11

To this rude people God caused Himself to be announced first, simply as “the God of their fathers,” in order to make them acquainted and familiar with the idea of a God belonging to them also, and to begin with confidence in Him.

12

Through the miracles with which He led them out of Egypt, and planted them in Canaan, He testified of Himself to them as a God mightier than any other God.

13

And as He proceeded, demonstrating Himself to be the Mightiest of all, which only One can be, He gradually accustomed them thus to the idea of the one.

14

But how far was this conception of The One, below the true transcendental conception of the One which Reason learnt to derive, so late with certainty, from the conception of the Infinite One?

15

Although the best of the people were already more or less approaching the true conception of the One only, the people as a whole could not for a long time elevate themselves to it.  And this was the sole true reason why they so often abandoned their one God, and expected to find the One, i. e., as they meant, the Mightiest, in some God or other, belonging to another people.

16

But of what kind of moral education was a people so raw, so incapable of abstract thoughts, and so entirely in their childhood capable?  Of none other but such as is adapted to the age of children, an education by rewards and punishments addressed to the senses.

17

Here too Education and Revelation meet together.  As yet God could give to His people no other religion, no other law than one through obedience to which they might hope to be happy, or through disobedience to which they must fear to be unhappy.  For as yet their regards went no further than this earth.  They knew of no immortality of the soul; they yearned after no life to come.  But now to reveal these things to one whose reason had as yet so little growth, what would it have been but the same fault in the Divine Rule as is committed by the schoolmaster, who chooses to hurry his pupil too rapidly, and boast of his progress, rather than thoroughly to ground him?

18

But, it will be asked, to what purpose was this education of so rude a people, a people with whom God had to begin so entirely from the beginning?  I reply, in order that in the process of time He might employ particular members of this nation as the Teachers of other people.  He was bringing up in them the future Teachers of the human race.  It was the Jews who became their teachers, none but Jews; only men out of a people so brought up, could be their teachers.

19

For to proceed.  When the Child by dint of blows and caresses had grown and was now come to years of understanding, the Father sent it at once into foreign countries:  and here it recognised at once the Good which in its Father’s house it had possessed, and had not been conscious of.