'I deny it. Only a small percentage of his own race is responsive. I would wager our percentage is proportionally higher. But Browning's philosophy of religion is already ours--for hundreds of years every Saturday night every Jew has been proclaiming the view of life and Providence in "Pisgah Sights": '"All's lend and borrow, Good, see, wants evil, Joy demands sorrow, Angel weds devil." What is this but the philosophy of our formula for ushering out the Sabbath and welcoming in the day of toil, accepting the holy and the profane, the light and the darkness?' 'Is that in the Prayer-Book?' said Esther, astonished. 'Yes, you see you are ignorant of our own ritual while admiring everything non-Jewish. Excuse me if I am frank, Miss Ansell, but there are many people among us who rave over Italian antiquities, but can see nothing poetical in old Judaism. They listen eagerly to Dante, but despise David.' 'I shall certainly look up the liturgy,' said Esther. 'But that will not alter my opinion. The Jew may say these fine things, but they are only a tune to him. Yes, I begin to recall the passage in Hebrew--I see my father making _Havdalah_--the melody goes in my head like a sing-song. But I never in my life thought of the meaning. As a little girl I always got my conscious religious inspiration out of the New Testament. It sounds very shocking, I know.' 'Undoubtedly you put your finger on an evil. But there is religious edification in common prayers and ceremonies even when divorced from meaning. Remember the Latin prayers of the Catholic poor. Jews may be below Judaism, but are not all men below their creed? If the race which gave the world the Bible knows it least----' He stopped suddenly, for Addie was playing _pianissimo_, and although she was his sister, he did not like to put her out. 'It comes to this,' said Esther, when Chopin spoke louder: 'our Prayer-Book needs depolarisation, as Wendell Holmes says of the Bible.' 'Exactly,' assented Raphael. 'And what our people need is to make acquaintance with the treasure of our own literature. Why go to Browning for theism, when the words of his "Rabbi Ben Ezra" are but a synopsis of a famous Jewish argument? '"I see the whole design, I, who saw Power, see now Love, perfect too. Perfect I call Thy plan, Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remaker, complete, I trust what Thou shalt do."