LIBERAL JUDAISM AND 
 HELLENISM
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO . 
 DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 AND HELLENISM 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 CLAUDE G. iMONTEFIORE 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1918
 
 COPYRIGHT
 
 TO 
 
 LILY H. MONTAGU 
 
 ORIGINATOR AND INSPIRER 
 
 OF THE JEWISH RELIGIOUS UNION 
 
 FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 
 IN WARM FRIENDSHIP AND PROFOUND REGARD 
 
 209304 G
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A YEAR or so before the War I was asked to give a 
 short course of Lectures in the United States on some 
 subject connected with Liberal Judaism. The Lec- 
 tures would probably have been delivered in 1915, 
 and two of them were actually written before the 
 War began. The others were written subsequently. 
 As, under the changed conditions of the world, it 
 had become quite uncertain whether the Lectures 
 would ever be delivered, or whether, indeed, I should 
 ever again have the pleasure to find myself in 
 America, I have determined to publish them as essays 
 in book form before they become too musty and 
 out of date. Most of them have been enlarged and 
 altered since they were first written. Part of the 
 first essay has already appeared in the Hibbert Journal 
 for January 1918, and is here reprinted by permis- 
 sion. A large portion of the fifth essay, and a small 
 portion of the sixth, were printed in the series of 
 Papers for Jewish People, published by the Jewish 
 Religious Union for the Advancement of Liberal 
 Judaism. But I ought, perhaps, to add here that I 
 do not in any way write as the official spokesman of 
 
 vii
 
 viii LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 the Union, and that the opinions expressed on more 
 than one point may not be shared by many members 
 of the Union or of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. 
 When I say : " Liberal Judaism holds and teaches so 
 and so," this must always be taken as an abbreviation 
 for : " Liberal Judaism, in my conception of it, and 
 in the conception of those who think with me, holds, 
 or should hold, teaches, or should teach, so and so." 
 The essays which form this little book all deal 
 with Liberal Judaism, and consequently contain 
 various references to Orthodox Judaism. Not long 
 ago one thought of Jews as divided into two classes 
 only : Orthodox Jews and Liberal Jews. But, with 
 the rise of modern Jewish nationalism, an entirely 
 fresh division of Jews has made its appearance : 
 nationalists and anti- nationalists. And this fresh 
 division is, in regard to the old cause of difference, 
 a cross division. For among the nationalists are 
 Orthodox Jews and Liberal Jews ; and among the 
 anti -nationalists are Orthodox Jews and Liberal 
 Jews. While it is sad for Liberal Jews to be sharply 
 separated from their fellow " Liberals " (as doubt- 
 less it is sad for Orthodox Jews to be separated 
 from their fellow " Orthodox ") upon so vital and 
 important a subject, it is some compensation for us 
 Liberal anti-nationalists to be brought nearer to 
 many Orthodox Jews, and to be actively united with 
 them upon a question which, in our eyes, is not 
 merely political, but also religious, united with 
 them, that is, in maintaining that all Jews, whether 
 Orthodox or Liberal, are held and linked together by
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 the tie, not of nationality, and not even, essentially 
 and primarily, of race, but of a common religious 
 faith a faith which has, indeed, its two main sections 
 or phases, but is yet justly described, as regards each 
 of these sections, by a single and historic name. 
 Though the Liberal remains no less ardent in his 
 Liberalism, and the Orthodox no less ardent in his 
 Orthodoxy, this active uniting together in a common 
 religious cause has made one Liberal Jew, at any 
 rate, appreciate the better, as regards Orthodox 
 Judaism, what has lately been so well said in a more 
 general connection : 
 
 " We may be firmly convinced that the religious 
 experience of mankind cannot be subjected to the 
 forms of the past, and yet we cannot seriously think 
 that the religious experience of former ages meant 
 nothing, or even that its forms are to us insignificant. 
 Even the man who is most clear that for him the 
 religion of the spirit is best expressed in the simplest 
 terms cannot be unmoved by the words which have 
 expressed the devotion of far more than a thousand 
 years, and the rites and ceremonies which have slowly 
 grown round this devotion." l 
 
 C. G. M. 
 
 1 Christianity in History, by Dr. Vernon Bartlet and Dr. A. J. Carlyle (1917), 
 P- S^S.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 i 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND THE OLD TESTAMENT i 
 
 II 
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND THE NEW TESTAMENT ... 77 
 
 III 
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE . .136 
 
 IV 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND HELLENISM . . . . .183 
 
 V 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND DEMOCRACY ..... 242 
 
 VI 
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND THE FUTURE . . . . 284
 
 I 
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 IN every phase of Judaism since the completion of 
 the Canon, the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, has 
 played a distinctive and essential part. And to-day, 
 too, its position remains of central importance. 
 Liberal Judaism, then, must take up a certain clear 
 attitude towards those venerable documents, that 
 form the Hebrew Bible. It must be able to explain 
 that attitude in tolerably simple words to all fairly 
 educated persons. It is true that Liberal Judaism 
 is itself no fixed quantity. It changes and will 
 change. Nor is there in existence only one type or 
 kind of Liberal Judaism. There are various kinds, 
 or, shall we rather say, there are various degrees ? 
 The attitude of one kind or degree of Liberal 
 Judaism to the Old Testament will not be wholly the 
 same as the attitude of another. Nevertheless we 
 have reached certain general agreements in our 
 Liberalism. And thus, though there are still varieties 
 and degrees (and most happily it is so, for absolute 
 agreements are a sign of stagnation and decay), it is 
 yet possible to put the question : What is the 
 general attitude of Liberal Judaism to the Hebrew
 
 2 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 Bible ? My own answer may not be wholly the 
 same as the answer of another, who is no less, or 
 perhaps more, of a Liberal than I. But I hope that, 
 in my main conclusions and arguments, I shall carry 
 with me the sympathy and agreement of a large 
 number of Liberal Jewish students and adherents. 
 
 They will, at any rate, agree with me as to the 
 importance, the delicacy and the difficulty of the 
 subject itself. A conflict is going on, which has to be 
 settled : there are different needs which have to be 
 harmonised. We want, and we mean, to continue 
 to keep and to love our Hebrew Bible ; but we want, 
 and we mean, to be true to ourselves; we want, and 
 we mean, never to palter with the truth. The 
 Hebrew Bible is still very precious to us : we are 
 convinced that it can, and will, remain precious to 
 us to us and to our children. But we do not 
 conceal from ourselves that there are troubles con- 
 nected with it which cause us anxiety and perplexity. 
 It is these troubles which need adjustment and 
 smoothing out. They are, in reality, less caused by 
 the Hebrew Bible itself than by the way in which 
 we used to be taught, or the way in which our 
 fathers and grandfathers were taught, to regard the 
 Bible. If we could only start afresh, the troubles 
 would be less conspicuous and puzzling. 
 
 Let us make a sort of rough list of these troubles, 
 so that we may have faced them at the very outset 
 quite bravely and honestly. The first, then, is the 
 critical trouble : the trouble of dates and authorship 
 and accuracy. We no longer believe, for instance, 
 that the Pentateuch is a unity, or that it was written 
 by Moses. We no longer believe in the accuracy 
 of all its statements (including the long series of 
 miraculous stories), we no longer believe in the early
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 3 
 
 and Mosaic origin of most of its laws. Connected 
 with this critical trouble is the trouble about 
 inspiration. We do not deny a divine element in 
 the Pentateuch or in the Prophets, but we recognise 
 a large human element as well. We no longer see 
 perfection in every law or every teaching. And this 
 falling away from perfection we may regard as 
 constituting the ethical trouble and the religious 
 trouble. The ethics of the Hebrew Bible and its 
 religious doctrines are not all of a piece. There is 
 much development : there is also some retrogression. 
 Some teaching is sublime and ideal : other teaching 
 is superseded and imperfect. Then there is the 
 liturgical trouble and the ceremonial trouble. The 
 worship of the Synagogue has been closely mixed up 
 with its attitude towards the Law. The ceremonies 
 both public and private are dependent upon the 
 Law, and are the outcome of the Law. 
 
 How are we to retain institutions for instance, 
 circumcision the origin and sanction of which, as 
 given in the Law, we no longer believe in ? If the 
 miracles connected with the Exodus did not take 
 place, if the details of the festival were not then 
 ordered by God, how can we still celebrate the 
 Passover ? And so on. It is easy to multiply the 
 instances. Lastly, we may recall the education 
 trouble. If we adults can thrash out a working 
 theory for ourselves, which satisfies more or less 
 fully our minds and hearts, what shall we say to our 
 children ? True and false they understand : good 
 and bad : white and black. But in-between varieties 
 they find more difficult. All the more need, then, 
 to come to clearness ourselves, in order that we may 
 do our best for the children. For in them lies our 
 hope for the future. We, who are more than thirty
 
 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 and forty and fifty, are all very well in our way, but 
 the really interesting people are the boys and girls 
 and the babies. 
 
 We may sum up our troubles by saying that we 
 want to combine two attitudes towards the Old 
 Testament, both of which we are convinced have 
 value, and both of which -we are convinced have 
 validity. On the one hand, there is the attitude of 
 freedom, about which I will say more in a moment ; 
 on the other hand, there is the attitude of authority. 
 For though the supreme authority must be our own 
 conscience, our unfettered and honest judgment, 
 reacting to the most assured results of criticism, 
 history and comparative religion, nevertheless some 
 authority the Hebrew Bible is still to retain. It is 
 not quite the same as other books, though it must 
 be criticised, investigated and estimated in precisely 
 the same ways as other books are investigated and 
 estimated, and be subjected to the same canons of 
 criticism and research. Yet when all is said and 
 done, Liberal Judaism still emphatically asserts of 
 this book : " Herein is the finger of God. Here 
 are words, here are teachings, for which the Divine 
 Spirit is, in some true sense, the Source." As the 
 patriarch said of the place, so do we say of the book, 
 " God is in it," and because God is in it, it has an 
 authority of its own, and a special authority for us, 
 who are the inheritors of the charge, of which the 
 book describes the foundation, and to which it asserts 
 the claim. "Ye are my witnesses." If that state- 
 ment was made without any divine warranty, Liberal, 
 as well as Orthodox, Judaism collapses like a pack of 
 cards. 
 
 On a lower level the trouble of the two attitudes 
 may be described as an attempt at, or the need of, a
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 5 
 
 reconciliation between freedom, on the one hand, and 
 the maintenance of historical connection, on the other. 
 Judaism is an historical religion, and Liberal Judaism 
 must be so too. It cannot neglect the past, or 
 ignore it. Its very organisation, its ceremonies, its 
 public worship must, to a large extent, be the 
 creations and the outcome of the past. Passover, 
 Pentecost, Tabernacles, must still be our Liberal 
 Jewish festivals. Our solemn and holy days must 
 still be the Days of Memorial and Atonement. 
 
 And yet we must have freedom, by which I do 
 not merely mean freedom to declare a given institu- 
 tion or rite obsolete and to neglect its observance, 
 but freedom to be true to the highest dictates of our 
 conscience, freedom to accept the surest conclusions 
 of ingathered knowledge and research. Free eyes 
 and ears, free heart and mind these are fundamental 
 necessities. If any statement or law in the Hebrew 
 Bible does not seem to our considered judgment, and 
 to our sifting and weighing conscience, the highest 
 morality and religion, we must be free to say so. 
 Liberal Judaism must require no prevarications, 
 suppressions or palterings : it can do with no 
 reservations, harmonisings or hidings. There must 
 be no slippery explaining away, and no uncritical 
 " reading into " the actual words of the text. If the 
 Hebrew Bible be not capable of bearing the whitest 
 and strongest light, then, too, are the days of Liberal 
 Judaism numbered. Honesty and frankness : these 
 we need no less than reverence and respect. 
 
 Let me now deal somewhat more fully with the 
 difficulties that have been just enumerated. The 
 " inspiration " difficulty and the " critical " difficulty 
 may be taken together. 
 
 Liberal Jews of all shades and varieties unanim-
 
 6 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 ously reject the doctrine of verbal inspiration. A 
 doctrine of inspiration is substituted which, in the 
 first place, allows for a human element of error and 
 inadequacy, and in the second place, restricts the 
 divine element in extent as well as in degree. That 
 is to say, there are many utterances in the Bible, 
 even though they be spoken in the name of God, 
 which, on moral and religious grounds, we cannot 
 call inspired at all. There are others which seem to 
 deserve the name, and in which we mark the workings 
 of the Divine Spirit. Now doubtless this is crudely 
 and un philosophically expressed, and Liberal Judaism 
 earnestly needs its philosophers, who will put its 
 conclusions into philosophic form, and give them 
 a philosophic justification and expression. But for 
 us ordinary people what I have said, if, as I believe, 
 it enshrines a truth, will serve. The good and true 
 are of God, and the better and truer they are, the 
 more of God do they contain. Or shall we say, the 
 better and truer they are in relation to their age and 
 environment, the more of God do they contain ? 
 That is inspired and divine in the Bible which is 
 original and good and true ; that is purely human 
 which was never good and was never true. If the 
 prophet Malachi makes God say, u I hated Esau," 
 that is neither good nor true ; it is human, it is 
 uninspired. If he says, " Have we not all one 
 Father ? " that is good and true : that may be human, 
 but it is also inspired and divine. 
 
 With this divergent view of inspiration, Liberal 
 Judaism combines a divergence from orthodoxy as 
 regards the miraculous. The miracles recounted in 
 the Biblical narratives are not regarded as evidence 
 of their truth. This changed view has grave conse- 
 quences. Each narrative has to be treated on its
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 7 
 
 merits, and the results will vary in different cases. 
 In some cases the narrative in which the miraculous 
 incident occurs may be supposed to be historic in the 
 main, while the amount of historic fact the pro- 
 portion of fact to legend may be very different in 
 each particular instance. In other narratives, again, 
 there may be no historic substratum whatever, or 
 none which can now be elicited. The importance of a 
 miraculous story is also of a very varying quantity. 
 We are, for instance, tolerably unconcerned as to the 
 substratum of fact in the miracles attributed to the 
 prophet Elisha, whereas what Moses said and taught 
 and did when we have removed the miracles that 
 surround his career will always remain a fascinating 
 and also an important problem. Together with our 
 orthodox brethren we celebrate the festival of the 
 giving of the Law. But Orthodox Judaism is, I 
 think, more concerned about the literal truth of the 
 narratives in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of 
 Exodus. It tends to cling to the reality of the 
 lightnings and the thunders, and of the descent of 
 God upon the mount, and of the divine voice audibly 
 proclaiming the Ten Words, and of the tablets of 
 stone upon which the divine artificer engraved them. 
 That these marvels actually occurred Orthodox 
 Judaism must, I think, maintain ; whereas Liberal 
 Judaism can look at such strange tales in a modern 
 manner a truly grave and important difference 
 between us, which it is only fair and honest to take 
 into serious account. Yet when this inspiration and 
 miracle trouble has been fairly faced, it is doubtful 
 whether many people will find it very troublesome. 
 So far as the Hebrew Bible has true religious and 
 ethical value and greatness, so far will that greatness 
 and value be unaffected by any fresh view of inspira-
 
 8 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 tion or by any denial of miracle. No miracle and 
 no theory of inspiration can make a given utterance 
 better than its contents. They can neither add to 
 the excellence of that utterance nor diminish it. But, 
 on the other hand, the old theory of inspiration can 
 cause great trouble if it conflicts with our ethical 
 and religious judgment. Nor can a miraculous tale 
 bolster up a bad or an imperfect ethical utterance. 
 To those who believe that God is the Source of 
 Goodness, what is good is divine : the more good, 
 the more divine. But we can never any more be 
 induced to believe and we are surely glad of it 
 that any conception or utterance is good and true 
 and perfect because it is contained in a book which is 
 alleged, either by itself or by any dogma or theory, 
 to be inspired and divine. The authority of the 
 good and the true lie in themselves. They carry 
 with them their own credentials. The new view of 
 inspiration, the small account of miracles, may cause 
 trouble as regards liturgy, public worship and educa- 
 tion. They need cause no trouble as regards the 
 value and authority of all that the Bible contains 
 which is excellent and noble and true. Nor does the 
 Old Testament become " the same as any other book," 
 if we do not cling to miracles and verbal inspira- 
 tion. We cannot any longer maintain the greatness 
 of the Law because its enactments are placed in the 
 mouth of God. They have to justify themselves by 
 themselves, not by an alleged authorship in heaven. 
 Judged by its contents and by its effects, judged by 
 its originality, judged by its character as a whole, the 
 Old Testament will remain capable of maintaining 
 its greatness and its worth even without the miracles, 
 and without the verbal inspiration of all its parts and 
 all its sentences. And if it cannot maintain them
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 9 
 
 without these, then they are not worth maintaining, 
 and they will not be maintained. 
 
 Connected with this trouble about inspiration and 
 miracles is the trouble about criticism. Liberal 
 Judaism is bound to accept the assured conclusions 
 of historical and critical investigation. Whither the 
 argument of truth leads, thither Liberal Judaism 
 must follow. Not that I mean by this that Liberal 
 Judaism must cry " Amen " to every hypothesis of 
 the critics as one succeeds the other. But I mean 
 that it must be precisely as open-minded and as 
 independent on any question which falls within the 
 province of criticism and history as the Greek or 
 Roman student would be open-minded and in- 
 dependent as to questions concerning Homer or 
 Solon or Romulus. Orthodox Judaism, for instance, 
 as 1 understand it, stands or falls with the unity and 
 Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. And therefore 
 orthodox Judaism has, as it were, to declare the 
 subject settled before the study of it has begun. It 
 has to say : " Whatever your impious conclusions 
 may be, I assert that Moses, under God's guidance 
 and inspiration, wrote the Pentateuch, or, at any 
 rate, all the Pentateuchal laws, and to that assertion, 
 whatever arguments may be brought forward upon 
 the other side, I must and I shall adhere." Liberal 
 Judaism, on the contrary, must be free. It must 
 have no fear of truth ; it has to recognise, and it 
 does recognise, that any Biblical narrative or code 
 must be studied and criticised precisely in the same 
 way as the narratives and codes of any other book, 
 and must receive no exceptional treatment whether 
 favourable or hostile. As, then, the assured con- 
 clusions of honest research are that the Pentateuchal 
 code is not a unity, that extremely little, if any,
 
 io LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 of it goes back to Moses, and that much of it is 
 centuries later than the Mosaic age, Liberal Judaism 
 accepts the verdict and has to reckon with it. And 
 accepting the verdict, Liberal Judaism has sought 
 so to adjust itself that, in its relations with the past, 
 it may be practically independent of historical and 
 critical research. " Practically independent," I say : 
 it does not follow, and I do not mean to assert, that 
 the independence is absolute. But Liberal Judaism 
 can never shut its eyes and its ears : it has always 
 to be ready to hear and to listen, and it can never 
 say to research, " Thus far shalt thou come and no 
 farther: thus much can I allow and no more." Within 
 its own field, history by which I include criticism, 
 comparative religion and subsidiary disciplines must 
 be unfettered and supreme, and Liberal Judaism must 
 recognise its supremacy and bow to its decisions. For 
 we worship the One God, who, in His flawless Unity, 
 is Truth as well as Goodness, the Source of Know- 
 ledge as well as the Source of Love. 
 
 Here, again, the trouble turns out to be no trouble 
 to Liberal Judaism. Criticism has justified our posi- 
 tion and even partially created it. If, for instance, 
 the Law were what it asserts itself, and what orthodox 
 Judaism believes it, to be the sheer and undiluted 
 word of God dictated unto Moses we could not 
 stand towards it in an attitude of respectful, but 
 unfettered, freedom. We could not, as we now do, 
 pick and choose, accept and reject. We could not 
 be free in the arrangements of our public worship, 
 and in our liturgy, free in our judgments of the 
 good and the permanent, the imperfect and the 
 obsolete. Or rather, even as we saw in the inspira- 
 tion trouble, our free judgments and conscience 
 would be brought up sharp against a terrible con-
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 11 
 
 tradiction. For the perfectly good God would 
 apparently have said and ordered what is by no 
 means perfectly good. From all such contradictions, 
 troubles and difficulties, we, by accepting the con- 
 clusions of criticism (quite apart from philosophical 
 or metaphysical considerations) are saved and set 
 free. Whether any rational theory of the divine can 
 accept such a statement as, " And the Lord spake 
 unto Moses, saying," matters not. Or, rather, we 
 need not discuss it. But because we know that the 
 words which God is alleged to have spoken to Moses 
 proceed from a time far subsequent to Moses, the 
 superscription troubles us no more. 
 
 On the other hand, we need not be troubled 
 because the compilers of the laws added the super- 
 scriptions. We shall not regard the ordinance to 
 " love the stranger " as any the less good, and as 
 therefore any the less divine, because it is thus 
 superscribed. For the laws of the various codes 
 were put together by the compilers with the idea 
 that they were legitimately to be regarded as Mosaic. 
 Moses was the original fount of legislation, and all 
 the right laws of Israel might be considered as the 
 outflow of his spring. -To the compilers, most of 
 the laws were old in the sense that they found them 
 or elaborated them, but did not invent and devise 
 them. And such old laws were not only " Mosaic," 
 but the will of God, and therefore divine. It is 
 possible that a few of the latest laws, dealing with 
 the priestly dues and the sacrifices, may have been 
 drawn up by the compilers, and given a superscrip- 
 tion which their compilers knew that they did not 
 deserve. But of such laws I would observe, ( I ) that 
 they are precisely those laws which have, for us, no 
 moral or religious value or importance ; (2) that
 
 12 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 even these laws were the development of other and 
 older laws ; and (3) that we must not judge the 
 compilers by modern conceptions of this particular 
 matter. The compilers knew well enough that to 
 lie is an evil and a sin, but it is very doubtful whether, 
 even as regards the latest laws, they believed or realised 
 that they were guilty of ascribing to God and to 
 Moses what should not and could not be ascribed to 
 them. Hence the results of criticism only emancipate. 
 They need not cause us trouble. The antithesis : 
 Absolute truth (i.e. Mosaic and divine), or valueless 
 forgery, is a false antithesis, and belongs itself to an 
 uncritical and unhistorical age. 
 
 As a result of this fresh point of view, which 
 criticism has helped to provide for us, certain old 
 controversies and theories have now lost their 
 asperity and interest. They have gradually faded 
 away under the newest light. We shall not seek to 
 show that all moral and religious excellence is con- 
 tained within the pages of the Hebrew Bible. In 
 later Jewish literature outside the Bible there are 
 also contributions of value and of truth. Nor does 
 Liberal Judaism claim that God has suffered no 
 aspect of truth to shine through other than Jewish 
 windows. Whereas in olden days it seemed to aid 
 men's faith in God if they thought that the teachers 
 of other religions were either wicked or deluded, and 
 that all religious literature outside their own was 
 valueless or trivial, we now find it more consonant 
 with the graciousness and goodness of God if, from 
 many centres and at many times, the human spirit 
 has been enlightened by the divine. Truth is 
 complex and subtle and many-sided, and there is 
 nothing alarming, but, on the contrary, there is 
 much which is reassuring and comforting, if the
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 13 
 
 religious and moral truths of the Hebrew Bible can 
 here and there be supplemented or deepened or 
 emphasised by ingatherings from other races and 
 other literatures than our own. 
 
 On the other hand, although, or rather just 
 because, from our Liberal Jewish standpoint (which 
 believes in progressive revelation, and is unable to 
 hold that perfect and final truth can be enshrined 
 within a book) we cannot consider that the Old 
 Testament contains complete religious truth, we 
 hardly feel even the necessity of replying to the view 
 that the Old Testament is the mere preparation and 
 the New Testament the complete fulfilment. I shall 
 have to speak more in detail about the New Testa- 
 ment in my second chapter ; it suffices here to say 
 that the New Testament is also a book, and thus falls 
 under the rule of imperfection and incompleteness 
 which all books must display. The New Testament 
 was written by men, and records the sayings of men, 
 and must, therefore, partake, like the Old Testa- 
 ment, of human limitations and human inadequacies. 
 Revelation is progressive ; revelation the enlighten- 
 ment of man by God did not cease in any particular 
 year or at any particular date, and therefore the New 
 Testament cannot contain, any more than the Old 
 Testament can contain, the sum total of religious and 
 ethical truth, both in extent and in- degree. 
 
 The Liberal Jewish position is emancipating. It 
 puts us upon a height. We breathe a purer and 
 serener air. If there are troubles, there are also 
 compensations. The Hebrew Bible remains to us in 
 all its peculiar glory. We can take from it all it can 
 give to us : we have no need to seek for more. We 
 have no need to try to put into it, or to draw out 
 from it, more than it contains. Its teachings were
 
 14 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 added to and were developed, but it is not a mere 
 preparation, it is not a mere part of a finished whole, 
 it is not the dawn before the noontide. It is a whole 
 in itself, and has its own comparative completeness ; 
 and in it will, as we believe, be found, and out of 
 it will, as we believe, be drawn, the fundamental 
 religious doctrines of all the ages that are to come. 
 Over and above its central and loftiest teachings and 
 its fundamental and permanent doctrines there are 
 other doctrines and other teachings to be shed and 
 discarded, but it is very doubtful whether the pro- 
 portion of shed and discarded teachings and doctrines 
 will be higher than in that other book to which it is 
 so often supposed to be the mere introduction and 
 the stepping-stone. For from the New Testament, 
 too, as we believe, some central and loftiest teachings, 
 some fundamental and permanent doctrines, will help 
 to form " the religion of the future," but not less here 
 than in the Old Testament are there, or will there be, 
 other teachings and other doctrines to shed and to 
 discard. 
 
 This shedding and discarding process brings us 
 up to the ethical and religious troubles which were 
 enumerated in our list. And once more the trouble 
 can be regarded as an emancipation. Would it still 
 be said : " Is a sacred Scripture worth having, can a 
 Bible be a Bible, if it contain imperfections ? " Liberal 
 Judaism, which regards nothing as perfect save God 
 alone, is not agitated by such a question. So long as 
 the said Scripture contains much that is good and 
 great and true, we are not' perturbed that (being a 
 book and creation of man, even if of man inspired by 
 God) it should also contain much that is imperfect, 
 transitional, obsolete, and even several things that are 
 false or bad. The imperfect or false things would
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 15 
 
 justly worry us if we had to try to prove that they 
 were neither false nor imperfect. But, from our 
 Liberal point of view, we are in no wise obliged or 
 concerned to do this. Hence the trouble falls away. 
 We cherish the good and the true, we still feel them 
 in the Old Testament in such high degree and in 
 regard to such fundamental matters that, in spite of 
 the imperfect, the obsolete and the false, the Hebrew 
 Bible still retains for us its exclusive and peculiar 
 position. We still regard it as we can regard no 
 other book and no other Scripture. We are still, if 
 I may use the phrase, rooted to the Old Testament 
 in loyalty and love. In it we still find the kernel of 
 our Judaism, in it we find, as it were, the heads, or 
 almost all the heads some of them, too, superbly 
 worked out of all, or almost all, our Liberal Jewish 
 doctrines of to-day. Let us, then, now proceed to 
 ask what it is that we do find in the Old Testament, 
 what are those great heads of Jewish doctrine which, 
 as we think, this noble book contains. Why is it, 
 in other words, that in spite of our concessions to 
 criticism, in spite of our disbelief in the miraculous, 
 in spite of our new conception of inspiration, in spite 
 of our refusal to read into the text what is not there, 
 or to explain away from the text what is, we still 
 can give to the Hebrew Bible this special and peculiar 
 place ? 
 
 Well, first of all, and most of all, we get from the 
 Hebrew Bible our conception of God. I do not say 
 that every statement concerning the Divine Being 
 contained in the Hebrew Bible we subscribe to and 
 approve of and believe in to-day. There is a higher 
 and a lower teaching in the various books of the 
 Bible ; we appropriate the one, and we neglect or 
 reject the other. Nor would I say that, in the two
 
 1 6 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 thousand years that have passed since the last words 
 of the Hebrew Bible were written down, we have not 
 developed, enriched, purified and deepened, our con- 
 ception of the Divine. But, none the less, it is true 
 to say that the greater, more essential and more 
 fundamental portion of our faith in God is not only 
 derived from, but is practically identical with, the 
 highest conception of God which the Hebrew Bible 
 contains. We hold this conception, knowing full 
 well its difficulties and its problems. The God of 
 the Psalmists is essentially our God still. Nor is it 
 by any means only the mere assertion of the Divine 
 Unity in the double sense that there is only one 
 God and that this sole God is one which we derive 
 from the Bible. It is, to my thinking, far more. 
 Far more characteristic, or, at any rate, far more 
 essential, is the combination of the Unity with what 
 we may call very imperfectly the Personality. It 
 must, indeed, be admitted that the Biblical writers, 
 or almost all of them, have no idea of the difficulties. 
 They speak of the divine Personality without the 
 smallest scruple or hesitation. God is as much a 
 reality to them as their neighbour or themselves. 
 Metaphysical problems as to the relation of God 
 to the world puzzles about transcendence and 
 immanence are quite unknown to them. But that 
 is just where, or that is also where, their distinctive 
 value comes in. For, as it seems to me, Liberal 
 Judaism must stand or fall with the highest Old 
 Testament conception of God. I do not mean that, 
 as the years roll on, we may not be able to give a 
 fuller and deeper explanation of the divine immanence 
 and the divine transcendence ; I do not mean that 
 we cannot, or may not, construct a grander and truer 
 theory of the divine relation to Israel and to the
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 17 
 
 world at large. But we can hardly continue to call 
 ourselves Jews without a faith in a living God, loving 
 and righteous, ruling and caring, Father and King, 
 Master and Lord, the source of goodness, the object 
 of prayer, the helper, the redeemer, the gracious and 
 merciful, the all-present and eternal. This faith is 
 not an easy faith. It is not easy from the theoretic 
 point of view ; it is not easy from the practical point 
 of view. But this faith is what, to a very large 
 extent, constitutes the Jew. The more vividly it is 
 held, the more intensely it forms the key to a man's 
 inmost character and way of life, the more emphatic- 
 ally is that man a Jew. And be this faith true or 
 false, this much is clear, that it is a large faith, full of 
 implications, and that the difference between those 
 who hold it and those who reject it is enormous. 
 Between those who can say, " The Lord is my 
 shepherd : yea, though I walk through the valley of 
 the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art 
 with me " who can say it and believe it and live on 
 it and feed on it and those, who, sadly or proudly, 
 wistfully or indifferently, cannot say it and believe 
 it, an immense gulf yawns, which it would be idle 
 and foolish to ignore or to deny. Now this large, 
 tremendous, inspiring faith derives for us, and indeed, 
 in the last resort, derives for the whole Western 
 world, from the Old Testament. But for us it 
 derives from the Old Testament alone. And even 
 though it may have been a little supplemented and 
 purified and deepened elsewhere and later on, no 
 supplement, no purification, no deepening, can com- 
 pare with the main contribution, the main conception. 
 " The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is our light : 
 in His light we see light. The Lord, the Lord, 
 merciful and gracious God, long-suffering and abound- 
 
 c
 
 1 8 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 ing in lovingkindness and in truth." What is added 
 to this, however noble, what is grafted upon this, 
 however sublime, seems to me mere trimmings. 
 The essential doctrine, so daring, so triumphant, so 
 gigantic, at once so inspiring and so hard, so trans- 
 figuring and so difficult, is already there. Thought 
 and life are one thing with this God, another thing 
 without this God. And this God comes to us 
 from the Hebrew Bible. What are dates and 
 authorships and miracles and outward events com- 
 pared to this conception ? If the Old Testament 
 has given us our God, and if we still believe in 
 God, what need we say more in its exaltation and its 
 praise ? 
 
 Yet we must draw out the implications. The 
 God whom the Old Testament has given us is a 
 God with whom men can enter into relations. He 
 is both the God of the nation and the God of the 
 individual. To the mysticism of the Psalter some- 
 thing can be added and was added, but the kernel 
 of the matter is already there. " Whom have I in 
 heaven but thee ? and there is none upon earth that 
 I desire beside thee." The personal individual aspect 
 of religion, the communion of the creature with the 
 Creator, of the child with the Father, of the soul 
 with the Lover and Author of souls all this goes 
 back in fundamentals to the Hebrew Bible and is 
 found in more than outline one may truly say is 
 found in essentials within the best of its pages. If 
 we had the Psalter and nothing else in religious 
 literature for our guide and prompter, we should 
 miss a great deal, but nevertheless a fine and helpful 
 religious life could be lived upon the basis of the 
 Psalter alone. The sense of sin ; the desire for its 
 overthrow ; the craving for forgiveness ; the joy in
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 19 
 
 communion ; all these aspects of religion, and many 
 more, are to be found therein. 
 
 But with the individualistic side of religion the 
 Hebrew Bible gives us also the social side. The 
 idea of religion vitalising and inspiring a community, 
 of a holy nation and a dedicated people, is also 
 revealed by it. In addition to the Psalter we have 
 the Prophets. It is unnecessary even to summarise 
 their teachings. But to them is due the doctrine 
 that the true service of God is mainly the service of 
 man, that public religion is manifested less in outward 
 worship and ceremonial institutions than in social 
 righteousness, justice and compassion. The prophetic 
 doctrine announces the true inwardness and the true 
 outwardness of religion. But when to-day men 
 rightly seek to unite religion to social service, and 
 find in religion the sanction of democratic effort, 
 what is this but an application to modern conditions 
 of the burden of the prophetic teaching ? 
 
 It obviously in no wise falls within the scope 
 and purpose of this essay to give any full and 
 systematic account of the religious ideas and concep- 
 tions contained in the Old Testament. The lower 
 and obsolete ideas do not concern us, though a 
 word must be said later on as to why the trouble 
 concerning them is really no trouble after all. But 
 even the high and permanent ideas cannot be set 
 forth in detail or in logical sequence. All that I 
 am anxious now to point out is how much of, and 
 how largely, the highest Old Testament religion is 
 our religion to-day, and how largely our religion 
 to-day coincides with the highest religious ideas and 
 conceptions of the Old Testament. 
 
 One may rightly press the word religion. It is 
 that which we draw from the Old Testament. Not
 
 20 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 theology : not the philosophy of religion. For 
 these we must go elsewhere. But the simple, ethical 
 monotheism of social and practical life : the simple, 
 yet profound and intimate (and even adequately 
 mystical), monotheism of our private and secret life 
 of prayer and communion. Religion for our work ; 
 religion for our duty ; religion for relations with 
 our society and our community ; religion for days 
 of joy and for days of sorrow ; religion for needed 
 sacrifice ; religion for solitude and for being " alone 
 with the Alone." 
 
 The Old Testament even, if we weld its highest 
 conceptions together, and attempt to make of them 
 a consistent and rounded whole, would nevertheless 
 present a religion with many difficulties, some in- 
 adequacies and ragged edges. The difficulties we 
 must solve, or leave unsolved, as best we can ; the 
 inadequacies we must supply, the ragged edges we 
 must smooth, from other sources. But, even so, it 
 is striking how many fundamental religious concep- 
 tions fundamental, I mean, for Liberal Judaism 
 to-day we gain and draw from the Hebrew Bible. 
 There is, for instance, first and foremost the union 
 of religion and morality. People speak, and rightly, 
 of the ethical monotheism of the Prophets. It is 
 that ethical monotheism, with all its difficulties, 
 which is our monotheism to-day. We cannot learn 
 from the Old Testament what is the origin or 
 explanation of evil. We cannot learn how to 
 combine God's goodness with His omnipotence. The 
 great puzzles are unexplained. But whether in 
 wise or foolish faith, whether as children or as 
 philosophers, whether as saints who know through 
 their saintliness, or (for the huge majority of us) as 
 very ordinary, average and erring people, who strive
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 21 
 
 to believe in the supremacy of righteousness, we all 
 can draw from the Old Testament our hold upon 
 the divine goodness. That God is good ; that 
 goodness, righteousness and love are more inexplicable 
 without Him than with Him, that He is the source 
 of goodness and its cause these doctrines constitute 
 the kernel of our monotheism to-day, as they con- 
 stituted the kernel of the monotheism of the author 
 of the fifty-first Psalm or the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. 
 Then, again, that we stand in a certain relation to 
 God ; that He is our Father and King, our Master 
 and Saviour ; this, too, we find in " Old Testa- 
 ment religion" and this, too, constitutes a large 
 portion of our own. We are His servants and 
 children : ordered to obey, but also glad to obey. 
 In obedience is our wisdom and our happiness. And 
 obedience means just that we must try to be " good," 
 to execute justice, to love compassion, to walk 
 humbly ; to aim at holiness, to " imitate " the 
 Inimitable, and to love Him. We all admit that 
 such a religion has many difficulties ; we are Liberal 
 Jews, if we say that, in spite of the difficulties, this 
 religion satisfies our reason, our wills and our hearts 
 more than its denial, and more than other religions 
 of which we happen to know. 
 
 The outlook of the Old Testament is limited to 
 earth. The doctrine of a life after death, a life 
 not less, but more, worth having than the life on 
 earth, separates both the Rabbinic religion and our 
 own from even the highest " religion of the Old 
 Testament." (The few clear allusions to the 
 resurrection in the Old Testament, such as Isaiah xxvi. 
 19 and Daniel xii. 2, can, for my present purpose, 
 be neglected.) But the remarkable point is that 
 though this doctrine makes a great difference, it
 
 22 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 does not invalidate, it only deepens and spiritualises, 
 the Old Testament conception of the earthly life. 
 This is a very important matter. The doctrine of 
 the future life does not destroy the value of the 
 earthly life. It does not make it mere preparation. 
 It does not concentrate attention upon earth's sorrow 
 and evils, and regard them as the only fitting 
 occurrences for earthly existence. It does not urge 
 or induce men to think it less important how they 
 fashion and shape their earthly societies. It does 
 not make justice upon earth less desirable because of 
 the higher justice which is expected in heaven or in 
 the New Jerusalem. It does not suggest that social 
 well-being and happiness and fraternity are either 
 unobtainable or undesirable, or even that it is not 
 our bounden duty to seek for and further them, 
 because a fuller and deeper happiness may await men 
 beyond the grave. The Kingdom of God is still 
 to be realised upon earth, although it is also, or is 
 also to be, realised in heaven. Nay more, the 
 Kingdom of God is progressively realised upon earth, 
 in every piece of righteousness, of love and of 
 unselfish happiness, which we may reciprocally give 
 to, and get from, one another. If" heaven " is God's 
 world, earth is, or should be made, God's world too ; 
 if it is worth while to die for what is to come after 
 death, it is also meant to be worth while to live for 
 what we can and ought to do before we die. 
 
 We have deepened the Old Testament view of 
 life, but we have not thrown it over. And in this 
 respect Judaism has been consistent throughout the 
 ages. In spite of side tracks of pessimism and 
 dualism, Judaism has never despaired of earthly 
 life, or disregarded and depressed its value and its 
 happiness. It has always considered it more than
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 23 
 
 a mere stepping-stone to heaven, more than a mere 
 preparation for the life to come. It has never held 
 that earth's sole importance consisted in its being the 
 test whether you are to spend eternity " above " or 
 " below," in misery or in joy. 
 
 That is why, in one very significant respect, the 
 Old Testament, and Judaism generally, are so 
 strangely or thoroughly modern. For some such 
 estimation of earthly life is what we all (I suppose) 
 feel about it to-day. And if we contrast this 
 estimation with the general tone and line of the 
 New Testament scriptures, we cannot fail to be 
 struck by the difference. Here the Old Testament 
 seems to be much more modern and vital than the 
 New. Still more are we conscious of this contrast 
 if we compare it with the mediaeval view of the 
 world, the view of it, be it remembered, of an age 
 when its thought was entirely dominated and con- 
 trolled by Christianity and nothing else. Take such 
 a summing up of the mediaeval view of the world 
 as is given us by that excellent American scholar, 
 Professor McGiffert, in his useful little book, Pro- 
 testant Thought before Kant : 
 
 With the traditional view of human nature was correlated 
 the notion of the present world as evil, sharing in the curse 
 of man and doomed to destruction as he is. To escape 
 from it was the one great aim of the serious-minded man. 
 Salvation meant not the salvation of the world itself, its 
 transformation into something better and holier, but release 
 from it in order to enjoy the blessedness of another world 
 altogether. The dominant spirit was that of other-worldli- 
 ness. To be a Christian meant to belong to another sphere 
 than this, to have one's interest set on higher things, to 
 live in the future, and to eschew the pleasures and enjoy- 
 ments of the present. Asceticism was the Christian ideal 
 of life. Man stands, as Thomas Aquinas says, between the
 
 24 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 goods of this world and those of another. He who would 
 possess the latter must eschew the former. He cannot have 
 both, and he must take his choice. The more he crucifies 
 his worldly desires and affections, and denies himself good 
 things here, the more he may enjoy of future bliss. Chris- 
 tianity promised men blessings in a life beyond the grave 
 at the expense of blessings here. It might, of course, bring 
 happiness in this life, as the Christian contemplated the 
 thought of the eternal felicity to come, but of earthly 
 delight it had none to offer. Rather it demanded the 
 sacrifice of such delight in order to the inheritance of joys 
 belonging to another world. Belief in a future life was 
 fundamental, and immortality an essential article of faith. 
 Given doubt as to its reality, and the whole structure of 
 Christian faith must fall to the ground. The sole signifi- 
 cance of the present life lay in the fact that it was a probation 
 for the life to come. It had worth only because of the 
 everlasting issues which were determined by it. The few 
 short years here are as nothing compared with the eternity 
 beyond, and the wise man will think of that eternity, and 
 live for it alone. So far as he may have interest in his 
 fellow-men, and the spirit of love may prompt him to 
 concern himself with their welfare, it will not be their 
 present state which he will chiefly labour to improve. For 
 them, as for himself, earthly conditions are of small account; 
 the one important thing is the salvation of their immortal 
 souls. It was not a mere accident, nor was it due to the 
 immaturity of civilisation and the lack of sensibility to 
 physical comfort, that social service on a large scale was 
 postponed to modern times. Rather, it was because of an 
 altogether different ideal, and an altogether different estimate 
 of the present world. 1 
 
 Now such a view of earthly life is not only 
 unlike the Old Testament view of it. It is also 
 unlike the Rabbinic view of it, just as it is unlike 
 the modern and the Liberal-Jewish view of it. And 
 yet Rabbinic and Liberal Judaism both accept the 
 
 1 Protestant Thought before Kant, pp. 4-5.
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 25 
 
 dogma of the future life. I think, perhaps, this is 
 one great reason why, " Christological " conceptions 
 apart, the Old Testament religion is nearer to us 
 than New Testament religion. We think so much 
 more nobly (as Plato would say) of earth ; we care 
 so much more for its future ; we are so much keener 
 on social justice and social fraternity and on their 
 possible earthly results ; we are so much more 
 anxious for earthly happiness ; we value it when 
 morally and spiritually transfigured so much more 
 highly than the heroes of the New Testament. 
 And that is why, or at least that is where, our 
 religion derives more from Amos and the Law than 
 it derives from Jesus and from Paul. 
 
 Art and beauty are absent. But we find the 
 praise of wisdom, even though it be a one-sided 
 wisdom. So of the three great human ends, the 
 Old Testament recognises two, and with them, or 
 combining with them, it emphasises also the religious 
 life with God. 
 
 If our modern view of earthly life and of the 
 world in which men live before they die seems to 
 connect itself with, and to be helped by, the best 
 Old Testament teachings, the same may also be 
 said of our general working conception of man 
 and human nature. We find no adequate and 
 profound psychology : we get no explanation, no 
 theory even, of " free will." For all such things we 
 must go elsewhere. But in comparison, for example, 
 with the conception of human nature in Paul or the 
 Fourth Gospel, the conception of the Old Testament 
 is much less supernatural and dualistic. It does not, 
 therefore, follow that it is truer ! But it is, at least, 
 more sympathetic to the average man in the modern 
 street. Men are not sharply divided into two
 
 26 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 classes ; those who are destined to be saved, and 
 those who are not destined to be saved. The 
 differences between good and evil are simpler, more 
 graded, more natural. Men have not to be super- 
 naturally born again in order to be " saved " or even 
 to be " good." The transitions are less startling. 
 The fleshly man is not sharply opposed to the 
 spiritual man, the one essentially corrupt, the other 
 essentially holy. Faith is not violently opposed to 
 works. Man is frail and liable to sin, " there is 
 no man that sinneth not," but the situation is not 
 hopeless ; there is no original sin ; man has not 
 abruptly fallen, and is not, without the aid of a 
 supernatural drama and sacramental processes, doomed 
 to eternal punishment or unhappiness. On the con- 
 trary. The Old Testament makes practically no 
 religious, and still less any theological, use of its own 
 legend of Adam and Eve. It teaches that man can 
 become good within his own limits. It looks forward 
 to men becoming still better in the Golden Age of 
 the future. God helps man to become " good," but 
 his own efforts and his own will are important factors 
 in the process. The Old Testament has no theory 
 of freedom : it merely assumes that we are respons- 
 ible for our actions, and that we merit praise and 
 blame both from our fellowmen and from God. 
 Again, the Old Testament has no theory of sin : it 
 looks upon sin as disobedience or rebellion against 
 God, but at the same time the content of sin is 
 (apart from idolatry), for the Prophets and the 
 highest teachers, ethical, a breaking of the moral law. 
 Sin and moral wrong-doing are thus bound together. 
 For God is good, and asks for " goodness " from 
 men. Hence moral obliquity is religious disobedi- 
 ence. Forgiveness is more antique : it is primarily
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 27 
 
 the remission of punishment ; but it is, at any rate, 
 also the getting again into a happy attitude with God. 
 And, above all, it is won by a combination of divine 
 grace and of human repentance and amendment. 
 When the Ninevites turned from their evil ways, 
 they were forgiven. Man can repent : he can abandon 
 his sin. The Old Testament grazes the gloomy 
 problem of a sinfulness which cannot be shaken 
 off, but its general attitude is hopeful, encouraging, 
 befitting its God who is merciful and gracious and 
 near to all who seek Him in sincerity and trust. 
 
 I do not think that all this means a shallow and 
 ordinary religion, for how can a religion be shallow 
 which is centred in a perfect God ? The very 
 conception seems to negate shallowness : is it a 
 shallow religion which can exclaim, " Whom have I 
 in heaven but thee ? There is none upon earth that 
 I desire beside thee " ? Is it a shallow religion that 
 can proclaim the injunction, " Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God with all thy strength," " Be ye holy 
 for the Lord your God is holy " ? But, however this 
 may be, this Old Testament religion (for it is not 
 unfair to call it so, though it be but a selection of 
 Old Testament religious ideas) constitutes a large 
 part of the religion of Judaism and of Liberal 
 Judaism to-day. And it seems to accord well with 
 modern conceptions of life and of man. 
 
 I fully admit that for the deepest problem of life, 
 for the problem of suffering and of evil, the Old 
 Testament is inadequate. I admit that its cardinal 
 conception of suffering and evil as the product of 
 human sin only serves our turn very imperfectly. 
 We notoriously limit the doctrine, and make excep- 
 tions to it, in a number of different ways. But even 
 here the Old Testament is not without rays of a
 
 28 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 purer and more helpful light. Job is after all an 
 Old Testament book, and the fifty-third chapter of 
 Isaiah is a portion of Old Testament prophecy. And 
 from them we learn that suffering is not always a 
 punishment of sin ; we learn high endurance ; we 
 learn of the discipline and education of sorrow and 
 pain ; we learn that suffering may be chosen voluntarily 
 for the sake of others and in the fulfilment of a divine 
 charge. Nor have we advanced much beyond these 
 teachings even to-day. 
 
 Is it possible that, just because one cannot go to 
 the Old Testament for any theories about the many 
 problems of theology, the book is therefore still 
 so fresh and permanently attractive ? If it had 
 theories, still more if it had one big predominating 
 theory, it would be one-sided. Or, at any rate, if 
 we now rejected the theory, the whole book would 
 become antique. But just because we can so well 
 pick and choose in the Old Testament, because, 
 in a sense, of its many inconsistencies, can we find 
 strength and value in it still. There is, indeed, no 
 theory of faith, but there is living trust in God. 
 There is no theory of grace or even of works, but 
 there is the strong and simple conviction that we are 
 responsible for our deeds, that we can become "good" 
 or " bad," and that God helps us to do His will. 
 There is no theory of human nature as either good 
 or corrupt, only occasional utterances this way and 
 that, but there is a predominating conviction that 
 while man is frail and liable to sin, God is merciful 
 and forgiving. The complexity and variety of 
 human nature and human life seem to find their 
 echo in the balance of Old Testament teaching, in 
 its general sanity and many-sidedness. The various 
 truths and experiences, which form the ingredients
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 29 
 
 and the justification of many diverse and discordant 
 theories, seem to be often represented in the Old 
 Testament. Here are the living constituents, un- 
 exaggerated and uncombined. Yet though there be 
 sanity and balance, there is no want of eagerness, of 
 passion, of enthusiasm. If we depend largely upon 
 the best and highest things in the Old Testament for 
 our religion, we need not, therefore, have a flabby, 
 feeble, disjointed religion, a religion of disconnected 
 odds and ends. No : the best and highest things 
 can be welded into a consistent whole, and in these 
 best and highest things there is passion, there is 
 enthusiasm, as there is also spirituality, religion. 
 We do not erect the moral respectability of the man 
 in the street into a creed. Nor is our vision limited 
 by the apparently somewhat pedestrian morality of 
 the book of Proverbs. We want that pedestrian and 
 homely morality too. But we want still more the 
 passion and enthusiasm of the Prophets and the 
 Psalmists. " Let justice roll down as water " " As 
 the heart pants after the water brooks, so pants my 
 soul after thee, O God." " How precious is thy 
 lovingkindness, O God ; the children of men take 
 refuge under the shadow of thy wings." " My 
 soul follows hard after thee ; thy right hand 
 upholds me." " Nation shall not lift up sword 
 against nation : neither shall they learn war any 
 more." Here are enthusiasm and passion, and here, 
 encircling and giving direction to these, are ideals. 
 Neither are obsolete. The passion is eternal : the 
 ideals are still unrealised. Thus the highest of the 
 Old Testament is surely of yesterday, to-day and 
 for ever. 
 
 Thus it is that the religious trouble as regards 
 the Old Testament constitutes for Liberal Judaism
 
 30 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 (so far as adults are concerned) scarce any trouble 
 at all. We are well aware that there is much in the 
 total of the book which is religiously imperfect, 
 obsolete and even false. There is much which is 
 primitive, even superstitious ; much, too, which, 
 though not primitive, is, nevertheless, to be rejected. 
 We do not, and we need not, greatly mind. We 
 know all about Yahweh, the tribal God, about 
 his partiality, his fierceness, his hatreds. We are 
 not forgetful of the exaggerated doctrine of retribu- 
 tion, of the sacrificial system, of the ordeals, and of 
 many another relic of ideas that have passed away. 
 But these things do not bother us. For our religious 
 purpose we ignore them. The Psalmist says, " The 
 Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His 
 works": and we press and emphasise the universality, 
 whether the Psalmist fully meant it or not. We use, 
 that is to say, the best of the Old Testament, and if, 
 even about any portion of the best, there clings any 
 ragged edge, we smooth it down. For the tendency 
 is towards the heights, the completion. u God is 
 One, and God is good," says the Old Testament. If 
 in certain cases we can see more clearly than any Old 
 Testament writer what that divine goodness must 
 imply, be it so. We do not mind. But the doctrine 
 that God is One and that God is good this funda- 
 mental doctrine we learn from, and find in, the Old 
 Testament. To it we turn to have our faith in 
 the divine goodness strengthened and replenished. 
 Mutatis mutandis we act in the same way as regards 
 other points. The special point of Israel and the 
 chosen people will come up for consideration later on. 
 Here, moreover, is one curious fact concerning 
 Liberal Judaism and the Old Testament, that is of 
 peculiar consequence. It is this. The doctrines and
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 31 
 
 ideas, the institutions and ceremonials, which do not 
 harmonise with the best and the purest, and which 
 we, therefore, must reject, are very easily shaken 
 off. They are curiously detachable. In this respect 
 Liberal Judaism is able to become, and does become, 
 a very modern religion. The Old Testament has a 
 priesthood ; we have got rid of the priest. The Old 
 Testament has a sacrificial system ; we have none. 
 The Old Testament may, I suppose, be said to have 
 sacraments, if a sacrament means a sacred action, 
 in which by material means a supernatural grace is 
 afforded to the faithful ; we have none. Certainly 
 there is more of the primitive in Orthodox Christianity 
 than in Liberal in some respects even than in 
 Orthodox Judaism. It may be questioned whether, 
 if we except Unitarianism, Liberal Judaism cannot 
 emancipate itself from the primitive more easily than 
 Liberal Christianity. 1 However this may be, it is 
 enough for us if our own emancipation is adequate 
 and thorough. 
 
 And if we look to the fundamentals of morality, 
 even as we to-day maintain them, are these too not 
 contained in the best commands and utterances of 
 the Old Testament ? Justice, on the one hand, com- 
 passion, on the other. Righteousness, too, and love. 
 The ethics of the Old Testament may be capable of 
 deepening and of amplification, yet if we collect 
 together the best of what we find in it, it takes us 
 a long way, and it needs a great deal of beating. 
 
 It is desirable to press this point somewhat fully, 
 for the ethical side of the Old Testament has in 
 recent times been a good deal depreciated or attacked. 
 The depreciation seems to be generally carried out 
 
 1 This remark was suggested to me by an article by Professor Hans Windisch 
 in the Theologhch Tijdschrift (1917, Aflevering III. en IV.).
 
 32 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 in two main ways. First, emphasis is laid upon its 
 most primitive, or, at any rate, upon its least ethical, 
 elements, and these are then regarded as characteristic 
 of the whole. Secondly, the best things in it are 
 either given a cheapening interpretation, or they are 
 simply ignored. 
 
 The Old Testament is made to stand for certain 
 unsatisfactory, inadequate or unethical sentiments 
 and ideas, examples of which can undoubtedly be 
 found in it, but which are contradicted by, or are in 
 antagonism to, other sentiments and other ideas that 
 are no less within it than the first. Both the New 
 Testament and the Old Testament are regarded as 
 homogeneous, but whereas the former is spoken of 
 as if its religion and its morality were all on the level 
 of its best things, the homogeneity of the latter is 
 degraded to the level of its worst. 
 
 The Old Testament does contain the law of the 
 " talio " an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ; it 
 does contain imprecations upon the enemies of Israel, 
 or of the pious in Israel ; it does declare that God 
 visits the sins of the fathers upon the children ; it 
 does say that He " hated " Esau ; it does describe the 
 awful punishments which He inflicts, or will inflict, 
 upon His foes. And, doubtless, this catalogue of 
 religious and moral inadequacies and anachronisms 
 could easily be enlarged. 
 
 But these things are not the only teachings of the 
 Old Testament, any more than the dull, obscure or 
 indecent passages in Shakespeare are the only things 
 to be found in all his works. 
 
 But how far are they the characteristic things ? 
 How far are they the things which predominate ?. 
 How far have they been the influential things ? 
 
 There is a certain tendency to put down the
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 33 
 
 religious and ethical faults and sins of Europe, 
 whether in the present or the past, to the account of 
 the Old Testament ; its religious and ethical virtues 
 to the account of the New. Such a tendency is 
 clearly unhistorical. It would, however, be beyond 
 my knowledge and powers to attempt a more just 
 and accurate apportionment (if indeed the division 
 be practicable). And, again, it may sometimes 
 happen that in the same persons good and bad are 
 closely commingled, and that for both one of the 
 two Testaments is predominatingly responsible. The 
 " fierceness " of the Puritans may not be the only 
 quality which they owe to the Old Testament, just 
 as the awful cruelties of the Inquisition may not be 
 the only quality which they owe to the New. 
 
 It is unfortunate, doubtless, when the lower 
 elements of a religious document are used instead 
 of the higher. It is unfortunate if " what does the 
 Lord require of thee, but to do justice and to love 
 mercy," is forgotten, and if " thou shalt not suffer 
 a sorcerer to live," is remembered. It is no less 
 unfortunate if the grim dualism of the Fourth 
 Gospel, or " I come to bring a sword," or the " ever- 
 lasting fire," or "the devil" and "the goats," be 
 remembered, and the great and noble things in the 
 Gospels are forgotten. It is true that, in a certain 
 sense, each book must accept its responsibility. 
 Huge masses of evil and misery are directly traceable 
 to the New Testament as well as huge masses of 
 happiness and good. In a certain sense the book is 
 equally responsible for both. So, too, with the good 
 and evil results of the Hebrew Scriptures. But when 
 we judge the books objectively, and assess them at 
 their true value, we must, to a large extent, forget, 
 or temporarily withdraw from our purview, the 
 
 D
 
 34 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 results of the books, and appraise them for what 
 they truly are. 
 
 But the question how far are the lower and 
 primitive things in the Old Testament the character- 
 istic and predominant things still remains over. 
 Suppose there was, in very truth, a little very good 
 and pure and permanent material in the Old Testa- 
 ment, but suppose that all this was a small and 
 vanishing quantity in comparison with its cruelties, 
 its imprecations, its " eye for an eye," its particularism 
 and its narrowness; should we not be justified in 
 regarding these inferior qualities as predominating, 
 and styling them the characteristic features of the 
 entire book ? 
 
 This question suggests answers which will, I 
 think, tend to elucidate the subject more fully. 
 
 Something depends on whether the excellences 
 whatever their bulk as written seem occasional and 
 adventitious, the flash of an isolated genius, not 
 followed up and imitated, without influence upon the 
 main stock or line of development, or whether they 
 are of the very essence of the whole, its life and its 
 spirit, informing the entire history and nature, and 
 giving to them their type and peculiarity. In the 
 second case, we may justly regard them as the essential 
 characteristics of the whole. Now' the excellences of 
 the Old Testament are undoubtedly of this second 
 kind. They are not casual, disconnected, occasional. 
 They are organically connected with the entire 
 development, bone of its bone, spirit of its spirit. 
 The ethical Monotheism of the Prophets is repro- 
 duced in the Law and the Psalter and the Wisdom 
 Literature. The virtues of justice and compassion 
 are the keynotes of the growing morality. The 
 cruelties and the imprecations are, as it were, the
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 35 
 
 hard opposing matter which the true spirit of the 
 religion has not yet been able fully to overcome and 
 to destroy. 
 
 That is one main reason why bulk does not 
 determine the matter. Count up all the " good " 
 sentences in the Old Testament, and suppose they 
 come to x. Count up all the " bad " sentences, and 
 suppose they come to x plus y. The matter is not 
 thus so easily and arithmetically settled. The bad 
 are not thereby proved to be the characteristic 
 features of the whole. For the essence of the whole 
 story and of the literature, the true nature and final 
 worth of the religion, lie in the excellences and not 
 in the defects. So we might say that the true 
 Wordsworth the Wordsworth that counts, the poet 
 Wordsworth is contained in much less than half 
 the words which he wrote. It is the " good " which 
 is characteristic of him, not the poor and the feeble 
 and the bad. 
 
 But these more general reflections do not exhaust 
 the subject. There are certain further special features 
 both of Old Testament excellences and of Old 
 Testament defects which should be carefully re- 
 membered. The defects or evils are partly primitive ; 
 the good had to work, or did work, upon a hard 
 and intractable materjal. It is this hard and intract- 
 able material the stiff-necked people which makes 
 the result all the more striking and strange. It seems 
 to make the presence and working of the Divine 
 Spirit all the more conclusive and irresistible. The 
 native Hebrew or Jewish nature does not appear to 
 be very attractive or delightful soil for the inspiration 
 of God. (Even to-day the Jew divorced from 
 religion is frequently a not over-attractive creature.) 
 A considerable part of the " bad " of the Old Testa-
 
 36 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 mcnt ; a good deal of that which we now justly 
 regard as obsolete or imperfect, or superseded, or 
 disagreeable, or false, or even immoral, we may 
 regard as " primitive." It is the stubborn subsoil, 
 which has not yet been transformed and overcome. 
 
 But not all the defects are primitive. Some of 
 the defects appear quite as strongly, or sometimes 
 more strongly, and with fresh developments and 
 guises, in later than in earlier documents. Now as 
 regards many of these defects we may justly say that 
 they are the defects of qualities. This is a very 
 important matter and should never be forgotten. 
 Take, for instance, the awful cruelties ordered in 
 Deuteronomy to be applied to the Canaanites. Or 
 take the horrible slaughters which are threatened by 
 Ezekiel against the idolaters at the " Messianic " age 
 and the final judgment. These things are the defects 
 of a consuming passion for righteousness, for the 
 service of the One God, for purity, for holiness. 
 Or, again, take the c< evil " examples of the doctrine 
 of retribution and tit-for-tat. These things are the 
 exaggerated and perverted results of a desire for 
 justice. A finer justice would undoubtedly condemn 
 them. But they are not merely and sheerly evil. 
 They are rather imperfect and mistaken expressions 
 of good : the aim is good, but the means are bad. 
 The bad means are not justified because of the good 
 end, but they are partially explained. They need 
 not worry us too greatly. We can ignore them, or 
 pass them by. 
 
 Next we may, I think, observe that the imperfec- 
 tions and evils of the Old Testament, though many 
 in number, if we count the written verses, are not 
 really so many, if we count the kinds. Fierceness, 
 false conceptions or applications of justice, par-
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 37 
 
 ticularism these are the three main kinds, and in 
 each case the essential " good " doctrines of the Old 
 Testament its true creations and its veritable line 
 of development contradict, and are in antagonism 
 to (as we can now easily see, though our ancestors 
 could not), the imperfections and the evils. " The 
 Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious God" a 
 fundamental and essential doctrine, if ever there is 
 one at all contradicts the fierceness and the cruelty. 
 So do the love and the pity, so do the justice 
 and the compassion, which we are so constantly 
 bidden to show to " neighbour " and to " stranger " 
 (who these are, and what are their limitations, I 
 will deal with later on). The righteousness and 
 mercy which we are to practise and to love are 
 in opposition to the " tit- for- tat " retribution and 
 requital that were then thought to be their expression 
 and embodiment. The doctrine of the One God, 
 creator and lord of the spirits of all flesh, good to all, 
 whose mercy is over all His works, is in flagrant con- 
 tradiction to the "narrowness" and "particularism." 
 We must interpret the election of Israel, not in terms 
 of favouritism and partiality, but according to the 
 highest doctrine of the Servant passages in the 
 " second " Isaiah. Here too the Old Testament 
 supplies the corrective to its own imperfections. 
 The doctrine of the chosen people is sound enough. 
 But it has to be interpreted to mean, not favouritism 
 and presents, but pain, discipline and service. Thus 
 the excellences are once more shown to be the 
 essential, the positive, the permanent, things in the 
 Old Testament. They are the things which really 
 count, which make the book what it is, which 
 give to it its value and its meaning, which stamp 
 it with a peculiar and precious character, which
 
 38 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 seem to reveal in it the finger and the spirit of 
 God. 
 
 I have made free admissions about the defects and 
 imperfections. Though they are limited in kinds, 
 I have allowed that there are many examples of each 
 kind. But an impartial verdict will, I believe, also 
 have to allow and admit that the excellences are 
 neither few in kinds nor in examples. On the purely 
 ethical side do we always adequately remember what 
 and how many these excellences are ? If the best 
 moral teachings, the best moral injunctions, and the 
 best moral ideals, of the Old Testament were carried 
 out and fully realised, what a paradise this earth 
 would be ! And in conjunction with the subject- 
 matter of the excellences, we may fairly take the 
 point that our own civilisation seems to rest upon, 
 and to demand, just these Old Testament ideals. 
 The moral principles which we hold highest are the 
 very principles which underlie, or are exemplified by, 
 the best Old Testament injunctions, maxims and 
 aspirations. In some respects there has been a certain 
 reversion to Old Testament ideals in quite modern 
 times. True that in one important point the Old 
 Testament needs supplementing by the doctrine which 
 grew up between the Old Testament and the New 
 the doctrine which is as important to the Rabbis as it 
 is to the authors of the Epistles and the Gospels I 
 mean the doctrine of the resurrection and the future 
 life. But all the more keen, therefore, is the Old 
 Testament on a good and holy earth, an earthly 
 society of justice and compassion and love. And is 
 not the best temper of our own time determined 
 that, whatever may be in store for men after their 
 deaths, we will seek to make this earth a better 
 dwelling-place for them during their lives ? The
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 39 
 
 Kingdom of God is to be realised upon earth as well 
 as in heaven. It is worth while, it is right, it is 
 desirable, to renovate and transform earth, as well as 
 to expect and look forward to heaven. But this 
 renovation or transforming of earth is an Old 
 Testament ideal. 
 
 And how is it to be achieved ? Should not we 
 too say by the two or three Old Testament virtues 
 of justice, compassion and lovingkindness ? And 
 are not these virtues the moving forces of the best 
 Old Testament morality ? 
 
 Think how they possessed the prophets. How 
 they informed the prophetic religion. Justice, mercy, 
 lovingkindness : these are the prophetic ideals. Social 
 justice and social lovingkindness : the prophets set in 
 motion a passion for these excellences, which found 
 expression in the Law, the Psalter and the Wisdom 
 Literature, and, later on, in the Rabbinic teachings 
 as well. The best spirits in Israel showed, I think, 
 a genius for social morality, they set going a passion 
 for righteousness, which was so finely expressed by 
 Amos when he said, " Let justice roll down as waters 
 and righteousness as a perpetual stream." 
 
 Justice and compassion meet and mingle in, and 
 are gathered up by, lovingkindness and love. The 
 desire for justice and compassion spring from, and 
 stimulate, a certain spirit of fraternity, of humanity. 
 Do we, then, find fraternity and humanity in the 
 best utterances of the Old Testament ? Yes, 
 certainly ; not, indeed, perfectly expressed, but on 
 the road, and even far along it. I do not mean 
 humanity as a mere synonym of compassion, but I 
 mean humanity even in the broader sense of a respect 
 for man as man. It is not yet perfect ; it meets with 
 difficulties ; it is confronted with prejudices, " defects
 
 40 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 of qualities," old-established institutions and inherited 
 hatreds. But yet it grows, and the ideas and the 
 injunctions which it generates are easily capable of 
 enlargement and purification. Think, first of all, of 
 the respect demanded for the old, the deaf and the 
 blind. Think of the charity inculcated to be shown 
 to the widow and the orphan. Think of the 
 tremendous sympathy exhibited by the prophets, and 
 reflected in the Law and in the Proverbs, for the 
 oppressed and the poor. No castes. " The rich and 
 the poor meet together : the Lord is the maker of 
 them all." 
 
