We pass from such à priori ideas to the evidence of the Bible. There we find that these principles were embodied first in Judaism. There the whole nation was the Church. The Jew entered into the religious privileges of his life, not by any conscious act of his own, but by being born of Jewish parents; he retained his true life by remaining in contact with his nation. The union of the different members of the nation with each other is so intimate that the whole nation is spoken of as a personal unit. It is called 'God's Son, His 'first-born Son,' 'Jehovah's servant.' The ideal of prophecy is essentially that of a restored nation rejoicing in the rule of national righteousness. Again, the nation was chosen out specially to bear witness to truth, truth about the nature of God, the Almighty, the Eternal, the Holy; truth embodied in the facts of history, and deepened in the revelations of prophecy; truths which the fathers teach their children, 'that they should not hide them from the children of the generations to come[336].' In the striking phrase of S. Athanasius, the law and the prophets were 'a sacred school of the knowledge of God and of spiritual life for the whole world[337].' Their worship, too, was essentially social and national. From the first it centred round great national events, the fortunes of the harvest, or the crises of national history: the individual was purified from sin that he might be worthy to take part in the national service; the events of the nation's history were celebrated in religious hymns; the capital of the nation became the one and only recognised centre for the highest worship.
But Judaism adds to these principles a further principle of its own. It claims that such privileges as were granted to it, were not granted to it for its own sake, but that it might be a source of blessing to all nations: it assumes that they are on a lower religious level than itself; that instead of each nation progressing equally along the line of religious life, truth, and worship, other nations have fallen backward and the Jew has been chosen out for a special privilege. It is the principle that God works by 'limitation,' by apparent 'exclusiveness,' by that which is in its essence 'sacerdotalism'; the principle that God does not give His gifts equally to all, but specially to a few, that they may use them for the good of the whole. This principle seems at first sight to offend some modern abstract ideas of justice and equality; but the moment we examine the facts of life, we find it prevailing universally. Each nation has its peculiar gift: the Greek makes his parallel claim to be specially gifted with the love of knowledge and the power of artistic expression; the Roman with the power of rule and the belief in law. Or, again, within a single nation, it is the artist who enables us to see the beauty of a face or a landscape which had escaped us before:
Art was given for that,
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out.
It is the poet who interprets our inner nature or the magic of the external world, and becomes
A priest to us all
Of the wonder and bloom of the world,
Which we see with his eyes and are glad:
he sings