Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/176

172 moving on all the while. The same direction which is really in the march of progress at one moment, is a mere flying out of it, off at a tangent, at another. That is why fashion is not progress. Fashion is mere imitation. Now if we watch the wind-storm, we see that to go East to-day may be real progress, but to go East tomorrow because some one else went East yesterday may be not progress but a departure from it. All the outer life of the world, political, educational, social, philosophic, moves onward by incessant change of direction. There is no real misfortune in this; we should miss much that is valuable if we restricted ourselves to going always in one direction. The danger is that if we have no standard of right direction, we may lose our way altogether, and fly off into isolation. Therefore, just in the middle of the whirl, Providence has placed one thing which moves on in a steady sweep towards the ultimate Truth, and which was never meant to take any part in the whirling movement to which all else is subject. And that one thing is the religion of Israel. It stands always in the centre of the world's march, as a test of the right direction. Nothing is going far wrong which keeps, as it were, well within sight of that standard. And when we have gone a little way wrong, it acts as a test to help us to find our way back to the right path. Judaism helps the world to judge of its own direction. This standard is not so rigid as to make all people alike; it leaves us all free to differ in detail; it allows Gentiles to try experiments and to gain the experience that can only be acquired by making mistakes and then correcting them; but if we take heed to the legacy left us by the old Prophets,