 It may be said : but what of the fact that the Law, 
 posterior to the Prophets as, taken as a whole, it is, 
 yet recognised slavery ? It did. But so far as 
 Israelite slaves were concerned, it did what it could 
 to soften and alleviate their lot. It did what it could 
 to turn their slavery into something better and Jess 
 permanent. Bondmen as they were in Egypt, the 
 Israelites are bidden, for that very reason, to be 
 pitiful themselves towards the helpless, the wretched 
 and the poor. The fruit and flower of Old Testa- 
 ment are seen in the thirty -first chapter of Job. 
 Speaking of his slave he says, " Did not He that 
 made me in the womb make him ? And did not 
 One fashion us in the womb ? " We have only to push 
 Old Testament teaching to its full limits, to develop it 
 along its own best lines, to reveal all that is implied 
 in it, and slavery whether from the point of view of 
 religion or of morality stands equally condemned. 
 
 But the caviller has a reply. " Israelite slaves," 
 he answers, with something of a sneering stress upon 
 the adjective. Over them, truly, the Israelites are 
 not to. rule " with rigour." But what of the Gentile 
 and the foreigner ?
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 41 
 
 I will come to that. First, however, let us realise 
 the position within the community itself. I contend 
 that the ideal there is one of loving fraternity. 
 " Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart." 
 " Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against 
 the children of thy people." The same ideal is 
 expressed in the Wisdom Literature. " Love covers 
 all sins." In conjunction with the repeated insistence 
 upon justice and pity, the famous command, " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," deserves the 
 fullest attention. At all events " neighbour " includes 
 all the " children of thy people," whether rich or 
 poor, bond or free. 
 
 Was the ideal reached ? Surely not. What ideal 
 ever has been reached ? But it is there. The im- 
 precatory psalms continually violate the command, 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," but the 
 command stands unsullied none the less. 
 
 Yet it has been assailed on two sides. Its alleged 
 limitation to the Israelite, on the one hand, its alleged 
 exclusion of the enemy, upon the other. 
 
 The excellence and purity of Old Testament 
 morality have been depreciated and assailed, in order 
 to exalt thereby the excellence and originality of the 
 New Testament and because of the well-known 
 attack in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is there 
 alleged to have said that " neighbour " excluded 
 " enemy." The Law, or, at any rate, the older 
 teaching, with which Jesus contrasts his own, is 
 alleged to have bidden the Israelite to love his 
 neighbour, but to hate his enemy. His enemy, 
 therefore, is not his neighbour. 
 
 As to how far Jew and Christian have in practice 
 " loved " their enemies and sought their good, I have 
 no special information. I should be ready to hold
 
 42 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 that honours are easy. I know no evidence which 
 leads me to believe that Jews have either exceeded or 
 fallen short of the measure of hate which throughout 
 the ages has been shown and felt by Christians. I 
 have no evidence to show that Christians have loved 
 their enemies many fractions more or less than Jews 
 have loved them. But the question is not one of 
 practice : it is one of ideal and command, however 
 greatly the command may have been neglected, how- 
 ever completely the infirmity of human nature may 
 have rendered it a dead and idle letter. 
 
 There is no doubt that if the statement in 
 Matthew was actually made by Jesus, it either does 
 not mean what it appears to mean, or Jesus was 
 guilty of a rhetorical exaggeration. There is no 
 injunction in the Law, or elsewhere in the Old 
 Testament, stating, " Thou shalt hate thy enemy." 
 What makes the matter worse, and the misstatement 
 still graver, is that Jesus is obviously not thinking 
 here of any contrast between Israelite and Gentile. 
 He is speaking of the Israelite only, and to the 
 Israelite only. The foreigner is not within his 
 thoughts, any more than he would be to a village 
 preacher to-day. The people whom he is concerned 
 with, the people whom he wants to make kindly and 
 loving to each other, are the people who are in 
 constant contact with each other : the villagers of 
 Galilee are to love one another ; the Israelite is to 
 love all his neighbours, even if these neighbours are 
 his enemies. If Jesus had been thinking of the 
 enemies of Israel, and not of private enemies, he 
 would have said so. For all his other injunctions in 
 the same chapter relate to private and individual 
 morality, and not to national morality : if the 
 injunction as to enemies had been intended to allude
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 43 
 
 to anything so startling as the love of Israel's enemies, 
 if this injunction, unlike all the others, had related 
 to national and not to individual morality, he would 
 surely have expressed himself more clearly. Whether 
 the historic Jesus would have asked his disciples to 
 love the Gentile is capable of argument. There is a 
 good deal to be said both for and against. What 
 seems clear is that, in this particular passage and in 
 this particular injunction, he is not thinking of the 
 foreigner at all. 
 
 As regards, then, the Israelite enemy there is no 
 command in the Old Testament that he is to be 
 hated. But is there any command that he is to be 
 loved ? No, there is not. And I am far from 
 approving those criticisms of modern Jewish writers 
 who, instead of admiring the command, " Thou shalt 
 love thine enemy," positively depreciate and condemn 
 it. I think that Matthew v. 44-48 and Luke vi. 
 27, 28 are among the noblest specimens of human 
 ethics, among the finest of human ideals and com- 
 mands. I still think this, though when I remember 
 the nationality of the commentators who have most 
 exhausted their vocabulary in exaltation of these 
 Gospel passages and in depreciation of Old Testa- 
 ment teaching, I have painful twinges of hesitation 
 and of doubt. But what is the love of enemies ? 
 How is it to be shown ? I do not suppose that 
 Jesus meant that we are to feel for our enemies the 
 same kind of feeling that we feel for our wives, our 
 children, and our friends. The Jewish critics are 
 doubtless right when they say that to ask for such a 
 feeling would be absurd and undesirable. But, as 
 so often when critics of one religion attack the in- 
 junctions and ideals of another, the Jewish critics set 
 up a ninepin in order to knock it down. It is an
 
 44 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 easy and delightful entertainment, but of dubious 
 utility. Jesus, I am sure, was thinking of something 
 which is practicable. And the explanation of the 
 " love " demanded is best given in the simple words : 
 " Do good to them that hate you." And so far as 
 feelings are concerned, we can avoid the desire of 
 revenge, we can avoid delight when the enemy falls 
 into misfortune. Now love of this practical kind, 
 and the quenching of feelings of this undesirable sort, 
 are both demanded by the Old Testament itself. 
 Therefore, as regards the enemy still be it re- 
 membered the private enemy of the individual 
 there is no difference between the morality of the 
 Old Testament and the New. Both are noble. The 
 New confirms, rounds off, and sums up (in grand 
 and impressive words) the teaching of the Old. 
 
 It is well to recall the passages. In the oldest of 
 the Pentateuchal Codes, we have the ordinance : " If 
 thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, 
 thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If 
 thou see the ass of him that hates thee lying under 
 his burden, thou shalt surely help to loosen it." 
 Then in the later Code : " Thou shalt not hate thy 
 brother in thy heart. Thou shalt not avenge, nor 
 bear any grudge against the children of thy people." 
 These laws produce in the Wisdom Literature the 
 following effects. " Say not thou, I will recompense 
 evil." " Rejoice not when thine enemy falls." " Say 
 not, 1 will do so to him as he has done to me ; I will 
 render to the man according to his work." " If thine 
 enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat ; if he be 
 thirsty, give him water to drink." And among the 
 terrible sins of which Job solemnly declares himself 
 guiltless, is this : " If I rejoiced at the destruction of 
 him that hated me ; or lifted up myself when evil
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 45 
 
 found him." Surely this teaching is on the same 
 lines, and points in the same direction, as the teach- 
 ing of Jesus. At the most the second is the culmina- 
 tion of the first. Here, then, too the foundations 
 of our present ideals, and much of their embodi- 
 ment, are to be found in the pages of the Hebrew 
 Bible. 
 
 But what about the alleged narrowness and 
 particularism ? Well, I do not maintain that every 
 moral excellence is found, or equally conspicuous, 
 in the Old Testament. I fully admit that narrow- 
 ness and particularism disfigure many of its pages. 
 The great point, however, for us Liberal Jews to 
 remember is that this narrowness and particularism 
 are easily shed. They are in flat contradiction (as I 
 have already hinted) to Old Testament monotheism, 
 to the doctrine that God is one, that He is good to 
 #//, and that His mercy is over all His works. They 
 are in contradiction to the doctrine of man, and not 
 merely the Israelite, being created in the divine 
 image. They are in contradiction to the doctrine 
 that the object of Israel's election is to disseminate 
 throughout the world the knowledge of God. They 
 are in contradiction to the highest Messianic ideal. 
 We can use the Old Testament to confute the Old 
 Testament, the broad to confute the narrow, the 
 universal hope to confute the particularist desires. 
 
 We may freely allow that the universalism which 
 we now cherish is partly due to two influences over 
 and above Old Testament monotheism. One is the 
 teaching of St. Paul ; the other is the teaching of the 
 Stoics. But neither Paul nor the Stoics could have 
 wrought what they did for Europe without the 
 monotheism of the Jews. 
 
 Admitting, then, a measure of particularism in
 
 46 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 Old Testament teaching, have we also to admit that 
 if the Old Testament did not teach the Israelite to 
 hate his private and personal enemy, it did teach him 
 to hate the enemy of his nation and his God ? Or 
 even worse : Did it teach him only to love his 
 brother Israelite, but to regard every non-Israelite 
 as an enemy and to hate him ? 
 
 To go anything like as far as this would be, I 
 think, very unfair. There is no doubt that there 
 was much hatred of the idolater and of the oppressor. 
 And there is also no doubt that the idolater, as, to 
 the Christian, the heretic, was looked upon as the 
 enemy of God. So was the oppressor of Israel : he 
 too was God's enemy as well as Israel's. 
 
 But that there is any direct inculcation of hatred 
 for national enemies is inaccurate. There is doubt- 
 less much expression of it. It is the great infirmity 
 of the Old Testament, just as the ready way in which 
 the enemies of Jesus, and, in the fourth Gospel, the 
 Jews, are relegated to destruction, devil and hell, is 
 the great infirmity of the New Testament. There is 
 glass in both our houses : we had far better not 
 throw stones at one another. 
 
 The real reason why Christian critics are so pain- 
 fully anxious to show up the limitations of the Old 
 Testament injunction, "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bour as thyself," is to leave more space for the origin- 
 ality of Jesus. It is a nuisance that the injunction, 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," is in the 
 Old Testament at all. For if neighbour meant 
 everybody, what more would be left for Jesus to say ? 
 Therefore it is most important to show that neigh- 
 bour most emphatically did not mean everybody, 
 and that the lawgiver spoke with conscious and most 
 intentional limitation. And, on the other hand, it
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 47 
 
 is most important to show that when Jesus uses or 
 quotes the injunction, he does mean everybody, and 
 that he always has the Gentile in his mind as well 
 as the Jew. Thus even Professor Kent a distin- 
 guished and admirable American scholar in his excel- 
 lent and invaluable volume, " Israel's Laws and Legal 
 Precedents," in that capital work, " The Student's 
 Old Testament," observes with regard to Leviticus 
 xix. 17, 1 8, "In these laws which relate to inner 
 motives and feelings, the Hebrew lawgivers almost 
 attain to the New Testament ideal. In the brief 
 command in Leviticus xix. i%b Jesus found the 
 epitome of all Old Testament legislation regarding 
 man's duty to his fellow-men. He, however, raised 
 it above its narrower Israelitish setting and made it 
 of universal application." To emphasise this Israelite 
 setting, Professor Kent translates the first part of 
 Leviticus xix. 18, "Thou shalt not take vengeance, 
 nor bear a grudge against the members of thy race," 
 just as he translates Leviticus xix. 17^, "Thou shalt 
 not hate thy fellow-countryman in thy heart." It 
 may, however, be questioned whether the / is not 
 dotted, and the / is not crossed, too sharply. I do 
 not for a moment intend to imply that by any of the 
 words he used the legislator meant to include the 
 alien or the non-Israelite. But I also believe that he 
 did not mean consciously and definitely to exclude 
 them. There was not, as might, I think, be almost 
 gathered from Professor Kent's renderings, a sort of 
 intended implication : " Remember, I say thy fellow- 
 countrymen and the members of thy race. I do not 
 say, and I even consciously exclude, the non-Israelite. 
 Him you need not love : him, indeed, you may 
 hate \ " That would, I think, be going too far. The 
 non-Israelite was not in the legislator's mind one
 
 48 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 way or the other, any more than when a Christian 
 preacher, in ordinary times, bids his congregation to 
 love one another, he is either consciously including, 
 or consciously excluding, the Mahommedan and the 
 Jew. He is not thinking of them one way or the 
 other. It is quite enough for him, and indeed for 
 the ordinary, practical purposes of life it is quite 
 enough for them, if his hearers love the people with 
 whom they habitually come in contact. And these 
 in 99 cases out of 100 are neither Mahommedans 
 nor Jews. 
 
 It is another matter, which it does not fall within 
 my present purpose to discuss, whether it is really 
 accurate to say that Jesus raised the command " above 
 its narrower Israelitish setting and " consciously "made 
 it of universal application." I do not, however, think 
 that it is historically and critically sound to go so 
 far. As regards the Sermon on the Mount, if Jesus 
 had intended to include, or been thinking of, the 
 non-Israelite, he would have said so. And, indeed, 
 considering the limitations and prejudices of his age 
 and his environment, if he had intended to make the 
 command of universal application, he would hardly 
 have left it to be inferred from the (alleged) general 
 tenor of his teaching. As regards the parable of the 
 Good Samaritan, which is the only other passage 
 in the Synoptic Gospels that is in point, I would 
 not for worlds deny the sublimity of its teaching. 
 But critically speaking, though Halevy's suggestion 
 (adopted by me in my Synoptic Gospels) is studiously 
 ignored by Christian commentators, it still seems to 
 me immensely strong. As it stands, the parable is, 
 I most gladly admit, a very important step towards 
 a universalisation of the command. The Liberal Jew 
 is in no way concerned to restrict the* divine inspira-
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 49 
 
 tion to the Hebrew Bible, or to deny the measure of 
 advance made in certain directions (along with a 
 measure of retrogression) by the writers of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 Assuming, however, that the injunction to Jove 
 one's neighbour as oneself, did not consciously 
 include, if it did not intentionally exclude, the non- 
 Israelite and the foreigner (and this assumption 
 would, I think, be correct), the Pentateuchal law, 
 nevertheless, did itself make some progress in the 
 universalistic direction. An interesting use is made 
 in Deuteronomy of the sojourn in Egypt during 
 which ill-treatment was received by the Israelites 
 at the hands of the Egyptians. We get here a very 
 significant instance of an inverted "Talio," a moralised 
 and topsy-turvy tit for tat. Here, again, we can 
 enlarge a principle which, as regards the Ammonite 
 and the Moabite, the lawgivers failed to apply or 
 make use of themselves. " Thou shalt not abhor 
 an Egyptian, for thou wast a stranger in his land." 
 " A stranger in his land." The Hebrew word is " Ger," 
 and the laws about the "Gerim" constitute an im- 
 portant feature of all the Codes. Thus in the 
 oldest code we have the order : " Thou shalt not 
 oppress a stranger : for ye know the heart of a 
 stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of 
 Egypt." Even though the second half of the verse 
 be an editorial addition, it seems a pity that Professor 
 Kent should have omitted those exquisite words : 
 " Ye know the heart of a stranger." In Deuteronomy 
 we are told that God loves the stranger ; " love ye, 
 therefore, the stranger : for ye were strangers in the 
 land of Egypt." The later " Holiness " Code takes 
 the same line. " The stranger that dwells with you 
 shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou 
 
 E
 
 50 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 shalt love him as thyself : for ye were strangers in 
 the land of Egypt." l 
 
 Certainly, then, the limitation to love only the 
 fellow-countrymen was, to some extent, at any rate, 
 broken through ! 
 
 But who was the " stranger " ? The law to love 
 him is not wholly pleasing to those who wish to 
 depreciate the morality of the Old Testament. 
 Hence they are at pains to point out that the 
 stranger is, in no wise, the mere foreigner, any 
 casual Gentile or non- Israelite, but strictly and 
 solely the resident alien, the man who had left his 
 own tribe or people, and taken up his residence in, 
 and put himself under the protection of, Israel. 
 The Ger and the Nochri (foreigner) are sharply 
 distinguished from each other. 
 
 All this is perfectly true. The Ger is not the 
 foreigner : he is the resident alien. It is for him 
 that the latest Codes declare that there is to be the 
 same law as for the native born. Yet he need not, 
 unless he wish, fully adopt the religion of his adopted 
 land, and thus, unless he submitted to circumcision, 
 he could not " eat the passover " (Exodus xii. 45, 48). 
 It is, therefore, true enough that the famous laws 
 of Deuteronomy x. 19, and Leviticus xix. 34, should 
 really be rendered thus : " Love ye, therefore, the 
 resident alien : for ye were resident aliens in the land 
 of Egypt." " The resident alien that dwells with 
 you shall be unto you as one born among you, and 
 thou shalt love him as thyself : for ye were resident 
 aliens in the land of Egypt." 
 
 Is the value of the law or its morality much 
 diminished? Perhaps, somewhat. But not greatly. 
 
 1 The words "thou shalt love him as thyself" are omitted in Professor 
 Kent's translation.
 
 5 1 
 
 For, after all, the resident alien was not of the same 
 blood or race as the Israelite : he was not a fellow- 
 countryman. And, secondly, he was the sort of 
 foreigner with whom (as I suppose) the Israelite 
 came most frequently into contact. He was the 
 foreigner whose kind treatment was of real practical 
 importance. He was the foreigner who was under 
 the protection of no foreign power : who had given 
 up his allegiance to his own tribe or nation, the 
 protection of which he therefore no longer continued 
 to enjoy (see Professor Kent's note, op. cit. p. 66). 
 
 Surely even for us Europeans or Americans to-day 
 the injunction, " Love ye, therefore, the resident 
 alien," is by no means superfluous. For us, too, is 
 not he sometimes the most uncomfortable, the most 
 real, the most vividly present, the most awkward, 
 of all foreigners? It is pretty easy to love the 
 Tartar and the Tibetan ; but how about the Negro ? 
 And it is odd that they who are at greatest pains to 
 point out the sad deficiencies of the Old Testament 
 in its limitation of love to the resident alien are 
 often those who most conspicuously violate that 
 Law, the moral level of which they consider them- 
 selves to have so far exceeded and passed beyond ! 
 " One Law for the native born and the resident 
 alien. Ye shall love him as yourselves." Then 
 how about the Jew? Is he not the " Ger" ? Has 
 he not come to seek protection and hospitality, and 
 taken up his permanent abode, in the lands of his 
 adoption ? Let us, then, by all means universalise 
 Old Testament morality still further, but Jet us first 
 of all seek to live up to it as it stands ! 
 
 That there was a genius for religion amid Israel, 
 or among some of the chosen spirits in Israel, seems 
 clear. But the genius was for a special kind of
 
 52 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 religion. Was there any genius for morality ? We 
 may, I think, truly say that there was no genius for, 
 and no tendency towards, either religious or ethical 
 speculation. But there was a genius for a special 
 and peculiar combination of ethics and religion. 
 
 The Old Testament does not contain everything 
 in religion which we have and prize and want to-day. 
 But it does contain, as it seems to me, the main 
 things. It certainly does not contain everything 
 in morality which we possess and prize and need 
 to-day. But as regards both religion and morality 
 it does seem to me, with curious felicity and genius, 
 to have fastened upon, discovered and joined together 
 (not always by any means in a perfect or fully de- 
 veloped form) the main, great, practical things, 
 from which further progress and development became 
 possible and could be effected. On the whole, too, 
 it avoided the things which impeded such progress 
 and such development. Its defects are pretty easily 
 shed ; its qualities are definite, practical and easily 
 capable of expansion. 
 
 Its monotheism reveals to us at once its strength 
 and its limitations. We do not go to the Old 
 Testament for any theory or speculation as to the 
 nature of God and of His relation to the world. 
 The metaphysical difficulties in its own conception 
 of God do not disturb it for a moment : it leaves 
 them unnoticed. So we must get over them or 
 explain them, or accept them, as best we can, with 
 other help from other sources. But what it does 
 do is to give us in its conception of God a peculiar 
 combination of religion and morality. It has given 
 us the sublime doctrine of One God, above and 
 beyond the world, yet " near " the world, the world's 
 creator, ruler, sustainer, its wisdom and its Spirit.
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 53 
 
 But it has given us this doctrine, not as a key to 
 knowledge, but as the secret cf righteousness. For 
 the essence of its doctrine is not so much that God 
 is One as that He is good ; that He is perfect in 
 righteousness and compassion ; that He cares for His 
 creation ; that He is holy. This is a conception of 
 God which is of value for human life, for human 
 action, for human goodness. This is a conception, 
 the defects of which, as presented to us in its various 
 stages of development, can be removed, but the 
 comforts and sweetness of which abide. And this 
 is a conception which makes for righteousness and 
 love, because the service of this righteous and lov- 
 ing God is declared by the purest Old Testament 
 genius to reside in acts of righteousness and love 
 towards man. Hence it is that this genius this 
 Old Testament genius is neither purely religious 
 nor purely ethical, but is essentially and emphatically 
 a peculiar and special combination both of morality 
 and of religion. 
 
 To have vitally connected morality with the 
 doctrine of One God, and to have vitally connected 
 the service of that One God with morality this is 
 the glory of the Old Testament. It riveted religion 
 and morality together both for God and for man. 
 Man cannot do without forms and institutions and 
 outward embodiments ; and there is plenty of them 
 in the Old Testament. But to put them for ever 
 in their proper place, which, again, means to unite 
 morality and religion together, we have the simple, 
 yet profound and far-reaching, doctrine of the 
 prophets. " I desire love and not sacrifice." " Let 
 justice roll down like water." "What does the 
 Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love 
 compassion ? " And the lesson was learnt ; though
 
 54 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 sometimes clouded and ignored, it was never wholly 
 forgotten. The community knew at bottom that 
 the sacrifice of God was a broken spirit ; it knew 
 that the true fast was to deal bread to the hungry ; 
 it knew that forgiveness was only vouchsafed to the 
 wicked when they turned from their evil way ; and 
 to remind itself of these truths it incorporated the 
 fifty-first psalm and the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah 
 and the book of Jonah in the liturgy of its great, 
 outward and ceremonial, Atonement Day. 
 
 Let us consider, too, certain other ethical principles 
 which we may detect in the Old Testament writings. 
 Some of them I have possibly mentioned before, but 
 they may fitly be resumed here. 
 
 It is a common criticism upon Old Testament 
 morality and religion to speak of its eudaemonism, 
 its stress upon outward well-being (" prosperity is 
 the blessing of the Old Testament "), its coarse 
 doctrine of reward and punishment. And I fully 
 admit that a certain purification is here necessary. 
 There is a measure of truth in the criticism. We 
 need to supplement and correct Old Testament 
 teaching in these respects with the idealism of the 
 Platonic philosophy and the Stoics. That is true. 
 But if we are out to find all the good we can in 
 the Old Testament instead of all the temporary, the 
 obsolete or the evil, we shall perceive that behind 
 the defects there lurks a truth, a truth in which we 
 place our hope and confidence even to-day. That 
 truth is the justified union of happiness and 
 righteousness. We not only ought to do justly 
 and to love mercy ; but through justice and mercy 
 and brotherly love human society becomes happier 
 and more prosperous. It is in every sense worth 
 while to be just. The increase of justice makes for
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 55 
 
 increase of human well-being. And human well- 
 being is itself worth while. The life of a just 
 society is good : worth having and living. The 
 " outwardness " of the Old Testament is part of its 
 hopefulness (a feature to which I shall recur). Do 
 we not need, and feed upon, that hopefulness even 
 to-day ? 
 
 So, too, I find of value and help the union, in 
 Old Testament estimation, of righteousness and 
 wisdom, of goodness and truth. It is wise to be 
 good. The intellectual and moral virtues are united 
 in their source. God is the source of wisdom as 
 He is the source of goodness : He is Himself the 
 God of Truth as well as the God of Righteousness. 
 In His unity the unity of righteousness and truth 
 are assured and guaranteed. And it is not only 
 wise to be good : it is wise to do good. Active 
 goodness is worth while and divine. I draw out 
 these doctrines from Old Testament teaching very 
 easily, and I find them of great encouragement. 
 They fortify and console. 
 
 We may, I think, notice too in the Old Testament 
 a certain excellent sanity and balance. And yet in 
 the Prophets, at any rate, there is no lack of 
 enthusiasm and ardour. I observe this balance in 
 the choice of the two fundamental virtues justice and 
 compassion. Justice, and again, justice: excellent ; and 
 surely the democracy of to-day echoes the cry. But 
 justice alone will not suffice : there will always be room 
 for those virtues of the heart mercy, pity, compassion. 
 Justice and pity are combined in love. Or again, 
 putting an already mentioned truth another way, we 
 must love and serve God, and we must allot time, 
 and devote actions, to His exclusive service (for us, 
 public worship, private prayer). But the chief field
 
 56 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 of His love and His service lies in moral action. The 
 service of man is the best service of God. This idea, 
 it seems to me, we have learnt and evolved from 
 the Old Testament. 
 
 Another idea, too, there is which was elaborated 
 by the Rabbis, but which goes back, by adequate 
 implication, to Old Testament sources. It connects 
 with Old Testament hopefulness, and with the 
 good side of Old Testament " materialism " and 
 " earthliness." 
 
 It has already been said that Liberal, no less than 
 Orthodox, Judaism, accepts that development of 
 doctrine which took place between the close of the 
 Old Testament and the beginning of the New 
 Testament period. We accept and require the 
 doctrine of the future life. But that doctrine in its 
 Jewish forms does not lead to the depreciation of 
 earthly life. It only gives to the Old Testament 
 high evaluation of earthly life a securer basis. It 
 adds to the right attachment to earthly life a right 
 detachment, and, perhaps too, I should also say, it 
 adds to right enjoyment a right asceticism. 
 
 It is this right and high evaluation of human life, 
 this right enjoyment of, and attachment to, life, which 
 are suggested, and even taught, by the Hebrew 
 Scriptures. Life is sanctified. We are to be holy, 
 as life's source and giver is holy. Hence, first, a 
 concern and respect for human life, wanting, as other 
 Old Testament excellences are wanting, in Greek 
 morality. Infanticide, the exposure of children, 
 would be abhorrent to the Hebrew of the Law. 
 Abortion would also be repudiated. Again, we see 
 in Old Testament morality a growing respect for 
 chastity. Most immensely significant for the Old 
 Testament sense of cleanliness and of purity is its
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 57 
 
 stern prohibition of unnatural offences. When we 
 recall the wide prevalence of these offences in the 
 East, and in Greece, and the tentative and inadequate 
 way in which even the best teachers of Greece (and 
 not all of these teachers) condemned them, we may, 
 I think, justly regard Israel's attitude towards these 
 horrors as both a moral and a religious inspiration. 
 The " natural " is not condemned outright, for earthly 
 life is not bad, but good. It is to be enjoyed ; it is 
 to continue. Not celibacy is the ideal, but marriage 
 and family life. The spirit is to sanctify the flesh. 
 To eat and drink are the fundamental gifts of God. 
 Eat, then, and drink as befits a creature who can 
 worship the divine Bestower with gladness, with 
 self-control, with a word of thanks and of blessing. 
 I do not say that these ideas are explicit in the Old 
 Testament ; still less do I say that in Old Testament 
 times they were always acted up to. But I do say 
 that they are implicit in the trend of the best Old 
 Testament teaching, and that they were largely 
 drawn out and made explicit by the Rabbis. 
 
 The curious and inseparable commixture of 
 morality and religion in Old Testament ideals is 
 further seen in the conception of holiness. It is true 
 that holiness was not yet perfectly moralised. It 
 had an outward, as well as an inward, signification. 
 But the inward and ethical element predominated in 
 the highest minds. Nevertheless, the injunction " be 
 holy " means something more, something deeper, than 
 the injunction " be good," just as the holy God means 
 something more than the good God. What is this 
 something more ? It is not easy to say, but I think 
 that this something more is just that thrill, that 
 fervour, that touch of purity, reverence and awe, in 
 which a morality that depends upon, and reaches up
 
 58 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 to, a perfect and adorable God differs from a morality 
 (however exalted) which is without Him. And in 
 this conception of holiness, and in this injunction to 
 Israel to be holy, the idea was started, so fruitful 
 and so spiritual, of the true Imitation of God. So 
 of this idea, too, I find the beginnings in the Old 
 Testament, and it appeals to me, just as that entire 
 conception of God appeals to me, which keeps God 
 and man apart, and yet brings them together, which 
 denies the " essential unity of the divine and the 
 human," and yet bids man imitate, so far as man can, 
 the inimitable perfections of the Divine. Man can 
 never become divine, but he can draw nearer and 
 nearer unto God. 
 
 And what of Israel itself? What of its duty and 
 its destiny ? Here, too, do we not build and rest 
 upon the highest of the Old Testament utterances ? 
 " Ye shall be unto me a Kingdom of Priests." " Ye 
 are my witnesses ; thou art my servant : with his 
 stripes we have been healed." Our theory of Israel's 
 mission of the religious charge entrusted to the 
 Jews for the benefit of the world goes back to the 
 Babylonian Isaiah. Perhaps it is here that both the 
 religious and ethical trouble are by some most acutely 
 felt. I have dealt with the ethical trouble at con- 
 siderable length : here I can be briefer. It cannot 
 be denied that the peculiar relation of Israel to God 
 and of God to Israel is of the very kernel of the Old 
 Testament. And it also cannot be denied that the 
 relation is often unethically presented : it may even 
 be said that there are very few Old Testament writers 
 and passages which are wholly free from a certain 
 measure of particularism. Moreover, the trouble is 
 that this particularism is most marked and most 
 awkward just when the God idea has become most
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 59 
 
 developed and most clearly monotheistic. It was far 
 less disagreeable in the earliest times than in the 
 latest times. Hence we cannot say, " This is merely 
 one of the primitive imperfections of the Old Testa- 
 ment. The later writers are free from it." Nor can 
 we say, " The Prophets are clear of it. It is only 
 one of the compromises which had to be taken up in 
 the Law." Law, prophets and psalter share it alike. 
 That in primitive times Yahweh should be specially 
 concerned in the welfare of his people is reasonable 
 enough. For Yahweh starts as a just, but as a tribal, 
 God. He cares for Israel, as Chemosh cares for 
 Moab. But that the God of the spirits of all flesh, 
 the one and only God, creator of heaven and earth, 
 that He should have a chosen people, that He should 
 be more concerned in the prosperity of Israel than 
 in the prosperity of Edom, that He should have 
 enemies, simply because Israel has enemies, all this 
 seems to be a doctrine utterly inconsistent with ethical 
 monotheism, utterly inconsistent with our modern 
 ideas whether of morality or of religion. And I fully 
 agree that it is ! The only limitation but it is an 
 important and crucial limitation that I would make 
 is that, while I accept the doctrine of the chosen 
 people, I interpret it to mean, not favouritism and 
 presents, but discipline and service. Liberal Judaism 
 holds, not that God cared more for the Israelites 
 than for the Edomites, but that he entrusted Israel 
 with a charge, a task, a mission. This task is 
 not for ourselves, but for humanity, not for our 
 benefit, but for the world's. The education for, 
 and the (very imperfect) fulfilment of, this charge 
 did not mean, and has not meant, more prosperity, 
 but less prosperity, not less suffering, but more 
 suffering.
 
 60 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 That this is not the usual conception of the Old 
 Testament, that this is not its usual and predominant 
 interpretation of the "chosen people," is obvious. To 
 maintain that it was would be hopelessly uncritical and 
 absurd. But two points must be noticed. The first 
 is that any other interpretation entirely conflicts with 
 the ethical monotheism of the Old Testament itself. 
 We must, therefore (as in other instances), correct 
 and refute the Old Testament by the Old Testament. 
 The second point is that though this interpretation 
 is not the prevailing or the usual interpretation of 
 the doctrine of Israel's election, a very fair, if in- 
 complete, form of it is found in a few Old Testament 
 passages which we can legitimately combine and draw 
 out. Thus we have, to begin with, the famous verse 
 in Amos, " You only have I known of all the families 
 of the earth : therefore will I visit upon you your 
 iniquities." God will deal more strictly with Israel 
 than with " the nations." This general prophetic 
 conception characteristic, at least, for the prophets 
 of the eighth and seventh centuries gave a deadly 
 blow to the idea that it was God's province and duty 
 to shower special favours and presents upon Israel, 
 His people. Next we have the prophetic hope of a 
 world religion, a universal acknowledgment of the 
 one true God, arising in the future as the final result 
 of Israel's life and teaching. " From Zion shall the 
 Law go forth and the word of the Lord from 1 
 Jerusalem." " The earth shall be filled with the 
 knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." 
 " God's house shall be called a house of prayer for 
 all peoples." " Yet will I gather others unto him 
 besides his own that are gathered." More definite 
 even than these passages, and more significant, is the 
 conception of the Servant in the Second Isaiah. " Ye
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 61 
 
 are my witnesses." Israel has been elected that 
 God's salvation may spread to the ends of the earth. 
 This conception culminates in the famous fifty-third 
 chapter, which the consensus of critics now regards 
 as the confession of the nations concerning the mis- 
 judged and maltreated Israel. Through his stripes 
 patiently and voluntarily undergone they have 
 been healed. Nothing can well be in greater con- 
 tradiction to the old doctrine than this. (It has to 
 be sorrowfully admitted that it made little headway 
 or impression.) Lastly, we can quote the conception 
 in Exodus of " the kingdom of priests," which seems 
 to point towards the idea of a mission. Priests 
 hardly discharge their office for themselves : they 
 discharge it for others. Modern exegesis has 
 shown that it would not be quite fair to quote 
 Genesis xii. 3 and its parallels, but that the uni- 
 versalist interpretation was making itself felt and 
 becoming known, even within the Old Testament 
 period, we may gather from the rendering of the 
 Septuagint. 
 
 Now the doctrine of Israel's election as interpreted 
 by Liberal Judaism to-day (and I imagine that 
 Orthodox Judaism interprets it in the same way) may 
 be true or false. The immense majority of mankind 
 would say that it was false, or, at all events, that the 
 only " mission " Israel had was to produce Christianity, 
 and that its election terminated, therefore, with the 
 birth of Christianity's founder. "I have not to argue 
 the question here. My point is simply that, whether 
 true or false, the doctrine, as we interpret it, is not 
 unethical. It does not conflict with the moral per- 
 fection of God. It need cause us no " trouble." 
 Further the doctrine, in its main outline, is to be 
 found in the Old Testament, so that here, too, we
 
 62 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 stand by, and cling to, the Old Testament at its 
 highest and its best. 
 
 Thus it is that I find the essentials of our religion 
 yes, even of Liberal Judaism already within the 
 four corners of the Hebrew Bible. It is true that I 
 also find a good deal there which is no longer part 
 of my religion ; it is also true that there are some 
 doctrines or elements in my religion which I do not 
 find in the Hebrew Bible ; but nevertheless the root 
 of the matter, to use an Old Testament phrase, is 
 there. The root of the matter, and many of the 
 fairest flowers. 
 
 Hence thotigh the attitude of Liberal Judaism to 
 the Hebrew Bible is not the same attitude as that of 
 Orthodox Judaism, it is yet an attitude of reverence, 
 of gratitude, of admiration and of love. It is an 
 attitude unlike that which we hold to any other book 
 in the world. To no other book can we render the 
 homage which to this book we gladly and freely pay. 
 Now this homage, as it seems to me, this reverence 
 and admiration and love ought to have practical 
 results. It ought to issue in study, and the deeper 
 study of the few should bear fruit for the lesser study 
 of the many. There is still much to be done in 
 order that the best teachings of the Hebrew Bible 
 may be properly appreciated by every member of 
 our community. We need editions of various 
 portions with explanatory notes : and these notes 
 should be written from a standpoint which should 
 be both critical and reverential. Nothing should be 
 read into the text, but all should be brought out of 
 it which is really and honestly there. And then 
 too it should be shown how the teaching of the 
 Old Testament has been expanded, illustrated 
 and deepened in later Jewish literature, how its
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 63 
 
 limitations have gradually been overcome, and 
 how even to-day the same divine Spirit is helping 
 us in our endeavours towards righteousness and 
 truth. 
 
 For that is part of our case. In a certain sense 
 we inherit and accept, though with grave modifica- 
 tions, the old Rabbinic theory of a further inspira- 
 tion and a further revelation beyond the limits of the 
 Bible. We take our stand upon the doctrine of con- 
 tinuous and progressive revelation. We find no 
 difficulty in the hypothesis that certain elements of 
 our faith to-day are later than the latest portions of 
 the Hebrew Bible, and that we owe them partly to 
 the Rabbinical period, partly to still later ages, and 
 partly to our own time. If God helped our fathers 
 to the attainment of fuller truth, that is no reason 
 why He should not help us. On the contrary it is a 
 reason why He should. Just in the same way we 
 believe that the Judaism of 2018 will be a fuller and 
 purer Judaism through God's help than is the 
 Judaism of to-day. Take, for instance, the doctrine 
 of a future life. That doctrine was only in its germs 
 at the very close of the Biblical period. It rapidly 
 develops afterwards in the Rabbinical era. Hellen- 
 istic Judaism contributes to its purification. It 
 slowly frees itself from the materialistic conceptions 
 of a bodily resurrection. It is possible that the 
 doctrine may be further developed, purified and 
 strengthened in the years that are to come. Mean- 
 while who shall deny that the Rabbi who said : 
 " Better is one hour of repentance and good deeds 
 in this world than the whole life of the world to 
 come ; and better is one hour of blissfulness of spirit 
 in the world to come than the whole life of this 
 world," or the Hellenistic Jew who said : " The
 
 64 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 souls of the righteous are in the hand of God ; their 
 hope is full of immortality," were without the 
 inspiration of God ? 
 
 Liberal Judaism, then, is far from seeking to make 
 a sharp and violent distinction between the Hebrew 
 Bible, on the one hand, and the Rabbinic literature, 
 upon the other, or between the Written Law, on the 
 one hand, and the Oral Law, upon the other. Such 
 a violent separation is opposed to the whole principle 
 of progressive revelation. " The Hebrew Bible and 
 the Hebrew Bible alone," or, still worse, " the Penta- 
 teuch and the Pentateuch alone, is the religion of 
 Jews," would be the falsest and the most fatal of 
 cries. The fourth article of the German Richtlinien 
 correctly says, " The historic basis of the Jewish 
 religion is the Hebrew Bible, as well as the subse- 
 quent further development of Judaism in the Talmud, 
 the Rabbinic writings and the philosophers up till the 
 present time " ; " up till," which means " including." 
 We should not hesitate to say that the Wisdom of 
 Solomon is more inspired than the book of Esther, 
 and the Sayings of the Fathers (despite some very 
 pedestrian and foolish things in it) than the books of 
 Chronicles. So, too, when it is a question of laws, 
 there can be no philosophic justification though 
 there may be here and there a practical justification 
 for saying : "We will obey the Pentateuchal laws ; 
 we will reject the Rabbinic laws ; we will refuse to 
 eat oysters, but we will freely mix meat and milk 
 together." 
 
 On the other hand, if you take book for book, 
 and compare though I admit that comparisons are 
 mostly odious, foolish and impossible the huge and 
 many volumes of the Talmud with the one modest 
 volume which holds all the portions of the Hebrew
 
 r AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 65 
 
 Bible together, there can be no question which is the 
 greater and the more inspired. There can be no 
 question in which the essence and basis of Judaism 
 are contained ; there can be no question to which our 
 reverence, our admiration and our gratitude are more 
 greatly due. For, in a certain sense, we must not 
 be too hard upon our Karaites, whether ancient or 
 modern ! If only they had thought as much of 
 Prophets and Psalter as they thought of the Penta- 
 teuch ! Bible and Talmud are, indeed, separated by 
 a big interval of value and of genius. The one is 
 for the student (and he should not be too closely 
 immersed in it) ; the other is for mankind. The 
 one is for now and then and perhaps more for then 
 than now ; the other is for always and for every day. 
 Though very briefly, imperfectly and unsystematic- 
 ally, I have now touched upon the three or four 
 theoretic troubles which, at the outset, it was 
 mentioned that Liberal Judaism must face and deal 
 with. The two or three practical troubles remain, 
 but these I do not propose to discuss upon the 
 present occasion. The education trouble would need 
 an essay to itself; it stands by itself. As to the 
 ceremonial and liturgical " trouble," these two are 
 closely connected with the newer conception of, and 
 the Liberal attitude towards, the Law, concerning 
 which there will be just a word to say later on. The 
 gist of the trouble is how to preserve contact and con- 
 tinuity with the past, while, nevertheless, to do and 
 say nothing which does not represent, and is not 
 consistent with, the Liberal beliefs of to-day. Cere- 
 monies, festivals and liturgy must, to a very large 
 extent, be taken over from the past adopted and 
 not freshly created. Words must be used which 
 will mean one thing to a believing orthodox Jew, 
 
 F
 
 66 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 another to a Liberal Jew. There is no harm in this, 
 provided that the new meaning and its difference 
 from the old are explained to the worshipper. It 
 may even be that in the recitation of a great and 
 famous document some few words or sentences may 
 have to be said which, in any natural sense, we 
 cannot accept at all. Thus "jealousy" can only be 
 predicated of God in a sense which explains the word 
 altogether away ! That God visits " the sins of the 
 fathers upon the children " can only be maintained 
 by us in a sense very different from the sense which 
 was meant by the author or expander or compiler of 
 the Second Commandment. And yet because of a 
 difficulty of this kind it would, I think, not only be 
 absurd to abolish the reading of the Ten Words from 
 our Liberal Synagogues, but it would be wrong to 
 edit or mangle or abbreviate so well-known and 
 famous a document. 
 
 So, again, as regards such a phrase as " the Sabbath 
 of the Lord thy God," or sentences which tell how 
 the Festivals were ordained and devised by God. 
 Some of these, in the liturgy, may be modified to 
 suit our present beliefs, but even after all that is 
 possible has been done in this direction, several must 
 remain, in which the old conception will shine out. 
 To us the Sabbath is the Sabbath of God in a very 
 different sense from the sense in which it was or 
 is the Sabbath of God to let us say an average 
 Rabbinic Jew of the Talmudic period or even an 
 average orthodox Jew of to-day. The story of the 
 Sabbath, as it would be told by a critical investigator, 
 differs considerably from the story as given in Genesis 
 or in the Exodus version of the Ten Command- 
 ments. To us the Sabbath is a divine institution, 
 partly because of its beneficent results, partly because
 
 6? 
 
 it is an integral and important part of that whole 
 history of Israel in which we discern the will and the 
 spirit of God. 
 
 So of the festivals. Passover and Pentecost were 
 not ordained once and for all by God in the manner 
 described by the Pentateuch. The " event " which 
 the Rabbis, without Pentateuchal authority, made 
 Pentecost commemorate did not in our opinion 
 take place with all the supernatural and miraculous 
 accompaniments which are so vividly described to 
 us in the Book of Exodus. And so on. Never- 
 theless, Liberal Judaism rightly clings to the five 
 festivals and holy days of the Pentateuch. It uses 
 the Rabbinic precedent about Pentecost to interpret 
 these festivals and holy days in its own way. And 
 it so happens that there is no real difficulty in doing so. 
 Passover becomes the festival celebrating Freedom and 
 the establishment of our religion. Pentecost becomes 
 the festival celebrating our ideas of Law and of 
 Revelation, which are ideas as vital to us as to our 
 orthodox brethren in faith, even though the meaning 
 and content of these ideas are very different to us and 
 to them. Tabernacles becomes the festival of Nature 
 and its relation to man and to God. The Day of 
 Memorial and the Day of Atonement are widely differ- 
 ent even to an Orthodox Jew from the "originals" 
 of these two institutions in the Pentateuch. No more 
 spiritual and " catholic " holy day than the modern 
 Day of Atonement in its Liberal Jewish form can 
 well be conceived. It is most deeply interesting to 
 trace its historic genesis and development from the 
 outward, priestly, ritualistic, tribal, and partly super- 
 stitious ceremony described in Leviticus xvi., to the 
 purely spiritual, inward, universal, holy day which we 
 celebrate now. No more triumphant or successful
 
 68 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 instance of development without break of historic 
 connection could possibly be imagined. 
 
 Again, in our use of the Old Testament in 
 public (or in private) worship, we often have to 
 denationalise and universalise the meaning. There 
 is no harm in doing so, if we are careful to distinguish 
 very carefully and honestly between the meaning 
 and intention of the original writers and the meaning 
 and intention which we, in the exercise of our liberty, 
 choose, for our own spiritual purpose, to give to 
 their words. Very often Israel will, for us, mean 
 humanity, just as, in our adaptation of the old liturgy 
 for our modern use, we shall often definitely add the 
 word " mankind " to the word " Israel." Often, too, 
 the material Jerusalem and the re -establishment of 
 the Jewish state will for us mean the spiritual 
 Jerusalem and the diffusion of the knowledge of 
 God throughout the world. The Messianic hope 
 we shall interpret in a purely religious, ethical and 
 catholic manner. With such an interpretation the 
 particularist and national troubles will fade away. 
 Nor will the connection with the past be too unduly 
 broken. For the real religious significance of the 
 Messianic promises is not what may materially and 
 physically happen to a particular people, but what 
 religiously and ethically is to be the future of the 
 world. " And the Lord shall be King over all the 
 earth : in that day the Lord shall be One and his 
 name One." 
 
 It is unnecessary to deal in detail with the Penta- 
 teuchal ceremonies which affect the private life of the 
 individual. As regards the dietary laws I have 
 nothing to add to, or subtract from, what I have 
 already said in previous writings. I imagine that 
 the observance of them in Liberal-Jewish households
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 69 
 
 is bound to disappear. For they belong to a class of 
 religious customs which have nothing specifically 
 Jewish about them. Food taboos are common to 
 dozens of tribes all over the world. Nor can it be 
 said that, at their origin, they start high up in the 
 development of religion. It is not in them that we 
 can perceive the divine element in the Pentateuchal 
 legislation. The same may be said of circumcision. 
 It is a rite which depends upon very old ideas, and 
 it is found in one form or another among many 
 different races. The story of its first introduction 
 and injunction cannot now be regarded as strictly 
 historical. Nevertheless, Liberal Jewish congrega- 
 tions do well, I think, in temporarily retaining this 
 unattractive rite for infants, while gladly abandoning 
 it for adult proselytes. The reason for this retention 
 is not religious, and it is not hygienic. So far as the 
 custom is hygienic, it can be performed, when de- 
 sirable, by a non-Jewish doctor and without any 
 ceremonial appurtenances. But the rite may justifi- 
 ably be temporarily retained for reasons of a social 
 and juridical order. If all Jews were Liberal Jews, 
 it would be different. But while so many are not, 
 it is not desirable that any Liberal Jews should be 
 under any religious disqualification or stigma in the 
 eyes of their orthodox brethren. That might lead 
 to difficulties in the case of a contemplated marriage 
 between a " Liberal " Jew and an " Orthodox " Jewess. 
 
 Thus none of the various " troubles," enumerated 
 at the opening of this chapter, seem insuperable either 
 to the existence and continuance of Liberal Judaism 
 as a separate religion, or to the special place to be 
 justly assigned in that religion to the Old Testament 
 Scriptures. 
 
 It is true that the results of criticism make the
 
 yo LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 history of Israel something very different from what 
 it used to be regarded in the days of old. Abraham, 
 Isaac and Jacob are no longer historical figures like 
 David or Ezra or Judas the Maccabee. The events 
 of which they are the heroes probably never took 
 place. Moses is an historical personage, but the true 
 story of his life and doings can hardly be recovered. 
 The entrance into, and the departure from, Egypt 
 did not take place in the manner in which they are 
 described in Genesis and Exodus. The Laws of the 
 Pentateuch were not dictated by God to Moses. The 
 institution of the Passover only gradually assumed its 
 present shape : the ordinances concerning it belong 
 to different eras ; they combine rules about two 
 different festivals which are only artificially united 
 together. And so we might go on. But great as 
 the difference is between such views of the Pentateuch 
 and the views of orthodoxy, the difference is not 
 great enough to destroy Liberal Judaism. For the 
 big unalterable facts remain. Here are the Jews 
 to-day. Here is the Old Testament. Here are the 
 religious verities (as we believe) contained therein. 
 Does it really matter that these verities are associated 
 with these inaccuracies ? Do the verities become 
 thereby less true, less valuable, less worth possessing ? 
 Surely not. Is it more difficult to believe that the 
 Jews have had, or have, any special religious vocation 
 or mission, because the story of their early history is 
 full of statements and legends of miracles and super- 
 natural events, in which we no longer believe ? The 
 real significance of the mission lies in the doctrines 
 which the Jews have produced and developed, and 
 not in the accuracy of the stories of their early 
 history and first progenitors. "Ye are my witnesses." 
 I can believe this, if I can believe and hold high
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 71 
 
 those doctrines, if I can interpret the whole course of 
 Jewish history as in accordance and congruity with 
 the assertion, if I can believe that the God whom the 
 prophets proclaimed is the God who rules the world, 
 and controls the destinies of mankind. I am not 
 perturbed in, or driven from, my belief because of 
 the legends and miracles of the Pentateuch. God 
 uses human means, and works with imperfect materials. 
 The legends and the miracles, however inaccurate and 
 untrue, do not make me believe any the less that 
 Israel was chosen by God for a religious purpose. 
 Why there is dross in the ore, why there is falsehood 
 amid the truth, why there was and is a slow growth 
 and development instead of sudden and complete 
 revelation, I do not fully understand. All imper- 
 fection represents a problem. But I interpret the 
 history and the record not by the falsehoods, but by 
 the truths, not by the lowest, but by the highest. 
 They vouch for their own divineness ; nor do the 
 legends and the miracles suffice to make the high 
 less high, or the true less true. Precisely the same 
 argument holds of the moral difficulty as well. The 
 permanent is not invalidated by the transitory : the 
 gold is not destroyed by the dross. It is for us to 
 distinguish and to separate, but it is not for us to 
 reject the good because we discover the imperfect, or 
 to deny the divine because we recognise the human. 
 So, too, with inspiration. You cannot make any 
 book, or part of a book, more inspired by declaring 
 it to be so. Its inspiration can only be deduced from 
 its contents. The inspiration of the Bible and its 
 divineness must be inferred from the great teachings 
 which it contains. You cannot show that the teachings 
 are great and true because it is inspired. You can 
 only show that it is inspired because the teachings
 
 72 LIBERAL JUDAISM J 
 
 are great and true. And when criticism has done 
 its worst and its best for criticism reveals the true 
 greatness of the Old Testament at least as much as 
 it produces difficulties to solve there remains enough 
 of what is great and true in the Old Testament to 
 justify the verdict that this book, if any book, may 
 be rightly called holy and inspired. 
 
 But if the Hebrew Bible thus retains for us 
 Liberal Jews its position of religious pre-eminence, 
 does it also retain for us its authority ? We may 
 bow down in reverent homage before its sublimest 
 utterances about God and goodness, but can we 
 yield submission to it as regards the ordering of our 
 lives ? Can we regulate our religious institutions, 
 our worship, our public and private expression and 
 manifestation of religion, upon its laws and its 
 ordinances ? Here we have the ceremonial trouble 
 making its reappearance from another point of view. 
 We have frequently emphasised the greatness and 
 permanent significance of the Prophets and the 
 Psalter. But what of the Law, from which, rather 
 than from Psalter or Prophets, have issued the form 
 and shaping of Jewish life ? 
 
 Yet even in Liberal Judaism the Law can occupy 
 a peculiar place. For though Liberal Judaism is far 
 less than orthodox Judaism a legal religion, and 
 though we can no longer say, " Because a certain 
 injunction is found in the Law, therefore I fulfil it," 
 yet even for us the Law has a position of significance 
 and of honour. In the first place, though Liberal 
 Judaism could not for a moment adhere to the 
 articles about the Law in the Maimonidean Creed, 
 it may, nevertheless, in a certain sense be regarded 
 as a religion of Law. Of Law, be it observed, 
 without the article. While we no longer regard the
 
 I AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 73 
 
 Pentateuch as the supreme word of God, and no 
 longer accept all its commandments as perfect, im- 
 mutable and true, we still accept the principle of 
 Law, we still hold that only through law, and in 
 law, can man upon earth win and maintain his 
 freedom. 
 
 Goethe spoke about art, but we apply his golden 
 words to morality, and say with him, " Und das 
 Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben " " Only law 
 can give us freedom." I cannot here pursue this 
 matter further, but if I am right in my assertion, 
 our championship of Law in religion our sense of 
 free obligation to the majesty and compelling force 
 of the Highest enables us to retain for the Penta- 
 teuch something of its old position of prominence, 
 if not of superiority. We still hold to the words, 
 "Thou shalt." We still recognise duty and the 
 constraint of duty : as free men we freely choose 
 to obey : we dare not, we must not, for our 
 highest self is one with the Moral Law refuse the 
 call or deny the obligation. If the Psalter, some- 
 what fancifully, may represent for us that quality 
 of God shall we say His immanence ? by which 
 we commune with Him, by which we recognise His 
 presence within us, the Law will represent that 
 quality of God shall we say His transcendence ? 
 by which we bow down before Him as the Holy 
 and the Perfect One, other than and separate from 
 ourselves. He is the Source and Consummation 
 of Goodness : He is the fount and well of that Law 
 in obedience to which is the only true liberty. But 
 in Him alone is liberty identical with law. In Him 
 alone is perfect freedom perfect law. Just as the 
 injunction runs, " Be ye holy even as God is holy," 
 so might the injunction run, " Obey yourselves, even
 
 74 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 as God obeys Himself," or " Be ye free, even as God 
 is free." But just as man, whether in this life or 
 in another, can never be as holy as God, so can he 
 never be so self-obedient as God, or so free as God. 
 The moral law is, indeed, in a double sense his law. 
 It is his law because man (with God's help and will, 
 with that reason of his which, in Biblical language, 
 is God's image and itself divine) creates and in- 
 creasingly apprehends it : it is also man's law because 
 by free obedience to it, and only thus, does he realise 
 his highest nature and his true end. 
 
 The moral law, as his law, is within him. But 
 though within man, it is also without man, and it 
 is not only man's law, but it is also God's law. For 
 God is its ultimate author ; God is its justification 
 and its guarantee. Man has to learn to obey it 
 freely, but he has also to recognise that he ought 
 to obey, that he must obey, that the Law, though 
 in it his true self be realised, is yet immeasurably 
 greater and holier than he. The Pentateuch repre- 
 sents for us this majestic compulsion, which never 
 ceases, though its ideal is freedom. The Pentateuch 
 represents for us this Law, the fulfilment of which 
 is no burden, but a joy, which the better it is fulfilled, 
 the freer we become, which the more it is realised 
 to be without and divine, the more it is also realised 
 to be human and within. Thus, even from this 
 point of view alone, we are ready to place the sacred 
 scroll within the arks of our Synagogues, and to 
 read from it week by week upon the Sabbath Day. 
 The Law is the symbol of Law. 
 
 And even that is not all. The Pentateuch 
 contains the watchword of our faith, the confession 
 of the Divine Unity ; it contains the Ten Command- 
 ments, it contains the injunction to love God with
 
 i AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 75 
 
 all our might; to love neighbour and stranger as 
 ourselves. We need not greatly mind if its codes 
 also include much which is obsolete, or not in 
 accordance with our present conceptions of morality 
 and of religion. It is enough that it contains the 
 very foundations of our Theism and of our social 
 and moral order. The proclamation of the Divine 
 Unity and Goodness, the principles of justice and 
 of compassion, the ideals of the love of man and 
 the love of God, suffice. We can ignore the obsolete, 
 and exalt the permanent. And if the Pentateuch 
 enjoins us to observe the Feast of Passover and the 
 Feast of Weeks, why need we have any scruple to 
 make, and to retain, a festival for Liberty, upon the 
 one hand, and for Law, upon the other ? 
 
 It is true that the authority of the Hebrew 
 Bible is not the same authority to us as it is to our 
 orthodox brethren. The Sabbath is not to us a 
 splendid institution because it is ordered in the Ten 
 Commandments. The law, " Thou shalt love the 
 stranger as thyself," is not to us good and inspired 
 because it is in the Pentateuch. It is inspired because 
 it is good, and it is good because our conscience 
 acclaims it. Nevertheless, this very conscience is 
 itself the partial outcome of the Pentateuch and the 
 Hebrew Bible. We are what we are partly because 
 of them. The Old Testament, for us especially, is 
 bone of our bone. It is, in a sense, our charter ; 
 inextricably mixed up with our history and our 
 destiny. Its authority is, therefore, to us greater 
 than it can be to others. But it is an authority 
 which is reasonable and historic ; we freely accept 
 it ; we recognise and define its extent and its limita- 
 tions. It is an authority which depends, first, upon 
 the contents of the book, secondly, upon the part
 
 76 LIBERAL JUDAISM i 
 
 which it has played in our history and development. 
 We could not admit the force of the second reason, 
 if it were not for the first. If the book were not 
 a supremely great book, the part which it has played 
 in the past would not affect and bind us in the 
 present. And if the book were merely a great and 
 noble book, it would not control and constrain us, 
 if it were not also our book, if it had not its historical 
 relation to us, if we were not, in part, creatures of its 
 influence. It is the combination of the two reasons 
 which gives to it its place, not only in our hearts, 
 but in our lives : it is this combination which, if 
 any prediction be safe, will unite Liberal Judaism 
 and the Hebrew Bible for distant ages inseparably 
 together. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 The reference on p. 64 is to the very important little 
 book : Richtlinien zu einem Programm fur das liber ale Juden- 
 turri) nebst den Referaten und Ansprachen auf den Rabbiner- 
 versammlungen zu Berlin und Frankfurt am Main und auf 
 der Delegiertenversammlung der Vereinigung fur das liberate 
 Judentum zu Posen (p. 57). 1912.
 
 II 
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND THE NEW 
 TESTAMENT 
 
 IT may be asked whether the title of this chapter is 
 well chosen, and what is its justification? Liberal 
 Judaism and the Old Testament seems a reasonable 
 collocation. It seems obviously reasonable, in other 
 words, that Liberal Judaism should have something 
 special to say about, should take up some special 
 attitude towards, the Hebrew Scriptures. But why 
 should there be this special attitude towards the New 
 Testament ? Take another book sacred to another 
 religion. Judaism and the Koran might be a reason- 
 able title for an essay, but Liberal Judaism and the 
 Koran would scarcely seem so. 
 
 Well, to begin with, Liberal Judaism must have 
 an attitude, must think out its attitude, towards all 
 products of religion. It must, therefore, have an 
 attitude even towards the Koran ! It may well be 
 that this attitude will, in many respects, be precisely 
 the same attitude as that of Orthodox Judaism : but 
 that can only be known after Liberal Judaism has 
 thought the matter out for itself. 
 
 But, in the second place, the view which Liberal 
 Judaism takes about Revelation and Inspiration 
 
 77
 
 78 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 makes it likely that its attitude towards all the other 
 sacred books of the world, over and above the Old 
 Testament, will be different from the attitude of 
 Orthodoxy. For Orthodox Judaism can hardly 
 allow that any aspect of religious truth is contained 
 in any other sacred book, which is not contained, or 
 not so fully or plainly presented, in the Old Testa- 
 ment and the Talmud. But Liberal Judaism does 
 not believe that God has enabled the human race to 
 reach forward to religious truth so exclusively through 
 a single channel. 
 
 I venture to think that there is also a " thirdly," 
 though I mention it with hesitation, and my first 
 and second reasons are ample justifications for my 
 title. My " thirdly," however, is this. There is 
 some reason, I hope, to believe that Liberal Jews 
 are less prejudiced about the New Testament than 
 Orthodox Jews, and that Liberal Judaism can, there- 
 fore, enquire into this matter more quietly and im- 
 partially, and reach less wooden and less one-sided 
 conclusions. 
 
 If the mere tide of this chapter is justified, I 
 hope that its importance will also be conceded at 
 least for the Jews of Europe and of America. I do 
 not say that the subject would be anything like so 
 important for the Jews of China, or Morocco, or 
 Persia. But for us who live in a Christian environ- 
 ment, and amid a civilisation which has been partially 
 created by the New Testament, our right relation 
 towards it must surely be of grave and peculiar im- 
 portance. For this civilisation is also ours. The 
 literature, which is soaked through and through with 
 New Testament influences, is also our literature. 
 The thought, which has been partially produced by 
 the New Testament, is the thought amid which we
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 79 
 
 are reared, which we absorb, to which we react. 
 From every side, from every point of view, our 
 attitude towards the New Testament is pressed upon 
 us for consideration and settlement. 
 
 Looking at the matter in a purely religious light, 
 we are driven to the same conclusion. What im- 
 mense claims have been set up for this book, 
 and are still set up for it ! By Europe and 
 America it is generally regarded as by far the 
 greatest and most original book about religion in all 
 the world. Jews sometimes conveniently forget this 
 very obvious fact. They will go so far as to quote 
 the opinions of notable Christians about the value 
 and greatness of the Bible. But they ignore the fact 
 that for these, as for all Christians, the Bible consists of 
 the New Testament as well as of the Old Testament, 
 and that in the eyes of all Christians the New Testa- 
 ment is the flower of the whole. The world would 
 by no means say the same things about the Old 
 Testament alone as it says about the Old Testament 
 and the New Testament together. The religious and 
 ethical teaching of the New Testament is, we are 
 told, the greatest and best religious and ethical 
 teaching which the world has ever seen, can see, or 
 will see ; and we are also told that this teaching is, 
 in many salient points, highly novel and original. 
 Is it not, then, of importance and of interest to 
 ascertain what the attitude of Liberal Judaism should 
 be towards these gigantic claims ? We no longer 
 live, we no longer want to live, in a narrow ghetto 
 with a huge high wall all round us. The very air 
 we breathe, the moral, literary, artistic influences 
 which we suck up from our childhood, are, to a 
 large extent, the same as those which surround and 
 affect our Christian fellow-citizens. We have, then,
 
 8o LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 almost in self-defence and preservation, if for no 
 other reason to define and make good our point 
 of view. 
 
 A subsidiary, and yet not unreal, ground for 
 Jewish interest in the New Testament is that it is 
 a book which, in very large part, was written by 
 persons who were born Jews. Its central hero was a 
 Jew. Its teaching is based throughout sometimes, 
 indeed, by way of opposition upon the teaching of 
 the Old Testament. It is commonly supposed to 
 contain the continuation, or development, or final 
 consummation, of the religious doctrine which pre- 
 ceded it. If many Jews are peculiarly interested in 
 Spinoza, because, though he entirely broke with 
 Judaism, and though his doctrine wholly departed 
 from the fundamental teachings of the Synagogue, 
 he was yet born a Jew, and his philosophy shows 
 traces, here and there, of Jewish influences, how much 
 more should they be interested in the New Testa- 
 ment, which is so vastly more important a book than 
 the writings of Spinoza, and the hero of which, in his 
 own judgment at any rate, lived and died a Jew by 
 faith, proclaiming always the God of his fathers ? 
 
 It can hardly be maintained that the Jewish 
 attitude towards the New Testament has always 
 been scientific and impartial. Even in the case of 
 Liberal Jews, though considerable advance and im- 
 provement can be noted, we have still not reached 
 a prevailingly adequate point of view. For the lack 
 of impartiality, as well as for the policy of ignoring, 
 there are excellent excuses and explanations. But 
 the excuses and explanations do not alter the fact. 
 They only excuse and explain it. 
 
 Now what I have just said might be taken to 
 show that I am myself as unscientific and as partial
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 81 
 
 as the people whom I condemn. For it might seem 
 to imply that the less you find to admire in the 
 New Testament, the less in it that you acknowledge 
 to be both new and true, the less impartial and 
 scientific you are. But surely a -priori praise is as 
 unscientific and partial as a -priori blame. It does 
 not necessarily follow that you have drawn nearer 
 to the truth because your opinion has become more 
 like the opinion of the immense majority. 
 
 This objection is fairly reasonable. It is, at any 
 rate, conceivable that the opinion of civilised Europe 
 as regards the value or the excellence of the New 
 Testament is entirely wrong. But, though conceiv- 
 able, it does not seem to me likely. If any one 
 were to try to prove that Beethoven was a poor 
 musician, and Raphael a poor painter, his views 
 might be conceivably right, and the world might 
 be ultimately converted to his opinion, but though 
 all this is conceivable, it is scarcely likely. Still a 
 majority may possibly be as prejudiced and pre- 
 possessed as a minority. We must no more follow 
 a multitude in thinking falsely than in doing wrongly. 
 It is conceivable that, as compared with the Old 
 Testament, there is nothing new in the New Testa- 
 ment which is also true, and nothing true which is 
 new. Perhaps I am too democratic a person, too 
 impressed by numbers, or perhaps I am too aristocratic 
 a person and too impressed by authority, to think 
 that this judgment is probably correct, but it is, at 
 any rate, conceivable, and must not be condemned 
 beforehand. It must be no more condemned before- 
 hand than we must condemn beforehand its precise 
 opposite and antithesis. We can only judge and de- 
 cide which is correct after careful study and enquiry. 
 
