jt. 
 
 m 

 

 
 SfacK
 
 (Ennplc JteraEl pulpit. 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE H. HARRIS, Pn.D 
 
 MINISTER OF TEMPLE ISRAEL UK HARLEM 
 NEW YORK 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 I'HILIl 1 CUWEN, 213-215 EAST 44TH STREET 
 
 I8 94 .
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 BM 
 
 HZ5 
 
 l/, 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OK HIM FROM WHOM MY FIRST RELIGIOUS 
 
 LESSONS CAME, AND WHOSE SIMl'LK PIETY WAS THE 
 
 PROMPTING 1M1TI.SE THAT LED ME TO FOLLOW 
 
 HIS CALLING, 
 AND WHO IS STILL MY INSPIRATION, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS REVERENTLY 
 DEDICATED.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 J/& ^<* 
 
 Bless God for Good as well as for Evil. 
 
 3 
 
 X T> 
 
 2. Patriotism. 
 
 3. Religion and Sacrifice. . . 
 
 4. Truth. .... ^ \f 
 
 5. Job.-I. 
 
 6. Job TI. - 
 
 7. The Influence of the Parent on the Child. - 
 
 8. The Influence of the Child on the Parent - 
 
 a 
 
 9. The Sins of the Fathers. - ' ^ 
 
 10. Micah's Creed. I . , , 
 
 . / / 
 
 1 1. Micah's Creed. II. 2 
 
 1 2. The Oldness of the New. * ' 
 
 / 3 
 
 13. How should we mourn the Departed? - - 
 
 / tf 7 
 
 14. Is Proselytism a Duty of Judaism? , . 
 
 15. The Ideal in Life. 
 
 16. Sophists and Pharisees or, the Vitality of Error. / 
 
 17. Sentiment and Law. . ^ 
 
 1 8 Gambling. fc *''' ^ 
 
 19. Sin and Duty. 
 
 20. The Fool hath said in his Heart, There is no God. 
 
 1
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 AT the solicitation of a few friends and with the 
 kind encouragement of the Trustees of Ternple Israel 
 I have been induced to issue some of my sermons 
 in pamphlet form, for a period of twenty weeks. 
 This volume comprises the series for the year 1894. 
 Although in the nature of an experiment the many 
 pleasant messages that have reached me about the 
 sermons from those whom they have helped and com- 
 forted, encourages me to consider the advisability of 
 continuing their publication next year.
 
 THANK GOD FOR THE EVIL AS WELL AS 
 FOR THE GOOD.
 
 i( Thank God for the Evil as well 
 as for the Good" 
 
 There is a cloud hanging over the nation, just as it is 
 being summoned to break forth into thanksgiving, that 
 to some seems to question the appropriateness of thanks- 
 giving at all. Do the people at large feel in such a 
 condition of security and content, that they can, with full 
 hearts and honest intent, burst into gratitude for all their 
 blessings? Has not many a lip quivered and many a 
 heart faltered in trying to frame a prayer of thankful- 
 ness this week as though it could not be quite genuine . 
 
 The "hard times" have affected nearly all of us? 
 though not in an equal degree. It has touched some 
 lightly, it has crushed others. Those who live on wages 
 and have lost their employment have already eaten up 
 their savings, if they were thrifty enough to have sav- 
 ings. Others have had to dispose of the little costly 
 treasures that nearly every family possesses as heirloom 5 
 from a past generation, in order to keep fire in the stove 
 and the wolf from the door. While the benevolent 
 institutions have had their hands full to supply the 
 pressing needs of many who have never before had to 
 submit to the humiliation of receiving charity. But 
 people have to swallow pride when they have nothing 
 else to swallow, and crying children drive us to many 
 desperate things. 
 
 Yes, times are hard ; but who has made them so ? Not 
 God. The land has not been visited by famine the 
 crops were fairly prosperous this year. While the wheat 
 crop has fallen oft from the unusually high standard of
 
 last year, the yield of oats and corn has been larger, and 
 that of potatoes and sugar also. God has fulfilled His 
 part. We have not the satisfaction of being able to cry : 
 " The hand of God !" the usual phrase for those visita. 
 tions that are beyond our control. No ; it is the hand 
 of man. There is a very significant quotation in the 
 Book of Proverbs: "He that maketh haste to be rich 
 shall not go unpunished." Everybody wanted to become 
 rich at a bound, and enormously rich at that. They 
 were too greedy and too grasping. The manufacturer, 
 whose avarice grew by what it fed on, continued to turn 
 out goods far in excess of the demand, until they became 
 a glut upon the market, and could not be sold. Thus 
 the money did not come back to pay the indebtedness 
 incurred the manufacturers could not meet their loans. 
 But so interwoven is the whole commercial world that 
 what is felt by one is felt by all. The delay of the man- 
 ufacturers to pay their indebtedness also made it difficult 
 for them to borrow more Creditors grew distrustful. 
 money began to be hoarded and became scarce. With 
 little demand for goods already manufactured and no 
 means to manufacture more, the mills and factories had 
 to shut down. That was the stage when the disaster 
 reached the poor man Thousands found themselves 
 out of employment, with doubtful outlook indeed. 
 Everybody began to economize, but that meant still less 
 production, so yet more were thrown out of employ- 
 ment. But these are the platitudes of this year's panic 
 that everybody knows, and that most of you know more 
 exactly than I. 
 
 Such is the condition and such its causes. There were 
 minor causes, too. But the prime factor was the avari- 
 cious haste of everybody to become rich, a mad scramble 
 for gold. There is a law of acquisition. It must be 
 steady, slow, and the outgrowth of industry to be legiti-
 
 mate. Nature makes no bounds. We sow the ground, 
 but have to wait a season till we can reap the grain. 
 There are people who think they can go down to Wall 
 Street, and, by a clever speculation, become rich in an 
 hour. It has been done, it is true. But one can also 
 become poor in an hour. That is considered a good deal 
 easier and a good deal more usual. But it is not the 
 right way nor the just way, nor, in the long run, the 
 best way to earn one's living. It unfits for legitimate 
 labor. So, realizing that we have none to blame but 
 ourselves we appear in God's presence at this time of 
 thanksgiving with shametul faces. He has provided, 
 but we have abused. Not all are the offenders, but all 
 are the sufferers. Because some believed in gambling 
 more than in labor, a blight has fallen upon the land. 
 And behold the collapse, proverbial consequence of all 
 inflation ! 
 
 " Should we receive good at the hand of God and not 
 receive evil ?" said Job, and his words were re-echoed in 
 a rabbinical command: "It is as directly our duty to 
 thank God for the good as for the evil." 
 
 * naion "?y TOO sin^ DKO njnn }y T^ DIN 3"n 
 
 The lesson has been very severely bought ; but if we 
 value things by their cost, the calamity paid for so dearly 
 may do more ultimate good to the country than it has 
 done temporary harm. Sometimes misfortune is the 
 best thing that can happen to us just as success is at 
 times our greatest danger. This is as true of communi- 
 ties as of individuals. Unfortunately, we will persist in 
 unlearning life's lessons, in discarding the precious 
 experience of the past, and that common sense that is the 
 best philosophy. 
 
 But those who will take to heart and to practice the 
 
 * Mishna Berachroth, chap, ix., par. 5.
 
 lessons of these hard times may well be thankful for 
 them, whatever they have cost. And if there be a ring 
 of sadness in our thanksgiving, the better for it. 
 
 Among other things, this financial crisis has revealed 
 to us, I think, the importance of making Political Econ- 
 omy a necessary part of every education. No lad should 
 go forth to the world unless he knows the true meaning 
 of wealth wealth for the country as distinguished from 
 wealth for the individual. He should know how it is 
 produced, and, what is even more important than pro- 
 duction, how it is distributed ; what methods can best 
 facilitate distribution, so that grain will not be rotting 
 at one end of the earth, while people are famishing for 
 the want of it at the other. At the colleges, this study 
 should be given more importance than the classics, 
 though I do not believe in that vandal spirit that would 
 banish this best means of culture from a liberal educa- 
 tion. But it certainly should not be an "elective." 
 
 I think the hard times have taught Americans another 
 lesson that they needed more than any other nation in 
 the world the lesson of thrift. There is something 
 sinful in our extravagance. It has become an illustra- 
 tion for proverb. Many could live on what we throw 
 away. The economy of the European household is 
 spoken of contemptuously. Because the people scatter 
 money so freely, do they find it necessary to make such 
 colossal fortunes ? Thrift, care and conscientiousness 
 go hand in hand. 
 
 If there were more sense of economy, there would be 
 less need of charity. Charity is not always the best 
 thing we can do ; sometimes it is one of the worst. The 
 poor grow poorer as the rich richer, partly because the 
 very rich give easily and freely, and do not bother to 
 ask questions, and therefore encourage shiftlessness and 
 foster pauperism. The extravagance of indiscrimi nate
 
 charity is not the least blamable of our extravagances. 
 Mr. Leslie Stephen says : " That charity is twice cursed. 
 It curses him that gives and him that receives. To the 
 rich man it is a mere drug to still his conscience, and 
 offers a spurious receipt in full for the neglect of social 
 duties. To the poor man it is an encouragement to live 
 without self-respect and without providence." I say, 
 then, better than giving the poor man charity, give him 
 a chance. Let us not handicap poverty so much, nor 
 give to wealth that dangerous facility of endless multi- 
 plication. 
 
 So, if this temporary set-back has checked us in a 
 headlong course of avarice, indulgence, carelessness and 
 extravagance, let us not thank God the less, but the 
 more. But, for that matter, it is not the most successful 
 man who feels most thankful. Our gratitude to God does 
 not depend upon the special prosperity of the hour, nor 
 does itvary with the individual and accidental benefits of 
 the hour. Our thankfulness toward Him has nothing to 
 do with our present bank account. If we feel grateful at 
 all, we will feel grateful always, His bounties to us never 
 fail; a little more money or a little less,here is still infinite 
 blessing. Gratitude is ultimately a question of character 
 Therefore, I always think it in a measure degrading to our 
 religious sense of obligation to our Maker, first to sum 
 up our material interests, to take in the results of a last 
 election, and then to thank God for personal, private 
 and partisan advantages. 
 
 Is gratitude helpful ? Does it matter much whether 
 we feel grateful towards God or not ? It may not mat- 
 ter much to Him, but it matters much to us. If we do 
 not feel grateful, we cannot feel content. Gratitude is 
 the bloom of contentment. Our whole financial trouble 
 has arisen partly from discontent, or rather from greed 
 to obtain more than the ample needs and simple com-
 
 8 
 
 forts of life call for. If we are satisfied with our portion^ 
 we are likely to think of our duties to others. So grati- 
 tude is the parent of philanthropy, of all good, unselfish 
 and improving helpful work. Gratitude does not rest 
 in itself in which respect it is distinct from content it 
 seeks an outflow for its feeling. " I feel so grateful I 
 must do something." Teach the people to be grateful* 
 and you do more to discourage nihilism than all intimi- 
 dating laws. 
 
 Gratitude has. I say,little to do with earthly possessions. 
 Nothing is less conducive to content and gratitude 
 than wealth without duties. A young man this week 
 committed suicide simply because he had nothing parti- 
 cular to live for. His greatest want was that he had no 
 want. You need pray no prayer more fervently than, 
 "I thank God for my needs," since they give the zest to 
 life and make it worth living. Because there is no choice 
 as to work,, since you must labor or you will starve, 
 there is an interest in your work and a joy in it than if 
 it were entirely voluntary you would hardly feel. 
 : Let us be grateful to God for the obstacles of life, for 
 its hardships, for its pains. That which we get without 
 sirugglirig for we do not value ; the conflict deepens the 
 triumph, makes it a triumph at all ; and the harder the 
 effort, the grander the joy. An occasional alternation 
 of suffering makes us understand the sweetness of health. 
 Life's joys are rooted in life's sorrows, and the "partial 
 evil becomes the universal good." 
 
 < It is the martyrs that make religion sublime. If it did 
 not command self-sacrifice, we would not trust it. When 
 we suffer for -truth it is glorified, and because men have 
 ,died for liberty do we realize how precious it is. Yes ! 
 let us thank God for the evil as well as for the good, for 
 evil reveals the good and makes it possible. Whom God 
 loves He chastens ; chastening purifies as well as pains.
 
 And although \ve should not seek troubles, we also need 
 not fear them. 
 
 Look back upon your life, and recall how much good 
 you owe to certain disappointments; first, to the very 
 necessity that drove you to this country, you who were 
 pilgrims here of hardships in your early home that 
 toughened you and brought out your capacities, of the 
 valuable discipline of poverty, of hard work, of rivalry, 
 of reverses, of anxieties. Take yourself as you are, and 
 thank God you are what you are. 
 
 Let us thank God for the evil, then, because it is not 
 unmixed. Judaism believes in no Ahriman spirit of 
 darkness with whom Orrnuzd spirit of light must con- 
 tend. God has no rivals in His universe, no demons or 
 devils; He is Sole Master. Evil is not positive; it is 
 simply negative our failure to reach perfection. A sin 
 is a weakness, the good in us not strongly enough 
 developed. The dispiriting materialists, on the other 
 hand, doubt the actuality of good. Schopenhauer tried 
 to explain away our conscience, calling it one-fifth van- 
 ity, one-fifth superstition, one-fifth prejudice, one-fifth 
 fear, and one-fifth custom. I have no patience with 
 those philosophers of the mud who would reduce all 
 our virtues to physical sensibility, and decompose human 
 merit in the crucible of necessity. If we would help 
 humanity, it is evil we must explain away. Let us real 
 ize that the essence of every child of God is good. We 
 have but to remove weeds, cut away excrescences, prune 
 wild growths, and the divine image will emerge." Every 
 man is intrusted with himself, so to speak, in a more or 
 less raw or rude state. He must manufacture himself, 
 removing dregs and dross and all superfluous matter, 
 must pass himself through the furnace of affliction, 
 through I lie wringing pressures of discipline. These are 
 not evils ; these are helpful processes.
 
 10 
 
 Let us thank God for the evil ; it is life's education if 
 we use it wisely. Yes ! the woes of life give it pathos, 
 give it depth, give it solemnity. In a too long period, 
 uninterrupted by care, life becomes flat. When trouble 
 departs, ennui enters. There are no people so empty, so 
 unfeeling, so superficial, so ignorant of the inner facts 
 of life as those who have known no great sorrow. This 
 may be one of the elements of greatness of the Jewish 
 race. Because "suffrance has been the badge of all 
 their tribe," the tragedy of fifteen centuries has given 
 them dignity. 
 
 Let us dare to deny the eternity of evil, the actuality 
 of evil. Let us make every day of life a day of thanks- 
 giving to God, whate'er betides, whate'er be its experi- 
 ence. Let us thank Him for life, its opportunities and 
 its glories ; for beauty, for love, for laughter ; for nature 
 and for art ; for labor and for recreation ; for sunshine, 
 for repose, and for the company of each other. These 
 boons belong to all. They break through the cramping 
 boundaries of caste ; they are independent of wealth or 
 station or nationality ; they are that common property 
 of which the socialist dreams; part of that human inheri- 
 tance born with every creature, which neither law nor 
 force nor villany can take away. 
 
 So I begin to understand what the Rabbins meant 
 when they said: "The time will come when the only 
 prayer offered by man to God will be the prayer of 
 thanksgiving." As we come to understand life better, 
 and see the meaning of its shadows as well as of its 
 lights, we every day find out that some force or some 
 sensation or some experience that we in our ignorance 
 had labelled evil or useless, serves a noble end. The 
 growth of wisdom shows the lessening of presumed evil 
 forces. Soon we will know that everything in this world 
 of God, be it dark or light, be it awful or delightful, be it
 
 PATRIOTISM.
 
 Patriotism. 
 
 A CHANUKA SERMON. 
 
 When the Maccabees appeared in the field to fight for God 
 and country, carrying aloft the banner emblazoned with the 
 watchword of their reagion: "Who is like unto Thee, among 
 the mighty, O Eternal !" we can well imagine the inspiration 
 of that battle-cry, and how it brought thousands to their 
 standard, who had till then hung back in alarm. How easy 
 it is to follow in the line of triumph, and to be set aflame by 
 the enthusiasm of victory! When we see the hero crowned, 
 greatness seems such an easy thing. 
 
 There is a glamor about patriotism that makes us think 
 only of its g'ory. To the popular mind it calls up a picture 
 of flying flags, beating drums, gay uniforms and general enthu- 
 siasm. That is patriotism seen from its sensational and festive 
 side. We forget that the highest achievement is to make the 
 difficult seem easv. We must not delude ourselves, nor let 
 our feelings carry us away into a forgetfulness of our normal 
 powers and our normal limitations. Nothing great is easy, 
 nothing easy is great. 
 
 Yes! there are the legions of Antiochus fleeing before Israel's 
 zealous champions. Behold these daring Hebrews victorious 
 in three successive battles, throwing themselves fearlessly 
 upon their enemies, borne forward by a faith in God and 
 Right that nothing could withstand. But did we look back 
 a little to an earlier stage of the contest, we would have seen 
 this same Judas Maccabeus a fugitive in the mountains, with 
 just a few trusty men around him, the capital Jerusalem in 
 the enemy's hands, the Temple despoiled, the people panic- 
 stricken, flying in all directions. Then we would have under- 
 stood that faith and bravery are not easy acquisitions.
 
 4 v 
 
 Washington at Valley Forge presents a very different picture 
 from Washington at Yorktown. Let us look back yet a little 
 further, and we will see the Syrian officers, guarded by troops, 
 come unexpectedly upon each little town and proceed to 
 prohibit Judaism by law as a capital offense. Then we will 
 realize that in that unprepared way, with no army organ- 
 ized and no assurance of support, refusal to obey* which 
 was called treason, was no such easy matter. To too many 
 it seemed impossible. There is but one Mattathias who 
 dares to come forward and throw down the idolatrous altar. 
 That is the moment to appreciate what patriotism means. 
 
 But even this is not the only side of patriotism nor its 
 highest form. It is usual to associate it with fighting, war 
 and oppression, as though only at such time is there oppor- 
 tunity for its exercise. It is in time of peace and in the 
 ordinary routine of civil duties that we have the best oppor- 
 tunity of showing our patriotism. War is an incident in a 
 nation's history, a rarer incident as civilization advances, but 
 patriotism should be a persistent virtue. Modern nations are 
 not militarisms but industrialisms. Every man is not a 
 soldier, but every man is a worker. We can serve our country 
 by our hands better than by our arms, and he who invents a 
 steam plough does more good to his nation and to mankind 
 than he who invents a smokeless powder. The safety of a 
 nation never lays in its armies nor in its ships of war. Some 
 of the world's best patriots have never wielded a sword. 
 Judas Maccabeus was more than a soldier, while Mattathias 
 was not a soldier at all. Hannah's seven sons and the aged 
 Eleazor did none of the fighting part of the Chanuka history, 
 but in their steadfastness to duty, as they understood it, they 
 were among the noblest defenders of their nation and their 
 people; for religion and patriotism were one then. Those 
 martyr mothers, with their martyred babes around their necks, 
 did more than we can tell, to inspire their brethren to armed 
 resistance. Patriotism is not a virtue confined to men of
 
 /s 
 
 muscle or even to men at all, and those who do no military 
 service, who make neither speeches nor laws in the legisla- 
 tures, and who cast no ballot, may yet be patriotic in an 
 intense degree, and can serve their country as faithfully and 
 as valuably. If a woman would be patriotic, she need not 
 join a woman's-rights r association nor clamor for the suffrage;in 
 the home can she best show her patriotism. And even there, 
 she need not, Spartan-like, say "Return either with your shield 
 or on your shield." This is the patriotism of barbarism. 
 
 Let us remember that tiie Maccabean battle was an incident 
 of the great history commemorated in this festival, as the War 
 of the Rebellion was but an incident in the emancipation of 
 the slaves. The best fighting and the hardest in the latter case 
 was done before a shot was fired on Fort Sumter. It was a 
 fight of principle the right of human freedom as against the 
 " thousand villanies of slavery." That struggle lasted thirty 
 years and more before the education was complete. In every 
 skirmish in this conflict of ideas, the cause of justice and 
 humanity continued to gain ground. And when the emanci- 
 pation proclamation was issued, the moral baltle at least was 
 over. 
 
 Before some cowards feared to be patriots when Antiochus' 
 legions appeared at Jerusalem, some traitors had already 
 become ashamed to be patriots in Alexandria. That was the 
 first chapter of the history commemorated in this festival. 
 There was no fighting to do and no oppress : on to withstand 
 The question then was, whether, in the face of a fashionable 
 and corrupt society, they would remember the traditions of 
 their Judean home and their Mosaic code; and whether, in 
 the presence of the living temptations of gladiatorial cruelties, 
 Bacchanalian revelries and Venus obscenities, they would dare 
 to be true to that simplicity and chastity which was their 
 inheritance from the great prophets, that at once distin- 
 guished them from among all the nations of the world. 
 
 That was when the bloodless struggle began when Greek
 
 /6 
 
 met Jew when the latter wavered for a moment between 
 Gentile culture and Mosaic morals, doubting whether he 
 should be ashamed or proud of the homely virtues and 
 homely ways of the land of his fathers. Here was the oppor- 
 tunity of showing the truest patriotism, when there was no 
 occasion for heroics, no applauding audience to watch and 
 cheer, but just the eye of God to see the duty of loyalty to 
 people and country fulfilled or neglected, with but the voice 
 of conscience to whisper approval at each act of integrity and 
 steadfastness to national and religious institution?. 
 
 The growth of this patriotic spirit in Judea (not among the 
 wealthy Sadducees and priests, but among the Pharisee 
 masses that misunderstood Jewish demuciacy) was the best 
 and the only military preparation to meet the armed merce- 
 naries of Epiphanes. 
 
 That patriotism implies enmity of other nations is another 
 popular error. Boys are fed on literature that forever pic- 
 tures patriotism the knocking down and the discomfiture of 
 enemies. Israel could be faithful to Judrea without mistrusting 
 all the world; they could learn something from Alexandria; 
 they could surely discriminate between philosophy and 
 mythology; they should have had sufficient self control to ac- 
 cept the broadening culture while drawing the line at loose 
 morals. It was fanatical of some Judeans to condemn every- 
 thing Greek as such ; as narrow as it is for some Americans to 
 condemn everything European as such. It is a libel on 
 patriotism to confuse it with the hatred of a foreigner. When 
 nations were continually at war we can understand how that 
 spirit would be fostered. Nor is it a fine exhibition of pa- 
 triotism to pass such tariff laws as may ruin the industries of 
 some other nation and reduce its working people to starva- 
 tion and misery. Patriotism is love of country love of coun- 
 try is not exclusive, but intensive. It does not imply the hatred 
 of other countries that is not even the negative side of pa- 
 triotism The love of one's own children does not exclude affec-
 
 /7 * 
 
 tion for other children. The human heart has room for many 
 special affections and no one need exclude another. We should 
 rejoice when the kinship between nations is strengthened It 
 should be gratifying to us that a country once our foe, delights 
 to do honor to a great American, in placing memorial win- 
 dows in Westminster Abbey to James Russell Lowell, ar.d we 
 should echo the hope expressed by Ambassador Bayard, that 
 in our international relations 'suspicion might be replaced by 
 confidence and ignorant animosity by friendly appreciation." 
 1 am glad that the great Liberty Bell cast for the Exposition 
 is to be taken to Runnymeade on Magna Charta : ay, June 
 5th, which will be a celebration by all English-speaking peo. 
 pie of the greatest liberty event in the history of the race. 
 The nations, like the religions, are coming together at last. 
 
 I need hardly inform the thoughtful that patriotism does 
 not consist in the boast of national superiority. ; 'Not because 
 you are the greatest nation, have you been chosen.'' Moses 
 reminds Israel. Our mission must not fill us with self-import - 
 ance, though it may awaken just pride. And if it tends to 
 encourage us to look with contempt on other nations or peo 
 pies, then it is a tendency that we cannot too severely icpress 
 Israel has been chosen for a duty and not for a privilege, to 
 be the servants of God was not to be loaded with honor, it 
 meant to suffer for His sake. We have carefully eliminated 
 from our modern prayer-books all phrases that even suggest 
 the statement of our superiority, while we recoil with horror 
 to-day from applying the term j'p^' to any one in a civilized 
 community. 
 
 The Maccabean motto, " D^X3 H3O3 'D, was not a 
 boast, but a religious conviction. They felt that what- 
 ever greatness was theirs grew out of their belief in that 
 God. They did not wage an offensive but a defensive 
 war they asked nothing but freedom of conscience. 
 When they took refuge in subterranean caves in order 
 to read their Scriptures, when they suffered slaughter
 
 rather than desecrate their Sabbath, until they saw that 
 the enemy was going to make that the opportunity of 
 their extermination we need not say that such was no 
 idle vaunting, it was the heroic expression of deepest 
 faith wrung from the agony of their souls. They felt that 
 the moral destiny of mankind was with them, and that on 
 their steadfastness hung humanity's future. This was 
 no boast. It was that innermost conviction which every 
 one in his loftiest moments feels, but which the Jewish 
 race felt most, that divinity and righteousness must be 
 right and that whatever is antagonistic thereto must be 
 wrong. 
 
 Those Americans are not most patriotic who boast 
 most about America. Boasting is either childish or 
 vulgar. The American abroad who talks big of every- 
 thing American and disparagingly of everything un- 
 American, by no means elevates the good name of his 
 countrymen. Indeed he is a libel on those Americans 
 of gentility, good taste and reserve, who blush for such 
 parvenu bragging and who deplore such unfortunate 
 representation. Experience has taught, that those who 
 boast most of their country, are those of whom their 
 country has least reason to boast. I think it was Samuel 
 Johnson who said : " Patriotism is the last refuge of a 
 scoundrel." It is a pity that the American press, except- 
 ing always a few select newspapers, should foster this 
 regretful failing, and should be doing its best to make it 
 an American characteristic. 
 
 Said Byron,''When I see the superiority of my country, 
 I am pleased, when I discover its inferiority, I am enlight- 
 ened." That, criticism is more valuable than praise, is a 
 lesson that both Jews and Americans need very badly. 
 "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." He who points 
 out the failings of his countrymen, may show truer 
 patriotism than if he indulged in that spread-eagle eulogy
 
 /9 
 
 that is sure to redound to his own popularity. Jeremiah 
 showed his patriotism by telling Judah that it deserved 
 to be defeated. Chatham showed his patriotism to 
 England by denouncing her policy against the American 
 colonies. I do not put much faith in that after dinner 
 patriotism, made up for the most part of stars and stripes 
 and self-sufficiency. He who tells his countrymen un- 
 pleasant truths loves them most after all, or why need 
 he say what puts him in an unfavorable light and upsets 
 a fond idolatry ? Love is not blind. Parents censure 
 oftener than they praise. ''My country, right or wrong," 
 is not patriotism but prejudice. 
 
 We need salutary warnings from our statesmen from 
 time to time to keep our integrity bright and to 
 remind us what we stand for. For the United States 
 does stand for something it was not the outcome of 
 growth or accident, or at least less so than other nation- 
 alities. It was a nation deliberately founded on a 
 principle. In our growing prosperity we are in danger 
 of forgetting our ideals. As a contrast to that boastful- 
 ness just mentioned, is the snobbish imitation of those 
 very institutions that it is in the spirit of true American" 
 ism to regard as superfluous. (This proves by the way 
 that boastfulness indicates a sense of weakness; those 
 who are sure of themselves never boast.) I say it is a 
 strange inconsistency, to have rejected titles as survivals 
 of lower civilization and then to run after them when 
 held by Europeans, and even to be anxious to marry 
 one's daughter to a title, though the individual attached 
 to it be a rake and arou6. This is a lamentable forgetful- 
 ness of American traditions of that simplicity of the 
 Puritan fathers and that conviction that "a man's a man 
 for a' that," that we have tried to make our own. Amer- 
 icans would smile if they learnt that they were but 
 imitating the worldly Jews of Alexandria, who were as
 
 anxious to be hellenized as they are to be anglicized, and 
 who tried to import Greek sports into Judea, because 
 'they were Greek, you know,'' just as they themselves 
 must introduce the latest from Paris and London for 
 reasons identical. 
 
 I do not think I quite liked the adulation given to Princess 
 Eulalie. The Court cereir.ony hardly coincided with "Jeffer- 
 sonian simplicity." It is an American principle, r.ot stated, 
 but felt, that honor is individual, and not inherited; that 
 greatness does not necessarily descend to the third and fourth 
 generation, but that we should credit a man for that which he 
 is, and not for that which his father was. The merit of 
 Columbus, whatever it may be and historians are not quite 
 decided is his, and not that of his great-great grand-children. 
 While *o load with flattering attention a member of the royal 
 house of the land which encouraged his expedition for merce- 
 nary and sordid reasons, is such a roundabout way. to say the 
 least, to honor Columbus, that we can only consider it as an 
 opportunity seized upon to indulge in royal pomp and pa- 
 geantry, for which some Americans, in their heart of hearts, 
 hanker more fondlv than Israel for the flesh-pots of Egypt. 
 
 Those who can read the signs of the times have probably 
 noticed many significant occurrences of late that must fill them 
 with disquiet The extradition treaty with Russia is an insult 
 and a slight to the very freedom for which the fathers strug- 
 gled and for which our country stands. That this free Repub- 
 lic should aid and abet that tyrannical and barbaric despotism 
 in hunting down those who dare to believe in human liberty 
 and right, and to preach it. is enough to summon the 
 shades of those American patriots of the last century, who 
 shed their blood for the furtherance of those very principles. 
 
 The Chinese Exclusion law is another menace to American 
 doctrine. Have we forgotten our traditions? Are not Mon- 
 golians as human as negroes ? Or are we onlv to advocate 
 the rights ot man in the abstract and not in the concrete?
 
 Even in the discontent expressed against the attitude of the 
 President in the Hawaii incident, we disclose a tendency 
 towards that ambition for territorial conquest that we so 
 severely condemn in European monarchies. Any element of 
 force, or coercion, or violence, the interference, in any form, 
 with the rights and liberties of the individuals of other coun- 
 tries, any suspicion of dictation or bullying, or taking unfair 
 advantage of foreign States because they are weak and small, 
 are so many kinds of treason against our own Declaration of 
 Independence. We can afford to lose the Sandwich Islands, 
 but we cannot afford to lose our integrity and self -respect To 
 add to the area of our sway in that way is not patriotism, but 
 the precedent of forbearance and the example of ideal justice 
 will be a precious inheritance for American posterity- 
 Religion and State are separate to-day in the United States; 
 they are distinct institutions. In ancient lands patriotism and 
 piety were synonymous terms; and just as the war cry of Judas 
 Maccabeas was " D'^N3 HDD3 "D, so that of the ancient 
 Romans was "Pro aras et focis" Uor our altars and our 
 hearths). For this reason, the suppression of Israel's national- 
 ity would have meant the suppression of Israel's religion. 
 Therefore, the victory was moral rather than political, and its 
 triumph was marked by a temple dedication, "O13n, and its 
 celebration to this day is remembered in a religious festival. 
 
 So far as Jews, but as Americans, it is our pride to-day that 
 all our municipal and State institutions are secular. Our Con- 
 stitution knows no theological doctrine. We rejoice that our 
 schools are unsectarian; we rightly resented the attempt of the 
 Protestant Church to force upon the Chicago Exposition the 
 religious recognition of its Sabbath just as we are now 
 rightly resenting the attempt of the Catholic Church to tamper 
 with tne perfect religious liberty of our public schools. Still, 
 in its unsectarian application, religion and State must never be 
 divorced, i.e., the State must rest on the foundation of moral- 
 ity. In this sense patriotism is religious even to-day. Con-
 
 scientiousness and justice must ever be the controlling impulse 
 in all national action. It was not accident that led the greatest 
 of poets to express man's triple duty in one sentiment 
 "Country, God and Truth." Let us remember, then, that 
 citizenship is one of our religious duties, and class it among 
 our obligations to our fellow. men. For only then can we 
 hope to realize the Eutopia of an ideal government for the 
 people.
 
 RELIGION AND SACRIFICE-
 
 Religion and Sacrifice. 
 
 A large part of the Law is taken up with the descrip- 
 tion of sacrifices; a large part of the Prophets is occupied 
 with denouncing them. But, although the prophets 
 prepared the way for the gradual abolition of specific 
 animal sacrifice and we to-day have accepted their con- 
 clusions, still sacrifice of some sort will always be 
 demanded by religion. 
 
 For while the slaughter, of a he-goat and the burning 
 of a ram may have been a clumsy and inadequate method 
 for man to express the yearning of his soul to give some 
 return to the unknown Source of his being, either in the 
 sense of gratitude, or justice, or even fear, still it re- 
 sponded to a genuine human sentiment that has certainly 
 survived this particular expression of it. And if in 
 response to the question put by the author of the n6th 
 Psalm, "What shall I render to the Lord for all His 
 benefits toward me," our answer would not be animal 
 sacrifice, we none the less feel an obligation to our 
 Almighty Father, we none the less desire to discharge 
 it. 
 
 Indeed, there is a half regret, it being told that God 
 needs nothing from us, that we can do nothing for the 
 All-powerful and All-perfect, and that He only asks 
 that we look after each other. The child loves to be of 
 humble use to its mother, and she will often create 
 duties to give it the pleasure of fulfilling them. 
 
 Yet God does need the service of mankind. We are 
 His creation, and therefore our own development is also 
 the development of His work; to help our fellow-men is 
 to help God's creatures. He has placed within us the 
 power of unfolding to those higher glories that are
 
 humanity's ideal, but the mental and moral growth must 
 be left to ourselves. God can go no further than endow 
 us with the capability, and if we dissipate ii the failure 
 is His as well as ours. In this sense we are co-workers 
 with God; in this sense we all assist God to bring to 
 beautiful fruition this universe of His. And so when 
 Amos asks, "What doth God require of thee, nothing but 
 to do justice and love kindness," this is no figure of 
 speech. He does require our justice and kindness. It 
 is the sacrifice that the Infinite asks and needs of the 
 finite; for we are part of God and our growth is His. 
 
 So, although the efficacy of sacrifice, like the efficacy 
 of prayer, is subjective, affecting our own nature rather 
 than moving divinity to action, it is objective, too, reach- 
 ing the throne of the highest. For, if God is not a cold, 
 mechanical force, but a living, loving Being, then surely 
 the aspirations of His children do in some way bring 
 Him nearer to us, or bring us nearer to Him. 
 
 And now let us look at sacrifice from another stand- 
 point. Sacrifice in some form is a condition of hfe. 
 Whatever we desire we must make some sacrifice for. 
 In that sense cost is sacrifice. Accomplishment costs 
 irksome study, painful discipline, and self-denial. We 
 pay a sacrifice for every good, aye, and for that matter 
 for every evil. If we only knev\ the ruinous prices that 
 we do pay for evil ! Says Isaiah, "Come every one that 
 thirsteth, come to the waters; come, buy, and eat without 
 money and without price.'' This is only half true. We 
 pay nothing in coin for the waters of salvation, for the 
 bread of life, for the spiritual food that nourishes the 
 soul, to which this quotation of course refers; but we do 
 pay for them in honest endeavor, in sturdy effort, in 
 bitter struggle, in heroic self-suppression. Are these 
 sacrifices nothing; are they not the very hardest, though 
 not to be intrinsically measured by bullion or species
 
 V 
 
 Are they not, alas ! beyond the moral means of so many 
 of us that we cannot ethically afford the luxury of higher 
 goodness? Or shall I say we will not afford, closing our 
 pockets or rather our hearts, and declaring that the price 
 of the kingdom of God is too high, above our spiritual 
 resources ? 
 
 It is true that we often use the word sacrifice only 
 when we voluntary give up more than we need, when 
 we unselfishly renounce what is rightfully ours. Yet 
 even under this disguise you will find concealed the same 
 principle. If a patriot sacrifices his fortune for a national 
 emergency, as Robert Morris did in the days of the 
 American Revolution, he is paid for that great renuncia- 
 tion by the exalted gratification of having effected a great 
 salvation. Not to all would the gratification of such an act 
 of patriotism equal the gratification of possessing the 
 fortune; but to the man who is willing to exchange one 
 for the other, it probably would. We all buy the things 
 we care for, and we do not all care for the same things. 
 
 We must each decide for ourselves what sacrifices we 
 can make, what we should make. We cannot avoid 
 making a sacrifice in some form, for, if we sit down and 
 do nothing, then we are sacrificing our time and our 
 opportunities. 
 
 Now, there is yet another phase at which we may look 
 at sacrifice that also touches its religious application. 
 Some people feel that they have no right to be too 
 happy, that there is something sinful in abundant joy, 
 that we ought to be uncomfortable at times and right 
 eouslv miserable. I think they have come to this state 
 of mind in this way ; because duty costs struggle, the 
 inference is unconsciously made that we ought always 
 to be somewhat in the condition of struggle, even where 
 duty is not directly involved. Or, since we never come 
 up even to our own conception of what we ought to do,
 
 then to atone for this shortcoming we should from time 
 to time impose penance upon ourselves, and by volun- 
 tary suffering now and then make up, so to speak, for 
 our deficiencies. 
 
 This superstition, which reached its climax in the age 
 of mysticism, led to those many phases of self-torture 
 and mortification of the flesh that are pitiful to contem- 
 plate when we consider the wasted energy that simply 
 rebounded on itself. Was that an acceptable sacrifice to 
 religion, an offering pleasing to God? Should we make 
 sacrifice an end in itself? Should we renounce and 
 should we struggle for the discipline that it gives as 
 exercise in self-control and independent of any salutary 
 end to be directly served by it? To this I answer no t 
 There is so much worthy work to be done, there are so 
 many helpful causes waiting for willing hands, the world 
 is crying so persistently to every "one of us to make a 
 small sacrifice to eradicate some evil or to extend some 
 good that it seems wickedly wasteful to exercise our 
 self-control in vain and'arbitrary discipline. A teacher 
 can train the memory of his pupils by making them 
 learn long lists of unconnected words, but he prefers to 
 train their memory by teaching them poetry, thus at the 
 same time cultivating their literary capacity. When I 
 read of Simon Stylites and his deluded followers stand- 
 ing on pillars for the mere merit of painful self-suppres- 
 sion, I think what a pity that those same physical and 
 moral forces were not used in a helpful instead of in a 
 useless way. Self-denial that is practised only to save 
 one's soul, in what way is it preferable to selfishness 
 practised to save one's skin ? Should we think of set- 
 ting machinery in motion merely to work itself but to 
 manufacture nothing? God has implanted all these 
 energies within us to be applied to beneficent ends, not 
 to be idly experimented with to test our physical and
 
 moral endurance. Religion asks no sacrifices for the 
 sake of the sacrifice, but merely as painful, though neces- 
 sary, means to attain noble ends. 
 
 Great sacrifices have been made in the past for the 
 cause of religion, and will, we hope, be made in the 
 future, for to be staunch to its principles and to be faith~ 
 ful to its duties often costs much wrestling of the spirit- 
 None of us can fulfil the Ten Commandments and the 
 " Ethics of the Fathers " without having to offer upon 
 the altar of duty many temptations, passions, unholy 
 yearnings. To " love God with all our soul, heart and 
 might," is very easy to say night and morning in the 
 Shemang) but, oh, to live it ! But, again, I say, religion 
 asks no sacrifice for the sacrifice itself. Do not suppose 
 that any of the ceremonies of religion are simply im- 
 posed to cultivate self-denial, though they may occasion- 
 ally and indirectly serve that end. Dietary laws were 
 never intended as a wholesome check on epicurean 
 indulgence, though they may have helped to make us a 
 temperate people ; they were simply priestly institutions 
 to maintain our complete separateness and sanctity; 
 they were not even intended as sanitary laws, as modern 
 apologists claim. 
 
