tic peoples is, that its priesthood
has always been subordinated to individual inspiration. Besides its
priests, each wandering tribe had its _nabi_ or prophet, a sort of
living oracle who was consulted for the solution of obscure questions
supposed to require a high degree of clairvoyance. The _nabis_ of
Israel, organized in groups or schools, had great influence. Defenders
of the ancient democratic spirit, enemies of the rich, opposed to all
political organization, and to whatsoever might draw Israel into the
paths of other nations, they were the true authors of the religious
preeminence of the Jewish people. Very early they announced unlimited
hopes, and when the people, in part the victims of their impolitic
counsels, had been crushed by the Assyrian power, they proclaimed that
a kingdom without bounds was reserved for them, that one day Jerusalem
would be the capital of the whole world, and the human race become
Jews. Jerusalem and its temples appeared to them as a city placed on
the summit of a mountain, toward which all people should turn, as an
oracle whence the universal law should proceed, as the centre of an
ideal kingdom, in which the human race, set at rest by Israel, should
find again the joys of Eden.[3]

[Footnote 1: I remind the reader that this word means here simply the
people who speak or have spoken one of the languages called Semitic.
Such a designation is entirely defective; but it is one of those
words, like "Gothic architecture," "Arabian numerals," which we must
preserve to be understood, even after we have demonstrated the error
that they imply.]

[Footnote 2: I Sam. x. 25.]

[Footnote 3: Isa. ii. 1-4, and especially chaps. xl., and following,
lx., and following; Micah iv. 1, and following. It must be recollected
that the second part of the book of Isaiah, beginning at chap. xl., is
not by Isaiah.]

Mystical utterances already made themselves heard, tending to exalt
the martyrdom and celebrate the power of the "Man of Sorrows."
Respecting one of those sublime sufferers, who, like Jeremiah, stained
the streets of Jerusalem with their blood, one of the inspired wrote a
song upon the sufferings and triumph of the "servant of God," in which
all the prophetic force of the genius of Israel seemed
concentrated.[1] "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness. He
is despised and rejected of men; and we hid, as it were, our f