 It is also conceivable and, I think, much more
 
 82 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 conceivable that though the New Testament, as 
 compared with the Old Testament, contains teachings 
 or ideals of life which are both new and true, it does 
 not contain such true novelties or novel truths for 
 the Jews of to-day. In other words, for good or 
 for evil, we are presented with the New Testament 
 many years too late. It is possible that, in their 
 own way, along their own lines, or through their 
 own religious development, the Jews have acquired 
 teachings and ideals of life which, not contained in 
 the Old Testament, are yet contained, in one form 
 or another, in later Jewish literature, and have, with- 
 out any external or specifically Christian influence, 
 been absorbed into the present Jewish religion. A 
 very simple instance may make my meaning clear. 
 The Old Testament says little or nothing of a 
 blissful life after death. The Gentile world has got 
 its teaching on this subject, not from the Old 
 Testament, but from the New. But the Jew, who 
 to-day believes in a blissful life after death, has not 
 got his belief from the New Testament. He has 
 got it along his own lines and in his own way. 
 Thus certain things which the Gentile to-day holds 
 dear, and which he finds in the New Testament, the 
 Jew holds dear likewise ; he already possesses them, 
 and he finds them, not indeed in the Old Testament, 
 for they are not there, but in later Jewish literature, 
 in later Jewish life. Thus what the Gentile goes for 
 to the New Testament, the Jew goes for to other 
 sources. He has the same needs as the Gentile, and 
 he recognises the same truths : but their expressions 
 and origins, which the Gentile finds collected in one 
 small volume, the Jew, it may be, finds scattered 
 about in many volumes. Yet the result may be 
 conceivably the same.
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 83 
 
 Thus whatever the Liberal Jew may decide (after 
 due study) as to the moral and religious worth of 
 the New Testament in itself, or in comparison with 
 the Old Testament, alone and isolated from all later 
 Jewish literature, it is not by any means unreasonable 
 that his feeling towards the book should be partially 
 influenced by an historic past which can never be 
 undone or put aside. You cannot subvert or deny 
 your own spiritual ancestry. 
 
 I can imagine that a Liberal Jew and a Liberal 
 Unitarian might conceivably take much the same 
 view as to the moral and religious worth of the 
 teachings attributed to Jesus in the three Synoptic 
 Gospels, and nevertheless that the Liberal Jew could 
 never feel towards the New Testament in the same 
 way, or receive from it the same religious emotions, 
 as the Liberal Unitarian. A different past has 
 moulded them, a different allegiance claims them, 
 and even if the judgment of the head should coincide, 
 the feelings of the heart must vary. To the one, 
 his Bible is the Old Testament alone, and it is not 
 easy to see how it will ever be a larger Bible ; to 
 the other the Bible is the Old and New Testament 
 combined, and it is no less difficult to believe that 
 it will ever be a smaller Bible. 
 
 The Orthodox Jew, who regards the Old Testa- 
 ment as the undiluted word of God, accepts its 
 miracles, and the doctrine of verbal inspiration, may 
 conceivably be converted to Christianity, and some- 
 times he is. He then adds another section to his 
 Bible, and looks at the larger book in much the 
 same way as he looked at the smaller book. But 
 the Liberal Jew, who regards the Old Testament in 
 the manner outlined in the last chapter, is seldom 
 converted to Christianity. That is why the orthodox
 
 84 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 Christian conversionists admit that the Liberal Jew 
 is a harder nut to crack than the Orthodox Jew, 
 and why it has been said, for instance, of the present 
 writer that, in spite of all his appreciation of the 
 Gospels, he is hopelessly far removed from the 
 borders of Christianity. The man who has come 
 to perceive the human side of his own scripture is 
 not likely to ignore that side in the scriptures of 
 another faith. And it is one thing, with all his 
 full realisation of the human and imperfect side of 
 his own Bible, to retain it as his sacred book, but 
 it is quite another thing to add to his own Bible 
 another book, human and imperfect too. The 
 Liberal Jew who rejects the miracles of the Old 
 Testament will very rarely accept the miracles of 
 the New. . 
 
 But, then, there is something more. It is a 
 strange fact that progress in religion is also accom- 
 panied by retrogression. The Liberal Jew may, 
 perhaps, see certain features of religious advance in 
 the New Testament as compared with the Old, but, 
 on the other hand, he may also find in it certain 
 features of retrogression. Retrogression, that is, 
 from the highest point of religious development 
 attained in the Old Testament. 
 
 Thus, for example, we find in the New Testament 
 much about demons and devils ; we find, in some 
 parts of it, a dualism which we cordially reject ; we 
 find, in parts of it, a pessimism towards the world of 
 earth which we condemn; and then, as Jews, albeit 
 Liberal Jews, we find in it a declension from the 
 purest monotheism of the Old Testament ; we find 
 in it the fateful beginnings of the deification of a 
 man. 
 
 These things appear to us both off" the line of
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 85 
 
 purest Jewish development and off the line of purest 
 religious truth. It is not necessary to deny that in 
 the full doctrine of the Incarnation, which finally 
 emerges from the basis of the New Testament 
 writings, valuable aspects of truth may be enshrined, 
 but with these aspects attractive and striking though 
 they be are mingled and combined other aspects (as 
 we believe) of retrogression and of error. 
 
 It is true that in the Old Testament, and not only 
 in the oldest bits of it, there are doctrines, or strands 
 of doctrine, which we reject, which we regard as 
 obsolete and erroneous, but these things in our own 
 Bible we take, as the Germans would say, mit im 
 Kauf y as part of the property which we have inherited. 
 But if we are asked to acquire another property with 
 such or other imperfections, they stare us in the face, 
 and are obnoxious to us in a very different, and 
 much more hampering, way. We keep and love the 
 old inheritance, imperfect though, as a whole, it be, 
 but when it is a question of adding to it some other 
 adjoining acres, imperfect too, though in a different 
 way, our critical faculties are too strongly aroused. 
 We cannot put the purchase through. 
 
 If all this be so, and if Liberal Judaism cannot, 
 any more than Orthodox Judaism, incorporate the 
 New Testament into its Bible, does that mean that 
 it has no use for it whatever ? Because it finds in it 
 errors and retrogressions, can it not also see advances 
 and truths ? Is all that is good necessarily old and 
 stale ? Or is no old truth newly and strikingly put ? 
 Is there nothing in the character and story of the 
 central hero to edify and to admire ? Is it not a 
 foolish judgment, and a very uncritical judgment to 
 boot, which would reject good and evil alike, false 
 and true ?
 
 86 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 I emphasise the possibility of old truths freshly 
 and strikingly put, for I believe that we have here 
 one of the most important uses to which, from a 
 Jewish point of view, the New Testament can be 
 put. Take, for instance, some of the great Parables 
 in the Synoptic Gospels. Let us, for example, recall 
 the parable of the Good Samaritan. The teaching is 
 not wholly new, but it is freshly and strikingly put. 
 Or take the parable of the Prodigal Son. The teach- 
 ing is certainly not new, but it is freshly and strikingly 
 put : it is illuminating, unforgettable. It may be (as 
 a great American Jewish scholar with consummate 
 learning has brilliantly argued) that some notable 
 sayings in the New Testament were current coin of 
 the time, or already existed in Jewish writings which 
 have now disappeared. 1 It matters not. It suffices 
 for us to-day that we have them now only in this 
 particular place. It may be that it was by no means 
 a new collocation to bring together the love of God 
 and the love of man as the two greatest Command- 
 ments of the Law. Never mind. The fact remains 
 that we have them brought together in words of 
 striking simplicity and power in the pages of the 
 Gospels. Shall we admire, and cherish, and learn 
 from^ these exquisite stories, or shall we sniff and 
 sneer at them and pass them by ? 
 
 Or, again, it may be that certain truths or 
 teachings, which are more on the periphery in the 
 Old Testament, may chance in the New Testament 
 to be found in the centre. What is incidental in the 
 one book may be prominent in the other. For 
 instance, the sin of self-righteousness is more in- 
 cidentally condemned, or less searchingly analysed, 
 
 1 Dr. J. Kohler in various articles in the ymoish Encyclopaedia and 
 elsewhere.
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 87 
 
 in the Old Testament than in the New. Thus a 
 parable like the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector, 
 which we should be foolish to neglect just because 
 the bad man is the Pharisee, is of importance and 
 value to us, not merely because an old truth is freshly 
 and strikingly put, but because it is centralised, made 
 prominent, intensified and deepened. 
 
 Or, again, a truth in the one book may be 
 developed in the other. A step further may be 
 taken in moral excellence. That God loves the 
 repentant sinner is a familiar Old Testament doctrine, 
 that man should search out and cause the sinner to 
 repent by the compulsion of love, adds a new touch, 
 a new truth, a new moral ideal. " Rejoice with me, 
 for I have found my sheep which was lost." That 
 is a novel note in the history of morality, and yet 
 one that fitted in with perfect propriety to the line 
 of the older teaching. 
 
 Now if it be a fact that quite apart from the 
 question whether it contains thoughts and ideals that 
 are both new and true the New Testament does, 
 at any rate, contain many old truths freshly and 
 strikingly put, and that some notable periphery 
 teachings are brought into the centre, with the light 
 of genius flashed upon them, it is hardly wise to 
 neglect such a work too prevailingly, or to cheapen 
 and condemn it. It would be a special pity, and 
 an added loss, if Liberal Jews were to depreciate 
 any aspects of truth because such aspects have be- 
 come central in the New Testament. If the alleged 
 truths are false, by all means depreciate and ignore 
 them : but if they are real, we neglect them at 
 our peril. " Rejoice with me, for I have found 
 my sheep which was lost." Are we, for instance, 
 to neglect the religious impulse and driving force
 
 88 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 contained in this parable and in the ideal which 
 underlies it ? 
 
 The New Testament fills few pages of print, and 
 is easily accessible, and is first-class literature. The 
 Synoptic Gospels are works of genius, and in our 
 vernacular translation are written in superb and in- 
 imitable English. If they contain nothing but error 
 and retrogression, they are all the more dangerous, 
 and should be all the more heartily shunned, but if 
 together with error and retrogression, there is truth, 
 shall we not make use of the truth, while duly point- 
 ing out the errors? It may indeed be said and 
 with much force that we are not limited to the Old 
 Testament, but that we have the vast corpus of the 
 Apocryphal, the Talmudical and the Midrashic litera- 
 ture to draw from as well. By all means. I fully 
 admit that in these immense literatures there is a good 
 deal which, as compared with the Old Testament, 
 is new and true, much old which is freshly and strik- 
 ingly put, and also some old things which are made 
 more central or are powerfully emphasised. By all 
 means let us use them. My complaint against the 
 Jewish scholars is rather that they have not adequately 
 enabled us to handle and possess these excellences, 
 that the light of them is still too much hidden 
 beneath the weight of tedious and inaccessible bushels. 
 Assuming, however, that we could get hold of these 
 admirable additions to the Old Testament, it may 
 still be said that two good things are better than one. 
 Moreover, I know enough about these plums from 
 the Rabbinical literature to be able to say that they 
 suffer from certain deficiencies. They are somewhat 
 atomistic and disconnected : they are not exquisite in 
 form : they are rarely the product of impassioned 
 enthusiasm and genius. Let us not neglect them :
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 89 
 
 let us use them all we can. But it may be doubted 
 even though, in essence, they closely resembled the 
 plums of the Gospels whether they could enable 
 us to dispense with their competitors. It may be 
 doubted whether they would have the same driving 
 force and thrilling power. Nor have the Jewish 
 scholars as yet made them widely accessible and 
 extremely inexpensive ! In the last resort I believe 
 that each set of excellences has its own special nuance 
 of worth, its own peculiar aroma of value. Both 
 come from Jewish sources, both spring from Jewish 
 lips. It seems quite foolish to neglect the good that 
 may be obtained both from the one and from the 
 other. And so far as both are good and true, both 
 are the gift of the Author of Goodness and the 
 Source of Truth. 
 
 Nevertheless, for very many reasons, I should be 
 quite against the use of the New Testament in our 
 public worship. It is true that the Old Testament, 
 large as it is, yet contains a great deal which is of no 
 present religious value or of uplifting power to the 
 average worshipper. Those of us who have had 
 to choose chapters for public reading know how 
 frequently we have to recur to the same selections 
 from Isaiah. Much of the Old Testament is purely 
 historical, much is so very difficult that it needs a 
 commentary, much is so mixed up with the circum- 
 stances of the age in which it was composed that for 
 our modern liturgical purposes it is of small avail. 
 Much has to do with subjects that are now obsolete. 
 The stories of Genesis are exquisite stories, but we 
 often feel, when they are read out loud, that we need 
 something more adult and gripping, something nearer 
 to the centre of religion and morality. The Sayings 
 of Proverbs are excellent in their way, but we often
 
 90 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 feel that we want something more inspiring, en- 
 kindling, provoking. Yet though, for these various 
 reasons, later Jewish literature, if Jewish scholars were 
 not so slack, might often be called into use, I do not 
 think, so far as public worship is concerned, that we 
 can employ the New Testament to supplement the 
 deficiencies of the Old. There are doubtless several 
 passages in the Synoptic Gospels, and a few in the 
 Epistles, which could be detached from their environ- 
 ment, and with very small omissions or even with 
 none, could be used without any violation of Jewish 
 sentiment or Jewish faith. And these passages would 
 supply some of the qualities we need. They would 
 deal with central problems ; they would be gripping, 
 adult and inspiring. They would arrest the attention 
 and stimulate religious emotion in a high degree. 
 But, nevertheless, it is better to forgo their advantages. 
 For the great mass of the New Testament literature 
 is shot through and through with conceptions that 
 sunder it off from any phase and form of Judaism, 
 and make it obviously unusable in the public worship 
 of the Synagogue. And these sundering conceptions 
 are vital and fundamental to the New Testament 
 writings. The conception of Jesus, not only as the 
 Messiah, but as a divine being, is of the very essence 
 of Paul's theology, and immanent in almost every 
 chapter of the Epistles. Even in the Synoptic 
 Gospels the conception of Jesus as the supreme 
 Master, the ultimate Authority, the new and final 
 Revealer of the divine will, is so frequently prominent 
 as to make it difficult to subtract this conception 
 from the majority of the chapters without violating 
 all the canons of literary and historical good faith. 
 That personal note in the Teacher, which differ- 
 entiates him from the prophets, with whom in many
 
 n AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 91 
 
 respects he is so closely and vitally connected, is 
 what underlies and fashions the difference between 
 the most unorthodox of Christians and the most 
 liberal of Jews. To that personal note the Christian 
 responds in glad homage and willing acceptance : 
 reverently he confesses : " Here speaks my Master 
 and my Lord." But from the Jew that personal 
 note, while historically interesting, wrings no homage. 
 Master and Lord are terms which he will use of God 
 alone ; he preserves his critical faculty before the 
 words of Jesus no less than before the words of 
 Hosea. Some he admires and approves ; some he 
 would modify ; a few he would entirely reject. 
 
 It does not, however, follow that, because the 
 New Testament is unsuited for use in the synagogue 
 worship, it should be totally neglected. In the 
 higher grades and classes of the religious school it 
 should, I think, be discussed and dealt with in a truly 
 judicial spirit not merely showing to the pupils 
 where it is unacceptable to Jewish opinion and, in 
 Jewish eyes, erroneous, but also where it is in harmony 
 with Jewish doctrine, and where it carries forward, or 
 nobly exemplifies and illustrates, important elements 
 of the Jewish faith. I would show them what to 
 admire and to cherish, as well as what to reject and 
 to condemn. And I would also seek to show them 
 most delicate and difficult task of all where the true 
 and the false are closely collocated and even woven 
 together. I would not fear to tell them girls and 
 boys of fifteen and sixteen where there seems 
 development, just as I would not hide from them 
 where there seems to be retrogression. 
 
 The manner in which Liberal Judaism regards 
 the conception of Inspiration makes it easier for us 
 to deal with the complicated problem of the New
 
 92 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 Testament. For we no longer say of the Old 
 Testament : " This book is inspired through and 
 through, and no other book is inspired at all. This 
 book is of one kind ; all other books are of a totally 
 different kind." We do not divide the Bibles of the 
 world into two unequal bundles, calling the small 
 bundle, ct the only true sacred book of the world," 
 and calling the large bundle, " all the false sacred 
 books of the world." Truth and falsehood are no 
 longer so rigidly and unequally distributed, and 
 inspiration also is no longer confined to our own 
 Scriptures. If, then, inspiration extends beyond the 
 confines of the Old Testament, shall we be willing 
 to admit its existence in the Koran or in some 
 Buddhist scripture, but refuse to recognise it in the 
 Gospels ? That is impossible. It is no longer 
 possible to say, " Because there is error and retro- 
 gression in this book, therefore it is not inspired." 
 For we no longer believe that any book is wholly 
 errorless. Isaiah is inspired, yet there are many 
 things in Isaiah which we consider erroneous to-day. 
 Inspiration can be claimed for, and must be allotted 
 to, the New Testament, first, because of the true and 
 great things which it contains, secondly, because of 
 the effect of these true and great things for good. 
 Indeed one can hardly believe in a ruling Deity 
 without also believing that those things which have 
 produced great good, even though they have also 
 produced some evil, did not come into being without 
 the will and the inspiration of God. 
 
 I am not prepared to measure degrees. Whether 
 the Sermon on the Mount is more inspired than the 
 Proverbs or the Psalms, I will not estimate or 
 discuss. We need not bother our own, or our 
 children's, heads with these tricky and unnecessary
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 93 
 
 questions. It is sufficient for our purpose if we are 
 ready to recognise in many passages of the New 
 Testament noble ethical and religious teaching, 
 supplementary and complementary to the noble 
 ethical and religious teaching of the Old Testament, 
 and to admit that, in the one case as in the other, the 
 nobility finds its ultimate source in God. 
 
 Nor is this recognition dependent upon the vexed 
 question of originality. It seems to be held by many 
 Jewish writers that if a certain saying in the New 
 Testament can be paralleled by a saying of the same 
 sort in the Old Testament or the Rabbinical literature, 
 that saying may forthwith be neglected. It is no 
 longer original. We have, however, already seen 
 that the greatness and inspiration of a New Testa- 
 ment passage do not depend upon its being wholly 
 unparalleled. They depend upon its position of 
 importance, upon its stress, upon its form and 
 passion, upon its relation to, and its place in, the 
 teaching as a whole, upon its ultimate effect upon 
 the world. Thus the New Testament would not 
 lose in greatness, in importance, or in inspiration, if 
 splitting it atomistically into sentences, you could 
 find for every good sentence a Rabbinic parallel, or 
 if you could prove (which you very rarely can) that, 
 in each separate instance, the Rabbinic parallel was 
 earlier than the New Testament sentence. As a 
 matter of fact, so far as the Rabbinic parallels are 
 concerned, they are usually a good deal later. But 
 even if you fish up earlier parallels from the Testa- 
 ments of the Patriarchs, or if you infer the existence 
 of earlier parallels from the Didascalia, originality in 
 date does not settle the question. Over and above 
 originality in date is originality as regards the world, 
 or the originality of fulness and centrality as against
 
 94 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 the originality of casual utterance and periphery. 
 You may fish up a few sentences from the Testaments 
 or from Philo, and we shall honour the authors and 
 admire the sentences, but the question remains whether 
 the thought of the sentences has entered into the 
 world's spiritual consciousness through the Testaments 
 or through the Gospels, through Philo or through 
 Paul. And the question remains whether the thought 
 is central and burning in the New Testament, and only 
 incidental and exceptional in the parallels. Luther 
 keeps his place, though he had his precursors; Darwin 
 maintains his position, though there were many 
 adumbrations and anticipations of his theories. 
 
 It is, however, necessary to pass now from sheer 
 generalities to details. What teaching, it may be 
 asked, is there in the New Testament to move our 
 admiration ? What features or parts of that teach- 
 ing fit in with, and carry forward, valuable elements 
 of Old Testament doctrine ? What supplements ? 
 What develops ? What corrects ? We may, for our 
 purposes, divide up the New Testament into three 
 portions, the Synoptic Gospels, the Fourth Gospel 
 with the Johannine Epistles, and the Epistles of 
 Paul. And first, then, as to the Synoptics, which 
 contain, so far as any books could or do, the record 
 of the teaching of the historic Jesus. 
 
 We shall justly note, to begin with, that portion 
 of the teaching which seems to take up again, or to 
 connect with, the salient doctrine of the Old Testa- 
 ment prophets, the doctrine which was so inimitably 
 expressed in the burning words of Hosea, " I desire 
 mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God more 
 than burnt-offerings." Yet it does not follow that 
 the teaching of Jesus, noble though it be, needs no 
 supplementing, or that it is not, regarded in isolation,
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 95 
 
 one-sided. But just because it looks so intently upon 
 certain great aspects of religion and morality, it 
 possesses the acute capacity to stimulate, to fortify, 
 and to console. It may, because of a certain one- 
 sidedness, succeed where a cooler, more balanced 
 teaching would fail. But the Jewish reader, in order 
 to allow the passion and grandeur of the Gospel 
 teaching to produce their full moral and emotional 
 effect upon his mind and soul, must, for the time 
 being, forget the historical environment and all 
 questions of historic justice. He must not ask (as 
 for historic and critical purposes he must undoubtedly 
 do), Does this passage, or the setting of this particular 
 teaching, do justice to the Pharisee ? Does it re- 
 present the antagonists of Jesus, the representatives 
 of Rabbinic orthodoxy, in a false or unfair light ? 
 To realise the full force of the teaching he must take 
 the words " Scribe " and " Pharisee " in a conven- 
 tional sense. He must regard them as mere names 
 for a particular type of character which is contrasted 
 with a particular ideal. They are the foils ; they 
 are the darkness which sets off the light. 
 
 Thus when we read the stories about Sabbath 
 observance, we must use and apply these stories as 
 we use and apply the great sayings of the Prophets. 
 And if we do that, we shall feel their fervour and 
 catch their spirit. Or again when we read the 
 saying, " There is nothing outside a man which, 
 entering into him, can make him unclean ; but 
 the things which come out of a man, these are 
 what make him unclean," we must not immediately 
 consider what have been the disciplinary effects of 
 the Jewish dietary laws, or what is the effect 
 scientifically and physiologically considered of foods 
 upon character, or whether gluttony and drunken-
 
 96 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 ness are not evils, or whether regard for health is 
 not a moral duty, but we must take the saying 
 as a great pronouncement of inward or spiritual 
 religion, or as a great liberating word against 
 formalism and superstition. It will then take its 
 place along with Hosea's dictum, < I desire mercy 
 and not sacrifice." If Jesus denounces those who 
 cleanse only the outside of the cup, who pay tithe 
 from mint and cummin, and neglect justice and 
 the love of God, we are not at once, or merely, 
 to ask, was this true of those about whom it was 
 alleged, but we are to take it as a warning against 
 certain types of hard outward respectability, and 
 of inadequate and conventional morality, which 
 culminate in self-righteousness and hypocrisy. 
 
 So too with the wonderful Parable of the Pharisee 
 and the Tax-Collector. We must not take these 
 contrasted figures as photographs of typical Tax- 
 Collectors and typical Pharisees. We must put 
 the question of historic fact entirely aside : we must 
 allow the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector to be mere 
 names without significance. So reading the parable, 
 we can hardly fail to be impressed with its trenchant 
 plea for inwardness. It connects with the old teach- 
 ing : " The Lord looketh to the heart." It supplies 
 a necessary corrective to any religion of law, or 
 rather it shows us that the true service of the moral 
 law is far removed from outward legality. A man's 
 conduct may be outwardly correct, but his character 
 may be inwardly rotten ; a man's conduct may have 
 been disfigured with sins, but he may yet possess 
 a certain yearning for redemption, even if only 
 occasionally realised, which in its humility and 
 sincerity may enable him to draw near unto God. 
 The correct and self-righteous formalist is in the
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 97 
 
 same position of danger as the man who thinks 
 he knows, but is really ignorant. The humble 
 ignoramus and the repentant sinner are at least free 
 from self-deception and from pride. 
 
 Jesus, then, is the great teacher of inwardness. 
 He resumes the prophetic r61e. And he does so 
 at a period when it was very difficult to take up 
 this role without bringing himself into conflict with 
 established authorities. Herein consist, to some 
 extent, the peculiarity of his position, and also, in 
 some ways, its pathos. Hosea and Isaiah were 
 more easily placed. In their times there was no 
 recognised code of Mosaic Law, regarded as the 
 
 O * O 
 
 undiluted word of God. There was no inspired 
 and perfect Pentateuch in existence. The Prophets 
 of the eighth century lived long before " the Law," 
 as Jesus knew it, or as we know it, had been com- 
 piled. And Jesus had no theoretic views about in- 
 spiration : he knew nothing about the history of the 
 Law. To him, too, as to all his contemporaries and 
 as to the Rabbis of his day, the Law was " Mosaic " 
 and inspired. And yet even more assuredly inspired 
 than the written code was the teaching which welled 
 up from the deepest convictions of his heart, or was 
 the doctrine of Hosea, " I desire mercy and not 
 sacrifice." Hence the conflict: hence the weaving 
 of the knot : hence the tragedy. 
 
 Meanwhile, we, who are raised above the com- 
 batants and the dispute, and who understand and 
 know the genesis of the Law, who can distinguish be- 
 tween its parts, perceiving and assessing its "human" 
 and its " divine " elements in a manner which was 
 impossible either to Jesus or the Rabbis, can appro- 
 priate whatever we please from the teaching of both. 
 The " inwardness " of Jesus connects itself with the 
 
 H
 
 98 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 inwardness of the Prophets without on that account 
 compelling us to throw over the Law. We shall 
 still observe the Day of Atonement, and many of 
 us will " fast," but the true fast is paradoxically 
 described for us both in the fifty -eighth chapter 
 of Isaiah and in the Sermon on the Mount 
 (Matthew vi. 16-18). Not less valuable for us and 
 helpful is its teaching about Prayer. Yet we shall 
 not hold public worship in less esteem because of 
 it (Ibid. vi. 5-13). 
 
 Jesus rightly attempts to seek for the roots of 
 goodness or evil in the heart or soul or mind. He 
 wants to cure the guilty disposition : he wants to 
 show us that we have not only to think of the deed, 
 but also of the motive and the desire. Not only 
 is there nothing anti-Jewish in this, but there is 
 even nothing anti- Rabbinic. But the teaching of 
 Jesus is contained in sayings of striking power, 
 and it would be foolish to ignore it. Thus the 
 doctrine, " Whoever looks on a woman to lust after 
 her has committed adultery with her already in 
 his heart," connects easily with Job xxxi. i and 
 with Rabbinic sayings as well. Jesus does not say 
 a new thing, be it conceded ; but he says a true 
 old thing with concentrated power and passion. 
 The parable of the widow's mite teaches nothing 
 more than a well-known and notable saying in 
 the Talmud. Why may we not, however, have 
 both ? Why may we not grow up familiar with both ? 
 More contentious are the stories and discussions 
 about the Sabbath and its observance, Dialectically, 
 as it seems to me, Jesus fails. But a deeper 
 principle is at stake. It would not have mattered if 
 the " cure " had been postponed for twenty-four hours 
 at the very most. This retort to Jesus was obvious
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 99 
 
 and convincing. But " the Sabbath was made for 
 man, not man for the Sabbath." This Jesus per- 
 ceived, as a later Rabbi perceived it likewise. But 
 Jesus, though he could not fully express it, saw 
 something more. He saw that man must interpret 
 the "outward" law so as not to conflict with the 
 " inner " law ; the " ceremonial " law so as not to 
 conflict with the " moral " law. He saw that there 
 is only one final law which we may express thus : 
 " Do the right thing when all the circumstances of 
 the case are taken into account." That may mean 
 the maintenance, or it may mean the violation, of 
 any particular ordinance. Jesus was feeling his way 
 towards that true freedom which emancipates us from 
 the code only to bind us the more closely to the 
 Law of highest Duty and to the Love of God. That 
 is the value to us of these Sabbath stories, and that 
 is their meaning. 
 
 The next element of value which we may note in 
 the teaching of Jesus can also be connected with his 
 prophetic r61e : I mean, its fire, its passion, its 
 enthusiasm, its tremendous thoroughness. We may 
 observe this element expressed in various aspects and 
 directions. 
 
 In one aspect it has sometimes been criticised as 
 if it were a sort of refined selfishness. Jesus seems 
 to speak as if the one great object of every individual 
 were, and should be, to save his soul, to avoid "hell," 
 and to obtain " heaven." And it is true that he does 
 speak like this. Nor is the teaching false. Clearly 
 if, as the result of your short earthly life, your future 
 life for all eternity is irrevocably determined, either 
 for supreme good and felicity, or for supreme evil 
 and unhappiness, it were surely folly not to look at 
 this life very largely from the point of view of the
 
 ioo LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 next. That is entirely logical. But though Jesus 
 does definitely take this line, he means more by 
 saving one's soul than the acquisition of happiness 
 or misery in the future. The life which leads to 
 heaven and happiness is supremely good in itself : 
 the life which leads to hell and misery is supremely 
 evil. The one life is living near to God ; the other 
 life is being progressively estranged from Him. It 
 is, therefore, not mere selfishness and wise investment 
 when Jesus urges men to lose their life in order to 
 gain it, to make any sacrifice for the sake of righteous- 
 ness. It is not selfishness, first, because, as we shall 
 emphasise in a moment, the higher life can only be 
 gained by ^selfishness, next because the higher life 
 is not mere constant and enduring felicity, but is 
 noble in itself, because it is the life which God desires 
 us to live, the life through which we learn to know 
 Him. Hence this passion for the obtainment of 
 heaven and the avoidance of hell may be more justly 
 represented as the passion for living the true life of 
 man, the passion for the highest righteousness, the 
 passion to quench low desires and to enkindle the 
 purest love. It does not mean anything different 
 from the simple injunctions, " Seek good and not 
 evil," " Be ye holy even as God is holy " ; but it urges 
 us to be good and holy with a peculiar force, an 
 immense enthusiasm and ardour. Nothing is to 
 stand in the way of the highest. There must be no 
 paltering and no compromise. For the sake of the 
 pearl of high price every lower consideration must 
 be regarded as of no account. If any temptation or 
 thwarting desire a lust of the eye or of the flesh 
 stand in the way, it must be ruthlessly cut down. 
 There must be no looking back upon the road ; there 
 must be no half measures and no faltering.
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 101 
 
 But there was another point about this highest 
 life, which Jesus put prominently in the foreground. 
 And it is a point of great originality. This life of 
 supreme devotion for supremest gain must be one of 
 pain and self-denial. " If any man would walk after 
 me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily 
 and follow me." 
 
 It is this touch of passion and extravagance, mani- 
 fested in a score of different ways in the teaching of 
 Jesus (as, for instance, in the love of enemy, in non- 
 resistance, in unqualified forgiveness, in " selling all," 
 in " hating " one's nearest and dearest, in complete 
 self-surrender and so on), which has most provoked 
 the criticism of Jewish thinkers, who regard it as 
 one-sided, exaggerated, impracticable, the morality of 
 angels, they tell us, and not of men. Nevertheless, 
 it is the element and the touch which most of all 
 have stirred to deeds of mercy and devotion, and 
 wrought the most varied exhibitions of self-sacrifice 
 and self-denial. This touch may not be literally 
 applicable to, or translatable in, the everyday life of 
 ordinary and average mortality, but it does not 
 necessarily follow that even to that everyday life it 
 cannot impart a certain transfiguration and stimulus. 
 It is the doctrine of All for the Highest. It is the 
 doctrine which, as we have seen, rejecting all com- 
 promises and half measures, declares that the one 
 duty of man is to search for the Kingdom of God. 
 If looked at in this light, it is little better than a 
 caricature to represent the doctrine as a refined 
 selfishness, as if it was nothing more than a burning 
 ardour for acquiring heaven and avoiding hell. Far 
 more justly might it be called the doctrine of service, 
 of whole-hearted devotion to the cause of righteous- 
 ness and the cause of God.
 
 102 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 The words I have just quoted : " If any man 
 would walk after me, let him deny himself, and take 
 up his cross daily and follow me," are solemn, un- 
 compromising, momentous. But surely not un- 
 Jewish or inhuman. Self-denial, self-sacrifice. 
 Unless the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is un-Jewish, 
 self-sacrifice is a Jewish virtue. But it can hardly 
 be gainsaid that it is only with the Gospels that self- 
 sacrifice and self-denial make their more permanent 
 and explicit appearance among the high moral ideals 
 of the world. 
 
 What do they imply ? What do they demand ? 
 I admit that they imply and demand complete self- 
 surrender, complete abandonment of all relations 
 and bonds which would, or which may, hinder a 
 man from absolute devotion to the one cause the 
 cause of humanity, of righteousness, of the divine 
 Kingdom call it by what name you will. This over- 
 mastering and overwhelming claim of the Highest, 
 which admits of nothing beside it or along with it, 
 is, moreover, expressed and illustrated in the Gospels 
 in two ways, both of which are unsympathetic to 
 Jewish sentiment, and both of which appear subversive 
 of all organised social life. The first of these is the 
 apparent, and, perhaps, the real, demand for poverty. 
 Jewish ethics would, I suppose, say, " use property 
 well," but do not give it all away. Jesus seems to 
 say, Abandon everything. " Every one of you that 
 renounces not all his possessions cannot be my 
 disciple." Whether these words are to be explained 
 as due to the special occasion, and intended only for 
 those who aspired to full and complete discipleship, 
 need not here be discussed. What is, however, in 
 any case true is that Jesus does demand a sitting loose 
 to, a detachment from, all material ties, possessions
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 103 
 
 and obligations, and that he does dwell with emphasis 
 upon the danger of wealth and of the acquisitive im- 
 pulse or desire. You cannot serve God and Mammon. 
 The second way in which the demand of self-sacrifice 
 is sometimes expressed wounds Jewish sentiment and 
 Jewish ethics more seriously still. The wound goes 
 deepest in the verse, " If any man hate not his father 
 and mother and wife and children and brothers and 
 sisters and his own life also, he cannot be my 
 disciple." The word " hate " need not be pressed. 
 Even as the soldier of the state has to neglect all 
 family ties and duties, when war is declared, so must 
 the disciple of God, on the same principle, be 
 prepared to sacrifice everything for the sake of the 
 ultimate cause and goal. Like Levi in the Blessing 
 of Moses, he must say to his father and mother, 
 "I have not seen them" ; he must refuse to "acknow- 
 ledge his brothers or to recognise his own children." 
 It is hard for us to conceive how the cause of 
 righteousness and God could possibly involve such 
 a neglect or refusal. Yet we can, at least, imagine 
 such circumstances, occurring not only in war, but 
 in peace. And this tremendous trumpet call, which 
 bids men shrink back from no sacrifice, and draws 
 the limit before neither their dearest possessions nor 
 their life, has been, is, and will surely continue to 
 be, impelling, coercive, sustaining. The voice still 
 rings across the ages. " No man who has put his 
 hand to the plough, and then looks back, is fit for 
 the Kingdom of God." For that Kingdom in 
 other words the Cause of Righteousness or of God 
 is to be regarded as like unto a merchant, who 
 seeks for pearls. When he has found one single 
 pearl of greatest price, he sells all that he has and 
 buys it. And who is he who is great in that
 
 io 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 Kingdom, and what is the method of obtaining it? 
 And once more the voice rings out, and destroys the 
 possibility of selfishness, as it utters the one word, 
 " Service." Whether Jesus used the phrase " Son of 
 Man " of himself, and what exactly he meant by it, 
 need not here be considered. Nor need we ask 
 whether he claimed to be Messiah, and whether Son 
 of Man and Messiah are for him interchangeable and 
 equivalent terms. But there can be no doubt that 
 the great saying ; " The Son of Man came not to be 
 served, but to serve," introduced a new and noble 
 ideal into the religious and moral history of the world. 
 The Messiah, a Servant. Not so had kingship been 
 conceived. The Suffering Servant of the Prophet had 
 not yet been commonly identified, if even, as yet, 
 ever identified at all, with the Messiah. But here 
 boldly, graphically, deliberately proclaimed is the 
 new truth that highest place means fullest service. 
 And even as the function of the Master, so must be 
 the call and the duty of the disciple. u Whoever 
 wishes to be great among you, let him be your 
 servant, and whoever of you would be the first, let 
 him be the slave of all." And so we may para- 
 phrase the words whatever is done unto the least 
 of God's children, is done as unto Him. 
 
 Is it possible that for these insistent and passionate 
 appeals there is no place in any Jewish heart, or that 
 they can exercise no effect upon any Jewish mind, 
 even though some of them are combined with a 
 personal claim which we cannot recognise, or with a 
 theology which we deny ? 
 
 It may even be doubted whether we can ignore 
 them with safety. For a morality, devised for "human 
 beings and not for angels," which takes account of 
 human limitations and weaknesses, seems to be a
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 105 
 
 morality which least of all enables men to overcome 
 their weaknesses and to transcend their limitations. 
 Ideals that can be fulfilled are not ideals at all. A 
 great poet has declared that a man's reach must 
 exceed his grasp. And a great scholar has observed : 
 " To abstain from vice, to cultivate virtue, to fill our 
 station in life with propriety, to bear the ills of life 
 with resignation, and to use its pleasures moderately : 
 these things are indeed not little. . . . Yet the 
 experience of the last age (the eighteenth century) 
 has shown us unmistakably that where this is our 
 best ideal of life ... it argues a sleek and sordid 
 epicurism, in which religion and a good conscience 
 have their place among the means by which life is to 
 be made comfortable." 1 Even if these words are ex- 
 aggerated, it is tolerably certain that the finger is here 
 laid upon a real error in the common Jewish criticism 
 upon the moral paradoxes and the spiritual passion of 
 the Gospel teaching. Paradoxes and passion are needed 
 to get out of human nature all of which it is capable. 
 By telling man that he must do what he cannot, you 
 make him do more than when you bid him do what 
 he can. By arousing his enthusiasm for a supreme 
 ideal you drive him forward upon the road towards 
 it. By kindling within him a passionate love and 
 aspiration for the heights and the pinnacles, he goes 
 forth, neglecting danger, heedless of all lower entice- 
 ments, glad and eager, upon his arduous quest. 
 Rules of prudence seldom create heroes. It is the 
 extreme, the extravagant, which more frequently 
 produces them. And for many it is the ideal and 
 the paradoxical, expressed in passion and fervour, 
 which lifts them, now and again, out of the average 
 
 1 Essays by Mark Pattison, vol. ii. p. 63. ("Tendencies of Religious Thought 
 in England " : this was Pattison's contribution to the famous Essays and Re- 
 
 uievvs, 1860.)
 
 106 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 attainment of every day, and making them in love 
 with greatness, enables them sometimes, if not to 
 achieve greatness, yet to attempt, in humble imitation, 
 small and unknown deeds of self-sacrifice and devo- 
 tion. The impossible ideal transfigures the actual, and 
 stimulates to those struggles which even repeated failure 
 is unable to stifle or to check. For the ideal strengthens 
 as well as ennobles : it impels and it consoles. 
 
 That the insistent demand of Jesus to give up life 
 in order to gain it would, in its true application, 
 promote unselfishness, we can discern from the sort 
 of action which he describes as the right and good 
 actions that lead a man to heaven. For our present 
 purpose it matters not whether the great panorama 
 unrolled in the last sixteen verses of the twenty-fifth 
 chapter of Matthew fell from the lips of Jesus or no. 
 They are a portion of the Gospels. Very strangely 
 are mixed up in them doctrine from which we turn 
 in horror, and doctrine to which we look up with 
 admiration. But we can neglect the judgment upon 
 the " goats " with its odious " Depart from me, ye 
 cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the 
 devil and his angels," as an awful aberration, just as 
 in Isaiah we neglect the horrid words, " And their 
 worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be 
 quenched." We concentrate our attention upon the 
 test which secures the admission of the sheep to the 
 Kingdom of blessedness. The test is purely moral, 
 purely " prophetic," in absolute accord with Hosea 
 and Isaiah. The hungry are fed : the thirsty are 
 given drink. The strangers are housed. The naked 
 are clothed. The sick and the prisoners are visited 
 (a true " Rabbinic " touch). Such deeds done unto 
 the least of men are done as unto God. So we may 
 paraphrase.
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 107 
 
 Social service, then, is the expression of the higher 
 earthly life which secures the blessed eternal life 
 beyond the grave. But there is something more. 
 The passion and enthusiasm of which we spoke as 
 the hall-marks of the Gospel teaching are displayed 
 in the bidding, not merely to help the poor and the 
 suffering when they come your way, but to seek them 
 out, and not merely to help the good, but also the 
 outcast, the pariah and the sinner. Hence it is that 
 all regenerative and redemptive labour and devotion 
 among the Gentile world look back, and look up, to 
 the words and the practice of Jesus as to their source 
 and their stimulus. And justly. This side of his 
 teaching, as this side of his life, are, so far as we 
 know, not merely sublime, but original. The repent- 
 ance of man and the forgiveness of God had been 
 nobly preached before. And now, in excellent 
 development, comes the demand not to leave the 
 sinner alone to repent if he chooses, but to cause him 
 to repent, to work regeneration and the new heart 
 within him by deeds of sympathy or words of love. 
 That is a new note, but assuredly a note which is not 
 antagonistic, but complementary, to what went before. 
 The sick need the physician, and the physic is love 
 love which may indeed be stern, but even in its stern- 
 ness is loving. The lesson conveyed by the story of 
 Jesus and the harlot in the seventh chapter of Luke 
 is that love can regenerate the sinful heart. And 
 this in two ways. Love evokes love. The loving 
 sympathy of Jesus evokes in her soul reverential love 
 and gratitude towards him, and his love and her love 
 together are adequate to change her heart, and to 
 effect her redemption. And because her heart is now 
 set Godward, Jesus can say to her, " Thy sins are 
 forgiven." The past is washed away.
 
 io8 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 In the previous chapter I alluded to that final 
 class of persons to whom Jesus, in the enthusiasm 
 and passion of his pity and his love (which only stop 
 short, with a truly human limitation, at his own critics 
 and antagonists), bids us extend our service and our 
 prayers. 1 " Love your enemies ; do good to them 
 that hate you." God " makes his sun to rise on the 
 evil and the good ; he sends rain on the just and the 
 unjust " (yes, even, O Jesus, upon the Scribe and the 
 Pharisee, upon the vipers and the children of hell) : 
 hence we must imitate God. (But what about the 
 goats and the eternal fire?) To the enemy, too, we 
 must be willing and anxious to render service, even 
 as the Samaritan ministered unto the Jew. And 
 we must act thus, as well for our own sakes as for 
 the enemy's. For our own sakes, because the highest 
 righteousness at which we are to aim must be free 
 from any possible taint of reciprocity or of selfishness. 
 No suspicion of a desired tit for tat. For the enemy's 
 sake, because it is implied, and elsewhere it is explicitly 
 stated, that evil can only be conquered by good, and 
 hatred can only be overcome by love. 
 
 With this demand of selfless benevolence may be 
 connected that element in the Gospel teaching, 
 showing itself in many ways and forms, which 
 modifies the old doctrine of proportional retribution 
 or tit for tat. That doctrine has its place and its 
 truths, but there exists, too, another and even higher 
 rule which cuts across it, and this higher rule has on 
 occasion to be observed by man, and is, so we may 
 believe, on occasion observed by God. The Gospel 
 is really developing here the Old Testament teaching 
 of the divine justice and the divine compassion. Just 
 as there is not to be a ceaseless tit for tat from man 
 
 1 See Appendix A.
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 109 
 
 to man injury requited by injury, and blow answered 
 by blow so are God's dealings towards man not 
 always on retribution lines. The rules of love are 
 not necessarily the rules of the law court. And this 
 violation of tit for tat may extend not merely to the 
 evil, but also to the good. It is not merely that God 
 forgives, not merely that He causes the sun to shine 
 and the rain to fall for the wicked as well as for the 
 virtuous ; not merely that He is good unto the un- 
 grateful and the evil. But even as man must not 
 look for recompense from man, so on earth, at any rate, 
 must he not look for recompense from God. After 
 they have done all that God has commanded them, 
 men must say, " We are servants : we have merely 
 done that which it was our duty to do." The 
 bargaining spirit, which reckons " so much virtue, so 
 much reward," must give place to the higher spirit 
 which perceives that God, for His own good ends, 
 may have to reward the late comer and the repentant 
 sinner at the same rate as, or in a higher degree than, 
 He will reward those who have toiled faithfully the 
 whole livelong day. Virtue must be its own reward : 
 "son, thou art always with me " ; that is enough. God 
 may like " to give unto this last, even as unto thee." 
 That is the higher and diviner righteousness, which 
 may supersede the lower righteousness of pro- 
 portionate requital, or tit for tat. And indeed, so 
 far as earth is concerned, the reward of the righteous 
 may be but sorrow and pain. 
 
 It is, perhaps, a more delicate question whether 
 anything may be learnt from the kinds of character 
 towards which Jesus was apparently more drawn and 
 from which he was more repelled. We shall all, at 
 any rate, approve the stress which he laid upon 
 simplicity and singleness of purpose. The new touch
 
 no LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 in morality that in order to enter the Kingdom of 
 God, or, as we might say, in order to be in a right 
 relation to God, we must become as little children, 
 will also appeal to us. For we also not uncommonly 
 say of some of earth's best or even greatest, " He 
 possessed to the end the heart of the child, humble, 
 simple, uncorrupted, pure." Something of this kind 
 was in the mind of Jesus. 
 
 Next we may observe that Jesus shows a peculiar 
 tenderness for the down-trodden, the despised, the 
 neglected, the outcast. Even if they are sinners, 
 their sins are at least as much the fault of others' 
 neglect and cruelty as their own. Here, too, he will 
 win our sympathy and our approval. Here, too, our 
 modern democratic feelings are in tune with him. 
 Still more heartily shall we be with him in his 
 evident feeling (though only incidentally evidenced) 
 for the inadequate status of womanhood in an oriental 
 society. We cannot approve his unqualified con- 
 demnation of divorce, if indeed he did so utterly 
 condemn it. But we shall surely approve of his 
 condemnation of the system whereby the man has 
 the power to divorce, while the woman has not. We 
 shall approve of a limitation of divorce to infidelity, 
 and to certain other grave reasons which could not 
 be within the purview of Jesus, and we shall desire 
 that these reasons should apply with absolute equality 
 to man and to woman. 
 
 We note next a certain gentleness in Jesus towards 
 some "fallen" women and even towards an adulteress. 
 Not the sternest and narrowest critic of his teaching 
 would suggest that Jesus was indifferent as regards 
 sexual purity. But we may gather that he perceived 
 that the cause of woman's fall is too often the vile- 
 ness and cruelty of man. Here, too, he is in line
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT in 
 
 with modern sentiment, which, to some extent, at 
 any rate, derives directly from him. 
 
 The sins which Jesus apparently cannot bear with 
 at all are selfishness, pride, cruelty and self-righteous- 
 ness. Realising the distance which separates the best 
 of us from the ideal, or from the perfect service of 
 God, he saw no hope of progress in the man who 
 thought that he had already achieved the ideal, and 
 that he served God with perfect propriety and exacti- 
 tude. The sinner who realised his sinfulness, who 
 still kept a humble heart, might be won to abandon 
 his sin and to enter upon the keen unmeasured service 
 of righteousness and of God. For the self-satisfied 
 proud formalist and precisian, who boasted to himself, 
 to others and to God of his own virtue and of his 
 difference from others, there was no chance of spiritual 
 redemption. It is quite possible that Jesus is some- 
 thing less than just, and something too pessimistic- 
 ally inclined, towards the formalist and the precisian, 
 towards contented respectability, and conventional, 
 average, pedestrian virtue. Nevertheless, there is 
 surely some truth in his preferences and his teaching : 
 the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector 
 enshrines a moral for all time. 
 
 If the teaching of Jesus is prophetic in its passion, 
 it is prophetic too in that unqualified and limitless 
 trust or faith in God, by which English words we 
 seek to translate the Greek word " Pistis^ That 
 faith, as Jesus used the term, was not faith in himself, 
 or belief in any theological propositions as to his 
 nature or his office, but it was primarily faith in GW, 
 and only secondarily faith in God's messenger and 
 servant which Jesus conceived himself to be. It is 
 the same spiritual quality which is extolled and en- 
 joined by the Psalmists : confidence in God, in His
 
 ii2 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 rule, His righteousness, His wisdom. But the quality, 
 the virtue, is deepened, as Jesus uses the term. By 
 faith he seems to mean a spiritual power, a confidence 
 which enables men to do things that otherwise they 
 could not do, that lifts them, as we say, above them- 
 selves. But it is also a confidence that God will help 
 them to do things, that He will give them strength to 
 do things, and therefore that they will be enabled to 
 do them. And, lastly, this confidence or trust, when 
 it is evoked, appears to be regenerative ; it can be 
 the basis and beginning of a new moral life : it turns 
 the heart towards goodness : it gives the power to 
 the will to quit the life of sin and to begin the life 
 of virtue. Justly may the past sins of a man, who 
 has begun to have faith, be forgiven, because by the 
 strength of that faith he will be enabled to overcome 
 his sinful tendency and to free himself from its 
 bondage. Is not this doctrine psychologically true ? 
 If a man has any right and ardent conviction about 
 God, either, for instance, that God will surely help 
 him, or that God greatly desires his repentance, this 
 conviction can become a power unto him, enabling 
 him, on the one hand, to conquer his sin and, on the 
 other hand, to fulfil the commands of God. Faith 
 causes works and precedes them. It can be a saving 
 faith, leading both to noble action and to happy 
 peace. This seems the doctrine not so much taught 
 as Implied in that frequent laudation of " faith " 
 which we meet with in the sayings of Jesus. And 
 this doctrine seems good and true, and only an ex- 
 tension and a deepening of doctrine which is already 
 taught within the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 
 In briefest outline and very unsystematically I 
 have now pointed out the chief elements of value in 
 the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 113 
 
 Gospels. We need, as it seems to me, have the less 
 hesitation in accepting them, and in admitting their 
 source, because we occupy towards the teaching as a 
 whole the vantage-ground of freedom. We have not 
 got to take it, or to leave it, in the lump. We can 
 accept one bit, and reject another. We can qualify ; 
 we can emend. We are not perturbed because Jesus 
 ignored the propriety of resistance to evil, and only 
 emphasised the virtue of attempting to overcome evil 
 with good. We can find a place and an hour for 
 resistance and punishment, for policeman and for 
 soldier, as well as for forgiveness and for concession. 
 We can perceive where to yield to the enemy would 
 be treason to the highest. We can know where to 
 fight is the noblest duty. We can understand that 
 punishment may be the best kindness to the evil 
 doer, and that there are kinds of evil doers who, 
 so far as our earth and our duty are concerned, 
 must even be simply removed, or kept under per- 
 petual lock and key. That the teaching of Jesus is 
 neither perfect nor complete : that it includes views 
 about God and His relations with man, which we 
 must reject and repudiate altogether, need not pre- 
 vent us from accepting, using, acknowledging and 
 reverencing, those portions of his teaching which do 
 appeal to us, and which we can regard as valuable 
 and as true. 
 
 As regards the second of the three portions into 
 which we have divided the New Testament, I mean 
 the Fourth Gospel and the Johannine Epistles (the 
 Apocalypse and the Acts, for our present purposes, 
 may be disregarded), a very few words will suffice. 
 For both Gospel and Epistles contain little religious 
 and ethical material which has any value for Jewish, 
 or Liberal Jewish, readers.
 
 U 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 The doctrine of God taught by the Fourth Gospel 
 is not ours. It does not develop Jewish doctrine, 
 but contradicts it. According to our view, the 
 Johannine doctrine debases the purity of Jewish 
 monotheism instead of developing it. We can only 
 pick out for appropriation the one famous verse : 
 (iv. 23) "God is a Spirit; and they that worship 
 Him must worship in spirit and truth." 
 
 Nor can we accept the doctrine of regeneration 
 or spiritual rebirth (e.g. iii. 3, 5). So too with the 
 Johannic mysticism. We can appreciate the beauty 
 of such passages as : " If a man love me, he will keep 
 my word ; and my Father will love him, and we will 
 come unto him, and make our abode with him," or, 
 " Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also 
 that believe on me through their word ; that they 
 may all be one ; even as thou, Father, art in me, 
 and I in thee, that they also may be in us." But we 
 cannot use such passages. They belong to another 
 theology, another religion, even to another world of 
 religious thought, than ours. Such truth as may be 
 in them we must obtain from other sources, as from 
 the sayings, " I dwell with him that is of a contrite 
 spirit," or, " Take not thy Holy Spirit from me," or 
 from Jewish mystics of a later age. 
 
 Ethically, as many of its interpreters have re- 
 cognised, the Fourth Gospel has astonishingly little 
 to teach. Its painful dualism and its doctrine of 
 predestination forbid repentance or forgiveness find- 
 ing any salient place in its pages. Nevertheless, 
 within the ranks and limits of the disciples, the 
 brotherhood and the believers, it does teach in a few 
 most noble passages an exalted doctrine of love. 
 And this doctrine we can appropriate and universalise. 
 It is odd that just as commentators have to point out
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 115 
 
 the limitations of Old Testament "love," so have they 
 to point out the limitations of Johannine "love." 1 
 To my mind the Johannine limitations are, in one 
 sense, worse. They are less natural, na'lve and 
 primitive : they are dogmatic, reflective, artificial. 
 They give an early theoretic basis to the awful 
 practice in Christian history of hating and persecut- 
 ing the heretic and the unbeliever. If the Old 
 Testament " neighbour " only means fellow-country- 
 man, the limit of love was broken down in the Law 
 itself by the inclusion of the resident alien. And 
 from the resident alien it is easy to advance further. 
 But to break down the barrier which separates the 
 children of light for whom Jesus can pray, and the 
 children of the devil, who are left, with complacency 
 and scorn, to their unfortunate destiny, would mean 
 the destruction of the entire scheme of Johannine 
 theology. Nevertheless, in themselves, and remember- 
 ing, or in spite of, their limitation, the great passages 
 in Gospel and Epistle about love make noble reading 
 and noble doctrine. We can admire, appropriate 
 and adopt them. What can be finer than this ? 
 " This is my commandment that ye love one another, 
 even as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man 
 than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 
 Or these passages from the Epistle ? " God is love : 
 and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God 
 abideth in him." This is a mysticism which we can 
 appropriate : the teaching that God is love is in full 
 tune with Old Testament teaching that He is loving. 
 " There is no fear in love : but perfect love casteth 
 out fear." " He that loveth not his brother whom 
 he hath seen cannot Jove God whom he hath not 
 
 1 The best Christian critics and commentators ao so now without hesitation. 
 Cp. Proost. " Deze liefde " (i.e. the Johannine love) " geldt slechts den onder- 
 lingen kring en is beperkt tot de vrienden." Theologisch TigdscArift, 1917, p. 209.
 
 n6 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 seen. And this commandment have we from him 
 that he who loveth God love his brother also. For 
 this is the love of God that we keep His command- 
 ments : and His commandments are not grievous." 
 Through morality to religion, and back again from 
 religion to morality. True and noble doctrine, and 
 in full accord with the finest Old Testament teaching. 
 It is impossible within the limits of this essay 
 to discuss the teaching of Paul. I cannot enter 
 upon the question whether there is anything or 
 nothing for Liberal Jews to appropriate in his doc- 
 trine of faith and grace, or of mystical union with 
 Christ. Though Paul's antagonism to the Law and 
 his antithesis of Faith and Law are for us obsolete, 
 we have risen above them it does not necessarily 
 follow that his conception of Faith or of Grace is 
 in itself of no value to us. For one thing it is almost 
 impossible that any fundamental spiritual conception 
 of a great and original genius like Paul should 
 have no elements of value even for those who are 
 far removed from his age, his conflicts, or his creed. 
 But there I must leave the matter, for to enter 
 upon it at all would mean a lengthy exposition 
 for which there is now no opportunity. Many 
 Jews have, I think, a sort of an idea that Paul's 
 doctrine of faith (which they falsely interpret to 
 mean a mere belief in certain propositions about 
 the death and resurrection of Christ) led him to 
 depreciate and to ignore " morality." Even a casual 
 reading of Paul's writings would show them their 
 error, and over and above the one great Pauline 
 doctrine which we have yet to emphasise, Liberal 
 Jews can find much to admire and to appropriate 
 upon the purely ethical side of the Apostle's teaching. 
 It is only necessary just to allude to the famous
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 117 
 
 paean on love in the thirteenth chapter of the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians. To that we may add 
 the sayings, " He that loves his neighbour has ful- 
 filled the Law. Love works no ill to his neighbour : 
 love, therefore, is the fulfilment of the Law. Be 
 not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good " 
 (Romans xiii. 8, 10, xii. 21). Very noble and 
 important is Paul's teaching, won from his own 
 experience, of constant contentment, constant joy. 
 The contentment which the Apostle means is a sort of 
 satisfied independence of mind, a self-sufficiency in all 
 circumstances and a rising above them. " I know," 
 he says, " how to be abased, and I know also how 
 to abound ; in everything and in all things have 
 I learned the secret both to be filled and to be 
 hungry, both to abound and to be in want. I 
 can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me " 
 Philippians iv. 1 1-13)- " Rejoice," he says, " in the 
 Lord always: again I say, Rejoice" (Philippians iv. 
 4). Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, had said, 
 " Happy are ye when men shall reproach you and 
 persecute you. Rejoice and be exceeding glad : for 
 great is your reward in heaven." So Paul said : 
 " Let us rejoice in our tribulations " (Romans v. j), 
 and he speaks of himself " as sorrowful, yet always 
 rejoicing, as having nothing, yet possessing all 
 things" (2 Cor. vi. 10). In all his affliction he 
 " overflows with joy " (2 Cor. vii. 4). The doctrine 
 of joy in suffering may be misapplied, but it contains 
 a glorious truth ; it is a fine achievement of human 
 nature. Very striking are the little compendia of 
 ethics which Paul sometimes gives at the close of his 
 letters, as, for instance : " Admonish the disorderly, 
 encourage the faint-hearted, support the weak, be 
 long-suffering toward all. See that none render unto
 
 n8 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 any one evil for evil : but always follow after that 
 which is good, one toward another, and toward all. 
 Rejoice always : pray without ceasing ; in everything 
 give thanks. . . . Prove all things ; hold fast that 
 which is good ; abstain from every form of evil " 
 (i Thess. v. 14-18, 21, 22). We may also profit 
 by Paul's counsels of charity and forbearance in 
 matters of external observance. " If because of meat 
 thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in 
 love. If meat makes my brother to stumble, I 
 will eat no flesh for evermore, that I make not 
 my brother to stumble" (Romans xiv. 15 ; i Cor. 
 viii. 13). The relations between Liberal and 
 Orthodox Jew may sometimes be smoothed by calling 
 these and similar fine passages to mind. Paul was 
 well seized with the prophetic doctrine of values. 
 " Nothing is unclean of itself : save that to him who 
 accounts anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. 
 The Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, 
 but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy 
 Spirit. Whether therefore ye eat and drink, or 
 whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God " 
 (Romans xiv. 14, 17; i Cor. x. 31). How noble 
 are those truly Prophetic, partly, too, we may say, 
 those Deuteronomic, words, " He is not a Jew 
 who is one outwardly ; neither is that (true) 
 circumcision which is outward in the flesh : but 
 he is a Jew who is one inwardly ; and (true) 
 circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not 
 in the letter ; whose praise is not of men, but of 
 God" (Romans ii. 28, 29). 
 
 But, for our present purposes, the great and 
 momentous contribution of Paul to religious develop- 
 ment was his pronounced and emphatic universalism. 
 He broke down the barrier (it is true by erecting
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 119 
 
 another) between Jew and Gentile : he put all 
 believers in Christ upon an equality, whether they 
 were Gentiles or whether they were Jews. That in 
 his sense we do not believe in Christ, that to us all 
 men are alike God's children, whatever their creed, 
 must not blind us to the greatness of his achievement. 
 We must not be captious or hesitating in acknowledg- 
 ment and praise. " Is God the God of Jews only ? 
 Is He not the God of Gentiles also ? " " For there is 
 no distinction between Jew and Greek : for the same 
 Lord is Lord of all and is rich unto all that call upon 
 Him" (Romans iii. 29, x. 12). Before and "in" 
 Christ, or, as we should say, before and with God, 
 there cannot be, and there is not, " Greek and Jew, 
 circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, 
 bondman, freeman, male and female " (Col. iii. 1 1 ; 
 Gal. iii. 28). 
 
 To this universalism, in spite of its partial limita- 
 tion to those who believe in the Messiahship of Jesus, 
 the Liberal Jew cannot refuse to render his homage. 
 He will not refuse to recognise its enormous signifi- 
 cance, or to realise that, whether we like the fact or 
 no, it established a world religion. Judaism had, so 
 far, not been able to solve the puzzle of the universal 
 God and the national cult. Paul cut the knot. He 
 cut it, it is true, by setting up dogmas which darkened 
 the purity of monotheism, and opened the door for 
 many subsequent evils both in religion and morality ; 
 but yet he cut it. We will not deny to him his meed 
 of glory. 
 
 Yet it is only fair to point out that neither 
 Rabbinic particularism nor Pauline universalism was 
 complete. In Rabbinism there are universalist 
 elements of great moment and significance ; in 
 Paulinism, of no less moment and significance, there
 
 120 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 are elements of particularism. Liberal Judaism has 
 combined the good elements, and has rejected the 
 evil elements, of both Rabbinism and Paulinism. 
 
 Paul doubtless declared that in the Messiah Jesus 
 there is neither Jew nor Greek : he made the new 
 religion independent of race. He broke down the 
 shackles which had so greatly hindered the diffusion 
 of Judaism beyond the limits of a single nation. He 
 showed that religion was something gloriously wider 
 than any single people. But, in destroying one kind 
 of shackles, he created another. In shattering old 
 fetters, he forged new ones. And these new fetters, 
 though related to morality, were yet distinct from 
 it. All who believe in the Messiah Jesus are on an 
 equality, be their race, their social position, or their 
 sex, what it may. But what of those who do not 
 believe in him ? These are left in, or relegated to, 
 the outer darkness. And just as the Jews were 
 tempted to declare (in order to save the moral 
 situation) that every heathen was of necessity a 
 sinner, so were Christians soon tempted to describe 
 those who rejected and even those who were 
 ignorant of Christ. The unbeliever, not because 
 he is of a particular race, but in virtue of his un- 
 belief, is a child of perdition and of sin. And, 
 in some ways, this particularism, when " faith " is 
 partly degraded to an intellectual assent to certain 
 theological dogmas and subtleties, is more shocking, 
 more calumniating to the goodness of God, than the 
 particularism of the Rabbis. 
 
 Moreover, the fetters of this Pauline Christian 
 particularism proved more heavy and more powerful 
 than the fetters of race. The Gospel became more 
 pitiless than the Law. And the Christian fetters lasted, 
 with small breaks and loosenings, till modern times.
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 121 
 
 Some dubious exceptions were made for Socrates 
 and Plato, and a few others of the heroes of Greece 
 and of Rome, but neither the ancient nor the 
 mediaeval Church ever enunciated the doctrine : 
 " the righteous, be their religious beliefs what they 
 may, shall have a share in the blessedness of the 
 world to come." 
 
 The Rabbis, however, to their great credit and 
 glory, broke down their nationalistic particularism, 
 even while the credal particularism of the Church 
 was hardly penetrated by any serious breach. In 
 an early Rabbinic treatise we find the immortal 
 saying : " The righteous of all nations shall have a 
 share in the world to come." In other words : not 
 genealogy, but conduct, is the passport to heaven. 
 It is true that a Rabbi could hardly have conceived 
 a man as righteous who did not believe in One 
 God. But, nevertheless, not religious belief, but 
 conduct, is made the condition. The righteous : 
 he it is who is " saved." Righteousness not race, 
 not belief that is what God cares for, looks to and 
 demands. 
 
 And this saying, so great and august in its 
 simplicity, won its way gradually more and more, 
 and became the official doctrine of the Synagogue 
 from comparatively early times. Long before any 
 Church said : " It matters not what a man believes : 
 God looks to his deeds," Judaism, without making 
 the antithesis in so many words, had asserted the 
 doctrine which it implies. Rightly may Rabbinic 
 apologists quote over and over again this single 
 illuminating sentence. It did not at first mean all 
 that they make it mean : to attempt to find modern 
 toleration in the Talmud is absurd and unhistoric, 
 but nevertheless this single sentence meant a noble
 
 122 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 meaning even to its first author, and it gradually 
 grew to mean more and more. 
 
 The universalism of Liberal Judaism derives, 
 therefore, both from Paul and from the Rabbis, 
 though it has moved far beyond both. For to us 
 universalism does not stop short before the redemption 
 of every human soul : and if we clothe our faith in 
 sensuous terms, we should say, " The sinners of every 
 faith and nation shall have a share in the world to 
 come." 
 
 I have called this chapter, " Liberal Judaism and 
 the New Testament," and the words were intended 
 to imply that I could not enter into any detailed 
 consideration of the life or the character of Jesus. 
 I have only spoken briefly and scrappily of his 
 teaching : the character and personality behind the 
 teaching have not been alluded to at all. Neverthe- 
 less, it would be undesirable that this most important 
 question should be wholly passed by or slurred over. 
 
 To the Christian, Jesus is much more than a wise 
 and noble teacher. He is considered to be the 
 exemplar of absolute goodness, the exhibition of the 
 divine. Even to those to whom he is God, he is 
 also " very man," and they regard his earthly life as 
 the manifestation of divine perfection. And even 
 the Unitarians hold that never was any man so good 
 and noble as this man ; that in him we see the ideal 
 manhood realised at once and for ever. Not only 
 that no man ever spake as he spoke, but no man 
 ever lived and died as he did. He was more than 
 inspired, because in his flawless and sinless perfection, 
 the divine and the human permanently coalesced and 
 were as one. Even Unitarians would, I believe, go 
 as far as this. Jesus is the Master, not only because 
 his doctrine is a new departure, fulfilling and
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 123 
 
 improving all that was good in the old teaching, 
 not only because he laid down, with conscious and 
 deliberate authority, a supreme and perfect scheme 
 of religion and morality, but because he actually 
 lived the ideal life, so that " the imitation of Christ " 
 is for all times the ideal towards which his followers 
 and all men must strive. Than his life there can 
 be nothing higher, greater, nobler or more beautiful. 
 
 A new charity, a new delicacy, have arisen in 
 these latter years the delicacy which scruples to 
 enter into the sanctuary of another, and to expose 
 it to the strong light of criticism and of reason. If 
 Christian scholars have, so far, shown little scruple 
 of this kind towards the sanctuary of the Orthodox 
 Jew, the Liberal Jew may nevertheless feel this 
 scruple very keenly about the sanctuary of the 
 Christian. For he has drawn nutriment even 
 moral and religious nutriment from a civilisation 
 which the Christian ideal has helped to generate, 
 and he has also drawn nutriment from the venerable 
 documents in which the life and death of Jesus are 
 portrayed. Nevertheless his highest master is the 
 truth (as he sees it), and to truth, which is God, his 
 ultimate allegiance must be paid. 
 