 The Sabbath was never originally intended as a sacri- 
 fice, though it may have so become now under changed 
 environment. It was a privilege the reward of rest 
 that followed a week of honest labor and as a boon it 
 always had been regarded. Those at all versed in our 
 rabbinical literature will know what a blessing the Sab- 
 bath was. a restful oasis in a dreary waste of privations- 
 a surcease, a light in much darkness Sacrifice ! Why, 
 the Sabbath was just the one day when harmless indul- 
 gence was encouraged. And half-starved during the 
 week, the poorest would contrive to have a good meaf 
 on Shabbas and gathered around the white cloth sing.
 
 ing Zeuriroth, they would for a brief space forget the hard 
 world and its cruelty. So little was the Sabbath a sacri- 
 fice, that without its soothing balm our people would 
 have surely broken down under the strain of perse- 
 cution. 
 
 But to-day the world has arranged its affairs to sui 
 the institutions of the majority, and we, being so small? 
 have been left out of consideration We are not theo- 
 retically prevented from keeping our Sabbath ; if we 
 can, we may ; if it means financial ruin well, that's our 
 affair. Now, we are asking ourselves this question : 
 Since the Sabbath was never intended as a hindrance and 
 sacrifice, but as a help and privilege, and has only so 
 become through social conditions, does the spirit of 
 Judaism demand a sacrifice that has been artificially 
 created, not by the Law of Moses, but by the commerce 
 of the world? Some have answered " no," and on that 
 argument have dropped the Sabbath without scruple. 
 Some have declared, "this is a religious institution that 
 it is our duty to fulfil if it be easy, well and good ; but 
 if it be difficult, we are certainly not absolved. Fidelity 
 to religion is tested under difficulties. We must be true 
 to its behests at all costs ; and so they keep the Sabbath. 
 Others share these sentiments to an extent ; they break 
 the Sabbath, but under protest, because it is necessarv 
 and they have no choice: but they feel from time to 
 time a qualm of conscience, and look forward to the day 
 when they will be able to observe it. Here are three 
 degrees it is not for me to decide which is right ; the 
 conscience of each must decide for himself. Only let 
 me warn you not to outlaw too easily as impossible 
 "what may only be difficult, and not to overlook the 
 added sweetness and added consecration that a Sabbath 
 will bring for which we make a weekly sacrifice. For 
 here we touch another law of our being ; for example, 
 our love for our children grows with the sacrifices we
 
 make for them. This is one of those mysterious com- 
 pensations by which the All-wise Father equalizes many 
 differences and transforms our trials into blessings. The 
 harder we labor, the sweeter is the fruit, and Divine jus- 
 tice will not permit us to enjoy to the full that which 
 becomes ours, but which we have not worked for. 
 
 Therefore, religion to-day asks sacrifice still. For 
 every spiritual gain must we sacrifice some material 
 gratification ; we rise in grace, but only on the stepping 
 stones of our dead selves, tearing out by laceration and 
 silent conflict the sensuous, spiteful, debased self. We 
 unfold by pain ; this is a principle running all through 
 creation. But the pain is often forgotten in the victory, 
 and the thought of that victory will even give us courage 
 to bear the pain. 
 
 We can exalt ourselves to such a degree of holy ecstasy 
 that the sense of pain is deadened, lost in higher emo- 
 tions. Tiie martyr steps forth joyously to the stake. 
 He feels no suffering though the flames encircle him; 
 the spiritual has defied and conquered the physical, 
 the feeling of sacrifice has vanished in the enthusiasm of 
 moral triumph. In this way are heroes made and are 
 imperishable deeds effected. By vigorous discipline and 
 moral progress we are steadily rising higher in the 
 capacity to sacrifice without suffering or regret. What 
 we feel as a painful restraint in a lower stage is exercised 
 mechanically without a pang in a higher stage. For 
 instance, I may safely say that all of you are sufficiently 
 schooled in honesty to feel that abstaining from stealing 
 is neither a restraint nor a sacrifice, though, perhaps, 
 not sufficiently schooled in the truth to feel no occasional 
 temptation to lie. What is felt as sacrifice by one who 
 has lived a wayward life accustomed to indulge every 
 whim and wish, would not be so felt by him who has 
 been trained in a life of strict discipline, who has learned
 
 IO 
 
 to obey when obedience was hard and to keep from evil 
 when the luring temptation was very strong. 
 
 And, therefore, I think the charity we do should be 
 measured to our credit by the sacrifice we make for it, 
 and not by the relief effected. The element of charity 
 rarely enters into our benevolent gifts, for we give what 
 we do not feel, what in no way affects our own comforts. 
 True charity begins when to give others we must con- 
 sciously deny ourselves, yielding a gratification or a 
 luxury to aid another. Our work for the poor deserves 
 the name of philanthropy only when we sacrifice some 
 of the time we would give to amusement-seeking or idle 
 dulce far niente, in going to' the objects of our gifts and 
 coming in personal contact with them, seeking poverty 
 in its repulsiveness and squalor, so that it must be felt. 
 Charity is not the writing of checks while ensconced in 
 luxuriant surroundings, from which the disagreeable is 
 studiously excluded, not wishing to know or hear of the 
 misery it is to relieve, for fear it might give a " bad 
 quarter of an hour." Sometimes in the so-called charity 
 we give, we best prove our cold-heartedness and our 
 selfishness. That, too, is not the sacrifice that religion 
 asks for; it is almost as contemptible as the slaughtered 
 bulls and the burning sheep that we now despise. If 
 our ancestors could not bribe God with burnt offerings 
 in lieu of repentance, so we cannot bribe Him with 
 charity doles in lieu of genuine duty the sacrifice of 
 the soul. 
 
 " For Thou desirest not (animal) sacrifice, else would 
 I give it; Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The 
 sacrifices of God are a subdued spirit. A broken and 
 penitent heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise."
 
 TRUTH.
 
 Truth. 
 
 We owe this fable to the Talmud; 
 
 When God was about to create man the angels 
 gathered about Him. Some said: "Create no more, the 
 harmony of Heaven will be disturbed by man." 
 
 Said the angel of mercy; "Oh Father create man, 
 make him in Thine own image. I will fill his heart with 
 pity and sympathy toward every living thing." 
 
 The angel of peace responded, "Create him not, Thy 
 peace will lie disturb. Bloodshed will follow him. War 
 and horror will blot the earth." And last spoke the Angel 
 of Truth. "Make him not, Oh God of Truth, else Thou 
 wilt send falsehood to the earth." Then came the Divine 
 reply: "Thou O Truth, shall go to earth with him and 
 yet remain a denizen of heaven, hovering between earth 
 and heaven, connecting link between the two." 
 
 There are two conceptions of truth that are only dif- 
 ferentiated by being called respectively "Truth" and 
 "The Truth," which distinction is hinted in the fable 
 just related. ''The Truth," is absolute knowledge and 
 belongs to the intellectual; "Truth," is veracity and 
 belongs to the moral. "The Truth," is the possession of 
 God only. Kant, greatest of philosophers has declared 
 that we can only know appearance we can never know 
 realities. We can never be sure that we know the abso- 
 lute truth about anything. Or we may be sure of math- 
 ematical truth, but not of metaphysical truth, that is 
 we can know that 2 and 2 make four, but we cannot 
 know the nature of the soul. Even of very common- 
 place things we do not know the essence. 
 
 If we knew the secret of a rose we might know the 
 secret of God. We are searching for the eternal truth, 
 but as human beings we can never hope to attain it.
 
 Lessing said: It is better that \ve should have to search 
 for it than that we should possess it. As a matter of 
 fact, the choice is not given us and Lessing was right to 
 teach us to make the best of what we have and not to 
 sigh for the impossible. 
 
 But Truth in its second signification, which is also its 
 popular and practical meaning, depends not on scienti- 
 fic investigation but on human character. Here is the 
 distinction between truth as knowledge and truth as 
 moral quality between knowing the truth and being 
 truthful. Truth is more than language. To be perfect- 
 ly truthful, our words must express our actual thought, 
 our actions must harmonize with our motives. Our 
 mode of life must correspond to our circumstances, 
 our attitude must convey our feelings. We must show 
 ourselves to be what we are. Then only are we truthful. 
 If I contribute to an orphan asylum, not to help the 
 institution, but in order to be considered charitable or 
 to become popular, that is in a measure untruthful. To 
 brush my eyes with my hands as tho' weeping while 
 secretly rejoicing, to let the externals of my home con- 
 vey an idea of wealth I do not possess, to talk of authors 
 of whom I only know the names, as though I were well 
 versed in their works, to remain silent when I know that 
 my silence will be misinterpreted, these are all forms of 
 lying. For they are intended to deceive and what is 
 lying but deception. Therefore humbug, pretension } 
 hypocrisy, even certain forms of diplomacy, are all 
 enemies of truth. 
 
 I say falsehood is not merely a question of language. 
 The out-and-out falsehood is the most innocent form 
 of lying, if any form can be called innocent. I will be 
 more ready to excuse David who tells Achish, he is fight- 
 ing against the men of Judah, when he is making war 
 against the Amalekites a distinct untruth, than I would
 
 excuse the brothers of Joseph who came to Jacob with 
 the blood stained coat and asked him: "Is this your 
 son's?" when they knew it; they had stripped it from the 
 boy and they had stained it to give a false clue. The 
 question was asked purposely to leave the impression of 
 their innocence. 
 
 ''A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies. 
 
 A lie which is afl a lie may be met and fought with out-right. 
 
 But a lie which is partly true is a harder matter to fight.'' 
 
 The worst enemies of the Jews are not those who de- 
 liberately fabricate malicious falsehoods against them, 
 They can be answered. We have been able to expose 
 the absurdity of the charge about using Christian 
 blood to make Passover cakes. But when the 
 anti-Semites ascribe to the Russian Jews alone, those 
 evils that are common to all Russians, but which the 
 Jews in Russia actually possess in a lesser degree as 
 proved by the statistics of Mr. Arnold White, they utter 
 against them a slander which from its tincture of truth 
 it is very hard for us to refute in a way to convince the 
 average cursory reader. 
 
 We are often lying even when we flatter ourselves we 
 are righteously exact. I have seen the truth made false 
 by change of emphasis; nor is it sufficient to stand 
 within the letter of precision. We may state 
 nothing but what is literally true, and yet if we 
 intend a false conclusion to be inferred, there is no virtue 
 in our cunning. Truth is not of the letter but of the 
 spirit. Even deceiving ourselves we cannot deceive 
 God. 
 
 Again, if we separate a fact from its relation to other 
 facts, and state it alone so that it leaves a different im- 
 pression from what would be conveyed if left in the 
 context, the falsehood is clever perhaps, but the smart- 
 ness does not lessen the offence, and the pity is that our
 
 ingenuity is not given to a worthier cause. It is only 
 the poorer type of Christian who takes an isolated verse 
 from the Psalms or the Prophets, so that it may seem 
 to prove his favorite doctrine. The genuine Christian 
 despises such methods and refuses to score a point by a 
 pious fraud. He who, anxious to prove a particular 
 theory of labor compares, let us say, low wages in 
 Europe with high wages in America, but deliberately 
 omits to state the lower cost of rent and clothing that 
 partly counterbalances the difference, might just as well 
 give false figures at once. Either the whole truth or 
 none. A half truth is a misnomer: there is no such thing. 
 Now one may tell the truth, the whole truth, simply 
 with the brutal intention of wounding and giving pain. 
 Is there virtue in that truth? Not a whit. There is no 
 moral difference between that truth and a fasehood 
 uttered for the same object. It is only used to serve the 
 ends of spite. In the realm of morals, motive is every- 
 thing. A fact stated deserves not the merit of truthful- 
 ness, unless stated for the sake of truth. For mark you, 
 we never apply the epithet truthful, unless it be a test 
 case, where a sacrifice, however slight, is made for the 
 
 cause of truth. 
 
 "To fight for truth is noble, 
 
 When we share her humble crust; 
 Not when her cause has triumphed, 
 And it's profitable to be just." 
 
 I am going to carry my argument one point further, 
 and say that he who does not wish to know the truth, in 
 case it may be unpalatable, but prefers to be left in com- 
 fortable error under the delusion that it is truth, is per. 
 haps a greater enemy of truth than the deliberate denier. 
 If you fancy you are doing your duty, but retrain from 
 investigating too minutely for fear you might find out 
 that you are not doing your duty, you are flirting with 
 falsehood and will learn to like her too well. Somepeo
 
 39 
 
 pie grow angry because brought face to face with a 
 disagreeable actuality. Leading snug lives that they 
 want to make believe are good lives, they reard as 
 their enemy he who shows that they are selfish lives. 
 Many again are afraid of the truth and refuse to learn 
 it. "My creed may be all wrong, but don't tell me, don't 
 show me the weak points, please leave me in my ignor- 
 ance, it is so blissful. Don't take away my faith." Oh 
 cowards, what must be your faith, if you cannot trust 
 God enough to look truth squarely in the face. It may 
 be disappointing at first; many fond delusions have to 
 go, many pretty and petty vanities and false imaginings, 
 but after you have adjusted yourselves to the new truth 
 you will learn to love it and be thankful that God has 
 shown you more light. Of course in the education of 
 youth there is a certain order or sequence in which 
 scientific truth should be imparted. An untimely dis- 
 closure may disturb the intellectual balance and perhaps 
 do harm. There are facts and books for every age. 
 
 I suppose one of the reasons why we are so fond of 
 compromise is that we ourselves are compromises of 
 good and evil. ''To be human is to be imperfect," is a 
 Latin proverb. So we seem to have a sneaking fondness 
 for imperfection. We don't like to swallow our truth 
 neat too strong, perhaps; we love to tincture our truth 
 with falsehood, and declare that the adulteration is 'a 
 improvement. Alloy hardens the gold, it lasts longer 
 and is much more practical for use; so, to be success- 
 ful, we think we must be practical in that questionable 
 sense and judiciously use a little alloy of falsehood to 
 make our truths reach further. The incident of yester- 
 day told among yoiu friends sounds infinitely better 
 touched witha little fiction. It would be a pity to spoil a 
 good story for fear of a little exaggeration. And just for 
 that apparently harmless reason, we are compelled to
 
 8 
 
 discredit half the world's history. Oh, if the ancients had 
 but loved the truth, how precious the exact knowledge 
 would be to posterity. What a dreadful revenge they 
 have taken upon themselves, giving to us distorted cari- 
 catures, when we might have had their life-like photo- 
 graphs. 
 
 It is our human preference for the half truth to the 
 whole truth that compels us to postpone the reign of 
 truth to that distant millenium to which we conveniently 
 assign all difficult attainment. There is not much choice 
 between people of the Louis XV type who say "after me 
 the world may go to smash," and that other type, that 
 says, ''when I am dead and gone the world may become 
 as perfect as it please." We are perpetually saying that 
 truth will prevail, not that it does prevail. We cry that, 
 time is its best friend, by which we mean that we are not 
 and that we do not propose to help the truth, but will 
 let it gradually extricate itself from the mass of lies with 
 which we try to smother it, as best it may. We piously 
 quote a proverb "truth crushed to earth will rise again;" 
 but why need it be crushed to earth? Why do we give 
 it a knock dovrn blow just because it is able to pick itself 
 up again? Why do we love falsehood and keep perpetu- 
 ally in its bad companionship, knowing it will corrupt 
 our morals? 
 
 In brief why do we lie? Some tell untruths out of 
 pure wantonness; but to state what is not the fact for the 
 mere pleasure of fooling other people, is only indulged 
 in by children or by very silly, thoughtless persons. It 
 can be easily uprooted by early impressing upon our 
 children the sanctity of truth, for truth's sake. The par- 
 ent must not decide the gravity of the falsehood by its 
 consequence, but must rebuke an untruth that is merely 
 trivial and of no account, as severely as an untruth that 
 brings about a mishap, otherwise the child will learn to
 
 discriminate between untruths and untruths, and will 
 consider those harmless that do not happen to turn out 
 unfortunately. You must teach your children to love 
 truth itself, as an end in itself as distinct from its special 
 application to any incident. Accustom them to habits 
 of accuracy, by setting high value upon exactness. And 
 if the child delightedly tells you it saw fifty lions at 
 the show, while you know there were not ten, 
 and the child is made to understand that its misstate- 
 ment has completely spoilt your interest in the narrative, 
 that the incident is ignored and forgotten in your dis- 
 pleasure at the exaggeration, the child mortified, and 
 ashamed, will not forget the lesson easily. 
 
 So much for the wanton falsehood. But lying, delib- 
 erate and presumptuous, what is its cause and purpose? 
 Nothing more than deception with the object of unfair 
 advantage. The prisoner denies his guilt in order not to 
 suffer its consequence. He who misrepresents in bus- 
 iness, does so to make money; he who conceals his 
 opinions hopes thereby to gain a post or to defeat an 
 enemy. We all deny our failing and discrepancies, that 
 the world may think we are better than we are. We are 
 more anxious to make a good impression than a true 
 impression, and so we present our best side as though it 
 were our only side, and hide our worst side to make 
 believe that it does not exist at all. Some people are 
 perpetually going about exaggerating to whomsoever 
 they meet, the creditable things they do, plausibly 
 smoothing over the discreditable things, and so persist- 
 ing on their excellence that gradually people believe 
 them, at least for a time. Even they, learn to believe the 
 good things they repeat of themselves perpetually. Thus 
 fictitious character is created by violating truth in the 
 interest of self. So all untruth is but to gain an unfair 
 advantage. Therefore if we discipline ourselves to
 
 IO 
 
 accept only what is perfectly just and are resigned to 
 submit to what is perfectly just, and are willing to grant 
 to others what is perfectly just falsehood will be un- 
 necessary. 
 
 Remember truth is the foundation of confidence and 
 trust. Placed in this world mutually dependent on each 
 other we have to trust each other in certain things. We 
 can't read each other's souls; we can't watch each other's 
 every deed; we cannot act as detectives on our fellow- 
 men, even if we did nothing but that. God has intended 
 that we should trust each other, to trust and be trusted 
 we must first be true to each other We can be true to 
 our fellowmen only by being true to ourselves. "To 
 thine own self be true, and it does follow, as the night 
 the day. that thou canst not be false to any man." Let 
 the world know you as you are. If you are not ashamed 
 of your real self why try to conceal it ? Don't get into 
 the habit of supposing that it is necessary to conceal so 
 much. Let us all be more frank and more sincere. We 
 need not walk abroad with domino and mask society is 
 not a conspiracy, it is a brotherhood. 
 
 Finally we deceive none but ourselves, all the schem- 
 ing and the subterfuge and the misrepresentation fails 
 to conceal the actual individual from a keen-eyed world. 
 Occasionally the mask shifts and people catch sight of 
 the face behind it. or we get tired of holding a screen 
 perpetually before us and drop it now and then, in an 
 angry word, in an impulse, in a moment of confidential 
 confession and then all the years of pretence go for 
 nothing. Others from whom we are trying to conceal 
 our true character actually know us better than we know 
 ourselves. 
 
 Oh, the wasted energy and labor to set right the world's 
 falsehoods that might be given to good and upbuilding 
 work ! In the Talmudic fable, at the opening of this 
 lecture, we were told that the Angel of Truth flitted 
 between earth and heaven. I fear that we give her but 
 an inhospitable reception here either asking her to 
 meet at our table her natural opponents, or else slamming 
 the door in her face. She might return to the heavens, 
 never to come back to us; but she has a few staunch 
 friends here on earth, and, for the sake of the ten 
 righteous, she will save the whole world.
 
 JOB I
 
 Jab 
 
 I. 
 
 Although the Bible has been translated into every 
 spoken tongue, some of its books are as unread and a 
 unknown as though they had remained in the original 
 Hebrew. This is not entirely the fault of the people. 
 For there are two kinds of translation the translation 
 of language and the translation of thought. There are 
 some chapters of some Bible books where the references, 
 the ideas and the poetic symbols are so obscure as not 
 only to be unintelligible even in the translation, but 
 where the vernacular has so misinterpreted the text in 
 sheer despair of its meaning that to understand the trans- 
 lation is to misunderstand the original. 
 
 The Book of Job is probably the most difficult to 
 comprehend of all the books of the Bible. Even had it 
 reached us in the exact form in which its author gave it, 
 even had no passages fallen away and no passages been 
 added to it, and no meddlesome scribe had tampered 
 with the text, its language would still be full of puzzles. 
 By a strange perversion, the verse that has been most 
 erroneously translated is unfortunately the most popular 
 quotation from Job, "I know that my Redeemer liveth," 
 &c.,and according as it be translated in each of three ways 
 may we infer the doctrine of the resurrection of the 
 body, or as against th'at the doctrine of the immortality 
 of the soul, or as against both complete silence on the 
 doctrine of future life. 
 
 With regard to the book in general, the critics are 
 divided as to whether it be a sober history or a 
 parable. The best thinkers accept the latter view, which 
 by the way is not exclusively modern. There are other 
 books in the Bible, which are much better understood as 
 allegories, written to impress important lessons, than as
 
 actual occurences. "Jonah " and " Daniel " are of this 
 character. "Jonah, "for example, was written to teach 
 that God was not local nor was His love confined to one 
 people; He was universal and Jonah could not escape 
 from Him even though he took ship to Tarshish; He 
 cared for all mankind and would save Nineveh as readily 
 as Israel. " Daniel " was written at the time of the 
 Maccabean war to encourage the patriots, by giving 
 inspiring pictures of brave fidelity, and showing how 
 Providence ever protecteth the innocent. 
 
 These books approach nearest to a certain high kind 
 of fiction of the present day, written to further needed 
 reforms such as " Uncle Tom's Cabin," " Robert Els- 
 mere," " Looking Backward/' The comparison is only 
 partial and not quite just to the Hebrew writers. For 
 their books were inspired only by the earnest and reli- 
 gious purpose of bringing instruction and comfort to 
 their people, unmixed with any lower motives of fame 
 or gain or entertainment. In whatever the ancient Jew 
 did, he was always in earnest. The narrative form of 
 writing for education was much more usual in the days 
 when the expression of abstract thought was hardly 
 developed in language, than now Now, the story is 
 primarily the vehicle for amusement and diversion. 
 And he who has a very serious message to deliver shrinks 
 from presenting it as a play or a novel, fearing that this 
 lighter form may detract from its high purpose. Even 
 Goethe's Faust, whose "Prologue in Heaven" is directly 
 taken from the Book of Job, loses in earnestness because 
 of its form. 
 
 What was the object of the Book of Job ? We are 
 always aided in finding out the intended motive of a 
 book by looking into the condition of the times in which 
 it is written. Now that is just one of the things that 
 the author has so cleverly disguised. In order not to be
 
 hampered by local conditions, he pictures his story in 
 the patriarchal age; he even makes his hero Job an Arab 
 Sheik instead of an Israelite, which mislead the early 
 commentators into supposing the book might have been 
 written by Moses; but mention of the gold of Ophir 
 proves that it could not have been written earlier than 
 the time of Solomon. Evvald thinks it was written in 
 the days of Jeremiah, but the most logical decision is 
 that it was written still later, during the Babylonian Exile, 
 that fruitful period of spiritual growth and literary 
 activity. If Job is to typify Israel, as some think, the 
 picture certainly fits the condition of this time. For 
 Job is a righteous man upon whom every form of afflic- 
 tion has nevertheless fallen; while many wicked people 
 triumph, he who had "strengthened weak hands and 
 had been eyes to the blind," is visited by all the woes 
 known to suffering humanity. Israel, who if not as 
 perfect as this type, led at least more moral lives than 
 the people around them, had to experience defeat, 
 slaughter, humiliation, denationalization and exile. 
 
 The sad straits of their people must have been a source 
 of painful thought to the " wise men," and a severe test 
 of faith in God. The old teaching had always been that 
 goodness was rewarded in this world by material pros- 
 perity and that evil was immediately or eventually 
 punished by adversity. The Psalms and prophets are 
 full of this teaching and it pervades, I might almost say 
 saturates, every page of the Bible. No people taught 
 this lesson so persistently as the Hebrews, for intensely 
 convinced of the moral government of God, they sought, 
 and thought they saw in every external condition a 
 distinct recompense for good or retribution for wrong. 
 The prophets connected every defeat of Israel with every 
 idolatry of Israel as direct cause and effect. To quote 
 but one of the Psalms as example the 92nd "When the
 
 + r 
 
 6 
 
 workers of iniquity flourish it is that they shall be de- 
 stroyed for ever, but the righteous shall flourish like the 
 palm-treeto show that the Eternal is just." 
 
 Either then God is unjust in the uneven way in which 
 prosperity and virtue are proportioned to each other in 
 human experience, or that theory of God's providence is 
 only a partial truth. It is the latter conclusion that is 
 the chief lesson the author wishes to convey. He seems 
 to have been a man of great learning, possessed of all 
 the knowledge of his age. He knows all lands and all 
 climates. He is versed in mythology, in Chaldean 
 philosophy, in astronomy, and is therefore well able 
 from his travels and experience to handle so vast a 
 theme. And now let us take up the story in full. 
 
 There was a man in the land of Uz named Job, who 
 feared God and eschewed evil. He had seven sons and 
 three daughters, and was rich in the kind of wealth that 
 was current in patriarchal times, for he had thousands 
 of sheep and camels, and oxen and asses in abundance. 
 So scrupulous was he, that whenever his sons had a 
 birthday party, Job would sanctify them after the feast, 
 for fear that in the revelry they may have indulged in 
 levity and forgotten themselves. 
 
 After this general description the scene is changed to 
 Heaven. It is unnecessary to state that there is no more 
 intended reality in this picture of God with His angels 
 about Him, holding a sort of court like an earthly king 
 than many such pictures in the Midrash of the same 
 character. One day, the angels presented themselves, as 
 was their periodic custom, and with them came Satan. 
 Satan was a sort of spirit-detective, who traversed the 
 earth to investigate all cases of evil His part is always 
 represented as the accuser, never the defender of man 
 the prosecuting attorney in the heavenly court of justice. 
 Where kinder spirits would see worthiness he would
 
 discover a sinister motive. At times he is the tempter 
 luring man to sin, not necessarily for fiendish gratification 
 but to test his moral powers; for the exercise of resist- 
 ence that temptation calls into play, strengthens a 
 really good man in his righteousness. We may presume 
 from the context that on each visit he rendered a report 
 of past investigation and was given one or more cases 
 to look up. 
 
 " Hast thou considered my servant Job," asks the 
 Eternal, "there's an upright and perfect man, you can 
 find no blemish in him." "Oh yes, "says Satan the cynic, 
 "Does Job fear God for naught; see how he is protected 
 and blessed, touch his possessions and he would renounce 
 You to Your face." "You may put him to the test," 
 replies the Eternal, "deprive him of all he has, but don't 
 touch his person." 
 
 So Satan begins his trial of Job. One day a messenger 
 hurried into Job's presence and said : " while we were 
 ploughing, the Sabeans fell upon us, took oxen and 
 asses and killed the servants, and I alone am left to tell 
 the tale." Then another messenger appeared and said : 
 "a fire has burned all your sheep and shepherds and I 
 alone am left to tell the tale." While he was yet speak- 
 ing came another, who reported that the Chaldeans in 
 three bands swooped down on the camels with their 
 attendants, and that he alone had escaped. But the 
 bearer of the most awful tidings came last." Thy children 
 were feasting when there came a great whirlwind that 
 took the house by its four corners and killed them all, 
 and I alone am left to tell the tale." Job arose and rent 
 his garments, yet fell upon his knees and worshiped, 
 'The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be 
 the name of the Lord." 
 
 Again came Satan at the heavenly court. "Art thou 
 now satisfied with the integrity of my servant Job?" But
 
 8 
 
 the incredulous Satan was not yet satisfied, "His body is 
 yet untouched; touch his bone and his flesh and he will 
 renounce Thee yet." We are a little surprised that the 
 author of this book should have made physical suffering 
 harder to be borne than mental, since the infliction of 
 pain is represented as more severe than the loss of 
 children. 
 
 However that may be. Job is now smitten \vith a kind 
 of leprosy, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his 
 head. He sat there in the ashes and scraped himself 
 with a potsherd, a pitable object of woe. Now in all 
 these afflictions, his wife had been spared to him, and 
 some one has humorously said that this was part of his 
 affliction, for she seems to have been a shrew. " Dost 
 thou still hold fast to thine integrity " said she, perhaps 
 spitefully, "renounce God and die." He answered un- 
 moved, "thou speakest as an impious woman would 
 speak. What ! shall we receive good at the hand of 
 God and not receive the evil ?" Job had withstood the 
 second test. 
 
 Three friends now came to comfort him, Eliphaz, 
 Bildad and Zophar. They rent their garments and sat 
 beside him in sympathetic silence. In deep grief we are 
 comforted by the presence of our friends more than by 
 their words. Their arrival closes the prose part of the 
 story. Now begins the poem that marvelous discussion 
 between Job and his friends on the relation of evil to 
 punishment the most splendid creation of Hebrew 
 poetry and one of the finest pieces of literature in any 
 ancient or modern language. We can but give you a 
 few picked fragments. 
 
 After the long awful silence, Job opened his mouth 
 and poured forth his tale of misery : 
 
 " May the day perish wherein I was born, 
 
 Let it be darkness, let God not regard it from above. 
 
 Let it be blotted from the calendar. 
 
 Why died I not at birth ? 
 
 Why was I not one of those infants which never see the light. 
 
 Why could I not be in the grave where the wicked cease from 
 troubling, 
 
 And the weary are at rest ?
 
 o / 
 9 
 
 The great and the small are alike there, 
 And the ^ervant is free from the taskmaster. 
 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, 
 And whom God hath hedged in? 1 ' 
 
 This plaint provokes reply from his friends. The 
 arguments of each friend are typical of the old theolog- 
 ical theories which the author wishes to contravert. 
 
 With a rare fairness the author presents these views 
 he would reject in their most beautiful and convincing 
 form. 
 
 ELIPHAZ. 
 
 " If one attempt to talk with thee. wilt thou be grieved? 
 
 Thou hast instructed many, thou hast strengthened weak hands. 
 
 Thy word* have upholden the fallen. 
 
 But now, that such trouble has come to thee, thou faintest. 
 
 (Though thou didst find excellent arguments to explain the grief 
 of others), 
 
 Is not thy fear of God, thy confidence? 
 
 Whoever perished being innocent, in your remembrance 
 
 Wherever were the upright cut off? 
 
 According to my experience, those who plow iniquity 
 
 And sow mischief, reap the same. 
 
 By the breath of God they perish. 
 
 In anight vision, I heard these words: 
 
 Shall mortal man be more just than God, 
 
 Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? 
 
 Affliction cometh not forth from the dust (out of nothing). 
 
 As for me. I would seek God, 
 
 And unto Him would I commit my cause. 
 
 Happy should be the man whom God reproveth, 
 
 Therefore despise not the chastening of the Almighty. 
 
 We have searched this thing out, and it is so 
 
 Hear it, and know it is for your good.'' 
 
 We can understand how such a patronising speech, full 
 of the old platitudes, would irritate the suffering Job 
 and make his pains almost unbearable. Using his own 
 past teachings against him too, and subtly implying, in 
 accordance with the old belief, that since he is afflicted, 
 he must have sinned. In anguish of pain he burst out : 
 
 JOB. 
 
 "Oh that my calamity were weighed in the balance 
 
 It would be heavier than the sand of the sea. 
 
 Therefore have my words been rash, 
 
 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me. 
 
 Would that it wjuld please God to kill me outright.
 
 10 
 
 Then I would be at peace. 
 
 1 have not denied the words ot the Holy One. 
 
 To a man that is ready to faint, a friend should show kindness 
 
 But \ou have dealt as deceitfully as a brook. 
 
 Did I ask you to redeem me from the hand of the oppressor? 
 
 Teach me to understand wherein I have erred? 
 
 How forcible are your virtuous words! 
 
 But what does your arguing prove? 
 
 Now look at me, for surely I shall not lie to your face. 
 
 Mv cause is righteous. 
 
 Cannot my sense discern what is wrong? 
 
 I "will speak in the anguish of my spirit 
 
 1 will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 
 
 And then to scare me with that vision of youi"s. 
 
 1 loathe my life; let me alone; my days are vanity." 
 
 Then he turns to God and in a moment of rebellion, 
 into which his friend's uncalled-for rebuke had goaded 
 him, lie assails even divine justice: 
 
 "What is man that thou shouldst magnify him. 1 ' 
 
 (This is a satire on the 8th Psalm.) 
 
 "And try him everv moment. 
 
 If I have sinned, what have I done. 
 
 Why hast thou set me as a mark for thee 
 
 So that I am a burden to myself?" 
 
 Then Bildad, the second friend takes up the argument. 
 
 ''How long wilt thou speak in this way. 
 
 Doth God pervert justice? 
 
 If thou wert pure and upright, he would make the habitation of 
 thy righteousness prosperous. 
 
 And although thy beginning were small, thy lattr end would 
 greatly increase. 
 
 Make enquiry of former age, of the experience of ancestors, 
 
 Can a rush grow up wiihout mir t ? while yet in its greenness it 
 withereth. 
 
 So are the paths of all that forget God. 
 
 Behold God will not cast away a perfect man, 
 
 Neither will He uphold the evi!-doers." 
 
 That the second friend should obstinately persist in 
 the same theory, as though misfortune could be accounted 
 for in no other way, galled Job sorely. But that he 
 should also insinuate in an unmistaken manner that Job 
 was probably guilty of some crime about which he 
 refused to be frank, drove him to such desperation, that, 
 added to his keen physical sufferings, caused him to 
 break through all the limits of reason, and approach 
 well nigh to the borders of blasphemy :
 
 ii 
 
 " How can man be just with God, if it please Him to contend 
 with man. 
 
 He maketh the pillars of the earth to tremble, 
 
 He commandeth the sun, He sealeth up the stars. 
 
 He alone stretcheth out the heavens and treadeth upon the waves 
 of the sea. 
 
 Who can say to Him what doest Thou? 
 
 How then can I answer Him. 
 
 Even though I were righteous, I would not answer Him. 
 
 For he breaketh me in a tempest. 
 
 And multiplieth my wounds without cause. 
 
 He destroyeth both the perfect and the wicked. 
 
 He will mock at the trial of the innocent. 
 
 The earth is given into the hand of evil doers. 
 
 He covered) the faces of the judges, 
 
 If it be not He. who then is it? 
 
 Then calming down a little bit, as he realizes that he 
 has spoken too rashly, he continues in a gentler tone: 
 
 "Is it good that Thou shouldst oppress, 
 
 That Thou shouldst despise the work of Thine hands, 
 
 Thou hast granted me life and favor, 
 
 Thy care hath preserved my spirit. 
 
 Are net my days few? Cease then and let me alone 
 
 That I may take comfort a little, before I go whence I shall not 
 return. 
 
 Even to the land of darkness, and of the shadow of death." 
 
 O the awful sadness of despair and the bitter anguish 
 conveyed in these words. Is the author recalling a bitter 
 experience of his own? How true to life is this natural 
 impetuous unreasonableness of an oppressed soul. And 
 still as though his cup of agony were not yet full, 
 Zopher, the third friend must now reiterate the same 
 provoking insinuations, in that same exasperating, 
 patronising way : 
 
 "Should thy boasting make men hold their peace. 
 
 And when thou morkest shall no man make thee ashamed? 
 
 Thou say'st I am clean and pure. 
 
 Would that God would open His lips aga'nst ther. 
 
 Know that God exacteth of tree less than thine iniquity deserveth. 
 
 (As though Zopher now actually had in hand the facts 
 of Job's sin.) 
 
 "Canst thou by searching find out God. 
 
 It is as high as heaven, what canst thou do? 
 
 Deep as the gr*ve what canst thou know? 
 
 He knoweth vain man, and sees iniquity, even when He seems to 
 ignore it.
 
 12 
 
 Therefore if iniquity be in thy hand put it away, 
 Surely then thou shalt lift up thy face without stain. 
 Then though there be darkness, it shall be as morning. 
 And thou shalt be secure because there is hope." 
 
 Job now replies to his third opponent, and his anger 
 takes the form of sarcasm: 
 
 "Oh yes you are all very clever. 
 
 And when you die there wont be any wisdom left. 
 
 But I know something as well as you. 
 
 I am not inferior to you. 
 
 (I yet maintain) The just and perfect man is made a laughing 
 stock. 
 
 The tents of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are 
 secure. 
 
 Every one knows without your telling that God accomplishes 
 all things. 
 
 That in His hand is the soul of every living thing. 
 
 That with Him is wisdom and might and effectual making; 
 
 When He breaks down none can build up again. 
 
 He can make judges fools, and princes contemptible. 
 
 I know all these things as well as you do.' 
 
 It is God's justice, not his power that Job doubts. 
 But you are physicians of no value. 
 
 Would that you would hold your peace and that would be your 
 wisdom. 
 
 God will slay me, I have no hope. 
 Nevertheless I will maintain my ways before Him, 
 I know that I am righteous, 
 Oh let me speak and answer thou me. 
 Make me to know my transgression and my sins." 
 
 Then turning from his own woes to those of man in 
 general, he bursts forth : 
 
 "Man that is born of woman is of few days. 
 
 And full of trouble. 
 
 He buddeth like a flower, and withereth; 
 
 He fleeth as a shadow, and ceases to be. 
 
 Thou hast decided his limits beyond which he cannot pass. 
 
 When he giveth up his life, where is he, 
 
 If a man die shall he live again? 
 
 In these sad reflections of wavering'doubt, the first 
 portion of the book closes. The discussion will reopen 
 again. The problems of life, immortality, sin, suffering 
 happiness, and divine justice will be further fathomed. 
 And we shall see what religious lessons and what new 
 truth this great unknown Hebrew writer wishes to teach 
 mankind.
 
 TOB II.

 
 o 
 
 b. 
 
 II. 
 
 We closed the last lecture on Job with the first act, so 
 to speak, when the curtain fell after Job had replied in 
 turn to the accusations of his three friends. Before it 
 rises again on the second argument, let us consider their 
 relative views. 
 
 The friends, following the old theology, which would 
 attempt to account for the whole moral plan of the uni- 
 verse by a half truth, argue that, because Job is afflicted^ 
 Job must have sinned. Surely, they should have felt 
 that there must be some mental reservation in that theory, 
 or society would have treated every unfortunate as a 
 criminal. But they so forgot their original purpose 
 that they became more anxious to prove Job wicked 
 than their theories mistaken. Job, conscious of his 
 innocence, is exasperated by their insinuations, and still 
 more so by their patronising advice. They give him 
 magnificent pictures of God's power. Job retorts that 
 he is well acquainted with the might of God, and in 
 turn gives them majestic descriptions of Divine marvels. 
 It is not God's power that he doubts, but His justice. 
 The contest between God and man is unequal and 
 unfair, he contends, how can weak mortals stand justi- 
 fied before that awful time-defying Power? Job reaches 
 the extremity of irreverence and doubt to which his 
 sufferings and his accusers have driven him, when he 
 suggests that God has devised this magnificent creation 
 only to destroy man. 
 
 We must not take such outbursts too strictly. We 
 can see thatJob never quite believes his most intemperate 
 speeches. In moments of great passion or suffering, we 
 are likely to say what we know to be unjust and untrue;
 
 and, noble though Job is, he is but a man. A less 
 skilful writer would have depicted him unmoved in all 
 his troubles, never forgetting himself in paroxysm of 
 grief or rage; but this truly human picture is the 
 achievement of genius. There is, however, another 
 reason why the author permits his hero to give expres- 
 sion to such daring views; he wishes to present through 
 Job all theories of God and life, even the most radical 
 and sceptical. To be fair and convincing, he must 
 ignore none. 
 
 On the other hand, Job's wild language convinces 
 his friends more positively than ever that he is guilty 
 of some wrong. So, while they at first dwelt on the 
 rewards of repentance, they now try to frighten him by 
 telling him of the terrible punishments of the wicked. 
 As if man could ever be frightened into goodness, or as 
 if the abstaining from evil through cowardice or fear, 
 could ever be called goodness at all ! But in these later 
 dialogues, Job and his friends change places they 
 become violent while he grows calm something of 
 his old faith begins to return, broken here and there by 
 occasional outbursts against the visitation of God. This 
 ebb and flow of faith is equally true to human nature. 
 
