YAHVISM 
 
 AND OTHER DISCOURSES 
 
 BY 
 
 THE LATE RABBI ADOLPH MOSES 
 
 EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 H. G. ENELOW, D. D. 
 Rabbi of Congregation Adath Israel, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE LOUISVILLE SECTION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN 
 
 LOUISVILLE 
 1903
 
 SfecR 
 Annex 
 
 NUNEMACHER PRE68. 
 LOUISVILLE, KY.
 
 Stack 
 
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 worlb that wbfcb ourselves 
 batb blesseb. 
 
 Xouisville Section 
 Council of Jcwtsb Momen
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The issue of this volume is due to the desire of the 
 Louisville Section of the Council of Jewish Women to 
 show its reverence and affection for the memory of the 
 sainted author. The editor appreciates the honor of hav- 
 ing been entrusted with his task. He has had delight in 
 rendering this humble service of love to the undying 
 soul of his late colleague and friend. His only regret 
 is that he has been unable to fulfill his duty less imper- 
 fectly. But it has not been easy to choose out of a mass 
 of material the portion most valuable and fit for a book 
 such as this. Moreover, few of the discourses were left 
 by their writer in a state appropriate to publication in 
 permanent form, and the editor, while seeking to present 
 the text in most readable shape, has not dared to take 
 liberties with the matter at hand. It is his fervid hope, 
 however, that his work may further the aims and ideals of 
 his lamented friend, to whom, surely, naught might have 
 been more pleasing, as a sign of love and gratitude, than 
 the publishing of such a volume. 
 
 Also, the editor wishes to give thanks to the members of 
 the Publication Committee of the Louisville Section of 
 the Council of Jewish Women for aid in various matters; 
 to the several friends who kindly lent him some letters 
 unveiling the depth of feeling and friendship that was in 
 the author ; to Rabbi Isaac S. Moses, for data bearing on his 
 lamented brother's early life ; and, above all, to Mrs. Moses 
 and her family for valuable help, especially to Mr. Melville 
 Moses, who for some years had been collecting most 
 piously the writings of his father, and thus unconsciously 
 cleared the way for the present work. 
 
 H. G. E. 
 
 LOUISVILLE, December 18, 1902.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 I. YAHVISM 
 
 Spoken at the Graduation Exercises of the Hebrew Union 
 College, Cincinnati, June 15, 1894 1 
 
 II. CEREMONIALISM 
 
 January 15, 1894 11 
 
 III. THE RELIGION WE OFFER TO THE GENTILES 
 
 JANUARY, 1896. 
 
 i. Introductory 26 
 
 ii. Germs of Religious and Ethical Truth in Polytheism . . 86 
 
 iii. The Unity of Mankind 43 
 
 IV. THE FIRST AND GREATEST OF ALL MORAL IDEAS 
 
 JUI,Y 28, 1896 55 
 
 V. THE IDEALS OF HUMANITY . .... 62 
 
 VI. CONTRIBUTIONS OF AMERICA TO THE WORLD'S 
 CIVILIZATION 
 
 DECEMBER, 1892. 
 
 i. The Nature of Civilization 70 
 
 ii. The Moral Emancipation of the Individual 79 
 
 iii. The Economic Emancipation of the Individual .... 88 
 iv. The Emancipation of Woman 98 
 
 VII. WHO Is THE REAL ATHEIST? 
 
 Chicago, September 21, 1898 108 
 
 VIII. LOSING GOD AND FINDING GOD 
 
 Day of Atonement 5661 (1900) 117 
 
 IX. THE REASONS WHY I BELIEVE IN GOD 
 
 Spoken at the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 
 Rochester, July 10, 1895 186 
 
 X. WHY I AM A JEW 
 
 October 81, 1897 158 
 
 XI. WHY I STUDIED MEDICINE 
 
 June 18, 1893 164 
 
 XII. THE EVOLUTION OF ENVY 
 
 April 28, 1896 175
 
 CONTENTS CONTINUED. 
 
 XIII. FROM SELFISHNESS TO BENEVOLENCE 
 
 APRIL-MAY, 1898. PAGE 
 
 i. Egotism and Altruism 186 
 
 ii. Pessimism and Medieval Asceticism 192 
 
 iii. The Reasonableness of Biblical Ethics 198 
 
 iv. Benevolence is Self- Realization 204 
 
 v. Benevolence and Justice 211 
 
 XIV. ETHNOLOGICAL FICTIONS 
 
 Read at the Jewish Denominational Congress, Chicago, 
 August-September, 1893 216 
 
 XV. THE MEANING OF THE MACCABEAN STRUGGLE 
 
 December 14, 1898 240 
 
 XVI. ERNEST RENAN 
 
 November 28, 1893 251 
 
 XVII. ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 October 17, 1892 261 
 
 XVIII. ALEXANDER III 
 
 November 22, 1894 269 
 
 XIX. JOHN ALBERT BROADUS 
 
 March 31, 1895 284 
 
 XX. ISAAC MAYER WISE 
 
 Cincinnati, March 14, 1899 295 
 
 XXI. FILIAL PIETY 
 
 June 8, 1894 309 
 
 XXII. THE DUTY OF THE PULPIT 
 
 July 8, 1899 320 
 
 XXIII. WHAT MAY MINISTERS AND L/AYMEN ACCOMPLISH 
 
 IN HALF-AN-HOUR ? 831 
 
 XXIV. HELL AND HEAVEN 
 
 April 14, 1892 840 
 
 XXV. Music AND RELIGION 
 
 September 1, 1900 344 
 
 XXVI. JACOB'S DREAM 
 
 September 18, 1901 .847
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ' The highest reward which mankind can bestow upon the self-sacri- 
 ficing promoters of human progress, the pathfinders of humanity and the 
 revealers of wisdom, is to keep their personalities and the story of their 
 achievements enshrined in the grateful memory of all generations." 
 Page 207. 
 
 from the scenes where the best part of his life was 
 spent and where he fell asleep amid devoted friends 
 and followers, Adolph Eliezer Asher Moses was born. It is 
 in a strange environment that he got his early training, that 
 his first impressions were formed, and the seed of culture 
 and piety was thrown into his receptive soul. But to those 
 remote and quaint spots we must turn in order to appre- 
 ciate fully the learning, the idealism, the innate piety, in 
 brief, the complex character which rendered 
 The Adolph Moses so unique a figure among the 
 
 Author's rabbis of America. For his character was 
 
 Complex complex, as all who have known him would 
 
 Character. attest: his soul presented an uncommon com- 
 
 mingling of power and frailty, of tenderness, 
 ambition, simplicity, sternness, passion, hate and love, 
 each trait in turn appearing in his work, cropping out 
 very often in his speech and action. Abstract thought, 
 critical inquiry, radical ideas, and arctic analysis of the 
 objects of knowledge alternated in him with a tropical 
 emotionalism and unseverable attachment to the traditions 
 of the past. Moreover, though in later life he was wont 
 to enshrine the memories of his youth behind the curtain 
 of silence, he was one of those men in whom the past is 
 never dead, who again and again live over the events and
 
 the thoughts and the feelings of the long ago, and who, 
 like the giant Antaeus in the myth, must ever touch afresh 
 their native soil in order to regain valor and might. Indeed, 
 it was but a year or two ere he passed away that he 
 avowed, in a letter to one of his sons, that in the essentials 
 of faith and longing he felt himself the same still as when 
 a mere boy in the old-fashioned orthodox Polish town: 
 a confession that may be taken as a key to his whole 
 nature and work. 
 
 The plain fact is that the townlet which once meant 
 the world to Adolph Moses with its varied scenes and 
 multiety of talents and tempers, with its many-hued 
 examples of human character, with all its 
 His First patterns of pettiness and greatness and 
 
 Impressions. shrewdness and cruelty and love and ideal- 
 ism and holiness left an indelible mark on 
 his spirit. Are not small towns, as a rule, most comprehen- 
 sive microcosms, and profitable centers for the true study 
 of human nature? At least, the impressions they make 
 upon the observer's mind are much more definite, owing 
 to the ingenuous way they have of revealing the faults 
 and the virtues of their denizens, than the ambiguous 
 knowledge of one another men acquire under the politic 
 reticence of the worldly-wise metropolis. I doubt whether 
 among all the ideas gathered by Adolph Moses in the 
 course of his travels and studies, whether among all the 
 opinions he formed in his later life, in the period of his 
 noblest achievements, there were any as potent and abiding 
 as those implanted in his soul by the townlet in which he 
 played and prayed as a little child. 
 
 Kletchevo may be too small for geographic honors, and 
 one seeks its name in vain on a map of old dismembered 
 Poland. We are told, however, that it lies close upon the 
 Prussian frontier, and that there, on the third day of May 
 in the year 1840, Adolph Moses was born. He was the
 
 XI 
 
 oldest son of Rabbi Israel Baruch Moses, who, though a 
 young talmudist of distinction and rare piety, as I shall 
 
 presently have occasion to point out, was 
 Parentage. loath to occupy a rabbinic position, in accord 
 
 with an old Jewish antipathy to the exploita- 
 tion of Sacred Knowledge for a livelihood. More honorable 
 it was deemed in those days and among those folk so near, 
 and yet so far- for a young scholar having wedded a rich 
 man's daughter to accept the hospitality of his father-in- 
 law and to pursue his holy studies while dwelling under 
 the roof, and eating at the table, of the latter. That Israel 
 Baruch's father-in-law, Rabbi Joseph Graditz, should have 
 been able to indulge in such a pious luxury as a scholarly 
 spouse for his daughter, is a surprise; for, from the writ- 
 ings of his grandson we gather that Reb Jossel, as R. 
 Joseph was named in the dialect of provincial familiarity, 
 served as precentor at the synagogue, an office not designed 
 ordinarily to enrich its devout occupants. However, 
 as those were not the days of American fortunes, Reb 
 Jossel was rich in his way. Besides, unlike the majority 
 of his cantorial confreres, he was a dauntless man of inde- 
 pendent disposition, who would truckle to none, not even 
 the proverbial rich man of his community, and who was 
 peculiarly disenmeshed of local superstitions a quality of 
 no mean merit for those times. And under his thatch it 
 was that R. Israel Baruch Moses lived while, despite his 
 marriage with Eve Graditz, he continued faithful to his 
 old supernal Bride, the Torah ; and there his children were 
 born and grew. 
 
 Is that humble Polish cottage still extant in which 
 one of our most famous rabbis passed the morning of his 
 life? We doubt it. But, albeit ruined, the noted son that 
 issued from it has drawn its picture and built it anew in 
 his memoirs. It is quite natural that Adolph Moses, 
 though master of a forceful and limpid English style, 
 should have reverted to German, the language of his youth, 
 in writing his reminiscences. From them, however, we
 
 Xll 
 
 derive our familiar knowledge of his early years, at least of 
 the surroundings in which his character began to build and 
 the basis of his education was laid. Now, the chief event 
 in the life of the Jewish child in Poland and what events 
 seem more momentous than those busying 
 In the Morn- and irradiating our childhood? is the mail- 
 ing Glow. gural day at the Heder, the elementary relig- 
 ious school. To parent and child that is a 
 wellnigh sacred occasion, the first landmark in a life 
 dedicated to solemnity and godliness, an incident open- 
 ing vistas of piety and learning and good deeds. A 
 devout father will wrap his child in his own Tallith, or 
 praying-shawl, and carry him to Heder on the first 
 day, thus investing the occasion with holy signifi- 
 cance. Adolph Moses was but four years of age when that 
 event took place. The Heder was located in the very 
 house of his birth, which was the communal edifice. The 
 latter was bipartite. The eastern portion, inhabited for 
 some thirty years previous to the birth of Adolph Moses 
 by his grandfather, contained a large living-room, with a 
 huge hearth and two low windows, and one or two smaller 
 chambers, not to mention the closet adjoining the main 
 hall in which Reb Jossel's good wife kindest soul, most 
 selfless and helpful of women, according to her grandson 
 was wont to store her Passover preserves and hide her 
 savings. The western half, however, was allotted to Reb 
 Haskel, the much-branched beadle of the congregation, 
 who also acted as " Dardekemelamed", or instructor of chil- 
 dren in the rudiments of Hebrew and religion. The bulk 
 of his residence consisted in a low-windowed apartment, 
 which served also as schoolroom for some two-score chil- 
 dren. The latter were arrayed along the wall, seated on 
 stools or on the floor. Little Adolph's favorite spot was 
 under the table, where oft he sat with his mates and mused 
 on future glories, counting on his fingers the years that 
 must pass ere he became a full-fledged Jew, Bar-Mitswa^
 
 Xlll 
 
 and might enjoy the grown-man's right to wind the Tefilin 
 round arm and brow. The hall connecting the two dwell- 
 ings harbored the public scales, on which R. Jossel used to 
 weigh the wool the Polish nobles were selling to the Jews. 
 Behind the house, in fine, there stretched a vast orchard, 
 cultivated jointly by the two families and separated by a 
 ditch from the huge meadow of the local count. 
 
 The squabbles and loquacious encounters that took 
 place on occasion between the wives of the two communal 
 dignitaries, the precentor and the beadle-schoolmaster, and 
 ruffled the halcyon atmosphere of the vicinity, we shall 
 not pause to divulge. We must hasten on to the gloomy 
 event that turned the whole town to mourning, that called 
 truce for a while to all petty brawls and scuffles, and left 
 the memory of every witness aghast for many a day. It 
 was when in the year 1849 the cholera invaded the town, 
 and as a ferocious beast hurled itself upon the panic- 
 stricken inhabitants. Terror, superstition, and stupid 
 medication, all served to increase calamity and confusion 
 among the hapless victims. From every 
 The Cholera window issued groans and wailing ; there 
 Nuptials. was scarce a house where there was not one 
 
 dead. At that hour of common distress the 
 whole town was tied together by nature's sable bands, and 
 a wave of sympathy swelled through all breasts. Then 
 many a heart was truly uncovered, and many a soul 
 dropped the veil of convention, and many an unforeseen 
 deed of heroism and love surely was done. But when 
 naught seemed to avail and, spite prayer and charity, 
 children and adults continued to be sucked into the 
 insatiable maw of the epidemic, a desperate man, versed 
 in the time-honored creed of the common people, counseled 
 recourse to a charity marriage. Popular belief had it, 
 namely, that the marriage of some impecunious couple 
 arranged by the dwellers of an afflicted town, would serve
 
 XIV 
 
 to halt the dread arm of Death. Such religious nuptials, 
 celebrated most auspiciously at the cemetery nigh some 
 fresh-hewn grave, it was said, often had stemmed the tide 
 of calamity. The suggestion was received with approval 
 by the townsmen gathered in the market-place, and what 
 with gifts of money from men of wealth and culinary 
 offerings from pious women and all kinds of counsel from 
 varied sources, a wedding forthwith was resolved upon 
 between Refuel, the tailor's apprentice, and Sprinze, the 
 capital, albeit oldish and ungainly, cook. The date for 
 the efficacious event having been set, the entire community 
 united in splendid preparation toward it, and all personal 
 woes and desires were drowned for the while in the grand 
 co-operative endeavor to conquer Death by a large deed 
 of communal charity. 
 
 The wedding feast, which was held in fine style, 
 both presents a picture of Jewish life unknown to the 
 western world and introduces us to the society in which 
 Adolph Moses spent his early years and caught his pri- 
 mary, never-fading inspirations. In fact, he was himself, 
 a boy of nine, present at the repast, and when many years 
 later he wrote down the story of the event, the memory of 
 the guests was still green in his mind, and the wedding 
 
 dainties, we might add, still luscious in his 
 The Wedding- mouth. Prominent among the guests was 
 Quests. Reb Siel the Nagid, or Nabob, proud of his 
 
 place and title as the richest Jew in the 
 province. According to the scholarly standard of the 
 time which was the chief system of character measure- 
 ment he was described as one who knew a little of 
 the Bible, less of the commentaries, and nothing at all 
 of the Talmud. However, he was possessed of rare shrewd- 
 ness and mother-wit, as well as some innate lordliness. A 
 money-lender, he numbered many indolent and reckless 
 noblemen among his debtors, who frequently settled their 
 accounts by transferring to him portions of their wooded
 
 XV 
 
 estates. "His house," writes Adolph Moses, "according 
 to my conception in those days, was a fairy-palace. It 
 seemed to me regal in its fitments : there were cloths on the 
 tables even on week days; there was a couch in 'the good 
 room', and curtains hung on the windows. A large orchard 
 lay behind the house, stretching almost to the lake. In 
 winter, R. Siel wore the finest sables, and he had a num- 
 ber of caps of the same fur for use on the Sabbath. He 
 had the most lovely and cultured daughters who could 
 read High-German, and even novels, who were kindly and 
 gracious to the poor, so much so that when a beggar was 
 yelled at by their irate sire they were wont to hasten to 
 his rescue and give him alms." Beside the Nagid sat Reb 
 IfTerels Moshe, the tall, broad-shouldered, powerful smug- 
 gler, who had had many a scuffle with the frontier-guards, 
 whose house was full of burying-holes and had suffered 
 repeated raids at the hands of armed officials of the cus- 
 tom-house. The latter at times found forbidden goods and 
 led the handcuffed smuggler away from his sobbing family ; 
 but usually the raiders could unearth nothing, seeing that 
 most of them were in the pay of the bold tradesman. 
 And yet, despite his illegitimate business and his rude 
 
 face and harsh voice, the audacious smuggler 
 Smuggler and possessed a tender heart, was ever charitable 
 Samaritan. and helpful, and during the dominance of 
 
 the plague he ministered to the sick with 
 unmatched devotion and intrepidity. Moreover, it was 
 he that had suggested the charity marriage and gave 
 a good round sum, as well as cloth for the groom's 
 coat, toward its consummation. 
 
 Among those present at the repast were also: the inso- 
 lent and hard-hearted Lemmels, noted for their red hair, 
 which legend traced back to a curse some rabbi of old, 
 wronged by one of their ancestors, in his dying hour had 
 lodged upon the family ; Reb Melech, the Nagid's son-in- 
 law, versed in the Talmud, but crafty and shrewd, with a
 
 XVI 
 
 goat's beard which he never ceased twirling between the 
 thumb and the index of his right hand ; the rabbi's step- 
 son, Duved a conceited fop, an idler and parasite owning a 
 venomous scoffing tongue, who, though an ignoramus, 
 deemed himself cultured because he violated some trivial 
 
 traditional customs, wore high heels, and 
 A Fop and a never walked without a cane, who, for his 
 Pretender. obscene talk, was dreaded and despised by 
 
 most women, and whose contribution to the 
 marriage was a pair of new boots worn but three times, with 
 the hope that they would not prove too small for the un- 
 known beneficiary. The rabbi's son-in-law, Reb Yakev, was 
 there also : a veritable whipper-snapper ; a superficial tal- 
 mudist who played the great scholar; looked upon himself 
 as a poet, because occasionally he made Hebrew rhymes, 
 but more often recited poems out of rare volumes as his 
 own productions; likewise, considered himself a philoso- 
 pher, because he could decipher the lighter portions of 
 Maimuni's "Guide of the Perplexed;" withal, a sweetish, 
 eely individual, currying favor with the rich, generous 
 in words but niggardly of money to the poor, a usurer 
 popular with the noblemen because he spoke their language 
 fluently and always appeared well-groomed and in glitter- 
 ingly blackened boots. 
 
 On the other hand, the feast was attended by a large 
 number of truly devout men, idealists of the purest stamp, 
 men of learning and piety, to say nothing of the godly 
 and benevolent women who many a day and night had 
 toiled to make the wedding a joyful occasion and 
 now were enjoying it in their own modest way and 
 place. Above all, we must name Reb Sruel (Israel) the 
 
 Marshalik, the Wedding-Bard, the coaxer of 
 The Wedding- tears, the creator of merriment, the player 
 Bard. whose instrument was the heart of man. 
 
 His powers were manifold and far-famed : 
 speaking before the enveiling of the bride, his pathetic
 
 XV11 
 
 rhymes, blending, as they did, a weird chant and moan, 
 so affected the hearts of the women that wellnigh they 
 passed away for woe and tears; at night, however, when 
 during the merry feast he stood upon the table and 
 called out the wedding-gifts and the names of their 
 donors, none could keep from laughter: then his jokes flew 
 like rockets, in limping rhymes he besang bride and groom 
 and their kith and kin, as well as all the grandees seated 
 round the board ; upon the rich miser he poured the vials of 
 scorn, was none too timid to allude to the failings of the rabbi 
 and his clerical associates, while the frailties of the women 
 and of the stutterer Kleuske, an ignorant and insolent 
 moneybags, formed his unfailing fount of wit and satire. 
 Equally noteworthy was Yankel Lomser, the tall scrimp- 
 bearded leader of the band, with big black eyes out of 
 
 which the fiery soul of music seemed to 
 A Born stare, though their owner could not read a 
 
 Virtuoso. note. To him, as to that other Jacques in 
 
 Dr. Van Dyke's story, music was life's ruling 
 passion : as holy as the Holy Law, a divine gift designed 
 to brighten the sad hearts of Israel languishing in exile, a 
 power by which he felt related to David, the royal minstrel 
 of old. He was the musical genius of the neighborhood, 
 where people were accustomed to comment that under his 
 magic hand you could hear the violin speak and weep 
 and moan in a human voice. When some years later he 
 died, it was rumored that he had been summoned from 
 earth to the choir of the saints above, to play before the 
 throne of God. But, above all, there was in the assem- 
 blage R. Israel Baruch, an incarnation of the finest Jewish 
 qualities, in whose portraiture, albeit idealized, we have 
 good ground to think that Dr. Moses drew the features of 
 his own father, whom, by the way, he never named save 
 with profoundest reverence, describing him as the saint- 
 liest man he ever knew. 
 
 Israel Baruch if we may copy more minutely Dr. 
 Moses's picture of that ideal character was tall and slender,
 
 XVI 11 
 
 with delicate, spirituel, and nobly-formed 
 Israel Baruch: features. His big brown eyes were of rare 
 Scholar, beauty, beaming, as he spoke, with a won- 
 
 Preacher, and drous lustre and charm. On his lofty brow 
 Saint. th e thinker's majesty sat enthroned. His 
 
 hair was brown and the beard of a reddish 
 tinge. After the banquet, the rabbi and several worthies 
 having spoken, some friendly voice called to R. Israel 
 Baruch athwart the table, spurringly: "Come now, Reb 
 Isruel Burech ; give us some Torah !" At first he declined 
 out of modesty, but finally had to yield to the importunity 
 of the assemblage. At the outset, then, he spoke for the 
 benefit of the scholars present, discoursing keenly on the 
 Halacha, the legalistic portion of the Talmud. He startled 
 and enraptured his hearers by the eagle flights of his 
 thought, by the acuteness and the amplitude of his dialec- 
 tic. Not after the errant, frantic fashion of the Polish 
 rabbis, but in the terse, clear, logical style of the Lithu- 
 anian sages he handled the talmudic problems. Moreover, 
 having paid the compliment of priority to Harifuth the 
 sharp, juridic themes, which scholars alone could follow, 
 he turned to Maggiduth the lighter homiletic subjects, 
 for the sake of the humbler folk. Like honey the words 
 now flowed from his lips. Richer and ever richer speech 
 streamed from the deep and quick source of his soul. 
 With eyes aflame and a burning tongue he spoke of God 
 and His boundless love, he spoke of the holy duties which, 
 though in exile and spite suffering and persecution, the 
 Jews were called on to fulfill in order to glorify the Name 
 of the Eternal in the eyes of all men. All that were 
 there, the rich and the poor, the learned and the simple, 
 were deeply moved. With bated breath they listened, 
 feeling in the depths of their souls that a great and noble 
 heart was speaking to their hearts. "And as for me," 
 writes Adolph Moses, "who standing behind my grand- 
 father's chair harkened to the orator's kindling words and
 
 XIX 
 
 shared in the deep excitation of the spirits, 
 The Power of there dawned upon me for the first time the 
 Oratory. vision of the might of eloquence and of the 
 
 dominion of the higher spirits over the souls 
 of men." While he spoke, numerous women crowded 
 round the door of the tent in which the men were feasting 
 and listened attentively. None might describe the emo- 
 tion of the speaker's wife, who, with cheeks crimsoned, 
 stood at the entrance and, love and pride glowing in her 
 eyes, beheld her gloriously gifted spouse. Thrilled by 
 his triumph, the young and fair woman deemed the 
 laurels of such a moment ample pay for all the cares and 
 pains and burdens of life, and inwardly did vow to teach 
 her sons to emulate their sire and follow in his path of 
 virtue. For, not only learned was her husband, not only 
 versed in both talmudic and philosophic lore, but also he 
 was a man of purest heart, capable of the greatest self-sac- 
 rifice, and most tender towards the poor and the suffering. 
 "One of those spirits by the grace of God was he, who 
 feeling the pangs and the misery of mankind and enduring 
 great agony in their own hearts, strive restlessly and with 
 ardent yearning after the good and the true, and, disdain- 
 ing the woes of the earth, build up a better world in the 
 realm of the ideal." When Israel Baruch made an end of 
 speech, there was a rustle of approval everywhere, and 
 "Yasher Koah" it rang through the tent, to-wit: "God 
 increase thy strength!" the ancient Jewish substitute 
 for the hollow noises of applause. The old rabbi of the 
 community, however, intensely affected, with a venerable 
 slowness rose from his seat and holding out his aged hand 
 to the devout and wise orator uttered the old blessing: 
 " May there be many like thee in Israel ! " 
 
 I shall not apologize for giving so much space to 
 both the charity wedding and its prominent guests, seeing 
 that they have disclosed to us to some degree the early 
 surroundings of Adolph Moses. I can not leave the
 
 XX 
 
 incident, however, without deploring- the fact that the 
 pious scheme proved a hope deferred. The plague was not 
 stopped, and was yet to bring a deep and unforgetable 
 sorrow to young Moses. His mother was attacked by the 
 
 disease, though she made a brave and win- 
 The Death of ning fight against it ; but tragic was the fate 
 His Sister. of his little sister, Sarah Vogelche, whom 
 
 the ravaging plague seized while she was 
 at play with her comrades in the big meadow, and devoured 
 in a day. " Unforgetable to me is that sad morning in July 
 one-and-thirty years ago when I stepped from my grand- 
 parents' sleeping-chamber into the family hall and beheld 
 my dear little sister Sarah Vogelche lying on the floor, her 
 feet towards the door, and covered with the black cere- 
 ment!" It betokened Dr. Moses's tenderness and depth 
 of affection that he could never forget the little sister 
 that died as a child, and it was the memory of her play 
 and sudden death that moved him to write the story of the 
 plague and the queer marriage it had brought about* 
 
 Shortly after that event, R. Israel Baruch, forced by 
 reverses, left the home of his father-in-law and moved to San- 
 tomishel, in the province of Posen, where he occupied the 
 rabbinic chair for a number of years. A similar position he 
 held later on at Dobrzyca, where his devoted son paid him a 
 visit in the year 1892, and where he died on the 6th day of 
 May, 1898, to be survived only two years by his wife. At 
 Santomishel, Adolph Moses continued his education until 
 at the age of thirteen he was commonly looked upon as a 
 
 boy of such particular promise as merited the 
 The Quest of special talmudic training which could be 
 Knowledge. secured nowhere save at the Polish seats of 
 
 learning, the far-famed yeshiboth. For that 
 purpose he recrossed the frontier, and three years, we are 
 told, he devoted to the sacred toil, exhibiting all the 
 
 * Cp. Zeitgeist, vol. 1, pp. 394 et seq.
 
 XXI 
 
 patience and the capacity for struggle and the hardi- 
 hood which have made the Jewish student in Poland, the 
 Bahur, famous. When he came home, he was sent to 
 Schrimm and Militsch in pursuit of secular studies. 
 After three years of close application, he was prepared to 
 enter both the Rabbinical Seminary and the university at 
 Breslau. At both schools ample opportunity was offered 
 to his intellectual avidity as well as his indefatigable zeal : 
 he attended lectures on history, philosophy, and philology, 
 subjects that remained his favorites to the very end. It is 
 easy to imagine what an intoxication the new environ- 
 ment : university lectures, intercourse with men of broad 
 culture, the intellectual atmosphere : must have meant to the 
 provincial disciple of the wise. In a sense, the experience 
 of the individual young Jew, thirsting for knowledge and 
 suddenly transported to the great common founts of wisdom, 
 was analogous to that of the whole Jewish community that 
 
 in the nineteenth century emerged from the 
 The New confines of the ghetto into the wide world of 
 
 Light. western culture. lyike many another youth, 
 
 reared amid the old Jewish traditions, Adolph 
 Moses, brought to Breslau an alert mind, a heart aflame 
 with intellectual ambition, a soul swayed by a lofty, 
 vague, and variegated ideality. Ideality, grand, impas- 
 sioned, indefinable : this is the key to the nature of num- 
 berless young Jews who these many years have been 
 rushing from the old isolated quarters of Israel toward the 
 vast, roaring sea of modern civilization, swelling its 
 waves with their own yearnings and powers, and causing 
 us all to ask whether needs they must be swallowed by the 
 great universal ocean or may flow on through it as a dis- 
 tinct unabsorbable stream. 
 
 To such abstract idealism must be attributed some 
 of Adolph Moses's most unique experiences his enlist- 
 ment in two foreign armies in order to fight for freedom. 
 Scarcely had he had time to orient himself in his new
 
 XX11 
 
 world and readjust his mental life, than the cause of 
 liberty in Italy began to stir the senses of the young 
 enthusiasts throughout Europe. The visionary student 
 from Santomishel, fired by a noble zeal, resolved to 
 follow the flag of Garibaldi. In an article published 
 some twenty years later in the Zeitgeist, he describes, 
 with a fine touch of humor, how in 1859 he left 
 Breslau and went to join the patriots of Italy, with no 
 companion save his walking-stick, which though it tra- 
 versed with him some of the world's most inspiring scenes 
 remained as dumb and dull as ever, resembling in that 
 regard certain human travelers. "Happy, impetuous, 
 enviable, fanciful youth," he exclaims in his habitual 
 introspective manner, betraying a bit of tender regret, 
 " when for the sake of an idea, out of sheer desire to take 
 
 part in a work of historic moment, I stole 
 Soldier of away from Breslau, with no other comrade 
 
 Freedom. save my stick, without means or knowledge 
 
 of the language, wandered on foot from 
 the Lake of Constance to the southward, and at Genoa 
 besought Dr. Betrani, Garibaldi's right hand, with tears 
 in my eyes, not to reject me, but graciously to enter 
 my name on the list of future heroes!" At Naples, 
 whither he was sent with a number of similar enthusiastic 
 recruits, he was given the military uniform, "the livery of 
 freedom," as well as an old rusty musket and a cartridge- 
 pouch with real cartridges inside. Thus, "the erstwhile 
 Bahur, but lately a student at the Rabbinical Seminary 
 now was a champion of liberty, with the cross of Savoy at 
 the baldric, the formidable gun on the shoulder." The 
 actual transition, however, of the scholar into the soldier 
 was much more checkered : there was training and serving 
 at various outlandish places, at Aversa, Santa Maria, Sant' 
 Angelo, Caserta, and Capua, where the metamorphosed rab- 
 binic aspirant was obliged to endure many a jolt and blow 
 and heathen oath ere he knew how to wield his gun and
 
 XX111 
 
 lift his limbs. But what are stumbling-blocks, however 
 numerous, to the knight of an idea? Suffice it to say, 
 that the idea conquered in this case also, the rabbinic 
 devotee of Garibaldi coming forth from the season's cam- 
 paign crowned with laurels, to-wit, a corporal's title. The 
 return march to Breslau then set in, a veritable triumphal 
 procession, we may be sure, for his throbbing, jubilant, 
 ardent soul. There was more leisure now, a broader 
 capacity for enjoying the ravishing Italian sights, the nerv- 
 ous haste to get to the field of battle having passed away : 
 he lingered a while amid the undying charms of Naples, 
 drank in the snowy grandeur of the Alps, visited the art 
 galleries at Genoa and Milan, and bathed his soul in the 
 enchanting loveliness of the lakes. The youthful idealist, 
 thus, wound up his term of soldiery with several inspiring 
 lessons in the love of Nature and Art, the first of the sort 
 he had ever had. "My mind then opened for the first 
 time to the beauty of art. In Italy and in Switzerland I 
 acquired a sixth sense, the open understanding, the imme- 
 diate appreciation of the beauties that are in Nature." 
 
 But, alas! the conquering hero, upon his return to Breslau, 
 was met with nothing so little as the honor and the applause 
 he had anticipated. Here was a champion of freedom, a 
 stalwart knight home from foreign fields ; but, whether his 
 motives were misread or his cause ^did not appeal, certain 
 it is that by his old associates he was welcomed home as 
 an erratic individual rather than a hero to be admired. The 
 whole incident was put down as quixotic. To Moses 
 always a combination of power and sensitiveness, ready 
 to battle for an idea, yet deeply sensible to public 
 opinion this was a period of bitterness and shame. He 
 felt himself weighted down by the worst of curses, 
 ridiculousness. He felt himself derided, maltreated, for- 
 saken. There were just three men whose kindness in those 
 sad days he never forgot: the immortal Abraham Geiger, 
 his magnanimous master, who took his part and supported
 
 XXIV 
 
 him both morally and materially ; Hermann 
 Friends in Cohen, now professor of philosophy at Mar- 
 
 Need, burg, his fellow-student and faithful compan- 
 
 ion, who shielded and comforted him; and 
 Isaac Bamberger, afterwards rabbi at Konigsberg, with 
 whom he studied Talmud and Italian and from whom 
 he received sympathy and appreciation the two gifts 
 Adolph Moses always required and prized most. Neverthe- 
 less, the unpleasant upshot of his military adventure seems 
 to have affected very little his attitude towards champions 
 of freedom : for, in the year 1863, during the Polish upris- 
 ing, what should Garibaldi's young corporal do but turn his 
 back upon Talmud and theology and hazard his life anew 
 in the name of Liberty ! However, luck was against him ; 
 he was soon captured by the Russians and put in prison 
 at Warsaw, where he had occasion to gain personal 
 knowledge of those aspects of Russian bar- 
 Russian barity which he has depicted in his story 
 Experiences. "Luser the Watchmaker." Thanks to the 
 Prussian consul, he was released on parole 
 and sent back to his studies. The present homecoming, no 
 doubt, was even less triumphal than the previous one, 
 especially since the cause of Poland was not popular in 
 Breslau. At any rate, this was the last adventurous incident 
 that interrupted his studious and scholarly life. 
 
 The story of the interval between this event and his 
 etnbarkment for the United States, may be told briefly. It 
 comprised several years of intellectual growth, of profit- 
 able and delightful intercourse with men of light and 
 leading, of preparation for a noble life-work. As Abraham 
 Geiger meanwhile, in the year 1863, had gone to Frankfort- 
 on-the-Main, Moses followed him thither, to continue 
 under the influence of that giant mind the Isaiah of 
 Reform Judaism. Subsequently, he spent two years at the 
 University of Vienna, coming in contact frequently with 
 Jellinek, the scholar-preacher, and with Dr. Giidemann.
 
 XXV 
 
 Necessity finally forced him to give up the 
 Learning and claustral pleasures of study and pure ideal- 
 Teaching, ism and to seek some practical occupation. 
 
 He accepted a position as teacher at a noted 
 educational institute at Seegnitz, in Bavaria, where he 
 worked from the year 1868 to 1870, amid most pleasant 
 surroundings and within a stone-shot from some of the 
 chief centers of German culture. It was thence that, 
 through the influence of some American friends, he was 
 called to the rabbinic office at Montgomery, Alabama. 
 
 In that cheerful Southern State Dr. Moses passed 
 eleven years, serving only over a year at his first post and 
 a decade at Mobile. It was a period of great moment to 
 him, another period of transition, crowded with work and 
 attended by an aftermath of delicious memories to the very 
 last. We have seen what manner of culture and traditions 
 he brought from the eastern shores of the ocean: the 
 impressions and the training of his childhood, the memories 
 
 of the various characters that had composed 
 A Decade in his unique early world, the talmudic dis- 
 Alabama. cipline at the Polish yeshiba, and the broader 
 
 culture, as well as the experience, garnered 
 during his eventful student years. With all that was coupled 
 an uncommon power of concentration and industry, as well 
 as accessibility to newiknowledge. Though he was not long 
 in impressing his congregation with his eloquence and depth 
 of thought, his eyes were turned toward the future. He was 
 the student still ; perfectibility was his dearest dogma. A 
 common sight it was to observe him on highways and 
 byways "transported and rapt in secret studies." While 
 German was the language at that time commonly used by 
 the Jewish preachers in America, he realized at once, with 
 Isaac M. Wise, that the future of the Jewish pulpit in this 
 country was bound up with the English tongue. To the 
 mastery of the latter, as well as to the improvement of his 
 oratory, he devoted himself, we are told, with the determi-
 
 XXVI 
 
 nation of a Demosthenes. The English classics became 
 his companions, especially Shakespeare who was his benign 
 master, whose words he memorized copiously, and on whose 
 foremost dramas he preached a series of sermons later on. 
 Also, he had enough leisure at Mobile to continue his 
 purely scientific studies, as a result of which he wrote, in 
 German, a number of articles, on anthropology and folk- 
 lore. Most of the latter were published in the Zeitgeist, 
 a weekly journal he edited, from the year 1880 to 1882, in 
 conjunction with his brother, Rabbi Isaac S. Moses, and Dr. 
 Emil G. Hirsch. In the same periodical appeared, likewise, 
 his partly autobiographic story "Luser Seigermacher " 
 (Englished by Mrs. A. deV. Chandron, as "Luser the 
 Watchmaker, an Episode of .the Polish Revolution") and 
 his other reminiscences. On the agth day of November, 
 1876, he married Miss Emma Isaacs, in whom for the rest 
 of his life he found a genuine and self-sacrificing helpmeet. 
 In sum, he had good cause for counting the years spent at 
 Mobile among the happiest he knew. 
 
 It is impossible to depict in detail the process of evo- 
 lution through which the mind of Adolph Moses passed. 
 We do not know to what degree he had declined from the 
 traditional view of Judaism before reaching this country 
 the new Land of Promise so glowingly, prophetically, 
 extolled by the dying Esther in "Luser the Watchmaker." 
 Unfortunately, the habit of extemporaneous preaching 
 adhered to by Dr. Moses in the early years of his ministry, 
 
 has left us without written records of his 
 Silent Growth, religious views during that period. But it 
 
 can not surprise us if after a lapse of some 
 years years, we are tempted to say, spent in the holy of 
 holies of study, within the veil of research and devout 
 inquiry the man who had drunk at the fount of 
 Abraham Geiger, should be found in the camp of radical 
 rabbis. The decade spent at Mobile, Moses applied to a 
 survey of the Jewish problem in the United States, to a
 
 XXV11 
 
 scrutiny of the essence of his religion, and to the ascertain- 
 ment of the role which the latter might gain in the 
 modern interplay of spiritual forces. Into his solution of 
 those grave questions both his carefully cultivated scholar- 
 ship and his glowing imagination, Law and Vision, 
 Torah and Hazon, the two sources, as Professor Marti 
 has pointed out, of Divine instruction in Israel : entered as 
 determining factors. And when, as member of the edi- 
 torial staff of the Zeitgeist, he began to contribute regularly 
 towards the elucidation of the Jewish problems, he showed 
 
 not only a supply of clear and firm con- 
 Scholar and victions, but also readiness to state his views 
 Seer. with unwonted vigor and dauntlessness. His 
 
 position as champion of a lofty and liberal 
 Judaism could not be mistaken, his style possessed the 
 power of attraction, and he was at once recognized as 
 one of the foremost figures in the arena. 
 
 Times change swiftly in our land, and how we change 
 with them ! When we allude to old conditions, to problems 
 of the past phrases in the Old World big with the asso- 
 ciations of centuries we have in mind things that held 
 the stage some ten, twenty, or, by reason of strength, thirty 
 years ago. Questions that but a decade since were the 
 sovereign monarchs of rabbinic minds, and divided all 
 
 Israel into hostile camps, today lie ghost- 
 The Problems less on the ground, tokens to the silent art 
 of the Age. Time has of bringing low the lofty. A score 
 
 of years have taught many a lip to frame the 
 shibboleths which erstwhile forbiddingly held the fords in 
 Israel, severing the Gileadites from Ephraim, the reform 
 "fugitives" from the orthodox. Conditions that in the 
 seventies and the eighties of the last century taxed all the 
 ingenuity of our public leaders, and vexatious problems 
 such as set them by the ears, to the children of today 
 sound like fables of the long ago. No serious person
 
 XXV111 
 
 would dream to turn into an issue now any of the topics that 
 were most fertile themes of controversy when Dr. Moses 
 entered the field. His contributions to the Zeitgeist, there- 
 fore, are of paramount value both as the testimony of 
 one who took a leading part in the shaping of events and 
 as a portrayal of what one might style a past age. 
 
 Particular interest abides in a series of articles sug- 
 gested by a question propounded in that periodical by a 
 noted Jew, as to the immediate duties of the rabbi. Dr. 
 Moses in his reply, first of all, points out the differences 
 between the ideal rabbi of former days, still surviving in 
 
 "Half- Asia and Asia" the judge of proper 
 The Rabbi: and improper diet, the expert examiner of 
 Old and New. eatable fowl and beast, the preceptor of 
 
 housewives in the religion of kitchen and 
 Passover pots, the talmudic chauvinist, the incarnation of 
 unworldliness, of whom no higher praise could be sung than 
 that he could not tell one coin from another and the ideal 
 rabbi in this country, where the Jewish minister is expected 
 to possess a*side from talmudic scholarship a large measure 
 of general culture, where a rabbi never is interviewed in 
 regard to the old laws of diet or divorce (unless it be by 
 an enterprising newspaper reporter occasionally), and where 
 a rabbi unable to distinguish a five-dollar bill from a ten 
 would be placed under a guardian. Having pointed out in 
 some such way this radical difference, he proceeds to indicate 
 those characteristics of the old rabbi which his modern suc- 
 cessor should emulate. The old rabbi's foremost duty was to 
 live an ideal personal life, ever to serve as an impeccable 
 embodiment of the piety and the religion he represented. 
 And upon this cardinal duty Reform Judaism should lay 
 greatest stress, which if it failed to do "all the changes, or, 
 if you will, all the progress made in the domain of Judaism 
 in civilized lands during the last half-century, were to be 
 condemned without mercy." The genuine leaders of 
 Reform Judaism, he witnesses, have lived up to this idea,
 
 XXIX 
 
 always distinguishing themselves by the highest ethical 
 conduct and a godly life in the spirit of the prophets and 
 the wise men of Israel. "To the writer," he 
 Geiger and continues, "it was granted for many years to 
 Einhorn. be the disciple and protege of the sainted 
 
 Abraham Geiger. My lengthy intercourse 
 with him enables me to bear witness that Geiger was a 
 man of boundless benevolence and charity, just, truthful, 
 and amiable, a soul free from guile and guise, and that the 
 pure doctrine he preached was to him no empty sound but 
 a vital doctrine, determining his actions and thoughts. 
 The most inveterate orthodox even who may have cursed 
 his endeavors on behalf of reform, did not deny his good- 
 ness and greatness of soul. Similarly, David Einhorn, the 
 typical creator and representative of American Judaism, by 
 friend and foe alike was recognized as a man of blameless 
 integrity, of wellnigh antique purity of morals and spirit- 
 uality, and from his adamantine character, his sincerity of 
 conviction showing in the greatest and the least matters, 
 issued the mighty influence which his life and work 
 exercised upon the development of. Judaism in America." 
 Men of dubious character were frequent in 
 False the Jewish pulpit at the time, and Dr. Moses 
 
 Prophets. pinned the blame largely to the congrega- 
 
 tions: "As often happens, they choose as 
 ministers hardened sinners, unscrupulous hypocrites, men 
 without principle and character, simply because the latter 
 have good mouths, thresh phrases with ease, assault Ortho- 
 doxy with insolent scoffery, and in hollow sounds lift 
 Reform to the skies." 
 
 Having emphasized the ethical side of the rabbi's char- 
 acter, he demands from him evidence of deep faith in God. 
 He deprecates the preachers of the day in whose sermons 
 God is mentioned but occasionally, out of shere deference, 
 as it were, playing the part of nothing so much as a roi 
 faineant: they speak of humanity, progress, freedom,
 
 XXX 
 
 brotherhood, development, ideals, all of which is very good 
 and pretty, but where is Religion, where is God? "If you 
 ask me," he continues, "What do you mean by Religion? 
 I am not ashamed to show myself in my reply as a very 
 
 plain, humble, old-fashioned individual. By 
 What is religion I mean faith in a living omnisci- 
 
 Religion? ent, all-seeing God to whom I pray not out 
 
 of metaphysic subtlety, neither in order to 
 soothe my heart with an unctious emotionalism, but rather 
 because I am convinced that the Creator and Guardian 
 of men will hear and heed my prayer. By religion I 
 mean further a firm faith in a God of Revelation, who 
 has shown us the good and the true, has disclosed to us 
 His doctrine of salvation, His laws, by the spirit of the 
 prophets and the sages of humanity. By religion I mean 
 the inward conviction that the omniscient God knows all 
 our deeds and the hidden secrets of our soul, a joyous trust 
 in His aid and succour while we are in misfortune and 
 sorrow, and a sincere sense of gratitude for all His good- 
 ness and love." It is such an unsophisticated conception 
 of religion that wellnigh had vanished among the American 
 rabbis affected by the contemporary conflict between 
 Science and Religion. Ere the rabbi could regain his 
 proper influence and do honor to Judaism, he must revise 
 
 his opinions and steady his mind on the old 
 The Rabbi as essentials of his faith. To that end, he must 
 Scholar. be a scholar. As no functions of a priestly 
 
 or redemptory character appertain to the 
 work of the Jewish minister, which consists rather in the 
 intellectual and spiritual training of his congregants, he 
 must make learning his chief pursuit. The Jew uncon- 
 sciously respects scholarship, the rabbi always has been 
 the center of learning to his community, and though our 
 ideals of culture may differ from those held by Jews in 
 former days and other parts, culture alone, in the highest 
 sense, will secure the influence of the rabbi. Just as the 
 Polish rabbi heads the talmudic scholars of his town, his
 
 XXXI 
 
 American compeer should lead the aristocracy of intelli- 
 gence. Unhappily, the demands upon our rabbis in those 
 days were of such a variegated and laborious sort as to rob 
 one both of time and bent for scholarly self-development. 
 In the majority of towns, namely, they were expected not 
 only to preach in two languages, German 
 The Rabbi's and English to feed, so to say, the confluent 
 Tasks. streams of two generations but also to con- 
 
 duct the Divine services, to teach, with 
 hardly any aid, all branches at the religious schools: 
 Hebrew, biblical history, and religion, and in some 
 instances mirabile dictu even to instruct several classes, 
 often numbering from seventy to eighty scholars, in the 
 German language. None the less, Dr. Moses lays stress on 
 the unavoidable duty of the true rabbi to perfect himself 
 in knowledge and not to leave the Jewish pulpit in this 
 republic to the mercy of ignorant congregational electors, 
 likely to seize upon any shrewd beadle or sleek butcher or 
 unctuous cantor who had learnt to mumble sanctimonious 
 cant and to recite, phonograph fashion, other men's elo- 
 quence, and turn him into a "reverend doctor." 
 
 Meanwhile, the ideal of scholarship kept on growing 
 before the mind of Dr. Moses. The burden of the modern 
 Jew weighed upon him heavily : the desire to remain faithful 
 to Israel, to cultivate loyally the old Jewish knowledge, to 
 cherish its ideals, and at the same time to seek the joys of 
 
 modern culture, to absorb the ideals of the 
 Hebraism and West, to be in touch with all the varied and 
 Hellenism. bewitching aspects of the civilization of the 
 
 day. Nowhere, perhaps, has the modern 
 aspiration to harmonize the ideals of the Hebrews and 
 the Hellenes manifested itself with such frequency and 
 force as in the house of Israel. And amid the Jews 
 this passion has burned long ere Mr. Hugh Black 
 gave it embodiment in his eloquent essays on "Culture
 
 XXX 11 
 
 and Restraint," or even Matthew Arnold had made it 
 a literary topic. Not to speak of its oldest exhibitions, 
 which would take us back to Philo the Neo-Platonist, it 
 flamed up anew, as I have hinted above, as soon as the 
 Jew was delivered from "the ghetto's plague," from "the 
 garb's disgrace," in Robert Browning's phrase, and was 
 given a part in the life and the work of the world. Not 
 one of the Jews of the nineteenth century who became 
 prominent in the realms of art or literature, but underwent 
 this struggle : the harmonization of the Jewish heritage 
 the feelings and ideas drawn from the deep well of old 
 Jewish world-concepts with the Hellenic disposition of 
 prevalent western culture. Mark Antokolskoy, a prince 
 among contemporary sculptors, is typical, in this respect, 
 of a great many modern artists and poets of Jewish 
 descent. To all, even though formally some had forsworn 
 
 Judaism, the poor mother, it was no easy 
 An Analogy. task to symphonize the inherited, conscious 
 
 or unconscious, Judaic ideas with those that 
 were current in the family of Art; and throughout 
 their work the two strains vibrate together. The dis- 
 tinctive feature of Antokolsky's work is not only that 
 in his early days he took his themes entirely from the 
 life of the Jews, and that some of his most famous statues, 
 as "The Inquisition," were based on Jewish history, but 
 rather that all the products of his genius, whether it be 
 "Ivan the Terrible" or "Spinoza" or "Socrates" or "A 
 Talmudic Controversy," are permeated by the Jewish ele- 
 ment, saturated with the Jewish world-attitude, which puts 
 the accent in life on the idea, on mind, on the soul, on the 
 sanctity and the invincible strength of righteousness. In 
 his endeavor to combine depth of idea with beauty of 
 form, nay, to have the soul speak to us, importune us, 
 out of a fine statue, rather than the deft moulding of clay, 
 to have the idea conquer the observer : in this fealty to the 
 spirit Antokolsky was unique, revolutionary among the
 
 XXX111 
 
 sculptors of his day. In him, after a long struggle, 
 unveiled in his autobiography, the so-called Hebraic and 
 Hellenic forces blended harmoniously. His cosmopol- 
 itan culture was dyed in its very texture with the colors 
 of Judaism. 
 
 In his own sphere and style Adolph Moses passed 
 through an exactly similar experience, and reached the 
 same conclusion. The temptation to single out all the 
 points wherein his life resembled that of the illustrious 
 artist just named, I shall resist: a similarity apparent 
 in the influence of childhood upon the later work, in 
 the effects of contact with university culture, in the grow- 
 ing sympathy with humane ideals, the gradual absorption 
 of universal enlightenment, the interfertilization, as anthro- 
 pologists would say, of Jewish and common knowledge, 
 as well as in the moments of doubt, struggle, and darkness, 
 to the very death in the midst of dreams and unfinished 
 labors. The fact is that in the measure in which Dr. 
 
 Moses's horizon of culture expanded, his 
 Culture and conception of Judaism, also, broadened, shak- 
 Judaism. ing off the shackles of ceremonialism and 
 
 racial exclusiveness. Whether or no his 
 cosmopolitan culture served to modify his views relating 
 to his faith, true it is that his faith proved adequate 
 to his culture. Naught there was in the vast domain 
 of Greek thought and poetry, which he had grown to 
 cherish, or in the history of the world, which he studied 
 assiduously and with rare sympathy, or in modern litera- 
 ture, of which he was ever abreast, or in the discoveries of 
 science, but to him seemed to lead up to, and to attest, 
 the truth of Judaism. The Ideals of Humanity, as reflected 
 by Homer and Dante and Shakespeare and Tennyson, to 
 him had found their essential expression in the ideals of 
 the prophets and the sages of Israel. All the knowledge 
 he had gathered he co-ordinated under the name of 
 Judaism. Not a truth but found a niche in the sanctuary
 
 XXXIV 
 
 of his faith. And that faith was sufficiently broad to wel- 
 come all men and house all knowledge. For, to him Juda- 
 ism was not the religion of any one race or chosen people ; 
 it was not the mechanic mirroring of a certain congenital 
 Semitic monotheism, as Renan had insinuated ; it was not 
 designed as the peculiar property of any set of men bound 
 together by physical kinship. He deprecated most strenu- 
 ously such " physiological Judaism." He inclined, we 
 might say, towards the midrashic view that the Torah 
 was given in the wilderness, belonging to all men alike, 
 so that everybody might come and claim an equal share 
 therein. Judaism to him was the supreme doctrine of truth 
 and morality, based on the belief in the one only God, 
 founded by Moses, developed by the prophets and the 
 rabbis, enriched by the thoughts and the divine ideals of 
 all wise and noble men, witnessed by all the martyrs to 
 Truth, and destined at some golden day to unite all human 
 hearts and minds by the sacred ties of righteousness and 
 love. 
 
 Such he held was the quintessence of Israel's ancient 
 faith. As the rabbis took the Divine mission of Abra- 
 ham to have consisted in "teaching the fam- 
 The Ways of ili es of man the ways of life and making 
 Life and the clear to them the unity of the world", even so 
 Unity of the Dr. Moses understood the purpose of his 
 World. ancestral religion. The name Judaism he 
 
 regarded as a misnomer and misfortune. Its 
 origin, he contended, was exotic; it was fabricated as a 
 countermark to Hellenism by Josephus, a man who tried 
 to congee to the western world, just as the ambitious Lord 
 Beaconsfield, under somewhat similar circumstances, became 
 the originator of modern Jewish racialism, of "the physi- 
 ological Judaism," the Judaism of noble ancestry, of blue 
 blood, fit to stand side by side, in point of pedigree, with 
 Anglo-Saxon aristocracy. The name Judaism, he argues 
 further, has grown associated in the minds of men with a
 
 XXXV 
 
 narrow racial creed, with the particular soul-business of 
 some real or fictitious Hebrews, Semites, nay, with a com- 
 plicated system of effete, oriental ceremonies and outlandish 
 practices. And such certainly was not the nature of the 
 doctrine the prophets taught, of the old world-wide religion 
 founded on the unity of God, Nature, and Man. Yahve, 
 the God of the prophets, whencesoever the name may have 
 been borrowed, to the enlightened minds of Israel had come 
 to designate the Creator of the world, the Father of man- 
 kind, the Lord of nature, the Source ever-living of Justice, 
 Righteousness, Truth, and Love. The service of Yahve 
 must needs embrace belief in the unity of the world, the 
 furtherance of the brotherhood of man, the sacred quest of 
 Truth, and unswerving loyalty to the cause of Righteous- 
 ness. "Whom have I in heaven, but Thee? And there 
 is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee," as the 
 Psalmist has sung. In this absolute subjection of the 
 whole universe, of all life, of Man and Nature, to one only 
 God, to Yahve, lay the spiritual majesty of the Religion of 
 Yahve, or Yahvism. This differenced it from paganism, 
 which was wont to parcel up humanity and the universe 
 
 among a host of wrangling deities, and this has 
 Yahvisra. distinguished it from every other faith that in 
 
 any manner whatever has tampered with the 
 idea of the Divine Unity. Not that these other creeds had 
 had no mission: on the contrary, every system of religious 
 thought has had in its bosom a sacred germ of truth ; "there 
 is no break in the development of the spirit of mankind;" 
 "God has left none of His children without a ray of His 
 light." "There is a soul of truth," as Herbert Spencer 
 reminds us, "in things erroneous." Nay, with Jowett, Dr. 
 Moses might have asked : "Are not all true sayings and all 
 good thoughts, in all times and in all places, the anticipa- 
 tion of a truth which is shining more and more unto the 
 perfect day?" But all other faiths, in his judgment, have 
 been merely preparatory to the one universal creed which
 
 XXXVI 
 
 regards all men as brothers, all nature as the work of one 
 Creator, and the whole cosmos as the servant of one domi- 
 nant law of Righteousness; all other religions are mere 
 broken arcs of idealism in relation to the one perfect 
 round of Yahvism which encircles the whole throbbing, 
 striving, yearning heart of the world. 
 
 And Yahvism, rather than Judaism, Dr. Moses would 
 name his doctrine. The resumption of the prophetic title, he 
 argued, would connote the true character of our religion: it 
 would be mistaken no longer for the peculiar creed of a dis- 
 persed oriental tribe; it would cease to be, as unluckily Juda- 
 ism has been these many days, the weapon of vicious anti- 
 Semitic bigots, on the one hand, and the 
 Revival of jejune slogan of ignorant, race-proud Jews, 
 
 Old Name. on the other; it would be rescued from the 
 
 misuse of sentimental venerators of anti- 
 quated superstition and of the idolaters of obsolete cere- 
 monies; it would arise before the world in its true nature, 
 as the light of nations, as the reflexion of the universal 
 Spirit, as the principle of unity in the world and humanity, 
 as the rule of righteousness and love amongst all men, as 
 the knot of all culture, truths, and ideals; and it would 
 draw to its bosom many a man who, though quite in accord 
 with its sublime aims and tenets, now shrinks from its 
 embrace by reason of old erroneous associations. The 
 preaching of this idea, the advocacy of Yahvism, may be 
 called the distinctive work of Adolph Moses in the full- 
 blown summer of his life. While Yahvism is a word that 
 has been much in vogue among students of the Bible, 
 it is his special merit to have taken it out of the 
 cold atmosphere of criticism, out of the vocabulary of 
 objective scholarship, to turn it into a warm doctrine 
 of life. To him this idea became the sun round which 
 all his knowledge and all his visions circled: by its light he 
 read the history of man, studied the tasks of Israel, inter- 
 preted the meaning of American civilization, forecast the
 
 XXXV11 
 
 future. Poetry, philosophy, science, art, nature the spirit 
 of Yahve moved upon the face of all. 
 
 The pulpit of Temple Adath Israel, at Louisville, was 
 the place whence this new Yahvism radiated into the 
 
 world. When in the year 1881 Adolph 
 Temple Adath Moses, in a most honorable manner, was 
 Israel. called to the rabbinate of that congregation, 
 
 though he left Alabama most unwillingly, 
 he knew of the larger opportunities the metropolis of 
 Kentucky had to offer. And he did not err. While the 
 increased congregational duties entailed a sacrifice which 
 he never quite ceased lamenting the partial discontinuance 
 of purely scientific work he succeeded in accomplishing 
 what very few in a similar position have been able to do. 
 He continued to publish articles on anthropology and 
 current topics in the Zeitgeist and other Jewish periodicals. 
 Biblical criticism remained one of his favorite studies, 
 suiting his analytic bent of mind, and, though he was too 
 busy to work out in full the various ideas with which his 
 brain was alive, he managed to publish, as precursor to a 
 larger work contemplated, a pamphlet on Nadab and 
 Abihu,* which has attracted the attention of scholars. Simi- 
 larly, his booklet on "The Religion of Moses," issued at 
 Louisville in the year 1894, gained friends for the idea of 
 
 Yahvism of which it contains an eloquent 
 Student of exposition. Moreover, spurred by scientific 
 
 Medicine. curiosity, he gave himself up for a number 
 
 of years, from 1887 to 1893, t ^ e study of 
 medicine, taking a regular course at the medical school of 
 the University of Louisville, and obtaining a doctor's 
 diploma. In his discourse, Why I Studied Medicine, which 
 we fear, however, has been left in incomplete form, he 
 describes the effect of that enterprise upon his religious 
 views, in a style which, in its bizarre blending of faith and 
 
 * Nadab und Abihu oder der Undergang der Sauliden, Berlin, 1890.
 
 XXXV111 
 
 poetry with the facts of science, will remind some readers of 
 Maurice Maeterlinck. However, it was on his preaching 
 that Dr. Moses centered all his time and the riches of 
 his mind. To him the sermon was the medium not only 
 of edifying his actual listeners, but of improving the world. 
 Humanity was his congregation. Yahvism was his text 
 perennially. Unto the ages he lifted his voice, which was 
 strong, thunderous, oceanic. His eye, with a prophet's 
 mysterious power seated in its depths an inescapable, lus- 
 trous, pathetic, haunting eye pierced the abyss of the past, 
 swept the realms of the present, and boldly looked into the 
 hidden halls of the future. To him one might address the 
 words in which Ben Sira apostrophizes King Solomon: "Thy 
 soul covered the whole earth and thou filledst it with dark 
 
 parables." The torch of his teaching was 
 The Preacher, lit at the flame of the eternal and infinite 
 
 Yahve, who was ever nigh to his heart and 
 mind. When he preached he was not like a man speaking 
 to the individual hearer only, though that he did exceed- 
 ing well when occasion served: at his best he was like a 
 prophet addressing the world, trumpeting forth a sovereign 
 truth that is sure to triumph some day; like Jeremiah, he 
 was as the mouth of Yahve. 
 
 America he regarded as the Canaan of his cherished 
 religion. It is here, he held, that Israel has gained the 
 unhampered opportunity of diffusing the doctrines of 
 genuine Judaism, or Yahvism. On the one hand, the Jew 
 in this enlightened republic has ceased to trouble on 
 account of his religious convictions, and is able to act as 
 missionary, not only as martyr, of his faith ; on the other, 
 the Atlantic Ocean, has weakened, as it were, if not swal- 
 lowed up, all the ceremonial habits and petrified rites 
 which in the Old World still circumscribe and encumber 
 the work of prophetic religion. The Jewish ceremonies, 
 no doubt, served a good end in their proper age, but now 
 they are nothing so much as the illegitimate encroachment
 
 XXXIX 
 
 of the past upon the territory of the present and the future. 
 
 New circumstances have bereft them of the 
 The Old Faith spirit of life; they linger on in our" midst in 
 in the New the anemic manner of the shadows moving 
 Land. through Sheol. All attempts to revive them 
 
 must fail; why babble about a return to 
 rites and ceremonies which willy-nilly we have outgrown, 
 why seek to raise up artificially things that are dead, to 
 wheedle ourselves into obsolete beliefs which can no longer 
 stir our breasts or better our souls? Dr. Moses was 
 opposed as a man holding his views of Judaism could not 
 help being to the schemes of the political Zionists, as 
 well as to the nebulous movement of the New Orthodoxy 
 with all its oracular watchwords relating to the past, historic 
 continuity, the claims of the ancient literature, and such- 
 like. He knew that watchwords and romantic phrases and 
 the kickshaws of theorists were not synonymous with life, 
 that they would never respond to the vital needs and the 
 spiritual yearnings of men living in the heart of American 
 civilization. None revered the past and its sanctities more 
 than he, but he believed that "religion," in the words of 
 Robertson Smith, "can not live on the mere memory of the 
 past." He looked upon himself not as a slave ironed with 
 the chains of dead centuries, but as a chosen servant of 
 the present and the future. His was not a voice coming 
 out of the sepulchres. "A new time has begun," he cries, 
 "and new work must be done by us!" The spirit of the 
 bold pioneers lived in him. He fought with those who, 
 like King Arthur's knights, were "the fair beginners of a 
 nobler time." Fervently he espoused every cause that 
 augured well for the ideal work of Israel and humanity. 
 Though in his mode of thought he was much more radical 
 
 than our sainted teacher, Rabbi Isaac M. 
 Isaac M. Wise. Wise the Ezra, and the Nehemiah also, of 
 
 American Judaism he was an ardent sup- 
 porter of the latter in all the momentous movements he
 
 xl 
 
 inaugurated, and his friend through thick and thin. The 
 Hebrew Union College from the day of its foundation had 
 a staunch champion in Adolph Moses, who foretold at once 
 that it would become the fount, if possibly not of the 
 highest academic learning, certainly of vital teaching and 
 spiritual upliftment to the Jews of this country, as, indeed, 
 time has proved it to be. In fine, recognizing that a 
 Divine Service on Sunday mornings might be turned into 
 a profitable agency for the spread of his religion, he 
 caused it to be instituted in his congregation. In the 
 autumn of the year 1892, he began to hold such a service 
 
 at his Temple, and thenceforward he had an 
 Apostle of enlarged opportunity for the delivery of his 
 
 Liberalism. lofty message. Indeed, he became the apostle 
 
 of liberalism to Louisville. Mixed congre- 
 gations of Jews and Gentiles brethren in ideals came to 
 hear the word of Yahve from his lips, the broad, universal, 
 exalted faith he preached. Who knows but those assem- 
 blies fulfilled partly and partly foreshadowed the days when, 
 as in Zechariah's vision, "ten men shall take hold, out of 
 all the languages of the nations, shall even take hold of 
 the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, 
 for we have heard that God is with you " ! 
 
 Of course, none could expect a following of thousands 
 for a man at the core of whose teaching lay what we have 
 described as Yahvism. Embodying, on the one hand, a very 
 lofty religious idealism that drew vitality from the remote 
 founts of metaphysic thought, and urging, on the other 
 hand, what could not but seem to the masses a bold breach 
 with the past, the peculiar doctrine of Adolph Moses had 
 to content itself with the precious appreciation of the few. 
 For is there aught, in such matters, that men in general are 
 less willing to yield up than old names? The rather, it 
 
 would seem, we would surrender the sub- 
 A Leader of stance than the time-honored title, the 
 the Few. picture than the frame. Though various 
 
 men be at one in their views of life and
 
 xli 
 
 faith, yet will each cling stoutly to the name his fathers 
 have called holy. It is a species of family-tree. In this 
 instance, tnorever, the new name, Yahvism, was advocated 
 simply as the revival of an old term for an ancient truth, 
 as a tie that possibly would unite men of similar thoughts 
 and ideals who now are separated by the ill-luck of 
 mutually exclusive labels, as a title that might serve to 
 reconcile the highest forms of Judaism and Christianity. 
 On the other hand, the discourse, "Why I Am a Jew," is 
 clear proof of the fact that Dr. Moses was not minded to 
 turn his back upon Jews and Judaism, even in name, as 
 long as a single human being, be he never so humble and 
 distant, were caused to suffer by reason of loyalty to the 
 faith of Israel. It is here that we see in juxtaposition the 
 diverse dominant elements of his character:, the frankness 
 of the unbiased scholar and the fervor of the universal 
 idealist combined with an unexpugnable fidelity to the 
 cause of his co-religionists. His soul ribboned by the 
 mystery of the centuries, by most tender sympathy, to the 
 Jews, could never as who could? grow unconscious of 
 the fact that it was the man known as Jew, not as Yahvist, 
 who, despite his baggage of oriental ceremonies and 
 medieval superstitions and occidental corruptions, had 
 through all the darkness of the ages kept alight the lamp 
 of monotheism and morality. Pending the world's accept- 
 ance of the ideal name he advocated "for the sake of the 
 way of peace," as our sages would have said it was a 
 small minority only upon whom he might rely for full 
 sympathy and help. 
 
 Neither did Dr. Moses possess the qualities which 
 ordinarily fit a man for the leading of large hosts, those 
 qualities of intrepidity in the face of the world, and self- 
 faith, and tact which distinguished, for example, the 
 divinely gifted Isaac M. Wise. Powerful and fearless in the 
 realm of ideas, in the conquest of the kingdom of thought, 
 he had much lesser skill in the practical world. Not only
 
 xlii 
 
 was he naturally possessed of an almost childlike naivete", 
 but also he depended to the very last, in a rare manner, 
 upon the buoying and the support, one might almost say, 
 the commendation, of his fellows. Without Aaron and Hur 
 staying up his hands, he would grow faint and unsteady 
 in his fight with Amalek. Sensitive to an unusual 
 degree a trait disclosed nowhere so touchingly as in his 
 ironical discourse on "What a Minister and Layman can do 
 in Half-an-Hour" he could never disenthral himself from 
 the bondage of Public Opinion, hard though he struggled 
 against it. Ofttiines this was to him a source of grief and 
 
 doubt and tears. "To you," he wrote but a 
 James Lane year before his death to Mr. James Lane 
 Allen. Allen, in reply to the latter's praise of "The 
 
 Religion of Moses," " I make bold to confess 
 that I have hitherto had a very poor opinion of my ability 
 and what I have done towards building up my own char- 
 acter and the better life of my fellow-men. We poor 
 preachers are so easily misled to gauge our success by the 
 number of people who come to hear our sermons. This is 
 a false standard which vitiates our whole life and distorts 
 our vision as to what is truly valuable in a man's activity. 
 Depending for success upon 'Public Opinion,' we come to 
 believe that the final judgment rests with the masses." In 
 the course of the same letter he thanks Mr. Allen for 
 having raised him, by his commendation, to a "higher 
 level of self-consciousness." "This is the highest privilege 
 of superior men," he continues, in a strain that recurs in 
 his writings. "After they have come to occupy a very 
 high station, they are able to lift up, through their esteem 
 and love, many a struggling pilgrim." This quality of 
 self-depreciation, outdoing humility, this spiritual nerv- 
 ousness it was that rendered Adolph Moses deeply appre- 
 ciative of the least token of sympathy and encourage- 
 ment shown him by his fellow-men, that made his letters 
 to his friends veritable love-letters. But it will be seen 
 easily how it was bound to hamper the practical work and
 
 xliii 
 
 the worldly success of a man whose philosophy was radical 
 to the core, requiring aggresive leadership to win for it the 
 adhesion of numbers. 
 
 Thus we have traced the life and the labors of Adolph 
 Moses from their humble, wellnigh hidden source in 
 remote Poland, the old homestead of Jewish scholarship, 
 to the place where they emptied into the infinite ocean of 
 humanity and civilization. We have seen him pass 
 through many a struggle in the service of the ideals of 
 truth and holiness. Some things, of course, we have 
 refrained from touching, especially the emotions and the 
 experiences which men are wont to hide from the eye of 
 their fellows, but which Dr. Moses had an 
 ingenuous way of unbosoming. His soul, in 
 Resume. the main, was a stage upon which was enacted 
 
 a drama not at all infrequent in the history of 
 Israel : the drama of two civilizations seeking each other's 
 hand, the so-called civilizations of Hellas and Judea, West- 
 ern Culture and Judaism, with all the agony and bitterness 
 and conflicts and joys that ever have attended such inter- 
 marriage. It was the drama that was known, though under 
 a different form, in biblical times, that Philo lived through 
 in ancient Alexandria, and Maimuni, also, who admonished 
 his disciple that "he ought to know all that is fit to be 
 known," and Jacob Ariatolio who, in the twelfth century, 
 with Michael Scot served the cause of culture at the court 
 of Naples, and Spinoza who harmonized the Bible and 
 Maimuni and the Qabbalah with Descartes and founded 
 modern pantheism, and Moses Mendelssohn in whose in- 
 tellectual garden the plants of the East and the West grew 
 up in such charmful promiscuity, to say nothing of thous- 
 ands of others that have gone through the same experi- 
 ence "in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the steep 
 place", "unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung." And like Moses 
 Maimuni and Moses Mendelssohn, his more illustrious pre- 
 decessors, who would not allow their metaphysics to thwart
 
 xliv 
 
 them in the practice of their religion as they had received 
 it, Adolph Moses, whatever his philosophic ideas, was ready 
 to abide by the colors of Judaism as long as the world was 
 not quite fit for the ideal faith he preached. At the bottom 
 of all his thoughts and meditations lay the true Jewish 
 piety, that blend of Rationalism and Mysticism, that 
 chant of a hidden nightingale among the boughs of 
 Reason, which formed the faith of the Prophets and the 
 Psalmists, of Jeremiah and Job and Hillel and Nahmani 
 and Isaiah Horowitz and Elijah Gaon, and which who 
 knows? yet may come to form the faith of the world. 
 Studied closely, in sooth, the writings of Adolph Moses, 
 notwithstanding their radical tenor, will be found to con- 
 tain naught save a reassertion of old Jewish tenets. He 
 resembles in this regard all true reformers who, to quote 
 again Robertson Smith, "do not claim to be heard on the 
 ground of the new things they proclaim, but rather because 
 they alone give due weight to old truths." The basic ideas 
 of his philosophy are those selfsame concepts upon which 
 the thinkers of Israel ever have builded. Throughout 
 his discourses there pulsates the elemental Jewish senti- 
 ment which might be summed up in the benediction 
 of Judah ibn Tibbon, the illustrious medieval trans- 
 lator: "The Name of our God be blessed now and for- 
 ever who by His wisdom brought forth being out of 
 naught, and created all by His might, and chose man to be 
 the most exalted of His creatures, the jewel of all beings, 
 and put upon him of the spirit of His own understanding, 
 and illumined his eyes by the light of His own Soul, and set 
 him apart by wisdom and knowledge from all created 
 things, and made him to rule over all living beings!" 
 Whatever seas of knowledge and culture Dr. Moses may 
 traverse, his mental vessel never leaves behind the anchor 
 of Jewish monotheism. Clothed in modern attire, he 
 presents to us afresh the spirit of the ancient world- 
 wanderer, the Religion of Israel. We behold anew the 
 miracle of mutability constantly recurring in the life of
 
 xlv 
 
 Judaism: its power of adaption, and absorption, and self- 
 loyalty; the genius of remaining the same, true to itself, 
 amid all changes. Dr. Moses himself may not be aware of 
 all the ties of kinship that bind him to his spiritual ances- 
 tors; he himself may not know how oft his new terms, 
 borrowed from modern thought and poetry and science, 
 are really the old syllables recombined a new version of 
 the things learnt openly or covertly at the yeshiba. And 
 certainly the casual reader, a stranger, unfortunately, to 
 the magnificent library of medieval Jewish thought, will 
 not suspect how oft the modern utterances are but the 
 echo of the mighty voices of the past an echo, it is true, 
 constantly modulated by the varying environment, as are 
 the echoes amid the diverse scenes of the Gap of Dunloe. 
 He may not imagine that the doctrines imparted by the 
 Science of today, relating to "the organic conception of 
 society" and "the historic conception of continuity," were 
 sacred thoughts to some old mystics who dreamed in Safed 
 or in Prague or on the banks of the Main in the sixteenth 
 or seventeenth century, and whose books were composed 
 in a language not commonly studied and understood. But 
 the initiate will not find it hard to recognize and doing so 
 will marvel afresh at the fundamental oneness of the mind 
 of man the fine silken thread which links the thought 
 of Adolph Moses, inwrought with the rhymes of Tennyson 
 and Goethe and the ideas of Darwin and Spencer, to the 
 quaint fabric of the old Jewish mystics. They will know 
 that when he descants on the interrelation of all men, 
 on the secret ties of sympathy that unite the universe, 
 and on our yearning to be at one with 'the Universal 
 Father, he clothes with new vigor the cherished concepts 
 of old Judaism. They will divine the mysterious relation 
 to other teachers and times of such phrases as, "Through 
 knowledge the currents of the universal Mind flow into 
 our individual mind," or "All minds are one in the Eter- 
 nal Mind," or "All nature is the incarnated thought and 
 will of God," or "The individual finds God near him
 
 xlvi 
 
 because he seeks Him in the universal life," or "Religion 
 means to feel the kinship of all souls in God," or "God 
 is the pre-established harmony of the spirits of all beings." 
 We see, then, that, despite his seeming Radicalism, 
 Adolph Moses remained faithful throughout to the funda- 
 mentals of Judaism. With Tennyson, one of his favorite 
 poets, he was convinced, that 
 
 "That man's the true Conservative 
 Who lops the moulder'd branch away." 
 
 The ceremonies, the husks, he forsook, but the kernel, 
 the spirit, he treasured more than all earthly goods. He 
 was a studious inquirer, an analytic examiner of the con- 
 tents of Tradition, and ever in search of new light upon 
 the meaning and the truth of his faith: but therein he 
 fulfilled what enlightened Jews always have deemed the 
 chief duty of man. " This matter," says Rabbi Bahya 
 ben Joseph, " is like to a servant who was bidden by his 
 king to collect money from the officials of the State, and 
 to count the receipts, and weigh and examine them. 
 Now the servant was an adept in all that the king had 
 commanded him, but the officials conspired against him, 
 and by much persuasion caused him to place confidence 
 in them. Thereupon they were wont to bring the money 
 to him with the assurance that all was correct in amount 
 and weight, as well as coinage. He trusted them, being 
 too lazy to look into the veracity of their words, and 
 thus made light of the order of the king. When the 
 matter came to the hearing of the king, he commanded 
 that the money be brought before him. And as he ques- 
 tioned his servant regarding weight and quantity, the lat- 
 ter could give no clear account, and the king charged him 
 with disobedience, in that he had relied upon the say 
 of others in a matter which, though their words were 
 true, he was able to ascertain for himself. Only if he 
 had himself been unequal to the task, he might have 
 been free from blame for depending on others. Simi-
 
 xlvii 
 
 larly, if them wert unable to comprehend by the aid 
 of thy reason the nature and the causes of the religious 
 obligations, thy excuse for refraining from examining 
 them might be an excuse indeed. Also, if thy intellect 
 were cramped and thy cognition too feeble to grasp it all, 
 thou wouldst be free from punishment for thy failing, and 
 wouldst be accounted like women and children who have 
 these matters by way of tradition. But if thou art a man 
 of knowledge and understanding, and art able to look 
 into the meaning of what thou hast received from the 
 wise men in the name of the Prophets, namely, into the 
 roots of religion and the principles of conduct, it is thy 
 duty to employ thy faculties until thou has become 
 master of the subject and it has grown clear to thee both 
 by way of tradition and reason. If so be that thou hidest 
 thy face and failest to do this thing, thou fallest short of 
 what thou owest to thy Creator." 
 
 The consciousness of such a sovereign duty animated the 
 research, and the radicalism, if you choose, of Adolph Moses. 
 But throughout his quest of knowledge and beauty, in pres- 
 ence of Wisdom and History and those wonders of Nature 
 which always thrilled his heart, he never failed to be 
 
 " Reminded how earth's greenest place 
 The color draws from Heaven." 
 
 His innate piety, his staunch belief in God and immortality, 
 moreover, stood him in good stead during the several years 
 of suffering that preceded his death. That quality alone 
 was able 
 
 "To pluck the amaranthine flower 
 
 Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind 
 Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, 
 And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind." 
 
 The way he fought against the disease which as early as 
 the year 1892 had begun its fatal attack on his life, evinced 
 his energy and the rare heroism of his mind. A trip to 
 Switzerland in that year brought him but temporary relief. 
 But with titanic tenacity he clung to his post of duty, despite
 
 xlviii 
 
 the agonies of his body. The pathos of his life's closing 
 years, the contest of his vigorous and unrelenting mind 
 with the sorely ailing body, the effort of the dove to fly 
 whose wings were cut, as he put it once, I shall not vent- 
 ure to depict. Neither his firm will to live, however, nor 
 the balmy air of California whither he resorted several 
 summers, nor the love and the skill of his physicians could 
 restore him to health ; it was clear to his friends that they 
 were losing him, and in the early part of the year 1901 it 
 was resolved to relieve him of the bulk of his ministerial 
 cares by the call of an associate rabbi. Yet, whilst he 
 was walking through the valley of the shadow, an 
 ever clearer view of the stars was vouchsafed to him, his 
 spirit seemed to mount ever higher to the throne of his 
 Maker. What devotion and pain and piety and faith are 
 merged together in "Jacob's Dream," the New Year's mes- 
 sage he sent from afar to his congregation! His body 
 was in distress, but his soul in heaven. On the seventh 
 day of January, in the year 1902, his struggle came to an 
 end, and when three days later his body was borne to rest 
 out of the house of God in which for twenty years he had 
 ministered, there were but few hearts in Louisville that 
 ached not at his going. With his congregation, which 
 loved and revered him, all Louisville mourned for the 
 passing of a man who had wrought to ennoble and uplift his 
 fellows, and ceaselessly had taught them to love one 
 another more deeply than is their wont. Surely, Religion 
 has had in him a noble, selfless servant; Humanity, an 
 ardent, faithful worker, and Israel a worthy son. The 
 day for the realization of his ideals, alas ! is not yet ; but let 
 us hope that the specimens of his work gathered in this 
 book will help to bring it nigh, as, no doubt, they will 
 serve to gain for his memory among a host of enlightened 
 and liberal men " that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise 
 which," in Milton's words, " God and good men have con- 
 sented shall be the reward of those whose published labors 
 advanced the good of mankind." H Q ENEW)W>
 
 YAHVISM. 
 
 AMONG the innumerable misfortunes which have be- 
 -*"* fallen the Israelites since they ceased to form a state 
 and a nation, one of the most fatal in its consequences is 
 the name Judaism. In the mind of the Gentiles this name 
 indissolubly associates our religion, which is universal in 
 its deepest sources and universal in its scope and tendency, 
 with the Jewish race, and thus stamps it as a tribal religion. 
 Worse still, the Jews themselves, who have gradually come 
 to call their religion Judaism, are most of them misled to 
 believe, that their faith is bound up altogether with the 
 Jewish race, that it is a religion for Jews alone and not for 
 people of any other race or nationality. 
 
 Yet, neither in biblical nor in post-biblical, neither in 
 talmudic nor in much later times, is the term Judaism ever 
 heard of among the Israelites. The Bible speaks of the 
 religion of Israel as " Torath Yahve," the instruction, or 
 the moral law, revealed by Yahve ; more fully it is stated 
 to be the statutes, judgments, and ordinances of Yahve. In 
 other places, what we are wont to call the religion of Israel 
 is represented as "Yirath Yahve," the fear and reverence 
 of Yahve. These and other kindred appellations continued 
 for many ages to stand for the religion of Israel among 
 its adherents. To distinguish it from Christianity and 
 Islam, the Jewish philosophers sometimes designate it as the 
 faith or the belief of the Jews. It was Flavins Josephus, 
 writing for the instruction of Greeks and Romans, who 
 coined the term Judaism, in order to pit it against Hellen- 
 ism as a worthy opponent and rival. By Hellenism was 
 understood the civilization, comprising language, poetry, 
 religion, art, science, manners, customs, and institutions,
 
 which, since the times of Alexander, had spread from 
 Greece, its original home, over vast regions of Europe, 
 Asia, and Africa. Josephus, zealous for the glory of his 
 nation, wished to prove to his pagan contemporaries that 
 the Jewish conceptions of God, of the soul, of morality, 
 enshrined in a noble literature, were in most respects 
 superior to those of Hellenism. And to the totality of 
 their beliefs, moral commandments, religious practices, 
 and ceremonial institutions he gave the name of Judaism. 
 The Christian writers eagerly seized upon the name thus 
 furnished them, in order to distinguish Christianity from 
 the mother-religion from which it had sprung and become 
 differentiated; they were thus enabled to demonstrate to 
 the heathens, who were seeking the true God, that for 
 them to embrace the religion of Israel meant to become 
 Jews, members of the hated, despised, and already perse- 
 cuted Jewish race. Moreover, the Jews themselves, who 
 intensely detested the traitor Josephus, refrained from read- 
 ing his works and from adopting any of his theological, 
 practical, or historical ideas. Hence, the term Judaism 
 coined by Josephus remained absolutely unknown to them. 
 It was only in comparatively recent times, after the Jews 
 became familiar with modern Christian literature, that 
 they began to name their religion Judaism. 
 
 But why object to this name and try to supplant it by 
 another, if it does most fitly express the facts, the whole 
 of those religious ideas and practices for which it stands? 
 Is it not really the religion of Jews and of no other race 
 besides? Has not your religion, an inquiring Christian may 
 ask, from its dim beginnings to this day, exclusively and 
 jealously been confined to the so-called chosen people, the 
 lineal decendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? When did 
 the Jews ever bring the light and truth of their religion, the 
 moral ideas and laws in which it glories, to men of other 
 races and nationalities? To these questions I will reply, 
 not with the fencing logic of an advocate arguing for one
 
 side of a case, but from the depths of my religious convic- 
 tions: A religion, which has moral monotheism for its 
 basis, the belief in one only God, the Maker of heaven and 
 earth, a religion which teaches that all men are descended 
 from one first father and mother, and, hence, that all men, 
 without distinction of race or climate, are made like their 
 first parents in the image and likeness of God ; a faith which 
 proclaims that God is the author, sustainer, law-giver, and 
 judge of all men, can not be tribal and national, can not 
 reserve all its store of light and moral truths for one people 
 alone, to the exclusion of all other races, leaving the rest 
 of the world forever to grope in darkness, and to perish in 
 corruption through ignorance of the right way. Such a 
 religion is bound to be universal in its extent; it must 
 strive, unless it belie its very motive, to bring its good 
 tidings to all men, it must put forth efforts to bestow the 
 blessings of which it is in possession upon all the families 
 of the earth, to educate all the races of men according to 
 the truths it holds, to teach them the ways of righteous- 
 ness and holiness in which they should go. A tribal or 
 national religion, one that does not cherish the desire to 
 extend its empire beyond the limits of a certain race or 
 people, is essentially a pagan religion, at least it has not 
 yet rid itself of certain ideas which are characteristic of 
 Paganism. 
 
 What is the cardinal difference between Paganism and 
 the religion of Israel, or Monotheism? Every nation in 
 antiquity had a supreme god of its own, from whom it 
 believed itself descended through mythical ancestors. 
 Every national god cared only for the welfare of his own 
 people, being utterly indifferent to the material and spirit- 
 ual interests of other nations, simply because they were 
 not his children and stood in no relation to him. He 
 loved only his nation, and was relentlessly hostile to those 
 nations that were at war with his people. The children 
 of his nation were bound to obey his voice, to fulfill his
 
 commands and ordinances, to seek his favor, and to show 
 their gratitude to him for his protection. The glory of 
 his nation was also the glory of the national god, its 
 defeat was his defeat. With the disappearance of the 
 people, that people's god lost his empire, and vanished 
 into nothingness. 
 
