against the unethical tabu-morality of the priesthood; the revolt was grounded in a lofty moral idealism, which found expression in a half-symbolic vision of a coming state in which might and right should coincide.  The apocalyptic prophecies of post-exilic Judaism, which were not based, like some political predictions of the earlier prophets, on a statesmanlike view of the international situation, but on hopes of supernatural intervention, had their roots in visions of a new and better world-order.  This aspiration, which had to disentangle itself by degrees from the patriotic dreams of a stubborn and unfortunate race, was projected into the near future, and was mixed with less worthy political ambitions which had a different origin.  The prophet always foreshortens his revelation, and generally blends the city of God with a vision of his own country transfigured.  We see him doing this even to-day, in his Utopian dreams of social reconstruction.

And so it has always been.  We remember Condorcet foretelling a reign of truth and peace just before he was compelled to flee from the storm of calumny to die in a damp cell at Bourg la Reine; and Kant hailing the approach of a peaceful international republic while Napoleon was preparing to drown Europe in blood.  Apocalyptism is a compromise between the religion of rewards and punishments and the religion of spiritual deliverance.  It calls a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old; but its discontent with the old is mainly the result of a moral and spiritual valuation of life.  Greek philosophy has really much in common with Hebrew prophecy, though the Greek envisaged his ideal world as the eternal background of reality, and not under the form of history.  In its maturest form, it is a transvaluation of all values in accordance with an absolute ideal standard—­that of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.  This idealism appears in a still more drastic form in the religions of Asia, which preach deliverance by demonetising at a stroke all the world’s currency.  Spiritual values are alone accepted; man wins peace and freedom by renouncing in advance all of which fortune may deprive him.

We are apt to assume, in deference to our theories of human progress, that the evolution of religion is normally from a lower to a higher type.  It would, indeed, be absurd to question that the religion of a civilised people is usually more spiritual and more rational than that of barbarians.  But none the less, the history of religions is generally a history of decline.  In Judaism the prophets came before the Scribes and the Pharisees.  Brahmanism and Buddhism were both degraded by superstitions and unethical rites.  Christianity, which began as a republication of the purest prophetic teaching, has suffered the same fate.  In each case, when the revelation has lost its freshness, and the enthusiasm which it evoked has begun to cool, a reversion to older habits of thought and customs takes place; and sometimes it may be said that the old religion has really conquered the new.