 Following the original order, Eliphaz is the first to 
 to speak. He rebukes Job now without reserve: 
 
 (If thy theory were correct, then) 
 
 "Thou wouhlst'do away with fear and devotion to God (altogether) 
 It is thine iniquity that is guiding thy speech. 
 Not I, but thine own lips, testify against thee. 
 Art thnu the first man that was born, 
 Hast thou been admitted in the secret counsel of God ? 
 Hast thou the monopoly of wisdom? 
 Thou knowest nothing that we do not know. 
 (In fact) We bring to you the experience of the aged. 
 Are the consolations of God (the retributions of life) too small for 
 thee?
 
 5? 
 
 Do not let thy feelings carry thee away, 
 To turn thy spirit against God. 
 
 What is even the best of men that he can claim righteousness? 
 Much less one (presumably Job) who drinketh iniquity like 
 water." 
 
 And then, to " comfort " Job, he closes with a lurid 
 picture of the sufferings of the wicked. 
 Again Job returns to the challenge: 
 
 " Miserable comforters are you all. 
 
 Is there no end to your empty arguments? 
 
 If I were in your place, I could speak as you do. 
 
 1 could say disagreeable things and wisely shake my head. 
 
 But if you were in my place, I would try to solace you 
 
 And strengthen you with encouraging words." 
 
 Fearing they had not realized his sufferings, Job now 
 follows with an awfully vivid description of them, 
 again protesting his innocence and calling on God to 
 vindicate him : 
 
 " Behold, my witness is in heaven 
 
 And He that can vouch for me is On High. 
 
 I was at ease and he broke me asunder, even though there was 
 no violence in my hands 
 
 Mine eyes pour out tears to the Almighty, that He would 
 maintain the right of a man with God and with his neighbor. 
 
 For when a few years are come, I shall go the way whence I 
 shall not return. 
 
 If I look toward the grave as my (last) home, 
 
 If I have said to decay thou art my father, 
 
 And to the worm, thou art my mother, 
 
 Where will my hope be then? 
 
 It shall go down to the bars of the grave 
 
 \Vhen -once there is rest in the dust." 
 
 In his most despairing moods, Job even questions the 
 future life. For the author, true to his comprehensive 
 plan, must present the theories of the agnostics also, and 
 they have always existed.
 
 Bildad, the second speaker, takes the cue of the first 
 by giving Job a refreshing picture of 
 
 "How the light of the wicked shall be put out, 
 
 How he shall be chased out of the world and his remembrance 
 perish from the face of the earth, and how the dwellings of the 
 unrighteous become desolate. 
 
 The patient Job, wearied unto death, replies :- 
 
 "How long will ye vex my soul 
 
 And break me in pieces with words? 
 
 Ten times have you reproached me. 
 
 You ought to be ashamed to treat me so hardly. 
 
 Even if I have erred, my error remains with myself." 
 
 Job is wrong there; no man can sin against himself 
 only. The consequences always reach others. In a 
 despondent tone, he tells us again of his woes, giving 
 some interesting experiences of how a man is treated in 
 adversity:- 
 
 "My relatives have failed me, my friends have forgotten me, 
 
 The servants of my own household treat me as a stranger. 
 
 If 1 call to a servant, he returneth no answer, though I entreat 
 him. Even children despise me 
 
 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, oh ye my friends, 
 
 For the hand of God hath touched me. 
 
 Yet I know that my Vindicator liveth. 
 
 And, though this body be destroyed, yet without my flesh shall I 
 see God, 
 
 Whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold." 
 
 The third speaker, Zophar, but repeats the ideas of his 
 fellows. "The triumph of the wicked is short, and the 
 joy of the godless but for a moment." In answer to 
 these dogmatic statements, Job takes up that mysterious 
 problem of life, the frequent prosperity of the wicked, 
 and the no less frequent adversity of the righteous. 
 
 "Whv doth; wicked become prosperous and longlived, and 
 their offspring secure? 
 
 [The very ones] that defied God. that say what is the Almighty 
 that we should serve him, [find] their houses safe from fear.
 
 How often is "the lamp of ihe wicked put out?" (to quote you) 
 You say God layeth up retribution for their children, 
 But they don't care what happens after they are gone. 
 One man, full of blessings, dieth in quietness and peace, another 
 dies in bitterness of soul, having never tasted good. 
 Why then comfort me in vain, 
 Seeing that in your answers there is only fasehood ?' 
 
 This closes the second act or series, and the friends 
 recommence their arguments for the last time, though 
 they have nothing fresh to tell except that now instead 
 of gently hinting at Job's possible iniquity, they : throw 
 oft all reserve and positively and openly assert it as the 
 only explanation of his calamities and his rebelliousness. 
 Eliphaz once more: 
 
 "Can a man be profitable to God? 
 
 Surely he that is wise is profitable to himself 
 
 Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous? 
 
 Is it gain to Him that thou makest thy ways perfect? 
 
 Is it for fear of thee, that He reproveth thee? 
 
 (No!) It is because thy wickedness is great. Why! there is 
 no ena to your iniquities.'' 
 
 Eliphaz then coolly proceeded to quote the list of what 
 he believes to be Job's sins, drawing entirely on his 
 imagination concluding with an edifying sermon of the 
 good that will still come to him, if he but forsake the 
 crimes that poor Job had never committed. But the 
 friends have ceased to anger Job now; his thoughts enter 
 a loftier plane that wave of hysterical reproach is over. 
 He does not deign to answer the friend he puts him 
 aside and looks above : 
 
 "Oh that \ knew where I might find God. 
 
 Th.u I might plead my cause before Him." 
 
 It was no use pleading it before men who remained 
 stubborn in their stock arguments: 
 "I want to know how He would answer me. 
 Would He contend against me in the greatness of His power?
 
 No! surely not; I know He would listen to me. 
 (But where can I find Him?) 
 Behold I go forward and He is not there. 
 And backwards but I cannot perceive Him 
 He evades me wherever I turn. 
 
 (How like and yet unlike the i39th Psalm.) 
 Yet have 1 kept His way and obeyed His commands. 
 I have treasured His words more than my necessary food. 
 But He doeth as He wishes and fulfilleth my destiny against me. 
 So when 1 consider I am afraid of Him. 
 Why is it, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty 
 That those who know Him see not His diys? 
 
 (How many a one has uttered that imploring cry, "Give 
 us more light on God's ways.") 
 
 Every outrage and wrong committed by man is 
 described by Job with pathetic vividness. 
 
 And yet God seems to let the wicked rest securely. 
 
 If this, he concludes, be not true, who will prove me false? 
 
 Bildad evades the direct question by saying that it is 
 impossible foreman who is a worm to be just before God 
 to whom belongs all dominion and before whose purity 
 even the stars grow dim." Here and there Job and his 
 opponents seem to use each other's arguments, though to 
 prove different conclusions. But Job in all his misery 
 will yield to none in his recognition of the greatness of 
 the Almighty. He breaks forth into another one of those 
 sublime descriptions of all embracing nature, in which 
 the author seems to be at his best: 
 
 JOB. 
 
 "He stretcheth out the north over empty space. 
 And hangeth the earth upon nothing. 
 He bindeth up the waters in His clouds. 
 By His spirit are the heavens beautified. 
 And these are but the outskirts of His power. 
 How small a whisper is heard of Him 
 But the thunder of His power who can understand?
 
 I* 
 
 9 
 
 Turning once more to his own cause : 
 
 As God liveth who hath taken away my right 
 
 My lips chall speak no unrighteousness. 
 
 Till I die, J will not put away mine integrity. 
 
 My righteousness I hold fasl, and will not let it go. 
 
 My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live." 
 
 Job then had withstood Satan's test in spite of occa- 
 sional waverings. No affliction could turn him from 
 virtue. But that original experiment with which the 
 book opened in the prologue in heaven has been put 
 aside in the larger problem of the purpose for which 
 suffering is imposed on mankind. It had been only used to 
 introduce this discussion, or perhaps the author's origi- 
 nal plan expanded and deepened as he advanced. After 
 a last speech which must be ascribed to the third friend 
 Zophar, although the text ascribes it to Job, the third 
 act closes. The friends have been silenced, the insuffi- 
 ciency of the old-fashioned theology and narrow con- 
 ception of Providence has been exposed. We presume 
 they now withdraw and Job is left alone. 
 
 Sitting in solitude, he again breaks forth into a mourn- 
 ful soliloquy of his happy past, by which the author 
 skillfully gives us a fuller insight into his early life: 
 
 "Oh that I were as in the months ot old 
 
 As ii! days when God watched over me. 
 
 When His lamp shone above my head and by His light I walked 
 through darkness, 
 
 When the Almighty was yet with me, and my children were 
 about rm. 
 
 When I went forth to the city gate, the aged rose and stood. 
 
 The young shrunk back, with awe, the princess ceased from 
 talking. 
 
 And the ear that heard me blessed me. 
 
 Because I delivered the poor that cried 
 
 The fatherless that had none to help him. 
 
 And 1 made the willow's heart to sing or joy. 
 
 1 was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame.
 
 10 
 
 And I defended the cause of him who was unknown to me, 
 Umo me men gave ear and waited, and afrer I had c poken they 
 answered not again. 
 
 But now I am in derision, they abhor me and stand aloof. 
 And spare not to insult me. I am thrown down by the mob. 
 My soul is poured out within me, affliction has taken posse-sion. 
 I cry to thee, oh God, and Thou dost not answer me. 
 Thou art cruel and persecuteth me. 
 Did I not weep for him that was in trouble? 
 Did not my soul grieve for the needy? 
 And now I stand in the assembly and cry for help. 
 If I have walked with vanity or deceit, then let justice be meted 
 out to me. 
 
 Had my heart followed the lust of mine eyes, 
 Had I enticed my neighbor's wife. 
 Then I would say let me sow and let another eat, 
 For that would be a heinous crime indeed. 
 If I have seen any perish for want of clothing, 
 Or if 1 have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, 
 Then let my shoulder fall from my shoulder-blade 
 And my arm be broken from the bone. 
 
 Had I made gold my hope, had I foolishly worshiped the sun, 
 Had I even rejoiced at my enemy's downfall, 
 That too would be iniquity worthy ot punishment. 
 Here is my signature, let the Almighty answer me, 
 Would that I could see the indictment against me." 
 Here follows the speech of a fourth man,Elihu. The 
 Bible scholars nearly all unite in concluding that this 
 did not belong to the original book of Job, but is an 
 insertion by some later writer who wished to introduce 
 his particular opinions into the discussion. Such 
 liberties in the field of literature were common in olden 
 times. But as he adds nothing to the argument and 
 only weakly copies what the book contains, we will pass 
 him by. 
 
 To prove his innocence to his friends and to fathom 
 the cause of his affliction, Job had repeatedly called upon 
 God to appear to him, to explain His ways and to justi-
 
 n 
 
 fy his punishments. Job's request is at last answered 
 What could not be imagined in sober narration is cer- 
 tainly permissible in poetry and parable, especially in 
 the bold style of antiquity. The author actually pic- 
 tures God Almighty meeting the challenge of the 
 afflicted man. 
 
 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and 
 said: 
 
 Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge- 
 
 Let me ask thee [who would venture to argue with God.] 
 
 Where wast thou when 1 iaicl the foundations ot the earth? 
 
 Teil me if you can. 
 
 Who determined its measure or stretched the line upon it. 
 
 Who laid the corner stone thereof when the morning stars sang 
 together. 
 
 When I presented for the clouds my decree. 
 
 And said, hither shah thy come and no further, 
 
 And here shall thy proud waves be stayed. 
 
 Hast thou commanded the morning since the days began ? 
 
 Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, 
 
 Or walked into the recesses of the deep? 
 
 Have the gates of death been revealed unto thee? 
 
 Declare if thou knowest it all. 
 
 Where is the way to the dwelling of light. 
 
 And as to darkness, where is its place. 
 
 Doubtless thou knowest for thou wast then born! 
 
 Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow. 
 
 By what way is the light parted, 
 
 Or the East wind scattered over the earth. 
 
 Who hath cleft a channel for the water flood, 
 
 Or for the lightning of the thunder? 
 
 (We to-day would say for the thunder of the lightning) 
 
 Hath the rain a father, or who hath begotten the drops of dew? 
 
 Out of whose womb came the ice. 
 
 And the hoar-frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? 
 
 Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, 
 
 Dost thou know the ordinances of the heavens. 1 * 
 
 Who hath given understanding to the mind?
 
 12 
 
 Who provideth the raven his food 
 
 When the young ones cry unto Gcd ? 
 
 Hast thou clothed the horse's neck with the quivering mane, 
 
 The glory of whose snorting is so terrible 
 
 As he paweth in the valley and leapeth as a locust 
 
 Doth the eagle mount up at thy command? 
 
 Doth the hawk soar by thy wisdom 
 
 Wilt thou then condemn Me that thou mayst be justified. 
 
 Or hast thou an arm like God? 
 
 Then will I also confess of thee 
 
 That thine own right hand can save thee. 
 
 Job, overawed by the realization of God's magnificence, 
 meekly and reverently confesses: 
 
 "Behold, I am of small account. What can I answer thee? 
 
 I know that thou canst do all things. 
 
 Yea! I have "hidden counsel without knowledge,' ' 
 
 Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not. 
 
 Things too wonderful for me, which I could never know 
 
 Before I had but heard of Thee now I see Thee; 
 
 1 will lay my hand upon my mouth and say no more." 
 
 So closes the book of Job. There is an epilogue, it is 
 true, which tells how Job was relieved from his suffering 
 and was given children, wealth and honor once more. 
 People love to clear up a story, and see its happy end. 
 But it is doubtful whether the original author wrote that 
 epilogue. It is certainly unnecessary for the purpose of 
 the parable, in fact, rather confuses it. For what is it to 
 teach that suffering is not necessarily the result of sin 
 nor prosperity the consequence of righteousness? If 
 Job were rewarded after all, it would be an endorse- 
 ment of the old belief. God's vast plan of the universe 
 cannot all be explained on that theory of material reward 
 and punishment as the three friends and all antiquity 
 believed and as many believe still. We cannot know 
 the ways of God to man, they are past our finding out. 
 They comprehend much more than our finite mind can
 
 "7 
 
 13 
 
 grasp. Such conclusions dawn on us when we pause 
 for a moment to realize the stupendous marvel of God's 
 glorious creation. 
 
 Job is made so very righteous and his suffering so 
 exceedingly great as the most forcible instance to prove 
 that adversity is not necessarily the consequence of sin 
 reducing the case to the lowest terms. 
 
 If you see a man whom you think wicked, in esteem, 
 and one whom you thought good in adversity, you need 
 not conclude that either you were mistaken in your 
 opinion of their character, as the friends thought, or that 
 God is not just, as Job at first thought, or that there is 
 not a God at all, as the sceptic concludes. Can you 
 learn the whole from a detail how do you know but 
 that partial evil mav be a universal good, that in the 
 Divine plan that is to encompass all time, the individual 
 may not suffer for the larger welfare of humanity. And 
 again, thousands of intervening causes outside of moral? 
 may bring suffering and pain. There are natural laws 
 as well as moral laws in God's world, which we must also 
 not ignore. You will notice that God does not really 
 answer Job but giving him a cursory glimpse of the 
 marvels of existence He shows him that it is impossible 
 for man to know all and wrong for him to condemn 
 what he can never understand. Job learns that the world 
 is deerjer than he thought. A condition of God's great- 
 ness is that we do not know Him that the world is not 
 such r. small and simple family affair as the ancients 
 supposed. We say with Moliere, "que sais je," "What 
 do I know?" Just enough to be reverently silent. Faith 
 in God and His justice is the most precious treasure 
 given to man, If he can hold fast to that he can bear all 
 things. When Job's faith came back, there was no need 
 to relieve him of his suffering. 
 
 Yes! we know too, that regardless of punishments and
 
 rewards, it is always Avorth while to be righteous, that as 
 the author says; "the fear of God that is wisdom, and 
 to depart from evil that is understanding." So in light 
 and in darkness, in joy and in pain, in good days and in 
 ev 7 il days, we too will declare with the sentiments of this 
 great drama. 
 
 "What is the hope of the godless, though he get him gain, 
 
 When God taketh away his soul?" 
 
 Yet shall the righteons hold on his way, 
 
 And he that hath clean hands, grow stron ;er and stronger."
 
 The Influence of the Parent on the 
 Child. 
 
 The Talmud says ''The world is saved by the breath of 
 the (school) children." And a modern poet calls chil- 
 dren"Idols of hearts and of households. angels of God in 
 disguise." I do not know if you have ever tried to think 
 what the world would be like without children some- 
 thing like those seasons of perpetual twilight that we find 
 at the poles. 
 
 "Ah, what would the world be to us 
 
 If the children were no more? 
 We should dread the desert behind us, 
 
 Worse than the dark be'ore. 
 For what are all our contrivings 
 And the wisdom of our books, 
 When compared with thir caresses 
 And the gladness of their looks." 
 
 We take them without thinking as one of the necessities 
 of life; and next to life itself, the most real of the Creator's 
 blessings. We may say without hesitation that the most 
 powerful of all human feelings is the love of parents for 
 children. The Roman matron Cornelia was probably 
 not more devoted than the average mother, but only an 
 additional cleverness suggested her reply to the question, 
 "Where are your je;vels?" ''These are my jewels," point- 
 ing to her children. We do not praise parents for loving 
 their children they can't help it. It is one of God's 
 laws stamped not only in humanity, but in all living 
 creatures. And when Solomon discovered the true 
 mother by threatening to slay the child, he followed 
 nature's unerring instinct. 
 
 The joy that comes with the gift of a first child can be 
 felt but cannot be described. It transcends expression
 
 7" 
 
 4 
 
 in language. They come to us helpless, hardly conscious; 
 and gradually before our eyes they grow into conscious- 
 ness and beauty and power. Would you like the time of 
 infancy to be shorter, or for life to begin with maturity 
 at once? It has been pointed out that only the long 
 period of helpless infancy has created the family. There 
 would be no families if it were not for these tender 
 mortals whose gradual unfolding we must guard and 
 guide with gentleness and love. The home exists large- 
 ly for them and to an extent they make it. And what is 
 it without them without their sunny laughter and April 
 tears, without the light patter of their little feet that fails 
 on our ears like music, without the infant chirpings that 
 gradually become speech, without their playthings that 
 we run across in all possible places mute recorders of 
 their presence? Even the anxiety we suffer at their ail- 
 ments but deepens our joy when they are in health. 
 There they are in all the glory of their sweetness and 
 their innocence and like beauty, their own excuse for 
 being. 
 
 And yet in the triumph of possession, we must not 
 forget that they are not really ours, in the sense of abso. 
 lute ownership. They are only a charge entrusted to us, 
 and God forbid that we should abuse the trust or neglect 
 it. The ancients owned their children as completely as 
 their portable property. The child was placed at the 
 feet of the Greek father and his caprice decided whether 
 it should live. A Roman had the power of life and death 
 over his children. The Chinese to-day often drown their 
 daughters as we sometimes drown superfluous kittens! 
 When human sacrifice prevailed, the burning of children 
 in the arms of Moloch was not uncommon. And to-day 
 those who recoil in horror from such indications of 
 ignorance and savagery, still believe their children to be 
 their own to do with much as they please. Too often is
 
 7' 
 5 
 
 the child treated as a doll to be fondled and caressed 
 and petted, and to be slapped sometimes when we are 
 out of humor. 
 
 In early years and when the children are well, we per- 
 haps think too much of the privilege and not enough of 
 the responsibility. We postpone the less agreeable 
 duties of training and discipline as long as posssible and 
 enter merely into the delight of possession. There is 
 plenty of time to train them, we say. Children should 
 be accustomed to the discipline, at least of regular habit, 
 almost from the day of their birth. The parents who spoil 
 their children by treating them unevenly, strict to-day 
 and indulgent to-morrow, in the first place give them- 
 selves infinitely more trouble both in the present and for 
 the future, and in the second place the children are not 
 nearly as happy. It is not easy to be perfectly just with 
 our children; even if we have the wisdom to rear them in 
 the best way how few of us have the self-control. Our 
 rabbis say "It is easier to see a whole forest of olive trees 
 grow up than to rear one child." What is harder than 
 to repress the rising tenderness that would clasp the 
 little one to our arms, when we should gravely impress 
 the lesson that the occasion calls for. We receive 
 special preparation for nearly all undertakings and call- 
 ings, but that highest and most sacred of duties the 
 training of the children entrusted to our keeping that 
 is left to chance to come of itself! How much of our 
 education is made up of tilings we may possibly use 
 and how little of some of the things about whose use 
 there can be no doubt. Some women think a higher 
 education thrown away if they have only just to look 
 after their children. I know of no finer use of the intel- 
 lect than that of developing the mental and moral nature 
 of a human being, and a very fine intellect it calls for, 
 let me tell you.
 
 r 
 
 They come to us, these soft, impressionable tilings, and 
 in the early formative age we can mould them to our 
 purpose they are clay in our hands. Here is the 
 supreme moment to lay the everlasting foundations. 
 Oh, to be gifted with the true wisdom to guide them 
 aright. It is the children's age of faith. They will 
 believe whatever you tell them. Beware that you do 
 not trifle with that beautiful trust by telling them what 
 is not true as far as you know it, or you will be crushing 
 out one of the fairest blossoms of the soul. And remem- 
 ber always that the best lessons are taught by example- 
 Children learn to speak bv imitating those about them 
 no one teaches them to speak. Their education for the 
 first six years of their lives is chiefly imitation. They 
 will get into the habit of doing not what they are told 
 to do, but what they see done by others. They will 
 s>peak the language that you speak, coarse if it be coarse? 
 refined if it be refined. Your mode of life is their 
 education, both in manners and morals. Yes, the sins 
 of the parents are visited on the children, even to the 
 third and fourth generation. What we do not give them 
 by example, we give them by inheritance, transmitting 
 our failings and our virtues with the color of our skin* 
 even to a distant posterity. 
 
 We are apt to draw distinctions between the American 
 and the European systems of training for there is a 
 difference. And there is good and evil in both. Here 
 as always the golden mean is the safest course. Per- 
 haps some American parents are too indulgent, and 
 pamper their children, humoring their likes and dislikes. 
 While the European child for the most part is given 
 what is thought good for it and no questions asked 
 that or nothing, the diet is simpler, the discipline more 
 strict. But the children are none the less happy. I 
 think they are happier. For when an occasional indul-
 
 gence is permitted either in a later hour to stay up or a 
 tasty dish, or an outing it comes with the rarity ot ;\ 
 treat. While the children who always have what they 
 wish enjoy but languidly and as young men and 
 young women soon grow blase. But the homely disci- 
 pline of 'Spartan simplicity" finds the young man with a 
 keen enjoyment for all pleasures however simple. And 
 the early training from the nursery, crystalized now 
 into habit and character has taught him to restrain the 
 gratification of his wishes within a moderate compass, 
 and to feel too that he has a right to demand but little 
 from the world and to be thankful for that little. 
 
 Perhaps also the American childhood is too short. 
 The boys and girls are mimic men and women before we 
 know it. They are too much around the adults, listen- 
 ing to discussions for which they are not ready and lor 
 which they are not fit; and leading the same life as their 
 elders, admitted into all their gathering, they attain a 
 precociousness that soon dispels the happy innocence of 
 childhood. Speaking of Samuel, the Bible says : "And 
 the child was a child." Let your children be children. 
 Let them live altogether in the fairy world of childhood- 
 Let them mature slowly. It will tell later on in their 
 life. Nature's best growths are gradual, slowly ripening 
 to a glorious and enduring perfection. John Stuart 
 Mill's father was so anxious that he should be a sturdy 
 man, that he permitted him no childhood at all. He 
 always looked back sadly to that want. It seemed to 
 cloud his life. We notice the complete absence of senti" 
 ment in all his works, like a tree bearing fruit without 
 coming to flower. 
 
 No, however hard your life be, don't let the children 
 feel it. They dont mind coarse food and coarse clothing 
 and cheap furniture. The differences between riches 
 and poverty are nothing to them as long as they can play
 
 8 
 
 and sing and make-believe, and enjoy a blessed liberty. 
 Some homes are like prisons, not because of privation 
 they may be homes of wealth, but because the discipline 
 is so unnecessarily harsh, on the theory, that the greater 
 the severity the more surely will the spirit be crushed. 
 I know of nothing more wicked than that of crushing 
 the spirit it is killing independence, self-reliance, dig- 
 nity. Here is that other European extreme, no less 
 dangerous than American indulgence, because it is so 
 often followed by a reckless, pernicious reaction. We 
 may make this a cardinal maxim never impose a 
 restraint purely for the sake of restraint. Don't bar the 
 child's every step with "thou shalt nots." We can sym- 
 pathize with the little girl who complained " those com- 
 mandments do break so easily." 
 
 Do not mistake firmness for severity. In the punish- 
 ing and rewarding of your children, it is chiefly necessary 
 that you be consistent that your yea be yea, and your 
 nay be nay. This is the best way to win early both 
 obedience and respect. Be gentle even in your punish- 
 ment so that they may see the love underlying it. The 
 Bible puts it in the best way, " My son, despise not the 
 chastening of the Lord, neither be thou weary of His 
 correction; for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, 
 even as a father the child in whom he delights." Is not 
 the father God's representative to the child? Mother is 
 the name for God on the lips of children. Punishment 
 in anger loses all moral force. It becomes spite and 
 revenge, and the child is rightly outraged. 
 
 While you are not called upon to give full explanation 
 of all your requests and prohibitions to your children 
 and certainly not to let them enter into an argument of 
 the merit and wisdom of your commands, still they 
 should see the reasonableness of all you ask them, and 
 that they are not dictated by caprice and tyranny. This
 
 is the only way to gain the confidence of your children 
 and nothing is more precious than that, nor more impor- 
 tant for their moral culture. I do not like to see a wall 
 of reserve between parent and child. Do not fear that 
 you will lose your children's respect, if you remove the 
 awe of distance A wise parent never loses the child's 
 respect. Encourage their frankness by always showing 
 sympathy for their small annoyances, and by taking 
 lively interest in their games and sports and lessons and 
 doings generally; so that entering completely into 
 their lives they will naturally open their hearts to you, 
 when all is not as it should be and your guidance and 
 advice inspired by the wisdom that love itself reveals may 
 just save them from those follies that wreck careers and 
 spoil lives. 
 
 Of course there may be some sides to your children's 
 natures that you can hardly be expected to know. No 
 one human being can completely know another. You 
 cannot therefore hope to be admitted into every experi- 
 ence of your children. It is well sometimes to let them 
 alone and not to meddle too much in their affairs. Don't 
 let them feel that they are watched and hampered. Give 
 freedom to their mental growth. Don't ask as a paren- 
 tal right to be included in their every secret, and they 
 will love you for your consideration and they will not 
 wish to have anything unknown to you. 
 
 While working and sacrificing for your children, even 
 beyond what duty calls for, still you may not be suffi- 
 ciently considerate to them. Does this sound like a 
 paradox? I mean we should not despise the feelings 
 and wants of children altogether and treat them as be- 
 neath serious consideration. While not encouraging 
 their whims, we certainly should not choke their indivi- 
 duality. Very often a silent rebellion is awakened in 
 the breast of the child, in feeling its righteous needs
 
 ignored and in being compelled to do what is violently 
 repugnant to its nature. In spite of our larger experi- 
 ence we cannot completely fathom these young beings 
 although they be our own children; their natures may be 
 even more complex than our own, and contain depths 
 that we have never sounded. If we can teach them, they 
 can teach us also. Said a Jewish sage: "I have learnt 
 much from my teachers,but most from my pupils." How 
 often the child is father to the man. The childish imagi- 
 nation pictures strange scenes, absurd mostly, but some- 
 times full of suggestion and even bordering on philoso- 
 phy. If we cannot answer their questions we should 
 not snub them by saying "don't bother." but rejoice that 
 your child is blessed with an inquiring mind and do all 
 you can to encourage it. 
 
 If, then, woman goes no further than her own home, 
 here is a glorious field to labor in to tend the physical, 
 mental and moral growth of human souls. And to think 
 that there are mothers who will turn over the care of 
 their children entirely to nurses! I am glad I have not 
 to bring this charge against Jewish mothers. I must 
 say of them that they cannot be accused of avoiding the 
 responsibility of home duties and of large families. 
 They surely are not the parents who, moving in a vortex 
 of pleasure, see their children occasionally for a few 
 minutes, so that growing up, the children only half 
 know them. I say this type of the cold, fashionable 
 worldly parent is not yet found amongst us. I hope it 
 never will be. And those Jewish parents, who, spending 
 their youth in privation had no opportunities for edu- 
 cation and culture but who are nevertheless determined 
 that their children shall not be so handicapped, but 
 shall have all the advantages that a liberal education 
 can give and who slave and pinch and strive for that 
 noble end I can only say God bless those parents. I
 
 77 
 
 do not think I am making an exaggerated statement in 
 saying that Jewish parents are never forgetful of their 
 duty to their children, even though they may often mis- 
 take what that duty calls for. The world can and has 
 taught us much in the rearing of children, for it has 
 been in recent years raised to the dignity of a science. 
 But I think the fulness of our obligation to our off- 
 spring, the closeness of the tie binding all the members 
 of the family together, the wickedness of family estrange- 
 ments and the religious sentiment that should sanctify 
 each step in the child's life, these I think, the Jew has 
 taught the world. 
 
 In one of his books, Thackeray takes occasion to say: 
 "I saw a Jewish lady yesterday with a child on her knee, 
 from whose face toward the child there shone a sweet- 
 ness so angelic that it seemed to form a sort of glory 
 round both. I could have knelt before her and adored 
 in her the divine beneficence . . . that has sanctified the 
 history of mankind."
 
 'JL' H K <- 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, 
 
 A Bible History for Jewish Schools, on a new plan. 
 
 Contains much miscellaneous information that will materially 
 
 assist the Teacher and make the subject more interesting 
 
 and more instructive to the pupil, 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE H. HARRIS, A. M.. Ph. D. 
 
 Rabbi of Temple Israel of Harlem, N. Y. 
 Vol. I. From the Creation t<> the Death of Moses. 
 
 Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
 
 Book I. Early Tradition. Book II Patriarchal Ages. 
 
 Book III. Exodus. Book IV. Law. 
 
 Book V. Close of Moses' Leadership. 
 
 Appendix, Prayers, Hymns, Caittidar, Exatn. Questions, &rf. 
 
 Vol If From the Conquest to the Death of Salomon. 
 Book I. The Period of the Conquest, covering the Biblical 
 
 record from Joshua to Ruth 
 
 Book II. First Stage of the Monarchy 
 Book III. The Rise of Judah, covering the Biblical record 
 
 from Samuel to Solomon. 
 
 Vol III. From the Secession to the Exile. 
 Book I. The Rival Kingdoms 
 
 Book II. The Influence of the Prophets 
 
 Book III. -The Survival of Judah. 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " Although made specially for use by Hebrews, it is so simple, straight- 
 forward and sensible as to reserve the attention of all young teachers in Sunday 
 Schools. The handling of the early chapters in Genesis is admirably reverent and 
 rational." N. y. Herald. 
 
 " It is gratifving to find our Hebrew brethren doing such excellent work for 
 their Sunday Schools. This little volume is vastly ahead in its treatment of the Old 
 Testament of the great mass of literature on this subject prepared for children. ' 
 Christian A'eeister. 
 
 5O cents each Volume or 55. 4O per Oozen. 
 
 PHILIP COWEN, 213-215EAST44TH STREET, 
 
 NEW YORK.
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHILD ON 
 THE PARENT.
 
 The Influence of the Child on the 
 Parent. 
 
 "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings i hast Thou established 
 strength, because of Thine adversaries, that Thou mightest still the 
 enemy and the avenger." Psalms viii., 2. 
 
 In reading this verse, one may experience a silent pro- 
 test, as though the case was overstated. For the power 
 of the infant is potential rather than actual. The strength 
 is there, but only in germ. "The child is father to the man" 
 only as the seed is father to the fruit. Egypt was m^.de 
 to tremble by a little babe in an ark of bulrushes that 
 rested among the reeds of its famous Nile; but when 
 Moses ''stilled the enemy" Pharoah, he was no longer a 
 babe, but a man, and a very old one at that. Nor was it 
 the "strength of babes " that induced that same Pharoah 
 to murder the male infants of the Hebrews at birth, but 
 only because he knew that babes can become men and 
 men can become enemies. 
 
 But in the meantime, what is more helpless than 
 human infancy. Ho\v very slowly the bodily organs 
 and the spiritual faculties develop. Up to a certain 
 time the babe does not know itself as itself, as distinct 
 from things around it. Yet its influence is not postponed 
 until it reaches intelligent, self-supporting maturity. 
 The child as child is a vital factor in the lives of those 
 around it. " Out of the mouth of babes hast Thou 
 ordained strength " The child's first strength is its 
 helplessness just as woman's weakness is often her 
 best protection. However rough and careless we may 
 be otherwise, we are tenderness and devotion with it. 
 And so that half-conscious dot of human life, humanizes 
 the most brutal and disciplines the most wayward. Who
 
 could have thought that that rough fellow could have 
 been so gentle ? The child did it. Who could have 
 thought that that flippant girl could have become so 
 quietly considerate and self-denying ? The infant again. 
 If woman creates the home, the child certainly completes 
 it. It comes into the world full of wonder at all things 
 reminding us anew, how wonderful the world is when 
 we were just beginning to forget it. It certainly seems 
 more wonderful to us with that child in it, so tiny, so 
 weak, so unknowing do we despise it and call it insig- 
 nificant? No. Its childish deficiencies we idealize in 
 our fondness, into childish excellencies. Its faulty 
 articulation is to us a new beauty of speech, and we are 
 sorry when it speaks correctly. Its weakness is delicacy 
 and its naughtiness is roguishness (to think of the 
 world of difference between roguishness and roguery). 
 its very ignorance, which we call innocence, invests the 
 child with a sanctity for us, and rapturously we mark 
 its broader outlook day by day| as the opening of a soul. 
 And oh, what a revelation it is to us. In watching it we 
 see how language grows, how experience develops 
 mind and memory, how facts of knowledge in the child- 
 ish brain, at first partial and confused, grow clearer and 
 fuller. And thus the bud opens in delicious beauty 
 before our entranced eyes. All these impressi9ns work 
 upon us, developing our love, our humility, our gentle- 
 ness, our reverence ail our finer sensibilities, as though 
 Isaiah's angel had touched us and raised us to a higher 
 human plane. We grow with our child, revising our- 
 selves into improved editions. 
 
 When we begin to teach the child, it puts us through 
 a severe examination, in which we get much the worst 
 of it. We did not realize that we had forgotten so much, 
 and that there was so much that we had never known. 
 The philosopher says: "Tell us the ultimate cause of
 
 everything;" does not the child ask the same ? ''Where 
 does the rain come from ?" you return a stereotyped 
 answer "but where do the clouds corne from?" If you 
 have never thought in your life before, they make you 
 think, those playful little things, with their pointed 
 questions I notice that thirst for knowledge that we 
 had in early youth, we lose toward middle life. We 
 grow a little tired of seeking for elusive sources, and 
 nonchalantly give it up with, " What matters?" But the 
 child comes to us as a fresh breeze, and its artless 
 curiosity reawakens our own. 
 
 The possession of children makes us feel older at first, 
 with a sense of our new responsibility but after we are 
 accustomed to the care of them, they make us feel more 
 youthful. A father at forty feels younger than a bachelor 
 at forty. There seems to be more of life before him. 
 because there is more in life. In a sense, we grow 
 young again with the children, coming down to 
 their childish conceptions of things, entering into their 
 humor, playing with them in their games of make- 
 believe. For their sakes, we are content to live some of 
 our childhood over again. They unbend us in spite of 
 ourselves, and break down the wall of crabbedness and 
 bitterness that the world's storms and the world's tor- 
 ments build around us. (I have always found, by the 
 way, that the torments are harder to bear than the 
 storms.) The children counteract many disappointments, 
 helping us to live through them While we are in the 
 first throes of the stinging blow, perhaps the presence 
 of the children with their unconscious prattle, seems to 
 bring no comfort, seems even to be irksome; (the sun- 
 shine seems irksome in the moment of supreme misery). 
 But. gradually, after we have brooded over our grief 
 and given way to the first outburst, the thought of the 
 children at hand, to come to us at our call begins to
 
 effect its healing, consoling influence. Yes ! "from the 
 babes God has sent strength to quiet " the demons of 
 passion and hate and despair within our raging breasts. 
 The childish influence soothes and stills us like a nar- 
 cotic the storm is over we can smile again. They do 
 not know the miracle they have wrought, the darlings! 
 how it would spoil it all if they did even as our own 
 too vivid consciousness of the fine things we think we 
 do, takes from them half their fragrance and their 
 charm. 
 
 The relation between husband and wife is spiritualized 
 after children have come to them. They feel now that 
 the tie uniting them, at first only official and social, is now 
 sanctified with holy mystery. They are in the presence 
 of the secret of the universe. The link between them has 
 gone beyond themselves and exists in a third person who 
 unites their characters and their souls. God has put 
 His divine sanction upon the marriage in the living 
 offspring that follows it the perpetual miracle of crea- 
 tion. How then can we, dare we, through the medium 
 of divorce, tear asunder these sacred bonds that involve 
 not only ourselves but new immortal souls the chil- 
 dren ? Such marriage cannot be divorced; it exists for- 
 ever in the child, whether we will or not for we have 
 called upon the laws of God and nature to create ever- 
 lasting witnesses to it. We cannot go back; we have 
 burnt our bridges behind us and must fulfil our duty to 
 the end. At least, so it has always seemed to me. 
 
 Therefore do not encourage others to marry lightly* 
 taking into account external considerations only, but 
 solemnly,as though divorce were not possible; for better, 
 for worse, till death. Marriage is the union of souls 
 not of estates. 
 
 Still, once married, however unfortunate the union 
 may be, the presence of the child then should keep hus-
 
 band and wife together, if from a sense of duty only. 
 But I am sure its influence goes much further than that. 
 The child is often the conciliator between mother and 
 father. The care of the child especially during illness 
 often helps to unite estranged parents where nothing 
 else would. In the presence of the danger to the one 
 beloved by both alike, they hush their own quarrels and 
 reproaches as though they were sinful. Again "the 
 babe stills the avenger and the enemy." In that 
 one interest, dear to both, they forget themselves, 
 and each is glad to aid the other in their devotion 
 to the flickering child-life. And even though, alas ! love 
 should have altogether died out between them, with 
 naught but gall and rancor left, this common sympathy 
 will help to bring them together. It may tend even 
 to rekindle a something of the old affection. For 
 human feelings fluctuate, and are not the same at all 
 times. 
 
 Parents may not often or ever be aware of the influ- 
 ence their children exert over them. Some parents feel 
 the responsibility more keenly than others. Nearly all 
 struggle industriously to provide ample means for the 
 children against the time that they will be taken from 
 them, and are thus made thrifty. But some go further 
 yet, and try to be noble because of, their children, keep 
 from certain temptations and certain baseness, if only 
 for their sakes. Even if they erroneously supposed that 
 parental sin is not visited upon offspring, still they 
 refrain from giving way to their worst selves out of a 
 sense of honor towards those they love so well. Their 
 good opinion is dearer to the parent than that of all the 
 world. And their silent rebuke is more dreadful than 
 public shame. For we can't be hypocrites before ou r 
 own children, even if, God forbid, we wished to be, and 
 they will always know us to be what we are, although
 
 s.rf 
 
 their love for us and their sense ot" filial duty will see* 
 our failings as "leaning to virtue's side." 
 