 The religion of Israel arose in irreconcilable opposition 
 to this pagan theology. Yahve, He who was, is, and will be, 
 He is the God of heaven and earth, the ruler of all nations. 
 All men are His children, because they are stamped with 
 His spiritual likeness, because they derive their life from the 
 breath of life which He has breathed into them. He is the 
 Lord of the spirits of all flesh. His divine laws of justice 
 are binding on all men, for He is the judge of the whole 
 earth. He visits their transgressions on all nations. His 
 mercy is extended over all His creatures, and He graciously 
 pardons the sins of repentant heathens, that heed the warn- 
 ings of His prophets, and return from their evil ways. Israel 
 is not His sole possession. From the rising of the sun to 
 its setting is His name to be praised among the nations. 
 Abraham, who sought the true God, and found Him, was 
 chosen to be a blessing to all men, and through his seed 
 should all families of the earth be blessed. Israel was 
 chosen to be the light-bearer of God's truth, His missionary 
 to teach the nations the knowledge of God, and show them 
 the way in which they should walk. The children of Israel 
 were not to enjoy special privileges and favors, but were 
 to be witnesses of Yahve. Israel is the servant of God, that 
 will not grow faint nor become weary until he has estab- 
 lished justice on earth. The servant of God suffers for the 
 sins of the nations, he is despised and his visage is not 
 like that of a man, his voice is not raised on high, even the 
 bruised reed does he not break. Laden with sorrows, bleed- 
 ing from many wounds, he is ordained to gather the lost 
 sheep, the nations of the earth, unto Yahve, their Father 
 and Judge.
 
 Such is the ideal mission of Israel, as conceived by his 
 seers. Nor has the historic life of Israel in its better days, 
 whenever the conditions of the time favored such a course, 
 been faithless to its high universal mission. The best 
 writers in Israel had a more or less clear insight into the 
 fact that Israel had not been formed into a people by race 
 affinities, but by the formative and unifying forces of spirit- 
 ual kinship. It was early recognized that Israel was not 
 what is called a pure race, but had received large accretions 
 from foreign tribes. Judah, the reputed father of the tribe 
 of Judah, we are informed, married a Canaanitish woman 
 who gave birth to the ancestors of the Jewish clans. This 
 simply signifies, that the tribe of Judah grew out of a union 
 of Israelitish and Canaanitish tribes. In fact, the Calebites, 
 the Yerachmeelites, and the Kenizites, though forming 
 integral parts of Judah, even in later historic times were 
 known to have been of Canaanitish origin. Joseph married 
 Osnath, an Egyptian, or, translated into the language of his- 
 tory, the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh received large 
 Egyptian accretions. A whole clan of Simeon was called 
 Saul, the son of the Canaanitish woman, which means that 
 it contained so many native elements that it was looked 
 upon as largely Canaanitish. Moses married a Midianitish 
 woman, and his children were therefore of mixed blood. 
 The whole Midianitish clan, into which Moses married, 
 was adopted into the Israelitish nation, and played an 
 important part in the religious history of Israel. It is agreed 
 on all hands that the great mass of the indigenous popula- 
 tion of Canaan were gradually absorbed by the Israelites, 
 and their blood blended with that of the conquerors. The 
 ancestress of the sacred dynasty of David was Ruth, a 
 daughter of the hated Moabitish people. Already during 
 the Babylonian captivity many converts were made to the 
 religion of Israel, as is evidenced by the fact that numer- 
 ous families were found among the returned exiles, unable 
 to prove that they were of Israelitish descent. The prophet
 
 Deutero-Isaiali welcomes the strangers, who join themselves 
 to Yahve, to serve Him. Of them He will take to minister 
 in His Temple. Several centuries later large regions of 
 Babylonia were inhabited by native Babylonians, who had 
 become converted to the religion of Israel. The royal 
 family of Adiabene and many great noblemen were pros- 
 elytes and proved themselves most generous to their 
 co-religionists in times of misfortune. During the last cen- 
 tury of the Second Commonwealth the religion of Israel 
 was gaining millions of converts. There was hardly a city 
 in the Roman empire which had not an Israelitish congre- 
 gation largely composed of converts from heathendom. 
 At the time of Paul almost all the women in Damascus had 
 embraced Judaism. The Pharisees, the most zealous, the 
 most numerous and progressive sect of Israel, are accused 
 by the Gospel writers of traversing wide seas and lands to 
 make a convert. Still later, in the ninth century, C. E., a 
 rabbi converted the royal family of the Khazaars, the 
 whole nobility, and a large part of the common people to 
 his religion. Proselytes were always held in high esteem 
 by the Israelites. It was not till Christianity, having 
 ascended the throne, forbade the Jews, on pain of death, 
 to make or receive converts that the proselytizing zeal of 
 Israel was checked. He that reads the history of Israel 
 with an impartial mind must convince himself that the 
 leading and most enlightened minds aspired to make the 
 religion of Yahve the religion of mankind. 
 
 But it shall not be denied that there were other 
 tendencies and forces at work opposed to the universal 
 aspirations of our religion. There occur numerous pas- 
 sages in the Bible, mostly, however, in the historical, not in 
 the prophetic parts, which do not breathe this lofty univer- 
 sal spirit, but betray a spirit of national exclusiveness. We 
 must, however, judge a religion and the literature in which 
 it is embalmed by its highest manifestations. We must 
 go to the root-principles of every religion, to its creative
 
 elements, and then consider whatsoever agrees with them 
 as vital and permanent, and whatsoever contradicts them 
 as a passing phase, as a temporary aberration, caused by 
 the pressure of deteriorating, adverse circumstances. The 
 chief cause in checking the universal tendency of Yahvism, 
 was the ever-present fear that by coming in close contact 
 with the surrounding nations the Israelites would learn 
 their ways and practice their abominations, and, instead of 
 leading men to the true God, would themselves be misled 
 to worship idols and defile themselves with the shameless 
 iniquities of idolatry. 
 
 Of such infinite importance was the worship of Yahve 
 and the knowledge of His ways held to be, so great and 
 imminent seemed the danger that the light of revelation, 
 but dimly burning in the heart of the Israelitish masses, 
 might be totally extinguished by the dense darkness of the 
 heathen world, that many writers and law-givers wished to 
 isolate Israel, in order to preserve in its midst the world's 
 priceless blessings. Hence, those utterances and enact- 
 ments, born of a spirit of exclusiveness, which stand in such 
 glaring contrast with the spirit of universality of the great 
 prophets and with the cardinal ideas of Yahvism. More- 
 over, Israel, though ideally the chosen messenger of Yahve 
 to all nations, under the given actual conditions formed a 
 people and a state, struggling for independence and often 
 for its existence, surrounded on all sides by hostile nations 
 that sought to subjugate it, and even to destroy its name 
 from the face of the earth. A state of mutual hostility 
 does not tend to awaken feelings of amity, to foster the 
 ideas of universal brotherhood. Yet, in spite of all these 
 tremendous difficulties, the spirit of universality, the belief 
 in the unity of God and the unity of mankind, was forcing 
 its way into the foreground of the national consciousness. 
 In the leading minds, at least, this spirit gained the 
 supremacy over all contending interests and ideas, and 
 especially after the great triumph of Yahvism under the 
 Maccabees it sought ways and means to realize itself.
 
 8 
 
 But there was an obstacle in the way of its realization 
 far more formidable than all the opposing forces men- 
 tioned above. Many causes, which can not be enumerated 
 here, had concurred to develop the ceremonial laws to 
 stupendous dimensions. The Jews alone, who had grad- 
 ually, in a long course of historic training, grown into 
 them, could make the serious attempt to shape their life in 
 accordance with them without feeling them as a burden. 
 The rest of the world, especially the Western peoples, 
 regarded these countless strict ordinances and ceremonies 
 as unnatural and insupportable burdens. These ceremonies 
 formed a wall of separation between the world and Israel. 
 The wonder is that the spirit of Yahvism succeeded in 
 making so many converts in spite of being grievously 
 hampered in its march by the weight of the ceremonial 
 yoke. Christianity sprang into existence and started on 
 its career with the intense strength of, and with the ardent 
 enthusiasm for, Israel's mission to the nations. Freed 
 from the trammels of ceremonial law by Paul, at once it 
 gained an immense advantage over the Mother-church, 
 which dared not break away from its peculiar national 
 forms. This was the tragedy of Israel, that he had within 
 himself a universal soul and a national soul, each con- 
 tending for the mastery and neither able to obtain it. 
 During the middle ages there was no possibility for Yah- 
 vism to spread within the domain of Christendom. The 
 penalty for making converts was torture and death. Thus 
 Yahvism was surrounded within by a high wall made of 
 hard, firmly-cemented ceremonies and without by the dread- 
 ful wall of fanaticism, hatred, and suspicion. 
 
 How could pure Yahvism dream of making conquests? 
 Yet the belief in a Messiah to come implied not only the 
 future deliverance of the Jews from the world's hatred and 
 cruel persecution, but also the assurance of the reign of 
 universal peace and universal brotherhood under the sway 
 of Yahve, the God proclaimed by Israel. But it was a mere
 
 dream, a far-off vision which had no feature common with 
 any possible reality. For the first time in many centuries 
 an arena has been opened in this country, and in our age, 
 for pure Yahvism to unfold its universal nature, to accom- 
 plish its mission as a religion of many races and nations, 
 to gather into its folds those Gentiles, whose reason can 
 not accept the peculiar tenets of Christianity, who are 
 separated from us only by a name. 
 
 The Israelites of America, at least the overwhelming 
 majority of the enlightened, the truly genuine American 
 Israelites, have completely emancipated themselves from 
 the yoke of ceremonial laws, have broken down the inner 
 wall, built by the hand of Talmudic and later times, which 
 has kept Jews and Gentiles apart. True, the outer wall, 
 raised by prejudice, ignorance, race antipathies, and relig- 
 ious fanaticism, though many breaches have been made in 
 it, is still far from being demolished. But let us at least 
 do our part to the best of our ability ; let us try to perform 
 the task which the God of History has imposed upon us; 
 let us remove every obstacle from the way in which the 
 universal spirit of Yahvism would move, and as a first 
 important step let us give up the name Judaism, which is a 
 hindrance to the spread of our religion. Painful though 
 the truth be, let us not hide it from ourselves, that many 
 who would embrace our faith, because they are already as 
 one with us in belief, refrain from doing so because they 
 do not wish to become Jews, because by embracing Judaism 
 they believe they lose their own race and nationality and 
 become adopted into the Jewish nation and race. Let us 
 call our religion YAHVISM. It is no new-fangled name, it 
 is simply the name by which our faith was called and 
 cherished by our forefathers, who designated it as YIRATH 
 YAHVE, the religion of Yahve. It is the fittest of all pos- 
 sible names for our religion. It is the expression of our 
 cardinal beliefs and the profoundest ideas of our faith. 
 Under this name we adore God as Eternal and Infinite
 
 IO 
 
 Existence, as the source of all being. As Yahve we worship 
 Him as Omniscient Providence. Yahve is the Creator, 
 the Preserver and Ruler of nature and mankind. Yahve 
 is our King, He is our Law-giver, our Judge and Saviour. 
 As Yahve He revealed himself to Moses, the founder of our 
 religion. As soon as we shall be accustomed to name and 
 proclaim our religion as Yahvism and to call its adherents 
 Yahvists, it will be set free to begin once more its predes- 
 tined career of conquest. Many Gentiles who now shrink 
 from religious fellowship with us, though at heart our 
 co-religionists, because they do not wish to become Jews 
 by embracing Judaism, will readily flock to the banner of 
 Yahvism, will gladly call themselves by the name of 
 Yahve, will proudly proclaim themselves Yahvists. Many 
 again, who now claim kinship with us by virtue of Jewish 
 parentage, although they have turned their backs upon 
 our religion, despising its truths and mission, will cease 
 to be regarded as members of our community as soon as 
 our religion, by assuming the name of Yahvism, will be 
 dissociated in thought from the Jewish race. There is a 
 tremendous, a magic power in a name! With a name you 
 may keep alive the demons of contempt, of race-prejudice, 
 of historical hatred ; with a name you may conjure up the 
 angel of mutual respect, of union, and universal love.
 
 CEREMONIALISM. 
 
 Jews of to-day, who live in the most advanced 
 -*- countries of the world, are, with every fibre of their 
 being, part and parcel of modern civilization. At the 
 same time they know themselves to be the heirs of the 
 ancient national religion of the Hebrew people and the 
 foreordained continuators of the spiritual history and mis- 
 sion of Israel. 
 
 This twofold life of the modern Jew on the one hand 
 is a high privilege and a source of spiritual power, and 
 on the other it brings on numerous conflicts, some of 
 which appear irreconcilable. The customs, usages, and 
 ceremonial laws of the ancient Asiatic Hebrews and of 
 the isolated medieval Jews are in many respects hope- 
 lessly antagonistic to the ways of life of modern Occidental 
 civilization. Let us not in a spirit of levity and self- 
 delusion slur over this fact. Let us full earnestly face it, 
 as becomes sincere men. We may deny it with our lips, 
 but in our heart abides the conviction that the contrast is 
 there, often glaring, between the old and the new order of 
 things, between Canaan and Europe. We are the children 
 of two worlds ; with heart and soul we belong to both, 
 and only with the last breath would we renounce either of 
 them. 
 
 It is true the Christians are also very largely Israelitish 
 in sentiment, belief, and ethics. Our Book of Life is also 
 their Book of Books. The lofty moral ideals, which were 
 evolved during post-biblical times, and which in many 
 respects mark a considerable advance beyond those of the 
 Bible, are also embodied in the writings of the New Tes- 
 tament. Our prophets and sweet singers, our heroes and
 
 12 
 
 martyrs, are also venerated by the Christians and looked 
 up to as noble types of God-seeking humanity. But 
 Christianity, though at first a national Jewish sect, soon 
 spread westward, from Asia to Europe, from the Jews to 
 the Greeks and Romans, and became in the course of a 
 century or two thoroughly denationalized. In its struggle 
 for existence, growth, and expansion Christianity broke 
 loose from almost all distinctively national customs, cere- 
 monies, and laws which were repugnant and unacceptable 
 to the Occidental peoples. Through this act of denation- 
 alization, the abolition of all ancestral usages and regu- 
 lations which had no moral meaning and educational 
 purpose for the world at large, Christianity got the start 
 of Judaism in the conversion of mankind. Without this 
 bold departure it would have continued through, perhaps, 
 four or five generations as an insignificant Jewish sect, 
 at last to disappear and be forgotten. By casting off the 
 garb of national ceremonialism Christianity succeeded in 
 becoming one of the great universal religions. 
 
 The rise and spread of Islam, which almost extirpated 
 the Christian religion in the Orient, caused the latter to be 
 thenceforth for good and evil identified with the life and 
 history of the Occidental nations. During the Middle 
 Ages Christianity came to be tainted with the fierce and 
 gloomy superstitions, inoculated with the savage instincts 
 of the new barbarous nations inhabiting Europe, corrupted 
 with the gross vices of the primitive Teutons and Slavs, and 
 contaminated with the more refined immoralities of the 
 Latin and Greek races. With the resurrection of the 
 sciences and arts and the rebirth of the Israelitish moral 
 powers, it emerges along with the Occidental nations from 
 a state of seeming decadence and degeneracy to new purity 
 and vigor. If it did not lead, it at least followed steadily 
 in the wake of advancing Western civilization, for the 
 simple and cogent reason that the Occidental nations, that 
 are the creators and standard-bearers of modern culture,
 
 happen to be also the highest representatives and acknowl- 
 edged standard-bearers of Christianity. True it is, the 
 results of modern science and the theory of the universe 
 it holds, in more than one respect seem to clash with 
 some of the vital dogmas, and to negative some of the 
 essential doctrines, of the Christian religion as authorita- 
 tively taught by the Catholic and the Protestant churches. 
 But these grave questions concern merely matters of faith 
 and philosophy. As to manners and customs and the 
 general ways of life there practically exists no antagon- 
 ism between Western Christianity and Western civilization. 
 The antagonism, as has been said, is confined to problems 
 of metaphysics and to differences between ideal ethics 
 and actual imperfect conduct. 
 
 When we turn from Christianity to the contemplation 
 of Judaism in its relation to modern civilization, we are 
 met with difficulties of a different nature; one might say 
 with difficulties of an opposite kind. In matters of faith 
 and dogma Judaism finds itself in full accord with the gen- 
 eral postulates of modern science. It knows of but one 
 theory of the universe which it is bound to combat to the 
 bitter end, namely, soulless materialism or atheism. In the 
 holy of holies of religious metaphysics the central ideas 
 of Judaism dwell in peace and conscious harmony with the 
 boldest and most comprehensive conception of modern 
 Occidental philosophy. The belief in the absolute unity 
 of God, implying the unity of universal life ; the belief that 
 unbounded nature is a perennial and progressive manifesta- 
 tion of the creative Infinite; the belief that justice and love 
 are not accidental phenomena appearing in man, but are 
 the divine revelations of the perfection and mercy of the 
 Eternal ; the doctrine that the human soul is godlike in 
 essence and dignity and free from the taint of any imagin- 
 ary hereditary guilt or curse ; the conviction that man is a 
 free moral agent, dependent for good or evil, for self-mastery 
 or self-degradation, on his own free will ; the view that
 
 14 
 
 there is a Messianic future in store for mankind, when 
 there will be a perfect humanity spontaneously living 
 according to the indwelling laws of God : these vital tenets 
 of Judaism, professed by all its adherents, by orthodox and 
 reformer, are the very ideas which the greatest and pro- 
 foundest philosophers of Europe have presented and are 
 presenting as the last outcome and the most precious fruits 
 of their speculation ! The ark of the covenant, subsisting 
 between God and mankind, containing the everlasting laws 
 of justice and love, rests safely within the sanctuary of 
 Israel's religion. No iconoclastic hands will ever break it. 
 It will endure as long as the heavens endure. Philosophy 
 and science are the cherubim from between whose wings 
 the still divine voice speaks from the mercy-seat of the 
 human heart and mind ! In matters of faith and ethics 
 Judaism has indeed anticipated, or held pace with, the 
 intellectual and moral progress of the most advanced civil- 
 ization. But when we consider the outward forms and 
 the ceremonial garb of Judaism, its most enthusiastic 
 votaries can not close their eyes to the fact that it has here 
 and elsewhere, but more especially in European lands, 
 very much to throw aside entirely, much to change and 
 modify, in order to be perfectly at one with the ways of 
 life of modern civilization, so as to become in the deepest 
 and widest sense one of its living and universal spiritual 
 powers. With the exception of the numerous reform 
 congregations in America, Judaism is still wearing, even 
 in the most advanced countries of Europe, the ceremonial 
 garments which fitted it well enough in Asia, but which 
 look strange, out of date, and out of fit in the midst of 
 the Occidental nations of today. Though universal to 
 the core, though necessarily universal in tendency, though 
 knowing itself destined by Providence to gather into its 
 fold many millions from all nations, it yet appears to the 
 eye of the fairest observers clad in its antiquated cere- 
 monial costume which distinguished it during the grievous
 
 isolation of the Middle Ages. Millions and tens of millions 
 of Gentiles who are no longer Christians even in name, 
 but are at one with us in all the essential elements of our 
 religion, feel themselves repelled from Judaism. For, by 
 retaining all its national ceremonies, usages, and laws 
 dating from biblical, talmudical, and medieval times, it is 
 made to appear intensely national or tribal, narrow and 
 exclusive, and strangely out of harmony with its Occidental 
 surroundings. 
 
 The student of history full well knows why Judaism 
 has thus in seeming remained national and outlandish. 
 Like all ancient religions, the religion of Israel was 
 national in origin and scope. It had its roots deep in the 
 heart of the people, it grew out of the spiritual experience 
 of the people, it derived its purest and strongest forces 
 from the vigorous morality of the chosen people ; it was 
 bound up with all the forms, customs, and laws of the 
 national life ; it was in keeping with the climate, and 
 adjusted to the habits, manners, and occupations of that 
 agricultural race ; it was intertwined with all the historical 
 memories of Israel, joyful and mournful. True, the great- 
 est and wisest of God's prophets, in whom His spirit was 
 a lamp shining far into futurity, in whose soul the inde- 
 structible essence of Israel's religion, ethical monotheism, 
 blossomed forth into the ideas and ideals of universal love 
 and universal humanity, these wondrous seers in their 
 boldest visions often broke through the bounds of nation- 
 ality, declaring in accents still ringing through the ages 
 that Yahve was the God and Father, not of Israel alone, 
 but of all the nations of the earth, and that His laws of 
 justice and mercy will one day come to be the laws of life 
 to all the tribes of men. They decried many ancient 
 ways and ancestral usages dear to the people's heart 
 as vicious and ungodly. They sneered at most of the 
 inherited religious practices and ceremonies, thought by 
 the priesthood and the populace to constitute true piety.
 
 i6 
 
 Even the institution of sacrifices, which in the opinion 
 of all ancient races was the very essence and life of 
 religion, was held in abhorrence by the foremost of Israel's 
 prophets. The greatest of them all proclaims in the name 
 of Yahve : u What is to me the multitude of your sacrifices? 
 In the blood of bullocks and of lambs and of goats I have 
 no delight. Bring no more false oblations ! Incense is an 
 abomination to me. Put away your evil doings from 
 before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well; 
 seek justice ; relieve the oppressed ; defend the father- 
 less; plead for the widow." Micah has for all the families 
 of the earth and for all the ages to come defined the true 
 nature of religion in these memorable words: "Where- 
 with shall I come before the Eternal and bow myself 
 before the most high God? Shall I come before him with 
 burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ? Will the Eternal 
 be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands 
 of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for the sin of 
 my soul, the fruit of my body for my transgression? He 
 has showed thee, O man, what is good ; what does Yahve 
 require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to 
 walk humbly before thy God?" Such were the religious 
 ideas and moral ideals of Israel's best, of God's own 
 chosen messengers. But the nation as a whole was not yet 
 ripe for so lofty a religion. It was simply a psychological 
 impossibility for the mass of the people to break away 
 from most of its national conceptions and usages and 
 rise to the dizzy heights of the prophet's universal religion 
 of justice, mercy, and love of God! Had not Israel been 
 providentially shattered to pieces and scattered abroad, 
 had not the nation as a body been destroyed and only a 
 remnant thereof been carried away from its native soil 
 into captivity, it is not improbable that the national 
 polytheistic elements, acting with the unbroken force of 
 hereditary habits of thought and modes of action, would 
 at last have overwhelmed the prophetic spirit of a purely
 
 17 
 
 moral monotheism. As it was, a remnant of the remnant 
 was saved and rejuvenated by imbuing itself largely with 
 the ideas, hopes, and aspirations of the prophets. Polythe- 
 ism, together with all its abominations, was cast out from 
 their heart and life, and ethical monotheism was firmly 
 and forever established in their soul. They formed the 
 nucleus of a new religious community, destined to be the 
 leaven of mankind. 
 
 But could that fragment of the nation, concentrating 
 as it did within itself the best and most vital spiritual 
 forces of the past, help cherishing along with the glorious 
 memories of the. past also the hope of returning to the 
 home of the fathers and there build up anew the old 
 nationality on the foundations of the divine law? About 
 fifty thousand devoted men and women, among them 
 numerous priests, returned to Palestine and, amid ruins 
 and desolation, began the arduous task of creating a new 
 commonwealth on the basis of Israel's religion according 
 to the laws, statutes, and ordinances of Yahve. But 
 which forms of the ancestral life were to be discarded 
 and which retained? All those ceremonies and customs 
 which were opposed to the .spirit of monotheism were 
 wholly done away with. On the other hand, all those 
 modes of worship and forms of life which contained an 
 element of morality or tended to bind the people together 
 and distinguish it from the surrounding heathen tribes, 
 were fondly preserved and embodied in the code of relig- 
 ious and national laws. The Temple was rebuilt and 
 became the rallying center and the emblem of the national 
 existence. Daily sacrifices were instituted anew and the 
 priesthood, the sons of Zadoc, the sole remaining repre- 
 sentatives of the ancient ruling families, came to be 
 invested with the supreme guiding power. The priests in 
 course of time learned to consider themselves better and 
 holier and nearer to God than the people, because they 
 ministered in the temple of the Lord, offering daily sacri- 
 fices to Him and burning incense in His sanctuary, because
 
 i8 
 
 they ate the sacred bread and meat of God, observing 
 certain laws of Levitical purity and diet. Then rose a 
 noble democratic spirit in Israel in opposition to the 
 priestly claim to special sanctity. Great and wise teachers 
 sprung from the mass of the people, proclaimed the 
 doctrine that the whole people is holy, that God is in it 
 and with it no less than in the sons of Aaron; in a 
 word, that all Israel was to be a kingdom of priests and 
 a holy nation. To carry this grandly democratic idea 
 into practice they extended the laws of Levitical purity 
 and diet and, in part, also costume, to the whole mass 
 of the people. All Jews should abstain from eating what 
 was forbidden to the priests ; the meat that came upon 
 their table should be of an animal killed in the way the 
 sacrifices were slain. Every layman should wash his hands 
 before breaking bread, just as the priest did before eating 
 of the holy bread. What was impure to the sons of 
 Aaron should be equally impure to the sons of the com- 
 mon people ; what contaminated a priest should be consid- 
 ered polluting also to the body of every other Israelite. 
 In these and in innumerable other respects all laymen 
 were made to observe with the most scrupulous care 
 all the rules and laws which regulated the daily life 
 of the priests. The effect of this religious policy was in 
 many ways highly beneficial. It imbued the whole people 
 with the consciousness of its priestly dignity and mission. 
 It made every Jew feel that, as to sanctity, devotion, and 
 godliness, he might be the peer of the high priest himself. 
 Moreover, it fostered habits of cleanliness, temperance, 
 and self-mastery. 
 
 But, as does frequently happen in the life of individuals 
 and nations, in the pursuit of means to reach certain 
 ends the latter are often lost sight of and the tem- 
 porary means come to be treated as ultimate ends. The 
 democratization of Judaism by means of popularizing the 
 ceremonial laws was to serve the high purpose, first to
 
 19 
 
 make the whole nation a kingdom of genuine priests of 
 God, and then, through the agency of this elevated and 
 humanized people, to impart the blessing of Israel's ethical 
 monotheism, the statutes of justice and mercy, to all the 
 families of the earth. The ceremonial laws gradually 
 became so numerous, all-embracing, exacting, and burden- 
 some that a very large portion of the Jewish nation itself, 
 the so-called people of the land, was unable to live up to 
 them, because it could not live under them. Thus there 
 was an ever-widening gulf between the great mass of 
 the uneducated, consisting mostly of peasants, and the 
 learned classes, mostly inhabitants of the cities. Again, 
 the ceremonial laws had gradually built up a perfect 
 wall around Judaism, and prevented the heathen seeking 
 the God of Israel from entering His sanctuary except 
 through the narrow ceremonial gate left open. Even 
 under these immense difficulties and restrictions numer- 
 ous Gentiles adopted Judaism and took upon themselves 
 the whole burden of its laws. There was the spectacle 
 of a lofty and thoroughly humane religion, which in 
 its very nature and tendency was destined to become 
 universal, yet which, through the concurrence of many 
 historical influences, had become imprisoned within a 
 thick shell of national laws and ceremonies, so that it 
 could not go forth as the messenger of God to conquer 
 the earth by the might of its divine moral powers. May 
 be that if the fatal crisis had not so soon arrived, if 
 the terrible struggle with murderous Rome had not cut 
 the nation to pieces and laid waste Judaism's center of 
 gravity, the process of historical development would have 
 brought on a peaceful or revolutionary solution of the 
 conflict between the universal soul and the ceremonial 
 tribal body of Israel's religion. As it was, the fearful 
 catastrophe, which had more than decimated the Jews and 
 drained nearly all the life-blood of the nation, left Juda- 
 ism prostrate and sick at heart, even nigh unto death. For
 
 2O 
 
 a long time it could not think of spiritual conquest abroad. 
 All that the leaders of Israel could do was to gather 
 together and unite the scattered fragments and breathe 
 into them the spirit of trust in God, of indomitable endur- 
 ance, and of hope in a glorious future and mission. 
 
 Under such critical conditions, during the supreme 
 struggle for mere existence, any attempt to dissolve the 
 national ceremonial laws would have proved sure death 
 both to the Jews and to Judaism. Meanwhile Christianity, 
 untrammeled by national memories, disasters, and laws, 
 was reaping the rich harvest prepared by the parent relig- 
 ion. Then came the ages of Christian dominance and 
 supremacy, but, alas, also of Christian fanaticism. Then 
 was ushered in the sad time when the Jews were driven 
 back upon themselves, ostracised, calumniated, hunted 
 down like wild beasts, robbed of all human rights, and 
 shut up in narrow ghettos. No wonder that the poor, 
 down-trodden exiles, the memories of whose past was their 
 only solace, whose literature, biblical and talmudical, 
 was their only home, whose hope in a Messianic deliver- 
 ance was their only star in the night of misery, considered 
 themselves an alien nation dwelling for a time among 
 hostile nations, but destined one day to be restored to its 
 sacred soil, to see Jerusalem rebuilt in all her glory, and 
 the Temple of God erected anew, where sacrifices would 
 as of yore be offered daily to the Most High. No wonder, 
 since the present was dark as the darkness of Egypt, that 
 our fathers turned their eye now back to the transfigured 
 past and now lovingly towards the hoped-for national 
 future. No wonder that they clung not only to the moral 
 laws, but with equal devotion to all the ceremonial ordi- 
 nances and statutes of Bible and Talmud, unconcerned 
 with the question whether any of them had outgrown their 
 time, meaning, and usefulness. Thus it came to pass, that 
 not only were all the old ceremonial laws preserved and 
 observed, as if they were imperishable, divinely-revealed
 
 21 
 
 moral laws, but innumerable new enactments and observ- 
 ances were year by year deduced from the older ones, often 
 by means of hair-splitting casuistry. Ceremonial burden 
 was heaped upon burden, restriction upon restriction, fence 
 added to fence, until almost every step was hampered and 
 every act hedged in by ceremony. The whole life of the 
 Jews was enveloped with the ceremonial laws as with a 
 huge spider's web. 
 
 At last, however, the light of tolerance has appeared. 
 Civilization has tamed the dragon of fanaticism, broken 
 down the walls of the ghettos, and with gracious words 
 proclaimed to the Jews : " Go forth from your prison, 
 breathe the air of liberty and equality, mingle with your 
 brethren, live with them as the children of the same 
 Father, work with them and for them, let your spiritual 
 light, which has so long burned in your dark prison, shine 
 in the midst of mankind, contribute your share of intellect- 
 ual, moral, religious, and artistic work to the store of the 
 world's possessions." We have heard that divine voice of 
 saving and liberating civilization, and have with grateful 
 and joyful hearts leaped forth from the prison of isolation 
 into the arena of modern life. We no longer feel our- 
 selves an alien race dwelling in misery among hostile 
 races. We know that we are flesh of the flesh, bone of 
 the bone, and spirit of the spirit of Occidental civiliza- 
 tion. W T e no longer are a nation within a nation, we no 
 longer hope nor wish to be restored to Canaan and there 
 begin a new national life. We are here to stay forever, to 
 be with heart and soul and might children of Western 
 civilization. We hope for no Messiah, but believe in 
 the coming of the great day when there will be perfect 
 humanity living in god-like harmony and union beneath 
 the scepter of universal righteousness and love. We 
 believe that we, the professors of Judaism, have still the 
 sacred mission to hasten the great day of the Lord by liv- 
 ing according to the moral ideals of pure Judaism and to
 
 22 
 
 gather in those many Gentiles whose spirit urges them to 
 walk with us in the ways of the prophets and sages of 
 Israel. 
 
 Yet such a consummation, which is devoutly to be 
 wished for, requires the most complete adaptation of Juda- 
 ism to the views and habits of modern civilization. The 
 inexorable spirit of history leaves us no other choice. 
 The conditions of modern life and the exigencies of the 
 times have in fact already decided the issue in a manner 
 not to be mistaken or reversed. The overwhelming 
 majority of the Jews living in the civilized countries of the 
 world, and more especially the American Israelites, have 
 virtually emancipated themselves from all such Mosaic and 
 rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress. 
 Even among those styling themselves orthodox in this 
 country there is not one in ten who strictly conforms to all 
 the ceremonial laws as laid down in the Bible, the Talmud, 
 and later authoritative books. There is not one in fifty 
 among the German and native orthodox Jews in the United 
 States who, under the genuine and unadulterated Jewish 
 orthodoxy of Poland and Russia, does not deserve scourging 
 and worse punishments in accordance with indisputable 
 enactments, biblical or rabbinical. The truth of the mat- 
 ter is, the practice has long ago outrun the theory; or 
 rather, it has pursued its own way without any theory, 
 being blindly determined by social agencies at work. No 
 protest, no grievous lamentation will ever bring to life 
 what has irrevocably gone out of existence for want of 
 harmony with its present environments. 
 
 But this very state of things gives much concern to 
 those having the mission of Judaism greatly at heart. 
 This rapid change, the speedy abolition of time-honored 
 and immemorial forms and ceremonies, brought about by 
 no clearly-conceived principle, but by mere stress of uncon- 
 scious forces, has been and is fraught with great spiritual 
 danger. It has made a breach in the moral consciousness
 
 23 
 
 of the Jewish masses, it has produced a glaring contrast 
 between the living, though unreasoning, practice and the 
 old theory. So many biblical and rabbinical laws being 
 flagrantly and generally violated, the question necessarily 
 suggests itself to many, whether both Bible and Talmud 
 have not entirely ceased to be our religious and moral 
 guides. In place of this unthinking and, hence, blindly 
 destructive practice, Reform Judaism enunciates a great 
 principle, derives from the study of Israel's history a prin- 
 ciple, which heals the breach in the moral consciousness of 
 the people by drawing a line of distinction between the 
 moral laws and the ceremonial laws of Israel's religion. 
 Its moral laws are indestructible and universal, binding on 
 all ages and all men. Not one jot nor one tittle of them 
 shall pass away as long as the heavens endure. But the 
 ceremonial laws, biblical and rabbinical, have been and 
 are merely educational means to serve ultimate moral 
 ends. They are timely and full of value only as long as 
 they fit in with the general conditions of society. As 
 long as they are quick with life and purpose they are 
 beautiful symbolic rites, helpful and healthful aids to the 
 working of the religious ideals. But when they have lost 
 all rational meaning and become mere fossilized forms, 
 they are mere dead-weight, obstructing the path of true 
 religion and clogging the spiritual progress of the soul. 
 
 Are we advocating the abolition of all religious cere- 
 monies and rites of biblical and post-biblical origin? 
 Heaven forbid ! There are symbols which are still preg- 
 nant with beautiful significance, there are rites which tend 
 to elevate and sanctify our lives, there are ceremonies 
 which keep green the memories of epoch-making events in 
 Israel's history, connecting by means of living links the 
 past with the present. To abolish these would be like cut- 
 ting away living and fruit-bearing branches from the tree 
 of Judaism. Do we insist, in a spirit of reforming fanati- 
 cism, that all rites and ceremonies, which no longer
 
 24 
 
 exert an elevating and moralizing influence, should at once 
 be done away with, even if they happen to be dear 
 to the people's heart from force of hereditary habit and 
 historical association? As long as they are no hindrance 
 to moral progress let us leave to the slow but sure action 
 of time to dissolve them. When they will disappear, as 
 disappear they must for want of spiritual forces to vitalize 
 them, the indestructible essence of religion will nowise be 
 affected, if but the truth be firmly established in the peo- 
 ple's heart that the moral laws alone are imperishable, 
 while all ceremonies are transient in their nature.
 
 THE RELIGION WE OFFER TO 
 THE GENTILES. 
 
 i. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 T^OR the first time since the final triumph of Christianity 
 * over Paganism, for the first time since the victorious 
 daughter-church had on pain of death forbidden the Jews 
 to make converts, Yahvism, usually called Judaism, is in 
 our time and country given a fair chance to renew its long 
 interrupted propaganda, to make the attempt at gathering 
 into the fold of our church those Gentiles whose heart and 
 mind are out of harmony with the teachings of Christi- 
 anity. The only one God, the Maker of heaven and earth, 
 who spake by the mouth of the prophets and revealed 
 Himself as the God and Father, the Law-giver, Judge, and 
 Guide of all mankind, is calling us by name, and bidding 
 us to gird our loins with strength, to bring to all the mes- 
 sage of Yahvism, the message of His all-embracing and 
 all-quickening unity, the message of His revealed laws of 
 universal justice, the message of humanity to be redeemed 
 by love and reconciled by entertaining the covenant of 
 righteousness with God. A new time has begun and new 
 work must be done by us. The God of history is putting to 
 us, the children of this generation, a glorious task which is 
 of infinite importance but also of infinite difficulty. Some- 
 where the beginning must be made by believing hearts 
 and dauntless spirits. Those who are determined to walk 
 in the path carved out by the inspired messengers of God 
 must take the first bold steps toward assimilation by spirit- 
 ual conquest if not immediately in practice, at least in
 
 26 
 
 clearly-conceived theory. The time has come for us firmly 
 to grasp the problem of our missionary calling. If God 
 has foreordained us to be teachers, we should know what 
 we are to teach: what cardinal principles of belief, what 
 ideas of morality, what ideals of private and social conduct 
 constitute the religion which we are to offer to men who 
 do not call themselves by the name of Israel. 
 
 But many of those within the reach of our voice, and 
 many more who will read this discourse, will smile at the 
 high-aspiring claims which we make for the destiny of 
 Yahvism. They will call our belief in the conquering 
 future of our religion a pleasant day-dream which is at 
 variance with the stubborn realities of the conditions 
 given by history. "It is not thinkable," they will say, 
 "that Yahvism will ever spread beyond the narrow limits 
 of the Jewish race. Any such attempt is foredoomed to 
 ignominious failure. It is not credible that the Jews will 
 ever make propaganda for their religion. They do not 
 show the least desire for such an adventurous and arduous 
 mission. In their heart of hearts they firmly believe that 
 Judaism is synonymous with the Jewish race. To them 
 no less than to the Gentiles, it seems simply ridiculous that 
 any but a born Jew should profess the religion of the Jews 
 and be a member of the church of Yahve." 
 
 To the doubters and the cavillers among my co-relig- 
 ionists I reply: If the Israelites have no wish to make 
 propaganda for their faith, the worse for them, and the 
 worse still for their descendants. Our present position 
 in the world is a most dangerous anomaly. History 
 furnishes no parallel to it. Nothing like it can be traced 
 in the annals of the past, nothing corresponding to it can 
 be found in the present on the whole face of the earth, 
 We live scattered everywhere among the nations of the 
 earth, we are distinguished by them and distinguishable 
 from them. We are regarded as a distinct people, and 
 many Jews, smitten with judicial blindness, accept this
 
 27 
 
 false and fatal view, and speak of themselves as belonging 
 to the Jewish people. If we are indeed a separate nation 
 or people, we have no business and no right to dwell in 
 every part of the world, and to claim everywhere the 
 privileges of full citizenship. We should as quickly as 
 possible try to have a country, a language, and a govern- 
 ment of our own, and thus constitute a nation in reality 
 instead of being satisfied with being one in theory. There 
 is consistency and method in the madness of the Zionists. 
 They argue: "We have these many centuries been a nation 
 living in exile. In former days it was impossible for us 
 to return to our Fatherland. Let us return as soon as 
 possible to Palestine, occupy and till its soil like our fore- 
 fathers, revive our Hebrew language and make it our 
 living national tongue, establish a government of our own, 
 and once more play the part of a nation with our national 
 religion for its basis." You laugh at this phantasmagoria 
 of the Zionists, and consider it a most mischievous folly, 
 little short of treason and blasphemy. For they are put- 
 ting dangerous weapons in the hands of our enemies and 
 maligners, who declare that the Jews are but interlopers, 
 who ought to be deprived of the rights and prerogatives of 
 citizenship and in every respect treated as aliens living in 
 the land on sufferance, by the grace of the nation. 
 
 Let us not hide from ourselves the fact that the spirit 
 of nationality has in this century become more intense, 
 more self-conscious, and more intolerant than it ever was 
 since the days of the Roman Empire. Nationality and 
 race, for good, but more for evil, have come to be in our day 
 the vital principles of every leading European state. They 
 are the crystallizing forces of all new political formations 
 in the old world. Community of race is declared to be the 
 only natural and solid foundation of every commonwealth. 
 The tremendous forces of nationality are rapidly disinte- 
 grating great empires such as Turkey and Austria, which are 
 composed of different races and nations. Racial affinities
 
 28 
 
 are recognized as the only power of national cohesion. 
 They alone are held to give to a state a reason and a right 
 for existence. In former ages the ruling family or dynasty, 
 in some cases religion, formed the bond of union between 
 the component parts of a state. Most states, therefore, 
 consisted of populations differing in race, language, man- 
 ners, and customs. The idea of nationality and race, so 
 strong in antiquity, was feebly developed in the Middle 
 Ages, and played only an insignificant part in the political 
 schemes of the rulers and the sympathies and antipathies 
 of the masses. The reason is not far to seek. The modern 
 nations themselves are of comparatively recent growth. 
 They were very long in the making. They were slowly 
 compounded and recompounded of numerous fragments 
 of races and states. The very fact that the medieval 
 emperor was the head of the Holy Roman Empire, which 
 comprised all Germany, parts of France, Italy, Holland, 
 Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Poland, clearly proves 
 how undeveloped the idea of nationality was in medieval 
 times and that it played at best but a secondary part 
 in the political and social life of Europe. While the 
 European nations were slowly evolving, religion was the 
 principal force that united or separated individuals and 
 kingdoms. In those days the Jews were deprived of 
 human rights and cruelly persecuted in the name of 
 religion. There was no racial, no national antipathy 
 against them. In the nineteenth century the slow pro- 
 cess of nation-making has been wellnigh completed in 
 the Old World. Nationality and race have been sub- 
 stituted for religion as the dominant principle of unity and 
 separation among men. The fanaticism of religion has 
 given place to the fanaticism of nationality. It has come 
 to stay for a long time. It will for centuries to come 
 direct the course of history, fashion the feelings and deter- 
 mine the acts of men in their individual and collective 
 capacity.
 
 2 9 
 
 The principle of nationality, the fanaticism of race, has 
 within the last twenty-five years risen in the Old World 
 against the Jews. Anti-Semitism is but the brutal and 
 wicked expression of a most potent force with which we 
 must reckon. Rightly or wrongly the continental nations 
 believe that the Jews are an alien people, and as such are a 
 foreign element in the body politic. The struggle is fierce 
 and disgraceful, the antagonism full of perplexities and 
 dangers. In a pamphlet recently published in Germany, 
 a celebrated Jewish lawyer recommends assimilation in all 
 things save religion as the only solution. His arguments 
 have made a profound impression on many thinking peo- 
 ple in Europe. There are far-sighted men in the Old 
 World and in the New who love the cause of Israel better 
 than their own life, who feel infinite love and pity for 
 bruised and tormented Israel, for Israel the scape-goat of 
 the nations. These men, with hearts full of sleepless sor- 
 row, have come to recognize it as the will of God that 
 Israel should, in the course of time, become a universal 
 religion and church, instead of being an isolated race. 
 Still, in the Old World the conditions are less favorable to 
 such a consummation. There is too much narrowness and 
 prejudice on both sides. Israel's new light of salvation 
 must and will come from America. Judaism or Yahvism 
 will start on a new career of spiritual and moral conquest 
 in the New World. Here, in this land of absolute relig- 
 ious liberty and endless possibilities, the faith of Israel is 
 destined to shake off all trammels of race and become in 
 all its activities and aspirations a universal religion, such 
 as it has always been in essence and scope. The historical 
 conditions surrounding us in this country are indefinitely 
 more propitious to the evolution of Israel and Yahvism 
 into the church of humanity. The spirit of nationality 
 fortunately has not yet been developed in America to 
 that degree of intensity and intolerance which has caused 
 it to become in Europe in many respects hostile to the
 
 30 
 
 spirit of broad humanity. The American nation is in a 
 large measure still in the making. Races physically and 
 mentally the most varied are still dwelling peacefully 
 together. The component parts have not yet been fused 
 into a compact national unity, and new foreign elements 
 are being constantly added to the variegated mass. But a 
 time will come when the American nation will be com- 
 pletely formed, when all the heterogeneous elements will 
 be transformed into an homogeneous people occupying 
 in dense numbers the fruitful American land. Then the 
 national spirit will become as strong and intolerant here 
 as it already is in the Old World. The bars will be raised 
 against foreign immigration. In theory and practice the 
 rule will prevail, "America for the Americans." Then the 
 fanaticism of nationality will be as virulent, as suspicious, 
 and dangerous as it is today in Europe. The Know- 
 nothing movement was but a premature prelude of what 
 will come to be in fifty or a hundred years. 
 
 Let us bestir ourselves during these years, before the 
 storms will burst upon us. Assimilation by making spirit- 
 ual conquests, safety by enlarging and transforming into a 
 universal Church, is the advice which far-seeing wisdom 
 gives us. Our religion is dearer to us than life itself. We 
 would rather be the outcasts of the world than become 
 faithless to our faith. But this very religion of ours 
 demands that we should preach its simple and broad 
 truths to the nations. It is our mission to be a blessing to 
 all the families of the earth. It is our calling to teach the 
 absolute unity of God in opposition to all Pagan adulter- 
 ations 01 the faith of the prophets. It is our office to join 
 unto ourselves all those who are our brethren in faith, 
 though strangers in blood. The harvest to be gathered is 
 rich, it requires infinite patience, enthusiasm, faith, endless 
 toil on the part of many generations. Say not that preju- 
 dices are in the way of our making spiritual conquests. 
 What can not enthusiasm and faith accomplish with the
 
 aid of God? A few Jewish apostles, poor, unknown, 
 despised, overmastered the proud and mighty Greek and 
 Roman World. We have long enough been hiding our 
 light under a bushel. We have, like Jonah, been fleeing 
 from the presence of God and refused to bring His mes- 
 sage to the children of men. Let us, even with our feeble 
 power, begin to prepare the day of the Lord. At best it 
 will take centuries and centuries to accomplish the task. 
 But ours is the duty to begin the work and do it with all 
 our heart, all our soul, and all our might. With the all- 
 wise and omnipotent God is left the completion and 
 direction thereof. Let everyone of us consider himself an 
 apostle of Israel's message to the Gentiles. Let everyone 
 endeavor to demonstrate by his deeds and words the beauty 
 and nobility of character shaped by the forces of Yahvisrn. 
 Let the conduct of each of us be such that men who are 
 not of the seed of Abraham will be led to worship the one 
 only God and flock to His sanctuary, that they may learn 
 His ways and walk in His paths. It is our duty to under- 
 stand the ways of God and walk as standard-bearers in the 
 path of Yahvism. Inviting the Gentiles to the house of 
 Yahve, we must be prepared to tell them, what kind of 
 religion we offer them as the light and guidance of life 
 individual and social. Driven by a sense of supreme duty 
 we undertake, with many misgivings, the difficult task of 
 answering the question : What kind of religion do we offer 
 to the Gentiles? 
 
 Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One ; thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. These two command- 
 ments are the vital and central principles of Yahvism. 
 They are the creative ideas of our religion, from which all 
 other beliefs and moral laws spring. Both together form 
 the supreme idea of Yahvistic faith and ethics. One is 
 the complement of the other. They belong together like 
 heart and head. Without the belief in the absolute unity, 
 perfection, and omnipotence of a supreme Creator, the
 
 32 
 
 unity of mankind and universal love have no eternal basis 
 to rest on. Without the idea of the unity of the human 
 race centered in God, and the duty of love flowing from 
 the spiritual kinship of all men, the unity of God is but a 
 useless metaphysical idea. The solidarity and brother- 
 hood of all the families of the earth, in other words, the 
 love of our fellowmen, is the perfect fruit of Israel's ethical 
 monotheism. The belief in more than one God, the belief 
 in a divine duality or a divine triad or trinity, the belief 
 in no God or atheism, lead to immorality. Any religion 
 but that which teaches the absolute oneness of the Divine 
 power, is likely to generate feelings, thoughts, and acts of 
 inhumanity. 
 
 According to the pagan theory of nature and man the 
 universe came into existence and assumed its present 
 form by dint of its own inherent blind energy. The 
 gods themselves were the offspring of nature, subject for 
 good and evil to an inexorable fate, or to an unconscious 
 omnipotent law having its ground outside and above 
 the gods. The world was not the creation of a wise and 
 almighty will. Nature was not the embodiment of a 
 Divine plan of beneficence. The universe was not sancti- 
 fied and spiritualized by being regarded as the visible 
 revelation of the beauty and love of a holy and all-good 
 spirit. There was no eternal purpose weaving together all 
 forms of existence, all events and times into the living 
 garment of the Deity. Good and evil lay opposite each 
 other in nature, both unexplained and irreconcilable, 
 both accidents, irrational, both acting blindfoldly, capri- 
 ciously, without a will and without a reason. The gods 
 were merely lucky aristocrats whom a whim of nature had 
 produced and endowed with certain limited powers. They 
 created nothing; their being shed no light on the mystery 
 of existence, nor on the problem of good and evil in nature. 
 They were no types of ideal goodness. On the contrary, 
 they concentrated within themselves all the seeming
 
 33 
 
 contradictions of nature, all her wild impulses and cruel 
 freaks, all her apparent brutal selfishness and heartless 
 indifference to suffering. The gods were at war with one 
 another, because each one represented only a part. Each 
 one was the patron, or father and protector, of a limited 
 section of the human race, and stood to the rest of man- 
 kind in a relation of hostility. As there was no unity of 
 the Divine power, so there was no unity of mankind. 
 There were as many mankinds as there were gods, there 
 were as many gods as there were peoples or tribes. Every 
 people looked upon all the others as standing outside the 
 fellowship of its own humanity, because there was to their 
 mind no Divine unity embracing all the children of men 
 and welding them together into a covenant of brother- 
 hood, worshiping the same common Maker and Father. 
 With profound insight in the origin, nature, and results 
 of idolatry or polytheism, the prophets of Yahve recog- 
 nized in it the root of all evil and sin, and hated it as the 
 deadly enemy of humanity, as the natural foe of justice and 
 mercy and holiness. The pagan was habitually unjust, and 
 cruel to all men but his own tribesmen. The reason is 
 obvious enough. He did not regard them as his fellowmen. 
 He despised them as inferior beings, sprung from a con- 
 temptible ancestry. They did not worship the same 
 gods, nor stand under their protecting egis. The idea 
 of humanity was unknown to heathendom. The word 
 "hurnanitas" meant politeness, urbanity, gentlemanly 
 behavior. Humanity in the broad sense of the spiritual 
 unity of mankind has its vital roots in the belief that 
 all the races of men have their common origin in one 
 universal God who has dowered them all with equal and 
 unalienable rights, and knit them together in bonds of 
 mutual obligations and loving kindness. The pagan 
 recognized only his compatriot, his fellow-citizen, as his 
 fellow-man. Man as man had no worth, no rights, no 
 claims, no duties. The pagan could not, as the Israelite,
 
 34 
 
 look with awe upon all men as wonderfully and fearfully 
 made, as beings clothed with the godlike dignity of man- 
 kind bestowed upon them by the Spirit of all. Right and 
 duty were merely social laws, legal ordinances. But they 
 had nothing absolute and universal in them, simply 
 because in the pagan theory of the world there was no 
 absolute good will, no universal reason, from which to 
 derive the moral laws as eternal revelations of the Divine 
 attributes. Love was merely physical love, the natural 
 family affections or the sentiment of friendship of one indi- 
 vidual for another. But it was not the pure spiritual love 
 of man as man, after the type of the love of God for all 
 mortals; it was not mercy for the finite image of the 
 Eternal whose mercy extends over all His creatures. 
 
 In polytheism sin in its deepest moral and religious 
 sense was unknown. Sin was dreaded because of its evil 
 consequences. It was viewed as an external injurious act 
 and was punished by the human and divine guardians of 
 the state as rebellion against the established ordinances of 
 society. Sin was not an inward self-debasement, a falling 
 away from the infinite moral dignity of humanity dwelling 
 in us, a wilful breaking away from the life of God, in 
 which we are to share by walking with Him in His ways. 
 Sin was simply an infraction of a statute. It would cease 
 to be sin if the powers that be, divine and human, chose 
 to reverse the statute. Sin is not, according to pagan 
 theology, absolutely abominable, because it is a departure 
 from the holiness and perfection of the one only God, the 
 life and essence of all being. It is not rebellion against 
 the everlasting canons of universal love. 
 
 Polytheism must needs foster vice; for it springs from 
 the belief that the different parts of nature have separate 
 lives and powers and are represented by various gods who 
 have the qualities of the phenomena they stand for and 
 typify. Every part of nature that is worshiped must be 
 obeyed. The bestial impulses, as well as the cruelties and
 
 35 
 
 tortures inflicted by nature, are manifestations of divine 
 powers, which should be imitated by man. Hence, the 
 monstrous practices of idolatrous nations against which the 
 writers of the Old Testament and of the New hurl their 
 fierce denunciations. 
 
 As has been said before, the pagan mind could make 
 no serious attempt to solve the problem of good and evil. 
 For in polytheism neither good nor evil had a reason for 
 existence, because they could not be conceived as rooted 
 in universal existence. No one God, nor all the gods 
 together, had created the world. Hence no god could be 
 believed to be the source of all good nor of all evil in 
 nature and history. There was no almighty being, in 
 whose manifestations good and evil were pitted as con- 
 trasts. Good and evil fell apart as causeless, purposeless, 
 and meaningless phenomena. There was no room in 
 polytheism for the hope that evil would in the fullness of 
 time be overcome and rooted out of the world, since there 
 was no omnipotent power of good to accomplish it. To 
 the pagan mind the history of nature and of man was 
 merely a succession of events. It did not begin in all-wise 
 and all-good omnipotent Will, nor would it end in the 
 unfolding and victory of the universal good. We must not, 
 however, fail to recognize in polytheism the germs of true 
 religion, the beginnings of an exalted ethics of humanity.
 
 II. 
 
 GERMS OF RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL TRUTH IN 
 POLYTHEISM. 
 
 Taking a broad view of the spiritual history of man- 
 kind as one continuous life and growth, we can not but 
 believe that polytheism, too, was a revelation of the 
 Infinite, a necessary stage in the unfolding of the spirit of 
 God in the human race. God has left none of His chil- 
 dren without a ray of His light. The ways of God 
 through all the domain of nature and of mind are those of 
 gradual evolution from lower to ever higher forms, from 
 the imperfect to the more perfect, from faint streaks of 
 dawning truth unto the brightness of the perfect day. But 
 of this we shall speak more fully when we come to treat of 
 the subject of Revelation and religious development. In 
 believing that a divine being was indwelling, and presiding 
 over, every part and phenomenon of nature, polytheism 
 gave expression to the truth that Nature is no weltering 
 mass of blind matter, no soulless mechanism, but is quick 
 with conscious life and full of superhuman divine power. 
 This is an immense gain made for true religion. In fact, 
 monotheism could not have arisen at all, if the pagan 
 theory of the world had not prepared the fruitful parent 
 idea, out of which grew the belief in one almighty all- 
 pervading Intelligence, the Maker, Preserver, and Ruler of 
 heaven and earth and all they contain. 
 
 The human mind, even in its undeveloped religious 
 stage, in the polytheistic state, had grasped the funda- 
 mental idea on which all religion and philosophy will 
 forever rest; the idea namely: mind, life, feeling, will 
 power, thought is not confined to the brain of men and 
 animals ; it is not absolutely bound up with a bodily frame. 
 Conscious life exists outside of man and animals and
 
 37 
 
 manifests its energy in every possible form, visible or 
 invisible, of the external world. Again, the conscious life 
 did not for the first time in the existence of the world 
 make its appearance in man and his inferior fellow- 
 creatures. Gods, similar in character, qualities, loves, and 
 hates to man or beast but superior to them in power and 
 length of days, have existed in the heavens above and the 
 earth beneath and in the waters under the earth, long 
 before the human race or any animate being had been born 
 on this globe. The monotheism of the prophets in its 
 highest reaches, still firmly roots in this primary spiritual 
 belief, in the belief of the pagans. For the central idea of 
 our faith is: A universal creative Intelligence animates 
 and pervades all nature; before the mountains were brought 
 forth and the earth was born, and the world, even from 
 Eternity to Eternity He was God. 
 
 The fact is, the belief that there are in the external 
 world entities, powers, activities, and tendencies like those 
 which distinguish the inner world of mind, lies at the very 
 root of all religious knowledge, is the necessary condition 
 of all truth. Without this pre-supposition, truth cognition 
 would be impossible. How could the mind comprehend 
 the world without, if that world had nothing in common 
 with mind? How could the intelligence have any knowl- 
 edge of nature, if nature were not somehow assumed to be 
 related to intelligence? How could the things of nature 
 be translated into thought, if they were not believed to be 
 written in the characters of thought and could not be 
 spelled out by the mind? 
 
 The most primitive men unconsciously started in all 
 their thoughts, beliefs, and phantastic vagaries from this 
 cardinal truth. The most advanced minds of prophets 
 and philosophers base all knowledge and all faith upon 
 this root-principle of the intelligence. The worshipers 
 of Baal and Astarte and other gods shared the belief in 
 mindlike powers existing and acting in nature outside of
 
 38 
 
 man, with the prophets of Yahve, who is the spirit of all 
 spirits, the cause and ground of all being. With this far- 
 reaching difference however : in polytheism conscious- 
 ness, intelligence, will, in nature is broken up into a vast 
 number of separate beings, into a teeming multitude of 
 divine personalities or gods. Every part of nature exists 
 by itself and for itself, and in and above every part there 
 is a divine being, the conscious counterpart of the material 
 object. In the monotheism of the prophets all nature is 
 one in origin, cause, and purpose, a living rational 
 unity, a growing harmony in Yahve, the universal Reason, 
 the creative almighty Will, in whom all things and all 
 spirits live, move, and have their being. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to explain the rise of moral 
 monotheism in Israel by showing its points of connection 
 with polytheism. Just as little can Man be explained by 
 pointing out the links of kinship subsisting between him 
 and the ape. But it is in every respect important to know 
 the basis of truth common to the partially developed and 
 to the most highly evolved religion, and to bring into 
 view the manifold service rendered by polytheism in pre- 
 paring the seed and the soil for monotheism. 
 
 In its own crude and materialistic way polytheism taught 
 with the utmost emphasis the fundamental religious truth 
 that man stands in closest relations to his God and that his 
 nature is of kin to that of the Deity. Practically this belief 
 is the most important, the most influential of all religious 
 doctrines. It brings down religion from the region of 
 mere speculation and makes it the most human of all 
 affairs. It elevates man to the Divine and brings the 
 Divine down to the heart and into the very home of man. 
 This faith has builded an ideal ladder between heaven 
 and earth on which divine powers descend to mortal men, 
 to protect, instruct them, and impart dignity to their life, 
 and on which again mortal men ascend to share in the 
 qualities, in the aims, and the glory of the Divinity. Man
 
 39 
 
 is godlike, man is a child of the Deity this was the intui- 
 tive faith alike of paganism and Yahvism. Only, the 
 pagans took their godlikeness and their descent from the 
 divine in a literal and physical sense. The members of 
 every family, of every tribe and people believed themselves, 
 in the material acceptation of the word, to be lineal 
 descendants of their ancestral god, to have the blood of 
 their divine forefather and ruler in their veins. As their 
 gods were identical with visible parts of nature, so was, 
 in their opinion, the relationship between men and their 
 deity of a naturalistic and sensuous kind. The bond of 
 union between them was mainly the kinship of animal- 
 ism. Still, low as was the pagan conception of the 
 mutual relations between man and his god, it was yet 
 the fruitful germ out of which there arose in the religion 
 of the prophets the sublime conception of man being made 
 after the spiritual likeness and in the moral similitude 
 of the Lord of all spirits, of Yahve, the creative Reason 
 and Love. Countless ages had believed that man was 
 the physical image and offspring of his gods. Thereby the 
 human mind was prepared to receive the message of 
 monotheism that man is the spiritual image of the perfect 
 Spirit, that the soul of man is a lamp of God, that Divine 
 love and human righteousness are the true ties of kinship 
 between the Creator and His creature. Thus polythe- 
 ism is also in this respect seen to have been the natural 
 precursor and path-maker of monotheism. There is no 
 break in the development of the spirit of mankind. Even 
 the greatest spiritual revolution, the victorious rise of 
 monotheism in Israel, was an evolution from pre-existing 
 forms of belief, and an involution of what was truest and 
 best in the religious life of former ages. 
 
 This is evident from other points of organic contact and 
 transition between polytheism and monotheism. Take 
 the case of idol-worship or the adoration of images repre- 
 senting gods in human form. The vast majority of the
 
 40 
 
 human race has from time immemorial to this day been 
 clinging to idolatry, a mode of worship which the prophets 
 denounced as the abomination of abominations, and which 
 we too can not help regarding as a blasphemous and 
 degrading practice. But we must be broad enough to 
 recognize that idolatry helped on the religious education 
 of the race. By presenting the gods to the eye of the 
 worshiper in the figure of men, though of superhuman 
 stature and majesty, it impressed upon the mind of the 
 believer that the dread ruling powers of nature were 
 related in their being and ways to man and that they pos- 
 sessed the attributes of humanity. For thousands and 
 thousands of years the worship of the Divine under the 
 symbol of man, the highest and noblest of all known crea- 
 tures, tended in the eyes of the worshipers to humanize and 
 moralize the gods and to vary them, in appearance and 
 action, from the beast-gods and the bird-gods of still older 
 and lower religions. The ground was thus prepared by 
 idolatry for the sublime conception and the pure wor- 
 ship of God as taught by the prophets of Yahve. God 
 is not a man nor the son of man. He is unlike anything 
 visible or material. Nothing corporeal and mortal should 
 be compared to Him, though it can be exalted in beauty 
 above all created things. But the spirit of man is the 
 symbol of the Eternal, the soul of man is the faint image of 
 the universal Soul, the moral qualities of man are a revela- 
 tion of the attributes of His perfection. In other words, 
 God is likest that which is highest, holiest, and divinest 
 in man ; like reason shining in darkness, like justice crush- 
 ing the head of oppression, like love going forth to all 
 flesh. Having gained an absolute victory within the Jew- 
 ish church, monotheism may now without fear of danger 
 freely acknowledge the debt of gratitude which it owes to 
 the preparatory work and influence of idolatry. 
 
 The belief in an all-wise and all-just Divine Providence 
 shaping the destinies of individuals and nations, quickening
 
 mankind to ever higher ends, may be traced to its humble 
 and child-like beginnings in primitive religion, and be 
 followed along its upward course through the great relig- 
 ions of Asia and of classic antiquity. The pagan of all 
 times and climes had his tutelary god always with him, 
 dwelling with him under his roof as the divine lord and 
 father of the household. The family god watched over 
 his human children, shielded them from evil, warned them 
 against danger, and looked out for their good. This was 
 certainly special providence in the most literal sense. 
 Every tribe, every people, believed itself to be under the 
 perpetual jurisdiction and guidance of its tribal or national 
 god. Every people carried on the business of life in peace 
 and war in the firm conviction that the eye of their god was 
 observing them, that his wisdom was leading them, and 
 his power rendering them help. Monotheism took over 
 this inspiring belief as an heritage from the religious past 
 of mankind. What a wonderful transformation this belief 
 underwent in the monotheistic atmosphere of Yahvism, 
 the religion of humanity! The providence the pagans 
 believed in was selfish, narrow, tribal, unjust, short-sighted. 
 Providence was favoritism. The tutelary god had a per- 
 sonal interest in protecting his people or his worshiper. 
 Vast numbers of men in our day are in this respect, as 
 in so many other regards, thorough pagans. The rulers, 
 priests, and writers of every people speak of God as if He 
 were the special Protector and Providence of His favorite 
 nation and cared very little for the rest of mankind. 
 They sing solemn Te Deums for victories vouchsafed them 
 by their God ; they intone hymns of thanksgiving to their 
 God who fought their battles and helped them to slaughter 
 thousands and tens of thousands of human beings. The 
 Providence of the prophets is no respecter of persons nor 
 of nations. He guides by His counsel all individuals, 
 and all the tribes of men. All men are alike His children 
 and His care and mercy extend over all His creatures. In
 
 42 
 
 polytheism there are many providences which are at war 
 with one another. There are as many providences as there 
 are families and peoples. In the religion of Israel's mono- 
 theism there is one God, one humanity, one impartial and 
 all-loving Providence, universal, unfailing, all-wise. Still, 
 if the families of the earth had not for countless genera- 
 tions been accustomed to trust in a tribal and egotistical 
 providence, the prophets of Yahve probably would not have 
 been able to imbue men with the belief that the eye of 
 one only God is upon all His children, that all mankind is 
 being led by Him toward ideal goals.
 
 43 
 
 III. 
 
 THE UNITY OF MANKIND. 
 
 The idea of an inalienable and indestructible right 
 inherent in every individual, the idea of a divine right to 
 life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness vested 
 in every man by virtue of his godlike personality, the idea 
 of justice wide as humanity, holy and awful as God, is the 
 cardinal ethical principle of Yahvism. To secure the 
 equal rights of all men because all are equal before their 
 common Maker, to enforce the inviolable dignity and 
 sanctity of every human being because he is the spiritual 
 image of the Most High, to inculcate the infinite importance 
 of meting out justice in private and social life, to rich and 
 poor, to the native and the stranger, with an impartial 
 hand, this is the chiefest burden of the Prophets, this is 
 the deathless mission of the religion which we offer to 
 the Gentiles. This principle of universal justice without 
 regard to kinship, nationality, and creed, the love of right 
 and equity passing the love of life itself, the hatred of 
 injustice and oppression stronger than death, spring from 
 the two cardinal beliefs of prophetic monotheism, from the 
 belief in the absolute oneness and goodness of God and 
 the belief in the unity of mankind centered in an all-just 
 Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge. These beliefs are the ulti- 
 mate source of right, the living fountain from which 
 justice flows for all the children of man. According to 
 every other theology, with the sole exception of the 
 religion of Yahve, mankind is broken up into several 
 parts, which are separated by distinctions of race or 
 nationality, or marked off from one another by religious 
 differences. According to every other theory of the world 
 and of society, the fulness of human rights is conditioned 
 upon the accident of birth, upon community of descent or
 
 44 
 
 community of faith or upon both. To the Athenian only 
 a full-blooded Greek who worshiped the gods of Hellas 
 was a genuine man and alone was entitled to the fulness 
 of human rights. The outside barbarians were in his 
 opinion no full men. They possessed no rights which the 
 high-caste Greeks, the favorites of the Olympian gods, 
 were in conscience bound to respect. They held their life 
 and property only on sufferance. Whatever rights of pro- 
 tection they enjoyed, while dwelling among the Greeks, 
 were accorded to them as an act of grace by the Hellenic 
 gods and their privileged worshipers. Closely examined, 
 among those believing in more than one god right is 
 merely a privilege, a prerogative granted by some Divine 
 Power to those he loves. For how can a god who is not 
 the Lord and Father of all men command laws of justice 
 that shall be binding on all men? How can a being, who 
 is not himself absolute and eternal, be the author of abso- 
 lute statutes of righteousness and of everlasting ordi- 
 nances of right? How can social right and equity be 
 derived from a god who is himself believed to be constantly 
 at war with other gods and with men? The moral laws 
 and the ideals of the perfect life can not derive their 
 sanction from gods who are themselves held to be imperfect 
 and tainted with selfishness and cruelty. 
 
 The idea of universal justice can be cherished, and the 
 attempt to realize it be made, only by men who firmly 
 believe in one universal God, in an absolute righteous 
 Will, an infinite Power that is perfect in all His ways. Jus- 
 tice in the true sense of broadest humanity was unknown 
 and inconceivable outside Israel. It was unknown even 
 in Israel before it was conceived in all its depth and 
 grandeur by the prophets and proclaimed by them and 
 defended in the face of fierce opposition offered by the rich 
 and powerful. Justice was, therefore, everywhere except in 
 the ideal world of prophetic monotheism, merely an exten- 
 sion of the mutual relation subsisting between the members
 
 45 
 
 of the family group to a wider circle. All the members of 
 the city or state were regarded as relations, and were 
 expected to deal with one another as brothers. All people 
 who were beyond the pale of the assumed brotherhood 
 were outcasts and outlaws. In this respect, as in so many 
 others, the Chinese are the most consistent, the most 
 ancient and pagan of all nations. The whole theory and 
 practice of Chinese social order rests on the family idea. 
 All Chinamen are officially and religiously considered as 
 kinsmen, as members of one huge family. The emperor 
 is obeyed and venerated as the father, priest, and lawgiver 
 of all his subjects. He is, in official parlance and in the 
 language and belief of the masses, held to be a lineal 
 descendant of the heaven-god and the earth-goddess. 
 
 According to the teachings of unadulterated Christi- 
 anity, according to the dogmatic theology of the trinitarian 
 churches, there is really no unity of mankind, neither 
 with God in heaven nor with men on earth, neither in 
 this world nor in the world beyond the grave. Those 
 who believe in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost, those who believe in the redeeming death and 
 saving blood of the Savior, are brothers in Christ Jesus ; 
 they alone are saved and exalted; they alone are called 
 the children of God. They enjoy the favor of the Father 
 and are beloved of the Sou. They are visited, purified, 
 and sanctified by the Holy Ghost. For them are reserved 
 the bountiful blessings of Divine grace and love. They 
 are saved from the power of evil in this world and 
 they are sure to enter Paradise in the hereafter. But 
 those who refuse to believe in the Trinity and in the 
 sacrificial death of Jesus, because their reason and faith 
 can not accept such a dogma, stand outside the consecrated 
 precincts of the Christian brotherhood. They are strangers 
 to God and strangers to the community of Jesus Christ. 
 They are separated by a vast gulf from the congregation 
 of God. They are not at one with their Maker, because
 
 4 6 
 
 they lack the mediation of Christ's atoning love. They 
 live unredeemed and unblessed on earth, and in the here- 
 after they will through all eternity suffer untold torments 
 as a condign punishment for having lacked the true faith 
 and for having wantonly declined the proffered means of 
 salvation. On one side stand the wretched non-Christian 
 goats, and on the other the blessed Christian lambs. 
 Would you call this a real unity of mankind in one all- 
 just and all-loving God? 
 
 Christian philosophers are asserting with endless reiter- 
 ation and infinite unction, that of all religions Christianity 
 alone proclaimed the unity of mankind and the brother- 
 hood of all men. But the Christianity which they thus 
 glorify is not really Christianity. They sail under false 
 colors. They make a false use of the name Christianity 
 which they first emptied of all its true and distinctive 
 contents. Smitten with judicial blindness as to the religion 
 of Israel, swayed by narrow inherited prejudices, they first 
 misrepresent Yahvism in a spirit of wilful ignorance and 
 rob it of its glory and merit. They take the imperishable 
 religious truth, the doctrine of the unity and godlike 
 dignity of all men, and give it the name of Christianity and 
 pit it against the faith of Israel as something infinitely 
 higher and diviner. They are self-deceiving deceivers. 
 Sure it is, Jesus was a teacher of Yahvism and not of 
 Christianity. Sure it is, Jesus was no Christian in the 
 trinitarian sense, and in any other sense there is no Chris- 
 tian religion. He taught the unity of mankind just like 
 the other prophets and wise men of Israel. But trinitarian 
 Christianity rejects the unity and brotherhood of mankind 
 in the sense it was revealed by God through His prophets. 
 Mankind is divided into two distinct parts, into those who 
 believe in the blessed Trinity and those who deny it, or 
 have never heard of it. The latter are abandoned of God, 
 no fountain of grace for them, no treasures of salvation in 
 store for them. The holy spirit is not in them, though they
 
 47 
 
 walk in the ways of righteousness and long to be perfect 
 with the Lord their God. The curse of original sin rests 
 upon them and keeps their soul in a state of degradation. 
 They have not been recognized by God the Father by acquir- 
 ing, through faith, a share in the great sacrifice of atone- 
 ment made by Jesus. They are not born again to the life 
 spiritual in Christ through the miracle of baptism. They 
 are the unregenerate children of Adam and form a lower, 
 purely carnal species of mankind. High above this 
 division of fallen and unbelieving humanity are the child- 
 ren of light and faith, the blessed of God, the living 
 members of the body of Christ. Again and again they 
 renew their life by assimilating to themselves through the 
 mystery of the communion the flesh and the blood of the 
 Redeemer. They alone are the true people of God. To 
 them has been vouchsafed dominion and glory and wisdom. 
 To them the earth has been given as an inheritance. 
 They are the true heirs to whatever things beautiful, to 
 whatever things true, and whatever things good have been 
 accomplished in ages past by all nations and religions, by 
 the prophets, poets, thinkers, and truth-seeking heroes of 
 all times. All peoples, all civilizations have toiled and 
 plowed and sown that the Christian brotherhood may reap 
 a rich harvest. The rest of mankind, unredeemed, unre- 
 generated, inferior, are weltering in religious darkness and 
 pining away in spiritual poverty outside the Christian city 
 of God. They exist on sufferance, and the followers of 
 Christ are their superiors and rulers by the grace of God. 
 The heathen, the Jews, and so-called infidels are children 
 of the handmaidens, but the Christians are children of the 
 true spouse, the church of Christ Jesus. 
 
 Such is the unity of mankind which genuine Christi- 
 anity, which the trinitarian churches teach. It is infinitely 
 superior to the pagan conception of man. In paganism 
 the distinction between man and man, tribe and tribe, is 
 of a physical and racial nature. There is, theoretically at
 
 4 8 
 
 least, no possibility of members of one people or race 
 crossing the lines of separation and blending with those of 
 another. In Christianity the distinction is spiritual, relig- 
 ious. Any man, whatever his people and race, may 
 become a Christian and share in the privileges of grace and 
 prerogatives of salvation of the chosen part of mankind. 
 No bars are raised against any man, whatever his descent; 
 no wall shuts any man from the Christian community. 
 The gates are wide to all comers. Still the distinction 
 between man and man is there deep and far-reaching. 
 The separation between one part of mankind and the 
 other is due to Divine favoritism, not to Divine justice. It 
 is by an arbitrary act of God that he dooms vast numbers 
 of men to moral degradation and spiritual death, because 
 their reason can not accept the dogma of the Trinity and 
 the other central Christian doctrines. On the other hand, 
 He exalts those who choose to believe in the Christian 
 mysteries, and brings them nigh unto Himself and pours 
 out upon them all His mercy and crowns them with loving 
 kindness. This is indeed election with divine vengeance. 
 The Calvinistic dogma of election is the most logical and 
 consistent expression of the more general Christian belief 
 in Divine election or favoritism. In Calvinism there 
 are but a few lucky mortals whom the whim of the Deity 
 picks out for salvation and blessedness, while the rest are 
 left to perish in spite of their correct belief. In the 
 Catholic Church all Roman Catholics are chosen and 
 saved. Even the broadest trinitarian churches teach that 
 a yawning gulf separates the worshipers of Christ from 
 those who deny Him. 
 
 The Christian theory which separates man from the 
 fellowship of man, according to creed, which divides 
 humanity into two distinct parts, into God-abandoned 
 deniers of the divinity of Jesus and into the redeemed 
 children of the triune God, has done as much mischief as 
 the pagan principle of kinship and tribal divinities. As
 
 49 
 
 long as the trinitarian dogma of salvation and election was 
 firmly believed in, it sowed everywhere the baneful seeds 
 of disunion and hatred and was the parent of infinite woes, 
 physical and mental. The spiritual pride and selfishness 
 of men caused the practice to come up to and surpass the 
 theory. From the time trinitarian Christianity ascended 
 the throne and became mistress of the western world until 
 the spirit of Yahvistic humanity began to resist and restrain 
 it, the pagans, the heretics, the Jews, and the Moham- 
 medans were held not to be equal to the Christians before 
 God and the law, and were treated accordingly with pitiless 
 injustice and often with remorseless cruelty. True, even 
 in the darkest days of the Middle Ages Christianity did 
 a vast deal toward elevating and humanizing the masses. 
 The Church tried to knit together many nations and races 
 and kingdoms into a spiritual brotherhood. But those out- 
 side the Christian church were dealt with in a spirit of 
 contempt and harsh exclusiveness. Attributing to God 
 himself the injustice of loving and saving the orthodox 
 believer, and abhorring and condemning the unbelievers, 
 the Christians strove to walk in the ways of the Almighty. 
 For this reason they had diverse measures of justice for 
 Christians and non-Christians, or rather the Christian alone 
 was believed to have an indefeasible claim to the rights of 
 man and the privileges of human brotherhood. Even in 
 our day the spirit of universal justice, the spirit of all- 
 embracing humanity, such as lived and worked miracles 
 of salvation through the prophets from Moses down to 
 Jesus, is far from having completely triumphed over the 
 medieval spirit of superstitious pride and intolerance. 
 The Christian still believes that he stands nearer to the 
 throne and heart of God and possesses larger rights than 
 Jews, Mohammedans, and pagans. And what he believes 
 he still practices to a large extent. At best the non- 
 Christian is contemptuously accorded tolerance. Where 
 he enjoys equal rights, it is considered a gracious conces-
 
 50 
 
 sion made to him by the ruling Christian. But he is not 
 regarded as the peer of the Christians, in moral dignity and 
 social worth. 
 
 Woe betide the non-Christians, the heathen or the 
 Mohammedan, if wrong is done by him to Christians in 
 any part of the world! If a few hundred rebellious Chris- 
 tian subjects of the Turk are killed by their wrathful 
 rulers, all Christendom burns with righteous indignation 
 and demands immediate and fullest redress. The remon- 
 strances made by the Christian powers are backed up by a 
 million Christian guns. But when five million Jews in 
 Russia are deprived of all human rights, treated as pariahs, 
 plundered, tormented beyond endurance, driven from their 
 homes and made to perish body and soul, the Christian 
 powers raise no protest against these horrors enacted by a 
 Christian potentate against helpless human beings. "They 
 are only Jews," the Christian says in his heart, "they are 
 not our brothers." 
 
 Lately a few Christian missionaries were killed in China 
 by an infuriated mob. A cry of horror was heard through 
 the length and breadth of Christendom. Vengeance for the 
 Christian blood ruthlessly shed was demanded in the Old 
 World and in the New. The warships of the great Christian 
 nations hurried to the scene of slaughter. Powerful argu- 
 ments a thousand cannons were used with the helpless 
 emperor. And they had their effect. A large number of 
 Chinamen have been beheaded in expiation of the crime 
 against the missionaries. This was justice, sure enough, 
 claimed and obtained by Christians for Christians. But 
 scores of Chinamen have at sundry times been massacred 
 in America, hundreds have again and again been plundered 
 and driven from their homes by Christian mobs. Still there 
 was no national indignation in America against these 
 monstrous acts. No European people remonstrated with 
 our government against these brutal outrages. A paltry 
 sum was paid by our government to the relations of the
 
 helpless victims. They were only heathen Chinese. Their 
 lives and rights do not weigh much in the scales of jus- 
 tice. An editorial writer in one of our great newspapers 
 recently said, "One Anglo-Saxon Christian is worth as 
 much as six heathen Chinese. Six lives should be given 
 for one Christian life." Verily, this is a beautiful illustra- 
 tion of the unity of mankind, a noble realization of 
 universal justice. The moral disease of anti-Semitism 
 which is raging on the continent of Europe and disgracing 
 modern civilization, is due to two co-operating causes, one 
 pagan, the other Christian, in origin and scope. The 
 fanatics of race and nationality, the Aryomaniacs, say : 
 "The Jew ought to be stripped of all civil and political 
 rights, and if possible, be driven from the land, because 
 he is not of our blood and race." This argument has 
 a heathen pedigree. "The Jew should in every way be 
 restricted and restrained and systematically excluded in 
 public and private life from fellowship with Christians. 
 He is a thorn in the thigh of our Christian civilization 
 because he differs from us in faith, and observes an atti- 
 tude of open or concealed hostility toward our Savior." 
 Thus reason the fanatics who consider themselves appointed 
 by God to watch over the highest interests of Christianity. 
 Opposite the polytheistic as well as the trinitarian 
 conceptions of mankind which separate man from man 
 according to physical kinship or according to religious 
 differences, stands Yahvism with its unshakable belief in 
 the indestructible unity, both physical and spiritual, of all 
 the families of the earth. Opposite the theory and practice 
 of justice both of paganism and of Christianity, which base 
 all right either on community of blood or community of 
 faith, stands the religion of ethical monotheism with its 
 eternal principle of universal, indiscriminating justice, with 
 its solemn declaration that all men are equal, because all 
 are made in the spiritual image of God. Yahvism recog- 
 nizes no distinctions of race nor differences of religious
 
 52 
 
 belief before the throne of Divine and human justice. All 
 human beings are declared to be alike the children of the 
 household of God. In the city of God, as seen by the eye 
 of the prophets, there are no favorites endowed with 
 rights superior to those of the humblest son of man. 
 This would be a grievous injustice done by God Himself. 
 The spirit of the prophets, their deathless love of right- 
 eousness, will brook no injustice, no partiality in God Him- 
 self. The throne of Yahve must be established on justice, 
 or the true Israelite would refuse to prostrate himself 
 at His feet. He would not adore a God in whom there is 
 unrighteousness. He would turn away with indignation 
 and despair from the supreme Power, were the Power 
 conclusively proved to bestow His favors with an unjust 
 hand, to deal with men according to His caprice, and not to 
 reward and love every man according to the righteousness 
 of his ways. 
 
 This idea is the very soul of our religion. Justice is 
 absolute, eternal, and universal, and is binding on God and 
 on men and all rational beings, wherever and under what 
 conditions soever they may exist in any part of the universe. 
 God is justice ; this is His name forever. If He were not 
 just He would not be God. He would be a dread power, 
 feared by weak mortal man, but He would not deserve our 
 worship and love. The sacred writers never weary of 
 praising and invoking the justice of God. The righteous- 
 ness of Yahve is the dearest theme of the Psalmist's 
 song and the chief burden of the Prophet's message. 
 "Thou lovest justice," say the sweet singers of Israel, 
 ''Thy right hand is full of justice." Justice walks before 
 Him. Justice and judgment are the foundations of His 
 throne. His justice is everlasting, all His ordinances are 
 just. Yahve is righteous in all His ways. He judges 
 the whole world in justice. In the song of Moses it is 
 said : Just and upright is He. In his confessions of Israel's 
 sins, Ezra says: O Yahve, God of Israel, Thou art just.
 
 53 
 
 Nehemiah prays: Thou hast kept thy promise, because 
 Thou art righteous. Thou art just in all that is brought 
 upon us; for Thou hast done right, but we have done 
 wickedly. 
 
 But why multiply instances? The belief in the per- 
 fect justice of God permeates every part of the Bible. It 
 has moulded the ethics of Yahvism and determined the 
 course of Israel's history. So convinced were the leaders 
 of religious thought in Israel, that the Maker of heaven 
 and earth must be righteous in all His ways and just 
 toward all men, that the heroes of faith do not hesitate to 
 turn to Yahve and demand justice at His hand, whenever 
 He seems to be doing injustice to them or to other men. 
 "Shall the judge of the whole world not do justice?" said 
 Abraham, the friend of God, the father of the faithful, 
 while pleading with the Lord for the people of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah. If there are only fifty or forty or even ten 
 righteous men in the doomed cities, God should spare all 
 for the sake of the righteous that are in their midst. For 
 it would be wrong to let the righteous perish with the 
 wicked. It would be unjust not to give the good time to 
 change by their example the life of the sinful and reclaim 
 them from the evil of their way. 
 
 Jeremiah, the martyr prophet, being ruthlessly perse- 
 cuted by his cruel enemies and treacherously treated by 
 his brethren, challenges God in the bitterness of his heart 
 and dares enter into a controversy with Him. 
 
 ' ' Thou art righteous, O Yahve, when I contend with Thee. 
 Why does the way of the wicked prosper ? 
 Why are all the men of treachery at ease ? 
 Thou has planted them, yea, they have taken root. 
 They grow, yea, they bring forth fruit, 
 Thou art near to their mouth, but far from their hearts. 
 But Thou, O Yahve, knowest me ; 
 Thou hast seen me and tried my heart. 
 Whether it be devoted to Thee." 
 
 In the agony of his sufferings Job calls God to account 
 for afflicting him without just cause. I would speak to
 
 54 
 
 the Almighty! he cries, I desire to reason with God. 
 "Behold, He may slay me, but I will defend my ways 
 before Him. Behold, I have arranged my plea, I know 
 that I shall prove my right." 
 
 This heroic love of justice, this dauntless conviction 
 that wrong is wrong whether done by man or by God, the 
 sublime belief that the ways of God must be just and 
 righteous altogether, form the keynote to the theology and 
 the ethics of the religion of Israel. From the first day of 
 its appearance among the children of men Yahvism has 
 above all things been the religion of righteousness, the 
 religion of justice uncompromising and universal, of jus- 
 tice Divine and human. The fruitful germ of Yahvism 
 was deadly hatred of wrong done to the weak by the 
 strong, by the rich to the poor, by the native to the 
 stranger, a horror of aristocratic privileges and abuses, a 
 fierce anger against oppression practiced in the name of 
 gods, of caste, of race and nationality. The tree of Yahv- 
 ism had from the very beginning its roots in infinite 
 pity for the down-trodden, in profound reverence for the 
 humanity of all men, in a quenchless love of justice as 
 broad as mankind. Yahvism, the religion of humanity, 
 is a perennial battle for the right So it was conceived by 
 Moses, so it was revealed by him to his immediate follow- 
 ers, and so it was transmitted by him and the other proph- 
 ets to be a heritage to all generations.
 
 THE FIRST AND GREATEST 
 OF ALL MORAL IDEAS. 
 
 moral ideas hold a distinct and supreme place in 
 " the world of thought They overshadow in dignity 
 and practical importance all other ideas. They form the 
 most characteristic and noblest possessions of the human 
 race. In the last resort they determine the worth of all 
 things and fix the rank of every man in the scale of 
 humanity. The moral ideas are the standards of judg- 
 ment, which by a spontaneous impulse of our soul we 
 apply to ourselves and all other persons, to all desires and 
 actions, to all relations which human beings bear to one 
 another. Whatever agrees with the moral standards of 
 judgment meets with our approbation and is praised as 
 good. Whatever is found to be out of harmony with the 
 moral ideas instantly calls forth our disapprobation and 
 is condemned as bad. 
 
