he
lectures of philosophers. The synagogue, however, was a territorial
institution; all the Jews in the neighbourhood came to its services.
It kept them acquainted with the law which otherwise they might have
forgotten, and also with the writings of the prophets, which were
regularly read, and thus strengthened the bonds which held all Jews
together, in the past history and in the growing hopes of their race.

The National Hopes.--Judaism becomes more and more, as befits a faith
of which prophets are the principal exponents, a religion of hope.
Debarred by their subjection under successive heathen powers from
political activity, and keenly aware of their outward humiliation,
the Jews turn to an ideal world in which they are free. The prophets
had spoken of a judgment in which Jehovah would judge the whole
world, of a happy time when Israel would be at peace from all his
enemies, and God and people would dwell together in full communion;
and when the land of Israel would become the religious capital of the
world. They had added to their picture features even more ideal, and
had declared that the conflicts of external nature would cease, the
wild animals would grow tame and friendly, all physical as well as
all moral evil would disappear. It was in this world, not in a remote
region or in the land beyond death, that all this was to be realised.
Jerusalem is the centre of the picture and the Jewish nation stands
in the foreground of it as the chosen people of the God of all the
world. Now these predictions, which with the prophets are vague and
idealised, were taken by the Jews always more seriously and worked
out in detail. After the prophet comes the apocalyptic writer, such
as Daniel (the Apocalypse of the New Testament belongs to the same
class of literature), who is able to give the exact course of the
history which is to lead up to the final judgment, to fix its precise
date, and to give many details of the ultimate state of affairs.
These "revelations," which were written generally to comfort the Jews
in their trials and to encourage them to steadfastness in
persecution, were very popular. It is true that they nourished the
national pride, and enabled the Jew to feel himself superior to a
world in which he occupied outwardly no great position; but on the
other hand the hopes they fed were not necessarily unspiritual; at
the Christian era we find it to be a mark of the most genuine piety
that one should be "waiting