Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/530

 gradually adapted themselves to their situation among idolaters, and became at length indistinguishably fused, as the ten scribes had been, with the alien races. But a few remained faithful to their God. These few it was who formed the whole of the nation which, when return was possible, returned to their native soil. Those who were not inspired by a deep sense of the sanctity of their national religion; those to whom the restoration of their national rites was not the one object of overwhelming importance; those whose hopes of national restoration were of a temporal rather than a spiritual nature, had no sufficient motive to return to their native soil. Jerusalem could have no attractions for them which Babylon did not possess. Thus, by a natural process, the most ardent, the most spiritual, the most unbending monotheists were weeded out from the mass of the community, and it was they who accompanied Zerubbabel or Ezra on his sacred mission. Misfortune, which had not shaken their faith, had deepened and purified it. Not only were they Jehovists, but they were Jehovists of the sternest type. There was among them none of that admixture of levity, and none of that facile adaptability to foreign rites, which characterized the oldest Jews. From this time forward their monotheism has never been broken by a single relapse.

Thus the Captivity forms the turning-point in the character of the Jews; for, in fact, the nation which was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar was not the nation which, in the days of Kyros and Artaxerxes returned to re-colonize and rebuild Jerusalem. The conquered people belonged to a monarchy which, if it was now feeble and sunken, was directly descended from one which had been glorious and mighty, and which had aimed at preserving for Judea the status and dignity of an independent power. Under its influence the Jews had been mobile, idolatrous, deaf to the voice of Jehovistic prophets, neglectful of Jehovistic rites; desirous of conquest, and, when that was impossible, unwilling on political grounds to submit to foreign domination; rude if not semi-barbarous in morals, and distracted by the contention of rival religious parties. But this polity, of which the ruling motives were mainly political, was succeeded after the return of the exiles by a polity of which the ruling motives were exclusively religious. All were now adherents of Jehovah;