In the apparition of these prophets, in the energy of their faith, in the boldness of their words, there is a positive revelation of a new world, the revelation of a religious ideal which, after divesting itself, in the gospel of Christ, of every national element, will naturally become the faith and consolation of humanity. * * * * * The education of the people of God had been a long and laborious work; besides the preaching of the prophets, it had needed repeated catastrophes in which the nationality of Israel had perished, as if the spirit could not free itself save by the annihilation of the matter that had from the outset grossly closed it in. When in the age of Cyrus we see the poor remnants of Benjamin and Judah return from Babylon, they are no longer a people; they are already almost a Church. The religious Law is now fixed. It enshrines the life, the ideas, the ethics and the ritual, the minute practices and precautions, which will for ever separate the Jew from all the other nations, and maintain him in a state of legal purity and high morality in the midst of universal corruption. It is the beginning of Pharisaism. In it the spirit of prophetic piety deteriorates, hardens, freezes. Nevertheless, when we think of the progress that had been accomplished, when we think of the distance that separates this rigid monotheism and this rigorous law from the old hard, cruel, sometimes impure Semitic cults, the prophets' work in Israel will appear to us in its immense proportions and immortal worth. 2. _The Dawn of the Gospel_