Salvador, that the Prophets were, in Church and State, the
equivalent of the modern liberty of the press, gives a just but not an
adequate conception of the part fulfilled in national and universal
history by this great element of Jewish life; by means of which, the
canon of inspiration never being complete, the persons most eminent in
genius and moral feeling could not only denounce and reprobate, with
the direct authority of the Almighty, whatever appeared to them
deserving of such treatment, but could give forth better and higher
interpretations of the national religion, which thenceforth became
part of the religion. Accordingly, whoever can divest himself of the
habit of reading the Bible as if it was one book, which until lately
was equally inveterate in Christians and in unbelievers, sees with
admiration the vast interval between the morality and religion of
the Pentateuch, or even of the historical books (the unmistakable work
of Hebrew Conservatives of the sacerdotal order), and the morality and
religion of the Prophecies: a distance as wide as between these last
and the Gospels. Conditions more favourable to Progress could not
easily exist: accordingly, the Jews, instead of being stationary
like other Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most progressive
people of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the
starting-point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation.
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