 No matter by what process of psychological and histor- 
 ical evolution the human race has come by the moral ideas, 
 they are found to exist in man as the supreme facts of his 
 consciousness. They can not be reasoned out of existence 
 by any sophisms of selfishness. They can not be expelled 
 from our soul by any effort of a wicked will. They form 
 indestructible parts of the very essence of the human 
 intelligence. They are spontaneous sentiments which 
 well up from the heart, original revelations which rise 
 from the mystery of the mind. Wherever two or three 
 men meet together, the moral ideas are present and pass 
 judgment on their conduct, their mutual affections, their 
 words and acts, bestowing praise or censure in accord- 
 ance with the canons of justice and benevolence. In the
 
 56 
 
 heat of passion, under the stress of egotistical forces, their 
 commandments may be disobeyed and their monitions may 
 go unheeded for a time. But their voice can never be 
 stifled. Their adverse judgments are invariably approved 
 of by all impartial observers, and come back to the trans- 
 gressor with the shock of damning public conscience, 
 causing him pangs of shame and remorse. 
 
 Within the innermost chambers of every heart the 
 moral ideas sit enthroned, and call before their tribunal all 
 feelings, all doubts, all stirring of the will. All noble and 
 all ignoble desires, though concealed from the knowledge 
 of other men, are discerned by the judges within our 
 breast, and are hailed by them as signs of inward right- 
 eousness or branded as exhibitions of inward iniquity. 
 With every deed of ours that is born into the world a 
 moral judgment is born as its twin brother. 
 
 The moral ideas are the divinities which reside within 
 our soul and strive to have dominion over our whole being, 
 to purify and direct the current of our feelings, to inform 
 our thoughts, to determine our will, to shape our acts, and 
 to mould our character after their own image and likeness. 
 All the moral ideas are one in their ultimate nature, 
 origin, and aim. All are, as it were, one deity which, like 
 the symbolic representations of the Divine in many relig- 
 ions, bears several faces expressive of various attributes. 
 All demand harmony in the varying human relations. All 
 may be regarded from the religious point of view as 
 manifestations of the Infinite and the holy ground of all 
 existence. They are revelations in man of the all-good 
 and all-wise divine Power and Love. What are moral 
 ideas in the soul of man are eternal and absolute qualities of 
 Him in whom we live, move, and have our being. Slowly 
 and painfully does moral man strive to incarnate the moral 
 ideas in his character and to realize them in the activities 
 of his life. To him they remain forever glorious ideals 
 which he follows from afar but is never able to reach.
 
 57 
 
 But the ideals of goodness, which imperfect man in vain 
 yearns to realize, are eternally actual in God. To the heart 
 of faith God is the realized Ideal of moral perfection. 
 
 Our conception of divine goodness yields to us the 
 moral ideas. The attributes of God descend, as it were, 
 from heaven to earth and become the moral ideals of 
 humanity. This is the deep meaning of the words of 
 the prophets, that the righteous walk with God. They 
 endeavor to walk in the ways of the divine prototype, 
 and with quenchless longing strive to imitate the qualities 
 of the perfect ideal. In this indestructible desire of man 
 to live a godlike life consists the glory and divinity of the 
 human soul. The great founder of Yahvism had this truth 
 in view, when he taught that man was made in the image 
 of God. The belief in a universal, all-perfect Intelligence 
 has for its corollary the belief that man, the highest finite 
 intelligence, has the power and duty to share in the quali- 
 ties of the perfect Spirit, to be like Him, just, merciful, 
 long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth. This is 
 the one supreme dogma in which religion and morality 
 are indissolubly bound up together. 
 
 Now, if we analyze our idea of God, we find its first 
 and chiefest content to be that wisdom and will are abso- 
 lutely identical in Him. The All-good never wills any- 
 thing evil; the All-just never desires injustice; the All- 
 wise never contemplates anything unwise. He, who is 
 the ultimate source of thought and being, perennially 
 reveals Himself in nature and history in accordance with 
 absolute goodness. In God wisdom and righteousness are 
 identical with His omnipotent will. This immutable unity 
 of will and goodness in the Divine Being constitutes the 
 idea of the absolute unity, perfection, and freedom of the 
 supreme Personality. In this deepest ethical sense, and in 
 this sense only, do we ascribe personality to God. 
 
 From this idea of divine personality springs the cor- 
 responding idea of human ethical personality, or the duty
 
 58 
 
 of man to unfold himself into a moral character. The 
 ethics of moral monotheism demands of every man that 
 he strive to be godlike in this, that his will shall in all 
 its manifestations be in perfect harmony with wisdom. 
 There shall be no conflict between the impulses of our will 
 and our knowledge of what is right and good. There shall 
 be no painful discord between the desires of our heart and 
 the claims of benevolence. The will shall not separate 
 itself in selfish isolation from the social whole. It shall not 
 refuse to listen to the voice of conscience, when it calls 
 upon us to combine our powers with those of our fellow- 
 men and co-operate with them for the general good. It 
 shall not rise in obdurate and greedy egotism against the 
 rights of any human being, but yield willing obedience 
 to the dictates of justice. There shall be no war in our 
 breast between the gentle promptings of love and the 
 demands of a self-seeking will. 
 
 The beginning and mainspring of all morality, then, 
 is that the moral ideas shall have perfect control over our 
 heart and mind. They must have the power to stir the 
 slumbering will into activity, and cause it to move along 
 the lines which they prescribe towards the end which they 
 propose. It is not enough that the moral ideas merely 
 announce their presence. They must prove an irresistible 
 motive-power of the will, whenever there is an oppor- 
 tunity to do some noble deed, to make a painful sacrifice of 
 pleasure and interest, or to repress some unworthy desire. 
 Moral insight which is powerless to energize and guide 
 the will is moral impotence. Such moral decrepitude 
 loses us our self-respect and brings down upon us the con- 
 tempt of all impartial observers. The more thorough 
 a knowledge a man has of the way of righteousness, the 
 more incumbent it is upon him to transform such knowl- 
 edge into moral energy. The light of wisdom must peren- 
 nially illumine the will and kindle it into an habitual 
 good will, which, according to Kant, is the only real and
 
 59 
 
 absolute good attainable to man, and in relation to which 
 all other goods are but means or indirect results. 
 
 How profound and clear soever a man's knowledge of 
 the moral ideas and ideals may be, it lends as yet no moral 
 worth to his character! As long as the good impulses 
 to which the moral ideas give birth can be crossed by 
 opposing evil desires and thwarted by selfish motives, our 
 title to the dignity of a moral personality is still sadly 
 defective. Only the wisdom which is ever active and 
 vigilant, which easily overmasters evil desires and readily 
 checks every inward movement of unrighteous selfishness, 
 constitutes a moral character. When the moral ideas and 
 the will thus interpenetrate one another and make one 
 music of life, does the human personality become clothed 
 with a godlike moral dignity. Such a person, in whom 
 wisdom or the moral ideas inform and govern all feelings, 
 aspirations, and actions, is in very deed a moral character 
 or personality. He is infinitely elevated above all those 
 human beings, who are merely swayed by blind instincts 
 and determined in their actions by egotistical impulses. 
 He has emancipated himself from the bondage of Nature. 
 He has broken the chain of necessity and lives as a self- 
 centered and self-determining intelligence in the divine 
 and pure air of spiritual freedom. 
 
 For the ethical personality is not a product of nature ; 
 the moral character is not the outcome of mechanical forces, 
 nor the result of irresistible psychological impulses. The 
 moral character is the highest creation of our free-will, is 
 the noblest work of human reason. The man in whom 
 the spirit of ethical ambition is stirring, constantly has 
 the moral ideas before his mind's eye. Steadily looking 
 upon them, he endeavors to fashion himself after their 
 likeness. Such a man is the greatest of artists. He 
 treats himself as a marble dug from mankind's quarry, and 
 aspires to transfer the features of the ideal man upon 
 his own character. With a master's hand he strives to
 
 6o 
 
 reproduce in himself the godlike forms of perfect human- 
 ity, as seen by the eye of faith and hope. Such a person 
 is crowned with the attribute of goodness. He is a moral 
 and harmonious personality. He ceaselessly strives to 
 bring every part of his conduct into harmony with the 
 moral ideas. He is in the habit of examining himself, 
 whether all his willing and doing is animated by nothing 
 but the love of righteousness and solely determined by 
 devotion to duty. He is ever asking himself, whether his 
 aspirations and acts have approached the moral ideals as 
 near as it was possible for him to come. Of such a man 
 we say, in the words of the Psalmist, that he speaks the 
 truth in his heart. He is truthful with himself. He 
 searches the inward chambers of his soul, whether there 
 be any self-deception, any hypocritical self-righteousness 
 found therein. His character possesses the noble quality 
 of inward truthfulness, which makes him proof against the 
 debasing illusions of spiritual pride. 
 
 The righteous man is conscientious in all his ways. In 
 all the relations of life he endeavors to satisfy the utmost 
 claims of the moral ideas. He never haggles with duty 
 about any of her demands. He is ever afraid of falling 
 in his practice behind the ideas of justice and benevo- 
 lence. For this reason he always tries to do more than 
 the letter of the law and the current conceptions of social 
 obligations require. For he judges himself by the stand- 
 ard of an ideal morality, which he bears in his soul, 
 although he knows that no human being can hope fully to 
 realize it. Though the reality always lags behind the 
 ideal, yet such conscientious pursuit of virtue, such ardent 
 love of the supreme moral good, which transforms and 
 possesses the whole man, imparts to him a new and sub- 
 lime character. He is no longer a mere child of Nature, 
 no more a part of the physical order of things, but has 
 become a citizen of a spiritual world or, to use the lan- 
 guage of religion, he has grown to be a child of the Eternal.
 
 6i 
 
 He has been born again, but his new birth is due to no 
 external miraculous act of grace, but to the regenerative 
 powers of unfolding godlike reason. Through Godward 
 aspiration, through moral self-development, the natural 
 man is recreated by himself into the spiritual man. In 
 him the moral ideas dwell incarnate as living powers, in 
 his noble soul the ideals of humanity have a local habita- 
 tion and are quick with personal life. Through his will 
 they become fruitful realities and reveal their hidden 
 wealth. 
 
 Such a man we call a moral personality. What is 
 merely potential in others, has become in him actual and 
 vital. The moral possibilities, which lay slumbering in 
 the germ, have unfolded into a full-blown character. 
 Only men of this kind may be said to have a genuine 
 character. They are typical men. Their character types 
 that of humanity. While they are full of the most intense 
 individual life, they also represent the general moral and 
 spiritual life of humanity. The immoral man, too, pos- 
 sesses a character; it is the character of the human 
 animal. The selfish man also represents in his individ- 
 uality something general, namely, the original beast of 
 prey still extant in the human race. But the noble repre- 
 sentatives of spiritual humanity have moved upward, away 
 from "the reeling fawn and the sensual feast." They 
 "work out the beast and let the ape and tiger die." They 
 are the heralds of the coming race and type within them- 
 selves, from more to more, the work of humanity in the 
 past and in future times.
 
 THE IDEALS OF HUMANITY. 
 
 MAN lives by his ideas and advances by his ideals. 
 Since man began his career on earth, ideals of one 
 kind or another have been moving before him as pillars of 
 light showing him the way which he was to go, leading 
 him on and on through the trackless material and intel- 
 lectual world. The human race, from time immemorial 
 and under all conditions, has been in search of a dreamland 
 of perfection. The various tribes and generations have 
 ever been traveling on diverse roads toward what they 
 believed to be the Promised Land of their dearest wishes. 
 The human mind is never content with what is, but 
 always strives after something that shall be. The present 
 never gives complete satisfaction to the soul of mankind, 
 it never appears as a good and desirable state. The better 
 ever looms in the distance as a condition devoutly to be 
 wished. When the better is reached, man finds discontent 
 and disappointment waiting there for him. Without 
 taking rest he sets out in pursuit of what he conceives to 
 be the best. When that is attained, he discovers that he 
 has only come to a way station, because a new and grander 
 ideal is seen shining and beckoning far away. Behind 
 every ideal, however lofty, another higher, diviner ideal of 
 perfection rises on the horizon of humanity's vision. This 
 process of conceiving and following ideal after ideal, each 
 successive one being nobler, more universal, and more 
 difficult of realization, than the preceding ones, has been 
 going on since the dim foretime of the race and will go on 
 as long as mankind will have an abiding-place on this 
 globe. This process makes up the true life and meaning 
 of history, and is both the moving cause and the result of
 
 63 
 
 humanity's religious, moral, intellectual, artistic, political, 
 and economic development. 
 
 Both the constitution of the human mind and the 
 constitution of things cause man to form varying and 
 ascending ideas of excellence and perfect existence, and 
 constantly urge him on to follow in the wake of his ideals 
 with a quenchless longing to see them realized. Of all 
 animate beings which the creative Energy Divine has in 
 course of endless evolutions brought into existence, man 
 alone is habitually dissatisfied with himself, his physical, 
 mental, and moral powers, and with the conditions of 
 nature in the midst of which he is placed. He alone 
 recognizes that the world which surrounds him is imper- 
 fect in innumerable ways. Of all the multitudinous 
 offspring of Nature he alone is conscious of the fact 
 that she is full of evils and horrors. Sickness, death, 
 want, and the thousand ills which flesh is heir to, ever 
 vexed and saddened the heart of man, and excited in him 
 a keen desire to overcome them as far as possible. The 
 lowest savages long after a state of well-being to which 
 the realities of their existence form a painful contrast. 
 "Things are not as they ought to be," has been the cry of 
 mankind in the rudest stone age as it still is in these days 
 of steam power, electricity, and telephones. In this ever- 
 lasting complaint is expressed the perennial dissatisfaction 
 of humanity not only with existing social conditions but 
 also with the natural environment. As to how things 
 ought to be, there is an infinite variety of views diverging 
 from one another according to the degree and kind of 
 civilization attained by a people. For human ideals pro- 
 gressively change in correspondence with the progressive 
 changes which human nature undergoes. The ideals are 
 evolved in accordance with the development of the inner 
 and outward life of man. Their rise is in keeping with 
 the evolution of the social organism in its various relations, 
 with the unfolding of the moral powers, with the growth
 
 6 4 
 
 of knowledge, art, literature, the appliances of industry, 
 and the production of wealth. The ideal state of existence 
 which is cherished by the heart, and given shape to by the 
 imagination, of primitive savages, would be regarded as a 
 state of moral degradation and physical wretchedness by 
 all cultured people in our time. 
 
 According to the ancient Germans, all valiant warriors 
 slain in battle lead in Walhalla a life of perfect or ideal 
 happiness. Every morning they go forth, armed with 
 shield, spear, sword, and arrows, to hunt Odin's boar. After 
 indulging in the pleasures of the chase to their heart's con- 
 tent, they sit down to feast on the flesh of the boar and to 
 drink immense quantities of mead from huge bumpers. 
 Slain every day, the boar rises daily to new life, again to 
 furnish a banquet to the heroes in Walhalla. Nor did the 
 supply of mead ever give out. Another source of delight 
 to the blessed who dwell in the German heaven consists in 
 daily combats among themselves. Terrible wounds are 
 inflicted, limbs, heads are cut off. But immediately after 
 the battle all wounds are healed, fresh limbs grow, the 
 heads return to their places, the slain dead live again, to 
 renew the same pastime the following day. Thus, hunt- 
 ing daily with unfailing success, feasting on rich meats, 
 drinking without stint and measure, fighting, wounding, 
 and killing without losing permanently life and limb, was 
 the ideal life, the dreamed-of Paradise of the barbarous 
 Germans. Compare it with the ideals of a Lessing, a Kant, 
 a Schiller, or a Goethe. The glaring contrast between 
 their respective ideals is not greater than the difference 
 between the ignorant, superstitious, ferocious, and vora- 
 cious Germans of old and these their late-born descendants, 
 who represent the highest intelligence and culture as yet 
 attained by the human race. As is a people, so will its 
 ideals be, seeing that the latter are after all but the trans- 
 figured images of the existing realities of life without their 
 blemishes and evils. The ideal of the brutal, brave, and
 
 65 
 
 cunning Roman conquerors, which aimed at the subjuga- 
 tion and exploitation of all the nations of the earth, 
 appeared to godly Israelites, such as the righteous and meek 
 Hillel and Jesus, as a thing of abomination, as the perni- 
 cious desire of a wicked people. The ideal of the Talmu- 
 dic sages was the perpetual study of the Torah in this life 
 and in the world to come. In Heaven the righteous sit 
 with crowns on their heads ranged around the throne of 
 God and carry on the most subtile discussions on knotty 
 points of law. By the fierce warriors of King Saul or 
 David the ideal life of these pedantic scholars and quib- 
 bling casuists would have been regarded as a most absurd 
 and unspeakably tedious sort of existence. 
 
 All ideals, high or low, primitive or modern, which 
 spring from dissatisfaction with the natural environment, 
 have one essential feature in common. They all aspire 
 after man's dominion over the surrounding world. Or, to 
 use the language of the Scriptures, the divine power that 
 indwells man has from the earliest days of his existence 
 inspired him with an irresistible desire to replenish the 
 earth and subdue it, to have dominion over the fish of the 
 sea and over the fowls of the air and over every living 
 thing that moveth upon the earth. With profound insight 
 into the nature and destiny of man the Bible tells us that 
 the distinctive mark of his humanity consists in his aspi- 
 rations after rulership over the earth and all it contains. 
 In the language of mythic poetry it is related that man 
 abode in Paradise as long as he lived in a state of child- 
 like contentment. But Paradise quickly vanished, as soon 
 as man had eaten of the fruit of knowledge and learned to 
 know the difference between good and evil. From that 
 time on discontent has been his inseparable companion. 
 From that time on, he has put forth ceaseless efforts to 
 make Paradise for himself through labor, through knowl- 
 edge, through conquest of the external world and conquest 
 of himself, of his lower nature, of his bestial instincts, his 
 fierce passions, his greedy and cruel selfishness.
 
 66 
 
 No deeper truth of human history has ever been uttered 
 than the statement of the Hebrew poet that man began to 
 be ashamed of himself, of the moral state he found himself 
 in, as soon as he awoke from the slumber of unmoral child- 
 hood and learned to distinguish between good and evil. 
 
 The perennial dissatisfaction of man with his moral 
 state, his ceaseless endeavor to rise to an ever higher moral 
 station, is the most inspiring fact in the life of mankind 
 and the chiefest motive power of humanity's upward move- 
 ments. The moral ideals are the results of this irresistible 
 tendency of the human race to self-criticism. 
 
 This inextinguishable spirit of discontent with the 
 conditions of the surrounding world and with himself, 
 with his physical and mental and moral powers, is the 
 royal prerogative of man, and is, closely considered, but a 
 trait of character he has inherited from the creative life of 
 the universal Energy. Humanity simply continues on a 
 grand scale and with conscious will-power the impulse 
 of dissatisfaction which Nature herself displays in her 
 processes of evolution. The intellectual and moral self- 
 criticism of mankind is nothing but the self-criticism of 
 Nature herself taken up by man, the highest representative 
 of her unfolding life, and carried onward by him on a 
 grand scale and with persistent will-power. Evolution, 
 the gradual ascent of Nature from the imperfect to the 
 more perfect, from the inorganic to the organic, the slow 
 but steady rise from the lowest and simplest organisms to 
 higher and ever higher forms of physical and mental life, 
 may be viewed as the expression of Nature's perpetual 
 dissatisfaction with her own past achievements and her 
 effort to reach a higher plane of creative self-manifestation. 
 The history of creation is the history of Nature's self- 
 criticism and progressing aspirations. The fully-developed 
 solar system may be regarded as Nature's own criticism on 
 the nebulous and undifferentiated state of universal matter. 
 The solid earth whereon we tread, fit to be the habitation
 
 6 7 
 
 of organic life, is the self-criticism of the creative Power 
 on the earth still weltering in tracts of fluent heat. The 
 birth of organic life on earth was the self-criticism of 
 Nature on the antecedent inorganic state of existence and 
 the beginning realization of a higher creative purpose. 
 Animate life is a criticism and an immense advance upon 
 inanimate organisms. The vertebrates are a criticism 
 upon the invertebrates. In man Nature brought into 
 being her grandest criticism upon all other forms of finite 
 existence. In man Nature produced the highest ideal of 
 her creative aspirations. In him are gathered together 
 and organized all the vital tendencies of her own past. 
 All her mysterious yearnings after the better and best are 
 incarnated in him. To her latest-born and most perfect 
 offspring, to royal man, she has transmitted, as an inheri- 
 tance from her own life, her divine discontent with 
 whatever has been achieved, her own ceaseless striving to 
 rise from stepping-stone to stepping-stone of excellence to 
 ever higher ends. Nature has given the scepter of prog- 
 ress, which she herself had wielded through countless 
 eons of time, into the hand of man. As man is the 
 epitome of the whole past life of the universe, so is he the 
 conscious standard-bearer of Nature's growing purposes, 
 the exponent and realizer of her ideals. In other words, 
 the Infinite Ground of all existence, that has manifested 
 Himself in the upward evolutions of life, continues to 
 reveal the hidden wealth of His power, wisdom, and good- 
 ness in humanity's progressive intellectual, moral, and 
 social ideas. 
 
 Nor has man at any period of his history failed to 
 believe that his ideals correspond to what he happened to 
 regard and venerate as the Divine in Nature and in the life 
 of humanity. The divinities of every people are simply 
 the counterparts of the ideals of power and moral excel- 
 lence entertained by that people. Every God, from the 
 brutal, cruel, and local god of the savage to Yahve, the
 
 68 
 
 Maker of heaven and earth, who is gracious and merci- 
 ful, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, 
 receives adoration, because he is believed to possess in all 
 perfection those attributes of greatness which his wor- 
 shipers chance to cherish and admire most intensely. As 
 are the ideals of a people, so are the gods thereof. The 
 reason is obvious. The gods are everywhere conceived in 
 the image of the prevailing human ideals. They are 
 reverenced as the realized ideals. Men strive to imitate 
 their qualities and to walk in their ways. Thus, there is 
 a parallelism between the gods of a people and its ideals. 
 As are a people's gods, such are the ideals thereof. 
 
 There is another parallelism which should be taken 
 into account, as it plays a most important part in the 
 social, political, and moral life of every people. While the 
 gods are worshiped as the realized ideals, aristocracies 
 of various kinds wield influence and authority, because 
 they are believed to approach nearer the type of the pre- 
 vailing ideal than the mass of the people. Some sort of 
 aristocracy has always existed among the children of man 
 and will exist, as long as men will cherish ideals of excel- 
 lence, power, and happiness. Under all conditions, in 
 every society however constituted, there are born into 
 the world some persons who are superior to their fellows 
 in those qualities, and are distinguished above others by 
 that conduct, which the social body prizes most highly. 
 Such persons are the natural-born betters or aristocrats 
 among their fellow-men, whether formally recognized or 
 merely tacitly acknowledged as such. The natural inequal- 
 ity of men will bring to the surface certain persons, to 
 whom pre-eminence comes because they possess in an extra- 
 ordinary degree those powers and virtues which the 
 necessities of the social environment most require and the 
 ideals of the age commend as most admirable. These 
 betters, or aristocrats, in all pagan societies derived their 
 descent chiefly from the gods of the people, thus asserting
 
 6 9 
 
 and explaining their claims to superiority by dint of their 
 relationship to the divine beings who were adored and 
 obeyed as the perfect types of power, happiness, and excel- 
 lence. 
 
 Like all things natural and human, physical and 
 spiritual, the idea of what constitutes the essential nature 
 of superiority and greatness has in the life of mankind 
 undergone a profound and varied process of evolution. On 
 the whole, the development has been in an upward direc- 
 tion, toward ever higher ideals of humanity. Thus, the 
 very qualities and acts which constituted a superior man 
 and worshipful hero among the savage ancestors of the 
 English, would in the England of Cobden and Gladstone 
 mark a man as an atrocious criminal. Instead of enjoying 
 material advantages and social honor, the career of such a 
 person would in all probability be cut short by the aveng- 
 ing hand of the commonwealth. Among some peoples, 
 however, there has in this respect been at sundry times a 
 development downward, a degeneration of the conception 
 of human nobility. It corresponds to, and is caused by, a 
 general degeneration of the moral ideas and the ideal 
 standards of life. The descendants of the Spanish Moors 
 in Morocco have, as in all other respects so with regard to 
 what constitutes true superiority, sadly fallen from the 
 high standard of their refined, chivalrous, and broad- 
 minded ancestors. The ferocious and forceful despot, the 
 strong and brutal robber, the ignorant and fierce fanatic, 
 hold the first place and wield the greatest influence among 
 these degenerate descendants of a once noble and highly- 
 developed race. Similarly, all retrograding nations go 
 back in their ideals to the ideas of superiority which were 
 entertained by primitive men. Force, physical power 
 occupies among them the first rank, just as it did among 
 the savage ancestors of all living races.
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS OF AMERICA 
 
 TO THE WORLD'S 
 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 What contributions has the American people made to 
 the world's civilization? This is no idle question. It is of 
 the deepest concern to us all to know what standing in 
 the scale of humanity the nation has of which we form 
 living parts. For the greatness, the worth and dignity, of 
 a people does not consist in its numbers, nor in the vast- 
 ness of its territory, but in what it has done and is doing 
 for the growth of the world's civilization. The Hebrews 
 were ever a small, politically feeble people, inhabiting a 
 narrow strip of land, which was largely barren and at best 
 yielded but moderate means of subsistence to its diligent 
 and abstemious cultivators. Yet, who would call in 
 doubt, that this poor, insignificant tribe, whose life has 
 come to be the better half of the spiritual and moral life 
 of mankind, has been an infinitely greater people than 
 any of the mighty conquering races of Asia? The Greek 
 people, the prolific parent of highest art, which has been 
 and forever will be the inspiration and model of all 
 nations, the sunny Hellenic race, that has bequeathed to us 
 its glorious poetry, far more precious than all the gold and 
 silver in the world, the nation of thinkers, who for the 
 first time in the history of mankind created a science of 
 mind and nature, this nation had mountainous and stony
 
 Hellas for its habitation, a country not larger than many a 
 county in Texas. Yet fifty years of Greece, the Age of 
 Pericles, Plato, and Aristotle, are better "than a cycle of 
 Cathay." The single city of Rome succeeded in accom- 
 plishing what the immense monarchies of the Bast failed 
 in, namely in unifying and organizing all the nations dwell- 
 ing on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea into an 
 homogeneous, mighty empire, binding them together by 
 the ties of common laws, institutions, and interests, secur- 
 ing to them peace and prosperity, and stamping upon them 
 all the character of a cosmopolitan culture. Because the 
 Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans were the authors of 
 three-fourths of our civilization, we regard and venerate 
 them as the greatest nations of antiquity, although the 
 barbarians of northern Europe and Asia outnumbered the 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome as a hundred 
 to one. The Russians are the most numerous people of 
 Europe. Still England alone, without Scotland, Wales, 
 and Ireland, is beyond comparison a greater nation than 
 Russia, because she is unspeakably richer in all the true 
 elements of human existence, because she has during the 
 single reign of Queen Victoria contributed a thousand 
 times more toward the world's civilization than the Russian 
 people since the beginning of its existence. What contri- 
 butions then has the people of the United States made to 
 the world's civilization, to justify us in regarding it as one 
 of the great and leading nations? 
 
 But before we can give a satisfactory answer to this 
 all-important question we must briefly state what civiliza- 
 tion is, in what its innermost life consists. The value of 
 life, individual, national, and universal, does not lie in 
 mere living. Manifestly it is the aim and purpose of life 
 to bring to birth the divinity we call reason, to develop 
 the lordly powers of humanity. All nature has travailed 
 through countless eons to bring forth man the thinker, 
 man the artist, above all, man the free agent. The mind
 
 72 
 
 of man is to be a lamp of God, searching the innermost 
 chambers of existence. The mind of man is to be the all- 
 seeing eye of the universe, looking into the secret heart of 
 things. The mind of man is to be the inspired interpreter 
 of creation, to spell out her most hidden mysteries, and 
 weave all that is in her into the web of a reasoned uni- 
 versal harmony, and thus to reveal the might, the glory, and 
 the wisdom of the infinite. It is the manifest destiny of 
 man's creative imagination to suffuse the heavens above 
 and the earth beneath with its own informing rays, to 
 make the stern countenance of the word necessity radiant 
 with the smile of beauty. The soul of a Mozart or 
 Beethoven gives to the spheres the witchery of music and 
 makes the air vocal with trancing melodies. The genius 
 of a Phidias breathes into the marble the breath of perfect 
 divine life, causing the eternal ideas to dwell in habitations 
 of clay. Nature has through countless ages been anxiously 
 waiting and ceaselessly laboring for the coming of the 
 artist, for the coming of a Raphael, who with the magic of 
 his eye and hand charms upon the canvas the visions of 
 his genius, the imperishable types of Godhood and man- 
 hood, and unfolds within the narrowest compass what the 
 heavens and the heaven of heavens can not contain the 
 soul of the world and the soul of man. 
 
 But knowledge and art, though of immeasurable value, 
 are not the only elements of civilization nor the most 
 important, for the reason that they are not the highest 
 manifestations of the mind. There is a power in man 
 diviner than all, the power of free-will. O holy power, 
 Freedom of will, thou art the mystery of mysteries pass- 
 ing human understanding, yet a blessed reality dwelling in 
 our very heart and soul ! Whence didst thou spring, glory 
 and majesty of the universe? No burning sun brought thee 
 to light! Space says: "In none of my chambers was 
 Freedom's birthplace." Necessity, the parent of all things, 
 the inexorable ruler of all, whose iron grasp neither star
 
 73 
 
 nor atom, neither the earth nor any of her offspring can 
 loosen, she was not thy mother, O Free-will of man ! Thou 
 art a goddess, that hoverest with outstretched wings over 
 the abysmal waters of existence. Thou sayest : "Let 
 there be light," and there is light in the midst of primeval 
 darkness; Thou sayest: "Let there be a sovereign law of 
 justice," and justice leaps forth in shining panoply, clothed 
 with majesty as with a garment! Her voice terrifies 
 arrogant tyranny, her sight cowers cunning greed and fills 
 with dismay defrauding selfishness, her scepter smites with 
 paralysis the hand of oppression, her foot is on the breast 
 of the robber and the murderer. She says: "Let there 
 be love," and mercy appears in the midst of the din and 
 fury of the universal war of all against all. She stands 
 between the strong and the weak, between the smiter and 
 .the smitten, between the crusher and the crushed. She 
 causes the tears of pity to flow, that wash away the blood 
 of the innocent, she stills with the whispers of loving 
 kindness the shrieks of those trampled under foot, she pours 
 the balm of brotherly compassion into the wounds afflicted 
 by the hands of cruelty. She gathers together weeping 
 orphans and places them in palaces of education. 
 
 Oh, Free-will of man, glorious incarnation of the 
 Omnipotent Will, thou commandest all nature to be a 
 servant unto man and behold all the forces of the uni- 
 verse yoke themselves as obedient slaves to the chariot of 
 his mind, and carry their triumphant lord from one end of 
 the earth to the other! They uproot for him the primeval 
 forests, they drive from their slimy abodes the foes of man, 
 the demons of fever and pestilence. They cause the face 
 of a continent to smile with growing abundance for men. 
 They tear open the bowels of the earth and bring up to 
 him immense treasures of gold and silver, iron and copper 
 and other metals, and work them up for him into count- 
 less forms of use and beauty. They dig his fuel in the 
 heart of the earth and bring it into his dwelling place.
 
 74 
 
 They build his cities and light up his streets and houses, 
 making night to shine like the day. They build roads of 
 iron for him and carry him through the land with the 
 velocity of a flying bird. With wondrous speed they waft 
 him in swimming palaces across the oceans, and make 
 him laugh at the terrors of the sea. They flash his mes- 
 sages from one end of the earth to the other with a swift- 
 ness greater than the swiftness of thought. The free-will 
 of man, the mightiest and divinest power of reason 
 has created a new world, the higher world of human 
 society, and superimposed it upon the world of nature. 
 Human society is the flower of all creation. Growing 
 through countless ages, developing from lower to ever 
 higher forms, rising from worm to man, life at last blos- 
 somed forth and ripened into the perfect fruit of human 
 society. Who but the infinite Self, yearning to reveal 
 His wisdom, His goodness and power, has taught thee, O 
 man, the wonderful cunning to unite and blend millions 
 and tens of millions of lives, minds and wills, making 
 them one life, one will and mind, but vaster, mightier? 
 For society is not merely the sum-total of all the individ- 
 uals which it comprises. A nation is a living organism, it 
 has a national will, a national conscience, national aims 
 and destinies. The mind of the nation thinks, meditates, 
 and produces a national philosophy; the heart of the 
 nation feels sorrow and joy, is stirred by hope and despair, 
 is elated by a noble pride or saddened by a sense of 
 shame, and these feelings utter themselves forth in national 
 poetry. The conscience of the nation, yearning after the 
 ideal of righteousness, expresses itself in ever truer laws 
 of justice and ordinances of equity. The energy of the 
 nation puts forth efforts and brings forth all the wonders 
 and works of national industry. The intelligence of the 
 nation asserts its liberty, loves freedom better than life 
 itself, rises in fierce indignation against those that assail it, 
 and tramples under foot those who dare offer it' violence.
 
 75 
 
 All these elements and forces, all these works and arts, 
 make up the civilization of a nation, they are all the mani- 
 festations of the growing national mind and will. 
 
 But the nations themselves are not self-centered beings, 
 they are not isolated immortal individuals, each moving 
 by a spontaneous force of its own toward a different goal 
 without bearing any vital relations to one another. All 
 the nations of the world, especially the leading nations, 
 that create light and destroy darkness, that strive to sub- 
 due the earth and conquer nature, that endeavor to work 
 out the problems of justice and mercy, are but mem- 
 bers of a greater body, living parts of the undying, 
 never-aging body of mankind. All national souls, all 
 national wills, are one soul, one will. The pernicious idea 
 that every nation is a being separated as to its material 
 interests, intellectual aspirations, and historical destinies, 
 from the rest of the world, the selfish belief that every 
 people should have a heart only for its own prosperity and 
 be absolutely indifferent to the welfare of other people, 
 the doctrine that every nation should with fierce egotism 
 endeavor to thrive and grow rich at any price, though the 
 other civilized nations perish in consequence of it, is 
 a return to the views, a reversion to the instincts of 
 primitive barbarism. The idea of humanity, the idea of 
 the fellowship and brotherhood of all men was utterly 
 unknown, was simply inconceivable to barbarous antiquity, 
 for the reason that every people had a national god of its 
 own, who loved and protected only his own people, his own 
 children, and hated and tried to exterminate the children 
 of the other gods, his personal foes. But the growth of 
 reason has not only borne the fruits of humanity, it has 
 also given birth to the idea of humanity. Mankind is the 
 strong, immortal son of God, in whom His will, His wis- 
 dom, His justice incarnate themselves. All the nations of 
 the earth are members of this body, and the souls of the 
 nations are manifestations of this soul. All mankind is
 
 7 6 
 
 one being. If one member inflicts pain on another, the 
 pain shoots through the whole body of mankind. It 
 Germany and France lacerate each other, causing each 
 other to bleed from gaping wounds, humanity loses part of 
 its life-blood. If misery eats into the vitals of one nation, 
 corruption will slowly but surely spread through the 
 whole system of humanity. If one person becomes demor- 
 alized and degraded through poverty, despotism, and sin, 
 demoralization and degradation will gradually diffuse 
 themselves through the whole organism of mankind. If 
 knowledge and truth are generated in the mind of one 
 people, light shines in darkness to the whole of humanity. 
 If liberty is showering her blessings on one nation, the 
 ministering powers divine, that wait upon the progress of 
 man, will sow the seeds of blessing in every land, and in 
 the fullness of time cause them to sprout and blossom to 
 all the families of the earth. If one people does justice, 
 loves mercy, and walks humbly before the Eternal, the 
 soul of humanity gathers new strength, fresh fountains of 
 love open in the heart of the whole race, and mankind 
 comes to take up a higher station on the mountain of God. 
 For humanity is one being, has one life, one breath, one 
 soul, one growing reason. 
 
 But the life of all the men and all the nations of today- 
 is but one short hour in the immortal life of mankind, a 
 passing incarnation in the existence of the mighty and 
 ever-growing son of God, of humanity. All the genera- 
 tions and all the nations that have been live in us, and we 
 and they will live on in generations to come, in nations to 
 be born, till time will be no more! Hebrews we are, and 
 spiritual sons of the Hebrew prophets, whether we call 
 ourselves Israelites, Christians, Mohammedans, or by any 
 other name. The spirit of the psalmists is in our soul, 
 their holy fire rises kindling in our breast. We have stood 
 with Moses on the mount of revelations, we have heard 
 with the redeemed ones the Ten Words of religion and
 
 77 
 
 morality, we have seen with Isaiah the vision of the king- 
 dom of righteousness, we burn with Jeremiah in indigna- 
 tion over the oppression of the weak, the iniquity of the 
 great. We have meditated with Job over the problems 
 and woes of human existence, and with him we wish to be 
 admitted behind the veil, where the soul might find an 
 answer to all its perplexing questions. We have threaded 
 the labyrinthine mazes of life with the teachers of love 
 and righteousness, we have listened to the tidings of the 
 brotherhood of man. We have suffered and bled and felt 
 the agonies of death with those who died for the truth. 
 Greeks we are all, and sunny children of the genius oi 
 Hellas. The spirit of Homer dwells in us. The music 
 and beauty of his verse dwells in our soul. The solemn 
 chants of ^schylus vibrate through our heart; the loveli- 
 ness, the glory, and the truth of Sophocles' dramas fill our 
 mind. We saw Jove leap radiant with ideal perfection 
 from the crowned head of Phidias, we saw Praxiteles 
 breathe the breath of divine beauty into the plastic 
 marble. We saw with our minds's eye Harmony building 
 the Pantheon at Athens, and beheld Art placing Pallas 
 Athene as guardian goddess upon its pinnacle. The spirit 
 of divine Plato is in us, trie eternal ideas and imperishable 
 forms of things discovered by his genius, have become 
 spiritual forces in our lives. We all are Romans, though 
 the arms of our ancestors may have clashed in fierce con- 
 flict with those of Rome. The spirit of their laws and 
 institutions, of their literature and art animates us, the 
 result of their civilization forms part of our being. We 
 are all children of the Italians of the Renaissance, we are 
 spiritual sons of Dante and Tasso, of Michael Angelo, 
 Raphael, of Galileo and Bruno. We are all the spiritual 
 children of Spain and France, of Germany and England. 
 Nay, even ancient India, Egypt, Assyria, and Persia have 
 a share in our being ! And all that the living families of 
 the earth are, with all the life of the past that in us is, will
 
 78 
 
 live on through countless cycles of time, ever purer, 
 mightier, richer, and holier in the one glorious child of 
 God, in imaging, undying humanity. And all the powers 
 of mind and heart already developed, all the arts and 
 sciences which the living and the departed nations have 
 bodied forth, all the conquests of justice and love which 
 civilization has made to this day, are but the beginning 
 and prophecy of the wisdom and goodness, the strength 
 and beauty, which Man the thinker, Man the artist, Man 
 the free agent, will unfold in ages to come.
 
 79 
 
 II. 
 
 THE MORAL EMANCIPATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 The contributions which the American people have 
 hitherto made toward the world's civilization lie chiefly in 
 the domain of the free-will, of social and political ethics. 
 Considerable as is the part America is playing as a pro- 
 ducer of thought, as a creator of science, most respect- 
 able and promising as are the beginnings of American art, 
 yet whatever has been accomplished in these fields of 
 civilization dwindles into insignificance when compared 
 with the immense service which the American people has 
 rendered and is still rendering mankind as a humaniz- 
 ing and moralizing power. 
 
 As far as human beings can be original in anything as 
 individuals or nations, the genius of the American people 
 has in this respect proved itself original in the noblest 
 sense of the word, original as an uplifter of humanity. 
 It has made the highest of all ethical ideas, the idea of 
 the inviolable moral dignity of every man, the central 
 force of its social and political life. 
 
 Thousands of years after the spirit of Hebrew prophecy 
 had promulgated the doctrine that every man is made in 
 the image and likeness of God, crowned with the attri- 
 butes of reason and free-will, the fathers of this nation 
 and their children after them, for the first time in history, 
 have taken the doctrine of the godlike nature and majesty 
 of every human being in all solemn seriousness. They 
 have made it the soul and essence of the constitution, and 
 with fearless consistency introduced it into the whole 
 practice of social and political life. The ideal of justice, 
 as conceived and proclaimed by the prophets, springing 
 from their lofty conceptions of man, is the informing
 
 So 
 
 principle of the organic laws of the United States, and 
 the animating sonl of their national life. 
 
 The leading principles of the American commonwealth 
 are: Every man is free by nature, because he is a free 
 agent; every man is the peer of any other man as a mem- 
 ber of society, because he is a rational being; no law of 
 the state shall interfere with the growth and the com- 
 pletest possible development of the physical, intellectual, 
 and moral powers of any man; no church shall put chains 
 on the conscience and faith of any human being; no 
 social arrangement shall prevent any man from using all 
 the faculties and all legitimate means for attaining his 
 happiness; no class distinctions shall place any set of men 
 above the others in the scale of honor ; no class privileges 
 shall entitle some men or families to live and thrive upon 
 the labor of their fellow-men. 
 
 These ideas have created the American nation. They 
 have moulded the character of its sons and daughters; 
 they stand behind all institutions and party organizations; 
 they are the chief motive power in the activity of the 
 individual and determine the great movements of national 
 life; they are present everywhere, running as a weft 
 through the warp of American history. Since these ideas 
 first came forth from the soul of Yahve's seers, the apostles 
 of the brotherhood of man, up to the time when they 
 created a nation in their image and likeness, they 
 have flitted about as disembodied spirits, from land to 
 land, trying in vain to take up their abode now in this 
 and now in that nation. Though at times homage was 
 paid to them in articles of faith or in Utopian dreams of 
 poets, no nation allowed them to enter and change its 
 heart, and become the vital principles of its thought and 
 conduct. The heart of every people was still possessed 
 by the old spirit of paganism, which can not dwell together 
 in the same breast with the spirit of monotheistic or pro- 
 phetic humanity. The Old World, ancient, medieval, and
 
 8i 
 
 also modern, till the appearance of the New World as a 
 factor of civilization, was swayed by the following social 
 and political ideas: All men are not born free, and should 
 not be granted the full enjoyment and blessings of free- 
 dom; all men are not equal, and should not be accorded 
 equal rights and equal advantages in the pursuit of 
 material well-being, intellectual culture, and moral devel- 
 opment. Certain men, certain families, certain classes and 
 races are, by virtue of birth, by right of conquest, or by 
 dint of fancied higher wisdom, superior to other men, 
 families, classes, and races, and are entitled to special 
 privileges and exceptional advantages. Until American 
 influences began to produce profound changes, the society 
 of the Old World was dominated by these ideas. 
 
 How could it be otherwise? States have always been 
 formed by a conquering race, that subjected and often 
 enslaved the conquered. Might was not only right, might 
 was also virtue. The conquerors considered themselves 
 better men than the subject race, because they were 
 stronger men and fiercer fighters. The conquerors of 
 every laud and time formed the nobility and aristocracy, 
 that looked upon their subjects as their legitimate prey, 
 lived in luxury upon the labor of the toiling masses, 
 treated them with merciless selfishness, and looked down 
 upon them with unbounded contempt, regarding them as 
 inferior beings that were hardly human. As the Fiji 
 Islanders believed that only the nobles had souls, so did, 
 and to a large extent still do, the noblemen of Europe 
 imagine themselves to have better blood in their veins, to 
 belong to a superior sort of humanity, and therefore to 
 have a natural right to feed upon the common herd and 
 bear sway over them. Within the nobility again, the rul- 
 ing dynasty, the royal or imperial family, towers high 
 above all the rest. It believes itself, and is believed by 
 others, to be somehow made of infinitely finer stuff than 
 common humanity, to be by nature endowed with extra- 
 ordinary qualities of beauty, of intellect, and manly virtues,
 
 82 
 
 and to be born into the world with the inalienable right to 
 govern or misgovern millions of men, their so-called sub- 
 jects, to live in wasteful luxury on their toil, to imprison 
 and even enslave them for disobedience or for daring to 
 criticise their follies and vices. This is the blasphemous 
 doctrine of the divine right of kings, which has been, and 
 in many countries still is, defended with fanatical zeal by 
 teachers of religion, who claim to be deep in the secrets of 
 God Almighty. In point of fact, however, this doctrine is 
 but the somewhat modified belief of savages and barbarians, 
 who hold that their rulers are gods or descended from 
 gods. The priestly castes of the Old World, from China 
 and India in the East to Spain in the West, from the 
 Shamans of Siberia down to Egypt, ancient and modern, 
 throughout Africa and Southern Asia, deemed themselves 
 placed high above the mass of the laymen, standing in 
 closer relations to the Deity than the rest of the people, 
 enjoying His special favor, entrusted with the power of 
 delivering man from, or consigning him to, perdition, of 
 opening and shutting up to poor mortals the passage to 
 the land of the blessed. 
 
 These religious ideas are of pagan parentage. They 
 originated in a time when every family, every clan and 
 tribe had its own god, who cared only for his own human 
 kindred and worshipers. These gods loved especially 
 those zealous servants of theirs who provided them daily 
 with the blood of bulls and rams, who filled their nostrils 
 with the sweet savour of incense and burnt offerings, who 
 tickled their ears with lavish adulation, and flattered them 
 to the top of their bent with sonorous praises. How, then, 
 should a layman dare to compare himself, and place him- 
 self side by side, with the priests who were the favorites of 
 the Deity? How could men dream of regarding and 
 treating all human beings as their equals, since there was 
 no bond of common humanity between them, standing as 
 they did under the tutelary protection of different and
 
 83 
 
 hostile gods? The barbarous conditions of society gave 
 birth to barbarous religious ideas, and these in their turn 
 reacted on society and kept alive and strengthened with 
 their sanction the inhuman distinctions between man and 
 man, between high-born and low-born, between the weak and 
 the strong, between the priest and the layman. The great 
 mass of the people was held in profound contempt by the 
 few, who exploited and ill-used them. Their bodies were 
 owned by kings and nobles, their souls and consciences 
 were held in trust by the priesthood. No man was hon- 
 ored because he was a human being, because he had a soul 
 possessing the divine attributes of free-will. 
 
 It was against these degrading distinctions, which a 
 paganistic and barbarous organization of society, which 
 the selfishness and the pride of the mighty and the 
 arrogance of priestly castes, had made between man and 
 man, that the religion of pure humanity rose in rebellion. 
 Such debasing ideas the prophets denounced in righteous 
 indignation, proclaiming the glad tidings that all men 
 were brothers, that all men were children of the one and 
 only God, the Maker of heaven and earth and the Father 
 of mankind, that all men were alike in His sight and love, 
 because He breathed into them all the living breath of 
 reason, and made them all in the image of His own free- 
 dom, and fashioned them in the likeness of His own 
 goodness. "All souls are mine," says the Eternal. The 
 soul of the humblest and poorest man is as precious in the 
 eyes of the Lord as is the soul of a king. The layman is 
 as near the throne of God as is the priest, whose claim to 
 superiority is based on the fact of his being a burner of 
 incense and offerer of sacrifices. Incense and burnt-offer- 
 ings are an abomination to Him. He delights not in the 
 blood of bullocks and the fat of rams. Justice and mercy 
 are the offerings He requires at the hand of man, not 
 chants and lip-deep praises. He loves the poor and lowly, 
 He is their guardian and the avenger of their wrongs. He
 
 8 4 
 
 hates the oppressor, the mighty and proud, whom he will 
 humble to the dust. The infinite moral dignity inherent 
 in every human soul is the burden of the prophet's gospel. 
 He made man a little less than a god, and crowned him 
 with honor and majesty. The soul of man is a lamp of 
 God, searching the innermost chambers of being. He has 
 given him dominion over all His works, and destined him 
 to subdue the earth with the might of his knowledge and 
 free-will, and bear rule over all her creatures. Such were 
 the prophets' lofty conceptions of the nature of man, such 
 were their solemn declarations of the equal rights of all 
 men, flowing from their equality before God. 
 
 These ideas went forth from Zion to conquer the 
 world and in course of time divided into three spiritual 
 armies, into Yahvism proper, or Judaism, Christianity, and 
 Islam. But they met everywhere with fierce and deter- 
 mined resistance. The old pagan ideas were intrenched 
 behind the old barbarous order of society. Here and 
 there a breach was made by the invading new ideas. But 
 the walls of ancient social iniquity remained standing, 
 and on the ramparts kings and noblemen and, alas, also 
 most of the priests, were fighting with the arms of brutal 
 force and with the witchcraft of superstition against the 
 sacred host of humanity. All through the night of the 
 Middle Ages, down to the founding of this republic, the 
 battle was waged with undecided issue between the old 
 and the new, between the pride and the selfishness, the 
 greed and ambition, of the few and mighty, and the 
 rights and the moral dignity of the down-trodden masses. 
 The Reformation and the Peasants' War in Germany, the 
 emancipation of the serfs in England, the English revolu- 
 tion and the rise of the Puritans, the successful revolt of 
 the Netherlands from Spain, and kindred phenomena pre- 
 ceding or following them, were unmistakable and hopeful 
 signs that the struggle was bravely going on between the 
 children of the prophets and the children of paganism, 
 and was big with promise for the future.
 
 85 
 
 Yet this struggle might have lasted on through many 
 more centuries without victory perching on the banners of 
 social righteousness and human honor, had not the God of 
 history, in the fullness of time, assigned a virgin continent 
 to the creative ideas of humanity. Here they did not 
 come into hostile contact with old pagan ideas embodied 
 in old institutions and class interests; here they were free 
 to form a new nation out of the most plastic materials 
 which the spirit of personal independence wafted across 
 the ocean in ships of destiny. The innermost principle of 
 life in this new nation is the moral dignity of the individ- 
 ual, respect for the personal honor of every member of 
 society, be he ever so poor or lowly. The] sturdy yeomen 
 of England, the stout-hearted puritans, who left home and 
 kindred to flee from the abominations of the old order of 
 society, left behind them the nobles and the priests of the 
 Old World, its vicious traditions and class distinctions. 
 They landed on the shores of the New World with the 
 spirit of the Bible in their heart, the sword of manly 
 independence in their right and the spade of tireless 
 industry in their left hand. Here in the vast wilderness, 
 surrounded on all sides by bloodthirsty savages, every man 
 had to work for himself and defend himself, or miserably 
 perish. Here every colonist had to develop the finest 
 qualities of self-dependence or go under. Here, where 
 every man stood face to face with the realities of life, 
 where every man had to work out his own salvation, the 
 shams and shows of royalty, the exacting prerogatives of 
 aristocracy were seen to be snares and illusions, the night- 
 mare of a barbarous past. In this soil, unencumbered 
 with the noxious social weeds of Europe, the ideas of 
 humanity found free scope; here they were to take up 
 their abode in liberty-loving hearts, and embody them- 
 selves in characters of exceptional moral vigor. After 
 centuries of slow formation there appeared a new nation 
 in the arena of civilization, the like of which the world
 
 86 
 
 had not seen. The God of the Universe who once spake, 
 "Let us make man in our image and likeness," He it is 
 that says through the mind of the American free man: 
 "Touch not my anointed, touch not the majesty of the 
 least of men, because every human being is an anointed 
 king by the grace of his reason, by the divine right of his 
 free-will." 
 
 The Americans are indeed a nation of kings. Every 
 American is conscious of his own worth and dignity. 
 The laboring man does not stand in cringing humility 
 before the rich man who gives him employment ; the poor 
 farmer does not look up with awe to the owner of vast 
 estates; the simple citizen does not regard those in 
 authority as superior beings. Self-respect clothes every 
 man as with a garment, and woe betide those who will 
 attempt to offer violence to his honor ! In the Old World 
 honor is meted out to men by rulers; the bestowal of a 
 title will raise, the taking away of a title will lower, a man 
 in the scale of human existence. Classes are placed above 
 classes in the amphitheater of fictitious honor, and there 
 is a disgraceful and ceaseless scramble to climb up to 
 a higher tier and be Seated among their betters, their 
 betters being those dubbed with a title, adorned with a 
 ribbon, or bearing the insignia of an office. 
 
 In America everybody feels and knows that the name 
 of man is the highest title of honor; that honor is seated 
 in one's character, and that the whole world can not rob 
 us of one tittle of it as long as we do not deprive ourselves 
 of it by dishonest acts. The Old World is richer than 
 the New in masterpieces of art, and it possesses more and 
 finer cathedrals ; it has a larger number of trained scholars. 
 But America glories in what is of infinitely greater 
 value in being inhabited by a people whose soul is pene- 
 trated by the ideas of personal freedom, of human dignity, 
 of personal moral worth, by means of which the great 
 mass of the nation has been elevated to a degree unknown
 
 87 
 
 in any other country. America is incomparably richer than 
 any other people, ancient or modern, in what is the highest 
 product of civilization, in superior, high-aspiring characters, 
 in men adorned with every quality of humanity, in men and 
 women that are types of noble manhood and womanhood. 
 So much have the American ideas, or, in other words, 
 the prophetic ideas planted in a new soil, done for the 
 American people; such are the precious fruits of civiliza- 
 tion that have ripened in these United States. But their 
 beneficial influence has not been confined exclusively to 
 America and the American people. These American ideas 
 have gone forward to conquer the earth, not as fleshless 
 and bloodless theories speaking to men in the low whis- 
 pers of entreaty, but as living incarnations, in the pleni- 
 tude of a mighty national reality. They have gone forth 
 from America as a spiritual army, and have invaded the 
 Old World ; they have radically changed the views of the 
 civilized nations regarding the inalienable rights of man ; 
 they are burying out of sight ancient wrongs, laughing to 
 scorn the pretentious of noble birth ; they are withering 
 with their breath the prerogatives of aristocracy ; they are 
 taking away unearned and abused possessions from vicious 
 idlers and restoring them to their rightful owners ; they 
 are tearing away its inherited tinsel from royalty, and 
 washing the stage paint from off the faces of kings.
 
 88 
 
 III. 
 
 THE ECONOMIC EMANCIPATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 The practical recognition of the infinite moral dignity 
 of every human being forms the key-note to the whole 
 social and political life of the American people. We took 
 occasion to observe, that the belief in the equality of all 
 men before God and society, which for the first time in 
 history has been intensely realized by the American people, 
 and embodied by it in its organic laws, has developed in 
 the American a high sense of self-respect and personal 
 honor, and that it has tended to bring forth in America an 
 incomparably larger number of superior characters, ot 
 noble types of manhood and womanhood, than is to be 
 found in any other country. 
 
 The genius of the American nation has brought about 
 the moral emancipation of the individual from the debas- 
 ing influence of caste. Every individual is by virtue of 
 his reason and free-will the sovereign of his own person. 
 Every man is left to work out his own salvation. The indi- 
 vidual has his center of gravity not outside of himself, but 
 within his own personality. The free-will of every man is 
 the pivot of his whole existence. Every human being shall 
 walk by the light of his own understanding, and use all 
 his powers in the way he deems most conducive to his 
 welfare, as long as he does no injury or injustice to his 
 fellow-men. The greatest possible freedom of action is 
 vouchsafed to the individual, limited only by the like 
 freedom of action to be enjoyed by other individuals. 
 This is the new fruitful principle which the American 
 people has introduced into the life of mankind, the vital 
 principle of the economic freedom of the individual, or 
 the right of every person to act and exert himself in what- 
 ever manner he may choose, to employ all his faculties
 
 8 9 
 
 and means to the best of his knowledge, according to 
 what his interests dictate, provided he does not encroach 
 upon the rights and interests of other persons. This prin- 
 ciple put into practice in every department of human 
 activity, within the short space of a century has created 
 the unparalleled material civilization of America and 
 much else that is even higher and more valuable than 
 mere material prosperity. 
 
 It is not the national government at Washington nor 
 the various State governments, but the untrammeled will- 
 power of individuals, the irrepressible energy, the bold 
 spirit of enterprise of private persons, that have produced 
 in America the general prosperity, the wide diffusion of 
 property, the wholesome and comfortable life of the 
 masses, which is the envy and admiration of the Old 
 World, and which steadily acts as an irresistible stimula- 
 tive influence upon all civilized nations. The complete 
 emancipation of human labor from the trammels of bane- 
 ful restrictions and prescriptions, from the oppressive 
 guardianship of the state, in America, and wherever the 
 example of America has been imitated, has set free all the 
 latent forces of individual minds and wills. Consequently, 
 there have been brought into play tremendous powers, 
 which in all lands and times hitherto have been more or 
 less suppressed or kept in check by pernicious laws and 
 regulations, originating in low, primitive conceptions of 
 man: the same pagan and barbarian ideas, which made 
 such vicious distinctions between man and man, between 
 low-born and high-born, between subjects and rulers, 
 which reserved all freedom, all dignity, and all enjoyments 
 of life to privileged castes, which held the toiling masses 
 in profoundest contempt, and kept them in an abject 
 state of physical, intellectual, and moral degradation. 
 These practices naturally enough put all productive labor 
 in chains, caged it within narrow and selfish restraints, 
 and hampered its progress at every step. Throughout
 
 9 o 
 
 countless ages the toiling masses either were directly 
 owned as slaves or serfs by the ruling classes, or were 
 indirectly their servants by dint of an iniquitous order 
 of society. Only the barest means of subsistence were 
 allowed the miserable toilers and producers, while the 
 bulk of the fruits of their labor went to maintain a proud 
 and overbearing aristocracy in luxury and idleness. The 
 pages of history are wet with the tears and stained with the 
 bloody sweat of the hapless millions who were doomed 
 from their birth to hard work, in order to provide a privi- 
 leged minority with the requisites of a cultured and 
 refined life, while they themselves were prevented by pov- 
 erty, toil, and cruel laws from having any share or part in 
 it! Labor was despised, because it was enslaved, because 
 the so-called upper classes held it in abhorrence. The 
 lower classes, the toilers of the earth, the producers of 
 whatever material wealth existed, were disheartened, with- 
 out hope and without aspiration. Being underfed, their 
 physical powers were stunted; being untaught, their mental 
 powers were dwarfed; being without the stimulus of 
 self-interest in their occupation, without the inspiration of 
 self-respect, they lacked the moral vigor and ambition to 
 develop all their faculties, and bring them to bear on the 
 work before them. The pre-American order of society not 
 only was shamelessly unjust in the distribution of the fruits 
 of labor, but also it was extremely wasteful and econom- 
 ically inefficient. Largely suppressing the motives for 
 self-exertion in the masses, paralyzing the mainspring of 
 the will, it was able to call into activity but an exceedingly 
 small part of the latent human forces, it succeeded in 
 enlisting but an inconsiderable amount of the available 
 talent and moral energy in the service of civilization. 
 Before the opposite tendencies and healthful conditions 
 began to manifest themselves in England, and reached 
 their culminating point in America, society tied up most 
 of its own arteries, and starved the rest of the body, to
 
 9 1 
 
 overfeed its head, the upper classes. As soon as the ruling 
 classes became effeminate through luxury and its attendant 
 evils, as soon as their physical, mental, and moral vitality 
 began to break down, the whole body politic was smitten 
 with incurable paralysis. For, there were no recuperative 
 powers arising from the great masses, and no fresh ele- 
 ments to take the place of those that had fallen into decay. 
 This explains the sudden downfall and rapid dissolution 
 of such societies ancient, medieval, and modern, the 
 destruction of such mighty kingdoms, as had seemed to be 
 established for eternity. This is the retribution which 
 has overtaken and will overtake those societies whose 
 lower strata consist of plundered, impoverished, ignorant, 
 and despised masses, and whose upper strata are held in 
 position only by the cohesive power of selfishness, greed, 
 and the heartless pride of caste. 
 
 Upon such states and kingdoms the prophets pro- 
 nounced the doom of the omnipotent God of justice: that 
 their strength shall swiftly wane, and their pride be 
 humbled to the dust, that they shall perish in their 
 iniquity, and rise no more. The seers of Yahve, who 
 proclaimed the godlike nature of every human soul and 
 the equality of all men as children of God, were filled 
 with burning indignation against kings and nobles who 
 devoured the substance of the people. They denounced in 
 unmeasured terms the mighty and the rich who appropri- 
 ated to themselves by means of wicked laws the fruits of 
 the labor of the poor and the weak. "Woe to those who 
 join house to house, and field to field, that they alone may 
 dwell in the land ! Woe to them that take away the children 
 of the people, to make them their servants to till their lands 
 and watch their vineyards ! Because of the oppression of 
 the toilers of the land, the whole land shall become deso- 
 late and be without an inhabitant. Woe to the despoilers, 
 they shall wander into exile and be a by-word and a hissing 
 to their enemies!" The prophets and the legislators of
 
 92 
 
 Israel cared very little for fine-spun theological theories, 
 but they set their whole heart upon putting a hedge of 
 protection around the mass of the people, and upon secur- 
 ing to every man the reward of his diligence. It is 
 touching to see the prophets and law-givers of Israel 
 grapple with the gravest of all social problems, the problem 
 of preventing the rich and mighty from becoming ever 
 richer and mightier, and the poor and weak from becoming 
 ever poorer and more helpless. Their idea of society is 
 one in which there shall be no poor, no disinherited class, 
 and no dominating caste, reveling in wealth wrung from 
 their subjects. Many remedies, many preventatives were 
 proposed and enacted as laws, in order to realize the ideal 
 of a perfect social state so devoutly wished for by them. 
 
 The social ideal of the Hebrew prophets and law-givers 
 was not destroyed with the destruction of the Hebrew 
 state, nor did it die with the death of the Israelitish nation- 
 ality. With Yahvism or Judaism, with Christianity or 
 Islam, it entered the life of mankind as an indestructible 
 force, slowly but irresistibly to revolutionize men's views 
 regarding the inalienable rights of every individual to the 
 free use of his faculties and the enjoyment of the fruits of 
 his industry, to undermine the foundations of the old 
 heathen order of society, and to build up a new society, 
 not made with the hands of brute selfishness, but with the 
 spiritual hands of freedom, of equality, and human dignity. 
 Even in the darkest days of the Middle Ages the Hebrew 
 social ideals were, with painful slowness, it is true, but 
 with the invincible power of destiny, preparing the Day of 
 the Lord, in whose noonday brightness seventy millions of 
 freemen are now basking in America. It redounds to the 
 everlasting glory of the Church, that she tried, as far as 
 her influence went, to bring about the emancipation of the 
 serfs, and at least to mitigate their miserable condition. 
 Her noblest representatives preached, to the great and 
 powerful, mercy and justice toward the down-trodden, and
 
 93 
 
 often stood with defiant courage between the brutality and 
 avarice of tyrants and their helpless subjects. In fact, the 
 Church contained within herself the Hebrew principle 
 of the brotherhood and equality of men, although she 
 regarded only good, orthodox Catholics as true men and 
 brothers. 
 
 Of all European nations England was the first to 
 emancipate the serfs, and to accord at least some semblance 
 of independence and free movement to the laboring classes. 
 The Magna Charta abolished the despotic power of the 
 King, and began to establish the principle, which came to 
 be the corner-stone of the American Commonwealth, that 
 the people should not be taxed without its consent, which 
 means, that no man's labor and products of industry 
 shall be taken away from him without his consent, given 
 through his representative in Parliament. The almost 
 total destruction of the powerful and overbearing Nor- 
 man aristocracy during the Wars of the Roses changed the 
 nature, and diminished the prerogatives, of the nobility, 
 and broke the spell of awe with which the common people 
 were wont to look up to, and obey, their lords as their 
 born masters. The Reformation brought the English 
 still nearer to the fountain-head of the social idealism of 
 Hebrew prophecy and legislation, and started that wonder- 
 ful process which was to transform the English into 
 Israelites in the spiritual sense of the word. The Puritans 
 who came over in the Mayflower and in other frail ships, 
 guided across the tempestuous sea by the hand of Provi- 
 dence, were animated, despite their bigotry and narrowness, 
 by the true spirit of the Hebrew prophets and law-givers. 
 They walked by the light of the Scriptures, and were 
 resolved to form a Commonwealth in accordance with the 
 social laws and ideas of the Bible. They fancied they saw 
 in the Indians the degenerate descendants of the lost tribes 
 of Israel, but in reality they were themselves the true 
 descendants of Israel, spiritual children of the prophets.
 
 94 
 
 Every Puritan felt and knew, that he was the equal ot any 
 king and better than many a king, that he wielded by 
 divine right the scepter of free-will, that he wore the crown 
 of royalty and priesthood by the affinity of his soul to God, 
 that unlimited freedom of action was guaranteed to him 
 by the will of the Omnipotent King, that his labor and the 
 fruits of it were secured to him by the immutable laws of 
 eternal justice. Even before the States had combined to 
 form the United States, the principle had been firmly 
 grasped by the descendants of the English in America, and 
 had become incarnate in their mind and laws, that every 
 man is his own sovereign, that economic freedom, or the 
 right to act according to one's own lawful interests, was 
 inherent in every individual by virtue of his moral 
 dignity. Barely three or four decades after the American 
 Commonwealth had been formed by the free consent of the 
 people composing it, the fruitful principle of the unlimited 
 economic freedom of the individual brought forth such 
 wonders of progress and produced such unheard-of works 
 of material civilization, that the civilized nations of the 
 Old World were filled with amazement, and were com- 
 pelled to adopt as much of that principle as their 
 conditions and the selfishness of the privileged classes 
 would permit, in order not to be quite overwhelmed by the 
 productive energies of the new nation. 
 
 For the first time in the history of mankind all the 
 powers of the individual will and mind were allowed in 
 America to unfold themselves, to grow without let or 
 hindrance, and to combine in the free play of action and 
 interaction. Here the individual has learned to know not 
 only all his rights but also all his powers; here the indi- 
 vidual has come to be filled with unbounded confidence in 
 himself, in the resources of his mind and will. Here he 
 has acquired the habit of relying on himself with manly 
 trustfulness, and not to look to the providence of the state 
 to show him the way he should go, and to guard him
 
 95 
 
 against the danger of falling and hurting himself. The 
 faculties of the Americans are in a state of tension, because 
 no prize of industry or honor is beyond the reach of any 
 one who displays the requisite energy and perseverance. 
 
 What wonderful abilities economic freedom, or freedom 
 of action, has developed in the American, what quickness 
 of perception, what powers of adaptation, what skill in 
 adjusting means to ends, what keenness in discerning the 
 heart of every problem, what boldness in going at it in the 
 straightest possible way ! The unlimited freedom of action 
 enjoyed by the individual has evolved in the American 
 people an inventive genius which is perhaps the most 
 marvelous phenomenon in modern civilization. Thousands 
 and tens of thousands of inventions are made every year, 
 which tend to multiply the productive powers of man, to 
 save time and labor, to increase comfort and cheapen the 
 commodities of life. Poor boys are seen rising by the 
 magic of their will under the sway of personal freedom, to 
 be the owners of vast wealth, to rank among the foremost 
 statesmen, to occupy the very highest positions of public 
 honor and responsibility, or to be leaders in the province 
 of science. The most gigantic works of civilization have 
 been undertaken and carried to a successful issue by a few 
 enterprising persons. This continent has been changed 
 within the space of a hundred years from a howling 
 wilderness into the garden of God, by the indomitable will- 
 power and the fearless progressiveness of individuals. The 
 quadri-centennial which will be held next year (1893) in the 
 metropolis of the West, will convey to the inhabitants of 
 this country, as well as to the Europeans, some idea of the 
 stupendous growth of American civilization a civilization 
 due not to the influence of government playing at provi- 
 dence and assuming the role of guardian toward minors, 
 but to the creative free-will of individuals, availing them- 
 selves of the methods and the discoveries of science, to 
 enlarge their dominion over nature, and make her forces
 
 9 6 
 
 the servants and helpmates of man the thinker, man the 
 free agent. 
 
 No less marvelous than the material development of 
 America is the work done and the triumphs achieved by 
 the enthusiasm, the moral vigor, and the mental energy of 
 private persons in the province of education and philan- 
 thropy. Harvard University was founded and has been 
 maintained and steadily perfected during two hundred and 
 fifty years by the voluntary contributions, the self-sacrifice 
 and devotion of pious men and women. Her younger 
 sister, Yale College, owes her origin to no royal grant, to 
 no state endowment, nor to the wisdom of a few officials, 
 but to the efforts and free-will offerings of noble individuals. 
 Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, McMicken Uni- 
 versity in Cincinnati, and scores of others were called into 
 existence by the munificence of rich men who regarded 
 great wealth as a sacred trust, to be administered in the 
 interests of humanity. And what is true of institutions of 
 learning holds good as to institutions of benevolence. 
 Splendidly equipped hospitals, palatial orphan asylums, 
 homes for the aged and infirm, houses of refuge for the 
 degraded and fallen, are scattered through the length and 
 breadth of the land, all erected by the spontaneous work 
 of private charity, and all giving evidence of the glorious 
 blessings which the principle of individual freedom of 
 action brings to birth. 
 
 This fruitful American principle has exercised an 
 incalculable influence for good on the world's civilization. 
 It is working as a leaven throughout Europe, and Australia, 
 and even in some parts of Asia and Africa. The world 
 is becoming rapidly Americanized. England has profited 
 most by the lessons taught, and the example given, by 
 her great daughter. She has become the foremost eco- 
 nomic power of the globe, because in some respects 
 she has learned to be even more American than America. 
 But also the continental nations of Europe have become
 
 97 
 
 imbued with the progressive spirit of our country and the 
 vital principles which animate it; they too are adapting 
 their economic theories and methods to the American 
 model. The Americanization of the Old World is steadily 
 going on in spite of the privileged and reactionary classes, 
 who justly fear that, unless checked, the new force coming 
 from America will overthow their thrones and trample 
 their privileges underfoot. But they can not stem the 
 irresistible tide of rejuvenating influences which flows from 
 the western shore of the Atlantic to its eastern shore. 
 Innumerable links connect the New World with the Old 
 and make them one country. The Atlantic has become a 
 narrow stream, bridged over by the greatest and wisest of 
 master-builders, modern science. Countless ministering 
 powers of civilization daily pass and repass on that bridge 
 of the human mind, carrying hither and thither the seeds 
 of wonders and blessings. It is the mighty spiritual host 
 of a God invisible to profane eyes, but clearly discerned, 
 with awe and thanksgiving, by those who, through com- 
 munion with the world's seers, have acquired the faculty 
 of seeing things spiritual.
 
 9 8 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMAN 
 
 The American people has carried into practice the lofty 
 ideals which the prophets and the poets of Israel cherished 
 regarding woman. In some respects the American practice 
 may be said even to have improved on the Hebrew ideal. 
 If the American nation had done nothing else for the 
 progress of humanity than to have at last redeemed woman 
 from the state of legal, social, and intellectual inferiority, 
 in which she had been kept from time immemorial, it 
 would be entitled to rank among the great civilizing 
 powers of the earth. To have broken the fetters which 
 the age of savagery had forged for woman, which the age of 
 barbarism had riveted upon her, with which even the most 
 advanced nations continued to enchain her, is a contribu- 
 tion of immeasureable value made by America towards 
 the world's civilization. The moral, mental, social, and 
 legal emancipation of woman, in a sense has- doubled the 
 working forces of civilization. Before all the faculties of 
 woman were liberated by the American people from the 
 narrowing and crippling restraints imposed upon her by 
 inherited savage customs and barbarous ideas, only one- 
 half the human race, the male half, was given full 
 opportunity to develop all the powers of heart and mind ; 
 only one-half was allowed to engage in the higher 
 pursuits of life, to be standard-bearers of the world's 
 accumulated knowledge, producers of new thought, repre- 
 sentatives of creative art, master-builders of the temple of 
 humanity. From the beginning of man's career on earth 
 till about one hundred years ago a fatal madness seemed to 
 possess all the tribes of men, which caused them to confine 
 one-half of all human beings to the duties and works of 
 the household. The blundering stupidity and the heartless
 
 99 
 
 cruelty of man, as he came forth from the hands of nature, 
 as he was molded by the brutal forces of savagery, and as 
 he was hardened by the cruel usages and debasing ideas of 
 barbarism, show themselves, in all their native hideousness, 
 in the degrading treatment which woman, the fairest and 
 gentlest of creation's children, received at the hands of the 
 stronger sex in nearly all lands and times. 
 
 The story of woman's wrongs, of her unrequited excess- 
 ive toil, of the indescribable physical and moral abuse of 
 which she was a victim, of her enforced ignorance, the 
 blighting contempt in which she was held, forms a chapter 
 of shame and iniquity in the annals of mankind. "By 
 their fruits ye shall know them" and we ought to judge 
 the tree of past humanity by the bitter fruits of misery and 
 degradation which it bore to womankind. To the savage 
 ancestors of the modern nations woman was what she is to 
 the savage Indian and Australian of today, a mere beast of 
 burden, who was bought like any other chattel from her 
 owner, her father, who was abused in every way, cruelly 
 beaten, often starved, and not seldom killed by the enraged 
 man-animal. To the barbarian, woman was and is a slave, 
 or a plaything, which he throws away after it has become 
 old and worn, and lost its charms for him. Even after 
 civilization had advanced in other respects, women con- 
 tinued to be held in subjection and contempt. The women 
 of Greece passed their lives in seclusion and ignorance. 
 The Roman matron was the property of her husband. 
 With her children, together with the slaves, she formed 
 the family, which was under the absolute sway of the 
 paterfamilias. He could kill his wife as well as his chil- 
 dren with impunity. German writers have long fabled 
 about the high position occupied by women among the 
 ancient Germans. But impartial historical research has 
 proved this assertion to have no foundation in fact. The 
 weakness of ancient civilization lay mainly in the fact, 
 that not only did half of the population of a country, and
 
 IOO 
 
 in some regions even a greater proportion of it, consist of 
 slaves, but that of the free-born people one-half again, the 
 women, virtually lived in a state of domestic servitude. 
 Thus, their intellectual powers became dwarfed through 
 the total absence of education. Their moral sensibilities 
 and faculties became sadly stunted, because they did not 
 breathe the bracing air of personal freedom, because they 
 lacked the sustaining and uplifting forces of self-respect, 
 and the invigorating influences derived from the world's 
 esteem. Even a Plato and an Aristotle, not to speak of a 
 host of Latin and other Greek writers, expatiate like Hin- 
 doo and Chinese authors on the moral obliquity of women. 
 
 Wherever and whenever, therefore, the iron rules and 
 restraints within which woman was held imprisoned, came 
 to be loosened through the co-operation of internal and 
 external causes, it did not result in the flowering of her 
 mental powers, nor in an ennobling and strengthening of 
 her character. On the contrary, there ensued a frightful 
 state of general licentiousness. All the barriers of old 
 broke down, there being no restraining ethical forces in 
 the national religion. There opened a yawning abyss of 
 demoralization which swallowed the nation, and all the 
 glory and pride of its civilization, its statues and paintings, 
 its poetry and philosophy. Thus were woman's wrongs 
 avenged by the inexorable nemesis of history. The life 
 of paganism was vile in almost all moral respects, but 
 vilest of all it proved to be in its treatment of woman. By 
 degrading woman, heathenism poisoned the well-spring of 
 life, the very fountain, drinking from whose holy waters 
 man was perennially to renew his youth. 
 
 The seers of Yahve saw the root of the world's evils in 
 the demoralizing beliefs and practices of paganism. They 
 were not content to lop off here a branch and there a limb 
 of the upas-tree ; they laid the axe to the roots of it, to the 
 baneful heathen theory of nature and man, of God and the 
 soul. The prophets of Israel proclaimed a new theory of
 
 101 
 
 nature and man, of God and the soul. This theory, once 
 embodied in habits and institutions, is bound to save 
 mankind from a returning deluge of destruction by immoral 
 forces, and to redeem woman from the curse inherited from 
 savage ancestors and barbarous times. They taught the 
 unity of all life in God, the sacredness of all life, because 
 it flows from the holy fountain of His creative being. 
 They brought the message to mankind, that all men, 
 without distinction of race or sex, were children of their 
 Heavenly Father; that woman was made no less than man 
 in the spiritual image of His will, and fashioned in the 
 likeness of His wisdom and love. In the image of God He 
 made them both ; man and woman He created them. 
 Having a godlike nature like man, woman possesses like 
 him an infinite moral dignity. She too is but little less than 
 a god. The free development of her reason, the untram- 
 rneled use of her free-will, the cultivation of her mental 
 powers, the unfolding of all the moral wealth of her soul, 
 is an inalienable right inherent in her by the grace of her 
 God-descended humanity, by virtue of her indestructible 
 ethical personality. The absolute equality of woman with 
 man is contained clearly in the cardinal conception of the 
 great revolutionary heroes of humanity, the prophets of 
 Israel. Nor did their ideals concerning woman remain 
 barren theories in the minds of the worshipers of Yahve. 
 Women are recorded to have been judges and prophetesses; 
 the spirit of God was believed to inspire them; they spake 
 with the voice of authority to the people and the rulers. 
 This fact goes far to prove that woman was held in high 
 regard in Israel, that she occupied a position of dignity 
 and influence, high above that assigned to her even by the 
 most civilized pagan nations. 
 
 Yet, though the position of woman in Israel was higher, 
 though her lot was happier than among the other ancient 
 nations, the Hebrew practice and common law with regard 
 to her were far from keeping pace with the Hebrew ideal.
 
 102 
 
 There were too many ineradicable habits of thought and 
 feeling, too many old institutions, such as polygamy, 
 which held on tenaciously to life, refusing to give way to 
 the revolutionary ideas and ideals, with which they formed 
 so glaring a contrast. Great reformatory ideas rarely 
 succeed in becoming fully realized in the land where they 
 first make their appearance. Thus, the ideas and ideals 
 which, after thousands of years, were to embody themselves 
 and celebrate their greatest triumph in America, went forth 
 from Zion, and migrated from people to people and from 
 age to age, pleading as with angels' tongues in the name 
 of God and humanity for the dignity, the intellectual ele- 
 vation, the social equality of woman. But the hardness 
 of man's heart, the coarse selfishness of the Middle Ages, 
 the universal oppression of the weak, the brutal spirit of 
 militarism, the belief that physical strength and physical 
 courage constituted the highest virtue, offered the most 
 stubborn resistance to any attempts at innovation in this 
 direction, and caused people to listen with a contemptuous 
 smile to the pleadings made on behalf of woman. The 
 so-called Age of Chivalry contributed nothing toward the 
 amelioration of her condition and the uplifting of her life. 
 It merely put an artificial and illusive paint on the face of 
 the prevailing barbarism. It produced a large number of 
 love-songs, in which an unnatural and exaggerated homage 
 was paid to woman's beauty, but it effected no moral or 
 social good; on the contrary, it resulted in a disgraceful 
 corruption of morals. The age of rationalism or enlighten- 
 ment in Europe brought partial relief and some gleams of 
 light to the women of the higher classes, but the great 
 mass of womankind in the Old World to this day have 
 continued to live in a state of social and mental inferiority. 
 You can still see in the streets of Dutch and Belgian cities, 
 and in other countries, a woman harnessed to a cart, 
 together with a dog; you can still see in parts of Germany 
 and Austria, and other civilized lands, a woman hitched,
 
 103 
 
 together with a bullock, to a plow, behind which the 
 husband is walking. The American who passes some time 
 in Austria observes, with a sense of horror, the women 
 carrying a heavy load of brick on their shoulders, with 
 which they climb up on ladders to the second and third 
 stories of buildings. The European peasant does not hold 
 his wife in much higher esteem than does the Indian 
 savage. To lose his cattle will break his heart, but he 
 readily consoles himself for the loss of his wife. It was 
 reserved for the American people to bring about the 
 redemption of woman from the curse of ages, from the 
 yoke which paganism and barbarism had put on her neck. 
 The scarcity of women in America till about a genera- 
 tion ago, has done something to effect this greatest social 
 revolution. But it has done far less than is usually 
 ascribed to it by European observers. The rather the 
 credit is due to the great principle which animates and 
 vitalizes the* American commonwealth. It is the intensely 
 realized idea of an infinite moral dignity inherent in every 
 human soul; it is the belief that every human being 
 possesses, by the grace of its godlike nature, the right and 
 the duty to develop all its powers, and to use them for the 
 attainment of happiness. It is the conviction, firmly 
 rooted in the heart of the whole people, that personal free- 
 dom of action is vouchsafed to every individual by the 
 eternal laws of justice. It is these cardinal conceptions 
 that have delivered woman in America from the state of 
 social and mental inferiority, in which she had been kept 
 through countless ages ; it is these that at last have placed 
 her on a level with man, and opened to her all the avenues 
 of human activity. With that fearless consistency in 
 carrying right principles to their best practical conclu- 
 sions, which characterizes the American, he said to him- 
 self: "Has not woman an immortal soul like man? Is 
 she not crowned with the attributes of reason and free- 
 will like man? Is she not a child of God, an image of
 
 the Most High, like man? Shall we regard her as belong- 
 ing to a lower kind of humanity? Shall we believe our 
 mothers, to whom we owe the noblest qualities of our 
 being, inferior to their sons? Shall we deem the partners of 
 our lives, whose love blesses us, whose purity ennobles us, 
 whose devotion is our shield and buckler, whose strength 
 of will upholds us in days of darkness, shall we think them 
 undeserving of equal rights and equal privileges with us? 
 Shall our daughters, whose loveliness is the light of our 
 eyes, whose sweetness is the joy of our life, whose angelic 
 affection is the solace of our days, shall they not be allowed 
 to penetrate the innermost chambers of the sanctuary 
 of knowledge, and to fall heirs to the world's wisdom? 
 Shall women, to whom we owe the best part of our spiritual 
 and moral life, be forced to observe silence concerning mat- 
 ters of high spiritual and ethical import?" The genius 
 of the American people has cried aloud, and its voice is 
 still reverberating from one end of the civilized earth to 
 the other: "Make a highway for woman, remove every 
 obstacle from her path, let every mountain of inequality 
 and injustice be made level, let every valley of ignorance 
 and prejudice be raised. Let her move on with man to 
 ever nobler ends. Let her, in loving harmony with him, 
 work out the salvation of the race ; let her gather knowl- 
 edge and with the arrows of her light chase darkness from 
 the earth, let her help to uproot evil and plant social right 
 and truth. Let her, too, grapple with the great problems 
 of humanity, and with her love and wisdom aid in giving 
 them a peaceful solution. Let all her powers grow and 
 expand, and be added to the working forces of civilization. 
 Let a crown of honor be placed on her head, let her be 
 clothed with the royal garments of virtue and be girt with 
 the magic girdle of loving-kindness and grace." 
 
 The American woman has become the highest repre- 
 sentative of womanhood. She has been placed on the 
 very pinnacle of social honor. The American people have
 
 surrounded her person with the safeguards of universal 
 esteem. Woe betide the man who should insult the 
 dignity of woman or offend her ear with the breath of 
 impurity ! The consciousness of being the queen of social 
 honor has given to the American woman a dignity of 
 bearing, a graciousness of demeanor, a noble spirit of self- 
 possession and self-respect, such as in the Old World is to 
 be observed only in the women of the highest ranks. 
 There is a spirit of self-reliance in the American woman, 
 a capacity for self-help, a firmness of purpose, a grasp of 
 the practical affairs of life, which make her contrast so 
 strangely and advantageously with the shrinking, timid, 
 and helpless women of the Old World. At the same time 
 there is in the American woman an idealism, a deep 
 religious sense, an almost mystic yearning after spiritual 
 illumination, an aspiration after the higher attainments, an 
 ambition to be abreast with the culture of the time and in 
 close touch with the best thought of all ages. Along with 
 these qualities there goes a keen and helpful sympathy 
 with human suffering, a sense of horror and of responsi- 
 bility at the sight of physical deterioration, of mental 
 deformity, and moral degradation, a sleepless desire to 
 leave the world better, wiser, and happier than she found 
 it. Such is the character of the American woman, as it 
 has been formed by the American people, or rather as it has 
 been molded by the great principles which are the soul of 
 the American Commonwealth. Of all the members of 
 society she has reaped the largest harvest of benefits, since 
 this continent has been changed from a habitation of 
 howling savages into the seat of the most progressive 
 civilization. 
 
 Yet is woman no idle beneficiary, no mere pensioner, of 
 the American people. Much as America has done for her, 
 she has done and is doing as much, and perhaps more, for 
 America. She is enriching, ennobling, and spiritualizing 
 the life of the American nation. America is called by
 
 io6 
 
 Europeans the land of a rarely material civilization. We 
 are accused of being steeped in materialism. It is said of 
 us that we worship no other god than the Almighty Dollar. 
 That we are able to refute these reproaches as utterly 
 baseless, is mainly due to the ideal forces which peren- 
 nially issue from the soul of the American woman, and 
 give our national and individual life a higher meaning and 
 purpose. While a ceaseless battle is being waged by the 
 men for the possession of material wealth, woman keeps 
 watch over the holy ark of the ideal, and ministers as 
 priestess in the sanctuary of God-seeking humanity. It is 
 she that upholds and upbuilds the temple of religion in 
 this country. The wholesome and growing religious life 
 of the nation derives its vital powers from the enthusiasm, 
 devotion, and self-sacrificing activity of woman. She is 
 the chief agent in inaugurating, preserving, and improv- 
 ing the institutions of philanthropy in this country. She 
 organizes and carries on most of the works of charity, 
 which alleviate the misery of countless thousands, and 
 save innumerable persons from physical and moral per- 
 dition. Two-thirds of the charities of our land would 
 languish and die, were she to refuse to lend them her 
 energy, time, and influence. The American woman looks 
 upon herself as the chosen adversary of evil, and fights it 
 with all her characteristic bravery and tenacity of purpose. 
 She has declared war upon intemperance, and will yet root 
 it out of the land. The women of America are found 
 among the foremost champions of social justice and politi- 
 cal purity. Two great reforms, which recently took place 
 in the administration of New York, were effected solely by 
 the moral courage, the unconquerable persistence, and the 
 irresistible eloquence of a noble woman. Let the cause of 
 humanity, in whatever guise, cry out for defenders, and 
 you will see women fighting in the front ranks and bearing 
 the brunt of the battle. 
 
