[W]e do not at all like the idea of a “chosen people”. Democrats by birth and education, we should prefer to think that all nations and individuals start level in the search for God, or even that all religions are equally true.

It must be admitted at once that Christianity makes no concessions to this point of view. It does not tell of a human search for God at all, but of something done by God for, to, and about Man. And the way in which it is done is selective, undemocratic, to the highest degree. After the knowledge of God had been universally lost or obscured, one man from the whole earth (Abraham) is picked out. He is separated (miserably enough, we may suppose) from his natural surroundings, sent into a strange country, and made the ancestor of a nation who are to carry the knowledge of the true God. Within this nation there is further selection: some die in the desert, some remain behind in Babylon. There is further selection still. The process grows narrower and narrower, sharpens at last into one small bright point like the head of a spear. It is a Jewish girl at her prayers.

The apple tree spread wide its shade
To shield the garden from the sun;
In dappled light the Virgin prayed
That, cloud or clear, God’s will be done.

The apple blossoms frothed and fell
In pools of white about her feet,
Wing-brushed when heaven came to tell
Of earth’s release and sin’s defeat.

She trod the blossoms to the ground,
For she would bear a finer fruit
Whose flesh would make the sick grow sound
And heal the wounded world at root.

The apples on the market stall
Are tempting to the eye and tongue,
But her fruit has surpassed them all:
High praise to Christ, our life, be sung!