 "Out of the mouths of babes hast thou established 
 strength." They are our teachers in many ways if we 
 will but observe them. Watch them at play, and you 
 will see the reflections of yourselves. There is selfish- 
 ness, kindness, cruelty, forgiveness, spite, sorrow, re- 
 morse, obstinacy, pity in that little nursery world. They 
 play with dolls and balls and wooden soldiers, and the 
 desire to possess these things and to do certain things 
 with them brings out nearly every human trait. Study 
 them, and you will realize that "men are but children of 
 a larger growth." All our schemes and tricks for posts 
 of honor, for social distinction, for grabbing the largest 
 slice, for overthrowing a rival, are but the children play- 
 ing with the puppets on a larger scale. To Gulliver, the 
 miniature Lilliputians with their fleet and their armies, 
 must have seemed like so many children playing at life; 
 while, on the other hand to the enormous Brobdingna- 
 gians, the tiny Gulliver's talk of his own government, 
 their laws and their social customs, must have seemed a 
 joke not worthy serious consideration. You cannot 
 despise the children without despising yourselves. And 
 when I have watched politicians scrambling for a sena- 
 torship or a judgeship, I have thought of boys scrambling 
 for a top. What is there superior in women quarreling 
 over petty personalities and petty preferences to little 
 girls spitefully fighting over their dolls? Looking back 
 at past history, at the wars of kings for affairs of 
 "honor, "for territory, or diplomatic slight, is it not as 
 contemptible as the sham-fighting between the wooden 
 soldiers on the toy-box? With these differences first, 
 that the adult children at least were old enough to know 
 better, and secondly, that the children's toy war does no 
 harm. -But the monarchs who make men their pawns 
 do not hesitate to sacrifice them in their larger game.
 
 ' / 
 9 
 
 Let us be wise enough to learn the life lessons our 
 children are daily teaching us. Let us humbly sit at 
 their feet sometimes, and take to heart the warnings that 
 God sends us through these tender little messengers. 
 Let them teach us to be more manly, more womanly. 
 Let us have done with cramping pettiness, and leaving 
 to the children all shallow toys, all whims and fancies, 
 iet us rise and busy ourselves with earnest work more 
 worthy of our matured experience. 
 
 We are all children in the sight of God. In His larger 
 vision, all our penetration is obscurity and haze. In His 
 infinite purpose, all our plans seem small and insuffi- 
 cient. In His eternal wisdom, all our vaunted knowledge 
 seems but as the prattle of a little child. Be humble, 
 then. 
 
 "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou 
 established strength." Children help to equalize the 
 social distinctions of life. They come alike to the tene- 
 ment and the palace. There is no monopoly here. We 
 are all on one level. Wealth, station, culture, have here 
 no privileges. The humblest housewife with her child 
 is a queen to be envied ; the queen, without one, is a for- 
 lorn woman to be pitied. "One touch of nature makes 
 the whole world kin." And fondling our children, 
 tending them, suffering for them and rejoicing with 
 them, we are one humanity. Thus children are the true 
 levellers, teaching not a vulgar, but a noble equality 
 between us all. 
 
 " Out of the mouth of babes hast thou founded strength 
 because of thine enemies." Who are God's enemies, 
 and in what way can the infant strength overthrow 
 them ? God's enemies are His deniers, but the child is 
 God's witness. I need no further arguments to prove 
 to me God's existence. Shut up your books of wordy 
 evidence ; look at the child that is evidence enough.
 
 10 
 
 Atheism may loudly shout its defiance ; that child there 
 silences it. It has come out of the infinite into the defi- 
 nite. It is almost the visible presence of God, and if we 
 have never learned to worship, surely the gift of a child 
 should be sufficient inspiration. If the heavens declare 
 the glory of God, then the child declares the love of 
 God. 
 
 But the atheists are not the only enemies of God, nor 
 the worst. They deny God in their arguments, but some 
 deny God in their lives. The former do not believe in 
 God, but the latter do not act God ; they are not godly. 
 Such are the adversaries of the Eternal. Can the child 
 silence them? Perhaps, it can. A child can some- 
 times reform a life, as a little infant reformed the life of 
 Amos Barton, and changed it from its sour hardness to 
 soft human ness again. The child Isaac taught Abraham 
 that human sacrifice must be sinful. It was a glorious 
 revelation of God through the boy. We cannot attempt 
 to give the record of all these little ministers who have 
 done God's work on earth, by ennobling the heart of 
 man. Some ancient barbarians prayed for sons, that 
 they might live after them to revenge their enemies; but 
 many generations of children have softened these feel- 
 ings, and men hope for sons and daughters " to still the 
 avenger," to perpetuate among mankind the best they 
 inherit, taking it down to the ages.
 
 THE SINS OF THE FATHERS.
 
 ^ lie Sins of the Fathers " 
 
 The first time you read the latter portion of the Second 
 Commandment, it may strike you as stern and discourag- 
 ing. "Visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the 
 children, even unto the third and fourth generation of 
 them that hate Me, but showing mercy unto thousands 
 of them that love Me and keep My Commandments." 
 
 Why should the children suffer for the errors of their 
 ancestors, and is it actually the case ? Yes, it is. \Ve 
 inherit our parents' sins with their features and the color 
 of their hair. They give us their passions and their 
 vices as well as their wealth and estates. Their reputa- 
 tion is our legacy for good or for evil. We share their 
 name and with it the conditions that the name has 
 earned. 
 
 Yet look at it from the side of the parent. You are a 
 father and you love your children with a depth of devo- 
 tion that hesitates at no sacrifice. You rejoice to suffer 
 and to strive that they may know no care; and dear as 
 your desire for your own success is, their's is equally 
 dear to your heart. Now think of it, if, as a young man 
 you are self-indulgent, and careless, if you lead a fast 
 wanton, reckless career, you hand down to the 
 children that come to you later, your broken constitution 
 and delicate health. Perhaps even your grandchildren, 
 born after you are dead, may be consumptive because of 
 your excesses. With that consequence before you, will 
 you not pause well before sinning? Will not every act 
 of yours be now freighted with a responsibility that 
 compels you to live and act as though a hundred lives 
 depended upon yours? And they do. Our sins outlive 
 us to fall upon the heads of those we love most. "Tis a
 
 dreadful penalty none more dreadful. Yet \ve would 
 not have it otherwise. We thank God that He has made 
 us as He has, linking our lives with others, making us 
 responsible creatures; thus giving to duty a new induce- 
 ment, and to evil, a ne\v horror. 'Tis elevating to our 
 dignity that our deeds should mean so much. It reminds 
 us of our kinship with God. 
 
 Forget not, too, the other side "showing mercv unto 
 thousands of them that love Me and keep My Command, 
 ments." The good we do is also registered in our 
 offspring and perpetuated in distant posterity. It is 
 even farther-reaching than evil for that descends "to the 
 third and fourth generation," while godliness extendeth 
 'unto thousands." Never was Shakespeare more unjust 
 than when he said: 
 
 "The evil that men do, live after them, the good is oft interred 
 with their bones." 
 
 If Louis XIV'S vices caused his great-grandson, Louis 
 XVI, to lose his head, Jochanan ben Zackhi's unselfish 
 zeal in asking of Rome, a religious school for his people 
 instead of honors for himself, bore its good fruit in 
 every later generation. Yes, the result of his goodness 
 is with us still, if our existence to-day as a distinct 
 religious individuality, be deemed a benefit and a boon. 
 That Adam's sin cursed mankind to all eternity, is but 
 an imaginary conception, but that Abraham's godliness 
 brought blessing to all the families of the earth by teach- 
 ing them spiritual divinity, we may broadly accept as a 
 truth. 
 
 I will go further, and on the basis of the Second Com- 
 mandment, deciare that goodness is never lost, but is 
 immortal. The world to-day is living on the goodness 
 ol bygone men and women. The product of their brains 
 and their hearts, their struggles and their martyrdoms 
 for freedom, for education, for purity, for justice, we are
 
 enjoying now. Say the Rabbins, "all Israel should 
 consider that it stood at Sinai." All Israel enjoys the 
 vital helpfulness of its commands. The good wrought 
 by Micah, bv Hillel, by Socrates, by Lincoln, is not yet 
 exhausted it never will be. The concentrated essence 
 of past virtue, past kindness, past love is a perennial 
 fount nourishing the children of endless ages. 
 The good are with us still. 
 
 "In pulsec stirred to generosity 
 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars." 
 
 Their worth becomes, 
 
 "The cup of strength in some great agony, enkindles generous 
 ardoi. 
 
 "And is the sweet presence of a good diffused." 
 
 If I said that the spread of evil beyond the evil-doer 
 is the severest form of punishment, surely the perpetua- 
 tion of good is most glorious reward. Right becomes 
 doubly worth achieving, since it is to yield everlasting 
 interest to be enjoyed by future generations. 
 
 But now a thousand years after Moses, the prophet 
 Ezekiel made this startling declaration : 
 
 "What mean you that you use this proverb: The 
 fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth 
 are set on edge? Use it no more. The soul that sinneth 
 it shall die. But if a man be just and do that which is 
 lawful and right he shall surely live. If a man beget 
 a son that seeth all his father's sin, yet doeth not such 
 like, he shall not die for the iniquity of his father he 
 shall surely live. The son shall not bear the sin of the 
 father, neither shall the father bear the sin of the son; 
 the soul that sinneth it shall die." This certainly reads 
 like a blunt renunciation of the Second Commandment. 
 
 Ezekiel s reasoning seems very reasonable. It at once 
 appeals to our common sense. Yet we have also shown 
 the profound truth that the Mosaic principle bears. Yet 
 can two statements that are contradictory, both be right?
 
 Are they contradictory ? May they not both be different 
 phases of a larger truth ? I do not think Ezekiel wished 
 to contradict the Law in this instance. I think he wished 
 to remove a mistake that arose from a too literal inter- 
 pretation of the Commandment. There was a cry for 
 individuality and personal responsibility in his day. 
 The individual wished to be heard and not to be lost in 
 the community. He did not want to feel that the sins of 
 his ancestors made his own salvation hopeless, or that 
 he must go through life bearing the burden of their 
 wrong. 
 
 If Moses, the Lawgiver was right, Ezekiel the prophet 
 was right too. We do not put one man in prison for 
 another man's crime. Christianity's doctrine of'vicarious 
 atonement" has always been repugnant not only to 
 Judaism, but to practical Law; and Moses' offer to die 
 for Israel's sin with the Golden Calf was rejected on the 
 ground of personal accountability for sin. 
 
 What is the whole truth ? The mistakes of the parent 
 do handicap the children, but do not absolute 1 )' condemn 
 them. And if in spite of bad parental example and 
 inherited vice, they can by individual struggle overcome 
 the lower self, the greater is their merit and the more 
 ready is the world to recognize it. That is why so many 
 of you deserve praise, who born to poverty have acquired 
 opulence bred im ignorance, have gained knowledge. 
 Much depends on what we inherit from parents and 
 ancestry, but not everything. We are free agents. Do 
 not then for a moment excuse your faults on the plea 
 of inherited traits, or throw the responsibility of your 
 viciousness on the shoulders of those gone before. 
 
 Sometimes ancestral disadvantages react in our favor, 
 as privation often develops sterling qualities. The 
 awful example of a bad father may fill the child with 
 such horror, that from this specific sin at least, it will
 
 flee in terror. In this way m:my children of drunkards 
 become teetotallers. Then again the same trait inherited 
 in a milder form, becomes a something else. We may 
 modify an inherited obstinacy into firmness, an inherited 
 weakness into gentleness, inherited severity into exact- 
 ness. \\ r e can do so much with ourselves, if we will 
 but try. Our qualities and failings are not iron-cast; 
 they are plastic and may be moulded. If we determined 
 not to improve on our parents, the world would never 
 grow wiser or better. 
 
 There are but too many, unfortunately, who fall even 
 below the example that a pious mother and father have 
 set them, who suppress the goodness they have inherited, 
 who modify inherited dignity into vanity and inherited 
 justice into harshness. Thus we see the sad sight of the 
 scapegrace son of an honored father, or the flighty girl> 
 who, early trained in the way she should go, when of 
 age deliberately departs from it. Il pains me to see a 
 new generation springing up vain, shallow and self- 
 indulgent a sad falling off from the rugged simplicity 
 of their parents young people who, because they have 
 a glib tongue and a certain veneer of polish, think them- 
 selves superior to their parents, those pure-hearted* 
 faithful souls. If these flippant creatures but knew that 
 they are not fit to touch the hern of the garments of 
 their pirents, for, old-fashioned and narrow though they 
 may be, they are staunch and loyal and tender all 
 through. 
 
 It is sad to see the lesson of a noble life wasted on 
 thoughtless, selfish children, who, instead of appreciating 
 the sacrifices daily made for them, and learning to be 
 come co.nsiderate in return, take these sacrifices as mat- 
 ter of course, as something due them their right and 
 tyrannize over their parents if they do not slave to 
 supply their luxuries.
 
 8 
 
 It may be hard that the sins of the parents should be 
 visited on the children, but it is harder that the virtues 
 of the parents should be lost upon the children. Do \ve 
 not daily see people deliberately debase themselves, with 
 righteousness in the persons of their parents standing 
 perpetually before them ? See them go from the home 
 of sanctity to the haunt of vice, thus bringing the fair 
 name they inherit won through a hard struggle down 
 into the dust, and bowing with shame and bitterness the 
 hoary head of a sterling father and a devoted mother in 
 their mad pursuit of disgusting, degrading revelries ! 
 
 Is this not reversing the law that the command and 
 Nature herself teaches, and visiting the sins of guilty 
 children upon innocent parents? 
 
 Let us advance a step further in the complex moral 
 problem presented by the Second Commandment. 
 
 We fall into the habit of talking ot "the good" and 
 "the bad " as though a sharp wall of distinction sepa- 
 rated the one class from the other. Now, we know very 
 well that in real life such is not the case. Who are the 
 wicked, whose sins go down to a third and fourth gen- 
 eration ? Who are the righteous, whose good extendeth 
 unto thousands ? "The soul that sinneth.it shall die," 
 says Ezekiel. Can you say, can I, in whom sin prepon- 
 derates, so that, tested in the balance, the evil outweigh- 
 ing the good, he would be found wanting? We all 
 flatter ourselves that we are fairly good, and it can be 
 easily seen how we come to form a favorable opinion of 
 ourselves. 
 
 We grow accustomed to that which is always with us, 
 learn to tolerate it, and even to like it. Now, we are 
 always with ourselves. For this reason, most people 
 approve of themselves, however detestable they may be 
 to everybody else. They pet and fondle their failings, 
 until they almost look like virtues. Then, again, they
 
 set their good points over against their bad points. 
 One will soliloquize to himself, "I may not be truthful, 
 but then, see how benevolent I am !" and so. on the 
 strength of his benevolence, he continues lying. An- 
 other condones his want of consideration for the poor 
 and unfortunate by his unfailing fidelity to his family ; 
 another makes his industry do penance for his lust. As 
 against this, let me formulate this maxim : To acquiesce 
 in our bad qualities on the strength of our good quali 
 ties is fatal to all improvement. Your vice must stand 
 alone in all its hideousness ; it is no more lessened or 
 compensated or atoned for by an amiable quality, than a 
 man who is overeating himself in one place can com- 
 pensate for one who is starving somewhere else. You 
 stand before God in your sinfulness and in your virtue, 
 and if you wish to make that virtue a sort of moral bank 
 account on which you can draw for your evil doings, 
 then I say that that very virtue becomes a kind of evil. 
 You taint your nobler side if it serve to encourage your 
 infamous side. Better no amiable traits if they be but 
 used as excuses for the continuance of vices. We don't 
 want men who are generous, but unprincipled ; we don't 
 want women who are affectionate, but treacherous. We 
 want good men and women, not moral monstrosities. 
 
 "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the 
 children, even to the third and fourth generation." 
 
 Now, one of the doctrines of sentiment of Judaism 
 teaches: "All Israel are responsible one for the other. " 
 We Hebrews are but an enlarged family. We suffer for 
 the sins of our Israelilic ancestors, and we enjoy their 
 merits. In many of the prayers of our Ritual we ask 
 forgiveness for the sake of the virtues of " the fathers." 
 
 \\ e keenly recognize how closely our reputation is 
 bound up with that of our co-religionists. If a Jew 
 disgraces himself, our cheeks burn with shame : if a Jew
 
 IO 
 
 distinguishes himself, our hearts kindle with pride. One 
 black sheep injures the reputation of all of us One 
 Emma Lazarus raises the world's respect for the whole 
 race. Is not, then, one's responsibility as Jew almost as 
 great as his responsibility as father? Our people as 
 well as our children have to bear our sins. We know 
 that many a Gentile will condemn every Israelite on the 
 globe, because the solitary Israelite he met was vulgar 
 or dishonest. If you care for your fellow-Hebrews then, 
 look to your character and your manners. Be a gentle- 
 man, be a lady, in the noblest sense in which these words 
 are understood, for their sakes as well as for your own, 
 and strive by your individual worth to force the world's 
 esteem for the Jew. 
 
 We are members of the human race as well as of the 
 Jewish race. Need I remind you of your accountability 
 to mankind? Need I remind you of the influence of 
 example? A stone dropped in the water creates a cir- 
 cular ripple, followed by another circle larger in size 
 but fainter in form, and the series of circles continue to 
 grow larger but fainter, until the surface of the water is 
 quiet once more. Each deed, worthy or unworthy, is as 
 a stone dropped in the depths of society, that imme- 
 diately creates a ripple of influence within the circle of 
 its nearest surroundings, and the impression is felt at a 
 greater radius of distance in place and time, though in a 
 fainter degree, and, growing fainter as it reaches further, 
 the effect finally dies out. But it is scientifically claimed 
 that though imperceptible to our eyes that series of rip- 
 ples on the surface of the water caused by the falling 
 stone continue perpetually until stopped by counteract- 
 ing influences. Can we say how far the consequences 
 of our deeds reach, or where they end, if they ever do ? 
 Can we trace the intricate results of our actions upon 
 the actions and the circumstances and the characters of
 
 n 
 
 others, and then trace the further results of those change 5 
 upon new actions and new character? Divinity alone 
 can take up the tangled thread of perpetually interwoven 
 human influences. But, on the same principle, we can 
 readily understand how a city could be saved by ten 
 righteous men by the gradual extension of their influ- 
 ence. We are each of us one of the ten one of the ten 
 that save it, or one of the ten that destroy it. One of 
 ten that injures it. even to its third and its fourth gen- 
 eration, one of the ten that helps it for a thousand 
 generations which will you be?
 
 JL 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE. BOOK, 
 
 A Bible History for Jewish Schools, on a new plan. 
 
 Contains much miscellaneous information that will materially 
 
 assist the Teacher and make the subject more interesting 
 
 and more instructive to the pupil, 
 
 BV 
 
 MAURICE H. HARRIS, A. M., Ph. D. 
 
 Rabbi of Temple Israel of Harlem, X. Y. 
 
 Vol. 1. From the Creation to the Death of Moses. 
 
 Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
 
 Book I. Early Tradition. Book II. Patriarchal Ages. 
 
 Book III. Exodus. Book IV. Law. 
 
 Book V. Close of Moses' Leadership. 
 
 Appendix, Prayers, Hymns, Calendar, Exam. Questions, &fc. 
 
 Vol II. From the Conquest to the Death of Solomon. 
 Book I. The Period of the Conquest. 
 
 Book II. First Stage of the Monarchy 
 
 Book III. The Rise of Judah. 
 
 Vol. III. From the Secession to the Exile. 
 Book I. The Rival Kingdoms. 
 
 Book II. The Influence of the Prophets. 
 
 Book III. The Survival of Judah. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " Although made specially for use by Hebrews, it is so simple, straight- 
 forward and sensible as to deserve the attention of al! young teachers in Sunday 
 Schools. The handling of the early chapters in Genesis is admirably reverent and 
 rational." N. Y. Herald. 
 
 ' It is gratifying to find our Hebrew brethren doing such excellent work for 
 their Sunday Schools. This little volume is vastly ahead in its treatment of the Old 
 Testament of the great mass of literature on this subject prepared for children. ' 
 Christian Kenster. 
 
 5O cents each Volume or 55. 4O per Oozen. 
 
 PHILIP COWEN, 213-215 EAST 44TH STREET, 
 
 NEW YORK.
 
 MICAH'S CREED-I.
 
 Micali's Creed. 
 
 I. JUSTICE AND KINDNESS. 
 
 "Wherewith shtll I come before the Lord and bow myself before 
 the high God ? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with 
 calves of a year old ? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of 
 rams or with ten thousand river,s of oil ? Shall I give my first-born 
 for my transgression, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul ? 
 He hath shewed thee O man what is good ; and what doth the 
 Lord rtquire of thee, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to 
 walk humbly wiih thy God. Micah vi, 68-. 
 
 Micah states his conclusion in the form of a self- 
 evident truth. As such, certainly, it appeals to us. But 
 in the days of the prophet it was by no means such an 
 accepted truism as he tries to present it. Although he 
 declares " it hath been shown thee, O man," the convic- 
 tion had not yet struck home. "Burnt-offerings and 
 calves of a year old" were still regarded as the prime 
 features of worship. The popular conception of Jehovah 
 was slill that of an earthly king and an Eastern despot 
 at that, \vho must be approached with substantial 
 presents if his wrath is to be appeased, .and who would 
 often impose cruel exactions as the condition of his 
 favor. 
 
 ' What doth the Lord require of thee but to be just, 
 kind and humble." Micah does not intend here to give 
 us a complete summary of religious duties. It is but a 
 hasty generalization in which we detect an implied 
 reproach, 4t What does God require of man nothing 
 for Himself; to Him everything belongs." "Be just and 
 kind to your fellowmen, that's all He wants." Righteous- 
 ness to man sums up obligation to God. The old- 
 fashioned catechisms divide duty into two parts duty 
 to God and duty to man. I do not think these two can
 
 
 be separated, and it is unfortunate that it was ever 
 attempted. It has led in the first place to the division 
 into religion and ethics of what should always have 
 an inseparable whole. It has encouraged the fallacy 
 that the ceremonies of the sanctuary and the dogmas of 
 theology were distinct from, and occasionally even 
 opposed to the duties of humanity. "Shall I bring the 
 fruit of my body for the sin of my soul," asks Micah ? 
 The sacrifice of the children to Moloch and to other 
 heathen divinities was a religious behest, commanded by 
 the priests of Baal. This awful temptation of their 
 surroundings was a perpetual menace to Israel. And in 
 spite of the burning protests of the later prophets 
 against the unnatural and revolting rite, some yielded 
 to this cruei example. Even the doctrine of vicarious 
 atonement the belief that the crucifixion of Jesus of 
 Nazareth atoned for the sins of man, is really a rem- 
 nant of the old superstition, " How to get rid of sin," 
 how to compensate for it, was the bugbear of scholastic 
 theology for centuries. 
 
 Micah answers his own question in a thunderous "Xo! 
 He hath told thee, O man, what is good, "indicating first, 
 that animal and human sacrifice are not good, and indi- 
 cating secondly that what Israel's God requires must be 
 good. Where had it been told? At Sinai. *'Thow shalt 
 not murder nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor bear 
 false witness, nor covet." This is what God requires of 
 us love justice, kindness, humility. A declaration such 
 as this so completely appeals to our highest wisdom and 
 our noblest ideals, that it seems almost like religion's 
 last word. And perhaps it is. The prophets of the 8th 
 and yth centuries reached the high water mark of moral 
 teaching. Their standard of duty is an unattained ideal 
 still. There are no new religious truths to teach. Ah 
 we could but live up to the old !
 
 "To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly 
 with thy God." "To do justice." It is said that justice 
 is blind and in the sense of being impartial, seeing 
 neither party, friend, interest nor appearance, this is 
 true. But in no other sense, for justice must have her 
 eyes open and her ears too, she must have all her senses 
 on the alert. It is not easy to be entirely just, even when 
 we wish to be. We cannot be just without wisdom: 
 justice will grow as the world becomes wiser. To give 
 to each his due, we must first know what his due is. 
 This is not easy. We have been centuries trying to find 
 out what we owe to each other. Have we for instance 
 been just to women? To be just to others we must not 
 merely consider tangible things for they are the least 
 in life. We are not just to woman if we hamper her, if 
 we restrict her liberties, if we refuse to give free play 
 and full opportunity to the expansion of her brain and 
 her soul. This we have not done in the past. This we 
 are only beginning to do now. 
 
 Have we fulfilled our obligations to our children? Do 
 not forget that we may be generous and yet not just. We 
 may lavish bounties upon them and yet not be just to 
 them, in not permitting them to develop their own 
 individuality. It is natural that parents should wish 
 their children to accept all things in the light in which 
 they do and to conform to their ideas, but is not always 
 right. Remember they are distinct from us with different 
 personalities. We cannot always measure the depths of 
 their nature. We dare not tyrannically suppress or 
 ignore their yearnings. It is the soul crying for ligh 
 and air. Xor need it make us sad that we cannot under- 
 stand them, or that they go a different way, provided it 
 be a good way. Rejoice in their higher growth, in their 
 righteous independence.and thank God that He has per- 
 mitted you, the old stock, to bear so fair a blossom.
 
 We talk a good deal of our duties to the lower 
 working classes; and since their supply of worldly 
 goods is small, and their battle for life fiercer, it is 
 certainly our duty to ask whether it is just that we 
 should have so much, and they so little. And although 
 equality, even of substance, is one of those delusions 
 that sensible people have long given up, and although, 
 too, happiness does not vary precisely with income, still 
 we should see to it rigidly, that in the pursuit of our 
 avocation, we are unjustly depriving no man. But what 
 I am also anxious to point out is that something is owed 
 to the higher classes too, by those standing at the other 
 social extreme. There is no justification for speaking 
 of them with contempt, as though they were good for 
 nothing, or with indignation as though they were little 
 better than criminals. Coming down to sober truth 
 they are simply guilty of being successful: they stand 
 where those who condemn them would stand if they had 
 a chance. People do not necessarily become wealthy 
 because they are selfish any more than people always 
 become poor because they are shiftless. The idle and 
 selfish are found indiscriminately among both classes. 
 If it be bitterly said that poverty has been called a crime, 
 bear in mind wealth has been considered a crime too 
 a crime worthy of death thought the French peasantry 
 of the last century, and the anarchists of this. Declares 
 the Bible of our neighbors " it is harder for a rich man 
 to enter Heaven than for a camel to enter the eye of a 
 needle."* I think it is imporiant that we should teach 
 the poor to be just to the rich, just because the duty is 
 not so evident, and is usually ignored. 
 
 Indeed we are every one of us too hasty, in our whole- 
 
 *"Eye of a needle "is explained to-day as the side, smaller 
 entrance for passengers, which the camel at times tried in vain to 
 enter.
 
 sale condemnations of certain classes. We censure the 
 corruption of the politician and the lewdness of the 
 actress, but we do not always consider their temptations. 
 A good old proverb reminds us to "give even the devil 
 his due." We condemn the criminal class in one sweep- 
 ing denunciation, ignoring inherited viciousness* 
 depraved environment and the host of conditions that 
 decide tendencies. We are seldom just to our friends or 
 our enemies, partial towards the former, prejudiced 
 against the latter We excuse those we love much too 
 easily, and give amiable names to their weaknesses. We 
 ascribe bad motives to the most innocent actions of those 
 we don't like; we see snare and design in all they say; 
 we give them credit for no disinterested good. Malice 
 is a bad historian. Judaism has never asked you to 
 ''love your enemies," but, oh ! if you could but be just to 
 them. 
 
 "Do justice." Yes grudgingly we do. Nations grant 
 each other justice at the cannon's mouth, under the 
 moral persuasion of gunpowder. Some grant justice 
 when they can withhold it no longer, when they hear an 
 official rap upon their doors, "open in the name of the 
 law." Bolts and bars and police have to make up for 
 the deficiency of justice in some of us. Our due is not 
 always given, at times it has to be wrested Many respect 
 not the law, but the organized power that is behind to 
 enforce it. 
 
 Yet for the justification of human nature let me add 
 that not a few have to be reminded to be just to them- 
 selves. I spoke of parents being unjust to their children. 
 This is much less usual than the uncomplaining self- 
 sacrifice of the parent, that wears itself out in ministering 
 to their needs. Often I feel inclined to say to a parent, 
 stop, you are needlessly yielding up your vitality in your 
 devotion to your children, when perhaps they would
 
 become more reliant, if made to depend on them- 
 selves. You owe something to yourselves. It was never 
 intended that care of children should be a slavery; the 
 nervous system can only bear a certain tension and then 
 it snaps. 
 
 We are often too easy with our employe's, forgiving 
 where we should punish. We call it mercy it is oftener 
 weakness. Don't forget that to let a fault pass is always 
 easier than to bring it to justice, and that indolence is at 
 the bottom of much of our forgiveness. A mistaken 
 weakness will lead a housewife to give a "character " to 
 an unreliable discharged domestic, and thus endanger 
 another household. 
 
 What doth the Lord require of thee, asks Micah? Noth 
 ing but to do justice Nothing but what a little all, that 
 is. Abraham at the gate of Sodom asks "Shall not the 
 Judge of all the earth do justice?" Yes, "He, the Rock, 
 His work is just." But can we say this of any of our 
 work? Is not justice one of the faces of that many-sided 
 perfection that is attained only in Divinity ! 
 
 'To love kindness" is the prophet's next condition. 
 Kindness is easier than justice. Justice has exact limits, 
 to go beyond them is to transgress it. Kindness is an 
 indefinite realm and we may wander where we please. 
 Justice needs sterling characters to fulfill its rigid re- 
 quirements, kindness admits of that broad latitude that 
 brings its performance within the capacity of most 
 natures. 
 
 And now what is kindness? Derivations help us some, 
 times to get at the heart of words. It is of the same root as 
 kin, which means relationship. Be kind to all. Treat 
 them as though a tie of blood united you to them. All 
 mankind should be a brotherhood. One touch of nature 
 one common experience makes the whole world kin, 
 i. e. reminds us of our kinship. Not all recognize duties
 
 even to their actual relatives. The greatest bitterness 
 oft exists between the nearest kin. Cain is not the only 
 one who asks "Am I my brother's keeper?" A cynic sar- 
 castically congratulates us if we have no relatives. That 
 is but a passing mood. Our hearts would grow numb 
 unless some living affections were enshrined there to 
 keep them warm. The heart craves love as the body 
 craves food, and finding none in the home will go forth 
 toother homes or even to the homeless, and claim kin- 
 ship with them by showing them kindness. 
 
 "Do justice," but some need more than justice. At 
 times we must measure what we should do for others, 
 not by our obligations, but by their need. In the high- 
 est sense we owe toothers what we can do for them and 
 what they are in want of. We should rejoice to think 
 that we can be helpful we should "lovt kindness." 
 Notice the distinction, do justice, but love kindness. 
 Within certain limits we are compelled to do justice, the 
 law mav command it. But who dare demand kindness 
 of us! When granted on demand it ceases to be kind 
 ness it is something else. Money is not kindness al- 
 though it pay the rent of the poor; clothing is not 
 kindness, although it protect them. Kindliness is a dis- 
 position of friendliness towards others. It may not 
 always take the tangible form of gifts or bread. "Not by 
 bread alone doth man live." The milk of human kind- 
 ness is not a physical nutriment. "Behold I will send a 
 famine in the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst tor 
 water." Kindness immediately we think of feeding the 
 hungry and clothing the naked. Is that all the human 
 heart wants, the bodily needs of the beasts of the field ? 
 The well-to-do need kindness at times as urgently as the 
 distressed. There are dark moments when a word of 
 kindness, a silent hand pressure will save a soul from 
 despair and a heart from breaking. Think not con-
 
 temptuously of the kindness that is sympathy, when 
 really heart speaks to heart, and soul is knit to 
 soul. 
 
 Be not chary of your \vords when there is feeling 
 beiiind them. Get into the habit of expressing the kind 
 thoughts that pass through your brain to those about 
 you wife and children and servants and persons you 
 meet. We know that ''words like nature half reveal and 
 half conceal the thought within." Yet a broken effort 
 should be made to express the tenderness and goodwill 
 that wells up in the heart. Why need it go unrecorded 
 and unenjoyed like " the rose that blushes unseen " and 
 'the myrtle in the desert." And if you think a man in 
 public life has done well, has earned your admiration 
 by fearlessness and integrity, write and tell him so. It 
 will help him to further good, never mind how great he 
 is or how small you are. 
 
 We all prefer to meet people whose manners are kindly 
 and whose dispositions are amiable, to those gruff and 
 curt. And yet here a word of warning is necessary. 
 When actual help is needed and you are called upon, 
 and not wishing to say anything unpleasant or have the 
 applicant feel ill-disposed to you you may receive the 
 person smilingly, utter some stereotyped form of 
 encouragement and bow him out with parting good-will, 
 but with no intention of putting yourself out for him 
 one bit. I say a thousand times rather give the rebuff, 
 make it as brutal as you please. Brutality is easier to 
 bear than humbug. Many persons don't like to say 
 unpleasant things because they are always more trouble- 
 some and more disagreeable to say than pleasant things. 
 They are most affable, these people who won't turn a 
 finger to help you, who may even injure your reputation 
 by an innuendo here and there smiling all the time and 
 presenting all the externals of kindness. But we have
 
 long ago learned that one may "smile and smile and be 
 a villain." 
 
 How a good word from a good man is treasured 
 through the ages. That phrase of Micah, "loving kind- 
 ness,'' has been compressed into one word "loving-kind- 
 ness," making it a distinct quality. Let us always keep 
 them united that is, let us never separate affection 
 from good deeds, but follow up the kind feeling with 
 kind action.
 
 MICAH'S CREED-II.
 
 Mi call 1 s Creed. 
 
 II. "WALKING HUMBLY WITH GOD." 
 "What doth God require of thee, nothing but to do 
 justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with thy 
 God." The duties of justice and kindness are clear 
 enough, but what does " walking humbly with God " 
 mean ? This phrase like so many Bible expressions may 
 perhaps be classed with those sentences that cannot be 
 explained they must be felt. If we are in sympathy 
 with the writer they are revelations, if not voluminous 
 commentary will fail to satisfy. Language is like a key 
 that put in the lock that fits it, will immediately open 
 the receptacle, but is nearly always useless for other 
 locks. The thoughts of one brain will fit the thoughts 
 of a certain other brain, and new light will flash from 
 the union. So we are not all helped by the same books; 
 Darwin saw nothing in Shakespeare. Still there are 
 many interpreters who can translate the feelings and 
 expressions of one into the feelings and expressions of 
 another. Every teacher ought to be an interpreter. 
 And I think we should all of us strive to put ourselves 
 in touch with the world's best writers and not give them 
 up at once with the excuse that we belong to different 
 realms of thought. We are all made in God's image 
 and that Divine kinship should remind us that in trying 
 to understand others we are aided in understanding 
 ourselves, 
 
 "To walk humbly with God." Perhaps if we first 
 look at humility in all its bearings we may be better 
 prepared to comprehend this special application. Uriah 
 Heep cringing before everybody and reminding them
 
 that he was so "very 'umble,"fills us with such abhorence. 
 that in the reaction we almost welcome an aggressive 
 man. Wicked people always bring good words into 
 discredit, and after Guiteau took shelter behind the 
 word inspiration, when he brutally shot President Gar- 
 field, it was a long time before we felt like taking the 
 word up again. I know that even some so-called 
 atheists were really deists, who disclaimed the term God. 
 because they thought it had been abused by the ignorant 
 and by the hypocritical. 
 
 But even if Dickens' famous character had been sin- 
 cere in his subserviency, he would have been almost as 
 disgusting. Nothing is more revolting to manly men 
 and womanly women than servility or self-abasement. 
 We ought never to preach the doctrine of turning the 
 cheek to the smiter. I do not say this because this text 
 occurs in the New Testament, for it is really an echo of 
 rabbinic teaching like so much that that book contains. 
 The submission of the Mohammedans, which is an out- 
 growth of their fatalism/, is an unfortunate trait. 
 Humility is not self-depreciation, although the Greeks 
 always used it in that sense; nor is it difidence. nor is it 
 lack of confidence in one's own abilities; and if any of 
 you have these failings, don't forget that they are fail- 
 ings, that you should discourage them, for they stand in 
 the way of success. Humility is rather just estimation 
 than under-estimation of one's self. No one can come 
 to a sober valuation of himself compared with the great- 
 ness that there has been and is, and, aware of his own 
 weaknesses be anything but humble. I am quite sure 
 that Newton knew the full value of his discoveries, when 
 he said that he had "picked up but a few pebbles on the 
 coast while the vast ocean of knowledge was still unex- 
 plored " none better. But his standard was high. 
 Intellectual humility is therefore a common experience
 
 among scholars. The higher we rise among the realms 
 of the learned, the less assertive do we find them, they 
 claim little. They are less sure with their many resources 
 than we are with our few. They have unknowingly 
 followed the injunction of the rabbis and taught their 
 tongue to say '' I don't know." 
 
 Of course, we must carefully distinguish between the 
 external manner of humility and the actual feeling. 
 Society offers us certain conventional phrases of self- 
 disparagement that mean nothing and deceive nobody. 
 Self-praise is considered bad form, and hence on grounds 
 of social etiquette alone, people refrain from spoken 
 approval of their own doings. Yet in their secret heart 
 they may hold an exaggerated opinion of themselves. 
 When one says "I have done my best in my humble 
 way," he does not wish to be interpreted too literally. 
 Nothing would disappoint some persons more than to 
 take them at their own stated valuation. 
 
 Not that self-depreciation even in words is popular 
 to-day, nor have we a right to ascribe the change to 
 greater sincerity. We seem to be living in an age that 
 has lost its modesty, and no longer hesitates as did, I 
 think the last generation before declaring its own import- 
 ance. People unblushingly reminds us of what they 
 have done; they write their achievements in large 
 capitals. They do not hide their light under a bushel, 
 but advertise themselves as though they were soap. 
 Said John Howard, the man who did more for the con- 
 vict than any other human being: "Let there be no pomp 
 at my funeral; put a sun-dial on my grave and let me be 
 forgotten." Such is not the spirit of the present age. 
 
 The quiet unostentatious worker, the man of solid but 
 not of florid attainments, that rare few who work for 
 good and not for glory, those old-fashioned people who 
 are of sterling worth, but neglect to tell us so they are
 
 left far behind. We are all to blame. We encourage 
 people to recite their merits and praise them for it. We 
 do not lovingly seek out the good, who humbly withdraw 
 from the public gaze, but leave them to pass away in 
 obscurity. Perhaps when they are dead, their steadfast 
 fidelity and splendid attainments dawn upon us as they 
 begin to be missed, and a little compunction strikes us 
 as we pay our tribute all too late. But the thought of 
 them is soon drowned in the noisy self-assertion of the 
 upstart sensationalist, who sends heralds ahead to 
 announce his coming, like a circus show, and who per- 
 sonally superintends the manufacture of his own halo. 
 What matters it if "all that glitters is not gold," if it 
 only pass for gold. 
 
 It is ^Esop who tells us that a fly sitting upon the 
 axle of a chariot wheel said : " See what a dust I raise." 
 How many conceitedly point to themselves as the cause 
 of certain fortunate conditions, that propitious circum- 
 stance may have brought about. For causes and results 
 are slippery things and we can never be sure in connect- 
 ing them. How few have the heroic discipline, humbly 
 to declare even to themselves that they are not indispen- 
 sible, that the same results would have been accomplished 
 by others, that they owe as much to chance as to merit, 
 that they are not more industrious, more self-denying 
 more faithful than millions who stand immeasurably 
 below them in the world's esteem. And yet how true it 
 is ! Who are the great, who are the small ? You talk of 
 your inferiors what do you mean ? The man whose 
 grandfather didn't make a fortune by an unforeseen rise 
 in real estate; the man who lacks your faculty of speech, 
 but who has a heart of gold and is one of nature's 
 noblemen ? Before we dare say that one is the superior 
 of the other, we must measure them in all their dimen- 
 sions, not in one. A man may be a giant intellectually
 
 "f 
 
 and a pigmy morally, like Bacon, "wisest and meanest 
 of mankind." Don't boast of your possessions or your 
 external dignity, but humbly thank God that all has 
 gone so well with you better perhaps than you deserved. 
 A Roman triumvir in the meridian of his glory had a 
 servant standing behind his chair, who from time to 
 time declared "Memento te esse hominem." In the 
 intoxication of glory at some grand success, \ve are 
 tempted to forget it. Unlike the Sicilian prince who 
 ate from an earthenware plate, to remind himself that he 
 was once a potter, we put the humble past for ever out 
 of sight. 
 
