because wanting in the antagonism required in connubial unions;[5] the
duty of offering up prayer, one of the noblest offices of piety, and the
most effectual medium of communion with God; that of confessing sins,
the inevitable consequence of human frailty; the injunctions to reject
idolatry, divinations, charms, exorcisms, sortileges, and all manner of
superstitions, all of which are obstacles to the development of the
religious idea; and several other precepts, which may be found dispersed
throughout the sacred code, all having similar tendencies, and coming
more or less directly within the scope we have assigned to them.

[Note 5: Another probable reason of this prohibition is, that the
practice of such unions would be fraught with great domestic disorders
and unhappiness, and consequent social evils. But it is opportune here
to remind the leader, that many attempts have been made, in the course
of centuries, by eminent expositors, to assign to many of the Mosaic
ordinances motives of various characters, rationalistic and
metaphysical, sanitary, political, and mystical, but all more or less
conjectural. To the religious man the positive knowledge of the true
motives is not at all essential for the performance of the divine
precepts; and in the words of our author himself, as stated elsewhere,
"we have to bow reverently before an explicit and rigorous commandment
of God, and we consider it as calculated to contribute to the promotion
of our own weal."--THE TRANSLATOR.]

CHAPTER XV.

XCIII. CASTING now a retrospective glance on what we have hitherto
briefly stated, it will be easy to deduce, from the aggregate of these
notions, the principal characteristic of that wondrous institution,
which it pleased the Divine mercy to found upon earth for the benefit of
the human family, selecting for its organ the people of Israel; an
institution, which, in reference to the means adopted for its
preservation and propagation, is called _Judaism_. The scope of Judaism
is, then, the propagation among men of the _religious idea_, and this
comprises the doctrines revealed respecting the Deity and respecting
man, in consequence of which the latter will be able to attain his true
goal. Respecting God, revelation teaches that He is a Being
absolute--that is to say, that has in Himself all the sources of
existence, of will, of power, and of action--hence He is eternal,
all-perfect, all-powerful, all-holy; He is unique, because