Look first at the capacities of the people themselves. They had no remarkable gifts which might have led us to anticipate this unique destiny. They had no intellectual qualities of a very high order like the Greeks--vivid imagination, subtlety of thought, æsthetic taste; no political capacity like the Romans, no organizing power or faculty of legislation which might secure for them the ascendency over the nations of the world. They were, moreover, a stubborn, exclusive, intolerant people--an unpractical people, without the power, or at least the will, to adapt themselves to the institutions, the feelings, and the prejudices of the people with whom they were brought in contact. They were believed, in consequence, to cherish an universal hatred against the rest of mankind; and they, in turn, were hated by all--hated, not with the hatred of an admiring envy, but the hatred of a supercilious scorn. Of all the tribes on the face of the earth the Jews, we should have said, were the very last to ingratiate themselves with the other races of mankind, and to lay the civilised world at their feet. And now turn from the people themselves to the land of their abode. Certainly this does not enable us to solve the enigma. Palestine does not occupy a large space in the Christian's imagination; for it is a very minute, insignificant spot in the map of the world. It is, moreover, incapable of expansion, for it is bounded on all sides either by sea or mountain ranges, or by vast and impracticable deserts. To a great extent all this country is mountainous and barren, and even this meagre and unpromising territory is not all their own. The sea-coast would have been valuable to a people gifted with commercial instincts. With commerce they might have extended their influence; but from the sea-coast they were wholly excluded. The Phoenicians on the north and the Philistines on the south occupied all the most important harbours; and this territory of the Jews was so unexpansive, so barren, so unpromising that they were placed at a still greater disadvantage when compared with the surrounding people. The Jews are surrounded on all sides, and by the most formidable neighbours. On the one side by Egypt, a country of the highest fertility, the foremost military power in the world, with an ancient civilisation which dated from a period long before the birth of the father of the Israelite people, whilst it stood foremost of the human race in works of art in its day. Who was Israel, then, that he could withstand Egypt? There, again, on the other side, was another mighty empire, first Assyria, then Babylon, the only rival of Egypt of the ancient world. In these places they had the same advantage of wide plains of exceptional fertility, a high and remote civilisation, an army of tremendous strength, and a centralisation under an absolute rule, with all the resources which a great and vast dominion could command. As Persia succeeded Babylon, and as Babylon succeeded