Judaism On the Social Question

bove the highest mountain tops he, nevertheless, towered above the heaving billows and walked along in safety, guiding the course of the Ark. Thus, says the legend, he escaped the all-devouring deluge and lived thereafter for thousands and thousands of years. Whatever may have stimulated the fancy of men to invent this primitive story, there is an earnest significance in it which attaches, with peculiar aptness, to the theme upon which we are now discoursing. Oppression, injustice, cruelty, every form of moral obliquity had descended upon the earth and deluged it as with a flood. But, towering high above its seething waters, through all the ages, stalked unharmed the personified Spirit of Justice, guiding to the haven of safety the oppressed and injured, the abused and derided among men. Since the very beginning of the contest against Individualism?from the very inception of society there have been men and women who were oppressed and abused because they subservient and dependent?there have been subjects hanging upon the breath of their rulers, workmen bending under the rod of their masters. For these Justice has still outlived the deluge of wrong, passing through gory seas of bloodshed and death. At last?I firmly believe it? at last the bowof promise is to be discerned in the skies and the weary dove is hastening homeward with the token of peace. Whatever be the storms we shall have still to through in this social strife, now that the clouds are discharg... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.