But Ezra had a clear perception of what there was for Israel to do. That religion, which in former times had been mainly the collective expression of the nation's relation to God, must now be realised as the personal concern of each individual. What the prophets had taught about God had so far produced no corresponding result in personal piety and conscious service. What had been declared by Moses as the will of God had been by no means fully taken to heart and wrought into the acts of daily life. There was divine teaching in abundance, and had been for centuries; now, the task must be seriously taken in hand of applying it, so that each individual might feel that he had a responsibility for doing the will of God, and might know what that will was. The great declaration: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God the Lord is one," was immediately followed by: "and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." If Israel now asked how he was to do this, Ezra's answer was that God had taught him in the Torah, contained in the five books of Moses. Henceforth let Israel "observe to do all that is written in this book of the Torah." That solemn promulgation of the Torah, described in the book of Nehemiah, is the central point of the reformation of Ezra, whether it were only the Priestly Code which was then introduced or whether it were the Pentateuch substantially complete. What Ezra did was to set up a written authority as the guide of personal conduct for each individual Jew. His demand was for the acceptance of this authority on the part of the nation, and a determined loyalty in carrying out the commands of God which would shrink from no sacrifice. It was, no doubt, the severity of this demand which for thirteen years delayed its acceptance; and the opposition was only crushed by the strong hand of Nehemiah. Whatever one may think of the method, the result was that Ezra gathered to him those who were prepared to do most and to sacrifice most for the sake of their religion; he had weeded out the weak and the faint-hearted, the indifferent and the lazy, and kept those who could be fanatics, heroes, martyrs, if the occasion should arise.