Again, the Christian idea of Love to Man possesses an element of tenderness not perceptible in Jewish philanthropy. Jews are splendidly charitable not alone to their own poor, but also to Christians. Their management of their public and private charities has long been recognized as wiser and more liberal than that of Christians at home or abroad. They are faithful and affectionate husbands and wives; peculiarly tender parents; pious children; kindly neighbors. The cruel wrongs of eighteen centuries have neither brutalized nor imbittered them. Well would it be if whole classes of drunken, wife-beating Englishmen would take example in these respects from them! But of certain claims beyond these, claims always recognized by Christian teachers, and not seldom practically fulfilled by Christian men and women,—the claims of the erring to be forgiven, of the fallen to be lifted out of the mire,—Jews have hitherto taken little account. The parable of the Lost Sheep is emphatically Christian; and among Christians only, till quite recently, have there been active agencies at work to seek and save ruined women, drunkards, criminals, the “perishing and dangerous classes.”[22] Mary Magdalene did well to weep over the feet of Jesus Christ. It was Christ who brought into the world compassion for her and for those like her. And for the forgiveness of enemies, also, the Christian spirit, if not absolutely unique, is yet supreme. The very core of the Christian idea fitly found its expression on the Cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That divinest kind of charity, which renounces all contests for rights, and asks not what it is _bound_ to do, but what it may be _permitted_ to do, to bless and serve a child of God,—that charity may, I think, justly be historically named Christian. Of course, every pure Theism is called on to teach it likewise.