Ebook The First and Second Books of Esdras

For consider how a knowledge of Jesus and of His Words and Love and Death depends on a knowledge of the people who lived round about Him, and on a knowledge of the nationality He shared with them. To know Jesus depends on knowing the Jew, despised though he has been. Therein the Jew has been singularly like Jesus, writ large, for each has been, and is, a marvellous microcosm, ay, and macrocosm of real life; each has been 'rejected of men,' and each also sees his seed and pro~ longs his days.' That grows plain to the reader of Esdras I. And II. For who shall know the Jewish nationality who does not feel the fight of the books of Maccabees? Who shall understand the Lord's yearning to convince or to condemn, to soothe? Or smite the Pharisee dissenter if he does not feel the wail of the Psalms of Solomon P Who shall see the justice of Jesus towards a Nicodemus if he have not sat with Jesus among the thinkers and writers and readers of 'wisdom' Or who shall sit be neath the Cross and drop hot tears on that pitiful spot realis ing that the Paschal Lamb of God feeds his soul, if he turns careless away from the hunger to eat the Passover that moves in every word of Esdras I. As for Esdras II., read his agony and his faith, and understand why Jesus said, 'thou art not far from the Kingdom of God.'