foreign elements which confronted them chiefly in the idea of Elôhîm, common to Israel and Canaan, and including all the abominations of the Canaanitish worship, and all the laxity of manners introduced from foreign parts into the higher ranks of society. With the Canaanites dissolute forms of worship were results naturally developed out of the previous history of their religion, and could be traced backwards to their origin in Mythology. Being such, they could not have so ruinous an influence on morals and character as among the Hebrews, who seized on the immorality as such, without having had any share in the previous historical stages which led to it. If for _unbelief_ we substitute _absence of historical preparation_, the correct observation made by Constant on Roman Polytheism is applicable to this case also: that indecent rites may be practised by a religious nation without detriment to purity of heart; but if unbelief takes hold of the nation, such rites are the cause and the pretext for the most revolting corruption.[701] The idea of Jahveh, therefore, according to the intention of the Prophets, was to stimulate a return to National enthusiasm; and the zeal against the spreading vice and immorality is directed more against the foreign character of the vice than against the immorality itself. ‘O house of Jacob,’ says Isaiah (II. 5–7), in close contact with the speech in which he anticipates the moral redemption of mankind through beating their swords into scythes and their spears into ploughshares, ‘come ye! we will walk in the light of Jahveh. For thou hast forsaken thine own people, O house of Jacob, because they (_i.e._ the members of that house) are full of divination[702] and soothsayers, like the Philistines, and join hands (_i.e._ contract friendship) with the children of strangers, and their land was filled with silver and gold, and there was no end of their treasures, and their land was filled with horses and there was no end of their chariots.’ In these words we see unequivocally how the ‘light of Jahveh’ is contrasted with foreign customs. It ought to be observed that in Deuteronomy, the book which stands nearer than any other part of the Pentateuch to the Prophets’ views on the world and religion, the collecting of much silver and gold and horses[703] is censured (XVII. 16 _sq._), in fear lest the people should be denationalised thereby and inclined towards the ‘foreign,’ which in Deuteronomy always means Egypt.