Altar, Latin Church
Altar, Latin Church We can never understand the depth and continuity of the religious life of the Jews without remembering that from the beginning a religious atmosphere surrounded the child of Jewish parents. “These are the things by which a man enjoys the fruits in this world, but their possession continued for the next; to honor father and mother, pious works, peace-making between man and man, and the study of the law, which is equivalent to them all.” Devotion to the law constituted, in the esteem of the Jews, the chief aim in life. Jewish parents were more concerned to give their children a knowledge of the law than they were to leave them an earthly inheritance. Among the memorable sayings of the Talmud there is one to the effect that “Knowledge of the law may be looked for in those who have sucked it in at their mother’s breast.” Of what the true mothers in Israel were can be known by studying the lives of the mothers of Zebedee’s children, and of Mark, of Dorcas, of Lydi...