by all the Prophets. This people which created no metaphysics nor science, nor music, nor sculpture, nor art, nor architecture of its own, wrote the grandest poetry of antiquity, glowing with sublimity in the Psalms and in the Prophets, inimitably tender in the stories of Joseph and Ruth, burning with voluptuous passion in the Song of Songs. Grown up in the midst of the cults of local rustic gods, they conceived the love of God, the one universal Father. Rich in gold and lands, they could boast in their prophets of the first defenders of the poor, and they conceived of the negation of riches. The same people who had cut the throat of human victims on their altars, and massacred whole cities of guiltless people, gave disciples to Him who preached love for our enemies. This people, jealous of their jealous God, always betrayed Him to run after other gods. Of their temple, three times built and three times destroyed, nothing remains but a piece of a wall, barely enough so that a line of mourners may lean their heads against it to hide their tears.