Maybe some such master may turn the pages of this story, and feel the same impatience at its incompleteness. Here in this place he would have added, with strong touches, many a convincing argument. There he would have spoken with the voice of a sage or prophet, and he may turn away, saying: "Why did you not strike all the keys, little sister? You have left silent some of the sweetest and deepest."
The answer is the same. Only a master-hand can sweep the gamut of history and human weaknesses and dogmas and creeds, touch the discordant elements of controversy and criticism in all their variations, and at the same time keep the simple theme constantly throbbing through them, so strong and full and clear it can never be forgotten.
The purpose of this story is accomplished if it has only attracted the attention of the League to a neglected duty, and struck a higher key-note of endeavor. But the League must not stop with that.
There is only one song that will ever bring universal joy to this old, tear-blinded world, and that is that the Lord is come, and that he is risen indeed in the lives of his followers.
True, the veriest child may lisp it; but the League should not be content simply to do that. It should be the master-musician, so familiar with the great complexity of human doubts and longings, that it will know just what chord to touch in every heart it is striving to help.
Go back to the days of the dispersion, and follow this Ishmael through his almost limitless desert of persecution—his hand against every man because every man's hand was against him.
Put yourself in his place until your vision grows broad and your sympathy deep. Chafe against his limitations. Stumble over his obstacles, and in so doing learn where best to place the stepping-stones.
Dig down through the strata of tradition, below all the manifold ceremonies of his formal worship, until you come to the bed-rock of principle underlying them.
When you have thus studied Judaism, its prophets, its priesthood, its patriots—when you have traced its sinuous path from Abraham's tent to the Temple gates, and then followed its diverging lines on into almost every hamlet of both hemispheres, you will have learned something more than the history of Judaism. You will have read the story of the whole race of Adam, and you will have fitted yourself far better to serve humanity.