Another extract will give us his ideas of the Jews. He thinks that the purport of the Old Testament can be best summed up in the words that it is a history of sin and redemption. After explaining that the narrative of the Fall is in accordance with the laws of a grand and comprehensive philosophy, and that the objections taken to it are the product of narrower and shallower modes of thought, he proceeds, passing by the story of the Deluge and the dispersion, to consider the selection of Abraham. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘were the Jews selected as the chosen people of God?’ Not, he thinks, because of their moral superiority. He contrasts the Jewish ethics and those of the Greeks, considerably to the detriment of the former, and then sums up the matter as follows: ‘Enough has perhaps been said to show that we cannot claim as a thing demonstrable a great moral superiority for the Hebrew line generally over the whole of the historically known contemporary races. I, nevertheless, cannot but believe that there was an interior circle, known to us by its fruits in the Psalter and the prophetic books, of morality and sanctity altogether superior to what was to be found elsewhere, and due rather to the pre-Mosaic than to the Mosaic religion of the race. But it remains to answer with reverence the question, Why, if not for a distinctly superior morality, nor as a full religious provision for the whole wants of man, _why_ was the race chosen as a race to receive the promises, to guard the oracles, and to fulfil the hopes of the great Redemption?