of applying our reason to the lucid, old truths learned by heart, that this statement may sound like a paradox.
Vladimir Solovyov's touching affection for Judaism is a plain and natural manifestation of his love for Christ and of his inner experience of being merged in the Church. The body of the Church is for the mystic the true, although invisible body of Christ, and through Christ it is the body begotten of Abraham's seed. The latter body, like the curtain of the temple in Jerusalem in the hour of our Saviour's death, was rent in twain, and that half of it which is Judaism passionately seeks the whole, longs and yearns, and pours out its wrath upon the second half, which in its turn longs for the reunion and the integrity of mystic Israel.
Whoever is within the Church loves Mary; and whoever loves Mary loves also Israel whose name together with those of the patriarchs and prophets solemnly resounds in our liturgical hymns. The minds of those who in various times represented the earthly organisation of the Church could be poisoned by hatred of the Jews, in whom they suspected Christ's enemies, precisely because it seemed to them that the
