THE APOCRYPHA, DAVID CASSEL, DION CASSIUS, J. G. EICHHORN, G. W. F. HEGEL, JUSTIN, F. R. LAMENNAIS, GASTON C. C. MASPERO, FELIX PERLES, T. G. PINCHES, POLYBIUS, EDUARD REUSS, CLEMENS ROMANUS, ASARJA DE ROSSI, BARUCH SPINOZA, STRABO, SUETONIUS, CORNELIUS TACITUS, COMTE DE VOLNEY, GEORG WEBER, R. T. M. WEHOFER, J. ZENNER COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS. _All rights reserved._ PART IV.--ISRAEL ISRAEL AS A WORLD INFLUENCE BY BERNHARD STADE Translated for the present work from _Geschichte des Volks Israel_. Many a nation has walked God’s earth, has long enjoyed its good things, has come into being and passed away, without our knowing anything of its history, or even whether it had a history at all. For no nation has a history except one that makes history, that is to say, that influences the course of human development. It is with races as with individuals; none is kept in mind by posterity save those who have distinguished themselves by ideas that have modified the life of mankind, or (which comes to the same thing) have been pioneers in fresh fields of action. The greater the spiritual gain a nation has brought to the rest of the world, the longer and more steadily its life has flowed in the channels it was the first to make, the longer is its history told among them. The nations of history are those which have put forward, in one fashion or another, their claim to the dominion of the world. Thus we may fitly ask what claim it is that is made upon our interest by the history of the Jewish nation. And the answer will be, that nothing which excites our attention, or stirs us to admiration or imitation in the history of other nations, is here present in any large measure. Israel was always a small, nay, a petty nation, settled in a narrow space, never of any considerable importance in the political history of the East; it never brought forth a Ramses II, a Sargon, an Esarhaddon, an Asshurbanapal, a Nebuchadrezzar, or a Cyrus to bear its banner into distant lands. Yet, for all this, the history of Israel has, for us, an interest quite different from that of those other nations of antiquity.