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.