w Power, see now Love, perfect too.
Perfect I call Thy plan,
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remaker, complete, I trust what thou shalt do.'

"It sounds like a bit of Bachja. That there is a Power outside us nobody
denies; that this Power works for our good and wisely, is not so hard to
grant when the facts of the soul are weighed with the facts of Nature.
Power, Love, Wisdom--there you have a real trinity which makes up the
Jewish God. And in this God we trust, incomprehensible as are His ways,
unintelligible as is His essence. 'Thy ways are not My ways nor Thy
thoughts My thoughts.' That comes into collision with no modern
philosophies; we appeal to experience and make no demands upon the
faculty for believing things 'because they are impossible.' And we are
proud and happy in that the dread Unknown God of the infinite Universe
has chosen our race as the medium by which to reveal His will to the
world. We are sanctified to His service. History testifies that this has
verily been our mission, that we have taught the world religion as truly
as Greece has taught beauty and science. Our miraculous survival through
the cataclysms of ancient and modern dynasties is a proof that our
mission is not yet over."

The sonata came to an end; Percy Saville started a comic song, playing
his own accompaniment. Fortunately, it was loud and rollicking.

"And do you really believe that we are sanctified to God's service?"
said Esther, casting a melancholy glance at Percy's grimaces.

"Can there be any doubt of it? God made choice of one race to be
messengers and apostles, martyrs at need to His truth. Happily, the
sacred duty is ours," he said earnestly, utterly unconscious of the
incongruity that struck Esther so keenly. And yet, of the two, he had by
far the greater gift of humor. It did not destroy his idealism, but kept
it in touch with things mundane. Esther's vision, though more
penetrating, lacked this corrective of humor, which makes always for
breadth of view. Perhaps it was because she was a woman, that the
trivial, sordid details of life's comedy hurt her so acutely that she
could scarcely sit out the play patiently. Where Raphael would have
admired the lute, Esther was troubled by the little rifts in it.

"But isn't that a narrow conception of God's revelation?" she asked.

"No. Why should God not teach through a great race as through a great
man?"

"And you really think that Judaism is not dead, inte