 Professor Jowett once wrote : " There is an ideal 
 which we have to place before us intimately connected 
 with practical life .nothing, if not a life which 
 may be conveniently spoken of as the life of Christ." 
 This ideal the life of Christ expresses to every 
 Christian. He reads into it, and draws out of 
 it, the full content of his ideal. And sometimes 
 those who are unorthodox as regards the miracles 
 seem, as it were, to recoup themselves by an almost 
 excessive exaltation of the character and the teaching. 
 Just because the virgin birth and the bodily
 
 i2 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 resurrection and all the other miracles have vanished, 
 the uniqueness, novelty and utter originality of the 
 character, the teaching and the life, must be emphasised 
 by them all the more. For in what else can their 
 Christianity consist ? More especially in the Liberal 
 Protestant theologians of Germany, with their 
 habitual anti-Semitic tinge, have we observed this 
 tendency, to deepen the surrounding darkness, and 
 to magnify the brilliant light, in the most marked 
 and intensified degree. 
 
 But what does the outsider see ? What does the 
 man see, who tries with all his strength to be impartial, 
 and who has, at all events, this one great satisfaction, 
 that he has been criticised by the Jews for praising 
 too much and by the Christians for praising too little ? 
 
 First of all, this outsider has to say that, in his 
 opinion, there is a paucity of material, and, secondly, 
 that some of the material is uncertain. Important 
 critics have said in substance that Jesus was so 
 infinitely greater than his reporters, who misunder- 
 stood him so often, that we may safely ascribe 
 to him all the purest and best and noblest things 
 in the Synoptic Gospels, and reject anything which is 
 merely "Judaic," "contemporary," and inconsistent. 
 But this is a very dangerous canon of criticism. Some 
 of the best things may even belong to the reporter and 
 not to the hero. We cannot make our modern pre- 
 ferences the test for authenticity. Nor can we say of 
 any man that he never was inconsistent with himself. 
 
 What do we really know of the life of the man 
 who is said to have lived the most perfect and adorable 
 life that ever was lived ? Nothing more, practically, 
 than what we are told in the Gospel of Mark. And 
 how fragmentary, how small this is. In all prob- 
 ability all that we are told about him relates to one
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 125 
 
 single year of his life the last. And of this one 
 year, how much do we really know ? How many 
 incidents are related of it ? How many of these 
 incidents are above suspicion, and how many of them 
 are of -a kind in which high nobility of character is 
 revealed ? Very few. 
 
 In all probability the life of a peripatetic Jewish 
 teacher of the first century was not one of peculiar 
 hardship. In spite of a certain famous verse in 
 Matthew, there is no good evidence that, for the 
 greater part of his teaching career, Jesus had any 
 gigantic troubles and difficulties to encounter or grave 
 sacrifices to make. Then we come to the journey to 
 Jerusalem, the last days and the death. And here, 
 too, uncertainty dogs us still. We cannot tell for 
 sure whether Jesus went to Jerusalem with the 
 expectation of life and revealed Messiahship or with 
 the expectation of death. But, in spite of the famous 
 cry upon the cross, which can either be explained 
 away or regarded as unauthentic, let us suppose that 
 he went prepared for death. It is quite as probable 
 as, if not more probable than, the contrary hypo- 
 thesis. Who shall then deny the nobility of his 
 action, the beauty and the greatness of his sacrifice ? 
 
 But the outsider is compelled to declare that, even 
 so, we do not know enough of Jesus the records 
 are too small and too uncertain for us to assert 
 categorically that this man's life was unique, perfect 
 and unapproachable. The material shrinks together. 
 
 We may, if we please, call the ideal life and each 
 of us will make up his own ideal the life of Christ. 
 But to call the life of the historic Jesus the flawless 
 exemplar, the essence, the completion, the fulness, of 
 the absolutely perfect life, seems to me exaggerated 
 and impossible. It is not so much that there are
 
 126 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 one or two holes to pick in what we know. It is 
 not that there are a few easy (Christians would say 
 shallow) criticisms to make in this action of his or in 
 that. It is that what we do know (if " know " be 
 indeed the word) is so extremely small. An heroic 
 death, upon the one interpretation, is undoubted. 
 But can we speak of an heroic life ? Where are the 
 noble deeds? We cannot make a list of them, for 
 they simply do not exist. 
 
 Nevertheless, through the mist and the uncertainty 
 and the paucity of the evidence, we seem to see the 
 lineaments of a striking character. We seem to see 
 a man aflame with love of God and love of man, who 
 passed his short life, and encountered his awful death, 
 in their true and unflagging service. We seem to 
 see a man of singular purity of soul, and of absolute 
 sincerity of purpose. A large-hearted man, who gazed 
 into the deepest nature of righteousness, and realised 
 the very essence of true religion. A man who loved 
 and was beloved, who looked below the surface, and 
 could recognise the germs of goodness beneath neglect 
 and ignorance and sin. A hater of shams and 
 hypocrisy and formalism and conceit, yet, withal, a 
 man conscious of his own power, his own inspiration, 
 his own message and mission from God. A man of 
 great tenderness, of deep compassion, he cared deeply 
 for the waifs and strays, the flotsam and jetsam, of 
 humanity, who were often more sinned against than 
 sinning. Yet a strong man too, and a fearless, who 
 could denounce those from whom he differed, those 
 who opposed his teaching, and those in whom he saw, 
 or thought he saw, the sins he specially hated self- 
 righteousness, hypocrisy, formalism with the utmost 
 force, and with, perhaps, exaggerated violence. A 
 lover of children, and a lover of nature, simple,
 
 ii AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 127 
 
 serene and single-eyed ; no ascetic, no solitary, but 
 independent of material needs, detached, because his 
 higher duty, as he believed, demanded it, from all 
 human ties of family or state. He lived for his 
 fellow-Jews and died for them : he lived in obedience 
 to his mission, and in intimate communion with God. 
 A holy man, undoubtedly ; one who realised the 
 Fatherhood of God with vivid intensity, and lived 
 habitually as in His presence. 
 
 Such, apparently, was Jesus. Not perfect, not 
 sinless, but a striking personality, who left the deepest 
 impression upon his followers. Not for the adherents 
 of Liberal Judaism the one and only Master, not the 
 adored exemplar of all perfection, not the One Con- 
 summate Teacher, whose words must not be criticised, 
 subtracted from, or added to, but yet for all time, 
 and without question, a noble and illustrious Jew. 
 
 And now, returning to the book, of which Jesus 
 is the Hero and the Centre, let me say this one 
 more word. To develop seems easier than to lay 
 the broad foundations. We will not minimise 
 the greatness of the New Testament, or cheapen 
 the originality whether of Jesus or of Paul. But 
 when we compare the achievement of the Old 
 Testament with that of the New, we realise how much 
 greater is our obligation to the Old. When you 
 have won through to your monotheism, and to the 
 doctrine of the One Good God, when you have got 
 your Prophets with their weaving together of religion 
 and morality, when you have got your commands 
 and ideals to love God with all your heart, and 
 the neighbour and the resident alien as yourself, 
 when you have reached the ideals of justice and 
 compassion, of the clean hands and the pure heart, 
 why, then, it was, in a sense, comparatively easy to
 
 128 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 supplement, to bring together, to purify, to uni- 
 versalise. Only comparatively easy, of course ! 
 The achievements of Jesus and Paul (in spite of 
 some sad retrogressions) are great achievements. 
 But what we owe to them seems but little in com- 
 parison with what we owe to their Old Testament 
 predecessors. The bulk of our religion and the 
 bulk of our morality seem due neither to Jesus 
 nor to Paul, neither to Plato nor to Epictetus, but 
 to the sacred Scripture of the Jews. For Liberal 
 Jews and for Liberal Judaism, the Old Testament 
 remains primary and fundamental, the New Testa- 
 ment secondary and supplemental. For the Old 
 Testament contains the conceptions of the One God, 
 righteous and loving, of the service of God as 
 realised in the service of man, of justice and com- 
 passion and peace forming the content of social 
 righteousness, of the love of God and of our 
 neighbour and of the foreign settler within our 
 gates, of the sanctification of life through religion 
 and law and duty, of the divine forgiveness and 
 of human repentance, of the free access of man- 
 kind to God without go-between or mediator, of 
 communion with God, and of spiritual joy. These 
 doctrines, here enumerated, in no systematic order, 
 constitute the substance of Judaism and of Liberal 
 Judaism both to-day and to-morrow. These we 
 find in the old Hebrew Bible, which remains 
 our Bible still. The supplementary and comple- 
 mentary teachings in the New Testament we will 
 also make use of and frankly admire, but the Old 
 Testament, both in regard to what it says and to 
 what it does not say, to what it contains and to 
 what it omits, abides as the basis of our faith, as 
 our stronghold and our charter.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 I HAVE said, in Chapter II., p. 108, that the love and pity 
 of Jesus stop short of his own critics and antagonists. In 
 my little book on the Religious Teaching of Jesus (1910) I 
 had taken the same line. I pointed out that the " outcast " 
 was a "little one " whom God sought to save : the opponent 
 was an offspring of vipers and a child of perdition. I urged 
 that, except " in the way of sheer abuse and bitter vitupera- 
 tion, Jesus did nothing to win over to his own conception 
 of religion the Pharisees and Rabbis who ventured to criticise 
 and dislike him." I regarded this "abuse and vituperation " 
 as a mark of human weakness and human inconsistency. 
 I had said much the same in my Synoptic Gospels (1909). 
 And even to-day, after nine years of further reflection, I see 
 no reason to change anything that I then wrote. But partly 
 in order to show that no Christian can agree with me, I 
 added this note : " In a friendly review of my Synoptic 
 Gospels in the Nation the writer says : c When he blames 
 Jesus for breaking the law of love by vehemently denoun- 
 cing the Pharisees, the censure fails in psychological acuteness. 
 One had imagined that Martineau had given the death-blow 
 to this sort of criticism.' And a friend wrote to me: 4 I 
 do not feel quite as you do about the "Woes" upon the 
 Pharisees. These woes, it seems to me, were pronounced 
 on the class, so far as they possess the faults referred to in 
 the context, just as Jesus says elsewhere, "Woe unto you 
 when all men speak well of you." In neither case need 
 Jesus, it seems to me, be supposed to feel hatred of the 
 persons addressed, but only hatred of an attitude of mind ' ' 
 (Religious Teaching of Jesus^ pp. 53, 54, 1 68). 
 
 I asked Dr. Carpenter, the biographer, pupil, friend and 
 129 K
 
 130 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 successor of Dr. Martineau, what the reference was to which 
 the reviewer in the Nation alluded. Dr. Carpenter told me 
 that the reference must be to Book ii. chapters i. and ii. 
 of the Seat of Authority in Religion. Let us, therefor, see 
 what Dr. Martineau there argues that would invalidate my 
 remarks. 
 
 To begin with, Dr. Martineau seems to take the line 
 that the teaching of Jesus is necessarily perfect. Clearly, if 
 you assume a priori that a given character in history, and 
 the words which he spoke, are flawless and perfect, there is 
 nothing more to be said. Between such a person and one 
 who asserts the right to judge all men and all men's words, 
 and to judge them by ordinary canons of reason and 
 common sense, there is a great gulf fixed. There is no 
 common ground for debate and discussion. And the whole 
 tone of Dr. Martineau's pleading seems to show that this 
 was his belief: the teaching of Jesus was immaculate and 
 perfect. His reverence for the Master is beautiful ; but is 
 it scientific ? Nevertheless, Dr. Martineau cannot help 
 being aware that not all the words ascribed to Jesus in the 
 Synoptic Gospels are entirely consistent with each other. 
 But if the teaching is flawless, it must be consistent, and if 
 it is flawless, it must be flawless according to Dr. Martineau's 
 ideals of what flawlessness consists in. These ideals I might 
 incidentally mention are by no means the same as many 
 another commentator or theologian would hold. For 
 instance, Matthew xi. 28-30, which so many Christians 
 regard as not only compatible with flawlessness, but illustra- 
 tive of it, are regarded by Dr. Martineau as only gracious 
 and true if they were not spoken by Jesus. Therefore the 
 deduction is at once drawn : " Plainly we have here the 
 reflective experience of grateful disciples." The dangerous 
 subjectivity of this method of deciding authenticity is surely 
 obvious. But Dr. Martineau raises it into a regular canon 
 of criticism. It is, indeed, no new canon, and had already 
 been employed by others, themselves, like Dr. Martineau, 
 anxious to maintain the flawlessness of the Master's teaching 
 and character, according to their own particular (and highly 
 modern) conceptions of flawlessness. By Dr. Martineau 
 the canon is expressed thus : " Acts and words ascribed to
 
 ii APPENDIX 131 
 
 Jesus which plainly transcend the moral level of the narrators 
 authenticate themselves as his : while such as are out of 
 character with his spirit, but congruous with theirs, must 
 be referred to inaccurate tradition." Against this canon of 
 special pleading, which refuses to allow any inconsistency in 
 the teaching of the Master, which judges his ideals on the 
 most modern lines, which rejects the possibility that an 
 editor or compiler might have a momentary impulse of high 
 inspiration, how far more sober, more critical and more 
 valuable is the famous and pregnant canon of Wellhausen : 
 " Die Wahrheit bezeugt nur sich selber und nicht ihren 
 Autor." 
 
 But now, returning to the particular passages in the 
 Gospels my criticism of which has been challenged, let us 
 see how Dr. Martineau deals with them. He does not by 
 any means (as one would suppose from the review in the 
 Nation] accept and defend them in their entirety. He does 
 his best, but they make even him a little uncomfortable. 
 So he has to use his canon about them, in order to water 
 them down to that particular degree of fierceness which 
 he regards as compatible with /lawlessness and perfection. 
 Thus while the anti-Pharisaic discourses do "represent the 
 real attitude of Jesus towards the ecclesiastical teaching of 
 his time," yet they show "traces of later conformation" 
 (p. 671, . i, ed. 5). More definite still are the statements 
 upon an earlier page : " These antipharisaic discourses are 
 throughout tinctured with the feeling of the post-apostolic 
 time." And even more trenchant is the following : " Em- 
 bedded in these discourses there may be " (note " may 
 be ") " many a pithy saying, and many a piercing rebuke, 
 that really came from the lips of Jesus ; but the tone of 
 intense passion pervading them, with total disregard of all 
 times and seasons, is utterly at "variance with the ruling 
 affections and inward repose of his spirit" (italics mine). 
 The "moral enthusiasm" of Jesus "peals forth in the 
 august tones of wounded justice, not in the shrill rage of mere 
 vituperation" (italics mine : p. 661). 
 
 So far as Dr. Martineau is concerned, I might leave the 
 matter here. The reviewer has appealed to Dr. Martineau : 
 he is answered out of Dr. Martineau's own mouth. I do
 
 i 3 2 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 not think that I had used any worse or more condemnatory 
 expression than "the shrill rage of mere vituperation " ! 
 
 Let us, however, note how Dr. Martineau defends such 
 parts of the "antipharisaic discourses" as he would allow to 
 be authentic. The trouble is that he never tells us definitely 
 which those parts are, or whether what he means is that we 
 may assume that Jesus did severely condemn the Pharisees, 
 but that there has been a sort of general sharpening up of 
 his phrases, so that we cannot be sure of any particular 
 sentence, whether it has reached us in the form in which 
 Jesus spoke it. If that were the case, I could have nothing 
 further to say. The vipers and the children of hell and 
 other phrases of this kind would, I suppose, all belong to 
 the extra sharpening up. What, however, is left when the 
 sharpening up is removed ? And how does Dr. Martineau 
 deal with the indefinite remainder ? To begin with, he 
 assumes, and even magnifies, the moral obliquity of the men 
 whom Jesus attacks. If any one else were involved, a 
 critic such as Dr. Martineau would surely consider whether 
 it would not be natural and human for an enthusiastic in- 
 novator to exaggerate the faults in the characters of his 
 conservative opponents. He would ask whether the opponent 
 is ever really so black as he is painted by the passionate 
 reformer. He would discuss whether what may have been 
 wholly true of one or two, or partially true of three or four, 
 has not been unjustifiably extended to cover a whole class, 
 a whole section. But as the reformer is Jesus, Dr. 
 Martineau does none of these obvious and usual things. 
 Whatever Jesus said we must assume to have been perfectly 
 just! Hence we are told of "sanctimonious impostors," 
 " Pharisaic hypocrisy and ambition," " blind guides that at 
 once burdened and misled the people," "sacerdotal digni- 
 taries with their flaunting texts and empty pretences to 
 superior sanctity," "formal rigour and hollow semblance," 
 and so on. No attempt is made to ask whether all these 
 ethical horrors really apply to the large percentage of those 
 who opposed Jesus' methods and pretensions, and received his 
 condemnation and abuse. 
 
 Let us assume, however, that an enormous percentage of 
 Scribes, Pharisees and Priests were the sanctimonious im-
 
 ii APPENDIX 133 
 
 posters and wicked hypocrites which Dr. Martineau believes 
 them to have been, and the question still presents itself: was 
 the language which Jesus used towards them the sort of 
 language best calculated 
 
 () to cure them, or 
 
 (b] to stiffen them in their "iniquity" ? 
 Jesus undoubtedly hated the sin of unchastity. He hated 
 " the attitude of mind " of those who committed such sins. 
 It is clear, however, that he did not hate the persons who 
 had committed them. He denounced them with no " woes " 
 and no " vipers," such as the " woes " and the " vipers " with 
 which he denounced the Scribes and the Pharisees, not even 
 so far as " they possessed the faults " to which he raised 
 objection. 
 
 It may be said (i) that Jesus disliked the sins of hypocrisy 
 and sanctimoniousness and self-righteousness and formalism 
 more than he disliked the sins of passion ; (2) that these sins 
 are morally much worse than the sins of passion ; (3) that the 
 sinners of these sins are much less curable and redeemable 
 than the sinners of the sins of passion. All this may be 
 perfectly true, but it is also true is it not ? that these 
 worse sinners were human beings with souls worth saving. 
 The harder the nut, the more interesting the problem of 
 cracking it. Did Jesus go the right way about it ? At all 
 events, he went a very different way from the way in which 
 he sought to tackle the outcasts and the sinners of passion. 
 Why was abuse likely to cure the hypocrites ? Why was 
 the method of love out of the question with them ? Is it 
 not obvious to any unprejudiced person that Jesus wanted to 
 cure the outcasts, and that he loved them in spite of their sins, 
 
 I but that he did not love the " hypocrites," and that he did 
 not love them in spite of their sins ? And is not the reason 
 obvious ? The outcasts did not oppose him : the " hypocrites" 
 did. A most human reason, a most natural reason ; a reason 
 which has affected every reformer ; but yet a reason of human 
 weakness forgivable human weakness but not a reason of 
 flawlessness and perfection. 
 
 Nor when we turn to Dr. Martineau can we discover 
 any real justification for the "vipers" and the "children of 
 hell." He says, for instance : " Whoever lives, like Jesus,
 
 134 LIBERAL JUDAISM n 
 
 straight out of a spring of affection which needs no rules 
 while it is aflow, and cannot use them when it is dry, is 
 necessarily impatient of the moral mimicry that puts on 
 the grimaces and does the postures of goodness without 
 the essence behind " (p. 680). No doubt. Such a one is 
 "necessarily impatient." And perhaps all the more im- 
 patient if these Bad People are his critics and antagonists ! 
 But it does not follow that "necessary impatience" is the 
 highest moral attitude, or the most efficacious to produce 
 redemption. It may be quite true that he "indignantly 
 exposed " the sins of these Bad Sinners ; it may be quite 
 true that it was "impossible" that his "antipathy" to 
 "formal rigour and hollow semblance" should be "anything 
 less than intense." But it does not follow that the anti- 
 pathy which, in the case of these particular people, did 
 not distinguish between the Sin and the Sinner, was not 
 only "intense," but wise, and flawless, and efficacious for 
 redemption. On another page Dr. Martineau most rightly 
 distinguishes between the supposed " leniency " which Jesus 
 showed " exclusively towards outcast sin " and his very differ- 
 ent attitude towards "sin in its court dress," etc. etc. etc. 
 (there follow a magnificent paraphrase and exposition of 
 such sin). "Did he address himself," asks Dr. Martineau, 
 to this sin "as the physician to heal it or as the judge to 
 condemn it ? " To this question my reply is that he addressed 
 himself to it solely as the judge, and not only to " it," the 
 sin, but also to the sinner. The one sort of sinner he tried 
 to heal, the other sort he only condemned and abused. Dr. 
 Martineau himself seems to feel that all is not quite settled 
 and satisfactory by his first question, so he follows it up with 
 a second. " Or rather did he not, by the sharpness of his 
 condemnation, identify himself with the voice itself of con- 
 science and of God, and so bring into play the only living 
 power in which healing could be found ? " This sentence 
 apparently means that the condemnation which Jesus em- 
 ployed was, nevertheless, in these cases, the best method to 
 bring about healing. From which opinion I can only, with 
 all respect, venture to differ. I believe that the condemna- 
 tion was neither calculated nor intended to work redemption. 
 Of course, if, with Dr. Martineau, you first edit the condem-
 
 ii APPENDIX 135 
 
 nation, and remove " the shrill rage of mere vituperation " 
 (including, I suppose, the "vipers" and the "children of 
 hell "), you can do what you please with the remainder. But 
 is this a critical method of procedure ? Is it permissible ? 
 Is it not better with Oskar Holtzmann frankly to grasp the 
 bull by the horns, and, e.g. as regards many of the phrases used, 
 ot alleged to have been used, by Jesus in Matt, xxiii., to 
 sa/ : " Das sind Kampfreden, die ebenso hyperbolisch sind, 
 wie wenn Jesus sagt, dass die Pharisaer Mucken seihen und 
 Kameele verschlucken . . . Wenn die Fuhrer der Pharisaer 
 w'rklich mit keinem Finger an die Lasten geruhrt hatten, 
 die sie andern auflegen wollten, so hatten sie schwerlich die 
 Ehre und den Einfluss gewonnen, die sie tatsachlich gehabt 
 haben." 
 
 For these reasons I am unable to see that my Strictures 
 upon the language of Jesus fail in psychological. acuteness, 
 or that Dr. Martineau has in any way succeeded in "giving 
 the deith-blow to this sort of criticism." 
 
 Finally, I must still venture to hold that, as regards 
 " loving your enemies," Jesus and does not this prove his 
 humaniiy ? found it far easier to preach than to practise. 
 I am no less grateful for, and no less an admirer of the 
 preaching, though I might have been still more grateful for, 
 and a st.ll keener admirer of, the practice. We have no 
 recorded instance of Jesus praying for his enemies, his real, 
 actual enemies, the Scribes and Rabbis and Pharisees. He 
 was humanly inconsistent, as no end of great teachers and 
 reformers both before him and after him. Shall I be 
 answered by the noble "Father, forgive them, for they 
 know not what they do" ? But is the authenticity of that 
 verse abo\e much suspicion ? And are we sure who the 
 objects of forgiveness were ? Was it the Roman soldiers ? 
 Or was it the Jewish populace ? Even if the second sup- 
 position fe true, there is no conscious inclusion of their 
 religious leaders, the Scribes, the Rabbis, the Priests, the 
 Pharisees. Turn the matter as you will, and try your 
 hardest ; pu cannot show that Jesus loved, and sought to 
 heal, and freely forgave, and prayed for, those who opposed 
 his teaching and denied his claims.
 
 Ill 
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND RABBINICAL 
 LITERATURE 
 
 LIBERAL Judaism, as we have already seen, does not 
 desire to cut off its connections with the past. Like 
 all historic religions, it draws some of its strength, 
 and much of its inspiration, from the days of long 
 ago. If some of its difficulties arise from its keeping 
 in touch with former generations, this keepng in 
 touch gives it colour and distinctiveness and power. 
 It is not the creation of to-day or of yesterday : it 
 is a development ; it has a long history at its back. 
 Its outward expression, its forms and institutions, are 
 the outcome of growth and of gradual change. Its 
 doctrines, too, are still mainly the old doctrines, 
 deepened, enlarged and purified, but yet funda- 
 mentally the same. 
 
 I have discussed the relations of Liberal Judaism 
 to the Hebrew Bible. I have also, in shortest and 
 roughest outline, considered its relations to :he New 
 Testament, to that collection of Greek documents 
 which forms the second portion of their Bible to the 
 great majority of our fellow-citizens in Europe and 
 America. 
 
 I desire now to speak of the relation of Liberal 
 Judaism to that huge collection of writirgs which 
 
 136
 
 Hi RABBINICAL LITERATURE 137 
 
 can be conveniently lumped together under the 
 generic denomination of Rabbinical Literature. 
 Beginning roughly with the opening of the common 
 era, and extending to the seventh or eighth century 
 after Christ, this literature has a place of great 
 importance in the religion of Orthodox Judaism. 
 For in it is comprised and included that Oral 
 Law, which, according to the official dogma of 
 orthodoxy, was as much divinely revealed to Moses, 
 and therefore as ancient and as authoritative, as the 
 Pentateuch itself. Orthodox Judaism to-day seldom 
 alludes to this strange and erroneous doctrine : the 
 Oral Law, as a body of enactments divinely revealed to 
 Moses, and handed down from him, unwritten but 
 unforgotten, has been suffered to drop away into 
 the limbo of obsolete dogmas. It has not been 
 given an official burial, but has been allowed to 
 wilt and fade in the fresh air of knowledge and en- 
 lightenment. Nevertheless, the laws and enactments 
 embodied in the Rabbinical literature, at a later age 
 codified and systematised, are still recognised by the 
 orthodox synagogue as binding upon its adherents 
 such of them, at any rate, as are applicable to condi- 
 tions of exile. They are still regarded as more or less 
 divine, and unsusceptible of modification or abolition. 
 Indeed, the laws are more sacred and more divine 
 than the ideas and conceptions upon which they rest. 
 It is much less necessary to believe exactly as our 
 Rabbinic forefathers believed than it is to follow 
 their religious customs and practices. Yet the ideas 
 and conceptions, although placed on a distinctly lower 
 level of importance and authority, are yet regarded 
 with considerable respect and admiration. More 
 especially is frequent effort made to establish their 
 superiority, and if possible their priority, to the ideas
 
 138 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 and conceptions of the New Testament. And at the 
 same time, and with some gentle and forgivable 
 inconsistency, it is sought to show that they are 
 very modern and up-to-date ideas, singularly free from 
 the supposed limitations and errors of nationalistic 
 prejudices, or of the prepossessions and peculiarities 
 of antiquity. The Rabbinical literature is darkly 
 alluded to as a mass of beauties, nobilities and truths, 
 to which its few chosen students rightly devote their 
 lives. 
 
 How, then, does Liberal Judaism regard this 
 literature ? What is our attitude towards it ? There 
 is a peculiar initial trouble about it to which it is as 
 well to call attention at the start. 
 
 An ordinary person can read the Old Testament 
 and the New. Any educated person, whether Jew 
 or Christian, may be expected to have read, though 
 not to have studied, these books. They are translated 
 into every language, and they are not so very long. 
 When, then, the student or the scholar proceeds to 
 talk to the ordinary person, or to the ordinary 
 educated person, about these books, he may assume 
 a general acquaintance with them, perhaps even some 
 familiarity with certain parts of them. But the case 
 is very different when we turn to the Rabbinical 
 literature. It is of vast size : only a few scholars 
 have read it, or are familiar with it, all. Only 
 portions of it have been translated, and many of 
 these portions only into one particular language. 
 For various reasons some of which will be presently 
 noted even these translated portions are familiar, 
 and are likely to be familiar, to comparatively few 
 Jews, even of those who know the languages into 
 which these portions have been translated. Only one 
 small book, as a whole, is familiar to many persons,
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 139 
 
 and I fear that that one small book the Pirke Aboth, 
 or Sayings of the Fathers is not familiar to the mass 
 of Liberal Jews, because, while it is included, as a 
 whole, in the Orthodox Prayer Book, it is not, I 
 think, included in any Liberal Prayer Book. This 
 omission is, in some respects, a pity. 
 
 It is desirable briefly to consider the reasons for 
 this lack of acquaintanceship. They are many. 
 
 The Rabbinical literature is, on the whole, much 
 more remote from us than even the Old Testament 
 or the New. From various causes it does not so 
 readily hook on to, and connect itself with, our 
 Western life and our Western point of view. The 
 Old and the New Testaments have, in a certain sense, 
 
 (become part and parcel of our modern civilisation 
 and thought : we can hardly escape from their 
 influence even if we would. That is not the case 
 with the Rabbinical literature. 
 
 Again that literature is not only huge in size, 
 but it is also very formless. It is, as a whole, 
 rambling, discursive, inartistic, amorphous. 
 
 Thirdly, while it has many great 'things in it 
 great thoughts well and nobly, or at any rate, 
 well and quaintly, said, it is not great as a whole. 
 Nor is any one book in it great, as Isaiah or 
 Aeschylus or the Fourth* Gospel is great. But it is 
 only great literature which translates well. 
 
 Lastly, while it embodies many great and fine 
 ideas, it also contains a very great deal which is to 
 us tiresome, unsympathetic, ugly and obsolete, which 
 We do not believe in, which we have got beyond 
 or superseded, which does not concern us, which 
 is out of relation to our lives. 
 
 To the Liberal Jew, or indeed to any Jew, the 
 sharp contrast between the Old Testament and
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 the Rabbinical literature is something like the 
 contrast, for the Christian, between the New 
 Testament and the works of the Church Fathers. 
 In some ways the Patristic literature may be a little 
 less remote, because the original language is Greek 
 or Latin, and because its component parts are books 
 with the unity of a single author and a single mind. 
 They are also less formless. Yet even they are 
 only read by a few scholars. Except, perhaps, the 
 Confessions of St. Augustine, hardly one is familiar 
 to the ordinary educated person. Nevertheless, I 
 for one, Liberal Jew as I am, or, shall I say, just 
 because I am a Liberal Jew ? am not satisfied with 
 the existing condition of affairs. Still less should 
 I be satisfied to see the Rabbinical literature more 
 and more neglected, progressively and increasingly- 
 unfamiliar, and sinking gradually into a complete 
 desuetude and oblivion. A few scholars, even a 
 few Liberal Jewish scholars, should still read that 
 literature and study it. And a somewhat more 
 numerous class, standing between the pure scholar 
 and the ordinary educated man, should also know 
 and read something of that literature ; some of it 
 in the original, a good deal more in translations. 
 This in-between class is dependent upon the pure 
 scholar. And as regards the Rabbinical literature 
 it has to be said that the modern scholar the 
 modern Jewish scholar has not done his duty to 
 the world. He has not done all he could do, he 
 has not done that which could, or has to, be done, 
 to make his subject alive and real and valuable 
 even within the limits of the possible to the in- 
 between class and, through that class, to ordinary 
 educated men. You cannot make the Rabbinic 
 literature as alive as Amos or as Plato, but you
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 141 
 
 can make it more alive than to most of us it now 
 is. And to do this is the duty of the scholar. He 
 has to show its connections with other literatures 
 and with modern and Western ideas. He has to 
 point out the parallels and the contrasts, to reveal 
 the new in the old, the ore in the dross, the fine and 
 deep thought in a strange and unfamiliar wrapping. 
 He has to edit Rabbinic books with modern notes, 
 and on the lines of the best and most illuminating 
 editions of the Greek and Latin classics. He has 
 to translate them, and not to regard it as beneath 
 his dignity to translate them, any more than a 
 Jowett and a Jebb thought it beneath their dignity 
 to translate Sophocles or Plato. It is idle to com- 
 plain of the neglect of Rabbinical literature, if the 
 scholar does not himself do his best to make that 
 neglect unjustifiable. Then the in-between man, 
 when he is given his tools, the good editions and 
 translations, will mediate between the scholar and 
 the ordinary educated person, and he will bring the 
 Rabbinical literature more, and yet nearer, home ; 
 he will, so far as he can, diffuse it and make it 
 known. It is 'not to the credit of the Jews that 
 the most useful, suggestive and wholly modern 
 edition of a Rabbinic treatise, as well as the most 
 available translations of great portions of the 1 
 Midrash, are from the hands of Christian scholars. 
 
 The Rabbinic books, like other books, are the 
 shells and outward coverings of certain ideas, 
 doctrines, aspirations. Indeed, it is these ideas, 
 doctrines, aspirations, which are so especially im- 
 portant in Rabbinic literature, because the form 
 of the literature is so unattractive and so valueless. 
 We can study Sophocles for his form and artistry 
 quite apart from his ideas. No man would study
 
 I 4 2 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 the Rabbinic literature from that point of view. 
 It has no artistry. And perhaps the very title of 
 this chapter of my book should not be, what is the 
 relation of Liberal Judaism to Rabbinic literature, 
 but what is the relation of Liberal Judaism to the 
 ideas, doctrines and aspirations the religious ideas, 
 doctrines and aspirations which are contained in 
 that literature, or which can be educed from it. 
 
 As Liberal Jews we ought to be capable of 
 impartiality. We, especially, from our past and our 
 present, should be able to judge Rabbinic literature 
 fairly. " Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in 
 malice." Its faults we shall see, but we should not 
 exaggerate them. Its virtues should neither be 
 minimised nor magnified. For we are in a position 
 of vantage. And that is why Liberal Jewish scholars 
 of Rabbinic are so necessary and desirable. We are 
 neither too near nor too far. We have no dogmatic, 
 barbed-wire entanglements, whether as adherents or 
 as opponents. We have, or we should have, no 
 prejudices, as thick and thin defenders, upon the 
 one hand, nor again have we, or should we have, 
 prejudices, as out and out antagonists, upon the 
 other. Legalism is not our passion or our banner. 
 But also it is not to us a red rag to a bull, as it is 
 to so many of our Protestant friends. So we should 
 be open-eyed enough to observe clearly and gauge 
 fairly both the merits of Rabbinic literature and 
 its defects, with philosophic calm, historic apprecia- 
 tion and religious sympathy. 
 
 Especially, if there is any need or desire to study 
 or determine the relation of Rabbinic literature and 
 of its religious ideas with the religious ideas contained 
 in the New Testament, ought Liberal Jews to be 
 well situated for quiet and comprehensive judgment.
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 143 
 
 We ought to be freer and more impartial than 
 Orthodox Jews, on the one hand, or than Christians, 
 upon the other. We should be able to keep our 
 eyes open to all that is good and noble and original 
 and true in both literatures. We ought also to be 
 able to guard ourselves against reading a volume 
 into a sentence, against overpressing or ignoring 
 a context, against making a mountain out of a mole- 
 hill and a molehill out of a mountain. On the 
 whole, Liberal Jewish scholars have not, it must be 
 confessed, proved themselves quite as impartial as 
 might be wished or expected. They have leaned 
 rather heavily to the Jewish side. On the whole, 
 great scholars like Geiger or Kohler have tended to 
 render a fuller justice, and to pay a keener apprecia- 
 tion, to the Rabbis than either to Jesus or to Paul. 
 
 At every stage of every religion's development 
 there are rough edges. But those who live at each 
 stage, and are believers, are little conscious of these 
 rough edges. We see the rough edges in the religion 
 of our forefathers, but much less vividly in our. own. 
 There were several of these rough edges at the close 
 of the Old Testament, about the middle of the 
 second century before the Christian Era. We might 
 ask how far did the Rabbinic development of Judaism 
 smooth out any of these edges, or again, how far 
 is our Liberal Judaism to-day nearer to the Rabbis 
 than to the Bible ? 
 
 The Old Testament, a collection of writings, 
 extending over many centuries, ranging, let us say, 
 from 950 to 150 B.C. a space of time which separ- 
 ates 'us from Henry the First, King of England is 
 naturally a mass of inconsistencies and contradictions. 
 And none of these eight hundred years was a period 
 of systematisation in theology. Religion grew and
 
 I 4 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 changed not always, if generally, for the better : 
 but theories of religion were not put forward. The 
 doctrine of God and of His relation to man and to 
 Israel, the problem of evil, the doctrine of rewards 
 and punishments and the nature of sin, the con- 
 ception of the Messianic age, of life after death, of 
 the relation of the ritual to the moral, and of the 
 Law and its purpose, on all these points and on 
 several others the edges were left rough, uncut and 
 jagged. The teaching of Prophet, Lawgiver and Sage 
 had not been forced into any rounded compromise 
 or balanced unity. 
 
 Meanwhile, the destruction of temple and state 
 caused a violent break with the past. Something 
 of a new start had to be made, even if the religious 
 leaders of the time were only partly conscious that 
 they were making it. But it is a characteristic of 
 the entire Rabbinic period that the religion was 
 extremely unsystematic and undogmatic. If that is 
 a sign of life, the Rabbinic religion was alive with 
 a vengeance ! The edges continue extremely rough : 
 no philosophic attempt is made to smooth them and 
 trim them into regularity. It needed the incoming 
 of Aristotle through the Arabs to produce the theories 
 and systematisations of Maimonides and the other 
 mediaeval Jewish philosophers. Yet in spite of the 
 lack of theory and system, in spite of the many 
 inconsistencies and contradictions, there is more 
 religious unity, more religious agreement, in the 
 Rabbinic literature than in the literature of the Old 
 Testament. If we add 800 years to 150 B.C., and 
 call that the Rabbinic period, it would be easief and 
 more proper to speak of a Rabbinic religion than of 
 an Old Testament religion. Certain religious con- 
 clusions and achievements had been won in the Old
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 145 
 
 Testament period which were never again let go. 
 Thus, for instance, the doctrine of the One God, of 
 pure monotheism, is not fully attained in the Old 
 Testament period till half its span is run, but once 
 attained it is never lost. The comparative religious 
 unity and comparative religious consistency of the 
 Rabbinic period are the result of the travail of the 
 Old Testament period. But it must not be supposed 
 that this comparative unity and consistency mean 
 that the highest points of Old Testament religion 
 are all securely maintained, and that development 
 and variety proceed from these. It is unfortunately 
 not so. The comparative religious consistency and 
 comparative religious unity of the Rabbinic period 
 do not represent throughout the highest religious 
 teachings and the noblest religious conceptions of 
 the Old Testament. They do not, at any rate, 
 include and sum up and represent all those religious 
 teachings and conceptions of the Old Testament 
 which are nearest and most sympathetic to Liberal 
 Judaism. 
 
 A gulf separates us to-day from what we may 
 therefore roughly, but not quite illegitimately, call 
 the Rabbinic religion. It would be foolish and 
 inaccurate to ignore this gulf, or to seek to represent 
 it as smaller than it really is. 
 
 In some ways we are nearer to Isaiah than we are 
 to Akiba. What is it, then, which causes this 
 separation ? What makes the gulf? The gulf is, 
 I take it, mainly caused by two leading Rabbinic 
 conceptions : first, the conception of the Law, and, 
 secondly, the conception of Israel. Rabbinic legalism 
 and Rabbinic particularism are the two main causes 
 of the difference between our religion and theirs. 
 
 We know that there were some Jews who were 
 
 L
 
 146 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 in the service of Imperial Rome. We know, too, 
 that there were many proselytes to Judaism. We do 
 not, however, know anything about the religious 
 views of such persons, or of what theories they 
 formed and held about the relation of Judaism to the 
 Empire and to the State. Nor, so far as I am aware, 
 do we know anything of the relation of the Jews 
 from this point of view to the Parthian or Sassanid 
 rule. In the Rabbinic literature, though not in Philo, 
 the Jew is a Jew both religiously and nationally. 
 Rome is the enemy : the desire is for its destruction. 
 Not the faintest parallel to the modern position 
 emerges. Thus the gulf in this respect for it 
 touches religion as well as politics between us and 
 Rabbinism is very great. We who are English, and 
 want to be nothing less or more, are severed by a 
 great chasm from those who were always looking 
 back as well as forward, and who thought that God 
 cared more for the Jews than He cared for any other 
 race or people in the world. For it is this com- 
 bination of practical nationalism with religious par- 
 ticularism which separates us off from the Rabbis. 
 Judaism is to us a religion and nothing more ; to 
 them it was also the relics of a state that was 
 destroyed, the promise of a state that was to be. 
 God is to us not only One, but in the supremest 
 moral sense, Universal : to them too He was One, 
 but His practical relationship with Israel was not on 
 an ethical par with His theoretic unity. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are some points in which 
 Rabbinism is more modern than any part or teacher 
 of the Old Testament, not only in time, but also in 
 idea. It is occasionally much more modern than 
 its Christian contemporaries, or than any Christian 
 teachers up to a comparatively modern era. There
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 147 
 
 are some points in which we are nearer to Rabbinic 
 Judaism than we are to Isaiah ; there are some points 
 in regard to which we are even closely united with it. 
 In some things our views are its views, developed or 
 purified not necessarily always the views of the 
 majority of its teachers, but views found in its vast 
 literature more or less incidentally, yet genuinely 
 there, and not elicited from it by exaggeration or 
 homiletic travesty. 
 
 And more especially as regards the Law, we may 
 say that, though our view of the Law and the Rabbis' 
 view of the Law constitute, in great measure, the 
 greatness of the gulf between us, yet our view has 
 connections and affiliations with theirs. Our view of 
 the Law, our view of Legalism, is not the ordinary 
 Christian view. Nor is it, historically considered, 
 our own creation. It is a development. It is 
 evolved out of the old view, different though it be. 
 
 It is true, as Rabbinic scholars like to point out 
 to us, that " Torah " both word and thing is not 
 fully and properly translated by either Law or the 
 Law. Nevertheless, though Torah has a wider con- 
 notation than Law or Pentateuch, the divinity of the 
 Torah, to the minds of the Rabbis, fully includes the 
 divinity of the Pentateuch. To all the Rabbis the 
 perfection, Mosaic origin and immutability of the 
 Code contained in the Five Books was an un- 
 questioned dogma. The Pentateuch was not only 
 the first division of the Bible, but incomparably the 
 greatest and the most important. It was God-given 
 in all its parts. Its laws were the outflow of divine 
 wisdom and divine goodness. Even though the 
 reasons for them might not be apparent, it was pre- 
 sumptuous and wicked to question the obligation of 
 their fulfilment. It was needless and even wrong to
 
 148 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 ask why did God order the Israelites to abstain for 
 ever from eating pig. It was sufficient for Israelites 
 to know that He it was who did so order them, and 
 then, in loving gratitude and joyful obedience, to 
 fulfil the command. 
 
 It is unnecessary to draw out in detail the full 
 measure of the difference between such a view and 
 our own. It is far-reaching and profound. To 
 us the Law is neither Mosaic nor perfect. Instead 
 of the Prophets resting upon the Law, as the Rabbis 
 believed, we know that the Law rested upon the 
 Prophets. The Pentateuch as a whole, and a large 
 portion of the Codes which it includes, are later 
 than the Prophets, and were by no means, as the 
 Rabbis supposed, written down many centuries before 
 them. To the Rabbis the smallest ceremonial enact- 
 ment was as divine, and in ordinary circumstances- as 
 obligatory, as the Ten Commandments themselves. 
 To us many of these ceremonial enactments have only 
 an antiquarian and historic interest. They repre- 
 sent old customs, common in great measure to many 
 tribes and peoples of antiquity, which were incor- 
 porated into the codified Law. So far from being 
 the exclusive prerogative of Israel, especially thought 
 out for its benefit by Almighty God, they depend 
 at bottom upon hoary superstitions and practices, 
 which are found among large portions of ancient 
 and uncivilised humanity. In themselves they are 
 by no means peculiar to Israel ; they are not part 
 of its distinctive glory and inspiration. The differ- 
 ence between such a view of the Ceremonial Law 
 and the view taken of it by all the Rabbis goes 
 without saying. 
 
 Yet in spite of the perfect faith with which, so 
 far as we can make out, all the Rabbis accepted
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 149 
 
 the dogma of the divinity and perfection of the 
 whole Law, divers problems in regard to it passed 
 before their minds. It was natural that after Paul's 
 attack upon the very conception of Law and Legal- 
 ism as a whole, some of them, at any rate, should 
 have pondered upon the object of the Law as a 
 means in the divine education of the Jewish people. 
 What is the function of Law in morality and 
 religion ? It is clear that some of them had 
 meditated upon this subject. Closely related to 
 it was the purpose or object in particular of the 
 ceremonial sections of the Code book. For this 
 part of it was criticised, and had for long been 
 criticised, by heathen as well as by Christian 
 antagonists and neighbours. The circumcised, pig- 
 hating Jew, refusing to carry a burden or kindle 
 a fire upon the seventh day, was to many a pagan 
 the subject of derision and contempt. 
 
 Looking back, as they did, upon the past history 
 of their race, and contemplating the Pentateuch as 
 a whole, the Rabbis were able to reach points of 
 view about the Law which were superior to, and 
 more thoughtful than, anything which we find in 
 the Law book itself. The Code itself, for instance, 
 is silent as to the relation of the moral to the 
 ceremonial ordinances. The strangeness of the 
 greatest command of all "Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself" being followed by a trivial 
 injunction about clothes was clearly imperceptible 
 to the compilers of the Code. But though to the 
 Rabbis the obligation to fulfil the ceremonial was 
 no less great than the obligation to fulfil the moral 
 enactments of the Pentateuch, and though upon 
 certain ceremonial enactments, such as circumcision, 
 they laid the most tremendous importance, and
 
 150 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 fulfilled them with a peculiar joy, they were 
 nevertheless very well aware of the basic difference 
 between the two classes of laws. And they had 
 clearly advanced far beyond the Pentateuchal posi- 
 tion in ridding their minds of superstition. They 
 did not believe that any of the ritual laws had a 
 sort of magical virtue in themselves. Doubtless 
 that lower view existed among the common people 
 for long. But the Rabbis emancipated themselves 
 from it, and their own emancipation gradually 
 filtered downwards. To the populace the Tephillin 
 were charms and amulets, as the Greek translation of 
 the word sufficiently indicates. To the populace the 
 ashes of the red cow acted as sheer magic ; the 
 waters of purification were a conjuring trick. But 
 to the Rabbis all these enactments were the arbi- 
 trary, and yet the gracious, decrees of God. In 
 His own inscrutable wisdom, and for the benefit 
 of His people, He had chosen to institute these 
 commands. They were not magical sacraments, 
 and when the Temple fell, all of them that remained 
 in force needed no priesthood for their continual 
 observance. Nor did the execution of them exercise 
 the smallest compulsion upon the will of God. 
 That remained as free and as unfettered as before. 
 Nor did the observance of them by man give any 
 pleasure to God except in so far as God takes 
 pleasure in the obedience of His children. The 
 ceremonial laws were devised for man's benefit and 
 not for God's benefit, to influence man's will, not 
 to influence or to constrain the will of God. They 
 were given to man as instruments to lead to his 
 sanctification ; as reminders and aids to his obedience, 
 discipline and self-control ; as vehicles of spiritual 
 happiness and religious joy ; as outward forms to
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 151 
 
 make life beautiful and holy ; as protections against 
 passion and sin. 
 
 It is in these ways of looking at the ceremonial 
 Law that threads of connection and points of contact 
 exist between Rabbinic and Liberal Judaism. One 
 must be definite and honest. We have not the same 
 point of vantage as our forefathers. The Law can- 
 not be to us what it was to them. It cannot help us 
 as it helped them. For if you once believe that 
 God Himself, most solemnly, definitely and directly, 
 ordered you to do, or to refrain from doing, a 
 certain act, your attitude towards that command is 
 not the same as that of the man who chooses to 
 fulfil the command, but does not believe that God 
 Himself is its direct and immediate author. Liberal 
 Jews are in the position of that other man. In so 
 far, our observance, let us say, of the Law of un- 
 leavened bread, or of the Mezuzot, or of abstention 
 from food on the Day of Atonement, or of any 
 other dietary law, can never be the same thing to us 
 as to our believing orthodox brethren. (I emphasise 
 the word believing, for there are many -orthodox 
 persons who observe but do not believe, and their 
 case seems to me the weakest, and religiously the 
 least potent, of the three.) 
 
 Yet there is nothing in the principles of Liberal 
 Judaism which should, or which does, prevent us 
 from observing historic rules and laws which appear 
 to us to tend towards the religious ennoblement of 
 our lives, which appear to us to act in the direction 
 of discipline, sanctification or beauty. In each case 
 we shall ask whether the balance of advantage lies in 
 the continuance, or the abandonment, of the particular 
 injunction. But in the principle of the observance 
 of ceremonial rules and ordinances, in so far as the
 
 152 LIBERAL JUDAISM in 
 
 root idea at the bottom of the rule or ordinance is 
 not in conflict with the fundamental doctrines of our 
 religien, we shall be in agreement. We have no 
 quarrel with ceremonial ordinances as such ; we do 
 not consider that man is above them or beyond 
 them. Thus the abstention from leavened food 
 during Passover, or from all food during the Day of 
 Atonement, does not conflict with any fundamental 
 doctrine of our religion. We may fitly and wisely 
 continue the observance. That a person called 
 Cohen should not enter a house in which there is a 
 corpse does conflict with such doctrines (for we deny 
 both the distinction between priest and layman and 
 the theory of clean and unclean), and therefore we 
 most properly refuse to maintain the ordinance, and 
 we violate it consciously and of purpose. 
 
 The multiplicity of laws was to the Rabbis a cause 
 for congratulation. The more laws, the more 
 honour. God's gracious love for Israel was shown 
 in the number of ordinances that were given to it. 
 Its life was made beautiful and distinctive at every 
 turn by statutes and enactments. Always there 
 were reminders of God : something to be done in 
 conscious obedience to His holy will, in joyful grati- 
 tude for His peculiar love ; something to be done 
 which others did not do ; something to be done 
 which turned the common metal of life into gold, 
 which illuminated the drab commonplace of everyday 
 existence with a delightful and heavenly light. Such 
 was the theory, and, to some extent, such was the 
 practice. Suum cuique. Each religion, or each 
 phase of each religion, has its peculiar delights and 
 excellences. This particular theory of the Law 
 Liberal Judaism cannot accept. We cannot any 
 longer say, "The more laws, the merrier." In the
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 153 
 
 multiplicity of enactments we can no longer recognise 
 a sign of the divine favour. We can, however, 
 appreciate the conception of laws and observances 
 as a means of sanctification. And we can observe 
 that the theory and practice of the Law enabled the 
 Rabbis to reach a conception of life which is char- 
 acteristic of their Judaism, and may well remain a 
 characteristic of ours. 
 
 The occupations and actions of a man's life are to 
 be sanctified by 'divine laws. In other words, they 
 are to be sanctified by religion. Earthly life is 
 exalted and transfigured. From rising out of bed 
 till a return to bed, divine laws are to accompany 
 man in his daily pursuits. Thus life is no longer 
 ugly or common : laws make it beautiful and divine. 
 Laws sanctify man's animal instincts and passions. 
 The deeds they prompt become deeds which can be 
 wrought to the glory of God. Eating and drinking, 
 and the occasions of family and sexual life, are 
 glorified and de-animalised by the Torah. The crude 
 and raw material of human existence is made beauti- 
 ful by the ordinances of God. Earthly life is not 
 an evil, but a good : it is given by God for man's 
 welfare and enjoyment, for his discipline and happi- 
 ness. It is, indeed, a preparation for another life ; 
 a vestibule that leads to the hall ; but it is not merely 
 a preparation, it is also an end in itself. No human 
 action need be regarded as common or profane which 
 can be ennobled and associated with a Law. The 
 very make and environment of human life are no 
 longer to be depreciated as material. The material 
 is a vehicle for the spiritual. The two form together 
 a higher and inseparable unity. 
 
 Such seems to be the Rabbinic theory of life < 
 a much more developed, more conscious and more
 
 I 5 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 satisfying theory than anything to be found in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures. And this theory is still ours. 
 We too are optimists like the Rabbis. We too, 
 though, like the Rabbis, we may have seen and 
 experienced great evils, do not despair of life. We 
 too do not throw all our hopes into the expectation 
 of another life, but we are keen about, and we believe 
 in, the sanctification and the amelioration of this life. 
 We too seek to make daily life beautiful by religion 
 and the sense of God. 
 
 The Old Testament had left the theory of 
 material prosperity rather open. It was one of the 
 ragged edges of which I spoke before. We know 
 how a somewhat too cursory reading both of the 
 Old Testament and the New had caused a great 
 Englishman to evolve the well-known epigram : 
 " Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, 
 adversity is the blessing of the New." There is, 
 however, about as much truth in this epigram as in 
 most epigrams* The Rabbis materially deepened the 
 conception both of prosperity and adversity, and they 
 accomplished this deepening by the Law. We no 
 longer use their means, but we still largely maintain 
 their result. The joys of earth are not impure 
 because they are temporary. Prosperity is still a 
 blessing, but it must be the prosperity, not of the 
 animal, but of the man the man, that is, who, on 
 an animal basis, can erect a fabric which has touches 
 and gleams of the divine. The Rabbinic doctrine, 
 which thanks and blesses God for the sight of a 
 beautiful tree or for the enjoyment of a good dinner, 
 which seeks to surround family duties and ordinary 
 occupations with enactments and ordinances, embodies 
 and rests upon a profound conception. It attempts, 
 at one and the same time, to determine the quality
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 155 
 
 of human actions and to give them a peculiar dis- 
 tinction and glory. Take the simple instance of the 
 good dinner. Religion is not merely to glorify the 
 dinner by making man grateful to God, the giver of 
 good, the creator and sustainer of life. Religion is 
 also to make man temperate. He must enjoy as a 
 man and not as an animal. Moderation, self-control, 
 simplicity, absence of waste, decency in speech and 
 behaviour all these the religious good dinner of the 
 Law prompts and demands. Honesty in business, 
 the duties as well as the rights of property these 
 too are demanded and stimulated by the religion of 
 the Law. And in this close association of religion 
 with life, in this moral purification and spiritual en- 
 noblement of life by religion, Liberal Judaism takes 
 over, continues, and will, I trust, strengthen, vivify 
 and develop, the Rabbinic ideal. 
 
 We have seen that Liberal Judaism differs widely 
 from Rabbinic Judaism in its views about the Penta- 
 teuchal Law. And, in practice, Liberal Judaism has 
 asserted the obsoleteness of very many enactments of 
 which Rabbinic Judaism demanded the strict and 
 the faithful observance. Yet, as I have said, the 
 idea of Law in religion binds the two phases of 
 Judaism the old phase and the new together. 
 Liberal Judaism maintains the view that man can 
 never be completely a law unto himself; that he 
 can never dispense with the idea of compulsion 
 and of an " ought " ; that there is a law, which 
 is not only within him, but without ; that this 
 Law " ought " to be obeyed ; that man is never 
 completely free. Even to the best men a fresh 
 struggle may occur ; and this struggle means a 
 recognition that there exists a Law which says "Do" 
 or " Do not," which " ought " to be obeyed, but
 
 156 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 which a "lower" part of the self desires to throw 
 over and repudiate. 
 
 The recognition of the binding and authoritative 
 Law is the mark of humanity : above the animal ; 
 below the God. So long as man is upon the earth, 
 he can only approach nearer, but he cannot reach, 
 the stage when there will be absolute and constant 
 correspondence between what he wants to do and 
 what he knows he ought to do. In the Messianic 
 Age, according to the prophet, the Law will be 
 written upon the heart. At its advent, external Law 
 the very sense of any momentary or passing con- 
 flict between Law and Desire may disappear. But 
 the Messiah and the Messianic Age have not yet 
 come : they are in the dim and distant future ! Till 
 then there is the Rule of Law. 
 
 In that sense Liberal Judaism is still legal. 
 
 The Rabbinic literature appears to contain cer- 
 tain adumbrations of the doctrine just enunciated. 
 Paul censures the Law because it stimulates the 
 desire of disobedience. A Rabbi praises it for 
 the very same reason ! It is just possible that the 
 praise is a deliberate reply to the censure. Not to 
 eat pig is not enough. One should have the desire 
 to eat it, and yet one should refrain. In this con- 
 crete paradox the Rabbi meant, I fancy, to indicate 
 that the very object of the Law is to engender, first, 
 the conflict, and, secondly, the higher obedience 
 which the conflict is to produce. The victory over 
 desire is the glory of man. There can be no true 
 victory without struggle : there can be no inward 
 struggle without the conscious opposition between 
 duty and desire. If you refrain from eating pig 
 without effort, what moral good is yours ? It is 
 the conquest, the gradually easier and easier conquest,
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 157 
 
 of the desire to sin, which creates the moral per- 
 sonality, and constitutes the peculiar greatness, as 
 also the distinctive glory, of man. No battle, no 
 victory; no struggle, no crown. The Rabbis would 
 have been in complete sympathy with that famous 
 sentence of Milton in his Areopagitica where he 
 says : "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered 
 virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never 
 sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out 
 of the race where that immortal garland is to be 
 run for, not without dust and heat." 
 
 Hence the importance to the Rabbis of the 
 negative commands, the many restraints and pro- 
 hibitions, the countless " do not's," in which the 
 Written and the Oral Laws abound. It is true 
 that the ideal is to like to do, and to be, good we are 
 all with Aristotle in that but the Rabbinic notion 
 was that you cannot reach the highest stage without 
 passing through the lower. A mere instinctive 
 taste for goodness is not the highest that man can 
 attain ; the highest is the deliberate and rational 
 love of the good for its own sake. And that comes 
 from struggle and discipline : from a painful and 
 reluctant obedience to an obedience, which, like 
 God's obedience to His own nature, is immediate 
 and joyful, but also consciously willing and perfectly 
 free. 
 
 Goodness for its own sake was essentially a 
 Rabbinic ideal ; yet it was recognised that it could 
 not be achieved at once. It is no little remarkable 
 that, though the Rabbis lay as much stress upon 
 rewards and punishments as the writers of the Old 
 Testament, they rose to the conception of, and 
 invented a nomenclature for, disinterested virtue 
 Here too they pass beyond Old Testament limits,
 
 1 58 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 and here too Liberal Judaism can learn from them and 
 agree with them. The Rabbinic word, " lishmah," 
 " for its own sake," is a fine religious creation, of which 
 apologists and defenders of Rabbinic religion may 
 very justly be proud. To fulfil the Law joyously 
 and " lishmah " is the ideal. In fact, if " lishmah" 
 then of necessity in joy ; if in joy, then also "lishmah" 
 The joy of the Commandments is the reward of the 
 Commandments ; it is caused by, and involved in, 
 doing them for their own sake. So too we agree 
 that joyous duty for its own sake, neither for earthly 
 nor for heavenly reward, is the consummation of 
 morality. Nevertheless, the sense of duty first ; 
 the realisation of its obligation : first, be a slave 
 of duty, and realise your bondage ; then, be a son 
 of duty, and realise your freedom. First, submit 
 with a struggle ; then, submit with joy. The Law 
 is without you, and it constrains ; you obey it, but 
 not lishmah : but it is also within you ; more and 
 more you realise that it is your law, the law of your 
 being ; you accept it more and more freely ; more 
 and more you perform it joyously, lovingly, for 
 its own sake, lishmah. This passage or develop- 
 ment seems to be not merely accurate, but also 
 valuable. We should maintain it and aim at it. 
 We need to preserve, according to both Liberal 
 and Rabbinic Judaism, the compulsive nature of 
 duty, its disinterestedness and its joy. And all this 
 we do by the doctrine of the Law which is both 
 without and within, God's law and man's law too, 
 and by the doctrine of lishmah. 
 
 It would seem as if Theistic religions had to 
 oscillate between two statements, and from both 
 of them obtain fruit and truth. The first is, " Man 
 is akin to God." The second is, " Man is not God."
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 159 
 
 It may, perhaps, be said that, upon the whole, the 
 Old Testament and the Rabbinic literature tend 
 to give more habitual emphasis to the second than 
 to the first. The Law was given to man for his 
 joy and his glory : but it was also given for his 
 discipline and sanctification. It was given to man 
 because he needs it, because he is lower than God, 
 lower than the angels. Only through the Old 
 Covenant and in the keeping of it not by its 
 abrogation and disregard can he step forward into 
 the New. 
 
 The Law, according to Rabbinic teaching, is not 
 the strength of sin, but a protection against sin. We 
 too share this view though we translate it into more 
 modern terms. The consciousness, the conviction, 
 that the moral Law is both God's Law and my 
 Law, not merely mine and not merely His, help 
 me to fulfil it. If it were only a mere arbitrary 
 Law of the stronger to be executed on pain of 
 punishment and hope of reward I should have 
 no inward desire to perform its enactments ; I 
 should not bow down in willing surrender to its 
 compulsion, and do glad homage to its majesty. 
 If it were merely the Law of my own being, however 
 much I might recognise that in its fulfilment I best 
 realised myself, I might be more indifferent to its 
 commands. Why should I not do as I please with 
 my own will? But it is in the combination of its 
 aspects God's Law is my Law, and my Law is God's 
 Law ; the Law within is the Law without, and the 
 Law without is the Law within that its seductive 
 compulsiveness lies. Here is the secret of its 
 success ; the key to its sweet and persuasive 
 constraint ; here is the reason for the realisation 
 that bondage to the Law is also the highest freedom,
 
 160 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 and that he who is the most devoted servant of 
 God is also His child, that servitude is liberty and 
 submission is independence. 
 
 Thus to us too, adherents of Liberal Judaism, the 
 Law is still precious. It is a symbol of our free 
 surrender to the God who is our Master and our 
 Father, joyful acknowledgment that His will must 
 be ours. The Law, we admit, does, in one sense, 
 create sin. If we had no consciousness of right, we 
 should have no consciousness of wrong. The accept- 
 ance of the Law implies the possibility of breaking it. 
 But, in a higher sense, the Law helps us, as the Rabbis 
 taught and rightly taught, to dominate the evil 
 inclination, and to resist its solicitations. If we do 
 wrong because of the Law, much more do we do 
 right. The Law pulls us up, and drives us forward, 
 by its attractiveness. Majestic and beautiful, winning 
 and severe, it is, after all, only God Himself, reveal- 
 ing to us His will, and beckoning to us on the way. 
 The sense of wrongdoing is the consciousness of the 
 violated Law : but that very Law itself, because it is 
 divine, creates the balsam for the wound which it has 
 made. In adoring it we are helped to obey it. Our 
 worship of it prompts to its fulfilment. 
 
 We may next ask how far the intellectual element 
 in the Rabbinic legalism can still appeal to us. Has 
 Liberal Judaism any links with Rabbinism in this 
 particular ? We recall the immense stress laid by 
 the Rabbis upon the study of the Law. Much of 
 this study seems to us to-day to have been largely 
 futile. Our estimate of the worth of the Pentateuch 
 and of the Mishnah is so different from theirs that 
 it is not even easy to transport ourselves to their 
 point of view. It has become strange to us and 
 remote. " Turn it and turn it again," they said, " for
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 161 
 
 all is in it." We are very far indeed from believing 
 that all is in it ; we are very far from believing that 
 all that is in it has a permanent and abiding value. 
 I should imagine that large portions of the Talmud 
 might be unstudied for ever, without humanity being 
 the worse, or its progress diminished or retarded by 
 a single hour. 
 
 But apart from the particular object of our study, 
 how far do we believe that study is necessary in 
 religion generally ? We have, I think, to distinguish 
 two separate parts of the problem. Any religion is, 
 or will become, in a bad case if it has no men of 
 learning among its adherents. Every religion needs 
 its students as well as its saints. It needs head as 
 well as heart, brain as well as feeling. The learning 
 of the student must gradually filter down into the 
 many. The thinkers must keep the religion in 
 contact with all the best knowledge of the day. 
 They must consider the effects upon it of scientific 
 enquiry and historic investigation. They must 
 maintain and develop its theology, keep it vital, and 
 make it responsive to the needs of each generation 
 as it arises. The philosophers and thinkers must 
 see to it that the religion acquires a form and a pre- 
 sentment suited to the intellectual needs of the age, 
 that it is a religion which can satisfy the few as well 
 as the many, the wise and the enquiring as well as 
 the simple and the pure of heart. Just as the uni- 
 versity is necessary for the well-being of elementary 
 education, so are the theological seminary and the 
 men of learning and of thought necessary for the 
 well-being of religion. On this side of the question 
 it is unnecessary to dwell. Almost everybody would 
 agree with Rabbinic Judaism here. Nor can we 
 deny that it was study, and the value placed upon 
 
 M
 
 1 62 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 study, which kept Judaism alive through the weary 
 sequence of the centuries from the fall of Jerusalem 
 to the advent of the emancipation era. It was study, 
 and it was the student, who prevented the degrada- 
 tion of the Jews to a horde of illiterate and mind- 
 stricken outcasts with no faith in themselves and with 
 no inward regenerative power. Judaism owes its 
 preservation, and the Jews owe their fresh vitality, 
 to the study of the Law. It was this study which 
 gave them, and maintained for them, a spiritual ideal. 
 Even in the worst times there was always something 
 better than the mere keeping of body and soul 
 together, something better than the acquisition of 
 money with which to buy off the persecutions of 
 Christian rulers and the malignity of the Christian 
 Church. There was always a spiritual end, a spiritual 
 ideal the study of the Law. That study was, indeed, 
 Israel's strength and Israel's consolation, its sanctifi- 
 cation and its joy. And Liberal Judaism must look 
 to it that the importance of study and of an adequate 
 number of students is continuously recognised, that 
 our religion is still kept fresh and vital and growing, 
 still capable of satisfying educated men and women 
 in every age. Moreover, study and learning preserve 
 idealism : they are a high and necessary corrective to 
 materialism and the service of mammon : they prevent 
 the corruption of the Jews as well as the corruption 
 of Judaism. They are as useful a part of our equip- 
 ment as social service or charitable institutions. 
 
