The order to go and teach all nations, however, by no means carries us beyond strictly Messianic limits. Whilst the Jews expected the Messiah to restore the people of Israel to their own Holy Land and crown them with unexampled prosperity and peace, revenging their past sorrows upon their enemies, and granting them supremacy over all the earth, they likewise held that one of the Messianic glories was to be the conversion of the Gentiles to the worship of Jahveh. This is the burden of the prophets, and it requires no proof. The Jews, as the people with whom God had entered into Covenant, were first to be received into the kingdom. "Let the children first be filled,"(1) and then the heathen might partake of the bread. Regarding the ultimate conversion of the Gentiles, therefore, there was no doubt; the only questions were as to the time and the conditions of admission into the national fellowship. As to the time, there never had been any expectation that the heathen could be turned to Jahveh in numbers before the appearance of the {137} Messiah, but converts to Judaism had been made in all ages, and after the dispersion, especially, the influence of the Jews upon the professors of the effete and expiring religions of Rome, of Greece, and of Egypt was very great, and numerous proselytes adopted the faith of Israel,(1) and were eagerly sought for(2) in spite of the abusive terms in which the Talmudists spoke of them.(3) The conditions on the other hand were perfectly definite. The case of converts had been early foreseen and provided for in the Mosaic code. Without referring to minor points, we may at once say that circumcision was indispensable to admission into the number of the children of Israel.(4) Participation in the privileges of the Covenant could only be secured by accepting the mark of that Covenant. Very many, however, had adopted Judaism to a great extent, who were not willing to undergo the rite requisite to full admission into the nation, and a certain modification had gradually been introduced by which, without it, strangers might be admitted into partial communion with Israel. There were, therefore, two classes of proselytes,(5) the first called Proselytes of the Covenant or of Righteousness, who were circumcised, obeyed the whole Mosaic law, and {138} were fully incorporated with Israel, and the other called Proselytes of the Gate,(1) or worshippers of Jahveh, who in the New Testament are commonly called [------].