It was on the Jewish religion as its stock that the Christian religion was grafted, as a gardener grafts a new branch into an old stem and the new takes up the sap from the old. There was another branch later grafted on the Jewish religious stem, besides the Christian--a very different branch, the Mohammedan {108} religion. When we consider what an immense effect Christianity in the first place, and Mohammedanism in the second, have had in the making of this world-story, we shall see, I think, that we are right in attributing a great importance to what happened to the Jews, from whom came these other religions, as well as their own, which they still hold now. What happened to them was thus much more important in the story than what far stronger powers did, such as the Hittites, who possessed all Asia Minor and threatened Egypt, or the Elamites; who nearly overthrew the Babylonians, or the Syrians, who at one time were far stronger than either Israel or Judah, or even both of them together. [Sidenote: The Bible] We know that the Jews won their intense faith in Jehovah, their national god, only with difficulty. They were of the same race as the tribes about them who worshipped Baal and Ashtaroth, and they were constantly inclined towards that pagan worship, as we know from the Bible. But in the end the higher religion won, and their religion was intensely real to the Jews. It was a very big thing in their lives. They believed that Jehovah punished them in this life for the wrong things that they did, such as oppression of the poor, or unjust dealing, and they believed that he punished the nation for wrong things that the nation did. They had not the belief of the Egyptians in reward and punishment in an after-life. And they considered their god as an exacting, a "jealous" god. He would punish them if they worshipped in the so-called "groves," which were often posts or stones set up on the "high places" to the pagan gods, or if they were slack in his worship, or in making sacrifice to him. All these peoples had, in common, a belief in winning {109} the favour of the gods by sacrifice. The more precious to them the thing sacrificed, the more value they deemed it would have in the sight of the gods; and that is how it is that we see them at one time actually sacrificing their own children, as the most valuable offering that they could make. The instance of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac will occur to your minds.