 But all this is only one side of the matter. 
 Rabbinic Judaism went further. The religion was 
 kept alive and developed by students, and it was 
 students who wrote the literature which we read. 
 They magnify their craft, and they tend to exalt 
 and exaggerate their own importance. They tend
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 163 
 
 occasionally to look down upon the ignorant, and to 
 identify piety with learning. In these exaggerations 
 we part company with them. It is not necessary now 
 to point out that a true love of God and of man may 
 be associated with a very minute modicum of know- 
 ledge. Most of us know many very good people 
 who are anything but learned, and even anything but 
 wise. A saintly clodhopper and a pious simpleton 
 are not necessarily contradictions in terms. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is something to be said upon 
 the other, upon the Rabbinic, side. Hillel's saying : 
 " An empty-headed man cannot be a sin-fearing man, 
 nor can an ignorant man be pious," taken literally, 
 is false. But, taken with grains of salt, it has its 
 measure of truth. Religion and Judaism call for the 
 mind as well as the heart. Intelligence must be given 
 to the service of righteousness and of God as well as 
 kindness. Love without insight may make many a 
 mistake. The foolish saint may be a reality, but the 
 wise saint is the ideal. It is not without justification 
 that the first prayer in the famous " Amidah " is for 
 understanding. How without it can we appreciate 
 the relative values of things or the true relations of 
 man to God and of God to man ? Mere feeling is 
 not adequately human : religion is by no means a 
 mere matter of the emotions. In his account of the 
 German theologian Schleiermacher, Dr. McGiffert 
 says : " He recognised that thinking and feeling 
 cannot be divorced, and that the religious man 
 inevitably thinks about his religious experiences, and 
 instinctively strives to give them some sort of intel- 
 lectual expression. Empty-headedness and thought- 
 lessness consort least of all with devoutness. You 
 will never call him pious, said Schleiermacher, who 
 goes about with his mind closed in stupidity and with
 
 164 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 no openness of vision for the world's life." l This, 
 to a large extent, is an accurate, if modernised, repre- 
 sentation of the Rabbinic position, and it is certainly 
 the position of Liberal Judaism to-day. We too 
 may rightly wage war upon stupidity, and especially 
 upon the stupidity which seeks to shelter itself under 
 the guise or mantle of religion ; we too may demand 
 in all matters of religious development, whether in 
 practice or in theory, " openness of vision for the 
 world's life." So we too may repeat the ancient 
 prayer with a lively faith : " Thou favourest man 
 with knowledge, and teachest mortals understanding. 
 O favour us with knowledge, understanding and dis- 
 cernment from Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, 
 gracious Giver of Knowledge." The intellectual 
 element in religion, upon which we, like our fore- 
 fathers, lay stress, is a heritage from the wise men of 
 the Old Testament and from the Rabbis of the 
 Talmud. With due reserves we will be careful to 
 maintain it. 
 
 Thus far we have only spoken of the Law in 
 one or other of its many aspects. For in any con- 
 sideration of Rabbinic Judaism or of its relation to 
 any other phase of type of the Jewish religion, it is 
 correct and inevitable that by far the largest place 
 should be occupied by the Law. The Law is the 
 central feature of Rabbinic Judaism, and hence the 
 Law must be the central feature in any discussion of 
 the relation of Rabbinic Judaism to Liberal Judaism. 
 
 A few words must, however, be said of other 
 matters. And first as to the Rabbinic conception of 
 God's relation to man, and of man's to God. Apart 
 from the particularism of Rabbinic Judaism, on 
 which I do not propose to dwell, what must be 
 
 1 The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas (1915), p. 75.
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 165 
 
 noted is that the Rabbinic conception of God, and 
 therefore of His relation to man, is frankly old- 
 fashioned in the sense that God's personality and 
 individuality are very strongly emphasised. No 
 philosophical considerations gave the Rabbis pause, 
 any more than they gave pause to Jesus, or at an 
 earlier age to Hosea. God knows Himself as God. 
 Omnipotent though He may be, He is yet sharply 
 distinguished, and distinguishes Himself, from the 
 world which He has made and which He rules. To 
 Israel, and to the Israelite, He is King and Father in 
 the very fullest sense of the words. He cares and 
 loves. He helps and forgives. He punishes and 
 rewards. The Israelite prays to Him, in the fullest 
 conviction that there is Somebody who hears and 
 responds to his prayers. The greatest Rabbis, or 
 rather all the Rabbis, small and great, thought of 
 God in the same simple personal way as Jesus did, 
 or as any simple man or woman does to-day, to 
 whom the words immanence, transcendence, self- 
 consciousness, mean nothing, but to whom the 
 words, " caring," " hearkening," " loving," " Father," 
 " Helper " and " Friend," mean a very great deal. 
 
 Yet every religion must have its philosophers and 
 its philosophic theologians, and any religion is in 
 evil case which does not possess therm It is for 
 Liberal Jewish philosophers to take the ordinary 
 Liberal Jewish conception of God and of His relation 
 to man, and to deepen and to purify it. They must 
 seek, not indeed to prove it, for I take it that in the 
 ordinary sense of the word the existence of God is 
 not provable, but at all events, to correlate it with 
 their whole conception of the universe, and to show 
 that it is a conception which is reasonable, consistent 
 and profound.
 
 1 66 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 But while this is the work, and the urgent work, 
 for our philosophers to do, I venture to believe even 
 now, and with the work of the philosophers out- 
 standing and undone, that if Judaism is to continue, 
 the Jewish conception of God must continue likewise. 
 It is very daring, and perhaps it is foolish and illiberal, 
 to put limits to the development of man's conception 
 of the divine Being. Nor will I do this. I will only 
 put limits and that very tentatively to the flexi- 
 bility of Judaism. I am inclined to believe that no 
 religion can rightly call itself Judaism be the pre- 
 fixed adjective what it may wherein God does not 
 remain a Being to whom the worshipper can pray, 
 and whom he may not still legitimately call, " our 
 Father and King." God must still, if not reward and 
 punish, at all events, rule and care and help and love. 
 And the love of God for man must be answered by 
 the love of man for God. Far be it from me to 
 suggest that Judaism should clip the wings of human 
 speculation, or to predict its results ; my contention is 
 simply this, that a religion whose God can no longer 
 honestly be conceived as Father and King, ruling, 
 caring, loving, may indeed be the religion of the 
 future, but that it could not be called Judaism. In 
 Rabbinic Judaism the adjective represents the Law. 
 Abandon the Law in the Rabbinic sense, and the 
 adjective falls. But the substantive remains. And 
 Liberal Judaism may flourish, though Rabbinic 
 Judaism may crumble away. But abandon God in 
 the sense defined, and it is not the adjective which 
 falls, but the noun. It is no longer a question of 
 Rabbinic or Liberal : it is a question of Judaism. 
 With the Father and King to pray to, with the 
 Father and King to reverence and love, it stands or 
 it falls.
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 167 
 
 Under these circumstances there is much in the 
 Rabbinic conception of God's relation to man, and 
 of man's to God, which Liberal Judaism can find 
 fruitful to study, to adopt and to enlarge. And it 
 may be noted that particularist and national though 
 the Rabbinic conception on the whole may be, it is 
 also broadly human. By this I mean that when the 
 Rabbinic teachers turned away from, or were not 
 thinking of, the distinction between Israel and the 
 nations, or the oppression of Israel by the heathen 
 vorld, they often speak quite simply of man as man. 
 Sometimes even they almost imply that it is with 
 the man as such, and not with the man as an Israelite, 
 that God enters into relations. At any rate, their 
 conceptions of God's relation to man, and of man's 
 to God, can often still be used by us, and are often 
 still helpful to us, even though our views as to God's 
 relations to Israel are very different from theirs. 
 
 It is impossible to deal with, or speak of, these 
 views in detail. It is sufficient to say that, so far as 
 jod's rule and fatherhood, His righteousness and 
 compassion, His response to prayer and repentance, 
 re concerned, there is little in which Liberal Judaism 
 reed deviate from, and there is much in which it can 
 aajree with, the teaching of the Rabbis. We need 
 rot go to the Gospels for the conception of a loving 
 Father, who grieves over human sin, and is ready 
 to welcome the penitent sinner. The mass of the 
 Gentiles may have learnt these conceptions from the 
 Gospels : the Jews learnt them from their own 
 teachers, along their own lines. Only in so far as 
 tte unrepentant sinner is concerned do we push the 
 lo/e of God further, and demand more from its 
 w>rking, than the Rabbis. God to us is the Father 
 of the sinner as well as of the saint.
 
 i68 LIBERAL JUDAISM HI 
 
 More important are our deflections from, or 
 developments of, their doctrine in respect of the 
 conceptions of forgiveness, punishment and reward. 
 On these subjects, in spite of occasional brilliant 
 flashes (such as the familiar, " The reward of a sin is a 
 sin, the reward of a transgression is a transgression ") 
 their teaching is still too outward for our modern 
 judgment. They still cling too closely, for the most 
 part, to the clumsy methods of proportion and tit for 
 tat. We do not ask that the outward issues of our 
 sin may not befall us. We have a deeper view of 
 atonement and a more far-reaching conception of 
 law. Yet we are grateful to the Rabbis for the steps 
 they took even though we have gone further upon 
 the same road to transform the priestly and partly 
 superstitious ceremony described in the sixteenth 
 chapter of Leviticus into the most spiritual day 
 consecrated to religious observance in the calendar 
 of any religious denomination. And the Rabbinic 
 teaching about repentance one of the brightest jewels 
 in their crown still remains, for the most part, valid 
 and inspiring for us Liberal Jews to-day. Reward 
 and punishment we look at with different eyes : yet 
 we too hold that the effects of sin are evil, and the 
 effects of righteousness are good, and that these 
 effects are of God's institution and will. We toe 
 hold that there is a correspondence or relation 
 ultimate and in the nature of things betweei 
 righteousness and happiness, and also between miser? 
 and sin. In that deeper and more fundamental sens 
 we too believe that God punishes and rewards. 
 
 As regards the relation of man to God, Rabbinc 
 Judaism co-ordinated and made more definite tte 
 teachings of the Old Testament. Two points aie 
 worthy of mention, for both are important, and both
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 169 
 
 may still be maintained by Liberal Judaism to-day. 
 The Old Testament had bidden men fear God and 
 bidden men love Him. It had made, and had become 
 conscious of, no contrast between these two emotions 
 and commands, nor had it declared that the one was 
 greater than the other. The religious perceptions of 
 the Rabbis became more delicate and alert. Their 
 psychology was more developed, and to them the 
 possible contrast between fear and love was quite 
 apparent. Nevertheless, they were not inclined to 
 dispense wholly with fear. Their fear was doubtless 
 what we call reverence, though they did not get so 
 far as, and were not able, to coin a special word for 
 that higher and purer form of fear which is alone 
 applicable to God. In a familiar Rabbinic passage it 
 is said that man must both fear God and love Him ; 
 he must both rejoice and tremble in the fulfilment of 
 the divine commands. On the other hand, it is freely 
 recognised and carefully stated that love is higher 
 than fear, and it is argued that the excellence of fear 
 is that it may lead on to love. Even as the divine 
 commands are to be fulfilled from a lower motive, so 
 that they may at last be fulfilled from the highest 
 motive (" lishmah" for their own sake), so is a man 
 to fear God in order that he may end by loving Him. 
 Liberal Judaism does well, I think, to maintain this 
 teaching, and not to abandon fear (or reverence) in 
 its insistence upon love. The late Dr. Frankl once 
 preached a sermon in which Mahommedanism was de- 
 scribed as the one-sided religion of Fear, Christianity 
 as the one-sided religion of Love, and Judaism as the 
 complete and balanced religion of both Love and Fear. 
 However this may be as regards the two other re- 
 ligions, it is accurate as regards Judaism. In respect 
 of our relation neither to our earthly nor to our
 
 i yo LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 heavenly Father is it necessarily true that perfect 
 love should, or does, cast out a measure of reverential 
 fear. Awe before the divine holiness is helpful in 
 the development of our own.. 
 
 No less noticeable than the Rabbinic combination 
 of fear and love is its creation of that religious motive 
 for human action which they call " Kiddush ha ' Shem," 
 the Sanctification of the Name. It was a motive 
 which operated very powerfully both positively and 
 negatively ; leading to the avoidance of certain sins so 
 as not to profane the Name, to the performance of 
 certain virtuous and heroic deeds (martyrdom being 
 the salient example) in order to sanctify it. There 
 is every reason why this fine creation of Rabbinic 
 Judaism should be maintained by ourselves. So long 
 as the conception of God is fully ethical, the concep- 
 tion of the sanctification of His name will be thoroughly 
 ethical as well. All men may rightly desire to glorify 
 God by their devotion to righteousness. The living 
 principle and source of righteousness are sanctified by 
 the vindication of righteousness, at the cost of suffer- 
 ing and sacrifice, by God's human children. But the 
 sanctification of God's holy name and nature is especi- 
 ally fitted to be a Jewish motive of conduct when it 
 is brought into close connection with the concep- 
 tion of Israel as the servant and witness of God. 
 Appointed by God Himself to be the witnesses and 
 confessors of His Unity and Righteousness, the Jews 
 pollute their charge and its author by their sin ; they 
 sanctify Him by their virtue. Sin in them is peculiarly 
 reprehensible : self-sacrifice and the passion of good- 
 ness are peculiarly incumbent and appropriate. It 
 is for the Jews to show that the highest goodness 
 springs from the Jove of God, and may be wrought 
 with the direct purpose to glorify and sanctify His
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 171 
 
 name. Like the principle of " Kevanah" or devotion 
 in prayer, which is also a noble creation of the 
 Rabbis, the doctrine of "Kiddush ha Shem " appears to 
 add a certain fragrance or distinction to their religion 
 for which we may be duly grateful, and which we 
 must be careful by no means to let drop. It is in 
 these delicacies of the spirit, quite as much as in more 
 specific dogmas, that the essence or distinctiveness of 
 a religion can be displayed. 
 
 There are several other Rabbinic doctrines which 
 we shall find stimulating and sympathetic even in our 
 own age. They will fit on to, and combine with, 
 our own conception of Liberal Judaism. It may be 
 only a thought here, a casually-thrown-out teaching 
 there, but though unsystematic, undeveloped and 
 occasional, they deserve preservation, and reward the 
 reader. The Old Testament left many edges ragged, 
 and sometimes a Rabbinic saying may show how 
 'these ragged edges are to be smoothed. It left many 
 doctrines one-sided and incomplete, and sometimes a 
 Rabbinic saying may show along what lines these in- 
 completenesses may be filled out. Again, there are 
 many noble Biblical conceptions which are, I will 
 not say improved upon, but, at any rate, deepened, 
 illustrated, confirmed by the Rabbis. So we may 
 find, in the vast Rabbinic literature, teachings con- 
 cerning the omnipresence and nearness of God, or 
 concerning grace and divine assistance, or concerning 
 prayer and repentance, which, all unsystematic as 
 they are, may be appropriated, used and enlarged by 
 us with great profit and advantage. It would be a 
 thousand pities to suffer noble and suggestive teach- 
 ings of this kind to fall into neglect. The Rabbis, 
 it may be noticed, are often less one-sided than their 
 modern descendants and representatives. They are
 
 172 LIBERAL JUDAISM in 
 
 not always thinking about Christianity, or making 
 their own religion one-sided and narrow by piling up 
 contrasts between it and the religion of their neigh- 
 bours. Thus we may find in their teachings some 
 suggestive sayings about asceticism, about faith, 
 about grace and works, which are not often made 
 prominent in the sermons of Jewish preachers of the 
 present day. 
 
 Beautiful as, in some respects, is the teaching of 
 the Rabbis concerning the relation of God to Israel 
 and of Israel to God, it never rises to the greatness of 
 the Servant passages in the Babylonian Isaiah. Never- 
 theless, the mission of Israel is not entirely ignored. 
 There are nasty things in the Talmud and Midrash 
 about proselytes, which we shall do well to forget, 
 but there are also fine and helpful things, which we 
 shall do well to remember. Nor should we forget 
 that an occasional flash shows insight into the highest 
 conception of all. " The whole purpose," says one 
 Rabbi, " of the dispersion of Israel is the making of 
 proselytes." Abraham, to the Rabbis, no less than 
 to Paul, was specially notable for his faith and for 
 his proselytising activities. His great object was to 
 bring all whom he could affect, or get hold of, 
 under the wings of the Shechinah. He is, as it 
 were, the " patron " of proselytes, and his work, 
 though not imitated, is yet looked back upon with 
 admiration and with praise. 
 
 Thus the inspiration of the great Biblical teachers 
 did not wholly fail the generations of the Rabbis. 
 And though we to-day reject the formal doctrine 
 of the Oral Law, we cling the closer to, and advocate 
 the more warmly, the doctrine of continuous inspira- 
 tion. In that sense, and from that point of view, 
 we are all traditionalists. To draw a sharp dogmatic
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 173 
 
 line between Bible and post-Biblical literature is 
 fatal. We stand for the doctrine of the divine 
 inspiration, in various manners and degrees, through- 
 out the ages. The Old Testament is not purely 
 " divine," and the Talmud is not purely " human." 
 The Old Testament may be, and is, a much greater 
 book than the Talmud, but if there is much 
 " humanity," as well as much " inspiration," in the 
 former, there is some " inspiration," if also more 
 " humanity," in the latter. God did not withdraw 
 His help and His Spirit from our forefathers with 
 the close of the Biblical period. He has not for 
 this too is part of our " case " withdrawn it from 
 us even to-day. 
 
 There is no opportunity here and now to speak 
 of the ethics of the Rabbis, or to discuss how much 
 of their ethical teaching may be adopted by Liberal 
 Judaism. Moreover, there is no need of any special 
 relation of our newer phase of Judaism to the older 
 phase in this particular regard. We can freely pick 
 and choose ; we can take what is good, and omit 
 or neglect what is inferior. I fancy that, under 
 these circumstances, there will be more taking than 
 neglecting. I do not mean to imply that Rabbinic 
 ethics are perfect, and incapable of development. 
 I do not mean that there is nothing to add or 
 nothing to omit. And lastly, I do not mean that, 
 in framing and pushing forward, if I may use the 
 phrase, our own ethical teaching, we should not 
 consider the ethics of Jesus and Paul as well as the 
 ethics of the Talmud, and profit for I believe we 
 can from the study of both. We may find that 
 they are not really opposed, but complementary, to 
 each other. It is easy to get at the ethics of Jesus 
 and Paul. The New Testament is a thin book and
 
 174 LIBERAL JUDAISM in 
 
 is accessible to all. Endless commentaries supply 
 explanation and to spare on any point of difficulty. 
 It is not easy to get at the ethics of the Talmud. 
 There is no good book upon the subject with 
 adequate quotations, and written simply to inform 
 and to tell the truth. 
 
 But that there is valuable ethical material con- 
 tained in the huge Rabbinic literature, let no man 
 doubt. And let no man suppose that he can rightly 
 or wisely say, " The Hebrew Bible is enough for 
 me. I do not want more. I do not need the 
 teachings of the Rabbis." In one sense, indeed, you 
 cannot get beyond sayings like, " I desire love and 
 not sacrifice." " What does the Lord require of 
 thee, but to do justice, and love mercy, and walk 
 humbly with thy God ? " " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself." But the Rabbinic teaching 
 fills these great forms of morality with noble content. 
 
 And it is in its details, in its applications of the 
 Old Testament principles, that its advance and its 
 value mainly consist. Rabbinic morality may be 
 called a workaday morality, a common-sense morality, 
 and yet it is shot through with idealism. Just this 
 combination makes it distinctive and even modern. 
 In the domain of charity it will speak in quite a 
 modern way of the excellence of independence, and 
 how it may be better to lend than to give, but it 
 will give rules about communal charity which are 
 touching in their delicacy, and it will declare that 
 the one unforgivable sin is putting one's neighbour 
 to shame or raising a blush upon his cheeks. Indeed 
 the word "delicacy," thus incidentally used, is perhaps 
 a chief characteristic of Rabbinic ethics. For new 
 and far - reaching idealism, for driving passion 
 and enthusiasm, we must go rather to Jesus than
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 175 
 
 to the Rabbis. But in moral delicacy and wisdom 
 there is much to be appropriated from the Rabbinical 
 literature, much to be transplanted from their 
 environment into ours, much to be adopted from 
 them and adapted. Sometimes this delicacy of 
 theirs may become as hard for some of us to follow 
 as the command to pray for the welfare of our 
 enemies ! Do many of us, for instance, find it 
 easy, if we have no intention or power of buying, 
 to refrain from looking too curiously at the con- 
 tents of an attractive shop ? And yet, if we do 
 not refrain, we violate a Rabbinical command ! In 
 several points it may be found that the Rabbis and 
 Jesus join hands. Most notably would this be the 
 case in the delicacies of almsgiving. " Let not 
 thy right hand know what thy left hand does " is 
 a most characteristically Rabbinic injunction, and 
 still more characteristic is it that the Rabbis care- 
 fully work out the principle into a number of 
 excellent and very practical applications. 
 
 Summing up, we may, then, justly say that the 
 Rabbis did undoubtedly smooth some of the re- 
 ligious and moral edges which had been left rough 
 and ragged by the Old Testament teachers. In 
 other cases they made contributions towards a subse- 
 quent smoothing. In others they made no advance, 
 and perhaps in one or two things, such as the 
 relation of ritual to morality in religion, they fall 
 below the highest Old Testament attainment. In 
 conclusion, what may we say as to their contribution 
 to the eternal problems of suffering and of evil ? 
 
 We must not expect any elaborate or well-thought- 
 out theodicy from the Rabbinical literature. The 
 Rabbis do not seem to have had capacity and 
 taste for philosophic enquiry. Nothing systematic
 
 i 7 6 LIBERAL JUDAISM m 
 
 in ethics or theology has been by them given to 
 the world. Therefore, as regards all the deepest 
 questions which perplex the human mind, we get 
 occasional fine ideas and helpful thoughts from 
 them ; little more. Yet as compared with the 
 Old Testament there is a distinct advance, mainly 
 due to the doctrine of the Resurrection and the 
 Blessed Life beyond the grave. For this doctrine, 
 once thoroughly believed in, was bound to throw 
 new light upon, and provide new interpretations for, 
 all the problems of human destiny and of suffering. 
 This is the case both with the New Testament and 
 with the Rabbinic literature. In both we find an 
 ennoblement of suffering over the limit reached in 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 
 The Rabbis teach that their best possessions have, 
 or will, come to the Israelites through suffering. 
 They develop the few sayings in the Old Testament 
 which regard suffering as a discipline. Suffering 
 purifies. The chastisements, or sufferings, of love 
 become with them a familiar conception. Some- 
 times Israel's special and peculiar sufferings, as 
 compared with the prosperity of its oppressors, sug- 
 gest the theory that Israel's " good turn "is to be 
 in the next world, while the good time of its enemies 
 is limited to this world. But there are also higher 
 thoughts about suffering than this, though no religion 
 which really believes in a future life will, I should 
 fancy, ever be able to dispense with that particular 
 consolation. All such believers will continue to find 
 in the higher peace, and fuller knowledge, and more 
 constant happiness, of " heaven " an explanation, 
 a compensation and a comfort for the measure of 
 their sorrows and agonies upon earth. Yet, even 
 apart from that other world, the Rabbis produced
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 177 
 
 some fine thoughts about suffering. It was better, 
 they said, to belong to the persecuted than to those 
 who persecute. Why is it better ? They do not 
 tell us or attempt to explain : but they felt and we 
 feel too that suffering goodness is a finer and 
 grander and better thing than prosperous vice. They 
 said that we must thank God for the evil as well as 
 for the good. Why must we do so ? They do not 
 say. But they felt and we feel too that if God is 
 really good, and really our Father, then all that 
 happens to us, however dark and inexplicable it may 
 be, is yet within the orbit of His will. They felt that 
 it was grander, and made man grander, to believe in 
 God, and to be grateful to Him, in the midst of 
 calamity than in the midst of prosperity. They 
 recalled again and again the words of Akiba, who 
 declared that it was a high privilege to love God 
 with all our heart and with all our life. Akiba said 
 this in his martyrdom, and the Rabbis would make it 
 apply to all suffering and sorrow and pain. More 
 especially is all suffering which may exhibit the 
 sanctification of the Divine Name, all suffering of 
 the Jew as a Jew, and because of, or for the sake of, 
 his Judaism, ennobled and glorified. In the Psalter 
 we get the earliest expression of conscious suffering 
 for the sake of God. The Maccabean writer exclaims, 
 " For thy sake are we killed all day long." But the 
 exclamation is also a complaint, in some sort an 
 accusation. The religious advance in Akiba's martyr- 
 dom is great. He neither complains nor accuses. 
 On the contrary. He smiles ; he rejoices. And 
 thus, perhaps, the most famous and familiar utterance 
 in all the Talmud speaks of those who rejoice in their 
 sufferings as the lovers of God, who are as the sun 
 when he goes forth in his might. It is true that this 
 
 N
 
 178 LIBERAL JUDAISM in 
 
 rejoicing in suffering is often related to the ideas that 
 through suffering man obtains forgiveness, or that 
 the suffering is somehow related to sin, or that 
 suffering is the means by which is won the blessedness 
 of the world to come. And if this blessedness is 
 caused by the purification produced by suffering, the 
 idea is surely not unethical. Thus, in one way or 
 another, the exaltation of suffering is there, and we 
 can maintain and develop the thought, while care- 
 fully freeing it from any lurking impurity. 
 
 One important aspect of suffering seems, however, 
 curiously absent from the Rabbinical literature. There 
 is little in it so far as I have been able to see of 
 the conception of self-sacrifice for the sake, not of 
 God, but of one's fellow-men. The supremest chapter 
 in Isaiah I mean the fifty-third is made little use 
 of. That we are to bear one another's burdens, that 
 we are to endure pain and sorrow for others for our 
 family, our community, our country, or for humanity 
 and that this interconnection of one with all, this 
 voluntary self- sacrifice for others, is one of the 
 greatest ennoblements of suffering is an idea which 
 we meet with in the New Testament and in the 
 Stoics, but which seems absent from the Rabbis. 
 But Liberal Jews can adopt and develop it from the 
 sources where they can find it. It links itself on 
 with complete consistency to the purest Judaism. 
 
 Yet though the idea of voluntary sacrifice for 
 others does not seem to be directly taught in the 
 way in which we are familiar with it, it appears to be 
 implicit in certain Rabbinic conceptions which played 
 a considerable part in their theological and religious 
 teaching. "All Israelites," declared the Rabbis, "are 
 responsible for one another." This assertion does, at 
 all events, indicate that we are bound to bear one
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 179 
 
 another's burdens, whether we like it or no. The 
 Rabbis believed that the virtues, if not the sins, of a 
 man exercised a peculiar influence upon the fortunes 
 of his neighbour. The wicked do not condemn the 
 righteous, but the righteous do, to some extent, 
 justify or acquit the wicked. It is said that God 
 created the good and the bad, so that the one should 
 atone for the other. Again, it is said those who 
 have knowledge of the Law, but do no good works ; 
 those who do works, but have no knowledge ; those 
 who are distinguished, and those who fail, in both 
 one excellence and the other all atone for each other. 
 The death of the righteous exercises an atoning force 
 as strong as that of Tom Kip-pur itself. With some 
 modifications, enlargements and purifications we may 
 still use these conceptions in our own day. 
 
 Metaphysical explanations of suffering and evil 
 are foreign to Rabbinic thought. It is not in our 
 power, they say, to explain either the prosperity of 
 the wicked or the adversity of the good. It was 
 difficult for the Rabbis to get rid of the doctrine 
 of retribution and tit for tat. They were always 
 much too inclined to try and find it somewhere and 
 somehow, and often in ways and by methods which 
 are mechanical, arbitrary and even childish. In these 
 matters we have left their thought far behind, and it 
 is no longer of use to us. Yet even here they now 
 and then rise startlingly above their own habitual 
 theories. There is no more dramatic passage in the 
 Talmud than the story of the twofold vision vouchsafed 
 to Moses, in which he first sees the wonders of Akiba's 
 pious learning, and then sees its reward the great 
 teacher dying under the most appalling torture. Moses 
 exclaims in horror, " Such learning and such reward ! " 
 " Silence," answers God, " such is My decree."
 
 i8o LIBERAL JUDAISM in 
 
 If it cannot be said that the Rabbis devised, or 
 hit upon, any theories which, in a consistent manner, 
 solve, or even attempt to solve, the perennial problems, 
 they help us a little by their perception of the diffi- 
 culties with which Old Testament teaching has left 
 us. They are not, for instance, unconscious of the 
 contradiction between the Second Word and the 
 accentuated individualism of Ezekiel. They seek to 
 harmonise the one with the other by suggesting that 
 it is only upon those children and grandchildren who 
 are themselves wicked that the sins of their pro- 
 genitors are visited. They are constantly at work 
 to magnify God's mercy, and to diminish (at least so 
 far as Israel is concerned !) the measure of His re- 
 tribution and severity. They seize upon Old Testa- 
 ment germs and develop them. Thus the merits of 
 the Patriarchs a doctrine known to Deuteronomy 
 is enlarged by them into a theory which, while 
 not diminishing personal responsibility, yet seeks to 
 give an extra reason for the grace and the compassion 
 of God. We can hardly accept the theory as they 
 present it, but yet it may suggest to us how by 
 spiritual law, and not by arbitrary favour, the virtue 
 of one generation may be used and inherited by 
 another, and it may give us in that way an added 
 stimulus to righteousness and love. Again, the 
 Rabbis, pressing and developing an obscure and 
 corrupt Scriptural verse (Isaiah Ixiii. 9), suggest the 
 doctrine of the sympathetic participation of the 
 Divine Being in human suffering and even in human 
 evil. If we are taught by them to bless God for 
 the evil as well as for the good, we are also taught 
 that God Himself suffers with, and through, the suf- 
 ferings of Israel, and, as we should say, of humanity. 
 How profound, and, perhaps, too, how suggestive,
 
 in AND RABBINICAL LITERATURE 181 
 
 is that observation of R. Meir : " When a man 
 suffers pain (a euphemism for 'when a criminal is 
 executed '), what does the Shechinah say? * Heavy 
 is my head : heavy is my arm.' If God grieves 
 so much over the blood of the wicked, how much 
 more over the death of the righteous ! " 
 
 Naturally, these quasi -explanations of suffering 
 and calamity are only very occasional and incidental. 
 The great permanent explanation as regards both the 
 sinner and the saint is the doctrine of the future life. 
 And here it is again well to point out that Liberal 
 Judaism in this matter is in fair accord with Rabbinic 
 Judaism, and is grateful to it for its teaching. I do 
 not mean in accordance with its doctrine of retri- 
 bution, and obviously still less with its theories of 
 purgatory and hell. I am rather thinking of the 
 effect of the doctrine of the future life upon our 
 estimate of this life. Rabbinic Judaism, upon the 
 whole, appears to hold the balance truly. It does 
 not over-exalt the material world in which we live. 
 It does not seek to exaggerate our attachment to it. 
 Together with its conception of the Law, it uses the 
 conception of the other world in which it fervently 
 believes, to spiritualise the enjoyments and activities 
 of man upon the earth. But, on the other hand, it 
 does not depreciate this world too much. It does 
 not declare that this world is not worth working for, 
 caring for and improving. It looks forward to a 
 Golden Age upon earth as well as to the Life Ever- 
 lasting in Heaven. It transfigures the joys of sense 
 and sanctifies them : it does not despise them or 
 repudiate them. Though this life may be but the 
 vestibule to the hall, yet Rabbinic Judaism does not 
 deny the presence of God within the vestibule, or 
 cheapen the vestibule improperly for the sake of the
 
 182 LIBERAL JUDAISM in 
 
 hall. The hall is to throw its light back upon the 
 vestibule, and that light is not to make the vestibule 
 contemptible, but to ennoble it. If the hall has its 
 peculiar happiness, so has the vestibule, and this 
 happiness is neither false nor wrong because it is 
 brief and a prelude. If we draw out the metaphor 
 in this way, and not unfairly represent it as the 
 teaching of Rabbinic Judaism, which is also the 
 teaching of Liberal Judaism, we may also appropriate 
 and expand that other saying of R. Jacob which 
 follows upon the saying about the vestibule and the 
 hall. Here too, I repeat, we may rightly appropriate 
 and expand, and with this deep and glorious saying 
 we may not unfitly take leave of our subject. 
 u Better is one hour of repentance and good deeds in 
 this world than the whole life of the world to come ; 
 and better is one hour of blissfulness of spirit in the 
 world to come than the whole life of this world."
 
 IV 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND HELLENISM 
 
 THE very title of this chapter may seem to challenge 
 the critic. In this juxtaposition adjective and noun 
 both require justification. For what purpose are 
 Judaism and Hellenism thus brought together? And 
 what specially has Liberal Judaism to do with the 
 matter ? 
 
 I am not thinking primarily of any reconciliation 
 of Hellenism with Judaism in the sense that Judaism 
 is to stand for religion and morality, and Hellenism 
 for art and for culture. Nor am I even primarily 
 thinking of Judaism and Hellenism in the sense 
 in which Matthew Arnold was wont to contrast 
 Hellenism and Hebraism with each other, and to 
 discuss the right amalgamation of the two. One or 
 two of the things he alludes to, some of the points 
 which he makes, may be touched upon or included 
 in that which I shall have to say, but primarily I 
 intend something rather different. I am thinking 
 primarily of religion on both sides : of Hellenic 
 religion religion produced and taught by men of 
 Greek blood, or by men nurtured on Greek philo- 
 sophy as well as of Jewish religion, the religion 
 taught or professed by Jews of the past and of the 
 present, the Jewish religion as it was, as it is, or as it 
 
 183
 
 184 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 might be. I shall, I admit, be somewhat broad in 
 my use of terms ; religion and religions will embrace 
 a good deal, and ethical conceptions will also be 
 brought in. But they will be brought in for a 
 religious purpose or from a religious point of view. 
 
 All this may seem to make my title still more 
 inexplicable. For what has Hellenism to do with 
 religion ? Am I going to suggest that Liberal 
 Judaism had better abandon the doctrine of One 
 God, and set up a combined pantheon which shall 
 deal fairly and impartially both with Sinai and 
 Olympus ? Are Liberal Jews to worship Zeus as 
 well as- Jehovah ? 
 
 I purposely ask these absurd questions, for I think 
 that they would really represent what many persons 
 must feel as regards the title of this chapter, if 
 Hellenism is to be interpreted to mean anything 
 ethical, anything religious. To those whose atten- 
 tion and reading have not been specially directed to 
 the subject, Hellenism means, I fancy, a parcel of 
 immoral gods and goddesses, on the one hand, a 
 number of beautiful, though often headless, statues 
 upon the other. 1 
 
 The admirable Jewish minister, whose excellent 
 pulpit addresses I used to listen to Saturday after 
 Saturday all my boyhood and youth and much I 
 learned from him which has become an integral part 
 of my most cherished convictions was wont to tell 
 us that Israel was not the only people which God had 
 chosen for a particular purpose and for the benefit of 
 the world at large. Israel was chosen to teach the 
 world Religion, Rome to give it Law, and Greece to 
 reveal to it Art. Here the doctrine of the beautiful, 
 
 1 To some it may mean something even worse. " Greatly they misread the 
 mind of Greece who think to become Hellenic by means of eccentricity tinged 
 with vice" (Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. i).
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 185 
 
 if headless, statues was elevated into a sort of theory. 
 Greece is one of three favoured and divinely chosen 
 races Greece, Israel, Rome ; the rest of mankind 
 nowhere. Thus were the divine purposes, and the 
 divine dealings, with mankind, simply and plainly 
 set forth ! 
 
 Dear, good old Jewish minister ! It would be 
 pleasant to hold so clear and definite a creed, and 
 also to believe that it adequately explained the world, 
 and made human history comfortable and easy. To- 
 day it is hardly necessary to indicate its insufficiencies, 
 but here and now we are happily only concerned 
 with its view of the function of ancient Greece. 
 Now to Greece it does much less than justice. For 
 of a truth the Western world, and Western civilisa- 
 tion (which in our pride and self-sufficiency we so 
 often regard as equivalent to the whole world, and 
 to all civilisation that counts), has learnt from 
 Greece, and can still learn from Greece, much more 
 than to admire some statues, or even to construct a 
 theory of the Beautiful. Greece has not only taught 
 the world how to think, but has given it many an 
 element in noble life. Greece has taught, or can 
 teach; us certain ways of looking at the universe, 
 certain ways of dealing with our fellow-men and with 
 the Power that is above men, which are permanently 
 suggestive, helpful and true. In other words, Greece 
 too, as well as Israel, made its contribution towards 
 religion. Israel gave more, but Greece gave some- 
 thing ; and if Greece has more to learn from Israel, 
 Israel has something to learn from Greece. 
 
 There is, indeed, a point of view which is much 
 wider than that of my dear old Jewish minister's, 
 but which would yet stop short of what I have just 
 said. Greece, it might be said, from that point of
 
 1 86 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 view, has revealed to man the true theory of the 
 State. Greece revealed and illustrated the conception 
 of ordered freedom, it taught the love of knowledge 
 and its meaning ; the need and the right of free 
 enquiry. Greece taught philosophy. It laid the 
 foundations of logic, ethics and politics, and in each 
 of them made contributions of permanent nobility 
 and worth. But all this, great and important as it 
 is, is not yet religion. 
 
 To this the reply is twofold. First, if all this is 
 not yet religion, it is very near to religion, and 
 touches religion in a dozen different ways. Liberty, 
 free enquiry, philosophic investigation these things 
 surely have a close relation with religion. And how 
 can a race have made great contributions to moral 
 philosophy or ethics without having also made con- 
 tributions to religion? Secondly, Greek thought 
 did not stop short of religion, and not only in- 
 directly, but directly, in its teachings and conceptions 
 of the Ultimate and of man's relation to the Ultimate 
 directly, that is, in matters of religion it has left 
 behind it ideas and teachings of greatness and of 
 truth. 
 
 But how far, it may still be asked, are the true 
 and helpful or noble things, which, directly or in- 
 directly, Greece contributed to religion in any sense 
 additions to the yet greater contributions of Israel ? 
 Let us suppose that Greek teachers and thinkers laid 
 down the ruling that the gods demand or desire from 
 men justice and compassion. It is a true and a noble 
 ruling, but it has been laid down with greater emphasis 
 and clarity by Hebrew prophets and lawgivers. What 
 new religious thought or doctrine did the teachers or 
 thinkers of Hellas enunciate which we do not find 
 anticipated or elaborated in Judaea ?
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 187 
 
 Once more the answer is twofold. First, there is 
 an interest, a value, and even a practical helpfulness, 
 in finding certain true and noble thoughts familiar 
 to us from the Bible expressed in another, but not 
 less striking, way by the Greeks. For the thought, 
 as expressed in Greek, fortifies and illumines the 
 same thought as expressed in Hebrew. The two 
 stir the imagination in different ways, and each 
 deepens the impression wrought by the other. More- 
 over, a fundamental thought, as it appears in Greek, 
 does not cover precisely the same ground as the 
 equivalent thought in its Hebrew form. Thought 
 and form constitute one whole, and therefore the 
 Greek whole and the Hebrew whole cannot be 
 entirely the same. Each deepens and intensifies the 
 other. Secondly, Greek teachers do supply thoughts 
 and doctrines which, in part at least, are really 
 original and really new. They may be comple- 
 mentary to Hebrew thoughts and Hebrew doctrines, 
 but they are not entirely the same. 
 
 The word "complementary" suggests an import- 
 ant point which may fitly be brought forward here. 
 There must, I take it, be adequate kinship between 
 two sets of religious ideas to enable the one to obtain 
 any profit from the other. If they are too different, 
 the first can hardly absorb or adopt anything from 
 the second. It may, for instance, be that Buddhism 
 contains elements or aspects of religious truth which 
 are not contained in Judaism, but it is doubtful 
 whether Judaism could adopt or absorb anything 
 from Buddhism. The two religions are too different. 
 It may be that they could be ultimately Jinked, as it 
 were, together by a series of intermediaries, but it 
 would be from these intermediaries that the two 
 religions would conceivably draw a little nearer to,
 
 1 88 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 or absorb a little from, each other, and not by any 
 direct and immediate influence. It is not improbable 
 that for a very long sequence of ages each different 
 religion may, in the divine education of the world, 
 retain a certain one-sidedness and a certain over- 
 emphasis of particular doctrines. Let us imagine 
 that in Indian pantheism and in Buddhistic ethics 
 there lies an element of truth. It may be that for 
 a long sequence of ages Jewish monotheism may be 
 unable to adopt or absorb that element. It may be 
 necessary that a certain touch of one-sidedness and 
 over-emphasis may cling to it for very long. But 
 Greek religious thought and Greek religious teach- 
 ing, in some of their nobler forms and phases, are 
 not, it is contended, too remote and too unlike 
 Jewish thought or teaching for Judaism to be able 
 to absorb and assimilate certain elements of them to 
 its own profit and edification. 
 
 It is a commonplace that Christianity conquered 
 the world partly because it underwent a considerable 
 infiltration from Hellenism. It assimilated a certain 
 amount of Greek thought and Greek teaching. It 
 would be a cheap mistake to suppose that this in- 
 filtration and assimilation merely tended to paganise, 
 that it merely weakened pure, monotheistic wine with 
 muddy, heathen, polytheistic water. Nor would it 
 be true to suppose that it was all in the direction, or 
 in the sphere, of metaphysical theology, turning, for 
 instance, alleged historical events into ultimate onto- 
 logical truths. That is not so. It at least included 
 the development of several Hebrew ideas by a Greek 
 setting and presentation, as well as the adoption of 
 several Greek ideas which were scarcely Hebrew at 
 all and this in the field of religion and morality as 
 well as in the field of theology and metaphysics.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 189 
 
 But Christianity could not have undergone this in- 
 filtration and assimilation if there had not been a 
 certain kinship, or if there had been too great a 
 distance, between the Greek and the Jew. 
 
 And here, perhaps, I may introduce a word or two 
 in defence and explanation of the adjective in my 
 chapter's title. It is clear that I have already made 
 many heretical remarks from the point of view of 
 Orthodox Judaism. For, according to that concep- 
 tion of Judaism, religious perfection was attained 
 when the Law was delivered. " All things are in it " ; 
 we have only " to turn it and turn it again." 
 Judaism possesses final and complete truth : there 
 is no need and no possibility of progress and 
 development. The point of view of Liberal Judaism 
 is very different. Christian theologians are wont to 
 speak of Christianity as the absolute religion, and the 
 more unorthodox they are, the more emphatic they 
 often become as to this absolute character of the 
 religion they profess and defend. Liberal Judaism 
 may be content with a less exorbitant claim. It is 
 doubtful whether there is, or can be, such a thing at 
 all as " the absolute religion," the one complete 
 changeless and immutable religion for all time, all 
 places and all peoples. We may believe, and we do 
 believe, that of all creeds Liberal Judaism contains 
 the greatest proportion of truth and the smallest 
 proportion of error, without putting forward for it so 
 gigantic and overwhelming a claim. And in any 
 case, its absoluteness has by no means yet arrived. It 
 has still to grow and to develop. It is still alive, 
 and it still can learn and absorb and expand. It 
 does not reject enquiry and investigation. It is 
 willing to accept some complementary aspects of 
 truth, if and when it can find them. That is why
 
 190 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 the relations of Liberal Judaism and Hellenism may 
 be a profitable subject for discussion and study, a 
 subject not merely for antiquarian research, but for 
 life and for practice. 
 
 But there is another reason too. Liberal Judaism 
 desires to take its place as a genuine religion of the 
 Western world. Jews are not alien Easterns in 
 America and Europe. Their religion claims to be 
 no exotic, no alien eccentricity. It wants to be at 
 home in Europe and America, and to grow there, as 
 in a soil which is suited to its growth. If that be 
 so, Judaism must think out and determine its relation 
 to Hellenism. Within the limits of truth and of its 
 own self-consistency, Liberal Judaism must hellenise. 
 No religion can live in the Western world which has 
 not settled accounts with Hellenism, and absorbed 
 and adopted something of the Hellenic spirit. For 
 one thing, no religion of the West can be without its 
 philosophy, and philosophy, as the .West knows it, is 
 the creation of Hellas. Twice before in its history 
 has Judaism sought to come to terms with, and to 
 assimilate, Greek thought and Greek philosophy. 
 On the first occasion the task was taken over by 
 Christianity, which made use of Jewish pioneers' 
 work for its own purposes. Yet the Wisdom of 
 Solomon and the works of Philo remain as striking, 
 if transitional, monuments of what was then accom- 
 plished in the attempt to bring together into a higher 
 unity the products of Hellas and of Judaea. 
 
 Then again in the era which was made illustrious 
 by the great name of Maimonides, Greek and Jew 
 once more came together. The influence of this 
 attempt at amalgamation was enormous, and has 
 lasted to the present day. But it is pathetic to find 
 Jewish students in Jewish theological colleges still
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 191 
 
 toiling at Maimonides and at mediaeval philosophy, 
 as if what was good and adequate for the needs of 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were also good 
 and adequate for the nineteenth and the twentieth ! 
 Historically, no doubt, Maimonides has high value 
 and importance, while much that he has said is of 
 permanent suggestiveness. Yet to-day we want 
 something more and something different, though 
 doubtless we want something which will again be 
 inadequate and antiquated before the years which 
 separate us from Maimonides have rolled over the 
 face of the world. The needs of Liberal Judaism in 
 2630 will be very different from its needs in 1918. 
 That is part of my case. But that does not make 
 our needs to-day any the less real and actual. 
 
 There are, so far as one can see, two eternal 
 elements in Western civilisation and Western thought. 
 These two elements are the Hebrew and the Greek. 
 They are perdurable. They take different forms, 
 but they seem likely to remain vital and effective. 
 Moreover, to the written sources of these elements 
 mankind, as it would seem Western mankind, at any 
 rate will constantly revert. They will constantly 
 refresh themselves, morally, spiritually, religiously, 
 at the founts of Hellas and of Jerusalem. They will 
 read and re-read the Prophets, the Psalter and the 
 Gospels, on the one hand, they will read and re-read 
 Homer, Plato, Epictetus, on the other. The great 
 Hebrews and the great Greeks will always be of the 
 centre. They are the two chief roots of our civilisa- 
 tion, and from these roots Western humanity will 
 long, if not ever, continue to draw spiritual nurture 
 and refreshment. And in order that there may be 
 increased power and increased unity in our modern 
 Liberal Judaism, we who are specially nourished by
 
 1 92 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 the one root must also draw nourishment from the 
 other. For us too what we get from Judaea and 
 Greece must form an harmonious and living unity, 
 which shall give renewed vitality and strength to 
 our own religion. 
 
 Let me now illustrate the kinship between the 
 two spiritual sources of our civilisation by a brief 
 reference to the Greek love of knowledge, the 
 glorification of wisdom. Now, at first sight, this 
 seems a very un-Hebraic quality, nor would I for 
 a moment contend that as Athens developed it and 
 understood it, so, in anything like the same degree 
 or with anything like the same broad freedom, did 
 Jerusalem. One can contrast a great scholar has 
 done so the famous utterance of Aristotle about the 
 unfettered cultivation of the reason with the Hebrew 
 warning, " let not the wise man glory in his wisdom." 
 And yet this contrast is by no means the whole of 
 the story or of the truth. 1 , 
 
 Judaism is a religion which has exalted wisdom. 
 It is true that its wisdom has been limited in area 
 and specific in kind, but it is no less true, and it 
 means a great deal, that its ideal has been set forth 
 in intellectual terms. The praise of wisdom is ex- 
 tolled in such remarkable strains in Proverbs that 
 some commentators have found in it probably need- 
 lessly an influence from Greece. Wisdom human 
 or divine is regarded as the highest and noblest 
 quality both of the Creator and of the creature. 
 The first petition in the oldest and most honoured 
 of Hebrew prayers is for wisdom and discernment. 
 God is blessed as the gracious giver of knowledge. 
 The Rabbis were not insensible to the claims of 
 knowledge even of secular knowledge, and they 
 
 1 Butcher, Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects, p. lio.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 193 
 
 conceived God as the God of truth as well as the God 
 of goodness. On seeing a wise man distinguished 
 for his knowledge of the Law, they bid us say, 
 " Blessed art thou, O Lord, who hast imparted of 
 thy wisdom to them that fear ;hee." But on seeing 
 a wise man distinguished for other than sacred 
 knowledge, it is no less right and ordered to say, 
 " Blessed art thou, O Lord, who hast given of thy 
 wisdom to flesh and blood." All wisdom, whether 
 sacred or profane, finds its source and its unity in 
 the one and only God. To the Hellene the main 
 contrast between the Barbarian and himself was that 
 he, the Hellene, was so much more intelligent than the 
 barbarian. That was pride, if you will, but a not un- 
 justifiable pride. And to the Hebrew, his difference 
 from the Gentile lay also in his possession of wisdom. 
 If he observe the Law, "surely this nation is a wise and 
 understanding people." Idolatry is folly as well as sin. 
 
 The introduction of reason into religion, the 
 fusion of righteousness and understanding, are not 
 un-Hebraic or un-Jewish. It has been stated that 
 " the wedding of thought with morality, of wisdom 
 with virtue so characteristic of Greece (is) yet of 
 all its phenomena perhaps the strangest to us." But 
 it cannot be said that the ideal of this wedding sounds 
 strange, or even is strange, to Jewish ears. 1 
 
 But what aid does reason give to religion ? What 
 service does it render? It has to cleanse religion from 
 superstition, to free it from that heritage and burden 
 of folly that Urdummheit, as Prof. Gilbert Murray, 
 following a German scholar, calls it, which for so 
 many centuries, or rather for so many millennia, 
 dogged its footsteps and impeded its development. 2 
 
 1 Livingstone, The Greek Geniut (Ed. 2), p. 224 fin. 
 
 2 G. Murray, Four Stages of Greet Religion, p. 16.
 
 i 9 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 Modify the conception of Reason a little, and you 
 get the idea of Rationalism, modify the word a little, 
 and you get the idea of Reasonableness. How much 
 rationalism should there be in religion ? Well, that 
 is a question of taste. To-day we should all like to 
 exclude from religion astrology and divination and 
 augury : most of us would like also to exclude animal 
 sacrifices and taboos ; demons and devils and spirits ; 
 spells and exorcisms and incantations ; local hells, 
 fiery purgatories, material heavens. The exclusion 
 of all these things has been the work of rationalism. 
 Religion, dropping them, becomes, as we think, the 
 purer and the stronger ; superstition wanes. They 
 are all, as history and investigation show us, part and 
 parcel of the Urdummheit, or aftergrowths from it. 
 
 Now in different degrees and measures, and with 
 alternations of success and failure, both Hellenism and 
 Hebraism have fought against the various forms and 
 manifestations of the Urdummheit, and have attempted 
 to purge religion from superstition. There is already 
 much of this purgation in Homer. 1 The casual reader 
 thinks of the relations of Zeus with Hera, of the 
 tricks played upon the Lord of Heaven by his 
 wife and his daughter, of the intrigue of Ares with 
 Aphrodite and of the inextinguishable laughter of 
 the immortal Gods. And truly the purgation of 
 Homer is an inadequate purgation. But a more 
 careful reading, with Prof. Gilbert Murray's help, 
 shows more. It shows, negatively, the complete or 
 comparative disappearance or neglect of a horde of 
 superstitions, connected with the worship of the dead, 
 with taboos of clean and unclean, with human 
 sacrifices, with auguries and divinations (we recall 
 Hector's great saying et? oitovos a/jto-ro?, 
 
 1 But cp. also Leaf, Homer and History, p. 310.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 195 
 
 Tray/a???), and it shows, positively, the divine 
 desire for, the divine government in the interests 
 of, justice and order and compassion. The higher 
 minds in Greece, the tragedians, the orators, the 
 great historians, and the philosophers, on the whole, 
 continue, imperfectly and with lapses, such as the 
 maintenance of the state religion, and such as the 
 inherent nature of polytheism, made almost inevitable 
 the purgation, and combat various manifestations 
 of the Urdummheit^ while never reaching, in spite 
 of the immense brain power at play, any complete 
 and harmonious result. Here and there, the Greek 
 purgation runs parallel to, and even nobly supple- 
 ments, the Jewish purgation, which also, for different 
 reasons, never became systematically complete. 
 
 The religion of the Prophets, indeed, marks a 
 wonderfully high level of purity ; the purgation is 
 strikingly large. In Amos, Hosea and Isaiah the old 
 superstitions have faded almost entirely away. God 
 and man stand face to face : their relations to each 
 other are moral and rational. Demons and spirits 
 and ghosts have disappeared, taboos of clean and 
 unclean are ignored : sacrifices, and the whole para- 
 phernalia of outward ritual, are deprived of their 
 potency. It is doubtful whether any society could 
 exist, whether any religious organisation could sur- 
 vive, upon the mere teaching of the Prophets. It is 
 perhaps too spiritual, too disdainful of material helps, 
 for average humanity. The Law, as we know, 
 effected a compromise whether consciously, or un- 
 consciously is a moot question between the popular 
 and the prophetic religion. In retaining a mass of 
 old ritual observances, it made concessions to the 
 spirit of the Urdummheit, and yet partially removed 
 its sting. For the old superstitious ritual became
 
 196 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 now the arbitrary decrees (and therefore no longer 
 magical processes) of the all-wise and all-righteous 
 God. Sacrifices continue in multitude ; there are 
 sin offerings and guilt offerings ; taboos of food ; 
 elaborate rules and regulations of clean and un- 
 clean ; curious purifications and strange " ordeals " 
 (e.g. Numbers v. 11-31). So if, in this particular 
 respect, one compares the religion of Israel, and, let 
 us say, the religion of the Stoics if, roughly and 
 inaccurately, one may for this purpose put all the 
 Stoics together in the first century of the Christian 
 era, we should find that each would have something 
 to learn from the other. Zeno, the founder, had 
 said noble things against images and temples, of 
 their needlessness and, in a sense, of their absurdity ; 
 the strange saying in the last chapter of Isaiah 
 perhaps written in Zeno's very lifetime " The 
 heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool : 
 what manner of house will ye build unto me ? and 
 what place shall be my rest ? " can be paralleled by 
 Stoic utterances. But, on the whole, the Stoics, like 
 the compilers of the Law, approved of temples and 
 sacrifices, though Greek, no less than Jewish, teachers 
 emphasise the need for a pure heart and for a right 
 intention, while both magnify the small gifts of the 
 righteous poor, and condemn and despise the costly 
 offerings of the wicked. Here the parallelism is 
 interestingly complete. 
 
 But, in regard to one primitive institution, the 
 Jews under the Law rose superior to the mass of the 
 Stoics. For Stoics admitted divinations and auguries. 
 u As a whole," Prof. Murray says sadly, the Stoics 
 yielded and "gave way." 1 The Jews rejected all 
 these superstitions. They maintained the high and 
 
 1 G. Murray, of. cit. p. 125.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 197 
 
 pure and sane level of the old priestly writer, who 
 in the sublime first chapter of Genesis emphatic- 
 ally implies that the stars are just material things. 
 Astrology- is as foolish as hepatoscopy. Living 
 birds can no more indicate the future than the 
 entrails of beasts. This rational attitude was well 
 maintained by the Jews throughout. Officially there 
 was no concession here to superstition and folly. 
 The story of Masollam, the archer, is a credit to 
 Judaism. It is doubtful whether it would not have 
 seemed shocking even to so noble a creature as 
 Marcus Aurelius himself. On some military expedi- 
 tion in the days of Alexander or of his successors, a 
 certain diviner points out a bird, and bids the com- 
 pany advance if the bird should fly forward, retreat 
 if it fly back. Then Masollam, without a word, 
 draws his bow, and shoots the bird. To the angry 
 imprecations of the augur and the soldiers, he replies 
 bravely : " How can the bird, who could not foresee 
 to save itself, tell us anything of value about our 
 own expedition ? If it had been able to forecast the 
 future, it would never have come to this place, fearing 
 lest it should be shot at and killed by Masollam the 
 Jew." This story is told in Josephus's ugly Greek, 
 but is it not worthy of Greek rationalism at its purest 
 and its best ? We may be proud that, in regard to 
 this branch of Folly, Judaism has never wavered or 
 given way. 
 
 On the other hand, in the matter of clean and 
 unclean, the Law, most unfortunately, clung to 
 primitive conceptions and superstitions, and by 
 codifying stereotyped and confirmed them. But, in 
 this sphere, the best minds of the Greeks, and some 
 of the greatest of the Stoics, carried the war against 
 superstition further. We have heard in a previous
 
 198 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 chapter the liberating utterance of Jesus, " There is 
 nothing from without the man that going into him 
 can defile him." No whit inferior is the saying of 
 Theano, " Do you ask when a woman is clean after 
 intercourse with a man ? If he be her husband, at 
 once, if he be another man, never." l Thus Hebrew 
 and Greek together can drive away primaeval folly, 
 and put it to flight. There is a true kinship between 
 them. 
 
 Reason, I said, leads in the ethical field to reason- 
 ableness. And here there is much to learn from the 
 Greeks. Here may be brought in all that " sweetness 
 and light " which to Matthew Arnold seemed so 
 characteristic of Hellenism. And of the higher 
 Greek thought, and of certain nobler manifestations 
 of Greek life, we may truly say that Arnold is right. 
 Their history seems to show a constant struggle to 
 attain this ideal against the temptations and desires 
 of the natural man. Upon the whole, and in the 
 long run, they were unable to succeed. Reasonable- 
 ness succumbs. Hubris gets the better of Sophrosune. 
 Excess and defect win the day over all-roundness, 
 balance, the mean. But, none the less, the ideal was 
 there, expressed for all time in admirable words, and 
 at least in some few admirable deeds. 
 
 To the Greek, reason was directly related to 
 limit, to proportion, to order. If it prompted, on 
 the one hand, to liberty, it inspired obedience, upon 
 the other. Reason said, MrjSh ayav everything in 
 moderation, by which reason did not mean that one 
 could have too much wisdom, too much beauty, or 
 too much goodness, but that wisdom, beauty, good- 
 ness were in themselves principles or expressions of 
 order, limit, proportion. The most characteristic 
 
 1 Schmidt, Die Ethik der alien Griechen, vol. i. p. 133.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 199 
 
 Greek virtue, the very name for which is hardly 
 translatable, is Sophrosune, self-control, temperance, 
 moderation, reasonableness, " sweetness and light." 
 
 The good man is he who is measured (metrios}, 
 who observes measure " massvoll" who is self- 
 restrained. Kosmios (orderly) is another frequent 
 synonym for good. Thus, in the Gorgias, Plato 
 says that the orderly soul is temperate and good, for 
 he does what is seemly and proper towards both 
 God and man. The intemperate man is "unrestrained 
 in his lusts ; the friend neither of God nor of man, 
 for he is incapable of communion, and he who is 
 incapable of communion is incapable of friendship. 
 But communion and friendship and orderliness and 
 temperance bind together heaven and earth and gods 
 and men ; wherefore is the universe called Kosmos 
 or order." In the Laws, Temperance is called a 
 condition of virtue, rather than a virtue itself; in 
 the Republic, it is one of the four cardinal virtues ; 
 it is the harmony of the soul, and makes a man the 
 " master of himself." 
 
 It was in accordance with Greek feeling that 
 Aristotle makes all the virtues and virtue itself to 
 consist in a mean, a balance between two extremes, 
 though he is careful to point out that the theory 
 does not mean that of the virtues themselves there 
 can be any superabundance or excess. " Measure 
 and symmetry," says Plato, " are beauty and virtue 
 all the world over." " Nothing is more in conformity 
 with measure than mind and knowledge," for " in 
 measure and the mean and the suitable and the like, 
 the eternal nature is to be found." 
 
 Insolent excess, Hubris, the lustful and measureless 
 passion, which respects no laws of gods or men, 
 that is the root of all evil. However keenly the
 
 200 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 Greeks realised the beauty of freedom, they realised 
 too that freedom is itself the product of law. 
 And however much they ventured to think out all 
 problems, to follow the argument whithersoever it 
 led, however much they venerated the mind and the 
 divine reason of man, they were yet very sensitive 
 to human limits and human frailty. " A day can 
 humble all human things, and a day can lift them 
 up " ; " lives that have waxed too proud " meet mis- 
 fortune when they " who are born to man's estate 
 forget it in thoughts too high for man." Insolence, 
 hubris, "breeds the tyrant," it makes a man "walk 
 haughtily, with no fear of justice and no reverence 
 for the gods." As the Assyrian to Isaiah, so was 
 Xerxes, the barbarian King, the type of this reckless 
 insolence to the Greek. " The excessive love of self," 
 says Plato, " is in reality the source to each man of 
 all his sins." Close to the Greeks was the relation 
 between reason and reasonableness. It is character- 
 istic that they raised the word for seemliness, pro- 
 priety, fittingness, to express high forms of righteous- 
 ness and justice. " Epieikes" seemly, decent, fitting, 
 can often be rightly translated by "good." Epieikeia 
 can mean gentleness, kindness, fairness, and finally 
 emerges as the philosophic term for what we know 
 as "equity." Of this virtue Aristotle says, in his 
 Rhetoric, " Equity consists in making allowances for 
 human infirmities, in regarding the intention of the 
 legislator rather than his language, the purpose of 
 an act rather than the act itself, the whole rather 
 than the part, in considering not so much what is a 
 person's character at a particular moment as what it 
 has usually been, in remembering benefits rather than 
 injuries, and benefits received rather than benefits 
 conferred, in suffering injustice patiently, in wishing
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 201 
 
 to resort to arbitration rather than to law." From 
 these conceptions and ideals we can find help and 
 suggestion even at the present day. 
 
 I might note, here and now, how in divers 
 externals Liberal Judaism has exalted the ideals of 
 reasonableness and beauty, and attempted to give 
 expression and do justice to them. It has sought to 
 put into the worship of the Synagogue order and pro- 
 portion and limit ; to introduce seemliness and self- 
 restraint ; to make the services reverent and beautiful, 
 in other words to unite Hellenism to Hebraism. It 
 is a curious fact that, in the long classic period of 
 Biblical literature, form is by no means neglected. 
 Limit, proportion, restraint are observed. Then in 
 the silver age form grows less elegant, till at last in 
 the Talmudic period when Hellenism has been cast 
 out and contemned formlessness and intemperance 
 rule supreme : the language tends to become poor, 
 rambling, discursive ; laws are heaped on laws with- 
 out moderation or limit, and the religious ideal 
 becomes one of number and excess and multiplica- 
 tion, whether in words or in ordinances, rather than 
 of balance and order and reasonableness and gracious 
 wisdom and seemly restraint. 
 
 Then, in modern times, reform enters upon the 
 stage, and old ideals, Greek, but not wholly unknown 
 to the best spirits of the Biblical age, are recalled. 
 The public worship is made orderly, restrained, 
 seemly, beautiful : the multiplication of ordinances 
 is checked : with fewer laws to obey, the principle 
 of Law shines out the more brightly. 
 
 But now let us go again more deeply below the 
 surface. In what ways did Greek reasonableness, 
 restraint and moderation show themselves in the 
 sphere of religion ? More especially let us look
 
 202 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 round for thoughts which are valuable for us as 
 complementary to the religious development and 
 religious teaching of the Hebrews. Greek Sophrosune 
 struggled to assert itself against an underlying tend- 
 ency to insolence, to excess, to Hubris. Judaism, in 
 spite of a certain original tendency in the Jews to 
 fierceness, to violence, and to cruelty, made pity 
 and compassion essential features of its ethical ideal. 
 To the Jew, God became not only just and awful, 
 but also righteous and compassionate. Nevertheless, 
 a certain residuum of the old, fierce, violent, un- 
 moralised Yahweh remained, and this residuum was 
 made occasionally to show itself to the enemy of 
 Israel, to the idolater, to the unrepentant sinner. To 
 them God is made to display unreasonable, vindic- 
 tive anger ; them He will punish retributively, not 
 disciplinary ; in other words, so far as they are 
 concerned, He is not wholly good. 
 
 Two things happened in Greece. The fine de- 
 velopment of moral philosophy and ethical teaching 
 reacted upon the conception of the divine nature and 
 of its dealings with man. (Whereas in Judaea it was 
 a case of religious development helping morality, 
 rather than of morality helping religion.) Secondly, 
 Zeus is much less purely and nationally Greek than 
 Yahweh is Israelite. Or, rather, he is, on the one 
 hand, identified with the head-God of many other 
 nations ; and, on the other hand, he fades into the 
 impersonal, nameless and many-named divine nature, 
 the supreme Deity who is one and many at one and 
 the same time, who is the soul and the law and the 
 reason of all the universe, immanent in it, if also 
 transcendent above it. Thus the Greek teachers knew 
 little of that difficulty so grievous to the Hebrew 
 of making their supreme God impartially just to the
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 203 
 
 foreigner as well as to the Greek. That particular 
 stumbling-block in the way of a complete moralisa- 
 tion of the idea of God hardly lay in their path, or, 
 at all events, was of no particular strength and size. 
 Anger, said a Greek philosopher, does not belong to 
 the divine nature, which in its singleness would not 
 admit the impurity and divisiveness of passion and 
 of wrath. God is said to make allowances. Famous 
 are Plato's two canons of theology. God is wholly 
 true, and God is wholly good. 
 
 Thus human fierceness cannot excuse itself by, or 
 base itself upon, a pattern in heaven. To rejoice 
 over the fallen foe may be an offence against religion. 
 Homer already bears witness to the conquests of 
 Greek Sophrosune in this direction. When the nurse 
 Eurycleia sees the dead bodies of the suitors and 
 " the great gore of blood," she begins to cry aloud 
 for joy. But Odysseus checked and held her in her 
 eagerness, and said, "Within thine own heart rejoice, 
 old nurse,- and be still, and cry not aloud; for it is 
 an unholy thing to boast over slain men." 
 
 It may be said that in the adage of Proverbs, 
 " Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth," we have the 
 same teaching, and thus the Greek can add nothing 
 to the Hebrew. But my point is that the two are 
 complementary, and that just because they are 
 complementary, they can be helpful to each other. 
 Even though we have in the Bible that fine verse 
 in Proverbs, and some similar verses elsewhere, the 
 same sort of teaching, presented in another form, may 
 be stimulating and valuable. In this very matter of 
 sinners and enemies, and of human frailty and weak- 
 ness, it cannot be said that Jewish (or Christian) 
 doctrine is always consistent, always adequate, always 
 on one and the same high and generous level,
 
 204 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 whether we turn to the Old Testament, to the New 
 Testament, or to the Rabbinical literature. Nor, by 
 any means, is the literature of Greece. But no one 
 who recognises that here, as elsewhere, in ethical 
 problems, there are many aspects of the question, and 
 that truth has many facets, can fail to be impressed 
 and aided by the teaching of the Stoics. And all 
 this teaching, even though much of it proceed 
 directly from Roman and not from Greek lips, 
 Seneca, Musonius, Marcus Aurelius, is yet justly to 
 be regarded as one of the voices of Hellenism. 
 
