6. The sufferings of Israel in particular were taken to be trials of the divine love.(360) God’s love for Israel, “His first-born son,”(361) is not partial, but from the outset aims to train him for his world mission. The Song of Moses speaks of the love of the Father for His son “whom He found in the wilderness”;(362) and this is requited by the bridal love of Israel with which the people “went after God in the wilderness.”(363) It is this love of God, according to Akiba’s interpretation of the Song of Songs, which “all the waters could not quench,” “a love as strong as death.”(364) This love raised up a nation of martyrs without parallel in history, although the followers of the so-called Religion of Love fail to give it the credit it deserves and seem to regard it as a kind of hatred for the rest of mankind.(365) Whenever the paternal love of God is truly felt and understood it must include all classes and all souls of men who enter into the relation of children to God. Wherever emphasis is laid upon the special love for Israel, it is based upon the love with which the chosen people cling to the Torah, the word of God, upon the devotion with which they surrender their lives in His cause.(366) 7. Still, Judaism does not proclaim love, absolute and unrestricted, as the divine principle of life. That is left to the Church, whose history almost to this day records ever so many acts of lovelessness. Love is unworthy of God, unless it is guided by justice. Love of good must be accompanied by hate of evil, or else it lacks the educative power which alone makes it beneficial to man. God’s love manifests itself in human life as an educative power. R. Akiba says that it extends to all created in God’s image, although the knowledge of it was vouchsafed to Israel alone.(367) This universal love of God is a doctrine of the apocryphal literature as well. “Thou hast mercy upon all ... for Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest nothing which Thou hast made.... But Thou sparest all, for they are Thine, O Lord, Lover of souls,” says the Book of Wisdom;(368) and when Ezra the Seer laments the calamity that has befallen the people, God replies, “Thinkest thou that thou lovest My creatures more than I?”(369)