 The American people is being richly rewarded for 
 having opened all the avenues of knowledge to women, by
 
 placing them on a footing of absolute equality with men 
 as regards education. The arduous and unremunerative 
 work of educating the young, is almost exclusively carried 
 on by women in our public schools. The kindness and 
 generosity of the American character are largely to be traced 
 back to the softening and humanizing influence exercised 
 by the female teachers on the plastic minds and the 
 impressionable heart of the young. The general high 
 culture of the American women acts as a constant stimu- 
 lative and leavening force on the minds of men. The 
 unbounded esteem in which they are held reacts most 
 beneficially on the behavior of the male population. 
 Their presence curbs rudeness and represses vulgarity. 
 The feelings and the manners of the Americans are becom- 
 ing in the best sense of the word ever more feminine, 
 gentle, generous, pure, and sweet. Such are the ethical, 
 educational, and intellectual services which woman is 
 rendering the American people, in return for the redemp- 
 tion wrought for her. No eye can foresee the wonders 
 and the blessings which the moral superiority of her char- 
 acter, her religious enthusiasm, her intense hatred of evil, 
 her fervid love of good, will bring forth in the future. 
 Incalculable are the influences which the example and 
 the exalted position of the American women are exerting 
 on the life of women in the Old World. The American 
 woman is the coming type of womanhood throughout the 
 civilized world. It is her manifest destiny to reform all 
 womankind in her own image and after her likeness.* 
 
 *This series comprised three other discourses, on " Popular Govern- 
 ment," which, however, it has been impossible to include in this volume.
 
 "WHO IS THE REAL ATHEIST? 
 
 >T~MME was and that time does not by any means belong 
 * to a remote past when atheism was regarded as the 
 most heinous crime of which a human being could render 
 himself guilty. To be accused of atheism meant to be 
 dragged before the tribunal of the state, as was done in 
 the days of antiquity, or before the bar of an ecclesiastical 
 court, as was the practice during the Middle Ages and for 
 nearly two centuries after the Reformation, there to be 
 arraigned as the worst of criminals, compared with whom 
 even a murderer seemed to be an angel of innocence. If 
 convicted, and an atheist was rarely acquitted, he was 
 condemned to die a felon's death. The curses of the com- 
 munity followed him to the place of execution. No 
 tombstone was allowed to mark his resting-place. One 
 suspected of atheism was shunned like a leper, and hated 
 as if he were a fiend incarnate. Yet how many glorious 
 champions of truth, how many path-finders of humanity, 
 how many saints of the earth, whose noble lives were the 
 best indications of the belief in a God of holiness, have 
 been persecuted with merciless fanaticism as atheists, as 
 the worst enemies of the human race ! 
 
 The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, who taught the 
 profoundest of all religious doctrines, that the universe 
 was shaped into purposeful harmony by an All-wise and 
 Almighty Mind, being accused of atheism was thrown 
 into prison, from which he secretly escaped and then 
 fled from Athens in hot haste. Even his powerful 
 friend Pericles could not protect him against the suspicion 
 and the hatred of the masses. Socrates, the wisest and 
 most pious of all Greeks, whose philosophy marks an
 
 109 
 
 epoch in the history of the human mind, and whose 
 life came to be to the Hellenic world what that of 
 Jesus is to Christendom, was condemned by an Athenian 
 jury as an atheist, and in his seventieth year com- 
 pelled to drink the cup of deadly hemlock. Giordano 
 Bruno, on the iyth of February, 1600, was burned 
 in Rome as an enemy of God. And yet that reputed 
 atheist taught that God is the unity of the universe, 
 the universal substance, the one and only principle, 
 the efficient and final cause of all, the beginning, middle, 
 and end, eternal and infinite. Spinoza, whom Schleier- 
 macher called "a God-intoxicated man," he who ascribed 
 real existence to God alone, declaring all finite beings to 
 be mere manifestations of the Infinite and Absolute, was 
 not only excommunicated by his own co-religionists, but 
 was until recent times universally regarded with horror 
 and hatred as the worst and most dangerous of atheists. 
 The Jews were loathed by the pagans as a people that 
 believed in no God. So utterly fallible and so baneful in 
 its effects has the world's judgment in all times and among 
 all nations proved to be, as regards atheists and atheism. 
 As a rule the so-called atheists of one age become the 
 venerated religious teachers and spiritual guides of after 
 ages. Those that perished amid the execrations of their 
 generation came to live transfigured in the mind and heart 
 of later generations as types of an ideal humanity. 
 
 The fact of the matter is, no original thinker, no 
 genuine seeker after truth, has ever been a real atheist. 
 The alleged atheists simply differed more or less pro- 
 foundly from the theology of those who passed judgment 
 upon them. The Greek philosophers who were indicted 
 on a charge of atheism, did not believe in the Olympian 
 gods, holding as they did monotheistic views. The Jews 
 were hated by the heathen world as atheists, for the reason 
 that they denied the existence of the gods of the Gentiles. 
 Similarly, the men that were hunted down and brought
 
 no 
 
 to an untimely end as atheists in Christian lands, only 
 rejected certain dogmas, held by the established churches 
 to be essential principles of faith, without which it was 
 believed religion would be destroyed. 
 
 Again, most scientists are reproached by over-zealous 
 theologians with being atheists and teaching atheism. 
 "You teach an atheistic science," they cry. "You leave 
 God out of your astronomy, your geology, chemistry, 
 botany, zoology, and physiology. No mention is ever 
 made in any of your writings of the Maker of heaven and 
 earth." Only blundering stupidity, going hand in hand 
 with blind intolerance^ can speak thus. It is not within 
 the province of science to teach religion or metaphysics, to 
 prove the facts of experience by referring them to the 
 highest and last cause, to trace all phenomena back to the 
 ultimate ground of existence. There is certainly no 
 religious mathematics, there is no room for God in a treatise 
 on geometry. The engineer who elaborated his plan for 
 the Brooklyn bridge, was not expected to start with the 
 premise, that all the physical laws on which he based 
 his calculations, measurements, and adjustments, were 
 perennial manifestations of an infinite, eternal, and immu- 
 table power, that we worship as God. 
 
 It is the sole office of the investigator of nature to 
 ascertain by conscientious observation and careful experi- 
 ments all the knowable facts within the range of his 
 experience, to arrange them in the order of their closer or 
 remoter relationship, to find the bond of union which binds 
 them all together into a systematic whole, to discover the 
 laws, according to which they live, move, and have their 
 being. It is the function of science to drive the notion of 
 accident and caprice from her entire territory, to show 
 every physical event as flowing of necessity from a preced- 
 ing physical event as its cause, to demonstrate that no 
 phenomenon in nature stands apart for itself, but forms a 
 necessary part of the whole order " of the universe, to
 
 Ill 
 
 connect by a chain of cause and effect whatever is or hap- 
 pens in the present with the remotest possible past of the 
 heavens above and the earth beneath or the waters under 
 the earth. Science is neither theistic nor atheistic. It is 
 as little religious or irreligious as cooking, building, sew- 
 ing, or plowing. It deals only with what is within the 
 ken of the senses, and its boldest conclusions and theories 
 in the last resort go back to what the senses bear testimony 
 to. Science proper has nothing to do with what is super- 
 sensual or beyond the reach of the senses. It does not 
 meddle with questions relating to the origin of things, nor 
 does it extend its inquiry to the ultimate ground of all 
 being. It is exactly where science ends that philosophy 
 begins. The subject matter of philosophy is the infinite 
 and absolute, the eternal ground of all existence, the 
 inscrutable power behind all phenomena, the cause of all 
 causes, the beginning, the middle, and the end of all exis- 
 tence, that which alone is, was, and forever will be. The 
 existence of the Infinite and Absolute is to all systems 
 of philosophy the highest and most certain of all truths. 
 
 The idea of the Eternal is incomparably more incon- 
 trovertible than the several finite things which we may 
 touch, taste, or smell. The Infinite is to philosophy the 
 only true reality, while the finite is regarded by it as 
 enigmatic, doubtful. And shall we decry these supreme 
 philosophical ideas as rank atheism, because the philoso- 
 phers prefer to call the eternal source and cause of alj 
 existence the Infinite and Absolute, instead of calling it by 
 the name of God? The Hebrew name Yahve, He that is, 
 was, and will be, He that causes all being, corresponds 
 exactly to the philosophic term of Infinite and Absolute. 
 The philosophy of Spinoza, the best hated and calumniated 
 of all reputed atheists, ought to be called, according to 
 Hegel, Acosmism, the doctrine of the nothingness of the 
 world, while reality is ascribed to God or the Infinite alone. 
 What is true of Spinoza holds good of all philosophers,
 
 112 
 
 from Thales down to Herbert Spencer. None of them was 
 an atheist, popular prejudice and priestly fanaticism not- 
 withstanding. 
 
 "But have not your philosophers," some of you might 
 ask, "asserted over and over again, that we can not prove 
 the existence of God? Has not your master Kant used 
 the gigantic powers of his mind, to demolish, one after 
 another, all the time-honored proofs of the existence of 
 God?" It is not in wisdom that you ask thus. It is 
 because Kant and other thinkers of equal originality 
 stood like Moses face to face with the Eternal and Infinite, 
 that they wished to show that all theistic arguments are 
 either untenable or insufficient. How can we prove that 
 which is itself the proof of everything else, upon which all 
 other truths hang, without which all knowledge would be 
 vanity and a striving after wind? To prove means to trace 
 back what is uncertain and doubtful to what is certain and 
 beyond a doubt, to explain the unknown by referring it 
 back to what is known, by showing it to be akin to what 
 is recognized and understood. But this process of proving 
 must at last reach a limit. We must finally arrive at 
 something, a proposition or cognition, which we can not 
 demonstrate, because there is nothing beyond it, in which 
 it might be included or to which it might be linked. It 
 is the supreme truth, the most certain and immediate of 
 all cognitions, it is the foundation upon which all other 
 verities rest, and without the recognition of which all truth 
 vanishes. It can neither be proved nor does it require proof. 
 "The idea of God or the Infinite is this most general 
 truth, which can not be reduced to a more general one. It 
 is the deepest truth to which we can get. It can not be 
 explained, it is inexplicable, unaccountable." 
 
 But what of materialism, is it not atheism? Are there 
 not philosophers who derive all life from the lowest to the 
 highest from matter and motion, and deny the existence of 
 mind or anything akin to mind in the universe? My
 
 "3 
 
 answer is, no serious thinker in our days holds such views. 
 Materialism has been refuted and exploded as a theory of 
 the universe. It does not account for the existence of mind 
 in man and animals. How can mind, which is absolutely 
 different from matter and motion, be the offspring of 
 matter or the child of motion? We can by no effort of 
 thought conceive how matter and motion could be changed 
 from what they are and be transformed into consciousness. 
 It is simply unthinkable. And if all matter is believed to 
 have an inner side to it, to be endowed with the qualities 
 of feeling and the dim germs of thought, then it is no 
 longer matter, but something else, something higher. 
 From whichever point of view we look at it, philosophical 
 atheism turns out to be a mere fiction, a mere delusion of 
 theological zealots. 
 
 But who are the real atheists? They whose conduct 
 belies their belief in the existence of God, whose life forms 
 a glaring contrast to the idea of God. The belief in a God 
 is not simply the highest and most certain of all truths, it is 
 also the greatest and most potent moral idea. The idea of 
 God implies the idea of divine perfection and absolute good- 
 ness. God and goodness are synonymous, interchangeable 
 terms. If we believed that God was not goodness, we 
 might fear Him, but we could not adore Him. A good 
 man would appear to us more worshipful than He. Relig- 
 ion and philosophy agree in holding that morality is the 
 highest manifestation of the Infinite in and through the 
 soul of man. Whatever we may think of its origin and 
 development, as it is, it doubtless is the most glorious 
 incarnation of the inscrutable Power, of the Universal Self. 
 To believe in God does not mean that we simply allow that 
 He exists, it means that we strive to walk in the luminous 
 footsteps of His holiness, to walk in the ways of His 
 justice, truth, and mercy. Every virtuous action is a true 
 act of worship. To curb our passions in obedience to the 
 laws divine engraved upon the tablet of our hearts is the
 
 grandest homage paid to the idea of God. To smite and 
 overthrow the vaulting instincts of selfishness, in order to 
 serve the common good of all, is the strongest proof that a 
 God of goodness inspires the breast of man. He is an 
 atheist who professes to believe in God but whose deeds 
 put his faith to shame. He who declares that he considers 
 the Ten Commandments a revelation of God and yet 
 violates one and all, he is the real atheist. He who 
 acknowledges that we should recognize no other God 
 beside the Eternal, and yet worships his own poor self as 
 the highest being and places his own interests and pleas- 
 ures above the highest interests and aims of humanity, he 
 is a real atheist. He who perjures himself, who swears a 
 false oath or utters lies to obtain profit or gain favor, he 
 does practically deny God, he demonstrates that he does 
 not believe in Him "that will not let him go unpunished 
 that taketh His name in vain." Whoever fails to honor 
 his father and mother as the representatives of God on 
 earth, whoever in heartless selfishness neglects his aged 
 parents and refuses to surround their declining years with 
 blessings and comforts, he is an atheist, though he daily 
 bend his knee in adoration to God and sound His praises 
 in the midst of the assembly. He that makes of himself a 
 slave of Mammon, who, in his greed to amass wealth, lets 
 the higher powers of his mind and heart run to waste, 
 verily he is an atheist, he does by his conduct prove that 
 he does not believe man to be a child and image of the 
 Most High, destined to pattern his life upon that of Divine 
 perfection. He that defrauds his neighbors in any matter 
 great or small, who uses false weights and false measures, is 
 an atheist: he does not believe in a God that hates decep- 
 tion and injustice. He is an atheist that deprives the 
 hireling of his wages, and takes away from the needy the 
 fruit of his labor. That man is indeed an atheist, who 
 robs the substance of his fellow-men by violating the laws 
 of the land, or by bribing legislatures to enact wicked laws
 
 "5 
 
 to favor his iniquitous schemes. Jay Gould was an 
 atheist, although he belonged to a church and was buried 
 by three ordained ministers. Whoever sacrifices duty and 
 conscience to his passions, is a rank atheist. That priest at 
 the altar is an atheist, that teacher of righteousness and 
 faith, whose heart burns with the unholy fire of lust. 
 Though he make many genuflections and lift his eyes in 
 prayer to Heaven, he does deny God in his sinful soul. 
 All those were real atheists who persecuted their fellow- 
 men on account of their faith, who tortured and murdered 
 the children of God in the name of God. Torquemada 
 and Arbues were atheists, in spite of the fact that they 
 scourged their bodies and sang many litanies in honor of 
 their God. That ruler is an atheist and an enemy of God, 
 who grinds the faces of the poor and needy, who oppresses 
 men on account of race and religion, who deprives human 
 beings of the right to earn a livelihood, who withholds 
 from them the means of acquiring knowledge and leading 
 the lives of human beings. The Czar of Russia is an 
 atheist, although he is at the head of the National Church; 
 his wicked counselors deny God, because they rebel 
 against the laws of Divine justice. He is an atheist who 
 calls darkness light and evil good, who praises the despot, 
 who drives mothers with their babes out of their homes in 
 midwinter, and causes many infants to die of cold and 
 starvation. The irreverend Dr. Talmage is an atheist, 
 though Sunday after Sunday he cuts capers in his pulpit, 
 and calls himself the servant of God. The God of truth 
 and justice is not in his heart, else he could not call a 
 tyrant a benefactor of his people, who causes infinite woe 
 and misery throughout the length and breadth of his land. 
 All those teachers of religion are atheists, the Stoeckers 
 and the Rohlings, who on Sundays preach from their 
 pulpits, "Love thy enemy as thyself," but as soon as they 
 step out of their church, do preach and practice hatred and 
 malice, spread calumnies and baneful falsehoods, and
 
 n6 
 
 excite in the breasts of the masses vile and bloodthirsty 
 passions. 
 
 Whoever holds that a man can be religious without 
 trying to be absolutely just, truthful, and merciful toward 
 all men, denies and blasphemes God. Whoever treats 
 his fellow-men with contempt, and deems them unworthy 
 of associating with him on account of race or religion, 
 is an atheist, because he practically denies that all men 
 are children of one Heavenly Father, who loves them all 
 and whose majesty resides in them all. It is on account 
 of such practical atheism that the earth mourns and is full 
 of desolation. It is on account of such practical atheism 
 that the cries of the depressed and down-trodden are heard. 
 Such atheism is the parent of infinite woe and misery. 
 Such practical atheism has drenched the earth with the 
 tears and the blood of the innocent. Alas, how many are 
 entirely free from practical atheism? Ministers and lay- 
 men, men and women, Gentiles and Israelites, one way or 
 another deny God in their conduct Oh, let us not glory 
 in the religious doctrines we hold, let us not boast of the 
 principles of faith which we profess. By our fruits alone 
 let us prove that we believe in an all-just, all-wise, and all- 
 merciful God. Let us gird our loins in strength and strive 
 to establish the kingdom of God, the kingdom of righteous- 
 ness and love on earth. Let us endeavor to make our lives 
 symbols of the perfection of God.
 
 LOSING GOD AND FINDING GOD 
 
 A DAY OF ATONEMENT SERMON. 
 
 " Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while 
 He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the man of sin his 
 thoughts. Let him return to God who will have mercy on him, and to 
 our Lord who will abundantly pardon." (Isaiah, lv, 6-7.) 
 
 OD may be found, declares the prophet, at certain 
 times favorable to spiritual insight and moral eleva- 
 tion. He is nigh unto us on sundry occasions, when the 
 external and internal conditions awaken in us a quenchless 
 longing to approach the source of all existence and the 
 fountain of our own being. Since, then, God may be 
 found by us at certain auspicious times, it follows that we 
 may lose God under adverse outward and inward circum- 
 stances, which dull the organ of spirituality and divorce 
 our soul from communion with the universal Power. 
 Verily, one may lose his God. It sounds paradoxical 
 enough, yet it is one of the most far-reaching and saddest 
 truths. The fact is, our highest possessions are most easily 
 lost. The noblest qualities of our humanity, the finest 
 tendencies of our nature, the loftiest beliefs of the aspiring 
 soul readily depart from us if we make no efforts to pre- 
 serve and cultivate and develop them. The holiest 
 spiritual wants of our soul are the first to disappear, when 
 moral degeneration sets in. Our lowest qualities and pas- 
 sions, those which we have in common with animals or 
 savages, will stay with us to the end. One may lose the 
 love of knowledge; one may lose reverence for truth and 
 the sense of abhorrence for falsehoods and calumnies; one
 
 n8 
 
 may lose the love of justice, the love of right and equity; 
 one may lose the love of human brotherhood and the love 
 of benevolence; one may lose the love of the beautiful and 
 the sublime. With the loss of any of these qualities we 
 lose God in proportion. For they are the manifestations 
 of the divine in man. With their disappearance God fades 
 out of our life. For God is not a mere theory. The belief 
 in God is not a philosophical truth which we infer from 
 given premises. God is not an object of knowledge like 
 any other knowledge to be stored up in our mind among 
 the thousand and one facts of observation and reasoning. 
 God to us, in the deepest and widest sense, is life, ever 
 growing and rising life. God is universal creative energy 
 in nature; He is moral energy in man. The more truth, 
 the more God ! The more justice, the more religion ! The 
 more love, the more divinity in our soul! The more we 
 break away from selfishness, the more surely do we find 
 God. 
 
 The idea of God and self-centered egotism form 
 irreconcilable contrasts. True religion and selfishness 
 exclude and repel each other. He that walks in the way 
 of self-seeking can not find God. Narrow, hard-hearted 
 selfishness is the root of all sin and godlessness. Genuine 
 atheism never springs from philosophical reasoning, is 
 never the result of any theory of the world and man. 
 Even those philosophers who deny God with their lips 
 have Him in their heart. They deny names, traditions, 
 dogmas. But underneath their very unbelief there is stir- 
 ring the spirit of faith in the universal, divine unity, faith 
 in the kinship of all minds and the brotherhood of all men, 
 faith in supreme and eternal principles of goodness unit- 
 ing all mortals and binding upon all souls. Their denial 
 and unbelief invariably lead to God along new pathways of 
 loftier thought. But true atheism or godlessness is always 
 of a practical nature. It is the selfish life, as opposed to 
 the life with God and humanity. The real atheist is the
 
 individual who imprisons himself within his own narrow 
 self, shuts out all common and higher interests, separates 
 himself from the joys and sorrows and burdens of the 
 world, is indifferent to all aims and relations which do not 
 promise personal utility. This selfish isolation and blind 
 self-love is atheism in its essence and manifestation. 
 
 For the soul of all religion, theoretical and practical, is 
 unity. Religion is the belief in the unity of all things, of 
 nature and mankind, in one eternal Being; the unity of all 
 the works and the thoughts of man in his long career on 
 earth, the unity of all star systems and of the whole drama of 
 humanity's life, in one supreme all-wise Power. The truly 
 religious man feels and knows that he is a part, though an 
 infinitesimal part, of the universal and eternal Unity. The 
 fruit of that knowledge is humility. We stand in awe and 
 meekness in the presence of the Infinite, with whom we 
 are bound up together in every fibre of our being, in every 
 thought and motion, in all our faculties and works. We 
 find God the very moment we realize that we can not for 
 one single instant break away from our relations to God as 
 revealed in nature and humanity, as manifested in eternal 
 laws governing the external world and determining every 
 movement of the inner world. We feel our individual 
 insignificance, because our eyes are ever straining to gaze 
 upon the countenance of the divine unity and life. We 
 feel our infinite dignity, because we know that we are a 
 revelation of the Eternal. We break down all fences and 
 walls which separate us from God in nature and humanity. 
 Love draws us towards the center of existence, from which 
 we have radiated. We try to complete our poor individual 
 life by assimilating to ourselves the glory and beauty and 
 wisdom and power of God unfolded in the endless evolu- 
 tion of His infinite life. We yearn after the parent cause 
 of our being, and find God along the path of the knowl- 
 edge of His ways. As soon as we strive to grow beyond 
 the limits of our fragmentary, narrow self, we find ourselves
 
 120 
 
 standing before the majesty of the Divine and Eternal and 
 Infinite, and in steady stream His light pours upon the 
 soul which yearns to be at one with the universal mind. 
 This is the reward of humility; the individual finds God 
 near him, because he seeks Him in the universal life. 
 
 The footsteps of the Deity can be discerned along the 
 highways of knowledge. The more knowledge we find, 
 the more truly do we find God. Every truth we discover 
 brings us nearer to Him, of whom all things are but signs 
 and symbols. Knowledge growing from more to more is 
 the progressive translation of the mind and life of the 
 Infinite into the mind and life of man. For all nature is 
 the incarnated thought and will of God. 
 
 The universe is the volume in which are writ the self- 
 revelations of the Eternal. History is the record of the 
 manifestations of His wisdom, of His attributes, of His 
 all-wise laws, through the minds of superior men, who have 
 felt after Him and longed after communion with His ways. 
 Through knowledge the currents of the universal Mind 
 flow into our individual mind. To use an expression of 
 the Talmud, we are like the blessed in paradise. We sit 
 rejoicing in the effulgence and glory of the Shechina, the 
 divine Spirit diffusing itself through nature and humanity. 
 This truth forms one of the central ideas of Judaism- 
 Religion is called the knowledge of God and His ways. 
 Again and again the injunction is laid upon Israel to know 
 God and the books of revelation. "One of the chiefest 
 crowns of our humanity is the crown of learning." He 
 that despises knowledge turns away from God. "Because 
 thou hast despised knowledge," says the prophet Hosea to 
 the priesthood of his time, "He has rejected thee to be His 
 priest." The love of His knowledge has been ever regarded 
 by Judaism as the love of God. To pursue wisdom means 
 to the true son of Israel to search after God. 
 
 Those of you who have lost the love of knowledge, the 
 distinctive characteristic of Israel, have necessarily lost
 
 121 
 
 God. If a man shuts himself up forever in a room, closing 
 all windows and doors, stopping up every keyhole and 
 chink, he certainly can not know and judge the world 
 without. He may see, by means of some rushlight or a 
 few stray rays penetrating through some cracks, the few 
 objects within his narrow prison. But all the beauty and 
 glory and richness and joy in the world without will 
 remain hidden from him, and his former knowledge thereof 
 will soon fade out of his mind. If you are indifferent to 
 the knowledge of nature and humanity, you wilfully and 
 permanently shut yourself up in the prison of your narrow 
 self. You take note only of the few things which concern 
 your own self, your personal wants and cares. But the 
 great world without you, the majestic world of nature and 
 the still more glorious world of mankind do not exist for 
 you. Such men can not find God, because they have 
 abandoned the way of knowledge, along which alone He 
 can be found. Those who complain that they have lost 
 God, that He is far from their mind and heart, ought to 
 remember that this fatal condition is due to their own nar- 
 row materialistic selfishness. Those who have become 
 all earthly have lost the mental organ by which to appre- 
 hend spiritual facts. Those who are wholly absorbed 
 in things material, those whose faculties are entirely 
 used up in the service of selfish gain and pleasure, 
 have no means of entering the Temple of Truth, in whose 
 holy of holies dwells enthroned the supreme idea, the idea 
 of God. If you tie up the wings of your spirit so that they 
 lose from want of use the power of upward flight, how can 
 you hope to rise into the pure and spiritual air of the ideal? 
 If there is no spirit in you, how can you expect to approach 
 in prayer, meditation, and aspiring knowledge the Spirit of 
 all spirits? If you habitually refuse to seek a home for 
 your mind in the world of ideas, it is impossible that you 
 should feel yourself nigh unto Him who is the all- 
 embracing, all-creative idea, the absolute and universal 
 intelligence.
 
 122 
 
 All men can not be searchers after truth, all men can not 
 devote their best energies to the pursuit of knowledge in 
 the field of nature and humanity, but all of us can bask in 
 the light of truth, kindled by illumined minds. All of us 
 may sit down as invited guests at the banquet of wisdom, 
 prepared by innumerable men, who were rich in original 
 insight, who hungered and thirsted after the knowledge of 
 God. 
 
 Those who refuse to put themselves into close touch 
 with the searchers after God, with the searchers after truth, 
 simply bar their way to the blissful belief in an all-wise, 
 all-penetrating, all-loving, divine Presence. For He has 
 not left Himself without witnesses. He has spoken to us, 
 and continually speaks to us, through the soul and with the 
 voice of the path-finders of humanity, who have sought 
 Him, His light and His truth, His laws of righteousness 
 and love, with all their heart. The immortal lovers of God 
 and man, the seers of the world, ascended to the summits of 
 thought, which touch the very heavens, and brought down 
 the light of God, the law of life, the treasures of wisdom 
 more precious than all gold and all material pleasures. 
 How can you hope to find God, if you refuse to follow the 
 lead of the men of supreme genius who sought Him and 
 His light all their life, who found Him along the path of 
 knowledge and goodness? The Bibles of humanity lie 
 open before us inviting us to take hold of the spiritual 
 experience of the world's best and most original minds. 
 If you refuse to read the pages written with the heart's 
 blood of the wisest and noblest of the children of men, it is 
 natural that your spiritual life should be pitiably poor. 
 Many have lost God because in the pursuit of material 
 interests they have lost the love of knowledge. Those who 
 keep away from the house of God, who have suppressed 
 within themselves the desire to listen to words of instruc- 
 tion, should not marvel that they can not find God in their 
 hearts when they seek Him on rare occasions, such as this
 
 123 
 
 day. Those that habitually despise knowledge can not 
 feel themselves priests of God when some strange mood or 
 accident or a holiday moves them to approach Him. Let 
 them resolve to abandon their ways of wilful ignorance. 
 For callous indifference to knowledge is atheism. It leads 
 to the death of the soul. Let them return to God and 
 worship Him, as the all-sustaining, all-determining and 
 creative Unity of all things. Let them find His ways by 
 the light of knowledge. 
 
 Rising to still higher religious thought, we worship 
 God, the universal Spirit, as the Unity of all spirits. As 
 it is said: "He is the God of the spirits of all flesh." All 
 minds are one in the Eternal Mind. All minds have their 
 center and the cause of their unfolding faculties in God. 
 He is the central sun of reason, and all minds revolve 
 around Him, forming the living harmony of humanity in 
 its relation to the parent source of all intelligence. Under 
 this aspect, religion means to feel the kinship of all souls 
 in God, to realize the brotherhood of all men by virtue of 
 their spiritual unity in the Eternal. The more closely 
 men unite themselves in social, religious, moral, and phil- 
 anthropic relations, the more truly do they find God. For 
 in this unity among men does God reveal Himself. Do we 
 not read in the Sayings of the Father: "Whenever ten or 
 even three men meet together and busy themselves with 
 things spiritual, with matters concerning the laws of God 
 and general welfare, the divine Spirit is among them"? 
 
 The first holy circle of divine unity amongst men is 
 the unity between husband and wife. Husband and wife 
 who love each other fervently and faithfully, who with 
 each succeeding year of their wedded life grow more and 
 more into one being, one soul and one heart, find God by 
 this their love. He is with them in their mutual tender- 
 ness and self-sacrificing devotion. As far as they have 
 conquered selfishness and become one through love, God 
 is nigh unto them in their very heart and soul. But if
 
 124 
 
 husband and wife move through life without love, if their 
 union is but that of prisoners for life, chained together by 
 law, they surely can not find God, even though they may 
 observe all outward forms of religious devotion. Those 
 whose selfishness expels love from their marital relations, 
 banish God, who is the fountain of all love and union, from 
 their heart and home. To return to God, therefore, means 
 first of all that the hearts of husband and wife should 
 purge themselves of every taint of selfishness and blend 
 together in love. By so doing they find God. 
 
 Where mutual love, mutual respect and helpfulness 
 bind together parents and children, brothers and sisters, 
 all the members of such a household form a true family. 
 Theirs is a spiritual unity which renews itself every day in 
 their hearts and actions and words, and grows holier, 
 stronger, and more beautiful with the advancing years of 
 the parents and the unfolding of the children's bodies and 
 minds. The spiritual unity of such a family is in very 
 truth a revelation of the Lord of all spirits. Such parents 
 and such children can not lose God, because He is stirring 
 as love, as duty and devotion at the core of their hearts. 
 The parents represent the mercy and wisdom of God and 
 the spiritual growth of humanity to their children. The 
 children represent the chain of spiritual unity with which 
 the universal mind knits together all generations. A 
 happy home is the first temple of God. The table at 
 which father and mother and children sit together in joy 
 and contentment is the true altar of the God of love. The 
 unity of such a family, the unity in thought and feeling, in 
 sympathy and co-operation, is the type and fountain-head 
 of all forms of unity among men. It is the result and 
 symbol of the unity subsisting between our common Father 
 and all His children. 
 
 Those families in which parental ignorance and rude- 
 ness, filial ingratitude, disobedience, and hardness of heart 
 keep father and mother and children estranged from one
 
 "5 
 
 another, those families in which selfishness, envy, and 
 mutual ill-will sway brothers and sisters, are a parody on 
 the idea of God dwelling with the children of men and 
 causing kindred beings to make one music of feeling, 
 thought, and action. Such families are a travesty upon 
 the belief that human love is a reflection of divine love. 
 The fountains of faith, hope, and trust dry up in them. 
 There may be daily prayers, religious ceremonies and 
 observances, they may have God on their lips, but He is 
 absent from their hearts. If we are to find God this day or 
 any other day, we must turn our heart in love and faith- 
 fulness to our kindred. If thus we forsake the way of 
 selfishness, God will have mercy on us and reveal Him- 
 self as union and love and kindness in the family circle. 
 
 That the family is the nursery and home of all true 
 religion, was clearly perceived and beautifully stated by 
 the seers of Israel. The chosen people, the people des- 
 tined to bring the blessings of the belief in, and the 
 worship of, one only God, the Maker of heaven and 
 earth, the Father of mankind, to all the races of the earth, 
 is said to have taken rise in one family, the family of 
 Abraham. The light of that faith was transmitted and 
 increased through three successive generations of families. 
 At last it became the heritage of a whole people, and that 
 people was chosen to become a blessing and the means of 
 union to all the families of the earth. This is an intimation 
 of profound significance. Family union and family love 
 must be enlarged in our sympathies to a union of the 
 whole people, to a union of our whole religious com- 
 munity. Our heart and mind must at last embrace the 
 whole human family within the circle of our highest 
 interests. Our spirit must go forth in kindness towards 
 all men and form a unity with all spirits. By such feelings 
 of compassion for all, by such thoughts of all-embracing 
 harmony to which actions must correspond, our life comes 
 to be identified with the universal life of humanity. We
 
 126 
 
 make ourselves the center of mankind's ever-growing 
 divine life. Our soul reflects the unity of all men in God. 
 Our sympathy with their sorrows and joys is a direct 
 revelation of the love of God for all His children. We find 
 God in our heart and soul and action. 
 
 Let us all, however, take warning: Family love and 
 unity may be hardened into family selfishness and god- 
 lessness. Many men make their home the prison of their 
 soul. All love, all tenderness, all care and labor for their 
 family alone, but callousness, utter indifference to the wel- 
 fare of those standing without the pale of their family! 
 The world at large has no existence to the hearts of such 
 men, except as it may be exploited for their own families. 
 The happiness of other families, the education and honor 
 of other men's children are matters of indifference, if not 
 of envy, to them. The cry of human suffering touches no 
 chord of their hearts. The works of charity in which they 
 share are not the results of genuine sympathy, but are due 
 to social compulsion. Whatever good they may do to 
 others, does not flow from love for their fellow-men, but 
 from calculation or from an irksome sense of the impossi- 
 bility to escape such deeds. Whatever pecuniary sacrifices 
 they may occasionally make for philanthropic institutions, 
 for congregational purposes, they regard as acts of robbery 
 against their families. Their hearts do not beat in sym- 
 pathy with the deathless life of their nation. They do not 
 identify themselves with the eternal intellectual, moral, 
 and social interests of the people. Their narrow sym- 
 pathies keep them ouside the mighty currents of divine life, 
 manifested in the literature and the moral aspirations of 
 their time and generation. They do not place themselves 
 within earshot of the voice of the universal Spirit, speaking 
 through His chosen instruments in art, philosophy, history, 
 and all other utterances of the Divine in humanity. They 
 refuse to take part in the sorrows and hopes, in the 
 repentance and exultation of the human race. The word
 
 127 
 
 "humanity" is an empty sound to them. The ideals of 
 humanity are regarded by them as the foolish day-dreams 
 of visionaries. Living thus wilfully away from God who 
 reveals Himself in the secular life of humanity, they 
 naturally can not find Him. When their heart cries, 
 Where is God? no divine voice answers from the heights 
 of Sinai : " Here I am ! The place whereon thou standest 
 is holy ground, the sacred ground of humanity's spiritual 
 growth through perennial communion with the Infinite." 
 
 All those that have lost God through narrowness and 
 hardness of heart, all those from whom God is far, because 
 they live in egotistical self-isolation, will find Him by 
 renewing in contrition the covenant of brotherhood with 
 their fellow-men, the covenant of active sympathy with 
 humanity's life. God is the pre-established harmony of the 
 spirits of all beings. By identifying ourselves with the 
 personality, with the moral and intellectual interests and 
 highest aspirations of our fellow-men, by forming a spirit- 
 ual union, starting with the family and embracing ever 
 larger and larger circles of humanity, we re-establish 
 within us that divine harmony which had been overthrown 
 or hidden by our selfishness. By abandoning the ways of 
 self-seeking and returning to our fellow-men, we return to 
 God. He is again found by us in our heart and soul. As 
 we feel our oneness with the children of God in the spirit 
 of love and faithful co-operation, we experience the 
 presence of the Eternal, who is the cause and end of the 
 unity of mankind. 
 
 "L/ove thy neighbor as thyself" and "Love the Lord, 
 thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all 
 thy might," of old have been declared to be the funda- 
 mental principles of Judaism. They cohere as the two 
 sides of one idea. They are one creative truth, uttering 
 itself forth in two strains. The love of man and the love 
 of God spring from the belief in the unity of mankind 
 embraced in the unity of God. He that loves his neighbor
 
 128 
 
 loves God, the Father of all men. He that loves God, in 
 the true spirit of Israel and not according to ancient or 
 modern paganism, can not help loving his fellow-men, 
 because they are manifestations and symbols of the Divine. 
 Rising to the highest religious idea of Israel, we wor- 
 ship God as absolute justice, infinite love, the parent source 
 of all finite goodness, the prototype of all human love. We 
 adore Him as the realized ideal of moral perfection. He 
 is all-just, all-merciful, and holy. As it is said, "The Rock, 
 all His doings are perfect, for all His ways are justice. He 
 is a God of faithfulness without any evil. Just and 
 upright is He. The Eternal is merciful and gracious, 
 abundant in mercy and truth." The attributes of God 
 well up from the soul of man as moral ideas. His ways 
 are revealed as the ways of eternal life to individuals and 
 nations. His being is the universal law; the qualities of 
 His holy will manifest themselves as moral laws in the 
 consciousness of those that seek Him. To love God means 
 to walk in His ways. The destiny of man, individual and 
 collective, is to become an image, however faint, of divine 
 perfection. The highest aim of man is to grow steadily 
 in the elements of justice and mercy and truth. This 
 is the highest end of human life, both of the individual 
 and of humanity. The moral good is our ultimate good. 
 All other ends are but means to that supreme end. The 
 noblest of all ambitions is to strive to be godlike in doing 
 justice, in loving mercy, and walking humbly in the ways 
 of God. A man may obtain the most coveted objects of 
 all forms of ambition, and yet, if he misses that one 
 ambition, if he fails to develop a character swayed in all 
 its movements by the moral laws, his whole life is worth- 
 less and a striving after the wind. A good man needs not 
 to ask, Where is God? For He is ever nigh unto him. 
 If you love justice and do battle for it, you have found 
 God, for He is justice. If you have compassion on the 
 poor, succor the needy, clothe the naked, lift up the fallen,
 
 129 
 
 dry the tears of the widow and the orphan, you are realiz- 
 ing the will of the living God. The God of love is with 
 you, revealing Himself in the beauty and holiness of your 
 charitable works. A just and merciful man shares in the 
 life of God. He co-operates with the plans of Providence 
 and helps to work out the salvation of the race. He is 
 the instrument of God in uprooting evil and planting 
 good, in fighting the powers of hatred and malice. He is 
 spreading the reign of universal love. 
 
 But he who is not fired with the ambition to grow in 
 the qualities of goodness, necessarily loses God. The 
 individual or the nation that rebels against justice, that 
 tramples underfoot the rights of the weak and the 
 stranger, can not approach God. He that gathers riches 
 by fraud and violence, he who builds his house by injustice, 
 can not find God in his heart nor in the bosom of his 
 family. God and wickedness can not dwell together. If 
 you take no delight in doing works of charity, if you do 
 not seek happiness in making your fellow-men happy, how 
 can you hope to find God, who is the Father of love and 
 the Giver of all good? Selfishness is the root of sin. The 
 sins of injustice and cruelty of every kind banish us from 
 the presence of God. "Your sins," says the prophet, 
 "have separated you and Me, your Lord." Immorality in 
 feeling, thought, and action is true atheism, practical 
 atheism, which is an abomination to God and the soul of 
 humanity. The prayers of the unjust, the uncharitable, 
 and the false are blasphemies. Their temples are dens of 
 moral vileness. The religion of persecutors, the worship 
 of race-proud maligners, is hateful to the Father of man- 
 kind. Says the prophet Isaiah: "When ye come to appear 
 before Me, who hath required this at your hands, to tread 
 My courts? Your appointed feasts My soul hateth. And 
 when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes 
 from you. Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not 
 hear; your hands are full of blood. Wash ye, make you
 
 130 
 
 clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine 
 eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, 
 relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the 
 widow. Then, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
 be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, 
 they shall be as wool." The monition comes also to us 
 from the heart of infinite goodness ; the same promise of 
 divine presence and grace addresses itself to us on this 
 great Day of Atonement. The genius of Israel cries aloud : 
 "Seek ye the Lord, while He may be found. Call upon 
 Him, while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, 
 and the man of sin his thoughts." Those who have lost 
 God, who is the realized ideal of perfection and the fount- 
 ain of all goodness, will find Him, if they make man's 
 highest good, the moral ideal, the chief theme of their 
 thoughts and the leading motive of all their actions. 
 Those who complain that God is far from them will soon 
 feel the breath of His presence, if they forsake the ways of 
 pitiless selfishness and strive to make themselves a bless- 
 ing to their fellow-men. Let but the unrighteous man 
 prostrate himself in humility before the throne of Jus- 
 tice, let the uncharitable open his hand and heart to the 
 poor and needy, and lo and behold, the certainty of divine 
 mercy and compassion will come to him with healing on 
 its wings. 
 
 If you strive steadily to stamp your character with the 
 likeness of divine qualities, if you make it the highest 
 ambition of your existence to be fellow-worker with 
 God in establishing justice and mercy and truth on earth, 
 He will be nigh unto you, and you will feel in your heart 
 the uplifting influence of His spirit. You will understand 
 in your soul the beneficent purposes of His providence, 
 and through wisdom and sacrifices endeavor to carry His 
 will into execution. Your sorrows and your joys, your 
 sufferings and hopes will help you to realize that you 
 are not alone and forsaken, but that He is with you
 
 even in the night of your affliction, disciplining you to 
 the service of suffering humanity. If you break away 
 from selfishness, your very griefs and pains will prove 
 spiritual blessings to you. They will open your heart to 
 sympathize with the sufferings of your fellow-men. They 
 will cause you to thrill with godlike compassion for the 
 afflicted children of men. They will cause you to go 
 forth as a messenger of God's mercy, to heal wounds 
 and dry tears, to turn sadness into joy and despair into 
 hope. By such growth in the beauty and holiness of sav- 
 ing compassion you will fulfill the highest aims of religion. 
 For every man is destined to be a watchman and tiller in 
 this garden planted by God, a sower of good and uprooter of 
 evil. We are all called to co-operate with God in making 
 human life ever better, ever more spiritual and beautiful. 
 
 We can not understand the mystery of evil, but this 
 much we know, that it is to be made, by works of love and 
 by submission, a means of salvation and moral growth. 
 The world, alas, is full of evils, physical and mental. 
 There are the innumerable ills which flesh is heir to. 
 There are the diseases which gnaw at the vitals, consume 
 the marrow of our bones, float as poison in our blood, rack 
 our nerves, and torture our brain. There are the terrors of 
 imagination, worse than all real evils. There are the evils 
 born of folly and sin, which have come down with us 
 from the years bygone, dogging our steps, harrowing our 
 conscience, and meting out a hundredfold retribution for 
 past transgressions. There are the evils born of the wick- 
 edness and brutality of men, the evils of hatred and 
 prejudice, of bloodthirsty religious or racial fanaticism. 
 There are the evils of willful falsehood and treacherous 
 calumny. All these demons of evil plague the human race, 
 and who of us has not his share of them? 
 
 Some men find God through sorrow and suffering, far 
 more lose Him through pain and distress. The selfish 
 man, when he is in tribulation, physical or mental, cries in
 
 132 
 
 the agony of his soul that he can find God nowhere, neither 
 in the world without nor within his own soul. In pros- 
 perity and health he lives in egotistical self-isolation, far 
 from his fellow-men and far from God. In sorrow and sick- 
 ness also he dwells alone in the narrow prison of his poor 
 self. Woe to the selfish man, when he is beset with evils! 
 Woe to him when nature assails him, with her poisoned 
 arrows, when she takes pitiless vengeance on him for trans- 
 gressions committed wittingly or unwittingly! Whither 
 shall he flee for refuge from himself? In what thought can 
 egotism offer him a means of self-delivery? He has cared 
 for the world only as far as it supplied him with his wants. 
 He has interested himself in the life of his fellow-men only 
 as far as he could use them for his own interests. To him 
 the idea of God is that of a purveyor of the necessaries 
 and pleasures of his life. God is to him a mighty Being 
 that is invoked for assistance in times of distress and is 
 dismissed and forgotten when no longer needed. He has 
 never identified himself with God and His eternal laws, 
 ruling nature and mankind. He has never identified him- 
 self with the deathless sorrows and joys, with the struggles 
 and defeats and victories of humanity. Therefore he is 
 left alone with his troubles. He has infinite pity and hot 
 tears for himself in his misery, but he has no heart-sprung 
 tears and no genuine compassion for others. For this rea- 
 son he is shut up in darkness with himself. Let his 
 wretched god of self rise up and help him. He may 
 multiply prayers, but all his prayers are but empty words. 
 He has worshiped and served only self ; therefore, there is 
 no response from the universal Soul to his dwarfed soul. 
 There is no way leading from his fenced-in self to Him 
 who is infinite Love, the Father and Saviour of all the 
 children of men. Thus it is that many men lose God 
 through sorrow and suffering, and cry out in their heart, 
 "There is no God." 
 
 Yet seasons of distress teach nobler natures to find 
 God more than ever. They learn to know and value the
 
 ministry of sorrow and suffering as a crown of glory, as a 
 means of salvation to themselves and others. They real- 
 ize more vividly than ever the fact that they are a part, 
 though most insignificant part, of the universal order of 
 things. They feel they are an integral part, living 
 members, of the immortal being called humanity. In 
 humility and submission they return to God, who is the 
 unity of nature and mankind, and whose love they recog- 
 nize in their sufferings. They take up the will of God into 
 their own will. Lovingly they embrace the laws of God 
 in nature as the laws of their own being. They pray with 
 the seers and the martyrs of Israel : " Thy will be done, 
 O God, in heaven and on earth." They recognize that 
 sorrow and suffering are blessings in disguise, that they 
 have been the means of tearing down the walls of self 
 and making man a citizen of the universe. They recognize 
 that sufferings and trials have been and are the means 
 used by Providence to awaken the human mind from its 
 slumber, to compel the spirit of man to find the ways of 
 the Eternal and through the works of reason to bring a 
 thousandfold good out of evil. 
 
 We shall find God, if we come to be thankful for our 
 very sufferings and trials, using them as means of moral 
 discipline and spiritual growth. He will be nigh unto 
 us, if we accept in grateful meekness the painful conse- 
 quences of our sins, regarding them as manifestations of 
 divine justice, indwelling the constitution of things. We 
 shall no longer cry, "Where is God?" if our sorrows tend 
 to emancipate us from the bondage of selfishness, if they 
 cause our hearts to sympathize with the woes of our fellow- 
 men, impelling us to hasten to the rescue of those in 
 danger, to lift up the fallen, to dry the tears of the poor 
 and oppressed. Doing the work of divine mercy to the 
 best of our ability, we shall experience the grace of Heaven, 
 rising as from a living spring from our soul. As the fruit 
 springs from the blossom, so will atonement be the issue
 
 134 
 
 of our own merciful feelings and actions. Let us be 
 grateful for our sufferings and sorrows, and regard them not 
 only as a proof of divine retribution, but also as signs of 
 divine love toward us. For there are sufferings of love, 
 according to the wise men of Israel. God intends to try 
 us, and to bring into play all the hidden possibilities of 
 our nature. 
 
 Such is the disposition which religion should produce. 
 Such the attitude of mind and heart, which the Day of 
 Atonement is to bring about. Let us, therefore, return to 
 God, to humanity, and our own higher self by dint of our 
 sorrows and tribulations. Let us willingly fall heir to the 
 virtues and the experiences of Israel. For suffering ever 
 was arid still is the badge of the Chosen People. It was 
 through infinite suffering that they have been chosen from 
 among all nations to give birth to the religion of human- 
 ity. Israel's endless sorrows have been the means of 
 abounding grace, of the gospel of mercy and holiness to 
 the families of the earth. On this Day of Atonement we 
 offer thanks unto the God of Love, that He has made 
 Israel His suffering servant through whom Justice is to be 
 established on earth. Let us take to heart the saying of 
 the rabbis, "Suffering is a blessing to Israel," and let us 
 add, the martyrdom of Israel has been and still is a bless- 
 ing to the world. The whole Bible is the passion flower 
 which has grown out of the bleeding heart of Israel. Let 
 us fall heir to the great principle, realized by Israel, that 
 knowledge is worship and wilful ignorance a denial of 
 God. Let us bear the truth in our hearts, that an ignorant 
 Jew, one who refuses to make use of the means of wisdom 
 and culture offered to him, is a godless Jew, a shame to the 
 name and conduct of his forefathers. On this great Day 
 of Atonement let us atone for our shortcomings and sins 
 by resolving to make the moral life the highest purpose of 
 ouj existence. Let us fall heir to the belief of Israel, 
 that it is man's mission to grow Godward in the divine
 
 qualities of justice, mercy, and truth. Let us fall heir to 
 the belief of Israel that God is the living, intelligent 
 Unity of nature and humanity. 
 
 Let us try to realize the awful idea of that Unity, by 
 making our will move in harmony with His will, by 
 identifying ourselves with the highest interests of human- 
 ity. Let religion do a great and noble work for every one 
 of us. Religion should so educate us that our individual 
 life and being shall be, through love, a center of the life of 
 God in man. Religion is the idea of the Universal Unity, 
 the synagogue is the symbol of that idea, worship is its 
 realization. Today we are nearer that realization than on 
 other days, mostly given to personal, material interests or 
 pleasures. Today we are forming a spiritual union in this 
 House of God, rising from grade to grade in dignity and 
 universality. Today each family is united before God, 
 its love being consecrated by the presence of Divine 
 Love. Today we represent the spiritual union of all 
 Israel, past, present, and future. As the people of human- 
 ity we give testimony to our faith in the indestructible 
 spiritual unity of all nations of the earth. Today we 
 pray for the peace and moral advancement and happiness 
 of all the peoples, even those that torment and persecute 
 the children of Israel. Today we rise on the wings of 
 meditation and prayer to the firm belief that Yahve, our 
 God, is One, the Law-giver, the King, the Father of all 
 men, that in due time He will establish the kingdom of 
 righteousness on earth. Today we seek Him and find 
 Him. Today we are blessed in knowing that He is nigh 
 unto us, when we call unto Him. Today let each and 
 every one of us abandon the way of self-seeking and for- 
 sake the path of sin. Today let us return to God, for 
 He is full of compassion, and to our Lord, who will 
 abundantly pardon. Amen !
 
 THE REASONS WHY I BELIEVE 
 IN GOD. 
 
 i. 
 
 T ET us begin our search after the rational grounds of 
 *-' our belief in God. Let us seek for proofs, if haply 
 they may be found, that there exists an all-pervading, 
 eternal Unity Divine which embraces both the universe 
 and the soul. Let us try to bring into clear view cogent 
 reasons for believing in a supreme Being, in an ultimate 
 Reality and creative Energy of which matter and mind, 
 force and will, the external world of nature and the inner 
 world of consciousness, are perennial manifestations and 
 purposeful self-revelations. Let us for the moment discard 
 all preconceived beliefs and unbeliefs and in all seriousness 
 and solemnity face the problem of problems, as if we were 
 commissioned by mankind to find a solution to it; as if our 
 age depended on us to give a satisfactory answer to the 
 question, compared with which all other questions dwindle 
 into utter insignificance. 
 
 We know two kinds of existence, the external material 
 world of things, of objects, and the internal world of con- 
 sciousness, of feelings, thoughts, ideas. The most awful 
 mystery of all is this very mystery of existence itself. How 
 comes there to be anything at all, matter and motion, 
 atoms, forces, life inanimate and animate? How comes 
 there to be feeling, sensation, thought, or consciousness? 
 Space and infinitude, the home of all being, time and 
 eternity, the stream in which all that exists and happens 
 moves, rises to the surface and disappears ; what are they, 
 why are they, why can not we imagine them as non- 
 existent? To be, the eternal, indestructible fact of being
 
 137 
 
 in general, of existence universal, begin ningl ess, endless, 
 continuous, that is the question. 
 
 We can by no effort of ours bring ourselves to deny that 
 something exists somehow, somewhere. Even if we think 
 that all things outside ourselves are unreal appearances, 
 that this fair world, the heavens and the earth are merely 
 a dream of our mind, yet we doubters and dreamers still 
 exist. You can not think of a time when there was abso- 
 lutely nothing in existence, nor are you able to think of a 
 time when existence itself shall be annihilated. Take the 
 wings of imagination and fly from star-system to star- 
 system to the uttermost bounds of all known galaxies, 
 beyond the region of the faintest and remotest cosmic 
 cloud, even in the heart of eternal night and silence and 
 cold you are still floating on the waves of being, and are 
 unable to break away from your soul's inseparable com- 
 panion, from the idea of omnipresent existence. Should 
 you fancy space beyond all stellar regions to be absolutely 
 empty, still space is left, space exists. You can put no 
 bound to space in thought. Beyond the uttermost reach 
 of imagination infinitude stretches, one, indivisible, eternal, 
 pregnant with the seeds of star-births, heaving with the 
 throbs of universal force. You can not conceive a limit 
 set to force. You can not say, only to a certain point in 
 space does it go and can not dart beyond a certain fixed 
 boundary line. Where force is, there dwells being, there 
 are beating the pulses of all-pervading energy. Being, then, 
 has no limits in space or time. Existence is infinite and 
 eternal. Well may the idea of infinite and eternal exist- 
 ence thrill us with religious awe, and cause us to observe 
 towards it an attitude of speechless wonder. It is the 
 simplest and surest and most universal fact. It is the tap- 
 root of all truths. It underlies all thoughts. 
 
 Without the idea of existence nothing is imaginable, 
 thinkable, nothing is possible. Yet it is the mystery of 
 mysteries. We are so near it, it surrounds us, we live,
 
 138 
 
 move, and have our being in it. Still it is inscrutable. 
 We are overwhelmed by the thought that whatever is has 
 always been and forever will be. We prostrate ourselves 
 before the unfathomable mystery that matter and force, 
 the very atoms and energies with which we are every- 
 where in closest touch, of which we ourselves form a living 
 part, have existed through boundless space from eternity 
 to eternity. Before the race of man was born, before the 
 sun, the moon, and the stars were formed, there was the 
 same essence, the same indwelling power was moving 
 through space, combining, dissolving, blossoming, bearing 
 fruit, decaying and awakening to new life and activity 
 through seeming death. 
 
 The same substance, the same force, the same laws 
 existed on and on, indestructible, of the self-same identity, 
 ere the universe blossomed into its present living harmony 
 as at this very hour. 
 
 Some of the profoundest religious minds of former days 
 have stood like us in worshiping awe before the unfathom- 
 able mystery of beginningless, endless, and universal being. 
 They, too, wrestled with the attempt to comprehend the 
 incomprehensible, to express the inexpressible. They 
 adored the infinite and eternal being as the highest Being, 
 as the only Reality. They worshiped it as the supreme 
 Power behind all power, as the permanent essence behind 
 all fleeting appearances. The Bible calls the supreme 
 Being Yahve, "He who is, was, and forever will be." 
 The Most High reveals himself to Moses as " I Am that I 
 Am," "I Am, that is my name." In the theosophical 
 speculations of the later Vedic poets the all-pervading, 
 self-existent essence is worshiped under the name of 
 Brahma. Some of the greatest Greek philosophers called 
 God the Being, to on, or the true Being, to ontos on.
 
 II. 
 
 We have so far considered the mystery of existence in 
 itself, in a purely abstract way. We have been dealing 
 only with the bare, though awe-inspiring, fact that some- 
 thing infinite and eternal does exist, that something, be it 
 matter, force, mind, has always been, still is, and forever 
 will be. But the question of questions is : Is all existence 
 of one essence, are all forms of being one being, all forces 
 one force, all manifestations of energy the outpourings of 
 one eternal Energy? Are all minds lights reflected from 
 the effulgence of one infinite Self? Does the chain of 
 natural causes and effects begin and terminate in a highest 
 cause, in an almighty cause of causes? Is there unity and 
 identity of essence in all diversity of being and multi- 
 plicity of forms ? 
 
 May it not be that every atom has from all eternity 
 been an isolated self-existent being, an individual inde- 
 pendent center of force? Thus there would be an infinity 
 of eternal, uncaused existences. We would then have no 
 principle of all-pervading, all-embracing unity which we 
 are seeking and which is to be accounted the first cardinal 
 attribute of the one only Being, of the ultimate Reality. 
 
 Nature, as known even to the most superficial observers, 
 shows the assumption of an infinite number of unrelated 
 atoms without any communication with one another to be 
 the wildest of errors, the most senseless of all imaginable 
 blunders. The universe does not present itself to the 
 human mind as a host of countless self-imprisoned, unre- 
 sponsive atoms and forces which have no relation to one 
 another, which exert no influence upon one another, and 
 do not mutually determine one another. If every atom 
 were absolutely shut up within itself, if all were not bound 
 up by an indwelling principle of unity, they would not be 
 able to combine with and interpenetrate one another. 
 There would be no change whatever. For all change is 
 caused by the chemical marriage of atoms with atoms, of
 
 140 
 
 molecules with molecules, and by the thousand other 
 influences which all elements exercise upon all others, be 
 they near or far. There would be no room for the 
 universal play of cause and effect, if there were no eternal 
 kinship, no inborn love between all elements and forces. 
 How could all the parts of the universe, the remotest and 
 the nearest, be connected together as an harmonious whole 
 by the interminable chain of cause and effect, if there sub- 
 sisted no eternal relationship between them? 
 
 The law of causality is of universal validity and admits 
 of no exception. The underlying principle of all science, 
 the supreme truth, upon which all the systems of knowl- 
 edge rest, is the indestructible belief, that nothing happens 
 within the whole compass of existence, that nothing can 
 take place in the life of nature and man, without an 
 efficient cause. Every fact is the offspring of other facts 
 which have gone before it and stand to it in the relation 
 of parent cause, and every new fact must give birth to 
 others which in their turn are bound to be the seeds of 
 events to come. Nothing great or small that exists or 
 occurs in the universe stands apart by itself, has the roots 
 of its origin and activity in itself alone. Whatever is or 
 happens is joined together by a chain of cause and effect 
 with every part and force in nature and with the remotest 
 past of the world's life. The whole present with all its 
 countless phenomena, with all its multitudinous forms, is 
 the child of the past by an endless succession of evolutions, 
 which are bound up together and determined by the 
 indestructible ties of universal causation. All the star- 
 myriads and the fulness thereof form a living harmony, a 
 symphony of forces and movements, of action and inter- 
 action, of cosmic growth and fruit-bearing. They ebb and 
 flow together with the all-penetrating currents of omni- 
 present causation. They are interlaced and intertwined 
 by the unbreakable chains of universal order. 
 
 Now the question arises : Why must all kinds of exist- 
 ence obey the law of cause and effect? Why are all atoms,
 
 all things, all phenomena, all manifestations of force of 
 every kind, held in the eternal embrace of causality? 
 There must be an all-sufficient reason why all things must 
 act and react upon one another. There must be an efficient 
 reason why all particles of matter or atoms influence one 
 another in a certain unalterable manner, why they com- 
 bine with one another according to fixed laws which they 
 can not transgress. Why is the behavior of all things 
 toward all others subject to an unchangeable rule and 
 order? On what ultimate ground does the law of causality 
 rest? 
 
 It is clear that the law of their mutual behavior, the 
 necessity of acting in a certain way in harmonious co-oper- 
 ation with one another, must lie in the original constitution 
 of all the elements of nature. 
 
 Now, if the atoms were from all eternity self-centered 
 individual beings, if they were absolutely the last elements 
 and forms of existence behind which there is no higher 
 reality and controlling power, how should they come to 
 form among themselves those everlasting bonds of friend- 
 ship, to establish the unchangeable laws of their conduct 
 toward one another? Did all the atoms in the starless 
 foretime once meet in counsel, and did they say to one 
 another: "It will not do for us to remain forever in our 
 state of single existence and unprofitable isolation. We 
 must form an everlasting and perfect union. Let us 
 establish among ourselves a covenant which shall not pass 
 away. Let us unite our forces for ever higher ends. Let 
 us lay down for ourselves inviolable laws to which we 
 shall all yield unquestioning obedience. Let us regulate 
 for all eternity our mutual relations. Let us give up our 
 barren independence and through universal interdepend- 
 ence become fruitful, creative. Let the act of one always 
 affect the others in a certain foreordained way. Let us 
 combine and grow into suns, star-systems, earths, plants, 
 animals, and at last flower into man, who shall translate
 
 142 
 
 our elemental compact into thought and call our unchange- 
 able social contract the universal law of causality'? 
 
 Surely, the indissoluble unity which binds all atoms 
 together into a living harmony, the immutable laws which 
 hold absolute sway over them all, and determine with 
 unfailing precision all their courses, combinations, dissolu- 
 tions, evolutions, give proof that the atoms can not be 
 separate and self-determined entities, that they can not be 
 the last elements of existence. There can be but one con- 
 clusion: Behind all atoms there is one universal Reality, 
 behind all special forms of existence there is one all- 
 enfolding absolute Existence; behind all finite beings there 
 is one infinite Being. All forces are the manifestations of 
 one almighty Force. This supreme Reality, this infinite 
 Essence and omnipotent Power, we call God. All the 
 world-systems are borne in the same parental arms of this 
 one creative Force. They all rest as children, grown or 
 growing, against the bosom of the same infinite parent 
 Power. All their vital energies and unfolding lives are 
 but incarnations and transformations of the one self- 
 identical Energy, inscrutable, all-sustaining, all-quicken- 
 ing, all-pervading. All atoms and aggregations of atoms 
 must obey the eternal and immutable laws of the universal 
 Self, because they are indwelling parts of it; because they 
 live, move, and have their being in it. All nature pro- 
 ceeds from the same divine Essence; the whole Cosmos 
 has blossomed forth from the same omnipotent Energy. 
 Hence no atom, no finite part, no creature, no star can 
 separate itself from the identity of the Almighty, can break 
 away from the immanent modes and ways of infinite Life. 
 The universal reign of law is nothing but the universal 
 self-revelation of the One infinite and unchangeable Power 
 which is forever at one with itself. The universal law of 
 causality flows from the identity of the one omnipresent 
 and omnipotent Being. The unity of nature springs from, 
 and reflects, the unity of God.
 
 143 
 
 III. 
 
 Our argument has so far led us only to the necessary 
 belief in a universal, self-existent Essence, to the idea of 
 an infinite, all-enfolding divine Unity, to the conception of 
 an almighty Power which is the ultimate cause of all that 
 is and happens. The truth which we have brought into 
 light forms the first broad foundation on which all religion 
 rests. And now there arises the most far-reaching of all 
 questions and presses for an answer. Is the infinite and 
 eternal Essence, the supreme Being, the omnipotent 
 Power, an intelligent Essence, a rational Self, or is it 
 merely an irrational entity, a blind force? It is clear that 
 we could not adore a senseless Power, that we could not 
 love a Being that lacks the attribute of reason. We might 
 stand in awe and dread of the Universal Power. We might 
 at times crouch in abject fear before the manifestation of 
 its deadly terrors. We might use all possible means to 
 avoid coming into conflict with the inexorable ways of the 
 almighty and omnipresent Being, lest we be crushed by a 
 blow dealt us by its outstretched arm. We might view 
 with speechless wonder the multitudinous forms of inani- 
 mate and animate life which the infinite Being assumes. 
 We might with eager curiosity try to discover the immut- 
 able laws which govern the universe from center to 
 circumference. But we could not worship and venerate 
 that Power. We could not bow our head in humility 
 before the Infinite as being higher and better than man. 
 For the highest and noblest kind of existence, is reason, 
 the divinest reality is the knowing mind, the most wor- 
 shipful power is the purposeful will realizing the ends of 
 goodness. 
 
 If the Infinite is not a spiritual Power, we are shut up 
 to materialism. The wings of faith are cut. We can not 
 escape from the prison of self and commune in sorrow and 
 joy with the general Soul.
 
 144 
 
 Now what proof have we that intelligence is a quality 
 of the universal Essence, that the all-generating, all-sus- 
 taining Power is a conscious Self? My answer is: The 
 existence of thinking and willing beings on our planet, the 
 existence of consciousness in man, gives proof that the 
 ground of all existence must be an intelligent Entity, that 
 the almighty Power, of which our minds are manifesta- 
 tions, can not but be a rational Energy. 
 
 Let us full earnestly consider that kind of existence 
 which we call Consciousness. What is consciousness? 
 What a question, you will reply. Consciousness is con- 
 sciousness. This is the only term by which it can be 
 expressed. It is the only definition we can give it. Sen- 
 sation, feeling, perception, thought, are names denoting 
 various manifestations, simple or complex, of the same 
 unique phenomenon of consciousness. It is absolutely 
 unlike any form of material being, it has no quality in 
 common with any kind of external existence. For this 
 reason consciousness can be stated only to be what it is 
 consciousness; to be identical with itself only and to have 
 no affinity with anything else. 
 
 But is it indeed impossible to compare mind with some 
 physical reality, be it matter or force? Let us just try. 
 All things material have three dimensions, length, breadth, 
 and height. Suppose you ask, How long, how broad, how 
 high is consciousness? Why, you will say, Not even a 
 madman can conceive such a question. Right enough : Is 
 consciousness thick or thin, hard or soft? Is it in a solid, 
 liquid, or gaseous state? Leave us alone, you will cry, 
 with your crazy questions! The attributes of extension 
 and density do not apply to mind. Well, we take note of 
 this self-evident fact and will soon make use of it in our 
 argument. What is the color of consciousness? Is it white, 
 black, red, green, or yellow? Is consciousness warm or cold, 
 sweet or bitter? You exclaim, Stop putting to us such 
 questions, which sound like the gibberish of madness.
 
 145 
 
 But your amazement, your vehement protests, simply make 
 it as clear as noonday that none of the qualities of matter 
 can be in thought ascribed to mind. Now, we know a 
 thing, a being, exclusively by its qualities. Since mind 
 and matter have so far been shown to have no quality in 
 common, therefore they can not be compared with each 
 other, they can not be placed in the same class. Conse- 
 quently they can not be of the same essence and nature. 
 
 Again, consciousness can not be tasted nor smelled nor 
 touched nor seen nor heard. The five senses have no 
 access to it, they can not penetrate to it, receive impres- 
 sions, combine them into qualities, and by such operations 
 inform us what mind is. On the other hand, all we know 
 of matter, of the world external to us, comes to us as a 
 message of the senses. Without the senses matter of every 
 kind and form would be absolutely unknown to us, the 
 external world would simply have no existence for us. 
 We would be wholly shut up within our self-consciousness. 
 Again, we can not imagine consciousness to be identical 
 with force, such as is manifested in the physical universe. 
 We know force first of all and chiefly as motion appearing 
 in moving bodies. Can you conceive consciousness as a 
 sort of motion? I appeal to your own inward experience. 
 Has feeling, willing, thinking, any feature in common 
 with what we call motion, moving from place to place? 
 Force under certain given conditions is changed from 
 motion to heat. Can you realize in thought that conscious- 
 ness is nothing but a form of heat? Well, force reveals 
 itself also as electricity and magnetism. Is consciousness 
 perhaps a species of electricity or magnetism? Try to 
 think it out this very moment. Can you say to yourself: 
 As I am observing my consciousness, I feel it to be like the 
 electric currents in a battery or like the magnetic force? 
 Why, your mind at once tells you, that identification is an 
 unthinkable absurdity. 
 
 You have the direct and incontestable testimony of 
 your mind that consciousness is absolutely unlike both
 
 146 
 
 matter and force. Yet consciousness undoubtingly exists. 
 Your own self is consciousness. Your truest and inmost 
 being is spirit or soul. Whence comes our conscious- 
 ness? From what ground did consciousness spring? Our 
 minds form part of the universal existence. It did not 
 rise into being by itself and through itself. Our spirit 
 must have its origin and existence in the universal exist- 
 ence. It can not be the offspring of matter and motion or 
 force, because it is in every respect different from them. 
 Only like begets its like. You can by no effort of imagina- 
 tion or thought bring yourself to realize that your mind is 
 nothing but a species of matter or, what amounts to the 
 same thing, a product of matter. You are absolutely 
 unable to think of feeling and will as a peculiar form of 
 heat, electricity, or motion. On this head Professor Huxley 
 writes in his inimitable style: "It seems to me pretty 
 plain, that there is a third thing in the universe, to wit, 
 consciousness, which in the hardness of my heart and head 
 I can not see to be matter, or force, or any conceivable 
 modification of either, however intimately the manifesta- 
 tions of the phenomena of consciousness may be connected 
 with the phenomena known as force." 
 
 Since consciousness can be derived from neither matter 
 nor force, we are driven to the conclusion, that it must 
 have its ground and origin in something which is like it, 
 namely, in a superhuman consciousness or a universal 
 mind. Human consciousness can not have sprung into 
 existence out of nothing. For nothing will in all eternity 
 bring forth nothing. We dare not say that mind has from 
 eternity to eternity existed only as human consciousness, 
 as spirit in man. For there was surely a time when the 
 human race had as yet no existence. There was, beyond a 
 doubt, a time, when the earth had not yet been formed and 
 become a fit dwelling-place for rational beings. Mind 
 must, therefore, have existed in the universe before the 
 birth of animals and men on our globe. The conclusion is
 
 147 
 
 thus forced upon us that intelligence is an eternal reality. 
 We can not say that it exists only as an isolated 
 phenomenon in some parts of the universe and nowhere 
 else. For the universal and infinite existence is one being 
 and power, forever and everywhere identical with its own 
 self; it would, therefore be the height of absurdity to 
 ascribe consciousness to only a part of the Infinite, seeing 
 that the Infinite consists of no separate parts but is an 
 absolute, self-identical Unity, all whose manifestations are 
 revelations of its hidden essence, and self-hood. The 
 infinite and eternal Existence and Power, whom we call 
 God, is thus shown to be a conscious Being or a universal 
 Intelligence, the fountain-head of all consciousness in finite 
 existence. The conclusion of the matter, then: The 
 Eternal is a spiritual Being. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The argument has, however, not yet fully satisfied you. 
 Your doubts have not yet been completely dispelled. The 
 greatest of all difficulties is still obstructing your path 
 towards a rational belief in an intelligent supreme Power. 
 How can we possibly believe in a universal mindlike 
 Being? How can mind exist without a nervous system, 
 without a brain? All mind-life, which we know of, appears 
 in connection with nerves, and the most highly-developed 
 intelligence is indissolubly bound up with the central organ 
 of the nervous system, the brain. If you destroy a man's 
 brain, his mind manifests its existence in no manner what- 
 ever. Let a man's brain be seriously injured, and he 
 becomes a maniac or will sink into a state of death-like 
 sleep. When the heart ceases to beat and no longer sends 
 the current of vitalizing blood to the brain, the body dies 
 and with it the mind seems to vanish into nothing. How, 
 then, are we to believe that the supreme Being is a con- 
 scious entity? For the blasphemous idea must of course
 
 148 
 
 be ruled out, that there is somewhere in the world a 
 gigantic divine brain communicating with every part of 
 the universe by means of an all-pervading nervous system. 
 
 To minds not trained in philosophical thinking, to 
 minds not accustomed to rise above the analogies of sense- 
 experience, these objections appear fatal to the belief in a 
 conscious, absolute, and infinite Being. They are the main 
 considerations, why so many men who implicitly trust their 
 own rough and ready judgments regarding what is possible 
 or impossible, have to their own hearts' grief come to 
 imagine that they do not believe in God. 
 
 It is a mistake that the manifestations of feeling and 
 will are absolutely dependent on that peculiar organization 
 of matter called nerves. There are innumerable forms of 
 exceedingly small animate beings, termed microbes, which 
 do not show the faintest trace of nerves. They possess no 
 organs internal and external of any kind. Yet these tiny 
 structureless and nerveless creatures plainly exhibit the 
 phenomena of feeling and willing. They pursue their 
 prey, seize and devour it. They become aware of danger 
 and try to escape from it. By such and similar actions 
 they give unmistakable evidence of discerning and voli- 
 tional impulses. These facts clearly prove that feeling 
 and willing which are the web and woof of all mind-life 
 can exist without any nervous apparatus. If nerves and 
 brain were the absolute condition and ultimate cause of all 
 mental phenomena, the existence of sentient creatures 
 devoid of nerves and brain would be an utter impossibility. 
 But you will object and say: "Those creatures lowest in 
 the scale of animate life display but the dimmest and most 
 shadowy beginnings of feeling and willing. All developed 
 intelligence, all consciousness deserving that name, is 
 invariably found in closest connection with a brain. The 
 more highly developed a creature's brain, the greater is its 
 mentality. The intelligence of man is immeasurably 
 superior to that of all other living beings, just because his
 
 149 
 
 brain is more perfect, more finely organized than theirs. 
 If the world-ground is intelligent, it must be mind of the 
 highest kind, infinitely superior to the human mind. But 
 how can we reconcile the belief in a universal intelligence 
 with the facts of experience which tell us, that there is no 
 consciousness without a brain?" 
 
 To this I reply: If the brain could ever be shown to 
 explain the existence of consciousness, your reasoning 
 would have some force. If science could ever demonstrate, 
 how matter organized as brain brings forth mind out of 
 what is not itself mind, there would be some show of 
 reason for asserting that the brain is the parent cause of 
 consciousness and hence that mental life is impossible 
 where the assumed creative force is absent. But will the 
 most minute and thorough knowledge of the structure and 
 composition of the brain ever enable us to say: "We 
 clearly see and observe, how the brain manufactures 
 thought. There is no longer any mystery about the origin 
 and nature of mind"? Suppose we should even succeed in 
 fixing upon the exact spot and the special cells of the 
 brain in which each particular thought takes its rise. 
 Suppose science should one day be able to make visible to 
 the eye every wave and tremor in the brain substance 
 accompanying every thought. Suppose physiology should 
 one day bring into clear view the peculiar set of molecular 
 and chemical changes which occur in the substances of the 
 brain, while a certain set of ideas is passing through the 
 mind. Still such knowledge would in no way explain the 
 existence of consciousness. It would in no possible man- 
 ner show, how the molecules of matter making up the 
 brain can produce mind which is absolutely unlike matter. 
 For the brain is after all no more nor less than highly 
 organized matter. Over eighty per cent, of the brain sub- 
 stance is made up of the elements of hydrogen and oxygen, 
 which, chemically combined, form water. Nitrogen, sul- 
 phur, carbon, iron, and other elements are the materials
 
 out of which an inscrutable Power has builded the glorious 
 dwelling of the mind, the brain. Now, we have shown 
 that consciousness can not be identified with matter and 
 motion, that it is impossible to conceive of mind as a 
 modification or product of either. Matter in the form of 
 brain still remains matter. It can not transcend its essence 
 and quality and be changed from what matter is through- 
 out the universe, and by virtue of organization give birth 
 to mind. Since, then, the brain does not explain the exist- 
 ence of consciousness and can not be regarded as the 
 generating source of mind, we have no right to hold that 
 under no possible conditions can consciousness exist with- 
 out a brain, and that consequently the infinite ground of 
 being can not be believed to be intelligent. All that we 
 may say is that under the given terrestrial conditions, as 
 far as we know, intelligence of the higher kind invariably 
 appears in closest connection and interaction with a brain, 
 that the finite human mind, while incarnate in a body, 
 manifests itself through the agency of a complete nervous 
 system centered in a brain. But our sense-bound experi- 
 ence does not justify us in laying it down as a universal 
 and absolute law, that it is impossible for mind to exist 
 outside of a brain. 
 
 Our experience alone does not suffice to decide with 
 apodictic certainty what is possible and what is impossible. 
 How shall we determine that something is absolutely 
 impossible? Innumerable things for ages have been 
 universally believed to be impossible which a larger 
 experience has proved to be possible. To talk and be 
 heard at a distance of thousands of miles, but a few years 
 ago seemed to be an impossibility. Yet the telephone has 
 made it possible. To catch the dread force of electricity, 
 to make it carry man's message from one end of the earth 
 to the other with incredible swiftness, to harness light- 
 ning like a horse to our wagon, to make it light up our 
 houses and streets, to heat up our dwellings and cook our
 
 meals, till recent times was deemed utterly impossible. 
 In Columbus' time no human being considered it possible 
 to cross the Atlantic in iron ships, in less than six days, 
 without the use of sails. In biblical times it was held 
 impossible to measure the earth and weigh it in balances. 
 In our days the length, height, and depth, the weight and 
 density of the sun, moon, and every planet are perfectly 
 well known. Spectroscopy has in our days made possible 
 what two centuries ago was regarded as a self-evident 
 impossibility. The human mind can nowadays ascertain 
 with scientific exactness the number and nature of the 
 atomic elements present not only in our sun but in the 
 remotest stars, whose light travels six thousand years 
 before reaching our globe. The idea of changing air into 
 a liquid and even turning it into a solid till recent times 
 was denied by the strongest evidence of experience. Yet 
 the testimony of experience, so long accepted with unques- 
 tioning faith by all men, in these days of ours has proved 
 to be fallacious. According to the data of our given 
 experience it is impossible to transform coal, stones, and 
 other materials into food for man and animals. Yet the 
 science of chemistry, which is still in its infancy, will 
 probably one day be able to change inorganic matter into 
 organic means of subsistence. Countless other things which 
 are now universally believed to be beyond the range of 
 possibility, one day will come to be well-known realities 
 exciting as little surprise as the telegraph and telephone. 
 
 What, then, is eternally and absolutely impossible? 
 That which is absolutely unthinkable, which is an irrecon- 
 cilable contradiction to the indestructible categories of our 
 mind. That is a priori impossible which is at war with 
 the inborn ideas of the soul. The most fundamental of 
 these innate ideas is: It is impossible for anything to 
 spring from nothing. The law of universal causality, the 
 necessary belief that nothing can exist or happen without 
 a sufficient cause, is but another expression of the same 
 innate idea. Hence, it is an absolute impossibility that
 
 152 
 
 matter in any imaginable form, matter in the guise of nerve 
 and brain, should be the parent cause of mind. Matter 
 having no quality whatever in common with thought, the 
 rise of consciousness out of it would be a new creation out 
 of nothing, which is unthinkable. 
 
 Still both matter and mind exist. Neither can be 
 identified with the other, nor can they be derived from each 
 other. The two worlds, the inner world of consciousness 
 and the external world of objects, seem to fall apart. In 
 spite of their intimate relations and interactions these two 
 eternal forms of existence seem separated by a yawning 
 chasm with no bridge leading from one to the other. They 
 face each other as irreconcilable contrasts. Materialism 
 can by no tricks of sophistical reasoning drive mind from 
 its position as a self-existing entity. Idealism can not deny 
 matter and prove it to be a mere illusion. But the human 
 mind can not rest in such dualism. The soul finds no 
 peace in a world divided in itself. The very root of all 
 knowledge is the indestructible and immediate belief that 
 the universe forms a unity, that the soul is co-related to 
 the world in all its parts, that all being is of one source, of 
 one essence, of one energy. The very ground of all 
 knowledge is the innate belief that behind the inner world 
 of consciousness, and behind the phenomena of the world 
 of objects, there is Divine Unity in which they are both 
 embraced and in which their differences are reconciled and 
 disappear. This belief in an all-pervading and all-enfold- 
 ing Unity which binds together matter and mind in a 
 supreme harmony, underlies all thought This one Being 
 reveals Himself as nature, and manifests Himself and is 
 present in us as mind. In Him we live, move, and have 
 our being. Yet He transcends both the human mind and 
 nature. He is infinite and absolute. He is not circum- 
 scribed by the conditions within which matter exists. He 
 is not circumscribed by the limitations which bound our 
 intelligence.
 
 WHY I AM A JEW. 
 
 ' I ^HE very fact that the question, why I am a Jew, can be 
 * put at all, conclusively proves that to be a Jew, in the 
 deepest sense of the word, does not mean to belong to the 
 alleged Jewish race or nationality, but to be a member of 
 the Jewish church. For it would be considered sheer mad- 
 ness, say, for a Frenchman or a Spaniard to rise and explain 
 why he is a Frenchman or a Spaniard, Once a Frenchman, 
 always a Frenchman ; one born of Spanish parents forever 
 remains a Spaniard by the indestructible law of his phys- 
 ical identity. But one may change his religion and go 
 over from one church to another. A Buddhist may become 
 a Christian; a Christian may embrace Islam or be converted 
 to Judaism or to any other religion. By changing his 
 faith the Englishman does not break away from his En- 
 glish nationality nor from his assumed Anglo-Saxon race. 
 In asking me why I am a Jew, you do consciously or 
 unconsciously imply that I am a Jew of my own free will 
 and accord, and that I might choose not to be a Jew if I 
 had a mind to. The fact is, the moment a Jew embraces 
 Christianity, or any other religion, he ceases to all intents 
 and purposes to be a Jew. His own father and mother 
 no longer regard him as a Jew, though they continue to 
 love him as a son and to respect him as a man. 
 
 The question is, therefore, perfectly pertinent. Why 
 am I a Jew? Why do I not embrace Christianity, the 
 religion of the leading nations of the earth, the religion 
 of the most powerful, the most civilized and progressive 
 portion of mankind? Why do I cling to Yahvism, the 
 faith of the powerless, ever-struggling minority ? Why do 
 I hold fast to the religion of the Jews, who are disfran- 
 chised and persecuted in many Christian lands and regarded
 
 with inveterate prejudice and not a little contempt almost 
 everywhere ? If I were to join with my family any Chris- 
 tian church, it surely would not be to our worldly disad- 
 vantage. We would be received with open arms. The 
 Christian pulpits would ring with hosannas and praises. 
 All social barriers would fall as if by magic. We, too, 
 would belong to the proud and powerful majority. I, too, 
 might speak with unctuous pity of the deadening legalism 
 of Judaism, with infinite self-satisfaction haul the Phari- 
 sees over the coals, and with upturned eyes pray to God to 
 open the ears of the deaf Jews to the message of the cross. 
 I, too, might in the pulpit and in my writings descant with 
 swelling pride on our Christian civilization, expatiate on 
 the infinite superiority of the ethics and ideals of Chris- 
 tianity, call and claim as Christian everything that is true, 
 good, and beautiful in the life of humanity, and identify 
 my little self with the greatest spiritual power in the 
 world. Yet I forego, of my own deliberate choice, all these 
 advantages and prerogatives and continue to be a faithful 
 Jew. For what cogent reasons, then, am I a Jew ? 
 
 First of all, I am a Jew because I believe in one only 
 God, because I believe in the absolute and indivisible unity 
 of the Supreme Being. I can not, by any effort of thought, 
 imagination, or will, bring myself to believe in the Trinity, 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; I can not embrace 
 Christianity because the idea of a Triune God, of three 
 persons in one and one in three, simply staggers my intel- 
 ligence. It is as little comprehensible to me as the wildest 
 dreams of one delirious with fever or the coruscations of a 
 mind smitten with madness. I certainly mean no offense 
 to my trinitarian fellow-men, whose intellectual powers are 
 as sane and strong as those of the Jews. Those impregnated 
 from their early childhood with the dogmas of trinitarian 
 Christianity, no doubt, experience little difficulty in believ- 
 ing that the assumed three Divine Persons form an absolute 
 unity. The mind of man is wonderfully and fearfully
 
 made. It will continue to harbor through the years of 
 intellectual maturity irreconcilable contradictions, abso- 
 lutely antagonistic beliefs, if they are but implanted in the 
 soul before the logical faculties have fully developed and 
 become dominant, and before the intelligence has begun 
 rigorously to apply the categories of reason to all given 
 ideas. When such a mind emerges from the early state 
 of passive receptivity, it finds the belief in the Trinity 
 deeply inwrought in its very constitution, almost indissol- 
 ubly interwoven with all moral ideas and ideals, inter- 
 twined with the sweet hopes of immortality, blended with 
 the noblest spiritual aspirations. Then a fierce struggle 
 begins in most Christian souls between faith and reason. 
 Only a comparatively small number comes to end the inner 
 struggle by dissolving the associations of ideas between 
 the belief in the Triune God and all the elements of 
 religion and ethics. It is with a bleeding heart that they 
 break away from the cherished belief of the church, hal- 
 lowed by innumerable tender memories of childhood and 
 home. But the vast majority of Christians wrestle on 
 bravely, and at last come forth victorious over all perplex- 
 ing doubts. They find rest in the teachings of Christian 
 apologetics that the dogma of the Trinity, though the 
 highest truth, is yet an unfathomable and insoluble mys- 
 tery, which the soul must accept with unquestioning faith. 
 What man is infallible ? Maybe the belief that three per- 
 sons make up the Divine unity is a supreme transcend- 
 ental truth. But we Jews are absolutely unable to give 
 it lodgment in our mind. Were I seriously to strive to 
 believe in a Triune God, it would wreck my mind and land 
 me in a madhouse. If the Jews could bring themselves 
 to believe in the Holy Trinity and in the other dogmas 
 flowing from that central Christian belief, all would be 
 well with them. There would be an end to the agony of 
 ages, an end to the martyrdom of body and soul, an end to 
 calumny and isolation. By suffering baptism, we would
 
 156 
 
 dive down into the stream of the nations, the waves would 
 swallow up our identity, Israel would be but a name and a 
 memory. 
 
 As the hart longs after water brooks, so does the soul 
 of the Jew long after peace and union. But we will not 
 purchase peace and union at the price of humanity's dear- 
 est possession, at the price of prophetic universal mono- 
 theism, without tinge and taint. Our souls are chained 
 by ties unbreakable to the fiery chariot of ethical, historical 
 monotheism. We must go with it, though it lead us 
 through the valley of the shadow of death and the world's 
 contempt. The will of Yahve compels us to proclaim, 
 "Hear, O Israel, the Eternal, our God, the Eternal is One." 
 His power is upon us, fastening upon our conscience and 
 mind the mission of monotheism which we can not shake 
 off. His word is in us strong as death, and we must obey it, 
 even to our hurt. We still hear the voice of His prophet : 
 " Ye are my witnesses that I am He, I am the Eternal, 
 and beside Me there is no Saviour. Ye are my witnesses 
 that I am God, and beside Me there is none else." Not 
 simply for our sake, but for the sake of the world, and in 
 particular of the Christian world, do we hold fast to the 
 mission of being witnesses to the absolute unity of God. 
 Trinitarian Christianity is ever in danger of degenerating 
 unconsciously into polytheism. To realize the three dis- 
 tinct Divine Persons as one Being is a tremendous strain 
 on the Christian rnind. The intelligence, under the sway 
 of the logical categories, is constantly tried to break up in 
 consciousness the Triune God into a triad of divinities, 
 whereby Christianity would cease to be a monotheistic 
 religion. The religion of Israel, the ever present church 
 of Yahve, serves the Christians as a warning against the 
 insidious polytheistic tendency, and stimulates the Chris- 
 tian mind to lay the utmost emphasis on the unity of God. 
 Without the Jew, who is the living witness of uncompro- 
 mising monotheism, the Christians would be less on their
 
 157 
 
 guard against the danger lurking in the dogma of the Trin- 
 ity, and might, as in the darkest days of the Middle Ages, 
 drift more and more in the direction of polytheism. For 
 rendering them this service the Christians owe gratitude 
 to us Jews. 
 