 So long as consistency is preserved, and the power 
 of action is not weakened, we cannot have too many 
 right motives and ends for our moral and religious 
 action. And even perfect consistency must, or need, 
 not be valued at too high a price. Is it necessary, 
 is it possible, for all of us to have an absolutely 
 harmonious theory, worked out consistently in all 
 its parts, of our relation to God and to our fellow- 
 men and of the divine relation to the world ? I 
 think not. We may be rightly stirred to different 
 bits of well-doing now by Epictetus and now by 
 Hosea, even though Epictetus's view of the world 
 could not be harmonised altogether with the view 
 of Hosea. 
 
 The noblest Stoic teaching about enemies and 
 anger may partly be due to defects as well as to 
 merits. On the defect side it may be partly due to 
 an inadequate realisation of the hideousness of sin, 
 to a too purely intellectual or determinist conception 
 of moral wrong-doing. It may also be partly due to 
 the ideal of allowing nothing to disturb the inward 
 peace and calm of the sage. You refrain from anger 
 with the man who wrongs you, not for his sake, but 
 for your own. But this very determination towards
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 205 
 
 inward peace and calm, the self-conquest and un- 
 ruffledness of the soul, is itself an ideal neither false 
 nor ignoble, is itself a facet of moral excellence, if 
 not the whole of it. It may be itself of comple- 
 mentary value to the more emotional ideals of 
 the Jew. 
 
 This teaching is, however, also due to the uni- 
 versalism of the Stoics, to their cosmopolitanism, and 
 to the fact that they regard the divine being as 
 having no special relation to any particular race. Of 
 this there will be a word to say later on. Meanwhile 
 from these causes, be they even partly weaknesses, 
 how noble is the result. I will not attempt quota- 
 tions. But it comes to this. Mankind is one large 
 family, and in all men there is a spark of the divine 
 fire. Quench not that spark through passion, hatred, 
 anger, or the desire of revenge. Though all men 
 (in Biblical language) are created in the divine image, 
 they are yet very frail and very liable to err. Bear 
 with their weaknesses : overlook their faults : aid 
 them, relieve them, strengthen them. If a man has 
 done you wrong, help him and do good to him none 
 the Jess : show and feel no anger. Conquer evil 
 with good. Overcome hatred by gentleness, injustice 
 by benevolence. The Stoic looked out upon the 
 human tragi-comedy with eyes which never flashed 
 with wrath, but were more often, I think (though 
 this was to them a weakness), wet with tears. His 
 outlook is gentle, calm, resigned. Yet he never 
 ceases to labour for the good of this frail humanity : 
 he does his duty to the fullest, even though, as we 
 may have to notice hereafter, he is not stirred to 
 action by the hope of a glorious future. It is noble 
 teaching : and in actual practice we know that it 
 moved many, from an emperor to a slave, to live
 
 206 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 strenuous and faithful lives, and to die difficult and 
 cruel deaths with courage and calm. It is comple- 
 mentary teaching to the best doctrine of the Bible. 
 It connects. That is why it is useful for the Jew to 
 learn the teaching of the Greeks : he can always find 
 connections for it in his own writings. " Fret not 
 thyself because of evil-doers : rest in the Lord ; 
 cease from anger." Here is a Jewish connection, to 
 which the calming and strengthening words of Seneca, 
 of Epictetus, and of Aurelius, can easily be fitted on. 
 And, on the other hand, it would be foolish to ignore 
 that there are many things in the Bible, relative to 
 both God and man, which are of a very different spirit 
 from the words of the Psalm that I have just quoted, 
 things to which the Stoic teaching supplies a needed 
 corrective and a delightful antidote. 
 
 Let us now turn to another aspect of kinship 
 between Greece and Judaea, another piece of doctrine 
 in which the one may be looked upon as comple- 
 mentary to the other. The attitude of Judaism to 
 earth and the things of earth has often been criticised 
 and misunderstood. That attitude has varied in 
 different ages ; it was profoundly influenced by the 
 introduction of the new doctrine of the Resurrection 
 and of a Blessed Life after death, so that it was never 
 quite the same after that doctrine had become pre- 
 valent as it had been before its coming. It is well 
 known how, upon the one hand, it has been said 
 that prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, 
 and on the other hand, how a despair of earth, a 
 pessimistic attitude towards human nature and human 
 life, are often regarded as specifically Hebrew, as 
 unfortunate Jewish remainders and excrescences 
 within the bosom of Christianity. Both these judg- 
 ments are largely erroneous or one-sided. Of
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 207 
 
 Rabbinic Judaism it would, upon the whole, be 
 true to say that, while not denying that the next 
 life would be better than this life, it taught men to 
 find happiness also in this life by its sanctification 
 and spiritualisation. The simple joys of earth are 
 recognised and approved. Again, Judaism is not 
 without its element of mysticism. But, on the 
 whole, its thought is turned to action and study, 
 rather than to mystic yearnings and emotions. Its 
 God, on the whole, is markedly transcendent, and 
 though he may be created in the divine image, man 
 is emphatically other than God. Whether in this 
 life or in the next, man retains for ever his separate- 
 ness and his inferiority. 
 
 Now apart from the doctrine of the future life, 
 there is a good deal of agreement here between the 
 Jewish view and the Greek view the predominant 
 Greek view, that is, of the Classical age. The Greek 
 too believed in " the spiritualisation of the earthy " : 
 and he too separated God from man and man from 
 God. 1 The views which Mr. Livingstone tells us 
 were held by the best of the Greeks about human 
 life and its joys are by no means so unlike Jewish 
 views as he seems to imagine. The two conceptions 
 are at any rate complementary, as Mr. Livingstone 
 himself, in one passage of his delightful book, has 
 been at pains to point out. 2 
 
 But, on the other hand, when Mr. Livingstone 
 comes to "some exceptions" and to Plato, he is 
 again wrong in supposing that Judaism taken as a 
 whole despairs of the body, and despairs of earth, 
 
 1 Murray, op. cit. p. 133: "One of the greatest works of the Hellenic 
 spirit, and especially of fifth-century Athens, was to insist on what seems to us 
 such a commonplace truism, the difference between man and God." Here 
 Athens and Jerusalem shake hands. 
 
 2 Livingstone, of. cit. pp. 127, 138.
 
 208 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 or that it teaches that there is an incurably evil 
 element in man, or that it proclaims the doctrine of 
 Original Sin. Plato, in fact, is much less Hebraic 
 than Mr. Livingstone seems to imagine, and precisely 
 because of his falsely supposed " Hebraic " elements 
 e.g. the body a burden or a tomb is he a valuable 
 corrective and a needed complement to the main 
 stream and line of Jewish doctrine, though here, too, 
 there are some Jewish thoughts to which his teaching 
 with its own peculiar facet of truth can be linked, 
 and by which it can be assimilated. 1 
 
 The Jewish spiritualisation of the earthy is, 
 however, conducted upon different lines from the 
 Greek spiritualisation, and depends upon different 
 methods and ideals. Hence it is that the Greek 
 spiritualisation can give to the Jew at least to the 
 freer and more receptive mind of the Liberal Jew an 
 extra string to his bow. The Jewish spiritualisation 
 proceeds by earthly actions and events being looked 
 at from the point of view of the divine glory. 
 Judaism covered "natural" life with a network of 
 religious commands and associations, and thus trans- 
 figured and spiritualised it. Or, again, if earthly 
 joys are for the righteous (when they get them, 
 which, it must be admitted, is not very often) a divine 
 reward for well-doing, these rewards must be used in 
 pious and seemly gratitude, and to the " sanctification 
 of the Name." For both reasons the gifts of earth 
 must be enjoyed as befits those who worship and 
 adore their Giver. The Greek spiritualisation is 
 different, but it may also be used by those who 
 continue to adopt primarily the Hebrew method. 
 For the one is not antagonistic to the other, but 
 complementary. The Greek transfigures the earthy 
 
 1 Livingstone, op. cit. pp. 190, 193, 195.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 209 
 
 by exalting, and then following, the inward spiritual 
 law of man's being. As a rational being he must 
 act as reason tells him : and reason tells him tells, 
 that is, the best and most representative of his race 
 to act justly, temperately and sanely. Reason is 
 allied with an all-round and many-sided development 
 of his body and his mind. Reason bids him rejoice 
 in youth and strength and wisdom and beauty, to find 
 pleasure even in food and drink, and the pleasures of 
 sense, but the pleasure must be the pleasure, not 
 of an animal, but of a man, a creature endowed with 
 reason and by reason self- controlled. The Greek 
 innate and peculiar sense of fitness, of proportion, 
 of temperance, together with their high intellectual 
 and artistic endowments, which led them bravely to 
 exalt the pleasures of the mind above the pleasures 
 of the body, led them also, as regards outward and 
 material instruments of pleasure and prosperity, to be 
 the votaries of simplicity, good taste, refinement, 
 moderation. Perhaps the Jews of the West have 
 not yet quite shed and discarded a certain Oriental 
 weakness for luxury, expense and excess. "Judaism," 
 says Professor Butcher, a critic keen but most appre- 
 ciative, has been "too much inclined to hanker after 
 material delights." l For us, then, the prize that was 
 a wreath of wild olive, and the famous words of 
 Pericles, <j)i\otca\ovfjLv yu-er' eureXeia? KOL <f>i\ocro(f>ov/j,ev 
 avev /iaXa/aa<? (" We are lovers of the beautiful, yet 
 simple in our tastes, we cultivate the mind without 
 loss of manliness "), may have still a special lesson and 
 a meaning. 
 
 When we reach philosophy, and when we reach 
 Stoicism more especially, this inward spiritualisation, 
 by virtue of the dignity and rationality of the human 
 
 1 Butcher, Harvard Lectures, p. 67.
 
 210 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 mind, becomes more conscious and more defined : it 
 takes on, moreover, a distinctly religious hue. The 
 doctrine of the divine image, man's kinship in respect 
 of his reason with the divine Soul and Spirit of the 
 universe, is pressed and utilised to the full. To be 
 as human as you can is to be as divine as you can. 
 Sin is a self-degradation a profanation, not as the 
 Hebrews would say, of the God without, but of the 
 divine spirit that is within. And even benevolence 
 and active help and redemptive succour towards the 
 sinner and the outcast can be (and were) regarded as 
 done, not so much from love of the individual, but 
 out of respect for the divine spirit within the criminal, 
 which, though clouded and sullied, could never be 
 entirely destroyed, done, that is, as in the well-known 
 story of the philosopher and the pirate, not so much 
 for the man's sake, as for humanity's sake, which he 
 disgraced and yet represented. 1 
 
 Ideas and thoughts such as these justly move us, 
 and they can surely be added on to our own moral 
 and religious store. The extra motives will but add 
 to our strength. Again, may we not find com- 
 plementary teachings of great beauty, cogency and 
 attractiveness in certain Greek doctrines regarding 
 punishment ? The passionate craving for the out- 
 ward and visible manifestation of the divine justice 
 led the Hebrews, as we know, to place an inordinate 
 value upon retribution upon proportionate punish- 
 ment and proportionate reward. Nevertheless, there 
 are Jewish connections for the complementary Greek 
 doctrine that virtue and sin are in themselves reward 
 and punishment. We recall the famous and familiar 
 Rabbinic utterance, " The requital of a command is 
 a command, and the requital of a transgression is a 
 
 1 Cp. Adam, The Vitality ofPlatonism and Other Essays, p. 145.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 211 
 
 transgression." On the same lines, but going further, 
 are the noble paradoxes of Plato in the Gorgias. It 
 is worse to inflict injustice than to suffer it. If one 
 has sinned, it is worse to escape punishment than to 
 receive it. For if the worst thing that can happen 
 to a man is the obscuration and corruption of his 
 own nature and of the divine light within, then 
 clearly to undergo pain and want and sorrow must 
 be less bad than unjustly to cause these things in 
 others. The sufferer can keep his soul pure and 
 unsullied. And if external punishment is remedial, 
 it is clearly a grave loss to be deprived of it. The 
 bad punishment of sin is sin itself, which pollutes 
 the soul and corrupts it. 
 
 " The unjust man," says Plato, " is miserable in 
 any case, more miserable, however, if he be not 
 punished and does not meet with retribution, less 
 miserable if he be punished and meet with retribution 
 at the hands of gods and men." Or again : "To 
 be boxed upon the ears wrongfully is not the worst 
 evil which can befall a man ; nor to have my purse 
 or my body cut open ; but injustice is the greatest 
 of evils to the doer of it." And again : " Can a 
 man be profited by injustice or any other baseness, 
 even though he acquires money and power by his 
 wickedness ? What shall he profit if his injustice be 
 undetected and unpunished ? He who is undetected 
 only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and 
 punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced 
 and humanised " (note here that punishment is not 
 retributory but educational), " the gentler element 
 in him is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected 
 and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and 
 temperance and wisdom." " The greatest penalty 
 of evil-doing," says Plato elsewhere, "is to grow
 
 212 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 into the likeness of bad men." "To have sight and 
 hearing and the use of the senses, or to live at all 
 without justice and virtue, even though a man be 
 rich in all the so-called goods of fortune, would be 
 the greatest of evils, if life were immortal ; not so 
 great, if the bad man lives only a very short time." 
 
 Two things are implied in these striking utter- 
 ances. The first is that the problem of evil is, in the 
 last resort, a problem of moral evil far more than a 
 problem of outward weal and outward woe. The 
 second is that the only real reward of virtue is virtue, 
 the only real punishment of sin is sin. That too is 
 a Jewish saying, but it needs strengthening and 
 emphasis. That strengthening and emphasis are 
 given by Hellenism. 
 
 Again, in the last resort, that is no true prayer 
 which prays for the mere destruction of the wicked. 
 It is no true prayer, because what one should pray 
 for, if one seeks to imitate God, is not the destruc- 
 tion, but the purification, of the wicked. But if 
 one is viciously inclined and revengeful, then, unlike 
 the Psalmist, one should not pray for the overthrow 
 of the wicked, but rather that he should continue in 
 prosperity, and sink deeper and deeper into the mire 
 of pollution and of sin ! 
 
 The sharp and clean-cut distinction between the 
 goods of sense and the goods of spirit, between 
 the outward and the inward, is Greek rather than 
 Hebrew. Greek is the saying, " Despise all those 
 things which you will not need when you are released 
 from the body, but those things that you will then 
 need, discipline yourself to attain, and invoke the 
 gods to help you." Yet this Greek distinction 
 merely takes up and enlarges the familiar saying of 
 Proverbs, " Wisdom is better than rubies," or puts
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 213 
 
 in a philosophical garb the conviction of the Rabbis 
 that the study of the Law is superior to all material 
 possessions. 
 
 The Stoic expected no outward reward from God 
 whether in this life or in another. His pantheistic 
 or semi-pantheistic conception of the divine did not 
 admit of any such idea. But his great comfort and 
 his spur to high endeavour lay in the thought that 
 he could put himself, by virtue and wisdom and by the 
 exercise of reason, into line with God, with the order 
 of the world, with the will of nature, with the right 
 movement of the universe. We must, I think, trans- 
 late these ideas into modern equivalents in order 
 to feel something of their force. Jowett has said : 
 " To feel habitually that he is part of the order of 
 the universe is one of the highest ethical motives of 
 which man is capable." If, in more Theistic phrase- 
 ology, we believe that righteousness and love are at 
 the heart of the universe, then a man, so far as he 
 deliberately lives the life of righteousness and love, 
 may feel that he is in tune with the universe, working 
 with, and not against, the highest, unseen spiritual 
 forces of the world a partner with God. No com- 
 plaint must be made against the divine will : the 
 good of the all, of which you are a tiny fragment, 
 may need your pain. The great Kosmos marches 
 to its predestined goal : yet each man has his part 
 in it : each has his duty. For the sake of the whole 
 the individual may have to be sacrificed or to sacrifice 
 himself. He is not condemned by a divine judge : 
 he is not rewarded by a divine paymaster. He is, 
 in a sense, his own judge and his own paymaster, 
 but, at the same time, he can, as it were, feel either 
 that he is working in harmony with the divine will 
 and purpose of the world, or that he is, however
 
 2i 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 idly and vainly, working against it. Here, if he 
 sees aright, is his true reward and here is his veritable 
 
 O * 
 
 punishment. Marcus Aurelius offers many examples 
 of these conceptions. "We are all working together," 
 he muses, " to one end, some with knowledge and 
 design ; others without knowing what they do." 
 " All rational beings have been formed for co-opera- 
 tion. Thou art a limb of the system of rational 
 beings." "Accept everything which happens, even 
 if it is disagreeable, because it leads to the health and 
 felicity of the whole. For God would not bring 
 upon any man what He has brought if it were not 
 useful for the whole." " Nothing happens to any 
 man which he is not formed by Nature to bear." 
 "Everything harmonises with me which is harmonious 
 with thee, O Universe. Everything is fruit to me 
 which thy seasons bring, O Nature : from thee are 
 all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things 
 return. The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops, and 
 wilt thou not say, Dear City of God?" Epictetus 
 says : " If you consider yourself a part of a whole, 
 it is for the sake of that whole that at one time you 
 should be ill, at another be in want, or sometimes die 
 prematurely. Why then are you troubled ? As a 
 foot is no longer a foot, if it is detached from the 
 body, so you are no longer a man, if you are separated 
 from other men. Must one, then, have a fever, 
 another die, and another be condemned ? Yes, for it 
 is impossible in such a body, in such a whole, among 
 so many living together, that such things should not 
 happen, some to one and others to others." 
 
 " Rest in the Lord," said the Psalmist. " Fret 
 not thyself because of evil-doers." Possess thy soul 
 in patience. Such was Stoic teaching too, though 
 man's sufficiency in himself is emphasised rather than
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 215 
 
 his freedom through his dependence upon God. Yet 
 it often comes to the same thing, for Stoic independ- 
 ence denoted submission to the divine will. The one 
 thing of which you are master is the one thing which 
 is the source and seat of good and evil, of happiness 
 and misery. That one thing is your soul, your 
 reason, your higher and truer self, which can either 
 rule and govern the passions or become their slave. 
 Free and purify and make wise the soul, raise it 
 above all outward events which it cannot alter and 
 which are powerless to alter it, and you have reached 
 the secret of happiness. Whatever befall you, you, in 
 your inward fortress, are safe. You are calm : you 
 are independent. Hear Aurelius once more : 
 
 " The mind which is free from passions is a 
 citadel, for man has nothing more secure to which 
 he can fly for refuge and for the future be im- 
 pregnable." "Suppose that men curse thee, cut thee 
 in pieces, kill thee. What can these things do to 
 prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, 
 just?" "Retire into thyself. The rational principle 
 which rules has this nature that it is content with 
 itself when it does what is just, and so secures tran- 
 quillity." " Look within : within is the fountain of 
 good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever 
 dig." "What more do I seek, if what I am now doing 
 is the work of an intelligent and social being, and one 
 who is under the same law with God ? " " Be like 
 the promontory against which the waves continually 
 break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the 
 water around it ! Say not, Unhappy am I because 
 this has happened to me, for not this is a misfortune, 
 but to bear it nobly is good fortune." 
 
 Superb as are the religious faith and outpourings 
 of the Psalmists, we are sometimes conscious of
 
 216 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 a certain one-sidedness. It is true that the com- 
 plaints against misfortune, the desire for recompense, 
 whether for their own fidelity or their opponents' sins, 
 are at bottom, not so much the wish for personal 
 happiness, as the justified yearning for the Kingdom 
 of God and for the triumph of His cause. Never- 
 theless, these complaints and desires seem sometimes 
 excessive. We feel that there is another way, not 
 so much of bearing trouble, but of looking at it. 
 The individual, we say, must think more of the 
 whole and less of himself. In so far as the "I" of the 
 Psalter is a collective "I" the community speaking, 
 and not the writer in his own person the objection 
 does not apply. But each individual^ we feel some- 
 times, must make less fuss about his own deserts, his 
 own wrongs, his own misfortunes. There is a certain 
 smallness so in some moods it seems to us in the 
 craving for recognition, for happiness, for reward. 
 It is, says Gruppe, the self-righteous egoist who moans 
 that the book-keeping of the universe is in disorder, 
 because his merits are not properly entered in and 
 marked down. 1 
 
 When this mood is upon us, we may find satisfac- 
 tion in the thoughts of the Greeks. It cannot be said 
 that, at any period from Homer onwards, they had 
 not an acute sense of the sadness of human life, and 
 of the misfortunes and sorrows and sufferings to 
 which all mortal men are prone. Yet, even before 
 the Stoics, they faced earthly life after which, as the 
 Psalmists, they knew and recognised, for the most 
 part, no second and longer life of conscious blessed- 
 ness and joy with steadiness and courage. They 
 enjoyed what fortune gave them, and manfully en- 
 dured its blows. And because death was the end, 
 
 1 Gruppe, Griechischc Mythologie und Religionsgcschichte, p. 1030.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 217 
 
 therefore the noblest of them were eager to do their 
 best while the light of day shone on them, and then 
 to leave a good reputation behind them when they 
 had passed away. The faithful service of the state, or 
 the attainment of renown, is enough reward. Very 
 significant, and not without their nobility and pathos, 
 are those words of the Homeric hero which are quoted 
 by Professor Butcher as very typically Greek. " Ah, 
 friend, if once escaped from this battle we were for 
 ever to be ageless and immortal, neither would I 
 fight myself in the foremost ranks, nor would I send 
 thee into the war that giveth men renown, but now 
 for assuredly ten thousand fates of death do every 
 way beset us, and these no mortal man may escape 
 nor avoid now let us go forward, whether we shall 
 give glory to other men, or others to us." l And 
 next to these words, which come from the opening 
 of the Classical period, we may fitly place the words 
 of Demosthenes from its close. " Seeing that a fixed 
 term for all men is death, good men must attempt 
 noble deeds, holding hope before them as their shield, 
 and bearing what God sends them with resignation 
 and with courage." 2 
 
 To these considerations the Stoic doctrine added 
 two grounds of consolation in trouble, which, hard 
 as they are for human nature to grasp, yet have a 
 nobility of their own. The first we have already 
 noticed. It is the unimportance in relation to 
 the whole of the individual's outward fortunes or 
 sufferings. Endure ; act nobly ; think of the whole 
 of which you are only a tiny fragment. Your pain 
 may be necessary in, or for, the harmony of the 
 universe. Make no complaint against God. The 
 
 1 Iliad, xii. 322-328 ; Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 176. 
 
 2 Schmidt, Die Ethik der alien Griechen, vol. ii. p. 76 ; De Corona, 76.
 
 2i 8 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 second is even harder. Outward and bodily things 
 and sensations are not truly good or truly evil. 
 The only true good is inward : virtue and the mind. 
 The only true evil is sin and the mind's corruption. 
 It is strange that the Greeks, with all their sunny 
 realism, and with all their artistic appreciation of 
 material things, were yet able to rise and in their 
 greatest writers without posing or affectation or un- 
 truth to the height of this hard idealism. " I am 
 the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." 
 The best Stoics could certainly say that, and they 
 proved it in their lives. No one can read Epictetus 
 and Aurelius, and the stories of the Stoic deaths in 
 Tacitus, without being moved to admiration. But 
 not only this. It is not suggested that the teaching 
 is adequate, but it is suggested that it is comple- 
 mentary. Stoic fortitude, Stoic endurance and calm, 
 Stoic contempt for pain and hardship, have a mean- 
 ing and a value. They can be utilised and partially 
 imitated. They can be united to a more thoroughly 
 Theistic faith. " How is it possible," says Epictetus, 
 " that a man who has nothing, who is naked, house- 
 less, without a hearth, squalid, without a slave, with- 
 out a city, can pass a life that flows easily ? See, God 
 has sent you a man to show you that it is possible. 
 Look at me, who am without possessions, without a 
 slave ; I sleep on the ground ; I have no wife, no 
 children, but only the earth and heavens, and one 
 poor cloak. And what do I want ? Am I not 
 without sorrow ? Am I not without fear ? Am I 
 not free? When did any of you see me failing in the 
 object of my desire ? or ever falling into that which 
 I would avoid ? did I ever blame God or man ? " l 
 But noble as the words are nor in their simplicity 
 
 1 Discourses of Epictetus, iii. 22.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 219 
 
 (for we must not forget that Arrian, not Epictetus, 
 is the writer) can they properly be accused of self- 
 righteousness and conceit they are yet clearly words 
 which were unable to conquer the world. If we hold 
 that the theory of the Eternal Father who cares is 
 true, then for the nameless many, for the humble in 
 heart and the ordinary in mind, it is this theory of the 
 loving Father who knows, and hearkens to, the cry 
 of His children, that best can help and strengthen and 
 console. The Psalmists, in spite of all their com- 
 plaints and all their yearnings for retribution and 
 reward, have helped, and will help, more millions of 
 men to noble endurance and dauntless faith and lofty 
 deeds than all the teachings of the Stoics. Neverthe- 
 less, why should we not add to our quiver an arrow 
 from the Stoic armoury ? It is a fine and fair arrow, 
 if not the finest and the fairest. 
 
 The Greeks no more than the Jews were able to 
 solve the eternal problem of evil. In a famous 
 passage in the Theaetetus, Plato combines a sense of 
 the hopelessness of the problem with an ethical lesson. 
 "Evils," says Socrates, "can never pass away, for 
 there must always remain something which is antago- 
 nistic to good. Having no place among the gods in 
 heaven, of necessity they hover around the mortal 
 nature, and this earthly sphere. Wherefore we 
 ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as 
 we can : and to fly away is to become like God, as 
 far as this is possible, and to become like Him is to 
 become holy and just and wise." Here the theory 
 is hinted at that the divine goodness is limited in its 
 power. We have already noticed the Stoic view 
 that what we call evil is needful and even good in 
 the economy of the whole, so that not only physical 
 evils, but the moral evil of wicked men ultimately
 
 220 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 and unknown to themselves fulfil their part in 
 the evolution of the universe. Hence as nothing 
 whether what we call good or what we call bad 
 fails in its intention, there is no such thing as evil to 
 the mind of God. Such is the meaning of the 
 famous saying of Epictetus : " As a mark is not set 
 up for the purpose of missing its aim, so neither does 
 the nature of evil exist in the world." With this we 
 may compare the noble and famous hymn of Cleanthes, 
 the Stoic, concerning which Mr. Adam has written 
 so interestingly, in his short but illuminating book, 
 The Vitality of Platonism : 
 
 " O God most glorious, called by many a name, 
 Nature's great King, who rulest all by law, 
 We are thy children, we alone, of all 
 On earth's broad ways that wander to and fro, 
 We bear thine image. Nought is done without 
 Thy will, O Lord, on earth, or sea, or sky, 
 Save what the wicked do by their own folly. 
 
 ct But thou knowest also how to make odd even, 
 and bring order out of chaos ; and the unloved is 
 loved by thee. For thou hast joined together in one 
 whole all things good with all things evil, in such a 
 way that all make up one universal reason, existent 
 evermore." 
 
 " For God," as Heraclitus says, " accomplishes all 
 things with a view to the harmony of the whole." 
 
 The Stoic palliative against evil is mainly the 
 denial of evil the denial, that is, of all evil except 
 moral evil, for which man himself is responsible, and 
 from which of his own efforts and discipline he can 
 set himself free. It was possible to weld on to this 
 doctrine a more personal conception of God as the 
 Trainer and Physician of man, so that the outward 
 sorrows of life become disciplinary and remedial.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 221 
 
 In this way a bridge is built between Stoic teaching 
 and the teaching of the Old Testament and the 
 Rabbis. " Happy is the man whom God chastens." 
 Sufferings are the chastisements of the divine Jove. 
 
 Thus Seneca says, " God does not pet the good 
 man : He tries him, hardens him, and fits him for 
 Himself." " God bears a fatherly mind towards good 
 men, and loves them in a manly spirit. Let them, 
 He says, be exercised by labours, sufferings and 
 losses, that so they may gather true strength." 
 " Why does God afflict the best of men with ill- 
 health, or sorrow or other troubles ? Because in the 
 army the most hazardous services are assigned to the 
 bravest soldiers." " The good man," says Epictetus, 
 " is convinced that whatever he suffers, it is God who 
 is exercising him. Thus he looks up to God and 
 says : Deal with me as Thou wilt : I am of the same 
 mind as Thou art, I am thine." 
 
 To these views can be added the Platonic doctrine 
 of personal immortality the immortality of the soul. 
 Here, again, when we read Plato, we find the Greek 
 supplements the Hebrew. It may not be easy to 
 say precisely what the extra Greek note is, or wherein 
 its excellence consists, but that does not mean that 
 this extra note is, after all, not really there. Listen 
 to this. " Be of good cheer about death, and know 
 of a certainty that no evil can happen to a good man 
 either in life or after death." " Let a man be of 
 good cheer about his soul, who having cast away the 
 pleasures and ornaments of the body as alien to him 
 and working harm rather than good, has sought 
 after the pleasures of knowledge ; and has arrayed 
 the soul, not in some foreign attire, but in her own 
 proper jewels, temperance and justice and courage 
 and nobility and truth in these adorned she is ready
 
 222 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 to go on her journey, when her hour comes." Are 
 these words not fitted and worthy to be placed beside 
 those other words, which are, perhaps, so peculiarly 
 moving and beautiful because they are the product 
 of a Jew who not only wrote in Greek, but had been 
 touched by Greek teaching ? " The souls of the 
 righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment 
 shall touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they 
 seem to have died, and their departure is accounted 
 to be their hurt, and their journeying away from us 
 to be their ruin ; but they are in peace. For even 
 if in the sight of men they be punished, their hope 
 is full of immortality. Having borne a little chasten- 
 ing, they shall receive great good, because God has 
 made trial of them, and found them worthy of 
 Himself." 1 
 
 What, then, may we say that Liberal Judaism can 
 learn from Hellenism ? What are the moral and 
 religious elements which, in our own moral and 
 religious equipment, can be strengthened by a study 
 of the best Hellenic thought? And when I say 
 " best," I mean only " best " from our particular point 
 of view, for while, for instance, Aristotle is a greater 
 genius and a greater philosopher than Epictetus, it 
 may well be that religiously we can learn more from 
 Epictetus than from Aristotle. 
 
 As in things political, and in the doctrine of the 
 state, men have learned from Greece the value of 
 ordered freedom, of the liberty of obedience, so in 
 morality and religion we can, I think, learn from 
 Greece the nobility and worth of a certain reverent 
 independence, a certain self-sufficiency, a certain 
 conquest of circumstance. Man wills the divine 
 will, and all that befalls him so far as it is not his 
 
 1 Whdom of Solomon, Hi. 1-5.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 223 
 
 own fault or alterable by his own action he regards 
 as the will of God. If he can do that, he is " inde- 
 pendent in face of the storms of fortune," and desire 
 and fear are extinguished. Reasoned courage in the 
 hour of danger when the call of duty, or the com- 
 mand of the state, or the will of God, summon you 
 to peril and to death the courage of Leonidas at 
 Thermopylae is peculiarly Greek. The Hebrew 
 order seems to be, God enjoins and man obeys : the 
 Greek order seems to be, Man freely puts himself 
 into harmony with God. Both are true and both 
 inspiring ; in some moods we ,may like to use the 
 first order, in some moods the second. The Hebrew 
 bidding to righteousness comes from without : the 
 Greek bidding comes from within. Neither Hebrew 
 nor Greek condemns the world and the things of 
 sense : both are sane and sober realists, but both are 
 idealists as well. Both ask for an enjoyment of the 
 things of sense which is other than the enjoyment of 
 the animal. Personal sanctification and the glory 
 of God that is how the Hebrew uses the world 
 and triumphs over it : self-control, temperance, the 
 cultivation of the mind, inward refinement and good 
 taste, these are the ideas and ideals that we have won 
 from Hellas. Why should we be , righteous, why 
 should we be holy ? Because God has ordered us to 
 be so, says the Hebrew. Because it befits our divine 
 manhood, says the Greek. Self-respect, self-rever- 
 ence, true shame, these are Greek ideals and Greek 
 conceptions. The untranslatable Greek word aidts 
 , with the kindred but distinct word aischune 
 reveals an entire province of Greek 
 morality. The fear of being thought ill of by 
 others, the desire for honour and reputation, were 
 deepened and refined into a fear of being thought
 
 224 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 ill of by oneself, or into a reverence for one's own 
 humanity, or, again, into a reverence for the rational, 
 that is, for the divine, element in one's own nature. 
 So, too, the fear of giving others pain and especially 
 those whom we respect or pity the delicate desire 
 to respect their feelings and their rights, became 
 moral motives of extraordinary power. 1 
 
 The two words aidts and aischune were often 
 used in connection with, and sometimes faded into, 
 each other. But more usually their meaning is kept 
 distinct. Aischune means a fear of being blamed by 
 others, and this fear deepens into a sense of honour, 
 a sense of shame. Aidbs means a fear of hurting the 
 feelings of others ; a respect of, or consideration for, 
 others. It may, therefore, come to mean pity or 
 reverence. It can be felt not only for human beings, 
 but also for the gods. And it can be felt for the 
 impersonal laws of morality, " those unwritten and 
 unfailing statutes of heaven, whose life is not of 
 to-day or yesterday, but from all time, and no man 
 knows when they were first put forth " ; " those laws 
 of range sublime, whose father is Olympus alone ; 
 their parent was no race of mortal men, no, nor shall 
 oblivion ever lay them to sleep ; a mighty god is 
 in them, and he* grows not old." 2 Thus in Homer 
 aid&s prevents Penelope from violating her fidelity to 
 her absent lord, the lack of it causes a man to show 
 no respect to the laws of duty to the guest, while the 
 sense of it hinders Telemachus from showing dis- 
 regard to his mother. As modesty and a becoming 
 consideration for the old, aidbs is supposed to be the 
 peculiar virtue of the young. Demetrius of Phaleron 
 said the young should in-doors show aidts to their 
 
 1 Cp. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, vol. i. pp. 168-184. 
 2 Sophocles, Antigone, 454 5 CEdipus Tyrannus, 865.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 225 
 
 parents, out-of-doors to every passer-by, and in 
 solitude to themselves. So Theophrastus said : 
 " Show aidbs to yourself, and you will not need to feel 
 aischunS before others " in other words : self-respect 
 will keep you from sin, and thus from fearing the 
 blame of others. 
 
 Thucydides uses aischun$ in a noble sense when, 
 in describing the plague at Athens, he says that some 
 went to see their friends without thought of them- 
 selves and were ashamed to leave them. Or, again, 
 
 o 
 
 where he says that if one party to a quarrel, having 
 got the best of it, overcomes his resentment and 
 offers moderate terms, the other party, from aischune, 
 a sense of shame or honour is more likely to keep 
 his word. Brasidas declares readiness, obedience and 
 aischund to be the virtues of a soldier. Through 
 aischune kinsmen must help kinsmen in the hour of 
 need. In an elaborately -worked -out passage, the 
 Spartans are declared to be good warriors because 
 of their orderliness and discipline, for in orderliness 
 and discipline are comprised self-control (sophrosune) 
 which produces aidos, and aischune which produces 
 courage. Here by aiats is meant reverence towards 
 the general and his orders ; by aischund the sense of 
 honour, which gives courage. 
 
 Plato, in the Laws, tends to identify the two 
 qualities. What he says of them is, I think, 
 singularly helpful, when looked at as supplementary 
 to Hebrew morality. Aischund he defines as the 
 fear of doing wrong. This right fear he declares 
 the legislator to hold in greatest honour ; he calls it 
 aidos^ reverence. The opposite is insolence or shame- 
 lessness. Elsewhere he speaks of that just and noble 
 fear, which will take up arms at the approach of 
 insolence, that divine fear, which we have called aidds 
 
 Q
 
 226 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 and aischune, reverence and shame. Of this rever- 
 ence the good man is a willing servant, the coward 
 is independent and fearless. " Let parents," he says, 
 " bequeath to their children not a heap of riches, but 
 aidtS) reverence. We, indeed," he adds, "fancy that 
 they will inherit aidts from us, if we rebuke them 
 when they show shamelessness. But in truth the 
 right way is for the elders to feel shame towards the 
 younger, and above all to take heed that no young 
 man sees or hears one of themselves doing or saying 
 anything disgraceful ; for where old men have no 
 shame, aischune, these young men will most certainly 
 be devoid of reverence {aidbs}" 
 
 It is thus an inward sense of what is right and 
 fitting that is to keep a man straight and to restrain 
 him from wrongdoing not the fear of punishment. 
 Nor can it be said that it was the hope of reward 
 which was to drive a man on to noble deeds. The 
 Greeks possessed an acute sense of the sadness of life 
 and of its sufferings, yet they faced it with courage. 
 They enjoyed what fortune gave them and manfully 
 endured its blows. Death was the end ; to them, as 
 to the Psalmists, the life of Hades was a life in no 
 wise worth having ; yet all the more were they keen 
 to do their best while the light of day shone upon 
 them, and to leave a good reputation behind. The 
 faithful service of the State, the attainment of renown 
 these are enough reward. No prose translation 
 can render back the dignified simplicity of the great 
 epitaphs of Simonides ; yet listen to this on the 
 Spartans who fell at Thermopylae. " O passer-by, 
 tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here obeying 
 their commands." Nothing more. Or on the 
 Athenian dead at Plataea : " If to die nobly is the 
 chief part of excellence, to us out of all men fortune
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 227 
 
 gave this lot : for hastening to set a crown of freedom 
 on Hellas, we lie possessed of praise which grows 
 not old." 
 
 We must not forget that the very conception of, 
 and the very word for, Conscience are creations of 
 Greece. Already Isocrates had said what now 
 seems a very copy-book injunction, but was more 
 original then " If you have done anything dis- 
 graceful, do not hope that you will escape notice. 
 For if it is unknown to others, you will be conscious 
 of it yourself" (o-eavTq* a-vvetSijcre^ 1 "). The dignity 
 of humanity is in the keeping of every man. Each 
 of us can sully, or keep pure, the god that is within 
 us. That is not the native Hebrew way of looking 
 at morality and religion, but it is in harmony with the 
 Hebrew way : it is not antagonistic, but comple- 
 mentary. Aristotle says : " If reason be divine as 
 compared with man, the life which consists in the 
 exercise of reason will also be divine in relation to 
 a merely human life. And instead of listening to 
 those who advise us as mortal men not to lift our 
 thoughts above what is human and mortal, we ought 
 rather, as far as possible, to put off our mortality, 
 and make every effort to live on the exercise of the 
 highest of our faculties ; for though it be but a small 
 part of us, yet in power and value it far surpasses all 
 the rest. And indeed this part would even seem to 
 constitute our true self, since it is the sovereign and 
 the better part." 
 
 Noble words and a noble thought. The great- 
 ness of man and the littleness of man are both 
 essential doctrines in Theistic religion : both are 
 asserted in the Bible and in Greek literature. But, 
 
 1 Isocrates i. 16. 
 2 Nicomachean Ethics, x. 7.
 
 228 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 perhaps, it is in relation to the first rather than to 
 the second that, so far as religion is concerned, 
 we shall go to Greece, and find a supplement to the 
 Eighth Psalm. 
 
 The greatness of man is emphasised on account 
 of his kinship with God, with the divine. And this 
 greatness or divine kinship becomes, with the philo- 
 sophers, a source of ethical teaching. " Of all the 
 things," says Plato, " which a man has, his soul is the 
 most divine and most truly his own. So next to the 
 gods, every one should honour his own soul." Then 
 it is shown in what this honour consists and in what 
 its opposite. Thus self-indulgence or excessive love 
 of life, or preferring beauty to virtue, or making 
 dishonest gains, are all a dishonouring of " this 
 wonderful possession," the u divinest part of man." 
 For " all the gold which is under or upon the earth 
 is not enough to give in exchange for virtue." Or, 
 again, in relation to man's power of attaining wisdom 
 and knowledge, " he who has been earnest in the 
 love of knowledge and wisdom, and has exercised 
 his intellect more than any other part of him, must 
 have thoughts immortal and divine, if he attain 
 truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of 
 sharing in immortality, he must altogether be im- 
 mortal ; and since he is ever cherishing the divine 
 power, and has the divinity within him in perfect 
 order, he will be perfectly happy." The philosophic 
 nature has " no secret corner of illiberality ; nothing 
 can be more antagonistic than meanness to a soul 
 which is ever longing after the whole of things 
 both divine and human. How can he who has 
 magnificence of mind, and is the spectator of all time 
 and all existence," think much of human life or 
 account death fearful ? And for every man " virtue
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 229 
 
 is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, 
 vice its disease and weakness and deformity." How 
 " ridiculous then is the question : which is the more 
 profitable, to be just or to be unjust? " "No man, 
 who is not an utter fool and coward, should be 
 afraid of death, but he should be afraid of doing 
 wrong. For to die leaving one's soul full of in- 
 justice is the last and worst of all evils." 1 "God," 
 says Epictetus, " has introduced man to be a spectator 
 of God and of His works, and not only a spectator, 
 but an interpreter." " Being the work of such an 
 artist as God, will you dishonour Him ? He has 
 entrusted you to yourself, and made you a deposit 
 to yourself. He has entrusted yourself to your own 
 care, and says, keep him for me such as he is by 
 nature, modest, faithful, erect, unterrified, free from 
 passion and perturbation." " Greatness of soul and 
 manliness can be ours : God has given us powers by 
 which we can bear everything that happens without 
 being depressed or broken by it." " To have God 
 for your maker and guardian and father, shall not 
 this release us from sorrow and fears ? " "If the 
 Emperor should adopt you, no one could endure 
 your arrogance : but if you know that you are the 
 son of God, sprung from Him in an especial manner, 
 will you not be elated? Will you have any mean 
 or ignoble thoughts about yourself? " "When you 
 have shut the door and made darkness within, 
 remember never to say you are alone : you are not ; 
 God is within you." 2 
 
 Greek thought culminates in Greek philosophy. 
 Judaism learnt philosophy from Greece, and must 
 learn it again. A religion is valueless which does 
 
 1 Laws, 726-728 ; Republic, 486, 444, 445 ; Gorgias, $22. 
 2 Discourses, i. 6 ; ii. 8 ; i. 6 ; i. 9 ; i. 3 ; i. 14 (Long's translation).
 
 230 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 not suit the ordinary man as well as the wise 
 man, but a religion is also valueless which does not 
 suit the wise man as well as the fool. Religion, 
 like education, must permeate human society from 
 bottom to top, and from top to bottom. Judaism 
 must again philosophise : we need our philosophers 
 not the historians of philosophy merely, who tell 
 us the philosophy of the past, but men who will 
 create for us a philosophy of the present, a philosophy 
 of religion which shall preserve for Judaism our 
 wisest Jews, and shall expound Judaism to the wise 
 that are without. Philosophy is not antagonistic to 
 Judaism and to the Jewish spirit : it is complementary 
 to them. Because there is kinship between Hellas 
 and Judaea, therefore we can fuse the spirit of 
 Hellas with our own. 
 
 And this kinship with Greece Liberal Jews will 
 feel the more acutely, because, like the Greeks, we 
 were a mere petty race, a petty nation, and we 
 became something better, larger, higher. We were 
 a petty nation ; we became a spirit. 
 
 The Greeks, like the Hebrews, were proudly 
 conscious of their difference from, and superiority 
 to, other men, and this consciousness of superiority 
 generated a certain pride, a certain hostility, a certain 
 disdain. 
 
 The Hebrews, on the one side : the " nations," 
 on the other. The Greeks, on the one side : the 
 " barbarians," on the other. Herodotus says that in 
 his day the Hellenic race had been for a long while 
 marked off from the barbarian as " more intelligent 
 and more emancipated from silly nonsense." l To the 
 Hebrew all the " nations " were idolaters, and all 
 idolaters are fools. " They know not, neither do 
 
 1 Herodotus i. 60. Cp. Murray, four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 57.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 231 
 
 they understand ; for He has shut their eyes that 
 they cannot see, and their hearts that they cannot 
 understand. " Nevertheless, the Jewish religion tended 
 to universalism. " The oneness of God," as Professor 
 Butcher said, " carried with it, as an implicit con- 
 sequence, the oneness of humanity. . . . No ancient 
 constitution accorded to strangers such a position 
 as they enjoyed under the Mosaic code. . . . The 
 rights of the alien are placed on a clear religious 
 basis the Unity of God involving the brotherhood 
 of man. ... At the heart of Judaism, beneath its 
 hard and often repelling exclusiveness, the idea of 
 universal humanity was being matured." l 
 
 Till the Stoics came, of whom the founder 
 strange, striking and almost pathetic fact was a 
 Semite in blood, Zeno the Cypriote, the Greeks 
 found it very hard to reach out to the idea of 
 universalism. Even Aristotle, as we know, thought 
 that certain peoples, that is, the Greeks, were fitted 
 by nature to rule, and others, that is, the whole 
 barbarian world, were fitted by nature to obey. 
 Yet even earlier than Zeno, there were adumbrations 
 of a wider doctrine. Plato, in the Politicus, laughs 
 at the logical folly of those who cut off the Hellenes 
 as one species, and all the other species of mankind, 
 which are innumerable, and have no ties or common 
 language, they include under the single name of 
 barbarians. 2 And we know from Strabo that 
 Eratosthenes blamed those who would divide all 
 mankind into Greeks and barbarians, and suggested 
 that they should rather be divided according to their 
 vices and virtues, for amongst the Greeks there are 
 many worthless characters, and many highly civilised 
 
 1 Harvard Lecturet on Greek Subjects, pp. 33-36. 
 2 Politicus, 262.
 
 232 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 among the barbarians. 1 More significant 
 for our purpose is the famous, if isolated, remark of 
 Isocrates, who in his praise of Athens says that the 
 teaching of his city has gone forth into many lands, 
 so that the Hellene has become the name of a 
 disposition of mind rather than of a race, and that 
 those are now more properly called Hellenes who 
 participate in Hellenic culture than those who 
 belong to the Hellenic race. 2 Hellenism is less a 
 matter of birth than of mind. It is a spiritual, not 
 a physical, quality. Precisely so do we claim and 
 desire that Judaism should be much less a matter 
 of birth than of faith. It is a spiritual, and not a 
 physical, possession. Philo, touched as he was in 
 different ways and measures by the spirit of Greece 
 and of Judaea, thought and said the same. " Kinship," 
 he said, " is in truth not reckoned merely by blood ; 
 it is rather doing the same actions and seeking the 
 same ends." 3 
 
 It was, however, the Stoics who preached a con- 
 scious and full-blown universalism. They took up 
 and developed the teaching of the Cynics, while 
 Antisthenes, the Cynic founder, himself had carried 
 forward, and made explicit, implications in the teach- 
 ing of Socrates. 
 
 It was Diogenes the Cynic who, when questioned 
 as to the state of which he was a citizen, replied, " I 
 am a cosmopolitan," a citizen of the world. 4 Was 
 
 1 Strabo, book i. ad fin, Strabo himself disagrees with Eratosthenes. The 
 reason for this division, he says, was because those who made it "found that on 
 one side justice, knowledge and the force of reason reigned supreme, but their 
 contraries on the other" (rots fj.tv ^TriKparet rb v6/j.i/j.ov ical rb iraiSeias nal 
 \6ywv oiKfiov, rots 5 ravavrLa.} 
 
 2 Isocrates, Panegyricus, 50 ad Jin. 
 
 3 Fhilo, De Nobilitate, chap. i. (Mangey, ii. p. 438.) 
 
 4 Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes, 63, puT7j9eh wbOev ett], KOfffJ-o- 
 TroX/TTjj, ttprj. Cp. Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, ii. I (4th ed.), p. 325, 
 n. i.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 233 
 
 this teaching, this breaking down of the barriers 
 between Greek and barbarian, this reduction of all 
 men to a common level, from which they only rise 
 by superiority in virtue and wisdom, specially sym- 
 pathetic to Zeno, himself of non-Hellenic blood ? It 
 is attractive to think that the broad human philan- 
 thropy and cosmopolitanism of the Stoics, which have 
 had so deep an effect upon European civilisation (for 
 we know how, in addition to the specifically ethical 
 teaching of men like Epictetus and Seneca, the Stoic 
 universalism entered into Roman law and Christian 
 doctrine), may partially have been due to the Semitic 
 origin of the founder. However this may be, Zeno 
 and his followers embraced with ardour the Cynic 
 cosmopolitanism. From Zeno to Aurelius, on this 
 point all Stoics took the same line. " In so far as 
 I am Antoninus," said the great Emperor, " my city 
 and fatherland is Rome, but as a human being it is 
 the world." l 
 
 This broadness of view was essentially religious. 
 " If," says Mr. Adam, "we would understand the true 
 historical significance of the Stoic cosmopolitanism, 
 we must above all things remember that it is essen- 
 tially a religious ideal, since the bond of citizenship 
 is man's unity with man in virtue of his unity with 
 God." 2 And this religious ideal of the Stoics, which 
 can still move and strengthen us, as we meet it in 
 those remains of Stoic literature which have been 
 preserved to us, fits in with, fits on to, our own 
 Jewish universalism. For we, too, after a severe 
 struggle, have won .through to a religious universalism ; 
 we, too, feel deeply the sense of human brotherhood. 
 Already an old Rabbi had said that the verse in 
 
 1 vi. 44 ; cp. Adam, The Vitality of Platonism, p. 144. 
 The Vitality of Platonism, p. 146.
 
 234 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 Genesis, " These are the generations of Adam," was 
 the greatest in the Scripture. It taught the unity of 
 man in the image of God. But in Liberal Judaism 
 religious universalism stands out with fullest clearness 
 as a truth and as an ideal. We recognise the 
 equality of all men before the one God, and the 
 dignity of all men as partakers of the divine spirit. 
 For religious purposes we maintain our self-identity 
 and our separateness, but our religion, in its doctrines 
 and in its expression, in its theories and in its forms, 
 is not for ourselves only, but for all who haply may 
 find it suited to their religious needs. 
 
 A man, who has within his brain and heart the 
 best thought and spirit of Judaea and of Greece, is 
 indeed well fitted for the battle of life. He is pro- 
 vided with panoply to protect him against the shocks 
 of fortune ; and he is given a spear with which to 
 enter bravely upon the fight. 
 
 The greatest of his spiritual possessions comes 
 from Judaea. The doctrine of the progress of man- 
 kind, and of the Messianic age, is hardly known to 
 the Greek at all. It is even remarkable, and may 
 perhaps account for the undertone of sad resignation 
 in much of their literature, that the Stoics were 
 satisfied with their grim teaching of the absorption of 
 all things into the divine fire, together with the 
 repetition and recurrence of everything in gigantic 
 cycles of time. Faint and inadequate again is the 
 Greek teaching respecting personal immortality. 
 Above all, the doctrine of the Divine Father who 
 knows and rules and cares and loves, with whom and 
 with whose spirit each human soul can have com- 
 munion, this Theism never becomes the fixed and 
 definite doctrine of Hellas or of any philosophic 
 school. Seneca of all the Stoics approaches nearest
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 235 
 
 to it, but it could not be reached, and made distinct 
 and luminous, and become general and diffused, 
 through Stoic, or indeed through any other Greek, 
 philosophy. Polytheism, on the one hand, pantheism, 
 on the other, prevented its growth. It is true that 
 the later Stoics, and the eclectic teachers who suc- 
 ceeded them, men such as Plutarch or Dion Chrysos- 
 tom or Maximus of Tyre, often preach a mono- 
 theism which seems not merely theoretically complete, 
 but practically and emotionally satisfying. " The 
 infinite benevolence of God is asserted in the face 
 of all appearances to the contrary." A " loving and 
 righteous will " is spoken of as at the heart of the 
 universe. 1 God is not only within the human soul : 
 He is also without, and He is represented as the loving 
 ruler, the helper and the guardian of every individual 
 soul. But the relations of these teachers to the official 
 polytheism prevented their nobler doctrine from 
 exercising a wide effect. Few of them thought it 
 necessary, or politic, or even true, to say that the 
 old gods were nonentities, and that their worship 
 should be utterly abandoned and destroyed. They 
 compromised, partly because they did not think it 
 possible for the " masses " to do without their gods, 
 their temples and their sacrifices, partly because, in 
 spite of their monotheistic language, the divine, in 
 their opinion, could and did manifest itself in divers 
 forms and ways. Maximus's defence of idolatry is 
 tender, tolerant and beautiful, but it needed a harsher 
 and more exclusive monotheism to capture the 
 world. 2 Moreover, monotheism needed a worship 
 and culture of its own, and with these the philosophers 
 and the sages were unable to supply it. For the 
 
 1 Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurellus, p. 393. 
 a Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 98.
 
 236 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 ordinary man the teaching was both too aloof and 
 too indulgent. It did not put something definite 
 and practical in the place of the old worship and the 
 old superstitions. It gave a theory, gentle and 
 luminous, but it stopped short of an embodiment and 
 a practice. We, however, to-day can, to some extent, 
 be helped and edified by this eclectic monotheism. 
 We connect it with, and add it on to, our own. It 
 forms a supplement, a useful addition. The main 
 source of our monotheism and the substance of it 
 are Jewish. The Psalms speak to us more nearly 
 and more movingly of God than Seneca or Epictetus, 
 be it that we are in the more direct line of spiritual 
 descent from their authors, be it that they are 
 actually at closer grips with their subject, or, in spite 
 of their religious inspiration, are yet less removed 
 from the general level of struggling humanity. 
 
 The loving God, transcendent and yet near, the 
 spirit of the world, yet above the world, creator and 
 friend of man, source of human mind and of human 
 righteousness, He comes to us, not from Athens, 
 but from Jerusalem. Out of Zion has He gone forth. 
 And from Zion still spring our deepest consolation 
 and our strongest stimulus. It is the God of Judaism 
 who urges us forward in His service : He is our 
 bulwark and our refuge. He inspires and He 
 comforts. He is our goal and our home. He is 
 our hope and our star. 
 
 Yet if we are led to the conclusion that the 
 deepest and most potent motives for action, and the 
 profoundest external comfort, come from Judaea, I 
 am inclined to think that our most effective inward 
 panoply comes from Greece. God our refuge, God 
 the object of our love that is mainly Jewish. The 
 dignity of man and of the human mind that is
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 237 
 
 mainly Greek. I say " mainly " with emphasis, both 
 because in justice to Greece and to Judaea the adverb 
 is needed, and because Greece can only reinforce 
 Judaea, and Judaea Greece, so far as each partakes 
 to some extent of the special virtue of the other. 
 With the panoply that I have called the dignity of 
 man and of the human mind much follows and is 
 associated. Its true cause is man's kinship with God, 
 and it is by no means necessarily accompanied by 
 conceit or incompatible with humility. In strictest 
 harmony with it is the doctrine that the only true 
 good is the mind's own excellence, virtue, the only 
 true evil, the mind's own corruption, wrongdoing or 
 sin. Virtue, said Antisthenes, is the only weapon 
 which can never be wrenched away from us. 1 All 
 outward things, all material possessions, all the gifts 
 or the shocks of fortune, all pleasures or pains, are 
 neither truly good nor truly evil. Suffering may be 
 a discipline for virtue : it is not for man to complain 
 of it. The mind, the true self, is superior to, and 
 independent of, all that may befall the body or the 
 environment of the body. The prosperity of the 
 wicked, the adversity of the righteous, are no puzzles. 
 For, from one point of view, prosperity and adversity, 
 having no inward relation to virtue, are neither good 
 nor evil, and may thus justly happen with complete 
 indiscrimination both to the wicked and the virtuous ; 
 from another point of view, they are the just retribu- 
 tions of wickedness and virtue. Prosperity hardens 
 the wicked in his wickedness, adversity hardens the 
 virtuous in his virtue. That whom God loves He 
 chastens is a thought which became as familiar to the 
 Greeks as to the Hebrews. Not only need his own 
 misfortunes and the prosperity of his " enemy " in no 
 
 1 Diogenes Laertius, Life of Antisthenes, 12, Ava<f>alperov STT\OV i) dperi).
 
 238 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 wise impair the calm independence of the righteous 
 and the wise, not only will he neither repine nor fret, 
 but if occasion should arise, he will help his " enemy " 
 and forgive him. Hatred is unfitting to man, because 
 man partakes of the divine spirit. 
 
 Anger disturbs the serenity and clearness of the 
 human mind. It clouds and dims that reason, which 
 is not only human, but also divine. Anger degrades. 
 It pushes man down from the higher level, in which 
 he rises towards the divine, to the lower level in 
 which he sinks and inclines towards the animal. To 
 be as human as you can, is also to be as divine as 
 you can. And human, in that sense, tended also to 
 mean humble. Philanthropy the noble word, a 
 purely Greek creation is the mark of him whose 
 vital or rational principle is akin with the divine. 
 Even for your own sake, then, remain calm : as 
 against the shocks of adversity, so also against the 
 machinations of the sinner. Remember the in- 
 voluntary nature of wickedness so especially accord- 
 ing to the Stoics; and also how, apparently, there 
 must always be these antagonisms and antagonists to 
 the good. Therefore, help, pity, teach, forbear. 
 
 " When you are offended with any man's shameless 
 conduct," says Aurelius, "ask yourself, is it possible 
 that shameless men should not be in the world ? It 
 is not possible." But, muses the Emperor, what is 
 possible is for you not to be irritated or harmed by 
 another's shamelessness ; you can correct him, teach 
 him, and forgive him. " Kindness is invincible, if it 
 is genuine. Tell the violent man who seeks to do 
 you harm : Not so, my son ; / shall not be injured, 
 you are injuring yourself''' "As horses neigh, so 
 must the bad man do wrong. If he annoys you, 
 seek to cure his disposition." The one thing the
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 239 
 
 Emperor would have loved to do was to pass his life 
 in study : he would have loved to read widely and 
 become a learned man. That could never be. " You 
 cannot be learned," he writes ; " you have no leisure 
 or opportunity, but you can be superior to pleasure 
 and pain, you can refrain from anger with stupid and 
 ungrateful people ; you can even care for them." 
 " Wickedness does no harm to the whole, to the 
 universe ; so too the wickedness of one man can do 
 no harm to another." 
 
 " Begin themorning,"says the poor weary Emperor, 
 " by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the deceit- 
 ful, the proud, the unsocial, the envious. They 
 have these qualities because they are ignorant of the 
 truly good and the truly evil. Yet these men are 
 akin to me, and they share the same divinity. How 
 then can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him ? 
 We are made for co-operation ; to be angry with him 
 is to act against him." 1 "Bear and forbear" were 
 the watchwords of Epictetus, and nobly did Aurelius 
 fulfil the maxim of his master. Pittacus, one of the 
 " seven wise men," who is supposed to have Jived in 
 the seventh century B.C., after being wronged by a man 
 and having the power of punishing him, let him go, 
 saying, " Forgiveness is better than revenge ; for 
 forgiveness is the sign of a gentle nature, but revenge 
 is the sign of a savage nature." " Men exist," muses 
 Aurelius, "for the sake of one another : teach them 
 then, or bear with them." The sinner merely injures 
 himself, not his enemy. The righteous can but pity 
 and pardon him. Moreover, both are members of 
 the human order, both are social beings ; hence the 
 righteous will not only pity the sinner, but he will 
 help him. Men must bear with each other and love 
 
 1 Aurelius, ix. 42 ; xi. 18 ; xii. 16 ; viii. 8 ; viii, 55 ; ii. I.
 
 240 LIBERAL JUDAISM iv 
 
 one another. The Cynics and the later Stoics and 
 Eclectics conceived the idea and the duty (which 
 we have found nobly characteristic of the life and 
 the teaching of Jesus) that the wrecks and outcasts 
 of mankind, the sinners and the reprobates, must 
 be actively succoured and redeemed. The good 
 physician must not be frightened to attend the sick. 
 When Antisthenes was reproached for going about 
 among depraved persons, he said, " Physicians also 
 live with those that are ill, and yet they do not catch 
 fevers." l 
 
 All these thoughts and teachings have their 
 measure of truth. All help, strengthen and console. 
 If we try to analyse the thoughts which for us 
 alleviate and make tolerable the problem of suffer- 
 ing, which help and strengthen us in the manly 
 endurance of sorrow, trouble and loss, we shall surely 
 find that these Greek ideas form a part of them. 
 " Thou," says Wordsworth, addressing Toussaint 
 1'Ouverture, 
 
 them hast great allies ; 
 Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
 And love, and man's unconquerable mind. 
 
 That is more Greek than Hebrew. Browning's 
 Rabbi ben Ezra expresses the harmony of the two : 
 
 Rejoice we are allied 
 
 To that which doth provide 
 And not partake, effect and not receive ! 
 
 A spark disturbs our clod ; 
 
 Nearer we hold of God 
 Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. 
 
 Then, welcome each rebuff", 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! 
 
 1 Diogenes Laertius, Life of Antisthenes, 6.
 
 iv AND HELLENISM 241 
 
 Be our joy three parts pain ! 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
 Learn, nor account the pang, dare, never grudge the throe. 
 
 That is neither pure Hebrew nor pure Greek. 
 It is a union and a development of both. In this 
 spirit may we continue with God's help to move 
 forward to fuller light, drawing sustenance and in- 
 spiration from both Athens and Jerusalem.
 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 THE importance and complexity of the subject of 
 the present chapter need no proof. It will be ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to know how to fix the boundaries 
 and draw the line. For, as Liberal Judaism is a 
 religion, our particular subject obviously ought to 
 include a discussion of the relation of religion as a 
 whole to democracy. This gigantic enquiry would 
 need learning and ability of which the present writer 
 is destitute, and which not many living writers possess. 
 Lord Acton could have undertaken it, as, indeed, in 
 his published essays, there are tantalising fragmentary 
 contributions towards it. As his projected history 
 of Liberty seemed to include all history within its 
 range, so might also the history of the relation of 
 religion to democracy. And narrow the enquiry how 
 one will or may, it yet must reach much beyond the 
 limits of a religion which, like Judaism, lies, for the 
 most part, so far away from the general stream of 
 European, or world, civilisation and history. The 
 difficulty of dealing with the subject is thereby in- 
 creased. For in truth as to the relation of Judaism 
 or Liberal Judaism to Democracy we have nothing, 
 or hardly anything, to go upon by way of record or 
 experience. Judaism has lived in a corner. It has 
 
 242
 
 v LIBERAL JUDAISM & DEMOCRACY 243 
 
 not been the prevailing religion of kingdoms and 
 states. It has only been the creed of a small minority, 
 only lately admitted to citizen rights, whose religion, 
 so far as the state is concerned, has nothing to do 
 with the citizenship of its believers. And yet the 
 more general considerations cannot be left out of 
 account. They cannot wholly be neglected. For, 
 at the present time, some of the great difficulties 
 which confront Liberal Judaism, or for the matter 
 of that, which confront Judaism generally, in its 
 relations with democracy, are difficulties inherent in 
 Theistic religion as such, and not, specifically, in the 
 Jewish form of such Theistic religion. Nevertheless, 
 it must here be sought to confine the subject, so far 
 as possible, to its Jewish and Liberal Jewish aspects. 
 
 It is clear that it is of most profound interest and 
 importance to Liberal Judaism to find out whether 
 there is anything in the noun or in the adjective or 
 in the whole, the unity, which is the result of the 
 combination, to make it an unsuitable religion for the 
 mass, for the "working classes," for the "democracy." 
 For even though a fresh development of religion, or 
 a new phase of a particular religion, may start in a 
 limited section of society, it cannot stay there. Unless 
 Liberal Judaism can be the religion of *' East End " 
 as well as " West End," of the " poor " as well as the 
 " rich," of the " masses " as well as the " classes," its 
 future, even within the Jewish community, must be 
 very limited and even precarious. Still less can it 
 look forward to any future of power outside the 
 Jewish pale, and amid the big and general world. 
 
 It must, I believe, be acknowledged that Liberal 
 Judaism, so far, has not made much progress among 
 the " masses." Its adherents in England, Germany 
 and America have, so far, been mainly drawn from
 
 244 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 the upper and the middle classes. Now, a man's a 
 man for a' that, and a woman is a woman. All have 
 souls to be saved : Judaism and Liberal Judaism want 
 them all. It is no small credit to Liberal Judaism 
 that, without it, a number of persons would have 
 been lost to Judaism altogether. Even though they 
 may have belonged to the now unfashionable "classes," 
 we may be glad to have retained them and their 
 children. Nor are numbers everything. And a 
 type or phase of Judaism which did appeal to the 
 " working " classes, but not to the middle and upper 
 classes, would be just as unstable and inadequate as 
 a type which appealed to these but not to those. 
 
 In discussing, and seeking to ascertain, the reasons 
 why Liberal Judaism has not yet penetrated " down," 
 we shall have to consider whether these reasons are 
 relative to its specifically Liberal elements, or to 
 elements which are common to it and to traditional 
 Judaism as well, or to the general fact that Liberal 
 Judaism is a religion. It may, indeed, well be that 
 the reasons come from all three divisions, and that the 
 remedies to be adopted must be relative to them all. 
 
 But, first of all, it must be noted that one special 
 reason why Liberal Judaism has never penetrated far 
 among the " masses " is because there have been no 
 serious attempts at such penetration. The case has 
 gone against us by default. If Liberal Jews do not 
 try to push their faith, no wonder that it does not 
 spread. 
 
 What are the reasons for this curious state of 
 things ? They are not difficult to observe. They 
 are dependent upon the condition of the Jewish 
 masses, and upon the history of Liberal Judaism 
 itself. Beginning in Germany, the Liberal Jewish 
 movement spread to America, where it flourished and
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 245 
 
 developed among the American Jews of German 
 origin. These Jews belonged to the middle and 
 upper grades of Jewish society. The movement, 
 though it had always a theoretic basis, was in origin 
 largely practical. It was an attempt to make Judaism 
 more consonant with the life and the environment of 
 " emancipated " Jews. It sought to heal the growing 
 gap, the growing divorce, between the sentiments, 
 opinions, judgments and practices of Jews in all other 
 departments of life with their religious institutions, 
 observances and worship. The Jewish masses were 
 untouched by the movement, or its need, both on 
 the practical and on the theoretic side. They were 
 located, for the most part, in lands where they were 
 still subject to disabilities, or they were collected into 
 groups where, even though not actively persecuted, 
 they could, and did, continue to live the old life in 
 all its aspects. They did not yet mingle with the 
 world at large, and were not subject to its influences. 
 The two branches of Jews lived a distinct life, and 
 the one did not interfere with the other. On the 
 whole, they were also locally separated. Reform or 
 Liberal Judaism had nothing to do with, and was 
 never brought to the notice of, the vast Jewish 
 communities in Russia, Poland, Rumania and Galicia. 
 And when great influxes from these communities 
 appeared in the West, it was generally felt that they 
 had brought with them a type of Judaism which suited 
 them, and which must in no wise be disturbed. A 
 tradition grew up that the " east enders," the Russian 
 and Polish and Galician Jews, were, and must always 
 be, strictly orthodox and traditional, and that Reform 
 or Liberal Judaism was not for them. It was not 
 fitted for them, and they were not fitted for it. In 
 this curious view there was a certain honourableness.
 
