The enormous significance of the Dispersion as a preparation for Christianity must not be overlooked. It showed to both Jew and Gentile alike that the barriers which had hedged in and isolated the hermit nation had broken down, and that what had ceased to be thus isolated had changed its character. A _kingdom_ had become a _religion_. What henceforth distinguished the Jews in the eyes of all the world was not their country or their government, but their creed, and through this they exercised upon those among whom they were scattered an influence which had been impossible under the old conditions of exclusiveness. They themselves also were forced to understand their own religion better. When the keeping of the letter of the Law became an impossibility, they were compelled to penetrate into its spirit; and what they exhibited to the heathen was not a mere code of burdensome rites and ceremonies, but a moral life and a worship in spirit and truth. The universality of the services of the synagogue taught the Jew that God's worship was not confined to Jerusalem, and their simplicity attracted proselytes who might have turned away from the complex and bloody liturgies of the Temple. Even in matters of detail the services in the synagogue prepared the way for the services of the Christian Church. The regular lessons--read from two divisions of Scripture, the antiphonal singing, the turning towards the east, the general Amen of the whole congregation, the observance of the third, sixth, and ninth hours as hours of prayer, and of one day in seven as specially holy--all these things, together with some others which have since become obsolete, meet us in the synagogue worship, as St. James knew it, and in the liturgies of the Christian Church, which he and the Apostles and their successors helped to frame. Thus justice once more became mercy, and a punishment was turned into a blessing. The captivity of the Jew became the freedom of both Jew and Gentile, and the scattering of Israel was the gathering in of all nations unto God. "He hath scattered abroad; He hath given to the poor: His righteousness abideth for ever" (Ps. cxii. 9; 2 Cor. ix. 9). [24] See _The Pastoral Epistles_ in this series, pp. 285-6. [25] See Salmon, _Introduction to the N.T._, p. 502, 4th ed. (Murray, 1889); Renan, _L'Antechrist_, p. xii.; Ewald, _History of Israel_, vol. vii., p. 451, Eng. Tr. (Longmans, 1885); Weiss, _Introduction to the N.T._, vol. ii., pp. 102-3 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1888). [26] See the immense amount of information collected in Schürer, _The Jewish People in the Time of Christ_, div. ii., vol. ii., pp. 219-327; also Westcott's article "Dispersion," in Smith's _Dict. of Bible_; Herzog and Plitt, _Real-Encykl._, vol. vii., pp. 203-8; and esp. Philo, _Legat. ad Caium_. [27] Πᾶσα δὲ γαῖα σέθεν πλήρης καὶ πᾶσα θάλασσα. CHAPTER V.