 "Walk humbly with God." I have dwelt more on 
 intellectual humility than on moral humility, though it 
 is always moral fundamentally. Still, we have not yet 
 looked at it from its religious aspect. The rabbins say 
 that a proud man is an idolator, and we perhaps echo a 
 something of that thought to-day, when we define reli- 
 gion as our humble recognition of our own weakness, 
 and our acknowledgment of a Higher Power, who is in 
 fullest perfection what we are in such a very small 
 degree. So piety and humility are often associated. 
 With thoughts directed toward God, the comparison of 
 man with his Maker must crush at once all pretension 
 as absurd. We disclaim our vain superiority as petty 
 in the presence of Him who is so far above us all, and 
 before whose Infinite greatness our finite differences of 
 high and low are altogether lost. "Oh, Lord," said 
 Abraham, ''can I presume to speak to Thee; I am but 
 dust and ashes?" Even in the presence of scholars we 
 feel our littleness, and shrink abashed to the back- 
 ground, glad of the privilege of listening silently to 
 their wisdom. Just a little before, perhaps, we were 
 moving among a throng who knew less than we. How 
 big we thought we were, and how we lorded it over
 
 8 
 
 them ! Look up to the stars, and their immeasurable 
 distance will give a faint suggestion of the magnitude 
 of space, and what a tiny speck are you and your 
 estates, and what a drop in the ocean of time is your 
 short life ! Does not that make you feel humble not 
 discouragingly humble, but reverently humble? "Oh 
 Lord, when I consider the heavens the work of Thy 
 hands, what is man that Thou shouldst think of him?" 
 
 Should we, then, feel shamed to the very dust ? By 
 no means. Religion, having first taught man to realize 
 humbly his own deficiencies, whispers to him of the 
 possibilities within him. Religion inspires true dignity. 
 Therefore, that very Psalm 1 have just quoted having 
 begun, "What is man," continues: "Yet Thou hast 
 made him but little lower than God, and crownst him 
 with gloiy and honor." I like to see that union of 
 humility and sturdiness, humble in its quiet unpreten- 
 tiousness, yet invincible as a rock in rigid adherence to 
 moral right ; gentle and yet firm, unflinchingly bearing 
 whatever slings and arrows fidelity to conviction may 
 entail, yet making no fuss, calling no audience to wit- 
 ness his honesty, sending no account of his achievements 
 to the morning papers, but still comforted and upheld 
 with the sweet assurance that He who seeth the evil and 
 the good will not forget His servants. 
 
 I am getting very near to my text now "Walking 
 humbly with God." How can we walk with God? 
 This phrase is a familiar figure of speech in the Bible. 
 "The path of right," "the Lord knoweth the way of the 
 righteous," "walk not in wicked counsel." Again, God 
 is represented as saying to Abraham: "Walk before 
 Me, and be thou perfect. " In that long genealogical 
 table from Adam to Noah, of men who lived fabulous 
 ages, we are told a single fact of just one of 
 them Enoch that "he walked with God." Be-
 
 cause of that solitary epitaph, fancy has woven 
 many a pretty legend around his name. What, 
 then, is the meaning hidden in this metaphor, 
 " walking with God ?" The prophet Amos asks : " Shall 
 two walk together unless they be agreed ?" God is our 
 everlasting standard of changeless perfection. God 
 cannot go our way, but we can go God's way ; we can 
 direct our life in line with His spirit. God must be our 
 ideal, and we must define an imaginary line between 
 ourselves and our ideal, and let no diverting temptation 
 draw us from that narrow path of right that leads from 
 man to his Maker. 
 
 We must learn to walk with God, and not go against 
 Him. We must be very cautious that, in following 
 God, we are not following some will-o'-the-wisp that 
 may land us in the mire, or some mirage that may mock 
 us with its illusive beauty, only to vanish into shadowy 
 nothing as we approach it, leaving us deceived and 
 abandoned. In other words, we must not too easily 
 satisfy ourselves that we are religious or that we are 
 dutiful. We may start out to walk with God, and then 
 become so absorbed in ourselves that we imperceptibly 
 drift away, and find that we have lost Him. Often in a 
 strange country, when we think we are walking parallel 
 to an unseen path and will come out to a familiar point, 
 we may be slightly veering in a different course, so that 
 each step takes us further away from our destination. 
 The bad way looks so much like the good way at certain 
 places, that only by close scrutiny can we tell the differ- 
 ence. I have seen selfishness mistaken for piety ; cruel 
 spite for religious zeal ; idolatry for godliness. It is 
 not easy to walk with God to keep step with the Un- 
 seen. A keenly sensitive conscience, a vigilant moral 
 sense, can alone assure us of our Divine companionship . 
 
 But we must walk humbly with God. I have just said
 
 10 
 
 we cannot see Him, nor can we always understand His 
 ways. They often seem to us hard and bitter. It is not 
 easy to submit humbly to the chastening of the Lord, 
 and to feel assured that whom He loveth He chasteneth. 
 How many in the presence of calamity can humbly bow 
 their heads, and while the tears are flowing fast, say, 
 "The Lord knoweth best. We have no right to question 
 the wisdom or the justice of His decrees," and, like 
 Aaron, stand in the silence of submission ? Oh, that we 
 could all learn to acquire the humility that is patience, 
 the humility that is resignation, the humility that is 
 faith ! They are all subtle forms of strength and help 
 us to bear the burdens of life. 
 
 Let us not rebel against the vicissitudes of our lot 
 whatever they may be, but school our spirit to serve 
 God even in the darkness walking His way, even 
 though it be a hard way, humbly and silently trusting 
 His leadership, pausing not even in the perilous passes, 
 knowing that "His ways are ways of pleasantness, and 
 all His paths are peace." 
 
 "Hush!" said Moses; "and see the salvation of the 
 Lord." How dare we murmur at decrees of which we 
 see but fragments, the beginning and the end being lost 
 in mystery? We do not even know enough to call them 
 decrees. We get occasional glimpses of vastness in 
 momentary flashes of light. Let our ignorance teach us 
 humility, even while our knowledge teaches us belief. 
 Let us be the children of God, and, like children, un- 
 questionably trust Him, feeling that His love will protect 
 us from all danger. Let us walk humbly with God. 
 Oh, for the sweet confidence that can say : " Yea, though 
 I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
 fear no evil, for Thou art with me !" Amen.
 
 THE OLDNESS OF THE NEW.
 
 The Oldness of tke New. 
 
 Among the different cries to which this age is giving 
 voice, one that seems to be raised above the others, is 
 the cry for the new in all things. Its refrain is " We 
 have had enough of the old, of the past. It is time we 
 swept away these cobwebs of tradition, we have had 
 enough of ancient precedent and authority of the ages* 
 Let us shake off the shackles of antiquity, of old beliefs 
 that we do not accept of old theories, that we do not 
 share, of old religions that have outlived their truth 
 cast them into the waste-basket of things worn out and 
 rejected; and then let us have a brand new religion on 
 brand new principles, a new departure that will voice the 
 needs of the present hour. 
 
 But is the new so very new ? There is a stubborn bit 
 of philosophy in the Bible that we cannot somehow get 
 rid of, reminding us that "there is nothing new under the 
 sun!" That which we call new is nothing more than a 
 fresh coat of paint, or a changed dress, or, at most, a 
 different arrangement of the old materials. The histo- 
 rian points to one isolated instance of a period known 
 as Renaissance when all the so-called new inventions of 
 the sixteenth century were nothing more than revivals 
 of inventions made and forgotten two thousand years 
 before. But I believe that all history is renaissance, 
 and not merely one of its chapters. It is all repetition* 
 revival, rehibilitation, not only in its inventions and 
 a rts, but in its 'social movements, its ideas, its epics, its 
 enterprise. The "world" seems to move in a circle as 
 well as the earth. We are but turning our ancestors' 
 garments, in a manner, it is true, ''warranted to look
 
 like new," and only when we rip them open, do they 
 show the well-worn merits of earlier generations. 
 
 What is there so new in our religious reforms is it 
 the giving up of the literal interpretation of the Bible 
 and explaining its stories and miracles figuratively ? 
 Philo did that in Alexandria before the second Temple 
 had fallen. Is it praying in the vernacular ? They 
 prayed in nothing else twenty-five centuries ago. Hebrew 
 was the vernacular. It is only we who pray in a strange 
 language. And even when their tongue became Chaldaic, 
 they made Chaldaic the language of prayer, showing 
 that they were perhaps more adaptable than we are. 
 Does the new truth consist in the lessening importance 
 of ceremonial and the growing importance ot spiritual ? 
 That was an old story to the prophets, who flourished 
 before the foundations of Rome were laid. I might 
 almost say they taught nothing else. "Not animal 
 sacrifice," says Micah, ''but justice, mercy and humility." 
 " Never mind about new moons and Festivals, let us 
 have charity, purity, righteousness," said Isaiah. " God 
 does not want burnt-offerings, but obedience," says 
 Jeremiah. "I have my opinion of those so conscientious 
 as to exact times of holy observance, but who give bad 
 weight to the poor," says Amos. What then is the much 
 vaunted new religious idea ? Even scepticism is as old 
 as faith, our doubts are as venerable as our beliefs. We 
 can be just as old-fashioned when we deny as when we 
 accept. If we have anything new to teach, it is rather 
 in detail, form or minor accessory. 
 
 And even granted, as of course we do grant, that new 
 thought that is also vital thought has just been given 
 life is this only true of our age ? Has the world stood 
 still till the ipth century, and then for the first time 
 decided to move ? Has not each century bequeathed to 
 posterity a fresh experience, a glorious discovery ? Is
 
 '*? 
 
 5 
 
 not human experience always being enriched and 
 corrected ? In our days yes, but in the days of Charle- 
 magne, too, aye, and of Bacon and Maimonides and 
 Newton. Has not almost every generation reached a 
 condition of advancement, beyond which it seemed 
 impossible to go? Has not the world always been on 
 the eve of a crisis, and jogged on nevertheless ? When 
 the year 1000 approached, people believed that the world 
 was bound to come to an end, and I think that every 
 generation believes that something is going to happen 
 in its age that has never happened before. 
 
 As an instance of the oldness of the new, I have often 
 thought that when the prophets first preached the abro- 
 gation of sacrifices, timid people began to say ''what ! 
 give up animal sacrifices ! it is one of the pillars of 
 Judaism, even Moses did not dare do that ! You will 
 begin by abolishing sacrifices, then you will abolish 
 priests, and so abolishing bit by bit, very soon there will 
 be nothing left." Don't suppose, therefore, that you 
 were the first to speak in that way; even that argument, 
 if it is an argument, is a very old argument. 
 
 Surely the liberty and rights enjoyed in this country 
 are modern, it may be asked ? Yes, but let the American 
 Republic forget not the debt it owes to the Constitu- 
 tional Monarchy of England that preceded it. Without 
 that preparatory condition their free speech and universal 
 suffrage would not be possible. The freedom that you 
 enjoy is not of to-day's birth, nor of yesterday's; you owe 
 some of it to the Habeas Corpus Act that was passed in 
 the year 1679, some of it to the Magna Charta that was 
 signed as early as the year 1215. Each age has given 
 something toward your enfranchisement; it is not all of 
 your own making. 
 
 It is seldom we can point to one man as the inventor 
 of a complete machine. He perhaps adds a wheel or
 
 improves a balance, simplifies or enlarges a previous 
 contrivance. Did Watt invent the steam engine ? There 
 was some species of steam engine in Greece, 130 years 
 before the common era; a Spaniard, a German and an 
 Italian, each did something toward its improvement 
 around the i6th century, only to be followed by two or 
 three Englishmen who pushed the invention still further 
 on; then a Frenchman added the piston, only then came 
 the famous Watt, who devised a separate vessel to con- 
 dense the steam. And so Columbus has to share the 
 discovery of America with half a dozen others. Now 
 that John Tyndall has died, it is hard to find out just 
 what he did. He did parts of so many things. He 
 supplied links to ever so many inventions. Our improve- 
 ments in social life belong to no one age, but to all ages; 
 like the sciences they represent, a perpetual, never end- 
 ing, always advancing growth. 
 
 The new things and theories of to-day are then simply 
 the latest phase of all that has been. The new religious 
 thought is but the last development from the old, is 
 evolved from the past and belongs to it, just as the child 
 is of the parent, bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh and 
 soul of its soul. Shall we then, having reached the new, 
 cast off the old, cut adrift from the past, which is the 
 father of the present, and like the new Pharoah, shall 
 we " know not Joseph ?" Shall we give up our grand 
 old religion, upon which is registered the growing 
 thought and deepening fervor of every epoch, and 
 organize a new religion, based only on the very latest 
 and very newest of our convictions ? 
 
 We rejoice in the glory of the flowers. They come to 
 us with such precise regularity, marking off the months, 
 that it seems as though they must have always been. 
 Qf course, you know that such is not the case. Flowers 
 are one of the later developments of nature. There was
 
 a. time when there were no flowers at all, long before 
 man made his appearance on the earth, nor were there 
 any bees to gather honey from the flowers that had not 
 come, nor were there any songbirds. A luxuriant 
 growth of enormous ferns marked the preceding stage- 
 Nature was not as beautiful then as now. But in her 
 gradual development she has perpetually attained a 
 richer glory. Now does nature discard all her earlier 
 creations, produce flowers and cease producing trees and 
 ferns, and moss? It would be very unfortunate if she 
 did. The flowers would lose their charm without th e 
 beautiful green background. They are most beautiful, 
 only when taken together with all the previous develop, 
 ments. Nature has retained for us all the different 
 gradations of her growth, except a few extinct flora 
 and fauna. Even her dead leaves enrich the soil, con- 
 tributing towards the living buds ar.d preaching yet 
 again the immortality of all things good. Shall we only 
 accept the last blossoms of religion and cut assunder the 
 tree and roots from which they have sprung ? The new 
 comes from the old and depends upon it for sustenance 
 and life. 
 
 Nature is one even as God is One, as man is one 
 there is no such thing as orthodox nature and reform 
 nature. She is one glorious whole. She has never 
 renounced hei past or severed herself from it, for she is 
 incomplete without it. The evolutionist sees a latent 
 reptile in the flying birds, sees a walrus in a horse and 
 even an anthropoid ape in a man. But her first stage is 
 as true and as necessary as her last. If we climb to the 
 top of the mountain and then have the mountain removed 
 from under us, we will simply sink to the ground again. 
 Your very height depends not merely on the topmost 
 plateau, but also upon the .'ower ridges, for they uphold 
 the plateau. We have never so advanced in literature 
 that we can discard the alphabet.
 
 8 
 
 If we cut off the past, we have no standard of morality 
 or right; we cannot measure our progress. We cannot 
 separate the ripened apple from the apple in its unripe 
 state; they are one; the unripeness has developed into 
 ripeness; it is all there, concentrated in the one apple. 
 
 I think I have answered the question shall we give 
 up our old religion, simply because of some new theories 
 that we find ourselves conceiving. Keep your new con- 
 victions by all means, they are blossoms on the old tree. 
 And if you do not think they have developed directly 
 from your religion, then graft them on it, and enrich it 
 with the new experience, so that it may grow from 
 without as well as from within, as we all do. Indeed 
 belief in our constant mental and moral growth, in our 
 nearer approach to God and truth is in itself a 
 cardinal doctrine of Judaism the Messianic doctrine. 
 
 I have been led to dwell on this feature of our faith, 
 because it has become fashionable for some having 
 caught hold of a new truth, which is really an old truth, 
 to discard their ancestral faith altogether, though it 
 really contains the so-called new principle. They are 
 tired of affiliation with people who are tabooed in clubs 
 and ostracised generally. They are anxious to affiliate 
 with a choice few, leaving their poor relations, so to 
 speak, to get along as best they can. Is this noble, is it 
 heroic, is it religious ? Nothing is so easy as to abandon 
 a faith, and let me add, nothing is so cowardly. To 
 reconstruct a faith, to adapt it to the age, and the human 
 need, would show bravery as well as genius. There may 
 be a great temptation to throw off observances that tax 
 one's time and call for some sacrifice, and with them to 
 throw off also people who may not always be congenial. 
 Do these things if you wish, but for God's sake, do not 
 call such action religious, seeing that it is selfish, and 
 snobbish, and worldly.
 
 Moses was religiously, far in advance of his people, 
 yet he stayed in the desert with them in a metaphorical 
 as well as in an actual sense. He permitted even the 
 retention of sacrifices and slavery, so that by that per- 
 mission he could induce them to accept a spiritual God 
 and the Ten Commandments. Better that the one great 
 soul should progress slowly, so that one thousand souls 
 should progress with him, than that he should go for- 
 ward untrammeled and leave them in the mire. Mendels- 
 sohn, through his philosophical writings, that won him 
 the friendship of Lessing, and his later literary fame, 
 was courted in the circles of culture and fashion, was 
 flattered and caressed and given entree into the salons of 
 savants and litterati. They wished him to stay with 
 them and to become one of them. Lavater pleaded, 
 begging him to become a Christian. But there were his 
 people in the Ghetto, most of them ignorant and uncouth. 
 Shall he cut adrift from them, and the humiliating 
 restrictions that was their inheritance from the Gentiles? 
 No! He must stay with them their fate must be his 
 and if he has learning and prestige, then he must use it 
 in their cause. The path of duty was clear Mendelssohn 
 emancipated a nation, winning them to better things by 
 gradual steps making small concessions to custom and 
 even to prejudice that he might obtain great concessions 
 to spirituality, sweetness and light. 
 
 I believe that all the world's progress has come about 
 simply by the wise and noble few going back to save 
 the ignorant many. Your brother is perishing in the 
 snow; you are strong and hardy and will soon reach 
 yonder cottage of warmth and shelter, but will you leave 
 him there to die by the wayside? Are you your brother's 
 keeper? 
 
 Let us stand by each other and not even leave the 
 Russian Jew behind, however debased he may be by
 
 persistent, crushing brutality. Let us renew the old 
 covenant of Sinai; indeed we know none grander. And 
 if the Commandments mean more to us than they mean 
 to the desert wanderers, if we have read into them our 
 higher ideals, so much the better. If living truths can 
 grow even as living flowers and living men, then has the 
 Decalogue grown with our growth and strengthened 
 with our strength. If the religious principle, like 
 material principle, has yielded interest year by year, 
 adding the interest to the original Mosaic capital, then 
 the vast inheritance that has broadened and risen with 
 time descends to us the lineal descendants, the rightful 
 heirs to the precious inheritance of Judaism. Let us 
 not fear to disseminate its truths, for unlike material 
 principal, it increases by its very expenditure, and the 
 more freely it is scattered, the vaster grows the limit of 
 its supply. It is ours to keep and to bestow, and to 
 keep by bestowing.
 
 HOW SHOULD WE MOURN THE 
 DEPARTED ?
 
 How shall we Mourn the 
 Departed? 
 
 Death is always with us and always will be. In spite 
 of elixirs of life and the triumph of medical science, 
 man has never yet learned how to evade the grim 
 messenger. We here to-night are therefore as sure of 
 our ultimate death as of our present life for although 
 by right-living, care and self-control we may put off 
 the evil day that day will sooner or later mature. 
 Therefore our daily experience has always a something 
 to do with the departed. Either we are wearing the 
 garments of grief, or saying the annual mourners' prayer, 
 or waiting in sad expectancy for yet another dear one 
 to be called away. A consideration then of our duties 
 to the memory of the lost is surely a timely theme. 
 
 The first question has always been what: shall we do 
 with the lifeless tenement ? The earliest and rudest 
 mode of disposal of the dead have been exposure in 
 the wilds, where they would either decay or be consumed. 
 Burning was general once, and for scientific reasons, 
 cremation is likely to become popular again. There 
 is nothing against it in Jewish Law. But the most 
 usual method, both of the primitive and the cultured 
 has been burial from the rude pile of stones heaped by 
 the Mohammedans above the corpse, encased only in a 
 shroud, to the pyramid that covered the embalmed and 
 elaborately bandaged mummy of the Egyptians, or the 
 granite mausoleum in which a costly casket is deposited, 
 familiar to your own experience. 
 
 Peculiar customs have always been associated with 
 burial that vary with difference of belief. Most of
 
 the ancients believed not only in the immortality of the 
 soul, but also in the resurrection of the body, and that 
 the life continued in another world in much the same 
 way. The North-American Indian only went from 
 their hunting fields here to the " Happy hunting 
 grounds " beyond, and were therefore buried with bow 
 and arrow and moccasins, that they might continue their 
 mysterious journey. Even a kettle of provisions was 
 placed by his side to meet all possible emergency. With 
 the same idea in view the Mexicans placed in the hands 
 of the deceased, slips of paper, passports, so to speak^ 
 against future dangers. The Norse hero was buried 
 with his horse and armor tkat he might ride to Valhalla 
 fully equipped, and for a like purpose the Chinese are 
 buried with paper images of sedan-chairs. So far in 
 these instances peculiar beliefs were followed by harm- 
 less usages. But this, alas, was not always the 
 case. Superstitions about futurity, sometimes led to 
 cruel customs. The natives of Dahomey kill a slave 
 from time to time, that he may thus tell the latest news 
 to the departed master. The Indian widow is burnt to 
 death in the delusion that she will thus accompany her 
 husband; while the Fijians strangled wives, friends and 
 slaves to give to the departed company in his life after 
 death. 
 
 The Semitic races, I am glad to say, are conspicuous 
 for the absence of any such wanton sacrifice of life, in 
 connection with burial, except that the camel of the 
 Arab dies on the grave of his master. Other funeral 
 customs worth mentioning are the burial of Mexican 
 children by the wayside, that their souls may enter into 
 the passers-by; again, the Greeks placed a coin called 
 an obolus in the hands of the deceased to pay his fare 
 to the weird boatmen Charon, who rowed him over the 
 Styx, the river of death, and a honey-cake to soothe
 
 Cerberus,the dog that guarded the entrance to the Shades. 
 While the Egyptians, Siamese and Greenlanders resort 
 to various methods to prevent the return of the soul, of 
 which they are very much afraid. This fear eventually 
 led to the worship of Manes, i.e. ancestors. The singing at 
 Irish wakes to ward off evil spirits, shows how old 
 customs persist. 
 
 Mourning rites are equally curious and diverse. 
 The Hawaiians on the death of a king feign madness 
 and commit desperate crimes, even murder, to indicate 
 that grief has driven them frantic. The Romans ended 
 the mourning with feasting and gladiatorial combats. 
 The Mohammedans hired women to wail and cry, while 
 such exaggerated forms of grief as fasting, covering the 
 body with rags and sackloth, sitting in ashes, wringing 
 the hands, beating breasts, tearing the hair, shaving the 
 head, gashing the body are common among most peoples 
 of antiquity. They are nearly all violent forms of natural 
 emotions. 
 
 While natural they are perhaps outside the range of 
 criticism. They begin to be objectionable only when 
 they become artificial. By artificial, I do not mean 
 hypocritical. I mean the prescribing a form of grief by 
 law, sayingjfor instance, that at the loss of a relative one 
 must abstain from food, sit in ashes, or tear the hair. 
 When these are natural emotions, they are unconscious; 
 when they are commanded, they cease to indicate 
 grief but simply obedience to rule. If we were told to 
 weep tears at prescribed times, the tears would no longer 
 be the natural and touching signs of an affectionate 
 nature, but a cold compliance with a mechanical 
 formula. 
 
 Here then lies the danger of religions or society 
 interfering with the private grief of a bereaved soul, and 
 compelling him to regulate his mourning by settled
 
 statutes and pre-arranged legislation. When all our 
 mourning is brought down to a meaningless uniformity, 
 to an arbitrary fashion, it is no longer mourning, its 
 observance indicates a respect for the usages of social 
 life, or perhaps merely a fear of awakening criticism by 
 disobeying them. 
 
 If society is to give us occasional liberty from its 
 exacting regulations, surely this should be the time. 
 Why must we clothe ourselves in black ? It is but a 
 symbol. The Chinese dress in white, the Ethiopian 
 mourning is brown the color of the earth, the Turkish 
 blue the color of the sky, the Egyptian is yellow the 
 hue of decayed leaves, and other nations a mixture of 
 violet and black to symbolize the union of sorrow and 
 hope. The color of the dress then is only a form that varies 
 with different nations; and even then it is almost wholly 
 confined to that sex with whom dress is an important 
 detail. Why then should we be so severe in this demand, 
 compelling wives and mothers and daughters in the 
 supreme throes of agony, to enter into worldly parapher- 
 nalia of dressmaking and millinery while the dead are 
 still in the house. Give them at least leisure for these 
 sad preparations. And granted black clothing, why 
 compel them to wear the costly and unhealthy crape? 
 Why impose upon our sisters, the burdensome veil, that 
 is injurious to the eyes and hideous always ? 
 
 In coming to the details of funerals and mourning 
 generally, I find much to condemn, much that should 
 be altered. Many old abuses have passed away with a 
 growing sense of refinement and fitness but many new 
 abuses have crept in. In the first place, the loss of those 
 we love is a blow sufficiently terrible and bitter; no need 
 to add to the gloom and the horrors by repulsive customs, 
 to make the grief more heartrending. Many of the 
 usages to which I refer are rapidly passing away and
 
 therefore I will not mention them. For, after all, it is 
 not so much the gloom with which we are apt to sur- 
 round death that is to be censured, for it is natural to 
 look upon the great mystery with trembling and awe. 
 It is the pomp and display that is the most objectionable 
 feature of the modern funeral. The extravagance of 
 the funeral trappings seems a mockery in the midst of 
 tears; the pride of wealth in the costly pageant, how 
 sinful at the hour of death! And it is so unjewish. The 
 code of our fathers, praised be their exquisite feeling 
 in this regard, demanded at this hour of sorrow, a stern 
 and rigid simplicity: the plainest covering for the body, 
 a sjmple unadorned coffin, and everything else in keep- 
 ing with the absence of decoration. In our gorgeous 
 tombstones I see but the vanity of riches that cannot 
 leave us even in death. For a tall conspicuous monu- 
 ment does not to-day indicate depth of affection, or pro- 
 fundity of bereavement. It is merely a question of 
 means. Notice too how this lavishness of chiseled marble 
 has destroyed the significance of monuments to the 
 great. For on entering a cemetery to-day and seeing a 
 splendid tombstone, you no longer say "some noble per- 
 son, surely one of the world's great heroes" No ! you 
 simply infer "what a rich man." The finest monument 
 in one of the finest cemeteries in this state adorns the 
 grave of an enterprising purveyor of soda water ! 
 
 Let me appeal to the rich for the sake of the poor to 
 revive the ancient beautiful simplicity. Do not by your 
 example of extravagance impose upon those in moderate 
 circumstances expenses that often embarrass them. 
 Naturally they try to do what you do, especially at such 
 a time when curtailment of expense might seem unfeel- 
 ing, as though they begrudged to the dear and the lost. 
 And would you believe that many poor Irish people, 
 slaves of custom, expend in flowers and carriages, funeral
 
 trappings and headstone, the hard-earned savings of 
 years! I know of some cases where for long afterwards 
 the living had to suffer privation to supply decoration 
 for the dead. 
 
 We have undoubtedly made much improvement in 
 refining the details, painful at best, of this trying ordeal 
 for the survivors. The coarse and crude management 
 of boorish assistants and unfeeling officials, is being 
 replaced by a better state of things. But some of these 
 still survive. For instance if an individual belonged to 
 a chevra or burial society, you will still see the rough 
 customs that offend our best instincts. I have often 
 been outraged at seeing an official shake a money box- at 
 frequent intervals in the presence of the dead in order 
 to solicit donations. Again I think the final farewell of 
 the relatives should be taken privately, and not in the 
 presence of the gaping crowd. It must be very hard to 
 have to pour out their agony in the midst of the assem- 
 bled throng. 
 
 A perhaps unavoidable evil is the desecration of 
 the solemnity of burial by pausing to take refresh- 
 ments at a way-side inn. Whatever sanctity may have 
 pervaded the'occasion, is dissipated in the eating, drink- 
 ing, smoking and gossip that now ensues. We talk of 
 barbarians having funeral feasts what is this ? It is 
 worth any sacrifice to change this I might almost 
 say scandal. 
 
 The great distance of the cemeteries make it difficult 
 to avoid this evil. But thiscongregation^in particular, if 
 I may make a specific reference, has a simple remedy at 
 hand. and its example may induce other congregations to 
 follow. Since our very small cemetery is almost filled, 
 and since ours is the farthest north of all the New York 
 Temples, and the greatest distance from the burial 
 centre at Cypress Hills and its neighborhood, it is
 
 surely high time that we lay out a cemetery of our own 
 a few miles north of this building, that could be reached 
 by a carriage in an hour. I am sure that it would be a 
 great boon to those who wish to visit the graves of their 
 departed from time to time. 
 
 And now what is our duty to our mourning friends ? 
 Certainly to visit them during the early days after the 
 bereavement. It goes without saying that we should 
 not officiously try to comfort them with stereotyped 
 words of solace, for it only makes them feel worse. 
 There are many little attentions that I need hardly enu- 
 merate, but that you will understand. Do not necessa- 
 rily speak of the departed one at all, rather talk of other 
 things,unless the bereaved show a desire to tell the story 
 of the sad end, and seem to find relief in the telling. 
 Still it may be well occasionally to try and take them 
 out of themselves, so that for the moment at least they 
 may forget the ever-present sorrow. Do not be too 
 severe with them in the enforcing of Ritual regulations, 
 telling them they must not wear shoes or sit on chairs, 
 or exchange greetings with friends; that they must not 
 leave the house, that they must tear their garments in a 
 prescribed way to symbolise the rending of clothing in 
 violent grief. Give grief the liberty of mourning accord- 
 ing to its natural impulse. 
 
 On the other hand, if they wish to do these things, if 
 the fulfilling of these observances comforts them, do not 
 irritate them by opposing their wishes. Do not offend 
 their sensibilities by brutally telling them that the 
 covering of mirrors with white cloths is merely an 
 ignorant superstition; this certainly is not the time to 
 criticise a custom sanctioned at least by age. In brief, 
 show a little tact by using every consideration to spare 
 the feelings of your suffering friends. 
 
 And to the mourners, let me also say : In grieving for
 
 10 
 
 the departed, forget not the living. You owe it to those 
 still left you to control feelings that are too violent, to 
 struggle against a depression that is too prolonged. 
 Death is not an exceptional visitation to be deplored as 
 tragedy; it is a universal experience, in each case is 
 merely a question of time, one of the unbroken laws of 
 God, surely ordained with a wisdom and a love beyond 
 our finite vision. To brood too long over your loss may 
 lead to a melancholy you may never be able to shake off. 
 To grope around the house with tearful dolefulness for 
 long after like a reproach at everything cheerful, to 
 make your presence a damper on the exuberance of 
 youthful buoyancy in your home is useless at best, and, 
 when carried to an extreme, is selfish and unkind. For 
 there is such a condition as the luxury of grief, in which 
 it is weakness to indulge. Bear in mind, that grief 
 is hardly a duty, and, when it is not felt, no law either 
 social or moral declares that you should assume a 
 sorrow you cannot feel. In asking you to abstain from 
 gaieties and public amusements for a time, to dress in 
 sober hue out of respect for the departed, is going as 
 far as the world dare. Any further restriction or impo- 
 sition would become an unjustifiable interference with 
 the sanctity of privacy. 
 
 All deeper signs of grief must be kept within your own 
 soul. You must not carry your heart upon your sleeve 
 nor ask for an audience to witness your tears. They 
 are for the solitude of your own chamber, not even for 
 the family circle give them your smile. To smile in 
 suffering in order to cheer others that is heroism. It 
 is not by a pervading gloom that we show that the 
 departed are not forgotten. There are truer and less os- 
 tensible ways of showing the endurance of our affection 
 not covered by law or rule. The picture of the loved 
 and lost not discarded ; every relic of the dear one jeal-
 
 ii 
 
 ously treasured ; every little memento kept in its place 
 and not allowed to become ruined and destroyed by 
 neglect All the different wishes expressed in the life- 
 time of the deceased faithfully followed now when they 
 are not present to see and rebuke. " 1 do not do that 
 because father never liked me to do it when he was 
 alive." 
 
 I enter, let us say, a home from which a parent has 
 passed away some years ago. There is no longer the 
 depression of mourning, but a something I cunn ot define 
 assures me of a pervading presence of the departed. The 
 sons and daughters are. of course, no longer dressed in 
 mourning, iheir talk has not that peculiar hush notice- 
 able in the first few weeks of bereavement. There is no 
 sadness now, there is even cheer ; and yet there is a 
 something of which they are quite unconscious them- 
 selves, but which tells me that the spirit of the one 
 gone before still hovers over the home, as though the 
 parental influence had entered their lives, giving to them 
 an added sweetness and a new purity that will abide 
 with them to the last day.
 
 -T H K- 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, 
 
 A Bible History for Jewish Schools, on a new plan. 
 
 Contains much miscellaneous information that will materially 
 
 assist the Teacher and make the subject more interesting 
 
 and more instiuctive to the pupil, 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE H. HARRIS, A. M.. PH. D. 
 
 Rabbi of Temple Israel of Harlem, N. Y. 
 
 Vol. I. From the Creation to the Death of Moses. 
 
 Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
 
 Book I. Early Tradition. Book II. Patriarchal Ages. 
 
 Book III. Exodus. Book iV. Law. 
 
 Book V. Close of Moses' Leadership. 
 
 Appendix, Prayers, Hyins, Calendar, Exam. Questions^ &c. 
 
 Vol II. From the Conquest to the Death of Solomon . 
 Book I. The Period of the Conquest. 
 
 Book II. First Stage of the Monarchy. 
 
 Book HI The Rise of Judah. 
 
 Vol. 111. From the Secession to the Exile. 
 Book I. The Rival Kingdoms. 
 
 Book II. The Influence of the Prophets. 
 
 Book III The Survival of Judah. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 'Although made specially for use by Hebrews, it is so simple, straight- 
 forward and sensible as to deserve the attention of all young teachers in Sunday 
 Schools. The handling of the early chapters in Genesis is admirably ".reverent and 
 rational." /V. V. Herald. 
 
 " It is gratifying to find our Hebrew brethren doing such excellent work for 
 their Sunday Schools. This little volume is vastly ahead in its treatment of the Old 
 Testament of the great mass of literature on this subject prepared for children. ' 
 Christian Keftster. 
 
 5O cents each Volume or 35. 4O per Dozen. 
 
 PHILIP COWEN, 213-215 EAST 44TH STREET, 
 
 NEW YORK.
 
 IS PROSELYTISM A DUTY OF JUDAISM ?
 
 Is Proselytisma Duty of Judaism: 
 
 It is very seldom that people wake up to a fulness of 
 their religious responsibilities. They may consider their 
 religion in relation to themselves, but not always in 
 relation to the world at large. A belief in a faith must 
 necessarily be accompanied by a deep interest in its fate 
 and in its future. Is Judaism a tribal religion, for Jews 
 only, or is it a religion for mankind ? We know that 
 religion for a tribe or for a nation is an anachronism in 
 modern times. If, then, we believe that we have reached 
 a pure and lofty conception of God and duty, such as 
 would be capable of guiding life and inspiring it, ought 
 we not to give it forth to the world, instead of keeping 
 it selfishly for ourselves? Is it not our duty to seek to 
 make converts to Judaism ? 
 
 We have so often reiterated the remark that Judaism 
 does not seek converts that we have almost made it a 
 dogma of our faith. Is it something to be so proud of, 
 looking at it from all points of view? As a matter of 
 fact, the sentiment does not only not do us credit, but, 
 what is more important, it is not true. In this glib for- 
 mula, we have rather overstated a tendency that has 
 really arisen out of external conditions. There was a 
 law on the statute-books of most countries forbidding 
 any to embrace Judaism, under severe penalty, that has 
 only just become a dead letter. And, independent of 
 that law, Je\vs, as Jews, were saddled with so many dis- 
 abilities -that it was rare indeed that any one would 
 voluntarily assume the hardships imposed on the Jews, 
 simply out of love of their faith, although such instances 
 did occur. But when times were brighter with us, 
 before our iron age began, and even in its early stages
 
 /4f 
 
 conversions to Judaism were remarkably frequent, and 
 many Jews sought converts to their faith with much 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 That frequent coincidence in history, that the victors 
 became the disciples of the vanquished, was repeated 
 during the Babylonian captivity. Many of the Baby- 
 lonians were drawn towards a religion that, strange to 
 say at that time, did not fall with the nationality of its 
 followers, and were inspired by the fidelity of those 
 exiles whose faith in their God remained unshaken, even 
 at the supreme moment of their overthrow. 
 
 The absurdity of idolatry that a man might use one- 
 half of a tree to kindle fire and fashion the other half 
 into a god pointed out by the keen satire of that un- 
 known prophet called the Second Isaiah, had also its 
 profound influence in bringing many of the heathen to 
 the worship of the spiritual God of the Jews. Not only 
 did these new converts keep the Sabbath, enter into the 
 Abrahamic covenant, and fulfil the Jewish ceremonial, 
 but even when the permission of Cyrus was given to 
 Judah to return to Jerusalem, many of these proselytes, 
 like the " mixed number from Egypt," went up with 
 them. The example of the converts reacted on the Jews, 
 and deepened their confidence in their faith. When John 
 Hyrcanus subdued the Idumeans, he actually compelled 
 them to embrace Judaism, giving only the choice of 
 exile; and while we take no pride in this solitary instance 
 of Jewish intolerance carried to that extreme, it proves 
 the eagerness of our ancestors to bring converts to their 
 faith. 
 
 Later on, when Jews were thrown more in contact 
 with Greeks and Romans, the latter, impressed by the 
 purity and spirituality of the Mosaic faith, became more 
 dissatisfied with their own deities, whose lives, even from 
 a human standpoint, as told by their poets, were any-
 
 thing but exemplary; while many pure-minded women, 
 both of Damascus and Asia Minor, were finding the 
 immoralities of heathenism of growing repugnance. So. 
 becoming more intimately acquainted with the Jewish 
 religion through the Greek translation of their Bible and 
 literature, many gladly sought in the new faith higher 
 ideals of life, and became devout converts. The change 
 in character was significant indeed. Philo-Judaeus tells 
 us of the marked improvement in moderation, gentle- 
 ness and humanity. 
 
 So eager were the Jews to win over their neighbors 
 from absurd beliefs that sanctioned vices, to the great 
 religion that made God and righteousness one, that they 
 resorted to a strange device. Seeing that the Greeks 
 had great faith in the mystic teachings of the sybils 
 women-prophets, presumed to be inspired by the gods, 
 and fearing that their public attempts at conversion 
 would not be given credence, even if permitted at all 
 they put the vital truths of Judaism in the form of Greek 
 sibylline prophecies. To put one's words in the mouths 
 of ancient teachers to gain for them authority, was a 
 common practice of antiquity, of which some instances 
 are even found in the Bible and Apocrypha. Literary 
 conscientiousness is a very modern virtue. 
 
 That some Jews actually travelled from place to place 
 to make converts is the best reply to the theory that pro- 
 selytism is against our principles. And very successful 
 these missionaries were. A Jewish merchant at an 
 Asiatic court expounded the principles of his faith with 
 such fervor that his hearers embraced it then and there- 
 The historian, Graetz, goes on to tell us how a young 
 prince was among the converts, and that his queen- 
 mother, Helen, had become such a passionate adherent 
 of Judaism that she made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 
 and aided it in time of famine.
 
