The traces of divinity ran through the whole of it.

But, beautiful as it was, it would not have been well that it should have lasted, for had it been so, mankind would have grown to depend too much upon the manifested Divine life walking incarnate side by side with it.

And it was necessary that the growing child should prove his own limbs, and the growing intelligence should learn to depend upon itself.

Then we come to a long period when the tyranny of the King brought out more and more strongly the usefulness of the Teacher, and when the Teacher was continually standing between the power of the tyrant and the helplessness of the people; when religion became a shield for the weak, a strong check for the violence of power.

And we pass thus through all that long period of human history where the oppressed found their only refuge in the priests of the religions, and found them a sure protection against the sword of the secular power.