 I am a Jew because I can not accept the Christian 
 scheme of salvation and incarnation; my soul shrinks 
 from it in dread and awe. The idea of God, the absolute 
 and infinite, assuming the flesh and form of man, being a 
 babe at His mother's breast, passing through the stage of 
 childhood, growing to the stature of manhood, eating, 
 drinking, fasting, thirsting, sleeping, weeping and laugh- 
 ing like a man, the idea of God Almighty being scourged, 
 nailed to the cross, and dying like a mortal man, is not 
 only unthinkable, unimaginable, and unbelievable to me, 
 but a denial of what is to Israelites the very essence of 
 religion. God is not a man nor the son of man. He is 
 not born of woman nor does He suffer and die like a mortal. 
 I know there are myriads of Christians who are wiser and 
 better than I, to whom the incarnation is the be-all of their 
 faith, the beginning, middle, and end of their theology. 
 But it is just because I can not believe with them in the 
 mystery of the incarnation that I am a Jew. 
 
 I am a Jew because I do not and can not believe in the 
 Christian dogma of the fall of man, of original sin, of 
 vicarious atonement, of redemption through the blood of 
 Jesus. I do not believe that the human race fell through 
 the alleged sin of Adam from the state of moral perfec- 
 tion and blessedness. The story of the Bible merely states 
 in a mythical form that there existed neither physical nor 
 moral good and evil as long as the mind of man was in 
 the state of happy, because ignorant, infancy. I am a Jew 
 because for the life of me I can not believe that an all- 
 good and all- just God decreed that the sin of the first man, 
 if sin it was, should descend as a moral blight and inex- 
 tinguishable curse to all his descendants. I am a Jew
 
 158 
 
 because the idea is abhorrent to me that the all-merciful 
 God found no other way to appease His unrighteous anger 
 save by means of a great sacrifice, by the sacrifice of the 
 God-man, the son of God, the second person in the Trin- 
 ity. To my benighted Jewish mind this dogma appears a 
 ghastly travesty on the idea of divine justice and mercy. 
 Yet among those who hold this belief are godly and holy 
 men whose shoe-strings I am unworthy of loosening. 
 Maybe their theory of divine government is true. But I 
 can not worship such a God. I would rather walk in the 
 darkness of unbelief. I would rather be crushed by His 
 power for rebelling than bend my knee to a God whom I 
 can not adore as just and merciful. 
 
 I am a Jew because I can not believe in the miracu- 
 lous power of Jesus, be he a man or a God, to redeem men 
 from the evils of ancestral sins and from the effects of 
 their own guilt. I believe in atonement through repent- 
 ance, through change of heart and conduct. But vicarious 
 atonement is to my mind mere religious magic. I wish I 
 could indulge in such pleasant hopes. It is an easy way 
 of getting rid of sins by letting the sufferings of Jesus 
 atone for them. But I can not entertain such a belief. I 
 am responsible to my conscience and my God for my sins. 
 No mediator stands between my soul and my Maker, to 
 obtain pardon for me through his influnce and merit. Face 
 to face I stand with the majesty of my Judge and Law- 
 giver, and between Him and me there is no other Saviour. 
 I bear the burden of my sins and accept the consequences 
 thereof, I hear His warning and judging voice in my con- 
 science, and His mercy is revealed in the thousand responses 
 of my heart. I am a Jew because I can not believe in the 
 strangest of all miracles that the wine and the bread taken at 
 the communion table are turned in the worshiper into the 
 blood and the flesh of Jesus. This dogma is authoritatively 
 taught by the Catholic church as well as by some Protest- 
 ant churches. I am a Jew because I can not believe with
 
 159 
 
 the Christians that there is no salvation for those who deny 
 Jesus, who have no faith in the atoning power of his 
 blood and death. I am a Jew because I do not believe that 
 salvation here and hereafter depends on baptism in the 
 name of Jesus Christ. I am a Jew because I believe that 
 the righteous live by their own faith, justice, and mercy, 
 and the wicked perish through their own moral degrada- 
 tion and sin. 
 
 Many will doubtless say : " Why, you are identifying 
 Christianity with exploded dogmas in which few educated 
 people really believe in our day. They are officially and 
 perfunctorily paraded in articles of creed, in order not to 
 break up the historical continuity of Christianity. The 
 Christian religion does not consist in the dogmas of the 
 trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the incarnation, the resurrec- 
 tion, and vicarious atonement. These dogmas are but the 
 historical trappings and temporary symbols in which the 
 Christian idea has inadequately expressed itself. The abid- 
 ing essence of Christianity consists in the ideal character 
 and life of Jesus and his sublime ethical teaching." To 
 this I make bold to reply : Christianity without the trin- 
 ity, without the divinity of Jesus, without the incarnation 
 and vicarious atonement, Christianity stripped of all its 
 distinctive characteristics, is nothing but the universal 
 religion of Yahve, such as was conceived and proclaimed 
 by the greatest prophets and wisest teachers of Israel, 
 among whom I count and reverence the immortal prophet 
 and teacher of Nazareth. Christianity without a Chris- 
 tian dogma is not the religion of the genuine historical 
 Christian churches. It is the universal faith which is usu- 
 ally named Judaism. It is what I call Yahvism in order to 
 dissociate it in consciousness from the element of the 
 race. It is the universal religion of broad humanity, of 
 justice, of love and holiness. It is the religion of Moses, 
 of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hillel, and Jesus. It is the 
 ethical monotheism of Israel without the limitations and
 
 i6o 
 
 the trammels of race, without the yoke of ceremonial law. 
 It is the religion which I and all enlightened rabbis pro- 
 fess and teach. 
 
 But do not the new moral ideas and ideals of Jesus, with- 
 out the dogmas of the incarnation, the resurrection, and 
 vicarious atonement, constitute an essentially new religion, 
 distinct from Yahvism, superior to it in every respect? 
 By no means, I answer. The teachings of Jesus are abso- 
 lutely identical in their general principles, as well as in 
 their special applications, with those of the Old Testament 
 and the Talmud. There is no moral idea, no moral ideal, 
 in the New Testament which is not inculcated with all 
 possible emphasis, and proclaimed with glowing enthusi- 
 asm, in the Old Testament and the Talmud. There is not 
 a moral saying of Jesus, no ethical truth preached by him, 
 that we Israelites do not accept with all our heart and all 
 our soul, and try to live up to. There is no doubt with us 
 that the ethical teaching of Jesus is nothing but the quintes- 
 sence of the highest biblical ethics and the finest essence of 
 the still more highly-developed morality of the post-biblical 
 masters, presented with sublime pathos and heart-bewitching 
 power by a great soul. There is no new revelation to us 
 Israelites in the Sermon on the Mount, no step is made 
 therein beyond the prophets' lofty ideals of love, charity, 
 humility, and piety as taught by the rabbis, the predeces- 
 sors and contemporaries of Jesus. But the Sermon on the 
 Mount is a glorious summary and incomparable presenta- 
 tion of the moral and religious ideas and ideals which the 
 spirit of God, through fifteen centuries, slowly and steadily, 
 with ever-increasing power and light, had been unfolding 
 through the soul of Israel. And that soul of Israel, the 
 prophetic, God-seeking, God-loving soul, which wholly 
 consecrates itself to Him by loving all His children, by 
 meting out to all human beings the fullest measure of just- 
 ice, by pouring out the rich streams of loving-kindness 
 unto all men without distinction of race or creed; that
 
 soul of Israel was stirring with might and dwelling 
 with radiant beauty in the breast of the son of Joseph and 
 Mary, and expressed itself with majestic eloquence and 
 heart-conquering grace and simplicity in his sermons, his 
 parables, and, above all, in his pure and holy life. We 
 Israelites claim Jesus of Nazareth as our own, as one of our 
 best and greatest masters, as one of our immortal fathers, 
 as one of our saintliest heroes of righteousness and love. 
 Whatever crimes have been committed against us by cruel 
 and misguided men in his name, verily we do not charge 
 him with them. Those blind and heartless fanatics did 
 not learn cruelty from him, the teacher of love. Surely 
 the example of the meek and lowly rabbi of Galilee, who 
 taught with the prophets and teachers of Israel to suffer 
 persecution and not to persecute, did not inspire the zealots 
 with the fury and madness of persecution. We claim the 
 ethical teachings of Jesus, as preserved in the Gospels, as 
 our own spiritual possession. 
 
 Still, my holding Jesus in profoundest veneration, my 
 enthusiasm for his sublime teachings, does not make me a 
 Christian. Just as little are those Gentiles true Christians 
 who, like me, deny his divinity and all the beliefs which 
 cohere with that cardinal dogma. I make bold to express 
 my humble opinion that the true Unitarian church is a 
 section or sect of the universal church of Yahvism, within 
 which Jesus lived, moved, and had his being, and of whose 
 truths and ideals he was a glorious exponent. But why 
 do I not join the Unitarians, with whom I agree in most 
 essentials of faith and practice? My answer is : A large 
 wing of the Unitarians still coquette with the peculiar 
 dogmas of Christianity. There is a wonderful magic in 
 historical words and names. They tend to draw men back 
 to their former contents. The world still needs the ancient 
 historical church of uncompromising prophetic monothe- 
 ism. For God's sake, for mankind's sake, we can not 
 renounce the mission of standing guard around the ark of
 
 l62 
 
 monotheism intrusted to us by the seers and martyrs of 
 Israel. For this reason I am a Jew, and not a Unitarian. 
 
 One more reason I shall give for being a Jew, and I 
 shall have done : The Gentiles who have totally discarded 
 Christianity and, to all intents and purposes, are at one 
 with us in faith, shrink from identifying themselves with 
 poor, despised, scattered, and maligned Israel. They are 
 afraid of losing caste by being named together with the 
 Jews as associates in the same church. But I am a Jew 
 for that very reason that the Jews are in all Christian lands 
 under the ban of social prejudice, and are in many king- 
 doms disfranchised and oppressed under the very shadow 
 of the cross. I follow the example of the two great Jew- 
 ish martyrs, Jeremiah and Jesus. They made their home 
 among the poor and despised. They ate the bread of afflic- 
 tion with those who were sore of heart and poor in spirit 
 Their great souls' love belonged to the down-trodden and 
 outcast children of God. Their companions and friends 
 were in the hovels of poverty, not among the mighty in 
 palaces and courts. I, too, inspired by their example and 
 teachings, wish to be a Jew in these latter days. I cast 
 my lot with the despised. I am a brother to the most 
 wretched and hopeless of men, to the Russian Jew, whose 
 face and form tell the woeful tale of Christian persecution 
 and contempt killing body and soul. You, proud Chris- 
 tians, are amazed at the sight of him, so disfigured and 
 scarcely human in his visage. But I bid him welcome in 
 his rags to my heart and home. I touch his sores with a 
 brother's tender hand. His bruises are my bruises ; I bleed 
 with his wounds ; I quiver with the stripes, physical and 
 moral, which poor Israel receives at the hands of Christian 
 rulers and nations. You have a smile and a contemptuous 
 name for the people of endless sorrows. But their sorrows 
 sit brooding over my soul by day and night. The misery 
 of the Jews, of whatever land, poisons my joys and makes 
 life a martyrdom to me. The shame and dishonor with
 
 163 
 
 which malicious tongues try to brand them burn them- 
 selves into my soul. The demon fury which rages against 
 the Jews in anti-Semitic Germany, Austria, and Roumania 
 haunts my waking hours and torments me in my very 
 dreams. The blasphemous philosophy of Christian think- 
 ers which declare the Jew to be doomed by the curse of 
 heredity to moral inferiority, makes me blush for mankind. 
 The contemptuous tolerance of good Christians, the exag- 
 gerated praises they bestow upon the Jew with a patron- 
 izing air, fill me with pain and loathing. I will not take 
 refuge in a church to save myself and my children 
 from the common lot of the Jews. I sit on the ground 
 with my brethren to take their hands in mine. I strive to 
 raise them with what power there is in me to new spirit- 
 ual heights, whence they shall see the landscape of the 
 future blooming with blessings universal, which they and 
 their fathers have sown with tears. I pray God to open 
 their eyes that they may see the church universal of 
 Yahve standing as a new Jerusalem with seven gates flung 
 wide open, through which the Gentiles may stream in 
 to kneel with us at the altar of the righteous and merciful 
 God of Humanity, and blend their voices with ours in the 
 cry: "Hear, O mankind, the Lord, our God, the Lord is 
 One."
 
 WHY I STUDIED MEDICINE. 
 
 HE fact that I have for the last five or six years 
 given whatever time I could spare from the arduous 
 and absorbing duties of the ministry to the study of medi- 
 cine ; the fact, moreover, that the University of Louisville 
 has lately honored me with the diploma of a physician, 
 gives the public the right to inquire, and makes it incum- 
 bent upon me to explain, why I have so long devoted time, 
 labor, and thought to a field of knowledge that seems to 
 lie out of all relation to that of religion, which it is my 
 calling assiduously to cultivate. It may surprise you to 
 be told that it was from religious motives, from an intense 
 craving of my soul to obtain a direct answer to certain 
 perplexing questions, that I pursued a course of study that 
 must have appeared to you absolutely useless to a preacher 
 of righteousness, to a teacher of faith in a living God of 
 wisdom and mercy. 
 
 Religion and science, the priests of atheism assure us 
 with an air of infallibility, are antagonistic powers. The 
 more diligently you investigate nature according to the 
 strict methods of scientific inquiry, they say, the more 
 readily will faith lose its hold on your mind. They cry: 
 "As long as nature is to you a book sealed with seven seals 
 you will be able to hold fast to the traditional belief in a 
 universal supreme intelligence, incarnate in all existence 
 as the creative and purposeful cause of causes. But as soon 
 as you have learned to open the volume of nature and to 
 read the eternal facts writ therein by the hand of necessity, 
 your faith in the kinship of nature with mind will vanish 
 as an illusion and a dream." Listening to such assertions,
 
 I said to myself: "Let me examine for myself, whether a 
 deeper and wider knowledge of nature does indeed teach 
 the rank atheism which is alleged to be the last outcome 
 of science. Let me learn to know as thoroughly and 
 minutely as possible what modern science has ascertained 
 regarding the physical framework of man, which is doubt- 
 less the highest manifestation of the universal energy, the 
 last and most perfect fruit that has grown in the world- 
 garden on the topmost branch of the tree of life. Should 
 the study of the anatomical structure and the physiological 
 life of the human body force upon me the conviction, that 
 the world of nature is absolutely different from the world 
 of mind, that there is in the former no trace of the pres- 
 ence and activity of intelligence, I will with an aching 
 heart, yet in obedience to my honest conviction, give up 
 the calling of a minister, which presupposes the belief in 
 an absolute and infinite wisdom of which both nature and 
 the human soul are perennial revelations." 
 
 Today, after years of converse with the highest forms 
 of nature, I make the solemn declaration that such con- 
 verse has made me more genuinely religious than ever, 
 that I have come forth from communion with nature firmly 
 convinced that a supreme intelligence, passing man's 
 understanding, is manifest in the masterpiece of creation, 
 in the human body ! Oh, happy hours that I spent in thy 
 temple, O Science, hours of blessedness and prayerfulness, 
 when my spirit felt itself near the creative spirit of the 
 universe, when my soul sang joyfully, "I am wonderfully 
 and fearfully made, O Lord. Verily, the body of man is the 
 sanctuary which Thy infinite wisdom has formed. When 
 I consider Thy wondrous work, this mortal frame of mind, 
 which Thy will has fashioned, my spirit is overwhelmed 
 within me, and my whole being bends in adoration to 
 Thee." Life's mystery of mysteries has embodied itself in 
 us, and is become flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. 
 The infinite Self has woven on the loom of time the living
 
 i66 
 
 garment of our soul. His creative thoughts have entered 
 as warp and woof into the texture of our corporeal being. 
 
 The bony framework, which sustains and bears all, 
 which shelters all vital parts and defends them against con- 
 tact with surrounding evil, is itself the marvel of marvels, 
 an inconceivably perfect piece of mechanism. What wise 
 adaptation of means to ends there is observable in the whole 
 and in every part! All the laws of mechanics and statics 
 have been called into requisition to build up what is the 
 most elegant and at the same time the most durable, the 
 strongest and yet the most pliant of structures. What seem 
 insurmountable difficulties offered by the law of gravitation 
 are overcome by contrivances incredibly cunning and yet 
 simple withal. Natural obstacles to locomotion are turned 
 into aids facilitating locomotion. Every possible emer- 
 gency is provided for, every contingency and danger are 
 foreseen and guarded against. There is the nicest adjust- 
 ment of every part to the whole, the most harmonious co- 
 operation of all the parts to bring about the desired result. 
 Every smallest spot, every elevation and depression, every 
 ridge and groove is put to excellent use, and, in most cases, 
 is made to serve more than one purpose. Every arrange- 
 ment known to the most advanced science of applied 
 mechanics finds its prototype in the framework of man. 
 And this framework is covered over with a garment of liv- 
 ing tissue that can not but fill the contemplative mind 
 with worshipful wonder. 
 
 Will I ever forget those hours of rapture and prayerful 
 wonder, when under the guidance of a masterful teacher 
 in the morning, and with the dissecting knife in the even- 
 ing, I learned to know and understand the marvelous 
 system of muscular bands and ties and clasps which bind 
 and knit together the whole body, and enable it to perform 
 innumerable kinds of co-ordinated motions and purposeful 
 notions, which give it the power to walk and run, to stand 
 up and to sit down, to breathe and articulate sound, to vail
 
 167 
 
 or unvail the eye, to grasp and unloosen the hand? Who 
 but a designing mind can have directed muscles, at what 
 point they shall take rise, along what lines they shall 
 spread, and at what particular spot they shall fasten their 
 ends, in order to perform their office with the least effort 
 and with the best result? I can not shake off the con- 
 viction that it was a creative purpose which gave birth 
 to these remarkable groups of twin muscles, those pairs 
 of correlated and mutually counteracting muscles, of which 
 one invariably bends when the other unbends, one stiffens 
 while the other contracts. Marvelous are the works of the 
 Eternal, and this my soul knows full well ! 
 
 The muscular system is infinitely more wonderful than 
 the solar system. It bewilders the mind to consider the 
 countless adjustments of means to ends; to contemplate the 
 living unity of purpose which binds all the parts together 
 and causes all their several movements to blend and make 
 the graceful rhythm of vital harmony. I am overawed by, 
 and stand in speechless humility before, the mysterious 
 power inherent in the muscles to contract and retract, to 
 lengthen out and harden at the bidding of the will or in 
 obedience to commands issued by unconscious centers of 
 authority. Who can help believing in an incarnated uni- 
 versal intelligence, as the hidden wonders of the muscular 
 structure unfold themselves under the microscope before 
 his gaze? What no eye has seen and no mind had 
 dreamed of is disclosed therein as the divine architecture, 
 which out of countless myriads of tiniest cells builds up 
 wonderful structures, able to bear the greatest strains, 
 and to perform during three score years and ten and 
 upward an incredible amount of vital work. Invisible to 
 the naked eye, every individual fibre is revealed by the 
 magnifying lense as a most complex organism lying shel- 
 tered in a sheath of its own and separated by it from the 
 rest. Millions of fibres are associated together wrapped in 
 a special covering, which welds them together into a unity,
 
 i68 
 
 and isolates them from the surrounding bundles. And all 
 the thousands of bundles are compacted together into a 
 still higher organic unity of the muscle, enfolded in a liv- 
 ing garment which divides off, and keeps its vital functions 
 apart from, the adjacent tissues. 
 
 And between the minutest parts there run innumerable 
 tiny rills of blood, bringing nourishment to every cell, 
 overlooking none, forcing their way to the most hidden 
 and remote. The sacred rivers of God, the life-bearing 
 streams of blood, that issue from the lake of the heart, 
 and in rhythmic cadences flow along the foreordained 
 paths to the place whence they flow, whither they are 
 ever returning to flow again! The spirit of Creation is 
 moving over their red waves ! By day and by night they 
 hasten with sleepless activity from place to place, bearing 
 in mid-stream the red purveyors of the vital breath and 
 the white carriers of life-renewing food. To every cell 
 they come like loving mothers to their nurslings, to refresh 
 the faint and to feed the hungry. To each they offer that 
 kind of nourishing substance which it craves and needs 
 for its maintenance and sustenance. To the muscle they 
 give what will make muscle, to the eye what will form 
 eye, to the brain what will transform itself into nerve and 
 brain matter. It is inconceivable to me that accident, 
 blindly groping, blindly striving, could have mixed and 
 combined the elements making up the blood current, and 
 determined their due proportions. 
 
 Were there no other witness in nature, the heart alone 
 would testify to searching faith that an Eternal Will 
 organizes itself as an intelligent and intelligible purpose in 
 the living forms of creation. Whatever the fanatical 
 priests of materialism may assert to the contrary, our rea- 
 son refuses to believe that an organ as marvelously perfect 
 as the heart can be the product of blind mechanical 
 causes. The heart dwells central in the microcosm of the 
 body as the perennial fountain of life. It is nestled
 
 169 
 
 between the lungs that are its life-long associates and 
 co-workers in the holy office of keeping the vital stream 
 wholesome and rich. The inscrutable power inherent in 
 nature, which makes for progress and vital perfection, has 
 brought together what in lower orders of animal life form 
 two distinct and separate hearts, and welded them together 
 into an organic unity, making one perfect organ out of 
 twain. Bach half, the right and left heart, still discharges 
 as in the early days of tentative creation its own special 
 function in the household of the body, but being incorpo- 
 rate into each other they beat with one pulsation and throb 
 with the same rhythmic alteration of activity and rest. 
 From every part of the body, from the remotest nooks and 
 corners, the blood, which has done its service in feeding 
 and oxygenating the tissues, returns dark in color, short of 
 vital breath, panting after life-renewing air. The rills of 
 venous blood gather themselves into brooks, the brooks 
 swell to many streams, the streams unite into two mighty 
 rivers, which, one from above and the other from below, 
 fall into the upper chamber of the right heart. At the 
 same time the beautiful air-laden, red blood flows from 
 the lungs through four channels into the upper chamber 
 of the left heart. A shock, a quiver, and the dark mass 
 descends into the lower chamber of the right heart, and 
 the red fluid goes down into the lower chamber of the left 
 heart. 
 
 Why does not the blood on either side return backward, 
 thereby to cause disease and bring on premature death? 
 Because the universal creative mind has prepared gates 
 and bars which shut of themselves and prevent the blood 
 from surging back and working havoc. Another shock 
 and quiver more powerful than the first, and lo and behold, 
 both halves contract and stiffen, driving the dark blood to 
 the right into the lungs to be purified and renewed by 
 receiving the precious burden of the vital air, and to the 
 left, sending the red stream of life-bringing blood through
 
 170 
 
 the broad aortic channel, thence to rush onward, dividing 
 and sub-dividing as it passes on. But why do not both 
 of these streams, after ascending, fall back into the cavity 
 from which they rose? Because the all- wise creative Self 
 put on either side wondrous curtains, which, immediately 
 after the uprushing of the blood, join themselves together 
 and allow not one drop to return. Within the brief space 
 of twenty seconds all the blood has flown in a circle 
 through the whole body, issuing from the heart through 
 one of its gates, and returning through another. And 
 this tremendous activity the heart carries on by day and by 
 night, in summer and winter, in spring and in autumn, 
 during seventy, eighty or ninety or even a hundred years, 
 and in some few persons even a hundred and twenty years 
 and longer. The heart never takes a rest like the other 
 organs of the body. Were it to sleep but a few minutes, 
 there would be no awakening to the whole body. Yet it 
 sleeps by snatches. After each pulsation there is a moment 
 of silence and sleep. During this brief interval of rest 
 the blood comes to it to feed it and give it strength 
 to take up its all-important work again. Marvelous as is 
 the heart in itself as a master-piece of creative art, no less 
 wonderful are the intimate functional relations which it 
 bears to every part and organ of the body, and most 
 especially to the lungs. The whole body appears as a 
 systematic unity with the heart as its vital center, from 
 which life radiates in every direction to the outermost 
 boundary of the periphery, and toward which all activities 
 far and near are converging. 
 
 The very existence and the structure of the lungs are 
 comprehensible only in reference to the service which they 
 render to the heart and through it to the circulation of the 
 blood. They are manifestly means fashioned by an all- 
 wise Will to serve a purposed end ; they are made to con- 
 vey the life-sustaining air from the atmosphere without to 
 the hidden recesses of the heart, and at the same time to
 
 carry away the poison from within produced by the self- 
 combustion of the blood. Had not the thousand dissecting 
 hands of science laid bare, and her thousand magnifying 
 eyes made visible, all the minutest arrangements and hid- 
 den marvels of the pulmonary structure, the human mind 
 would not believe it, that an organ so ingeniously con- 
 structed, so perfectly adapted to a special end, could exist 
 in nature. In the cave of the mouth, where the back wall 
 meets the floor, there begins a tube, the trachea or wind- 
 pipe, which being composed of alternate rings of soft 
 tissue and cartilage, is at once most firm and most elastic, 
 capable of expanding and narrowing, of lengthening and 
 shortening, to suit the requirements of its functions. As it 
 descends deeper and deeper and reaches the lungs, it enters 
 them through an open door. Along with it there are 
 admitted its faithful companions: the pulmonary artery, 
 bringing the dark blood for aeration ; the veins taking the 
 purified blood to the heart; the nerves, to energize every 
 part and guide every movement. The tube splits up into 
 two branches, one going to the right lung, the other to the 
 left. Bach branch divides into many limbs, the limbs sub- 
 divide into hundreds of twigs, each twig branches off into 
 thousands of twiglets, each twiglet leads into a narrow 
 court into which numerous little chambers the air cells 
 open. Between the exceedingly thin walls, which separate 
 and unite neighboring air cells, there spreads a bewildering 
 network of tiny rills and lakelets of dark blood. About 
 twenty times every minute a current of air rushes in 
 through the wide corridor of the trachea, enters every pas- 
 sage, penetrates to every court, and fills every air chamber. 
 The inflated lungs expand, the elastic ribs fly apart to 
 make room, the diaphragm descends, giving way below. 
 Meanwhile one of nature's great miracles takes place. The 
 air and the blood meet in the air chambers, separated like 
 lovers by a thin partition wall. The air gives off its 
 precious gift of oxygen, which passes through the wall to
 
 172 
 
 mingle with the blood. The blood again willingly yields 
 up its poisonous carbonic acid to the air. As soon as this 
 office of mutual love is performed the lungs contract, and 
 the poison-bearing air is forced to go forth and build up 
 the substance of the plants. 
 
 But wise nature, or rather the divine wisdom indwell- 
 ing nature, has used the wind-pipe, or trachea, for a still 
 higher purpose. At the uppermost part of the wind-pipe, 
 just below the cave of the mouth, nature has built a 
 musical instrument called the larynx, which possesses 
 excellencies of the very highest order. Though this musi- 
 cal instrument has but two chords, the two vocal chords, 
 it has an astonishing range of note, an almost boundless 
 power of modulation, a magic faculty of making the air 
 vibrate with soul-bewildering song. By means of it and 
 the other, secondary organs of speech, the infinite Spirit of 
 All has enabled the finite spirit of man to create lan- 
 guage, to translate into articulate sound all the phenomena 
 of the universe, and the innermost causes which bind all 
 the realms of nature together, to make manifest through the 
 instrumentality of words the most impetuous as well as 
 the gentlest stirrings of the emotions, and to communicate 
 from mind to mind the inexhaustible wealth of the grow- 
 ing reason. What an immense progress from the howling 
 of the wolf, the roaring of the lion, the bleating of the 
 sheep, the bellowing of the ox, and the chattering of the 
 ape, to the voice of man, to the entrancing song of a Patti, 
 the stirring declamation of a Booth, and the majestic ora- 
 tory of a Webster or Gladstone ! But the evolution of the 
 voice from uttering bestial sounds to being the perfect 
 organ of the soul, is due to the beautiful mechanism of the 
 human larynx, which, when once understood, fills the 
 student with a sense of worshiping admiration for the 
 living Purpose which shapes means to ever higher ends. 
 
 And as the divine creative Will and Reason have evolved 
 in man a magnificent organ of sound, to bring forth the
 
 witchery of song and to reveal the inner life of the soul, so 
 He has formed a wondrous organ of hearing, to receive an 
 almost boundless variety of sounds from nature and man, 
 and transmit them as integral parts of experience to the 
 seat ot consciousness, where they are organized together 
 with various elements of impression, received through the 
 other senses, into the living unity of thought. Who can 
 fathom the world's mystery of mysteries, which weaves 
 itself in nature's secret sanctuary into the purposeful forms 
 of a life to corne? In the breathless and silent night of bud- 
 ding existence organs of speech and hearing are fashioned, 
 which perform their office only in the vibrating waves of 
 the circumambient air. Him that planted the ear we can 
 not but adore as supreme intelligence. For wonders of 
 wisdom without number are wrought into the structure 
 of the ear. Of three chambers the Master of life builded 
 the echoing palace of sound. The first chamber is open 
 to the outer world and the atmosphere. It is closed 
 toward the inner chamber by a membranous curtain, the 
 ear-drum. At the entrance there oozes a fluid, to catch 
 and hold fast intruding insects. The inner chamber is 
 filled with air flowing in through a long channel whose 
 open end is to be seen in the ceiling of the mouth. It is 
 separated from the innermost chamber by a thin wall, in 
 which there is a round window for communication. A 
 trembling bridge made of three little bones, the hammer, 
 the anvil, and the stirrup, is stretched through the length 
 of the chamber from wall to wall, the stirrup resting 
 in and filling up the opening of the round window. 
 The innermost chamber, the labyrinth, is filled with 
 water, which flows around magic vessels containing water. 
 In and around the magic vessels, in the midst of the 
 mysterious waters, there are myriads of musical strings, or 
 keys, made up of the hair-like terminations of the auditory 
 nerve. Wherever the ocean of air without is stirred into 
 waves, the sonorous waves transplant themselves through
 
 the outer chamber to the ear-drum, and cause it to vibrate. 
 The shock is imparted to the anvil, the anvil moves the 
 hammer, the hammer makes the stirrup quiver. Through 
 the round window the quivering stirrup transfers its own 
 undulating motion to the water within the innermost 
 chamber. A moving shiver runs through the water. The 
 wavelets touch the nerve strings and play upon them as on 
 the keys of a musical instrument. The sound vibrations 
 then travel upward along the pathway of the auditory 
 nerve until they reach the seat of consciousness, where 
 they are translated into feelings, and formed into harmony 
 and thought. 
 
 I will not attempt to expatiate on the stupendous won- 
 ders which the most perfect of all organs, the most impor- 
 tant of the senses the eye displays, both in its general 
 and minute structure. It would require a special lecture, 
 replete with the most difficult anatomical and microscopic 
 facts, to bring into view the divine logic incarnate in the 
 organ of vision. Suffice it to say, that when I came to 
 master the plan on which the human eye is constructed I 
 felt overwhelmed by a feeling of religious awe. Unfor- 
 getable as moments of deep religious experience will 
 forever abide with me, the memory of those hours, when 
 the study of the human eye forced upon me the conviction 
 that an inscrutable reason dwells embodied in nature, and 
 reveals itself in the ascending forms of unfolding animate 
 life. The Infinite Self formed the eye to be a window to 
 the soul of man, through which it shall look out upon the 
 phenomena of the universe, receiving impressions of light 
 and color, with all their modifications of intensity and 
 combinations, and thereby acquiring the principal ideas of 
 form, space, and movement.
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF ENVY. 
 
 T T is passing strange that the generality of men indulge in 
 envy, although it is not only the meanest of all feelings, 
 but also one of the most painful. It does not suffer us to 
 rejoice in what we are and have. The more success, pros- 
 perity, joy, and honor we see around us, the greater is the 
 gloom and bitterness of soul. And the distress which 
 envy causes, apparently brings with it no compensation of 
 any kind. Why, then, should nature have endowed man 
 with an emotional quality which both afflicts and demoral- 
 izes him? 
 
 Our answer is : Envy is a mental relic of the primitive 
 past of the human race ; it is a survival of the savage con- 
 dition and life of man. This feeling was developed to a 
 pitch of the greatest intensity and wrought into the very 
 constitution of man's nature during countless ages of 
 savagery, when man was daily and hourly wrestling with 
 man in fierce contention for the barest necessaries of life. 
 Time was when the means of subsistence were few and 
 far between. The earth, could supply only a compara- 
 tively small number of men with a sufficiency of food. 
 Where nowadays two million human beings live in affluence 
 by means of agriculture and manufacture, only a few 
 hundred were able to eke out a precarious livelihood. In 
 those days the struggle for existence was relentlessly 
 cruel. Pitilessly the battle for life was constantly fought 
 between societies and societies, between individuals and 
 individuals. Plenty enjoyed by one in many cases actually 
 meant starvation to another. Wealth possessed by one 
 group of people invariably implied the wretchedness of 
 another group. There was so little to divide, that what 
 one person took to himself was regarded by all others as
 
 taken from them. In those days envy was the dreadful, 
 necessary, and legitimate expression of the instinct and 
 law of self-preservation. Everybody naturally looked upon 
 the larger possessions of his fellows as a personal injury to 
 himself. One man's bread was once literally another 
 man's poison or death. No wonder, therefore, that envy 
 invariably begot implacable hatred. The envied person 
 was indeed an enemy. He was the successful rival in the 
 deadly struggle for existence, or rather subsistence. 
 
 In those days of most cruel competition for the scanty 
 means available for sustaining human life, envy never was 
 a mere passive feeling preying upon those who cherished 
 it. Envy always led to a desperate fight with the hated 
 person or persons who held in possession what the other 
 lacked and desired. "You have what I want and can not 
 do without. I will take it from you by force, if I can." 
 The stronger man appropriated to himself what he could 
 lay his hands on. In proportion to his gain was the suffer- 
 ing of others. Superiority of every kind, be it of bodily 
 strength, of cunning, or of will-power, made, therefore, a 
 man an object of aversion to his companions, unless he 
 generously used his powers, skill, and sagacity in the inter- 
 est of the society to which he belonged. For, excellence 
 of every sort, by which one individual got the better of 
 his associates, as a rule, caused loss and privation to those 
 he had outstripped. Against such a one the envy and 
 hatred of the whole social group usually turned with 
 vindictive force, to keep him down to the general level, to 
 prevent, as it were, his selfish appetites from devouring 
 the sustenance of others. 
 
 Thus, in the state of primitive savagery, while man 
 lived from hand to mouth, envy was a very useful, yes, 
 an indispensable emotional force in the economy of human 
 life and the development of society. It spurred the indi- 
 vidual on to maintain himself in the desperate battle of 
 life. The man who looked on without envious resentment,
 
 while others grabbed whatever was in sight, had no chance 
 to survive and bring up children. His unselfish and 
 unenvious disposition would have been his own and his 
 family's destruction. The legend of Cain and Abel truly 
 describes the conditions of life in the foretime of the race. 
 The envious Cain kills his gentle brother, and becomes 
 the father of a numerous progeny. The early education 
 of mankind was in the hard school of hunger and cold, of 
 ceaseless combat, amid the passionate actions and reactions 
 of untamed egotisms. The meek and weak and modest 
 were crushed out of existence, and their race was cut off 
 from the earth. Of all the blindly urging, unresisted and 
 irresistible passions of self-love, envy was the most potent 
 for good and evil. It was a powerful factor in awakening 
 the slumbering faculties of individuals and societies and 
 raising them to progressive activities. It created a spirit 
 of healthful rivalry. It caused the unskillful to imitate 
 the ways and adopt the practices of the skillful. It com- 
 pelled inferior minds to emulate superior minds and copy 
 their methods of action, in the hope of overtaking them 
 in the race of life. In a sense we may hold with the 
 Preacher that all the doings of men, all their forward 
 movements, individual and social, were due to the stimulus 
 of envy. 
 
 In like manner, the envy of people against people had 
 its origin and justification in the state of primitive savagery 
 and poverty. For a long time it was a tremendous evo- 
 lutionary force. Like most primeval educational methods 
 of Nature, envy was red in tooth and claw. It caused 
 innumerable deeds of horror to be committed by one social 
 group against another. But it also compelled the tribes of 
 men, with the rod of an inexorable taskmaster, to bestir 
 themselves for defense and attack, to improve their 
 material condition, to exert and develop their mental 
 faculties in order not to succumb and perish in the strug- 
 gle for existence between society and society.
 
 i 7 8 
 
 Time was when there were only a few favored regions 
 on earth which, by natural exuberance, were capable of 
 affording ample means of life to a comparatively large 
 number of associated families. Outside of those favored 
 regions there was gaunt misery, a perpetual fight against 
 the demons of want In those ages the well-being of one 
 people implied the wretchedness of another. The goodly 
 land which had fallen to the lot of one nation was coveted 
 by other nations with envious eyes. In those days it was 
 indeed true, that the gain of one people was necessarily 
 the loss of another, the exaltation of one, the degradation 
 of the others. Then was every people the natural enemy 
 of neighboring peoples. Envy impelled the poor tribes to 
 combine and form a more efficient and compact military 
 organization, in order to dispossess the wealthier people of 
 their land. The latter driven from their happier homes, 
 carried the arts of a higher civilization into barren regions. 
 In the fearful storm and stress of competition in the ages 
 of low civilization envy urged every people to vie with the 
 rest for the prize of superiority, to learn from all what 
 could be learned, to adopt from the rivals whatever seemed 
 to have given them the start in the race of life. In the 
 childhood of the race and far into the years of its youth, 
 envy was a useful companion to man, a Mephistophelian 
 power given to him by the Creator, to prevent him from 
 sinking into bestial sloth and contentment, to goad him 
 onward in the road of progress, making him dissatisfied 
 with what he possessed and achieved, stinging every people 
 to reach out after the better conditions and the superior 
 arts of life attained by more highly advanced national 
 rivals. 
 
 The beneficial effects of envy on individual and social 
 life in the remote past, the way it has helped to work out 
 the material and moral progress of the race, is a striking 
 illustration of the great inspiring truth, that good invaria- 
 bly grows out of evil, or that there is a soul of goodness in 
 things evil.
 
 179 
 
 Moreover, like all evil passions and activities envy in 
 the course of time brought forth results which tended to 
 lessen its virulence and to diminish its influence. The 
 very spirit of rivalry which it has through countless ages 
 exerted in men, caused individuals and nations to bring 
 forth ever more wealth, to increase the sum-total of the 
 world's goods. The more plentiful the means of subsist- 
 ence grow to be in the world, the less embittered and 
 cruel becomes the struggle for existence between individ- 
 uals and societies. One man's plenty no longer necessi- 
 tates another man's going hungry. One man's riches no 
 longer doom a number of other human beings to wretch- 
 edness. Enough necessaries of life are produced and 
 accumulated to give to all, save the idle, the shiftless, and 
 the incapable, some share for sustaining life as a compen- 
 sation for their labor. Much can even be given away for 
 sweet charity's sake to those who do not earn their bread 
 by the sweat of their brow. The progressive development 
 of agriculture and later on of manufacture has multiplied 
 a thousand and a hundred thousand fold the means of life 
 on earth. In consequence of this, envy has become 
 infinitely less brutal and vindictive than it used to be in 
 primitive ages. It has become a gentler, a less aggressive 
 force, because the instinct of self-preservation has to fight 
 a less desperate battle for self-maintenance. 
 
 The wheat fields and cotton fields of America, and the 
 other boundless products of our country, which supply the 
 teeming millions of the old world with an abundance of 
 cheap and wholesome means of subsistence, are rendering an 
 incalculable service to the moral health of Europe. They 
 bring greater contentment to the masses and subdue their 
 envy of the wealthier classes, which otherwise would be a 
 destructive anti-social force. The fact is, the richer a 
 country is in all kinds of wealth, the smaller the number 
 of people ever on the verge of want, the less envy will 
 there be of individual against individual, the less violent
 
 i8o 
 
 the envy of class against class. For this very reason there 
 is less envy in the make-up of the American character 
 than in that of any other people. The Americans are not 
 only exceedingly tolerant with regard to religious matters, 
 letting every man believe and worship as he pleases, they 
 are just as tolerant in matters of a secular nature, allowing 
 every man to pursue his own interests, his own happiness, 
 to the best of his ability. "Give every man a chance, 
 let every person do the best he can for himself," is the 
 characteristic expression of American morality. One 
 seldom meets among genuine Americans with that grim, 
 yellow-visaged envy which plays such disgraceful pranks 
 in the heart of Europe. 
 
 The reason is not far to seek. Till recent times wealth 
 was more evenly distributed in America than anywhere 
 else on earth. Even to this day, in spite of the immense 
 fortunes accumulated in the hands of a few families, the 
 general average of material wellbeing is incomparably 
 greater in this country than in any other part of the 
 globe. For nearly two hundred years the struggle for 
 existence has in our land ceased to be like that obtaining 
 among animals and savages. It has not been, with a num- 
 ber of successive generations, the dreadful rule of unmoral 
 nature: You are eating and I am starving, I will eat and 
 you shall starve. There has been and still is ample room 
 in this broad country for all diligent hands to obtain a 
 comfortable livelihood. The widest scope is readily given 
 to every talent and endeavor. Competition has not meant 
 with us mutual encroachment and injury, but a friendly 
 rivalry in making use of the vast undeveloped resources 
 of a virgin continent. Thus, for several generations the 
 feeling of envy in America has been called into activity far 
 less frequently than in the Old World. Now, it is a well- 
 known law in physiology and psychology that organs, 
 faculties, emotions, which are seldom brought into use, 
 tend to be atrophied, to shrink. In consequence of this
 
 partial disuse the feeling of envy has become less violent 
 and general in the American character than it is among 
 the nations of the Old World. 
 
 Moreover, the exceeding scantiness of labor and the 
 vastness of territory to be turned from a wilderness into 
 fruitful fields and busy towns, suggested the wise policy 
 of inviting immigration, of bidding a generous welcome to 
 all comers, urging them to settle among us, occupy land, 
 subdue it, and eat the fat thereof. This liberal policy 
 toward strangers has had a most beneficial moralizing 
 influence on the emotional springs of the American char- 
 acter. For it has in a practical way brought the greatest 
 idea of humanity, the idea of the solidarity of all men and 
 their interests, to bear upon the hereditary feelings of envy 
 and hatred. Here was a whole people which habitually 
 took delight in seeing strangers, men of all races, climes, 
 conditions, and creeds coming over and sharing with the 
 natives in their fruitful acres, their mineral wealth, in their 
 growing prosperity. For the first time in the history of 
 mankind the great mass of a people came to recognize the 
 following cardinal and moral truth, which in other coun- 
 tries and in different environments only the best and wisest 
 were able to grasp: "In a civilized community the interests 
 of all men are indissolubly bound up together. The gain 
 and success of every man in the last resort redounds to the 
 welfare of all. The more a man produces and lays by, 
 seemingly to his own profit and use, the more he increases 
 the working forces of his nation's civilization, the more he 
 contributes in the end towards its productive energy and 
 enhances the resources of all. The failure and wretched- 
 ness of any denizen in the land in some measure cripples 
 the vital powers and lessens the moral spring and elasticity 
 of the whole commonwealth. The more prosperous people 
 there are in the land, the better it is for all. The efforts to 
 rise materially, intellectually, spiritually, made by any citi- 
 zen, help to lift up all others more or less. The degrada-
 
 182 
 
 tion of any person or section, tends to lower the level of the 
 whole neighborhood or of all sections." These facts were 
 discerned by the American people over a hundred years ago. 
 They came not by these infinitely important economic 
 and ethical truths by way of philosophical speculation. 
 The latter were forced upon their mind by the necessities of 
 their peculiar conditions or surroundings. Still, in what- 
 ever way the idea of the solidarity and unity of all men 
 and their interests was reached, it had a most salutary edu- 
 cational effect on the national character. It fostered and 
 strengthened the altruistic feelings, and kept down and 
 weakened the selfish emotions of which envy and hatred 
 are the most intense manifestations. 
 
 The master-builders of the American commonwealth, 
 the conscious representatives of the ideals of civilization, 
 recognized and proclaimed a practical principle of a still 
 loftier character and of a much wider scope. They recog- 
 nized the solidarity and oneness of the interests of all 
 nations. They saw what most of our degenerate public 
 men are incapable of perceiving, that the true interests of 
 the American people do not clash, but are identical with 
 the best interests of all civilized nations. The greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number of nations is also the 
 greatest happiness of America. The latest-born offspring 
 of civilization, America should strive to be the type of 
 the most advanced civilization. She should emancipate 
 herself from all the emotional forces which were engen- 
 dered in mankind by the inexorable necessities and the 
 perpetual warfare of the savage and barbarous past of the 
 race. She should endeavor to cast behind her the fatal 
 legacy of national envy and hatred, bequeathed to the 
 living families of the earth by a long line of ancestors 
 whose feelings, thoughts, and actions were under the sway 
 of nature still red in tooth and claw. America should 
 cherish peace and goodwill toward all people. She should 
 gratefully share in all their material and spiritual bless- 
 ings and take part in all their onward movements. She
 
 should sorrow over their calamities, deserved and unde- 
 served, and regard them as her own misfortunes. America 
 should hate no people for whatever power, glory, and 
 wealth it"may call its own. For, whatever good any people 
 brings to light or produces, increases the possessions and 
 forces of the world's civilization. Whatever things and 
 events impoverish and degrade any nation in the end injure 
 and demoralize the life of humanity. It is the mission of 
 America to be the people of humanity. All influences and 
 powers of growing humanity are to ..converge toward her, 
 and help to enoble and exalt her. The gain of every 
 nation is her gain, the loss of every people is her own 
 loss. She bleeds with the wounds of every people inflicted 
 by war. The healing of every people through wisdom and 
 repentance brings healing also to her ills. She grows with 
 the growth of all nations. She stands in the very center 
 of modern civilization as the ingatherer of all its gifts, 
 the interpreter of all its tendencies, as the realizer of all 
 its ideals. How then should America envy any nation, 
 seeing that every people, while striving to do the very 
 best for itself, is rendering service to her, and helping her 
 to work out her mission of peace and humanity? 
 
 The foregoing considerations, psychological and socio- 
 logical, furnish us with a set of ideas which, in combina- 
 tion with other ideas derived from still higher sources, 
 may be successfully arrayed by us against the impulses of 
 envy in our breast. We should first of all with the utmost 
 emphasis bring home to ourselves the fact, that in the 
 present bountiful conditions of human existence, envy is 
 an infallible sign of moral inferiority and backwardness. 
 Whenever we observe the presence of envy in our bosom, 
 we should not hide from ourselves the degrading nature of 
 that feeling by cloaking it under some specious name, but 
 with a sense of profound shame confess to ourselves that 
 in spite of our intellectual trappings and outward forms of 
 civilization we are still in a state of savagery and bestiality.
 
 1 84 
 
 If we once fully realize this truth, our conscience will 
 compel us to despise ourselves for being envious like wild 
 dogs and wolves or brutal savages. The torments of self- 
 contempt will gradually generate in [us a feeling of abhor- 
 rence against the solicitings of envy and kindle an intense 
 desire to preserve our self-respect by disciplining ourselves 
 to rejoice in the success and excellence of others. By thus 
 developing powerful antagonistic feelings, we may hope in 
 course of time to emancipate ourselves from the tyrannous 
 passion of envy, which is the most characteristic utterance 
 of a nature not yet regenerated by the moral forces of 
 humanity. It is by a slow and painful process of self-edu- 
 cation alone that we may deliver ourselves from the immoral 
 powers of unbridled selfishness which abide in us, being 
 qualities inherited from a long line of savage, fiercely ego- 
 tistical ancestors. 
 
 There are two beings in every one of us, each belong- 
 ing to a different order of things, each swayed by a differ- 
 ent set of impulses. In the hidden recesses of our being 
 there lurks the savage man, with the instincts, greedy 
 desires, and appetites of the brutish ancestors of the human 
 race. But there is also in us the civilized man who strives 
 to fashion his character after the image of an ideal 
 humanity, to be in action like an angel, in works of justice 
 and love like unto God. These two antagonistic beings 
 within our breast are constantly contending for the mastery 
 over us. In all men who strive after the higher life this 
 spiritual battle is being perpetually waged within the con- 
 fines of the soul, reflecting the vaster battle between the 
 good and the evil, between barbarism and culture, which is 
 perpetually being fought in the world at large and in 
 history. If we have once conquered and destroyed envy 
 within us, we may be sure that, in one respect at least, the 
 savage within us has been forever subdued, and that we 
 may count ourselves among the children of light and love 
 and reason. The presence or absence of envy is the
 
 crucial test by which we may judge our moral standing 
 and our true share in the higher and highest attributes of 
 civilization. For envy is the chiefest part of the mental 
 furniture of savagery and bestiality, its principal agency 
 in carrying on successfully the battle of life. But it is 
 glaringly out of harmony with the environment, the require- 
 ments, and the ideals of civilized humanity. In order to 
 overcome entirely and root out that feeling, we must trans- 
 form our whole being, cast out, as it were, the old Adam, 
 and become in feeling, thought, and action dominated by 
 the moral laws and lofty ideals of the most advanced rep- 
 resentatives of civilized mankind.
 
 FROM SELFISHNESS TO 
 BENEVOLENCE. 
 
 i. 
 
 EGOTISM AND ALTRUISM. 
 
 ALL the sins of man against man, be they sins of 
 *"* omission or commission, all envy, hatred, calumny, 
 malevolence, fraud, violence, persecution, spring from 
 selfishness. Egotism, unrestrained and unqualified, is the 
 root of all unrighteousness in feeling, thought, and action. 
 Moral evil does not come from without; it is not produced 
 like physical evil by the constitution of external nature. 
 Its source is in the unregenerated heart of man, such as is 
 shut up within itself and is wholly absorbed in the love of 
 self. We call this selfishness. 
 
 Selfishness is self-love perverted, or rather it is self-love 
 in its primitive force. It is self-love still swayed by blind 
 instincts. It is self-love not yet enlightened and guided 
 by reason, not yet controlled by the moral ideas and trans- 
 formed by tender fellow-feeling into love for others. That 
 selfishness is so very common, so intense and persistent 
 and so hard to conquer, is due to the fact that it is self- 
 love in its untamed, original form of manifestation. For 
 self-love is a tremendous inborn power. It is the primary 
 and all-dominating element of our consciousness. It is a 
 sleepless energy which is actively present in nearly every 
 movement of our mind. We naturally refer all things, all 
 events, and even all ideas, to ourselves, and their value is in 
 the last resort determined by us in accordance with the 
 beneficial or injurious or indifferent relations which they
 
 i8 7 
 
 bear to our own well-being. Every man is after all the 
 center of the universe to himself. 
 
 But there is a vast difference between self-love purified 
 and ennobled by wisdom, changed by moral and religious 
 and social forces into love of God and man, and self-love 
 in its natural state. If left entirely to its own low, 
 instinctive promptings, self-love tends to make our own 
 welfare, real or imaginary, the sole object of every imagi- 
 nation and thought of our heart. It will assert itself with 
 ruthless selfishness. It will have no thought for the happi- 
 ness of others. It will pursue its purely egotistical aims 
 without any regard for the feelings and interests of other 
 human beings. Selfishness or self-love not yet taken in 
 hand and disciplined by the moral ideas, will isolate the 
 individual so that he will live in a narrow, miserable little 
 world of his own, without contact with the noble, vast 
 world of humanity around him. If such self-love were 
 given full sway, if it ever became general, it would break 
 up human society into mutually-repelling, mutually- 
 devouring units. There would be a perennial war of all 
 against all. Man would be a mere animal amongst 
 animals, a fierce beast of prey, more cunning than the fox, 
 more cruel than the tiger, more venomous than the ser- 
 pent. In fact, the few men who came as near being 
 absolutely selfish as is possible for human nature to be, 
 proved themselves monsters of cruelty, veritable fiends 
 incarnate, who filled the earth with violence of every kind. 
 If all human beings were like them, if all were creatures 
 exclusively determined by motives of pitiless egotism, the 
 human race would have no right and reason to live. Its 
 existence would be a blot upon creation. Its complete 
 destruction by some fearful cataclysm, such as a universal 
 deluge, would be a consummation devoutly to be wished. 
 
 But perfect egotism or absolute selfishness is impossible 
 to the children of men, save perhaps a few monstrous 
 criminals such as Richard III and lago. Those human
 
 1 88 
 
 monsters known to history who belong to the category of 
 Richard and lago were as a rule descended from a long 
 line of degraded ancestors and had passed through a long 
 apprenticeship in wickedness. Indestructible and ever 
 present as is self-love, it yet contains within itself the vital 
 germ of altruism, or the love of others. The human race 
 has at no period of its secular life suffered itself to be 
 wholly governed by motives of selfishness. Everywhere 
 altruism has been a mighty factor in developing the dis- 
 tinctive marks of humanity, in molding thought, in 
 shaping conduct. The chiefest and noblest process of 
 human history, consists in bringing altruism, or love of 
 others, to birth, in investing it with power to regulate the 
 relations of man to man. 
 
 It has ever been the office of religion and ethics to 
 combat the evils of selfishness, to wrench the scepter of 
 sovereign power from the hands of egotism. Relentless 
 war upon loveless selfishness, determined effort to make 
 justice and love prevail in the hearts and actions of men, 
 is common to all advanced religions and codes of ethics. 
 But there is a radical difference in their methods, in the 
 view they take of the relation of self-love to altruism, or 
 the love of others. All systems of morality fall apart into 
 two broad classes. One class, of which Buddhism is the 
 most extreme development, assumes that altruism, or the 
 love for others with the duties and sacrifices it implies, is 
 hopelessly opposed to self-love and its claims. It holds 
 that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the self- 
 regarding and the other-regarding tendencies of man, 
 ascribing the former to what it calls our lower nature and 
 the latter to what it designates as our higher nature. The 
 systems of ethics, religious or philosophical, which belong 
 to this class, regard altruism alone as distinctly moral, and 
 consider self-love as morally indifferent or even essentially 
 immoral. According to their view, we have duties towards 
 others, but none towards ourselves. The only duty we owe
 
 189 
 
 ourselves is to practice justice and benevolence towards 
 our fellow-men. The other class, of which Yahvism, or 
 the moral monotheism of the Bible, is the highest repre- 
 sentative, brings altruism into closest organic connection 
 with self-love. Love for others is conceived as the flower 
 of self-love. Benevolence is the perfect fruit of our unfold- 
 ing self-love. The duties of justice and mercy bloom 
 forth from the primary duty of self-development and self- 
 expansion which we owe to our own humanity. The more 
 genuine and spiritual a man's love for himself, the nobler 
 and deeper will his love for his fellow-men be. Those 
 systems of ethics which we call Yahvistic, foster and 
 vitalize love for others by appealing to the highest 
 aspirations of self-love. The opposite system, to which 
 we may give the generic name of Buddhistic, attack and 
 vilify self-love, in order to magnify altruism and cause all 
 our moral energies to be exclusively devoted to it. In 
 giving a succinct exposition of the Buddhistic theory of 
 moral conduct, we are at the same time giving the general 
 characteristics of all kindred systems of morality which 
 are less developed and consistent. 
 
 The clearly-conceived and ultimate aim of Buddhism is 
 utterly to destroy the love of self and to substitute for it the 
 love of others, boundless love for all human beings as well 
 as for all dumb creatures. The love of self is declared to 
 be the cause not only of all moral obliquity, of all sins and 
 vices, all hatred and violence, but also of all the physical 
 ills which flesh is heir to. In order to deliver yourself 
 from the curse of moral and physical evil, your love for 
 your own self must become absolutely extinct in you. 
 You must be dead to pleasure and pain, to the pangs of 
 hunger and thirst, of heat and cold. You must grow 
 utterly indifferent to sickness, old age, and death, indifferent 
 to the world's esteem and contempt. You must cut off" in 
 yourself every root of desire and hope. The only hope 
 you mortals should cherish is that of being one day wholly
 
 i go 
 
 rid of the consciousness of self, the hope of extinguishing 
 in yourself the desire of distinct personality. When you 
 have succeeded in reaching this stage of self-extinguish- 
 ment, you have entered Nirvana. You have forever 
 broken to pieces the tabernacle of sense-life and have 
 escaped from the miserable prison of selfhood. Then you 
 have attained to Buddhahood and are greater than any god. 
 With the destruction of all your self-love you have volun- 
 tarily destroyed your personality together with all evils 
 inseparable from it. You have ceased to be an individual 
 being and become immersed in the universal, dreamless, 
 wishless ground of all appearances. 
 
 In order to become thus impersonal, universal, in order 
 to lose his own self and blend with all, a man must put 
 forth tremendous efforts of self-denial and self-forgetfulness. 
 He must live for all but himself, in order to become at one 
 with all. He must lead a life of perpetual self-sacrifice for 
 the good of others. His whole life, all his labors and 
 thoughts must be entirely given to his fellow-creatures, 
 both human and animal. He must cast himself away for 
 them and consume himself for their benefit. He should 
 treat all creatures with infinite pity, carry their life's bur- 
 den, soothe their pain, feed them, if need be, upon his own 
 heart's blood. He should commiserate them for the very 
 fact that they are in the toils of existence, from which 
 none but a few elect have the power to escape by virtue of 
 their heroic self-extinguishment. For, according to Budd- 
 hism, to live is to suffer. L/ife is a disease, of which all 
 evils are necessary symptoms or concomitants. Although 
 but a small number of men, the wisest of mortals, can be 
 completely cured of this disease called life, yet our love 
 should offer to our hapless fellow-men whatever partial 
 remedies it can find. But the best remedy one can give 
 them, is to teach them the Buddhistic way of salvation, to 
 indicate to them the path to Nirvana, though a few men 
 only have the wisdom and moral courage to tread it to 
 the end.
 
 191 
 
 Thus, Buddhism conceived the bold scheme to over- 
 come the evils of selfishness and prevent all manifestations 
 of egotism by digging up all the roots of self-love and con- 
 suming them in the fire of life-long self-sacrifice and self- 
 extinction. To Jews and Christians, brought up in the 
 wholesome moral atmosphere of prophetic monotheism, 
 the great scheme of Buddhistic altruism appears unnatural, 
 irrational, and impossible of realization. It is itself the 
 grievous disease of a noble oriental mind, gone astray in its 
 search after the highest good. The Buddhistic ideal of 
 delivery from selfishness by condemning and destroying 
 self-love is at bottom immoral, since it is an outrage 
 upon the dignity of the human personality. If the love of 
 one's own self, the mightiest impulse of our nature, is rad- 
 ically and eternally evil, there is no reason whatever to 
 hold that love for others is essentially good. If love is 
 an evil in its fountain-head, in the original self, it can 
 not be a virtue in its outflow towards other selves. If 
 every individual is to regard his own life and welfare as 
 utterly valueless, he ought to consider the life and happi- 
 ness of his fellow-men as equally worthless.
 
 II. 
 
 PESSIMISM AND MEDIEVAL ASCETICISM. 
 
 Viewed from the standpoint of progressive civilization, 
 Buddhism appears as a sad failure. It has become a 
 blight to the highest moral, mental, and social life of its fol- 
 lowers, for the reason that it attempts to establish the reign 
 of benevolence upon the ruins of the human personality, 
 whose foundation is the love of self and the belief in the 
 infinite value and dignity of the individual. It tries to 
 destroy the sins and evils of selfishness by crushing out all 
 love and respect for self. The remedy is at least as bad as 
 the evil which it is to cure. For the economic, mental, and 
 moral health of a race mostly depends on the vigor of indi- 
 vidual minds, upon the energy with which, within legiti- 
 mate bounds, every person asserts himself and exerts his 
 faculties for his welfare and self-expansion. Feeble indi- 
 vidual characters, with but a languid love of self, careless 
 of their rights, indifferent to the pleasures of existence, 
 make a feeble and cowardly people that easily falls a prey 
 to the strong will of despots and readily submits to being 
 robbed by the violent few of the fruits of their labor and 
 cheated out of the gifts of life. In spite of its lofty ethics 
 of benevolence, Buddhism, like other kindred theories of 
 life, has emasculated human nature and trained men to be 
 patient slaves that suffer meekly, like sheep while being 
 preyed upon by wolves. Buddhism is pessimism, the most 
 consistent and gloomiest pessimism known to the student of 
 thought. All other pessimistic conceptions of life, ancient 
 and modern, religious or philosophical, are either copies of 
 it or have risen independently from a like sense of hopeless 
 physical and moral wretchedness and from an intense 
 desire to conquer selfishness by showing the utter vanity 
 ot all things which men desire and to obtain which they
 
 193 
 
 sin against their fellow-men. The very soul of Buddhism 
 and of every other kind of pessimism is the belief that life 
 is not worth living, that it is a pernicious illusion which 
 mocks us with its vain joys and torments us with its 
 innumerable evils. It endeavors to save man from all evils 
 and emancipate him from the sinful impulses of his 
 selfishness by teaching him to regard his life as a hollow 
 mockery and to become indifferent and insensible to the 
 pleasures and pains of existence. 
 
 Closely considered, all pessimism, and especially that of 
 Buddhism, is the very refinement of selfishness. Because 
 life is not perfect happiness, because it is tainted with evil, 
 it is declared to be an unbearable curse, from which one 
 should seek to escape one way or another. Because self- 
 love is seen to bring forth sin as well as good, self-love 
 must be cut off root and branch. This is the philosophy 
 of despair, despair of the world and of the human soul ! 
 At sundry periods of history large numbers of men in the 
 Orient and in the Occident took refuge in the religion of 
 world-despair and self-despair. 
 
 Medieval asceticism, in its worst form of aberration 
 from the healthy moral ideals of the Bible, came danger- 
 ously near the Buddhistic ideal of world-despair and self- 
 extinguishment. L,ike Buddhism it held that this world is 
 a place of boundless wretchedness, and is governed by 
 powers of evil. Man is the principal factor in making the 
 earth an abode of misery. His greedy selfishness, his love 
 of self and of pleasure, has from the very beginning 
 marred the beauty of creation and. called into existence a 
 swarming host of physical and moral evils. Lawless self- 
 love begets all evil desires and is the serpent which 
 beguiles man to put forth his hands after forbidden fruits. 
 Christian asceticism taught that the love of our mortal self 
 in any form is the parent of all sins against God and man. 
 It is the primeval curse which began with the first man 
 and has been inherited by all his descendants. This curse
 
 can only be overcome by making life-long war upon the 
 love ot self, by the sacrifice of self for the good of others, 
 by absolute self-renunciation for the love of God and 
 man. 
 
 Self-contempt, self-abasement, and self-torment were 
 believed to be the necessary conditions of a life acceptable 
 to God, the only means of redemption from the indwelling 
 curse of sin. L,ove God and your fellow-men, love even 
 your enemies, serve them and sacrifice yourself for them. 
 But treat your, own self as a thing accursed, which can be 
 saved only by the death of your love for self, by the infinite 
 grace of God, and by the merit of the self-sacrifice of the 
 god-man. The root of all sin is the love of self, the yearn- 
 ing after happiness on earth. Kill in yourself every desire 
 to do good to yourself, remove far from you every pleasure. 
 'Rather seek the opportunity to do yourself all possible 
 bodily harm. Torture your flesh ; quench every longing 
 after joy and honor. Humble yourself to the dust, esteem 
 yourself no better than a miserable worm that deserves 
 to be crushed underfoot by divine justice. These ideas of 
 Christian asceticism in its most advanced form, these aspi- 
 rations after self-abandonment and self-extinction appear 
 marvelously like some leading conceptions of Buddhism. 
 In fact, there is hardly a doubt that directly or indirectly 
 Christian asceticism both as to its ideas and institutions, 
 was largely derived from Buddhist India. Various waves 
 of Buddhistic influence passed over the Western world at 
 various times before and after the Christian era. Even in 
 our own days Buddhism exercises a peculiar spell over cer- 
 tain minds in Europe and America. For theosophy is 
 nothing but Buddhism half-disguised, half-understood, 
 combined with heterogeneous Christian ideas and certain 
 evolutionary concepts of modern science. In like manner, 
 Christian asceticism together with other related phenomena 
 was in large part due to a current of Buddhistic ethics and 
 world-despair, which once swept over Western Asia, Egypt, 
 and various occidental countries.
 
 195 
 
 Bat the fact that medieval asceticism was saturated 
 with Christian ideas and hopes makes a vast difference 
 between it and the Buddhist idea of self-effacement. The 
 ultimate aim of the Buddhist is to annihilate his conscious- 
 ness of self, to be forever delivered from the disease of life 
 in this world and any other possible hereafter. In order to 
 achieve this, he proceeds to extinguish his love of self, to 
 quench every desire after any personal good, to deaden 
 every impulse of self-assertion and self-preservation. For 
 he regards the love of self as the final source of individual 
 existence. From it springs self-consciousness, which is the 
 cause of all sins and evil. The genuine esoteric Buddhist 
 abhors individual conscious existence in every form and in 
 every place, in heaven no less than on earth. But to the 
 Christian ascetic only this earthly life appears as a burden 
 and a curse. He loathes his mortal body as the vile prison 
 of his immortal soul. But he is far from despising life as 
 such. He does not, like the Buddhist, wish his personality 
 to pass entirely out of existence, to be blown out like the 
 flame of a candle. On the contrary, he aspires after the 
 eternal life, a life of perfect bliss in the next world. He 
 is determined to purchase for himself everlasting and 
 unclouded happiness in heaven at the price of the transient 
 and contemptible happiness which our miserable earth can 
 offer. He suffers willingly here ; nay, inflicts tortures upon 
 himself, in order to earn beyond the grave celestial joys, 
 not the least of which will be to feast his eyes upon the 
 torments of the enemies of God in hell. He humbles 
 himself on earth, in order to be exalted in heaven. The 
 pleasures he casts away here in this short sublunar life, he 
 firmly believes, will be repaid to him with a thousandfold 
 interest in the eternal hereafter. He treats himself with 
 contempt here below in the hope of receiving one day a 
 crown of glory above. He makes himself as one of the 
 despised and outcast of the earth, in order to range among 
 the blessed elect in Paradise, and be one day venerated as a
 
 196 
 
 saint, whose intercession will be implored by worshipers 
 and whose very bones will work numerous miracles. In its 
 core Christian asceticism was an audacious sort of egotism. 
 Behind the most abject forms of self-humiliation there 
 lurked the pride of the individual, daring to outrage nature 
 in himself, and spurning her gifts and joys, in order to 
 attain a supernatural eminence and happiness in heaven. 
 
 Both Buddhism and Christian asceticism challenge our 
 admiration, because they show what heroic efforts high- 
 aspiring men have put forth to destroy within themselves 
 what they regarded as the root of evil. They are a moral 
 inspiration to us, because they illustrate the noble struggle 
 of humanity to conquer the baneful forces of selfishness 
 and fire all hearts with the desire to lead a life of benevo- 
 lence. But they are nevertheless irrational extremes. 
 Whatever good they may have directly and indirectly accom- 
 plished, the impartial student can not help regarding them 
 as hostile to the development of a healthy and vigorous 
 humanity. For they are at war with the human personal- 
 ity and in a conflict with nature and God. In every such 
 conflict man, however heroic, will suffer shock. Nature 
 will not allow herself to be expelled from her legitimate 
 empire^ by means of philosophical, subtle theories nor by 
 fantastic religious enthusiasm. She will come back with 
 fiercer power and wreck the man or sect that dares offer 
 violence to her everlasting laws which are seated in the 
 constitution of humanity. 
 
 God has implanted an overpowering love of self, of 
 happiness, in every human being. It is the part of supreme 
 unwisdom, it is rebellion against His will to try to uproot 
 the love for self and desire for personal wellbeing, in order 
 to bring about the reign of benevolence. Whenever and 
 wherever attempts of this kind were seriously made for any 
 length of time, they led to hypocrisy, to mental, moral, and 
 social stagnation, to a deplorable paralysis of individual 
 energy. Sooner or later the vital impulses of human
 
 nature, violently suppressed by an unnatural theory of life, 
 rise in furious rebellion, and as a reaction bring on a reign 
 of unbridled selfishness and shameless sensuality. The 
 divine order of things in nature and man can not be vio- 
 lated with impunity.
 
 198 
 
 III. 
 
 THE REASONABLENESS OF BIBLICAL ETHICS. 
 
 The religion of the Bible, or Yahvism, is characterized 
 throughout by what we may call a spirit of reasonable- 
 ness and naturalness. Even in its loftiest moral and relig- 
 ious ideals it is still in harmony with human nature. It 
 never makes war upon the perennial qualities of the 
 human soul, and demands of no man supernatural virtue 
 to which his being can not respond. Yahvism is a religion 
 of humanity and wisdom, because it offers no violence to 
 the inborn qualities of human nature, but uses them as 
 fruitful seeds, out of which it endeavors to develop the 
 highest moral attributes and powers of humanity. The 
 supreme end of Israel's religion and ethics is to establish 
 the reign of universal love and benevolence on earth. But 
 it does not strive to reach that end by condemning self-love 
 as the root of all evil. It does not teach that the love for 
 self must be rooted out of man's heart, before justice and 
 mercy can be made to flourish in all hearts and bear fruit 
 in all human relations. On the contrary, it takes self-love 
 as a fundamental and indestructible fact, and makes it the 
 basis of a noble code of ethics. 
 
 It is agreed on all hands that the life-principle of 
 Mosaic ethics is contained in the commandment, Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. This is the whole law 
 of Moses, say the sages of the Talmud. All particular 
 moral laws are merely deductions from it, every statute of 
 righteousness is simply a special application of that uni- 
 versal principle. Now, this root-principle of justice and 
 mercy presupposes the love of self as a basal fact given in 
 the constitution of man. It is taken for granted that self- 
 love is morally good, that it is pleasing to God and willed
 
 by him. Self-love is assumed as the inexhaustible fount- 
 ain-head, from which the stream of general love peren- 
 nially flows. Love thy neighbor as thyself: in this maxim 
 the love of others, or altruism, is made absolutely dependent 
 on the love for self. If the latter is held to be immoral or 
 morally indifferent, the former has nothing left to rest its 
 claim on. If it were a sin of nature to love one's self, it 
 would be equally sinful to love others. We should have to 
 draw this inference, paradoxical and iniquitous though it 
 might sound. The river can never rise higher than its 
 spring, and the spring of all love, all feelings and aspira- 
 tions, is the mighty and sleepless love which every indi- 
 vidual bears to himself. The spring of all humanity is 
 the individual self-consciousness. The individual soul is 
 the spring of all the living forces of knowledge and wis- 
 dom. The individual character is the vital spring of 
 humanity's moral dignity and god-like life. The mental, 
 moral, and artistic originality of every age springs from the 
 creative energy of individuals. The glory and work and 
 power of humankind have their center and well-spring in 
 individual minds and hearts. 
 
 The health and progress of a people are indissolubly 
 bound up with the esteem in which every individual 
 holds himself, with the dauntless courage displayed by 
 every man in claiming his inalienable right to pursue 
 his own happiness and to develop his faculties untrammeled 
 by tyrannical social restraints. Every nation still low in the 
 scale of civilization, every people already in a state of 
 decay, shows contempt for the individual and treats his 
 welfare and rights as matters of slight moment. The indi- 
 viduals themselves have little respect for their own selves, 
 and do not find the center of gravity of their existence in 
 their own manhood and character. Society or the nation 
 becomes an all devouring Moloch, to whom the individuals 
 are mercilessly sacrificed, body and soul. 
 
 The distinctive and creative principle of Yahvism is a 
 noble and wise individualism. It clothes every individual
 
 2OO 
 
 with an infinite moral dignity and worth. Every man is 
 declared to be made in the spiritual image of God. Every 
 individual represents the potential godlikeness of man and 
 mankind. Every man is a world in himself, a microcosm, 
 that through the bonds of love is to form a harmony of 
 universal beneficent relations with his fellow-men. Every 
 man is bidden to honor in himself the majesty of human- 
 ity that rests upon him and to reverence his own soul as 
 an immortal being stamped with the likeness of the Per- 
 fect and Holy One. Every individual stands face to face 
 with his God and Father. His ear may hear the voice of 
 the universal Lawgiver; his heart may throb with the 
 pulses of the universal Love ; his mind may be filled with 
 the revelations coming to him from the universal Soul. 
 The Ten Commandments never use the plural, you, but the 
 singular, thou. They address themselves to the individual 
 man, revealing to him their eternal Thou shalt and Thou 
 shalt not. 
 
 The supreme law of morality, the principle of all- 
 embracing love also addresses itself to the individual, say- 
 ing, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. It clearly 
 inculcates a twofold love, the love of self and the love of 
 others. It is thy duty to love thyself, seeing that thou art 
 made in the image of God like thy fellow-men. It is thy 
 duty to watch over thine own self, to develop thy mental 
 faculties, to unfold thy moral possibilities, to make paradise 
 for thyself on earth, as far as it is within thy power. The 
 beginning of all morality is to love our own soul truly and 
 nobly, to do good to our own self in the widest and high- 
 est sense, to seek for ourselves the richest and largest life 
 attainable. It is our duty to make our existence complete, 
 beautiful, joyous. Our love for ourselves must be so strong 
 that it shall lead us to the summits of humanity. Where 
 the best have stood, there we, too, must endeavor to gain a 
 firm foothold. Where the happiest of mortals have dwelt, 
 there we, too, on such sunny heights, ought to pitch our
 
 2OI 
 
 tents. If we have no such duties towards ourselves, we 
 have no similar duties of love to discharge towards our fel- 
 low-men. If our love for ourself does not bind us to seek 
 our own highest good, whence should the obligation spring 
 to love our neighbor and to put forth every effort to further 
 his welfare in every possible way? 
 
 Should one answer and say, To love our neighbor is sim- 
 ply a duty commanded by God, and we must blindfoldly 
 obey the will of the almighty Lawgiver; to this we reply, 
 Such a duty, such obedience would be moral bondage, not 
 moral freedom. It would not be a law of our humanity, but 
 a law forced upon us by a will external to ourselves, though 
 it be the will of an omnipotent Power. The will of God, 
 if it is to bring us moral freedom, must well up as a reve- 
 lation from our own will. Every moral principle must 
 flow spontaneously from the deep fountain of our being. 
 Every moral idea must be a manifestation of the constitu- 
 tion of our soul. All morality must derive its vitality from 
 the well-spring of our conscious energy and expanding 
 existence. That well-spring of moral life must be to 
 every man his own personality. The source of our ethical 
 energy must be the noble and aspiring love of self which 
 the Master of life has implanted in our soul. From it are 
 all the issues of moral life, of all the forces and activities 
 of benevolence. 
 
 The whole secret of benevolence, the very soul of 
 humanity, therefore, lies expressed in the supreme moral 
 command and principle of Yahvism. Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself. Love thyself as duty requires. Love 
 thyself with the love due to the godlike dignity of human- 
 ity which resides in thy soul. Strive to crown thyself with 
 the highest attributes of the race. Endeavor to incarnate 
 in thy character all those qualities which make man but a 
 little less than a god. Aspire to realize in thy life the 
 ideals of humanity. Love thyself so as to make thyself 
 a center of spiritual power and beneficent influences. Let
 
 202 
 
 thy love for thyself bring about the steady growth of thy 
 mental faculties and thy moral powers. Let thy love of 
 self manifest itself in the continuous expansion of thy per- 
 sonality, in the ceaseless enrichment of thy life. 
 
 But love thy neighbor as thyself, just because he is 
 neighbor to thine own true self. Love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self, because he is of nearest kin to thine own essence and 
 being by virtue of your common humanity. Love him as 
 thyself, because what is truly human, what is godlike and 
 eternal in him, is identical in origin, nature, and destiny 
 with what constitutes thine own truest and noblest self. 
 Love thy fellow-man as thyself, because he is thy fellow in 
 feelings and thoughts, in moral endowments and aspira- 
 tions. He drinks with thee of the same fountains of 
 human joys and sorrows. His mind and thine own feed 
 and grow upon the same knowledge. The same eternal 
 ideas abide as supreme ruling powers in his soul and in 
 thine. The same awful moral "ought" is written upon 
 the tables of his heart and of thine own. You both live 
 and die, prosper and perish by the same universal divine 
 laws. Thou and he represent the same life of humanity in 
 God and the life of God in humanity. His self and thine 
 own self are finite and imperfect images of the infinite Self. 
 You both are perfectible images of your common perfect 
 Father. 
 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, thus means that 
 we shall regard our neighbor as forming mentally, morally, 
 and spiritually a part of our own self. We are to love our 
 fellow-man like our own self, because we and he are closely 
 related living parts of the vaster never-dying self of human- 
 ity. The life-blood of humanity courses alike through our 
 veins, the general mind of humanity embraces and fashions 
 his mind and thy mind. In loving my fellow-man as 
 myself I really love my own self, I love a representative of 
 my own humanity. But let our thought mount still 
 higher! We are to love our neighbor as ourself, because
 
 203 
 
 his soul and our soul have the source of their being and 
 qualities in one universal creative Soul. His spirit and our 
 spirit have their eternal bond of unity in one supreme per- 
 fect Spirit and Love. We are all bound up together in the 
 unbroken identity of His life. All our love and light come 
 to us from His being. Our human love, derived as it is from 
 the divine Love, should flow from heart to heart and make 
 one music of grace and benevolence of our diverse lives. 
 Is it not the loftiest ideal of humanity to walk in the 
 ways of God? Now, we believe of Him that His love 
 embraces all His creatures, that all the children of man live, 
 move, and have their being in Him. If there is any mean- 
 ing in the grand conception of man being created in the 
 image of God, our life must reflect the all-embracing life of 
 God, our love must walk in the luminous foot-steps of the 
 divine Love. Our kinship with God should be realized and 
 demonstrated in our godlike benevolent relations towards 
 our neighbor. We should identify our selves with our fel- 
 low-man in feeling, thought, and action. Let him be in 
 very deed a neighbor to our heart and mind ! We should 
 bear his personality, his joys and sorrows, his honor and 
 welfare in our soul. We should love and respect him as 
 our second self, or alter ego. We should give his whole 
 being an habitation in our heart and mind. His person- 
 ality should be embraced by, and bound up with, our con- 
 sciousness of self and our love of self.
 
 204 
 
 IV. 
 
 BENEVOLENCE is SELF-REALIZATION. 
 
 He that truly loves his neighbor like himself realizes 
 both in others and in himself the ideal of human life. His 
 pure and strong love tends to ennoble the nature of his 
 neighbor, to strengthen his character, and fill him with a 
 sense of gladness and hopefulness. By virtue of such love a 
 man becomes an uplifting moral power and a source of hap- 
 piness to all with whom he comes in contact. Of such a 
 man it may be said, as of Abraham, that he is a blessing to 
 his fellow-men or that many of the children of men are 
 blessed in him. The beautiful life of such a person reflects 
 the beauty of the countenance of divine Love. Such 
 conduct is an inspiring influence, a veritable revelation of 
 the moral possibilities of human nature. Such love, which 
 goes forth to meet all fellow-men with words and acts of 
 soul-born benevolence, does with irresistible force bring 
 home the conviction to all hearts that perfect Love made 
 the world in the beginning and continues to manifest itself 
 and work salvation through the godlike love of noble 
 men. 
 
 On the other hand, it is only by loving our neighbor 
 like ourself, by identifying his personality with the con- 
 sciousness and love of our own self, that we can attain the 
 fullness of our individual life. This love of others, vary- 
 ing in intensity and duration according to merit, according 
 to closer or remoter natural bonds of fellowship, is self- 
 love in ideal transformation. It is the truest realization 
 of our own selfhood. It is the expansion of our self-con- 
 sciousness to ever wider dimensions of humanity. Through 
 sympathy, pity, love, and friendship we take up into our 
 soul other personalities, other lives and their contents, 
 their griefs and joys, their hopes, aspirations, and manifold 
 experiences.
 
 205 
 
 This absorption of other beings into our conscious self, 
 this blending in thought of other personalities with our 
 own, is no fantastic ideal, to which the realities of our life 
 in no way correspond. On the contrary, it is the law of our 
 mind, the immutable condition of all mental development. 
 For the intellectual, moral, and spiritual growth of the indi- 
 vidual consists in the process of assimilating the contents of 
 other men's lives, their knowledge, their skill, their varied 
 experience. As the body lives and grows by the food 
 which it receives from without and incorporates into its 
 own organism, even so does the life and growth of the 
 mind depend on the mental and moral materials which it 
 draws into itself and blends with its own being. The 
 more a man appropriates to himself of the feelings and 
 thoughts, of the moral personality of other human beings, 
 living or departed, the richer and larger and nobler does 
 his life grow to be. The position of every man in the 
 scale of humanity is determined by the share which he has 
 in; the general and individual life of his fellow-men. In 
 fact, a man is a man only in so far as he is a fellow-man to 
 other human beings, in so far as there subsists between 
 him and others a fellowship of ideas and ideals, a bond of 
 moral relations, a community of benevolent -'feelings and 
 actions. 
 
 The superior man holds within himself the best intel- 
 lectual, moral, and spiritual results of his time and of all 
 past generations. He bears within himself a world of 
 thoughts, to which great minds gave birth in life-long 
 labor. He has assimilated to himself that world of ideas 
 through knowledge and made it the living contents of his 
 own self. All thinkers, seers, lawgivers, poets, artists, and 
 statesmen, of whose life and works he has a thorough 
 knowledge, dwell transfigured in his mind. They live 
 incarnated in his self-consciousness and constitute precious 
 fruitful elements of his innermost life. The world's 
 greatest men are those who gather up and absorb into
 
 206 
 
 themselves the world's deepest and richest experience, who 
 live over in thought the life of humanity, and reproduce in 
 themselves the intellectual, ethical, and religious evolutions 
 of mankind. Such typical men show in a glorious way 
 how the individual may identify himself with the life of 
 all. By reaching out after the largest wisdom of the world 
 such men advance the boundaries of their individual self, 
 and enlarge them to the vast circles of humanity's exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Thus, the continual blending of our mind with the 
 minds of other human beings, through ever-increasing com- 
 munity of thought, the taking up of other persons into our 
 consciousness as objects of knowledge, constitutes the 
 growing life and mental wealth of our individual self. 
 The more truly a man loves himself, and the more intensely 
 he seeks his own highest good, the more thorough a knowl- 
 edge he will try to gain of the surrounding world, of the 
 world of nature and of man. But while the knowledge we 
 have of our fellow-men is the most precious of our soul's 
 possessions, the idea of benevolence comes in at the same 
 time and demands of us that we should make every effort 
 to learn to know our neighbor, to have insight into his 
 character, to understand the motives of his actions. The 
 first step in benevolence towards our neighbor is, to use a 
 homely but expressive phrase, to take notice of him. The 
 beginning of all fellowship is to deem our fellow-men 
 worth observing and knowing. We should place ourselves 
 in thought in the position of our neighbor and do unto 
 him as we would be done by him. What we desire above . 
 all things is that we should be favorably known to our fel- 
 low-men, that they bear in their minds a dear and faithful 
 image of our character and conduct Nothing is more 
 painful than to be unknown and unappreciated. We con- 
 sider it a deadly insult to be told by any person that we 
 are beneath his notice. What anguish to know that our 
 fellow-men keep our personality entirely out of their mind,
 
 207 
 
 that our happiness and our very existence are matters of 
 utter indifference to them ! Many of us would prefer death 
 to such an awful isolation. No exile feels himself as 
 wretched as he who knows himself exiled from the thoughts 
 of his fellow-men. The most miserable of outcasts is he 
 whom his fellow-men have cast out of their soul as a crea- 
 ture unworthy of holding a place in their mind and heart. 
 The most grievous part of a criminal's punishment consists 
 in his being banished from the interest, esteem, and thought 
 of his fellow-men. Imprisonment is but an external or 
 material expression of a man's being cut off from the com- 
 munity of minds. Solitary confinement is the most 
 emphatic and dreadful form of a person's excommunica- 
 tion from the social mind. In the solemn language of the 
 Bible, the man whose crimes have rendered him unworthy 
 of human fellowship, his soul is utterly cut off from the 
 midst of his people. 
 
 On the other hand, what unspeakable delight it is to be 
 known to many thousands of fellow-men, to be understood, 
 honored, and loved by them. To live reflected in the con- 
 sciousness, to dwell crowned with esteem in thousands and 
 tens of thousands of souls, is indeed the ambition of noble 
 spirits. The highest reward which mankind can bestow 
 upon the self-sacrificing promoters of human progress, the 
 pathfinders of humanity and the revealers of wisdom, is to 
 keep their personalities and the story of their achievements 
 enshrined in the grateful memory of all generations. The 
 love of such immortality, which fires the imagination and 
 kindles the heart of the greatest mortals, is after all the 
 desire common to all men to be known to and honored by as 
 many human beings as possible. As the hart pants after 
 the brooks of water, so does every man long after recogni- 
 tion. The wish to be recognized and not to be overlooked, 
 to be known and admired and not be condemned to inglo- 
 rious obscurity, to be appreciated according to our merits 
 and not be misjudged and misprized, is quenched only
 
 208 
 
 with our last breath. This desire reaches with every one 
 of us beyond this life and plants the hope upon the grave, 
 that we shall not be cast into utter oblivion, that we 
 shall not wholly die on earth, but live transfigured in the 
 love and admiration of our fellow-men. 
 
