MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD says that "the best way to bring up a boy, is to begin one hundred years, at least, before his advent." This is an advanced mortalmind view of the law of heredity; for this pseudo creator and lawgiver is ever seeking, through education, physical training, mating and selection, to improve and beautify its so-called creations.
For ages, the painters and sculptors of the world have been busy at perfecting designs for the ideal, model, man; while the more material or "practical" of the race are hoping, through college culture, athletic sports, or mechanical art, to develop a higher type of manhood. The civilizations and creeds of the world have regarded man as a fallen creature who, by human or superhuman agency, was to be raised and restored to his lost estate.
Though having the same end in view (making man perfect), the Hebrews — or Jews, as outsiders called them — ignored the methods of other nations, and sought in a mental rather than material way to develop, or make manifest, the True Man. But it looks as though, in this process, the Jews were unconscious of their own mortal mind agency; for they attributed all the work to God. They were commanded to prepare the way and make straight the path of the Perfect Man; and they did prepare the way for the noble scion of the House of David, by beginning to think of him over eighteen hundred years prior to his advent on the plains of Bethlehem. By limiting his line of descent to the most spiritual families and individuals, they kept it pure for over forty generations. Judah, for instance, was chosen instead of Reuben; and thus the survival of the fittest was maintained. On his deathbed, Jacob prophesied his coming as Shiloh, (which being interpreted is, the "Rest Giver; the Man of Rest; Rich in Peace,") who should draw — gather, not drive — all nations unto him.
