stood alone, the friend and elect of the Eternal. 'He showeth his word unto Jacob, his statues and ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge of his laws.'[1]
Poor Israel! poor ancient people![2] It was revealed to thee that righteousness is salvation; the question, what righteousness is, was thy stumbling-stone. Seer of the vision of peace, that yet couldst not see the things which belong unto thy peace! with that blindness thy solitary pre-eminence ended, and the new Israel, made up out of all nations and languages, took thy room. But, thy visitation complete, thy temple in ruins, thy reign over, thine office done, thy children dispersed, thy teeth drawn, thy shekels of silver and gold plundered, did there yet stay with thee any remembrance of thy primitive intuition, simple and sublime, of the Eternal that loveth righteousness? Perhaps not; the Talmudists were fully as well able to efface it as the Fathers. But if there did, what punishment can have been to thee like the punishment of watching the performances of the Aryan genius upon the foundation which thou hadst given to it?—to behold this terrible and triumphant philosopher, with his monotheistic idea and his metaphysical Trinity, 'neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance'? Like the torture for a poet to hear people laying down the law about poetry who have not the sense what poetry is,—a sense with which he was born! like the affliction to a man of science to hear people talk of things as proved who do not even know what constitutes a fact! From the Council of Nicæa down to Convocation and our two bishops 'doing something' for the Godhead of the, Eternal Son, what must thou have had to suffer!
