Transported to such surroundings, Israel received the mental shock which an American of a generation past experienced on first visiting Europe.  The influence of this surprise was very marked.  Israel’s genius flowered in this strange soil.  Her literary life centres in Babylonia.  The second Isaiah wrote there his immortal pages.  The unknown authors of the noble histories, whose charm never stales, fashioned there the traditions and records of the past into their present shape.  There the great legal codification was carried out, and the institutional system of Israel perfected.  A new circle of ideas show themselves at work in the mind of the people while in exile.  From Chaldean scholars the Israelites probably learned the ancient legends of the Beginnings, which they worked over in their profounder religious consciousness into the simple and spiritual forms in which they stand in Genesis.  From Persia they either received bodily the system of angelology that thenceforth appears in their writings, or they received the quickening influence of a kindred religion upon the thoughts latent in their beliefs.[50]

These intellectual influences wrought directly upon the development of Israel’s religion.  In the revelation of the prosperous life of these alien peoples the chosen race saw herself but one member of the great world family.  Persia’s ethical and spiritual religion discovered to the nobler natures of Israel the very ideals which they and their fathers had long been strenuously seeking.  These heathen were worshipping the same source and standard of goodness before which they themselves had been doing homage.  A new sense of human brotherhood stirred within the exclusive race, and with it the perception that there is one Father of all men.  Religion threw off all lingering polytheistic notions and soared to the vision of One God.  Monotheism dates as a clear consciousness from this era.[51] It was saved from becoming an abstract, philosophic conception, merging good and evil in a common source, by the stern ethical dualism of the Persians.  Though there be but one God, who is ultimately to triumph over all evil, yet, said these Persians, evil is a present power in creation, organized and active, waging constant warfare with the powers of goodness.  Earth is the scene of the battle between light and darkness, in which each man must play his part, for weal or for woe.

These high ethical and religious conceptions were nourished from the deeps of sorrow out of which the people cried bitterly to God.  Their nation was crushed, their homes were broken up, and they themselves were captives in a strange land.  Israel might have said,

    A deep distress hath humanized my soul.

All tender and gracious and holy humanities sprang forth from the hard Hebrew nature under this deep distress.  The national ideal changed wholly.  The old dream of a puissant king passed from the minds of the better men, and we hear little of it thenceforth in the writings of the nation.  In the place of it arose the vision of the Righteous, Suffering, Servant of God—­the Nation trained in the school of sorrow for a sacrificial mission, and charged to lead the peoples of the earth into the knowledge of the Eternal, who loveth righteousness.