He declares that each nation has its own work to do in the world, in the
uplifting and maintenance of some special idea which is necessary to the
welfare and development of humanity. The place he assigns to Judaism is
precisely that which made it dear to George Eliot, because it embodied her
conception of religion and its social functions.

"Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of
affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the
reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life
into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and
weak and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us."

Again, he utters words which are simply an expression of George Eliot's own
sentiments.

"Where else is there a nation of whom it may be as truly said that
their religion and law and moral life mingled as the stream of blood in
the heart and made one growth--where else a people who kept and
enlarged their spiritual store at the very time when they were hunted
with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires that chase the wild beast
from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman that, swimming to save
his life, he held the roll of his writings between his teeth and saved
them from the waters. But how much more than that is true of our race?
They struggled to keep their place among the nations like heroes--yea,
when the hand was hacked off, they clung with the teeth; but when the
plow and the harrow had passed over the last visible signs of their
national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with
the blood of the sowers and planters, they said, 'The spirit is alive,
let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting because movable--so that
it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn
may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on
an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though
often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded
amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the
Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of
them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he
diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines
of Greece and carrying their products to the world. The