The practical application of this idea needed the acceptance of it on the part of the people, and further, a definite undertaking to make certain changes in their manner of life. And, before all, it was necessary that they should, so far as possible, separate themselves from the "peoples of the lands" in whose midst they found themselves, on returning from the Exile. This is, of course, the meaning of the putting away of the foreign wives, and the forbidding of such marriages for the future. The general programme of the reform is set forth in Neh. x., which is nothing more than the logical corollary of the acceptance of Torah. Among the points there specified, besides the prohibition of intermarriage with foreigners, are the observance of the Sabbath, the payment of the tax for the service of the house of God, and the duty of bringing first-fruits and tithes. Of course these provisions do not cover the whole duty of the Jew, and they were not intended to do so. Their purpose was to set up the Jews as a closed corporation, distinct from the surrounding peoples, and to provide for the maintenance of the Jewish cultus. Within the limits thus drawn, this enclosure marked off from the Gentile world, the Jew was to live his whole life, and the Torah was to be his guide in doing so. The limits were drawn in order to make it possible for the Jew to live up to the Torah. The limits themselves are not part of the Torah; and hence it follows that a Jew could live with complete loyalty to the Torah, and yet be but little conscious of the limits within which he enjoyed his spiritual freedom and privileges. Unless occasion reminded him of the fact of separation between him and the Gentiles, he could give his whole mind to the immediate concerns of his religious life--meditation, prayer, and the doing of his duties towards God and man. His thought was not taken up with a painful study of precepts, but was free to range over the whole relation in which he stood towards God. The Torah was his guide to the _whole_ meaning of that relation, not merely to the performance of specified duties. And therefore, when Ezra prevailed on the Jews to become a separate community, he was not condemning them to a life of barren legalism, cutting them off from a free communion with God; he was providing for them a means whereby they could enjoy that free communion, defended against the dangers which, in the past, had been so disastrous to the religious life of the people. It is, of course, true that in doing so he was at the same time cutting the Jews off from free intercourse with their fellow-men of non-Jewish race, and thereby restricting their development as human beings. And the Jews ever since have paid a heavy price for that separation. But in Ezra's time free intercourse with non-Jewish peoples did not seem at all a desirable thing, if the Jewish people were to survive. It is indeed difficult to believe that they would have survived, if the policy of Ezra had not