 What our self-love so eagerly demands of others, so 
 ardently hopes to attain from the gracious will of our fel- 
 low-men, the idea of benevolence bids us do unto our 
 neighbor from a sense of moral obligation. The divine 
 command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," 
 first of all requires of us that we should try to know and 
 judge our neighbor as we want others to know and judge 
 us. The benevolent man shows to every person, with 
 whom he comes in contact that he takes genuine pleasure 
 in knowing him. It is especially by this mark that we 
 may recognize the moral greatness of a man. In his 
 mouth the words of common politeness used on making a 
 new acquaintance, "I am glad to know you," are no hol- 
 low phrase, but are full of bewitching kindness and soulful 
 sincerity. Among the countless blessings which great and 
 good men bestow upon their fellow-men, one of the very 
 greatest is the sense of joy and moral exaltation which 
 they give us, whenever they hold converse with us. Their 
 words, their looks, their whole bearing make it manifest, 
 that they delight in knowing us and take a heartfelt inter- 
 est in our personality and welfare. A soul of benevolence 
 beams upon us from their eyes ; graceful recognition of our 
 worth is conveyed by them in subtile ways by what they 
 say and leave unsaid. We are impressed with the fact 
 that they bear our personality in their mind and heart and 
 that we stand high in the scale of their esteem and affec- 
 tion. They make us feel that they place us on a level with 
 themselves. By the magic of their benevolence they raise 
 us in our own estimation and inspire us with strong faith 
 in our character and faculties. 
 
 Their benevolence thus affords the most exquisite of 
 spiritual joys and confers upon us the greatest of benefits.
 
 209 
 
 Men of this kind, distinguished above all others by the 
 genius of benevolence, are loved and followed with bound- 
 less enthusiasm by multitudes of their fellow-men, who are 
 irresistibly drawn within the magic circle of their magnetic 
 personality. This is the secret of the wonderful mastery 
 which certain great men, born leaders of the people, have 
 over their fellow-men. It is intellectual greatness crowned 
 with the attributes of love which exercises such a spell 
 over all minds. We take pride and delight in the surpass- 
 ing powers of their intellect and character, because their 
 behavior convinces us that they bear us in their mind and 
 embrace us with their love. We never envy the greatness 
 of truly benevolent men. For we feel that we have a share 
 in their glory; knowing that we live in their soul, we 
 identify ourselves with and rejoice in the magnitude of 
 their mind. Because they exalt us in our own eyes, we 
 wish to see them exalted in the sight of all. Because they 
 descend to the humblest of men and lift them up to them- 
 selves with the arms of benevolence, all men conspire to 
 elevate them above their fellows and heap honors upon 
 their head. For love begets love. The harvest of benev- 
 olence is honor and joy to him who receives and double 
 honor and joy to him who gives. 
 
 Such a thing of beauty and joy is benevolence, such 
 grace and favor does it win for those who display it, that 
 hypocrites and demagogues mimic its ways and copy its 
 forms, in order to gain the love and confidence of their 
 dupes. The art which the self-seeking politicians culti- 
 vate above all others, is to make every voter believe that 
 they feel honored and delighted in knowing him, that they 
 are his admiring friends, that they have his well-being spe- 
 cially at heart. The austere, seemingly cold-hearted patriot 
 of surpassing talent will as a rule be beaten in the race for 
 office and honor by the shallow demagogue, who knows 
 human nature and has learned how to play the part of a 
 devoted lover of his fellow-citizens. So quenchless a long- 
 ing have men for the tokens of benevolence that they look
 
 2IO 
 
 for them even in the most practical dealings with their fel- 
 low-men. In all callings those persons earn largest suc- 
 cess who wear the graces of benevolence, whose manners 
 and words are brimful of generous recognition and hearty 
 good-will towards all with whom they happen to be in 
 touch. 
 
 The proud man is hated and shunned. We naturally 
 shrink from having any transactions with him, even 
 though it entail upon us a sacrifice of material advantages. 
 The proud man wounds us in our tenderest feelings. He 
 refuses to satisfy the strongest desire of our social nature. 
 He disdains to give us even for a moment a place in his 
 mind. He separates himself from his neighbor, and places 
 himself upon a lofty pedestal, from which he looks down 
 upon him as a creature that is far beneath him. Instead 
 of raising their fellow-men in their own estimation, as is 
 every man's duty, the proud try to humble them and make 
 them feel their inferiority. The very presence of the 
 proud gives pain and excites feelings of resentment and 
 aversion. Pride is, therefore, sin and rebellion against the 
 idea of benevolence which is the primary law and condi- 
 tion of humanity.
 
 211 
 
 V. 
 
 BENEVOLENCE AND JUSTICE. 
 
 Justice and benevolence are of such close kin, they have 
 so many features and relations of life in common, that it is 
 often hard to determine whether a certain line of conduct 
 was commanded by the former or the latter. In many 
 cases justice and benevolence must go hand in hand; in 
 order to reach a certain end, they must work together each 
 in its own way, in order to energize the will and give light 
 and direction to mind and heart. Thus, justice demands 
 that we should be absolutely just towards our neighbor in 
 passing judgment on his character or his actions. But the 
 idea of justice alone will seldom suffice to make a man per- 
 fectly just in forming and expressing an opinion touching 
 the merits and demerits of his fellow-men. It is easy 
 enough to be scrupulously just with regard to things exter- 
 nal, material. It requires no very keen sympathy for a 
 man, in order to mete out to him full justice in tangible 
 matters, to give him just weight and just measure of what 
 he may claim as his property or his rights. But when it 
 comes to judging of a man's inner life, of his character, the 
 quality of his mind, his virtues and failings, his strength 
 and weakness, his aspirations and achievements, the mere 
 sense of justice often will not bring us far. Justice in this 
 respect frequently proves a blind guide of the blind. 
 
 We needs must have the lamp of love in order to search 
 the innermost chambers of a fellow-man's heart and being. 
 We may try our utmost to do full justice to our neighbor, 
 but as long as we lack the light of benevolence, we grope 
 in darkness and can not see him as he really is. Every 
 man is hidden from us behind a dense veil, until we look 
 at him with the penetrating eye of intense sympathy. Is 
 not every human being a mystery even to himself? Is it
 
 212 
 
 not exceedingly difficult for him to know himself? How 
 much more is he a mystery to others! How much more 
 difficult is it to have a clear and appreciative insight into 
 the inner life of another man ! The personality of every 
 man is separated from us by the unfathomable gulf 
 of individual consciousness and history. Only love can 
 form a magic bridge, on which our mind may cross over to 
 the soul of our fellow-man, and read aright the writing 
 engraven on the tablets of his heart, discern the elements 
 which make up his character, and spell the true meaning of 
 his life. Through benevolence we learn to see our neighbor 
 with his own mind's eye. We grow one with him; we 
 understand him as he understands himself and judge him 
 as he judges himself in his calmest self-scrutinizing mood. 
 The benevolent man is exceedingly slow in judgment. 
 He is ever full of fear lest he do his fellow-man injustice in 
 thoughts and words. He is continually afraid that he 
 might weigh a brother man in balances of deceit, in bal- 
 ances of prejudice and injurious ignorance. For he tries 
 to love his neighbor like himself, he feels for him as for 
 himself, and he realizes the grief of one who knows that 
 he is misjudged and misrepresented, that his image lives 
 distorted in the soul of his fellow-man. The benevolent 
 man will judge his neighbor only from personal knowledge, 
 long and carefully gathered, from observations made with 
 the eye of sympathy. The kindness of his heart warns 
 him against judging any human being from hearsay. He 
 refuses to lend credence to unfavorable rumors, though 
 repeated by a thousand tongues. The benevolent man will 
 not let his judgment of any person be warped by the opin- 
 ion of the masses that are blind in their love and hatred, 
 in their praise and censure. He will not follow a multi- 
 tude to do evil to any man who is maligned and persecuted 
 by wicked and designing persons. He will never speak 
 lying words in a cause, neither incline after many to wrest 
 the judgment of an unhappy man entrapped in a snare
 
 213 
 
 laid for him by ruthless enemies. He will not quail before 
 the fury of public opinion, when it rages against a defense- 
 less, calumniated man. Like Voltaire and Emile Zola and 
 other heroes of humanity, he will bid defiance to the 
 wrath of the maddened populace and reject with scorn the 
 unrighteous verdict of those smitten by hatred with judi- 
 cial blindness. With the light of love that is within him 
 he will search for the truth and find it, though it be hid- 
 den beneath a mountain of falsehoods and calumnies. 
 With the dauntless courage and unconquerable might of 
 benevolence he will do battle for the right of the innocent. 
 Panoplied in the shining armor of humanity he will appear 
 in the arena as the champion of his brother man against a 
 whole people intoxicated with hatred, reeling in folly and 
 fury. Undismayed by the threats and curses of the pop- 
 ulace, unterrified by the anger and violence of tyrannical 
 power, he will stand up for the right and dignity of 
 humanity, outraged in the person of any oppressed man. 
 He will cast behind him popular favor and applause, 
 wealth and honor, nay, he will expose his life to the fury 
 of the masses and the hatred of the mighty, in order to 
 redeem the oppressed from the hand of their enemies. He 
 will fight for justice with such deathless devotion, because 
 he loves his fellow-man, and shares in the soul's agony of 
 him who is misjudged, persecuted, and condemned by mal- 
 evolence, envy, and ignorance. The benevolent man will 
 judge every person according to his individual merits and 
 demerits, and will not let the element of race, nationality, 
 class, and religion bias his opinion with regard to any 
 human being. He who tries to realize the ideal of love as 
 proclaimed by the inspired seers of humanity, he who ever 
 hears in his heart the words of our common Father, "Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thy self," will wage life-long war 
 upon all baneful prejudices which have been transmitted 
 as a curse from generation to generation, which blind the 
 eyes of the mind to truth and pervert the judgment of the 
 wise.
 
 214 
 
 The typical representative of this fearless militant 
 benevolence is Gotthold Bphraim Lessing, the ever- 
 glorious champion of truth and humanity. Though he 
 had grown up in an atmosphere dense with religious and 
 racial prejudices, he walked by the light of universal jus- 
 tice and love. His heart was full of infinite pity for poor 
 Israel, despised in his time, and hated by all men without 
 reason and cause. It was assumed that every Jew was a 
 contemptible wretch, simply because he was a Jew. No 
 one took the trouble to learn to know the individual Jew, 
 to honor or despise him for what he was and not for what 
 an inhuman prejudice presumed him to be by dint of his 
 blood and faith. But in the midst of a world steeped in 
 injustice and malevolent prejudice, Lessing sprang up a 
 true shoot from the spiritual stem of the prophets. The 
 nobility of his soul grew up from the roots of Moses and 
 Jesus. There rested upon him the spirit of true religion, 
 the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of love 
 and moral might, the spirit of saving knowledge and the 
 fear of humanity's God. He did not judge men by the 
 marks of their race and by the name of their sect, nor did 
 he decide the moral worth of any person by the voice of 
 the ignorant masses and the damning cry of religious pre- 
 judices. He judged the poorest and most downtrodden of 
 his time with enlightened benevolence and claimed equity 
 for the most afflicted of the land. He smote the fanatics 
 of Germany with the rod of truth ; with the breath of his 
 lips he drove the dragon of racial prejudice into hiding. 
 Humanity was the girdle of his loins, and the love of man 
 was a lamp to his feet. The intellectual giant of Christen- 
 dom bound to himself the meek little Jew Mendelssohn 
 with indissoluble ties of friendship, and glorified one of the 
 children of despised Israel as Nathan the Wise, proclaim- 
 ing him as the type of ideal manhood. He did not grow 
 weary nor become faint in his struggle to make a highway 
 for justice and love.
 
 215 
 
 Praise be to the God of mankind that He sent us His 
 servant Ephraim Lessing to teach a benighted world anew 
 the gospel of justice and benevolence! Glory be to ihe 
 Master of life who revealed Himself once again in a great 
 seer, and inspired him with wisdom and courage to fight a 
 life-long spiritual battle for the moral dignity and honor 
 of the weak and meek, around whom fanaticism, ignorance, 
 and prejudice had built a wall of contempt and hatred, sep- 
 arating them from the heart and mind of their fellow-men! 
 As long as the race brings forth men like Lessing, cham- 
 pions of truth and justice and love even unto death, we need 
 not fear that the spirit and practice of true benevolence 
 will die out of the midst of men and make room for the 
 spirit of hate and envy and malignant selfishness. Their 
 teachings and examples are a perennial fountain of life, 
 from which generation after generation will draw new 
 moral youth, new spiritual strength, new powers of love.
 
 ETHNOLOGICAL FICTIONS. 
 
 OOME time ago an officer in the Austrian army called a 
 ^ Jewish physician "an impudent Semite." The latter 
 retorted and called the officer "an arrogant Aryan." A 
 bloody duel was the outcome of the altercation. The two 
 men slashed each other to vindicate the honor of their 
 respective race. If there be evil powers that hover between 
 heaven and earth, watching the doings of mortals, and 
 rejoicing in their follies and crimes, they must have taken 
 a fiendish delight in the sight of Jew and Gentile driven 
 by the figment of an Aryan and a Semitic race to spill each 
 other's blood. There was precious little Aryan blood in 
 the race-proud warrior, and the doctor, though a Jew, was 
 not much of a Semite. 
 
 There is no Aryan race anywhere in existence. And 
 the Jews certainly can not lay claim to being pure Semites. 
 This honor, if honor it be, belongs exclusively to the 
 Bedouins of Arabia. During the first third or half of this 
 century the imagination of certain famous linguists gave 
 birth to the myth of a great and homogeneous Aryan race, 
 which, with the exception of the Basques in Spain, the 
 Magyars in Hungary, the Turks, and the Finns, comprised 
 all the nations of Europe, the inhabitants of Northern 
 India, of Persia, and of Armenia. Because all those nations 
 were found to speak kindred languages, the philologians, 
 with pardonable but unscientific rashness jumped at the 
 conclusion that they were all of one blood, of one race, 
 that their common ancestors one day must have lived 
 somewhere in Asia as a united people, governed by the 
 same laws and institutions and worshiping the same gods. 
 
 On the basis of this fiction the scholars went on building 
 up a spurious science of a common primitive Aryan culture,
 
 217 
 
 of Aryan religion and mythology, of law and government, 
 of their racial characteristics, their emotional and intel- 
 lectual traits. Imaginative writers, such as Professor Max- 
 Miiller, drew charming pictures of the idyllic life which their 
 reputed Aryan ancestors, the forefathers of the Hindoos, 
 the Iranians, the Lithuanians, the Teutons, and the Sclavs 
 once upon a time led in their Central-Asian home, dwelling 
 together almost under the same roof. Ernest Renan, with 
 his all-knowing retrospective imagination, did most to 
 elaborate into a consistent system the luckless legend of an 
 Aryan race, perennially opposed in its innermost nature, 
 in its habits of thought and modes of feeling, in its con- 
 ception of nature and life, to a fictitious Semitic race, 
 embracing the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, the 
 Arameans or Syrians, the Hebrews, with their kindred, the 
 Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Edomites, the Phenicians 
 and the Carthaginians, all the inhabitants of Arabia, and 
 largely also the tribes of Ethiopia. He describes the Aryans 
 as the most valiant, the noblest and lordliest of races, 
 endowed by nature with a rich and creative imagination, an 
 intellect vigorous, profound, metaphysical, rather inclined 
 to mysticism, and possessing constructive political powers 
 of the highest order. He but voices, though he exaggerates, 
 the views of the other Aryomaniacs. He exalts, above all 
 others, the stock of which he believes all the European 
 nations to be the living representatives, he glorifies it as 
 the earth's natural born aristocracy, and magnifies it as the 
 imperial race of the world, destined to bear sway over all 
 the children of men by the grace of its high and inde- 
 structible native qualities. 
 
 How did Renan and the whole school of which he was 
 the most eloquent exponent, come to know, with such 
 wonderful exactness and fulness of detail, all the emotional 
 and artistic, all the mental, moral, and religious character- 
 istics of the hypothetical Aryan race? By a simple process 
 of selection and combination. He selected the finest
 
 218 
 
 qualities of the noblest Grecian tribes, as displayed in the 
 season of their richest flowering and fruit-bearing, and 
 spoke of them as inborn qualities of the whole Aryan race. 
 He took the grandest and ripest achievements of the Hel- 
 lenic genius in the fields of poetry, art, and science, and 
 deduced from them instinctive tendencies of the imaginary 
 Aryan race. The rare capacity of the Roman people for 
 military and political organization, slowly developed under 
 favorable conditions during centuries of fierce contest and 
 growing experience, the sturdiness, the unyielding tenacity, 
 the undaunted courage, the iron will and domineering 
 spirit of the Roman nation, were turned by a mere sleight 
 of hand into innate attributes of whole Aryan families. 
 Whatsoever things good, whatsoever things true, whatso- 
 ever things beautiful and great the Italians and the 
 Spaniards, the Dutch, the English, the French, the Ger- 
 mans, and the Americans have accomplished in course of 
 many ages in war and peace, in art, poetry, philosophy, 
 science, and commerce, were by a delusive fancy traced 
 back to hereditary racial powers peculiar to the fancied 
 Aryan stock. The hymns of the Rig-Veda composed by 
 successive generations of swarthy poets on the banks of 
 the Indus are spoken of with comical enthusiasm as the 
 hymns of our ancestors, as the oldest poems of our race. 
 The pantheistic speculations of the Indian thinkers, and 
 the refined mysticism of Persian Sufism, are claimed no less 
 than the ideal philosophy of Plato, the monumental sys- 
 tem of Aristotle, the epoch-making meditations of Descartes, 
 and Kant's revolutionary Critique of Pure Reason, as 
 emanations of the Aryan spirit. All the greatest men of 
 the Occidental world, all the kings of poetry from Homer 
 to Shakespeare and down to Goethe, the Indian poet 
 Kalidasa, Firdausi, the famous poet of the Persian epic, 
 Shahnamah, the immortal masters of art from Phidias to 
 Canova, the most renowned statesmen from Alexander and 
 Csesar to Charlemagne and Napoleon, the most celebrated
 
 scientists from Archimedes to Newton and Darwin, were 
 compelled to yield their best parts in order to make up the 
 psychology of the Aryan race. A composite photograph 
 was taken of the supreme men of India and Persia, of Hellas 
 and Italy, of Spain and Portugal, of Holland and England, 
 of Germany and America, of the glorious men who within 
 the space of nearly three thousand years appeared at long 
 intervals in the sky of humanity. This composite photo- 
 graph, looking so ideal, so beautiful, was declared to be the 
 true likeness of the Aryan race. It was indeed ideal but 
 absolutely unreal, the fanciful picture of a fancied race. 
 
 This imaginary superior and aristocratic race, poetic, 
 artistic, polytheistic, philosophical, imperial by virtue of 
 incredible instincts, finds its natural contrast and historical 
 antagonist in another fictitious race, the so-called Semites, 
 whom the omniscient Renan, with his usual promptness 
 and recklessness of judgment, brands as an inferior race. 
 The method by which the most famous linguists, with the 
 adventurous Renan for their spokesman, managed to 
 draw a pen-picture of the emotional, intellectual, moral, and 
 religious nature of the Semitic race, corresponds with that 
 adopted in delineating the character of the Aryan race, 
 and forms one of the most discreditable chapters in the 
 annals of modern scholarship. The monotheism of Israel, 
 the belief in one only God, the Maker of heaven and earth, 
 which was the result of at least a thousand years of moral 
 and religious development, was changed by Renan, with 
 audacious self-assurance, into a general characteristic, into 
 a necessary mental state of the whole race, into a religious 
 instinct peculiar to all Semites, past and present. In the 
 opinion of Renan and his numerous followers, all the 
 nations regarded as members of the Semitic race, because 
 they are known to have spoken or to speak the Semitic 
 languages, have been and are monotheists by an invincible 
 necessity of their mental constitution. They can not help 
 believing in one God only. Just as spiders weave their
 
 220 
 
 web, as bees gather honey by instinct, so were Semites 
 compelled by the form of their mind to believe in, and to 
 worship, only one divinity. The Semitic mind, he says, is 
 too narrow, too unimaginative, to believe in more than one 
 God, to conceive of more than one divine power ruling 
 all the phenomena of nature. The expansive imagination 
 and creative intelligence of the Aryan race could not rest 
 content in so narrow a faith, so beggarly an idea of the 
 supreme power. They peopled the universe with a host 
 of self-conscious, self-determined divinities. Every natural 
 phenomenon was personified, and represented as a divine 
 individual. Even after the Aryans of Europe had been 
 converted, by persuasion or force, to a Semitic religion, the 
 indestructible tendencies of their polytheistic soul speedily 
 turned the barren Semitic idea of an absolute divine unity 
 into the richer and profounder idea of a divine trinity. 
 The belief in only one God is good enough and natural 
 enough for the inferior Semites. But as to the Aryans, 
 heaven forbid, that they should be satisfied with one only 
 God ruling in the heavens above and on the earth beneath ! 
 However hard History tried, she could not change the 
 immutable nature either of the Aryan or of the Semite. 
 The two races are like opposite poles. Some sort of 
 polytheism is in the blood, the feelings, and the intellect of 
 the Aryan, while monotheism, uncompromising, fanatical, 
 poor in ideal contents, is bound up with the very nature of 
 the Semite. 
 
 The chain of reasoning by which Renan and other Aryo- 
 maniacs arrived at this startling generalization is as plain 
 as it is delusive, as simple as it is false. Israel glories in 
 the fact that it has given the religion of monotheism to 
 the world. But did not the people of Israel belong to the 
 inferior Semitic race? How should the spirit of originality 
 in this one particular field, in the province of religion, 
 have departed from the great creative race, the standard- 
 bearer of civilization and progress, the chosen Aryan race,
 
 221 
 
 and come to manifest itself in so signal a manner in the 
 midst of the Semitic Hebrews? Does it not seem like a 
 perversion of the laws of nature and history? Starting 
 from such false premises, only one answer could be given 
 by thinkers who believe in blood, instinct, race, inherited 
 tendencies, as the cause of causes, as an all-sufficient expla- 
 nation of all things animate, of all things human. The 
 Semite Israelites were believers in one God only, because 
 they were Semites. All Semites are born monotheists, just 
 as it is the nature of sheep to grow wool and bleat. The 
 syllogism is perfect. The Hebrews were Semites; hence, 
 all Semites were monotheists. You ask for proofs ? Proofs 
 shall be forthcoming. Are not the Semitic Arabs mono- 
 theists? Is not the Semitic East monotheistic? On the 
 other hand, the whole Aryan Occident, all Europe, is Chris- 
 tian, trinitarian. Is this not convincing evidence ? What 
 if History protests against such an unwarranted assumption, 
 and is indignant at such a wilful perversion of her facts, 
 at such reckless falsification of her records? What if every 
 page of history bears witness to the fact, that the so-called 
 Semitic nations, Babylonians and Assyrians, the Syrians, the 
 Phenicians, and the rest of the Canaanites, and the Arabs 
 down to Mohammed's time, were steeped in idolatry the 
 most abominable, believed in innumerable gods, male 
 and female, in gods of heaven and gods of earth, gods of 
 the seas and of the rivers, in mountain gods and forest 
 gods, divinities of the sun, divinities of the moon, divini- 
 ties of the stars, divine rulers of life and of death and the 
 underworld? What if proofs irrefragable go to show that 
 the Israelites themselves had for ages been rank polythe- 
 ists, that there had been as many gods in Israel as there 
 were cities in the land, that it required a thousand years of 
 prophetic preaching, nay, that the nation as such had to be 
 destroyed, before the leaven of heathenism was overcome, 
 and a small remnant was thoroughly and permanently con- 
 verted to the belief in one God{? If the facts contradict,
 
 222 
 
 down with the facts! Let them perish in order that the 
 theory of Aryan superiority and Semitic inferiority may 
 live and prosper. 
 
 The Semites are all born monotheists, instinctive wor- 
 shipers of one God. This is the first, though far from 
 praiseworthy, characteristic of the race! Moreover, the 
 despots of Babylonia and Assyria are known to have been 
 fierce and cruel conquerors. There are to be seen on the 
 ancient monuments harrowing scenes representing acts of 
 cruelty done by the ruthless victors upon the vanquished. 
 King David treated the conquered inhabitants of Rabbath 
 Ammon in a manner which, to our refined humanity, 
 must appear exceedingly inhuman. What inference was 
 drawn from these facts? Why, they were generalized into 
 a race quality of the Semites, and renowned writers did 
 not hesitate to teach, with an air of scientific infallibility, 
 that savage cruelty toward vanquished foes was a dis- 
 tinguishing feature in the character of the Semitic race. 
 And what a glaring contrast such Semitic bloodthirstiness 
 is made to form to the gentleness and the sweet uses of 
 humanity usually displayed by Aryans against their ene- 
 mies ! Several days after he had slain Patroclus in battle, 
 Achilles, the hero of the Aryan Greeks, tied the corpse of 
 his great foe to his chariot and dragged it, driving furiously, 
 round and round the camp, in order to appease his wrath- 
 ful and vengeful heart. Yet no one ever asserted that the 
 savage action of the ideal Greek was characteristic of the 
 whole Aryan race. Alexander the Great destroyed the 
 glorious city of Corinth, one of the centers of Hellenic 
 civilization, and sold all its inhabitants into slavery. Yet 
 no writer ever held that in so doing Alexander simply 
 acted in obedience to the ferocious instincts of the Aryan 
 race. Great Caesar one day ordered a whole German 
 people, some sixty thousand persons, to be massacred in 
 cold blood, sparing neither age nor sex. That fearful 
 butchery is declared by historians to have been dictated by
 
 223 
 
 motives of far-seeing policy. But the Aryan race is not 
 dragged in to stand godfather to it. Was it by virtue of 
 his brutal Aryan nature that Titus caused over a hundred 
 thousand Jewish warriors to fight with wild beasts in the 
 arena? 
 
 Hadrian hunting the conquered Jews of Cyprus and 
 other lands like wild beasts, is not declared by historians 
 to have acted out of the inhuman disposition of his whole 
 race. Historians have diverse kinds of judgment for 
 what they regard as the Aryan and for what they desig- 
 nate as the Semitic race. Urged and favored by their 
 geographical position, the ancient Phenicians were enter- 
 prising and shrewd merchants ; ages of remorseless exclu- 
 sion and restriction have compelled the Jews after their 
 dispersion to eke out a livelihood by trade. What follows? 
 Why, the Semites of all lands and all times are born traders 
 and money-getters. The Babylonians and the Canaan- 
 ites are known to have been lascivious in their religious 
 practices and sensual in their private conduct. Forthwith 
 the conclusion was reached, that the whole Semitic race 
 was and is exceedingly sensual by nature. The peculiar 
 characteristics of the Bedouin tribes of Arabia have been 
 worked as a rich mine of adjectives, to be applied indis- 
 criminately to all the peoples speaking Semitic tongues. 
 The Bedouin is avaricious and rapacious, both a miser and 
 a spendthrift according to his varying moods. So are all 
 the Semites. He is unscrupulous in his dealings, lacking 
 in truthfulness, unreliable ; faithful to his guests as long as 
 they are in his tent, treacherous as soon as they have left it. 
 In all these respects the modern Bedouin is declared to be 
 the typical Semite. The Bedouin is in his usual demeanor 
 calm and dignified, but when aroused, he is capable of 
 the wildest outbursts of uncontrollable passion. He is 
 revengeful and cruel. L,o and behold, they cry, the true 
 son of Shein! He dislikes physical labor, and wishes to 
 earn his bread with as little muscular exertion as possible.
 
 224 
 
 He is of migratory habits. He is superstitious, fanatical, 
 his religion is mainly one of fear. In all these points he 
 is held up as the true representative of the Semitic race. 
 In this curious way there has been formed a complete, but 
 most incongruous, picture of the Semites. 
 
 What a strange animal the hypothetical Semite is 
 made to be ! What an incredible creature he is, made up 
 of irreconcilable contradictions! He is moved, by the 
 invisible wires of instinct, to utter forth with a prophet's 
 tongue the deepest truths regarding God and the moral 
 dignity of man, such as the wisest of the wise among the 
 Aryans did not dream of, and at the same time he adores 
 vile and vicious gods and pays homage to them in ways 
 unmentionably abominable. He preaches the gospel of 
 love and mercy, of universal brotherhood and broadest 
 humanity in Jerusalem, and in Babylon and Tyre he is a 
 bloodthirsty despot. In a word, he is all things to all 
 men and all times. Yet he does not act out his part in 
 the free play of spontaneous development, in harmony 
 with his changing surroundings, but he is compelled to be 
 what he is, and to do whatever he does, by the fatality of 
 his immutable racial nature! Through all times and all 
 lands he forms, by the indestructible laws of his being, an 
 enduring contrast to the Aryan. They have met in thou- 
 sands of places and times, they have exchanged innu- 
 merable services, they have adopted from each other the 
 arts of civilization and learned each other's wisdom of 
 life. But they have never blended. There is a natural 
 gulf of separation between them. There is a deep-seated 
 mutual antipathy between the Aryan and the Semitic races ! 
 
 Many scholars have sinned grievously against the 
 holy spirit of history and humanity by giving expression 
 to such perverted and mischievous views. But it was 
 chiefly the witchcraft of Kenan's marvelous powers as a 
 writer that gave currency to those pernicious theories 
 of race, and made them popular throughout Europe
 
 225 
 
 and America with the educated and half-educated, from 
 whom they gradually percolated down to the masses. 
 Without knowing it, without willing it, Renan was in 
 a sense the intellectual father of modern anti-Semitism. 
 He with others sowed the poisonous seed of the baleful 
 theory regarding the Semitic race and its eternal antag- 
 onism to the Aryan race, from which in course of a 
 few decades the upas-tree of anti-Semitism has grown, 
 to their own dismay and disgust. The very term anti- 
 Semitism bears the birthmark of its origin in the lucu- 
 brations of philosophizers. Linguists and historians gave 
 birth to the idea of Semitism ; knavish or insane agita- 
 tors tacked on to it their malignant "anti." Strange 
 fate and nemesis that Renan, the gentlest and sweetest- 
 tempered of men, as true a lover of his kind as 
 ever lived, should have fathered a theory, the practical 
 consequence of which became the shame and curse of our 
 century! Like many wise men before him, he did not 
 give heed to his words, and did not calculate the effect 
 which his theory might have on natures in which the 
 instinct and the ideas of the savage lay dormant, and which 
 only required the right word to be awakened to full life. 
 With savages blood kinship is everything. Right and 
 wrong, love and hate, are derived exclusively from the 
 bonds of race. For thousands of years the prophets of 
 Israel and their disciples have tried to substitute the moral 
 dignity of man and the brotherhood of all men for the 
 brutal conception of descent and race. Barely had these 
 supreme ideas of humanity begun to make a deeper impres- 
 sion and to translate themselves into a humanizing prac- 
 tice, when leading scholars came up with their theories of 
 an Aryan race and a Semitic race, drawing hard and fast 
 lines of separation between these two races, and tracing all 
 the grandest achievements of the human mind back to 
 racial qualities, to hereditary instincts and tendencies. 
 The fanaticism of nationalism in our days and the still
 
 226 
 
 fiercer fanaticism of race is largely due to the influence 
 of such teachings. Since the Jews are Semites and we 
 are Aryans, the anti-Semites say, and since Semites and 
 Aryans are- forever separated from one another by their 
 physical and also by their moral and emotional constitu- 
 tion, the Jews are and forever will remain strangers in our 
 midst, aliens that can not be assimilated with us. And 
 since the Semites are an inferior race, their presence in our 
 midst is a perpetual danger to our higher Aryan life and 
 character. Fortunately, a deeper and more conscientious 
 research, a science based on fact and not on fancies, during 
 the last ten or fifteen years has begun to deal staggering 
 blows to the ill-starred fiction of an Aryan and a Semitic 
 race, and bids fair soon to drive it entirely from the temple 
 of knowledge and rob it of all power to affect the views of 
 men for evil. 
 
 Certain eminent scholars, foremost among them the 
 distinguished French anthropologist Broca, were not daz- 
 zled by the splendor of the Aryan theory, and asked them- 
 selves in* sober earnestness, what evidence there was for 
 assuming that nearly all the nations of Europe and many 
 peoples of Asia form one vast homogeneous race. True, the 
 nations in question do speak languages which are closely 
 related to one another and may, in a sense, be regarded as 
 but widely divergent dialects of one common speech. But 
 does community of language prove community of race? 
 There are eight million negroes in the United States and 
 several more millions in the West Indies who speak 
 English, the language of the New Englanders, the language 
 of Gladstone and Tennyson. Will any one contend that the 
 blood of Washington and Cromwell rolls in the veins of 
 the South Carolina blacks? The Spaniards, the Portu- 
 guese, and the French speak Latin tongues, yet there is 
 scarcely a trace of Roman blood in these nations. The 
 Mexicans speak Spanish, a Latin dialect. Still, of pure 
 Spaniards there is but a dwindling number in Mexico.
 
 227 
 
 The overwhelming mass of the natives are of Aztec blood. 
 The present inhabitants of Greece are largely a Slavonic 
 race, which in the eighth century occupied the lands and 
 learned the speech of the Greeks. The Bulgarians speak 
 a Slavonic language, but they belong to the Turkish race. 
 The Arabic language is spoken today by all the Egypt- 
 ians, the lineal descendants of the Hamitic pyramid build- 
 ers, by the Berbers and Kabyles of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, 
 and Morocco, the descendants of the ancient L/ibians and 
 Mauritanians. By adopting the speech of the Bedouins 
 they did not exchange their blood for that of the Arabs. 
 The Arabic has killed off all the native languages of Asia 
 Minor, of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. But in their 
 racial features the populations of those countries have con- 
 tinued substantially what they were before the Arab con- 
 queror had set foot there. The speech of Tunis has been 
 in turn Numidian, Phenician, Latin, Vandal, and Arabic. 
 The inhabitants of southern Germany speak German ; but, 
 taken as a whole, they belong to the Celtic stock. They 
 exchanged their Celtic speech for German within historic 
 times. Instances too numerous to mention could be 
 adduced from every part of the inhabited earth to prove 
 that, under certain conditions, there is a tendency in lan- 
 guage to spread from people to people. Spanish, Portu- 
 guese, French, German, Arabic, and, above all, English, 
 are steadily invading new territories, occupied by races 
 physically and mentally the most varied. 
 
 Such causes as conquest, slavery, the necessities of 
 commercial intercourse, and religious propaganda co-oper- 
 ate to give to certain languages dominion over vast areas 
 and over multitudinous tribes of men wholly unrelated to 
 the people whose speech they have come to adopt. What 
 has taken place within historical times, what is happening 
 before our very eyes, doubtless, under the operation of the 
 same causes, was going on in prehistoric ages. One 
 such universal language, split up into numerous branches,
 
 228 
 
 is the Aryan speech, which is spoken by about six hun- 
 dred millions of human beings through the length and 
 breadth of Europe, in northern India and all Persian lands, 
 in the south of Africa, and in the two Americas and Aus- 
 tralia. Many, many thousand years ago, in the dim past 
 of mankind, it originated somewhere in Europe, but not in 
 Asia, in the midst of a people which scholars are agreed to 
 call the Aryans. It must have been a masterful people, 
 since, like the English, the Spaniards, and the Arabs of 
 these latter centuries, they imparted their own speech, be 
 it by conquest or by the powers and arts of a higher civiliza- 
 tion, to the various distinct races which inhabited and still 
 inhabit Europe. Which of the modern European nations 
 may be regarded as the descendants of the original and true 
 Aryans? Most probably none. The original Aryans very 
 likely mingled and blended with the conquered alien 
 stocks, and, disappearing as a distinct race, left only their 
 language behind them as the record of their power and far- 
 reaching influence. 
 
 There exists an Aryan language, but no Aryan race 
 in Europe. The population of that continent and of 
 other continents settled by European colonists, consists 
 of four distinct and easily recognizable races. Any 
 man with an observant eye can, in a large assemblage of 
 Europeans or Americans, readily enough distinguish 
 extremely divergent types, being the living representatives 
 of the several races which have occupied Europe from 
 time immemorial. Here you see a man small in stature, 
 of slender build, swarthy of complexion, with black eyes 
 and black hair. His head is long, his forehead narrow 
 and nearly perpendicular. He is either a Welshman from 
 Denbighshire or an Irishman from Kerry, Donegal, or Gal- 
 way. Or you may discover that he or his ancestors came 
 from the Basque provinces of Spain. But it is just as 
 probable that he hails from the island of Corsica. He 
 belongs to the Iberian race. The Berbers of northern
 
 229 
 
 Africa and the Guanches, of Teneriffe and the Canary 
 Islands are his close racial kinsmen. The bones of his 
 remote ancestors are found in sepulchral caves in England, 
 France, Corsica, and other parts of Europe. Next to 
 your Iberian you may see another small, dark-complex- 
 ioned man with black hair and black eyes. He too has a 
 straight forehead. And yet he belongs to quite a different 
 race. His head is extremely short. If you inquire you 
 are sure to learn that he or his forefathers came from central 
 France, and more specifically from where the Auvergnats 
 dwell. Or he will tell you that he is a Savoyard or a 
 Swiss. The skeletons of his savage ancestors are found in 
 Belgian caves and in the round barrows of central France. 
 Though both speak French or German, they are as to 
 their race the brothers of the Laplanders. They and the 
 Lapps have, of all existing races, the shortest heads. They 
 resemble one another in their swarthy complexion, their 
 black hair and eyes. The head of the Auvergnats and 
 Lapps is alike abnormally narrow across the cheek bones 
 and wide at the temples. They belong to the Ligurian 
 race, which once inhabited large parts of Italy. 
 
 Besides those representatives of the Iberian and Ligu- 
 rian races, you may notice in any large gathering in Amer- 
 ican cities a number of tall men with blue eyes and blonde 
 hair and a white skin and somewhat projecting jaws. 
 They have very long heads. You will, at a glance, recog- 
 nize them as Swedes or Frisians or North Germans of the 
 fair type. They belong to the Scandinavian race. The 
 bones of their ancestors are found in numerous graves in the 
 southwest of Germany, in Holland and Sweden, in Bur- 
 gundy, and many other parts of Europe. These primitive 
 Teutons were the oldest inhabitants of Europe. They were 
 muscular, athletic, and of great stature. They were nomad 
 hunters, who sheltered themselves in caves, but were with- 
 out fixed abodes or even any sepulchers. These savages 
 were the direct forefathers of the Germans and the Eng- 
 lishmen who represent the pure Scandinavian type.
 
 230 
 
 Besides those three races, the Iberian, the Ligurian, and 
 the Scandinavian, there lives in Europe and in many other 
 parts of the world a numerous race, the Celtic. The living 
 representatives of this race are like their prehistoric fore- 
 fathers, men of tall stature, with light eyes and yellowish red 
 or brownish red hair. They have long and prominent jaws 
 and florid faces. They are marked off from the Scandinav- 
 ian race mainly by the fact that they are brachycephalic 
 or short-headed. The great mass of the English, Scotch, 
 and Irish are the descendants of the ancient Celtic Britons. 
 The other element which has entered into the composition 
 of the British people, are the dark-skinned Iberians and, to 
 a certain extent also, the Teutonic Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 The fiction of an Anglo-Saxon race is one of those delu- 
 sions which the pride of the English and the American 
 hugs to its heart. They speak with unbearable vanity of 
 the noble, glorious, invincible, creative, liberty-loving 
 Anglo-Saxon race on both sides of the Atlantic. In listen- 
 ing to the Fourth-of-July spread-eagle eloquence on the 
 Anglo-Saxon race, one would imagine that every Ameri- 
 can and every Englishman had nothing but the purest blood 
 of the purest-blooded Anglo-Saxon invaders in his veins. 
 But in reality the present Americans are a mixture of all the 
 European races. And even the English and their purest 
 descendants in America have at best but a streak of Anglo- 
 Saxon blood to boast of. Only a number of noble families 
 in England may lay claim to being largely the offspring 
 of the invading Anglo-Saxons. But the English as a mass 
 are Celts and Iberians. For even the Danes, who settled 
 in certain parts of England, are like the Danes of Den- 
 mark itself, no Teutons, no genuine Scandinavians, but 
 Teutonized Celts, as is evidenced by their racial character- 
 istics, chiefest among which is their being short-headed, 
 instead of long-headed, like the true Scandinavians. The 
 same short-headed Celtic race inhabited, as Gauls and 
 Celts, large provinces of France. The French people thus
 
 231 
 
 consists of a mixture of Iberians, Lagurians, and Celts, with 
 a sprinkling of Teutons. The present Spanish people is 
 composed of Iberians and Celts, and in a measure, also, of 
 Phenicians and Jews. The south of Germany as far north 
 as the Teutoburger Wald, the Thiiringer Wald, and the 
 Riesengebirge is in the main Celtic in race, though Ger- 
 man in speech. The Swiss people, whose ancestors erected 
 pile dwellings around the Swiss lakes, belong, together 
 with the people of northern Italy, to the same Celtic race, 
 with a large mixture of Etruscan and other blood. The 
 southern Italians are of quite a different race. All the 
 nations of Slavic speech, except the Great Russians, or the 
 Russians proper, are members of the same far-spreading 
 race. They have short heads, light hair, and light eyes. 
 Yet let not the Celts of France and England believe and 
 boast that they represent the genuine high-born Aryan 
 race. For the despised tribes of Siberia, the barbarous 
 Finno-Tartaric tribes, that speak Turkish languages, 
 belong to the same aristocratic race. All of them are 
 short-headed. Most of them have blue eyes and flaxen or 
 red hair. The Turcomans are usually blonde. The heads 
 of the Mongols are precisely like those of the ancestors of 
 the short-headed English. 
 
 All of the foregoing details will suffice to convince the 
 most skeptical mind that the belief in a close racial kin- 
 ship between all the Aryan-speaking nations is a mere 
 fiction refuted by incontrovertible facts. There exists an 
 Aryan language, but no Aryan race. And as the fiction 
 of an Aryan race has in the light of careful inquiry van- 
 ished like a mist, so has the myth of a Semitic race 
 recently been condemned by the spirit of true knowledge 
 and made to pass into the limbo of exploded delusions. 
 Eight nations, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the 
 Hebrews, the southern Arabs or Sabaeans, the Phenicians, 
 the Armenians, the Abyssinians, and the Arabs proper, are 
 known to have spoken or still to speak languages so closely
 
 232 
 
 related that they may be regarded as merely dialects of 
 one language. In their vocabulary, in their grammatical 
 structure, and above all in the law that every root must 
 consist of three consonants, they form among them- 
 selves the most intimate unity and stand in striking con- 
 trast to all other languages. From the community of 
 speech the deduction has been made that all the above- 
 mentioned nations belonged to the same race, the Semitic 
 race. But the facts brought out by the most searching 
 investigations of the foremost anthropologists of our time 
 flatly contradicts this assumption. Sixty thousand heads 
 or skulls belonging to those various nations have been 
 examined with circle and tape-measure, and* the result has 
 been u not unity of race, but a bewildering variety of racial 
 characteristics." Only the Bedouins of Arabia form a 
 surprising exception. They alone can be regarded as a 
 physically homogeneous race, among whom the variations 
 are reduced almost to a minimum. Just as their speech, 
 though in a literary sense two thousand years younger 
 than Babylonia, has, with wonderful tenacity, preserved 
 the oldest and fullest forms of the original Semitic lan- 
 guages, so do they in their physical qualities represent the 
 genuine Semitic race in almost absolute purity. They 
 have invariably long and narrowed heads, as they appear 
 depicted on numerous ancient monuments of Egypt. This 
 goes to prove that the Bedouins of today are the lineal 
 and unmodified descendants of the primitive inhabitants of 
 Arabia. These Arabs are without exception of a dark 
 complexion with black eyes and black hair. But, what 
 is most to be noted is the fact that the Arabs have 
 short and small noses, which are hardly curved at all. 
 They form in every respect a striking contrast to what the 
 vulgar regard as the typical curved Jewish nose. The 
 physical traits of these genuine and unmixed Semites seem 
 to connect them, in some as yet unaccountable way, with 
 the long-headed and dark-skinned Iberian race, which, in
 
 233 
 
 prehistoric times, occupied England and many other parts 
 of Europe. 
 
 Which of the so-called Semitic nations, living or 
 departed, does or did, in its racial characteristics, most 
 closely resemble these pure Arabs? Only the ancient 
 Phenicians can be looked upon as true Semites, as the full 
 brothers of the Arabs. Many Phenician skulls have been 
 most carefully examined by eminent anthropologists, and 
 bear out the testimony of the Egyptian pyramids, on 
 which Phenicians are represented as pronounced long- 
 heads, and otherwise showing the distinguishing marks of 
 the pure Semitic or unmixed Arabic stock. Now, what 
 has anthropology, after years of most conscientious search- 
 ing, after collating and comparing many thousands of facts, 
 ascertained regarding the Hebrews and Syrians, both of 
 ancient times and of the present day? Are the Syrians, 
 are the Jews pure Semites, or even largely Semitic? There 
 are numerous and life-like representations of Hebrews and 
 Syrians on the monuments of ancient Egypt. Those 
 carefully-drawn pictures of the Egyptian artists of Hebrews 
 and Syrians tally to perfection with the observations made 
 by modern investigators on Syrians and Jews. And what 
 do we learn from both these reliable sources of information? 
 Only five per cent, of the Syrians and the Jews are found 
 to be true long-heads, and to bear the other distinctive fea- 
 tures of the genuine Semites. Stranger still, fully eleven 
 per cent, of the Jews and Syrians have blue eyes and blonde 
 hair, and display the other characteristics of the Scandinav- 
 ians and the fair North Germans. No less than fifty per 
 cent, are veritable short-heads, and consequently do not 
 belong to the Semitic race. Of these a good many are the 
 happy possessors of so-called typical Jewish noses. How 
 came there to be eleven per cent, blue-eyed and blonde- 
 haired genuine Aryans among the Jews and the Syrians? 
 Fortunately, the ancient Egyptians have preserved for us 
 on their imperishable monuments a clear and decisive 
 answer to this important query. The Amorites, one of the
 
 234 
 
 seven nations that inhabited Palestine before and after the 
 invasion of the Israelites, are depicted on those monuments 
 as tall white-skinned, blue-eyed, and blonde-haired men. 
 These Amorites are called in Egyptian Tamehu, the peo- 
 ple of the Northland. These Tarnehu or Northmen are 
 described by the Egyptian writers as white savages, who 
 were dressed in skins and, in Indian fashion, adorned their 
 heads with feathers. It is certainly no disgrace to the 
 blue-eyed and blonde-haired among the English, the Amer- 
 icans, and the Germans, that their ancestors were living in 
 Europe, in North Africa, and Palestine as savages long 
 after the Babylonians and the Egyptians had reared the 
 grand edifices of their civilization, that their forefathers 
 were dressed in skins and dwelt in caves at the time Moses 
 had laid the foundation of the kingdom of righteousness 
 and humanity. Nor are we Jews specially proud of the 
 fact that a good deal of the blue blood of the blue-eyed 
 Aryans is rolling in our veins, almost as much of it as is to 
 be found in southern Germany, in many parts of England, 
 and in most parts of America. We only wish to call atten- 
 tion to the fact that they who pride themselves on being 
 Aryans did not receive a charter from nature to be exclus- 
 ive standard-bearers of civilization and the privileged crea- 
 tors of the arts and the wisdom of a higher life. At the 
 same time we desire to point to the fact that we Jews are 
 after all, by the ties of blood, second or third cousins to the 
 very people who, as Aryans, regard us as Semitic aliens. 
 
 But whence do the fifty per cent, short-heads among the 
 Jews and Syrians come, who are evidently no Semites? 
 Prof. Felix von Luschan, whose data I am freely using 
 and whose lines of reasoning I am closely following in this 
 lecture, has, in a paper recently read before the German 
 Anthropological Society, given a satisfactory solution of 
 this great problem. The fifty per cent, of the Syrians and 
 Jews that have short heads, dark eyes, and dark hair are 
 the descendants of the once great, very numerous, and
 
 235 
 
 powerful Hittites, one of the seven nations found by the 
 Semitic Israelites when they conquered Canaan. The Hit- 
 tites belonged to the wide-spread race called by Luschan 
 the Armenoid, by Hornmel the Alarodian stock. The mod- 
 ern Armenians are the purest representatives of that race. 
 The Armenians have short heads, dark eyes, dark hair, and 
 the most pronounced typical Jewish noses. They resemble 
 in every respect the ancient Hittites, as represented on 
 numerous Hittite monuments. The same race forms the 
 main stock of the population of Asia Minor. Most of the 
 Greeks and Turks bear the features of that race. The 
 ancient Pelasgians, the aboriginal inhabitants of Greece, 
 were a branch of the same race. The latter, again, are 
 very probably identical with the Ligurians, whose descend- 
 ants form the bulk of the population of southern Italy, 
 and make up a very large part of the French and Swiss. 
 
 The result of the foregoing discussion is : The so-called 
 Aryans consist of four distinct races; the Semites do by no 
 means form a racial unit, and, lastly, we Jews are far from 
 being a pure race. On the contrary, we are a very mixed 
 race. Three elements have entered into the composition of 
 the Jewish people: the true Semitic race, the blue-eyed, or, 
 if you choose, the Aryan Amorites, and the Hittites, have 
 mixed their blood to produce the Jewish or Israelitish peo- 
 ple. The Aryan Amorites and the Armenian Hittites were 
 turned into Israelites, into worshipers of Yahve and follow- 
 ers of Moses, by a small but masterful Semitic tribe, the 
 Bene Israel. Many a Jew will doubtless groan in spirit or 
 be filled with indignation on being told that he shall no 
 longer vaingloriously boast of being a member of the 
 purest race on earth! "What are we then," many of these 
 race-Jews will cry, "if we are not unmixed and lineal 
 descendants of one of the tribes of Israel? Alack the day! 
 We are told by a teacher of the religion of Israel that we 
 are not pure Israelites. All our glory will depart from us, 
 and the faith of the prophets will lose its hold on the Jews,
 
 236 
 
 if they should come to think that we are after all a very 
 mixed race, if we can not all lay claim to beinglineal descend- 
 ants of those that went forth from Egypt." To this 
 lament of race-Jews, I reply: Let the voice of your igno- 
 rance and irreligion be hushed! There has never been a 
 great people on earth that was of an unmixed race. Only 
 among savages do you find pure races. The English, 
 French, and German nations, on whose shoulders rests the 
 civilization of Europe, have been composed out of four dis- 
 tinct races at least. The valiant, free, rich, and progress- 
 ive American people is the most mixed of all peoples. 
 There is hardly a race on earth that has not contributed 
 some of its blood toward the making of this youngest 
 nation. All the greatest nations known to history: the 
 civilizers of the world, the Hellenes ; the conquerors of the 
 world, the Romans; the Egyptians, before whose stupend- 
 ous works we stand in speechless wonder; the Babyloni- 
 ans and the Assyrians, who gave to the world the art of 
 writing, of architecture, and sculpture, the science of 
 astronomy and the elements of mathematics all grew out 
 of an amalgamation of various races. And should the 
 people of Israel, that has given to the world something 
 more precious than all the gifts bestowed by all other 
 nations, namely, the belief in the one only God, the Maker 
 of heaven and earth, and the Father of all men, the belief 
 in Yahve, the righteous and merciful, that has given birth 
 to the Bible, and enriched the families of the earth with 
 the highest spiritual treasures, should that people alone 
 have formed an exception to the universal rule and done 
 its life-work as a pure race? Savages exist as a race just 
 as animals form distinct species. All the civilized nations 
 of the earth, however, were welded together into a living 
 unity by spiritual forces. 
 
 The Israelites were, closely considered, no people in the 
 narrow and accepted sense. They were from trie very 
 beginning a religious community. It was the supreme
 
 237 
 
 genius of one man, of Moses, that delivered a few small 
 Semitic tribes and a multitude of non-Semitic people from 
 the bondage of Eygpt. It was through him that the infinite 
 mystery of all manifested itself for the first time as Yahve, 
 the just God, who loves the stranger, pities the oppressed, 
 and wreaks vengeance on the cruel oppressor. For the 
 first time in history oppression exercised in the name of 
 race and nationality, were resisted and overcome in the 
 name of human rights, defended by a God that loves right 
 and hates wrong. It was on Mount Sinai that the hero of 
 justice promulgated the leading principles of social and 
 individual morality as a revelation of the Deity. It was 
 there that he made a covenant between Yahve and the 
 freedmen, not as between a tribe and its divinity, but as 
 between the redeemed ones and their Redeemer, between a 
 God of righteousness and the people that was to walk in 
 the ways of Justice. With this step taken by Moses, the 
 spirit of mankind broke through the bounds of race and 
 made the attempt to establish a commonwealth on the 
 foundation of human rights as laid down and made sacred 
 and inviolable by the will of Yahve. The people of Israel, 
 as fashioned and inspired by Moses, had in itself a spiritual 
 power of attraction and assimilation. No race and no 
 class could be excluded from a community which had for 
 its animating and unifying principle the belief in Yahve, 
 the Protector of the weak and oppressed and the Lover of 
 right. As the Israelites marched through the wilderness 
 they attached to themselves a number of Midianitish tribes. 
 Though by no means a numerous people, they conquered 
 Canaan and made it the land of Israel and of Yahve, not 
 so much by the prowess of their arms, as by the spiritual 
 power inherent in their religion. The sever; nations were 
 not annihilated, as a late legend would make us believe, but 
 were assimilated by the Israelitish spirit and incorporated 
 into the people of Yahve. Translated to Babylonia, the 
 Jews converted the population of whole provinces to
 
 Yahvism and incorporated them into the body of the 
 Jewish people. Only about fifty thousand Jews returned 
 from the Babylonian captivity. But in spite of the vehe- 
 ment protests of the puritan nationalists against intermar- 
 riage, nearly all the pagan inhabitants of Palestine were 
 transformed into Yahve-worshiping Israelites. In every 
 province and city of the Roman empire numerous Gentiles 
 embraced the faith of Israel and formed flourishing congre- 
 gations. And the blood of these Gentiles still rolls in our 
 veins. In a modified form as trinitarian Christianity, the 
 religious spirit of Israel has conquered and assimilated the 
 best part of mankind and made it Israelitish. But Yahv- 
 ism, pure and simple, did not cease to gain accessions. 
 The blood of the converted Turanian Khazaars has mixed 
 with the blood of the Russian Jews. Teutonic, Celtic, 
 Slavic, and Latin are elements that have entered into our 
 composition. The very vigor and vitality, physical and 
 mental, of the Jews is, next to the perennially active influ- 
 ences of their moralizing religion, due to the fact that they 
 are an extremely mixed race. 
 
 Some of those who hear, and many more who will read, 
 this lecture, will exclaim: "If we are not Jews by race, if 
 we are not Jews by the sacred and indissoluble ties of 
 blood, why should we continue to be Jews, why should we 
 hold to Judaism?" To such we answer: "If you are not 
 Jews by faith, but by race, the sooner you will depart from 
 us, the better it will be for you, the ^better it will be for 
 the mission of Yahve, for the religion of Moses and the 
 prophets, the religion of the psalmists and sages who 
 worked and prayed, who lived and died not to glorify a 
 race but to glorify the God of humanity. If I knew that 
 there is not a drop of Semitic, not aj drop of Jewish blood 
 in my veins, I would yet cling with every fiber of my 
 being, as long as there was breath in me, to the religious 
 community of Israel, to the Church of Yahvism, to the 
 monotheistic faith of pure humanity."
 
 239 
 
 Abraham is not our father, Isaac did not beget us, 
 Jacob we know not, but Yahve, the Maker of heaven and 
 earth, the Father of all men, the Father of justice and 
 mercy, He is our Father and our God, He is the Redeemer 
 and Guide of spiritual and universal Israel from genera- 
 tion to generation.
 
 THE MEANING OF THE MAC 
 CABEAN STRUGGLE. 
 
 TTTE celebrate this week the half-feast of Harmkkah, or 
 ^ ^ the feast of the Maccabees. It was instituted many 
 years ago, to commemorate an event which for good and 
 also for evil has exercised an incalculable influence on the 
 religious and moral destinies of the human race. On the 
 one hand, the dreadful persecution which the Jews suffered 
 for the sake of their faith and laws under Antiochus 
 Epiphanes, and the heroic uprising of the people under 
 the leadership of the immortal Maccabees, saved the 
 religion of Israel from imminent death. The battles of 
 Emmaus, Bethzur, and Eleasa decided the fate of Hebrew 
 monotheism as against paganism, just as the battles of 
 Marathon, Salamis, and Platsea preserved to mankind the 
 blessings of Greek culture. On the other hand, the blood 
 of the martyrs not only kept alive the religious truths and 
 moral ideas of Yahvism, to be transmitted as a precious 
 heritage to generations unborn, but it also hallowed every 
 priestly rite and custom, consecrated every ceremony, and 
 gave a divine sanction to every dietary law. A fearful 
 price had been paid for the preservation of the Mosaic and 
 the traditional laws. Every part, therefore, came to be 
 regarded as of equal religious importance and of imperish- 
 able ethical value. The yoke of the Law was, in conse- 
 quence thereof, fastened more firmly than ever upon the 
 neck of the worshipers of Yahve, and was not to be 
 removed for thousands of years to come. Only a few 
 enlightened men were henceforth able to make a clear dis- 
 tinction between eternal moral obligations and transitory
 
 241 
 
 ceremonial institutions and ordinances. When the times 
 were ripe for Yahvism to go forth from Zion, and bring 
 its glad tidings to all the ends of the earth, it was unable 
 to move freely forward, being weighed down by the cere- 
 monial laws ; it could not change its external forms and 
 adapt itself to new conditions and a larger mission. 
 
 Glorious beyond praise were the victories won by the 
 Maccabean warriors against overwhelming odds. The 
 inspiring personality and military genius of Judas the 
 Hammer, turned pious scholars and peaceful rustics into a 
 band of heroes, whom he pitted with marvelous success 
 against the trained Greek armies of the king. They 
 snatched the Jewish nationality, which the furious tyrant 
 had determined to exterminate, from the jaws of death. 
 They secured the religious freedom and the political inde- 
 pendence of their country for about a century, and made 
 the name of the Jewish people, so long held in contempt 
 by the ruling pagans, a terror to the surrounding nations. 
 But while these achievements must be regarded as unmixed 
 blessings, when viewed from the purely national stand- 
 point, they proved for ages to come a fatal hindrance to 
 the spiritual mission, to the Messianic destiny, of Israel. 
 For they intensified a thousandfold the already exist- 
 ing antipathies between Jews and Gentiles, and bred in 
 the latter that spirit of aversion and implacable hatred 
 of which we, after two thousand years, are still reaping 
 the bitter fruits. When, in the fullness of time, the 
 mountain of the house of Yahve was to be established 
 at the head of the mountains, and exalted above the 
 hills, when all nations were to flow unto it, and many 
 kingdoms were to say: "Come, let us go to the mount- 
 ain of Yahve, to the house of the God of Jacob, that 
 He may teach us of His ways, and that we may walk in 
 His paths," then mountains of inherited hates, misunder- 
 standings, and prejudices rose between Israel, the foreor- 
 dained teacher and redeemer, and the tribes that he was to 
 gather into the fold of Yahve.
 
 242 
 
 It was a great historical calamity, of dire consequences 
 to all times and races, that Greek and Jew met in deadly 
 conflict, the Greek as a ruthless persecutor and murderous 
 oppressor, and the Jew as the desperate defender of his 
 spiritual possessions and of his national existence. The 
 twenty or more years of inhuman persecution and bloody 
 warfare, full of shame and crime on the part of the Greek, 
 full of fervid enthusiasm, of heroic endeavor, and death- 
 defying fanatical resistance on the part of the Jew, 
 engendered feelings of mutual detestation in the com- 
 batants, inflamed the breast of the Greeks with inex- 
 tinguishable hatred for their antagonists, and caused a 
 wide and deep chasm to yawn between the two greatest 
 nations of antiquity. Henceforth the Greeks were irrec- 
 oncilable and conscienceless Jew-haters and Jew-baiters. 
 It was their fertile imagination, inspired by deadly hatred, 
 that invented those dreadful lies and calumnies against 
 the Jews which, with but slight modifications, are to this 
 day the stock in trade of our enemies in every land. It 
 was they that spread through the world those envenomed 
 prejudices which still poison our lives. It was they who 
 inoculated Christianity, for a time the faithful and lov- 
 ing daughter of Israel, with the virus of fatal enmity. 
 They had the ear and held the minds of every people 
 belonging to the Mediterranean circle of civilization. 
 Their language was understood and spoken, and their writ- 
 ings were read, by the educated classes of every country 
 and nation. Greek colonies existed in almost every part 
 of the civilized world, mostly in close local contact and 
 hostile rivalry with Jewish colonies. Thus it came about 
 that their violent antipathies against the Jews and their 
 malignant slanders of the Jewish character and religion 
 spread from people to people and from kingdom to king- 
 dom, and were transmitted as an inherited curse from gen- 
 eration to generation, even to the children of our own 
 times. On the other hand, the most pious and zealous
 
 243 
 
 representatives of the Jewish people could not help remem- 
 bering, with a sense of bitter resentment, the fearful spirit- 
 ual and physical misery, which the cruel despotism of the 
 Greeks had brought upon them. They could not but 
 bear in mind that contact with Greek culture and adop- 
 tion of its views and ways, had caused a large part of the 
 Israelitish nation, the wealthiest and most aristocratic part 
 of it, to become apostates from their faith and traitors to 
 their country. No wonder, therefore, that they held 
 Greek customs and manners, Greek modes of life, in 
 abhorrence, and were sore afraid of Greek speech, of 
 Hellenic art and science, poetry and philosophy, as leading 
 to idolatry and its vices and abominations. Though it 
 was impossible wholly to stem the tide of Greek influence 
 on the life and thought of Israel, still there was a deep alien- 
 ation from, and invincible distrust of, Hellenic civilization 
 in the hearts of the most vigorous leaders of Palestinian 
 Judaism. 
 
 Alas for the follies, the passions, and the crimes of men, 
 alas for national hates and strifes, which caused the civili- 
 zation of Greece and that of Judea to stand apart, and observe 
 towards each other for centuries an attitude of mutual con- 
 tempt and hostility ! Do they not together form the whole 
 of humanity? The genius of Athens and the genius of 
 Jerusalem complement each other, each supplies the ele- 
 ments of higher life that the other lacks. Is it not the aim 
 of modern civilization to make one music of the spiritual 
 life of Israel and the glorious artistic life of Hellas? Does 
 not the process of history consist in blending the ideas 
 and ideals of the Hebrew prophets, psalmists, and lawgivers 
 with the imperishable ideas and ideals of the Hellenic 
 poets, artists, philosophers, and to weave them into a higher 
 unity and harmony? This all-important historical pro- 
 cess had indeed begun to work itself out quietly but 
 progressively since Alexander the Great had led the 
 rich stream of Greek civilization into Asia and northern
 
 244 
 
 Africa. The Eastern lands were being fertilized with new 
 elements of intellectual, poetical, and artistic life. The 
 melodious and rich language of Hellas, the most perfect of 
 all idioms, her wonderful literature radiant with incompar- 
 able beauty and teeming with treasures of wisdom, the 
 refined modes of Greek life, the grace and elegance of 
 Greek manners, the wit and charm of Greek conversation, 
 the vivacity, suppleness, and keenness of the Greek intel- 
 lect cast a spell over the mind of every people that came 
 in contact with representatives of that sunny race. The 
 Israelites who dwelt in Egypt and Palestine formed no 
 exception. They, too, felt the irresistible charms of Greek 
 life. They had to confess to themselves, that there was 
 much in Hellenic civilization which was superior to that 
 of any other people. There was sweetness, loveliness, and 
 beauty attached to Hellenic culture which could not but 
 profoundly impress the most open and sensitive minds 
 among Judeans. The upper classes learned to speak, to 
 read, and to write Greek. The poetry and philosophy of 
 the ruling race exercised a stimulating and rejuvenating 
 influence on Hebrew poetry and speculation. Some of the 
 most original and profoundest works, some of the greatest 
 masterpieces of Hebrew literature, saw the light during the 
 Grecian period before the era of suspicion and hate had set 
 in. Greek ways and manners were slowly and impercept- 
 ibly adopted by all classes. The more tinged one was with 
 the elements of Hellenism, the greater was his claim to 
 general culture. The language, the intellectual and mate- 
 rial civilization of Greece, comprised under the general 
 name of Hellenism, were not only cosmopolitan elements, 
 shared in more or less by all the subject races, but they con- 
 stituted the only bond of Union which held together the 
 diverse and discordant countries and nations that formed 
 the kingdom of the Seleucidae. The more Hellenized a 
 people was, the higher was the position it occupied in the 
 empire, the nearer it approached as to dignity and rights
 
 245 
 
 the imperial Hellenic race. No wonder, therefore, that 
 there existed a strong Hellenistic party in Judea. We 
 ought to divest ourselves of the violent prejudices which 
 we have, from the days of our childhood, imbibed against 
 that party. It was originally far from being composed of 
 a set of traitors or apostates. The highest aristocracy of 
 the nation belonged to it, the high-priestly family of Judea 
 that traced its descent back to Aaron, the brother of Moses. 
 Since the return from the Babylonian captivity the 
 Zadokites were the hereditary high priests and political 
 chiefs of the Jewish people. The pious high priest Onias 
 and his brother and successor, Jason, were zealous friends 
 and promoters of Hellenism and the acknowledged heads of 
 the party. Surely the sons of Zadok, whose exalted posi- 
 tion depended on the religion of Yahve and on the people's 
 adherence to the laws and teachings of Moses, can not have 
 intended to undermine the very ground on which they and 
 their power were standing. That party was originally 
 actuated by motives of true patriotism and inspired by 
 ideas of generous progress. While clinging to the God of 
 their fathers and to the laws of righteousness, mercy, and 
 holiness, they wished to deliver their people from the state 
 of appalling isolation in which it found itself. Their 
 neighbors, the Samaritans, the Ammonites, the Moabites, 
 Idumeans and Philistines, hated the Jews with a deadly 
 inherited hatred. The Greeks despised them as barbarians 
 and ridiculed their peculiar customs and manners. The 
 Hellenists determined to bridge over the gulf which sepa- 
 rated the Jews from the Gentiles. By adopting as much 
 of Greek culture and Hellenic modes of life as was compat- 
 ible with Israel's religion and morality they hoped to 
 remove from their people the reproach of national exclus- 
 iveness and barbarism, so that it would come to be treated 
 as the social and political peer of the ruling nation. But 
 they made a grievous mistake in the means they chose to 
 bring about the consummation so devoutly wished for by
 
 246 
 
 them. They were impatient of the slow pace of time, 
 and unwise and violent in their measures. Instead of let- 
 ting spiritual forces and the accumulative influences of 
 time work out the process of conciliation, by which both 
 the Israelitish and the Hellenic minds were to be quickened 
 with a richer life, they resorted to purely external meas- 
 ures of assimilation, that were regarded by the puritan 
 party with loathing and hatred. 
 
 The Greeks assigned to gymnastic exercises the fore- 
 most place in their scheme of education. They looked 
 upon athletic sports as the most serious business of life. 
 A great athlete was honored as a national hero. Pub- 
 lic games, such as the Olympian, were held at stated 
 periods in the mother country, and wherever else Greeks 
 were settled. Whoever proved himself in those national 
 contests to be the best wrestler, the most accomplished 
 boxer, the most skillful thrower of the discus, was 
 crowned as victor, was celebrated in dithyrambic songs; 
 statues were erected to him and he and his family were 
 exempt from taxation. Only born Greeks were permitted 
 to take part in those games. Any non-Hellenist, who was 
 allowed to participate in them, was by this special privilege 
 adopted into the ranks of the noble Greek race. At the 
 urgent request of the high priest Jason, King Antiochus 
 Epiphanes granted to all such Jews as gave proof of being 
 skilled in Greek athletics, the rights of full Macedonian 
 citizenship, and the privilege of taking part in all public 
 assemblies and the national games. Then Jason and the 
 Hellenists resolved to open gymnasia in Judea, in order to 
 obtain by this means the higher citizenship for their com- 
 patriots, and to abate the contempt in which they were 
 held. In the year 174 B. C. a gymnasium was opened for 
 young men and boys in Jerusalem in the Acra, northwest 
 from the temple. But the puritans were filled with dismay 
 and indignation. For a Greek gymnasium was not like one 
 of ours. The very etymology of the word, which is derived
 
 247 
 
 from gymnos, nude, will of itself explain why those games so 
 deeply offended their moral sensibilities. Suffice it to say, 
 that no civilized people of today would allow such gym- 
 nasia to exist for one day. The modern Christian nations 
 are simply not Greeks but Jewish puritans in this respect 
 as well as in many others. Those puritans were God-fear- 
 ing, sternly moral, simple, pure, abstemious, and hard- 
 working people. It was entirely indifferent to them 
 whether the idolaters despised or respected them, whether 
 they loved or hated them. They knew the moral rotten- 
 ness of the Greeks, they were fully aware of the unmen- 
 tionable abominations practiced by those graceful and ele- 
 gant Greeks, and held their manners and ways, their whole 
 conduct of life in sovereign contempt. They feared con- 
 tact with them as a source of moral contamination. No 
 wonder, therefore, that the sight of Jewish young men exer- 
 cising in the Greek fashion put their sense of shame to 
 blush, and caused them to burn with righteous anger. 
 Fierce strife, mutual recriminations, and partisan hates 
 filled Jerusalem and all Judea. 
 
 The Hellenists became ever bitterer against what they 
 called the blind fanaticism and narrow exclusiveness of the 
 Assideans or Puritans. In course of a few years the most 
 radical among them gained the upper hand. The most 
 unscrupulous, fanatical, and cruel, of them all, Menelaus, 
 bought the high-priesthood from the king, although he 
 does not even seem to have been of priestly descent. Being 
 intensely hated by the people as a sacrilegious plunderer 
 of the Temple, as a murderer and blasphemer, he became a 
 relentless enemy of his nation and religion. Vile apostate 
 that he was, he persuaded the king that the laws of Moses 
 were full of hatred to mankind, forbidding the Jews to sit at 
 the same table with Gentiles, and to do aught but evil to 
 strangers. He, therefore, advised the king to abolish the 
 whole Mosaic Law. Thus Menelaus hoped to turn the Jews 
 intoGreeksby destroyingtheirfaith and national laws. Anti- 
 ochus Epiphanes was senseless and cruel enough to listen
 
 248 
 
 to such advice and carry it into practice. The king was a 
 strange admixture of madness and statesmanship, of egregi- 
 ous folly and keen prudence. He was an inhuman despot 
 and a pleasant boon companion, a reckless spendthrift and 
 yet full of insatiable avarice. He believed in no God, and 
 yet shed human blood like water in order to convert the 
 most faithful and inoffensive of his subjects into worship- 
 ers of the Greek gods. As the Czar of Russia is trying 
 to prop up his tottering despotism by driving all his sub- 
 jects into the Greek Church or driving them out of the 
 land, so did Antiochus Epiphanes hope to give fresh coher- 
 ence to his fast disintegrating empire by means of a forced 
 unity of religion. Hence, he issued the insensate decree 
 abolishing the religion of Israel. The sons of Israel were 
 forbidden to worship Yahve the Holy and Righteous, or 
 to observe the laws of Moses. They were commanded to 
 adore the Olympian Zeus. His statue was placed on the 
 greater altar in the court of the Sanctuary, and swine 
 were daily offered up to him. Every Jew was ordered to 
 abjure his faith, burn incense and sacrifice to idols, and in 
 token of his apostacy to eat of the flesh of swine. The 
 practice of the Abrahamitic rite, the observance of the 
 Sabbath and the holidays, and abstinence from forbidden 
 meats were most severely punished, in many cases with 
 death. Tens of thousands submitted to the decrees, pur- 
 chasing life and peace at the price of faith and conscience. 
 But there were also thousands of holy men and women 
 who preferred death to spiritual suicide. Many suffered 
 martyrdom, many expired on the cross, or were in other 
 ways tortured to death. The inhuman persecutors strung 
 up many heroic women, tying their dying babes to the 
 breast of their agonized mothers. The pious fled from the 
 towns and villages, and hid themselves in caves. Most of 
 them were massacred or burned in their hiding-places, on 
 Sabbath days, when they would not raise a hand to defend 
 themselves. The land became desolate, Jerusalem was
 
 249 
 
 without inhabitants, save the Greek garrisons and the Hel- 
 lenists, who dwelt in the Acropolis. Such infinite woe 
 had the Hellenistic party brought upon their country and 
 their people through their reckless and fanatical measures. 
 The people of Israel, and what is infinitely more precious, 
 the religion of the prophets seemed doomed to perish. To 
 all human calculations the cause of Monotheism was hope- 
 lessly lost. 
 
 But when all was darkness and despair, a star shone 
 forth from Jacob, and a savior came forth from Israel. The 
 priest Mattathias and his five sons took up arms against a 
 host of evils, and by heroically opposing, ended them. 
 They gathered the scattered sheep of Israel, and trans- 
 formed them into irresistible warriors. They rushed with 
 their bare bodies against the mailed ranks of the Greek 
 phalanx, and broke them to pieces. The doves chased the 
 vultures. A few thousand peasants, scholars, singers, and 
 priests put large armies of Greek veterans to flight. For 
 at their head marched the five Hasmonean lions, whose 
 roar terrified the foe. They all lived and died working 
 out the salvation of the Lord unto his people and through 
 it unto all nations and times. But the greatest and might- 
 iest of them all was Judas Maccabee. 
 
 O Judas Maccabee, glorious hero, fierce as a lion in 
 battle, gentle as a dove in peace, radiant with holiness, 
 girt with strength, crowned with all the attributes of man- 
 hood, we, the latest-born children of those whom then 
 didst lead from darkness to light, from shameful oppres- 
 sion to victory, we, and with us countless myriads of 
 Christians, who adore thy God and seek His ways, we all 
 bend our knee to thy hallowed name, and offer the tribute 
 of our love and gratitude at the shrine of thy memory! 
 We see thy flashing sword dazzling thy eyes of thy ene- 
 mies. We hear thy thundering voice marshaling the hosts 
 of Faith and Liberty against their destroyers and the mur- 
 derers of their infants. We behold thee in the thick of
 
 250 
 
 battle, surrounded by slain foes as a reaper is by sheaves. 
 Thine eyes shine and burn like two stars. Majesty is 
 seated upon thy brow. Thy mighty frame bestrides the 
 earth, a born king of men. We note thee watching by 
 the camp-fires, devising new victories. Thy great soul 
 communes with God in the night, it bodies forth immor- 
 tal songs, those melodious psalms that have been ring- 
 ing through the ages, and are chanted in churches and 
 synagogues, as numerous as the stars of heaven. We hear 
 thee pray before the battle, as thou kneelest with thy host 
 on the ground, lifting up thy heart unto heaven. We see 
 thee fight thy last fatal battle on the field of Eleasa, 
 deserted by those who ought to be with thee, with but 
 eight hundred faithful knights of the spirit around thee. 
 All day thou strivest, with superhuman valor against over- 
 whelming forces. Towards evening thy enemies beset 
 thee round about. Now thou fallest, sweet master, high 
 priest of God, our light and deliverer! Thou didst not 
 live and die in vain. Thy precious blood has made the 
 earth fruitful. The future of humanity was in thy keep- 
 ing, and nobly didst thou discharge thy trust. As for us, 
 may our tongue cleave to its roof, may our right hand for- 
 get its cunning, if we ever forsake the holy cause for 
 which thou hast laid down thy heroic life! May our name 
 become a byword and a hissing if we become faithless to 
 the spirit which animated thee ! O may a spark of thy fiery 
 soul fall into ours and illuminate it! And you, unhappy 
 Hellenists, who grew impatient with time and were thrust 
 aside by time, whose good intentions were turned into 
 curses, to yourselves and your people, you, too, we under- 
 stand and over your tragic fate, too, we shed tears of sympa- 
 thy. We and generations unborn will work out your plans 
 of conciliation and fraternization, but in calmness and wis- 
 dom, taking heed not to awaken love violently before it be 
 willing. In due time God will hasten His salvation and 
 bring on the great day of universal harmony when He 
 will blend all the tribes of man into a higher unity.
 
 ERNEST RENAN. 
 
 TF "there are sermons in stones, books in running 
 *** brooks," there are certainly excellent sermons in the 
 lives of the humblest men. How much more information 
 must there be in the life of Renan, who for fifty years and 
 upwards has been among a host of brilliant authors the 
 most brilliant writer of France, who, during half a cen- 
 tury, has largely moulded the religious ideas and moral 
 tendencies of the French people, and has exerted a consid- 
 erable influence on the thought of Europe, and more 
 especially affected its views regarding the origin and 
 development of the religion and ethics of Israel. How 
 great soever his faults as a thinker, how numerous soever 
 his glittering but superficial generalities, how grievous 
 soever his shortcomings as an historian, how perverted and 
 exaggerated soever his religious and philosophical ideas 
 may have been, he is nevertheless in his weakness and 
 strength, in his aspirations and his skepticism, in his ideal- 
 ism and his pessimism, a representative Frenchman, the 
 very embodiment of the national spirit, as it was fashioned 
 by the classic age and literature of Louis XIV., as it came 
 forth from the school of Voltaire, Diderot, and the other 
 Encyclopedists, and as it was shaped with the shanks of 
 doom by the great revolution and later political and 
 social cataclysms. 
 
 The age of Louis XIV. and its galaxy of great writ- 
 ers and artists brought to a head what the native instincts 
 of preceding ages had been tending to, it made the French 
 the modern classical people of beautiful forms in social inter- 
 course, in art, and literature. From the court courtly forms 
 spread to the upper and the middle classes, and from them
 
 252 
 
 they descended to the lower strata of society. French man- 
 ners are most elegant and winning. From the academician to 
 the artisan, from the great lady to the wife of the small shop- 
 keeper^here is a natural courtesy and urbanity in the French 
 which forms a pleasant contrast to the natural rudeness 
 and brusqueness observable in the great mass of the other 
 European nations. More than any other people, the French 
 seek to cover up the ugly features of selfish human nature 
 with the veil of exquisite politeness, and try to make the 
 converse of man with man a thing of beauty and joy. 
 
 Renan was the typical son of this amiable nation. He 
 was perhaps the most amiable and lovable Frenchman of his 
 time. There was a refinement about him, an indescribable 
 charm of manner, a sweetness of temper, a joyous kindli- 
 ness of nature, that made everybody who had the good 
 fortune to know him love him tenderly, enthusiastically. 
 Even those who most bitterly opposed his theological 
 views and hated his writings as prolific sources of spiritual 
 evil, cherished for him personally but feelings of respect 
 and affection. No bitter words ever escaped his lips or 
 flowed from his pen against those whose fierce opposition 
 had driven him from his professorial chair at the College of 
 France and who continued to assail his works with unspar- 
 ing invectives. He was generous to friend and foe alike. 
 It may be truly said of him, that he loved his enemies. 
 He bestowed valuable favors on them, whenever there was 
 an opportunity, and aided whatever good cause they 
 worked for with his immense influence. Struggling tal- 
 ents of every kind received encouragement, liberal help, 
 and advice from him, and whenever his own means did 
 not suffice, a note of recommendation from him to any of 
 his millionaire friends, to a Rothschild or Baron de Hirsch, 
 was as good as a note of the Bank of France. Not only in 
 France, but in every European country and in America he 
 left behind him a host of devoted friends and admirers among 
 Catholics, Protestants, and Israelites, among believers and
 
 253 
 
 unbelievers. He recognized in his personal relations 
 no difference of creed, race, or nationality. He corre- 
 sponded on terms of intimacy with dignitaries of the 
 Church, with leading Lutherans, and with Jewish scholars, 
 such as Geiger, Levy, and many others. Though the 
 fratricidal war between France and Germany had enkin- 
 dled fierce hatred between these two nations, it did not 
 alienate Renan's soul from his German associates, nor did 
 it blind him to the superiority of German scholarship, nor 
 cause him to think less highly of the noble qualities of 
 the German heart and mind. France may justly be proud 
 of Renan, and as long as she can produce such characters 
 and pure lives as his, her moral standing among the civil- 
 ized nations will be firmly secured. 
 
 As a literary artist, Renan ranks among the foremost 
 representatives of the French artistic genius. As respects 
 the art of literary composition, the French have no rival 
 among the modern nations. From this point of view they 
 are, in a higher sense than any other people, the heirs of 
 Greece and Rome. The Renaissance, or the rebirth of the 
 models of ancient art and literature, has in this respect 
 done more for them than for any other nation. The 
 French language is itself a most perfect masterpiece, 
 devised by no individual artist, but bodied forth by the 
 artistic soul of the nation. It is a marvelous vehicle of 
 communication, which conveys thought with astonishing 
 precision. It is rich, copious, yet never ambiguous; it has 
 the logical directness, lucidity, and syntactic coherence of 
 the Latin together with the grace and beauty of the Greek 
 language. These native qualities of their idiom have, 
 since the golden age of Racine, Moliere, Bossuet, Fe*nelon, 
 and many other stars of first magnitude, been developed 
 to a wonderful degree of perfection. The French style is 
 as clear and transparent as the water of the most limpid 
 brook. With hardly an exception French authors in every 
 province of literature strive above all other things to write
 
 254 
 
 with elegance, precision, and grace. They form every 
 sentence with the utmost care, as if they meant it to be in 
 itself a model "of literary art. There is in French books 
 and essays a proportion between parts, a symmetry of 
 ideas, an airy gracefulness, a vivacity of movement, a 
 spirited sententiousness, that makes them the model and 
 envy of all nations. The French mind is nothing if not 
 logical; it is passionately fond of symmetry. Hence the 
 French excel in mathematics and astronomy. A French 
 writer will take up an idea, which he holds to be true, and 
 will with admirable skill develop it to its utmost logical 
 consequences, oftentimes without regard to historical or 
 social facts. If the facts of history and life do not agree 
 with his idea, which ought to be universally true, the 
 worse for the facts. A French author will erect a grand, 
 many-storied edifice out of the materials of one truth, one 
 idea. There will be many large windows to that building, 
 and at each window the same theory will stand smiling, 
 and look out at you with a winning grace. The more is 
 the pity if the realities of things are seen standing outside, 
 declaring aloud that there is no room for them in that 
 beautiful building, and that, if once admitted, they would 
 burst it apart and bring it down upon the author. 
 
 It is needless to say that there are very numerous 
 exceptions to this rule. But the general characteristics of 
 the French mind and of French authors most fitly apply 
 to the mind and works of Renan, and give a fair estimate 
 of his merits and faults as a writer. He was one of the 
 most brilliant writers of modern France. Apart from 
 their contents, from their truth or falsity, his works pos- 
 sess excellencies of a very high order. They are master- 
 pieces of literary art. Long after progressive biblical 
 research will have exploded, long after a deeper and truer 
 philosphy or religion will have refuted, and the religious 
 conscience of the world will have rejected, his theories and 
 ideas, his books will be read as French classics. In this
 
 255 
 
 respect Renan is one of the incarnations of the French 
 artistic genius. But also his faults as a thinker and histo- 
 rian, which are many and grave, are faults of the French 
 mind, appearing exaggerated and individualized in his 
 writings. He has the French passion for completeness at 
 any price, though there be but the slenderest fragments 
 upon which to build. A theory, an idea, always ingenious 
 and dazzling, though at best but a partial truth, will take 
 possession of him, and with it he will start out to explain 
 the best part of the universe, or a vast section of history, 
 and will resolutely move on bursting through brazen walls 
 of opposing facts, leveling mountains with his unterrified 
 imagination and raising valleys, in order that his beautiful 
 theory may spread unchecked, and present an harmonious 
 whole. He will draw a picture of the past, so perfect, so 
 vivid and attractive, that it looks as if it had been taken 
 from life, as if he had lived in closest daily contact with, 
 and kept a diary of, the persons whose characters and con- 
 duct he describes. But when you turn to the given mater- 
 ial and evidence from which he drew, you will find in 
 most cases that they are woefully inadequate, or diametric- 
 ally opposed to his statements. 
 
 As you wander through the charming chapters of his 
 " Life of Jesus " or his " History of Israel," you often wonder 
 where he got hold of the alleged events he narrates, and 
 the traits of character he depicts, events and characteristics 
 which no reader of the Old and New Testament ever 
 dreamed of, which no investigator has been able to dis- 
 cover. One often asks himself, "How did Renan come to 
 know all these unknown things and features? Has the 
 genius of history bequeathed to him a chest full of original 
 documents and dispatches?" He really makes no secret of 
 his plan of procedure. In the preface to the first volume 
 of his History of Israel, he says: "We must not, with the 
 modern school of historians, insist on being guided only by 
 the evidence at hand. In that case the history of Israel
 
 256 
 
 up to the time of David would be a blank, and could not 
 be written at all. The question is not, how the things 
 really came to pass ; we must imagine the various ways 
 they may have happened. What has not been true in one 
 case has been true in another." And then he goes boldly on 
 to construct a history, such as his poetic imagination and his 
 French love of logical symmetry require. In fact, his " Life 
 of Jesus" is no real biography, is no more a history of the 
 founder of Christianity than Wallace's "Ben Hur." His 
 " History of Israel," at least in the earlier volumes, is really 
 no history. These works are delightful historical romances. 
 As such they are as excellent, as artistic, as Walter Scott's 
 novels, with the difference that the latter mirror the Scot- 
 tish past more truthfully than Renan's so-called histories 
 reflect the Biblical and post-Biblical past of Israel. 
 
