Furious believers unceasingly instigated violence against all who wandered from the worship of Jehovah--they succeeded in establishing a code of blood, making death the penalty for religious faults.

Piety brings, almost always, singular contradictions of vehemence and mildness.

This zeal, unknown to the coarser simplicity of the time of the Judges, inspired tones of moving prophecy and tender unction, which the world had never heard till then.

A strong tendency toward social questions already made itself felt; Utopias, dreams of a perfect society, took a place in the code.

The Pentateuch, a mixture of patriarchal morality and ardent devotion, primitive intuitions and pious subtleties, like those which filled the souls of Hezekiah, of Josiah, and of Jeremiah, was thus fixed in the form in which we now see it, and became for ages the absolute rule of the national mind.
This great book once created, the history of the Jewish people unfolded itself with an irresistible force.