apostles, you English. You turned Jews under
Cromwell, and now your missionaries are planting our Palestinian
doctrines in the South Seas, or amid the josses and pagodas of the
East, and your young men are colonizing unknown continents on the
basis of the Decalogue of Moses. You are founding a world-wide
Palestine. The law goes forth from Zion, but by way of Liverpool and
Southampton. Perhaps you are indeed the lost Ten Tribes."

"Then you would make me a Jew, too," she laughed.

"Jew or Greek, there are only two religious
possibilities--fetish-dances and spinning dervishes don't count--the
Renaissance meant the revival of these two influences, and since the
sixteenth century they have both been increasing steadily. Luther was
a child of the Old Testament. Since the Exodus, Freedom has always
spoken with a Hebrew accent. Christianity is Judaism run divinely mad,
a religion without a drainage system, a beautiful dream dissevered
from life, soul cut adrift from body, and sent floating through the
empyrean, when it can only at best be a captive balloon. At the same
time, don't take your idea of Judaism from the Jews. It is only an
apostolic succession of great souls that understands anything in this
world. The Jewish mission will never be over till the Christians are
converted to the religion of Christ. Lassalle is a better pupil of the
Master than the priests who denounce socialism. You have met Lassalle!
No? You shall meet him here one day. A marvel. Me _plus_ Will. He
knows everything, feels everything, yet is a sledge-hammer to act. He
may yet be the Messiah of the nineteenth century. Ah! when every man
is a Spinoza, and does good for the love of good, when the world is
ruled by justice and brotherhood, reason and humor, then the Jews may
shut up shop, for it will be the Holy Sabbath. Did you mark, Lucy, I
said, reason and humor? Nothing will survive in the long run but what
satisfies the sense of logic, and the sense of humor. Logic and
laughter--the two trumps of doom! Put not your trust in princes--the
really great of the earth are always simple. Pomp and ceremonial,
popes and kings, are toys for children. Christ rode on an ass, now the
ass rides on Christ."

"And how long do you give your trumps to sound before your Millennium
dawns?" said "little Lucy," feeling strangely old and cynical beside
this incorrigible idealist.

"Alas, perhaps I am only another dreamer of the Ghetto, perhaps I have
fought in vain. A