r,
Und als Todtenlampen schweben
Nachts die Sterne ueber mir.

To find an equally beautiful expression of faith in God as a universal
spiritual presence that transcends all space relations, we must go
back to the anonymous Jewish poet who wrote the psalm in which occur
the lines:

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
And whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me,
And the light about me shall be night;
Even the darkness hideth me not from thee;
But the night shineth as the day.
For the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."

As a matter of fact, both poems are to be accounted for as equally the
product of a rarely gifted people--a people with a unique genius for
religion.[D]

_Disraeli and His Oriental Imagination_

Benjamin Disraeli belonged to a family who left Spain in the fifteenth
century to avoid the horrors of the Inquisition. Upon their escape, in
gratitude to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unheard
of trials, they adopted the name Disraeli, in order that their race
might be forever recognized. Of such a family Benjamin Disraeli was a
worthy representative. He never was ashamed of his race. On the
contrary, he gloried in it, and lost no opportunity to put forth the
claim of his people to be the true aristocracy of the earth. "Has not
the Jew the oldest blood and the finest genius of the world?" he asks.
And again, in one of his books (_Tancred_, 1847), he says, "The Jews
are of the purest race; the chosen people; they are the aristocracy of
nature."

It is Disraeli's Jewish characteristics that have bewildered and
sometimes offended his critics. He has been charged with insincerity
because he was so clever, and because he wrote with a kind of Oriental
exuberance that was to him entirely natural and a part of his Jewish
heritage. Gilfillan is the only critic, so far as I know, who has
recognized that Disraeli's excellences, and his defects as well, were
racial rather than individual. Speaking of his Oriental fancy and
cleverness, Gilfillan says: "Disraeli has a fine fancy, soar