Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/221

 the Hindus birth determines for every individual even his rank and his relation to Brahma, and accordingly they do not in any way demand that others should adopt their religion; in fact, amongst the Hindus, such a demand has no meaning whatever, since, according to their ideas, all the various peoples of the earth belong to their religion, and foreign nations are reckoned collectively as belonging to a particular caste. Still this exclusiveness is rightly regarded as more striking in the case of the Jewish people, for such strong attachment to nationality is in complete contradiction with the idea that God is to be conceived of only in universal thought, and not in one particular characterisation. Amongst the Persians God is The Good. That is also a universal characteristic; but it is itself still in the condition of immediacy, consequently God is identical with light, and that is a form of particularity. The Jewish God exists only for Thought, and that stands in contrast with the idea of the limitation of God to the nation. It is true that amongst the Jewish people, too, consciousness rises to the thought of universality, and this thought is given expression to in several places. Psalm cxvii. 1: “O praise the Lord, all ye nations, praise him, all ye peoples. For his grace and truth are great toward us to all eternity.” The glory of God is to be made manifest amongst all peoples, and it is in the later prophets particularly that this universality makes its appearance as a higher demand. Isaiah makes God even say, “Of the heathen who shall honour Jehovah will I make priests and Levites;” and a similar idea is expressed also in the words, “In every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.” All this, however, comes later. According to the dominant fundamental idea, the Jewish people are the chosen people, and the universality is thus reduced to particularity. But as we have already seen above in the development of the Divine end how the limitation attached to this is based on the limitation