Page:Hebrew tales; selected and translated from the writings of the ancient Hebrew sages (1917).djvu/25

Rh kinds, he had the baseness to give to his dogs his father's name and titles. Should the king show his anger on the prince, or the dogs?" "Well turned," replied the philosopher: "but if your God destroyed the objects of idolatry, he would take away the temptation to it." "Yea," retorted the Rabbi, "if the fools worshipped such things only as were of no further use than that to which their folly applied them, if the idols were always as worthless as the idolatry is contemptible. But they worship the sun, the moon, the host of heaven, the rivers, the sea, fire, air, and what not. Would you that the Creator, for the sake of these fools, should ruin his own works, and disturb the laws appointed to nature by his own wisdom? If a man steals grain and sows it, should the seed not shoot up out of the earth, because it was stolen? Oh, no! the wise Creator lets nature run her own course; for her course is his own appointment. And what if the children of folly abuse it to evil? The day of reckoning is not far off, and men will then learn that human actions likewise reappear in their consequences, by as certain a law as the green blade rises up out of the buried corn-seed."

'Abodah Zarah, 54b.