sness,
the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men,
neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them
up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my
righteousness shall be forever and my salvation unto all generations."
Righteousness was the aspect of Deity that appealed to the second
Isaiah, and it was he that spoke words of comfort to our people in all
the days of their endless tribulations. The certain faith in the
ultimate success of right sustained them throughout the centuries and
constitutes their strength to-day. This is the law that was handed
down to them from of old, the law of right, which though often broken,
often forgotten, was always found again and cherished as the one thing
worth while in a world torn by the brutal instincts in man--instincts
which the law had chained and sought to make harmless.

So we may well cling to our title of the people of the law,
remembering that it does not mean merely Nomos, as the Hellenized Jews
mistranslated Torah, but legal and ethical doctrine and knowledge in
its broadest sense, and that it is the people of the law that have
always shown their love of knowledge and found it "a tree of life to
those that lay fast hold on it." Some ancient Jewish mystic said that
the sword and the book came out of heaven together and Israel had to
choose. Israel did choose and thereafter dreamed of days when swords
would be beaten into ploughshares.

_How the Heritage of the Law Was Preserved_

The reading of the law has since time immemorial been an established
part of the synagogue service, thus educating the people to know their
law, the very phrases of which by constant reference and repetition
became part of their daily vocabulary. The origin of this custom of
reading the law in the synagogue may probably be found in the Biblical
references to the great convocations when King and scribe read the law
to the assembled people.

The effect of the dispersion of the Jews was to give a peculiar
sacredness to the law as the sole heritage of their earlier and
happier days. In most of the lands of their dispersion, the Jews dwelt
a race apart, separated from the rest of the community by mutual
prejudices and antagonisms. The soil on which they dwelt was so far as
ultimate overlordship was concerned the land of the stranger, but
nevertheless in a very definite and special sense it was the Jews'
own land. For it was a land