"
Through those long ages of darkness, devil-worship, and polytheism (in
its grossest forms all around), the Jew stood up in unfaltering protest
against all. Persecutions, proscriptions, tortures in every form, were
of no avail. On the gibbet, on the rack, amid the flames, his last words
embodied the central confession of Judaism, "O Israel, the Lord _thy_ God
is one Lord." Christianity, the appointed custodier of the still more
central truth, "God is love," had to all appearance failed of its
mission; had not only merged its higher message in a theistic
presentation, dark and terroristic as that of Judaism at its dawn, but
had absorbed into its scheme, under other names, the gods many who swarm
all around it; till nowhere and never, save by some soul upborne by its
own fervour above these dense fogs and mists, could individual man meet
his God face to face, and realise that higher life of the soul which is
His free gift to all who seek it. Between this heathenised Christianity
and Judaism, the contrast was the sharpest, the contest the most
embittered and unvarying.
Pages:
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139