her ribald tongue before these illustrious writings,
and Indecency vomit her own nastiness elsewhere than on our Bible.

II.

The Bible lays a yet deeper claim upon our reverence These books
constitute the literature of a people whose genius was religion, whose
mission was its evolution into universal forms, whose writings express the
moods and tenses of that development; whose history is the organic growth
which flowered in the life of Him who freed religion from every swathing
band, and gave the world its pure essential spirit; after Whom all races
are being drawn as one flock under one Shepherd.

1. _Israel's specialty in history was religion._

Every people finds laid upon it certain necessary activities, in most of
which all peoples find their common tasks. Every nation must cultivate
agriculture handicrafts, trade and commerce; must develop social,
political and religious institutions. Each people will, however, do some
one thing better than the rest of its tasks, better than it is done by
other peoples. Each great race has some commanding inspiration; some
ideal which masters every other aspiration and ambition, energizes its
efforts and shapes its destiny. It creates a specialty among the nations.
The real legacy of each great race lies in the works wrought in the line
of its highest aptitudes. Thus Rome developed a genius for civil
organization. She conquered the whole western world, united isolated
nations under one empire, cleared the Mediterranean for safe and free
communication, opened roads as arteries through the vast body politic,
established post communications for travellers and the mails, carried law
and order into every obscure hamlet, consolidated a polity which, by sheer
massiveness, lasted for generations after the soul of Rome had fled, and
left to posterity, in her institutes the basis for modern jurisprudence.
Thus Greece evolved a genius for art, developed architecture and sculpture
to the highest perfection the world has seen, made statues thicker than
men in Athens, made men more beautiful than statues, sighed even after
Virtue as the Becoming, the Perfect Beauty, left the world temples whose
ruins are inspirations, and marbles whose discovery dates the epochs of
culture. Israel essayed to do many things that other peoples achieved, and
promised success in more than one direction. At a certain period she bade
fair to develop into a martial empire, and to become a lesser Ass