Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/20

You Gentiles of faith. Can he tell me what John Doe or Isaac Levy believes? Does John Doe believe that Christ rose from the dead? Really believe that, as a plain truth, as he would believe it if his mother, whom he buried five years ago, should suddenly come walking into his house, rotted away and clad in her tattered cerements—believe it as simply and as terribly? And does Isaac Levy believe that the waters of the Red Sea were divided, as he would believe it if one day, below the Williamsburg Bridge, he were to see the waters split, rear, and fall again? And if neither John Doe nor Isaac Levy believes as cogently as this, then what do they really believe, if they believe anything at all? And if the professor cannot answer these questions, what does he mean when he says that the Egyptians believed that Osiris rose from the dead? And what do his reports matter?

There is no test or guarantee of a man's wisdom or of his reliability beyond what he says about life itself. Life is the touchstone: books must be read and understood in order 16