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fer to Him, imperceptibly, our own righteous indignation at the sight of a wicked deed, or our own compassion with the sufferer, or even our own mode of deliberation and decision. Moreover, the prophets and the Torah, in order to make God plain to the people, described Him in vivid images of human life, with anger and jealousy as well as compassion and repentance, and also with the organs and functions of the senses,--seeing, hearing, smelling, speaking, and walking. 7. The rabbis are all the more emphatic in their assertions that the Torah merely intends to assist the simple-minded, and that unseemly expressions concerning Deity are due to the inadequacy of language, and must not be taken literally.(186) "It is an act of boldness allowed only to the prophets to measure the Creator by the standard of the creature," says the Haggadist, and again, "God appeared to Israel, now as a heroic warrior, now as a venerable sage imparting knowledge, and again as a kind dispenser of bounties, but always in a manner befitting the time and circumstance, so as to satisfy the need of the human heart."(187) This is strikingly illustrated in the following dialogue: "A heretic came to Rabbi Meir asking, 'How can you reconcile the passage which reads, "Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord," with the one which relates that the Lord appeared to Moses between the cherubim of the ark of the covenant?' Whereupon Rabbi Meir took two mirrors, one large and the other small, and placed them before the interrogator. 'Look into this glass,' he said, 'and into that. Does not your figure seem different in one than in the other? How much more will the majesty of God, who has neither figure nor form, be reflected differently in the minds of men! To one it will appear according to his narrow view of life, and to the other in accordance with his larger mental horizon.' "(188) In like manner Rabbi Joshua ben Hanania, when asked sarcastically by the Emperor Hadrian to show him his God, replied: "Come and look at the sun which now shines in the full splendor of noonday! Behold, thou art dazzled. How, then, canst thou see without bewilderment the majesty of Him from whom emanates both sun and stars?"(189) This rejoinder, which was familiar to the Greeks also, is excelled by the one of Rabban Gamaliel II to a heathen who asked him "Where does the God dwell to whom you daily pray?" "Tell me first," he answered, "where does your soul dwell, which is s
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