It was not, then, merely true that the failures of the heathen world left it empty, hungering, distrustful of itself; nor merely that the world of that particular epoch gave extraordinary facilities of an outward kind for the diffusion of a world-religion: but also that in some of its most characteristic and deepest workings, in thoughts and dispositions which it had purchased at a great cost of ancient glories and liberties and of all that was proud and distinctive in Greek and Roman religion, there was that which would make men ready for Christianity and cause it to be to them, as it could not have been to their ancestors, intelligible, possible, and congenial. II. Dr. Westcott has drawn, in a useful phrase, the invaluable distinction between a _tendency towards_, and a _tendency to produce_, the truth of Christianity[169]. If we have been able to trace a real shaping of the lines inward and outward of the world's order disposing it for a true religion, the impression which this makes on us must be enormously increased if (1) we can see that that religion, when it comes, is most obviously a thing which _comes_ to the Gentile world, and does not _grow out of_ it either by blending of tendencies, or by constructive individual genius: and if (2) we are able to indicate another and perfectly distinct course of shaping and preparation which at the required moment yielded the material and equipment for the religion which was to go out upon the world. That this was so is in a sense upon the face of history. The Christian Church, it has been said, appeared at first as a Jewish sect. 'The salvation' Christ declared was 'of the Jews.' He came ('not to destroy but) to fulfil' the system amidst which He arose. Such sayings put us upon the track of a special preparation for the Gospel. Let us follow it. And (as the phrase is chosen to imply) we look here for something kindred indeed in many of its methods to that general preparation which we have hitherto traced, but yet more coherent, positive, and concentrated. For we pass in a sense at this point (to use language of the day), from the preparation of an environment suitable to the Gospel, to a preparation of the organism itself. Such language is obviously open to criticisms and misconceptions of more kinds than one. But it is sufficiently defensible historically and theologically to justify us in gaining the clearness which it gives. I shall attempt to present the signs of this preparation by considering successively these three points. (1) The relations between Israel and the world at the Christian era. (2) The fitness of Israel to be the seed-plot of a world-religion, and of the world-religion given by Christ. (3) The character of the process by which the Israel, so fitted, and so placed, had come to be.