 Judaism grew very popular in Rome and Asia Minor 
 in the last days of the Jewish state, and even after it had 
 fallen, in an age when religions were supposed to be 
 overthrown with their nationalities; and when the out- 
 look for our faith was dark and uncertain, many con~ 
 tinued to renounce their family ties to embrace the creed 
 of our fathers. Much of the persecution of the Jews by 
 Tiberias was due to the leaning of many Romans toward 
 Judaism, among whom we may mention Fulvia, wife of 
 a Roman Senator. Josephus tells us how zealous they 
 were even for the ceremonial side of our faith. 
 
 Some became Talmudic scholars. Aquila, a Greek 
 philosopher, outdid the proverbial enthusiasm of a con- 
 vert. And his Greek translation of the Bible became 
 such a model of exactness, that an Aramaic translation 
 on the same plan was named after it, Targum Onkelos 
 (Aquila). 
 
 The Emperor Domitian, whose forte was cruelty, made 
 it dreadfully hard for the Jews, but still harder for their 
 proselytes. They were despoiled of their property, 
 exiled, and sometimes put to death. But, in spite of all, 
 a cousin of the Emperor named Flavins Clemens, 
 entered the Jewish faith, together with his wife Flavia 
 Domitilla, and, be it remembered, their son was a possible 
 heir to the Empire. Think of the might-have-beens of 
 history ! Constantine, a later Emperor, adopts Chris- 
 tianity and makes it the religion of Rome, which was 
 the world. Henceforward, we hear of the Holy Roman 
 Empire, and Christianity became the religion of the 
 nations of Europe into which that Empire broke up. 
 Might not Judaism have held this proud place had Dom- 
 itian followed his cousin's example, or, perhaps, even if 
 he had not interfered with it ? But these are idle con- 
 jectures. Alas ! Flavius Clemens was condemned to 
 death for the crime of Judaism, for which heinous offence
 
 even his relationship to the Emperor could not save him; 
 and his wife was exiled. 
 
 Conditions continued to grow rapidly darker for Israel. 
 Hadrian made Judaism a capital offence even for Jews; 
 and glad enough they were when Antoninus Pius allowed 
 them to follow their faith in peace, considering it no 
 hardship that only proselytism was not permitted. But 
 the climax was reached when Constantine exchanged 
 Paganism for Christianity. The days of partial tolera- 
 tion were over. The imperial edict went forth, no Jews 
 dare make converts, no individual dare adopt their faith. 
 Here is the real source of the discouragement by us of 
 would-be converts to Judaism, which we have mistaken 
 for a dogma. Our faith was declared a contraband 
 article forbidden by law. 
 
 Still, there is one renowned instance of conversion to 
 Judaism, several centuries later immortalized in Jehuda 
 Ha-Levi's Cusari. Bulan, king of the Chozars, a now 
 vanished people who dwelt on the border land between 
 Europe and Asia on the Caspian Sea. desired to be con. 
 vinced of the true religion and, sending for representa- 
 tives of the three great faiths, Judaism, Christianity and 
 Mohammedanism, was so impressed with the faith of our 
 fathers that he and his people adopted it; the details are 
 legendary, but the general fact is historic. 
 
 Outside, then, of this conversion of the Chozars and 
 an attempt to convert Mohammedans in Spain about 
 the year 1066. for which they were dreadfully persecuted, 
 proselytes to Judaism were rare and surreptitious. 
 The Jews could hardly call their lives their own; and 
 if they could hold their own, it was as much as they 
 could do. 
 
 But those dark days are over, and, let us hope, for 
 ever. In Western countries, even the age of toleration 
 is past. We have advanced beyond that word. We no
 
 longer beg gracious privileges as Jews; we demand just 
 rights as men. Occasionally a Gentile enters the Jewish 
 fold, as you very well know. You know, too, that the 
 law does not interfere; it is considered nobody's business 
 except the party concerned. And, yet, we seem to care 
 so little for what our ancestors would have considered 
 so great a boon, that I doubt if many pause to think of 
 the gigantic gain implied in this perfect religious liberty. 
 Here, at last, is our opportunity, and yet, outside of a 
 few exceptional instances of proselytism, in which the 
 question of marriage is usually a factor, we are making 
 no efforts to bring converts into our faith. We are not 
 doing our whole duty in this negative attitude, either to 
 our religion or to the world at large. We are shirking 
 a great responsibility. 
 
 Do I mean that we should endeavor to wean others 
 from their faith? God forbid. A man's religion is the 
 profoundest part of him. We have no more right to 
 take away one's religion than to take away his property, 
 unless we know that his convictions are false, malicious 
 and dangerous. We have not the excuse to offer that 
 the Christian has for pursuing proselytism so fanatically 
 We do not believe that our faith is the only door to 
 heaven the only way to God. We see a relative truth 
 and a legitimate right in other faiths. If they are firmly 
 believed and conscientiously followed, we would feel it 
 undoubtedly wrong to disturb them. We only wish that 
 others would assume that same attitude towards us. We 
 have so strongly condemned that tendency of some dis- 
 creditable representatives of the faith of our neighbors 
 to steal devoted believers from Judaism in order to swell 
 their ranks, that it would be little short of infamous to 
 adopt that course ourselves. 
 
 But there are many nominally within the Church who 
 no longer believe its cardinal doctrine, whq are really
 
 nearer to us than to the Church to which they give a 
 formal allegiance. There are still more who have all 
 but officially renounced the faith of their birth, because 
 no longer believing in the Trinity, in Vicarious Atone- 
 ment, in Everlasting Punishment, nor even in the 
 Messiahship of the Nazarene. There are many who, 
 because no longer believing in the current creed, while 
 strongly deistic, have drifted into freethinking and 
 agnostic societies, who might have found sustaining and 
 comforting faith within the fold of Judaism, had its 
 doors been invitingly open to them. 
 
 Judaism is the only legitimate representative of Mono- 
 theism. It is not a faith of yesterday. It is not a plat- 
 form deliberately drawn up within our own remem- 
 brance, and, therefore, likely to be superseded by the 
 latest ideas of every new comer, which is the weakness 
 of new-fashioned creeds and brand new religions. It 
 was the first pure Monotheism; its roots are deep down 
 in antiquity, and it has followed every upward step of 
 man from patriarchal times: it has survived all changes 
 of human outlook, all revolutions of human thought; it 
 has seen schools of philosophy and systems of belief 
 rise and decay. And here it abides to-day, the oldest of 
 religions, yet including within itself the ripest thought 
 of humanity. 
 
 But I do not mean that we should go out and seek 
 even those who believe almost as we do, who are Jews 
 in all but sentiment and sympathy and association. 
 Unless it be an instance where moral salvation is in- 
 volved, there is a grave doubt in my mind whether a 
 religion is justified in such methods as will entice con- 
 verts into its fold. To enter into unworthy rivalry with 
 other faiths to stoop to undignified competition such 
 methods belong only to the world of trade, and bring 
 religion into degradation and ridicule. I ask no more 
 than that the synagogue should be hospitable in every 
 sense, that our doors should be open wide to all who 
 wish to come, that we should cordially and sympatheti- 
 cally greet whoever seek us, and not indifferently turn 
 to them a cold shoulder, as though their religious wel- 
 fare were no concern of ours. If we really believe in
 
 the truth and helpfulness of our faith, we have no moral 
 right to discourage others from joining it. That is pure 
 selfishness, and selfishness and religion can never exist 
 together. 
 
 Unquestionably it is our duty to our religion and to 
 ourselves to let the world know what that religion is 
 its beauties, its grandeur, its inspiring and eternal truths. 
 We have no right to shut it up in mysterious books and 
 strange tongues, and encourage others to believe, as 
 some do, that it is made up of ceremonies instead of 
 convictions. We withdraw it from the eye of the world, 
 concealing it in obscure forms, instead of broadly pub- 
 lishing its goodly tidings in all their simplicity, that all 
 may freely come and drink from the living waters with- 
 out money and without price. When the heathen comes 
 to us and says, " Tell us your religion in a nutshell," 
 we do not act as disciples of Hillel, first gently giving 
 the epitome of morals in a pithy sentence, and then 
 invite him to probe deeper, we imitate Shammai : \ve 
 coldly tell him to be gone ! 
 
 No wonder the world forms false and ridiculous 
 notions about Judaism, and never does it justice. Even 
 when it wishes to be most fair to Judaism, it only pre- 
 sents its Bible phase, as though our fa^ith never advanced 
 beyond the conceptions of two thousand years ago. It 
 may be convenient for our neighbors to believe that they 
 have progressed, and we have stood still; that we cling 
 yet to the exploded notions of antiquity, and have 
 remained through all these centuries in that half-devel- 
 oped condition in which Judaism is pictured at the close 
 of the Bible; for certainly their own faith would gain by 
 such a contrast. But it is also our fault that they should 
 be unaware that Judaism has kept time with human 
 progress, and has assimilated the highest and the best 
 that humanity has produced. We have not tried to tell 
 them, and they know the Bible phase best, because 
 they have translated it and disseminated it for them- 
 selves. 
 
 I have said that we are indifferent as to whether the 
 outside world understands or misunderstands the vital 
 truths of Judaism; but I will go further and say we are 
 indifferent as to whether our own understand them,
 
 II 
 
 pursuing with them the same apathetic nonchalance. 
 Judaism is nor made simple and inviting to our young 
 generation. And so they are drifting from us and we 
 are letting them go. We are doing nothing to save our 
 young people to Judaism, by bringing our faith to them. 
 We have not enough of the missionary spirit. Liberality 
 has become a cloak for indifference. I get frightened at 
 the appaling ignorance of Judaism among our young 
 men and women. I see them drifting into skeptical 
 societies and gradually into hopeless materialism. And 
 we are to blame. 
 
 We never speak of our faith outside, as our neighbors 
 do of theirs. We shun the theme as though we were 
 ashamed of it. If circumstances force us to say a word 
 about it, we do so apologetically, perhaps disparagingly. 
 What can people at large think of such a religion ? I 
 know that persecution and ridicule have engendered 
 that timidity and withdrawal. But it is time we freed 
 ourselves from the associations of conditions that are 
 past and dead. We must regain confidence in ourselves, 
 and, without presuming to force our religion on the 
 notice of others, still, when the occasion calls for it, let 
 us tell the story of our faith, modestly and yet proudly, 
 with a kindling warmth showing that we feel a great 
 treasure is ours iti the possession of Judaism. 
 
 If we really love our faith and do not accept it as a 
 mere inheritance, but believe it to be a boon to humanity, 
 the simplest and the truest of creeds, the best guide and 
 support for a human life, then it is our duty to look to 
 its future preservation, to enlarge its boundaries and to 
 save it as far as we can from being swallowed up, as the 
 causes of most minorities are. It must grow from with- 
 out as well as from within, even to hold its own. Every 
 age has its separate problems to solve. An age of 
 emancipation calls for means for sustaining a faith, very 
 different from those which an age of persecution 
 demanded; so Israel's problem is different to-day from 
 what it ever was before. The min^U'D (ceremonial fence 
 around tlve law), of our fathers can no more be a defence 
 of Judaism to-day than walls can be the defence of cities 
 in this age of cannon and gunpowder. 
 
 To desire the nations to enter the fold of Judaism, is 
 good o'd orthodox doctrine. The prophets preached it.
 
 12 
 
 Says Zechariah, " Ten men of all nations shall take hold 
 of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying we will go with 
 you, for we have heard that God is with you." The first 
 Isaiah looks forward to the time when "the mountain of 
 the Lord's house shall be established above the hills, and 
 all nations shall flow to it. saying let us go up to the 
 house of the God of Jacob, for from Zion goeth forth 
 the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." 
 Preaches the second Isaiah, " Let not the stranger that 
 hath joined himself to the Lord say the Lord will 
 separate me from His people, for the strangers that join 
 themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, to be His 
 servants, to keep His Sabbath, even them will 1 make 
 joyful in My house of prayer, for My house shall be 
 called a house of prayer for all peoples." In Solomon's 
 prayer at the dedication of the Temple, we read: "More- 
 over concerning the stranger that is not of Thy people 
 Israel, who hearing of thy great name shall pray toward 
 this house, oh hearken to his request that all the people 
 of the earth may know Thy name to fear Thee '' 
 
 Only persecution has made us forget the broad and 
 liberal standpoint of our ancestors, has made us forget 
 that we owe a religious duty to the world that our 
 mission 1 to mankind is not fulfilled by simply remaining 
 Jews ourselves, regardless of the religious condition of 
 humanity at large. 
 
 I believe a fear of persecution is at the bottom of our 
 religious timidity and exclusiveness to-day. "What! 
 openly make converts to Judaism ! Think of the is/ius 
 you will bring upon your heads ?'' That is always the 
 cry when we would do anything, when we would fain 
 be true to ourselves. I believe much of the anti-Semitism 
 is brought against us, not because of our religion, but 
 because of our open and flagrant neglect of it, and the 
 spread of infidelity amongst us. Believing and observant 
 Jews always win the esteem and confidence of the 
 Gentiles, in civilized lands at least, and Russia is not a 
 civilized land. Only when we forget our traditions do 
 they raise against us the cry: "Behold a people without 
 a' religion a menace to the State !" 
 
 Do not fear your religion clo not. fear the preachings 
 of it far and wide, that all may hear; for that alone was 
 our greatness and our salvation in the past, that alone 
 will be our greatness and salvation in the future.
 
 THE IDEAL IN LIFE.
 
 The Ideal in Life, 
 
 Language expresses thought approximately, but not 
 exactly. The " half that is concealed" is often the more 
 precious. We commonplace people think ' unutterable 
 things," as well as the poets. Impressions surge through 
 our brain, too blurred and incoherent even to be called 
 thought; this is where thought and feeling merge, each 
 vaguely helping out the other. So one word will often 
 stand for many things, taking its precise meaning from 
 the standpoint of the speaker. 
 
 Ideal has become a much used and therefore much 
 abused word; many liberties have been taken with it. 
 It has been made to cover too much, and in consequence 
 .the rabbinical doctrine has held good, " whoever 
 increaseth diminisheth," it-has come to signify too little. 
 Let us find out what it does mean. The words takes us 
 back to the days of ancient philosophy when the great 
 thinkers began trying to find out the essence of all things 
 and when mind and matter were first distinctly con- 
 trasted. Plato is the philosopher most associated with 
 the doctrine of ideas, though each thinker had his say 
 about it, particularly the Jewish philosopher Philo. It 
 was stated by Plato that every common object or thing 
 had some general prototype, which was not one of any 
 particular class, but which possessed the qualities of all. 
 This general model although it existed only in an idea, 
 was nevertheless, the only real, unchanging substance, 
 the objects seen around us were but ephemeral forms. 
 In fact, everything that is known to human experience 
 is but a passing and imperfect copy of the original idea 
 or ideal of the thing itself, as it absolutely is. This ideal 
 of each object is the perfect object which will always 
 survive the transient, imperfect, external representation.
 
 When people then speak of a thing as ideal, they mean 
 or at least they should mean it approaches almost to the 
 perfect model which the mind can comprehend, but 
 which imperfect human beings cannot actually produce. 
 When therefore you have an ideal an ideal of duty, of 
 government, of home, of labor, of beauty, of humanity 
 your brain conceives the most lofty and finished con- 
 ceptions of these things of which it is capable, though 
 no government or duty ever exists on earth quite up to 
 your ideal of it. 
 
 In the realm of literature and art, ideal may seem to 
 mean something else, but you will find presently that it 
 takes us back to the same principle. You hear of the 
 realists and the idealists. Realism was reaction against 
 that romantic tendency that wandered too far from the 
 truth in giving full rein to the imagination and the senti- 
 ment. It began to be felt that better truth, however 
 unlovely, than falsehood, however sublime. In art it 
 was called the pre-Raphaelite movement. 
 
 Writers and artists had dwelt so long on the ideals of 
 things, that they had misrepresented things as they are, 
 as known to human experience. Let us go back to 
 nature and to life, and study them faithfully and min- 
 utely said the new school. Let us despise no fact, pro- 
 vided it be true, let us distrust every impression that can. 
 not be verified in the world of the actual. 
 
 A new zest was thus given to the investigation of 
 minute details previously overlooked and ignored, and 
 many valuable data and interesting descriptions were 
 thereby given to the world. Then came an era of micros- 
 copic detail, every line in a spider's web, every speck in 
 a butterfly's wing found its place on canvas and in fiction. 
 So far was this theory of fidelity to all that the world of 
 sense contained carried out, that nothing was considered 
 too revolting for description, provided it be true, that
 
 in fact it was expressly meritorious to give faithful pre- 
 sentation of the undesirable. 
 
 Realism did good in so far as it discouraged loose 
 representation that was untrue to life, and in so far as i l 
 stimulated scientific exactness and conscientiousness. It 
 pricked many bubbles, it cleared the air of a thousand 
 follies. It ceased to be good when it sweepingly excluded 
 the imaginative and the ideal. There is a fundamental 
 distinction between false images and ideal images, 
 between ideas of imaginatiou that are disciplined by 
 noble purpose, and imagination run wild. Th e 
 things that appear to the external senses are not the only 
 facts of life, nor the truest, nor those of most enduring 
 value. There is more in the world of the unseen and 
 the unrealized than in the world of the seen and the 
 realized. What man may attain but has not is a truth 
 too not of the moment, perhaps, not seen casually in the 
 street, not ready to be reported in this evening's "Extra,"' 
 but what may grow into a deepening truth as man 
 advances. And the attempted representation of it here 
 is a grand and inspiring ideal to hold up to him. 
 
 For instance a moralist pictures life as it ought to be 
 a realist life as it is. The idealist in fiction gives us a 
 Jean Val Jean, a Colonel Newcombe, pictures of men 
 perhaps better than they exist. The realist takes an 
 incident of passing life, of human depravity or human 
 selfishness, exactly as we may read it depicted in the 
 morning newspapers, not giving it an extra touch or 
 finish for better or for worse, not toning down its repul- 
 sive features nor caricaturing its better side, but painting 
 it exactly as seen by our daily human experience, in 
 moving among the crowds of commonplace, unideal 
 worldly people; not calling them beautiful if they are 
 not beautiful, nor tender and self-denying if they are 
 not lender and self-denying. Surely this is the truth,
 
 A 
 
 he claims and better frankly to depict it however un- 
 lovely it may be than to deceive by pictures of impos- 
 sible persons good beyond the bounds of human capa- 
 bility. 
 
 That a writer should not give us individuals so exalted 
 above human experience, as to cease to be human, and 
 hence unhuman as false to reality, as elves and fairies, 
 is a sensible conclusion about which there need be no 
 difference. But that a writer should combine in one 
 individual the excellencies of many, and thereby give us 
 a glorious and yet true picture of humanity in this com- 
 posite photograph, is the triumph of art and the inspira- 
 tion of man. We do not need an artist to present to us 
 things as we see them - this is not art: but to choose his 
 materials from the things that we see and know, and so 
 to arrange them as really to give us something new, yet 
 not a purely fanciful creation; this will delight us and 
 spur us on by showing us what noble men and women 
 we all can become if we unite each others virtues with 
 our own. 
 
 So while giving us present truth the idealist is also 
 the prophet of future truth; revealing to us not only 
 what we are to-day but what we ought to be and will be 
 at some later day and what we should be trying to be 
 every day. He may even be said to advance the era of 
 a glorified humanity by giving the impulse towards it in 
 the presentation of it, hastening the good day by his 
 inviting and beckoning prophecy. 
 
 It may be said that on the same lines a composite 
 picture of human badness would be equally true. In the 
 first place the awful picture of the possibilities of human 
 depravity, could only do harm, appaling and discourag- 
 ing us by the disclosure of our united infamies. In the 
 second place, it would not be as true as the picture of 
 our concentrated excellencies, for that is a growing
 
 truth, while the other is a vanishing truth. In the devel- 
 opment of man the lower is steadily falling away, the 
 higher steadily emerging; and in our onward progress 
 we are for ever leaving further behind the animal, in its 
 carnality, cruelty and savagery with which mankind 
 began his upward* march towards the ideal goal of per- 
 fection. 
 
 For the philosopher Plato is essentially if not techni- 
 cally correct there is an ideal of humanity which is the 
 only real, of which we are but imperfect copies. For 
 do not we say that we are true to ourselves when we 
 bring out the best that is in us, implying that we are 
 not ourselves at our worst? Then it is that we approach 
 nearest to the ideal which is the only real humanity. 
 And in this sense too we will agree with the philosopher, 
 that what we call the actual is not being in so far as 
 it is but an intermediary process in which we are slowly 
 evolving to our true exalted place which in the divine 
 design is as high at least as our ideals picture it. 
 
 This difference does not belong merely to the realm 
 of fine art and literature but also to the realm that most 
 concerns us all, the realm of morals. You will meet two 
 kind of teachers there is first humanity's apologist, who 
 bids us be self-satisfied, who, basely content with our 
 average attainment, looks at the best side of our works 
 and our doings, and ignoring the shameful side, flatters 
 us by telling us in glowing periods the glories of our 
 institutions and ourselves. The dishonesties, the be- 
 trayals,the venomous partisanships, the sacrifice of public 
 causes to private self-interest these are plausibly 
 slurred over, and conscience is lulled to sleep by dis- 
 couraging comparisons with other lands. 
 
 There is on the other hand the censurer of humanity. 
 Why did the prophets so unceasingly scourge the Israel, 
 ites with the lash of their rebukes; they were probably
 
 8 
 
 morally ahead of their surroundings? Amos and Hosea 
 might have taken the laudatory self-complacent tone of 
 some of our modern successful men and preached the 
 glory of Israel. In the reign of Jeroboam II. with its 
 external splendor and successful conquest, there was 
 certainly reason and excuse for adulation and self-ap- 
 proval. Yet in the times considered most propitious 
 did they paint their darkest pictures. Why? Because 
 their standard of mankind was so high that they refused 
 to accept the present condition of gilded but sinful 
 indulgence as a just estimate of Israel's valuation. So 
 really humanity's censurer who points out man's sin 
 has yet a higher opinion of mankind than humanity's 
 apologist why dwells on his excellencies. 
 
 Here then both the idealist and the materialist may 
 give us glimpses of human frailty and passion, but with 
 motives so divergent that the whole impression of the 
 picture in each instance is radically distinct. Zola may 
 show you the night side of Paris and say "this is life 
 be it good or eyil does not concern me, such is average 
 humanity." Isaiah shows us the night side of Jerusalem, 
 but he thrills with horror while he depicts the picture 
 and makes us .understand by his burning denunciation 
 that this is not the normal moral tone of man, that it 
 dare not be, it is but a temporary falling to a lower level 
 above which men must soon rise to that lofty plane of 
 conduct designed for them by God. Such is not average 
 humanity such is not the most we can expect of them 
 such is degraded humanity, a grotesque caricature of 
 the divinely stamped creature, an awful nightmare from 
 which he must soon awaken. 
 
 The idealist he who would vindicate the better side 
 of man, may not always go about his work in the same 
 way. We may reach the same truth from opposite 
 directions. If at times it is his duty to expose the rotten-
 
 ness underlying that which seems fair, at other times it 
 may be his duty to reveal the nobility of man under 
 rough and uninviting exterior. Whether we show that 
 some people are not as good as they ought to be and can 
 be, or that others are better than they seem, the encour- 
 aging impulse to a grander human ideal is still main- 
 tained. We are therefore indebted to Mr. Bret Harte for 
 showing us the tender, generous and self-denying touches 
 in hardened, lawless pioneers on the Pacific Slope. The 
 strange mixture of blasphemy and poetry, of blood-shed 
 and chivalry, show us in these alternate lights and shades 
 the broad capacity for good and evil in every human 
 being. 
 
 I think that Heinrich Heine and Karl Emil Franzos, 
 and to a certain extent, even Israel Zangwill, have done 
 something of the same service for the Jew of the Ghetto. 
 The world at large saw or only cared to see the squalid 
 side. These writers show us the poetic side. Underneath 
 uncouth manners, jargon, dialect and narrow formalism, 
 inheritance of Gentile bigotry, they revealed a slumbering 
 nobility and moral greatness that showed them still to 
 be a nation of heroes with lofty ideals. A Jew sunk in 
 the depths of poverty yet poring over the religious 
 problems of the Talmud, is a condition presented by the 
 poor of no other people on the globe. Their pictures of 
 the Sabbath home in the humblest Jewish quarters, 
 where family affection is hallowed by religious sanctity, 
 where worship is hailed as a joy, and duty and love 
 become one, are at once the Jew's vindication against the 
 slanderous charges of sordid materialism, cupidity, avar- 
 ice and spoliation, which are the periodic slanders of his 
 detractors. 
 
 We want a Heine or a Bret Harte to write for us the 
 inner life of the shamefully abused Russian Jew abused 
 in Russia by barbarities which we would not inflict even
 
 on our convicts, abused in America by spiteful and cruel 
 calumnies, that would lay all crimes and all evils at his 
 door. The fact that the world should bear uppermost in 
 mind is that they are sufferers for conscience sake, that 
 they are martyrs to their religious convictions. They 
 are here because they refused to sell their souls for civil 
 liberty, because they refused to deny their God and to 
 outrage their conscience, by outwardly submitting to the 
 formalities of another creed that would have saved them 
 from shameful indignities, unrighteous exactions and 
 practical exile, not to mention the bribe of a lump sum 
 down as the price of their apostacy. They are, therefore 
 worthy to be compared with the Puritans, who. also ihe 
 victims of persecution, came to these shores to worship 
 God as their hearts dictated. It is our duty to reveal 
 the ideal side of these ''despised and rejected of men." 
 
 Furthermore we should make it our mission to search 
 for the good, the beautiful and the heroic, in the com 
 monplace, the ignorant, the obscure, just as the miner 
 delves deep into the dark earth, braving its polluting 
 gases, to extract the rare gem embedded in the rock and 
 soil. Let us go down into the slums, not only to find 
 out the sordidness and wretchedness that lie upon the 
 surface and then report them in sensational and glaring 
 tableaux in vulgar newspapers but for the vindication of 
 humanity, for a helpful encouragement to both high and 
 low to continue their slow but certain progress let us 
 show how a sweet usefulness and a divine pity pervades 
 the hearts of "the great unwashed,'' who swarm the pur- 
 lieus of large cities. 
 
 Reveal also to these forlorn and neglected their own 
 *deal side, their kinship with the highest, that hope may 
 brighten their sad hearts and noble emulation succeed 
 their blighting apathy. Poetry and prose are simply 
 different ways of looking at the same thing. \Ve are
 
 most of us prosaic we see the dull hard facts of life in 
 their gray reality; few are gifted with the poet's wand or 
 can apply the magnetic touch that would raise them 
 from the realm of the sordid and reveal their latent 
 charms. Yet our happiness largely depends upon ihis 
 poetic power. We must believe with the philosopher 
 after all, that what we see are copies of ideal realities 
 beyond, and our aim must ever be to catch occasional 
 glimpses of the ideal side of all things. You can throw 
 a charm about your home, and around the simple facts 
 of your life that will be to you an endless source of cheer 
 and joy. It will not depend upon your circumstances 
 nor on things themselves, but upon your power of ideal- 
 ization. It lifts you above the material world to a higher 
 realm in which all things are exalted and you with them. 
 Remember that since God has put Utopias and Arcadias 
 in our hearts, the realization of these ideals may come 
 some day. 
 
 Is not this the province of religion to idealize life, and 
 to exalt life's ideals; to lift it out of the slough: to 
 enhance it; to transfigure it; to raise it on high. What is 
 its perpetual lesson be not satisfied with the temporal: 
 "not on bread alone doth man live,"but move ever onward 
 towards the divine goal that must never be lost sight of. 
 This is the truest sense in which it may be said to bring 
 salvation and a Messianic age. It is ever striving to cul 
 tivate our taste for the highest. Listen to its whisper- 
 ing voice within you to come up higher, and to make 
 your ideals realities.
 
 SOPHISTS AND PHARISEES -OR, THE 
 VITALITY OF ERROR.
 
 Sophists and Pharisees; or, the 
 Vitality of Error.* 
 
 It is said that the idle straying of the cows decided 
 later the high-ways of Boston, and we all know that a 
 flight of birds led Columbus to sail south and thus save 
 North America from Spanish civilization, and assure its 
 Anglo-Saxon character. History is full of these chance 
 currents that change the course of humanity's progress. 
 Even the reputation of the leaders of men hang on the 
 turn of a hair. The prejudice or venom of a biased 
 historian may blast a character for all future ages. Later 
 critics may try to set things right by learned works on 
 "the real truth about so and so," but the slander has 
 gone forth, has been taken up by the people and the 
 refutation is too late. Yet we will not hesitate to add 
 our little word to the cause of truth to try and plead 
 again for the misunderstood perhaps the world may 
 give a new trial and revoke some of its unjust sentences. 
 We will take up two typical instances, one from the 
 sphere of knowledge, the other from the sphere of 
 religion. 
 
 When philosophy in Greece had reached the stage of 
 "confusion worse confounded," there appeared about 
 500 B. c. E., a class of men. who, seeing the impossibility 
 of a decision being reached, abandoned altogether the 
 search for the key to all mysteries. They decided to 
 confine their energies to the sphere of the known and 
 the practical, reminding us somewhat of the Positivist 
 movement of modern times. They were called Sophists 
 which means " men of wisdom " for they came as 
 teachers of youth. All the philosophers hitherto had
 
 given lectures to young men, but only on metaphysical 
 themes. Now, Protagoras of Abdera the founder of the 
 school of sophists conceived the idea of preparing such 
 a schedule of* studies as would offer a practical education 
 for conduct and civic life a course of training, not to 
 enable them to reach the ideal truth which was the aim 
 of all philosophy, but simply to make them capable and 
 virtuous citizens. He opened at first four new branches 
 of study or sophistries as they were called; culture, 
 rhetoric, politics and disputation. 
 
 It was then simply a movement for higher education 
 to supplement the usual instruction in reading, writing^ 
 gymnastics and music. The sophists gave particular 
 attention to grammar, style, poetry, oratory, and thus 
 exercised a great influence on literature, and helped to 
 raise the literary standard of their age. Some of the 
 sophists who followed Protagoras extended the scheme 
 of what we would call to-day " a liberal education," by 
 adding the teaching of science in a popular way. Some 
 made a specialty of preparing men for pleaders in the 
 law courts, others for political debaters. The sophists 
 were before everything educators. There had been 
 no systematic higher and literary education until they 
 came. And they did much to give to the Athenians their 
 remarkable versatility. 
 
 Now there was a fear that a special training for success 
 in debate taught by the sophists, might lead to a desire 
 to win rather than a desire for truth; for the applause of 
 bystanders rather than for honest conviction, that in this 
 way they might be tempted to use brilliant oratory to 
 cover fallacious reasoning. This fear may be well 
 founded, but it would apply equally to all speakers 
 whether trained by the sophists or not. The accusations 
 brought against the sophists that they cared for style 
 more than matter, for effect more than accuracy, were
 
 simply the slanders of enemies; though in its decay some 
 worthless pretenders may have helped to bring degrada. 
 tion on this school of teachers. All schools, all profes- 
 sions and all religions have their black sheep. Some 
 doctors are quacks, some lawyers are unscrupulous, some 
 ministers are hypocrites. These sophists were the first 
 to show the importance of elegance of writing and 
 grandeur of oratory and without them Demosthenes 
 would have been an impossibility. 
 
 To a certain extent even the sublime moral philoso- 
 pher Socrates was a sophist, for he too believed that it 
 was better to teach young men virtue and excellence 
 than the pursuit of theoretical abstractions, though his 
 aim was higher than that of the sophists, the eventual 
 attainment of truth; theirs, success in life. Therefore, 
 we should say to-day, Socrates was a religious teacher 
 the sophists, secular teachers. But no one to-day would 
 think of condemning teachers who turned out their 
 pupils, polished gentlemen of culture and practical men 
 of affairs, on the ground that the teachers were not also 
 ministers. But for virtually that reason, and because 
 they taught for pay, instead of gratuitously like the philo- 
 sophers, the sophists were condemned. Plato and 
 Aristotle had only mildly to criticise their methods for 
 their reputation for all future time to be blackened. 
 Centuries later these founders of our modern college 
 education were believed to be " ostentatious imposters 
 flattering and duping rich young men for gain, under- 
 mining morality, encouraging their pupils in the un- 
 scrupulous prosecution of ambition and cupidity." A 
 sophist came to mean a deceptive pleader who covered 
 his false theories by plausible language. Sophistry came 
 to mean fallacious reasoning. And this historical slande r 
 has passed current for 2000 years. 
 
 The historian Grote has been among the first to dis-
 
 close the truth about the sophists, to show that they 
 were "a much calumniated race,^' that there were 
 sophists and sophists just as there were philosophers and 
 philosophers. 
 
 The vindication comes almost too late; sophistry as a 
 synonym for sham logic, has passed into language. 
 You will find it so defined, in all the dictionaries, you 
 use the term yourself. The slander will live in spite o 
 the denouement, for error is a power on the earth as 
 well as truth. 
 
 Our second picture in illustration of the vitality of 
 error, brings us to a change of surroundings. Since 
 Hellenism and Hebraism represent the two great ideas 
 that divide the world, it seems eminently fitting that 
 having chosen our first example from Greece we should 
 take our second from Judea. 
 
 It is as natural for religions as for politics to have 
 their separate parties that give outlet not only to differ- 
 ence of opinion but also to difference of temperament. 
 They even both use the same terms Conservative and 
 Radical. But in Judea, Church and State were one, so 
 we at times find political parties divided on religious 
 issues, and religious parties divided on political issues. 
 Therefore in describing the Pharisees and Sadducees we 
 cannot separate the ecclesiastic points of divergence 
 from the civil. 
 
 The Sadducees were the descendants of the old aristo- 
 cratic priestly families, and believed in maintaining all 
 the privileges and honors of the priestly class, and con- 
 fining all religious rites to them. The Pharisees repre- 
 sented the popular class who believed in making Judaism 
 democratic, with every man as his own priest, with the 
 right to perform for himself every ceremonial function. 
 Here was the first difference.
 
 Again the Sadducees were fashionable, worldly, ambi- 
 tious, believed in cultivating Greek arts and manners, 
 in managing the Jewish State in the way all othe r 
 governments were directed, in having representatives 
 at the courts of other nationalities, and in endeavoring 
 by their own energies to open up a brilliant political 
 future for Judea. The Pharisees wished little communi- 
 cation with outside nations, because bitter experience 
 had taught that it invariably led to idolatry. They were 
 passionately attached to the Mosaic Law this religious 
 law they would like to have kept as the law of the land; 
 for they wished no earthly king. God alone was to be 
 their king the nation should be a theocracy. 
 
 This leads to the third difference. The Pharisees were 
 zealous to obey every religious rite written in the Mosaic 
 Law, or implied in our Rabbinical law. They were 
 scrupulously observant of every detail of ceremonial 
 especially with regard to cleanliness and food. Again' 
 they had unbounding trust in Providence, believed in 
 future rewards and punishments, and were therefore 
 deeply submissive to the Divine will. This intense faith 
 made them forbearing, chaste and heroic. The Sadducees 
 were more rational in their principles, but less firm in 
 their beliefs. They believed in the future life, but not 
 in rewards and punishments. They carried out the 
 Mosaic Law with stern strictness, but would not accep 1 
 the Oral Law. 
 
 On the whole the Pharisees were the self-sacrificing, 
 patriotic, pious party of the common people. The 
 Sadducees, the advanced, cultured, worldly party of the 
 aristocracy. Each party had its drawbacks and its com- 
 pensations. We admire the liberality of the Sadducee, 
 the earnestness of the Pharisee. 
 
 But what was remarked in reference to the Sophists- 
 must be repeated here. All parties have their scape-graces
 
 and the Pharisees certainly had theirs. None is more 
 bitter against the false Pharisees than the Talmud itself 
 the Zebuim the 'painted ones' as it calls them, who do 
 evil like Zimri and then claim godly reward like Phineas. 
 In its severe denunciation of false Pharisees it divides 
 them into six classes. 
 
 1. Those who do the will of God for earthly motives. 
 
 2. Those ostentatious ones who go with slow steps and 
 say, "wait for me I have a good deed to perform." 
 
 3 Those who knock their heads against a wall because 
 never looking up for fear they might see a woman. 
 
 4. Those who pose as saints. 
 
 5. Those who say -tell me of another duty. 
 
 6. Those who are pious, because afraid of God. 
 Who are the genuine Pharisees asks the Talmud 
 
 ''They who do the will of their Father in heaven, because 
 they love Him." 
 
 The founder of Christianity also denounced the false 
 Pharisees. His followers have taken up this con- 
 demnation and supposed it to apply to all Pharisees 
 forgetting that he himself was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. 
 He denounced those Pharisees who were hypocritical, 
 just as a conscientious democrat would denounce bad 
 Democrats, or a conscientious Republican would de- 
 nounce bad Republicans. Just as a Christian minister 
 would rebuke Christian hypocrites or a Jewish minister 
 Jewish hypocrites 
 
 The whole burden of the teachings of Jesus was 
 against. the rich political party in power who were the 
 Sadducees. He threw in his lot with the masses, the poor, 
 oppressed those who intensely believed in the ''kingdom 
 of God " they were the Pharisees ! The Sadducees 
 therefore died out with the fall of the nation, with the 
 destruction of Jerusalem as a political power but the 
 Pharisees survived as the only Jews, We are the descen- 
 dants of the Pharisees to-day!
 
 But just because Jesus of Nazareth denounced the 
 false Pharisees, a blind obstinacy has persisted in believ- 
 ing th:it the condemnation applied to all Pharisees. 
 Henceforward Pharisees were to be known as a race of 
 hypocrites form-worshipers, observers of ceremonies 
 and ignorers of spirit. To-day Pharisee means a pious 
 fraud, one who uses the cloak of religion to be success- 
 ful in evil. Turn to Webster to-day and you will find 
 Phariseism defined ashypocricy in religion. Such I fear, 
 it always will mean. For unlike the Sophists the Phari- 
 sees have not even aGrote to defend them. 
 
 It has alas been the lot of our race to be the victims of 
 more popular errors than any other people. We have 
 been the great misunderstood class of history. Among 
 the excuses offered by the Gentile for the persecution of 
 the Jews, the most familiar was that they always stole a 
 Christian child, killed it and used its blood to make their 
 Passover cakes. The innocent Jews humbly denied the 
 slander. But they were not believed and many were 
 butchered each Easter, because of this fancied crime. 
 
 At times, some inhuman monsters would deliberately 
 slay a Christian, throw the body into the Jewish quarter 
 and then raise the cry that the Jews had killed a Chris- 
 tian child. But when in every instance the truth was 
 finally disclosed, always after the massacre and plunder 
 of the Jews, it might be presumed that the error would 
 be uprooted ? Not a bit of it. It was believed strongly 
 the very year after its falsity was conclusively proven, 
 and in the very face of its refutation, new horrors would 
 be committed. 
 
 But when the iQth century dawned the century of 
 enlightenment, when all the cobwebs of superstition were 
 swept away and all the dark corners of erroneous belief 
 were exposed, then surely this absurd and wicked slan- 
 der would pass out ? Alas no! It reappeared every year.
 
 10 
 
 Do you remember the Terza-Esler case in Austria, some 
 twelve years ago; the case in Corfu that occurred within 
 three years, or that recent notorious incident deliberate- 
 ly created by the anti-Semites, to further their fanatic 
 crusade ? 
 
 And, to think of it, this same accusation was brought 
 against the Christians themselves when they were a small 
 sect persecuted by the Romans ! They were said to use 
 the blood of infants in the Eucharistic meetings, "feast- 
 ing upon a new-born child concealed within a vessel of 
 flour, into which a knife was plunged." I need not add 
 that this accusation against the Christians was just as 
 false as it was against the Jews. 
 
 The treasuries of the European cathedrals are full 
 of relics of wafers and hosts, that the Jews were said 
 to have pierced and that by special miracle, blood 
 flowed therefrom in consequence. These relics are 
 worshiped annually by the same pilgrims who wor- 
 ship the "holy coat" of the Savior, although two differ- 
 ent cities claim to possess this wonder-working treasure. 
 
