As the Jews are reputedly "the chosen people of God,"--chosen by him out of all the nations of the earth to be the special recipients of his favors,--the chosen instruments through which to communicate his will and his laws to the whole human race, and chosen to be a moral example for all mankind, for that age, and for all future generations,--it becomes a matter of great importance to know their real character for morality, for intelligence, for honesty, and for reliability. And that we may, in the effort to present a brief sketch of their character, furnish no ground for suspecting any misrepresentation, we will present it in the language of Jewish and Christian writers of established reputation. It may reasonably be presumed that their own writers would be more likely to overrate than underrate their virtues. Hear, then, what one of their leading prophets says of them. Isaiah thus describes them (Isa. lix.): "Their hands are defiled with blood, and their fingers with iniquity; and their lips speak lies; their tongues mutter perverseness. None of them call for justice; none of them plead for truth. They trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hand. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths." Such is a description of God's holy people by one of their number. And David completes the picture by declaring, "There is none righteous; no, not one." And Christ calls them "a generation of vipers." Rather a shocking picture of God's peculiar people! "Peculiar" they were, if Isaiah's description of them was true,--peculiar for defective character. It is rather strange that Jehovah should have selected such moral outlaws as lawgivers and moral examples for the whole human race. There were, at the time, several nations superior to the Jews in morals and intelligence, and much farther advanced in civilization. The Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, and a portion of the Hindoos were in advance of the Jews.