The long period of affliction and of misery between the Captivity and the Advent of the Christ is like a time of painful gestation, during which, in the bosom of the Hebraic tradition, fecundated by the spirit of the prophets, was prepared in obscurity the gospel of the Beatitudes and of the Parables. What a revolution! The ancient theocratic law promised to the righteous length of days and great abundance of material goods. The friends of Job regarded him as criminal because they saw him in adversity. The problem of human destiny appeared to the later prophets as less simple and more tragic. "Why do the wicked prosper?" is the question ever on their lips. "Why do the righteous suffer?" This spectacle has become so constant that the correlation of the words has been reversed. "Rich and wicked" in the Psalmists, and in the second Isaiah, are equivalent terms. "Poor and afflicted" are synonymous with "the righteous" and "the friends of God." Riches and high looks are the signs of malediction; humility, poverty, persecution, tears, are the marks of piety and the pledges of divine affection. It was at this time that the words were born that edified the early Christians: "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble." Gather together in a common hope this family of little ones, of the defeated and unhappy ones whose hearts were crushed and whose eyes were filled with tears, and you have the true people of God, the heirs of all the promises, the "little flock" to whom it is the Father's pleasure to give the kingdom. It was from their ranks that was to come the "Man of Sorrows," who should be scourged and put to death for the sins of His people. The religion of suffering is born. For the suffering of "the Servant of Jehovah," in whom is no iniquity, cannot be the chastisement of His own crimes; it will henceforth be accepted as the necessary part that fraternal solidarity imposes on the best for the redemption of the rest. A tender, fragile flower, a bud as yet scarce opened in the writings of the prophets, this thought will expand into the Gospel and become the religion of mankind.