If a man brought a question like this to a Christian priest, the priest would certainly begin to expatiate in glowing terms on the duty of a man to sacrifice his life for another, to “bear his cross” in the footsteps of his “Messiah,” so that he might win the kingdom of heaven—and so forth. But the Jewish teacher weighs the question in the scales of objective justice: “Seeing that in either case a life must be lost, and there is none to say which of the two lives is more precious in God’s sight, therefore your own danger does not entitle you to break the sixth commandment. Be killed; kill you must not!” But suppose the case reversed; suppose the question to be “Another is going to be killed, and I can save him by giving my life instead of his, what shall I do?” Then Raba would have replied: “Let such a one be killed, and do not destroy thyself. For do what thou wilt there must here be a life lost; and who hath told thee that his blood is redder than thine? Perhaps thine own is redder.” From the standpoint of Judaism every man’s blood is as red as any other’s, every soul is “precious in the sight of God,” be it mine or another’s, therefore no man is at liberty to treat his life as his own property; no man has a right to say: “I am endangering myself; what right have others to complain of that?” (Maimonides’ Code, _Laws of Murder_, XI. 5). The history of Judaism can tell, indeed, of many acts of self-sacrifice, the memory of which will remain precious and holy for all time. But these are not cases of one life given for the preservation of another similar life, they are sacrifices of human life for “the sanctification of the Name” (the religious ideal) or for “the good of the community” (the religious goal). And justice demands that we rise above sentiment not only in deciding as between the self and another, but also in deciding as between two other persons. Forty years ago Abraham Geiger—the man in whom our latter-day “Reformers” see their spiritual father—pointed out that the Jewish commandment “Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause” reveals a morality of unparalleled loftiness.[171] All other moral codes warn us only against favouring the persons of the rich and the powerful; and the Gospels, as is well known, favour the persons of the poor, and have much to say of their merits and their future greatness. All this is very well from the point of view of the heart; but a morality based on justice rises above sentiment, and teaches that it is our duty to help the poor man if we are able, but that mercy must not induce us so far to sin against justice as to favour the poor man in his suit.