where peace exists, love cannot be
lacking, and yet! Perhaps I might decide for yours."

"There you have it."

"No, no! We have not done with this question so speedily. See, I do not
grudge you your faith, nor do I wish to disturb it. The child must
believe, that all its parents do and require of him is right, but the
stranger sees with different, keener eyes, than the son and daughter. You
occupy a filial relation towards your Church--I do not. I know the
doctrine of Jesus Christ, and if I had lived in Palestine in his time,
should have been one of the first to follow the Master, but since, from
those days to the present, much human work has mingled with his sublime
teachings. This too must be dear to you, for it belongs to your
parents--but it repels me. I have lived, labored and watched all night
for the truth, and were I now to come before the baptismal font and say
'yes' to everything the priests ask, I should be a liar."

"They have caused you bitter suffering; tortured your wife, driven you
and your family from your home. . . ."

"I have borne all that patiently," cried the doctor, deeply moved. "But
there are many other sins now committed against me and mine, for which
there is no forgiveness. I know the great Pagans and their works. Their
need of love extends only to the nation, to which they belong, not to
humanity. Unselfish justice, is to them the last thing man owes his
fellow-man. Christ extended love to all nations, His heart was large
enough to love all mankind. Human love, the purest and fairest of
virtues, is the sublime gift, the noble heritage, he left behind to his
brothers in sorrow. My heart, the poor heart under this black doublet,
this heart was created for human love, this soul thirsted, with all its
powers, to help its neighbors and lighten their sorrows. To exercise
human love is to be good, but they no longer know it, and what is worse,
a thousand times worse, they constantly destroy in me and mine the desire
to be good, good in the sense of their own Master. Worldly wealth is
trash--to be rich the poorest happiness. Yet the Jew is not forbidden to
strive for this, they take scarcely half his gains;--nor can they deny
him the pursuit of the pleasures of the intellect--pure knowledge--for
our minds are not feebler or more idle, and soar no less boldly than
theirs. The prophets came from the East! But the happiness of the
soul--the right to exercise charity is denied to us. It is a part of