Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/23

Rh righteousness, the intense, narrow, hard, rigid hatred of unrighteousness carried to excess in the old Hebrew people—the Hebrew people to whom the people of Europe owe their knowledge and love of righteousness, it was this which destroyed the Jewish nation. It was from this over-intense narrow, hard, rigid hatred of unrighteousness that Jesus Christ came to save His people. Christ, with what Matthew Arnold calls his unspeakable sweet reasonableness said to his own people: "Learn of me, that I am mild and lowly and ye shall have peace in your souls." But the Jews—his own people would not listen to him; they, instead of listening to him, crucified him and the consequence was—the Jewish nation perished. To the Romans who were then the guardians of civilisation in Europe, Christ said, "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword!" But the Romans would not listen, but instead, allowed the Jews to crucify him. The consequence was—the Roman Empire and the old civilisation of Europe perished and passed away. Goethe says: "What a long way mankind must have travelled before they came to know how to deal gently even with sinners, to be merciful to law-breakers, and to be human even to the inhuman. Truly they were men of Divine nature who first taught this and who gave their lives for it in order to make the realisation of this possible and to hasten the practice of it. "(Welchen Weg musste nicht die Menschheit