The political and religious centralisation, which formed the program of the first two representatives of the Davidical dynasty, and which bound the highest power in the state to one city, Jerusalem, as a geographical centre, and to one family, as the visible representative of that power, did not meet with unmixed applause everywhere. Jerusalem lies close to the southern limit of the Hebrew territory. If the South came to the front, the northern parts of the kingdom might be deprived of all influence on affairs of state and religion. The inhabitants of the northern district were practically condemned to be only bearers of the burdens, imposed on the subjects of the kingdom through the luxury growing up in the centre of monarchy and of religion; for very little enjoyment of, or pride in, this splendour could fall to their share. And then the religious centralisation took all importance and influence from the sanctuaries and places of assembly in the North, which before the centralisation were spread over the whole kingdom in due proportion. Nothing, therefore, could be more natural than the reaction in the North, which spread after the death of Solomon under his weak successor, and ended with the division of the kingdom. The history of this division and the circumstances connected with it are sufficiently well known from the Old Testament narrative (1 Kings XII.), in which no essential element is devoid of historical credibility. All of it is a natural consequence of the then condition of the Hebrew kingdom. Now it is very intelligible that in the northern district, the centralising and theocratic spirit, which was at bottom the reason of the political secession, could not find an entrance, and that therefore the northern district remained at the Elohistic stage as it was before an advance had been made to pure Monotheism—in relation to religion scarcely yet separated from Canaanism, but with respect to nationality sharing the common Hebrew sentiment. Accordingly, in the spiritual development of the Northern kingdom, the theocratic interpretation of the past ages of the nation, excited by the centralising movement, is not merely treated as unimportant, but positively does not appear at all. This, of course, is true not only of the spiritual condition of the northern Hebrews after the secession, but of their spiritual life during the whole period of the formation of the theocratic spirit in the South. For the very fact that the Northerns possessed little knowledge of and no inclination for this tendency, then all-powerful in the commonwealth, gave an impetus to the secessionistic aspirations, which under the strong rule of Solomon had no opportunity of declaring themselves, but burst out all the more forcibly and persistently at the commencement of a feebler reign. But while the theocratic spirit, so peculiar to the Southern kingdom, forms a distinction between the characters of the North and of