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Logic Taught by Love

then is a fitting occasion for Judaism to come to the front. It reminds us that He Who gave to us a certain limited power of sympathy with strangers, reserved for Himself the luxury of limitless sympathy, precisely because He is not a stranger but the Father of us all; that this Father in Heaven has placed us on earth; that the particular stratum of the fourth dimension wherein He has located us is that of three dimensional (i.e., physical) consciousness; that mere vague sensuous sympathy, not safeguarded by Law, may be not virtue but vice; and that the Eternal, acting within the limits of His own Holiness, has imposed on our faculties an order in development and a sequence of action which cannot be safely ignored.

We are prone to think Jews indifferent to religion and careless of our well-being, because they leave us so much to ourselves. Our own restless fussiness causes us to think every one callous who is not incessantly fidgeting about, trying to improve and convert somebody else. The New Testament (to say nothing of the Old) might have taught us that he is the best teacher who most perfectly reflects the Divine patience and willingness to suspend action. The Ideal Saviour seems to be asleep, leaving others to manage the ship as they will; till they cry to him in the storm, "Master, we perish."[1] In another version of the storm-myth,[2] the teacher, perceiving that men would make him a King by force, retires to commune with his God, and leaves the disciples to go on their way alone. But when it is dark and the tempest arises, they find that, without using their means of transport, he has reached

  1. Luke viii.
  2. John vi.