 246 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 It was also partly due to the general Jewish dislike 
 of religious propaganda. A group of Jews had a 
 right to come together, and provide for their own 
 religious needs and tastes. They had no right to 
 push their opinions afield, or to offer what suited 
 them for the approbation of others. The idea that 
 it is a duty to diffuse what you believe to be true was 
 not sympathetic to Jewish minds. And, indeed, so 
 far as Orthodox Judaism did and does provide a 
 vehicle for living a noble and spiritual life, who would 
 wish to expel it from those souls who lead such 
 lives ? But it is to be feared that this right sensitive- 
 ness and delicacy, this justified dislike to upsetting 
 faith, even when portions of that faith may seem to 
 you untrue, have been pushed too far. It has been 
 too rashly assumed that the Russian, Polish and Gal- 
 ician "masses" must be for ever wedded to Orthodox 
 Judaism. What was good for, and suitable to, the 
 Ghetto in Russia must also be good for, and suitable 
 to, the Russian Jews in England and America. What 
 was believed and practised by the grandparents would, 
 under wholly different conditions, be believed and 
 practised by the grandchildren. The result has been 
 that we are only gradually waking up to the realisation 
 that a considerable proportion of the grandchildren 
 both in Russia and in the West are estranged, not 
 only from Orthodox Judaism, but from religion 
 altogether ; while of another portion it is, I fear, true 
 to say that their Judaism, traditional, such as it is, 
 in practice, is yet, so far as spirituality, depth and 
 clarity go, in a very enfeebled and unsatisfactory 
 condition. For all this, as it may be relative to the 
 Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, Liberal Juda- 
 ism may be blameless. It is, however, a very different 
 story as regards the " Eastern " Jews who are settled
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 247 
 
 in the West. Their religious impoverishment and 
 destitution are, partly at least, due to Liberal Jewish 
 inaction, aloofness and blindness. And it must, I 
 fear, be added that the honourable scrupulosity, which 
 I have just mentioned, has a much less respectable ally. 
 For it is undoubtedly far less troublesome, and rouses 
 far fewer animosities, to leave the whole matter 
 severely alone. Let Orthodox Judaism look after 
 its own sores. 
 
 If a large number of the Jewish " masses," both in 
 the East and in the West are becoming estranged from 
 Orthodox Judaism, could, or can, they be brought 
 into the Liberal Jewish fold ? Or is the argument 
 to be : " If these people are ceasing to be Orthodox 
 Jews, still less are they becoming Liberal Jews. The 
 reasons which remove them from orthodoxy are 
 reasons which go to the root of all religion. They 
 will never stop short at, and take refuge within, any 
 half-way house. If any form of Judaism could appeal 
 to them, it would be traditional Judaism. If even 
 traditional Judaism cannot hold them, still less could 
 Liberal Judaism. For Orthodox Judaism has much 
 which they care for : yet they abandon it ; Liberal 
 Judaism includes the things for which they abandon 
 Orthodox Judaism, but possesses nothing which they 
 care for. Why, then, should they adopt it ? It has 
 nothing on which they will lay hold." 
 
 Well, that remains to be seen. Meanwhile what 
 are the reasons which have made so many "Eastern" 
 Jews, whether residing in East or West, sit loose to 
 the Orthodox Judaism of their fathers ? I am ready 
 to allow that the main reasons are not difficulties of 
 historical criticism. It is not the knowledge that 
 the Pentateuch is not a unity, or that its various 
 codes are generations later than Moses, which has
 
 248 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 primarily affected the Jewish "masses" in the direction 
 of unbelief. It is not theories of inspiration or revela- 
 tion. The reasons, so far as they are of a theoretic 
 nature, are of a more general and a more fundamental 
 kind. But they are not all of this more general 
 kind, and even those that are, or many of them, 
 could be tackled by Liberal Judaism (as I believe) 
 more easily and satisfactorily than by Orthodox 
 Judaism. Moreover, though the details of Biblical 
 criticism may not worry and perturb, I am sure that, 
 to the younger generation, the Biblical difficulties 
 as regards the " unethical " passages, and the lower 
 elements, and the miracles, do often constitute a 
 veritable stumbling-block. Crude attacks upon the 
 Old Testament filter through into Jewish ears and 
 minds. And it is only Liberal Judaism which can 
 deal with them, just as it would be only Liberal 
 Judaism which if people are educated in it from 
 the beginning can prevent these difficulties from 
 arising or from being difficulties at all. What can 
 Orthodox Judaism do ? It can only say, " Take the 
 whole, or leave the whole." It cannot allow and 
 accept the truth in these crude attacks, while pointing 
 out the falsehood. Again, we must remember that 
 while many may go on to doubts and denial of the 
 very bases of religion, such scepticism might have 
 been avoided, had the overthrow of the Bible been 
 stayed. The one leads on to the other. So too as 
 regards the practice of ceremonial commands. Here 
 too Liberal Judaism could help. 
 
 It is not that Liberal Judaism says that the cere- 
 monial commands and ordinances do not matter. .It 
 is that the point of view is changed. Orthodox 
 Judaism can only say : " Here is the inspired Penta- 
 teuch, here is the inspired Oral Law : here is the
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 249 
 
 Code which embodies the two : accept it or reject it." 
 It has no living authority with which it can envisage 
 modern life and say : " Under these conditions the 
 following modifications of the Code are to be made." 
 It can use neither authority nor common sense. 
 Liberal Judaism, with its distinctions between the 
 temporary and the eternal, the human and the divine, 
 the obsolete and the permanent, Jthe means and the 
 end, the ceremonial and the moral, can deal with the 
 varying conditions of life. It can show when sacrifice 
 is desirable, and when sacrifice would be wrong. It 
 can show when breaking the letter of a particular 
 ordinance, or disregarding a particular ceremony, is 
 harmful or right. It can show that religion is some- 
 thing other than a mere collection of ordinances and 
 doings. Take, for instance, the crucial and constant 
 question of the Sabbath. There is, I believe, a good 
 deal of evidence to show that the compulsory break- 
 ing of the Sabbath Law by the necessity of earning a 
 livelihood is, in many cases, the method by which the 
 whole edifice of personal religion is broken down. 
 The conscience is seared by the violation of the 
 Sabbath. If the Sabbath is broken in one way, it 
 can be broken in another. If its peace is invaded by 
 the workshop, it can be invaded by the picture palace 
 and the theatre. If one Law is broken, another can be 
 broken. Breaking the Sabbath law means breaking 
 the Law, breaking the Law means giving up Judaism, 
 giving up Judaism means abandoning religion. The 
 first violation of the Sabbath can lead, by fatal and 
 facile progression, to an ignoring, or even to a denial, 
 of God. Whereas Liberal Judaism can prevent the 
 descent. Under given conditions it may be right to 
 work on Saturdays, but one may feel the Sabbath in 
 one's heart even though one goes to work. An hour
 
 250 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 in the day may be consecrated to private or to public 
 worship. Because it is right to work, it is not thereby 
 made right to coarsen and degrade the Sabbath eve 
 and the Sabbath peace by visiting a picture palace or 
 a theatre. Again, if, under certain conditions, it is 
 right to work on Saturdays, a man or woman who 
 does so work is no less a Jew or a Jewess than are 
 those who do not need to work upon that day. The 
 bases and fundamentals of religion remain where they 
 were or what they were. Whatever the life of the 
 individual, God is to be reverenced and loved, 
 whether work upon the Sabbath is carried on or 
 not. All the verities of religion and all the essentials 
 of the religious life -justice, truth, humility, love, 
 prayer, communion with God remain untouched, 
 as obligatory, as valid, and as adorable, as before. 
 
 My contention, therefore, is that Liberal Judaism 
 can arrest the process of religious disintegration. 
 Liberal Judaism can keep many a soul faithful to 
 Judaism and to God. I claim that just for the 
 Jewish masses is Liberal Judaism so entirely advis- 
 able and even essential. Where Orthodox Judaism 
 must stand sadly by, and witness the ruin, Liberal 
 Judaism can reach out the gripping hand to enable 
 the stumbler to regain his footing. 
 
 But, then, it is said that Liberal Judaism, with 
 the best intentions, is unable to do all this, because 
 it has nothing to offer which the Jewish masses would 
 care to accept. Its religion is too thin, too attenuated, 
 too " intellectual," only suited for a small group of 
 educated persons. It can no more dominate, and be 
 accepted by, the Jewish masses than the Christian 
 masses could be dominated by the Unitarianism of 
 Dr. Martineau. 
 
 What does this criticism imply, if it is true ?
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 251 
 
 Some very curious conclusions emerge. If the 
 Jewish masses fall away from Orthodox Judaism, 
 what is to be their fate ? If Liberal Judaism cannot 
 hold them and give them shelter, it cannot be 
 contended that they will accept either Orthodox 
 Christianity or Unitarianism. If so, the only other 
 possibility is religious wreckage and unbelief. 
 
 There are other curious deductions to be drawn 
 from the view that Liberal Judaism and Unitarianism 
 must both be unacceptable to the " masses." For let 
 us assume that the Jewish masses are ultimately to 
 be reconverted to Orthodox Judaism. What about 
 the non- Jewish masses ? The theory of Orthodox 
 Judaism is that these unfortunate people are to 
 become Unitarians of a very pronounced type, but 
 they are not to become Orthodox Jews. The Law 
 is only for the Jews. The non-Jewish masses are to 
 be content with the mere dogma of the divine Unity. 
 Any outward embodiment of that simple faith they 
 are to fashion for themselves. But is there not here 
 a palpable contradiction ? The purer and whiter the 
 Unitarianism (and it will be less " historic " far than 
 Dr. Martineau's, for it will be much less Christian), 
 the less will there be in it of substance and body for 
 the masses to hold on to and to live by. And yet 
 this pure and white Unitarianism is ex hypothesi to 
 be their religion their only religion and the sum 
 and substance of their religion in the Golden Age ! 
 Which is wrong ? The critical judgment upon 
 Liberal Judaism and Unitarianism : or the vision of 
 the Golden Age ? 
 
 Let us return, however, and confine ourselves to 
 Liberal Judaism, and to the criticism upon it. It is 
 too thin ; too " intellectual." But there is something 
 more. What is also said is this. What has kept
 
 252 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 the Jews together in the past ? What have been the 
 features of the religion which have kept it going ? 
 What has really appealed to the hearts and imagina- 
 tions of the multitude ? The answer is : just those 
 things which Liberal Judaism rejects or attenuates. 
 To some extent, indeed, these are also the very 
 things which the conditions of modern life make it 
 impossible to maintain and conserve in the Western 
 world. But this last admission only proves the 
 necessity for segregation and " the national life " and 
 the " national centre " : it does not weaken by a hair's 
 breadth the argument against Liberal Judaism. It 
 may be true enough that the faith in God kept 
 Judaism going and kept the Jews faithful to Judaism. 
 But it was a faith in God clothed and clad. It was 
 clothed in forms : it was clad in ceremonies. And 
 these forms and ceremonies were the conserving 
 agency. They were beloved. And they were 
 particularistic and national. They were picturesque. 
 They penetrated daily life ; they entered and sancti- 
 fied the home. It was not a religion which seeks to 
 universalise itself, to drop its national dress and 
 colour, to become suited for men and women of 
 every race it was not such a religion as that which 
 united the Jews together, enabled them to survive 
 persecution, and to persist through unheard-of 
 sufferings and trials. It was a frankly national 
 religion which achieved this miracle : Israel was in 
 no wise a symbol for humanity, but stood out in 
 contrast to it, and this separatist and distinctive 
 group, which " humanity " hated, and which reacted 
 against that hate, prayed to a God who, whatever 
 else He was, was also first and foremost, and in 
 no ethereal sense the God of Israel. 
 
 It may be true that a large and growing percentage
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 253 
 
 of the Jewish masses is becoming estranged from 
 this God and from this national religion. But these 
 people will reject with scorn the caricature of it 
 which you dish up for them under the title of 
 Liberal Judaism. If they have become estranged 
 from orthodoxy by theoretical reasons, they will 
 not be drawn to your dogmas ; if they have be- 
 come estranged from orthodoxy through the pressure 
 of circumstances, you have nothing to offer them 
 that they will care to accept in lieu of what they 
 have been compelled to forgo. On the contrary. 
 Hundreds and thousands will, for a long while yet, 
 love to observe relics and patches of outward ortho- 
 doxy, even though they no longer believe in the 
 dogma of the Perfect' and Divine and Mosaic Law 
 
 o 
 
 which underlies them. For these relics and patches 
 appeal to the deepest instincts of their souls : they 
 are historic, national, poetic, Jewish, separatist, dis- 
 tinctive. And that is what the Jewish masses like 
 and want. Your Liberal Jewish leaders and preachers 
 may be good Englishmen or Americans. To the 
 Russian and Polish and Galician masses they are not 
 good Jews, and over these masses those alien leaders 
 can have no influence, just as to them the Liberal 
 Jewish doctrine, with its universalism and its purity, 
 can make no appeal. 
 
 What can be our reply to these arguments and 
 allegations ? So far as it may be simply stated 
 as a fact that the Jewish masses are nationalist in 
 sympathy, and that therefore Liberal Judaism, because 
 it is anti-nationalist and universalist, can make no 
 appeal to them, no direct reply is possible. I have 
 to admit that Liberal Judaism, in my view and 
 conception of it, is anti-nationalist. It does seek to 
 be a catholic, and not a particularistic and national,
 
 254 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 religion. It does, in assessing the worth of a 
 ceremony, primarily consider its religious content 
 and its ethical bearing. But these facts do not 
 impair the truth of Liberal Judaism or lessen its 
 value. To begin _with, the Jewish masses, if they 
 are taken as equivalent to the Russian and Rumanian 
 Jews, have hardly yet tasted liberty. Till a man can 
 be a free Russian, he is likely enough to consider 
 himself as a Jew and nothing else. But when he 
 can be a free Russian, and when he has been a free 
 Russian for a couple of generations, then he will 
 require and appreciate a religion which is more than 
 national : then he will want to have a religion which 
 shall be supernational and universal. Transplant 
 your Russian Jew to England and America, and he 
 cannot lose in a few years the feelings of many 
 generations : if clever orators inflame his chauvinistic 
 and nationalist passions, he will not become a pure 
 Englishman or American of the Jewish faith, but he 
 will still cling to his old nationalist conceptions : he 
 will be a hybrid creature, not quite American or 
 English, and yet not quite a mere " Jew " and 
 nothing else whatever. But his children will become 
 more anglicised or americanised : among them Liberal 
 Judaism will have its chance. Only let the Liberal 
 Jewish leaders be true to their Liberal Judaism in its 
 purity and universalism ; let them have courage ; 
 let them labour ; let them not rashly assume that 
 the " masses " are not for them. The masses will 
 be for them and for the truth. To think otherwise 
 is faithlessness and cowardice. It would be sheer 
 atheism and unbelief to suppose that the " masses," 
 who are notoriously being lost to, and drifting away 
 from, Orthodoxy, can never be won to a Judaism of 
 another texture and a less " nationalist " hue.
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 255 
 
 So far then as the contention is that the Jewish 
 masses must always be " nationalist " in their sym- 
 pathies and feelings and aspirations, and that a 
 religion, which does not satisfy them here, cannot suit 
 or appeal to them, I am not perturbed. 1 see no 
 reason why the Jewish masses must, or should, or 
 will, always be nationalist in their views. With the 
 growth of freedom their particularist and separatist 
 tendencies will pass away. They will become 
 Russians, English, Americans, as the case may be. 
 If not, the deduction would be that they will become 
 religionless, as, indeed, so many of them are to-day. 
 For Orthodox Jews they will not remain : Christians 
 they will not, I think, ever become. If, then, Liberal 
 Judaism has no attraction for them, are they doomed 
 to irreligion for ever ? Perish so unbelieving and 
 hopeless a thought. 
 
 But the argument went deeper. It was alleged 
 that Orthodox Judaism might be true or false, 
 but, at all events, it was not a thin and attenuated 
 religion. It had something to lay hold of, something 
 inspiring ; something to kindle the imagination ; to 
 create passion and love. And this something was 
 the Law with its ceremonies and injunctions : or, 
 again, it was Israel, the people, with its hopes and its 
 sorrows and its glories, with its destiny and its God. 
 Liberal Judaism possessed none of these excellences. 
 Just in the same way, Orthodox Christianity might 
 be true, or it might be false. But at all events it 
 was not a pale and attenuated religion. It was 
 concrete and rich ; it had also something to lay hold 
 of ; something for which to rouse sacrifice, to kindle 
 love. That something is the figure of the divine 
 Master : his life, his death, his resurrection ; the 
 incarnation, the atonement. These doctrines can
 
 256 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 move and appeal. But the Unitarianism or Theism, 
 which may be left when Orthodox Christianity (in 
 any of its various forms) has been removed, will be 
 wanting in driving force. The less " Christian," the 
 less impelling, the less attractive. It would seem a 
 bad outlook for religion, if the democracies of the 
 future must either be orthodox or religionless ! 
 
 The argument seems to me strange on the lips 
 of those who profess to be staunch believers in 
 democracy. " What one is, why may not millions 
 be ? " At any rate, there seems no reason in the 
 nature of things why a religion which appeals to a 
 hundred should not appeal to a thousand, or why a 
 creed which appeals to a thousand should not appeal 
 to a million. If the appeal of Liberal Judaism 
 depends upon education, may not education spread ? 
 If the doctrines of Liberal Judaism are true, why 
 should we despair of the attraction of truth ? Again, 
 if to a hundred people Liberal Judaism seems dis- 
 tinctive, Jewish, worth living for, and working for, 
 and making sacrifices for, why should it not seem 
 so to a million ? 
 
 Nor is it the case that in Liberal Judaism, though 
 God is retained, Israel is dispensed with. Israel the 
 Church is a greater conception than Israel the nation, 
 and could evoke an even more passionate response. 
 Israel the Servant is a nobler conception than either 
 Israel the wandering People, or Israel in the future, 
 ruling and triumphant. Can we not teach the Jewish 
 masses to cherish that great conception of calling 
 and of service ? Can we not make it bring forth 
 passion and enthusiasm ? Israel as the divine witness : 
 Israel as the servant of humanity : would a free 
 Jewish democracy be unable to enter into, to cherish 
 and to be faithful to, these ideas ? Would they not
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 257 
 
 clothe mere Theism with a special garb ? Would 
 they not give to it, so far as the God- idea itself 
 needs such setting and embodiment, warmth and 
 colour ? Israel, not as an exclusive people over 
 against humanity, but Israel as the Ingatherer, Israel 
 as the Conscious Labourer : are not these great con- 
 ceptions, which can make Liberal Judaism a religion 
 neither attenuated nor pale ? 
 
 And here it might be well to mention a point 
 in which Liberal Judaism would seem a more truly 
 democratic religion than Orthodox Judaism. If the 
 doctrine of the chosen people, of the Segulah, means 
 anything like privilege, then it is essentially un- 
 democratic. If Israel is more beloved of God than 
 other races and peoples, that is undemocratic. It 
 is unfortunately true that a people which dislikes 
 privilege within its own ranks has sometimes no 
 objection to privilege as between itself and others. 
 But religion has to withstand the limitations of the 
 democrat no less than it has to withstand the pre- 
 judices of oligarchy. The true democrat should 
 fight shy of any doctrine of election, if it means 
 privilege and special gifts. But if the privilege is 
 but a privilege of discipline, and the gifts are suffer- 
 ings, then the undemocratic feature is removed. If 
 the election is solely an election for service, if Israel 
 has been chosen less for his own sake than for the 
 sake of humanity, no democrat need refuse to accept 
 the doctrine. He too will be willing to believe. He 
 need not refuse to attach himself to an aristocracy, 
 which may be joined by all who will, and who ask, 
 not to rule, but to serve. 
 
 There would, then, seem to be no valid reason 
 why Liberal Judaism should not hold the emancipated 
 masses, whether these live in Russia or Rumania or 
 
 s
 
 258 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 Galicia, or, living in the west, or across the sea, are 
 only of Russian, Rumanian, or Galician origin. If 
 we have but faith, the difficulties will be overcome, 
 and the desired consummation will be realised. Faith 
 in our cause and in its truth ; this, on the one hand ; 
 on the other, faithful and constant labour. 
 
 A full general discussion of the relation of religion 
 to democracy is, as I have already said, beyond my 
 capacity and knowledge, and in a small volume such 
 as this it would be also out of place. But it may be 
 neither impossible nor unfitting to glance at a few 
 democratic difficulties concerning religion, and to see 
 how far Judaism and Liberal Judaism can meet 
 them. 
 
 Democracy appears to stand for equality. Organised 
 religion has too often stood, or seemed to stand, for 
 distinctions ; it has seemed to be the preserve of the 
 great ones or of the happy ones of the earth rather 
 than of the dispossessed and the empty ; of the 
 comfortable few rather than of the impoverished 
 many. Whatever justification there may have been, 
 or may be, for so strange a misconception of religion 
 as regards Christianity cannot be considered here. 
 But as regards Judaism, if we take the ages through, 
 it has been more the religion of the poor and the 
 oppressed than it has been the religion of the com- 
 fortable, the grand and the wealthy. Up till quite 
 modern times, it would, I suppose, be true to say 
 that the Jewish working classes have kept closer to 
 their religion in belief and in practice than any other 
 section of the Jews. Up till quite modern times it 
 would, I suppose, be true to say that Judaism has 
 been a democratic religion. So far as there was 
 an aristocracy among the Jews, it was an aristocracy 
 of learning. And many of these aristocrats sprang
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 259 
 
 from the " people " and were extremely needy. The 
 Synagogue was the home of the poor quite as much 
 as, or even more than, it was the home of the rich. 
 This can hardly be said with equal truth of it to-day. 
 Modern religious organisations require money with 
 which to run them. They tend to get into the 
 hands and the management of the rich, or, at any 
 rate, of the middle class. These pay the piper, and 
 these call the tune. They appoint the officials and 
 provide them with their salaries. The income of a 
 place of worship is often obtained from the rents 
 of its seats. The well-to-do sit in front, the less 
 wealthy behind : quite at the back are some free 
 seats for the poor. It is natural that the comfortable 
 seat-holder, who takes his daily bath, should not care 
 to sit next to a man who reeks of onions and un- 
 cleanliness. This oligarchic tendency is counteracted 
 by the little Synagogues and the Chevras. Here 
 Orthodox Judaism has still the advantage. Liberal 
 Judaism will have to see to it that its Synagogues 
 too should be free from the reproach of class. It 
 will not be easy to achieve this end, but it must be 
 kept in view. 
 
 So far as democracy is still inclined, or has become 
 inclined, to desire or to champion a false and unreal 
 equality, religion must fight it. Liberal Judaism, 
 being a religion, must fight it too. For that one 
 man is as good as another in every sense religion 
 must deny. We may fitly believe that God cares 
 for all, and that in His eyes there is no distinc- 
 tion of persons. In one sense, indeed, religion 
 will be often too keen on equality for democratic 
 prejudices or tastes. Democracy is urgent for 
 equality of opportunity within the inhabitants of a 
 single state, or within the limits of a single and
 
 260 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 dominating race. But is the democratic Magyar 
 always keen on equality for the Rumanian or the 
 Ruthene ? Or is the American white man keen on 
 every sort of equality for the American negro ? 
 Do not stubborn facts suggest that, even within the 
 British Empire itself, equality has many difficulties 
 and problems ? Religion may recognise these, and 
 may admit that the pace must not and cannot be 
 forced, but its ideal must still remain. In another 
 sense, however, religion, as I have said, may deny 
 equality just where democracy may wish to assert it. 
 One man is not as good as another, whether in work 
 or in saintliness. The saints form an aristocracy, 
 whether democracy likes it or no. Only it is an 
 aristocracy without titles or birth, without barriers or 
 stations. And religion has to see to it that modern 
 democrats shall not lose the exquisite human graces of 
 humility and of reverence. From God to man, and 
 from man to God : religion suggests both processes. 
 Our reverence for God, our humility before Him, 
 enable us the better to feel reverence and humility 
 towards those who, among men, are wiser, better, 
 holier than ourselves. But democracy is too often 
 suspicious about both reverence and humility. Rever- 
 ence has often been asked for the old, but the old, 
 instead of being better and wiser, are often duller, 
 more prejudiced, more hide-bound than the young. 
 In the mere growth of years, as such, there is nothing 
 for reverence. A faded rose is less glorious and less 
 promising than a rosebud. Throw it away or bury 
 it decently. And reverence for the old is not the 
 worst. Too often reverence has meant a desired re- 
 spect for those in power, for the rich, the employer, 
 and the master. It has been inculcated from above, 
 for the sake of those above and of their usurped
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 261 
 
 authority. It is the pseudo-virtue by which it has 
 been attempted to make the poor content with their 
 lot, and to keep them quiet, awe-struck and resigned, 
 amid their squalor and degradation. 
 
 It is, then, religion which has to teach true 
 reverence as distinct from false reverence, and true 
 humility as distinct from false humility. For the 
 best cannot be got out of man the most beauty and 
 sweetness out of human nature unless he learns to 
 admire, to reverence, and to adore. But how can he 
 reverence and what ? Only if he recognises the 
 existence of a wisdom, a goodness, a love, which is 
 greater and fairer than his own. He must recognise 
 them among his fellows, but, more than that, he must 
 believe in them as existing outside man altogether, 
 as existing perfect and complete in the Eternal and 
 the Divine. It is urgent that we should reverence 
 the good in man, and specially in those who are 
 better and worthier than ourselves, but it is very 
 doubtful how far this reverence for man will continue, 
 if it is not strengthened and vivified by a reverence 
 for God. Unless we revere the source, shall we 
 continue to revere the derivative ? 
 
 It is, then, religion which must preserve, amid a 
 democratic society, a true humility, a true depend- 
 ence, a true sense of imperfection and inequality. In 
 relation to Perfection we are as nought. " What are 
 we ? What our goodness ? What our wisdom ? " 
 The old prayer spoke truly. We are equal in our 
 common littleness before the Infinite. But my point 
 also is that humility towards God can rob us of our 
 foolish conceit towards our fellows, and that rever- 
 ence before the perfect source of righteousness may 
 better enable us to revere righteousness in man. And 
 if the reverence of God helps us to reverence man,
 
 262 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 so the reverence of others may help us to true self- 
 reverence that virtue which often enables people 
 to keep straight and clean and keen in the midst 
 of opportunities for dishonesty and impurity and 
 slackness. 
 
 There is no reason that a democratic environment 
 and democratic aspirations should not consort with, 
 and approve of, admiration and reverence. There is 
 no necessary connection of admiration and reverence 
 with servility and adulation. On the contrary, so far 
 as in us lies, it is natural for us to seek to imitate 
 that which we admire, even though we recognise that 
 a full copy is beyond our powers. It may be noted 
 that admiration and reverence are independent of 
 classes. In our present society, which many may 
 regard as insufficiently democratised, Jones in Class 
 A may admire and reverence Smith of Class B, 
 whether A is a conventionally higher class than B or 
 a lower. And, what is more, respect and respect- 
 fulness can proceed, not only from conventional 
 lower to conventional higher, but vice versa. It is 
 the man and the woman whom we respect, not their 
 clothes. 
 
 Another point is, I think, worth making. We 
 may rightly admire in men and women other things 
 besides sheer intellect or even sheer goodness. We 
 may admire charm and graciousness of manner, we 
 may admire courtesy and exquisite manners ; we may 
 admire gentleness and beautiful breeding. But does 
 not that seem to imply the recognition of classes and 
 distinctions, such as democracy tends to dislike and 
 to overthrow ? Yes and no. It would be dull if we 
 were all equal, and as a matter of fact we are not, 
 and never shall be. We are not exactly equal even 
 in such lesser virtues as those which I have just
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 263 
 
 mentioned. Some of us may possess some excellences, 
 and some may possess others. Now might we not 
 suppose a cart-horse, with full self-respect, yet admir- 
 ing the thoroughbred ? " Never mind," he might 
 say, " for the moment how the beauty of that 
 thoroughbred has come about. Perhaps it is only 
 too true that it has partially come about by my 
 ancestors having been overworked. But here as a 
 fact it is. It stands before me. And so I have the 
 courage to admire it." But here is the difference 
 when the parable comes to be applied. The cart- 
 horse, with all his courage, his insight, his modesty, 
 that make him admire the thoroughbred, must remain 
 a cart-horse still. But the essentials of those fair 
 virtues that I named just now, courtesy, and gentle- 
 ness, and exquisite manners, and beautiful breeding, 
 are not the prerogatives of any class. They can be 
 found in all classes. Moreover, they can be taught 
 and fostered byright environment and right education. 
 If democracy will greatly care for them, democracy 
 can obtain them. But it can only obtain them if, as 
 I say, it cares for them and honours them wherever 
 it sees them, in rulers and in the ruled, in the high 
 and in the low, in the rich and in the poor I use 
 present distinctions whether they are to continue or 
 not. For admire and recognise courtesy, and you 
 will yourself be courteous ; honour and recognise 
 modesty, and you will yourself be modest ; love and 
 recognise gentleness, and you will yourself be gentle. 
 And how can you better retain and increase your 
 power to admire, to honour and to love what is fair 
 and beautiful among men than by the reverence and 
 the love of God ? 
 
 No form of Judaism, whether Orthodox or Liberal, 
 is wedded to any particular theory of wealth and
 
 264 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 distribution. But " Thou shalt not steal " still 
 remains one of Ten Words honoured by both Liberal 
 and Traditionalist. This Command, however, can 
 be interpreted in more ways than one. The Socialist, 
 for instance, has often declared that it is the Capitalist 
 who is the thief. And, more generally, the conten- 
 tion of the fiercer democrats is that religion has 
 interpreted the Command in the interests of the few 
 rather than in the interests of the many, of the rich 
 than of the poor. Religion has thought more of 
 the property of those who have than of the empti- 
 ness of those who have not. It has, indeed, not 
 entirely neglected the poor ; but what has it offered 
 and asked for them ? It has sought for alms, for 
 charity. But democracy seeks no alms. It does 
 not want charity, it wants justice. It does not by 
 any means agree with the confident and complacent 
 saying, " The poor shall never cease out of the land." 
 On the contrary. It intends that, in the sense of 
 one man needing the alms of another, the poor 
 shall cease out of the land. Judaism has identified 
 Z,edakah righteousness and justice with Alms- 
 giving. Democracy would rive them asunder. The 
 schnorrer^ as a fixed institution, existing to give 
 merit to those who helped him, is an entirely anti- 
 democratic conception. The rich are not to exist 
 for the sake of the poor, still less are the poor to 
 exist for the sake of the rich. But men are to live 
 the best human lives for their own sakes in equality 
 and independence. They are to be ends, not means. 
 I do not see that Judaism has any reason to fear 
 the truth which these contentions contain. Social 
 justice is a pillar of the Jewish faith. The greatest 
 creation of the Jewish religion is the series of the 
 Jewish prophets. Or we might say, conversely,
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 265 
 
 that the Jewish prophets created Judaism. Liberal 
 Judaism more especially is constantly harking back 
 to their teaching. Now these prophets were as 
 intensely keen on social justice as on pity and loving- 
 kindness. Justice to Amos, the first, and not the 
 least, of the band (so far as their writings have been 
 preserved), is the very keystone of the social arch. 
 The prophetic sympathy with the poor and the 
 oppressed, their denunciations of the rich and the 
 oppressor, are too well known to need illustration. 
 It is inaccurate and anachronistic to call the prophets 
 social reformers, tribunes of the people, socialists, 
 but that they have been given such titles shows 
 which way the wind blows. 
 
 Again, Judaism, as a religion, has always set 
 before the worshipper a God who was no respecter 
 of persons, and before whom all men are equal. All 
 can approach Him : they need the mediation of no 
 priest or intercessor. If this last statement was not 
 wholly true before the fall of the Temple, it has at 
 least been true, and became increasingly true, for the 
 last 1800 years. 
 
 Then, too, the Jewish religion whether rightly 
 or wrongly is another matter has not established 
 any double system of morality. It knows no works 
 of supererogation. What it asks from its believers, 
 it asks from them all. And the ideal, even from 
 Biblical times, is a democratic ideal, a knowledge 
 of God for all. " They shall all know me." 
 " Would God that all the Lord's people were 
 prophets, and that God would put His spirit within 
 them alt." And when the Jews lived among and to 
 themselves, there was only one sort of aristocracy 
 known to them, to which all might aspire. It was 
 not an aristocracy of wealth, even though, from the
 
 266 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 very nature of their sad ..history, wealth had for 
 them special and peculiar advantages ; it was an 
 aristocracy of learning. The learned Rabbis were 
 the Jewish Viscounts and Earls. 
 
 Among the virtues, which religion has often 
 lauded and inculcated, are contentedness and resigna- 
 tion. Nor can either Orthodox Judaism or Liberal 
 Judaism do without them. But here, too, democracy 
 might seem to take up an opposing line. We are 
 so Judaism teaches to thank God for the good, 
 and even for the evil. Patient endurance, without 
 cavil or grumbling, of our lot is supposed to be one 
 of the virtues proclaimed and commended by religion. 
 We must not worry ; we must not fret. Rest in 
 the Lord. Whereas the ideals of democracy seem 
 very different. We are to worry, we are to be 
 impatient, over the troubles both of others and of 
 our own. We are to be discontented with the 
 wretchedness and injustice of our lot. We are to 
 be consumed with a burning passion of indignation. 
 Discontent is to engender the demand for redress, 
 for improvement. We are not to be satisfied either 
 with our own poverty or with the poverty of our 
 neighbours. We are to struggle against it, and 
 not to rest. Our hope and aim are to be that, to 
 ourselves and to others, there shall come change, 
 advancement, increase of comfort, increase of know- 
 ledge, increase of well-being. Instead of pious 
 satisfaction with our dull and restricted lot, we are 
 to strive for better things, both for ourselves and for 
 our children. 
 
 It is of the greatest importance that religion 
 should come to terms with democracy upon this 
 question. It must point out the limitations, while 
 freely acknowledging the partial accuracy, of the
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 267 
 
 argument. We must, in the first place, carefully 
 distinguish. To be contented with our own lot is 
 one thing : to be contented with the lot of our 
 neighbours is quite another. Democracy is very 
 right in suspecting that second kind of contentment, 
 especially when it takes the form of the rich being 
 satisfied with the poverty of the poor, or the com- 
 fortable acquiescing cheerfully in the misery of the 
 wretched. 
 
 We must not be content with evil. Only we 
 must make up our minds, and clear our vision, as 
 to what is really evil. Carking anxiety for the 
 morrow's meal ; the lack of any opportunity for 
 wholesome recreation and simple joys ; to see one's 
 own child, or any child, inadequately fed, clothed, 
 tended, taught ; such things as these we may choose 
 to estimate as true evils, and we may declare that to 
 be resigned to them, and content with them, and 
 grateful for them, is monstrous and perverse. But 
 it does not follow that it is an evil to be an " assistant 
 teacher," while my neighbour is a " head " ; or that, 
 if I am a bootmaker, it is an evil for my son to be the 
 same. Nor does it follow that because it is requisite, 
 say, for the avoidance of grinding care, and for the 
 attainment of simple and wholesome well-being, to 
 earn and possess x pounds a year, one is therefore 
 happier with 4*, and still happier with i6#, and so 
 on ad infimtum. True contentment depends partly 
 upon a true doctrine of values. Nor, within certain 
 limits, are even good and right values the same for 
 every man, or need every man's ambition run along 
 the same lines. We are not, then, to be content 
 with wrong ; and we are not even to judge too 
 hastily about what another man should be content 
 with. But what of ourselves ? Are we to be
 
 268 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 content with our lot and with the station in which 
 we find ourselves ? Ruskin said Yes, but he declared 
 that while the maxim was, on the whole, a good 
 one, it was peculiarly for home use. " That your 
 neighbour should, or should not, remain content 
 with his position is not your business ; but it is very 
 much your business to remain content with your 
 own. What is chiefly needed in England at the 
 present day is to show the quantity of pleasure that 
 may be obtained by a consistent, well-administered 
 competence, modest, confessed and laborious. We 
 need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to 
 decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide 
 for themselves that they will be happy in it, and 
 have resolved to seek not greater wealth, but 
 simpler pleasure ; not higher fortune, but deeper 
 felicity ; making the first of possessions self-posses- 
 sion ; and honouring themselves in the harmless 
 pride and calm pursuits of peace." l And again he 
 says : " In spite of all the cant which is continually 
 talked by cruel, foolish or designing persons about 
 the ' duty of remaining content in the position in 
 which Providence has placed you,' there is a root 
 of the very deepest and holiest truth in the saying, 
 which gives to it such power as it still retains, even 
 uttered by unkind and unwise lips, and received into 
 doubtful and embittered hearts." 2 So far as it is a 
 true saying, it is so because " the most helpful and 
 sacred work which can, at present, be done for 
 humanity is to teach people (chiefly by example, as 
 all best teaching must be done) not how to ' better 
 themselves/ but how to satisfy themselves." " And 
 in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is 
 
 1 Unto this Last, Essay IV. 83. 
 
 2 Time and Tide, Letter II. 5.
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 269 
 
 necessary fully to understand the art and joy of 
 humble life, this, at present, of all arts and sciences 
 being the one most needing study. Humble life, 
 that is to say, proposing to itself no future exalta- 
 tion, but only a sweet continuance ; not excluding 
 the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore - sorrow, 
 and taking no troublous thought for coming days ; 
 so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or 
 provision, but wholly of accumulation ; the life of 
 domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensi- 
 tiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure ; 
 therefore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural 
 world." 1 
 
 There may be exaggeration in this. It is cer- 
 tainly not true that we ought to be always con- 
 tented even with our own lot or with our own 
 station. There have been many lots and stations 
 with which no one should have been contented : 
 there are also several such lots and stations to-day. 2 
 Nor does it follow that what is adequate for one man 
 is rightly adequate for another, or that a striving to 
 rise above one's "station" to another and a "higher " 
 station is necessarily foolish or wrong. We are quick 
 enough to applaud those who have achieved the 
 rise successfully. Yet a religious teacher may justly 
 criticise a method of life and of living which is ever 
 seeking satisfaction to-morrow and never finding satis- 
 faction to-day. 
 
 For just as democracy objects to jam to-morrow, 
 but never jam to-day, so may a true doctor of 
 life object to satisfaction to-morrow, but never satis- 
 faction to-day. Whether you are to rise in your 
 calling or not may depend partly on you and 
 
 1 Modern Painters, vol. v. part ix. chapter xi. 20-21. 
 
 2 Cp. the splendid books of Mr. and Mrs. Hammond on the Village 
 Labourer and the Town Labourer from 1760 to 1830.
 
 270 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 partly on others, but if you strive for such a rise 
 to-morrow, such striving is false, if it makes peace 
 and happiness, if it makes joy in the doing, im- 
 possible to-day. And this inward peace, this self- 
 possession, this joy in the doing, are all associated 
 with, and strengthened by, religion. Joy in the 
 doing : as your service, as your gift, as the realisation 
 of your own being, as your tribute of love and 
 thankfulness to humanity and to God. Then, too, 
 se ^-possession ; inward peace. This form of content 
 is twofold. First, as produced by our environment 
 an4 occupation, and as conditioned by them. And 
 this is truly a foremost problem of democracy ; that 
 all labour should be able to produce joy, satisfaction, 
 peace. But if it cannot, and so far as it cannot, and 
 so far as the shocks of circumstance and fate interfere 
 and injure, there comes in that other form of content, 
 in which the soul reacts against the environment and 
 rises above it, unconquered, triumphant, trustful, 
 serene. Out of inadequacy and dulness and pain 
 the mind and heart make the best of things : they 
 manufacture good out of evil. Here, again, religion 
 must be the ultimate source of this kind of content, 
 of this type of resignation. And religion can give 
 it to us in two forms. First, in the more Stoic form 
 of high endurance : " I am the master of my fate, I 
 am the captain of my soul " ; " Know that he who 
 finds himself loses his misery." Secondly, in the 
 more Jewish form of trust and faith : " Cast thy 
 burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain thee " ; 
 " Rest in the Lord and fret not " ; " There is naught 
 upon earth that I desire beside Thee." 
 
 Religion alone, so it seems to me, can give us this 
 final and satisfying peace. 
 
 Still more closely connected with religion, and
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 271 
 
 therefore with Judaism, must be the questions of 
 duty and of authority. Religion must ever uphold 
 the conception of duty, and yet the word, though 
 not I think the thing, has for many extremer demo- 
 crats an ugly sound at least in its association with 
 religion. For religion has been supposed (and with 
 some truth) to preach too often of duty, and too 
 seldom of rights. And what has this belauded word 
 duty too often meant in the mouths of the teachers 
 of religion ? It has meant : obey your masters ; be 
 subservient to your rulers ; be content with your 
 position. It has meant, dutifully and uncomplainingly 
 toil so that others may enjoy. It has meant, submit 
 without question to degradation, to poverty, to cease- 
 less labour, to a miserable old age, to the absence of 
 all that makes life happy, civilised, worth living ; 
 and then once a week go to your church, and thank 
 God for your own miseries and for the privileges 
 of others. Such has been the duty of religion : it 
 cannot be the duty of democracy. If duty means 
 but that, democracy will have none of it. 
 
 But surely there is no difficulty here of under- 
 standing and reconcilement. The word and con- 
 ception are both much too noble for democracy 
 to abandon. It has reacted with some pardonable 
 exaggeration against false interpretations of duty ; 
 it has objected to men emphasising " duties " and 
 disregarding oppressions. It has even asked, How 
 can those do their " duty " who have not the basic 
 modicum of material well-being ? How can you, it 
 asks, even speak of duty in the case of those who 
 are in natural revolt against a society which wrongs 
 them? But all this is no argument against, and no 
 antagonism to, duty itself. It rather means : let 
 society do its duty to the oppressed, and then the
 
 272 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 oppressed will do their duty to society. If demo- 
 cracy rejects duty, on the one side, it appeals to duty 
 and brings it back again, upon the other. 
 
 While, however, the conception of duty may be 
 so rightly and properly explained as to be fully 
 accepted by democracy, the case of authority may 
 seem more difficult. Democracy, at any rate, has 
 been hostile, if not to authority itself, yet to many 
 actual authorities, to many false or wrong authorities, 
 as it conceives them to be. It has opposed the 
 authority of the rich over the poor, of the powerful 
 over the weak, of the few over the many. So far as 
 it still desires change, it is opposed to many existing 
 governments and authorities. So long as democrats 
 are in opposition, they are obviously hostile to the 
 authority of the authorities. Democracy in power 
 can be, as we know, more authoritative, and place 
 greater restrictions upon liberty, than many other 
 forms of government. Socialism would possibly be 
 the least free form of government that the world 
 has ever known. But, as things now are, the 
 extremer democrat is opposed to authority, especially 
 to that type of authority which seeks to govern from 
 above, and by a right which does not spring from 
 below. But it is just this form of authority which, 
 in the past, has often been backed and supported by 
 religion. Upon this false and unpopular authority 
 religion has often cast its aegis and its halo. It 
 has bidden people be obedient to their rulers and 
 their kings, obedient and subservient. The Book of 
 Proverbs, for instance, encourages submission to, 
 and fear of, the constituted authority. A king is 
 the Lord's anointed. Religion has devised a sort of 
 hierarchy, from the authority of fallible and visible 
 men to the authority of an infallible and invisible
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 273 
 
 God. It has entered, as I have said, into an under- 
 standing with the great ones of earth. In return for 
 their support and acknowledgment it has buttered 
 and buttressed them up in their greatness and their 
 privileges. Moreover, religion itself is closely con- 
 nected with authority. It has set up the authority 
 of a God, whom it likes to call Lord and King, and 
 if Judaism lacks the authority of a priesthood, it 
 depends all the more upon the assumed authority of 
 a book and of a code. 
 
 But can democracy recognise any authority which 
 does not spring from itself? The people must be 
 the sole source of authority. The authority of a 
 supposed God must be rejected. There seems to 
 be some sort of notion existing among cruder and 
 fiercer democrats that the idea of a " personal " and 
 " omnipotent " God is in itself antagonistic to, and 
 inconsistent with, democracy. He and His authority 
 must, therefore, be rejected. If a man's whole-hearted 
 allegiance is given to democracy, he cannot tolerate 
 a rival sovereign, and, moreover, a sovereign with 
 inconsistent and antagonistic claims. A democrat 
 can only render obedience to the will of the people. 
 He cannot render obedience to, he cannot even 
 recognise or admit, the will and the commands of an 
 outside and autocratic ruler, even if He be affirmed 
 (by sundry interested persons) to be " omnipotent " 
 and divine. But if democracy cannot accept " God," 
 it clearly cannot accept any religion of which God, 
 in the plainest and most emphatic sense of the word, 
 is the sheet anchor of its faith. The breach between 
 Judaism and democracy would be complete. 
 
 This whole objection to the very idea of God 
 appears to rest upon a grave religious misconception. 
 It seems to create a false God, and then to throw 
 
 T
 
 274 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 Him over. Unconsciously, it does what so many 
 people love to do : erect a feeble ninepin of your 
 antagonist's views and ideals, and then hurl the 
 ninepin down with alacrity and rejoicing. It is easy 
 to demolish a caricature or a will-o'-the-wisp. 
 
 But it is most important to be just and to be 
 accurate. It is, I think, a false idea of God against 
 which the democrats go forth to tilt, but for this 
 false idea many representations of the divine are, at 
 any rate, partially responsible. 
 
 Let us assume that one could imagine a human 
 society entirely destitute of any religious conception 
 whatever. Let us further imagine that, amid super- 
 natural thunder and lightning, a Voice was heard to 
 say, " I am an omnipotent Being. Indeed, I am the 
 one and only intelligent and self-conscious Being in 
 all the universe besides yourselves. And, as I said 
 before, I am omnipotent. I am now going to throw 
 down to you upon the earth a series of commands 
 and prohibitions. If you act according to these 
 commands and prohibitions, I will reward you, 
 after your death, in another state of existence. If 
 you transgress them, I will severely punish you. 
 Farewell." 
 
 It would not be unreasonable that, except for 
 purely hedonistic or prudential reasons, the com- 
 mands and prohibitions of such a Being should be 
 neglected. Even if among them were many quite 
 excellent and unobjectionable injunctions, such as, 
 " Be unselfish to one another," it might yet be 
 justifiable to say, " We may happen to obey this or 
 that particular order, but not because this unknown 
 Being has told us to do so. His purely external 
 authority we reject. We refuse to cringe to him ; 
 we refuse to obey him. As to his threats and bribes
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 275 
 
 we will venture to ignore them. Perhaps he is 
 only a delusion after all. We will take the risk, 
 and preserve our liberty, our independence, our 
 manhood." 
 
 But such a conception of God, of His relations 
 to man, and of man's relations to Him, is a sheer 
 caricature. It is not the conception of Him which 
 is taught either by modern Judaism or by modern 
 Christianity. It is not the conception of Him which 
 was taught by the Rabbis. It is not the conception 
 of Him which was taught by the Prophets. It is a 
 ninepin. 
 
 God is not supposed by religious believers to be 
 thus unrelated to man, nor is man supposed to be 
 thus unrelated to God. He is not the mere external 
 omnipotent and arbitrary Being, who is supposed to 
 have issued a number of haphazard ordinances with 
 threats and bribes for their due performance. He 
 is not worshipped because He is believed to be 
 powerful : He is worshipped because He is believed 
 to be good. Indeed, He is only believed to exist on 
 the score of goodness and on the score of truth. 
 He is believed to exist because we believers (whether 
 rightly or wrongly, sagely or foolishly, is here not in 
 question) cannot explain the fact of human goodness 
 or human wisdom without Him ; or because we can 
 account for human goodness and human wisdom 
 most satisfactorily with Him. It is not power which 
 we adore : it is righteousness ; it is not punishment 
 which we fear, but it is holiness which we reverence ; 
 it is not reward which we seek, but communion, but 
 nearness. In spite of evil and sin we are still shall 
 we say bold enough, or foolish enough ? to believe 
 that the universe is less explicable without God than 
 with Him. Such goodness and wisdom and love as
 
 276 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 man has achieved and displayed we believe to be 
 due to the divine existence, and to the divine will, 
 and even to the divine aid. 
 
 There is, therefore, no question of servile 
 obedience, but of willing, of free and of loving 
 obedience. No democrat, however completely non- 
 religious and atheistic he might be, would object to 
 saying, " I am the free servant of Righteousness and 
 Wisdom." He would allow that the righteousness 
 and wisdom which he " serves " is not the mere 
 creation of his own individual will and mind, but the 
 creation, after much travail, of collective humanity 
 or of humanity's most chosen spirits. We, too, 
 should say the same, only when we say that we are 
 the servants of righteousness and wisdom, we think 
 of a righteousness or wisdom, which is self-conscious, 
 perfect and divine. If righteousness and wisdom 
 are the Jaw of our human nature, the law whereby 
 we reach man's highest, we also believe them to be 
 the law of God's nature. The moral law is Law in 
 a triple sense. It is the law of God's being ; it is 
 the law of our being ; it is the law which, recognised 
 by us as both without us and within us, we are called 
 upon by ourselves and by God to adore and to obey. 
 The moral Law was not thrown at us from without, 
 as a number of casual and arbitrary ordinances, by 
 an outside and omnipotent power ; it was revealed 
 to man's soul and mind by the conjunction of man's 
 own highest effort with the aid and the illumination 
 of God. 
 
 The non- religious democrat would allow that 
 there is a true sense in which it may be said that 
 the man who serves his passions and the caprice of 
 the changing hour is a slave, whereas the man who 
 serves righteousness is free. Precisely so do we urge
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 277 
 
 that he who serves God is free, for the servant of 
 God is the servant of righteousness. And the lover 
 of God is the lover of righteousness : he seeks it 
 with eagerness, with passion, with delight. To 
 the Theist righteousness is guaranteed by God ; 
 guaranteed as to its reality, guaranteed as to its 
 ultimate effectiveness, guaranteed as to its value. 
 God's love glorifies and consecrates ours. His 
 perfection gives meaning to our imperfection. 
 Worship and obedience are one, and the fullest 
 obedience is the completest liberty. We adore the 
 living law of righteousness and love which is both 
 ours and not ours, both within us and beyond us. 
 No hope of reward, no fear of punishment, tempt us 
 or constrain, but in gladsome reverence and ardent 
 love such at least is the religious ideal we worship 
 and obey. 
 
 Where, then, is the externalism ? Where the 
 cringing ? Where the fear ? Where the obedience 
 to mere arbitrary Omnipotence ? I answer unhesi- 
 tatingly : not in the soul of the believer, but in the 
 heated and angry imagination of our opponents. 
 These things are but vain chimeras ; at best they are 
 the immature gropings, or errors, or perversions of 
 religion ; not its flower, its essence, or its crown. It 
 is to religion in its purity and growth for which we 
 would ask the democrat's allegiance ; not in its early 
 stumblings or in the travesty of its foes. 
 
 It might be legitimate to add that in Liberal 
 Judaism the unquestioned authority of the perfect 
 code falls away. The mind and conscience of man 
 are set free to interpret, to distinguish, to appraise. 
 The obsolete is separated from the permanent, the 
 lower from the higher, the ceremonial from the 
 moral. Hence, as it seems to me, Liberal Judaism
 
 278 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 is really more suited to the democrat than Traditional 
 Judaism, which can allow no questions and no criti- 
 cism, which sets up the Code in its totality as the 
 ultimate and the unalterable authority. 
 
 There is one more religious teaching, common 
 both to Liberal and to Orthodox Judaism, upon which 
 democracy has looked with some suspicion and 
 concern. It is the teaching respecting the relation 
 of this world to a supposed second and other world 
 beyond the grave. Perhaps the quarrel here is more 
 with certain phases of Christianity than with Judaism, 
 but yet Judaism too has laid immense stress upon the 
 " Olam ha-ba" the world to come, and in its 
 convinced faith in that world has found comfort and 
 redress for the miseries and inequalities of this world. 
 It has even taught that the Jews are destined to be 
 unhappy here that they may be all the happier there. 
 We may well endure, with passive fortitude and 
 quiet resignation, temporal and temporary sorrows 
 and oppressions, if we are to be compensated for 
 them in eternity by everlasting prosperity and joy. 
 But against this doctrine the extremer democrats 
 turn with fierce dislike and suspicion. It seems to 
 them all of a piece with the other teachings of 
 subserviency. It seems to have been invented and 
 concocted in the interests of wealth and persecution, 
 in order to keep the poor quiet and contented, and 
 to prevent them casting off their chains. Democracy 
 refuses to be comforted with the promise of happi- 
 ness to-morrow, but never happiness to-day. It 
 knows for sure of no other world than this world. 
 It is this world which it desires to be prosperous. 
 It is the evils of this world against which it desires 
 men to rise and fight. It is their present miseries 
 and limitations which it bids men to strive against
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 279 
 
 and to overcome. It suspects a religion which puts 
 men off and fobs them with the delusive prospect of 
 a life beyond the grave. 
 
 It is, however, not difficult to reply to this 
 objection. It hardly touches any sore spot in Jewish 
 teaching. For Judaism (and its keen antagonists 
 have not been slow to notice and emphasise this 
 point), while laying stress upon the world to come, 
 has yet continued to attach importance to this world. 
 The Golden Age upon earth is as much one of its 
 dogmas as the Golden Age beyond the grave. And 
 if Orthodox Judaism, it is true, has rather expected 
 this golden age to arrive suddenly by the interposition 
 of God, the ideal itself is at least as important as the 
 supposed means of its achievement. There is no 
 reason why the ideal should not, as it were, be linked 
 on to a different means the means, namely, of 
 gradual improvement wrought out by the hands of 
 man. This, at any rate, is absolutely true : that 
 Judaism has never considered the social organisations 
 and relations of this life as insignificant : even though 
 this life is the vestibule, we are, nevertheless, to make 
 the vestibule as good and decent as we can. Men 
 are to be happy in the vestibule as well as in the hall. 
 To wipe the tears from off men's faces is a work for 
 man as well as for God. 
 
 To sum up, it seems tolerably clear that in the 
 case of many of these supposed quarrels of democracy 
 with religion, the real hostility is based, not upon 
 religion as such, but upon the attitude taken up, and 
 the doctrine preached, by many religious teachers, and 
 by many religious societies, in the past. As regards 
 duty and property, for example, religion in itself is 
 not committed to the cause of the rich against the 
 poor, or to any particular form of social organisation.
 
 280 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 If it could be shown that socialism was the best form 
 of government, and that it would greatly add to 
 human well-being and happiness if no individual 
 possessed any private property of his own, I cannot 
 for the life of me see why religion as such should 
 be opposed to it. One can well understand and 
 sympathise with the suspiciousness of the democrats. 
 Too long were a large number of the churches, and 
 of the highest persons in the churches, in alliance 
 with the forces which make for the interests of the 
 powerful and the few. But this unholy alliance must 
 be put down to the fault of erring men and not of 
 religion. It cannot be denied that there now is in 
 the Christian churches and in the Jewish synagogues 
 a large number of priests, clergymen, ministers, 
 rabbis, who have a burning sympathy with the poor, 
 the toilers, the many. I would even venture to say 
 of several of these men that their prejudices are on 
 the side of democracy, and that they often judge the 
 well-to-do (I speak as one of them) too harshly. 
 And the number of these " democratic " ministers of 
 religion is growing decade by decade. Yet their 
 faith in God and in the doctrines of their own 
 particular creed shows no slackening. And it shows 
 no slackening because religion and democracy need 
 each other. And Jewish democrats need (for no 
 other religion will serve their turn) the Jewish 
 religion. 
 
 They need it to give a basis, and to supply a 
 crown, to their own ideals. For, as I see things, it 
 is religion which, in the long run, must give that 
 basis, and supply that crown. Without religion those 
 ideals will, in the long run, crumble away. The 
 ideals include brotherhood and service and unselfish- 
 ness, and the willingness to labour for a common and
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 281 
 
 social end. Many will not agree with me, but, for 
 my part, I believe that in order that men may con- 
 tinue to care for and to honour justice and unselfish- 
 ness and service, they must believe that these virtues 
 are not merely the chance creations of an ephemeral 
 planet : they must believe them to be superhuman, 
 supermundane, cosmic and divine. They must bow 
 down to them in adoration, not merely as the best 
 and most suitable arrangements for their own human 
 societies, but as rooted in a wider and more embrac- 
 ing reality, and as the expression of a more universal 
 will. And I think too that they must believe them 
 to be guaranteed by that reality and that will, so that, 
 in some true sense, it may be said of all labour on 
 their behalf and for their increase, " finis coronabit 
 opus " the end will crown and justify the work. 
 Religion is needed to give to toiling man faith and 
 hope ; faith in the reality of his highest and purest 
 ideals, hope in their ultimate realisation and success. 
 For the democratic ideal includes, if I understand it 
 aright, both spiritual and material ends. It wants 
 justice and knowledge and beauty and social service 
 and unselfishness, but besides these it wants for all 
 men a certain modicum of outward comfort and pro- 
 sperity. Only upon the basis of these " outward 
 goods," as the old Greeks called them, can men 
 possess and enjoy some of the goods of the spirit 
 knowledge, beauty, peace. How can a man enjoy 
 peace who is in ever constant anxiety as to how he 
 and his family shall obtain their next week's meals ? 
 Let us admit all this, and admit it freely. Never- 
 theless, there is, I believe, a danger of a religionless 
 society and of religionless democrats forgetting the 
 end in their anxiety for the means, or mistaking the 
 second for the first. It is religion which has to put
 
 282 LIBERAL JUDAISM v 
 
 and keep prosperity in its place. The fig and the 
 vine are good servants, but they are bad masters. 
 Let a man sit beneath his fig tree by all means, but 
 the vital question is : What is he going to do with 
 himself as he sits ? Religion must see to it that the 
 golden age be more than an age of gold, that in their 
 very quest for the ideal men do not forget its highest 
 and noblest constituents. It is not only despair which 
 might prompt men to say, " Let us eat and drink 
 for to-morrow we die." Prosperity, too, might lead 
 them to say it ; prosperity and the denial of God. 
 Religion's appointed task is to be the guardian and 
 champion of the human soul, the human spirit ; and 
 every creation of the soul must be dear to it. If 
 that be true, an alliance between democracy and 
 religion should tend to the effective maintenance and 
 development of all that is best and greatest in the 
 achievements of the human mind. 
 
 Religion alone can aid us to work both for others 
 and for ourselves, both for the present and for the 
 future, both for earth and for heaven. Religion alone 
 can nerve us to constant and patient work, and yet 
 give us, at each moment in the process, a sense of 
 security, of completion, of attainment. Religion alone 
 can help democracy to make us both rightly discon- 
 tented and rightly satisfied, rightly striving and 
 rightly restful. And religion alone, with its high 
 hope, can give the due perspective to the present ; 
 and can hallow earth with heaven and man with God. 
 Democracy need not be afraid of Judaism with its 
 teaching about the vestibule and the hall. The vesti- 
 bule, as we saw, is not to be neglected because of 
 the hall. It is to be thought all the more of, and 
 to be made all the better and the sweeter. Not only 
 is " one hour of blissfulness of spirit in the world to
 
 v AND DEMOCRACY 283 
 
 come better than the whole life of this world," but 
 also " better than the whole life of the world to 
 come is one hour of repentance and good deeds in 
 this world." It is this paradox of reconcilement which 
 the union of democracy and religion may achieve. 
 
 Thus, whether we look at the matter from the 
 general or the particular point of view, there seems 
 to be no reason why we should scruple or hesitate 
 to make Liberal Judaism known to the " masses " 
 of the Jewish community. There is no reason why 
 these masses, be their habitation or their nation- 
 ality what it may, be they Russians, Americans or 
 Rumanians, should not become ardent Liberal Jews. 
 There is, indeed, one limitation. Liberal Judaism is 
 much more suited for emancipated Jews than for 
 Jews who are subject to disabilities and persecution. 
 Apart from this one limitation, Liberal Judaism may, 
 and should, joyfully go forward. For, in the first 
 place, religion and democracy should be allies : there 
 should be no quarrel between them. Then, in the 
 second place, religion for Jewish democrats must take 
 the form of Judaism. And, in the third place, the 
 kind or type of Judaism which, with the growth of 
 knowledge, will become increasingly necessary, must be 
 Reform or Liberal. Negatively, it can be shown that 
 Liberal Judaism, when better understood, presents, at 
 least to free citizens, no obstacles ; positively, it can 
 be maintained that it possesses qualifications, which, 
 in the modern world, no other type of Judaism can 
 possess. It alone can stand cross-examination by 
 history and by criticism, and come forth unscathed, 
 without equivocation and without surrender. There- 
 fore to the future alliance of Liberal Judaism and 
 democracy we may look forward with confidence and 
 with hope.
 
 VI 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM AND THE FUTURE 
 
 IN the first four chapters of this book I have dealt 
 very briefly with the relation of Liberal Judaism to 
 certain creations and documents of bygone genera- 
 tions. What I want to do now is something much 
 more doubtful and perilous. It is nothing less than 
 to venture upon a peep into the future. How can 
 any man dare to peer into futurity ? The hypo- 
 thetical nature of my remarks, their vague and 
 fragmentary and uncertain character, are at least as 
 obvious to myself as to any of my readers. Still, 
 I think that there may be a certain utility in such 
 a venture. It will, at any rate, indicate the goal 
 towards which, as I believe, Liberal Jews are pro- 
 ceeding, or towards which, in my opinion, we ought 
 to proceed. 
 
 Besides the venturesome uncertainty of my lucu- 
 brations, I realise their thorniness and delicacy. It 
 is needful to tread lightly on many difficult places, 
 to put rash hands into several hornets' nests : with- 
 out metaphor, it is necessary to allude to a ques- 
 tion which divides not merely Jew from Christian, 
 but Jew from Jew, and not merely Jew from 
 Jew, but Orthodox Jew from Orthodox Jew, and 
 Liberal Jew from Liberal Jew. No reasonable 
 
 284
 
 vi LIBERAL JUDAISM & THE FUTURE 285 
 
 person wants to hurt or to be hurt, to sting or to 
 be stung, more than he can avoid, and therefore it 
 will be well to write with as much brevity and 
 restraint as clearness and frankness may permit. 
 
 Let us, then, straightway ask : What are the 
 chances of Liberal Judaism amid the competition of 
 the religions ? What is its strength ? What, if 
 any, are its weaknesses ? Does it seem to be in 
 keeping, if I may use such a phrase, with the move- 
 ment of religious thought in the European and 
 American world, so far as such a movement can be 
 discerned? Is Liberal Judaism a mere survival a 
 survival that may live for many ages but which 
 merely represents a despairing, if unconsciously 
 despairing, effort to rescue what cannot any more 
 be rescued, and to preserve what can no longer 
 be preserved ? Is it a well-meaning, but hopeless, 
 attempt to fit out for a modern life a religion whose 
 roots reaching far away into an alien past can no 
 longer give sap and sustenance to the branches and 
 the leaves ? Did Judaism, so far as any effective 
 vitality and influence are concerned, indeed come to 
 an end (as almost all non-Jews believe) some nineteen 
 hundred years ago ? 
 
 There is something very striking in the loneliness 
 of Judaism through the ages in the Western world. 
 There is something very grand in the defiance of 
 this small band of protesting dissidents against a 
 hostile and contemptuous environment. It is a story 
 of a long trust in God and in the truth without a 
 parallel in history. Suppose we compare the position 
 of Judaism to-day with its position in Europe during 
 the Middle Ages. It is lonely to-day ; it is dissident ; 
 it still stands apart ; but how much more lonely 
 then than now ! If it is venturesome to-day, how
 
 286 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 much more venturesome then ! If any of the 
 thousands who gave their lives for Judaism from 
 Constantine to Luther were to return to earth, might 
 he not say that, while the day has not yet fully 
 dawned, the night is breaking, and the worst is past ? 
 A thousand years ago the Jew, in his European 
 environment, looked out upon a united, a believing 
 and an orthodox Christianity. Who then doubted 
 the dogmas of the persecuting and conquering 
 Church ? Only the despised and hated Jew. He 
 alone. There was, indeed, another world religion 
 besides the religion of the Church. There was 
 Islam. But the Jew rejected Islam no less than he 
 rejected Christianity. He ventured to stand outside 
 both, and from both to reap derision and contempt. 
 The dogmas of the Church, which all believed, 
 seemed very firmly woven and very firmly fixed. 
 And of these dogmas those most in evidence, those 
 most cherished, those most lived by, and lived for, 
 and beloved, were the very dogmas that were most 
 antithetic to Judaism, against which Judaism, in its 
 brave and lonely dissidence, protested most fiercely, 
 and to the death denied. Not the humanity of the 
 founder, but his unqualified divinity, filled men's 
 minds ; not his ethical teaching, not his simple love 
 for God and for man, but subtle dogmas about his 
 Godhead and about his bodily presence in bread and 
 wine, strange conceptions about his virgin mother, 
 the supposed mother of God, adoration of images, 
 invocations of saints, infractions of monotheism in 
 many forms and directions these things occupied 
 the religious consciousness, stimulated the religious 
 actions, of the Christian world. They still exist ; 
 they have not perished. But, nevertheless, what an 
 immense change between then and now. For one
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 287 
 
 who even secretly doubted the specific dogmas of 
 Christianity then, are there not a hundred or a 
 thousand now ? Where is the stress laid to-day ? 
 The Church is divided against itself, and within 
 the ranks of each division and sect are many who 
 are its adherents only in name. Many educated 
 persons no longer believe in the Virgin Birth, the 
 Empty Tomb, a physical or semi-physical Resur- 
 rection, the doctrine of the Trinity or of Transub- 
 stantiation, the absolving power of a priesthood, the 
 invocation of the " mother " of God. The crumb- 
 ling process may take a long while, but it progresses, 
 and another dozen centuries may make a vast differ- 
 ence yet. If our old martyr Jew of the tenth century 
 were to rise and look around, he would readily 
 perceive that he had not died in vain ; " let me 
 sleep again," he would say, " and return in another 
 thousand years for another glance. For surely 
 Thou changest not ; a thousand years in Thy sight 
 are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch 
 in the night. What matters the number of the 
 years ? I will lay me down and sleep. When I 
 awake, I shall be satisfied." 
 
