Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m GOD AND ISRAEL We saw in the preceding chapter that neither the terms of space nor heaven as applied to God, nor the imaginary descriptions placing his particular abode on high, meant for the Rabbis remoteness from the world. Whatever the faults of the Rabbis were, consistency was not one of them. Neither speculation nor folklore was ever allowed to be converted into rigid dogma. As it was pointed out, when the Rabbis were taught by experience that certain terms meant for superficial proselytes only a reflex of their former deities, they not only abandoned them for a time, but substituted for them even the Tetragrammaton itself; a strong measure, taken in contradiction to ancient custom and tradition, and thus proving how anxious the Rabbis were that nothing should intervene between man and God. We shall now proceed to show how still more intimate and close was the relation maintained and felt between God and Israel. He is their God, their father, their strength, their shepherd, their hope, their salvation, their safety; they are his people, his children, his first-born son, his treasure, dedicated to his name, which it is sacrilege to profane. In brief, there is not a single endearing epithet in the language, such asbrother, sister, bride, mother, lamb, or eye, which is not, according to the Rabbis, applied by the Scriptures to express this intimate relation between God and his people.1 God is even represented by the Rabbis as saying to Moses, As much as thou canst exalt this nation (Israel) exalt it, for it is as if thou wert exalting me. Praise it as much as thou canst, glorify it as much as thou canst, for in them I will be glorified, as it is said, 'Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified' (Isa. 49 3).2 What is his (God's) name? El Shaddai, Ze...