Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/94

58 of a fixed question ever-present, never resting: what is the significance of the Jewish law, and, in particular, of the fulfilment of this law? In his youth he had wished personally to satisfy it, being filled with an eager desire for this highest of all distinctions which the Jews could imagine—the people who have raised the imagination of moral loftiness to a higher level than any other nation, and who alone have succeeded in creating a holy God, and the idea of sin as an offence against this holiness. Paul had become both the fanatic defender and guard-of-honour of this God and His law, and was for ever struggling with and lying in wait for the transgressors and doubters of the same law, being hardhearted and malicious towards them, and included in favour of extreme punishments. And now he experienced in himself that, hot-headed, sensual, melancholy, and malicious as he was in his hatred, he could not himself fulfil the law, nay—and this seemed to him the strangest thing of all his extravagant ambition was constantly being stimulated to break it, and he could not help yielding to this stimulus. Is it really "fleshliness” which, again and again, made him a trespasser? Orrather, as he afterwards suspected, the law itself, which continually proved impossible of fulfilment and with an irresistible spell entices men into transgression? But at that time he had not yet hit upon this expedient.Many things weighed on his conscience; he hints at enmity, murder, witchcraft, image-worship, debauchery,