 Week after week misstatements, and misrepresenta- 
 tions about the Jews are thundered from the pulpits, 
 deepening the false impressions about us year by year, 
 infusing all literature with misinterpretations about 
 Judaism and the Bible, until some of the very Hebrews 
 themselves have come to believe that Judaism was 
 arrested development, that the picture of God in our 
 Bible is stern and cruel, that no spiritual religion was 
 taught till Jesus came, that all virtues and all good take 
 their date from that time. We point to the stubborn 
 facts of history, we point to the prophets, we point to 
 rabbinical ethics, we point to the purity of Jewish domes- 
 tic life, the protest is of no use, we are in a hopeless 
 minority. Alas the truth of the Arab quotation "Long 
 is the life of a lie."
 
 ii 
 
 What a dreadful time it took the world to believe 
 that the earth was a sphere and not flat and that it 
 moved round the sun, after it was conclusively 
 proven. What a lot of people had to be persecuted 
 before they would accept the facts. What a hard fight 
 r he truths of science have had to make their way. How 
 often has beneficent information been postponed by 
 stupidity for hundreds of years. 
 
 For 200 years the English believed Oliver Cromwell a 
 hypocrite instead of a patriot; for 1,000 years Mahomet 
 was branded an imposter. For 1.800 years a mortal man 
 has been worshiped as an immortal god and the worship 
 is going on still. During the Middle Ages the Jew was 
 thought to be a four-footed animal and the Talmud a 
 living man. The Catholic church still bases its theolog- 
 ical instruction on the scholastic philosophy <>f Thomas 
 Aquinas, ignoring the tact that this philosophy has 
 been exploded ever since the days of Sir Francis Bacon. 
 
 Yes ! errors live long and die hard. When we think 
 we have reached truth at last we find that the fair 
 picture was but the mirage of the desert. Even the mis- 
 takes that have been exposed are still crystalized in 
 language. 
 
 Half the world to-day is holding fast to the errors 
 that the other half has outgrown. There are millions 
 to day who refuse to be convinced, who persistently 
 deny the self-evident. Falsehood has among its allies 
 prejudice, ignorance and indifference, and it will be a 
 hard fight to lay the monster low. 
 
 The Persian legend hath it that Ahriman, spirit of 
 darkness and falsehood, is perpetually struggling with 
 Armuzo,-spirit of light and truth. Thai struggle ha? been 
 going on as long as man has been upon the earth. When 
 will the end be? When will truth live without a rival - 
 when will the epitaph of error be written?.
 
 SENTIMENT AND LAW.
 
 Sentiment and Law. 
 
 Reform Judaism is in no sense a completed institution, 
 although it has passed its experimental stage. Nor does 
 it represent one standpoint; it includes many different 
 theories and varying forms. It has already three divi- 
 sions: Conservatives, Progressives, Radicals. Radicals 
 and Conservatives now stand as far apart as did the 
 Orthodox and the Reform, in the first stages of the latter. 
 To say. then, that one is a Reform Jew does not define 
 his attitude toward Judaism. And even these divisions 
 are not sharply divided by clear cut lines, but they blend 
 into one another. 
 
 The Reform school are still making changes from time 
 to time in ritual and in custom. They are trying many 
 things. They are not yet satisfied. I know I am not- 
 I see errors in Reform as well as in Orthodoxy, and will 
 impartially reveal both. 
 
 Radicalism has made the mistake of changing too 
 much and changing too quickly. In its eagerness to 
 adapt itself to modern lines of thought and to conform 
 as far as possible to Western surroundings, it has for- 
 gotten the value of individuality. It is quite as important 
 that our mode of worship should be distinct from that 
 of our neighbors, as that it should be like, that of our 
 neighbors. It should be like theirs because we have 
 many ideas in common; it should be distinct because 
 we hold some vital ideas that are not shared with us. 
 For those ideas we stand, and if we love them \ve will 
 not mind standing alone. Then we will even welcome 
 any distinctive feature, particularly if it typifies one of 
 those ideas. We are forgetting that \\\ this world of the 
 commonplace and the prosaic, where each person is much 
 like the next; distinction in the good sense is a great
 
 thing worth even suffering persecution for. When \ve 
 look back on the past and compare our people \viththeir 
 immoral surroundings, we glory in their distinction 
 among the nations. Young people, impetuous and 
 enthusiastic, often pass through a radical stage in which 
 they would fain sweep away all forms and all differences 
 and cry heroically for the spirit and the ideal. As we 
 grow older and can think more calmly and soberly, \ve 
 find out how impossible it is always to keep our souls 
 turned to that high pitch, and how helpful suggestive 
 ceremonial is. Age teaches the value of association. 
 
 The impatient youth asks, " Why need we read the 
 'Bible from that unprinted parchment scroll and in un- 
 punctuated Hebrew, too; why not read it from a plain 
 paper book printed and in the vernacular?" A scroll is 
 the form in which books were made in the days of our 
 ancient ancestors, and skin was the usual material. The 
 Hebrew in which it is written was the language of Israel 
 while it was yet an independent nation. It is unpunctu- 
 ated, for points and stops are modern innovations, almost 
 as modern as printing. The Hebrew scroll is then a 
 memorial of antiquity, one of the links that bind us to 
 the past. It calls up a host of suggestions: that we Jews 
 ourselves are, as it were, a link between past and present, 
 between Orient and Occident, between the old and the 
 new; that the forms of books, of writings or of tongues 
 may change from age to age, but that there are certain 
 Divine truths and moral principles that are the same 
 throughout all ages; they are the eternal verities, and 
 those truths are written in that parchment scroll, and 
 were first taught in the Hebrew language. 
 
 Our praver-books, indeed, are made as books of to-day, 
 and to a varying extent written in the language of to- 
 day, and the service is read from them, except one small 
 portion read from the scroll, in response to a sentiment
 
 /rs 
 
 that we all love and introduce everywhere of preserving 
 among our brand new possessions little bits of the old- 
 cherished relics of bygone days, sweet reminders of an 
 almost forgotten past. And if the relics belong to one's 
 own race, one's own family, how much more highly are 
 they prized. Reverence for the past is despised only 
 by Philistines and Vandals. 
 
 We have only to take care that regard for the old 
 assists and does not interfere with duties demanded by 
 our own times; it should enhance them and show them 
 in a new light. The true uses of ancient rites are brought 
 out when they are fittingly subordinated to the needs of 
 the hour, they must not in the slightest degree ignore 
 them. 
 
 The past is the foundation on which the structure of 
 the present rests; yet we do live in foundations but on 
 them. 
 
 Ceremonies are matters of sentiment. I make against 
 Orthodoxy the charge that it has taken all the poetry 
 out of the ceremonies by making them laws And so as 
 hard, dry, unattractive forms Reform Judaism has largely 
 rejected them or at least permitted them to fall into 
 decay. But it was and is the duty of Reform not to 
 renounce the old observances, but to idealize them. It 
 may have done that here and there, but riot sufficiently. 
 Reform has contented itself chiefly with the negative 
 work of removing abuses It has pulled down roppl'.ng 
 structures it has cleared the ground. It has not yet 
 taken up the trowel. The harder task, the synthetic 
 work of modern Judaism the upbuilding work has 
 hardly begun. 
 
 Orthodoxy has killed the sentiment in our ceremonies 
 by legalizing them, and has robbed them of their beauty 
 by a literal, crude, prosaic interpretation. Let me illus- 
 trate. An old teaching of Judaism is that simplicity
 
 should prevail in all the mournful details of burial. 
 That is a fine idea. In death we are all equal. The 
 distinctions of wealth and poverty, of honor and obscu- 
 rity, that divide us in life, end at the grave. To be sim- 
 ple is to return to our early condition, and death is a 
 return to the source whence we came. In the solemn 
 presence of death, vanity, pomp, display, seem hollow 
 mockery Elaborate decoration irritates the bereaved, 
 quiet simplicity soothes them. But when Orthodoxy 
 stupidly supposes that simplicity means rudeness and 
 roughness, its common pine box, its repulsive shroud, 
 the very name of which makes us shiver, its black cloth 
 often unclean because used on many occasions, and its 
 sheeted mirrors, destroy the original idea. Our feelings 
 are outraged by gross, uncouth details, that tend to 
 make death, sad in itself, ever so much more shocking. 
 
 But on the other' hand, because the idea of simplicity 
 has been abused, should Reform Judaism neglect it alto- 
 gether, and forgetting entirely its old teaching, copy in 
 every detail the elaborate decorations of the Gentiles ? 
 I say it is our opportunity as Reform Jews to return to 
 the old simplicity taught by our ancestors. I mean sim. 
 plicity in the spirit, not to define its precise limits within 
 rigid legal formulas, and not harshly to refuse, as an 
 orthodox Rabbi does refuse, to officiate unless certain 
 ceremonial details, indicating the letter but not the spirit 
 of simplicity, are complied with. 
 
 Reform Judaism had no right to make any change for 
 change's sake. What purpose, pray, was served by the 
 abolition of the Chuppah, the marriage canopy, so com- 
 pletely identified wiih the ceremony as actually to be 
 used as a synonym for it? What advance idea was implied 
 in its abandonment ? Surely we must have a reason for 
 our changes if we wish those changes to be respected. 
 The Chuppah is another beautiful sentiment. It typifies
 
 the home of the bridegroom, he takes his bride under 
 the protection of his roof. It is an objeci lesson in the 
 husband's duty to his wife to shield her from the world, 
 to nourish and to cherish her in the home they will 
 build together, and which her presence is needed to 
 complete. 
 
 A^ain, while asking you to return to that good old 
 custom, I say don't spoil it by rigid interpretation. A 
 canopy of flowers or leaves preserves the same idea Div- 
 ing it perhaps a final poetic touch. 
 
 A further instance. It was customary to build the 
 synagogue to \vard the Kast, and to pray facing in that 
 direction. A feeling of affection led our fathers to look 
 toward their old home, where their inspired teachers 
 lived and taught, towards Zion whence came the Law 
 and where their much beloved Temple had once stood- 
 I think we ought to try to maintain this idea wherever 
 we can, but of course not to permit it to stand in the way 
 of important principles and living issues. Therefore I 
 cannot but regret the action taken by the Chief Rabbi of 
 England, who refused to sanction the building of a syna- 
 gogue unless it faced the East. He stifled the sentiment 
 of religion through the legalism of the Slvulchan Aruch. 
 The Shulchan Aruch cannot decide these things for us, 
 any more than it can legislate our feelings. Law kills 
 feeling. Customs grow naturally, taking root in our 
 deepest need, force them artificially and they will wither- 
 
 Our Rabbins made the mistake of reducing all religion 
 to law, attempting to meet by laws every minute religious 
 duty. No opportunity was given for spontaneous reli- 
 gious outburst, for the free play of emotion, for obeying 
 the promptings of the heart, for personal prayer. Ir 
 was all anticipated in cut and dried laws. Every 
 bowing, every tremor, every beating of the breast 
 was marked out in advance to be applied to speci-
 
 fie passages. Special words had to be fitted into certain 
 places in the prayers for special occasions, as thong a 
 prayer were an algebraic formula. Even the mourner 
 was not left in peace but was hedged in with a whole 
 host of laws, as to the nature of the seat on which he 
 should grieve, and the kind of rent that should be made 
 in his garment, when it should be sewn up, either fine 
 drawn or roughly stitched, according to the degree of 
 relationship. Judaism was a voluminous and complica- 
 ted code. And since it was impossible for everybody to 
 master all these laws, the chief duty of the Rabbi was to 
 study the ponderous volumes of intricate law day and 
 night, in order to be able to answer the ceremonial 
 questions of the people posken hashaaloth, as it was 
 technically called. The Rabbi was in fact a religious 
 lawyer. 
 
 But from the one extreme of formulating a specified 
 benediction for every minute detail of life, we have no 
 right to go to the other extreme of completely secular- 
 izing all our experience, of banishing the Berachoth alto- 
 gether, and with them the thought of God in daily life, 
 and the association of religion with the duties of home. 
 We may have objected to the old liturgy as being much 
 too long, but it did not justify the reaction of abandon- 
 ing the morning prayers, the grace after meals and the 
 Passover Seder. 
 
 I do not wish to imply that this omission has been in 
 any sense sanctioned by Reform, except that in not cen- 
 suring the neglect, it h:is to that extent encouraged it. 
 Some persons are unfortunately under the impression 
 that the lighting of Sabbath Lights, the blessing of the 
 children, the Kiddush, and many of those beautiful cere- 
 monies of Judaism that we can never afford to lose, have 
 been abolished by Reform Judaism. It is time that we 
 laid insistence upon the fact that such is not the case, by
 
 dwelling upon them in the pulpit, by teaching them in 
 the Sunday-schools, by practicing them in the homes. 
 There are a good many ways of killing a man besides 
 hanging him; there are a good many ways of making a 
 ceremony a dead letter besides officially abrogating it 
 one is, by saying nothing about it. 
 
 It is the mission of Reform Judaism to spiritualize 
 Judaism just where Orthodoxy has materialized it. The 
 exaggerated importance given to the thousand and one 
 laws about Kosher and Trifa has stood in the way of 
 great principles. The perpetual intrusion of petty die- 
 tary injunctions has justified the criticism that ours was 
 a "kitchen religion." In this city, that monstrous organ- 
 ization and its wonderful equipment simply to see that 
 every ecclesiastical detail with regard to kosher meat is 
 complied with, if solely directed to moral elevation would 
 accomplish vast results. It is sad to tiiink that a so-called 
 Chief Rabbi was imported from Europe almost wholly to 
 supervise its supply, this being considered the greatest 
 religious need. Dietary laws are important for the pre- 
 servation of health, but they do not belong to the sphere 
 of the synagogue. A good many of us have to practice 
 sundry dietary restrictions not found in the Mosaic code, 
 as to wines, pastry, cheese, etc. These restrictions are 
 identically parallel with those found in Leviticus, and 
 yet we never think of associating them with religion, with 
 man's aspiration towards God. 
 
 Instead of abolishing an unaesthetic ceremony, Reform 
 Judaism should so modify it as to bring out the original 
 religious purpose obscured perhaps under an unfortunate 
 form. This it has already done for the Barmitzvah in 
 its broadened Confirmation and for the Mourners' Kad- 
 dish the two strongholds of modern Judaism. 
 
 Reform Judaism should encourage constructive^ not 
 destructive changes. For example, it should change
 
 Chanuka from a minor to a Great Festival, so that our 
 children would look forward to it with as much eager- 
 ness as they now, alas, anticipate Christmas. The Ten 
 Penitential Days between New Year and Atonement 
 should be recognized in some form. The Lulav and 
 Esrog on Sukkoth should be supplemented by fruits of 
 our own country, which should all be donations from 
 the congregations and should afterwards be distributed 
 among the poor. On Shevuoth, there should be flowers 
 in the home as well as in the Temple. We must not 
 confine the ceremonies of religion to the Temple. If 
 there be no religious observance in the home, the influ- 
 ence of the Temple is meagre indeed. 
 
 Again, when we touch the institutions of Judaism we 
 must not forget that we stand on holy ground. A con- 
 gregation is not a religious unity, complete in itself, and 
 responsible only to itself. It is but part of a larger whole 
 and it must be willing at times to sink its individuality 
 for the good of that larger whole. It owes duties to 
 other congregations in fact to the whole community of 
 Israel. In making ritual, it has not fulfilled its obliga- 
 tion by merely considering the wants of its members it 
 must consider the sentiment of all its brethren. If each 
 individual Rabbi is considered as sufficient authority for 
 all ceremonial changes, and each congregation becomes 
 a law unto itself, then Judaism will split up into as many 
 sects as it has congregations. 
 
 There is in fact not enough unity amongst us. There is 
 lacking religious fellowship. We unite for charity but 
 not for worship. Within the one city, congregations 
 become rivals, trying- to outstrip each other by the offer 
 of "attractions and novelties" instead of lovingly help- 
 ing each other as religious bodies should. In this way 
 ritual changes are not always made on their merits, nor 
 as the result of the highest conviction, but often on the
 
 ground of expediency, because they would be popular and 
 would draw. In railing against the undoubted abuses of 
 Orthodoxy, Reform Judaism must not forget that it has 
 abuses of its own, abuses that we cannot shift to the 
 shoulders of past ancestors. We have been in too much 
 of a hurry to realize religious ideals, forgetting Nature's 
 lesson that slow organic growth always precedes the best 
 and the most lasting results. I believe in Reform Juda- 
 ism with heart and soul, and still I acknowledge that our 
 hardest work is yet to be done.
 
 GAMBLING.
 
 Gambling. 
 
 In Mishna Sanhedrin we are given a list of classes of 
 people whose evidence would not be taken in courts of 
 justice Among these we find Metsachek bekubyah dice 
 players, and Mafrichai Yonem trainers of doves for racing 
 purposes. Sometimes the indirect information inferred 
 from an old quotation is more valuable than the knowl- 
 edge directly given. And this old Talmudic law teaches 
 us first, how ancient gambling is, and secondly how early 
 it became a demoralizing agency, so that the words of 
 those engaged in it could not be trusted. 
 
 It is a mournful reflection to discover how ancient 
 every kind of evil is ; the inventive genius of man seemed 
 to develop quite soon enough to devise all sorts of clever 
 contrivances to pander to the baser passions, as ancient 
 ruins abundantly testify. The sword was invented be- 
 fore the plough, and while devilishly ingenious tortures 
 of most elaborate completeness existed in abundance, 
 even before the days of the Inquisition, we have had to 
 wait almost till the ipth century for labor-saving 
 machinery and sanitary science. 
 
 As early as the days of the Judges, we find Samson 
 propounding a riddle that was really a wager, to his 
 friends, promising 30 changes of raiment if they guessed 
 it and exacting the same if they could not. References 
 to a race are found in the igth Psalm and in the Book of 
 Ecclesiastes. While as far back as we can go in history, 
 we will always find a sphinx legend in some form, where 
 the world is at the feet of him who can guess the riddle, 
 while he who fails is doomed. 
 
 Human nature revels in the mysterious even prefer- 
 ring an element of uncertainty in all its calculations,
 
 4 
 
 which it loves to trust to blind accident. In childhood, 
 while the dark and the unknown terrifies, it at the 
 same time fascinates. It gives opportunity for the piny 
 of imagination. 
 
 In our earliest years, when laws of nature are but dimly 
 understood, we believe more in chance luck than in 
 cause and effect. But this belief is by no means confined 
 to childhood. An old superstition has encouraged the 
 belief that justice is best obtained by lot, and in olden 
 times men preferred to trust to its decision rather than 
 to fallible human reason; they were fully convinced 
 that if they devised an ordeal of formality to decide be- 
 tween the true and. the false, the gods would step in, 
 turning the scale for innocence. And so the wager, the 
 ordeal of fire, the trial by combat, and the duel were at 
 first religious institutions regulated by the law of the 
 land. Hence the absurdity of maintaining the duel 
 to-day to decide a misunderstanding, when it is no longer 
 believed that supernatural powers will defeat the guilty, 
 but that by the laws of cause and effect, regardless of the 
 merits of the fighters, the best swordsman or the best 
 shot will probably win the victory. Still superstitions 
 always survived even their exposure, and many a young 
 woman will prefer to decide her own fate by the throw 
 of a coin or an arbitrary accident, to acting according to 
 the dictates of her own heart. 
 
 But although many gamblers to-day hold many super- 
 stitions with rega r d to play, as to occurrence of figures 
 and taking a number from a dream, which are in fact 
 part of their infatuation, it is the mad love for the daring 
 excitement at gambling and its luring possibilities re- 
 gardless of its consequences that impels them to give 
 themselves up to it with reckless devotion. 
 
 There is a delicious frenzy in hazarding our future 
 and even our lives on uncertainty, in staking everything
 
 on the throw of a die, that masters all other hu man 
 passions. Even the sirens of drink, of lust, of power, 
 cannot entice the gambler from his worship of the god 
 of chance. And the unfortunate disease grows on what 
 it's fed. 
 
 You should see those pale intense faces, with all human 
 softness gone from them, as I saw them gathered around 
 the gaming table at Ostend, breathlessly watching the 
 roll of the ball, until it gradually reached a stand-still at 
 a particular number ; brutally oblivious of the outside 
 work! and its concerns. Sometimes the degradation is 
 so complete as to make the hopelessly confirmed gambler 
 reckless of honor, reputation, of his very soul. 
 
 Tiie milder, healthful exhilaration of innocent pleas- 
 ures and mirthful pastimes and the sober occupation of 
 business fails to satisfy the man who has learned to keep 
 his pulses at fever heat. Accustomed to stake a year's in- 
 come in one hour a*, the Exchange or at the iable,he finds 
 the slow and gradual profits of steady and legitimate 
 industry distasteful. He has lost the moral will-power 
 that can patiently submit to the discipline of continous 
 occupation. Even the young man who has but once 
 tasted tne intoxication of the betting fields and wins $100 
 on a holiday afternoon feels discontented to have to 
 come back to $10 a week for ten hours a day, and hears 
 the delusive whisper, whether in addition to the pleasure, 
 the excitement, and the jolly companions of the race- 
 track, it would not pay occasionally to neglect his duties 
 on some excuse and make a comfortable sum. A heavy 
 loss may be his salvation, may awaken nim to his folly 
 and cure him in time. Or it may have the contrary 
 effect, urging him to borrow in order to try again to 
 refill his own pockets and repay the debt. A position of 
 trust may afford the opportunity to take, temporarily of 
 course, money that is not his, which he may win back
 
 and return, but which he may lose, and in very fright 
 may borrow more if only perhaps to win and repay it. 
 Need I go any further ? You may read the sequel almost 
 any day of the week in almost any of the newspapers. 
 
 Gambling is evil in itself, regardless of such unfortu- 
 nate consequences, that do not always follow. It con- 
 tributes nothing to the world's substance, or to its good 
 inanvform. When men stand around the gambling 
 tables at Monte Carlo, millions may change hands, but 
 not an iota has been added to the world's wealth. What 
 one gains another loses. In legitimate labor the farmer 
 adds to the world's products, while maintaining himself, 
 the merchant who transports it makes a profit and so 
 does the retail dealer ; the consumer is certainly benefited 
 by having the commodity gathered from the distance, 
 brought to him for his consumption, through the machin- 
 ery of trade. All help and all are helped none need 
 be losers. The teacher, lawyer, doctor, confer benefits, 
 all in their way,, and help their kind. Even the enter- 
 tainer, if the amusement he offers be harmless and relax- 
 ing, is of use in our social economy. For we need 
 recreation to re-create us, to fit us for continued labor. 
 Gambling does not even effect this it exhausts the 
 energies ; it saps the vitality, it is more wearing on the 
 physical system than life's troubles. While morally it 
 dries up the feelings and even the natural affections, it 
 destroys the scruples of conscience it changes a man 
 into a bird of prey and his fellow-creatures become his 
 victims. 
 
 Were not the sages of the Sanhedrin right in outlaw- 
 ing the evidence of a gambler? Were not the Pharisees 
 right in mistrusting the Greek culture since in the reign 
 of Herod it introduced dice-playing to the Israelites, as 
 the Greek word kubia indicates ? Rab Ilai wished to 
 make a distinction in that law that refused the evidence
 
 of gamblers, between those who played for pleasure and 
 those who played for gain. And although the distinction 
 was not accepted, still it is obvious there are some im- 
 portant differences. A professional gambler is no gam- 
 bler at all he thrives on the mania for play of other 
 people. It is no question of risk or uncertainty with 
 him. For even if his cards are not marked, his dice not 
 loaded and he uses no confederate, he has mastered by 
 long study the intricacies of the game, and those who 
 play with him are no match for his superior skill. He 
 is no gambler he rather belongs to the sharpers and 
 swindlers and should be dealt with by the law as any 
 other rogue. On Wall street there is an important differ- 
 ence between men of the type of Fisk and Gould, Ives 
 and McLeod of Reading notoiiety,and men like Vander- 
 bilt and Pierrepont Morgan, although a superficial pub- 
 lic may not always discriminate. There is finally a dis- 
 tinction between those who spend much of their time at 
 the race tracks and the gambling clubs, and those who 
 play in the evening once or twice a week, with just 
 enough monev at risk to give the game zest, but not 
 enough to seriously involve themselves to affect their 
 business or their health. 
 
 Yet it is a question not easy to answer where card- 
 playing as pure recreation ceases, and where card-play- 
 ing as gambling begins. It does not depend upon the 
 amount, for what would be an embarrassing sum for a 
 young clerk would be nothing for a retired merchant. 
 Or fortunes being equal, what would be felt as small by 
 the extravagant may be considered large by the par- 
 simonious. It depends upon the emotions. If the 
 interest in the amount involved, however small it may 
 be, is greater than the interest in the game itself, then it 
 is gambling. There are some games so entirely devoid 
 of thought or skill and so purely dependent on chance,
 
 that they nearly always run to gambling. There are 
 games of cards that demand such mental alertness as to 
 be of absorbing interest in themselves regardless of the 
 stake involved. It seems to me that a legitimate amuse- 
 ment should be sufficient in itself for pleasant recrea- 
 tion without having to borrow interest bv involving loss 
 and gain. 
 
 But card-playing in its most innocent form does 
 certainly not take rank amongst the highest and most 
 refined forms of pleasure. It does not help towards 
 cultivation as do so many amusements: it often unfits 
 for other and better enjoyments. We mav judge people 
 bv their recreations better than by their occupations. 
 When I learn of ladies who, day after day, spend after- 
 noons playing poker at each other's houses, when I learn 
 of men doing the sama nightly not even excluding th e 
 Sabbath eve, I cannot but reeret the pity of it. I cannot 
 but feel, that carried to that extent, it is. debasing. I 
 think that such an example is most unfortunate for our 
 Gentile neighbors and for our own children. In the 
 latter, it may awaken a distaste for reading at an age 
 when reading is most important for mind culture and 
 the formation of character. 
 
 This is an old evil in Israel; they have always seemed 
 to drift toward speculation. Thev may even have been 
 among the first to bring cards to Europe from the East. 
 In the Middle Ages it had become such a vice, I learn 
 from some interesting data published on the question, 
 that in 1628, the Rabbis of Venice published a decree of 
 excommunication against those members of the con- 
 gregation played cards. Every Jewish devotional book 
 published at the time was sure to contain a tirade against 
 cards. It always expressed the chief warning of fathers 
 to sons. And many weak-willed souls fearing its evils 
 actually signed pledges not to touch cards, just as people
 
 to-day sign pledges not to touch liquor. We know that 
 this love of speculation tempts even the poor Jews in all 
 quarters of Europe, to spare a little from hard-earned 
 wages, to take a fraction of a ticket in a Dutch lottery. 
 
 To-day, let us confess it, we have earned the unenvi- 
 able distinction of being particularly prone to gambling 
 in our clubs, at hotels and in our homes. Many of the 
 evils of Monte Carlo have been introduced at Long 
 Branch and Saratoga. This is most sad when found as 
 it so frequently is among our young men, and that is the 
 reason why you older people who know what responsi- 
 bility is, who do not as a rule gamble at cards, but who 
 play innocently, and who have earned the right to larger 
 leisure and greater indulgence, should be so very careful 
 as to the example you are setting. There is a profound 
 maxim in the Rabbinical Code, which says, it is not 
 sufficient not to do wrong but for the good of example, 
 we must even refrain from that which may appear to be 
 wrong. Be very careful that your example of too fre- 
 quent though harmless card-playing may not be mis- 
 understood by the younger people as a defence of card- 
 playing in any form; and just because youth will not 
 discriminate lest it serve as excuse for them to cross that 
 narrow border line that changes an innocent pastime 
 into a guilty passion. Once the fatal poison to gamble 
 has infected the moral system it will seek other methods 
 of gratifying it. If we wish to bet we can bet about 
 anything, from a Presidential election to a walking 
 match. Even a legitimate business can venture so far 
 in daring speculation as to be little less than a gambling 
 concern, in disguise. Such Jewish convicts as we have 
 are mostly young Americans between the ages of 16 and 
 30 who have been led to vice and crime by card-playing, 
 horse-betting and " sports " general ly. 
 
 I am shocked to notice how completely au fait the boys
 
 are with all the slang of the turf, how keenly they follow 
 all sporting news, and that they indulge in betting before 
 they are out of school. The details of the New Orleans 
 lottery scheme, kept before the eyes of the public for so 
 long could not but have had injurious effect. There 
 they saw public officials the representatives of the peo- 
 plemen holding important posts of responsibility, 
 who from such exalted positions were naturally looked 
 up to as examples, for the young generation who would 
 succeed them, shamelessly betray their public trust to 
 legalise a gambling institution and by permitting the 
 State to accept part of its profits, to give it thereby 
 moral countenance. A State much nearer to us, roused 
 to righteous indignation, was but yesterday fighting a 
 similar battle against its own leaders, who were betray- 
 ing the interests of their constituents in the interests of 
 a race-track. When such causes are pleaded in high 
 places, humbler people may well ask themselves, what is 
 right and what is wrong. 
 
 For this reason I feel opposed to " chances " at Fairs 
 for charitable and religious institutions, even though 
 I confess to have taken part in them, and aided them my- 
 self. Anything approaching the Jesuitical principle that 
 the end justifies the means, is morally pernicious. No 
 means tha*: are bad should be accepted to further ends 
 that are good, because, even though the particular end 
 may be safely effected, a loophole has been made in the 
 consciences of the workers, for dangerous sophistry that 
 may in some other emergency tempt them to resort to 
 all sorts of questionable methods for ends that may easily 
 be considered righteous; for to provide for our wives 
 and children for instance is a righteous end. I have no 
 hesitancy in saying that some weak natures may take 
 refuge behind the Church Fair as offering excuse for 
 attendance at gambling dives. In any event, the example
 
 20$ 
 ii 
 
 is most unfortunate of a religious institution, resorting 
 for its support to a practice to condemn which, is one of 
 the reasons of its existence. The pious fraud is a result ot 
 just such jugglery with moral issues. Let us not venture 
 too near the ragged edge of virtue, but keep well within 
 its boundaries. 
 
 A long and useful experience has surely taught us all 
 that the right way is always the best way, and in the 
 end the shortest way. There is no royal road to learn- 
 ing nor to success and woe to those who are waiting 
 for accident or fate to lift them suddenly into fortune 
 that their own energies cannot win for themselves. I 
 call that a form of gambling all the more insidious 
 because unconscious. The old gods are still half believed 
 in, and like the ancient Greeks, some thoughtless 
 moderns believe that the hidden fates are weaving our 
 destinies as they spin their invisible threads. We must 
 give up these old delusions. The Fates like the Muses 
 are but the poetic figments of imagination the baseless 
 fabric of a dream. Our destinies are in our own hands, 
 and we must weave our own lives. 
 
 There is no such power as Luck in the economy of 
 God's universe. It is almost idolatry to speak of it, for 
 every evil and e^nery good can be traced back to reason- 
 able (guises. Do not foolishly depend on Wind chance, 
 but trust alone )the m^eriaVand moral forces with which 
 our Father has eadowecr each of His children to work 
 out their own salvatioX^
 
 SIN AND DUTY.
 
 Sin and Duty. 
 
 There is a popular delusion that religions in their 
 codes of law and specified precepts cover all the detailed 
 duties of man and every phase of sin. Offences against 
 the state are codified within a certain degree of complete- 
 ness but not the offences against God. The only tab- 
 lets on which man will find his every duty written and 
 his failings recorded are the tablets of his heart. They 
 do not always tell the same behest, but like dissolving 
 views change for each occasion. No one can tell you 
 when you are wrong, so well as you. yourself. It is 
 true that there are certain fundamental duties, and cer- 
 tain fundamental crimes that nearly all people recognize 
 though even here there is divergence.* But neither 
 Judaism nor any other religion in their books of Law 
 can specify every human obligation; that would be im- 
 possible. The Ten Commandments give a few cardinal 
 duties, so does the i6th Psalm, so does Micah. The 
 Shulchan Aruch specifies as many as 613 precepts, but 
 they consist mostly of details of ceremonial. All duty 
 for all men could never be codified it belongs to the 
 'nfinities; nor is duty the same for all men. You may 
 stand in a position with conflicting calls upon you, in 
 which precise position no other human being has ever 
 stood. In no code of law or manual of ethics will you 
 find out what is your distinct duty in this instance- 
 
 * There are certain kinds of murder and suicide sanctioned by 
 barbaric religions. A Thug is a conscientious strangler; Suttee 
 compulsory suicide is duty for an Indian widow; sell-immolation 
 under the Juggernaut is an Oriental form of piety. Even here in 
 the United S ! ates, what is legal marriage in one State is incest on 
 the statute books of another.
 
 You must decide for yourself. Of course you will find 
 general principles that may cover the case, but every- 
 thing lies in the application of the principle. Nor can 
 even another advise you, for in the very way in which 
 you tell the case, you may half consciously give it a 
 certain bias that will decide his answer. There may be 
 certain shades of difference between these two dutie 8 
 before which you stand in doubt that would be hardly 
 capable of coherent explanation you feel them easier 
 than you can utter them. But they all enter into your 
 final decision. 
 
 For this reason must we be so very cautious in judg- 
 ing others. We see the act, with some of the attending 
 circumstances we may even guess pretty accurately at 
 the dominant motive. But that is all. Of a thousand 
 little additional details that decide his action you can 
 never know, he hardly knows all of them himself some 
 of the inner deciding promptings hardly coming to the 
 surface of consciousness at all. No one man should be 
 as severely judged for the same offence as another, first 
 because no one man is exactly like another, secondly 
 because the attending circumstances can never be entirely 
 the same, and thirdly because the mood in which the 
 act is committed may be different. 
 
 For moods vary. At times you feel more righteous 
 than at others. In certain moods you could almost 
 commit a crime, from which in other moods you would 
 recoil in horror. At one time you will think in surprise 
 of what a strange person you were at another time. 
 Therefore a man's guilt before God, must be measured 
 somewhat by the mood in which he sinned. There are 
 moments when you feel so exalted that you would be 
 capable of great heroism or self-renunciation. It is a 
 pity that when you feel that way you don't act instead 
 of letting the lofty sensation pass over you without
 
 using; it for good. To waste your best moments by 
 inaction, is like pouring treasure into the sea. It always 
 for instance seems to me so unfortunate when we let our 
 exquisite waves of compassion run off into mere useless 
 pity, instead of directing: them into some tangible aid 
 and thereby giving to the good impulse which otherwise 
 would be momentary, a sort of permanency an immor- 
 tality. On the other hand, it is a good thing if you let 
 your bad moments pass off in harmless passion. Shut 
 yourself up in your room and storm and rage there, and 
 then when the fit is over, come out a sane and reasonable 
 man. Alas, if we give an immortality to our bad moments 
 by committing our deeds then how many crimes are 
 due to that. 
 
 From these reflections you see how complicated are 
 duty and sin, and how careful we must be in deciding. 
 Faults and virtues do not stand isolated in books of 
 moral maxims; they become faults or virtues only in 
 connection with individuals. Mind and conscience 
 must first be educated before we can recognize sin at all. 
 And in the sight of God nothing is a sin unless the soul 
 recognizes it as such. Therefore 
 
 " The beast unfettered by the sense of crime 
 To whom a conscience never wakes," 
 
 does not sin, however brutal and savage it may act. 
 
 Even a very young child cannot be punished for 
 selfishness or untruthfulness, it can only be instructed. 
 More deeds are sins to a civilized man than to a savage, 
 for nigher education has taught the former to recognize 
 as wrong, what the untutored conscience of the latter 
 would regard with indifference. For this reason even 
 our secular and medical codes of law are constantly 
 changing with the constant higher development of man, 
 and with his spiritual growth. What one age permits 
 another age will condemn. We are constantly dropping
 
 both from our political and religious codes, needless 
 restrictions and formal injunctions that uselessly hamper 
 the liberty of man, and are replacing them by regulation 
 that are moral and helpful. 
 
 But as I have already indicated these can never cover 
 the whole sphere of duty for the individual. He must 
 often be a law unto himself. The author of the Book 
 of Judges wishing to explain the roughness of the times 
 that he describes says, ' every man did what was right 
 in his own eyes." If it is meant to imply as it certainly 
 does that there was no organized justice or police or 
 armed authority we can understand that such condition 
 would encourage in some, lawlessness and violence. 
 But in the realm of higher duties every man must ulti" 
 mately do what is right in his own eyes must be a law 
 unto himself. Our conscience is our last and highest 
 authority. It is the closest means by which man can 
 learn the will of God. The directing voice of conscience 
 is higher than the voice of any oracle, or any other indi- 
 vidual clothed with sacred authority, or the word of any 
 holy book. If your own soul declares your deed wrong 
 nothing can make it right. The fact that you think 
 your deed wicked makes it so. 
 
 What is sin for one is not sin for another. If you 
 think it wrong to kindle fire on the Sabbath, and you 
 nevertheless kindle it, then it is a sin for you, just as 
 decidedly as stealing would be. But if you so interpret 
 that Mosaic command as to consider the lighting of fire 
 harmless, then it is not a sin for you. In this way two 
 persons may stand before the same injunction, which is 
 sin for one and not for another. But you will say, 
 "following that same line of argument, then if a man 
 considers stealing no sin, and if it obtains the approval 
 of his conscience, then it is no sin ?" Very true. But 
 here is the importance of wise education of conscience.
 
 Centuries of experience of thought and noble striving 
 after betterment has established the enduring right of 
 certain things and the undoubted wrong of others. These 
 are the golden maxims of life, the fundamental teachings 
 of all religions, the foundation of all civilised society. 
 They belong to the first rudiments of all education, and 
 are so early and so thoroughly implanted that they be- 
 come as it were a part of the organized conscience of the 
 community and the laws on which it works. So no 
 civilized being, doubts the evil of falsehood, stealth, 
 murder, unchastity and violence. In all our reasonings 
 we take those at least as axioms which need not be 
 reasoned out again. 
 
 Therefore the danger to society of anarchists who 
 would call into question even fundamental laws, and 
 ask us to doubt and reconsider ihose enduring principles 
 of life and duty, to the truth and necessity of which 
 successive ages of wise and good men have borne testi 
 mony and stamped with their approval Either accept 
 this or regard all civilization as a mistake, deny all 
 improvement and growth, and doubt the concentrated 
 wisdom of all humanity. 
 
 The attitude of these deluded zealots at least holds 
 out to us a warning, that in acting according to the 
 dictates of our conscience as I said we should, and in 
 adhering to that which is right in our own eyes, that we 
 must weigh and ponder before deciding. One of our 
 duties is to find out what is duty; and if we evade an 
 ordeal of painful thought to get at the absolute right, 
 and impatiently act by guess-work, or are content with 
 approximation why then we sin in the process of decid- 
 ing our action, apart from the sin we may commit in the 
 action itself. My chief purpose then in dwelling on 
 this, is not so much to tell you to fulfil your obligations, 
 as to show you the importance of tirelessly and earnestly
 
 searching for those obligations they wont always come 
 to you, and to demonstrate the vital necessity of your 
 being keenly alert in deciding what is right and wrong 
 for you, since no one else can do it for you, and since 
 by the way in which you decide right and wrong for 
 yourself, do you determine your haracter. 
 
 Conscience can be educated, expanded, distorted, 
 dulled or even killed, and those perpetual decisions of 
 yours saying, "this I think right,'' "this I think wrong," 
 and acting on them, is moulding your conscience in all 
 these different ways. Show me the book of morals that 
 your nature has finally drawn up, and I will tell you 
 what you are. 
 
 For we all do unconsciously draw up such a code, 
 and I wish to point out a fatal error that we nearly all 
 make. We are all of us more sensitive to sins of com- 
 mission than to sins of omission. You would not actively 
 commit a wrong, perhaps though you might passively 
 commit the sin of not doing a certain good when the 
 opportunity was there. We are all more guilty of nega- 
 tive sins than of positive sins. This is where our self- 
 delusion comes in; we do not always think that the 
 abstaining from good may be evil, and that there is no 
 middle, neutral ground between them. 
 
