Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/70

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You Gentiles

ture the ghastly unity of all life and power, the grim and sempiternal-settled predestination of all effort is, when accessible, an intolerable thought.

We Jews are incapable of polytheism. You gentiles are incapable of monotheism.

Given, in the most explicit terms, the definition of monotheism, which you have tried as sincerely as lies in your power to accept, you still fail to make it your own. If life here is a sport and an heroic epic, the origins of life must be the same. Let the exceptions among you proclaim what they will: I know that the creeds of your masses, as I have heard them expounded from pulpits and in homes, as I have read of them in books and in periodicals, are polytheistic creeds. Of the three-in-one, the three is stressed, the one is the reluctant concession to the dogma.

For where there is the happy and imaginative gentile spirit there cannot be the complete and unconditional prostration of the individual. This utter breakdown of self which is revealed in our prayers before God,

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