Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/76

 expressly told that God does not require them to glorify him by their obedience.

"A Noahite who is forced to transgress one of his commandments, it is lawful for him to do so. Even if he be compelled to commit idolatry he may commit it, for they are not commanded to sanctify God." (Hilchoth Melachim, c. x. 2.) So that, according to the Rabbies, the Noahite who is compelled to commit murder, adultery, or even to deny his God, may do it with impunity; he still belongs "to the pious of the nations of the world," and may have a share in the world to come. We confess that we cannot see in this doctrine either charity or toleration. We can discover only that narrowness of heart which characterizes the oral law. In order to magnify themselves, and depreciate the other nations, the Rabbies first swell out their own commandments to 613, and reduce the commandments of the nations to seven. But not content with that, they also strive to confine the glories of martyrdom to themselves, and tell the Gentiles that God does not require them to sanctify His name. Can such doctrine come from God? Is God the God of the Rabbinists only? We grant that the Jews are his "peculiar people." We acknowledge that "they have much advantage every way"—that "they are beloved for the fathers' sakes"—that the time is coming when "all that see them shall acknowledge them that they are the seed whom the Lord has blessed." But we still think that God's heart is large enough to comprehend us Gentiles too in his love. We know that we are the work of His hand, and we trust that, as He is our Father, he requires, and is pleased to see even in Gentiles, the feelings of children, love and filial fear. And we found this our faith on your Scriptures as well as ours. The Word of God tells us that, long before there were any Rabbies in the world, He had a gracious and tender care for all mankind. He promised to our first parents a Saviour who should "bruise the serpent's head." He saved Noah and his family, not one of whom was a Rabbi, from the deluge; and when they came forth from the ark, He made a gracious covenant not with one nation only, but "with all flesh," and hung up on high a lovely and glittering arch, from one end of the heavens to the other, that all the habitants of earth might have a token of their Father's love. and learn to look up to Him with humble confidence. When he chose Abraham and his seed, it was not an act of partiality, but that in his seed all the families of the earth might be blessed. He did not leave himself without witness to