worship of Jehovah.[1] No Israelite cared to convert the stranger to a worship which was the patrimony of the sons of Abraham.  The development of the pietistic spirit, after Ezra and Nehemiah, led to a much firmer and more logical conception.  Judaism became the true religion in a more absolute manner; to all who wished, the right of entering it was given;[2] soon it became a work of piety to bring into it the greatest number possible.[3] Doubtless the refined sentiment which elevated John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul above the petty ideas of race, did not yet exist; for, by a strange contradiction, these converts were little respected and were treated with disdain.[4] But the idea of a sovereign religion, the idea that there was something in the world superior to country, to blood, to laws—­the idea which makes apostles and martyrs—­was founded.  Profound pity for the pagans, however brilliant might be their worldly fortune, was henceforth the feeling of every Jew.[5] By a cycle of legends destined to furnish models of immovable firmness, such as the histories of Daniel and his companions, the mother of the Maccabees and her seven sons,[6] the romance of the race-course of Alexandria[7]—­the guides of the people sought above all to inculcate the idea, that virtue consists in a fanatical attachment to fixed religious institutions.

[Footnote 1:  Ruth i. 16.]

[Footnote 2:  Esther ix. 27.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xxiii. 15; Josephus, Vita, 23; B.J., II. xvii. 10, VII. iii. 3; Ant., XX. ii. 4; Horat., Sat.  I., iv., 143; Juv., xiv. 96, and following; Tacitus, Ann., II. 85; Hist., V. 5; Dion Cassius, xxxvii. 17.]

[Footnote 4:  Mishnah, Shebiit, X. 9; Talmud of Babylon, Niddah, fol. 13 b; Jebamoth, 47 b, Kiddushim, 70 b; Midrash, Jalkut Ruth, fol. 163 d.]

[Footnote 5:  Apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius, Cod. pseud., V.T., ii., 147, and following.]

[Footnote 6:  II.  Book of Maccabees, ch. vii. and the De Maccabaeis, attributed to Josephus.  Cf.  Epistle to the Hebrews xi. 33, and following.]

[Footnote 7:  III.  Book (Apocr.) of Maccabees; Rufin, Suppl. ad Jos., Contra Apionem, ii. 5.]

The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes made this idea a passion, almost a frenzy.  It was something very analogous to that which happened under Nero, two hundred and thirty years later.  Rage and despair threw the believers into the world of visions and dreams.  The first apocalypse, “The Book of Daniel,” appeared.  It was like a revival of prophecy, but under a very different form from the ancient one, and with a much larger idea of the destinies of the world.  The Book of Daniel gave, in a manner, the last expression to the Messianic hopes.  The Messiah was no longer a king, after the manner of David and Solomon, a theocratic and Mosaic Cyrus; he was a “Son of man” appearing