Source Sheets and Speaker Materials

They are also the critical initial episode in the making of a people out of a rabble of slaves; that is to say, they are to the phenomenon of civilized peoplehood what Genesis is to the phenomenon of the world order. [...] The Ten Commandments — taken in their set- ting — asserted for the ancients that the source of civilization and morality is not to be sought in the conflicting intentions of a multiplicity of divinities; and they assert for the moderns that it is not to be sought in the relativisms of the anthropologists — not in the elan vital but in the elan divin. [...] For the Bible is not simply a collection of dogmas and episodes; it is essentially the record of a dynamic unfolding of the spirit through the medium of his- tory, that is through the substance of human events. [...] In order to glorify and exalt that day, the days are counted from the 3irst of the festivals up to it, as is done by one who waits for the coming of the human being he loves best and counts the days and the hours. [...] Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time? Here we are admist the meditation of the land, the songs of the water, the humility of the flowers, flowers wiser than all alphabets - Suddenly we feel embarrassed, ashamed of our complaints and clashes in the face of tacit glory.