Sarah\'s School Friend
SARAH'S SCHOOL FRIEND by MAY BALDWIN Author of 'Two Schoolgirls of Florence,' 'Barbara Bellamy,' &c. With Six Illustrations by Percy Tarrant [Illustration: He took Sarah by the hand and pulled her up on to the bank. Front. PAGE 179.]
these. Over and over again things are not what they ought to be. The
sacrificial system should have destroyed spirituality; in fact, it
produced the Psalter, 'the hymnbook of the second Temple.' Pharisaism
ought to have led to externalism; in fact, it did not, for somehow
excessive scrupulosity in rite and pietistic exercises went hand in hand
with simple faith and religious inwardness. So, too, the expression of
ethics and religion as Law ought to have suppressed individuality; in
fact, it sometimes gave an impulse to each individual to try to impose
his own concepts, norms, and acts as a Law upon the rest. Each thought
very much for himself, and desired that others should think likewise. We
have already seen that in matters of dogma there never was any corporate
action at all; in ancient times, as now, it is not possible to pronounce
definitely on the dogmatic teachings of Judaism. Though there has been and
is a certain consensus of opinion on many matters, yet neither in practice
nor in beliefs have the local, the temporal, the personal elements ever
been negligible. In order to expound or define a tenet or rite of Judaism
it is mostly necessary to go into questions of time and place and person.
Perhaps, then, we ought to be prepared to find, as in point of fact we
do find, within the main body of Judaism, and not merely as a freak of
occasional eccentrics, distinct mystical tendencies. These tendencies
have often been active well inside the sphere of the Law. Mysticism was,
as we shall see, sometimes a revolt against Law; but it was often, in
Judaism as in the Roman Catholic Church, the outcome of a sincere and
even passionate devotion to authority. Jewish mysticism, in particular,
starts as an interpretation of the Scriptures. Certain truths were arrived
SARAH'S SCHOOL FRIEND by MAY BALDWIN Author of 'Two Schoolgirls of Florence,' 'Barbara Bellamy,' &c. With Six Illustrations by Percy Tarrant [Illustration: He took Sarah by the hand and pulled her up on to the bank. Front. PAGE 179.]