 Like the school-boy when called to account we say 
 ' I didn't do anything," exactly. We have our finger 
 on the sore spot the sin of doing nothing. No life 
 that is empty is sinless. My experience with most of 
 those I meet is that everything beyond being a law-abid- 
 ing citizen, and supporting one's family is considered as 
 entirely voluntary a sort of extra beyond the bounds 
 of actual duty an overweight granted put of the pure 
 goodness of heart. If they do a little spasmodic charity, 
 they think they have done such a great thing such a 
 mitzveh and pat themselves on the back in satisfied self- 
 complacency.
 
 We must enlarge the realm of our distinctly recognized 
 duties, and so cultivate our conscience to that higher 
 degree, that we will be dissatisfied with ourselves unless 
 our obligations cover that extended field. That vast terri- 
 tory of useful activity, in which fine shades of virtue 
 begin to be exercised, that lies beyond the populous 
 centre of the necessary duties ot mere respectable exist- 
 ence we treat too much, like some foreign land, to 
 visit which lies beyond our moral means some remote 
 sphere, far beyond the temperate zone, which only the 
 boldest explorer in the undiscovered depths of the soul 
 would venture to direct his sails. We each map out our 
 own lives in a way and our own little world of work, and 
 there are some people who make for themselves such a 
 small world, who recognize so few duties to others, think- 
 ing themselves highly praiseworthy if they but keep out 
 of the clutches of the law, 'hat, in their selfishness and 
 hardness and meanness, most of you, whose lives are 
 fuller and worthier, would shrink from them in disgust. 
 But there are others, again, whose conception of obliga- 
 tion is so much higher than yours, who voluntarily 
 live in the poor quarters of town, in the Tenth Ward of 
 New York, in Whitechapel of London, simply to influ- 
 ence the lives of the less fortunate for good, who would, 
 perhaps, in their turn, shrink from you in disgust in your 
 comfortable, pleasure-seeking lives. Here we see what 
 varying degrees of duties may exist even within the 
 limits of respectable society. 
 
 Think of the different standard of duty thai these 
 people have set up as compared with some of yours. So 
 lofty is their view of life, that to live as comfortably as 
 opportunity would permit them, they would regard as a 
 species of sinfulness. I meet, on the other hand, so many 
 young women whose lives are practically empty, full of 
 frivolity and idleness. They may, perhaps, play at a
 
 IO 
 
 little make-believe charity, but it is only a make believe 
 There are young married women, again, who think that 
 if they but just take care of their small families, aided 
 by plenty of expensive nssistance, that the rest of their 
 time may be conscientiously spent at the kaffee-clatch, 
 or what not, and so they live their selfish lives. Most 
 excellent and respectable and irreproachable people! 
 Their husbands are industrious and honest, and pass 
 their evenings at the club playing cards, but nobody 
 could say a word against them. They pay their bills and 
 support their families even go to Divine service twice a 
 year. 
 
 God help the world if it were made up entirely of such 
 people. Life means struggle and persistent effort ; 
 improvement comes from sheer persevering strife with 
 evil and animal forces. In this way humanity has 
 ripened with pains and tears and heart throes and fear- 
 less moral courage and noble self-denial. Nothing good 
 has come easy to man. He has had to fight for liberty, 
 knowledge, equality, right, morals, freedom of conscience 
 he has had to bleed for these things and die for them, 
 that others after might live by them and enjoy them. Is 
 it all over now? Have we reached the acme of excellence 
 in anythingp^ls there to be no heroism in the nineteenth 
 century? Are all the struggles over ? The cry of the 
 hungry is just as bitter. The problem of labor is just as 
 intricate. Have we reached our political ideal? Of 
 course we have not. Our State institutions are full of 
 abuses. We know that religion is not what we would 
 have it. Modern inventions have not removed crime; 
 prisons are still full. Look at that awful, shocking side 
 of life, on which Dr. Parkhurst cast a light for a moment. 
 
 Have we time for comfortable leisure with these things 
 before us? Are they not our duties yours and mine 
 just as much as anybody's? Is it not, then, a kind of sin-
 
 II 
 
 fulness to shut this out from our sight and knowledge, 
 and simply to hoard up for ourselves, and to give all 
 our thought and all our work just for self? Might not 
 a sensitive conscience construe this neglect into just as 
 real a sin as embezzlement or perjury? 
 
 The principle I wish to enunciate, then, is the larger 
 the number of useful actions that you have brought 
 within the sphere of your duties, and to neglect which 
 you would consider sin, the nobler you are. This is the 
 measure of your character and your worth. We judge 
 nations, as individuals, by what they brand as wrong. 
 Some people never fall below their own standard of 
 right, and never disobey the voice of their own con. 
 science; but their standard is so low and their conscience 
 so slightly developed, that they are much meatier crea- 
 tures than others who do not always come up to their 
 own ideal of right, because that ideal is so very, very 
 high. 
 
 Some of you may have made it your duty to look 
 into the lives of your employes, to keep them straight 
 when out of the store, and, even by constant inquiry, to 
 keep an eye on their families, and feel conscious-stricken, 
 now that, in the turmoil of financial troubles, this accus- 
 tomed duty has been somewhat neglected. While those 
 who consider that in no way their concern, as lying 
 entirely outside of their duty, don't feel in the least dis- 
 turbed. The approval of your conscience is not enough; 
 it is the quality of your conscience that should give you 
 most concern. Better not to get quite the approval of 
 a very sensitive, active, remorseless conscience than the 
 complete approval of a dormant, sleepy, comfortable 
 conscience. Israel, not quite obedient to Jehovah, was 
 higher and better than Canaan, quite faithful to Baal. 
 
 Some lives are perfectly harmless and perfectly empty 
 No particular excellence and no particular failing,
 
 12 
 
 except that monstrous failing of no particular excel- 
 lence. They would not commit a crime for the world, 
 nor an act of heroism either. Two boys write compo 
 sitions. One has no grammatical errors, no bad spelling i 
 no blots, no ridiculous notions, and yet there is nothing 
 in the composition. The writing of the other is full of 
 mistakes, has to be revised on every line, but the teacher 
 sees in it the spark of genius. There are some failings 
 that are almost the accompaniments of great virtues that 
 meaner natures are entirely free from. But now beware, 
 lest you take comfort from some of your failings as an 
 indication of possible greatness. Evil is a very poor 
 sign of good. Self-deception is the most hopeless of all 
 deceptions. 
 
 Look more strictly to yourselves, and don't take too 
 much in character for granted. Remember every 'time 
 you reveal a new sin, you reveal a new possible excel- 
 lence that's how man improves. It is stepping higher. 
 Some carry their obligation to others as to abstain from 
 intoxicating drink, because the example may encourage 
 drunkenness to weaker natures, and not to deal at the 
 large stores, because they may ruin the small shopkeep- 
 ers. I do not say that you should do either of these 
 things. I simply instance them, to show you how 
 large the sphere of duty may be made by good and lov- 
 ing men and women, who ponder day by day to devise 
 new means of helping others, and rejoice when a new 
 mode of helpfulness dawns upon them, though it will 
 mean a new sacrifice. One of our confessions should 
 always be, how much there is to do in this world that 
 God has given us, and how little we have done.
 
 THE FOOL HATH SAID IN HIS HEART, 
 THERE IS NO GOD.
 
 The fool hath said in his heart, 
 tliere is no God. 
 
 The Hebrew word *?33 translated "fool," might better 
 be translated knave. It really means the vicious churl 
 who deliberately denies the good. The deniers of reli 
 gious doctrines have been more leniently treated in 
 Jewish Law and Practice than in any other of the reli- 
 gions of mankind. Judaism has always held men respon- 
 sible for their works rather than for their beliefs. For 
 we cannot so deliberately decide just what we shall 
 believe, as we can just what we shall do. Our reason 
 moves in spite of us. 1 could never understand how 
 men claiming to be religious should have seized those 
 who believed differently from themselves, tied them to 
 stakes and permitted them to burn at slow fires. In 
 most of these historic instances, if there was any choice 
 of belief between persecutor and victim, I think you 
 would have felt inclined to side with the martyred here- 
 tics. Often the so-called unbelievers were only unbe- 
 lievers in things unbelievable, but all the deeper believ- 
 ers in things rational and good. It is ridiculous to ask 
 people to believe in God, as some ecclesiastical Diet or 
 Synod may decide. That is certain death to real religious 
 feeling. The conscience cannot be adjusted to suit the 
 last convention or even the majority vote. We must be 
 true to ourselves if we would be true to God. 
 
 Many have become doubters only because their deep 
 soul could not contain a shallow fancy or a monstrous 
 delusion. "There's more re.il faith in honest doubt, 
 believe me, than in half the creeds," said Tennyson. 
 Some people never doubt only because they never think. 
 Therefore better the man striving to reach the core of
 
 , ? 2 * 
 4 
 
 things, anxiously wrestling with doubt, than he, who 
 mechanically wears the yoke of tradition and worships 
 in listless conformity. 
 
 "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God," 
 should he therefore be condemned ? May not the sceptic 
 be just as honest as the man of faith? 
 
 There are believers and there are believers there are 
 deniers and there are deniers. There are certain phases 
 of belief and faith that are indications of character. To 
 a certain extent our beliefs decide what we are: to be 
 able to believe, to be gifted with faith is often the test 
 of a great soul. To be deprived of this privilege, of 
 this trust in the Infinite God and in the infinite good, 
 often implies a grave deficiency in disposition. For the 
 depth of our belief is often the measure of our greatness. 
 We must likewise distinguish between belief and 
 belief. There are believers who are vicious creatures 
 but you will find that their beliefs are not real and vital. 
 There are unbelievers noble and self-denying, but you 
 will find they are unconscious believers. For no real 
 belief in a vital idea could end in itself, without leaving 
 its impress on our being, any more than a red hot bar 
 could be laid on a block of wood and leave no mark of 
 its presence. 
 
 Belief is not like a garment that can be doffed and 
 donned at pleasure, it is rather like our network of 
 nerves, a part of ourselves, growing with us and insepa- 
 rable from us to the last day. You cannot tear apart 
 vour real beliefs from yourselves, because they are your- 
 selves, and what you feel and what you do^ what you are 
 and what you will become depends upon the convictions 
 of your soul. 
 
 Now we are nearer to the meaning of our text " The 
 fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." 
 
 Notice how closely allied are faiths in God and in
 
 man. When you begin to lose faith in one you have 
 learned to trust, you will find yourself losing faith in 
 the Invisible God. With the sinking of high human 
 trust, the dignity of life sinks too. On the other hand, 
 you cease to believe in your own better self when you 
 doubt the existence of the everlasting ideal that was 
 your guide and copy. Thus the finer impulses begin to 
 dull and you find yourself a meaner creature than you 
 were. Very often the moral nature of a pure innocent 
 creature has been completely unhinged by an act of 
 baseness and betrayal, which has often led to religious 
 denial and spiritual abandonment. 
 
 For belief in God includes belief in nobility of man, 
 in goodness of the world, in the dignity of life, just as 
 surely as fruit and flowers and vegetation imply roots 
 hidden somewhere. God is a vast word and means, love 
 and righteousness it means endless power to create and 
 to endure, and to make justice the foundation of the 
 world. It means supreme consciousness and supreme 
 life. Only a fool could say there is no God. Oh, what 
 a worse than fool to stand in this vast universe godless 
 and alone To think that all is here by chance, and 
 whether we rise or fall, whether we flourish or collapse 
 into the yawning abyss of forgetfulness, all depends on 
 the blind, unguided movement of a chaos of atoms. 
 None so solitary as he who knows not the gre.it and 
 everlasting Friend. " With orphaned heart he mourns 
 beside the immeasurable corpse of nature." Yes, corpse 
 for the animating soul of God is gone Oh, to die and 
 to have to leave one's children in such a world! 
 
 Faith in God does not depend upon logic or argu 
 ment. We cannot teach faith any more than we can 
 teach parents to love their children. The best senti- 
 ments cannot always be argued, they go too deep for 
 reason. We must not confuse moral conviction with
 
 intellectual conviction, for here is the distinction be- 
 tween religion and philosophy, between the metnphysical 
 and the practical. Conduct is not a mere deduction 
 from reason, although the utilitarians try to make it so. 
 
 You cannot be convinced of God outside of you if you 
 do not find God within you. For if we think the world 
 be petty and godless and animal, it is because we are 
 petty and godless and animal, and see reflected the un- 
 flattering vision of ourselves. To believe in God is a 
 moral education. I do not mean such a belief in God 
 as is shared by many I daily meet. A belief inherited, 
 but not felt, a belief mechanical, but not real; a belief 
 that does not influence that is not at all that vivid belief 
 that touches every nerve. God to such is but a shadowy 
 idea. They may repeat the ^^iL? 11 y.&. They may add 
 n nsi " Thou shalt love God," but they do not love 
 God. He is too far away from their thoughts and their 
 feelings and their interests: they believe in the existence 
 of God as they believe in the existence of Africa. Even 
 while praying to Him they are not thinking of Him. 
 And only when danger comes and they fear an impend- 
 ing calamity, do they ask themselves *' How near are we 
 to God? v For remember there are atheists in practise 
 /". e. those who believe in the existence of a divinity, yes, 
 but He is away outside of our human world; not influ- 
 encing human lives or human doings, but leaving good 
 and bad alike to shift for themselves. This denial of 
 Providence, of the continual nearness of our Maker 
 about us and in us, I call practical atheism. 
 
 The reason, the belief of some of you in God is so 
 shadowy and doubtful is first, because you think that 
 faith is a something that will come of itself. Faith 
 needs the education of self-discipline, the cultivation of 
 the spirit and earnest religious meditation. 
 
 Just as belief in God implies other beliefs, so denial
 
 of God involves many other denials. It is these other 
 denials that are its practical consequence, that will most 
 appeal to you. The denial of God leads first to the deni- 
 al of the soul. It brings us to the dreary conclusion that 
 we are nothing more than clods of earth kept going by 
 chemical combustion. Life and thought and feeling are 
 reduced to mere mechanical and automatic action like 
 an electric motor, and when the supply is exhausted, the 
 person dies, just as a fire goes out. Thus the denial of 
 God means the denial of man, I mean man as a respon- 
 sible creature, man as something more than the beast 
 that seeks its carnal appetite, man as touched with the 
 divine spark that breathes love and inspiration and 
 glorious self-denial and martyrdom. 
 
 ' The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." If 
 God is not, then there is none beyond or above us we 
 have no ideal for progress no higher power or higher 
 goodness, as our standard of perfection, to spur our 
 moral emulation. No grander model from which to 
 shape our lives. But we ourselves in all our weakness 
 and insufficiency and wavering aims, would stand the 
 highest in the universe. Take God out of the world, 
 what a poor world it becomes. Though our virtues be 
 small 'tis inspiring to feel that there is an infinite source 
 of all virtues; virtue itself grows larger. Though our 
 power be limited, there is assurance in knowing that it 
 is but a modicum of a boundless Power that is directing 
 all tilings. It makes us better to realize the greatness 
 and the grandeur of the world. 
 
 Denying God leads to the denial of what we call the 
 moral sense. Conscience is explained away. "What 
 is it ?" ask the atheist. Schopenhauer answers, one-fifth 
 fear, one fifth superstitution, one-fifth prejudice, one- 
 fifth vanity, one-fifth custom. Thus are the very founda- 
 tion stones of morality loosened. We are on this theory
 
 a 
 8 
 
 kept from errors, by a combination of errors equally 
 despicable. Thus even righteousness is dissolved into 
 a something almost unrighteous. The gold of goodness 
 turns out a dross of pretence when passed through 
 the atheistic crucible. We are not surprised to find the 
 school of deniers wishing to eliminate from our diction- 
 aries on the one hand merit, and on the other hand 
 guilt, by classing the latter with disease and the former 
 with self-interest. Duty ceases to be a divine messenger, 
 but is simply a phantasm made up of desire and fear, 
 and thus all moral distinctions are broken down. And 
 all the grand array of virtues for which we have so 
 struggled are contemptuously defined as sensation, 
 passion, a bubble in the blood. We have almost reached 
 the lowest rung of degradation in this gloomy philo- 
 sophy of denial when life is compared to an ass going 
 to market with a bundle of hay before it, who sees noth. 
 ing but the bundle of hay. And so step by step, we are 
 prepared for this final definition of another materialist. 
 " mankind is a rascal, the world lives by humbug, so 
 will I." Might not a reasoning from the text, "The 
 fool hath saith in his heart there is no God,' lead in our 
 heart to saying, 'I know no authority for the Ten Com- 
 mandments all these laws may-be a mistake. I will be 
 a libertine, a debauchee -I'll have my fling. Let us 
 eat and be merry." 
 
 And so I find that the godless state is generally the 
 cynical state. The deniers of God, the soul and con- 
 s ience, become the deniers of that better and purer side 
 of human endeavor. They fail to see God in history, in 
 progress, in natural law, in human nature. They be- 
 come sceptical of every disinterested good, and ask how 
 much was paid for it. They say every man has his 
 price. They explain heroism by ambition, and martyr- 
 dom by vanity. They sneer incredulously at the virtue
 
 and innocence of woman, auu il acknowledging it at all, 
 give material and selfish explanations. They rob mar- 
 riage of its ideal side and even love is seen only in its 
 lower and carnal phases. At this hopeless picture of 
 man, all human endeavor seems to be a mistake, and all 
 struggles for higher good or any good, for betterment 
 of character and discipline seem to be useless and vain. 
 The nerves of perseverance are cut, generous enthusiasm 
 is discouraged, and we can but settle down into the 
 ignoble despair of a disgraceful pessimism. The lives 
 of the great heroes are exhumed and pulled to pieces. 
 Moses is a pretender, Samuel and the prophets are poli- 
 ticians, Socrates a vain bore, Washington a drunkard, 
 Cromwell a hypocrite Mahomet an impostor. And so 
 the moth of negative cynicism and brutal denial eats 
 away our fairest pictures and denounces them as the 
 idle dreams of a credulous age. 
 
 Enough of this filthy philosophy. Humanity, its 
 patience exhausted, calls out in rebellion: "Show us an 
 untainted good, or our souls will starve." We will look 
 at another picture. There was a man who lived in the 
 land of Uz, and none have yet decided to what age he 
 belonged what matter? His name was Job a name 
 that dispels the spirits of darkness and evil. All the 
 human misfortunes that the saddest lives know entered 
 into his loss of wealth, loss of children, physical agony. 
 " Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? Renounce 
 God and die," said his companion. And Job replied : 
 ''Thou speakest as one of the foolish speak. What! shall 
 we receive good at the hand of God and not receive 
 evil? Is. my righteousness more than God's? The Lord 
 giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the 
 Lord." That is what is meant by faith. A belief that 
 stands such a test a firmness in right that cannot be 
 broken by trials and pain. Such is the faith that I
 
 TO 
 
 assert is not an accident of mind or a deduction of logic, 
 but an indication of sterling character. Such is the faith 
 that does not come of itself by drift of thought, but ha s 
 to 63 foi^ic for by wrestling with evil, and, by super- 
 human effort, holding fast to good. I stated at the 
 beginning that we Hebrews rather despise faith simply. 
 It seems too theoretical. That is true only of a certain 
 phase of faith "What matter what a man believes if his 
 life is right?" you ask. You are correct. But you will 
 find always, if you probe deep enough, a right faith 
 behind that right life that alone makes it possible. The 
 man may call himself a sceptic; but you will see that 
 when you touch his belief in the all-pervading moral 
 law, in the inevitable Divine Power in the world and in 
 him that is making for righteou*iess, when you touch 
 the belief that we owe duties somewhere, that the good 
 is beautiful and must be sought, then you will find he is 
 not sceptica'., but these beliefs are the very fibre of his 
 being, the warp and woof of all his actions. 
 
 The author of Ecclesiastes is called a scoffer sometimes, 
 but he said this: "Though a sinner do evil a hundred 
 times and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that 
 it shall be well with them that fear God." Place it side 
 by side with the text: "The fool hath said in his heart 
 there is no God. 1 ' Between these two attitudes we see 
 the difference between religion and irreligion. " Right- 
 eousness tendeth to life," has been ever the watchword 
 of our people. 
 
 Our ancestors did not despise faitli and belief when it 
 came to the martyr's test. Hide the principles of religion 
 as you will behind ceremonies and formulasatid conven- 
 tional usages, these foundations must always be (here. 
 Without a hidden source up in the hills somewhere, the 
 river would soon dry up, mighty as it looks at the har- 
 bor. Without a perennial spring of faith somewhere up
 
 II 
 
 in the hidden depths of the soul, the inspiration for noble 
 deeds will soon exhaust itself. The good physician looks 
 not to symptoms, but to the hidden root of disease, 
 though he may have to trace it back even to a succeed- 
 ing generation. 
 
 Let us look at the text once more before closing. 
 "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." Tak- 
 ing the word, fool, in its popular signification, there is 
 a fine piece of sarcasm implied here. The sceptics 
 think themselves so critical and so clever. All else are 
 living in a fool's paradise. They alone see and know 
 things as they are. Yet, very often the unbeliever, 
 wishing to be wise above all knowledge, plunges into a 
 darkness deeper than all ignorance a blindness more 
 incurable than that of the "common herd," as they call 
 the people whom they so thoroughly despise. What is 
 true knowledge? Is it not to be wise with a wisdom that 
 is goodness? Are not these two texts one idea, looked 
 at from the positive and the negative side: "The 
 fool hath said in his heart there is no God;" "The begin- 
 ning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; to fear God, 
 that is wisdom, and to depart from evil, that is under- 
 standing." 
 
 So I know no higher wisdom than that of him whose 
 fine moral penetration sees God even in the darkness of 
 adversity, and whose spiritual insight has learned to 
 declare, even in the midst of misfortune 3iO~? IT OJ. Oh, 
 the grandeur of the soul ever led by that faith that can 
 " wait for the salvation of the Lord," whose belief does 
 not shift with circumstance, but whose reliance on God 
 is so deep and so complete that no calamity can disturb 
 it. Let us strive to acquire that uncomplaining patience 
 that has learnt to labor and to wait, and slowly the ligh t 
 will grow. And though Divinity be invisible because 
 spiritual, though none can see the face of God and live,
 
 yet will we follow His unseen guidance, and never give 
 up the precious faith that feels that virtue is the highest 
 good, and lives the faith it feels. This is religion, this 
 is godliness.
 
 Faith and Reason. 
 
 BY REV. DR. MAURICE H. HARRIS. 
 
 We cannot hide our eyes to the growth of unbelief, 
 The scepticism of the nineteenth century is even deeper than 
 the scepticism of the eighteenth; then the freethinkers were for 
 the most part deists, now they are for the most part materialists. 
 There is a growing fear that knowledge is killing religion 
 that they stand to each other in inverse ratio, and the more 
 we know the less we believe. 
 
 \\e are terrified at our own discoveries, and are alarmed at 
 the bewildering infinities that our researches are opening up. 
 Science has revealed to us a much vaster univejse than was 
 ever pictured by the unaided imagination of our ancestors. 
 But though theoretically God is nearer to us since His omni- 
 presence is more thoroughly demonstrated practically He is 
 further away from us, lost in His own immensity. Again those 
 two great principles of evolution: "natural selection" and "the 
 survival of the fittest,'' have made the universe well-nigh 
 automatic, and almost explained away the need of Providence. 
 While some seem to feel that evolution has magnified 
 creation in general, but minimized man in particular; that 
 he is no longer the centre of the universe with all things 
 made for his benefit, but that he simply represents a stage 
 the highest stage it's true in creation. There is no longer a 
 gap between him and the '"brutes that perish;" perhaps he is 
 a brute that perishes himself. 
 
 While progress of science has awakened these fears, the 
 advance of philosophy has also given cause for alarm. The 
 far-reaching application of cause and effect threatens to rob 
 man of freedom of will and hence of personal responsibility.
 
 Some disciples of the Utilitarian School explain away human 
 worth, saying we are no more responsible for our sins than for 
 our diseases. But tell to the masses at large that good deeds 
 are not to be accounted to their merit and that they are not 
 to be blamed for evil, then we will undermine the morals 
 and even the stability of society. 
 
 All these new theories have increased man's doubts have 
 made him less sure of the immortality of the soul, or even of 
 the distinct existence of the soul at all. That teaching of 
 Antigonus ben Socho,that we should do good for its own sake 
 and not for the sake of reward or for the fear of punishment, 
 has been carried too far when it is used to eliminate the hope 
 of future life. The old fear of punishment in the future. which I 
 am proud to say never played any figure in Jewish theology 
 so that" a Jewish Dante is almost as unthinkable as a Jewish 
 John Ward, Preacher may well take its departure. But it is 
 not well if that old fear is followed by a dread more awful even 
 than eternal punishment viz. that we and our doings are 
 entirely ignored by the powers above. The thought of pun- 
 ishment may have its terrors, but the thought of neglect is 
 still more terrible. When man fears less, he hopes less. 
 If we take from the future its consequences, we take from 
 life its enthusiasm. 
 
 Now, is it true that as we know more we feel less ? Does 
 knowledge make us cold ? Does the fact that we have learned 
 the causes of so many things lessen our sense of reverence ? 
 Is science the enemy of religion after all? Is ignorance neces- 
 sary to faith ? 
 
 If these conclusions were true they would fill us with melan- 
 choly and dismay. We would really be progressing backwards. 
 The ignorance of savagery would have been the golden age. 
 The tree of knowledge would indeed be the disenchanter, 
 driving us from the garden of hope and ideals to the gloomy 
 desert of a despairing reality.
 
 Let us hasten to reassure ourselves at the outset. Faith is 
 not the measure of our ignorance. The people who say that 
 religion is only needed by the masses who cannot reason do 
 not know what they are talking about. No greater libel 
 against religion was ever uttered than that. In J. S. Mill's 
 wonderful essay on " Liberty," he says they who least appre- 
 ciate liberty are those most in need of it. I may say the same 
 of religion. No ! religion and ignorance are not mutual con- 
 ditions. In certain respects they are natural contradictories. 
 The faith of the unlettered is not the result of their illiteracy, 
 any more than the materialism of some scientists is the con- 
 sequence of their science. There was atheism before there 
 was evolution, just as there is theism after it. It has even 
 deepened the faith of some. To many an explorer its results 
 have made God greater, life grander, duty holier, though 
 personally I do not think that this theory, or for that matter 
 any other theory, can take faith from believers, nor give faith 
 to unbelievers. Kut certainly no phase of knowledge need 
 stand in religion's way for religion is not less than science 
 but more than it, and is dissatisfied with it only because it 
 cannot go far enough. We need not be afraid whither our 
 researches may bring us for we can never exhaust the glories 
 of the Infinite, nor fathom the source of the Everlasting 
 Good. 
 
 Our reasoning faculties are the gift of our Maker just as 
 much as our conscience, and we would be showing poor 
 gratitude for His gifts by neglecting or mistrusting them. 
 God's perpetual revelation unfolds before us. just as fast as 
 our expanding souls can drink it in. Let us not deserve the 
 reproach of Isaiah that "having eyes we see not and having 
 ears, we hear not." If the age is not religious, it is not because 
 the age is wise. And he who only knows enough to be 
 irreverent, only enough to deny, he knows little indeed, and 
 is not the less ignorant because he disclaims ignorance. Many
 
 "a fool hath said in his heart there is no God." Never is 
 the proverbial " little knowledge " so dangerous as in the 
 realm of religion; and Heaven save us from the newly-fledged 
 college graduate, who has read a few chapters from Herbert 
 Spencer's First Principles and thinks he " knows it all." 
 
 And yet there is a something in that charge against the 
 times, with which I opened, one sided and half-truth though 
 it be, that bids us pause. This is the age of rationalism. It 
 has made as its motto "the voice of reason is the voice of 
 God. ;> The worth of all things in the heaven above and in 
 the earth beneath must be tested in the crucible of logic, and 
 be capable of experimental demonstration. This spirit of 
 rationalism has reached religion too. Our beliefs and doc- 
 trines must admit of almost mathematical deduction. The 
 pulpit of to-day busies itself with proofs and evidences and 
 appeals to the intellect of the congregation. A scientific 
 lecture will often replace the homely sermon of olden times. 
 
 Of course it would be childish to deny that this spirit of 
 investigation has not done good service to religion. It had 
 cleared it from error and misconception. It has checked 
 unbalanced sentiment. It has broadened and deepened its 
 principles in the light of the latest knowledge. But our en- 
 thusiasm has carried us too far. In our admiration for mind 
 we have neglected the claims of emotion. But remove 
 emotion from religion and you reduce it to a cold philosophy. 
 Surely religion should remind itself that man is something 
 more than a thinking machine. The intellectual and the 
 emotional sides of our nature react on each other, becoming 
 mutually helpful by revising and supplementing each other's 
 deductions. There is a certain kind of knowledge that is 
 revealed through our feelings, that cold thought would never 
 discern. What we call intuition, from which we have learnt 
 much, is a conviction of the soul that evades demonstration 
 through the mind.
 
 2.3) 
 
 1 
 
 Let us modify the maxim of the age . Reason is not the 
 voice of God but a voice. Is it the "still small voice,'' 
 must be religion's supreme question. Let rationalism dispel 
 our illusions by all means, but let it not rob us of the sanction 
 of sentiment or we will be paying too much for it. Because 
 religion no longer fears science as an enemy, it must not go 
 to the other extreme and neglect its own inheritance. 
 
 Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell. 
 
 Religion is not a mere deduction from reason, nor will 
 it admit of the scholastic methods of the schools. For in- 
 stance, it is not a matter for argument, as many persons sup- 
 pose. Never was religion more outraged than when stupid 
 mediaeval kings gathered priests and rabbis to argue publicly 
 the merits of their respective religions fitly satirized in a 
 poem of Heine. The best that is in religion escapes 
 demonstration is perhaps degraded by demonstration. 
 "Words like nature half reveal and half conceal the thought 
 within." We get flashes of it here and there in moments of 
 inspiration; but no man can see God's face and live. To try 
 to reduce religion to premises of a syllogism or to a system of 
 deduction, is like picking a rose to pieces to get at the frag- 
 rance. In the act of analysis the essence is gone. 
 
 It must always be borne in mind that creeds follow 
 religions, they do not precede them; first the Prophets and then 
 the Law was the real order. Creeds are but the result of look- 
 ing back upon our beliefs after the religion is fully developed, 
 when religious fervor has cooled down, and is followed by a 
 critical stage, during which man tests his theories and modi- 
 fies his doctrines. Prophets make religion, scribes make 
 creeds . 
 
 It is, then, useless for man to go to science or to philosophy 
 to find out God. They have assured us time and again that 
 it lies beyond their province either to prove or disprove
 
 8 
 
 divinity, their conclusions resulting' only in antinomies. 
 Religion begins where science ends. I venture to say that 
 even the proof of a First Cause through the cosmological or 
 the ontological arguments of philosophy would have no value 
 for religion. Such demonstration is no more likely to inspire 
 man to worship than mathematics would inspire him to worship. 
 It is approaching God from the wrong side. Here are differ- 
 ent realms. Religion should teach man to reach God through 
 the soul. When we must needs sit down to prove God, our 
 faith is in a desperate condition. The Psalms can hardly be 
 said to contain proofs of God, yet they breathe His whole 
 spirit. It is not a book of proofs; it is a book of faith. Faith! 
 how despised that word is to-day, and by none so much as 
 by ourselves. I am fully aware of the abuses to which blind 
 faith has led man, just as well as I am aware of the dreary 
 and despairing results of science, unaided by religious imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 This decline of faith has led to a theory as popular as it is 
 sophistical. Never mind what a man believes, so long as he 
 does his duty. To put it in a couplet of Pope's: 
 
 For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; 
 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right. 
 
 But to cry for morality and to despise faith is to cry for flowers 
 and to despise roots, and is as unreasonable as to expect our 
 flowers to continue blooming after they have been severed 
 from the roots on which they grew. 
 
 We point with a little too much pride and a little too much 
 positiveness to the absence of dogma from Judaism. We 
 should not forget that some kind of faith must underlie works, 
 that a belief is unconsciously implied in every deed. The 
 greatness of our ancestors, as the religious teachers of mankin d 
 lay in their implicit faith in the power of a righteous God, 
 whose nearness to us varies with our moral worth. 
 
 That we have not a distinctly defined creed to-day, or that
 
 no two Hebrews agree as to what are the essentials of Judaism, 
 is not our strength but our weakness. It is a slip-shod atti- 
 tude that leads to looseness in our whole religious life. What 
 is a Jew? What isn't a Jew? a race, a nation, a religion, a 
 sentiment what not! Orthodoxy and Reform differ chiefly 
 in ceremonial, because in the matter of principles there is a 
 hopeless chaos. I think it is time we decided where we 
 stand. 
 
 Indifference to doctrine and loss of faith has already reacted 
 on us, though we may be unaware of it. They have been 
 followed by a lack of appreciation of prayer, by a lowering of 
 our ideals of life and by a loss of spirituality, which is the 
 bloom of that very morality of which we talk so much. Spir- 
 ituality is a word easier uttered than denned. It is a species 
 of moral refinement that comes from a vivid realization of the 
 soul's kinship with divinity, a sense of entering into commun- 
 ion with God. In our craze for rationalism and in our decline 
 of faith we have wandered so far from the spirit of our ances- 
 tors, that the yearning of the Psalmist,"as the hart panteth after 
 the water brooks so my soul panteth after thee, O! God, 1 ' 
 sounds strange, almost incomprehensible to the ears of the 
 modern practical, prosaic Jew, as though this were the phrase- 
 ology of some other creed instead of the very spirit of the 
 ancient Hebrews. I can almost imagine a smile at my refer- 
 ence to these soul yearnings, because from the material 
 standpoint, which of late is often the Jewish standpoint, it 
 would seem that these expressions must either cover hypo- 
 crisy or are the result of weakmindedness and maudlin senti- 
 ment. 
 
 But the modern rationalist will tell us that we need only 
 "The Truth," that we must boldly and fearlessly say what we 
 think regardless of consequence, that evil cannot possibly 
 come from the utterance of truth. And the word is written 
 in big capitals. But there is danger here too, first in the order
 
 10 
 
 in which we may present even what we may believe to be 
 absolutely right, and secondly in the manner of presentation 
 of doing much harm to our young men. For since we can 
 never get more than fragments of truth at best, since so much 
 is left to the inference of imagination, in which emotion and 
 sentiment play so large a part, therefore must the guardians 
 and teachers of religion, realizing the solemnity of their trust r 
 strive with painstaking and conscientious care, so to present 
 the little that they think they know to those who look to them 
 for guidance in the highest and holiest of life's duties, that 
 it may inspire them and lead to their spiritual awakening; and 
 not in a way to shock their moral sensibilities, producing 
 religious apathy or hopeless despair. 
 
 For instance, there is less difference between the old theory 
 of the supernatural inspiration of the Bible and the new school 
 of what is called higher criticism, than' there is between the 
 possible ways of presenting the latter for the purpose of cultiva- 
 ting faith and reverence. We may, like Ingersoll, see in the 
 Pentateuch nothing but "the mistakes of Moses," and may 
 picture it to the public in a caricature as the slanderer Schlei- 
 ermacher presented the Talmud. Or, on the other hand, even 
 in discrediting the miracles, as miracles we can show the 
 intense morality of our ancestors behind their very legends, 
 since all things are made to happen from moral causes; and the 
 beautiful trust of those old Hebrew writers in an ever watchful 
 Providence "who slumbereth not nor sleepeth," that has made 
 the Bible that book of power it always will remain, whatever 
 be the theories about it. The touch of reverence with which 
 we present the truth often makes more difference than the 
 truth itself. 
 
 So much depends upon the attitude with which we 
 approach the Holy of Holies, removing our shoes, so to 
 speak, Kin trilp noitf '3, or whether as ''fools we rush in 
 where angels fear to tread," and with brutal levity tear
 
 ii 
 
 aside the veil to gratify a vulgar curiosity. Mockery in 
 religion is worse than doubt. 
 
 Mockery is a Vandal that ruthlessly shatters our hallowed 
 sentiments enshrined in ths temple of our hearts, and by its 
 coarse jeers tears into shreds the "living garment of God,'' 
 in which the labors of all humanity are interwoven. Mock- 
 ery makes the sacred profane, tainting the soul with its 
 venom, and the holier the theme, the more revolting becomes 
 the caricature, for "corruptio optimi pessima." The 
 variation of a tone changes a prayer into a sneer, and may do 
 more to upset the honest faith of an honest soul than twenty 
 solid arguments; for, though it be but a step from the 
 sublime to the ridiculous, from the ridiculous to the sublime 
 is a gulf impassable. 
 
 Therefore, in the religious education of children, the 
 manner of presentation should give us much concern. Some 
 really conscientious parents, anxious to preserve in the home 
 the old Jewish customs, have killed the religious sentiment 
 of their children by the rough, matter-of-fact way in which 
 they fulfilled them, robbing those beautiful rites of all their 
 spiritual value. Prayer without reverence is worse than 
 nothing. Here, again, the modern rationalists give too much 
 consideration to the question, "teach us what to pray," and 
 not enough to the question, ''teach us how to pray." \Ve 
 are so afraid that our prayers might not be quite logical, o r 
 that an anthropomorphism might creep in, as if the feeling 
 were not everything and the words nothing. 
 
 Without teaching the children any precise dogmas at the 
 outset, we must first strive diligently and lovingly to cultivate 
 their sense of reverence, not necessarily for any particular 
 object or idea, but reverence as such, as a quality of character. 
 Open to its young soul the perpetual mystery and the perpe- 
 tual sublimity of all that is. It will then of itself look upon life 
 and the universe from its sublime side, and the idea of God
 
 12 
 
 will almost be intuitively suggested before it is distinctly. 
 In this way, the very framework of religion is already laid in 
 the heart of the child, ready to be clothed with the particular 
 faith of its ancestors. The perpetual wonder of a child 
 for everything around it may be darkened into fear, may be 
 discouraged into matter of fact, or may be deepened into awe. 
 liere is the parent's supreme opportunity and supreme 
 responsibility. The child's boundless and sensitive imagina- 
 tion, one of its greatest charms, must be wisely directed to 
 religious uses. 
 
 Religion is our conception of the universe Weltanschauung 
 as the Germans call it. The child's universe is very small 
 indeed, but we can make it pure and sweet and beautiful or 
 we can make it common and rough and dreary. For life for 
 all of us is what we make it, sublime or commonplace. If 
 children come to our Sunday Schools, with little faith, with 
 little reverence for the Sanctuary, and its associations lacking 
 that spiritual touch which indicates the cultivation of the sense 
 of sanctity, we can but trace these conditions to the parents, 
 to the home. Parents stand to the child as representatives of 
 God, and disobedience to them is a sacrilege. Home is the 
 first shrine,the hearth is the first altar,parents are the first min- 
 istering priests. To their loving care is entrusted the laying of 
 the foundations of religion, upon which we can 
 only build later. How faithful have we been to this, the high- 
 est of all parental obligations? 
 
 In trying to present the importance of faith and reverence 
 in religion, I am only asking that we go back to first principles. 
 Since it was the privilege of our ancestors to bring to man the 
 first message of righteous divinity, let us resume our ancient 
 birth-right. And in an age that would worship reason only 
 like some new idol, let us vindicate the claims of the soul. 
 "There are more things in heaven and earth" than we can ever 
 hope to explain. We say with the Psalmist "such knowledge
 
 13 
 
 is too wonderful for me, I cannot attain to it." But faith begins 
 where knowledge ends. Our senses have been developed to 
 the utmost, but the endless capacities of the spirit, in which 
 are hidden divine possibilities, are still almost untested. The 
 realm of the soul is still an undiscovered world, yet all the 
 greatness of the coming man lies there all our messianic hopes 
 and grandest ideals. Let religion then return to its neglected 
 inheritance, and perhaps, like unto Moses, the glory of God 
 may pass before us.
 
 000 341 068 5