God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees and established him as a
foundation upon which to build a nation. He chose him because of all
the men then upon the earth, he as an inspired religious thinker was
best fitted to restore faith in the world and the worship of the one
God, because Abraham possessed within him that soil most congenial
to the development and growth of the spiritual idea--Abraham is the
spiritual father of the Jews, and they are the spiritual progenitors
of all those nations, tribes and peoples who now acknowledge "A
personal God, supreme and eternal in the universe which He created."
In what does the greatness of the Jew consist? What great and lasting
contribution has the Israelitish nation made to the development and
progress of mankind? "The greatness of the Jew does not consist
of political ascendancy, not in great attainments in the arts and
sciences, nor in cities and fortresses and chariots and horses, nor in
that outward splendor which will attract the gaze of the world, and
thus provoke conquests and political combination and grand alliances
and colonial settlements by which the capitol on Zion's hill would
become another Rome or Tyre or Carthage or Athens or Alexandria, but
quite another kind of greatness. It was to be moral and spiritual."
This was the grand destiny of the Jewish race.