that the victory of the good
is to be decided _here_, and that the idea of justice should not assume
the character of other-worldliness.

8. It is true that neither the prophets, such as Jeremiah, nor the sages,
such as the authors of Job and Koheleth, actually solved the great enigma
which has baffled all nations and ages, the adjustment of merit and
destiny by divine righteousness. Yet even a doubter like Job does not
despair of his own sense of justice, and wrestles with his God in the
effort to obtain a deeper insight. Still the great mass of people are not
satisfied with an unfulfilled yearning and seeking. The various religions
have gradually transferred the final adjustment of merit and destiny to
the hereafter; the rewards and punishments awaiting man after death have
been depicted glaringly in colors taken from this earthly life. It is not
surprising that Judaism was influenced by this almost universal view. The
mechanical form of the principle of justice demands that "with the same
measure one metes out, it shall be meted out to him,"(323) and this could
not be found either in human justice or in human destiny. Therefore the
popular mind naturally turned to the world to come, expecting there that
just retribution which is lacking on earth.

Only superior minds could ascend to that higher ethical conception where
compensation is no longer expected, but man seeks the good and happiness
of others and finds therein his highest satisfaction. As Ben Azzai
expresses it, "The reward of virtue is virtue, and the punishment of sin
is sin."(324) At this point justice merges into divine holiness.

9. The idea of divine justice exerted its uplifting force in one more way
in Judaism. The recognition of God as the righteous Judge of the
world--_Zidduk ha Din_(325)--is to bring consolation and endurance to the
afflicted, and to remove from their hearts the bitter sting of despair and
doubt. The rabbis called God "the Righteous One of the universe,"(326) as
if to indicate that God himself is meant by the Scriptural verse, "The
righteous is an everlasting foundation of the world."(327)

Far remote from Judaism, however, is the doctrine that God would consign
an otherwise righteous man to eternal doom, because he belongs to another
creed or another race than that of the Jew. Wherever the heathens are
spoken of as condemned at the last judgment, the presumption based upon
centuries of sad experience was that their lives were fu