 Yet it can not be denied, that there are in these works 
 flashes of wonderful insight into the innermost workings 
 of the souls of the prophets and apostles. He at times 
 looks with the divining eye of a true poet into the most 
 secret laboratory of the Israelitish mind, where the great 
 religious ideas and moral ideals were formed out of older 
 amorphous elements, ideas and ideals which went forth to 
 bless the families of the earth. Few men have had as firm 
 a grasp of the central religious and moral ideas of the 
 faith of Israel, or Yahvism. Few men have, like him for 
 fifty years and upwards, held their ear to the heart of 
 Israel's prophets and teachers, and heard it throb with a 
 mighty love of justice, and palpitate with a fierce hatred of 
 injustice. Few men have for half a century stood, like 
 him, with the prophets before the burning bush of the 
 world-mystery, and listened intently to the solemn message, 
 that there is an Eternal Being, Yahve, the supreme Intelli- 
 gence, who is the Father of justice, mercy, and truth, and 
 who will in the fulness of time cause right and love to 
 prevail. He heard the message, but he lacked the faith to 
 receive, and to believe in it. He did not believe in a
 
 257 
 
 World-Soul, whose essence is love ; he did not believe that 
 the heart of the universe is justice, nor did he believe that 
 the world of humanity is governed by the powers of good- 
 ness, that justice will one day find an abiding home with 
 man, that the common good will in the end be crowned 
 with victory. He was a pessimist in religion, ethics, and 
 politics. The establishment of democracy in France and 
 its conduct frightened him, and filled him with gloomy 
 forebodings as to the future of his nation. In his poem 
 "Caliban" he describes the ultimate triumph of the bestial 
 elements of man and the suppression of the higher. 
 
 In this, his religious, moral, and political pessimism, 
 he is again a representative of modern France. His pes- 
 simism is said to have infected the new generation of 
 writers. There is a school of young authors, who profess 
 and preach, in novels and more serious works, the sad doc- 
 trines of Renan. But in reality he was not the father, 
 but the child of French pessimism, he was in this respect, 
 too, but the son of his time and people. What took place 
 in the life of the individual Frenchman, Ernest Renan, 
 who, having been brought up in a Catholic seminary in 
 the strictest doctrines of the church, not only broke 
 entirely away from Catholicism, not only renounced Chris- 
 tianity, but also gave up, though with a bleeding heart, the 
 very essence of the monotheistic Israelitish faith this same 
 spiritual tragedy has been and is still being enacted in the 
 life of his great mother, the French nation, a tragedy the 
 more awful, because it is national and because in this case 
 there is no death to bring it to a conciliating end. To the 
 head and heart of France, to the upper classes as a whole, 
 always reserving many thousands of exceptions, to those 
 who lead and think, who in the last resort determine the 
 great movements of the national life, religion even in its 
 broadest and most liberal sense, even the faith of the 
 prophets, the belief in a supreme Power and Wisdom, the 
 belief in an overruling Providence shaping the destinies
 
 of mankind to ever higher ends, are utterly dead and past 
 resurrection. As it is dead with the upper classes, so it is 
 with the laboring masses. What is left to fill the place of 
 lost faith are grandiloquent phrases, high-sounding senti- 
 mentalities, which are often used to cover the yawning 
 abyss of spiritual despair. The nation's loss of faith in 
 an Infinite and Absolute, a conscious Will making for 
 righteousness and goodness, has also brought with it the 
 downfall of the belief in a future redemption of mankind 
 from evil and sin, in the final establishment of the king- 
 dom of righteousness on earth, the belief which is the very 
 soul of morality, that goodness is bound to prevail and 
 wickedness to succumb in the end. The French mind, 
 vigorous, rich, progressive though it is, for the present, at 
 least, is in its representative classes and thinkers thor- 
 oughly pessimistic, sad and hopeless, believing neither in 
 God, nor the soul, nor in the victorious power of right and 
 truth. Hence the cynicism and painful realism that 
 appears in the works of even the best authors; hence also 
 the unblushing sensualism and mocking selfishness of the 
 laboring classes, from the taint of which the upper classes 
 are by no means free. 
 
 The pessimism of the French stands in glaring con- 
 trast to the optimism of the English, and more especially 
 to the wonderful hopefulness of the American mind. The 
 two English-speaking nations have not lost the three magic 
 jewels of humanity, faith in a heart of goodness throbbing 
 at the center of existence, faith in the soul of man and its 
 kinship to the highest, faith in the coming kingdom of 
 righteousness, though it tarry long to appear. This gives 
 buoyancy, joyousness, moral vigor to their national charac- 
 ter. They know that their destinies are bound up with 
 the awful and holy mystery of infinite existence, they are 
 convinced that their future is in the keeping of a Power 
 whose will can not be thwarted nor turned away from its 
 purpose. The English people and the Americans owe the
 
 259 
 
 preservation of the three jewels of faith, to which is due 
 the wholesomeness and hopefulness of their rnind, to the 
 fact that religious and political liberty stood guard over 
 their growing life. Where freedom holds her gentle sway, 
 knowledge and faith do not wage a deadly conflict with 
 each other. These two daughters of heaven grow and 
 wax mighty together, and move before man to lead him to 
 ever higher destinies. Knowledge drives away the dark- 
 ness of ignorance, slays the dragons of superstition, buries 
 dead traditions and withers soul-enslaving forms. She 
 gives him power and victory over evil, and multiplies his 
 possessions an hundred and thousand fold. She chains 
 nature's forces to the chariot of his mind and gives him 
 wings to fly over space and time. Faith teaches men purity 
 of feeling, sincerity of thought, and nobility of action. 
 She bridges over the gulf which separates the individual 
 from his kind, and causes his interests and love to grow 
 incorporate with the common good of all. Faith holds up 
 the mirror to man, in which he may see all the wonders 
 and glories that are to be. She marches before him with 
 the torch of hope. She points out to him the city of God, 
 seated on the hill. She lifts him up when he has fallen, 
 and gives him new strength when his spirit grows faint. 
 She plants the tree of life on the grave. The French peo- 
 ple lost the jewels of faith because political despotism and 
 religious despotism had for centuries put their conscience 
 and mind in chains, and trampled the rights of the citizen 
 underfoot. And when at last conscience and mind burst 
 their fetters, and the rights of man rose from the dust, they 
 rushed with demon-fury against the Church and the State. 
 The French revolution was the offspring of French despot- 
 ism, the terror had its birth in the bastile, the axe which 
 cut off the head of Louis XVI. and Mary Antoinette, was 
 forged by the hands of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. The 
 night of St. Bartholomew gave birth to the iconoclastic 
 spirit of Voltaire, the :dragonades were the mothers of the
 
 260 
 
 Encyclopedists. As soon as this wrathful spirit of denial 
 was born, it sent forth such peals of sardonic laughter, 
 that it made the saints tremble in their seats, caused the 
 mitres of bishops and cardinals to appear as fools' caps, it 
 turned the holiest mysteries of religion into mummeries, 
 and changed, in the minds of the people, the profoundest 
 dogmas into hollow delusions. The corrosive poison of 
 its fearful satires dissolved the very substance of faith in 
 the upper and in the lower, largely also in the middle, 
 classes. The doomsday of the revolution merely consumed 
 the body of a dynasty already dead, and abolished a relig- 
 ion which was already extinct. Though it has been offi- 
 cially restored, it has not been resurrected in the soul of 
 the nation. 
 
 The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children 
 and children's children, not only in the domain of physical 
 life but also in the domain of the spiritual life. Renan was 
 one such child of time, who suffered in his heart and mind 
 for the iniquities of his people's past. For fifty years and 
 longer his soul stood disconsolate at the gates of Faith's 
 paradise. He heard, as few men of his generation did, the 
 sweet psalms of holy singers with startling distinctness, he 
 saw the glorious visions of the world's seers with a clearer 
 eye than many a professed believer in literal inspiration, he 
 felt the burden of the prophets' divine tidings more keenly 
 than many a teacher of orthodox religion. But he could 
 not enter the paradise of Faith. For between him and its 
 walls flowed a river of blood, the blood of those slain by 
 fanaticism. In it he saw swimming the myriad corpses of 
 those murdered by cruel statecraft and priestly fury. Over 
 its red waves he heard the loud wail of countless souls 
 tormented, while in the flesh, beyond human endurance. 
 And louder than the songs of seers and seraphs resounded 
 in his heart the scornful laughter of Voltaire and the other 
 voices of revengeful and wrathful denial !
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 A STRONG, melodious, and holy voice of nature and 
 -*-*- humanity has been hushed a few days ago. Lord 
 Alfred Tennyson, lord of song and wisdom, has gone silent. 
 He will add no more psalms of life to the world's psalm- 
 ody, he will enrich with no more gems of thought man- 
 kind's store of higher knowledge. For sixty years and 
 upwards, since he was a mere youth, he has stood on the 
 watch-tower of time, and whatsoever things beautiful his 
 eye beheld, and whatsoever things true his mind discerned, 
 and whatsoever things good his heart perceived, he uttered 
 forth in undying rhythmic measures. Two generations 
 listened to his song and rejoiced in their hearts, and two 
 great English-speaking nations received his message, and 
 their lives became purer and wiser thereby. Tennyson 
 was one of the world's genuine men, an original intel- 
 ligence. Most men pass through life as mere shadows, 
 flitting along paths trodden before them by real men. 
 They are hollow forms, which simulate the features and 
 actions of genuine men. Their thoughts are echoes of 
 other men's thoughts, their faith is not soul-born, but 
 something external, learned of men ; their very feelings are 
 imitated, copied. Tennyson was no mere shadow, no 
 empty form. He was a powerful human reality, that 
 steadily grew and expanded from early youth to a high old 
 age, bearing the golden flowers of beauty, ripening the 
 perfect fruits of wisdom. He forced his way through the 
 painted copies of things, through the spectres of words 
 and traditions, to the breathing life of nature and the throb- 
 bing heart of man. He stood face to face with nature and
 
 262 
 
 humanity, and gazed awe-struck upon the countenance of 
 the world's history. 
 
 "He saw through life and death, through good and ill, 
 
 He saw through his own soul, 
 The marvel of his everlasting will, 
 
 An open scroll 
 
 Before him lay ; with echoing feet he threaded the secretest 
 walks of fame." 
 
 Like all great poets, like Wordsworth and Browning, 
 like Schiller and Goethe, Shakespeare and Dante and the 
 poet of Job, Tennyson was a deep thinker, a profound 
 philosopher, and, like a true poet, it was not with the dis- 
 secting knife of the logician, not with the scales, measures, 
 and weights of the scientist, that he approached the great 
 problems of existence, but with the riving power of poetic 
 intuition. The logician and the scientist forever remain 
 on the outside of things, but the poetic genius penetrates 
 to their innermost chambers, by the magic of his universal 
 love for all life. A mind of such penetrating, original 
 insight was that of Alfred Tennyson. He was no warbler 
 of idle songs, no wild poet who "worked without a pur- 
 pose or a conscience." The great problems of existence 
 pressed in upon his mind, demanding a fresh solution. 
 His age, which is also our age, the age of great political 
 and social revolution, the age of tremendous upheavals of 
 thought, the age whose fire has melted old institutions, 
 theories, creeds, traditions, like snow, required new answers 
 to the spirit's everlasting questions, and Tennyson returned 
 answers from the heart of his own experience. The spirit 
 of the times formed for itself in Tennyson an inspired 
 interpreter, to spell out its hidden meaning, to voice its 
 desires, and to lend the beauty and sanctity of song to its 
 ideas. In the gloomy night of his own misery, while his 
 soul was moaning and weeping over the death of his dear- 
 est friend, Arthur Hallam, who was dearer to him than his 
 own brothers, whom he revered as the type of perfect
 
 263 
 
 manhood, whom he loved as the embodiment of what is 
 divine and beautiful in man, in that night he wrestled with 
 the demon of ghastliest doubts, that in his age and our age 
 threatens to blight and blast the breathing spring of human 
 hope and faith. In that night of woe, fear, and doubt, he 
 struggled for us all to deliver us from the horrors of athe- 
 ism, to redeem us from the terrors of the soul's annihila- 
 tion, to free us from the furies of spiritual despair. In his 
 own soul, Tennyson battled for the soul of human kind, to 
 save it from self-slaughter. Every cry of anguish he uttered 
 during that struggle became a melodious lament of all 
 souls smitten with grief, the red blood which flowed from 
 his wounded heart was turned into unfading flowers of 
 faith. 
 
 Tennyson descended to the lowermost circle of the 
 spirit's infernal regions, having cruel sorrow for his guide. 
 There he saw the gigantic shades of dead worlds, the spec- 
 tral corpses of extinct suns; there lay shriveled up the 
 once blooming earth, bloodless, motionless, a monstrous 
 mummy. No love was throbbing at the center of exist- 
 ence, no world-soul was bodying forth living thoughts in 
 purposeful creation. He seemed to see the spirit of man 
 leaving the body as a mere breath, and dissipate itself and 
 vanish into air. And this universal death bore the pale 
 features of his dead friend. Cruel sorrow whispered: 
 
 "The stars blindly run ; 
 
 A web is woven across the sky, 
 
 From out the waste places comes a cry, 
 And murmurs from the dying sun ; 
 And all the phantom, Nature, stands, 
 
 With all the music in her tone, 
 
 A hollow echo of my own 
 A hollow form with empty hands." 
 
 And from the vaults of death a voice murmured : 
 
 " The cheeks drop in, the body bows ; 
 Man dies ; nor is there hope in dust."
 
 264 
 
 "All, then," his soul moaned, " heaven and earth, is dark- 
 ness at the core. All, nature and man, is but dust and 
 ashes." 
 
 But his love, that was stronger than death; his love for 
 his lost friend, whom of all creatures he deemed the fair- 
 est, whom he revered as the flower of man, did not suffer 
 him forever to remain a bondsman to the dark, did not 
 allow him long to be shut up with sorrow and despair and 
 unbelief. He whom he held to be half-divine, that glori- 
 ous life, the noble will, strong and pure, could not become 
 earth's rubbish and slime. The still voice of love within 
 him spoke: "The high intelligence, the lordliest of all 
 powers, the reason ruling over all and reigning supreme 
 in head and breast, can not be blown out like a light, can 
 not vanish like a mist. Mind is the lord of all; the mind 
 of man is a beam of the supreme intelligence." Then he 
 gathered strength and fought his doubts. 
 
 Then new-born faith, a stronger faith of his own, born 
 in darkness and in clouds, leapt full-armed from his soul, 
 faced ^the spectres of his mind and laid them. Then he 
 threw himself with his weight of cares on " the great world's 
 altar-stairs, that slope through darkness up to God." 
 And on these stairs he ascended to the sunlit heights, 
 where Hope sits rejoicing at the foot of God's throne. 
 And with him he brought his own strong faith, brought it 
 to the children of his time, who dread the countenance of 
 science and tremble at her words, because she, the all- 
 knowing, knows naught of God, of free will, of the soul's 
 immortality. With prophetic fervor he sang to the sons 
 of his time: " Knowledge is of things we see; God's immor- 
 tal L,ove, whose face we can not see, by faith and faith 
 alone we embrace, believing where we can not prove. We 
 have but faith, we can not know." Not that he did not 
 love knowledge, not that he 'railed against her beauty,' not 
 that he wished to 'fix her pillars,' to set bars to her progress. 
 Knowledge, he believed, came from God, a beam in our
 
 265 
 
 darkness. "Let her grow from more to more," said he, " let 
 her work prevail, may she mix with men and prosper." 
 But there should be more of reverence in her. 'Let mind 
 and heart, according well, once more make one music as be- 
 fore.' On the forehead of science sits a consuming fire. She 
 submits all things to desire, to natural impulses, to instinct- 
 ive forces. She knows only what is, she deals with things as 
 they are. She knows no over-ruling moral law, no sover- 
 eign "ought." Can science fight the fear of death? Cut 
 from love and faith, she is some wild Pallas, sprung from the 
 brain of demons. Fiery hot, she will burst all moral bar- 
 riers in her onward race. " Let her know her place ; she is 
 the second, not the first." Let wisdom guide her footsteps. 
 "For she is earthly of the mind, But Wisdom heavenly of 
 the soul." 
 
 The continental masters of science did not heed the 
 warning voice of our seer. Their theories, true within 
 their own domain, set their faces boldly forward, and leapt 
 into the spiritual domain, where they wrought sad havoc 
 among the European nations. Their teachings, misunder- 
 stood, misapplied, have wellnigh consumed faith with 
 their fire, and in her stead have arisen soul-killing athe- 
 ism, the despair of pessimism, all-degrading sensualism, 
 and the fanaticism of race hatred. But the English and 
 American nations, the spiritual mothers of the poet, were 
 swayed by his prophetic counsel, and with them faith and 
 knowledge dwell together in unity, making one music as 
 before, but vaster. 
 
 Lord Tennyson was abreast with the knowledge of his 
 times, not as a trained scientist, but as a man of highest 
 culture, who watches with keenest interest the intellectual 
 movements of the time, and whose mind moves and grows 
 along with them. The great intellectual revolution of this 
 century that goes by the name of Evolution, the far-reach- 
 ing revolution set in motion by the genius of Darwin, his 
 countryman, who was born in the same year as he, in
 
 266 
 
 1809, was welcomed by him as a new ray of light, as a 
 beam from God. But as the new theory of the flowering 
 and growing of life passed through his mind, it was beau- 
 tified by the rays of his poetic genius: the moral ideas 
 blossomed forth from the germs of development, and the 
 ideals of humanity appeared as perfect fruits on the top- 
 most branch of the world-tree. The poem, " Contemplate 
 all this Work," is a noble hymn, in which the greatest 
 English poet of this century gave the approval and sanc- 
 tion of the world's conscience and faith to the new theory 
 of life, taught by the greatest English scientist of the cen- 
 tury. "Arise and fly the reeling faun, the sensual feast; 
 Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and 
 tiger die." These are the concluding words of the gospel 
 of growing humanity, proclaimed by the poet from the 
 heights of modern knowledge. 
 
 Lord Tennyson was not only a great poet and a great 
 thinker ; he was also a great, good man. He scorned scorn, 
 he hated hate, loved love. The well-spring of his song 
 was love of the best, hatred of sin, love of right, hate of 
 wrong. The charm of his poetry lies mainly in his pro- 
 found sympathy with man, his woes and sorrows, his rise 
 and fall, his aspirations and struggles. With his ringing 
 song he strove to "ring out the false and ring in the true." 
 While 'he moved his course, crowned with attributes of 
 woelike glories,' he longed to ring out, by teaching men 
 faith and wisdom, "the grief that saps the mind." He 
 grieved over the feud of the rich and poor, and regarded it 
 as a poet's mission to "ring in redress to all mankind." 
 Whatever laws, institutions, and old forms of political life 
 he saw to be decaying, slowly dying, he wished to be 
 speedily rung out of existence, and be replaced by "nobler 
 modes of life, with sweeter manners and purer laws." 
 
 More than all the sermons preached in his lifetime have 
 Tennyson's inspired verses, his flame-winged rhymes, done 
 to ring out old shapes of foul disease; to ring out the want,
 
 267 
 
 the care,' the sin, to ring out in England and America 'the 
 narrowing lust of gold, the faithless coldness of the times 
 to ring out false pride in place and blood, the civil slander 
 and the civic spite, and to ring in the love of truth and 
 right, the common love of good.' And in coming ages, 
 when the thousand wars of old shall have been rung out 
 by the combined influences of knowledge and faith, by the 
 efforts of the wise statesmen, the heroes, martyrs, and seers 
 of all times, then will Tennyson's name be known and 
 revered among those whose life and work helped to ring in 
 "the thousand years of peace." His heart did not misgive 
 him as to the final triumph of right and truth. Even 
 while 'the red fool-fury of the Seine piled again her barri- 
 cades with dead,' his soul knew that all was well ; even 
 while in the roaring storm, 'faith and form seemed sun- 
 der'd in the night of fear,' he heard a deeper voice across 
 the storm proclaiming, "Social truth shall spread, and 
 justice." 
 
 What a rich life was his, how full of ceaseless effort, 
 how fruitful in accomplishing, how nobly he worked his 
 life-work from early youth to the last days of his high old 
 age ! A spiritual Ulysses, he could not rest from traveling 
 onward on wisdom's road. How dull it seemed to him 
 ever to pause, though he had seen much and known much, 
 and become a part of all he met. Though his had become 
 a name known to all the nations of the earth, he would 
 make no end of work, would not let his mind rust unbur- 
 nished. He shone in use even in the last days of his high 
 old age. He saved every hour of his life from the eternal 
 silence, he was ever a bringer of new things, of immortal 
 works. With an ever hungry heart he roamed the plains 
 of knowledge, his spirit longed in desire to follow knowl- 
 edge, like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bounds of 
 human thought. Though his body had been made weak 
 by time and fate, he was to the last strong in will, to strive, 
 to seek, to find, and not to yield. Alas, the King of Song
 
 268 
 
 has passed away; the shining knight of love and faith, of 
 truth and human brotherhood, has been wafted from the 
 shores of mortality! And we, still standing on the banks 
 of time, have seen how a dusky bark hove in sight, all the 
 decks dense with stately forms, the figures of those to 
 whom his genius gave immortality. King Arthur was 
 there, and the three Queens with crowns of gold, and all 
 the famous Knights of the Round Table. Ulysses also was 
 seen and his companions; brave-hearted Enoch Arden was 
 in the funeral barge; and chaste Godiva, Isabel, Mariana, 
 Maud and Lady Clare, Dora and the Gardener's Daughter, 
 Queen Mary, Harold, and the Foresters. But one there 
 rose, the tallest of them all and the fairest, Arthur Hallam, 
 who laid the poet's head on his lap and called him by his 
 name, complaining loud. And from them all and from us 
 all, that loved and revered him as our guide, from millions 
 of souls whose light he had been in darkness, there rose 
 
 "A cry that shivered to the twinkling stars, 
 And, as it were one voice, an agony 
 Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills 
 All night in a waste land, where no one comes, 
 Or has come, since the making of the world."
 
 ALEXANDER III. 
 
 '"T^HE Czar Alexander III. is dead. He passed away 
 after a most painful illness before completing his 
 fiftieth year. The autocratic ruler and master of one 
 hundred and fifteen million human beings has yielded to 
 an Autocrat mightier than he. He whose word could 
 make a prince of the veriest beggar and turn princes 
 into vagabonds, is now poorer and weaker than the most 
 wretched exile working in chains in a Siberian mine. He 
 whose single will commanded the bodies and souls of vast 
 multitudes, has not will-power enough left to stir his little 
 finger. The man whose decree drove millions of his sub- 
 jects from their homes, has been compelled by an omnipo- 
 tent Will to leave his own palatial home and take up his 
 abode in a subterranean chamber. He whose empire 
 stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea and 
 from the Pacific to the Baltic, now is content to lie a still 
 and harmless man within the narrow confines of a coffin 
 a beautiful and precious coffin, no doubt still a coffin. 
 Such is the impotence and vanity of all earthly power and 
 pomp. What a grim satirist Death is ! What cruel sport 
 he makes of the mightiest kings ! How he puts his grinning 
 mask upon the face of majesty! How, in the twinkling 
 of an eye, he changes their crowns and sceptres into a 
 ghastly mockery and makes the vain shows of royalty a 
 derision! There is something at once tragical and farcical 
 in this sudden collapse into nothingness, which God's 
 alleged vicegerents suffer on being touched by the cold 
 hand of Death. The man to whom for thirteen years the 
 twelfth part of the human race looked up with brutish 
 awe and slavish fear, whom they dreaded more and obeyed
 
 270 
 
 more readily than God in heaven, will furnish a banquet 
 to the worms like the corpse of any pauper. 
 
 Vanity of vanities, all earthly glory and authority are 
 vanity! But no, all is not vanity. Wise kings, righteous 
 rulers, who strove to establish the reign of universal justice 
 and equity in the land and wielded the scepter of mercy 
 and humanity, are more glorious in death than in life. 
 They live transfigured in the grateful memory of their 
 people, and are venerated by the nations of the earth as 
 heroes, guides, and benefactors of the race. 
 
 No unprejudiced observer of these times, who goes by 
 facts and not by fictions, will assign to Czar Alexander III. 
 a place among the wise and beneficent rulers known to 
 history. Though we put the most charitable construction 
 on his intentions and acts, we are driven to the conclusion 
 that his reign was most calamitous to the Russian people 
 and a great misfortune to the best interests of civilization. 
 The saddest feature of all is that the dead Czar, who 
 caused more human misery and degradation than Caligula, 
 Nero, and Domitian combined, was by no means a bad 
 man at heart. Had it been his good fortune to be a mere 
 private citizen, he would have been an estimable, though 
 commonplace, man. He possessed in a marked degree 
 what are called the domestic virtues. He was a most faith- 
 ful and loving husband in the midst of a notoriously 
 shameless society, compared with which even French 
 society under the Regency, with all its cynicism and blots 
 and foulness, possessed certain redeeming traits. His love 
 for his wife was almost morbid in its intensity. He was a 
 most devoted father. Grief over the fatal illness of one of 
 his sons hastened his own end. He found his greatest 
 enjoyment in being with his wife and children. He was a 
 very industrious and plodding man. Save for brief periods 
 of holiday-making with his family, he used to work till 
 two or three o'clock in the morning, examining records, 
 reading suggestions, and signing papers. He was a giant
 
 271 
 
 in health and strength. Had he been born to one of the 
 minor thrones of Europe, he would most probably have 
 proved a respectable figure-head. The tragedy of his life, 
 with all its horrors and dismal failures, sprang from the 
 fact that he, a man of the very slenderest talents, very 
 imperfectly educated, a slow, narrow, prejudiced, and stub- 
 born man, was fated to guide the destinies of the Russian 
 empire at the very time when it would have required the 
 genius of a Caesar or a Napoleon to cope with the gigantic 
 evils and innumerable difficulties bequeathed by the sin- 
 laden past. Nature had fitted Alexander to occupy in 
 some industrial establishment a subordinate position 
 requiring great physical power and habits of industry. 
 The cruel irony of fate called this poor Philistine of 
 stunted intelligence, of dimmest vision, hard-headed and 
 bigoted, to fill the imperial office which his highly 
 endowed, broad-minded, noble, and enthusiastic father 
 after twenty years of heroic struggle found to be beyond 
 his powers. 
 
 His statesmanlike and high-aspiring father undertook 
 the tremendous task of governing Russia wisely and justly, 
 of making her a truly civilized country, of saving the 
 peasantry and the Jews from the misery of ages, and of 
 delivering the people from the curse of inconceivable 
 official corruption pervading and paralyzing all depart- 
 ments. He succeeded in the herculean effort to liberate 
 between fifty and sixty million peasants from the yoke and 
 degradation of serfdom, or slavery. He ordered schools to 
 be established everywhere, in order to bring to the brutal- 
 ized and incredibly ignorant peasants some light of educa- 
 tion. He introduced the jury system not only for civil 
 suits, but also for criminal and political offenses. He 
 made some inroads upon the crushing despotic system of 
 absolute centralization. For the first time in the history 
 of Russia, he tried to give the people some measure of local 
 self-government by creating the institution of the Zemst-
 
 272 
 
 vos, or local administrative boards, elected by the provin- 
 cial nobility and the wealthier citizens. He, moreover, 
 encouraged the Zemstvos to establish common schools of 
 various orders, not subject to the supervision of the igno- 
 rant and drunken clergy. The censorship of the press 
 was relaxed, and public opinion was allowed to develop 
 and express itself with a great deal of freedom and inde- 
 pendence. He gave relief to the hitherto cruelly oppressed 
 sects of Russian dissenters, who, beside the Protestants, 
 are the only real Christians in the empire. He allowed 
 them to worship God according to the dictates of their 
 conscience, although he did not dare to remove all legal 
 restrictions. He alleviated the miserable lot of the Rus- 
 sian soldier, greatly reducing the years of service, and in 
 every way trying to stay the thieving and rapacious hands 
 of the officers who were preying upon him. He not only 
 abolished the fearful national instrument of torture, the 
 knout a whip provided with several thongs having a 
 leaden ball at the end but he also forbade all corporeal 
 punishment. 
 
 Of all the wretched people of Russia, the Jews profited 
 most by the liberal policy of the good Emperor. They 
 had till then been cooped up within the so-called Pale, a 
 circumscribed territory consisting of seventeen provinces, 
 which formerly constituted part of the kingdom of Poland. 
 The rest of Holy Russia was hermetically closed to "the 
 scurvy Jews," as they were officially styled by Catherine 
 II. The generous and far-sighted Czar threw open the 
 gates of all Russia to certain classes of Jews, viz.: to 
 skilled artisans, graduates of high schools and universities, 
 and the merchants of the first guild. The latter are mer- 
 chants who for five consecutive years had been paying an 
 annual tax of six hundred dollars inside the Pale, which 
 amount they have to pay for two years longer after settling 
 in the interior. About one million Jews, mostly artisans, 
 flowed over into the provinces of Russia proper. This out- 
 flow gave some relief to the fearfully over-crowded Jewish
 
 273 
 
 population in the Pale, and enabled the remaining five mil- 
 lions to earn a little more bread. Free access was given 
 the Jews to all educational institutions. There was a won- 
 derful intellectual, commercial, and patriotic revival among 
 the Jews of Russia, which redounded to the benefit of the 
 whole people. The Jewish youths and maidens pressed 
 forward to the high schools and universities, to drink with 
 avidity the long-withheld waters of knowledge. They dis- 
 tinguished themselves by native ability and persevering 
 industry, incited as they were to utmost exertion by the 
 ambition to enjoy the privilege of higher education. A 
 number of men of world-wide fame came from their midst. 
 Among others I will but mention Mendelieeff, the greatest 
 living chemist, and Antokolsky, one of the greatest sculp- 
 tors of the age. During the beneficent reign of Alexander 
 II., Jewish intelligence and enterprise exerted a most pow- 
 erful stimulating influence on the industries and the trade 
 of Russia. During those years of relative enfranchisement 
 the Jews became enthusiastic patriots. They learned to 
 feel themselves as children of their Russian fatherland. 
 The cruel lines of race and creed demarcation which had 
 been so deeply drawn in previous reigns, became less prom- 
 inent in men's minds in places faded away altogether. 
 The Jews of Russia call those comparatively happy years 
 "the golden age." 
 
 Alexander II. tried, also, to reconcile his Polish sub- 
 jects. He made to them large and valuable concessions. 
 He granted them a certain measure of local self-govern- 
 ment, and appointed a Polish statesman, his personal 
 friend, Count Wielopolsky, as governor-general of Poland. 
 He cherished the plan of restoring to Poland a sort of 
 autonomy, like that enjoyed by Finland. Unfortunately, 
 the impatient and fantastic Polanders rose in rebellion 
 against their best friend, following the will-o'-the-wisp of 
 French assistance. The Polish insurrection was the first 
 great misfortune which befell Alexander's reign, being the
 
 274 
 
 first defeat which his liberal policy suffered. The Polish 
 uprising excited a tremendous national reaction in Russia. 
 The bureaucracy, which hated the Emperors liberal ideas, 
 used the Polish rebellion as a lever against his liberal 
 course. The reactionaries declared aloud that it was fatal 
 for Russia, and especially for the autocracy, to adopt the 
 principles and methods of European liberalism. The old 
 national prejudices and hates of the Russian people were 
 aroused to a state of frenzy. The more Europe seemed to 
 favor the cause of Poland, the fiercer and more fanatical 
 became the reaction against everything foreign, that is to 
 say, against all the- influences of Western Europe. The 
 innate barbarism of the Russian people began once again 
 to rebel against the forces of Western civilization repre- 
 sented by the Emperor. Public opinion and evil counsel- 
 lors forced him against his better nature to send the 
 butcher Muravieff to Wilna and other savage satraps to 
 Warsaw, where they established a reign of terror and 
 crushed out every vestige of the liberal regime. 
 
 From Poland the anti-liberal policy spread to Russia. 
 The old despotic officials who detested the Emperor's lib- 
 eralism, raised their heads again. They declared in court 
 and through their allies in the press, that it was dangerous 
 to Russia, and especially to the autocracy, to govern in 
 accordance with the principles and methods of modern 
 liberalism. They pointed to the rise of Nihilism as evi- 
 dence that the measure of freedom granted bred criminal 
 discontent and prepared the way for a tremendous revolu- 
 tion which would overthrow the dynasty, or at least reduce 
 it to the impotent position of English royalty. The 
 unhappy Emperor battled on single-handed against the 
 national instincts of his barbarous and brutalized people 
 and against the intrigues and secret enmity of a vile and 
 corrupt bureaucracy. On the one hand the Nihilists dog- 
 ged his every step, determined to murder him because he 
 refused to carry out their wild schemes of social and polit-
 
 275 
 
 ical revolution, and also because they wished to avenge on 
 him the cruel persecutions they suffered at the hands of 
 his agents. On the other hand, the old Russian party, 
 which abominates the chromo-civilization forcibly imported 
 by Peter the Great and upheld, by fits and starts, by some 
 of his successors, declared his generous designs to civilize 
 and liberalize Russia as fatal attempts to denationalize the 
 Russian people. There arose in Moscow a powerful school 
 of reactionary thinkers who protested that Western civiliza- 
 tion or modern culture was effete, diseased, immoral, and 
 godless to the core. They proclaimed in all seriousness that 
 the unwashed, unlicked, and illiterate peasantry of Russia 
 represented the genuine type of Russian national manhood. 
 They contended that the Greek Orthodox Church was the 
 only true form of Christianity and that all the inhabitants 
 of Holy Russia should be brought, by persuasion, if possible, 
 and by force, if necessary, within the pale of the national 
 church. They declared that it was the mission of Russia 
 to combat all the vital ideas and to uproot the liberal insti- 
 tutions of Western Europe as vicious powers and noxious 
 growths. They taught, and still teach, that Russia was 
 providentially called to unite all the Slav populations of 
 Europe into one all-dominant Pan-Slavic nation. They 
 hold that this Pan-Slavic nation of the future is destined 
 to conquer the rest of Europe, by infusing into it its own 
 young and healthy blood, and by inoculating it with 
 wholesome ways of life to rejuvenate the effete and mori- 
 bund European world. This is the wild dream of Panslav- 
 ism, without a right comprehension of which the baneful 
 policy of Alexander III. can not be understood. This is 
 the fantastic ideal which a set of very able publicists of 
 Moscow elaborated and gave the widest currency. So 
 strong a hold did it gain on the ruling and educated classes 
 that Alexander II. was against his will driven into the 
 Turkish war, undertaken for the purpose of liberating 
 their so-called Bulgarian brothers. During that war the
 
 276 
 
 unhappy monarch learned to know the utter rottenness 
 and incompetency of his army, due to the inconceivable 
 and universal corruption which permeated the officials 
 both military and civil. After immense sacrifices of blood 
 and money in a useless war, a bootless peace had to be 
 concluded. The Emperor returned to his capital a broken- 
 hearted man. Yet he still struggled on, although he had 
 lost faith in the possibility of carrying out his plan of 
 regenerating Russia. He recognized that he lacked the 
 proper agents, through whom he might work out his 
 beneficent designs. The official classes thwarted his pur- 
 poses by lying, stealing, and knavery of every kind. The 
 last years of the noble prince were full of gloom. At last 
 he was hunted down and massacred by the inexorable 
 Nihilists. Some competent observers of that mournful 
 event asserted that his murder was connived at by certain 
 high officials. On the very day he was slaughtered he had 
 intended to set his name under a constitution which he 
 had resolved to give to the Russian people. 
 
 The sudden and shocking death of his father put upon 
 Alexander III. the fearful responsibility of guiding for 
 good or evil the destinies of one hundred and fifteen mil- 
 lion human beings. Which road should he travel? Should 
 he go forward, following the course pursued by his father, 
 or should he entirely abandon the path of liberal reform 
 and go back to old Russian methods of despotic govern- 
 ment ? He did not hesitate long in making his choice. 
 The terrible end of his father was regarded by him as an 
 unmistakable proof that liberalism was a fatal policy, 
 which must needs lead to the overthrow of autocracy and 
 perhaps to the disruption of the empire. He had been 
 brought up under the influence of the old Russian Pan- 
 slavistic party of Moscow. The chiefest teacher and guide 
 of his youth had been Pobiedonostseff, the Procurator 
 of the Holy Synod. This remarkable personage is the 
 very incarnation of the national reaction in religion and
 
 government. He is a fanatic of the fiercest and most 
 uncompromising type. " He is a modern Torquemada," as 
 someone has said. "He is a sincerely and fanatically pious 
 man, as the Greek Church understands piety. During the 
 great fast of the year he retires to a monastery and morti- 
 fies his flesh like any anchorite, remaining for days on his 
 knees, fasting and beating his forehead against the stone 
 floor. This does not prevent him from uttering the most 
 amazing and barefaced lies." Like the dreadful persecu- 
 tors of Spain, he does not shrink from committing mon- 
 strous cruelties against Catholics, Lutherans, dissenters, and 
 Jews for the greater glory of God. Acting in accordance 
 with the satanic logic of medieval fanaticism, he holds it 
 right to serve God with falsehood, with theft, with shame- 
 less treachery, with torture, massacre, and wholesale perse- 
 cution. This man became the Czar's chief adviser and 
 most trusted friend. By him the narrow mind of the 
 Emperor was thoroughly impregnated with the idea pro- 
 mulgated by the Moscow school of reactionary thinkers 
 that the Orthodox Church was the one prop of social order 
 and autocracy. From him he learned to adopt the vicious 
 theory that the Russian state is identical with the Ortho- 
 dox Church. He taught him to draw the inference that 
 all his subjects who stand outside the church are the nat- 
 ural-born enemies of the nation and the dynasty, and 
 should by all means, fair or foul, be brought within its 
 pale. 
 
 The mind of the ruling classes, including the dynasty, 
 is haunted by the fear that a tremendous revolution will 
 one day shake up Russia from center to circumference. 
 To stave off the day [of wrath and if possible to prevent 
 its coming, is the chief aim of her statesmen. To the 
 reactionaries the Church alone seems to offer the sought- 
 for means of salvation. For the Church is, indeed, thor- 
 oughly Russian. It represents the primitive national bar- 
 barism. It is devoid of all spiritual and progressive life,
 
 278 
 
 and its ignorant ministers are on a level with the drunken 
 and bestialized peasantry. If all the inhabitants of Rus- 
 sia could be permanently brought under the stupefying 
 and soul-killing influence of that Church, if all could be 
 made to embrace its teaching of slavish submission and 
 unquestioning obedience to the God-Czar, there would be 
 little danger that the spirit of liberty will ever possess the 
 Russian people and cause it] to break the fetters of despot- 
 ism. This idea became the guiding principle of the late 
 Emperor's policy. This belief of his furnishes the key to 
 his otherwise unaccountable conduct toward the Catholics, 
 the Lutherans, the dissenters, and the Jews, whom he per- 
 secuted with merciless cruelty. He honestly believed that 
 it was his sacred duty to make them all good Orthodox 
 Christians, and to transform what 'he considered dangerous 
 foreign elements into genuine Russians. 
 
 This was the true motive which set on foot the cruel 
 persecution of the dissenters, and more especially of the 
 hapless and helpless Jews. It was not the wanton cruelty 
 of a bloodthirsty tyrant, but the impious and suicidal pol- 
 icy of blind fanaticism and senseless statecraft which 
 caused the Czar to commit such inhuman crimes against 
 the most intelligent, useful, and inoffensive part of his 
 people. The original intention was to make life outside 
 the Orthodox Church absolutely intolerable to the non- 
 Orthodox Christians, and most especially to the Jews, so as 
 to drive them from sheer despair into the National Church. 
 The villainous officials, high and low, were glad of an 
 opportunity to show their devotion to the Czar by acts of 
 persecution and rapine which satisfied the savage instincts 
 of their natures. The very men who had a short time before 
 publicly borne testimony to the usefulness and patriotism 
 of the Jews, suddenly turned with the wind blowing 
 from St. Petersburg and became their most violent haters 
 and persecutors. There was enacted a drama of horrors, 
 of fiendish outrages upon the primary rights and the eter-
 
 279 
 
 nal sanctities of humanity, which has added another dark 
 page to the record of mankind's shame. There ensued a 
 carnival of lying, plunder, and murder. The Jews were 
 hunted down like wild beasts. They were driven from 
 their homes in the very heart of one of the coldest Rus- 
 sian winters. Their homes were surrounded by the police 
 at midnight; the inmates, without regard to age or sex, 
 sick and dying people, women in ths most delicate condi- 
 tion, with their babes a few days old, were dragged out of 
 their beds and driven to jail through the streets, while the 
 thermometer stood at thirty degrees below zero. Those 
 who fled wandered through the woods or took refuge in 
 neighboring cemeteries. One woman, while fleeing from 
 her invaded home, became sequestered from her husband 
 and son and made her way alone to the Orthodox ceme- 
 tery. She was found by the morning light, lying insensible 
 on the frosted grass among the graves. Beside her was a 
 dead child, to which she had given birth during the dread- 
 ful night. The expulsions from Moscow on the 22d of 
 January, 1892, reached the climax of horror. On that day 
 the thermometer marked thirty-four degrees below zero, 
 Fahrenheit. The gas could not burn in the street lamps 
 in such a temperature, great bonfires were kept blazing in 
 the squares and at corners to prevent citizens compelled to 
 be out of doors from freezing as they walked, the schools 
 were closed, and garrison drills suspended, the forwarding 
 of criminals from the central prison was stopped for the 
 time being, owing to the terrible cold. But several thou- 
 sand Jews were compelled to leave the city on that very 
 day. Four little children were frozen to death in the 
 streets on their way to the railway station. Over a million 
 Jews have been chased into the over-crowded Pale, where 
 the fierce struggle for existence has been and is still caus- 
 ing a state of misery which only the pen of a Milton would 
 be able adequately to describe. The Jews during the reign 
 of Alexander III. have been treated, in accordance with his
 
 280 
 
 decrees, as pariahs and outlaws. Their personal liberty 
 has been completely taken away from them, their religion 
 proscribed, and their very souls killed by the contempt 
 heaped upon them. 
 
 The wholesale expulsion and pauperism of the Jews 
 have proved most disastrous to the economic welfare of the 
 Russian people. The commerce and the agriculture of 
 vast provinces have been smitten as with a blight. But 
 Czar Alexander III. stuck to the policy mapped out for 
 him by his Panslavic counsellors, to give all Russia uni- 
 formity and security from revolution by compelling all her 
 inhabitants to enter the Orthodox Church. Part of this 
 plan was to keep the masses in a state of brutish igno- 
 rance, to confine education to the higher classes, to pro- 
 scribe the free movements of national intelligence, to sup- 
 press with ruthless cruelty the lovers of liberty, to train 
 all minds to be in love with despotism. He was, after all, 
 but a tool in the hands of the Panslavistic reactionaries, 
 whose theories and aims have been described above. But, 
 tool as he was, he lent to their barbarous schemes the tre- 
 mendous power at his disposal. He undid all the good 
 work done by his high-minded father. He has driven the 
 Russian people back to where it was under his grand- 
 father, Nicholas, and in many respects he made it go still 
 further in a backward direction. The peasantry has been 
 pauperized by grinding taxation and by a most pernicious 
 economic policy. By encouraging the excessive use of 
 liquor, from which the exchequer derived the largest part 
 of its revenue, by suppressing all temperance movements, 
 he has caused the peasants to become still more brutalized. 
 By abolishing thousands of communal schools and placing 
 the remaining ones under the supervision of the ignorant 
 and debauched orthodox clergy, by denying to whole 
 classes access to the educational institutions, he has sys- 
 tematically bred ignorance and fostered all the evils flow- 
 ing from it. By oppressing the dissenters in the most
 
 28l 
 
 cruel manner, by punishing peasants with flogging and 
 exile for studying the Scriptures, he did his utmost to dry 
 up in the Russian people the fountains of religious and 
 moral life. 
 
 History will sit in judgment on his reign and will 
 declare it] to have been a curse to the Russian people, and 
 in some vital points a bane to modern civilization. That 
 he was not a bad man at heart, that the untold evil he did 
 and suffered to be done, did not spring from a spirit of 
 wanton wickedness, makes the case still more deplorable 
 and still more disheartening to the believers in an over- 
 ruling Providence governing the destinies of mankind 
 through human agency. The great criminals known to 
 history were not, as a rule, wicked men in the narrow sense 
 of the word. They were seldom persons addicted to com- 
 mon vices, they were not led to commit acts of inhumanity 
 by the mere love of evil. Licentious rulers are usually too 
 easy-going, too much absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure, 
 to care very much about carrying out any consistent pol- 
 icy, good or bad. They leave the administration of public 
 affairs to their ministers, whom they change at their 
 caprice. Voluptuaries, they are, moreover, as a rule sensi- 
 tive to the censure of public opinion which disturbs them 
 in the enjoyment of their sensual vices. Like all rakes, 
 they believe in nothing, neither in God nor in man nor in 
 any principle, and do not take the trouble to serve the 
 cause of heaven or of Satan. Again, constitutionally cruel 
 men are rare phenomena. The monsters of the past, who 
 wantonly shed blood and committed other useless crimes, 
 were most of them monomaniacs. The most dangerous 
 men in power, the most ruthless destroyers of human life 
 and happiness, are the virtuous fanatics, who honestly 
 believe in some false and pernicious principle, and try to 
 carry it out to its utmost consequences. They are firmly 
 convinced that they have a sacred mission to save society 
 at any cost. They consider themselves providentially com-
 
 282 
 
 missioned to realize a certain policy, be it religious or 
 political, without regard to the current idea of justice and 
 mercy. These saviors of religion and society think them- 
 selves justified in committing any crime for the glory of 
 God or the welfare of the state, regarding nothing as a 
 crime which serves the end they have proposed to them- 
 selves. They do not spare themselves nor do they spare 
 any man who stands in their way. They calmly carve 
 human victims as sacrifices on the altar of God or of the 
 state. Hecatombs of men, women, and children are immo- 
 lated to what is regarded as the supreme good, be it called 
 Olympian Jove, or the Holy Roman Church, or the God- 
 dess of Reason and Revolution, or the Orthodox Russian 
 Church, or the Autocracy. The dreadful grand inquisitors, 
 who tortured and burned myriads of human beings and 
 turned many a blooming land into a howling wilderness, 
 were intensely religious persons. They were men of pure 
 and exemplary lives. They mortified their flesh, fasting 
 many days, scourging their body and praying on their 
 knees through many a night. Robespierre was a most 
 virtuous man. All the Terrorists of the great Committee 
 of Safety, who in cold blood sent thousands of their fellow- 
 beings to the guillotine, were sober, earnest, and honest 
 men. One such virtuous fanatic and great criminal from 
 honest convictions was the late Czar Alexander III. Like 
 the others he held that the interests of religion, of the state, 
 or of the nation should override the common rights and 
 equities of humanity, and that crimes of every kind are 
 legitimate means to compass about the assumed ends of 
 statesmanship. But what mortal, be he the wisest and great- 
 est, has the wisdom and the right to decide that there is a 
 good which is better than universal justice, that there is 
 any interest higher than the eternal rights of humanity 
 common to all the children of God? There is but one 
 safe principle for churches,, empires, and republics to live 
 and act by to do justice toward all men without distinc- 
 tion of race and creed, to practice mercy at any price
 
 283 
 
 toward all human beings. As soon as statesmen and 
 nations forsake this everlasting principle, they are at sea 
 without a moral compass and readily fall a prey to the dark 
 powers which lurk in the depths of man's lower nature to 
 beguile and betray him into acts of inhumanity. 
 
 Alexander III. fell a prey to the dark powers and 
 became the author of infinite woe, committing unpardon- 
 able sins against God and humanity. Pobiedonostseff was 
 his evil genius. The Panslavists of Moscow were his evil 
 counsellors who seduced him. The barbarism and slavish 
 nature of the Russian people led him to set back the dials 
 of time. The desperate condition of the autocracy and 
 threats of Nihilism urged him on. His narrow mind and 
 undeveloped nature made him a fit vessel to receive all 
 the poison flowing toward him, and then to diffuse it as a 
 deadly force through the length and breadth of the land. 
 What saddens the lover of man and of progress most is 
 the thought that the accident of birth should have put into 
 the hands of so incapable a person so much power for evil. 
 The horrors of his reign caused many an agonized soul to 
 question the existence or the goodness of God. We used 
 to hate him with the most intense hatred as the worst 
 enemy of humanity. But from the moment that it became 
 known that he was suffering excruciating pain our hatred 
 was suddenly and wholly gone. We could wish him no 
 ill. He was, after all, a poor mortal like us. He felt the 
 pangs of nature and passed through the throes of death 
 like our dearest friends whom we mourn. One touch of 
 suffering makes all men kin. There is a conciliating and 
 pardoning power in death. We pity his faithful wife, 
 although he had no pity for the thousands of widows and 
 orphans he made. Let us think of him in a spirit of 
 charity. We have charity for the criminal who dies on a 
 gibbet. Let us have charity for the criminal who dies on 
 a throne, pitying him as our misguided brother ! Let our 
 judgment show the quality of mercy !
 
 JOHN ALBERT BROADUS. 
 
 A MEMORIAL SERMON. 
 
 'T^HE glory of Louisville has departed from her with the 
 departure of John A. Broadus. The splendor, the 
 ornament of this place is gone, since the greatest and saint- 
 liest man who had dwelt in it has left it forever, never to 
 return. Our city is like a ring, the precious stone of which 
 has been torn from its setting and become lost. All feel 
 the general loss, but his personal friends mourn over the 
 fact that they have been bereft of a great spiritual force 
 under whose directing and elevating influence they had 
 stood for years. There was a moral magnetism about him, 
 an uplifting power in his personality which no one could 
 help experiencing who was in more or less close contact 
 with him. In his presence you felt like exclaiming: "Ecce 
 homo behold a genuine man; behold an ideal man!" It 
 was borne in upon you that you were standing face to face 
 with one of the great and original men of earth, with one 
 who towered high above you in intellect and knowledge, 
 in will-power and nobility of character, in breadth of cult- 
 ure and refinement of manners, and in those indefinable 
 spiritual powers and qualities of mercy which mark off a 
 few men as the children of light and immortality. Still, 
 the consciousness of your mental and moral inferiority, as 
 compared with him, did not humiliate and pain you. So 
 lovable and full of grace was that large, sweet soul that 
 you actually rejoiced in knowing and acknowledging that 
 he was a greater, wiser, and better man than you. His great 
 superiority in all things in which ambitious men aspire to
 
 excel never excited envy. His rich, full, and strong person- 
 ality almost seemed to have nothing personal in it, so abso- 
 lutely free was he from self-assertiveness, from self-conscious- 
 ness. So humble was Broadus, the man of God, and so 
 spontaneous were the varied manifestations of his genius 
 that people accepted him, as it were, as a natural blessed 
 fact, and regarded him as one of those beneficent realities 
 for which we are thankful to the Giver of all good. 
 
 We took pride in his greatness, as if it were in part our 
 own. We gloried in his fame and in his immortal achieve- 
 ments, as if we had a share in them. We felt that his 
 extraordinary powers and singularly beautiful life shed 
 lustre on our common humanity, that we were all elevated 
 with him and made wise in his wisdom. The strange feel- 
 ing which possessed his friends that his light and strength, 
 his sweetness and moral excellencies belonged to us all; 
 that they were simply the forces of man's higher nature 
 revealing themselves and acting in him was the reason 
 why his presence made us think better of ourselves, raised 
 us in our own estimation, and inspired us with confidence 
 in our own intellectual and moral faculties. We ' L saw our 
 spiritual aspirations and our noblest ambitions realized in 
 a fellow-mortal who loved us, and walked before us in 
 meekness, never intimating that he was the leader, never 
 showing by word or sign that it cost him an effort to take 
 us with him as his companions on his journey. His pres- 
 ence somehow tamed and put to sleep all low elements of 
 our nature, hushed the voice of selfish passions, and made 
 us for the time being feel that we were worthy of being 
 his associates. The fact is, in loving and venerating 
 Broadus we loved goodness as realized by a few rare mor- 
 tals such as he, and paid homage to the spirit of faith 
 which lived incarnate in him. 
 
 He was the most intensely and genuinely religious man 
 I ever knew. Religion was not with him some theory of 
 divine government which he professed, no system of theol- 
 ogy which he accepted and taught. Religion was life itself
 
 286 
 
 with him. Faith in God was the very heart of his moral 
 and spiritual being, and the spring of his power. The fear 
 of God and the love of God, hatred of evil and love of 
 righteousness dwelt central in his soul as its ultimate, 
 ruling ideas. They were the controlling and molding 
 forces of his character. They gave tone and color, coher- 
 ence and direction to all his thoughts. They determined 
 all his actions from the greatest to the least significant, 
 from composing a standard work or establishing a semi- 
 nary to writing a note recommending a worthy person to 
 a friend's kindness. Of him it may be truly said that he 
 walked with God. To him the belief in God and His sav- 
 ing mercy was not a creed learned of men, but an immedi- 
 ate intuition, a soul-born conviction. The existence of a 
 righteous and redeeming God was to his mind a self-evi- 
 dent truth. To his consciousness it was surer than any 
 facts gathered by experience, truer than any axiom and 
 principle of science. The idea of God, of His justice and 
 abounding grace, was an ever present reality, with which 
 he stood face to face in loving communion and daily expe- 
 rience. He took delight in the fear of God and in His 
 service. To him religion was not a spiritual luxury, a per- 
 sonal privilege, a way of securing his own salvation here 
 and hereafter. To him religion meant doing the work of 
 our Heavenly Master with all our heart, with all our soul, 
 and all our might. As the hart pants after the brooks of 
 water, so did John A. Broadus, the inspired servant of God, 
 long to establish the kingdom of God on earth, to save 
 men from the curse of degradation, of sin, and win them 
 back to the higher life. 
 
 If there ever was a true servant of the Lord who loved 
 and served Him with an undivided heart, it was John A. 
 Broadus. He loved God as Abraham did, striving like him 
 to spread the love of God among men. More than through 
 the charm of his eloquence did he win men from sin and 
 lead them to God through the witchcraft of his example.
 
 287 
 
 His conduct was such that men came to love God through 
 him. To him may in very deed be applied the words of 
 Isaiah: "The spirit of Yahve rested upon him; the spirit 
 of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and 
 might; the spirit of the knowledge and the fear of God." 
 
 Consider it well, Israelites and Christians ; mark the 
 meaning of this highest tribute paid by a rabbi to the 
 religious power and saintly character of a Christian divine, 
 of a teacher of uncompromising trinitarian Christianity! I 
 have always differed, and as long as there will be breath in 
 me I shall differ, from him as to the characteristic dogmas 
 of Christianity, to which he clung with every fiber of his 
 being. But when I contemplate the holy life of this typ- 
 ical Christian, and find it in all its essentials marvelously 
 like the life of Jewish saints and martyrs, I come to realize 
 that behind the different dogmas of Judaism and Christian- 
 ity there is the indestructible unity of religious essence, of 
 moral ideals, and sanctifying power. Before I became 
 familiar with Dr. Broadus I knew Christianity only as a 
 creed which seemed absolutely incomprehensible to me. I 
 judged it mainly from the untold, unmerited misery, the 
 agony of ages which Christian rulers and nations had 
 entailed on poor Israel under the impulse given by Chris- 
 tian priests and teachers. But when I learned to know and 
 revere in Broadus a Christian who was truly a man of God, 
 in whom there was the spirit of justice and mercy, the 
 spirit of brotherly love toward all men without distinction 
 of nationality, race, or creed, my conception of Christian- 
 ity and my attitude toward it underwent a complete change. 
 For the first time in my life Christianity presented itself 
 to me, not as a bundle of unfathomable dogmas, but as a 
 living power for good, as actualized in an ideal man. 
 Broadus was the precious fruit by which I learned to judge 
 of the tree of Christianity. Would there were many Chris- 
 tians like Broadus in the world to bless it, and bring peace 
 and good-will to all men ! The strife and bitterness of
 
 288 
 
 ages, the mutual misjudgments and historical recrimina- 
 tions would soon cease among kindred religions. Jews 
 and Christians would soon recognize that they are, under 
 different standards, doing battle for the same eternal cause, 
 for spirituality and holiness, for the brotherhood of all men 
 in God, their common father, for the establishment of the 
 kingdom of Heaven on earth. Sinai and Golgotha would 
 no longer be standing for conflicting creeds, but would be 
 the spiritual symbols of the one only true and universal 
 religion, of which Judaism and Christianity represent each 
 a special aspect and carry on each a peculiar mission. Oh, 
 that the mantle of the wise master would fall on many disci- 
 ples, that they may have a double share in his spirit of 
 broad humanity, and continue the work of uniting the 
 hearts and wills of men in the service of God which the 
 great man has left unfinished! 
 
 What a blessed privilege it is to have been familiar 
 with a great man, to have basked in the sunshine of his 
 genius ! What a precious memory it will be to have 
 enjoyed the friendship of a man like Broadus, to have often 
 listened to his sparkling conversation and to his inspiring 
 sermons. What rare and radiant creatures truly great men 
 are ! When God makes a great man, He equips him with 
 marvelous powers and graces of mind and heart which ren- 
 der him the wonder and delight of his age. 
 
 What a keen, capacious, and lumious mind Broadus 
 had ! His intellect penetrated with native force to the 
 heart of every problem he dealt with. He mastered with 
 an easy grace the profoundest and abstrusest questions in 
 metaphysics and theology. He was a deep, philosophical 
 thinker, was thoroughly familiar with the various systems 
 of ancient, medieval, and modern speculation, and fully 
 understood their mutual relations and the meandering 
 course of their development. He ranked among the fore- 
 most theologians of our time. He and his lamented friend, 
 Boyce, were the greatest and most original exponents of
 
 289 
 
 Christian theology within the Baptist Church. He under- 
 stood the spirit of the Old Testament and of the New, and 
 the mighty currents of their religious and moral forces as 
 few men of our time did. Being himself an inspired man, 
 he was by native insight at home with the prophets, apos- 
 tles, and wise men of Israel. The seers of Zion spake to 
 him as to a kindred soul. He was no occasional visitor 
 with them, catching now and then a glimpse of their beauty, 
 truth, purity, and morality; he was familiar in all their 
 house. Few men had as clear and keen an appreciation of 
 the sublime oratory of the Bible as he. In his history of 
 preaching Broadus, who was one of the greatest preachers 
 of all times, gave striking proof of his affinity to the immor- 
 tal preachers of Israel. His knowledge of the whole field 
 of biblical literature was simply amazing. He was a great 
 biblical scholar. He was no dry-as-dust pedant who gropes 
 about the outside of the temple of the Scripture and now 
 and then picks up and with great glee explains an antique 
 fragment. By virtue of penetrating sympathy and original 
 power, he worked his way into the holy of holies of the 
 Bible. He commented on the world's seers and on the 
 volumes in which their imperishable thoughts are enshrined 
 like one in authority. His commentary on Matthew will 
 remain an everlasting monument to his ripe scholarship, to 
 his strong grasp of central ideas, and his masterful literary 
 style. 
 
 His style is as clear and transparent as the limpid 
 brook. Because one seems to look to the very bottom of 
 his thoughts, one might imagine that they are not deep. 
 But let us just try to dive down into the current of his 
 ideas, and we will soon find that there are deeps under- 
 neath deeps. He possessed the rare faculty of making the 
 most difficult and complex matter appear as simple and 
 clear as a child's problem in arithmetic. 
 
 He was a philologian of uncommon attainments. 
 Greek and Latin were as familiar to him as his mother
 
 290 
 
 tongue. He thoroughly understood the language of nearly 
 every European literature. His mind was stored with a 
 vast amount of knowledge, culled from every field of liter- 
 ature, ancient and modern, Asiatic and European. He 
 was familiar with the best results of science, and with 
 her methods and principles. Still he would not be over- 
 awed by any second-rate scientist, who gave out his per- 
 sonal lucubrations and subjective theories as the deliver- 
 ances of infallible Science with a capital letter. He was 
 a profound student of history. The landscape of the past 
 lay clear before his mind's eye. To his comprehensive 
 mind the history of mankind was no jungle of accidents, 
 delusions, follies, and crimes, of battles and conquests, of 
 migrations and discoveries. He was firmly convinced that 
 a divine plan of love was realizing in all the vicissitudes, 
 changes, and evolutions of humanity's secular life. He 
 saw an eternal purpose of justice and mercy running 
 through all times, giving unity to all periods and events, 
 and imparting a lofty meaning to all the struggles and 
 sufferings, the aspirations and victories of the human race. 
 This belief in an overruling Providence, making for right- 
 eousness and blessedness, made him an optimist in the best 
 sense of the word. He never despaired of human nature ; 
 he never lost faith in the ultimate victory of good and evil. 
 Even the phenomena of reeking corruption and disgrace- 
 ful demagogism, which saddened his patriotic heart, could 
 not rob him of the belief that liberty will, under God's 
 providence, work out her salvation and solve the most dif- 
 ficult problems in our America. 
 
 He had a quenchless thirst for knowledge of every kind. 
 He knew perhaps every good book in English, American, 
 and continental literature. He read with avidity, from the 
 ponderous volume on biography, history, science, philology, 
 and travel, down to the light novel of the day. He read 
 rapidly, yet absorbed what was worth remembering in any 
 work. He was an ardent lover and fine judge of poetry.
 
 291 
 
 The great poets were, next to the Bible, his dearest com- 
 panions, his comforters in days of sorrow, his inspirers in 
 seasons of intellectual ebbing. Among others he held 
 Browning in highest estimation, regarding him as one of 
 the world's great seers. 
 
 His tastes were catholic and his range of knowledge 
 was of universal scope. He seemed to be at home in every 
 province of human knowledge. In hearing him lecture or 
 converse on any subject one was tempted to think that he 
 had devoted many years of painstaking study to just that 
 particular subject. Much he learned from books, but much 
 more he gained from personal observation. He was a keen 
 observer of men, of things, and of times. He looked quite 
 through the people with whom he happened to be thrown. 
 He understood at a glance the permanent qualities and 
 forces of a man's character. He was full of pleasant and 
 instructive reminiscences of the great men whom he had 
 known and been in close touch with in America and 
 Europe. He had traveled extensively in Europe ; had vis- 
 ited Egypt and Palestine. He knew the cities, the arts, 
 the habits of mind, and the manners of the nations he had 
 observed. 
 
 His conversation was, therefore, extremely instructive 
 and entertaining. He possessed wonderful conversational 
 powers. He was the most charming and brilliant conver- 
 sationalist I: have known. He touched on no subject but 
 he adorned and illumined it. Whatever the subject of con- 
 versation, he opened large and new vistas to the surprise 
 and delight of his admiring friends. However trite and 
 stale the topic, he lifted it to a higher plane. There was 
 a play of fine humor and wit in his talk. But he never 
 employed the weapon of sarcasm or irony. He never 
 abused his great intellectual powers in debate. In fact, he 
 was not conscious of them. There was such a touching gen- 
 tleness in his voice, such a noble modesty in his demeanor, 
 that it was a pleasure to bow to his superiority. He was an
 
 292 
 
 excellent listener. He was all attention and eagerness to 
 hear what one had to say. He seemed to be expecting to 
 receive from you some message of higher truth and new 
 light. He greeted the most ordinary persons with gracious 
 cordiality and utmost respect. Ah, it was his delight to 
 honor and love men, and to inspire them with self-respect 
 and moral courage. The central warmth of his great heart 
 diffused itself as a genial influence in glance and smile, in 
 clasp and word, on his family, his friends, his disciples. 
 Broadus was an ideal American gentleman. He was per- 
 haps the most amiable and loveable Southerner of his time. 
 
 There was a refinement about him, an indescribable 
 charm of manner, a sweetness of temper, a joyous kind- 
 liness of nature, that made everybody love him tenderly, 
 enthusiastically, who had the good fortune to know him. 
 No bitter word ever escaped his lips or flowed from his pen 
 against any opponent. He was generous and charitable 
 almost to a fault. His heart was a noble vessel, brimful of 
 the milk of human kindness ; the slightest touch of pity 
 caused it to overflow. 
 
 With all his gentleness there was combined an iron 
 will, an unyielding tenacity of purpose, an untiring energy, 
 working without rest and toward a fixed end. He was a 
 ruler of men by the power of a steadfast will, by the might 
 of a vigorous intellect and the magnetism of his pure char- 
 acter. He was a brave man in the highest sense of the 
 word. A certain man in this city who belonged to the 
 same Confederate regiment in which Broadus served as 
 chaplain, a few days ago said in a voice trembling and 
 almost hushed in emotion: "That pale and delicate 
 preacher on numberless occasions exposed himself to mor- 
 tal danger while attending to his office of mercy. He could 
 be seen moving calmly where the bullets'were flying about 
 thick and fast, bringing physical relief and spiritual com- 
 fort to the wounded." 
 
 Great as he was in many things, he yet appeared great- 
 est in the pulpit. There his rare powers of mind, heart,
 
 293 
 
 imaginatiou, and will blended in perfect harmony and acted 
 with concentrated energy. The clearest light of logical 
 reasoning was combined in his sermons with the kindling 
 force of ardent emotion ; sublime thoughts expressed them- 
 selves in language comprehensible to a child. The most 
 stirring pathos, the blaze of proud faith went hand in hand 
 with the most lucid exposition and a marvelous freshness 
 and variety of illustration. There was music, there was a 
 soul-bewitching persuasive sweetness in his voice. There 
 was a certain indescribable tone in his voice which touched 
 the chords of the heart and carried conviction. There 
 were at times melting tears in his voice, while the eye of 
 the speaker was dry. While he swept the audience as by 
 an irresistible torrent, he never lost control of himself. As 
 much as he gave, you felt that there was still a reserved 
 force behind. As you looked up into that noble, spiritual 
 face, you could not help thinking that an ancient prophet 
 was standing before you delivering a message received 
 from on high. He was, in my opinion, one of the greatest 
 preachers of all times. Will I ever hear and see the like 
 of him again? 
 
 Methinks his place will not be filled in this city and in 
 the South in our lifetime. What a grievous and irrepara- 
 ble loss his death is ! Well has it been said by his eloquent 
 friend, Professor Whitsitt: "Broadus ought to have lived a 
 thousand years." Somebody remarked to me a few days 
 ago: "Why should Broadus be dead, whose life was a gen- 
 eral blessing, while thousands of vile men are enjoying 
 life?" I answered him in the words of the Talmud: "The 
 wicked are dead while they are alive, the righteous live 
 most truly after their death." The life of Broadus was 
 worth the lives of a hundred thousand common men. His 
 memory will be even a greater blessing than his life was. 
 Men like Broadus never die, and the grave of their true 
 self can be seen nowhere. 
 
 Farewell, wisest and sweetest soul ! My love of thee 
 was passing the love of woman. Pardon this tribute paid
 
 294 
 
 by an inferior mind to thy greatness ! Suffer me to link 
 for a brief moment my obscure name to thy immortal 
 memory. May all the inhabitants of Louisville shine for 
 a day with the light reflected from thee ! Let men rise and 
 call our city blessed, because Broadus has in her midst 
 done the best part of his life-work! Many sins shall be 
 forgiven Louisville, because she has for years harbored, 
 loved, and revered Broadus, the servant of God. His life 
 and his death will plead for her, and stay the hand of retri- 
 bution till she consider, repent, and learn to walk in the 
 ways of John A. Broadus.
 
 ISAAC MAYER WISE. 
 
 ADDRESS OF CONGRATULATION.* 
 
 TDELOVED Master, Dear Friend, Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, 
 
 1) 
 
 "*^ in the name of the Rabbis here assembled, in the 
 
 name of all the members of the Rabbinical Conference of 
 America, founded by you, presided over and wisely guided 
 by you for ten years, in the name of this large audience 
 which is truly representative of American Israel, I congrat- 
 ulate you upon the completion of the eightieth year of 
 your life, and above all upon the manifold, fruitful, and 
 noble work done by you during the days of your long and 
 ever upward pilgrimage. All who know you and to 
 know you is to love you all who have been inspired by 
 your example, all whom your thoughtful yet fervid elo- 
 quence has edified, all whom your teachings have made 
 better and wiser, all who have derived knowledge and 
 guidance from your writings, the vast number of men and 
 women throughout our broad land who have directly and 
 indirectly feH the uplifting influence of your personality 
 and activity, rise on this great day and call you blessed, all 
 praise you, saying: Many have done valiantly, but thou 
 excellest them all ! Deceitful are the triumphs of selfish 
 ambition, vain is the glory of mere learning, vain the 
 pride of high-sounding oratory. But the man who has 
 given all his powers to the general good shall be praised. 
 The man who has walked in humility and uprightness 
 
 * Spoken at the Central Conference of American Rabbis, at Cincin- 
 nati, Nissan 3, 5659 (March 14, 1899), at the celebration of the eightieth 
 anniversary of Dr. Wise's birthday.
 
 296 
 
 with God shall be exalted. We say of this righteous man, 
 on this his eightieth birthday: It is well with him, for he 
 eateth of the fruits of his labors. He has scattered bless- 
 ings, he has been as a father to the poor and needy, he has 
 sown light for Israelites and Gentiles. His name and his 
 work shall endure forever. 
 
 This is indeed a week of rejoicing and thanksgiving 
 not only to the venerable sage himself and to his immedi- 
 ate family, not only to his disciples and friends, but to all 
 those who are ever looking out for manifestations of divine 
 goodness and signs of divine guidance in the lives of indi- 
 viduals and nations. Consider his marvelous physical 
 vitality, unabated even to this day, note the vigor and 
 elasticity of his mind even at this late season of his life, 
 mark his abounding energy equal to all conditions and 
 demands, contemplate the long and blessed result of his 
 career! You can not help realizing that the Soul of Exist- 
 ence as manifested in the life of Isaac M. Wise, is benefi- 
 cent order and compensating grace, you are bound to con- 
 clude that the divine Power which makes for progressive 
 development in nature and for righteousness in the secular 
 life of mankind, is behind those who with an indomitable 
 will and a clear purpose strive to co-operate with the plans 
 of Providence. The lives of persons such as Isaac M. Wise 
 justify the ways of God to man. The lives of most men 
 seem to indicate that the lot of man is weakness, misery, 
 and failure. They are like the shadow of a dream. They 
 are carried away as with a flood. They seem to be con- 
 sumed as in a quenchless anger divine and troubled by 
 Nature's unappeasable wrath. They spend their days like 
 a sad tale that is told. The days of but a few men are 
 three score years and ten and the gain thereof is weariness 
 and sorrow. Age brings decay to all their faculties. All 
 things become stale, flat, and unprofitable to them. The 
 pleasures they had lived for, abandon them. Disappoint- 
 ment sits brooding over their soul. They come to feel that
 
 297 
 
 human existence is but vanity and illusion, that man is the 
 helpless victim of envious and pitiless powers. 
 
 But the wholesome, rich, and joyous life of this Grand 
 Old Man, his ceaseless intellectual, moral, and spiritual 
 growth, his bearing precious fruit even in high old age, 
 confute the gloomy view of human existence, which we 
 are inclined to hold on observing the average life of human- 
 ity. Men like Isaac M. Wise show that God who made 
 man rejoices in him, and is just and kind to him in all his 
 ways. This mortal, whose eye is not dim nor his natural 
 force abated at eighty, who is physically and mentally still 
 full of sap and green, is a living proof that there is no 
 unrighteousness in the Rock of Ages, that He is forever 
 making for strength and victory and gladness in the realms 
 of nature, and above all in man, the crown of all creation. 
 We hail our teacher as a witness to the lovingkindness of 
 the God of Nature. We reverence him as a typical man 
 such as the creative Love divine intends man to be. We 
 rejoice in his individual life because we believe it fore- 
 shadows the life of the coming man. We rise from the 
 contemplation of this particular man to ideal conclusions 
 regarding man in general. This glorious birthday, promis- 
 ing many more like birthdays, seems to foretell the latter 
 days, when the average life of man will be eighty or ninety 
 years, when wisdom will guide the steps of every mortal 
 in the ways of God, and the old age of every man will 
 bring home a rich harvest prepared by his youth and man- 
 hood, a harvest rich in noble results and honors, such as we 
 are celebrating to-day. 
 
 What is the secret of this man's immense spiritual 
 power and moral influence? What is the ultimate cause 
 of this man's triumphant career? What has enabled him 
 to bear so many burdens and perform truly herculean 
 tasks? My answer is: His character and his achievements 
 find their explanation in the fact that he has from the days 
 of his youth to this, the crowning hour of his life striven
 
 298 
 
 with all his powers to be a witness of the one only God, 
 the living God of justice and mercy, the God of holiness 
 and truth. It has been with him a life-long instinct and a 
 passion to be the champion of the universal faith and the 
 sublime ethics of Israel. Indissolubly interwoven with 
 the very constitution of his mind is the belief that the 
 religion revealed by God through the seers and lawgivers 
 of Israel is the fountain-head of all true religion, the pri- 
 mal and perennial source of all humanity. He has ever 
 firmly believed in the deathless mission of Israel unto all 
 the families of the earth, he has ever held that justice and 
 equity can prevail only where the eternal principles of the 
 Mosaic moral and social laws are fully acknowledged and 
 carried into execution according to the varying conditions 
 of the times. His love of Judaism has been the great and 
 holy passion of his life. This love is with him synony- 
 mous with the love of God, with the love of humanity, and 
 of reason. In his mind there has never been the shadow 
 of a doubt that the triumph of Israel's religion would be 
 the triumph of reason against superstition, of light against 
 darkness. In his heart of hearts he has always borne the 
 conviction, that the realization of the moral ideas and ideals 
 of Judaism would bring on the reign of righteousness, 
 of peace, and of human brotherhood. Our religion has 
 never been a lip-deep profession with him. It has been 
 and is the very life of his mind and heart. It has informed 
 his thoughts, shaped his character, and determined the 
 whole course of his life's activity. 
 
 Smitten with the passion for the truths and the mission 
 of Judaism, he has been exceedingly zealous for the cause 
 of Israel, which he justly holds to be identical with the 
 cause of God and humanity. His heart burned within 
 him when he saw Judaism fettered by innumerable cere- 
 monial ties, weighted down by the yoke of medieval 
 orthodoxy, disguised by an outlandish garb, disfigured by 
 unnatural excrescence. To reform Judaism in the spirit
 
 299 
 
 of Moses and the prophets and their true successors, to 
 regenerate it in the spirit of wisdom and might, to make 
 it again the living heart of Israel, to make it a great moral 
 and spiritual world-power, has been the central and all- 
 determining purpose of his whole life. You can not truly 
 read the meaning of Dr. Wise's career, you can not compre- 
 hend the movements of his mind, nor understand his varied 
 and restless activities, unless you view them in the light of 
 his high ideal. 
 
 He made himself a voluntary exile from his country, 
 his birthplace, and father's house, because he was con- 
 vinced that a thorough-going reform of Judaism was not 
 possible under the hardened conditions prevailing in the 
 Old World. His prophetic soul told him that in the New 
 World there would be found free scope and favorable sur- 
 roundings for a Judaism purged of its dross, a Judaism 
 adjusted to the conditions and requirements of modern 
 civilization, and fitted to open a new era of moral and 
 religious life to Israel, and to bring light to the nations. 
 Fifty-three years ago he landed on the shores of America. 
 And from that hour to this day he has lived and toiled, 
 battled and suffered and conquered for that ideal. Not for 
 one moment during all those years did he become faithless 
 to the central purpose of his life. Not for one moment 
 did he doubt that God was with him, and was helping him 
 in his arduous work. 
 
 This intense enthusiasm for one great ideal has given 
 his life that unity of purpose, imparted to his character 
 that strength and consistency, and endowed him with that 
 marvelous capacity for work, which have made him the 
 greatest force in American Israel, and the greatest reformer 
 of his time and generation. All his native powers an 
 indomitable will, a vigorous, keen intelligence, wonderful 
 nerve force, clear and straight vision all were taken into 
 service by his great ideal and directed with concentrated 
 energy towards a fixed goal. He always knew what he
 
 300 
 
 wanted, because he always knew the requirements of the 
 times and the demands of the cause for which he lived. 
 He invariably recognized the right means which would 
 lead to the purposive ends. Though working for one eter- 
 nal ideal, he never was an unpractical dreamer. He always 
 had an eye for the realities of things, and sound judgment 
 to distinguish between the possible and the impossible. 
 Because he wanted little or nothing for himself and every- 
 thing for Judaism, because he did not work for his own 
 glory, but for the glory of God and humanity, he was 
 always fearless in thought and act. His ideal and his faith 
 in God inspired him with dauntless courage, so that he 
 ever looked with an unflinching eye on conditions and 
 men, on things old and new, on friends and foes. With 
 unfaltering steps he walked toward his goal, far or near, 
 and rejoiced in overcoming the innumerable obstacles 
 which he met in his way. For his is essentially a militant 
 energy. Isaac M. Wise always loved a good fight in the 
 service of a good cause. But he never did anything in 
 malice or in hate, but in honor. Battle and victory and 
 rule were never regarded by him as ends in themselves, but 
 as means to a high end. And that end was, to help estab- 
 lish justice on earth, to give victory and glory to the faith 
 and moral ideals of Israel. 
 
 One after another he determined upon the means to 
 serve the central purpose of his life. He early recognized 
 that preaching in English, the language of the country, 
 that preaching every Sabbath and holiday, and on all 
 opportune occasions and in all possible places, was the first 
 prerequisite for bringing the truth of God home to the 
 hearts of the Israelites, and for making Judaism a moral 
 and religious power in the national life of America. For 
 over fifty years he has made his preaching a means of incal- 
 culable good to all American Israel, and to the country at 
 large. There is not a region in our broad land where his 
 inspiring voice has not again and again been heard. Every-
 
 301 
 
 where his sermons have kindled enthusiasm in the soul of 
 his co-religionists for the law of God and for Israel's glori- 
 ous historic calling. Everywhere his word has been like a 
 hammer breaking ancient prejudices. Everywhere his mes- 
 sage turned the heart of the Gentile towards the Jew, and 
 the heart of the Jew toward the Gentile. That anti- 
 Semitism does not exist in this country; that Jew-hating 
 and Jew-baiting are an impossibility in our America ; that 
 Judaism is universally respected and regarded by many 
 enlightened Gentiles as co-equal with Christianity ; that our 
 temples are more and more becoming houses of prayer for 
 all nations, is in a large measure due to the far-spreading 
 influence exerted during a half a century by Dr. Wise's 
 preaching and writings. Upon this grand achievement we 
 congratulate you today, saying: You have wrestled with 
 darkness, with indifference and enmity, and have prevailed 
 by the might of your word. 
 
 The deep and lasting effect of his preaching is not 
 due to any tricks and artifices of oratory. His has been 
 and is the eloquence of a powerful personality, the 
 eloquence of unshakable conviction, the eloquence of 
 reason alive with passion, the eloquence of ideas irre- 
 sistible in logic but charged with emotion. The fruit 
 of that eloquence of character, of knowledge, of life-long 
 enthusiasm, for the moral and religious ideals of Isreal, is 
 the condition of Judaism in Cincinnati. It may be said 
 without fear of contradiction, that Cincinnati has been for 
 years, and still is, the center of American Israel. The 
 right man and the right conditions met in this city, and the 
 outcome of their harmonious co-operation, their mutual 
 actions and re-actions, during wellnigh half a century, has 
 been a blessing to all the inhabitants of Cincinnati, the 
 Jews first and next the Gentiles; a blessing to all Ameri- 
 can Israel, a blessing to Judaism in the Old World. Here 
 he found the men, who, as members of congregations or as 
 colleagues, entered with eager sympathy into his intentions,
 
 302 
 
 lent him the influence of their characters, of their posi- 
 tions, of their wealth or learning, and enabled him to 
 advance step by step towards the realization of his far- 
 reaching plans. Many of his fellow-workers have gone to 
 their reward, and at this hour he remembers them with 
 mingled feelings of gratitude and love and sorrow, but 
 many more are, thank God, still with him, celebrating him- 
 self and themselves in him, in his work and honor. And 
 with them are their children. A new generation has risen 
 with their fathers and mothers who know Isaac M. Wise 
 and his works. They are filled with his spirit, and are 
 resolved to keep his name and his work alive and transmit 
 them as a precious legacy to their children and children's 
 children. This man deserves to live in your heart, and to 
 shine transfigured in your mind, as the typical teacher and 
 guide of American Israel. For he not only preached the 
 gospel of the one only God of humanity, he not only 
 inspired himself and others with the grand ideals of the 
 prophets, but he has also wrought with all his might for 
 their realization. One by one he had to fashion the instru- 
 ments with which to do his self-imposed work. He had 
 to prepare the means and measures wherewith to compass 
 his high ends. He felt called to satisfy the wants which 
 his own bold spirit of reform had created. 
 
 Judaism in America required a reform prayer-book 
 which should respond to the ideas of American Israel, 
 eliminating dead hopes and exploded national issues, mak- 
 ing room for new aspirations, giving expression not to 
 lamentations over vanished glories, but to joy and gratitude 
 for deliverance wrought in our own day. Still such a 
 prayer-book was nowhere to be found. So he set to work, 
 and after years of toil and labor, he brought out the "Min- 
 hag America," which was adopted by most reformed con- 
 gregations, and which for many years served as the com- 
 mon ground for their religious solidarity, and as a sign of 
 their spiritual union.
 
 33 
 
 He recognized the need of a weekly journal, to represent 
 reform Judaism in America and abroad. Under innumer- 
 able difficulties which would have made a less sturdy heart 
 give up the attempt in despair, he succeeded in establish- 
 ing the American Israelite and the Deborah, as consistent 
 organs of progressive Judaism. In them is stored up the 
 history of Isaac M. Wise's growing and expanding charac- 
 ter and mind, the history of his high-aspiring ideals, of his 
 struggles and achievements. In them the future historian 
 will find the ample records of American Israel during 
 almost half-a-century, the records of its inward and out- 
 ward evolution. From them he will trace the gradual devel- 
 opment of Judaism in America from an insignificant for- 
 eign plant, until it became a mighty, far-spreading tree of 
 life of indigenous growth. From them the future biogra- 
 pher of Dr. Wise will be able to reconstruct his life-work, 
 discern the innermost meanings of his various movements, 
 and lay bare in the character of the man the cause of the 
 tremendous influence exercised by him on his time and 
 generation. He will be able to show that among other 
 qualities of true genius, Dr. Wise possessed the capacity 
 for taking infinite pains in doing thoroughly and in due 
 season the many arduous tasks required by the ideal to 
 which he had consecrated his life and all his powers. He 
 will be in a position to prove that our Master pursued a 
 constructive plan for building up theoretically and practi- 
 cally Reform Judaism on the free soil of America. He 
 laid the foundations broad and deep, and went on erecting 
 with incessant labor one part after another of the super- 
 structure. 
 
 American Israel needed a catechism for the religious 
 instruction of the young. Wise produced one, which is 
 really a systematic treatise on Judaism, embodying in pop- 
 ular form the cardinal beliefs and the imperishable moral 
 ideas and laws of Israel's religion of humanity. It stands 
 unsurpassed among the catechisms which have appeared in
 
 304 
 
 this country and elsewhere. It is a clear and fearless 
 expression of the universal religion of the prophets, free 
 from narrow tribalism, free from Jewish national chauvin- 
 ism and the pagan pride of blood. It breathes the pride 
 of Messianic hope and brotherhood for all the families of 
 the earth. 
 
 American Israel needed a history of Israel. Dr. Wise 
 wrote a brilliant history of the First Commonwealth, which 
 unfortunately has long been out of print. He gave years 
 of most painstaking research and arduous labor to the 
 composition of the history of the Second Commonwealth. 
 Neither envious silence nor hostile criticism will ever be 
 able to commit that work to oblivion. It will forever be a 
 monument to his learning, to his tireless energy, his liter- 
 ary ability, and his all-absorbing love for the science of 
 Judaism. 
 
 He has given us a systematic treatise on the theology 
 of Judaism, a treatise profound, lucid, strong in logical rea- 
 soning. In another splendid work he has brought into 
 clear view the relations subsisting between Judaism and 
 Christianity, showing their agreements and disagreements, 
 defining their boundaries, giving unstinted praise and 
 honor to the daughter religion, yet making good the claim 
 of the mother church to eternal life and a universal 
 mission. 
 
 His ideal of a rejuvenated Judaism, resting on reason 
 and lit up by revelation, compelled him, as it were, to 
 write his "Cosmic God." There is great profundity and 
 originality of thought in it, and astounding cogency of 
 reasoning and a vast array of learning. The purpose of the 
 great argument is to show, that the well-ascertained and 
 co-ordinated facts of nature and the fundamental concepts 
 of science, as well as the cardinal ideas of metaphysics, lead 
 up to the supreme truth of all, to-wit: to the belief in an 
 all-creative, self-conscious Cause, in an all-embracing, all- 
 unfolding spiritual Power the eternal essence and parent
 
 305 
 
 source both of nature and of man. That work was a great 
 step in his intellectual and religious pilgrim's progress, 
 which he invited us to make with him. 
 
 Admirable and rich in noble fruitage as are his theoret- 
 ical and literary works, more important still are his practi- 
 cal achievements for the growth and honor of American 
 Israel. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 
 the Hebrew Union College, and the Central Conference 
 of American Rabbis, are the three creations by which 
 he will mainly live. The union of all reform congrega- 
 tions in our land has been the dream of his life. Attempt 
 after attempt was made and failed. But in the fullness of 
 time, some twenty-five years ago, with the aid of valiant 
 men and true, he succeeded in establishing a Union, which 
 has grown from more to more, until it has come to embrace 
 every progressive religious community of Israel in Amer- 
 ica. Though still at the beginning of its career, the Union 
 has already accomplished great results. It contains within 
 itself the promise and potency of untold good, moral and 
 religious, yet to be achieved in course of generations. The 
 very fact that over a hundred congregations know them- 
 selves to be members of a great spiritual Union is in itself 
 a moral gain of utmost value. For union is the ultimate 
 end of morality ; peace and good will are the signs of our 
 nearness to God, our common Father, the Holy One of 
 Israel. Discord and disunion are the deadly fruits of self- 
 seeking ambition, of mutual suspicions and jealousies, of 
 apostacy from God and humanity. In celebrating Isaac 
 M. Wise today, we are celebrating the Union of American 
 Congregations, the noble offspring of his enthusiasm and 
 sagacity. Through him and his faithful fellow- workers a 
 permanent union and harmonious co-operation have sup- 
 planted sectional discord and personal strife. Blessed be 
 the God of peace and love, the Guardian of Israel, who has 
 given us in Isaac M. Wise a prince of peace and father of 
 union !
 
