There Is No God but God and Israel Is His Prophet 18
When one thinks how this earliest of theistic creeds has persisted through the ages, by what wonderful constructive statecraft it has built up a race of which the lowest unit is no atom in a ‘submerged tenth’, but an equal member of a great historic brotherhood, a scion of the oldest of surviving civilizations, a student of sacred books, a lover of home and peace; when one remembers how he has agonized—the great misunderstood of history—how his ‘pestilent heresy’ has been chastised and rebuked by Popes and Crusaders, Inquisitors and Missionaries, how he has remained sublimely protestant, imperturbable amid marvellous cathedrals and all the splendid shows of Christendom, and how despite all and after all he is living to see the world turning slowly back to his vision of life; then one seems to see the ‘finger of God’, the hand of the Master-Artist, behind the comedy-tragedy of existence, to believe that Israel is veritably a nation with a mission, that there is no God but God and Israel is His prophet.
ISRAEL ZANGWILL.