The Jews have grown to embody, if indeed they did not embody from the first, an element very important in society, but, in its crudest form, definitely antagonistic to the cruder forms of other equally important elements. We cannot think of them in the Middle Ages apart from what they were in the Old Testament and what they are to-day.

He was a Jew by birth who said He was come to bring “not peace, but division”; or (to quote from St Matthew) “not peace, but a sword”. We ourselves, however unconsciously, are constantly implying the same thing when we say of any man that he is “in deadly earnest”: the living flame within this person may have deadly reactions outside. In proportion as one man is determined to follow his own conscience—in proportion as he is wholly possessed by the greatness of any cause which he espouses—in that same proportion must he risk collision with others equally resolute, equally conscientious, yet diverging certainly to some extent (given the endless variety of human character), and possibly diverging in some of the most essential respects. This is nowhere seen more clearly, perhaps, than in the history of Christianity and Judaism in their mutual relations. Here we see exemplified those words of Christ which follow: “The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother.” Yet Christ proclaimed emphatically that His mission was not to destroy the Jewish law, but to fulfil it.