ABSTRACT
One is now in sight of a great truth upon which Judaism strongly insists—the truth that the highest service is disinterested service, the highest obedience that which is uninfluenced by the thought of recompense. The truly virtuous man is not a hireling, who ceases to serve when his wage is insufficient or unpaid. He shuns evil because it is degrading, and pursues goodness because it is lovely. Those who have attained to this disinterested virtue have realised the highest ideal of service. Very striking is the idea that the punishment in the future life consists in the torment of the soul torn by conflicting desires—by its old sinful longings, which it can no longer gratify, and by its yearning after the higher joys which it is not yet pure enough to attain. The pictures of penal fires with which some Jewish writers have embellished their descriptions of a future life are purely imaginary.
