the seat of government. As in Catholicism the institutionalizing of
religion that followed the period of free prophetic life was an effort to
embody that life, to incrust and thus preserve it; and, in the one case as
in the other, though the crust of institutions choked the further growth
of spiritual religion, it yet did keep it sluggishly alive within this
hard bark, through times that else would have proved fatal to it. As in
Catholicism, this priestly cultus really drilled deep into the natures of
men the principles and laws and habitudes of ethical and spiritual
religion; and stored the force which, when its rigid routine and fettering
formalism became unbearable, burst through this crust and opened a new
world of fresh, free life.

Of this singular shaping of the nation's experiences to further the growth
of true religion, the Old Testament is the impressive record.

6. _Israel's literature thus presents the picture of a nation's patient,
insistent pressing forward, through long centuries, toward the fruition of
its ideal, the realization of true religion._

So continuous is Israel's movement toward the ideal of religion, so
straight the line of her advance that it seems as though the nation had a
conscious aim, seen afar and steadfastly pursued by generation after
generation, unwilling to stop short of attainment. It is the founder of
scientific Biblical criticism who thus expresses his sense of the
wonderfulness of this historic movement:

"This aim is Perfect Religion; a good which all aspiring nations of
antiquity made an attempt to attain; which some, the Indians and
Persians, for example, really labored to achieve with admirable
devotion of noble energies, but which this people alone clearly
discerned from the beginning, and then pursued for centuries through
all difficulties, and with the utmost firmness and consistency, until
they attained it, so far as among men and in ancient times attainment
was possible."[22]

7. _The literature of Christian Israel records the realization of this
long sought ideal, the fruition of this organic growth._

The nation found the times ripe at last for the final process of this
historic evolution; the dead cerements of Judaism fell apart, and thereout
bloomed that perfect flower of religion, the religion of the Christ,
simple, free, ethical, spiritual. The extant literature of this last
creative effort of Israel constitutes the New T