 306 
 
 The Central Conference of American Rabbis, created 
 by him, imbued with his spirit, and guided by his calm 
 judgment, crowns the work of union in the camp of pro- 
 gressive American Israel. We congratulate him today 
 upon having banished the evil spirit of disunion, suspicion, 
 and jealousy from among the Rabbis of this country. We 
 congratulate him upon having united us into a true broth- 
 erhood. We thank him for having made us a band of 
 mutually-respecting and mutually-helpful fellow-workers 
 in the vineyard of Israel. All misunderstandings have 
 given way to mutual trust, all animosities have been 
 quenched by the love which we bear to the head of the 
 Conference. We have come here to honor ourselves by 
 honoring him. We are assembled here today to pay hom- 
 age to him as the typical American Rabbi. We wish the 
 possibilities and aspirations of the American Rabbi to be 
 judged by his ideals and achievements. For his ideals are 
 our ideals and upon his works we shall strive to pattern 
 our own. His spirit will live in and act through the Cen- 
 tral Conference of American Rabbis long after his career 
 on earth shall have come to a close. Whenever and 
 wherever the Conference will meet in coming days, his 
 name will be mentioned for a blessing. The permanency 
 of this organization is secured not only by the character 
 which his mind has stamped upon it, but also by the fact 
 that a majority of its members are his disciples and that 
 their number will increase from year to year. 
 
 The Hebrew Union College is the greatest creation of 
 his idealism and of his practical genius. By it he has 
 become the Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai of America. He 
 has planted it as a tree of life and knowledge in the house 
 of God ; it shall flourish forever in the courts of Judaism. 
 It shall rise like a palm tree on the mountain of Yahve, 
 and grow up like a cedar on the spiritual Lebanon of 
 American Israel. By this institution, if by no other work 
 of his, he has gained his immortality. By this institution he
 
 307 
 
 will live as a creative spiritual force in the growing life of 
 American Israel. The College is the most perfect and pre- 
 cious fruit of his life. By it he has linked his own indi- 
 vidual existence to the universal and eternal existence of 
 spiritual Israel. In fact, it is dearer to him than all things 
 else that he has accomplished. Were an angel from heaven 
 to appear to him and say: "All your work save one shall 
 perish; the choice lies with you. Which do you choose?" 
 He would without a moment's hesitation answer: "Let 
 the Hebrew Union College live and grow, though all 
 things else, willed and worked for by me, should dwindle 
 into nothingness!" He would readily consent to let his 
 own name sink into utter forgetfulness, if thereby he could 
 further the cause for which he has lived and labored and 
 suffered. Not for his glory, nor for the greatness of his 
 house has he toiled incessantly for over half-a-century, but 
 for the glory of God, for the mission of Israel, and the pro- 
 gress of humanity. 
 
 For he is an Israelite to the very core of his being. He 
 is like one of the ancient leaders of Israel come to life 
 again. He is a Hebrew of Hebrews in the best sense of 
 the word. He has the stubbornness of will, the tenacity of 
 purpose, the unyielding endurance of a genuine son of 
 Israel, who may at times bend but never breaks. He has 
 the intellectual vivacity, the keen penetration, and the love 
 of knowledge for its own sake, which are characteristic 
 qualities of the superior Jew. But he has also the tender- 
 ness of heart, the mercifulness and the strong family affec- 
 tions, by which the true Israelite is distinguished. Infinite 
 pity for the poor and needy and the disinherited of the 
 earth, quenchless hatred of tyranny and tyrants, fierce 
 anger against the wicked, who disguise their lying spirit, 
 their envy and low passions as patriotism and religion, an 
 ardent faith in the God of righteousness these attributes 
 of the soul of Israel have been the sleepless forces of his 
 character and the impelling motive of his conduct. Ana-
 
 308 
 
 lyze his character, scrutinize his life, and you will find that 
 he has ever been a loyal man loyal to God, loyal to Israel, 
 loyal to his beloved America, loyal to his family, loyal to 
 his friends, loyal at all times to his convictions. He has 
 always stood on his convictions as on an immovable rock. 
 He was never overawed by popular outcries, nor swerved 
 from his position by the assaults of fanaticism. The waves 
 of orthodox reaction, which of late years, in consequence 
 of anti-Semitism, have risen in Germany and flowed over 
 to our own shore, have not been able to tear him from the 
 moorings of Reform Judaism. The madness of Zionism, 
 the most deplorable effect of vile anti-Semitism, has met 
 in him an uncompromising antagonist, convinced as he is, 
 that it is utterly opposed to the spiritual and universal mis- 
 sion of Judaism. Mysticism of every kind, whether the 
 romanticism of neo-orthodoxy or the wild day-dreams of 
 the Zionists, is abhorrent to his light-loving soul. For half 
 a century and upward he has been standing on the watch- 
 tower of time, warning his co-religionists against the 
 dangers of materialism and of letter-worship, warning men 
 of all denominations against making love to darkness and 
 superstition, warning the people of America against calling 
 evil good and folly wisdom. Oh, may he stand on that 
 watch-tower for many more years to come the guardian of 
 our highest interests, the type of the true Israelite, the 
 noble representative of American manhood and patriotism !
 
 FILIAL PIETY. 
 
 love and reverence for parents partakes of the nature 
 of religion. Filial piety and the fear of God spring 
 from one and the same root. "He that feareth the Lord 
 will honor his father." We adore God as the fountain of 
 infinite existence from which our own life has flowed. It 
 is the mystery of existence surrounding us on all sides to 
 which our soul bends in speechless worship. Our whole 
 being is overwhelmed with awe as we stand in the pres- 
 ence of this all-embracing infinitude and eternity of which 
 we know ourselves to be a part. We are drawn by love 
 and yearning toward the nameless Being that is the parent 
 of the heavens above and the earth beneath, the parent also 
 of our own self. Impenetrable is the veil which enfolds 
 all things, inscrutable their whence and whither. From 
 what seeds did matter sprout and blossom forth? From 
 what central fire was the spark of life taken and blown into 
 a universal flame? Where is the hidden eternal light of 
 will and reason of which our own mind is a beam in dark- 
 ness? Eagerly, anxiously our soul puts these questions to 
 the world-mystery, and answer is returned by a still voice 
 within: "Sink on thy knees, O mortal, and in hushed awe 
 worship Him, the unseen yet everpresent, whom no thought 
 of thine can grasp, yet whom by faith thou dost embrace. 
 In fear and love adore Him under the image of a father, 
 under the symbol of a mother." And we fear and love our 
 earthly parents as the image and symbol of our heavenly 
 Father. For they link us as no other being does to the 
 mystery of world-existence ! It is from them and through 
 them that we have received life. They alone form the 
 vital chain which connects us body and soul with the mul- 
 titudinous life of the universe. They stand between us
 
 3io 
 
 and the infinite divine existence. The torch of life pass- 
 ing through countless ages from the hand of one genera- 
 tion to another has been transmitted to our person through 
 our parents. Noble natures, therefore, gaze rapt in won- 
 der at the countenance of father and mother, and are stirred 
 by feelings akin to the religious emotions which the con- 
 templation of the mystery of existence excites in them. 
 "He that feareth the Lord will honor his father, and he 
 that is obedient to the Lord will be a comfort to his 
 mother." 
 
 We adore God as the ideal of perfection. We believe 
 Him to be the highest and holiest of goodness. We do 
 not worship the Infinite because He is all-powerful. His 
 omnipotence could arouse in us only feelings of craven 
 fear, and awaken the anxious desire to live at peace with 
 His will, lest the arm of His dreadful might strike us 
 down. But despite His infinite power we should withhold 
 our love and reverence from Him, did He not reveal Him- 
 self to the heart of our faith as the realized ideal of justice, 
 mercy, and holiness, an ideal which we mortals, enslaved 
 by our passions, clogged by our infirmities, are striving 
 after in vain. We can love and revere only those beings 
 that we know to be adorned with the attributes of good- 
 ness. We prostrate ourselves and pour out the praises of 
 ardent devotion before Him whose perfection is unsearch- 
 able, whose essence is love radiant with holiness. 
 
 Similarly, we love our father and mother as the noblest 
 beings we know of on earth. They are venerable to us 
 beyond other men because to our mind they are better, holier, 
 and purer than others. All the virtues seem to us to have 
 incarnated themselves in their lives. They are to us the 
 types of manhood and womanhood, the representatives of the 
 moral ideals of humanity. From them we first learned to 
 distinguish between right and wrong, between good and evil, 
 truth and falsehood. The sweet smile with which our 
 mother nodded approval upon the child's generous acts and
 
 words had in it a matchless eloquence, that enkindled in 
 our breast the love of things good, of things beautiful and 
 true. The reproachful frown, the painful look, wherewith 
 our father reproved the child's outbursts of envy, hatred, 
 and malice, terrified our conscience like the angry coun- 
 tenance of a deity. To the end of our days we shall not 
 forget the words full of sadness and love, with which our 
 father and mother rebuked our idleness, our heedlessness, 
 the wildness of our ways. The example of our parents' 
 life has been and still is a moral inspiration to us. 
 
 No wonder, therefore, that the reverence with which 
 we regard our parents is religious in its origin and nature. 
 We worship God as the ideal of perfection, we honor our 
 parents as types of human excellence. "He that feareth 
 the Lord, will honor his father and his mother." We adore 
 God with hearts overflowing with gratitude toward the 
 Giver of all good. With a lavish hand He scatters bless- 
 ings along our path, which we gather as we pass. The 
 fountains of His bounty flow by day and night. The heav- 
 ens rain down the bread of life. The earth brings forth 
 gifts innumerable to sustain our body and gladden our 
 heart. And as our soul rejoices in the benefits received, it 
 offers its thanksgiving unto the Sustainer and Upholder of 
 all, whose mercy goes forth to all His creatures. But all 
 the benefits bestowed on us by God came to us through 
 the heart and from the hand of our parents. The bound- 
 less beneficence of God manifested itself through our father 
 and mother. They are the messengers, whom Providence 
 sent to us, bearing in their hands the material and spiritual 
 treasures, which His loving kindness charged them to 
 deliver unto us. Our parents have been unto us as it were 
 visible gods on earth, through whose eye and soul infinite 
 Love flashed out upon us the deep expression of its pres- 
 ence and power. Our gratitude towards God, if it be gen- 
 uine, necessarily contains within itself thankfulness towards 
 father and mother. We believe God to be absolute love.
 
 312 
 
 He delights in showering His blessings upon us, because 
 He is love. He requires no service at our hands in return 
 for His countless benefits. But where in the whole range 
 of creation do we meet with such divinely unselfish love 
 save in the heart of parents? The love of all other beings 
 is tainted with an element of self-interest There is a 
 streak of self-seeking in the love between husband and wife. 
 Some alloy of selfishness is invariably mixed with the metal 
 of friendship. The love of parents alone is wholly disin- 
 terested like that of our eternal Father. Their affection is 
 pure gold that has passed through the crucible seven times. 
 They love us without wishing, without hope, for any 
 reward. Parents feel happy in being able to minister to 
 the happiness of their children. Give a mother an oppor- 
 tunity to make a great sacrifice for her child, and she will 
 bless you for enabling her love to express itself. Show 
 but a father how to purchase with his heart's blood the 
 health of his suffering child, how to deliver the life of his 
 son or daughter from the grave, and he will rejoice, as if 
 he had found the world's choicest treasure. As far as the 
 east is from the west, so far is parental love from egotism. 
 The love of parents for their children is the holiest mani- 
 festation of divine love. God's lovingkindness incarnates 
 itself in the heart of mothers and fathers. 
 
 "He that feareth the Lord will therefore honor his 
 father and mother." Filial piety is the first fruit of relig- 
 ion ; in fact, it is the human side of religion. In what does 
 filial piety exist? How does it act? How does it mani- 
 fest its inner life? Filial piety inspires us to fear our 
 father and mother almost as we fear God, our Heavenly 
 Father. This is the only kind of creature-worship, if I may 
 use the expression, which is not idolatry. Approach your 
 father and mother as if you were coming into the presence 
 of the Infinite. Be overwhelmed by a sense of worshipful 
 awe, as you gaze upon their venerable countenances. Let 
 your accents be low and reverential, measure well and
 
 3*3 
 
 weigh your words, when you address the authors of your 
 life. The mystery of universal existence, physical, intel- 
 lectual, and moral, is looking at you through the eyes, is 
 holding converse with you by the mouth, of your father 
 and mother. Pay honor in deeds and words to your 
 parents, with whom you are bound together by a sacred 
 and indissoluble unity, which is the living image and most 
 expressive symbol of that divine unity that embraces all 
 worlds, all beings, all souls, the past, the present, and the 
 future. Our spirit longs to transcend the bounds of our 
 narrow self by rising on the wings of adoration into com- 
 munion and union with the universal Reason. By render- 
 ing the homage of filial piety to father and mother we take 
 the first and most important step away from the prison of 
 self-sufficing and self- worshiping egotism or selfhood, and 
 come to stand in an attitude of reverence and love before 
 those who are not ourselves and yet are at one with us by 
 virtue of countless vital and spiritual ties. 
 
 "He that feareth the Lord will honor his father and his 
 mother." If we regard our father and mother as types of 
 noble manhood and womanhood, if their moral superiority 
 is their chiefest title to our veneration, what follows as to 
 the way filial piety requires us to honor them? By striv- 
 ing after moral excellence, in order to be like them, in 
 order to continue their higher life, we pay the most glori- 
 ous homage to them, and bestow, as it were, divine honors 
 upon them. The highest and holiest kind of worship con- 
 sists not in praises and hymns, but in the practical adora- 
 tion of the attribute of divine goodness, which we try to 
 imitate. We endeavor, as far as our human frailty will 
 permit, to walk in the ways of His holiness, in the ways of 
 His justice and mercy. This clinging love for the divine 
 ideal, this yearning to pattern our life upon it, is the serv- 
 ice which true piety renders God. If the love we bear 
 our parents is to deserve the holy name of piety, of filial 
 piety, it must manifest itself in a desire to glorify them
 
 3*4 
 
 through our life, through a life of moral beauty, of high- 
 aspiring endeavor, of ceaseless growth in those godlike 
 qualities, for which we reverence our father and mother. 
 The true and deep self of our parents lies in their spiritual 
 life, in their aspiration after perfection. This is the crown 
 and glory of their existence. Shall their virtues die with 
 them? Or shall they embody themselves in us and live on 
 as immortal powers making for the world's righteousness 
 and redemption? Shall their crown of wisdom and scep- 
 ter of moral sovereignty be hidden away with them in 
 their graves? Let us, their rightful spiritual heirs, wear 
 their crown, and adorn it from year to year with precious 
 jewels found by our .own soul's experience; let us wield 
 their scepter, and continually extend its dominions by fresh 
 victories won by our will and reason over sensuous desires 
 and impulses. Can you conceive of a greater honor to be 
 paid to your parents than that of rescuing the highest, the 
 ideal elements of their life from death, and re-embody and 
 unfold them still farther in your own growing life? Thus 
 only can filial love realize itself, thus only can the feelings 
 of filial reverence convert themselves into acts of highest 
 homage. 
 
 Do you wish, O sons and daughters, to render thanks 
 to your parents for the innumerable benefits they have 
 bestowed on you? Take up the threads of their life-work 
 and continue to weave them into the living garment of 
 humanity. Turn into a fruitful actuality what in them 
 was but a noble ambition which they were powerless to 
 realize for lack of means and opportunities! What in 
 them were unquenchable longings after the ideals of cult- 
 ure, shall in your life attain their richest fulfilment. Let 
 them be blessed and rewarded beyond all hope and expres- 
 sion by beholding in you the realization of their soul's 
 divinest dreams. Elevate your father and mother, living 
 or departed, by elevating yourselves. Make yourselves 
 kings amongst the children of your time by the grace
 
 divine of wisdom, righteousness, and mercy. Thereby you 
 shall make your parents the progenitors of a royal spiritual 
 line. 
 
 He that feareth the Lord will do service to his parents 
 as to his masters, and will help his father and mother in 
 their age. To work for our parents is not a sacrifice, but a 
 privilege. To supply their wants with the first fruits of 
 our labor is not an irksome duty imposed upon us by 
 society, but a blessed right, which our heart claims. It is 
 not in reluctant obedience to the imperial commands of 
 conscience, but because our love "rejoices in it that we sur- 
 round the declining days of our parents with the blessings 
 of plenty. The heavens above and the earth beneath sing 
 with joy as they behold us supporting with our strong arms 
 the old age of our parents. In the wide realm of nature 
 and humanity there is nothing more touching, nothing 
 more expressive of the holiest moral forces in the soul of 
 man than the sight of sons and daughters hastening to the 
 bedside of sick parents, watching over them with the eye 
 of anxious love, and nursing them with untiring attention 
 and devotion. Blessed the son, thrice blessed the daugh- 
 ter, whose kindness eagerly goes forth day by day to do 
 service to father and mother in things great or little, in 
 deeds and words! It is not only in deeds, but also in words 
 that we should strive to give expression to the feelings of 
 love and veneration which we cherish for father and 
 mother. Many of us are bountiful in acts of devotion, but 
 miserly in words of affection toward our parents. Are not 
 words full of sweet tenderness, are no slight tokens express- 
 ive of our love and reverence more precious to parents 
 than the richest gifts coldly bestowed? As the hart pants 
 after brooks of water, so does a mother's soul thirst after a 
 look of love, an affectionate word from her grown-up child; 
 as the dry and parched field waits for the dew and rain of 
 heaven, even so does a father's heart yearn after the pres- 
 ence of his son and hunger after the loving words of his
 
 daughter. A few lines from a distant child received after 
 weeks and months of silence, are hailed by father and 
 mother with tearful joy, as if they were a heavenly mes- 
 sage. Shall children begrudge their parents a few hours of 
 loving converse in return for a life-time of devotion, a few 
 flowers of tenderness for the garden of Eden which their 
 love planted for them? 
 
 How is filial love rewarded? To this question the 
 experience of mankind returns answer: "Honor thy father 
 and mother that a blessing may come upon thee, for the 
 blessing of the parents establisheth the houses of children." 
 Though we may not be able fully to explain it, it is yet a 
 fact as well ascertained as any fact in the life of nature or 
 of man that a curse consumes the houses of those who dis- 
 honor, while a blessing establishes the houses of those who 
 honor, their parents. Outraged filial piety is turned into 
 a spirit of vengeance. It takes up its abode in the chil- 
 dren of those that dishonor their parents. In the fullness 
 of time their offspring will commend to their lips the 
 ingredients of their own poisoned chalice. Popular imag- 
 ination and the fancy of poets have often seized upon this 
 theme, and in impressive tales brought its solemn lessons 
 into clear view. You are familiar with the German story 
 of a married couple that ill-treated and almost starved the 
 old and decrepit father of the husband. He was not 
 allowed to sit at the family table, but was confined to his 
 corner behind the stove, where he was given the scanty 
 remnants of the meal in a wooden bowl. One day the 
 parents observed their little son, their only child, work- 
 ing away on a block of wood. "Dear son," they asked, 
 "what are you making?" "I am trying to make," the boy 
 replied, "a wooden bowl from which you :shall eat behind 
 my stove, when you will be old." At these words their 
 conscience awoke, and smote with might upon the chords 
 of their cruel hearts, their cheeks blanched, and their eyes 
 filled with tears of repentance. From that time they
 
 3^7 
 
 treated their poor father with more consideration and kind- 
 ness. An English poet has enshrined the following awful 
 tale in beautiful verse. The scene is a miserable cottage 
 on the shore of the North Sea. The time is a bleak 
 December night. The wind is howling, the rain is falling 
 in torrents. Within the hut are two men, father and son. 
 The latter of gigantic stature, with brutal features and 
 blood-shot eyes, is fiercely cursing his equally repellant- 
 looking sire. "Out with thee, useless carrion! Must I 
 ever go on filling thy ravenous throat with the fruits of my 
 labor, while thy wretched old hands can do nothing save 
 carrying the food to thy mouth? Out with thee, toothless, 
 drivelling drone ! Thy ancient rotten bones shall no longer 
 encumber this house of mine ! " So saying he begins to 
 drag his father out by the legs. He drags him from the 
 first room to the second, from the second to the hall, from 
 the hall to the threshold. The father says not a word. 
 But when the son is about to pull him across the threshold 
 into the open air, the father cries : "My son, hold on ! So 
 far but not further did I fifty years ago drag my father on 
 a night like this." These awful words strike upon the ears 
 of the son like trumpet sounds of the day of Judgment. 
 He takes up his father, and carries him back into the room, 
 and places him in the chair. All through the long winter 
 night they sit speechless in the darkness. The morning 
 gray shows to the son his father stiff and cold in death. 
 Another writer describes the following harrowing scene. 
 A daughter was quarreling with her mother, speaking dag- 
 gers to her. The mother bore everything meekly. Sud- 
 denly as the daughter was giving expression to certain 
 abusive words, the mother uttered a piercing shriek, threw 
 herself upon the ground, and tore at her gray hair. "Woe is 
 me," she cried, " these are the very words, which forty years 
 ago I addressed to my own poor mother!" Retribution 
 walks with halting and slow steps behind him who despises 
 his father and dishonors his mother, but at last she overtakes
 
 him, and fills him brimful of misery. His own mis- 
 deeds and cruel words incarnate themselves in his children, 
 and turn upon him with demon-fury to plague him, and 
 poison his every joy and hope. The peace of his household 
 is destroyed. Black ingratitude gnaws at his vitals. If he is 
 rich, his children wait with ill-concealed impatience for his 
 death, in order to possess themselves of his wealth. If he 
 is poor, he is allowed to pine away in his old age. For- 
 saken by his own children, he lingers through his last ill- 
 ness attended only by merciful strangers. His expiring 
 breath becomes a curse to his children and their descend- 
 ants after them. After a few generations the family sinks 
 to the level of criminals and paupers. 
 
 But the blessing of the parents establishes the house of 
 the children. There is a vitalizing and upbuilding power 
 in filial piety. Those families in which filial love and rev- 
 erence are strong and active forces, are seen to be endowed 
 with wonderful life-powers, intellectual and moral. By a 
 divine law indwelling human society, they rise from sta- 
 tion to station till they come to occupy the high places of 
 the earth. Know you families, once poor, without learn- 
 ing and social standing, that have within your life-time 
 exalted and distinguished themselves, so as to be an object 
 of admiration and emulation to many? Inquire into the 
 hidden causes of their marvelous growth in moral energy, 
 in culture, wealth, and influence ! You will find that par- 
 ents and children are bound together in such families by 
 the strongest and holiest ties of love and reverence. You 
 will observe their grown-up sons and daughters hanging 
 upon the lips of father and mother, listening to their words 
 of advice as if they were a message of heaven. You will 
 see there both the older and the younger children clinging 
 with tenderest affection to their parents. In such houses 
 you will mark in the behavior of the children toward their 
 father and mother a refinement of manner, a sweetness of 
 temper, a joyous spirit of obedience, that make you feel as
 
 3*9 
 
 if you were in a breathing paradise and heard humanity's 
 springs of life flowing with melodious murmur. Happy 
 the house in which aged parents dwell secure and happy 
 under the shelter of their children's provident love and 
 care! Thrice happy the house in which dying parents 
 bless their sons and daughters, saying, " May your children 
 be like you, may they be as faithful, as kind, as true to you 
 as you have been to us!" Such houses will endure for- 
 ever, their foundation is firm, and will never be removed. 
 Filial piety is the fountain of life. It may not always 
 prolong the days of an individual, who may be cut off by 
 blindly-seizing, blindly-destroying disease. But it is sure 
 to give long life to a people, in whose midst it is found. 
 Filial piety gave to faint Israel power to endure in the ages 
 of darkness and persecution. It imparted abundant strength 
 to the feeble remnants of Jacob wandering as fugitives over 
 the face of the earth. Youthful nations shall faint and be 
 weary, and young warrior-races shall utterly fail. But the 
 children of Israel that love and honor father and mother 
 both in deed and word, shall mount up with wings like 
 eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk 
 and not be faint.
 
 THE DUTY OF THE PULPIT. 
 
 TT7HAT is the duty of the pulpit? In what does the 
 ^ ^ peculiar office of the preacher consist? He is a 
 teacher, no doubt. But what shall he teach ? What kind 
 of knowledge is it his ministry to impart to the people? 
 Our answer is : The office of the preacher has grown out of 
 the office of the ancient prophets of Israel; or rather, it is 
 the very same, only modified in many external and inter- 
 nal respects, in order to meet the altered conditions and 
 requirements of the times. The -preachers are to be the 
 successors of the Israelitish prophets. 
 
 Of course, all preachers are not true disciples of the 
 prophets. There are unworthy men who usurp and 
 degrade the high calling of a religious and moral teacher. 
 They regard their calling as a business like any other busi- 
 ness. They are ministers for revenue only. The larger 
 their income, the more contented they are with their work 
 and their congregation. They are anxious, above all 
 things, to please the people, on whom they depend for a 
 living. They are most eager to be popular with the rich and 
 influential members of their congregation. The first ques- 
 tion with them always is, What do my people like best to 
 hear? How shall I satisfy their taste? I must attract and 
 entertain them. I must make them admire me as an orator! 
 They shall flock to hear me with the eager curiosity which 
 makes them wish to see a famous actor or opera singer. 
 The saddest feature of all is, that such contemptible and 
 vain hirelings are the favorite preachers of large numbers of 
 American Jews. They are in our time and generation 
 what the false prophets were in the days of old. 
 
 Like the corruptors of the people in those far-off ages, 
 they speak smooth things, such as their bread-givers like to
 
 321 
 
 hear. They tickle the ear of their Jewish hearers with ful- 
 some flattery. They tell them that the Jews are by nature 
 better than the Gentiles, that they are by race intellectu- 
 ally and morally superior to every people on earth. They 
 persuade men, who ought to be roused to a consciousness 
 of their narrow selfishness, dense ignorance, and material- 
 istic life, that they are the chosen aristocracy of the whole 
 human family. They mislead the people, making them 
 believe that all is well with the Jews, that they are secure 
 in their hereditary virtues, that there is for them no dan- 
 ger of spiritual decay and moral degeneracy. They tell 
 people who are mere dwarfs in all things save commercial 
 shrewdness, that they are the most enlightened men on 
 earth. They lay the unction to the heart of those who are 
 dead to the higher life, deaf to the voice of religion, and 
 blind to the wonders of creation, that they are far above 
 their ancestors who for ages suffered martyrdom for the 
 sake of their religious and ethical ideas. Like their 
 ancient prototypes, the modern false prophets do not sorrow 
 over the faults, the sins, and the follies of their people. 
 They care only for their own personal glory and advan- 
 tage. The highest aim of these men is, to win applause at 
 any price. They cater to the low intellectual wants of 
 the ignorant majority. Their sermons do not rise above 
 the mental and moral level of the multitude. They try 
 but to amuse, and to coax a smile of approval and a 
 look of admiration from their self-satisfied hearers. These 
 phrase-mongers and hired players turn the pulpit into a 
 stage, on which they strut about and cut capers for the delec- 
 tation of those who pay for the show. The dull and stupid 
 go away delighted with themselves, because they spent a 
 pleasant half-hour without being compelled to think and 
 learn something new. These clerical play-actors are usually 
 surrounded after the service by an ignorant crowd who con- 
 gratulate them upon their entertaining speech, assuring 
 them that they have expressed exactly their ideas and sen- 
 timents.
 
 322 
 
 Fortunately, the number of pernicious foxes who destroy 
 the vineyard of the Lord is not as great as one might judge 
 from the noise they make. A large number of modern 
 preachers take their calling most seriously. They feel 
 overwhelmed by the magnitude of the duties which their 
 sacred office imposes upon them. They know that they 
 are sitting in the seat of the prophets. This thought robs 
 them of peace and contentment. Their soul is ever on 
 fire. They feel that they are responsible to God and their 
 conscience for the moral life or death, for the religious 
 growth or decay, of every member of their congregation. 
 They consider themselves as watchmen on the tower of 
 time. They constantly hear a voice crying : "Woe to the 
 watchman who falls asleep or abandons his post in search 
 of ease, and allows the forces of evil to work havoc with- 
 out let or hindrance!" Can you fathom the despair of 
 him who says to himself: "Woe is me! The children of 
 God are becoming mere toiling machines, mere pleasure- 
 seekers, because I fail to teach them the truths eternal of 
 the prophets, because I can not awaken them from their 
 spiritual slumber"? What is wealth, what matters glory, 
 friendship, or enmity to men who know themselves to be 
 the messengers of God to their brothers, appointed to 
 proclaim His everlasting laws of righteousness, to teach 
 faith in a supreme Power of justice and love, to inspire all 
 hearts with firm trust in an ever ruling Providence? The 
 true preachers are never doubtful as to what is the duty of 
 the pulpit. 
 
 To teach with tongues of fire the belief in the absolute 
 and infinite ground of all being, the belief in the Maker 
 of heaven and earth, the belief in one all-wise God, the 
 Father and Lover of mankind, the Lawgiver, Judge, and 
 Redeemer of all the families of the earth, this is the first 
 and foremost truth which the pulpit must inculcate in sea- 
 son and out of season. This belief is the essence and soul 
 of the religion of the prophets. This faith was the source
 
 323 
 
 of their inspiration, the secret of their courage and power. 
 The preacher who is silent and indifferent about this 
 central idea of all true religion, the minister who does not 
 care whether his flock, young and old, have the fear and 
 love of God in their hearts, is a lying wretch, worse than 
 the thief and forger. If a preacher knows that many of 
 his parishioners call in doubt and, worse still, actually dis- 
 believe the existence of God, shall he observe silence 
 about this all-embracing theme, in order not to be consid- 
 ered a bore? 
 
 I have frequently been told by members of my congre- 
 gation : " We Jews are no believers ; we do not go to the 
 temple to be instructed on matters of faith. We are not 
 interested in such questions. Talk to us on live topics ! 
 We know all you can tell us on that old subject." 
 
 I would be a contemptible time-server, a miserable 
 slave working for wages, were I not to use all the argu- 
 ments of philosophy and history and all the means of 
 persuasive eloquence, in order to re-awaken their slumber- 
 ing faith or recall to life their dead belief in God. Though 
 I might not convince them, I have done my duty. 
 Though I may grieve over the lack of success, my con- 
 science at least is clear. But if I neglect this paramount 
 duty for fear of being considered a tedious speaker, I stand 
 accused before God and my conscience. Every soul lost 
 to faith will be accounted to me as spiritual murder. 
 
 The belief in God is no mere metaphysical conception. 
 It is the highest ethical idea, containing within itself all 
 the principles of moral conduct, all the ideals of humanity. 
 To preach the fear and love of God, means to preach right- 
 eousness, to show the ways of life and goodness revealed 
 by Him through the aspiring souls of His prophets. To 
 the faith of Yahve, God and goodness are identical 
 I thoughts. For the Israelite to believe in God signifies to 
 observe the divine laws of justice and mercy. It is there- 
 fore the duty of the pulpit to teach the good or godly life.
 
 324 
 
 God and righteousness must be the theme of the preacher's 
 sermons just as they were the burden of the prophets' ora- 
 cles. It is the duty of the pulpit to measure the conduct 
 of the people, in things both great and small, by the stand- 
 ard of the highest moral and religious ideas. The 
 preacher should be like the prophets of old the living, 
 ever-wakeful conscience of his congregation. It is not the 
 province of the pulpit to entertain. This is the business 
 of the stage and other like institutions. It lies outside of 
 the sphere of the pulpit to impart any kind of secular 
 knowledge as an end in itself. The pulpit uses the knowl- 
 edge supplied by science, art, and history solely for the 
 purpose of bringing into light the truths of faith and trac- 
 ing the ideas and enforcing the laws of moral conduct. 
 
 It is the preacher's mission to be the religious and 
 moral monitor of his congregation. He should fearlessly 
 criticise the rich and the poor, the men and the women, 
 the young and the old, for their moral shortcomings. 
 There is no pardon for him from God, if, from fear of mak- 
 ing enemies, he fails to tell Jacob his transgression and 
 Israel his sin. He must be full of noble enthusiasm for 
 the perfect life, and on all occasions compare his own con- 
 duct and that of his fellow-men with the moral ideals set 
 up by the prophets and teachers of Israel. 
 
 To do this persistently and successfully he must be a 
 man of dauntless courage. He must not be afraid of giv- 
 ing offense to the leaders of his congregation. He must 
 speak the truth, however unpleasant, though he run the 
 risk of losing the friendship of influential men. He must 
 preach, teach, and act in accordance with his deepest con- 
 victions, and be wholly unconcerned about the conse- 
 quences which might flow therefrom to his own detriment. 
 He must be ready to give up his charge at any moment 
 and go with his family to face poverty, rather than be a 
 flatterer and hypocrite. He must be willing to be an 
 object of vicious criticism to the ignorant puffed up with
 
 325 
 
 their own conceit, an object of scorn to shallow scoffers 
 and to the purse-proud gilded youth. To discharge faith- 
 fully the duties of the pulpit, the preacher must be free 
 from vanity and pride. He must be a despiser of money, 
 indifferent to public applause and all the shows and trap- 
 pings of external honors. He must love the cause of 
 religion and morality better than his own life. He should 
 work with an eye single to the spiritual growth and moral 
 advancement of the community. He should be contented 
 to be a failure in all that concerns his own interest, if he 
 but succeed in helping men to understand and realize the 
 higher life. 
 
 No man can devote all his energies, with a sustained 
 effort, to the general good, unless he feels that he has a 
 mission from God to do such life-work, arduous and thank- 
 less, yet of inestimable value. No minister can be a fearless 
 champion of truth, reckless of all consequences, defying 
 the powerful and rich, chiding the masses, putting the proud 
 to the blush, if he is not inspired by deathless love for the 
 highest well-being, the immortal good of his fellow-men. 
 
 The true teacher in Israel glows with enthusiasm for 
 the universal mission of Yahvism. He is consumed with 
 sleepless care for the present and the future of this people 
 of endless sorrows and immortal destinies. Infinite pity 
 and love possess his soul for poor maligned Israel. His 
 heart is full of grief, because actual Israel falls so sadly 
 behind the ideal Israel of the prophets. 
 
 His eyes grow dim, as he sees the missionary people 
 of spirituality mostly sunk in materialism. He burns 
 with indignation that the servant of God refuses to live 
 and work any longer for his high calling, that the people 
 of the Book of Revelation no longer know nor care to know 
 the Book of Life, which the Christian nations cherish as 
 the apple of their eye. Therefore must he raise his voice 
 like a trumpet and tell the Israelites their sins and rebuke 
 them for their faithlessness and the spiritual deadness of 
 their souls.
 
 326 
 
 Whoever is a true teacher in Israel will not only try to 
 improve the outward conduct of men, he will also put 
 forth strenuous efforts to change their heart, and ennoble 
 their inward life. It is his duty to guide and educate the 
 higher faculties of their soul, to plant in them the princi- 
 ples of righteous conduct, to transform and elevate their 
 character. Good actions which do not spring from noble 
 motives are of no moral value to the doer of them. 
 Charity which is not born of love is mere dust and chaff. 
 The virtues which have not their roots deep in a moral 
 will are merely acts of prudence or a blind habit. It is 
 the duty of the preacher to enlighten, spiritualize, and 
 invigorate the will. He should feed the will of his hearers 
 on the sublimest moral ideas, on the inspiring examples of 
 the world's greatest leaders, the immortal revealers of 
 truth. 
 
 The pulpit has still grander aims to pursue. It must 
 not be satisfied with judging, for praise or censure, the 
 actions and motives of men by the moral standards and 
 ideas of the past. The pulpit has inherited from Hebrew 
 prophecy the mission ever to extend the boundaries of 
 ethical knowledge and insight, to go on developing the 
 moral ideas from more to more, to make the ideals of 
 humanity ever loftier and diviner. The preacher should 
 endeavor to be among the pathfinders of moral progress. 
 He ought to be among the first to see the visions of the 
 larger and better life which is to be in coming days. The 
 light of new spiritual evolutions should first dawn upon 
 his wakeful soul, and his clear notes should proclaim to 
 the age the gospel of nobler duties and sweeter modes of life 
 than known to former generations. The principles of 
 morality are not something absolutely fixed and stable. 
 They are no antique precious stones, polished to perfec- 
 tion by the master-hands of departed artificers and trans- 
 mitted as an heirloom from generation to generation, to be 
 preserved in their given shape, not to be increased nor
 
 327 
 
 diminished. The moral ideas and ideals are capable of 
 infinite growth. They are the seeds divine implanted in the 
 human soul. There is no bound to their powers of 
 growth. They unfold with the unfolding life of civiliza- 
 tion and are the flower and fruit of the growing social 
 organism. It is the office of the religious teacher to look 
 into the moral needs of his time and show to the people the 
 new fruits of the spirit which the conditions of the age are 
 ripening. For the genius of history gives to every age 
 new problems to solve. The old solutions never fully 
 meet the new conditions. The social diseases of our time 
 can not be wholly cured by the remedies offered by the 
 religious and moral thought of past times. Those 
 appointed to lead the people must closely observe the 
 movements, the evils, the conflicts and dangers of their 
 time, and rise to conceptions of social duty higher than 
 those recognized heretofore. The loud discords of our 
 day, the fierce feud of poor and rich, the clashing of inter- 
 ests and classes, demand ideals of private and public con- 
 duct towering above the prevalent ideas and ideals of 
 justice and mutual obligations. It is the office of the pul* 
 pit to bring home to the heart of the people the higher 
 claims which humanity makes in our day on individuals 
 and society, and to fire them with enthusiasm to co-operate 
 with the work which the age is charged to perform. 
 
 It is not enough for the preacher to inculcate only 
 what may be called the private virtues and to neglect the 
 field of public or civic virtues. The duties of citizenship 
 form a very important, perhaps the most important, part 
 of morality. Yet this whole province of ethics is persist- 
 ently left alone by most preachers. The selfish dema- 
 gogues of our time, who fear nothing as much as the 
 moralizing influence of the pulpit on public opinion, have 
 inoculated the masses with the idea, that the pulpit should 
 not be allowed to discuss the social and political problems 
 of the day. A few preachers of superior character and
 
 328 
 
 power, such as the late Henry Ward Beecher, have shown 
 the moral courage to defy this pernicious superstition. 
 They dared follow the example given by their great proto- 
 types, the Hebrew prophets, who stood in the very midst 
 of the currents of the time and judged all events, all politi- 
 cal actors and parties, by the infallible standard of uni- 
 versal justice and social truth. The modern preachers of 
 righteousness should walk in the footsteps of their immor- 
 tal predecessors. Their mind should take an absorbing 
 interest in the political and social life of their own nation 
 and also of all the nations who play a part in the drama 
 of modern civilization. They should have a comprehen- 
 sive knowledge of the history of their own people and of 
 all the great races, and be thoroughly familiar with the 
 leading facts and general truths which bear on the economic 
 conditions of social well-being. They should know and 
 teach by what virtues and principles nations rise, and by 
 what vices and follies they fall. The American minister 
 should by study and observation come to have a clear 
 insight into the fundamental moral principles on which 
 the republic rests, and by the sapping of which it is bound 
 to perish. It is his office to warn the people of the dan- 
 gers which threaten the commonwealth, to make known 
 the maladies which are vitiating its vitality, and to rouse 
 men and women to a sense of their individual responsibil- 
 ity for the evils which are poisoning the fountain-heads of 
 national life. 
 
 The newspapers have largely absorbed this all-impor- 
 tant function of the ministry, and claim to discharge it 
 better than any other agency hitherto known. But unfor- 
 tunately, very few of them make good their claims to be 
 conscientious and wise guides of the people. Being merely 
 business enterprises, most of them have but one aim, to 
 make money by all means, fair or foul. Most of them are 
 the worst exponents of the lying spirit of blind and 
 unscrupulous partisanship. Instead of moulding public
 
 329 
 
 opinion in the interests of the general good of the country, 
 many of them lend their influence and voice to the worst 
 passions of sectional partisanship or, worse still, are in the 
 pay of organized plunderers and self-seeking political cote- 
 ries. But for those newspapers which are above party and 
 above the lust for wealth, the press of the country would 
 have to be considered a power for evil rather than for 
 good. It is the duty of the pulpit to give all its strength 
 to the cause of political morality so nobly represented by a 
 few independent and truly patriotic newspapers. It must, 
 of course, keep aloof from politics in the narrow sense, 
 from all party strife and contention. The preacher must 
 not descend into the arena of common political warfare. 
 But he should be foremost in righting against official cor- 
 ruption, against debasing and falsifying the suffrage 
 through fraud and chicanery, foremost in doing battle for 
 honesty, efficiency, and economy in the administration of 
 city and state, for patriotism, honor, and wisdom in those 
 clothed with authority. 
 
 The pulpit is eminently fitted to render this kind of 
 service to the people. For the sincere teachers of faith 
 and righteousness are most likely to penetrate to the moral 
 root of the questions which agitate the nation, because 
 their high calling excludes the thought of political ambi- 
 tion, because their mental vision and judgment are not 
 obscured by greed of office and the love of power. The 
 preacher who is inspired by the shining example of the 
 prophets has no desire to rule and command. Men in 
 whom the spirit of the Hebrew prophets lives incarnate, 
 have no wish to be the rulers of the people. They only 
 long to be the instruments of public justice and the mes- 
 sengers of social truth to the people. They do not parade 
 as statesmen, nor do they dream of obtaining political 
 power. All they strive after is that mercy and truth shall 
 meet together in the land, that righteousness and peace shall 
 kiss each other in every part of the commonwealth, that
 
 330 
 
 truth shall spring out of the heart of the people and jus- 
 tice look down from the high places of the earth. The 
 only reward they hope for is, that they may open the eyes 
 of the blind, so as to make them see the dangers of the 
 times, and may cause the ears of the deaf to hear the warn- 
 ing voice of the God of history. 
 
 But, while dealing with the questions of the day, the 
 religious teacher should ever rise in his instructions and 
 monitions from the individual case to the universal ideas, 
 from passing events to the eternal truths which hover as 
 creative powers above all times, all happenings, all nations. 
 From the bewildering perplexities and confusions of the 
 hour, he must ascend with his hearers to the imperishable 
 ideals of humanity; from the finite, he must take the people 
 with him on the wings of thought to the contemplation of 
 the Infinite ; from the shifting rules and laws of the day, he 
 should rise with them to stand face to face with the eter- 
 nal verities which will endure though heaven and earth 
 pass away.
 
 WHAT MAY MINISTERS AND 
 
 LAYMEN ACCOMPLISH IN 
 
 HALF-AN-HOUR? 
 
 '\T7HAT might a minister do in half -an -hour? Why, 
 the answer is self-evident ! He may, in half-an-hour, 
 deliver a beautiful and soul-stirring sermon, abounding in 
 moral truths and adorned with all the graces of genuine 
 oratory. Within that space of time an eloquent preacher 
 may make a speech so powerful as to lift scorners by sheer 
 spiritual force out of their seat of vanity and sin and carry 
 them in a column of fiery but righteous wrath to the very 
 heaven of repentance. In thirty minutes a true minister 
 of God may melt the stoniest hearts in his audience, and 
 thaw them into dew of pity. Half-an-hour's time should 
 be sufficient for a religious speaker to handle any subject 
 skillfully and exhaustively, making it clear even to the 
 comprehension of the least educated, while at the same 
 time charming the intelligence and taste of refined minds 
 by chasteness of diction and wealth of thought. A lect- 
 ure of thirty minutes' duration may be made a gem of 
 composition and truth. All this, and much more, may be 
 accomplished in half-an-hour, and even in less time. 
 
 Well, why do ministers so seldom do what appears so 
 desirable from the point of view of wisdom, harmony, and 
 economy? Why do they so often keep their helpless vic- 
 tims in an agony of yawning and dull despair for forty- 
 five minutes, frequently a whole hour, and sometimes the 
 length of an hour and a half? Like innocent lambs 
 doomed to slaughter, the hearers sit in dumb misery sub- 
 mitting to their cruel fate, their only consolation being the
 
 332 
 
 thought that they are suffering for their many sins. 
 Wretched indeed is the state of the audience while the 
 flood-gates of the preacher's vocabulary are opened and a 
 torrent of turbid and turgid words is being poured out 
 upon them, overflowing their minds and drowning every 
 sensation but that of their utter helplessness and inability 
 to escape. The gates of the church or synagogue are shut 
 upon them by the inexorable sexton, and unless they 
 should faint or die outright, they are bound to stay to the 
 end, and neither God nor angel can help them. Should the 
 forlorn creatures, from time to time, stealthily take out their 
 watches to measure the length and width of their desola- 
 tion and anguish, the minister darts at them a look of 
 withering indignation, so that they shrink like guilty 
 things and blush for shame. 
 
 Many preachers that, Sabbath after Sabbath, thus vex 
 and afflict the best and most reverential portion of suffering 
 humanity, are never aware of their sinful ways, never learn 
 to know that by their long discourses they make the earth 
 less habitable and less endurable. Some preachers, how- 
 ever, who at times deliver interminable sermons or lect- 
 ures, happen to have true friends and a sensitive con- 
 science to tell them that they have fallen into evil ways. 
 Then forsooth they do repent and mourn over the deed 
 that was overdone, and grieve over the overgrown sermon, 
 which, with its unnaturally lengthened limbs and dropsical 
 body, has descended into the grave of oblivion. Of the 
 latter class of preachers that often transgress the bounds of 
 time, but invariably are plagued by remorse afterward, I 
 confess to be one! But a week ago last Friday night I 
 again drew out my lecture to the length of three-quarters 
 of an hour. Immediately after service cruel conscience 
 began to attack me with bitter taunts and reproaches. I 
 slunk out of the house of God abashed like a ghost at cock- 
 crow ! I took a walk with self-contempt at my side. The 
 very stars seemed to wear a contemptuous smile; they
 
 333 
 
 trembled so ironically ! I seemed to hear them say, " Brev- 
 ity is the soul of wit," aye, "brevity is the soul of wit!" 
 It was late when my perturbed soul could find rest in 
 sleep. 
 
 Alas, it was but for a short while that I enjoyed the 
 blessing of self-forgetfulness ! For soon the god of dreams 
 began to play his mischievous pranks and tricks about me. 
 I dreamed that I was dead and lay in a silver-mounted cof- 
 fin ready for interment. I saw a vast amount of flowers in 
 the room, and felt sorry to be no longer alive, that I might 
 preach a strong sermon against such waste of money which 
 could be spent to better purpose in aid of the poor. I 
 regretted exceedingly to leave an intelligent and generous 
 congregation. Still more did I grieve to part from my 
 family. I was distressed that I should nevermore be able 
 to read the books of many great minds, which, through 
 idleness, I had in my life-time failed to read. It was, how- 
 ever, a great consolation to know for certain that the uni- 
 versal hope and belief of mankind in the immortality of 
 man's soul was no mere dream, but a reality. Was not my 
 spirit, while the body lay motionless and lifeless, thinking, 
 meditating, and loving, even with greater energy and clear- 
 ness than before? Soon a large number of good and tried 
 friends, Jewish and Gentile, filed in and took of me a last 
 look of infinite pity and tenderness. I heard my praises 
 sounded on all sides from all lips in so extravagant a man- 
 ner that my soul, which knew better, blushed for shame, 
 although my bodily face continued pale and expressionless. 
 All at once I heard one man say to a group of four or five 
 other men in a low whisper, yet not low enough as not to 
 be overheard by me : "All the good they say about him, 
 now that he is gone, may be true ; but Heaven forgive him 
 his long sermons and his still longer lectures ! At times 
 he was a great bore. How anxiously I watched many a 
 Friday evening for the end of the lecture that seemed 
 never to come. I pitied myself and the other hearers,
 
 334 
 
 but most of all the officers who are perched high in 
 their seats of honor. The rest of the auditors could at 
 least turn about and give vent to their impatience by sighs 
 and expressive contortions of their features. But the poor 
 officers from their high station, exposed on all sides to 
 observation, had, by superhuman efforts, to hide their 
 misery from the public eye and show a satisfied and serene 
 countenance. I liked our lamented friend best during his 
 annual vacation." The whole group looked and nodded 
 assent One of them, whose name I still remember, 
 heaved a deep sigh and remarked: "Ah, poor soul, he is 
 dead now, he meant it well!" And I who, while in the 
 flesh, was so sensitive to criticism and prone to acknowl- 
 edge any fault, being now wholly spiritual, felt neither 
 indignation nor remorse nor compassion. Speak on, I said 
 to myself, complain to your heart's content of the length 
 of my sermons! God will surely reward me for having 
 made a thorough use of the rare opportunities you offered 
 me to see and address you in the house of God. When I 
 happened to have you sinners before me, I was bound to 
 give you two or three doses of moral medicine at once. 
 
 Presently a change came over the spirit of my dream. 
 I was standing on the dismal shore of the river of death, 
 and there came toward me an old man in a boat. His long 
 beard was white with hoary age, his eyes were glowing and 
 shining like orbs of fire. He beckoned to me, and winged 
 desire wafted me from the river bank into the boat. It 
 was a strange vessel ! Some parts were beautiful, made of 
 finest wood with artistically carved figures. Certain spots 
 were covered with plates of gold and inlaid with precious 
 gems. Other parts of the same boat, however, consisted of 
 rotten wood with many holes in it, through which the dark 
 waters were splashing. About the tenth portion of the sail 
 was formed of purest white linen, but the rest was made 
 up of dingy rags loosely held together. But the queerest 
 and at the same time the most frightful feature were numer- 
 ous tail-like appendages of immense length, which were
 
 335 
 
 grown out of the very body of the boat and trailing along- 
 side of it in the water. They seemed endowed with life, 
 for they were writhing and twisting themselves as if in great 
 pain and fear. Around them were swimming huge mon- 
 sters, that eagerly swallowed them, but immediately cast 
 them forth again. And I said to the ferryman: "Master, 
 explain to me the mystery of this bark! Why is it so 
 shabby and gorgeous at the same time? Have you no bet- 
 ter material and no more skillful builders in your world?" 
 And he answered: "Deluded mortal, this is the shadowy 
 image of thy life on earth. The plates of gold mean " 
 "Stop!" I cried, "explain no more; I fully and sadly under- 
 stand the structure of this boat. But tell me, what are 
 these long appendages and the monsters following them?" 
 Then the lank cheeks of Charon distorted themselves into 
 a grim and deathly smile, as he replied: "Poor man, whom 
 flatterers on earth, and especially those sons of Belial, the 
 poetical reporters, called an eloquent speaker, these append- 
 ages are the excrescences of thy long sermons, the shadows 
 of thy interminable lectures. Who are the monsters, thou 
 askest? They are the ennui, the tedium, impatience, and 
 despair of thy hearers. They had to swallow the intel- 
 lectual food thou didst offer them, but they could not retain 
 it." "Cruel demon!" I exclaimed, with tears of rage in 
 my eyes, "wouldst thou even rob me of the good opinion 
 I have of my work on earth?" He vouchsafed me no 
 reply ; his eyes only looked merciless scorn that thrilled me 
 with anguish. 
 
 Soon I was brought before the dreaded Seat of Judg- 
 ment, and found myself standing at the foot of the throne 
 of the Ineffable Majesty. A flood of many-colored lights 
 streamed forth from the mystery of Divine Presence. I 
 could not look at the glory before me, for my eyes were 
 dazzled as if by the rays of ten thousand suns. I closed 
 my eyes and stood with my head bent downward. Then 
 I heard a low voice of soul-bewitching sweetness. It spoke
 
 336 
 
 to me in tones thrilling with pity and love like that of a 
 father gently chiding his erring child. "My son," He 
 said, "I have called thee away from earth, and summoned 
 thee to appear before My tribunal. The days of thy pil- 
 grimage in the world of mortality are ended. Thou hast 
 made poor use of the precious gift of time while abiding 
 on the star which mortals call Earth. I gave thee eyes to 
 see with awe My manifold wonders, to behold with rever- 
 ence the living revelations of My creative will. I vouch- 
 safed unto thee eyes to become mirrors of creation's beauty, 
 and with worshiping joy to gaze into the starry depth of 
 the universe. Yet thou, My mortal child, didst close them 
 to the heavens above that declare My glory, and didst bend 
 them earthward to seek gold and silver or to be affrighted 
 by the shadows of thy passing sorrows. Though endowed 
 by Me with wondrous vision, thou hast lived in the world, 
 wherein I have planted the tree of knowledge, a life of 
 blindness. Thou hast not plucked the delicious fruits of 
 knowledge that were within thy reach. Thou has left the 
 world of sense as ignorant of its harmony as when thou 
 wast made to enter it. Thou hast spent the best part of 
 thy time in idleness and suffered half of it to be consumed 
 in vanity. Child of My love, how grievously hast thou 
 failed! Hadst thou given but half-an-hour every week to 
 the contemplation of My works, and the understanding of 
 My laws that bind suns to remotest suns, to catch a glimpse 
 of My eternal will, as it liveth and stirreth in infinite forms 
 and with expanding creative love ascends from plant and 
 lowly worm through bird and beast to lordly man, hadst 
 thou thus turned thyself but thirty minutes in seven days 
 to learn and know My ways, thou wouldst have lived on 
 with a life of joy as wide, as rich, as divine as My bound- 
 less revelation, which mortals call Nature! What hast 
 thou done with thy time? My messengers I sent to man- 
 kind in all generations, My prophets, seers, and sweet 
 singers, My high-priests of truth have bequeathed to thee
 
 337 
 
 treasures of wisdom, have revealed My ways, the ways of 
 goodness and justice, love and mercy, have brought down 
 the true, the beautiful, and the eternal from heaven to 
 earth. They have laid quite bare the foundations of the 
 earth and unveiled the mysteries of existence! Hadst 
 thou devoted every day of thy life but half-an-hour to learn 
 and understand what untold ages with toilsome labor 
 have prepared for thee, thou wouldst have gained much of 
 the wisdom of the noblest minds that lived in thy time 
 and before thee, thou wouldst have fallen heir to the king- 
 dom of the past and the present. Half-an-hour's time every 
 day of thy life devoted to suffering humanity, would have 
 dried many a tear, would have lifted many of My fallen 
 children from the dust, might have rescued many a weak 
 man or woman from utter ruin! Thirty minutes given 
 day after day to thy needy and helpless fellow-men, would 
 have lessened the evils of earth and increased its joys. 
 Half-an-hour snatched daily from thy selfish pleasures 
 and selfish griefs, would have built up some of the waste 
 places of the earth and made it more habitable and beauti- 
 ful. Hadst thou, since thou didst arrive at maturity, con- 
 secrated half-an-hour every day to gather together all the 
 truth accessible to thee on any subject in the realm of 
 nature or mind, and written day by day a passage of lucid 
 and earnest truth, thou mightest have left behind thee a 
 valuable book as a lasting memorial of thy earthly life. 
 As it is, thou hast but written two wretched novels, that 
 nobody reads, but thy friends, out of kindness for thee. 
 But more grievously than in all these things, hast thou 
 sinned as a preacher. I took thee from behind the plow 
 of poverty and delivered thee from the hand of oppressing 
 care, and said unto thee: Be thou a teacher unto My chil- 
 dren, to guide them in My ways and to lead them gently 
 along My path, to strengthen the weak with the words of 
 thy mouth, to infuse courage into the despairing. I des- 
 tined thee to serve the spirit of My truth in the midst of
 
 My congregation, to lead the lost sheep of Israel to the 
 mountain of My revelation, and enkindle the sacred fire of 
 faith in the hearts of the young. But woe is thee, My son ! 
 how sadly hast thou failed in thy holy mission. Instead of 
 drawing them toward their Maker, toward truth, righteous- 
 ness, and love, by means of short, attractive sermons, full 
 of sound doctrine and sound morality, thou hast kept my 
 sons and daughters from My house through wearisome, 
 long speeches and lectures. Thou hast frightened away 
 My people from the fount of truth, thou hast turned the 
 Sabbath eve into hours of distress and of torture to their 
 spirit. But for thee they would have crowded My sanctu- 
 ary, listened eagerly to the words of admonition. The 
 terror of thy endless lectures kept them at home, where 
 they joined themselves together to indulge often in the 
 games invented by Satan, the arch-enemy of the human 
 race. Thou hast been weighed and found wanting, because 
 thou hast given little in too many words." 
 
 When I had heard these dread words issuing from the 
 mouth of Eternal Justice, I changed color, my knees 
 knocked against each other with trembling, my whole 
 frame shook with terror. Soon I fell on my face in agony 
 of despair. Then an angel touched me lightly on the 
 shoulder and whispered, "Rise and plead for mercy! for 
 He is a merciful God." I therefore rose to my feet, and 
 raising my hands toward the seat of Divine Mercy, I said, 
 weeping bitterly: "O pardon and forgive Thy erring ser- 
 vant ! I sinned, but not in a spirit of willfulness, I ever 
 intended to make my sermons and lectures short, but they 
 invariably turned out long. But I am not the only trans- 
 gressor. My teachers, great leaders in; Israel, used also to 
 make exceedingly long speeches. I imitated their evil ways, 
 as most all my coternporaries, Jewish and Christian, were 
 noted for their desperately long sermons. Candor embold- 
 ens me to say, that compared with some of the most famous 
 preachers, I am the very embodiment of brevity. Besides,
 
 339 
 
 I never preach longer than forty-five minutes." A voice of 
 thunder rebuked me: "Speak no falsehood in the presence 
 of thy Maker! Last Day of Atonement thou didst preach 
 an hour and a half. The young of my temple therefore 
 staid away from the evening service, and have not returned 
 to this day." "Pardon and forgive my iniquity," I again 
 pleaded, "let me but once more return to the earth! I 
 will mend my ways. I will never preach longer than 
 twenty minutes." "No, half-an-hour thou mayest con- 
 sume, but no more ; for once I will be gracious unto thee 
 and restore thee to thy family, thy books, and thy congre- 
 gation. But, beware! an angel will watch thee, invisible 
 to thee. The very first instance thou exceedest the bound 
 of time, off thou goest, never to return!" "Thanks and 
 praise to Thee," I said, with overflowing gratitude, "for 
 Thy lovingkindness. But suppose a subject should require 
 more time?" "Then break it off in the middle!" There- 
 upon Divine Mercy commanded two angels to bring me 
 back to earth. They bore me on their wings to my home, 
 and, strange to say, thrust me in through the window into 
 my dwelling-place. I found myself bathed in tears. I 
 then vowed solemnly to keep forever the promise I had 
 made before the Seat of Judgment.
 
 HELL AND HEAVEN. 
 
 T * 
 
 "T7OU wish me to state my views regarding Hell and 
 *- Heaven. Really, I am ashamed to confess how 
 densely ignorant I am at present as to those interesting 
 localities. Thirty-two years ago I visited Hell for the first 
 and last time. I was then in my feeble way helping to 
 drive out the Bourbon Devils from Naples. This occupa- 
 tion awakened in me the desire to go and see the Devils in 
 their celebrated home. So I descended one day into Hell 
 with my trusty Italian guide, Dante Alighieri. Thus I 
 acquired a pretty accurate knowledge of the geography and 
 topography of Hell. I made the acquaintance of many 
 highborn ladies and gentlemen, and of numbers of 
 renowned preachers and politicians. They all fanned 
 themselves constantly on account of the oppressive heat. I 
 was introduced to several Devil gentlemen, the superin- 
 tendents of the various departments, the most courteous 
 among whom was the chief of the fire department. He 
 made me acquainted with one of his principal officers, the 
 head of the Standard oil department, which is used there 
 for heating and cooking hard sinners. Since then I have 
 not visited that tropical country, because I dislike exces- 
 sive heat. It makes me bilious. I can not, therefore, tell 
 what Hell looks like nowadays. 
 
 Many great changes have since taken place which must 
 have greatly altered the state of things down there. For 
 instance, slavery has been abolished in the South and in 
 several other countries. When I was a little boy the com- 
 ets used to be considered wandering hells, traveling hotels, 
 as it were, for the accommodation of sinful souls. Science 
 
 *A letter to the editor of Truth, a Louisville weekly.
 
 has, however, lately discovered that comets are but assem- 
 blages or chains of meteors loosely held together by mutual 
 attraction. There is surely no room on them for an infer- 
 nal establishment. Is the moon a hell, as wise men and 
 women formerly thought it to be? In my present lament- 
 able state of ignorance I dare not give either an affirmative 
 or negative answer to this all-important question. Still, I 
 am inclined to think that the transitions from dreadful 
 heat to horrible cold, though supplying, without any extra 
 arrangement, most suitable torments for the wicked, must 
 in the long run totally ruin the health of the supervising 
 Devils. Ague and fever must make life unbearable to 
 them, and determine them to emigrate. Indeed, I honestly 
 believe that Hell has of late years been transferred to the 
 earth to Russia. Millions of souls are tormented there 
 by veritable devils. Religion, manhood, self-respect, honor, 
 hope, are crushed out of them by contrivances which no 
 devils in Hell could have conceived. By means of half a 
 million of sub-devils, the arch-devil has succeeded in turn- 
 ing multitudes of human beings into beasts. That Hell, 
 misnamed a Christian country, is surrounded by high and 
 thick walls of ignorance; it has lofty gates, the accursed 
 gates of despotism. The inscription on those gates ought 
 
 to be: 
 
 Per me si va nella citta dolente, 
 Per me si va nel eterno dolore, 
 Per me si va tra la perduta gente, 
 Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate ! 
 
 "Through me you pass into the city of woe; through 
 me you pass into eternal pain ; through me to the people 
 lost for aye; all hope abandon ye who enter here!" 
 
 As to Heaven, I will tell you all I know about it, precious 
 little though it be. I lived in Heaven many ages before I 
 became a denizen of this planet. I have still a faint recol- 
 lection of how bitterly I cried when I was bidden to leave 
 the ever-green meadows, the garden of bliss, with its trees
 
 342 
 
 bearing the fruits of knowledge and joy, and take up my 
 abode in the house of a poor minister. I clung to the feet 
 of my guardian angel and implored him to let me stay 
 and forever play with the young angels, with whom I 
 went daily to school and received instruction from Gabriel. 
 My guardian angel took me in his arms, laid my head on 
 his bosom, and lulled me to sleep with a magic song, of 
 which I remember but these few detached words: "Serv- 
 ant of God, suffering love, doing good to God's children, 
 uprooting evil." When I woke up, I found myself in a 
 small room, lighted up by two tallow candles. I was gazed 
 upon with intent, solemn eyes by two bearded men, one 
 very old, the other young, and I heard the faint whispered 
 words of a pale, beautiful young woman, "Oh, God, bless 
 my first-born son," to which her aged mother devoutly said, 
 "Amen, amen!" I was so deeply agitated that I began to 
 cry aloud and bitterly. I cried : "Heaven, oh lost Heaven; 
 take me back to Heaven!" My human relatives did not 
 understand me, but my guardian angel whispered : "Be still, 
 prove worthy; try to regain Heaven. Make a Heaven of 
 this earth. I will not forsake thee, and bring thee often 
 Heaven's messages." During the first five years of my life 
 Heaven was not entirely shut out from my vision. Lying 
 on my back on the meadow stretching behind our house, I 
 would for hours look up to the blue heavens above. After 
 awhile several little angels, my former playmates, would 
 open a window and smilingly look upon me and talk to 
 me. Sometimes they opened a gate so that my vision could 
 penetrate far into the interior of Heaven. Then I would 
 see angels and saints move in solemn procession to the 
 heavenly sanctuary, singing soul-bewitching songs, of 
 which the echoes reached my ear. Since that blessed 
 time I saw so much deviltry, misery, and oppression on 
 earth that they, together with my own sins and passions, 
 have sadly dimmed my sight. The world's bitter preju- 
 dices, the cruel fanaticisms of race, men's spiritual pride,
 
 343 
 
 their religious conceit and arrogant ignorance strutting 
 about in the livery of Heaven, have shut out Heaven. The 
 sighs, the groans, the cries of the oppressed, have rendered 
 the echoes of the heavenly music inaudible. Yet, I hope 
 that before I shall take my final departure from this planet 
 my eye will once more see the visions of childhood and 
 my ear hear the gracious melodies of Heaven ; and if not 
 here, then in the hereafter. I believe in the immortality of 
 the soul and in a return to God. Whatever He has 
 reserved for man in the world to come, I accept with a 
 loving and confiding soul. More I do not know ; more I 
 can not know. Yet, I envy those divines who have two 
 telephones in their house, connecting them both with 
 Hell and Heaven. No wonder that they have such accu- 
 rate and minute knowledge of both places ! Listening 
 through the telephone at their left, they hear the agonized 
 cries, the bitter lamentation of the tortured wicked, the 
 gnashing of their teeth, the sound of their hands clapping 
 together in hopeless woe. And straightway they sit down 
 and give in a sermon to be delivered a faithful account of 
 what they have heard, hoping thereby to terrify the sin- 
 ners. Then they go to the telephone to their right. 
 Hark, they are listening ! They hear all the hymns and 
 hallelujahs of the blessed, their conversations and discus- 
 sions. They hear more. They hear all that the Lord 
 says. All His plans and purposes are made known to them 
 in detail. With what glee they then write down for the 
 edification of the elect all the joyous news their pious ears 
 have taken in! Blessed men we call them, because they 
 are the depositaries of all the secrets of Hell and Heaven.
 
 MUSIC AND RELIGION. 
 
 "TV yf USIC and song are the universal language of religion. 
 *M*- All hearts understand it, all souls are thrilled by it. 
 All men, whatever their creed or no creed, rise on the 
 waves of music above their own narrow selves, and com- 
 mune with the general Soul. By means of song and music 
 alone does the human mind succeed in expressing the 
 inexpressible. In this language alone can the spirit of 
 man speak mouth to mouth with the universal Spirit. In 
 musical strains the heart of mortals is able to voice its 
 quenchless longing after the Eternal. Only in the accents 
 of song can Faith chant the soul's undying, mystic love of 
 the Lord of all. 
 
 The understanding in vain stretches lame hands of 
 inquiry to grasp the Infinite. It gropes along the narrow 
 paths of knowledge to find the eternal verities in which 
 the heavens and the earth are established. Yet it gathers 
 but dust and chaff. The understanding can not embrace 
 God, the all-enfolding Unity, the living Harmony of all 
 existence. For the intelligence is compelled by its own 
 constitution to divide the indivisible One. In order to 
 comprehend aught, it must break up the inseparable Unity 
 into parts. Thought is forever chained to palpable or 
 imaginable forms. The most abstract ideas must still wear 
 the shapes and features of things visible, at least of sensu- 
 ous experience. In order to become knowable they must 
 assume a name which circumscribes and isolates them. 
 The understanding lives and has its being wholly in finite 
 parts. Its home and office are within the confines of the 
 senses. It can not transcend experience, and all experience 
 is bound to parts. It has no wings on which to reach the 
 Infinite and Absolute.
 
 345 
 
 Faith is not the offspring of the understanding. The 
 belief in one only God, the infinite ground of all existence, 
 the belief in an absolute principle of unity embracing both 
 nature and the soul, the belief in a universal Reason and 
 Love transcending human comprehension, has not come to 
 us as a message of the analyzing and comparing under- 
 standing. The belief in a Power Divine which makes for 
 the better and the best in nature and for righteousness in 
 the growing life of man, is not the fruit of the mind's 
 gathered experience systematized as science. Such faith is 
 the immediate revelation of the absolute Self and Reason 
 in the reason of man. Enclosed and safe within our cen- 
 tral heart abides the belief in the Divine Unity. Faith in 
 the existence of the Universal and Infinite, faith in an all- 
 good Power, is the indestructible ground underlying all our 
 beliefs and thoughts. God is the highest and ultimate 
 truth which we can not prove, because there is nothing 
 beyond it to prove it by, because all truths spring from it 
 and are a dream without it. But when the understanding 
 is called to give a clear expression to the soul's inexpres- 
 sible faith, to define the indefinable, it staggers and blun- 
 ders and fails. It must give a name to the nameless Mys- 
 tery. Any name individualizes and isolates what is the 
 Be-all, the beginning, the middle, and the end of all existence. 
 The attributes of God are minutely analyzed. His rela- 
 tions to the world and the soul, to free-will and necessity, 
 to good and evil, are carefully elaborated and worked up 
 into systems of theology. The soul's immediate percep- 
 tion of the Divine and Universal is made to wear the 
 chains of analyzing logic. Faith is imprisoned in words. 
 The word is worshiped instead of the living presence of 
 God in the worshiping soul. Names are adored in place 
 of the ineffable Reality, which is beyond the ken of lan- 
 guage. Every creed, therefore, articulates and proclaims 
 but part of the universal truth. Hence the jar and discord 
 of the churches, each claiming to be alone in full posses- 
 sion of the knowledge of God. Hence the mad Babel-din
 
 346 
 
 of warring sects and dogmas. Hence the demon-fury of 
 fanaticism and religious hate. Mankind has been these 
 many thousands of years building the tower of faith which 
 shall reach to Heaven. But there is confusion of tongues 
 among the builders, so that one can not understand the 
 religious language of another. 
 
 But when the soul utters forth her longing and hope 
 and adoration in music and song, the din and confusion of 
 creeds cease at once. All souls are of one faith, while they 
 hear the universal language of faith. For this language is 
 free from the limitations of thought, from the tyranny of 
 the logical categories, from all the letters of common 
 speech. Music does not deal with particulars. It hovers, 
 an uncaught bird, in the pure, divine air of the universal, 
 the spiritual. Music is the spirit of harmony which moves 
 as the principle of unity above the parts, giving them 
 meaning and beauty. God is the living Harmony of the 
 universe, the creative Unity of nature and humanity. By 
 the magic of music's harmon}' the soul is able to reveal 
 its faith and ecstatic joy in the all-pervading Harmony 
 Divine we adore and love as God. In the music of a 
 Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn this Divine 
 Mystery sounds its clearest notes of love and redemption, 
 and wells up in the thousand responses of the yearning 
 heart. From of old all true prayer has been a song, 
 accompanied by the sounds of musical instruments. It is 
 in the immortal songs called the Psalms that Faith 
 sounded all the heights and depths of the soul's relation to 
 the World-Soul. It is in the swelling song of the congre- 
 gation, rising and falling with the hymnal notes, that all 
 hearts feel their nearness to God, and experience the beati- 
 tude of spirits blending in adoration with the Universal 
 Spirit.
 
 JACOB'S DREAM. 
 
 A NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE.* 
 
 the uttermost ends of our land my love comes to 
 you in this hour with greetings on its wings. From 
 the shore of the far-sounding Pacific I send you my bless- 
 ings for the New Year. Three thousand miles separate me 
 from the objects of my love, from my friends, from the con- 
 secrated spot where I have for twenty years tried to teach 
 you the truth of God and the ways of the higher life. 
 While my body is far away from you, my mind is at this 
 moment in closest touch with your mind, my meditations 
 blend with your devout thoughts, my prayers for your wel- 
 fare in the coming year mingle with your own prayers and 
 together ascend to the throne of the Eternal. Impelled 
 by quenchless longing, my soul wings its flight to the 
 place where I have builded my spiritual and moral home 
 by the altar of your sanctuary. The best results of my 
 life, few though they be and marred by many faults and 
 mistakes, are stored up as vital elements in the character, 
 the works, and the ideals of Congregation Adath Israel. If 
 you wish to judge me, judge me by yourselves, by the best 
 men and women now assembled in the house of God. If you 
 desire to determine my worth, gauge it by the moral and 
 intellectual worth of the generation which we have trained 
 up together in joy and in sorrow, to which we have devoted 
 our best years and the noblest forces of our being. Let 
 
 *Sent by the author to his Congregation from San Francisco, where 
 he was detained by the state of his health. It was read by the Junior 
 Rabbi.
 
 348 
 
 our tree of life be judged by its fruits. The tree itself 
 may in a few years be withered and consumed, and its very 
 roots decay in the ground, but its numerous offshoots will 
 be green and nourishing and bearing fruits in ages to come, 
 and its seeds will spring up like cedars of Lebanon in the 
 garden of God. Thus, my true self is with you and within 
 you. While physically absent, my present spirit is bless- 
 ing you and your children, and imploring God to vouch- 
 safe unto you a year of fruitful work, a year of rejoicing in 
 the fruits of your hands, a year of peace and contentment. 
 My truest self is addressing you now by the mouth of my 
 friend and fellow-teacher. 
 
 "Jacob went forth from Beer-sheba, and went toward 
 Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried 
 there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one 
 of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and 
 lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and 
 behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it 
 reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God were 
 ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord 
 stood above it, and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abra- 
 ham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon 
 thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. . . . And 
 Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord 
 is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, 
 and said, How fearful is this place! this is none other but 
 the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And 
 Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone 
 that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, 
 and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the 
 name of that place Beth-el. . . . And Jacob vowed a vow, 
 saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this 
 way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment 
 to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in 
 peace: then shall the Lord be my God, and this stone,
 
 349 
 
 which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house ; and 
 of all that Thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth 
 unto Thee." (Genesis, xxviii, 10-22.) 
 
 In this hour we are in the proper frame of rnind, I 
 believe, to understand the meaning of Jacob's dream, and 
 to take home to ourselves the solemn lessons which the 
 beautiful poem was intended to convey. Our own personal 
 experience, bitter and sweet, which we have gathered on 
 our pilgrim's progress may help us to interpret aright the 
 dream of our ancestor, and find it to be the dream of our 
 own soul groping in darkness for an answer to the riddle 
 of our existence. We too have arrived at a way-station in 
 our lives. It is called a New Year. The sun of the old 
 year has set. We pause and rest for a while to reflect on 
 what has been, on what we have achieved and gained in 
 the course of years. We survey the landscape of the past 
 and contemplate the field of the present. We ask our- 
 selves: What good has life brought us? Has it ful- 
 filled the rich promises which it made to us in our child- 
 hood and youth? Has it profited us to plan and scheme, 
 to toil and bear burdens and often to stagger under the 
 load of our difficulties and responsibilities? Have the 
 seeds which we have sown in the furrows of time ripened 
 into a harvest of happiness? To these questions we 
 answer in the spirit of the ancient seer who composed 
 Jacob's dream. To those who, like Jacob at the beginning 
 of his career, in blind selfishness seek the end and aim of 
 their life in their own selves, to those whose sole ambition 
 and aspiration it is to obtain happiness and glory for them- 
 selves, life proves to be a lonely and barren desert, as it did 
 to our fugitive forefather during the period of his relentles 
 egotism. We can not win the blessings of life by self-seek- 
 ing. This is an eternal law, seated at the core of our 
 being, working at all times and in all directions, ever pres- 
 ent and active in the heart of nature and humanity. He 
 who thinks, strives, and toils with an eye single to his own
 
 350 
 
 good is foredoomed to failure. We may put forth the most 
 tremendous efforts, if it be for our own self-aggrandize- 
 ment, for our own glory and pleasure, we shall find our- 
 selves thwarted and deceived by powers we can not over- 
 come. Every pursuit whose sole end is the benefit of self 
 leads to sad disappointment. However shrewdly we may 
 contrive it, however cunningly we may carry on the activi- 
 ties of our life, egotism invariably terminates in moral bank- 
 ruptcy. All hopes are blighted, all plans miscarry, all joys 
 taste bitter, all successes are felt to be vain, if we ourselves 
 are the be-all and the end-all of our strivings 'and achieve- 
 ments. To such selfish wanderers the field of existence 
 offers but hard stones to rest their heads on in their weary 
 pilgrimage through the years. Wealth gotten and used 
 merely for selfish purposes turns to stone ; knowledge, cult- 
 ure which pursues no other end but the pleasure and intel- 
 lectual power of the owner thereof, instead of a blessing 
 becomes a curse. If a man is only for himself, all goods 
 from the highest to the lowest turn to ashes. He that 
 seeks himself and makes himself the center of all his will- 
 ing and doing will, like Jacob of old, be a poor fugitive on 
 earth, forever running after the blessings of life, while the 
 blessings are forever fleeing from him. 
 
 By what spiritual means shall we escape such bitter 
 disappointment? How shall we avoid being driven into 
 the arms of pessimism or despair of life? How shall we 
 prevent ourselves from feeling and thinking like the 
 Preacher and crying out with him on an occasion like this, 
 "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"? Without the divine 
 dream of religion, without the dream of an ideal world 
 beyond ourselves, for which we have to live and work and 
 suffer and sacrifice, our own individual existence is indeed 
 a barren delusion. As soon as we rise above the wretched 
 realities to which alone egotism clings, and begin to dream 
 the dream of the world's seers and pathfinders and mar- 
 tyrs, the ground on which we rest is wondrously trans- 
 formed and changed into a heavenly landscape. Let us
 
 but grasp the central truth of all religion and philosophy, 
 that our life and all our activities do not reach their end in 
 ourselves but in our fellow-men, in the social whole and in 
 our descendants, in an ideal future which shall realize the 
 plans of God. As soon as I am thoroughly imbued with 
 the conviction that I do not exist for myself, and that my 
 life-work is but a means to a higher end, and that end 
 reaching out into an eternal world, I am cured of the dis- 
 ease of discontent and go forward on my pilgrimage with- 
 out fear and complaining, doing my task with cheerful 
 trust and confidence in the wisdom of Providence. Ours is 
 the will to propose to ourselves various ends in accordance 
 with the dictates of duty and love. But the results of our 
 efforts can not possibly be foreseen by us, they go far beyond 
 us and are greater and more numerous than our boldest 
 imagination can divine. Our will, illumined by wisdom, 
 creates the deed, but as soon as the deed is created it goes 
 forth and becomes an independent power, producing influ- 
 ences transcending all possible calculation. 'Tis our glory 
 that we may make ourselves the center of vast beneficent 
 effects, but these effects form ever-widening circles which 
 spread far beyond our vision. No man, however great and 
 far-seeing, has ever done anything of which the results did 
 not go infinitely beyond what he intended to accomplish. 
 As a rule, the results aimed at even by the greatest of men 
 appear ridiculously insignificant compared with the far-off 
 results not intended by him. Columbus went forth in 
 search of the eastern coast of India. His immediate pur- 
 pose was to gather vast treasures, by means of which he was 
 to equip a crusade and wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the 
 hand of the infidel. A result undreamed of by him was 
 the discovery of America, and the effect of that discovery 
 surpasses the power of the greatest mind to conceive. The 
 discoverers of great scientific truths, the great invent- 
 ors of steam and telegraphy, have produced tremendous 
 revolutions in the thought and life of humanity which no
 
 352 
 
 human eye could foresee and no fancy grasp. We are but 
 instruments in the hands of God, willing instruments if we 
 are wise, unwilling instruments if we are blind and selfish. 
 With this vital thought which came to Jacob on his 
 journey, with this comforting truth in our heart to guide 
 and cheer us through the coming year, we can not but 
 dream tonight the beautiful dream of the ancient seer, the 
 dream of religious idealism, the dream of our inalienable 
 share in the universal and eternal life. The ground 
 whereon we rest is not an isolated, godless spot, full of 
 darkness and moral confusion, full of profitless toil and 
 fruitless sorrows, but stands in perpetual inter-communica- 
 tion and inter-relation with the world above us. We and 
 the place we inhabit are not set apart, as things inferior 
 and despicable, from the celestial order. This earth, our 
 dwelling-place, is as much a part of heaven as any planet 
 or sun. Behold, a ladder is standing on the ground, the 
 top of which reaches to heaven. The divine creative 
 power forms a ladder of unity between the whole universe 
 and this earth, even the particular place whereon we abide. 
 The angels of God, divine forces and laws, which are reve- 
 lations of His will and wisdom, are perennially ascending 
 and descending thereon, forming a wondrous chain of liv- 
 ing relations in heaven and earth. What an elevating 
 thought! We are not banished away from God and the 
 eyes of His Providence in some gloomy corner of the uni- 
 verse. We are seated at the very heart of existence. The 
 light, the creative love, and the manifestations of the Eter- 
 nal are constantly descending down unto us from every star 
 and world-system, while answering influences ascend with- 
 out ceasing from the earth to all the realms of heaven. 
 Each of us is a part of this universal order. No man is so 
 insignificant, so humble and poor that he has no part in 
 the universal life. Blessed dream, that shows us our dig- 
 nity, our greatness and importance in relation to the 
 heavens above and the earth beneath ! The place whereon
 
 353 
 
 we stand is holy ground. With our feeble powers we are 
 doing the work of the Eternal, with every noble act and 
 thought and sacrifice we are sending forth influences, 
 which rise on the ladder of humanity to affect for good 
 generations yet unborn. Our existence is rooted in the 
 earth, but the true end and aim of our life reach to heaven, 
 and the purpose of our work and sufferings is accomplished 
 in the vast and ever-growing life of humanity. 
 
 What a joyful dream is vouchsafed unto us on solemn 
 occasions like this! Despair of life can not invade our 
 soul. We feel that we have not lived in vain. We are 
 associated with the heaven of humanity, with the best 
 hopes and aspirations of the race through our children 
 and disciples. A ladder is standing on the ground and 
 the top thereof reaches to heaven. And on that ladder 
 we see the angels of God, immortal souls, descend to us in 
 the guise of loving sons and daughters. Every child is a 
 messenger from heaven, a revelation of the grace and love 
 of our Eternal Father. Through our children by blood 
 or spiritual adoption we make ourselves immortal on earth. 
 Through them we project ourselves into futurity. Through 
 them we reach out a hand to grasp the hand of far-off 
 generations. Through them we become a beneficent 
 power which shall not pass away. 
 
 At the same time we behold tonight other angels 
 of God ascending on the ladder of existence from earth 
 to heaven. We see beloved beings, venerable fathers 
 and mothers, darling children, brothers and sisters, com- 
 panions of our life leaving this earth and mounting heaven- 
 ward to dwell transfigured and blessed in the world of 
 immortality. Through our departed friends our heart is 
 in close touch with heaven. Through our deathless love 
 which we bear to them we are in constant communication 
 with the spiritual world. Our holy memories are our rich- 
 est ideal possessions. They make us realize that we are 
 but a link in the endless living chain of generations; that
 
 354 
 
 it is our duty to continue the life and work of our fathers 
 and forefathers, and transmit it enriched with new ideals 
 and moral powers to our children and children's children. 
 They remind us that, though our pilgrimage on earth be 
 short, it is yet a journey towards the city of God, towards 
 the promised land of universal love and justice, toward 
 which nations and individuals are moving in procession, 
 led by the light of divine wisdom. 
 
 Let us be grateful to the world's seers for having taught 
 us to dream the blissful dream of religion ! For in the 
 vision of that dream we find ourselves in the constant 
 presence of God. We are not alone and abandoned, we 
 are not allowed to wrestle painfully and fail miserably. 
 Our life can not be a failure, seeing that it is dedicated to 
 the life of God unfolding itself in the development of 
 humanity. Our work must be crowned with success, 
 because we know that it will blend with the works of 
 innumerable noble men, and will somehow combine with 
 the operations of Divine Providence throughout the ages. 
 God is standing by us as He stood above Jacob in his 
 dream. His promises come to us as in the whispering 
 voice of a loving father. They are sure to be fulfilled, 
 not in us but in our descendants, in our spiritual succes- 
 sors in far-off days. What God promised to Jacob was 
 partly fulfilled many hundreds of years later in his chil- 
 dren, is still being fulfilled in a thousand ways and places, 
 and will reach its perfect fulfillment only when all the 
 the races of men will be blessed in Israel and the whole 
 earth will be the holy land of God, flowing with the milk 
 of human kindness and bringing forth fruits of righteous- 
 ness and peace. In this sense we are truly dreaming the 
 dream of our ancestor, for we are all waiting and working 
 for the kingdom of humanity promised of old to the 
 prophets of Israel. 
 
 When we awaken from the dream of religion, to attend 
 to the practical duties of life, we exclaim, with Jacob,
 
 355 
 
 "How fearful is this place! this is none other but the 
 house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Religion 
 makes us feel that the spot we inhabit is consecrated 
 ground. God is present in our feelings and thoughts and 
 works. Our home is a temple of God as much as any 
 sanctuary. The house in which you bring up your chil- 
 dren in the spirit of lovingkindness and purity and truth- 
 fulness is as holy as the Holy of Holies in the Temple at 
 Jerusalem. The table at which the members of your fam- 
 ily sit ranged in sweet converse, eating of the fruits of 
 your honest labor, is an altar of God. Where husband 
 and wife and children are twined together in love, faith- 
 fulness, and soulful helpfulness, there stands the ladder of 
 moral ascent, and there is the gate of heaven, through 
 which the prayers of parents for the welfare of their chil- 
 dren and the prayers of the children for their parents rise 
 to God. 
 
 In our truest house of God, which is our home, we 
 vow, like Jacob, at the beginning of the year to be satis- 
 fied with whatever God will grant us. Be it little or much, 
 let us be satisfied with the gifts of God, as long as they 
 enable us to serve Him and to raise servants unto His 
 name and work. Let us strive after the grace of a con- 
 tented disposition. Perfect happiness is not attainable, is 
 not intended for us. We exist here for ulterior universal 
 ends, which are infinitely more important and far-reaching 
 than individual happiness. But modest contentment is 
 within our reach, if we use the gifts of Heaven wisely and 
 meekly. We have much to thank for and rejoice in. We 
 should rejoice in our moral possibilities, in the power of 
 growing wiser in thought, stronger in willing, kinder and 
 juster, with the revolving years. We should find content- 
 ment in the fact that we are able to give a true home to 
 our beloved ones, by which we may become a blessing to 
 many families of the earth. We should feel grateful that 
 we have the heart and the ability to dedicate part of our
 
 356 
 
 possessions to God. What we give to the poor and needy, 
 trying to lift them up and enable them to earn a liveli- 
 hood, is given to God. Whatever wealth and time and 
 energy we spend on behalf of those smitten with disease, 
 whatever efforts and means we expend in bringing healing 
 and light to those sorely afflicted, is tithes given to God of 
 what He has bestowed on us. Let us find satisfaction in 
 the faith and power we possess to change all the stones of 
 hardship, of sorrow and suffering into one sacred altar, on 
 which we offer daily sacrifices of righteousness and officiate 
 as the high-priests of the ideal humanity which is to be. 
 Let us gratefully rejoice in the gift of dreaming the divine 
 dreams of religion, the dreams of all -transfiguring ideal- 
 ism. Let us resolve to translate these dreams into daily 
 practice and transform them into the living rock of a noble 
 character. With these thoughts and dreams and resolu- 
 tions let us start on our journey through the coming year.
 
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