But this perplexing and contradictory people, superhuman and wretched, the first and the last of all, the happiest and the most unhappy of all, although it serves other nations, still dominates other nations with its money and with its Bible. Although without a country of its own for centuries, it is among the owners of all countries. Although it crucified its greatest Son with His blood, it divided the history of the world into two parts: and the progeny of those god-killers has become the most infamous but the most sacred of all the peoples. THE PROPHETS Never was a people so warned as were the Jews, from the beginning of the temporal kingdom to its dismemberment: in the great days of the victorious Kings, in the sorrowful days of exile, in the evil days of slavery, in the tragic days of the dispersion. India has its ascetics, who hide themselves in the wilderness to conquer the body and drown the soul in the infinite. China had its familiar sages, peaceful grandfathers who taught civic morality to working people and emperors. Greece had her philosophers, who in their shady porticos contrived harmonious systems and dialectic pitfalls. Rome had its lawgivers who recorded on bronze for the peoples and the centuries the rules of the highest justice attainable to those who command and possess. The Middle Ages had their preachers, who wore themselves out in the effort to arouse drowsy Christianity to a remembrance of the Passion and the terror of Hell. The Jewish people had the Prophets. The Prophets did not give forth their prophecies in caves, spitting out saliva and words together from their tripods. They spoke of the future, but not merely of the future. They foretold things not yet happened, but they also brought to mind the past. They possessed time in its three phases; deciphering the past, illuminating the present and threatening the future. The Jewish Prophet is a voice speaking, or a hand writing, a voice speaking in the palace of the King or in the caves of the mountains, on the steps of the Temple and in the precincts of the capitol. He is a voice that prays, a prayer that threatens, a threat that breaks out into divine hope. His heart is afflicted, his mouth is full of bitterness, his arm is raised, pointing out punishment to come; he suffers for his people; because he loves his people, he vituperates them: he punishes them that they may be purified; and after massacres and flames, he teaches the resurrection and the life, triumph and blessedness, the reign of the new David and the Covenant not to be broken.