 So far the mediaeval Jew. But if the develop- 
 ment of religious thought seems to be tending, 
 slowly but surely, to the dissolution of Orthodox 
 Christianity, is it tending any the more towards 
 Judaism ? What would the awakened mediaeval 
 Jew have said had he looked within instead of 
 without ? What would he have said as to the 
 conditions and prospects of Orthodox Judaism, and 
 what would have been his agony had it been suggested 
 to him that the future of his faith, if indeed it had a 
 future at all, belonged, not to the old Judaism which 
 he knew, believed in and loved, but to a new Judaism,
 
 288 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 which he could only have regarded as a most terrible 
 and atrocious heresy, wholly unworthy of the Jewish 
 name ? I fully admit that the brave old martyr 
 would have sunk back to his sleep with very different 
 feelings in his heart. Any smile of satisfaction would 
 almost wholly have disappeared. 
 
 The present position and prospects of Liberal 
 Judaism can be considered from a negative, and also 
 from a positive, point of view. The negations of 
 Liberal Judaism relative to Christianity are also 
 affirmations. For example, Liberal Judaism does 
 not merely deny the Orthodox Christian conception 
 of God ; it affirms a conception of its own. 
 
 How far is its attitude towards Christianity hope- 
 ful or hopeless ? 
 
 It has been suggested that the dogmas of Orthodox 
 Christianity show signs of wear and decrepitude. 
 Some of them are abandoned by many educated 
 persons ; some are being so explained as almost to 
 be explained away. In spite of the immense claims 
 which are still made for Christianity as the absolute 
 religion, or as the one universal religion, which is 
 destined to cover the whole area of the globe, and 
 to be adopted by all races and all colours of men, 
 Liberal Judaism may be well content to stand firm 
 and to wait. The process of disintegration may 
 go much further. He who compares 900 with 
 1900 may have reasonably good hope and courage 
 for the difference which is likely to prevail between 
 1900 and 2900. The attacks of science, philo- 
 sophy and criticism upon the miraculous and historic 
 elements of the Orthodox Christian faith may have 
 periods of cessation and reaction, but they are 
 likely to be renewed. What is left of Christianity 
 in 2900 will perhaps bear much closer resemblance
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 289 
 
 to what we now know as Unitarianism than it will 
 to any other now existing section of the Christian 
 Church. The Jesus who is universally believed to 
 have had a human father as well as a human mother, 
 and whose resurrection was no more than the con- 
 tinued life after death of any other member of the 
 human family, will hardly remain for many centuries 
 the only begotten son, and himself the incarnation, 
 of God. His deity will gradually resolve itself into 
 that touch of divineness which every good man may 
 be supposed to share. In view of the immense 
 amount of faith which still exists in the " Divinity 
 of Christ," such assertions may seem foolhardy and 
 ridiculous. Never mind. Liberal Jews have no fear. 
 Our faith in our own pure monotheism, which suffers 
 the partnership of no man, and offers worship to no 
 child of woman, is happy, confident and serene. We 
 hold that this faith of ours will, at long last, be 
 vindicated triumphantly. Nor do we think that 
 even the human Jesus will be allowed by time to 
 retain his lonely pinnacle of solitary perfection. Will 
 criticism always affirm that all his recorded utterances 
 are on an equal level of moral or religious ex- 
 cellence, or that the more excellent are all genuine, 
 the less excellent incontestably spurious ? Will men 
 for all time endure the burden of a religion which 
 forces them to accept as authoritative and immaculate 
 the sayings of a single Jewish teacher, who necessarily 
 shared, to some extent, in the moral and religious 
 limitations of his age and his environment ? Will 
 that be always regarded as the perfect life of which 
 we only doubtfully know a few incidents in a single 
 year, while a large portion of what we do hear is 
 shrouded in legend, uncertainty and mist ? The 
 freedom of Liberal Judaism towards any book, any 
 
 u
 
 2 9 o LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 teacher, any record, as it gives its adherents happi- 
 ness and serenity to-day, must surely win for them 
 many more adherents in the future. Can it be that 
 coming ages will bind us more closely to the correct- 
 ness and the authenticity of a story, or to the moral 
 and religious perfection of a number of ancient words ? 
 Emancipation from bondage, whether to a code, a 
 story, a book, or a man, may be more probably 
 regarded as the tendency of the future. 
 ',', ! But even assuming that all this is so, and will be 
 so, we must not too hastily assume that the disin- 
 tegration of Orthodox Christianity means the ever 
 firmer and more world-wide establishment of Liberal 
 Judaism. If there exist dissolvents for Christianity, 
 will not these very forces be dissolvents for Liberal 
 Judaism as well ? 
 
 But the essence of my bold contention is that, 
 while Orthodox Judaism may not be able to resist 
 these forces, Liberal Judaism is in very different case. 
 Orthodox Judaism depends upon a particular inter- 
 pretation of a book and a code an interpretation 
 which is more open and exposed to the heavy guns 
 of criticism than even a tolerably orthodox interpreta- 
 tion of the New Testament Scriptures. As regards his 
 own religion our old resurrected Jewish martyr would 
 suffer almost as much as he would triumph. The 
 doctrine of the divine man has received many a blow ; 
 but the doctrine of the homogeneous, perfect and 
 divine Code has been so severely attacked that few 
 serious attempts are now made in its defence. 
 
 Yet if Liberal Judaism is impervious to the 
 onslaughts of criticism, if it can dispense with 
 miracles and perfect codes and perfect teachers and 
 divine men, has it not other heritages of the past, 
 weaknesses of omission as well as of commission, thin-
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 291 
 
 ness and inadequacy of substance as well as positive 
 troubles both in doctrine and in form which must 
 make its chances of life and of development exceed- 
 ingly poor and small ? 
 
 How absurd it would be to suppose that a great 
 religion like Christianity, which has produced so many 
 saints and heroes, and so many great teachers and 
 philosophers, a religion which has satisfied so many 
 millions of different minds, sustained them in sorrow 
 and nerved them to endurance and to sacrifice, should 
 not contain a large element of permanent truth. Nor 
 would it be wise to assume too hastily that what is 
 good and permanent and helpful and true in Christi- 
 anity is only that part of its doctrine which it shares 
 with Judaism. Many dogmas of the Church may 
 crumble away, but there will be teachings, there will 
 be ideals, which, in one form or another, will remain. 
 And as I ventured to assert in a previous chapter, 
 the figure of Jesus himself is scarcely destined to be 
 forgotten or treasured no more ; nor is cultivated 
 society likely to abandon the Gospels to cling the 
 closer to the Law, to forgo the Apostle to the 
 Gentiles, but to hold in all the higher esteem the 
 authors of Judges and of Esther. If the time should 
 come when Liberal Judaism is to take its place as a 
 universal religion, as the faith of many races rather 
 than the faith of a portion of a single race, it will 
 have to be less purely negative and repellent than it 
 now is to the New Testament and to its central hero. 
 
 But this is not all. It is not only a question of 
 an attitude towards a book and a teacher, it is also a 
 question of an attitude towards certain particular 
 doctrines : it is also a question of how far the 
 doctrine of Liberal Judaism is capable of defence, 
 upon the one hand, of expansion, upon the other.
 
 292 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 First, then, as to expansion, where matters have 
 again to be touched upon to which vague allusion 
 was made before. Christian dogma seems to be one 
 thing ; Christian theology another. The mighty 
 product of thought which is incorporated in the 
 theology ; the endless travail of splendid brains, the 
 religious experience which has suggested the thinking, 
 and the thinking which has been tested and illumined 
 by the experience all this has not ended, and will 
 not end, in sand. The dogmas of the Trinity, the 
 Incarnation, the Atonement, may all pass away, and 
 may cease to be believed. But surely they will leave 
 something behind. Are we to suppose that the entire 
 conception of God and of His relation to man has 
 been only injured and corrupted, and in no way 
 enlarged or enriched, by the whole course and process 
 of Christian theology ? Can we believe that it is all 
 loss and no gain ? That as men believed about God 
 in Judaea in 10 B.C., so, and in no way otherwise, 
 would the wisest and the best of them do well to 
 believe in A.D. 2000? 
 
 Somehow or other, such a belief seems to me to 
 be not only amazingly silly, but to savour of 
 something between atheism and blasphemy. All the 
 great thinkers of Christianity and all its beautiful 
 souls must surely have contributed something to the 
 fuller knowledge of God. A living faith appears 
 to demand a belief of this kind. There is some- 
 thing behind a dogma in which great souls have 
 believed and found nutriment, which big brains have 
 fashioned and toiled at. Jesus was, Jet us assume, a 
 very good and a very great man, but not a perfect 
 man, and not without limitations, both intellectual 
 and religious ; yet the doctrine of the Divinity of 
 Christ, though literally false, may, nevertheless, con-
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 293 
 
 tain elements of truth and of value. And so too 
 with the Trinity, and with other Christian dogmas. 
 Literally, they may be false and transitory, but they 
 will not pass away without leaving fructifying seeds 
 for the purer and truer conception of God and of 
 man that is to follow them. 
 
 The old parrot cry about Judaism knowing 
 nothing of a God of mercy has almost ceased to 
 croak. The Old Testament God of justice, the 
 New Testament God of love, is a false antithesis. 
 The unbeliever and the child of darkness who fall 
 into the hands of the God of the New Testament in 
 general, and of the Fourth Gospel in particular, will 
 by no means have a pleasant time of it. In relation 
 to the unbeliever the God of the Fourth Gospel is, 
 according to Liberal Jewish ideas, neither loving nor 
 just. Nor have we to go to the New Testament or 
 to Christian theology for information or inspiration 
 about the conception of God as a Father. In our 
 own documents and in our own theology, and on 
 our own lines of development, that particular aspect 
 and conception of God are amply provided for. As 
 to the loving-kindness and compassion of God we 
 have Httle to learn. It is not here that the expansion 
 seems called for or required. 
 
 In a previous chapter I mentioned the doctrine 
 of the divine Immanence. Here is one direction in 
 which advance has probably to be made. Judaism 
 must always maintain the separateness of God and 
 man. But the nature and the implications of the 
 relation between the two have not yet adequately 
 been thought out. The doctrine of the divine 
 image can be more fully developed. Again, there 
 is no feature of the Orthodox Christian faith which 
 has been more repellent to the Jewish mind, from the
 
 294 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 age of Paul till now, than the idea of God, in human 
 form, suffering and dying upon the cross. To the 
 Jew, God is always the same and always perfect. 
 Occasionally He seems, perhaps, to resemble a little 
 too closely the God of Aristotle in His majestic self- 
 sufficiency, in His eternal and immutable beatitude. 
 We may well believe that this aspect of the Divine 
 Being represents a truth, and can never be entirely 
 abandoned. It was necessary, at a certain stage of 
 development, to enunciate the doctrine that goodness 
 and wickedness are not rewarded or punished by 
 God because the one benefits, and the other injures, 
 Him. He does not rule the world of man for His 
 own profit and advantage. There is, therefore, a 
 real, if relative and limited, truth in the statement of 
 Eliphaz (Job xxii. 2, 3) : 
 
 Can a man bring profit to God ? 
 
 Nay, the wise man but profits himself. 
 Does Almighty God care for thy righteousness ? 
 
 Has He gain from thy blameless ways ? 
 
 Or, again, when Elihu declares (Job xxxv. 7, 8) : 
 
 What effect has thy sin upon God ? 
 
 What cares He for thy many transgressions ? 
 What gain comes to Him from thy righteousness ? 
 
 What receives He from thy hand ? 
 It is to men like thyself thy sin matters, 
 
 It is mortals thy righteousness touches. 
 
 Professor J. E. M'Fadyen (whose capital trans- 
 lation I have borrowed) says of this second quota- 
 tion : " One hardly knows whether to abhor more 
 this utilitarian conception of religion or this heartless 
 conception of God." And of the words of Eliphaz 
 he says : " There is something peculiarly repellent 
 about this position of Eliphaz, whether we consider 
 its commercial view of religion or its loveless concep-
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 295 
 
 tion of God." l I do not think that either Eliphaz 
 or Elihu deserves this very severe condemnation. It 
 was not illegitimate to point out that God primarily 
 desires human righteousness for man's sake, not for 
 His own sake : that man's virtues affect man, and 
 that man's sins injure man. If God rewards the one 
 and punishes the other, He does not do so for any 
 benefit or injury which He has sustained, but because 
 man deserves what he receives, and is benefited by 
 receiving it. It was necessary to establish the divine 
 independence and self-sufficiency before one could 
 safely go on to find a certain mystical or ontological 
 sense in which it might be supposed that the fortunes, 
 or the moral condition, of man affect God. Yet if 
 God pities human sorrow, if He feels compassion for 
 human suffering, is not this very pity or compassion 
 a breaking in upon, and a limitation of, the divine 
 beatitude ? Is not pity akin to sorrow, and is not 
 sorrow akin to suffering ? A further step is sympathy. 
 Must not God be sympathetic with the woes of the 
 universe ? Surely, He must. But is not sympathy 
 more akin to suffering even than pity ? In a 
 former chapter I mentioned how the Rabbis make 
 free use of this conception of the divine sympathy. 
 They base their thought upon that strange verse 
 in Isaiah (Ixiii. 9) (of which the text is probably 
 corrupt) : " In all their afflictions He was afflicted." 
 The Shechinah suffers with the sufferings of Israel. 
 Yet even this conception does not go to the full 
 length to which the doctrine of divine suffering is 
 often stretched to-day. When Dr. Carpenter says 
 that, according to his belief, " the long passion of our 
 humanity is borne in all its multitudinous variety " 
 by God, that " He is the companion, if He is also 
 
 1 The Problem of Pain : a Study in the Book of Job (1917), pp. 157, 263.
 
 296 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 (in part at least) the author, of our woe," he means 
 something more than sympathy. 1 He means, I take 
 it, that in the great cosmic process or drama the 
 Divine Being or Spirit suffers of necessity in its 
 difficult evolution. He brings His plans to the 
 birth in pain. He is bound to succeed, but He can 
 only succeed at a cost and a struggle, in which He 
 is Himself involved, and through a universal suffer- 
 ing in which He is bound to share. He grieves 
 for, but He also suffers with, and suffers in, the 
 sorrows and the sufferings of man and of the world. 
 Such conceptions raise many difficulties. But if 
 there be any truth in them at all, if God is not, as it 
 were, static in a lonely and isolated perfection, but 
 Himself moves forward with, and amid, His creation 
 to a more perfect good, may we not, perhaps, have 
 here, in this huge idea, thus roughly, briefly and 
 clumsily expressed, the germs of a grander theodicy 
 the germs of some finer transfiguration and ex- 
 planation of suffering than Jewish thought has yet 
 devised ? 
 
 May it be too that this idea may also provide 
 some explanation for the awful mystery of the 
 sufferings of animals. And, parenthetically, it may 
 be remarked that practical Jewish idealism has been 
 ever very sensitive to these sufferings, while Christi- 
 anity has, for long, been careless and indifferent. I 
 do not believe that if Europe had become Jewish 
 instead of Christian, England, for instance, would have 
 waited till the nineteenth century for any legislation 
 to be passed, or for any Society to be formed, to 
 suppress cruelty to animals, or that hundreds of years 
 after the land had become Jewish, on a man being 
 charged with horrible cruelty to a cow, the case would 
 
 1 The Place of Immortality in Religious Belief, p. 93 (1898).
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 297 
 
 have been dismissed because the cow was only an 
 implement of the farm and the property of the man. 
 
 But if the Divine Being Himself in some mysteri- 
 ous manner shares in the world's travail and suffer- 
 ings, then, for all those who partake of the divine 
 gift of reason and consciousness, suffering is strangely 
 glorified and sublimated. In some newer and higher 
 sense we become partners with God ; in some newer 
 and higher sense, as we wage war with evil, so are 
 we fighting shoulder to shoulder with Him. 
 
 Nor is this all. For closely allied to the doctrine 
 of suffering is the doctrine of sacrifice. For why 
 should God suffer ? Not because of His sin, for He 
 is sinless. But what if He suffers, because He is 
 strangely bound up with, even though He be above 
 and beyond, the worlds which He informs and 
 sustains ? What if He suffers, because they, in their 
 imperfection, must suffer ? What if He suffers with 
 them, and for their sakes ? What if He suffers 
 because He loves them, what if He suffers in order 
 to redeem? 
 
 These reflections may appear presumptuous, yet 
 they seem to be partially involved in those ancient 
 words, not of the prophet, but of his copyist or editor : 
 " In all their afflictions He was afflicted." And so we 
 come near to the idea of sacrifice, to the idea of the 
 eternal sacrifice of God for the sake of His creation. 
 In their affliction He is afflicted ; of necessity, but also 
 voluntarily ; afflicted, in order to redeem and to save. 
 There may conceivably be a transcendental sense in 
 which the old Christian interpretation of the most 
 famous chapter of Hebrew prophecy may enshrine a 
 difficult, but profound, truth : " He is wounded for 
 our transgressions." 
 
 Even ethically this great chapter has been, I
 
 298 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 believe, inadequately used and developed in the 
 history of Jewish thought. We have not realised 
 with sufficient fulness and clarity the meaning and 
 implications of the idea and the doctrine of self- 
 sacrifice. We have not realised enough how it 
 changes and illumines the conceptions of retribution 
 and of punishment, how it connects itself with, and 
 transfigures, the whole story of human effort and 
 human suffering and human love. " The highest 
 life," said the great teacher who, when she wrote 
 the words, had long ceased to be a Christian, 
 "is a conscious voluntary sacrifice." But there can 
 be little doubt that the idea of self-sacrifice, of 
 bearing one another's burdens, of vicarious suffer- 
 ing, consciously, even voluntarily, undergone, and 
 realised as the law of life, which is both inevitable 
 and redemptive, is a contribution to human ethics 
 of a distinctly Christian stamp. It bears a Christian 
 superscription, and issues from the Christian mint. 
 It is closely connected with, and indeed rests upon, 
 that idea of the divine suffering and the divine 
 sacrifice, which I have ventured just to touch on with 
 some hesitation and uncertainty. But it seems to me 
 that here, at any rate, are conceptions of Christian 
 origin, which Liberal Jewish theology, if Liberal 
 Judaism is to become a more universal religion, must 
 deeply consider, and may possibly, in some shape or 
 form, think well to adapt and to adopt. 
 
 So much here (by way of mere illustration) about 
 expansion. But there is also a word to say as to 
 defence. The attack, alike from Orthodox Jewish 
 and from non-Jewish quarters, upon Liberal Judaism 
 would be to argue that its doctrines have been so 
 contracted or so " purified " (whichever way you like 
 to look at it) that, except in one single instance, they
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 299 
 
 only amount to a pale and unsubstantial Theism, 
 while that one single, specifically Jewish, doctrine is 
 inadmissible by, and unacceptable to, any who are not 
 born within the Jewish pale. I have often replied to 
 the first part of this attack before, and I will deal 
 with it now but very briefly. The truth is that this 
 attack is usually put forward by people, who are, 
 perhaps, learned in Jewish law, but ignorant and 
 neglectful of Jewish theology. They seem to think 
 that the one salient doctrine in the whole Jewish 
 religion is the Unity of God, so that only the cere- 
 monial law differentiates the Jew from any other 
 person who says that he disbelieves in the divinity of 
 Christ, and accepts the theory of the divine Unity. 
 Or, again, they seem to think that faith in God is 
 something small and pilulous, and that what gives 
 size and substance to religion is dietary laws and 
 minutiae of Sabbatical observance. But in both 
 respects they are wrong. To make faith in God 
 central and supreme in human existence is both 
 Jewish, on the one hand, and religiously substantial, 
 upon the other : it is neither flimsy nor small. 
 " Mere Theism " people say ! But what an adjective 
 for what a noun ! Somehow one feels almost inclined 
 to reply that only those can speak of mere Theism 
 to whom the vast realities of faith in God have 
 somewhat receded behind a certain pride of race and 
 the observance of a number of ceremonial injunctions. 
 But they are wrong in their criticism from another 
 reason as well. The Unity of God is not the end-all 
 and be-all of Jewish theology. You are not a Jew 
 merely by saying that you believe in the divine 
 Unity. Judaism goes beyond so bare and even 
 barren a statement. What son of God is this deity 
 whom you declare to be One ? What is His char-
 
 300 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 acter ? What is His relation to the world and to 
 man ? What can and should be man's relation to 
 Him ? What is His relation to good and to evil, 
 and how are these conceptions affected by a faith in 
 His existence ? What is the relation of men to one 
 another, and how does our duty to God affect our 
 duty to our neighbour ? All this and more is in- 
 cluded in " mere Theism," and to all these large 
 questions Judaism, like any other Theistic religion, 
 must have, and has, its specific answers to give. It 
 is all of them together which go to constitute the 
 Jewish religion. The Jewish answers to all these 
 questions have their specifically Jewish colour. Con- 
 nected one with the other, and forming a substantial 
 and consistent whole (however capable of further 
 development), they make up a theology which should 
 be adequate for the men of many races and not 
 merely for the men of one. 
 
 And now as to the alleged one and only specifically 
 Jewish doctrine within the compass of Liberal Judaism 
 which is inadmissible by, and unacceptable to, the outer 
 world. That doctrine is the Mission of Israel. But 
 why can this doctrine not be more generally believed 
 in? I admit that no Christian can accept it. To 
 him the mission of Israel closed with the birth of 
 Christianity. But for those who have rejected the 
 Orthodox Christian doctrines, and who yet believe in 
 the conception of God in history, why is it impossible 
 to believe that Judaism may still have work to do, 
 and a place to fill, in the religious development of 
 the world ? If its doctrine of God is essentially true 
 and capable of enlargement, why may not this religion, 
 even though now confined to a few, be destined in 
 the future to a wider influence and a larger sphere ? 
 Let us first be true to ourselves, and true to truth
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 301 
 
 where we discern it, and the wider influence may at 
 long last be ours not ours for us to see, but ours 
 because we shall have; helped our spiritual descendants 
 and successors to see it. Let us think greatly of 
 Judaism ; let us, by our fidelity and effort, help it to 
 develop and to expand, and there seems to me no 
 inherent reason, within it or without it, why a place 
 upon the large theatre of human progress should not 
 yet be in store for it, why a big part should not, in 
 God's own time, be reserved for it to play. When 
 I am told that nobody believes in our mission except 
 ourselves, the fact does not disturb me, if I can find 
 in that faith of ours nothing that is itself unreasonable 
 or absurd. 
 
 As regards its doctrine, Liberal Judaism would, 
 as I have said, be criticised by the outer world be- 
 cause of its continued and insistent belief in the 
 mission of Israel. But this touch of particularism, 
 as outsiders call it, while we deny the accuracy of the 
 nomenclature, is not the only reason why its prospects 
 in the future are considered small and feeble. There 
 is another criticism also connected with the question 
 of particularism which we have now to investigate. 
 And here, for opposite reasons, Jewish and non- 
 Jewish critics join hands. Over and above the 
 dogma of the mission of Israel, and apart from it, 
 Liberal Judaism is said by one set of critics to be 
 too particularistic, by another set to be not particular- 
 istic enough. 
 
 The non- Jewish critics speak of it, in other words, 
 as if it were still a national religion, and as such to 
 be ignored ; the Jewish critics declare that it seeks 
 to eliminate and overlook the fact and the glory of 
 nationalism, and is therefore doomed to sterility and 
 extinction. To the first set of critics, Liberal Judaism
 
 302 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 is doomed because it is, and must be, a national 
 religion ; to the other set it is doomed, because it 
 has successfully evicted the national element. 
 
 In what respects (apart from the dogma of the 
 Mission of Israel) is Liberal Judaism held to be 
 of necessity a national religion? I suppose the 
 answer is twofold. First, its embodiment is national ; 
 secondly, its members belong, and must continue to 
 belong, to one race and one race only. 
 
 Let us examine these two contentions in order. 
 The first can be disposed of very briefly. It is 
 exceedingly curious, but true, that the majority of 
 the Jewish holy days are singularly universal in their 
 character. The harvest and thanksgiving festival 
 of Tabernacles, the purely human and catholic institu- 
 tions of the Day of Memorial and the Day of Atone- 
 ment, can appeal to everybody. Pentecost, as the 
 festival of Law, has also a purely human significance. 
 The Passover is more difficult to universalise, but as 
 the festival of Liberty it, too, strikes a broadly 
 human note. It is hardly necessary to remark that 
 the weekly day of rest, be it observed on Saturday or 
 Sunday, is in every respect non-national and universal. 
 Hence the charge that the outward embodiment of 
 Liberal Judaism (apart from its dogma) is, and must 
 be, national in character, seems to me to break down. 
 It will not hold water. And, as a matter of fact, 
 proselytes to Judaism find no difficulty* in accepting 
 the Jewish holy days and in observing them. The 
 word, together with the conception, of Israel, which 
 will always retain its place in a Jewish liturgy, can 
 and does easily lose its narrow, physiological, genea- 
 logical, national connotation. It can, and, please 
 God, it will, gradually assume, more and more com- 
 pletely, a purely religious significance. Israel will
 
 vr AND THE FUTURE 303 
 
 mean all those, be their race or ancestry what it may, 
 who accept the Jewish faith and Jewish obligations. 
 
 But the second part of the answer is much the 
 more serious and vital, namely the allegation that 
 Liberal Judaism must always continue to be a puny 
 sect, the members of which can only be recruited 
 from a single race. And we must all agree that the 
 day, or, at any rate, the religious value, of national 
 religions is past for good and all. 
 
 In one sense even orthodox and even nationalistic 
 Jews are agreed that the day of national religions 
 is over. A curious theory has been invented by 
 Orthodox Judaism in modern times in this regard. 
 Orthodox Judaism frankly declares and admits that, 
 while the dogmas of Judaism are universalist, its 
 institutions and laws and embodiment are national. 
 Its God is the God of the whole earth and of all 
 human races, but its cult and worship are intended 
 for the members of a single race. Hence Orthodox 
 Judaism has no desire whatever for proselytes in the 
 sense in which that word is usually understood, that 
 is to say, persons who accept, not only the doctrines, 
 but also the institutions and practices, of a particular 
 religion. So far as I understand the theory, Orthodox 
 Judaism is anxious (though it does not itself take 
 action in order to realise its aspirations) that all the 
 world shall accept the Jewish doctrine of the One 
 God. But having accepted it, and in the measure 
 that they accept it, the world's inhabitants must, so 
 far as worship and religious institutions go, shift 
 for themselves. Orthodox Judaism has nothing to 
 offer them or to share with them. It leaves them 
 severely in the cold. As to what the worship and 
 the religious institutions of the millions who abandon 
 Christianity, and accept the doctrines of Judaism, are
 
 304 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 to be, Orthodox Judaism says no word. It appears 
 to be indifferent on the subject. It is true that 
 the Gentiles have this one advantage : they are not 
 to be subjected to the burdens of the Ceremonial 
 Law. But the Orthodox Jew tells us that these 
 supposed burdens are no burdens. They are a 
 delight and a glory. They are the vehicle of the 
 purest religious satisfaction. They bring those who 
 practise them near unto God. Nevertheless, the 
 great and overwhelming mass of the human race 
 are to be deprived for ever of these delights and 
 satisfactions. They are never to perform those 
 practices which bring men near unto God. How 
 they are to draw near, what their religious vehicles 
 and instruments are to be so long as these are, I 
 suppose, wholly disconnected from any semblance or 
 taint of Christianity it is for them to discover for 
 themselves. The perfect Law is for the Jews alone. 
 In other words, they occupy a special and chosen 
 place. They enter and possess the sanctuary. They 
 enjoy privileges. They have the rights of the first- 
 born. They are the priests ; outside is a huge 
 second class of neglected laymen. In truth, Orthodox 
 Judaism cannot get rid of a certain measure of par- 
 ticularism. Drive out its particularism by the door 
 of doctrine, it re-enters by the door of observance. 
 
 A religion which frankly admits that only its 
 doctrines, and indeed only some of its doctrines, are 
 to become gradually universal is in a very difficult 
 position. I say, " indeed only some of its doctrines," 
 for the dogma of the perfect, divine and Mosaic law 
 not even the most ardent Orthodox Jew can suppose 
 will ever be accepted by those who are outside the 
 Jewish pale. When Orthodox Jews speak of the 
 spread of Jewish doctrine, they usually mean little
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 305 
 
 more than the diffusion of a belief in the Unity of 
 God. 
 
 Liberal Judaism, on the other hand, aspires to give 
 its all. There are to be no reserves or exclusions. 
 When it prays for the diffusion of Judaism, it does 
 not merely mean that more and more people are to 
 acknowledge the abstract dogma of one God, but it 
 means that they are free to accept the entire Liberal 
 Jewish teaching as regards that God and His relation 
 to us and our relation to Him, and that those institu- 
 tions and worship by which we publicly and privately 
 draw near to God may also be theirs. We seek, 
 then, to give our all ; we hold back nothing. We 
 do not say : " here are the doctrines ; we keep our 
 forms and our worship to ourselves." We would 
 throw the doors wide open, so that when Liberal 
 Judaism has gradually conquered the Jews, it may 
 slowly begin to draw in the world. 
 
 Our hope and aspiration may be daring, but they 
 are definite. We know that our progress must be 
 very slow. We realise that our religion must develop 
 and expand, and that in certain respects it must be 
 modified and enriched, before it can become, in very 
 truth, a universal religion, of which the adherents 
 will be drawn from many races and not only from one. 
 We realise, moreover, that it is still more necessary, 
 at first, to carry the men of our own race with us, 
 and draw them after us, than to attract the men who 
 are without. We must constantly preserve our 
 communications, and keep in touch with our rear : 
 we must maintain our connection with the historic 
 past. It is Judaism which we have to universalise, 
 and whose limits we have to push forward : an 
 historic religion, which must not lose the justification 
 and propriety of its ancient name. The goal is very 
 
 x
 
 306 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 distant ; but that it is either absurd, on the one hand, 
 or ignoble, on the other, we deny. We admit that 
 the venture is great. Only fools must be unable to 
 see the force of the objection that even Liberal 
 Judaism is merely the belated outgrowth of an 
 anachronism, and that the Western World will never 
 retrace its steps. We are well aware that the Liberal 
 Judaism of the distant future will, in many ways, be 
 very different from the Liberal Judaism of to-day. 
 Be it so. Even though different, it will yet be an 
 historic development. Judged by old and orthodox 
 standards, Unitarianism is less Christian than Liberal 
 Judaism is Jewish : nevertheless, the future of 
 Christianity may be reserved for some form or phase 
 of Unitarianism, which itself may ultimately coalesce 
 with the Liberal Judaism of the future. We need 
 not attempt to prophesy too closely ; yet we keep 
 our prophetic goal in our hearts and in our minds. 
 
 It is thus that we meet the attack from our 
 non- Jewish critics ; but what of the attacks from 
 within the Jewish pale ? 
 
 Are the Jews a people like any other people ? 
 Are they a nation like any other nation ? And if so, 
 what is the result of such a fact, if it be a fact, upon 
 the conception and destiny of Liberal Judaism. We, 
 however, deny that it is a fact. Israel was once a 
 nation ; it is now a church. And a church is greater 
 than any nation : it transcends the nation, binding 
 nation and nation together. That is why, in our 
 Liberal Jewish opinion, it is so futile and false to 
 compare the Jewish community with the Serbians or 
 the Greeks. They are just a people ; we are not. 
 
 Our religion, it is true, is at present largely 
 regarded as a national religion. But we hope that it 
 will not always be so regarded. We hope that the
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 307 
 
 synagogue the Liberal Jewish synagogue of the 
 future will, in the most literal sense, be a " house 
 of prayer for many peoples." When we use the 
 term " Israel," we do not think of those who are 
 connected together by race ; we think of those who 
 are connected together by religion. Whom do we 
 regard as nearer to us a proselyte, or an atheist who 
 is a " Jew by race " ? There can be no question 
 about the answer. The proselyte twenty thousand 
 times ! " Yet will I gather others to him besides 
 those that are gathered." For the fulfilment of that 
 prediction however little we may talk of it, and 
 people often do not talk of the deepest and most 
 cherished elements in their faith we would labour 
 and have faith. It is not a national religion, professed 
 by a petty people in Palestine, which can help to fulfil 
 that prophecy ; a national religion, professed by a 
 small people in a distant home, can only retard it. 
 Jewish communities scattered all over the civilised 
 world, one with their fellow-countrymen in all 
 national affairs and aspirations, keen on their Liberal 
 Judaism as it grows in purity and universalism these 
 may help to realise it ; to their open houses of prayer 
 the peoples may yet resort. From Zion in the literal 
 sense no law to the nations will go forth ; but the 
 many scattered Jerusalems of the synagogue may yet 
 be destined to preach to numerous listeners the 
 " Word of the Lord." For the days of local and 
 national religions are over. 
 
 Such religions Liberal Judaism agrees with every 
 kind and type of Christianity in regarding as vener- 
 able anachronisms ; as transcended phases of religious 
 development. Even if a people were to say : " My 
 doctrines are for the world, but my worship and 
 religious institutions are national," such a make-
 
 3 o8 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 shift at universalism, such a cross between univer- 
 salism and nationalism, could hardly become of in- 
 fluence. Indeed Liberal Judaism goes further, and 
 it would say, as I imagine all Europeans and Ameri- 
 cans of every variety of religion would say like- 
 wise : nation and religion had better not, and should 
 not, be conterminous. Religion should be wider than 
 nationality : men of many nations should be of one 
 and the same religion. A state is one thing ; a 
 church is another. Men of one state need not all 
 be of one religion : men of one religion need not 
 all be of one state. A religion needs no petty 
 principality, no earthly and local centre. A Judaism 
 which requires a material capital is as mediaeval 
 as a Catholicism which requires the restitution of 
 the temporal power. 
 
 It was noteworthy and pleasing that at the Central 
 Conference of American Rabbis, held in 1917, a 
 Committee of 23 Rabbis passed, by a majority of 21 
 to 2, the following statement : 
 
 "We herewith reaffirm the fundamental principle 
 of Reform Judaism that the essence of Israel as a 
 priest-people cohsists in its religious consciousness, 
 and in the sense of consecration to God and service 
 in the world, and not in any political or racial 
 national consciousness. And, therefore, we look 
 with disfavour upon the new doctrine of political 
 Jewish nationalism, which finds the criterion of 
 Jewish loyalty in anything other than loyalty to 
 Israel's God and Israel's religious mission." 
 
 If an outsider and Englishman may judge, it was 
 a great pity that, for this clear and excellent state- 
 ment, a feeble and flabby " substitute resolution " 
 was adopted at the Conference in order to placate 
 the nationalist minority. By this resolution the
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 309 
 
 Conference merely reaffirmed " its traditional position 
 that the essence of Israel as a priest-people consists 
 in its religious consciousness and in the sense of con- 
 secration to God and His service to the world. And 
 that, therefore, we must and do look with disfavour 
 upon any and every unreligious and anti-religious 
 interpretation of Judaism' and of Israel's mission in 
 the world." 
 
 The most learned of all the Liberal Rabbis of 
 America and probably of the world, Dr. Emil Hirsch 
 of Chicago, in frequent articles published in his 
 journal, The Reform Advocate, strikes no uncertain 
 note. "Our Judaism," he says, "is broader than 
 either new Nationalism or old orthodox Messianism." 
 Yet, in the construing of Israel's history and fate as 
 under Providential ordering, both the Orthodox who 
 pray for the rebuilding of the temple and the re- 
 establishment of the sacrifices, and " we who read 
 our past in terms of a world-wide duty and obliga- 
 tion," are of " one sustaining consciousness." " To 
 claim that modern Nationalism, which, to put it 
 mildly, is indifferent to religion, is the heir of old 
 Jewish Zionism is arrogant camouflage" 
 
 It might be supposed that there is some inconsist- 
 ency in my apparently attacking Jewish nationalism 
 both because it is too entangled with religion, on the 
 one hand, and because it is not exclusively religious 
 enough, upon the other. But the inconsistency is 
 only apparent. The trouble is with Jewish national- 
 ism, and not with me, its Liberal Jewish critic and 
 adversary. 
 
 If Jewish nationalism attempts to free itself from 
 religion, in other words, from Judaism, entirely, 
 that is Scylla. If it connects itself with religion, that 
 is Charybdis.
 
 3 io LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 The explanation of the riddle if it be not already 
 obvious is as follows : 
 
 It would be best in accordance with modern and 
 enlightened views as to what constitutes a nation if 
 Jewish nationalists were to purge Jewish nationalism 
 from every trace and particle of religion. And this 
 is what a large and very important section of them 
 actually desires to do. They are Jewish secularists. 
 They do not want to have anything to do with 
 religion, which no longer interests them. They 
 would, therefore, I imagine, have no difficulty in 
 granting that for full Jewish citizenship in a Jewish 
 state there should be no religious tests whatever. A 
 Jewish " national " might be of all religions or of 
 none. If he professes the Jewish religion, and then 
 becomes a Christian, he would none the less remain 
 a full Jewish " national," and would no more lose 
 any fragment of his national rights than an English 
 Christian who became a Jew (by religion), or a French 
 Jew (by religion) who became a Christian, would lose 
 a fragment of his. A Christian Dane could become 
 a Jewish " national " precisely in the same purely 
 secular manner as he could become an Englishman. 
 His Christianity would have nothing to do with the 
 matter of naturalisation one way or the other. 
 
 From one important point of view all that would 
 be most satisfactory. It would entirely get rid of 
 any suspicion of religious disabilities. It would 
 entirely get rid of the appalling fear that what the 
 Jews have fought and declaimed against, when it 
 suited their own interests and affected themselves, was 
 going to be set up by themselves (because it would 
 then only affect others} in Palestine. It would wholly 
 get rid of the terrible suspicion that what the Jews 
 have claimed to be the right and proud speci-
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 311 
 
 ality of modern citizenship the total absence of 
 religious tests was to be neglected and ignored by 
 them, directly they got the chance, in a state of their 
 own. 
 
 So far, then, so good. But at what a cost has 
 this result been achieved. Or shall I say : only at 
 what a cost can this result be achieved ? It can 
 only be achieved by definitely dissociating the *word 
 " Jewish " with the word " religion " : by definitely 
 dissociating the Jews with Judaism. A section of 
 Jewish nationalists may, indeed, honestly seek to free 
 the new Jewish nationalism from any taint or trace 
 of religious tests or religious exclusiveness. But 
 they can only do so, because they are frank secular- 
 ists, who desire to have nothing to do with (for they 
 no longer believe in) the old religious Mission of 
 Israel. Jewish nationalism is, indeed, purged of 
 religious tests and religious disabilities : but the 
 purgation involves the sacrifice and disappearance of 
 Judaism. 
 
 May not this result be justly called Scylla ? 
 
 Is not this kind of Jewish nationalism justly to 
 be considered as not religious enough ? 
 
 But if Jewish nationalists desire to retain some 
 measure of religion and of Judaism, then the odious 
 monster of religious tests again rears up her hoary 
 and antiquated head. Then a Jewish "national," 
 who formally abandons the Jewish religion, would 
 ipso facto cease to be a Jewish national any longer, 
 and a French Christian who sought to obtain natural- 
 isation could only do so if he became a Jew by re- 
 ligion as well as a Jew by nationality. 
 
 May not this result be justly called Charybdis ? 
 
 Would not this kind of Jewish nationalism be 
 justly considered as too entangled with religion ?
 
 312 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 The truth is the conception " Jew " is so inextric- 
 ably mixed up with religion that it is extremely 
 difficult to free it from any religious connotation. 
 And the argument shows that there can be no com- 
 promise. There can be no via media. There can 
 be no half-way house. Either the Jews must be a 
 religious community, if you like to use] the words 
 in a non-natural sense, a priest-people and that 
 only. Or they must be a nation, the men and women 
 of which (like the men and women of every other 
 modern nation) may belong to all religions or to 
 none. 
 
 Attempt a combination ; declare that the Jews 
 constitute a peculiar nation, one of whose distinguish- 
 ing marks is the possession of a particular religion, 
 and you fall into hopeless difficulties and dangers. 
 And seek to set up such a nation in a land of its 
 own, and you revive a perilous anachronism. No 
 longer can you claim freedom for the Jews outside 
 their own land. For the wit of man cannot devise a 
 scheme under 'which a nation, one of whose distin- 
 guishing marks is the possession of a particular 
 religion, is yet to create a national life which shall be 
 free from every trace and taint of religious test. 
 
 That, therefore, is why Jewish nationalism can be 
 justly attacked as either too entangled with religion, 
 upon the one hand, or as not exclusively religious 
 enough, upon the other. 
 
 To veil their own deficiencies and weaknesses, 
 Jewish nationalists like to carry the war boldly into 
 the enemy's country. They tell us that Liberal 
 Judaism tends to devitalise and to emasculate Judaism. 
 It tends to remove from it not always consciously, 
 but yet actually what is most distinctive of it and 
 most characteristic. A dogma or two may survive,
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 313 
 
 but such dogmas are like bones. Flesh and spirit are 
 gone. The bouquet and the aroma have vanished. 
 Judaism is something more than two or three 
 dogmas. It is a view and a manner of life. And 
 these will become progressively unknown, and finally 
 disappear. This it is which is meant when it is said 
 that Liberal Judaism is a mere pale, dogmatic Theism, 
 such as might be held, and is held, by any " Unitarian " 
 Gentile. Even if to the dogmas of the existence and 
 unity of God, of the immortality of the soul, and a 
 few others of this kind, you add the apparently 
 distinctive Jewish dogma of the election and mission 
 of Israel, you are still little nearer to true Judaism. 
 For the dogmas in themselves are nothing : they are 
 the framework, the skeleton. Judaism is the Jewish 
 conception of life, and the Jewish life is based upon 
 that conception. I have not yet used the now 
 dubious-sounding word " culture " ; but it might be 
 said that Jewish culture is the spirit of the Jewish 
 religion. 
 
 This Jewish conception of life, this Jewish life as 
 based upon that conception, and this Jewish culture, 
 are all unknown to, and ignored by, Liberal Judaism. 
 
 It will be seen that the argument is exceedingly 
 specious. It is not quite the same as the old attack 
 of orthodoxy. It does not say that the essence of 
 Judaism lies, not in believing a few dogmas, but in 
 fulfilling a number of commands. It binds itself 
 less to the letter of the written and the oral Law. 
 It assumes a more modern and more attractive shape. 
 It speaks of spirit, of life. 
 
 But why is this spirit or this life unknown and 
 foreign to, and ignored and unattainable by, Liberal 
 Judaism ? The answer, if I understand the argu- 
 ment aright, is that this spirit, this conception of
 
 3 1 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 life, and this practice of life as based upon the con- 
 ception, need segregation. They cannot be obtained 
 unless Jews live together, and are kept free from 
 outside influences. A few Englishmen, scattered 
 over Russia, France and Germany, could not maintain 
 the English ethos ', culture, conception and way of life. 
 On the other hand, if the national life in England 
 continues, it may even invigorate the few scattered 
 Englishmen. Just so with the Jews. On the other 
 hand, nobody wants the continuance of ghettos. 
 For in them the segregation is obtained, but at the 
 cost of other evils. You get a Jewish way of life, 
 but not such a way at its best. To obtain that^ you 
 need a national centre, an autonomous and inde- 
 pendent Jewish state. Then you can obtain the 
 Jewish conception of life and the Jewish way of life, 
 the Jewish culture and the Jewish spirit, even as the 
 Greeks can obtain their way of life and their spirit 
 by the national life and centre in Greece, and the 
 Serbians theirs by the national life and centre in 
 Serbia. And if this Jewish national centre, which 
 will also be a Jewish spiritual centre, is called into 
 flourishing existence, then it may even be powerful 
 enough to invigorate, and keep alive, and keep 
 Jewish, the scattered Jewish communities in England, 
 America, Russia or elsewhere. 
 
 How are we to reply to these argumentations ? 
 So far as the first half of them is concerned, no one 
 would deny that freedom has everywhere its trials, 
 its temptations and its dangers. But in order to 
 escape these it is, nevertheless, not desirable to hark 
 back into servitude. So with ourselves. Though 
 emancipation has its perils, we will not run away 
 from it. We will still cherish its ideals. We will 
 not budge from our position. But we will be all
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 315 
 
 the more keen to devise fresh methods and plans 
 which, while not infringing, as nationalism does, 
 emancipation ideals, may avoid or heal its special 
 perils and dangers. Because, for instance, mixed 
 marriages have increased with alarming strides in 
 Sweden, we must be the more earnest and active in 
 religious education in England. It is a cowardly 
 conception of human nature to assume that freedom 
 must everywhere work the same evils. Forewarned, 
 forearmed. We can take our counter-measures. It 
 is Liberal Judaism which has to see that young Jews 
 and Jewesses are provided with a religious armour 
 suitable for their needs, in harmony with their 
 thought and with the advancing knowledge of the 
 age. It is the work of Liberal Judaism to keep 
 them staunch and true, capable of resisting tempta- 
 tion, and of remaining faithful to Jewish ideals. It 
 is Liberal Judaism which has to show them what, 
 I take it, Swedish Jews have not been shown, that 
 Judaism is worth living for, that it is not merely an 
 antiquarian and picturesque survival, not merely a 
 religion which suited their parents and grandparents, 
 but a religion which is true for them and for their 
 children, a spiritual home for to-day and for to- 
 morrow. The greater the need, the more instant is 
 the call upon our action : the greater the danger, 
 the more moving is the appeal. 
 
 But the second part of the argument is far the 
 more interesting and the more positive. Yet to 
 reply to it adequately would need an essay to itself. 
 For the reply would have to contain a full exposition 
 of Liberal Judaism, showing all that it is, and is yet 
 capable of becoming, and dealing with its relations 
 to, and its differences from, other Unitarian and 
 Theistic faiths. That is clearly impossible here.
 
 316 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 But a few words must be said about the doctrine 
 of a special Jewish conception of life and of a Jewish 
 way of life as based upon that conception, and also 
 about the doctrine of a special Jewish culture. All 
 these need, it is said, Jewish segregation. Concentra- 
 tion alone can produce them in such force and in 
 such continuance that they may not only preserve 
 Judaism in the zone of segregation, but also outside it. 
 
 What is this Jewish conception of life ? What 
 is this Jewish way of life ? What is this Jewish 
 culture ? 
 
 We must assume that the Jewish conception of 
 life and the Jewish culture relate to religion and 
 morality. What, then, are they ? Can they be 
 stated in words ? The Jewish conception of life, as 
 found, for instance, in the Rabbinic literature, can be 
 definitely described. So far as it is good and true, it 
 can be lived here and now, in England as well as in 
 Palestine. So far as it is, in our present opinion, 
 obsolete and undesirable, we do not regret its dis- 
 appearance. We must not be imposed upon by 
 words. The Liberal Jewish saint of to-day is just 
 as saintly and just as Jewish as the saint of the 
 ghetto. Our conception of life to-day we have 
 every right to call as Jewish as the conception of life 
 formed by any Rabbinic or mediaeval Jew. Judaism 
 does not mean something fixed and undeveloping. 
 It grows. And our conception of life grows. It 
 grows in depth and in purity ; it grows in many- 
 sidedness. But it does not become un-Jewish or less 
 Jewish because it becomes deeper, purer, more many- 
 sided. We have as much right to the adjective 
 Jewish for our religious and ethical ideas and our 
 conception of life as ever had our predecessors. In 
 a sense, indeed, the truer and greater the conception,
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 317 
 
 the more Jewish it is. Our descendants will, I trust, 
 have a nobler and greater religion and conception of 
 life than we ; but these will not be less Jewish on 
 that account they will be more Jewish. 
 
 What is Jewish culture? If any comparison is 
 made between a Jewish culture and a Greek, English 
 or Serbian culture, all of which, it is said, require for 
 their due production and maintenance a national 
 centre and a national life, the cloven hoof of the 
 argument is displayed. For at once Judaism is com- 
 pared with a nation a religion with a people. Jewish 
 culture cannot be compared with English or Serbian 
 culture, any more than Christian culture could be so 
 compared. It is really nationalism which is being put 
 forward in a religious disguise. The Jews as a nation 
 are to develop a national culture. This national 
 culture we Liberal Jews repudiate. We have neither 
 place for it nor desire. 
 
 What in a religious and ethical sense Jewish culture 
 may be we are not told. It can hardly, I imagine, 
 be something different from the Jewish conception of 
 life of which we have already heard. 
 
 Let us, however, probe the matter a little further. 
 So far as there may be something in it more than 
 nationalism, it seems, I think, to be this. The 
 religion and " culture " of Europe or America are 
 Christian. The literature is Christian ; the art is 
 Christian ; the civilisation is Christian. In our 
 Western environment a man may be, if you please, a 
 dogmatic atheist. But his culture, even five-sixths of 
 his " conception of life," are none the less Christian. 
 So with the Jews. Where they live on equal 
 terms with " their fellow-citizens of other creeds," 
 their culture and five-sixths of their conception of 
 life are Christian. It is no matter that they (like
 
 318 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 the atheist) hold a few dissentient religious dogmas. 
 Christian literature, Christian art, a hundred subtle 
 influences of Christian civilisation, make up much 
 more of what they are than a few abstract religious 
 dogmas. Their conception and way of life are, 
 therefore, in very truth more Christian than Jewish, 
 just as the atheist's conception and way of life are, 
 in all probability, more Christian than atheist. To 
 produce a Jewish conception and way of life you 
 must have segregation, a powerful and concentrated 
 national life, not in the ghetto, but in a free and 
 autonomous state. 
 
 In this form of the argument the two extremes 
 touch. Anti-Semitic writers have objected to the 
 Jews because, in their opinion, the Jews cannot, and 
 do not, assimilate Christian culture and the Christian 
 conception of life. Jewish nationalists object to the 
 results of emancipation and to the unsegregated life 
 of the Jews in European countries because, in their 
 opinion, the Jews assimilate Christian culture and the 
 Christian conception of life too much ! Both the anti- 
 Semites and Jewish nationalists agree, however, in 
 assuming the existence of a Christian culture and a 
 Christian conception of life, which is opposed to, and 
 different from, Jewish culture and a Jewish conception 
 of life. The anti-Semites presumably think that the 
 Jewish culture and conception of life are not only 
 different, but inferior ; the Jewish nationalists pre- 
 sumably think that they are not only different, but 
 better ; or do they refuse to appraise the quality or 
 the truth, but simply cling to the difference, and 
 declare that it is for the world's benefit that varieties 
 of culture should be preserved ? On this last point 
 I am not clear. 
 
 But the argument as such is not without its force.
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 319 
 
 There is no doubt, for instance, that the influences 
 which we drink in from literature, to mention only 
 one feature in our composite culture, must be 
 enormously subtle and powerful. Take the case 
 of Jews who owe much to Tennyson, Browning, 
 Ruskin, Carlyle. Are not these four writers in their 
 different ways impregnated with Christian teaching ? 
 And, more generally, are not the influences to which 
 we are subjected for six days in the week, which we 
 imbibe at all the pores of our mental, moral and 
 spiritual skins, and from which, if we live among 
 them, there is no escape, much stronger in shaping 
 our characters and our conception of life than a few 
 dogmas which we are taught on Saturdays and in 
 scraps of " religious education " ? 
 
 But do these indubitable influences really harm 
 and deform our Judaism ? I do not think so. It 
 is possible that they may be slowly prejudicial to 
 orthodox Judaism, for certain modern ideas (though 
 not, I think, specifically Christian ideas) do, perhaps, 
 undermine the old orthodox Jewish position. In the 
 long run we cannot live a divided life in watertight 
 compartments, though it is amazing how powerful 
 and fresh in more generations than one such a life 
 can be. What chiefly undermines Orthodox Judaism 
 (apart from practical difficulties, with which I am not 
 here concerned) is not, however, Christian culture 
 or a Christian conception of life, but the results of 
 historic and critical investigation. And these results 
 will tell against Orthodox Christianity, though less 
 rapidly, no less than against Orthodox Judaism. 
 
 I admit "that if we were to assume a number of 
 Jewish communities, constituting a small and scattered 
 minority, distributed over a huge area, among a 
 population that professed a wholly alien culture and
 
 320 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 conception of life, a culture and a conception which 
 was wholly non-Jewish, and not only non-Jewish, but 
 also low, degrading, false, then I should view the 
 situation with alarm. 
 
 But the actual condition of things is very different. 
 Nor am I intimidated by the possible rejoinder that 
 the danger is greater just because the surrounding 
 culture and conception of life are not wholly hostile, 
 different, alien. Christian culture and civilisation 
 are the product of various elements, one of which is 
 the Jewish and one of which is the Hellenic element. 
 It is a composite culture. A composite conception 
 of life, though composite, does not mean un- 
 harmonious or discordant. So far, then, as Judaism 
 is concerned, I should say that the Christian culture 
 and conception of life contain much which is con- 
 gruent to Judaism or which is essentially Jewish ; that 
 they contain some things which are supplementary 
 and complementary to the best and highest Jewish 
 ideas ; that they contain a few things which are anti- 
 pathetic to Judaism. As regards, then, the first 
 class, there can be no objection to our assimilating 
 it all. As regards the second, I hold that Liberal 
 Judaism will be all the richer and truer for assimilat- 
 ing it. As regards the third, it can be trusted to be 
 alive enough and strong enough to reject the food 
 which is discordant with its own organism and un- 
 suited to its own life. Moreover, if I read the signs 
 of our age aright, the third class is slowly diminishing. 
 There is much in modern culture and in the modern 
 conception of life which is more sympathetic to 
 Judaism than to the mediaeval conception of Christi- 
 anity. On the whole, the modern conception of life 
 tends to become not less Jewish, but more Jewish. 
 If this statement is true, it is most important, though
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 321 
 
 the proofs or illustrations of it cannot be attempted 
 here. But it may at least be said that the whole 
 modern European attitude to earthly life in its 
 relation to the life after death is far more Jewish 
 than was the prevailing attitude of Europe to that 
 life right up to the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries. I, therefore, hold that there is little in 
 our modern environment or " culture " which is 
 disintegrating to Judaism in general or to Liberal 
 Judaism in particular, but that, on the contrary, 
 there is much which may deepen and enrich it. To 
 put Judaism into a corner, to remove it from Europe 
 and America, to isolate it, to segregate its believers, 
 would not make it grander and truer, but would 
 impoverish and degrade it. 
 
 As to the Sabbath difficulty, on which I have not 
 touched, I fully admit its strength and its importance. 
 But here, again, Liberal Judaism refuses to cry out 
 and to wail, just as it also refuses to shut its eyes. 
 We must be content at present with palliatives. The 
 tendency of modern civilisation is to diminish rather 
 than to increase the hours of Saturday labour for all. 
 We must be the more keen to do all we can by 
 Friday evening and Saturday afternoon services, and 
 by other means, not merely to get over the difficulty, 
 but also to supply positive counter-influences which 
 will greatly diminish its effect. For that end we 
 possess our minds and our wills : to devise, to react, 
 to create ; to overcome difficulties, not merely to 
 deplore them. 
 
 It also seems to be believed that a national centre 
 and national segregation are needed for Jewish literary 
 productivity. It is rightly argued that books by Jews 
 do not constitute Jewish literature. It is suggested 
 that the creative period of Jewish literature and 
 
 Y
 
 322 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 Jewish thought stop when segregation ends. To 
 this argument it is hardly possible to reply, because 
 the age of Jewish emancipation has been too short 
 for any certainty to exist as to its effects upon Jewish 
 thinking and Jewish literature. But it was hardly 
 national life which created the best of the Old Testa- 
 ment ; it was not national life, in any usual sense 
 of the word, which created the Talmud ; it was not 
 national life which stimulated the Jewish Hellenistic 
 literature ; it was not national life which produced the 
 Jewish mediaeval philosophers. I admit that all these 
 various works were achieved under segregation, but 
 in regard to two of them, the fertilising agency was 
 not internal, but external, and, as regards the Old 
 Testament, it was also to a curious extent the entry 
 (however unfortunate) of the small Jewish state into 
 the orbit of the world powers of Assyria, Babylonia, 
 Persia, which evoked the speech and message of the 
 Prophets. Agitation and life produced these, not 
 quiet segregation and apartness. " Thought assimi- 
 lation," says Dr. Emil Hirsch, " is the pre-requisite 
 for vital literature." 
 
 There are, indeed, some who vaguely speak of, 
 and desire, a purely spiritual centre. But for what 
 end ? And is there to be, and can there be, a 
 spiritual centre without a national centre as well? 
 Assuming, however, that there could be such a 
 purely spiritual centre, what would be its utility and 
 what would be its function ? People speak of a 
 Jewish university. But surely those who are touched 
 by the modern spirit must look with considerable 
 mistrust upon a sectarian university. What is a 
 Jewish university to teach ? Jewish chemistry ? 
 Jewish mathematics? Obviously not. Jewish his- 
 tory, then ? Jewish philosophy ? If by Jewish history
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 323 
 
 is meant the history of the Jews, that can be taught 
 as well in London as in Jerusalem. But if Jewish 
 history means history from a Jewish point of view, 
 or if Jewish philosophy means philosophy from a 
 Jewish point of view, surely we have got, or are 
 getting, beyond that. In a university, history and 
 philosophy must be taught from no special point of 
 view, and certainly not from a sectarian point of 
 view. In history and philosophy we must rise above 
 the sects. Our only point of view must be truth, 
 which can best be served from the clash of opinions 
 in a free and wholly unsectarian university. And so, 
 too, with the history of religion, and so, too, even 
 with theology as it should be pursued at a university , 
 and not at a theological training college. The new 
 English universities have started free faculties of 
 Theology and of the History of Religion. I hope 
 there may to-morrow be a Professor of Theology 
 who is a Jew, even as to-day there is a Professor of 
 Philosophy. That is the modern tendency ; that is 
 the modern direction. Are we going to set up a 
 Jewish university at which the direction is to be 
 turned backwards towards mediaevalism ? A Chris- 
 tian, a Jewish, a Mohammedan university ; in the 
 future let us hope they will all alike be contradic- 
 tions in terms. 
 
 If it is desired to turn more able Jewish minds to 
 study Jewish history and literature, to work creatively 
 at theology and philosophy, there are other and better 
 means than a national, or even a spiritual, centre. 
 Create some really well-endowed colleges and semin- 
 aries, run on modern lines and with adequate freedom, 
 and what is wanted will be achieved. To these add 
 a highly paid ministry, some of whom shall be allowed 
 to have adequate leisure to think, to read, to write.
 
 3 2 4 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 We do not need one centre ; we need many centres ; 
 not one centre, aloof from the pulse and throb of 
 modern civilisation, but many centres, planted right 
 in its midst, yet radiating forth Jewish thought and 
 Jewish conceptions of life from among them. For 
 religious influence and enlightenment I would prefer 
 a noble college in London to a university in Jerusalem. 
 I am not sure that a spiritual centre (if such Rome 
 be) is not a heritage full of difficulties for Roman 
 Catholics ; I have no desire to create one (even 
 without a Pope) for Judaism. If, indeed, the Jewish 
 settlements in Palestine should increase and multiply ; 
 if, whether wisely or unwisely, an autonomous Jewish 
 state be attempted there, under the suzerainty of 
 one of the Great Powers, it would obviously be as 
 desirable that there should be a university in Pales- 
 tine as in any other country of the world. But that 
 this university would be of importance and help for 
 Judaism and Liberal Judaism I do not believe. So 
 far as it had any religious influence at all, it would 
 be less likely to be Liberal than Ultramontane. 
 And in Ultramontanism, whether in one religion or 
 in another, there lies danger. 
 
 From the religious point of view, Liberal Judaism, 
 which aims at a spiritual universalism, must deprecate 
 the idea of being confined to the limits of a single 
 people or of a single land. From the religious 
 point of view, if the Jews are again to be a nation, 
 Liberal Judaism could only accept such a solution 
 of the so-called " Jewish problem," if Jews can form 
 a nation such as the English or the Italians are, a 
 nation, that is, whose citizens can be of more re- 
 ligions than one. 
 
 But religion has become so integral a part of the 
 Jew that if an attempt were made to form a new Jewish
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 325 
 
 state, it would be exceedingly difficult to know how 
 to deal with it. Nothing could be more abhorrent 
 to the modern spirit, nothing could be more opposed 
 to all that we have claimed and fought for, than to 
 make religion the test of citizenship. And yet in a 
 Jewish state what other test could there be ? If ten 
 French Christians immigrate into Palestine and live 
 there for five or seven years, are they to be refused 
 the rights of citizenship and naturalisation ? Will 
 they not be allowed to become Jews ? If they are 
 so allowed, how curious ; if they are not so allowed, 
 how monstrous ! The truth is that the Jewish 
 religion has made a "Jewish state almost inconceivable. 
 
 There would be, indeed, one method in which the 
 difficulty could be solved, but it is a method which 
 may seem almost too bizarre to be discussed. No 
 doubt this method would remove the religious 
 objections to Jewish nationalism, but the very fact 
 that the adoption of the method seems so dubious 
 suffices to show how deep-rooted the religious objec- 
 tion really is. 
 
 If the Jewish religion could be entirely severed 
 from its apparently inseparable connection with the 
 Jewish " nation," then Jewish nationalism would lose 
 its religious obnoxiousness. We should then need 
 two separate words : one to describe a man who was 
 a member of a particular nation^ one to describe a 
 man who was a member of a particular religion. The 
 second man might, so far as race and nation are 
 concerned, be anybody you please. The man who 
 was a member of the nation might be called a Hebrew. 
 The man who was a member of the religion might 
 be called a Jew. In such an arrangement there 
 would legitimately be Hebrews who might belong 
 to any religion or to none. Religion and the state
 
 326 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 would be wholly dissevered. The state would have 
 to be an etat laique in the most rigid sense, even 
 more than the United States. At starting, most 
 Hebrews would also be Jews, but the coincidence 
 would be " accidental," not " essential," just as most 
 Americans are Christians. Outside this Hebrew 
 state there would be, as now, scattered over the 
 other states of the world, and integral citizens of 
 such states, Jewish communities, most of whom 
 would doubtless at first be " Jews " in the old sense, 
 but who could be men of any race and any nation, 
 for they would be just a religious community like 
 any other. 
 
 There must, in other words, be a complete divorce 
 between nationality and religion. What we claimed 
 in Russia, we must establish among ourselves. As 
 there must be Jews who shall be Americans or 
 Italians, some of whom shall be of Semitic genealogy 
 and some of whom shall not, so must there, in any 
 Jewish state, be citizens of all religions and even 
 citizens of none. There must be men who are by 
 nationality Jews, but by religion Catholics or 
 Protestants. A Jewish state whereof the hallmark 
 or God forbid the test of citizenship were religion, 
 would be the lie direct to all our claims for emanci- 
 pation and for equality, the lie direct to all the ideals 
 and aspirations of Liberal Judaism. 
 
 Whether such a comprehensive Jewish or Hebrew 
 nationality can be created need not here be discussed. 
 The difficulty would seem to be that the Jew is really 
 very much more a member of a particular religion 
 than he is a member of a particular race. The one 
 is a permanent essential, the other is a temporary 
 accident. The Jews, if I may prophesy, can never 
 be a nation, or even a people, like the Belgians, the
 
 vi AND THE FUTURE 327 
 
 Serbians or the Greeks. A Serbian may be a Pro- 
 testant, a Catholic or a Jew, and yet he may be, 
 whether he is the first, the second or the third, 
 a passionate and devoted Serbian. The idea of a 
 devoted Jew, who is also a Protestant or a Catholic, 
 is much more difficult to comprehend. The notion 
 of a Jewish state, wholly divorced from religion, 
 some members of which should be ardent Pro- 
 testants and some ardent Catholics, but all alike, in 
 national sentiment and patriotic fervour, ardent 
 Jews, is logically correct, but practically almost 
 absurd. And that is another reason why Liberal 
 Judaism cannot tolerate the notion of a Jewish 
 nationality. The Jews have been identified with 
 religion too long. The meaning of being a Jew 
 has been too long associated with the possession 
 of a certain religion the possession, therefore, of 
 something which is above and beyond nationality, 
 which, in its higher development, breaks the bonds 
 of race, uniting men instead of dividing them for 
 the words to be once more contracted to mean the 
 members of a single nation, or the citizens of a 
 single state. Judaism means something super- 
 national, something larger than race, greater than 
 a territory, grander than a state. And the word 
 " Jews " should mean those who belong to Judaism, 
 who accept and practise the Jewish faith, be their 
 race and be their nation what it may. That is the 
 ideal of Liberal Judaism, and that is why the vast 
 majority of Liberal Jews reject the whole conception 
 of Jewish nationalism and Jewish nationality. 
 
 It is a distant future to which we look forward ; 
 it is only in a distant future that we can expect even 
 an approximate realisation of our dreams and aspira- 
 tions. Meanwhile, we have the present to think of
 
 328 LIBERAL JUDAISM vi 
 
 and to work for, and it may well be that in many 
 practical details the needs of the present may not 
 entirely tally with the vision of the future. Hence 
 the need for caution and for circumspection, and for 
 gradual and careful movement which will not, by 
 any hasty efforts to anticipate to-morrow, cause 
 injustice or injury to-day. For to-day has to 
 prepare for to-morrow, and to-morrow cannot dis- 
 pense with to-day. Visionaries we may be, but just 
 because of our visions we will not lose sight of the 
 practical requirements of what stands revealed before 
 our eyes. But that we think deeply of, and plan 
 our action with ultimate reference to, a future which 
 neither we nor our sons shall see of that we are 
 not ashamed, but proud. To look far forward is 
 the privilege of man. We too and we think with 
 all the better justification because of our faith in 
 God would echo those words of Cicero which 
 George Eliot chose as the motto of her own great 
 human hymn : " Longum illud tempus quum non 
 ero magis me movet quam hoc exiguum " ("The 
 long ages when I shall [on earth] have ceased to be 
 weigh more with me than this little span of life "). 
 In the translation I have inserted the two bracketed 
 words, for surely it is partly because we affirm that 
 the human spirit is not annihilated at death that 
 most of us can retain our interest and our faith in 
 the future of humanity upon the earth. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 0V. Q? i-*w 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS
 
 3 1158 00430 5115 
 
 A 000 046 974 2